As they drew closer to their houses, Carla found herself growing increasingly hesitant. Coming home was both the best and the worst part of her day in the best of times; best because it reassured her that her grandmother and sister were still okay, and the worst because she knew what she would have to endure upon returning.

  "You going to tell them what happened?"

  What happened? she thought. As if it was just a result of some natural phenomena. Carson was her friend, but there was no need for him to be so antiseptic. She’d murdered a child. She shook her head.

  He nodded, “Okay, well, you know where I am if you need me.”

  The platitude was wasted on her. She desperately needed him more than ever, but her time today with the handsome man was over. Now he returned to his real family.

  Carson waved and walked away, heading up the drive to his residence. Following suit, Carla stepped into her own home and took a deep breath, preparing herself for what lay ahead.

  For six decades, Maria Garcia had been an outcast, struggling to make America her own. No matter how hard she worked, no matter how many of their customs and values she embraced, it seemed that there was always someone else ready to remind her that she was never a ‘true’ American. Her foreign presence was a constant reminder that no matter how hard she tried, she could never truly belong.

  Over the years, that mindset had hardened Carlas’s grandmother, who had worked as a housekeeper for much of her life. She’d been determined to ensure her daughter, Santina, got a proper education with a chance for a real career, while at the same time, teaching Santina to always remember where she came from. This ‘take-no-shit’ mentality had earned her the nickname ‘Fiery Maria,’ a name she’d come to detest in her later years.

  Maria had been harsh with her daughter, maybe too much so. Santina had been a hard-working student, excelling in English and history, the latter of which had influenced her own daughter, Carla, in her own teaching career. But no matter how far she went in school, there was always some way in which Santina fell short in her mother’s eyes. Maria had often said, “You give up too soon., If you don’t give it your best effort all the time, the bots will replace you like you were a worn-out piece of meat.”

  Carla had never understood her abuela’s near pathological hatred of the mechanical bots, looking down on the easily replaced jobs such as cashiers and warehouse workers, telling Santina that she should never settle for a career that could just as easily be done by a machine.

  The woman’s intensity meant that Maria was hard to please as a parent. If Santina wasn’t doing everything right, she might as well not be doing anything right. At one point, Maria had even said, “You have no Mayan blood, your spirit is dead.”

  The comment had cut her daughter Santina to her core, and as soon as she had grown old enough to claim her independence, she’d left her mom and never looked back, keeping all contact with her overbearing mother to a bare minimum.

  Maria's heart shattered into a million pieces when she found out she was a grandmother through someone else. Santina had refused to even let her know she was expecting until well after Carla's birth. Desperate to make amends, Maria made contact and even offered to help with the baby, and later with both girls. But each time she was rejected. Her daughter's words cut like jagged knives. "I won't let you infect my daughters with your toxic lies," she spat back at Maria, leaving her feeling like a worthless and rejected mother.

  The chasm between Maria and her daughter seemed to stretch endlessly, time at a standstill as their bond shattered into irreparable pieces. Then came the fateful night that obliterated any hope of reconciliation. A phone call, the bearer of devastating news - Santina and her husband gone in a heart-wrenching, boating accident. Waves of grief crashed over Maria, drowning her in a sea of loss and regret. She screamed in anguish, clutching her chest as if trying to hold on to her shattered heart. The realization that she would never have the chance to tell her beloved daughter how much she cherished her was a knife twisted deeper into her already broken soul.

  But in her two granddaughters, Maria saw the glimmer for possible redemption. Carla and Meredith were nineteen and fifteen, beautiful, smart, and desperately in need of a parental figure. Their mother had been more of a friend to them—Maria worried if she could avoid the mistakes she’d made with Santina. She petitioned and was granted full guardianship of the girls, giving them a home back in San Antonio, and trying her best to support them. She’d managed to take a more delicate hand with the girls, instilling the same drive for independence and financial autonomy as she had with Santina, but never missing an opportunity to tell both how proud she was of them, and saying all the things she wished she had said to Santina when she was alive.

  A year or two ago, Maria found herself forgetting things. She had always prided herself on an excellent memory. But she’d been losing track of things more and more, misplacing her SmartComm, walking into stores and completely forgetting what she had gone in for. Simple things at first, but it became more frequent. She had tried to brush it off as getting forgetful in her old age.

  Carla had always been the pragmatic one, unlike her grandmother, who was stubborn and independent to a fault. When Carla finally convinced Maria to see a doctor, she knew it wasn't going to be good news. The autodoc could have easily diagnosed Maria's condition, but Carla wanted her grandmother to face the cold reality of human diagnosis. Alzheimer's was cruel in its onset; stealing precious memories and moments from people until they no longer even recognized their own loved ones.

  Maria initially refused to accept the diagnosis, and Carla understood. But as time passed and more information came to light, the truth could not be avoided. The disease took hold of Maria quickly, pushing Carla into the unexpected role of primary caregiver.

  Carla struggled with conflicting emotions as she watched Maria suffer from the debilitating illness. She couldn't help but feel resentful at being burdened with the responsibility of caring for her loved one, yet immediately felt guilt for having such thoughts. She was torn between feeling anger towards the disease and empathy towards Maria. It was a constant battle within her heart.

  Maria sometimes called her by her mother's name and treated Meredith as she did Santina. Despite the history, their grandmother was good to them and worked to make amends for past mistakes. But her hurtful words would still resurface. Carla couldn't abandon Maria now when she needed her most, despite feeling conflicted. And unfortunately, caring for her ailing grandmother was only part of her responsibility. Her sister Meredith also had her own issues tat they all had to deal with.

  The last few years had been challenging for Carla, but then the bombs ripped through San Antonio like a Texas-sized twister, leaving rubble and the dead in their wake. Every day she went out in search of anything that would keep her family alive. Hunger and the smell of the dead were constant, and rumors of encounters with even worse elsewhere made her skin crawl.

  Every now and then, Maria’s dementia-riddled mind transported her back to a pre-collapse world, Carla found herself frequently having to explain to her grandmother how the world had changed for the worse, only to realize her grandmother didn’t believe her, assuming it was a cruel prank her grandchildren were playing on her.

  Ultimately, it had gotten too exhausting for Carla to explain what had happened over and over. Instead, she tried to keep up the pretense that life was carrying on as normal, which meant herding Maria back into the house whenever she wanted to venture outside. It pained her now to even see her abuela, her grandmother, knowing every time she looked at her, a little piece of her seemed to break away, never to be recovered.

  Carla closed the door and walked up to her grandmother tentatively, as though she were approaching a wild animal. “Grandma?” she asked. “You all right?” Maria was gazing absently out of the window; Carla couldn’t tell if she even knew she was there.

  Without turning away from the window, her grandmother said, “You should speak Spanish. Never forget where you came from, Santina.” She turned to look at Carla, blinked, her face awash in confusion, then was back in the present day once again, the fog having temporarily lifted. “Sorry, dear, some days you just look so much like your mother.”

  “Where’s Meredith?”

  “She’s upstairs, reading some guy’s fortune,” Maria stated.

  “What?” Carla blurted out, instantly heading for her sister’s bedroom.

  The world might have ended for everyone else, but this had made little difference to her sister. Truthfully, the girl hadn’t been living on the same planet with the rest of them for the last few years. It had started back when she was just a young teen. She had been having hallucinations, imagining strange scenarios. Lucid dreams and…even weirder stuff.

  But to Meredith, they hadn’t been hallucinations. They had been premonitions of a dark future. She began attaching deeper meanings to many of them and even linking them to evil that just seemed to follow some people. The visions weren’t the problem…not really. No, it was the depth of Meredith’s conviction that they were divine, that she was the true harbinger of tomorrow’s secrets.

  Before the accident, their parents had decided Meredith should see a psychiatrist to hopefully explain these hallucinations away. They were under no delusions. It was obviously some sort of mental illness, but they had no idea what it was and thus, no clue as to how to deal with it.

  The parents had done all they could to shield their daughter from ridicule. It also didn’t help that Meredith was strikingly beautiful. She got attention, lots of attention, but her friendships rarely ended well. Truthfully, it was exhausting for the entire family.

  Finally, they’d planned a family holiday away on a boat, and had decided, upon their return, that they would take Meredith to see a specialist. One final, happy family excursion before getting down to the business of treatment. But Meredith had claimed that she had a bad feeling...seen a premonition that something bad was going to happen.

  Every fiber of her being screamed that this trip was a deadly mistake, and she would do anything to prevent it from happening. But her mother's forceful grip dragged her towards the car, her screams echoing off the walls as she fought against her impending doom. Their father, weary from their constant fighting, ultimately caved and allowed Carla to stay behind and care for Meredith while they embarked on their doomed voyage. In the end, it was the last time either girl would lay eyes on their parents before tragedy struck.

  Somehow, the boat’s onboard battery bank had caught fire and violently exploded, killing everyone on board. Afterward, Carla recalled the Coast Guard officer could only shake his head in disbelief; the odds of such a tragedy happening were infinitesimally small. In one cruel moment, every soul aboard had perished. A one in a million chance, they said.

  Meredith sunk into a deep depression and even Carla had to admit there might be something to her sister’s ‘gift,’ but still, the girl needed help. If not for the visions, then for the depression, guilt, sleeplessness, and delusions. After coming to live with their grandmother, Carla had done what she could to manage Meredith’s illness. Now, Carla found herself confronting it alone with none of the medications or understanding of how to keep the crazy at bay.

  The illness had ravaged Meredith’s chances for an ordinary life. She had lost friends who didn’t want to be associated with her anymore, she had lost jobs because of public meltdowns. The only thing she seemed to be doing with her time now was reading the future of anyone who cared to listen to her.

  As Carla turned the doorknob and pushed open the door, her eyes fell upon a teenage boy perched on the edge of the bed. He held out his hand, palm up, and Meredith's slender fingers traced its lines delicately. Carla noticed the dark circles rimming her friend's usually bright eyes, and she couldn't help but wonder if Meredith had slept at all the night before. The dim light from the bedside lamp cast shadows over the room, making it seem even more somber and mysterious. A faint scent of lavender lingered in the air, providing a calming presence amidst the tension in the room.

  “In your future, I see… a leader-”

  “Meredith, what have I told you about having people upstairs?” asked Carla, taking on the role of the parent. She looked at the teenager. “You, beat it.”

  Not needing to be told twice, the frightened teenager gathered his things and headed out the door.

  Carla realized her semi-official uniform and the gun and cuffs probably did scare the shit out of the kid.

  “I was reading his future,” Meredith said sullenly.

  “You have to be careful with strangers,” Carla exclaimed. “Who knows what this guy could have been up to? He could have been a thief, or worse.” Immediately, she started searching through Meredith’s drawers to ensure that nothing had been stolen.

  “Why don’t you let me read your future?” asked Meredith.

  Carla sighed, exasperated. “If I said ‘no’ to you the first time, why the hell would I say ‘yes’ the next fifty times?”

  “I thought you’d want to know what is coming,” said Meredith. “You need to know.”

  “Nothing is coming, Meredith.” She had tried to be gentle in her approach, but years of looking after her sister had taken their toll, and Meredith’s inability to grow up was testing Carla’s already-limited patience. “It’s all in your head.”

  “That’s exactly what Mom and Dad said,” Meredith snapped back. Thankfully, she didn’t include her normal rejoinder of 'And look what happened to them,' for a change.

  Carla couldn’t deny how eerie it was that Mom and Dad had died in the boating accident, just as Meredith had predicted. But she worked hard to tag it as extreme coincidence, nothing more.

  As though reading Carla’s mind, Meredith quickly said, “And I predicted last month, don’t forget. I told you the world was ending.”

  "You say that shit all the time, Meredith."

  Honestly, it was true; a week before the airstrike, Meredith had said that the sky would start falling down, and indeed it had. But Carla forced the idea from her mind. It was bad enough having Meredith tumbling down deeper into her fantasy world. She didn’t need to get suckered in herself.

  As she retreated into her bedroom and shut the door, she couldn't shake off the feeling of being invaded. This was her safe haven, her sanctuary, and she didn't want anyone else to enter it. As she sat on the floor, she noticed her hands trembling uncontrollably. She wondered if they had been shaking like this the whole time or if it was just a recent development. Her nails were caked with dried blood, a reminder of what she had done. She desperately tried to scrub it away with her other hand's nails, but it only made her feel more conflicted and guilty.

  She thought again about Jenny, and then to the girl’s family, wondering whether she had someone who was relying on her, waiting for her to come home. What if Jenny had been forced into a role of responsibility herself? The tears welled up, and Carla couldn’t hold them back. She wasn’t as strong as people thought. Honestly, most days she was only barely holding it together.

  Carla knew she wouldn’t face any immediate charges for what she had done. The police sergeant had stated that she was ‘obliged to uphold the law in whatever way she saw fit.’ But that didn’t stop the overwhelming sense of remorse, the thought that maybe she could have talked Jenny down. That it didn’t need to end in bloodshed. Maybe this was the next step. Everyone was moving backwards, now that the constraints of society were lifted, having little reason to abide by the quaint notions of fact or fiction or even just right and wrong.

  In a way, she was grateful for the remorse. It meant that she was still human and that she still cared. But what if there would come a day when she would have to pull the trigger again? What if a day would come when she could no longer recognize herself in the mirror? What happened when she no longer felt anything real?

  Carla couldn’t bear to think about that. She pushed these dark thoughts to the back of her mind. She had to be strong, for her abuela, and for her sister. And at this rate, maybe for the whole of San Antonio.

  Chapter Three

  She was up early the following day. Carla kissed her grandmother goodbye before heading out. Before she left, Maria held her close.

  “I just want you to know, love, I’m so proud of you. I know you put yourself out for this family time and time again, taking care of an old girl like me, and of course, your sister.”

  Carla appreciated the acknowledgement. It was nice to hear that someone appreciated what she did. “I had a good teacher,” she said.

  Maria blushed, her wrinkled cheeks turning a soft pink. "Oh, I only wish I could take that credit, dear. But you turned out the way you did thanks to your mother. She was strong-willed, determined to make her own way in the world even from a young age. Back then, when she was just a child, I didn't think that was a good thing. I wanted her to be more obedient, more traditional. Now I know better. Her strength and independence shaped who she was, and in turn shaped who you are. You have her fire in you, that unwillingness to back down from a challenge. I see so much of her in you, and I'm so very proud."

  Maria squeezed Carla's hand, unshed tears glistening in her eyes. Though years had passed since her daughter's untimely death, the pain still lingered, raw and aching. But she took comfort in the fact that her spirit lived on in her granddaughters. Her legacy endured.

  Carla was glad to see her grandmother was starting off the day clear-headed. It often got worse later in the day, but she didn't want her dwelling on guilt and remorse regarding her mom. Carla kissed her again on the cheek and left for work. She didn’t say goodbye to Meredith. She knew anything she could possibly say would be met with resistance. Hopefully, this would be a better day for them…and her.

  She walked next door to Carson’s house. The early morning sky was painted with pink and orange, the bright colors in sharp contrast to her mood. She wanted to start work while the day was young, and the temperature was marginally bearable.