July 5, 2057 – 4:27 a.m.
Detroit Metro Airport, Cell-phone lot
The red-eye from Vegas kisses the runway twenty-three minutes late, brakes howling like it's sorry to be here.
Jonah sits in the idling church van, "St. Mary Magdalene Youth Group" still ghosted on the side in flaking gold letters. He's been refreshing the flight tracker so often the screen has gone dim twice.
Terminal doors slide open.
A girl steps into the sickly orange light. Eighteen, maybe nineteen. Sun-bleached blond hair in a messy braid that looks like it lost a fight with the desert wind. Denim jacket two sizes too big, sleeves rolled to the elbow, backpack hanging off one shoulder like she's ready to bolt. Scuffed Vans, tired eyes, and the faint smell of jet fuel and frybread when the breeze shifts.
Jonah rolls the window down. "Maya Ruiz?"
She stops ten feet away, sizing up the van like it might bite. "Depends. You the kid who sounds twelve on comms?"
"I'm twenty-one," Jonah mutters, cheeks heating.
"Sure you are." She circles to the sliding door, yanks it open herself, and climbs in back. Up close Jonah sees the heat rolling off her in slow waves, the kind that makes the air above summer pavement shimmer.
He risks a glance in the rear-view. "Frybread survive TSA?"
Maya pulls a foil brick from her pack and tosses it to the passenger seat. Still warm. "My tita threatened to hex the entire security line. They waved me through."
Jonah tears the foil. The smell of blue corn and lard fills the van like a hug from someone who's still alive.
Maya leans between the seats. "Talk to me. How many kids on the convoy?"
"Twenty-three confirmed. Plus the twenty-two we already pulled. Forty-five total if tonight goes right."
She nods once, like the math was never in question. "And Red Mirage?"
"Riding escort. Kenji's cousin. Kid's looping illusions over every camera from here to the state line."
Maya's jaw tightens. The temperature inside the van climbs five degrees in a heartbeat; the foil around the frybread starts to smoke.
Jonah swallows. "We hit them at mile marker 67, old burial grounds under I-75. Kenji can move the earth there. Rest of us… improvise."
Maya rubs Tiger Balm under her nose, sharp menthol cutting the heat. "Red Mirage thinks pain is medicine," she says quietly. "Thinks if he forces the country to feel what we felt, it'll finally stop doing it."
Jonah risks the question. "And you?"
Gold flickers behind her irises, embers under ash. "I think pain just teaches people how to hand it down better."
Silence stretches, thick as airport fog.
Maya stares out at the empty pickup lanes. "My little cousin's on that convoy," she says, voice suddenly small. "Eight years old. Powers just sparked last month. They took him out of his bed."
Jonah's hands tighten on the wheel.
Maya exhales, and the heat drops back to bearable. "Let's go get him back," she says. "Before Red Mirage decides the whole interstate needs a history lesson."
Jonah shifts into drive.
Behind them, the terminal lights dim row by row, as if the city itself is turning down the brightness to watch what happens next.