Chapter 31: Old Friends, Old Wounds
Dr. Elias Wakati made the sort of sound only old men made when they had been sitting too long and were determined to pretend the noise had come from the chair.
It started low in his chest, climbed into his throat, and escaped as a rough little groan while he pushed himself up from behind his desk. His back cracked in several places, his left knee complained with real passion, and one shoulder decided to join in even though it had contributed very little to the actual movement.
Elias paused halfway upright, one hand pressed to the desk, the other holding his cane.
"Well," he muttered, breathing through the stiffness, "that is deeply undignified."
The study did not answer.
It rarely did unless Kairo was nearby, and then the room usually became much louder, stranger, and more likely to contain toys where important scientific instruments had once been.
The last week had hollowed Elias out in ways sleep could not repair. There had been meetings, phone calls, legal questions, police interviews, parents arriving at his door, and several long conversations with Madame Xanadu in which she answered almost nothing while somehow leaving him with even more to worry about. His entire household had been moving around the disaster at the zoo like people trying to step carefully around broken glass, everyone pretending they were holding together better than they actually were.
Kairo had recovered quickly in the physical sense.
Children did that.
Their bodies bounced back while their minds hid the bruises somewhere much deeper and quieter.
Elias knew better than to mistake appetite, laughter, or stubbornness for healing. Kairo had been eating, sleeping, and arguing normally enough. He had also started checking every room twice before entering. He kept one hand near the golden watch at his chest whenever someone mentioned the zoo. He asked where Rebecca was more often than he asked about anything else.
That told Elias enough.
He adjusted his glasses, reached for a stack of papers, then stopped himself. If he touched them, he would sit down again. If he sat down again, he would find another excuse to stay inside.
He had spent twelve years doing exactly that.
Twelve years of sealed doors, drawn curtains, private labs, and carefully managed distances. Elias told himself the mansion was safer. He told himself the work needed him. He told himself he was old, tired, and too well known to walk around Cranston Estates like any other resident.
Most of those excuses had some truth in them.
That did not make them good.
He left the study.
The hallway beyond was quiet, lined with old portraits, narrow tables, and clocks that had been chosen because they were beautiful rather than accurate. Elias moved slowly, cane tapping against the polished floor as he passed the rooms he knew better by sound than sight.
The mansion had changed around him over the years.
Once, it had been a laboratory wearing the costume of a home. The floors were always clean, the doors always shut, and every room seemed to carry the faint hum of machinery behind the walls. Then Amara had grown up inside it, quiet and observant, learning how to disappear without leaving the room. Elias had not understood what that meant at the time.
Later, after she left, the house became a monument to absence.
Her room remained untouched for years.
Temple's notes stayed in locked cabinets.
Every clock felt like an accusation.
Then Kairo arrived, wrapped in thermal silk, small enough to fit in the crook of one arm, carrying silver hair, Amara's eyes, and a heartbeat so exact that Elias had almost broken apart holding him.
After that, the mansion became something else.
Toys appeared beneath tables. Staff laughed louder. Beryl left boots in places boots had no business being. Anika brought warmth into kitchens and hallways that had forgotten what ordinary life sounded like. Kairo filled rooms by entering them. Even when he was quiet, the house knew he was there.
Elias walked past the grand staircase and caught his reflection in one of the tall windows.
He looked older than he remembered.
That was an unpleasant thing mirrors did, especially when one had avoided them for long enough.
His grey hair had become more unruly with age, refusing every comb he had ever owned. The lines around his eyes had deepened. His shoulders had narrowed, though he still carried himself with the faint stubbornness of a man who had once argued with university boards, corporate directors, government officials, and Victor Fries before breakfast.
For a moment, he considered turning back.
The study waited behind him.
It knew him.
The outside did not.
Before he could make the mistake, Anika stepped from a side corridor carrying a folded blanket and nearly walked into him.
She stopped short.
"Doctor?"
Elias cleared his throat and straightened as much as his back allowed. "Anika."
Her eyes moved over him, then toward the front of the mansion. "Are you going somewhere?"
"I had considered it."
"That sounds very different from yes."
"I am walking toward the door."
"That also sounds different from yes."
Elias gave her a look.
Anika smiled.
She wore a simple cream blouse with the sleeves rolled to her elbows, dark trousers, and her long braid resting over one shoulder. There was always something steady about Anika. She had no magic, no combat training, no hidden cosmic role, and yet people seemed calmer when she entered a room. Elias had come to understand that as a gift all its own.
"I am going to the Langstrom residence," he said.
Her smile widened. "You are?"
"I do not know why that sounds shocking."
"Because you have not left the house in twelve years."
"I have left the house."
"You have gone into the garden."
"That is outside."
"You stood under the back awning and complained about the wind."
"The wind was excessive."
"That was six years ago."
Elias looked toward the front hall. "I am already regretting telling you."
Anika shifted the blanket under one arm and stepped beside him. "Do you want company?"
"I am capable of walking down the street."
"I know."
"You said that too quickly."
"I also know you have not done it in a while."
He grumbled something under his breath, but he did not refuse.
Together they crossed the entrance hall.
The front doors waited at the far end, tall, dark, carved with old patterns of stars, gears, and branches. Elias had passed them countless times without opening them himself. Deliveries came through service entrances. Guests were received by staff. Security handled everything beyond the gates.
He stopped in front of the doors.
Anika noticed.
The house behind him seemed to hold its breath.
It was ridiculous. They were doors. Heavy doors, yes, old doors, expensive doors, but doors all the same.
Elias rested both hands on his cane and stared at the seam between them.
He remembered leaving for conferences with Amara trailing behind him, asking when he would come back.
He remembered returning from a six-week research trip and finding that she had stopped asking.
He remembered Temple standing in this same hall, young and composed, waiting to be invited deeper into the house.
He remembered the morning Amara and Temple disappeared.
After that, leaving the mansion had always felt like risking another loss.
Anika moved beside him and placed one hand against the door. "Ready?"
"No."
"That is honest."
"Do it before I become sensible."
Anika pushed.
The doors resisted at first, then began to open with a deep wooden groan. Elias lifted one hand and helped with the other side, though Anika did most of the real work. She was stronger than she looked, which was saying something because she already looked like a young woman who could carry a stubborn child under one arm and several bags of groceries with the other.
Cold air entered the hall.
Fresh air.
Pine.
Damp soil.
The faint smell of cut grass.
Elias stepped outside.
The sunlight made him squint.
For several seconds, he simply stood beneath the covered entrance, one hand gripping his cane, the other resting against the railing. The world looked sharper than he expected. The sky stretched pale blue above the mountain ridge. Trees moved gently in the wind. Somewhere farther down the estate, a dog barked twice, paused, then barked again as if continuing an argument.
Elias breathed in.
The air did not feel filtered.
That thought made him think of Kairo.
He wondered if this was what his grandson had felt the first time he walked out here with Beryl. The difference between looking through a window and existing beneath the sky was embarrassingly large.
The driveway curved around the fountain and toward the vehicle area. Elias's eyes drifted to the cars.
There were more than he remembered.
Staff vehicles. A newer sedan used for household errands. A dark SUV added after security became more concerned about Kairo. Beryl's motorcycle sat at an angle like it had been parked during an argument. His black 1967 Chevrolet Impala remained under the covered section, polished, quiet, and patient.
He had not driven it in years.
"Are you heading to the Langstrom mansion now?" Anika asked.
Elias nodded. "Yes."
"Do they know you are coming?"
"Beryl said Abraham expected me."
"That was not my question."
"It is close enough."
Anika laughed softly and stepped out beside him. "You could call."
"I could also arrive."
"Bold."
"Once, perhaps."
They started down the front steps.
Elias moved carefully, testing each one before placing his full weight. Anika stayed close without making a show of helping. He appreciated that. There were few things more irritating than being treated as fragile by someone young enough to recover from falling asleep in the wrong position.
At the bottom, he paused again.
"Abraham and I go back a very long way," Elias said, more to fill the quiet than because Anika had asked.
"I know."
"We were friends."
Anika tilted her head. "Were?"
Elias looked toward the road. "I would like to believe we still are."
"What happened?"
"Life."
"That usually means something specific."
He sighed. "I became very good at pushing people away."
Anika's expression softened.
Elias continued walking. "I believed distance made things safer. Less complicated. I told myself the work needed all of me, then I told myself grief did. By the time I realized I had built a habit from isolation, most of the people I cared about had learned to live without me."
"And now?"
"Now I have a grandson who appears determined to collect every strange child in Gotham."
Anika smiled. "So the pushing-people-away part probably will not be inherited."
"No," Elias admitted. "I do not think that will be a problem."
"Good. He already has more friends than you."
"That is disrespectful."
"It is also true."
Before Elias could respond, another voice appeared from directly beside them.
"Painfully true, though in the lad's defense, most of his friends are less likely to spend thirty years ignoring a telephone."
Elias jerked so hard that his cane slipped.
Anika gasped.
Beryl Hutchinson stood near the railing, hands tucked into the pockets of her jacket, looking as if she had been there for several minutes.
Perhaps she had.
Elias caught himself against the rail, breathing hard. One hand flew to his chest.
"Good Lord!"
Anika immediately rubbed his back, then turned a look on Beryl sharp enough to peel paint. "I thought you said you were going to stop being sneaky. Normal people cannot handle this."
Beryl raised both hands. "I wasn't being sneaky."
"You appeared out of the air."
"I've been standing here."
"No, you have not."
"I helped open the door."
Anika stared at her.
Beryl pointed behind them. "From the other side."
Elias pressed two fingers against his wrist, checking his pulse. "That does not improve matters."
"I did say good morning."
"Did you?"
"Quietly."
"Then it does not count," Anika said.
Beryl's shoulders rose in apology. "Right. Fair. Sorry. My fault. I blend."
"You vanish."
"Occupational habit."
"You are retired."
"Mostly."
Anika continued looking at her.
Beryl looked away first, which was a rare victory.
She cleared her throat and changed the subject with all the smoothness of someone fleeing a crime scene. "Anyway, Kairo is safe. Rebecca is safe. They're both upstairs at the Langstrom place doing whatever children under seven do on a playdate. Reading. Drawing. Planning a minor government collapse. Hard to say."
Elias lowered his hand from his chest. "And Ace?"
"Still sleeping. Abraham has a private medical room. She's stable. Batman arranged for some very discreet help, though I'm keeping an eye on everyone involved."
"Of course you are."
Beryl nodded. "I came back, as we agreed, to see whether you still wanted to go."
Elias straightened.
"Yes," he said. "Please. If neither of you young women minds walking an old man down the street."
Anika smiled. "You are not that old."
Beryl glanced at his cane. "Ancient, perhaps, but not old."
Elias stared at her.
Beryl smiled brightly. "British distinction."
"I do not understand it."
"Neither do I," Anika said.
Elias waved them off. "Trouble. Both of you."
They set out together.
Beryl walked slightly ahead, not enough to look like a guard but enough to check the road before Elias reached it. Anika stayed behind and to his left, close enough to help if his knee failed, though she continued pretending that was not why she had chosen the position.
For both young women, the walk was nothing.
They knew Cranston Estates far better than Elias did.
Beryl had traveled the roads by motorcycle, on foot, across rooftops, and probably through several private gardens she would deny entering. Anika knew which households employed kind staff, which dogs were friendly, which fountains broke every winter, and which families pretended not to watch their neighbors through curtains.
Elias had lived here longer than both of them combined and knew almost none of it.
The road curved gently downhill beneath tall pines. The air carried the clean scent of sap and mountain wind. Houses appeared between trees, each one large, private, and built with enough confidence to assume the land around it belonged to the same family.
Elias took his time.
He noticed small things.
A blue bicycle leaning against a stone wall. Wind chimes outside a distant porch. A gardener cutting back roses while listening to old jazz through a portable radio. A child's chalk drawing on one driveway, bright flowers and a crooked sun surrounded by stars.
The estate was artificial in places. Too controlled. Too polished.
Still, life had found cracks.
Kairo would notice those first.
The walk remained mostly quiet. Elias did not mind. Silence felt different outside. Inside the mansion, silence gathered. Out here, it moved with birds, leaves, footsteps, and distant voices.
The Langstrom residence appeared after the next bend.
Compared to most of Cranston Estates, it was modest, which still meant it was larger than many public buildings. The mansion sat low and wide across the property, made from dark wood, pale stone, and long windows. It looked warmer than the Wakati home, less like a monument and more like a place people had actually chosen to live.
There were fewer towers.
More porches.
More wood than stone.
Elias liked it immediately and resented that Abraham had always possessed better instincts about homes.
They reached the front steps.
Beryl and Anika both stopped.
Elias looked at them.
Beryl gestured toward the door. "Your moment, Doctor."
"I am aware of how knocking works."
"Just checking."
He raised the brass knocker.
His hand hesitated.
Nervousness crept into his stomach, absurd and youthful. For one uncomfortable second, Elias felt like a student again, standing outside a lecture hall on the first day of university, unsure whether he belonged among the other brilliant young minds gathered inside.
Then he knocked.
Footsteps approached.
The door opened.
Abraham Langstrom stood on the other side.
He had aged.
Of course he had, but Elias still felt the shock of it.
Abraham had once been broad-shouldered, handsome, and almost irritatingly energetic, with dark hair he kept swept back and a smile that usually meant he had already ignored three safety procedures. Now his hair had gone mostly white, though thick silver remained at the sides. His face had softened with age, his cheeks fuller, his jaw hidden beneath a neatly trimmed beard. He wore a dark green cardigan over a white shirt, comfortable trousers, and house slippers that looked expensive enough to have opinions.
His eyes remained the same.
Warm brown.
Sharp.
Too amused.
Abraham stared at Elias.
Elias stared back.
Neither man spoke.
Then Abraham's face cracked open into a grin.
"Well, look what the mountain finally coughed up."
His laugh came deep and full. Before Elias could prepare, Abraham stepped forward and pulled him into a hug.
It was not a polite hug.
It was a crushing, old-friend hug, one arm around Elias's shoulders, the other clapping his back hard enough to shake dust from his soul.
Elias grunted, then returned it.
The embrace carried years inside it.
College laboratories.
Shared meals.
Arguments that lasted until sunrise.
Victor Fries laughing over cheap whiskey.
Nora correcting all of them.
Amara as a child running through a hallway while Abraham pretended not to encourage her.
Kirk before ambition became obsession.
All of it came back at once, warm and painful.
Abraham pulled away and held Elias by both shoulders. "You old bastard."
"You are older."
"By months."
"Meaning older."
Abraham laughed again. "Come inside before your knees change their minds. I'm shocked you didn't make me drag myself over to your mausoleum."
"It is a mansion."
"It has more clocks than windows."
"That is not true."
"It was true the last time I saw it."
"That was a long time ago."
"Yes," Abraham said, and something quieter passed through his face. "It was."
The moment threatened to become heavy.
Abraham did not allow it.
He glanced at Beryl and Anika, greeted them warmly, then stepped aside. "All of you, in. Staff will start gossiping if I leave the door open."
"They already gossip," Beryl said.
"Good. Means they're comfortable."
They entered.
The foyer smelled faintly of cedar, coffee, and something baking deeper in the house. Family photographs covered one wall, several showing Rebecca at different ages. In one, she was a baby wrapped in a dark blanket, one tiny hand gripping Abraham's finger. In another, she sat on his shoulders wearing oversized protective goggles.
Elias slowed.
Abraham noticed.
He said nothing.
Instead, he leaned close and muttered, "Still remember Professor Mallory's reactor?"
Elias looked at him.
Abraham's grin widened.
The memory struck so suddenly that Elias almost laughed before he understood why.
"You mean the one you swore was stable?"
"It was stable."
"It melted through two tables."
"Cheap tables."
"You used Victor's lunchbox as shielding."
"It worked."
Elias looked him dead in the eye.
Then he said three words.
"Nora told you."
Abraham froze.
For half a second, the old man looked offended.
Then both of them broke.
Their laughter filled the foyer, loud, cracked, and helpless. Abraham slapped one hand against the wall. Elias bent over his cane, wheezing, his knees threatening mutiny. Neither Beryl nor Anika understood the joke, which somehow made the two men laugh harder.
Anika looked at Beryl. "Do you know?"
"No idea."
"Should we ask?"
"Absolutely not. It'll ruin it."
The old men finally recovered enough to breathe.
Abraham wiped one eye. "God, I missed you."
Elias's smile softened. "I missed you too."
Beryl and Anika let them walk ahead.
Partly because the moment belonged to them.
Partly because neither young woman wanted to interrupt whatever Kairo and Rebecca were doing upstairs. They drifted toward another hallway instead, exploring the house with the quiet permission of staff who seemed used to people wandering wherever they pleased.
Abraham elbowed Elias lightly. "Race you to my study."
Elias stared at him. "You are an old dog."
"So are you."
"I do not know where the study is."
"That is what losers say."
Abraham pointed toward a large wooden door at the end of the hall.
Elias immediately began speed-walking.
Abraham gasped. "Cheat!"
"You showed me the destination."
"That was courtesy."
"That was weakness."
Neither man moved quickly by any reasonable standard.
Their race consisted of short, determined steps, offended breathing, and the occasional use of furniture for balance. Abraham tried to overtake near a side table. Elias blocked him with his cane. Abraham protested sabotage. Elias called it strategy.
They reached the study almost together.
Almost.
Elias placed one hand on the door first.
"I win."
"You leaned."
"I arrived."
"You used the wall."
"The wall was available."
Abraham opened the door while breathing heavily. "Get inside before one of us dies and embarrasses the children."
The study was warm, lined with bookshelves and dark wood. A broad window looked toward the back gardens. Two leather chairs sat near a low table, and a drinks cabinet occupied one corner with the confidence of something frequently used.
Both men collapsed into the chairs.
For several minutes, neither spoke.
They simply breathed.
Abraham loosened his collar. "Still got it."
"We traveled forty feet."
"Victory is measured by outcome."
"You lost."
"History is written by whoever pours the whiskey."
He pushed himself up again with great effort and moved toward the cabinet.
"Whiskey?" Abraham asked.
"No."
Abraham took out two glasses.
"I said no."
"You did."
He poured both anyway.
"For youth," Abraham said.
"That sentence makes no sense."
"It made perfect sense thirty years ago."
"It did not."
Abraham handed him the glass.
Elias accepted it.
He did not drink immediately. He held it beneath his nose, letting the smoky warmth rise. The scent pulled loose memories of late nights in university housing, young men arguing about science as though the universe might surrender if they became loud enough.
Abraham sat across from him.
For a while, they spoke about nothing important.
Old professors.
Failed experiments.
People they had known.
A conference in Keystone where Victor argued with a hotel manager over a broken refrigerator and ended up repairing the entire cooling system.
Nora's patience.
Amara's childhood habit of hiding under laboratory tables with books.
Kirk as a young student, desperate to prove he was more intelligent than every person in the room.
The stories brought laughter, then softer smiles, then silence.
Eventually, the zoo arrived between them.
It had been waiting.
Abraham turned the glass slowly in his hand. "Rebecca changed."
Elias nodded.
"I had hoped she wouldn't."
"So had I."
"We knew the mutation was there. Kirk and Francine knew too, though they treated it like inheritance. Like some grand proof that their work had succeeded."
His mouth tightened.
"We spent years managing it. Rebecca and me. Tests. Medicine. Monitoring. When she was little, the changes were small. Her pupils. Her teeth. A growth spurt that came too quickly and vanished by morning."
Elias listened.
Abraham continued, "Then came the hearing."
"Enhanced?"
"Extreme. At first, she heard through walls. Then across the house. Every pipe, every footstep, every voice. She cried for days because sleep became impossible. We built the muffs. Added filters. Changed the insulation in half the mansion."
"And the psychic ability?"
Abraham's face darkened.
"That came later."
"How much later?"
"About a year ago."
Elias's fingers tightened around his glass.
Abraham stared toward the window. "She started answering questions nobody had asked out loud. Said people were too noisy even when their mouths were closed. At first, I thought it was anxiety. Pattern recognition. She is very observant."
"She is."
"Then she told me exactly what one of the nurses was thinking about her marriage."
Elias raised an eyebrow.
"Detailed enough that the nurse resigned."
"That is unfortunate."
"It was accurate."
"That is more unfortunate."
Abraham gave a tired laugh. "Super hearing and telepathy in the same child. Imagine that, Elias. Every whisper, every thought, every ugly thing adults hide behind a smile. She has had to learn silence before she learned multiplication."
Elias looked down at his untouched whiskey.
"Kairo helps her."
Abraham's eyes moved toward him. "She says the same."
"I do not know why."
"Maybe his mind is quieter."
Elias thought of Kairo's strange but powerful soul, temporal abilities, and strange resistance to outside influence.
"Perhaps."
Abraham leaned back. "What can he do?"
The question held no demand.
No suspicion.
Only concern.
Elias took a slow breath. "I am still learning."
"That sounds familiar."
"Most of it concerns time."
Abraham waited.
Elias lifted his eyes. "Not clocks. Not only clocks. Time in nearly every form I can describe, and perhaps several I cannot."
Abraham's expression sharpened with the old scientist's focus.
Elias began carefully.
"There is linear time. The ordinary progression people understand. Seconds, minutes, aging, cause followed by effect. Kairo can slow it, stop it, perhaps step outside it under stress."
Abraham did not interrupt.
"There is cyclical time. Repetition. Seasons. Returning events. Patterns that seem determined to happen again. I have seen signs that he senses those patterns, though I cannot prove it."
"Prophecy?"
"Possibly. Memory as well. Reincarnation may belong there."
Abraham's eyes narrowed slightly, but he let Elias continue.
"Then branching time. Possibilities. Divergent choices. Alternate outcomes. Hypertime, if one prefers the language used by certain theorists. Kairo reacts strangely to choices. Sometimes he looks at a room as though he remembers several versions of it."
"That is disturbing."
"Yes."
Elias took a small sip of whiskey.
"Deep time concerns scales no human mind naturally holds. Planets aging. Stars dying. Civilizations rising and eroding. I do not believe Kairo understands it, but something in him responds to old things. Ancient materials. Temporal residue."
"And eternal time?"
Elias looked at him.
"The stillness outside sequence. Past, present, and future existing together. Gods. Cosmic beings. The Endless."
Abraham lowered his glass. "You think he touches that?"
"I know he has."
The room became quiet.
Elias continued, voice softer. "There are other forms. Subjective time, how a moment stretches during fear or disappears during joy. Emotional time, measured through trauma and memory. Mythic time, where stories repeat because people believe in them. Divine time, where miracles bend sequence."
Abraham stared at him.
"You sound frightened."
"I am."
"Good."
Elias frowned.
Abraham leaned forward. "I would be more worried if you weren't."
For several seconds, neither man spoke.
Then Abraham asked, "Does Kairo understand any of this?"
"No."
"Do you?"
"Not enough."
"And Temple?"
Elias's jaw tightened.
Abraham saw it.
"He would try to control it," Abraham said.
"Yes."
That truth sat between them, cold and familiar.
Temple Fugate had once been brilliant, careful, and deeply alive when discussing impossible things. He had also believed that anything understood could be mastered, and anything mastered should obey.
Kairo was the opposite in ways Elias prayed would last.
The boy did not seek control.
He sought safety.
Sometimes too desperately.
Abraham looked toward the ceiling, where the children played somewhere above them. "Kirk used to say transformation was evolution."
Elias closed his eyes briefly.
"Victor said stillness was mercy."
"Yes."
"Temple said time was order."
"Yes."
"And we stood beside them long enough to believe we could guide them."
Elias's voice became rough. "We were arrogant."
"We were fathers and friends."
"Those are not mutually exclusive."
Abraham laughed once without humor.
Then the conversation shifted toward their children.
Kirk.
Amara.
Temple, though he had never truly belonged to Elias as a son, only as a student who became family and then took part of that family away.
Abraham spoke about Kirk's early brilliance, his obsession with bats, the way he could lose himself in an idea until people became secondary. Francine had matched him too well. Their love amplified everything, including the worst parts. Together they built theories of human evolution, chased physical transformation, and stopped recognizing the line between sacrifice and harm.
"They left Rebecca with me," Abraham said. "No explanation worth anything. Just a child, records, medicine, and enough money to prove they understood responsibility only when it could be transferred."
Elias stared into his glass.
"Amara did something similar."
"I know."
"She sent Kairo with a message."
"Did she say why?"
"That she could not keep him safe."
"And then?"
"Nothing."
Abraham's face softened.
Elias continued, "I spent years believing Amara left because I failed to see her. Then she returned only through a recording, and I had to accept that I was right."
"You were absent."
"Yes."
"So was I."
They sat with that.
Abraham spoke first. "I thought stepping away from Kirk would force him to understand what he was becoming. I told myself refusing to fund the work was enough. That distancing myself made me moral."
"It rarely does."
"No."
"I told myself giving Amara everything material was love."
"She needed you."
"Yes."
"Kirk needed me to stop him."
"Yes."
The agreement hurt them both.
Then Abraham smiled faintly. "And now we have grandchildren."
Elias looked toward the ceiling again.
"They are better than us."
"They are children."
"Exactly."
Abraham leaned back. "Rebecca has spent half her life hearing what people hide, and she still wants friends. Kairo has enough power to frighten gods, if your expression is anything to judge by, and the first thing he does with it is save someone who helped attack him."
Elias's eyes lowered.
"He told you?"
"Beryl told me enough."
"Death spoke to him."
Abraham stared.
Elias sighed. "That is another conversation."
"I assume it involved rules."
"And tacos."
Abraham blinked.
"Tacos?"
"Apparently."
"I have missed a great deal."
"So have I."
They laughed quietly.
Then Abraham raised his glass.
"To Victor."
Elias hesitated before lifting his own.
"To Nora."
"To Amara."
"To Kirk, before he lost himself."
Elias swallowed.
"To the children who may yet do better."
Their glasses touched.
The sound was small.
Clear.
A knock came at the study door.
Both men looked up.
Abraham frowned. "Come in."
The door opened.
Batman stepped inside.
His cape brushed the floor behind him. The door closed with a quiet click, sealing the room again.
Neither Elias nor Abraham appeared surprised enough, which probably said something unfortunate about their lives.
Batman looked from one old scientist to the other, then at the whiskey between them.
His white lenses narrowed slightly.
"We need to talk before your grandchildren become the next government project."