Cherie was gonna end it for real this time.

She sat on the quarter-full subway car, one hand around Liam’s skinny arm, scared to let him go for even a second because he was in one of those moods where he’d run off the moment she took her attention off him. The other arm was curled protectively around Aiden, strapped into one of those baby carriers that was like a backpack but in front of her—he was getting too big for it, honestly, but it would be okay for this one trip. Aiden had stayed mercifully asleep up until now, but he was stirring and fussing and she knew he’d fully wake up soon, cranky and hungry and dead set on toddling around after his brother. She held the oversize rolling suitcase between her legs, cat carrier strapped on top with bungee cords, and the baby bag was still slung over one of her thin shoulders. She burrowed her face deeper into her scarf.

In her fist, she held a crumpled Post-it with directions to a women’s shelter, and she kept looking at it, reminding herself of everything the lady at the hotline told her, scared she’d get distracted and miss her stop. Her neck was sore and aching, and the spot on her back where she’d hit the table throbbed. Her head hurt, and the world felt fuzzy and far away. She fought through those feelings to stay alert—she needed to get off at the right stop, and to notice any cops or metro employees before they noticed her. None of Chris’s cop buddies could know where she went, or this would all fall apart.

<Mom, I’m bored. What about school?> Liam signed at her. She didn’t answer, just checked for the hundredth time that he still had his hearing aids, then mentally went through the checklist again—birth certificates, ID, phone. She’d set up a separate bank account a few months back after a particularly bad argument; there wasn’t much in there, but by buying extra at the market and returning it for cash, she’d managed to sock away a few hundred.

<Mom?> Liam signed and tugged on his arm, hoping to be let go. <I’m bored.>

She just shook her head at him. Even with his hearing aids, he wouldn’t hear her over the noise of the train, and more of an answer would require two hands. She wasn’t sure she could unclench the one around his arm if she wanted to.

With her other hand, she fumbled for her phone in the pocket of her jacket. She knew she wouldn’t get reception until she was back above ground, but she couldn’t help herself—she was still hoping for a reply from Maddie, her oldest, whose high school classes would be getting out soon. She opened her texts with her free hand.

Still no reply.

The train’s brakes started to screech, and the car swayed as it began to slow. Cherie tensed, ready to grab her kids and her suitcase and slip down the train if anyone official-looking got on, same as she had for the past four stops.

Guy in a suit, a couple teenagers… Her stomach flipped when she saw a woman in blue, official-looking clothes, but on closer examination she realized it was just a mail carrier’s uniform. Nothing to worry about.

The station cleared and the doors started to close. Cherie let herself breathe again.

At the last moment before the doors shut, two men pushed their way into the subway car, breathing heavily like they’d been running. The shorter one, a thirty-something guy in a gray coat, collapsed into the seat next to her, while the taller one…

He loomed.

The second man was enormous, probably the tallest, broadest person she’d ever seen. He didn’t take a seat, instead opting to stand over his companion. She glanced at his face and took in the long, jagged scar that ran from his forehead down his left cheek—then quickly looked away so he couldn’t catch her staring.

She was frozen. She just… She couldn’t take having a man standing over her like that, not right now. She wished desperately that she could run for it.

She took a deep breath, let it out slow. This guy wasn’t Chris, or…or anyone else who wanted to hurt her. He couldn’t help being tall and kind of scary looking. He was probably a nice guy, and that tensed-spring, attack-ready vibe she got off him was most likely all in her head.

And if he was a threat, running would just make things worse.

She was still fine. Just two more stops to go.

She made herself turn her attention to Aiden, who was sleepily rubbing his face against her chest. She’d hoped he would stay asleep through the whole trip, but that was wishful thinking, really. He was 18 months old now with endless reserves of energy. She’d need to distract him somehow before he started crying about being stuck in the carrier. She dug around one-handed in the baby bag for the pacifier the doctor told her not to give him anymore—she felt a pang of guilt that she’d never managed to break him of the habit, but having a quiet baby just made everything a little easier.

She was still digging through the baby bag when the train lurched, hard.

She skid out of her seat, lost her grip on Liam, and was sent sprawling onto the floor of the train car, barely avoiding falling on her front and crushing Aiden. Sparks flew up past the windows as the train jumped off its rails and scraped the sides of the tunnel with a horrifying metallic screech. She grabbed the bottom of a subway pole and curled herself around it to keep from being thrown further down the car, free hand shielding Aiden’s head as best she could.

A moment later, the guy in the gray coat came crashing right into her. As the train lurched sideways, he reached over and grabbed the same pole she was curled around; then he was thrown to the side, clipping her with an elbow as he flailed. She couldn’t do anything, couldn’t help or fend him off, just clung on helplessly as the whole world narrowed to the subway pole and the unbearable screech that wouldn’t end.

Finally, mercifully, the car slowed, then stopped with a lurch. The silence was overwhelming after the horrible noise of metal on concrete.

Aiden started wailing.

Cherie carefully picked her bruised body off the ground and turned her attention to the toddler, giving him as good a once-over as she could while he was still buckled to her front. He didn’t seem to be bleeding or anything, as far as she could tell in the dim emergency lights, at least—his sleeve was dirty from the subway floor but he seemed unhurt, just shaken up by the noise and falling. She wrapped her arms around him, maybe more for the comfort it brought her than anything else.

The man who’d crashed into her was getting back to his feet too, hauled up by one arm by his giant companion. As he rose, his dark eyes met hers for an instant.

That momentary glance shot through her body like a bolt of lightning. She felt...exposed, like he’d flayed open her mind and soul and saw everything about her in an instant—every secret, every fear, every weakness. The feeling was bizarre, and it shredded what was left of her already-frayed nerves.

After only an instant, though, his eyes softened, and the feeling changed to something like a deep sadness, but the emotion felt strange—it didn’t match up with how she should feel. It felt like it came from outside her, somehow.

She looked away as fast as she could.

“They found us,” she heard the man say to his huge companion.

Wait. Liam. Oh God, where was he? She berated herself for losing hold of him, for not thinking of him immediately, terrified that he was seriously injured or worse... Cherie turned to the back of the subway car, heart in her throat as she looked for her son.

He was right there, on the floor but sitting up, cradling a skinned knee but otherwise okay.

<Mom?> he signed.

She rushed over to him and helped him off the floor, giving him a once-over to look for  more serious injuries. Like Aiden, he seemed fine other than a few scrapes and bruises—his hearing aids were askew but still attached, and she absently fixed them as she ran a hand over his buzzed, dark hair and pulled him close. Their suitcase, cat carrier still attached with bungee cords, had skidded over here too, and she carefully righted it to a mrrrr of protest from inside. Liam immediately stuck his fingers into the carrier to comfort the cat—named Katsuki by Maddie for some reason she couldn’t remember—and the animal rubbed her face against his fingers. Cherie bounced Aiden absently and mumbled some soothing nonsense, and his crying settled down into small hiccups.

With the three small beings she was responsible for all handled for the moment, Cherie looked back up the car.

Other passengers were picking themselves up off the floor, and although she could hear some moans and quiet swearing, everyone seemed alive and largely mobile. At least as far as she could tell.

One of the passengers she’d seen earlier—the mail carrier—came over to the door nearest Cherie and started trying to pry it open. The woman struggled with the dented metal doors, but they were stuck closed; the roof of the car was bent out of shape, Cherie noticed, and it must have jammed the mechanism.

After pulling a few times at different angles with no luck, the mail carrier gave up. She stepped away and seemed to notice Cherie.

“Uh, hi. You all right?” the mail lady asked. “And the kids?”

Cherie nodded, looking away when she realized she’d been staring blankly at her. She should help, right?

She still didn’t move.

“I think this car got disconnected from the rest of the train, somehow,” the mail carrier said as she surveyed the rest of the subway doors. “I don’t know…it doesn’t seem like the kind of thing that could just happen. Maybe somebody tried to bomb us but screwed it up. A botched terrorist attack or something.”

Cherie felt like she should reply, but somehow the part of her that knew how to talk to people wasn’t available at the moment. She stared dumbly.

The mail carrier seemed to notice Cherie’s distress. “Uh, sorry, that was morbid. The important thing is that we’re okay, and I’m sure they’ll send someone down here to help us soon.”

Cherie took a closer look at the woman—she was Black, with deep brown skin and close-cropped dark hair. She had a solid, stocky build under her shapeless uniform, and seemed a bit older than Cherie, maybe around forty—though perhaps that impression just came from how together she seemed, despite the terrifying situation they were in, locked underground, power out…trapped.

She could feel her breathing getting faster.

The woman seemed to notice something was wrong. “Hey, maybe you should sit,” she said. Cherie shook her head and took a step back—she was suddenly certain that if she stopped moving for a moment she’d fall apart. “Okay, well...could you go check if anyone’s hurt?”

Yeah. That was something useful she could do! First she’d check on Liam again, and...wait, he’d skinned his knee, hadn’t he? The hot core of guilt in her stomach surged to the surface again to remind her that she was a terrible mother, but she pushed it back down with a few deep breaths.

Liam was still beside the cat carrier...and now he was trying to open it and get Katsuki out, apparently. Luckily, the latch was too hard for a little kid to open. She patted his shoulder to get his attention.

<I’ll bandage your knee, okay?> she signed.

Liam nodded and clambered into the seat. She got to work, dabbing at his knee with a baby wipe and trying to get the worst of the gross subway dirt out of it, though there wasn’t that much she could do in the dim emergency lights of a grimy train. She layered a few Band-Aids over the worst parts and tried to flash him a smile as soon as she was done.

<Paw Patrol is for babies,> he signed with all the scorn an eight-year-old could muster, gesturing at the Band-Aids.

<It’s all we have right now. And don’t let the cat out,> she signed back at him.

<She doesn’t like it! She wants to go home!>

His thin arms flailed, his signs wild with the outburst. This wasn’t like him normally—he was definitely the most even-keeled person in the family—but, well, he’d been through a lot today. No wonder he was freaked out.

She didn’t bother replying, just reached out to him. He glommed on to her side immediately.

WHAM.

Something big suddenly slammed into the subway car, and she stumbled back, only barely keeping her and Liam upright. The door that the mail carrier had been trying to open dented inward—the woman jumped backward away from it.

WHAM.

Again, something slammed into the door, denting it further. Cherie pulled Liam a few steps farther away from it, getting between him and the source of the noise. She could see out of the corner of her eye other passengers scrambling—some getting to their feet, preparing for whatever was happening, others shrinking back.

“What is that?!” the mail carrier shouted, looking to their fellow passengers for anyone who could explain. There was murmuring and confusion from the people scattered throughout the car, but no one had any answers.

The huge man she’d seen before strode up to the dent in the wall and settled into what looked like some kind of fighting stance, like from an action movie, or maybe a martial arts thing?

“Stay back,” he said in a deep, rumbling voice.

WHAM.

If this was some sort of prank, or an elaborate trick for Mr. Giant Guy’s YouTube channel, she was gonna have words for whoever was responsible.

His companion, the guy in the gray coat, was suddenly beside her.

“Don’t worry, he’ll handle this,” he said, glancing in Cherie’s direction but keeping his gaze lowered, like he didn’t want to meet her eyes again. “He always beats them.”

What the hell does that mean?! Cherie thought.

“What the hell does that mean?!” the mail carrier turned to shout at him. “We’re being attacked? By who?!” She strode up to the man, looking like a woman at the absolute end of her rope who was about to shake some sense into somebody...but Cherie saw the moment her eyes met his and she seemed to deflate.

WHAM…kreeeeeeeeee!

The metal sliding door of the subway car peeled back like tinfoil, and something came in.