The Madison parents just stared, not quite believing what they were hearing, as Becca and the two visitors from D.C. discussed with each other an apparent war for the fate of the world that she was somehow involved in. Zoe and Mikey listened with a little more active interest, but all of them were a little shocked when Becca pulled her doll out of her jumper and it revealed itself to not be a doll at all, but a very small flesh-and-blood person, who apparently was her mentor.
"Just...just a minute, here," Mr. Madison said, looking a little confused. "Is...is this real? I mean, it's not a game she's playing?"
Hawkins shook his head. "Unfortunately, it's quite real. The enemy she's describing sounds nebulous because it actually pretty much is, but it's a very real threat, and she's one of a group of protectors that, as far as we know, the Sun itself has brought into existence to counter that threat - though thus far there's only been limited contact with the Enemy itself."
"One of a group?" Mrs. Madison asked. Hawkins nodded. "They are the Numbers, in some sense that I'm not really entirely clear on. We know who One and Four are already. I'm guessing, from looking at you, Becca, that you're Three?" Becca nodded.
"So that leaves Two that we haven't found," Hawkins said. "We're not sure if there are more than four."
"I...um, I know who Two is," Becca interrupted. "She's a girl in my school..."
"Good," Hawkins said. "Good. That's the four, then. With your permission, I'd like to get you in contact with the parents of the other two - and Two, whoever she is. The more time they have together as a team, the better."
"Just a minute here!" Mr. Madison protested. "What makes you think we're going to let her be put at risk?"
Hawkins sighed. "Believe me, sir, I sympathize completely. We intend to do everything we can to support these girls, and frankly I wish it wasn't necessary. But from what they've been telling me, this is something deeply inherent - it's not a job they can just pass on to someone else. And they can't remain neutral, either - the Enemy has already managed to track down one of the Numbers and attempted to assassinate her, and they very nearly succeeded, but for the fact that they didn't count on humanity being contagious. It doesn't matter whether you keep her here or let her be part of the team - she is going to be involved. But as part of the team, she'll have a better chance against the Enemy."
Becca nodded. "P-please," she said. "This...this's somethin' I wanna do. An' I don't want any more people like Mrs. Crawford bein' hurt 'cause the Enemy is tryin' ta get at me. We gotta do this."
"The principal?" Mrs. Madison asked. "What's she got to do with this?"
Becca bit her lip. "Umm...I'll tell you later, but...please, this is really really important!"
Mr. Madison sat down and put his head in his hands, feeling a little overwhelmed. His children being caught in the sunlight and taking on strange new forms, he could handle. His two sons becoming girls...it was a little more difficult to come to grips with, but it was still manageable. This, though...to know that there was some kind of war going on on a cosmic level, and somehow this little girl that wasn't even theirs but whom they were caring for had to be involved in it...
He felt his wife's arms around him. This...this was overwhelming...but if it was true, then there was no way to just make it go away. It didn't seem fair that Becca should be dragged into this, but she said she wanted to do it...he couldn't even guess why. Even for her, not even his own flesh and blood, he would've stepped in to keep her from having to be involved, but he couldn't...if he couldn't, then...then there was nothing to do but...but to support her in any way they could. He took a deep breath. "All right," he said. "We'll allow it."
Jenny got home knowing it was much later than it should've been. She knew that what they'd done was good, and it needed to get done, but then, she was still out later than Muriel wanted her to be...and she was supposed to meet with One today, too... She opened the door to Muriel's small apartment, feeling nervous that her mom would be mad...
Muriel got up from the couch and came over to meet her. Melanie was asleep on the couch, wrapped in a blanket. "You were gone an awfully long time," Muriel said, a bit sternly.
Jenny bit her lip. "Y-yes," she said. "There was...there was something in the library, we had t' check it out..."
Her mom nodded. "Well, I had to call Riley's family and cancel. We'll go over there tomorrow, instead." She looked Jenny over. "You went to the library? The old one, that nobody's taken care of in years? By yourselves?"
Jenny nodded. "Yes..." She was surprised when, instead of lecturing her, Muriel picked her up and held her tight. "God I'm glad you're okay," the policewoman whispered. "Let us know when you're going to do something like that!"
"O-okay," Jenny said. "I'm...'m sorry..." But her mother shushed her, not interested in getting upset, or lecturing, just holding her tight...
Lilly thought about what her mother had said, as she was brushing her teeth. The baby...she was going to be a big sister to the baby. She hadn't thought of it that way before. In a way it was kind of comforting - she wasn't going to be the baby of the family anymore. She'd only been in that position for almost two months...part of her enjoyed the attention, but on the other hand, part of her didn't like being the one everybody was worried about and having everyone else looking after her all the time. She was still able to look after herself...at least sometimes, right? She'd done that whole thing in the library today...she'd actually helped Artemis and Jenny with it, after they'd gotten stuck inside! So it'd be nice to have someone else that she could help look after, instead...
She was still amazed at the idea of what her mom would go through when the baby came - or what she was going through right now, actually. She'd seen her mom get sick and have to throw up sometimes, because of the baby, but she just took care of it like it wasn't even a big deal! And she had to carry it around inside her all the time, too... Two times before she'd done this - and she still wanted to have another baby? But she'd said it was all worth it - and Lilly could tell that she meant it. She, and Stacy, and now the baby...all worth the trouble that their mom had to go through. It...it must be something really special, to be a mom, then... She thought about what she'd thought about before - that she was a girl now, that when she was old enough, she could be a mother, too. It was...it was a scary thought, kind of. She couldn't even imagine yet how that would feel...but if it really was worth it...she thought she might like that.
She exited the bathroom to find her dad there. "Hey, Lilly," he said, scooping the squirrel-girl up in his arms. "Your mom told me you had a bit of an adventure today. Did you girls really go into the old library?"
Lilly nodded, still pleased with herself for her role in it. "We did!" she said, grinning a buck-toothed grin. "Artemis an' Jenny got stuck inside, an' I had to go help them...there was a ghost in the library, Daddy! But it wasn't bad, just...just scary, an' we had t' help it get something out of the books, it wanted to make all of us be characters in a story, but we told it to come out..."
She went on at length, recapping to her father what she'd already told her mom. He smiled, but looked a little concerned. "You need to be careful," he said. "I'm glad everything turned out okay, but old buildings can be dangerous, and we didn't know where you were." He sighed. Abby wouldn't hear of the idea of telling her not to go with her friends, and he wasn't keen on it himself. And if Jenny really were everything Muriel said she was, the danger might not be quite so great - but that didn't keep him from worrying. He set her down, and she sat down on the edge of her bed, looking up at him. Sakura jumped up and curled up next to her. "If you're going to do something like that," he said, "you should at least tell us first. Okay?"
Lilly bit her lip. "S-sorry," she said. She didn't mean to make them worry - but she had been able to help, and they'd done something really good...but then, he wasn't telling her she had to stop...and she knew that he really did mean well for her - after all, he'd stayed in her room the other night just to make sure she didn't fall out of her tree...
Les smiled. "That's alright," he said, hugging her. "Good night, Lilly."
She smiled. "G'night, daddy."
The library saw a peace and quiet that night that it hadn't seen since the Sun changed and began to do strange things to the world. The thing that had taken up residence in its books, wherever it had come from, no longer displayed the dark obsession with control and simplistic order that it had; the visitors today had seen to that. What would become of it in time remained to be seen, but things had a chance to turn out much better than they would've, without the visitors' intervention.
With that issue resolved, the apparition that had been manifested in an attempt to deal with it could cease, its task completed. The long weeks of pacing the library, monitoring the problem but unable to do anything about it, waiting for some other party that might be able to help, could end. Its presence could dissipate, and the library could return to that state of mundane emptiness that any abandoned building exists in.
That was not what happened. The presence ("consciousness" might be too strong a term for it, but not the wrong idea) found itself, rather than dissipating out into nothing, actually condensing. Whatever it had been - the soul of a person, metaphysical patterns impressed into the building itself from decades of repetition during its operative years, or something in between - it had been touched by the Sun, and having relinquished its hold on ghostly existence, it was now free to be drawn out of the library halls and rows of bookshelves, and drawn together into one room, where it began to accrete around an object: the old computer.
What most people don't realize, unless they're students of computer history or industry old-hands, is that RAM which loses its contents when it loses power is actually a fairly recent development. Magnetic-core memory, which the machine in question was old enough to be equipped with, is completely non-volatile and can retain its contents for decades with no power at all. So when a more definite, personal consciousness began to form in the memory of the old computer, shaped in some way by what had been left loaded into memory the last time it had been used, and in other ways by the remnants of the library presence, instead of vanishing into the ether as quickly as it had formed, it remained - held safely in hundreds of thousands of tiny ferrite rings, drifting in dreamless sleep until such time as power was restored...
