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He frowns at me, sitting straighter. “I’m not having a strong reaction.”

I just lean closer so he can better feel the burning wrath of my glare.

Cole sighs. “Fine,” he says, “bring your…wet cracker mush. I want to talk to your dad about this, I’ll tell you why on the way.”

Eager to learn more, I stand, hastily crumbling more crackers into my soup as I do.

“That’s disgusting,” Cole murmurs, watching me.

“Don’t police my eating habits, Kincaid!” I say, scooping up my bowl and grabbing my spoon. “Besides, you’re wrong.” I take a big crunchy bite to prove my point.

Cole’s face twists with half confusion and half disgust as he moves for the door. I grin around my food, waving to my friends and continuing to eat as I hurry to keep up.

When we get out of the tent, Cole leads me a few steps away and then glances around to ensure we’re alone. “What do you know about the Children of Solace’s whole kid thing?”

“What kid thing?” I ask, speaking around my food.

He stares at me again. “Do you want like, a minute? To finish that?”

“Oh, lay off, I’m hungry,” I grumble, waving my spoon at him as either encouragement or threat for him to continue. I let him decide which.

Cole just laughs a little and steps close, voice low. “There are some rumors that we’ve gotten from the very few people who have escaped the cult,” he says. “The people who reported its existence in the first place. There’s not a ton of detail – they keep everything very locked down even amongst their members – but wedoknow that children are frequently, maybe always, separated from their parents young and brought up in little gendered communities. Put to work young, that sort of thing.”

I look at him like he’s a little crazy. “That…that has to be exaggerated…” I murmur.

“Maybe,” Cole says with a shrug, leading me away to the abandoned fire circle where we sit. But then he continues to tell more details that they’ve gleaned from survivors about the way the children are apparently raised in isolation, trained to fight from a young age – at least the boys.

They’ve never met a girl from the community.

And that also romance is apparently deeply discouraged – that men and women do not interact, at all, except strictly in terms of procreation. And even then, only long enough to produce a child.

I look over toward the tents where some escapees sit and rest in small groups, desperate suddenly to ask them more about what their lives are like.

“So,” I whisper after Cole has been quiet long enough to indicate he’s finished. “You’re not…messing with me? These people produce kids like…unassuming breeding stock? Not people who love each other and want to have a kid?”

“This is what I’ve heard,” Cole murmurs, staring off into the distance, clearly lost in his thoughts. “We have little to no proof, though. Hopefully Jeanie and her crew can get us more answers, though of course her first priority is taking care of her patients.”

I straighten my shoulders a little. “Cole, you can’t ask her to break her patients’ confidentiality.”

“I know,” he says, nodding seriously to me. “But…hopefully some of them can be encouraged to tell us as well. So that we can help the people who are still within the Children of Solace.”

My scowl deepens as I think further about what these poor people have been though, but I see people starting to come out of the mess tent, indicating a change in shifts. “Okay,” I say, nodding. I bite my lip. “Um, I want to get to work, do you want to…”

“Go talk to your dad myself and then come back later and tell you every single detail so you can have your cake and eat it too?”

I give Cole my very rare, widest smile, the one that shows all my teeth. “Yes, please!”

But my smile fades a bit when he grins, blushes, and drops his eyes.

And then I blush too.

And then I kind of freak out and jump to my feet.

“Okay, bye! I have to go to work!” I shove my half-empty soup bowl at him and start to stride for the nursing tent.

Cole bursts out laughing, fumbling to catch the bowl before it falls to the ground. “What am I supposed to do with this?”

“Try it!” I call, waving over my shoulder. “It’s good!” I laugh to myself, kind of hoping he does because it’s just cold sodden gush at this point and that would serve him right for being all…