▪︎ Chapter 104 ▪︎ “What is that?”

Violetta sat behind her desk, one hand resting lightly against her cheek as she read through the reports spread across its surface.

The outages hadn't been limited to the safehouse.

That was the first thing she'd confirmed after the previous night's interruptions. 

Nearly every part of Oakridge had experienced the same brief losses of electricity at roughly the same times. 

The exact durations differed slightly depending on the report, but the pattern was consistent: the power disappeared for several seconds, sometimes longer, and then returned without any apparent intervention.

It had happened several more times since.

One interruption that morning had lasted nearly half a minute in parts of Oakridge. Another had gone on for more than a minute before the lights abruptly returned. 

Engineers had found no singular failure responsible for either outage, and the explanations Violetta had been given amounted to increasingly professional ways of saying that nobody understood what was happening.

She wasn't particularly surprised.

The fact anything worked at all was a testament to how thoroughly reality and physics seemed to have become optional.

Violetta shifted one report aside and looked at the regional map beneath it. 

Even calling it a map felt generous. The Second Divergence had rendered nearly every preexisting measurement useless. 

Places that had once been separated by manageable distances were now divided by vast stretches of new terrain, and infrastructure that should have physically connected them simply didn't anymore.

If a power plant had been far from Oakridge before, it was much farther away now.

The transmission lines between them had been severed by the appearance of miles upon miles of wilderness.

Yet when someone pressed a light switch, the lights turned on.

When someone opened a faucet, water flowed.

Phones connected to networks whose physical infrastructure no longer made sense.

Somehow.

Nobody had an explanation. Engineers couldn't identify how electricity crossed gaps where power lines didn't exist. 

Utility companies couldn't explain why water continued moving through networks that should have been severed. 

Researchers could document the phenomenon, but documentation wasn't an explanation.

More troublingly, humanity couldn't simply repair the infrastructure that should have been broken.

Power lines could be rebuilt. Pipelines could be extended. Roads could be reconstructed. 

None of those things were impossible in principle, but all of them required supplies, machinery, workers and functioning transportation networks. 

Roads were needed to move the supplies necessary to build roads. Fuel had to reach machinery before machinery could clear paths through forests, and the fuel itself needed transportation.

Moving directly through the Diverged Lands was possible, but difficult. 

Miles of dense woodland stood between communities that had once been connected. 

New rivers had no bridges, terrain hadn't been properly mapped, and the wildlife occupying it was considerably larger and more aggressive than the animals humanity was accustomed to.

Aircraft helped.

Aircraft couldn't replace an entire continent's roads and railways.

Violetta's gaze drifted toward another folder. She pulled it closer and opened it despite already knowing what she'd find.

Fuel.

Medicine.

Water.

Food.

Her gaze lingered on the last section.

Following the First Divergence, governments, businesses, relief organizations and private groups had sent large quantities of food and other necessities into population centers in preparation for disruptions caused by the sudden appearance of vampires and werewolves. 

Oakridge had therefore possessed considerably larger reserves when the Second Divergence struck four or five days ago than it otherwise would have.

That had bought time.

Time wasn't the same thing as a solution.

Violetta closed the folder and pushed it away.

Every problem seemed to depend upon another problem being solved first, and no matter which one she focused on, she couldn't personally fix it. The realization irritated her more than she cared to admit.

Standing, she glanced toward the clock.

2:24 PM.

Violetta exhaled softly.

She'd been paying far too much attention to time lately. 

With so many problems looming, every hour felt important, yet watching the minutes pass only emphasized how little she could presently accomplish. 

Sunset would come whether she stared at the clock or ignored it, and most of the crises awaiting them weren't going to politely wait for vampires to become available.

She smiled wryly at herself and left the office.

Halfway down the hall, the lights flickered once.

Violetta paused.

The interruption was brief enough that a human might have wondered whether they'd imagined it, but she hadn't. After a moment, she continued walking.

She could hear the others before she even reached the lounge. 

There was laughter, the rapid patter of feet, something hitting furniture and an indignant complaint from Evangeline immediately followed by Rosaline's unmistakably delighted laughter.

Violetta reached for the door.

It opened directly into a dodging Evangeline.

The red-haired vampire blurred sideways at almost the exact moment Violetta stepped through, apparently avoiding something thrown from deeper inside the room. 

Violetta instinctively caught her around the waist before momentum carried her into the opposite wall, preventing what likely would have been another unnecessary repair.

Evangeline blinked at her before looking back into the lounge.

Rosaline stood several yards away with a grin.

"That doesn't count," Evangeline said.

"It absolutely counts."

"Violetta caught me."

"After you dodged."

"I saved the building," Violetta corrected as she released her.

Evangeline adjusted her dress and nodded seriously. "Thank you for catching me."

"You're welcome."

Then Evangeline snorted at Rosaline and walked back into the room as though nothing unusual had happened.

Violetta followed her inside.

Lavinia lay facedown across the couch, eyes closed, her golden hair spilling around her face and shoulders. 

The contrast between her hair, golden eyelashes and dark skin made her look almost deliberately posed despite the arm hanging lazily over the edge of the couch.

Evangeline apparently found the sight irresistible.

She walked over and began tapping Lavinia's back.

Violetta watched with amusement as several seconds passed before Lavinia's empty red eyes opened. 

The golden-haired vampire remained dazed for a moment, then slowly raised her head and looked at the clock.

Her expression immediately soured.

"The sun is still up."

Evangeline smiled. "It is."

"Why did you wake me?"

"Because you were sleeping."

Lavinia stared at her, apparently waiting for a better explanation. When none came, she let her face fall back onto the couch.

Valerie reached over from nearby and caught Lavinia's face between her palms. "Sleeping all day isn't healthy."

Lavinia rolled her eyes. "Being healthy is the least of my problems."

Valerie opened her mouth to retort, but every pointed ear in the room twitched at almost exactly the same moment.

Something was coming.

It began so far away that even their hearing caught little more than a low rumble. 

At first Lavinia merely lifted her head again, but the sound didn't fade like thunder. 

It steadily grew louder, approaching with enough consistency that Violetta's relaxed expression disappeared.

Lavinia pushed herself upright. "What is that?"

Nobody answered.

The rumbling intensified by the second until a faint vibration passed through the floor. 

Evelyn stood, turning toward the outer wall, while Adelaide set aside what she'd been holding. Valerie's teasing expression disappeared entirely.

Nearly seven seconds after they'd first noticed it, the sound reached Oakridge.

Air roared across the exterior of the safehouse.

The windows rattled violently in their frames and the entire building emitted a series of low groans as pressure swept over it. 

Something outside crashed against the ground, followed by several more distant impacts. 

The sound continued onward through the city, carrying with it the unmistakable rush of displaced air before gradually fading into the distance.

For several seconds afterward, nobody spoke.

Lavinia looked toward the nearest window, then noticed the afternoon light glowing around the edges of the curtains and immediately reconsidered whatever she'd been thinking.

"No."

Valerie looked at her. "No?"

"I'm not sticking my face into the sun to see what made a weird noise."

"Fair."

Instead, Lavinia turned toward Violetta. "Any idea what just happened?"

Violetta's expression had become still. "That's the first I've heard of it."

She disappeared from the room in a blur.

Valerie stared after her before looking toward the completely covered windows. "Did somebody drop a bomb or something?"

Adelaide frowned. "I don't think someone would simply detonate a nuclear weapon in the Unified Sovereignties without a reason."

Valerie glanced at her. "You say that like having a reason would make it better."

"It would make it less confusing."

Lavinia sat upright and pushed some golden hair away from her face. 

"I don't think it was nuclear. I'm not an expert, obviously, but that was wind. Or pressure. Something like that. If a bomb went off close enough for the blast to hit us that hard, wouldn't the windows have shattered?"

"Probably," Adelaide admitted.

Rosaline crossed her arms. "We also didn't hear an explosion."

"Maybe it was far away," Cordelia said.

Evelyn had gone unusually quiet.

The blonde vampire stood near the couch, facing the direction from which the wave had first reached them. 

She frowned slightly as though listening for something the rest of them had missed.

"I think it came from the Diverged Lands."

That quieted the room again.

Rosaline glanced toward the covered windows. "Whatever it was, we can't do much about it right now. Unless someone has developed a cure for sunlight while I wasn't paying attention."

"Figuring out what happened wouldn't hurt," Lavinia replied.

"I didn't say it would. I'm merely declining to investigate personally until the sky stops trying to kill me."

Rapid human footsteps suddenly sounded elsewhere in the safehouse.

Several sets.

Then Violetta's voice carried clearly through the building.

"Get everything ready to move! Weapons and ammunition first! Load whatever you can carry!"

Lavinia vanished from the couch.

She appeared beside Violetta in the hallway, where soldiers were already moving between storage rooms and the exterior doors. 

The personnel assigned to the safehouse nominally existed to provide security and protect the building. 

At the moment, none of them seemed particularly concerned with guarding vampires.

Violetta held her phone in one hand while directing them with the other.

"That blast wasn't local," she told Lavinia without waiting for the question. "It's being reported across the Unified Sovereignties."

Lavinia frowned. "The entire country felt it?"

"As far as we can tell, yes." Violetta turned toward two soldiers carrying equipment. "Take that outside. Ammunition too. Don't leave anything useful sitting here if local forces need it."

"Yes, ma'am."

Lavinia watched them hurry past. "So why are they arming themselves?"

"Aerial reports are coming in. Wildlife throughout the Diverged Lands has started moving."

Lavinia waited for the part that explained the soldiers.

Violetta looked at her. "Toward population centers."

Lavinia's expression went blank for a moment. "What does that mean?"

"It means exactly what it sounds like. Animals are rushing toward cities and towns. Aircraft are reporting movement through forests and open terrain in multiple regions, all directed toward populated areas."

"Why?"

"We don't know."

"How many?"

"We don't know that either."

Violetta turned away long enough to call toward another group of soldiers. "Load as much ammunition as the vehicles can safely carry! Prioritize rifles and anything suitable for large animals!"

Lavinia stepped alongside her. "They're still animals."

"To you."

That made Lavinia pause.

Violetta lowered her phone slightly. "You walked through the Diverged Lands without much concern because you're a vampire. The wildlife created by the Second Divergence is larger than its ordinary counterparts, generally stronger, and many species we've observed are highly aggressive. Some are considerably more durable as well."

Valerie emerged from the lounge with Adelaide and Evangeline behind her. "Do you really think animals are going to cause that much trouble?"

Violetta looked between Valerie and Lavinia and sighed. "Both of you have a very distorted understanding of what qualifies as dangerous."

Valerie blinked.

"Of course you weren't particularly frightened when you traveled through the Diverged Lands. You're strong enough to throw most animals through a tree."

Evangeline smiled faintly. "That's fair."

Violetta gestured toward the soldiers around them. "An ordinary wolf can seriously injure or kill a human. So can a boar. So can a large cat. A bear is obviously dangerous. Now make those animals larger and stronger, increase their aggression, and send large numbers of them toward densely populated areas at once."

Valerie's expression became more thoughtful.

"The government hasn't kept restrictions on exploring the Diverged Lands because we enjoy telling people where they can walk," Violetta continued. 

"The ecosystems haven't been studied properly. We don't know all the species present, their behavior, or how dangerous some of them are. People enter anyway, obviously, but that doesn't make it safe."

Lavinia glanced toward the soldiers carrying ammunition outside. "How many are coming toward Oakridge?"

"I don't have a number."

"Thousands?"

"I don't have a number," Violetta repeated. "The aerial reports describe extensive movement. Herd animals, predators, solitary species, packs. Animals that shouldn't ordinarily travel together are all moving in roughly the same direction."

"Toward us," Valerie said.

"Toward population centers generally."

Lavinia's brow furrowed. "How would they even know where the cities are?"

Violetta didn't answer.

Lavinia didn't like that.

The Second Divergence was only four or five days old. 

These animals shouldn't have understood the geography of human settlements well enough for wildlife across enormous areas to simultaneously decide where the nearest population center was.

One of the officers approached Violetta and saluted. "General, the vehicles are loaded."

"Take everyone here who isn't essential to the safehouse. Report to local command and place yourselves under their operational control until further notice. Prioritize the outskirts and keep civilians away from the Diverged Lands."

"Yes, ma'am."

"And don't assume warning shots will turn the animals around. We don't know what's driving them."

The officer nodded and turned away.

Lavinia glanced at Violetta. "You can't leave with them anyway."

Violetta briefly looked toward the daylight leaking beneath one of the distant doors. 

"No. Which is why everyone under my command here is being temporarily turned over to local forces. Sitting inside guarding us accomplishes nothing if Oakridge needs them."

The final soldiers carried equipment outside. Every time the exterior door opened, a narrow strip of afternoon sunlight stretched across the floor, keeping the vampires comfortably farther down the hall.

Then the last soldier saluted Violetta and stepped outside.

The door closed firmly.

Several seconds later, engines started.

The vampires listened as one vehicle after another pulled away from the safehouse until the sounds gradually receded into the city.

Violetta turned and walked back into the lounge.

The atmosphere had changed considerably from when she'd first entered. Nobody was throwing anything now. 

Rosaline sat with her arms crossed, Cordelia had moved closer to the others, and Evelyn remained attentive to the distant sounds outside.

Violetta lowered herself into a chair. "I may need to oversee the outskirts personally after sunset."

"I'll come," Lavinia said.

Valerie snorted and leaned forward, her orange hair falling around her face like a curtain. "We'll all go. Don't say it like the rest of us are going to sit here while you two run off."

Lavinia smiled. "I phrased it wrong."

"Obviously."

Lavinia batted her golden eyelashes at her. "We'll come."

"Much better."

Rosaline tilted her head. "I assume 'we' includes me."

Evangeline looked at her. "You can stay."

Rosaline's eyes narrowed. "I didn't say I wanted to."

"Then why complain?"

"Because I enjoy complaining."

"Reasonable."

Lavinia laughed softly before looking back toward Violetta.

The amusement faded.

Violetta looked worried.

Not frightened. Lavinia couldn't remember seeing her genuinely frightened by much of anything since becoming a vampire. 

Even uncertainty usually earned little more than that strange smile she wore when she didn't know what expression she was supposed to make.

This was different.

Lavinia still wasn't entirely sure she understood why.

She knew what Violetta had said. The wildlife was larger, stronger and more aggressive. 

Enough animals entering Oakridge would cause injuries, traffic accidents and chaos. People could die.

But at the end of it all, they were still animals.

Lavinia had crossed stretches of the Diverged Lands herself. She'd seen some of the creatures living there and heard others moving through the forests. 

They were impressive compared with ordinary wildlife, certainly, but she hadn't considered them something to fear.

Valerie apparently shared some of that skepticism.

Then again, Lavinia realized, neither of them was a particularly useful standard for determining whether something was dangerous.

A creature that could barely injure her might kill a human in seconds.

The lights dimmed.

Nobody said anything at first.

They brightened again, remained steady for several seconds, then flickered twice in rapid succession before going out completely. 

The television vanished with them, and the familiar electrical hum throughout the safehouse disappeared.

The darkness lasted several seconds longer than the interruptions from the previous night.

Then the power returned.

The television began rebooting while the other electronics resumed their familiar sounds. 

Valerie looked upward, her lips pressing together slightly, while Violetta's gaze lingered on the ceiling.

No one needed to discuss what had happened. They all remembered the previous night.

The electricity had come back again.

That was becoming less reassuring each time.

Rosaline eventually lifted one shoulder. "One disaster at a time."

Valerie laughed softly. "That's surprisingly sensible."

"I have moments."

Lavinia leaned back against the couch and looked toward Violetta again. "How long until the animals reach Oakridge?"

"Some may already be near the outer districts. We don't know exactly where the migration began, and the nearest Diverged Lands aren't particularly far away anymore."

"And you're sure they're coming here?"

"Aircraft are tracking substantial movement toward the city."

"Maybe they'll stop before they arrive."

"Maybe."

The answer did little to reassure her.

Outside, the afternoon sun remained high enough that the vampires could do nothing personally. 

Soldiers were moving toward Oakridge's outskirts while aircraft watched vast stretches of newly created wilderness churn with wildlife. 

Police and local forces would be preparing for something nobody understood, and ordinary humans probably didn't even know what was happening yet.

Once night came, that would change.

Lavinia looked around at the others.

Eight or ten vampires could kill an extraordinary number of animals if necessary. 

Werewolves in and around Oakridge could help as well, and humans possessed guns, armored vehicles and aircraft. Even enhanced animals were still flesh and blood.

Surely that would be enough.

Yet Violetta's expression remained troubled.

Lavinia considered asking why, then decided against it. Violetta had access to reports she hadn't seen, and dismissing her concern simply because Lavinia herself didn't feel threatened would be foolish.

The television finally returned.

For several minutes, conversation remained subdued. Valerie checked her phone, Rosaline exchanged a few quiet remarks with Adelaide, and Evangeline wandered back toward the couch. 

The crisis had arrived at the particularly irritating time of day when the vampires could hear about it but couldn't personally investigate it.

Then a faint sound reached them.

Lavinia's ears twitched.

A howl.

It was distant enough that a human inside the safehouse never would have heard it. Lavinia tilted her head toward the outer wall, listening.

Another answered it.

Then another, farther to the side.

Evelyn slowly turned toward the sound as well.

The calls weren't coming from inside Oakridge.

They were coming from beyond it.

Lavinia's expression became more serious as she listened to another long howl carry faintly across the distance.

It was still far away, but there was something distinctly uncomfortable about knowing what lay between the sound and the city.

Nothing.

No wall surrounded Oakridge. No continuous defensive line had ever been necessary. 

Before the Second Divergence, roads and suburbs simply gave way to familiar countryside.

Now they gave way to a wilderness humanity hadn't built, hadn't mapped, and barely understood.

The lights flickered once more.

This time, nobody looked up anymore.