Griffin shouldn’t need all this protection in his own city, his own childhood neighborhood where he was about to have Sunday dinner with his family, but after the assassination attempt by Wes Pritchart five years ago, and the detractors that had since grown more vocal once his “relationship” with a Chimeran had come to light, they couldn’t be too careful.

Griffin jogged to his family’s building and inserted his key, the same one he used to wear around his neck when he was young and his parents had been away on duty. Inside, the same stairs still creaked. The same carpet still welcomed him into his parents’ place, only now it was flattened and darker with permanent stains.

“Hey, Pop.”

Griffin’s father sat wide-legged on one of the couches making an L around the TV. He looked up from the baseball documentary whose volume was cranked all the way up to compensate for the driving beat of the music pumping from his sisters’ room.

“Griffin,” Pop said with a nod toward the TV. “You’d like this. All about the Yankees.”

Griffin grimaced and chuckled. He loved baseball, hated the Yankees.

Pop lifted a beer bottle to his smiling lips. “I think your mother could use some help.”

Nothing like a visit home to remind you that you aren’t leader of the Ofarians in every way.

“Sure,” Griffin said, sliding around the pinch of furniture cramped into the tiny living room. How his parents had raised nine kids in here, he’d never know. But they’d stuck to their “Keep Ofarians Strong By Population” creed and had never once complained.

Until Griffin had helped overthrow the old Board. Until he’d been given command. Until his father had to take a position in a Primary security firm to pay the bills. After that, the issue of struggling Ofarian classes and touchy Primary integration sat right in the middle of the dining room table along with the mashed potatoes and pork roast. Pop thought that being born into and serving in the Ofarian soldier class was the greatest honor ever, and its reduction in numbers was a slap in the face. He never missed an opportunity to tell Griffin as much.

But then, Pop had never been an assassin.

Despite Griffin’s difference of opinion, they were still his parents.

Griffin leaned into the kitchen, where his mom was spooning green beans into a big bowl. “Hey,” he said, smiling. “Need help?”

She looked up, her cheeks pink from the warm kitchen and hard work. She had the exact opposite coloring of Griffin and his father—her blond hair just starting to gray at age 52, her pale skin barely showing her distinguished wrinkles. “Hi, baby.”

The endearment never failed to make him happy, even though she was only seventeen years older than he was.

She added, “Could you go tell Henry and your sisters that dinner is in fifteen?”

Down the short hallway, Griffin rapped on the door to his sixteen and seventeen year-old sisters’ room, which positively vibrated with the music’s bass. When no one answered, he cracked the door open. Meg, the older one, was teaching the younger, Eve, some sort of dance routine.

“Fifteen minutes,” he shouted. “And turn that down. I could hear it on the street.” They stopped moving, and Meg gave him a classic eye roll. He pointed a finger, grinning. “I could give you nelicoda for that.”

As he suspected, the threat of dosing her with the chemical that neutralized water magic did nothing, just made her roll her eyes even more dramatically as she reached for the volume knob and twisted it down.

“Close the door, will you?” Eve said on his way out.

“Not a chance,” he replied.

The door to Henry’s room—which had once been Griffin’s room, along with two of his brothers—was slightly ajar, and Griffin pushed it all the way open. The twelve year old was perched on the edge of his bed, playing a handheld video game.

Griffin lingered in the doorway, unnoticed. “Hey, you. Whatcha playin’?”

Henry finally ripped his eyes from the screen and looked up. “Griff!”

The kid was a mini-Griffin: thick, dark hair that could never be anything but super short, and brown eyes hooded beneath eyebrows that he would have to get used to being teased about. He dove back into his game, thumbs flying, elbows twitching up and down.

“Armed Battle 4,” Henry said. “Wanna play me? Bet I can kick your ass.”

“Language, dude.” Griffin crossed the carpet to ruffle his littlest brother’s hair. He peered over the small shoulder at the game screen. Humans destroying other humans and aliens that looked nothing like real Secondaries. Guns and knives and chain ropes. Blood and body parts everywhere. Death and glory in the form of points.

I won’t tell anyone. I swear.

I didn’t mean to see that.

Please don’t. Oh, God, no. Please don’t. Please don’t kill me.

Three different Primary voices. All saying essentially the same thing. There’d been nine more who’d never gotten a chance to say or plead for anything before Griffin had taken their lives.

“No, thanks,” Griffin managed to get out, trying to seem as casual as possible. “Hey, can you turn that off for a second?”

Distracted, Henry kept playing, the sounds of death and dying stabbing into Griffin’s brain. His hand shot out, knocking the game to the bedspread. Henry slowly turned to Griffin, and the look on the kid’s face was nothing like the playful defiance Meg had given him. He looked petrified, and Griffin felt guilty.

“Sorry.” Griffin ran a shaking hand through his hair. “I, uh . . .”

“’S’okay.”

Brothers born to such different generations. Henry gazed up at him with nothing but pure adoration and his own heartfelt apology, though he’d done nothing wrong. Griffin sank to the bed and wrapped an arm around the shoulders that had yet to widen into the Aames shape. The boy was still pretty scrawny, all knobby knees and long limbs, but he was on the verge of change. About to come into his body—and his water powers.

The first of the Aames family who didn’t have to become a soldier because the Ofarian class system dictated it.

Be an advertising executive, Henry, Griffin wanted to tell him. Be a writer or an engineer or a janitor. Be something no one tells you to be, and don’t be afraid to go into the Primary world to do it.

Griffin held his brother tight, sending his dreams and wishes through the embrace.

“Um. Griff?” Henry’s voice was muffled, and Griffin realized he’d wrapped his other arm around the kid and had curled Henry’s face into his shoulder.

He let Henry go. “Sorry,” he said again.

The answering grin was pure joy, pure pride. Henry stood up, then dropped into a fighting stance Griffin recognized from Ofarian-sanctioned practice sessions, meant to prepare kids for soldier testing and training. “Want to help me on something? Captain Hansen says I’ve got promise, but I need help on my form and I need to practice, and Meg and Eve just ignore me, even though they’re both really good already. Please, Griff. You’re the best fighter we have.”

Maybe once upon a time.

Sliding his hands to his knees, Griffin said, “I’d rather help you with—”

“Math.” Henry heaved a great sigh as he came up out of the stance. “I know.” He went to his desk and fiddled with a familiar orange textbook. “It’s kind of embarrassing, you know, to be Griffin Aames’s brother and be one of the worst in training.”

“I’m sure that’s not true.” Griffin tried not to let this revelation mess with the filter he’d applied to this boy who had such incredible promise. “I know someone who could make you a genius, though. You’re already smart, but she could send you to the top of your class in math, teach you things about computers you never even knew existed.”

Griffin had been looking for ways to bring Adine, the half-Secondary tech wizard, further into the Ofarian world, and he saw instruction as a possible natural progression. Henry seemed to brighten for about one-point-two seconds, then his face fell, because when you’re twelve, how could math or computers ever compare to being able to throw your opponent and disable his weapon?