fell a little faster, and his eyes were even getting misty.
“Uncle Luce?” I took a step closer to him, worried.
“That dress . . .” His voice was choked, and he cleared this throat before taking my hand in his. “She was wearing that dress when we met. I had no idea she still had it—that you still had it.”
“It was one of the only things that survived the crash. She wore it a lot, always on happy days.”
“For a second you looked exactly like her. You have the same eyes, the same hair—she had it long like yours when we met.”
“I can change if this is too much—”
“No.” He shook his head and smiled. “It looks beautiful on you. It’s a nice reminder of her. It just took me by surprise, that’s all.”
“We should get going,” Tyler gently reminded us.
We piled into two cars and headed off to a memorial that Lucian and I had organized for my mother.
This was not another funeral. This was a way to acknowledge the past and focus on the future.
In the weeks after the confrontation with Davis, we went to so many funerals, sometimes more than one in a day. There were a few days where all we did was eat, sleep, and go to funerals. I almost felt numb to it by the end, but then I’d hear the loved ones start to cry, and it would all come flooding back, my own emotion, my own tears bubbling up.
I cried at every single one.
I bawled uncontrollably at Jamie’s, Dot’s grief amplifying my own.
The reprieve was brief. We took some time to say goodbye to the fallen, but there was a lot of work to do. We’d taken Davis out—we’d removed the cancer—but we had to make sure his poison didn’t keep spreading. Our cuts and bruises were fading, the broken bones healing, but the world still had a long way to go.
All of Davis’s properties and holdings were seized and searched, all his secrets revealed. His horrific experiments were stopped, his machines destroyed. Any research that could be useful was handed over to ethical, educational institutions.
The world learned how he’d stolen his ability, how he’d lied, cheated, and manipulated to get ahead. Everyone knew he was responsible for the Vital kidnappings, for countless deaths in incidents like the one that killed the guys’ parents. Everyone knew it was on his orders—in an attempt to assassinate Senator Christine Anderson—that an entire plane of civilians was shot out of the sky.
He killed my mother, but I took him down.
With Davis dead, his reputation in tatters, and no one willing to defend his memory or his legacy, Variant Valor started to lose steam.
The world was more stunned to learn of the Lighthunters’ legitimacy. Their “coming out” went as well as we could’ve dreamed. They had insurmountable evidence to prove they were the “real deal,” not to mention decades’ worth of evidence to prove Davis was shady, manipulative, and a downright murderous psychopath.
At every turn, they preached peace between humans and Variants, vowing they were on the side of order and peace. It’s what the Light demanded, and that included the human population.
After initial mistrust, the Human Empowerment Network began to calm down too.
The work Dot and Charlie were doing with other grassroots organizations across the world was helping. There were peaceful protests, Human-Variant community meetings, reconciliation speeches, forums, all kinds of small and large events in local communities all over the world that fostered cooperation and togetherness. Their main aim was to dispel fear through education.
As we drove through Bradford Hills—Lucian, Alec, and Ethan in an accessible SUV, Tyler, Josh, and I in Josh’s Challenger—we had the windows down, enjoying the warm breeze. No armored cars tailed us. There were no security checkpoints to pass at the gates, no black-clad agents crawling over every inch of town or following every Vital.
The violence had stopped. Some residual unrest lingered in Bangkok, Moscow, Mexico, and a few other spots, but for the most part, the world was getting back to normal. People were getting back to their lives. Businesses were opening, schools were back in session, Bradford Hills Institute was back at full capacity. Some changes in staff had been called for, and a handful of students had been expelled after it was discovered they’d worked closely with Davis and committed serious crimes, but the reputation of the Institute was intact. Most people were just happy to get back to learning.