The moment Lucien spoke, Shane's head snapped around to look at him.
"You mean the military base a hundred miles away?" Lori asked, surprised.
"Yeah." Lucien nodded. "That's where I was thinking we should go."
He could feel everyone's attention shift to him.
"It makes sense, doesn't it?" He tried to sound casual. "Military base means trained soldiers, proper defenses, weapons, and ammunition. And they'd have supplies. Plus, it's far enough from the cities that it might've avoided the worst of the outbreak."
Shane's expression shifted.
"See?" He gestured at Lucien, looking at Rick. "Even he gets it. Fort Benning is the smart play."
"But," Lucien continued, and Shane's face fell, "after hearing what Rick said, I think the CDC might be better."
Shane stared at him. "What? Why?"
"Because of what you told me." Lucien met Shane's eyes.
"When you found me, you mentioned what happened when you went to visit Rick. The hospital was chaos. The military was there, blocking roads, and they were... They weren't helping people escape. They were shooting them."
Glenn looked shocked. Andrea's face had gone pale. Even Dale, who'd probably suspected something like this, looked disturbed by having it confirmed.
"Shane? Is that true?"
"Yeah, it's true."
"Jesus Christ," Morales muttered.
"So if that's what the military was doing in Atlanta," Lucien continued, "what makes us think Fort Benning will be any different? They might not even let us in. They might see us as... I don't know, potential infection risks. Or just more mouths to feed they can't afford."
He looked around the group, trying to gauge reactions.
"And it's a hundred miles away. We don't know what the roads are like, if there are walker herds, or if the base is even still standing. The CDC is in the city, which is dangerous, but at least we know where it is. And it's a research facility, they're supposed to be working on a cure, trying to help people. Not shooting them."
Rick was watching Lucien.
Shane looked like he'd been punched in the gut.
"He's got a point," T-Dog said after a moment. "Military ain't been real friendly to civilians from what I've seen."
"The CDC could be overrun with walkers," Andrea pointed out.
"Could be," Rick agreed. "But it's still our best shot at answers. At finding out what this thing is, how it spreads, if there's any hope of stopping it."
Shane was quiet for a moment. Everyone waited.
Finally, he let out a long breath and walked over to Rick. He clapped his friend on the shoulder.
"Alright. CDC it is. Even though going into the city still sounds crazy to me." He glanced at Lucien. "But you're right. Instead of hoping the army has things under control, we go looking for real answers. Anyone else have objections?"
Nobody spoke up. The decision was made.
Lucien felt something unclench in his chest. He hadn't realized how much he'd been worried about the group fracturing over this. In the original timeline, the Morales family had left because of disagreements about direction. If they'd split over Fort Benning versus the CDC...
But they hadn't. They were staying together.
For now, at least.
---
The group had already packed most of their gear before the meal, so by early afternoon they were on the road.
Dale's RV led the convoy. Rick drove the pickup truck loaded with supplies, with Morales and T-Dog riding in the bed. Shane brought up the rear in a more agile SUV he'd liberated from an abandoned parking lot.
The formation made sense. Scouts led the way, heavy cargo stayed in the middle, and fast response vehicles brought up the rear. It also meant that if they were separated, each vehicle had at least one person capable of handling themselves.
Lucien rode in the RV with the other kids, Carl, Sophia, and Duane, while Lori and Carol kept watch over them. He had half expected to be placed in one of the other vehicles, given how uncomfortable his presence made some people, but they had apparently decided that keeping all the children in one place was more practical.
The highway was a graveyard.
Abandoned cars clustered at every exit, some of them positioned as barricades, others just left where they'd run out of gas or their drivers had run out of hope. Every few miles they'd pass a larger pileup. The RV had to slow down frequently to navigate around obstacles. Dale was good at finding paths through the debris, but it was slow going.
Through the windows, Lucien could see walkers shambling between the cars. Not many, but enough to be a constant reminder of what waited if they broke down or got stuck.
They also saw other survivors.
Some were just glimpses, faces peering out from behind broken windows, or figures darting into the tree line when they heard the convoy approaching.
Others were more bold.
Around mile marker forty-seven, they encountered a group that had set up a roadblock using shopping carts and stripped car parts. Three men stood in the road, two with baseball bats and one with what looked like a crowbar. They weren't trying to hide their intentions.
Dale slowed the RV to a stop about fifty yards out. Through the windshield, Lucien could see Shane getting out of the SUV.
Rick joined him a moment later.
The standoff lasted maybe thirty seconds. The would-be bandits took in the size of the convoy, the number of armed people visible through the windows, and the complete lack of fear on Shane and Rick's faces.
One of them said something to the others. They grabbed their barricade and dragged it aside.
The convoy rolled through without stopping. As they passed, Lucien saw one of the men spit on the ground.
"Assholes," Dale muttered.
Lori had moved to stand near the driver's seat, one hand on the back of Dale's chair, clearly ready to grab the kids and get them down if shooting started. When they were clear, she let out a breath.
"That was tense."
"They weren't gonna try anything," Carl said from his seat. He sounded confident. "Dad and Shane would've shot them."
"Carl," Lori's voice carried a warning.
"What? It's true."
It was, but Lucien didn't think Lori wanted to hear her son talking about killing people.
The encounter left everyone on edge.
By mid-afternoon, the adrenaline had worn off and exhaustion set in. The rhythmic swaying of the RV, the white noise of the engine, and the warmth of the late summer sun through the windows all combined into a powerful sedative.
Lucien found a corner in the back, pulled a blanket over himself, and let his eyes close.
Sleep came fast.
---
The dream started normal enough, or as normal as dreams got when your subconscious was a chaotic mess of two lifetimes' worth of memories and trauma.
He was walking through fog. Shapes moved in the mist, but when he tried to focus on them they dissolved.
Then the fog thinned, and he was somewhere else entirely.
It was an office. Large and circular, with portraits lining the walls and strange instruments covering every available surface. He recognized it immediately from the films he had watched in his previous life.
Dumbledore's office.
But he was not seeing it through his own eyes. The perspective was too high, and the emotional context felt borrowed, as though he were watching someone else's memory.
Two people stood in the center of the room. One was a stern-looking witch in emerald robes and a pointed hat. It had to be McGonagall.
The other was Dumbledore himself, unmistakable with his long silver beard and half-moon spectacles. But he wasn't the twinkly-eyed grandfather figure from the movies. He looked worried.
McGonagall was speaking.
"...must be found immediately. A first-year student missing from Platform Nine and Three-Quarters is not something we can simply..."
"I am aware of the severity, Minerva. Every available resource is being utilized. The Ministry has been notified, despite their reluctance to investigate Muggle areas."
"A child is missing."
"I know."
---
The scene shifted, the dream's logic warping in that way dreams did. Now Harry Potter was there, pulling on Dumbledore's robes.
"You have to listen," he said desperately. "Dobby told me he was trying to protect him. He said it was too dangerous. He did not mean for it to happen. The wall... He hit the wall, and then he was just gone."
"Gone?" McGonagall's voice went sharp. "What do you mean, gone?"
"He went through but he didn't come out on the platform, he just disappeared!"
"That's impossible. The platform enchantments are—"
"Clearly not infallible," Dumbledore interrupted. "If the boy struck the barrier with sufficient force while it was compromised..."
The voices started to fade. Lucien tried to hold onto it, but it was like trying to grab smoke.
The last thing he heard before the dream dissolved completely was Dumbledore's voice.
"I fear we may have lost him to something far worse than danger."
---
Lucien jerked awake to the sound of voices outside and the RV's engine cutting off.
For a moment he was disoriented, the dream still clinging to his thoughts. Platform Nine and Three-Quarters. A missing student. Him?
No, that was ridiculous. It was just a dream. His subconscious processing the trauma of the barrier incident, mixing it up with Harry Potter knowledge from his previous life.
Except it had felt so real.
He shook his head, trying to clear the fog, and looked around. The other kids were stirring as well, roused by the sudden stop. Through the windows, he could see they'd pulled over at what looked like an abandoned gas station.
The sun was setting.
Lori stood near the driver's seat, peering out through the windshield. "Stay in the RV," she said without looking back. "Something's happening."
Lucien scrambled to his knees and looked out the window.
Rick and Shane were standing outside, talking to someone. A teenager, maybe sixteen or seventeen, with torn jeans. Dale was half-out of the RV driver's door, watching the exchange.
The kid was gesturing wildly.
"What's going on?" Carl whispered, pressing his face against the window next to Lucien.
"Don't know," Lucien murmured back.
Lori turned from the front. "There's a survivor out there. He says his camp was attacked by walkers, and he claims he's the only one who made it out."