Well this sure is absolutely awful.

Kalia has no idea where Zana is; she's supposed to be playing with Morris's younger brother but apparently she isn't at their house anymore, the station is getting ripped apart, and she doesn't have anything particularly weapon-shaped to work with.

Kalia summons Cam. Normal binding, she didn't have time to change it, they'll figure something out. 

It's not their scheduled time. He shows up instantly with a spoon dripping soup onto the floor in his hand; he takes in the alarm. "What do you need?"

"Hi there are pirates and they're killing people outside and I have no idea where Zana is do you have suggestions."

"- I think this doesn't let me do - uh - maybe I can - I can find her, but - uh - which binding is this, if it's the medical one I can knock everybody out and then wake you up -"

"It's the normal one - I'm sorry, I didn't have any others handy - "

"I can make you an emergency circle and you can resummon me, that would be faster than trying to work around this one, but you'd have to trust me on that -"

She takes about a second to think. There's a scream outside.

"Yeah, do it."

Cam makes her a circle and hands it over.

Someone starts breaking down her door.

"Shit," she whispers, barely more than a breath.

She can't turn a demon loose to save her own life, she can't, but if she gets killed then no one can resummon Cam and no one can find Azalea or Connor or Zana and they all die and Connor and Zana will be dead, and -

"Don't kill anyone," she says desperately, and then she snaps the binding.

"On it," he says, and he preempts the next door bash; the door falls out of its frame and the three pirates beyond fall to the floor, apparently uninjured. He walks rather than running from the room, wings and tail twitching for balance.

"Thank you," she says in a very small voice, and then follows Cam out the door. Heck if she's gonna wait for secondhand info on whether her niece and her nephew are already dead.

He looks over his shoulder when he hears her following, then continues. He checks a resident's pulse, finds it absent, moves on. More pirates fall before they can react to his approach; he steps over them, checks their victims, and keeps going, climbs a ladder he makes into their ship to knock out the ones who took prisoners and release the prisoners, climbs back down and finds another bunch. There's Azalea and her husband; no pulses. He doesn't spot Connor hiding.

And then there's Zana, knifed and already gone, herself beside a complete demon circle from the emergency kit. Cam checks her pulse, drops her hand, moves on toward the next habitat.

She follows him for most of this, even past Azalea and her husband. She pauses at Zana's body and drops to her knees. 

They're too late. They're too late and it has to be her fault. There has to have been something she could have done. She could have summoned Cam sooner, could've summoned Cam without a binding in the first place, could've kept a closer eye on Zana, could've convinced her mother not to raise her on Pluto where apparently random people can decide that they're going to be pirates and stab three-year-olds to death. She could've and she didn't and now it's too late.

She cradles her niece's body and cries.

Cam doesn't stop to comfort her; there's another hab full of pirates.

But he comes back, some fifteen minutes later, when he's done. Sits next to her. Puts a wing over her.

She rests her head on his shoulder.

"How many still alive?"

"Twenty-nine."

"S'better than none. Is Connor one of them."

"Hiding in his apartment, I checked when I didn't have the count I expected."

"That's something. Thank you." She wipes her eyes. "Poor baby was trying to save us when she died."

"Yeah. Looks like."

"I should've - I keep trying to think of what I should've done, where I messed up, I can't think of anything that makes very much sense other than just 'get Azalea not to raise her kids on Pluto' - it's not like I waited to summon you - "

"I - uh -"

Cam takes a closer look at the circle. Espies foot-shaped wrinkles in the middle of the paper.

"- uh -"

"...yeah?"

She's still crying but she's crying mostly silently.

"- somebody could come by any minute but there is something I need to tell you privately. I'm, uh, I'm gonna sit here as long as you need, then make another replacement hab, since these have holes in them now, and then - will anyone here know how to check my binding?"

" - I don't think anyone here does, no. I'm not done crying but you can make another habitat now, that sounds, like, more important than comforting crying people."