Despite what I'd told Jessie, I spent most of the day of her parent-teacher conference at the GC center. There really wasn't much time to spare, and both Ellen and I were still recovering from our injuries in the C-Rank portal—to say nothing of Yasmin, who'd decided to overnight at the hospital instead of toughing out esophageal burns. If we weren't clearing portals, I needed to be working on my alternative Law problem.

But, just like we'd found on the first day of our search, there wasn't an answer. 'Paragon' felt like a dead end.

No, it felt worse than a dead end. It felt like the right path, but like the information we wanted had deliberately been removed. That didn't make any sense, though. Why would the Governing Council suppress information about Paragons? It felt like the kind of subterfuge that would only hurt Phoenix if it got out—or even if it didn't. If Paragons had anything to do with delvers getting stronger, why not make the information available to everyone?

Everyone could benefit from it, after all. Everyone could get stronger if they knew, and that would only be good for Phoenix. The Governing Council wasn't in the business of sabotaging delvers, though.

Unless…

I couldn't explain what the 'unless' might be, though. There was a scenario where suppression of information was the right call. In fact, there were several: there might not be very many Paragons, or they might be disgustingly powerful threats to the city and Earth. The God of Thunder—I needed a new name for him, but I couldn't think of one, and Jessie would probably name him Falafel or something—had introduced himself as one, and he was stronger than anything Earth could muster.

But no matter what, I didn't have a way to confirm if Paragons were what I needed, what they even were, or even if they existed beyond a handful of super-powerful monsters like the God of Thunder. The library wasn't helping. After hours of poring over books, I changed into my workout clothes and worked a punching bag until my knuckles wouldn't punch anymore.

It wasn't a battle trance, but it felt good to hit something.

And then, before I knew it, I was changed into a pair of slacks and a button-down shirt that didn't feel quite right—they were built for unawakened Kade, and my body had gotten a lot stronger—and riding a bus toward Public School Seventeen.

My memories of high school weren't happy ones.

I'd never been the teachers' favorite. Far from it; I'd been an angry kid when I'd first walked through the high school's doors. Someone who was ready to fight at a moment's notice. The fact that I'd wanted to fight the right people hadn't meant anything. I was trouble, and that got me on a lot of teachers' naughty lists.

School hadn't been my priority, either. I'd done it, but it was more a matter of drifting through the process and less about investing in myself. My focus had been on discipline, control, and fighting, not English and math. That hadn't gotten me in good with most of the teachers, either.

And we'd skipped the last two conferences—both the spring one for Jessie's freshman and my senior year, and Jessie's fall sophomore conference. I'd understood I was supposed to be there, but I'd barely managed to graduate while dealing with Dad's death and my awakening. School had been…less important…after his death. It wasn't that I didn't care. It was that it was hard to care about it. Between Jessie and my awakening, it didn't feel like it mattered as much.

I sat down across the desk from Mr. Yarrow—the sixth and final conference of the evening. One of the school's counselors. The fact that he'd requested a conference at all meant something was up, and I had a feeling I knew what. "Is this about Jessie's circle of friends again?"

"Yes. Jessica's a solid student, As and Bs across the board except in PE—"

"Which we have a waiver for. She shouldn't be enrolled in PE at all."

"—which, as you said, she's not enrolled in," Mr. Yarrow continued. He adjusted his glasses. He always adjusted his glasses when he was annoyed. "She performs especially well in computer sciences and math. But until a month ago, she didn't have any friends at all. She ate alone, sat in the back of classrooms whenever she could, and played on her phone during any free time instead of talking to other students."

Jessie squirmed uncomfortably in her chair next to me. I felt for her; conferences sucked under the best of circumstances.

"That sounds like her. Jessie's got plenty of friends, they're just scattered all over the Phoenix area and the smaller towns on our 'net. She keeps in touch with them digitally, all the way from Flagstaff down to the border towns. But real-life friends? She's never been a social butterfly there."

"Um, yes. We're glad she's got friends online. Forging real-world relationships and learning how to make them work is an important part of the school process, though—"

"I'm not interested," Jessie said. She'd crossed her arms and was staring at her lap; the GC tablet was still tucked in her bag, and her phone was in her pocket. I braced myself, though. She was digging in.

"Mr. Noelstra, your sister's well-being when she's an adult revolves around having some friends—"

"Jessie, why don't you wait outside? I'll just be a minute, okay?"

My sister sighed, nodded, and wheeled herself to the door. It opened, and she disappeared. As she slipped through it, I saw her go for the GC tablet. Okay, one possible problem down—or at least delayed. Now for the other one.

"Mr. Yarrow," I said, "my sister's got friends. They're not here, but she's friends with a few of my friends, and she's got a relationship going with a boy here. I'm happy she's reached out that much. When I was here, it was just me and Jeff. She's no worse off than I was, and you never had this conversation with my dad. Why not?"

The counselor sighed. "Kade, you're redirecting the conversation. We're not talking about you. We're talking about your sister."

"Are we? I think we're talking about different people. You've shared what you're seeing. Here's what I'm seeing. Jessie's happy with her relationship. She's got a part-time job she enjoys, that challenges her and lets her feel like she's part of Phoenix's defense. She's got friends her age online, and friends a few years older than her in my circle. She's introverted, and a lot of the time, she's hurting too much to bother with people she doesn't care about."

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"What about the portal break last month?"

I nodded appreciatively and let the subject change. That was a real concern, and it was one I shared—unlike Jessie's social life. "She hasn't talked about it at all."

Mr. Yarrow looked down at the papers on his desk. "We've met with every student who was there—some several times. But Jessica has consistently refused to show up for our appointments."

That sounded like Jessie. "She's stubborn, and I've been dropping the ball on how she's handling that. I'm a delver now, and it's been high pressure the last few weeks. I'll tell you what, though. I'll see if she wants to talk to someone about what happened. If she does, I'll call PS Seventeen and let you know if it'll be you or someone else."

I expected some bluster back, but Mr. Yarrow appeared to be some strange combination of defeated and relieved. "Okay, I can live with that, Kade. We all can. I think we're on the same side here—we want what's best for your sister."

I stood up and reached across the table. The counselor did the same, and we shook hands. It was fast—any faster, and I'd have come across as rude. He winced, and I winced back. "Sorry. I just hit D-Rank."

"Understandable," Mr. Yarrow said as he massaged his hand.

"We'll be in touch, I promise."

"I'll expect a call in the next few weeks."

I headed for the door, opened it, and came face to face with a Jessie who was deeply engaged with her tablet. "Did you know a C-Rank portal broke in Mesa? They've got a Coyote team handling it, but it's pulling resources from all over the east half of Phoenix."

"No," I said. Then I stretched out. "I'm not going to get involved in that. Not tonight. We need to have a talk."

Kade: Ellen, could you pick us up and take us somewhere? Jessie and I need to get to the Fallen Delver's Memorial in the next hour.

Ellen: Nope. I'm busy tonight—family stuff.

A selfie appeared, of Ellen wearing a business-like pantsuit.

Ellen: Is it an emergency? I can send Deimos over if you need the wheels.

Kade: That'd be great. We're at Public School Seventeen.

Ellen: Deimos is on its way. Hang tight for a bit.

"Who you texting?" Jessie asked. "It's kinda rude to say we need to talk and then not talk.

I shrugged. "I said we needed to talk. I didn't say we needed to talk here."

The Fallen Delver's Memorial stood in the middle of downtown, in the center of a half-dozen fountains and abstract-looking public art installations. It was a pyramid of glass sunk into the concrete, with screens wrapped around it at eye level. Inside the pyramid was a functioning, broken E-Rank portal. This late in the evening, the blue light flooded out through the reinforced, portal-glass pyramid and threw the entire courtyard around it into an ethereal glow.

A delver team cleared the portal out daily to keep it from filling the memorial with monsters, and it was a low-threat Glade world, too. Supposedly, it was one of only three active portal breaks in the city with human-built fortifications inside it. The Wickenberg portal was the second, and rumor had it that one of the guilds kept a D-Rank portal for training. But the Fallen Delver's Memorial was the only one people could see—the only public one.

And overhead, a thin, tall diamond hovered. It was made of glass and portal metal, too, and it reached almost a hundred feet overhead. It was still dwarfed by the skyscrapers around it, but that was okay. The men and women whose names scrolled across the screens hadn't died for the monument. They'd died for the city around it.

I pushed Jessie to the monument, and she typed in Dad's name: Roger Gerald. A picture of him appeared on the screen, backed in blue light, along with his status, final skill build, and two paragraphs about his death fighting the portal break I'd awakened in.

Jessie pressed enter, placed her palm on the scanner, and waited as machinery inside the monument clicked and whirred. After a minute, an urn appeared in the center.

"Hi, Dad," Jessie said.

I nodded. There wasn't much to say to him. We hadn't visited in too long, and I felt awkward about it even now. For all that Dad and I had shared our training, he and Jessie had a different relationship. Not better—Dad hadn't been the kind of man who'd treated us differently just because I wasn't his blood relative—but different. She was Daddy's Little Girl, and she always would be.

"I miss you. Things have been hard, and we haven't had the time to come visit as much as we should," Jessie continued. "I've got a boyfriend now. You'd hate him—he's a nice boy, but he's not tough and he doesn't know how to handle himself. Not like you or Kade. And I'm working for the Governing Council once or twice a week. Keeping busy. Things are getting better, but it's still hard. I'll make sure Kade takes me to visit you more now, though. Things are calming down a little."

She looked at me. I cleared my throat and touched the glass that separated me from the urn. "I'm keeping my promise, Dad. I'm taking care of Jessie, and I'm going to make you proud." My voice felt husky and raw.

That's all I said. I couldn't say any more. After a minute, Jessie tapped the screen and the urn slowly sank back into the memorial's depths. We walked, with me pushing her chair, for a while. Then she turned, groaning a little with the effort, and looked at me. "Mr. Yarrow asked you to do something, didn't he?"

"Yes. He wanted to know if you were okay after the portal break. Every other student has met with him or a therapist, but you're refusing. He's concerned, and so am I. I should have asked earlier."

Jessie stiffened. Then she almost shrank into her chair. "I'm…not…I don't want to talk about it. Not with them. Their job is to get me to say I'm fine, not to make me fine. I want someone like the physical therapists who work on my joints, not a school-appointed shrink."

"Understandable."

"And I don't want you to miss your chance to help Jeff. I'll be fine. Just keep looking for portals, and we'll keep figuring out your Law problem. I think I'm close to getting into the GC-only side of the archives—the stuff they don't want us to see."

"Jessie, I think we can do both. It won't be too hard to find a therapist for you, and I can't run portals twenty-four/seven. We'll get all of this figured out, I promise."

Jessie turned around. "I'm ready to go home." Then she shrank a little more, even. "But yeah, if we could do both, that'd be great."

Carter stepped out of the E-Rank portal he'd been helping some new delvers with, a light sweat across his face.

"Thanks, Caleb," the freshest one said. It took him a second to react; when he realized she was talking to him, he nodded, but didn't say anything. He'd kept quiet for most of the clear. Carter was an aggressive, serious leader, but Caleb? He was a brooder, hiding beneath a forest-green cloak.

The E-Ranker was a striker—a rapier-wielding striker, in fact—and every bit the equal of what he'd seen of Kade at that level. Unlike him, her sword wasn't imbued with any elements. Instead, it was almost supernaturally sharp.

"Of course," Carter said. "Here's my number. Text me for high E-Rank or D-Rank portals."

That was the most he'd said outside of pointing out a few obvious traps or a monster's weakness. Brooding, quiet, mysterious. That was Caleb.

He hadn't grown much. But his goal wasn't growth. Not yet. Right now, he needed to establish Caleb Richter as a real person with a history. Once he had that, he could…

Carter hadn't thought that far ahead. He didn't know what his longer-term goals were—not in detail. But he did know a few things.

First, he needed to avoid Deborah Callahan. The best thing he could do for Terri and Lizzie was stay dead until he was stronger and he knew they'd recovered. If Deborah knew he was alive and outside her control, she'd take it out on them. Carter knew it. He'd made it clear he cared about them. That had been a weakness.

Second, and much less importantly, he needed to find a way to talk to Kade Noelstra. He didn't know what he'd say, but he needed to say something.

And third—and the only thing he could do right now—he needed to dig into the Gerald name. Something about that GC rep felt familiar, but he couldn't place it. Gerald…Gerald. Where had he heard that name?

"I'll see you around," the striker said. She smiled shyly and raised a hand.

"Goodbye," Carter said. He stuck out a gloved hand, and the E-Rank striker shook it.

Then he headed for the nearest bus stop. He needed to get to a Governing Council library. The last name Gerald should be easy to find information on—there weren't that many delvers out there.

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