Still huddled in the shelter of the rocks, I discretely pulled the others into my memory palace so we could talk about the situation without Matlyn and Grunkle hearing us. I'd already used divination to search the area, since I could clear away sand without actually having to dig - although, much like the way going through walls cost me more mana, there was some resistance to it. I'd found a few interesting things, but nothing particularly shocking.

"No other pins, which means Matlyn is probably telling the truth about it belonging to her sister and these guys were just... random assholes."

Errod was looking at my conspiracy cork board. "Deserters, probably. You were right that they're wearing modified or cast-off uniforms from Halenvar and Erathik. I talked to Matlyn like you asked, from what she said I think they had some dream of forming a mercenary group, or maybe doing some light banditry. I don't think they were very smart, frankly."

I was about to ask why Halenvar and Erathi soldiers would be working together, but then I remembered that the two nations bordered each other and hadn't been at war until recently. For all I knew, there were a ton of people with cousins on both sides of this conflict. "Did you get anything out of her about the pin?"

"She avoided my questions, but I don't think she's part of any shadowy organization. She was upset, and I didn't see a way to push her on it without flat-out interrogating her."

Katrin nodded. "I did sort of interrogate Grunkle, but he only admitted to telling the deserters some exaggerated stories about treasure so they would keep him alive. To his credit, he also tried to convince them that Matlyn and her sister were important and should be kept alive. Well, according to him he did. He said that Zee was clearly a prisoner, and the leader of the deserters was some Erathi they called 'Hammer', probably because he had a war hammer tipped with Laharketa."

Calliope caught my raised eyebrow and clarified: "It's an alchemical metal, it amplifies force. Hit it lightly, everything is fine. Hit it hard, that force and half as much again comes back at you. It is useful for sling bullets, but expensive. A war hammer... seems stupid. The force comes out from all around, it would destroy whatever it is mounted to."

If it gave off more force than what was put into it... that seemed broken. That felt like something that could absolutely cause some sort of crisis in physics. I mean, all magic did to some extent - but what if you had a hammer on a spring, pointing at a lump of this stuff such that once it hit it would get pushed back by the force effect? It would pop back out and hit the lump again but harder, and get pushed back further, and spring out and hit harder, on and on until something broke. And in the meantime, that force would also be coming out from the sides. "Hey, uh. Couldn't that turn into some ridiculous infinite explosive thing?"

Katrin looked unsure, but Calliope had clearly played with this stuff before. "No. There is a period after each blast where it is dormant, and it increases with the strength of the reaction. Again, it is good for sling bullets but inadvisable for weapons like hammers. I suspect this man is an idiot."

"Okay, cool. Well, hopefully he doesn't kill Matlyn's sister before we get to him. I found some stuff the sister must have been carrying, there's a bag on the wagon that's packed with American money. I flipped through, it's big stacks of the same kind of bill and... I guess I have to explain this. They're paper, or... kind of halfway between paper and fabric. And they have numbers on them, so each one is unique. Well these ones, the numbers repeat within each stack - so they for sure were made with Fabrication or something. There's also some clothing that could pass for normal on Earth, though it was clearly made here."

Katrin perked up. "Oh! Can you get into Matlyn's phone?"

"I've been spying on her with divination, but she only uses it to listen to music. I saw her enter the code to unlock it, so if we take it from her we can search it, but she found her stuff on the wagon before I did and it doesn't seem to work here in the memory palace. The ephemeral dream-stuff it's made of doesn't work well for electronics, maybe." Being Ematse, the phone had seemed to turn on just fine but had shown me what was clearly the magic equivalent of AI slop rather than whatever was actually on the real phone.

Errod sighed. "This is still more information than we had before. Let's just proceed with caution, and try to rescue Matlyn's sister if at all possible. We don't know for certain that she's part of this organization, nor do we know that everyone in the organization is evil - you said that Bill worked for them, and he was a good person, right?"

"I don't think he was a pin-wearing agent of Coelestis, though. I think he was more of a... I don't know, a tool. A pawn. But... I guess I don't know that. Either way, you're right. Let's get some sleep, and then head after them. If nothing else, having seen the pin makes it easier to ask about it. In the meantime, I guess I'll go back to trying to recover more memories about this whole thing. Wish me luck."

Calliope headed off to her room in my memory palace, and the the others left to get some sleep. As usual, I left one mind watching us with divination before sending the other into my memories. I should have been looking for new ones, but instead I found myself back in that memory of Bill and I making mac 'n cheese. That was where his house started to feel like a home. I watched him lean down to kiss the top of my head, watched as my shoulders tensed the tiniest bit but then relaxed, not only letting that new tension out but more, something that had been wound up tight inside me for ages.

I could see it, the second that I decided I was allowed to just be happy with Bill.

I forced myself to move on, to look for something more relevant, but I kept thinking about him. They'd wiped his memories too, presumably. He wouldn't remember me, and I couldn't give him his memories back. It was just... gone. It had never happened, for him. Maybe that was for the best, though. I wasn't going to stay on Earth, and Bill could never be happy in a fantasy world. Besides, it wasn't like he would uproot his whole life for me anyway; I was just some kid he let crash at his place for a while. Although... although. The Duminere did show my last name as being 'Young'. That had to mean something, and I'd had fragments of a memory...

The next door opened, and it felt like it was the memory I was thinking of but... not. I had just burst into Bill's kitchen from the side door that led into the garage, swinging the door closed behind me. I was panting, there was a slice across the back of my hand, my hair was a mess... what the fuck? I heard Bill's footsteps approaching as he called out. "Hey kiddo, just in time to help me make dinner!"

My reaction was... interesting. Dropping my backpack, I hurriedly straightened my hair and brushed myself off before running to the sink and washing the blood off of my hand. At the last second, as Bill entered the kitchen, I seemed to remember something and reached down to my jeans, where the gold brooch was attached to a belt loop. I pulled it off with my injured hand and shoved it into a pocket - thankfully I was wearing boy jeans back then, and could stand with my hands comfortably in my pockets without it being weird.

I could feel something else in the pocket. It was... wait. Wait.

I took control of the memory and pulled it out, even though that hadn't happened in real life. Motherfucker. I had one of those silver Coelestis pins in my pocket, smeared with blood. The symbol on the front was swimming around, unclear, so I couldn't add the number to my list of known pins. I'd have to hope I looked at it later in this memory. I let the scene resume, and immediately was struck by how flustered I was - I'm typically pretty good under pressure, and I was having a really hard time looking casual.

Bill smiled at me as he walked in, and then as he chatted with me about my day - I claimed to have just been at the convenience store down the road, which was plausible but also for sure a lie - he grabbed the trash can and pulled the bag out. "Hey, put a new liner in, will ya?" He turned and opened the side door, and then paused for a second before closing it again. He stood like that for a moment, staring at the door, and then turned to me with a strange expression.

"Hey. Uh. I had a thought, let me know what you... think. About my thought."

"Okay..."

"How would you feel about moving? No! Hey, I see that look. No, I mean both of us. Selling this house, buying a different one."

I'd never moved before, not in the traditional sense. I'd gone to live at foster care placements, and my uncle's hotel, and group homes. But that was just me moving, not packing up furniture and stuff. It wasn't the same. "Uh. Yeah, I guess. Where would we move? Is this for a job?"

Bill nodded to himself, as if agreeing those were good questions. "It's a new idea, I don't have a lot of answers yet. It's a hypothetical, based on housing market stuff - this neighborhood is overpriced right now, we could make some good money even if we stayed within range of your high school. But it would be somewhere that would be as much your home as mine, since we could move in at the same time. Would you like that?"

"I don't give a... I don't care if I stay at this high school. But... Bill, you're not moving just to give me some warm fuzzies, are you? Please tell me you're not."

He grinned. "No, that would just be a perk."

I shrugged, very much caught off-guard. "Yeah. Okay. I mean, you do you. I'm going to go upstairs and wash up and stuff."

I could feel the pull of another memory, but I resisted for a moment and watched myself head to my room and, much to current-me's despair, shove both the brooch and the pin into my backpack without looking at them. I washed my face, switched shirts, and went downstairs again. Dead end, probably, unless I was going to watch for hours. I allowed the other memory that I could feel ticking at me load, and it was very similar. I was, once again, walking into the kitchen - but Bill was already there at the little table, looking at a laptop. We were both wearing different clothes, so it wasn't the same day.

"Hey kid, I'm checking out houses. You have any requests?"

"You're serious about the moving thing, huh? Uh... no, not really." The memory was intense for some reason, and despite my reply I could feel how nervous the talk of moving was making me.

Bill nodded. "Well, I was thinking about options, and all the stuff that comes with moving. Went down a bit of a rabbit hole, honestly, thinking about the future. What, uh, what are your plans? I know you've said you want to run off and be famous in one way or another the second you turn eighteen, but... have you put any thought into being adopted?"

My pulse quickened, and my vision got dim around the edges. I could feel my thoughts, so strong they were practically voices whispering in my ear. Bill was farming me out. He was getting ready to move, and he was looking to clear out as much as possible so he didn't need to pack it all. Like a yard sale. "Uh, yeah. Yeah, I guess."

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

"It's just that I ended up looking at some houses in Oregon, I know it's a bit trendy of me but I really do like it up there. And, well, that's not an option with someone in kinship care. I could take you out of state for a vacation, but if we're talking about moving they -"

"Yeah, no, I totally get it. I wouldn't want to keep you from going to Oregon." I braced myself against the counter, and tried to breathe. I couldn't understand why this was hitting me so hard, I had been waiting for the other shoe to drop for so long. "And if you can't find someone to adopt me it's cool, I can go back to the group home or whatever. I didn't actually mind it." My eyes were watering, and I could feel myself thinking that was stupid. It was completely ridiculous to be crying, it was going to make Bill think I wanted to stay - and I didn't want to stay, I didn't like Bill anyway, it was fine. It was fascinating, hearing me lie to myself like that.

Bill looked genuinely confused. "What are you talking about? Find someone...? Calliope, I'm talking about me. I'm saying that I would adopt you."

I waved him away, sure he had just seen me crying and gotten the wrong (totally correct) idea. "It's fine, really. It's nothing."

"Hey. No, come here. Look over here, I have the paperwork already started." I didn't come to him, so he got up and came to me, and tried to hand me something - which was hard, because I was trying to turn away as if I could keep him from seeing that I was crying despite it already being extremely obvious. "I've got the adoption case manager already on the job, here's her business card. You want to call her? I'm serious, you can call her and ask her what I said when we spoke earlier."

I was a fucking mess. It was deeply, deeply embarrassing to watch. Bill was hugging me, and I was - for some reason - still trying to tell him it was fine for him to just move without me while openly sobbing. He tried to show me the card, and talk about the process, and I kept telling him not to bother while internally panicking because some sort of floodgate had opened and I didn't think I was physically capable of getting my emotions under control. This wasn't even about the current moment, clearly. This was something old and fucked up I'd had hidden away, something I'd told myself wasn't a problem, something I'd refused to acknowledge before Bill started chipping away at the dam by showing me things could be... if not normal, then at least healthy.

Bill put a hand on each side of my face, and made me look at him. "By the Sundered Throne, by the name of the twelve kingdoms, I bind my blood and yours, that you may be my heir in the eyes of Kehennon itself."

I was so surprised I did actually stop crying. "You... You learned... But you hate those books!"

He nodded, still holding my face. "So, so much. They're ridiculous, and badly written, and I still find the glorification of child soldiers terrible. But you love them, and I love you. So... there you are. It's not legally binding, but hopefully the gesture is worth something."

I dropped out of the memory, back into the copy of that hallway in the Long Haul Hotel, and just stood there for fifteen minutes while I tried to convince myself to go back in. Eventually I decided it wasn't happening, not right away, and took shifts sleeping - even with my body resting, if I didn't let my minds get a few hours of downtime I felt like shit. Once each of them had gotten about an hour and a half, with the other in divination mode and bored as hell, it was time for us to get up and get moving anyway.

We'd stopped for five or six hours, first to wait out the sand storm and then because it was overcast and pitch black out - Katrin's light spell was good, but it couldn't reach far enough to let us navigate by landmarks or see if another sandstorm was coming. It had probably been for the best for us to rest a while anyway; the moskar needed rest from the day's travel and some time to calm down after the attack, and some of us were fully exhausted from hours of hanging on to a giant centipede.

But now... the moon was out and full, as it seemed to be too often - I hadn't bothered to look up the phases of the moon, but I put it on my to-do list. The point is, with the clouds gone and an abundance of moonlight we could see the mountain up ahead that marked the location of the City of a Hundred Gates, also translatable as the City of a Large Round Number of Gates, and there was no good excuse not to get moving again. Matlyn was worried sick, and while I wasn't super concerned over someone I didn't know and who might be my enemy I could objectively remember that, sure, it was always good to rescue a kidnapping victim.

We all took a moment to wash some of the worst dirt off, especially from areas that were covered in tiny cuts from the storm, and did the same for the moskar. We couldn't take everything from the wagon, but most of it wasn't worth taking. We got enough loaded up, with me leaving the American money in its bag and letting Matlyn "find" it so we could keep up the act of not knowing about Earth, and then started off across the dunes despite the moskar snorting at us in annoyance.

There was no sign of the deserters that got away. The storm had destroyed all tracks anywhere near us, and if they were off ahead of us I couldn't find them despite zooming in as best I could. I was a little skeptical that they would have gotten far in the sandstorm, or been able to aim for anywhere in particular. They could be buried under the sand for all I knew. Still, with no way to confirm there was no better option than continuing towards the ruins.

We took frequent breaks, which stressed Matlyn out, but she understood that the moskar went in sprints. During one break she asked if we thought her sister was okay, and I had to pretend I hadn't heard her and wait for Errod to answer instead. In the meantime, I continued trying to find more memories about Coelestis and finally had some success.

I was just arriving at school, and everyone was still milling around outside. Zoey was there, still visibly injured from me... hitting her with a textbook, apparently. She was talking to the same agent I'd seen in the memory when I'd burned Jake Ross and the Shattered Crown. She had her usual sneer on her face, but then she saw me and pointed at me. The man smiled, handed her some money, and started walking towards me. I took off, on impulse, and headed around the side of the school and then ducked inside.

My clothes looked familiar, and I realized I was wearing the same outfit that I'd been in when Bill warned me not to talk to anyone from Coelestis. This had to have been earlier that same day, which would mean once Zoey had told them who owned the books they'd called Bill about it. Hmm. Not a huge revelation or anything. I was pretty sure, based on my reaction when we had the conversation, that there hadn't been a confrontation at school that day. I watched a little longer just in case, but I wasn't willing to sit through an entire day of high school.

I tried to feel around, see if I could find a similar memory. I'd had limited luck with that tactic, but every now and then it worked. This time I hit paydirt.

I wasn't at school, but I was across the street. I'd just turned a corner and a guy was standing there in front of me. He was wearing a suit jacket but I could just barely see the edge of a silver pin under the edge of his lapel, pinned to his shirt. I jumped back a little, and he smiled a bit too wide.

"Ah! Calliope Smith," he said, "I've been hoping to run into you. How would you like quite a lot of money?"

This was, admittedly, a very good opening. "You've got one minute, talk fast."

"A kid after my own heart. Right down to business, eh? Very well. You have a copy of a book called Jake Ross and the Shattered Crown. I'd like to buy it from you. It's that simple. What's it worth to you?"

I squinted at him. "I'll make you a deal. How about you think of the biggest number you know, and then double it? You tell me what that number is, and if I like it I sell you the book. Otherwise, I don't. No negotiating, you get one offer. Make it good."

I could feel my thought process a little, but it was fuzzy. I didn't intend to actually sell the book, but I really wanted to know how much they would possibly pay me for it. I had to wonder if there was also some little part of me that was thinking it would be worth it, for the right price. Surely Bill would understand, in fact he didn't like the books anyway. It was maybe rude to sell a gift, but if the guy offered enough... well.

"One offer, huh? You're a savvy kid. Look, I don't want to waste any more time on this, so I'm willing to split my commission with you in addition to the amount I'm authorized to offer. This is literally the most I can give you, anything more and I'm not getting paid. Eight grand."

I hesitated, looking very conflicted. Finally I took a deep breath, and nodded. "Okay, here's the situation. My legal guardian doesn't want me to sell the book, he's never going to agree. So you'd have to be willing to pay a minor in cash." The man nodded, clearly fine with that arrangement. "Tomorrow, three in the morning. I'll write down directions, hang on."

I scribbled down instructions on a scrap of paper from my backpack, handed them to the man, and then walked past him towards the high school. I couldn't remember what I was doing. The place I'd sent him was somewhere I avoided normally, I'd ended up there once after running away and deeply regretted it. It was one of the three times I'd actually ended up stabbing someone, in self-defense. I could picture myself trying to set something up so I could steal the eight thousand dollars, but that still seemed like a strange location for it.

As soon as I had broken line of sight, I pulled out my phone and dialed. "Hey, Bill. No, I didn't forget anything. A guy just tried to buy that book off me, for eight grand. Said he would pay in cash, so I arranged to meet with him at this abandoned building I know at three in the morning tomorrow. Kinda sad I won't get to see the look on his face when he gets there, it's basically a public toilet for the local homeless population. Just shit and needles and broken glass. Yeah. Yeah, spaghetti sounds good for dinner."

Huh. For some reason I hadn't expected my past self to tell Bill the truth.

I felt another memory calling, so I reached for it. I was on a roll, and while I hadn't learned much it was only a matter of time. The memory snapped into place, and I was... at high school, again. This time, I was smoking a joint in this little secret corner I knew, by the football field. There was a utility shed, and the wall hit it at this odd angle that left a little nook where it seemed like nothing should be. I wasn't sure where I'd gotten the joint, I didn't have a regular dealer. Probably I'd stolen it from someone - I was a better person when I lived with Bill, but if someone left some drugs somewhere I could steal them that probably would have been too tempting.

The Coelestis guy stepped into my little nook, and I almost choked on the joint.

"Hey kid, that was a funny joke, the other day. Really good one. I got mugged by someone who hasn't showered since the late eighties, had to break his arm."

"What the fuck are you doing here? Fuck off, or I'll yell and tell everyone there's a school shooter or something."

The man smiled, and pulled his suit jacket aside to reveal a holster. "Oh, that can very much be arranged. Here's the deal, brat. You're going to give me that book. If you do it without making my life any harder, well, I can still give you a little cash for your trouble and we can part as friends. If you try any other little jokes, any at all, then I start hurting people. First things first, dump out your bag so I can see it's not here with us."

I did as he asked, while watching the gun very closely. The book wasn't there. He told me to put my things back in the bag and I did so, my eyes darting around for a weapon while I regretted my decision to get stoned. I stood and looked at the agent, and said, "Listen, I can - oh! Coach Morris!"

He didn't turn all the way around, or fully lower the gun, but he stepped sideways and half-turned while moving the weapon so it wouldn't be in plain view. He was clearly a professional, but we were in a little awkward space and I had recently learned that big heavy textbooks could do significant damage to someone's face. I hadn't put my world history book back into the bag yet, and a corner of it hit him in the eye hard enough to snap his head back. I dove past him as he raised his gun and simultaneously tried to grab at me, barely squeaking by.

It seemed like I would be in the clear pretty quickly, since it should be hard for some rando with a gun to chase someone around a high school campus without causing all sorts of chaos. In any sane world, probably that would have been the case. Instead, the closest building was the gym and there was nobody in there. I was fumbling at something in the memory, and it took me a moment to realize what it was - the brooch. I was pinning it to a belt look on my... oh. This was the same outfit as in the other memory, where I'd been injured and shaky and had a bloody Coelestis pin in my pocket.

So this was probably right before that.

A shot rang out, deafening as it echoed in the open space. Surely someone would hear that. They'd know it was a gunshot, right? Even if they didn't, the mere possibility would put them on high alert. That was the theory, but I knew that in practice it didn't always work out that way. People would hear a sound and think it kinda sounded like a gunshot - not like the ones on television, though - and other people would say something fell down in the gym, and they'd nervously wait to see if it happened again. And if it didn't they might shrug it off, and if it did that might be the sound of me dying.

Well, obviously I wasn't going to die since this was a memory, but it still felt pretty intense.

Still skirting along the outer edge of the gym and ducking behind the few obstacles I had for cover, I tipped a rack of basketballs over and heard the agent trip over it right behind me. His gun went skidding across the floor - okay, maybe he wasn't a professional at this after all - and while I was sure it had been tempting to go for it, I decided to build up more of a lead instead. I ran into a locker room, and when I got to the door at the far end I pulled it open but then ducked down along a row of lockers. The agent came in right after, saw the door swinging shut, and hurried through without seeing me.

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