Chapter 378: I’m Giving This Back

It’s well past bedtime when I finish putting a clean sheet on my bed. Rhayne watches the whole thing from the doorway, arms crossed, wearing the expression that usually shows up when she’s decided to argue with me until one of us gives in.

"Den, I can sleep on the couch."

"You can."

She waits a few seconds, maybe expecting the rest of it.

"And?"

"And you’re not going to."

Rhayne lets the air out through her nose and comes into the room.

"It’s your house."

"Technically it’s my mother’s."

"But the room is yours! Don’t play dumb."

"Okay, but... so what?"

"Dryden!"

I give up before she throws something at me. I tuck the pillow under my arm and point at the bed.

"You spent more than eight months inside a tank, came back today, needed Zhang Xi to walk properly, and you’re still getting your strength back. You’re sleeping in a bed. I’ll survive the couch."

"I’m much better already."

"Great. Tomorrow you can celebrate by standing until your legs give out."

She opens her mouth to answer, but my mother appears in the hallway carrying Lili and immediately chooses violence. Psychological violence.

"Already giving up your bed for her?"

I close my eyes.

"Mom..."

"What? I’m impressed. It took your father months to reach that level with me."

Rhayne goes red almost instantly.

"Ingrid..."

My mother smiles at her with the calm of someone who has done absolutely nothing.

"Alden at least took me to dinner first."

"See?" I say, pointing at Rhayne. "This is what you’ve done."

"I only made an observation."

"You just compared giving a friend a bed to the start of your relationship with Dad."

My mother considers it for a moment, then deliberately makes it worse.

"You’re right. Your father didn’t move me in with his mother on the first day either."

Rhayne turns her face away, red to the ears now.

’If you’re already in hell, you may as well shake hands with the devil.’

"Tomorrow I’ll buy flowers and make it official. Happy, Mrs. Sands?" I say.

"Dryden!"

The pillow comes flying at me. I catch it before it hits my face, while my mother laughs and Lili follows the commotion like she’s just discovered live entertainment. My mother laughing, the way I haven’t seen her laugh in a long time.

"Good night, Rhayne," my mother says, finally backing off. "If he snores out there, close the door."

"I don’t snore."

"Your father said the same thing."

"That isn’t genetic evidence."

She leaves, still laughing.

I look at the hallway for a moment before turning back to Rhayne.

"Because of her, I occasionally regret bringing you here."

"Doesn’t look like it. You seem to enjoy it."

She tries to hide the smile and loses the fight. I put the pillow back on the bed, check that I left water on the small table beside it, and get ready to leave. That’s when she says my name in a different tone.

"Den."

I look back.

Rhayne runs her fingers along the edge of the sheet.

"Thank you."

"For the bed?"

She shakes her head.

"For today. For all of it."

The automatic urge to turn anything serious into a joke goes away. She lost the only place on Earth she could still call home, found a letter left by a man who is probably dead, and found out that same man might be connected to my father’s disappearance. All of that after waking up from more than eight months inside a tank.

It was a long day even by our standards.

"Sleep," I say. "Tomorrow we deal with the rest."

I close the door without turning the hallway light all the way off.

I wake up to the smell of coffee and a pain in my neck confirming that my couch is still the certified torture device it has always been.

I lie there a few seconds looking at the ceiling, trying to remember why I agreed to sleep on that thing, until I hear Rhayne’s voice coming from the kitchen.

"Like this?"

"Smaller," my mother answers. "Otherwise you’ll destroy the tomato."

"Cutting a tomato seems harder than defusing a bomb."

"From the way you’re holding that knife, I’m still not sure what it is you people do in Thirstfall."

I get up and walk to the kitchen.

I stop in the doorway before they notice me.

My mother is at the stove, working on the eggs. Rhayne is sitting at the table with a small board in front of her, cutting tomatoes with a concentration I’ve only ever seen her use in combat. Lili is in the bouncer near the wall, kicking at the air while she watches the two of them.

Nobody notices I’m here.

For a few seconds, I do nothing but look.

My mother. My sister. Rhayne.

Alive, together, inside that cramped kitchen.

This image never existed in the other life.

Rhayne was a name I knew from records, reports, and a tragedy that happened far away from me. My mother and Lili died before any path between us could cross like this.

Life was so hard and so precarious, even when I came back, that there was no room for this kind of peace.

Not one of the memories I carried for ten years had space for that simple scene: my mother complaining about the size of the tomatoes Rhayne is trying to cut to prove she knows how to use a knife, while Lili stays busy with her own foot.

Maybe it’s precisely because it’s so small that it gets to me.

"Morning."

Rhayne lifts her eyes and sees me working my neck.

"Your bed is perfect..."

"A jab first thing in the morning?"

My mother puts the eggs on the table.

"You two... should I start?"

"Please, Mom. Spare us the insinuations."

She ignores my complaint and looks at Rhayne.

"By the way, I never asked, sweetheart. Did you sleep well?"

Rhayne nods.

"Very."

The answer is simple, but I look at her for a moment. If you count Thirstfall time, that might have been the first night in years when she woke up in a bed on Earth with someone making coffee on the other side of the door, without having to worry about surviving monsters the next day.

My mother sets a plate in front of her.

"Then eat before it goes cold."

Rhayne sets the cutting board aside.

"Can I help with anything else?"

"You can."

She’s already reaching for the other plates when my mother finishes:

"By eating."

Rhayne stops.

My mother points at the plate.

"You just came out of a long recovery. You don’t have to prove you’re useful to have breakfast here. You already helped plenty with the tomatoes."

She obeys without answering, but I see the way she looks at my mother.

I focus and check the clock behind my eyes.

[76:02:04]

We still have a few days.

Rhayne just gained a new way of living, and in three days she’ll have to leave all of it again.

We sit down together. For a while, the world shrinks to eggs, bread, coffee, and Lili starting to complain because everyone in that house seems to be eating while nobody is offering her anything.

’This is good.’

Good enough to almost push Arthur Lancaster out of my head.

After breakfast, and after feeding Lili, my mother takes her to change her diaper while Rhayne collects the plates despite explicit instructions to do nothing.

"Mom, is Dad’s stuff still stored?"

She stops at the mouth of the hallway.

"It is."

"All of it?"

"Whatever I didn’t have to move out of the way. Clothes, documents, the old phone, some boxes... it’s practically all in the bedroom."

"Can I look?"

She understands before I explain.

"If you’re looking for Arthur, I never searched for that name."

"You had no reason to."

My mother shakes her head slowly.

"Maybe I should have."

"No, Mom. You’re human. Don’t take on everything."

She accepts that, though she doesn’t look entirely convinced.

"Go through whatever you want, son."

My parents’ room still feels like it belongs to both of them.

Some things have changed since Alden disappeared, but not enough to erase him. Half the closet still holds his clothes. There are shoes under the bed, a box of documents on a high shelf, and a drawer full of the useless things every nightstand drawer keeps.

Rhayne stops in the doorway.

"Want help?"

"I do."

I hand her a box of papers.

"Look for Arthur, Lancaster, any strange abbreviation, an address, a company name, or anything that seems out of place."

She sits on the floor while I start with Alden’s old phone.

The battery is completely dead. I find a compatible charger, leave it connected for a few minutes, and manage to get it to start. The passcode is still the same one my father used years ago, which is both convenient and disappointing for a man who spent most of his life hiding things.

I search the contacts.

Arthur.

Nothing.

Lancaster.

Nothing.

A. Lancaster.

Nothing.

I go through messages, notes, and local files. Not a single reference.

"Anything?" Rhayne asks from the floor.

"Only that my father treated bank advertising like historical documents. There are a lot of them."

She holds up four nearly identical papers.

"Maybe they had sentimental value?"

"They’re loan offers, Rhayne."

"A collection of them..."

I toss the phone onto the bed.

We spend the next hour opening boxes and sorting papers. There are Diving records, statements, receipts, medical documents, old maps, and an impressive volume of useless things that somehow survived moves and poverty.

In the middle of a folder, Rhayne finds a photograph of me at thirteen.

Her expression changes immediately.

"Den..."

I don’t even have to look.

"No."

"That hair."

"Give me that!"

She holds the photo out of my reach.

"You had bangs."

"Rhayne..."

"I’m keeping this."

"You’re going to die."

She starts laughing.

"After what I found out about my future, that threat lost its weight."

I manage to recover the photograph and shove it to the back of a drawer, where I hope it stays until the collapse of civilization.

We keep going.

No Arthur.

After another half hour, my patience starts to run out. The closet is practically the last place left. I go through the pockets of pants, coats, two backpacks, and a heavy jacket my father used to wear when he had to cross the city at night.

Nothing.

I take the jacket in both hands and squeeze the fabric before folding it.

Something crackles.

The dry sound of paper creasing.

’What is that?’

Rhayne looks up.

"What is it?"

I squeeze the jacket again.

The sound comes from the lining.

I run my fingers along the inside until I find a small opening by the seam. There’s a narrow pocket hidden behind the main one, almost invisible if you don’t know it’s there.

I push two fingers in and pull out a folded sheet.

Rhayne gets up and comes over while I open it.

There’s an address in District 4, followed by a short identifier.

Crimson Street, P.O. Box 417.

Below it, a single handwritten line:

I’m giving this back to you.

I stand there looking at it.

"That isn’t my father’s handwriting."

Rhayne leans in.

"May I?"

I hand her the paper. She reads it once and then looks at the backpack she left near the door.

I understand immediately.

Rhayne runs over and takes out Arthur’s letter.

We set both papers side by side on the bed. The material is different, but the writing doesn’t leave much room for doubt. The slant of the letters is the same, along with the shape of certain strokes and the particular way some words end.

"Arthur," I say.

Rhayne confirms with a nod.

My heart speeds up.

That paper has been hidden inside a jacket of Alden’s since before the last Dive.

The address leads to a small private postal office squeezed between two commercial buildings in District 4.

The place is discreet, the kind of service that exists to be ignored. A counter, a few chairs, and walls covered in numbered metal boxes.

’That makes sense.’

Divers spend months away from Earth. Many of them don’t want mail piling up at home, and others simply prefer that business done in Thirstfall not point directly at a residential address.

We go in without drawing attention.

I check the clock out of habit.

[73:32:04]

The woman behind the counter looks at us for a second and goes back to her own screen.

We follow the numbering until we find box 417.

It uses a small numeric keypad, no physical key.

Rhayne studies the paper.

"There’s no code..."

I bring my face close to the lock. A label warns that three incorrect attempts lock the mechanism and summon an employee for verification. Forcing the door would be even worse. There are cameras on the ceiling and probably some alarm I can’t see.

Rhayne speaks quietly.

"So now what?"

I look at the metal.

A possibility occurs to me.

It’s absurd enough to suit my class.

I put my fingers against the door of the box and concentrate.

Link answers.

The information simply organizes itself inside my head the same way it has before: material, age, structure, condition, details I’d have no way of knowing by looking.

’Common metal alloy. Twenty-seven years since original manufacture. Electronic mechanism replaced four years ago. No structural damage. Compartment occupied.’

Then I find what I was looking for.

The lock system recognizes four specific digits as the condition for opening. The sequence is stored in the mechanism itself.

I enter the sequence.

The light turns green and a dry click comes from inside the box.

Something pulls at my remaining time as the skill closes.

[73:02:04]

Thirty minutes.

That’s what it cost to ask a lock what it remembers.

Rhayne looks at me.

"What was that, Den?"

I pull the latch.

"Well. Remember Link? The skill I use to check items and appraise things in Thirstfall?"

She nods.

"Let’s say it works here too."

Rhayne looks from the lock to me.

"And it showed you the code?"

"Apparently. It was in the object’s memory, after all. My class has its moments."

I was expecting a letter. Maybe some small object. Anything consistent with a paper hidden in a jacket and a forgotten post office box.

The compartment is full.

There are folders stacked to the back, thick envelopes, photographs, document copies, and a small notebook.

Rhayne loses her smile.

I pull out the first set and hold it against my chest.

"Let’s get this out of here."

The woman at the counter doesn’t look up when we close the box. To any camera in that room, I simply knew the code and owned the box.

We find a small café two streets away.

I pick a table at the back and we spread the material out between us.

The first folder has a name on the cover.

VESPER, RHAYNE.

She goes still beside me.

"That’s mine."

I open it.

There’s an old photograph of the orphanage, civil registration, her parents’ names, their history as Divers, dates related to their disappearance, school, clinic, and information about Rhayne’s first Dive. Several pages come with short notes.

She runs her fingers over a photograph.

"He already knew all of this before he talked to me."

"Looks that way."

I turn another page.

The notes move into behavior. Tendency to avoid groups. Ability to stay unnoticed. Response under pressure. Social vulnerabilities. Points that could be trained.

Rhayne reads a few lines and her expression closes.

"He was studying me. When he first made contact in Thirstfall, he already knew all of it. Before my first Dive."

I don’t answer right away, because another folder caught my attention.

My name is written on the cover.

SANDS, DRYDEN.

I open it.

Home address.

School.

Grades.

Basic records.

Photographs of me waiting for a bus, leaving the building, walking with my mother.

All of it before Thirstfall.

Long before.

Rhayne moves closer.

"He investigated you too?"

"Looks like it. This is from before my first Dive."

Some of the information is public. Other parts would require specific access, or someone supplying the details.

Then I find a handwritten note in the corner of a page.

I recognize Arthur’s handwriting.

Alden confirms.

I keep going.

On another page:

According to A.S., he has not yet manifested his first diving.

Further down:

Family not informed. Aion Project present.

I stop turning pages.

Rhayne notices.

"Den?"

I point at the notes.

She reads them slowly.

The feeling that runs through me is strange. Part of the problem just got much simpler.

Arthur didn’t need to predict my birth, find out my name through some impossible method, or know my family by supernatural means.

The notes make it clear that my father told him about me.

He may even have supplied part of that material.

The line on the paper comes back to me.

I’m giving this back to you.

Maybe that wasn’t only directions to a post office box. Maybe Arthur was returning something Alden handed him to review, expand, or investigate.

For a few seconds I feel something close to relief. One impossibility just died.

On the other hand, "Aion Project" raises every hair on my body.

Rhayne keeps moving through the pages while I go over Arthur’s notes.

Then she stops.

"Dryden."

The way she says my name makes the feeling worse.

She takes a sheet out of her own folder and sets it in front of me.

It’s a planning sheet. There are observations about training, espionage, ways to earn income and independence. The name Azure Prime Academy appears further down, accompanied by a time window.

Within two years, depending on the project’s steerability, the target will be there.

I know this part.

It was the deadline Arthur gave her.

But there’s another note.

Handwritten.

Expected contact: Dryden Sands.

I stare at my name.

Arthur knew who I was because Alden talked about me.

Fine.

That explains the name. It doesn’t explain the rest.

At the time these notes were written, I hadn’t made my first Dive. I had no idea I’d end up at Azure Prime.

The first time I lived through those years, my path didn’t even go that way.

Rhayne sees exactly where my head has arrived.

"Your father could have told him about you."

"But..."

"He could say your name, where you lived, your age..."

"Yes."

She puts a finger on the note.

"But he couldn’t say I’d find you at Azure Prime two years later."

I look at her.

"No."

The mystery didn’t disappear. It just changed owners.

Arthur has stopped looking like a man who simply knew my future. At least part of his information came from Alden.

My father was at the center of this story before he disappeared. Before Arthur started preparing Rhayne. Before I died. Before my second life began.

I go back a few pages.

Alden confirms.

The phrase looks different now.

Rhayne stays quiet beside me while I stare at the notes.

Maybe Arthur wasn’t the source of the impossible information.

Maybe he was only the one who received it.

The question that’s left is worse.

I tighten my grip on the page and look one more time at my father’s name.

’Dad. What did you know?’