Chapter 380: Blind Spot

We move everything to the table in the living room, and after more than a day and a few hours, the table no longer looks like a table.

Papers cover almost the entire surface. Some are lined up by date, others separated by origin, and there’s a third pile made only of documents we still haven’t managed to fit anywhere. Photographs sit pinned under empty glasses so they won’t slide. Photos I’ve looked at so many times that I’m starting to recognize the stains on each one.

Rhayne sits across from me with her hair tucked behind one ear and an expression that closes a little more with every page.

We tried chronology first.

Then names.

Then document origin, handwriting patterns, cross-references between Arthur and my father, orphanage dates, and any note that could have been produced before or after Alden disappeared.

Nothing.

Or worse.

Everything leads somewhere, and none of those places ends in an answer.

"Again," Rhayne says.

She drags one of the sheets to the center.

"Your father confirms the initial criteria. Arthur looks for candidates. He finds my record, watches me, and starts the training."

"Right."

"Then the instruction shows up to put me at Azure Prime within two years."

"Right."

"And your name is already attached to the final contact."

I nod.

She runs her eyes over the documents.

"Everything else is just plans and failed results. So why do I feel like we haven’t found anything?"

’Because we haven’t. We have new facts. Plenty of them. We just don’t have the piece that turns facts into a story.’

I pick up the sheet where the header shows up again.

PROJECT AION.

"Because the beginning is missing."

Rhayne looks at me.

"The beginning?"

"The information that explains why any of these decisions exist."

I point first at the search profile. Then at the authorization signed with my father’s initials.

"Why look for someone with your characteristics? Why train that person? Why put that person in my path? Why do it before my first Dive and, more importantly, before my father’s last one?"

Rhayne props her arms on the table.

"And why two years?"

"There’s that too."

I go back to the header.

The answer we’re missing has been written in front of us for hours.

It just doesn’t explain anything.

"What was Project AION?"

Rhayne follows my eyes.

The apartment is quiet. My mother took Lili to the bedroom a while ago to try to get her down. The noise of the old fan mixes with distant District 4 traffic, while the two of us keep staring at the word AION as if it might get tired and decide to talk.

No report describes the project.

No page explains its purpose, its origin, or who else was involved. Arthur uses the name as though anyone involved would already know what it meant. So does my father.

That’s what makes the documents so infuriating.

They weren’t written for us.

They were written by people who shared information with each other and never imagined needing to record it for anyone outside.

If I knew what AION was, I’d probably understand why Rhayne was chosen. Maybe I’d understand the Academy deadline, the link between Arthur and Alden, and even why my father started preparing something before his own disappearance.

Across hundreds of pages, nobody bothered to explain the one word holding up all the others.

"AION," I say again.

Rhayne watches me.

"What are you thinking about?"

It isn’t a casual question. She felt the change.

"I’m thinking about my Codex. Its name is Hope, but it’s like Hope is a volume of it. When I came back, what appeared clearly was the Aion Codex."

Aion is an uncommon word.

That alone proves nothing. Names repeat. People like naming projects after old words because it sounds more important than it is.

But my father was involved in a project called AION that was trying to arrange events years ahead.

I died ten years later.

I came back to the past carrying a relic called the Aion Codex.

’Coincidences have a right to exist. This one is abusing the privilege.’

"I don’t have a single piece of evidence saying the two things are the same," I say. "But the odds of them being unrelated are starting to get ridiculous."

Rhayne runs a finger along the document’s title.

"Especially because you came back?"

"Exactly. Especially because I came back."

That’s the part that ruins any simple explanation.

If Project AION involved a weapon, a guild, or some political plan of my father’s, there would still be dozens of possibilities.

But the project involves my name.

It involves Rhayne.

It involves a window of time that only makes sense in my second life.

And my Codex carries exactly the same word.

The piece fits.

We just don’t have enough glue to claim it belongs to the same puzzle.

"That still doesn’t explain how your father knew," Rhayne says.

"Or why."

"Or what he expected from me."

"Or whether Arthur knew everything or was only following orders."

She sighs.

"We’re back at the start."

"With more pages. Damn it."

I pick up the phone and look for Garen’s contact out of reflex.

He’d be my first choice.

Garen knew Alden from a side of his life my mother never saw. He has the position, the age, and the experience to recognize the name of an old project. If AION had any connection to important people in Thirstfall, he might have heard something.

The problem is that Garen is diving.

I look at the screen for a few seconds before locking it again.

"Garen might know."

"Are you going to message him?"

"No."

Rhayne looks surprised.

"Why not?"

I gesture at the table.

"Because I’m not going to digitize all of this and send it over a network."

"But you trust him."

"I do trust him."

I point at the phone.

"Not a server, an employee, a storage system, or anyone who could intercept a file before it reaches him."

Rhayne considers that.

"Especially now that Halcyon is involved?"

"I don’t know how involved Stardeep is, but it’s basically a sensible precaution."

Even if the orphanage acquisition has nothing to do with Project AION, Stardeep is already too close to this story for me to make anything easier.

"I want to show him in person," I say. "I want to see his reaction before he has time to prepare an answer."

"And how are you going to do that?"

"Maybe come back to Earth at the same time. I need to get to Thirstfall and talk this through with him. A joint reentry, or at least a close one."

That’s going to take coordination later. One more thing for the list.

I run a hand over my face and lean back. I’m about to gather the documents when I look at the clock on the wall and then at the counter in my head.

[23:06:21]

A little over twenty-three hours left.

I look at Rhayne, noticing something, and she catches it.

"What?"

"How much time do you have left?"

It takes Rhayne a few seconds to understand, and then she checks her own counter.

"Twenty-six hours and... fifty-two minutes."

Almost four hours of difference.

"You’ve never tested Void Monarch here, have you?"

She frowns.

"On Earth? Of course not."

"Hm."

"Den, I never came back after my first Dive."

Right.

Stupid question.

She hasn’t had a single opportunity to find out what any of her abilities do on this side.

I rest my arms on the table.

"Then we need to test it."

"Now?"

"Better now than finding out in the middle of an emergency."

Rhayne looks around the room.

"Void Monarch isn’t usually a discreet skill."

"In Thirstfall."

"You just said you don’t know what it does here."

"Which is exactly why we’re going to find out."

She keeps looking around, unconvinced.

"And if something happens?"

"If it starts swallowing the house, I’ll let you know and you turn it off."

"Damn it, Den. That isn’t funny."

"I didn’t say it as a joke. Or would you rather I let the house get eaten?"

She rolls her eyes, but she stands up.

We move the chair aside and open space in the middle of the room. My mother is still in the bedroom with Lili, so I keep my voice down.

Rhayne stands near the couch.

"What do I do?"

"The same thing you’d do over there."

"There’s no OXI here."

"There also shouldn’t be a Link that works on a post office box, and I opened one anyway."

She accepts the argument, closes her eyes, and her breathing changes.

"Void... Monarch..."

For a few seconds, nothing happens.

Then her skin shimmers.

But I notice it isn’t light.

It’s color.

Shades of the wall, the couch, and the shadows in the room run across her face, arms, and neck in fast waves, as if her body is trying to decide which surface it should be copying. The effect changes several times in a few seconds. Gray. Beige. Dark. Reflections off the window.

"Rhayne..."

"Am I doing something?"

"Wow."

She opens her eyes.

The colors keep running across her skin.

Then they slow.

Her shape starts losing definition.

She doesn’t disappear all at once. The edges get hard to follow first. Hair, shoulders, arms. The background starts coming through the space she occupies until her whole body turns into a smaller and smaller deformation of the light.

Three seconds later, I don’t see anyone.

I stand there looking at the place where Rhayne was.

"That is definitely new."

Her voice comes out of nothing.

"Den?"

"Hold still."

"I am holding still."

I take a step to the side.

Nothing.

If I didn’t know exactly where she is, I’d probably walk right past her.

The wall looks normal, and so does the edge of the couch behind her.

"Raise your hand."

The image deforms.

Very slightly.

Part of the straight line of the wall ripples for less than a second before returning to place.

"Move to the right."

Rhayne moves.

Now I can follow her.

I don’t see a body.

I see the room getting something wrong.

The light bends slightly around something. The edge of the table shifts a few inches when she passes in front of it and then goes back. It’s such a small refraction that anyone without a reason to look would probably ignore it.

"Faster."

She picks up speed.

The distortion gets easier to see, but it’s still good.

Very good.

"Come back."

Rhayne returns to the starting point.

When she stops, she disappears again.

"Den, my counter is dropping fast."

That pulls me out of the analysis.

"How fast?"

"Wait."

Silence for a few seconds.

"Between five and ten minutes per second."

"Turn it off."

The distortion appears again.

First comes a vague shadow. Then the edges of her body recover definition, and those same colors run across her skin in the opposite direction until Rhayne is fully back.

She looks at her own hands.

"Was I invisible?"

"Almost."

"Almost?"

"Optical camouflage. Standing still, I really couldn’t see you. Moving, there’s a small refraction. The light deforms."

She looks at me.

"So, invisible."

"Technically—"

"Invisible."

I give up.

"Fine. Fine. Invisible."

A smile appears on her face. Small at first, then wider, which makes me smile too.

Rhayne looks at her own hands again, like she could turn the skill on once more just to confirm that it really happened.

"It works here?"

"It works very well here."

She looks genuinely happy.

And I understand why.

Arthur taught Rhayne to observe, to hide her presence, to get in and out without drawing attention. For years, espionage was more than a way to make money. It was the skill that gave her some autonomy in a world where almost nobody was willing to protect her.

Finding out that piece of her still exists on Earth means more than gaining invisibility.

"That’s quite a skill for a spy," I say. "Even on this side."

Rhayne smiles.

"Arthur would have liked it."

The name creates a small silence.

After everything we’ve found out, there’s still affection there. And that makes sense.

Arthur may have looked for Rhayne as part of a project she knew nothing about. That doesn’t erase the years he spent teaching her, feeding her, and helping that girl survive.

"Probably," I answer.

I look at the clock.

"How much is left?"

Rhayne checks.

"Twenty-three hours and forty-eight minutes."

I run the math quickly.

Then I check mine.

The difference has dropped to less than an hour.

"Perfect."

She narrows her eyes.

"I just spent almost three hours of my time on Earth and you’re happy?"

"You were almost four hours ahead of me."

Rhayne understands.

"Ah."

"Now we can go back practically together. Depending on the final difference, whoever gets there first waits a short while on the other side."

She thinks about it.

"So I don’t have to stay here alone after you go back."

"That was one of the things I wanted to avoid."

My mother would look after her without any problem.

That isn’t the point.

Rhayne went years without coming back to Earth. I brought her home, put a bed under her, and gave her some normality for the first time in a long while.

I don’t like the idea of simply disappearing first.

Besides, going back to Thirstfall will be different this time. She doesn’t have to do it alone.

"We go back together," Rhayne says.

"That’s the plan."

She nods.

She looks satisfied.

Now there are twenty-three hours until the next problem.

I go back to the table.

The documents are still spread out the same way. Nothing has changed.

But now I remember the other question I was trying to solve before the test.

What to do with all of this when we leave Earth?

I’m not taking the documents with me. There’s no reason to. I also don’t want to leave a single copy inside the apartment.

If Halcyon or Stardeep has any real interest in this story, my house is one of the first places someone would look after connecting my name to Alden.

I need redundancy.

More than one.

Physical.

Outside digital systems.

And preferably handled by someone nobody would watch as part of an operation involving Divers.

I look at the hallway.

The idea starts to form.

Rhayne notices.

"What is it?"

I start gathering the papers.

"I think I solved one of our problems."

"AION?"

"Unfortunately, no."

I put everything back in the folder.

"The documents."

Rhayne watches while I close it.

"What are you going to do with them?"

"First I need to talk to my mother."

I get up and head down the hallway.

I find her coming out of the bedroom a few seconds later, closing the door carefully so she doesn’t wake Lili.

She sees me carrying the folder.

"What happened now?"

"Nothing."

My mother folds her arms.

"You’ve been saying ’nothing’ with a very problematic face lately."

I come closer.

"Mom, I need to ask you for something."

"Does that usually get expensive?"

"Not this time."

"Dangerous?"

I think about it.

"For you, no."

She doesn’t look convinced.

I hold the folder against my body.

"Actually, I have a mission for you."

My mother stares at me.

"A mission?"

I nod.

"And you’re the only person on Earth I trust to do it."