Chapter 37

"Ave, Jashin et Idris, in morte salutamus te." Colson and Zoe both chanted as they stood beside the two fresh graves. Sitting next to them, Ivy watched silently, looking down at the sites, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

The villagers had scattered memorabilia across the freshly packed dirt of all the recently dead. Pictures, heirlooms, and old weapons.

When they had finished, Ivy jumped to her feet, energized, "We get to go back to Crater now, right?"

"Yup," Colson stretched, "Today's the day. We should probably confirm with Cahya that everything is all good before we go."

Zoe looked at Ivy, "We should ask the doctor to give us some stuff for Ivy's arm just in case." She glanced at her watch, 'Seven-thirteen. If something happens to Ivy, none of us know anything to help her….'

"We literally have pennies to spare," Colson grumbled, looking at the receipt.

"Well, we have good seats, at least—booth windows!" Zoe bubbled, looking out the window, watching the aircrafts enter and exit their respective hangers. "You still have your wedding ring money."

Colson sighed, looking around the area. The three were sitting in a large open concourse. Ivy was tinkering with a cheap plastic toy from a fast-food restaurant while Zoe was distractedly playing along. Zoe bought Ivy the most oversized shirt with the longest sleeves she could find. It was an ugly, itchy, and cheaply made sweater, the top half a dark brown and the bottom half a bright blue. It almost hurt Colson to look at.

Colson reached into his pocket, grabbing onto a small piece of paper. Right before they left, Cahya slipped into his hand. He took it out and read it for what felt like the thousandth time. 'I guess I have someone to call now.'

A monotone female voice came over the loudspeakers, "Flight crew at Gate C, prepare for boarding."

"What do you think will happen when we get back? Think we'll be famous?" Colson grinned as he sat down in their seats. It was a half-circular booth; the couches were a dark purple, facing the line of windows that went along the upper deck along the outside.

"What normally happens after missions?" Ivy asked.

"From the few I've done, you just go to the quest master, and they'll confirm that you actually completed the job, and that's it. After a day or so, you'll get paid."

"Why would this be different?"

"I dunno. I doubt most of them have done anything like we just did. Think about it, Ivy; we're heroes!"

"Heroes…" Zoe echoed, her voice full of lament. "I don't know about that."

His voice started to vibrate and shake as the aircraft's engines shuttered to life. "If saving a village full of hundreds of people doesn't make us heroes, then I guess that bar is set pretty high."

"We'll be there in four hours," Zoe said, changing the subject.

Colson looked to Ivy, whose eyes glinted with amazement.

"So this thing can actually take us to Crater?"

"Wait, hold on," Colson said, "You've never seen one of these before?"

"No," Ivy shook her head. "I thought I saw some flying in the sky, but nothing like this."

"I've never been on one either," Colson admitted, "But I've seen them plenty of times. Occasionally, a private one will land in Crater."

"Oh yeah," Zoe remembered, "My mom said that Orion's was solid gold."

"Yeah, I was there when it landed…never seen anything like it."

Two hours later. Both Colson and Ivy were completely passed out. Every time Zoe would slip into unconsciousness, her mind would wander, thinking back to Geier and Ivy.

Zoe sat across from her; Ivy occasionally tried to scratch her face or arm in her sleep, being unsuccessful since she was missing her dominant hand.

Zoe brought her knees to her chest, her eyes started to water as she stared out the window. Everything over the past few weeks hit her all at once.

She glanced around; the third floor of the aircraft was relatively empty. It was only them and a few other people. They were either sleeping or reading. She got up from her chair and stuck her head into the walkway, looking up and down—no attendants in sight.

She sat back down, closing her eyes. When she opened them, an orange haze surrounded her. The drone of the engines overpowered the hum of her energy. She watched her aura follow her as she moved her hand back and forth in front of her face. She was still in awe and amazed at how anything like this could be possible. 'Thinking about it now, I'm almost one hundred percent positive this is what they're talking about when you become a triple-star. This must be what they teach you.'

Colson shifted next to her. He leaned forward, suddenly looking at her, "Oh, that's what I was sensing. 'Bout gave me a heart attack," he chuckled, leaning back on the couch. "You wanna fight some with that or what?"

"No, I was just… I don't know, honestly. Maybe just seeing if I still have it."

"Why wouldn't you?"

Zoe shrugged, "I dunno. This just seems so weird. These past few weeks have just flipped my whole worldview upside down," she stared out the window. "Besides that one time a few years ago, Crater is all I've ever known," she said. 'Even that small little stint we just did was too big. I feel microscopic on this planet.'

"Yeah, I get what you mean. That whole 'trip' was wild."

"Remember what Jashin said? About how this stuff was secret."

"Mhm," Colson nodded, "What about it?"

"Well, once we get back, and if they know, do you think they'll be mad?"

Colson thought for a minute, "Maybe," he said hesitantly, "I don't think Neph would care, but Reiza's dad, Aye…that dude gets mad at just 'bout everything. I guess it would be a good idea to not flaunt it around."

"Yeah, that's what I was thinking. I was also thinking about the star ranks. The triple-star rank…."

"Ohhhh," Colson said, his eyes lit up with the realization, "The 'secret information,' that makes sense. That would make sense how Reiza would know about it too. I bet her dad told her!"

"How many people do you think would know? My mother is a triple-star, and my dad is a four-star. I'm sure he'd have told her about it at some point. So if I'm right, they would know about it and possibly have learned it."

"I think there's about forty or fifty four-stars, at least in Crater. Who knows about the other three. I don't know why they'd keep it a secret, though. Do you think it's like that in other colonies? Maybe Neph or Lummock put a restriction on us."

"Hmmm, I think so. I know Orion has the final say for all laws put in place."

Colson scoffed, "From what I hear, that dude's a little nutty. Speaking of parents, though. What happened to Ivy's?"

Zoe leaned back into the couch, "She hasn't shared much. But I haven't asked either. I guess she disappeared and then left her a letter to come to Crater. I'm pretty sure her mom was never a resident."

"Do you believe that?"

"That her mom isn't a colonist?"

"No, the whole letter story."

Zoe's eyes flitted to Ivy—she was still fast asleep. Then they shifted to the ground. "I don't know," there was a long pause, "I think Ivy fully believes that. She may be wrong, but she isn't lying. She showed me the note that her mom supposedly gave her…It wasn't in Ivy's handwriting, and it didn't seem like something she'd write. Also, she sent her some kind of map."

"A map? A map of what? When was this?"

"I don't know where she got it from, but it was probably a few weeks before we left. It was called…Isle of light? Isle of Skye? Something like that, but she seemed pretty excited when she showed me."

"She always is excited about something."

"Yeah," Zoe smiled. She reached into the bag at Ivy's feet, fishing around until she found the box of cards. She took a stack of twelve, spreading them across the table in the center of the booth, all facing up.

"I just have a hard time believing what the fortune says. I just can't really see her doing anything like that," Colson pondered.

"Maybe, but didn't Pearson tell you that he mixed up the definition of 'raze'?"

"Yeah, but I meant 'raise.'"

Zoe had an annoyed look on her face, "You still think so after all of this?" She waved a hand over the line of cards. After her hand passed each card, they somehow changed to a new one.

"Just hear me out, alright. She just seems to…I don't know how to describe it, really. Maybe it's just a gut feeling, but it's a feeling that's persistent."

"A feeling?" Zoe monotoned, clearly not convinced.

"I don't know, I'm not good with words, alright. But just listen, alright?" Colson took a deep breath, "I like her and all, right. She seems…normal, I guess; all things considered, she could be a lot weirder. But then she'll do or say something, and then alarm bells start going off in my head.

"It gets me thinking. Remember like half a year ago when Orion seemed to disappear off the face of the earth? Ivy told you that's when her mom disappeared. Maybe it's a bit of a stretch and a long shot, but those two events are connected. Like, why did she send Ivy here instead of—oh, I don't know, a babysitter or something. And ever since she arrived, weird stuff has started to happen. They don't really seem that connected to her, but hey, it's like you've told me many times before, 'there's no such thing as a coincidence; everything happens for a reason,'" Colson sat back, watching Zoe's reaction.

There was almost a full minute of silence as Zoe took it all in. "Well, let's say you are right," Zoe said quietly, barely audible over the buzz of the engines, "What would we do? I can't imagine how she is now, that she'll be able to do much."

"Oh yeah, I kinda forgot about that. I mean, who knows. Do the fortunes have a time limit?"

"I'm not sure."

"I hope Crater can do something about that," he said, gesturing to what was remaining of her right arm.

"Yeah. She seems to be in good spirits about everything."

"Definitely. If that happened to me, I'd be absolutely miserable. Especially losing my right hand—that would be a true tragedy."

"I feel like it's my fault that happened."

"Didn't she say that was her plan?"

"If I came up with something better, she wouldn't have needed to do that." Zoe sighed, "I think you're the only one that my plan actually worked for."

"You can't blame yourself for someone else's choice. I mean, she didn't even use the fallback plan. It's not like we would've come up with something better."

"I guess you're right, but even beyond that."

"So you're still feeling bad about Geier?"

"Yeah, a little bit." Zoe muttered.

"To be honest, I can't really say I blame them."

"Yeah, they didn't really seem all that bad."

"The werewolf, though, that dude definitely deserved it."

"Yeah," Zoe smiled. "But to a certain extent, I think that everything happens for a reason."

They sat in silence for a while.

"It sounds kind of stupid," Zoe said, "Considering what we've been through, but I don't think I could've done this alone."

"What do you mean?"

"Flying. I've never done it before—alone, at least. I don't know if I could've managed it without you guys here."

"Uh, yeah, it's all good," Colson said, confused.

Zoe continued flipping through her cards, pressing down several times on the 'attendant' button while Colson stared out the window—lost in thought. They were currently passing over a massive city. It held the second tallest building in the world, 'La Colonne d'infini.' One hundred and thirty-seven floors. Colson had read in the past that the skyscraper held businesses, apartments, restaurants, and pools. The top penthouse floors have sold for over two hundred million dollars.

'It's odd,' Colson thought, his eyes staring forward, 'I never thought all that much about what the outside world was really about, and the people in it. I don't think my previous assumptions were so wrong per say, but most of these people outside Crater seem absolutely unremarkable. Disgraced themselves in so many ways. Cassius at least has the courage to fight for themselves. These people would let themselves be taken and turn in their own mothers to their new leaders for their own safety.' While deep in thought, his eyes wandered, ending up staring at Zoe. An attendant walked by, handing her a package of food. Absently, she started eating, only after a minute she picked up on the fact that Colson was staring at her.

Her dilated eyes stared back as she casually shoved chicken nuggets and grapes into her cheeks.

"Is something wrong?" Zoe asked through a mouthful of food. "You've been staring at me for several minutes."

"Huh? Oh, no, I was just zoning out. Thinking about stuff… You know, it's like my whole perception of reality has flipped upside down."

"I feel the same way," Zoe said, shuffling her deck with one hand and poking at the food with her other.

"Do you believe in fate?"

Zoe paused, looking up at him, "In a God's plan sense? Or like a quantum sense?"

"Either."

"I think certain things are bound to happen one way or the other. Who's to say what's pushing things to occur. I'd say to a certain extent, we all have free will; but I would say there are certain things that may be destined to happen."

"So our prophetic, she is able to see the future. Being able to look into something that hasn't happened yet…so the concept of a 'future' would mean that things are destined, no? As in, us existing in a time that hasn't happened yet…Do you think that reality itself is energy? Maybe the energy of reality is doing it."

Zoe said, "I'm still trying to wrap my head around what exactly is energy, and what it means. I can't answer that."

"The thing I'm curious about are the coins Jashin had. It's crazy to think that someone out there has the power to send you wherever you want. When we get to a higher rank, we have to ask them about how it's possible."

"I was actually thinking about that a lot. I have a few theories that back most of what they said up; well at least I've found a way to rationalize it. The law of conservation of energy: It basically says that energy can't be created from nothing or reduced to nothing. That lines up with what Idris and Jashin said. We're just using the energy already inside us."

"Yeah, I think I follow you."

"A theory I have for the coins is quantum tunneling."

"Quantum tunneling?" Colson said the words slowly as if they were alien to him.

"Yeah," Zoe nodded. "I was reading something about this phenomenon a while ago. To go into more detail, every particle in the universe has a chance to be anywhere in the universe at any time." Colson always found it humorous when Zoe got like this. She would stare wide-eyed at whoever she was talking to, speaking very quickly but somehow never seeming to run out of breath. "That can also be your own particles as well. When the phenomenon occurs is when that particle chooses to be somewhere else.

"Everything in the universe has a wavelength of possible locations it can appear at. Occasionally the wavelength can be inside an object that it doesn't have the kinetic energy to pass through or exist in. It'll appear at the end of the barrier at speeds faster than light can travel."

"Okay," Colson said, trying to keep up. "Isn't it like impossible for anything to go that fast?"

"It's tested by having two tracks. One with a barrier, and one without a barrier. They then test the location of the wavelengths after the test, when quantum tunneling goes faster than the wavelengths moving at the speed of light due to teleporting through an area."

"So, if I'm understanding this correctly, it's like a glitch in physics itself?"

"You could say that."

As they flew past the building, he could make out the people through the windows. Small dots moving wildly. Ants scurrying back and forth from one room to the next. The dull bronze and black glass that was plated on the outside sparkled beautifully at the angle Colson was looking.

He didn't realize that he'd fallen asleep until he awoke to Ivy poking him in the cheek with her fast-food toys.

They stood outside the aircraft hanger, staring at the map Zoe held in her hands. In front of the main building, taxis lined up bumper to bumper, as a crowd of people entering and leaving clogged the sidewalks and streets. Occasionally, Zoe had to duck or jump out of the way of someone as they barreled past, late for a flight.

"We only have about .47CC of the main fund left!" Zoe had to yell over the noise. "There's no way we can afford a Taxi all the way to Crater."

"How far is it?" Asked Colson, squinting at the map.

"I can't tell exactly, but a bit over one hundred and fifty."

"One hundred and fifty what? Miles?"

Zoe nodded. "Yeah," she said glumly.

Colson yawned, stretching his arms and reaching down to touch his toes, "I guess there's only one thing we can do. Unless we start begging, which y'all are on your own for that."

"That'd take all day," Zoe complained.

"I don't mind running," Ivy said.

"Over one hundred miles?" Zoe asked skeptically.

Ivy shrugged, "It's a bit more than what we've done. Silas had us run a distance similar to that."

"Yeah," Zoe hollowed. She felt a shiver run down her back at the memory of Silas screaming at her and her classmates.

"Also," Ivy grinned, "There's this!" She closed her eyes; a translucent veil started to form around her a second later.

"Ivy!" Colson snapped, grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking her, "Don't do that here!"

"Honestly," Zoe said, looking around to see if anyone had noticed. No one seemed to pay them any mind as the crowd continued to flow around them, most not acknowledging their existence. She let out a long sigh, "Alright, Ivy, do you remember what Jashin and Idris said about how energy was secret?"

"Uh-huh."

"So I think it'll be a good idea to not 'show off' or do anything in places like this or back in Crater."

Ivy thought for a moment, "That makes sense."

"I don't think we have the energy stamina to keep it activated for the run either," Zoe noted.

"So we're gonna have to do this the old-fashioned way," Colson muttered. "Alright, which direction is it?"

"We should stay away from going too far into the forests," Zoe said, wiping the sweat from her forehead. At this point, it had been almost two hours since they started running. They ran beside a large road identifiable on the map to keep their bearings. They were to keep following the road until it eventually split into a fork near a small river.

The sun beat down on them, the only shade coming from the trees on the side of the winding road. Ivy wrapped her jacket tightly around her waist, exposing her bandaged arm. Colson had taken off his shirt and wrapped it around his head.

Cars would fly past them on the highway next to them. Some would slow and give them odd looks. It wasn't every day they saw kids running on the side of the road. Colson would occasionally need to gesture that everything was okay and for them to keep driving.

'It must be quite the sight to see some shirtless kid chasing a girl with one arm and some other girl on the side of a road in the middle of nowhere.' The thought made Colson smile. He ran past Zoe and Ivy, making it a few feet ahead of them. He had been pacing himself for most of the run, ignoring Ivy's suggestions that they race. "You have an advantage now. Because of your arm, you're a lot lighter, so you'd be quicker now," was his answer.

Zoe put two fingers to her neck, feeling her pulse. 'I'm surprised. By this time, I would've normally felt like passing out, but I'm only a bit winded. I'm actually able to keep up with both Ivy and Colson now; I'm sure they could run a lot faster if they wanted. Am I just getting stronger, or is this just a byproduct of activating energy?' She looked to her left; Ivy seemed as carefree as ever, bouncing along beside her.

They continued sprinting along the road. Once activating energy, they could keep pace with the cars next to them. The sparse houses disappeared and were replaced by dense forests. The occasional beast would cause them to veer off-course.

Spotted Otter-Waheela—The Spotted Otter-Waheela is an omnivore native to central and northern forests of North America; typically found in regions where it snows frequently and there are lots of rivers or bodies of water. It is a quadrupedal beast standing over fifty inches tall at the shoulders, and the fully grown adult females weigh in at one ton, with the males being in the eight-hundred-pound range. It is wholly covered with sleek dark brown hair with dark spots sprinkled on their hide. Scientists and those who study these animals have found that just like human fingerprints, no two Spotted Otter-Waheela have the same spot patterns.