In the land outside my convoluted memories, two more days had passed, along with two more minor earthquakes. Each one was followed by Warden Bennett stopping by to glare inside my cell with his pale skin and annoying goatee.

My return smile was full of false confidence and superiority. There wasn’t an ounce of justification to it. Sensations were too messed up reliving the past memories anyway. The longer they kept me in this room, the better I felt. The biggest concern outside this cell was Leo.

During those two days, I’d come out of a memory doing half motions in the tiny cell. It was mostly the footsteps and slides. Tal’s words and commands echoed across the years even though the old man was dead.

That realization would hit me briefly. I’d been reunited with him at Bottom Pit, then again in the small town. He’d been looking out for me two decades later, and I couldn’t even recognize him until the very end.

I couldn’t recognize myself. Sometimes I’d find myself standing in front of the reflective metal staring at my face. It wasn’t the face of a young boy, fresh to a strange world and lost. It didn’t fit with the growing child in my memories.

The two timelines were still jumbled. There’d be a flash and I could see a younger version of Roy behind me, glaring on with a mix of disapproval and other submerged emotions.

It took us nearly ten years to find a balancing point between ourselves. Coming to terms with the kind of creatures we were. Roy’s kind, Tal, Leo, their brothers, were all cut from the same cloth. They were naturally muscled creatures with slightly discolored skin and eyes. They wanted to fight. They were borderline savages unless they managed to keep under control. They all longed to fight and see who was on top.

They’d been obsessed with learning the dances from my memory. To them, they were an incomplete series of martial forms used by creatures with excessive strength or natures beyond the pale. It made sense, their arts had been created by generations of battle obsessed brutes where only the successful survived.

Both men were obsessed with learning this material artform. Knowing more than either one, as a child, simply added fire to their desire. They both hungered to know, but at the same time they were worried why someone outside their kind knew anything at all.

Swoosh. Swoosh. Step. Step. Wall, spin, arm up out to the side. Punch twice. Turn and sweep the leg. Each motion was designed to flow into the next. They could turn into another pattern easily, or link together in new chains, but the full unblocked series of moves looked exactly like a dance that vibrated the air.

I relived the learning process moments at a time while actual sleep stayed broken and disturbed. It was getting hard to tell what was now and the past.

“Fields,” a guard called. I shook my head and huffed out of the latest flashback.

I’d been thinking of my third grade teacher. The only one who’d actually tried. She had dark hair and pale skin on a tiny frame.

The guard was none of those things, but he was polite as cuffs were placed on hands and feet. He didn’t tell me to wait inside the cell, though. Instead I was escorted along two halls, down the elevator and into another room.

A woman sat inside. Her build didn’t belong to the dark-skinned Kahina Rhodes. It didn’t match Boss Wylde’s with her freckled complexion. She wasn’t Candy, a deceased Julianne or my third grade teacher, but that last one was close.

“Ms. Sauter?” I said haltingly. It took me time to figure out who this visitor was.

It was the blue eyes. I’d seen them on her daughter as well. Sky like, mixed with a slightly tanned skin that seemed to have hardened over the last year.

She smiled, but her eyes squinted just so against tightened cheeks. Her expression wasn’t attempting to be friendly, it was guarded.

“Mr. Fields.” Ms. Sauter acknowledged me with a slight nod.

“What—” I didn’t even know where to start. This reminded me of how Tal had reacted when my corrections had come forth. I felt even more disconnected from reality.

“I had an appointment with Stacy. She’s a guest of Atlas as a result of... disturbances.” I looked around. A briefcase was on the floor, some electronic device off to one side, and a phone.

Then there were her clothes. There was the decorative jewelry just like the last time we’d met, but that jacket on the back of her chair, the way she held her hands. It all screamed business professional.

I knew exactly what Stacy had done, which was rescue me from a shitty situation, but played dumb. “Why visit me?”

“To extend an offer. We, myself and two others from our pack, are part of a national group offering counsel and other legal services to wolves in need.”

“Wolves in need…” I trailed off in wonder for a moment. “I’m not a wolf.” That had to be out of the way first thing. With Muni’s charm gone, no one would remember me wrong. No one would smell this body and picture a furry creature that might lick a face or sleep on someone’s feet.

Hell. The last person I’d cuddled with had nearly lost her head twice because of me. That was hardly adorable. Plus, Spike had attempted to stab me with silver and set me off.

But I’d always had a weakness toward ladies.

Now it was Ms. Sauter’s turn to be confused. “But you’re—” She sniffed, followed by a study of my neck and shoulders. Quick glances to the typical stress areas of a wolf.

“May I see your hand?” she asked.

They were still bound with some slack between legs and arms. I managed to get an arm up which forced the other one into my crotch.

“Huh. But you don’t smell…” It occurred to her what other options there were.

If I wasn’t human or wolf, and clearly didn’t have pointy ears despite attempting to superglue the tips one summer, well, what remained was worrisome at best.

“That’s strange. I could have sworn you were pack the last time we met,” Ms. Sauter said.

I smiled weakly.

“A lot has happened since then.” A lot was still happening, even if most of it was in my head at this point. Atlas Island itself had been rather peaceful aside from the earthquakes. Whatever foundation the prison was built on seemed sturdy. Only a few cracks here and there.

“Well,” she said while leaning back. My hand was dropped kindly on the table.

“Well,” came my tired response. “Thanks anyway.” I started to stand and head back to the door when Ms. Sauter called.

“I think I can still help you, Mr. Fields.”

“Why bother?”

Why did any of these people reach out to me? Some answers I knew. Daniel helped because he needed a tame monster. Candy helped because of her twisted addictions and desires to keep me under control. Leo helped because he was desperate to win my, and his father’s, respect. Julianne had helped because we were friends.

I shook my head and listed my own crimes. “I failed to get your money back. I got you into a fight with your husband, right in front of your daughter. Hell, I even stole one of the rings that dropped after you shifted and chased your husband.”

That bit of guilt had been building for a while. She had shifted in a rush to chase after her fleeing husband and left behind two rings. They were shiny and abandoned, so naturally I picked them up for my personal collection.

“You did what? You took that ring?”

“Yeah,” I said with a nod.

“Why on earth would you take my jewelry?”

There were a lot of halfhearted reasons. Her husband had owed money was my excuse if anyone caught me. I could have said it looked abandoned on the sidewalk. That it might have dropped off someone else.

Or “Because it was pretty,” I admitted.

She started packing up her stuff. The briefcase opened and in slid one electronic device, then a second. Her jacket came off the chair and was halfway to the shoulders before she paused and counted. I saw her lips move, one to ten like a mantra. A moment later her face forcibly relaxed.

“Mr. Fields, do you still want legal representation?”

“No. Go home. Take care of your little girl.” The one who was now short a father due to something I’d been directly involved in. I’d fucked up enough lives.

“I’ll sit down, if you will, Mr. Fields. We should talk this through.” Off came the jacket, back onto the chair, down went the briefcase onto the ground.

Clearly she was crazy. I rattled my way to the door.

“Sit the fuck down, Mr. Fields, or I will make you sit.”

I turned and looked at Ms. Sauter. Her face twisted in a snarl, form slightly disfigured, cheekbones warped. Quick calculations went through my brain. Ms. Sauter was the mother of a teenage daughter and a lawyer of some sort. I’d upset her with the missing ring talk. Above all that she was a literal bitch and high in the pack hierarchy.

I sat the fuck down, noisy chains be damned, and refused to make eye contact. Maybe it was the insecure childhood I’d been reliving. Maybe memories of being thumped in the head by the first female Alpha I’d run into plagued me. It could be blamed on my general weakness for doing what women told me to do.

“Now. Here’s my offer. I, and the firm I associate with, will take your case and mitigate the charges to the best of our ability. Mitigate, at best.”

I risked a glance. Ms. Sauter looked annoyed and rubbed her hands together with uneven jerks. I could feel the finer grooves of her fingers, where skin rippled in swirls, brushing along the much larger bumps of thread. My brain threatened to fall into the patterns and study how her clothes were made.

“In exchange, the debt over my husband’s recovery will be wiped clean. You will provide a sworn statement as a witness to Stacy’s involvement during the conversion of Kahina Rhodes. And. by God above, Mr. Fields, you will return my ring.”

My body had been turned away, almost sulking, but now I looked directly at my proposed lawyer.

“What if I don’t want to leave Atlas?” I asked.

“Regardless of my efforts you’re probably boned on some of it. I would need time to catch up with your case, read over the charges, and see what sort of legal precedence could be applied.” She paused, confused.

I turned to face her directly instead of to the side like a lost boy. The memories of my past which unraveled every night shouldn’t keep screwing up how I acted.

It had taken years to get used to people and dealing with people of this world. Adult Jay Fields feared no one and faced them head on. I had to stop letting my mixed up brain take control.

“Isn’t freedom better than this? At least out there you’re able to decide for yourself. In here, everything is on someone else’s timetable. Eating, sleeping, work.” She managed to look even more uncomfortable. Both hands jerked off the table and back to her sides for a quick shudder. “I don’t know how anyone stands it.”

I let her self-compose while thoughts ran through my head. Would it be better to be outside and free? The Order of Merlin might still try to hunt me down, but good luck tracking a giant serpent in the frozen northern tundra. Maybe I could find a cave and set up a television dish with some power generator. For dinner I’d eat a seal straight from the iceberg, freshly burned to a crisp.

“And the other thing?” I asked. Before everything else, this mattered.

“What other thing?”

“I’m not a pack member.”

“As far as our firm is concerned, nothing about it would be unusual. We extend services to those affiliated with pack as well, simply because we’re considered the experts in these matters.”

“You know what I meant.” I locked eyes with her for a moment and struggled not to blink.

She had more control than any other pack member I’d seen. She didn’t even bat an eyelash. “That might actually help us. I’ll have to check, but there’s wiggle room,” she said.

What did it hurt? Sitting in here, going half mad with memories flooding in and out already taxed my mind enough. Waking up in cold sweats and feeling like a lost child could only be improved by a legal ground to exist on.

“I can pay,” I said.

The words hurt. Parting with money was against my personal code. Still, even I knew lawyers weren’t cheap. If Ms. Sauter truly wanted to take this case on there’d be so much paperwork involved she might drown. I had been a bad boy over the course of my life.

“Good.” She kept steady.

“Do you know where Bottom Pit is?”

“I know of it.”

Of course she did. She was a pack member, even if she didn’t seem like the elitist or seedy type. Pack always knew where the fights were.

“Go there. Talk to the bouncers, tell them James sent you,” I said.

“James? A pseudonym? Legal or street name?” Miss Sauter had gone into business mode. Her hand was a bit steadier now, jotting things onto the tablet she’d recovered from her briefcase.

“Not legal. A go by. Roy Forge, their head of security, is a childhood friend. They were, sort of my foster family. Someone there will remember—” Briefly, images flashed through my mind. Memories of talking to people about handling my cash and where to store it rushed by. “Will—” Gods, speaking through the onslaught grew difficult. My body tightened and breath hitched. One arm wound up the loose chain as I struggled to keep in one piece, as if physical tightness could help my mind stay together.

The world tilted sideways and went further back in time. Suddenly I was a child again. Roy took labored breathes right next to me as we went through an endless amount of sit-ups. Tal screamed in our faces. “Again!” he said.

“What do we do when we fail?” the old man yelled.

“WE TRAIN!” Roy yelled back. I couldn’t even eke out that much but my stomach burned from endless sit ups.

“What do we do when we succeed?”

“WE TRAIN!” he answered again. Roy Forge had been made of iron from a young age.

The past sped out as quickly as it came leaving me bemused and rubbing away the pain of memory at my core. Ms. Sauter’s face, back in the here and now, looked very concerned about something.

“Mr. Fields?” Ms. Sauter said. I couldn’t even remember her first name. Part of me felt terrified of trying to recall it in case more of the past punched me in the gut.

“Jay, please.” Only Daniel insisted on using my last name like that, and he was being clever with it. “Bottom Pit. Roy Forge. James sent you.”

“And then?”

“Ask him.”

Another thought occurred to me.

“They’re…” How do I tell someone that she might be walking into a den of nonstandard races? Wolves would know by smell, but Muni had the entire place layered. “He’s someone I’ve known since childhood. He took care of some of my things, money, while I’ve been in trouble.”

“Is this more legal trouble?”

I didn’t have an honest answer. My brain was still working through the past and present memories. Robbing a bank seemed unlikely but maybe there was a similar poor choice buried in the missing parts.

“No. Roy is a different sort of trouble.”

“All right.” Ms. Sauter brought her hands together and pinched the inside of her palm. After a deep breath she started again. “It will take me a week or two to get things together. Until then, please try to remember every detail you can. About the charges that might be against you, about your work under Kahina Rhodes. Anything.”

“All right.” I’d tell her anything she wanted to know, except the things that shouldn’t be shared.

Our meeting was over. Ms. Sauter flagged the guard and escaped, looking both excited and stressed at the same time. Moments later they escorted me back to my torn up solitary cell and closed the door.

I stood there and wondered too many things.

Warden Bennett paced by the door and paused for a moment to breathe in. His footsteps felt pensive, his weight froze in awkward jerks while the world kept on moving. His vampire bursts of speed fluttered about the hall. In the end he never stepped into my cell.

My getting a visitor likely set off his alarm bells. Had I created more trouble for Ms. Sauter? Roy would be trouble for her, but she seemed like a tough lady.

I glanced toward the door and felt guards stroll by. My senses were harder and harder to control. Each day brought more of the world under my grasp. People’s very presence in my surroundings grated on me.

It made sense why I drank so much.

Moments of the past flashed by again. Daniel’s teenage face, still freckled, still redheaded. At that age he’d less of a tan, but after fifteen it would really take off.

“You have to try this, man, it does awesome things. Here, man, drink, drink.” He seemed so giddy and happy. I was theoretically fourteen myself. Legally, we were far too young for liquor.

“It’ll help, man. I think. My dad says there are three kinds of drunks. Angry, excited, and sleepy.” Daniel turned out to be the excited type.

I’d been the sleepy kind. My mind drifted slowly as Daniel chattered his brains out about anything and everything of note in his life. Most of what he said went over my head. Stories about his life, about what his father had seen, creatures, legends, things that didn’t ever make complete sense.

That moment faded away as I worked to keep myself in the here and now. More days passed. Solitary lasted longer than the original proposed week. I didn’t care one way or the other.

No one explained the reasoning for my delayed egress into the world. In my idle moments I’d theorized Warden Bennett was keeping me under watch. The ground continued to shake, smaller tremors that felt duller with each day.

The world drifted in and out. Memories of Ms. Sauter plastered against teachers who tried to rein me in. Guards overlapped police officers who had dragged me home to a disapproving Tal Forge.

Time moved funny in isolation. Spans where it felt like days were only hours. Minutes sped by in single blinks. Walls warped in and out as vision swam from mental exhaustion.

Some nights I groaned. Others I held rigid and desperately tried not to tear up the room any more. A lifetime of control was coming apart at the seams. Before, it’d been easier, because I hadn’t had anything to control. Something about knowing what man I’d been in the past made the here and now feel wild.

Miss Sauter didn’t return with any news. Nothing came in from Warden Bennett. No visitations by Roy or any other family member.

Eventually they returned me to general population and the world felt wrong. Not just me and my worn out mind. The shared cell was certainly the same one. I felt the little pockets of items I’d hidden around the room. Some had moved, others were tampered with, but none actually missing. The intrusion rubbed me wrong, but it had been expected.

I stumbled to the schedule on the wall and noticed my name had been crossed off for the rest of today. There were other markings for tomorrow and the days following. Basic jobs but no allotment of yard time. It might be a punishment for being so good at kicking another man in the ribs.

Leo’s schedule had him in the same place. His had some other item marked Rec., likely due to successful performance. Apparently he’d been a good boy during my absence.

Nathan’s activities were unchanged from the rotation he’d been on before my stretch in solitary. I frowned. Was the man really going to survive here?

The cell gates were open, allowing us to roam around the floors while guards stood above. Normally, when we weren’t performing assigned duties, we’d been set loose until lockdown later at night. None of it mattered a ton since I stayed near my bunk to protect my meager collection. Or to stay sane.

The furthest I voluntarily dared was at the edge of my shared cell, where I quietly studied other people. They were always in clumps of three or four. Some scuttled between here and there passing messages. Females existed but seemed to group up on their own. Occasionally, women, and men, vanished behind curtains with other people. No doubt they plied an age old trade for goods or services.

My shoulder rolled to one side as moments and twitches were observed. Tearing up the wall and being on my own had left me sore. My body ached from stretching at all hours of the day.

I studied the crowd while absently scratching my side. Most people here were human, maybe about forty percent werewolves. Less than five percent were elves. One used an illusion to make his ears appear rounded. Two huddled in the top corner, skittish about coming out of their cell.

And the smaller group belonged to three partial vampires. I hadn’t seen them in the yard, but vampires didn’t function well during the day. All three were together, slapping each other and gesturing to members of the crowd while making comments.

No natural light shone in from any windows. I only knew it was nighttime from the aware vamps and cold brick on the edge of my tactile senses.

Everyone here was a violator of Sector crimes. Accidental and deliberate, but not all crimes were murder or anything close. Robbery from an elven clan would rate as a cross race offense. There was a television show based on entrapping would be trespassers with illusions. They’d leak rumors online and then send those stupid enough to try to jail after exposing them on national TV.

Leo had been right. Most people here seemed to resist the lingering hostility. When a human bumped into a wolf there were angry glares but no spoken words. Different groups would curse and flip each other off but never actually approached for a confrontation.

Guards watched from above with indifferent gazes. From their perch nearly anyone could be brought down in moments. Their guns felt heavy and fully loaded, fingers clutched stocks but never reached around to the trigger.

Between their looming presence and the barely displayed hostility below things felt almost normal. But at the same time this entire system was designed to punish those who didn’t fit within the rules.

I still only had one official strike. No privileges were given and none were taken away. I turned back into the cell and counted my belongings once more, to be sure they were all in the right place.