“I met a woman years ago who had been the victim of significant memory manipulation, in addition to other forms of abuse. She was clinically insane, and had been placed under strict watch. The case she was involved in was, thankfully, not one of mine. Before the case could be resolved, she attempted suicide, and her life could not be saved.”

~ Bek Trent, M.A.S.O

When Silver finally made her way back downstairs, Bek’s eyes turned towards her briefly. He sat with his mother in front of the suitcase, discussing its contents, most likely. There was a part of Silver that wanted to tell him about the mirrors. The white room. The strange space between breaths where she sometimes found herself, looking back at the ghost of who she might have once been. But she could not bring herself to. Not until she was certain that the thing she was most afraid of was a thing that she could conquer, and a thing that she could live with, just as she could not live without it anymore.

Magic.

These thoughts occupied her mind as she settled into a comfortable ball in one corner of the perfect couch, her knees tucked against her chest and her toes digging into the fabric at her back. The wolf curled up with her, eyeing everything around them warily. All conversation seemed to have ended when she entered the room. Silver watched as Elise busily arranged several long logs in the fireplace, dress whisking softly about her ankles. Bek was watching her as well, his bronze eyes narrowed, hands folded in his lap as he leaned forward.

Several minutes passed in cozy contentment as the fire roared to life. Silver was warm, tired, joyfully oblivious to the world around her. Her fingers danced sluggish circles in the wolf’s thick coat. It all reminded her, for a moment, of home, and for once the memories she had were simply comfortable; Lena asleep on one end of the sofa, hair a deep chocolate swirl against the upholstery; the curly-haired back of Ren’s head, blocking a computer screen in front of them both; Silver had a notebook in front of her, drawing something strange and fanciful. The space between her heartbeats swelled with contentment.

And then some other image intervened. Flames like the ones Elise had just called into being, dancing merrily in front of her. There was stone all around them, a fireplace as tall as she was. Voices murmured in the background of her thoughts, voices that suddenly sharpened when she reached for the fire. Cold hands pulled her away, but that did not stop her from seeing that the fire reached for her as well.

A soft clunk roused her from her thoughts – Elise, setting a steaming mug of something in front of her on the coffee table. Silver looked up into the woman’s bright eyes.

“Hot chocolate,” Elise said softly, as she claimed a seat in a chair where she could see the both of them, “I hope it’s not too sweet for you.” Silver considered her chances of spilling the drink all over the white carpets and perfect sofas, and determined to let it cool a bit longer.

Elise did not look either surprised or put out by her lack of movement, but simply glanced at her and then at Bek before saying, “I’m sure Bek can explain what I told him about the evacuation currently in progress here.” Silver felt her eyes widen. “I gather there were other questions that brought you back here. So…what did you need to ask me, Bek?”

“I have some questions about the time,” Bek said slowly, “right before Dad died. I need to know who he was working with.”

Silver stared between the two of them. She had not known Bek’s father was dead. He had never told her, though it was hardly something that would come up in everyday conversation.

“You read the files?” His mother took a tentative sip of her hot chocolate, eyes not leaving the mug. “I don’t know all that much more than what’s in them, you know. I was married to the man, but the MASO…”

“I’ve read them,” Bek agreed heavily. Silver had the sense he had read them more than once, and the way his brows furrowed as he stared at the table in front of them made her think she was right. “They’re lacking in details. Most of what was in them has been redacted.”

For a long moment, no one said anything. Then, Elise suddenly set her mug down on the coffee table. She was clearly deep in thought, or lost in recollection.

“There were things he shouldn’t have been involved in, but your father had a strange sense of duty. When I first met him, I thought it was to the MASO. Later, I realized it was to something else, something related to his research. That was the only thing he ever held equal to his family. He hid his work dutifully, and he shared it with very few people.”

“Who?” Bek prompted, clearly prepared for this conversation.

“A man named Howard Jennings. He’s a man Jorik has been trying to get his hands on for well-nigh fifty years, the sole carrier of the complete records of Sendelphon’s research. You may be unaware that the MASO of our present day stole a portion of those records long ago. They form the basis of much of the agency’s research on magic…certainly, they were the foundation for parts of mine.”

“Can you explain what exactly you and Bek’s dad did research in?” Silver interjected, her eyes moving to Bek expectantly, “And what does Jorik want with Sendelphon’s work?”

Bek did not look surprised. Sendelphon had been the king of Atlantis when they fell back in time, the man who had supposedly caused the destruction of both Sister Isles through his study of the Stones of Alti. “My father studied the Castle of Divides,” Bek said, not looking at her, “and anything else he believed was related to Alti.”

“And I,” Elise said with a glance at Bek, “studied the effects of memory manipulation. I was going to school for psychology when I was pulled into the project. I’m sure it doesn’t surprise you that Bek mentioned your condition to me, Silver. I hope you’ll allow me to help you.”

“If…” Silver hesitated, “if you can that would be great.”

Elise smiled radiantly. “I’m glad to hear you say so. Now, the reason Jorik was looking for Jennings was to get his hands on research pertaining to magic itself. The origin of magic, how to create it, why it is fading with every passing decade. How to make magic into a power that can be quantified and controlled with science. Magic and science are not any less at odds than, say, science and the church seem to be. Though it is easy enough to believe in both, in practice, they are difficult to reconcile.”

Elise paused, sipping again from her hot chocolate as if to order her thoughts.

“Say, for example, if magic were an endlessly renewable resource that could take the place of electricity as it did once, long, long ago…or if a look and a word could cure life-threatening diseases in clinics around the world? To people who have never used it, magic appears to be a sort of panacea. Yet, the human mind can only grasp so much at once. That’s why magic never became the greatest power in the world. It is an unpredictable ability in terms of inheritance, it relies too heavily on the will and desire of the individual…every flaw that makes us human makes magic weak. Thus, people specialize. They spend their lives learning an art, and oftentimes, they take it with them when they die.”

“Somewhere along the line, an enterprising person realized that a look could cure only where a mind could comprehend the proper way to put magic to work…it’s the ultimate paradox, in a way,” Bek said, fixing Silver with his bronze eyes, “Without advances in technology, we can’t use magic to its fullest potential. At the same time, with magic, we can use technology as a springboard to do things that would take hundreds of years without it. Having said that, science defines rules, and magic breaks them. Without proper forms of classification and containment, magic users could do irreparable damage in a society where non-magical beings are the majority. And they are the majority now. By far. The inherent secrecy required to keep those who know of magic and those who don’t divided – to prevent the chaos, superstition, and loss of life of the medieval ages – means magic is rarely used to its full potential, and rarely integrated with technology. This is part of the reason the MASO exists, and part of what you would have learned if I had more time to teach you before we left the agency.”

“Our relationship with magic is complicated,” Elise agreed, nodding. Her brown eyes glittered, almost black, in the firelight, “Jorik once said that dragons might be the key to everything. No…even when I first met him, he had a tremendous amount of pride – he said that dragons were the key. He believed that if dragons could be cloned and returned from extinction, he would be able to complete the research Sendelphon began. We could use it to return to a world where magic was everywhere. I could have continued to believe his goals were impossible if genomics hadn’t moved along as it has in the past thirty years. Now he has his dragons, moved, I’m sure, to some secure facility where he can continue his research even after the evacuation.”

“Wait, are you saying he succeeded? He cloned the dragons?” Silver interrupted incredulously. Elise nodded faintly, as if this were to be expected.

“Oh yes, Silver. He succeeded. If the MASO were not keeping it quiet, it would be very big news.”

“Let’s not get distracted,” Bek said, glancing between the two of them. “We knew the agency was likely to succeed the minute we gave them the dragon eggs. What I need to know is whether my father ever told Jorik he was working with Jennings?”

Silver fell silent, supposing he was right. It was still hard for her to imagine dragons being born on the MASO’s pristine lab benches, opening their jewel-bright eyes to a world of plexiglass and humming machines. It made her feel sick.

“Your father originally believed that magic and science were irreconcilable; Jorik might be able to clone dragons into existence, but they would be shadows of what the ancient beasts were, devoid of magic. He believed the world had already moved on, perhaps for the better. Mankind has come so far as they are, why return to using a power that has so much potential for destruction, and why revive a species with the power to reduce our cities to ash? There was a lot of bad blood between him and your grandfather. And if I’m to be absolutely honest with you, your father didn’t know he himself was working with Jennings at first. He suspected it, but he did not know. The man was secretive, and incredibly intelligent. I met him only once. Him and your father had a lot in common. They both believed magic should be allowed to fade away. And it was Jennings who approached your father, intrigued by his work on the castle, not the other way around. He made numerous contributions to your father’s study of the circuit surrounding the castle.”

“Was there anyone else that knew?” Bek asked after a moment. Elise nodded.

“Only one other person. I would say…Howard and Teri worked together for around half a year. Then, one day, Jennings disappeared. It was around that time your father realized who he really was, without a shadow of a doubt. By then, he was obsessed with the ruins of the Castle of Divides, claiming that there was some sort of gateway to Alti. I thought he would eventually let it go, at first, but then he started working closely with a researcher from the UK division, Jack Weiss.”

“With Jack?”

Elise looked at Bek, picked up her hot chocolate, and took another slow sip. She appeared to be thinking something over with great care.

“The world’s only expert on instant transit; that is to say, the only expert on time manipulation and teleportation. He chose to remain in the American Northwest division after your father’s death, convinced that he’d stumbled onto something. Do you still speak with him?”

Bek’s eyes narrowed. “How could I not?”

“He tried to keep you away from Jorik. I think he felt responsible for your father’s death.”

“So, does that mean this Jack person is still around here?” Silver asked readily.

“For now. Until the MASO evacuates,” Bek said, running a hand through his hair in apparent frustration. “He never told me any of this.”

“He wanted to distance you from it, I’m sure,” Elise said gently. “He and your father were nearly inseparable friends. Jack met you before you could even walk. But he never told me anything about what he and your father learned over the years, and I don’t really know more than what I’ve told you already. Your father stopped talking about it when he saw how upset it made me.”

An uncomfortable silence settled over the room. In front of them all, the fire flickered, light catching in the steam from their hot chocolate. Silver finally took a sip, amazed at how much sweeter it was after months of fish and exotic vegetables.

“Why did you need to know this now, Bek?” his mom finally asked. Bek was slow to answer, but eventually, he did.

“I needed to know how much he knew,” Bek said then, “about Alti. And I needed to know who I can ask about his research. Now I do. I also have other suspicions…either way, tomorrow we’ll go with you as far as the city. I need to find Jack.”

“I’m sorry I don’t know more, but I can take you to the MASO,” Elise protested, “how else are you going to—”

“We have a way to get there,” Bek said. “I want you to follow the evacuation routes. If we can, we’ll join you soon.”

Elise looked between the two of them, opening her mouth as if to say something, and then closing it again. Silver could tell the woman did not want them to leave, or that she wanted to come with them. Silver’s mother would have done the same, and Silver would have been powerless against her mother’s pleading. But Bek’s family situation was different, she realized instantly. This woman was his mother, but he must have been working for the MASO for years. Elise would have been used to him leaving, perhaps even for months at a time, without coming home. The thought made Silver’s chest clench painfully.

“It’s getting dark now. Silver said she wants to visit the site where her home sat,” Bek continued, oblivious to the stab of pain his words sent through her, “it should only take us a few minutes. Then, the two of you can discuss memory manipulation.”

For an instant, Elise looked surprised. She fixed her eyes on Silver, and Silver did not expect the concern she saw in their depths. “Are you sure this is what you want? It might be better to wait until I’ve had a chance to assess your condition.”

Silver nodded, unable to speak. Elise turned her sharp gaze on Bek instead.

“Go slowly. I’ll be expecting the two of you back within the hour. Silver…” the woman seemed to think better of whatever she had been about to say, “I’ll have dinner here when you get back. It’s getting late. I’ll try to whip something up for your dog as well.”

Silver disentangled her legs from the couch and joined Bek on his way to the door. The silence through which she walked was nearly tangible. Bek ignored it, so she did her best to do the same, following after him when he opened the door. His mother’s eyes hung on Silver’s back all the while.

As soon as they were down the porch steps, she slowed. “Bek,” she said, waiting for him to turn and face her. Above them, the sky had taken on an impenetrable gray cast, alight with a dull glow. The air was filled with the wet scent of impending snow and the uncharacteristic warmth that always settled shortly before it fell, as if the chill of the day were being absorbed into the heavy clouds. A car sped past, the wet tread of its tires momentarily breaking the stifling hush of the world.

“What is it?” he asked.

“I want to go alone,” Silver said.

Bek regarded her in silence. She could sense the dragons now, lurking just out of reach in the thick trees beyond the houses. They were near enough to reach out with their minds, certainly.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Bek stated flatly, “but I’ll try to give you some space.” She could see in his eyes that he knew what she would find where her house had been. Most likely, he had been there. Maybe with the MASO. Maybe the very night her house had burned down.

Silver averted her gaze, and after that, they walked together, in silence. For some reason, she kept her eyes downcast as they crested the hill, waiting until they slowed, stopped by a series of rods strung up with yellow tape, to look up. Whatever she had imagined, it was not what she found. In her mind, there had been black rods that thrust up from the foundation of her house, splintered like blackened bones, ashen wood cracked beneath the weather. There had been half-melted glass through which the sunlight shone to cast an eerie, bloody glow over the site. There had been a broken husk of the home she had left, and it had hurt her even though she had lived in it for only a few short weeks.

Instead, there was nothing.

The space between her neighbors’ houses was conspicuously empty. Stark. Cold. Ash that had burned to the ground until it would never be removed, and pooled glass that had become weathered and cracked, draped with snow until it looked like half-melted ice, asphalt that had been melted away from the garage like hot rubber, part of a steel doorframe. Yellow tape hung all over it, crisscrossed like golden spider thread.

It had all been erased, just like her memories.

Her heart fluttered. Really, what were the chances that someone had survived such a fire? That she had survived in itself was a miracle, though she had now lived through worse. Silver’s heart beat noisily against her ribs when she lifted her hand to her chest, touching the spot where it had been pierced during the war. That wound had killed her. Until that moment, for some reason, she had never accepted that as fact. How was she alive?

“It will be a while before anyone can rebuild here,” Bek observed softly. “The fire that destroyed the house was something like dragonfire. There’s a tremendous amount of magical radiation in this area…well, tremendous by the standards of this age. It’s enough to make a normal person very ill. Luckily, we were able to contain most of it.”

Silver reached in front of her, lifting the tape and ducking under. For once, Bek did not try to stop her. Apparently, he was not worried that any sort of magical radiation would hurt her. And why should he be, she wondered as she drifted slowly up the cracked remains of the driveway? Even now, she had both the Dawn Stone and Izathral with her. Surely, they were more potent sources of magical radiation than anything in their modern era. Even dragonfire.

Silver did not hesitate when the ground changed beneath her to crumbled charcoal, metal, and glass. She stopped only when she had reached the spot where the stairs had stood, and in her mind, she found herself looking up through the narrow hallway lined with picture frames, to the place where the bedrooms had been. What she saw was empty sky – gray, cloud-smothered sky that seemed to waver and flux.

Her eyes narrowed as she balled her hands into fists.

Even if they had lived, where would they have gone? They would not have simply disappeared, leaving her to awaken alone in a hospital bed. They would have looked for her. They would have claimed her. The fact that they had not…was that not proof enough that she was alone in the world now? And even if she was somehow wrong, how could she face them after everything she had been through, knowing what they had hidden from her?

As Silver stared at the empty sky, her breathing quickened. Tears blurred her vision.

I have no choice but to be stronger than them.

If they had been killed, that was all the more reason she had to survive. She was now the only one who carried the memories locked in her mind.

I will steal them back from death itself.

The thought felt like a promise, an oath to herself. It felt like the only path she had to forgiveness – both for failing to save them, and for moving on with her life.

“Someday we’ll meet again,” she promised through her tears, “on that day, you’ll be proud…” she trailed off, aware that her words were half incomprehensible, but certain that just standing on the ground she had shared with her family was enough to make them understand. If magic existed in the world, then so, too, could miracles.

Finally, she allowed herself to sink to her knees. Once, she had believed she knew the greatest pain that any human could; she had survived the Ruveris Plague, and she had died and come back after someone gave their life to save her. But what she felt now was a thousand times worse. Each breath she drew was a knife to her beating heart. And yet this was an invisible pain. No matter how her heart bled, no one would ever know.

Tears burned tracks down her face as she knelt, wracked by sobs, the real world suddenly too heavy for her to bear. She was glad Bek had remained behind her, glad she could lose herself in this private moment of grief.

And then, suddenly, she was somewhere else. There were ruins around her, as there always were. The sky bled red from a scarlet moon overhead, and she could see the black water that flowed beneath it. The water bubbled past where she lay, among the broken rubble that was all that remained of everything she had ever known and loved. There was no one else living there with her, not even the wolf. She was the only thing that had failed to die. Yet, there was someone – someone was there with her…

“Silver, stop it. Now,” Bek demanded. The real world came rushing back to her. Bek was leaning into her from behind, and she was clutching at the ice-cold hands he had placed over her eyes. “You can’t bring it back,” he growled.

“I can,” she heard herself whisper, and even she was afraid of that whisper. It was so desperate.

“Don’t.”

She shrank away from his words. Then the wolf’s furry head pressed into her chest, and she allowed herself to relax. Her hands fell to the wolf’s neck, and she hugged the beast close to herself. Bek let her go. As light flooded her opened eyes, she drew a sharp breath of surprise.

The world around her had changed. There were walls again; walls that looked so familiar they tore at her heart. The staircase was half re-built, extending into the open sky, carpet and picture frames untouched. When had she done this? How?

“You actually did this much…” he echoed her sentiments.

She turned slowly to find herself staring directly into Bek’s bronze eyes. He was looking away from her, towards the staircase. Once more, he wore that preoccupied expression that said there was something about her that did not add up. Some piece of the puzzle he was missing. A glimmer of uncertainty…

“Someone’s bound to notice this. A stairwell appearing out of thin air? Really, Silver? I’ve never met someone who thought so little about the consequences of their actions. Anyone could’ve been watching. Anyone still could be. This isn’t like Alti.”

“I didn’t mean to,” she interrupted his tirade.

“Didn’t mean to? Magic doesn’t work itself,” he disagreed angrily.

“Mine does.”

“It can’t, Silver. Not in this world.” He averted his eyes again, and she could see the intensity draining from them as his hand moved habitually to his throat. Sighing, he said, “I’ll deal with this.” The wolf twitched its ears against her arms in such a way that Silver knew it agreed.

“I can burn the building down again if necessary,” Seijelar offered a little too readily. Silver glimpsed a glimmer of dragon scales in the trees not so far from them.

“Just—” Bek began, but Silver shook her head and stood, pushing past the wolf to place her palm flat against one of the half-formed walls. With only the most minute hesitation, she called the magic to her fingers. The wall receded to black dust that swirled and then fell to the earth beneath her touch. She sensed that the same occurred all around her, and when she turned back to the empty space behind her, it was just that – empty. Only Bek and the wolf remained.

“Let’s go,” she suggested after an awkward moment. “I saw what I came to see.”

He did not respond.

“What is it, now?” Silver finally asked.

“Never do that again,” Bek warned softly.

“What?”

“There are laws in this world we can’t ignore, Silver,” he said. She realized he had grown pale.

“This is about laws?” she asked a bit irritably, wiping the tears from her face to keep them from freezing there. The sun was sinking quickly now, as another short winter day came to a close.

“Not just any laws.” He stood and dug the toe of his boot into the ash. “Magic screws with perception, physics, all sorts of things, but there are some things that we can’t touch. I’m talking about the difference between levitating a single stone and eliminating the concept of gravity. There are things humans just can’t do.”

“What are you talking about?” Silver asked wearily.

“In this city, about five years ago, there was something called the Erin Gray incident. You hadn’t moved here yet, but it made national news. You recognize it?” he asked harshly.

She blinked. “I mean, I heard about it,” she said. Large scale school shootings were a big deal, big enough that students three states away tended to know about them. He snorted.

“If you had known about magic back then, you would have done more than hear about it. Erin Gray was a magic user, Silver, and she turned her power to rejecting the world. The incident wasn’t actually a school shooting. Her boyfriend was driving home after the big homecoming game. The roads were a bit icy, he’d had too much to drink, and in the end, he swerved and hit another car.”

“That’s awful,” she said.

“A week later, he came to school with Erin,” Bek continued, undeterred.

She eyed him mutely. “But didn’t he…?”

“Of course,” Bek replied as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “He died that night. Tragedies tend to travel in the news, so everyone knew. Everyone, it seemed, except Erin. She tried to turn back time to bring him back. Every clock in the school ceased to function that day, from watches to cell phones. The school placed a call to a local technician when they lost central heating, right before the phone lines died. The MASO intervened when a teacher met their dead student, and made a comment that shook Erin,” he paused, “the teacher died instantly. Before the MASO arrived, nine students lost their lives, and Erin Gray herself passed away from acute magical exhaustion. She had been trained in using her magic since she was four years old, but she was only a rank two. No one ever expected her to do something like that. No one thought she would do something so stupid as to try.”

He was staring levelly at her, and Silver felt again the brush of fear that raised the hair along her neck and arms.

“You and your mom just said sort of the opposite. If we can’t comprehend how to do something, magic can’t do it. The human mind is limited in its grasp,” she replied.

“Were you even listening to me, Silver?” Bek asked grimly, “She died. I would say that proved the limit of what her mind could do. As for what my mother and I told you barely half an hour ago, you can’t expect that we summed up the entirety of magic in a single conversation. There are easy and hard ways to do everything. You used to take the bus to school, right?” she was nodding, but he clearly did not care, “but that was only because it would’ve taken too much time and energy to walk there every morning. Magic is the same way. If you don’t know how to build a bus, you’re screwed. You have to walk. If you don’t have the time or energy, you just skip school that day. Most magic users don’t have enough power to work their way around the possibilities that technology presents. It takes this much,” he held up his fingers barely a pencil-width apart, “to speed the healing process in a broken bone, and this much,” he held his arms apart, and she saw his hands shaking with the weight of his words, “to make it such that the bone was never broken.”

“You don’t have to worry about me, then. Reality – right here, right now. I got it,” Silver said a bit more loudly than necessary. Bek’s bronze eyes flicked to the black dust that had gathered around her boots.

“Good to hear you have such a static definition.”

“Besides, I didn’t bring back any dead people, just part of a building,” she reminded him, waving a hand offhandedly at the ashes around them.

“Neither did Erin, in the end. She only skewed one person’s time a bit too much,” he said carefully.

“I won’t ever do something that stupid,” Silver finally assured him.

“You don’t think you will,” he said.

“I really won’t. I know better.”

“If only I could believe that coming from you.” Bek’s expression was so serious that it stopped her up short.

After that, they did not speak anymore. Bek muttered under his breath through their short walk home, trying to help Skourett convince Seijelar that they could not possibly fit in his backyard. Silver ignored them all. She was thinking of Illian, long ago, telling her that neither pyromancy nor healing were actually her lean. She had wondered, then, what it meant if he was right.

Now, she was not so sure she wanted to know.