I could finally breathe as we stepped out of the courtroom. The emotional rollercoaster I’d been riding for the past few hours seemed to have finally stopped. I felt safe out in the hallway because I was no longer under judgment. I could handle whatever punishment Master Ramin had in mind, because I hadn’t lost what mattered to me most.

“That was way too close,” I said as Katherine untied my wrists and I shook out my arms. She gripped my shoulder firmly and her eyes bore into mine.

“This can’t happen again.”

I lowered my head and nodded. Even though her thumb was bruising my shoulder, her touch made my blood rush like a river. She squeezed tighter, trying to get me to meet her gaze. I could only look for a brief second.

If her eyes could speak they would’ve said, don’t do this to me again. She wasn’t just telling me to get my act together so I stopped hurting people. She was also saying that she never wanted us to come so close to being separated again.

My mind short circuited. I felt like my center of gravity shifted. Katherine had always made it clear to me that nothing came before her responsibilities. She’d sacrifice whatever sort of personal relationships and attachments she wanted so that she could keep her focus. I was constantly aware that our friendship had boundaries, that I could never truly be significant to her.

Yet for a split second, she looked at me like I was the only thing she cared about, not her duty, not the whole of humanity—just me. It made me wonder…was there a part of her that she kept so hidden from me I hadn’t known it existed, a part of her that possibly felt some smidgen more than just friendship towards me?

“It-it won’t,” I said.

Suddenly, any trace of emotion in her eyes vanished. It was back to business as usual. She turned around to see Master Ramin coming out of the courtroom and I felt stupid for hoping that she might feel more for me than she led on. It was almost downright laughable.

“You know the downside of working with immortals?” Ramin said as he approached us. I noticed he was holding my sword. “They can hold a grudge for a really long time.” He glanced over his shoulder. Helios was stomping down the hallway and couldn’t to seem to get out of the building fast enough.

“Not that I’m complaining or anything, but didn’t he have a point?” I said. “How is it fair that he was taken off his team and I wasn’t?”

“I’m glad you asked that, because I know it might appear to be similar cases on the surface but there is a lot more going on. Katherine, you wouldn’t mind if I had a word?” Ramin said. I looked at Katherine and tried to signal that I didn’t want to speak to Ramin alone.

“No, of course not,” she said.

Ramin gave me a gentle push in the other direction towards lonelier corridors. We walked in silence, turning different corners until we reached a hallway that was empty and dark. Ramin kept rotating my sword over in his hands like he might have been accessing the damage. Finally, he stopped and faced me.

“Kaine, do you trust the ruling council?” Ramin asked.

“Uh…” I felt pressure building between my ears. My mind rushed for an answer. I knew the right thing to say was “yes” but I couldn’t bring myself to lie. I knew I couldn’t say no either, I was under oath to serve the council. “…I…don’t know.”

I didn’t want to upset the man who’d just rescued me in the courtroom and who could easily accept what the judges had declared if I offended him. I waited for some kind of lecture or sharp words, but instead Ramin sighed and frowned with regret. He started walking again.

“I’m sure this is a direct result of our secrecy and of course whatever that Betrayal told you, correct?” Ramin asked.

I watched my feet and hooked my thumbs into my belt. I wished that I could’ve just wiped away the blonde Betrayal’s words and the message my dad had left for me. His words found me in the dead of night sometimes and I could hear them clear as day no matter how hard I tried to forget. Earth is on the verge of catastrophe and the ninja are doing nothing about it. They’re content to pull back to their base and watch the Earth burn. Your grandfather had no qualms with raining down fire from the heavens and destroying entire cultures that the ninja deemed undeserving of life. They will ask you to do the same, son. If you don’t leave them now, in time, you will see the truth and hopefully by then it won’t be too late.

I didn’t know what to make of any of it. All I knew was there were strings being pulled behind the scenes that no one wanted to tell me about. The whole thing irritated me if I thought about it too much because I just wanted to know the truth.

“Yeah,” I said.

“It’s important that we trust one another. Especially now.” Ramin stared at the writing on the wall beside him. “The truth is we have been keeping an eye on you for a long time, Kaine. From the day you were born in fact. I remember it was a Wednesday when we got the news. The masters dropped everything we were doing to hold an emergency session.

“We hadn’t argued like that since…” Ramin swallowed his words. “Since a very long time. Three masters did not want to take the risk. With the abilities you have, if you learned to harness them in the same way your grandfather did but you turned on us like your father—it would be a nightmare scenario. Only Master Enki and I argued that we needed you, but once the votes were cast we were outnumbered and your name was added to the black-list.

“We knew we couldn’t accept that outcome though. So, in secret, we found a commander who was willing to take a chance. After watching you, Katherine was convinced you would do the right thing no matter what. With her testimony and our word, we convinced the rest of the council to reconsider and let you join us.”

I rubbed the back of my neck. “I’m probably making you all look bad with all the stuff I destroy.”

“Well, you’re not making it easy for us,” Ramin chuckled, “but we won’t give up on you…we can’t. You see, there is something the other masters don’t know and it’s the reason why you’re so important to us.” He looked around to be sure no one was close by. “This is something only myself and the grand master know, so whatever you do you must keep what I’m about to tell you a secret. Understood?”

My lips formed a tight line. “Yes, sir.”

“Your grandfather was famous for a lot of things, but his greatest achievement was overthrowing the very first rebellion—the first Betrayals. It was the bloodiest civil war you ever imagine. It took so much out of the ninja to bring them down that there were hardly any of us left. The Earth was plunged into chaos. In the aftermath, Master Pyralis realized that the ninja couldn’t risk coming so dangerously close to an end again.

“So, he created a weapon. I don’t know what it is or what it does. I don’t even know where it is. Pyralis only said that it was to be used in an hour of great need, when all hope was lost. He said only he and his descendants would be able to unleash it by using this,” Ramin held up my sword. “That’s why you carry it. If all else fails, you are our final defense, Kaine.”

He placed the warm sword into my hands. I’d never been more afraid to hold it. All this time I thought it was just a dusty relic.

“Why are you telling me this now?” I asked. “Why not tell me from the start?”

“Because it’s an immense responsibility and because we didn’t think you would need to know so soon.” Ramin held his hands behind his back and stared down the hallway. “If you haven’t noticed, things are taking a turn for the worse and tonight was one of the largest attacks we’ve seen in decades. Someone has rallied the Betrayals and if it is who’ve been dreading, then we’re going to be facing annihilation once more.”

“Are you talking about that Genevieve lady everyone’s whispering about?” Ramin’s eyes became squinty like he’d eaten a lemon. “Why is everyone so afraid of her?”

“We don’t know for sure if she is the one behind all of this. It’s best not to think about it until it’s time to cross that bridge.” He clapped his hand onto my shoulder. “I’m putting you on probation. Do you know what that means?”

I shook my head.

“You’re going to be staying here in Harukan and you’re going to put all of your focus into finding Pyralis’ weapon.”

“But—”

“I’ll be expecting you at the Red Palace in three hours. That should be plenty of time to check on your family and give your mother some excuse as to why you’ll be missing for the coming weeks,” Ramin said.

My shoulders slumped. What was I supposed to tell my mom? Any excuse to explain why I’d be gone out of the blue for who knows how long was going to sound ridiculous. My midsection felt like a twitchy blender.

We made our way back to Katherine. Before I could say anything to her, Ramin started talking. I didn’t have time to wait and I got the feeling I was supposed to move along. I gave Katherine a wave goodbye and wandered down the hall.

“Please, tell me you found something,” Ramin said.

Katherine sighed. “The trail went cold again…”

I walked slower and focused my ears to pick up their conversation. I probably shouldn’t have spied, but I was curious to know what Katherine had been up to.

“Every time I think I have a potential lead, it just stops and there are no more clues. I keep getting the sneaking suspicion that these are just false breadcrumbs and I’m being lead further away from the truth,” she said. “I’ve never seen Betrayals have patterns like this before, sensei. Usually, we are ahead of the events and can anticipate what the enemy is doing or at the very least we’re figuring it out while its happening. But lately, it feels like whenever the enemy arranged all of this is…it was so long ago that nothing is traceable.” There was a small moment of silence. “But I did notice something odd about the video they broadcasted.”

“The mention of a forbidden fountain. You caught that, too?” Ramin said. My forehead scrunched up. Was there some part of the broadcast that I missed? What were they talking about?

“Do you think it was meant literally or metaphorically?”

“I’m leaning towards literal.” I heard Ramin tap his finger on his chin. “The enemy was very confident in their plan. So confident that they told us the details about it. I’m sure they think that it’s far too late for us to stop them. I’m guessing this fountain is real and it will allow them to crush us in battle.”

“A fountain of power…that could refer to so many things.” I heard a noise that sounded like Katherine massaging her forehead as if she was getting a headache. “But anything that could grant that kind of power would either be here in Harukan or lying in a dust heap because the Black Guard destroyed it, wouldn’t it?”

Ramin’s tone shifted like he had bad news he didn’t want to share. “Master Aleki once told me not everything could be sealed up inside the base or destroyed. Some things remain on Earth and it was the fear of these items falling into the wrong hands that kept him up at night. It seems that the Betrayals have found one.”

“What if…what if it’s a trick?” Katherine said. “Another false clue to keep us away from their true plan?”

“From where we stand right now, what other choice do we have but to play their game?” Ramin replied.

My scabbard creaked and I realized I was holding it in a death grip. I didn’t like the sound of that. I jolted as I bonked into the exit doors. Everyone around me looked at me like I was crazy. I pulled the door open and rushed outside, desperate to get out of their judgmental gaze.

I checked on Hannah first in order to buy me some more time before I faced my mom. My sister was out cold on her hospital bed. She was bandaged and bruised, but her heart held a steady beat. The nurses told me she was getting stronger by the hour. Her costume was removed and lay in a jumbled heap on the chair by her bed.

I wrapped my hand around hers and gave a gentle squeeze. I hated to see her like this. I’d gotten lucky that it hadn’t been worse.

Katherine tried to warn me that it was easier to just let my loved ones go. They would be safer without me in their lives. The image of an arrow ripping through Hannah would forever be burned into my mind. It tempted me to truly consider Katherine’s words.

I would only have one mother and one sister in my life. Yes, someday I would have to leave them when they started to notice I was no longer aging. Who knows, that could even be a few short years away, but I couldn’t leave before I had to. I wanted to savor what time I had.

“Feel better, sis,” I whispered and moved to the next room where my mother was. Some part of me hoped that she was asleep and I could’ve left a note.

My mom was partially wrapped and reminded me of a halfway done mummy. I was used to seeing my teammates lying in the infirmary, missing flesh or sometimes limbs. But they were lucky, they had inhuman healing abilities and after a few weeks they’d be back to normal. My mother was never going to heal that well. She’d have to bear terrible scars for the rest of her life.

My mom winced as she turned to see who was coming in. She looked miserable as she saw me. Her eyes were red and puffy.

“Gawd, there you are! Where have you been?!” she said in a raspy voice. She must’ve been really drugged up, or so mad at me that the pain of half of her face missing didn’t faze her.

My brain took a second to cycle through a list of lies. “I was with the police. They wanted to know what happened,” I said.

“Oh, really? Did you tell them a rival mob bombed our house?” she said. I shrugged and dragged my feet as I dared to take a few more steps towards her.

“How many times do I have to tell you, mom? I don’t work for the mob.”

“A gang, a posse, whatever you want to call it. I know it’s not legal. Where else would you get all of that money to help with the bills? A respectable job would not hire a high school dropout. It would not have you running around at the weirdest hours. I’ve seen the blood stains on your clothes, Daniel. I’ve had it up to here with your lying!” Her lower lip was quivering and her eyes were tearing up again. “You tell me right now why our house is gone—everything I worked for—gone!”

My mouth hung open.

I expected my mom to be upset, but not quite at this level. I knew she wasn’t just responding to the loss of our house and a near death experience. It was more than that. Her final straw was broken.

She brushed the tear from her cheek. “You were always such a good boy, Daniel. You never acted up, you were responsible and I could trust you. And now I don’t even recognize you, you know that? It’s like my real son ran off to summer camp and he never came back.” She pointed at me from head to toe. “Because I don’t know who this liar is. I don’t know this guy who never has the time to play board games, or watch movies, or even sit and have a conversation with us.

“I’ve tolerated all of the lying and the sneaking around because I wanted to hold onto you in the only way you’d let me. But now you have put me and your sister in the hospital. So, you need to decide something tonight. You tell me the mess you’ve gotten into and we can find a way to get you out of it, or…Or, you walk out that door and you just stay away.” She pulled a tissue off the table beside her and dabbed at her nose.

My heart pounded like a jackhammer. I didn’t know what else to do. My mom had never been pushed to the point where she offered me ultimatums before. She’d get upset when I lied or gave her a flimsy excuse, but she didn’t argue. Instead she sat down with a pint of ice cream and mumbled about where she went wrong.

I thought maybe if I could calm her down, or distract her she could brush this off like all of the other times.

“I know you’re upset, but you need to take a deep breath. How could the attack on the house be my fault? A lot houses were attacked tonight, but everything’s going to be okay. We’ll find a nice hotel to stay at while the house—,” the words got stuck in my throat. It was only wood and nails, it was outdated and nothing ever worked right, but it had been the only home I’d ever known. Sure, I had the money to replace it, but it wouldn’t be the same. I tried to keep a strong face for my mom’s sake. “You always wanted to live in a fancy hotel, remember? The important thing is you guys are alright.”

“Don’t do that! Don’t try to redirect me or win me over with some flashy thing! And I know our house isn’t the only one that got attacked, but the fact that you disappeared afterwards and are lying about where you’ve been says enough. I don’t know how you’re involved and-and—” She choked on her words as she sobbed. “—I can’t go on like this. I can’t handle not knowing where you really are or what you’re doing, or if you’re even safe.”

I pulled up a chair and sat down. I eyed my shoes. I wasn’t thinking about an excuse or another lie. I was trying to hang onto the long silent seconds slipping through my fingers, afraid to face the next moment. She watched me, expecting a reply—a real answer and not just my stalling this time.

I knew what I had to say and I was scared to say because it wasn’t going to be what my mom wanted. I wished there was another way to get around it, but I either faced it now or down the road this would come up again.

My voice wasn’t strong enough to be louder than a whisper. “I can’t tell you the truth.” My mom screwed her eyes closed as if I’d stabbed her. She turned away from me and hid her face under her hand.

I’d seen her cry plenty of times before, but not like this. She was completely heartbroken. I tried to put a reassuring hand over hers but she pushed me away. She refused to look at me.

“I wish I could tell you, mom.” My throat constricted. My words were having no effect, if anything they made her cry more. “I hate lying to you guys. I hate not having any time to be with you, but this is something I have to do.”

She sniffled and her breath hitched as she tried to get a hold of herself. “I knew this would happen someday. I knew it.” She stared at the window curtains. “I told your father that I didn’t want to have his kids because I didn’t want them to be involved with his other life—this other life he couldn’t tell me about.” She waved her hand at the air like she was brushing off some invisible fly. “But he promised it wasn’t going to be like that, he was going make sure that never happened to you. God, I was so stupid to believe that.”

“Don’t say that.”

She tore little pieces off of the corner of her tissue. “He did the same things. The same sudden disappearances, the same inexplicable amounts of money, and of course he said that it was something he had to do, too. Like the fate of the world rested on his shoulders.” She finally brought her blood shot eyes back to me. “That’s what this is, isn’t it?”

I nodded. I couldn’t think of a better way to tell her and yet not tell her. Her face scrunched up again, squeezing out fresh tears.

She whimpered. “So how long before some big, important thing takes you away and I never see you again? Hmm? When you are you going to disappear like your father?”

There it was, the source of her anger and sadness. She was scared I’d disappear without a trace or an explanation. I could only imagine what the past year had felt like for her, it was like reliving her most painful memory. All this time she’d been waiting for me to just not come home one day.

“I’m not going to leave.”

“You can’t promise me that.” I tried to argue, but she shook her head. “I see in it in your eyes sometimes. You look at us like your running out of time. Like someday you know you’re going to have to say goodbye. And wherever you go, we can’t follow and we can’t contact you. Do you have any idea how hard that is for me? I can’t go to sleep at night because I keep thinking what if today is that day?”

Here I thought I’d been hiding everything so well. I wanted to tell her it wasn’t true, but I couldn’t. As bad as I was at juggling my home life with my ninja life, I would’ve kept it up forever so I could see my family. They were there for me back when I had no friends. It was my mom who stretched her dollars to buy me a new backpack because the kids at school wrote mean things on it for the fourth time that week. My sister was the one who waited with me in a ten-hour line for the latest Star Wars movie. We were all each other had for so long.

“I wish so badly that I could know where you go and why you feel the need to put your life in danger. What is worth putting your family through so much pain?” my mom said.

“Trust me, I want to tell you as badly as you want to know. All I can say is that what I do is important and it is worth it,” I said.

If only she knew the things that I did…Before I was a ninja the state of the world was pretty bleak. Everyone kept saying the storms were getting stronger, oceans were rising, natural resources were drying up, and polar bears were in danger. Well, now I knew that the stuff they showed on the news was actually old. Yeah, like really old.

Polar bears were gone. The last wild bear died the year after every last inch of ice melted in the arctic around five or six years ago. When people looked at the globe from space, the ice cap only looked white because the ninja put a huge reflective canvas up there to try to stabilize global temperatures.

The Amazon rainforest was not halfway gone, there was only one filth left. People were still breathing because oxygen had to be pumped into the atmosphere now. The oceans were swelling so much the only thing keeping coastal cities from drowning were the massive underwater pumps the Science Division had installed.

The ninja were recording hurricanes that made Katrina look like a bland thunderstorm and tornadoes that were so far off the Enhanced Fujita scale we had to create a whole new classifying system for them. The mega disasters that humanity saw were the mild ones the ninja didn’t have the time to bother with.

No one knew that the world was breaking down and the only reason why things seemed semi okay was because of the ninja were holding it all together. Doing my job had never been more important.

We sat in an awkward silence for a long time. Only the sounds of the machinery beeping and my mom’s quiet sniffles filled the room. Then she looked at me. “Are you at least happy?”

My shoulders lifted. At last, she asked me something I could answer. I smiled. “Yeah, I’m ridiculously happy.” It was true. Nothing made me feel better than running across rooftops at a hundred miles per hour or the way Katherine hugged me when our team survived a dangerous mission. “I finally feel like I’m doing what I was meant to.”

She tried to take comfort in that, but at the same time it must’ve driven nails through her heart. “And you believe you’re doing the right thing?”

“Without a doubt.”

She wiped away more tears. She stared at her hands, waiting for her voice to become steady again. “Well, sweetheart, if you believe it is the right thing to do then I shouldn’t hold it against you. You’ve found your happiness so I will try…” Her voice hitched. “…I will try to be happy for you.” She struggled to fight back a wave of pain. “I love you and I just want to enjoy whatever time we have left. Whenever you have to go, then go, no more lies and no more pretending. But for as long as you can, you find a way back us, okay?”

She grabbed my hand and held it with all her strength. I wished she was better and I could hug her. She was trying so hard to be brave and supportive.

“I love you too, mom,” I said. “And don’t worry. I’m going to build us a new blow up proof house that doesn’t leak or smell like mold. I’ll try to make things as easy for you as I can.”

She let out a pitiful laugh. “That sounds nice to me.”

“Did they feed you yet?”

“Oh, yeah. If you can call a microwaved can of soup food.” She took in a deep breath, trying not to burst into more tears.

“It’s gonna be okay, mom.”

She nodded, but I could tell she wanted to keep on bawling. “I need to watch something. Take my mind off things. Can you reach the remote for me?” I handed it to her and she turned on the TV hanging on the wall. The news was back on again, showing footage of decimated neighborhoods, scrambled emergency workers, and overflowing hospitals.

The footage cut to the White House where a solemn president stood before a hastily gathered crowd. “Never in our history have we experienced an event like today. Homes in major population centers as well as rural towns and villages in countries across the world were savagely destroyed in the course of an hour. The death toll is estimated to be in the millions. This is an act of terrorism at its worst. The targets are not a single racial group, a single country, or religious group. The target is humanity itself. I want to assure not only the American people, but all the inhabitants of the world that we will not tolerate these acts of violence. We will stand together and we will bring those responsible to justice.”

The station reporter returned to the screen. “In some cities, protestors have taken to the streets to send a message to the attackers.” A picture of a crowd holding makeshift signs appeared on the screen. NO CHOAS was scribbled onto cardboard and spray painted onto the sides of buildings. “It’s important to remember that no one is alone in this, we have all been effected. If you or a loved one is struggling to deal with the aftermath there is a toll-free hotline you can call.”

“Well, at least one good thing is coming out of all this. People are finally coming together,” I said.

My mom frowned. “But why does it take something awful for people to come together?” She rubbed her eyes and changed the channel. “I can’t think about what happened. I can’t think about the house, all the things we lost…all of our family photos and your guys’ macaroni art…”

“Don’t think about it. Let’s just watch this movie, okay?” I sunk into my chair and propped my feet up on the edge of her bed. Reluctantly, she turned her attention to the screen. After a while she no longer had fight to keep from crying. We were together and that’s what mattered. For a brief moment, everything seemed okay.

By the time the movie ended, my mom had fallen asleep. I slipped the remote out of her hand and shut the TV off. I left her a note to let her know I would be gone for a while and my credit card in case they needed anything. I checked the time, my three hours were almost up. It was time to head back.