Rising Shards

I actually laughed. Actus Kathron couldn’t be our father. That didn’t add up with anything I knew about him. Or at least, the person I was starting to realize was a thing from the void.

“But he was so young.” I said. “He said he went to Falling Shards!”

“Retention sprites are very adaptable,” Caya said. “And can appear any age the user wishes them to.”

“The user?” I asked. “So someone sent them?”

“Mrs. Kilander…” Stella said. “About that…”

“I know,” Caya said. “You don’t have to worry about who created it. The retention sprite will be destroyed shortly.”

“Destroyed?” I asked. “But…if…you can’t do that!”

If someone sent out the retention sprite to find me, they must have wanted me to see it. It made the most sense to me immediately that if Arctus Kathron was my father, he sent the retention sprite from the void to find me. My mind was racing so fast it felt like my head was humming, but that might have just been my tense scalp muscles.

“What if he’s out there and we need to rescue him? And this sprite thing was the only way he could find me?” I asked. “Wait, so was everyone in Vita Coa a retention…something?”

“No, the Exumi you encountered were not retention sprites.” Caya said. “One of the ways I was able to discern that Arctus was one was through them; they confirmed seeing him at different ages—for example, seeing him when he was younger, then older, then younger again much later—though they weren’t aware of how organics age given their mostly mechanical bodies.”

I realized at some point I’d stood up.

“Zeta, let me explain.” Stella said.

“Oh, this should be good.” I blurted out. “Are you really finally going to talk about this or just deflect like you always do?”

“Zeta!” Stella snapped.

“It’s alright, Zeta,” Caya said. “Finding out about a retention sprite can be a harrowing reveal on its own.”

“Yeah, and finding out it was my dad?” I said. “And that you’re going to destroy it? You’re throwing way too much at me here!”

“Let’s step outside.” Stella said. “Thank you, Caya.”

Caya didn’t stop Stella from grabbing my hand and taking me out of the room.

“Zeta, I know you’re upset.” Stella said.

I waited for an answer.

“And?” I asked.

“And…tomorrow.” Stella said. “I’ll tell you everything tomorrow. I promise.”

“OK.” I said. I didn’t believe her, but I wanted to be alone. I didn’t want to spend the night at the new apartment like we planned on Friday if she was going to attempt to tell me about our parents the next day, it’d be miserable sitting around with her trying to put words together all day to hype herself up only to inevitably not tell me anything the next day. And for Dr. Diast to be there for all that too.

Oka was at play practice and would head to the Kilanders after like she usually did on Friday nights. And then off to a theater trip with Lillia the next day. I didn’t want Kalei to see me heated like this, so I paced around the school, trying to avoid the dorms.

My parents’ names are Octa Faleur and Arctus Kathron. I wondered why Stella and I ended up with Faleur as our last name. Maybe our dad is really humble. Arctus in the void was a big hero to the Exumi. My dad’s heroic, that’s so cool! I was a little giddy finally knowing. Even if it was a younger version, I finally had a face to picture when I thought about my father.

“Are you feeling alright?”

09 had a look of concern as she sat on a bench next to me. I didn’t even notice that I walked past her. In fact, I was so much in my own little world I didn’t notice I’d walked all the way to the little garden on campus.

“I was going to ask, ‘why the long face?’ But then you keep flipping back and forth between looking like you’re about to get delicious pudding and that all the pudding in the world has been destroyed.” 09 said.

“I er.” I said. “I got some news and am processing it, I guess.”

“As a clybrid Cani, I’m all about processing, lay it on me,” 09 said, patting the empty space next to her on the bench. “I need a break from what I was working on.” She had some kind of tech she was tinkering with, it looked like the location point disks we got to go to a certain place in the void, but a bit bigger.

I relayed the news I’d gotten from Caya.

“And I’ve just been walking around thinking about it since then.” I said.

“Hmmm,” 09 said. “And now you have a whole day to just stew in that, huh?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I just wish I could do something other than stew in it. And I know Stella’s gonna flake on really telling me anything again tomorrow, so I just wish…I dunno.”

“Something other than stewing in it.” 09 said.

“Yeah, exactly.” I said.

“Why don’t you go see this sprite before it gets destroyed?” 09 asked.

“Huh?” I said. “Even if it’s still around, I wouldn’t even know where to look.”

“Where was the last place you saw it?” 09 asked.

“In Vita Coa.” I said. “Oh duh, I can just go there!” I stood up excitedly, then reality crashed back down onto me, plopping me back onto the bench. “Or wait, I can’t. They monitor that stuff and I’d get caught pretty quick sneaking in.”

“I could maybe help there,” 09 said. “I have to go check on my you-know-what today. So I could maybe drop you off on the way?”

09 was still on her top-secret void mission to keep an eye on Aira and Laenie on their own top-secret void mission. It’d make sense that 09 would have her own, less checked on way into the void.

“You’d do that for me?” I asked.

“Uh, duh! Why wouldn’t I help you out?” 09 asked. “You know, there’s a specific code phrase that works on retention sprites and it can get them to take you to their user.”

“What?” I asked. I didn’t see anything like that on the papers Caya gave me when I skimmed them.

“Uh huh, if you get it right, the retention sprite should say, ‘I thought you’d never ask,’ and take you to whoever made them.” 09 said.

“What’s the phrase?” I asked. The chance to actually meet one of my parents was intensely alluring, and for the first time in my life, seemed like it could be in reach relatively easily.

“Hold on,” 09 said. Her eyes glowed red, the sign that she was using her tech augmentations to search the internet and databases and stuff. “It’s generally ‘for whatever may come.’ And then you can ask who sent it to make sure it wasn’t secret assassins or something.”

“Huh.” I said.

09 pulled out a void gate rosin and flipped the disk over, which made it look more like a bowl.

“Oh, wait, it’s one of those! Uh, what do you call thems!” I said excitedly. The bowls that you drop the gate rosin into for a safe and stable journey into the void. I couldn’t remember if they had a name.

“Yep! We can go right here.” 09 said. “I was about to head to the void in a few minutes anyways. Want to do some sleuthing?”

“Absolutely.” I said.