The Lost & the Found

Everything happened in an adrenalized blur.

Crowe rushed around the front of the car, Raven around the back. The two gunmen turned to aim at their next targets—

Raven let out a powerful scream—whipping her arm across the air and snapping the nearest man’s neck with a sickening CRACK. His head twisted limply at an unnatural angle, and he collapsed to the sidewalk.

Crowe nodded upright—the gun flying from the second man’s hand—then he reached out and seized a tight psychic hold on the man’s throat, making him choke and gag, groping at his neck helplessly as he slowly raised into the air.

Arm extended above himself—Crowe glared up at the man he held suspended, blood trickling down his hate-stricken face—then he brought his arm down like a hammer—smashing the man to the sidewalk and cracking his skull—then he raised him into the air again—then brought him down again—beating his head into a messy red pulp atop the concrete.

He wasn’t sure how many times he pulverized the sidewalk with the man’s lifeless body before he stopped.

Everything fell suddenly silent—and Crowe’s eyes flickered over to Aravali, lying sprawled at the bottom of the stairs, motionless and bloody, scattered newspapers and puddles of thick, dark crimson all around him.

Raven inhaled a trembling breath at the sight of him—and Crowe fell strangely stoic, shaking his head.

“Oh—hell no you don’t.”

He turned and jutted his hand at the car—both back doors flying open.

Then—Crowe raised his hand above the doctor—Aravali’s body lifting off the stairs, floating, head hanging, entirely still and unresponsive.

He tried not to look at how grisly and morbid the man looked; instead, Crowe faced the car, did a smooth flourishing motion of the wrist, and brought Aravali over to the vehicle, swiftly gliding him inside and landing him perfectly in the back seat.

“Now get back there with him and don’t let him bleed anymore ,” Crowe ordered, thrusting a finger at the back.

Raven gaped at him. “How…?!”

“You know how!” Crowe insisted, giving her a look and jabbing his finger to his temple.

Then—he dove into the driver seat and slammed the door—Raven quickly scrambling into the back seat and hunching on the floorboard, hovering over the doctor and frowning with horror at the sight of him.

Crowe shifted gears and planted his foot to the gas—the car peeling out and spinning in a crooked circle before racing off at top speed, engine roaring on the night air.

While Crowe drove like a madman—Raven remained hunched over the fallen doctor in the back, tear crawling down her face as she held a hand above him, concentrating best she could on every spot in his torso where she saw the oozing blood, his shirt saturated in it, his body fully still, not twitching, not reacting, not so much as breathing.

“The hospital’s too far away!” Raven cried hoarsely. “We don’t have time! He’s not…”

“We’re not going to the hospital—they’ll find us at the hospital,” Crowe rumbled, pressing the gas even harder and bringing the speedometer to a dangerous high. “And you’re right. They won’t save him. But Amory might.”

He sped the Oldsmobile Cutlass towards an intersection without slowing even the slightest bit—barreling directly towards a red light.

Raven turned around and ogled the back of the driver’s seat. “Can Amory do that?!”

Crowe glared into the windshield, focusing intently on the intersection—and soaring through the red light without care—a van speeding toward him from the side—then the van was suddenly pushed away by a force unseen, its tires squealing across the pavement as it went sliding sideways onto a curb.

“You get pale, and you get dizzy,” Crowe muttered with a rasp, another teardrop of blood traveling down his cheek. “And I get headaches, and my eyes bleed…”

He drove over a small hill and nearly ramped over it, entering the back road he sought.

“But Amory… gets… none of that,” Crowe disclosed. “He doesn’t bleed, or faint, or hurt, or anything. His eyes glow up, and he can do things that I don’t think even we can do. He’s got more of that angel in him than any of the rest of us. I dunno if he can heal someone, but he’s our only shot at trying.”

He raced the Oldsmobile into Moonvale’s narrow driveway haphazardly, the car shaking and rocking terribly all the sudden.

Raven maintained her psionic pressure on every wound she could see, her expression twisted with empathy and chagrin the more she stared down at Aravali.

Crowe brought the car into a wild and dangerous turn—skidding it to a sideways stop just at the threshold of Moonvale Mental Hospital.

The moment the car finally stopped moving, Raven, frowning and wearing a look of grave dread, slowly pressed her fingers to Aravali’s throat—then she choked out a sob.

“It’s too late,” she whimpered.

Crowe flew out of the car and ripped all the doors open with a swat of the hand.

“No—it is damn well— not! ” he screamed—reeling his arm back and ripping Aravali out of the car with his mind—knocking the entire stack of newspapers out and sending them fluttering across the gravel.

Aravali was sent flying at Crowe—and Crowe swiftly caught him—snapping an arm around the doctor and slumping him over his shoulder.

He then turned and stormed up the stairs—jerking his head upright and sending the double-doors crashing open in the wrong direction—smashing against the walls inside.

Raven scrambled out of the car and hurriedly followed—Crowe carrying Aravali and thundering down the white hallway. He moved past the empty lounge, turning the corner and striding down the back hall, then he stopped at the utility closet in the far corner, grabbed the knob, and pulled the door open—seeing, just as he now expected, an entirely new place on the other side.

Mapleview, North Carolina.
September 24th, 2025.
2:32 P.M.

Crowe entered the rounded room with the checkerboard floor, not seeing many things; there was a gigantic wood-paneled television directly to his right, a couch along the wall nearby it, and a similar couch sitting in a lopsided position across from it, sconces on the walls, and portraits of people that were covered with dust and cobwebs, the tall, rectangular windows to the left all dust-layered as well, though they still allowed a stream of daylight in.

Raven staggered inside with him, gasping and looking around in bewilderment. “What the hell…? What is this place?!”

Crowe didn’t seem to hear her; he approached the couch along the wall and gently lay Aravali down on it, the doctor’s head limply rolling back, mouth slightly agape, arm hanging off the edge, the majority of his clothes soaked with blood, his caramel complexion unusually pale, body making no movement whatsoever.

Now that he could see him in the light—Crowe felt a horrid sensation striking up and down him like lightning, his stomach churning with dread and dismay, as he was certain he was staring down at a fresh, still-warm corpse.

“Oh… come on… please,” he choked, lowering over Aravali and smacking him on the cheek. “Please, please don’t make me rip the bullets outta you… I really don’t wanna do that, mate… I really think that’d make it worse…!”

Aravali still showed no response.

“Ari… fucking wake up! ” Crowe screamed into his face, emotions finally beginning to fight their way out of him.

Raven gnawed her lip and covered her mouth, crying silently as she watched.

“Fucking…” Crowe glanced up and looked around, wanting and expecting to see Amory somewhere, but he was nowhere in sight. “Amory! AMORY!”

He launched up from the couch and stormed over to the nearest double-doors-slamming them open and looking around. He saw another large room, this one much longer and emptier with the same sconces and a similar floor, but there was still no Amory to be found.

Crowe clenched his teeth and shook his head, turning back to the rounded room and raking his fingers through his hair, nails digging hard through his scalp, eyes clasping shut as hot tears began to burn them.

“FUCKING HELL!” he bellowed—whipping around and launching a punch at the wall before he began shouting in every direction. “AMORY—FUCKING—COME BACK! PLEASE COME BACK! FUCKING CHRIST! I’M SORRY! JUST FUCKING COME BACK! IT’S AN EMERGENCY! JUST—JUS—DON’T FUCKING LEAVE US! AAAAAAGH!”

He turned and kicked the crooked couch with all his might, cursing and screaming, just before hitting his knees and falling over the arm of the couch, arms lying over it and face buried in it, breaths shaky and rapid, a terrible sorrow overcoming him.

Raven sniffed and swallowed another sob, placing her face in her palms and shaking her head down at the floor.

Crowe yelled into the arm of the couch, then raised his head—blinking through his tears, suddenly falling silent, and only just spotting another person in the room with them, someone who had been standing over by the windows, whom he didn’t notice before.

Raven let out a soft cry, lowering her hands and looking to Crowe. Then, she too went quiet, following his trail of vision across the room.

Zyon stood at the windows, hands pocketed in his dark black trench coat, sunlight washing into the room from just behind him. He was staring at them intently, though his expression seemed rather unreadable.

Raven gazed across the room, her mouth drifting open in astonishment, and Crowe slowly pushed upright, standing and ogling the man as if he was witnessing a fairytale come to life.

“Oy—hey—mate, listen,” Crowe sputtered, snapping out of his shock and striding directly towards him. “D—d’you know where Amory is? It’s an emergency—my friend’s dying, I n—I need—just—where is he?”

Zyon’s eyes narrowed slightly, peering past him and surveying the dead, bloody body on the couch across the room.

Then, he marched past Crowe without a word, moving past Raven as well. He walked over to the couch along the wall, stopped there, and gazed down at the doctor for a moment, releasing a deep cloud of breath.

“Honestly—we don’t have time for this,” Crowe stammered impatiently, approaching from behind. “He got shot—I can’t—I can’t think of anything to do except just pull the bullets out with my power—but that won’t—that can’t—just—will you please just do something?!”

Zyon peeked back at him from over his shoulder, simply raising a finger at him.

Crowe sighed shakily, dropping his arms by his sides as tears ran down his face, fusing with the streaks of blood along his cheeks.

Zyon stared down at Aravali, slowly reached out, and placed his hand over the doctor’s heart.

Then—eyes aglow, a brilliant cerulean, the angel pressed his hand harder against the man’s chest, and the miracle began.

Ping.

A small, single bullet oozed from one of the wounds, rolling off the side of the doctor’s body and hitting the checkered floor.

Crowe watched in awe, moving steadily closer and staring down at Aravali, Raven approaching from the other side and observing with the same fascination.

Four more wounds along the doctor’s torso did the same; a tiny bullet crept out of each one, landing on his saturated shirt or falling off to the side.

Zyon took a deep breath, eyes shining slightly brighter.

And, as the seconds passed—Aravali’s every inner wound was slowly, fully, healing. The organs steadily became unbroken, the heart began to beat, and the lungs began to expand, finally allowing the air to return to him, his skin easefully beginning to regain its color.

The moment Aravali’s chest gently began to rise and fall with breath again, Zyon withdrew his hand, his eyes returning to their normal blue. He straightened up, stared down at the man for a second longer, then pocketed his hands and wandered back over to the windows.

“Give him a moment to adjust,” Zyon advised in his low, softened rasp, stopping at the windows and gazing outside. “He will be awake before long.”

Crowe and Raven both stared at him with looks of amazement, then turned to the couch, surveying the doctor. Crowe moved closer, examining him very closely, watching as Aravali’s chest rose and fell, looking as if he was simply sleeping now.

After a moment of vexed contemplation, Crowe’s gaze wandered across the room again, eyeing the angel and feeling at a total loss for words.

“Whoa… you’re amazing,” Raven breathed with a laugh, glancing at Aravali, then at Zyon.

“I am only the working hand of the amazing one,” Zyon replied, still gazing outside.

Crowe still said nothing, merely looking on and feeling several things rising up inside, and it took him a long, quiet moment to ascertain what any of them were. He gave another glance down at the doctor, then faced the angel again, sighing deeply before strolling toward him.

“I think I, ah… I owe you an ap… apology,” Crowe said with some difficulty, stopping nearby him and looking away.

There was a pause, Zyon’s eyes following a red cardinal outside, watching as it flew to its nest in a nearby tree, adding another tiny twig to its nest, which it had been working on building for quite a while now.

Then, he raised his brows slightly, sparing Crowe a brief glimpse before returning his attention to the cardinal.

“God does not want or expect apologies,” he muttered. “Only repentance.”

Crowe stared at him for a second, shrugging and tossing up a hand. “Right, okay, I jus… I’m not talking to God right now, am I? I’m talking to a person. I think. Right?”

He gave the angel a questioning squint, Zyon responding with another odd glance.

“I am a part of God… and, as I am now… also a person,” Zyon said. “So yes.”

“Okay. Then yeah. I owe you an apology,” Crowe stated. “Look, I never meant to discount you or anything, but you’ve gotta understand—Amory kept himself locked in that place for years for you, and that was just bothering me for a lot of reasons—namely because that place was bloody evil. Hell, you know it was evil. You were there.”

“Crowe,” Raven whisper-yelled.

“What? It’s not like I’m telling him something that’s news to him, is it?” Crowe quipped in response, facing the angel again. “Honestly, d’you know how much it scared me when I started piecing together what was going on there? We had to go , mate.”

Zyon turned to him, this time facing him properly.

“Ye of little faith,” he said softly.

Crowe shot him a look. “What…?”

“Amory prayed on your behalf… and then, all three of you did,” Zyon told him pointedly. “Did you think those prayers fell on deaf ears? Did you believe that I would promise protection when asked, and not deliver when asked?”

Crowe stared strangely at him. “Well, I dunno. Prayer never did me a whole lot of good before.”

“It did things that you could never see,” Zyon replied. “The difference in this situation is that you can see the result, and very plainly, too. Yet, you’re still riddled with doubt. You do not believe in your heart that good things can happen… and that jades you.”

Crowe fell momentarily silent, his expression hardening. Then—he jutted an arm out, motioning to Aravali across the room.

“Whaddo you call this , then?!” he griped. “I bloody raced here just on the blind hope that Amory could do something to save that pain in the ass—and I really hoped and prayed that he could be saved. Christ—I really thought he could be! I fought like hell for it! I was not about to just accept yet another godawful thing happening that I can’t do anything about! No—y’know what? I am never gonna accept that! Ever! ”

Zyon stared, his mouth curling into a faint, subtle half-smile.

“A strong person like you must always tread carefully… because you’re driven to take action, and a person like that can easily be fooled into believing that they can shoulder all the burdens themselves,” the angel disclosed. “Knowing when it is beyond you, and knowing when to call on The Lord for help… I believe… is something you’ve demonstrated well today. The fact that you believed he could be saved and you sought us out means there is some faith in you. It’s just battling with a great amount of turmoil.”

Crowe gave him another befuddled look, glimpsing between him and Raven. “What is this, Christian therapy? Why do I feel like Ari’s picking my brains all over again?! And I didn’t drive off looking for God , mate—I drove off looking for my friend.”

Zyon let out a breathless little laugh. “What do you think is in your friend?”

Crowe fell silent, this time for longer, ogling him bizarrely.

Zyon’s smirk grew, a brief shimmer of bright blue light swirling around his pupils.

“Amory… is still human… still… in the forever push and pull of good and evil that all humans inhabit,” he murmured thoughtfully, turning his head and staring out the windows again “But… he is very faithful, and he has uniquely connected to me… so… he has a part of the holy spirit in him like no other human being has ever had before. That is a potential for all three of you, honestly… if only you could learn to believe rather than doubt…”

“Oh, well, pardon the hell outta me,” Crowe snarked. “I’m sorry I don’t just blindly believe that everything’s gonna be okay, and I’m sorry I have a hard time thinking that good things can happen, but life’s been a terrible ride of pain and disappointments. I really started trying to think differently, too. I really started thinking that things might be all right—but look what happens!”

Zyon stared into him, then glanced to the side, nodding and pointing across the room.

“Indeed,” the angel said, raising his eyebrows at Crowe. “Look what happens.”

Crowe opened his mouth to argue, then paused, looking across the room—only just noticing that the doctor was beginning to stir.

Aravali lay there, wincing slightly, reaching up and grasping his head.

“Oy,” Crowe uttered, moving across the room and approaching him.

Raven sat gently on the very edge of the couch cushions, smiling at the doctor, and Crowe hunched over him, squinting at him intently.

Aravali began to blink himself awake, looking bleary, disoriented, and exhausted. It seemed to take him a moment to straighten out his vision, his dazed stare venturing around, surveying the room around him, his expression slowly morphing into one of confusion.

“Heh… well, whaddid you expect? A hospital?” Crowe laughed. “Nah… that’d be a bit too boring for us. Eh?”

Aravali’s groggy stare wandered over to Crowe, eyes narrowing at him, glaring rather fixedly at his jacket.

Crowe blinked and looked down, only just remembering that the Smooth Criminal outfit he still wore was now smeared with large, heavy blotches of blood on one side, leftover from when he’d carried the doctor into Moonvale over his shoulder.

“Hah… that’s a funny story,” Crowe chuckled, flapping the jacket out and shrugging. “Well, not funny, really… it’s actually quite terrible. Doesn’t matter. Jacket’s not even mine. Whaddo I care? Heh. So, ah… how d’you feel?”

Aravali stared for a moment longer, still entirely out of it, digging his fingers into the bridge of his nose and pinching the center of his forehead.

“I feel like I got shot to death,” he mumbled hoarsely. “Is that not what happened…?”

Crowe laughed. “Well… yeah… kinda. But, y’know, we hauled ass into a magical doorway and found a nice angel to fix you up right. All’s well now.”

Aravali didn’t speak for a moment, wincing slightly harder, driving his fingers into either of his temples now.

“Please don’t send me into shock again,” he muttered with a rasp. “I would really like for this day to be over already…”

“The day’s been over for a while, mate,” Crowe joked.

“Not here,” Raven remarked, staring at the windows across the room and reaching her feet. “Where are we? Why is it daytime here?”

“This… is Evervale Manor, in the year 2025,” Zyon replied.

“ 2025 …?” Crowe exclaimed, whipping his head around at the angel.

“Evervale Manor…?” Raven said, making a face.

“Hold on—so he really did time-travel?” Crowe asked, launching to his feet and giving the angel a look. “This is where you both ended up after the lab?!”

“Yes,” Zyon affirmed. “That is why you saw the doorway in your dreams. Your dreams are usually of the future, are they not?”

“Has it really only been a day for you two?!” Crowe questioned.

“Yes… about,” Zyon replied, glancing over at the blue door, which still stood open, the white hallway of Moonvale just in his view. “It seems he tried his hand at finishing the doorway, and I suppose he got the time a bit off… but… it’s honestly remarkable that he got it anywhere near the correct time without me being awake to guide him through the process. It wouldn’t be an easy thing for a human being to do… but… he did it anyway. I suppose he felt that returning to all of you was fairly urgent, and he just couldn’t wait anymore.”

There was a pause following his words, Crowe looking down and feeling a surge of guilt.

“Why couldn’t you do the doorway?” Raven inquired, squinting questioningly at the angel.

“Because they poisoned him,” Crowe told her grimly. “Remember? Amory mentioned that earlier. Valek, and Vincent, and whatever weird damn demon science they’ve got going on in there… I reckon they worked out a way to drug an angel, and if they did that, then it would’ve had to have been something wickedly powerful that they dosed him with. It probably messed him up real good. Still, though… I am curious… how is it that you can heal a person, but you can’t make a… a time portal? I’m just… just wondering…”

“Manipulating the rifts of time and space that exist in Mapleview takes quite a lot more energy than manipulating the physical status of a single human body,” Zyon explained. “I don’t believe I could fully heal ten people right now… but one? One is doable. Easily.”

“I must be dreaming,” Aravali mumbled to himself, pressing his thumbs into his eyes. “This cannot be a real conversation I’m hearing right now…”

“Um… where is Amory?” Raven wondered. “Did he come back here…?”

Zyon glanced at her, nodding and sighing. “Yes… yes, he did come back here. He appeared shortly after I woke up, and he was glad that I was awake, though it seemed like something had him rather distraught. He said he was going out for a walk… and… he left.”

Crowe narrowed his eyes at him, pointing over at the open blue door. “Left… through this door? Or like… just out of this building?”

“No… he is still in 2025, wandering the town, I presume,” Zyon clarified. “He is fine, just seemed to need to clear his head.”

Crowe opened his mouth and paused, glancing over at the double-doors that he’d smashed open a short while ago, wearing a profound expression.

“Crowe,” Aravali said roughly, a hand still placed over his forehead, though his dreary eyes were staring up at Crowe now. “Now’s not the time…”

Raven glimpsed at them, and Crowe’s gaze fell onto the doctor, looking serious.

“He will come back,” Aravali assured. “And… if he doesn’t come back by the time we’ve all had some rest… then that will be the time to go and look for him.”

Crowe looked between Aravali, the double-doors, and the angel, seeming conflicted. Then, he strode over to Zyon.

“Did he say anything else before he left?” he inquired. “D’you know what he’s miffed about?”

“Well, he… he said he’s upset enough to feel better in a place where his family is… not, um… around anymore,” Zyon replied. “That’s all he said before he walked out.”

“Not around anymore…?” Crowe griped, looking back at Raven with a peculiar face. “Christ, he doesn’t think we’re gonna live to 2025? He doesn’t think much of us, does he…?”

“I doubt he just meant this family,” Raven remarked, gesturing between Crowe and herself. “He probably meant he’s upset enough to actually be happier in a place where our parents aren’t around anymore. I guess that means he didn’t really like being here at first…”

Aravali said nothing, but he made a strange, thoughtful face as he gazed up at the ceiling. From what he’d gathered, it sounded as if the Evervale parents were dysfunctional people whom Amory was once desperate to get away from—but now, it sounded as if he didn’t enjoy being in a time where those parents of his were deceased. It seemed his views and feelings regarding his parents were evidently rather complicated.

“All right… why don’t you two go back into Moonvale and have a night of sleep?” Crowe said, waving over at the doorway. “I need to go find that prat and talk to him.”

“Crowe…” Aravali groaned, driving his fingers into his eyes again. “If I’m not actually dreaming… and we’re really some odd thirty-seven years into the future… then the last thing you need to do is run off right now. This is a completely unfamiliar place…”

“No it’s not. It’s Mapleview,” Crowe argued, turning to the angel for confirmation. “Right?”

Zyon made a halfhearted nod.

“Yes, Mapleview—nearly forty years into the future,” Aravali stated. “And I’m sorry, but do you believe that you’re somehow immune to fatigue in a way that we aren’t? What the hell is all over your face? Hm?”

Crowe paused, dabbing his face and only just remembering that long, crooked lines of dried blood were still covering each of his cheeks from his crimson tears.

Aravali slowly pushed himself upright, sitting up on the couch and shooting him a look. “How much have you actually used that little power of yours tonight?”

“I d… I dunno,” Crowe uttered, lowering his hand from his bloodstained face. “I didn’t have time to think about it, I jus…”

“Looks to me like you’ve done more than either of us combined today,” Aravali guessed, pointing between himself and Raven. “And that’s saying something, too.”

“Well—I had to.”

“I understand that. I’m not chastising you for it—I’m only saying that you need rest, probably more than any of the rest of us. All right?”

Everyone fell silent, Aravali staring intently and expectantly at Crowe, awaiting his response.

Finally, Crowe sighed and threw up a hand, nodding in agreement. “Fine. Fine…”

“Thank you,” Aravali said, looking down and swallowing a gasp, only just spotting the alarming amount of blood saturating his button-up. “Oh, good Lord…”

“Your spirit is shaken,” Zyon observed, his eyes fixed onto the doctor. “And must be calmed.”

Aravali blinked and squinted at him.

Zyon strolled closer, reaching out and placing a hand to Aravali’s forehead.

Then—just as he’d felt earlier in the evening, when Amory had laid hands on him—a slow, warming sensation spread throughout his entire being like a smooth, comforting fire, and every sense of anxiety, shock, or disbelief felt to be draining out of him all at once.

Zyon then withdrew his hand, and Aravali merely stared at him, feeling perplexed despite also feeling so very calm now.

“You are one of the blessed,” Zyon said, turning on his heel and wandering back toward the windows. “Savor your peace, and garner your rest.”

“Right,” Aravali muttered, staring after him, still fairly lost.

“Oy… Miss Morgan’s usually in bed by now, and so is everyone else,” Crowe informed, stepping toward the doorway and waving him over. “If you wanna get your blood-soaked self into a bed before she sees you and has a heart attack, then now would be the time.”

Aravali sighed and reached his feet, pausing for a second to allow a wave of dizziness to pass. Then, he ventured over to the doorway alongside Crowe.

“Thank you,” Raven called out to the angel, giving him a smile and a wave. “Thank you for everything. We’ll be back after we’ve had some sleep.”

Zyon responded with a wave and a nod.

The angel watched as all three of them walked back through the doorway to their own time, Crowe closing the blue door firmly shut behind him.

Mapleview, North Carolina.
December 1st, 1988.
11:01 P.M.

Raven headed down the back hall with a quick and soft speed-walk, peeking around the corner and into the lounge, just to be sure the coast was clear. When she saw nobody around, she turned and gave the other two a thumbs-up before hurrying around the corner towards the stairway.

Aravali moved to do the same, then slowed to a stop and turned around when he noticed that Crowe wasn’t following him. He had just shut the utility closet door, and now, he merely stood in the hallway with pocketed hands, a blood-covered face and jacket, and a strange, intense look on his face, staring at the doctor gravely.

“What?” Aravali asked.

Crowe hesitated, his mouth barely opening, and he let out a breath, mildly shaking his head.

“Just can’t believe you’re here,” he mumbled.

Aravali paused, then nodded. “Well, neither can I… but… people come back from the brink all the time. Those little miracles don’t always get to unfold… especially not in the way they have under our unique circumstances… but… let’s just be thankful for it. It does happen.”

“Yeah,” Crowe said softly, looking down and nodding. “Good things happen…”

“And I had a talk with your friend Amory before he came here,” Aravali added. “We planned to have him admitted here properly. I imagine it will be safer if everyone on Canterbury’s little hit list are all sticking together rather than breaking off alone. Now, are you actually going to be able to adjust to him being here? Because I really think you two ought to work some things out, anyway, and there’s never going to be any progress made if you don’t. Not to mention. His safety is on the line as much as all the rest of yours—”

“Ari,” Crowe said in a low, uncharacteristically serious voice. “I’m gonna work out every problem I have between me and everyone around me.”

Aravali stopped for a second, blinking and giving him a look. “You… really?”

“Yeah,” Crowe replied calmly. “I mean… y’know… no reason to hold grudges over trivial things. You never know when your conversation with someone is gonna be the last one… so I’d rather just not fight anyone who’s on my side anymore. No reason for it.”

Aravali paused again, raising his brows and feeling genuinely surprised to hear Crowe say such a thing. “Oh. Well… all right, then… good…”

“Right… well… we need to get showered and changed before Miss Morgan sees us,” Crowe laughed. “C’mon.”

“Oh, I couldn’t agree more,” Aravali replied, turning toward the other hall.

Just when the two of them moved to march past the lounge toward the end of the stairway—they both halted to a stop, spotting someone standing just at the bottom of the stairs, her hand on the bottom of the railing as she turned the corner, staring at the two of them.

Elaine froze there, her mouth drifting agape, ogling them both in mortified shock.

Aravali and Crowe stood opposite her—both with clothes smeared with heavy stains of blood, Aravali’s shirt color nearly completely lost beneath the darkening crimson shade, Crowe’s face smeared with messy crooked lines of red down both of his cheeks.

“Oy,” Crowe uttered, trying to wave and scratching his head. “Hah… I, ah… I figured you’d be in bed by now…”

Elaine closed her mouth, her expression slowly morphing into one of angry dismay. She gave Crowe a deep, burning glare, then her eyes shifted over to the doctor.

Aravali, not knowing what to say or where to even begin, merely choked out a laugh, muttering the first thing that came to mind.

“Ahm… hello, Elaine. Is the live-in option still available?” he asked.

Elaine stared for a moment longer, releasing a heavy, stressful breath and attempting a smile, though her visage looked rather painful now. She simply nodded, waving him closer and gesturing for him to join her—and she led them both upstairs for the night, finally ending their longest and most perilous day yet.

Mapleview, North Carolina.
September 24th, 2025.
3:02 P.M.

After Amory’s impulsive arrival back in 2025—he spent some time wandering, trying to shake his hurt feelings and his troubling thoughts, barely succeeding at all.

He hardly spoke to Zyon before marching out of the manor, striding down the grassy hill, and entering the future version of his hometown again. Beforehand, when he felt as if he’d landed in a dystopia or an alternate universe, he remembered feeling incredibly out of place, shaken and almost homesick—but now, this new Mapleview felt peaceful to him, as it served as a fantastic escape from the many life stresses that existed for him in 1988.

Amory wandered the streets for a while; he paid no mind to the gray McDonald’s, instead choosing to walk farther and visit the more familiar places, the places that didn’t look much different than they had in the 20th century. The park that he and his friends always used to visit—Greensboro Park—appeared very much the same, and the tall, thick oak tree still stood on the corner where it always had.

By the time he reached Main Street—the historical part of town—he found himself peeking into shop windows and hunching in the window of the Radioshack, truly bewildered by all the technology he was seeing on display inside, including tiny speakers with various lights on them, earphones that apparently had no cords attached, and rectangular and handheld screens in small boxes, which he couldn’t for the life of him imagine the purpose for.

Amory gaped at the nearest one—one in a little white box, labeled SAMSUNG SG—then he straightened up and glanced around, spotting a young couple walking past him on the sidewalk, a blonde woman and a brown-haired man with a beard.

“Ah—excuse me,” Amory said, raising a hand and gathering their attention. “What is that?”

He pointed at the window, gesturing to the Samsung.

The man and woman stared at it, then exchanged strange faces with each other.

“That’s a phone,” the woman said, perching her brow and fighting a forming smile.

Amory stared, his brow hardening, and he whipped back around to the window again, practically pressing his face into it and giving the smartphone a perplexed look. “No way…”

The man and woman swapped glimpses and chuckled as they walked off together.

Amory continued eyeballing the peculiar devices inside until the aching in his stomach began to seize his attention. He straightened up, sighing and running a hand over his stomach, only just realizing that he hadn’t eaten or had a drop to drink since his last night in the lab.

Then, a light powered on in his mind, remembering that Xena had given him cash. He reached into his pocket and pulled the two twenties out, smirking and marching down the sidewalk. When he rounded the next corner—he spotted a Taco Bell just down the street, his smile growing as he quickened his pace towards it.

He pushed the glass door open and walked inside, pleased to see that this Taco Bell had some color to it, purple and white along every booth and table, as well as a couple of touchscreens on the nearest wall. It didn’t appear quite as authentically Mexican as it had in the old days, but seemed both vibrant and futuristic, not devoid of color or feeling at all. Perhaps he had the future judged wrong the first time he came here.

Amory’s eyes landed on the plump woman behind the register, and he marched toward her.

“Hello,” he smiled. “Do you still serve the Bell Burger?”

The woman—who had been looking down at her phone—slowly raised her head, adjusting her glasses and giving him a strange look.

“Um… you mean the burger with the taco meat on it?” she guessed. “They haven’t served that at any Taco Bell since the late 70s, hun.”

“Oh…” Amory muttered, glancing up and squinting, only just spotting the huge, vibrant menus on the wall above the woman’s head. “Oh, wow, that’s bright… um…”

He blinked and looked away from the menus, as they seemed to be hurting his eyes a bit.

“Do you still have burritos?” he wondered.

“Yes, hun, we still have burritos,” the woman replied with a curt smile. “Would you like just a regular bean burrito…?”

“Yes, please. That’ll work,” Amory decided.

“All right, hun…” The woman shifted over and punched a few buttons on the register. “That’ll be two sixty-nine.”

Amory blinked and shot her a surprised double-take. “ How much…?”

“Two sixty-nine, sweetheart,” the woman repeated.

Amory’s mouth opened, and he made a face and shrugged, digging into his pocket. “Okay, wow, no wonder she gave me so much… um… could I get an ice water too?”

The woman nodded and added it to his order, and he pulled out one of his twenties and handed it to her. Then, he stood by and waited for a while until his bag was placed on the end of the counter, containing his single fresh burrito. After filling his cup with water and ice and planting the lid and straw on it, he opened his burrito, kept it halfway-wrapped as he snacked on it, and tossed the bag away in the trash can, sauntering out of the restaurant and resuming his exploration of future Mapleview.

Amory spent some time sight-seeing, eating his food slowly and traveling down a long road that he barely recognized, despite that he used to walk down it all the time. The payphone, the pawn shop, and the car dealership were no longer here; instead, there was a gas station, a laundromat, and a Big Lots, and he walked past all of them, glancing around until he finally spotted something familiar down the way.

On the right side at the end of this road—where the King’s Place was in the 80s—was a huge Sonic restaurant now, but the place across from it was the same as it always had been, the same old chapel that had been there since the 1960s and before.

Amory smiled at the sight of it, finishing off his burrito and crumpling up the wrapper before sliding it into his pocket.

He sipped on his water and marched on, turning a corner to the left and heading back toward the heart of town, feeling a little disappointed that the old arcade didn’t seem to be where it once was, along the back road that stretched west from the chapel.

However—when he arrived on the edge of Main Street again—he gazed down the road and across the intersection before him, spotting something newer and more captivating than anything he’d expected. It was a large, shiny arcade building, complete with several lights and a gigantic sign in the shape of a UFO, reading CYBER SHOWDOWN.

“They still have arcades…?” Amory breathed hopefully, quickening his stride and hurrying towards the arcade at once.

As he drew closer, he saw a wide wrap-around parking lot off to the right side of the building, and he crossed the street and marched directly towards the open double-doors, seeing crowds of people moving in and out of the building.

But, before he could reach the open doors—something else caught his attention, a young child, wandering out of the parking lot and absentmindedly venturing towards the open entrance of the arcade, the kid’s face aimed downward and buried in a rectangular device in his hands, one that looked bigger, longer, and more colorful than the apparent “phones” he’d seen in the Radioshack. The boy’s hair was short, dark, and spiky, large glasses on his face, and his thumbs moved atop the blue device he held, fidgeting with a pair of small joysticks as he walked.

Amory found himself staring rather fixedly at the child—and at the device in his hands. He started walking again, approaching the boy without any forethought and slowly advancing on him from behind, peering over his shoulder and nearly looming over him, eyeing the game system in his hands with bewildered intrigue.

The child slowed to a stop near the arcade’s entryway, making a face and turning around, giving the long-haired stranger behind him a suspicious sort of look.

Amory met his eyes and instantly straightened up. “Oh—I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to act like a creep, I just—I was just—looking at that thing you’re playing. What is that?”

The boy blinked, glancing down at his game and holding it upright. “It’s my Switch.”

Amory squinted at him. “It’s your what …?”

“It’s a Switch,” the boy told him. “Have you never seen a Nintendo Switch before?”

“Ninten… that’s a Nintendo? ” Amory muttered, eyeballing the device yet again. “Holy crap , they’ve come a long way. I haven’t seen a Nintendo since we had one hooked up in our lobby four years ago, but it didn’t look anything like…”

He paused, trailing off and shaking his head.

“I’m sorry. Hi. I’m Amory,” Amory introduced himself, offering his hand. “And you?”

“I’m Mikey,” the boy replied, briefly returning the handshake.

He adjusted his glasses and looked away, shifting slightly in his stance and saying nothing else.

Amory gave him a curious look. “Why do you look nervous?”

The boy, Mikey, looked up at him again, frowning warily at him. “Because… you’re a stranger, and you keep talking to me…”

Amory raised his eyebrows. “Oh. I’m sorry, is that not… is that not okay to do anymore? I can never tell what’s changed over time…”

Mikey gave him an odd look, scanning him up and down and wearing a face of intrigue. “Why are you acting like the Doctor?”

Amory stared, now entirely lost. “Ah… what…?”

“The Doctor… from Doctor Who,” Mikey clarified. “You’re acting like you’re lost in time or something… and you look like it, too.”

Amory took back, feeling slightly surprised that the kid had placed him so suddenly and pointedly, especially when so many grown adults in this time hadn’t done so.

“Wow… you’re smart. Uhm…” Amory uttered, scratching his cheek and glancing around, seeing that nobody was in direct earshot before he leaned closer and began to whisper. “Would you think I was crazy if I told you I was a time-traveler?”

He smirked at the boy, expecting a reaction of excitement, but Mikey merely stared, his expression fairly unreadable now.

“No you’re not,” he eventually replied.

“Ohh, yes I am,” Amory grinned, straightening up and folding his arms.

“Nuh-uh,” Mikey said, shaking his head. “You’re a tweaker, aren’t you?”

“A what? No—I’m just—whaddo you mean, tweaker?” Amory asked him.

“Dope head, crackhead, meth head, pill-popper, fentanyl addict, bath salts zombie, whatever you wanna call it,” Mikey explained.

Amory opened his mouth and paused, nodding and sighing. “Oooh… okay, I see what you’re saying. No, I’m not a wasteoid. I’m just kind of a vagabond.”

Mikey narrowed his eyes skeptically at him. “What time did you come from?”

“1988,” Amory answered. “But I haven’t really been outside since 1973.”

“Why did you come here?”

“To escape from an evil lab that was experimenting on people.”

“How can you time-travel?”

“The lab gave me and my friends superpowers.”

“How many?”

“I don’t know how many… I just know there’s time-travel and telekinesis.”

“No way,” Mikey uttered, rounding on him and eyeing him very intently now. “No freaking way. Prove it.”

Amory blinked, biting his lip and glimpsing around. “What… right now?”

Mikey nodded, stuffing his Switch into his hoodie pocket and staring expectantly up at him.

Amory hesitated, surveying everything nearby—the sidewalk up and down the street to either side of him, and the periodic person venturing into the arcade from its side parking lot. He couldn’t think of any way to use his power here discretely, without drawing much attention.

Then, an idea occurred to him; he reached into his pocket and pulled out the balled-up bean burrito wrapper, tossing it up and down in his hand like a baseball.

Seconds later—he flourished his wrist and made the wrapper fly around his hand rather than landing inside it, whizzing around his fingers and wrist in circular motions before eventually plopping back down into his palm.

Mikey gazed up at him in awe. “How’d you do that…?”

Amory smiled at him as a single gleam of blue spiraled through his eye. “Magic.”

He pocketed the wrapper, the boy standing stock still in front of him, ogling him as if he’d never seen anything quite like him before.

“But magic’s not real,” Mikey breathed.

Amory tilted his head at him, crossing his arms. “You look like you’re only nine or ten years old… and you don’t believe in magic? Do kids in this time just not believe in the magical parts of the world anymore?”

“No,” Mikey muttered. “Because it’s not real…”

Amory’s eyes narrowed, cracking another smirk. “Well… you just saw it was real, buddy. Besides, even if you couldn’t see it, that doesn’t mean it’s not there. You can’t see the wind, either… but it’s still there, and it has a science behind it too, just like my powers do. There’s science, and the spiritual, and all kinds of stuff that’s a part of it… and the explanation isn’t just science, or the spiritual, or the supernatural. It’s all those things put together.”

Mikey made a slow, quiet nod, still staring at him perplexedly.

“How come nobody ever… sees stuff like that?” the boy wondered.

“I guess because it’s not usually supposed to be seen,” Amory shrugged. “But me and my friends are just kind of a special case.”

Mikey squinted at him thoughtfully. “That sounds like something that would come from other dimensions, then… from places we know exist, but we can’t usually see or interact with.”

“You are a really smart kid, you know that?” Amory grinned. “How come you’re here by yourself, anyway? You meeting some friends here?”

“No… I had to move away from where my friends live. Most of them live way out in the country from here,” Mikey explained, turning and swatting loosely at the arcade behind him. “I’m just here because my mom promised to meet me and put some money on my Cybercard.”

Amory stared blankly at him.

“The card—the thing for this arcade,” Mikey elaborated.

Amory remained silent, still completely lost.

“Here, come’ere… I’ll show you,” Mikey decided, turning on his heel and marching into the arcade building, waving him along.

Amory quickly followed him, blinking and adjusting his eyes as they walked through the doorway, immediately surrounded by darkness and bright neon lights rather than the afternoon sun. Music seemed to be echoing from a number of areas in this enormous interior—and Amory found himself slowing to a stop for a moment, gazing around at everything with fascination, as this was most assuredly not how he remembered the arcades of the 20th century.

From the Dance Dance Revolution game in the far corner, a song called Blinding Lights by The Weeknd was blaring, two teenagers dancing on its lit-up floor with swift quickness. Across from that game were two long rows of immersion games, one with a fake dirt bike mounted on it, one with two realistic-looking assault rifles mounted on its deck, and several more that had their own interiors, some with steering wheels or firearms rather than joysticks or buttons. Along the far left wall was a long row of basketball and ski-ball machines, and smaller games were interspersed throughout the arcade everywhere else.

Mikey stopped and turned around, realizing Amory wasn’t following, and he strolled back over to him. “What do you wanna play?”

Amory blinked once and looked down at him, managing a shrug. “I d… I’m just… I’m lost. You’re gonna have to just take me to something…”

Mikey nodded and broke into another stride, heading over to the shooter game with the two assault rifles attached to it. As they stood before this enormous game machine, the song behind them ended, the teenagers wandering off just when a group of millennials took their place, selecting a new song on Dance Dance Revolution.

Amory didn’t notice; he stared at this war machine of a game, a gigantic screen with an amazing amount of detail in front of him, depicting a high-definition war scene with soldiers running and gun blasts echoing across the game’s intro scene.

Mikey glanced up at him, flashing a coy sort of half-smile and lifting the player 1 rifle off of its mount. “Grab your gun.”

Amory tore his eyes from the screen and stared down at the player 2 rifle, feeling almost intimidated by the game before him. Then, he hunched down and examined the area where he expected a coin slot to be, only to find a small electronic screen and a slim rectangular slot beneath it instead.

Mikey breathed out a laugh, propping the fake gun on his shoulder and using his free hand to dig into the pocket of his navy blue hoodie. He pulled out a card, one that looked like a debit card, but with sparkly and decorative purple waves strewn across it, and the top read Cybercard .

“This is the card you use to pay for games at this arcade,” Mikey explained, leaning forward and inserting the card into the slim rectangular slot. “You put money on this card, and then you can use it to play all the games here. I only have like six bucks left on my card right now, but that’s enough for us to play a few games until my mom gets here.”

“Oh… kay,” Amory murmured, still feeling like a total fish out of water.

He made an odd face and slowly turned around, eyeing the Dance Dance Revolution machine, where the millennials were now dancing to Panic! At The Disco’s Don’t Threaten Me With A Good Time . He stared bizarrely at it for a moment, having never heard any music like it before, then faced the shooter game again, sighing and lifting his assault rifle.

“Okay… just… don’t judge me too much if I bomb at this, all right?” Amory said, trying to adjust his grasp on the fake firearm. “I’ve only used a gun once before in my life, and it wasn’t anything like this one… and I wasn’t actually trying to hit my target, either…”

“It doesn’t matter… just do your best,” Mikey advised, straightening out and aiming at the screen, a wave of music playing as the game sequence began. “You’ll see a floating crosshair on the screen everywhere you aim, so just try to hit all the other soldiers based on that.”

Before he knew it—the game started, and Mikey began firing instantly, the game erupting in explosive gunshot sounds as the boy blasted through soldier after soldier.

Amory gulped and raised his gun, lining up his hovering crosshair and firing a few times—felling his first target. He continued playing, taking a little longer to line up his shots than Mikey, who had apparently played this game many times before.

“Sheesh… this game looks like real life,” Amory murmured.

Mikey decimated several enemy troops, the screen almost covered in a blood splatter effect.

Amory made a face. “ Man , this is violent…”

The game carried on for a couple minutes before concluding, and then, the front began to spit out a long, rapid row of blue tickets. Mikey plucked the bundle of tickets from the machine, nodding at the screen and placing the rifle back on the deck.

“You didn’t do bad,” he told Amory. “Especially not for your first time.”

Amory lowered the gun, giving the screen a grim sort of look before placing the fake firearm on its mount. “That was like killing real people. Wow…”

“It’s not real,” Mikey laughed. “C’mon… you know what a video game is.”

“Yeah… I know what Pong is,” Amory muttered. “Or Duck Hunt, or Mario, or whatever… not Vietnam Simulator, or whatever this was…”

“It’s Call of Duty,” Mikey snickered. “You deadass talk like a seventy-year-old.”

Amory turned and gave him an odd look.

Mikey laughed again, walking away from the game and motioning for him to follow. “We don’t have to play a killing game. There’s a million other ones here…”

The two of them approached the ski-ball machines, and suddenly, Amory found himself having fun again, he and Mikey side by side as they rolled the balls up the elongated slide platforms. After a while of this, Mikey paused, pulling out his smartphone and sending a text to someone before pocketing it and leading Amory to their next game. With the boy’s last remaining two dollars on his card, they chose the cheapest game they could find, a drop-down crane machine with toys and prizes inside, including tightly-rolled tickets. They spent a large swath of time playing this before the card finally ran out.

Once there was no more money to spend, Mikey showed Amory over to the ticket exchange area, where all the prizes were on display. The costliest ones—the ones that cost thousands upon thousands of tickets—were the brand new game consoles hanging on the wall, including a PS5, which Mikey had to explain to Amory in great detail. After this, the child led him toward the back, pointing out the dark, cave-like tunnel that led into the laser tag area, and he told him longwinded tales about how he and his friends would play that game a long time ago.

By the time all the money was spent and they ran out of things to do or talk about—it was nearly seven o’clock at night, the sky just beginning to darken outside, and Mikey pulled out his phone once again, standing by the ticket exchange counter and texting quickly.

Amory leaned over his shoulder, examining the bright screen of the device he held, yet again looking befuddled. “I thought those were phones? Someone told me they were…”

Mikey adjusted his glasses and glanced up at him, nodding and raising the phone up higher, displaying the screen for him fully. “Yeah… it is. I’m just texting. Phones can do more than just make phone calls now.”

“Oooh,” Amory breathed. “Okay… so… what’s texting?”

Mikey sent another text to his mother, asking where she was, then pocketed the phone. “It’s like… it’s like sending mail, but you do it through the phone or the internet instead.”

Amory tilted his head. “What’s the internet?”

Mikey sighed. “Oh my God , you’re depraved…”

“I am not,” Amory laughed. “You’re just overstimulated all the time. How can you stand having this much technology just on you? That would make me paranoid.”

“Well… it should make you paranoid,” Mikey remarked, pulling his phone out again and impatiently checking it. “The government and the third-party people always spy on everybody’s phones, and internet searches, and everything else.”

Amory stared at him, raising his brows and looking surprised. “Seriously…?”

“Oh yeah,” Mikey affirmed. “It’s documented and openly admitted, too.”

Amory ogled him, making a vexed expression and shaking his head once. “Then why do… why do people still just use them?”

Mikey stared down at his phone and shrugged. “I don’t know… and neither does anybody else. Everybody knows about it, but just… nobody cares.”

Amory eyed him thoughtfully, perching an arm on the counter and pondering on this before he spoke again. “Okay… you do realize that you just said something really heavy-handed, and negative, and depressing… right?”

Mikey lowered his phone, staring vacantly up at him.

“But you said it like… like it was nothing to you,” Amory tried to explain. “Like… you’re completely numb to it, and it doesn’t bother you at all.”

Mikey remained silent, merely shrugging again.

“I’m just used to the world being terrible,” he said. “Everybody is in 2025.”

Amory slowly took back, frowning and feeling a sense of despair festering in the pit of his stomach. He never could’ve imagined a time where a kid his age could be so desensitized, and it honestly disturbed him to hear.

“How old are you?” he asked impulsively.

“Eleven,” Mikey replied, still staring at his phone.

Amory grimaced, eyeing him intently and huffing out a breath. Even on the worst days of his childhood, he couldn’t imagine reacting to anything with a deadpan expression and a toneless voice, couldn’t fathom how any child could be so deeply detached and switched-off.

“Hey… kids still play outside, don’t they?” he wondered.

“Yeah,” Mikey mumbled.

“Do they still trick-or-treat on Halloween?” Amory questioned.

“Yeah… sometimes,” Mikey told him. “Some places still go door to door, and other places do big events like trunk-or-treat, where you go trick-or-treating in a big parking lot with everybody handing candy out of their cars. Sometimes there’s big trick-or-treating events at the park, too.”

Amory nodded, gnawing his lip and mulling over several new ideas on his mind. “What, um… what time of year is it, again?”

“It’s the end of September,” Mikey informed.

Amory’s eyes lit up, and he straightened out, breathing out a laugh. “Oh… awesome . You know what we should do? We should just have an epic Halloween.”

Mikey slowly lowered his phone, giving him a peculiar little squint. “Are you trying to like… make plans for us to hang out? Do you know how weird it is for a grown-up to do that with some kid they just met? Everybody’s gonna think you’re a MAP.”

Amory took back. “A what …?”

“A minor-attracted person,” Mikey clarified, glimpsing down at his phone once more. “It’s basically just the nice way of saying someone’s a pedophile.”

Amory shot him a bizarre sort of look. “Why would there be a nice way of saying that …?”

“Because everyone’s stupid,” Mikey grumbled, glaring into the phone and sighing, just before tossing his head back. “ God , this bitch… I hate when she does this crap…”

“Who… your mom?”

“Yeah… she’s been saying she’s on her way here for the past two hours. She lives like ten minutes out from town. I know what she’s doing. She’s drinking before she comes over here.”

Amory hesitated, gazing across the room at the glass doorway at the front, seeing that the dimness of the early evening was setting in.

“Why is she drinking before she comes to see you?” Amory asked him.

“Because she just can’t stop herself,” Mikey mumbled with disdain. “She has a problem. There’s a reason I don’t live with her. I’m not even supposed to see her right now… but she said she’d put some money on my card…”

Amory fell silent, his expression falling stony, and he felt a spark of discomfort and concern inside. Now, he found himself wondering who Mikey’s guardian actually was, or if they were even aware of where the boy was right now.

“Y’know… this is the thing, right here,” Mikey griped, jutting the phone out toward him. “This is the thing that got me used to everything sucking. Every time I think that maybe she’ll care about her own kid more than drinking, she always disappoints me… and she always just reminds me that I’m not important to her. This is how everything is in 2025.”

Amory made a slow, quiet nod, his expression grave, pocketing his hands and sighing as he upturned his head and stared across the room.

“And 1973,” he murmured to himself. “Some things never change…”

“Oh… crap,” Mikey groaned, rolling his eyes. “Now my aunt’s blowing up my phone. Dammit, I really don’t want her to come here at the same time as my mom. That’s gonna be a problem…”

“Your aunt,” Amory said, turning back to him. “Is that who you live with…?”

“Yeah… she’d be getting back from work about now,” Mikey sighed. “And, she just realized I’m gone… and now she’s gonna throw a fit, and probably come here looking for me…”

“Well… why didn’t you just tell her where you were?”

“Because… she’s the one who took me away from my mom, and she wouldn’t be okay with me meeting her here. She’s trying to keep me ‘safe’ from her, but I can handle my mom when she’s drunk. I just wanted some game money, because me and my aunt are broke like all the time…”

Amory paused, something clicking together in his mind. He gave the boy a deep, curious stare.

“Where do you and your aunt live…?” he inquired.

“In a motel,” Mikey mumbled into his phone.

Amory’s brow bone hardened, surveying the child closely and only just noticing that he had hair that was jet black, and with eyes of crystal blue. Yes—he looked quite a lot like Xena, now that he thought about it. Mikey must have been the nephew she’d mentioned.

“Hey, do you think your aunt would ever move you out of there?” Amory asked.

“Tch… if we had a bunch of money fall out of the sky, yeah,” Mikey snarked.

“Well, I jus… I just had an idea, but I don’t know if it would work,” Amory mumbled, mostly to himself again. “Actually, I don’t even know how many rooms I have… I haven’t looked yet… aww, but I promised I’d pay her back somehow, and that’d be an amazing way to do that. I have to look and see how many rooms I have to spare… and… probably get the power turned on…”

Mikey glanced up at him with a strange look. “What… you have a house? I thought you were supposed to be a time-traveler.”

“I am a time-traveler,” Amory insisted. “It just turns out that my family left a big awesome haunted-looking mansion to me, and I still own it here. Apparently. Ooo—you know what I should really do? I should run a haunted house this Halloween! Have you seen Evervale Manor up on the north side of town? The big spooky place right up the road from Mapleview Cemetery? That’s my place. It would make a good haunted house, right?”

Mikey was just about to reply, right when he got another text. He looked down at his phone, nodded, and pocketed it, breaking into a brisk stride towards the exit.

“Finally, now she’s here…”

Amory’s smile faded, and he pushed off the counter and quickly moved to follow him.

“Okay—okay, just—hang on a sec,” he uttered, rushing in front of the boy and stopping in his path. “Are we sure this is a good idea?”

Mikey paused and gave him an odd look. “What do you care…? I mean… no offense, but it doesn’t really have anything to do with you.”

“Well… first of all, I don’t need a reason to care,” Amory told him pointedly. “And second of all… I know your Aunt Xena, and I don’t think she’d want me to just let you go meet up with your mom if your mom is a dangerous person or something.”

“Oh… God… you know Xena? ” Mikey griped. “Man… is that why you’ve been hanging around all afternoon? Are you like spying on me for her…?”

“No! No, I swear, I’m not,” Amory promised. “I didn’t even piece together that you were her nephew until like two seconds ago. I swear. Cross my heart. I just—I don’t know—let me at least just go with you, okay?”

“Okay,” Mikey shrugged, then resumed his pace, strolling out the open front doors.

Amory trailed after him, and the two of them turned left, marching down the sidewalk as the sunset became twilight. They entered the parking lot from the edge, and they stopped for a moment, Mikey glimpsing around until he located the vehicle he was looking for, a black KIA Optima, parked crookedly just across from them.

The driver door of the car popped open—and a slender woman with long dark hair stepped out, her hair tied back in a low ponytail, her bangs stringy and a bit askew, makeup slightly running, and her jacket’s hood turned inside-out. The woman held a lit cigarette, taking a drag from it and ventured forward, her car still running, and her driver door still open.

Mikey approached her, Amory standing back and sliding his hands into his pockets, merely supervising from a short ways away.

The woman’s eyes flickered to Amory instantly.

“Who is that?” she asked, swatting loosely at him and eyeing her son questioningly.

“He’s a friend of ours,” Mikey answered before Amory could.

The woman squinted skeptically at the boy. “Of Xena’s…?”

“Yeah,” Mikey affirmed.

The woman made a slow nod, crooking her jaw and making a thoughtful sort of face.

“Um… Amory, this is my mom, Kira,” Mikey introduced, waving between the two of them. “And Mom, this is Amory, Aunt Xena’s friend.”

Amory made a polite smile and wave, and Kira managed a nod in response.

“M’kay… well… I appreciate you looking after him for me, but I can take him off your hands now,” Kira said, motioning at Mikey with her cigarette. “C’mon… get in the car. We’re gonna head to McDonald’s.”

Mikey hesitated, seeming confused. “I thought you were gonna give me some arcade money?”

“Mhm… well… we can do that later,” Kira replied, glimpsing briefly at Amory again. “Let’s grab some dinner first. C’mon and get in the car.”

“The arcade isn’t gonna be open later,” Mikey said. “They’re gonna close in like an hour.”

“Mikey…” Kira sighed, looking agitated.

“Why do you always have to lie to me?” Mikey chided. “Why can’t you ever just do what you say you’re gonna do…?”

“I am ,” Kira stated, glaring angrily at him. “But I am your mother, and I wanna buy you some damn dinner first.”

Mikey retorted to this, and as the two of them argued back and forth, Amory found himself slowly, easefully moving closer, approaching Mikey from behind as his eyes shifted between the mother and son, feeling a strange, festering uneasiness inside.

“Are you gonna drive me out to the country again?” Mikey asked.

Kira stopped, propping her hand to the back of her car and leaning on it, inhaling another puff from her cigarette. She seemed to sway slightly in her stance, cocking her head and giving the boy a dark, snide look.

“What… you mean drive you back to our home? ” she snarled. “Oh, God for-fucking-bid your own mother just take you back home…”

“Yeah… God forbid you lose out on extra food stamps and dependents you can claim on your taxes,” Mikey quipped in response. “Y’know… with all the free stuff I got you, you could’ve at least not smacked me around in front of everybody at the donation center.”

“You shut your goddamn mouth,” Kira snapped, jabbing the cigarette at him and staggering closer. “That smart mouth is what got you spanked in the first damn place.”

“Spanked? Oh, okay, so hitting people in the head with an old shoe is spanking? ” Mikey snarked, rounding on her fearlessly.

Amory swallowed uncomfortably as he watched, his expression grave, his eyes trained on the woman and her every mild wobble or side-step, a familiar spark of anxiety spiraling up and down him like lightning.

“Yeah—you’re damn right it’s spanking,” Kira growled through gritted teeth, hunching down and leering hatefully into her son’s face. “Because you know damn well what I could do.”

There was a long, tense pause as the two of them glared at each other.

Then, Mikey simply sighed, tossing up a hand and giving her a stoic, unfeeling look.

“Are you gonna give me some arcade money or not?” he asked tonelessly.

Kira stared with a deadpan visage, her nostrils flaring.

“You get in that car,” she ordered, motioning to the KIA. “And you let me get you some McDonald’s first—”

“That’s a no,” Mikey determined, turning on his heel to walk away from her.

Kira reached out and grabbed him—yanking him back and throwing him toward the KIA with all her might—Mikey tripping and hitting the pavement hard.

Amory inhaled sharply—a frantic feeling shooting through him—and he clenched his teeth and thrust a hand out without a thought—

And Kira was suddenly launched off her feet—shoved to the side by a force unseen and skidding roughly across the pavement, landing just behind the KIA.

Mikey winced and sat upright, gazing over at his mother in awe—and Amory took in a longer, shakier breath, lowering his hand and feeling yet another surge of urgency inside, this time a nervous one, a wave of regret washing over him instantly.

“What… the fuck ,” Kira screamed into the pavement, upturning her head and glaring wildly at the two of them.

Mikey stared in surprise, then turned to Amory, whose mouth drifted open, shaking his head regretfully at the boy.

“I’m so sorry,” Amory breathed. “I didn’t mean t…”

“You… get… in the goddamn car!” Kira shrieked, drunkenly staggering back to her feet and lumbering over to her son. “I’m taking you home…!”

Mikey leaped up and quickly backed away—and Amory grabbed his arm and pulled him closer—stepping in front of him and planting himself firmly between the boy and his mother.

“Now who… in the fuck… do you think you are? ” Kira hissed, looming very close to Amory and raising the burning end of her cigarette threateningly to his face. “Move… your ass… now .”

Amory took in a bracing breath—an anxious sensation coursing through him, his eyes locked onto the cigarette as another unpleasant memory visited him. He glared at it for a moment, and then, his shiny black eyes traveled back to Kira’s glazed blue ones, glaring into her with an expression that no one would mistake for a friendly one.

At once—the regret he felt for hurting her was gone—and a spark of anger ignited inside to take its place.

“I have a better idea,” Amory said in a soft, light voice, staring practically through her as the quick, gentle light began to spiral through around either of his eyes. “Why… don’t you … move… your ass.”

He stepped forward—and Kira inhaled a choking gasp—finding herself moving back, perfectly still, not stepping, stumbling, or doing anything whatsoever. But, as Amory moved closer, Kira moved backward, his eyes aglow, and her body rigid as it gracefully traveled across the small, empty parking lot.

Mikey remained by the curb, watching with stunned fascination as Amory strode from one side of the parking lot to the other, glaring into Kira, and moving her steadily back.

When he stopped—he was right beside the KIA Optima, and the shiny spirals of blue faded from his eyes, Kira dropping to the ground just beside her open driver door. She collapsed awkwardly there, arms hooked over the edge of her floorboard, gaping up at Amory in anger, shock, and horror.

Amory merely stood over her, expressionless, making a sideways nod to the driver seat.

“Go,” he said simply.

Kira glared up at him from behind her messy bangs, her mouth just managing to close, fuming at him with a sense of indignation. After a moment, she finally began to climb to her feet, clasping the driver door and ogling him with a look of disgust.

“You’re one of them,” she breathed faintly.

Amory merely stared, not responding.

Kira’s face continued to warp into one of total revulsion, and she shook her head, crawling into the driver seat and slamming her door shut. She quickly shifted gears and launched the car backwards without bothering to check if Amory or Mikey were behind it—bringing the vehicle into a rapid turn and peeling out of the parking lot. She drove off so fast, she nearly hit a passing van on the road, making the van stop and blare its horn at her.

Amory watched her car speed away, and the moment it was gone, he let out a huge breath and turned back to Mikey, approaching him and frowning.

“Okay… I am… really sorry,” he told the boy honestly. “I’m so sorry… I really didn’t wanna hurt her, and I didn’t mean to, I just… I don’t know, I just reacted, and then she just… I don’t know, I can’t just stand there and watch that. I can’t…”

Mikey gazed up at him with a mesmerized look, choking out a laugh. “Dude, you’re amazing.”

Amory sighed shakily, attempting a smile and barely succeeding.

There was a pause, twilight steadily darkening into nightfall around them.

Amory pocketed his hands again, glancing down the nearest road, then back at the boy. “So… you want me to walk you to the motel?”

“Nah… that’s okay,” Mikey replied, checking his phone again. “Xena’s coming to pick me up.”

“Oh… okay,” Amory muttered, nodding and sauntering over to the curb, plopping down and sitting on it. “I guess I’ll just wait with you until she gets here.”

Mikey stuffed his phone away, giving him an odd look and sitting beside him. “Don’t you have like… anywhere to be at all?”

“No,” Amory laughed. “I’ve been locked up in a lab for fifteen years. This past twenty-four hours is the first time I’ve been outside in a long time, and it’s… well, it’s honestly been pretty hectic, but… I have a pretty much clean slate and a fresh start. No idea what to do with it yet… so… I’m just wandering. For now.”

Mikey nodded, propping his arms atop his knees and intertwining his fingers, fidgeting for a moment before he spoke again.

“Are you really gonna make a haunted house for Halloween?” he wondered.

Amory turned his head and raised his brows, cracking a smile. “If I can get everything worked out to do that… yeah. I’d love to.”

Mikey nodded again, glimpsing down in thought. “What all do you need worked out?”

Amory tilted his head at the sky, leaning back on his hands. “Ahh… well, I need to figure out how to get the power and everything turned on at the manor, and… I guess I’d need to advertise. I’d have to put up posters and stuff all over town.”

Mikey flashed a smirk, giving him a look. “Okay… first of all, you need money to turn everything in the house on. You have to be able to pay those bills. Second of all… people don’t advertise by just putting posters all over town anymore.”

“Well… I could put an ad in the newspaper, too,” Amory shrugged. “If I get money…”

Mikey breathed out a laugh, pulling out his phone again. “Yeah. Or… you could do what everybody else does, and just post it all over the internet.”

Amory glanced over, staring down at his phone and watching as he swiped and clicked on things, appearing to hit icons and open programs despite that there were no buttons on the screen.

“I don’t think I’m gonna be quick to learn all that stuff,” Amory murmured.

“Well… I didn’t mean you do it,” Mikey clarified. “I meant I’d do it for you. Look… there’s Instagram, TikTok, Twitter X, Facebook, Twitch, YouTube, Reddit, and the community page for Mapleview. There’s a million apps and sites where we could advertise for a Halloween event.”

“Wow,” Amory exhaled.

“Yeah. And… it’s possible that we might be able to work something else out,” Mikey added, slipping the phone back into his hoodie. “Because… my aunt is literally looking for anything, anything to get us out of the motel. She just can’t save any money with the way we’re living now, and living there is draining her dry. It’s gonna be impossible to move into a place that needs deposits, and down payments, and all that stuff. She’s looking for a roommate deal, or an RV in someone’s yard, or a modified shed… she’s looking at pretty much anything. If you’re serious about offering us a spare room at your place, I honestly think I could talk her into that… or at least talk her into going there to look at the place.”

“Yeah?” Amory smirked.

“Yeah. And, if we move in there… then we’d be paying rent there,” Mikey explained. “Which means your power and water gets paid for, and everybody’s problems all get solved.”

Amory stared straight ahead, pondering on this and enjoying the idea. “I like that…”

Mikey laughed, pausing and eyeing him curiously. “How do you even know Xena, anyway?”

Amory sighed heavily, making a mild shrug. “She was just… the first person I met here. Actually, she was… she was the first friend I made since leaving Canterbury Lab. And she was really nice, too… and… I really needed that…”

Mikey nodded, still staring at him questioningly. “So… is this gonna be like a movie thing with you? Like a ‘don’t tell anyone you have superpowers’ thing?”

“You can tell her if you want, I just don’t think she’d believe you,” Amory snickered. “Oh… that reminds me, though… there is someone else living at the manor, and there’s also this door that… oh God, where do I even start? Umm…”

He ran a hand down his face, turning and facing the boy more.

“Okay… there’s another person like me there, a guy called Zyon,” Amory informed. “And… he’s been out of society for even longer than I have, so… he might come off kind of ‘out of it’ sometimes. And… in the round room with the checkerboard floor, there’s this blue door…”

“Wait… how long has this other guy been locked up?” Mikey asked.

“Since the forties,” Amory answered.

Mikey stared at him. “Whoa.”

“Yeah,” Amory nodded. “But, the round room with the checkerboard floor is… I mean, I should basically just call it off-limits, because that’s where the blue door is, and it’s literally a doorway through time. It leads back to 1988.”

Mikey’s eyebrows shot up. “Whoa… really? ”

“Yeah… and I need you to promise me something,” Amory said seriously. “If you guys end up living there, then I’m probably gonna try to keep the round room locked, and I need you to promise me you won’t try to go in there. I still have to go back to 1988 sometimes, and I’m still dealing with some really dangerous things there… and they’re not… they’re not the kinds of things I wanna involve anybody else with. Especially not a kid. Okay?”

“Okay… I promise,” Mikey agreed.

“ Promise promise,” Amory insisted, holding out his hand and raising his pinky. “Cross your heart and hope to die.”

Mikey nodded and wrapped his pinky around Amory’s.

The two then lowered their hands, and there was a pause, night having fallen entirely, the arcade’s parking lot almost completely empty now, and the building’s lights slowly began to shut off behind them.

Amory sighed, glancing over at the boy as a gnawing thought returned to him.

“Can I ask you something?” he said.

Mikey turned to him and nodded.

Amory hesitated, glimpsing across the parking lot where Kira’s car was earlier.

“Why do you keep… talking to her?” he wondered. “I mean… I know it’s not my business, but I’m genuinely just curious, because… it sounds like your mom does this kind of thing a lot, and it also seemed like she was just gonna take off with you… after she threw you down on the ground. She said something that made it sound like she used to do a lot worse to you, too, and she apparently has no problem drunk-driving all over town, and… I mean… just… why invite that back into your life when you have the chance to move on and just forget about her?”

Mikey intertwined his fingers, glimpsing down and mulling over this for a moment. Then, he made a simple shrug and gave a definitive answer.

“Because she’s my mom,” Mikey replied. “I don’t have to forget just because I forgive… and I don’t have to choose between moving on and talking to her. I’m not gonna live with her again. I’m not gonna let all that stuff ever happen again. But… I’m not just gonna cut her out and completely hate her, either, because I’ve seen her eat herself up with hate, and I don’t wanna be that way. Just because I’m not gonna take the abuse anymore doesn’t mean I don’t still love her.”

Amory stared, wearing a profound expression as he slowly absorbed everything Mikey said. He looked forward again, lost to his thoughts, and managing a few light nods.

“Never thought of it like that,” he murmured faintly.

Mikey pulled out his phone once more. “There’s a song that pretty much sums it up for me… and it’s like… one of the best Ozzy songs.”

Amory blinked, turning his head and squinting at him. “Ozzy Osbourne? From Black Sabbath? Is he still around…?”

“Well… he was, right up until a couple months ago,” Mikey replied, opening up his YouTube app. “Me and Xena have been on an Ozzy journey ever since he passed away. Here it is. Listen.”

He clicked on a video, and his phone began to play a smooth, somber tune—Ozzy Osbourne’s Mama, I’m Coming Home .

“Times have changed, and times are strange… here I come, but I ain't the same. Mama, I'm comin' home. Time's gone by, it seems to be… you could have been, a better friend, to me. Mama, I'm comin' home. You took me in, and you drove me out… you had me hypnoti-ized, yeah. Lost, and found, and turned around… by the fire, in, your eyes. You made me cry, you told me lies… but I, can't stand, to say, goodbye. Mama, I'm comin' home. I could be right, I could be wrong… it hurts so bad, it's been so lo-o-o-ong… Mama, I'm comin' home…!”

Amory sat still on the curb, gazing directly forward at nothing in particular, the song sinking into him as a peculiar series of feelings began to rise up inside, steadily clawing their way out of him, and—for the first time he had allowed in a very long while—memories of the far-gone past were beginning to return, emerging from a deeply-hidden space inside, things that he had entirely forgotten about for fifteen long years.

Yes, he had hated many things about his life during childhood; he hated Joseph working him so very hard, hated fighting with his father and fearing the next moment when things would turn violent and painful, hated that his mother seemingly turned a blind eye and a cold shoulder to her children when they needed her the most—but he had never once, for a decade and a half, allowed himself to recall any of the good memories of the Evervale household.

Now, they were simply coming back to him, seemingly for no reason at all.

He remembered when Candice did seem to see him—him and Raven both—even smiling at them, even driving them to the bright red McDonald’s with the golden archway, even taking them to the old arcade, even taking them to their grandma’s house for Thanksgiving, and Christmas, and Easter, and their birthdays. Hell, he even remembered Candice driving the two of them out to the store to let them each choose their own birthday presents every year—and he could even remember Joseph being a part of it every now and then. Once in a blue moon, for no apparent reason, Joseph would feel the need to splurge, buying a swing set that the kids would eventually break, or buying a brand new record player for Amory in order to make up for whatever they had fought about that week. In fact—he remembered a time when he and Crowe both had sprinted home after being chased by Chad Henderson and his friends, a gang of bullies from their school, and Joseph had charged out of the house with a baseball bat, swatting it wildly over their heads, cursing and threatening the bullies until they finally ran off of the property and left Amory and Crowe alone. He remembered when Joseph and Candice both decided to buy something expensive for Raven, something she’d really wanted, a beautiful blue Alice in Wonderland dress that she intended to wear for Halloween one year—and he remembered having sit-downs with Joseph, wherein his father would struggle and grunt in his attempt to level with his son like a human being.

No, those people were not perfect, or even great parents—but they were still very much that. They were still his parents, and they did try to be, at least some of the time.

In fact—now that he really, deeply pondered on it—if Candice and Joseph had cared about their children at all, then Amory and Raven running away from home had probably really hurt and scarred the two of them for the rest of their lives.

Amory had spent so many years in Canterbury, wandering the halls, eating in the cafeteria, making new friends, watching TV with them and playing video games with them in the lobby, waging basketball wars in the gym, toying with Vincent whenever he could for cheap laughs, and grinning whenever it was time to go to bed, knowing he was going to be able to visit is angel friend in the dream world soon—but during all of that time, Candice and Joseph were left to wonder where their children were, or if they were all right, or if they were alive, or if they would ever see either one of them again. He couldn’t know how much either of his parents cared—but he’d never even considered the fact that they could have cared, never before now.

And if those two did—if those two cared, to any extent at all—then Amory’s decision to flee to Canterbury might have completely shattered them both.

He couldn’t believe he’d never thought of that as a possibility before.

For so many years, Candice and Joseph had been forced out of his thoughts, sleeping in the back of his mind, never allowed to hinder or interfere with whatever was going on in his day to day life—but now, for whatever reason, everything he’d ignored for fifteen years was flooding into him all at once, and it put a deep, painful knot in his chest.

Mikey lowered his phone, staring over at him intently.

“Y’okay…?” the boy asked.

Amory continued staring forward for a moment, blinking and feeling a tear run down his face. He swallowed painfully, wiping his cheek with his finger, only just realizing he was crying.

“Yeah,” he murmured in a meek, wispy voice. “Yeah, I’m sorry, I j…”

Amory paused, inhaling a trembling breath and biting his lower lip hard, glaring across the parking lot and forcing everything down best he could. He lowered his head, sealed his eyes shut, and pressed a fist to his mouth, forcing his breaths to slow for a long, silent moment before he managed to find some composure.

“Yeah… I’m sorry,” Amory breathed, shaking his head at the parking lot. “I just… I think I understand why I felt so lost when I first came here. I honestly thought it was just because of how different everything is… but… that’s really not it at all. It’s just because… everyone I know is just… gone here. Part of me thought that was awesome, and it was the perfect escape, and I could just run away and be free from it all for a while… but…”

He sighed shakily, grimacing at the darkness in front of him.

“I think I hate that,” Amory realized. “I hate being so separated from everyone I care about, and I really hate thinking that it’s too late to… fix… what I need to…”

Mikey gave him a surveying stare. “But… you’re a time-traveler. It’s not gonna be too late for you to go back and fix something, is it?”

Amory glanced at him, choking out a laugh and nodding in agreement. “Yeah… yeah, that’s true… that’s just… a scary thought…”

He paused for a second, smiling, then turned to the boy again.

“You’re not just really smart… you’re wise , too,” Amory told him. “Especially for an eleven-year-old. You’re really leagues ahead of most other people. Y’know that?”

Mikey was quiet for a second, revealing a slight smile—but just when he opened his mouth to reply, a pair of headlights caught his attention.

A shiny blue KIA Soul rolled up to the edge of the parking lot, stopping crookedly there, its driver window aimed right at them. The window was down—and Xena leaned out of it, giving the boy a searing sort of glare.

Mikey stared at her, sighing and setting his phone to sleep mode before turning to Amory.

“I’m gonna talk to her about everything… and I’m gonna try to get her to come by your place tomorrow, if that’s okay,” Mikey whispered to him as he reached his feet. “She’s off work tomorrow, so that’s the best time to try and come see the place. I would just text you when we can come over, but I’m assuming you don’t have a phone yet, so…”

“Oh… yeah, yeah,” Amory nodded, standing as well. “Damn, you’re right, I need to have a phone hooked up at the house too…”

“What… like a landline? ” Mikey chided with a laugh. “Okay, Grandpa.”

Xena opened her mouth and prepared to holler at her nephew—then suddenly paused, spotting Amory standing beside him, and she stared at him in slight surprise for a second.

“Hi!” Amory grinned with a wave.

“Ah… hi,” Xena muttered, putting the car in park and popping the door open.

She stepped out of the KIA and approached them, her eyes shifting between the two.

“Yeah… before you say anything, he told me he knew you, and he decided to just hang around and watch over me all afternoon,” Mikey told his aunt. “So don’t get mad at him for anything.”

“Oh… I’m not mad at him ,” Xena replied severely, giving the boy a sharp look. “And you need to stop running off to meet your mom, because you know damn well how unstable she is. How many times does she have to screw us over before you figure out what the freaking deal is? What the hell’s a’matter with you?!”

She ranted at Mikey for a moment, and Amory found himself smirking, turning away and hooking a finger over his mouth. She seemed to have a touch more of a southern accent whenever she got worked up, and for some reason, he felt tickled by it.

Xena then fell silent, sighing deeply and turning to Amory. She looked him up and down—surveying his outfit, the same outfit he was wearing the first time they met—and she huffed out another breath.

“Have you just been wandering all over town aimlessly since the last time I saw you?” she asked, cracking a smirk.

“Kinda,” Amory laughed.

Xena folded her arms, narrowing her eyes astutely at him. “Do you actually not have anywhere to go, or what…?”

“Oh… no, I do,” Amory assured. “I just haven’t gotten around to… using it… at all…”

Xena stared quizzically at him. “You swear you do? Because I can figure something out at the motel… and… no offense, but you seem like you’ve just been sleeping outside or something.”

Amory glanced down at himself, only just remembering that his white flowy shirt had small smears of dirt on a couple areas. “Oh, yeah, that’s just… I’ve just had a really long day, and I haven’t been able to actually… wind down, and change, and shower, and all that…”

Xena eyed him skeptically for a moment longer, then shrugged and nodded. “Okay… well, you know where the motel is if you change your mind. Mikey, get in the car. We’re gonna have a long damn talk right now.”

She turned and swatted at the KIA, Mikey giving Amory a farewell wave before walking over to the car and climbing into the passenger seat.

Xena sat in the driver seat and moved to pull the door shut, pausing and giving Amory a smile.

“Thank you,” she said genuinely.

Amory returned her smile warmly, waving them off. “No problem. See you around.”

“Seeya around,” Xena agreed, making a two-fingered salute before pulling the door closed.

Amory sighed and slipped his hands into his pockets, quietly watching as the car rolled off the sidewalk and cruised away, driving down the road and steadily vanishing from his view.

He remained standing there, even after it was gone, gazing deeply into the darkness of the night as many things continued to linger on his mind—and through it all, the Ozzy song that Mikey had played continued to echo in his head, and he pondered on every revelation that had come to him tonight in deep, reflective solitude.

Before long, he turned on his heel, and his feet began to carry him away, starting the trek back to the north side of town, feeling as if he was almost ready to return home.

But not before one last stop here in 2025.