20. Epilogue What We Remember
Epilogue: What We Remember
Janice
Bliss Fontaine’s new studio opens on a Friday morning with sunlight on the windows, flowers on the pavement, and a line of people waiting to get inside before the doors officially unlock.
I stand across the street with Steve’s arm around my waist, watching Bliss pretend she isn’t overwhelmed by the attention while Matthias stands beside her with coffee in one hand and his other hand resting lightly at her back.
He isn’t guiding her. He isn’t managing her.
He’s only there, constant and close, while she welcomes the world back into her work.
The sign above the door is simple.
Art By Memory
Upstairs, the second-floor windows are open to the small apartment she and Matthias have made together above the gallery. I know because Steve helped carry the sofa up two days ago and swore at the staircase in three languages, two of which he doesn’t speak.
Inside, the walls are filled with The Recall Series.
No grey fog this time.
The paintings are fierce, layered, and beautiful in a way that makes people fall quiet without anyone asking them to.
Color moves through each canvas like something alive.
Some pieces hold broken shapes that don’t quite fit back together.
Others show hands reaching through smoke, faces emerging from shadow, doors opening into light.
They aren’t easy paintings, and they don’t try to be.
Art critics are already calling the series devastating and transcendent, which sounds like something someone says when they’re paid by the syllable. Still, they’re not wrong.
Bliss didn’t paint a clean recovery. She painted identity after theft. Memory after violation. A woman rebuilding herself without pretending the cracks don’t exist.
Matthias is in several pieces, though never the same way twice. A profile in morning light. A hand wrapped around a coffee cup. Wire-rimmed glasses left on a table beside tubes of paint. He told me yesterday he didn’t know how to feel about being made into art.
Bliss told him to feel flattered and stop fidgeting.
This morning, when I arrived early with pastries, I found her painting him again at the small kitchen table upstairs while he drank coffee and reviewed research notes. He looked entirely accustomed to being studied now, which might be the most romantic scientific surrender I’ve ever witnessed.
A small white poodle puppy trots between Bliss’s feet, ears and tail dyed in soft rainbow colors, looking like a cotton ball that found a pride parade and committed fully.
“That,” Steve says, nodding toward the dog, “is the fanciest mop I’ve ever seen.”
“Her name is Crystal,” I say. “The colors were Bliss’s idea. Riley thought she'd make a good emotional support animal, so Crystal's joining the recovery team.”
Steve watches the little poodle launch herself at Matthias’s shoelace with breathtaking confidence.
“Fair dinkum?” he asks.
“I think she’s already started.”
Steve nods, a smile tugging at his mouth.
Crystal sneezes delicately, then spins herself into a tiny, triumphant circle before collapsing onto her bottom.
Bliss laughs, bright and whole, and Matthias looks at her like every color in the room begins there.
After everything Meridian tried to take, this is what remains.
The artist. The scientist. A studio full of memory.
And a ridiculous rainbow poodle guarding the door.
Blackstone Ventures HQ, San Francisco. 1130 hours
Victor’s briefings have changed shape.
They’re precise, layered with data, and capable of making my coffee go cold before I remember I’m holding it, but there’s something different in the room now. Less scramble. More structure. HAVEN isn’t only reacting anymore.
We’re building.
Steve sits beside me, one hand resting near mine on the table while Victor brings up the monthly operations update on the main screen. Around us, the team settles into familiar positions, the kind no one assigned but everyone somehow respects.
Matthias sits near Dr. Tran with a tablet open, his notes already connected to the new psychological recovery archive. Bliss isn’t here. She’s at the studio, pretending she isn’t nervous about the second wave of visitors after this morning’s opening.
Victor starts with the field teams.
“Solace and Nikolai are in Venezuela after the earthquakes,” he says. “Officially attached to a humanitarian medical convoy. Unofficially watching two aid organizations with Meridian-linked funding structures.”
A photograph appears, Solace in a dust-covered vest, auburn hair tied back, crouched beside a little girl holding a bottle of water.
Behind her, Nikolai stands broad, silent, and watchful, except the effect is somewhat ruined by Sable tucked under one arm and licking his face with determined affection.
Steve’s mouth twitches. “Sable’s backup?”
Victor nods. “According to Solace, she’s excellent at morale, perimeter alerts, and making Nikolai look slightly less terrifying.”
“So, Solace has compassion, Nikolai has intimidation, and Sable has plausible deniability,” Steve says. “And possible fleas.”
“An effective triangle,” Victor says.
The screen shifts again. Grayson and Felicity are running digital audits on every Meridian-front charity that used disaster relief as cover, while also building the report Victor requested on what the other ten Legacy Initiative family businesses might be hiding behind.
HackSnack continues to grow, giving independent developers affordable tools to protect their software before predators can steal it, while Felicity’s accessibility platform keeps expanding alongside it.
Mercy is chasing journalist contacts in Washington while Faith has found two more shell companies connected to the Rothman pharmaceutical branch.
Serenity is coordinating survivor relocation packets with the calm of a woman who can make chaos sign a form and sit quietly.
Her interview-safety workshops at Baby Bump SoMa are also going great guns, teaching women how to spot danger signs before a polished opportunity turns into a trap.
On weekends, she’s teaching children’s dance classes in the studio, because apparently she looked at one full life and decided it needed more choreography.
Dimitry is never far from her side. When he isn’t helping with security, he’s working through the old trafficking routes Nikolai supplied, using his Bratva knowledge to identify which networks are still active and which ones have simply changed names.
Hope is continuing as the public ambassador for the DANGER app, and downloads have climbed sharply since the last rescue made quiet waves through survivor networks.
Reports are coming in faster than Victor’s original system was built to handle, so Hope is helping triage submissions, separate urgent threats from false leads, and flag patterns that might point to Meridian activity.
Elena remains CTO of Kane Industries and far too in demand to be borrowed lightly, but she continues stepping in when HAVEN needs serious app development, software architecture, or another system upgrade Victor insists is absolutely reasonable.
Victor’s next slide brings up Shereen’s program. She’s started gentle anxiety-reduction classes for rescued women, using Lamaze breathing, Pilates relaxation techniques, and enough patience to help the women feel safer before anyone says a word.
Then Victor brings up Matthias’s section.
“Dr. Cross has completed the first recovery framework for victims exposed to memory-disruption protocols.”
Matthias doesn’t look up right away. He’s too busy adding a note to the margin.
Dr. Tran does it for him. “We’ve built it as a staged model. Medical stabilization first, then identity-anchor recovery, sensory reintroduction, trauma support, and long-term monitoring. No forced recall. No pressure to perform recovery for anyone else’s comfort.”
That last part matters.
I nod because I know exactly how many well-meaning people can hurt survivors by wanting them healed too quickly.
Victor continues. “Felicity has secured the archive. Grayson built the pattern-detection tools. Every recovered Meridian clinical record now runs through Matthias’s model for comparison.”
Victor looks to Dr. Tran. “And the four women from the institute?”
Dr. Tran’s expression stays professional, but the answer isn’t light.
“Naomi, Iris, Maribel, and Camille are medically stable, but this recovery won’t follow our usual timelines.
They’ve agreed to remain under HAVEN’s care for as long as they need.
No one’s rushing them toward normal because normal isn’t a doorway they can walk through on command. ”
Matthias nods once. “We’ll rebuild trust first. Sleep, nutrition, names, language, familiar routines, then memory work when each woman is ready.”
“Good,” Victor says. “Send me the report when it’s complete.”
“And Thandiwe?” I ask quietly.
Matthias finally looks up.
Her photograph sits beside his tablet. It’s always there now, not hidden, not displayed for sympathy, simply present.
“The search continues,” he says. “Grayson’s working through the old routing codes and archived networks now. We’re trying to determine whether Thalassa was a facility, a vessel, or a program.”
Steve leans back slightly. “Sounds like HAVEN.”
Matthias’s gaze moves from Thandiwe’s photograph to the screen, where Solace stands in rubble, Bliss’s studio opening waits in another folder, and half a dozen active investigations glow in Victor’s careful map.
“Yes,” Matthias says. “I’m beginning to understand that.”
Ecstasy's Table, San Francisco. 1830 hours
If heaven had a smell, I’m reasonably certain Ecstasy and Renzo have found it.
The long table is covered with Serbian-Italian fusion that somehow manages to look too beautiful to eat and too delicious not to.
Handmade black truffle ravioli sits beside slow-cooked lamb beneath rosemary, roasted peppers glisten beside fresh burrata, and Ecstasy has somehow convinced Steve to try ajvar without first explaining what it is.
He’s halfway through his second helping.