Chapter 10
Beckett
I’ve been awake since four.
Not because I couldn’t sleep — because my brain won’t stop running the math.
We’ve been at Ameena’s for two days. Two days in one location is a pattern.
Every hour we stay still is another data point they can triangulate, another window for someone in the surrounding area to mention the group of young men who showed up at the old woman’s house with a girl who wouldn’t wake up.
I know they’re looking because I’ve been picking at their system since before the sun came up.
The Nightmare Order’s communication network isn’t sophisticated — regional relay, maybe ten years behind anything Shadow runs — but I’ve only managed partial access.
Enough to get an idea of what’s happening.
Not enough to see all of it. That’s worse.
Ameena made oatmeal. It’s good — brown sugar, cinnamon, something she did with the apples that makes the whole kitchen smell like fall.
Everyone’s eating. Locke has his second bowl.
Vaelor’s standing at the counter because all the chairs are taken and he doesn’t seem to mind.
Nova’s at the table between Rane and Trey, eating slowly, and every now and then she presses her thumb against the mark on her wrist like she’s checking it’s still there.
Ameena reaches for the water bucket. It’s empty.
“I’ll get it,” Locke says, already pushing back from the table.
“Sit down and eat.” Ameena takes the bucket off the counter and tucks it against her hip. “I’ve been hauling water from that well since before any of you were born. I can manage.”
She’s out the back door before anyone can argue.
I wait until it closes.
“We need to move,” I say.
The eating doesn’t stop but the energy shifts. Rane’s spoon slows. Kyron looks up from his bowl. Nova’s eyes are on me.
“I’ve been pulling what I can from the Nightmare Order’s relay network this morning,” I say.
“I don’t have full access — their encryption is sloppy but there’s a lot of it — but what I can see isn’t good.
” I turn the laptop so they can see the screen.
“Laith has teams moving outward from the Academy. I’m seeing movement orders, coordination pings.
Everything within a twenty-mile radius. Some of the closer settlements are getting door-to-door visits. ”
“Door to door,” Rane repeats.
“And there are notices going out. Persons of interest. I can’t pull the full documents but I caught fragments — physical descriptions, approximate ages.” I look at Nova. “Silver-blonde hair came up more than once. So did my name and Locke’s.”
“What kind of descriptions?” Kyron asks.
“Detailed enough that seven people traveling together aren’t going to blend in.”
The kitchen goes quiet. Outside, I can hear Ameena’s footsteps on the path to the well.
“So where do we go?” Nova asks. She’s not panicking. She’s asking like it’s a logistics problem, which I appreciate.
“That’s the question,” I say. “We can’t stay here. We can’t go back to the Academy. And we can’t just keep walking and hope nobody notices.”
“North,” Kyron says. “Into Whisper territory. I have contacts there. People who’d shelter us without asking questions.”
“Whisper territory is three weeks on foot,” Rane says. “And we’d have to cross through Dream to get there. My House.” He shakes his head. “If they’re putting out notices, Dream will have them posted before anyone else. They love that kind of thing.”
“Reverie?” Trey suggests.
“Reverie doesn’t have infrastructure,” I say. “We could disappear there but we’d also starve. There’s nothing to disappear into.”
More silence. Everyone’s thinking. I can feel the options narrowing.
Nova’s watching Vaelor. I follow her gaze. He’s been standing at the counter this whole time, not eating, not talking. Staring at his oatmeal like it holds an answer he doesn’t want to give.
“Vaelor?” Nova says.
He looks up and takes a breath and lets it out slow.
“I know where we need to go,” he says quietly, and it sounds like the words are costing him something.
“Where?”
“Memory.”
Nobody says anything for a second.
“Memory House?” Rane asks. “Your Memory?”
“The archives.” Vaelor sets his spoon down. “When I was eight years old, I found a page in the restricted section. A loose page, hidden between two bound volumes. It had a mark drawn on it that didn’t match any House. The ink was faded but the colors were gold and red.”
He looks at Nova’s wrist.
“I asked my grandmother about it and she took it out of my hands and told me to never mention it again. Years later I went back to find it and it was gone. No record of it anywhere. Memory keeps records of everything, but that page didn’t exist in any catalog, any index, any system.”
“And you think the answers are still there,” Kyron says. “In the archives.”
“I think someone went to a lot of trouble to bury one page. Which means there’s more. And if there’s more, it’s in Memory, because that’s where everything ends up eventually.”
“Can you get in?” I ask.
Vaelor’s quiet for a second too long.
“I don’t know. I haven’t been back since I joined the cluster.
My family—” He stops. Starts again. “It’s complicated.
Memory doesn’t forgive people who leave.
Especially not for a cross-House bond.” He looks at the rest of us.
“I think I should go alone. I can move faster, draw less attention. I know the layout. I could get in, find what I need, and meet you somewhere after.”
“No,” Nova says.
He blinks. “Nova—”
“No.” She says it simply, like the word is self-explanatory. “You’re not going alone. None of us are going anywhere alone. That’s not how this works.”
“It would be safer—”
“For who? For you, walking back into a place that doesn’t want you, by yourself, with the Nightmare Order putting up posters?” She shakes her head. “We go together or we don’t go.”
“She’s right,” Locke says.
“The logistics—” Vaelor starts.
“We’ll figure out the logistics,” I say. “That’s what I do. But she’s right. We’re not splitting up.”
Vaelor looks around the table. At all of us. At Nova, who’s looking back at him with an expression that doesn’t leave room for argument.
“Okay,” he says. “Together.”
“So.” I pull the laptop back toward me. “Memory House. How far and what are we walking into?”
“Three days on foot if we take the back routes,” Vaelor says. “The territory is dense, layered. Easy to get lost in if you don’t know it.”
“You know it.”
“I grew up there.”
“Then we leave tomorrow. Early.” I look at Ameena’s back door. “We tell her tonight. Give her time to make sure our being here hasn’t brought anything to her door.”
Nobody argues.
The back door opens and Ameena comes in with the bucket on her hip, water sloshing. She looks at us — all of us, sitting around her kitchen table with the kind of silence that means something just got decided — and sets the bucket on the counter without asking.
“More oatmeal?” she says.
“We’re good,” Vaelor says. “Thank you.”
She nods and starts cleaning up. She knows. She might not know the details but she knows we’re leaving, and she’s not going to make it harder than it already is.
I look at the laptop screen. The fragments of intercepted traffic, the movement orders I can only half-read, the shape of something closing in that I can’t fully see.
We’re heading to Memory. Into the territory of a House that doesn’t forgive people who leave, to find records that someone already tried to erase, with the Nightmare Order spreading outward behind us like a net.
This isn’t heading toward safety. But it might be heading toward answers, and right now that’s the only direction that matters.