It was nice to have two minds, because I could pull Katrin aside and talk to her while still watching a recovered memory. "Hey. I'm watching a memory, a Coelestis guy showed up and tried to buy the book, I told him I'd meet him somewhere and didn't, and he came back with a weapon. The memory is ongoing, but I think maybe I kill the guy because it lines up with the memory where I had a bloody Coelestis pin. Could be I just grabbed it off him, I don't actually know that I killed him. But I'm going to have to keep watching this one for a while I think."

We had just stopped again, and were stretching and giving water to the moskar. We had some dense blocks of feed for them too, though at the moment they didn't seem hungry. Katrin kept her face straight and just nodded, then frowned at the mountain we were heading towards, now looming in the near distance. It was like the "mountains" we had around the Phoenix area, where it was like some sort of bonsai peak, a mountain on a smaller scale. "You have time, I think. We're not getting there for a few more hours."

Normally the moskar could cover a ton of ground if Katrin was keeping the mana capacitors in their craws charged, but it was slower going on the dunes. Thankfully the buried city wasn't super far from where we'd started anyway, at least not in the grand scheme of things. It was a shame we'd lost the centipede, that thing had gone ridiculously fast. I couldn't complain about only two days of desert travel though, I'd been planning on at least three. I could see the ruins, somewhat, and it looked like they were pretty badly buried. There was a vague circular shape in the sand where the walls had to have been, just irregularly regular dunes, and then a hint of some walls or corners inside that circle.

Errod saw me looking and came to stand next to me. "I think Grunkle has doomed us by making it sound like he can get us in," he said. "I think the entrance he's talking about is almost certainly buried in a million pounds of sand, and the tools we've brought to dig it out aren't anywhere near good enough."

I nodded. That looked right, from where I was standing. Still... it was possible, so long as he knew exactly where we needed to dig. If it was, instead, a 'somewhere around here' thing we were well and truly fucked. Also, I wasn't sure if I'd be able to get us into Nusos from here even if we gave up and tried to go directly to Earth. There were no intact buildings, no doorways, nothing. We'd have to go all the way back to Batasun's Shelter. I was struck once again by how risky Katrin's plan had been - she was supposed to be the reasonable one, but if the ravenous sandcrawler had eaten the moskar we would have maybe needed to walk all the way back on foot.

She'd had too much faith in me, basically. Or... well, it had worked out, so maybe just barely the right amount of faith. And we had pushed it at the end, to catch up, so it probably would have been easier if things hadn't been so close. Hmm. Okay, I'd talked myself into thinking Katrin was smart again.

Meanwhile, back in the memory, my past self was in a situation where she really could have used someone like Katrin to help her figure out what to do. Instead, she got Zoey. My fucking bully. As I tried to sneak out of the gym building, she was right there in the hallway - seemingly looking for me, camera recording. "Hah! You still smell like pot, goat licker."

I kept walking, shoving past her. "I don't know what you're talking about, Zoey. Did you ditch detention - suspension, whatever - to try and catch me doing something? Do you see how dumb that is? You're also breaking the rules."

"I'm not the one with drugs on campus."

"Again, Zoey, I have no idea what you're referring to. I don't smell like weed," I said, smelling very much like weed, "and I don't have any drugs on me." That was true, I'd dropped the joint when the Coelestis guy had jumped me. Clearly, Zoey had seen me holding it and followed me - the psycho - but lost track of me somewhere.

She lowered the phone. "You won't get away every time, goat licker. And I'm going to be right on your ass until you graduate or get kicked out. You're going to have to be the best-behaved little -"

"Shut up, you dumb bitch. Did you not hear that gunshot earlier? There's a guy here with a gun, we need to keep moving."

She rolled her eyes, but she looked nervous. "That wasn't a gunshot. You're so full of shit."

"I hate you, and I wouldn't be sad if you died, but I'm not going to stand here and not warn you, either. He's here, he's armed, and he already shot once which means he's not worried about drawing attention for some reason. If you think I'm lying, run to the office and tell them I'm making up stories about a school shooter. That'll get me in trouble for sure."

Now she looked very, very nervous. "Wait. Wait. This is bullshit, right?"

"It's very much not bullshit, Zoey. I'm not kidding about running, he's... he's after me, if he sees you running he probably won't do anything. I have to be sneakier. So it's best if we split up. Just my fucking luck there's like... nobody in the whole ass gym right now. That never happens."

"The water is shut off because a pipe broke," she muttered, "so they're doing a thing in the auditorium instead. You didn't hear?"

"No. It doesn't matter. Just go, and if you see that fucker in the suit that payed you to point me out the other day run as fast as you can."

Her face paled, making the still lingering bruises around her eyes and the thick makeup she was using to try and cover them stand out even more. Finally taking me seriously, she nodded and hurried ahead of me - right as the Coelestis guy turned the corner, with a friend. The one from the alley. They were maybe a foot in front of her, and she screamed and ran back towards me. I, for some reason, closed my eyes tight. Was I giving up? Was I trying to curse him? I couldn't get a handle on what I'd been thinking in the moment.

Snapping out of it, I threw myself against the door next to me and -

The memory cut out.

What the fuck? Why would it end there? Why couldn't I keep watching? Something was wrong, there were still memories I couldn't find and when I did find one the spot where they started or ended sometimes felt too abrupt. I'd gone through a lot to recover my memories, and it felt unfair that I was still having trouble with them, that I had to stop and review each one to really get the memory back and even then things were chopped up, fragmented.

I tried again, searching for another memory. After that one, of me and Zoey at school.

Something snapped into place around me. Kids gossiping, pointing at me. The outfit I was wearing was familiar, again. This was the day that Bill said he wanted to adopt me, so it was for sure after the other one. The next day, or the day after that maybe. I had to be close to the memory of burning the book in that alley by Universal Servicing Systems, within a couple days probably. So much had happened within a week, maybe a week and a half. All the really important things I was looking for.

What were the kids whispering about? Why was I getting so many looks? I was in trouble, maybe. I was standing right by the office, so that would make some sense. Someone - one of the office staff, I didn't know her name - called me in, and I looked as nervous as I've ever been. They had me sit down in the vice principle's office, and she came in shortly after. "Calliope. You were supposed to be in in-school suspension, and yesterday you missed fifth period and then left early."

I nodded. That clearly wasn't what she wanted from me.

"Where, exactly, were you?"

"I was in the gym. It was empty because that pipe broke, and I wanted to look around."

She sighed. "And was Zoey Carmichael with you?"

"She followed me, trying to get me in trouble, but I ditched her. That's why I went back to in-school suspension, I figured she would keep looking for me, and she'd be pissed if she found out I'd been right where I was supposed to be the whole time. But she didn't come back, so I guess she just went home."

I was getting a lot of mileage out of the fact that I was in the vice principle's office being questioned. There was a certain expectation that I would look nervous, so she probably couldn't tell that I was way, way, way more nervous than that and just mostly hiding it. My hands were shaking under the desk. The vice principle sighed, looking suddenly very tired. "You didn't see Zoey at all, for the rest of the day?"

I shook my head. "No. She was following me, but like I said I ditched her. I hid in the men's locker room for a few minutes and she must have gone past me. And then I went back to the classroom."

She just stared at me for a moment, and then looked down at her computer. "I'm extending your in-school suspension by a day. And... Calliope, if you hear anything from Zoey or see her around, please tell me. She... didn't return home last night, and her parents are worried sick."

I left, and once I'd found a place away from everyone I slumped against the wall and started hyperventilating. Quietly, under my breath such that it would be inaudible if to anyone else, I whispered something. "She's dead," I said, "she's dead because I got her killed. I hated her so much, and now she's dead and part of me doesn't even care because I'm a fucking monster like mom always said I was. But also... also I can still hear her screaming. Why can I still hear her screaming?"

It was a memory of a memory - I couldn't pull up the original for some reason - but I got this flicker, an impression, of Zoey grabbing at a Coelestis agent as she fell from somewhere, a mess of broken walls and floors, some half-demolished dark ruin of a building. There was something in the shadows under her, waiting for her. Waiting to kill her, to eat her. And she screamed, and screamed, and then was very quiet.

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I dropped out of the memory. Back in the real world we were getting noticeably closer to the ruins, and I still couldn't see any sign of the kidnappers that got away. The sun was getting low, but it looked like we'd be in the shelter of the mountain by nightfall and could start exploring the ruins in the morning. We stopped one last time, at the moskar's insistence, and again I pulled Katrin aside for an update. She looked... concerned.

"I can't think of why you would be missing memories still. And do you think the monster you... remembered remembering... was literal, or was it some exaggerated thought from seeing something traumatic?"

It was a fair question. "I'm not totally sure. It seems crazy that it would be literal, but it felt like it might have been."

Something was on the verge of making sense, or being remembered, but I couldn't quite get it to click. Before I could think about it more, Errod walked up. "Hey," he said, "I'm remembering that we thought there were some odd parallels between this job and the one where we found the Duminere. And your sister - sort of - died right before we went into Nusos. And I don't see any sign of Matlyn's sister. And... well."

Ah. Shit. "Yeah, that... doesn't sound great."

At this point, we were going to Earth regardless. I had promised to take human Calliope home, and Katrin was dying to visit another world. Also, frankly, if Matlyn was going to bail on this job I was thinking of getting crop samples myself. But if she did want to cancel due to the possible death of her sister, we'd have to escort her back to civilization first. That wouldn't be a huge deal, but it was a pain for sure. Part of me was aware that I was thinking about someone losing her sister in terms of how annoying it was for my schedule, but... well, it wasn't my sister, I didn't even know her. And she was probably with the people that had tried to kill me and wiped my memory.

I talked to Errod about it, and went with him over to Matlyn, who was scanning the landscape compulsively. He, thankfully, took the lead. "If it's okay with you, the plan right now is to camp at the ruins tonight. Tomorrow we'll spend time searching for the entrance to the temple and, depending on how that goes, we might stay another day or two digging or exploring. And then... if your sister hasn't shown up, it's possible she's back at Batasun's Shelter. So we'll head back there, see if there's any word. If she's there waiting for us, great, if not... you can make the call on if we head into Nusos or if we call the job off for now until you can find out if they're going to ransom her."

Matlyn nodded. "Thank you for not saying she's..." She cleared her throat and wiped her eyes. "We... we can't wait around. My family needs this, if there's a ransom we can't pay it. You're right that we should go back to Batasun's Shelter if she isn't in the city and doesn't show up soon, I was going to say the same. I have a long distance communicator, Orick has the other half. It only does little signals, not full audio, but I sent him the clicks for 'things are going poorly but I'm proceeding'. It's the most I can easily communicate. If they contact him with a ransom request, he'll signal me for certain. I hope they do. It would be good to know there's hope."

Pleased with how that had gone, I left the two of them there and hid in the shade of my moskar. It was hot, at least as hot as the middle of summer in Phoenix, and the water collector wasn't keeping up well since there was nothing in the air. As had been the case in Brinkmar, we'd been forced to refill it ourselves. Soon enough we were on the move again, and I found myself desperate to reach the ruins just so I could have some shade and walls that would block the wind - dry heat might be better in a lot of circumstances, but at temperatures like what we were dealing with a breeze didn't help like it did when the problem was humidity. If the air was hot enough, wind was just another way to make you miserable.

There was nothing to do about it for now but tune my body out as much as I safely could and get back to work searching my memories. As curious as I was about what might have happened with some sort of actual monster, I already knew what came next. I came home, shaken, talked to Bill, went to school the next day, and talked to the vice principle. The most important part that I was missing was how I ended up in a position to steal magic shit from Greg.

It felt like finding these memories was getting easier the more I did it, so I was pretty hopeful - but it was still slow going when I couldn't get a nice edited version, and so I wasted time watching myself sit through my in-school suspension and walk through the hallways of the school or Bill's house. We reached the ruins just as the sun was going down, and Katrin had to light things up until we could find a good place to camp. Not surprisingly, there were signs of people having been there before.

Sure, we were in the middle of nowhere. But we weren't so far out that people wouldn't hear about the remains of this old city, and want to come explore and look for treasures. There were few enough structures that were more than mounds in the sand, and so the one we picked - two and a half walls, no ceiling - had marks from people's fires and scraps of trash like old frayed ropes and a damaged cookpot.

The red rock of the mountain loomed over us, not tall as mountains go but impressive for being basically one huge rock. I could see signs of life there too, once the moon was shining on it, places where people had carved things on the flat surfaces facing the city. There was clearly writing, most of which was too small to make out and some of which was large but foreign, and carvings of animals, and people - some just stick figures - and of course a gigantic phallus. People are people everywhere.

During the night, I tried my memories again and found one where I was clearly sneaking out of Bill's house. I had the nice new backpack, which meant this was after the bleach incident, so it was right in that week I was trying to learn more about. I had to sit through a lot of boring memory of me waiting for a car from a rideshare app, ignoring the slightly creepy driver, and then walking for a bit - for whatever reason I hadn't had the car drop me directly at my location. As I approached a long, drab building, I could see the sign painted on its side: AIR COOLED SELF STORAGE.

Fucking finally. This had to be it. This had to be why the center of the sealed-off bit of my memories was a storage unit.

I ducked into the shade of a palo verde and put on a hoodie, gloves, surgical mask, and tinted glasses so I would be hard to identify. I then circled around a little while keeping to the shadows and watching the security cameras. There was a spot that didn't seem to have any, one I'd clearly already known about, and I sprinted over to the wall right at the dead zone and pulled off my bag. Inside were only three things - a rolled-up scrap of carpet, and a nice new lock-picking set, and a pry bar. Arguably the pry bar was also sort of a lock-picking tool, but this particular one looked more like it was along to be used as a weapon.

I flung the long thin roll of carpet over the barbed wire that topped the wall, and scrambled over without hurting myself. The lot in the back of the building seemed to be for people storing RVs and trailers, and I was able to sneak alongside a pop-up camper until I was close to a door. There was a camera off to one side that would have missed my trip over the wall but was pointed pretty directly at the door I wanted to use, so I repositioned and snuck over to stand underneath it. A gentle nudge with the pry bar angled it up to be looking at nothing, and I hurried over to pick the lock on the door.

I wasn't ever a master at picking locks, and at the time this memory happened I wouldn't have been good at all, but it turns out a lot of locks are really just there to prevent random thefts of opportunity. They weren't actually very secure. This was for sure one of those locks, because even fumbling around and mostly clueless - present me was wincing at past me's technique - I got in after only five minutes or so. Once I was inside, I sprinted down the hallway to a scene I recognized - Greg's shitty little office.

I put down the lock picking kit and pulled a cork board away from the wall, looked at a note taped there, and then hurried to a beeping panel and typed in a five digit code. I nodded in satisfaction as it beeped once and a light turned green. "Go get me water, girl," I said in a mockery of Greg's voice, "get me my paper, give me my sandwich, get me my laxatives. How about I get your fucking security code, you leaky asshole."

I reached under the counter and pulled out a huge bolt cutter, and then went down a hallway with the classic roll-up metal doors lining either side. I stopped at the first one and cut the lock off and rolled the door up while flipping off a camera, then stepped inside and nodded in satisfaction. Rather than old boxes or something, the room had a computer and a rack of video equipment. I went down the stack of devices, popping out the tapes, and then pulled the tinted glasses and mask off and lowered my hood.

I calmly to Greg's office, ducking inside for a moment to grab a lighter and a little metal trash can. "Get me my lighter, girl," I muttered in his voice as I left out the door I'd come in through. Once outside, I pulled the magnetic tape out of each cassette - amazing that anyone was still using such outdated technology - and dumped the tangle into the trash can. I lit the papers that were already in the trash can on fire and watched everything burn for a moment before flipping the can over and stomping it out.

Back inside, now with no security cameras, I headed to Greg's desk and started flipping through a ledger. I ignored most pages, going straight to a section where every entry started with a zero. "Okay, Greg, let's see which units you're renting out in the basement..." I started a list, and it was clear I was writing down only the ones with no information next to them. After a moment I stopped, stared at the page, flipped to the next one and then back, and stared some more. "Unit zero two one, unit zero two three. Where's basement unit twenty-two? Got you, motherfucker."

I practically danced down the stairs, and when I got near the end of the hall I stopped in front of unit twenty-two. The big bolt cutters went snip, and I rolled the metal door up to find... a totally normal storage unit, with boxes and furniture and stuff. I sat down in an old armchair to think, looking annoyed at not finding what I'd been looking for, but present me was on the edge of my seat. This was it. This was the exact unit that had been in my memory palace, the one the Granch had been protecting. The chair, the boxes, the decorative spoons, the painting. It was exact.

Memory-me got up after a moment and looked in some of the boxes, but there wasn't anything interesting. It appeared to be mainly clothes, and some dishes. After that I went to the back wall and started feeling along it, and then tapping on it and listening. I tapped all along it, and there was something different at one spot, something more... hollow. Excited once more, I began looking for seams or hinges or... anything, really. There were spots on the metal walls where one bit ended and another began, but none of them would budge.

I got down on my hands and knees to see if I could tell where - or if - it opened, and noticed something strange. A little slot, very discrete, cut into the metal. I pulled my bag around to the front of me to get out my lockpicks, but they weren't there - I'd put them down in Greg's office right after entering and had forgotten to pick them back up. I looked back at the door, then leaned down with my cheek pressed against the cold concrete and tried to look into the slot.

I stood up, and looked at the display of spoons. I couldn't pick a lock with them, obviously, but I wasn't even sure this was a lock at all. They all had little enamel state seals, one for each of the fifty states. It seemed stupid. Why spoons? I grabbed one, and got back down on my hands and knees. Using the handle end, I poked at the hole and... something clicked. Huh. No lock picks required. The wall opened, swinging inwards, and cold air hit me as I looked into a hidden underground chamber lined with shelves.

"Bingo," I said in the memory, "found your stash of fucking toys, Greg. Let's see what Coelestis Acquisitions has been acquiring. It would sure be a shame if something happened to all this stuff."

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