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So, I learned everything Perrsnile knew about the people he had sold those children to. It was going to take a lot of effort and time, but we would track them down and save all the ones we could, the ones who were still alive. I held no illusions that they would all be safe and sound after all these years, but I was going to do everything I could to put them back with their families. I had detailed notes written down, and promised the nasty little man that I would be keeping him with me while checking on the information he gave. Part of me thought I should just get rid of his ghost immediately, but I wanted to make sure he wasn’t screwing with us one last time. He had no chance of hurting any of us anymore, but I really wouldn’t have put it past him to get sick amusement out of telling us a bunch of lies just before I erased his ghost, leaving us with no way of getting the actual information.
Besides, maybe someone like Brom Bones knew a spell that could make him tell the truth. Or maybe Denny would do it if she showed herself at some point. I wasn’t sure. But either way, getting rid of him right then, no matter how much I wanted to, felt like a bad idea. Still, I didn’t have to deal with him at the moment. So, I used my necromancy to take him down to a tiny speck of power so he wasn’t even visible. Then I basically shut him away for the moment so I could move on to the next thing. In this case, the next thing was going with Gliner and the other ghost, Ausesh, up to the auditorium so we could talk to Sesh– hold on, was this really the first time I was noticing the similarities between those two names? There was absolutely no relation between Sesh and Ausesh, as far as I knew, and yet… yeah that was weird.
Shaking that off, I took the elevator that way, and soon found myself facing a bunch of curious and scared people all looking to me for answers. They were also staring in confusion at Gliner, Archibold, and the ghost of Ausesh, who hovered in the background trying to ignore all of them. Her whole problem with crowds might’ve been lessened by being dead, but it wasn’t gone entirely. When she saw me glancing her way, the woman whispered, “Don’t look at me, you talk to them.”
“She’s right,” Gliner agreed while folding his arms as he stood next to his partner. His voice was a soft murmur. “They don’t really know us, for the most part.”
Swallowing hard, I stepped to the middle of the stage and raised my voice. “First, I want all of you to know that the murderer has been caught and stopped. We know what happened here, and you’re all safe.”
Yeah, that brought on a lot of questions. They were being shouted at me from every direction, until I whistled as loud as I could. That made them stop so I could push on. “I’m going to tell you all the truth, and it’s going to be hard to hear. But we have proof, and we’re going to restore your memories about all of it.” That started even more murmuring about what I meant by restoring memories, so I held up both hands and continued. “Like I said, this is all going to be pretty hard to hear, but I really need all of you to listen.”
And with that, I gave them the whole explanation. I told them about Perrsnile selling their children and then erasing their memories using the vault’s built-in system for making sure no one could expose this place. Needless to say, hearing that they could have decades-old children running around in the outside world, or rather, enslaved in the outside world, caused even more of a fervor. But they all wanted to hear everything, so they settled down soon enough, now definitely latched onto my every word.
I continued through the rest of it, telling them about the whole Ausesh, Gliner, and Archibold situation, and about Gliner and Archibold making their mistakes about who the guilty person was. I told them about Perrsnile killing Mophse, and why that happened. I told them all of it. Not really the Denny stuff. That felt personal and not exactly relevant to the situation. But I did tell them that Perrsnile was dead now, and would never threaten them again. I just left out who exactly killed him.
Obviously, they had a lot of questions about their missing children and the memories related to them. So, I quickly assured the whole crowd that Ausesh knew how to undo the memory eraser system, and that we were going to work on that immediately. “I just wanted you guys to know it was coming so you wouldn’t be so… umm, shocked when you get your memories back,” I explained. “I promise, we’re about to go work on that. But since the bad guy is gone, I think you can all safely go back to your rooms and all that, if you want to. Or to the cafeteria, or whatever. We’ll send out an intercom message when we’re about to restore your memories, and I’ll talk to you again once we figure out what’s going to happen next. I just–yeah.”
Feeling a bit awkward and like I might have been rambling on too much, I stopped myself before taking a breath. “I promised you guys before that we weren’t going to make you leave this place if you don’t want to, and we’re still not. We’ll find someone to help take care of the vault’s system, someone who can learn from Ausesh over here. She might not have programmed the computers, but she did design and build the vault itself, so between that and Sitter, we can keep the place running.”
For her part, the ghost woman hesitated before straightening a little with a nod. “I will… do everything I can,” she agreed quietly. “Valdean would have wanted that. I am… sorry he is not here to be the face of this any longer. And that I am… not physically equipped to do as good of a job as he would like.” She was mumbling those words by the end, and I could see people in the audience trying to lean forward to hear what she was saying.
Rather than ask her to repeat herself (figuring that wouldn’t go well), I just spoke up myself. “She’s right, she’s gonna help any way she can. We all will. And that includes helping all of you find your lost family members. If any of you want to help with that when the time comes, you can. But either way, if you have kids out there, or other family, we’ll find out what happened to them, and if possible, bring them back to you. I know you guys don’t have a lot of reason to trust Heretics, but I promise, we’re going to take care of this.”
All of that was obviously a lot for them to digest, to say the least. I answered a few more questions about what was going on and what we were going to do, then stepped out of the way while waving Sesh up to join us. Once we were closer to the back of the stage and had a little privacy, she stared at me wide-eyed. “Damn, Flick. When you get to the bottom of things, you really get to the bottom of them.” With a quick glance toward Gliner and Ausesh, she looked back to me and added, “What about the others?”
After a momentary hesitation, I gestured. “They’re okay. There’s just uhh… well, there’s stuff with Denny, but they should tell you that part themselves. Sorry to ask this, but could you stay up here a bit longer while we get the memory thing working right? Just in case those guys need something. I know I said they could head out to their own rooms and stuff, but uhh… they don’t seem to be doing that.”
Glancing over her shoulder to look that way before turning back to me, Sesh nodded. “Yeah, sure. We’ve uhh…” She reached into her San Jose Sharks jacket and withdrew a large hardcover Dungeons and Dragons handbook, waving it idly. “I’ve sorta got a game going with some of these guys right now, so take your time, you know?” A soft chuckle escaped her before she sobered. “Perrsnile was playing for awhile… fuck!” She punched her own hand. “I can’t believe I never even–”
“Stop,” I interrupted. “None of us realized until–well, yeah. He had everybody fooled, believe me. And there’s no point in playing the what if or should have game. He’s dead. Now we just have to pick up the pieces.
Sesh nodded once. “Sure, I’m just saying, I never would’ve let him play a paladin if I had any idea. But uhh, just so you know, I’m gonna want to hear everything that happened, cuz I’m pretty sure you’re leaving some stuff out right now. For now though, yeah, I’ll stay in here with these guys some more. Just make sure you let us know before you shove everyone’s memories back in their heads? Most of these people are probably gonna want to be sitting down when that happens. It just, you know, feels like it’s gonna be a lot.”
Promising that we would absolutely do that, I headed back for the elevator once more. On the way, I casually glanced toward the others., “Is there some sort of record for riding this thing around the vault the most times in a single day? Because I feel like I’m approaching the championship.”
“You might be in the top ten,” Gliner informed me, “but you’ll never touch Valdean’s record. Not with as much as he went tearing around this place trying to solve everyone’s problems and…” Trailing off, he sighed before looking at the ghost woman nearby. “I am… the words I want to…” His face twisted a little, as all six of his eyes looked off in different directions before he clearly forced himself to focus on her, as the words came out. “I am sorry. I am so very sorry for my–for my assumptions, and my actions. My–I murdered you. You trusted us to protect you, and I not only failed to do that, I took your guilt for granted and didn’t give you any opportunity to defend yourself. I–I can’t–”
“Stop,” Ausesh interrupted, her voice flat. “You’re right, you killed me, and you can’t undo that. Nothing you say will magically bring me back to life.” She paused, and I could feel the turmoil within her ghost energy before she sighed. “But, I understand why you did what you did. I was an old Heretic. Even if I was never exactly top of my class in combat, if I had been the monster you believed me to be, you never would have gotten a fair shot off.” Her hand rose to point at him. “That does not mean I have forgiven you. But I do understand your reasoning. Let us leave it at that for now. Anything else would be a waste of time and effort.”
It looked like Gliner still wanted to say something about that, but he acquiesced and gave a short nod. I could tell that he didn’t want to push things too much. No matter how much he felt the need to apologize for, well, killing her, it was better if he let it go for the time being. Otherwise, he’d just be apologizing for his own feelings rather than hers.
Instead, after letting out a long breath, he turned to me. “Are you really going to go out there and try to find all those missing children? Even though it’s been decades?”
After grimacing slightly at the reminder of just how long those ‘kids’ (probably mostly adults by now depending on how fast each of their species matured) had been missing, I confirmed, “I mean, there’ll probably be several of us taking turns working on that. We’ll have to trade off whenever one of us has some free time, but yeah. It needs to be done, and something tells me there won’t be a shortage of volunteers to help with it.”
“I’ll be one of them,” he informed me.
“As will I,” Archibold noted. “We… have a lot to make up for.”
A moment later, the elevator door opened, and we moved back into the server room. As soon as we got there, I saw Sitter standing up. He was lifting one foot off the floor, even as De–Letters stood in front of him and requested, “Okay, the other foot, please.” Immediately, the robot lowered that foot and lifted the other one.
“Hey, Sits! You’re awake.” Waving that way as I approached, I added, “How’re you feeling?”
“I believe the correct term is ‘annoyed,’” came the response. Sitter’s mouth lights shifted to an amber color before he added, “Mostly at my own failure to identify the trap before it was sprung. I apologize for being unable to assist your investigation.”
“Oh, Sitter,” Ausesh murmured before hovering closer. “You have always been entirely too concerned with aiding others over your own personal well-being. You nearly died.”
“And you…. did.” Sitter flatly pointed out, mouth-lights shifting to a soft green as his head tilted that way. “I am told that I should know you, that you aided in my creation, and that of this vault.”
“Yes, we can restore those memories, I… believe.” Frowning a little, the ghost woman looked toward me. “As I said before, programming is not my strong suit, but I know a little.”
“Right arm, please,” Letters put in, watching as Sitter lowered his leg and raised the arm. Then she addressed the rest of us. “I think I can help with the memory thing, I just want to make sure his physical responses are working right. Other arm, please.”
Marina, approaching from the back area of the server room, spoke up. “You managed to get him working pretty quickly, Letters.”
The blonde girl shifted a little, looking embarrassed by the compliment. “It wasn’t that big of a deal. I just reconnected a few–never mind. He should be okay now. Oh, uh, you can put your arm down. Do you want me to dig deeper and try to fix your memory?” She sounded a little hesitant and unsure of herself.
Sitter, however, nodded once, mouth lights shifting to a dark blue. “I trust your ability, Lady Letters. And it would certainly be nice to know that my memories are correct. If nothing else, it would be a good idea to have all those memories checked before I trust myself to disengage the locks for this vault. If my memories are still wrong, I shudder to think of what could happen.”
Taking that as a good shifting point, I looked over to Ausesh. “Speaking of having the correct memories, is there anything else we need to bring down here before we get started on fixing everyone else’s?”
“No,” she replied, “we can start that right now. I may not know a lot about programming but I know how this works. Valdean and I worked on it together. He was always…” She trailed off before giving a soft sigh. “We can do it now. Here, come this way.”
So, while Letters worked on fixing Sitters’ memory, Archibold, Marina, Gliner, and I did all the physical work on the system itself as Ausesh called out instructions. Shifting the memory-eraser part of the system over to restoring the memories it had changed wasn’t exactly easy. It was possible, but required some rewiring and even physically moving components. Apparently she mainly knew how to do this because Valdean had talked her through it as a just in case sort of measure. Which, well, we had definitely hit ‘just in case’ quite awhile back.
Either way, while it was time-consuming, and would’ve been impossible if she wasn’t telling us exactly what to do, the actual work itself wasn’t that hard. I was able to zone out just a little and simply focus on moving one piece of the machine somewhere else, or switching the positions of two wires, that sort of thing. Mostly I focused on what was going to happen once we got out of here. Avalon and Shiori were probably going to kill me. Then find a way to resurrect me so Tabbris and my dad could kill me. Then Abigail and Wyatt could take their turn, and– yeah. I probably had a lot of death in front of me.
Though that sentence could be completely accurate in a few other ways too.
In any case, after about an hour, we had the whole thing put together. Letters had finished with Sitter about twenty minutes earlier, and had been replaced by Peanut, the pixie Aspect. And yes, that meant that, thanks to Tailor, she shrank down to a positively tiny form. In that body, small as it was, she was able to get into the very tight spaces within the machine, which would’ve required the rest of us to take the thing apart to reach. And boy was Peanut excited to be in the outside world. She kept commenting about how big everything was, even though she’d been in a larger space inside the Carnival. But when I pointed that out, she said this place felt bigger. I could only imagine how she’d react to the actual outside world.
Between her going into those tiny spaces we couldn’t fit in and (somewhat reluctantly) temporarily shifting into the skittish bunny-like Bijou so she could simply reach through solid material, the Aspects were already incredibly helpful.
Not that they weren’t already helpful, considering Letters’ ability to fix Sitter. But still. They were definitely making very good first impressions.
Finally, it was done. Before we activated it, of course, I told Sitter that we needed him to use the intercom to warn everyone it was coming. Which he did, politely reintroducing himself, assuring the guests he was fine, and that they should sit down while their memories were restored.
From where she was hovering next to one of the computer terminals, Ausesh nodded to me while indicating the enter button. “Press that, and the system will restore all altered memories.”
My finger rose, then I stopped myself and looked over to Bijou. The pink bunny girl was half-hiding behind Marina, eyes and ears darting in every direction. She might’ve been less afraid of us now, but that didn’t mean she was completely calm. And she was making absolutely certain to keep either Marina or me between her and any of the others. So, I kept my voice low. “You guys wanna do the honors? Since you helped so much.”
Her head tilted a bit at me, before she abruptly shifted down into the much smaller Peanut. “I’ll do it!” the pixie girl cheerfully called. Flying over, she landed next to the computer. “This is one small step for pixies–which is saying a lot, cuz we’re pretty small to begin with, and one giant leap for Aspect-kind!” With that, she stomped down hard with her foot on the enter button, while making a trumpet sound with her mouth.
*****
After that, well, a lot of things happened very quickly. The people of the vault had all of their memories back. They knew who their children were, and that caused a lot of emotions. Marina and I did our best to help them through it, as did Sitter and Sesh. Ausesh wasn’t exactly suited for that sort of thing, and the two bodyguards were more about physical action than helping with emotions.
Obviously, we promised again to help get their families back together. I reassured them once more that we would send more people into the vault to talk to all of them. I knew Abigail would want to come in here, and that she would know exactly who to bring with her. There was a lot that was going to have to be done in order to fix all of this. We were also going to set up a way to get in and out of it more easily, which Ausesh said she had a few ideas for. A way to link this vault both to Wonderland and to the Fusion school.
There was a lot to be done. I would have to go in and out of this place for quite awhile before we were through fixing everything Perrsnile had done. And I couldn’t even get rid of that piece of shit’s ghost until we knew for certain he’d told us everything.
But, in the meantime, I could at least get out of here for now. Ausesh was coming with, given the trouble she would have when it came to those orichalcum walls. I was going to set her up with a lab in the Haunted Mansion so she could work on those new vault entrance ideas. Besides, she wanted a bit of time away from Gliner for the time being, which I couldn’t blame her for.
As for Gliner himself, and Archibold, they would be staying in the vault to help out, in between going out with us to find the missing family members. Sesh was staying there too. Apparently she’d taken a liking to all the vault people, and wanted to stick around for awhile. Besides, they were deep into that D&D game and she didn’t want to abandon her players.
Which left Marina and me standing back in Valdean’s room, along with Dakota and Jordan, the Denny-Aspect who was blue, with the scales, red hair, and the trident and all that. Apparently she manipulated water and had something to do with marine animals. Even as we stood there, she bounced the trident against the floor, making it give off a steady ringing sound as she called, “I cannot wait to see the outside world! My first order of business shall be to investigate this ‘streaming video.’ I had no idea computers were so protected against being wet.”
The words actually made Dakota snicker before she poked the blue-scaled figure. “Did Denny make you as the one who likes puns on porpoise?”
“I do not know,” Jordan shot back, “I shall have to ponder that.”
Groaning despite myself at their antics, I shook my head. “Well, I can already tell which of my girlfriends you’ll get along with.” Turning to the two bodyguards, who stood nearby, I added, “Take care of things in here until we bring some more people back to help, okay?”
They promised they would, before I nodded to Sitter. “Okay, hit it.”
“Very well,” he confirmed. “Be safe, and do not be strangers, Lady Flick, Lady Marina, Lady Dakota, and Lady… Jordan,” he confirmed. “And all the other Sir and Lady Aspects. We will look forward to your return visits. For more than one reason.”
With that, he did… something, and the air shimmered around us. Suddenly, we were standing on the hillside right above the ghost town of Wonderland. I could see the place stretched out below us.
“Ahh, that’s better,” I announced while stretching my arms. Then I reached out through my connection to my little sister. Tabs, you there?
Flick! She sounded both shocked and delighted. You made it!
Yup, I confirmed. It’s a really long story, but what did we miss?
Uhhh… There was a pause, then, Hang on, I’ll come to you! Then we can share stories. Cuz this one’s pretty long too.
That’s great, I sent back. I gotta tell you, what I definitely really need right now is a big surpr–
“Ms. Chambers,” a voice spoke up from behind me, even as my Necromancy started screaming at the power I was feeling. I spun so fast I almost fell over, even as Marina, Dakota, and Jordan did the same around me. We found ourselves facing a single semi-transparent figure.
“I believe… I owe you… and a great many others… an apology,” Manakel’s ghost announced.
Heretical Edge and Summus Proelium 