While Reed entered the General’s office, Isaac loitered around outside in the hallway, unsure of what to do. He felt a calming hand on his shoulder.

“Not sure what he told you,” Babs offered with gentle eyes. “But you should get some rest. You look shocked.”

Isaac placed his own hand over hers for a moment. It was soft to the touch, warm like her smile. “Thanks. I think that’s for the best.”

Both of them seemed reluctant to let go. But, after a long while, both of them withdrew their hands. Isaac headed down the hallway, feeling Babs’ gaze on him as he disappeared into the labyrinth of floors and staircases. When he arrived outside, he hoped for a blue sky to lift his spirits, but the weather remained as overcast as ever.

At least it's not raining.

In times like these, Isaac knew he could make himself feel better by doing something productive. He would work on cultivating the Kyznosis Art tonight, but for right now, he would go check in on Lynn. He needed to make sure she didn’t tell anybody about what she saw in his memories. And perhaps more importantly - Lynn was a friend.

Except she might be a traitor.

He shook his head. It wouldn't do him any good to doubt all his friends. If one of them really was a traitor, he would have to examine it with a cool head.

I should’ve visited her earlier. But I guess I got caught up in my own things.

Isaac took the usual route home - Lynn lived in the same building as he did, just on the first floor. He gave her door a few knocks, his knuckles rapping against wood.

“J-j-just a minute!” came the anxious response from inside. Isaac stood there, knowing Lynn was likely peering at him through the peephole in the door. A moment later, the door creaked open, and Isaac saw that Lynn wasn’t doing so well. Her eyes had dark bags beneath them, and it seemed like she had lost some weight, slimming her already thin figure.

“Isaac?” she half-greeted, half-questioned. Come to think of it, the two had never talked one-on-one before; it had always been in a group.

“Hey, just wanted to check in on you. You alright?”

She almost looked mad for a moment. But then her eyes softened. Isaac had never noticed they were blue.

“Yeah, I guess so. You want to come in?”

Isaac nodded, and Lynn let him through the door. He could appreciate the cleanliness of her room - it looked spotless, just like his own, at least before Henry had destroyed most of it. She offered him a seat on her bed; she sat down next to him, twirling her streak of blue hair. There was a photo on her desk, presumably of her family. Her mother and father stood amid a group of eight children - Lynn appeared to be the eldest child, but stood off to the side on her own, away from her siblings. Her eyes looked full of surprise and anxiety in the photo. Her mother carried a hard stare to her, and Isaac felt the pangs of sorrow and fear from when he was exposed to her memories back in Machigonne. Isaac only had dim memories of his own mother, but he knew they shouldn’t act like that. But his mother was a seamstress, not someone from a family who spent generations in service to someone else.

“You’re the first person to visit,” Lynn explained, trying to hide her sorrow with a layer of casualness. “Well, Mackenzie came to visit, and she even got me more blue coloring for my hair. But, you know, we’re not friends. We’re not equals. We can’t be. My family serves hers.”

Isaac felt a pang of guilt after hearing something like that. He served on a squad of people he genuinely considered his friends. They all supported each other through thick and thin since his arrival on the base. But Lynn - she had been dumped in a squad with two elites. She was in no position to befriend them.

“I’m sorry, I should’ve visited earlier.”

“It’s okay.” That was a lie - the casualness in her voice was far too forced to sound real. “I’m currently on the list of cadets who can’t be activated for combat, and I haven’t really been doing any training. But I’ve been helping out. They have me repainting some of the buildings here. Honestly, it’s really nice. Mindless. And no chance of dying. I think it’s really helping me.”

That’s good. At least she found a healthy way to feel better-

Lynn reached down, below her bed, and produced a dirty sock. The metallic fume of industrial paint reached Isaac, even from within the sock. Lynn put it over her mouth and nose and inhaled deeply. She repeated these deep breaths for a good thirty seconds before dropping the sock back below the bed. She rubbed her eyes and her body shook for a second.

That’s not healthy at all!

“Uh…you probably shouldn’t be doing that-”

“Oh, I see,” she simply said. Her eyes stared at the wooden floor as she spoke. “When Reed gets to chain smoke cigarettes, that makes her cool. When you and Babs get high, that’s a good memory. But when Lynn huffs paint, suddenly it’s a bad thing!”

Isaac simply looked at her for a moment, unsure of what to say. “Well…it’s paint-”

“You want something from me,” she flatly declared. “You only came to see Lynn because you want something. If I had a fun quirk like loving the thee-at-ter or big muscles or staring at telephone lines, I’m sure you would’ve come to visit sooner. But no. You only remembered to see Lynn now because you want something from her.”

Her eyes took on a dangerous quality to them. The fact she that she was now speaking in the third person also didn’t help.

But Isaac knew she had a point. There was no point in lying. “I’m sorry. I guess…yeah, I do need something from you.” After a moment, Lynn gestured with an erratic shake of her hand for him to continue. “Did you tell anyone about what you saw in my memories?”

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Lynn tilted his head at him for a moment, then started laughing to herself. It was a low chuckling, not entirely stable. “Isaac…you really think I have anyone I could tell? You think I have any friends here?”

“The members of Squad 1 and 3 are your friends,” Isaac reminded her.

“Are they? Then why didn’t I get a little bowl of food with everybody’s name on it to cheer me on like you did?”

More guilt. Lynn’s hands trembled, looking slender and delicate and frail.

“I’m sorry,” Isaac said again. “We were all too focused on our own lives. But we can fix that, can’t we? We can start over and go train together again, or go to the movies together again. We’ve treated you pretty badly, but I won’t let it happen again.”

Lynn sniffled a bit, then wiped her eyes. She spent another thirty seconds huffing paint and choked down a sob afterwards. Her eyes grew cold again. “Prove it.”

“Huh?”

“Prove it to me. Reed, Babs, and Kieran all got to clasp hands with you under the moonlight. That’s the mark of a trusted friend. I want my own Isaac-hand-clasping moment. Only then will I know for sure.”

“Uh…you can’t really just do it, you know?” Isaac scratched the back of his head. “Those were all organic moments.”

“Then make it happen,” Lynn ordered.

“Well, I can’t really just make it.” Isaac, still in a little disbelief that this was an actual conversation he was having, wracked his brain for a common thread between his apparently famed moonlight moments. “They all came after someone helped me overcome emotional issues, or when I helped them overcome theirs. I don’t particularly have any emotional issues at the moment, but you…uh, you have issues with your mother, right?”

Lynn flopped backwards onto the bed and covered her face with a hand. “Yeah. Yeah, I do have issues with her. But it’s too late for that. I’m already a cultivator and I’m already in the military. How could you help me with that?”

“I could help you survive.”

“Like you did with Kieran?”

An awkward silence descended over the room. Isaac rubbed his temples - Lynn had a right to be upset, but not to disrespect the dead. She must’ve recognized this, since she rolled over and brought her legs upwards, holding herself close in a ball.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

More silence.

“Maybe you should go now,” she said quietly. “I wouldn’t tell anybody. Just come visit me again. It doesn't have to be you. It can be anyone.”

Isaac nodded. He wasn’t sure how to feel, seeing her blonde hair spill past her face, covering up most of her expression. When it came to emotional issues, it seemed like everybody had gotten theirs resolved through getting help from others, whether it be Kieran or Reed or Isaac himself. But when he saw Lynn, he rubbed his neck, because it seemed like there were things he just couldn’t solve.

At least for right now. He wouldn’t give up on her because he wouldn’t want anyone to give up on him.

The days went by. Lynn soon returned to training, and the group of cadets, minus the friend they lost and now joined by new northerners and westerners, took up their usual routine. But the atmosphere had changed. Lynn kept quiet, Demetrius still looked distressed from the discovery of dead Atalantan’s corpse, and all the while, it rained.

But at least Isaac could improve his arsenal of cultivation powers. During the day, he worked on upgrading his Foundational Technique. It would great if he could one day use his |Eightfold Fist| to punch through the solid concrete walls of an enemy pillbox; right now, he could at least punch through an increasing number of wooden planks, all of them breaking apart into satisfying splinters. At night, he worked on the Knyzosis Perception Art. The military moved him into an empty room in the same apartment building, so at least the change didn’t feel too abrupt. Reed also confirmed for him that it was free of any bugs or other listening devices. Fortunately, the destruction of his old room had spared his family photo; his brother and parents continued to watch over him while he cultivated.

It was an odd feeling - to cultivate the perception art, Isaac needed to circulate Rddhi in and out of the opened meridian in his right eye. It wasn’t a sensation he could feel on a physical level - he felt in his soul, an intangible sort of feeling that sent chills down his spine. But it wasn’t entirely unpleasant, and he kept at it each night. Working at night also helped out because seeing any bright lights after cultivating within his eye sent his head spinning.

Fortunately, he still had those two May Flower pills he bought some time ago, before the raid on Machigonne. He opted to use only one, and its effects were nearly instantaneous. He could feel the circulation move more smoothly. Occasionally, he even heard the flickers of Rddhi from around his eye socket.

Isaac sometimes switched things up and gave himself a break by checking the archives for any relevant information. His main target was this God fellow. He apparently ran the world, which meant religion, a complicated subject in a world where psychic powers existed. A complicated subject in a world where science existed, too. The Skyfather sending his bolt down to punish humanity for their transgressions - that used to be the readily-accepted, common knowledge explanation behind the Unleashing. But according to modern science, a solar flare - a projection of fire off the sun or something like that - actually caused it.

Isaac couldn’t find anything on God. He then looked for information about the other odd things he saw at East Sachem Temple, all the way back in Patuxet. The bunker was for a Population Exchange program for a Department of Domestic Security. He couldn’t find anything on the latter, while researching population exchanges brought him to the War of Arcadian Independence, when Arcadia freed itself from its Elysian shackles. Arcadia spat out its Elysian minority after the war, sending them back to their homeland. Elysia did the same in turn.

Only books written after the Unleashing could be found in the archives. That only meant five hundred years of knowledge. And, if those Greek monkey-men were real, humanity actually existed for at least three millennia - meaning the archives were missing over two thousand years of history and accumulated learning. There were floors in the archives still off-limits to a cadet like Isaac; he would need to come back to them once he ascended the ranks.

He did learn something while perusing the books at least - a hibiscus was a type of flower. It actually looked pretty, and apparently he could make tea out of them. A hibiscus tea for Hibiscus Reed would be a fun surprise.

In any case - when Isaac finally unlocked the |Fists of Anji|, it came after thousands of tries until it finally clicked. That was a combat art that could be practiced repeatedly, however. Knyzosis required a bit more finesse. Isaac memorized symbols and phrases from his book, the letters dancing in his black field of vision while he kept his eyes closed. Isaac had never learned another language before, but he assumed this was an abridged version. Just memorizing the encryption, memorizing the symbols, memorizing the way certain words could just melt into the paper. Until, one night, it also clicked.

Isaac instinctively knew. The flare of red energy spilling out of his right eye also gave it away. He splashed some water on his eye - unlike when he opened the meridian there, this didn’t really hurt, nor did it make his vision any better. The Art would only work if he wanted to encrypt his own writing or decrypt the writing of others.

A moment later, he gave an excited knock on Reed’s door. It was in the middle of night; he could see his breath condense in front of him. When Reed opened the door, she wore just a nightgown and rubbed her tired eyes.

“Can I help you?” she asked with a yawn. "Waking up a beautiful girl like me in the middle of the night. At least take me to dinner first."

Isaac didn’t have time for games.

“I’m here for my brother’s journal page.”