Yume opens her eyes and begins to heave, trying to cough up the pseudo-liquid that filled her lungs inside of the memory. Once she realizes she’s back in her body and out of the dark pool of recollection, she starts to collect herself.

She may not be cognizant of it, but there is a change occurring within her. The deepest desires of her heart have always been reuniting with her mother. Without really addressing it, she shifts her focus entirely. The world she has been exposed to is so much more important than finding her mother. Systemic killings to create a jewel for a king. She finds herself outraged at the hell this child and their father have put her in.

All these years of wondering what her father was asking her to do on the day of his death have been eradicated. With one question answered, another is bestowed upon her; is her father dead? Regardless, she is in possession of the secrets he was referring to. She knows he must have meant the nodes on her bracelet.

Then again, she’s in Junker’s house and he is adamantly against talking to Hypatia about a supposedly made-up memory. There’s no chance he’d be willing to take her there, especially with her emboldened sense of urgency.

Yume decides to take matters into her own hands and go there herself. She knows the way after all, so even if Rosie won’t carry her there, she can manage the walk. Her mind is made up, she is going to sneak out of the house and get her to watch these memories.

She gets up from the bed and makes her way to the door, one hand clutching the hook, the other holding the bracelet.

One look up the stairs leading to the kitchen and it’s clear that this won’t be an easy task. Junker is awake and cooking something in the kitchen. God only knows what time it is now; Yume has no idea how long she was out for. She decides to take her chances.

One delicate step after the other, she makes her way to the top. Junker has his back turned to her, babying something that’s searing in a pan. He’s humming along to a song of sorts that must be playing in his head. Perfect! She thinks.

Attempting to move quickly, she makes a few brisk steps through the tile. Only a few more to make it to the door handle.

Suddenly a loud POP! comes from the pan.

“OUCH!” Junker yells as he clutches his hand and turns away from the pan.

“AH!” He yells again. “Yume! What are you doin’ there, girl, you gave me a good scare!”

“Sorry, Junk. I was just going to go for a walk. Need to clear my head” she says in an anxious tone.

Junker raises one of his non-existent eyebrows. “Oh…just a walk, eh?”

“Yes, just a walk. I saw a lot today, or yesterday, whatever the hell time it is.” She sighs. “I just need to get my head straight.”

“Alright then, I don’t see no reason to stop ya. Just give Rosie a scratch on the way out.” He smiles at her.

Yume smiles back, actively trying not to smile too hard, as she feels a bit cheeky after successfully lying.

“I’ll give her a good one for ya! Be back in a while!” She says, and nonchalantly exits the house.

As she closes the door, she says a quiet holy shit to herself and makes her way up the path; not forgetting to give Rosie a little pat before leaving. She feels a tad bit guilty after having pulled a fast one on Junker like that. He clearly trusts her, having let her go off on her own after their last discussion. Ultimately, it doesn’t hinder her; the ends justify the means.

It must be somewhere in the afternoon now; the sun is shining brightly down upon the crimson prairies and houses scattered across the land. The tall blades of grass whisper in the light breeze. Yume has a moment of gratitude as she breathes in the clean air. It wasn’t long ago when a breath this deep in the open would leave her choking.

Moving along, she stares into the forest surrounding the edges of the prairie. It’s odd, there are a few abandoned houses off in the distance. They appear to have something wrapped around the outside. It’s a silly thought, but it almost looks as though they’ve been wrapped in cellophane.

Yume follows the path to the fork and looks beyond Hypatia’s house, towards the city in the distance. She lets her curiosity swell and stares hard at it, before coming back to the task at hand.

She makes her way down the dirt path to Hypatia’s armored door. On the side is the panel that Junker pressed his face into. She mimics what she saw him do and presses her nose and cheeks firmly against the glass.

It lights up and a white line runs down from the top to the bottom of the screen, scanning her facial features. After a few cycles of scanning, it beeps loudly and flashes red.

“Huh?” Yume asks aloud.

She tries again, only to be met with the same result. Without hesitation she goes for a third try, only to be met with a video feed of Hypatia sitting on her chair.

“Who’s there?” Hypatia asks.

Feeling a little nervous now, Yume responds. “I-it’s me, Yume. I need to talk to you.”

Her face lights up. “Oh, Yume! Please, darling, come on in!”

The large parts of the door decompress and open, with the sides of the door spraying Yume down in white mist. Yume makes her way down the tunnel and past Rosie’s nesting spot. She lifts her hand to knock, only to be met with Hypatia opening the door and welcoming her inside.

“Hello, Yume! To what do I owe the pleasure this time?”

“Hi, Hypatia. I have some things I want to show you!”

Hypatia lifts her eyebrow in an enthusiastic curiosity. “Well, I would love to see what you have. Please, come in, take a seat.”

Yume follows her inside her shop where she is then led back through a curtain. Inside this curtain is a room made entirely of lush cushions. From the floor to the walls, everything is soft and comfortable, like a huge couch. There’s several fur blankets and pillows all laid around the room. Hypatia takes a seat against a portion of the room shaped like two chairs.

“What did you want to show me, dear?” She asks.

“Well, before I show you, can I ask you a question?”

“Certainly.”

“Okay, so, when you and my dad went to the pinnacle, what exactly did you see there?”

Hypatia’s expression changes from joy, to controlled sadness.

“We saw the collection of our people’s suffering. A monumental atrocity.”

“I know that much, but what about the tippy-top. Do you remember an egg?”

Hypatia looks sincerely confused, with a tinge of grief.

“There is nothing beyond the pool.” She responds, in a mono-toned drone.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

“Hmm. Well, okay, thanks for answering anyways.”

“Of course,” She raises an eyebrow “now, what did you want to show me?”

Yume reaches into her pockets and pulls out the memory hook and a specific opal node.

“Adam wanted me to show you this. It was his dying wish; I saw it in his memories.”

Hypatia scoots herself close to Yume and leans in towards her, ecstatically.

“Adam left me something?” She squeaks.

Yume nods and hands her the items.

“If you’d like, I can give you some time to go through them all.”

Hypatia looks at the nodes and clutches them, nervously.

“Would you mind staying, darling? Memories can be troublesome; I would greatly appreciate your company.”

Yume nods. “Of course, I will.”

Hypatia gets up and grabs one of the many luxurious-looking blankets strewn about the room. She lays herself down on a flat portion of the floor and throws the blanket over herself. Yume grabs the node, presses it into the hook, and lays it down on top of Hypatia.

Hypatia grabs onto Yume’s hand and uses her other hand to hold the scepter. In an instant, Hypatia’s hand goes entirely limp, with her body following suit.

“Pat?” Yume asks.

Clearly, she is no longer in the room. Yume finds it strange seeing someone else experience the hook. The way one’s body becomes powerless and vacant. It looks almost as if Hypatia has just passed away, but her heart is still beating.

It’s not long before Yume begins to ask herself how long she’ll be out for. Junker was damn near snoring by the time she got through the first node. Was it hours? Days? Yume wasn’t entirely sure, but Hypatia asked her to stay, and stay she will.

The cushion-lined walls and flooring were neat at first but are becoming claustrophobic as the minutes tick by. Between the boredom and the anxiety, she begins to pace the room. The dread of not knowing how Hypatia will react to such information slowly eats at her. The node she put in there was the node of Adam seeing the king.

The glowing lights of the display cases in Hypatia’s shop peek through the curtain separating the two rooms. Yume slips out for a moment, trying to take her mind off things with some of the treasures laid about.

She heads to the front of the store and glances at the cases. Rows and rows of nodes, all varying in color and gem-cut. A wide array of greens, blues, and opal all sparkling in their glory.

Yume moves towards the back of the store, presumably where Hypatia would stand. Back here is the display of fixer. Blue, glowing vials line the shelves. On the back end of the display is a large tank full to the brim with the liquid. It has a pipe that connects down to a compartment below the floor.

“Huh?” Yume asks, as she finds a small window showing the inside of the compartment below.

She stares down into it trying to figure out what she’s seeing. On one end is a tube slowly trickling out fixer. On the other end it is dark; much too dark to see what’s happening. Every so often, though, a small red flash illuminates something.

It’s so difficult to make out what’s happening, but in the brief glimpse Yume can see a red liquid being pumped into an enclosure. Inside of the enclosure are a few things sitting along a small pool of red liquid. She can’t tell what they are. All she can articulate are legs. Lots of tiny, spindly legs. They seem to be feeding on this red liquid.

“YUME!!” belts out from behind the curtain.

“HUH?” She fumbles to her feet. “Oh! Sorry Pat! I’m still here!”

Yume rushes back through the curtains into the padded room. Hypatia is clutching around her forehead, moaning in pain. Yume falls to her knees, trying to get a look at what’s going on with her. Her node is glowing a faint orange and smoking. It looks as if it were a coil on an old electric stove.

“W-what’s going on, Pat?” Yume blurts out.

“I…I remember. Everything. I remember every moment that they pulled from me.”

Hypatia grabs the node and screams out in agony as it singes the skin on her fingers.

She tries to explain through her searing pain. “Showing a true memory to someone who has been hooked erases the false memory. Our brains naturally make connections between memories, it even associates feelings and sensations. The network that used to house my memory was still there, it just needed to be reminded.”

“GAH” She yells out as the node sparks and sputters. “It’s overloaded. It doesn’t want me to remember, but it’s too late.”

Yume’s face is beaming with confusion. “You think the node has desires?”

“Oh, dear, enough with the confused-little-girl mindset. Who do you think gave us these?” She snaps.

“These came from The Chamber.”

“Yes.” She gets increasingly frustrated with Yume’s comprehension as she’s fighting a burning node attached to her forehead. “You saw the rest of those memories then, right?”

Yume nods.

“The king made that really special node, which you have, correct?”

Yume nods again.

“Before the king spent all of his power creating that special node, his body was used to create nodes. His entire cocoon would produce them. They made these, to control us.”

Hypatia’s node begins to glow less intensely. She sighs in relief as the pain subsides.

“So, what now, is your node going to try and hook the memory back out?”

“No, nodes can’t hook by themselves, they can only uphold a false memory after it has been implemented. Their main purpose for civilians is to transmit data.” Hypatia’s face scrunches in concern. “The data that it transmitted just now may as well have been a death sentence.”

“Hypatia, I am so sorry. Junk forbid me from coming here, I shouldn’t have done this.” Yume pleads.

“Don’t you dare apologize to me, darling. I would rather die knowing the truth than drift away years from now with my memories trapped in rose-tinted glass.”

Hypatia scans around the room in a sudden deep thought.

“What is it?” Yume asks.

“Follow me. Now.”

Yume gets up and follows Hypatia through the curtain, back into the merchandised room. Hypatia goes to the center of the room, with her eyes darting around at all the cabinets and display cases. She does a few circles around and then heads through a small door into another room.

This room is dimly lit with a faint blue overhead light. It’s packed full of large, armored boxes and crates. Hypatia begins flipping through them all desperately searching for something.

Box after box. Crate after crate. No luck. That is, until she reaches a small container towards the bottom, covered in old cob-webs and dust.

“Ah-ha!” she exclaims.

Hypatia cracks open the case, revealing a hunk of concrete about the size of a can of soda. There are two circular pieces of electronic boards screwed into it, leading wires into the hunk’s insides.

“What is that?” Asks Yume.

Hypatia giddily walks out to the main room, holding the object in her hands, giggling quietly.

“Yume, we don’t have time for anymore explanations.”

Yume sinks a little bit and conceals her curiosity.

“The child’s node, do you have that on you?”

Yume lifts her wrist up at her and shows her the bracelet with the red node resting at the top.

“Excellent. I have some friends who can help us out with this”

“Help us-“ Yume cuts her question off, remembering the urgency. “Okay. I trust you.”

Hypatia smiles at her and gives her a quick hug.

“Now, here’s the thing with these friends. Their appearance is peculiar. I need you to not react at all when you meet them. Can you do that for me?”

“…yes?” Yume responds.

“Great. Ah, this is so exciting. Unexpected, certainly, but I think I have longed for this day for years. Not that I knew what I was longing for all that time, but I felt it. This is what I have desired.”

“I’m excited too! I think.” Yume says, growing sheepish as her sentence progressed.

“Adam and I’s plan extended far beyond just stealing that node, Yume. There’s a lot we need to do and not enough time to do it all.”

They hurry off through the door of Hypatia’s shop and out through the tunnel. Together, they walk down the path and take the fork leading to those abandoned houses Yume saw before seeing Hypatia.

The trees surrounding these buildings and homes are twisted and curled in a horrendous fashion. Not even one is alive and by the looks of it, it’s been decades since they’ve last bloomed.

The area’s dark, sinister atmosphere is enough to make Yume start to shake nervously.

Hypatia grabs her hand.

“This way, dear. I can’t imagine how long they’ve been awaiting us. Best to not leave them in the dark much longer.”

Hypatia slips a node out of her robe and presses it into her hand. Her hand spasms for a moment and then becomes incredibly sturdy. The veins around the node engorge and she clenches her fingers into a fist.

“No need to knock when it comes to friends, right?”

Yume, trying to control her shaking, gives her a light-hearted shrug.

Hypatia walks behind one of the houses and into its backyard. There’s a large circular patch of dirt in the middle of it. When the moonlight catches it just right, the dirt glistens and sparkles.

As they walk closer to the patch, Yume can see now that the dirt is laced with thousands of tiny strands. It’s like silk that’s been woven into the ground.

“Watch your step!” Hypatia says as she slams her fist into the dirt.

Yume steps back, watching her slide her arm deeper into the dirt.

Hypatia lets out a tremendous roar and begins to lift the patch. The strands through the dirt act as a glue that holds it all together. She lifts it and then throws the top back so that it lands against the wall of another house.

Beneath the dirt is a hole covered entirely of the silk like fiber. This patch of dirt was not a cover to a secret base, no, it was a trap door. Meant for large prey to walk on and fall into.

“What exactly did you get me into, Pat?” Yume asks, trying not to cry in fear.

“There’s someone down here who’s going to help us.”

Hypatia takes a prudent step into the silky tunnel. The vibrations from her movement ripple down into the abyss. The twisting strands sparkle in the moonlight shining above them. As Yume takes her first step down, she’s met with a tinge of déjà vu .

This feels familiar…she thinks, as her hands steady against the webbed edge. She brushes it off and follows Hypatia deeper into the hole. It only takes a few steps before the faint light fades into nothing.

The sounds of them walking begin to dampen. Each step down is quieter and quieter, Yume starts to hyperventilate in a panic.

“What’s going on?!” She tries to scream, but nothing comes out.

The only sign of her struggle was in the form of a shockwave down the web. Hypatia turns around and grabs her lips. She grabs a small flashlight out of her robe and turns it on her face.

Hypatia holds her finger to her lips and then grabs Yume in a hug. She rubs her back in a circular motion, trying to calm her down. She holds the flashlight up to her face again and begins mouthing some words to her.

You

Must

Be

Quiet.