“No… no, no way.” Sands was shaking her head as the five of us floated there in the ocean, each supported by one of my sharks. Which was a good thing, since neither of the twins seemed to be in any kind of position to be keeping themselves above the water.

“You mean one of us–one of us is…” Lowering her voice, Sands whispered hoarsely, “possessed?! And you’ve been–you’ve been lying about all this stuff you’ve been doing?”

“Only the stuff that we couldn’t let the Seosten know,” I reiterated. “The stuff about learning how to expel them, finding Fahsteth when we said we were fighting zombies with Dare, lying about the choker being destroyed. Okay, yeah, it was a lot of lying. But Sands, we’re really sor-”

“Really sorry,” the other girl interrupted while squinting darkly at me. “Seriously, dude? You’re really sorry? I’m pretty sure Scout and me should be insulted right now.”

My mouth opened and shut a couple times. “I–like I said, we were trying to… there wasn’t any–”

Sands rolled her eyes. “Not insulted for that, dummy. We’re not insulted because you had to lie and keep secrets, we’re insulted that you’d think we’d be mad about it after you explained it. Seriously? You think we’re that selfish? Maybe I’d be a little miffed if it was anything less than this, but it was Seosten, Flick. Of course we’re not mad that you had to make sure it was safe before you told us. That’s just common sense. How freaking self-centered do you think we are?”

My mouth opened and shut a few times at that. “I–I–um. Oh. Well, um. Sorry? I mean, thanks.”

Avalon snorted, head shaking. “Now you know what’s been happening. And why we couldn’t tell you the truth until we knew you weren’t possessed. And why you can’t tell anyone else yet.”

Sands nodded slowly, sinking back a bit against Sherman as the bull shark held her up. “I–you… you really think that it’s someone close to you? One of the team, or Deveron, or…”

“It has to be,” I confirmed. “Everything they know about, everything I overheard, what Fahsteth said, whoever this Charmeine is possessing, it’s someone that’s close to us, someone we trust.”

“So you have to clear us, one at a time,” Sands murmured, her eyes wide as she took all that in. “Holy shit. I mean, I… we knew they could possess people, sure. But I never–I mean I didn’t think they were actually–I didn’t know that–holy shit.” Repeating herself, she looked almost sick.

It was an expression that got even worse as Scout leaned over to whisper something to her. I saw Shiori flinch beside me, her own enhanced hearing obviously allowing her to pick up whatever Scout had said. Sands, for her part, looked pale as she turned to me. “Oh. Scout, um–” She grimaced, working her mouth a little. “Scout wants to know if you’ll check our dad.”

The question made me flinch, for more than one reason. After a brief hesitation, I nodded. “Of course. I–maybe…” Pausing, I thought about offering to let them take the choker to check their father themselves. But honestly, I couldn’t be sure that they’d be able to disguise their reaction if he was possessed. And if they did give anything away, it wouldn’t be hard for whatever theoretical Seosten was possessing the man to figure out that they knew too much. And from there, well, he’d probably get the choker back in about two seconds if he knew about it.

“Yes,” I finally settled on. “We’ll test him, as soon as we can. I mean, I don’t wanna just walk right up to everyone who might be possessed and put my hands all over them. Even if the Seosten didn’t start getting suspicious about it, I’m pretty sure I’d end up on some kind of list.”

Sands started to nod then, before blinking. “Hey, that reminds me… how did you guys get back to the island?” She was squinting. “You said you had to talk to the head in the lighthouse to get it to send you away in the first place–which, for the record, I am also completely freaking out about and you are totally going to take us up there to talk to the thing at some point.”

“Um, it’d probably help if you started out not calling him a ‘thing’,” I pointed out mildly.

Her head bobbed up and down. “Right, right, of course. I just–the point is, that’s how you got off the island. But you had to go through all that in the first place because of those bozos from the Committee. So how’d you get back onto the grounds?”

“Oh,” I replied, “that part was simple. I just called Gaia. She got Dare to distract the guard in the lighthouse. Then she went up there and left her phone on speaker so that I could talk to the Reaper and ask him to bring us back over.”

For a couple minutes after that, the five of us just floated there in the water. I didn’t want to do anything to interrupt the twins as they clearly came to terms with everything we’d just told them, and from the look on Avalon and Shiori’s faces, they felt pretty much the same way. So we just sat like that, letting Sands and Scout work through it for as long as they needed. Once in awhile, they’d ask a question about something that had happened, and I’d answer. Other than that, however, there was relative silence (beyond, of course, the sound of the ocean around us).

Eventually, Sands looked to her sister. The two exchanged silent stares for a few seconds, seeming to come to some kind of silent agreement before both of them looked to me. “Okay,” the talkative twin announced, “we get why you had to lie before. But now we’re in, all right? We want to be included. Whatever happens, we get to help. We’re your team, Flick. Let us help.”

I stared at them both. After everything that happened, all the stuff I’d had to lie about… they accepted it and moved on, just because they realized that I had to? Just like… that? There was a thick lump in my throat, which wasn’t entirely because of what they said. It was also because of what I knew I had to say. I couldn’t put it off anymore. Not after what they’d just done.

“Shy, Valley….” I murmured before coughing as I raised my voice. “Could you guys give us a few minutes? I–I need to talk to them alone.” Glancing to the two, I added a soft, “Please.”

They both seemed to realize quickly what was going on. Avalon nodded, shooting a brief glance toward the probably even-more confused twins before she and Shiori started off back to shore.

“Uh, Flick?” Sands offered, her tone puzzled, “are you sure you didn’t get this whole thing backwards? You already told us the bad news, remember? Why are they leaving now?”

Biting my lip, I took a moment. I’d been thinking about this for awhile by this point, ever since I learned the truth from Klassin Roe. That had been… jeez, before Christmas. You’d think that, by this point, I’d already know exactly what to say to them about it. But I didn’t. I had no idea.

So, I just decided to wing it. Thinking about it any more was just giving myself more excuses to avoid actually saying what I had to say, more reasons to delay. “Um. So, I have something to tell you guys about the umm, the war. You know, the one with my mom and the… yeah.”

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

I wasn’t helping matters like that. Sands was even more confused. “Uh, now you’re going even further back. I swear, if you’re about to confess that your mom was part of a group that was trying to protect Strangers that they thought weren’t evil, I’m gonna have you checked for a concussion. Or possible possession, I’m not sure which. What the hell, dude?”

“No, no, I–” Sighing, I started over. “Okay. Listen, I found this out awhile ago, back before Christmas. But first I didn’t know how to bring it up, and then there was all that stuff about not knowing who to trust or what to–it was hard. But um, the thing is… your dad was… sort of the person who… kinda… got the war started in the first place.”

Seeing the obvious confusion on their faces, I pushed on, rushing by that point to just get it all out. “What I mean is–ugh. Okay, I’m just gonna say it. My mom was working with people to secretly protect Alters. Sort of like what we’ve been doing, but more proactive. You know, a secret group of people she trusted. Like I trust you guys. One of–um, one of those people was your dad. She trusted him with the secret about what they were doing. And he… um, he sort of went to the Committee and turned them in. That’s how they found out what Mom and her people were doing and brought the whole thing out into the open. That’s what started the civil war.”

Silence. Nothing. Absolutely no sound whatsoever came from either of the twins. Sands and Scout both just floated there, staring at me in complete silence for… I had no idea how long. It felt like hours. But then, it could have been only a few seconds. I heard a slight ringing somewhere in the back of my head that I had to convince myself wasn’t real. I was afraid. I was more afraid of their reaction to this news than I had been about everything else. They’d understood why I had lied to them and kept secrets about the Seosten thing. This was their dad. It was their dad, after they’d already lost their mother. How could they possibly react to this?

As it turned out, the answer was: not well. Scout looked stricken, of course. Her mouth had fallen open, and she was staring at me as if I’d… well, as if I’d told her that her own father had been responsible for a war that nearly ripped their society apart, all because he betrayed someone who should have been one of his closest friends, someone who had trusted him.

But it was Sands, Sands who kicked off and started to swim to the beach. She moved so abruptly and so quickly that it took me a second to react. Scout looked just as taken aback, making a noise of confusion before starting after her sister, who was already halfway to shore.

Catching hold of Scout’s arm, I gave a short whistle. Brody and Quint both swam right up, giving us a lift to the shallows that cut off some of the other girl’s lead. We scrambled up out of the water just as Sands started out onto the sand, and I blurted, “Hey, wait! Where are you going?”

“Where?” Sands demanded, pivoting back toward me. “Where am I going? You just told me that my dad–” She lowered her voice slightly, into a hiss that was quieter, though not that much further away from hysterical. “You just told me that my dad was responsible for the entire civil war and everything that happened in it, and you want to know where I’m going?”

I winced, my mouth opening and shutting a couple of times as I fought for the right words. But before I could actually say anything, she went on.

“We lost our mom.” Her eyes were so wet that I didn’t think she could see anything out of them, and it had nothing to do with the ocean. “We lost our mom, and now… now you’re saying that…”

Pivoting, she punched a tree so hard that her fist made a hole in the thing, while letting out a noise that sounded like a mix between a grunt and a somewhat muffled scream.

Scout quickly moved to her sister, while Sands stood there with her fist embedded in the tree. Her voice was lower.

“Do you have any idea how much I wanted things to go back to the way they were supposed to be before all this happened? Do you have the slightest clue how hard I wished for all the monsters to be the monsters they were supposed to be, for all of the Heretics to be the great, upstanding, perfect heroes that I always thought we were? Do you understand?

“My whole life, we were told the stories about the noble Heretics saving humanity. And I wanted it, I wanted all of it. When you told me about the Alters thing, how they’re not all monsters, you have no idea how hard it was not to go straight to Gaia, or one of the other teachers. I was scared, I was scared and I was mad and I wanted… I wanted everything to be the way it was supposed to be…

“I wanted to tell them, I wanted them to make things be the way they were supposed to be. I wanted you to be wrong. I wanted all of us to be the heroes we were supposed to be. I wanted to tell them, I wanted them to make it better. I wanted you to be wrong. It’s selfish, I know, I know. But I still wanted it. I wanted it so bad.”

Pulling her fist out of the tree, Sands turned to face me, while her sister put a hand on her shoulder. “But I didn’t. I didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t do that, because it was wrong. Because you trusted me, and because me wanting something to be true doesn’t make it true. A hero doesn’t stick with things exactly as they are just because it’s easier. But it’s hard, because every time I look around and see everything that we are, I have to question all of it now. I have to question everything now, my entire life. All of it.

“Mom, she decided that Strangers weren’t all evil. She did it, and Scout is still alive because she trusted the Stranger that saved her.”

Glancing to the girl beside her before looking back to me, Sands lowered her voice a bit more. It was trembling. “But now you’re telling me that if the positions had been reversed, if Dad had been there instead of Mom for whatever reason, Scout would have died. Scout would’ve died because Dad wouldn’t trust them, he wouldn’t trust a Stranger.

“I wanted things to go back to the way they were, I wanted things to be the way they were supposed to be the whole time I was growing up. But they’re not. They’re not, and no matter how much I want them to be, they won’t. I moved on. I’ve been trying to move on, and the one thing that has helped me with that, the one thing that is helped the most is the fact that I knew I knew that if push came to shove and I had to tell my dad the truth, he would believe me. He would be there for me, for us, because he’s my dad. He’s our dad. And no matter what kind of wrong things he did, my dad always did the right thing if he could. If we told him the truth, if we showed him the truth, he’d listen.

“But now… now you’re telling me that he wouldn’t. Because he already betrayed his friends. He took the easy way out. He turned them in. This whole war that happened, all of it is his fault. He would have turned in my mom, his wife. He would’ve turned us in. He’s our dad, he’s the only parent we have left, and you’re saying that he would have turned us in.”

There was an anger in the other girl’s eyes that I’d never seen there before, a hardness as she continued. “And you know what? Mom would’ve been on the side of the rebellion. She would have been on that side, if they hadn’t erased it. Which Dad obviously helped them do. If they hadn’t done that, if the rebellion wasn’t erased, our parents never would’ve gotten together in the first place. Which means Scout and me, we would never have been born.

“So you want to know where I’m going? I have no idea. But where I want to go is to my dad, so I can…” Sands trailed off for a moment before her head shook, tears for flowing freely as they had been throughout all of this. “So I can punch him. So I can punch him and keep punching until… until…”

Words had completely failed the other girl by that point, and she fell to both knees, shoulders shaking heavily as she cried.

And I… I had no idea what to say. Honestly, I’d kind of expected Scout to be the one that was more upset by everything, not Sands. I thought Scout would be upset and Sands would know what to say. If anything, I’d thought that Sands would almost be on her father’s side of the whole thing. This was… this wasn’t going the way I’d thought it would, at all.

While I stood there, clueless for a few seconds, Scout had already knelt by her sister and was embracing her. Neither of them said anything, content for the moment to just hold onto each other while they tried to cope with what I’d just told them.

And what could I say? I’m sorry? It was pathetically inadequate. I remembered how I’d felt as a kid when people told me they were sorry that my mother had abandoned my father and me. Apologies, sympathy, anything I could’ve said felt… wrong.

So I didn’t say anything. Instead, I took a few steps forward and then sank to my knees beside the twins. With a heavy lump in my throat, I embraced Sands and Scout, putting one arm around each of them.

I wasn’t sure how long we stayed there like that. But I did know one thing with crystal clear certainty by the time we moved again.

Liam Mason deserved every single punch his daughters wanted to give him.