Mattie returned with a bright smile and a skip in her step, superciliously tucking her slingshot back into her pants pocket. She rolled her shoulders as she approached. “Ah, that was stress relieving.”

She stood behind the bench to give our shoulders a hard pat. “Just what I needed.” Mattie leaned forward, sticking her face and shoulders over the back and into the relatively large gap between where Jack and I were sitting. “I thought about it, and while I’ve had enough of people lying to me, I’ll forgive you as long as you help.”

Unsure of what to say, I went with, “That’s what we’re here for.” And, quite literally, what I signed up for.

Her smug smile dropped a little. “I know.” She rustled her hair at the scalp. “And I thought about your reasoning. I don’t agree with or like it, but I understand why you didn’t want to tell me.”

Mattie’s smile dropped into a full scowl. “Just don’t do it again?”

I went with the honest “I wasn’t planning to.”

“Good.”

Mattie strode around the bench to drop herself between Jack and me, sitting just a few inches closer to Jack than me. She looked around the park area. “Where’s Cove?”

“You just noticed?” Jack wondered.

She slammed her shoulder against his. “No, I just didn’t ask earlier.”

“He split shortly after you.”

“I see,” Mattie said.

We drifted into pleasant conversation as we waited for Cove, carefully avoiding discussing the current future. Jack offhandedly mentioned that I’d been to Heirs, and our conversation quickly derailed into discussions about the characters and my time there.

Some time into our conversation, Jack questioned if we should send someone after Cove, wondering if something had happened. Thinking about the range of spells Cove could perform, I told them not to bother.

Shortly before we were supposed to meet back up, Cove stumbled out of the woods. He looked frantically around before his eyes caught on us, and he straightened, playing off whatever had been plaguing him. Sweat dripped down his brow, and he casually made his way to where we were sitting.

“I lost track of time.” He explained, dropping down onto the bench to my right.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Mattie snorted. “You sure you didn’t get lost?” She teased.

Cove flushed, and he reached up to tug at his ear. By the time he’d decided on how to respond, it was too late. “No way, are you for real? You actually got lost?” Mattie asked.

“The trail was longer than I expected,” he dodged.

The sweat dripping off his brow caught my attention, and my next question slipped out as I was thinking it. “Did you have to teleport back?”

His silence gave us our answer, and Mattie started laughing. Jack joined in, and I couldn’t help myself from laughing either. I’d put Cove on such a pedestal during all of those months of training that seeing this new, human side of him was both nice and a little absurd. Cove tried to hide the growing smile on his face, but we all managed to catch sight of it before he turned away.

We left after we regained our breath, returning to Bearard’s office. During the car ride, Mattie told Cove what she’d said to Jack and me, and Cove had copied my response nearly word for word. When Mattie pointed this out, Cove said, “How unbearable,” sending another roaring round of laughter through the car. Even I laughed, though it was less at the terrible pun than the ridiculousness of the entire situation. A talking teddy bear? In a dystopian novel?

Mattie gasped for breath. “Who named him anyway?”

In the rearview mirror, I caught sight of Jack’s ashamed face. Mattie gaped.

Cove, whose moods had been back and forth enough to give me whiplash, said, “It’s a bear-ry good name.”

Mattie giggled again. It was nice to see the two getting along after the tense situation earlier.

Before we knew it, we were back in the office, standing across from Bearard. The threads of his mouth wiggled up into a smile at the look on our faces. “You all calm down?”

Jack and Cove stepped forward to answer simultaneously, talking over each other. Perhaps remembering his philosophy, Cove dropped his smile and deferred to Jack, stepping back to stand beside me.

“We’re good. So, how are we going to do this?”

Silence fell in the room as we considered our possibilities. Finally, Mattie spoke up. “Well, we need to take down the mayor and recover the missing piece. Our novel gave us a pretty good idea on how to beat the Mayor, but what about this fragment? Do you have any ideas on where it is?”

Bearard looked contemplative, then shook his head. “I don’t.”

I cleared my throat. “I know where it is.”

Mattie whirled her head around to glare daggers at me. I surrendered. Uncertain if I was telling the truth, I said, “I wasn’t planning to keep it from you,” and told them what I’d told Cove about my dream in the cave.

Jack and Bearard exchanged thoughtful looks before it clicked. “So it was you Bearard saw.”

I rubbed the back of my neck sheepishly.

Jack continued, “And that’s why you two were so mad when I used that EMP.”

Cove and I both struck him with a dark glower, remembering both that and our unfortunate phones. If I hadn’t backed my phone up before coming, suspecting something might happen to it, the EMP blast would have been more devastating than it already was.

Cove deadpanned, slipping his dead phone out of his pocket.

Chagrinned, Jack ducked away, sticking his hands in his pockets.

“So were you two planning to hack it like we did in the future-that-never-was?” Mattie questioned.

“Sort of. They must have some way to track them if they’re repairing the destroyed ones, right? I figured I could track their locations or find out where they’ve spent a lot of time if I could get my hands on the right equipment.”

“That’s….a really good idea.”

Feeling bold, I added, “I can recall all the robots to that cave if we can get in there.”

“That’s how we’ll do it, then. We’ll hunt down one of the robots for Hayden and find out what we can, and see if we get any leads on where Bearard’s missing piece is. If we can, we’ll get John–or Hayden–to issue new orders, sending the rest of them back through the cave and up into the Mayor's house. On the outside, I’ll gather the village at the cave to reveal the Mayor’s treachery while Cove and Hayden deal with Bearard.”

It was a solid plan, and we all agreed.

We went upstairs and ate, finalizing some of the details as we ate. When we were done, we headed back to Jack’s apartment to watch more Heirs, and I drifted off to sleep.

I did not get a chance to speak to Cove like I promised. But there was always tomorrow.