Long ago

We were back on the road where we'd first met, a couple months earlier. But this time, the circumstances were different.

The building was big, though my dad would've probably said it wasn't big enough. It was Inotian in style - I brought that up earlier, I think - with tall, white walls possessing only minimal protrusions, made pale grey with the passing of the decades, and a stairwell to the second floor on the exterior as well as the interior. The doors were colored vividly; a deep, purple-ish red that stood against the rest like a wine stain on a tablecloth.

It was nearly winter, now - we'd switched uniforms, our cloth tunics replaced by woolen jackets - and the street was bathed in fallen leaves, brown and orange and faded red. They flowed downhill as the gusts of harsh, bitterly-cold wind pushed in from the east. There were so many it was almost like a river. It was a wealthy area, after all; lots of free land for trees.

"We're early," I said as I opened the front gate, looking at my logic engine. "My... Her mom might not be home yet."

Ran furrowed her brow at me. "They haven't given you a key?"

"Uh, no, I do have one..." I said. "Normally. But I left it behind today because I couldn't find my shoes, and had to rush out the door to make it in time for class."

She turned back to face forward, mumbling something to herself.

"I'll try it anyway," I said, and knocked.

For 20 or seconds, I was worried we'd have to trudge back down the street and spend the next half hour awkwardly looking for something to do, but we ended up being in luck. The door clicked open, and a woman was there, smiling.

We only looked a little alike. She was shorter than me, only coming to a bit over five feet, and had a wider face with broad lips, and brighter eyes. She styled herself very differently, too, with loose hair cut to about chin-length. She was wearing a brightly-colored dress, and holding a set of keys.

She dangled them in the air with a sly expression.

"Yeah, mom, I know," I said, forcing a tired smile.

"I'm just saying," she said, gesturing to the table at the side of the doorway. "If you just remembered to leave them in the right place every morning, this sort of thing wouldn't happen." She looked to my side. "Nice to see you again, Ran."

"Good afternoon, ma'am," Ran replied, bowing her head.

My mother held the smile, but her brow flattened a bit. "Come on, call me Kataoka. I told you that there's no need to be so formal." She sighed. "Well, come on in."

We stepped into the hall, which was a relatively modest room decorated with some generic landscape paintings and a traditional Saoic rug, and took off our shoes. My mother shut the door behind us.

"Will you be staying for dinner, Ran?" she asked, in a friendly tone. My mother always had this fairly formal, but also straightforwardly warm way of speaking, like she was running a traditional inn. Well, except when she got drunk-- When that happened, she'd mostly shout at people and make really bad jokes. "We're having duck penang curry tonight. Should be more than enough for a guest, especially with Utsushikome's father away."

"Uh, we're not sure yet," I said. "We're just going to do homework, so it'll depend on how quickly we can get through it."

"I asked her, not you, Utsu," she said, raising an eyebrow. "Friends or not, it's bad manners to speak for other people."

If my life were some sort of ridiculously dark theater comedy, this would be when the crowd started laughing and I made a stupid face at them.

"...probably not today, ma'am," Ran said. "I have to be home by eight, and my house is on the other side of the hill."

"Hmm, we could have it a little earlier, if you liked," she offered.

"It's okay, mom," I said, glancing over at her. Our cat, skinny and with black fur, wandered over to me as I approached the stairs. I leaned down to pet her softly as I walked.

"Well, if you're sure," she said, with a shrug. "Though really, I hope you don't feel like you're being an imposition, Ran - you'll always be welcome to, if ever you'd like."

Ran looked at her strangely. "...thank you, ma'am," she said.

My mother sighed a little, but smiled. "Well. Feel free to let me know if you want some drinks or snacks. Though I'm sure you'd tell me you were too old for that, Utsu." She left, chuckling to herself.

My eyes followed her as she departed. I wasn't sure what was worse. The guilt that I felt every time we spoke, or the fact that, slowly, it had begun to diminish. Like stones at the edge of the sea.

We ascended the staircase in silence, our socks softly scuffing against the bare stone flooring. When we reached the top, we took a right and headed down the hall, stepping through a door on our left. The bedroom behind it was excessively large, though not too lavishly decorated. Unlike the halls, it had a carpet of a pale blue shade, and the walls were painted roughly to match. There was a double bed with a colorful duvet, a heavily-stocked bookcase, a logic engine with a small sofa. A cushioned area covered in stuffed animals, the largest of which was a life-sized boar, its eyes large and cutesy in a way that contrasted with the gruff nature of the animal. In the corner was a piano, along with a few paintings.

And out the window, the tall maple tree cast a shadow which reached into the chamber. The faint dark tendrils lining the floor, like the tentacles of some strange sea beast.

This was my room.

"Gods," Ran said. "I'll never get used to how big this place is."

We stood in the entrance for a moment, as if waiting for something to happen; a building pressure to burst all at once now that we were in private and alone. When that didn't happen, though, we took seats on the sofa, spaced a little apart. I set my bag at the side.

A somber atmosphere quickly set in. I didn't try to make small-talk today, and there were few nasty looks from her. She simply stared ahead, at the silent edifice of the logic engine, the light reflecting strangely off the motionless complex of the gears.

"Uh... so," I eventually said, my voice quiet. "I went for the second appointment."

"That's why we're here," Ran said. Obviously she was prodding at me for stating the obvious, but you wouldn't have known it without the context. Her voice was essentially emotionless, bereft of any inflection, even the subtle sardonic edge it usually had in casual conversation.

"I asked the questions you told me to," I said.

"And?"

My eyes wandered towards the window.

"They... Said that it's not a matter of them not wanting to do it, or it being illegal, or something like that," I said, finding myself matching her tone. "Rather, it's just not possible, I guess. Apparently the index can be removed - that's what the thing you read probably meant - though even that has a chance of killing someone, or doing serious damage. But undoing the other part, is..." My lips tightened. "Well, when I pushed them about, they said it was like mixing one jug of water with another. They can't really... Tell them apart, after it's happened."

The room was silent for a moment. The clock I had at my bedside was hydraulic, so the only sound at all was the distant melody of my mother humming somewhere downstairs, at the very edge of my capacity for hearing.

Eventually, I had the courage to look at Ran. She was still staring ahead, expressionless.

"...heh." The laugh eventually came, low and bitter. "'s weird."

"Y-Yeah," I said.

"No," she said, shaking her head. "You don't get it." She swallowed the air, her mouth resting open slightly between sentences. "It's weird that she's gone, and I'm the only one who knows it. That things are just going on like nothing happened."

That's what I meant, I thought, but decided against saying out loud.

"She... Might not be gone," I said.

"You know what I mean," she said, her tone growing distant.

I winced a little bit. Somehow, I'd preferred it when she'd been insulting me all the time.

"So," she said. "Is it going to be like you said last time? That the way they handle this shit is just to, what... Pretend things are normal? Act like you're still the same person?"

"Well, they said that I shouldn't think of myself as... As the person I used to be, at all," I said. "That, for the treatments to work best, I should treat it like a sort of delusion. Or rather-- That's how they said it is. That I am her, but just, well. Deluded." I bit my lip. "They called it an 'error of neurological interpretation'."

"Huh," she said.

"They told me to think of my memories of-- Well, the ones I'm supposed to have, as real, and to regard the others as something like intrusive thoughts. And to just try and live normally." I paused for a moment. "And if I do that, things should work out."

"You mean, you'll just forget about it?" she asked. A tiny hint of emotion appeared: Skepticism.

"Y-Yeah," I said. "I guess so."

"But this is advice meant for people from thousands of years ago," she said. "Not for people from now."

I frowned. "When I tried to talk about that, they said that sometimes people who this happens to get... Confused, from the mix-up of memories. They end up inventing fake versions of their past to fit into the world of today as a way of making sense of things."

"So that's delusion too, huh. Pretty convenient." She nodded slightly. She still hadn't turned to face me. "Do you think that's true?"

"No," I said, shaking my head. "The stuff I remember is way too specific." I scratched my head. "Though, if it were, I guess I would say that anyway... I mean, it's not like you can tell if you're crazy, right?"

She was silent for a few moments, her body growing even more still.

"They, uh, gave me something," I said after a moment, reaching into my bag to withdraw a small, fresh-looking leather bound journal. "It's the first part of the treatment. It's a book to keep track of how much I think of myself as Utsushi--" I hesitated. "Rather, how much I feel like myself."

I held the book shut very tightly, my body knowing.

"It doesn't sound like you feel much like 'yourself' right now."

"Well," I said. "No."

"Do you feel any uncertainty? About who you are?"

I didn't say anything. My eyelids wrinkled, like I was biting on something bitter.

"Even if this worked, somehow," she said. "Would she really be back, really? Or would you just be deluded in the other direction? Just really good at convincing yourself you're someone else."

"I dunno," I said. "I mean... That's more of a metaphysical question than anything, I guess."

Another long silence. This time, it was well over a minute. Outside, through the window, the sun broke through the clouds, and the shadows running over us grew starker against the bright light.

"I don't know what to say right now," she said, her tone still utterly muted. "To be honest, I want to scream. At you. At the people telling you this bullshit. At the whole world, for being complicit in something so completely fucked and not even talking about it. I wanna grab something and smash everything in this room to pieces." She closed her eyes for a moment. "But if this really could work... If the fragments of who you should be are still there, waiting to heal... Then the last thing I want to do is make you feel shitty. If I yell at you for the shit that's happened to you, that'll probably make you feel even more like the person who you aren't supposed to be."

"So... What are you gonna do?" I asked, cautiously.

"It's like that dilemma you hear in ethics class," she said. "Where one siamese twin abuses the other, and you can't punish one without punishing them both. Except instead of twins it's just one person, stuck in a box like the cat in that old experiment. Where you can't tell if it's alive or dead. Victim or culprit."

"So..."

"So I'm gonna go," she said, standing up sharply, her voice a little terse. "I'll treat you normally at school, but otherwise we shouldn't talk any more. If-- If things do go back to normal, just try to forget all this."

She moved rapidly towards the door, and started twisting the handle--

"Wait!" I cried out, my voice cracking. "Wait."

She stood there for a moment. Then, slowly, she looked back at me. And I saw an expression on her face that I hadn't before. Her face was contorted in something like fear, or regret, and there were tears in her wide eyes.

Perhaps I was still looking for a sort of false atonement, unable to accept that my cowardice had barred me from attaining what I really needed. Or maybe what I desired was instead a sort of catharsis-by-proxy, where I could feel the anguish of facing the truth through her, even though I'd closed myself off to anything resembling it from within.

But those are over-intellectualized explanations, whereas on the inside, I was - and still am, really - a child. And my desires were simple. Childlike.

I didn't want to be alone.

"...could you stay?" I asked. "For a little longer?"

𒊹

Inner Sanctum First Floor | 10:55 AM | Third Day

There was a thud as Kamrusepa's chair, strained from the extent of her leaning, fell onto its back. She stood up and corrected it with an impassive expression, as if nothing weird had happened.

"Our hypothesis was this," Linos said. "An index is, more or less, an artificial interplanar structure attached to the human mind - like what they say in school, the Power is, when you get right down to it, little more than an extra limb that can reach places we normally don't have access to." He clasped his hands together, resting his chin on them. "But there's nothing saying that other interplanar structures, natural ones, couldn't be affixed using the same technology. It's just that there's never been a point to do it, since they wouldn't follow human commands. It'd be like nailing your arm to the side of a building."

Oh my god, I thought. Is this really going where I think it is?

"But if entropy really did have something like consciousness... Then - again, hypothetically - couldn't it be possible to form an altogether new sort of connection? One based not on domination of the inanimate, but rather two living beings able to share something like thoughts?"

"You're telling me that you guys tried to, what," Seth said, his eyes narrowed. "...give this thing a human body? Create some kinda physical god?"

"Let's not use the 'G' word," Linos corrected him quickly. "We're all scholars here. There's no value in being unscientific."

"To... Be honest, dad, it is hard not to think about mythology, hearing this," Theo said, troubled. "Rather, ah. If we're to believe that nothing less than a property of thermodynamics could somehow display sentience, and you planned to give it a human body..."

"I need to nip a misunderstanding you're both having in the bud," Linos said, gesturing downward with his hands. "Our goal wasn't to 'give it a human body'. An index, or anything else like this, isn't a direct addition to the core of the pneuma like the first part of the Induction process. It can't overwrite someone's personality. What we wanted to do was merely to establish a connection between a human and entropic force."

"That's still fucking nuts!" Seth objected. "Don't say that all soothingly, like we're in hysterics or something!"

"Why?" Ptolema asked.

"I just explained that, miss Rheeds," Linos replied. "To communicate. Our hope was that, in having such a mental connection, a frame of reference could be built up between the subject of the experiment and the phenomenon. That they might find some way to talk to one another, or-- That it might develop a sense of awareness of or empathy for us."

"This does sound like something from an old Inotian or Saoic story," I said. "Beings above mankind being brought down to their level, and then learning to care about them in the process... It's a really old trope."

Linos sighed, rubbing his eyes.

"How could this be ethical?" Seth asked, seeming more lively than he had in hours by virtue of the sheer absurdity of what we were hearing. "Like, in a million years. Assuming the theory is right, we're talking about sticking a direct line in someone's brain to some incomprehensible fucking nightmare being that has influence over the entire universe. It seems more likely than not that whoever you did this to would... Would..."

"Go bananas?" Ptolema offered.

"Yeah," Seth said, nodding. "Or catatonic, I guess. I mean, it'd be like dropping a mountain on a stag beetle."

"Such concerns were raised at the time," Linos said, rubbing under his nose. "We discussed many variations of the experiment that would... Minimize potential harm. Obviously, we required a candidate that had undergone the first stage of their Induction but not the second, and someone who could be trusted and displayed general mental stability." He frowned. "Unfortunately, finding a suitable one under those restrictions proved very challenging. We'd hoped to enlist someone from among the non-arcanists in our ranks, ideally an elderly volunteer, close to death yet lucid... However, the stigma towards non-arcanists the organization had at the time curtailed the pool of candidates to, well, a puddle. There were also persistent anxieties about the idea which served to neuter interest."

"I'll bet," Seth said. "I wouldn't sign up for that shit even if I was on my deathbed. What happens if you get sucked up into its mind? That's the kind of immortality you don't want."

"I don't know," Theo said. "I think I'd consider it. Can't be worse than eternal nothingness."

Seth snorted. "You gotta work on your imagination, Theo."

"How did you end up resolving it?" I asked. "If you resolved it, I mean."

"We... Did," Linos said, biting the corner of his lip as his eyes flickered in the direction of the security center. "Though in a controversial manner. It was eventually decided... Around the time of the construction of the sanctuary... That we would instead use an unborn child."

I felt a clicking in my mind as some things started to fall into place.

Ptolema blinked, then scratched her head. "Wait, you can induct an unborn baby? How would that even work?"

"Well, it can't be done with a natural birth-- A child literally in the womb will confuse the Induction Bed. But... Though the Covenant normally forbids it except in emergencies, there's more than one way to skin a cat when it comes to gestating an infant." He cleared his throat. "We have more than enough resources at our disposal for such an endeavor. As for fundamental viability, a child's cerebrum - and pneuma, by extension - is usually sufficiently developed for an index to be attached by around six and a half months into term. That was our plan."

"Gods," Seth said tiredly, shaking his head.

"I think I understand your reasoning," I said, nodding slowly. "If you did it that way, then even if the fetus was lost as a result of the experiment, their mind still wouldn't have been completely developed when it happened. So it's not quite the same as doing it on a literal baby." I frowned. "It's not exactly ethical, but it could be a lot worse."

"You're being too kind, Su," Seth said, looking up at me with a strangely bitter expression. "It's not just about whether or not the kid dies right off the bat. What if they live? Live a whole life with their brain fucked up beyond helping, because some old assholes decided it could be useful for the project ?" He hesitated, glancing towards Linos. "Sorry, I don't mean to lay into you, but... You get how screwed up this is, right?"

"I do," Linos said, smiling sadly. "For what it's worth, I'm still not proud of the whole business, even if I didn't exactly have much of a say, back in those days. I said back in the guest house that the Order's done a number of things I haven't approved of, and as part of the council, I take responsibility for that." He looked to his son. "I'll say this for you in particular, Theo: Even if you follow me into this line of work, never let your high-minded beliefs about what's best for humanity justify doing what you know is wrong to individuals. I've never done anything I feel I couldn't defend, but still. It wears down the soul."

Theo made an uncomfortable look, and nodded, looking downwards.

I thought back to the theme we'd now seen reiterated several times: The 'sins' of the order. This was the first thing I'd heard which felt like it really qualified.

"So, what was the plan, exactly?" I asked. "You'd raise the child... Down here, and wait to see if they started reporting a presence beyond themselves in their own mind, as they grew older?" I glanced around. "That's the real reason this place is so comfortable, isn't it? You wanted a place where someone could grow up, without ever visiting the outside world."

Guilt crossed Linos's features for a moment, and he glanced downward, nodding. "That's... Largely true. Or at least, it's one of the reasons for the design of the sanctuary." He sighed. "This will sound disingenuous, but we wanted to make the child's life as comfortable as possible. As well as trying to optimize the environment, we had plans for several families within the Order to live here intermittently to make sure they could have relatively normal social interaction, a volunteer willing to formally adopt them and act as their mother..."

"But they wouldn't be allowed to leave," I deduced.

"...no, they wouldn't," he admitted. "At least, not until the experiment was concluded. We were dealing with something existential, beyond even our own understanding. We had no idea how the child's connection to entropy would manifest, not in terms of behavior, nor... Anything else. Some people even suggested they might develop supernatural abilities." He chuckled awkwardly. "They needed to be under a controlled environment, where they could be monitored consistently. And where they'd be safe from the opponents of the Order-- Especially in those days."

"Basically, you wanted to keep them prisoner," Seth said, his tone critical. His eyes wandered the room. "Now that I know this place started life as a gilded cage, it's a lot creepier."

"I don't know what to tell you, master Ikkuret," Linos said. "It was an unpleasant idea. In retrospect, I'm glad it never got off the ground."

My mind wandered for a moment. How much of the sanctuary did this really explain? Anna had said it had served multiple purposes, one leading into another...

She hadn't been specific about how long the sanctuary had existed in its original state before the construction of her 'ultimate defensive mechanism' which allowed it to 'detach' and exist purely in the void as it did now. Had that been before this project was abandoned? Or afterwards?

"So, uh, why didn't it?" Ptolema asked. "I mean, something went wrong, right?"

Linos took a breath. "In fact, that's a bit of an understatement, miss Rheeds. Just about everything possible went wrong, at every stage of the process." He took another drink of water. He seemed to be sweating a lot during all this. "To start with, it turned out to be an incredible struggle to even pin down an element of the entropic interplanar framework that was suitable to substitute an index. To minimize the risk, we wanted the scope of the connection to be as minor as possible so as to not overwhelm the mind of the host - have it be something they could block out, perhaps that even could be severed..." He shook his head. "But it frustrated our efforts at every turn. And then, as our research into entropy continued, people began to lose faith in the project. There were so many debates..."

"What were you doing during all of this, dad?" Theo asked. "Utsu said you were involved with the project."

"Me?" Linos thought for a moment. "Not much. I'm a transmutation and replication specialist, so I mostly did non-arcane work just crunching the math. I didn't even see the child when it was growing." He sighed. "The child..."

"I'm guessing something bad happened with that, too," I said.

He nodded somberly. "That was the culmination of it all. Eventually, with heavy opposition - myself included - it was decided we'd proceed with the project with a merely acceptable connection to framework identified, rather than the ideal one we'd been hoping for. The fetus was developed, removed for induction, brought to term..." He shook his head. "But in the end, it never gained consciousness."

"Geez," Ptolema said, frowning sadly.

"We kept them on life support for several years, hoping for some miraculous change in their condition - considering how unique the situation was, we didn't want to rule anything out completely. But eventually..." He pushed his lips together, thoughtful for a moment, then looked back up to face us. "Well. Now you know."

I guess I did. I found my eyes wandering downwards. There was only really one question I could think to ask, and it didn't even feel like it mattered.

"So, to be clear..." I said. "This was also my grandfather's project. Is that right?"

He nodded. "Largely. He spearheaded almost all of our efforts which employed the Ironworker's facility here; the machine that currently exists down below now is the direct descendant of the one we tried to use to find and pull forth a suitable connection for the child. Based on the same principle-- Isolating the phenomenon." He raised an eyebrow. "He never spoke to you about any of this."

I hesitated. "N-No, we never barely discussed his work with the Order. Only a little, right before he died."

"I see," Linos said. He seemed to consider something for a moment. "I'll never forget how affected he was, by all of it. He took the loss of the child very personally, when we finally had to end things... I suppose it hit him in a sore spot." He let out an awkward laugh. "Forgive me. I shouldn't say such things."

I didn't say anything, looking to the side.

"Anyway," Linos digressed. "After that, there were other attempts at communication, but nothing came of them, either. So eventually, the research was quietly shelved. I'm not sure what Neferuaten hoped to accomplish bringing it up to you, but I suppose it doesn't matter now." He looked between our group. "Hopefully, you understand now why this isn't pertinent to our current circumstances. Though it was a tragic situation, other than the child - who, sadly, never really lived to begin with - no one left it feeling particularly wronged... Well, with the possible exception of our accountant. My point is, there's a thousand things more likely to be motivating the culprit behind this.

"Honestly, hearing this has kinda changed my impression of the Order for the worse," Seth said. "...but I guess it's not really the sort of thing you'd kill someone over." Theo nodded along.

Linos looked to me. "Do you feel satisfied, Su?"

I scratched my head. "I suppose so. It's all so out there it feels unreal, but I guess it does answer some questions. Even if it doesn't really help explain much that's really important."

I said that, but I couldn't help but feel like there was... Something missing, here. A piece of the story Linos had omitted.

He sighed. "Well. If something else comes to mind later, try to give me the benefit of the doubt--"

"Hey, you guys don't think that like... This really could be death - or entropy, or whatever - taking revenge for that, do you?" Ptolema asked, interjecting. "I mean... When we heard that message, at the start of all this... They talked about the Order doin' stuff which pissed it off, you know?" She looked disconcerted. "Maybe putting it in a body... Trying to control it..."

Linos sighed, rubbing his brow. "I was afraid of something like this." He turned to her. "Miss Rheeds, I already explained that the nature of the experiment was never to embody or dominate. Just to talk." His tone was patient, but he did sound a little strung-out. "Besides, nothing we learned ever suggested that even if entropy can think, that it's ever remotely cared about or even noted our actions. And most decisively, there's nothing that's taken place tonight that can't be explained completely rationally." He smiled, but that, too, was strained. "I'm pretty sure if it was capable of wanting us dead and, well, did, we'd be gone already."

"I mean..." She scratched her head. "The message told us it was holding back... That it wanted to give us a fighting chance to survive."

Linos chuckled. "A little too convenient as mercies go, I'd say."

"I dunno," she said, a shadow falling over her face. "What we saw upstairs... What'd happened to Durvasa... It really didn't seem like a normal human could've done that, y'know?"

"C'mon, Ema," Seth said, frowning at her with concern. "I'm scared too, but you can't let this stuff get too big in your head. Besides, we, uh." He glanced towards me awkwardly. "I mean... We already have a pretty good idea of who is responsible..."

You don't need to act like that, I thought. I don't care.

Despite the words being about my grandfather rather than him, Theo still subtly shrunk back in his chair at the mention of the topic.

Right. It felt like it'd gone as far as it could for now, even if there were things I was missing, I needed to turn the conversation towards what had happened to the boys.

Glancing over my shoulder to make sure Kam was still paying attention, I started thinking about how to digress--

Then, suddenly, a piercing sound cut through the room. It was a scream, coming from the direction of the front of the building, and belonging to a woman. It was sharp and brief; over in just a second.

In an instant, the entire room fell silent, the calm that had reigned for the past almost-two-hours shattering in an instant. At first, my brain didn't know how to process what it'd just heard. I wondered if it could've bird, even though that was obviously impossible.

It was Ptolema, funnily enough, who brought focus to reality, after a few moments had passed.

"Um," she said. "Was that Mehit?"

It was definitely Mehit, my brain said.