They hijacked two cars.

The first car had been easy to access. After much posturing on Oliver’s part, and the lie that had broken Kid’s heart, he’d broken the window and slipped into the car.

Apparently, he’d postured because when he’d looked through the tinted glass, he’d seen the keys in the ignition.

They’d gone through a few more cars, the Olympians serving as watchmen with their guns held up before they’d found another working car with enough fuel. This one had been hotwired before it had become capable of being driven.

Currently, Zed rode in the back seat of the hotwired car.

“Why couldn’t we just get the one with the keys?” he asked.

The road was rough, making for a bumpy ride. Oliver turned the steering to avoid a particularly large lump in the road.

“Punishment for teaching my brother how to lie,” Ash answered.

Zed sat against the window in the back. Between next to him was Shanine. Next to her was Chris, and against the other window seat was Festus who sat staring out the window at the passing cars.

“An apartment complex,” Zed said suddenly.

“What about it?” Shanine asked.

“Where we just left.” Zed let out a relieved sigh. “It’s called an apartment complex. Wow, that would’ve bothered me for days.”

Oliver met his eyes through the rearview mirror. “You’ve been trying to remember what that place was called all this time?”

Zed shrugged. “You know when you can’t solve a math equation but it’s still on your mind even days later?”

“You could’ve just asked someone,” Chris said.

Zed stared out the window. “And where would the fun be in that?”

They were passing more buildings now.

He’d spent the last few months in Heimdall’s town, seeing the growing development humans were capable in the wake of an apocalyptic event. He’d been through the woods and a bit of forest and spent little time in HIllview.

He had seen damage and rebuilding, but he had not seen the true essence of the outcome of the second awakening.

He saw it now.

As Oliver followed behind the Olympians, slow and gentle so their car didn’t run into a hole in the ground too deep or an upturned piece of earth too large, he stared at broken building crumbled or swallowed in vines and trees and grass.

He remembered the man who had been selling runes when the second awakening had happened. The one who’d bought himself a few extra seconds of being alive before being crushed by a piece of a building.

How much did we lose? He wondered.

He’d seen the advancements too. The Olympian armor, their aircraft that was really more like a spaceship.

He’d heard how advanced they’d become. But those advancements were spread out in certain places. The old world was advanced all around.

How much of us is advanced now?

Oliver swerved suddenly to avoid something Zed didn’t catch.

“Massive lump,” he announced even though no one asked.

The car was silent for a while as their driving continued. They veered off the road at some point, following the lead of the Olympians, and took a detour off-road. The ground was rocky and sandy and they drove through it raising enough dust to mask visibility.

“What happens if you get a tattoo of a rune?” Zed asked nobody in particular.

“Something stupid,” Chris answered. “But if you really want to get a tattoo of a rune, get only one.”

Zed nodded to himself. “You get too many and you’ll get overloaded.”

Festus snorted. “No one has any business tattooing runes on their flesh.”

“I knew a guy with runic tattoos,” Chris said.

“And how many of those runes worked?”

There was a moment of silence as Chris thought about it while their car bounced up and down the dirt road.

Zed wondered if Oliver was keeping in touch with the Olympians ahead of them somehow. With all the low visibility they could easily lose each other. And the Olympians were the only ones with a functioning map.

The aim, even if it was going to take a very long while, was to drive all the way back to VHF headquarters.

Even now, everyone still felt Zed simply wanted out of the backwaters and into civilization. And he did. Call him shallow but he’d be happy to have a warm bed and some soft drinks.

But those were secondary. What he really wanted was information. From the little memories he had, he knew one thing for certain. He’d spent a small but important period of time in VHF headquarters before the second awakening.

And they had a file on him. He remembered Peter talking about their files once upon a time. Apparently, the Institute had a file on all the children. It contained psychological evaluations on them, their progression at the time in the experiments, as well as their origins and their medical records.

If he could get there, he could find out more about himself. He held a small interest on what exactly they had hoped to gain with the experiments, but he was more interested in himself.

I need to find my way home.

When Chris finally answered Festus, her voice was small. “I never really saw him activate any of them.”

Festus laughed derisively. “That’s because he couldn’t. If you want to make a mage incapable of using magic, mark him in runes.”

“Why?” Ash asked from the front passenger seat.

Zed remembered the rune seller again. “Because he won’t get to pick what rune comes alive when he uses magic. They’ll all come alive.”

He could still remember how all the man’s runes lit up. How his skin burned like an overworked engine.

Must’ve been a tough way to go.

“He’d burn through his core and his flesh in minutes,” he muttered, then shook his head. “Not a nice sight.”

“And an even worse feeling,” Festus added. “It seems like you’ve gotten to witness something like that before.”

Zed nodded. “Met something called a rune-grafter just before the second awakening.”

“I remembered meeting a few on campus,” Oliver said. “Rune grafting was quite expensive, but it gave a nice high.”

Ash turned a shocked look on him. “You said you never touched the stuff.”

“And I never did. But Obinna frequented the place a lot. He always had one rune or the other on him.”

“Then your friend was stupid,” Festus said.

Oliver made another turn in the dust. “I can’t argue that.”

Then the car pulled to a stop.

“I think we’re here,” he announced.

Zed opened his door and came down. Where exactly was here?

When the dust cleared, he got the answer to his question.

Ahead of them, the Olympians had also parked their car. They’d come down already, Daniel towering over all of them. They looked happy to be free of the car, and Kid took a deep breath even in the dust.

Zed wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

“Isn’t that uncomfortable?” Shanine asked, looking at Kid.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“It only goes to show how bad it must’ve been in the car.”

“It was probably stuffy.”

“Or maybe someone farted.”

Shanine looked up at him.

“What?” Zed shrugged. “It’s definitely possible. And it’s not like we can’t confirm it.”

“Not a poop mage, Zed.”

“Never said you were.”

Zed’s mind went to what type of mage she was, and he looked around warily. He took her by the arm and moved her aside.

“Have you figured out what you’re good at, though?” he asked in a low voice.

His volume was enough to make her alert. When she answered, her voice was equally low.

“Not yet. And I’ve been trying.”

Zed sighed. He didn’t know what to do here. There was a part of him that said it wasn’t his problem. A part of him felt she was supposed to figure herself out. If she was inevitably a blood mage, then that was her worry.

But it was only a small part. A larger part felt like he had some level of responsibility over her. And he didn’t know why.

“You two love birds done flirting?” Chris mocked from where she stood.

Shanine scowled. “You should’ve hit her harder during the training. Life was better when she wasn’t talking.”

“Wait,” Zed said, puzzled. “How did you know I was the reason she wasn’t talking.”

“Oliver told me when we were coming to save you guys.”

“Oh.”

They joined the rest not long after. But before they did, Zed gave her one last piece of advise. “If you ever feel some kind of connection to magic, don’t use it.”

“Why?” she asked, confused.

“Just don’t. Alright? Just keep the feeling but don’t use it. For now, let’s agree that you’ll only use magic when it’s the both of us.”

“You’re scaring me, Zed. This doesn’t feel like one of your jovial shenanigans.”

“And it isn’t.” Zed looked up and caught Oliver staring at them suspiciously from the distance. “I have an idea of what your mana type might be, but the problem is that, from the little I’ve learned, mages don’t take kindly to it.”

Shanine deflated. “Great. People oppress me when I’m not a mage. Now that I’m a mage, I get a mana type that will make people want to oppress me more.”

“Not if we’re smart about it. If we play it right, no one will be getting oppressed.”

Shanine was quiet for a while before she finally nodded.

“It’s not like I’ve got a choice,” she grumbled.

She was right. Being the weakest in the group didn’t give her a choice. She couldn’t take decisions on her own unless she wanted to be kicked out of the group. And she couldn’t throw a tantrum because she was the weakest.

“It’s annoying being the weakest,” she commented as they approached the others.

“True,” Zed agreed. “But that’s the good thing about magic. When I met Oliver and the others they could all wipe the floor with me. Now I survived an annoying fight with Chris. With magic, you can grow.”

“I thought you won against Chris.”

“I wouldn’t really call it a win. That last blow was kind of controversial and I only won because I think I have better endurance. Also, I think she was holding back.”

“Doesn’t she, like, hate you?”

“She does.” Zed remembered their short conversation right before Abed turned on them. “She really does.”

“Then why would she hold back.”

Zed shook his head. “No idea. But I get the odd feeling that she was. But let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves here.”

When they rejoined the others, Oliver was the first to comment on their private talk.

“What was that about?”

Zed shrugged. “She was feeling uncomfortable being the weakest in the group. I’ve been the weakest in the group before so I figured it wouldn’t be a bad idea to give her a pep talk.”

Oliver thought about it as they all gathered in one place with the Olympians.

“What was it like?” he said, after a while.

“Honestly.” Zed shrugged. “I really can’t say. I didn’t really care. I was too busy worrying about other things.”

“Like your daughter?”

Zed opened his mouth to answer, but didn’t. He closed it, instead.

A guy with amnesia mentions a daughter once and everyone’s hooked on it.

“I’ve got a family out there, Ollie,” he said at last. “But a daughter isn’t one of them.”

“But you said—”

“I didn’t remember much about my past at the time, and Cindy made me feel like I probably had a connection with a child that was a girl in my past. She could’ve been a niece or something. Maybe even a neighbor.”

He sighed. “I’ve got memories in my head that aren’t mine, Ollie. Memories that belong to someone else, to more than one person. It’s a mess I’m still trying to sort out.”

Oliver frowned. He wanted to say more but everybody had gathered.

“We’ll talk about this later,” he said, instead. “This conversation isn’t over.”

“Probably,” Daniel said, rounding them up. “But we’ve got a new conversation, and I don’t think it’s going to be pretty.”

“Why not?” Chris asked.

The Olympians didn’t look anywhere near happy, and Zed had a strong feeling it had something to do with whatever Daniel was about to speak on.

“It’s the town we’re about to go into,” Ronda said.

“What’s wrong with it?” Chris asked.

“Well, they have something of a dictatorship form of leadership, where the big guy says jump and everyone jumps at once.”

“Oh. Is he that strong?”

“Not really,” Daniel said. “But he’s a Bishop so that’s saying something.”

Shanine looked between everybody. “Don’t we have a Knight?”

“We do,” Jennifer said.

Zed could already hear the but.

The Berserker had toppled enough government bodies for him to know what the issue was. He’d also seen a lot of failed attempts to topple government bodies.

“The problem is that we can’t go in there tossing our strength about,” he explained. “Not if we intend on taking over. Which we don’t.”

“So we’re just going to leave everyone to some mage’s dictatorship?”

“Yes.” Daniel’s answer was abrupt. “We go in there toppling powers and what happens when we leave.”

“We can just take out the guys at the top. Bring down the dictators before we leave.”

"That will just leave chaos behind. Leadership is important, even if it's bad leadership. Without it al you get is chaos and anarchy."

"I still say we kill them."

Chris snorted. “You went to the killing quite quickly mage.”

Shanine glared at her but said nothing.

“Now’s not the time for accusations and mockery,” Zed pointed out. “Now’s the time for explanations and plans. We can’t take out the leaders because we’re in a hurry. If we want to take out the leaders and do it right, we’ll need to dedicate too much time to it. Taking down a government and still ensuring the place can survive on its own is harder than the movies make it seem. For that you’ll need an actual rebellion. Then you’d need to pick out leaders, yourself. The rebels will be too acquainted with certain dogmas so you can’t trust them to pick by themselves.”

He frowned, thinking the entire thing through.

“If we want to wipe out the current hierarchy, we’ll need to understand the current status quo. If we take out the leader, who’s next in command? And we obviously can’t start from the top because if the hierarchy isn’t established, taking down the leader will lead to chaos and anarchy. I know the movies make the anarchy look like something a genius can navigate, but trust me, its not.”

If they wanted to do it right, they needed to take out someone in the middle first. The person had to be important enough that their demise would be noticeable, but also unimportant enough that their absence wouldn’t affect the operations too seriously.

How quickly the person was replaced, and by whom, would tell them how organized the leadership was.

“We’ll need to take out someone in charge of something important but someone replacable,” he continued. “A town like this would need a hunting party if its run by a dictator. The hunting party will have a second in command. Let’s go with whoever that is, first. They’ll usually play middle man between the leader of the hunting group and the rest of the group.”

He frowned as the plan came into place, but there was one thing missing. One crucial piece of information. He was making all these arrangements based on the assumption that the place was as large as Heimdall’s town.

“Just one small problem,” he said.

“What’s that?” Daniel asked. “How large is the town.”

Daniel pointed to the bottom of the tall hill, and Zed saw the town.

It was a tight knit conglomeration of small houses. it was probably twice the size of Heimdall’s town in population. He peered down at it and was surprised at how well he could see despite the distance.

It looked over populated.

Heimdall had all the houses he needed but not enough people to occupy all of them. This town looked like it had too many people but not enough houses.

Was the leader keeping it like this on purpose?

“This is going to be harder than I thought.” He rubbed his stubbles. “A place like this, everybody will know anybody. If we go in there they’ll have their eyes on us immediately.”

“Zed?”

Zed turned to Oliver.

“What did you do before the second awakening?” Oliver asked.

Zed shrugged, his mind still going through possible outcomes. “I was a student at some institute. We were testing some product or something.”

“What else did they teach at this institute?” Ronda asked. “Did they teach you how to topple governments. Were you in a CIA training institute?”

“Why would you—oh…”

Zed was just noticing how he had everyone’s attention. Shanine was looking at him with worry, and Chris looked impressed.

“I didn’t know Bloodbath had a devious bone in him,” Chris said with a grin. “You know we would’ve gotten along just fine if you worked like this from day one.”

Zed didn’t know how to feel about everyone’s attention. But he did know one thing. Chris’ words were not words he took as a compliment.

But he said nothing on them. Instead, he looked at Daniel and said, “This is your op, right? How are we doing it?”

Daniel hesitated briefly before he spoke.

“We’re taking it simple. The last time we came here, we were all in our Olympian armor. It dissuades violence and intimidation tactics. We asked about the nearby towns and got the answers we needed, then we were gone.”

“But it’s not going to be as easy this time,” Jennifer said. “For starters, we don’t have any armor on.”

“And they didn’t seem like the kind to play ball if we were just average people passing through,” Kid added. “I think they’ll give us a lot of trouble.”

“And we can’t send in a Knight rank,” Ronda added. “The moment someone smells a Knight rank, they’ll see it as a challenge to their power.”

“Or they might just wait for us to get what we want and pass through,” Shanine suggested.

Zed shook his head. “Dictators aren’t usually that level headed. They sense a threat and they’ll see it as a threat. If we walk in there with Festus in tow, the first thing the person in charge is going to do is try and figure out the best way to establish dominance.”

“Why?”

“Because that will remind those beneath him that he’s strong. And there’s nothing deadlier than taking down someone that’s a rank above you.”

“Like what you did to Chris?” Shanine asked innocently.

Zed knew there was nothing innocent about it. He knew he should ignore the question, leave it alone, but he couldn’t help himself.

“Exactly like what I did to Chris.”

Chris scowled. “You want to go again, Bloodbath?”

Zed stalled her with a raised hand. “Not the time, love. I’ll tan your hide again another time.”

She lunged at him and he spun behind Festus.

Festus didn’t budge from where he was standing. Instead he bowed his head and shook it. “Just when I was thinking there was an adult in there somewhere, you go and remind me that you’re still a child.”

Zed’s lips pursed in thought. Festus was right, and he knew it, too. This hadn’t been the time.

But when he remembered all the bullshit he’d gone through at the hands of Jason and Chris it was difficult to ignore any chance he got to annoy her.

He took a calming breath and stepped out of Festus’ back.

To everyone present, he said, “I apologize. That was uncalled for, especially given the circumstances.”

Ash stared in shock. “Ollie.”

“Yes.”

“Did Red just apologize without being asked to?”

“Yes.” Oliver chuckled. “I think some good things came with his memory.”

“Wait, the whole memory thing is real?” Kid looked between them. “I thought he was just joking about it when he said it on the ship.”

Ash shook her head. “Not a joke. I think. He’s had a bad memory ever since we met him.”

That got a frown out of Daniel. “So what? He has no idea what he’s been doing since the second awakening?”

“None whatsoever,” Zed lied.

“If we’re going to keep traveling together, we might have to look into that.”

“Agreed,” Ronda said. “It was kind of impressive how easily he was drafting a plan to topple an entire leadership system.”

“Yes,” Daniel said in an ominous tone. “But I was more bothered by something else. He sounded eerily familiar.”

“Yea,” Jennifer muttered. “He sounded a lot like Odin.”