Ash stared at the hologram in front of her not for the first time. It was a blue rendition of a three dimensional map, complete with topographical arrays and the likes. It contained clear borders, differentiating over fifty-two regions, each labeled with rising flags varying in colors of green yellow and red. It wasn’t a long throw to understanding what each one meant. Red indicated danger zones, most likely parts with either dense monster sightings or high ranking monsters. Yellow indicated a survivable level of monsters, but survivable for who, was the question. The green indicated safe areas. Safe areas didn’t necessarily mean there were no monsters, merely that the monster sightings weren’t that high.

However, threat levels weren’t the reason Ash stared at the hologram. Projected from a small disk resting on her bed, Ash studied the names on top of each flag. Each region had a name affixed at the top of their flag. Ash recognized each name as most people would. Utah, Ohio, Massachusetts, Manhattan, California, Texas, Georgia. The list went on and on. Her knowledge of American states and capital wasn’t great, certainly not as good as Oliver’s and he couldn’t name all fifty-two states, but she knew enough to know, their arrangement wasn’t correct. For instance, Massachusetts had no business being anywhere near Virginia.

Regardless of the chaos of the rearrangements, those were the least of her worries. Ash zoomed in on the map, placing her fingers against each section and pinching. She zoomed in on regions, looking for the name she sought. Unsurprisingly, there were grand discrepancies in them.

“What the hell is Atlanta doing next to New York,” she muttered, moving the map around. “And why are they in Carolina? And what the hell sort of street name is New Yokshire? Isn’t that English or something.”

She grumbled at the chaos but forced her way through it, zooming into regions and zooming out, reenacting an action she’d done three times already in over one week.

The VHF had devised an acceptable technique for allocating the old world states. For instance, while slip space had done more to affect small scale geographical locations, it hadn’t transported entire states, just towns and the occasional streets. Thus, what the VHF had done was name regions by the highest number of towns that belonged. So if over fifty percent of the towns present belonged to Washington, then that region was old Washington.

Ash took her time studying every region, from town name all the way down to street names. It took her an annoying amount of time, during which she felt Jason and Chris’ aura when they entered the house and joined Oliver in the living room.

Her ire was lit again with two things from her study of the map as she felt Oliver strolling up the stairs. One was that some of the places on the map didn’t even belong to America. A simple example was the presence of a college she knew for a fact belonged in the heart of the United Kingdom, yet she watched it rest comfortably in Kentucky. The second thing that pricked her was that the place she was looking for was not on the map.

“I’m going to skin that VHF lout with a blunt knife,” she scowled.

Oliver knocked on her door once, then twice.

“Come in,” she beckoned, doing nothing to hide the map.

Oliver opened the door and walked into the room. His eyes narrowed slightly at the sight of the map and he closed the door behind him and locked it.

“Is that it?” he asked in a calm voice.

“It?” Ash asked.

“The thing that made you rendezvous with that guy at the party.”

“Yes,” Ash nodded. “It is.”

“So you went to get a map.”

“Yes.”

“Because you’re still looking for mom and dad.”

“Yes.”

“And judging by the fact that it’s not made of paper, I believe it’s a safe bet to say it’s VHF tech.”

Ash nodded.

“Which means, that guy was VHF,” Oliver said, his voice eerily calm through the entire conversation.

Ash nodded again.

Oliver nodded too, then shook his head.

“Alright,” he said with a sigh. He rechecked the door, confirmed it was locked and came to sit on the bed with her, eyes focusing on the map. “And have you found them.”

Ash shook her head. “No. The map’s a complete mess. Utah isn’t where it’s supposed to be. And Virginia has entered a sudden relationship with Alaska. It’s just wrong.”

“First,” Oliver said, pointing at Utah. “Utah is exactly where it’s supposed to be and so is California, their borders are just all wrong.”

He paused after that, studying the map.

“And second?” Ash prompted.

Oliver looked up at her. “What’s that?”

“You said the first thing is Utah and California have correct locations,” Ash said. “What’s the second thing?”

“No, I only have the first thing. There’s no second thing.”

Ash frowned at that and would’ve hit him if his expression wasn’t so serious. Since they’d lost Zed, Oliver had been too serious. The jovial boy she knew wasn’t dead but he showed up too little now. Sometimes, Oliver would slip into his old jokes and friendly smiles just for it to disappear. Most of his days were spent with stoic expressions and too little jokes. Ash knew he’d get over the loss eventually, and while she knew it wouldn’t be anytime soon, it was over one week already. It felt too long a time to grieve the loss of a friend he’d known for a little over a month.

She knew she would get her jovial brother back, but she was already missing him. Sometimes seeing him without his smile made her want to cry.

“Do we know why eight regions aren’t labeled?” Oliver asked after a while.

“Yeah,” Ash frowned.

“And the reason is because…”

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“The asshole wants me to ask him.”

“And why are you so sure about that?”

Rather than answer, Ash pulled something out from under her bed. It was a disk similar to the one that projected the map but smaller. It had a silver sheen and a clean metallic polished surface.

Ash held it up to Oliver but didn’t offer it and he didn’t try to take it. Oliver merely looked at it.

“Okay,” he said. “And what’s that?”

“A communication device. Apparently, with this I can contact him whenever I want from anywhere I am.”

“I won’t disagree with people’s opinions of your beauty, Ash,” Oliver said. “But doesn’t that look too expensive to be giving out just because you like a girl?”

“No, Ollie,” Ash sighed. “He was trying to recruit me, that’s why he gave me. But I swore I wouldn’t contact him.”

“But you took the device.”

“Because you can never be too sure, and now I’m glad I did.”

“So you’re going to give the guy what he wants.”

Ash threw her hands up in exasperation. “What other option do I have, Ollie? He has the complete map.”

“And you’re sure this isn’t just how the map is?”

“I’m sure, Ollie.”

“And how sure are you that Baker street’s even on the map at all?”

“Very.”

“That’s quite the confidence. I wonder where it’s coming from.”

“It’s coming from the fact that I told him where exactly I was looking for before I bought the map and he assured me it was there.”

“Yet he gave you a map with eight unlabeled locations. Seven are not too far from one another and the eight is on the other side of the entire map.”

“Where is all this doubt coming from?” Ash asked, annoyed. “You didn’t used to doubt me, Ollie.”

“I’m not doubting you,” Oliver said, eyes still on the map. “I’m doubting your merchant. You do know there’s this thing called lying, right?”

“I know what lying is, Ollie. I remember teaching an innocent seven-year-old boy how to do it without getting caught. But this isn’t about that. There was a time when you’d trust that I can tell when I’m being lied to. There was a time you didn’t question my decisions.”

Oliver’s eyes grew thoughtful. Even though he was looking at the map, it was clear his mind was elsewhere. Then he turned to look at Ash.

“I don’t doubt you,” he told her. “However, you have shown your judgement isn’t the best when it comes to this topic. You’re so desperate to get back to mom and dad that you’d take unnecessary risks and trust people you have no reason to trust.”

“Unnecessary risks?”

“You slipped away from us in the middle of the night to meet alone with a VHF soldier without telling any of us, just days after one almost killed you and Zed. I bet you didn’t even know he was a Rukh mage when you met him.”

“That is what you call a necessary risk, Ollie.”

“For a map, Ash! A freaking map!” Oliver ran a hand down his face. “Are you even listening to what you’re saying?”

“It wasn’t for a map, Ollie. It was for a chance to find mom and dad.”

“You could’ve gotten another chance with lesser risks and you know it.”

“When?” Ash snapped. “Next year? In case you haven’t forgotten, Ollie, we weren’t even supposed to be here for more than a few days. Weeks, at the most. But look at us now.”

Oliver shook his head.

“You could’ve waited. The map wasn’t worth the risk,” he said, then his voice lowered into a somber whisper. “It wasn’t worth the cost.”

Ash inched closer to Oliver and placed a gentle hand on his shoulder, the fight suddenly gone from her.

“Zed wasn’t our fault, Ollie,” she told him. “There was no way we could’ve known what would happen.”

“But we could’ve been there.”

“Jason and Chris were there.”

“And we should’ve been there with them.”

Oliver dipped his shoulder out from under her touch and got up from the bed. Whatever little acceptance he’d had when he’d entered the room was gone from his eyes. Ash didn’t see hate in them for her but she did see a little touch of disappointment. She continued to pray it wouldn’t one day turn to hate. She didn’t think she could cope with her only family in the world hating her for something she didn’t do.

“Ollie—”

“Jason’s downstairs,” Oliver said, interrupting her. “A VHF platoon visited and Heimdall passed some information down for the hunters. Judging from the look on Chris’ face I don’t think we’re going to like it.”

With that, he unlocked the door and left the room.

………………………………………..

Ash sat on the single chair in the living room. Around her Jason sat alone on the three seater Zed used to sleep in and Chris shared the double seater with Oliver.

Oliver had been right about the look on Chris’ face. It was an upturned scowl that screamed in her eyes and promised blood should anyone test her. Jason’s face didn’t give away much, but he was pointedly avoiding Chris’ gaze so it was safe to say where the source of her annoyance came from.

Jason looked between Ash and Oliver. Finding something that touched his attention, he asked, “Is everything good with you guys?”

“We’re fine,” Oliver answered. “Just a bit of sibling rivalry gone too far.”

Ash kept any emotion from her face, leaving Oliver’s lie to serve as the answer for the both of them.

“So what’s this news we’re gathered here to listen to?” she asked instead.

“Yea, that.” Jason scratched the back of his head and adjusted on his chair. “Well, you guys know the VHF came to town two days ago, right?”

“I heard,” Ash said. “Rick wouldn’t stop talking about how powerful they looked when I was at the market yesterday.”

“You weren’t in town?” Chris asked.

“Nah. I went out with Francis’ gang to keep away a pack.”

“Well, they came,” Jason said. “And they reached a deal with Heimdall.”

“What kind of deal?” Ash asked.

“The kind that leads to us working with them. Apparently, they know where the mana surge—or what’s left of it—is.”

“Not possible,” Ash said. “Unless its somewhere really far from us because we’ve checked everywhere.”

“Well, we didn’t check properly,” Jason said. “According to Heimdall, they have some magitech that allows them detect the thing, and they brought a smaller version of that tech with them. Because of that, they have the general location of where it is. Just not a pinpoint accurate location.”

“Get this,” Chris said, scowling as she leaned forward. “It’s in the forest opposite the one with the shed.”

“The one Zed came from?” Oliver asked.

“Yes,” Chris hissed. “Bloodbath was hiding something from us. Now we know what it is. He knew what we were looking for and where to find it.”

“And he was hiding it because?” Oliver asked.

“No idea. But that’s not what matters.”

“And suddenly you trust the VHF?” Ash asked Chris.

“No,” Chris spat. “But I trust VHF magitech. If they told me they’d invented something to make rain fall forever, I’d believe them. That’s what they do.”

“So you believe the mana surge is in that forest?”

“Yes.”

“Before you go blaming Zed for anything,” Oliver said. “Remember you were the one who said the ambient mana density in that place was too low to be the site of a mana surge.”

Chris pouted at that but said nothing on the subject.

“We’re going tangent,” Jason said, drawing their attention back to him. “That’s not necessarily what I’m here to share, it’s just the preamble. The main point is that we’ll be leaving for the forest tomorrow morning, and we’ve been separated into groups.”

“Why?” Ash asked.

“Because we’re going hunting with the VHF, that’s why,” Chris said with disgust.

“It’s for the greater good,” Jason said, tired.

“Greater good my ass. If Heimdall told you shaking hands with the devil was for the greater good, you’d give the snake a hug.”

“I don’t know how many times I have to explain this, Chris. If we don’t find the mana surge quickly and get rid of it, we’ll have more monsters on our hands than the ones we’re already struggling to keep at bay. We know there’s at least one Bishop rank out there already. What happens if we get two?”

Chris said nothing. She folded her arms and leaned back, one side of her resting against Oliver.

“As I was saying,” Jason went on. “We’ve been broken into teams. And as usual, we remain a team. Heimdall has gathered six teams and has decided we’ll be heading to the forest first thing tomorrow. We have different points of entry and will meet with a team of VHF Olympians once we get there. The only part that I can consider bad news is that our team will be following the orders of an Olympian.”

“You have got to be kidding me,” Oliver groaned. “Are you sure that’s safe?”

“On that subject, I can’t say. However, I do know that Festus is going with another team, and he will be the one leading the team he makes up with the Olympians. So it’s clear there was a compromise somewhere.”

“So two teams in total,” Ash mused. “Considering it’s six of our teams going, aren’t those going to be large groups?”

“It’s actually three teams in total,” Jason said. “And from what I’m getting, there’re going to be other mages besides the Olympians and us. One of them is going to be leading the third team.”

“I guess we can live with that,” Oliver said. “No harm in meeting new people. Working together with them, we might learn a thing or two.”

“Or one of them might try to take our heads off,” Chris muttered.

Oliver gave her a flat look. “Thanks for the bright light of cynicism.”