Chapter 164| A Flash of Something Else
Irene’s fragment surfaced during an otherwise unremarkable training session, three weeks into Farrow’s careful surveillance work, and Allen watched her flames falter mid-strike for the first time in longer than he could remember, her usual, fierce precision faltering into sudden, visible disorientation.
"Irene?" he called, immediately closing the distance.
She staggered slightly, hand pressed against her temple, and it took several long, considerable seconds before her eyes properly focused on him again. "I saw something," she said slowly, voice carrying genuine, unsettled confusion. "Just for a second. Like a flash, cutting right through the middle of the drill."
"What kind of something?" Vivian asked, already moving to steady her.
"A room," Irene said, working through the memory with visible, careful effort. "Not the dungeon. Somewhere else. White walls, considerable equipment I didn’t recognize. And I wasn’t fighting anything. I was just — sitting there. Restrained, maybe. I couldn’t tell for certain."
The training yard fell into heavy, uneasy silence, and Allen felt the familiar, cold weight of the past months’ accumulating mystery settle back into place, considerably sharper now that it had touched Irene directly for the first time.
"Like my dream," Vivian said quietly. "The observers. This might be connected."
"I think it might be," Irene admitted, some of her usual fire dimming beneath genuine, unsettled uncertainty. "I don’t like this. I don’t like not being able to trust my own memory."
Allen drew her close, feeling her still-unsteady breathing gradually settle beneath his familiar, grounding presence. "We’ll figure it out," he said. "Whatever this actually is."
"I know," Irene said. "Doesn’t make it any less unsettling in the moment."
---
They gathered that evening to properly discuss the fragment, Myria recording every detail with careful, methodical precision, cross-referencing it against Vivian’s own earlier dream and the torn journal page’s still-unexplained gap.
"A white room," Myria said slowly, reviewing her considerable notes. "Restraint, without combat. That doesn’t match the dragon encounter at all. If anything, it sounds considerably more like some kind of medical or observational setting."
"Consistent with the document’s language," Vivian said. "Subject group. Observed methodology. If they were genuinely studying the four of us, a controlled setting like that would make considerable sense."
Everlyn, listening quietly from across the room, finally reached for her notepad, hand trembling slightly as she wrote. ’I’ve never had a fragment like that. Should I be worried it hasn’t happened to me yet?’
"No," Vivian said gently, crossing to her side. "If anything, be grateful. Whatever triggers these fragments, it doesn’t seem to be something any of us can control or predict."
"We should tell Farrow," Allen said. "Add this to whatever she’s already tracking."
"I already have," Myria confirmed, having quietly sent the update partway through the conversation. "She’s asked us to document any further fragments as precisely as possible, even small ones. She thinks the details might eventually help pin down exactly what facility we’re looking for, if this really is memory rather than simple imagination."
Allen absorbed the observation, feeling the investigation’s scope settle into something considerably more concrete than the abstract dread it had carried until now. A room. Equipment. Restraint without violence. Pieces of a picture still frustratingly incomplete, but no longer entirely formless either.
"We’re getting closer," he said quietly. "I can feel it."
"Closer to what, though," Vivian said, "is the part that still worries me."
Nobody had a proper answer for that, and the evening settled into careful, considered quiet, four women carrying pieces of a truth none of them had chosen, gathered close around the one person who’d promised, from the very beginning, to help them carry whatever weight that truth eventually demanded.
"Whatever it turns out to be," Allen said finally, "we face it together. The same as everything else."
"Together," Myria echoed, and the family settled into their familiar, considerable rhythm of quiet resolve, one fragment closer to a truth that felt, with every fresh, unsettling piece, increasingly impossible to keep buried much longer.
Irene remained quiet longer than usual as the evening wound down, and Allen found her later on the balcony, staring out at Hegeville’s scattered lights with an expression that carried none of her usual restless energy.
"You alright?" he asked, joining her.
"I keep trying to remember more," she admitted. "Push past that single flash and see what else is there. It doesn’t work. It’s just gone, the way it came, and I hate that. I’ve spent my whole life hating not having control over my own considerable power. Now I don’t even have control over my own head."
"You will," Allen said gently. "We’ll find every piece of this, eventually. I promise you that."
"I know you mean that," Irene said, leaning into him. "Doesn’t make the waiting any easier. But I’ll take the promise anyway."
"For what it’s worth," Allen said, "I don’t think you’re broken for not remembering more. I think whoever did this to you was simply thorough. That’s not a reflection of anything wrong with you."
"I know that, logically," Irene said. "Feels different at two in the morning when I’m lying awake trying to force a memory that won’t come."
"Then wake me," Allen said. "Any hour. I’d rather sit up with you than have you carry that alone."
Irene studied him a long moment, something fierce and grateful settling behind her earlier unease. "I might take you up on that," she admitted.
"I hope you do," Allen said, and drew her closer still.
They stood together a while longer on the quiet balcony, watching the town’s lights flicker steadily against the darkening sky, and Allen felt the familiar, protective resolve settle deeper into place, one more reason among many to see this mystery through to whatever considerable end still waited, patiently, for them to finally uncover it.
Vivian and Myria found them there some time later, drawn by the quiet stillness of the evening, and the four of them settled together against the balcony railing, no words strictly necessary between people who had already learned, so thoroughly, to communicate through simple, steady presence.
"Any more fragments tonight?" Myria asked gently, glancing toward Irene.
"None," Irene said. "Just the one, still sitting uncomfortably at the edge of my thoughts."
"That’s enough for one day," Vivian said. "You don’t have to chase the rest of it tonight."
Irene nodded, some of her earlier restless tension finally easing beneath her family’s steady, patient company, and together the four of them stood watching Hegeville’s lights a while longer, gathering what quiet comfort they could before the night’s rest finally, properly claimed them.