Annabeth stared at Wyatt. “But you already knew that.”

  “I did, yes,” he said with a nod.

  “Well, this complicates things.” She tapped her fingers against the table, taking a bite of her less-than-awful looking NutriGrub for the first time since they sat. She idly ate as she looked over the different articles, screening through them all for anything she could find.

  He knew how she worked and could tell she searched for the common link between each attack, for any identifiable pattern she could use to discover the mystery behind why the Double Awakened were being hunted.

  And he watched with a smile on his face. She’s just like I remember. Give her an inch, and she’ll take a mile.

  As he spooned the awful mush into his mouth, washing the aftertaste away with water, he watched the clock. Now that he’d given her something interesting to dive into, he’d be responsible for making sure they got to class on time.

  If he didn’t, she’d sit there all day while researching the topic and forget every other responsibility without feeling even remotely concerned.

  “This goes way back, Wyatt,” she finally said, pointing towards an expanded timeline of the last couple thousands years she’d created. “How has this gone unnoticed for so long?”

  Many of the articles looked ancient, scanned onto the NaviWeb to preserve them. The dates didn’t disagree. Anything from before the turn of the current era had been translated from its original form with the translated version side by side.

  “This is incredible, but I think I’m on to something,” she muttered, pulling up articles he’d never seen before.

  He went to the other side of the table with his bowl and cup in hand, then sat by her side. There were dozens, maybe even hundreds, of articles open by now. She’d somehow figured out how to access the interface so she could put numbered arrows from one article to the next, showing how she’d gotten from one thing to another.

  Her eyes and hands never stopped moving. The rapid rate in which she found something new, something seemingly unimportant, to latch onto as a clue to further her search truly amazed him. The fact she could process so much information all at once impressed him.

  "I’m pretty sure it hasn’t gone unnoticed,” he said, pulling up his own search prompt using her deep NaviWeb access. After a few minutes, he found a few articles he’d marked in his memories as noteworthy. “Look here.”

  She read through the articles and looked back at him. “There’s an anonymous group looking to harbor the Double Awakened in opposition to those hunting for them. But why would anybody want to hunt down the Double Awakened?”

  “That’s a good question,” he muttered. He knew why the Devils would be after him, but the occurrence and descriptions of power manifesting from these other Double Awakened had nothing in common with what he experienced. “I think people might be afraid of them. Let’s see if we can find anything about a Double Awakened fully manifesting their power.”

  They searched for more than half an hour, drawing incredibly close to the time they needed to depart the cafeteria for class, and found nothing. Any traces of a Double Awakened fully developing into their entire deck worth of power had been scrubbed from any historical record—almost as if someone or something out there was trying to keep the entire phenomenon under lock and key.

  Once the timer he’d set at the beginning of his own search went off, he sighed and saved his entire search history to a local storage under Annabeth’s access identification. He wouldn’t be able to access the articles and research he’d found without her, but he didn’t see them being separated much in the near future.

  They shared classes together, and he would go out of his way to make sure she didn’t go too deep before either of them were ready to fight off whatever storm was brewing in the background.

  He shoveled the rest of his NutriGrub into his mouth as fast as he could and washed it down. He set the dishes aside and pursed his lips, staring down at the table in thought.

  "We don’t have much time before class, but I’m sure we can meet up after, if that’s okay with you?" Annabeth asked.

  He looked up at her and looked at the uncertainty and curiosity warring in her gaze. The concern stabbed his heart like a hot knife. She’d already proven the extent in which she would go in order to find the answers to a mystery, to get to the bottom of every secret she could sniff out in his last life.

  That was the exact reason she’d lost her life before. Rather than go to him with her findings, she’d gone to Commander Marlon—Lucifer’s disguise vessel. He didn’t have a problem with her curiosity, her skepticism, her deep need to find the answers to the questions that she seeked answers to.

  He did have a problem with her recklessness.

  “Look, you’re not going to like what I say next,” he started, watching as that concern and uncertainty shifted to furrowed brows and heated cheeks—which came as no surprise to him. She hated being told what she could or couldn’t do, but he wouldn’t allow her to be involved if she wouldn’t work with him. “If we’re not together, you leave this alone. If you do any research, your safety needs to come first. At all times. No ifs, ands, or buts about that.”

  “You’re worrying too much!” she hissed, shaking her head and crossing her arms. “They’re not after me, Wyatt. They’re after people like you.”

  “What did I just say?” he growled. Like knives, he stared into her, locking her in place. “This is not a request. I am telling you to stay away from anything that relates to Double Awakenings when we’re not together. I don’t care how much you think I might be an idiot.”

  “Why do you care so much?” she asked, looking away. “You’re not making any sense. I’m always careful, so that goes without question.”

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

  “I know that better than anybody,” he said, softly brushing his shoulder against hers. “I know how you are. If you go too deep into things, you’ll get sloppy. Make one mistake when looking into these things, and then you’re gone forever, no traces left behind.”

  She looked over at him, an array of emotions crossing her face until her features settled on a strange mix of realization and horror. “You're too confident, Wyatt. You’re talking like… this has happened before. That can’t be possible, but if we’re talking Double Awakenings—you’ve gained some kind of foresight or precognition ability, haven’t you?”

  Damnit, he hissed internally. “Not exactly…”

  She tapped on the table again and filled in her notes before closing out of everything. “You have. That’s how you know everything. You didn’t know about any of these things a week ago, but now you’re the expert? Definitely precog. Which means you’re talking from experience.”

  “Nothing like that. You’re grasping at straws,” he muttered, looking away.

  “That’s what I do best, and my hunch is always right.” She turned and straddled the bench and lifted her hand to turn his face towards her. “You’re too worried about me, in a way I’ve never seen before. Something happened to me because of all this, right? That’s why you’re worried and telling me to be careful. I made a mistake and…”

  He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter what may have happened or might happen. The only thing we can do is act on what we know and do our best now.”

  “You’re not usually so avoidant. Definitely precog, and something bad happened to me.” She brushed her fingers against his face. “I know you’re concerned, but whatever happened hasn’t happened yet. If you know, then I trust you. However, I am who I am. Nothing will change that, especially if one of my few friends is in danger. I can’t just do nothing.”

  “I know.” He grabbed her hand in his. “Just be careful, okay? We’ll meet up after classes are done for the day. Where we go doesn’t matter, and we can figure that out later.”

  “Alright, then it’s a date,” she said with an impish grin. “Danger or not, doesn’t mean we have to take everything so seriously. Though, we really need to get you something for your eyes if you don’t have a way to turn off the whole glowing thing.”

  “Agreed. Despite all of this, I’m quite enjoying this. I’ve never really had a chance to enjoy the time in which I exist without being so stuck in the past or future. I think one of my old friends rubbed off on me," he muttered, remembering how Annabeth used to always chase an unattainable future and never considered living in the moment.

  She looked at him oddly but didn’t say anything.

  He thumbed towards the dome. “About time to go.”

  “Right.” She dropped the dome, and he collected his stuff. She walked beside him, lost in thought.

  “Before this morning, what were you looking into before? I think you mentioned something about slave trafficking from Riacore into Eyanora?” he asked as they made their way towards the washing station. “Did you make any progress on that?”

  “I hit a block. I plan on retracing my steps to see what pieces of information I might have skipped over.” She clenched her jaws, and a fiery aura made the area around her rather warm. “If what I found is true, the enslavement is happening from our side. To get through the checking stations, someone has to be in on the whole operation. There’s no other way such a large-scale operation could be kept on the down low for so long otherwise.”

  He remembered hearing about something similar. “Have you looked into anomalous Gate activity? I vaguely remember something about unregistered Gate activity going under the Inter-Dimensional Council’s radar for some time.”

  “Not possible,” she muttered with a slight shake of her head. However, they walked in silence the rest of the way to the washing area as she contemplated his words in silence. Once she reached a conclusion, she turned towards him. “That’s eerie, you know? The record of syndicates being busted with unregistered creatures of Riacore has left the I.D.C. stumped for awhile now. They’d got powerful Truthseekers and Inquisitors that screen everyone that works at the Gates. Nothing noteworthy has been discovered, otherwise, I’d know.”

  “Hard to consider something you think is impossible,” he said. Once he reached the receptacle, a white rack, he placed the dirty dishes inside. A light streamed from overhead, catching the two dishes before they budged from the space he’d dropped them, and then guided them into the rack. “NaviSys is as reliable as ever.”

  Annabeth did the same with her bowl, turning towards him. “I’ve been working on a theory for a while now, and this whole thing with your Double Awakening is making me consider things I hadn’t before.”

  “You’ve piqued my interest,” he said, turning towards the exit of the cafeteria.

  He checked the clock, and they had time to walk and talk as long as she didn’t slow down too much. He could see the familiar expression of her thinking face taking her to an entire world inside her mind of information, clues, and different articles that would lead her to a satisfying conclusion.

  “The criminals who get busted all are reported to have blackened Ichor that implodes like a vortex, consuming everything in its surroundings—to include the slaves and operatives working for the I.D.C. Only the most powerful Clairvoyance rankers are able to make out any details. The black Ichor warps everything, leaving the operations almost entirely obscured,” she explained, huffing in frustration. “If there were more details, this wouldn’t be so hard to figure out.”

  “I think that’s the point,” he said, grinning as she scowled at him. “What are you trying to achieve with this theory? Do you even know what you have to do in order to achieve what you're trying to achieve? The steps required to find concrete proof, a plan to disseminate this information to those that can do something about what’s going on, or anything more than just speculations?"

  Annabeth could’ve become one of the best detectives of all time, in his opinion. She just had an issue with authority. Always the first to throw herself into the fire to tackle a problem, she’d never report her findings to those organizations specifically made to handle such matters.

  Wyatt had always been there with her, but his reasoning had nothing to do with an issue of authority or not. Most other organizations that weren’t Demer’s administration actually implemented the idea of efficient resource management and usage. If she were to uncover something like this, the grand crime syndicate plan, and reported the suspicion with the contextual evidence, more than a few organizations would spare no expense to handle the matters.

  But Annabeth never considered them as competent enough.

  He’d regretted not reporting the findings to those more capable, but the adventures had always been worthwhile, exciting, and a way for him to make him feel better.

  Selfish and foolish. I won’t make the same mistake twice, but we do need more information before I can report any of this to anybody at the I.D.C. He made a promise to himself that, once they’d accumulated enough information, he’d deliver everything to where it belonged.

  He wouldn’t let them continuously throw themselves into the line of fire time and time again just to get some sick sense of satisfaction from being the one to save them, to be the anchor that kept them alive. There were more things to life than being a hero or adventurer.

  And with their abilities, they could do good work. They just couldn’t be on the frontlines themselves.

  Hopefully, he added, thinking about the Devils that would inevitably come for him. He doubted his life would remain very peaceful, but for now, he didn’t need to enable Annabeth to throw both of them into situations where they barely escaped alive. This time, things will be different.

  A promise to himself, one he would never break.

  Not this time. He’d already paid the price once.