It took a week to schedule a meeting with the new lawyer. She was in court for a case the week I contacted her. The inspectors had done their bit and left. The die was cast. Whatever was going to happen, would happen. I needed to be as prepared as I could be. She called me while I was in the equipment shed changing the oil in Dad’s tractor.

  “Hello?”

  “Is this Eddy?” she asked.

  “This is.”

  “This is Melissa, I was told to call this number. Is your father around?”

  “I was the one who reached out to you,” I confirmed. “I’m the one in need of legal services, not my father. It’s my company and my actions in question, not his.”

  “Please don’t take this the wrong way, but you sound pretty young.”

  “I am eleven.”

  I heard a sigh on the other end.

  “Alright. What do you need help with?”

  “Well, I got your information from Al, who said he wasn’t willing or able to handle it.”

  “He can be like that sometimes,” she said. “Please, continue.”

  “Well, it involves dumping chemicals into a stream on my property. There were government inspectors buzzing around last week. Not sure what the timeline on this sort of thing would be, but I’m pretty sure they didn’t come around for shits and giggles.”

  “You’d be right,” she said with a chuckle. “That being said, there are steps we can take when they reach out to you, your father, or anyone else. Until they do, however, there isn’t much we can do besides prepare.”

  “What are the usual penalties for this kind of thing? I’m not going to prison or anything, right?”

  “Unlikely. You’re a first time offender, and the penalties are usually fines more than anything else. You might have a large debt, but otherwise you should be free.”

  “Thank God,” I said. “That was my biggest worry. I have plenty of money, so I should be able to pay for the fines. Is there any way to reduce them as much as possible? Or at least delay the proceedings as much as possible?”

  I heard her muttering in the background something about how I was way too smart for my own age. Without my enhanced body—and the senses that came with that—I wouldn’t have picked up on it through the background static.

  “That depends on how they attack the problems, but yes, there should be ways we can do that. They’ll be expensive, though, since that’ll take a lot of my time—”

  “I’m more than willing to pay for it,” I said over the end of her sentence.

  The way I did so wasn’t nice, but I felt the urge to set expectations and a pecking order. It wasn’t a feeling I’d had before. And yet, it was something I needed to do. Especially after Al’s sudden betrayal.

  “Ok then,” she said. “You’re the one paying me. Let me handle whatever comes up. If you get served any papers or contacted by anyone, let me know first before you respond in any way.”

  “Will do.”

  “Good. That all being said, I don’t think you’ll hear much about it for a while. These things take time—especially on the government side. So don’t think about it too much. We’ll get through this.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  And I meant it. I felt like she knew what she was doing—or at least that was my hope. Al hadn’t been a bad lawyer, so his recommendation was likely a good one for what I actually needed.

  The next two years went by like the last few years had. I focused on the farm and getting as much experience as I could. I was just shy of ten million by the time I turned thirteen. It was around then that I discovered something else: I was aging more slowly.

  I’d gone to the doctor for a routine checkup. Although everything was good, I was beginning to fall behind on the growth charts significantly. It was as if I wasn’t growing much anymore at a time when my body should—and had previously—grown much more quickly. While the doctor was mildly concerned, I suspected it was system-related.

  In my original life, my growth happened around thirteen to fourteen. The last time it had been closer to fifteen. I was trailing behind that significantly, now. My best guess was that it had something to do with leveling and tiers, but I couldn’t be certain. At least not without a lot more testing. Was it just the growth in power or a specific segment of it that mattered?

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  That was for next time. For now, though, that future Melissa had said would take a while was now here. On a Tuesday morning, I was ambushed on the way out of my house.

  “Milton Edward Teller the third?” a man in a police uniform asked.

  “That’s me,” I said.

  “Here,” he said, handing me a thick envelope. “You’ve been subpoenaed.”

  With the papers in my hand, he spun on his heel and left.

  I went back inside and pulled the papers from the envelope. There were a lot of them in there, and it took some time to do reading. It boiled down to two requests. The first was for records I had about chemical purchases over the last five years. The second was a request for my appearance at a grand jury in two months’ time.

  I immediately contacted Melissa.

  “So what does it say?” she asked.

  I proceeded to read the document to her.

  “Based on that, you’ll have to supply what is being asked for. As for the request to appear, I believe we can challenge than on account of your age. Additionally, you don’t have to say anything even if that motion fails. So hang tight. I’ll do what I can.”

  “Alright.”

  “Oh, and please send me a picture of the request so I can challenge it.”

  “Will do.”

  After hanging up, I sent her the pictures. There was a deadline on getting the documents to the people requesting them, but it was a month out. I would have time to gather them. I kept receipts—or should I say, Gloria had them. While she didn’t do my end of year taxes, she kept many of the files for day-to-day things like receipts, so she could enter them into the program she used.

  I composed an email to Gloria, asking for the records. I made sure to ask her to be as thorough as she could be. The government wanted records? Well, I was going to bury them in everything I had. Maybe that would delay things some. That was shy I asked for every receipt and invoice I had for the period they were requesting.

  Now that I knew prison wasn’t in the cards, the fear I’d had now became petty obstinance. They’d scared me with all of this legal stuff, and I wanted to be a petulant child about it. I was still a kid, so what else did they expect? Well, I was a kid with lots of money, so I could get away with it—and I was going to take full advantage of being a little shit. It seemed appropriate for something that—ultimately—didn’t matter. I would just wipe the slate clean later.

  I told Dad about the legal troubled, but not Mom. Since it was just a fine—and a few years off, probably—there was no need to let her worry over nothing. Dad was generally more stoic about things. What was, was. What would be, would be. That’s how he was, and that made it easier to talk to him about those sorts of things.

  “I got served, too,” he told me a few days after I’d talked to Melissa.

  “Would you like to talk to my lawyer?” I asked.

  “Probably a good idea. Can you pass me the number?”

  “Sure. She’s pretty good, I think.”

  “She? I thought you had that other guy… Arlo or something?”

  “Al you mean?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He dropped me over this whole thing. But this other lady was his recommendation.”

  I shrugged.

  “Alright. I’ll give her a call then.”

  He picked up his phone to call her. At the same time, I got a notification that Gloria had finished what I’d asked her to do. I forwarded them to Melissa so she could send the package along to the investigators.

  Dad returned after his phone call to tell me that while we couldn’t coordinate our answers—that would be illegal—we could talk about the investigation and what they wanted from us. From him, they wanted the same stuff they’d asked me for. They also wanted to talk to him in person. His proposed date was much sooner than mine was, and he didn’t have potential grounds to contest the appearance like I had.

  Speaking of contesting my in-person interview, Melissa told me—through Dad, of course—that she’d filed the motion and it would go in front of the judge soon. All I needed to do was to sit tight.

  “I hate sitting in limbo,” I complained when Dad told me what she said.

  “Eh, it’s alright, kid. I mean, I get why you did what you did. The world won’t see it that way, but I get it. If you ever do something like that again, maybe think of the consequences before you do it?”

  “I’ll try,” I said with a smile. “I’m not planning on doing something like that, but I’ll keep what you said in mind.”

  “Mm,” he grunted, then slapped me on the back.

  “It’ll work out. I’m going out for a smoke.”

  “Wish you’d quit that awful habit.”

  “Doesn’t much matter, right?” he shrugged.

  I just shook my head as he walked towards the door.

  Melissa called me early in the morning two days later. I had been up for a while, so I was glad it wasn’t my alarm clock for the day.

  “Hello?”

  “Good morning, Eddy,” she said. “I finished speaking with the judge last evening. Sorry I couldn’t talk to you sooner.”

  “And what did he say.”

  “He said that you are still compelled to appear, but you can have a parent, guardian, or lawyer with you in the room.”

  “So you’ll be with me?” I asked.

  “That would be the best option,” she confirmed.

  “Better than Dad?”

  “I know their tricks. They’ll try to twist your words into something you didn’t actually mean to say. Well, they would if you were going to say anything. I would recommend you exercise your right to remain silent on anything that could incriminate you—which is pretty much anything they might ask beyond your name.”

  “So how do I go about that?”

  “You’ll have to clearly say so for any question they ask you where an answer might look bad for you. Again, I would be cautious and say that for everything they ask.”

  “Alright, and when is this going to happen?”

  “The first week of next month—so about two weeks. You’re scheduled for that Tuesday, but it could change. I’ll confirm with you at the end of the week beforehand and keep you up to date on any changes that happen. Just in case. Oh, and you should get a suit or other formal wear for that day.”

  “Do I have to?”

  “It doesn’t hurt for you to look like you’re taking it seriously.”

  “Ugh. That sucks.”

  “It does,” she chuckled.

  “I guess I’ll see what Dad and I can scrounge up. Oh, and where is this all taking place?”

  “You’ll have to go to the state capitol. I’ll give you the rest of the details the week before.”

  “Thanks, I guess. No way to delay it more?”

  “Not at this stage, sorry.”

  “Ok,” I said.

  I hung up and let Dad know about the clothing I’d need.

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