“… Avery? Come with me, Avery…”

  That voice, that accent, sonorous and full like a waterfall—pleasant, who?

  The boss.

  Avery’s eyes were closed. His head was ringing, and his stomach was spinning—countless butterflies—no. That wasn’t it.

  Too much, too much again.

  He opened his eyes. Shit. Blurry, everything blurry. Avery closed his eyes.

  “… Avery? Truly, o, not that you do it often, but why at all? Come with me; I’ll take you home…”

  It was the boss’s voice; he was speaking directly into Avery’s ear, from very close.

  Avery wanted to push away; it was too close, but he lost his balance and landed on his knees. He had been caught. The boss pulled him up easily, supported him, and started leading.

  “O, so unruly, let me…”

  The voice was quiet, not angry—at least, as far as Avery could tell.

  The route. Five minutes. Three. Stairs. Door. The boss opened the door, of course. It was dark inside; neither of them turned on the light.

  Shit, suddenly, Avery started to feel sick. Then, immediately, he felt a flow of energy, and it tasted like what? Freshness. Trees—what kind? Avery got tangled in his thoughts and lost control of his head.

  … Avery woke up.

  Where? He opened his eyes but couldn’t see well yet, so he closed them again. Sounds…

  He was in his apartment; there was the familiar ticking. He felt a little better.

  For how long had he been unconscious? No clue. Where exactly was he? He was sitting on the floor against the wall, leaning against what? Something warm. A body—he quivered, wanting to push away.

  “Avery? Easy, not again…”

  It was the boss’s voice.

  He recalled that the boss was supposed to take him home—and, shit, he did.

  But. Not only. He stayed by his side, and… what?

  Avery opened his eyes, tried to focus, and only then realized… it was he who was leaning on the boss; it was his head on the other shoulder.

  “… Truly, Avery, you get drunk when miserable, and you get drunk when happy? Amazing or not amazing, I cannot decide. O, I can sense you are better. Can you talk? I can dematerialize if I bother you. I stayed to be certain you are… yes?”

  Avery wanted to say something, but the sound he made was like the rattling of a rusty piece of junk.

  When the boss heard it, he began to laugh. The laugh was too loud. Avery grabbed his head, and the boss stopped laughing.

  “Sit properly,” he said in a lower voice.

  Avery only now pulled himself together and straightened up.

  The boss got up, went for something, and came back. He brought a glass of water and honey. Avery recalled it—he had given these to him some time ago, too. The boss added honey to the water, mixed.

  Avery drank the mixture, and then finally he could say something.

  “I’m very sorry for the inconvenience,” he started, wanting to add something but feeling dizziness returning.

  He stopped talking.

  “Correct, it is an inconvenience. Though, Avery, I think more for you than for me. I do not judge; you do what you want when not at work. I thought that the occasion was good, marking one year of Shadows’ citizenship. Luna told me you planned to celebrate. But when I noticed your state, I decided to do something…”

  The boss was talking. Avery didn’t interrupt. He listened, trying to gather his thoughts and compose himself.

  It was embarrassing.

  At that moment, Avery decided he would control it more in the future.

  But. Now, the boss was here, seeing Avery wasted like never before.

  “If you prefer, I can go; tell me. I think my being here will soon become a problem for you, no? You do not like men visiting you in your apartment.”

  The boss laughed silently.

  “I apologize; somehow, I had to say it. Don’t be worried. Nothing has changed; I am truly not interested,” he added.

  “I know, I’ve heard—” Avery started to speak.

  He wanted to say that Luna had told him bits; he also noticed that the boss, when talking to himself, seemed to be talking to this man. Avery even knew the name of that other man—Song—easy to misunderstand.

  Then the boss surprised him.

  “Your hearing, Avery, is extraordinary, no?” he asked.

  Avery sighed.

  The boss had noticed. How long ago?

  “Don’t answer; I do not need it. It was not truly a question. And you are still intoxicated. Why did you dim your Crystal’s energy? Will you turn it on, or should I help you? Or do you want to stay intoxicated? I am even curious about what the plan is.”

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  The boss’s tone of voice changed; he was certainly not smiling.

  It was still quite dark inside. Avery decided to first manage his body; without a word, he awoke his Crystal and healed himself. The boss merely nodded when he noticed.

  Avery then stood up and turned on the lights, but not the brightest ones. He looked around. Everything looked normal; at least he didn’t smash anything.

  He mixed more water with honey and drank it.

  The boss stood in the same place he had been since the moment he had brought the drinks. He was not saying anything but observing. Then, as if he had made his decision, he suddenly struck his open hand with the other.

  Avery knew it—it was a goodbye sign, so he interrupted to prevent it.

  “Stay,” he said quickly.

  “O.”

  The boss said only this. But. He didn’t dematerialize his projection; he stayed.

  “I wanted to explain,” Avery started, but wasn’t sure what to say next.

  The silence was strange; it lasted for only a few minutes, but it seemed very long.

  Then, the boss laughed slightly and spoke.

  “Avery, I think we better discuss some irrelevant things for a moment, then I will disappear. It won’t be awkward when we meet again tomorrow, no?” the boss asked, smiling. “For example, I noticed you like older machines, the pre-ACD ones. There was a person who was also fascinated by them. I would like to talk about it, or try, especially the planes, to fly one…”

  “You mean your Song?” Avery asked suddenly.

  “Amazing, correct… though, now I think about it, it is not the best topic. You wouldn’t like me talking about it. Let’s try this. One year of being officially Shadow, not being one. Amazing… Avery? I see your face; I assure you, I am not being ironic. I was in a very similar situation many years ago, but I remember it as if it were yesterday. Imagine that. I was allowed to join the Sect, a place only for Abilitiers, when I still had my Crystal. How problematic I was for them back then…”

  The boss sighed when he said the last sentence.

  “It is difficult to learn about you.” Avery suddenly said, surprising them both.

  “… I wouldn’t say so. I talk quite a lot,” the boss said, trying to dodge, turning the conversation into something lighter.

  “When you do not want to say something, even if you talk for an hour, it is still not said.” Avery commented on it.

  No dodging. It was tiring. Avery tried to search for information about the boss and failed.

  Everything was cleared in a way that looked normal. Some facts remained, dates matched, and neutral details were left intact.

  But.

  That was all. There was no information that could explain how he, as a Crystaler, was the Sect Member, what kind of Ability he possessed, let alone how he managed to get rid of artificial energy. This was still not developed, and yet, regarding the boss, it was mentioned as if it were a regular procedure, done every day.

  Before, it had been intriguing, but recently, it became more tiring, almost infuriating.

  Avery wanted to understand who the boss was.

  They worked together, and he knew almost nothing. Some scraps of information, mostly eavesdropped, which was the worst.

  And the boss knew Avery overheard some of his conversations.

  Luna, for example.

  How did she end up so deeply involved in politics between Crystalers and Shadows? Why did a regular girl from Unio, perceived as a weirdo, happen to know so much about science, so much about energies, not to mention all these people she also clearly knew? Alive and dead ones, because additionally, from where did she know the boss? It didn’t look like a shallow relationship; it looked like years of friendship.

  There was much more to that.

  Avery sighed.

  The boss broke the silence.

  “Avery, correct. O, I see the look. Let me… I realized it can be frustrating. Though, Avery, I am not quick to warm up,” the boss said. “These are Si’s words; don’t look at me like that. What he means, and I think it is correct, is that I am not quick to start relations. Again, your look. I mean any relation based on trust; I do not mean romantic relation. I said I am taken. I have said it too many times recently. Give it time, Avery. For today, I cannot answer questions you, as I assume, have in your head. Especially when you are in this state, no offense.”

  The boss stopped.

  He stopped because Avery suddenly looked down at his clothes and at himself. It had to be visible—Avery was instantly horrified. He looked like a drunkard.

  “Only now you… I think it is better I leave you alone.”

  This time, the boss made his projection disappear before Avery could say anything.

  It wasn’t that he wanted to stop him.

  It was the most embarrassing. Not their talk. Avery felt he was a giant embarrassment himself.

  There was no excuse for his behavior, he realized.

  After the boss had disappeared, Avery stood in the same spot, not knowing whether to laugh at himself or start throwing something.

  A moment, and his emotions froze. He looked at himself again. A piss-stained, puked-up drunkard.

  He went to wash himself, threw away his clothes, everything except the messenger.

  Shit. He had to wash the messenger too.

  Then he made himself another portion of honey water—in fact, it remained a habit.

  Avery decided. He had to stop this; it couldn’t be like this. He had to stop.

  That was one thing. The other one… annoying was an understatement.

  Not only did the boss know that Avery could hear from a distance and that he had heard details he shouldn’t have. He definitely shouldn’t have. The boss also had to know that Avery was trying to find information. And what?

  Nothing, shit, nothing. He just didn’t care; the boss didn’t care.

  What infuriated Avery wasn’t that the boss didn’t care.

  It was that he suddenly cared about it himself.

  But. It was not surprising, this change.

  Before, Avery had thought it was an opportunity to work with Elder, but not a very interesting one. He had been more inclined to go back to working with Si, especially when Si became the Leader of the Empire. But after a while… Avery noted things and began to understand that with the boss, that had been the best opportunity he had ever had in his career.

  There couldn’t be a better one.

  Understanding was everything.

  Avery needed to know more.

  … Why did some of the boss’s projections look like he was haunted by demons, and others as calm as a lotus flower on a lake surface?

  There was one he saw twice—with a scar on the cheek, behaving strangely, angrily. The boss even commented on it, saying he was violent back then and, looking back, was not proud of himself, although he sometimes needed to use it. Avery wanted to ask, why?

  Why was the boss angry? Why was he violent? Or why did he have to project this one?

  No clue. No information.

  The boss was Elder, but how did he achieve that? What was his level? What skills did he have?

  Avery had read that he was a biologist specializing in de-desertification. What did it mean?

  Recently, there was news about an experiment that took place at Salty Lake. Avery wanted to see this curious lake but didn’t manage to see it in time; it was transformed into a regular lake. How? The news said it was a test, an attempt to repeat the older way of terraforming.

  The natural energy way.

  At first, Avery assumed it was the woman he had seen during the epidemics.

  But. Later, he overheard the boss and Luna’s talk, and it was as if it dispelled some fog. Avery started to think that the woman, it was not her.

  He had the thought that she didn’t exist at all. This was quite disturbing because Avery had many dreams about her.

  Even so, it didn’t matter. It was not real.

  Exactly.

  The boss was not real. He was energy.

  Yet another set of questions. How? How did he end up in Gates? In the documents, it was noted that Taj—Elder An died in 70 ACD.

  It meant the boss had died before the Gates net was created.

  How, then? It had to be later. Where was he, and in what form, in between?

  No clue. No information.

  … Avery realized he was so lost in his thoughts that he stood with an empty glass for half an hour. And that something awoke him from his speculations.

  A buzz.

  He picked up his messenger and sighed, a bit in disbelief and a bit as if someone had let the air out of a very inflated balloon.

  The boss sent him access to a special folder with many files inside.

  Avery opened something blindly.

  It was a description of the artificial energy Crystal extraction performed on the patient Taj Manh, with several dates to look at. The last one with an additional ‘success’ note. Avery looked into the middle one—saw the photos, saw the patient’s condition.

  He had to sit down.

  Then he opened it again and started reading everything that was in the folder, from the oldest file.