“Avery? I’m a little tired; can we go slower?” Luna asked.

  “Roger. Do I recall correctly that it was you who wanted to go dancing?” Avery pointed out.

  “Right, right, Taj has no strength now, so I thought… Avery? Are there detectors everywhere?” she asked.

  “Of course. You’re the Leader’s wife; how could there not be?” he replied.

  “But where we’re going to dance, there aren’t any?” she asked further.

  “Luna, weirdo. That sounds very specific. But no, there aren’t any; I removed them, as you insisted.”

  “That’s it. I’ll just ask—have you read this book?” she asked.

  Was he missing something?

  “Which book?” he asked.

  She gasped, and Avery noticed.

  He was then missing something.

  “So, you don’t know. How would you know that… soon. I asked Si to talk to you about it. I mean, we’re going dancing; come on.” Luna said.

  She hurried him—and she was the one who was out of breath a moment ago.

  Women.

  Avery sped up.

  It wasn’t a problem to go dancing. He and Luna had known each other for years; they had met at dance classes.

  But. They hadn’t danced together for years. Luna danced with the boss usually.

  … For a few weeks, the boss hadn’t been projecting.

  He gave tasks, but there was no contact.

  Avery sighed silently before he could stop his reaction.

  They had been working together for three and a half years.

  Three years ago, Avery got the first part of the materials. Then more. Later, even more. In packages and pieces. The boss explained that he had to delete private topics or those that he considered not to be at that level of access to the classified knowledge.

  Roger?

  Avery calmed down. He had a moment when the boss drove him crazy; his previous need to understand the boss felt like spiraling. But. It passed.

  The relationship had been better. Was the boss more—human?

  Perhaps.

  There was more to that. When Avery realized how deliberately information had been erased—and the fragments he started to receive, how they were filling some gaps—he decided to be careful.

  The boss was a powerful figure with a complicated political background story. Avery understood many things about the past through their cooperation, and what was clear was—the boss knew weapons that could erase both Crystalers and Abilitiers easily.

  Too easily.

  The boss was dangerous, despite his cute ponytail. The politics were ruthless. Avery would rather not step into some shit and end up banished again. Or killed.

  Regardless.

  Materials were dripping, but they were there. What the boss was cutting out meant that there was more. A lot more.

  Despite the danger, Avery wanted to know.

  Work was all he had.

  … Some of their talks made him wonder. Was the boss starting to go crazy? How was he managing in his situation? Too well?

  Wasn’t it a bit pitiful?

  However, Avery didn’t want to empathize with a man like the boss.

  They were there.

  It took him two and a half hours to remove the detectors. Why did Luna insist on it? He didn’t know. But Si, the Leader, knew about it. So, nothing too strange. Just Luna. Weirdo, as always.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  As soon as they entered the room, Luna immediately explained that point. And then—another one.

  “Right, so I wanted no detectors because I don’t want Taj to laugh at me later, as Avery? I got chubby!”

  Luna smiled as she talked.

  “One more thing, Taj dances with his sword, and I don’t accept it, but you, Avery. Don’t you even think about training me in your flamenco. Something simple today, something easy,” she added.

  Was it that important to get rid of the detectors?

  Roger. But. Weirdo.

  They danced for fifteen minutes, only for Luna to have to sit down.

  Avery smiled, which caught her attention.

  “Let me rest for a moment,” she started to say, but then stopped.

  Luna lay down on the floor!

  Indeed. She completely lost her form. True—the boss would have laughed at her.

  Avery continued dancing. At some point, he noticed that Luna sat, but she seemed absent. After a while, he saw that she was waving her hands.

  He decided to ask her.

  “I don’t know how to start,” she mumbled.

  Those detectors weren’t then to hide the fact that she had gained weight—Luna wanted to talk.

  Avery waited.

  “… Because the problem is—no, I can’t say that. It’s Si who should… I can’t stand this, Avery? It would be best if you two talked,” she said.

  It was unclear.

  “Who?” he asked.

  “You and Taj,” Luna said.

  “The boss…?” It slipped out of Avery’s mouth.

  He thought she meant the Leader.

  “It’s still just boss and boss, but you know, Taj has a name,” Luna said out of the blue.

  But. Avery knew what she was getting at. He knew.

  Yet. Distance at work was necessary. He had already been close to the trap of getting too involved once.

  She looked at him in silence. Suddenly, she spoke.

  “Taj doesn’t project himself because he has private difficulties. He stays at home—” she started to say, but Avery, somewhat unexpectedly for himself, stopped her.

  “Home?” he asked.

  “Right, home, he rebuilt his house, his old one, and he’s there now; he’s not in Gates because he’d probably go crazy,” she said.

  Shit? Was something going on in the Empire?

  No, Luna said it was private.

  But. The boss had a house?

  “Where?” he asked further.

  “I would rather Taj tell you, especially because, from what I know, even if I told you and you went there, you wouldn’t spot it. I am not sure how it was made, but the barrier works quite oddly; no one can enter if they were not invited,” Luna said.

  The boss. Of course, he did it in a way that distanced everyone.

  “Avery, I think that you two could like each other. I don’t know; it’s probably naive. But I like Taj and you, and I’m sure you two would get along, making your job more enjoyable. You have your history, Taj has his history, and you have so much in common, even your behavior is sometimes the same—you’re locked in your past,” she added.

  Avery sensed something strange.

  What history did they have in common?

  He asked her.

  “How to put it… I can’t say that, politics. And I can’t say this; it’s his private trauma…” Luna seemed to be talking to herself more than to him.

  Trauma? Avery caught it.

  Again, he asked her.

  “I’ll put it this way. You have a head; you’ll get it together. I wonder when you’ll finally do something to start talking because I know that you’re the one who’s putting up these walls all the time. And then you complain to me—you complain! Listen to what you say sometimes: you complain that you don’t know something. How are you supposed to know? Avery, it’s challenging to separate private things from non-private things. Taj sometimes sits by my side and thinks about what to cut out so that it doesn’t seem like he’s talking about something from his life and so that you understand what he means. When I listen, I think to myself, people, talk once, and it’ll be easier…” Luna was talking.

  Avery was listening.

  “… And now this. I need to add, I know you would ask later anyway—I decided to go on your trial myself. No one told me to. Taj didn’t order me or suggest doing it. Only when I made the decision did he tell me why he was happy about it. And only then did he tell me what it was about in his past. And now, he is barely coping; I think at least it’s like that because he…”

  Avery caught it. What couldn’t the boss cope with? Gates? Energies?

  He interrupted her; he needed to ask.

  Luna seemed surprised and answered with a question. “With the situation? With his life?”

  “The boss is dead.” It slipped out of Avery’s mouth. Again.

  Luna grimaced. Then she snorted.

  “That’s awfully stupid, Avery. He is alive, and—never mind.” She suddenly stopped talking and started to get up.

  “Tell me. I want to understand,” Avery said quickly.

  He needed to know.

  Luna gave him a strange look.

  “Avery, we’re both weirdos, I know. But Avery, you should knock yourself on the head. Seriously? Maybe he’s dead physically, but he exists and can feel. How would you cope if someone shouted on the street what a hero Xavier was? I don’t know, Avery. By the way, I think I said what I wanted to without saying what I didn’t want to or couldn’t…”

  Luna stood up, dusted herself off a bit, then slightly smiled.

  “Think about it,” she added and left.

  Shit?

  That was very specific.

  Avery cleaned the room and left.

  A few hours later, he understood much more.

  Checking which book mentioned a hero was easy. It was the new bestseller. Avery bought it and read it in the next three hours.

  The story in the book was very direct, some scenes—too direct.

  The name in the book, Raja. Certainly not a coincidence. Avery looked into who Riley Clar was.

  Some facts matched; others were distorted.

  Avery found something odd—the flowers named by Clar. If one knew Clar’s name and the boss’s name, it would be child’s play.

  Clar’s romantic love was the boss.

  Two men.

  Lately, Avery had stopped commenting on it. It stirred no emotions in him.

  Moving forward.

  The date of Clar’s death was strangely close to the boss’s wedding. News from that time—very specific.

  Could it be the boss’s first love, somehow unhappy, with a tragic end? And now the boss was desperate because the book described their story?

  But. Why the reference to Xavier?

  Luna mentioned that the boss was pleased she had testified in the trial. Coincidence?

  The boss had previously given him the cases of abuse victims. Coincidence?

  Why did the boss lock himself away, alone?

  Everyone was excited about Clar.

  Luna mentioned how Avery would feel if everyone was excited about Xavier.

  It was sudden, like a revelation.

  These weren’t coincidences.

  Shit.

  The boss was a victim.