A full month passed while Lu struggled in his studio ceramics course. The professor was particularly harsh to him, annoyed that he’d been recommended by people she admired, only to discover her most-anticipated pupil could barely assemble an emotionless pinch-pot, turning in a coil bowl she could have structured better using her own hair, then a thrown bowl that her cat could have made more appealing. He was unremarkable and unimpressive and he didn’t even try to walk the line between Asylum approved emotion and that darker side of human nature that required art for expression. He simply reproduced assignments with the same level of focus and discipline as the elementary classes she taught on weekends and she despised him for it.

Lu did his best, but the class was boring and his internship was worse. He spent hours mining through ancient reports, consolidating research data into new reports with skimmable graphics, sending invitations and thank-yous to name-brand philanthropists, and tracking program impacts at Mids middle schools that were so far superior to their Grounder facilities, that he had to stop and orient himself halfway across campus, pausing a passing tour guide to direct him to administration after lapping the grounds twice and embarrassing himself trying to open a library door without a pass-key. Security had kindly escorted him away from the door, but when Lu had turned to ask for directions, he found only confusing bots with rotating compasses as useless as his nav-system. 

He was so overwhelmed by the opportunities Mid pre-teens waded through daily that he tipped over into a default pessimism. Of course they got decent jobs and moved upwards, it would be embarrassing if they didn’t, surrounded by so much opportunity. He cringed at every encouragement the ARC employees had thrown at them at Navy Academy, then cringed harder at the idea of it as an Academy at all. They’d been a charity project to the Mids, and he hated himself for being impressed with their green expanses of parks and public recreation centers, their community rails that were free to board for residents, and all the ways they shared teh burden of community, because they stood atop the pile of dusted Grounders, coughing and wheezing and dying in the cold. He hated them, and he didn’t want to deliver invitations to private fundraisers, or watch the way they spent fortunes on decorations no one else cared about, but he did, because it was his job, and the only alternative was returning to Gideon. 

He stomped home, surprised to find Phaios lounging on their couch. Racing season had started again,                the rains dried up into the canals and drained through the Wells, but before he could ask, Phai sat up and began a long and dramatic saga of broken trains keeping people from the track and Nika stress-hitting anything within reach. Lu tried to follow along at first, but Phaios rambled on mercilessly, barely breathing between one topic and the next, and Lu eventually gave up and indulged him, nodding where he should and asking questions when Phaios paused, dancing around the kitchen to make dinner to keep himself engaged. He assumed Phai’s pit-crew hadn’t done much talking in the few weeks he’d been away and let him carry on until he talked himself out. Phaios gestured and paced as he ranted about the politics surrounding the track, referencing the families of the Quartet like they were game pieces moving across a board, elaborating a particularly deadly play until Lu reminded him he didn’t care about the Ground. His only direction was up, toward the sun, toward freedom, toward Adon. 

☆

The next time the uncles came for him, it was with bats. They beat Lu in the alley behind his unit. He saw Phaios shouting into his phone through the window above them, but only curled around to protect his head and endured Sias’ heavy boots accusing him of a dozen non-crimes he was never guilty of. 

“Orestes told us it was you, nark,” Old Paris scowled, Bashing Lu’s shoulder, cracking his clavicle. “Mid scum,” he spat at Lu, roaring as he kicked, “get tossed!” 

The uncles cheered and lifted Lu by his ankles and wrists, swinging him toward the nearest banister over a pit dropping two levels before it was interrupted by a transit platform. The fall would be enough to hurt, even if it didn’t kill him. Lu struggled against them in horror until he went limp, his head nicked against a park bench meant for viewing the Chroma light show dancing in the distance. 

Lu regained consciousness to Phaios kicking Sias in the chest, waiving a phone with a familiar face filling the screen, and shouting back at them “Benny’s orders, so FUCK OFF!”

Lu slouched against the banister, scoffing at his own ignorance. He should have known Phaios was the babysitter. How else would the uncles have figured out where he lived. Why else wouldn’t they have come sooner?

He’d never escaped Gideon, he’d only been allowed temporary independence, a mercy the Flock believed could be revoked at any time. Lu tried to climb up the bench, but his left side ached, quivering as the strength went out of his arms and he fell backwards.

“Hey,” Phaios tried to help Lu sit up, “take it easy.”

Lu ripped out of his grip, rolling upright. His voice gravelly, blood dripping down his chin from biting his cheek, “I’m moving out.” He pushed Phaios away from him and limped inside, ignoring the earnest apology as Phai tried to follow until Lu shut the bathroom door in his face. 

Lu showered gently, inspecting each raised bruise and promising himself he’d get to a med-pod in the morning for an x-ray, more certain than ever that he’d done the right thing for Adon, protecting him from monstrous men who only knew bats, and bruises, and lies, and the marbled glass of the bone boxes staining the black volcanic walls of Caldera. 

Lu crawled into his bed and scrolled through news reports of a Sec-Off raid on the Quartet, skimming conspiracy comments citing the Asylum’s desire to distract from the Arcade Files, or else political motivations with an election approaching, listing dozens of politicians trying to prove they were doing something to stabilize the Wells. But Lu, who’d grown up in a mansion in the gutter, knew that Gideon could only be arrested or detained if the Conductor allowed it, so he was being thrown away or used on purpose. The Conductor didn’t throw away good tools, he bent them and sent them skipping into hissing lakes. Lu felt blasphemous for his hope but unapologetic as he curled around his pillow, perhaps the arrest was the end of Gideon’s Flock and he’d finally be free to look up toward Adon without watching every naive step, worried about tripping back down into those cruel talons.

Lu heard Phaios return, heard his apologies and excuses, his promises that he never told Gideon anything, which had to be true, otherwise Lu would have been forced into the law program ages ago. The Conductor would have pulled strings, demanding he be useful to the Quartet like his Pa, but Lu ignored Phai’s obvious innocence with loud sighs and silence. The past was too raw, the truth that he was still findable too sour, and he moped until Phaios moved out, returning to Nika’s track for good, no longer needing to skirt around Gideon’s crew, because Gideon was in Asylum custody. Phaios was free to walk the Ground without the Flock eyeing him as a traitor, and Lu was free to draw a million versions of Adon alone in his studio apartment.

The Ground settled into a new order, the four families of the Quartet accepting a strained peace as Gideon’s top dogs scrambled to prove loyalty to new owners. Lu tacked his scribbled portraits of Adon onto bare walls, no longer needing to hide his only hobby from a curious roommate. He glared at his ceramics professor while she reviewed his workshop pieces with unappreciated criticism, inspecting each attempt with an unimpressed sigh, the rest of the class leaving him to work in peace, avoiding his corner lest they attract her spiteful gaze. 

Gideon’s trial began and Lu meant to ignore it, but Phaios’ old warning about his ignorance still wormed in his mind, so he hesitantly dialed his ID into the Asylum Case Tracker, only to find himself listed as a voluntary panel witness, meant to sit opposite the jury and agree or disagree with key witness statements, providing additional context detail when queried, or simply add entertainment value to keep viewers engaged, because court halls and reality game shows had become inseparable genres, the Quertet’s online gambling forums full of chattering patrons debating bets. There were professional panel witnesses in the Mids, entertainers who explained legal jargon and kept audiences engaged—Lu had wanted to be one once, back when he was dramatic and theatrical and proud of Gideon’s plan for him to inherit the Flock.

He stared at the invitation banner across his screen for a long time, then stood from his desk and cleaned the entire condo while thinking about it. Lu concluded that it was time to know everything so that he could leave the Ground behind. No haunting questions, no invalidated fears, no horrors softening with time until he doubted his memory, just the awareness that he’d grown up abnormally, and would always be behind his peers because of it. 

☆

“You shouldn’t have come, Lu-Bird,” Benny grunted into the bathroom mirror while Lu washed his hands in the obscenely large court hall bathroom. Few people had shown up for Gideon’s trial in person, unwilling to give away their affiliation, but the small viewer count beneath the judge glitched between 50K and 50M, so Lu was sure there were millions listening, even if it was meant to be entertainment. 

“You don’t need to know everything,” Benny insisted, hanging his head with a defeated sigh as his voice echoed off the tiles of the empty room.

“I do need to know,” Lu pushed past Benny’s protruding gut, unsure what to call him anymore, uncle and Benny both made him feel sick. He moved toward the door with a sad smile, pausing to dry his hands, scoffing bitterly at the towel, “because I might hate you less if I understand where it started.” He looked at Benny in the mirror, but the old man only shook his head and wiped a whimpering tear, and Lu knew there would be no redeption There was no truth that might soften the harsh memory, only the cold that would get colder, and the nostalgic warmth of Adon who he’d shoved away. 

Lu nodded, bracing himself for the inquiry and hours of revelations to come, then clapped Benny’s shoulder loudly, meeting his eye with a bright imitation of a smile he hadn’t attempted in years, thinking of the buzzing needle, the small of ink, and how he still slept on his stomach, “well, I can’t hate you more.”

Lu side-stepped Benny, nodding once to the sec-off at the door, and clicked his dress shoes down the long tiled hall, entering his court hall booth and sliding the blue velvet curtain back into place behind him with a swooshing snap. The booth was stuffy and the lumpy chair smelled like mildew and dust. He could hear Phaios snickering at his phone to his left, the walls thin as paper, and watched Benny be escorted next to Gideon, who sat too proud and too straight. This was the Conductor moving a pawn, Lu realized, and he’d come to torture himself by learning all the ways that awful pawn had moved before, because then he would understand his own fear, he would have reasons to hate and never return, he would have memories levy against any rising doubts. 

For the first hour, Gideon’s lawyers used Heranika, Orestes, and Korinth to paint a picture of a devoted father, doting on birthdays and cooking family breakfasts Lu couldn’t even imagine, casting Lu as the rebellious prodigal son of an unfortunate young love. Lu worried he’d only be humiliated, left without the full picture, that he’d have to forgive Phaios before he was ready just so he could demand the truth from him. He didn’t want to be naive anymore, and the uncomfortable question he’d shoved to the back of his mind was beginning to throw a tantrum: what happened to Adon?

By the fifth hour lunch break, however, Lu’s appetite was gone. He remained in the booth as the court hall emptied. When the trial resumed, Lu watched as if from a distance, removed from his body, numbly coated in facts as he pressed the confirm, deny, and unknown buttons at the prosecution’s prompts. His childhood hope that Pa wasn’t that bad, that he was cruel to Lu out of some distorted tough-love translation, crumbled, and Lu was left to face Gideon the monster, and himself, the monster’s son. 

Lu was surprised to learn that Gideon’s construction company had been intentionally responsible for quakes that had collapsed several Wells sectors, whole neighborhoods left crumbled, including sections of Navy. A photo of Navy elementary’s entrance heaped in rubble was projected on the screen, EMS workers digging through the pile, small bodies hidden by tarps, blankets, and gravity coats lining the corridor. Lu gaped, he hadn’t even heard of the collapses or quakes from the Mids. He spent the horrible hour of sobbing parents standing as witnesses and testifying against Gideon reminding himself over and over that Messenger was older, that the ten-year-old frozen in his mind didn’t exist anymore, that he didn’t go to broken elementary schools, that he had ascended beside Adon, out of reach. But the more Lu fought himself, the more his logic cracked under the pressure of hope. He had no proof. He had no way to know. He didn’t deserve peace. 

Gideon’s lawyers argued against intention, calling it an accident even as prosecutors showed the embezzlement funds and comms from the indicted Wells governor to keep the Mids separated by targeting the Navy Academy where so many of them reluctantly sent their smart kids despite its location on Ground levels. They revealed murders, gambling houses and illegal debt collection, the bio-scanner frauds and sec-off bribes, weapons manufacturing and the threats that had ruined so many lives by overriding legal asylum credit accounts. The Conductor couldn’t have meant for all of Gideon’s sins to be aired, because several times, Lu watched Pa’s carefully pensive gaze crack, disdain pulling at his lip before smoothing back into neutrality.