“Kevin,” Stewart whispered, as he stepped out of the storage room and began to approach Kevin, in plain sight of the Guard's drone. “We should head back to the storage room before we’re spotted.”

Kevin turned to him, still in the middle of the field. "Okay, let's say you're right, that I am part Seirei Jin. Does that mean I'm adopted too?”

“I don’t know,” Stewart shrugged. "It's possible. You're the first other Jin I've ever met."

Kevin smiled slightly. That humanized Stewart for him, at least a bit.

Stewart continued, "It's kinda nice to not feel alone in the world."

Kevin couldn’t help but think of Sara and Johnny. What would they think when they found out about what he was? Would they love him just the same? Would they have an argument? That possibility was too much for Kevin to think about. His mind was just so overwhelmed with questions.

Then, he had a moment of clarity. If he could figure out the answer to one central question, perhaps some of the others would answer themselves.

“Stewart?” he said. “I need your help with something.”

Stewart nodded, still surveying the area with his eyes. “I’m all ears.”

"I need to know what really happened that night," Kevin said. "You said that the memory I have of the car accident is false. Is it possible to remove that false memory so I can see the real one?”

Stewart paused his scanning and thought for a moment. "I mean, it should, I honestly don't know."

Kevin nodded. “Would you be willing to find out?”

Stewart scratched his head at this. Really, they should be hiding from the Advent Guard right now, but it didn’t seem like they knew where the boys were. Honestly, his curiosity was piqued, and he wanted to do whatever he could to deepen the trust Kevin had in him. Was it really a bad idea to just give him what he wanted?

“Alright,” Stewart said. “Sure.”

He walked over to where Kevin stood near the edge of the football field and stretched out his hand.

“You’ll have to stay close to me,” Stewart said. “You could get lost in there if you don’t.”

Kevin nodded and took his hand.

Within seconds, Stewart’s eyes began to glow a purple hue. Kevin watched as the lights grew brighter and brighter until he could no longer see his surroundings.

Both arrived in what Kevin now knew was the alleged false memory. It was nighttime. In front of Kevin, a truck had rammed straight into an SUV. He recalled how he’d experienced this night: waking up with his worried parents beside him, discovering the rough scar that ran down to his chin. Now, he approached the damaged vehicle. He wanted to see for himself what the wound had looked like before it became a scar.

He peered into the car. At first, he saw only shadows inside: two adults in the front and an unconscious child in the back, able to be differentiated by their size. Because of the tinted windows, he couldn't make out their faces, only their silhouettes. He leaned in closer.

As soon as he got a glimpse of what was inside, he stepped back. The faces of the shadows were blank canvases, lacking any features. As he grew closer, the shadows remained shadows. The bodies didn’t belong to actual people.

Stewart was right. He hadn’t been in this accident. Nobody had. It was a false memory.

Stewart grabbed Kevin by the shoulder.

"Told you it wasn't real," Stewart said.

Kevin nodded, though he didn’t know what exactly to say.

Stewart wasn’t put off by his lack of response. "Now, we need to look for a glowing thread."

"A glowing thread…" Kevin glanced around.

He didn’t even know what he was looking for. An actual piece of thread? All he saw were the remnants of the crash site, and he really didn’t want to look at the shadow people again. Then, he thought about his favorite movies. Characters always used the power of their minds to bring things to life. Maybe that same strategy could work here.

He closed his eyes and imagined a glowing thread.

Within seconds, he could see a light shining through his eyelids. He opened his eyes. There, before him, a pearly white glowing thread appeared, floating in space. It hadn’t been there just moments ago.

"That's it," Stewart said, in awe. "That's the thread I was talking about. How did you do that?"

Kevin didn’t know how to answer, so he didn’t. One end of the thread seemed to be connected to the fake childlike shadow entity in the car. The other end seemed to lead into the nearby woods. Kevin assumed Stewart would follow and started toward the trees.

Yet, after a few steps, Kevin came up with another idea. The thread wasn’t just bright; it also emitted warmth. He reached out with a hand, glanced at Stewart, and then touched it.

Suddenly, the damaged vehicles in the background flickered and dissolved. Everything dissolved. Kevin and Stewart found themselves surprisingly standing in a dark void, with only the luminous thread to break up the darkness, still in Kevin’s grasp.

"What just happened?" Kevin whispered.

"You disconnected the false memory," Stewart said, speaking with slowness and hesitation. "And from the looks of it, all that's left now is that tree."

“Tree?”

Kevin followed Stewart’s gaze, and there, an undeterminable distance away, was a giant glowing silhouette of a tree, its color similar to the thread. The closer they walked to the tree, the more it began to glow. Though Kevin still felt confusion, for the first time today, he felt a sense of peace too.

"OK, you were right," Kevin heard himself say. "Why is there a tree in here?"

"Your guess is as good as mine," Stewart replied. "This is your head."

As Kevin focused on this giant tree, he felt a sense of familiarity and importance. In this moment, memories came crashing down on him once more. He saw a flash of messy hair, his own messy hair from when he was a child. He recognized a memory floating through his mind in which he and Johnny were running through the woods laughing. There in the center of the woods was a fort the two of them had built, where they would play pretend and come up with silly schemes together. Another flash, and he saw himself as a child once more, placing a blue metallic box into the hole of a tree. This tree. Kevin woke from his walk down memory lane still staring at the tree before him, feeling discouraged.

Why is this happening to me?

Kevin realized, being here in this strange place felt like just another episode in a weird, messed up show. He thought back to better times, before the “accident”, where he’d been just like everyone else. The moment he had gotten the scar on his face, everything had changed and now this. Whatever Stewart was trying to tell him—about being a Seirei Jin, still didn’t add up. It had to be a lie.

Suddenly, from within the tree, Kevin could hear the faint sound of arguing. That broke him out of his moment of emotion. What was that sound? He leaned in closer to listen, and recognized his father’s voice, clearly in distress.

"K-Kevin, it's your father. You need to calm down."

Kevin remembered those words. It took him a moment to remember where they came from, but then he placed them: his vision of himself as a child, and his father being held by the Advent Guard. Then, the voice stopped suddenly, the remaining thread whipped out of Kevin’s hand and into the tree. It was as though the tree could sense the moment he remembered the vision and grew quiet.

Kevin glanced at Stewart with curiosity. "Now what?"

“Just walk through it, like a portal.” Stewart nodded in the direction of the tree.

Kevin’s eyes widened, and he was filled with hesitation. A portal? What did that even mean? He had only ever walked through portals in video games. It took a moment for him to build up his courage. When he did, he pressed forward through the tree, Stewart following behind.

Their surroundings looked like a thick forest. A few feet away, the boys could see a near-filled parking lot. Beyond the lot was a large, well-lit stadium that Kevin recognized.

"This is the parking lot behind the stadium from the vision,” Kevin said. “This was where my folks and I went when we left the racetracks."

Behind the two teens, the tree still stood, a part of the forest now. In that moment, a golden light emerged from the tree and began to grow brighter and brighter. Kevin noticed out of the corner of his eye. When he turned around to look at it, the tree dissolved into energy particles.

"Guess that means the false memory is completely destroyed," Stewart said with a shrug.

Kevin didn’t even have time to process what this meant before he heard another voice, one he didn’t recognize.

"Somebody restrain that kid!"

Kevin and Stewart turned in the direction of the commotion and followed the voice. A glowing blue light seemed to be emanating from the center of the lot. Together, the two wove between parked vehicles toward the light. They stopped behind a van that seemed to be a safe enough distance away, and they peeked through the car’s windows toward the action.

Kevin felt his heart drop. He recognized this from his vision. He saw his father being held against his will by a Guard, and he recognized the Agent with the eye patch. A dead soldier flat on his back at the center of the action, smoke rising from his forehead. The remaining guards were all pointing their weapons at a target that was too far for Kevin to see.

Just for a moment, he rose and looked over the car’s roof. There, a few yards away, was a ten-year-old version of himself with an aura of blue energy encompassing him. The child had no expression on his face and glowing blue eyes. He lacked a scar on his right side, but where the scar would one day be, the child’s skin was cracked and peeling, revealing blue energy underneath.

What the hell is all this?