Kara meandered down the hallway and opened another door. She’d been exploring the mansion for almost an hour now. No one had come to stop her yet. The mansion was much like Kara expected it to be: tastefully decorated and large. There was the occasional odd room, but for the most part there were few surprises.

  This was one of the odd ones: floor-to-ceiling window on one side, green walls, no furniture, no discernible purpose. She stepped up to the glass. No escape here. The forest was beautiful, but not helpful. The area closest to the house had been cleared, some sort of buffer zone with patrols. She’d spotted a few.

  She hadn’t seen anyone inside. All the movement seemed to be on the lower floors.

  Even if she could climb down, her options seemed to be a hike or ocean cliffs. She couldn’t tell if this was an island or just coastal. Several burst sheds dotted the cleared area—structures connected to long metal wires that collected energy surges from the bursts. So, the compound was likely completely burst-powered and off-grid, which meant isolated, possibly miles from the nearest town.

  None of it boded well for escaping on her own.

  Kara backtracked through a burstdoor and down the stairs. So far, she’d only been able to explore the upper floors. She’d found an elevator, but it didn’t go below the third floor. There had to be ground-level stairs somewhere, probably behind one of the locked doors. She turned down an unexplored hallway and tried a handle. Locked. The next door opened into a large, dimly lit space filled with looming shadowy shapes.

  “Minerva, lights please?”

  Minerva made a sound that was suspiciously close to a harumph. The house AI was strangely annoyed with her exploration, but the lights flicked on, revealing a maze of towering sculptures. Most were life-sized figures in bronze and aluminum, though a few were clay or even marble.

  She wandered among the sculptures, slightly unsettled by the lifelike metal figures, especially after six hours without seeing another real person. Still, the art was beautiful. One tree, made from several fused metals, displayed the seasons in sections.

  The room curved at the back, revealing clay statues, molds, and scattered tools. Not just a sculpture gallery, then. This was an art studio, but whose? It was impossible to tell, but it was different than the rest of the house.

  Kara eyed the tools. Maybe one could double as a weapon. The room had no windows, probably due to sensitive equipment, but there was a burstdoor in the back wall. Kara wove through the statuary and pressed the wall control. To her surprise, it opened.

  She slipped into the antechamber. The inner doors closed, and a second set opened onto a balcony, which overlooked a large garden in a first-floor courtyard. Trees, benches, and winding paths filled the space. A mermaid statue overlooked a pond at one end, and an ivy-covered arch framed a small fountain at the other.

  Trellises lined the walls, ivy climbing nearly to the roof. Kara leaned out slightly, testing the trellis’ distance. Close enough to reach. Sturdy enough that it might hold her. Not quite an escape, but a start, a way to reach the ground floor, especially since the courtyard was likely less monitored than the outer perimeter.

  Kara traced her fingers along the balcony railing. Was escape still her best option? Initially, that was all she wanted, but she’d been looking at Siera’s data when not exploring, and something was going on with Novem. What if she needed the information here to untangle all this? She had a copy of Novem’s pages. That’s what she’d wanted, right?

  And Siera would have access to information Novem wouldn’t: things Kara couldn’t get any other way, manuscripts and documents Solaterra had sealed and never released to the public. She needed to escape eventually, but for now… maybe gathering information was her best option.

  But Lev.

  Blond hair tangled between her fingers as a crying eight-year-old sobbed in her arms. He’d accidentally burned himself on the stove, not bad, but he couldn’t get the memory to stop until she held him.

  Kara shoved the memory away. She’d been eleven then. Lev was far more capable now, but if Novem kept him, if people misunderstood… She flinched. There was nothing she could do. Not now. Lev was an adult. He’d figure it out. Probably. Maybe.

  This wasn’t helping. She should go back and look at that data again. Decide what it was worth.

  She flicked off the lights in the statuary room on her way out. The contrast hit her as she stepped back into the hallway—warm brown carpet, clean cream walls, the occasional painting. Almost spartan compared to the dramatic art and greenery she’d just seen. Kara turned a corner, heading back toward the console room. She needed information. Now.

  True to her word, Siera had given her access to the net. But with uploads disabled, Kara couldn’t send any messages out. Still, the search function seemed legitimate. She’d tested it on obscure articles mentioning Novem that she remembered. They’d all come up. It wasn’t proof, but it was enough for her to take the data Siera had given her seriously.

  Kara re-entered the console room. Everything was exactly as she’d left it. She grabbed a grape from the tray of snacks that had mysteriously appeared during one of her exploring sessions and dropped into the rolling chair.

  Ten hours of reading and wandering, and she still had more questions than answers. She checked the simulation she’d been running. She already knew Novem was hiding something, so she’d dug into Siera’s data: disappearances, deaths, strange gaps in records involving Novem. There were plenty, which was alarming enough, but it didn’t tell her if Novem was the culprit, so, after cataloging the cases, Kara pulled Aralin’s overall accident and disappearance rates for comparison.

  Siera had access to more than just news: old police reports, archived government files. Kara didn’t know how she got them, but they looked legitimate. The simulation she’d run to account for data gaps had finished while she was exploring. Now she keyed in a round of statistical tests, popped a grape in her mouth, and waited.

  As unlikely as it appeared, any associations with Novem could be a coincidence. Kara wanted to rule that out before drawing any conclusions. Perhaps Novem really was taking out their own people to protect their secrets, but Teorin’s crazy, conspiracy theorist explanation also sort of fit with the data that she had seen so far. Novem’s secrecy could be a defensive move, not a cover-up.

  Results began popping up on the screen.

  People who asked questions about the Atalanta, the bursts, or off-planet access were significantly more likely to be hired by Novem. That tracked, given their mission. But then came the kicker: those who publicly questioned such topics, regardless of employer, were much more likely to suffer accidents. Kara shivered. What in the cascades was happening? The trend was even stronger within Novem itself, but was that because they employed more curious minds or something more sinister?

  Something was going on here. Kara had three entirely plausible theories:

  Option 1: Novem had some crazy secret they were trying to cover up. It was important enough that they were willing to take out their own employees to protect it. They also monitored the general population for people digging too much.

  Option 2: Some secret person or group really was trying to keep them grounded here and was willing to kill to do it.

  Option 3: Some combination of the first two options. Some secret person was trying to take people out, and that person was part of Novem.

  Kara’s data didn’t really support any one explanation more than the other. Though Kara was starting to feel that option 1 was really out there. It had a lot of assumptions. The thing was they all sounded crazy.

  Siera was right. The piece missing from every theory was motivation. Kara had no idea why anyone would go this far to block access to the truth. What were they hiding?

  Steps interrupted her thoughts. A woman appeared in the doorway—mid to late twenties, similar coloring to Siera, but where Siera was curves, this woman was all lean muscle and angles. Her braided black hair fell nearly to her waist.

  And she was wearing a dark blue leather jacket.

  Memories flashed from the tower: the woozy feeling of the stun, invisible hands grabbing her, and a leather jacket against her cheek. Then… Teorin’s face. Kara still wasn’t sure what to make of that. Siera clearly hated Novem, so it seemed unlikely they were in on it together. As a Memoran, she’d never had cause to distrust her memories, but she’d also never been under a stun before.

  The woman hooked her foot around a rolling chair, spun it toward Kara, and slid into it like she owned the place, completely at ease. The woman grinned, almost like she expected Kara to recognize her. “Your brother makes that exact same face when he’s thinking,” she said, propping her feet on the desk.

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  Lev. Her stomach twisted. He was burned and alone and—

  No. She had to concentrate on this. Kara folded her arms. “You know my brother?”

  The woman shrugged. “Not well. We talked at a party a few weeks ago.”

  What kind of party had Lev gone to with Kara’s kidnappers in attendance? “Who are you?” Kara asked.

  The woman gave a small salute. “Isi, at your service.”

  “You’re planning to serve me?” Kara said dryly.

  Isi smiled, amused. “I’m very serviceable, so if you let me, yes.” Isi looked up at the screens, scanning the contents. “She’s already put you to work, hasn’t she? Never could let anyone rest. If my uncle weren’t around, she’d probably work herself to death.”

  Kara’s head was spinning a little. “Are we talking about Siera?”

  Isi gave her a half smile. “Who else?”

  Kara had to reorient for a second. The dynamic in this house was… Kara didn’t even know. She’d only met Lucas, Siera, and now Isi. They all seemed to be part of the same family, but they were all vastly different. Siera was clearly in charge, but other than that it was still unclear what was going on. “Siera is your aunt?”

  “Yep,” Isi replied with a sigh, kicking her foot against the ground and spinning her chair around.

  “What party did you meet my brother at?”

  Isi spun her chair again. With every spin, she seemed to hit a couple of keys on one of the screens. “It was a sort of ball. Very fancy, not really my style. He was there looking oh-so dapper.”

  Kara frowned. There had been a day a few weeks ago that Lev had crashed on her couch, whining about a fancy party. The next time she saw him, she was going to grill him on his party-going preferences. But for now, it was time to test her memory. “You were the one who stunned me,” Kara said, keeping it matter-of-fact.

  Isi froze.

  It was all the confirmation that Kara needed. “Don’t try to lie. I know it was you.”

  Isi shifted the chair so that she was fully facing Kara and cocked her head. “How did you know?”

  “The jacket,” Kara said, waving at the jacket in question. “I couldn’t see you, but the texture was definitely leather.”

  Surprisingly, Isi just grinned. “Clever, clever.”

  “So, why exactly are you here?” Kara asked.

  Isi spun her chair again, looking slightly more serious, but the spinning kind of took away from that. “To test the waters,” she said.

  “Right. So, I am extremely tired of receiving cryptic answers. Do you think you could just explain?”

  Isi grinned again. “I guess that’s fair. Where to start…” She spun again. “Well, a few weeks ago, I got put in charge of figuring out what Novem was up to. They made some interesting moves with their fleet around that time. I heard that Novem was looking to hire you, so we monitored what we could—”

  “You’ve been watching me?” Kara asked, interrupting.

  “Sort of. Not that carefully, mostly just monitoring Novem’s contact with you. Anyways—”

  “Wait! Why exactly did you care about them hiring me?”

  “We keep track of anyone Novem hire, but especially translators. And we were paying particularly close attention to people they contacted in the last few weeks.” Isi spun again, her hand sweeping across the keyboard.

  “Why?” Kara asked.

  “We heard they found something big, a large recovery site. Sometimes that means documents. Normally, they’d take something like that to an in-house translator, but their preferred one disappeared a couple of weeks ago.”

  Kara raised an eyebrow. “Did the da Silvas have something to do with that?”

  “No,” Isi said fiercely as she straightened in her chair, her gaze momentarily sharp at the suggestion. After a few seconds though, Isi took a deep breath and leaned back in the chair again. She went on slowly. “Technically, he’s still missing in action. No one knows what happened to him.”

  Kara just nodded slowly. She wasn’t sure what to make of that reaction. “So, you showed up at the tower because Novem showed up,” Kara said.

  “Yes,” Isi said. “We knew they thought those pages were valuable. We also knew that Novem would probably make them disappear.”

  Well, Isi wasn’t wrong about that. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because Siera wants you to understand. I want you to understand. Novem running off and hiding information isn’t some new occurrence. It’s been happening for a long time.”

  It would have been a dramatic revelation if Kara hadn’t experienced it for herself for the last day or so. And while Isi was correct, Kara still didn’t trust anyone in this house. Novem certainly had issues, but the da Silvas were almost worse. “Is that supposed to change my reaction to being kidnapped?”

  Isi shrugged. “Maybe not, but how else were you going to get an outside perspective?” Isi spun again, slower this time, fingers trailing very deliberately. The light on the camera in the corner flared and then turned off. Had Isi just powered down the cameras?

  “Did you just do that?” Kara asked, glancing at Isi, who was still coming out of that last spin.

  “Hmm? You mean the camera? Yes, I did.”

  Isi hit another few buttons as the chair swung around, and the console shut down. Kara stared at the screen in horror.

  Isi waved a hand in dismissal. “No need to go into a panic. I saved your work. Who exactly do you think I am? Anyway, that should give us a minute or two before my beloved aunt or someone storms down here to yell at me, so we’d better talk fast if we don’t want eavesdroppers.”

  “I—” Kara protested but stopped herself. Isi had been giving her a lot of information. What could she want to say without being overheard? “Fine. What are we talking about?”

  Isi straightened, her chair stilling and demeanor shifting.“We are talking about a trade.”

  “What sort of trade?” Kara asked.

  “The kind where I deliver that note that you wanted to send to your brother with no oversight from Siera, and you tell me what you found in those pages the Novem brought you.”

  Kara stiffened. She’d only told Siera about wanting to contact Lev. Was this all some ploy to get Kara to trust them? Siera was the bad cop, and Isi was the good cop? Kara tried to keep her frustration off her face. Questioning and analyzing everyone’s motives this way was exhausting. Clearly, she should never become a spy. It seemed like an incredibly frustrating profession.

  But it didn’t matter if she liked it. She was here now. She relaxed slowly, keeping her expression neutral.

  “Who says I found something?” Kara asked, faking innocence the way she did when someone asked if she knew where Lev was.

  “Don’t play coy. I know you read some of the document Novem brought, and I know you found something because Novem is on the move.”

  Kara traced a finger along the desk. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Isi just shook her head, almost like she was disappointed. “I saw you and Teorin in the ice cream parlor. You had plenty of time to look things over.”

  Isi knew about the ice cream parlor. She’d also called Teorin by his name. Siera hadn’t. Kara wasn’t entirely sure what that meant. If Isi had been following them, that would explain how she had found them in the tower. And if Isi was a da Silva… invisibility was their specialty. It was entirely possible.

  Kara kept her face neutral. “I had time. That doesn’t mean I found something. Translating is slow. It was just a bunch of notes about plants.”

  Isi smirked. “That’s not what you told Teorin.”

  Kara froze. The image of Teorin watching her succumb to the stun invaded her head again. Had Teorin betrayed her? But that didn’t make sense. If he was working with Isi, then Isi wouldn’t be questioning her. She had to be referencing something else. “What do you mean?”

  Isi spun again, but just once. “On the way to the tower,” she said with a dismissive wave.

  Bursts. She and Teorin had mentioned the human while walking. Clearly, Isi wasn’t falling for the no information lie. Maybe it was time to switch tactics.

  “Fine,” Kara said. “Maybe I do know something, but that doesn’t seem like a fair trade. A note to my brother for valuable information? Get me out of here, and I’ll tell you.”

  Isi pursed her lips and sighed, “I can’t do that. Not yet. Getting you out would require a lot more preparation, at least if you wanted to get farther than a few feet into the woods. So, don’t count that as a strike against me, no?”

  “Then no deal,” Kara said, straightening. She wanted Siera’s information, but also… every mention of the tower reminded her Lev might be trapped and suffering.

  Isi was silent for a few moments. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Just tell Siera to let me go!” Kara said, her voice rising.

  “Shh,” Isi said, her eyes flashing. “I turned off the mics in here, not everywhere else. Why do you think that I turned off the cameras? I’m not working with Siera.”

  “And yet you live here,” Kara said more quietly.

  “I technically work for her, but only to get information. It’s complicated,” Isi said.

  Kara raised an eyebrow. “You just expect me to believe you on that?”

  “What motive would I have to fake this?”

  “Maybe you're just trying to gain my trust,” Kara said with a dismissive wave. “I certainly don’t trust Siera.”

  “And you trust me more somehow?” Isi asked.

  “No.” She certainly liked Isi more than Siera. It was hard not to like Isi, but that didn’t mean she should trust her.

  Isi leaned further back in the chair and said, “Seems like a pretty idiotic plan then. Doesn’t it?”

  “And that proves?” Kara asked.

  “Nothing. I know,” Isi said with a sigh. She stared at the blank screens for a moment in silence. “I don’t know what evidence I could give to prove that I’m telling the truth.”

  “Get me out?” Kara suggested.

  Isi smirked. “If only it were that easy.”

  Footsteps echoed in the hall. Isi glanced toward the doorway, then stood quickly. As she turned, her hand brushed Kara’s. Kara closed her fingers around the object, something small and familiar. A necklace.

  Isi leaned back against the console, and her demeanor changed again, her expression melting into what Kara could only describe as concealed insolence.

  Siera strode into the room, glaring at Isi. Her nails tapped the desk—once, twice. “Dionira.”

  Isi flinched.

  “This isn’t a game,” Siera’s voice was icy. “You are wreaking havoc with our system. I don’t care how talented you are, do that again, and I will send you packing.”

  Kara blinked. This wasn’t the quiet control from before.

  Isi nodded but said nothing. Siera gave Isi another sharp look. “Leave us. Now.”

  Isi gave Kara a discrete wave, and padded out, shooting Kara a “See? What can I do?” expression and shrug before slipping around the corner.

  Siera watched Isi leave before turning back to Kara. “I apologize for my niece.”

  Kara nodded. Honestly, she preferred Isi, but she wouldn’t say that.

  Siera took a deep breath and seemed to calm. “So, you’ve had a while to wade through my notes and other data. What do you think?” Siera asked.

  Straight to the point, but Kara didn’t have an answer, and there was no way she was deciding now without time to process everything she had just learned. She didn’t trust Siera, but saying no might have its own consequences. “I think you make some interesting points. I’m still undecided. Can I sleep on it?”

  Siera exhaled slowly, rubbing her temple like she was already exhausted. Then her gaze sharpened. “Do you want to head back to your room now?”

  “Yes, please,” Kara said.

  “Very well. Lucas will be here momentarily. Tomorrow morning, we will hear your decision.”

  Kara nodded, and Siera spun on her heel and strolled out. Kara finally opened her hand to reveal what Isi had placed there. It was her necklace, the one with the memory drive built in.

  Her stolen copy of Novem’s pages.

  Kara turned the necklace over in her fingers, its familiar weight pressing against her palm. Isi had given it back. No fanfare, no conditions. Just slid it into her hand, as if it meant nothing. But it meant everything.

  Why?

  Footsteps in the hallway. Kara swallowed hard, tucking the necklace into her sleeve. If Siera had seen—

  No. She didn’t have time to think about that now.

  [Archivist] Also, Lev... rent.

  [Lev] So, you are allowed to be late and I'm not? That seems like a double standard.

  [Archivist] I am producing reconstructions that are half art. You are writing sentences or finding archives to cross reference. They are not the same thing.

  [Lev] ...Fine. But I still think it's unfair.

  [Archivist] That's your right.