The mud war had been wild; I could even taste it in my mouth. I didn't imagine Michael would enter the game so quickly, which led me to think how much he needed to reconnect with the person he once was.

When we returned to town, people stared with wide eyes and wrinkled noses. Despite our attempts to clean up, we still looked like we had escaped from one of those holes that opened up in the ground when you least expected it.

Anika ran towards Michael. "I was worried about you. What the hell happened up there?"

 Michael and I exchanged glances, each waiting for the other to come up with an answer that wouldn't make us look like five-year-olds. Anika turned her eyes to me, seeing that Michael was struggling with the question.

"I fell in the water, and Michael came to help me." I explained.

Okay, this didn't make me look like a five-year-old, but stupid and clumsy as hell. Great.

"Who's Michael?" She asked, confused.

"Oh, sorry. I mean, Commander Rowand."

Anika raised an eyebrow but didn't say anything else. I guess she just gave up on the mystery. Now I realized that Michael hadn't corrected me a single time when I called him by his original name while visiting The Hole. Interesting.

We ate at the common house of the Phoenix Group with Michael, Anika, Ryan, and a handful of other soldiers whose names I forgot the minute after they were introduced to me.

The last to arrive was Heather. She had gotten out of the cell, thank God. She sat next to me, and I noticed she had changed clothes and her hair was wet. I figured they had let her have a shower and borrowed clothes. Quite an improvement in treatment from the past weeks.

"All good?" I whispered to her.

She nodded.

"What about you?" She asked.

"Not too bad so far. A bit surreal, but nothing too out of the ordinary for my regular dose of surreal."

Heather smiled trying not to stand out too much.

"After this, I'd like to talk to you." She said with another whisper.

"Of course."

Michael, who was at the head of the table, stood up and quieted all the soldiers who were roaring like a rowdy battalion.

"Phoenixes. Please." Everyone turned to him.

"I would like to make a toast. We've been waiting for this moment for a long time. So I'd like to toast for the present and the future. A future without predictions, without data, and without walls." The soldiers raised their glasses enthusiastically.

"I would also like to thank Grace and Heather for helping us complete the mission. Soon we'll destroy The Orb. Soon walls will fall."

Heather and I exchanged a confused look. Destroying The Orb. So that's what the mission was about. I could have guessed, but it still sounded delusional. I had worked close to it and knew the kind of advanced tech we were talking about. Getting to the top of the Nexus Court where The Orb resided was hard enough. Destroying it was another level of impossible. You couldn't just blow it up or unplug it like a damned washing machine. The Orb was data, an algorithm, a ghost in the machine. How did they plan to "destroy" it? And the more intriguing question, what did Heather have to do with all of this?

Once lunch ended, we slipped away to the town center, far from the watchful eyes of Anika, Ryan, and Michael. We ended up in a market that smelled of baked bread, roasted grains, and fresh melon. Paradise, truly. We wandered around, savoring the strange feeling of having a normal life.

At one of the stalls selling fresh fruit, the woman tending it let us try some pink cherries she had grown herself, or so she said. Heather accepted them with enthusiasm and, oh my, they were delicious. They burst in my mouth like juicy balloons of honey.

Then we saw a stall selling strange objects, likely stolen parts from spaceships or machines. I was examining a piece of an engine turbine when Heather pointed her finger at an object. I followed her gaze and discovered a Reg Bracelet. It was an old model with some scratches and it was for sale, although it no longer worked. There was a small sign that read: "The Seed of Evil."

It was incredible how, over the years, that bracelet, which had once symbolized the salvation of humanity, had become, for many, the embodiment of evil. I didn't feel comfortable with that idea, though. I refused to see both sides of the world as opposites. Because that meant that Heather and I should be incompatible and that wasn't quite true at all.

Our last stop was a stall with a mouthwatering aroma that had been trailing us for a while. It was a bakery run by two elderly twins. They sold us two slices of apple pie, and we then sat beneath the sheltering canopy of a great tree, ready to devour those delicious pies.

"How long until they figure out we slipped away?" Heather asked, her mouth full of pie.

I took a bite. "I told Michael we'd be back. He'll give us a decent window."

"What's a decent window?" She mumbled through a mouthful. I laughed as tiny bits of pie scattered.

"Let's go with... until nightfall, maybe." I closed my eyes, savoring the pie. "Holy crap, this is amazing!"

"They really are. This is heaven." Heather said, finishing her last bite and then she rested her head on my lap and closed her eyes.

"But it's not nearly as good as the one you brought me that day." I said.

Heather peeked up from her cozy spot. "You remember that?"

"Of course! You left me a killer apple pie when I was laid up in the hospital after the acid rain storm. It was one of the sweetest things ever, and I don't forget sweet stuff. You know how much I love sweets." I said.

Heather looked up at the sky and smiled, but it was a nostalgic smile, one of those that conveyed more sadness than happiness.

"Sometimes I wish we could go back there, where everything was easy." She said.

I finished my pie and my hands reached for her hair. It was as silky as I remembered.

"Working endless hours, trapped in the Narval House, and surviving acid rain storms? That's your idea of easy?" I said, raising an eyebrow.

Heather chuckled. "Okay, maybe not easy, but simpler in a way. At least we knew what we were up against."

"That's true," I said. "But doesn't all this feel kind of exciting, like it's leading to something good?"

Heather thought for a moment, letting her eyes wander around the clouded sky above.

"I wish I felt that way... I have no idea what they're going to tell us tomorrow in the meeting, but I accidentally overheard Ryan and Anika talking..." She trailed off.

"And?" I asked.

"I'm not sure, but they seemed to be talking about forcing me to do something." She explained.

"Maybe they were talking about something else." I said.

"Yeah, maybe..."

Heather closed her eyes and stretched her arms above her head, her wavy hair draping over my legs. It looked like the natural brown of her hair had lightened since we crossed the wall, almost as if the new environment was changing it, like an animal shedding its skin. But it wasn't just her hair that had shifted. Her gaze was distant, and I could sense the unease pricking beneath her skin.

"Hey. I have an idea." I said with a grin.

"Oh-oh. I know that look. What's on that crazy mind of yours?" She replied, sitting up and knocking on my forehead.

I stood up and extended my hand to her. "Come with me."

Author's Note: 

Hey there!

Apple pies are in the spotlight again, hahaha. Do you have a favorite sweet, if any?

Thank you so much for reading!!!

Love you all!

Ava 💫