Evarus Falls

“You mean the Canadian is a bad guy?” Edson scratched his head. “I thought Canadians were supposed to be nice?”

“Clearly you don’t watch hockey,” Sadie said. While they waited for Vidar to come back from the mech garage, she explained what had happened over the last few days. If Edson was going to be in the meeting, he might as well know everything. But also, it confirmed her mom was most likely alive, so it meant his friend probably was too.

They didn’t have to wait long.

“WHO authorized you to attack the tear like that?” Vidar rumbled toward them leaving raiders on debris-clean-up duty scrambling out of his way. “The deterioration event starts out of nowhere, tears all over the sky; then you four idiots try to get everyone killed! And now we have to find a temporary colosseum on top of it!”

Oh, hell no. This dude can power-trip with the raiders, but he was not going to shout her down after nearly getting killed like three times in three days.

“Myself,” Jiyu shot back at him, “and obviously it worked.”

“Clearly!” He gestured towards the debris littering the Colosseum.

“It stopped expanding, didn’t it?” Fawkes stepped in front of Jiyu. He was the only one Vidar didn’t tower over. “Besides you’re the one who told us to help. So really, it’s your fault.”

Vidar looked ready to blow a gasket.

“Vidar.” Edson squeaked out the word. He coughed to hide it. “They said they have information on the missing people. Sadie is related to one, and Jiyu’s mentor went missing.”

Vidar looked between them. “Which one is related?”

Sadie raised her hand.

He flared his nostrils and reared back with a settling breath. “Why,” he said through gritted teeth, “did you not tell me the SECOND you found out information?”

She smiled sweetly instead of kicking him in the shin like she wanted to. “You have your messages set to friends only on Pidgeon, and I lost access to—” She stopped herself from saying her mom’s account, which she couldn’t message from while in Evarus.

“And you locked us in a dungeon,” Jiyu added. “World-class hospitality you have here. Wouldn’t even speak with us.”

“None of you three are raiders.” He said it as a statement rather than a question. When they shook their head no, he stalked off yelling orders at raiders.

“Hey!” Sadie ran after him with Fawkes, Jiyu, and Edson in tow. “We need to talk to you.” She couldn’t believe Mom was friends with this jerk, even work friends.

“Beat it, kid. A bit busy here.”

She ran in front of him and planted her feet, making Vidar stop. She was done having adults in her life, related or otherwise, not freaking communicate. They all needed to go back to kindergarten.

“No, you said if we helped out you would talk to us, and we have information.”

He scrunched his nose and looked up like he was trying to remember. He scoffed. “Guess I did say that. Fine. Lost access to what?”

“What?” Sadie blinked in confusion.

He narrowed his eyes at her. “You want to talk. What did you lose access to?”

“Er.” She looked back at Fawkes and Jiyu and they nodded for her to go on. At this point, he was the only person who might be able to help find her mom or this key, and if she couldn’t trust one of mom’s confidants, who could she? If he got angry that she lied to him, so be it. He seemed like a generally angry person either way.

And if Ben was concerned about her sharing too much info still, he would have mentioned it in the Decay.

Sadie provided a short hard version of everything that had happened since her fight with the ghoul cytroll including showing the video they obtained at Ravi’s with the cloaked man and a description of the Decay she saw through the tear. She told him everything—everything except that she spoke with Ben there. Other than some serious grape-sized nostril flaring at impersonating her mother, he focused on her and listened.

Vidar ran his hand through his hair. “That is bad.”

“With that kind of genius and insightfulness, no wonder they made you head of the Colosseum,” Jiyu muttered.

Edson panic-eyed her and mouthed “Shh.”

“What? That’s so basic Fawkes could have said it.”

“Yeah.” Fawkes nodded in agreement and took a bite of an apple he found in the Lontra. “Wait, what? You said basically the same thing not even thirty minutes ago!”

Was it possible to clone Jiyu to annoy Fawkes full time?

Vidar acted like he didn’t hear anything, but his mouth twitched into a smile for a split second. “The guild leaders already knew about Ed and the key. Thanks for the information from the video.”

He stalked off again. Sadie grabbed Fawkes apple and tossed it at Vidar’s head. Bullseye.

“You three are the worst,” Edson said, panic-stricken.

Vidar whirled around on her.

“We weren’t done,” Sadie said, more confidence in her voice than she felt.

His eyes bulged, and Sadie thought he might go berserk on them. But he burst into laughter. “You are Rachel’s kid.” He checked the time. “I’ll give you five minutes.”