It takes a while, the search. Wherever Atreyu is staying, it must be warded, because all of Grace's efforts and algorithms come up empty. At least, at first. But then Monday evening, something happens: one of Grace's search protocols trips. And there's Atreyu leaning against the glass at the Denver Zoo otter exhibit. The otters themselves are in the midst of a frolicking array of underwater tricks, and they've attracted the attention of a number of visitors. A group of young children press up against the base of the glass with delighted squeals of laughter. They catch Atreyu's attention too, and for a moment he watches them in much the same manner he watched the otters: with this little charmed smile.
By the time Grace arrives, of course, he's moved on to another exhibit. It's late enough in the evening that the steady stream of guests has slowed to a sporadic trickle. In about an hour they'll be closing the gates, but a few stragglers still stand at the ticket window, waiting to get in a bit of last-minute animal-watching. The sun is dipping low on the horizon and everything in the park is lit up with a deep golden glow.
It isn't much trouble to locate Atreyu, after arriving. Grace finds him sitting on a bench by the polar bear exhibit, legs crossed with a backpack at his side and a sketchpad laid out across his lap. He's sketching a drawing of one of the bears sleeping beneath the shade of an overhanging rock.
He looks a little different than she remembers, though her memory is overlaid with multiple images. This Atreyu has longer hair than he did when she found him in the space station in Bastion. He's a bit older, and dressed in more typical clothes. He doesn't look out of place. Doesn't really feel out of place either.
His resonance has gotten a little stronger. Still that same dauntless energy, but more focused now. Seeking.
Grace
[Awareness!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 5, 5, 5) ( fail )
Grace
Grace has daemons working for her.
Little seeking daemons made of code, background processes in all her servers. They're trained to look for a face -- to yell when they find it. After brute forcing her way to Atreyu didn't work, she got mundane-creative, built a web of eyes and waited. Wait time is officially over.
Now, the pursuing begins.
Knowing he's at the zoo makes him an easy target. There's a little worry that she's missed him, but even then -- she can get creative again. She doesn't need to. A bright, if wary smile reaches her face when she sees him, sitting there drawing a polar bear as though he didn't once belong to another world.
"I heard you were looking for me. So I had to come looking for you. Difficult to find, as usual," she says, walking up.
Atreyu
Funny that, how they always seem to find each other this way. How much of his time in Bastion does Atreyu remember? How many of his lives there are still contained within him? Perhaps Grace finds it odd, seeing him there in her world. A stranger from a strange land. Atreyu looks up from his drawing when he feels her approach. There is a moment of quiet regard while he takes her in. They've both changed (both grown.) And yet, their faces are just as they remember.
When he recognizes her, he smiles. There's a slow-burning warmth that always seems to resonate from Atreyu's smiles. In every incarnation, he (or she) was always something of a beacon. "I figured you'd find me eventually. It's... good to see you." He says it like it surprises him, almost. The way she reminds him of home.
There's space beside him on the bench. Atreyu nods toward it in silent invitation. The sketch in his lap is mostly finished. It's a simple thing, but the depiction is reasonably skilled, if perhaps not to a degree that would ever net him a career in the arts.
"I went to see Patience, but her house was empty. I guess she left."
Grace
"Patience, yeah, she moved on. You remember her too, I guess."
Grace strides over, plops herself down on the bench, and curls a leg underneath to sit on. "It's strange to see you. It makes me wonder a lot of things, really."
She glances at the sketch, but Grace has no eye for art. It looks like a polar bear. So do the bears lounging nearby. He could just take a picture, right?
"Like, yeah... what are you doing here? Not to be rude? But no, seriously. What the fuck?" The aggression in her words is a contrast to her face, which mirrors his seeking nature back at him. She just really wants some answers here.
"You should have seen Kalen's face when I told him you were here," Grace says, even though that face of Kalen's was only readable by people who are fluent in Kalen Face Language. He doesn't like to express shock or fear, especially not to Grace. "I think he expects the zombie apocalypse now."
Atreyu
Atreyu laughs when Grace questions him. The sound is relaxed (good-natured.) Her bluntness doesn't seem to phase him much, but her line of inquiry inevitably draws a more serious expression out of him.
Why is he there?
"Sometimes the things I remember feel like dreams. Sometimes there are are pieces that come and go. I remember Kalen, though. And Ian. And... Sid. I remember all of you. You're really the only pieces of Bastion that I have left, besides my memory. I know I didn't know you very long, but I guess I wanted to see you again. Plus, I'm always amazed by the mountains here. There wasn't anything like that on the Station."
None of that is really what Grace is asking, and it isn't a complete answer on his part, but perhaps Grace will forgive him a moment of sentimentality.
"I found something I wanted to show you." He slides the sketchpad off his lap and slips it into his backpack, fishing around for a tablet. When he pulls it out, he navigates to a hidden folder and a video marked, simply "Home."
"The Union found it, you know. In the ocean. Right before... everything happened at the end. It's fucking weird to think that everything I ever experienced was sitting on a bunch of hardware in a trench in the Pacific." He goes quiet then. Looks at Grace for confirmation. "Do you want to see it?"
Grace
"That's not really weird. Well, okay, it is. But I don't think that matters, technically. Experiences are experiences. They happened. And there's absolutely nothing that says we aren't -- right now -- sitting on a bunch of hardware in a trench in some other Pacific. Where do you think people got the idea to make Bastion in the first place?"
She scoots closer to him, leans over to get a look at the tablet. "I want to see it. What is it?"
There is a 'Home' folder. Something in that tugs at the heartstrings. He misses those disjointed dreams...
Atreyu
There are a hundred worlds there for him to miss. A hundred lives, each of them complete with their own experiences. How many of those experiences were merely stories implanted into his memory? Did that make them less real?
What is it?
"You'll see," he says quietly. And then he plays the video.
At first, the only thing Grace sees is the ocean. Deep blue water, stretching out forever into the horizon. And the sky, muted with the blue-grey light of dawn. The picture moves a bit, rocking gently - as though filmed by hand from someone standing on a boat. Voices can be heard in the background.
"I don't see anything."
"It was there. Wait."
Suddenly an arc of electricity spiderwebs across the surface of the water. When it does, the video gives off an eerie feedback hum.
"Shit. Something's happening. What's the read-out say?"
Everyone gets very quiet for a second. Then someone says: "Fuck. We need to get back, now."
The boat starts moving, sending a trail of broken waves in its wake. Whoever's holding the camera keeps it steady though. Keeps it pointed at the water. On the surface, the current of energy arcs again, bigger this time. It builds into a bright, crackling electrical storm. In the background, people start shouting. The ocean grows choppier, more violent. The boat rocks as a wave hits the side. In the distance the electrical storm grows and grows, arcing out across the water and up into the sky. Then the screen flashes with a brilliant explosion of light. There's a lot of feedback before the audio track goes dead. The last image on the screen before the video cuts out is... well. It could be a trick. But it looks like a being made of light rising out of the water. There's a moment, a flicker of recognition when her face forms in the sky, then the light shoots up into the atmosphere and disappears.
And the video stops.
"I think I knew that's what happened. But... it's different. Actually seeing it. There's more videos of the divers exploring the trench. The server got totally trashed, but what was left of it looked like an underwater city." He pauses and looks at Grace. The two of them are alone right now, apart from the bears. Some people are gathered at another exhibit across the way, but they're starting to thin out.
"I want to believe that it's all still out there somewhere. With her. Wherever she is."
Grace
"I had a dream about her. So did Kalen. It can't have been an accident," Grace says, staring -- perhaps a bit open-mouthed -- at the events occuring on Atreyu's screen. "It looks like she got away."
She looks up at him, then, once the video ends. "So, yeah. It is with her. And with us."
Then, her eyes find the video again. "How did you get this?"
Atreyu
"I've been trying to dig up anything I could about what happened." He pauses a moment, reluctant. "Wulf... found it for me."
He knows what he's telling her. What Grace will remember when she hears him mention a wolf. Nothing good, certainly. But she'd been there when Atreyu merged with the creature (the protocol.) Apparently some version of it was still with him.
"When I came here, it came with me. Sort of... sharing space in my head. Mostly it's dormant. But it wakes up sometimes when I need it. It took me a while to figure out how to let it out, but..." Atreyu reaches up to lift some of the hair behind his ear. When it parts, Grace can see what looks like some kind of device implanted into his skull. "It's pretty crude." (By his standards, anyway.) "But it works. The Mercurials say it's code, the Kha'vadi think it's a spirit. Personally... I don't make a distinction."
Grace
Daemons running processes in the background -- waiting until they are needed... "Mercurials might just be saying that because most of us don't know jack about spirits. Myself included."
She appears to be completely enraptured by the device sticking out of his skull, because already there are a million questions.
"I think you might be on to something though, about there not being much of a difference. It's all code in the end anyway..."
She trails off, but gives him a sideways glance, wary again. "You're in control of Wulf? Do you need to be in control of Wulf to keep him, it, whatever from hauling off and murdering anything that smells vaguely human because it might be a 'Crat? You did something to it, I remember... Fixed it?"
Atreyu
"When I Woke Up, yeah. He's... better." There's a hint of a smile when Atreyu notices the way that Grace's attention fixates on the device. There isn't much visible, but it looks like some kind of jack, and there's a little bump where the wireless antenna is located. He gives her a chance to look at it before letting his hair fall back into place. "I think I might have changed him a little, too. Turns out he's pretty useful for hunting down files and getting past high level encryption. Better at it than I am, anyway. One of my cabal-mates likes to call him the Ghost in the Machine."
Apparently, a lot has happened in the last year.
"I don't think you need to worry. Not about that, anyway." The sky is getting darker, and Atreyu glances up at the clouds. "We should probably get going before this place closes. But listen, there's... more that I need to tell you. I'm here with some other people. We've been looking into the Union for a while, and there are things you should know. A lot of things. But we can't talk about it here. I have a secure cell number I can give you. If you give me yours then we won't have to hunt each other down again."
Grace
"I thought that might have happened to you. Wondered if it could inside Bastion. You know, I have heard some Awakening stories before, but none quite so... extreme."
She looks up into the darkening sky when he glances at the clouds.
"Yeah. There are things I need to know..." Grace says, looks at him almost as if she wants to touch his face, just to see if he's really real. It's a silly impulse. It passes.
They exchange numbers, because of course she wants to know what's going on with the Union. They're rearing their ugly heads, for all it seems to be rumor and chance meetings that go nowhere. That the Mages of Denver have not crossed paths with them in years might be coincidence or by design, eh? And certainly not the design of the Traditional types.
There's a puzzle here. Grace likes puzzles. They're meant to be solved. There's a reason, she thinks, that her daemons found him today. The universe sometimes seems to have an uncanny knack at knowing what it's doing. Sometimes, not. Just like anyone else, really.
Atreyu
Atreyu looks like he wants to say more, but he doesn't. He probably shouldn't have risked telling her what he did in such an open, public place. (Grace found him, after all. It stood to reason someone else might do the same thing.) But despite his caution, he doesn't seem especially... worried. Perhaps there are reasons for that. Perhaps he's just a young man (albeit an unusual one) who forgets too easily what it means to be afraid. (That boldness is, after all, written into his very essence.)
So he gives Grace his number, and inputs hers into his phone. And when they're done he packs up his bag and stands.
"I need to speak with my cabal. I think it would be good if we could arrange a meeting, but I don't know if they'll go for it. We have to be pretty careful, for a lot of reasons. But either way, I'll find us a place to talk. And then I can tell you what we've found."
He slings his bag over one shoulder and gestures in the general direction of the zoo's entrance. "After you."
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