Chương 45: The Book (Finale)

"Abilities do not have the power to erase or alter memories." Every textbook, every website, and every authority-sponsored researcher restated this same claim. Based on a person's reaction to the claim, I could categorize them into one of three types of people. Category one was for the blindly trusting. The type who thought to themself: " all the official sources say that memory-wipers don't exist, so it must be true." Category two was for the skeptical, but ultimately powerless and clueless.

"I bet that wipers probably exist, but I don't know where the authorities are hiding them." Category three was for authorities and authority-connected. They were the ones who were supposed to know, the ones who thought things like,"We ought to bring a wiper in to do some work. Make them forget what they just saw." The three categories had captured every single person on the planet… that was, until late October, when Alicia spied on a series of names and addresses while using Valerie Lingard's point of view.

It was a list of people with the Memory Twisting ability, all of whom had been given fake identities, complete with falsified abilities and careers. The truth was that they'd been trained for employment under The Authorities from a young age. From then on, a fourth category with exactly three members had formed - it contained Alicia, John, and me. Our thoughts on the subject went something like,"We know where memory manipulators live, and we should have a plan to use them, just in case it ever becomes necessary."

After learning that The Authorities had narrowed Unordinary's author to the two (correct) sectors, we decided that it was necessary. So, the day Wellston High let out for winter break, John and I took a flight to New Boston. The moment we landed, we drove out for fifty minutes into the city's outskirts - a suburban elite-tier neighborhood with snowy cul-de-sacs and carrot-nosed snowmen. Our target was Moreno Gil. He was twenty-nine years old, had purple hair, and his address was 167 Viney Brook Lane.

His fake ID said that he was an authority-employed precognitive. He lived in a two-story, beige-painted house with his level 4. 3 girlfriend, but she was away in New Providence visiting relatives, which meant he was home alone. I said a quick mental apology to him once we parked in front of his house. I walked up to the front door. Moreno Gil's girlfriend was a tall, blue-haired woman with a nice figure, so that was what I looked like. John's three copied abilities were Psychic Force, Illusion, and Invisibility.

Invisibility was for himself, Illusion was for me, and Psychic Force was for our unfortunate third wheel.

"Surpriise!" my voice shrilled, high-level Illusion affecting even sound.

"Did you miss me, Moreno?"

"Makena." A purple-haired man swung the door open, blinking and smiling.

"I didn't realize you would be home. I thought you said that you were staying over until tomorr-" John took control. The man's lips clamped together tightly by force. I smiled, killing any drop of real feeling in me, and immediately circled outside his field of vision to wrap my arm around his elbow. Moreno's real file - not the official one but the accurate one - said that he needed approximately fourteen seconds of eye contact to start working on someone's memories.

"I did say that," I answered for the cameras, "but I really wanted to see you. I thought we could go get a late lunch or something."

'Moreno' smiled artificially and nodded. He dressed quickly in a winter coat and boots. We walked, arm in arm, to the rental car at the curb. Once all three of us were in the car, John used density-enhanced ropes to tie Moreno's limbs behind his back, and secured thick black bands over his eyes and mouth. Then he used Psychic Force to do a full-body search.

"Found the tracker," John announced, deactivating Psychic Force and Invisibility to save stamina. He passed me a metal square with numbered buttons on it.

"Do you remember the code?"

"1-4-7-3-6-5," I answered.

"I can take care of the hourly number entry." Moreno had gone totally silent. Upon hearing the code, he let out a muffled noise of alarm. He began to trash wildly, frantically, squirming like a butterfly trying to escape its cocoon - in his case the rear seats of the rental car. He seemed to realize that we were more than simple kidnappers. We knew about his tracker; we had come into this prepared. I started the car and started driving, studying him periodically through the rearview mirror.

He rolled and twisted and struggled, yelling into his muffle, but we had prepared for this, too, by buying a maximum strength silencer. I could only hear him because my ability was active, and even then his calls for help were almost too quiet. Other than our captive's struggling, we kept the car purposefully silent as we drove. We had made our plan extremely detailed to minimize the chance of a worst-case scenario.

Alicia had spent a hundred hours in Valerie Lingard's eyes, long enough to gain knowledge beyond just Moreno's name, address and living situation. We also knew everything about his protocol, all the measures The Authorities took to keep him safe and secure. One measure was the fake ability profile. Another was the tracker device Moreno used, which made him enter a PIN once per waking hour, to signal that he hadn't been compromised.

There was even a fake sequence of numbers that Moreno could input, pretending it was the 'all-good' pin, when in reality it was an emergency pin that would send his superiors a distress signal.

"We know all of the tricks specified in your protocol," I said.

"Resistance will only be counterproductive. My friend's ability gives him mastery of illusions, invisibility, and psychic force – an ability that does not appear in the official records. There are powers and organizations in this world beyond even The Authorities' imagination." I paused to let him absorb the lies.

"However, we do not wish for open conflict," I continued.

"We do not wish to hurt you in any capacity… or cause your superiors to punish you, by disgracing you in their eyes. Our purpose today is simply to borrow your ability for a small afternoon task. When it is done, we will return you to your home unharmed, and without a single authority agent knowing about today's events."

"This is assuming that you cooperate with us," John added in an Illusion-deepened voice.

"This is assuming you follow our orders to the best of your ability, and make today's process quick and painless as a result. Otherwise it will be painful. In the conventional way, yes, with burning and cutting and so on, but in other ways as well. Have you ever wondered, Moreno Gil, what the consequences would be if you ran naked through the streets of New Boston with 'death to the authorities' written on your-""That's enough." The words came out harsh and authoritative, to suggest that I stood above John.

Then I softened my tone.

"I'm sure the poor man is under enough stress already." This wasn't a genuine expression of concern for the man, of course. Our plan was to establish a good-cop-bad-cop dynamic to make him more cooperative. Unfortunately, he seemed just as bent on escaping as before. I was concerned that he might have started biting into his tongue or otherwise trying to harm himself, so I pulled over at the earliest highway rest stop to check. I went to the back seats and removed his blindfold.

For a few seconds, he glared up at me with wet, reddened, glowing eyes. Then I applied a new blindfold and removed his mouth bindings, and when I checked his mouth there were no wounds or blood. I let out a breath. The worst case would have been suicidal loyalty.

"Will you cooperate with us?"

"Fuck you," Moreno spat.

"Using Makena's face and voice to do this shit. Two days from now, when the agents catch you, I'm going to enjoy deleting you from your mind." John started laughing.

"That's good," he lied.

"Now that we know he won't ever obey, we can kill him and move on to the next one. Amara Moyo lives close, and her profile says she's higher level than this imbecile."

"If we were going to switch," I replied, "Yui Sato and Mikel Arnett were put down as having the lowest Authority loyalty on the list. But I think it's worthwhile to spend an hour convincing Moreno before moving on from him…" I'm not unique. These people have options. They'll kill me, and the only one feeling bad about it will be me as I die. I placed a light hand on Moreno's arm, as if to inject these impressions in him, and moved to slowly re-seal his lips.

"Wait." He cracked right before I made him mute.

"At least," he said quietly.

"At least tell me what you're making me do." Beautiful"You're leaving me no choice but to start over," Valerie Lingard snapped.

"When I tell you to give detailed answers, I intend that you do so without resorting to make-believe conjecture."

"I - I'm very sorry, Ma'am," the mid-tier girl blubbered.

"It's just that there are things I'm not quite sure of, but I think are right, and sometimes what I think I'm sure about gets counted as a lie and what I'm not as sure about gets detected as truth… and - and then I'm not sure what I should say or shouldn't say." Before she fully lost her temper, Valerie reminded herself that this was only to be expected. A mid-tier's subconscious tendency toward obedience led them to answer in a way that they thought their superiors wanted to hear.

She leaned back in her office chair and took a deep breath.

"If you're even slightly unsure, state in your answer that you're making a guess," Valerie ordered.

"Now, again. Were you at all involved in the creation of Unordinary?" The mid-tier shook her head rapidly.

"No. No, no, not at all." The lie detector agreed, and Valerie continued.

"Then, when we detect that you were involved in the North American distribution, your explanation is that you were tricked into it by a stranger?"

"Yes!" the mid-tier rushed to say.

"That's exactly what happened. I was in a computer cafe, working my waitressing job, when one of the customers asked me to click his mouse. I thought he might give me a tip if I did it, so I went along, but I think he was making me post something online. I saw that I was clicking on a button that said 'publish chapter.'" These two answers are always true, Valerie thought. She received the 'all-good' signal from the lie detector.

"I believe you." She placed both hands on her desk and leaned forward.

"Now, with full honesty this time: what did the man who tricked you look like? What was his height, build, and facial shape? What was his hair color?" Now the mid-tier girl pursed her lips. Before, she'd rushed to answer these questions like the others, but now she seemed to struggle immensely. The girl finally shook her head.

"He was wearing a facemask, hat, and coat, so it's all hard to say. He seemed normal-height for someone sitting down. I thought I remembered him having green eyes and hair, but I guess I don't know for sure." The lie-detector standing at the edge of Valerie's office gave a signal that meant: 'everything but the last part about the eyes and hair.' Valerie nodded but clenched her teeth. Which ultimately translates, she thought, to 'I know nothing.'

"Oh!" the girl exclaimed.

"But he did have a very deep voice! I remember that for certain." Voice was perhaps the most useless descriptor of a person. People lowered and raised their pitch all the time, even if they had nothing to hide whatsoever. Valerie, who had been told earlier in the day that the same masked man had a 'high-pitched voice,' wanted to bludgeon the mid-tier girl before her into a corpse. Instead Valerie limited herself to ordering the mid-tier to leave.

Perhaps sensing that she'd done something wrong, the girl let out a pathetic sort of whimpering noise, prompting the lie detector to give an asinine assurance that everything would be fine. Everything wouldn't be fine. After spending a useless minute searching for positive progress of any kind, Valerie struck down on her desk with her fist. She breathed. The girl had been her third suspect.

All three of them had been detected by source-tracing abilities, and all three said honestly that a masked stranger had tricked them. The same was reportedly true for hundreds of source-tracing suspects worldwide. Protocol worldwide was to start by investigating clear-cut suspicious persons like source-tracing suspects, and this was usually very effective… but Valerie couldn't help but think that Unordinary's distributors had exploited the rule to their advantage.

Plenty of criminals were cautious enough to avoid source-tracing measures. It was nothing unordinary. But for the culprits behind Unordinary to have created a vast sea of artificial source-tracing suspects, resulting in days of wasted work before the investigation could truly start…

"This isn't working," Valerie muttered to herself.

"It's possible that the standard approach has been compromised." Then, to the lie-detector: "I need to send new directives to teams five through nine. There's very little time. I assume that you're capable of acting as a scribe?" The lie-detector blinked and hesitated.

"I am, Ma'am."

"Good." Valerie thought for a moment.

"To begin with, I've come to the conclusion-" Beautiful Hello all, I have come to the conclusion that the source-tracing suspects are intentionally constructed bait. I assume that many of you believe the same. A small fraction of each team will continue with the source-tracing angle, but the rest of us will pivot to targeted fieldwork. Our first search direction will focus on publishing firms headquartered in the Great Lakes and North Atlantic sectors. Professional fiction authors and editors are of high interest.

As previously discussed, the logic here is that Unordinary has prose beyond that of most professionally edited novels, despite its 'self-published' exterior. Various forecasting and analysis teams have independently confirmed that this direction is highly promising. It is also very probable that Unordinary's author is connected with authority agents. There are few other explanations for how they were able to construct a distribution scheme that so perfectly wasted our time.

This, combined with other considerations, leads me to believe they are a high-tier. Top-priority interrogations are high-tier fiction authors known for outlandish personal views, perhaps with previously banned or shadowbanned work. Next in priority are other authors, then any employees at a publishing company who may have encountered earlier Unordinary manuscripts. Lie detection is required, and a deep memory scan is allowed after just a single detected deception.

Keep in mind that our culprits are organized, clever, and may even possess inside knowledge; any slowness or lack of decisiveness may give them time to formulate an escape strategy. Do not be the agent responsible for letting them run free. This message ends here for brevity's sake. Below is a list of fiction publishers based in New Toronto and New Boston - divide them as you like. I wish you swift success, Valerie Lingard … Alicia read the email, then the attached list of publishers, through an agent's eyes.

When she deactivated her ability, her bedroom faded back into reality around her. She was home for break. It stung a little, considering what Meili and John were doing, but Alicia understood that the choice to leave her behind was purely practical. She could do far more to help them from the back lines than anywhere else. The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. Case in point, she thought. That was definitely 'Square Books' on the list of fiction publishers.

Square Books was William Doe's old publisher; at least three employees there knew that he was Unordinary's secret author. Square Books' company headquarters in New Boston was where Meili and John would go after securing their memory-wiper's cooperation. Chances are good, Alicia reasoned, that an agent won't visit their building in the next day or two. The name is pretty far down on the publishers list. I don't think we have to panic. … But Valerie's also telling them to be as fast as possible.

"Shit." She typed out a quick message to Meili, telling her to be fast. Beautiful"How am I to trust that you three can 'shut off' a memory in the first place? How do I know this isn't some trick?"

"Well, if that's your main concern, we can verify it right now. Look into his eyes for a few seconds."

"I - Okay? What is this supposed to prove?"

"I assume that you have your phone number memorized. Can you recall it?"

"Of course I can. It's…"

"It's?"

"I'm usually much faster than this," she replied.

"Give me just a few moments-" Her eyes widened. Deborah Zhang, publishing director of Square Books, realized that she could no longer remember the phone number she used every day. She stared at her three masked office intruders in astonishment.

"I can't recall a single digit."

"Very good," said the blue-haired woman who seemed to be the group's leader. She was flanked by purple-haired men on both sides.

"Now, if you would rather check your phone to remind yourself, that's fine. But my friend here can unblock the memory for you as well." The masked man on the left nodded. He had moved his mask downward to uncover his eyes, which glowed with lavender-tinted light. Despite feeling significantly more hesitant about it than before, Deborah met the man's eyes again, and her phone number reappeared in her mind a dozen seconds later. She sucked in a reflexive inhale.

"Exactly," said the blue-haired woman.

"Now, if you would like to hear the rest of our proposal…" Deborah listened attentively, without interrupting a single time, as the group of utter strangers somehow managed to offer her a convincing lifeline. They had literally materialized in her office, and the sudden appearance of good fortune created a sense of dissonance within her. She could hardly believe that she had a chance to escape the coming weeks alive. …

Before the three nameless strangers' sudden appearance, she had been spinning dread-filled circles in her chair as she stared up at the ceiling. A sense of inevitable death had filled the air. Her personal estimate of Unordinary's popularity was twenty million readers – and the chance The Authorities forgave her for it was something like one percent. Even one percent, that tiny sliver of survival, hinged on the idea that The Authorities' bans had worked to stop Unordinary's spread.

But Deborah had learned that pirates were still spreading it, just under aliases like 'Extraordinary' and others. One of the more clever hosting sites was hiding chapters 1-40 of Unordinary at the end of forty different webnovels, and the site still hadn't been taken down.

"We're highly confident that The Authorities will question you within the next week," the masked woman continued.

"My friend is skilled enough to place a one-week memory block that will fade automatically on its own. Private research indicates that a week of memory-blocking leaves negligible long-term effects on someone's mind, only temporary confusion that always fades…" Deborah was glad to hear it, but in truth she might have accepted a level of mental impairment in favor of facing The Authorities.

Unordinary had gathered a critical mass of popularity: the rare level only a few books had ever reached, where any effort to ban it just created more people wanting to read it. Some high-tiers had even started copying the story's protagonist, pretending to be 'superheroes' as they galavanted through low-tier districts and stopped crime. The book was an infinite producer of society-destroying rot in The Authorities' eyes.

Deborah, as the person who'd suggested that William post it online, knew they would want to kill her. After considering the number of information-gathering abilities employed by The Authorities, her fate had seemed certain. It didn't seem so certain anymore.

"… The crux of it," the masked woman concluded, "is that we will temporarily block all memories that give you awareness of Unordinary's author. We will do the same for any proofreaders who are aware that William Doe wrote the book. As long as you can accept being without these memories for a period, all the other details are unimportant. What do you say, Deborah?" The masked strangers seemed to believe that shutting out her memories would allow her to circumvent lie detection. It made intuitive sense.

If she were to genuinely believe that she had never assisted William Doe with Unordinary, saying so would count as true. They were silent as she thought, which let her mind stop racing to process the suddenness of everything, and it struck her that she knew nothing about them besides what they were offering. Deborah studied them, these three people who had come from nowhere, trying to understand what they might gain by helping. Perhaps they wanted her to owe a favor? But she was only a 5.

6, and she assumed that people with access to memory-wiping had no need for favors of that level. In the end she could only conclude that they were involved with William Doe.

"I'm going to wipe every mention of Unordinary from our logging spreadsheets," Deborah replied. She powered on her computer, opened all the important tabs by reflex, and started typing.

"I'll message the three others who know to come here this instant."

"I assume you're agreeing to follow our plan?"

"Yes." She typed out her message for the others, ready to click send… then hesitated.

"But before I fully cooperate, I would at least like to know who I'm working with."

"Do you want to know our identities?" one of the men asked in a low tone.

"Our names are off-limits," the blue-haired woman said.

"We already have very little time, and spending it verifying that we are who we say we are is untenable." Deborah shook her head.

"What I mean is that I need to know your motives. I am already assuming that William directed your group to me, which is why you seem to know so much, but I do not know why. I do not mean to be ungrateful, but I don't know how anyone could willingly involve themselves in such a dangerous situation." The masked woman seemed to hesitate, tilting her head back and forth.

"First tell the others to come here, and then I can explain to you. Time is already scarce." Deborah frowned to herself but clicked send. After checking the message, the masked woman asked: "How do you think William Doe managed to achieve such explosive, worldwide growth for an anonymous webnovel release?" The seeming non-sequitur caught Deborah off guard, but it happened to be a question she had deeply considered.

She answered quickly: "I imagine that he must have gotten the help of a large global entity, possibly an anti-authority group." Such a group wasn't supposed to exist. But then again, a cripple like William Doe wasn't supposed to have the connections to launch his book to global stardom - which was why she'd been fine with him putting his book online. She hadn't expected him to get even a modest number of readers. The blue-haired woman nodded, the nod somehow seeming expectant despite her mask.

Deborah realized what was being implied.

"Are… are you saying-?"

"Our organization makes a point of staying unknown," one of the masked men stated.

"I can at most say that we support projects of social upheaval across the world, of which Unordinary was one. One policy of ours is ensuring the safety of our collaborators, which is why we are here."

"Just as an illustrative example," the masked woman added, "of everything Square Books has published, can you name what The Authorities responded most negatively to?" Deborah rubbed her mouth in thought.

"I suppose it would have to be the alternate-society, warring-tribes novel from five years ago."

"Tribal Crimson by Alexander Penny," the masked woman confirmed.

"We were responsible for two million of the five million copies it sold." Deborah felt her eyes widen in alarm. The masked woman didn't elaborate. An intense curiosity told her to ask all sorts of questions, for example about a mutually beneficial business partnership, but she managed to refrain. Their organization was clearly one that employed memory-wipers and manipulated the behaviors of millions of people - not something to risk provoking on a whim.

Instead, she clicked through the manuscript-tracking spreadsheets, deleting any row with Unordinary in it. The masked men and woman began whispering to each other, and stared out the office windows as if to look for something. Soon the spreadsheets were fully clean, and a few minutes later, Matias, Angela, and Liesel came into the office. Eyes glowed with ability activation. The presence of masked strangers immediately put her employees on guard.

Deborah hurried to explain that they were allies, and that the memory-blocking they offered would be the most surefire way to escape punishment. Matias, Angela, and Liesel's main crime was failing to report William Doe. It was significantly less punishable than Deborah's mistake, but the three of them were only mid-tiers… considering that, they were no less vulnerable than she was.

"This is how we ensure that we can get out of this," Deborah said.

"This is how we ensure that Square Books can continue to exist. Having our minds modified for a period of time will be uncomfortable, but it is certainly better than the alternative. I believe the choice here is clear." Angela and Liesel nodded. Matias hesitated but ultimately agreed. In the end, they didn't need very much convincing; she knew that they dreaded the idea of being caught just as much as she did.

"I'm going to have to use my Psychic Force ability to keep you from moving during the process," one of the masked men said to the room.

"Otherwise we risk breaking eye contact halfway through. Is everyone fine with that?" Deborah gave her agreement, and all her employees echoed the same. In response the other man slipped his mask downward once more. An intense purple light beamed from his eyes, thicker and more intense than the previous time, perhaps the most mesmerizing ability activations she had ever seen.

"Who wants to go first?"

"I will," Matias volunteered. A layer of black energy, fluid and elastic, surrounded him to freeze him in place. He hovered in the air like a floating statue - the memory-wiper met his eyes. After the fifteen-second staring contest between statue and man, Matias slumped to the floor, then began rolling back and forth while mumbling to himself.

"That's not right," he said quietly. His eyes twitched open and closed at a rapid pace.

"That's not right…"

"Will he be okay?" Deborah frowned.

"Is that a normal reaction?"

"It is," the masked woman reassured her.

"This kind of semi-unconscious state is exactly what we expected. We're temporarily replacing your most recent memories with memories of falling asleep at your desks, which will cause a dissonance. If you give me the directions to Matias' desk, I will carry him there, and the dissonance will go away."

"Alright." Deborah nodded, explaining where to go. She was the one who knew the locations of everyone's desks, so she settled into the role of direction-giving for Liesel and Angela's turns. After each of them had their memories blocked, they mumbled the same thing as Matias: "That's not right." Deborah tapped her feet all the while, impatiently, trying to hide that she would have much rather gone first. Finally, it was her turn. The memory-wiper met her eyes.

A wave of relief swelled in her, through the anxieties formed by watching Unordinary's audience grow ever-larger, and swept her fear out to sea. The Authorities would question her, in the coming week or month or year, and she would be found innocent. She would forget for a short while, but the memories would return - it would be like waking from a long dream. Psychic force lifted her into the air. Her spine was made straight, and her hands forced parallel to her sides.

As she stared into the hypnotic light, she focused on her earliest memories of Unordinary, the very first moment she slotted it into the 'written by William Doe' category. Soon there would be no category. Soon she would forget. The knowledge should be going away now, she thought. I should be forgetting that Alexander Penny wrote Unordinary. Yes, forget that Alexander Penny wrote Unordinary… Oh, but that's not right. Alexander Penny? No, that can't be the right name, Deborah thought.

The right name is William Doe, William Doe is the author. He was the one who came to the publishing meeting. He had that miserable, pathetic, heartbroken look on his face as I shot the book down. I remember it so clearly. But Alexander Penny was what the novel manuscript said. Didn't it say that? Yes, that's right, it was'Unordinary by Alexander Penny,' I'm sure of it. He wrote Tribal Blood, another alternate-society novel, also hated by The Authorities.

And he's a god-tier, which is why he was able to make the online release go so well. … But that still isn't right. I'm supposed to forget. Why is either name still here? The memory-wiping man's eyes were widened with shock, like something about her memories had taken him by surprise - maybe he'd made a mistake? Deborah felt a chill run through her static body. That's not right. Her Legionnaire ability activated, and the strength of an army filled her muscles. She broke eye contact by wrenching her head to the side.

Her psychic bindings constricted around the rest of her, squirming against cloth and skin to keep her trapped, but a burst of brute force broke her through. The masked man with Psychic Force let out a strangled cry of pain. He tried to re-establish control of her legs, until she forced his attention to the mach-four chair she hurled at his face. The memory-wiper was making a beeline toward the exit, but her instantaneos acceleration let her beat him there.

"What the hell are you doing?" She grabbed the man in a chokehold, angling his mind-twisting eyes to the ceiling.

"What in the world did you just do? You're not- you're not blocking off the memories, so why am I-" A curtain of blood-colored crimson swept past Deborah's eyes, faster than even her limbs. The red tendrils yanked her backward, entangled her, bound her ankles and wrists like shackles. Squirming streams of red crawled on the floor and walls, forming a living cage – Deborah thrashed wildly for freedom but only managed to learn the source. The masked woman had stabbed a syringe of clear liquid into her right arm.

The arm was now crimson and tree-sized, planted on the floor, from where the streams of red emerged as roots. Deborah realized with horror that they writhed in unison with the masked woman's breathing, all throbs of the same demonic body.

"I didn't think we'd have to field-test the enhancer so early." The woman's voice was unhinged. Deborah continued straining against her binds but found no success. The memory-wiping man was already approaching once more.

"You can't do this!" she shrieked at him, at all three of them, only for a density-enhanced chair to start cracking back and forth against her skull.

"Moreno," said the masked woman.

"Will you be able to finish swapping her memories? Something seemed to go wrong."

"There's no issue," the memory-wiper replied.

"Her attachment to a William Doe memory surprised me with its strength, but Alexander Penny is ultimately more believable." Deborah felt liquid in her hair; she knew vaguely that her skull must have cracked. She knew vaguely that what she was feeling was true terror, and that the room wasn't curving and twisting like a chain playground swing.

The familiar purple light returned, gleaming and shimmering with dark power – and this time she could somehow feel it piercing through her, through her eyes to saturate the self further within. She screamed. It faded from loud to soft, from slick to raw, until it hurt so badly she couldn't see or hear, couldn't even hear her own screams, couldn't know what she thought because a different person had arrived in her unwilling body. Time may have passed.

"That's not right," she muttered.

"Okay. Let's get everything cleaned up before interrogators come." Someone spoke the words softly, though Deborah didn't know what they meant. Beautiful Among the small category of people who knew about memory-wipers, an even smaller sub-category knew that 'wiper' was the wrong name. The ability in question was Memory Twisting, and the word twisting could take on a wealth of meanings beyond just making someone forget something.

Consider a randomly selected Memory Twisting victim™, whom for convenience I called Deborah. A wiper could, for example, delete very old memories from Deborah's childhood, memories that had mostly faded into the subconscious realm. Even a formative experience that Deborah already struggled to recall. If this formative experience was - for example - Deborah's first experience of betrayal, what would happen to her once the memory was gone? The answer was that Deborah would become less wary of betrayal.

She would be more susceptible to being backstabbed. That formative memory of betrayal had protected her through her life, bolstering her subconscious social intuition in situations where she felt she might be betrayed. Without it, she would be exposed. Of course, the highest-ranking authority agents knew this. They were where my knowledge came from, in the first place, and wipers like Moreno also knew.

He'd executed our plan to perfection - first compromising Deborah, who then influenced her lower-level employees into going along - so it would be unfair to blame him for the errors at the end. The fault rested with me and my planning.

"I know we agreed that I would overwrite my memories of today," Moreno said, "but I would still like to satisfy my momentary curiosity. What exactly is your grudge against Alexander Penny, to sentence him to this kind of death?" I smiled sadly, honesty an option once more.

"There's no grudge," I answered.

"He was simply a convenient shield for William Doe." We stood in the office, resting, having spent half an hour cleaning it of blood and mess. Deborah Zhang slept peacefully at her desk. Alicia's disguised, codeword-filled texts said that an agent would be at the Square Books building within two hours, after which our success or failure would be decided. If Moreno Gil truly had no attachment to living, then he had gone behind our backs to harm us, which meant that we had failed.

But we had picked him for his personal and psychological profile, which said that he was far from suicidal, that he was living a good life. Much more likely was this. The agents would come, question Deborah Zhang, and find that Alexander Penny was Unordinary's author. They would interrogate Alexander, first with lie detectors and then memory-readers, and finally determine that he had gone to a wiper to change his memories. Alexander Penny would claim that he'd been framed.

Authority agents would point out his previous alternate-society novel, how it was among the closest precursors to Unordinary on the North American continent. It was a hell of a lot more believable that a god-tier would alter his own memory to escape punishment, compared to thinking an authority agent had twisted the memories of four innocent civilians to create a false conviction.

And they would torture him, and they would kill him, this man whose only sin was possessing the right traits to make a credible scapegoat, and Deborah Zhang would die too.

"So." Moreno adjusted his mask slightly, irritatingly calm.

"Are you staying to confirm that the arrests happen?"

"No." John shook his head.

"We're taking you to a lie detector now." The window dropped straight down to the sidewalk, where it would simply be a matter of walking to the car. But there were shakes in my shoulders, and though the mask did help, I didn't know how many eyes could see that they were sobs.

"Thanks," John whispered, placing his hand on my shoulder.

"I don't know what I would do without my dad." I shook my head.

"I would have been next, once they read his memories. I did this for me."