Five days later, we hadn't seen any signs of Roadrunners.

The GC rep had gotten them all to the hospital, collected the Council's five percent from us, and left me with my next core. And after that, we'd all laid low—except for Ellen. She couldn't afford to stop.

I pulled up my status, staring at the ceiling in my room.

User: Kade Noelstra E-Rank Stamina: 250/250, Mana: 250/250

Skills: 1. Stormsteel Core (D-02, Unique, Merged) 2. Thunderbolt Forms (E-05 to E-08, Altered, Merged) 3. Mistwalk Forms (E-01 to E-04, Altered, Merged) 4. Ariette's Grimoire (E-01 to E-04) 5. Overcharge (E-01 to E-03, Active) 6. Focus Casting (E-01 to E-02) 7. Spellblade Affinity (E-01 to E-02)

Path: Stormsteel Path Laws: First Law of Stormsteel

I had a problem, and the problem was combat. I had a lot of different drains on my Mana, and I needed to contribute to every fight for our team to do well. Until we got some sustained damage-dealers, like an archer or fighter, I had to fill that role and let Ellen save her firepower for when it mattered. That meant Focus Casting and Spellblade Affinity had only had a handful of opportunities to be useful.

And I couldn't reduce the amount of Mana I was consuming with the rapier and armor. I needed the sword to fight, and fighting without a breastplate felt like a massive risk. That left me with a steadily-dwindling Mana pool, a limited number of casts, and no way to reconcile those.

Worse, the egg looked like it was getting close to hatching. Ellen and I were both running out of time for our fifth merges—or at least, to have an open slot for Familiar Bond. In fact, she'd taken the step of running with a different team to get her next core and level her skills.

I hadn't had a chance to do that yet, because a very important date had just arrived, and I'd been preparing for it.

Jessie's sixteenth birthday.

We'd missed her fifteenth. Dad had just died, and—

Wait. Dad had died a year ago. Over a year ago. And both Jessie and I had missed that anniversary. How was that even possible? Granted, we'd both been busy—her with her GC rep training and me with delving and working on my build—but even so…

Remembering Dad hurt, even after so long. It was hard to believe we'd both been so busy that his death had slipped our minds, and yet, here we were, over a year past his death.

Was it something I wanted to bring up today?

The answer was an obvious 'no.' Unless Jessie brought up Dad, I wasn't going to ruin her birthday. But the answer to the first eluded me. Dad had been…massively important to us both. Without him, I'd almost certainly be in prison from letting my anger get the best of me, and Jessie…Jessie would be struggling alone or in the Phoenix foster kid system. That sounded like a nightmare for her. She needed someone who'd really take care of her, not someone who barely knew anything about her.

Dad had taught me discipline. He'd helped me start forging my anger into determination. And without him, none of what I'd achieved in the last year would have been possible.

I'd talk to Jessie about it later and ask her if she wanted to do something to mourn, celebrate, or at least remember.

But not today.

Today was for Jessie. I got up and started getting ready. Her birthday had fallen on a Saturday, and I'd let her stay up late last night, probably talking to Stephen. Not that I had much control over her bedtime, but someone had to keep her on schedule, and it wasn't going to be her.

If I moved fast, I'd have an hour or two to get ready. And I'd spent a good five hundred dollars on making sure she'd remember this birthday forever. You know, to make up for the one we'd missed.

Jessie glared at her brother, cheeks reddening as he snapped another picture of her. This was torture! It had to be against the law! Cruel and unusual punishment!

It had started the moment she walked out of her room, yawning. Kade had snapped one of those ridiculous party hats on her head, then taken a picture while she stared, bleary-eyed, at him. Then he'd laughed.

Things had gone downhill from there.

A special birthday breakfast. A goofy sign made out of balloons that said 'Happy Sweet Sixteen.' A half-dozen presents, all wrapped like someone had just crumpled wrapping paper around a box and called it good. And everything was photographed.

"Why are you doing this?" Jessie asked, head down on the kitchen table so low the pointed, pastel-colored hat almost touched the smooth wooden surface. She was still in her pajamas, for god's sake. "Please tell me you're not posting these anywhere."

"I'd never embarrass you like that, Jessie," Kade said. She could hear his smirk. "And I'm doing all of this for you. If you really want me to tone it down, I can. If you want me to wait until you're a little more awake, I can. But your fifteenth birthday kind of sucked. A lot. I'm trying to make this one suck less."

Jessie closed her eyes, head still down on the table. She took a deep breath. Okay. This was fine. Kade wasn't trying to make her turn into a beet; he just had completely the wrong idea of how today was supposed to go. That. Was. Fine. She gritted her teeth. Then she forced a smile.

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Then she punched him in the shoulder as hard as she could.

"Ow."

Jessie's punch didn't hurt. They hadn't hurt in a long time, not since I'd learned to manage pain. And I was honestly surprised that she hadn't hit me before; I'd been pushing her buttons all morning, and I knew it.

"Sorry," she said. Then she punched me a second time, but way lighter. "It's just…Kade, I need you to take this seriously. Can you do that?"

"Yep." I took one more picture, this time of the sign overhead. Then I put my phone away. "What's up?"

"I'm sixteen. I'm technically old enough to be a delver, right? I mean, if, hypothetically, my system were to awaken. Awakening is possible, anyway."

I already knew where Jessie was going with this. "Yes."

"And if it were to awaken, it might help with…" Jessie rolled up her sleeve, showing her swollen wrist and elbow. "…this. Right?"

"Yes, in theory, it might help. It didn't fix my scars, but when Jeff awakened, his broken leg was repaired within days. But there's no real proof that system access runs in families, and if it does, you'd be the first with Dad's genes. And at sixteen, you'd need guardian permission to enter any portals."

"But you'd give it to me, right?"

I hesitated. The silence grew pregnant, then awkward. "I'm…not sure. It'd depend on what you got as a Unique skill, and how we arranged your build. But there's a very real danger to being in portal worlds, and I'd need to know you were safe. Not just suspect it, but know." I took a deep breath. "My gut feeling is to say 'no' unless I'm with you."

Jessie looked at me, eyes narrowing. "Why?"

"Because it's not just the portals that can go wrong. I haven't cleared a portal in five days because there's a team out there that keeps trying to interfere with us whenever we go in. We're waiting for things to calm down a little before we put ourselves out there again."

"Oh."

"Yeah. Oh." I stood up from the table. "Why don't you pick out a couple of presents? I worked hard on them this year."

It was a blatant attempt to distract Jessie, and she knew it. But instead of pushing, she just nodded. "I get it. And it's all hypothetical, anyway. My system hasn't awakened or anything. I'm just hoping for something to happen."

She wandered over to the half-dozen presents. "Kade. Next time you need help with wrapping, talk to Ellen. Or even Jeff. You suck at this."

"Ow," I said again, as I cleared up the breakfast mess.

Jessie ripped into her presents like she hadn't gotten any in years—which was technically true, but I hoped that what I'd gotten for her would make up for it. Most of them were small things: a middle of the line headset, or a wireless mouse. But the big one took her almost a minute to unwrap all the paper I'd stuck to it. When she finally got it open, she stared. Then she punched me. Again.

"Ow!"

It took almost an hour for us to assemble Jessie's new computer desk in her room. It was black, tempered glass and metal legs, with locking casters and a single drawer. Once it was done, I had to spend another twenty minutes dragging her bed around before she was happy with where everything was arranged. The chair wasn't anything special: a black, stretchy-webbing seat, adjustable arms, back, and height, and a headrest. It didn't take up much space, though, which was the most important thing.

When it was all finished, Jessie set up her laptop. "Hopefully, I'll have enough for a desktop soon. I can't wait for all that power!" She stared at her new set-up for a while. Then she shook her head slowly. "It's nice, but I kind of miss the one Dad made for me, even though it was really getting too small."

"Yeah," I said. "I miss all that stuff, too, but we couldn't…I couldn't afford storage, and we didn't have space. It sucked to lose it all, but…"

"You did what you had to do, Kade," she said. She stood up and hugged me, and I tried to ignore her sniffles. "We're moving up, and things are going to get better. But we should visit Dad soon. It's been a long time."

"Three hundred seventy-eight days since he died. We missed the anniversary. I think it was the day after that portal break, and neither of us remembered."

It had been a month since we visited the Memorial Tower, where fallen delvers' remains—or their effigies, in the cases where there wasn't anything left—were interred. Dad was there. Jessie had been consistent in visiting up until recently, but with her new job, new boyfriend, and everything else, she'd forgotten.

And I'd been too busy to remind her. The most important way I could honor Dad was by finishing my merges, making sure Jessie stayed safe and happy, and getting stronger every chance I had.

"Hey, you haven't showed me the egg in a while," Jessie said suddenly. I recognized an attempt to change the subject when I saw one. I also recognized the tears in her eyes. "Let's see how it's doing, alright?"

I took the easy road. "Yeah. Yeah, let's do that.

Truthfully, Jessie probably missed Dad more than I did. I'd inherited his system, in a way. Not the exact skills, or even anything close to them, but his death had been the catalyst that awakened Stormbreak. Granted, I'd spent months trying to find a way to get that legacy under control, and months after that designing my build. It had been a painful, slow process to get here.

But at least I had that connection.

And he'd also taught me how to manage my anger. Without his training—on the fencing pitch, in the workout room, and over the chessboard—I wouldn't have been able to avoid using Stormbreak, or to keep my temper with Carter below Mardou's tower.

With Jessie, their connection had been both closer—she'd been unabashedly his favorite to dote on and surprise with little gifts—and less…professional. Dad simply hadn't had anything to offer her in terms of skills, save for pain management, and even that was only so useful for her when she had to manage it constantly.

I didn't regret my training. It had been a ton of time with Dad, and every bit of it had been high-quality, meaningful time. But Jessie's time with him had been meaningful in a different way. We'd both missed out on each other's experiences.

We left Jessie's room and stepped into mine.

I hadn't done a lot with it. The chessboard sat on a side table, and my bed took up most of the floor space, so there wasn't much else to do. I opened the side table's cabinet door and looked inside.

We—Ellen and I—had rigged up a warming light, and I'd nestled the egg in the same towels as before. The heat was annoying, especially when I was trying to sleep, but according to her, it was necessary for the last part of whatever was inside's development. I didn't know enough about it to dispute Ellen's claim.

I fished the egg out and set it on the bed. "It's getting heavy," I said.

"Looks like it," Jessie replied. She reached out and touched it. "Feels more leathery than it did before, too. That's weird. Almost like a turtle instead of a bird?"

"Yeah. That's not too weird, though. It was a snake-lady boss, sort of. Stands to reason that the eggs it was protecting would be reptile-like."

"Can I name it when it hatches?" Jessie asked. "Please please please? It's my birthday."

"Sure," I said.

"Yes! I'm going to come up with the best name ever!"

I already regretted my decision.

We watched the egg for another minute. Then, just as I was about to reach out to put it away, it twitched.

The whole egg twitched.

And a tiny crack appeared in its side.

"Oh. Oh, crap," Jessie said.

I stared at the gunmetal-gray egg. Then I reached over, turned the warming light off, and put it away. "Jessie, you might be naming it sooner than you thought."

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