Read Gratuitous Epilogue : Touchstone Extras for Free Online

and Ys occasionally infuriated.
Sen's still a little too young to comprehend more than the fact
that everyone knows who she is and they wave at her when we go into
town. And then new pictures of us show up on the interface. Living
on an island was a damn good idea.
    For me the first news
of reconnection to Tare came along with a handful of emails from
Zan. They were typical of Zan's calm formality, with just a thread
of uncertainty beneath. I think in a way she must have been trying
to help me by writing them, creating an expectation for me to be
alive to read them. Or maybe she wanted some kind of sounding
board, the same way I used to use my diaries. She needed someone to
talk to.
    Twelfth had been
off-shift, asleep, when I fell down the Cruzatch-hole, and when
KOTIS went to full alert upon Kaoren's return they'd been stuck
biting their nails for rather too long, then sent after Thirteenth
and Fourteenth, who had been assigned to Maze Rotation. They were
deep within the tangle of whitestone walls, working in two
different locations to lower the chance of attracting roamers, and
when Twelfth reached the maze space, Zan immediately ordered
everyone back to Tare.
    Twelfth had waited just
within the maze space entrance, and when Thirteenth arrived had
sent them back ahead. And then the first wave of distortion had
hit. They'd felt it in the Ena of both Tare and Kolar, not to such
a paralysing level as Muina, but enough to make clear that
something was wrong and only getting worse.
    Zan's email covers all
this in a sentence, but I've since watched the mission log, and
listened to the conversation between her and Kin Lara, the sleepy
captain of Fourteenth who I mainly remember as being a friend of
Els'.
    "Go ahead, Namara," he
said, as Fourteenth raced around the twists and bends of the maze.
[Zee tells me that it's a very bad idea trying to fly over the top
of the walls there.]
    "We'll wait," Zan
replied. "I can move us fastest."
    "Not the time to ignore
protocols," Lara said, still sounding sleepy and unperturbed,
almost amused, even though his squad were running for their lives.
"You're usually more sensible, Zan."
    The next wave of
distortion hit them then, underlining his point. Lenton's log shows
me Zan's face, white, expressionless. Then she says: "Hurry," and
sends her squad through the small house space which leads to the
maze space, and then into near-space, then she picks them up and
flies all-out, as fast as the strongest Telekinetic in the Setari
can manage, back to the gate-lock.
    Fourteenth made it to
near-space before the storm which followed the destruction of the
malachite marbles hit. If they'd still been in the maze space they
would have been completely lost, since it's now shifted out of
alignment with Tare's near-space (this bothers me a lot because
no-one's seen Ghost since). Twelfth, waiting in real-space at the
gate-lock, couldn't do anything when the gate – usually invisible –
suddenly washed bright white and roared power at them.
    The effect on
Fourteenth was a combination of a severe aether overdose combined
with the overenhancement which occurs when they touch me while I'm
expanded. The Levitation and Telekinesis talents, who were flying
as fast as possible, lost control and they tumbled to near-space's
ground. Blinded by white, bruised and with a couple of broken
bones, they used the interface to track each other and find the
gate, dragging each other toward it.
    They didn't make it,
though, all of them collapsing. Zan, since her squad had been
ordered not to go back into near-space, and with no sign of the
storm subsiding, had thought to send drones, which easily homed in
on Fourteenth and brought them back.
    Broken bones were
nothing compared to what the storm had done to their talents.
Hyper-enhanced, producing brain lesions when any of them tried
using anything energy-intensive. Four months later they've only
just begun to reach normal levels again. Anyone with Sights – the
talents which