The Moon estate was quieter than usual when they arrived, the guards more alert, the gates slower to open, the whole place feeling like it was holding its breath. Becca had called ahead from First Landing, told her grandmother they were coming, told her what happened, told her the people who attacked Kaito had tried again. The old woman had been waiting for them at the entrance when they pulled up, her face pale in the evening light, her hands steady on her walking stick.
David watched her as they climbed out of the car, watched her eyes move over Becca first, checking for wounds, then over Lucas, then over him. She didn't ask if they were hurt. She could see they weren't. She asked the only question that mattered.
"Did you find it?"
David met her eyes. "We found it. And then we hid it."
The grandmother nodded slowly, something shifting in her expression, something that might have been relief or might have been resignation. "Good. Come inside. We have much to discuss."
Kaito was waiting in the main hall, still pale, still bandaged, but standing this time, leaning on a cane that looked like it had been carved from something older than the estate. He smiled when he saw them, that easy smile that made everything feel less terrible, and David felt something loosen in his chest.
"You look terrible," Kaito said.
"You've been saying that a lot lately."
"Because it keeps being true." Kaito moved toward them, his steps slow, his weight on the cane. "The people at the portal. They were the same ones who attacked me."
David nodded. "Same training. Same equipment. Same everything."
"They're getting bolder. The first attack was in the shadows, at night, somewhere no one would see. This one was in broad daylight, in front of the portal, in front of everyone." Kaito's face was grim. "Whoever they are, they're not hiding anymore."
The grandmother moved to her seat at the head of the room, her walking stick tapping against the floor with each step. "Sit. All of you. Tell me everything."
They sat. David told the story from the beginning, the vault in the mountain, the door made of light, the egg on its pedestal, the men who came through the tunnel. He didn't mention the second system, didn't mention the shelter, didn't mention how the egg had disappeared. He said they'd hidden it somewhere safe, somewhere no one would find it, and the grandmother nodded like that was enough.
When he finished, the room was quiet for a long moment.
"You don't know what it was," the grandmother said. "The thing in the vault. You don't know what your father was protecting."
David shook his head. "He said the Phoenix Clan was formed to protect it. That it was something old. Something powerful. Something that could save the world or destroy it."
The grandmother's hands tightened on her walking stick. "The old stories say the Phoenix Clan was different from the other clans. That they had something the others didn't. Something that made them powerful in a way that couldn't be measured." She looked at David. "I thought it was just stories. Legends. The kind of thing people tell about the dead to make them seem greater than they were."
"The stories were true," Becca said quietly.
"They were true." The grandmother stared at the floor for a long moment, her face unreadable. "And now the people who killed your parents have been hunting that thing for eighteen years. They've been patient, David. Patient and careful and hidden. But they're not hiding anymore. And that means they're desperate."
David thought about the man in the cavern, the way he'd looked when David told him the vault was empty. The confidence cracking into something uglier. The fear behind the mask. "They think we have it. They think we took it somewhere they can find it."
"And can they? Find it, I mean."
"No." David's voice was steady. "It's somewhere no one will ever find it. Somewhere even I can't reach unless I want to."
The grandmother studied him for a moment, her eyes sharp, her face giving nothing away. "You sound very sure for someone who didn't know what it was until yesterday."
"I'm sure."
She nodded slowly, something in her expression shifting. "Then we focus on what we do know. Someone in this city has been hunting the Phoenix Clan's legacy for eighteen years. Someone with enough power to send trained assassins into our territory, to attack my grandson, to strike at my granddaughter in broad daylight. Someone who thinks they're close to what they want."
"Director Chen," Becca said.
The room went very still.
The grandmother's eyes moved to her granddaughter. "What do you know about Chen?"
"Kaito told us. Before the attack. He found something, someone inside the system, someone who helped the people who killed David's parents. Someone who's been protecting them for eighteen years." Becca's voice was calm, measured. "He was looking at Chen when they came for him."
The grandmother looked at Kaito, something passing between them that David couldn't read. "You found evidence?"
"Not evidence. Patterns. Things that didn't add up. Records that disappeared when I got close. Connections that led back to her office." Kaito's voice was rough, tired. "I was days away from something solid. Maybe hours. And then they found me."
The grandmother was quiet for a long moment, her eyes moving from Kaito to Becca to David, weighing something, deciding something. "Chen is protected. Not just by her position, but by people above her, people who've been in power since before the system came. If she's involved, if she's been protecting the people who killed the Phoenix Clan, then she's not working alone."
David leaned forward. "Then we find out who she's working with. We find out who's protecting her. We find out who's been hunting my family for eighteen years."
"And then what? You kill them? You bring them to justice? You expose them to a world that doesn't want to know the truth?" The grandmother's voice was sharp. "You're eighteen years old, David. You have power, yes, and courage, and a name that people still remember. But you don't have an army. You don't have allies. You don't have anything except a few friends and a dead father's journal."
Lucas stood up, his chair scraping against the floor, his face flushed. "He has us. He has the Moon Clan. He has people who believe him."
"Sit down, boy." The grandmother's voice was tired, not angry. "I'm not saying this to discourage him. I'm saying it because he needs to hear it. The people he's fighting, they've been doing this for eighteen years. They have resources and connections and the kind of power that comes from being in the shadows for a very long time. If he's going to beat them, he needs to be smart. He needs to be patient. He needs to be more than just powerful."
David met her eyes. "What do you think I should do?"
The grandmother was quiet for a moment. Then she smiled, and for the first time since David had met her, it looked like something real. "What your father would have done. Train. Plan. Build your strength. Make allies of people you can trust. And when the time comes, when you're ready, when they've shown themselves completely, you strike. Not before."
David sat back, the words settling into him. It wasn't the answer he wanted. He wanted to move now, to find Chen, to find the people who'd attacked Kaito, to find the names on his list and make them pay. But the grandmother was right. He wasn't ready. Not yet.
He looked at Lucas, at Becca, at Kaito leaning on his cane, at the grandmother watching him with eyes that had seen too much to lie to him. "How long?"
"How long until you're ready?" The grandmother shrugged. "That depends on you. On how fast you learn. On how strong you become. On how many people you can bring to your side before they realize what you're doing." She leaned forward. "But I'll tell you this, David Ashborn. They've been waiting eighteen years. They can wait a little longer. And when you finally come for them, they won't know what hit them."
---
They stayed at the estate that night, all of them, too exhausted to go home, too wired to sleep. Lucas found a couch in one of the sitting rooms and was unconscious within minutes. Becca went to check on Kaito, to make sure he was resting, to talk to him about things David didn't need to hear.
David sat in the garden, the same garden where Kaito had shown him the plants that healed and the ones that killed, and looked up at the stars that were different here than they'd been in the Expanse. His phone buzzed and he pulled it out expecting Lucas or Becca but it was Erica.
*Made it back to the city. Everything quiet here. You?*
David typed back: *At the Moon estate. Safe. Thank you for what you did at the portal.*
A long pause. Then: *I was watching them for three days. They knew when you were coming back. Someone told them.*
David's hands tightened on the phone. *Who?*
*I don't know yet. But I'm going to find out.*
He put the phone away and looked at the stars again. Someone had known when they were coming back. Someone had told the people who attacked them exactly when to be there, exactly where to wait, exactly how to find them. Someone inside the system, Kaito had said. Someone with access, with power, with the ability to watch and wait and strike when the moment was right.
Director Chen. Or someone above her. Someone who'd been waiting eighteen years for David Ashborn to lead them to what they wanted.
They'd been close. So close. If Erica hadn't been there, if she hadn't been watching, if she hadn't put that arrow in the first man's shoulder, they'd have David now. They'd have the crystal and the journal and whatever else they thought he had. They'd have him.
But they didn't. He was here, in the Moon estate garden, with the stars above him and the fire in his chest and the egg hidden somewhere no one would ever find it. And he was going to make sure they never got another chance.
Becca found him an hour later, sitting on the same bench, staring at the same stars. She sat beside him without asking, close enough that he could feel her warmth, far enough that he could breathe.
"You should sleep," she said.
"Can't."
She didn't say anything else, just sat there with him, the two of them in the garden, the estate quiet around them, the stars moving slowly across the sky.
After a long time, David said, "When we were in the cave, when those men came, I wanted to kill them. Not because they were trying to hurt us. Because they were trying to take what my father died for. Because they were the same people who killed him. And I wanted to burn them all."
Becca didn't move, didn't react, just sat there listening.
"I stopped," he said. "You said something and I stopped. But it was close. So close."
"You didn't do it."
"I wanted to."
"That's not the same thing." Becca looked at him, her face soft in the starlight, her eyes holding something he couldn't name. "My grandmother says that wanting to kill and killing are two different things. One is human. The other is something else."
David looked at her, at the girl who'd been trained to kill since she could walk, who carried shadows in her blood and daggers on her hips, who talked about her family's business like it was just another job. "What do you think?"
She was quiet for a moment. "I think the people who killed your parents deserve to pay for what they did. I think you have every right to want to make them pay. But I also think that if you let that want control you, if you let it turn you into the thing they are, then they win. Not because they get what they're after, but because they take what you are."
David turned her words over in his mind, felt them settle somewhere deep. "That's a lot for someone who's been trained to kill her whole life."
Becca's lips twitched. "Maybe that's why I know it. Because I've seen what happens to people who let the wanting take over. My family is full of them. People who started with a purpose and ended with nothing but the kill."
They sat in silence for a while, the garden dark around them, the stars bright above.
"Thank you," David said finally. "For being there. For stopping me. For all of it."
Becca didn't answer, but she didn't leave either. She sat beside him until the stars began to fade and the first light of morning touched the garden walls, and when David finally fell asleep on the bench, she was still there, watching the sky, keeping the dark at bay.