Jason sat alone in his mother’s darkened apartment watching a crystal recording that heavily featured Farrah. Her guidance had been so important to him in his early days in the other world, although it wasn’t until after she died that he realised how often she had been right and he had been wrong. It hadn’t stopped him from running his mouth. Projecting confidence had never been an issue for him, even when he had none.
Shade told Jason that his mother was arriving and he shut off the recording, returning the projector to his inventory.
Cheryl trudged from her car into the elevator, her head swirling with revelations and stress. She hadn’t been into the office in two days, which was completely unlike her, even over the weekend. After her mother’s miraculous recovery, she had been spending her time at Robert’s farm, helping her mother get settled.
As if that weren’t enough, her dead son had returned to life, only to vanish on her all over again. After the shellshock revelation at the hospital, she had been trying to get more information out of her other children. Kaito didn’t seem to know any more than Cheryl herself, while Erika was being obstructionist. Her own daughter refused to tell her where she could find the son impossibly risen from the grave. Their last few phone calls had devolved into screaming matches.
She tapped the key card to access her apartment.
“You don’t need to bother with the alarm,” a voice said as she stepped inside. “It’s already off.”
Her son’s voice was deeper than before. She looked at the silhouette sitting in the dark in one of her armchairs. She flicked on the light, revealing him in full. She had only seen him briefly in the hospital, but now she started cataloguing the changes. Along with his new voice was the beard and the small scars on his face. The eyes were the same—dark and hostile.
“Son.”
“Mother.”
“I thought I lost you.”
“You did,” Jason said, getting up out of the chair.
She moved forward to hug him, only to be struck by a wave of dread that sent her staggering back. Her hair stood up on end. Her instincts screamed danger, until the sensation passed. She looked around. There was no indication of what had caused the sensation, yet she was certain it had come from her son.
“What was that?” she asked, rattled.
“Explanations will come,” he said. “Not tonight.”
She was unsure of what to do with herself, standing in the middle of the room but not willing to try moving forward again.
“How did you get in here?”
“Mysteriously,” he said. “I’m mysterious now.”
She was having a hard time recognising her own son, but she caught a glimpse of the boy she remembered in the moment of silliness.
“Jason, after you died…”
“You still had the son you liked, so no big loss.”
“How can you say that?”
“Years of observational evidence. Kaito and Amy, I get. We were young and dumb and made choices that hurt each other. It took me a long time to get there, but I’m ready to try forgiving them. It’s not as easy as I thought it would be—I haven’t moved past it as much as I thought—but I can do it.”
He shook his head.
“But you,” he continued. “You weren’t young. You weren’t mired in hormones, love and friendship all tangled up in a rat’s nest. You were meant to be the detached one. I know parents have favourites, Mum, but you could have at least tried to hide it a little.”
“What I was trying to do was hold the family together through what was obviously going to be a crisis.”
“And how did you do it? The same way you did everything: by stepping on me.”
“It’s not like that, Jason.”
“I know you loved me, Mum,” Jason said, voice dropping soft and low as he bowed his head. “But I also know that you really didn’t like me.”
“That isn’t how it was, Jason.”
“You think I’m pulling that out of thin air? You spent twenty years showing me how you felt.”
“You weren’t the easiest child, Jason.”
“Oh, I didn’t realise it was hard,” Jason said. “That’s egg on my face, I guess. Sorry, just forget everything I said, then. Good seeing you, Mum.”
She skittered out of the way as he forcefully strode to the door and opened it.
“I came back home for reconciliation,” he said softly, pausing in the doorway. “I know I’m not doing a great job of it, but there were things I needed to say before I had any chance of moving forward.”
Cheryl steeled her nerve and rushed at her son, grasping him tightly in a hug.
“My boy has come back to me,” she whispered, sending a shudder through his body.
“You need to stop bothering Erika,” he said softly as he extricated himself. “I’ll be around for a while, so look after Nanna. We’ll see each other again soon.”
Ken and Ian left the houseboat after another session of watching recording crystals, Ian taking Emi home with him. Erika remained behind, watching one of the recording crystals she retrieved from Shade. The recording was of Jason in what she had come to recognise as his lodgings in the strange, magical city he had been living in.
“I killed some people today,” image Jason said. “They weren’t the first, and they were coming to kill us. I was on a job, escorting a shipment of magic coins.”
He laughed, shaking his head in disbelief.
“This is my life now. We were in these amazing sand skimmers, which is like an airboat, but for sand. Then we got attacked by—get this—sand pirates! Crazy right? They swept in and we fought them off. It was awesome.”
He hung his head.
“It wasn’t until after I got back that it occurred to me that I’d just killed eight people. And it was fun. Fun. Even now, I have trouble feeling bad about it. It’s not like they were going to let us live, but protecting ourselves should be a grim necessity, right?”
He sighed.
“I’m starting to become afraid of what I’m turning into. What happens when I stop caring about human life altogether? I’m dangerous now. If I ever get home, will you even recognise the person I’ve become?”
The recording came to an end and Erika sat staring into the space it had been. Caught up in her thoughts, she was startled when Shade appeared at the door.
“Mrs Asano, your brother will shortly be arriving in the lounge.”
She was waiting for Jason when he appeared through a portal arch.
“You saw Mum?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“You didn’t show her the crazy teleport door, did you?”
“Of course not.”
“Because I’m still processing all of this,” Erika said. “Emi’s young and she adapts quickly, but Ian and I are feeling pretty adrift.”
“I know,” Jason said. “The world is a different place now.”
Erika thought back to the troubled boy on the recording, afraid of what his family would see in him. The man in front of her was certainly changed. For good or ill, she didn’t know.