Addendum

So, now you’ve met one of the few people I’d sacrifice everything for. My child.

By now, you’ll have figured out where this story is going, although if you haven’t, that’s fine too. As with the beginning of the Ancients Crisis, I’ll skip a few years, twenty-five in fact. During this time, I was again an utter moron in a lot of ways. For example, I never followed up on Feena’ suspicion about how easily we'd found Harvel, filing the memories of that mission in a folder that I rarely touched.

As for what happened during those years, I’d say not a lot. Socially, there was backlash when people found out I had a kid, but I’d expected that. My partners and I kept it away from Jax.

Also, about six years after we took our child home, a few concerning issues started arising for me, or rather, I first started taking notice of them. For instance, before then, my personas may have been getting out of hand, as seen by how independent Rylan had become while with Zan and Cerullis, but for some reason, they started getting more… intelligent—I’ll put it—as well, which made keeping them below the surface more difficult. Learning how to solve that problem took me quite some time, and as you’ll see in the next few chapters, I still wasn’t great at it, even after twenty-five years of practice.

My general mental state also took a turn for the worse, although it was never in a way that affected my job or relationships. Simply put, my anxiety and depression levels skyrocketed, making it much more difficult to keep them under control, but I managed. I’ve always done that.

If only I’d known then what I know now. Hell, it would have helped.

When it came to my job, I found myself carefree for the first time in decades. I looked into some minor problems, like the missing persons case I’ve mentioned, but not much else came up.

That mission ended up being mostly frustrating. We never found the people who were lost, and when the disappearances stopped a year later, the case was put on a shelf to gather dust. Fortunately, not many of the others were like that, easily solvable instead.

Soon after my month-long break, I visited Sanya, as planned, and as you might expect, we quickly became friendly with one another. Usually, I don’t have much trouble when it comes to getting along with people, and Sanya’s personality meshed well with mine. Why wouldn’t we get along?

The point I’m trying to make, however, is that for twenty-five years, my life was wonderful. I got to raise our child through their formative years. I got to be a father and a husband and a life partner and a lover instead of a ruthlessly efficient killing machine.

This made me soft. So, it was inevitable that what I’ll describe next would occur.