"It began when we arrived at Master Oh's studio last week."

  Kumiko went on to describe the special training she had received when Karla was off buying Chinese food.

  Jane nearly dropped her teacup when Kumiko got to the part about throwing Master Oh for messing up her hair. What a woman she was going to be when she grew up!

  Of course, Jane and Karla needed to make sure that the twins survived until adulthood. That thought was both depressing and sobering.

  Kumiko correctly interpreted Jane's sudden change from mirthful to subdued and thoughtful.

  "Be not afraid Onee-san. There is more that I have yet to tell you. I now understand, at least partially, our purpose. Kimiko is the Teacher. I am the Protector. Even as I am now, I am certain that, as long as I am near, Kimiko will come to no harm from our enemies. She is no longer your responsibility. She is now mine."

  Woah! That was a game-changer if ever there was one. Jane studied Kumiko intently and realized that, somehow, Kumiko was right. Jane's brief time as protector was over. So what was she to do now? That part was unclear.

  Kumiko saw the puzzled look on Jane's face and, again, drew a correct conclusion.

  "Your task remains the same Onee-san. Your instruction and protection of our sister was just an interlude. You are still the, the...."

  Kumiko's face went slack, then she carefully put down her teacup, stood up, walked to Jane's bed, and crawled under the covers. She was asleep in moments.

  "Sometimes that one tries to take on too much. She is impetuous, but she is strong. If you please, help her to curb the former and cultivate the latter."

  Jane turned her head, and then, very precisely, laid her teacup on the table beside her armchair. She stood, and gave a deep curtsey to the being who had manifested in her room.

  "Last time we talked, I was chest deep in a stream and you told me not to curtsey lest I end up with waders full of water. This time let me offer you the full courtesy My Lady."

  The Lady laughed. She hadn't had much reason to lately, but that was the result of her deliberate choices, and thus not worth mentioning.

  The Lady strode forward and laid her palm on Jane's cheek. "I see that my younger sister Kali has scorched you. That one is much too rash and does not yet understand that not all see as clearly as she does. Fortunately that will pass once she herself passes out of her childhood.

  "For now, let me repair the damage she did. You above all are in need of all of your faculties."

  Once again her touch was like gossamer, but this time it was a healing touch. When the healing was complete, Jane realized that she had been laboring in pain ever since Kali's visit. That pain was now gone.

  The Lady glanced over at Kumiko. "That little one was correct. But she needs to deal with one thing at a time, as do all who are limited by their physical bodies. She will remember talking to you about the Aztith, but not her comprehension of your purpose. If she remembers, she'll try to protect you as well as Kimiko, and she would likely fail. She is not one of the very few who are able to manifest in two places at the same time."

  She chuckled slightly then continued. "Know that I am pleased with you. As one of 'those who seek' your task is to ferret out information, wherever it may be hiding. Without that, none of you will understand where you must go and what you must do. You would simply be reacting, and that would eventually be deadly."

  "I canna say that I completely understand My Lady, but I think I get the gist of it. I'm to poke and pry into all kinds of things that folks don't want poked or pried into. Once we flush the birds from cover, we'll have the advantage rather than them."

  Jane laughed. "It's too bad that I can't think of a good fishing metaphor for that, it'd suit my character better than one about hunting. Oh well, I guess I can't have everything."

  The Lady smiled and levitated herself far enough that she could put her hand on the top of Jane's head. "You have my blessing little one. Continue as you see fit. I shall see you anon."

  Jane sat up with a start. She'd fallen asleep in her chair. She looked around and saw that she wasn't alone in the room. Kumiko had fallen asleep too, but she'd had the good sense to crawl into bed first. That it wasn't her bed didn't stop Jane from giving her full points for common sense.

  As she half-drowsed in her chair, Jane replayed the conversations she'd had with Kumiko and The Lady. The Lady! She'd been in Jane's room, hadn't she? Or was it just a dream like the one Ian had before he'd met the rest of the family?

  Well, in either case it hardly mattered. Ian's "dream" had been entirely accurate, so, even if it had been a dream, Jane decided that she'd better pay close attention to it. That is, if she could remember it clearly.

  Moment by moment it was fading, but a few points remained clear. One was her headache. That constant, nagging, irritating headache that she'd had since they were visited by Aunt Kara. It was gone. Totally gone. Not having her head hurt almost made Jane feel giddy with delight.

  The second point was that The Lady had said something about Jane being, what was it, someone who knows things, or finds out things, or something like that. Whatever the specific wording was, the idea was clear. She needed to intensify her searches for possible threats, no matter how far-fetched those threats might be or how innocuous the possible source might seem.

  It certainly fit in with her basic character. Jane was one of those people who was happiest when she found out something that almost nobody else knew. Not that she'd ever reveal the information. Just knowing that she was one of the select few who knew was enough for her. She had an extensive archive of such information, triple encrypted and requiring, in addition to her password, both fingerprint and retinal scans to access. Perhaps it was time to go through all if it again and see...no, wait.

  First she'd get Ian to design her a search algorithm that would let her put in specific key words or ideas and then match them up for her. It would save a great deal of time, and time was something that they were very short on. She wasn't entirely sure how she knew that, but she was certain that she was correct.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  In the meantime, sleep was the first item on the agenda. She crawled in next to Kumiko and was asleep within seconds.

  ----------------------

  The next morning, when Ian dragged himself in for breakfast, she hit him with the idea of writing a search algorithm for her data. She'd been counting on his drowsiness and the scents of breakfast to wrest an easy agreement from him. What happened instead what that he gave her a mildly dirty look, turned around, and trudged back to his bedroom.

  She was trying to figure out what went wrong with her plan when he walked back into the kitchen and laid a flash drive on the counter. He didn't say a word. He just picked up his plate of scrambled eggs and his juice, went to the table, and sat down with his back to her.

  After breakfast he was still ignoring her, so she took the drive and went into her workshop to find out what was going on. She plugged in the dirve and checked the directory. The only file there was one titled: SEARCH. Now she understood. Ian was having a male moment. He was feeling hurt that she'd think that he wouldn't have something so obvious already to hand.

  MEN! They could be so childish. She'd have to figure out some way to unruffle his feathers, right after she took a peak at his program.

  A little while later Kimiko came looking for her. "Nee-chan. Onee-chan! Please, come quick. If ya don't Kaa-chan says that she's gonna cook dinner!"

  Kimiko had accidentally picked the one thing that could cause Jane to do a crash surfacing. She snapped back to herself and checked the time. Oh my gosh! She'd been at it for over seven hours.

  "Ah, right Kimi. I'll be right there. Tell Mama not to do ANYTHING."

  Kimiko flashed her a grateful look and disappeared back down the hall at warp speed. She wanted to stop Karla before anyone was poisoned.

  Jane had intended to follow immediately but she was delayed by an even more urgent need. If she didn't get into the bathroom, right now, she was going to pee her pants. Seven hours was more than a bit too long to hold it in.

  After she relieved herself, she relieved everyone else by showing up and cooking a slightly extravagant dinner. She felt that she owed them one because she'd let them worry about Mama cooking.

  Mama did try hard, bless her, but she simply didn't have the patience to do things right. She always rushed things and they either ended up burnt or under done.

  There was a Monopoly battle after dinner, with no conclusive winner. Then the girls settled down to watch some more old movies. Ian begged off, pleading the need to finish some project for DARPA within the next 24 hours.

  Jane cleaned up the kitchen while Karla supervised the girls.... That is, if you could call rapt attention focused on the TV screen supervising. Mama was such a child sometimes. Jane was about to tease her about it when her mother's laughter stopped her cold.

  That laugh made Jane think, and think hard, about her mother's life. Karla had never had a childhood, at least in a manner of speaking. Her early life had been much too horrific for the stereotypical childhood full of games and fun. She'd never even had the chance to go to school after the sixth grade. It was no wonder that she'd worked so hard to see that Jane was able to enjoy her childhood and school life.

  It also explained Karla's voracious appetite for books. Jane had long noticed that Karla read two to three times as much non-fiction as fiction. Now she supposed that she knew why. Karla was continuing her education in the only way she could. Lord knows that, even now, she had no time for formal schooling.

  Looking at her mother in this new light, Jane was acutely aware of how much Karla had sacrificed for her, and how much she was loved. Given that, Jane supposed, at least this time, that she could let her mother's movie addiction pass without comment. With a nod to herself as acknowledgement of her belated conclusions, Jane put down the dishtowel and slipped away down the hall.

  Once in her workshop, Jane surveyed the results of her earlier marathon. Thank God for the software Ian had given her. She'd missed a rather large number of connections over the past few years. Several needed immediate attention, and a number of others should be attended to within the next week or so.

  In the ensuing three hours she prepared over 70 emails, not counting those to her personal network. The latter were to be routed to her also, as if she were receiving and not sending them. It would never do for anyone to find out that she was the one running things and not just another member of the team.

  Many of the first group of emails were to various people in Homeland Security and Interpol asking for names of police departments around the world that could best use the money about to be "recovered." There were always places in the poorer countries where the police were woefully underfunded.

  It doesn't matter how dedicated you are if you don't even have a working flashlight or reliable telephone service. Sometimes as little as a hundred dollars could make a world of difference.

  Some of the arrests that would result from what she had just started would startle a good many people, especially the politicians and businessmen who were the ones who would be arrested. All of them probably thought that they were perfectly secure and not traceable to the criminal activities that they were associated with.

  With any luck, the organizations that they were working with would conclude that these arrests were more of the fallout from the events of August. Not that she'd count on it. What precautions she could take had long been taken, so she'd not worry about it more than she had to.

  She'd done what she could do in one day. There was a lot more pending, now that she had the proper tool to work with, but that would have to wait. She needed sleep again, so she got herself ready and fell in her bed. She was already fading out when she felt Katryna curl up against her back.

  Routines can be very comforting. How strange that she hadn't noticed it before. Any further analysis of that idea would have to wait until morning though as she was already asleep.

  -------------------------

  Ian hadn't been quite as upset as he'd let on when Jane came to him asking for search software, though he was somewhat miffed that she had asked him "IF" he had a good search algorithm she could use. Women could be so insensitive at times. Be that as it may, he was intensely curious about what Jane was scheming this time. Any time she buried herself in her workshop for more than an hour, especially if she was working sans soldering iron, she was "up to something."

  Ian was especially curious because this episode had lasted a hair over seven hours. She'd never closeted herself with her computer for more than three hours at a time in the three months that he'd lived here. What a strange thought that was. For the first time that he could remember he had a "family" life. Sure, he'd been busy and moderately happy in the past, but it had always been under the dutiful, and rather impersonal, care of one foster family or another until he'd gone to Davidson. He'd never even been able to find out if he was orphaned, abandoned, or just lost somehow -- though the last seemed highly unlikely.

  At age 10 he'd sent his first computer program to DARPA. He'd been appalled at how antiquated some of the coding on their public web page was. It was less than a month later that he'd been given some odd tests at school. Shortly thereafter he was moved to the Davidson Academy. It was after he'd been there about five months that he was first officially contacted by the government and given a project.

  After they'd assessed his work, and, probably more importantly, determined that he could keep his mouth closed with the best of them, they'd gradually given him more complex and important tasks.

  Davidson had a more congenial atmosphere than a "normal school" given that everyone else around him was at least as smart as he was, and he didn't have to put up with being harassed about his intelligence any more. However living in what was essentially a boarding house full of strangers wasn't exactly what one could call "family life."

  He hadn't realized how much he'd missed it until he'd been placed with the Knights by The Lady. He knew that he'd be grateful to her for that kindness for the rest of his life. Everyone here was more than a little bit strange, but, being an honest boy, he had to admit -- ruefully -- that he was more than a little bit strange too.

  One thing that did sort of bother him was his actual status legally. Yes, all the paperwork, and even his passport, said that he was Ian Knight, but that was essentially a false identity created by the government. What would happen if they decided that he wasn't needed anymore. Who would he be then? Even more importantly, who did he want to be?

  When he reached 18 he could do what Jane had done and change his name legally, but, if he did, what name would he change it to? For that matter, what name would he change it from? He had no idea what his birth name was. Ian Bergner was just what he'd been called the past eight or nine years. Was that his original name, or just something that the State of Nevada had assigned him with some sort of random number generator when he was first put into foster care?