It was so late at night that he was almost willing to call it early morning by the time he got back to town. But he wasn’t tired—he couldn’t be, not when the other member of his team wasn’t with him, not when she needed his help. A part of him had hoped that, anywhere along his hurried trip back, he would see a sign that Clover had simply just come out before him. But the boat was still there, with no note—and he knew she’d leave a note. She was too meticulous, too careful, to leave without any kind of explanation or reassurance.

  And all of that hope was dead when he returned to the dock, knocked on the door of the boat rental guy’s cabin, and explained the situation.

  “Knew letting you kids out there was a bad idea,” the man muttered. “I should’ve trusted my gut when it said that you were going to do nothing but get into trouble.”

  “This is serious!” Nik gave an exaggerated gesture towards the door. “I don’t know anything about where she is or what she’s dealing with right now!”

  “I thought you were supposed to be extremely well-prepared?”

  “Oh! I guess we should’ve prepared for some lunatic’s experiments then!” He was nearly ready to push the man out of the door and into town. “Are you going to help or not?”

  In a frankly surprising twist, it was the man who pushed Nik out of the way. He gave one look back at the boy and waved for him to follow. “Of course I am. Don’t know who you think I am, kid, but I’m not the kind of guy who leaves a well-paying customer out to die somewhere. The two of you are practically one of the few people keeping this business of mine alive, you know. Don’t suppose you had a plan?”

  “Uh… get help, and get back to Clover. Isn’t that enough?”

  “Yeah, I can tell which one of you is the planner. You need more of a plan than that if you’re going to want to rescue somebody. You’ve got to make sure you know what you’re going to need and what your plan is going to be. Luckily for you, though, you’re not the one doing this alone.”

  “So does that mean you have a better plan..?”

  “We’re going to talk to the knights and get a few of them to help. I know some of them work the graveyard shift. They’ll put one of their teams together, and then we’ll be ready to go. Oh, and we should probably get someone to talk to Clover’s parents. They’re going to want to know what’s happening.”

  “That doesn’t sound like it’s going to be very quick.”

  “How fast you do it doesn’t matter if you’re underprepared, kid. Trust me.”

  If there was one thing Nik hated most about that night—morning?—it was how often he ended up having to explain what happened. Practically every person that they came across, he had to tell the story to. It never got easier to say it; it seemed to only remind him of how stupid he was, for not somehow predicting this in the first place. Clover hadn’t really wanted to go there anyway. Maybe he should’ve listened to her.

  And now see where they were.

  It took an agonizingly long time in order to get to the knights and have them let Nik lead the way. That wasn’t even half of it—they had to keep asking questions as they walked, as if this was just a casual scroll with not-so-casual conversation topics.

  “You said there was a scientist there?” one of the knights—probably the leader, given how the others acted around her—asked. “Do you have any details about him? His name, appearance, time of residence?”

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “I wasn’t all that interested in the scientist, but we did try to find the details about some of the people he might’ve ‘worked’ with. Iva Lior and Stefan Handel. He used them in his experiments.”

  “And where is your proof of this..?”

  “I’ve already mentioned it to you, it’s all gone!”

  “I hope you understand that there’s nothing I can do about that half of the situation if there’s nothing to back it up with. There’s very likely several other possible solutions, most of which can have nothing to do with what you’re talking about.”

  “I think you’re going to change your mind once you see it…”

  He didn’t like the head of the town’s knights. This was, of course, the first time he’d ever had to interact with her—or, honestly, even acknowledge that she existed—but that didn’t change his opinions. Wasn’t she supposed to be here in order to keep everyone safe? Why did he get the feeling that she didn’t really care? There were probably a handful of reasons for it, though his mind chose to ignore all of them.

  All he really thought about was how much she must’ve questioned him. Him, an outsider, getting one of their better liked locals into danger. She probably thought he was stupid.

  And, frankly, he didn’t disagree with that assumption.

  “With all due respect, milady, I believe I’ve heard those names on some reports before,” another knight remarked, getting closer to the leader.

  She gave a passing glance over to him, though she seemed to consider him in the same way she considered Nik. So maybe she thought all of them were stupid. “What about them? They weren’t a part of anything that happened in our viscount’s lands, that I know for certain.”

  “They were from nearby towns, but not under our viscount. Lior was a maid, if I recall correctly, who went missing about ten years ago. And while I don’t remember all the details, I believe Handel was a scholar from another section of Jaden territory.”

  “That doesn’t necessarily sound like something that would concern us. For all we know, Lior ran away for one reason or another. Whatever happened to her after that falls only within her own hands.”

  Nik scuffed. “Do you really not care that something like that happened in your area? What kind of knights are you, if you don’t even seem to care about what you’re responsible for taking care of?”

  The leader only shot him a dark glare. There seemed to be many things she could say, but she just shook her head. “We don’t have the evidence of anything yet, is all. Once we have some concrete proof, all of this will become a lot easier, and I believe we might even come to a mutual agreement about the situation. But I think you fail to realize that I’ve dealt with too many false alarms regarding this stupid island in order to take all of them seriously.”

  “You’re going to end up making a mistake,” he grumbled. He knew, because that’s what he’d done. It was a lot easier to do than he imagined.

  “We’ll see about that.”

  The other soldier then moved a bit closer to Nik. “Don’t worry,” he whispered, as if everyone couldn’t hear him anyway, “she’s always like that. As long as we can find something to back your story up with, she’ll change her tune.”

  Nik felt his heart drop when he heard the tone. “You think I’m lying, too?”

  “Don’t take it the wrong way, kid.” The soldier shrugged. “It’s just… there’s a lot of stories around that place. Minds like to make stuff up, you know? So when they’ve got a story to base it all off of, they can warp things to match those possibly false perceptions. You’re not the first person that has said they saw something here and wanted us to investigate it. You’re probably going to be far from the last. But in almost all of those cases, there wasn’t a single piece of evidence that backed up what they thought they heard or saw. In those cases when they did, it was just some wild animal or convenient weather damage.”

  “So you don’t believe me at all.”

  “I didn’t say that. In fact, I’m more inclined to believe you than not. There… have been a couple of disappearances around that island. I’m sure that you already realized that, with all of the research it sounded like you and Clover did. And, as you can see now, we take those much more seriously.” He patted Nik’s shoulder, as if it was really supposed to be reassuring. “You did a good thing coming to us, and anyone would be lucky to have a friend as caring as you are about her. We’ll find her and bring her home safely, alright? You were quick, and so are we. We’ll be able to sort out what happened in no time.”