Night Market [4]

"Kid, you're here? I thought you got scammed into slavery. What happened to that?"

She arrived as strongly as she walked. Immediately, her hand was ruffling Gio's hair while she looked at him with a big grin on her face.

Gio continued to smile wryly. It had been a long time since he'd experienced this. Even if he had the option to remember it vividly, he rarely revisited the memories of those days if it wasn't in relation to something he needed to know for his plans.

"Yeah, that place went down in flames, so I'm free now. I'm doing some work on the side, which is what I'm here for," he said, answering her questions.

"I see, I see," she responded, nodding her head in understanding.

"Then…you're free to come back to the lab?"

"That, I'm not."

Gio immediately denied it. If it weren't for that lab, he never would have developed such a relationship with her, but that didn't mean he ever wanted to go back there.

She wasn't a cruel person, but if he entered that place, he knew he wouldn't be able to leave again for a very long time. 

The Old Lady's expression visibly fell. 

"Unfortunate. I feel like I'll have a breakthrough with just a little bit more. You need to come back at some point soon."

She only looked thirty and she never told anyone her age. It was one of the main reasons why nobody wanted to call her the Old Lady. Gio at that time was also unaware, but after what happened to Gastle, he was able to view her file. 

He knew how old she was, and he was also aware of her true name and history, though he wasn't going to bring any of that information up.

At this time, she was around 50 years old. She had been a researcher her whole life, and for the last 30 years of her career, she'd kept her primary focus in the same place.

"Resistances" and "Weaknesses."

"How've you been? Any incidents lately?"

She asked out of both concern and curiosity. 

Gio shook his head as he replied.

"None. I haven't been in any particularly dangerous situations, so I've been fine."

She looked him up and down as if trying to assess the veracity of his words. Her eyes moved to the stall behind them and the vial in Seb's hand. It had been paid for while she and Gio were conversing without alerting either of their attention. 

"What do you need that for? If Seb's buying, then it must be important."

"That…"

Gio hesitated. Currently, the location he planned to attack was unknown to everybody. He wanted to keep it as closely guarded as possible, but if it was her…

'She might be able to offer some help in other ways.'

She had more access to resources and information than anyone he knew. If he had her backing, his journey would certainly be easier, but if she got too worried and sent an entire protection detail, he wouldn't be able to move as he pleased at all. 

He wanted to consider whether or not to tell her, but the decision was out of his hands from the moment she saw him hesitating.

"You're planning something stupid again. I see how it is."

She clocked the heart of the issue instantly.

"I–"

"No talking."

Gio was hushed before he could defend himself. 

"You're not going off on your own again. Not after you just sold yourself into such a stupid contract for a few credits. If you want to do something stupid, you're going to need my approval first."

She grabbed his arm with a grip that he couldn't resist. Not only was she an adult, but she was also a Sequencer. Her strength compared to his was quite literally unfathomable. 

"Seb, you have the list, right? Buy everything we need and then bring that back to the Dome. Whether or not he's getting it depends on if he can convince me before then."

It was more than obvious that Gio was soon dragged out of Nightreign. He didn't end up leaving through his own gate, but through the one that the Old Lady summoned. 

Her treatment of him didn't make much sense considering her position. She was almost like his mother. 

One could assume that she was this friendly with everyone she'd met, but that was too far of a jump. It was obvious that her relationship with Gio was special. 

He was three years old when she found him. 

She had been making rounds through the Wasteland, visiting the small encampments and nomadic people to give them healing they needed but didn't have access to. In one of those small encampments, she came across a child. 

The settlers told her they didn't know where he came from. A passing group must have left him when nobody was looking. They had been giving him food and water enough for him to survive, but they didn't have many resources to spare.

The boy had almost traumatic injuries. It was clear that he had been treated terribly before he arrived in the settlement. When she took him into the mobile clinic they'd set up and asked him how he got his wounds, he told her exactly. 

Without missing a detail, he retold the events that led up to his arrival at the encampment. She learned that he had an unprecedented memory, a memory with only a single flaw. 

The first sight he remembered seeing was the sky of the Wasteland. The appearances of his mother and father did not exist whatsoever. 

It was a pitiful story, but only a more exaggerated version of something she saw often. Her plan was to sigh and move on after healing him, but that was where her problem arose. 

The moment she tried to use her Sequence on the boy, he cried out in pain. 

The power in her hands that was made to help people caused suffering for the very first time. 

She tried over and over again, but nothing changed. At that point, she realized the key factor she'd been missing. 

The very subject of her research, Resistances and Weaknesses.

Resistances and Weaknesses were present in all humans just like Original Genes, but for those who did not become Sequencers, they usually remained mostly dormant and hardly had any positive or negative effects.

Every human had between one to three of each. They were simply as their names stated. They were certain forces or things that people had inborn resistances and weaknesses towards. They were the most heavily guarded secrets of Sequencers that nobody could know, to the point where even the Old Lady was only aware of a single one of Gio's weaknesses.

But that one was so specific and strange that it provoked her to bring him with her to Gastle. That was where he first found true shelter in life, and it was also where she found the key to reaching new heights in her research. 

He naturally spent a lot of time around her when he was growing up. Her people became his people in a way, but he never wanted to accept all the help she was willing to offer him. 

It felt like their relationship had been cut short abruptly in the past, but this was a different timeline entirely.

Even this moment, where Gio was being dragged into her lab so suddenly, was something that couldn't have happened in the past.

So, even if he dreaded it a little, he stayed quiet and allowed her to pull him along. 

Well, not before yelling to Seb to grab him some Aether Shards first, of course.