Elliot Ramirez

"What happened to Skylar Kaynes?" Tom asks me.

The question surprises me, although I guess it shouldn't. I know he watched her fight, never as closely as he watched Medusa, but still, he would have noticed.

"Skylar Kaynes?" I fight to keep my voice steady. I don't want to show how much his question hurt. Lucky for me its something I'm well practiced in. "She-she had to leave the Spire."

"Why?" he asks. Of course he wouldn't accept the simple answer.

I sigh. "Look, all you need to know is that she's not here anymore. Why not ask her brother if you want to know so badly?"

"But why? She wouldn't get kicked out; she was one of the best Combatants." Like I didn't know that. She was our best. "And besides, Axle wouldn't tell me anything," he persists.

I take a deep breath. "Ok. She really did have to leave, but before she...went...she left me something."

"What?" He leans forward.

"Some of her memories. They document her time here. They show what happened to her." I stop talking quickly as my voice starts to waver.

He treads carefully around his next question. "Can I maybe-would you let me see them?"

I think for a moment. Could I do that? Share my last memories of this girl? Finally, I make my decision. "Ok. But because I owe you for the Summit fight." And maybe it's also because I think she should know. I start to push the memories to the front of my brain, a transfer technique Skylar herself discovered. I'm starting part of the way through her time at the Spire, from the time she started to be extraordinary. As a plebe, she truly wasn't anything amazing. Oh, brilliant just like everyone else of course, but it wasn't until she started flying that she really shone.

Just before I start to transfer the memories into his neural processor, I share one last thought. "Tom?"

"Yeah?"

"Be sure to learn from her. Make it worth something."

Ok, so based on the fact that I had to create this archive, I don't know if anyone will be reading this, but if you do, I hope you like it! I don't know how often I'll be updating, but it should be fairly regular since I have almost all of it prewritten. Also, the chapters vary in length a lot, but I think this is one of the shorter ones. That all said, hope you liked it, please review :)