Dr. Caera Han—now Wizah, disguised as Uari Orthen—didn't care whose fault it was that climate change was plaguing them, but her brain objected vehemently at the idea that long, flowing robes covering her body would protect her from the heat of Wren.
She'd forgotten how amazingly hot it was here. The worst part of it was that Uari's body ran much warmer than her own, and she felt the difference deeply in her bones as sweat seeped into her scalp.
She itched to shave this body bald and wondered if it would do anything to her original form.
The motel room outside of Wren had no conditioning. A pathetic fan spun on the ceiling, circulating hot, dry air onto her thermally-unequipped body.
The locals, of course, were dressed in said robes. Wizah would rather poke her own eyes out than believe that the robes were meant to be modest, especially with sex workers baring their legs at every other corner, male and female alike.
There had to be something to those robes, and although Wizah hadn't believed it when she was last in Wren, she would need to blend in slightly. They needed to offer an accurate depiction of hiding away instead of actually drawing attention immediately.
The other clones would do that first, and very obviously, in the further-flung corners of Southernland.
Bitterly, she withdrew the robes Uari had given her from his previous jaunt through Wren. She wondered how Io was doing.
In their old world, they had been close. Callan and Caera Han, eight years apart in age. Only children when their parents had passed. Only children when they had scraped their way up from the bottom of the barrel where no one wanted them. Caera had been a teenager working nights to put them both through school, and then a medical student supporting them both on a meagre scholarship stipend.
Callan had just turned sixteen when they had both been flung into a reality neither of them had understood. Unknowing of where he was, with friends who claimed not to know who he was and parents who were still alive at the house they lived in as children, but who also didn't know who he was, Callan had grievously broken down.
Caera, older and more world-weary, had easily accepted that the things she'd worked hard to get might already be gone. She was used to shrugging and moving on, but Callan hadn't been able to accept that.
It was Callan that suggested new names for them. Wizah and Io, offshoots of the Wizard of Oz. Like they were on a journey, an adventure. Like they could return to Kansas one day.
Caera had gone along with it to help him cope, busy as she was trying to navigate a new method of living in this world where her medical degree was unrecognised and without an identity. On top of that, both had developed new abilities that not even a single other person in this new reality seemed to have.
After a number of skirmishes brought about by her giddy little brother, convinced that they were in an adventure that wouldn't matter after they returned, Uari had found them.
He'd followed the trail of supernatural rumours. He'd brought them back to the Gravts, where Ghost and Valen and others in the same situation were already there. Ghost had promised to return them back to their original universe with her ability, Breakdown.
Uari had sat down with them. He'd explained their suspicions, given them support and resources, told them they could go home. Ghost might have been the genius figuring out the way, but it was Uari who gathered them and told them of hope.
It had been Uari who had pulled them together, and it was Uari who served as the nucleus of the Gravts. There were many who had arrived in this new world, who had things in the old one that they couldn't afford to lose. Everyone fell in line behind Ghost and Uari.
What Ghost said, they would do.
Caera had never thought there would ever be a possibility that her own brother would turn a memory wipe on her. It brought up too many questions.
She had verified it herself: records of locations she didn't remember being in. Shaky memories which didn't quite match what her own records told her. His methods hadn't been as refined as hers.
Why would they wipe her?
What had caused her to react so badly that they felt the need to wipe her memories?
Caera was a pragmatic person who knew what she wanted, but she was familiar enough with where her morals lay. It was easy to infer that they had crossed those boundaries if she had thrown a big enough stink to require a memory wipe.
It was probably Callan who had used Immovability on her. It was probably Callan who had wiped her. Ghost had probably known.
Had Uari known?
She couldn't be certain, but right now, he was the only other ally she had. She couldn't stay, not with the knowledge that the Gravts would be willing to hide things from her and the idea that she might be participatory in something that went against her own ethics.
Yet, her own tracks and Metal Body and lack of resources meant that even if she were to escape alone, she wouldn't be able to go very far. Ozcar and her Fisherman. Io and his Immovability. Ghost and her Breakdown.
Where could she go if they really wanted to come for her?
She dressed her new body in the robes Uari gave her as she mulled over the information she had.
Uari's intentional memory loss was fine, but his sudden return and upright rebellion had shaken the Gravts to their very foundations. Right now, their goals were in line, and while it had seemed as though Uari had kidnapped her, she wouldn't put it past Ghost to suspect something was different and plan for it.
Right now, they were allies. Until Uari decided that he was returning to the Gravts, they were allies. She would use the opportunity to break up the Gravts as much as she could to prevent whatever catastrophe they were working on and hope that Uari managed to get his information from the data centre.
She wasn't the Wizah that Io wanted. She was Caera Han, and although she wasn't able to practice, the beloved values she had adopted over the course of her medical career ran strongly in her beliefs.
If she needed to, she would get blood on her hands to enforce them.
Attired appropriately in robes, Dr. Caera Han left the motel room and headed deep into Wren to search for the one person she had been avoiding for years.