Keramon knew something was different in the way Chris was acting. He was acting like there was something very big about to go down and everyone but him and Mocimon knew what was happening. Finally, one day, Jesse showed up at Chris and Jaina’s apartment, dressed all in black, her hair pulled into a ponytail that hadn’t been cut for ages. Keramon let her in; noting that, once again, she was only wearing black. He hadn’t seen another color on her since Matt’s death.

Jaina Ishida looked up to see Jesse enter the room. She, her husband Chris, Koushiro, T.K. and his fiancée Kari were already there.

“All right Ishida, what the fuck do you want?”

Chris turned . . . and suddenly threw himself at her as Kari came up from behind. Together they managed to overpower Jesse, who was screaming herself hoarse as she tried to escape. Over the noise, she could hear T.K. yell, “Digiport open!” and the computer behind Izzy start to beep. Suddenly, Chris’s plan completed itself in Jesse’s mind.

“NO! Please don’t, I beg you, don’t take me back there . . . !”

Suddenly, everything went white, and Jesanae Tekani was thrown back into her own personal Hell as the Ishidas and their Digimon, and the rest of those assembled at the apartment, were whisked back to the Digital World.

No, please, don’t let me be back here . . . Jesse thought as she opened her eyes. Sadly, for her, it was . . . here.

She found herself standing on the cliff . . . the horrible cliff where she had lost her love, her personality, and her will to live.

Jesse spun around to see the Ishidas, their Digimon, Izzy, T.K. and Kari looking at her.

“Why the fuck did you do this to me? Why? I thought you cared about me!”

“We do care about you, Jesse,” Mocimon, Jaina’s Digimon, said in a voice that sounded like a beautiful rose. “We brought you back to find out what happened to Matt.”

Jesse paused, her body and mind in turmoil. “What do you mean?”

Keramon pointed toward the cliff, Digivolving into his Champion form, Flivivomon, a giant fly about half the size of Kabuterimon, as he spoke. “We’re going to either find Matt’s body and bring it back for a proper burial; or, if there is no body, then we’ll find out if Matt’s alive or not.”

Her eyes began to brim, but something else rose in them behind the tears and forbade them from falling. She nodded and turned to look into the chasm. She knew every rock as seen from here, every crag, every vein of shiny crystal and flaking mica that permeated the stones. She closed her eyes, and the afterimage superimposed itself over her memories, and she saw again Matt falling, falling, falling . . .

Strong hands gripped her shoulders and yanked her backwards. Her eyes came open and sent a question at the owner of the hands. “You were starting to sway,” Jaina explained, her pink eyes blinking owlishly.

Jesse nodded. “I’m all right,” she lied, biting back more tears and pulling gently out of Jaina’s hold. Taking a deep breath that nevertheless did not disguise the shaking in her voice, she pointed and said, “He fell here. On this side, by our favorite crystal formation . . . ”

Chris gave her a sympathetic look, and she tried to smile. Failing that, she turned away.

“Well,” said Flivivomon, “that’s a start. Let’s begin.”

The night was quite as uneventful as the day’s search had been. No hint of anything anywhere. They had journeyed to the bottom of the chasm, where it was dark and cold and forbidding, and begun to look for signs of Chris’s and T.K.’s brother. Nothing, not so much as a scrap of cloth.

Nerves and emotions led to quarrels about how to go about searching and whether they were in the right spot and if they might be turned around, and it nearly came to blows. Anger flared in everyone’s eyes, and they went to bed with negativity veritably oozing from every pore.

Morning was grey and bleak and did nothing to soothe the ruffled feelings of the previous evening. Resentment hung semi-palpably in the chill air, and the search commenced in silence. Then, a discovery was made.

“Hey guys, I found something over here!” shouted Izzy. The searchers came quickly to gaze at the small, white-and-yellow object he held.

Not a hint of emotion was evident on Jesse’s face as she took it from Izzy’s hand. “It’s Matt’s harmonica,” she said unnecessarily.

As night fell, Jesse still hadn’t moved herself from the position she had been in when the group stopped to make camp nearly four hours ago. She just kept turning the harmonica over and over in her hands.

Why do I keep doing this? It won’t help. It won’t bring Matt back to me. It won’t even tell me where his body is.

In frustration, Jesanae hurled the harmonica to the ground. However, as it passed over the light of the fire, she noticed something scratched onto the top of it.

It was an arrow.

“Koushiro! Wake up!”

With Jesse’s screams, everyone in camp was soon wide awake. After order was reinstated, Jesse marched up to Izzy with the harmonica.

“Izzy, where and in what position did you find Matt’s harmonica?”

Izzy took it from her and walked about ten feet towards the cliff. He then stopped and placed the harmonica on the ground.

“Like this. Why?”

Jesse then pointed out the arrow to the group. The arrow was now pointing away from the cliff, into the dense forest before them.

“Well,” Jaina quietly said. “We know which way to go now, don’t we?”

“Indeed,” Izzy agreed. “However, just in case any evil Digimon attack us, our Digimon should be at full strength.”

“All right,” Chris said. “Everyone, you know what to do?”

“RIGHT!!!”

Keramon Warp-Digivolve to . . . Diaboromon!

Mocimon Warp-Digivolve to . . . MetalJackalmon!

Patamon Warp-Digivolve to . . . Seraphymon!

Gatomon Warp-Digivolve to . . . Magnamon!

Tentomon Warp-Digivolve to . . . HerculesKabuterimon!

Lyeernmon Warp-Digivolve to . . . HypnoCalarshmon!

And so, with all their Digimon at their Mega level, the search party braved the forest of File Island, hoping against hope and fate that they would find the answers they searched for.

And what was life, anyway?

Nothing that she knew, or wanted to know.

She had cut herself off. She wanted it that way. By not touching, she could not be hurt, nor hurt others. It was so much easier not to touch, to keep her pain to herself, but she knew she was failing. They were worried about her. They shouldn’t be; she should be able to leave them without any burdens, to take it all upon herself and keep it there.

She felt a terrible guilt. It had always been there, it seemed. She would tell no one else that she had been the one who had wanted to visit their pleasure spot, she had been the one to coax him into it despite his fatigue. And now he was gone. The glimmering of hope that he might still be alive only made it hurt all the more to know that he wasn’t with her. She felt for him, in her soul, and knew that he wasn’t there. She faced an unkind reality, like so many other realities she had faced in her trial of life.

If he were alive, he would have come back. He swore to me that he would always come back. And I made him break that promise. The promise my beloved made to me . . .

But now she was giving her sorrow and self-loathing to all those she loved, and that gnawed at her with a fresh kind of agony.

She had never intended to hurt anyone. And she didn’t want to start now.

The forest was dense. Visibility was nil. The Digimon hacked and slashed at the overgrown flora, creating a trampled-looking path through the undergrowth that was alive with bugs and burrs and all manner of unpleasant things. Everybody was grumbling, verbally or otherwise, about the miserable state of affairs.

Except Chris.

And Jesse.

He worried about her, goddammit. And he worried because she wasn’t complaining.

She looked—resigned. And in pain. And that told him that she was losing the hope in her mind, that unconscious insistence that it couldn’t be true, that had been keeping her going. Most likely, she was giving up, even in sight of that hope.

And he intended to do something about it.