Reality broke apart as if made of fine glass, disorienting everyone. We stared, stunned, as the shards fell, like a curtain of glass falling apart into nothingness, revealing a new scene from behind them.

When all the broken pieces of reality had fallen, it was as if nothing even happened, besides our surroundings changing. I looked around, seeing LED, Spotlight and Payback. We appeared around a raised table. On top of it was a perfect match for the glass star, broken exactly as it had parted in our hands.

“Talk about a mind warp,” Spotlight commented.

I could only agree, holding my head, still disoriented with the trip. We were in a big shed; the floor was raw cement, the walls bare bricks leading to a metal ceiling curving high above us.

But it wasn’t completely empty. There were several other raw cement tables, like the one we appeared in front of, spread throughout the place, and more importantly, someone approaching us.

“Welcome,” the man said, holding an amicable smile on his face. “It’s good to see you didn’t hesitate that much LED.”

I was very interested in the pure black wings seemingly made of branches arching from his back. Led nodded and turned to us, gesturing the man with his hand, “This is Spawner.”

As the now named Spawner approached us, I could see there were pods growing from the branches on his wings.

He smiled, his bluish-purple eyeliner curving with the motion; it could also be another effect of his power but it really looked like eyeliner.

I tried looking into his matrix, itching to get to know more about his powers and maybe get some of it for myself, but all I got was fuzzy static-like feedback, making me recoil in reflex from the nauseating feeling.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” he said, noticing my reaction. “Hercules here interferes with other powers acting on me.” Spawner said, pointing at the tiny creature calmly siting in one of Spawner’s branch wings.

“Is that part of your power?” I asked, cradling my head in disorientation again in less than a minute.

“Why yes,” he said, stretching his smile turning it more conspiratory, “a part of it.”

“There’s a lot more then.”

“Don’t get started Spawner, you saw my report about him.” LED said, interrupting the conversation.

“You know I like the attention, but so be it. You all need to go meet Scavenger”

“Scavenger is here as well?”

“Hmhumm, he’s the one commanding the operation.”

“I thought that was you”

Spawner shook his head. “It seems this expedition is too big, even for me.”

LED fell silent at that with a pensive expression on his face. Spawner left him to sort his emotions, turning to Payback.

“It’s good to see you still in one piece, Payback.”

“Yes, that the way I like it too.”

“Indeed, I hope the present you’ll receive might help with that.”

Payback looked intrigued, but Spotlight blurted in the conversation.

“Who’s this Scavenge? Some construction worker?”

“Not quite,” Spawner answered, his expression still the same distant amusement, the same curve on the bluish-purple line extending from his eyes. “He’s specialty lies in information gathering. He works mostly in the northeast. Our manpower here in the south is really abysmal.”

Spotlight seemed put off by that, maybe because his way of controlling the narrative with cheap humor wasn’t working.

“Well, you all can ask more questions on the ride. We should be going.” Spawner said, motioning to the door.

“So, you’re the overseer?” I asked.

“The only and only.”

I nodded, making a noncommittal noise in response.

“You don’t like it?”

“No, nothing like that,” I said, shaking my head. “I just hoped for more, you know? You seem somewhat casual.”

“There is plenty of time for brooding and seriousness in this life without we trying even more.”

“Yeah, you’re right. It’s just weird, the mismatching of the legendary image with the day to day actually being part of the organization.”

Spawner chuckled, “you’ll be repeating that a lot.”

I snorted, trying to erase my expectations for once. There were more important things to address, anyway. Seeing that I still had Spawner’s attention, I asked, “Would you mind letting me get a look at your powers?”

Spawner turned, walking away as he started explaining. “I’m afraid that would be impossible. Hercules is necessary so that the enforcers don’t come crashing down on me. I’m on a closely watched list, you see.”

He turned back, gesturing for us to follow him already, and seemed to notice my disappointment. “Don’t worry though, I’ll give everyone a little critter to help them before the mission.”

“Even the recruits?” LED asked, impressed.

“Yes, we deemed the mission too important to risk failure.”

“What about this mission that’s so important?” Spotlight asked.

Spawner shrugged. “Who knows, but don’t worry, it won’t take that long.”

I looked at the little beetle, Hercules, as Spawner walked in front of us, “so you spawn these creatures and they have powers of their own?”

He seemed to have multiple matrixes when I tried looking. I glimpsed at his branch like wings again, but that could just as well be from his mutations.

“Yes,” Spawner answered without turning back, “took me a while to figure exactly how it works, but now I just keep most of them tucked away.”

“Oh, so you have some type of pocket dimension?”

“Something like that,” he chucked “it’s awfully convenient.”

The unassuming aluminum door opened to reveal the outside of the industrial shed. It was just a stretch of gravel besides an unpaved road.

Parked there under the sun in complete contrast to one another were two cars, a shiny turquoise Miata and a black SUV.

“So, who wants to ride with me?” Spawner asks, approaching the pristine Miata.

“WOAH, and who did you steal this one from?” Payback exclaims, approaching the curvy vehicle.

“It’s good to have someone that understands its beauty.”

“Isn’t that a bit too flashy?”

“You of all people should know how flashy can sometimes be more discreet, Spotlight.”

“Yeah well…”

A woman exits the black car flipping her hair, her eyes obscured behind sunglasses.

“You said you wouldn’t take forever talking like always, Spawner.”

“Theia! didn’t know you would be here.” LED smiles approaching the woman.

“Yeah, didn’t want to. How things going LED?”

“Ah, you know how it is.”

“I imagine.” Payback also approached the two. Theia smiled at him. “Oh, Payback! how’re things? the horns hurting too much?”

“I’m doing great, voyeur witch. You still failing each other mission?”

“Easy to talk shit when you’ve barely done a quarter of the missions I did. How you finding it being LED’s meat shield?”

I looked from one to the other startled, not having thought that there would be so much bad blood with the people they knew from the main ‘branch’, but then the two burst into laughter and Payback pulled Theia in a big hug.

“So those two are friends or something?” Spotlight asked, pointing at the weird interaction.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

“Ah yeah, Theia’s the one who basically recruited Payback into the organization.” LED explained, smiling at the other two antics.

“Oh, so it’s her.” I nodded, remembering the story Payback told me about how he entered the organization after rescuing a young woman from the military.

----------------------------------------

I ended up being the one to ride with Spawner. Traveling thorough the dirt roads for a good while until we emerged onto a highway. I saw the plaques pointing towards Curitiba.

“The base in the city?” I asked, indicating the plaque.

“More or less, the ‘base’ is actually just a big inn.” Spawner chuckled.

I snorted, “yeah you were right to tell me to curb my expectations. I’m not even surprised anymore.”

“So mundane, right? The inn is actually owned by one of our members. We just stay there as guests, officially. It’s a good way to save resources for just what we really need. It’s not like we have any funding.”

“Guess no one would bat an eye at people coming and going from an inn.”

“That’s the idea.”

We spent the rest of the trip idly chatting. Spawner shared a little more about his powers at my prompting.

“Doesn’t your wings hurt?” I asked, seeing them folded around the seat.

“Not at all. They are a lot tougher than they seem, even the pods”

“Yeah, I was meaning to ask about that: are they, like, eggs? From the ‘critters’, as you called them.”

“Sure are, and don’t worry, it’s not weird like motherhood or anything, maybe a bit like Tamagotchi? hm.” he hummed in thought.

“I see, and are they generating matrices of their own? Are the powers random?” Maybe it worked similarly to Old Dan’s power.

“Matrices are what you see as the power cores, right? I don’t know if they have that specifically, but yes, they’re random. Although I can also ‘seed’ them with examples from other powers.”

“That could be really good to copy.”

“Yeah, sorry about that. I’m really not comfortable dropping the obfuscation.”

“No problem, I understand.”

He smiled at me. “But really, the way they work the critter you get will probably have a relevant effect on you.”

“I hope so. Do they take a long time to, huh, hatch?”

Spawner laughed. “Depends on the power really a couple of hours to a week.”

“Based on complexity, I imagine I saw a power that did something similar.” I said, thinking about Victor’s new powers.

“Yeah, if I have encountered a similar power before, it’s much quicker.”

“Interesting, say aren’t you a bit too open about all of this information?”

“Why? are you not an ally?”

“Yeah, it’s just unusual, but I appreciate it.”

He was very open and casual, not giving off any inkling that he was, in fact, one of the top commanders of a rebellion.

It didn’t take long for us to arrive at the inn. Taking a turn just a few kilometers shy of entering the city, here on the outskirts you could still see far in the distance without the buildings to obstruct your view.

We parked on the grounds in front of the inn, where a big gravel patio already had a couple of other cars. The inn itself was a three stories wide building with architecture reminiscent of the colonization period.

It looked pretty; it wasn’t anything glamorous but had a homey charm to it.

Theia’s car parked beside ours and everyone exited the cars.

“Here it is people, the utmost secretest base of the Dawnbreakers.”

“Well, I’ll be going ahead then,” Theia said, waving us off.

“Till later,” Spawner waved back in a singsong voice.

“You sure it’s okay to just announce it like that?” Spotlight asked.

“It’s not impossible that there could be a random guest, but it is very rare.” Spawner said. “And when we went out, there weren’t any, so even less likely.”

“it’s true,” LED said. “The whole time I stayed here, there wasn’t a single one.”

“Not even for an overnight stay.” Payback added.

Spawner took the lead, inviting us over. The entrance was a double door left open, leading to a spacious reception room with two couches and an empty receptionist’s desk.

The style of the rooms and the furniture matched the outside of the building being all in a dark wood and the couches having a flower print, the walls bare white with the occasional pastel blue or yellow, even more pastel because of how faded it was.

“Come on, I’ll take you all to see the big boss”

We followed him, passing into one of two corridors that led left and right from the entrance. They then curved back into a veranda overlooking an internal garden open to the sky on one side and rooms on the other.

The place was huge.

we followed the path straight ahead, keeping the garden on our left until we turned right again into another corridor, this one with rooms on both sides and some common areas with sofas and TVS at ten room intervals.

We had passed by three and instead of a fourth one after the ten rooms, there was a space that extended further than the others and ended in a wall with four little niches, each with three big windows probably giving a good view of the property

The floor was all carpeted, with bookshelves lining the walls beside us, a pair of stairs in each corner lead above and back.

Spawner stopped in the middles of the room “make yourselves comfortable, I’ll bring Scavenge in a second.”

He went to a door I hadn’t noticed between two bookshelves. We looked at each other and Spotlight shrugged, being the first to plop down on one sofa. The rest of us followed his example, sitting down on the various sofas and armchairs.

Scavenge didn’t take long. We had just all settled down when he exited the room talking with Spawner.

He smiled at us all as the LED started getting up, to which he waved away, sitting himself in an armchair facing the curve of sofas we had sat on.

He just held all our gazes for a moment, the smile on his face not wavering, his eyes striking me as intelligent and cunning. “A pleasure in meeting you, to those I’m seeing for the first time and a long time to see to those I’m seeing again.”

“I go by Scavenge as you probably heard from spawner or Theia,” He was confident and eloquent looking at each of us acknowledging our nods “My job is to collect intelligence from the government as my power helps with that, I could say as well that I am the intelligence commander or overseer of our organization, but we are a rebellion not an accounting company.”

“For more that we try to keep things organized, we need to be decentralized and be as unofficial as possible. To not so even when, when and not if, the government crashes down on us it always a small part.”

“It helps that the government is so assured of its position, but I’m getting distracted. I just wanted to say that you all do not need to defer to me or to obey my rules implicitly, the chain of command is useful when doing missions and thinking of it like that helps to get our heads in the game, but we’re lucky we have so many people with military backgrounds at all. Hell, I worked with media before all this. I don’t need you all scuttling around me like I’m some sort of noble.”

“I want a people that want to fight and topple this regime instead of loyal servants.”

Scavenge panned the gaze around his audience seeing the nodding heads and nodding back “We still need to wait for more of our guests to arrive, so you all will need to wait until then to know more specifics about this mission, but aside from that, questions?”

“If you don’t like being looked up to, why does everyone call you boss, then?”

Scavenge huffed, “cause they know I don’t like it.”

“But the boss is the boss,” Spawner commented, a little smile on his face

“Who else is coming?” LED asked.

“I basically called for everyone Spawner could get to in short order and had some fighting experience. So, there’s the two teams that you should already be familiar with, your own team, and there’s another 3 recruits to arrive, and that’s it.”

I had nothing to ask really, besides my curiosity about his powers. So I didn’t, content with waiting till the debrief he mentioned. It seemed everyone was on that same page, as no one brought up any further questions.

“Well, that’s settled then. Just one more thing, does everyone have their cellphones? I want to add everyone to the group chat.”

----------------------------------------

I looked at my message app. I had long since destroyed my last chip, but gladly the app the Dawnbreakers used only needed an account.

There was a standard welcome message explaining a little about the chains of command and a map of the inn, below that some other numbers sent stickers congratulating and welcoming everyone.

Simply surreal, I thought, scrolling past the silly welcome memes and cutesy imagery with things like ‘behead the elite.’ The last was one of the power rangers with the caption welcome to the team sent by Scavenger himself.

“Is this really the best way to communicate?”

Scavenger shrugged, smiling at his own sticker “The more unofficially the better. Even if people tap into this, it’s just one more group chat.”

“For more serious things, we prefer to do it person to person. That’s the only a hundred percent secure way of communicating, and even then, with powers in play, not even that is a guarantee.”

“Yeah, guess you have a point.”

Scavenge nodded, getting up and giving a clap. “Right, I’ll see you all again at the debrief, most likely tomorrow, Spawner. Would you show them their rooms?”

“Of course. Follow me, little ducklings.”

We left Scavenge and followed Spawner back through the corridors we came from, arriving back at the intersection facing the inside garden. I could see benches and walkways between the trees. It was more like a little park than a garden.

It reminded me of the form college, the classes building had one sky garden as well, my favorite place on campus where I would relax and hang out with my friends. Funny how it’s looking back that we appreciate these moments.

The garden was enclosed in a half wall of these pretty balusters making a rail around with some open access at regular intervals, and we entered it through one of these openings cutting directly through it to a mirrored corridor and Spawner led us to another of the islands of couches and TVs. this one even had a vending machine and people.

I recognized Theia. She was with two other people. Was she part of the team Scavenger talked about?

She saw us as we got closer and waved at our group. “Hey there, our meeting with Scavenge was very short as well when we arrived.”

“I don’t know why he even bothers,” Payback said, “although it’s good for the new faces, I guess.”

“Ah, speaking of new faces,” Theia gestured to the person besides her. They had Very curly hair up to their shoulders wearing cargo pants and a thick sweatshirt. “This is Karmeye,” Theia said, to which Karmeye only nodded idly, putting their hands behind their back.

“And this” Theia continued, turning to the man beside her, “is Lovecraft.” The guy waved, giving us an easygoing smile visible through his bushy beard.

He had a bit of a tan and used jeans shorts with slippers and a Palmeiras T-shirt to complete the look. Really, he was just missing the beer can in his hand. “Don’t worry, I’m not racist.”

We waved, saying our names one by one, codenames that is.

“Has he told any of you what the mission is gonna be about?” Lovecraft asked. “The wait is killing me.”

LED shook his head. “Not a word.”

“You all didn’t even listen to a rumor or something?” Spotlight asked.

“Astral said that it was going to be on the docks, but that Scavenge told him to stop snooping after that.”

They stared at Spawner, trying to get anything of the man who just kept his little amused smile.

“Why look at me like that, little ones? Who’s saying I know anything more than you all?”

“Well, you’re the overseer for one.”

“True, but it’s Scavenger who came here with the mission. You think he would tell me?”

“Yeah, true.”

Spawner chuckled.

“All right then, let’s keep going, boys. I need to show you all your rooms before being a free man once again.”

We waved goodbye to Theia Lovecraft and Karmeye, following Spawner through a flight of stairs and some more corridors.

He stopped seemingly arbitrarily in front of doors 174 and 175. “Here they are. Choose whichever you like. The rooms are the same.”

We nodded, and he looked at each of us. “Any more questions? Otherwise, I’ll leave you all to yourselves.”

“Can we walk around?” Spotlight asked.

“Of course, you’re not prisoners, are you?” he laughed.

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Behave, then,” he said in parting, “don’t break anything.”

“Well, I’ll check out my room.” LED said, “The day has been really tiring.”

“Same, I need a nap.” Spotlight said.

I entered my room. Room 175 was bigger than the one in the UnderBarn and seemed comfier as well, the mattress looking bigger and the covers fluffier.

There was a simple two door cabinet with a mirror and a desk in front of the only window in the room.

I laid back in the bed, taking out my cellphone and seeing some messages from Swordjuice. It was interesting to have people who knew me enough to message me again, but a welcomed change.

I answered her and checked the group’s messages. There was one by another unsaved number that seemed pretty interesting.

‘sparing/training in the gym, anyone up?’ followed by a series of complaints like ‘who would want that?’ and ‘it’s both too early and too late to get crushed like that’

I smiled, seemed like someone pretty strong was just offering to showcase their powers, well don’t mind if I do.