The Dawnhold time-keeping bell rang, informing me that it was another full hour past my bedtime. And my getting up time. And my next bedtime was approaching rapidly, too.

To be fair, I'd caught a few naps in that time, but the group needed translators. Cluma and I were the only ones to hand, and Cluma still wasn't completely fluent. I felt bad running away to sleep when the situation hadn't been resolved.

The Earth humans were out of danger, as best as I could tell. All four were still ill; my potions cured them, but they always resuccumbed within a couple of hours, and given their rank one state, taking multiple potions would cause them alchemic poisoning.

And that was a clue that potions were fake, right there. How would a potion know what rank someone was? It should be based on endurance, or the size of their health pool.

Grover's rank five enchanted rings were keeping them topped up on health, though. He'd also thrown in disease resistance and endurance enchantments, although the endurance enchantments were rank one by necessity, so didn't have a huge effect, and I wasn't convinced the disease resistance was doing anything at all. They'd also seen their endurance climb rapidly, with Abigail gaining three points and the others two, leaving even the lowest of them at eleven. Thankfully, anyone freshly infected by the System didn't start at all ones, although they were still far lower than any native adult of their age.

I returned to their room, giving them each a cast of [Endurance]. Cluma was the only other one in there, talking to the guards.

"Thanks," muttered a shivering Harry in [Common], the only one of the four victims currently awake. Now that he was reattached to the System, he was doing his best to level it. "(I don't suppose you could make any educated guesses to how long this will last?)"

"No. (I'm afraid not. Until your immune systems adapt, or your endurance rises enough for the System to do it for you.)"

Raymond was in a room down the corridor, having entered the quarantined area to help. His skills did more than Kari's, but just like my potions, any attempts at curing our guests proved temporary. Fortunately, no-one on our side had fallen ill, but they still weren't letting anyone out of the institute. Or... no-one was leaving the institute? It wasn't as if the doors were locked or guarded at all, so saying 'letting' seemed weird. The Law made for efficient and effective quarantine.

It was a pity they couldn't unlock [Accelerated Healing] or [Enlarged Health Pool] without a class change, or I'd have suggested that. Harry had the soul points for it. No, actually, that probably wouldn't work.

"(Do you have access to the skill shop yet?)"

"(No. It says my soul is still in flux.)"

Yeah, definitely wouldn't work. I didn't know whether they'd need to wait the full year, but for the moment, they couldn't buy any skills. A pity; the health-sapping effects of whatever disease—or, more likely, cocktail of diseases—they were suffering from would have boosted the skills as fast as it was boosting their endurance.

It was interesting that the System had remembered his previous state from before he was disconnected. Then again, I'd seen with [Soul Perception] that the System shard was still embedded. It had just been inactive. How long would it persist for? What happened to it when someone died? Would the soul go flying off to an afterlife or reincarnation with the shard still stuck in it?

"(What about you two?)" I asked the guards, who had turned from Cluma to listen to me and Harry. "(You've been in those suits for a day and a half now. That's got to be getting uncomfortable...)"

"(It's not 'getting' anything. It started uncomfortable,)" muttered Russell darkly. Yay for appraisal skills working again; I finally knew which was which.

"(Shall I call Darren for a shift change?)"

Could he stand outside the building's walls and open a portal inside? I didn't want him in here. I'd spoken to Mum via my [Item Box] express delivery service, and apparently he'd had a light fever, but nothing that was any cause for concern, and he'd already recovered. She was still keeping him away from anyone with less than ten endurance, though.

No-one here had fallen ill, and we'd been in an enclosed space with our guests for ages, but infections developing that quickly was odd to start with. We'd wait a while longer before declaring ourselves clean.

The pair of guards looked at each other. "(Yes, please call Darren,)" answered Dominic. "(If nothing else, we need to send a report.)"

"(If nothing else?)"

"(Well, we've been talking, and in the interests of minimising exposure and possible contamination, we think it would be advisable for us to stay here.)"

I peered at the pair of them. It was true they'd been here longer than any of the last diplomatic squad, but their lack of illness proved the effectiveness of their protective equipment, and they'd be returning home to a location prepared to receive them. I couldn't see it as a great risk. Did they have other reasons? Their interactions with the scientists had been professional more than personal, so it seemed unlikely to be due to them. It had been Cluma they were talking to when I walked in.

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

... I'd reattached them to the System. Earth had a set of newborns who may need to grow up with it. People were going to want to know the effects. If they went back to Earth, they'd likely end up as guinea pigs.

"(It's just contamination you're worried about, and not anything to do with the System?)"

They looked at each other again. "(Okay. I'll come out and say it. How do we avoid the mind control?)"

My guess was not completely accurate, and their real reasoning wasn't something I wanted to discuss... "(Mind control?)" I asked innocently.

"(Don't bother with the games,)" Russell snapped, glancing at Cluma, whose face had gone blank at the mere mention of it. Damn. "(You openly admitted there was mind control involved last time we were here. When I couldn't explain things to her on the way here, I thought she was just slow. But no. She understands, and then forgets. Do you know how many times I've watched entire conversations get wiped from her head while you've been napping? No way will I let that happen to me.)"

Bah. I knew this would happen the moment the language barrier started eroding. Now Earth would find out, and the only thing I could do to stop it was for Darren to not open another portal.

Or Darren could open a portal and I could send through six disease ravaged corpses, along with an apology, and a suggestion that we forget about any sort of migration and keep all contact to an absolute minimum.

And then we'd still get invaded. It was best to assume the portal technology had spread and we were on a strict time limit to do something about it. Also, I wasn't evil enough to murder six people while claiming the ends justified the means. It wasn't even close.

"(Okay, it was something I wanted to keep hidden because it's so easy to take advantage of... Let me give you a bit of this world's history.)"

I gave a brief overview of the civilization that predated the System, and then the second that predated Erryn and her Law. And then the current, new and shiny one. Wrapped up in the chains of someone who might as well be a goddess, ensuring they would never destroy themselves again. Not only the guards, but Harry on his sickbed listened with rapt attention.

Harry swore. One bright point of the Law; he'd probably stop doing that.

"(No wonder you're so worried about us, despite us having no control over our portals' end points, and you being bulletproof, with weapons that can effortlessly destroy any defence we can make, seemingly immune to disease, but able to spread deadly plagues of your own,)" he continued once he'd finished turning the air blue. Despite his fever-fuelled lethargy, his tirade had been impressive. "(Fine. I'll help you defend yourselves. I'll work with that dwarf to find some way to block the portals. There's got to be something we can do. But I'm not lifting a finger until you share whatever it is that makes you immune.)"

Damn.

"(I can't. Erryn rendered me immune herself.)"

"(Then she can just do the same for us.)"

"(She...)" I started, not wanting to admit her death. Thinking there was someone around who could mind-control a planet would be another brick in our psychological defences.

"(Oh. Great. So she's gone, too. Obviously; if you had someone with that sort of power around, you wouldn't be so worried.)"

Damn again. This guy was far too intelligent.

"(Look, my Earth parents are here. My brother is here. He's bound already. My parents are well on their way. Don't you think I haven't searched for some solution for their sakes? Disconnecting people from the System was all I could come up with, and the System won't even let me do that any more.)"

"(Great. I regret ever agreeing to work for that man,)" muttered Harry, flopping back down. ("What have I done...")

At least his ability to get so worked up without passing out was a good sign he was getting over his sniffles.

"(Wait, what man?)"

"(The guy who funded our research. Electricity alone is insane; the portal generator drains near a gigawatt while it's active.)"

"(So, we're going to lose the capacity not only to do evil, but to perceive that others can do evil?)" interrupted Dominic. "(Yeah, we can't return to Earth. We'd be eaten alive.)"

"(Staying here is an option for you. And for us,)" muttered Harry from his prone position. "(Don't forget every new child born on Earth will be affected too, though.)"

There was a moment of silence as everyone processed the bad news.

"(I want to speak to your parents,)" said Harry eventually.

"Huh?" I let out stupidly, the request catching me completely by surprise. "Uh... I mean... (Okay, I don't see why not. But there's going to be some logistical issues. They died way later than me, so they're still only two here, and they aren't human, and live at the top of a vertical mountain half the continent away. And they can't talk, but they can write perfectly well.)"

How could I arrange a meeting? Given the quarantine, I didn't want to sit Harry on Krana's back and fly him there.

"(What about your brother?)"

"(Erryn wiped his memory. He doesn't even know me.")

"(Convenient...)"

"(I did mention someone was trying to stab me, right? It was him. His behaviour didn't improve after arriving here. He's the reason Erryn arranged for all future Earth souls to be bound.)"

Harry let loose his traditional storm of swears.

"(I still want to meet your former parents before we start discussing portals,)" he confirmed after a relatively short torrent.

"(Yes, I'm happy with that. I just have no idea how to arrange it. While you're here, it would be helpful if you could invent videoconferencing. We'll come up with something.)"

"(Wait, what do you mean they aren't human?)" asked Russell.

I gestured at Cluma, who was still staring blankly at nothing, able to comprehend enough English for this entire conversation to be off limits to her. "(There's a cat-girl over there. You've met dragons, dwarfs and an elf, too, so you know humans don't have this place to ourselves. My parents were reborn as harpies.)"

"(What sort of timescale are we looking at?)" asked Harry.

I flickered [Soul Perception], but I didn't really have any way to gauge it. His chains were looser than the twins, and they weren't bound yet despite their age, so it wasn't as if he'd be affected tomorrow.

"(A couple of years?)" I guessed.

"(Okay, so there is time to plan. I know what you're worried about, and anyone building a portal from scratch using nothing but stolen blueprints will take a couple of years, too. I can't even begin to guess how long it will take to come up with something to block portals, but it's not going to be quick. Years is as good a guess as any. Everything will happen over the same sort of timescales. It seems we have a race on our hands.)"

"(Years, huh?)" muttered Dominic. "(Fine then,)" he added, pulling off his protective hood.