Silence descended over Reed’s bedroom. Isaac wasn’t sure what else to say - his friend had made it pretty clear to him that Derek Domino, one of the few survivors of the Sect Hidden in the Mountains’ destruction, could not be involved in the conspiracy. Isaac knew Domino as a hero - but Reed knew him personally. And that difference meant Isaac couldn’t be sure he wasn’t involved. But it would do him no good to further press Reed on something this important to her. He had plenty to stew on already.

Reed must’ve realized this, since she gently set the sword back down and made an awkward motion with her hands. “I’m sorry to kick you out, Isaac. But I think I’d rather be alone right now.”

“That’s alright. Thanks for meeting with me so late.”

Reed placed the journal page back in its secret hiding spot with a forlorn look. After a long sigh, she showed Isaac to the door. Right before she opened it, she remembered something and the sorrowful look disappeared from her face - or she did a good job covering it up.

“Meet me at the archives once training lets out for tomorrow,” she said. “Stockham gave me a job and wants me to show you what I found. You’ll probably meet with him right afterwards.”

In their last meeting, Stockham mentioned he would have an assignment for Isaac in the coming days. It looked as though Reed would be involved in some capacity as well. Even if the General suspected her to be a traitor, it seemed like he wasn’t placing all his eggs in one basket by relying entirely on Isaac. Considering the murky circumstances, he didn't blame him.

“I’ll be there.”

And be there, he was. Night turned to day, his friends talked, and Isaac went through the motions of it all. As the revelations from the previous night sunk in, Isaac realized Reed had a point about sinking in the shit. The hidden writing on the journal page opened up a whole new can of worms - if his theories were true, then an ancient sect was running the show from the shadows, pulling the strings of both the military and the revolutionaries.

But if so - what was the endgame? Why did the conspiracy need both? Isaac was a little bit smarter now - he recalled that, right after the huge strike in Patuxet a while back, the authorities put the town under a strict curfew. Any time dissent appears, the crackdown strikes back twice as hard. Does a controlled revolutionary group give the military an easy way to tighten their grip on the country?

But if so - why the drug smuggling and human trafficking? Why the atomic material? Perhaps the revolutionaries do things the military couldn’t openly do.

Isaac had more questions than answers. And that wasn’t even getting started on the esoteric side of things. A billion souls in the tree. The Garden of Eden. Only a few months ago, Isaac thought cultivating meant punching things with increasing amounts of power and spectacle; now, after everything he had stumbled upon, he understood a little better as to why Reed would prefer to shit in the sink.

And speaking of Reed - he found her within the archives, the night sky visible behind her through a window. She had her face buried in a book about previous Arcadian Naval Media Committee productions. She didn’t look up as he arrived; he even stood next to her, completely unnoticed, and read silently alongside her. Isaac didn't recognize the actor with a strong jaw gazing back up at him from a photo in the book, but the text revealed he had been in several Navy-funded action movies. A goofy grin then appeared on Isaac’s face; Reed had also been scrawling down notes as she read.

Isaac saw his chance. He tapped her on the opposite shoulder, fully expecting her to look the wrong way. Instead, she just lazily looked up at him. “Glad you could make it…why do you look disappointed?”

He gazed at her shoulder. “No reason.”

Reed just shrugged, tucked the book and notes away in her greatcoat, and led the way deeper into the archives. “Now, since I’m Chief Midshipman and all-around asskicker, Stockham authorized me to peruse some of the off-limits sections of the archives for this project.”

Babs’ reaching Circuit 2 must’ve have really put her in a compensating-for-something mood.

The two arrived at a small door at the back of the archives. One key inserted by Reed later, the wooden door creaked open, revealing a staircase descending into pure darkness. Reed raised a finger and used the sparks of Rddhi for light. Their footsteps echoed off the stone stairs; Isaac reached out and ran his hand along a stone wall, his fingertips feeling the rough, cold surface.

If Stockham suspects her as a traitor, why is he allowing her to access secret materials?

The question was answered when they arrived at their destination. Reed placed her finger on an unlit torch on the wall; the new light revealed a lobby with two doors. One door appeared to lead deeper into the classified section; Reed approached the second door and opened it, leading them to a small alcove that sported just a few bookcases and a single wooden table and chair.

I think I get it now. He’s only giving her access to a tiny bit of information. And if that leaks out, she’ll know it came from her, or whoever else he allowed into this room.

Reed retrieved a large tome from one of the bookcases along with a map of Narragansett. She set the map down across the table and then flipped through the book.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

“This is a list of every real estate investment made by Zhanghai in the past ten years,” she explained. The ledger displayed hundreds, if not thousands, of holdings throughout Arcadia in general and the capital in particular.

Isaac read some of the names. “Mines…railroads…forests…I knew they owned a lot, but damn…”

The list kept going and going. Having made her point, Reed pointed at the map. “And this map has been marked with all of their holdings.” An equal number of red x’s covered Narragansett from the highrises of downtown to the slums and ghettos of elsewhere. Isaac struggled to make out a pattern to it - it simply seemed like Zhanghai had been buying up everything in sight.

The torch flames illuminated Reed’s face as she spoke. “Now, here’s where things get interesting. Two years ago, the leadership within the Arcadian branch of Zhanghai Industrial Corporation changed. A cultivator named Dai Hong was sent here to oversee things. And, if we look at the purchases made under his tenure in these past two years…”

Making a big theatrical display of things, Reed grabbed a nearby pencil and drew lines connecting the biggest x’s. Across the map, the lines snaked and curved, and Reed only had to erase her work and try again just a few times. When she finally set the pencil down with a satisfied look, Isaac gasped.

The map now displayed just a series of scrawled lines running through Narragansett with no rhyme or reason to it. Reed noticed his confusion and tapped on a particular spot. Isaac now realized she had a point - they all connected at the Four Eagles ghetto.

“Zhanghai owns the land and buildings there now, right?” Isaac recalled. “And after purchasing it, they evicted all the migrants, squatters, and homeless and even forced some to work for companies like Machigonne.”

“Good memory. Zhanghai even owns the dockyard where we raided the Melusine. They got their fingers in everything. But that’s not all.”

For her concluding act, Reed dramatically pulled another map out from a bookcase. She held it proudly in her hands. “This is a copy of a copy of a copy of a particular map from Narragansett’s predecessor.”

“You mean the city that existed here before the Unleashing?” Isaac didn't even know the name of it, nor did the map provide it. Perhaps the name had been lost to history.

“They built Narragansett right on top of it. But the old city didn’t just disappear.” Reed looked down at the stone floor. “It’s still there, right below our feet.”

She spread the map across the table. “This map shows the subway system in the old city. It was a pretty big one, too. A lot of large stations and a countless amount of tunnels.” The map appeared flimsy and slightly transparent, but when she laid it atop the map of Narragansett, Isaac understood why. The lines connecting the purchases made in the past two years appeared through the map of the old city, and then everything clicked.

“Every purchase in the past two years has involved land or infrastructure over the major subway stations of the old city,” Reed concluded, no doubt proud of her own discovery. Isaac would have to congratulate her later. He held his breath as he followed the lines to Four Eagles ghetto, and then let it all out in a surprised gasp.

Four Eagles ghetto had been built directly over the central station of the old city’s subway system. Not only that - the station was also connected to a gigantic sports complex. Isaac hadn’t heard of that stadium before - if it was still there, it would’ve been buried under layers and layers of Arcadian housing and neighborhoods and other infrastructure built up in the five centuries since the Unleashing.

Reed tapped on the symbol for the complex. “Zhanghai owns the land over the major entrances to the city’s underground. Because of their relationship, the Restorationists can use the stations and tunnels for their own advantage. Drugs, humans, and even atomic material can be smuggled below the city right under our noses. There’s an old city station at Fore River, for example. The cargo on the Melusine could’ve been brought right into that station and then transported underground. Four Eagles would be a major crossroads for it.”

The hairs on the back of Isaac’s neck stood up. “That ghetto…it has to be their main base. Or at least, it's right on top of it. If we’re going to find something, it’ll have to be there.” As he processed all this new information, he looked at Reed in a new light. Literally - she lit another torch to get a better look at her own work. The flames revealed a growing sense of confidence on her face.

“How’d you figure all this out?” Isaac asked.

“Ah, well, you know…” Reed opened her mouth, no doubt to say something smug about herself, but she stopped. Instead, she looked off to the side with a genuine smile. “Stockham had a hunch and asked me to look into it. He said that he knew I could do it. Maybe he’s just manipulating me or whatever…but it felt nice to finally be trusted with something not related to cultivation or being a symbol for my family. That somebody thought I would be good at something beyond it.”

She scratched her cheek with a light finger. “I thought it would be boring at first, but it’s funny how it works. It was just work. It was just me, down here, all alone, going through all these ledgers and records. It felt nice to see the map fill up. It felt even better to put it all together. There’s a huge difference between being alone with nothing to do and being alone doing something you find yourself wanting to do.”

Considering all the land holdings, the project must’ve taken dozens, if not hundreds, of hours. And it was done by the laziest person Isaac had ever met. He supposed that maybe that term didn’t apply anymore. Maybe it never did. Lethargic, not lazy. Perpetually tired because her closest friend got taken from her all those years ago.

“You did a good job on this, Reed.”

She gave him a big grin. “Ah, you know me, Isaac. Good job’s my middle name.”

The two enjoyed the following comfortable silence. But the revelations displayed on the map eventually drew their attention back to Narragansett’s underground and the former glory of the old city.

“I did some research on that stadium,” Reed said. “It could fit over a hundred thousand people.”

The simple symbol on the map didn’t do a stadium of that size justice. Isaac could feel something gray, ominous, and intangible gnawing at him - Zhanghai’s connection to the conspiracy remained unknown, but considering their links to the Restorationists, they had to be involved somehow.

The enemy seemed everywhere. From ancient history to right below his feet to among his group of fellow cadets. Isaac found himself in a swamp, the murky waters swirling around Four Eagles right in the center of it.

“You’ll think we’ll find answers there?” Isaac asked.

Reed looked back down at the symbol. “We’ll find something down there, no doubt. As to what that something might be, I hope we’re ready for it.”