At the end of the ravine, they’d found a standard dungeon door, tall and thin, leading to another of the distorted twisting corridors Miles had experienced on his dive with Brisk.

They'd taken thirty minutes to march the length of the corridor, and even according to Fran’s tools, it hadn’t been directly in the direction of the crater.

Miles was starting to worry that her reassurances of making it out 'with time to spare' had been wrong, that they might not even have time to escape before the dungeon started rearranging.

“What happens during the shuffle?” he asked her as they traversed the long passageway.

She answered carefully, without turning to look at him. "Well, the rooms move around, for one. Some get broken down, new ones get built. If you're down on the deeper levels, the floors above get shuffled a few times before yours comes due, on account of the time difference. Did I tell you about the time difference?"

"What happens if you're inside during a shuffle?" he asked, ignoring the temptation to get sidetracked on the dungeon's time dilation.

Fran was quiet for a long few seconds before answering.

"If I were stuck down in a room during the shuffle, here's what I'd do. I've got a bottle of meds in my pocket. Sedatives. Instant. Powerful. I'd clear the room of threats, find a tight place to hide, and pop as many of those pills as I thought I could live through."

"You'd want to sleep through the reset?” Miles asked.

"If I had no chance of getting out? Yes."

"Why?"

"The academics have got the phrase 'inimical to sapience'. Does that mean anything to you? You can survive a shuffle if you're a cobolt, or a bug, or a slime monster, or whichever, provided the room you’re hiding in doesn’t get taken down. But if you go into a shuffle as a sapient, you don't come out as one. Something changes. Like a switch gets flipped, person to animal.”

Miles tried to digest that. "You mean it causes some kind of brain damage? There's radiation, or a chemical release?"

"I really hope that's what it is," Fran said.

"Hasn't anyone ever tried to find out?"

"Well, you're free to follow that line of thought, on your own time,” she said, becoming businesslike. “My feeling is that knowing the answer won't be much better for you than finding out first-hand, but that might just be the old-timer in me trying to spin you another ghost story."

Miles wasn't really interested in internalizing another oddity about the dungeon. Until someone gave him a better answer, he'd work on the basis that being inside when it reset exposed someone to dangerous and damaging radiation.

Past the winding corridor, they came to some kind of factory room. There were conveyor belts, articulated tech arms reaching down from ceiling-mounted rails, large boxy units with distorted warning labels, and metal bins full of parts and materials. A small bank of benches at the far end were piled with abandoned clothes and synth fabric duffle bags.

It obviously wasn't a real factory. The conveyor belts weren't continuous, instead being broken up into sections that started nowhere and went nowhere. The mechanical arms were all different from each other, different numbers of fingers and joints, different lengths and colors, many with manipulators that were clearly useless or no manipulators at all.

Fran became interested in her scanner as walked into the room. She seemed upbeat as she looked up from the screen on her wrist.

"By my dead reckoning, the crater's just past this door. We're all but out."

Miles felt something unclench in his gut at the news. One door between them and the open sky.

“Who wants to do the honors?” Fran asked.

Lanet ran forward and slapped their hand against the door panel. It chimed in acceptance.

There was a brief grinding sound, then the door opened on a rainy Ialis evening.

Miles had never been so glad to see rain.

“Hold up,” Fran said, “I just want to check this room while we’ve got time.”

The raw materials scattered around must have been better copies of reality than the equipment, because after inspecting a few, Fran had them collecting bags from the benches and stuffing them with specific components.

Lanet looked at them with distaste as they looted the storage bins, and Miles felt a little heartless himself for trying to make a marginal profit on a dive where people had died.

In the ravine, collecting the cobolt weapons had felt like he was clawing something back for the near-death terror he’d been forced to experience, making it worthwhile. Here, where the door out was open in front of them, it just felt cold and insensitive.

Miles followed Fran’s instructions mechanically, despite just wanting to be gone. He tried to tell himself it was the professional thing to do.

Calm. Detached. Professional. Another word forced itself onto the end of his mental list. Mercenary.

That evoked images that were a little too close to home. He pictured people that he didn't want to become like. He started to resent the bag of supplies.

He'd liked Fran when he'd first met her, but now he wasn't sure. She'd presented herself as competent and self-reliant, but now that same independence seemed to be maintained at the cost of empathy and the willingness to make connections with the people she was working with.

Was it even possible to do this job without becoming like that?

When they were done with the factory room, Fran called them a new platform, since their old one was still sitting hundreds of meters up at a level three entrance.

The new transport came quickly, dropping down from somewhere above, and they rode their way back up to the entrance complex in weary silence. It set them down close to one of the open-walled buildings. They stopped there, to prepare to pass through the Gilthaen's processing.

Fran started collecting the salvaged goods from Miles. There was the bundled fabric taken from the Ymn cityscape, the gathered cobolt weapons, the tech components from the factory.

There was a moment of tension when Fran held out her hands to take the coppery metal door from Miles, but he just stood there in silence, staring back at her.

“You going to hand that over, Miley?”

He really didn’t want to. He’d become attached to the makeshift shield. He regretted not clarifying that he was keeping it earlier.

With Lestiel Dunverde, the contract had seemed like overkill at the time, but it had stipulated that outside of the Draulean’s samples, there’d be an even split of salvage. He didn’t have anything like that with Fran, just the equivalent of a verbal agreement that he’d come as a backup healer.

“Technically, we didn't agree that you’d automatically get everything," Miles said. "This is just something I picked up on my own. Doesn’t that make it my salvage, technically?”

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Fran seemed annoyed for a moment, but the expression changed to amusement. “Technically? Well, technically, I guess you’ve got me there. Technically.”

Fran carried everything except Miles' door and levitation unit as they walked toward the processing desk.

Miles had been hoping to see They-who-warily-tread again, but he didn't recognize the Gilthaen running the desk.

“I am Consul They-who-catalog-meticulously,” the unfamiliar sapient said, bowing slightly.

“‘Course you are,” Fran said, approaching the desk.

The Gilthaen official was shorter than They-who-warily-tread, maybe seven feet from tail to tip. With the lower half of their body coiled on the ground for stability, their head only came up to Miles’ chest. This individual only had two eyes vertically running down the center of their 'face', and they were dressed plainly for a Gilthaen, wearing only an enclosing sock of white synth fabric.

Fran stopped at the desk, gesturing to the load of salvage she was carrying. “We’re cashing all this out. Except the door this guy’s carrying. Technically, he’s keeping that.”

“You may call me Consul Cas, if that eases communication," the Gilthaen said.

Fran didn’t respond, just dumping the sacks of recovered cobolt parts and weapons, the bags of tech components, the fabric, and finally her bundle of strange metal planks onto the table. Miles was surprised it took all of the weight.

“My records suggest that your party had six members when you entered the artifact. You are leaving as a group of four. What is the cause of the discrepancy?”

“Two of us died,” Lanet said, before Fran could answer.

“That is a tragedy,” the consul said. “It is something we always dread. Were there contributing factors which constitute a violation of our code of conduct, such as malfeasance, the deprioritization of life, or unacceptable risks taken as a result of fraudulent representations?”

Everyone looked at Lanet, who seemed to be considering saying something. Finally, they looked to the ground.

Lanet answered for the rest of them. “No. It was just… the wrong place for us. They thought every enemy was something they could fight past, but that was never true.”

“Were there contributing factors relating to the performance of your healers for the expedition — Fran San-san-quirren and Miles Asher, He-who-burns-his-hand-on-mercy?”

Lanet made a dismissive gesture with their hand. “There was nothing of them left to heal.”

With that, Cas’s questions seemed to be over. “Then, all is in order. I will now appraise the items you have acquired within the artifact. Please place all items for inspection.”

The Gilthaen was looking at Miles as they spoke, and he got the impression they were talking about the door.

“I’m keeping this,” Miles said. He didn’t want to sell it, at least not immediately.

“It must still be appraised.”

Taking a tense breath, Miles put the makeshift shield down on the table, at the far end from the other salvage. His real worry was that it would be worth too much to pass up, or else nothing at all and he’d feel dumb for making a point of keeping it.

The Gilthaen clerk began peering closely at each item. Comically close, Miles thought. They started with the cobolt weapons, then the fabric, then they moved to the duffel bags, inspecting them as if they could see through the synth fabric to the components inside. When they reached the metal planks, they paused for a moment, spending twice as long inspecting them as the rest of the haul. They only took a passing glance at Miles’ door.

“These metal samples are unusual,” they said, indicating the planks and the door. “In fact they are unique. I have not experienced this material before.”

“We found it in an unusual environ, level three,” Fran said.

The Consul turned to Miles. “Do you reiterate your desire to keep your piece of the metal?”

“Yes,” Miles said, feeling suddenly less certain about it.

“Then I will only appraise this collection.”

Consul Cas stooped to look at each item again, and then stood in silence for a minute, apparently thinking.

“For the recovered weapons and power cores, the Ialis Corporation will pay eight hundred and nine standard exchange notes for the batch.”

“Sounds good to me,” Fran said.

Cas moved to look at the duffel bags. “For the industrial components, the Ialis Corporation will pay two hundred and seventy-five standard exchange notes.”

“Eh. Sure.”

Cas briefly checked the fabric again. “For this material, one thousand, six hundred standard exchange notes.”

“Go for it.”

Pausing at the bundle of metal planks, Cas looked at Fran. “For the unusual metal samples, the Ialis Corporation will pay eighty-two thousand standard exchange notes.”

Fran was silent for a long moment then started shouting.

“Yes! Paydirt! That’s why we do this, Miley. This is why we’re in this business.” She slapped her thigh, walking around in a circle, before she turned to look at him. “And rightly, two hundred of that’s yours, technically.”

Two hundred seln. The amount he agreed to do this for.

Miles let out a long breath.

Fran leaned closer to him. “You get a job in the future, make sure you get something in writing. Payment, liabilities, and salvage split. Not everyone’s as nice as I am.”

The statement confused him, before she turned back to the Consul and said, “I’ll take that in a 30-70 split, with the 30 divided between these three.”

Miles looked at her back, shocked. She was splitting the payout. Not evenly, maybe, but coming straight off the feeling that he’d screwed himself out of a fortune, it was hard for him to say it wasn’t equitable.

Thirty percent, divided by the three of them. Ten percent of the payout is at least eight thousand, plus change.

Task seemed to be in shock, though Miles didn’t know whether that was from the size of the payout or the recent horror.

If the Gilthaen payments worked the same as last time, they’d leave the items here, and the funds would be sent to their comm accounts within the next few hours. He was already trying to calculate how much eight thousand seln was worth as delta.

Maybe about three thousand? And how much is the door worth?

He asked a question before They-who-catalog-meticulously could leave for other duties.

“Consul, is this a one-time offer, or could I come back and sell something I salvaged today later on?”

“If you arrive here with salvage, it can be appraised and sold to the Ialis Corporation at any time,” Cas said, reassuring him. “Though, this offer applies only to items recovered from the artifact.”

“Okay, thanks. Could you say how much the Ialis Corporation would pay for this?” he patted the door on the table.

Consul Cas briefly inspected it again. “At the present time, the Ialis Corporation would pay twelve thousand standard exchange notes for this amount of metal. At a later date, it may be less.”

Twelve thousand! Could he afford to pass that up? On the other hand, if the metal was unique among salvage brought out of the dungeon, then it was irreplaceable. It was good to know he wasn’t throwing potentially thousands of seln away by walking away with it right then, but it was hard to pass up that much in the moment.

A thought occurred to him, and he started to think of a plan that would let him access some of that money without losing the door’s utility as a shield. He didn’t need the entire thing just to get between him and a threat, after all.

Fran and Lanet started wandering away. Neither bothered to say goodbye. Miles guessed this was a cold business, after all.

Miles was left with Task. They started walking towards the transport platforms, before Miles broke the silence.

“Are you going to be okay?” he asked.

Task worried one of his fangs with his bottom lip.

“I don’t know. Today was a new experience.”

“Yeah.”

It was probably even a new experience for Fran. And definitely for Lanet. The day had thrown a lot of new experiences at them.

He hesitated before speaking, worrying that he might be crossing a line. “Do you want to come with me to get some ice cream, or watch some old Hurc movies or… What do you do for comfort?”

Task took a while to answer, finally saying, “There’s a garden on Tholis Tower rooftop. It’s peaceful.”

“Yeah? You want to go?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, let’s stop off at my apartment on the way,” Miles said as they began walking toward the landing pads. “I need to dump this door and tell my team I’m alright.”

Miles pulled his comm from his belt pouch as he walked, planning to call a platform.

When he pulled it up, he saw that he had a few missed messages from the time he was in the dungeon. Two from Trin, one from an unknown sender, and one from a person he wanted nothing to do with.

> Damien Asher > Miles

> Hello Miles, it’s Dad. Seen the news? We have to talk.