There was a model being prepared, by a team of scientists under the supervision of the one called SpaceOps. A model trained on the weather data that attempted to correlate the anomalous pressure differentials in the upper atmosphere with the sites where Events had taken place. Because, and this was a recent discovery, not only had there been many more events than previously thought, but also not all of them had left behind Eggs in their sites.

What concerned Samantha the most was the possibility that the Eggs had been indeed deposited at the sites like usual, and that they then ended up in someone’s possession. It was a dangerous hypothesis and yet it was all too probable. There were fifty-six small eggs resting in cold storage somewhere in the Quadrangle, originating by the same number of events registered by the satellites in real time. So far, no event had ended without an egg appearing in our reality, which lead to her doubts about the nature of the other events that had managed to fly under the radar.

Those eggs were sitting somewhere, perhaps in some rich guy’s house. Perhaps in the hand of some unknown organization trying to pry them open for their secrets. Perhaps in the hands of the Sekkers, which would be catastrophic to say the least. For now the eggs were inert, simply sitting in place and doing nothing of note except for the occasional humming sound and flickering lights.

For now.

Something was bound to happen, sooner or later. The model on screen showed where it was most probable that something would happen in the near future, although it was hard to tell what exactly until a team was sent to the location to investigate. And when a small blinking red dot appeared right under one of the arms of the great spiral, the farthest a dot had ever been from Temalas City, the whole room hoped it would just be another Spatial Event with subsequent Egg. So far they had been lucky. Fifty-six times they hoped it would just be an event, and fifty-six times it was an event they encountered. Up to Tier 2, and never exceeding bounds. Never misbehaving. For a mysterious force, the events were being surprisingly consistent.

Because everyone knew that the alternative was the unknown, and nobody liked the idea of facing the unknown. Events were already mysterious enough, but at least they were the familiar kind of mysterious by now. Other things? The sole thought of the Holy War was enough to send anyone who knew about it into a state of alarmed awareness every time the siren went off.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

And this time Samantha had a bad feeling. This one dot, located exactly under the great arm of the barely visible spiral, was too far away to be consistent with the others. Could this be the first instance of a Tier 3 event? There was more: the weather map was updating in real time, showing that a storm was brewing right around the area. It was a relatively small (compared to the continental size of the map) swirl of air that was quickly gaining force, developing into a thunderstorm supercell that could turn into a tornado cloud without warning. And all around, the air currents of the great spiral were changing shape, to fuel the storm and to push its ever growing winds to dangerous levels.

“Show me the closest town.” Samantha said.

The screen panned. There was a tiny city at the edge of the storm, surrounded by miles and miles of wheat fields with the occasional corn plantation.

“They’ll need to be evacuated. Assemble the team and alert the response unit. I want armed people establishing a quarantine perimeter as soon as possible, in case the spatial event is different than usual.” Samantha ordered before turning to SpaceOps, who was sitting at the desk, hunched over the touch keyboard. “Let’s go. Grab PsyOps on the way too.”

***

[New quest]

* Quest: Daily challenge – Day 05: Precision Training.

* Reward: 150$, [Fireball III] skill template.

“Later.”

Albert was already running late for his ‘appointment’ with his grandpa. There had been a choice to be made last night, between sleeping off the hangover and waking up early, and Albert chose the former of the two options. This meant he couldn’t waste much more time doing the daily quest, at least in his mind. It should be noted that he could have done so without any problem whatsoever, using the Hazegem to then rewind back time, but the idea did not come to mind until much later in the day and Albert cursed himself quite a lot for not thinking about it.

Time was his to control, and yet he was not used to reaping the benefits that came with his power.

Outside. The sky was grey, draining all color from the already gloomy facades of the city buildings. This was the third day of nonstop overcast skies and occasional rain, something that was not too uncommon for mid-September in this area, but that never failed to make Albert feel overly depressed. It was a clear sign that summer was over for good, and that winter was coming. Winter was not fun.

Although perhaps this year was going to be different, with magic and college. Damn. Today was Sunday and he needed to study. A problem for later, for afternoon-Albert to deal with.