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We followed Targent and his Legions back to his tent, tense for signs of hostility. The Captain's back was stiff, but when he turned to face us and took his seat, he looked calmer. Composed. Maybe even pleased.

"Well, Vigiles, I sorely underestimated you," he remarked. His slave wasn't in attendance, so he took an iron carafe of wine and poured two cups himself. "Count me impressed, and please forgive me my attitude. It was just smack talk.”

He had his back turned for some of that, so there was a small pause as I translated for Angel. “Thank you, sir. And same here.”

“Mm.” He scrutinized Angel for a moment, trying to read her expression. “I'd hoped to intimidate you with the differences in our positions, but I see I miscalculated your capability and confidence."

I cocked an ear outside as Lancelot took off somewhere, leaving a rolling sonic boom in his wake. Guinevere accompanied her master inside, tip-tapping over to assume a bodyguard posture by his left.

"Don't trust this guy for a second." I telepathically signed to Angel as she accepted her cup and made to sit. "And don’t drink his wine."

"What? Why?" She looked back to me for a moment.

"He smells like fear. And right now, he's trying to butter you like a biscuit," I replied, settling down to lie on the floor. With my tail out, I took up nearly a third of the floorspace in the tent and most of the doorway. When Lulu rolled off to bloop onto the floor, the exit route was completely blocked. The acidic smell of fear that hung around Targent grew a little sharper.

Angel was learning to trust me. She stayed on her feet, cradling the cup of wine one hand. "Thanks for acknowledging the accomplishment, sir. I put on my war face the moment you indicated you intended to battle us in the arena."

"Then like me, you have mastered the truism that all battles are first won in the mind." Targent sounded modest, but he was tipping his face down toward his cup. "But I'm curious: if you're deaf, how do you understand me so fluently?"

He had his mouth hidden by the rim of his cup, and Angel's brow furrowed in the seconds before I relayed what he'd said to her. "Lip-reading, like I said. So I'd appreciate it if you kept your face up."

"Oh, sorry." He looked up at her with a benign smile. "Better?"

"Yes."

"Strange to think the gamemasters would leave you with such a debilitating condition," Targent mused, waving her to the seat across from. "Please, Vigiles, relax."

"Sorry, sir. Not much of a sitter." She smiled back at him. "Plus, I don't want to take up any more of your time than I have to. I really just want to know who Dimitri Solonov is, and why he sent me this awful letter."

Targent's expression grew troubled. I scented the air as he took a deep drink of wine and reached up to loosen the collar of his tunic. The scent of fear was getting stronger.

"What I say here must never leave this tent," he said softly. "Chorus will censor it, like it does any conversation about the Sponsoreds and the Paragon Society, but that’s not enough protection for you OR me. You must never discuss it with anyone again. There are officers and other gladiators in The Jungle who wouldn't even do you this courtesy, Angel. Do you understand me?"

She swallowed, and nodded.

Targent pressed his lips together in a thin line, and lounged back in his seat. "All I know are generalities, things that have filtered down to me through the guild's command structure whenever advancement beyond the Jungle has been discussed. Dimitri Solonov is the undisputed champion of the game, one of only nine players to have ever reached the First Realm, Arcadia. He's the standard by which all other Sponsoreds measure themselves. He advanced through all four worlds like Napoleon conquering Europe, felling his enemies and the Daeva one after another."

"Right. But who IS he?" Angel insisted.

"Rumor has it that he's the son of one of the server's main stakeholders," Targent admitted, dropping his voice to a near whisper. "Anton Solonov."

Anton Solonov. The name gave me psychic whiplash.

Lying on the roadside, footsteps getting ever closer. Still holding my guts, like it will do any good. It’s cold. Cold and wet on the road.

“STOP! STOP!“ Hands, eyes white and terrified. My sister’s eyes. Blood on the kitchen counter.

A warm spring day. A wedding. My sister, blossoming under her veil as a man with a face like television snow slides a ring on her finger. The priest is speaking, an ASL translator – a friend of my sister’s – signing while he speaks. To his left, a tall older man looming like a shadowed cutout. To her right… me. Watching them all. Doubting the whole damn thing.

I grunted as a blur of broken memories flashed through my mind. Garbled, incoherent. Lulu gave me a reassuring pat on the shoulder.

"And who's he?" Angel's fingers patted over the surface of her cup as she asked the question verbally.

"No one remembers," Targent replied. "He may be a Russian government official, or some kind of business leader. One can assume he is some prominent individual in the Paragon Society. Like you, most of my memories were wiped when I was sent here. If I knew him during the course of my career, I don’t recall. One thing I AM certain of is that the Solonovs support the Hell Pigs. That is the context in which my superiors have discussed him."

"That'd explain why the Hell Pigs are hunting me." I lay my head down on my paws, stitching together what evidence I had so far. The letter from Dimitri implied I'd been an agent for some organization, currently unknown, and somehow involved in investigating or spying on these Solonovs. They’d had me killed. Until now, I'd assumed the white-haired man who'd stomped me was Dimitri himself, but that wasn’t necessarily true. The guy who killed me might have been an enforcer working for either Anton or Dimitri.

"Well, at least I now know who he is." Angel sighed. The information meant very little to her. "Don't know why he'd leave this nastygram in my inbox."

"You are uncommonly beautiful, Vigiles," Targent said smoothly. "While the women in Survival of the Fittest tend to be, let's say, 'somewhat idealized', I've never seen another with your pale skin and white hair. You’re strong, yet strangely fragile. You could almost pass as a spirit-type Legion."

Angel blushed. "Uh... thank you, sir, but I don't think he was trying to hit on me. It's full of threats against my family."

The Captain chuckled. "Men are strange. Maybe he thinks you like bad boys."

"Then he doesn't know me very well." Angel smiled at him: a genuine smile, that finally reached her eyes.

"Don't buy it, kid," I warned her. "He's manipulating you. Mark my words, Targent is up to something."

Angel couldn't reply in depth without giving away my ability to speak with her, but she flashed me an 'ok' sign.

"Anyway, thanks for your help," Angel said. "I appreciate you honoring our agreement from the other day. There’s not a lot of men in the Jungle who would."

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"I’m a man of my word, and it’s the least I can do for a talented young officer," Targent said, absently petting Guinevere's back. The Driado didn't move, or really show any emotion one way or the other. She kept stoic watch over us and the room. "Speaking of your promotion: your quarters have been reassigned to the women's area. I already dispatched your kit and your first round of orders."

“When the hell did he do that?” I asked Angel and Lulu both. “While we were walking?”

Lulu made a burbly sound of uncertainty.

"Yes, sir." Angel, sensing the dismissal, saluted smartly. "And thank you."

"My pleasure. See you soon, Vigiles." He sounded all kinds of pleasant, but something about the way his eyes tracked Angel made my hackles lift.

"I've revised my opinion," I remarked to Angel as I padded out after her, Lulu bobbing along by my side. "This guy isn't just planning a generic 'something'. He's about to have you murdered."

"What makes you think that?" Angel signed back. “He doesn’t get anything out of killing me, at this point.”

"Sure he does. You just told him that Solonov send you a nastygram full of threats, that Solonov is someone to fear. He figures that if he niners you, he gets in good with Solonov."

"You're really paranoid. You know that?"

"And you went from believing Targent sicced those Hell Pigs Elites on us to being on his side after ten minutes of smooth flattery. You know THAT?"

Angel's stride slowed, and she looked back at me. I was prepared for her to argue, but the expression on her face was one of serious consideration.

"You know… you’re right," she replied after half a minute or so. "He was laying it on thick, wasn't he?"

"Seriously. You want to be the best at everything you do, and he picked up on that need, that eagerness to do a good job and be rewarded for it." I rumbled, padding beside her like a panther. "Seriously: this guy was a lawyer in his last life, or a politician or lobbyist or something. He didn't get to middle management of the Centurions because he's a fantastic Legion trainer. He got to where he is because he's a ruthless politician, and if we forget that..."

"Alright. You’re right, I get it." Angel flashed back, a little defensively.

I wasn't sure she did, but I could read her body language as well as I could Targent's. I let it go.

The tent in the women's quarter was a lot larger and nicer than the one in C-block: white oiled canvas set up on raised wooden foundations, with enough space between neighbours that we couldn't hear what was happening in the tents to either side. It still wasn't big enough for me, so I flopped to the ground outside and resisted the urge to start grooming like a cat. Angel went on past me.

"Do you know how weird it is to have a human mind and all these Reaper instincts?" I brought a back foot up to scratch my head before I really thought about what I was doing.

"Yuuu…" Lulu agreed. She oozed off my back and fell to the ground with a little 'plop', then breezed past me into the tent.

"I can't even imagine it," Angel signed, taking a seat on the edge of her cot. There was a note waiting for her on the thin pillow. She raided the trunk at the end of the bed and equipped her new Vigiles-rank weapons first, grunting with satisfaction as she withdrew a [Bronze Spear], [High Capacity Waterskin], and a host of other survival essentials. There was also a [Crossbow]. It was common-grade, considerably shittier than the rifle I'd gotten for her.

"Can you hold onto this?" She offered it to me. "The stats on it suck, but if I ever lose the rifle you gave me, it's better than a bow."

"Sure." I reached out with a tentacle and coiled the weapon into my inventory. Angel took the ammo.

She returned to the letter and cracked the seal on it, scanning it. As she read, her brow furrowed.

"What's it say?"

"I have to report to Camp Goldrush and speak to the commander there, Primus Eisenblatter,” she replied. “And provide any support the commander requests in his fight against the Hell Pigs and other ‘rebellious elements.’"

The tip of my tail began to twitch as I remembered Lancelot flying off from Targent's tent. "Where's Camp Goldrush?"

She set the letter down, and checked her HUD. "Oh wow. About a hundred kilometers south, on the other side of the volcano, right on the warfront between the Pigs and the Centurions. It's the battle zone not far from the site of the second Daeva. The Pigs camp that spawn and all the resources around it, and we're trying to dislodge them."

"So he's getting rid of you."

She sighed. "Yeah. He's getting rid of me.”

“That’s more of a pussy move than I expected,” I replied. “Figured he’d try and kill you so he could take me and Lulu, not send us off somewhere he didn’t have to look at us.”

“Well, guess you were right about him being a coward.” Angel signed, once she’d laid the letter down in her lap. “You don't have to come, by the way. Now that I’m in with the guild… well. This is the war I wanted to fight."

"War? Say what?" Alarmed, I lifted my head.

"The guild war between the Pigs and the Centurions is basically about access to the Daeva and resources," Angel signed. "I don't know the full history of the guilds, but I figured out pretty quickly that the island is split in two. The Centurions used to be the only major guild on the server. Then something happened, a schism or a sponsored coming in or something, and the Pigs appeared. They took control of the first and second Daeva spawns, plus almost all of the Jungle's oil. The Iron Centurions hold the eastern half of the island, the third boss spawn, and most of the metal. So now there's a warfront between the two clans as the Pigs push from the west, trying to claim iron, tin and copper, as well as the other two Daeva."

"Meaning that no one player is able to progress through the game right now," I finished. "Because if you're on the Pigs’ side, you can only fight the first two Daeva, and if you're on the Centurions’ side, you can only fight the last one."

"Right. And that gives the Pigs the advantage against us," Angel replied. "Because their elites can potentially get buffed by two mandalas before engaging any Centurions gladiator."

Lulu looked between the two of us like someone watching a tennis match.

I rumbled. "Well, that’s annoying. If Karkinos’ arena is swarming with Pigs, that ain’t any fun for us."

"No, it isn’t. But I want to advance through the game, Noodles." Angel scooped the note up, adding it to her inventory. "I want to make the people who sent me here regret the day they let me live. They told me I was just 'scenery', bait for people like Razor and Targent to abuse. I'm going to show them all that they do not know who they are fucking with. And when I get back to the real world…"

I blinked a couple of times. "Get back to the real world? Angel... there’s no going back. They whacked us out there."

"No. I'm still alive on the outside." She stubbornly shook her head. "Alive and in a stasis pod.”

“So they just… took you captive? Why?"

"No reason. It was senseless. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time," she signed back. "I travelled a lot for shooting competitions, and was part of the women’s team for the Championship of the Americas in Guadalajara. My return flight was cancelled due to an ecoterrorist incident in the airport, so we got put on a shuttle to Puerto Vallarta. The bus was stopped on the road by the cartel. We tried to defend the bus, but… it didn’t work out. They killed most of the men and took the women."

The name of the cartel and the events she described gave me strange, vague pings of recollection: nothing my fractured and torn memories could put together, but somehow, I must have heard of this incident in my previous life. The flashes of recollection were enough to convince me she wasn’t lying, improbable as it seemed.

“And these guys, the Los Caballeros Carmesí, they didn’t kill you?” I tilted my head to one side.

“No. They gave us a choice. Get ransomed back to our families, be killed and put to work in a virtual brothel, or get in a pod and be sent here as gladiators. If we won the game, they’d consider the ransom paid and send us home. Most of us took this option, but as far as I know, I’m the only one from my team on this server.”

If I had eyebrows, I would have raised them. “And… you believe them?”

“They definitely weren’t lying about the murdering or the ransoms,” she replied bitterly. “If I beat the game, the cartel will let me go. I'll be able to go back to my family."

I used the side of a tentacle to rub my eyes. I was willing to bet Angel was deader than roadkill, her organs auctioned off to the highest bidder. But if it gave her hope, who the hell was I to tear her down?

"Anyway… like I said, it's not your cross to bear," Angel signed. "This is my war, and you’ve helped enough already. I'm sorry Targent wasn't much use in finding your sister."

"It was more helpful than you think," I replied, watching Lulu as she engulfed Angel's old cuirass and tried to put it on. "Anyway, you aren’t getting rid of us that easy. We’re coming with you."

Angel blinked rapidly a couple of times. "Really?"

"Yeah. You’re alright.” The urge to preen between my toes was powerful. Before I realized what I was doing, I started to groom them with my teeth. “Besides, after hearing that story, I figure we both have axes to grind with the Paragon Society. I’m betting whoever heads up Los Caballeros Carmesí is also funding this game." My tail began to swish over the ground as I thought. "I'm not great at working with people, but M.T Noodles the 4th isn't a complete dumbass. We've got a better chance of making it if we team up. But I haven't changed my mind about the collar."

By the look of apprehension on Angel's face, I knew she'd been about to ask.

"Suits me," Angel replied aloud. "What do you think, Lulu?"

"Oooh!" Lulu trilled back. She was still preoccupied with the cuirass, doing her best to form arms and legs.

"I'd say that's a yes." I chuckled. "So: how about we take a little nappy-nap, then get started for Goldrush?"

"Sure." Angel frowned. "We never did work out who put those Hell Pigs onto our trail."

I cast my senses out behind me, turned my head and sniffed - and spotted the trailing edge of a narrow, white-grey wing retreat behind one of the edges of the neighbouring tents. It was Prima Falks' Cute, the Irizado. "I'm sure they’ll show themselves eventually."