The cool morning chill slowly wore into a hot afternoon as they walked through the narrow road, talking rapidly and with some urgency. The woods were regular and monotonous, deciduous trees overhanging the small dirt road.

Oliver asked Gideon many questions, but found himself reluctant to ask the more fundamental ones. He ended up reserving many of them in order to avoid disclosing just how little he knew of this world to Gideon; though no doubt Gideon knew he was a newcomer here, he wanted to keep him guessing for as long as he could. There was no harm in Gideon believing that Oliver was more capable than he seemed for as long as possible, without outright deceiving him.

Gideon for his part played a similar game, dancing around Oliver's questions while still giving him answers to more general questions.

Eventually, when Gideon dodged a particularly direct question about the Moderates' cell system, how he could claim to be a leader and how his authority was verified with the other cell, the interplay in the conversation became patently obvious and Gideon addressed it directly.

"Look, Oliver, I can appreciate that you've got a lot of questions. I once stood in your shoes, lost in an unfamiliar world. But, while you can rest assured that we will answer all of your questions and more, you must understand that now is not the time. I’ll put it bluntly: I don't want to reveal our weaknesses to you, in case you turn out to be a bad guy."

"Fair enough," said Oliver with a wry grin. It wasn’t an unreasonable policy; they didn’t know each other yet.

Oddly enough, this admission of mutual distrust eased the conversation and they moved on to safer, more general topics such as the town they were heading to, the disposition of the Empire, and other such things.

The day passed uneventfully as they walked. They passed a couple of folks on the road, but nobody paid them any particular mind except to offer a wave or a greeting as they passed, though these were few and far between. Most travelers seemed content to simply let strangers be. They did not appear to be possessed of a particularly outgoing culture around here.

Oliver and Gideon stopped for a brief lunch of cool mint tea and trail food that Gideon produced from nowhere.

When Oliver finally asked how that was possible, Gideon explained that he was using a magical ring that allowed the summoning and dismissal of items in a pocket dimension.

After Oliver peered at his hand for a little while, trying to make out the signature of the ring, he was eventually distinguish the faint white glow of mana that delineated it from the orange mana lines shot through Gideon's hand and the aura surrounding it.

Unlike Galen's wand, the ring's mana signature was largely concealed by his aura, a trick that reminded Oliver of the yellow aura the house he'd stayed in in the last city had been surrounded by. Perhaps a similar principle was at play, combined with the mana suppressor technology, to conceal auras.

"You could use that thing for some crazy tricks," Oliver said eventually.

"Indeed," said Gideon with a small, private smile, "and I have. In fact, it forms a significant part of one of my fighting styles."

"Making weapons appear and disappear in combat?" asked Oliver.

"Weapons, cover, many things," said Gideon. "And not just my own, but other peoples' too. It's ridiculously effective. Probably for the good that these rings are so hard to come by, honestly."

That simple statement got them started on a long tangent on how magical fighting worked in this world.

"The key element is surprise," Gideon said. "Combat tactics and spells have largely stagnated in recent years, with only minor refinements made here and there. Both practicality and efficiency demand a rather small set of spells for most military forces here, to make it easier for soldiers to train to use the spells and also for purposes of strategization. But the one thing you can count on is surprise. Magical combat is quick and efficient because it's so hard to counter. Therefore, there's a significant advantage to being the first to strike, and strike hard."

That explained the combat in the street while they were escaping, then. Tiro had wanted to strike first, while the patrol in the street still thought they were harmless citizens. Although if there were regular killings in the streets, and the stakes were so high, Oliver found it curious that the patrol hadn't attacked first, or disabled their magic in some way, which led into a whole other round of theoretical discussion that took up a lot of their time.

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Beyond magical combat tactics, Oliver took full advantage of the long walk to ask Gideon questions about the Empire.

"So, you've integrated into the rebellion. Why?"

"First, it's not a rebellion. It's a subversion. Very different. Second, I got involved with it for the same reason it exists," said Gideon, "Knowing what happens if it fails."

"The end of the world?"

"As we know it. If the Empire becomes able to do even a shred of what we've accomplished in our own cell in a fraction of the time, it would be game over for this world. And then they'd come for Earth. I'm confident of it."

Oliver asked if Gideon could tell him how many people had been summoned by the Empire, and how many had escaped due to Moderate interference, but Gideon was cagey around that, and Oliver felt it could probably wait in any case.

—

The entrance to the cell's lair, as Gideon referred to it with a dramatic smile, was hidden on the outskirts of the city, just after the slums turned into proper housing standing just outside the shadow of the tall stone wall that surrounded the city.

Oliver would have missed it entirely if Gideon hadn't stopped him and pointed it out. Even after that, it took him a moment to realize what Gideon was insistently calling the entrance was not in fact a boring, blank wall in the side of a house, but a simple wooden door with a line of glowing runes on the lintel above it that Oliver couldn't read.

Oliver turned to Gideon and raised his eyebrows. "Some kind of anti-attention spell?"

"Yes," said Gideon. "It's a mana-powered illusion spellform described by the runes above the door. Charge it whenever you go in, like this," he said, reaching up and resting his hand on the rune for a moment as he reached for the door handle.

Watching closely, Oliver was rewarded with seeing a trickle of mana flow into the rune as Gideon opened the door with his other hand.

"It's me — Gideon," he called out, stepping into the house.

Oliver trailed behind. The first thing he noticed as he entered was that he smelled burgers. The interior of the house smelled like a greasy spoon, the scent of sautéing onions and fried beef causing his mouth to water instantly. It was evening and he hadn't eaten much that day except for the light lunch on the go around noon.

He took stock of the dim, low, cozy room in front of him. A couple doorways in the back of the room, rounded clay walls, two leather couches and some small dark wooden coffee tables pronounced this room a common loving space.

There was a man sitting at a desk off to one side of the room, a glowing holographic screen open before him a couple of feet tall and perhaps three feet wide.

As Oliver entered, he was manipulating it with miniscule motions of his hands, which he held just above the bare desk he was sitting at, elbows resting on his chair. He was intent on his work. The display was showing what appeared to be an elevation map.

The man glanced up as they entered, did a double take when he saw Oliver, and made some sort of motion with his hand that caused the holographic screen to disappear. He looked back to Gideon, concern written on his face. He was Asian, short, with dark hair cropped close, and a little chubby. Unlike Gideon's aura, his golden aura was faint except where it concentrated on around his head, where it blazed so bright it was nearly white.

Gideon nodded to the man. "It's okay, Sung. This is the new guy. Oliver. American."

"Good to see you made it in one piece," Sung said to Gideon in a Korean accent and a faintly questioning tone, staring at Oliver.

"Oliver, this is Sung Lee. He's a mind practitioner and a programmer."

"A programmer?" asked Oliver, distracted by the existence of what appeared to be an actual computer. "What was that display, a computer?"

"Of a sort," Sung said, smiling. "It's good to meet you, Oliver. I am glad to see you found us in one piece." He talked very quickly, like he'd thought out the words far before they reached his mouth and now was simply burdened with getting them into the air.

"Nice to meet you too," he said, feeling a little hung up on the whole casually having a magical computer thing. "But… how is that computer even possible? Wouldn't you have to build an operating system from scratch?"

"Well, yes," Sung said, with a proud smile, glancing back at the desk.

"And the hardware, the—the firmware too," said Oliver. "Did you build and code the whole thing from the ground up?"

"Do you see any hardware?" asked Sung, gesturing to the desk, which indeed seemed to be a plain wooden desk. "But yes, I did," said Sung. "Several years ago, I would have said it was impossible myself. I'm not that good of a programmer, or at least, I wasn't. The system changed all that."

That seemed unreasonable; surely if everybody from Earth could invent a computer from scratch with enough mental improvement the Empire would have already won by now.

Just as Oliver was trying to find a way to phrase this assertion as a question, a young Indian woman appeared in the doorway opening her mouth to say something when she noticed Oliver. She froze, looking like a deer in the headlights, then whirled around and fled the room with what sounded like a sob.

"And that's Tallahassee," said Gideon. "Don't mind her," he went on as Sung searched for words. "She's been through a lot lately, since we lost Luke."

"Luke?" asked Oliver.

"Another Earther," said Gideon. "He was an RAF pilot and her boyfriend. And he was our primary operator." Gideon turned to Sung. "Can you scan him, please?"

Sung nodded, then raised a hand towards Oliver and muttered something under his breath. He frowned for a moment. "He's clean, but his Path doesn't seem to be reading correctly."

They both turned to look at Oliver expectantly. "I don't have one," he said. "Yet."