By the third run through, Oliver was confident Gideon was messing with him. Testing him. The predictable layout of the last two runs had changed; there were three men in the first room, and four in the third. He took a couple of hits before clearing it.

Despite their numbers they were still slow to react, obviously not meant to be quite the real thing. The lasers stung, but didn't hit with the force they held in the real world. Whatever they were doing here for simulating the spells, it was tactile learning reinforcement at its best, minor punishment for failure, a reminder of the realities the spell was only simulating.

He had to get more creative. When the third room had multiple people firing lasers at him simultaneously, he'd already worked out how to trigger the spell twice for two bullets at the same time. Three wasn't much harder, and at close range aiming was a non-issue.

When the dummies started getting smarter, hiding around corners, he found that if he tugged on the strands of mana that followed every bullet as they departed from his hand and gave them the right tug before they snapped and sent the bullet on its merry way, he could curve the bullets. He missed a couple of times at first, ran out of ammo about half-way through the third run and had to pause it for Gideon to give him more.

By the end of the fourth run he'd worked out a strategy to keep up a lethal offense at a trivial mana expense; by decreasing the mana cost per second he could lower the rate at which the bullets accelerated out of his hand, but the disparity between his mass and that of the bullet meant that each round would still accelerate quickly and hit just hard.

It was the same principle a bed of nails operated on; distribute your mass across a large enough surface area — enough points — and you could lay down on a bunch of nails no problem. Conversely, concentrate that same amount of mass — or, in this case, the acceleration created by that mass — onto a single, small point, and you had created positively frightening destructive potential. It was just a matter of timing and accounting for distance.

When the last man had fallen and the hostage was the only other person standing, Oliver paused, bouncing the last bullet in his hand. He stared at it for a moment, then activated the spell again, visualizing the bullet falling *up*. He dialed down the mana expense to an almost negligible amount, causing the bullet to relax in his grip. Then he slowly, ever so slowly incremented it up until the bullet was hovering in place above his hand, slowly rotating.

He stared at it for a moment, then up at the hostage, who was still cowering in place, unreactive as a video game NPC.

He was down to the last tenth of his mana.

"Gideon, I'm out of mana. Can you end the sim?"

A heartbeat later the sights around him blurred away and he was left standing in the Construct, facing away into the white emptiness. He turned around to see Gideon watching him, along with Sung, Tallahassee, and Graves.

Tallahassee' eyes were narrowed, the sullen expression that had seemed fixed on her face having focused into a dark intensity.

Graves was just looking at him thoughtfully.

"I told you it was possible," Sung was saying to Gideon in a tone of satisfaction matched by the smile on his lips.

"What was possible?" asked Oliver, glancing from face to face as Gideon shrugged. Oliver used the last of his mana to flick the last bullet to Gideon, who barely caught it with his his ring hand, the bullet disappearing without pause from his grasp as he did so.

"That humans could have differing innate capacities for utilizing the System," he said, turning to Oliver. "That some would take to it more naturally than others."

There was an odd mood in the air, the others waiting with bated breath. Oliver realized they were waiting for him to say something.

"I would think it depends on their System," Oliver said. "Mine is uniquely suited to fine mana manipulation and rapid triggering of spells. Not sure about yours or others'. I get the impression that the more traditional temples offer less optimized interfaces in this area."

"The civilian ones do," said Gideon.

"Well. My interface has also nearly killed me multiple times, so I can't exactly recommend it," Oliver responded.

"You know what they say," Graves said. "The world is only changed by people too stupid to realize it can't be done."

"What do you see?" asked Sung, the same tone filling his voice. Oliver realized it at last.

"A spreadsheet," said Oliver, letting out a breath. "Like an Excel spreadsheet."

"What does that let you do?" said Tallahassee, in such totally plain, unaccented English that Oliver suspected the System might be handling the translation for her. But for all that, the same tone was clear in her voice too.

Hope.

Oliver sensed that the time was ripe for him to ask a few questions of his own. They were all here, watching him, waiting for him to say something.

"Gideon. What's the plan?"

"The plan?" Gideon asked, raised eyebrow.

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"For getting home."

"What do you know about the Phoenix project?"

"I know it's how we got here, that it's an experiment the Empire is running designed to increase their magical power by making use of Earth knowledge, that it was originally meant to resurrect the dead and that it's now used to summon people from Earth that the Empire hopes will aid their cause. This much I was told by the other Moderate cell."

"Good. The Moderates have an in with the Phoenix project. They have a man on the inside. The plan is to use him to get us access to the spell, then cast it on ourselves to get home."

"So you're going to what, just waltz in and steal what is possibly the most valuable spell the Empire has ever created?"

"There are details."

Oliver had to find a way to take control of the situation. "Tell me over a truth stone."

"That won't be necessary, Oliver. I can explain everything satisfactorily."

"If you can explain everything, you should have no problem doing it truthfully."

"The truth stone's kind of a big deal around here, Oliver," said Graves, jumping into the conversation. He rounded on her, but before he could say anything, she continued in that thick British accent. "We don't take it out unless it's absolute necessary. If you demand that we use it, it means nobody in the room can lie, evade your questions, or anything. We're big on trust around here, and the truth stone's a great way to destroy it."

"If you're big on trust, then give me a reason to trust you," Oliver insisted. "Look, why did you want me to come? I know you needed me bad enough to risk bringing an absolute stranger into your operation, somebody who could be a spy, an assassin, or worse."

"Worse?" asked Sung.

"You're from Earth, Oliver. So are we. Isn't that enough?" Gideon said over him.

Oliver stared at Gideon, flat-eyed. "We need to find common ground. You asked me your questions yesterday, with the truth stone. Now it's my turn. You want trust? Act like it." He looked from face to face as he finished his speech. It was a tense moment. Desire and fear warred on their faces.

"Could you give Oliver and I a moment?" asked Gideon, looking around at the others. They shifted, began to leave.

"No, wait," said Oliver, holding out a hand. "I want to do this with everybody." Sung froze in place, but Tallahassee kept walking without looking back. Graves seemed torn.

"You really don't," said Gideon.

"No, I think I do."

"As you wish," Gideon said, acquiescing at last.

"Thank you," said Oliver as the tense atmosphere faded a little. He was in control of the conversation, at least for now. The others came back.

Sung reached into the pocket of the sport jacket he was wearing, withdrew the bag with the truth stone in it, took the stone out and laid it on the bag in the palm of his hand.

There was a tense silence.

"What is your plan to reach home?"

"We are working on a plan to get into the lab the Phoenix project is being run from, acquire the spell they are using, and cast it to send ourselves home."

"Why do you want me to join you?"

"Two reasons. One: you're another person from Earth. When the team found out, they insisted," said Gideon, gesturing at the others. "And two: we need another person with combat experience on the team."

"Another?"

"I'm National Guard," said Gideon. "But I never saw combat back home. Tallahassee's good with a sniper spell, but she's no soldier. Luke was our point man, and now he's gone."

The Indian woman's face hardened at this, her customary scowl reasserting itself.

"I'm sorry for your loss. But I was an engineer, not frontline infantry," said Oliver.

"You saw combat," said Gideon. "Luke was RAF, a pilot, but he knew his way around magic. This whole place," and he gestured around them to the illusion spell, "this was his idea. Based off of flight simulators. He spent most of his time down here practicing combat ideas."

"You expect more fighting, then," asserted Oliver.

"We hope not to, but there's not much of a choice," admitted Gideon. "We'll be meeting up with another cell for the op, and they're supposed to be doing the heavy lifting, but that's only if nothing goes wrong. And something always goes wrong."

"Why not just steal the spell? Why assume combat is going to happen?"

"Do you realize what you're talking about? It's the most valuable spell, possibly ever invented. That we know about it at all is a miracle. It's going to be almost impossible to get it and get out without running into trouble. Of course we're going to try to steal it, but it'll us no good if we're caught and killed."

There was a pause as Oliver digested this. His mind was moving quickly, trying to make sense of the details.

"Is that what happened to Luke?" he asked finally. "Caught and killed?"

"Luke died on a mana run," said Gideon after a pause. "It was a routine op, just an accident really."

"A mana run?"

"The Empire has to transport the mana they collect from their citizens. There are regular caravans that make the run from here down the river. We'd Robin Hood the occasional transport, not much, just enough to get the mana we needed. On Luke's last run one of the guards picked the wrong time to get a little brave. It was messy."

"And what about the others? Did they all die the same way?"

"Oh, no," said Gideon. "We've lost a number of folks experimenting with spells. Too many people tried to run their own custom system, like you were doing, apparently. There were themes. But many of them were problematic. Of those that survived, some were apprehended before making it to the Empire. We have lost a few on combat ops, but most of them were truly accidents. And Yang's group left after Luke was killed. That was nine right there."

At no time yet had the light in the truth stone flickered on.

"What happened to them?"

"No idea," Gideon said.

"So what's the next step?"

"Get you trained up," Gideon said instantly. "Then we need to stash up on mana ahead of the raid on the Crucible. That means raids. At least three more."

"The Crucible?"

"It's the name of the lab where they perform the Phoenix Rite. It's in the heart of the part of Range Perilous that passes through Shadowveil."

"That's not far from where I came from," noted Oliver.

"Most of us came from that direction. The spell that the Moderates managed to disrupt the targeting component of the Phoenix Rite with constrains the dispersion of the mana streams significantly in order to avoid everybody getting dumped into the ocean."

"I see." The stone flickered slightly, a yellow glow catching Oliver's attention. Well, that was that — it was a real stone, not a fake. He hadn't quite understood that fully. But it was enough.

"What are the chances we succeed?"

Gideon hesitated, glancing unconsciously at the truth stone.

"Magic provides incredible opportunities for security, and the Empire's been very clever. There's a good chance that not only will we have to fight our way in, but we'll also have to disable a number of automated defense systems. There's also a good chance there's going to be a least one archmage guarding the facility."

"Sounds hard," said Oliver.

"Not just hard. Impossible."

"How good is your intelligence?"

"Good. The Moderates have a couple of sources on the inside, the ones who sabotaged some of the Phoenix Rites, and they've been reporting to us."

"How do we know it's not a honeypot?"

"The intelligence is good. The Moderates want the Phoenix project shut down as much as we do, and their source has been embedded for a long time."

"Sounds like we've got our work cut out for us."

"That we do, Oliver. That we do."