Colin POV

The party was half victory celebration, half heartfelt reunion. I rarely found myself at a loss for words, but today was one of those times. My old teammates surrounded me, slapping me on the back and congratulating me.

They'd changed in the year we'd been apart. Alpha seemed more confident. It was clear she was the team leader now, not me. While I felt a little bittersweet about that, I'd come so far myself in the last year. I was glad they hadn't been left behind.

Pete was relaxed. Even now, here, he had a casualness to him I hadn't seen before, confident and ready to jump in at a moment's notice. But the most notable change was in Rose and Amber. I'd had trouble getting the two of them to work together on the team. I don't know if it was jealousy or they just didn't get along. When I'd left, Rose and Amber were as likely to find themselves at each other's throats as they were to chat with each other. Now, well, they weren't bosom chums, but they got along. As they took turns filling me in, I felt some stress that I hadn't even realized was on me slipping away.

They wanted to hear what Sage, Rok'gar, and I had been up to, of course.

"Everyone thought you were dead. You couldn't get a message through?" Pete kept demanding. "We had a memorial service for you and everything. People cried. Mostly for her." He hooked a thumb toward Sage, who was across the square talking to Alpha intently.

We were in the central square of our garrison. Gambler had put up decorations for us. Blue and white buntings and a big "Welcome to the Party" sign hanging from the headquarters building. I had explained to all of them who Gambler was. Since they'd worked closely with Coyote for the last few years, it wasn't hard for them to figure out how to interact with him.

I explained the complication, and Pete nodded. "Yeah. Captain Williams was very clear to us not to talk about this anywhere except on the Ad Astra or once we'd reached you. You've made the Galactics very angry. I think they're going to be coming for you. Again."

"We will be ready for them when they are," Rok'gar declared. "Has Williams told my father that I'm here?"

"I don't know," Pete said.

"I doubt it," Rose drawled. "Firebrand is running security for one of the other groups. We went up against them recently. Not directly opposed. They let us in. The mission where Sam saw you guys, actually."

"And well done, Sam," I said, turning to him and grinning. "You're the real hero. I'm grateful you were quick enough to figure out what was going on and tell Williams about it."

Sam blushed pink under his dark tan. “A guy who couldn't figure that out wouldn't deserve to be on your team," he mumbled.

Sage and Alpha approached us. Sage's face was bright pink and her eyes suspiciously bright. If she hadn't been crying, it was a near thing. I wondered if Alpha had brought her a message from her brother.

"So, what's our next move?" Alpha asked. "We're at your disposal now, Colin."

"Excuse me," Gambler's voice broke in. We all looked around instinctively. A man stepped out of the headquarters building. I knew him at once to be Gambler. He'd never taken an avatar before. The one he'd chosen was a short, dark-haired man with silver at his temples. He couldn't be more than 164 centimeters. He wore a dark three-piece suit with a silver tie. Both his tie pin and his cufflinks were emerald. He bowed to the ladies.

"You look good," Sage observed. "What's with the get-up?"

"It matches imagery I found in your minds for a high-stakes poker player," Gambler said.

Sage giggled. "You're a little out of date. Most high-stakes poker players these days wear T-shirts. I'm not one to look down on a neat dresser," she added quickly. "I was always trying to get my brother to pay more attention to his clothing. What's up now?"

"Now that there are so many of you, it seemed easier to have an avatar to join the conversation," Gambler said. "I need to know what's been going on. I've been trying to make educated guesses based on what we've seen, but you," he told my team, "are a valuable new source of information."

"We'll tell you whatever we can," Alpha said.

"I would like permission to look more deeply at your memories."

Alpha drew back. The rest of my team looked uncomfortable as well.

"Rummaging through our minds? I don't think so," Rose snapped.

"I only need to access your high-level memories of missions and mission briefings," Gambler said. "I will immediately forget anything not relevant and prevent it from entering my long-term memories."

"I don't like that," Rose said again.

"Look," Pete said. "We know you could do this anyway, so why are you even asking our permission?"

"Because I would rather have it."

Alpha sighed. "You can look inside my head. If you need to look into anyone else's, ask them, but I've been on every briefing and mission that the rest of us have."

Gambler nodded. "Thank you." He placed a hand to his own temples theatrically. "Hm. Interesting. Interesting. Patriarch Kvaltash seems to have hired your team frequently."

"He wanted the best, so he got us," Alpha said. She took note of the pride in her voice, and I was glad to see the rest of my team had looked to her in my absence.

"Do you know what he was after?"

Alpha shrugged. "Something progenitor-related, that much was clear."

"Yes. As it happens, it is fortunate that we were raiding the same vault that you were. I'm able to know what it was he was after, and then reconstruct from the rest," he turned to us. "Patriarch Kvaltash is attempting to create something he should not have. A key."

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

"What will it unlock?" I asked.

"Reality engines. Not just this one. Any of them. All of them."

"Isn't that what the Galactics have been doing for the past however long it's been?"

"To put it crudely, the Galactics have been smashing open locks using rocks and getting at the easily snatched content. There are secrets in vaults which they have never had access to. This would open every lock, and all at once. It would utterly change how reality engine exploits are performed."

"That's a good thing as far as I'm concerned," Sage said. "Nobody should have to go through what we did."

"You will be trading off one suffering for another," Gambler warned. "There are secrets about the reality engines that you do not know, that Kronos, it seems, has not shared with you."

That didn't surprise me at all, but Sage looked offended. "We made a contract with Kronos, and he's kept it. He's been a loyal and faithful friend.”

“And a being with his own interests. Interests which do not include placing himself entirely in your power. Nor do I care to share everything I know. Not yet," Gambler declared. "I do know, however, that letting the Patriarch fully assemble and use his key would be bad for all of us. In addition, we are in his way. I think we can expect another larger attack soon."

"I don't think you have to worry about that," Pete said. "The Galactics said that they could only bring so many people to bear. If they bring another force, it'll be the same size as what you already dealt with, and you've managed to lock out many of their top-level teams."

"If they are willing to use the key, those restrictions will vanish. I fear that is what the Patriarch intends."

"So what are we going to do?" Alpha asked.

"I'm currently running simulations," Gambler said. “But I need to make it clear. Failure has dire consequences. Extermination for me. Possibly your team could be extracted from this engine. You three," he told Sage, Rok'gar, and me, "are bound to me, not to any of the Dominator networks, and would have a hard time transferring."

"What about a negotiated truce?" I asked. "We're in a position of strength here. We could bargain for a piece of this engine and safe passage out of here. If we offer up all of our stolen loot..."

"I have been attempting to speak with the Dominator network since the end of our last set of hostilities. They are refusing to speak to me. I believe they want me dead," Gambler said.

I sighed. "So, time for another gamble, then?"

"Always," Gambler said. “But first, we need to prepare our defenses.”

Gambler set all of us on some minor tasks, assigning Sage and Rok'gar to my team to familiarize them with our base and its systems. He had me going around to all of our defensive towers and configuring them against the next wave of attack, which we were certain would come soon. But I was suspicious.

"What is it you really want from me?" I asked once we'd gotten farther away from the others.

"Your help in planning."

I had figured that was the case. "I thought you were this clever chap who had worked it all out himself. The man with a plan."

"You mock me," Gambler said, "but not unreasonably. I do have a plan, but I need your sort of lateral thinking. Besides,” his voice sounded unexpectedly unsure. "I am risking a great deal here. This is going to be dangerous. We need to get hold of the Patriarch's key."

“Right,” I said, scratching my head. "So, sounds like we've got two options here. We could figure out where he is, lay an ambush, and steal the key from him. Or we figure out where he's going, set a trap, and steal the key from him. I don't suppose we can infiltrate his own base, slip in without him noticing, and replace it with a dummy copy? That'd be my first choice, personally."

"No," Gambler said. "I can't get past their Dominators, not yet. The key will allow me to do that," he added. "It gives the dominator network direct access to an engine, but in my hands it will be a backdoor into their network. Part of my strategy is to use it, once it's in our possession, for just that."

“Then we need to lure him in. He's got a key, and it sounds like he's planning to use it. We need to be ready when he does."

"The only way to overcome our defenses will be to use the key that he's built. It already contains enough of the back doors into our system that if the Patriarch chooses, they can use it to bring a vast army to bear against us," Gambler said. "But in doing so, he'll expose the key to us. We'll possibly be able to steal it."

"What does this key do, specifically?”

He hesitated. "There are things I don't want to tell even you," he admitted.

"I can't help if I don't know what it does."

Gambler sighed. "I'm going to give you as much as I dare. Brace yourself."

That was all the warning I had. A piercing pain stabbed through my head. I closed my eyes and rubbed my temples as it slowly faded. Now, as I thought of the key, my memory supplied all of the details—what it was, what it could do.

Much of what Gambler had fgtured out was guesswork, though very intelligent guesses. Kvaltash had found clues to the nature of engines based on the behavior of a hundred different reality engines. He'd modeled fragment behavior from Kronos and Coyote and the other personalities of our own reality engine and come to understand them in ways no one else had. Doing so had allowed him to create the framework for this key. But it only helped him that far. Powerful fragments, resisting an exploit, did not reveal all the secrets of their nature. I doubted if they even knew them all consciously.

The rogue engine offered him the components he needed, components which had been stripped down in the tamed reality engine for their parts. He'd found them here, in a replica of an ancient progenitor facility, and in the fortress where Sage and I had clashed with Williams and my own team.

What he had found were indications of the fundamental nature of a engine. Just as subatomic particles revealed the nature of physics to a scientist better than observing people walking around. Engines didn’t usually provide access to such low-level information. The fragments weren't even consciously aware of them, deep-rooted reflections of their nature which indicated how they talked to each other, how they interwove and communicated, and used ethereum. With the power this knowledge gave him, the Patriarch had made a tool he could use to force his way into zones the Dominators didn't control, bend fragments to his will, even temporarily override the simulations to some degree. I couldn't tell the full potential of that power. There was clearly knowledge that Gambler had not shared.

"If he wants to use the key against us, he has to bring it here," I said.

"That is correct."

"Then we make him use it," I said. "We make ourselves a target he and the others cannot resist. We've taken a good step already by defeating that first force. Now, we double down. We've been laying low, not hitting them, for fear of reprisal. That changes right now. We need to hit them in a dozen different places. Not just steal, but destroy. We'll sabotage anything we can. We can retreat back down here, fortify, make ourselves a hard nut to crack."

"Yes," Gambler whispered. "That is my best projection for success as well."

"Then why didn't you just tell us?"

"Because I predict only a 60% chance of survival. How could I ask my allies to do that?"

“Better than 50%?” I laughed. "Any gamer worth his salt would take odds like that. Let's talk about the next step. We bring them down, we steal the key, and… then what?"

Gambler explained to me the next phase of his plan.

My eyes widened and I slowly nodded. "That's good. Ambitious. But, you're not thinking big enough. You've got the technological side, but we're going to need legal and economic elements that will be needed. I think....”

Gambler and I returned to our base later to find that Sage and Rok'gar had my squad drilling with packs of minions. I gathered everyone up.

"Here's the plan," I told them. I laid out the first couple of steps. Jaws dropped everywhere.

"Are you serious?" Sam demanded.

"Sounds like fun to me," Rose declared. "Dibs on blowing up Elf Fairyland. That place gives me the heebie-jeebies."

"We might not win," I warned them. "There's a lot that could go wrong."

"And a lot that can go right," Sage said. "So, when do we start?"

"Right now," I said. Gambler called up a map of the top-level zones and who controlled them. "We hit everyone. All at once. As many places as we can. Gambler, we need to swap in some of our allied mines who know how to blow stuff up good."

We broke into two different groups. Rok'gar and I were in charge of the defense. We would need solid fortifications, even better than what we had now. Instead of trying to defend everything, we'd pull back to the area right around Monte Carlo and layer our defenses three deep. We recruited Amber to help us, then asked the rest of the Gamer squad and Sage to go on offense. I wanted the galactics to know they'd been stung when we hit them.

It felt good to go active again.