“Sir? Branch 411 has not submitted a report within the last twenty-four hours. Based on submitted reports from earlier, we have brought the matter to your attention,” a secretary said.

Mr. Portal rose silently from his seat. He was impeccably dressed in his suit as always. The secretary bowed her head and departed the barren office. With the tip of his cane, he drew on the blank, white wall. Though he did not even touch it with the tip, arcane sigils and glyphs appeared and spread out of their own accord over a mechanical structure, which itself emerged from the wall.

This hybrid archway of science and the arcane stood empty before him. On a keypad, he pressed the three numbers of 411. The portal within came to life, though it was green in color rather than the gold of the stockhouse portals or the blue of the headquarters portals.

Without further ado, he stepped through the shimmering green portal and disappeared from the office. After a brief moment, the portal turned off and the empty room's lights likewise shut off.

Store 411 was well established on this world, and as such was located in a modest section of the city known as Gearworks. As it was locally midday, the store should have been open to the public, yet Mr. Portal found the main section of the store dark and the door locked. He saw no evidence that the storefront employees were even present, confirming the information the secretary had given him.

"They couldn't possibly have all fallen ill," he murmured to himself.

As every storefront had the same basic layout, he moved upstairs to the employee housing. At the top of the stairs, he found the first sign of something wrong: a broken window. It was an impressive feat, given Mr. Portal made the employee sections of the storefronts much more durable and resistant to intrusion. He pulled out a pair of spectacles from an inside pocket of his suit coat and, after donning them, examined the window more closely.

Readouts began appearing in his vision as the spectacles analyzed everything there at an atomic level. There was no evidence of biological tampering, but there was a unique blend of metallic dust left behind on the glass fragments.

Straightening, he moved to each employee's room in the building. Of the three storefront employees, only one still lay in their bed. The fact that the mechanical golem was even in the bed was interesting. Examining with his spectacles, he could see that the employee had suffered a piercing puncture to the back of the head, shattering its memory core and processor core. Fluids leaked from the cranial hydraulics that had been likewise punctured, soaking into the bedsheets. The atomic analysis likewise saw the same unique metallic dust around the 'wound.'

Pressing further, Mr. Portal found two more employees likewise dead, though these two were both human men.

"Five missing employees. All female. Overpowered standard employee safeguards. Evidence of advanced golem infiltration. I do not like where this is going."

Mr. Portal tapped his cane on the floor, summoning forth a swarm of nanomachines from seemingly everywhere within his suit. Mentally, he sent the machines orders to repair and reinforce the store. The nanomachine cloud dissipated as they set off to work.

He returned the spectacles to their internal pocket, though if observed one would note that they seemed to disappear completely inside. Then he tapped on the wristwatch on his left wrist, bringing a holographic screen to light. He flipped through the profiles of five missing employees, which he pulled from his universal database of information about PTC employees.

Female. Two humans, one elf, one rabbit beastfolk, one celestial. Given the demographics of the current world, the last three were likely the real prize for the abductors. A sour taste filled Mr. Portal's mouth.

He walked straight out the front door, not even bothering to open it as he did so. Wood and glass, supposedly reinforced to resist such things, crumbled before his power and sent shards and splinters flying outward onto the street. He paused for a moment only to order the nanomachines fix the door before he strode off.

The streets were largely empty, which should have normally been the opposite at this time. A few mechanical golems and a handful of human men hurried about on their own business, though many stopped to stare at the ostentatious dressed man wandering boldly down the middle of the street.

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As he walked, untroubled by the attention he might have been drawing, Mr. Portal was waving his fingers through the air, as though conducting an orchestra only he could hear, which caused arcane glyphs to flash around him.

The tracking spell focused on the metallic dust, or rather its source, as he followed the directions of the spell. A few blocks away from the storefront, the trail descended to the subterranean stream train that interconnected the city above.

"Ticket please…," the ticket clerk stammered out nervously as Mr. Portal simply walked past, "Sir! You can't…"

But he was not followed or stopped by the clerk as he jumped down onto the tracks themselves and continued following the arcane sigils.

"How cliche," Mr. Portal murmured as he continued down the path of the tracks.

Eventually, the path diverted down a side tunnel, clearly for undercity maintenance. He continued down the path, which ended at a metal door.

"Girl Scout Cookies!" Mr. Portal said brightly as he rapped on the door.

There was a momentary silence before a hatch opened up on the door. Out popped a spinning trio of gunbarrels that immediately started spitting their projectiles at the perceived intruder.

However, despite taking the bullets at point brank range, Mr. Portal seemed to remain unharmed. After about thirty seconds, the machine gun stopped firing.

"You could just say no," Mr. Portal quipped.

He clenched his hand and the gun twisted and was pulled out by an invisible force. A mechanical golem, still grasping the gun, was pulled out through the hatch. The process ripped open the hatch as the golem didn't quite fit though the gap normally.

The golem leapt to its feet and lunged at Mr. Portal, a blade extending from its wrist. He easily dodged the blade and tapped the golem with his cane. Electric shocks pulsed through the golem, sending it spazzing to the ground before stopping all movement.

Mr. Portal sneered down at the golem for a moment before returning to the chipper personal he had opted for this infiltration.

"Well the door seems to be open! You must wish to discuss the cookies after all!"

Reaching through, Mr. Portal opened the door from the inside, as the hatch hole was not quite big enough for him to slip through without possibly ruining his still somehow immaculate suit. The small landing he found himself on sat at the top of some stairs that descended further. Undeterred, he descended these.

The echo of his highly polished shoes hitting the metal steps rang through the brick lined column as he went deeper and deeper. A chill started creeping into the air, causing a misty trail to form behind him as he progressed. Faint orchestral music could be heard as he finally finished with the stairs, leading to a hallway. Proceeding down it and with a flick of his hand the door swung open.

"The intruder was dealt with?" a creepy sounding voice within the room ahead asked.

Mr. Portal stepped through, gazing at the bizarre laboratory and the things found within, completely ignoring the man who had spoken.

"What? You! How did you defeat my golem?" the greasy man demanded.

Mr. Portal walked to a large cylindrical vat made of copper and glass, within which a blue gel substance was being stirred by a series of prongs on a fork-like arm. After nodding, he walked over to a wall which had hundreds of small doors on it. Each door was about a meter in either direction and had a small window and two buttons on it. Mr. Portal peered through the window of the first door he arrived at, and seemingly satisfied, finally turned to the man.

"You have an impressive setup here doctor. Cryogenic preservation gel and the accompanying chambers will fetch a nice price to the right buyer," Mr. Portal said calmly, pointing to the blue cylinder and the wall of doors respectively.

"They are not for sale," spat the doctor.

"Of course not. You have them filled with the women you've had your golem abduct."

"So?"

"This includes five of my employees."

The 'doctor' sneered.

"You want to partake? I can guarantee you'll… gak."

He was unable to finish his sentence as Mr. Portal covered the distance between them in seemingly a single step and pierced the doctor's throat with his cane, whose tip now sported a blade of about fifty centimeters. The doctor's eyes were wide with shock.

"Vile garbage," Mr. Portal rumbled as he stared with disgust at his prey.

The blade twisted and morphed inside the doctor's neck, forming an X shape that sliced the arteries on either side as the blade was withdrawn. The doctor was dead before hitting the floor.

Mr. Portal tapped at his wristwatch again.

"Alert the medical wing that we will have…," he glanced at the wall of cryochambers, "... a lot of patients for psychiatric consultations and therapy."

With a heart-wrenching sigh, Mr. Portal started opening the chambers one by one.