They did not get paid. Mino wanted to argue the point, but Ark had bigger concerns, namely getting out of the dockyard as quickly as possible. With more persuasion than force, Ark dragged Mino away from his stand-off with Mr. Wright, who had somehow gotten it into his head that they owed him for the trouble.
“Well, you found something down there, didn’t ya?” Wright growled, proffering his hand, “Give it here—it’s station property when you found it working on station dime.”
Ark rolled his eyes and said, “I just gave it away, you saw. In any case, there’s no rule that says you can’t keep what you find down there, and even if there was, you’d keep it yourself, rather than give it to the station.”
Wright spluttered in protest, but Ark was having none of it. They were never coming back here anyway. “In any case, the point is moot, since you’ve decided to deny us our pay. We’re leaving.”
Ark turned and had to tug at Mino’s shirt, since the big boy still stared Wright down with eyes tinged with lingering rage.
“Mino, let it go,” he said, voice quiet.
“We need the money, Ark,” Mino said through clinched teeth.
“We’ll get by, don’t worry.”
“But he—“
“Mino,” Ark said, voice more forceful, “Trust me.”
Mino turned his big eyes on Ark, studying him. “You know I do,” he said, his voice resigned, “Fine.” With a final glare, he turned away from Wright and followed Ark out of the dockyard in sullen silence.
There was always movement and work being done in the dockyard, but in the late afternoon, the flow of people had ebbed in preparation for the evening shift, when activity would pick up again. Ark had been down there in those tunnels for hours, and his detour into the bowels of Vanguard’s dilapidated underground had only delayed his return to the surface. Now, looking up into the lines of white light from the ceiling above Lowtown, Ark had a moment of contemplation, thinking about what had to be done.
He would have to put the matter of END aside for now. No matter what that thing was, it was not his immediate problem—the Tanks and their officer had seen to that. Vanguard had noticed his irregular movements, enough to send VISOR personnel to investigate; that meant there was eyes on him, and that would make his next move more difficult. Distracted, he traced the crystals lodged in his arm, accepting the pain as a warning for the future. He needed to be more careful.
Because Ark was hard at work thinking, he only noticed something was wrong when a hand grabbed him by the nape of the neck and slammed him into the wall of a nearby building. Eyes wide open, Ark tried to recognize his attacker, only to find Mino’s face close enough that their noses would touch if either moved just a hair’s breadth forward. Mino’s kind brown eyes had turned to hard basalt, piercing Ark with a fury that he should have expected, but had failed to notice due to all that was on his mind.
“What. Happened.”
Mino’s words were more a command that a question, and Ark had to swallow just to contain the instinctual fear that was growing in his stomach.
“There… There were complications,” Ark said, trying to evade the question, to which he got a shake of his entire body in return.
“Don’t bullshit me, Ark,” Mino said, once he had returned Ark to rest, “I told you not to do shit like this, and you go ahead and do it the first opportunity you get. In return, I get an explanation, so spill.”
Ark tried to get a look at their surroundings, judging where they were and how many eyes might be listening. Gritting his teeth, he tried to evade again. “Not here, Mino.”
“Yes here. I don’t need the details, but I need an explanation. Now.”
Shit—Ark thought, closing his eyes tight. It was not that Mino was being unreasonable—that was Ark’s role—rather, it was that it really was not the time or the place to lay down the tale.
“Alright, alright,” Ark said at last, thinking desperately to figure out how he could phrase it so that anyone listening would get nothing out of it, “You remember this?” Ark raised his arm, still scarred with crystals all the way to his elbow.
Mino nodded, his eyes growing a little softer, but his hold was still firm. “Well, it turns out that I returned with a guest.”
“What?” Mino let go of Ark, and let him fall to the ground, “You’re serious?”
“I wouldn’t joke about this, Mino,” Ark said, once he had gotten his footing steady, “That’s why I can’t talk about this, not here.”
“Alright, then what about what happened with the officer?”
“I did not expect that, but we got out of it nicely,” Ark said, nodding for them to continue out of the dockyard, “We took a loss, but it wasn’t all bad.”
“What do you mean, it ‘wasn’t all bad’?” Mino growled, “Whatever you had to give him to go away was expensive enough for him to accept it, and now we didn’t even get paid? How are we going to eat?”
Ark could not help a grin escaping his face, as he turned to Mino and said, “Don’t worry about food, Mino, I found a way for us to become riftwalkers—real riftwalkers.”
“How?”
Ark put up two fingers in a victorious V and said, “What I gave the officer; I got two of them.”
----------------------------------------
They got out of the dockyard as quickly as they could, after that, passing into the narrow streets of Lowtown. Here they circled away from their paltry excuse for an apartment, avoiding familiar paths to ensure they were not being followed. Arks mind raced with thoughts of their next move, knowing it was risky. There were very few ways for anyone of his status to exchange a rift egg into credits, and any one of them could be deadly. The one he had settled on was no less dangerous than the rest, but at the very least, he knew what he was getting into. This was their one shot, and he would not let Mino down.
Their winding path got them into one of the commercial districts that could offer the few amenities that lowtowners could afford. Among them, Ark and Mino stopped before a decrepit building with a crooked sign pronouncing “Edwar’s Emporium” to the surrounding street. There were no costumers lining up here, nor were their any displays on the wares that were sold here. The windows were barred, and a sign at the door read: “No solicitors allowed.”
In short, it was a shithole—exactly what they needed. Ark moved forward, pushing the door open into a damp interior with a musty smell. Inside, there were a few displays along the walls, where objects of indeterminate value haphazardly placed in groupings that suggested the owner did not really care if they fit together. Dolls leaned up against hammers and boxes of screws, while an entire shelf might be dedicated to a single lamp that had either stopped working, or was not plugged in. Covering it all, a thin carpet of dust accurately conveyed the shop’s cleaning policy.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
All in all, it was a delicious mess that obscured the true value of this place. At the desk, a scrawny man with a thin mustache and a comb-over, lazily picked at his teeth as Mino and Ark stepped inside. He waved in their general direction and said, “Look around, but don’t touch anything.”
Ark ignored the man’s invitation, and instead stepped up to the counter while Mino stepped up beside him, after crouching beneath a chandelier that hung crooked from the ceiling.
“We would like to pawn something,” Ark said, putting an elbow on the counter an leaning forward. The man stopped picking his teeth for a moment, and eyed Ark out of the corner of his eye, but did not move to face him. Instead he just sighed and said, “I don’t think you’ve got anything worth purchasing, kid.”
“Not even if I know Edwar’s secret?” Ark smiled sweetly. No sooner had he said the words before a knife was at his throat, mustached man’s eyes scrutinizing him carefully. Mino raised his fist, but Ark stopped him with a hand.
“Who are you, kid?” The man said, eyes narrowing, “We’ve never done business.”
“We’re from Respite. The Governess sends her regards.”
With a lick of his tongue, and a quick calculation, the man pulled back his knife and returned to his seat, leaning back. “So, you’re one of Hera’s lost causes, are you? Well, fine, I’ve promised a chance to anyone she sends so I guess you’ll do. What have you got, kid?”
Keeping his eyes locked on the man, Ark carefully reached into the inside of his shirt, where a hidden pocket sewn into the armpit of the loose fit allowed him to hide objects even at the size of a small fist. The rift egg he drew out from inside was bigger than the one he had handed to the officer, and its luster was far deeper.
Carefully, he put the egg down on the counter, watching as the mustached man’s eyes began to sparkle with endless and reliable greed. He moved forward with a start, reaching for the egg, when his hand was seized by Mino in a steel grip. Looking up at the giant, the man looked unfazed by the sheer difference in size between them, and simply said, “I need to inspect it to ensure it’s real. May I?” The last, he addressed to Ark, who had not even flinched when the scuffle began. With a slow nod of his head, Mino released the man, who reached out with a lot more care before grasping the egg and holding it aloft.
After studying ever facet, and from every angle, the man put it back down on the counter and eyed Ark and Mino. “Wait here,” he said, before going into the back of the shop, disappearing behind a curtain.
“You sure we can trust him?” Mino said, quietly.
“Like I said, Hera vouched for him.” Ark kept his voice low, just above a whisper, “Without him, there’s no way we can turn that egg into the money we need.”
“I get it, I get it, but still… Be careful.” Mino looked from Ark to the curtain the man had disappeared behind, and back again, “So… what’s Edwar’s secret, anyway? Is that the man who owns this shop?”
“Oh that?” Ark said, smiling ruefully, “No, it’s not, at least not anymore.” Looking up at Mino, Ark gestured for him to bow down, as he lowered his voice even further. “Edwar is dead—has been for at least a decade. That man is the one who killed him, and the current owner.”
Mino opened his eyes wide and grasped Ark by the shoulders. “And you trust him?”
“No,” Ark said calmly, “I don’t. I trust Hera. She said he wouldn’t try to cheat us if we dropped her name.”
“But… he’s a killer!”
“Yeah,” Ark shrugged, wondering if it was wrong of him to be so nonchalant about it, “But so was Edwar, though he didn’t use his own hands.”
Furrowing his brow, Mino moved back. “What does that mean?”
“He was a VISOR informer, Mino. He sold out his fellow lowtowners for credits; anyone who might have expressed dissent at one time or another. One word from Edwar, and they ended up dead in the streets.”
“That…” Mino chewed on it for a while, before he continued, “It still isn’t right, Ark.”
Sighing, Ark patted his massive friend on the arm and said, “No, you’re right, it isn’t. Still, we can’t change it, the way we are now. For that, we need power.”
“I know,” Mino said, sourly, “I just don’t like it—that’s all.”
Ark silently agreed, as they waited for another minute before the mustached man came back with a device between his hands. It looked like a microscope in form, however, the lens had been replaced with a transparent screen with lines of electronic wiring set into into a metallic frame around it. He put it down beside the egg and looked at the two boys. “Alright, you two. Let’s see just how valuable this thing is, shall we?”
Both Ark and Mino could not help but suck in a breath at those words. They had worked for a long time just for a chance at this, and hearing it said out loud somehow made it that much real. The mustached man grinned at their reaction and placed the egg below the screen, activating the device with a flick of a button.
Getting back his nerves, Ark noted the cobbled-together nature of the device and said, “That’s some old tech. It still works?”
“It’s a relic from Terra itself,” the mustache said, proudly, “Older than Vanguard by at least twenty years.” He looked up at them with a warning gleam in his eye. “That means it’s completely offline, a secure way to confirm whether it is worth what I think it is. You didn’t show this to anyone else, did you?”
Ark shook his head, “It’s been hidden since I found it in the tunnels.”
“Good—that makes things easier,” the man said, distracted by the readings that began showing up on the transparent screen. With fingers dancing upon dials and buttons along the metallic frame of the device, the mustache began smiling wider and wider.
“It is in extremely good condition, with almost no degradation of its exterior. The energy signature suggests it may link to an uncharted realm, rather than a known one,” the man mumbled, jotting down notes on a piece of paper by his side, “The true value may remain unknown until the rift is accessed, however the potential…” He looked up at the boys with a face marred by gleeful greed.
“Absolutely priceless.”
Ark felt his knees wobble at those words. They’d done it. They had actually done it. With this this could apply for guild membership and buy gear. They might even be able to—
“Unfortunately, I can’t buy it,” the man said, cutting off Ark’s imagination by the knees.
“What?” Both Ark and Mino said in unison.
“By that, I mean, I can’t afford it,” the mustache said, shrugging, “This is worth too much, and finding the right buyer, with the right amount of discretion, is going to take at least half a year, if not more. I can’t sit on an investment like this for that long. I’ll be bankrupt before I see any return.”
“Then, what about you pay us what you can now, and the rest when you find a buyer?” Ark suggested, leaning forward with desperation.
“I’m not holding on to a liability like the two of you,” the mustache shook his hand, “Even just transferring funds like that will raise a flag in Vanguard’s systems. That’s enough for a VISOR visit—and not the kind you can buy your way out of.”
Sagging, Ark held on to the counter in disbelief, was this really happening? Were they really failing at this point?
“However,” the man’s careful tone alerted Ark, and he immediately narrowed his eyes, sensing a trick coming, “I may just have a way for all of us to get what we want.”
“How’s that?” Ark said, tone saturated with suspicion.
“I’m guessing the two of you aren’t just out for money; the two of you are searching for a future, am I right?”
A slow nod from Ark allowed the man to continue. “I figured as much. This kind of money might set you up in Lowtown for life, but if you want to go to upwards,” he pointed to the ceiling, to MidCity above, “Then it won’t be enough. For that you need credentials.”
“We know that already,” Ark said, warning the man, “Get to the point.”
The mustache grinned and drew out two paper envelopes from the inside of his jacket, placing them before the boys on the counter.
“These are guild commissions for a riftrun, along with letters of introduction from an anonymous donor to the Explorers Guild. I always keep a handful stocked for something like this.”
“What do they do?” Mino said, eying the envelopes as suspiciously as Ark.
“They will grant you guild training in preparation for a single riftrun, under supervision by a guild representative. If you do well, you will be offered guild membership, alongside your share of whatever you get from the rift.”
“But it’s not guaranteed” Ark said, matter-of-fact.
“If you want guarantees, kid, you’re looking in the wrong place. Even if you had the money to pay for membership directly, the guild won’t accept you unless you can prove your usefulness. This, right here, is your best shot, believe me.”
Ark looked to Mino, who seemed to chew on the information with his jaw. At the end, though, he looked back at Ark and gave a slight nod. Ark turned back on the mustache and said, “Fine, but the deal is still uneven. We’ll need to see some credits.” He forestalled the mustache’s objections as he continued, “I get that you can’t pay us a lot, but you should be able to transfer an acceptable amount. The rest, you’ll have to pay out as a donation; that won’t be as suspicious, right?”
The mustache chewed on the side of his lip, narrowing his eyes. Finally, he said, “A donation to whom?”