The destroyed coins are heavy in my hand as I set them down on the table. I pull my hand away slowly, revealing them as Gisela’s expression shifts once more from suspicion to confusion. She reaches for one without pausing to think, holds it close to her eye, and looks at me through the hole in the coin.
“That’s all that was left.”
She doesn’t say anything. All she does is put the coin down, and one at a time, picks up the other two to inspect them just like the first. Some kind of dour mask falls over her face as she seems to recognize something from the third coin, and when she places it back on the table, her entire mood shifts.
“I don’t know how I can convince you of this, but I didn’t do this. Nobody in my company did.” She pushes the coins back at us. “Aside from you, we sent out a few groups to try and find the coins. All of them that came back reported straight to us, and we had ways to confirm that they didn’t steal or damage any coins.”
“So it was the Preservation.” Ursula sighs. “I was kind of hoping it was you. Or, y’know, you could be lying to our faces right now. Convince us.”
Gisela grits her teeth. “I can make the transcripts of the meetings available to you. Other than that, all I can give you is my word. And… maybe an explanation of why I want these specific coins in the first place. Dora, you can come in now.”
A section of the wall slides open from behind Gisela. And a woman that looks exactly like her–down to eye colour, hair style, and even the makeup. The only difference I can make out is that her expression is much more nervous and shy compared to Gisela’s calculating confidence.
“This is Dora. My identical twin sister.” Gisela gestures for Dora to take a seat next to her, and security fluidly molds to protect two people instead of one. “We’ve been preparing to take class coins for almost five years, and with the shift in magical powers in the world, we can’t wait any longer.”
Dora nods shyly as she takes her seat. “We can’t trust other organizations to train our people any more. Without powerful class-wielders, we won't be able to get any more footholds in any countries, so we need people we can trust.”
“Ourselves.” They both say at the same time.
I find myself looking between the pair. There’s no moles, no scars, no tattoos to differentiate them. Considering that neither of them has showed me unbridled terror so far, I can’t really tell which one of them I ran into before I killed the dragonjet. And… if she’s actually important… did someone send the dragonjet after her? Is that even possible?
No; I know it's possible. The Preservation proved that with the krarig and the subwyrms. The question is if the Preservation was responsible for that particular attack. I’ll have to get Call to look into that.
“So… which one of you actually talked to us?” Ursula glances between the twins with a frown. “Because you were pretty hostile over the airwaves. Not the kind of person we want an extended business relationship with.”
“That would be me.” Gisela readily volunteers. “If you’re looking for an apology, you’re not going to get it. What I can offer you is an explanation.”
She presses her palm against the table, and a scanner flickers under her skin. Part of the wall behind her, including the door that had opened to let Dora in, brightens with projected images. I instantly recognize a picture of the krarig taken from the air, but there’s no magical interference from any kind of storm.
“As you already know, we purchased the rig from its previous owners a few years ago. Our plan was to make it a training and storage facility somewhere where we weren't strangled by the Preservation or any government’s rules.” She pulls her finger down the scanner, and the image shifts to the surface of the krarig. One without any magical bullshit weighing it down. “We were told that we could stop it from being claimed by the apocalypse if we put machines in a specific pattern, and for a few months, it seemed to work.”
Another swipe switched the picture to a scene I’m much more familiar with–albeit with less salt. A few grains of the stuff floats in the camera here and there, but the vast majority of the changes are in the metal structure.
“So someone bullshitted you and screwed you over.” Ursula cuts in. “When did you put all the coins in? Did everything go to shit right after that?”
Gisela shakes her head. “We brought the coins in on day nine, and we started having issues on day one-hundred and fifteen. By day one-hundred and ninety, we had to evacuate the rig, and in doing so we left all the remaining coins behind.”
“It was a really hard decision.” Dora says quietly. “When we put the safe in the rig, there were thirty-two coins. We used eighteen of them, and we left the other fourteen behind, even though we really didn’t want to.”
“She’s understating it a little, but it’s the truth. After that we started hiring people to get the coins for us, since we couldn’t risk our own personnel, but we had no success.” Gisela scrolls through a series of images that show the krarig further developing, then stops on one that looks a lot like what we saw. “When we were out of options, we had to choose which horrible path would be the least bad for us. Which major organization that we couldn’t intimidate did we want to risk contacting to get our coins?”
I jab a thumb at myself. Both Dora and Gisela nod in confirmation, but Dora’s the one who speaks.
“We had to choose between you, the Preservation, HuSt, and whichever government held claim to that stretch of sea.” She motions for Gisela to change the picture, and it shifts to a simple piece of paper with red tally marks beside each of the names she just listed. Everyone else has more than a dozen, but the resort just has two. “Choosing you was the easiest choice. You take a small but significant fee, have a near flawless record, and aren’t associated with anyone we thought was a threat.”
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
Ursula leans back and clicks her tongue. “So we’re the safe choice. Not sure I like it, but I get it. So what’re the two marks against us?”
“Raw, unadulterated power, and influence.” Gisela states grimly. “We have nothing we can lord over you, and not a single one of our employees can hold a candle to the strength you’ve showed. When we chose you, we knew we would have to trust you to uphold your side of the deal, since we couldn’t force you into doing anything more than that.”
Dora lifts her eyes and shyly glances at me. “Talking to you confirmed our fears, but it also convinced us that we made the right choice. Because, for some reason, none of you want anything. I don’t personally get it, but I have to respect it.”
Ursula waves off Dora’s comment. “Oh, no, we want things. Lots of things, actually. It’s just that you can’t give us any of them. No humans can, really. I’m about done hearing your reasoning, and honestly, I believe you. You’re greedy, ambitious, and you’ve obviously got goals you’re not sharing with us. Probably because they’d make us go ‘hell no, we’re not helping you’.”
I find myself nodding along in agreement. “Yeah. I do have a few questions, though. How about you, Ursula?”
She grins, as if she’d been waiting for me to ask that. “‘Course I do, Shelby. First one; do you two still want us to escort you to whatever the event is?”
“I do.” Gisela says immediately, then turns to her sister. “What about you?”
Dora hesitates for a moment as she looks between me and her sister. “I guess so. Even if we tried to switch now, we couldn’t find anyone better.”
“Yeah, I love being the default choice. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.” Ursula says flatly. “Cool. We’ll work out the details after this. Question two; what coins did you have inside that vault? And why ask us specifically for the two that happened to not get destroyed?”
The twins share an uncertain look, then Gisela starts to talk. “Honestly, I don’t know. We could’ve gotten extremely lucky with the ones we have left, or someone could have intercepted our plans somehow and found out which ones we were planning on using.”
Which ones they were planning on using? How long have they known they were going to do this? And why bother with hiding those two specific coins in the first place if they knew they were going to use those coins?
“What was the plan if things didn’t go wrong?”
Everyone looks at me. I don’t flinch, or even feel pressure from everyone’s gazes. Pearl nods in agreement with my sentiment, which is enough for me to confidently say that this is important.
“The plan was this, except out on the rig.” Dora says slowly. “What else would the plan be?”
Gisela shakes her head. “No, I know what she’s insinuating. The truth is that we were overconfident. We thought we could control the krarig’s development, and for months, we pretended everything was fine. Then, one day, everything wasn’t fine and we couldn’t do anything about it.”
Ursula nods. “Sounds about right. So, the coins that were in the vault; I’m just going to cut to the chase. Did any of them have Fate or Worth as primary stats?”
“Fate, yes. Worth… I don’t think so. I’ll check.”
As Gisela paws at the table to check, Dora nervously keeps glancing at me. When our eyes meet she shyly looks away, but the same thing happens when Ursula meets her eyes too. I’m almost certain she’s the one I saved from the dragonjet, not Gisela, which would make sense. The CEO of a company wouldn’t be out somewhere random like that, but it isn’t so unbelievable that her sister might be investigating something weird.
“Dora, have we ever met before?”
Her eyes briefly meet mine, and she looks down to avoid eye contact. “Not before today, no. I did hear you talk to Gisela once, though. Does that count?”
…Oh. Huh. “No, it doesn’t. So… I didn’t save you from the dragonjet?”
She shakes her head. “That was Gisela. I don’t know if she wants me to say why she was there, so I’ll let her answer that if she wants to.”
“It’s not a secret. I was there because I wanted to buy the city.” Gisela sighs. “When the evacuation signal went out, I thought I could go and offer to repair everything and get G.I. a base of operations further up north. Although I hate to say it, I’m only alive right now because Shelby saved me.”
So I saved the one that definitely won’t thank me. Or do anything nice for us. Hell, I’m probably the reason she put the ‘get coins’ plan in motion. But I guess it's better than some phantom corporation losing its head and potentially becoming another Preservation or HuSt.
“Ah, no, there weren’t any Worth classes in the vault.” Gisela says with a frown. “I could’ve sworn we had one, but the last inventory we took said we didn’t. Dora, do you remember what class it was?”
Dora shakes her head. “Sorry.”
“Hrm. That’s… bad.” Gisela motions for one of her bodyguards to come close. “Scour the databases for any evidence of us ever having a Worth class. If someone altered our memory to make us forget, we need to know. Put it as priority one.”
The bodyguard nods. “Yes, Ma’am. What secrecy ranking?”
“Zero.”
With one more nod, the bodyguard rushes out of the room and disappears. I watch them go, and when they open the door, their body shimmers slightly and their clothes change to a researcher’s lab coat.
“Is that normal?”
“The clothes change? Yes, it is normal. Security zero means not a single word of it leaves this room.” Gisela drums her fingertips against the table and eyes the class coins. “You’re probably wondering why we picked those specific coins. Now that there’s a chance our memories have been altered, I’m starting to wonder, too.”
Dora raises a hand to her mouth and gasps. “Do you think they made us think we wanted the only two that were left?”
“We can’t cross off that option just yet.” Gisela locks eyes with Ursula, then with me. “There’s a chance you two just became the only people whose memories we can trust. Shelby, when you saved me, you destroyed a dragonjet. What was I wearing that day?”
I raise an eyebrow. “A crop-top hoodie. That’s all I remember.”
Gisela stares at me. “That’s all you remember?”
“Yeah.”
“...That’s annoying.” She mutters quietly to herself. “I was wearing that, jeans, a shoulder bag, sneakers, a mesh crop top, and… more. I remember hiding in a building when the dragonjet descended on me, and then it just… left.”
Her gaze becomes even more intense. It almost smolders on me, and I feel the need to shrink away in… embarrassment? Why am I embarrassed?
“I saw you kill it. Someone who stood to gain absolutely nothing from saving me, and who didn’t even try to get anything out of the act.” Gisela continues, her voice growing increasingly intense as she speaks. “You terrify me, Shelby. Enough that you scared me into finally accepting that, more than anything, I want to take a class of my own and go to the other world. No matter what it costs me here.”