Piercing flames shear through the metal obstructing the door like warm butter. It takes Ursula all of four minutes to clear away all the metal, which may or may not have been apocalypse-made, then tosses the flamethrower-torch off the platform. With a few flicks of her finger, she nods to herself and rears back to charge the door.
Magic condenses around her shoulder as she crashes into the door, forcing it open with a rusty squeak and a rush of stale air mixed with the smell of propellant. She stumbles into a desk and catches herself before she can fully fall over, turning back to me and sitting down on it as if she meant to do everything.
“That was damn close.” She laughs and rolls her shoulder. “Almost face-planted into potentially important information. Judging from the smell of this place, nobody’s been in here for a long time–which raises the question of how our client got information in here specifically for us.”
I nod in agreement and look around the room. It’s mostly filing cabinets and desks, but there are a few old CRT tvs and a bunch of computer monitors hooked up to a power grid that definitely didn’t survive the changes so far. No one file or cabinet calls out to me at first, but maybe that’s just a ‘me’ problem. So I pull out my Class Card to get another opinion.
“Does anything in here feel significant to you?” I type as I lean down and pretend to look through the bottom drawer of a random cabinet.
Pearl hums in thought, then crosses her arms while looking upwards. “I can feel something in here, but I don’t think it’s the information you’re looking for. Honestly, I don't even know what it is I’m feeling. It’s close to those big thick screens; you should have Ursula check it out.”
“Good call. Keep an eye out, and if you see anything that might be useful, hit me up.” I finish typing, then send my Class Card away and turn to Ursula. “There’s something near the CRTs. I can’t make out if it's dangerous or not, so be careful around them.”
“Gotcha.” Ursula gives me a thumbs-up and beelines for the CRTs. She stops less than a foot from them and runs her fingers down a dusty screen. “Huh. This isn’t dust.”
I glance up from the cabinet, which I started seriously looking through at some point. “What is it, then?”
“Some kind of powdered… something.” She frowns and brings her fingers close to her mouth. I don’t see what happens next, but the sound of tongue on skin viscerally disgusts me. “Salt? How’s there salt on the screens, but nowhere else in the room? …Gambler?”
She turns around with a raised eyebrow, then busts out laughing when she sees my expression. I guess I must have something pretty damn entertaining etched onto my face, since she doesn’t even react to the spark of light that flickers from the CRT screen to the center of the room. Salt seeps in from the open door like a slowly rising tide, all making their way to the chunk of light to condense into a form around it.
I wave a hand to get Ursula’s attention and steel my expression. “Ur…Mercenary. Something’s happening. Pull yourself together.”
“I can see, I can see.” She waves me off with one hand while wiping her eyes with the other. “Damn, I needed a good laugh.”
“You… know what’s happening here?” I say in disbelief. “Did you study the hell out of the Greenland krarig when I wasn’t looking?”
“No. Well, yes, but no.” She shrugs and confidently walks up to the growing magical salt crystal. “I did study the hell out of the other krarig, but there wasn’t anything like this reported for it. What we’ve got here is a salt elemental trying to form itself, but since we don’t have the same magical atmosphere as the other world, it’ll die out the second the krarig stops making this magical mist.”
She sighs and pats the chunk fondly. “Poor thing. So desperate to be born, and it doesn’t even realize that it’s going to be dead in less than a week. But hey, at least this gives us some insight into what we’ll be finding as we go deeper into this bitch. Now c’mon–help me make this door airtight so we don’t have to fight in our info space.”
I shake my head and stand up straight, then join Ursula in walking back to the door. She gestures for me to hold it shut, which is easier said than done thanks to the winds, but my enhanced body manages it just fine. Instead of reaching for her briefcase for some kind of sealant, she just stands on her tiptoes and runs a finger along the not-quite-perfect seam between the door and the frame. Thick magic flows from her fingertip like industrial sealant, and after a quick trace around the entire frame, we’re sealed in tight.
Well, the edges are. There’s still the huge hole she carved into it, which she fills with expanding foam that hardens in the blink of an eye.
Ursula dusts her hands off and looks back at the elemental core, which now floats uselessly in the center of the room without any more salt to suck up. “Done, done, and done. Unfortunately that made this place airtight, so we’re gonna have to make this quick-ish. I’ll set up Architect’s equipment; you keep looking for the stuff our client alluded to. It can’t be that hard to find if she wants us to find it.”
“...Yeah.” I say slowly as I scan the room full of documents. “I’ll… do that.”
----------------------------------------
Files bleed into files. Words bleed into words. Even with Pearl’s help, scanning this place for one specific file is like trying to find a certain piece of hay in a haystack. Obviously I checked all the desks first–since they’re where someone would put something they wanted us to find–but nope. Just personal reports and day to day statistics about running an oil rig.
I sigh and pinch the bridge of my nose as I look away from yet another earnings report. “Mercenary, you almost done setting the stuff up? I’m starting to go cross-eyed here.”
“Almost done!” Ursula calls from amidst the old computers. “Just gotta get this little generator cranking, then we’ll be in business.”
Generator? I glance over my shoulder to see what she’s talking about, only to come face-to-face with the salt elemental core. With a grunt I push it aside to try and see what Ursula’s doing, but if the things she’s installing are any bigger than an old computer tower, I sure as hell can’t see them.
I shake my head and slide the filing cabinet closed. There’s no point randomly sifting through all these files if we’re on a time limit. “Question; if we can’t find those files, how screwed are we?”
Ursula’s head pops up over the blockade of electronics. “Not much at all. I’ll be able to get a map to what we’re looking for, and Architect will get the specifics on our client while we’re working here. Why? You think they’re gonna be impossible to find?”
“Not technically impossible.” I say as I walk over to get a better look at what she’s doing. Which looks like she’s sticking a bunch of differently coloured squares to the computers while fiddling with a battery pack. “Please tell me this is some magic bullshit that’ll actually help us.”
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“It’s some magic bullshit that’ll actually help us.” She says without missing a beat. “They’re all devices Banker commissioned from someone who lives in the resort that lets Architect use her buildings’ effects remotely. Once I get the field properly set up, it’ll be like she made this room.”
I tilt my head to the side. “And?”
“She’ll be able to use it like the room she’s sitting in right now. Back at the resort.” Ursula grunts as she twists a dial on the battery pack with gusto. “Which is a hyper-advanced surveillance suite that’ll let her read this place like an open book, while also feeding that info to us without any magical interference.”
“Ah.”
Ursula rolls her eyes and pushes the dial into the battery pack. “That’s underselling it by a factor of about a thousand. If you still need specifics, she’ll be able to monitor the water and air around us for about five hundred miles. Perfectly and undetected since the origin point is in this magical mist. She’ll also be able to guide us through the innards of this beast with pinpoint accuracy. And she’ll have access to whatever was on this database, which she’ll skim through when we’re not spelunking the rig.”
“I get it.” I say as I hold up my hands in defeat. “That was an ‘ah’ of understanding, not a sarcastic one. But I get how they’d sound the same.”
She stands with a snort and brushes off her knees. “Banker’s the master of sarcastic ‘ah’s. Just like he’s the master of pretending to understand something so the conversation can move on. Makes it really annoying when you’re six levels deep into an explanation and he’s stuck on level three. Or god forbid, level one. Here.”
A pair of earpieces like you’d see in a spy movie are thrust directly at my chest. I take them and wiggle them into place, where they sort of melt into my ears like the mask did to my face. Ursula nods at me and puts in a pair of her own, then opens her hand to reveal a small sphere of crackling blue magic.
“Once I connect this, we’ll be connected to Architect. She’ll hear everything we say, which is a little flaw in the system, but necessary so she can alert us to random danger around us. So… try not to be too loud or hiss a bunch when you talk. It really bothers her.”
“I’ll only yell when it’s blatantly appropriate.” I say seriously. “Anything else I should worry about?”
Ursula purses her lips in thought. “She’ll see us as blips on a screen. Even if she’s got an up to date map, there’ll be things we can see that she can’t, and vice-versa. Respect that, and know that she’s got our best interests in mind. Even if she might get openly frustrated with us, try not to do the same. And… well, if I can think of anything else, I’ll tell you when it comes to me. Line’s connecting in three… two… one.”
Magic arcs from Ursula’s hand to each of the devices she set up. They crackle and whir like a bowl of rice cereal placed on top of an overworked hard drive as the magic does its work, searing random letters and numbers into the previously flat surfaces. Once they’ve all been filled with writing the magic jumps from the devices into the battery pack, sending the dial Ursula cranked spinning like a turbine engine. Noise shrieks to life in both of my ears for a split second, and Pearl winces in discomfort at the intrusion.
“That’s a lot of magic.” She murmurs to herself as she rubs one arm. “It almost reminds me of the communication corps from… a while ago…” She trails off somberly, then puts on a melancholy smile. “Maybe March will show me how she did it when you know it’s safe enough to show me to other people.”
Maybe, Pearl. I have a feeling March would love to have someone to gush to about her interests, but another feeling tells me it’d have to be the right time. Pearl nods to herself as if she’d made up her mind about something, then takes a seat in something and settles in for what’s probably going to be a very long haul.
“Hello? Can you two hear me?” March’s voice comes clearly through the earpieces at the same time. “Is there any interference?”
Ursula shakes her head. “None I can hear. Gambler?”
“None here, either. We hear you loud and clear, Architect.”
“That’s good. Mercenary, do I have to look for client files first?”
“Client files and anything that could give us a hint on what we’re going to find in this thing’s bowels.” Ursula says as she steps out of the computer bank. “We’ve got a few hours before we have to get moving, but I’d like to get a scouting run done before we call it a night. How long do you think you need?”
March hums in thought, and I can hear her drumming her hands on her knees. “I have full administrative access, so it depends on how they labeled everything. And if the client left information on the server at all. It’ll be thirty minutes before I can give you a confident answer.”
“That’s just fine by us. If you need any code words or time stamps, check for anything on coins and stuff specifically added after this place got abandoned. If even that comes up with nothing, we’ll just have to do it live.”
“I hate doing it live.” March mutters to the sound of a mechanical keyboard clacking. “We do it live way too often. Sometimes even when we don’t have to do it live. Do you promise me you’re going to let me scour the system before you do it live?”
“We promise.” I cut in before Ursula can say anything. Because it looked like she was going to say no. “If you can’t find anything specific, can you use whatever tracker you’ve got on us and look at this room for anything out of place?”
“Oh, I already did that. Aside from the monster you’re both ignoring, there’s a few signs of magical intrusion. One’s on the far left from the door, and the other’s in something that looks like a bunch of old TVs.”
Ursula and I both snap to the TVs, then share a look that’s both self deprecating and apologetic. That’s where the damn elemental came from, and neither of us had the wherewithal to take a closer look. She summons a hand-length knife that looks like it’d be at home under a soldier’s gun, then points at the left side of the room with it in a silent suggestion. Before I can say anything she’s on the TVs like a repairman with a grudge. But quieter.
“Oh, something’s happening. I hear a bunch of smashing?” March pauses, then laughs. “Nevermind, I think I can imagine what’s happening. Gambler… are you alright?”
I frown and look over my shoulder. The salt elemental is still hovering uselessly between two desks. “Yeah? Why?”
March hums nervously. “It kind of looks like there’s another person right on top of you.”
What’s she…
Pearl.
Somehow, these machines Ursula set up can sense Pearl where nothing else could. I keep the shock off my face and bend down to try to find whatever March alluded to on the left, but internally, I’m shitting bricks. This is not how I wanted this to be revealed. The consequences could be… unimaginable. I need a cover story.
“Weird. Maybe it’s… because… I’ve got another Class Coin on me.” I nod to myself and pull open the bottom drawer on a filing cabinet like any other. “Could that be causing it?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen this happen before. Maybe I should take a look at this stuff after we’re done. It’s never bugged out before, but that doesn’t mean it’s completely immune to it.” March murmurs to herself along with the heavy clacks of keystrokes. “This could be a really dangerous flaw in the program. You’re super duper sure there’s nobody else there?”
I plaster on a false smile and nod. “Just me, Mercenary, and the salt elemental.”
With some hums and clacks, March seems to accept my excuse. Pearl’s gone deathly quiet–even more so than usual. Probably because she doesn’t want to risk March hearing her voice. That’d kill her cover in an instant. I keep that fake smile on as I sort through the files, my fingers touching old manilla and my eyes scouring over small tags on each and every one. Most of them are nothing different from what I’ve seen so far; reports, documents, and everything else that goes with running an oil rig.
Something else catches my eye the moment I pull open the middle drawer. A splotch of bright blue plastic in a sea of manilla. Something so obvious that I’d have to be completely blind to miss it. There’s no label on this particular file, but if it isn’t the one we’re looking for, I’ll eat a ghost quarter.
I pull it out and flip it open. A familiar woman’s face stares up at me from atop a pile of documents. She’s wearing a fancy dress that hugs her toned frame and shaking hands with someone out of frame that’s probably important, but I’d recognize that face anywhere. Even if she isn’t wearing a crop-top hoodie and running from a dragonjet.
God, I hope I’m not the catalyst for all this bullshit.