Sara walked toward the river. She decided that if she could cross that without getting close to the central waterway, she could avoid Mosk. Avoiding a fight seemed the way to go at the moment.

She realized that Tim was right. A compass would be useless without something to draw the needle to magnetic north, and in this place, you could see the center of the world from almost any spot.

She wondered who had thought a disc would be a good design for an underworld.

The levvy attacks bothered her for some reason. Tim indicated that no one knew why they happened. The checkerboard went to war when they did happen. There had to be a way to stop them from occurring before they reached the central part of the rim.

She didn’t have an idea herself. Maybe they needed a bigger imaginary weapon than anyone had ever pulled out of the armory so far.

It wasn’t her place to fix the systemic problems around her. She wanted to get back to her kids. She wasn’t going to stay around and become part of the problem while trying to fix it for other freelancers coming behind her.

Joe and Tim seemed to have become veterans and unable to move on from the lives they had carved out. She imagined Tim could cross the wall at any time with his dancing potato trick.

The fact that the Light only controlled two gates into the central hub didn’t seem right either. It was creating a bottleneck of freelancers except for those who spawned on the other side of the rim and were lucky enough not to get drafted by the Dark before they reached the gates.

She considered that Joe and Tim might be using her as a proxy against the three lords in their way. She didn’t put it past them. Solving their problem with a goat didn’t seem out of place if they had been on the rim a long time.

She decided it wasn’t something she would do. She didn’t like other people getting involved in her problems. Using them as tools seemed just as bad.

Sara reached the near bank of the river and looked around. Nothing seemed out of place, but she expected some kind of lookout. Maybe Mosk didn’t care if someone crossed the river as long as they didn’t cut back toward his central holding area.

He might not like to use minions, and preferred a hands on approach to things.

She didn’t see a ferry close by. Should she go to a Light bubble and cross there? That would be better than trying to cross where she could get in trouble and not have any help.

She decided to take the safer course. She could see the lights from the factory that Belsin had built in the center of his holding. She could cross and sight in on that to reach the edge of his bubble and head for Voit’s.

She wondered how much time was passing in the real world while she struggled with this. She cursed not having a car. There had to be a better way. Why didn’t the Light provide a plane service since they obviously had planes?

She wondered if that was against their rules. You worked for the Light, or you didn’t. And if you didn’t, you didn’t get a plane ride.

It would be nice if they could set up an airport service to the Tower. That would clear the freelancers out of the way faster than anything.

But that wasn’t the Light’s intentions.

They needed freelancers as deniable assets and proxies against the Dark. They couldn’t break their own rules and engage with the Dark until a lord decided to invade one of their bubbles. Open warfare wasn’t going to be declared if a freelancer blew something up doing something else.

Sara preferred open warfare. It seemed a little cleaner than sending people to their deaths for minuscule gains.

She reached the edge of the bubble and stepped over in the light. A guard dressed like the first border guard she had met watched her from a lookout tower further away from the river. She waved at him as she went to the water.

“Hold on,” he called out. He slid down the ladder and approached her. “What are you doing?”

“I need to cross to get to the wall,” Sara said. She pointed at the inner wall in the distance. She took a moment to wonder how tall it actually was before turning her mind back to the problem at hand.

“You can’t swim across here,” said the guard. His face had taken more of a beating than the first one. “The fish will eat you alive.”

“The fish?,” asked Sara.

“The fish,” confirmed the guard. “They like to congregate here before heading

downstream to the edge of the rim.”

“Is there a bridge I can use?,” asked Sara.

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“There’s one a few miles down the road,” said the guard. “It leads into Cabol’s racing land.”

“You know a bridge right here would be better than one leading into another Dark land,” said Sara.

“I don’t make the rules,” said the guard. “I just tell you what they are.”

Sara looked down the river. Did she want to chance meeting a fourth Dark lord on top of the three she was trying to avoid. She should have grabbed a rope or climbing thing in the armory when she had a chance. Then she could swing across the river with that.

She knelt on the grass and pulled out the bag of plaques and tube with a light on the end. What did they do? She touched one of the buttons on the side of the tube. A humming answered her experimentation.

It didn’t do anything obvious. Maybe it needed context to work.

She put it back in her pocket and then spilled the octagonal plaques out on the ground. They looked the same size as a wallet, maybe a small cell phone. Carvings of animals covered the front of each.

She picked up the rooster and wondered how it worked. She shook the stone. She squeezed it. She looked around. The guard seemed shorter now.

“You’re floating,” said the guard.

“So the stones let you float,” said Sara. “Who knew?”

“This one lets you float,” said the guard. “The others might let you do other things.”

“How do I turn it off?” asked Sara. She dropped to the ground.

“All right,” said Sara. “So these are more useful than I thought.”

“Don’t use that wand around anything with good hearing,” said the guard. “The sound reaches into the ultrasonic. It will drive them crazy when you turn it on.”

“Thanks for the head’s up,” said Sara. She tucked the bag of stone cards away, but kept the rooster in her hand. “Don’t work too hard.”

She concentrated on the plaque and she lifted off. She flew across the river slowly. She didn’t have to cross the two bubbles on foot to get to Voit’s territory now. She could reach the wall in a matter of hours.

She could fly over the wall if she could avoid the turrets on top.

A fish jumped out of the water and bit her in the leg. Other fish followed. One latched on to her arm, opening the hand holding the plaque. She headed for the river and the feeding frenzy waiting for her to hit.

Reflexes caused her to grab for the stone octagon. She snatched it out of the air with her other hand. More fish jumped for her with maws filled with needle teeth. She had to get to the other side of the river before they chewed her to pieces.

The sound of water boiling reached her ears as she headed for the ground.

She hit and rolled. The fish biting her continued with their chewing even away from the water. She had to do something about that.

She pulled her extending blade and sliced the heads away from the bodies. The fish continued to bite. She needed to do something drastic to fix the mess she was in.

She pulled the blaster and put the muzzle right up to the fish head biting her leg. One shot stopped the chewing. She switched hands and did the same with the one hooked to her forearm. She collapsed in relief, sharp pain dropping to an ache.

Did Mosk’s zone have a hospital? She needed to get fixed up if she wanted to

continue. She was losing too much blood, and that had to be a cause of death and losing yourself. How did she stop the bleeding before she bled out.

She pulled her jacket off and cut the undamaged sleeve along the seam with her sword. She cut it in half and wrapped one half around her leg. She wrapped the other around her arm.

That helped but it was a stopgap. She needed something better.

At least she knew she could fly if she had to, but it also made her a sitting duck for anything on the ground that could reach her. She should have thought of that.

She dug out the bag of plaques and looked them over. What did the other eleven do?

She tried them out one by one. Eyebeams and flame throwing breath and speed and strength were great for what she wanted to do. Splitting in a good and evil side and being able to project your mind didn’t seem that useful. Invisibility and changing shape would help her sneak around unless everyone could see through the changes. Feeling healthy and healing up hurts worked wonders on her arm and leg.

The rat was the only one she couldn’t figure out. She used it on the river, but nothing happened that she could see. She figured there was some condition that wasn’t met. She put it back in the bag and tucked the sack through her gun belt.

She had picked better than she had thought with the weapons from the armory. If she had known what she had when she fought her way out of the hospital, she would have thought better of her chances against the zombies.

Now that she knew what the plaques could do, she needed a strategy to take

advantage of their powers. They should help her get through Voit’s bubble and to the gate in the wall.

She wanted things to be easy. She doubted they would. The most she could expect was not to have to deal with Mosk or Belsin before she got to the last bubble on her route.

Sara checked herself over, feeling recharged and healthy again. She cut the damaged sleeve off her jacket before pulling it on as a vest. She stamped her feet and started walking along the edge of the Dark bubble to where she had to cross.

She should have asked Tim if he had some idea on what the plaques did. She took a breath and pushed the idea away. What’s done was done. She had to keep moving forward.

The lagoon fell behind her. She didn’t see any signs of the dark lord, or any of his possible minions. Maybe he didn’t chase anything not close to the water.

That was good for her.

She reached the edge of the bubble where two Light bubbles and Belsin’s bubble all touched together. She could skirt his territory altogether to reach Voit’s. The nature of the checkerboard made that easy enough to do.

Voit’s bubble was directly behind the Light bubble she stood in. She saw walls at the edge of his territory. Apparently he didn’t want freelancers trespassing. She realized that wall was blocking any access to the Segregation Wall gate. And the tower of his keep took up the whole bubble.

How did she get in to get around to the gate?

Maybe the Light border guard would know.

Sara looked around as she cut along the edge of the Light bubble. She noted that Belsin’s factory pushed up toward Voit’s wall. Could she use that somehow?

This would be so much easier if she knew what she was doing.

She found a trio of guards watching the two connected bubbles. They had set up a forward base made of concrete dividers and tent walls. A mounted cannon inside a wall of dividers pointed at Voit’s tower.

“How’s it going?,” asked Sara. She gave them a small wave to show she wasn’t dangerous.

“Freelancer,” said one of the guards. He had his hand up to his helmet so she didn’t know if he was talking to her, or to the radio she knew they had.

“That’s right,” said Sara. “How can I break into that tower?”