The situation in the hangar was basically the same as they had left it. There were close to twenty people sitting on the floor, walking around the hangar, or talking to each other quietly in small groups. It didn’t appear as if any other participants had pushed into the rift after them.

Most looked over at Hudson, Cor, and Vince with curiosity as they pushed the wheelbarrow over to where the stack of example resources lay on the floor.

Hudson caught a few murmurs from the crowd, and several walked up for a closer look. “They’re back.” “They survived.” “Wow, they look dirty and exhausted.”

One of the more curious, a short, wide middle-aged woman with long black hair, a sharp nose and critical eyes came up to them as they collapsed on the floor to rest.

“What was it like, on the other side of the rift?” she asked.

Hudson was too tired. He didn’t particularly care to answer, but thankfully Vince was eager and willing to regale her and the rest of the other participants with descriptions of their exploits.

He did, however, leave out the details of where they’d found their crystals, and Hudson’s ability to use a breathing technique.

“And after we finally got back to the cave we’d originally arrived at, we just pushed back on through and voila, here we are,” Vince was saying. “A wheelbarrow full of maseki, as easy as you please.”

Hudson was only half paying attention, but that last word caught his attention. Maseki? What was that? Was Vince talking about the crystals? He didn’t have time to ask Vince, though, as his attention was caught by something else.

One of the cheaters stumbled through the rift portal, breathing hard and covered in blood. More people rushed through the portal in a flood, some bloody and bruised, but all of them breathing hard and harried.

The first guy fell to the floor. His left arm was bleeding profusely from a deep puncture on his bicep, and he had a few more light scrapes and bruises on his hands and legs. One of his companions ripped his shirt apart, bent down and wrapped the bleeding arm up tightly with a make-shift bandage.

Hudson did a quick count. Only nine of the cheater group had come back through the portal, and Clara wasn’t one of them.

None of the other participants were paying any attention to Hudson and his group any more. Everyone was quiet; the only sounds were the labored breathing of the participants who had just run back through the portal.

After a tense few minutes there was still no sign of Clara.

She wasn’t his friend. He barely knew her; she had tried to beat him up and kick him out of the ring this morning. Why was he so nervous?

Hudson walked up to the group of dusty and bloody participants that had just come back through the portal. He thought he recognized the one who had seemed in charge of the group – he had a small scar over his left eye. Average height and build, but he gave off an intense aura.

Hudson swallowed, his throat dry. He’d walked all the way over here, he might as well go through with it.

“What happened out there?” Hudson asked.

Predictably, the man ignored Hudson and continued wrapping a piece of cloth around his thigh. He had a bloody cut – shallow, but long – down the outside of his leg. About half of the group had similar types of wounds on their arms and legs.

“Were you attacked by something? We didn’t see anything when we were in the rift.” Hudson tried again. If there were aliens on that rift that attacked participants… then Hudson and his group had been in a lot more danger than they’d realized.

No response from the man with the scar, although his frown might have deepened a little further.

It was frustrating to be completely ignored. The man was sitting on the floor, dealing with his wounded leg, so Hudson decided to crouch down and meet him at his eye level.

“What about Clara? I didn’t see her come back,” Hudson asked.

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The man’s frown deepened considerably and he stopped wrapping his leg. He looked Hudson directly in the eyes.

“She was weak,” he said slowly, dry and bored. “She didn’t follow orders, and she was left behind.”

“What?” Hudson said, in shock. They left her behind? In an alien, interdimensional rift? Because she was… weak? And didn’t follow orders?

She certainly wasn’t weak, at least compared to Hudson.

The man stared at him with contempt. “You dare to question me?”

He shook his head and “tsked” at Hudson. “You are not fit for this trial, or for the path of the cultivator. If the director did not expressly prohibit it, I would remove you myself, here and now.

“The weak follow the strong. That is the way of the world, and that will never change. I am strong, and you are weak. You will always be weak. It is a stench that you will never cleanse, even if you make it past the first hurdle and clear all the ichor from your blood and bones. But it is your nature, and I do not fault you for that. Why should the mountain fault the mosquito?”

The man paused slightly and cinched the cloth bandage on his leg tight.

“You have not yet learned your place, but perhaps you will, unlike Clara. And if you do, you will know the comfort of the weak; of being a part of something greater, of contributing to the strength of another, and you will be rewarded accordingly for it.”

The man stood up abruptly and brushed past Hudson, who fell back on the floor from his crouched position in shock.

The man’s words hadn’t been angry, or even hateful. He was supremely confident. Arrogant. Bored, even.

Who did he think he was?

Hudson could barely wrap his head around the man’s worldview. But at least one thing was clear – he had left one of his people, Clara, behind in that rift, because she had not followed his orders.

He didn’t know why he cared. All of these other participants were in some ways his enemies; his competition for the trial, at a minimum. And the “cheaters” in particular seemed like they were out to push the other, disorganized participants around.

Perhaps he was channeling some of his own fear at being left inside the portal when it closed. No one knew what would happen – except maybe the cheater group and their scar-faced leader did know. Maybe it wasn’t so bad?

Hudson shook his head, stood up, and looked around. Vince was talking in hushed whispers with the middle-aged woman who had approached them previously. Cor was standing next to their haul of crystals, looking over at the pile the cheater group had brought back. Theirs was considerably larger – about as twice as large as their own.

He walked over to where Cor was standing.

“One of their group didn’t come back,” Hudson said.

Cor nodded. “I noticed the same.”

“I asked their leader there – at least, I think he’s the leader, the one with the scar on his forehead – and he said he left her behind. Because she was weak, and because she didn’t follow orders.” Hudson could barely get the words out, but he felt like he had to tell someone. Vince was busy talking to someone else, so he picked Cor.

Cor let out a long whistle. “Well, stick me in a freezer and call me a popsicle if that ain’t the coldest thing I’ve heard in a while.” He sucked on his teeth and shook his head.

“What’s gonna happen to her, you think?”

Cor squinted a little bit, sucked on his teeth some more, and then shook his head. “Not sure there sonny. But I will say, looking at all of the others she was with, banged up and bloody, whatever is going to happen to her probably already happened to her.”

That made sense. Perhaps she had been wounded fighting off alien attackers, angry at human cultivators stealing their shiny crystals. Perhaps she had been wounded so severely she couldn’t walk or run, and then been left behind.

“How much time left until the rift closes, do you think?” Hudson asked.

“You’re not thinking of going back in there, are you?” Cor asked him. “Not sure that’s a smart move.”

Hudson hadn’t been thinking of doing that, not really, at least not until Cor had asked him. Why would he? She wasn’t in his group, and she wasn’t one of his friends. About the only thing he knew about her was her name.

“No,” he said, shaking his head. But at the same time, he was asking himself, why not? He was shocked and angry at the whole situation. First, for an unseen, robotic-voiced director with mind-bending teleportation powers to make them go mine crystals in an alternate dimension. Secondly, for a group to so callously cast aside one of their own, and not for any good reason.

It rankled him, and someone should fix it. But there was no one else to fix it.

Hudson’s guts started twisting into knots. He didn’t want to go back through that portal, not when it was due to close so soon. And certainly not when he now knew there were dangers in that portal, dangers that had wounded other participants who were stronger and could fight better than him.

But he didn’t want to sit and watch until the black rift in reality faded away, forever sealing someone – a living, breathing person whose name he knew – to die on an alien planet.

Hudson stared unblinking at the rift. His legs were unwilling to move. Cold, hard logic said he owed nothing to the woman still on the other side of that rift. But a small part of himself was screaming this was unfair; her friends should be looking out for her, not abandoning her; and if it was him on the other side of the rift, he would be desperately hoping someone would come for him.

The rift flickered. Hudson startled as a bloody and bruised Clara fell through the opening onto the cold steel floor of the hangar. She had made it back in time.