They walked up his driveway in black suits. Handguns sat on their hips, and the woman carried a vellum folder in her right hand. Grey watched from the roof of his home.
He had fended off several roaming monster groups in the past week and cleared most of the Dungeons in the area, their Keys sitting comfortably in his Inventory, and concrete barricades now spotted even his neighborhood. The authorities had driven by days ago, using megaphones to direct the evacuation of his neighbors to a nearby safe area. He suspected it was the closest military base.
Now, they were here. They were different from the two that had watched him the other night, and from their movements, he suspected they were Returnees much like himself. The government worked fast.
One was a man with dark skin and black hair that was shaved close. His features were sharp, and he had the distinct movement of a fighter, his legs never crossing or spreading too far apart.
The other was the woman. It was upon her that description failed. Grey was no connoisseur of beauty, but even he could see that there was something to this woman, something that transcended symmetry of the face and whiteness of the smile. She seemed even more dangerous than the man. Her hair was a warm chestnut, neither wholly brown nor red. She had attractive features, thought it was her eyes that stood out, their color so light a brown they seemed almost golden. Perhaps the most intriguing was the air she carried about her, as though she were an edge so sharp even gazing upon it might cut him.
Grey looked anyways.
“Sir,” the woman said, pulling a badge from inside her jacket. “My name is Agent Wells. I am part of the ARA, an agency devoted to the prevention of and response to what we are referring to as Anomalies and the monsters spilling out of them. We received word from a pair of our agents that indicated you might be interested in the same thing. Would you be willing to talk to us?”
Grey hopped down from his spot on the roof, causing the man to flinch and drop his hand to his gun. The woman did not move, a calm smile on her face. “I would.”
“Very well, then. May we go inside and discuss this?” She inclined her head to his house.
He nodded. “Yes, but it was robbed while I was in the Tutorial.”
He showed them inside and found a few intact chairs and a mostly intact table for them to sit around. The man declined the seat, however, remaining standing by the door. Grey nodded. Intelligent.
Agent Wells laid her folder on the table between them and opened it, sliding a few papers over to him. He glanced them over, his face showing no expression. They were reports about his family and their current situation.
“As you can see,” she said. “Your family is alive and evacuated to a safe area. At the moment, relocating them here would be an issue. As for the other part of your terms, becoming an agent of the ARA would give you access to any Anomaly within the area.” She slid over another paper.
It was a map. “District Twenty-four?” Wait, that looked like…
“That is what we are referring to the city as now. It has been overrun by monsters. Over half of the population is either missing or dead by best estimates. It is the twenty-fourth major city in the United States to become so. If you were to become an agent, that is where we would send you, provided you were willing, of course.”
A warm feeling ran through Grey. Yes. The Dungeons that developed near such a large population would be at least Silver-level, if not Gold. He glanced up at the woman.
“I accept.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Do you come from a battle iteration?”
“A what?”
“My apologies,” she said. “That’s what we are referring to the Tutorial scenarios that involved a lot of combat as. Though we don’t have full knowledge of the number of iterations, we suspect they correspond to latitude and longitude lines from information disseminated in the iterations.” She traced a line through the map that bisected District Twenty-four and his own town. “And as you can see, your home sits on the border of two iterations.
Multiple Tutorials… Well, he had guessed as much. The others had to have been somewhere. “Yes, I did.” He made a mental note of the line on the map, feeling another piece of his plan slide into place.
“We are in need of eager defenders. If you are ready, we can take you to headquarters now. I will draw up the papers, and you will need to answer a few questions. Then, you will be officially assigned to District Twenty-four.”
Grey closed his eyes and adjusted his plans. His timetable had just moved up. “That is… amenable.”
He sat in the backseat of a black SUV. His hands shifted to his daggers frequently, but in truth, he suspected no foul play beyond some intrusive information gathering. He had already prepared a series of half truths regarding his abilities and knowledge. No, his thoughts strayed more to the city. District Twenty-four.
He had always known he would end up there. It was inevitable. He would need a place to gather Evolution Points quickly, and his town was too small for that. What interested him more was the fact it was divided into two iterations.
He had seen that word in the desert.
The first in an iteration to gather a Diamond Key will unlock the Evolution of the Archons. Twelve Golds, they say, to make a single Diamond.
Unless he was misinterpreting, several people would be able to receive the Archon’s Evolutions. That was unimportant at the moment, however. How did the woman know of iterations? Was she testing him? Did different Tutorials receive access to different information? The woman at the Dungeon had seemed to know little in comparison. Also, he had not seen anyone in his iteration. What did that mean?
He frowned, watching ruined homes and groups of police officers and Returnees manning barricades pass by through the window. There were a lot of variables at play. More than he had originally thought, even. He would not change his plans without something more concrete, but his goals changed slightly.
Some time later, they had arrived at the city building of his town. It seemed relatively unmarked by combat, and heavy guns loomed over the balconies of the white building. A barricade of sandbags and steel wire sat in front of the building’s steps.
Agent Wells led him through. “Your town has now become one of our temporary bases of operations since it hangs on the border of two iterations,” she said over her shoulder. They walked into a bustling office, men and women in suits bent over desks. Phones rang. People talked. It almost seemed normal if he squinted his eyes.
Several men and women stood around the room in armor, both the medieval and modern kind. They wore swords and guns, and their steps made heavy clicks on the granite floor. Wells led him to a small office in the back of the town hall, where she gave him a few papers to fill out and then left for a moment. He settled into a seat by the desk, staring up at the fluorescent light for a moment. He had counted twelve fighters, not including those that might be on the floor above. Tough odds. He gave himself a forty percent chance of escaping at best.
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When she returned, a man followed her. He was bald and wore a serious expression, his nose looking as though it had been broken several times. Grey counted at least three weapons scattered around his person.
“Grey, this is Wyvern. He has an Evolution that can detect lies, and he will sit in on our interview. I will ask you a series of yes or no questions.” She gathered a stack of papers in front of her and then looked up at him once more. “You may elaborate as much or as little as you’d like. If at any point you don’t want to answer a question, you may say ‘next,’ and your answer will be recorded as a blank. Before we begin, is there anything you would like to ask?”
He shrugged. “Not until after.” He imagined he would receive better answers if they trusted him first.
“Then we will begin,” she said. Her pen traced a line on the paper before her. “Is your name Grey Michael Shor?”
He frowned. “Yes,” he said.
“Were you transported to a world known as the Tutorial on September seventeenth of the year 2020?”
“Yes.”
“Did you select an Evolution from the Archon’s shop?”
“Yes.”
“What was it?”
His face remained impassive. “That is not a yes or no question.”
She looked up at him, her brow furrowing. “Are you refusing to answer then?”
“I agreed to answer yes or no questions. Please stick to your own guidelines,” he said.
She wrote something down. “Noted. Have you ever killed another human being either before, during, or after the Tutorial?”
“No.”
“Were you in a military or law enforcement career prior to the Tutorial?”
“No.”
“Have you come into contact with any other Returnees since arriving on Earth?”
“No.” He kept his eyes on Wells, but he read Wyvern from his peripherals.
“Alright, I have just a few more. Do you harbor any ill or violent intentions towards anyone in this building or the organization known as the ARA?”
“No.” Not unless they got in his way.
She smiled. “Last one. Do you agree to serve as a member of the ARA and protect the population of the United States against the Anomalies?”
“Yes,” he said. For now.
“All clean, Wyvern?” she asked.
“Yes,” the bald man said, his words sounding like they’d been poured from his mouth.
“All is in order, then.” She stood, and Grey followed a moment later. “Agent Shor, I formally invite you to the defense of District Twenty-four.” She offered her hand.
He met her strange eyes and grasped her forearm instead. Many Evolutions activated through the palms, his Minor Telekinesis included, and he didn’t like the way those eyes looked. They were a hawk’s eyes. He had caught her, though. Wyvern hadn’t been able to detect his lie. She was bluffing.
“When do we leave?” he asked.
“Today. My team is ready. You were the last lead on our list.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Your team?” That… complicated things.
“Yes, mine. Is that a problem?”
He took a moment to compose his words. “I was under the impression I would be working independently.”
“I think you should see the situation before deciding that, no?”
It felt as though he were being outmaneuvered in some way. “Perhaps,” he said. The day had only started, and Grey felt as though the first act of the Game was already beginning.
Part One of the Ultimate Plan started.
——
Earlier that day,
Jessica looked over the blonde woman with a discerning eye. The man known as Wyvern stood behind her, his broad frame filling the small office with an intimidating presence. This was her third meeting of the day, and she had another yet to go. That one seemed… interesting, at least.
“This is Wyvern.” She smiled at the blonde woman, shaking her hand firmly. “His Evolution allows him to tell the difference between truth and lie,” she lied. It was only the second week of the apocalypse, after all. Categorizing her comrade’s abilities was slow going.
“Okay,” the woman said. She looked nervous, but she had an edge to her, one that lurked in the calluses of her hands. As expected of a Returnee.
“I’ll ask you some questions, but don’t worry. Most of them will be a simple yes or no.” She shuffled her papers for show. In truth, she would remember everything said here, but it helped people to loosen up if they thought her normal. “Is your name Haley Andrade?”
“Yes, it is,” she said.
“Alright. Haley, have you ever killed another person before, during, or after the Tutorial?”
“I have not.”
Wells drummed her fingers against the wooden desk. “And have you encountered any other Returnees since leaving the Tutorial? We’re recruiting, as you can see.”
“I have, actually.” The woman looked hesitant to continue. That could be fixed.
“Oh?”
“Yes, I had tracked a group of monsters to one of those… Anomalies. They surrounded me, and then all of a sudden a man was there, killing them. He wore strange armor, and he carried a spear that seemed to be made of bone of some sort.”
The words tickled a part of Jessica’s memory, and she nodded. “What did he look like, if I might ask? Did he say his name or anything? Anything odd or distinguishing about him?”
Haley sighed. “I’ve got a bit of a headache, but I’ll do my best. He couldn’t have been very tall, maybe average height at best. He had light brown hair, and… brown eyes, maybe? He wasn’t particularly good looking, but he wasn’t ugly either. He was just odd. He said his name was the Player and called the Anomaly a Dungeon, and when I tried to follow him into the Anomaly, he said I should leave because I might not make it out alive. It sounded like a threat almost.” She shrugged. “He didn’t strike me as someone who would work with the ARA, at any rate.”
Wells rummaged through her stack of papers before sliding a photograph over, one pulled from the website of a mid-sized tech company in the region. It was the photograph of a man that fit Haley’s description. His name was Grey Shor, and his was one of the houses the FBI had monitored in the days leading up to the Genesis. Much like her own, though that had more to do with her uncle’s influence.
“Yes, that’s him,” Haley said, suppressing a yawn.
Wells closed her eyes, bringing the man’s personality evaluation to mind.
Grey’s school records show a pattern of academic excellency. Many of his teachers, colleagues, and superiors describe him as closed off and extremely intelligent. His household shows signs of minor stressors, including a dysfunctional parental marriage and a troubled, abusive older brother. Subjected to the strangeness of the Tutorial, it is this investigator’s opinion that Grey might show unstable mental patterns.
Evaluation: Highly intelligent and dangerous.
Recruit: No
They had written that before he had confronted the investigator’s assigned to watch him. Many of the other known Returnees had been sent invitations to join the ARA, but those deemed unstable like Grey were only watched. From Haley’s words, she knew that was not enough.
She finished the interview and dismissed the girl after assigning her to an evacuation team. The government had made many, many response plans, but none of them had prepared for what was happening. Only the ARA, formed in haste by her uncle, was mobilizing in a way that might be helpful, but it would be months before they had a functional system up. Who knew where the world would be by then?
She would do her best to maintain order, nevertheless, and now she had found a variable, one that held secrets that might be important to the world at large. If she could just turn him to their side…
Besides, she found him sort of cute.