I squeeze my way to the front row of the crowd, the convention room packed with people. On the stage, the emcee looks at our furious faces nervously, wondering whether or not to just scrap the event. The crowd begins stamping their feet in unison, a reminder to the organizers that they better not chicken out of this.

"Uh, so I'm sure everyone's really exciting to meet today's guest -" the emcee licks his lips as he speaks, but is quickly interrupted.

"Bring that fraud out here!" someone yells.

"Yeah!" I shout in affirmation.

"So without further ado, I present to you the lead developer of that game we all love -" the emcee hurries through his canned introduction, eager to escape our attention.

"It sucks! The game sucks!" another guy snaps.

"Sucks! Sucks! Sucks!" everyone takes up the chant and drowning out the rest of the emcee's speech.

A bespectacled, morbidly obese man waddles on to the stage and reluctantly accepts the mic from the emcee, who quickly makes himself scarce.

"Hi, guys." the fatso says, "Glad everyone managed to come to this session."

"What're you going to do about that stupid game your company sold us?" I question angrily.

The fatso gestures to a member of the staff and a slide is projected on to the screen behind him.

"Well, that's a good question." Fatso begins his spiel, "As you can see, we are still committed to supporting the game and our customers. According to this roadmap, our patch for the AI problems was released last week."

"The patch doesn't work!" someone shouts, "None of us here can get past the prologue!"

"Uh, well," Fatso begins to sweat, "We're also looking at lowering the difficulty, maybe rebalancing combat as well."

"Are you going to give us refunds or not?" I demand and the rest of the crowd bays in agreement.

"If you look at End User Agreement," Fatso's eyes dart about in agitation, "You'll note that for this product, a full refund will not be granted."

"Bullshit!" the guy next to me gives Fatso the middle finger.

"I had nothing to do with it!" Fatso blurts as he looks to the emcee for help, "Its publisher policy!"

"Then get the publisher out here!"

"Yeah!"

"Please, we understand you're all upset," Fatso says evasively, "but this isn't helping! Give us time to fix the game and -"

"Boo!" the crowd roars and a can of soda is sent flying at Fatso, staining his shirt. The emcee runs up to grab Fatso, hustling him to the exit as security tries to cover them.

"Don't let them get away!" I shout as everyone pushes forward, brawling with the rentacops hired by the developer. Someone hands me a chair and I start swinging away vigorously -

.......

"Adam, are you alright?" there's a nudge to my ribs, rousing me out of my half asleep state.

I grunt, wiping away the drool dribbling out from the corner of my mouth. Shifting the pack of supplies on my shoulders, I blink owlishly, taking in the sight of the collapsing Rift portal in the distance. Right, that Rift we were in was an unstable one. The portal would only stay open for a week before disappearing for months. No wonder the Supervisor was kicking our ass, telling us to march at double quick fast speed.

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"Its cold." I complain to no one in particular, turning away from the Rift portal winking out of existence and leaning against the wall of the transit station.

Snow falls gently on our column as the last of General and Support Department brings up the rear, hauling whatever we could salvage from the trashed camp. My ears prick up as the monorail line above us rattles, signaling another pack of adventurers, refugees, fortune seekers and mercenaries departing to Crossroad City. My eyes trace the outline of the train as it zooms off into the horizon, toward the metropolis that looms in the background. A convoy of buses and ambulances from the city rolls along the broad highway that links the transit station to civilization.

"Winter Rift is acting up again." James idly comments, pointing his chin at the largest rift in the vicinity, "Sucks that the portal is stable, would be nice to have a summer or spring here."

"Hnh." I grunt wordlessly, observing a group of adventurers stumble out of Winter Rift, the cold wind literally pushing them out.

As James remarked, Winter Rift is stable, meaning that the portal never shuts down. The physical size of the portal might not be anything to write home about, but Winter Rift belches out several nuclear reactors worth of exotic radiation twenty four hours a day. The radiation, as far an anyone can tell, is harmless to humans, but also wrecks havoc on the local climate. Crossroad City has been plunged into an eternal state of winter, thanks to that rift.

That might be a huge problem, but Crossroad City was actually founded partially because of Winter Rift. Most rifts were dead ends, self contained miniature realms. Permanent rifts however, played by different rules. They were actually connected to multiple points in the real world. Meaning you could effectively use the rift as a travel system between continents. As long as you could survive what's lurking inside of course.

That being said, ever since air travel became untenable thanks to the periodic ion storms, using a permanent rift to get about was the fastest way to get where you need to be. And Crossroad City had easy access to two such rifts, Winter Rift and the Eternal Sea Rift. Neither rift was rated as high danger, so a good deal of commerce passed through both of them. And that also meant Crossroad City became home to all the major guilds worth talking about, and then some.

Everyone wants a slice of the pie, but really, most of the time, you scrabbling about for crumbs. My paycheck is proof of that fact.

"How you feeling?" James asks solicitously.

"Better. But real drowsy." I grumble, "What did you guys hit me with?"

"At least you're not flying into a psychotic rage." Sam comments as he plays with his phone, "Your body is no longer insisting that you're in danger. A bit more rest and you should be able to completely reset."

"Your supervisor was pissed at you though." Adam smiles at me, shaking his head, "You were sound asleep for an entire day while we were tearing down the camp. I only woke you up once everyone was ready to march."

"What happened to Latour anyway?" I ask, looking around, "I don't see him here."

"Captain Latour left earlier, just after your fit in fact." Sam looks up from his phone, "I managed to treat some of Captain Excelsior's wounds, but he needed a hospital. Captain Latour performed the escort with a team of Combatants."

"I really lucked out there," James throws his pack on the powdered snow and sits on his haunches, "Captain Latour wanted me to join the escort, but I managed to get out of it by saying Adam here needed to be watched."

"Thanks." I offer some gratitude, not that it costs me anything.

"No problem." James shrugs, "You quietened down very soon after Captain Latour left, so watching you was a milk run."

So the fit stopped after Latour left with Robert Excelsior in tow. Sam's treatment most likely had nothing to do with it. So the question is, why is Robert Excelsior causing my freak outs? I'm not a coward, at least I hope not. But that fear I experienced in the camp, it was elemental, undeniable. The emotion sprang from the deepest depths of my soul.

And then there's the halos I'm seeing. Not everyone has them. Just some people, like Sam and James. Latour too. I've got no explanation for what's going on here and I'm not about to admit that I'm seeing things. The last thing I need is to be forced into a psych eval and be declared cray cray.

"I would not have allowed you to leave early." Sam scoffs at James's remark, "You're still under observation as well, remember?"

"Yes, sir." James responds with a playful salute as Sam turns away with a huff, both hands crossed over his chest.

The convoy of vehicles comes to a stop in front of us and Sam joins the other medics in loading the seriously wounded on to the ambulances. I join the queue of General Department staff carrying the backpacks on to the buses and once that job is done, I disembark and head toward the transit station.

"Hey!" James shouts from the crowd, "You're not coming with us?"

I shake my head, "I've my own apartment. Taking the train back home."

"Lucky." James grins lopsidedly, "And I remember someone complaining about not having enough money."

"I don't have enough money." I scoff without any real heat, "And my apartment is crap. You stay at the Guild dorm?"

"Sam and I do." James agrees, "Never saw a reason to move out. Getting to work is easy, food is provided."

"Good deal. I just like having my privacy." I start walking to the station's entrance, "See you."

"Bye Adam!" James gives me a hearty farewell and I fire off a lazy wave before boarding the station's escalator. Its a heartwarming image. Fluffy even. James is very much a nice guy, isn't he?

Just ignore him never smiling with his eyes.