Truth looked over the ritual space. After careful examination, looking closely at the micro-engraved gems, the achingly precise line arrangements, the Enochian cyphers written into the floor then filled with mythril; after a detailed forensic examination he reached a firm conclusion.

I don’t have the faintest goddamn idea what goes on in here.

In his defense, he consoled himself, there were clearly big pieces missing. There were several engraved circles, squares and triangles where things were clearly intended to be placed. Whatever wound up slotted in there would likely change the whole operation of the ritual. There were also a lot of lines and spell formations that just ended abruptly, or seemed only half written. Not unfinished- split in half horizontally. Presumably the other half was written on something else. Just waiting to be plugged in.

He tried tracing the lines of magic through their winding and intersecting paths. Tracing them along floors and up over walls. Some of them were etched into wires, run through pipes in the walls. Another one of those things he had heard of, but never actually seen. Usually a heavy-industrial thing, or when you were very concerned about potential interference from atmospheric cosmic rays.

Did… they have them in alchemist towers? He seemed to remember a maintenance journal mentioning that. Mass producing potions and pills required very specific magic profiles, and isolating your enchantments from even minute interference was considered the basics of the basics. High end beastcrafting too. Never relevant in anything Truth expected to work on, though. Streetlights and air conditioners didn’t mind micro-thaum energy density variations. The enchantments were comparatively coarse; they wouldn't even register the difference.

This was something being built to a higher standard. He traced the lines of shimmering silver and tarnished gold as they formed complex interlocking geometries, occasionally vanishing into a wall, floor or ceiling, before reappearing at random somewhere else.

It took him an embarrassingly long time to realize that the ritual room was set over the Prototype lab. The Prototype lab with its three story tall ceiling. Meaning that this second-floor ritual room was connected via direct spell connection with the formations and constructions being made below. His eyes dragged back to the empty center of the room where the locus of the ritual was clearly intended to be.

You couldn’t fit Sally in there. You could fit that weird sarcophagus thing, though. What would that achieve? Truth had no idea. Probably nothing good for Sally. Or, ultimately, him. He looked around the room one more time. He was tempted to try and tamper with the spells somehow, but he really didn’t know enough about what was going on here to do so in a way that wouldn’t be immediately obvious. It wasn’t the time for loud moves. Not yet.

He had personally confirmed the presence of two high levels. Fingers crossed they were “only” Level Eight. If they really were Starbrite mental clones, and if Starbrite really was some kind of next level being, he might not take their “high level” as a threat. Got to feed the dog meat if you want it to guard well. You aren’t really paranoid if they really are out to get you, and the whole damn planet was out to get Starbrite. Had been for decades.

Truth crept down the halls, the tension firmly settled into his guts. He could feel the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck standing alert, waiting for that gust of air that would be the only warning of an ambush. Incisive was up and running as always, but he kept remembering how Dr. Sun managed to get the drop on him. Truth had never really figured out how he managed that.

He could hear his heart beating. The footfalls of the researchers, laborers, soldiers in the base echoing off the white walls and polished concrete floors. Knowing that mixed in to that sound were the footfalls of trolls, or some random person with a blessing or talisman that let them see him. It only took one person. One second. A single glance. And then he was dead. There might be a little noise before it was all done, but he was dead.

Truth found himself diving in and out of rooms almost at random. When the stress got too much, he would shadow someone into their lab, or work station, or whatever. One time, in a very, not-awkward-at-all moment, he found himself standing in the bathroom. Trying to calm himself in, as one of his romance novels put it, the room of ease, as everyone else strained for release.

Agonizingly slowly, he made his way back to the locker room. He found a bench and lay down on it. Just… breathing. In and out. Trying to calm his breath. Trying to fight down the fear. Justified fear, perhaps. But at the moment, not useful fear.

He stared up at the bare concrete of the ceiling, feeling the sweat of the place trying to soak through his pores. Trying to breathe. Trying to remember just how, exactly, he got here.

How does a guy from Towering Heavens Apartments Co. Building Number Thirty Seven wind up trying to drown a secret base inside a volcano in lava? Hoping that his move will be so fast and so deadly, it will kill the Level Eight powerhouses before they can stop it. Which, realistically, they can. They are strong enough to stop a lava flow if it is anything less than geography changing.

It will have to be that destructive, while still giving the three story tall bald twelve year old girl a chance to punch through the thin fabric of reality when the seemingly endless lead curse tablets melt off of her. All while I am inside the base. With the terrifying monsters and trolls and high levels and explosive lava waves. Because, you know, sure. Why not?

I swear every step leading here seemed like a reasonable idea at the time. Sometimes the only reasonable idea. But I don’t think you could call this a reasonable place to be. You wouldn’t call this a reasonable situation to be in. I feel like somehow, somewhere along the way, I made a bad choice. Maybe a few of them. And now I’m here.

Waiting to solve a problem in the dumbest, most violent way I know. And before that, a little light industrial sabotage in the form of bitching with a coworker.

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Truth could feel the metal of the bench digging into his back. It didn’t hurt. Nothing in this room could possibly hurt him by now. But his skin was sensitive enough to count the short ridges stamped into the rolled steel. He could feel the steady cool draft of the air circulation system. It was doing its best in bad circumstances. He felt an odd sort of kinship for it. He would have been the guy fixing it, had he been a little less greedy.

Was that it? The one bad decision that everything flowed from. The choice to take the tall money and join the PMC. Maintenance was right there. Might have had to wait a while for enrollment to open up, but it was right there. Didn’t have to go into the violence trade.

I… don’t think I would have been a good person if I had gone into talisman maintenance. Not that I’m a very good one now, but I think I would have been a bully. Work my way up to supervisor and just… find reasons to fuck with people. Give them shit details for not looking scared enough. Or something. Find reasons to start fights then take them too far. I wouldn’t know about The Prince. I wouldn’t know about King Rat. What I have to overcome.

I would be trapped in the “Real,” same as everyone else. Easing my pain by hurting others. Over and over and over. Not much has changed even now that I do know. Going to hurt an awful lot of people. Again. Mostly because it will make me feel better, broadly defined. But you know what? I really can’t imagine doing anything else. Not really. This seems like the only reasonable thing to do. Under the circumstances.

A world where the rats don’t eat each other. Maybe this will be the first step to that. Or my first step to that. Stepping on an awful lot of my fellow rats to do it, though.

The next shift came piling into the locker room. Mildly moaning about the work, how the heat protection suits fit, how everything stank of sweat despite the cleaning talismans. Truth eventually figured out who the squad leader was. An older man, still fit and strong. Faded tattoos of naked women and roses twining around skulls decorated his chest. An icon of St. Chirguh had faded to blue-green across his clavicle. Broken smile and offered coin in hand.

Truth leaned over and whispered in his ear. “You know, they wouldn’t be asking about how things feel in the tunnels unless they knew there was something to feel. This is management we are talking about here. They don’t give a fuck about feelings, they care about numbers. They want results. Which means they expect you to hear something. They know damn well something is coming and they are using you and the squad to find it the hard way. Now, orders are orders. No getting around that.”

The old man’s head was starting to nod. More firmly at that last bit. He was clearly very used to following orders. Truth knew how that went.

“Orders are orders, and regardless of anything else, the job needs to be done. No shirking. Job needs to be done, and done right.” Solid nods there. “So that means your job now includes finding whatever they are looking for and figuring out how to keep your squad alive. Because that’s always been your job too.”

This got narrowed eyes and a slow exhale. Truth could see the wheels turning in the man’s head, as he started reframing things he already knew.

“Everybody keeps their ears open. Even if it’s hard to hear or see, you can still hear or see something. And once you do, you need to run back to the door as fast as you can. Even if it means not every security check is perfect. Perfect isn’t the goal. If something does go seriously wrong, so what? They are the ones trapped in the tunnel, not your squad. Your job is to find the enemy and keep your squad safe. Everything else is secondary. Important. But secondary.”

That was probably about as far as he could push that. Truth started moving around the room, finding ears to whisper in.

“Did the maintenance guys really fix the air and tem seals? They say they did, but did they really? That’s a lot of suits to maintain every day. Wouldn’t be crazy to think they missed something.”

“Funny how you don’t really get used to the lava. You should. You know how to work in those tunnels. But any little fuckup and you are dead. And there would be nothing you could do to save yourself.”

“They have to be coming through the ground. Can’t do anything to us in the air, doing even less coming in on the surface. So they gotta be coming through the mountain. Through the lava tubes. If it was you running things, billions of earth demons and fire demons would come boiling up out of the lava to hurt you bad before hauling you to Hell.”

“He’s looking at you again. Now. With everything going on. He won’t take a hint. You are about to do something crazy dangerous and he’s not even paying attention to the job. You just want to get the job done, he’s going to get you killed because he’s an asshole.”

Around and around he went, throwing handfuls of paranoia like confetti at a funeral. Nothing rebellious. Nothing against Starbrite. The workers just wanted to do their job, but they were going to get them killed. And “They” could be anyone. Blind trust was not a thing that existed in Jeon. Lots of ears primed to catch dripped poison.

They suited up, and made their way to the checkpoint. A lot of tension in those eyes now. A lot of closed body language. Truth made his way as quickly as he could back to the supervisor’s office. He wanted to see how his experiment panned out. How they would react when pushed. Because Starbrite Security wasn’t dumb, and if he could think of it, they could think of it too. So how, exactly, would they handle problems at the mining site?

He looked over at the supervisor, the light bouncing merrily off the parts of his scalp unprotected by the comb over. Sorry buddy. Your day is about to get really interesting.