He found his feet moving toward the chaise almost of their own accord, his head laying back before he stopped to take stock of the situation.
This is fine, right? Silver wouldn’t have brought me here if I was in danger.
But he had promised not to let me out of his sight…
The woman settled into the nearby chair, a subtle smile playing across her lips as she caught Terry’s eyes.
“Shall we begin?” she asked sweetly. Her voice had a calming effect and he felt his doubts drain away.
But a question had been ringing in his mind.
“Where’s my—” He cut off, realizing he’d almost asked where his grandfather was. That wasn’t information he should have been divulging. He quickly amended his words. “—my sponsor.”
She tilted her head, her lips parting subtly. “Ah, your sponsor is in the next room over. He’s waiting for us to finish up.”
Terry furrowed his brow, sitting up. “Can I see him?”
The corner of her lip twitched, and he almost would have thought it had turned down in a frown. But it was there and gone so fast, he couldn’t be sure.
“Protocol dictates that we clear new arrivals first.” She arched a single brow. “Like I said, I’m happy to return you to your home, Terry.”
He bit his lip, wondering if he was being obstinate for no reason. He didn’t want to waste his opportunity to see Terraform’s Market. “No, that won’t be nece—” He clipped his words, his eyes flaring for the briefest moment before he brought his expression back under control.
I never told her my name…
She sighed, making a tsking sound with her tongue. “I had hoped to do this the easy way.”
Terry pulled up his System chat and frantically attempted to send a message to Silver. But as he pulled it open, a notification was already waiting for him.
Silver has requested a private channel. Accept?
He quickly accepted and a series of messages filtered into view.
> [Silver]: Terry, where are you!
>
> [Silver]: We’ve been betrayed, stay on guard. Reveal nothing!
>
> [Silver]: Terry! Accept the damn channel invite!
>
> [Silver]: I’m coming to you, stay safe, Terry! Please!
His stomach clenched as he read over the messages. As fast as he could, he typed out a response.
> [Terry]: Grandpa, hel—
Before he could send it, the woman’s aura surged out like a tsunami, dampening his senses, slowing his thoughts. He forgot what he had been doing, the chat laying dormant to the side, his message unsent.
He blinked four times, slowly, ponderously, his body feeling light, numb.
“My apologies, Terry,” a voice said. It took him a few seconds to turn his gaze toward the woman sitting across from him. She’s pretty, he thought dimly. “I abhor the necessity.” She shrugged casually and he felt himself falling in love. “But Skip gave me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”
Terry couldn’t follow the conversation, but that didn’t bother him for some reason. He just wanted her to keep talking. “Oookaaay,” he replied, the word dragging out of him one long syllable at a time.
“Thank you for your cooperation, hon. I promise to be quick.” She leaned in and he felt himself pulled into her eyes. His mouth gaped open but he didn’t care. “Who is the S-ranker named Silver and what is his relation to you?”
He processed each word at a time, not quite putting the question together until several moments had passed.
He’s my grandfather on my mother’s side. His na—
Everything in his mind short circuited, his thoughts coming to an abrupt halt.
I shouldn’t tell her that, he thought. That might be compromising information.
It was another set of several seconds before he was able to articulate the thought.
“I don’t think I should say.” He felt bad telling her no, but they could still be friends, right? She had called him a child, but maybe in a few years, when he was stronger, she’d see him as a—
Her face dropped, her lips setting tight with disappointment. He felt his heart flutter with fear—fear that he’d ruined any chance they had of a relationship.
“I’m sorry—” he tried to say. But the words came too slow and she cut across him.
“Don’t you like me, Terry?” Her lips pouted, her face turning away in disappointment, revealing the graceful length of her jaw. “I thought maybe we could have been something…”
We can—wait. His mind bucked against him, fighting the fawning words forming on his lips. A moment later, everything crystallized in his thoughts.
“I hope we can,” he replied, feeling like his heart was breaking even as his conviction formed. “But that’s not my secret to reveal.”
That felt right, despite the crushing pain deep inside his chest. Maybe grandpa doesn’t mind if I reveal his name and our relationship. But maybe he does? I need to talk to him…
“Can I see him?” he asked, latching on to that thought desperately. “Maybe I can talk to him and get you what you—” He cut off as she shook her head. Was that frustration or annoyance he was reading on her face?
“Impressive control,” she said with a hint of surprise. He felt his skin flush at the compliment, a smile forming on his face. “I had hoped not to damage your mind, but you’re proving a tougher nut to crack than I’d assumed.”
What…? He had difficulty parsing those words. Damage my mind?
Before he could coax his sluggish thoughts into unpacking those words, stabbing pain spiked behind his eyes. The hold over his mind drained away, replaced with the horrible realization that he was being attacked. He marshaled his aura, trying to force her back. But her power was overwhelming, pressing against his own with a weight that felt like it would bury him.
“Don’t fight,” she said softly. “Your mind will shatter if you fight.”
He gritted his teeth, condensing his aura around his mind as tightly as he could. But it was no use; he felt like a toddler wrestling an adult. She was knocking at the door of his thoughts, preparing to break it down with a finality that he knew would mean brain death.
The entire room shook with an ear-splitting boom, dust and soil filtering from the ceiling like an earthquake had shaken it loose.
The hooded woman looked up in surprise, the invasion of his mind relenting blissfully. Her eyes went wide with fear, even as another boom seemed to shake the room.
In spark of clarity, he realized that this was his chance. He jumped up from the couch and raced for the door.
He didn’t make it halfway before her aura returned with a vengeance, wrapping around him like a vice grip.
“Get back here!” she shouted and his feet obeyed against his will. He stood before her, his entire body trembling as he resisted the compulsion. “Stand in front of me. I’ll have to use you as a human shield.” She growled, the frustration turning her face ugly. “Dammit, Skip had one job. Now everything’s fucked.” Standing up, she turned him to face the door. “Now, do exactly as I say and nob—”
The wooden door exploded out, smashing against the back wall with a splintering crack. The woman screamed in surprise and Terry felt the hold over his mind clench instinctively. His limbs were full of lead as Silver appeared in the doorway.
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“You okay, kid?” His tone was light, but his face was a dark storm, his eyes fully opaque with silver magic.
Terry tried to respond, tried to dive away, or hit the floor to clear his grandpa’s line of attack. But neither his body nor his mouth responded to his desperate need.
“Don’t come any closer!” the woman shrieked behind him, her lilting tone completely erased by the sheer terror. “I’ll shred his mind if you so much as blink!”
Silver snarled, his teeth bared. “There’s nowhere you can hide, little girl. I’ll find you and I’ll make you hurt like yo—” He cut off as the woman screamed, his eyes going wide with surprise. At the same time, the hold on his mind disappeared. Belatedly, he dashed away, turning to see what had happened.
A sheathe of stone encased her head, wrapping around her like a granite helmet. His eyes tracked up where a large divot of the ceiling was gone. It took him a moment to realize that the earth itself had dropped the stone from above, covering her head in an instant.
She clawed at the stone helmet, her aura cut off. Only her shrieking voice escaped, echoing terribly inside the rock.
“Please, please!” she pleaded. “It was Skip! He forced me! I didn’t want to but he—” A choked scream sounded from beneath the rock. A terrible squelch echoed, like a foot stepping through a rotten melon. Her hands futilely clawed at the edge of the stone. A half-second later, they went limp, her legs giving out. The stone helmet continued compressing inward, squeezing the space until blood and viscera oozed out the bottom.
The hardwood floor was dyed crimson as Terry looked on in horror.
A voice broke through the terrible fog infecting his mind. “I hope you know this doesn’t square us.” Terry turned to see his grandpa at his side, his face still a mask of fury. At first, Terry thought Silver was talking to him, but a moment later, the stone above began to morph, seeming to melt as it dripped down to the floor below.
In a handful of seconds, it had formed into a humanoid shape made of pure rock. A face materialized on its head, features simple but undeniably human.
It’s a golem! He’d read about them on HeroWatch, seen the sims and the stills, but seeing it in real life was something entirely different.
The stone stacked seven feet high, its joints grating against each other like the ponderous sound of a dying earthquake. The floor practically shook as it bent at the waist into a deep bow. Its voice rumbled inside Terry’s chest.
“My deepest apologies, Silver.” The golem turned toward Terry. “And to your friend. It seems my business partner has made a grave miscalculation.”
Silver’s lips set, his eyes still opaque balls of metallic fire. “And where did our old friend Skip get off to, huh?” He indicated the body still twitching before them. “Did he get the helmet treatment?”
The golem spread its hands wide in an eerily human gesture. “Alas, S-ranked Travelers are tricky to pin down. He escaped.”
“Convenient for you.”
Terry whipped his head toward his grandfather, sensing the annoyance and the barest hint of a threat beneath his voice.
“On the contrary,” the golem rumbled. “The sanctity of my Market has been violated. Until the betrayer is captured, my name is sullied.”
Silver grunted, crossing his arms. He looked around, taking in the dead Hypnotist and the shattered door before his gaze finally rested on Terry.
“You okay?” he asked softly, his eyes narrowing in concern.
Terry thought about that question. Am I okay? Well, someone invaded my mind under false assurances, then threatened to shred it when I resisted. Then I was held hostage—even if briefly. His eyes trailed down to the woman who he’d been so enamored with a minute earlier. Sticky red viscera edged toward his shoes and he hopped back.
No, I’m not okay, he realized a moment before he spewed his latest meal over the hardwood floor.
He expected Silver to console him, maybe pat him on the back like his mom would have when he was sick. Instead, the man indicated Terry with a nod, turning toward the golem.
“Let’s talk compensation. The mental trauma alone…”
The golem grumbled. “Of course. Follow me.” It turned toward the far wall and started walking. When it seemed about to collide with the wall, the rock melted away, revealing a hallway made of smooth-cut stone. Faint light emitted from its mouth—some sort of bioluminscent moss.
Terry wiped at his mouth with his sleeve, keeping his eyes very purposefully up. But the afterimages in his mind threatened to spark another episode. Silver put a hand around his shoulders and met his eyes.
“Seriously, you okay?”
His eyes almost pulled back to her body and he had to fight to keep from glancing down. “No.” He shook his head and met Silver’s gaze. “But I will be.”
His grandfather nodded, his lips set tight. He glanced at Terraform’s golem, then back. “Want me to send you back? I’ll negotiate everything you need and be back—”
He cut off as Terry was shaking his head. “No.” He cut his gaze up toward the golem. “I’m here. I want to see the Market.” He raised his voice. “Unless Terraform doesn’t think he can guarantee our safety?”
The golem bowed deeply from the tunnel threshold. “I will protect my guests with my life,” it rumbled. “In my domain, nothing and no one will touch you.”
Terry considered that proclamation for a moment, then turned to Silver. “I’m good.”
His grandfather searched his face as if looking for cracks in the facade. But Terry set his lips and returned his look confidently. After a moment, Silver shrugged.
“Okay, let’s go, then.”
The moment his feet touched the narrow passage, the stone seemed to shift. At first, he thought maybe Terraform was betraying them and images of the tunnel squeezing him like a lemon played across his mind. But a moment of frozen panic passed before he realized that the stone was simply shuttling them down the tunnel like a conveyor belt, expediting their travel.
They moved in silence, traveling that way for another couple of minutes before the moss light gave way to the bright white of fluorescents at the end of the tunnel. A silhouette passed across the lights, stopping in front of the tunnel as they approached.
The stone ferried them out into a large room and Terry had to blink his eyes to adjust to the bright lights.
Standing before them was an Asian man of medium-build, his hair greying at the temples, a short-cropped goatee ringing his mouth. He was dressed in an impressive three-piece suit but was otherwise subdued in his appearance. There were no rings or jewelry of note and nothing to indicate that they stood before one of the richest men alive.
Though Terraform wasn’t an Original, he was one of the oldest S-rankers and had made a name for himself running the world’s most legendary market. And over the man’s shoulder, Terry could see just why it had that reputation.
A floor-to-ceiling window extended across the entire far wall, revealing Terraform’s Market below. The space expanded out before them, a thousand feet across and a thousand feet wide. A tiered series of rooms were cut into the large cavern on three sides, and Terry could see into most of them from their vantage point. Stone pillars rose up into the space between, supporting bridges that cut across the cavern in straight lines. The bridges themselves appeared to be made of pure glass wrapping up to completely enclose pedestrians as they crossed. Terry could easily imagine that vertigo was a real problem for those not used to traveling that way.
Despite the wonder of the glass bridges and the honeycombed nature of the three walls, the real eye catcher was below it all. A pool of shifting lava served as the floor of the cavern, illuminating the Market from below with its yellowish-red light.
Terraform caught Terry’s wide-eyed gaze, glancing over his shoulder before looking back with a soft smile.
“What do you think of my Market, young man?” His voice had the slightest accent to it, barely noticeable, such that he couldn’t identify its origin.
Before Terry could put into words just how dumbstruck he was by the display, Silver cut across his reply.
“Yeah, yeah, it’s great.” Terraform pursed his lips in displeasure, but didn’t interrupt. “Don’t try and dazzle us with your fancy volcano setup. What the hell happened and why did your people try to take me and my companion out?”
Terry’s eyes went wide at that, not quite realizing that Silver had been in danger as well. “They tried to kill you?”
Silver flicked his eyes toward Terry, but kept his attention locked on Terraform as if he expected a double cross at any moment.
“Oh, you bet they did,” he growled. “Found myself teleported into solid stone. Turns out I’m denser than rock.” His brow raised pointedly, as if in warning to Terraform. “Then Skip tried to teleport me into the lava, but I managed to break free from his hold.” He took a small step toward Terraform—subtle, but full of deadly intent. “So I’ll ask again. What the hell happened?”
Terraform’s face remained placid, his hands steady by his side. “Of course, you could kill me now if you’d prefer. I brought you face-to-face understanding the risks. But if you’ll allow me to explain, I believe we can come to an understanding.”
Terry opened his aura sense, wondering if he could intuit the man’s intentions through that. As soon as he did, his mouth gaped open.
The aura extending from Terraform seemed thin on the surface, but a thousand tendrils reached out into the surrounding stone like the webs of a spider, pulses of power visibly traveling back and forth along their paths.
Silver seemed not to notice or care about the staggering aura exuding from the man. He grunted agreement and nodded for Terry to follow.
Terraform flexed one of the many tendrils and the stone beneath their feet shifted. Terry flinched, expecting an attack, but Silver just continued his approach. The stone lifted from the ground, forming a desk and a chair with its back to the Market. Two more chairs formed opposite the desk—presumably for Terry and his grandfather.
“Please, sit.”
Silver took the stone chair on the left, settling back and crossing his legs. Terry approached a bit more hesitantly, feeling completely at the mercy of the man who could mold stone with his mind. He hovered over the chair, wondering if he could just stand. But Silver gave him a subtle nod, his eyes flicking to the seat.
With a sigh, he sat down, cringing as if he expected the stone to swallow him up like the Hypnotist from earlier. But as he settled his weight back, he found the stone chair surprisingly inviting, molding to his weight more like a water bed than a slab of rock.
Terraform rubbed at his temple and sighed—the first crack Terry had noticed in the man’s elegant facade.
“Firstly, you both have my deepest apologies for the impingement on your wellbeing—”
Silver scoffed. “Impingement. That’s a mild way of puttin’ it.”
Terraform nodded wearily. “An unacceptable lapse, and one that will not happen again.”
Terry felt himself out of the loop, still not clear on exactly what had happened. “Um, can someone explain? All I know is that Hypnotist—” The image of her limp, bleeding body flashed in his mind, her scream echoing in his ears. He flinched, pushing it away. “—that Hypnotist was asking about Silver. She told me it was standard procedure, then she tried to force her way into my mind.”
Terraform pursed his lips, turning his gaze toward Silver. “Is he aware?”
Terry turned toward Silver with a start. “Aware of what?”
Silver waved casually. “Yeah, he knows.”
Terraform nodded, turning back to Terry. “Your sponsor possesses the Physical Singularity. He made…” His eyes cut back to Silver for a moment. “…quite an impression, the last time he was here. It seems my partner, Skipper, took notice.” He frowned, his eyes becoming animated with obvious anger. “He attempted to kill Silver and take his Singularity. And I believe you were the contingency plan.”
“Your…partner?” He wondered about that. From everything he’d heard, Terraform was the leader of the Underground Market. He’d never heard rumors of a partnership.
The super sighed, his chair swiveling to face the windows looking out over the Market. “An S-ranked Traveler by the name of Skipper. I brought him on six years back in an attempt to expand.” He stood up, pacing to the window to look down. “For twenty years, my team and I ferried entrants physically through the earth.” He glanced back. “As you can imagine, the efforts were a full-time engagement. I knew that if I could delegate that task to a high-ranked Traveler, we could circumvent the bottleneck and expand the Market.”
“Looks like you trusted the wrong man,” Silver said.
Terraform turned back, his lips set in a frown. “I did. It appears the draw of your Singularity was too much for him to resist.” He returned to his chair, settling wearily into it. “Which brings me back to recompense.”
He leaned forward, his eyes suddenly intent.
“Tell me what you require to make this little mishap go away.”