We waited for the beacon for a good ten minutes before it appeared out of nowhere. During that time Okeria gave out dozens of orders and responded to five times that many messages, most from people whose voices I didn’t recognize. Thorn and Cyntherin were the only two he gave direct orders to, with all the others being more general warnings and troop movements to make sure our people were never surprised.

It was oddly… calm. Okeria never panicked, never raised his voice, and assured everyone who was suffering with the kind of charisma that made you want to trust him. There was barely a hint of the person I knew he actually was in there, which only made it weird when he switched from commander mode to personal mode with Acasiana and me.

“So you actually trusted Viri with this?” I asked when he got a second of downtime. “I mean, considering how we recruited her, I’d be hard pressed to trust her with… well, anything.”

He shrugged. “Not like I had much of a choice. We needed someone who could sneak in, and paired with one of my gadgets for invisibility, she fit that bill ta a T. Sure I coulda used someone else, and sure she might choose ta betray us the second she gets back ta Scalovera, but that don’t matter. She’s expendable. Nobody else is.”

The callous ease with which he said that scared me. But what scared me even more was how much I agreed with him.

“Even if she betrays us, you’re in control of her communicator and probably have it tracking her even now.” I mused and leaned closer to the map. “But you’re going through all this because you need her to think you still trust her, right?”

“Exactamundo.” He confirmed, then held up a finger for me to wait. “Transmission’s comin’ in from Viri. Watch her figure on the map while I talk ta her, and Acasiana, you tell us if it looks like it’s comin’ from somewhere close ta a facility.”

“Heard loud and clear.” Acasiana confirmed and joined me in leaning in.

Okeria nodded, then counted down from three on his fingers and pressed his wrist. “You’re on speaker. Report.”

“Okay. Sheesh, this place is dark and wet. Our base is so much nicer.” Viri complained, then gasped when Okeria aggressively cleared his throat. “Right, sorry! Can you see the beacon now?”

As she spoke, her figure’s left hand began to glow. I nodded slightly just in case Okeria was looking at me instead of the figure, then gently tapped the figure to set it moving. It was extremely slow thanks to the scale difference, but it was obviously moving.

“Yeah, we can. Ya had it on all this time?’

“Since you told me to put it on. Do you want me to fall back to the base or stay here so you can find me?” She asked far quieter than a second ago, then let out a little ‘eep’. When she spoke next, it was in a whisper. “They’re bringing in more hurt people. I don’t know how big the war in the city is, but this seems like way more than we could make. And… hey, I recognize that uniform. …From somewhere I don’t remember.”

Okeria grimaced and gestured for me to open my interface. I did as he asked, then swiped over to my map. He slid some coordinates over to me, and when I put them in, Viri’s beacon lit up for me as well. He did the same for Acasiana, then ignored Vivi as she rambled on about nothing.

“Well, looks like we found the main reason Endra decided ta hole up here. She’s usin’ the waters from the facility ta heal her troops, and I’d bet almost anythin’ that she’s sellin’ it as a miracle cure ta the other cities.”

I nearly threw up on the spot. “What?! You mean the shit we’ve been drinking all along? THAT shit?!”

“Yeah, but not quite the same stuff.” He gestured at Acasiana. “The sample Viri sent ain’t as powerful as we got here, and they’re takin’ it from a single massive reservoir they found. It don’t connect ta the rest of the system, but if that changes, we might lose all of this. And I don’t know about either of ya, but I don’t really want ta lose this massive advantage.”

Acasiana nodded vigorously. “I can isolate any of the facilities if I can get to the control panel. That won’t be a permanent fix, but it should stop them from contaminating any of the other facilities’ supplies. Unless they’ve already broken into them, that is.”

“If that’s the case, then it’s even more important that we cut them off accessing this one.” I decided. “Okeria, send a drone to follow her to the control room and record her operating this place. I want to be able to watch it back in case we need to access it and she’s not here.”

“Oh, I plan on staying with all of you for a long time. But I don’t mind giving a demonstration.” Acasiana said as she stood. “Oh, and make sure you don’t leave without me. I can’t wait to kill the drowned bastards that are using my facility to further Endra’s plans.”

“Wouldn’t think of it.” I said with a little wave as she left, then turned to Okeria with a sheepish look when she was long out of earshot. “Alright, maybe I was thinking about it. She just came off having what amonted to unlimited battery and a massive boost in power to everything she did. I’m worried she’s going to get herself seriously hurt.”

Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

He snorted out a quick laugh. “Now what makes ya say that? The fact that ya already saw the insides of her head within the literal hour she got out?”

“Yeah, that’ll do it.” I chuckled. “Seriously, though, I want to put her somewhere she’ll be able to test her newly enabled limits before she fights anyone too powerful. That isn’t in the middle of the Keratily power vacuum, and it definitely isn’t wherever all of the powerful people Scalovera hired are.”

“Fair point. I’d send her ta…” He looked over the map for a few seconds, then frowned. “Honestly, I don’t know where I’d send her. Scalovera’s elite could show up anywhere at any time, so the best place would be with people who can back her up. That’s either with ya when ya go find Viri or ta the middle of Thorn’s battlefield.”

I straightened my back and sighed. “Neither of which are great options, huh. Well, let’s go with the easy one. We call Jun and Mortician back here, and all three of us go clean out the facility. Knocking out their reinforcements is priority number one, and all of us keep our memories through Acasiana’s rewinds.”

“Alright. I’ll call them back the second we’re ready ta go.” Okeria agreed without argument. “Viri, can we get a head count on powerful people down where ya were?”

“Oh, sure! Um… I saw eight severed heads, and fifteen bodies without heads. They managed to fix up six of them, but I guess they didn’t have the matching pieces for the others.” She said seriously. “But they weren’t in a real hurry, so I guess they weren’t powerful. Or at least important.”

Okeria and I shared a look when we realized she was being serious. He sighed and pressed his fingers between his sets of eyes, then spoke a little more clearly.

“Viri, how many people are there that you haven’t seen enter or leave even once?” He said clearly and without his accent. “And in addition to that, how many people have a slight orange-yellow glow on them through the gadget I stuck on your visor?”

“Um… I don’t really remember exactly, so give me a second. I recorded everything I saw just in case something like this happened.” She said, then started mumbling to herself.

“If you’ve got the recording, Viri, just send it to us.” Okeria tried to say, but she was already too engrossed in her work. He made a show of confirming she couldn’t hear us, then crossed his arms in annoyance. “Drown me, she hyperfocuses too hard. Or she’s buying time ta try and trick us.”

I scratched my face and shrugged. “I don’t know. She doesn’t seem like the kind of person to betray someone on purpose. Maybe they’re using that to get her to betray us without realizing it, or maybe she’s actually on our side and we’re suspecting her for nothing. Honestly, I don’t really think it matters.”

Okeria widened his eyes slightly. “Oh, really? I’d love ta hear your reasoning.”

“Because we would just kill her if she really did. Along with everyone else Scalovera throws at us.”

“Ruthless. But efficient.” Okeria nodded and tossed me a cube of silvery metal. “That’s a high-grade explosive that’ll only activate on my signal. If things fall inta the abyss, throw it as close ta their command center as ya can and teleport outta there.”

I took one look at the cube, remembered what Jun’s gun had done to Danday, and sent it away. The damn thing might not be huge, but if I could get it in the reservoir, there wouldn’t be anything left of it.

“Um, are you still listening to me?”

Okeria waved off the conversation before responding. “We are, but we need the short version.”

“Oh. Okay, then. There were four people with orange glows, and I counted fifteen who never really moved from their posts. Two of them overlapped, so that makes seventeen people who’re either powerful or important to the place.” Viri relayed. “I didn’t see Scalovera himself anywhere, but there’s a really big metal box that’s always being guarded by two orange glowing people. He’s probably in there, and if he’s as paranoid as you think, there’s probably more orange people in there with him.”

That was a good estimation. I quickly checked all my cooldowns and reserves, and found myself strangely lacking. The waters’ diminishing effects had kicked in something fierce, and Okeria’s intervention pill had a really long cooldown. I’d have to rely on something other than a flat-out offensive if I wanted to make this work.

Especially if Jun and Mortician had been fighting non-stop for the entire time I’d been running around with Annette and Inopsy.

Speaking of… “Keep an eye on Annette and Inopsy. There’s something wrong with him, and he wants to be kept prisoner until whatever it is dies down. Let her talk to him while he’s like that, but make sure neither of them does anything to the other.”

Okeria tilted his head to the side. “Anythin’ in particular I should be on the lookout for?”

“One of them killing the other. Either Annette killing him as a twisted mercy, or him killing her because he goes out of his damn mind.”

Saying that gave me no joy, and it weighed heavily on my mind that someone who’d helped us so much was potentially going under. But if anyone could understand that, it would be Annette and Okeria. I secretly hoped that they’d be able to help each other without hurting anyone, but I knew there wasn’t an easy happy ending for anyone. Maybe, just maybe, they’d be able to take the edge off each other.

A surge of electricity coursed through the facility. Things that had been inert buzzed to life, but in reality, barely anything changed. Okeria tossed me a communicator and saluted me as I turned to leave.

“Good luck. If it gets too hairy, get out and regroup.”

I waved with the communicator and donned my armor as I walked to meet Acasiana. Things would get hairy–that much was obvious. But we’d manage somehow. I raised my hand to the side of my helmet and connected to Jun and Mortician.

{Teleport back to base. We’re going to go clear out Scalovera’s field hospital.}