"I'm sorry," I said to Rob.

I felt wrung out, like a sponge, drained and bereft of all liquid once the tears ended. He guided me into the chair once the surge had passed. I resumed function. The overwhelming characteristic of the vivid memories no longer as intense or overriding.

Rob's voice was grave. "Memories have power," he said. "Yours have been so suppressed; I'm actually still a little worried, but you're taking it pretty well, all things considered."

I had to wonder: was I?

Looking at the floor where the tears had already evaporated without a trace, my heart still felt the ache. The reclaimed loss had torn open a lesion I hadn't known of, the fissure concealed by the layer of corporate shade I endured for so long.

"I don't really feel that way. They're just so—" I paused, gesturing with a hand as I searched for the right words to represent the unexpected clarity. "Vivid? I've never experienced anything like it before now or ever. Is it always going to be like this?"

Pinching his lip between thumb and forefinger absentmindedly, a nervous habit I was glad remained unfeigned, Rob leaned back in his chair and made the slow grumble he often did for time when he needed to think.

"To be honest, Owen? Usually the protocols are disabled before they're implanted," he said. "It's like that one story: 'Minds that’d been integrated are at greater risk, so we usually won't grab them.' You've had some suppressed past trauma most others might not have to contend with, like..." He stopped talking.

I wasn't sure he was getting the quote right, but I believed I understood what he was saying. "Like who? My mother?"

He pulled on his lip harder as he stared toward the hidden compartment but didn't answer.

I had a sudden surge of stubbornness: I'd decided I had enough of the mysteries and uncertainties. Time to be direct.

"I have questions." I said, firmly but gently.

"Okay, but I get to say if I'll answer them now or not. Deal?"

I nodded as he gestured for me to continue.

"Well, first. Are we safe?" I asked.

"Safe?" he repeated with a cocked eyebrow.

"From being pursued to your Pod?"

The eyebrow lowered a fraction. "Tell me. Did you feel you managed to throw them off?"

"I think so," I said, thinking back to the runner who'd led the hunting teams away, "It was a ghost town after I'd circled a few times, and the roving groups were too busy chasing someone else."

"Huh," he said, leaning back, "Just one person? Did you actually see who?"

"No," I said, "I didn't get a look, but they must've been fast; light steps. Two teams sounded like they were having issues keeping up and were spending more time trying to get others to get ahead of...whoever it was."

He eyed me quietly before resuming his lip pinching. "I reckon we're fine." It was obvious he knew more.

"Huh?" I was skeptical. "How can you be so sure?"

"Besides finally shedding some light on a little mystery I've had since you've gotten here?" he said, standing up to purposefully walk toward the Inner Lock door. "I've got more than a few tricks up my sleeve."

I turned in my seat to track him but held my momentary confusion in check as he tapped the multi-control interface onto a blue-tinged screen I'd never seen before. "Vibration sensors?" I said aloud after spotting the tagged labels, "How did you...?"

"Hang on," Rob said over his shoulder as he worked.

I remained silent.

"Nobody triggered any of the proximity conditions except you," he said with an air of certainty as he closed out the interface.

"How can you know that? You didn't know I was coming."

He gave me a pointed look, making me feel rather stupid with comprehension.

"You totally knew I was coming, didn't you?"

"The moment you set foot on level five," he said with a smirk. "The suite is configured to only notify me if anyone doesn't match the usual profile characteristics, and you didn't."

"Profiles?" I asked, intrigued, "Characteristics?"

"This time of night, how many people you think are out and walking around?"

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

"Okay, but there has to be holes in the system," I said, "Ways to bypass?" My brain had shifted over to what it liked to do best: find the constraints of a system to seek out improvements or ways to bypass problem locations. A personal flaw, but one I was enjoying because it kept my mind off of...other things.

Rob nodded once to concede, "Sure. Every system has holes, but McCreed and Golrich's Goons aren't exactly the brightest stars in the sky, so most of the major ones w--" He stopped, smoothing over his near slip-up, "I...that I've already taken into consideration."

"What about the railings?"

"...the railings?" Rob asked quizzically.

"Yeah, couldn't someone just climb up?"

"At fifteen levels?!"

"It's not unheard of," I said, matter-of-factly, as he stared at me in disbelief, not realizing the other reason why I'd been called the "Bluebell Winter King.".

I actually wasn't certain he knew about the game...

"Why in the f--" Rob started as the harsh bleat of the Lock caller button made me jump in fright.

With the suddenness of being ejected out of a crashing flitter, I felt an odd tugging sensation followed by the feeling of acceleration and deceleration as the smoothness of the wall softly thumped against my back.

My mind was struggling to retrieve snapshots of the events as I deconstructed what had just happened.

Rob had exploded into action with a sharp mechanical efficiency even the drones would've had problems mimicking. In what felt like a single smooth move, I'd been approached, yanked out of a chair, safely pressed against a wall, and moved out of sight of the inner door's pickup and tiny viewport before I could blink.

The chair was now sitting somewhat askew from where I'd been seated less than a fraction of a second ago, and I goggled at Rob as he pressed a warning finger to his lips before snapping his revolver into existence in his right hand, finger resting on the enlarged trigger guard's ring as he stared into the multi-display's video feed.

My eyes shifted to the screen as he tapped a few times, rewinding the entry video feed until we could see a hooded figure. The figure paused, kneeling to tighten a loose boot buckle as a slender hand snaked down and poked a gloved finger in between the slats of the gantry grate. With a blinking icon, there was a flashing on the top right of the screen, indicating the time and date of an external entry request notification from a hidden trigger.

Interesting.

The figure resumed, or rather appeared to resume, adjusting the buckle with one hand as the other stayed obscured for anything but the outer door feed. A quick flash of digits, and the figure leaned over to peer past the lip of the gantry and into the darkness below.

The audio spectralizer on the top left of the feed spiked in time as the figure stood, clomping the adjusted boot in an irregular pattern before appearing satisfied with the changes. Backing up, they approached the railing off-center of the screen's visual before executing a turning vault that would've made any parent's heart drop if they'd seen their kids trying it from so high up.

It was smooth and controlled, the movements of a gymnast or dancer as they faced the outer door's feed from the other side of the railing, hanging out into open air as they looked side to side to check for observers. I had to be impressed as they dropped in a clean dismount. Out of sight, but not out of audio range as the spikes peaked in time with softly audible clanks from the railings below until they could no longer be tracked. The roll of the distant thunder caused the visualization to dance until the feed was cut. The absence of movement signaling for the system to stop recording.

Rob swore softly, making me assume the use of the hidden call trigger and the subsequent Port-Sign-flashed number sequence hadn't been good news. A series of rapid taps on the display caused his face to go grim as he cleared the data with a sweeping hand; from where I could see, all signs of the multi-display's hidden functionality were made non-existent.

Turning as if on a swivel, he put the gun back into his waistband, at normal speed this time, before walking back to his sleeping area to scoop up the small pile of random items he'd been amassing. It mostly looked like the smaller versions of shock boxes we used for loading items into containers; a few were perfectly sized for cases of ammunition.

“Change of plans, Price,” he said, handing me a double-strapped pack he'd snagged on the way over. He dumped the stack into the area with the privacy curtain.

"Stuff all the uniform gear except your power pack into your work satchel," he said sternly, "everything else goes into this bag. No questions. Not yet. Go.”

When it came to Rob, especially over the years, there were times to ask questions and times to focus on what needed to be done as soon as Rob said.

This...was one of those times to do what Rob said. Without hesitation, I moved to grab the now dried Outeralls from their hook before moving toward the privacy area where he'd dumped the rest of the equipment and clothing.

"Listen," he said, holding the curtain with one hand, "Security is going to pass by in a minute. They might bypass us entirely, but if they ring us? I’ll handle them. You? Stay quiet.”

I nodded, kneeling as he closed the curtain, trying to force myself to be calm. I focused on quietly sorting the gear, laying out the parts still inside my work satchel onto a spare shirt Rob had provided in order to bundle them for easier transport.

The sound of running water and splashing filled the Pod's interior as Rob prepared himself, making up the appearance of being disheveled and awoken from a sweating slumber, if I had to guess.

The Outeralls were the biggest issue. They were bulky and hard to package. There is a trick to strapping it down for storage, kind of like trying to collapse a self-deploying survival habitat. The process? Isn't so important. What was important: after much silent swearing, finagling, and pulling, the bulky suit, stowed soft hood, jacket, and accessories were eventually squeezed into the compartments of the work satchel minus the cylindrical power pack, which I'd extracted from the processing unit on the suit's belt and stuffed into a jacket as instructed.

It had not been easy, and there remained little room for much of anything else, but...it fit.

Barely.

The rest of the equipment was easy in comparison. The bag Rob had given me was more of a giant sack with straps and made from a similar material to the pants. It had a single open top with a black pull-string fitted mouth serving as the sole opening into the gullet-like body. A wide buckled flap ensured the contents could stay dry and featured a pair of polymerized zipper openings positioned to keep some of the smaller items within reach. It was in these I stuffed the boxes, which looked like they held ammunition, figuring Rob would need them at some point.

Lining the bottom of the pack with the spare clothing Rob had given me, I stuffed the bundle of Rig parts on top before stacking in the remainders of the pile. Overall, the entire process took less than fifteen minutes. Securing the drawstring and flap as quietly as I could, I positioned the two bags within easy reach as the outer entry buzzer sounded, causing me to jolt awake as adrenaline flooded my system.

They'd arrived.