Alex stepped out onto the platform and was surprised to find it was raining.
The storm had to have blown up out of nowhere. Overhead there were dark clouds, and for half a moment she had the disturbing impression that she hadn’t actually left the other world, or that the broken sky had somehow followed her here. She shook her head, the scent of magic filling her nostrils, and tried to focus.
Liliana was already taking reports from the others. She looked patient, despite the rain pattering down over the umbrella she held. Forsmith stood a short distance away, watching the portal impassively.
Alex took a deep breath and joined the rest of her team. She listened idly to what the rest of them were saying—it wasn’t hard to catch occasional references to her lack of Skill or bad behavior, though Christopher seemed the least comfortable with it—but she mostly wanted to make sure that Liliana was hearing what the team captain wanted to hear. What Alex needed her to hear.
When it was her turn, Liliana offered her a broad smile. “Well, well, well, Alexandretta! I am sorry to hear that you are still having such…difficulty working with your new team. It may be that you require additional classes in teamwork. Perhaps that can be arranged.”
She looked back at the team captain, allowing a little of her outrage to show. Then she made just as obvious an attempt to hide it. Let the woman think she was getting to her, just a little. “I think things are going well enough. We completed our mission out there today.”
“At least some of you did, yes.” Liliana’s smile grew wider. “Did you have any changes to report?”
“Yes.” Alex felt her heart hammering. “I took the Skill Chain for Combined Arms and Anticipate, and for Running and Recovery as well. It set most of my Skills back to zero, but it should help me catch up to my teammates in a lot of ways.”
Liliana paused, as if stunned to silence. Her expression, for a brief moment, became shrewd and calculating.
Then she smiled. “Oh? You know that isn’t wise, Alexandretta. Portals can be so dangerous, and your team was already struggling to help you along. Now you want to be even more of a burden?”
Alex glared at her openly now. “This way I can get better, not that you care. Also, I took Inspect and Focus, too, so I’ll be leveling those up now as well. Once I get those all done, there won’t be a single thing you can do to stop me.”
Contempt colored Liliana’s expression now, but she didn’t let it reach her voice. “Oh Alexandretta, I’d never want to stand in your way. As your team captain, I only wanted to help you. It is too bad you have continued to ignore and undervalue my advice. Such a shame to waste so much potential.” Before Alex could respond, Liliana gestured for her to leave. “You’re dismissed. Also, you’re assigned more teamwork exercises for Monday. They should help put you in the appropriate frame of mind for your next Survey. Goodbye, Alexandretta.”
The finality behind those words told Alex that the team captain had definitely taken the bait. Whatever plan Liliana and Paul had set up, it would be in motion for the next Survey.
Which meant, really, all she had to do now was survive it.
“So your plan to survive your supervisor trying to kill you is to convince them to try and kill you sooner?” Her mother’s face scrunched up in obvious discontent. “That…does not sound like a great plan, Alex.”
“It’s better than waiting for them to spring something on me when I’m not expecting it.” Alex shrugged. She’d come home for her first weekend of leave since the Raid, and her parents had immediately pounced on her, demanding the details of her situation. Now her mother was grimacing over the plan, while her father sat back looking thoughtful. She looked at him, realizing that he’d been pretty quiet since she’d started. “What do you think, Dad?”
Eric blinked, his large frame jumping a little as if the question had startled him. “Hm? Oh. Yes.” He glanced at his wife, and seemed to pick his words very, very carefully. “I think it is probably the best option you have under the circumstances. Are you sure you don’t just want to quit instead, though?”
It was a fair question, and Alex took a moment to sit and consider it. “I mean, it is just a job. I can probably find a way to be a Surveyor anywhere, not just in this part of the state.”
“You’d have to move away, though.” Muriel gave her husband a level look, and Eric’s expression abruptly turned alarmed. “And besides, you’d be leaving your friends in an awkward position. Who’s to say they wouldn’t turn on them next?”
Alex nodded. “And that’s besides everything going on with the portal. Your house isn’t that far from the place, and if something happened…”
Muriel met her gaze and smiled. “We’d be fine, dear.”
“You might, but Dad isn’t a Surveyor. And we both know what would happen if there was some kind of Escalation Event, right? They’d call him in to get people out, and he wouldn’t leave until the last idiot was dragged out of their house to safety.”
They both looked at her father, and Eric grunted. “I’ve never criticized you two for doing your job. Are you really going to say anything to me about doing mine?”
Her mother sighed and reached out to pat his hand. “No, my love. It would hurt my soul to see you do anything less.”
Eric gave her a half-defiant, half-grateful stare, and Muriel smiled back in a too-warm way. Alex rolled her eyes, feeling awkward, and tried to steer things back on track. “So yeah, I think we are stuck with me still working for Golden Swallow…which means I need to handle Liliana and her pals. Better it all happen now rather than later.”
Muriel looked back at her and paused. When she continued, she was speaking very, very carefully. “You need to be wise about this, Alex. Portals are dangerous enough with a good team at your back. Without one, you could be in more trouble than even you could handle. If it grows too much, get out of the portal and go to the police. I have half a mind to take it to them now.”
Alex grimaced. “They can’t prove anything is going on inside the portal, and I doubt they have any ex-Surveyors on staff to help out. No, I’ve got to handle this on my own. I’ll be fine, okay? I’ll be ready for them. It isn’t like they are going to come after me while I’m—”
There was a knock at the door, and she blinked and came to a stop. She looked back and forth between her parents, but both of them shrugged. “Nobody was coming over that you knew about?”
Her father shook his head, and so did her mother. Alex’s eyes narrowed, and she stood up slowly from the table. “I’ll go check it.”
Eric looked sharply at Muriel. “You don’t think—”
Muriel raised a hand. “I don’t…but not everything happens the way it should.” She looked at Alex and nodded. “I’ll be right around the corner. Don’t hesitate.”
Alex nodded, and she walked out of the kitchen, headed for the front door. She had visions of Liliana and the rest of Team Alpha tearing through it on their way to hit her, and grimaced. The house would take a lot of damage from it, even if it would settle things pretty cleanly on her end. Who else would it be, though? It wasn’t like any of her other teammates knew where her parents lived, and she’d been very careful to not reveal it to anyone inside of Golden Swallow.
She reached the door and paused. Another knock sounded, a little faster and harder this time, and she tensed. Her axe was in her hand, and she slowly rotated the handle, and then yanked the door open all at once, ready to strike.
Zach looked back at her, his eyes wide. He looked at her axe, frozen in her hand, and then back at her face. “Hey Alex! Uh, rough week?”
Alex stared back at him, not quite believing he was actually there. It didn’t help that he wasn’t dressed in his lab uniform and coat; he was just wearing a normal t-shirt and jeans. She almost had trouble recognizing him, standing there like that. “Zach? What are you—”
He grinned, obviously happy to have surprised her. “Oh, I was just in the neighborhood and thought it would be a good idea to visit. You know, talk about things that we shouldn’t have been caught doing and all.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You shouldn’t have been able to find my address in the employee directory. It was part of my contract.”
“Well, you certainly didn’t make it easy for me, but…oh, hello.”
Alex glanced backwards and saw her father standing in the hallway behind her. Eric’s face was red. He was unsuccessfully trying to hide an old fire axe behind his broad back. “Ah, hi. The name’s Eric. Eric Morrison.”
Her father stuck out a hand—the one not brandishing a deadly weapon—and Zach leaned past Alex to shake it. He smelled like citrus. “Nice to meet you. I…see the family resemblance.”
Alex bit her lip as Eric burst out laughing and gave up on trying to hide the axe. He set it to the side, just leaning it up against the wall of the hallway. “Sorry, you weren’t exactly who we were expecting.”
Zach nodded, his face growing a bit more serious. “I can imagine. Actually, I wanted to come and talk about—”
He cut off abruptly, his face going absolutely blank. Alex followed his line of sight, and saw her mother, standing a little further back in the hallway. The Crimson Blade was only holding a practice sword, but her stance…
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Alex turned in a quick motion and yanked Zach into the hallway. She closed the door behind him, speaking as she did so. “So good of you to visit. Why don’t you come in and take a seat?”
Zach stumbled a bit and then turned to stare at her. “She’s…I saw her once, back before…Alex, she’s the—”
Her mother stepped past Eric, smiling slightly. She’d left the sword somewhere else and extended her remaining hand. “Hello, Zach, I’ve heard a lot about you from Alex. Good to meet you.”
If the situation hadn’t been so dire, Alex might have laughed at the expression on Zach’s face. He’d gone pale from shock, and he shook her hand in a daze. “The honor’s all mine, ma’am. I mean, I never expected—”
“We prefer to keep a low profile here. I’m sure you understand?” There was a hint of iron in Muriel’s voice, just a touch of a sword’s edge. Zach straightened up immediately, his back going ramrod straight.
“Yes, ma’am. Not a word from me to anyone.”
“Good.” Muriel looked at Alex. “Now, I hear you came to talk with Alex about something. Care to join us in the kitchen? My husband and I can prepare a snack for you while you get settled.” She winked at her daughter and disappeared, partially dragging a smirking Eric behind her.
Alex looked from her bemused parents to her shell-shocked coworker and groaned inwardly. The afternoon had just gotten quite a bit more complicated.
“So your last name isn’t actually Morrison, is it?”
It was the first complete question that Zach had asked, and it showed that he was finally getting his feet back under him. Alex just wished he hadn’t jumped straight to a topic she really didn’t want to talk about.
“It’s my last name now, so that’s all that matters.” She kept her voice level, and Zach snorted.
“Yeah, right. Alex, your mom’s the Crimson Blade! You’re trying to tell me that doesn’t matter?”
Alex fixed him with an equally level stare. “Does it really change who I am at all? Or how you see me?”
Zach opened his mouth. Then he paused and closed it. “Mostly no, I guess.” He raised an eyebrow. “Though I think I have to remind you that you weren’t being super honest with me during our background questions.”
She flushed red. “That’s a good point, I guess. Sorry.”
He sat back and shook his head. “Still, you’re the daughter of the Crimson Blade! That explains so…much…” Zach’s words trailed off, and he suddenly looked far more thoughtful. “Actually, I think I realize why you didn’t say anything, either. With what happened at the end…”
Alex nodded slowly. “Yeah. It wasn’t the Grue that almost killed her, and the people who did are still out there. I don’t want them to realize that I’m her daughter. Not until I’ve gotten stronger.”
Zach nodded. “I get it. We can talk about it later.” He paused and laughed. “Though I think I’m going to have about a billion questions. Hope that’s okay.”
She sighed. “Sure. Later, though.” He nodded easily, and she continued in a quiet voice. “So you were saying you wanted to tell me something?”
“Oh! Right. I had three things for you, actually.” Zach brought out his familiar tablet. “First off, the Group has completed its investigation of the missing health potions you used on the Raid.”
Alex froze. She spoke carefully. “What did they find?”
Zach slumped slightly. “They got me. Apparently, there was a security camera pointed right at the dang things. No way to even dispute it.”
She winced. “How much trouble are you in?”
“Oh, the usual. Temporary suspension of pay, punishment work, threatened to terminate my internship, etc.” Zach shrugged. “There’s a bunch of regulations about hiring and firing people from the PAD, or else I think they would have tossed me out already. Once the internship is up, I have a feeling they won’t be offering me a permanent job.”
Alex grimaced. She looked away. “I’m…sorry to hear that.”
Zach snorted. “Don’t be. It was worth getting you through that Survey. Besides, you’ve been helping me with the monitors, too.”
It still didn’t seem like a fair trade, but she nodded slowly. “So what do they have you doing now?”
“Paid administrative leave.” He grinned at her look. “My boss was assigned to the PAD because he ticked off his own supervisor at the time. He gave me a fist bump and asked me if you had an older sister.”
Alex rolled her eyes and tried to ignore the amused snort from her father in the next room. “So you have all this time to yourself, huh? What have you been doing?”
“I might have wandered down to the containment area around the portal, actually. Put in a few more off-the-book hours looking into the information we have about it. Historical data, Survey reports, stuff like that.” He slid the tablet over to her. “Found a couple of interesting things. Take a look.”
She picked up the tablet and read. A frown spread across her face as she did. “The portal used to be C rank?”
“Yep! And B rank before that.” Zach pointed at the tablet. “They ran a few high level Raids back then, targeting a few Anchor Points. Once those were taken down, the portal’s danger rating dropped significantly. It’s been classified as E rank ever since.”
Alex kept reading, her frown growing as she did. “It…seems like it was stable as an E rank portal for a long time, actually. Lots of Surveys went through with no issues, and rare losses.” She looked up. “So whatever this project is, it’s recent. They haven’t been doing it for very long.”
“Yeah. That means it probably has a pretty fresh budget trail. I’ve tried tracking down what I could from public expenditures and boardroom reports, but I haven’t found anything quite yet. At least, nothing specific to this area.” He shook his head. “Still, it tells us they might still be persuaded to cancel it if things get bad enough. They don’t have years of work put into it yet.”
She grunted and swiped her finger to go to the next set of slides. This time she was confronted by the familiar graphs of monitor readings. “Did something change about the readings from the portal?”
“Aside from the fact that they are getting progressively worse, and happening a lot more frequently? No, not really.” Zach grimaced and gestured for her to go to the next slide. “Did you hear about the traffic accident on Thursday?”
The non sequitur almost completely threw her for a loop. “No? What does that have to do with—”
Zach held up a hand. “There was a three car pile up along Elm Street. Almost completely blocked the road, caused about an hour of delay for anything along that entire part of the city.” He paused a moment, allowing her to think through the implications. Elm Street ran near the containment area, and if there had been a bad accident, it would have blocked anyone coming from the Group’s main offices to the portal.
“So the convoy to the portal got delayed?”
He nodded. “Yeah. They were about an hour behind schedule. Didn’t get there until way later than usual.” Then he gestured to the tablet. “Look at the magical output for Thursday, though. Tell me what you see.”
Alex frowned down at the graph. “The same spike of magical output. It lasted a little longer, but it started at the same time…” She blinked. “Wait. If the convoy was delayed, but the output still spiked on schedule…”
“Then the convoy isn’t causing the spikes. They’re reacting to the spikes.” Zach’s face grew grim. “Odds are, they are sending a group of C rankers into the portal to try and calm it down a bit. The C ranks do what they can, and then the E rank teams that go in after are just dealing with the leftovers.”
“Then why have us go in at all? Why not just keep sending in C ranks?”
“Because the E ranks are being used as cover for what is going on.” Alex looked over and saw her mother leaning against the kitchen doorframe. Her eye was narrowed, and she was looking at Zach. “The company can’t admit that things are going off at the portal, so they are sending in the C ranks off the books. As long as E ranks are going in regularly, they can still classify the place as an E rank portal, and their little project stays under the radar.”
Zach nodded. “That’s part of what I concluded, yeah. If they openly admit that they are using C ranks to deal with the issue, it might get the project canceled, so they are trying to keep that from becoming common knowledge.” Then he paused, shaking his head a little as if to clear it. “There’s another part, though. If the convoy isn’t causing the spikes, that means that their mission isn’t to create the spikes. It’s to contain them.”
Both Muriel and Alex looked at Zach, nonplussed. He looked back at each of them and then grimaced. “It means that whatever is causing the portal spikes isn’t in the other world. No one else went through the portal before the convoy arrived, so that means—”
“It’s here. On Earth.” Alex’s eyes widened. She’d never heard of anything that could affect a portal like that on the Earth side. Everything that modified the portal’s energy had to be in the other world, otherwise there wouldn’t be any need for Surveyors to go through. If that was wrong… “Where is it? The thing they’re using?”
“No idea. Not yet, at least.” Zach held up his hands defensively. “I looked around the containment area, and I didn’t find any secret underground lairs or anything. No tunnels with a lot of dark SUVs going in and out, at least. It has to be a separate facility, but it can’t be too far away from the portal. Otherwise, it wouldn’t affect it so strongly.”
Alex nodded. The implications of being able to mess with a portal from the Earth side were staggering. Could they decrease the output as well as increase it? Could the portals be closed completely? It was the kind of thing that could save hundreds of thousands of lives in the right hands.
Then again, was the Golden Swallow Group the right place for that kind of discovery? If they managed to find a way to close the portals, they’d probably be cutting off their own revenue flow. Would they choose to close the portals anyway, or would they just use their new discovery to selectively worsen portals and take the additional contract fees for suppressing them? She wanted to deny that possibility, but the fact that they were keeping everything so tightly under wraps rather than trumpeting it to the world gave her an unpleasant hint about the answer to her questions.
“Okay. So what do we do about it?” She looked from Zach to her mother and back. “Once we find it, do we alert the authorities? Would the Portal Regulation Agency shut it down?”
“The PRA might already know about it, but even if they do, publishing anything on the web about it will bring a lot of unpleasant pressure on them.” Muriel shrugged. “If all else fails, we could just hit it ourselves. Maybe do enough damage to stop it.”
Alex gave her mother a look. “They have Forsmith, and probably a whole team of C rankers, Mom. I doubt you and me are going to be able to take them and whatever guards they have set up there.”
Muriel smiled. “Don’t forget, they probably can’t station regular guards at the place. If there’s a ton of magical energy leaking everywhere, they’d at least have to use E rankers, and those don’t come cheap. We probably wouldn’t be facing that much, and if your friends helped—”
“I’m not staging a mutiny at the Group, Mom. We’ll just have to find another way.”
“That’s a good point, though. The E rank thing, I mean.” Zach reached out for his tablet, and Alex handed it back. “I’ll see if I can track down any of their ex-Surveyor guards to see if anyone has an odd assignment or is pulling extra hours. Maybe that’ll lead me to the project, and where it is located. I’ll let you know as soon as I find it.”
Alex nodded. “Good. I’ll keep my eye open for anything else.” Then she sighed. “As long as my own team doesn’t kill me, that is.”
“Yeah, I might have heard a little something about that.” Zach tilted his head. “Something about payback and comeuppance for a certain E rank Surveyor who should know better than to challenge the company, or something like that. You sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine, Zach.” Alex smiled. “Just need to get through another couple of Surveys, and it should be handled.”
“All right, just checking.” Then Zach smiled. “And to make doubly sure of that…”
He reached into his pocket and drew out a vial full of health potion. Zach slid it across the table to her. “Just in case. You know, if things go really wrong.”
Alex picked it up, feeling the weight of the syrup inside. “You’re not going to get in trouble for it?”
Zach snorted. “Probably. It’s worth it, though.” He patted her hand and then stood up. “Well, I should probably get going. Mr. and… Mrs. Morrison, it was good to meet you.”
Her mother smirked and nodded back. Her father popped out of the adjacent room to wave goodbye and then vanished just as quickly. Alex walked Zach to the door and closed it after he left. She stood there a moment, staring at the closed door and thinking.
“Nice boy. I can see why you…work so well together.”
Alex spun to point a finger at her mother. “Don’t you start too.”
Her mother grinned. “All right, all right. Would some sparring help you to focus? You have a lot to think about.”
She snorted, but followed her mother out to the practice area anyway. Better to work out a little instead of letting her mind run in circles. Her next Survey was only a few days away.