Waking up in the dorms was not nearly as nice as waking up in her parent’s house.
First, instead of a nice, lush mattress, Alex had spent the night stuffed into a thin, narrow cot, one of the four in the room. They’d stuffed her team into the same room, with Alex and Audrey taking the bottom bunks while Joanna and Clara claimed the top ones. They’d all slept like the dead last night, but Alex could already tell that she wasn’t going to look forward to sharing the room. Clara seemed like she snored a little—maybe a side effect of being scrunched up in the tiny space—and Audrey occasionally talked in her sleep. Already, the room she’d had at the now-closed Blue Riders facility was a fond dream.
The addition of an alarm that they all had to share in common was not an improvement, either.
Alex rolled out of the bed and slapped at the button to turn the ringing off. Joanna groaned—she hadn’t liked the early wake up time either, but Audrey and Clara had insisted—and Alex shook her head to clear the cobwebs from her mind. She remembered the events lined up for the day were going to start fairly early, but she was having a hard time remembering exactly what they would be doing.
Audrey popped out of the other low bunk, bright eyed and bushy tailed. “Morning! Guess we have that remedial training today, right?”
“Uh, yeah, sure.” Alex staggered back over to her bunk and grabbed her phone from the charger. It was already showing the schedule plan for the day, and she had to resist the urge to throw herself back into bed when she saw what Liliana had scheduled them for.
They had at least two hours of obstacle course runs, along with ‘appropriate team-building activities’ for another hour after that. She was pretty sure that would just be a meeting where Liliana talked a lot, but it could be something worse, like trust falls or something. After that, there was another two hours of ‘Corporate Standards Review’, which did not look promising, followed by a minute fraction of time meant to give them a chance to eat. Unfortunately, it would be immediately followed by nearly three hours of personal sparring; given that she’d just reset her main combat Skills to zero, Alex wasn’t really looking forward to that one.
The rest of the afternoon looked like it had been broken up by person. Joanna and Clara had been assigned to an introductory spellcasting class, something that would hopefully allow them to use their Acolyte and Adept Roles a bit more effectively. Audrey had been sent to help with something called Armory Weapons Testing, which Alex imagined she would do just fine.
She, however, had been assigned to the Portal Analysis Department as a research resource. Something told her she was going to enjoy that experience as much as she did the cafeteria’s lowest-bid-contractor food.
Alex shook her head and set her phone back on the charger. The early start meant that she had an hour or two before she needed to head to breakfast. She looked around at her teammates and forced a smile. “Who’s up for a morning run?”
Audrey was the only one who took Alex up on the offer, and by the end of the first ten minutes, the Squire had already checked out to head for the showers. Alex had kept going for a little longer on the company-provided track before she headed there herself. The exercise wouldn’t help her gain a Skill—not in a low magic environment like the dorms—but it would keep her in shape, which was about as important. A slow Surveyor was a dead Surveyor, as her mother said. Her father had a similar bit of wisdom when it came to firefighters, actually.
When she reached the cafeteria, it was already half full of other Surveyors. There was no one here above D rank, of course; C and B rank Surveyors were more than powerful enough to demand a chance to avoid staying in the dorms. Even some D ranks could manage to finagle their way into a contract that allowed them to live off campus, though some of them enjoyed the ‘free’ housing the Group provided. Of course, the housing costs and the food prices were just automatically deducted from their salaries, but it was easy to pretend it was actual generosity motivating the Group.
She polished off the meal—it was some of what her father called ‘hotel eggs’, all plastic and wobbly, combined with some passable hash browns and some milk—and then headed off to the obstacle course. Maybe it wouldn’t be as bad as she thought.
It had been exactly as bad as she thought it would be.
By the time she made it to her assignment at the Portal Analysis Department, her nerves were about as frayed as they’d ever been. The obstacle courses hadn’t been all that painful, and her sparring sessions hadn’t been that bad—her training with her mother had covered over the loss of her Melee Skills—but the team building and standards review had been the closest she’d ever come to torture. If she never had to listen to Liliana’s cheerful droning for another hour, it would be a spat of good fortune that she’d never forget.
Now she entered what looked a lot like a cross between a machine shop and a laboratory. The walls were a simple slate grey that suggested reinforced concrete, and the main room was full of broad workbenches where people in lab coats were hard at work. Some of the benches had a kind of flickering barrier put up around them, as if to isolate them from the rest of the room. Crystals, flasks of liquid, metalwork, and glowing runes were everywhere.
One of the lab coated men caught sight of her and hurried over. He was broad shouldered, but not muscular. Wiry, with sandy blond hair and a quick smile. “Hello! You must be Alexandretta Morrison. My name is Zachary Ellis. Welcome to the Portal Analysis Department.”
He stuck out a hand, and she shook it. “Hi. Just call me Alex.”
“Oh. Alex. I guess you can call me Zach, then.” He let go of her hand and stepped back. “Thank you for coming by.”
Alex gave him a crooked grin. “I…didn’t have much choice.”
Zach had a brief flicker of sympathy cross his face. “Yeah, I know.” Then he gestured for her to follow him as he started down the steps into the room. “Still, I hope that with your assistance we can make some advancements here. Our department is not incredibly hooked in with most of our Surveyors, so your perspective will be invaluable.”
“My perspective?” Alex frowned. “I’m just an E rank Surveyor. I’ve only been on two Surveys.”
“Two more than I have!” Zach glanced back at her. “Our department, as small as it is, has the responsibility to analyze the artifacts brought back from the portals and to determine the effects of our missions on the gateways themselves. If there is something off about the portal, or conditions suddenly deteriorate near one, it is our job to figure out the what and why.”
“And how to fix it, too, I hope?” She tried not to sound too sarcastic, but the words still came out a little bitter.
“You and me both, Alex.” Zach led her towards one of the side rooms, where a desk and a couple of chairs were waiting. It looked well-used; stacks of tablets and paper covered a part of the desk in a sloppy pile, while a nearby bookshelf was half-filled with technical manuals. Alex recognized about half of them from her own collection at home; Zach had apparently studied portals about as much as she had.
“We’ve been looking for a Surveyor to talk with for a while now—the Group has been telling us that there just haven’t been any available—so we have quite a few questions for you. If you don’t mind, of course.”
He gestured for her to sit and then took the chair behind the desk. Alex reluctantly settled in on the other chair. “You have four hours of questions? That seems a little extreme.”
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Zach laughed. “Well, you might underestimate our curiosity.” Then his face grew more serious. “In all honesty, our department doesn’t have much direct access to the Surveyors, and we don’t have priority on the materials you bring back either. So the opportunity to meet with you when you aren’t on actual missions is a unique chance to assess the situation from a better perspective.”
It sounded like Liliana had found the most useless spot to put her in punishment for her choices. The message had been received then; war it would be. Outwardly, she tried not to look too grim. “Wait, isn’t the primary responsibility of the Group to prevent their portals from destabilizing? Isn’t your department at the center of that?”
“We are!” Zach nodded, his smile going a little off. “In fact, our department is necessary for the Group to have portal access. Mandated by law, in fact, and our results are required to be made public as well, to encourage inter-corporate cooperation and promote public safety.”
Alex frowned. “So then why…”
“You can’t copyright public information, Ms. Morrison. Can’t make much money that way.” Zach leaned back in his chair with a sigh. “And while the official mission of the Group is to protect the public from problems caused by the portals, their actual purpose is to make shareholders money. Which is why the majority of the material and access to portal assets goes to the Resource Development Department, not us.”
Realization dawned. “Oh. I see.”
“Yeah.” He stretched his arms, then laced his fingers together behind his head. “So I imagine you must have gotten into a bit of trouble for them to send you here. A lot of people feel like we’re a punishment detail. A dead end for their careers.” Zach raised an eyebrow at her.
Alex flushed. “Ah. Well—”
He brought out one of his hands and made a dismissive gesture. “Don’t worry about it. I’m here because of a…disagreement that I had with a supervisor over in the RDD, so I know more or less how this all works. I don’t blame you if you feel like this is a giant waste of your time, but I’m just going to ask you to keep in mind that whatever we have you do is probably a lot more helpful for the regular folks than anything you’re doing normally.”
She studied him for a moment longer. “A disagreement, huh? That sounds like an interesting story.”
Zach winced. “Not really. Besides, I thought I was the one asking the questions here?”
Alex grinned. “All right, well, let’s do it this way. You get a question, I get a question. You know, in the spirit of colleagues helping each other out.”
“Troublemakers unite, huh?” Zach snorted. “Okay, if that’s how it has to work, then that’s fine by me. Though I have to ask for a better exchange rate; I’m not that interesting.” He held up four fingers. “Four of my questions for one of yours. Best I can do.”
“Two.” Alex leaned forward, still smiling.
“Three. Best I can do.” Zach spread his arms, then linked his fingers behind his head again. “Otherwise, we’re going to end up sitting here in silence for a few hours. Not the best way to spend an afternoon, but at least I can catch up on paperwork. Maybe you can help me, Surveyor. Some of these spreadsheets are really tough.”
“Oh, that’s harsh.” Alex laughed. “Fine, three. You go first.”
“Excellent. Was that so hard?”
“No.” She held up one finger, and he blinked in surprise. “That was your first. Two left, smart guy.”
Zach raised his eyebrows as high as they would go. “Oh, so that’s how we’re going to play it. That should make this interesting.” He leaned forward, his eyes taking on a predatory glint. “To your knowledge, has the magical energy leaving Portal Alpha-Nine-Four remained constant, or has it fluctuated at any point during your time near it?”
Alex paused, the smile fading from her lips. She thought back over the scent of magic that had filled the air near the portal. “I haven’t noticed any real difference at all. Actually, there were a couple of times when the magic seemed to be stronger than it was at first.”
His eyes narrowed for a moment. “Can you tell me when it felt stronger, and what was happening around it at the time? Please be as specific as you can.”
“About three days ago.” She hesitated for a moment, wondering if she should mention the convoy. Would someone in the PAD even know anything about it?
“Three days ago?” Zach glanced down at his desk. He tapped a tablet there a couple of times. “You didn’t have a mission scheduled, then.”
“No. I was doing some Skill training in the containment area, and noticed that the magic was a lot more tangible than it was for our last mission.”
“Oh. Interesting. That makes sense.” Zach nodded and tapped a few more times. “I’m guessing that Skills don’t increase without the presence of magic, then.”
Alex leaned forward, trying to get a peek at the tablet. “Yeah, that’s how it seems to work. Why were you asking about fluctuations?”
He broke into a grin. “That’s your question. Now I get three more.”
“Hey!”
“Ah ah ah, no complaining! I’m not the one who started it.” Zach’s grin grew a little wider. “It matters because the whole point of the Surveys, from a public safety standpoint, is to contain the magic output of the portals. Each time a Survey goes in and comes back, they’re supposed to absorb enough magical energy to negate some of the outflow. That doesn’t mean the output is consistent, though. Conditions on the other side can modify how much energy is coming out, and increased output can suggest that things are not stable, or that the portal has become more dangerous. It could mean that a higher level Survey is required to get things back under control.”
Then he tapped a few more things into the tablet, leaving Alex with her own thoughts for a moment. If the portal was growing more dangerous, it would mean it was less safe for E rank Surveyors like herself. Was that why they had sent in Forsmith?
Zach finished his typing and looked up. “Was there anything going on at the portal that might have suggested what had changed?”
It was a dangerous question, given that an obvious cover up was involved. She paused, thinking it over, and then made a decision. “There was a convoy from the Group there that day, headed for the portal. I didn’t get close enough to see what they were doing, but I know a C rank Surveyor was present.”
“Oh.” She saw obvious calculations going on behind Zach’s expression, and he very carefully took his hand away from the tablet. Perhaps making it obvious that he wasn’t going to make a note of it. “Interesting. Seems like the Group has already got a handle on it.”
“Sounds like it.” She mimicked his careful tone, even though his blankly neutral expression shouted something else. Her mother had been right—mostly. The company was covering up something about the portal, and she needed to be careful going forward. It might have even been a mistake to mention it here. Was there a worse place than the PAD that they could assign her to?
Zach nodded slowly and then gave her another smile. “Well, with those out of the way, my last question this time is if you would be willing to wear this on your next Skill training session out there.” He opened a drawer in the desk and drew out a small strap with what looked like a medallion attached to it. There was a familiar-looking chunk of purple stone attached to it, though it had apparently been tampered with extensively.
“What is that?” She abruptly paused, but Zach’s chuckle told her she was already way too late. “Oh, come on. I’m never going to get that story, am I?”
“Technically, that’s two questions, but I’ll give you both answers anyway. Out of charity, of course.” Zach slid the medallion over to her. “This is a Magic Detection Meter. We have a batch of them set up around the containment area for each portal to help us monitor the output. I want to get a more direct reading, however, so if you could wear one of them on your next visit, it would be a huge help.”
“As for the story, well, all you have to do is ask—when you get the chance.” He grinned.
“Think you’re so clever, don’t you?” Alex rolled her eyes at the smug expression on his face. “Fine, I’ll wear the thing on my next run—though I don’t know why you need extra readings if there are already a bunch there.”
“Thank you. I appreciate your cooperation.” Zach closed the drawer the monitor had come from. “Now, what other questions can I ask you… Oh yeah! When you went through the portal for the first time…”
Roughly three and a half hours later, Alex staggered her way out of the PAD, feeling like a dishrag after someone had wrung every drop out of it. Zach had been extremely polite—in a way that was entirely sincere, unlike Liliana—but that hadn’t meant he wasn’t an absolutely merciless interrogator. He’d dredged every single detail out of her about her Skills, her experiences in the other world, and her interactions with the Survey Screen. Worse, he’d been so clever with his questions that he'd been able to go over every detail two or three times, where she’d been struggling not to give her own questions away for free.
At least she’d gotten the details of his ‘reassignment’ out of him, as far as he’d been willing to discuss it. Apparently, one of his supervisors had been floating the idea of simply ignoring a few portals for a while until they had increased magic output, in the hopes that higher class materials could be recovered from them afterwards. Zach had been a little too vocal in opposing it, and as a junior member of the team, he’d been given the boot. Not out of the company, of course, just out of any useful department.
She touched the monitor in her pocket. There had to be some reason that he wanted her to wear it, beyond just confirming the readings he was already getting from the stationary ones in the area. Did he think that the on-site monitors weren’t working somehow? Or was it something else? If someone like Forsmith caught her with it, would they instantly know what she was up to, or would they just dismiss it as irrelevant?
Alex shrugged and made her way down the hallway. She’d given her word that she’d do it, so she wasn’t going to go back on it now. Besides, something told her she was more willing to deal with Liliana being mad at her than she was to let someone as earnest as Zach down. Her father would be disappointed in her otherwise.