Alex had just gotten back from the portal room—where Wells had seemed particularly dissatisfied with her, as usual—and had finished her phone call with her parents, when her phone chirped again. It was another text from Zach. He was requesting another immediate meeting.
She frowned at it a moment and then changed course. Sam had been one of the first ones sent through the portal that morning, so he would probably be back in the barracks first.
As expected, he was already in the room, shuffling around in the locker beneath his bed for something. Sam looked up as she knocked on the doorframe. “Hey. What’s going on? Did your Survey go all right?”
She nodded. “Yeah. How did yours go?”
“Well enough.” Sam shrugged, a dissatisfied expression on his face. “I had to give Wells his sacrificial lamb. They all seemed like good Surveyors, but one of them is already marked down for being excluded. Doesn’t seem right.”
Alex made a face. “Yeah, that’s not right at all.”
Sam raised an eyebrow. “You don’t know the half of it. You know how you asked me to look into those Surveyors who get transferred?” She nodded, and he continued in a lower voice, stepping closer to make up for the difference. “There’s at least thirty ‘washout’ E ranks that never actually made it to wherever they were going. Wells listed them as going to another facility, but then he reported that they quit and paid the contract penalty fee.”
She frowned. “That fee is like five years’ pay. There’s no way most Surveyors could handle it.”
“Suspicious, right?” He shook his head. “Once I found that, I did a little more digging around. Turns out it isn’t just E ranks either. Every couple of transfers or so, a D rank goes missing, too. Not a washout, but quits with all fees paid. There’s been about twelve of those since Wells set up shop here.”
Alex blinked. She felt a slight chill travel up her spine. “Do they turn up again?”
“Yeah. A bunch of the E ranks ended up living here in the city, even if they lived somewhere else before. A couple of the D ranks, too.” Sam paused and grimaced. “A lot of the D ranks, though… they just vanish. Never seen again.”
A coil of dread started to writhe in Alex’s guts. Whatever was going on here was even worse than the drugs could have been. “We have no way to trace them?”
Sam shook his head. “Not from here. I was already pushing things, asking about transfers and poking at the company database. I forwarded the list of the ones in town to Zach yesterday, though. He said he would check into it.”
Alex frowned. She still didn’t know if she liked the fact that Zach was working with more Surveyors than her, but the jealousy seemed to be almost unimportant compared to the dread worming around inside her. “He said he wants to meet tonight. Do you think I can get away from the celebration?”
He smirked. “Need someone to run interference for you again?” She nodded, and he laughed a little. “Don’t worry about it. Wells isn’t going to be there. Something about him having something to do.”
“Okay, good.” She felt a moment of disquiet about what could pull Wells away from his favorite form of entertainment—aside from smacking her around in the sparring ring, of course—and then shook her head. It would make it that much easier to slip away from the party. “I’ll tell Zach we’re on for tonight, then.”
Sam nodded. “Good. Tell him I’ll be coming too.” He reached back into his locker and pulled out a jacket. “I’ve benefitted enough from all the ‘hunches’ that I figure I owe him a meal or something at least. Besides, maybe this way you won’t get too distracted staring longingly into each others’ eyes.”
Alex snorted, but she felt a hint of a blush crawl up her cheeks. She did feel a little disappointed that she wouldn’t be meeting Zach alone, but at the very least, she’d get to see him again. With that thought, she went back to her own barracks to get changed. Seeing that spark in his eyes again would more than make up for bringing company along.
Zach looked up as they entered the restaurant. Alex thought she saw a flash of disappointment in his blue eyes as he saw Sam standing next to her, but it vanished a heartbeat later, just before he waved them over.
She didn’t pay it much attention, however, because she was focused on something far more important. As she slid into the booth across from him, her eyes were locked onto his face, which was covered in cuts and bruises. It was a struggle to keep her voice low. “Zach, what happened?”
He looked from her to Sam and back again. “I went looking for the names from Red Blade. I assume you’re Sam?”
Sam nodded, his eyes intent. For some reason, he was still standing. “Yeah. Thanks for the help.” He stretched out a hand, and Zach stood up for a moment to shake it. Then both of them slid into the booth, Sam next to Alex and Zach still across from both of them.
Zach glanced around before he spoke, and he was just as careful to keep his voice low as she had been. “Like I said, I did some checking into the names. Not all of them are in the city.” When Sam nodded, Zach grimaced. “No, I don’t mean the ones that fell completely off the grid. I mean the ones with addresses listed here. There should be thirty ex-Surveyors. At least five of them are ghosts, probably literally.”
Alex’s eyes narrowed. “What does that mean?”
He took out a list from his pocket and slid it over to them. How paranoid had he gotten that he was using paper? “For five of those addresses, the rental units were empty. They were hooked up to the internet, had some traffic moving through them, bills were being paid, but no sign of habitation.” Zach tapped the list. “Did a bit more digging. All five units belong to the same landlord. A friend of Wells’ from the Army.”
Sam grunted. “So those houses are empty. Where are the Surveyors?”
Zach shook his head. “I’m assuming they’re dead.” A brief silence fell, and he shook his head again. “Sorry. This news isn’t going to get better. I’m betting that those five heard Wells’ job offer and told him to die in a fire.”
Alex glanced at Sam. He looked dazed. “There’s no sign of murder, though.”
“There wouldn’t be.” Alex shook her head. “If he put the body through the portal and sent someone after the Talisman, there wouldn’t be any evidence at all. They’d just disappear.”
Zach nodded, his bruised face solemn. “Then they get ‘transferred’ and an empty house set up for them for a while. Nobody has enough pieces to know the whole story.”
Alex felt a flare of anger thread through her. So Wells wasn’t just some kind of smuggler. He was a griefer as well. A C rank murdering E ranks. She shook her head, trying to clear it of her rage. “What about the others? You said something about a job offer?”
“Yeah.” Zach pulled out another set of printed out pages. They showed a series of photos. “I was able to track down most of the rest of the E ranks, and both D ranks still in the city. You can see that they aren’t exactly in uniform.”
As Alex and Sam started to look through them, Zach reached out and tapped one of them. “See the neck tattoo? That means he belongs to the Highland Park crowd. This one is wearing a tattoo for the South Metro gang, this one was surrounded by a bunch of the Greenroad guys…” He shook his head. “All of them are associated with the same dealers that Wells is feeding his material.”
“Which means he isn’t just smuggling material. He’s smuggling Surveyors.” Sam sounded numb, and Alex could sympathize. If Wells had twisted their arms somehow, forced them to become enforcers for the gangs… it would mean he’d have two advantages. First, his ‘friends’ would have better soldiers than any of the others in the city, which would mean they would win any fights that started.
The second, of course, would mean that Wells had a leash around the neck of everyone he was supplying. If something went wrong, Wells could always remind the Surveyors in the gangs of whatever he had on them, and they would tear the criminals apart from the inside.
She clenched her fists. Regulation agents should have been all over the case months ago. Wells had been getting away with murdering Surveyors for years and nobody had done anything. Why hadn’t they?
Zach was still watching her, and she realized he wasn’t finished yet. “What else?”
He sighed slowly, the noise coming out of his battered face a little oddly. “Those government guys you saw at the handoff with Wells? They definitely aren’t government.” Zach drew out another piece of paper. “I managed to track the car after one of the handoffs. It went to a facility a little outside the city. It is some kind of secure site, but I think it is owned by a corporation, not an agency.”
Zach glanced at Sam again, but the other Surveyor was still engrossed in the pictures that Zach had already given them. Alex felt her eyes narrow as she looked back at Zach. He took a short breath. “When I tried to follow it back to who actually owned the place, I got to a shell company. One that was used at one point by Greylight Industries.”
Alex felt her breath catch. Greylight had long been a corporation associated with unethical research and questionable corporate practices. They were notable for being one of the few Survey corps that openly provided Surveyors as security consultants to the rich and powerful. Far worse than that were whispers about medical experiments and espionage, along with the occasional coverup. Her mother had always wanted to bust them open, of course, as had every other Regulation agent.
In fact, Muriel had been doing so when her team had been led through a portal and into an ambush. One that she’d always suspected had been set up by…
It took a moment for her to remind herself to breathe. Zach was still watching her. He’d talked with her parents enough to know what Greylight meant. He had to know what she was thinking of doing. As she watched, he slowly shook his head, and she felt reality impose itself. If Greylight was involved, they’d have their own group of agents. Maybe even the same D ranks Wells had handed over to them, ready to eliminate any threat—and that was if she was lucky, and they didn’t have any C or B rank Surveyors on hand to squish the problem.
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Sam had glanced up at the mention of Greylight, and he was now looking back and forth between them. “So you think the D ranks went there?”
“Yeah.” Zach looked away from Alex, who was focusing on clenching and unclenching her hands. “They’d have a lot of uses for a well-drilled D rank that couldn’t say no to their… propositions. They probably pay Wells highly for each one, too. Their compound is almost as heavily isolated as the Red Blades’ one here.”
“Is that how you got hurt? Trying to ask questions around Greylight?” She couldn’t help spitting the word, and Zach seemed to hurry to shake his head.
“No. I just got caught doing something I shouldn’t have been.” He gingerly touched his face. “One of the E ranks here in town took offense to me digging through her trash. I was dressed up like a homeless person at the time, though, so I don’t think she caught on at all.”
Alex felt some of the tension inside her relax a little. “Which one?”
Zach hesitated, looking at Sam. The other Surveyor just grimaced and shrugged. “This one, right here.”
She looked down at the photo, memorizing the ex-Surveyor’s features. Then she nodded. “Okay.” The two men exchanged a look that Alex chose to ignore. “We have about three weeks until the next crunch, right? And transfers are supposed to happen after that?”
Zach nodded. “Yeah.”
“Then we have about that long to find a way to stop this from happening again.” Alex tapped the list of names in front of her, her mind feeling clear and focused. “We can’t take on Wells directly. Not with what we have right now.”
Sam laughed, sounding a little nervous. “Well, yeah. Even you can’t seem to touch him, and you’re the best we have. Unless the Crimson Blade steps off the pedestal they set up for her in the portal room, of course.”
Zach cleared his throat, and Alex gave him an exasperated look. “That means we need to bring down the stuff he’s doing to support himself. Which means we need to cut something out of his program.” She looked down at the papers again, thinking through it all. Then something occurred to her. “Sam, the reasoning behind crunch was that because we didn’t collect enough, we had to make up for all the washouts, right? Since they weren’t safe enough to go through the portal?”
The question seemed to surprise Sam a little. He nodded. “Yeah, that’s how Wells put it.”
Alex nodded slowly, the idea coming together in her head. “Crunch is what he uses to make most of this work. Without it, he can’t hide the material he’s sending to the gangs, and he can’t organize transfers where people disappear as easily. If we take that down…”
She paused, thinking through her strategy. It might rely on Wells hating her a little too much, but if she could challenge his ego enough… “All right. I’m going to try to sabotage his chances at justifying another crunch. It might mess up his little washout program too.” Alex turned to Sam. “Can you start talking to your friends in the support staff? Keep bringing up how unreasonable Wells has been to them, and see if we can get them to stop playing along with his orders. They aren’t active Surveyors, so the only thing he can do is fire them, after all.”
Sam nodded, his expression a little skeptical. “I’ll see what I can do. A lot of them are really scared of him, though.”
“Let me see if I can deal with that.” She smiled, and Sam sighed in resignation. At least he wasn’t raising any objections.
“I’ll keep digging into the connections Wells has. See if I can get a better picture of how it all works.” Zach shuffled all the papers together and handed them over. “Take what I have for now, but I think I can lean on one or two of the E ranks. If they come clean, then even Regulation won’t be able to overlook this. They may not nail Greylight, but they’ll go after Wells for the gangs at least.”
Alex frowned at him. “Zach, you’ve already gotten yourself injured over this. You should leave the rest to us.”
He tilted his head and smiled at her. The expression didn’t look any worse for the bruises. “Oh please, if I did that we’d never get anywhere, now would we?”
The question was frustratingly accurate, and she was still trying to think of a way to answer it when Zach reached forward and put his hand over hers. “I’ll be all right, Alex. I’m not going to just watch you guys fight for your lives from the sidelines, though—so like it or not, I’m going to keep digging. Maybe I can even find a way to stop this without having you throw yourself into the fire. Okay?”
She fought her own initial reaction, which would be to threaten to call her mother on him. It didn’t help that his eyes were sparkling, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking. He even had a little smirk on his face.
Alex let out her breath in a small huff of frustration and looked away. “All right, fine. Just… be careful.”
“I will, Valkyrie.”
She felt her face grow instantly hot as he used the nickname and tried to ignore the low chuckle from his side of the table. “Okay, how do we get food here, anyway?”
When Alex started her run the next morning, it felt predictably rough. The lack of Meditation to recover and the sudden lack of Marathoning combined to make the first lap a miserable experience. It made her glad that Sam had not joined her for it.
Yet as she continued, Alex found herself falling into a kind of moving meditation, one that seemed to fuel her muscles as she ran. As Motion Trance began to gain levels, the fatigue building in her body started to stabilize, and her speed increased. Her desire to stop and catch her breath began to fade, and her steps along the walltop grew more and more sure.
By the time she started her third lap, the burning in her legs had started to go down instead of continuing to increase. Frowning at the change, she put on more speed, hoping to push herself further. The wall blurred by as she moved, her legs growing stronger and stronger as she went.
When she reached the end of her third lap, she realized with shock that she felt good enough to go for a fourth. Wondering how much further she could push it, she poured on more speed, feeling the magic flow through her. The wind whipped past her and her heart beat in time with her footsteps as she traced the perimeter of the compound yet again.
As she came to a stop at last at the end of the fourth lap, she saw orange text hovering in front of her.
[Motion Trance advances to 9!]
She didn’t feel as fresh as she had when she’d started… but she was closer than she would have believed. Before, Marathoning had helped her speed and endurance, but she’d still had to stop for ten minutes of Meditation to wipe the slate clean, so to speak. If she didn’t have to do that anymore…
Grinning, she started down the steps just as the first E ranks started to file into the exercise yard. She waved to them as she jogged past, and got a few hesitant waves in return that only made her smile wider. The first piece of her plan was already falling into place.
Sparring went about as expected, though to her surprise, she could no longer use meditation as she had before. Instead of sitting calmly between matches, Alex loped around the gymnasium in a lazy prowl, using Motion Trance to recover her strength. It made her seem like some kind of restless animal pacing the gym, and she could see flickers of hesitation among the rest of the Surveyors, but it also was helping her gain levels on the Skill, so she continued.
In the afternoon she was almost tempted to take the two hours of personal time to go run again instead, but she worried that would tip her hand. As it was, her prowling still brought her all the way up to twelve in Motion Trance. It was enough to put a smile on her face despite the way that Wells once again beat her easily in the daily spar. It was annoying to not be able to meditate her way through the tactical seminar, but she found it hard to complain as she flew along the walls for her nightly run.
On the third day of the training period, Wells called for a brief meeting before they began their sparring sessions.
Alex lined up with the rest as the chief grinned at them from where he stood. He started without preamble. “The teams for tomorrow’s Survey have now been organized. Those who were identified as being particularly unready for the mission have been excluded; the support staff have been informed that they might have some additional help for the day.”
Now was the time. Alex raised a hand. “Chief, why aren’t we putting them through the portal, anyway? Aren’t we going to fall behind on our quotas that way?”
Chief Wells blinked, obviously knocked off balance by the deviation from the normal script. He stared at her for a moment, while the other Surveyors shuffled uncomfortably in the silence. When he answered, his voice was a mixture of baffled amusement and exasperation. “Surveyor Morrison, Red Blade Securities takes its responsibilities for Surveyor safety very seriously. If a Surveyor isn’t ready to go through the portal, they put both themselves and others at risk. It’s true that their lack of performance may impact our production of critical materials, but we can make up for their faults through the grit and determination that we have all learned to rely on.”
It was difficult to keep her face neutral, knowing the lies behind the griefer’s words, but she managed. “Chief, if they don’t go through the portal, how are they supposed to learn that same grit and determination? Shouldn’t we make our best effort to bring them up to the level they need to be on?”
Wells was glaring at her now. His hands twitched at his sides. “Unfortunately, we don’t have the resources to do so, Surveyor Morrison. We cannot afford to spend our time helping Surveyors who have refused to prepare themselves to fight by our side. Those who make an effort and work hard for their teams are the ones we will focus on.”
Alex met his glare with a neutral look. Not challenging, but not backing down. “If you’ll excuse me, Chief, that doesn’t make sense.” As his lips started to twist into a snarl, she continued in a voice that carried across the other D ranks. She tried to ignore the twist in her gut. “The Crimson Blade never left anyone behind. She always expected the best from everyone, not just the strongest. If these Surveyors aren’t pulling their weight, then someone should make them do it.”
A murmur ran through the assembled Surveyors, and Wells paused. His eyes had grown hard now, and he seemed to be weighing his rage against his control. Alex would have wagered her entire life savings that he wouldn’t have expected her to appeal to her mother’s legacy—which was exactly why she had. In this compound, the Crimson Blade was the only authority that outweighed Wells’, and Wells knew it.
When Wells spoke, his voice was half-strangled with anger. “And who do you expect to do that, Surveyor Morrison? Who is supposed to take responsibility for their lack of ability and show them how things are done? Who will turn them into better Surveyors for Red Blade Securities? You?”
She answered as if the question had been genuine. “I would be honored, Chief.” Before he could pull back the opportunity, she continued in an even voice. “If you would divide them into six teams of four, I’ll take them through the portal tomorrow in waves. A maximum of two hours per team; I’ll only come back after every other Survey, to give me a chance at completing the Main Quests.”
Wells stared at her, as if completely taken off guard. “You’re going to take all of them through? By yourself?”
“If that’s what the company needs, Chief.” She let her tone do the talking for her, and saw anger punch through his confusion again.
“You’ll be expected to bring them back safely. Safely, and on time. If you come back late even one time, or bring back a single wounded Surveyor, you’ll be washing dishes right next to them for the next Survey. For the next three Surveys! Understand?”
“I do, Chief.” Alex understood better than he thought, and she relished the flicker of triumph in his eyes. He thought she’d fail; after all, she was volunteering for something as bad or worse than a crunch, and volunteering to do it while everyone else was just doing one Survey. It should have been a crushing weight.
Of course, he didn’t know about Motion Trance, or that she knew about his plans and plots. Wells probably thought she was just restless and wanted to avoid another Salvage Survey.
Which was fine by her. After all, when she actually succeeded at what she was proposing, he’d have a hard time arguing that they needed to do a crunch afterward—and even if he justified it somehow, the Surveyors he was sending through would have enough combat experience to actually make it through the rush. Without washouts, and with an additional boost of materials that were on the official logs, he was going to have a hard time keeping his little operation under wraps.
At least, that was the hope.
Wells was still glaring at her in a way that promised some kind of retribution was coming. She just stared back at him, picturing exactly what she was going to do with him once she got the chance.
Then he snorted. “So be it, Morrison. You’re on washout duty. Be in the portal room right after breakfast; you’re going to have a very long day.”
“Yes, Chief.” Despite herself, she matched his smile. The next day would be a long one, but it would also be the beginning of the end of Wells the griefer. That fact made it worth any price.