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The Infinite Labyrinth
171. Checkpoints

171. Checkpoints

“More reports,” the assistant said, dropping a pair of sheets on Jonathan Atkinson’s desk.

The US Federal Deputy Secretary for the Labyrinth looked at his assistant, and asked tiredly, “What’s new?”

“Two more locked Gates, not too far from that tier-two pair of locked-ones in Garnjern. One to a tier-four and the next to tier-five, straight up from the zone itself. So far, nobody has used these very much, which is why it escaped notice until now. Both teams apparently came out, saw the Gate they had just used with a descriptor showing ‘locked’ and came back immediately to report since they knew about lock-outs.”

“That’s thirteen so far?”

“Yes. But who knows how many more might be coming up. It dried out after the first two days, but we still get new reports of closed Gates after nearly a week, although always the same ones. Except for those two today.”

“I need answers for Secretary Tompkins now that he’s finally here,” Atkinson pointed out.

“We have nothing else. No indication of a source, nothing. Just scattered locked Gates all over. It’s a puzzle,” the assistant admitted.

Atkinson sighed, gathered his notes, and stood up.

“Well, let’s hope I get a bright idea before I get in his office, then.”

Daniel D. Tompkins contemplated the view from his office as Atkinson finished the briefing. From up there, the Secretary for the Labyrinth Affairs could see the main square, with the Great Gilded Gate in the middle. It was hard for him to see any difference. Even the movements in and out of the Labyrinth seemed perfectly normal for the hour, none of the Professionals hurrying or showing any visible sign of nervousness. At least from his vantage.

“So, what is your first hypothesis?”

Tompkins smiled broadly before adding, “Just to see if it’s the same as mine.”

“The English, I presume?” Atkinson replied.

“Oh. No, I was more thinking about the Chinese, actually,” Tompkins said.

“Why…? Ah, Machenlenso.”

“Every Gate leading into Machenlenso is gone, empty metal circles. Four Gates, four empty loops. The only way in or out is by Fast Travel or Recall. And we do know this one directly leads to some Chinese zones.”

“We still haven’t got a team that has completed all the lairs. The most advanced one we had Recalled after freaking out from their descriptors disabled mentions, and they don’t have a Fast Travel into the zone because they always come straight from here. So now, they can’t get back at it,” Atkinson informed Thompkins.

“It would be interesting to see if that special Gate located in… the Five Star lair?… is closed as well.”

“I’ll try to build a new ad-hoc team with anyone having any form of working access. They’ll get started with instructions to be as speedy as they can. The zone isn’t going to be busy anyway, cut out from normal as it is,” Atkinson said, jotting down notes.

“Your idea about the English has merit, though,” Tompkins said finally.

“Weird Labyrinth event and weird Professionals? The principle of mediocrity applies,” Atkinson replied.

“Not everything has to stem from the same root causes, despite what you think. But it is an idea worth pursuing. You have a specialist for that, I think. She’s been cultivating that young Professional who visited last year since.”

Atkinson stifled a groan, but his displeasure didn’t escape his boss.

“I still don’t know why you dislike her so much.”

“She’s a loose cannon and completely mercenary. She sprung that night-time visit on us with almost no warning, and she even tried to take advantage of it, instead of sticking to the mission.”

“But she is a main player and has a knack for finding interesting facts, and she is on friendly terms with London’s special ones. And mercenary mentalities means you always know where they stand. Give them the right reward, and they deliver. Who else is going to pay up? The Chinese?”

Atkinson sighed and jotted down another note.

Just because her father is a long-standing Jeffersonian supporter you need to stand against the Federalists doesn’t mean you have to always use her, he thought.

“Miss, HMS Northwind is a special cutter. We work for the Postal Office, and it's all special cargo, parcels and official business only. We’re not a passenger ship.”

“Nonsense. I was waving at your passengers last year when they left from this very quay. And as for official business, here’s my bona fide, from the government. I am currently on a diplomatic officially sanctioned trip, and getting to London is a priority. And you’re next to leave port.”

The purser internally grimaced but kept barring access to the ship to the woman. He could guess she was a Professional, despite the mundane-looking clothing, from the faint unreality wisps that escaped around her presence. She felt somewhat slightly more real than the world around her. It was a bit more pronounced than that young Professional they’d been ferrying last year, but now he could recognize where that uncanny sensation came from. Getting a woman aboard a ship, especially not a passenger ship, was always courting disaster, but a Professional?

“I will ask the captain,” he finally said, admitting defeat.

Sylvia Underwood smiled back sweetly.

----------------------------------------

Jonas turned in his report to the Scout’s headquarters half unnoticed. The urgency of the early days had apparently already settled down. Once he’d left the short report at the reception desk, he headed toward the Archives to check with them for a larger picture and maybe some answers. Assuming they were not too busy.

There were three Archivists poring over maps along with piles of charts and diagrams when he came into the building. Jonas quickly summarised his own team’s findings.

“Not every Gate is covered by someone’s Fast Travel options, so it takes time. But we’re starting to get a good picture of things,” Babbage said.

“Which is?” Jonas asked.

“It looks like the Great Gilded Gate of Versailles shutdown caused a kind of… wave, for lack of a better term, propagating across the Labyrinth. Not every Gate was affected, but I am seeing that, the closer to the origin in Argentmart, the more got closed, and the lower the ‘stability’ reported on the now-visible descriptors. None of the Gates is reported to have lost integrity, unlike the Great Gate, but the event clearly ‘destabilized’ stuff.”

“Empty surfaces.”

“Yes. And the destabilization seems to occur on the side ‘outward’ from the origin, rather than the inward-facing one as if it was some sort of under-pressure occurring or something akin to a pump collapsing and sucking in water. The inward-facing ones remain intact.”

Jonas thought about the trunk gates and the Markandon gate, and how that matched this theory. The Zolferras-Ovildian Gate could be thought of as either facing to or away from the trunk, depending on which zone you travelled through to come from Donerkal.

“Something physically travelling across zones?” he asked.

“Maybe. The Labyrinth is very obviously the product of divine design, but it still takes inspiration from the laws of the Earthly world. If we assume it’s really your Milestone that is the source of this…”

Babbage’s fingers drummed on the table.

“You know, not many people were present on both Gate shutdowns. Your team, the British Scouts’ five, the ones from the Duke of Newcastle that were also on patrol there – if they were on the Versailles assault at all, that is. And that’s it. Tell me, did anything differ during the shutdown?”

Jonas started, surprised at the question. Then, he rummaged through his memories. Despite being a non-Professional at the time, Intellect helped to bring back the events, even though he had not been paying much attention to the surroundings, too fearful for his own life at the time.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

“It pretty much went the same way. Integrity fell first, with stability remaining normal… The Gate surface only started to get agitated once it fell below a certain amount, around 95% I think. Then stability fell fast.”

He apologized.

“I didn’t witness the last parts of the London shutdown, of course. We all got shanghaied into the Labyrinth just before. But like Versailles, the Gate’s surface blew up and popped, just as the stability was getting to the 0% value,” he added.

“Maybe Cowen can shed more light on it…” Babbage mused.

“I think they were still battling that Frenchman in the street when it blew up in London. Maybe Douglas – last time I saw her then, she was trying to get to the gate-breaker French group. But her team stayed on the Versailles side when we shut down the Gate anyway.”

Babbage grimaced slightly.

“Well, we’ll do with what we have. We are lucky to have at least some witnesses that were in the right place for both events. So… integrity followed by stability. I mean, I wasn’t there during the shutdown event itself. I only got to see the London Gate in the aftermath. It had 83% integrity still, with 0% stability remaining.”

“Oh. Versailles ended at… 6%, I think.”

“Sooo… well, that’s obviously very different.”

“It does look like it’s really Adjustment doing it, then,” Jonas said.

“It might be that a Great Gate is more vulnerable from the Labyrinth side. Short of having someone shutting down their Gilded Gate without your friend’s help, that’s going to be hard to verify,” Babbage said.

“And I don’t see anyone else hurrying to provide a Great Gate for us to experiment on,” Howard Brook commented.

Babbage shrugged as if the idea was not a big problem.

“But we have more information still. Integrity is seemingly linked to the Gate physical self, and that’s what your Gate Closer affects. Stability… it seems to be the actual transit surface or system. Once you remove enough integrity, stability can’t be sustained, but it is independent. That’s why the descriptor has two numbers. They’re both meaningful in their own distinctive ways.”

“The Labyrinth never lies,” the third Archivist pronounced.

“The Earth name blurred as well during the last moment of the Gate shutdown, before returning,” Jonas added helpfully.

“Could be that this is the default setting for the Gate then, even if it's not connected?” Babbage mused aloud.

The men remained silent for a while, contemplating the charts of Gate connections laying on the table.

“What about the low-stability Gates in the main sectors?” Jonas asked finally.

“That’s the slightly pre-occupying part. Stuff like the Cheogary Gates – there are two out of three Gates to that zone that have been both disabled outward – make only sense…”

“… if you assume there’s a short connection to Argenmart available leading into that zone,” Jonas completed.

“There are other different areas like that, with multiple Gates shut down in close proximity without an obvious reason. And yes, the current idea is that there might be another trunk's connections hidden nearby, with Gates close to Argenmart and Cheogary, if not outright linked to Argenmart. It could open up as well in the Dediye-Chislswell tier-three area or something next to it to explain why we have six Gates centred around those two zones now closed. And potentially another tier-five as well, although that’s still a possible outflow from Biskanta since we know for certain your original trunk opens up there as well. Without knowing how far the ‘wave’ goes before it’s dissipated enough not to blow up Gates on its way out, it’s hard to say.”

Jonas counted in his head the trip. Argentmart, Brocarres, Szinkal, Donerkal, Othary, Markandon, Warsemial…

“It’s at least seven Gates, if you assume there’s no weird shortcut. It shouldn’t be coming from another direction, since the Warsemial side from Markandon probably blew up.”

“More than seven, or we’d have only one, maybe two tier-five Gates disabled instead of four widely spaced,” Babbage immediately remarked.

Jonas contemplated the schematic full of question marks on display before asking the big question.

“Now what?”

“That’s probably an answer left for the government to worry about. It looks like there’s little we can do about it…”

“Unless us six help again.”

Jonas then spent a few moments explaining how his team figured out that the disabled/locked Gates “zapped” them.

“One thousand,” Babbage said.

“Of every vital. But it did not move the stability percentage.”

“We actually have one Gate who went up by one per cent between the first and most recent report – the Grailburg-Cheogary one went up at one point three days after the initial event.”

“And we also have different inconsistent reports on Nindarul’s stability,” another Archivist added.

“So, the transits are stabilizing themselves,” Jonas said.

“Like the London Great Gate eventually did. Or the one that was tested early this year. It’s still going to take multiple months at that speed, but I do agree – you do not need to be involved, at least until Gates are close or at 100%.”

“Didn’t that test Gate reopen by itself?”

“Yes it did, but it stayed at 100% for a long time, far longer than it would need to get to, say, 101%. So, you might be useful to… accelerate the reopening of the Gates…” Babbage’s voice trailed again.

“At the cost of maybe dying again.”

“I’m sure Minkton or Laufrey’s might compensate you well if you can re-open their old pathways across the Labyrinth even a few weeks earlier. Or claim you owe them anyway. Right now, they’re still trying to establish new routes and bring more carriages for those. But that’s not what I am thinking about.”

“Oh?” Jonas asked.

“Yes. I remember when you forced the Great Gate to re-open, and how it… sort of searched for the connection, even though it had already been set to transit to ‘Earth-113’ until then.”

“You think… the Gates could be induced to do the same?”

“If there are multiple Gates still unconnected, all at 100%… what is possible there?”

“Could we… establish shortcuts across the Labyrinth? Reshape it?”

“Until over a year ago, we did not know that Gates could be closed. Or that there could be Professionals affecting them that way, like you. Who knows?”

“Are shortcuts even desirable?” another Archivist asked.

No one had any answer to that one. Not after using the trunk for a surprise attack.

The rest of the team was gathered in the headquarters’ main relaxation room.

“So, our Zilbarn access is safe?” Laura asked.

“All Gates in and out of Zilbarn were already reported active by teams while we were scouting the Othary area. Two outfits use it regularly, the Bouquet Supplies and the Dungeon Scrappers.”

“Dungeon… scrappers?”

“Well, they say the poor critters are stuck in their lairs like they’re locked inside some dungeon. And thus, they’re freeing them. And scrapping the treasure. I don’t know which noble thought it funny to name his company that way, but I am sure it’s a Professional that proposed that one,” Jonas said, chuckling.

“Avoids having to walk back from Gatepost,” Ira breathed in relief. “That would take quite a long time to get back to tier three or four.”

“Not that lairs in tier four are doable for now. Don’t our licenses in Zilbarn expire soon?” Alton asked.

“By the new year.”

“What’s the plan anyway? Now that the raid is done… what do we do?” Guss asked.

“Well, that’s the second news. We may have some specific for-us-only jobs incoming. In a few months, that is.”

Jonas started to explain the potential offer imagined by Babbage.

“There are alternate pathways to almost everywhere, but those companies want to move stuff as quickly as possible, using the lowest tier possible. Their bean counters dislike having Professionals busy ferrying stuff on their own when they could empty lairs instead and have filled carriages to drive around large quantities of stuff with a single Professional.”

“So, they are going to pay us to die?”

“Not unless we can avoid it. Dying is okay for a while, we get two days’ rest. It’s the Adjustment that might come when you are resurrected that is not. Which means getting our vitals to the point where it is safe to ‘push’ the Gates back to active status without being killed for messing up.”

“And assuming that’s something we want to do.”

“The major companies are well connected, politically. We are going to be asked to do it, politely, but firmly, is my guess. So we have a few months to prepare for that potential problem,” Jonas said.

“Levelling is still a priority, then,” Jonathan noted.

“For all of us, yes. But at the same time, we might want to focus on getting some specialized gear for this specific task.”

“Getting pieces that focus heavily on vitals. Or at least Potentials that boost vitals,” Laura immediately said.

“A hundred-fifty vitals on some gear is easier than getting thirty levels for our lowest vital. So, the more gear, the better. Strictly speaking, we mostly need vitals to boost our lowest values. At least Endurance for Guss and me, Aether for you… but then if you lose vitals by the thousand, you need even more of everything, except maybe Health, which is so far good enough for all of us. Jonathan, you’re probably even closer to two thousand all over, with all your extra levels and lopsided build, but maybe we can all get there.”

“Faire is tomorrow anyway, and it’s been so long since I went around. I’m on it, then,” Laura said.

“Doesn’t this cause problem with company stores if we go and trade stuff on our own there?”

“I’ll figure out a deal with Fleming. The Manager is a reasonable man,” she replied.

Jonathan Bennett Gilbert

Health: 4399/4399 (3832)

Mind: 2447/2447 (2286)

Endurance: 2150/2150 (1524)

Aether: 1483/1483 (1391)

Effective level: 172

Level 22 Calculating Guardian

Level 26 Careful Barrier

Level 35 Calculating Barrier

Level 15 Defender

Level 44 Layman

Level 30 Watcher

Experience: 38124/94286

Strength: 60 (54)

Dexterity: 65

Agility: 87 (72)

Constitution: 191 (108)

Stamina: 95 (58)

Wisdom: 55

Focus: 110 (68)

Presence: 105 (68)

Fortitude: 102 (50)

Intellect: 63

Defence Rating: 711

40% faster levelling

11% team defence

16% armour

10% health/CON

3% vitals/potential

1 mind/FOC

5% mind/FOR

Milestones: Adjustment VIII, Watcher II, Layman III, Defender I, Calculating Barrier II, Careful Barrier II, Calculating Guardian I

Skills: Notice Attack (4+1), Dodge (3), Brace (1), Cross (1), Turn Blade (1), Gauge Enemy (1), Anticipate (0+1), Interpose (0+1), Deflect Strike (0+1), Deflection (0+1), Turtle (0+1), Solid Defence (0+1), Repel (0), Parry (0)

Equipment: Iron Chainmail Loop (10FOC/9CON), Black Iron Breastplate (12CON/+1interpose), Steady Steel Handgrip (8CON/ 6STR/92hp/76end/+1deflect), Lacquered Iron Plate Girdle (16PRE/15CON/192hp/188end/+1turtle), Iron Chainmail Cuisses (14STA/13FOR), Watery Steel Sollerets (8FOC/92aether/+1notice), Steel-Twined Wood Ring (16FOR/ 14CON/181end/3%vitals/ +1solid.def), Agate Bronze Pendant (13CON/12FOC/161mind), Brass-Lined Orb (12CON/12STA/10AGI/10PRE/256end/120hp/+1anticipate/+1deflect.strike/1%armour/1%team.def), Tempered Longword (12FOR/12FOC/11PRE), Cat-Pommel Iron Blade (11STA/11FOR/134hp)