Jonas was now looking forward to the evening. The lieutenant had advised him caution, stating that Colonial mores were probably a bit looser than would be proper, and she was certainly looking to have fun without being actually interested. And besides, they would be heading back to England at one point. And there was no way she’d follow him.
But at least, she was a friendly figure, compared to the Pathmaker or, worse, the tier four Professional the Gate Office had as a negotiator, who kept requiring demonstrable reassurance that Jonas was not going to blow up the Gate. Proving a negative was, well, hard.
Jonas noticed the wine glass when Sylvia beelined from the bar to their customary table.
“Wine? Not ale today?”
“Good or bad news, depending. My ship has finally made it to port today. They’re going to finish unloading and loading tomorrow, and… well, I will be checking out and moving into my berth then. Probably leaving tomorrow late or at dawn the next day.”
“Ah.”
“Yes. In theory, it should have happened before you even arrived, so at least I could get to know the Most British of Professionals a little bit.”
“Well, you were the best company I could hope to have in New York. And we will probably never see each other again.”
“Well, in a decade or two, when you’re in high tiers? Who knows if we won’t end up in the same zones at one point, what with the bizarre Labyrinth geometries.”
“To the high tiers, then.”
They clinked their glasses.
“Another day of pointless negotiations. I think the man doesn’t agree when your President said yes and is trying to sabotage the mission.”
“Nothing? Not even a promise?”
“I’m tempted to give up, head back home, and let the diplomat handle the thing because I might still be there on Easter if this keeps going the same way.”
Sylvia leaned back, sipping a bit of wine before putting it on the table and tapping her fingers together.
“You know what? You really should stop waiting.”
“What? Leave without Babbage’s data?”
“No. Stop waiting for permission. Sneak in, have your look, and then you’re good.”
“The Gate must be heavily guarded!”
“At night, without the French next door? Come on. Besides, I want to know what you see before I leave. If we wait, you’ll be gone when I come back next year, and I’ll never know. You don’t tease a girl’s curiosity like that and let her just hanging. It would be mean.”
“So you…”
“Look, the moon is at last quarter and rises pretty much at midnight. What’s your Stamina, Agility and Focus? I remember them in the mid-thirties, right?”
“Stamina is at 31, but…”
“Then it’s just over five miles in the countryside until the Gate area. It’s smack in the middle of the island, nothing but small farms around. I wouldn’t use a horse, but you and I got enough Focus to see once the Moon is up and Agility to make good time. Maybe one hour in, one hour out, and nobody will even notice we’re gone because you’ll be back before morning.”
Jonas had to admit it was terribly tempting. He should note down anything he could see, but the main part was the Gate numbering scheme. If he got that, he could push more, or simply get back to England. That all hinged on how the American Gate area was set up, and Sylvia would know it well enough.
“They’re going to watch me.”
“You’ve never been to a hotel? No, don’t answer that. There are backdoors all the time. We slip out, go, slip back in.”
She smiled evilly.
“And if they catch us coming back… well, you’ve spent the night out with a pretty tier five Professional…”
Jonas’ face might have turned beet red if he had had less Fortitude.
Sylvia had been right, Jonas had to admit. Once they moved out of the streets of the port area into the countryside, the rising moon was just enough to let them guess at things. Besides, she obviously knew the roads around. It was, or had been, her city, after all.
The night was silent and nearly freezing. A bit more mordant than Othary, but nothing his Stamina couldn’t handle.
“It’s too bad it’s not closer to the city,” he whispered.
“Yea. It’s not as if we decided where to put it. You got yours smack in the centre of London, the Chinese have it next to their Emperor’s home, I hear, and even the French had a castle next to it. On the other hand, the Gate Office had plenty of room to build all they wanted. The City surveyors were pissed that their big plans for the future of New York got derailed and they can’t build all those houses there, but that’s too bad.”
“How hard is it to access the Gate?”
“Not hard. There’s going to be a patrol or two; at two in the morning, they’ll be bored out of their skulls, and there’s plenty of buildings to hide nearby.”
They jogged across the darkened countryside. A few times, he spotted the silhouette of a farmhouse or what looked like a more stately house, silhouetted against the flats of the island.
“Sylvia? What’s the strangest Moon you’ve ever seen?” he asked out of nowhere.
Jonas couldn’t tell, but he could somehow guess the surprised look she must have had. Then, after a few moments, she answered in her own whisper.
“The tier five where I went to pick my Profession. It’s not the one I go to, now that the team is starting to get some tier five lairs going, but I remember the zone last year. It’s a huge swamp, half the time you have water up to your knee or something. But at night… there’s three of them.”
“Three moons?”
“We stayed there for two weeks or so. But yes. There were three of them – the Fast Travel option seemed to track the largest. They looked pretty much similar, nearly as big as the normal one. The largest one was brighter but went faster through phases, which was pretty convenient for Fast Travel. You got charges every four-day multiples instead of a week.”
“That’s what is the most unsettling about the Labyrinth for me. The moon. Or moons. Or lack of any moon.”
“The further away you go in, the less like Earth it gets?”
“Yes. That.”
Sylvia didn’t answer, and they kept on jogging in the darkness and silence.
The American Gate area was relatively well lighted. Jonas should have expected it; the London Gate was kept under watch day and night. Power Crystals were embedded in shiny mirror surfaces, focusing their yellowish glow. But Sylvia hadn’t been lying. The buildings and surroundings provided plenty of covers.
“How close do we need to get?”
“A little bit closer, I think. About the range at which you’d see a creature’s descriptor if the creature was Gate-sized. And the Great Gates are, well, larger than normal.”
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
“Then let’s see how close we can get. I’d say we use the claims office – that’s the building there to the right. That’s the one I know best, you get there when you register a complain because someone jumped up your lair without having priority.”
They slowly made their way to the indicated building. Jonas had not seen guards for minutes now. It looked like there were probably two patrols of the hulking metallic figures with dozen of guns around their arms. The things – well, things with men inside – moved pretty silently for something so large and intimidating. But Power Crystals wouldn’t make a sound or anything. That was what worried Jonas most – none of them would be able to hear anything if there was a patrol headed their way.
“So, you can get the hidden descriptors. Any additional descriptors you shouldn’t have?” she asked.
“Not that I know. Besides, most of the time, descriptors are hidden – you need to have the right access to get them. Creatures – and the Gate – are pretty much the only ones you can get from afar.”
Jonas stopped. From this side of the building, he could see the Gate entirely, which looked pretty much like its British counterpart. A large metal ring covered in fantastical heads of Labyrinth creatures. Basic Gates had a few of them, the Great Gates were literally covered in heads with nary an inch without.
Transit: Earth 113 - Marsden
Integrity: 100%
Active
Stability: 100%
Sylvia noted his stop.
“You are in range, right?”
Jonas didn’t immediately answer. He hadn’t expected pretty much anything, honestly speaking. As Babbage said, there were so many possibilities and hidden meanings. But the Gate number was not a Gate number. It was something else. He should have expected it, really. All the Gates just indicated their zone connections, without a gate count. And the Great Gates were no different. They connected to the same tier zero zone. Earth.
“So, you have completed your mission”, Sylvia said. “This is it. What you came for.”
She reached out to him, wrapping her arm around him.
“I am happy that you…” her voice trailed before stopping.
Jonas turned his head toward Sylvia. She was looking straight ahead, blinking and shaking her head. Then she dropped her arm, blinking again. Then she grabbed him, nearly painfully again.
“Sylvia? What’s wrong?”
“I see it.”
“What?”
“I see it. When I hold you…”
She grabbed his hand, then dropped and grabbed the wrist instead.
“When I hold you like I would to get access to your descriptor… I see it as well. I can see not just your descriptor… but the ones you have access to.”
“How is it possible? You are not…”
“Earth 113? Marsden? That active status? I’m not imagining anything. It’s the descriptor you can see. Right?”
“Yes. But…”
“Shit! If you can give access to anything… wait here. Do. Not. Move. Wait. For. Me!” she ordered.
Then she sprung out, running toward the Gate. Jonas nearly started, then caught himself, moving backwards to remain in the office’s shadow. What was Sylvia doing, he wondered. The woman ran straight into the Gate and was gone.
“What is that woman doing?” nearly blurted Mike Hampstead.
John Blackeye grabbed the Professional Spellthrower, preventing him from advancing and uncovering himself.
They had been tracking Sims and Underwood for half an hour, as they neared the Gate area along the road she’d warned them about. She’d been moving the British Professional around, to make sure he got only as close as he needed to be for his special descriptor ability, and no further. And now, she’d just dropped everything and beelined for the Gate. That was definitively not the plan.
The only thing preventing Blackeye from calling out a full-scale reaction of the Professional team and the Gatewatch units on standby was that Jonas Sims was obviously as flustered and surprised as they. So, he let Underwood cover the last few yards across the Gate area and plunge into its border, and kept looking at the British.
Jonas stayed frozen in the shadow. He had no idea whatsoever was happening. He might try to get out of the Gate area, but leaving without Sylvia felt wrong. And besides, she said to wait for her.
At least, her mad dash did not seem to have raised any alarm. Her assumptions about how bored the guards would be seemed to hold. So far.
The minutes slowly ticked, without a sound nor a move, as Jonas’ worried about her. What was she doing behind the Gate? Jonas guessed that there might be some equivalent to Gatepost. A town of American Professionals, coming and going and sleeping and working in the Labyrinth itself. Was she… bringing her friends? Her team?
Jonas was slowly getting antsier. He couldn’t afford to stay there forever. He wasn’t entirely sure he’d be able to go back to town easily, but if the Americans found out he wasn’t at the hotel, they would ask questions. Sneaking would make him look terribly bad in the eyes of Malcolm, the Professional that already thought of him as an enemy agent.
Sylvia popped out of the Gate. Alone. She stopped, threw glances all around, then dashed back toward Jonas’ hiding spot.
“What was that? Where did you go?” he whispered hurriedly.
“If you can provide access to your abilities, then I have to try this.”
“What?”
She showed him a crown. It looked like a small pale metal loop, with a single black gem embedded in the front.
Black Aetheric Crown
Head
Heroic equipment
Requires: Level 257
Provides: 133 defence rating, +1 Aether Strangle rank, +659 mind, +317 aether, FOC+42, PRE+31
“That is the only piece of gear known with Aether Strangle, and the only Professional in the USA that has this aether-control skill is a tier seven combat adept. It’s a spell that lets you drain the aether from enemies and make it your own,” she explained breathlessly. “Wrecks your enemies, make you an endless caster. And she does not know how she got it to appear.”
She grabbed Jonas by the neck, nearly fumbling in her haste.
“Come on, come on… Why isn’t it working?”
Jonas tried to move his neck away. She might not be as high in her Strength as her Dexterity, but the grip was nearly painful.
“Sylvia… even if contact lets you see through my descriptors… it won’t work. At least I think.”
“Why? You get the skill when you wear it, right?”
“When I wear it. If I can access the skill descriptor and that gives me the skill… I have to be the one who accesses it.”
She removed her crown and shoved it onto Jonas' head. Or rather, tried to shove it. It slipped, snagged, and started to itch massively over Jonas’ hair.
“Stop it. I don’t have the level. And even then, it does need to be an Aether/Offense one for me to get it. I’m not even sure you could if you were not also with the same sphere at the time.”
“Balls. Bollocks. Total bollocks.”
Jonas tried to comfort her, and she didn’t move away.
“Not everything works out.”
She stayed silent for a while.
“I went overboard, didn’t I?”
“A bit,” Jonas replied.
At last, she gave a sigh and shoved the crown into a pocket of her robes. Jonas guessed she did not have room in her puppet – she probably had one at tier five, but maybe a smaller one.
“Now, after giving me a fright… let’s slip away?”
“It sounds like a plan. You’re sure you don’t want to run into the Gate and vanish or something?”
“No. You nearly got me out of my socks doing that. I’m not going to tempt a patrol. It would be the worst of luck to get one, so I’m sure it will be the case.”
“Then let’s go. We’ve got five hours before sunrise, we should be good. And catch some sleep.”
“If I can. I’m a light sleeper, and that excitement isn’t going to make me comfortable,” Jonas replied.
She looked around, checking everything.
“We’re good. Follow me,” she said.
They were back in the city’s street, and Jonas was starting to feel a bit better. Jogging back across the dark landscape of Manhattan Island had been even more nerve-wracking than going. His imagination kept conjuring a pursuit, American Gatewatch units running guns blazing after them.
Sylvia found the hotel easily, bringing them to the rear entrance.
“Now that you have your information… you should push them.”
“What?”
“You can play hardball. Nobody knows you have what you want, so tell them they give you what you want or you’ll be heading back and complain to the British government. They accepted your visit, it would be a diplomatic embarrassment or something if it ‘failed’.”
“That sounds… workable. I guess.”
She pulled out a notebook, and hastily scribbled something before handing him the note. Jonas looked and saw her name and an address in New York.
“That’s the place where they deliver mail. Test… well, test your ability. If you can let someone access a skill, then send me a mail. I’ll cross the Atlantic if need be as soon as you are 257 and have an aether-control profession.”
“You really want that skill so much?”
“There are only a few high tier skills known. Some of them are good… but they are even better if you can have gear and milestones invested in them. Getting the skill is hard. Getting a headstart is even better…”
She grabbed him and kissed him.
“I won’t be seeing you, but remember Sylvia from the Americas when you’re back to your old Island.”
Then she smiled and waved as she ran into the stairs. Jonas stayed there for a long time. Then, he finally slowly started climbing to his own room.
Sylvia Underwood was slowly unwinding from the whole night, quaffing some heavy rum from her fathers’ special reserve when the knock on her door came.
“Get in, Blackeye.”
The Steadfast Pathmaker entered and glowered at the woman.
“What? Mission accomplished.”
“Stepping out of the plan like that? What were you trying to do? I was that close,” he said, pinching his fingers forcefully, “to call in the strike and get you and Sims in lockdown. And suffer the diplomatic consequences of blowing the operation out in the open, gentlemen’s agreements be damned.”
She smiled, her countenance having been restored long ago.
“As I said. Mission accomplished.”
“Now get up. Got horses and escort and we’re heading back to Gate Square. Atkinson already dislikes you, so expect to get railed. Us Lenape tends to respect women, but he sure won’t. And I’m also tempted to follow his lead on this because you haven’t exactly filled me with confidence about you.”
Sylvia got up, the clothes flipping back to working leathers. She picked the dropped mundane clothing and dropped it on the bedstand before following John Blackeye down.
They got out in front of the hotel, where Malcolm Volker was waiting with the horses. Horse running back across Manhattan was not going to be pleasure in the night, but their boss would be waiting for them at the Gate Office headquarters, and the longer this went, the more furious he would be.
“So, how can you be sure he really told you everything.”
“Because he did not tell me anything. He showed it to me,” she replied.