I went next, following the guidance of the tracer. Flinq was right; the directions split. Both led to the same universe, but terminated at different points within. From the Interstice, I couldn’t tell which one Flinq had picked. I gave it a wild stab in the dark, complicating things further with my usual last-minute swing.

A turbulent forest downpour met me on the other side. Raindrops the size of bullets pelted onto my armour with bruising impact, sending a layer of rebounding liquid bursting from the mud at my feet. It was dark – naturally so – full of shadowy blues and greens, and the torrent on my visor was all I could see and hear.

Water already leaking through small crevices in my armour, I tapped at my helmet to toggle its predictive vision. The picture partially cleared.

I stood on a wide forest trail with packed dirt rapidly turning to black sucking mud under my feet. All around me towered the trunks of enormously high trees. Much of the ecosystem action seemed to take place up in the canopy, with only half the plant density below. The rain didn’t seem to care about the coverage, punching holes in the distant leaves to send large tattered shreds down to the flood beneath.

Flinq was nowhere to be seen.

Without a door near, there was no point in doubling back. I pressed on. One of our twin targets was not far ahead, and we needed to verify which. In this weather, my kinetic gun was likely to be useless. I readied my laser instead.

Movement in my peripheral vision made me jump, but it turned out just to be Alushex. The underdressed assassin approached from a cautious distance and waved me over, holding up far better than I’d have expected. Part of it would be baseline second-tier resilience, but I imagined there’d also be augments at play. Even the most benign-seeming choices could be surprising.

Once he’d confirmed I wasn’t going to fire on him, Alushex waved us forward in the direction of the target. The storm seemed to grow worse as we went. A gale at the canopy level blew back the trees, bending the girth of their trunks and wrenching from them great, rending cracks.

What either Rein would be doing out in this storm escaped me. For now, the downpour helped cover our signs of approach. I held back on Gear Shift for the same reason.

Together we slogged through to the spot where the target should have been, but only found more waterlogged forest. The leaks worked through more of my armour and pooled in my boots, making me damp and slightly itchy. Yet the mission objective remained clear.

The closer target wasn’t moving. I toggled through my helmet’s full range of anti-camouflage settings, scanning the trunks and low-hanging branches of the trees, but found nothing. It could have been magic performing the concealment, in which case it was a shame we didn’t have Imbertri with us. It was stronger than technology on this world, after all.

Unfortunately, magic didn’t carry over between universes, or we all would have carried some. Versal magic – the stuff of augments – was the sole exception. It was also much harder to come by. There were one or two universes where I’d managed to master a local trick or two, but it all vanished upon departure, rendering it effectively useless. It was why Reins had to be moved around, though I never had understood the point of the dying. Surely there were better ways to sever psychological ties, like just pretending they’d died and not doing it. But then I’d no longer have a job.

A titanic, multi-pitched keen rose improbably above the storm, coming from above the canopy.

Or, the simplest answer happened to be the best, and we hadn’t looked up. When I toggled to motion sensors, glimpses of red showed up between buffeted leaves, speaking to something vast and unseen. I’d thought it was the storm.

I triggered Gear Shift, hoping for the unlikely instance of a low-tech flying machine.

What I got was an elevator. Beautifully designed, with sturdy timber beams and intricate decorative carvings, but unable to move so much as an inch. I was designed to rise up on pulleys and cables, and I had none.

I transformed back to Alushex grinning at my misfortune, a crack in the armour. He looked like he wanted to laugh, but didn’t, even in silence. A moment later he returned to focused business, raising his head while skirting the base of the giant trunks. I realised what he was doing and joined in, searching for viable landing sites.

Alushex found one first, directing my attention to the place to stand. I did so, craning my neck up at the wide branch dozens of metres above me. A gap in the canopy loomed over it, where my visor picked up larger amounts of red. It occurred to me a fall from that height meant both of us were probably just dead, even in my vehicle form. I didn’t know how many splinters I could break into and survive, and that was if they didn’t all wash away.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

I looked back in time to see Alushex close his eyes, pause, and reopen them to converge on a subtle panel embedded in the trunk of the tree. A simple carving adorned its surface, with an indent just above. Alushex hooked a finger into it and tugged, whereby the door popped open revealing a set of simple controls underneath. He pressed the lower button, and I looked up to see a set of cables plummeting towards me from directly overhead.

I scrambled out of the way before the tail ends plunged into the mud, then helped the Hex pull them out where they stuck. Lucky Find's casual altering of reality in our favour. I couldn’t help but feel a sharp pang of jealousy. It was an emotion I’d worked hard to eject over many years, lest it take over my life. But I couldn’t manage to retire it completely.

Here, now, I repressed it back where it belonged and sloshed back to the indicated spot, transforming again. One at a time, Alushex hooked me up to the cable ends, covering us both in mud and twigs, and gave me a small tap on a support beam.

This much I could do, and began the ascent. The wind became stronger above ground level. Water continued to pelt at us from the sides, clearing off some of the grime and buffeting me with sticks and leaves. I swung back and forth at the ends of the cables, rotating almost a full hundred-and-eighty degrees. White-knuckled, Alushex clung to my supports and handrail.

There’d been something odd about his behaviour during this whole exercise; the non-human influences I knew had to be there finally making more of an appearance. I couldn’t quite put my finger on how.

Ironically, I could see better in this form. Something the scale of a mountain swayed through the gaps in the canopy, dark and subtly glinting. Its size did nothing to block out the weather.

Above, the cables hung through a compartment carved into our destination branch. With the wind blowing us sideways, I slowed on the approach and endured a few corner bumps as I missed the edge of the opening. Eventually I managed to nail the timing and jolted my way into blissful dryness with a few bangs and scrapes.

Better vision or not, this form was not my favourite.

The rain reappeared on the other side alongside the cable terminus. I held myself in place while Alushex clambered over the rail, located a lever and snapped a trapdoor into place underneath me. I transformed back immediately, shaking my wrists cable-free, and joined the Hex in clinging to the slick wood for dear life. Someone had carved a simple path up here. One that didn’t include handrails. It terminated in a sturdy ladder that against all odds hadn’t been blown over yet, in turn connecting to a high viewing platform.

Our mission target was there. At this point, with our resources devoted to not falling off and dying, I was no longer confident we still had the element of surprise. And the target was just… waiting.

We weren’t off to a great start. Nor had I heard from Flinq. It had been a while with no summons, which meant Alushex and I were likely the ones facing Jadal Cai. I was also hesitant to put out our own call before we’d verified it. That kind of margin of error was begging to be Near Missed.

Alushex had already located another compartment containing a pair of backup cables and was busy tying one to his belt. I copied him with the other and let him lead.

My visor was still swarming with wind and water trails, but through the gap in the canopy I could make out more of the great creature above us. I couldn’t tell if the glints came from metal or scales.

Very carefully, we picked our way through a trail defined by several more subtle compartments until reaching the ladder. I took the lead, feet slipping step by perilous step, and wound both legs hard around the ladder while one hand readied my laser and the other pushed up on the trapdoor.

If Jadal Cai could still sense attacks, I was in trouble.

Beyond the trapdoor, I immediately noticed two details. A figure I took for Jadal Cai sat cross-legged in the centre of the platform, seemingly oblivious to the raging monsoon. His back was turned to the ladder, but I recognised the scars and the haircut. The strap of the eyepatch cut a groove in his hair.

I pinged off a summons to Flinq and let loose with the laser. It missed by a narrow margin; whether due to bad aim, wind or augment-related influences, I couldn’t be certain. I swore silently as the glowing beam sheared past and caught Jadal Cai’s attention. I fired more as I scrambled into a better position, clearing the way for Alushex while leaving myself exposed and vulnerable.

An illuminated sphere sprang into being around Jadal Cai, sending my projectiles ricocheting into the trees. It resembled a three-hundred-and-sixty degree version of my deflector shield, which a few more shots confirmed. I switched to the kinetic gun, which did manage to fire despite the rain, but it, too, bounced off. The breeze of the ricochet rushed past my right ear and lodged itself in the back of the platform.

I booted up my own shield, but there was no question as to whose was superior. I held it in front of myself and the trapdoor to give Alushex time to make it up.

“I want to talk,” Jadal Cai called, his deep voice somehow carrying through the chaos. “Truce. Answer some questions for me, and I’ll let you leave alive.”

I hit amplify on my helmet’s speakers. “No deal,” I called back.

“I know your voice,” the Rein responded. “You’re the one following me. Who are you?”

Someone who made a mistake, I thought, but kept silent.

Alushex pulled himself up behind me, took in the situation and stayed carefully in line with my shield.

“Who’s your friend?” Jadal Cai asked. “He’s underprepared for a gunfight.”

“You’re a serial murderer,” I stated, neglecting to mention any personal similarities. “Why are you hunting people down?”

“Ohhh no,” drawled the Rein, tilting his neck as he warmed up his shoulders. “We’re not doing this. I offered you a truce. You take it, or I add you to my list. What will it be?”

In many ways, Jadal Cai broke the mould for typical Rein behaviour. But not this. This was straight out of the archetypal handbook. For a post-death, at least. Surreal to see it close-up in the flesh. Post-deaths were the realm of second-tiers, along with managing their careers. But it was familiar by reputation all the same.

“And I said no deal,” I repeated.