Max glanced around the back grimly, as if worried everyone would disappear the moment he answered. “Seven.”

Muttering rose to a fever pitch as the others discussed the evaluation. From what Max had said, his evaluation scale worked from one through twelve, twelve being a total success, one being an abject failure. A seven gave us the narrowest expectation of success. There were multiple questions I wanted to follow up with, when Max’s cool down expended.

On the bench across from me, Miles caught my eye and gave a small shake of his head.

I realized why immediately. There were other things I wanted to ask Max, but the previous evaluation was already unsettling the group. If I started asking questions along the lines of casualties and who was most likely to die, I was going to destroy their morale. Personally, I’d want to know my chances at any time—more information was always better than less—but most people weren’t like that.

“Seven ain’t so bad,” Grayscale said, speaking directly to Bob, who had taken on a new shade of pale.

“Barely better than a coin flip.” Astrid shifted closer to her twin, Astria, who was shivering.

“It’s just a rough estimate,” I interjected, “There are things we can do to mitigate our risks, more so now that we know vaguely how difficult the situation will be.”

It took a while, but Max was able to follow-through. Miles and Astrid were almost guaranteed to make it, with a twelve and eleven respectively. Everyone else ranked between seven and nine, except for me and Max himself—as he couldn’t read me due to or evaluate his own numbers—and Astria, who was the least likely to survive based on the estimations, with an evaluation of four.

I frowned, looking at the spell caster. Other than her silence and shivering, there was nothing visibly wrong with her. She appeared to be in decent health, cognizant and aware.

What made her more likely to die?

Maybe she just wasn’t as good in dangerous situations as her counterpart—but the disparity between the two of them was strange.

“Make sure you prioritize protecting the casters. They’re our strongest asset, and if we lose either of them, we lose most of our pressure.” I emphasized aloud, the memory of Jinny all too fresh in my mind. “If you have to give ground to protect them, do it.”

There were a series of nods.

“Goes for the two of you as well,” I said directly to the twin magic-users. “Look out for each other first, everyone else second.”

“That was always the plan,” Astrid said, a hint of disdain in her voice.

My skin flushed as the vein in my forehead began to pulse. I was irritated and angry, overly so, likely venting my frustration from earlier losses into the current situation. There were many variables in what we were planning to do, and keeping chaos theory in mind, even slowing us down for Max to read me the evaluations was a possible explanation for the numbers changing. Still, it irked me to no end.

We’d held off for too long already, and besides giving me an idea of what we were dealing with and how involved I needed to be with the exterior force, if I delved too deeply into the minutia it would only muddy the water.

“What weapons are you working with?” Miles asked me.

After a brief discussion on load out, Miles offered to augment my repertoire. Again, he seemed a little too open and friendly, but we would be working side by side. My success was his success, at least in the short term. Taking gear and equipment from a relative unknown seemed like a bad idea, but none of the things he was offering were available in the store—even if I had the twenty minutes to wait.

You have received:

You have received:

You have received:

“Pearling?” I asked. He’d briefly covered the sedative coating and the garrote, but had made no mention of the potion. “Like free diving?”

He nodded. “Brewed it by accident the first time, thought it was weird that the system even allotted for something like that, seeing how we’re landlocked. Kept it in my inventory for a while, until I was hunting a bounty with high Perception who nearly killed me. The sneaky shit was always my forte, even before, so it didn’t make sense how he kept finding me—“

“Until you took the potion.”

“Yup. Turns out he was literally hunting me by the sound of my breathing. Gives you around seven minutes, though I’ll admit, the last two aren’t exactly pleasant.” Miles sounded remarkably calm, considering how he was describing hunting another human. He was waiting, watching the potion in my hand in amusement. “You’re, uh, not going to take that, are you?”

“I’ll think about it,” I lied.

“Suit yourself,” Miles shrugged, withdrew an identical looking potion and pulled the cork.

Not having to breathe would be an advantage. It was also drastically outweighed by the risk of taking a potion from a relative unknown who admitted to brewing said potion himself. I’d take the offensive gear, but I wasn’t going to put my life on the line just because he told me a story.

If we got through this intact, I’d have to ask both him and Chastity how they landed their vocations. As frequently as it was mentioned in my quest rewards, I still had precious little information on the subject.

Any advantage I could get was critical.

“Infiltration team, get in position,” Max said. There was a mechanical whirring as the rear ramp of the APC lowered, nearly touching the still moving ground.

Miles stood, hand clinging to the metal handle on the doorframe as he twisted back to face me. “Ready?”

“Let's get this done.”

There was a squealing noise as the APC braked. Miles leapt out, landing in a crouch and maintaining the low stance as he scurried off the street onto the sidewalk, his movements smooth and liquid. told me he wasn’t using a skill. Meaning, he was just that good at this.

I followed him, trying to copy his form. I was partially successful, but significantly slower, arriving beside him as we waited in the shadow of the closest building as the APC continued up the road. It stopped directly in front of the storage facility, brakes hissing loudly.

“What the fuck?” I heard an unseen User call out.

The APC’s top hatch slammed open and Astrid emerged halfway, her curly hair flaring straight back as she held a wand outward, the spell she’d clearly taken time to charge before springing out radiating a brilliant blue. A sonic boom rang out, loud enough to rattle my ears from a distance, as the spell left her wand. The resulting blue projectile grew to half the size of a small car before it disappeared from my sight and exploded, a cacophony of shrapnel and crumbling brick following immediately after.

Miles looked concerned. “That’ll definitely get their attention. Along with anyone and anything else in the area.”

I got one last glance at the Users in our group piling out of the APC before I followed Miles down a connecting alley. Several more audible explosions followed. Someone screamed, and continued to scream, voice a keening wail over the constant barrage of explosions.

Up ahead, Miles leaned around the corner and immediately snapped back into place, swearing silently.

That wasn’t ideal. If I was going to help mitigate the survival chances of the ground team, we needed to get inside as soon as possible. I ignored him, checking around the corner. As he’d said, there were two of them. A man and a woman. Both sneaking worried glances towards the front.

Miles’ followup message went unanswered as I used and reached into the male User’s mind.