“I am totally not fine with that.”

Black tried to calm Bec down. They were in a white void, and Bec was dealing with some bad news. The lift did not actually take anyone to any floor, in particular, simply it took them to a floor of their choosing. Black guided them to this floor simply by telling them to think of the word Lauds. There are some weird fucky spacial things going on in the city, and Bec was feeling constantly surprised by the technology at play.

“I’m sorry, Bec. But the reality is that Ludo will decide.”

“He’s an asshole!”

“Obviously. That doesn’t change the fact that he’s the only one who knows your story, and the fact that you convinced AmiGo to have a change of heart.”

“There were spectators! They know!”

“Maybe, probably it was just a fight and a ranting girl to them. If I’m wrong, the secret is out anyway.”

Bec barked an order to Scarlet, “Crack the egg!”

Scarlet crossed her arms. “What’s the magic word?”

“NOW!”

Scarlet punted Bec far into the white void. Dorian had to squint to see the bloody splat Bec left off in the distance. While he was trying to see if Bec was okay, Scarlet started to crack open the foam. Dorian flicked his eyes between the egg and a slowly returning girl crawling back to the group, leaving a red trail behind her.

"She'll be fine." Scarlet waved dismissively at Dorian's alarmed expression. Soon, Ludo was out of his egg and laying there.

Ms. Scarlet rapped her fingers to her chin. She gave Ludo a light kick, “Well? Ludo, was it? Have anything to say for yourself?”

“No.” He was despondent. “I heard everything.”

“And?”

“I’m the Gamester. Sure, I didn’t actually tear Al limb from limb… but I would have…”

“And?” Scarlet pressed her foot against him, pulling these emotions out of him by force.

Ludo laid there for a moment, then dropped his head. “When did I become a bad guy?”

“You weren’t, now you are. Things change, darling. New management means new rules. Get up.” Scarlet dragged him to his feet and whispered in his ear, “Now apologize to Bec, give her back her data slate as soon as you can, and maybe I won’t let it leak that you were such an asshole that AmiGo rewrote the rules specifically to punish people as shitty as you.” Her words oozed a sweetness that made Ludo shudder. She gave his cheek a gentle slap and smiled.

Bec slowly, and bloodily, crawled back to the group to see Ludo out of the egg. He immediately offered her a hand and bowed. “Bec, I’m sorry. I will give you the data slate back and everything. You won.”

Bec swatted the hand away. “That’s nice and all, but my legs still need some time before I can stand.” Bec had some time to think as she crawled herself back to the group. Scarlet’s punt made Bec realize she’d been a little unhinged. Bossy. Mean. Angsty. Ranty. Meh, that wasn’t what she wanted to be like. So, she decided that she wouldn’t be those things. She was mostly over all the anguish these last few days brought her. Truly amazing what a simple kick from a friend can bring. She did slap his hand away so maybe baby steps.

“What do you mean? You can’t stand at all?” Ludo asked.

“I heal really slowly.” Bec popped her kneecap into place with her thumb. “Sorry about that.”

Ludo didn’t know why she would apologize, nor did he care, what he was interested in was this odd girl who managed to change AmiGo’s mind on her second day in the city. She was… very strange indeed. He didn’t really have time to think about it because a door opened up out of thin air, and a man with remarkably silvery hair was revealed. Bec gasped. That was Samuel! And what was once a meek man who looked like a breeze would blow him away now was… well… completely ripped. He was buff beyond belief, with muscles barely contained by his suit.

“Bec.” He nodded to the group paying only slightly more attention to Robert. “Follow me please, we’re about to start orientation.”

Bec shakily got to her feet and followed Samuel through the door in the air. The group was led into a meeting room with familiar faces abound. It was just like last time she had a meeting with Lauds. Every single person was there… sans Tamara. Bec felt a cold chill roll down her spine as she entered the threshold. Black seemed to react to it, too. He whispered to himself something only Bec could really hear. “Stasis Bubble.”

Once in the room, a few eyes were on Bec. The sharp girl looked ragged with deep, purple bags under her eyes. There was the Vietnamese boy who looked bored, flipping a coin over and over again. The redheaded kid was there, too, but he had a huge grin on his face. At the head of the table… well, Bec had no clue how this was the last thing she noticed, but Nkosi was there lounging in the air. He also had a dumb grin on his face.

Bec pulled a seat and her group looked uncomfortable. Nkosi immediately picked up on this and beckoned them to take a seat. “Please! Please! Robert, Dorian, Ludo, and Scarlet, was it? Please join us. Consider this a kindness on behalf of Lauds Inc..” Ludo and Dorian gaped like idiots irrespective of each other and couldn’t bring themselves to speak.

Nkosi waved at everyone as he drifted around the room. “Hello everyone! This is a truly glorious day, is it not?”

“Yessir!” Ludo stammered.

“Please, Ludo. No need to be so formal.” Nkosi gestured dismissively like he was waving the stench of propriety out of the air.

“You don’t understand, sir. My family would kill me if they found out I had disrespected someone of your stature. You’re a Founder! Not just any Founder either!”

“Please, please, please…” Nkosi rested back in his seat. “Your family is over!”

“B-beg your pardon?”

“Mmhmm.” Nkosi nodded. “Kaput. Shattered.”

“My family?”

“Yes, my god! Man, please listen. Your family has collapsed. New rules, new rulers. As they say.”

Ludo dropped all sense of propriety when he stood up and shouted, “What happened?”

“Well, Bec here somehow convinced the stubborn ass known as AmiGo to start thinking of human lives as valuable. Your family? I’m sure I don’t need to explain to you what their empire was built on.”

Ludo sat down. “They… they did it for the betterment of society.”

“Yeah, that’s what the Nazis said, too.” Bec couldn’t believe how savage Nkosi was being.

“My sister?”

“Hmm? Oh, she’s probably fine, Ludo. The family is in shambles, not the people in it.”

Ludo’s expression drained of life. “That’s… that’s good.”

“Oy! Why did Bec get to bring an entourage? That’s not fair.” The boy with freckles crossed his arms as he rested his legs on the table and leaned back.

Nkosi flicked his finger, and the boy found his legs flung off the table. “Davies, this is a casual meeting, not a barbaric one. And to answer your question, I never said you couldn’t bring people, it’s not my fault she’s the only one who’s made any friends, Davies.”

Ferris, Bec remembered his first name now, gave a shrug. “Got me there.”

Sarah, the girl whose name Bec never forgot, asked, “Where is that asshole, Tamara?”

“Well, why don’t we ask our resident chaos causer, Bec?” Nkosi gestured at Bec causing her to slide deeper into her chair.

“Erm, well, uh. I—I mean I didn’t exactly, uh,” Bec was starting to sweat, so she just blurted it out. “She’s dead.”

A smirk streaked across Sarah’s face, “You killed her? Color me surprised.”

“Well,” Bec stumbled over her words, “It’s more complicated than that. I—”

“It was a collaborative effort,” Black interrupted.

Nkosi waved his hand. “Fantastic. Maybe you could share the story?”

Bec really didn’t want to, so thankfully, as she started to open her mouth, Black silenced her. “No, I don’t think she will. Bec is new to this, but she is not about to give that story away for free.”

Nkosi drifted over and tried to hug Black. Black batted him away. “I knew it would be rewarding to drop you all near relevant locales. Bec, I don’t know what you did, but you’ve put fire back in Robert’s eyes. As his godfather, I am so happy.”

“Wait? So, it was intentional that you dropped me in that scav den?” Sarah moaned and palmed her face. “Of course, it was.”

“That was not just any Scav den, Ramsey. That was the largest and most organized group of scavengers on this side of the Suburbs. Real pain in my side.”

Sarah snapped. “I know that. I had to kill them to escape.”

“And what was so valuable about my cave of spiders?” The black-haired Vietnamese slapped his hands on the desk.

“If I’m being honest, I ran out of ideas by the time I got to you, Lang. I don’t like spiders.”

“I told you to call me Luster! For god sakes, man! How many millennia are you going to get this wrong?”

“Wait, where was I dropped?” Davies asked.

Nkosi frowned. “You were dropped at the foot of my favorite combat school. I wanted to see what Master Burg thought of a confused newbie.”

“I don’t remember that?” Davies looked distraught.

With a growl and a nod, Nkosi said, “I know that. You went in the complete opposite direction. Bec and Sarah delivered. You boys didn’t.” His face returned to a friendly tone. “Oh well, it is what it is.”

Luster looked distraught. “What would you have me do? Wipe the spiders out?”

“Yes, preferably. I was really not a fan.”

Luster short-circuited and promptly slumped in his seat. He was used to formality, and Nkosi was the epitome of informal. Sure, there was the whole dropping him in the middle of a spider cave with an ominous syringe, but this lack of propriety was what made Luster just meltdown quietly in his seat.

Meanwhile, Dorian just sat there and tried to piece these interactions together. He couldn’t really understand how all four of these obvious kids had 1) survived these excursions, and 2) been working for Lauds despite the fact he knew Bec was new to the City. The others all seem old, yet young. Weak, yet hardened. He chewed on each new bit of info greedily as he knew the insights gained at the table of Nkosi would likely set his life’s trajectory farther than he ever could have expected. An audience with the head of Lauds could be a life-changer. He would wait until his chance to strike.

Scarlet wasn’t comfortable with this whole meeting. It triggered a deeply engrained sense of worry in her. Nkosi, she actually had seen before doing one of his loud, ostentatious presentations, but he acted differently to the public that now. He was relaxed and unconcerned. That was bad news. Something she taught to every scout at the Border was to fear nonchalance. Genuine insouciance screams the sense that the person does not feel even slightly threatened by anything. This was not good in a world with mind-bending, often uniquely potent powers. It either meant that the person was an idiot, or, far worse, that they really and truly never have been contested in their life. Scarlet looked at his smile that reached his eyes, and she had a suspicion which one of the two Nkosi truly was.

Robert watched his dad thumb through data on a slate as he stood by Nkosi’s side. A shiver ran down his spine. For Robert’s whole life, Samuel was the strongest, smartest, most influential man he knew, except for one person. No matter how impressive Samuel was, Nkosi cast a far shadow. Robert couldn’t really tell how much of his father’s accomplishments were wrongly attributed to Nkosi, but it was far too many. His mind wandered to the Timelet and wondered if the saving of the Silver Spire was at the hands of the Timelet. Did his father really spontaneously create Fabric threading or was it a labor of many lifetimes? Could Robert really compete with that?

Bec was anxious. She had far too many questions to ask, and even a stasis bubble felt like it didn’t garner a significant amount of time for the questions she wanted answered.

“Uh,” Bec said, drawing Nkosi from a hushed side hustle he had formed between him and Sterling.

“Mmm, yes, Bec?”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Uuuuh, do I really need to explain it to you?”

“Oooh, you mean the kidnapping you and leaving you in random spots of an experimental colony world?”

Every one of the Timelet users exclaimed at once creating a rumbling sound mixture of relief, exasperation, indignation, and fury.

“Well, you all were part of a scheme I came up with called ‘Project Mix-up’ and so far, it has already paid for itself.”

“Project Mix-up?” Bec asked.

“Indeed, frankly put, when I decided to engage in this colony project, I knew that cultural stagnation would be a concern. Do you know that the population fell well below fifty thousand people at one point? Unacceptable. How were we supposed to reinvent human society if we keep getting stuck in the same trappings?”

“We… are a mix-up? Why us? Why only five young kids from—”

"You assume that you are the only group? You may be right… you might not. The real reason we picked you five, erm four, is that well… how do I put this nicely?”

Samuel chimed in with utmost professionalism. “You are all lunatics.”

Sarah laughed. Davies choked on something. Luster sat quietly. Bec did what she does best, ask questions, “We’re lunatics?”

“Mmm, yes, did none of you realize that the ad we put out was not… designed to attract…” Nkosi rocked his head in thought, “Boring people? It very clearly asked people to risk their lives exploring a miserable wasteland full of killers and psychopaths.”

“Yeah, but...” Bec didn’t really have words. The thoughts ran dry.

“You all were willing to abandon your families to risk your life. For whatever reason you had, it was extraordinarily questionable decision making. The exact kind we were looking for.”

“Money.” Davies looked at the ceiling of the room blankly.

“I did it to escape my family.” Luster lost his luster.

“Freedom.” Sarah said with her arms crossed. Everyone looked at Bec, and she began to sweat.

“I…I…” She sighed. It wasn’t the most compelling backstory, but she’d just get out with it. “I was curious about city ruins?”

The group including Ludo, for some reason, groaned.

Nkosi smiled. “You are all lying so wonderfully. I hope your time here on Dust helps you all come to terms with that fact.”

Bec frowned. She wasn’t lying… was she? She thought about Robert, and how the SensoLink, a thing currently in her head, tracked everything she thought. Surely, it knew she was lying if she lied.

“You’re using the SensoLink in our heads to determine that we lied?”

“No, no, no. I just know you all far too well to assume you’re telling the truth. You all haven’t signed away any of your life experiences to me yet.”

Dorian cleared his throat. “Excuse me, so I don’t exactly understand why you allowed me in on such a sensitive meeting. I feel a bit like a fish out of water.”

Nkosi said, “Well, it’s not my fault that the rest of my lovely employees in Project Mix-up didn’t make any friends along the way.”

Davies shrugged at Sarah. “He got us there. I didn’t even consider making friends. I just punched people until I got here.”

Nkosi put his hands out towards Davies with a bugged look, “See! Lunatic. Completely unhinged way of thinking.”

“Oy!” Davies smiled. “I resemble that remark.”

Nkosi absolutely died laughing.