Lead Scientist Jirinthoulganim felt anxious. He had already taken a spirit shot to calm himself and still he felt anxious. The emotion had set its roots too deeply—the curse of Pheilett biology. Fortunately, looking nervous wasn’t anything unusual in these trying times. Jirin didn’t look out of place because many others were jittery too. People were shaken and concerned, quite understandably.

The demon had escaped. Would it come back for revenge? Logic dictated that the chance of that was practically close to zero. Bloodthirsty as the demon was, it wasn’t stupid; it knew that countermeasures were taken should it ever try to come back. But logic and reason weren’t the only things that drove a Pheilett. No matter how unlikely it was for the demon to return, the possibility was always there—weighing on every survivor’s mind.

The vacations would begin soon. After what had happened, people were right to quit. To leave the Facility as far behind as possible. Jirin wished he could have done the same. The Facility had become a madhouse and the Leaders and the Managers were organizing one meeting after the other, trying to mitigate the disaster. They had many fires to quench. Vacations were one thing and security issues were another. The server outage had lasted only for a few seconds before the backup servers took over, but even those few seconds caused tremendous damage to Nerilia. Critical experiments in the Facility had to be aborted because of the demon, ramping up the losses even higher. People had died – or worse, become tainted – and the incident was all over the Uninet already.

Meanwhile, what was Jirin doing? He was attending this meeting, if only virtually, wishing to be elsewhere. The well-lit water chamber had full-bodied projections all around; more than two-thirds of the attendees had chosen to show up remotely. Under normal circumstances this would have been frowned upon, as having regular physical contact with each other was an important company incentive—but these weren’t normal circumstances. Looking at the grim faces around him, Jirin could tell that nobody cared all that much about company policies anymore. Their trust was shaken. They craved answers.

“Just to make it clear,” Leader Uthulgirhinor said, clearly reciting from a memory note, “this tragedy needed five coincidences to happen. First, a mere Test Subject somehow managed to kill Inspector Hartigulmathin. Second, the Test Subject was removed from the Game and brought up here for some reason. Third, the demon was recently relocated to a more easily accessible location. Fourth, the Test Subject found a tool to break through walls and safety measurements. Fifth, the Test Subject found the demon and managed to free it. Five coincidences. Do you see my problem here, Inspector Shiraksavalirin?”

Heads turned to Shiraksava, intent to hear her reply. Some of the attendees even swam closer to her, abandoning all pretenses of decorum. The tension was almost palpable in the water; everyone wanted someone to blame for what had happened, and Shiraksava was a prime candidate for it. Who else would be held accountable, if not the Inspector whose Test Subject instigated this disaster?

Jirin didn’t like Inspector Shiraksavalirin. Fame had gotten to her head and made her arrogant. She frequently challenged the lines set by her company, careful to never overstep but ruffling feathers all the same. She had more enemies than friends, that much was certain. In spite of this, her very appearance radiated smug defiance. She attended the meeting in person but wore her white Inspector’s suit. Underwater. There weren’t any company rules that forbade clothes in a water chamber, but why would anyone want to wear soaked fabric over their body? And yet Inspector Shiraksava was doing exactly that, floating in the water with her hands in her suit’s pockets. Only her plain white mask was missing—so that everyone could see her amused smile.

“I understand your problem very well,” the Inspector told the Leader, “but I fail to see what I am to be accused of. Have I not explained every single one of your coincidences already? I had nothing to do with Inspector Hartigulmathin’s secret projects; no one could have predicted that he had such a destructive weapon stashed away. I had nothing to do with the late Inspector’s death either. Even if I knew what Subject Randel was planning – which I could not know because our technology is incapable of fully discerning his layered thoughts – I had no obligation to tell Inspector Hartigulmathin how to do his job. He didn’t take the necessary precautions and he paid the ultimate price for it—it’s that simple. I had nothing to do with the demon’s relocation either. I have neither the permissions nor the time to handle Test Subjects up here; my purview is the experiments out on the field. Finally, your fifth coincidence is no coincidence at all; Subject Randel’s prototype was created from the demon’s blood, and so the demon was capable of luring him to herself.”

“This only proves that you didn’t meddle directly,” the Leader said, “and you have yet to explain letting the Test Subject loose in the very same Facility we all work in.”

“Because it should be obvious that I’m in no way responsible for that either. Removing the Test Subject from the Game in case of a major emergency is standard procedure. The death of an Inspector qualifies as such, wouldn’t you say? Subject Randel was brought here, and after we thoroughly inspected and analyzed him, the Committee decided to end his life in a spectacular manner. They wanted something exciting, something that would be satisfying for the Spectators to experience.”

“So the Committee should be held accountable for this unprecedently idiotic decision.”

“Who else?” Shiraksava asked. “They pressed me to reveal all I knew about Subject Randel. They were particularly interested in the plot thread that I had previously set up when I showed Subject Randel a room full of captive shades. A final, desperate rescue mission against hard odds. The Committee thought it would be the perfect end to Subject Randel’s tale. But I didn’t advise them to simply set him loose and expect that he goes for the shades. I didn’t advise them anything. Indeed, I fought against setting him loose at all.”

“Because it is your precious Test Subject. Your great success story. You’d be half as popular if you lost it.”

“There’s that, yes,” Shiraksava said, laughing pleasantly. “But I also take security concerns very seriously. I believe that bringing the Game of Ascension up here must be done with the utmost caution.”

“Bringing the Game up here? Just look at yourself, Inspector. One might say that by wearing that suit you’re doing just that. You’re so immersed in the Game that you can’t help but play it with your colleagues too. You’re fooling no one here, Inspector. Do you know what I think really happened? You created that plot with the captive shades as bait because you knew that the Committee would bite on it. You knew they would let the Test Subject loose just so their little puppet show would attract more Spectators.”

“Careful, Leader,” Shiraksava chided, “that almost sounded like an accusation based on your feelings. There’s no rational reason for what you claim I was doing. Why would I ever want to manipulate the Committee into letting Subject Randel roam free? It doesn’t benefit me at all. Indeed, it—”

“But you don’t deny that the Committee can be manipulated.”

Shiraksava tilted her head questioningly, her eyelids fluttering.

“No,” she said. “I’ve never implied that they can be manipulated. You speak lowly of the Committee, Leader Uthulgirhinor, but you forget that it’s full of smart and competent people—such as yourself! Just because they made a wrong decision today, I would never underestimate any of them. This puppet show that you berate so is the backbone of our finances, and it’s only because of our capable Committee—”

“Spare us the company tone, Inspector. We’re talking about you, not the Committee’s undoubtedly numerous virtues. I’m not accusing you of anything—yet. But I do believe that all the evidence needs to be laid out so that we get a better understanding of what actually happened.”

“Oh, my,” Shiraksava let out another amused laugh. “How diligent of you, Leader. It isn’t even your job to investigate, and yet you’re so determined to do it yourself. With our colleagues as witnesses, no less! Very well. Ask your questions—but please, do it quick. I’m a very busy woman these days, as you may well imagine.”

Leader Uthulgirhinor did not like her tone, that much was painfully obvious from his twisted expression. Even as a virtual attendee, Jirin could feel the tension in the room rising. Most who were present were not a fan of Inspector Shiraksavalirin, that much was clear—and yet, if this bothered the Inspector she showed none of it. Her body language practically radiated how unfazed and unapologetic she was. Jirin wished he could feel like that instead of the crippling anxiety that currently weighed on him. He didn’t want to listen to this argument anymore. He didn’t want to be in this meeting. But as Lead Scientist, he was expected to.

Leader Uthulgirhinor showed them some video footage next, taken from Randel’s escape pod. According to the Leader, it was solid evidence: Shiraksava was gloating on it about how everything went according to her plans. In response, Shiraksava chided the Leader once more by telling him that it was called acting, something that should be the mark of every good Inspector. Inspectors had to keep up appearances in front of the Test Subjects and their Spectators, after all. The Leader’s comment that the so-called acting looked a little too genuine earned him only a wide smile and a thank-you from the Inspector.

At that point, Leader Uthulgirhinor was losing too much face so one of his men stepped in, pointing out the conflict of interests between Inspector Shiraksava and the late Inspector Hartigul. Shiraksava was progressive and Hartigul was supposedly conservative—though his secret experiments with demonic power spoke otherwise. Nevertheless, the two Inspectors were known to have strong disagreements with each other and Hartigul had been quite vocal about his dislike of his colleague. This meant that Shiraksava actually had a motive for facilitating Hartigul’s death—

—which on the surface might have sounded like a compelling argument, but it amounted to nothing more than mud throwing. Inspector Shiraksava had disagreements with the vast majority of her peer Inspectors. She was too young and she had risen too fast, and her radical ideas often evoked stubborn resistance. People either envied or hated her. Saying that she had a hand in the late Inspector’s death just because they didn’t like each other held no substance. The same could be said for just about any Inspector. Hartigul was far from Shiraksava’s greatest rival.

On and on the verbal fencing went, and Jirin suffered it in silence. He didn’t like Inspector Shiraksavalirin, and yet he wished the Leader and his cronies would just leave her alone. It was becoming painfully obvious that no matter what they threw at her, nothing was going to stick. The Inspector played her Game perfectly. If Jirin were an Inspector, he would probably be in the camp of those who envied Shiraksava—but he was not an Inspector and he had no stakes in any of this, so he just wanted the meeting to be over.

Thankfully, Shiraksava hadn’t lied when she said that she was a busy woman; her presence was abruptly requested by the Director and so she left Leader Uthulgirhinor’s meeting to explain herself in yet another meeting. Jirin was one of the first to leave after her, logging out with shaking hands. He blinked in the dim light of his private chambers, flaring his gills in the cool water, feeling the soft currents on his bare skin. Loosening his limbs, trying to relax.

It didn’t help. He couldn’t calm down. A notification was flashing on the screen next to him.

“AR-X,” Jirin called out to his AI assistant, “shut down all communication networks. I want absolute silence.”

“Understood,” AR-X chimed within Jirin’s head. “Shutting down all external mental communication channels… Please wait… Shut down complete.”

“Perform a system scan for any trackers,” Jirin said. “Just in case.”

“Understood. Performing system scan… Please wait…”

Jirin’s heart sped up while he waited. He couldn’t keep still. His anxiety was now paired with another emotion: anticipation. Fear too, perhaps. Jirin wasn’t a security expert, and he wasn’t a hacker either. He knew that AR-X wasn’t the best tool for this job, but he didn’t trust anything else. He had no more time to spare besides. He had to act now, while the confusion in the demon’s wake lasted.

“Scan complete. No foreign entities found.”

“Good,” Jirin said, more to himself than to his assistant.

He eyed the blinking icon on his screen. A simple green triangle, the mark of completion. AR-X had finished Jirin’s task during the meeting. The question was whether it succeeded. The task seemed innocuous at first glance, but … it was basically hacking. Some pull on Jirin’s status as Lead Scientist and some ingenuity on AR-X’s part. Also some clever use of contingency channels. It was hacking, plain and simple.

Jirin opened the notification.

Read-write access granted

That was the first message and it filled Jirin with hope. The next message, however, made his hands shake even harder. His skin crawled in horror.

Scan complete. 51 matches found.

Fifty-one. Jirin had expected as much, but seeing that number in person chilled him to the bone. So many. The Facility had been built long ago and so the technology used around here wasn’t always cutting-edge, but whoever was responsible for monitoring the demon’s path did a good job. Hundreds of nanocams caught everything from every angle and then with AI assistance the recordings were quickly parsed. Nothing avoided the parser’s notice: it knew exactly who the demon touched and what the tainted people did afterward. The nanocams watched out for even the smallest particles that the demon had emitted from its body. Every tainted being had been either eliminated or quarantined, be it Pheilett or just a Test Subject. Everyone.

There was no cure for the demon’s taint. Those who were quarantined would remain so indefinitely—either until they chose to end their lives or until a cure was miraculously produced in the future. None of the tainted would be allowed to reenter society ever again, for the demon could twist their minds even centuries after having touched them. Keeping the tainted isolated from the Astral Plane was said to help a little, but never to the extent that would make them trustworthy ever again. They would forever be the demon’s agents, a ticking time bomb ready to sow discord and chaos.

Containing everyone who had become tainted was taken very seriously. The AI behind the nanocams made no mistakes; it did precisely what it was asked to do, which was to find everyone that the demon came in contact with. Everyone one of the survivors had already been quarantined. Everyone that the demon had come in contact with.

“AR-X, please play the footage for me.”

Jirin’s assistant complied, lining up fifty-one video recordings. The footages were made with different technologies, but they all showed the same room at the same time. Jirin watched as the Material World twisted out of shape and the ceiling collapsed, dropping a demon and one more person on top of a group of unlucky Pheilett. The demon landed at one end of the room, but the Jirin’s footage was focused on the other person. A vicious grin contorted Randel’s face as he fell. He hit a running man’s back with both feet, kicking him to the ground. He kicked Jirin to the ground.

Lead Scientist Jirinthoulganim watched the scene over and over, observing from fifty-one different angles as Randel’s bare feet slammed into his naked back, kicking him hard. Randel’s bare feet. His pale-white feminine feet with black nails. His demonic feet touching Jirin’s naked flesh. Jirin reached around and rubbed the spot on his back. The itch was just his imagination. Nothing more.

The AI behind the nanocams had done precisely what it was asked to do: it had found everyone that the demon came in contact with. The demon. Not Randel. Jirin had been overlooked; he had not been quarantined … yet. Not until someone happened to manually check the footage. But there were lots of recordings, and parsing all of them in person was tedious—that was why they had the AI do it. The chances were small that anyone would discover what happened. Small, but not zero.

“I can’t just delete this,” Jirin said, wringing his hands. It would be a glaring red flag if some of the recordings went missing. Perhaps he could make it look like the server outage had something to do with it, but—no. If something like that happened, it would definitely incite a manual inspection.

“AR-X, can you edit these footages to make it seem as if I wasn’t touched by Randel? As if I fell on my own.”

A tense silence followed, during which Jirin felt as if his heart was beating in his throat. His AI assistant’s little chimes while it worked did nothing to soothe his nerves.

“It can be done.”

“AR-X,” Jirin shakily asked, “would you be able to hide all signs that these files were tampered with?”

This time the reply was immediate.

“I can mask the activity on the files, but the server access and the traffic will be trackable.”

Trackable, but that didn’t mean anything. All sorts of people were accessing the files all the time. So, which was less likely: someone seeing the footage of Randel kicking Jirin, or someone noticing that Jirin touched a few files? No, that wasn’t even the right question. When Jirin was caught, which would be easier to explain away: getting touched by a demonic leg or unauthorized access to a few recordings? The answer was obvious.

“AR-X, one last question. Are you certain that Randel’s Transcension Device didn’t record anything in the demon’s vicinity?”

“I am not certain, but there are no such public records yet. It is speculated that the demon’s presence disturbed our technology. The footage released to the Spectators will most likely be limited and censored.”

Jirin closed all three of his eyes, shuddering. He was done for. Someone was going to notice. If the collar around Randel’s neck managed to record anything, Inspector Shiraksava was going to notice. What could Jirin do about it? Nothing. But he could at least make sure that he wasn’t discovered through the security cams.

Jirin took a moment to brace himself, then addressed his AI assistant.

“AR-X, do it. Locally alter the footage just as I asked! A-And then, show them to me. If I find them satisfactory, reconnect to the network and overwrite the originals while masking your activity. Do everything you can to make this unnoticeable. Y-You understand? Unnoticeable.”

“Understood. Modifying files… Please wait…”

Jirin felt sick. He couldn’t remember ever having done anything illegal. No, not just illegal—dangerous. Risking other people’s safety. But he could not allow himself to be quarantined. He was panicking just at the thought of being locked up. It would be unfair. He wasn’t tainted! The feet that touched him didn’t belong to the demon, but to Randel. The AI overlooked it, so it was probably nothing. Jirin was worrying for nothing … and yet, he couldn’t risk someone drawing the wrong conclusions. Not when it meant a lifetime in quarantine.

Besides, Randel was just a Human. Sort of. Jirin had no reason to worry about Him. Even if Randel somehow inherited the demon’s powers, there was no way He would know how to use them … right?