Keynes met Waxilium Earl daily and each time he experienced the same excitement about opening the rift. It wasn’t difficult to figure it out. Lord Earl’s Talent caused it. Even so, Keynes didn’t have the audacity to question the Lord. It certainly wouldn’t have changed anything. The man ran this place and while it looked like a massive research facility, there were soldiers positioned in dim corners, observing Keynes’s every move. Not that Keynes could do anything to anyone here. Everyone was at least Level 2.

Once Keynes signed the paperwork, making him a part of the World Government, they ran standard tests on him. He was very healthy. After that came the training. They gave him objects of varying sizes with different types of locks and asked him to open them.

He finally learned what a mana headache was. He also realized how crude his understanding of his Talent was. That day when he’d stood before the rift, he’d barely used his Talent. Willow Croft told him that the best way to picture it was to imagine holding a shovel in one hand but using the other one to dig. It didn’t matter how strong Keynes’s will was if he didn’t use his Talent to do the work. All that labyrinth work should’ve been automatically navigated by his Talent. True, if Keynes didn’t have his Talent, he wouldn’t even access the labyrinth. This was the reason why no one else had opened the rift.

With a better understanding and grasp of his Talent, Keynes approached the rift the second time.

Rift (Common)

Level

1

Status

Sealed

Details

???

Accessing Details…

Task failed. Insufficient Spirit Attribute.

Willow Croft explained that Level 1 didn’t have enough of the Spirit to see the details but they already knew them as some High-Level individuals had checked it. Willow Croft had wondered if it wouldn’t be better to level Keynes up first but Waxilium Earl had dismissed the idea for now.

Keynes focused on the status of the rift. It said it was sealed, indicating that someone had done it. But this was of no importance now. Then Keynes took hold of his Talent. Holding the Seal in one imaginary hand and the Talent in the other, he pushed them closer to each other. Shockingly, strong resistance appeared keeping the two from getting any closer.

Keynes grunted, feeling a strong drain on his willpower. How could he be so stupid to think it’d be easy? He staggered, someone’s hands prevented him from toppling to the floor.

“What’s the matter?” a distant voice of Willow Croft asked.

“It resists…” Keynes’s own voice sounded muffled. “I can’t get my Talent close to the Seal.”

Then a powerful euphoria hit him. It came from nowhere and felt nothing like the earlier excitement. This could be described as feeling a strong physical addiction and the drug was in your hands, you just needed to bring it up and swallow. But that was where Keynes struggled. He couldn’t do it despite his body screaming at him to do so, and he tried to comply.

He pushed with all his will, all his conviction and desire.

In the end, the resistance was too powerful and Keynes ran out of strength. One moment he pressed the two incorporeal things and the next a darkness consumed it all.

***

Waxilium Earl was back in his office, reviewing his report. A mana glyph stood next to energy-infused water on the desk. He almost drained his tank pushing the boy to the edge. He got caught in excitement himself. His own Talent backfired on him and he pressed Keynes Kid until the boy’s strength gave out, a dangerous move this was. If Waxilium was one Level higher, he’d have certainly fried the boy’s brain.

But Croft’s people confirmed it, they were close to bringing the boy’s Talent and the Seal together. From there, it’d be a formality as the Talent should do the heavy lifting. They were so close. Uncomfortably close.

A light on the phone flickered to life. Waxilium checked the small screen – Beverly Nort-Witch.

Right, this was about time. Two weeks since her last report. The President would want to know that all loose ends were tied up. Waxilium pressed a button and a screen on a wall came to life.

Beverly Nort-Witch stood alone in an office. For Level 3, she looked tired.

“I hope you have good news for me,” Waxilium said.

She smiled weakly.

“I am afraid not, sir. All our leads on the Foxgloves turned out cold. We scoured through all the companies they used as proxies. On that front, we found nothing.”

Waxilium sat down, keeping his face from leaking emotions. This sounded like a disaster. Whoever was this capable and knew about Keynes Kid’s Talent posed a serious threat.

Waxilium waited.

“Sir, we returned to the Kid family and used a bit more persuasion because they were bound by an NDA contract and they were afraid of breaching it. We’ve learned… well, this is where the news turns from bad to worse.” Great.

“The Foxgloves offered to shape Keynes’s Talent as they apparently had an effective method to do so. They sighed a contract that would see Keynes Kid employed by them if he received a mind or intelligence-related Talent as they tried to shape it. Once they failed, they quickly disappeared without a trace. I pushed harder and found that Vivena Foxglove joined Keynes’s Talent class, which many people confirmed. No record of her at the school though. I’ve learned that Lorelai and Vivena Foxglove were in the military base at the time of the Unlocking Ceremony. All footage from the base for this day was erased. Webster Frog, the same man who wishes to join us, told me that Lorelai Foxglove had visited him before the ceremony and demanded to take away her daughter and Keynes Kid from the ceremony’s list. He did so for the daughter but not for Keynes Kid.”

Waxilium found the task of keeping a neutral face becoming substantially harder with every second.

“How was the footage erased from the military base’s system?”

“Commander Luke Winters said he’d received a call from major Gollod Brunk from the New Mexico Military Base. He was told to erase the footage and give the woman whatever she wanted.”

“I gather you talked to the major. What did he say?”

“Nothing, sir. He told me to… fuck off. I spoke to his superior, colonel Burygold Finn who said to drop the case.”

Burygold Finn… Waxilium thought for a moment. He knew the name but it took a moment to place the person within the Finn family. Burygold was a son of general Wisslow Finn. At this level, things got very ugly, very quickly. As a member of the High Parliament, Waxilium was fully within his rights to demand information from general Finn. It’d get political in a matter of hours though. The President would hear about it. Questions about the inquiry would be raised. This operation was spearheaded exclusively by Hidden Hand and supervised directly by the President without the High Parliament’s or the military top brass’ knowledge.

“It’s okay, specialist. I’ll deal with this personally. Anything else?”

“No, sir.”

Waxilium turned the connection off and let out a heavy sigh. This wasn’t as clean as he wished it to be but he hadn’t expected to get a hit in the first round. Going forward, they needed a tighter protocol. The boy should’ve been isolated the moment they identified his Talent. It’s too late for this.

Waxilium decided to not include Beverly Nort-Witch’s report in his. An hour later, a scheduled briefing with the President started.

“Wax, what do you have for me?” Waxillium hated when the President sounded and behaved easy-going like this. It made him feel safer than Waxilium really was.

“We almost managed to unseal the rift, sir. The boy is untrained and has very limited stamina. Once he recovers, we plan to retry it.”

“Good!” the President exclaimed. “Good.” He repeated a bit quieter, a bit thoughtful.

Waxilium didn’t break the silence.

“Three weeks. I want to be there when the rift opens.”

“Sir,” Waxilium began, caught off-balance. “The report…” The President waved him into silence.

“Send the report to me. I don’t have time to listen to it,” he said and then before the screen flickered out he repeated. “Three weeks.”

“Yes, sir,” Waxilium said to the wall as the connection already ended.

He wasn’t even surprised that the President was ready to throw him under the bus. This was the way of Windsor Freeman. He hoped he’d get more time but the man who had reached the Level cap was restless. He needed the rift before other powerhouses would catch up and the peace would be torn apart by warring Level 10s. Waxilium himself was halfway through there. Even his parents were a long way from Level 10, hitting Level 7s a few years ago and joining a very small club of Level 7s. At this moment, there were only thirty-three people in the entire solar system with that Level. Not a single person had Level 8 or 9 and only Windsor Freeman was Level 10. The massive gap in levels boiled down to Freeman’s Talent, which allowed him to gain essence faster than others could. Levelling at the higher levels was a massive pain as the essence penalty for being a single level above was large and not many Level 6s were happy to be slaughtered.

Nonetheless, what Freeman expected from a Level 1 rift was unclear to Waxilium. Even if the researchers were right and the rift provided essence, would it allow Freeman to go beyond the Level cap? If yes, what about the essence penalty? In the end, it didn’t matter. Waxilium’s job was to open the damned thing. Whatever happened after that, would be Freeman’s to deal with.

Waxilium reached for the phone and checked the list of special contacts. When he found the one he needed, he pressed the name and waited until a little slurred voice welcomed his ears.

“Yes, boss.”

“I need you to get someone for me. His name is Gollod Brunk, major, Level 5. I need him alive in New Mexico’s safe house ASAP.”

“Understood, sir.”

This better go smoothly or his own father would send him to one of Saturn’s moons as an administrator.

***

Days blurred for Keynes. His mind felt light and heavy at the same time. The second try at the rift had kicked him harder than he thought possible. Willow Croft and his assistants weren’t pushy at first, offering Keynes time to recover.

It quickly changed and by the end of the first week, they ground him without mercy. He was using his Talent until he ran out of mana and then they forced him to use his willpower to keep using it. Painkillers made his thoughts thick like honey but they didn’t need his thoughts, they wanted his Talent.

Occasionally, Waxilium Earl appeared in the bright training room and Keynes’s excitement to work harder was reawakened. They pushed him until he collapsed.

When the end of the second week came, Keynes felt his mind so twisted and wrung that even his photographic memory began failing him and once, Keynes sat for ten minutes and stared at the pale-skinned, black-haired man with aristocratic bearing, wondering what his name was.

“Keep going.”

And so it went until Keynes passed out again.

When he woke up his mind was clearer than ever. There were several IV drips connected to his arms. He was in a medical room. He glanced at the equipment but he was more interested in what he was doing here. His memories were… fuzzy. That had never happened before. Keynes was so consumed by this phenomenon that he missed a young woman enter the room.

“How do you feel?” she asked softly.

Keynes squeaked and immediately buried his face in his hands trying to hide his embarrassment. A smile flicked on her face, Keynes could see it through his fingers and it made him feel worse. She wasn’t anything like Vivena and yet his mind started turning to a blob already. It was inevitable that he’d make an idiot out of himself.

“Good, thanks, you?”

“I’m well, thank you. I have to ask you a few questions. Are you okay with that?”

Keynes understood her question but he just couldn’t focus on the answer. It felt like his mental processes stopped working. I need to get a grip! I can’t react each time a pretty girl enters my field of vision…

“I can give more time if you need,” she said although she didn’t sound very sure. Memories slowly trickled down. Keynes was on a timer. Waxilium Earl and Willow Croft wanted him to open the rift very soon.

Without Lord Earl’s Talent’s influence, Keynes didn’t feel the same urge to do so. His curiosity was peaked. Keynes was convinced that he’d find all the answers there.

Finally, his thoughts cut through the wall that appeared around his mind and said, “No need to wait. I’m happy to answer your questions.”

The young nurse nodded. She was Asian, had black hair that ended just below ear level, violet eyes with a crystal shine that had to be related to her Talent. She had a tiny frame but something was telling Keynes that she’d overpower him if they were to fight. Her control over spiritual energy wasn’t as solid as Captain Ventura’s or Lord Earl’s, but good enough.

She handed him a sheet of paper.

“I will ask questions. You have to find the answer on the sheet.”

Keynes glanced at the sheet and found only some random symbols he didn’t recognize. She noticed his confusion and hurried up with an explanation.

“It’s a simple test that scores your cognition recovery. After the ordeal you’ve been through, Lord Earl wishes that you get back to full health.” Of course, he wishes that. He requires me to open the rift for him.

The test was easier than Keynes anticipated, almost childishly so. It indicated that Keynes’s mental faculty was at all times high. Very strange, Keynes thought. With the pretty nurse in the room, he expected his results to hit the floor.

She quickly removed the IV drips and asked him to wait for specialist Croft.

“What’s your name?” Keynes asked as she reached the door. His cheeks were burning with embarrassment because what kind of idiot would do such a thing? Asking a girl for her name… lame.

“Sakura,” she replied and left.

He couldn’t deny that she seemed nicely surprised by his question. Her cute, pale face imprinted itself in Keynes’s mind. He still longed to see Vivena, although he could remember every detail of her face, he wanted to see her in person.

Crap!

Willow Croft came ten minutes later. He was beaming.

“Excellent! I see you recovered nicely.”

“Yes.” After what you put me through, people, it’s a freaking miracle, he thought bitterly but didn’t say a word. He was a 16-year-old Level 1 without a sliver of a chance against these people. Not that he wanted to stop being so close. True, the last few weeks drained emotions and energy out of him but curiosity pushed him forward. What worried him was what was going to happen to him after he opened the rift. They might decide they didn’t need him anymore. Yeah, that will suck. A good thing that we signed a contract…

“Are you ready for another go at the rift?”

“Yes… sir.”

“Well then. Follow me.”

Keynes grunted.

“Yes?”

“Shouldn’t I at least change… my clothes?”

Willow Croft glanced at him as if seeing him for the first time. Clearly, hundreds of things were on his mind and he required a moment to realize what Keynes meant.

“Ah. I will send Sakura with your clothes. I will be waiting outside.”

Keynes froze. What?!

***

He made an idiot out of himself again. She didn’t stay to help him change… why did it cross my mind in the first place? Keynes wondered. It didn’t matter. I must focus on the rift now.

He put the new uniform on. It had the insignia of the World Government at the sleeves and a high collar. It actually looked cool. The material felt strong and comfortable. It was different from the standard uniform he’d been wearing before ending up in this room. Why was that? I’ve already signed the contract with them. I’m part of their organisation, am I not? This wasn’t the time to search for answers. He had a job to do.

True to his words, Willow Croft waited outside. He wore the same white coat, however, now that Keynes got a closer look, the coat seemed whiter than ever, with thin gold threads and insignia of the World Government Keynes hadn’t seen earlier.

Did it mean they expected Keynes to open the rift today? It seemed to be the case.

“Sir,” Keynes said. “I’m ready.”

“Let’s go,” Willow Croft said a little stiffly. Was the older man nervous about this? He said that he waited for ten years for this moment. Keynes remembered his own stress building up weeks before the Talent Unlocking ceremony.

The usually quiet and well organized underground base behaved like a beehive now. Soldiers and researchers slowed down only when they noticed Willow Croft. The Head Researcher, despite only being of a specialist rank, received a massive amount of respect from others, even behaving casually around Lord Earl. It indicated that something was up today.

“Sir, may I ask a question?”

“Absolutely.”

“What’s the matter with the elegant uniforms today?”

“We’ve got a visitor today and we must look as sharp as we can.”

He didn’t explain who the visitor was but the fear in Willow Croft’s words made it clear that whoever it was, wasn’t small fry. The large cavern opened before them ten minutes later. Things looked, strangely, quiet here. Yes. There was even more equipment packed in the free spaces and platforms were installed above, holding people in white coats. A few faces there were new.

In the corners, he noticed dangerous-looking soldiers wearing black helmets and even blacker armour.

On the path leading to the rift stood Lord Waxilium Earl in the company of a man who put fear in Keynes's heart as he recognized the man right away. Who wouldn’t? He didn’t need his perfect memory to recognize President Windsor Freeman.

So this was the mysterious visitor that threw Willow Croft off balance. He didn’t blame him, Keynes himself felt rooted in place. Before either of them made a step forward, two people appeared in front of them. Their looks were full of suspicion, as the violet-haired woman cast her dark eyes at them, the dark-skinned man stood silently, focused on something Keynes couldn’t begin to imagine, most-likely they were using their Talents.

“Miss Moonbane, Mr Pizzaro,” Willow Croft said, sounding quiet and a little surprised. “Keynes doesn’t present any threat to the President.”

“It is not for you to decide,” Miss Moonbane replied coldly. “Go.”

Both of them stepped aside… I underestimated the importance of this rift. If the President personally came to see me opening it… crap. Crap! I can’t fail.

In the face of this revelation, stress and anxiety began rapidly building up. These weren’t circumstances Keynes could work.

“What’s the matter?” Miss Moonblane asked when Keynes didn’t follow the Head Researcher.

Willow Croft turned his head and asked, “Are you alright?”

While it sounded like a genuine question, it had a hint of dangerous undernote. With a waiting President, Keynes had to be alright. He understood now why Lord Earl had pushed him to the edge. They had a deadline…

“We don’t have the entire day,” she said. “Besides, no one makes the President wait without facing dire consequences.”

Keynes swallowed. He pushed his will into his feet and forced them to move forward. Only twenty or so feet separated him and the rift but the entire distance felt like infinity contained within a single second.

Willow Croft approached the President and Lord Earl.

“Mr President,” he said, bowing. “It’s an honour to have you here.”

“Croft, I brought one of your students with me. I want you two to work on this going forward.”

“Yes, Mr President.”

The President’s eyes were already on Keynes. Somehow, Keynes expected Level 10 to look like a giant but levels didn’t work that way, which made a lot of sense. An increased Mind attribute didn’t make people’s heads larger and so why should an elevated Strength attribute make a person larger?

There was fear coded in Keynes’s mind that screamed at him to run away. This was a well-known phenomenon among the people who went through the Talent Unlocking ceremony and became Level 1s. The new instinct tried to keep them out of harm's way. The World Government operatives’ concealment of the spiritual energy made it difficult but in the case of this man, Keynes didn’t need to (and didn’t wish to) feel his spiritual energy to fear him. This was the most powerful being in the solar system, if not the Universe.

“Keynes, is it?”

“Ah, yes, sir… I mean, Mr President.”

Keynes bowed, hoping the President wouldn’t punish him for the breach in the etiquette, not that anyone had taught Keynes it.

“Good, good,” the President said jovially, sounding amused and relaxed. “So, you’re going to open the rift for me.”

“Yes, Mr President.”

“Off you go then.”

Keynes stumbled forward with the rest following him. He reached the rift and the spiritual interface appeared before his eyes.

Rift (Common)

Level

1

Status

Sealed

Details

???

Accessing Details…

Task failed. Insufficient Spirit Attribute.

He wasn’t interested in the details. Lord Earl and Willow Croft already had them. With one incorporeal hand, he touched the Seal while with another one he took hold of his Talent. By now, Keynes was sure there were different ways of picturing the process but wouldn’t risk any last-minute changes with the freaking President standing behind him.

His heart was rapidly beating and his mind was racing through the direst scenarios it could conceive. What if I fail?

He pushed his Talent and the Seal closer to each other, the resistance started fighting back. All the days he’d been brought to the verge of madness by Lord Earl’s Talent showed their effect as he could push the Talent and the Seal closer than ever.

His body started showing strain. He grunted when his mind began burning from exhaustion. The Seal hated his Talent so much Keynes felt immense repulsion radiating from it. Why was that? All this time, he hadn’t asked the basic question – was opening the rift the right thing to do? If someone had sealed it, didn’t it mean someone had had a good reason to do so?

These were unimportant worries now…

Lord Earl’s Talent slammed into Keynes, elevating his euphoria to an absurd level. Suddenly, Keynes’s vision tunnelled and he only saw the goal ahead.

His body was trembling, his mind screaming with pain but he was happy and motivated to see it to the end. He’d succeed no matter what.

His Talent and the Seal were almost touching…

Almost there!

Almost…

Pressure from all directions was hammering at him. As if the world itself refused to accept Keynes in it. His vision darkened. The first sign of losing his consciousness. I. Am. Too. Close. I. Will. Not. Fail…

There!

His Talent and the Seal touched for the briefest of moments but that was all Keynes needed.

Attempting to open the rift…

The Rift’s Status: Sealed.

Lockpicking initialised…

Keynes lost awareness of his surroundings. He was convinced that he had already lost consciousness and all that kept him up was his Talent. His exhausted mind didn’t even see what was going on. The Talent was on autopilot until a warning appeared.

System Warning: Rupture Detected!

Do you wish to continue?

Yes/No

Keynes picked ‘Yes’ and wrongness filled everything around him. He knew that he shouldn’t have opened the rift. It was the wrong thing to do. Very wrong. But the time for remorse was over. A high-pitched wail exploded in his head...

The rift opened successfully.

The Rift’s Status: Open (Ruptured)

System Warning: Rifts Breakout detected!

System Warning…

Keynes lost the will to keep going and darkness consumed him.