The region around the exotic rift was slightly different from what Keynes had read on the Web. Mansions with sprawling gardens were everywhere. Why was it different then?

The size of each mansion and the adhering ground were difficult to grasp at first. When Keynes broke into one of the contemporary houses built out of unconcealed concrete, he found a map on one of the walls. It showed the area around the mansion. It looked like the rich divided a small part of France between themselves and built their own enclaves here.

That was the right word. Enclaves. When Keynes got to the roof of the two-storey house, he couldn’t spot another house in the vicinity. People who talked about southern France had never shown how extreme the situation here was.

He couldn’t stay on the roof for too long though. Helicopters came in the evening and circled the area until the morning. He didn’t sleep that night, not because of the helicopters--no, the bedroom of the mansion he’d broken into was soundproof--but because he realised that Freeman could have people with tracking Talents. Still, Keynes took his time, if Windsor had such people then running was not an option.

The property was clearly abandoned and robbed. He didn’t know if that was because of the exotic rift several kilometres from here or something else. He needed many things, especially food and weapons. He’d lost his katana when he’d attacked Hellescott.

It was a large property with seventeen bedrooms, two swimming pools, a cinema, a gym, an indoor garden and an empty safe.

In the end, he found and took two clean blankets, a chef knife, several forks and spoons, a metal cup and a tent.

What he didn’t find was food. At least the tap with running water worked. He drank as much as he could. He found a single plastic bottle so he filled it with water as well. It wasn’t much but better than nothing. And if his assumptions were correct, other properties would also be abandoned and he might be able to complement his ‘loot’.

He left the estate the first thing in the morning. The sky was empty of helicopters. Keynes hoped it was a good sign and that the search party had simply moved somewhere else.

It took him almost three hours to find an entrance to another property but then he heard barking dogs and his instincts told him to run.

Maybe not all properties were abandoned. Considering his next move, he realised one flaw in his escape plan. He didn’t know where to find unclaimed rifts in this region. He was aware that Australia had been left to the rift monsters and that South America struggled immensely because a lot of rifts opened in inaccessible places but France? Obviously, the next outbreak added rifts but he didn’t know how to find them.

Another thing on my to-do list.

Keynes walked for the entire day, drinking up half of the bottle and searching for edible fruits and vegetables. Despite his impressive memory, he’d never memorised much beyond the most common plants. Who could imagine he’d be foraging for food in southern France? It sounded so improbable, he wondered if it wasn’t a nightmare.

It didn’t help that there wasn’t much space between the walls that separated the properties. It felt surreal to slink next to a high concrete wall, about twenty metres from a road. Then, on the other side, there was another twenty metres between the road and the next wall.

It really seemed like a different world.

***

By the evening, Keynes arrived at the outskirts of a town. It didn’t have a wall like many towns and cities around the world to protect citizens from the rift monsters on the run, but Keynes could see the materials were stockpiled so there had to be a plan to build a wall.

As expected, the main road was blocked by a squad of troopers. They looked bored. The map from the mansion had the town listed under a misleading name, Emerald Lake.

It was located on a mild slope by the lake with the same name. Not very original but then there was something about the town that didn’t seem right. It looked more like an entertainment resort than a town. Keynes moved away from the main road and entered the town through someone’s orchard. There was no other way in.

He brought up the map in his mind and realised that the town and the lake were surrounded by the properties. This was bizarre but then he saw food and the map stopped mattering.

The apples on the trees had the richest crimson he’d ever seen. He picked one and took a large bite. The taste made him dizzy.

This stuff is divine!

He picked another five… twenty apples and sat down under the tree and ate until he passed out. He had a sleepless night after all.

A grunt and cold, hard metal awoke Keynes in the morning. A gaunt, old man pressed a rifle against Keynes’s cheek. Keynes’s eyes went wide at first but when the brain fog cleared, he began composing a plan.

“What do you think you are doing here?” the man asked gruffly.

“I… fell asleep.”

The man snorted mirthlessly.

“What about my apples? What happened to them?”

“I was hungry.”

“Oh, that explains everything. All’s good then, right?”

“Right…”

“No,” the man snapped. “All is not good. You stole my apples.”

Keynes considered pulling a knife. The man didn’t sound very sane.

“I’m sorry, I’ll pay for this,” Keynes said, eventually deciding against escalating the situation. He was an intruder here. Keeping him at gunpoint was overkill but he didn’t want to harm the old man.

The man’s sour expression didn’t change.

“I don’t care.”

Right, what now?

“Hugo,” came a female voice and the man grimaced.

“What does she want now?” he asked himself.

“Hugo,” she called again and he tsked, annoyed.

“I’m busy here!” he called back. “I caught a thief.”

For a second, Keynes expected him to ask the woman to call the authorities but he didn’t and instead he moved the rifle away from Keynes’s face.

Keynes didn’t wait for another chance. He leapt toward the man, startling him, then he yanked the rifle out of his hands. The man took a step back, raising his hands.

“Take whatever you want but don’t kill my wife.”

Keynes had no experience with firearms and he didn’t exactly know what to do with the rifle so he put it into his dimensional pouch.

“Whaa—what—what was that?” the man exclaimed. It seemed that not everyone was aware of dimensional containers.

“Nothing in particular. Now.” Keynes gestured to him to put his hands down. “I’m not going to hurt you or your wife or anyone for that matter. I was just hungry and a little tired.”

An elderly woman approached them and when she saw her husband with his hands still up, she frowned, slowly comprehending what might have occurred here.

She stopped.

“Hugo…” Her expression turned worried. “What’s going on? You haven’t touched your breakfast.”

“Go home, woman.”

“Hugo.” Her voice hardened. “What’s the meaning of this? Why are you holding your hands in the air?”

Hugo eyed Keynes with a dour expression and Keynes decided to explain himself to her.

“I’m sorry, it’s my fault. I was… I stole your food.” He gestured at the apple cores laying about. “I was hungry…” His voice trailed off seeing how the woman’s posture changed.

“And I guess, he found you with his stupid rifle.” She pointed her finger at Hugo who made a surprised face.

“He stole my apples, what was I supposed to do? Offer him tea?”

“I don’t know,” she replied, shaking her head. “Do you like tea?”

“Anything to drink will do,” Keynes replied.

The woman eyed her husband dangerously then beckoned Keynes to follow her.

“If you’re still hungry, I’ll prepare breakfast for you. Do you like scrambled eggs?”

At the mere thought of scrambled eggs, his stomach groaned with insistence.

“Sorry, I love scrambled eggs.”

***

“It was outstanding,” Keynes admitted after he devoured a plate of scrambled eggs, a bowl of carrot and coriander soup and half a loaf of honey bread. He didn’t lie about it. The taste of the food she served was out of this world. He had questions but so had they.

“What’s your name?”

“Brandon,” Keynes lied.

“I’m Sophie.”

“That’s not a European name,” Hugo grumbled from the other side of the table. “And why do you wear a military uniform? Are you a dese—OUCH!”

His wife stood above him with a large wooden spoon.

“You have to learn some manners,” she said then turned to Keynes. “Please, forgive my husband, he doesn’t know when to shut up.”

“He’s a thief,” Hugo said and immediately flinched, fearing the wooden spoon.

Keynes smiled because they seemed so… normal. He missed that. Since his Unlocking ceremony, his life had turned upside down.

“It’s okay, it was my fault. I shouldn’t break in and steal your food.”

She accepted his words with a grateful nod then sat down, joining them by the table.

“Now that the wealthy residents are gone from our little town, all this food may go to waste anyway,” she said.

Keynes couldn’t help himself but grow curious.

“Why did they leave? There are no rifts anywhere near the town. Right?”

Hugo narrowed his eyes, his wife sensing words coming from his mouth, glared at him until he turned his head away.

“Yes. No rifts. In this one regard, we were lucky. But it isn’t what made the wealthy residents leave.”

“Government,” Hugo spat.

“The government arrested them?”

“They tried but most of the wealthy had left before the government came. Anything they couldn’t easily replace, they left all together with their staff. Then the government came. Good folks were arrested for no reason. If nothing changes, we’ll be out of business in the next couple of months.”

“Take it easy, Hugo,” Sophie said. “We’ll get through this. They’ll be back.”

While Keynes processed the revelation, Hugo stood up, left the room and a minute later returned with an unlabelled bottle that contained various herbs inside. The golden liquid had a greenish hue.

“Do you want some?”

“What’s that?”

“What do you think it is, soup?” he grumbled.

“I guess it is some sort of alcohol.”

Hugo placed three glasses on the table and poured the drink. The couple picked up their glasses and emptied them with ease. Keynes eyed them with little alarm. They made the absinthe look like tea.

Then Hugo’s wife nudged him to try. Just by smelling it, his mind became euphoric. What was that stuff?

He tried a little and couldn’t believe how good it tasted.

“It tastes incredible. Your food is beyond anything I’ve eaten.”

Hugo poured himself another glass.

“It’s Hugo’s Talent. It enhances the taste of anything he grows personally.” It was a weird Talent. Having food taste this good was amazing but beyond that, there seemed to be no application for it. His father’s Talent was the same in this regard. He could hone glyphs, making them higher quality, although glyphs had very wide use.

“It’s not only that,” Hugo protested. “To make high quality and good tasting food, you need more than taste-enhancing Talent. You need the right soil, temperature, fertiliser, light—”

“Hugo,” Sophie interrupted him. “Brandon doesn’t want to hear about gardening.”

“Actually, I find it interesting,” Keynes replied. In Scotland, they had been testing the rift soil. How could it improve the quality of the food? Could it enhance it in any other way?” An idea sprouted in his mind. He told them about the rift soil but changed circumstances.

“So, your uncle used the soil from a rift?” Hugo asked, his eyes wide. “But why? And who is your uncle?”

It seemed unbelievable how quickly the man’s personality started to change. The moment they began talking about gardening, he turned into a different man.

“It has something to do with a spiritual quality.” It was a borderline truth. The gardener from the Cluster city hadn’t known himself what exactly would come out of his experiment but he’d had a few strong guesses. “As to who my uncle is, well, he works for a company called Foxglove. They are well-connected and got him the rift soil.”

He cursed in his mind for using the Foxglove name but it was too late for regrets.

“Sophie, are you hearing this?” Hugo asked. “They are using the rift soil.”

She nodded.

“We must get in touch with your uncle,” Hugo said with urgency.

Oh, crap.

"Not going to be easy, I’m afraid. We aren’t on speaking terms anymore.”

Hugo frowned. Keynes could almost hear the man’s brain.

“I’m sure we can think of something. I’ve never considered the importance of Spirit when it came to growing my plants.”

He stood up, made a circle and sat down. Keynes’s revelation excited him quite a bit.

“I will leave you,” Sophie said and left the dining room.

“Tell me more about this rift soil.”

Keynes told Hugo most he knew. There wasn’t much but he had his own guesses about it as well.

“If… my uncle’s right. Then it may be possible to create plants that exceed the boundaries of our nature and step into the realm of unlimited possibilities.” It was pure salesmanship at this point as there was nothing to back up Keynes’s words, even though he had a strong suspicion that he was right.

“I’d love to put my hands on this rift soil…” Hugo tapped his index finger against the table then he abruptly stood up and beckoned Keynes to follow him. “Come with me, Brandon, I want to show you something.”

They left the cottage and returned to the orchard but didn’t stop there. Behind many more rows of various fruit trees, the orchard hid a small separate garden with a greenhouse.

Most things in the garden were herbs and tiny vegetables.

Hugo opened the door to the greenhouse and went in. Keynes followed him. From the first step, Keynes felt the difference. It was all around him.

The air felt richer, more energised. Then Keynes remembered.

“You’re using glyphs to enhance the air.”

“Not only air but temperature, light, moisture, you name it.” Hugo nodded. “For Sophie, everything revolves around my Talent. “But Talent isn’t enough. It can make food taste good but that’s all. If you want to sell to the wealthy, you must go beyond taste. They want more.”

They always do.

“And the glyphs do it?”

“There’s the issue, Brandon. You can enhance food only so much before its properties plateau. I heard some of my friends speculate that it could be tied to Spirit but it’s always sounded like bullshit to me. What possibly could Spirit have to do with plants? But I’m not so certain now.”

“Have you tried using runes or formations…”

Hugo glowered at Keynes.

“Runes and formation? Do I look like someone who plays with fire? Using that stuff is asking for trouble.”

The way Hugo reacted made Keynes pause. There was something about the suddenness in which he replied. Still, using runes and formations could give plants additional properties, if someone could make them work. Keynes had never given a thought about gardening but the more he thought about it the more he realised its potential. What was more, he didn’t mention to Hugo that different rifts had different kinds of soil. Some had water and their own plants. It was all Level 1, and now Level 2. If Hugo could enhance the taste of ordinary food to this degree, what would he be able to do with Level 2 food? He wanted to learn more about this but he was forgetting about one tiny thing.

The World Government was after him.

Crap.

“Is there anywhere I can learn this?” he pointed at his garden but Hugo snorted.

“No. Everyone has their own methods and techniques. We don’t share with each other.”

But you asked me to tell you everything about the rift soil.

Keynes nodded, disappointed, but he should’ve expected this outcome. He was on the run and his short stay here would have to end very soon.

Hugo realised that something was up, he sighed.

“You are running from… someone, right?”

Keynes froze.

“Relax, I’m not going to report you to the authorities. But if anyone, indeed, is after you, you’d better eat this.”

He picked a small round fruit Keynes didn’t recognize.

“What’s this?”

Hugo smiled.

“As I said, the wealthy want more than taste.”

***

The helicopter circled the area around the exotic rift for hours. Windsor sat inside it and looked through the window at the abandoned estates of his enemies. To him, they were an afterthought at this point. His plans were in ruin because he surrounded himself with incompetent fools.

No one had reported that Keynes Kid removed his tracker. Level 5 Hellescott had failed to apprehend him. And he’d lost Pullman to the rift monsters. He needed to turn this around or—.

Windsor’s phone rang and he picked up expecting good news for once.

“You found him?” He said flatly, more a statement than a question.

“Mr President…” the tracker hesitated. “Not exactly. He vanished.”