The commotion continued for some minutes. I think seven people in total had been thrown brutally out of their virtual world. Things got slowly calmer but not less intriguing. There had been an almost total outage in a circle of around twenty to thirty meters... around me. I mean around that tin cans mountain with juice. Nobody made the connection to me. Not even I did that for some time. I was that stupid.

Now really, why did I need so long to recognize this fact?

“What did you do?”

“Nothing, nothing. I swear I did not do anything!”

My fairy alter-ego was protesting, but she must have done something.

After I took the lead, most things started to work. Not immediately but slowly. Except for one computer and two dream interfaces that were utterly bust. Also, one mobile phone, mine, but I did not add that to the list.

It was that moment when I discovered that my mobile phone broke that I first started to suspect my fairy.

“You took the lead before, but my mobile phone did not die. Why did it die now? Did you do something different?”

I was sipping juice from one freshly opened tin can, sweating guilty, sitting on a box and watching the still happening commotion around. In the beginning, I tried to help but then, seeing that my help was not needed, I retired here. Sitting there and looking around, it dawned on me that I may have been the reason for the problem. After that, I did not dare move for a while; I just stayed there with the tin can in my hand - not a very clever action on my side.

“I don't know. Do you want to heal them? Your heal might help a little... ”

“No. How do you even come to the idea? Magic healing would be a cool show and would instantly put a target on my head for I don't know how many shady organizations. They are not that badly hurt to need a heal. The question is, if it was not you, what else could have been?”

“How could I know? I just tried to inspect those things around when it happened. I did not even get a feeling of the surroundings to be able to tell.”

She did not get a feeling of the surroundings to be able to tell...

I sighed. No, she did not do anything special! Why do I have the feeling I need a forceps to extract any useful information from her?

“What do you mean with this sentence: you were trying to inspect the surrounding? Visually?”

“No, silly. It is with magic that you can inspect in a much faster, better way, especially when you want to look around and be unobserved. Plus, you learn much more...”

Silly. She called me silly, and she did not even intend to be mean to me. I sighed. Unobserved! Is this what she calls inspecting unobserved?

“Describe it to me. What do you mean with inspecting with magic?”

“Not with magic, through magic. You must know that I have an aura. Every person that possesses magic has an aura. Most people are not aware of it. Cala, as an assassin, was able to sniff it and even locate her target through it. If you have higher-level manipulation of aura, you can do much more than only have it around. You need centuries of exercise to arrive at a high degree of control, but aura can do many things, like, for instance, replacing or complementing your other senses. Seeing, smelling, taste, and touch; you can do all these through your aura.”

“You can look? Are you joking? You did this?”

“Of course, I did this. I am not joking. It is as if you see something instantly from many points of view. You can even see inside things. Your nose flies to every point that you want to smell; your fingers get to every point that you want to touch.”

She was now getting excited, explaining to me aura manipulation possibilities.

“Even inside things? Why did you not tell me when I asked?”

“You asked if I did something different. No, I did this before.”

“Did you check my mobile phone before?”

“Yes, but I might have done it more throughout now. I was just curious after you talked with your mother...”

“You busted my mobile phone!”

“Ahm. This should not have happened. Aura check is not lethal...”

“It seems to be lethal for mobile phones. Why did the problem disappear after I took control?”

“When I am not in lead, my aura stays, remains with me, and what was in the air dissipates.”

Now I got maybe an understanding of what had happened. It could have been her aura. Probably it was her aura, her 'magic inspection'.

How did her aura influence mobile phones, dream interfaces, and computers was still an enigma for me, but I might have identified the culprit.

Hopefully, the others will not make the same observation. What could help me was that even if I stayed there, nothing terrible happened further; therefore, they could not make the correlation between the problem and me. If I had left, that might have been bad.

I mixed in a group that was feverishly discussing the events and listened to them. They were calling it an S-event. They had some kind of scale for unexplained events, and it was relatively low on the scale, yet it was still classified as a significant event. Significant in the sense that no normal explanation could be given to it, it was a clear abnormal event.

The group consisted of five boys and two girls, three with me. Suddenly one of the boys decided that it was time to have lunch, and the group approved. As they stood up to go to eat, one of the girls turned to me:

“You come?”

At first, I wanted to refuse, but then I followed. I took another can of juice with me on the way.

“Helen!”

She said that giving me her hand. I took it in mine:

“Dolores.”

I watched her; she was a murky brown-haired girl with brown eyes and a warm smile.

I followed them to the 'canteen'. It was in an open area where about twenty people were currently gathered. A cauldron was above an open fire where a 'cook' was mixing some liquids.

Besides the cauldron was a small mountain of opened tin cans of various soups clarifying the cauldron's content enigma.

Around the cauldron, several low tables made from stacked used tires covered with wood panels were spread in a circle, people sitting on various boxes or barrels, eating, drinking, or just chatting.

I followed my group as they continued chatting happily whilst picking up plastic saucers and lining up for the soup. There was also a beer barrel, and I learned it was self-brewed beer. There was a bit of a beer-mugs crisis. I got a mug only after I made my puppy eyes look. The brewery was obviously illegal, but the beer tasted good. I gave up my juice and swapped it for a beer and a soup teller.

I followed the group to a bigger table made from a huge used cable drum. As seats were smaller cable drums, boxes, or chairs made of used tires.

“This was not normal! This was a fucking attack on us. Somebody tries to intimidate us not to investigate the Mephisto thing!”

This was a tall boy with an aggressive mustache that spoke. I tried to put my two cents:

“Maybe it was an accident?”

“An accident? Ridiculous!”

The tall boy was just getting warmed up. Helen sighed. I lowered my eyes to my soup, promising to keep silent for a while. The soup was good.

“You really knew Markus?”

This was Sebastian, a relatively fat boy with some strange ticks. Every couple of minutes, he looked over the shoulder as if checking if somebody was still there. He was eating the soup with bread. He had a big brown bread with him. I've seen too late that they also had bread and was too lazy to go and ask for some now. I did not like what he was doing with that bread in his teller.

I tried to ignore that. He had a genuine smile on his face. It seems Markus is some kind of a legend now, one of the original founders of the organization.

I nodded.

“I haven't met him for almost a year.”

From my right, Helen confirmed.

“None of us did.”

“I did!”

This was a thin young boy with long brownish hair. I did not remember his name. He explained further without being asked:

“It was in the underground salt mine stolen!”

I wondered:

“What could he do there?”

The other girl turned to me, a tiny esoteric blond girl with a timid smile:

“Probably detoxifying from this electrical smog!”

“Electrical smog?”

The 'I do not remember his name' boy shook his head:

“He was meditating there!”

The blonde continued to explain:

“The stolen is the best place. Even the light is done there with especially isolated cables. That's why the visit to the mine is so expensive.”

“It's not expensive; it costs only one per hour.”

The blonde insisted:

“Per hour!”

Another boy, Peter, I think, explained further:

“The really expensive part is the transport. The train there is twenty. If you want to stay for ten hours, you have already a cost above thirty without eating and drinking.”

“Yes, that's why I do not go. I do have a gratis voucher for three hours, but the train is too expensive.”

This was the fourth boy. A dark-haired, dark skin, small in stature but relatively well build type.

“It's only twenty kilometers?”

The dark-haired boy shrugged:

“You propose to walk?”

This raised my attention:

"You mean there is no internet connection down there?"

The dark-haired-boy laughed:

"Not only that. There is no electrical smog. Nothing. Clean as during the time of the dinosaurs."

I risked to beg:

“If you do not use it, would you consider giving me the voucher?”

He shrugged:

“Sure, but it expires today, and the cheap train tickets are sold out. I just tried.”

“Is it not possible to get there by bike?”

Helen nodded affirmatively:

“Oh yes, there is a good bicycle route to there!”

“Can you describe it to me?”

She wondered:

“Don't you have a mobile?”

“I do, but it got busted...”

“So you still have a valid id? You could try with Mike; he has a lot of scrap mobiles, fifty percent are still working if you put a valid id in them, or you can use only wi-fi!”

She pointed towards the end of the hall.

“Mike?”

“Sure. He is there where that mountain of tires is!”

The fifth, a red-haired boy explained, pointing in the same direction.

I continued to talk with them, eating my soup, but I got no other interesting info. I exchanged my email address with Helen as she promised to let me know if they find a way to the Mephisto game. The general sentiment was that the game was broken, but there was some incertitude.

“What does this mean?”

White Flower wanted me to clarify the access issue whilst I was walking towards Mike's place.

“This means that I cannot access Mephisto's world.”

“You mean I will not see the Lynx anymore? You mean I will forever be stranded here?”

There was a bit too much panic in the way she said that. I sighed.

“Maybe there is still a way to do that. We'll see later. Until then, don't panic; everything will be alright. We are safe here.”

She found some consolation with that:

“Hm. Maybe you are right. At least this world seems safer than my world, the one that you call Mephisto's world.”