The next day welcomed Keynes with a surprise.

His mother was Level 3, and according to her, his father was as well. Wagner had decided to begin levelling up his employees and Keynes’s parents were ones of the first on the list. Keynes was glad to hear that. With additional Levels came many benefits related to Talents. His mother could sooth more people with greater and longer effect; glyphs fine-tuned by his father received additional improvements. And all of this happened without a Level 5 Minor Talent Upgrade.

But none of this was important to Keynes. He wanted his parents to be safe and live long lives. Levels enabled that.

Unfortunately, their short reunion was spoiled by Harter’s uncharacteristic departure. His brother not only left Geneva but he hadn’t told anyone his Talent. Keynes was sad because he’d hoped he would take Harter with him. Keynes’s mother soothed his worries away even though he had an option to block the soothing. He welcomed the feeling of tranquillity before he left Geneva again.

Later that day, he met with Pucci, the head of gardening. Pucci was on his way to Level 5 but his spirit stage was at the very bottom. The same was true for everyone here, even Wagner. Keynes hoped that his confrontation with the Prime Minister would stir something and convince Wagner to get to the Medium stage but he received the same old excuse -- not enough time.

Pucci was quite intrigued by the prospect of using a spiritual aura to manipulate the growth of plants but he was less enthusiastic about the idea of cycling the essence and couldn’t commit to it before Level 5. Despite his growing frustration, they discussed many interesting ideas about gardening. But the most important topic was fungi. Pucci accepted a sample of mind mushrooms and promised Keynes to research it.

The rest of his free time, Keynes spent catching up with the events. He scoured the Web, learning about the impact of the third outbreak. Even though there were casualties, their number was the lowest out of the three outbreaks. And many people actually wished for more outbreaks. Being praised, even indirectly, for the outbreak felt strange. In his head, the outbreaks were evil. He didn’t fool himself anymore. He wasn’t a good person, even though he vowed to recompense the world one day.

Other than that, the true issue was the Dominion of Monsters. Growing number of established monster dominions and their unpredictability was a threat. Nonetheless, this threat was uniting the world and the public vastly accepted the idea of the resistance and the World Government becoming once more. The only element that campaigned against the peace treaty were the White Masks. They argued that without the proper resistance, the World Government would cut common people off the sources of essence. While a valid concern, there was proof to the opposite. Numerous hunting grounds were established where rifts had been left uncleared and endlessly spawned monsters for anyone to hunt them. It had its own drawbacks, monsters outside rifts didn’t drop items or weren’t affected by rift modifiers. Rifts’ rare and valuable resources weren’t exploited and the amount of essence was vastly diminished.

Still, many cities that were lucky to lay near a rift cluster, used it to convert to hunting grounds. Keynes was interested to learn that Australia was a number one destination for hunters. The giant island was exclusively populated by monsters. Not a single city remained there. One day, Keynes would love to visit it as well.

The last thing Keynes read about before his departure was the Solar Summit. It was happening in a few days in Geneva and would feature every major party in the solar system. They still awaited their invitation.

***

The trip to Southeast Asia was challenging. Because every public asset of their company was under scrutiny, Keynes needed to use an unaffiliated company that wouldn’t know who he was. While he wasn’t a public figure, his anonymity was a fragile asset.

In the end, Keynes ended up using seven different aircrafts, moving from one country to another, not always in the right direction. He landed on the day of the Solar Summit, which only increased his anxiety because he was kept in the dark for the last twenty-four hours as they hadn’t allowed him any electronics on the way here.

And here was god knew where. It was an island, judging by the size, no larger than forty kilometres across. Its terrain was extremely uneven with many mountain ranges, valleys and dense tropical forest. Low hanging, dark clouds heralded heavy rain.

Despite his time spent in the World Reserve, the extreme humidity and heavy air hit Keynes without mercy. After he left the small plane, it immediately took off from the abandoned airport, if a strip of hardened ground and a few old buildings nestled between trees could be called as such.

I hate this weather, Keynes huffed.

You can use your spiritual aura to negate it, Alice informed him.

She remained small but her body was much more detailed and visible than ever before. She stood on something invisible at the height of Keynes’s head.

How?

Sorry, master, but I cannot take away the fun of discovery from you.

Take it, Keynes said. You can have all the fun. I don’t care. Just help me breathe.

Hmm. I will see what I can do. With that vague promise, Alice vanished.

A few seconds later a jeep emerged out of the woods. Alice confirmed that it was Esopp Earl.

Keynes waited until the jeep stopped in front of him. Esopp beckoned Keynes inside where he found blessed air conditioning. He took a deep breath of cool, refreshing air.

“Yeah, the weather here sucks,” Esopp said with a smirk. “How was the trip?”

“Uneventful. How’s the summit? Has Wagner gotten an invitation?”

“He did,” Esopp replied. “Just a couple of hours before the meeting of the Solar Council. It’s clear they aren’t happy with our reply but your stunt might have saved our asses.”

The road was hardly a road but the jeep did its job. When it stopped, Keynes needed a few seconds to make sense of what he was seeing. A large gate was extremely hard to distinguish from its surroundings. The wall that extended from the gate had the same property.

“The camouflage is Level 2 stuff made from plants and has to be reapplied every week. Hopefully they’ll deliver an upgraded version soon. The cost of keeping it up makes the camouflage questionable,” Esopp complained.

Without any obvious sign or message, the gate cracked open and let the jeep inside. An alien sight welcomed Keynes on the other side. The base was hidden in a valley but Esopp went a step further and erected several gigantic pillars that expanded in all directions above the base creating an artificial canopy. According to Esopp, it also had the same camouflage that had to be reapplied weekly. Now, his complaint had merit. The pillars were so tall that they dwarfed everything between them.

The base itself was a mixture of many futuristic buildings made out of glass, steel and concrete. The air beneath the canopy was cooler and thinner than on the airfield. Vents protruding from the pillars seemed to exhaust something so there was more to them than mere support.

They crossed the concrete parking lot and entered the lobby with an arched wooden desk in the middle. There were only a few seats provided next to the concrete wall.

“This is our backyard so this part of the complex isn’t finished. In most cases, our clients won’t see any of this. The idea is to not let them come to the surface.”

“Another underground base?” Keynes groaned.

“Not entirely.” Esopp shook his head. “But we must be careful. We have to keep the location of this place a secret. And so we are building an underground train that would come here from a nearby island. We have no choice but to keep our clients in the dark.”

They left the empty lobby and moved on to Esopp’s office with a nice view of the garden outside. The office was nice and comfortable but nowhere near the level of absurd luxury in Wagner’s. Esopp showed Keynes to a comfortable armchair then offered him a smoke. Some potent Level 2 plant from Wagner’s collection. Once both men comfortably settled in the armchairs, Esopp asked, “What do you think?”

“Is that all?” Keynes asked, confused.

“No.” Esopp shook his head. “Obviously there’s more. Not all of the base is finished though. Some of our ideas are a little too ambitious but who cares? We have resources so we might do it as well the right way.”

“In this case, I’d tell you my opinion when you show me the rest. I hope I have a room with a similar view.” Keynes nodded at the garden outside.

“Sure. Only one-third of the complex is currently underground, although the rifts made it easy when it comes to dealing with the excess soil.”

“What is the plan for this place?” Keynes remembered everything Wagner told him about this project. Its code name was Emerald City. It meant to be a completely self-sustained city-like base and house rifts from all over the world and beyond. That was all Keynes had heard from Wagner before going to the World Reserve. They didn’t talk about it upon Keynes’s last visit.

“It depends on our dealings with the Solar Council,” Esopp answered. “Columbus and Wagner would like to expand this place, transform the entire island and islands around into a gigantic agglomeration that would revolve around the rifts we keep here. That’s their long term goal anyway.”

“I don’t share their enthusiasm but that’s more to do with the fact that I led Hidden Hand for over a decade. Our utmost priority was to keep things hidden as the name suggests. It is not easy to get the sentiment out of my system. What about you?”

In truth, Keynes didn’t care much. Not because he didn’t want this place to thrive. On the contrary, this meant to be their source of income so if things weren’t handled right, they’d fail. However, Keynes’s mind was focused more on leaving Earth and pursuing rifts on other planets. What kind of rifts would he find there? Would they be the same as the ones on Earth or not? His curiosity burned at the thought of flying through space, visiting planets, opening rifts, giving an opportunity for humankind to move beyond the solar system.

“So?” Esopp prompted him when Keynes failed to answer.

“I like Columbus’s and Wagner’s idea. It’d allow us to shift our business when we run out of higher level rifts to open. But they aren’t taking my warnings seriously. Even if the Solar Council would guarantee us immunity, we’d never be perfectly safe.”

“That’s understandable. That’s politics, there’s always scheming.”

“But we need countermeasures. Hiding is good for now. But eventually, there are going to be people with Talents and skills who will find us despite every countermeasure we can employ. What then?”

Like during the video conference, Keynes’s words struck home. Esopp agreed with Keynes on this and the topic of the conversation soon shifted to the rifts themselves. According to Esopp, they had 36 Level 1, 12 Level 2 and only 2 Level 3 rifts here. The cost of purchasing the rift orbs consumed 40% of the total budget, which left Keynes speechless. They had three times as many rifts scattered all over the world but without means of transporting them here. Currently not a single rift orb that moved rifts was up for a sale. It was because of the dominions.

“What do you mean?”

“Dominion orbs allow you to establish your own dominion. So when those with dominions and rifts started to buy up any rift orb regardless of the price, the sellers figured out that it would be better to auction these orbs instead. These auctions are brutal and the prices are beyond even what we want to pay.”