Several strategies came to mind, each quickly abandoned. I’d never dealt with someone as explosively unstable as Sunny before. Judging from the unkempt hair, the blood-soaked state of his shirt, and the way he was looking at me, I was seriously reconsidering if ingratiating myself to Sunny was even worth it. And I couldn’t lean on Azure here—from the hints my summon dropped, he needed as much mana as possible for the geas.

“You’ve looked better,” I said.

“Okay.” Sunny sniffed, hiked up his pants, and approached me casually. But something was off. Something in his expression. I reached for my inventory a split-second before he hauled me off the ground. My entire world exploded in pain as he slammed me head first into the desk. “What fucking game are you playing?” He yanked the back of my head up, his face inches from mine.

“The hell?” The pain and shock radiated through me. My mind raced, trying to parse what he could possibly know that had pissed him off this much. Of course, my first thought was that he somehow knew everything, and I’d just walked myself in here like a lamb to the slaughter. “I have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about—fuck!”

Sunny pushed my arm behind my back painfully, pinning me to the desk as he went through my inventory. He pulled out my weapons, a manila envelope, along with the bag of User cores I brought, per our agreement. “You just show up in the primary facility as a flex? Trying to make me look bad? Incompetent?”

Fuck this.

I spun, dislocating the shoulder he still held and driving my elbow into his face.

Sunny’s head whipped back, and he smiled through bloody teeth.

“Go fuck yourself.” I cradled my arm, tense. “There wasn’t a directory. I followed the instructions you gave me to the goddamn letter. Which led me nowhere until some lady at a bus stop spouted cryptic nonsense and teleported me into the facility proper. Calm the fuck down.”

Sunny pointed the knife at me and took a step forward. “You expect me to believe it’s all a fucking coincidence?” He rotated the tip of the knife in a circle. “I give you a little errand to do, then, over the three days that follow, a fucking car-bomb nearly wipes me off the face of the planet, and Aaron’s suddenly gung-ho about moving up the timeline. But it’s all a coincidence, right?”

Aaron wasn’t being subtle. And of course Sunny would blame the newcomer. I needed to be careful how I handled this, or I’d end up crushed in the middle.

I snapped back at him. “Blame it on the guy who's been here less than an hour that you can’t keep your fucking house in order. Solid leadership, there.”

My heart hammered as Sunny opened up the envelope and withdrew Cameron’s finger, an inscribed picture of a Chinese dragon on the ring. I didn’t want to escalate this. But there wasn’t a person in the world that would put up with this treatment when I’d effectively done the man a favor for nothing.

“You know what? Fuck this. I don’t need this shit. Send me back to the bus stop. I’ll take my chances on my own.”

“Or what?” Sunny’s voice grew dangerous, as if he was daring me to threaten him.

“Or nothing. I did the job and reported back to you. And yeah, I was hoping this place would be a good fit, but you’ve clearly got too much on your hands and I don’t feel like sticking around long enough to bite a bullet I’ve got nothing to do with.”

Sunny placed a damp hand on my throat, but didn’t squeeze. Instead, he let it slide off my neck, bloodying my armor. “Nothing to do with it? We're passed that. You killed Cameron. Do you have any idea what Aaron would do to you if he found out?”

“You gonna tell him?” I scoffed.

“We’re in this together now.” Sunny drew a rag from his pocket and wiped the streak of blood from my armor.

A muffled moan sounded from the room attached to his study. We both glanced over, then looked at each other.

“Unfinished business?” I asked.

“Hold on. Just—fucking—stay there.” Sunny stalked to the door and opened it partway, slipping inside. There was a terrified scream, then silence. Sunny absentmindedly emerged, fresh blood spatter on his face. I glimpsed plastic spread across the floor and a vacant chair in the center of the room before he closed the door again. “Now it’s finished.”

“Great.”

“You really want to leave?” Sunny asked me, cleaning fresh blood off his knife with a rag.

Not in a body bag.

“No. But I’ll tell you right now, I’m not sticking around if you keep waving that thing in my face.” I breathed. “Now, I’m missing a lot of context. But it’s obvious there’s some internal beef, and you’re floundering. This guy you’re up against, he smart?”

“Thinks he’s Einstein. He’s not.” Sunny evaded. “But yeah.”

“And did you say or do anything that could have tipped him off?” I asked. It was a blind stab in the dark, but if Sunny was as paranoid as I thought, he’d come up with something.

“I’m too careful for that. It’s not as if…” Like clockwork, realization clouded his expression. “Shit.”

As tempted as I was to ask what, exactly, Sunny had realized, I wanted him to move on from it as quickly as possible, before he poked holes. “Is it recoverable?” In an angry motion, Sunny threw the knife. It wasn’t directed at me, but I was still startled by the sudden movement. The knife stuck in the wall beside the door and quivered.

“I’m so tired of this fucker being one step ahead.”

“Then improvise. Come up with something he couldn’t have possibly accounted for.” I urged him. If Sunny folded and ran, my primary avenue of sowing chaos within the group went with him. I needed him here, weakening things from the inside.

Sunny focused, eyes shifting back and forth wildly. “The kid who brought you up here. He say anything to you?”

“He… was helpful.” I shrugged. “Seemed to like me, for whatever reason.”

Sunny’s attention snapped to me. “Wait—really? Could you work him, if you needed to?”

I was missing too much information to piece together where he was going. Part of me wanted Nick as far away from this as possible, but that would only make it more difficult to protect him.

“Given the opportunity, it wouldn’t be hard.”

“Okay. Okay, I can work with that.” Sunny straightened my armor. Suddenly buddy buddy in a way he hadn’t been since he gave me the assignment. “We don’t have a lot of time. Let’s get your introduction over and done with.”

Sunny was much better at blocking the elevator password than the henchman before, but I could still get a general idea of the number of inputs. It was between ten and twelve.

Different password than before.

It could have been my imagination, but the elevator seemed to move much more quickly than last time.

The door slid open, revealing an underground area that looked to have been abandoned in the middle of excavation.

Sunny put a hand on my back and shoved me forward, out of the elevator. “Hit the intercom when you’re done. And don’t doddle.”

Before I could ask a question—something like “What the hell am I supposed to do here?” the elevator slid shut.

The underground space was half cave, half smoothed stone, with stalagmites pushing up from the unprocessed areas. Several large, yellow construction vehicles were strewn about the area, covered in a layer of dust and dirt.

More striking was the light blue glow that illuminated the cavern, light came from iridescent moss that covered the ceiling. As far as I could tell, it was the only lighting the cavern had.

I’d thought, after region six, nothing could phase me. But the otherworldly light got under my skin in a way few things could.

Somehow sensing it was the correct direction to go, I followed the lichen on the ceiling, the unsettling feeling growing stronger the deeper I journeyed into the cave.

Another source of light caught my eye. A woman in robes—one who looked remarkably similar to the woman at the bus stop, beckoned me forward. She stood in the center of a mass of lichen that covered the area. The scarring on her face I’d mistaken as the result of burns was luminescent, glowing the same light blue.

“And so, the time has come.” She said. She sounded sad somehow, as if my arrival was both a tragedy and a foregone conclusion.

“You brought me here.” I pointed out.

“That is not entirely true. I can take no more responsibility for your presence than a grain of sand may claim the coastline it resides upon.”

“But it was your responsibility."

The woman smiled, and for just a moment, I spotted a dull glow of blue in the back of her throat. “You’ve always been here. Just as I’ve always waited. The result differs, but this meeting has happened more times than either of us can count.”

The lichen had piled on top of itself unevenly, creating a static ocean of green and blue. As I drew closer, the outline of a large stone embedded in the back wall grew more pronounced. It was too covered in fungus to make out anything more than an outline

Before her were two kneeling pillows and a single teacup.

“Can we get this over with?” I asked. I’d be lying if I claimed our surroundings, and the woman herself hadn’t unsettled me.

“Are you prepared for the oath?”

“Yes.”

The woman knelt and indicated the pillow across from her. “Let us begin.”