The whole trip, Terry couldn't stop thinking about the prisoner and her group. Even separated from him by the holding walls, even secured and unable to do more than curse aimlessly, the woman's whole demeanor remained firmly cemented in his head as dissonant.

Ordinarily, he'd have brushed it off as insanity. Plenty of people when Awakened started to think they were the center of the universe, or that any number of conspiracy theories they'd concocted must be the truth.

This group, though... so far he had yet to see a single thing they'd been wrong about.

His mind kept replaying that one moment, the tone in her voice when she proclaimed the coming doom. Absolute confidence.

They'd already seen a thousand times over that the System could enable the impossible. Just because they'd never encountered any time-related powers didn't mean they didn't exist. If Cassandra Jackson really could see the future, or taste it or whatever, she was a resource they couldn't afford to squander.

They stopped at D11 to hand over the named monsters for study and conversion. The intake process ended up taking most of the morning, including writing reports on each of the creatures and its fighting style to the extent he remembered it.

After that, Terry also checked in with communication before departing to see if there'd been any news from C01. Nothing out of the ordinary. A report on the chaos, scheduled arrival of a smaller team for rotation, and the decision to proceed with the morning's dungeon clear. Terry frowned at that - it would require nearly the entire surviving facility personnel, but it was too late now for him to do anything about it. Even if he sent back a strongly-worded reprimand, the clearing team would already be inside by now. He sent the message anyway, but knew it would be only a retroactive rebuke.

"Keep me apprised of the progress on those monsters. I'll be heading to D03 next."

"Understood."

He gave the semi-liquid puddle of sparking goo one last frown, then returned to his plane for the second leg of their journey. It may be overstepping his jurisdiction a tiny bit, but he was starting to think this particular group was outside of his pay grade.

Better to hand them over to the professionals.

Flying normally felt calming, peaceful breaks between the chaos of managing everything, but today it felt interminable. The mana-powered engine was a constant strain to maintain sufficiently without a co-pilot, and Terry's thoughts simply didn't want to settle. He couldn't slip into his usual state of concentration.

He sincerely hoped that he could turn the ringleader over and get nothing back but a 'you've been overreacting, nothing to worry about' consensus. Yet the nagging concern wouldn't let him trust it until someone else verified.

If there was any chance these people were right, that containment and control of the dungeons would be detrimental in the long run, he couldn’t ignore it.

He wanted to talk to her more, wanted to personally crack her facade of control, but that wasn't his area of expertise. Terry's place was to be an overseer, not an interrogator. Occasional questions for intake, yes. Proper questioning of someone this stubborn? No.

The facilities continued to run well, aside from the recent disruptions. Too many disruptions too close together. Could they be related? It felt like too much coincidence, but sometimes coincidence was like that. The prisoner showed no reaction but confusion to the sparking horse-thing, but he couldn’t tell whether it was because she was a good liar or if she honestly had as little clue of what was going on as he did.

By the time they landed, he’d half convinced himself that he'd exaggerated the whole thing out of proportion. Until he met the prisoner's eyes. The calm confidence and certainty there, despite everything, brought all his doubts rushing back.

"Where'd you bring me to this time?" she asked, the spark of playfulness seemingly restored by the flight despite her restraints. "Seems a bit fancy for a first date, wouldn't you say?"

Terry didn't gratify that with a response.

The landing field at D03 was just outside the main compound, which was bigger and more utilitarian than the more specialized containment and research facilities.

‘Fancy’ was not a word he would ever use to describe it.

D03 housed a Destruction dungeon, one of the lower level ones. They'd noticed negative repercussions to initiating new Awakened to any dungeon above the level of 15, the atmosphere itself causing damage. When they obtained this one it had been decided to hold back on clearing it to prioritize having an available training and initiation spot for newcomers.

Its relative low level made it the ideal spot for command and tactical as well, since there would be less danger of high level monsters coming out to wreak havoc.

Cassandra Jackson gazed about with a look of disappointment. "No windows? What is this, Area 51?"

"That's enough glibness out of you. This is a very serious situation and should be treated accordingly."

"Yeah, I know. You're the one who isn't taking it seriously enough. But, really, bringing me to a place like this? Who do you think I am?"

Terry stopped listening. She wasn't going to cooperate and he didn't have time to entertain her nonsense.

They entered the facility, their footsteps echoing.

“Looks so clean, this must have been put up recently, huh?”

Terry maintained his policy of do-not-engage, as the woman kept up a running commentary that she probably thought was funny.

Still, as he turned her over, there was an odd note of regret mixed with the relief. He couldn’t quite pin down why it bothered him, but tried to put it out of his mind.

He spent the next hour in his office filling out the admission forms, recorded as much detail as he could remember about his own interrogation efforts and added in the basic transcript. Seeing it in text made his reactions feel exaggerated. She was clearly some kind of con woman, not a seer, not some new unknown thing.

He pushed aside the last of his uncertainty and stood from his desk, handed in his reports, and before long someone came knocking at the door.

The serious-faced man, Commander Ralph Kinar, Terry knew as one of the other rotational chiefs of their region.

“We need to talk.” Kinar turned and started to walk away without waiting for acknowledgement. Terry restrained his curiosity and followed in silence until they were safely downstairs in the secure conference room.

"Find anything?"

"A lot." Kinar flipped through copies of Terry's recent transcripts, nodding. "She wasn't lying about it being a family operation, she just happens to be wealthy and well-connected enough to pull it off where most people couldn't. I'll be sending a team to pick up the mother along with any documents they may be holding there. The biggest question mark is the ex-boyfriend and brother-in-law. Neither of them were listed with your intakes. Levi Morrison and Gordon McKaine. They've yet to show themselves anywhere we have eyes."

"They'll slip up eventually. Everyone does."

"I'm more concerned about them being out there unsupervised. The kid..." he flipped through another stack of paper for a moment, "Peter, had more monsters with him than a Tamer of his level should be able to control.

There's a high chance that they're both tamers as well. We can't afford to have them running around unchecked. You said you found named monsters?"

"Yes. You think they were tames?" Terry's mouth felt dry at the realization. If this had been only the beginning... and the compound was left practically unguarded while those idiots ran the dungeon despite his warnings...

"I see you understand the threat this causes. We can't afford to underestimate a threat of this magnitude."

Before the discussion could progress further, the third member of the group joined them through a side door.

Hyran Kirkus looked as disinterested as Kinar looked disapproving. "What's this I'm hearing about now? Some disruption or other?"

"Brought in that new group that was stirring up a fuss, think there's more to them than meets the eye."

"Yeah, well, isn't that everyone?" Kirkus sniped blandly.

"Here." Kinar shoved Terry's report to the latecomer, along with a few of the more relevant pages of the logs. "Named monsters popping up, attacking C01. We need to get a handle on this before this gets out of hand. Missing suspects."

"Why hasn't this been escalated until now?" Kirkus continued to scan the pages as he spoke. "If these missing people are of such great concern--"

But Terry's immediate defence of having come directly and personally as soon as he had reason to suspect anything was amiss died unspoken as alarms began to blare from every corner of the facility.

"Perimeter breach?"

"Call this in, now!" Terry shouted, running for the door. The other two may have seniority, but Terry’s level was highest.

He unslung his manabow as he ran, orange light flickering to life as he mentally stacked buffs. Guidance, Precision, Enforce, and he poured power into the glowing bolt until it lit up the halls brighter than the red emergency lights.

Whoever was attacking them, they'd get a faceful of surprise as soon as he caught them.