Terry sat in an office chair that was very much not his, in front of a mechanical relay device connected to a computer positioned at an extensive remove from his high-level self, contemplating.

How was it that two equally ridiculous options had become the definitive central question of the rest of his life? However long or short that may turn out to be.

Rearranging a few guard schedules was nothing. Everything was analog now, paper and ink, no records to be traced back to him. It would cause a ruckus, there’d be investigations, Online, though… that couldn’t be fully concealed. Electronic trails may be more challenging to trace now with the technology limitations, but they were far from impossible.

The world could be mere months away from ending, and somehow the responsibility of minimizing the fallout had landed on the incredibly unprepared shoulders of Terry Saunders.

He glanced over his shoulder at a small sound, but it was only footsteps in the hallway outside that quickly receded.

This skulking around was making him jumpy.

He was under no particular illusions about the people he worked for and with. They had found power available for the taking, and proceeded to take it. They may have built a grand facade of doing this to protect the common people from the risk of those with power misusing it, but Terry had always seen that for the flimsy excuse it was.

He’d never claimed to be a good man. He was fully aware of his self-serving nature, using any method at his disposal to climb the ladder of power within the organization, and further amplify his personal strength with their backing.

Yet here he sat, considering taking actions that would almost certainly lead to severe repercussions if found out, and given the scope of what he was about to do, being found out was all but inevitable. Demotion for incompetence would be a best-case scenario. Losing access to the majority of the resources to which he’d become accustomed would be a given.

All he had was the word of a handful of fanatics. Why would he even consider taking such a drastic action?

But… they knew too much, were too right about too many things without fail. Information even months of dedicated research had failed to uncover, and this group handed them out casually to anyone they met.

He couldn’t deny their sincerity, and he couldn’t quite bring himself to doubt their accuracy. The logical, reasonable action to take was, therefore, to accept that the information he’d been given was correct, and act accordingly.

Which would be great, if not for the fact that acting accordingly involved staking everything on a future he couldn’t verify until it would be far too late. If he could just… donate a few thousand bucks or something, that’d be so much easier than this.

The clock ticked down toward the fateful moment. Still Terry hesitated, torn. His personal future, or the future of the planet? Shouldn’t that be an easier equation?

There was nothing easy about this. Simple to say, simple to plan, but now the actual moment was here…

“Commander Saunders?”

Terry’s heart jumped in panic at the shout. He spun on the newcomer.

“There you are.” One of the local underlings nodded back toward the hall behind him. “Commander Kirkus has something you need to see. He wants you ASAP.”

“I’ll be there soon,” Terry replied automatically, and hit the button. He covertly kicked the relay cable as he stood, disconnecting it just enough to appear accidental, then followed the man out.

The lackey led him along the plain corridors of facility D03, and not toward the usual meeting room. They were heading towards the outside. Had something going wrong? Had he been discovered already?

"Plane three, sir." The man held the door open to the airfield, and Terry forced himself to relax.

Despite their appearance and grand sounding name, the mana planes were relatively slow and unwieldy compared to pre-system planes. That said, given the restrictions on communication and transportation by mana interference, anything faster than a bicycle was still well worth having.

Commander Hyran Kirkus stood waiting beside the indicated plane’s loading door. "Saunders! There you are. We're heading over to D11, hurry up."

Terry swallowed back a surge of panic, doing his best to appear entirely untroubled. Of all the times, and all the places, this couldn’t possibly have been more poorly timed. "D11? Why there?"

"I've been reading over your report on the new monsters you've encountered, and the reports from those who've been in the field. It's about time we moved on from dinosaurs and goblins."

“Shouldn’t you be at D05 debriefing our survivors?”

“I’ll leave that to the experts. I’m more interested in advancing our monster control department. The takeover of C01 proves that we’ve been sitting on a gold mine without properly exploiting it. Come on, Kinar is meeting us there and I don't want to keep him waiting.”

Terry winced inwardly, but he could do nothing more at this point. Not being here to re-enable the internet security meant the breach would be discovered sooner rather than later; instead of a temporary blip it would be a full failure, and detected as such.

Not being able to warn the team preparing to raid D11 would probably make them think that he had set up a trap. It would be easy enough to turn it into one, if he wanted to cement his reputation here.

That still wasn’t a choice he was ready to make. "Let me collect my things. If I'd known we were going on a trip I’d have packed."

Kirkus scoffed. "You won’t need anything. It's just a few hours to look things over and interview a few of the researchers. You'll be back by evening, no worries."

"At least let me grab my weapon," Terry pressed. "I know they say everything's controlled, but I'm not convinced. I rather not be in the same room as wild monsters without a weapon."

"Don’t we have enough weaponry stocked on this thing for you?"

"But my bow is upgraded, and I have special arrows for it too. I’d feel more comfortable—"

Kirkus waved a hand in irritation. "Okay. Go get your weapon. We need to hurry if we want there to be any good ones left."

What did he think would happen, that Kinar would be carrying monsters off? It’s not like he could drop them in a shopping cart. No, that wasn’t important right now.

Terry sprinted back inside toward his office, mind spinning. It was too soon to reconnect the online filters, he was supposed to wait a half hour. All he could do was grab his dungeon gear, slipping into the power vest and gloves, sheathing his manabow across his back, and strapping the bandolier of special upgraded arrows over his shoulder.

He mumbled under his breath as he ran back to the airfield, cursing everyone and everything for this misfortune. Cursing himself for thinking any of this was a good idea, cursing Levi Morrison and Cassandra Jackson for being so damn persuasive, and cursing his fellow commanders for their absolutely wretched sense of timing.

Of course they would decide on an impromptu meeting at the exact same location during the precise time it was scheduled to be invaded.

He could stall for time, perhaps keep them from noticing anything, but it wouldn’t be easy. And there was a more than even chance he would end up forced to blatantly choose a side one way or the other in the coming hours.

Even now, Terry didn't know what he’d choose.