BRRRRT! BRRRRT! BRRRRT!

The grating cry of Blake’s morning alarm dragged him unwillingly from his much-needed slumber. Getting up on mornings like this was a much harder task than it had been on Earth. Back then, he’d just stuck his cellphone across the room, forcing himself to at least climb out of bed for a moment to turn it off. That had usually been enough.

Now, however, he could just turn the noise off with his mind. The temptation was there and growing stronger by the second.

He’d gone to bed extra late, largely because of all the work needed to get Gabriela and the Flying Toaster underway last night, plus other crisis-related activities. Then, despite trying his best to fall asleep—or perhaps because of it—he'd spent far too long just staring at the ceiling and stressing about everything. When he’d finally crossed into the land of slumber, it had been well into the early morning.

He glanced at the clock, blinking away the gunk blurring his vision. The numbers looked blurry, and he had to strain until he could see the time flashing from across the room. He cringed at the sight. Another night of practically zero sleep. Even with his upgraded body, he felt like a slug run over by a steamroller.

Still, despite the protests of his body and mind, he rolled out of bed. On another morning, when things weren’t so dire, he’d probably decide to throw his schedule to the wind and sleep until well past noon. Oh, how he missed those days when he could sleep far too late, spend the afternoon watching videos online, and then play games until it was almost dawn. Those good old days, when life was simple, fast food was a few taps on his phone away, and dragons weren’t potentially going to invade the rest of the world.

Today, however, he needed to get up, regardless of his body’s protests. Beyond the general dragon emergency, there was something else he needed to be awake for—something specific. He was sure that if he thought about it hard enough, he’d remember what that thing was.

It was...

It was...

Right, the cabinet meeting. Today was sure to be an interesting morning. After all, this was the morning of the first cabinet meeting since the dragons had made themselves known to the world. Blake would get the “honor” of informing his subordinates that a portion of their stupid, silly religion was actually accurate. Dragons did, in fact, exist.

There would be so much to talk about after that; Otharia would have to enter as close to a pre-war state of readiness as the nation could manage and get there as fast as possible. The meeting was sure to go long, and then there’d be follow-ups and consultations, and... He felt exhausted just thinking about it.

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN WE’RE RUNNING OUT?!” Blake hollered, leaning over the table and pounding his palms against it so hard that it shook. “HOW CAN WE BE RUNNING OUT OF CRYSTALS?! HOW?! THEY’RE FUCKING EVERYWHERE!”

He felt stunned. Bushwhacked. Betrayed. He felt like he could barely think past his incredulous rage.

“L-Lord, I—”

“WHAT PART OF ‘THERE’S A BUNCH OF HUGE-ASS DRAGONS THAT COULD FLY DOWN HERE AND ROAST EVERYBODY ALIVE AT ANY TIME’ DO YOU NOT FUCKING UNDERSTAND?! YOU THINK THEY’RE GONNA STOP AT THE BORDER AND POLITELY WAIT FOR US TO GET READY?! NO! THEY’RE GOING TO SHOW UP TO BRING FIRE AND FLAMES ANY TIME NOW, AND IF WE DON’T HAVE A FUCKING ARMY READY TO MEET THEM, WE’RE FUCKING TOAST! YOU UNDERSTAND YET?! CAN YOU GET THAT THROUGH YOUR THICK SCYRIAN SKULLS?!”

“We’ve been doing everything we can to locate more veins,” Leo informed him.

“OH REALLY?! BECAUSE IT SURE SEEMS TO ME LIKE ‘EVERYTHING’ WOULD INCLUDE TELLING ME ABOUT THE PROBLEM! DON’T GIVE ME THAT ‘WE TRIED SO HARD’ SHIT! YOU DIDN’T THINK IT WOULD MATTER! THAT’S WHY YOU KEPT IT TO YOUR-FUCKING-SELVES UNTIL IT REARED ITS UGLY HEAD TO BITE ME IN THE ASS!”

A particular thought, long dormant, stirred. It poked its head out from its hole and found the current climate to be most accommodating.

“Or...” he continued, his voice dropping as his gaze traveled across each of them with quickly growing suspicion, “maybe that’s what you wanted all along...”

Before he even knew what he was doing, he had a massive handcannon in his grasp, pointed right at Minister Tievais’s bug-eyed face.

“Yeah, you wouldn’t even have to do much,” Blake continued. “Wouldn’t even have to actively sabotage things. All you’d have to do is be somewhat inept. Let the output slow. Let the surveys take longer than they should and ‘accidentally’ miss some stuff. How would I know? I’ve been cooped up in here, trusting you like a fucking chump!”

“Lord Ferros—” Arlette tried to cut in, but he ignored her. Hell, he could barely even hear her over the sound of his heartbeat pounding in his ears.

The gun swerved as he changed his target. “Or maybe it’s deeper than that. Et tu, Leo? You picked him out. Maybe he’s just doing exactly what you want him to. You said ‘we’ have been doing everything ‘we’ can. So, you knew too, then, didn’t you?”

He slowly pointed the weapon at each of the people in front of him, watching them all for signs of... guilt? Fear? Anything that qualified in his mind as ‘suspicious’, he supposed.

“You’re all in on it, aren’t you? You’re all in a conspiracy to depose me! To bring me down! I’m on to you! I—”

A hand grabbed his arm and pushed it upwards. It took him a moment to see through his anger and recognize Arlette standing in front of him, both of her arms pushing with all her might just to move his aim up a foot or two.

“Lord Ferros, calm yourself!” she grunted.

Part of him decided on the spot that this meant she was in on it. The rest of him wasn’t so sure just yet. She wasn’t connected to the others. Still—

A loud, shrill alarm from inside his helmet took him by surprise, causing him to accidentally pull the trigger. The gun bucked in his hand and the small room was filled with an ear-splitting ‘CRACK!’, followed by screams and whimpers. Several of the ministers cowered in their seats, while others ducked under the table to cower closer to the floor.

Luckily for everybody involved, the bullet struck the far wall almost head-on and did not ricochet, instead practically melting against the surface. Perhaps he’d put a little too much power into the weapon, he considered.

Before his thoughts could stray any further, a video feed popped up and began to play in front of his eyes. It took only a second for him to blanch and turn the feed off.

“Is this your doing too?!” he yelled at the others, his exhausted mind momentarily forgetting that nobody in the room but him could see what he was talking about.

After a few moments of confused and terrified silence, he grabbed Arlette by the arm and pulled her towards the door. She was probably still trustworthy.

“I’m stepping out for a bit. You all fucking wait here until I get back.”

Deciding to enforce his order himself, he sealed all the doors as soon as he and Arlette stepped outside. That accomplished, he began to march down the hall with Arlette just behind him.

That didn’t last long.

After several moments of quickly walking, Arlette shot in front of him like a bullet from his handcannon. She glared at him balefully as she set herself in his path.

“Alright, that’s far enough,” she declared. “What the fuck was that?! Stars above, have you lost your goddamned mind?!”

Blake ignored her and tried to step around her. When that didn’t work, he decided to just go through her. The next thing he knew, he was face down on the floor. What had happened? He’d tried to move his leg forward, and then it had hit something that had stopped it from moving properly, and...

“Look at you. Slow, uncoordinated, paranoid, hysterical. What happened to you?”

“Wha?” Blake managed to respond.

“You seemed alright yesterday, but now you look...” She crouched down and studied his face closely. “...even more tired than usual. How much sleep have you been getting?”

“...Some.”

She glared at him in a way that reminded him of his strict middle school history teacher whenever he didn’t do his homework.

“How many hours of sleep did you get last night?” she asked pointedly.

Blake pushed himself into a sitting position, leaning his back against the hallway wall. “I don’t know, one?”

“One hour?!”

He shrugged. “Ish.”

Arlette began to massage the bridge of her nose with gusto. “How about the night before.”

“Didn’t.”

“What?”

“Dragons invaded Kutrad,” he informed her. “I was too busy.”

She groaned and rubbed her face. “Yes, Blake, I know. I was in the crisis planning session with you! Don’t you remember?! And, I still went to sleep that night! We all did!”

She exhaled sharply. “How much have you slept in... I don’t know... the last ten days?”

He mentally staggered through his foggy memory, trying to come up with a number. This was too much mental effort for him right now. “Three hours a night?” he offered.

“Three?!”

“Maybe three-and-a-half?” he added, hoping to mollify her.

“Ancestors, give me strength,” she groaned. She pulled him to his feet with concerted effort. “Come on. You’re going to go apologize and beg the others to forgive you, and then you’re taking a desperately needed nap.”

“Apologize?! Why should I apologize to backstabbers and traitors?!”

“Stop embarrassing yourself. You’re so far gone that you’re barking at shadows in your head. Why in the world would they do what you think they did? There are a thousand easier and more effective ways to undermine you if they want to. It wouldn’t even matter, anyway. If they were undermining you to topple your rule, lowering crystal production wouldn’t do much. The force that keeps you in power already exists.”

“But—” he began, indignant.

“No. No buts. If we’re in such dire straits that you’re burning the candle at both ends and the middle too, the last thing we need is for you to alienate all the people keeping this place running on a day-to-day basis! Star above, if I were one of them, I’d already be out of this place, with no intention of ever coming back!”

The heat of shame made him flush. Was what Arlette said true? No! No, she couldn’t be right. What did she know about Otharians, anyway?

“That’s easy for you to say,” he countered. “You’ve never seen what these people are like. They used to teach their own children to kill non-believers as an act of devotion! Why should I trust them at all?”

“I don’t know, maybe you should ask yourself that. The you that hired them, and the you that worked with them for more than a year without any of this bullshit. The you that has slept for more than two hours a night and has a properly functioning mind.”

Blake scowled at her—not that she could see it, but she’d get the general impression—and fell into a petulant silence. She had some potentially good points. Possibly. Maybe. He just didn’t really feel up to determining just how good, and he wasn’t in the mood to listen to her, anyway.

After a few moments of the two of them staring at each other, Arlette spoke again. “Go apologize, or I tell Sofie.”

Blake went cold. “Please don’t.”

“Go back, apologize, and salvage whatever can still be saved with your relationship with them before it’s too late, or I will go tell Sofie this instant that you pointed a fucking weapon at harmless civilian subordinates, and that if I hadn’t been pushing your arm up, you very well might have splattered one of them across the wall. Now, before any more of them rightfully run away.”

He gulped.

“Oh, uh, they can’t leave. I sealed them inside,” he helpfully informed her.

“Just more proof that you need to sleep as soon as we’re through this. Let’s go. Now.”

“Oh, wait, right. We can’t. We have to deal with the other thing.”

“Now. Don’t make me trip you again.”

“No, I’m serious! We have to deal with the alarm. It’s uh... what’s the word... time-sensitive.”

“What are you even talking about? What alarm? And what does it have to do with me?”

“The one that went off in the meeting? Just come with me. It’s important.”

She glared at him distrustfully, before giving in. “You have five minutes.”

As quick as he could manage, he made his way through the fortress and came to a stop outside a large, thick bulkhead in the middle of the passage they were in.

“Wait, what’s this? Shouldn’t your workshop be here?” Arlette wondered.

“Hold your breath,” he told her. “The vents should have sucked out all the gas now, but just in case.”

“Gas?”

“Yeah, I had the twerp make it.”

Without further ado, he toggled some switches within the walls and the bulkhead rose into the ceiling, as did its partner on the other side of the hall. Purple haze lingered at around ankle depth in the now-revealed space between, covering the floor and the bottom of the door to his primary workshop.

Arlette’s eyes went wide when she saw the other thing of note within the fog. She let out a tired groan. “It just keeps piling on...”

Passed out on the cold metal floor, just outside the workshop, lay a single unconscious form—that of one Chitra Batranala.

BRRRRT! BRRRRT! BRRRRT!

For the second time that day, the grating cry of his alarm dragged Blake unwillingly from much-needed slumber. He sat up and stretched, feeling... well, still not great, but better than before. The fog clouding his thoughts seemed to have largely dissipated; this morning, he hadn’t even been aware of it.

He climbed out of bed. Though the day had grown older, there was still far too much to be done. After finding Chitra, he and Arlette had confined her in a cell down underground. The woman had received a heavy dose of the brat’s sleep gas—seriously, he’d loaded the area with, like, twenty of them—so there wasn’t much else to do with regards to her for the time being. She’d be out for most of the day. Then, he’d returned to the meeting room and profusely apologized to his beloved underlings before being whisked away to bed.

Looking back now, Blake felt a mix of embarrassment and anger at how the morning had gone. He’d made an ass of himself, and to make it worse, he struggled to find a way to blame anybody but himself. What had he been thinking? There was no way Minister Tievais had the balls to do anything like what Blake had accused him of doing. Perhaps the only Minister who did have the spine was the crotchety old farmer Fricis Upeslacis, except that the geezer probably liked Blake the most of any of them. After all, thanks to Blake and his efforts, Otharia was no longer in a constant crisis of food shortages and one bad season away from mass famines.

His only consolation, he supposed, is that it was Arlette who’d confronted him. It could have been much worse; it could have been Sofie.

His doorbell rang. He didn’t need to check to know it would be Arlette. She’d decided upon his wake-up time, as well.

Looking around his bedroom, he decided the place was far too messy for others. Partially formed bits and pieces of machinery littered the tables and floor, and his bedsheets were in dire need of a wash. He meandered to his office, which he found to be only half as messy, and sat down with a groan before unlocking and opening the doors.

Arlette entered the room a moment later. “Feeling better?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. We have a lot to talk about. While you were sleeping, I talked with Leo about everything. I suggest you go apologize to him when he gets in tomorrow and get his advice about how to convince the others to stay.”

“But, I already apologized.”

“Did you? A rambling speech where you repeatedly say ‘mistakes were made’ while barely acknowledging that it was you who made all those mistakes is not quite what I would call an apology, really. If it bought you any more time or goodwill, it was entirely because of how clearly unwell you appeared to everybody. The only reason I didn’t make you do it again was because I realized that was the best I was going to get at the time.”

Blake groaned. “Alright. So he’s out now? That doesn’t sound like him.”

“They all left early, and I don’t blame them.”

He sighed, then shoved his feelings about it aside. This was now a problem for Future Blake.

“Anything else?”

Arlette nodded. “We need to talk about Gabriela. She needs to know about her—”

Blake shook his head vehemently and cut her off. “No way. Not a chance.”

“She deserves to know!” Arlette insisted, equally vehement.

“First of all, there’s no simple way to send her a message at this distance. The only way we’d be able to tell her is to trigger the emergency alarm and have her turn around.”

“Bullshit. I’ve seen what you’re capable of. You could figure out a way in under an hour if you really wanted to.”

He crossed his arms. “Well, I don’t really want to.”

Fists clenched, she closed her eyes and took a long, deep breath.

“Why do you care, anyway? I thought you didn’t like her,” he asked.

She glared his way, her frustration tinged with something else. Pity? “You’ve never really loved somebody, have you? That’s the only explanation I can think of for why you would even ask such a thing.”

“Whoa, whoa, hey! I’ll have you know that, back in college, I had more than my fair share of—”

“Hey, have you seen Pari?” Sofie asked, walking in on the pair of them. Her brow was creased with worry and she looked as exhausted as Blake felt. “I haven’t been able to find her all day.”

Blake frowned as he watched the fortress’s prime irritant invade his private quarters. He wondered how she’d even gotten inside before realizing that he’d forgotten to re-lock the doors after Arlette had entered. Stupid! Perhaps he needed to go back to sleep.

Arlette, on the other hand, seemed relieved. “Sofie! Come help me explain to this heartless man that we need to let Gabriela know that we locked her partner up in the dungeon!”

Sofie gasped. “What?! Chitra?!”

“No, her other girlfriend,” Blake snorted.

He mentally activated a nearby screen hanging on a wall, revealing the Batranala. Tied to the back wall of a cell through cables and cuffs, much in the same way that Tehlmar had been held, she hung limply, her head slumped against her chest. Other than the rise and fall of her chest, Blake could see no movement. Before going to bed, he’d set up a live video feed, which he could access at any time. He could even display it in his HUD within his helmet if he wanted to, or have it pop up should she make noise over a certain level.

“She tried to sneak into my workshop and got hit with some of the brat’s knockout gas,” he explained. “We’ll deal with her later, once she’s awake.”

“And in the meantime, we must call Gabriela back here. It’s not right for us to do this without her,” Arlette insisted. “Right, Sofie?”

“Uhh...” the other woman hesitated.

“How do you think she’s going to take it when she gets back days from now and we’re like ‘Oh, hey, sorry, but we imprisoned your lover and interrogated her while you were gone’? What if something happens to her? What if we end up taking more extreme measures?”

“I get what you mean, but why would letting her know now make things better? You know how she is with sudden trauma. She’s—”

“Don’t say ‘delicate’,” Arlette warned. “I’m glad she’s on our side now, but nobody who is that much of a butcher gets to be called ‘delicate’.”

“Fine, ‘emotionally fragile’, then,” Sofie continued. “She’s already fallen into grief-spurred comas more than once, by her telling. We can’t risk that happening again right now—not with all that’s going on. If the situation wasn’t so serious, I’d agree with you, but we need her to complete her mission as soon as possible.”

Blake almost couldn’t believe his ears. Sofie “Bleeding Heart” Ramaut, the gadfly of his existence, was agreeing with him! Against her own friend! This was a once-in-a-lifetime experience!

Deciding this was not a battle she could win, Arlette chose to voice her resignation with a harumph and a scowl.

Taking that as a cue that the argument was over, he inquired, “Now, what were you saying about that twerp?”

“I said that I cannot locate my delightful and lovable little sister anywhere. I haven’t seen her since last night. Neither of you knows where she might be?”

“Nope,” Blake said.

Arlette shook her head. “Did you ask Samanta?”

“Yeah, that’s the thing. Apparently, they were playing Hide and Go Seek, but after Pari went to hide, Samanta couldn’t find her. I’ve scoured the entire fortress. Maybe she somehow got into one of the places I’m not allowed into?”

“Fine, I’ll check,” Blake sighed, walking over to a nearby console and pressing a few keys to bring up the feeds from the surveillance cameras. Quickly, he began switching between them, until he found the feeds from the handful of spaces off-limits to Sofie and most others.

“Nope, nope, nope, aaaannnnndddd nope,” he stated.

“Wait, that’s it?”

“I’m not locking you out of half the fortress, Sofie. You’re allowed almost anywhere these days.”

“What was that last one? I don’t think I’ve ever seen that one before.”

“This?” Blake flipped back to the feed coming from his crystal vault deep below the surface. It was there that he stored all the most valuable, and usually largest, cantacrenyx crystals, including his two remaining jumbo big boys. Originally, he’d had three massive crystals on his hands, all three of them so large and powerful that he didn’t know what to do with them. The smallest of the three had eventually become the main power supply for the Flying Toaster. The other two... well, aside from a single emergency use, the others were still waiting.

“This is my vault,” he told her. “It’s where I store the good stuff. Special projects need special fuel, after all.”

“How come I’ve never seen it before?” Sofie wondered.

“Why would you bother? Nobody goes in there but me, and even I barely visit it.”

“I’m just curious because I can’t see where you’d fit it.”

“It’s past that huge door with all the security machines, isn’t it? The one next to the elevator to the jail cells,” Arlette guessed.

“Technically, behind that door is another elevator which goes down to the vault, but yeah. Made sense to put it as deep as I could go, since that’s the most secure floor in the fortress. Dozens of meters of solid tucrenyx all the way down, all buried fifty meters underground. Ain’t nothin’ getting through that. Not without me knowing, at least.

“Anyway, looks like she’s not in there. If you still can’t find her, then I’d bet that urchin went and hid out in the city.” He patted her on the shoulder. “Good luck with that!”

“Please, do you think I don’t know her?” Sofie scoffed with a shake of her head. “I made sure to establish a rule for that long ago. All hiding has to stay within the fortress walls.”

“Maybe she broke the rules.”

“Not a chance. She’s a good girl who follows the rules, always.”

“She stink-bombed my bedroom.”

“Well, I never made a rule saying she couldn’t, and you deserved it.”

He most definitely had not deserved it! Everything he’d done had been fully understandable!

“Well, then have fun checking the whole fortress again,” Blake said with a casual shrug. If she wanted to be like that, she didn’t need his help that badly.

“Sofie, when did they start playing, exactly?” Arlette interrupted, a worried look on her face.

“Uh, evening? I don’t know the precise time. I was too busy trying to help with the last bits of Gabby’s trip before she left.”

“You know one thing that is technically ‘within the fortress walls’? The Flying Toaster while docked.”

Sofie gave her a confused look for a heartbeat before the blood swiftly drained from her face. “We have to call them back right away!”

“Pfft! What happened to your argument from a minute ago?” Blake snickered.

“That was before we realized that Pari is on the ship! She’ll be in danger!”

“Meh, I doubt that,” Blake said dismissively.

“I agree,” Arlette chimed in. “There’s no way that Gabriela will let Pari get within a league of anything dangerous. You know how she is about children. She’ll chop down the entire Stragman rainforest before she lets that girl get hurt.”

“Arlette!” Sofie cried, stomping her foot. “I thought you were on my side!”

“You made a convincing argument. As much as I wish it weren’t true, you’re right—this mission is too important to risk it. We’ll just have to prepare and be ready when she returns.”

“Yeah,” Blake chimed in, “she’ll probably just leave the little twerp on the ship while she takes care of things. There will be nobody within a mile in any direction from the brat. She’ll be way up in the sky, all alone...” He began to break out in a cold sweat as he finally took his statement to its logical, inevitable conclusion. “...with nobody to stop her from blowing my baby to smithereenswehavetoturntheshiparound!”

Images of silver wreckage strewn across a hillside filled his mind’s eye, a massive chunk of the superstructure blown away with fire ravaging what remained.

“No!” Arlette harshly replied.

“Not if you’re blaming Pari for it!” Sofie added.

“...urgh...” a third voice chimed in, cutting through Blake’s sudden panic.

The three of them turned to the screen to see the image of Chitra stirring, her head lolling to the side. She did not seem fully conscious just yet, but that would not be far off.

“Oh, look who’s finally waking up,” Blake quipped. “I think it’s time for a little chat, three-on-one.”

“Hold on, hold on. Is that the same type of camera you have all around the place?” Sofie asked.

“Yeah? Why?”

“You have microphones in all those cameras?!”

“What? Don’t give me that look! It’s for security! And, it’s not like I’m even recording the sound most of the time.”

“Most of the time?!”

In the end, cooler heads prevailed and the Flying Toaster was left to continue on its way unmolested. The three of them, meanwhile, headed down into the earth. First, they took the main elevator to the ground floor.

“Why is everybody scattering the moment they see us like we’re carrying some sort of plague?” Sofie wondered.

“No real reason,” Blake quickly answered. “They probably all heard I’m not in a good mood today.”

“When are you ever in a good mood?” she shot back.

From there, they entered one of the basement elevators and proceeded down that as well. Most of the basement elevators went to various storage chambers. This one, however, only went to one relatively small room filled with boxy containers—the contents of which only Blake knew or cared about—and with two doors on the other side.

The one on the right led to a special, high-security elevator that would only open to a small handful of his most trusted people and those involved in internal security. It kept a record of everybody who used it, so the comings and goings of prisoners and their jailers could be easily tracked—not that there was much to track; the jail was almost always empty. In fact, he’d built a dozen cells, yet not once so far had more than one been occupied simultaneously. It made him wonder why he’d bothered in the first place.

The door on the left, however, put its neighbor to shame. Bristling with weaponry and all manner of sensors and traps, the door to his crystal vault would only open for him.

“So, that door also leads down?” Sofie inquired.

Blake nodded, and she gave him the side-eye.

“So, you put your most valuable things right next to where you put your most dangerous criminals?”

“Did you think I hadn’t thought of that? Look, there’s only so much room down there for me to work with,” Blake argued. “And, it’s not like they’re ‘right’ next to each other. There’s nearly 5 yards of metal between them. Now, come on, I want to get this over with so I can eat something.”

They all stepped into the prison elevator, the door closing behind them.

“Are you going to be alright with... you know...?” Arlette asked Sofie as the lift slowly descended foot after foot.

The other woman nodded. “I’m alright. This needs to be done. Besides, she should be used to it after all I put her through before.”

“If you say so...”

Exiting the cabin many feet deep into the earth, they came upon another thicker-than-normal door—the entrance to his high-security jail. Others called it a dungeon, but Blake disagreed; this place distinctly lacked the rats, skeletons, and mold necessary to qualify for such status.

It lacked a lot of things, if he were to be honest. It had been a long time since he’d last come here, and he’d forgotten just how spartan the cells were. All they contained were a rudimentary toilet protruding from one side wall, a thin cot sticking out of the opposite wall, and a set of four thick cables with shackles on their ends coming from the wall in the back. Oh, and in this case, one Ubran failed thief restrained by those cables and cuffs.

The wires were usually slack enough to allow the cell’s occupant enough freedom to be able to do their business, sleep on the cot, and move about a little. With the flick of a switch, however, they could pull the prisoner up against the back wall and render them unable to move—just like they were doing with Chitra right now. The Batranala stood against the back wall, her arms extended up and out, her legs held together. She almost looked like she was being crucified, he thought, except that her feet were squarely on the floor.

The array of thick metal bars separating them and their prisoner lowered into the floor and they approached until they were only a few steps away.

The gorgeous woman graced them with a hearty, unbothered smile. “Why, Lord Ferros! Oh! And Arlette, and Sofie as well? My, my, to think all three of you would deign to grace me with your presence at the same time! To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Yeah, yeah, can it,” Blake snapped. “Sofie, do the thing.”

Sofie cleared her throat. “Don’t lie. Don’t mislead with half-truths. Don’t hold back information.” She glanced his way. “Anything else?”

“Nah, that about does it, I think.”

“Oh, come now! You’re taking all the fun out of it!” Chitra protested. “What about the verbal sparring, the misdirections, the battles of wits?”

“Nope,” Blake simply stated. “None of that crap today. We’re just going to datamine you and be done with it.”

“You’re all bores,” she lamented with a theatrical sigh. “And you know it’s true because you’ve rendered me unable to lie.”

He clapped once, creating a clank loud enough that it made Arlette and Sofie wince—though Chitra didn’t even blink. “Alright, enough of that. Let’s get this over with. The fuck you doing outside my workshop?”

The Ubran rolled her eyes. “What do you think? I was trying to get inside.”

“Why?”

She gave him a disdainful scowl. “To take what was in there. Come now, is your strategy to torture me by asking the most inane questions you can come up with? If you won’t make this fun, at least make it interesting.”

Blake was almost amused at Chitra’s attempts to carve out a bit of control of the conversation for herself, but he knew it was futile. Sofie’s restrictions had defanged and declawed the woman, and she had little left to fall back on. Soon enough, she’d figure out that even the taunting front she’d put up was ineffectual.

“He means, who are you working for?” Arlette helpfully clarified.

“I’m entirely self-employed right now, sadly.”

“But you are working with some person or group, yes? I can’t see you trying this just on your own. Even if you were going to just sell whatever you find, you wouldn’t take this risk unless you already have a buyer in place.”

“Correct.”

Blake let out a quiet grunt of annoyance. Even if she had to tell the truth, the Ubran seemed dead set on only answering their questions in as limited a scope as she could manage. “Who are you working with?”

“A bunch of fanatics who call themselves ‘Othar’s Chosen’. I hear they’re making poor Arlette’s life just miserable.”

“You—!” Arlette lurched forward, ready to strangle Chitra with her own two hands. Sofie and Blake had to hold her back as she struggled against their grips. “How could you work with them!? Don’t you have any conscience?!”

Chitra shrugged. “I never said I liked them. It was nothing more than a mutually beneficial arrangement between two parties. Living a good life in this place is very expensive.”

“How do you find them?” Arlette demanded.

“I don’t. They would always find me.” The Ubran laughed. “I’m sorry, were you hoping I would be able to point you right towards their hideout?”

Arlette practically growled like an angry dog, but this time made no move forward.

“What did they want you to steal from the workshop,” Sofie asked.

“Anything would have done, really, as long as it would help them improve their machine designs.”

“They can make crystal machines?” Sofie gasped.

Chitra let out a laugh. “Of course! Do you really think they would have been able to stay hidden otherwise?”

So, Arlette had been right all along. He could feel the burn of humiliation growing inside as he remembered all the times he’d shot her down on this very subject. Even so, Blake could scarcely believe it—if not for Sofie’s restrictions, he still probably wouldn’t. But, if they were making their own cantacrenyx devices, then that meant—no. No, he was not going down that road right now. His spirit roiled, but he shoved it all down into a box and closed the lid. There was a time and place to reckon with such conclusions, and this was neither. Right now, he needed to appear unflappable above all else.

“What else have you done for them before this?” Blake inquired, noticing the way Arlette was glancing at him and hoping to change the subject.

“Oh, information peddling, basically. This was the first, and clearly the last, theft I’ll be doing on their behalf.”

A spike of alarm shot through Blake. “Wait, what sort of information?”

“Oh, you know, whatever I could learn. Merchant movements, trade secrets, all sorts of things.” She flashed a grin that showed off her perfectly straight, white teeth. “For some reason, people seem to want to tell me all sorts of things they really shouldn’t.”

“And when did you start this? The day you arrived?”

“No, not until about a season has passed.”

This did little to assuage Blake’s worry. “What about Gabriela? What has she told you?”

“She’d told me nothing of note,” Chitra answered, her head tilting to the side as she looked Blake in the eyes. Her gaze twinkled with amusement. “Why, are you saying my honey bud has been holding out on me? I wonder, what sorts of secrets would she keep from her own love?”

Whoops. Perhaps he had not thought that question all the way through.

“Her own love?” Sofie cut in. “What about you, Chitra? Do you love her?”

For the first time, the Batranala seemed to lose her composure. She hesitated for a moment, before responding, “Love? What even is love, truly? For someone such as I, ‘love’ is a silly, childish emotion, nothing—”

Suddenly, she spasmed, her words cut off by a massive, full-body coughing fit. With each and every hack, she spewed blood on the floor between them, quickly turning the matte grey metal into a grey and red rendition of a Jackson Pollock painting.

“Y-Yes,” she eventually managed to gasp out between shuddering coughs.

Chitra’s body immediately went still, the fit gone like it had never been there in the first place. Yet, the toll it had taken remained. No longer standing tall and composed, she slumped forward about a foot, her upper body hanging from the cables. Her long, silken hair fell over her face, but Blake could still see between the strands that blood still dripped from the corner of her mouth.

“Yes, damn you,” she repeated, her voice soft and weak. Gone was her condescension, her almost jovial attitude, her unbothered and relaxed affect. Instead, she glared at Sofie with eyes of hatred—the hatred of someone powerless and defeated gazing upon their victorious oppressor. It was the first time he’d ever seen her ruffled in any way. “Are you happy now?”

“Have you worked for or with any person or organization other than Othar’s Chosen since the end of the Ubran invasion?” Blake jumped in, taking advantage of the woman’s weakness before she could recompose herself.

“No,” she sighed. “There is no one else. There has only ever been me.”

The cell settled into a momentary silence.

“Anybody have anything else to ask?” he inquired.

“I do. I’m going to pull every last detail about those fuckers out of her,” Arlette said. “But... it can wait an hour. I need to eat.”

“Yeah, I’m hungry,” Sofie agreed.

“Alright, then,” Blake said. “It’s been fun. Enjoy your stay down here, Chitra. I have a feeling you’ll be here for a long time.”

The three of them left the cell.

“I’m sorry for doing that to you,” Sofie said to Chitra as the bars rose from the floor to separate them once more.

“No, you aren’t,” Chitra replied.

The prison door slid closed behind them with a final, conclusive thump, and the tension Blake didn’t even notice had built up inside him started to slowly drain from his body.

“Glad that’s over with—for now, at least,” he said to nobody in particular.

“Hold on a moment,” Arlette replied. “We’re not done yet!”

One look at her smug grin told him exactly what was coming. He opened the elevator door and stepped inside with a sigh. He’d dealt with a lot today. He didn’t need this, too.

The Scyrian former mercenary stood tall, her back ramrod straight. She clomped into the lift with stiff, awkward movements that drew a chuckle from Sofie.

“‘You’re jumping to conclusions, Arlette.’ ‘You’re just paranoid, Arlette.’ ‘There’s no way the terrorists could manage something like that, Arlette,’” she parroted in a low, mocking voice.

Dropping the parody, she jabbed his chest armor with a pointer finger as the door closed behind them and the lift began to move.

“I told you!” she proclaimed, triumphant. “I told you that somebody was creating tech like yours! I was right! You were wrong, and I was right!”

Blake sighed, really not wanting to dwell on the issue. “Yes, yes, good job,” he said rather dismissively.

Arlette shook her head. “Oh, no. I told you for seasons, and you blew me off every time! You treated me like I was peddling absurd conspiracies! I’m going to need more from you than that.”

“Fine, fine, I apologize,” he conceded.

“Not good enough. I want you to say I was right and you were wrong. I want to hear you say it from your own lips, mask off.”

“...You know, sassing your employer is usually not the best strategy for continued employment,” he said after an awkward pause.

“Mask off. Come on!”

“Let’s be serious here. I promise to take your analysis of things into better consideration from now on, alright? You’ve made your point.”

“Those sure are a lot of words that don’t convey how right she is,” Sofie chimed in, smiling daggers his way.

“Sofie, stay out of this,” he said, both as a warning and a plea.

She giggled, her gaze growing predatory. “Why? What’s wrong, Blake? Something bothering you?”

He mentally reached out and dialed up the power sent to the lift motor to its maximum, increasing their speed by perhaps fifty percent—better, but still not good enough for his liking. His mask flowed away to reveal his face.

“Fine, you were right, Arlette. I was wrong, and you were right. Happy?”

“Maybe you should say it a few more times,” Sofie snickered, enjoying the moment far too much for Blake’s taste. “We’re both rather hard of hearing, you know.”

“Will you just drop it, already?” Blake snarled, the words coming out far more heated than intended and bringing forth ringing laughter from the pesky irritant. Already regretting his outburst, he quickly reformed his mask before he lost his temper even more.

“Never! Oh, how I’ve been waiting for this day! The day that Blake Myers, Super Engineer was finally knocked off his high horse to fall face first into the sticky brown mud of humiliation. The mud of defeat!”

Blake’s gut tensed up. Did she know?

“It’s alright, Sofie,” Arlette told her. “I’m satisfied now.”

Sofie turned Arlette’s way, her expression giddy, bordering on manic with glee. “No, Arlette you don’t get it. There’s a reason he always insisted against your obviously correct conclusion. To agree would be to accept something he just could never accept, and now he can’t deny it anymore and now look. He’s just malding apart inside that armor and I am here for every second of it!”

She knew. Gods help him, she knew, and he could tell that she was going to make sure to twist the knife as hard as she could.

“What in the world are you talking about?” Arlette asked, not on the same page as her friend.

“Do you know what one of the biggest advantages of machines is?” Sofie asked, before answering herself. “It’s automated factories.”

Fuck.

“Uh, you’re going to have to enlighten me,” Arlette said.

“Think about it. Sure, building all your machines by your own hand is cool and all, but that takes time. On the other hand, once you get machines sophisticated enough, you can use them to build more machines. Without you needing to do much of anything.”

Fuck!

“You can?!”

“Of course! We do it all the time in our world. They’re not usually one-hundred percent automated, but the machines do the vast bulk of the labor and they do it faster than people could ever dream to. Think about how much easier everything could be for Blake’s life if he didn’t have to manually make everything he needed. What if he could just whip up a design and then have a machine make a hundred of them for him, instead? Wouldn’t that save hours of his time every day?”

Fuck, fuck, fuckity fuck fuck! Blake took a deep breath and told himself to remain calm, despite the roiling frustration and anger growing inside him.

Arlette nodded in complete agreement. “That makes a load of sense. Why don’t you do that, Blake?”

“YOU THINK I DON’T FUCKING WANT TO?!” Blake exploded. “I—!”

He clamped his mouth shut so hard that it hurt. With a huff, he crossed his arms and looked away from the two of them, inspecting the shaft’s construction for signs of wear. He wasn’t going to let these two get to him any more than they already had. He was going to control himself. He was going to control himself. He was an adult, and he was going to control—

Sofie broke out into full-on guffaws that set Blake on edge. She shook so hard that she had to lower herself to the floor before she fell instead, her mockery like sandpaper scraping across his soul.

“Because he can’t,” she explained mid-cackle, every word a splash of gasoline upon the bonfire. “He’s never been able to figure out how to make the energy channels that his tech needs the way the ancients were able to. The only way he knows how to do it is with his powers! Don’t try to deny it, Blake! We both know I’m right! Hahahahaaaaaa!”

Blake’s teeth ground against each other so hard that they should have turned to dust. He was going to murder this woman. It wasn’t like he hadn’t killed anybody before; after all he’d done, what was one more, really? Nothing of value would be lost. No, the world would be a better place, and he would be lauded for his noble deed.

“But now, look!” she continued, barely able to form words, let alone sentences with her heaving diaphragm. “Somebody out there is making machines themselves! They don’t have super special magic metal powers! They don’t have years and years of experience with electronics and whatever else! And yet, here we are! The mighty Lord Ferros, Roboticist Extraordinaire, upstaged by one of the very same people he considers so backward that he’s spent two years trying to shove his idea of progress down their throat! Some superstitious, ignorant, unenlightened Otharian has solved a puzzle that’s stumped him from the very day he first got here, and he can’t handle it! Look at him! He’s absolutely dying inside! Ahaha! Aaaahahahahahahahahaaaaaa!”

The dam broke.

“SHUT UP! SHUT UP!” Blake hollered, his voice hoarse and his heart beating in his ears. “FUCK YOU, SOFIE! FUCK YOU!”

Far too late, the lift came to a stop and the doors slid open. Not wasting a moment, he stormed out into the storage chamber, his one good hand balling into a fist with such furious strength that he was warping the gauntlet that encased it.

“I BET THEIR FUCKING SHIT SUCKS!”

Unable to contain himself, he grabbed a nearby container and hurled it across the room. It crashed into the wall and its lid flew off, sending hundreds of marble-sized crystals bouncing all over.

“BWAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAA!”

Fuming, Blake stomped into the upward elevator and triggered the door behind him, leaving the others behind. Judging by the final glimpse he got before the door closed, they wouldn’t be joining him anyway. Sofie had gone fully non-verbal, pounding and kicking the floor with her fists and feet, rolling and flailing about with her face so red that it could pass for a ripe strawberry. She wouldn’t be going anywhere for a good while.

A thunderous shout emerged from his throat. He struck the cabin wall with his fists and feet, venting his anger upon the innocent metal, but that accomplished little. Her voice echoed in his mind, taunting him, fanning the flames of his fury. Her laughter, her taunts, the glee at his frustration—it all combined to push his indignation to new heights.

But, really, all that paled in comparison to the fact that he couldn’t deny anything she’d said. As much as he wanted her mockery to be a heap of poor logic and faulty conclusions, she’d spoken the truth. Some nobody, some Otharian rube, had solved the greatest technical issue holding him back, one that had been a persistent roadblock since the day he’d first discovered how to make cantacrenyx technology.

After months and months of beating his head against that wall, he still had nothing. He’d failed. He’d lost. And knowing it was going to drive him up the wall.

“Stupid Sofie, stupid Arlette, stupid... whoever they are... Think they’re all that...”

Grumbling endlessly to himself, Blake plopped down in a chair in his bedroom and pulled a nearby terminal in front of him. Time had taken the edge off the sting of Sofie’s truth, his rage dying out fairly quickly, but he remained frustrated and exceedingly grumpy. Luckily, he could think of one thing to cheer him up—one person who he hadn’t spoken with in a while, and who he’d be able to chat with shortly. He launched a certain program on the terminal and leaned back.

Arlette had been partially right. He could create a communication system to contact Gabriela if he wanted to—which, again, he did not. He’d maintained a form of it throughout much of the siege of Crirada, utilizing a chain of small skitters and flitters that worked as information relays between him and the other end many miles away. The problem was that deploying such a setup took time, especially without the aid of the Flying Toaster. None of the skitters involved could move anywhere close to the airship’s speed, so until she settled down in Gustil after completing the initial mission, he’d have a hard time getting a hold of her, anyway.

Case in point, he’d been working on setting up a communication link with Bazz for several days, and even after starting with a half-completed chain left over from the Ubran invasion, he was just finally nearing completion. Well before the recent attack, he’d hemmed and hawed about whether to go through with contacting his dragon friend. As he’d explained to the others, given the theory that the dragons were behind their presence in this world, reaching out to his buddy was an unfortunate risk. He’d always been pretty sure that Bazz had little or nothing to do with it, but if another dragon found out, things would go south fast.

Now that the dragon-shaped cat was out of the mountain-shaped bag, however, he’d decided that he had to chance it. Even so, there was a large difference between taking a risk and throwing all caution to the wind. As much as he’d wanted to just fly robots north, anything airborne had a good chance of being spotted by a dragon. Instead, he’d stuck to ground-bound units, sending them northward along a route designed to provide as much overhead cover as possible at the cost of speed.

Finally, in just a few moments, the last link in the chain would be within broadcast range of Bazzalth’s mountain. He looked forward to seeing his scaly bud again, though communication would be a bit stilted for a while. When it became clear that they’d be parting ways, Blake had spent a few hours teaching the dragon some rudimentary written English and built a communication unit for him to use for text communication. Bazz knew enough for a simple conversation—enough to serve as a foundation to build on, at least. All that the unit needed was a connection to the rest of the system, one that his approaching skitter would soon provide.

Soon enough, the last robot was in position. Hiding it in a small crevice, he activated its stealth mode. Two large rounded metal pieces rose up from the small skitter’s sides, fitting together to form a specially built and custom-painted shell made to look like another ordinary rock. When the machine crouched down, the shell concealed the rest of it entirely. Hopefully, that would be enough to keep it from being discovered.

Blake watched with satisfaction as the test ping signal traveled through the chain, each link quickly lighting up green on his display. Just to be sure, he brought up the live log and watched all the good messages roll in. A smile graced his lips as the final node went green and a message window opened. The communicator in Bazzalth’s lair was successfully receiving the signal.

Real-time communication across thousands of miles.

“Let’s see Mister Genius Scyrian manage that,” he muttered bitterly.

“hey bazz, what’s up” he typed, before eagerly hitting send.

After nearly fifteen minutes, he was still waiting for a response.

Well... that was to be expected, he supposed. It wasn’t like Bazz was just sitting around and ceaselessly watching the communicator for days on end, hoping for one of Blake’s trademark punctuation-and-capitalization-optional missives to suddenly arrive. He surely had a lot on his plate as well, with the whole invasion and whatnot. Realistically, it would probably be hours at the least before—

Ding!

The sound of a new incoming message caught him off-guard. His gaze flicked back to the screen to find perhaps the shortest reply possible.

“No”

Blake read and reread the dragon’s curt response, trying to parse extra meaning from the pair of letters and failing. Eventually, he gave up and decided to just ask.

“no? no what?” he typed back, but the message refused to go through. Checking the live log again, Blake found a disconcerting message: “Endpoint not responding.”

Blake sent several more pings, all coming back with the same result: Bazzalth’s communicator was out of commission.

“Well, shit,” Blake muttered.

Now what was he supposed to do?