The bustle of motion that followed the chimeras’ defeat was chaotic at best. Ellison still wasn’t responding to messages. That could be a bad sign but it could also be nothing. Communication wasn’t his forte these days. Iris was fine. Fine, of course, being relative. She’d apparently fallen asleep, and considering how bad things were going to get in the coming days, I wanted her to get all the rest she could.

Shortly after the timer appeared, Aaron and Tyler had paired off, probably to discuss how to best manage the inevitable panic.

The second transposition event. We always knew it was coming. Guess now we knew when.

I forced myself to close the UI, and stood on the far edge of the reservoir, watching as a mix of civilians and Kinsley’s mercenaries recovered the minotaur’s remains. The bomb had done its job, and other than a few large chunks, the rest of him was more or less well-dispersed oatmeal. Sticky oatmeal. One particularly gruff looking man in dark fatigues was balancing on his tactical knee-pads on the off-white concrete, reflective light from an honest-to-god spatula bouncing as he scraped a particularly tough sample off the ground and placed it into a vial.

“You sure this is the best use of our time?” Kinsley said. She’d come down to check on me because she was worried, and after seeing the bloodied state of my clothes, was standing a few extra feet away. “I get that he was regenerating but… he looks very dead. Super, extra dead.”

I sympathized. The store was probably getting traffic from everyone who noticed the timer, yet she had people out here on cleanup detail. Still, this was important.

“I decapitated him, Kins.”

She blinked. “Before you blew him up?”

“More sawed. But yeah.” I peered at her. “Then, despite the fact that would dissuade most things from existing, he chased me down to lodge a complaint.”

Kinsley absorbed that stoically. After a moment, she called out to her people. “Make sure you’re keeping the samples separated.”

Steinbeck, a gruff man with a cheery disposition, took a break from whatever he was scraping up and knelt upright, broadcasting to the rest. “You heard the boss. Handle with care. Wouldn’t want to get thrown out a window.”

A dark chuckle rippled through the mercenaries and civilians. At first, I took it as a generic joke coloring Kinsley as some power-hungry mob boss, but she shifted from side to side, lips pulling down in a scowl.

“Did—Did you actually throw someone out a window?”

“No.” Kinsley’s mouth set in irritation. “He jumped.”

I waited a beat. “Like actually jumped or was ‘assisted’—”

“Yes! Actually jumped.” She sighed. “I’ve been meaning to tell you that the satellite science team finished up their research, but it’s been something of a busy morning.”

That was the truth. The series of close-calls still rattled me, so much so that with the sudden change of subject it took a second to place what exactly she was talking about.

“Hastur’s potion.” I realized. The reward he’d offered me as incentive. Either out of coyness or a twisted personality, he’d refused to say what it did, alleging I wouldn’t believe him.

“As much as I hate to admit it, you were right. Keeping the research team under guard felt wrong, but it probably saved our asses. On that topic, I highly, highly recommend you don’t hold on to it and use it as soon as possible.”

Slowly, I connected the dots. “It’s that valuable?”

Kinsley’s expression was dead serious. “I mean Jesus Christ Matt, you’re the best friend I have in the world and I’m tempted to steal it just to auction it off.”

“You have more money than god.” I reminded her dryly.

“Yep.” Kinsley nodded. “And with upkeep, new acquisitions, paying these idiots decent wages, I’m breaking even until the dust settles. If I auctioned that potion, I’d have more money than the whole chicken-fucking pantheon.”

Suddenly, I put it together. Kinsley wasn’t being coy or dramatic by withholding what the potion did. More accurately, it legitimately spooked her enough that she didn’t want to say whatever it did out loud.

What the hell is it?

“So the guy you threw out the window was a researcher—”

“I told you he jumped. And he wasn’t just any researcher.” Kinsley said glumly. “Head researcher. Rare vocation, sharp as hell, and had a jar of Dum-Dum pops in his office. Gave me one every time I came by. Very well compensated. But despite that he got greedy, inventoried the potion, and when the guard team cut him off at the stairwell…” Kinsley clapped her hands with a loud snap. “Dove through a window and ended up like a strawberry on the pavement. Five story fall. No idea how the moron thought he could survive that.”

I absorbed that and waited. “Send me the description.”

What?

Barely processing what I was reading, I focused in on the highlighted square that covered Asura’s Gift.

“Jesus fucking christ.” I slowly turned to look at Kinsley. Her typical devil-may-care expression was nowhere to be seen, overtaken by an overcast glumness. “If this gets out—”

“Yeah. I’ve already taken precautions.” Kinsley said. She hesitated. “To be honest, I’m not sure if they’re enough.”

I understood completely. This wasn’t just a cure-all. It was effectively a potion of immortality. Perhaps that was less valuable here in the dome, where any given day could potentially dish out more trouble than the average person could survive, but even so, there was the XP modifier, class utility, and amped up resistance.

It wasn’t just valuable. It was priceless.

The only way to guarantee something like this stayed secret would be executing the research team almost immediately after the potion’s value was revealed.

Kinsley watched me, her expression grim. “Other than the head researcher, the rest of my team has done nothing wrong. They’re quiet, freaked out, but generally loyal. Maybe to the paycheck, but still. Plenty of people turned up their noses when they saw how young I was, regardless of what I was paying. I’d rather not make ones who didn’t regret it.”

“Of course.”

“I mean it, Matt.”

I stared at her. “I’m not going to go after your people just because they have knowledge I’d prefer they didn’t. Even if I was willing to do that, word spreads. It’s probably already too late.”

She looked away. “Okay.”

I read through the description, making sure I hadn’t missed any fine-print or serious downside. The system didn’t always provide an itemized list of potential downfalls, but it often hinted. Yet, there was no hint as far as I could see. If the description was accurate, the tears were as powerful as they appeared to be.

“Wait,” I said, suddenly. “When he gave it to me, Hastur claimed that once I figured out what it did I’d realize I needed more than one. And that he’d give me the second later once I’d helped him.”

Kinsley said nothing, just waited. She didn’t seem surprised.

The first had an obvious use case. Sae’s insectile transformation weighed heavily on her. While it provided incredible speed and strength, the more… monstrous… aspects of her appearance were a constant drain on her psyche and severely restricted her ability to move freely in the open. All of which were near-direct consequences of my mistakes. I’d been too full of myself to see how sloppy I was being in the early days, and while the role I’d played in what happened was indirect, Sae had still suffered for it.

If I was reading it correctly, this potion could undo those effects.

Giving it to her was only fair.

“Cures all injuries or defects regardless of age.” Kinsley echoed.

Oh. Oh shit.

Iris.

I resented the term defect. And wanted to push back against the idea that my sister had some “issue” in need of correcting. If this was the old world, I might have done exactly that. Mom wasn’t supposed to play favorites, of course, but Ellison had taken to saying that Iris was “the best of us” long before the dome came down. And for the most part, I believed he was right. My sister had an essential kindness in her that almost everyone around her lacked. She was always the first to lend a helping hand, to put herself out to aid someone else even to her own disadvantage. There just wasn’t that many people like that left in the world. Part of me thought she’d eventually grow out of it. The rest of me hoped she didn’t.

There was nothing wrong with her. In any reasonable, civilized setting she was more than capable of working around her own physical disadvantages and excelling.

An image of a dark shape sliding down the slide behind her replayed in my mind, and I closed my eyes.

With danger everywhere and the possibility of a second event looming in the distance, I had to be purely rational about this. And as much as I hated it, the conclusion was obvious. No matter how protected she was, or how many safeguards I put into play, people who could hear the thunder coming had a higher chance of living through the oncoming storms than people who couldn’t. The potion had plenty of secondary effects that further empowered that equation—damage and status effect resistance alone factored astronomically.

Of course, ignoring the minor downside that if Iris lived through the dome, she’d outlive everyone she loved.

Fucking Darwin.

I rubbed the bridge of my nose. “Is it stored somewhere safe?”

“Safe as it can be.” Kinsley said, not looking confident. “But I’ll still feel better when it’s nothing more than an empty bottle.”

Kinsley was smart enough not to say it out loud, but I could guess. She’d probably stashed the potion in her sanctuary. Even if she was under duress, she couldn’t retrieve the potion without entering her sanctuary first. Once inside, she’d be able to forcibly eject anyone who accompanied her, and would have multiple points within a several mile radius to escape from back into the city.

Still, we were living in a time of unlimited possibilities. There was probably a way to get the potion out of her sanctuary we simply didn’t know about. Which meant I needed to decide. And soon.

“I’ll need to talk to Sae.”

“Look, giving it to Iris makes sense.” Kinsley said. From the way she was looking at me, I could tell she’d already guessed how this would go. “Sae may even see it that way. What happened to her is horrible, but there’s no question her… issue… makes her more capable than if she’d remained an ordinary User. But as soon as you tell her, it will give Hastur leverage over you. He’ll be able to string you along until he gives you the second potion.”

“I know.”

“Then why tell her at all?” Kinsley asked. She crossed her arms. “We both know it’s only a matter of time before the Order turns on us. Pretty sure you’d never agree to work with Aaron if you truly believed he was planning to make good on his terms. God knows I wouldn’t, considering what those fuckers did to me. What they’re still doing to my dad.”

I struggled to answer. Because at the beginning of all this, I probably would have agreed.

“Too many people know what the potion does. If Iris miraculously regains her hearing, it might be possible to explain it away as some class affect or ability. But if Sae hears about the potion after the fact and connects the dots… it’d put us in vice.”

Of course, that was just the rational explanation, the one Kinsley would accept. The truth was more complicated. While everything I’d said was accurate, what was really sticking in my gut was that I didn’t want to lie to Sae. Not about something like this. After all the shit we’d been through together, she deserved to know the truth. Even if it sucked. Even if it made her hate me.

Still, the small quirk at the side of her mouth told me Kinsley wasn’t buying it. “You’re probably right. And even if you weren’t, it kind of makes me feel better.”

“Why?” I glanced at her curiously.

“Nothing. Just a reminder that you’re still you. Part of my role is collecting information.” Kinsley hedged, working her jaw. “And I’ve been hearing a lot about our mutual friend over the last few weeks that’s… worrying.”

Mutual friend being Myrddin.

“Like?”

“Nothing specific you need to worry about.” Kinsley continued without answering, giving me a lingering side-eye. “But people fear him. And not just existentially, like they were before.”

I rolled my eyes. “Courtesy of the Overseer, our mutual friend is both bogeyman and scapegoat. Someone trips and falls down the stairs, they’d probably find a way to blame him for it.”

Kinsley inclined her head. “Maybe. But we both know most rumors carry a grain of truth.”

I stuck my hands in my hoodie pockets and started to disengage. “You got it from here?”

“Uh, yeah I guess.” Kinsley grimaced, watching as one of her people picked up a long viscous strand of meat from the pavement with a pair of tongs and stuffed it into a large glass jar. Her people were working slow, only partially because they were being thorough. From the way they kept sneaking peeks to the side, seemingly at nothing, it was obvious they were checking the timer on their UI. “Headed to the tower?”

I considered it, then shook my head. As much as I wanted to attempt to bullshit my way and rush through the remaining floors so Nick could claim Excalibur, we’d already tried that, and it failed. What was required to make it through the upper floors was a coordinated group effort, and there’d already been too much chaos today. There were plenty of injuries, and with the reveal of the timer, everyone was scared. I suspected the impulse to rush was at least partially why we’d received such an advanced warning. The previous “game” had been divided by regions. There was at least a baseline assumption that the system established the regions for a reason, and whatever the event pertained to would probably include them.

But there was no guarantee it would shake out that way.

And most of us knew it.

So inevitably people would panic, and wear themselves out so much getting ready for whatever was about to happen that when and if it did, the populace as a whole would be on edge, primed to make plenty of mistakes, playing right into the system’s hands.

As much as the necromancer attack and sudden reveal of the timer made me want to run around in a panic, I needed to resist that urge. Matt, specifically, needed to project calm. Like it or not, with the way things had gone down after the last event, the people in my region looked up to me. And the calmer my region was, the easier it would be to get things done in the long-run, and the better we’d do in the second event if Nick and I failed to stop it.

“Not today, but soon.” I pointed at her. “Make sure you keep that potion secure. And send some dummy quests when you can? Stuff that should be easily achievable in the tower. Not exactly low on Selve at the moment, but with the way things are going I’ll probably need more.”

“Easy enough.” Kinsley nodded, watching me curiously. “But now you’ve got me wondering. What are you doing today?”

“Need to check on Iris. Lock in a level. Show face with the wounded. Then, after the dust settles, then make sure everyone who’s watching knows I’m not particularly worried about the second event or what happened today.” I squinted, passing out of the shadow of the reservoir and into the sunlight.

“How?” Kinsley called after me.

“How else?” I shrugged. “By finally going on that date.”

Somehow I managed to ignore the excited squawking that followed, echoing after me as I reached the ladder that led to the upper platform and beyond.