AUTHORS NOTE: If you read Chapter 26 before some revisions, the last few paragraphs have change and I would suggest rereading them before reading 27!
Mikhail was already moving. He threw himself between Petra and the doorway as she hit the ground, his personal shield flaring to life around him. Two plasma bolts struck the barrier in quick succession. The first splashed across his chest; the second caught his raised arm. The impact staggered him, but the shield held, blue light rippling across his body like water absorbing stones.
“Close it!” He was crouched over Petra, shielding her with his body while the barrier took the punishment meant for both of them.
Tess lunged for the panel. The door began grinding shut. Another bolt streaked through the narrowing gap and scorched the wall above her head. The buzz of rotors was deafening now, dozens of them, the sound filling the corridor beyond.
The door sealed.
Something struck the other side. Then again. A staccato rhythm of impacts as whatever was out there tested the barrier.
Then nothing.
Mikhail stayed where he was for a long moment, breathing hard, his shield still active. When nothing else hit the door, he finally let it drop and slumped sideways.
“What in the…” Petra’s voice came out rough. She was still on her back, one hand pressed to her shoulder where the plasteel had taken the hit. Scorched but intact.
Tess stayed pressed against the wall. Adrenaline still buzzed through her, sharp and electric. “Are you okay?”
“Fine.” Petra sat up slowly, wincing. “Armor caught it. Mikhail?”
He was examining his shield emitter, turning it over in his hands. The casing was cracked, and small flashes of light flickered through the cracks. “Three hits nearly destroyed it…”
“What were those things?” Tess asked.
“I barely saw them.” Petra was still staring at the sealed door. “Small things—metal shells with propellers.”
“Flying drones,” Mikhail said. “With plasma emitters. And there were a lot of them.”
Bee’s voice came through their earpieces. “I am monitoring open channels. Multiple distress calls from registered Delvers on Floor 2. Two parties have retreated to the main staging area. One party has not reported in for forty-three minutes.”
“We knew it would be harder,” Mikhail said. He didn’t sound like he believed it anymore.
“This isn’t harder.” Petra’s voice was flat. “That was three seconds. Door opens, plasma fire, door closes. Three seconds and my armor’s scorched and Mikhail’s shield is broken.”
She finally looked away from the door, meeting Tess’s eyes.
“Floor 1 spawns were tough. These things acted like they were waiting for us.”
They sat in the staging area for a while, letting heart rates settle and their equipment cool. Mikhail’s shield emitter looked nearly destroyed. Petra’s armor had held, but another direct hit to the same spot would probably punch through.
Tess examined the capacitor banks. Charging quickly, drawing ambient Aether from the floor. At least something was working as intended.
“The tunnel access,” she said, because someone had to. “I still don’t have a way in.”
Petra looked up from checking her vibroblades. “The main staging area might have access. It’s Network-monitored, but if you could get in and out fast enough…”
“I won’t even get through the front door. One confirmed sighting of me in the dungeon and whatever cover we have is gone.”
“We could disguise you,” Mikhail said. “Different armor. Helmet with a full visor.”
“That… might work, but they’d know the moment I used the elevators down.”
“I have been considering the problem,” Bee said. “If Petra and Mikhail could locate a maintenance tunnel access point from within Floor 2 proper, they could theoretically guide you to it from the main staging area entrance. You would only need to be visible for the duration of transit.”
Tess shook her head. “That’s still too long. And we don’t even know where the tunnel access points are on this floor. You can’t see anything without the FCN.”
“It is a recursive problem. I cannot guide you to the FCN because I cannot see Floor 2. I cannot see Floor 2 because the FCN is offline. I am… frustrated by this.”
“Join the club.”
Petra had been staring at the door with a distant look. “What if we went in from the public entrance? Registered a normal delve, found the tunnel access, and then came back to get you through the Guild entrance? Would could even do a hand-off. Full helmet and armor, swap with me in here, then when you’re in the tunnels, I rejoin Mikhail.”
“Then they know there’s a secret entrance if they’re watching. Without the map from the main staging area, I’m wandering blind through a maintenance system I don’t know. One wrong turn and I end up somewhere with working surveillance.”
“Or somewhere with those flying things,” Mikhail added. “The tunnels might not be as safe as Floor 1.”
The options were narrowing to nothing. Every solution had a fatal flaw, and the flaw was always the same: they didn’t have enough people, enough firepower, enough information.
“I have just received another distress call over open channels,” Bee’s voice in their ears was clipped. “A party calling themselves Crimson Tide has requested assistance with extraction from a corridor on Floor 2. It was cut off mid transmission.”
Tess closed her eyes. People were dying down there. People who didn’t know what they were walking into, who thought Floor 2 would be hard but manageable, but had no idea what was going on.
“We need to warn them,” she said. “Somehow. Tell people that Floor 2 isn’t what they expect.”
“And how do we explain knowing that?” Petra’s voice was gentle but firm. “Three Delvers who just happen to have insider information about a floor they shouldn’t? That raises questions we can’t answer.”
“So we just let them keep dying?”
“We figure out how to fix it. Which means we figure out how to get you into those tunnels.” Petra stood, rolling her shoulders, wincing at the pull of scorched plasteel. “But not today. Today we retreat, we regroup, and we come back with a better plan.”
Mikhail was already on his feet, cradling his broken shield emitter like a wounded pet. “She’s right. We can’t solve this by throwing ourselves at it until something works. That’s how parties end up missing.”
No one spoke on the elevator ride back to Floor 1’s staging area. From there, the Guild elevator carried them up through the shaft, past layers of ferrocrete and forgotten history, until the doors opened on the dusty workshop basement.
Sara was standing at the old holotable, hands flat on its surface, expression unreadable.
“You’re back earlier than expected.”
“Floor 2 is more than we expected.” Petra set her vibroblades on the table, then began unfastening her scorched armor. “Flying spawns with plasma weapons. They responded instantly, like they were waiting for us.”
Sara didn’t react, but her focus sharpened. “Flying?”
“Drones of some kind. Propellers, metal shells, yellow cores like the Floor 1 spawns but… evolved. There were a lot of them.”
“And the maintenance tunnel access?”
“Doesn’t exist.” Tess dropped into one of the old chairs, the adrenaline finally catching up to her. “At least not from the private staging area. If I want to reach the FCN, I have to go through Floor 2 proper, where the Network cameras are active and flying death machines are apparently hunting in packs.”
Sara absorbed this. “The difficulty curve is steeper than expected.”
“That’s one way to put it.”
Bee spoke through the communicator on Tess’s toolbelt. “I have been analyzing historical records. Floor 2’s previous spawn difficulty, when I was fully operational, was rated for parties of Level 5-8 with coordinated tactics. Current spawn behavior suggests difficulty levels well beyond that baseline.”
Sara frowned. “The same problem as the Alpha spawner?”
“Maybe.” Tess said. “What should be a Level 8 floor is probably closer to… we don’t know. Fifteen? Higher?”
“The Alpha was Level 17,” Mikhail was still turning the broken shield over in his hands. “If Floor 2’s spawners have the same problem…”
He didn’t finish the thought. He didn’t have to.
“The Network will notice the activity,” Sara said, sitting down with a sigh. “Multiple parties retreating, at least one missing, all in the same day. They’ll chalk it up to unprepared Delvers pushing too fast after the Alpha cleared, but if this continues…”
“They’ll want to know why Floor 2 is killing people.” Petra had gotten her armor off, revealing the angry red mark where heat had transferred through the plasteel. Not a burn, but close. “And if they investigate properly, they might figure out the same thing we did about the difficulty accumulation.”
“Which leads them to questions about the Alpha—why it’s gone, what else might have changed.” Sara’s fingers drummed on the holotable. “We’re on a clock now, whether we like it or not.”
***
The workshop above was quiet when Tess emerged from the hidden elevator. Late afternoon sun came through the windows. Petra had stayed below with her mother. Mikhail had left his damaged shield on the workbench with a hopeful look. Tess had already glanced at it—the cracked casing was cosmetic, easy enough to fix. The internal damage was another matter. High-level components, precision engineering. She could probably repair it, but the parts wouldn’t be cheap.
Tess sat on a workbench and stared at the wall across from her.
“Bee…we opened up Floor 2 by killing the Alpha spawner, and now Delvers are rushing in and getting killed because we didn’t… I don’t know. Warn them? Put up a sign?”
BEE: You could not have predicted this outcome. The Alpha was preventing all access to Floor 2. Eliminating it was necessary for any progress. The resulting rush of unprepared delvers is not a consequence you could have prevented.
“Doesn’t feel that way.”
BEE: Feelings and facts often diverge. This is something I am learning.
Tess almost smiled at that. “Yeah? What are you feeling right now?”
BEE: Frustrated. I can hear distress calls from Floor 2, can monitor the chaos through open channels, but I cannot see. I cannot do anything to help. It is similar to how I felt when I was isolated, except now I have you and still cannot act.
“We’ll fix it… somehow.”
BEE: I believe you. I am simply… impatient. This is a new feeling. When I was alone, time did not matter. Now that I have something to work toward, every delay is difficult.
“I think I need to ask my dad for help.”
The words came out before she’d fully formed the thought, but they felt right.
BEE: Marcus? He offered intelligence about Floor 2 from his delving days.
“It’s more than intel. We need more people. You heard Mikhail—two fighters aren’t enough, especially if they have to go through the front door. If we’re going to push into Floor 2 and actually reach the FCN, we need a real party.”
BEE: He would know people who fit those requirements?
“He knows a lot of people who used to delve on Tertius-Prime. The ones who are still alive, anyway. If anyone knows who we could recruit or who we could trust with…”
She gestured vaguely, encompassing the workshop, the hidden elevator, everything they’d built.
BEE: With me.
“Yeah.”
BEE: I would like that. More people to talk to. More people to work with. The party has been… good. Petra and Mikhail are competent and kind. But more allies would mean more options. More chances of success.
“And more chances for something to go wrong. More people who could let something slip, or get captured, or just decide the risk isn’t worth it.”
BEE: This is sound logic. I am unsure of the right path.
Tess pushed off from the workbench and walked to the window. The Tertian garden spread out around the workshop, manicured plant life and old architecture, wealth that came from centuries of careful positioning. Beyond it, the city of Tertius-Prime stretched toward the horizon—millions of people living their lives above a dungeon most barely thought about.
“Floor 1 is clear,” she said. “The Alpha’s gone, the spawner’s dormant, and once the reset cycles catch up, it’ll be the safest delving floor on the planet. People can delve and level up there somewhat safely.”
BEE: Correct. This is a significant accomplishment.
“But Floor 2 is worse than it was before. And Floor 3 is probably worse than Floor 2. And so on, all the way down, every floor. What does Floor 10 look like? Floor 15?”
BEE: The scope of the problem is substantial.
“We can access Floor 2 now. That’s what matters.” She turned from the window. “We have a way down. We have a staging area the Network can’t see. We just need to figure out how to get me into the maintenance tunnels without being caught, and then I can start fixing things.”
BEE: The path forward exists. That is more than we had this morning.
It wasn’t a solution. Not yet…
***
Tess found Sara in the conservatory before leaving, wanting to share her thinking about her Father. The older woman was standing by the fountain, watching the water cycle through its intricate patterns.
“It’s a good idea,” Sara said without turning around. “Recruiting additional party members.”
“But?”
“It’s a risk. Every person we bring in is another potential leak, another point of failure. But it’s also an opportunity.” She turned, and her expression was thoughtful rather than worried. “But we might not have a choice. Are you sure your father wants to get involved?”
“He’s already involved,” Tess said. “I’m pretty sure he sits around in our home listening to Bee relay what we’re doing like it’s a holo.”
Sara laughed as she turned around, finally meeting Tess’s eyes. “I’d do the same thing, which reminds me… we need to patch Bee in down there. Do you think that’s something you can put together?”
Tess barely needed to think about it. “Yeah. It’s close enough to the dungeon that I don’t even need specialized parts… I could use the distraction.”
“Tess… you opened the door. You didn’t push anyone through it. The Delvers who rushed Floor 2 made their own choices, same as Delvers have always done.” Sara’s voice softened slightly. “I know that’s cold comfort. But guilt over things you can’t control will paralyze you, and we need to move forward if we’re going to make a difference.”
Tess moved to sit at the edge of the fountain. “What if we can’t figure it out? What if the tunnel access problem doesn’t have a solution?”
“Then we find another approach. Secret entrances we haven’t discovered yet, disguises, or maybe we find someone to bribe in the Network to look the other way.” Sara shrugged. “I’ve been solving impossible problems for longer than you’ve been alive. Very few of them were actually impossible. They just required finding the right angle.”
“You sound like Bee.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.” A small smile. “Go home, Tess. Talk to your father. Get some rest. We’ll meet again in a few days to plan next steps.”
“Few days?”
“You need recovery time, even if you don’t feel it. And I need time to make inquiries about the Network’s response to today’s casualties. The more we know about what they’re watching, the better we can avoid their attention.”
Tess stood. The afternoon’s adrenaline had faded, leaving behind the heavy exhaustion of too many problems and not enough solutions.
“Sara.”
“Yes?”
“Thank you. For all of this. The workshop, the equipment, the support. I know it’s all tied up in politics and House positioning, but… it still matters. To me.”
This time Sara’s laugh was genuine. “You’re welcome Tess. And don’t worry about politics, I certainly don’t. Leave that to my husband.”
Tess smiled and said her goodbyes, making her way to the tram station.
The tram back to the Sector 6 elevator was nearly empty. From there, it would be a familiar walk to Sector 7. The city sped past, but Tess was hardly paying attention.
BEE: You are still thinking.
“Always.”
BEE: I would like to share an observation.
“Go ahead.”
BEE: Recently you were classless, with a scanner built from spare parts, a broken freighter for a home, and a father who was slowly dying just like the world we’re all on. Now, thanks to you, the world is healing just like your Father. You have a support network that includes one of the most powerful houses on the planet, and a party of skilled fighters who trust you with their lives.
“And a talking AI in my head.”
BEE: Obviously! The scope of what we have accomplished together is significant, even if today’s setback obscures it. Floor 1 is clear. The Alpha is gone. Aether output has nearly doubled. These are genuine changes that will affect millions of people.
“But Floor 2…”
BEE: Is a problem that we have time to solve because of the repairs you’ve made, and the things we’ve done together.
Tess leaned her head against the window as Sector 7’s lights approached.
“When did you get so wise?”
BEE: Thank you for noticing. I had 47 variants of what I was going to say, but this felt like the best option.
Tess laughed as the tram slowed for her stop. She gathered herself, checked her tool belt out of habit, and stepped onto the platform.
Floor 2 could wait. The plasma drones could wait. The tunnel access problem and the Network surveillance and all the impossible challenges ahead could all wait until tomorrow.
Tonight, she would talk to her father. Ask for his help. Start building the team they needed to tackle what came next.
And maybe, just maybe, things would work out.
BEE: Tess?
“Yeah?”
BEE: I am glad we are partners.
She smiled as she walked toward home. “Me too, Bee.”