Chương 54: Chapter 47 - The thumb drive doesn't bite

The three of them crossed the bar like a weather front. Liu drifted, robes flowing with the unhurried grace. Henrik cut straight lines between the tables, glasses shining with a fresh scan. And Aurelio came with heavy, purposeful steps, all the crosses on his outfit polished to shine. Ren's katana rotated a few degrees on his lap. Kael's hand had disappeared somewhere below the table. On his shoulder, Venn's fur went from calm grey-blue to bone white in the space of a breath, ears pinned flat.

"Friends of yours?" Kael asked quietly.

"Two of them." I raised my arm in a greeting.

"Yo." Liu covered a snort behind his hand. Aurelio glowered at me. Henrik smiled.

"As always, my scans have proven to be accurate." He glanced at Aurelio.

"I told you I was detecting Damian." Aurelio only grunted in response. They stopped at our table. Aurelio stood front and center, black plate polished to parade condition, silver scripture catching the morning gold. Fresh projection, fresh armor. The censer hung at his belt next to the sword of office, and his face had a military-grade stern look to it. His hand settled on the sword's hilt.

"You sure have some nerve, O'Connor."

"Comes with the profession." I motioned at the chairs.

"Take your seats. The coffee is decent. These are Ren and Kael, local climbers with whom I've been climbing." With my head, I motioned at the three of them.

"Liu, Henrik, and Aurelio are from where I come from." They all exchanged glances. Liu sat first, followed by Henrik and Aurelio. Henrik unfolded his tablet. Aurelio sat down like the chair had personally wronged him. For a moment, nobody spoke. Kael's eyes ping-ponged between us. Ren had gone very still in a way that wasn't relaxation.

"Your actions on the 25th floor were unconscionable," Aurelio said. I rolled my eyes.

"Spare me the sermon." I looked him in the eyes.

"I don't care." For a split second, he froze. A little shiver shook him.

"What my companion means," Liu said, pouring himself into the silence like tea into a cup, "is that heaven does not linger on spilled blood, and neither should we. The karma of the twenty-fifth floor is already written. Today's floor is not. This one suggests we cultivate the latter." Henrik pushed up his glasses.

"Or at least not killing each other." Ren's head turned toward me, slowly.

"Context?"

"I can be exceedingly destructive," I replied.

"My friends here wound up on the wrong side of it on the floor 25."

"That is one way to put it," Henrik said. Aurelio studied me for a long moment.

"In a strange, immoral way, I find appreciation in your straightforwardness. There is honor in evil not pretending to be something else. But, as others said, we aren't here to settle our differences." He sighed.

"Anyway, I know the floor. The original trial is most likely near the waystone." We all narrowed our eyes.

"How do you know that?" Kael asked.

"I…" Aurelio started, voice careful before it solidified.

"I was born before the tower's fall. I died in the devil's flames, and I was reborn into the body of a dying man on Earth. My life in the tower wasn't short, so I know most of the floors."

"You must be from pretty high," Ren remarked.

"I was in the guard of the god of death, of Daelus himself. But that is beside the point." He looked over Henrik and Liu.

"We are on a timer, and there's no reason to need two dives for this floor." He got up. We all got up. Something about the way he spoke made it natural to follow his lead. Most likely a system skill, I realized. Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings. We paid at the exit and headed through the station's hallways. On the way, I glanced at Liu.

"Through what floors did you get here?"

"After floor 25, we were all bedridden for a day. The next day, we rested to recover. Today, we came to dive. We spawned in the hallway behind us." Right, the whole roster got the progression if one person succeeded.

"Anyone got higher floors?"

"Yes," Henrik confirmed.

"But no one has gotten to the thirties yet." We arrived at an elevator. The door was open, so we walked in. Except that the elevator was for four, and we were six. We squeezed in, anyway. I had Aurelio's shoulder plate pressing me from one side, and Henrik being pushed against me by Ren from the other side.

"Fourth button from the top," Aurelio said, unable to reach the keyboard. Kael managed, and the elevator door closed, pushing us into an even tighter space. As we started moving, Henrik waved his hand. A soft spell created a barrier around the two of us. The others spared us glares, but said nothing.

"With this spell," Henrik said.

"Only we can hear each other." He removed the earpiece from his ear and stuffed it into his pants' pocket.

"I visited floor twenty-two yesterday. I found Paradise offices, and I hacked into that bio-mechanical terminal." I nodded.

"Impressive."

"Yes, very. In any case, I found that the crucial floors of their operations are floors from thirty-two to thirty-four. Their entire base of operations for floors one to fifty is there. I suspect the tower won't let us get to those floors easily, which is where you come in." I smiled.

"I'll try, but unless you've got a way to access their technology, I'm not sure I'll be able to get much." He pressed against my pocket and slipped in what felt like a thick thumb drive. It writhed by itself. He raised a finger in front of his mouth and said, "That is a problem we have yet to solve." I got the gesture. And it brought a massive frown to my face. That meant he didn't want it seen or heard on the transmission to Earth, implying he thought Paradise had a spy on Earth… somehow.

"I'll figure it out."

"Do not let anyone touch it after you, so it only despawns with you." The spell vanished from around us. With a beep, the elevator arrived. The door opened, and I got out. Another hallway was in front of us.

"The trial and the waystone are both this way," Aurelio said. He led the way. And it was good that he did, because the hallways formed a maze with no signs or labels. I got lost three turns in. But Aurelio has clearly been here before. He navigated us through the maze without losing a step. I at least enjoyed the view when I could. The end of the sky of the city underneath looked incredible from slightly above it, an artificial barrier made of clouds and azure, then sharply ended into space.

We walked into a chamber the size of a cathedral, pale stone under all that dark metal, as if the tower had peeled back its modern skin to show the bone underneath. The same pale as the waystones. Two doors faced each other across the floor. The left one stood tall and arched, carved with the spiral iconography I'd learned to associate with waystones, soft light bleeding through its seams.

The right one was newer, framed in dark metal, with a registration kiosk manned by a robot beside it and a holographic board listing nothing. Through the arched door, the shrine chamber glowed. The waystone stood at its center on a raised dais. And around the dais, kneeling in a dormant ring, was a construct. Four arms folded across its chest like a monk at prayer. Pale metal plates over a frame three men tall, a head with no face, just a single vertical seam of light, currently dim.

Etched patterns pulsed lazily along its shoulders, breathing. Ren leaned a bit to see the construct better.

"Well, our trial better not be like that."

"Yep," Kael said, following Ren's gaze.

"We'd be getting wiped even with Damian. And he's about to ditch us." Venn, suddenly awake atop his shoulder, glared at me. I snorted.

"I'm not ditching anyone." I glanced at Henrik.

"Did the floor say three out of three or four out of four?"

"The former," Liu said, interjecting.

"But it is necessary for you to touch the waystone with us." The air suddenly tensed. First, the thumb drive, then this. There were some serious suspicions going on down on Earth. Aurelio cleared his throat.

"We can all try to clear the trial for locals. Then, we can refocus on our primary objective." Ren stepped toward the door.

"Let's go before you change your minds." We went to register the three of us, Ren, Kael, and me. The robot clerk heard our names, and they popped up on the board. We got a new number, team one, and the name immediately shone above the door. We headed there. Aurelio, Liu, and Henrik waited by the door. The door opened, and we walked in. Aurelio stepped after us. When he attempted to cross the door frame, his leg hit an invisible wall. He felt it a bit with the boot, touched it with his hand, and stepped away.

"We seem to be unable to attend this trial."

"I'll come back after we clear this." I stepped after Ren and Kael.

"We will forcefully cultivate the boss in the meantime," Liu said.

"And then we shall see who decides where destiny takes us through the waystone." I froze in my tracks. He said it innocently, as if misspeaking and said a sentence in broken English. But he didn't. Who decides where the waystones take us? The obvious assumption we all made were the overseers. The overseers waited around the waystone, and so they were naturally the ones who decided the floor progression. But on floor 25, I killed the overseer long before I touched the waystone. And yet, we all got our next floor.

So, there was another mysterious entity that controlled the decisions. Or it was the person managing the interface between Earth and the tower. The person on whose unique power the entire access system ran. The one person whose actions couldn't be checked in any way, because she did everything herself with her magic. They weren't suspecting some mysterious spy or infiltrator. Even without knowing she could access the tower on her own, they were suspecting Cassandra.