Grey nudged the door open, allowing three others in dark outfits and masks to slip into the building. He shut it behind them surveying the alleyway. A half-moon hung in the sky above, the stars more visible now than he ever remembered them being.

A flash lit the alleyway for a moment, and then a few more came after that, a few thumps following close behind. A muffled shout was cut off. He counted silently in his head. Twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-one, thirty-two…

At about sixty, he started moving, inching his way to the edge of the alley. The beams of floodlights ran up and down the street outside, and two men were walking his way, a muffled conversation taking place between them.

His sword took one of them in the throat, and he dropped it, yanking the other one close. His dagger punched one hole, two, a dozen, until the man slumped against the brick wall of the alley building. He dragged their bodies to the doorway. His compatriots slipped out not long after.

“Did you get them?” Grey asked.

“Yes, the intel was good. They had a few.” The man in the lead, a tall, lean fellow named Wes, held up a clinking bag. Grey took it from him.

“Alright, you two, put those uniforms on and walk a patrol. Get the eyes above away from us, so we can slip out.”

The other two nodded, stooping to strip the bodies of their clothes. Moments later, they were back onto the street in the distinctive tabards of the guild. Wes crept to the opposite end of the alley.

“We have to go. Someone will be on their way soon,” Grey said, running up behind the man.

“I’ll take the left, you okay with the right?”

“Sure thing.”

They bolted from the alleyway in opposite directions, and Grey listened closely for the slightest sound of alarm. None came. He darted into another alleyway and disappeared into the night. The bag with the Keys disappeared into his Inventory after he willed the Dungeons to return to their normal respawn rate. He withdrew an empty one in its place. The black chess king Jessica had given him rested in his other palm, his hands tracing its form. He had a single stop to make before he returned to Gilded.

Some time later, he walked into the casino, the bag held aloft to the sounds of cheers. Alin laughed and took the bag, looking in it and pulling a Key out with a smile. The cheers grew louder.

“Bring out the drinks,” he said. “Tonight, we’ve dropped the damned Guild to its knees. The north side is for the Hunters!”

Hands clapped Grey’s back as he was ushered to the bar and liberally supplied with drinks. He faked being drunk after some time, while in reality he had simply put the liquids into his Inventory. Poison Evolutions were always a threat.

His hands strayed to his daggers whenever anyone grew too handsy, but by and large, the casino roared with triumph. Grey imagined they should be preparing for a counterattack, as there would undoubtedly be one. The Guild had not expected an attack so deep into their territory, not one that completely bypassed their main compound. They had actually been quite clever in hiding the Keys in another location, just not clever enough to keep their scouts from finding out.

The raid had been Alin’s idea. Well, Grey had done most of the planning, but Alin took the credit. That worked for both of them. He estimated it would take a few days for the ARA to hear about what they had done and a little longer for them to realize they needed to intervene.

He suspected Jessica would sue for peace, a sort of armistice with the Keys. She avoided confrontation and preferred politics, and it would allow her to paint the ARA and even herself as peacemakers. As messiahs. He was still technically a part of the ARA, but he was under no illusions. She knew.

Their unofficial war was well under way. He had made his first swing in anticipation of her counter, and he imagined she would accept. A summit benefitted her, too. She would want all the Keys in one place, as well.

If she didn’t, however, that was fine, too. His attack served more than one purpose. The Keys would have to be kept close from now on. They were too valuable to do otherwise. He needed only a few more, and he would have twelve. He had done the math. The ARA would have more than enough to make up the difference. Much more.

The problem was the location. He had one in mind, however: the location where he dropped off the information he had gathered on the Hunters. He had a hunch that Jessica would feel the same. She was cautious, but she was sure to move when she felt she had the advantage. Taunting him with a location familiar to the both of them was too tempting. Besides, it was a location she already had eyes on, meaning he couldn’t prepare any traps ahead.

He guessed it was around a ninety-percent chance she would choose that rooftop. If not, however, he would have to convince Alin to negotiate for one near a Dungeon. Yes, his plans were coming together nicely, but he had a strange feeling within him, part excitement and part fear.

Jessica had something planned, and he had no way of knowing until it was too late. That was fine, however. This was not chess. In Grey’s game, the king was the most deadly piece of them all, and soon, the king would move.

A few days later, his plan bore fruit. They had weathered the Guild’s counterattack and postured for another attack of their own, and the turning tide forced the ARA’s hand. They invited the Hunters to a meeting for peace at a building that was as close to an midway point between their three territories as any. It was Grey’s building. When he received the news, he sat in a chair in his room at Gilded.

With his plans running through his mind, his thoughts went to his single vulnerability, the single chink in his armor. His family. He hoped his brother still lived. Renan was the only one who could decipher his message.

---

Renan Shor had always been the more… Well, the more everything of the Shor siblings. He was more handsome, more charismatic, and more athletic. In fact, the only thing he wasn’t the best at was intelligence, and to him, even that was debatable.

He had the sort of sharp good looks that drew the eye, and his tan skin and black hair had made him his mother’s favorite, her Brazilian heritage more evident in him than any of his other siblings. When the Archons had spoken to him, it was not so much a surprise as it was an opportunity.

After the Tutorial, he had gathered his close family together. When the agency at the ARA came to them and offered them sanctuary, he accepted instantly. It was not faith in the government that caused his decision, though. It was information. He needed time to survey the situation before he made a decision.

It was now months after that choice. He stood by the wall of fence that surrounded the fort their small town had evacuated to. His talents didn’t exactly lie in combat, but one of the other Returnees had an Evolution that allowed her to enhance weapons with special effects that allowed them to harm monsters regardless of the user.

“Go on down and get you something to eat, son. I’ll handle this here,” the grizzled man told him, grasping his hand firmly. “You’ve worked hard enough today.”

“I appreciate it, sir.” Renan smiled widely in the way people liked. In truth, he had stood guard for all of twenty minutes. It was simply a waste of his time. He let the man believe what he wanted, though, or rather, what his Evolution made the man believe.

From the wall, he hopped in the back of one of the trucks that was heading back to the main base. The word fort conjured images of a single stalwart bastion, but this was more of a compound, a series of buildings surrounded by a large fence topped with barbed wire. His eyes ran over the faces of the men and women that walked its streets and sidewalks. Pathetic. They thought themselves safe, blind to the world outside the walls.

Many of these people had not experienced the Tutorial. They did not know what a single monster could do left in a room of unarmed people. Renan did. More often than not, he had been the one to guide the monster in such a room in the first place. The best assassinations were the ones that looked like accidents, after all.

His family shared a mobile home parked close to the mess hall, and he knocked lightly before entering with a wide smile. His mother Maria wrapped him up in the sort of hugs only mothers could give, gray creeping into her dark locks.

“Renan,” she said, her accent pronouncing the R as an H. “Back so soon?”

“Yes. It turns out they didn’t need me today.”

“Your father is still out. He was looking for you earlier.” Her words were strained, a look of anger flitting across her face for a moment.

Distantly, he heard the screaming of his parents when he was young. They had divorced not long after. Then remarried. They were still together now, but it was a dead relationship. Had been for years.

Renan smiled and stepped away. “I’ll go find him soon, then. Where’s Mandy and Ana?”

“I don’t know,” she said, sighing. “I’m too old to keep up with the four… with the three of you.”

Grey. He hung unspoken between them. His mother didn’t know what had driven his younger brother away from their family, but she worried over him constantly, especially now that the world had ended. They knew he was alive, at least.

“Old.” Renan snorted. “Where’s the cane, then? I don’t think you’re quite stooped over yet, mom.”

“Keep running me ragged, and we’ll see.”

He laughed and walked out of the camper, raising a hand. “I’ll go find dad and then see if I can track my wayward siblings.”

“Be careful!”

“Always.”

When he walked out of his mother’s sight, his smile fell, dropping into an expressionless mask. He walked down the base’s street, dodging past rumbling humvees and busy men and women. The morning sun had yet to reach its zenith, and on his right, the main building of the fort rose, a formidable stone building that managed to look both stately and intimidating.

Inside, he found a small office and walked in. His father sat behind a desk, reading over a piece of paper with a frown. Renan sat in the chair in front of him, knowing it would take his father a moment to escape from his thoughts.

Jack Shor was a handsome man. He had pale skin and short light brown hair. Where others might have blue eyes that were ocean blue or glacier-like, Renan’s father had eyes that were simply blue, neither too deep nor bright. They carried a piercing intelligence, nonetheless, and it was this intelligence that he had given all four of his children.

After a moment, he set the paper down, scribbled something onto a notebook beside him, and looked up. “Messy logistics,” he said by way of explanation, running a hand through his hair. “Need something?”

Renan smiled. “Mother said you were looking for me.”

“Oh. Yeah.” He looked over to the laptop on the desk beside him and clicked something before handing the device over to Renan.

A message greeted him. From Grey. Renan read it once in a hurry, but then an idea came to him. He grabbed a clean sheet of paper from his father’s desk and a stray pen, making small marks as his eyes scanned the message.

Years and years ago, he and Grey had made a secret code together. It was their version of fun, speaking and writing in normal sentences while conveying another message entirely. Of course, their relationship had soured not long after, but it was the sort of thing only Renan would know to look for. The fact that his brother had used the code at all suggested it was serious.

Escape. Don’t trust ARA. Want me dead. Maybe you too.

Renan tapped his pen against the page. His father watched patiently. He handed him the paper and the laptop.

“It’s a code. The cipher is-”

His father held up a hand. “I’ll figure it out.”

Renan waited until his father had proofed his work, and then they met eyes. “It seems your son has gotten us into a mess.”

“Your brother.” He rubbed his face, his wrinkles deepening with his frown. “Talk to me, Renan.”

“I’m inclined to believe him.” He clicked the pen in his hand. “You know him. He’s too serious to waste our time. You know this,” he waved his hands, “This isn’t sustainable. Too many don’t work, don’t perform a useful function. Food production is basically nonexistent. Even basic resources like toilet paper and soap are being used faster than we can replenish them from nearby towns.”

“Where do we go, then?”

“Ana and Mandy can fight. We can take the RV. Grey is three hours away. With the way things are now, that’s a day or two worth of travel at worst.”

“Not safe there, either.”

Renan frowned. “Maybe not, but he clearly knows more about the situation than us.”

In truth, Renan knew much about the situation. The U.S. government was rapidly losing what little authority it had. The mercenary groups and rising warlords were realizing their only motivation for complying- wealth- was rapidly becoming meaningless. Monsters had killed many. Starvation, dehydration, and exposure to the elements were killing more. Places like this fort were little more than tinderboxes waiting to catch.

“Fine,” Jack said with a grunt. “I’ll get the supplies. Find your sisters. Tell Maria.”

Renan bowed mockingly. “As you command, father.” He strode out of the office, fingering the handgun at his side and looking for any eavesdroppers. He planned on doing more than just finding sisters. Much more.

He had a Returnee- one more valuable than nearly any other dozen put together- to convince.