There were too many people around, and I was moving too quickly to see how full the receptacle was. Civilians, both neighbors I’d known for years and some I didn’t, were lingering in a cluster around the receptacle.

I pulled the front and back breaks evenly, not waiting for the motorcycle to stop before I jumped off and recalled it into my inventory.

The crowd was thick enough that I felt a knot of anxiety settle in my gut, even in the guise of the mask. There were too many people I didn’t recognize. Any of them could be Users from another region.

A few people had turned around at the loudness of my entrance. As I ran closer, they seemed to clock the glowing satchel over my shoulder and parted ways. A thick man, seemingly half as wide as he was tall, stood in my way. He was wearing gray scaled armor, and openly wielded a pole-arm with a pointed tip, not unlike a spear with an extraordinarily long shaft.

“Hold up. Where you coming in from?”

I didn’t like the small smirk at the side of his mouth. Maybe he was just an asshole, maybe he was hiding something. The one thing I knew was that I didn’t have time for assholes.

I reached into his mind with He was simple, so it was easy. Like reassembling a remote control. Something I’d noticed as suggestion had leveled up, was the simpler or more vulnerable the target mind was, the more I could do with it. I couldn’t read minds—actual, direct thoughts—but I was beginning to recognize emotions in their latent form without previous context.

And Grayscale was scared. Terrified. I was rolling without as equipping any title that wasn’t seemed like a terrible idea in my current state, so it was mostly conjecture, but based on how scared he was I guessed his machismo put-on and likely self-appointed role as warden of the region two receptacle was all window dressing. An attempt to control what little he could, while the world went to hell around him.

There was a tiny dark knot of trauma.

I stabbed at it viciously with my mind, connecting it to his fear, reawakening whatever it was that had initially unsettled him so badly.

”Do you really want to screw with the guy who just brought back that many Lux solo?”

Grayscale’s lip pulled tight and his tough-guy gaze averted away from me as he quickly stepped aside. I passed him, then thought better of it. All that fear could easily turn to resentment. He was vulnerable. Sometimes, if you give a neutral party something to do, some hoop to jump through to make them feel valued, it’s easier to flip them later.

I answered his question. “North. This is my region. Where are we at with the receptacle?”

Grayscale averted direction for the second time in five seconds, looking slightly whiplashed, and fell in step with me. “Rodrick’s people have been putting in work. They were hitting a good stride, but ran into something nasty. Lot of casualties. Since then, progress has stalled.”

“Stalled as in stopped?”

“Almost completely. Last lux we had came in almost an hour ago.”

“Fuck me.”

“I hear that.”

“Watch my back while I make the drop?” I studied him after I said it. The first hoop was following me, answering my questions. This was the second hoop and the buy-in. If he agreed, it opened him up as a possible resource.

He hesitated, just long enough to confirm he wasn’t completely thoughtless, before he nodded. Finally, enough people had parted in the crowd that I could see the receptacle itself. It was positioned on a cracked portion of sidewalk next to a rusty USPS postal box.

I hissed through my teeth. The receptacle was barely more than a quarter full.

“That’s it? Really?”

Grayscale scratched the back of his neck. “The girl said each lux has a different hidden value. Most of the shit Roderick’s people brought back didn’t do much.”

“What girl?” I asked absentmindedly as I loaded the first lux into the receptacle. It clinked as it hit the bottom, the top curvature of the sphere still visible as it melted into nothing. I fought the urge to back off from the receptacle to see how much progress had been made, all-too-aware of how much was left in my satchel.

“You haven’t been back since this started?”

“No. I was north, like I said.”

“The little merchant girl, Kinsley.”

The world tilted. I was glad the lux in my hands wasn’t fragile. Otherwise, there would have been a real risk of shattering it. Somehow, I managed to keep my voice calm and collected.

“Didn’t know we had a merchant.”

“Mhm.” Grayscale hummed in agreement. “The one behind the system market, apparently. Just a kid, so that’s how she’s been keeping it on the low-down. She’s a smart one.”

“Not that smart.”

“Say again?”

“Nothing.”

I loaded three more manually, then lost patience, turning the satchel upside down and backing away as the remaining lux dissipated, filling the receptacle. At the rate it was going, I found myself hoping that it would fully ascend to the top, despite knowing how unlikely that was.

The rising volume of the receptacle stopped abruptly at the halfway point. There was a sporadic rise of cheers and applause. Someone slapped me on the back.

It isn’t enough.

I glanced at the transposition countdown clock.

God dammit.

We were barely keeping pace. If I couldn’t get things moving again, and it slowed to crawl permanently, we were fucked.

I took three steps backward, my body feeling exorbitantly heavy. Sara’s warning to stop and take a break weighed tantalizingly on me. Almost involuntarily, I leaned against the post box, the small of my back feeling immediate relief from the support.

My mind went to the tunnel. How I’d watched the timer tick down, unable to force myself to move.

Can’t do it, Sara.

No. I couldn’t stop now. Not until this was over. After region six, the risk of going catatonic again was too high. I’d pay for it, eventually, but only after my region was safe.

My entire body fought against me as I shifted my balance away from the post box. I nearly overcorrected, but Grayscale caught my arm before I could stumble. “Easy. That was a good haul.”

I shrugged it off. “Not good enough. Point me to the merchant? Need to restock, and I’m not keen on waiting for the twenty-minute delivery.”

“You’re going back in?” Grayscale asked, his brow furrowed in disbelief.

“No choice.”

“She’s with Roderick’s guys.” Grayscale pointed to the small, rundown duplex on the corner. It was a crackhouse before, people coming and going at all hours of the night until last summer when the police emancipated the occupants for the fifth time. Not sure why the fifth time stuck, rather than the third or fourth—maybe that was just their threshold for being forcibly evicted, or they just found a better spot—but it’d been empty ever since.

No posted guards. Doesn’t speak well for the state of the group.

And Kinsley was in there alone, with Roderick’s people. I didn’t like that.

I passed two of Roderick’s guys, who shifted out of the way. They looked beaten and beaten down in equal measure, their eyes hollowed out and bloodshot.

Mentally toggling the mask to the highest available setting, I watched with muted fascination as eyes slid off me. Nonchalantly, as if it was the most normal thing in the world, I walked into the crackhouse yard, crossed over the dying grass, bypassed the door entirely and hopped the fence.

Voices were coming from around the back corner of the house. People in the backyard, talking. I glanced through the iron-barred window. No sign of Kinsley. Half a dozen people laid out on cots. Judging from the sheer quantity of blood sopping through their bandages, health potions were the only things keeping them alive. I dropped to a crouch, mindful of anything on the ground that would give away my footsteps. I was about to venture a peek around the corner when I heard a familiar voice ring out.

“I’m already marking your shit down to almost nothing—“

“Fifty percent—“

“Shut up, blondie, the adults are talking.”

“But… you’re not an adult.”

“Do we really need him?”

“Yes. He’s my second in command.”

“Fantastic. Now, Roderick, kindly tell the hand of the king to shut the fuck up, so I can explain to you exactly how unreasonable you’re being.”

There was a tense silence.

“Shut the fuck up, Bob.”

“Thank you,” Kinsley said.

I lowered the setting on the mask to solely cover appearance and voice, and stepped out into the open.