The beginning of the rescue mission was a few hours away but Keynes couldn’t shake off a feeling that the hospitality of Wagner Zimmermann was too good to be true.

And on top of that were the things Wagner had shown and told him.

What was the catch here?

It drove him crazy until Alice offered him a basic relaxation meditation technique. He needed that. Since he returned from the armoury, Keynes tried to behave as if nothing had happened but he did a poor job.

His family and friends had arrangements now and from what Keynes saw these activities were designed to kill the time while they were here. His father and Kaito Ren were exceptions though. Their Talents made them very useful. His father currently worked with lab technicians on the glyphs in the labs as they needed to determine if increasing the efficiency of glyphs would benefit the plants.

Kaito Ren Talent’s was simpler but it possessed a major drawback – cooldown. Its length was based on the distance and number of people that passed through his portal. It made him poor at using his portal frequently, and of course, he needed a visual of the destination to be able to open the portal. This wasn’t the biggest problem when they had access to the Web.

At the moment, Kaito Ren was preparing for the mission. Out of his group, only Vivena and Keynes’s family stayed. Everyone had been given their own room and he had to admit, he liked it here very much. This place had nothing of the cold underground base in Jamaica or the makeshift city in Scotland.

A knocking disturbed his meditation and he invited whoever was on the other side. He could ask Alice to check on his visitor but they wanted to test a few things. If Keynes had to put an extra effort to learn things beyond the tutorial’s knowledge, could the same apply to Alice? Could she also grow other than through increasing his spiritual stages?

When Vivena turned out to be his visitor, he regretted not asking Alice to check the door. Vivena was a trouble and in his state, her insistence on going with them only made things worse.

“Keynes, we need to talk.”

He perked up at the lack of sweetness in her voice. She must have realised that being nice to him wouldn’t work. Though she was close. Each time they interacted, Keynes felt his defences grow thinner. Her fake surname really fitted her. She was his poison.

“Okay.”

“Zimmermann refused my request again. I want to take part in the mission.”

“Didn’t he explain that he doesn’t want to risk Miss Sael getting hurt? You’re too important.”

“Bullshit,” she snapped for the first time since Keynes had known her. “I can see that he is at your whims now. What happened to your talk about being independent? It seems that when the first chance came, you crawled under his wings.”

She huffed.

“You just contradicted yourself,” Keynes told her. “He’s at my whims but I am under his wings?”

She slammed the door and advanced toward Keynes, stopping a metre from him. This close to him he realised that his perfect memory couldn’t bring back one thing.

Her presence.

Vivena’s blue eyes were no longer sad and their intensity bored holes in Keynes’s skull.

“Tell me, why do you trust Zimmermann over me? Why? Didn’t I help your friends save your family? What did I do that made me so untrustworthy?”

She stood before him, angry and disappointed. And he couldn’t stop himself from admitting it. She was perfect, and he had feelings for her.

He didn’t want to answer her question and he was pretty sure he shouldn’t but he had to.

“I am grateful for your help and I will never forget it but at the same time, you are your family. You represent their interests and I don’t trust them. Freeman—”

“I know what that psycho did to you!” she snapped again. “When I learned it, I wanted to kill Waxilium Earl so badly… but Keynes, not everyone is like them.”

He agreed with her and was more than a little surprised by her revelation. But it wasn’t enough to sway him.

“Answer this yourself: do you think your family wouldn’t try to lock me up and let me go only to open rifts for them? Remember to be honest.”

Vivena’s rage subdued, turning into beautiful sadness. Tears appeared on her cheeks. She made a step toward him and her hand touched his left shoulder, obliterating his defences. Then she moved it to his neck…

Keynes’s mind went blank, his body froze.

At that moment, he was hers if she wished for it.

But she turned around and he didn’t stop her. His stomach became a pit of acid as he watched her leave. A voice in his head told him that if there had been a chance for them to be together, that chance just vanished.

If he only followed her, talked to her, told her his feelings.

But no, he was a fool, a proud and scared fool.

***

Keynes didn’t find escape in meditation again. Its relaxing properties remained elusive. He paced the room. It was quite spacious and pacing discharged some of his pent up tension.

Wagner’s house was built on a slope with at least seventy percent of the building being underground and from what Keynes saw in the last two days, this place was an actual home. The labs had a separate entrance with a lobby.

His room was luxurious with a private bathroom, a wardrobe which he didn’t use, and a folding wall that could transform the room into a small reception room.

When a knocking sounded for the second time, he asked Alice to return to him. It was time for the final briefing. He opened the door and found Sylv there. The disruptive beauty didn’t hide her antagonistic mood.

“Are you ready, Keynes Kid?” she asked, stoically.

“Yes.”

The final briefing took place in Wagner’s office. Wagner replaced his oriental attire with military-grade armour with a few custom made pieces. His black hair was tightly tied and left laying on his right shoulder. He had a smug smile on his face.

Next to him stood Tyr Truman. A distant relative of Letchworth Truman whose family had perished in the first outbreak. Tyr was a flamboyant, easy-going guy. He always smirked and teased everyone. Keynes had learned that he, like Sylv, was Level 6, so no joke, no matter what his appearance indicated.

Unlike Sylv, he seemed to not use anything from Wagner’s formidable plant arsenal but Keynes didn’t believe this was the case. Tyr would have to be an idiot to not take advantage of the insane things Wagner cooked up in his garden labs and Wagner would have never made an idiot his security chief.

On the other hand, Wagner told me his greatest secret after less than a day.

So, yeah, anything was possible.

Kaito Ren and Christopher Wolf were also here, both wearing similar black armours but without customisation.

“Sylv, dear.”

“Sir.” Her voice had no warmth. “Everything is ready.”

Wagner nodded then turned to Christopher Wolf and Kaito Ren.

“You enter the closest government station with a tracking terminal. If Tyr cannot crack the system, you force the staff to show you the tracking information on your friend and send us coordinates.

“Me, Keynes and…” Wagner hesitated, glancing Keynes’s way. “Miss Sael will be en route to that location. Is everything clear?”

What?

“What about Fen and why is Vivena suddenly going with us?”

“Miss Daiyu is only Level 2 and we decided to not risk her life. Also, her character is a problem.”

“And she was alright with that?”

“She is happily asleep. She will wake up after the rescue mission is over.”

Wagner clapped his hands, bringing back all attention to him.

“We must move. With every hour there are more Freeman’s soldiers in the city. Go.”

Keynes didn’t like it but Daiyu Fen had a difficult character which could make the mission harder for them. Keynes and Wagner met Vivena in the garage where she revealed to him why she was going with them – her ridiculously overpowered Talent. After their conversation, she had gone to Wagner and showed him her Talent. He didn’t have the same serum her father had prepared for her but a quick look at the Dark Web and his own stockpiles yielded promising results: seven poisons and a strong poison neutraliser that didn’t remove the poisons but kept their negative effects to a minimum. After a short calculation, the number Keynes came up with was impressive. Just seven poisons would raise her attributes to 39 each. There were a few temporary stat and attribute boosting fruits as well that would increase everything even further.

Keynes was speechless when a final realisation about Vivena’s Talent settled in. She was a monster. If she managed to get a serum with 15 poisons that was a 150% boost, which only at Level 2 lifted her attributes to 59 and at Level 3 to 65. Wagner told them in the car that his attributes stood at 35 without any enhancements and a bit over 40 with rift items. Wagner was so thrilled with Vivena’s potential that he begged her to join the mission.

Keynes had taken the backseat, and remained quiet as Wagner drove the car away from his estate to the private airport several kilometres from here.

Geneva was so large that the road to the airport ran mostly through the forested parts with smaller roads leading to hidden residences on each side. In many ways, this part of Geneva reminded Keynes of Emerald Lake.

He stayed quiet and it eventually led Wagner and Vivena to have a conversation. It turned out that the Saels had apartments, houses and estates in Geneva. Some were rented or used by her family but many remained empty for some reason. Wagner told Vivena that her grandfather had reached Level 8 which brought a stunned silence to the car. It was officially the only Level 8 in the world apart from Freeman’s Level 10.

Wagner noticed her mood and asked her about it but she didn’t comment on it. Was this proof that her family couldn’t be trusted after all? Or was Keynes paranoid?

As they reached the airport, they found no airport security guards but government troopers.

“What are they doing here?” Wagner stopped the car on the side.

“They will recognise us,” Vivena said.

Keynes agreed with her. They were the most wanted people in the world and the army was coming here for them.

“Okay, if we cannot take the main entrance, we’ll take a secret one.”

“But what if there are more of them and the planes are grounded. What is going to happen if you ‘steal’ a plane, even if it belongs to you?”

Wagner turned to Keynes.

“If we cannot take the plane… we may have to call off the mission.”

He took out a phone and called the director of the airport. After a few minutes, the news was mixed. Planes were permitted to take off or land but they had to be searched first by the World Government forces.

The clock was ticking. Soon, Kaito Ren, Christopher Wolf and Tyr Truman would find Tulli’s location and Keynes wouldn’t be ready to rescue her. He couldn’t leave it like this, he’d promised Daiyu Fen.

But before they could come up with a second plan, Tyr called them. Wagner put him on the speaker.

“Boss, we have a problem.”

***

Kaito Ren stared at the screen of a computer. The station was an information hub used by the government to track its army and relay commands from the higher-ups. Whoever had designed the station had failed to include a proper defence system, making it very easy to break in. The station didn’t possess any anti-teleporting formations or runes.

When they’d ported here, the staff didn’t try to resist. They did everything they had been asked to do. After that, Kaito Ren tied them up. Every member of the station’s staff was Level 1 so they posed no threat.

The mission was too easy to end like this…

“This cannot be right,” Christopher Wolf murmured. “Why would they take her there? That region is known to have no rifts.”

“And this name – a high-restricted and militarised zone. Sounds ominous,” said Tyr, not hiding a smirk.

“Can you inform Wagner Zimmermann?” Kaito Ren asked Tyr.

Tulli was held in China near Qinghai Lake and the whole situation was complicated by the fact that the lake and anything in a two hundred kilometre radius was a newly-built militarised zone.

Even as a member of the Hidden Hand, Kaito Ren hadn’t been aware of any high-restricted zones in that region, and not because he hadn’t been curious. China lay in the Oriental League’s sphere of influence and before the rise of the World Government, China had been a part of the Oriental League.

Thinking about the Hidden Hand reminded Kaito Ren about Ventura, an eccentric captain who knew too much for his own good.

Kaito Ren checked the location of Ventura and found him alive in Spain. He took note of it and returned to Christopher and Tyr.

“Boss says that they have a problem as well. The government controls the airport and they cannot enter it without raising suspicions.”

“Wait a minute,” Christopher said. Something made him look beneath the computer desk. “Great. This is the silent alarm. We must go.”

Kaito Ren’s cooldown stood at 12 hours so their way back would have to be on foot. The station was in Geneva but the city was full of troopers. They’d have to be careful.

They escaped the main room and took the emergency exit that let them out at the back of the building.

The station was walled from all sides. There were several buildings, a parking lot, and a hundred-metre tall antenna. They subdued only the people in this one building, hoping to have enough time to escape…

Alarms started blaring then and over twenty troopers came out of another building. Kaito Ren, Christopher Wolf and Tyr Truman hid at the back of the main building but they knew that the chance for the silent escape was over.

“We make a hole in the wall?” Tyr asked.

“Can you do it?” Christopher asked, looking sceptical at the thick wall.

Tyr waved his scepticism away and a small container appeared on Tyr’s hand.

“Okay, folks, listen. This is dangerous and don’t try it at home.” He dumped the container’s content—brown seeds—on the ground next to the wall. Then a bottle of water appeared in his hand. “This is where things get messy.”

He poured the water on the seeds.

In an instant, the seeds started blooming. Roots and branches came to life and forced the three men to back off to the main building. They pressed their backs against the building’s wall as troopers were checking the yard and buildings. If they saw them…

The wall cracked, then exploded as the branches forced their way into the wall. Kaito Ren’s attention was so focused on the spectacle that he didn’t notice a stray trooper open the emergency exit door and walk outside.

He immediately started shooting at them, Christopher Wolf and Tyr Truman weren’t in any real danger as long as the trooper didn’t hit their neck artery or eyes but Kaito Ren had to be more careful. Bullets could still harm him.

In a heartbeat, Christopher was between the trooper and Kaito Ren while Tyr Truman decided to neutralise the danger. He shot toward the trooper with the speed that none of them could match and dropped the attacker in a single punch.

By the time the seeds destroyed enough of the wall for them to pass through, the entire station was going down on them.

“We must go now!” Tyr called out, laughing.

***

Dreux and Hellescott checked the hotel through and through. Interrogated the owner four times and pulled out satellite imagery and local monitoring records but found nothing. Other trackers were bound to arrive in a few hours, together with a thousand troopers to sweep the area.

She had the only chance to figure out where they had disappeared, on her own. Once everyone arrived here, her glory would be diminished. And there was going to be glory! These weren’t some lowly wanted criminals. The police confirmed the identity of one of them.

Christopher Wolf.

If that was the case, they had to assume that Kaito Ren, Vivena Sael and Daiyu Fen had been here as well. One of them had a Portal Talent. It was an easy deduction to make that they’d teleported out of here.

But where?

Hellescott had sent troopers to every place linked to any of those four but Dreux didn’t think they would be successful. The four terrorists were at large for weeks and she didn’t believe they’d make such an obvious error. Dreux reread the file on Kaito Ren, the man with the Portal Talent and something stood out to her. Under limitations of his Talent was written: clear visual of a destination.

It bothered her because it was a pesky limitation unless… wait a second.

Didn’t they find blood and a dagger in one of the rooms? Yes. And why they had fought Karimazov instead of opening a portal and escaping?

Because they couldn’t go to a hospital… Of course, they needed a place to go and Kaito Ren had to see it first. And what better place to do that than the Web.

She rushed down to the lobby where the owner sat behind the counter. Upon seeing her, the old man tried to vanish.

“Old man, how many computers with access to the Web do you have in the hotel?”

He pointed at the computer in front of him.

Dreux slapped her forehead. That was why Christopher Wolf blocked the entrance to the lobby.

We have them.