Travis wasn’t sure if he should be worried or excited. Ever since he’d been added to the leadership team, everything had been going his way. During the several meetings that followed the first, he’d managed to pitch ideas he’d come up with, which would make every aspect of their attack easier and more effective.

Of course, all those adjustments involved using items he’d invented. Their attack now involved a lot more explosives than before. But that was just a side benefit. His improvements to the plan had everyone else looking at him with more and more respect every time they convened. At first, he could tell that no one had any expectations for him, and he was more there out of acknowledgment for his previous accomplishments in the field than any expectation that he’d have good ideas to add.

Obviously, that had changed. Travis saw the opportunity he’d been given for what it was. A once-in-a-lifetime chance to move out of the field and into the positions that held real power. He just happened to be in the right place at the right time. There was no guarantee that he’d ever be able to produce results like that again. Sure, he was doing well enough, inventing things and going on missions. But he wanted more.

So, he made the most of it. He argued aggressively for his ideas, adjusted and adapted to demands. He wasn’t going to let anyone naysay what he was forming over some dumb details. Sure, his plan put more revolutionaries at risk, but they made sure that the job got done. And that was what really mattered. Besides, it wouldn’t be the first time the Revolution sent its members on suicide missions. No one could argue the point, so he got his way.

Travis could tell that all his ideas, plans, and changes had shifted everyone’s perspective on him. It was honestly pretty simple. They had initially treated him like an outsider. Appreciated, sure. But not really respected the same way everyone else was. Travis’s solution had been simple. He didn’t act like an outsider. Instead, he threw himself into the middle of decision-making, taking part and acting instead of observing.

It might not have worked out as well if he had nothing worthwhile to say, but that was a moot point. Once he had everyone debating the merits of his ideas, they forgot all about treating him differently. After all, they were treating what he said the same as the words of their peers, so they started treating him the same as their peers. And now Travis was in. No one even thought of kicking him out.

Which was what had him concerned now. Out of the blue, with no explanation, he’d been told someone had required a meeting with him. Not who, and not why, and it wasn’t a request. No one in leadership should be treating him like this, so what was going on? Travis wasn’t sure, though he had his suspicions. Several things he noticed about the Revolution were a little…odd. And he was half-sure he was heading to find out why.

Half-sure wasn’t sure, though. And the other half contained some unpleasant ideas that Travis was really hoping weren’t the case. If he had pissed off the leadership…The stories he’d heard painted a dark picture. Still, he was feeling optimistic. Everything had fallen his way since he left home, running from the CA. The Revolution was the right place for him; he could feel it.

Walking through the hidden city of Revolution Headquarters, Travis made his way to the designated location. It was in one of the locked areas, a place normal members weren’t allowed into. The Revolution took compartmentalization seriously, and no one was told something they didn’t need to know.

He was excited to see exactly what they were hiding in here.

Looking the place up and down, there was nothing immediately impressive about it. All buildings in RHQ were built to a standard, so no place was more impressive than any other. Every building was a plain white rectangle with no defining features. The front door had a series of symbols on it that denoted the clearance level necessary to enter, like every other building.

Travis recognized these symbols, obviously. Every revolutionary had them memorized, as the meanings were never written down for security reasons. But he had been seeing this set a lot more recently. Maximum Clearance Level, Invite Only. These areas were so important that intruders were killed on sight. If you weren’t invited in, you were going to get shot.

Travis, despite his recent advances, still wasn’t on the gold list for MCLIO locations. Today was an exception. One Travis intended to leverage as much as he could. Just like his first senior leadership meeting. This could be the foot in the door he needed to move even higher.

Placing his hand on the door, Travis waited. After a moment, the false aura collar around his neck let out a musical tone, and a previously invisible symbol on the door lit up. The meaning of which was obvious. Enter. Travis shivered. He was either going to die painfully or see something amazing.

Instead of pushing or pulling the door, Travis watched as it slid to the side. One white rectangle sliding into the side of a bigger white rectangle. Despite how much he hated shrouded and their pompous attitude, Travis had to admit that they had a better sense of aesthetics than the Revolution.

The doorway showed a featureless white hallway leading to another door. This one opened the same as the first, and Travis finally saw where he was. He could see the ceiling, five stories above him and across to the back wall of the building. It was one giant open space.

That space was filled to the brim with things Travis had never seen before. Ethertech of every design and description, from a forty-foot tall suit of armor to a table covered in thirty different versions of the same pistol. To his left and right were stairs leading to mezzanines that ran the length of the building. Past their railings, he could see even more ethertech, partially constructed.

It was the shrine of some kind of mad genius. Travis was in love. He couldn’t understand half the things he was looking at right now, and all of them were amazing. He had thought the Revolution was advanced, and it was. But the leap in ethertech covered by even half this room outshone every advancement he had ever seen.

There was only one logical conclusion. This building, this workshop, was the source of every piece of ridiculously overwhelming ethertech the Revolution used. And for some reason, the maker was holding out on them.

That idea got Travis’s mind spinning back to some lingering questions he had about the Revolution since he joined. Now he was really hoping he was in the right place to get some answers. This whole building was a confirmation of half of his guesswork. Now he just needed to see the owner.

There was no one there to greet him at the entrance, so Travis started to move through the cluttered, invention-filled warehouse-lab-workshop. The more he saw, the more astonished he was. The Revolution masses, the grunt workers and foot soldiers, all thought they had access to the most advanced ethertech in the Starry Sea. From what he saw in the tiny section of this building he had walked through, Travis knew how wrong they were.

Much of what he saw meant nothing to him, as Travis’s understanding of ethertech was based on less than a year of haphazard education and his own testing. But what he did understand revealed just how much was being held back. Just a few of the weapons in here would be enough to boost the might of the average revolutionary tenfold.

Reaching the back of the building, Travis caught the sound of a peppy, energetic tune coming from the side. Several large crates blocked the noise, preventing him from seeing the source. Maneuvering around the clutter, Travis saw a man clad head to toe in form-fitting black clothes with a long black coat. The entire setup looked both uncomfortable and impractical, but the man moved lightly and easily, humming along with the tune.

He was working on what looked like a miniaturized ether engine the size of Travis’s palm. Several sets of ether rendering equipment were set up randomly on a series of tables and boxes with no apparent organization. Despite the cumbersome and ramshackle setup, the man danced around, managing a dozen different rendering processes at once while also slowly and carefully assembling the tiny engine with sliver-sized pipes and chambers.

“Excuse me,” Travis spoke up in an open moment when the man was moving in between two tasks.

The black-clad figure glanced his way before flicking a finger in the air. A clear indication to wait. With nothing else to do. Travis watched over the next half hour as the micro-engine came together and various ethers were added.

“Alright! Forgive my lackluster manners, but that process was one that could not be interrupted. Engines of this size are impossible to take apart and reassemble in a timely fashion. It's better to do it from scratch at that point.” The man spoke, turning to Travis with a cheery and welcoming tone. Travis couldn’t read his expression, as his face was hidden by the same black cloth that covered the rest of his body. It rendered him completely featureless.

“It’s lovely to meet you, Travis. It’s not often I encounter such a talented young man. I’ve been keeping track of you since early on. Your work with explosives is simply enlightened! Truly inspired stuff. No wonder you’re so popular with the leadership.” He laughed.

“Thank you.” Travis was a bit thrown by such an enthusiastic reception. “I hope you don’t mind, but could you tell me who you are? Did you invent everything here?”

“Yes, where are my manners?” The man flicked his hand flamboyantly, offering it up for Travis to shake. “I don’t talk to others much, so names are a bit awkward for me. Simply call me Founder, as I’m the one who started the Revolution. I think that will suffice.”

Travis nearly choked on his own tongue while shaking the man’s cloth-covered hand. He had a surprisingly firm grip. “I’m sorry, did you just say you started the Revolution?”

“Yes indeed. I also invented everything in this warehouse.” Travis could practically hear the broad grin on the Founder’s covered face. “Go ahead. Ask your questions. Everyone always has a few when they first meet me. I tend to hide in the background, so not many even know I exist. Certainly not the rank and file.”

Travis nodded slowly, his mind running a mile a minute. This was exactly the man he wanted to talk to, twice over. After all the little inconsistencies he had noticed, Travis had been dying to talk to two people. The person who kickstarted the Revolution’s ethertech, and the man who started the Revolution. Now, it turned out they were one and the same. And he had. So. Many. Questions.

“Well, I guess the first thing I want to ask is, what are you actually doing?” Travis said.

The Founder’s head tilted, “I’m not sure I follow.”

“I mean, what are your actual intentions? Because it’s got nothing to do with helping unshrouded.” Travis explained.

“...And how exactly did you come to that conclusion?” The founder asked after a moment, a dark edge entering his voice.

Despite the ominous tone, Travis smiled internally. He neither confirmed nor denied it. As he had thought. The Founder was like him. “It’s pretty obvious when you think about it. No matter what we do, the Revolution is never going to wholly conquer the shrouded. Especially now. Before our last move, we might have managed it in a few thousand years, if we were careful. But now it's impossible.”

“That’s a strange statement coming from one who is so enthusiastically planning our next attack.”

“Ha!” Travis laughed. “That’s not the point here. What I’m saying is that the Revolution is doomed.”

“I fail to see how. We struck a major blow to this country not even a month ago.”

“Yes! This country. We weakened the CA. But that’s just one country on the Starry Sea. The Tournament of Powers that we’re planning to attack. That’s just a pretext for the neighboring lands to scout out the CA’s weaknesses. But if the CA falls, so will we. The conquerors will not leave us alone. No shrouded is going to quietly accept the existence of a force that could cause the collapse of a nation. They’re not that stupid. So when the Central Authority falls, so will we.”

“If the revolution had stayed quiet and expanded their recruitment and reach across the entire Starry Sea, things might have been different. We could have risen up en masse and ended the shrouded in one motion. Maybe. But we can’t do that now. And it wouldn’t have mattered anyway because killing all shrouded is fundamentally flawed as an argument. Unshrouded give birth to shrouded too. I should know; my brother is one. So unless we started killing kids, the shrouded would always come back. They’re never going to be completely gone.”

“All of that means the stated mission of the Revolution is fundamentally impossible. Worse, the world order they want to establish is unsustainable, even if they did succeed. And after coming in here, I know you’re too smart not to see it. No one who could build all these wonders is stupid enough not to see the failings. So that leads back to my question. What are you really doing?” Travis held his breath. He’d said his piece. Now he just had to hope he was right.

A long moment of silence stretched out as Travis grew more and more uncomfortable.

“I didn’t think you were this intelligent. How long did it take you to figure this out?” The Founder spoke. He sounded amused.

“Oh, I was pretty dumb when I joined up. But access to a bunch of secret technology and intelligence reports will clue anyone in if they go looking.” Travis shrugged. He had joined out of desperation and a general hatred for shrouded. Especially his brother. But he wasn’t blindly loyal to the cause like most here. Instead, Travis was looking for just one thing. Power. The ability to do whatever he wanted. That was what really mattered. “I just learned as I went. It’s not that impressive; everyone else is just blinded by this utopic vision you’ve put in front of them.”

“You do realize that killing all shrouded infants would be feasible, right? We have no shortage of those willing to sacrifice their young for this ‘utopic vision,’ as you call it.”

Travis almost rolled his eyes. Apparently, the man still wanted to test him. “Not really. Sure, right now, everyone is so desperate to get out from under the shrouded that they’d do anything. Even kill their own kids. And the ones who wouldn’t will fall in line or die. But two generations down the line? Three? Unshrouded don’t live that long, Mr.Founder.”

“In less than two hundred years, no one alive will remember the tyranny of the shrouded. They’ll have stories, but no one will have lived through it. And soon, mothers and fathers will start thinking, ‘oh, the shrouded couldn’t have been that bad. My little baby would never commit all those atrocities. Why is the government making me kill my child?’ And then whoever’s in charge would be the tyrant to overthrow, to stop the baby killing. Then the shrouded would be born, and we’d end up back where we are now.”

“Ha! You really have thought this through. I’m genuinely impressed.” The Founder nodded in approval. “I brought you here so that I could meet our newest leadership talent. But you’ve gone and surpassed my expectations. Young, smart, and insightful. Yes, you’ll do nicely. Tell you what, kid, I’ve been thinking for the last few years that I need an apprentice. What’s the point of all this knowledge if I have no one worthy to share it with? How about it?” He offered up his hand once more.

Without a second thought, Travis shook it. This was even better than what he had hoped. Travis had assumed that the other leadership staff were in on the bit, but apparently, they were actually believers in the Founder’s false vision. He had just been promoted, and higher than he ever anticipated. “I’d be honored.”

“Excellent. Now, let me tell you the real plan.”