Jun glanced down at her marble, then shrugged and handed it over to Okeria. He nodded and accepted the small stone, then rolled it between his fingers and pressed it to the other one he held.

“Alright. Let's see what happens when I do this.”

He pushed one stone into the unpausing wax, then held it there for a handful of seconds. When he removed it, the marble had lost its red writing and was nothing but a simple white stone. That seemed to be what he was looking for, which he confirmed with a happy little hum, and then he set the other marble into the unpausing wax and removed its writing as well.

“So what was the point of that?” Jun asked seriously as she leaned around Okeria's shoulder to watch. “You just removed the only hint we had.”

Okeria shook his head. “Nah, I didn’t remove it; just confirmed somethin’ for myself. Those numbers were painted on, which means someone had ta paint ‘em on. And they’re here, which probably meant that these were the spent marbles. And all those numbers burned into the screens were tellin’ those people ta return their marbles before they were allowed ta leave.”

That seemed like a little too much to assume just from what I’d seen, but Okeria had a history of making wild assumptions that turned out to be true. He’d sussed out that I was The End’s chosen using the exact same method, after all. So much so that I started to think he might have some kind of function feeding him information that he hadn’t told us about.

I patted Jun on the shoulder and pulled her close. “We can always re-write the numbers if he’s wrong.”

“I know. It’s just weird how he’s so confident all the time.” She sighed and shook her head. “He’s going to be wrong about something sometime soon, and it’s going to backfire horribly.”

“I was already wrong, and it already backfired horribly. Remember the entire Persephonia thing, and Scalovera takin’ over Rainbow Basin while I was away? If you call that anythin’ except bein’ wrong and backfirin’ horribly, then I don’t understand how ya classify things.” Okeria said chipperly. He tapped the side of his head, then motioned for Mortician to hand over the other box and the stick. “Thank you, Mortician. I think these are access passes, but they’ve gotta be activated somehow. And if we need ta get the power on before we can use them, then there’s no point in havin’ ‘em anyhow. What’s your favorite number, Juniper?”

“Zero.” Jun said easily.

Okeria silently stared at her for a second, then chuckled to himself. “Alright, not the number I’d go with, but it’s definitely one of ‘em. This subfacility’s labeled as triple-zero, right? Not zero zero one?”

Jun nodded. “Triple zero.”

“Then that’ll do.” Okeria said as he dipped the stylus into the unpausing box. He quickly scrawled three zeroes with ninety-degree angles for the corners, almost like he’d written it the way a computer would, and handed it to her. “Give me a second ta paint some for the rest of us before ya do anythin’. And if I get left behind since I don’t have access, I’ll stay here and help relay information between the three of ya.”

As he spoke, Okeria scribbled something on his own marble and stashed it away in his inventory. I didn’t expect he was hiding anything, but it was strange that he didn’t even give us a chance to get a glimpse of what he’d written.

“We would like the number six, please.” Mortician requested the moment Okeria sent the marble away. Okeria held out his hand for Mortician’s marble, quickly repeated the process to rewrite a number, then handed it back to them. “Thank you very much. What do you think we will be doing with the marble, if we may ask?”

“You may.” Okeria said, then extended a hand to me and closed his fingers repeatedly in a request for my marble. Without taking his visor off of Mortician. “If I’m right, the marbles are teleportation anchors, and the numbers on ‘em work like coordinates. Not quite coordinates though; more like assigned spaces pre-approved for teleportation within the facilities. I’d thought of buildin’ something like this myself, but it was way too much work for far too little benefit.”

He shrugged and chuckled as he scribbled a number on my marble. “Guess Acasiana didn’t share my thoughts on the matter. And good on her for it.”

The thing was thrust back at me, with the number zero-zero-one written on it. I felt a little put off that Okeria didn’t ask for my favorite number, or even give me time to ask for a specific one, but it was so minuscule in the flow of things that were going on that I forgot about it the second the marble was in my hands. Especially because it felt… active, where it had been completely inert before.

I studied it closely, then tried to analyze it. Absolutely nothing happened. “Well, that’s a sign that someone really powerful made these things. So what now, Okeria?”

“Simple. Ya do the same thing ya did ta open the walls ta the marbles. Assert your clearance, however that works.” He said, then snapped the boxes closed and placed the stick on top of them. “If they teleport ya ta the specific place you’re lookin’ ta go, then great. If they open up a doorway when ya press them into a wall, then double great, since I get ta come with ya. Either way, hopefully ya can find whatever we need ta do ta turn the power on for this place.”

Before I could say anything, Mortician held up their marble and forced their clearance onto it. The numbers snapped and crackled like a fire before they began to glow the same red as Acasiana’s abilities, then they dimmed to a low glow and a sensation something like being in an elevator going down a little too quickly spread over me. I glanced around to see if anything was shaking, but nothing was moving in the slightest. Even the marbles in the cylinder were as still as if they’d been glued in place.

Meaning the sensation of movement was from the marble alone. “Mortician? Can you do anything else?”

“We are attempting to answer that question at this very moment.” They said quietly, and through great concentration. “It is as if the marble wishes to be elsewhere, and it is attempting to use our body as a conduit to move itself.”

Jun squeezed her marble tight, and the exact same sensation of movement overlaid on top of Mortician’s. She hummed in thought, then shook her head. “I don’t think it's trying to use your body as a conduit. It’s trying to force something into existence in this room, but something’s stopping it. Maybe we need the power to use these things?”

They both turned to me in unison. I looked down at my marble, then forced my clearance into it along with a sharp intake of breath. Much to my surprise, the sensation of movement expelled from the marble and washed over me completely. The marble wanted to be somewhere else, but it was more… that it was giving me permission to move it. Not that it was trying to force itself away.

I gently let go of the marble, and it hovered in midair as my fingers left it. The thing slowly spun around to show the numbers to me, and the sensation of movement increased ever so slightly. Not a lot, but enough that there was a noticeable difference. Yet it felt like there wasn’t something on the other side to move to. As if the way was blocked, and when we eventually stopped moving, the doors would open to reveal that the path was blocked.

“I’m pretty sure we need the power for this.” I said as Mortician ripped a hole in the air. A white-red lattice knit itself around the rectangular portal, which was just large enough for them to walk through without hitting their shoulders on the edges. They turned to me, and even though they didn’t say anything, I could feel the snarky expression behind their helmet. “Or not. How’d you do that?”

“We simply ordered the movement to stop.” They said with an amused tone that confirmed my assumption. “Then there was a sensation akin to solitaire muddled with an additional sensation of overcrowding, and we pulled the crowded sensation to the forefront of the marble’s function.”

Okeria leaned in and studied the portal as he scratched the bottom of his chin, then nodded. “So one way creates a portal, and I’m bettin’ the other one would’ve teleported ya alone. Maybe one of ‘em’s for people leadin’ a group, and the other’s for someone who doesn’t want ta be followed. Or somethin’ like that. I ain’t pretendin’ ta understand someone who chose ta be alone with a god for multiple thousand years.”

Mortician turned and strolled right through the portal without a second thought. Their marble stayed hovering at the apex of the archway, and it began to shudder the second they went through. I blinked at it, then grabbed my marble out of the air as I retracted the clearance I’d put into it and stepped through the second portal of the day.