“Five hundred minutes there? That’s a whole day… Well, alright, let’s try it.”
As soon as I logged into Dis, I saw myself in limbo. Scyth was dead and awaiting revival. But apart from the timer, another line suddenly appeared:
Synchronizing…
The line blinked, disappeared. My head cleared up. Suddenly, I remembered all the events of the Nether just as vividly as before. But now I also recalled the extra few weeks that had passed for the Scyth that remained here while I was outside my capsule.
With surprise, I realized that the other ‘me’ had been continuing to live his best life (sarcasm) while I was gone, and knew nothing of the emergency exit. Apparently, he hadn’t seen the system notification about it—but now he knew. I felt joy, not my own, but his, over the fact that he (I?) had been pulled out. We merged into a single personality again. Now, when I was pulled out again, he would be able to have hope, and not just the sense of doom that I felt in him, in myself.
My five hundred minutes passed almost entirely in the great nothingness. As soon as I revived, I fell into Nine’s baleful clutches.
“What the hell are you up to?!” she shouted in rage, having failed again to steal an ability from me.
In my absence, she hadn’t managed to get anything out of Scyth. Hold on, buddy, I told myself mentally when the emergency quit activated. As reality materialized before me, my own answer echoed in my thoughts: Get me out of here.
The intragel slid off me. I saw my friends’ anxious faces behind the walls of my capsule and pushed it open, shook my head.
“Still in the Nether…” I suddenly felt how tired I was, how important it was now to forget about Dis and everything related to it, to switch onto something else. I remembered that we had plans for that evening. “What about that party, guys?”
“Uhm…” Ed exchanged lost glances with Hung and Malik. “We forgot…”
“What did you forget?” I said, not understanding.
“We forgot to cancel it!” Hung shouted, his eyes widening as he checked the time on his comm. “All this stuff made me forget that we told everyone to arrive at eight! Damn it!”
“No problem, I’ll cancel it now,” Ed said. “Sorry, Alex, I know you aren’t in the mood to party…”
“On the contrary!” I climbed out of my capsule, tramped over to my bed and got dressed. “Who’s coming? I invited Piper, Rita and Karina yesterday. Who else?”
“Well… I called Alison,” Hung answered. “And Ed…”
The big man shut up, and Rodriguez continued for him.
“Basically, Alex, Tissa’s in town. She flew in to visit her dad for the weekend. And I…”
“You invited her?”
“To be precise, we invited her.”
“You did the right thing. I need to talk to her, set a few things straight,” I said calmly. I looked at Hairo. “You staying?”
“Afraid not, kids,” the security officer answered, frowning. Three deep wrinkles furrowed his brow. “I’ll be nearby and keeping an eye on you. You’re playing with fire. If my information is correct, Melissa Schafer is still in the Awoken even though she’s been recruited by the White Amazons. And on top of that, you’ve invited Piper Dander and Alison Wu, members of T-Modus, right? Rita Wood, a potential member of the Awoken that guessed Alex’s status… And Karina Rasmussen, her friend. Both those girls study in the same school as a certain Wesley Cho, former leader of Axiom, who blackmailed Alex. And that matter hasn’t been solved yet, am I right? I think this should be a pretty fun party. Who taught you to be so careless? So naive? Or are you just morons?”
Hairo raised his voice with each sentence, until practically shouting the last few. It seemed the party was news to him. After a pause, the security officer sighed and finished calmly:
“Next time you wanna throw a party, just let me know first. I’d like to see and hear all your conversations, too. Can you stream to my comm?”
We looked at each other, nodded. Privacy was one thing, but security was more important.
“Alright,” Hairo said. “While we’re on the subject, I suggest signing a mental non-disclosure agreement with all the clan members, the noncitizens first.”
“Mental agreement…?”
“That’s what it’s called. Put simply, it creates a mental block that prevents the disclosure of anything they know about Alex or the clan’s business.”
“How does that work?”
“It’s not an entirely legal procedure, but it’s widely practiced in corporations. It’s harmless. Works on a friend-or-foe basis. If the carrier of the knowledge is talking to someone outside of the corporation, or in our case the clan, then the ’foe’ mental trigger activates and the person simply can’t discuss secret information. Works for social media and private messages too. The mental block puts the ’foe’ tag even on empty rooms.
“What about Dis?” Malik asked.
“Works in Dis too,” the security officer nodded. “But we could do with something else there. I questioned the noncitizens and they constantly referenced a certain Behemoth. I hope you’ll introduce me to him. If he’s really as awesome as your workers say, and Alex is his favorite, then it might be worth discussing a punishment for betraying the faith. He’s a god, right? That means anyone who betrays Alex should be punished by Behemoth. But that’s just an idea. I’ll leave you for now, boys. Have fun and try to keep your lips sealed. Remember what’s at stake.”
When he was gone, Hung smacked himself on the forehead and ran after him. I looked at Ed in confusion.
“We need beer, Alex.”
Chuckling, I left my friends and sent a stuck character ticket to tech support. After a moment’s thought, I duplicated the message to Kiran Jackson, the Snowstorm director. I doubted he would answer right away, but in any case, Scyth would have to spend another year in the Nether. I really hoped he wouldn’t lose all his skills there.
Right after that, I contacted
