“What kind of fresh hell is this?” Carlton muttered to no one in particular. This new siege mission had dropped them in a rain-soaked hillside overlooking the damned creepiest hospital that the veteran Aspirant had ever seen. The horrid storm was making their more sensitive equipment act up already, and they hadn’t even been in this dimension for more than a few minutes. Still, this was nothing new. Central’s selection of Trial grounds hadn’t been exactly calm and relaxing.

  “Hope’s Memorial’s damned right,” his partner and vice commander, Zaara, answered, “The damned hosts didn’t mention it’d be this fucking wet in the brief.”

  “Like they ever tell us jackshit,” Carlton said with a frown.

  His partner shrugged. “Well, we know that there’s just the general set of monstrosities on the other side; no ghosts or ethereal crap to deal with this time. I guess we can’t wish for much more than that.”

  Carlton sighed, but Zaara had a point. The last Trial they were stuck in was almost their last since none of his or his partner’s abilities did fuck all to those intangible specters. He’d stocked up on charms and other one-use items to counter this crippling weakness, but those were expensive, and he didn’t want to use them on a relatively risk-free siege mission.

  “Fair enough, Zaara.” He shook his head and turned back to the group of 10 scouts, raising his voice to shout through the downpour. “Alright, everyone. Y’all know the drill by now! A.J.’s forces are waiting in the back, and you don’t want that mean motherfucker mad if we take too long.”

  The rain-soaked Aspirants grumbled all types of complaints and affirmations, but as carefree as they appeared, Carlton knew that these 10 were dependable. They’ve survived way too many close encounters not to have formed a close bond, and a little bit of relaxation before a new mission was one of the ways that they kept their wits about them when it really mattered.

  “Five hours,” Carlton shouted. “We start at 8 am sharp and meet back here no later than 1. That’s five minutes for last-minute prep. You’ve seen the map, Zaara’s half will check out the patient's quarters, and my group will go toward the hospital proper. We meet up in the administrative hall at 11:30 and hopefully finish up before 12:45. If shit hits the fan, don’t fucking skimp out on using the talismans. Your lives are worth more than a few thousand gold.”

  He gave the group a hard stare. They’ve lost way too many good men and women because they thought they could save a few resources. He wasn’t going to let these guys make the same mistake.

  Carlton only continued when he was sure that the people under his command understood what. These ten individuals were the best of the best that Atlus had to offer in terms of stealth and recon abilities, hence, they were tasked to scout the entire premise with such a small force. Other city-states might have a larger scouting force, but Carlton would bet anything that they wouldn’t be even half as good as his men were, even if they had ten times his numbers.

  Carlton did his own last-minute checks, and when it was finally time to go, he addressed his members one last time. “Alright, coms are working fine?”

  “They’re all good,” Dylan, their communications specialist, said. “No interference either, but emergency procedures are set just in case.”

  “Good,” he nodded. “If you think anything’s fucking with our coms, you let us know and we switch to charms.”

  “Understood, sir.”

  “Standard procedure going forth then,” Carlton continued, “Radio-silence for the first half hour as usual.” He nodded to Zaara, “Cloaks up, let’s go.”

  A shimmering veil of light washed over the Zaara’s group, and they disappeared from view. Carlton was still impressed with his partner’s abilities. Zaara was able to hide a large group of people from every scanning device that they tested, and after her last job upgrade, she could keep the ability up almost indefinitely outside of combat. That was why she was in charge of half of the scouting party, which worked best as a group. Carlton’s own forces were made for solo missions.

  Two of his members, a pair of siblings, simply vanished from view. Another member turned into smoke and dispersed into the air, while Dylan took overwatch up in the skies, disappearing into the cloud cover. The last member dissolved into the ground, and before long, Carlton was the only one standing on that lonely hillside. All of them had abilities that were damned hard to track down, and better yet, none of their powers overlapped with each other, so even if the enemy could counter one of them, it was highly unlikely that they could counter all of Carlton’s forces.

  And it wasn’t like his own powers didn’t improve either.

  Carlton smiled and stepped through into the cracks of the dimension, into the space in between things that he coined as the ether. It was never a pleasant feeling, like taking a plunge into the icy ocean in the middle of an Alaskan winter, but it was a small price to pay to sidestep so many of the more mundane security systems that he’d seen. Aside from those annoying ghosts and ghasts, nothing could follow him here, even if his combat powers were severely limited while he was in the ether.

  C: Coms check. Can everyone hear me?

  Z: Team two reads you loud and clear.

  C1: All clear.

  C2: Same.

  C3: Everything’s clear.

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  C4: Good on my end.

  C5: Clear.

  C: Good, proceed as planned. Talk only if there’s an emergency or major anomaly.

  Z: Roger.

  Once the last of the affirmations were finished, only silence greeted Carlton in his bleached-out, hollow view of the world. He approached the side of the building where the main hospital should be, and completely phased through the tall fence that surrounded the structure. He hardly felt the metal pass through his body. That was another problem with the ether. Everything, from the colors, the textures, and tastes, was washed out, distorted, or altogether missing. It was unnerving seeing the world like this, as if he were nothing more than an outside observer unable to influence anything.

  Carlton tried to do the same to a section of the wall but found that he was oddly unable to pass through it. He frowned and tried again, but once again, his body simply refused to pass through the normal-looking brick and concrete wall.

  C: Hey, Tee, can you scan the walls? Something’s off about them.

  Z4: Just a sec, boss.

  With a few minutes to kill before Tee could finish her scans, Carlton took a detour to one of the side exits to the building. He had to really concentrate to interact with the physical world while he was still in the ether, but prying open one door didn’t prove to be too hard. He squeezed himself through the gap and found himself inside the loading dock in some kind of food prep area. Various monstrous creatures wearing crude imitations of chef’s uniforms were busy butchering huge slabs of meat. Carlton was all too thankful that his sense of smell was dulled when he peeked over to see what kind of food they were dealing with.

  Z4: Scan of the walls is done, boss. Nothing seems out of the ordinary on my end, but that’s not my specialty.

  C: Never mind then the walls might be trapped or warded. I couldn’t get through it from the ether. I’ll make a note of that and have someone in the R&D team check it out later.

  Z4: Got it.

  Carlton took out his portable scanner and made a quick map of the kitchen area as he proceeded onward. He was about to dismiss this entire section of the hospital when he noticed something odd. Deep within one of the storage areas was a heavily guarded jar that was setting off every alarm from every piece of scouting equipment that he was wearing. What the hell was that thing to warrant so much protection? He didn’t risk getting too close to the object but made a note of the object’s location so that the main team could come back to check it out.

  He didn’t tarry in the storage area for much longer, choosing to exit the kitchen and step into the cafeteria. Carlton took his time to check out every nook and cranny of the area since it was such a large space, but he was surprised to see that aside from the odd staff member munching on “food”, there was nothing else of note. Where were the defensive structures? Where were the guards or soldiers? This was unlike any kind of siege mission that he’d ever encountered.

  C: Has anyone found any kind of defensive fortification so far? There doesn’t seem to be any on my end. I know that this is a bonus stage to reward us, but it can’t be this easy, right?

  Z: No… I see a bunch of sickly looking patients on my end, but Tee’s still scanning the room. Dylan, anything up above?

  C5: Nothing. There’s some slight anomalies and energy signatures. There’s two smaller ones, one in the patient wing and the other in the operating theater, and there’s a really strange one in the Admin building. Aside from that, there’s nothing to note. The staff’s just… doing creepy experiments from what I’m seeing.

  C: Those would be the bosses of this place then. I’ve only seen a few guards patrolling around; I almost thought that there wouldn’t be any big bads around.

  Z: How strong do you reckon they are?

  C: We can’t be sure about the bosses without engaging them first, but the guards appear to be a mid-tier threat, maybe upper middle. A cohort of 5 can take one on, no problem. The other staff are minor at best. What about the patients?

  Z: Basically no threat at all. It seems like our biggest challenge will be to see who can get the most points if this is what we have to face.

  C: Don’t get complacent just yet, bonus stage or not. Scout the rest of the building and see if we can learn anything about the three energy signatures.

  Z: Let’s not get our hopes up.

  C: Yeah, yeah. But tell that to A.J. That fucker still thinks we can gather information out of thin air; nothing’s going to convince him that there’s simply no information on the bosses until you fight them.

  Z: To be fair to the asshole, it’s not us fighting those monstrosities either. Let him grumble and bitch if it means we can avoid the hard work.

  C: Okay, enough talk. Get back to work. Find any unusual spots and mark ‘em down. I found a strangely guarded jar earlier, I’m willing to bet there are other secrets hidden here.

  Z: Roger, boss.

  C5: I’ll let you know if I see anything else.

  The rest of the scouting session went about as well as possible. As Carlton thought, the area where the bosses should reside was closed off, which meant that only a few small areas of the hospital were unknown to the members of Atlas. Aside from that, his group was able to map out every square inch of the hospital. The only strange part of the building was the creepy children’s room found in the basement - why that was found in a horror hospital was anyone’s guess. More than a dozen points of interest were marked down, along with the exact number of enemies that they were dealing with.

  The scouting report barely took more than fifteen minutes, and once the information was disseminated to the rest of the gathered people, the atmosphere around camp brightened considerably. They had worried about the creepy atmosphere here, but once the actual information was out there, the Aspirant’s mood all improved, including Carlton’s. His part of the operation was more or less over, and he and his party would now sit in reserve. Hell, he probably didn’t even need to act given how easy things would be and simply await the good news.

  “Let’s get this shit over with,” A.J. addressed the gathered Aspirants with a grin. “We got seven whole days to break this hospital apart, so let’s savor this opportunity and let loose. Who knows when we’ll have it this easy next. Head out!”

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