The thought of communicating with his mother through Savage made his skin hot. Something about the memory of the furred monster unhinging his jaw to take Crunch’s arm had never left him.

  He didn’t think he could use Savage as a liaison.

  Turning to Marlon, he injected as much need into his tone as he could.

  “Can you take me to San Francisco? Savage and I aren’t exactly on speaking terms.”

  Before Marlon could respond, Terraform was shaking his head.

  “Absolutely not, Terry. It’s a warzone right now.”

  “I can turn invisible!” he argued. “And I can portal out of any danger. Tell him, Marlon.”

  But when he turned toward the Traveler, the look on the man’s face wasn’t the solace of an ally, but the frown of someone forced to acknowledge a truth he didn’t care for.

  “Marlon…”

  The man grunted, furrowing his nose. “Listen, boy. I’m not one to coddle you or keep you from danger. But even I ain’t circumventing your mother’s orders. She’d string me up by my ball—”

  “Thank you, Marlon,” Terraform interrupted pointedly before turning a sympathetic look toward Terry. “I understand, Terry—truly. But those are A- and S-rankers fighting over that bay.” Terry opened his mouth to protest, but Terraform cut over him. “Imagine if one of their A-rankers took you hostage. Just think of the ramifications. Would your mother have the fortitude to let you die? Let you be tortured? Would she trade you for San Francisco? The west coast?”

  She wouldn’t do that, he wanted to say. But that would be a lie. He didn’t know how far she would go, but it was certainly further than he was willing to let her.

  He stewed in that realization, his jaw clenching and unclenching as he tried to find some other way to reconnect with her that didn’t involve Savage.

  After a few moments, he reluctantly nodded. “You’re right. Going into a warzone just to see her would be irresponsible and dangerous.” He could see Terraform visibly relax. “Would you take me to my father?”

  Marlon tilted his head. “You’re a C-ranker, too, boy. Why don’t you take us?”

  His eyebrows lifted in surprise; he was still thinking like a D-ranker.

  “Not sure I can do it in one go,” he admitted reluctantly.

  Marlon threw his hands up dramatically.

  “Oh, well in that case, might as well not even try, huh!”

  Terry stared at the man, his lips pressed tight.

  “Sometimes I forget how annoying you can be,” he said after a moment.

  Marlon grunted in acknowledgment before adding, “And sometimes I forget what a whiner you can be. Come on, Tammy, take us to Dallas.”

  Terry reached through space, angling toward where he thought the general location of Dallas was.

  “When I’m an S-ranker, I’m sending you to the moon,” he grumbled under his breath.

  “You could be the Omega himself,” Marlon fired back, “and I’d still dance circles around your rudimentary spatial control.”

  Terry snorted, shaking his head as he reached the limits of his aura. His senses were far more attuned to space and he was able to get an impression of the location even before he opened a portal. He knew it wasn’t Dallas, but it felt damn close.

  When the blue-white oval irised open before them, Marlon snorted dismissively, but didn’t say a word.

  Terry ignored the grouch, stepping through and arriving in an entirely different environment.

  Instead of the open field of grass back in Topeka, he now found himself in an industrial park surrounded by rows of warehouses. Glancing around, it wasn’t obvious what city they were in, and he didn’t have a way of locating himself spatially.

  This was the big hurdle for Travelers, he realized; how did one know where they were in relation to where they wanted to go?

  Marlon and Terraform stepped through his portal a moment later. Their passage was signified by slight tugs on his aura and he had to marvel at how easy it had been to transport them hundreds of miles.

  His sense of pride was quickly squashed by Marlon’s dismissive snort.

  “Ain’t nowhere near Dallas, boy.”

  Terry whirled on the man. “How am I supposed to get somewhere I’ve never been before?” He waved his hand vaguely. “If it’s so easy, why don’t you do it?”

  He was baiting the man obviously. Of course Marlon could get them to Dallas—he’d clearly come from there or had been there before at a bare minimum.

  What Terry was truly hoping for, was to utilize his new Master of Skill Analysis.

  Marlon fell for the bait—hook, line, and sinker—his aura effortlessly reaching through space.

  Master of Skill Analysis pinged at his attention, and he gave it free rein to activate.

  Active Powers in Range:

  Master of Space (Marlon Ockers)

  Spatial Orientation (Marlon Ockers)

  Unknown (Terraform)

  Unknown (Terraform)

  Unknown (Terraform)

  He almost forgot to activate Aura Snapshot as he read through the list of powers. A part of him had always suspected that Marlon’s Skills weren’t the same as his own. Even though Terry had learned his High-Efficiency Matter Transportation from Marlon and it had been an upgradeable Skill, there had always been a niggling feeling that he was missing some piece of the puzzle.

  Now that he recognized the naming pattern of the first power, it all made sense. Everything Terry had personally formed through experimentation was named Master of, yet his portal Skill had been different.

  It was rewarding to realize that he now had Marlon’s secret sauce recorded in his Aura Snapshot catalog, ready to be analyzed and assimilated.

  The Spatial Orientation Skill was the other piece of the puzzle and Terry felt a smile itch across his face.

  I’ve got all your secrets now, Marlon!

  He resisted the urge to rub his hands together and laugh manically just to rile Marlon up. Nonetheless, the man seemed to sense something—either in Terry’s aura or from the Aura Snapshot Skill itself—and turned to stare at him.

  Terry desperately wished he had the time to analyze the two new Skills in order to whip them out right in front of Marlon, but he suspected those would take a dedicated session to fully catalog.

  In the meantime, he was content knowing that he had a project to delve into later.

  As for Terraform’s three Unknown Skills, he suspected that was a function of the rank differential. All the same, it was powerful information to know when and how many Skills another Awakened had active. He could see it being vital intelligence in future battles.

  “What’s got you looking so smug?” Marlon grunted, a paranoid look on his face.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Terry couldn’t completely mask his pleased smile, but did his best to cover it with a shrug.

  “Nothing, Marlon. Just admiring the work of a…Master of Space.”

  Marlon’s eyes narrowed, flitting toward the portal he had opened, then back to Terry. Terry simply raised his eyebrows innocently, waving toward the portal.

  “Shall we?”

  Marlon grumbled under his breath, while Terraform simply looked between the two of them like a weary parent observing squabbling children. He was the first one through and Terry followed behind him.

  The change in atmosphere was instantaneous. They were inside a small concrete room that had the look of a prison cell. A single heavy door enclosed the space, while a two-way mirror lined one wall.

  But it wasn’t the confines of the cell that Terry felt, but the scanning sensation of a towering presence. He knew from past interactions that it was Hopper he was feeling, her senses appearing to vet them before sliding away.

  An unavoidable rush of adrenaline suffused him at the touch, reminding him of a time not too long ago when Hopper had been actively attempting to strand not only Terry, but a thousand refugees, in the furnace that was Qui Shen’s presence.

  It seemed that the Incursions had forced everyone to brush recent feuds under the rug—at least for now.

  As Marlon stepped through the portal behind him, the heavy metal door shifted, the sound of a bar being thrown back before it squeaked inward.

  A familiar man stood there, his eyes running across the three of them before nodding greeting.

  “Back with the package, Purge,” Terraform said in greeting.

  Purge—the S-ranked Disruptor of Team Dallas—nodded his head toward the outside hallway.

  “News from the Rose just came in. We’ve been waiting for you.” Terry felt his stomach flip at those words, but kept any reaction from his face as Purge looked at him. He felt the S-ranker’s senses trail over him, a flicker of disappointment in his eyes before he continued. “I see you survived.”

  Before Terry could form a reply, the man turned to go, Terraform on his heels.

  Terry glanced over at Marlon, who pinched his lips tight, then nodded for him to follow the S-rankers.

  It was only dawning on him now that he had a lot of explaining to do, and no good answers. Stealing the Singularity was one thing, something he would be hard pressed to account for.

  But not bringing it back?

  Nausea gripped his stomach as he considered the anger and accusation he might face—not only from his mother and Silver—but from the other S-rankers who were being forced to fight.

  If he had just let his mother become the Omega, these Incursions would have been averted. The millions of Atlanta would still be alive…

  He knew that letting his mother become the Omega might have had serious ramifications for the enemy that had the Weaver and all the other Systems worried…But was it worth the wholesale destruction of Earth…?

  His mind threatened to spiral away from him, guilt and regret gripping at his every thought. He forced them back, reminding himself over and over again that he’d made the right choice.

  Somehow, he couldn’t quite make himself believe the words…

  As he followed Purge, Terraform, and Marlon, they traversed a series of winding cement hallways, passing by dozens of Awakened running about on various tasks.

  The strengths on display ranged, but were mostly in the Ds or lower. While it appeared Dallas was a hub of command, most of the higher-ranking Awakened seemed to be deployed to the fronts.

  After a minute, they came to a set of doors guarded by two men in an unknown uniform—the same uniform the guard at the Topekan Memorial had been wearing.

  Unlike that guard—and most of the people running about—these two gave off powerful auras. At first, he thought they were both B-rankers, but as they neared, he realized the one on the left was an A-ranker!

  Posting an A-ranker on door duty seemed ludicrous in the context of the power scale. Which meant there was something vitally important occurring behind those doors.

  Master of Skill Analysis pinged again and he activated it out of curiosity. With a thought, he found he could filter away the Skills he’d already seen—in this case, Terraform’s three active ones—to only show the new Skills around him.

  Active Powers in Range:

  Surface Thought Examination (Unknown User)

  Hostile Intent Identification (Unknown User)

  Unknown (Unknown User)

  Unknown (Unknown User)

  Unknown (Unknown User)

  There was no indicators with Master of Skill Analysis, but he was still able to determine based on feel that the two recognized Skills belonged to the B-ranker on the right, while the three unrecognized belonged to the A-ranker on the left.

  And judging by the Skill names, the B-ranker was a Hypnotist scanning entrants before they were allowed inside.

  As for Purge, he got the impression that the Disruptor’s aura had somehow stymied his Master of Skill Analysis, as he didn’t get any indication of active Skills from the S-ranker.

  Given the nature of a Disruptor, that didn’t surprise Terry.

  With Master of Skill Analysis active, he took an Aura Snapshot, adding the two identifiable Skills to his list to be cataloged later. He could quickly see this becoming an unhealthy obsession wherein he snapshotted hundreds upon hundreds of active Skills, bloating his catalog to the point of unusability.

  But for now, it felt wasteful not to get a grip on the useful Skills he was glimpsing.

  Apparently, his Aura Snapshot wasn’t as sneaky as he had hoped, and the two guards immediately turned watchful eyes on him.

  “Release your active powers and refrain from further usage inside the chamber,” the A-ranker said gruffly. His gaze ranged across the others with familiarity before returning to Terry. “Unauthorized power usage inside the chamber will trigger our sensors and set off alarms.”

  Marlon grunted at his side.

  “They’re loud and annoying.”

  By the way the A-ranker glared at Marlon, Terry got the impression that they’d been through one or two false alarms already.

  “Thank you, Huxley. I’ll keep an eye on them in the meantime,” Purge said.

  The A-ranker—Huxley—saluted Purge, then Terraform, surprising Terry. There had never been a militaristic bent to any of the local super groups—including Team Dallas.

  When Terry looked toward Marlon with a questioning raise of his eyebrows, the man simply rolled his eyes.

  With Purge vouching for them, the two guards opened the chamber doors and stepped aside. There was a small inner chamber with two more doors, along with two more uniformed guards standing attentively. These two didn’t stop the group, though they did salute crisply after opening the doors.

  Past them lay a wide room that had over a hundred people at desks or running about. The center of the room was dominated by a large, circular table, while the far wall was a series of screens that seemed to each display a region in conflict.

  The table itself had space for dozens of people, but only a small sliver was occupied on the far side.

  Terry immediately recognized a handful of faces and couldn’t help himself as he called out.

  “Dad!”

  James Fairway’s head shot up from a report he’d been perusing, a smile broadening across his face as he pushed from his chair and ran to meet Terry.

  The two embraced in the center of the room, eliciting a few surprised stares before most people went back to their business.

  “Terry!” his dad whispered into his hair. “I was so damned worried, son! I would’ve come to fetch you myself, but I’m monitoring—”

  He cut off, pulling back the words he’d been about to say.

  “It’s Mom, isn’t it?”

  James stepped back, his hands on Terry’s arms, his eyes flitting to Terraform behind him.

  When he looked back, his expression of joy was replaced with a thinly-veiled anxiety.

  “Yes,” he replied with a sigh, “it’s your mother. She’s holding San Francisco right now against the A-ranking forces.”

  Terry felt his anxiety spike.

  “Will she be okay?”

  His father nodded sternly. “Definitely. She’ll be fine. It’s the civilians I’m worried about…” He trailed off, leaving the rest unsaid.

  Terry leaned back, shaking his head softly.

  “This is my fault, isn’t it? Because I took the—”

  “No!” James interrupted sharply. “This isn’t on you, Terry. Even if your mother had become the Omega—” He cut off, obviously wanting to say more. Instead, he glanced back at the others and bit his lip. “Come on, Whip’s been worried sick about you.” James snorted humorously. “I think even your grandfather was missing you, though he wouldn’t admit it.”

  Terry chuckled at that, following as his dad threw an arm over his shoulder and brought him to the group at the far end of the table.

  Whipvine was the first to approach, his scars dancing across his face as his expression shifted into a roguish smile.

  “Look at you!” Whipvine shouted happily. “A C-ranker, fresh from a Summons! Come here, my boy!”

  Despite how they’d left things months ago, Terry had never stopped thinking fondly of Whipvine. Other than Crunch, this man had been his anchor, more of a father to him that his own father, if he were being honest. And though he had reconciled with James, there would always be a special bond between him and Whip.

  He rushed into the Duelist’s arms, gripping him tight in a hug before pulling away.

  Whipvine smiled—an ugly look that once upon a time would’ve seen him running into his mother’s arms—and lightly punched his shoulder.

  “So? Where’d you go? Tell us all about it!”

  Over Whipvine’s shoulder, Terry met his grandfather’s eye.

  Taking a deep breath, he forced his voice steady.

  “I was summoned…to the Underworld.”

  Whipvine’s eyes went wide and he heard his father gasp at his shoulder. But he kept his gaze on his grandfather, curious about his reaction.

  The man remained stoic, only the slightest arch of a single eyebrow indicating he’d even heard Terry.

  Whipvine opened his mouth—a barrage of questions incoming, no doubt—but cut off as the Emperor approached his shoulder. Turning to the man, Whipvine barked a laugh.

  “More of a chip off the ol’ block than I woulda thought, eh, Terrence?”

  Despite Whip’s jovial mood, the Emperor didn’t smile, his eyes seeming to trace up and down Terry with an appraising look. Whipvine seemed to get the hint and took a step back to give them some space.

  After a moment that stretched into five, the Emperor held out his hand.

  “Welcome back, Terry.”

  Terry looked at that hand in surprise, casting a quick glance toward his father before meeting his grandfather’s eyes. The Emperor raised a brow at his hesitance and Terry smiled, gripping the man’s hand tight.

  “Thanks. The Underworld was…quite a trip.”

  The Emperor nodded knowingly. “You’ll have to tell me the whole story. But first—” He nodded over his shoulder. “—I do believe there are a few more friends eager to say their hellos.”

  Terry leaned around his grandfather, looking toward where he had indicated. His eyes found a group of ghouls standing at rest and he gasped in shock.

  He couldn’t help himself as he ran past the Emperor and threw his arms around Crunch. The ghoul didn’t react outwardly, but Terry couldn’t miss the love and excitement in the ghoul’s aura.

  Blood and Burg were there too, and Terry gave them quick hugs—which they received stoically on the outside, but excitedly through their aura—before he turned back to Crunch.

  Before either of them could say anything, Terry summoned his aura, shaping it in a very particular way.

  When Crunch, Burg, and Blood felt the images through that aura, he felt their pride and surprise radiating out sharply.

  As he retracted his aura, Crunch bowed low, speaking in ghoulish. His words tightened Terry’s throat.

  “Welcome back, Lightbringer. A well-deserved name.”

  Before Terry could respond, Burg and Blood simultaneously directed their own aura. It took Terry a moment to realize what they were doing, but when he did, he felt the tears slip free against his will.

  They were introducing Crunch’s name—his ghoulish name.

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