[Mission Report]

  [Successful Return! +20 Experience]

  [Main Quest Completed! +160 Experience]

  [Secondary Culling Quest Completed! +80 Experience]

  [Secondary Culling Quest Completed! +80 Experience]

  [Secondary Culling Quest Completed! +80 Experience]

  [All Quests Completed! Glorious Victory! +80 Experience]

  The weariness in her was offset by the view of that full clear. Alex tried to feel some triumph over it, but it was difficult, given the people who’d died and the fatigue from fighting the horde. If it took that kind of effort on every emergency Survey, no wonder the others were showing up tired.

  The text shifted, and she found more encouraging news.

  [Battle Maneuvers increased from 14 to 30!]

  [Motion Trance increased from 14 to 18!]

  [Combat Balance increased from 18 to 30!]

  [Combined Arms–Axe/Shield increased from 18 to 35!]

  [Holy—Storm increased from 33 to 35!]

  It turned out that diving into hordes of Grue was a fairly effective tactic for increasing her Skills. She chuckled wearily a little at the thought and then moved to the next options.

  [Battle Maneuvers has reached level 30! Skill is at Max Level and can no longer increase.]

  [Reset Battle Maneuvers to gain a Title?]

  A little curious, Alex accepted the reset. It would be the last Title she got for one of her oldest abilities, and it would be interesting to see what the Screen would give her. If anything, she hoped it would be something that would help her survive whatever she was going to face in the future.

  Once again, there was a rush of power that quickly ebbed.

  [Title Ambidextrous gained (Increases Skill grade of Battle Maneuvers, Anticipate, and Combined Arms by one.)]

  She snorted as she looked at the results. At least she’d be able to use it for something in the future, perhaps, and every enhancement helped.

  [Combat Balance has reached level 30! Skill is at Max Level and can no longer increase.]

  [Combat Balance has reached capacity for Titles. No more are available.]

  [Reset Combat Balance to add maximum levels?]

  Alex began to accept it, only to pause as a memory struck her. Technically, it was company policy to not reset abilities when on emergency Surveys. After all, she wouldn’t be training as much—to avoid injuries—and she needed her abilities to be ready for anything that got thrown at her in the future.

  Then again, they had tossed her and her team into this mess with barely any warning, and she wasn’t supposed to be on-call yet anyway…

  She reset the Skill, grimacing as potential replaced power yet again

  [Combined Arms–Axe/Shield has reached level 35! Skill is at Max Level and can no longer increase.]

  [Combined Arms–Axe/Shield has reached capacity for Titles. No more are available.]

  [Reset Combined Arms–Axe/Shield to add maximum levels?]

  This time she relented, allowing the Skill to stay as it was. After all, it wasn’t going to be a Permanent Skill, and she’d need some combat Skills if she ended up on another mission too quickly.

  [Holy—Storm has reached level 35! Skill is at Max Level and can no longer increase.]

  [Holy—Storm has reached capacity for Titles. No more are available.]

  [Reset Holy—Storm to add maximum levels?]

  Here she decided against it again. The magic had been ridiculously helpful against the horde, and even if she had exhausted it almost entirely, it might be needed in another initial fight. Again, it wasn’t a Permanent Skill. She could be patient.

  Choices made, Alex sighed and let the light wash over her…

  The moment she stepped out into the real world, she saw Orbit and his team waiting. The Emerald Bay crew was a short distance away, talking with the other Surveyors that they had rescued. One of them caught sight of Sam carrying Kim through the portal and sprinted to help. Alex spoke quickly as they approached. “Not wounded, just exhausted.”

  As the Surveyors clustered around their unconscious companion, one of the Emerald Bay executives broke off to grab her. “Was there anyone else? Anyone left inside?”

  Alex shook her head. “No. I’m sorry. We did what we could.”

  The executive’s expression was stricken, now, and he let go of her sleeve. As they backed away, a shadow fell over Alex. She looked up to find Orbit looming over her. “Valkyrie. Report. Now.”

  She tried not to narrow her eyes at the man. He’d been having a rough week, after all. “There was a horde waiting for us right next to the portal. We scattered it, but it’s already trying to reform.”

  Orbit blinked. “A horde, that’s…”

  Alex continued before he could get started. “The Theater’s full of Camps, and so is the Garage. There’s an Anchor Point forming on top of the Clock Tower, but you might be able to break it before it finishes activating. We saw a couple of Ogres, but nothing heavier than that.”

  “Just a minute.” Orbit leaned closer to growl at her. “Whether or not there was a ‘horde’ or whatever, you took forever to come back. You should have been able to be back through the portal long before—”

  She stepped right up to him, forcing him to lean back. “We got the job done, we secured the survivors, and the portal itself is clear. If you really had a problem with the timing, then you should get moving now, before the Grue recover. Anything else can wait until we’re on the tiltrotor.”

  He stared back at her for another three heartbeats. Then he snorted. “Fine. We’ll discuss it then.” Orbit glanced at the rest of his team, who were speaking in low, frustrated tones with her friends. “What are the patrols like?”

  “Twelve Soldiers, eight Knights, eight Archers, two Brutes, one Mage.” Alex shook her head. “No active Shifters, from what we saw, but that could change when you go in. You should be able to make it to the Theater or the Tower before one arrives. If you have time, the Pawn Shop has an Outpost you can harvest.”

  Orbit continued to ask her a handful more questions, mostly about how to locate the various targets that he and the others were going to hit. Then he and the rest of the C ranks jogged up and through the vortex, their faces already grim. Alex watched until they vanished and then turned to the others.

  She found them already heading for a side room, following an Emerald Bay employee. As she started after them, one of the Surveyors caught hold of her elbow. When she looked back, she found Jonathan staring at her. “Thank you. I know you didn’t have to. You could have just left us.”

  Alex smiled. “No, I really couldn’t.” She extended her hand, and the other Surveyor shook it, tears in his eyes. “Take care of your people. They’ll need it.”

  He nodded and swiped at his face for a moment. Then he went back to the rest of the survivors. She watched him go, trying not to remember the fact that eight people just like them hadn’t made it out of the trap. It was hard, especially, to not feel anger flickering at the edges of her mind when she realized that someone, somewhere, had made this happen, on purpose, for nothing more than money.

  Instead, she turned and jogged after the rest of her team. They’d done their best today, and she needed to find her phone. Otherwise, her parents would not be happy, and neither would Royal Purple Contracting when the Crimson Blade set their building on fire.

  Orbit and his team were inside the portal for almost two hours, during which time the magical energy crackling through the vortex dropped sharply. One of the Emerald Bay employees had a live feed to their PAD monitoring systems, and they showed her when each of the levels dropped.

  Alex hadn’t really needed it, however. She could see it just fine in the way that the portal lurched and diminished. The scent of magic filling the air began to retreat, and she felt herself relaxing more as time went on.

  By the time the C rank team exited the portal, the energy levels were nearly normal. They were still high for the portal, historically, but it was no longer threatening a full-scale Escalation Event, and there were no signs that another spike in activity level was on its way.

  Alex and the rest of her team had napped and eaten, trying to recover from the work they had put in. Clara looked like she was hungover, and Alex could sympathize. Completely running out of magic was almost as draining as exhausting herself physically. Worse, in some ways; it seemed like her increased stamina had nothing to do with getting her magic back.

  She had put her chair in a place where she could look out the doorway and see the portal, so when Orbit and the others exited, Alex was up and walking over to them immediately. The others reluctantly shoved themselves out of their own seats to follow her.

  Orbit and the others looked as if they had been through the wringer, but none of them looked any worse injured than they had going into the portal. Alex saw Orbit look in her direction, and then look away. She and the others fell in behind him as he went to speak with the Emerald Bay executive that was waiting there.

  His voice was an exhausted growl. “The portal is stable. We’ll be leaving the rest of the cleanup to you.”

  The executive nodded. “Thank you, Surveyor.”

  Orbit stomped towards the tiltrotor, with the rest of the two teams following. Alex pictured what the ride home would be like and sighed. It was going to be a long day, after all.

  To Orbit’s credit, he only spent ten minutes of the hour and a half ride back to the Royal Purple compound lecturing her. Once it became clear the motion of the tiltrotor was making her more uncomfortable than his critique, he mostly just settled back and glowered at her for the remaining duration of the ride.

  They landed in the tower almost seven hours after the emergency had been called. Night had fallen hours ago, and they staggered off the Greyhawk together and headed for the dorms in a tired, weary bunch.

  Warner, of course, was waiting for them as they passed through the offices. He beamed with the repulsive freshness of a man that had gotten far too much rest confronting those who had not. “Congratulations on another successful Survey! I understand that Emerald Bay is now one of our clients, and I am sure that your hard work has contributed to their decision to sign with us. Well done!”

  He slapped Orbit on the shoulder. The bulky C rank gave the executive a glare, but his heart didn’t seem to be in it. Warner nodded to Alex as she passed, though his expression seemed to be a bit hollower when he saw her. She ignored him and headed for the elevator.

  They reached the dorms and went straight to their rooms. Alex barely had enough time to send her parents a brief text confirming that she had survived the flight home. Then she fell into her bed and began a deep and dreamless sleep.

  The next morning dawned far too early.

  Alex grumbled a few complaints to that effect before she finally dragged herself out to face the day. The only potential bright spot, ironically, was that it was cloudy; there wouldn’t be a sky full of cheerful sunshine to mock her dark mood. Her dreams the night before had not been comfortable ones, filled with Grue and panicking Surveyors and cackling Greylight executives. It had set her up to fully appreciate the atmosphere set by dark clouds and a cold wind.

  When she made it outside in her running gear, for half a heartbeat she almost thought that she was in the other world. At the same time, the gloomy sky lacked a certain… something about it that reassured her. Perhaps it was just the knowledge that a blue sky and bright sun lurked beyond that grey ceiling, only temporarily hidden by the weather. Maybe it was something deeper, something that she had sensed during their Raid at Golden Swallow. Either way, she shook off the foreboding feeling and looked around to see if Sam was waiting for her.

  He was there, leaning back against a nearby light post and staring up at the sky. When she drew near, he looked down and smiled, a little twist of the lips more than a genuine expression. His dark eyes had bags under them, as if he hadn’t slept well either. “Well, good morning to you, Valkyrie.”

  Alex rolled her eyes. “You look as cheerful as I am this morning. Still a bit worn out?”

  “More had trouble sleeping, actually.” He shrugged and fell in beside her as she jogged down the sidewalk. “Yesterday was a little too… familiar.”

  She grunted. “Yeah. A little too much like what we fought before.” They ran in silence for a long moment, and she glanced over at him. “Did you find anything?”

  Sam glanced at her, his eyebrows raised. “Should I be flattered or insulted that you assumed I’ve already been looking?”

  Alex laughed a little. “Well, it was either that, or you look like death-warmed-over because of how excited you are for our upcoming week of on-call duty.”

  He muttered something under his breath that she didn’t quite catch. Then he spoke a little louder. “Greylight doesn’t own any property near the Emerald Bay portal. Not a warehouse, apartment, or office building within twenty miles of the place. No storage units, either.”

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  “You checked their subsidiaries too, right?”

  Sam gave her a flat look, and she grimaced. “I had to ask, all right?”

  He faced forward again. “Nothing there either. I even spent a little bit of time calling some of the hotels in the area, just to make sure that nobody had rented a space under an assumed name. After all, they’d still need to live somewhere while they were working on the thing.”

  Alex glanced at him. “Anything there?”

  “Only one thing popped up.” His expression grew very serious, his dark eyes narrowed. “There weren’t any long-term stays planned or anonymous groups scheduled out there for the past few months. I did find one guy who came in the day before the portal went haywire, though.”

  She blinked. “The day before?”

  “And he left the day after.” Sam shook his head. “It was one of Warner’s assistants. Carl Ecks. Apparently, he came in to talk with Emerald Bay about signing up. It’s why they called us in so quickly.”

  Alex was quiet for several strides, digesting the information. Obviously, Warner’s assistant just happening to be in the area wasn’t even close to a coincidence. It was the same kind of thing as the old fire departments and their arson scams. If anything, they were being extremely blunt about what they were doing. Someone competent would have at least let a week lapse before attacking the portal.

  She shook her head. It still didn’t tell her how they were doing it. One person couldn’t replicate what had happened at Golden Swallow by himself from a hotel room, especially not with barely two days’ time. “It’s definitely them. The only question is how they’re doing it.”

  Sam grinned, the first time she’d seen him genuinely smile since they’d gone in the portal at Emerald Bay. “Well, yeah. It also tells us that whatever is going on, it’s probably being coordinated through Royal Purple, not some other branch of Greylight. Otherwise, Warner’s people wouldn’t be involved.”

  “Which means that they’d have to know what was going on, and how it was happening. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be able to arrange to be in exactly the right place to scoop up the pieces.” Alex’s eyes narrowed. “So, how do we bust them?”

  He chuckled, though it sounded a little breathy. Apparently, Marathoning hadn’t gotten as high as it needed to keep up with Motion Trance. “We can keep an eye on Warner’s little minions. When they move… we’ll know something’s up.”

  Alex turned the next corner, and he scrambled to catch up. She waited until he had drawn even with her before continuing. “How do we do that?”

  Sam went quiet for a few strides. Then he shrugged. “I’ll figure out… a way.”

  She nodded. “All right, then.” Then she grinned. “We couldn’t do it without you, Sneak.”

  He rolled his eyes, grinning again. “Of course… not. You’d be lost… in the woods.”

  Alex laughed, and they settled in for the rest of the run, their pace taking them in a wide loop around the hanger where the Greyhawk they had ridden the day before was undergoing maintenance. She shuddered a little as she saw it; the last thing she needed right then was another reminder of the nightmarish ride. It was a relief when they got around the edge of the hangar and the aircraft disappeared. Better to rely on her own two feet.

  Abbott was waiting for them in the training room after breakfast. His expression was clearly concerned as he looked them over for injuries, but he eventually smiled. He spread his arms wide as they approached. “Well then! Here come the conquering heroes. How did your first response mission go?”

  Alex took a quick glance at the others. Then she smiled back. “We survived.”

  Abbott’s smile faded a little, but he nodded in understanding. “Any injuries I should know about? Anyone need to head to the infirmary?” When they shook their heads, he nodded again. “All right. From what I’ve heard, the D ranks who made up the other teams have enough Surveyors to cover the rest of the week for on-call, so Warner has graciously released you to me for training again. Do you think you’d be up for another spar, Valkyrie?”

  Alex blinked. She mentally went back over her reset combat Skills and forced a grin. “Sure.”

  “Good.” He looked at the others. “I’ll give you each a shot once she’s a bit more tired, but I think the other teams will be more than happy to give you a challenge. Don’t go too hard, though. You’ll be up on assignment next week.”

  As they agreed and wandered off to join the rest of the D ranks, Abbott gave her a teasing bow and gestured to the nearest training cage. “If you would join me for a moment, Alex?”

  She snorted and grabbed an axe and shield on her way in. At the very least, she wasn’t going to be bored.

  “So, I heard you had an interesting Survey last night.”

  They were taking a brief break between bouts. Abbott wasn’t tired, of course, but he was pretending he was worn out enough to need a drink of water. Alex, for her part, felt like she’d thrown herself into another horde. The fact that she was walking slowly around the room to keep Motion Trance engaged was helping things a little, but a part of her wondered if she had gone a bit overboard by giving Abbott the idea to train her personally.

  She finished the drink of water she’d been taking and nodded. “Yep. Seems like something went pretty wrong over there.”

  It was an effort to keep her voice casual, and something about the way Abbott tilted his head told her she hadn’t entirely succeeded at keeping the edge out of her voice. “Went wrong, huh? On a scale of one to ten, what would you say it was at?”

  Alex smirked a little. “Oh, a seven or an eight. So about one or two lower than usual for me.”

  He let out a huff of amusement. “No sign of Liliana, though?”

  She shook her head. “No. I’m betting she’s still licking her wounds, or hasn’t been able to find me again.” Alex took another drink. “Actually, bouncing around between portals might make it even harder for her to catch me. So there’s that.”

  Abbott frowned. “Of course, that would mean that you expect to be going to a lot of different portals. I know last week was busy, but I don’t think we usually have that many emergencies to cover, especially since you’re still a D rank.”

  Alex argued with herself for a moment before she spoke again. “I think Warner might have plans to change that, actually.”

  The other Surveyor gave a quick bark of laughter. “Oh, come on. He’s a CEO, but not even he could… cause…”

  Abbott’s eyes suddenly sharpened, and he looked at Alex with an entirely new expression. It seemed very close to the one he’d been wearing when he had faced Liliana. She met his eyes and schooled her face so that it wouldn’t give away anything. When he tilted his head, his expression becoming incredulous, she just raised her eyebrows and shrugged.

  Then she turned away and took another drink. A moment later, he seemed to find his voice again. “That seems unlikely, Valkyrie.”

  The change in name did not go unnoticed, nor did the fact that he was scanning the training room like he was expecting Shifters to jump out of the corners. Of course, depending on what Greylight had been up to, he might not have been wrong.

  She suppressed a smile and faced forward again. “Why do you say that? We’re under new management, right?”

  “We still have the same mission, though.” Abbott glanced at her long enough to raise an eyebrow. “We won’t do anyone any good if we aren’t looking like heroes.”

  Alex nodded. “And busy heroes are productive heroes, right?” He glanced at her again, a chagrined expression on his face. “I’m just saying, it’d be pretty convenient if a lot of our new clients just happened to get an offer of protection from us just before things went wrong.”

  He glanced at her a third time. Then he slowly gave a reluctant nod. “That would be… suspicious.” He fell silent for a few moments, and then he laughed. “Man. Did you give Forsmith this much trouble back in the day?”

  “Almost as much as he gave me. Probably more, actually.” Alex smiled briefly at her memories of the stern C rank.

  Abbott snorted. “I can imagine it. You know he mentioned you to me, right?”

  She blinked and looked back at him. “Really?”

  “Sure.” He shrugged. “We had a habit of gossiping about new Surveyors, keeping each other up to date on what we could expect. You know, which ones could fight, which ones were reckless, that kind of thing. Just so we wouldn’t get blindsided by a dangerous loose cannon.”

  Alex winced. “I gave him that bad of an impression, did I?”

  The C rank shook his head. “Quite the opposite, actually. He told me you were driven, serious, and a bit too brave for your own good. Maybe a little dangerous, but someone to watch out for. In a good way.” Abbott paused. “He told me that just a day or so before the incident, actually.”

  She turned away, feeling wetness in her eyes. It had to have been the time she came back from the Survey late to find him waiting for her. They’d talked, and then, just a short time later, he’d been gone. Just like Zach.

  Grief crashed in for a long moment, and Alex drew in a deep, shuddering breath. She focused, gathering that cloud of pain that had ambushed her, condensing it into a dense fog.

  Then she remembered Greylight, and Liliana, and Wells, and her anger lit a match. The mental miasma burned slowly, but it did burn. Her fingers clenched for a moment, and then relaxed. She brought her head back up and saw him watching her from the corner of her eye. Alex shook her head. “He was a good man. I don’t know if I told you that. He deserved better.”

  Abbott nodded. “I know.”

  Alex looked at him directly, anger burning in her eyes now. “And so do you. You told me when I got here that you didn’t want to write my name on that thing.” She hooked a thumb over to the small monument in front of the portal. “Well, I don’t want your name on there, either. Got that?”

  He studied her for a moment. Then he grinned. “Who protects the protectors, I believe it was?” She flushed red, and his smile grew. “Then I guess we should train hard enough to make sure that neither of us ends up disappointing the other, huh? You ready to head back in?”

  She nodded, not entirely trusting her voice. If there was one thing she needed right now, it was to hit things. Everything else could wait.

  The next two days were a blur of constant training and lectures. Abbott drove her hard, as if he was determined to help her get past her own thoughts, and to his credit, it worked. As her Skills improved, she fell more and more into the rhythm of fighting in the training cages and the arena. Even the lectures on the different portals the company serviced grew more interesting, given that within a handful of days she would likely see some of them.

  Unfortunately, despite their efforts, none of her friends turned up any more information about the plots being carried out by Warner’s minions. There was another alert call, but it was a more normal one. At the very least, none of the D ranks that had gone on the mission reported anything like the massive horde that Alex and her friends had encountered, and they seemed relieved that it had been a straightforward call by comparison.

  Sam spent an inordinate amount of time trying to find out more about the company through the support staff. He became a common sight around the offices, talking with everyone from janitors to security personnel to receptionists. None of them could tell him anything about what Warner was up to, however, and he grew more and more frustrated as time kept passing him by.

  Joanna had chosen a different tack. She pretended to have a newfound interest in the Greyhawks, and started to hang around the maintenance hangars, with the idea that Warner’s minions might eventually start using the aircraft for their plans. The mechanics and pilots accepted her curiosity with bemused professionalism, and to the Adept’s surprise, she genuinely began to enjoy it. She started to come back to the dorms with stories about rotors and engines and a half a dozen other things that Alex couldn’t quite keep track of.

  Clara had her own plans. She chatted with the other teams, trying to get as much information as she could from them. They turned out to be a wonderful source of gossip. If anyone had needed to know who was secretly going out with who, or which Surveyors were gunning for the top spots, and which had grudges, Clara quickly became the person to talk to. Unfortunately, none of the D ranks knew anything more about Warner than Alex and her friends already knew, and the C ranks treated her with aloof patience that defied her attempts to get to know them.

  Alex, for her part, focused on a bit of extra training. She hung around the training cages, practicing her attacks and trying to come up with new ways to fight. The fact that she had nearly run short of stamina and magic during the attack on the horde was galling to her, and she knew she needed to be stronger the next time. A second run, this one before bed, only helped increase her Motion Trance, so that she would be faster. She poured herself into the work, hoping that by the time her on-call week rolled around, she would be ready. A voice that sounded like Ed kept whispering that if she’d been quicker during the last mission, Kim wouldn’t have been alone.

  It was getting harder to ignore.

  Then, on the morning of the third day after the emergency mission, Alex looked up at a knock on her door.

  She was already dressed for her run, so she walked over to open it. Maybe it was Sam coming to collect her so that he could go over his latest theories, but she doubted it. He seemed to avoid showing up uninvited.

  When she opened the door, she found Abbott waiting for her. He folded his arms. “Alex. Just a reminder, today’s your day off.”

  She blinked. “I know. I was just going to put in a little extra training so—”

  “You have family in town, right?” Abbott waited until she reluctantly nodded. “Lisa told me that last time your mother had to show up and drag you home. Do you want her to have to do that again?”

  Alex winced. She didn’t have to sound sincere this time. “No.”

  His expression turned terribly smug. “Then I would suggest dropping in to see how they are doing. Calling them is nice, but it’s no replacement for the real thing.” Abbott paused, and he leaned forward to put a hand on her shoulder. “Training is a good thing, Alex, but there is such a thing as doing a bit too much. Go get some time to clear your head, and then you can go back to burning the candle at both ends if you want to, okay?”

  She grumbled something that he seemed to take as an agreement, and he stood back. “All right then. Give my best to your parents, and I’ll see you when you get back tomorrow.”

  He waved goodbye and started off down the hallway, humming some song to himself. Alex glared after him for a moment and then sighed. Whether or not she liked to admit it, he was right. Running herself ragged another day wasn’t going to stop whatever Warner had planned, and maybe her parents had an idea about what to do.

  With a sigh, she closed the door and searched out a set of casual clothes to wear, just a shirt and jeans that wouldn’t stand out. At the very least, it would be good to be out of uniform for a while.

  “And to what do we owe this sudden surprise?” Her father’s booming voice made Alex groan. He still swept her off her feet in a hug that still made her ribs creak a little, though not as much as it had in times past. Eric hadn’t lost any strength, of course, but she was tougher now. A lot tougher.

  When he set her down, she rolled her eyes. “I… might have been going a little too hard at work. My boss decided I needed to remember how to slack off, so I came to see you guys.”

  Eric’s snort was eloquent, and he backed into the hallway to allow her into the house. “I really need to meet this Abbott fellow. He seems to be a decent man, unlike your last manager. Or the one before that, actually.”

  Alex chuckled to herself as she followed him back to the kitchen. “I guess him not trying to kill me is an improvement, yeah.” She reached the kitchen and looked around curiously. “Where’s Mom? Is she out back practicing?”

  He shook his head. “Not today, no. She’s almost as bad as you are, but I managed to convince her to go out for groceries.” Eric’s chuckle warmed Alex’s heart. “She’s been playing up that disguise of hers lately. I think she’s trying to make sure it sticks in people’s minds around here. New neighbors, and all that.”

  She nodded. It had always seemed like the more Muriel exaggerated things, the more people believed them. Over the years, she’d actually become quite good at acting. Of course, the Crimson Blade had been just another persona as well, in the end, so maybe it was just a skill she’d developed before she’d nearly been killed.

  Alex shook her head, drifting over to look at the backyard. It seemed much more cramped than their last house, almost like it barely fit anything at all in the space between the fences. At the very least, it didn’t look like the neighbors had any windows poking over to invade their privacy, but it still seemed like she might not have a very good chance to duel with her today. Training or no training, it might help to clear her head.

  Eric cleared his throat, and Alex jumped a little. She realized she’d just been staring out the window for a few moments longer than she’d meant to. When she turned around, she saw her father studying her. “Sorry. I was just… thinking.”

  “I know.” Eric smiled gently. “I’ve had a few of those moments myself. Your mother does too. It happens.”

  Alex walked over to the counter and hopped up to sit on it. “I just… it still hits me sometimes. How many people are just…”

  Eric waited a moment, and then said the word for her. “Gone.” She nodded, and he continued. “It’s part of the cost, my dear. All three of us chose a way to serve and protect people, but in the end, we can’t do it all. We can only do our best.”

  She nodded, but stayed silent. He sighed. “Your last Survey. It was a bad one, wasn’t it?”

  Alex looked up. He was watching her, not pushing, just waiting patiently. She nodded again. It was an effort to say anything. “We lost eight of them. It probably happened before we got there. I couldn’t have done anything.”

  “It probably doesn’t feel that way, though.” He leaned back against the refrigerator. The appliance shifted a little from his weight. “It never does after we have a bad fire.”

  She heaved a sigh. Memories of Zach flooded her head for a moment before she packed them away. With another sigh, she looked up. “Any advice about how to deal with it? Or does it just get easier on its own?”

  Eric shook his head, clearly not liking the answer any more than she did. “I don’t think it ever gets that much easier. You just use it to fuel what you do going forward.” He paused. “You’re still going ahead with all of this, right? You don’t want to stop being a Surveyor?”

  Alex gave him an incredulous look. “I do. I can do good here.”

  He folded his arms and chuckled. “I know. You can’t blame a father for trying, though.” A distant look filled his eyes, and he looked out the window. “I always thought that it took bravery to throw myself into burning buildings. Then it was courage to watch my wife do the same thing with portals. Seeing my daughter do it, though…”

  She pushed herself off the counter and crossed over to him, giving him a quick hug. “I’m going to be all right, Dad. It’s just hard today.”

  Eric shrugged. “Well, I might worry less if you found yourself less trouble, you know! Every single corporation has had some kind of conspiracy so far.”

  “To be fair, I think that says more about the corporations than it does about me.”

  He grimaced. “True.” The front door creaked open, and he smiled. “Honey? Do you need a hand?”

  “Oh, I’m all right, dear.” The quavering voice lasted until the door thumped closed again. At that point Alex heard more thumps as Muriel started to disassemble her disguise. “Some kind soul actually helped me to the bus and everything. Didn’t have the heart to tell him I could lift it all without even noticing… Well, here she is!”

  Muriel walked into the kitchen and held her arm out. She gave Alex the same kind of rib-crushing hug with her single arm and then held herself out to run her eye over her daughter. “Still intact, I see. That is encouraging.”

  Alex smiled. “Yeah.”

  Her mother’s expression suddenly softened. “Oh. It was a bad one, wasn’t it?” Alex didn’t have time to respond before her mother dragged her into another hug, this one a bit tighter than before. She thought she heard her spine creak. “It’s going to be okay, Alex. I know you did your best, and there are people who made it home because you gave it your all. That’s enough for you to give.”

  The words shouldn’t have meant much, but it struck something deep down. She buried her face in her mother’s neck, even as her father’s arms went around them both. It was a long time before either of them let go.