Once power was restored to the elevator network and the rest of the building, the Lus3rs assembled in their Office Pool. All of them sat in their chairs letting them stitch up the wounds. There wasn’t much for each of them to say other than that Flav, Patti, and Farhad’s time were rather uneventful, whereas Belinda, Daisuke, and Maxi all had a run-in with a Grutomaton or two.

  They all generally seemed to like Maxi’s new pet though some of them were nervous that it was a grutomaton. Dalek wasn’t contagious as far as any of them knew as none of the other electronics the creature came in contact with beasted out. It was well known that an infectious machine would infect others quickly as it was only seconds from infection to full beasting.

  Belinda offered to let Dalek stay in the workshop because the pens where employees kept their pets didn’t allow grutomatons in the area. While there wasn’t a company policy against having one as a pet, the conventional wisdom said that the creature would eventually go feral and turn on Maxi. She had also heard a lot of the same rumors about pitbulls and any one of those dogs she ever met seemed like a drooling, happy dog.

  While they were catching up with each other, Maxi casually asked why Daisuke was in IT to begin with. His face darkened, and he said that he didn’t want to share. Maxi shrugged it off to make the question seem casual, but she still couldn’t get the fact out of her head that he could be going the way of Yancy.

  When she had a moment after social time was done, and people returned to their computers to do some menial labor, she checked the list she had received from Von Patrick, and he was on it. While she couldn’t be sure about the list of other names, what Cassidy said did ring true, they ranged from people who worked in IT according to the company directory to folks that didn’t seem like a threat.

  Maxi didn’t want to discount anyone though, because in a world where possession was a thing, anyone could be an agent of the enemy. At the same time, there wasn’t any solid evidence that Yancy was possessed either. He could have just been an ass hat from the start. People have normal seeming childhoods all the time and turn out to be serial killers.

  Maxi needed something more before implicating one of her own in a conspiracy to take down the company. She wished her uncle was more talkative about why Yancy bothered him so much. Most of her uncle’s information hadn’t been very helpful, including Henry Breakwater’s file. As promised, she received it after completing her Uncle’s quest. Her father’s file was like any other employee file.

  It had his biographical information, his class, Generalist, no surprise there, tier, level, and information you’d expect of a power twelve. To her surprise, her mother wasn’t in his Office Pool, which made sense, Office Pools of the Power Twelve were more like hollywood entourages. She once heard that big stars would travel with their doctor, psychiatrist, fitness coach, private cook, and all the people they had on staff just to support their film career. Maxi couldn’t imagine boarding a plane with ten people that were hired just to keep your life going as it is. Then again, she probably wouldn’t ever have to get on a plane again if she stayed at the company.

  His yearly employee evaluations were all exemplary. Maxi retched at the idea of Ted filling out one about her. There weren’t any disciplinary notes, save one about unauthorized travel to a quarantined dimension though much of the document had been redacted and was outside her clearance level.

  And that was it, other than a copy of the contract he signed when he started working for the company. The sum total of a person’s life in supervisor evaluations, hiring paperwork, and demographic information. When she confronted her uncle about it via text, he said that it was his employee file not his personal storage space.

  Her dad’s personal storage had been given to her mother after he died. As much as she hated it, she was going to have to talk to her mother. She felt like interrogating her mom was the equivalent of grilling a war vet about memories they rather not relive. Tara had done more than enough for the company.

  “Hey Farhad,” Maxi leaded over her cubicle wall. He was listening to headphones and playing a first-person shooter that was all the rage with employees with the credits to spare. While their plan to buy out contracts was still being funded through quest earnings, they also did not decide to live like monks either.

  There was a lot to be said about having the time to relax, it made them sharper when they were on duty. Even so, they had all decided what was the acceptable amount of frivolous spending between them, so one person would just play video games all day while people do menial labor.

  He paused the game and said, “What’s up?”

  “You know how you are my Warehouse 13 one?” Maxi said. It was their code for she wanted to tell himself that something that she didn’t want the rest of the group to hear.

  “Yeah?”

  “Want to take a walk?”

  “Sure,” he said and put his computer into sleep mode.

  Belinda said she’d take Dalek to the workshop for a diagnostic, and Maxi called the magic elevator after the Inventor and the fluttering pet left. There was a long wait before the door opened. She and Fardhad went into the elevator. She pressed the button and said a mall that was a short walk from her mom’s place in the Bronx. She wanted to take Farhad with when she talked with her mom, just in case things took a turn in the conversation.

  One thing that was true about Maxi’s mother as well as herself is that they were both stubborn individuals. Neither of them would budge in situations that looking from the outside, should be something they should give. When she was tween, she had wanted to go to her first rock concert. Her mom gave her permission to go but wanted to go with her.

  She was mortified by the prospect of her mom being at the concert, and they fought. Neither of them would back down from their position. Maxi’s assertion that she was old enough to take care of herself, and her mom just wanted to be there for her. It was an ugly fight, but there was middle ground, and her father found it by offering to take her but would wait in the car.

  Tara hadn’t been a fan of the solution but acquiesced to it eventually. Maxi also didn’t like the idea of her father lurking outside the concert hall, but in hindsight, it was probably the solution that was best for them all. She would be free to be with her friends at the concert without a parent lurking over her shoulder, but he would also be there if she needed him.

  While Maxi never experimented with drugs, it was definitely a deterrent for her knowing she would be riding home with her father later. While Maxi was rebellious as a teen, always seeking to pave her own way rather than accepting the wisdom of others, she had steered clear of recreational drug use. She was too much of a control freak to do anything that took her out of her own mind.

  The possibility of Yancy being possessed by nefarious force was deeply unsettling. She didn’t like the thought of not being in control of one’s actions. Another reason she wanted to be sure about Daisuke before acting against him. She was thankful that she could trust Farhad in that regard. Then again, he could be under the influence of a demonic power too. Sometimes, she hated this job.

  The elevator door opened to the third floor of the mall, which also happened to be where her favorite game store used to be located. The spot was now a nail salon, but she had many good memories of midnight releases waiting outside for them to open the cage for the special events. She used to love buying video games from the store, tearing open the ridiculous amount of packaging, looking at all the goodies that came inside.

  It was an experience that was squarely in her childhood as the entire industry had changed, and people would be waiting on their home systems, waiting for the download to trigger at midnight. There would be lots of goodies in the special editions, but it wasn’t the same. There was something visceral about the experience.

  Her connection was why the elevator brought her to the third floor rather than the others. The elevators had a telepathic connection that would interpret her thoughts when she wasn’t specific with the destination. Another reason why Albuquerque was so hard to decode. She didn’t know what was going through her father’s head when he said it.

  They walked through the mall together in silence for a bit, and Maxi decided to lay it all out, the important piece of information she failed to receive from Von Patrick, the sidequest that could indicate Daisuke’s possession, and her talk with Cassidy. She even showed him the list of employees who accessed the server room recently. At this point, Farhad knew so many company secrets that she had told him he could get her terminated.

  But she trusted him and after it was all over, he teased. “I think Cassidy likes you.”

  She punched him on the shoulder and said. “Is that all you can say? What about Daisuke?”

  “No, really, I think Cassidy likes you.” He said more seriously.

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Think about it this way. Let’s say Cassidy had it out for you or the Lus3rs more generally. It would be a whole lot easier for her to keep quiet on the subject of Daisuke, and let him tank our pool for her.”

  “At the expense of the Company? If he was possessed then he’d be directly responsible for the worst monster attack since I started.”

  “Same here, more perms than ever before, but still in acceptable limits if you are thinking about in terms of numbers.”

  “But these are people!” Maxi said, a little too loud, and a woman pushing a double stroller veered away. Maxi got quieter. “The company's problem is treating people like they are numbers.”

  “Yeah,” Farhad said. “At our level. But think about it from Cassidy’s view. She can’t fight every battle herself, so she has PIs do it for her, at some point, it becomes a game of numbers. She knows there will be losses, that’s the nature of battle, so you start measuring success in terms of number of losses.”

  “Sounds like you are justifying the business as usual crap. Same reason why nothing changes. Some asshole wants to buy another yacht, so the shit they dump on their workers is acceptable losses.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far. I was just illustrating how Cassidy thinks. She can’t meet everyone individually, shake everyone’s hand, fight every battle, so at some point she has to think in numbers. And if she wanted you dead, a possessed teammate would be the way to go, and the added bonus of getting Daisuke to reveal himself before he’s a threat to her.”

  “I don’t think any of us are a threat to her.”

  “Yancy was when he finally revealed himself, so by warning you of her suspicions. I think she likes you.”

  “Okay, she likes me. Hooray,” Maxi said with a deadpan voice. “Still doesn’t help us with Daisuke.”

  “No, but I don’t think it’s Daisuke.”

  “I thought you said that Cassidy likes me! Why would she be sending me after my own teammate?”

  “Because she doesn’t have a better answer,” Farhad said. “Show me the list again.”

  Maxi pulled out her phone and gave it to Farhad after she opened Von Patrick’s file. They had traveled down the escalators to the ground floor, and were leaning against a wall near the entrance. Maxi glanced around and people were going about their business. There wasn’t anyone lingering.

  Farhad scrolled through the names, and said. “These three are IT employees and work in the server room. One of them is permadead from the attack. This guy is an accountant class, too obvious for another possession case.”

  “Unless Yancy lured one of his fellow accountants.”

  “Once again, too obvious. Yancy spent most of the time working under the radar. He only revealed himself when there was no other choice, and where he’d be able to escape.”

  “How did he escape? The Power Twelve went Avengers on him.”

  “Your guess is as good as mine, all the security feeds into the server room were down, but regardless of how, he knew he couldn’t beat them in a straight fight, so he controlled the situation as best he could so he could slip away.”

  “Anyway, even if it was the accounting guy, he doesn’t have any battle skills. Same with these other three.”

  “Maybe Yancy’s skills came from the demon inside?”

  “Perhaps, but if you were about to release a bunch of monsters, do you want a host with low stats? Yancy had plenty of time and opportunity to raise his ambition, dedication, and speed.”

  “If host stats matter to the entity, then how did Yancy go toe-to-toe with the Power Twelve?”

  “Maybe he didn’t. All we know is that the server room was trashed and a lot of the Power Twelve were critically wounded in the process. We think battle, but did they ever say it was a battle? Or are we just all thinking that when half the Power Twelve come out on stretchers?”

  “Why would they lie?”

  “Not offering the truth isn’t the same as lying. If you were caught off guard in a trap, would you admit your weakness to all the people below you, gunning for your position? Sometimes, it’s better to let rumors do work for you. There is nothing more powerful than the stories we tell. Rather than the humiliation of a lower tier employee getting the drop on them, let them think it was something powerful, and their heroics are the only reason you are alive.”

  “They have to have told someone about what happened. They answer to Upper Management,” but even as she said it, she wondered how much Upper Management were just powerful players masquerading as gods or maybe there was no one running the show. Maybe Upper Management was the illusion to make everyone feel like there was someone in charge, steering the ship. There was also a chance that they were all just cogs in a massive machine that had no one in charge, and it just seemed that way because the system was too complex to be random events.

  Some people believed there was an intelligent omnipotent force that created the universe because of the elegance of its design. Variables and conditions were perfect for life to evolve and eventually become aware to understand just how easy a little tweak to physics and there would be no life at all. A person could argue for the existence of an intelligent force that designed everything because of the balance of nature.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  However, the inverse could also be true, that they all had just gotten lucky. Humanity lucked out during the Big Bang when there was just enough matter over antimatter to form planets and stars. They lucked out again when gravity was just enough over dark energy to form galaxies, stars, and planets. Another dice roll and a carbon was just right for folding into proteins for plants and animals.

  It could be that the system is so complex that people think something must be in charge. There has to be god or gods guiding the universe, connecting the dimensions, and responsible for the whole show but in reality, when dice are rolled enough times it begins to look like an intelligent system. Maxi pictured a massive intergalactic ship hurdling through the void, and every Branch did their part to keep the ship going, but with no one on the bridge to steer, no one knew where they were going.

  Farhad and Maxi exited the mall, and went out onto the street. There was the honking of horns, bustle of foot traffic, and everything Maxi had grown up with living in one the densest population centers on Earth. There was a falafel vendor, a grubby man holding a cup out for spare change, and NPCs strode past unaware of the hidden dangers of their city.

  They turned down a street where several ten to twenty story brick buildings were packed together, one of them still had a fading cola ad from days where people had to buy their pop from a soda fountain. She used her key to open a gated door to the lobby that wasn’t the dingiest in the Bronx, but wasn’t exactly luxury.

  There was a vase with the same fake floral display that was in every floor of the building, a rickety staircase, and an old single elevator. There was still a loose tile near the vase far enough from the walkway, so it never got complaints. There was a chip in the paint on a wall under the stairs that was there for as long as Maxi could remember.

  It was an old building, squarely in the middle class, not something that a person would expect from someone who used to be in the Power Twelve because of the kind of money her parent’s made. But then again, no one knew that her parents had been the equivalent of billionaires. Most of their wealth had been spent keeping Maxi as far away from the company as possible. The rest was used for causes like the one Maxi had for buying out contracts.

  After her mom bought out her contract, she had given away everything but what she needed for a middle class life. Tara had no use for possessions, and even ended up working an NPC job to keep herself busy. Tara didn’t need the money, she hadn’t even needed Maxi to pay her part of the power bill back before Maxi had found her career.

  While Maxi bristled at the time when she was paying for her part of the power bill, she understood why her mom did it. Her mom was trying to put some economic pressure so she’d start working and become one of the NPCs, the people of the world who didn’t know about the company. Tara’s hope for her was that Maxi wouldn’t have to face death every day as her day job.

  However, what her mom never understood about her was that life as a NPC was never something that felt right for her. When Maxi was temping and getting odd jobs here and there in the mundane world, she always felt like she was out of her element and not doing what she was meant to be doing.

  While many of her friends from high school and college rejoiced when they entered the adult phase of their life with their first job that gave them a desk and a nameplate, she couldn’t escape the feeling that it would be a trap, golden handcuffs. Being paid enough money to have a good life but always a low level sense of not fitting in her being in the right place.

  Whereas at the company, she had no doubt she was right where she was supposed to be. While her mom and father both had the best intentions for her, parents rarely got to decide the path their children took. They could offer guidance and suggestions, but the child made the decision whether or not to listen and in Maxi’s case, she wasn’t much of a listener. She was a doer, and for better or worse, she was always barreling ahead.

  She pressed the button to call the elevator, and her regular apartment elevator opened.

  “That’s weird…” Maxi said, expecting a company elevator.

  “The elevator network can sense when you are calling them,” Farhad said. “No sense in sending a magic elevator when a normal one can do besides the network is backed up because of the outage.”

  They piled into the elevator, and she hit the 10 button. She was so used to the lurch of the magic elevators that the one in her building almost felt like it wasn’t even moving by comparison. The door opened, and they piled out into the hallway with the same vase and floral display as the one from the lobby.

  Miss Greenbaum from a couple doors down opened her apartment as they passed. She was an elderly lady and wore a white knit shawl and blue shirt. She smiled and said, “Maxi, my you have grown. Now, who is this fine young lad?”

  “Farhad,” he said with a nod.

  “You two wouldn’t be…”

  “No,” Maxi said a little too quickly. “We are just co-workers.”

  “Oh,” Miss Greenbaum couldn’t hide her disappointment. She was the building gossip, and had made Janitorial’s job easier when she spread the rumors about a burglar attacking the super in Maxi’s apartment. As for the super himself, he did nothing to confirm or deny what had happened, and would extract himself if anyone tried to talk to him about it. Maxi was amazed by the ability to repress trauma or the need to explain it away as something mundane.

  They continued down the hall, and Maxi knocked on the entry of her apartment. Miss. Greenbaum watched them for a moment, receded into her apartment, and shut the door. It wasn’t unusual for her neighbor to put her nose into the situation when people were coming down the hall. Maxi swore that the women just sat in her entry listening for footsteps.

  Tara answered, and beckoned them inside. “I told you to use your key,” she said and began preparing a kettle. She rummaged for some cookies and tossed them on the table. If there was one thing that the company did well was keeping them well fed. The free plan at the cafeteria gave Maxi all the food or snacks she could ever want. It was a limited menu that was on a three to four week cycle, with the occasional themed dish like the ghoulash they would be serving for Halloween.

  When meals weren’t being served, there were snacks at all times including a “going, going, gone” cart that had buff snacks that were about to expire. She had a dedication boosting mochi the other day that was equally delicious as it was beneficial for a boost. She didn’t touch the cookies but Farhad dug in for a couple of the jam filled shortbread her mom loved.

  After water boiled, tea was poured, and all the pleasantries of conversation, Maxi decided to ask what she had come for. Normally, Maxi was act first, figure it out later, and didn’t experience much hesitation, but since she was most likely bringing her mom back into a life she had spent a fortune to escape, Maxi felt nervous, “I well, um… want access to my father’s files.”

  “His company files?”

  “Yeah, like what was on his personal partition when he died.”

  “I’ll send you a link, but I don’t know what you aim to get from it.”

  “Maybe something about that printer.”

  “That damned printer,” Tara said. “We should have never gone looking for the printer.”

  “It could save us from the apocalypse, ma!”

  “There’s always an apocalypse on the horizon, yet humanity keeps going on,” Tara brushed it off.

  “That’s because there are people doing something about it.” She felt the tension building and Farhad squeezed her leg. “I just want to look through it,” Maxi said more softly.

  “Okay, fine,” Tara said. “You’re not going to find anything useful. We’d talk about all the important stuff. He kept a diary, but it wasn’t on the computer. He didn’t trust those things.”

  “Even Terry?”

  “Terry was fine, but the people managing the storage space, the Archivists. They are an obtuse Branch. Not even from this world. He didn’t like that they could just access his files whenever they wanted despite their insistence that they would never do so. But if you want to kill some time, going through your father’s files, I’m not going to stop you.”

  “Have you ever met Upper Management?” Maxi changed the subject.

  Tara frowned and said, “What’s this coming from?”

  “One of the Power Twelve has a theory, Cassidy West.”

  “Cassidy?” Tara laughed. “That pup? She’s leading the PI’s?”

  “Yeah,” Maxi said. “She kinda made it seem like you were in charge...”

  Tara laughed some more. “Cassidy West,” she said after composing herself with a sigh. “My, times have changed.”

  Maxi got irritated. She didn’t know if it was because she wasn’t in on the joke or that her mom was doing it again, withholding information for Maxi’s benefit. She would decide what was important and what wasn’t. Maxi was done being kept out of the loop.

  “Mom,” she said. “If you were in charge of the PI Branch you need to tell me.”

  “I was, once,” Tara said. “But I didn’t think it was that important.”

  “Not that important,” Maxi yelled and Farhad squeezed her hand under the table. She softened the next words. “You know things that could get me killed. Dangers that could end the world. You know things, ma.”

  “Sure,” Tara said nonchalantly. “But you have to remember that it was a long time ago. It would be asking the Director of the CIA in the 1980’s about what they think Russia is doing now. The situation’s changed.”

  Maxi felt a little embarrassed. She survived a dragon and yet her mom still had the power to make her feel the way she did. “Still,” she said. “If you know something that would help…”

  “Then I will tell you,” Tara said. “The ban on telling company secrets is more just a threat anyway. The company is not a surveillance state. They can really only terminate you if they know about the breach like people posting about it online or doing something that traces it back to them.”

  “It feels like they would have a bug in every room,” Maxi said.

  “Too costly,” Tara said. “Mass surveillance costs money. That’s why surveillance states always fail, they can’t watch everyone all the time, so they have to make choices where to invest the resources, that leads to cracks in surveillance, and when a faction finds and exploits those cracks…”

  “Jeez, mom, you sound like you were the Director of the CIA in the 1980’s,” Maxi said.

  “It’s an apt analogy to running the PI’s. Our Branch, my Branch was as close to secret agents as the company gets.”

  “Speaking of company, does the company have a name? Weyland-Yutani?”

  “I’m sure the company has a name.”

  “What’s the name then?”

  Tara, for once as far a Maxi could remember, didn’t have anything to say. “You know, come to think of it, we all just call it the company.”

  “Isn’t there documents? Like if you need to send a bill, who would they write the check too?”

  “This isn’t the 1980’s no one uses checks anymore. It’s all credits.”

  “But what about back in your day?”

  “It was credits then too. If PI’s needed to pay Janitorial for a clean up fee, it was with credits. IT sending a bill for services rendered, credits. Rewards for defeating monsters, credits. The whole system runs on credits.”

  “But isn’t there letterhead? An email signature? something with the company name on it?”

  “No,” Tara shrugged.

  “Don’t you find that odd?”

  “Maybe it’s part of the translation protocols?” Farhad offered. “Like how in other dimensions text appears in English and hard to translate words like months of a different calendar system appear as Luna or First Spring of Newgold?”

  “Okay,” Maxi said. “I just find it weird that we all work for this place and don’t even know the name,”

  “Maybe company is the name,” Tara said. “Like Farhad said. The translation protocol is just using a word we all understand.”

  Maxi didn’t think that was the case, but it also wasn’t the closest fire to the house, so she went back down another thread, “What about Upper Management?”

  “What about them?” Tara asked.

  “Who are they? What do they do? Is there anybody running the place or does it just exist? Have you ever met one of them?”

  “No,” Tara said. “It was all intermediaries.”

  “So someone shows up, says they work with Upper Management, and you just went with it?”

  “How much do you know about the Holiday Party?”

  “The Holiday Party? I don’t see why this has anything to do with it.”

  “There is a Holiday Party every year, top floor of the building that’s really only used as an event space. Nice views of the city, large ballrooms, little nooks and crannies for more private conversations, very well thought out space.”

  “You sound like a travel agent, ma!”

  “It’s also the only place and time the Power Twelve can be found in the same room at the same time. Even when the combat team assembles non-fighting classes like your uncle aren’t there. But, if you wanted to snuff out all the top players in the company, the Holiday Party is where you’d do it, so the top floor also happens to be the most secure place in the building. The elevators incinerate anyone who isn’t invited.”

  Maxi thought back to the time when she crashed Hellboy666’s party and was glad it didn’t have that feature. Her mother continued. “It’s shielded from any surveillance, psychic attack, even a nuclear weapon couldn't penetrate the barrier.”

  “You could nuke the lower half of the building.”

  “You could blow up the planet, and that room would still be floating in the void with party goers unaware that anything was happening.”

  “Okay, so security is tight. I don’t see what this has to do with Upper Management.”

  “The intermediaries, we each have one, a player like us but from a different dimension. They all show up each year to the party. Every Tier 1 and Tier 2 is there, lucky Tier 3 and 4’s get an invite. There are also people who are not employees, but sort of contractors, they usually work inside the world government systems, keeping company secrets safe. The strange part is the party is mundane for what could very easily be, under different circumstances, a cabal discussing domination of the world. Yet somehow it’s just as awkward and banal as every other office party. People hook up with people, some get too drunk, and others stay too long on the dance floor. People gossip, embarrass themselves, play out rivalries, and engage in office politics. It’s like any other holiday party you’ve been to.”

  “I’ve never been to an office holiday party.”

  “Trust me when I say you aren’t missing anything. The exception is that the liaisons I was telling you about. The twelve people who aren’t from our world and most employees wouldn’t recognize them, assume they delete satellite footage of a killer moss that engulfed a town from the CIA databanks.”

  “I don’t know what’s more disconcerting killer moss or the fact that the CIA doesn’t even know what’s going on.”

  “It’s easy to do when they are only looking for threats from other humans, dear. The point is that the most secure place on planet Earth is a room that gets used once every year for the Holiday Party.”

  “I mean all the Power Twelve are there.”

  “But so are the intermediaries. When you were with Cassidy, did she ever use her powers on you?”

  “I’m a Breakwaters. Sarcasm is in our DNA.”

  “And when she did it, did it feel like she could just snuff out your life, and not the kind of snuffing that the resurrection chairs could handle?”

  “Yeah, but she is a Power Twelve. I’m Tier 9.”

  “That was the kind of power the intermediaries wielded.”

  Tara paused, and Maxi could feel the psychic tendrils of Cassidy around her throat. The energy the woman wielded with barely a thought was more powerful than her teacher, Swami Robinson, could ever hope to achieve. It had more potential than any of the PI’s she battled when she first learned Psychic Tsunami and broke free from the grasp of a few higher level players who tried to pin her down. Her mom had also been Tier 1.1 during her day. A being that the intermediaries could make her mom feel as helpless and weak as Maxi did when she faced off with Cassidy…

  “To go back to your question about Upper Management,” Tara interrupted Maxi’s thoughts. “We never questioned the intermediaries’ directives because they were always aligned with our overall mission to protect the Earth, and there wouldn’t be anything we could do to resist them if we could.”

  “But didn’t you ask questions? Push back? Didn’t you ever want to talk to them? Lo said he had once, through an identity scrambler.”

  “Then you should talk to Lo about that.”

  “He’s not answering my texts.”

  “Look dear, I want to help you. I really do. And yes, I was always curious about Upper Management, and I pushed back on my liaison as I’m sure you do with Cassidy. But at the end of the day, if someone more powerful than you doesn’t want you to know something. You don’t get to know it. Besides, Upper Management is the least of your concerns. The only time they’d get involved, or the intermediaries at the very least, were when we were in danger of losing raids, or occasional tweaks to the system when we notice a problem. Like surge pricing. Time off used to be a fixed rate per level, but then we had problems with everybody taking summer off, and monsters don’t take summer breaks. Then we implemented a system where surge pricing calculated the employee’s level, criticalness to the mission, and current need for time off, and it all went away. A fix mandated by Upper Management, brought to the table by a liaison.”

  At least Maxi understood a little more about who was running the show, whether it was Upper Management or just power players from other dimensions acting as an unofficial Board of Directors for the company, she didn’t know.

  “Oh, there’s one more thing about them, a detail that I almost forgot,” Tara said.

  “What?”

  “There’s an elevator door, one the Power Twelve can’t even use. It’s located on the top floor in the entry to the ballroom. The liaisons are the only ones who use it. No one else is allowed, and it leads right into the most secure room on the entire planet.”

  That’s when it clicked for her. The security of the top floor wasn’t for her mom, the Power Twelve, or any of the top employees of Earth. It was for the liaisons, but they were so powerful, they might as well be gods. The question Maxi had to ask, what made gods tremble?