This was one of those times where Sorin’s hands were tied. Whoever the Black Hellions were, he was supposed to already know. Asking questions would only reveal his ignorance of red tower society, and he was not willing to share his origins with these people. Them knowing about Liminal Gateway was bad enough, and he’d only told them that because the tower had separated them and because it was too powerful to just not use it.

  “We were fucked either way,” Sorin said. “People like that don’t let their property go. The second you started climbing, there was an hourglass running down how much time you had left before this happened.”

  “I’m not property!” Rue protested.

  “Were you being forced to do things you didn’t want to do under threat of violence? Ever been held against your will? Kept in sub-human conditions? Tortured for information when you wouldn’t tell them what they wanted?”

  Odric was staring at Sorin in open-mouthed horror, and Nemari’s face just grew darker and darker. Little licks of fire were flickering in the air around her, blooming and then snuffing themselves out repeatedly. She didn’t even seem to notice that she’d lost control of her anima and was feeding it into her soulprints.

  “I… I’m not property,” Rue whispered.

  “That’s how your handlers saw you,” Sorin told her. “And they’re willing to kill to keep you under their control. That Jorn guy didn’t run me down hours away from the hub in the middle of the night in a territory with a reputation for ambush monsters just for a friendly chat. He was fully planning on killing me and happy to not have to haul the body away.”

  “Probably Raf’s idea. Jorn’s not that smart.”

  “Regardless,” Nemari said. “Why do you think we’re fucked?”

  “Because it’s the Hellions. If they’d cornered anybody but Sorin, they’d have won. Jorn’s a street enforcer. He’s low rank.”

  “And you don’t think they’ll cut their losses and let you go. You think they’ll send more guys or maybe just one guy who’s a lot higher rank than us,” Nemari finished for her.

  “They will. There’s no escaping them, not unless we can convince some rank 30 to descend down to Floor 0 and wipe the Hellions out. Even that might not be enough.”

  Sorin wanted to ask just how strong the gang’s leadership was that Rue thought it would take a rank 30 to break their power, but once again, he was held back by not knowing what exactly was already common knowledge. It seemed completely bizarre to him that anyone that accomplished would care about the petty squabbles down at the bottom of the tower, but he’d already been surprised by the various ways red tower civilization had diverged from what he was familiar with.

  “I don’t know about rank 30,” Sorin said. “Let’s start a bit smaller, here. Jorn was rank 5. What ranks are the other two guys you mentioned?”

  “Raf is rank 7 and Eldart is rank 6. Neither of them specialize in combat, though, so Jorn was probably the strongest,” Rue answered. “It’s not going to just be them though. Raf will reach out to other handlers and borrow their muscle if he needs to. Or he’ll just carry up a new enforcer to rank 5. The Hellions are more than strong enough to uplift their new recruits. It’s actually part of their incentive structure.”

  Sorin couldn’t see the appeal, personally. To have someone else carry him partially up the tower, then just stop and be stuck there forever? It was the antithesis of every single day of his life. But he supposed if all a person wanted was to be able to lord a frankly laughable amount of strength over people who hadn’t even taken their first step yet, this was a way to go about obtaining it.

  “The way I see it, we’ve got two options,” Sorin said. “We find Raf and Eldart and kill them. Hopefully that severs your ties to the Hellions, and they never bother you again. Or we run and we climb until we’re strong enough that they can’t touch us.”

  “That would take our entire lives,” Nemari objected. “Decades of work to maybe make it to rank 20 if we’re lucky. And we’d have to do it while dodging whoever the Black Hellions decide to throw at us.”

  “Decades? No. We’d need to get serious about climbing, but I imagine a year would be sufficient for rank 20. Maybe a year and a half if we account for some heavy interference and loss of access to common resources on the lower floors slowing us down. I don’t imagine the Hellions will be much of an issue past Floor 10 or so.”

  “You’re insane,” Nemari told him. “A floor every two weeks? It’s impossible.”

  “It’d be hard work,” Sorin admitted. “No one’s saying it’s easy. But we already did it once.”

  “Yeah, on Floor 1. Floor 10 is going to be just a little bit harder.”

  “Oh, it will. No argument there.” Sorin looked around at the room. “But honestly, it’s very possible to do with solid build planning and a dash of luck. We’d need to be all in on it, and probably recruit a fifth person, but we could make it work.”

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  Nemari shook her head. “Does anyone here think Sorin’s plan is reasonable?”

  He was not surprised to find himself standing alone. Really, they weren’t wrong. His plan was unreasonable for a normal climber. If he could pull his old team back together, they could do it. The bottleneck would be finding the right soulprints in the quantities needed for the whole team, not farming enough anima to empower them.

  And yet, this team could still make it to rank 20 in a year. It wouldn’t even be that hard. The lower floors were significantly easier to clear. It was the higher ones that contained thousands of miles of ocean needing to be navigated entirely underwater or endless winding caverns with no light, heat, or air that were challenging.

  He remained silent, however. There was no point in dragging the unwilling along, and since this issue with the Black Hellions was entirely Rue’s problem, he was willing to go his own way if they couldn’t agree on a solution. He doubted the Hellions would care much about him outside of his association with their rebellious asset.

  “What about your family?” Rue asked suddenly, turning to Nemari.

  “What about them?”

  “Could they take on the Hellions?”

  Nemari barked out a sharp laugh. “God, no. Are you crazy? Running to them might save us from your handler, but if the Hellions as a whole decide to come down on you, the Sildfalls are not going to be your saviors. I don’t know if they’d even be willing to shelter anyone besides me.”

  “Our only option may be to run and hide,” Odric said. He stood up from his work and turned to look out the window. “They could be watching us right now. The sooner we can leave, the better.”

  “It’s not a solution,” Nemari argued. “Long term, we’re still screwed. We need to be able to rest in safety. If nowhere is safe, what are we supposed to do?”

  Sorin had a simple solution for that, too. Climber killers used it all the time. If they were rank 20, they’d just find an unoccupied corner of Floor 5 where nobody would come looking for them and the danger from the local monsters was laughable. Of course, for his team to use that method, they needed to be stronger than rank 2, which was why he didn’t bother suggesting it. They’d eventually work out on their own that the only true safety was overwhelming power.

  When no one said anything, Nemari blew out a frustrated sigh. “Alright, first thing to do is figure out what we’re dealing with. I’m going back down to Floor 0 to talk to my family, see what they can tell me about the Black Hellions. You three… I don’t know. Stay here. Stay together. Don’t go wandering around where people can see you. Focus on Rue’s recovery so we can move as fast as possible if we need to.”

  “That’s a good start,” Sorin said. “It’s easier to make a plan when we know exactly what we’re fighting against.”

  “Right, yeah. I’ll see what I can find out. Give me a few hours.”

  Nemari walked out of the tiny room and closed the door. Sorin was the closest to it, and he thought he was probably the only one to hear her whispering, “God damn it, Rue. You really fucked us good, didn’t you?” Then she was gone, passed beyond the range of Blind Sense.

  Still sitting on the bed, Rue looked up at her brother. “You knew the whole time?”

  “Not the whole time, but I figured it out.”

  “And you never once said a word about it.”

  Odric shrugged. “You have always been… independent. A bit stubborn. I didn’t think you’d appreciate me bringing it up.”

  Teenagers and their secrets. Sorin resisted the urge to roll his eyes as he took up a position leaning against the wall by the door. We’re going to need supplies for a long trip at the very least. I wonder if I could leave stuff in the liminal space to use it as storage. Probably not, though. Fucking tower would just reclaim it when I’m not looking like it does everything else.

  Supplies randomly vanishing if they were unattended was one of the biggest reasons it was near impossible to establish any sort of civilization outside of Floor 0. Even the portal hubs were barely more than campgrounds, though they did seem to be somewhat immune to tower reclamation for a small distance around the portal itself.

  “I thought I had it under control,” Rue said. “I didn’t have the money, sure, but they were forgiving the interest on the loan every week.”

  Sorin snorted. “You’re kidding yourself if you think you were ever getting out of their hands. Just look at what’s happening right now. This isn’t about the money. It’s about control.”

  “Yeah,” Rue said bitterly. “Guess I really screwed up.”

  “We’ll figure it out,” Odric said.

  Sorin wondered if he was lying to make his sister feel better, or if he really believed what he was saying. “The only way out is up. Focus on healing those ribs. I’ll scrounge up supplies for a long trip, and when Nemari gets back, we’ll be ready to move.”

  “She said to stay together.”

  “Sooner I leave, the sooner I get back. It’s better to do it now before the Hellions realize their enforcer isn’t going to make it home, and if any one of us is going to be walking around alone, it’s best that it’s me. You two just sit tight. Enjoy your breakfast. Sorry if it’s gone cold.”

  Sorin collected all the danirs he could from the other two and ventured into the bazaar to grab travel food. He’d already sold Jorn’s gear on his way in, though he’d prioritized unloading it over getting the best price. It was better than leaving it out in the woods, but he didn’t want to be walking around with a dead climber’s possessions.

  What he really needed was more time in the Union archives to study exactly what was going on with Floor 2, to find the good farming spots, the best soulprints, and to map a route to the portal guardian, but that wasn’t likely to happen right now, not unless he was willing to go back down to Floor 0. On the one hand, that knowledge might be worth the risk. He’d skimmed what the archive had available to rank 1s, but they liked to keep things locked up so that climbers would keep coming back to pay monthly fees. Most of what he’d learned was very broad and focused on figuring out how to find the portal hub after ascending to the floor. It wasn’t the in-depth knowledge he needed now.

  On the other hand, there was nowhere he was more likely to run afoul of a high ranked Hellion than on Floor 0, and if they were watching for him, it was natural to assume they’d have eyes on the Climber’s Union building. They probably kept tabs on the portal grounds as a matter of course, so it wasn’t likely he could go through there without getting spotted. Then again, he had an advantage in that he didn’t have to use the portal.

  What to do, what to do.

  He held back a grin as he dropped the results of his supply run off in his room at the inn. If there was one thing Sorin knew about himself, it was that he didn’t shy away from danger when it came to getting what he wanted.