Jessie hated to admit it, but Kade had been right.

  If she’d had it her way, she’d have dropped out of school the second she got her GC rep job. She didn’t need it. It was a waste of her time, and she knew how the world really worked thanks to her trip into the GC’s inner archives. It’d be better for her to climb the Governing Council’s ranks, take a seat on their council, and gain power that way. Or, even better, to run her own guild. That was attainable.

  Civics had felt like the biggest waste of time out of every class she’d taken.

  But Civics had given her the spark of her idea, and now, it was fully in motion. Phoenix ran at several different levels. Delvers didn’t really need to listen to the local government. The mayor wasn’t relevant, and neither was the city council. The reality was that the Governing Council was the only governing body that mattered to them. So Jessie had spent the last year-plus since Kade’s system awakened focusing on them, not on the ‘civilian’ government.

  That had been a mistake.

  Deimos roared down the street toward the Phoenix City Hall building. It sat downtown, across from the Governing Council’s tower, with the Fallen Delvers Memorial smack in between them. Her heart hurt just looking at the blue light flooding out through the pyramid. She wanted to visit Dad.

  Instead, she wiped a tear from her eye as the car screeched to a halt outside City Hall’s doors. She opened the passenger door and clambered out, cane tapping on the cement sidewalk and briefcase in her other hand.

  The car stayed behind, engine idling, in a no-parking zone. Civics be damned. Jessica Gerald had paperwork to file, and then it was on to her next appointment of the evening.

  Jessie: I’m here. Waiting in line now.

  Kade: Understood. We’re committed now. Be quick.

  Ellen: Thanks, Jessie.

  Jessie: No problem, Ellen. But you owe me the comfy chair. Ditch your phone.

  Ellen: I’ll think about it. Going silent.

  Bob stared at me for a second. Then he laughed. “Kade, you’re operating off of incomplete information.”

  “I don’t think I am,” I shot back. “Ellen’s been pretty clear about what her world was like growing up.”

  “But she never told you why, did she?” Bob paused for just a second, then continued. “No, she didn’t. She probably said something like ‘I was taught only what I needed to know,’ right? That’s true. I did raise her to take care of the Traynor Corporation. She’ll be good at it when the time comes.

  “But you’re all too young to remember what Phoenix was like in those first five years after the Portal Blitz. This house is only fifteen years old. There are fewer than two hundred buildings in Phoenix that made it through the Blitz, and less than half of the roads were functional when the Traynor Corporation was only in construction. There was nothing left of the city, so there was nothing for Eleanor besides what I could teach her or hire someone to teach her.”

  “You’re lying,” Yasmin said.

  “No, I’m not.” Bob smiled widely. “By the time Eleanor was ten, things had changed. The city was coming back. The Wickenberg break and the farms it waters were in full operation. And, of course, the Traynor Corporation was at its most vulnerable. Too big to stay under the radar, too small to be indestructible. I needed to ensure that it would survive. Eleanor was the ideal candidate to act as my second. She still is. I just need to bring her back into the fold. And that’s part of why I’m so happy you’re here.”

  I blinked. It was close to what Ellen had told me. But it wasn’t quite the same, and I couldn’t tell whether Bob was telling the truth.

  And Bob pressed his advantage. He stood up and pointed at the paperwork on his desk. “Kade, Yasmin, Jeffery, I have a problem. Three, actually, and you can solve all of them. First, the Traynor Guild is currently operating at full capacity. We have our C-Rank team, plus an E-Rank team whose job is harvesting the portals the C-Rank team clears. But we need a second one. Half of my delvers are B-Rank already. The other half will get there soon and—“

  “Break their cores as they push for A-Rank?” I interrupted.

  “Exactly,” Bob said. “You can help with that, Kade. I know you survived your break and somehow repaired your core. My team needs that. They’re in danger if you don’t help them.”

  “You can help them right now,” Jeff said. “Just call them back and let them recover for a while. None of them has broken yet. Healing from overburdening your core just takes time.”

  “And Logan?” Bob asked.

  I took a deep breath. Then I shook my head slowly. “I might be able to help Logan. But I can’t do that until I know you’re not going to kill the rest of your team pushing them.”

  “That aside, you can still help me with two problems. I need Eleanor on a Traynor team, and I need a second high-ranking team. Jeff, you’re stuck. You can take over leadership of the C-Rank team. We’ll shuffle delvers around between your current team and the Traynor team to make two assault teams, then find more E-Rankers for a second harvest team.” Bob had shifted so smoothly it was like he’d planned the whole conversation.

  We were outmatched. I knew we held the center of the board. We had the high ground on the core break issue, the way he’d treated Ellen, and his attempt to force us into joining his team. But it didn’t matter. His strategy ignored the four center squares completely, and I couldn’t adapt fast enough.

  This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  But I had a gambit of my own.

  I set the briefcase on Bob’s desk, then fiddled with the combination lock for a second. It opened, and I pulled out three separate documents. “Read these.”

  Bob Traynor owned almost every media company in Phoenix.

  Almost.

  Ellen had taken pictures of all his private records, and she and Jessie had gone through them all. And they’d found a single television company owned by a rival. More importantly, while there were five others that only appeared to be owned by a rival, there was zero evidence that Channel Fourteen had anything to do with the Traynor Corporation.

  Jessie was counting on that. She stood in the lobby, waiting in line as the receptionist slowly moved people forward. Even this late, the downtown building was still busy. The news never stopped, but even so…there seemed to be a lot of reporters going in, and they all seemed irritated and frantic.

  Something was going on—breaking news was happening—and that news might be a direct threat to her plans.

  Jessie couldn’t do anything but wait, though, and tap the briefcase against her leg. At least it was a good day so far. The chair was in Deimos’s trunk, but she wouldn’t need it. She was almost done. Just a meeting here to discuss the paperwork she’d filed on behalf of the Governing Council and six independent delvers, then her last stop of the night.

  The line moved up, the receptionist checked her badge and double-checked his computer, then she was off to an office on the sixth floor. The reporter quickly looked over the contents of her briefcase, then slowed down for a second, more thorough look. “Excuse me, Representative Gerald. I need to bring in some of the higher-ups. We’ll have to see who’s available, though. News just broke about the Carlsbad convoy expedition. They’re back in town, and there’s an emergency meeting of the council.”

  “There’s what!?” Jessie asked. The plan was coming off the rails, and there was nothing she could do about it. They’d been caught up in larger events.

  Bob’s eyes rocketed across the paperwork. Then he set them aside. “You’re attempting to blackmail me? Me? Really?”

  “No. No, I’m not. We’ve been planning this move for a long time—since the last time you and I met, in fact.” I pointed at the first document.

  “It won’t work. Blackmail only works if your opponent can’t weather what you’re threatening to release. The Traynor Corporation isn’t a weak individual. It’s impossible to get rid of. Invincible. I own half of Phoenix, so none of this paperwork matters. Go ahead and file it.”

  Yasmin snorted. Jeff actually laughed. And I kept my finger on the first document.

  “What?” Bob asked.

  “Nothing. Only, we filed the paperwork before we’d even finished looking at your art collection,” Jeff said. “This is all in motion already.”

  “It’s not blackmail. It’s never been blackmail. The Governing Council, Representative Gerald, and independent delvers Traynor, Noelstra, Carlton, Walker, and Guttierez are filing suit against the Traynor Corporation, alleging blackmail against two of that team’s members, knowingly withholding information that led to the crippling of at least one delver’s core, and illegal terms of contract with at least twelve delvers.” I read that from a notecard I’d pulled out of the briefcase. It all felt too formal. “Additionally, several news organizations have been given this information, including all companies that the Traynor Corporation has limited or no control over.

  “And you think this will stick?” Bob asked. For the first time, he looked like he was on the back foot. Ellen had been right; he hadn’t expected such a direct attack.

  It had been simple, once we’d figured it out. The world Bob thrived in and the world we did were two different places. He was a man of deals and discussion, of political and economic pressure. Of maneuvering endlessly for small advantages. Of chess, but not the kind I played.

  Bob Traynor’s attention was split.

  On the one hand, his team was currently in a C-Rank portal, with the E-Rank harvesting team ready to move in the second it was secure and start stripping it of resources. The Traynor Corporation had vastly underestimated the value of a properly-stripped portal—partially because while the other Phoenix guilds were good at clearing them, the resource extraction process left much to be desired. By simply spending two or three extra days, a portal’s value could be increased by twenty to thirty percent. That wasn’t anything to sneeze at, especially for a smaller guild like the Traynors.

  That had most of his attention. He had constant text-based contact with the E-Rank team’s lead, as well as video footage from all six of their on-board cameras. Those wouldn’t work inside the portal, but they gave Overwatch—and Bob—a good idea of what was going on outside of it.

  Most of the rest of it was on Ellen. She’d continued to grow, and Bob needed her. She was far too valuable to the Traynor guild and corporation for her to be acting like she was.

  That would stop, and it would stop now. He’d make it happen.

  And the tiny part of his attention that was focused on the here and now was locked on the three delvers in his office. They were dressed for battle—but they didn’t need to be. His team wasn’t here, and at their ranks, his standard security wouldn’t be enough to stop them.

  And none of them were dressed for business, either.

  He could handle them just fine. He was already winning.

  With his attention divided and split, he missed a silver car pulling up outside of his house and a girl in a suit getting out with a reporter in tow and a briefcase in her hand. She lugged it behind her as she hobbled toward the front door with a cane, then opened it with the family code, even though he’d had it locked behind the three delvers. Security moved to stop her, but she showed them a badge, and they stood down. Then she kept on walking down the hall.

  Bob missed all of that, though. He was too busy planning for his future.

  Angelo Lawrence, the Light of Dawn and Depth of Midnight, was scared.

  No, he was terrified.

  Not at the assembled two dozen S-Rankers—half from the Phoenix area and the other half from nearby towns and Carlsbad. Though they represented a disturbing amount of firepower, Angelo was confident in his own strength. He could outmatch any one of them. And not at the Governing Council. They were all here. All of them, including Councilman Anders. But they weren’t a threat. And he certainly wasn’t concerned with the few dozen attaches and aides. Deborah was his only guild member in the room, and she was a treacherous worm, but also fiercely loyal to the Roadrunners.

  No. He was terrified because, deep within the Carlsbad Caverns, he himself had been outmatched. And that had continued throughout their retreat. He had never felt less in control than those few days.

  “For a while, we were holding our own. We’d pushed the break back past the Iceberg and toward the Hall of the Giants. But something changed. The monsters got stronger, and there were so many of them,” one of the A-Rankers who’d survived the debacle was saying. “We had to retreat, but we couldn’t disengage. Even the Phoenix team wasn’t enough to change things.”

  Angelo shut his eyes and saw what he’d wrought in the confined tunnels.

  The Iceberg wasn’t—hadn’t been—ice. It had been stone, a blue-white stone that dwarfed the delvers who’d fought at its base. Half of them were dead when the Light of Dawn began his combo. Now, the Iceberg wasn’t blue anymore, and it wasn’t a towering blob of stone. It was a melted and resolidified mass of black magma. He’d had to go all-out, and his power had scoured the caverns black all around him.

  But even that hadn’t been enough.

  “We expected the portal break to occupy the caverns and regroup. This wasn’t our first retreat,” the A-Ranker continued. “But that’s not what happened. They followed us to Carlsbad, and we had to scatter the survivors. Most of them headed for Texas while we fought a delaying action toward Phoenix, drawing the monsters toward us. We think they made it, but we got forced west. It was almost six days of fighting to cross the desert and make it here. Less than half of us survived.”

  There are 30 more chapters on . Come see! I'm blown away by the number of people checking it out.

  I'm offering a single chapter in advance for all free members on Patreon. If you're interested in reading ahead, please feel free to join for free. Thank you.