On the screen was a flashing box.

  TERMINAL CONTRACT REQUEST BY TEAM LEAD

  ACCEPT AND VIEW TERMINAL CONTRACT?

  WARNING: Acceptance constitutes acceptance of the Terminal Contract. Contract details may not be shared with individuals who have been offered but not accepted these terms.

  [Y/N]

  “So we don’t get to know what the job even is before we accept it?” I asked, turning to look at Makesi.

  His expression… did something. He was a lizard, so it was hard to tell, okay?!

  “You have more than one Life, so you don’t have to risk yourself alongside us,” Makesi said after a moment. “You can disengage from the team here and purchase a body in the Nexus for one of your Lives. Find another team before you’re tied up in all this. Since you don't really know—”

  He paused, his eyes unfocusing for a moment, before he turned to Aisling, who was glaring at him.

  “Sorry, ignore that remark,” he said, looking down. I’m pretty sure Aisling sent him a message through the System, but I wasn’t sure what she could have said to make him react like this. “That’s the reason this was a last resort. We have no idea what we’ll be reincarnating into. I just want you to be aware that you aren’t forced to take the Contract.”

  “Oh, no, it’s fine, I already accepted it while you were rambling,” I said before looking down to read the details. Aurin glanced over my shoulder and let out a hum. She sounded uncomfortable for some reason. I squeezed her hand in reassurance, and she squeezed back, indicating she was fine, so I let her be.

  Makesi muttered something about ‘another Vivi’ to himself.

  It would be nice if they could get over the fact that I existed and had already integrated with the team. Also, if Vivi could stop being weird, that would be great.

  Glancing to the side at her, I caught her quickly looking away, and pretending as if she hadn't just been staring at me. Her spotlight had been very bright, so I was thankful she stopped.

  Reading through the Contract, I couldn’t help but feel the objective was too easy compared to the payout. All we were required to do was reincarnate into a world and kill one person. We also had to ensure they would then be caught by the System to be processed by the REB so that they could do something. The Contract didn’t specify what would happen to the…

  “What’s a Defector?... No, wait, that isn’t quite the right question. How could a Defector even exist?” I asked, looking up from the contract. Makesi had a distraught expression at the mention of a Defector, and even Aisling looked concerned, while Vivi looked just as curious as I was as to how a Defector could evade the REB.

  “When a Contractor is in breach of their Contract, they are labelled a Defector. Usually, Defectors are caught the moment they enter the reincarnation cycle, and the System gets hold of them. But in certain cases, a Defector manages to disconnect themselves from the System's enforcement mechanisms; this is often due to outside influence. This can be through a deal with a Daemon or another faction might be involved, whatever the case, the only reason we would be sent in is that the rest of the Defector's team was wiped out,” Aisling explained, and I nodded along. Part of the terms we signed required us to hunt down and kill any team member who was in breach of Contract.

  There was only one way for a Contractor to breach the terms of their agreement: by knowingly acting against the strategic interests of the REB to ruinous effect. What ‘ruinous effect’ meant was determined by the System itself, which would pass judgement immediately upon passing a certain threshold.

  Anything else prohibited by the REB was enforced through fines or other such punishments. Those were restricted such that being rich and well-connected would make them irrelevant, obviously.

  Reading through the Terminal Contract again, I found the section detailing the Defector we were supposed to kill. Their name was Iyora, and they had been on a team of three Contractors. Until they murdered their fellow teammates and severed their connection with the System. It was known that Iyora was of sound mind and in control of their faculties at the time of severance.

  I guessed the System could tell if you weren't right of mind due to a cognitohazard and killed under those circumstances, given it had to know when to reload someone's mind from backup.

  Their actions led to a world important to the interests of the REB being lost. What that meant exactly, I had no idea. Then they skipped worlds, using a method different from the REB's to reincarnate into the destination we were being sent to.

  “What's an Arbiter?” I asked. The System provided information in the definition of Iyora's Archetype, of course, but those were technical details that didn't really give me a picture of how it worked. All I knew was that it was related to outcome manufacturing.

  “A real pain in the ass to fight is what they are,” Vivi grumbled, not looking up from the Contract we had accepted.

  When would Vivi have had a chance to fight another Dustborn?

  “They're an Archetype focused on shifting causality in their favour,” Makesi said.

  That sounded completely broken. How could you even kill someone who could just decide they were unkillable? “Please tell me their Aspect isn't as overpowered as that description makes it seem.”

  “It isn't all-powerful, every Aspect is inherently limited by its cost after all. While only being at Tier One, they won't be able to stop your heart with a thought, or at least not without paying so much cost that they'd be effectively useless afterward. The Arbiter we'll be facing will likely be limited to probability manipulation,” Aisling explained, easing my worries slightly. That still sounded overpowered as fuck, but within the realms of something we could handle.

  “Arbiters are usually highly prized in the organization, so it's odd to see one clearly sabotage a core world,” Makesi said, with a throat trill that I interpreted as a hum.

  “Not really, you shower someone in praise and gifts, and they’ll start thinking they’re special. That they deserved all that, and maybe they deserve more than you were giving them. Or she was just crazy and permanently killed her teammates because of petty reasons, who's to say?” I said. The more powerful someone got, the more entitled they started acting. It was like a natural law or something.

  “You know you're also going to be highly valued for your unique Aspect. Which is part of the reason Makesi tried to give you up,” Vivi said, glancing over at me.

  “I was giving them a reasonable warning for the situation at hand,” Makesi shot back.

  “Thanks for making me feel so wanted,” I said dryly.

  “Are we going in with a plan, or waiting until childhood?” Aisling asked.

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  “We aren't on a time constraint this time—”

  “Thank fuck for that, I like growing up with my family,” Vivi muttered under her breath.

  “—so it would probably be best to figure out what the situation on the ground is like before we make a plan to hunt for Iyora. I would prefer we reach adulthood first so we are all in our most capable forms during the confrontation,” Makesi explained, ignoring Vivi's interruption.

  “So what do we do until then?” I asked. They had been running around as barely teenagers on Earth, but if we weren't under any kind of time crunch… did we just sit around?

  “Try to have a normal childhood. As you did in your previous dimension,” Makesi replied, and I nodded in response. I was looking forward to the pit fights… There would be pit fights, right?

  “Remember this isn't Earth, there will be magic users who gain Stats through their proximity to or use of magic, or those born in areas of magical density that have inherent Stats at birth. You can't rely on the fact that you'll be the strongest person in the room. Some Stats are invisible, so picking a fight with the wrong person can mean bleeding out in an alleyway,” Aisling explained.

  So no pit fights?

  I leaned into Aurin, who ran her fingers across my back.

  “At least you'll be with me while growing up,” I whispered to her, and she kissed the top of my head.

  “Mmm,” she hummed against my head in what I was pretty sure was agreement.

  “So are we going or what? It feels like I've been stuck in this Dust forsaken room going over Contract details for hours now,” Vivi asked, while tapping one hand against the console. “The last discussion was entirely pointless, too. We failed the Contract, and I don’t even remember it.”

  “That last Contract is the only reason you are still alive. If you hadn't gained another life by finding Ren, you would be completely spent. The pre-planning we did may be the only reason you are still here,” Makesi said with a sigh. “But yes, we can head out, unless you have anything you need to go over, Ren? This is your first time reincarnating after all.”

  “Uhh, I guess I could use a basic explainer. We never really discussed how our next lives worked after all,” I replied.

  From here, the team gave me a breakdown on what I should expect. Shortly after a child was born, the soul was attached. By default, we would always be born close to each other, but it was possible to disable that feature. The only reason we would do that is if we didn't have a Seeker and wanted to expand the radius of information gathered early on in our lives, or if we were entering a higher Tier World.

  They didn't explain why it was different for higher Tiers, but it wasn't relevant to our current situation, so I didn't ask.

  After our souls found our new bodies, our memories and Aspects would be disabled until our brain development wouldn't be harmed by our Archetypes being bound to our body. Which was apparently a potential problem, something about reality-altering powers and an infant's brain didn't mesh well, and our memories were bound to our Archetypes.

  From there, we would grow into our Aspects, which had a habit of being disrupted in the presence of magic. We could learn to work around that through brute force training, but learning how to use magic would also make it easier. Understanding the science behind why that was the case was well beyond what I'd ever care to learn.

  The Threshold State affected the maximum Dust we could spend on a purchase through The Stream. The exact cap at each Threshold value was determined by the System based on how the dimension handled reality-altering presences. This was because purchases over the Stream damaged the dimensional lining more, the less warped reality was by anomalies and the larger the purchase was. For this mission, the value started at two, due to another Dustborn having already been present for years.

  I had been given a few lessons on how things worked on Earth, but that was mostly just the rules regarding Dusttouched anomaly formation. Which were useless here because there was no Dust incursion.

  “Just to confirm, the Dust we enter with is going to be all the Dust we have, isn't it?” I asked to close the reincarnation discussion.

  “For this world, yes, unless you somehow find anomalies left behind by other world walkers, the Dust you enter with is all you have to use. Please try to be frugal with it,” Makesi said, and I nodded in response.

  “Can we finally go? I'm so bored, it's like you're reading a textbook at me,” Vivi whined. She had transitioned from her chair to lying on the table facing the ceiling.

  “I think I'm good for now,” I said in response.

  “If you have any other questions, feel free to send a message over System chat. One of us will answer, assuming our minds are awake. If you are the first to wake, hold position and spend time with your birth family,” Makesi said, then slapped his hands against the table, startling Vivi. “With that, we can begin. I'll see you all on the other side.”

  A window appeared on the console in front of me, and the others started vanishing one by one from the room. I took a moment to fill it out before also accepting.

  REINCARNATION PRESET

  Contract Payout: 20000 Dust & 1.5 Lives

  True Name: Ren

  Maintain appearance if possible?: Yes

  Preferred Sex: Random

  Proximity Group: CHAMP-436

  Embark?

  [Yes]

  With that, I was ready.

  “See you on the other side,” I said, turning to Aurin.

  “Mhmm!” she hummed before pulling me in for a kiss.

  While in her arms, I accepted the prompt and the world blinked out from around me.

  The only thing I could see was Aurin's mental representation floating in front of me. For some reason, it was drifting away. I felt myself try to reach out for her, but I couldn't seem to touch her.

  I felt myself slam hard into reality, my senses lighting up all at once. I hadn't realized how dulled they were while dead until just now. The world was too bright, and the sounds present too loud; someone was talking incredibly loudly. Not like they were shouting, it was more as if their voice was carrying far louder than it should have.

  Through my blurry eyes, I could kind of make out a face. Before I could do anything else, a System window resolved clearly in front of me.

  Warning: Memories will be disconnected to preserve brain development. Please stand by for reintegration.

  The world blinked yet again, and I suddenly found myself waking up in a pitch-black room on a bed with very comfortable sheets.

  Another message sat in front of me that I could see in the dark.

  Notice: Memories have been re-enabled. REB procedure recommends checking your team chat to see if anyone else's minds have awoken. Please stand by for the integration of childhood memories.

  There had been mention that it might take a minute for the System to align the two memory structures in the brain. I think… It felt like only moments before that we had embarked on the Contract, but there was a fuzziness to the memories.

  I'm sure that would go away on its own.

  Sitting upright, I patted myself only to recoil when I felt a different texture than I was expecting from my hand. It was like I had… poking at myself a couple times, I could tell I definitely had fur on my hands. Also, I think those were claws?

  Running them over my body, I could tell I was probably very young as well. Or perhaps just short in stature… that wouldn't be the first time that had happened.

  I was born male, which would be interesting, probably. I set my birth sex to random because I didn’t actually care about my personal presentation. I always saw myself as a thing inhabiting my body, not as my body itself.

  I also noted floppy fur covered… oh, those were ears. Was I a cat boy? Aurin was so going to pretend to be mad but secretly be thrilled if I were…

  Wait, where was Aurin?

  “Hello?” I called out into the pitch-black room.

  Checking the Stage in my mind, Aurin's lockbox wasn't there.

  But she was supposed to be there! Where would she be otherwise? We were supposed to grow up together!

  A window appeared in front of me, mid panicking.

  Notice: Memory integration complete.

  Years of memories rapidly flooded past my perception. As if I had experienced an entire childhood in an instant.

  I let out a yelp, and my hands went to my eyes, where what felt like a piece of fabric sat. No matter how much I tried to dig at it, the fabric wouldn't come off, as if it were sewn into my skin.

  Aww man, Vivi was right. I got kidnapped as a kid…

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