Chapter 228. Level 04 (Patreon)

When I return, I’m standing on solid ground a few feet from Euryphel.

“Hi,” I murmur, grabbing his attention.

He turns around. “Why do you always spawn behind me?”

I shrug. “I don’t make the rules. Are we ready to begin?”

“Yes.”

Nothing happens, though Euryphel’s brow furrows. He’s obviously running scenarios, so I wait patiently for him to give me actual real-world orders. But with every second that passes, I can’t help but wonder how many scenarios he’s running.

“Is there something wrong?”

He sighs and tugs at his hair. “You can’t find the Infinity Loop.”

I grin at Euryphel’s impatience–from my perspective, we’ve been investigating for less than a minute. “Why don’t you explain what you’ve had me try? I don’t have memories of anything.” I suddenly wish I had Crystal on hand to collect and transmit Euryphel’s experiences.

Shooting me a knowing look, he launches into an explanation: “You usually enter the building from the side closest to us, passing through the wall without problems. You’ve also tried entering from all other walls but the one on the farthest side–you can’t reach it in time.”

“It’s not that far,” I protest.

“You’re rather slow in your ghost form,” Euryphel chides. “It’s not like you can fly yourself around like you’re used to. You have to actually walk–or run.”

I gesture to my body. “It’s not like I’m a twig who sits around at a glosscomp all day.” With my current physique, I should be able to run faster than most people.

Euryphel shakes his head; I see the slightest trace of red on his ears. “This is irrelevant. When you enter the building...” He trails off, then fishes for his glossY and holds it in his palm, creating a projection. He begins to draw on it with his finger.

I look around. “Is it a good idea to do this in the open?”

“There’s nobody around and our vantage point is obscured from all glosscams. Believe me, I scoped this place out thoroughly, and I continue to sweep for threats.”

“I’d believe it.”

“Okay, see here?” Euryphel says. He’s drawn up a rough blueprint of the lab’s first floor.

“Did you make this mostly from my descriptions, or from the use of your elementalism?” I ask.

“A combination. These two rooms–” he points to a chamber with a staircase and a small closet “–are sealed, so I rely on you entirely to scout them.”

The utility closest is small and doesn’t seem to go anywhere; that just leaves the room with the staircase.

“The small room turned out to be a refrigerator; there wasn’t anything important inside. It was when you ventured down the staircase that things got interesting. The basement of the lab is bigger than we thought, stretching far deeper and wider than it has any right to. I’m unfamiliar with Sere’s building codes, but it's definitely not to specifications. An earth elementalist likely expanded the basement to make room for the loop.”

“So let me guess: I was able to reach the basement, but was unable to fully explore it. That suggests that the loop is recessed deeper than I can get to in a minute, even when running.”

“It’s not just how far you can go in a minute, but how far you can go, come back, and report what you’ve seen. Unfortunately, it takes you about five seconds to end and restart the transmission, after which you need at least fifteen seconds to report what you saw. That leaves at most forty seconds to actually explore.”

“Sounds like you need to start your scenarios later. As in, when I’m already in the building. Tell me the way to go.”

“You’ll need to be careful you aren’t seen,” he warns. “In my scenarios, people who saw you initiated alarm sequences that locked the building down.”

“Sounds tricky, luckily I’m in capable hands.”

“I appreciate your confidence in me, but...”

“But?”

He sighs dramatically. “Your stealth leaves much to be desired.”

I gape in mock offense.

Chuckling, Euryphel dispels the projection. “Just kidding. It helps that you have no vital or heat signatures; you don’t even have fate arrows, which is the biggest plus. Even the most masterful Dark agents who can turn fully incorporeal can’t get rid of their arrows, which is where Remorse practitioner support typically comes in.”

“This artifact is more overpowered than I originally thought,” I say.

“It is rather ridiculous. Anyway, getting to the building is easy: Walk down the block.”

Nodding, I set off, giving him a small wave. I try my best to walk casually, looking aimlessly at the cobbled street. The grout is clean and the stones even, hinting at the area’s wealth. Multiple houses have green lawns that look out of place among the dry, dusty terrain.

When I reach the end of the street, the lab looms diagonally in front of me. I can either follow its fence left or right.

“Go right,” Euryphel instructs. “That will take you toward the back, and closest to the staircase leading down.”

I proceed down the block on the right; when I near the end of the fence, Euryphel speaks again: “Two glosscams are positioned to capture you walking along the building’s side, but have a blindspot at the corner. Wait for my signal.”

I keep my pace steady despite my nerves. As I turn left to follow the back side of the building, Euryphel’s voice sounds in my ear: “Dash diagonally right...now!”

I twist and throw myself to the side, sprinting on as perfect a diagonal as I can muster past the fence and into the building. The wall is thick, so I have a moment to breathe without fear of discovery. The wall’s interior is lightless, and my sense of touch is muted. I can hear the din of people shuffling, the sound carrying through the wall.

“Now what?” I ask, though the sound is soaked up by the insulation. Frowning, I move my head so that only my lips are sticking out of the building. There’s no way glosscams will notice anything.

“Eury?” When I hear nothing back, I adjust my face so that part of my ear is also exposed.

“Hi,” he says. “You’re bordering up against the sealed off room, which is good. But it’s difficult to go downstairs without being discovered because two people are moving boxes into the basement. We’ll strategize in the meantime.”

“Sure. Sounds like I still haven’t found the loop.”

“No, you haven’t. With all the time saved by starting so close to the basement, you’re able to go farther. When you trigger the alarms, personnel rush to a lift platform. Last scenario, you got far enough to see them key in floor 04. That’s where you should go.”

“The basement has four floors?” I ask.

“At least.”

Wow. Euryphel wasn’t kidding that it’s big. “Seems like we’ve maybe chanced upon more than a simple Infinity Loop site.”

“Perhaps. It’s so infuriating not being able to communicate with you in the basement. Without the ability to tell you that you’re in a scenario...”

“Wait,” I interrupt. “You might not be able to tell me directly, but you can give me a sign that I’m in a scenario. If you trigger the alarms, the basement will go into lockdown.”

Euryphel is quiet for a moment. “Y’jeni, I can’t believe I didn’t think of that. New plan. Get to the lift platform, then come back. I’ll be running scenarios the whole time. When you hear alarms, assume you’ve just entered a scenario. Do as much as you can while still leaving enough time to return to the surface and relay what you’ve found. When you return to this wall, I’ll reinitiate contact to re-strategize.”

—

“The box movers are gone–you have a clear shot down the stairs. Don’t forget, three people are situated around the basement door, so you need to go around them. Travel through the walls until you get to the lift. You can’t press physical buttons, so you’re going to need to find a creative way to get down.”

“Got it. Talk soon.”

My stomach tightens with anticipation. In my phantom state, it’s almost easy to believe that I’m in a dream or alternate reality...that nothing is real. I’d like to think that mindset will help me not to overthink things.

I take a deep breath and step into the room with the staircase. One limitation of the transmission artifact is that I can’t travel vertically through the walls, so sinking through the floor isn’t an option. That means I actually need to take the stairs–and any vertical lifts–out in the open like a normal person.

At least my steps are perfectly silent as I go down the stairwell. I crane my head to see the three people Euryphel mentioned at the bottom, though they’re all facing away, paying the silent stairs no mind. My gut churning, I finish my descent and dive into the wall.

Safe.

I proceed cautiously through the wall, periodically sticking my head out low to the floor. Doing so is risky–I could get unlucky and attract someone’s attention–but there’s no other way to know when I’ve reached the lift.

The next time I stick out my head, I see not the basement but countless soul gems. Recoiling, I realize that they’re cargo in one of the boxes the movers have been transporting.

The first floor of the basement is filled with crates containing soul gems. The amount of wealth is staggering–no university would have the funds to procure so many. Definitely for an Infinity Loop.

Unfortunately, the many gems also necessitate a fleet of security guards. According to Euryphel, the guards are all mid-level practitioners–and expensive to keep on payroll. One more thing a university wouldn’t be able to afford.

After half a minute of sneaking, I finally find myself near the lift platform. I duck back into the wall and wait for fifteen seconds, giving Euryphel ample time to run all the scenarios his heart desires, then begin my return trip.

When my face breaches the exterior wall of the lab, Euryphel’s voice immediately enters my ear: “Great work–you discovered a lot.”

“Thanks, on behalf of my intrepid forgotten selves. Did I find the loop?”

“No. But you got really close. The key is the crates.”

“How so?”

“You need to take the elevator down, but you can’t do so on your own–you can’t press the buttons. Besides, the lift has a glosscam within it, so you’d be spotted.”

“What about hiding in the walls?” The lift is structured like a small room, complete with a sliding door at the entrance.

“Unless you’re actually inside the lift, standing on the platform, it won’t transport you properly. You’ll get stuck.”

“So how do the crates help?”

“You’re going to hide in one.”

—

“When you enter the basement, there will be three crates to the left of the entrance. You need to sit in the rightmost one. Go now, so you can crouch down and hide yourself before the movers come and take the crate down.”

We’ve been waiting for the movers to return ever since they took the last shipment down. Now, after twenty minutes of restless calm, Euryphel’s words jolt me to action. “Okay.”

Euryphel continues, saying, “Try your best to find the loop in fifteen minutes of reaching level 04. Then return to my side by restarting your transmission–it’s highly probable that you will have found the loop in a scenario by then.”

“And how am I supposed to know when fifteen minutes have passed?” My glossY is frozen when I transmit myself across space, its time functionality broken.

“Just estimate as best you can. Now go, quickly–you have forty seconds at best to get in position”

I sneak back down into the basement. The crate is easy to find, but it’s next to one of the three guards by the stairwell doors. If I weren’t incorporeal, I’d be sweating from the stress of pulling this off. Killing hundreds of people is easy–sneaking, even when I have all the advantages in the world? Not so much.

The guard looks away and I practically dive into the crate, half my arms digging into the floor. I yank them up as I force my legs to my chest, curling up into the tightest ball I can manage.

My head starts to pound.

I can deal with swimming through the tight arteries of a stadium-sized leviathan in pitch darkness. I can handle being inside of solid walls. But there’s just something about crouching inside of a wooden box that sets me on edge, especially when I lack the ability to sense my surroundings. Without my power, the fears I thought I overcame in the loop loom again. My mind imagines what it would be like to sink into the earth, stuck in an earthen prison forever, buried alive.

The crate tilts to the side, interrupting my thoughts.

“This is the tenth one today,” a woman observes, her tone snippy.

“Aye, it’s the last,” a man replies. “Be out of your hair soon.”

“Indeed,” she mutters in distaste. “Don’t forget to leave your badges on the way out.”

The crate jumps up, its tilt uneven due to one of the movers being taller than the other. My body tenses on reflex, my arms wrapping tightly around my legs. It bobs back and forth until eventually dropping to the ground with a soft thud, signaling that we’ve reached the lift. I hear the soft beep of the keypad before we begin to ascend.

“What d’you think they need so many for this month?” one of the movers whispers under his breath. “We’ve brought in more than the last half-year combined.”

His partner snorts. “They’ve also been bringing in more people. Even opened up floor 05 to make room.” He knees the crate. “Have you seen inside ‘em before?”

There’s a moment of silence, perhaps filled by a nonverbal gesture.

“I haven’t seen inside either,” the second man continues, “but my guess is it’s either ‘spensive crystals of some sort or a load of rocks.” he chuckles. “I reckon university researchers don’t have much use for rocks.”

The lift comes to a stop; the movers hoist up the crate, the soul gems jostling with each step. They walk for a minute before dropping the crate down and turning back. When the area is quiet, I hesitantly raise my head to look around.

I’m in an empty hallway; nine other crates are stacked neatly along the corridor. I stand up and hide my body in the wall, revealing as little of my face as possible.

Rounding the corner, I reach a three-way intersection. One of the hallways is a dead end, but the others extend for quite some time before branching off in new directions. Doors line the corridors; many of them are adorned with decorative signs and plaques. One has a flag draping across it with a giant mug of steaming coffee. These are personal offices, I realize. Or labs.

This basement doesn’t feel like a last-minute construction job–it looks like it’s been operational for at least a few months, long enough for personality to take root. If I can trust what I overheard from the movers, it seems like this place has been running for at least a year.

I don’t think the Infinity Loop will be in a personal office or lab. And if the whole facility is built up around the loop, I’d expect it to be in a central location–somewhere easy for researchers to access and run experiments.

With little information to go on, I decide to follow the right-most passage, walking gingerly through the walls. I run wherever the walls are unbroken and pivot whenever I come upon a door. They’re all thinner than the walls, preventing me from walking straight through them without half of my body sticking out.

I proceed down the corridor until one of the doors opens–right when I’m ducking into the hallway to sidestep a door. I dart left on instinct, ramming through the wall so hard that I overshoot and end up on the other side. I freeze in place as I behold the scene of a researcher simultaneously pumping one-hundred pipettes of solution into small vials, her eyes obscured by thick goggles. The lab around her is modern and well-organized, like it’s been recently tidied.

The woman is so absorbed in her work that she doesn’t notice me. I backpedal into the wall, but keep one ear exposed.

“Are the results back for patient Oak?” a man asks. He sounds like he’s half a room away. “We need to find a common element. His bloodline is promising. Sister and both parents are practitioners.”

The woman’s response is terse. “With all due respect, I’m working as fast as I can. If you can find another Beginning practitioner of my caliber willing to work in a veritable cave after signing a mountain of confidentiality oaths, hire them! Many hands make light work.”

“It’s not like we don’t give good compensation,” the man retorts.

“That’s irrelevant. Beginning practitioners worth employing can work anywhere they please. This entire assignment stinks of risks and danger–you might fool the other types of practitioners into working for you, but us Beginning folks are smarter than that.”

“You still chose to work for us.”

“Of course. Not all shy from danger. Only most.”

The man sighs. “Y’jeni, I’d hire ten of you if I could. Sorry to bother you–good work.”

The room returns to silence.

A few more close calls later and two more twists of corridor, I arrive at a large atrium that appears to be a cafeteria. The ceilings are high enough that I can see all the way up two floors, with balconies revealing corridors for what must be the third and second basement levels. People are eating food at tables; most are wearing white coats or casual office attire. Only a few engage in conversation.

But at the center of the atreum is a large, clear wall, made either of glass or another transparent material. Beyond I see a familiar sleek, white pod. Three white coats man the interior, monitoring the equipment. On the outside is a large glossY projection with three names that I can read even from across the room:

Pre-processing and stasis: Patient Thyme

Experimentation in progress: Patient Sycamore

Post-processing: Patient Ravine

Jackpot.

[ i am aware that i'm still behind one chapter technically (though these past few chapters have been thicc) ]