"So you were here. From the start."

Tears trickle down Jumble's cheeks as she shakes her head. "Not the very start. I didn't… they had a choice. The ones that went from the start. But we didn't have a choice–we were prisoners, captives, terrified normal people who tried to run or fight… but none of us wanted this."

"You're from the second wave." I clarify.

This time, she nods. "I still remember being a painted dane. Everyone who gave in to the system forgot immediately, but too many of us didn't for the system's liking. So it… punished us. Made sure we'd never really feel perfectly comfortable in a body that we hadn't spent most of our lives in. Well, it turns out that living for way too long lets you get used to anything, so I get the last laugh here. Haha. Ha…"

Jumble sniffs and raises her shoulder to wipe her eyes. Every single word she just said sounds like the truth. Considering she doesn't know about Pearl yet, and she doesn't know I know some of this place's secrets, her story's lining up a little too much to be made up. I offer her a smile and wait silently for her to feel confident enough to continue.

"Sparing you a lot of the details, the system obviously didn't like a lot of us. It wanted to use us in experiments, but we weren't close enough matches for its preferred paindne for that to work. So instead it just… abandoned us." A shudder works its way up Jumble's spine, culminating in a mixed expression of remembrance. "It let us loose in a few districts, cut us off from the other paindne it actually liked, and completely stopped caring about us."

I raise an eyebrow. "How'd you manage to survive?"

"Well, this place wasn't always like this. It was actually livable at the start. The tops of the walls were gardens, there was an underground river with fresh water and a lot of fish, and all of us had fresh new Classes so the system could keep an eye on us." Jumble lets out a small, bitter laugh. "I wasn't… a fighter. Honestly, I still wouldn't say I am. So I thought getting my Class was a great thing–that I could just tell stories and keep our history alive. That was before I found out the system absolutely hated Worth Classes."

Jumble gently insists I let go of her hands. I nod slowly and let go. She releases her left but not her right, pulls me over to the backless couch, and sits down while leaving me more than enough room. I don't hesitate to take it.

"So how'd it screw with you?" I ask. "It killed a bunch of other Gamblers before me, then tried to murder me with a shellraiser teleporter."

Jumble's eyes shoot open wide. "How many gamblers?"

I shrug. "Honestly, I have no idea. At least one–definitely more. You… are you the only storyteller that's ever existed?"

"Maybe? I don't know how the system made Classes, or why it even made Worth Classes if it hates us so much, but I'm the only storyteller I've ever known about." Jumble fidgets awkwardly as she struggles to find somewhere to put her hands. Eventually she settles on squeezing them between her thighs. "The system tried to kill me a lot. I remember the first… five dozen or so, but after that, it just became normal. All those first-wave paindne who attacked us, the horrible diseases, the manufactured natural disasters… it made sure to tell all the other second-wave paindne that it was because I lived there. Some of them were on my side for a little while, but nobody could stand it for that long. So… I had to keep moving. And when I started travelling, I started writing."

Jumble waves her hand, and a nearly decrepit scroll of yellowed parchment appears in her hand. Paindne writing coats every inch of it, and even though I can't make out a single word, I have a feeling I'm looking at the very first volume of that series.

"So why'd you hate shellraisers?"

"Hate? No, I never hated them–they were the ones fighting the system. I just… it's hard to write something that changes people's minds about things. Especially when I was really bad at writing. Here–just take a look at this." Jumble unfurls the scroll, takes one look at her own writing, and blushes beet red. "A-actually, I think I'd die if anyone read this out loud. Heck, I almost want to die just from reading it myself. Can you, um, please take my word on it that I was so bad at commentary that it just came off as… endorsing the system over the shellraisers?"

Can't see why dredging up someone's shameful first draft would be any help. "If it means you're good to keep talking, I'll take your word for it."

Jumble lets out a shaky sigh of relief. "Thanks. So, um, long story short–I was taken here against my will, uplifted, given a Worth Class for reasons I still don't understand, and then just sort of wandered and wrote for… a long time. Then the ______________________________"

My vision goes half-white as censorship digs into my brain like a rusty knife. Jumble keeps talking, her eyes trailing along the floor as she pours her heart out into the unhearing void that is me. I grimace and grab her shoulder, to which she jolts and turns her eyes to mine.

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

A gasp escapes her lips, which close immediately after. "Sorry, sorry, sorry! I thought–the system didn't censor anything else so far, so I thought it wouldn't censor that either!"

I groan and rub my aching head. "Not your fault. The things the system censors are not logically consistent, believe me. And that's with the fifteen Mind the quest threw at me."

"Fifteen… how'd you get that?" Jumble asks bewilderedly. "Only paindne–no, painted danes–are supposed to get that. It's for uplifting. Are you… oh, is that the secret you were going to tell me? That you're actually a paindne in disguise? Wait, no, that doesn't work either. Hmm."

While Jumble frowns in thought, I turn my eyes towards Pearl's shell. She's watching with obvious interest, and since she hasn't contradicted anything Jumble's said, I guess Jumble really was just an innocent painted dane bystander that got sucked into the conflict. But… what did the system censor? If it happened after Jumble was fully uplifted, then it… must be the incident the construct in our tower alluded to.

"How'd you manage to get out of here in the first place?" I ask. "...Jumble?"

Jumble startles and straightens her posture. "Yes! I'm here."

I stare at her for a second. "How'd you manage to get out of here?"

"Right! Yes. Um. You aren't actually a painted dane, right? Because the system made sure we–um, they–were all incapable of higher thought. Not that I'm saying you're incapable of higher thought, o-or…" She swallows around her words. "I'm going to stop now."

"Don't dig yourself any deeper." I chuckle. "Seriously, though, no. I'm originally a human. Once you're done talking, I'll explain what that means. Alright?"

Jumble nods.

I offer her a smile. "Then let's get back on track. How'd you escape this place? Was it just… somewhere on the planet and you walked away?"

"I wish. Heck, we all wished." Jumble laughs somberly and laces her fingers together. "The same way the system partitioned the world with clearance levels, it put borders around this place. Even though we could see the outside world, none of us could get strong enough to make it through. Not until the… thing that got censored."

"The incident." I mutter under my breath. "Damn thing's too connected to the quest for you to tell me."

Jumble's eyebrows shoot to her forehead. "It is? Why? Isn't all the other stuff I told you, like, way more important?"

Pearl sighs. "That's what all of us thought when we heard it, too."

I nod in agreement, which Jumble takes as me agreeing with her–which, I guess is actually pretty much true. She fidgets with her hands some more, mouthing words without making a single sound, then nods to herself and squeezes her fingers tight.

"After the… thing… I have a blip in my memories that lasts for… I honestly don't know how long." Jumble shakes her head. "Once that happened, I woke up outside the city with hexagonal debris and a lot of squirming plastic around me. I was super excited at first, but then I looked around and realized that the city was completely gone. I wandered for a long time after that, writing more and more books and using my Worth skill to make sure people would read them."

Her Worth skill. Shit, I'd almost forgotten–did forget, really. I glance at her to see if she's still in the middle of talking, and from the looks of it, she's just taking a second to breathe. Once she's done, I have to ask about that.

"I watched a bunch of cities get built, others die out, and different cultures flourish under the system's newfound world domination. You'd be surprised how long the Gris took to evolve those smoky body parts of theirs; before that, they were more cat than person–I even wrote about it in one of my books." Jumble opens her hands, and a much more modern-looking leatherbound journal appears in them. "Evolving Debris. But, um, that doesn't matter right now. You're probably more worried about the timeline since you found a book that I wrote pretty recently right here with us. And I do have an answer, but it doesn't make me look good."

Jumble sends the book away and steels herself. She takes a deep breath, closes her eyes, and leans down so her elbows rest on her knees. "Eight years ago, I found a way back into this place after hundreds of years. The others didn't come with me, since… you know… and I just… explored for a while. But the time dilation was really bad back then. Like, really really bad. I was here for three years, but when I got back out, less than two weeks had gone by."

I whistle and lean back. "Yeah, I'd say that's a horrible time difference."

"It really was. And I didn't have to eat then, either, so the quest was already in the process of rebuilding things. I handled seeing these things way better than I thought I would, but… the quest was running a lot of tests. I saw things that I wasn't supposed to, participated in things that weren't supposed to be happening, and kind of pissed it off really bad."

"So that's why you don't have a greyed-out Class Card." I say. "You pretty much pre-cleared the quest."

Jumble shakes her head. "Nope–I already had all the system upgrades from this place from way back. And I didn't actually clear anything; I just saw all the pieces getting ready to get put together. You saw how big this place is–there's no way I could see all of it even after three years. But… um… there's a reason I did all that. A reason I looked for a stupid den in the middle of nowhere to try and go back to the place that imprisoned me for over a hundred years."

She turns to me, eyes full of vulnerability as her hands shake. "Some people didn't manage to escape. People that I really cared about. Even if the system murdered them all for the part they played in… things… I needed to know what happened to them. I still need to know."

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.