It was another gray, overcast night. The sky was orange, reflecting the city back at us as we headed towards our destination. I didn't think I'd seen the stars properly since we'd arrived on Earth with the way the weather had been, although it wasn't like we would have been able to see stars in the middle of the city anyway. We'd gone shopping, and I was now armed with some knives and a collapsible baton - I was already making plans to have that re-created back in fantasyland, and was thinking of all the vicious enchantments that could be put on it.

The cold weather and flu season gave us ample excuse to have our faces covered, but if a security company was actively monitoring the cameras we'd be in trouble regardless. There was some hope there, however - the cameras didn't look like they'd been properly cleaned, with at least one having visible dirt on the lens. That didn't look to me like something people were paying a lot of attention to. The plan was to just go as quickly as possible, with Zoey trying to hack our way in first and Katrin on standby to knock the door down.

The two of them headed to the building ahead of the rest of us, stumbling slightly and holding on to each other. "I think this is where the party was supposed to be," Zoey said way too loudly, "it's a... pop up thing, or something, I don't fucking know. Ugh, girl, we should not have pre-gamed so hard."

The rest of us were out of sight, and holding onto their bags. Katrin wasn't the most convincing drunk, but Zoey was actually knocking it out of the park. She kept up a running commentary on some imaginary person, going into detail about how much they would regret it if they had the balls to show up to this party after what happened last weekend, and quietly pulled out some tools so she could prod at the keypad while yelling "buzz me in, I know Chad!" at the little speaker.

I was watching through a very cool monocular thing that was meant for hunting or bird watching, and I saw a tiny hidden panel pop open in response to whatever Zoey had done. She said something to Katrin about having dropped her vape and ran back towards us, smiling. "Great news, goat licker - I think we're in. I just need my pin back. You've still got it, right?"

I did. She took the Coelestis pin and ran back to the building. As soon as she pressed the pin against the newly-revealed panel, the door opened. Jackpot. Katrin was crouched down at the threshold, probably working on some runes, but after only a few seconds they both went inside. And then we waited. My phone rang about ten minutes later, right when I was really starting to worry. "The cameras are off," Katrin said, "and Zoey is doing something to... she called it 'spoofing', I think she's making it look like we were never here. She seems to really be enjoying whatever is going on with her connection to Earth's collective consciousness."

The rest of us headed in, with Katrin meeting us at the door to show us where she had and hadn't cleared yet. We closed the door behind us, and started turning on lights. "Okay," I said, "this place looks... pretty fucking deserted? Kind of an anticlimax, honestly."

Katrin continued to sweep for runes, and I helped with threadsight; the strange web that had appeared connecting everyone made it a little hard to see, but with how thin the lines were it was manageable. She identified a very secure-looking door that had mana in or behind it but which had no visible runes, meaning they were probably only accessible when the door was open. That one looked like it led to a basement, so we skipped it for the moment and headed upwards.

The upper floors were devoid of magic, and had the appearance of a pretty normal office. There were cubicles, and computers, and coffee makers. Most of the cubicles were completely empty, but some had clearly been abandoned. "Okay so... this is the third desk that has a calendar from November of 2021. That would have been right around the time my memory got wiped. Could be a coincidence, I guess, or maybe me breaking into the Self-Storage place made them re-think some things about the organization."

The next floor up had signs of life that were more recent, so Coelestis had just downsized in 2021, not closed entirely. The few signs we could find on the handful of desks that still had anything on them pointed to March or April of the current year - the only April item with a specific date was from the first week, so things had probably shuttered right near the end of March. I took a moment to do the math. "That... would have been the Grand Alignment. The first one, I mean, where the world ended. Okay, so... they close one floor down at the same time that I tamper with things, and then close another floor down when the world ends. What the fuck does that mean?"

Katrin didn't look happy about not having an answer. "They wouldn't have had a whole floor dedicated to finding that last Jake Ross book, would they? No, that seems ridiculous. I just can't think of what else would have made them scale back at the same time you were captured. At least one of them got killed in Nusos, maybe that spooked them...?" She didn't look convinced.

When we reached the fourth floor, there were already lights on. Unlike the previous two floors, there weren't cubicles; it was all nice offices, five of them circling an open space with some room left over for a break area, bathrooms, and a conference room. One of the offices was lit up, and looked like a fucking mess. There were take-out boxes everywhere, and I could see that the couch had been converted to a bed. I crept closer, so I could check the food containers.

"Fuck. This is recent. Go tell the others, someone is living here. If they're not in the building now, we have to assume they'll come back to go to bed. I'm going to search through all this shit."

It would have been very convenient if the owner of the office was some luddite who still did everything on paper, but as I dug through the mess I could see that wasn't the case. There were a few hand-written notes, but they were the sort of things that people jotted down as they were thinking, not complete thoughts. I took a picture anyway, but I could already tell it wouldn't be useful.

I checked the computer, but it was locked. The login was filled in as "Agent 054". I went and checked the other offices, but they were all cleaned out - one had some sports memorabilia on the walls and a few books on management styles, but that was it. Likewise, the conference room was wiped clean and showed no sign of recent use. Whoever agent fifty-four was, they appeared to be the only person still working in the building.

The rest of the place wasn't getting us much more. Zoey had gone super hacker and done something to the security system, but she wasn't able to log into the normal computers even though that felt like it should be easier.

"No," she said, "it's because the AegisTech system is meant to be live monitored but they've got it set up all local. There's a vulnerability if you make it think it's getting a call from somewhere else to perform a backup, and uh... the thingy, like, doesn't check for the... password, or whatever, if you're plugged in to the actual... the computer, the... I lost it. Yeah, it's gone, I don't know what the fuck I was saying. The point is, there was a specific thing I did that only worked for the security system. The other computers are out of date, but not in a way that matters."

It seemed like she couldn't hold onto the external knowledge for long unless she was actively using it for something. That was fine, she'd be able to get it back if she needed to, but it meant she wasn't just omniscient. She had to specifically go looking for a piece of information, and couldn't look for two different categories of information at the same time. Zoey wasn't going to be turning into some kind of all-knowing superintelligence.

"Well," I said, "I'd hate to leave here empty-handed, but I don't know what to do. We could steal some hard drives, I guess, but it doesn't sound like we need more time, it sounds like we're just fucked. There's the basement, if we've figured out how to get that open?"

The basement door had no visible way to open it, and had something magic going on behind it. So we could blast it down, but we'd almost certainly trigger some sort of magical alarm or trap. We stood there talking about it for a few minutes, weighing the pros and cons, before I remembered I could send my fucking ghost through the floor. I couldn't use divination on Earth, and I'd been avoiding popping my ghost out because I didn't want anyone to see it, but there was no reason not to just lower it into the basement and have a look.

I managed to injure my ghost almost immediately, because it turned out that passing it through electrical lines wasn't a great idea. Still, there were plenty of spots where that wouldn't be an issue. I got it on my second try, and hit the jackpot. "Holy shit. There's guns, and extra Coelestis pins, and... hang on, I need to get my body closer, my ghost can't go all that far away from it... fuck, there's some sort of vault but it's ghost-proof. Let me try over here... is that a teleportation circle? It totally is. Or... I don't know, there's more... stuff to it. And then... oh. Shit, I've seen that before."

There were three identical suits of armor. They looked like some plate mail had fucked a modern motorcycle outfit. Sleek, superhero-style body armor out of some kind of movie. Most importantly, though, was the helmet. I'd seen that helmet before, on the mysterious bodyguard guy that had followed along with Harmid and human Calliope and then evaded us in Brinkmar. He hadn't been wearing the rest of the outfit, though. Was he Coelestis? Had he killed a Coelestis agent and taken the helmet as a trophy?

For all I knew, Coelestis Acquisitions had imported the armor from fantasyland or something. Although... no, seeing it all as a compete outfit it looked way too much like an Earth thing. That had been designed here. I described everything to the others, and Katrin made me go into excruciating detail about the teleportation circle - or more specifically, the bits all around it.

"Okay, so thanks to it being too much of a pain to ghost-proof each floor we know what's in the basement. I say we smash the door, clean it out, teleport something as a decoy - assuming we can teleport it to the rune sequence we grabbed from Worthington Hardware Co. so we know it's not just dropping into Greg's lap - and then run out the front door. If they respond to the alarm and can tell we used the teleporter, they'll head to Virginia."

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"One problem," Zoey said, "there's someone walking towards the front door right now."

I yelled at everyone to hide, and I darted out into the main area to turn off lights. I got to the stairwell just as the front door opened, and the lights turned back on again behind me. I kept going up, as quietly as I could, and got the lights on the upper floors turned off. I felt my phone buzz, and saw a message from Errod. GOING UP STAIRS HIDE. Jesus, all Errod needed was some random ellipses for no reason and he could pass his texts off as coming from a boomer.

I knew I had a minute, and the best plan seemed to be going back down to the third floor so the agent would pass me on his way to the fourth and I could get out. But there was another, worse idea that had taken hold of me. I ran to his office, lowered the volume and turned off vibration on my phone, and started a video call with Katrin. I got it into position behind some of the junk, covered the screen as best I could, and ran for one of the other offices right as the door to the stairwell opened.

My heart was pounding, but it was clear he hadn't seen me. He sat down at the desk, and as he pulled a bottle of beer out of a bag I got my first look at him. He didn't look great. He wasn't wearing a suit like the others had been, just a puffy winter coat over regular casual wear. He needed to shave, and he needed a haircut. He shifted, pulling a gun out and placing it on the desk, then let out an extremely long fart.

This was not matching up to my expectations for the evil organization.

He logged in to his computer, sighed, and started working. I was about to pat myself on the back for making sure his keyboard was in view as he logged in, when I realized my plan had been dumber than I'd thought; even if I could use his login on one of the other computers, I had no way to retrieve my phone - nor could I get to the stairs or elevator without him seeing me.

I could wait for hours, hoping he'd go to sleep. I wasn't crazy about that plan, partly because it sounded boring but mainly because I'd still need to sneak into the office where he was sleeping to get my phone. I really didn't want to leave it there, I wasn't sure if I'd be able to remote wipe it in a way he couldn't get past. Plus, even if I'd covered the screen well enough that he didn't notice on his way in, he might see a glow once the lights were off and he was trying to fall asleep.

I could kill him.

It seemed wrong, when he was just sitting there drinking a beer, but it would make things so simple. If he was the last one here, there was no way he wasn't in on what the company did. They'd tried to kill me, and had wiped my memory and Zoey's memory. I wasn't certain why they didn't just kill us both, but even the memory-tampering was enough to put them on my kill list.

The others were watching. Errod, at least, would object to me just sneaking up and putting a knife in this guy. The others might as well. Grunkle would be okay with it, probably, and human Calliope would have if she'd been with us. I'd been really good at being a good person since our return from Brinkmar, but shit like this always annoyed me. I was certain this guy would try to kill me if he knew I was here. If he did, and I killed him instead, that would be self defense and everyone would be cool with it. But if I make the first move, suddenly it's not okay. Bullshit.

I'd agree in some circumstances, sure. But here, in the heart of enemy territory? It didn't matter, regardless of how much I tried to argue my case I was still picturing the disapproving looks of my friends. It was so annoying that I was tempted to make a noise, "accidentally", to provoke a fight so I could kill the guy and be done with it. That would bring the gun into play though, and I really didn't want that.

As if he'd heard my thoughts, the agent stood and grabbed the gun. What the fuck? I'd been damn near silent, and certainly nobody downstairs had made a sound. He marched towards the stairwell, glancing around nervously, and then quietly opened the door and started heading down. I ran to his office and picked up the phone. "He's suspicious, and headed towards you guys. He's got a gun."

I'd turned the volume up as I talked, so I could hear Katrin's reply. "We all watched, and Zoey thinks he was typing 'Coelestis' but with a zero for the letter 'o' and threes for the 'e's, and then the word 'spaghetti' after that. Capitol letters for the start of both words, and an exclamation mark at the end. I'm ending the call for now, before he gets to us."

I typed in 'C03l3stisSpaghetti!' and the workstation unlocked. There, on the screen in front of me, was a page showing numbers and timestamps. Almost all the numbers were 054, but one of them was 157. This was some sort of log of what badges had scanned in at the front door. I wasn't sure what had prompted him to check - something slightly out of place, maybe - but this was bad news. I didn't see a way to alter or delete it, either. If someone checked this, they'd be able to look up agent one fifty-seven and see that they'd vanished in Nusos when pursuing Zoey and I.

There was nothing to do about it for the moment. Even if it had just been Katrin or Errod down there that guy was fucked, and it was actually both of them. I wasn't really counting the others; Matlyn had shown some real promise when fighting Sahrger, but I wasn't sure she had enough plant matter to work with. Grunkle had clearly figured out the Behemoth's Dumine, but he would almost certainly sit back and let the others deal with things. And Zoey's new ability was amazing, but... wait, could she learn martial arts or something from the collective consciousness?

Something to explore later, for sure.

I started looking through the agent's computer. He was writing something up using an official form, and it was about us. He'd attached photos, though we were only in the background and we weren't recognizable; the photos were of tiny shimmering crystals on the walls of a subway station. There was video too, and you could just barely tell that the crystals were larger at the end of the clip than they'd been at the start.

It didn't seem like anyone had pegged the random group of people off to one side as the cause, so that was something. Still, the fact that this guy knew they were mana crystals and had gathered all this information wasn't great. I deleted everything, but I assumed it was backed up somewhere. I opened his email and poked around, but there wasn't a lot in there. So far as I could tell, everything was done with forms and databases.

There were some older emails, but there was probably some sort of auto-archiving thing happening because the oldest ones were from precisely two years ago. I didn't see a way to get to anything from before that, it was possible they were deleted but I'd also never worked a corporate job; I just didn't have the experience needed for this sort of thing. I'd spent a lot of time poking around in the computers at Universal Servicing Systems, but that place was significantly older and nothing looked the same.

There were three gunshots downstairs, in quick succession. I decided to ignore it; they could handle themselves, and by the time I got downstairs it would be over anyway. I found a place to pull up case files, but there was no search method other than the case number, and I wasn't even sure of the format. I went back to the email and searched for the word 'case' and got one hit, in some emails from seven months ago.

I pulled it up, and skimmed through the report. There'd been a building in Phoenix that had collapsed on the 30th of March, which I was pretty sure was the day of the Grand Alignment the first time around. Photos were attached, and... there was Matlyn. Or, well, half of her. There were other bodies, or parts of bodies. I recognized a woman with bright pink hair and a snake tattoo - she'd been using the templating device at the tryouts just before me. There was also someone that was almost entirely gone, just their left arm and left leg remaining, but a notebook was laying by their hand and I for sure knew it. That was Cyne's notebook.

It made sense; he'd been willing to go with us to the Duminere, on a strange job with minimal details and a promise of future payouts. With that job not happening, of course he'd apply to this other one. They hadn't been able to open the way back before the Grand Alignment, and then when they did... the void had spilled out, and killed them all. There was no other explanation, the bodies were missing parts with such clean lines that it couldn't be anything else.

There was a video attached as well, and when I hit play I saw Zoey. She was crying, and handcuffed to a chair in a storage unit. Greg was asking her questions. I sped the video up, and most of what she said was shit I already knew. Nothing too surprising. Greg asked about me, but Zoey didn't know anything. He asked some questions about politics, about Brinkmar, about people's preparation for the Grand Alignment - she didn't know much.

Finally he looked at someone off-camera, and said, "We're done here. Ki..." and then hesitated as if he couldn't force the word out. "Fuck!" He spat, "Leave her, I'll wipe her memory. We'll need to make a cover story, as well, and edit her family's memories. What a waste of my time."

I slowed the video back down to normal speed, and watched the end again. What the fuck was that? I was almost certain he'd been about to say 'kill her', and then... what, he'd changed his mind? Remembered something he needed her for?

I tried changing a digit or two of the case number, but nothing came up. Whatever the rule was for the case numbers, they didn't seem to be sequential. My phone rang, and I answered while still poking around on the computer. "Callie," Katrin said, "the agent shot Matlyn and Zoey. They're okay, I healed them enough for now, but he did it as a distraction - he got out the front door before we could stop him. I would have called right away but I was busy healing them and Errod was chasing the man and just came back. Are you coming back down? I think we need to leave, now."

Aw, shit. "Okay. Blow down the basement door, we'll do the decoy thing and teleport a desk to the hardware store or something. I'll be right down, I didn't learn much though."

I hurried down the stairs. I'd found more information before, when I got shit from Greg's computer. It was a shame I'd lost all that before even checking out what all I had. I got down to the first floor and followed Katrin down the stairs to the basement, told Errod to grab a suit of the armor, and then started to work on the gun cabinet with my lockpicks while Katrin examined the teleportation circle.

"I was right," she said, "it's for sending and receiving. I just need to charge the capacitor."

I got the gun cabinet open - the lock was actually pretty shitty - and began shoving everything into my bag. There were several types of weapons, lots of ammunition, and... grenades? I was assuming they were gas canisters or flash-bangs or something, but they weren't labeled in English. As I tried to figure it out, the others came running down the stairs yelling.

There was a sickly red flicker from the stairwell, and Grunkle was launched forward with a bloody crater in his leg. Errod kicked the door shut and slid a table in front of it, and I waved everyone over to the teleportation circle. "Go, go! This is the exit now!"

The door and the table in front of it exploded into shrapnel, and I threw two of the grenades into the stairwell as I joined the others on the teleportation circle. There was an explosion, and lightning, and searing pain... and then we were in the dark silent room under Worthington Hardware Co. Someone - presumably Greg - knew we were here, and would be searching for us.

I got us all out of the room, and Katrin obliterated the circle rather than just covering it up. "Whoever it was that attacked," she said, "had he already been in New York? Or was there another circle?"

It was an important question, but not one we had any way of answering. "We have to assume the worst case scenario, whatever that is. That means we also need to get out of town, right away. Katrin, work on anti-scrying wards for us. Grunkle, your leg... healed already? Good. And then... we need to go to Arizona, I guess. We'll have to take the fight to Greg, and eliminate him. I refuse to be the one getting hunted."

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