Whatever Deborah or Harold had done, it didn’t matter. My only concern was with my own fight the next morning. And with both Ellen and Jeff through the second round, their efforts all landed on me.

  Andrew was a known quantity. He was massive—seven feet tall, armored, and wielding the largest, heaviest axe I’d ever seen. In our Rime portal, he’d been the group’s main sustained damage and tank, by virtue of being the most obvious threat in the universe. He wasn’t defensive at all, though; he’d simply killed his enemies before they killed him and relied on armor instead of skills to keep himself alive. I’d be facing raw aggression, unchecked rage, and a never-ending series of attacks.

  That would be fine, but it did mean…

  “Your combo’s not going to be reliable unless you can maintain distance from him. I’m sure you can with your Scripts and skills, but that might not be the best plan.” Ellen pointed at the screen in the guild base’s common room. “See, he’s packing at least three gap-closing skills. You’re going to be pressed the entire time.”

  Jeff snorted. “Yeah, he’s got a really strange build, judging by his skills. His Unique screams fighter, but everything else is set up for raw damage and speed. He looks more like a striker on paper, other than that axe and armor. I wouldn’t want to take too many hits from him.”

  I leaned forward, watching as Andrew fought his Round One opponent to a standstill. That shouldn’t have been possible, given that his fight had been with an A-Rank striker who knew his role—and how to end fights. But somehow, Andrew had pulled it off. Marcus had lost the closest fight of the first round.

  What I couldn’t see was how. Marcus was faster, hit harder, and while he couldn’t take blows like Andrew, he didn’t have to. There was no reason for the fighter to have won. I went back to the beginning. What had Andrew done early in the fight to eke out a win at the end?

  Nothing. He had no business winning.

  “Okay. I think I know what I’m doing for this one,” I said quietly. “I’m going to let him do exactly what he wants to. He’s going to bring everything he’s got at me. I’m going to let it happen, build up Rainfall Charges, and get hits in when I can. I’ll do the same thing Ellen did this morning—outlast, wait for mistakes, and punish them. It’ll be a long fight, but that’s okay. I can afford a long fight.”

  “You’re sure about that?” Jeff asked. “You’re not a tank.”

  I hesitated. Then I nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, this is the best plan. I could try an all-in attack, but with both of us at E-Rank, it might not be enough—and Ellen’s right. The spell combo isn’t reliable. I’ll fish for opportunities instead.”

  “If you’re sure,” Ellen said. “Now, Jessie’s going to be back from school in…”

  “Just under an hour.” I stood up and stretched my back. “That gives me just under an hour to stretch out, take a quick run, and make sure I’m not missing anything about Andrew.”

  “Ellen yawned. “I’m going to take a nap. Good luck with your workout.”

  Andrew had to have done something.

  I couldn’t shake the thought the whole time I ran on the treadmill, averaging a solid thirty miles per hour for a half-hour. B-Rank really was something. I was benching close to a thousand pounds, and if I tried, I was pretty sure I could bend the bar with one hand.

  Andrew was C-Rank. I didn’t understand how he’d gotten that far; he’d been arrested right after the Rime portal, and he’d only been out for…I had no idea. But that wasn’t enough time to progress unless he’d been close to C-Rank before his arrest. The Fallen Delvers Portal was supposed to make rank differences less important, but realistically, an A-Ranker had more skills—not system-granted ones, but practice and reflex and training—than a C-Ranker. He shouldn’t have been able to win.

  And I couldn’t think of a single thing he could have done. The recording had started the moment he and Marcus entered the portal, long before they stepped into the sparring room. He hadn’t had a moment for any weird buffs or poisoning his axe, or anything like that. No privacy, either.

  Maybe he’d gotten lucky, or he’d had the right strategy.

  I turned off the treadmill, sweat pouring down my face. A full sprint for thirty minutes was enough to get even a B-Rank body sweating and breathing hard.

  “Ah, you’re done. I was wondering when you’d finish up.”

  I whirled. Jessie was sitting on a bench, watching me, laptop on her legs. Two deep breaths to relax, one stretch to loosen my shoulders, and I was ready to talk. “What are you doing here? What time is it?”

  “Close to five. I got home a half-hour ago. Ellen said you were just finishing up, so I came down to talk to you, but you didn’t even notice me. So, I’ve been listening to your feet since then, and—“

  “I’ve been running for an hour and a half?”

  Jessie shrugged. “I dunno. I guess. Listen, Kade, I have questions that you can answer. Maybe. Hopefully. It’s important.”

  “What do you need?” I grabbed a towel and dried off my face.

  “The Arboreal portal with the market. Can you describe that first warehouse to me? As many details as you can remember—I think I’m close to a translation, but I need to be sure.”

  “Okay. The big thing was the twelve tanks. They each had a monster inside, from a portal world we’d visited before. Experiments from a fleshcrafter, stitcher world.”

  “And?”

  “Chemicals. Lots of chemicals. Acid, formaldehyde, other preserving fluids. I think there were powders and dried, ‘solid’ chemicals, too, but the entire warehouse was full of stuff from that one portal world.” I shrugged. “It reminded me of a portal world we’d fought through in Roswell, too. A mix of monsters from different places, none of which should have been there, and—“

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  “The people from another world,” Jessie finished. She grinned. Then she pointed at a circled set of symbols. It looked like she’d solved a word search. “The world the experiments came from is probably Tylnox—or that’s a person involved in it. That’s the only word on this diagonal I can’t translate. Everything else fits in, though. See? ‘Two-one glass of being, different being in each, courtesy of Tylnox.’”

  “So, it is a ledger?” I asked.

  “No. Well, the first part wasn’t. It was a guide to the language—something with the basics. I’m not reading it well. Probably like, as well as a kinderg?rtner. But I’m reading it!” Jessie beamed.

  I smiled back. “That’s great, Jessie. Let me know if you get anything else, okay?”

  “Will do. I’m going to focus on the ledger for a while, even though the words on the front page are the most interesting. The ledger’s set up to repeat, so I can lock most of the words in, at least on this angle. Then it’s just filling in with what the GC’s decided to share with us.” Jessie stood up, tucked her laptop under her arm, and disappeared.

  Whatever she was up to, she was moving pretty quickly on it, and I was happy to help. The guild wasn’t currently looking for portals, since half of the team was in the tournament, so that left me with nothing to do but prepare and plan.

  And I could only do so much of that. At the end of the day, my fight tomorrow was entirely dependent on what Andrew brought to the sparring room. Just because I hadn’t seen him buff up didn’t mean he wasn’t hiding something.

  When I got out of the shower, Ellen was…just sitting there on the edge of my bed. She didn’t look at me right away, but she nodded stiffly. I got dressed, then sat down next to her. “What’s on your mind?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. She leaned into me and put her head on my shoulder. I waited. Something was on her mind, but rushing wouldn’t help get it out there.

  But she didn’t say anything for a long time, and she didn’t relax. After almost three minutes, she stood up suddenly. “I’m going for a drive. Come with me?”

  “Yeah, sure. Where to?”

  “I don’t know,” she repeated. “Just…out.”

  I nodded, followed her into the elevator, then to the bridge over the road below. We got into Deimos, and Ellen started the engine, then took the wheel. She was going to drive herself—that meant she really didn’t have any idea where she was going. We pulled out into Surprise, and she turned on the radio.

  The sounds of drum and bass filled the car. Ellen shivered in the driver’s seat. “I hate this stuff.”

  “Then why—“

  “I know, Kade. Why am I listening to it now? Bob’s done with me, in a legally binding sense. I’m my own person for the first time in my life, and I’m twenty-one. It’s great, and it’s freeing, and…” she trailed off and turned onto the 303 Loop, driving parallel to the wall and putting on speed. “And I don’t know who I’m supposed to be now.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. I buckled my seatbelt.

  Ellen noticed, but she didn’t comment on that. She stared out the window for a while as the concrete-and-steel barrier flashed by on our left. “I mean, like…Kade, you’re doing the same thing as me. Kind of. It’s backward. You’re trying to make your stepdad proud and take care of your sister. I’ve spent my whole life since I was fifteen trying to make my dad go away. And now that’s done, and I don’t know what’s next.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You don’t understand what?” Deimos took control long enough to swerve around a car, then returned the steering to Ellen. I didn’t say anything about that.

  “I guess what I mean is, you’re on point when you’re doing delver work, or preparing for the tournament, or fighting in it. It’s okay not to know what’s next sometimes.”

  “Kade, you don’t understand.” Ellen took a deep breath. “You—“

  “You’re right. I don’t.” I reached out and put a hand on Ellen’s knee. She didn’t move it away, and she kept her eyes on the road. “I don’t understand what your situation’s like, but I do know a little of what you’re going through. So, do you want advice, or do you want to talk about it?”

  Ellen went quiet. Deimos slowed down to a reasonable speed. Then her hand flicked out, and the drum and bass music cut off. I relaxed a little.

  But she still didn’t say anything, and I could tell she was struggling with it. Her hands left the wheel. Deimos took over a split second later, and she fiddled with her hair.

  “Look, Ellen, you’re one of the strongest people I know, but changes like this are hard, and people don’t just get over losing family—even if that family is Bob.”

  Ellen snorted.

  “So, advice?”

  She nodded slowly. “Yeah. Let’s hear it.”

  “Okay. When Dad died, I didn’t have time to slow down. I was just about to graduate, and Jessie needed one hundred percent of my attention, and my system had just awakened. I had no choice but to step up and be functional all the time. And it sucked. I held it together, but it sucked. I only did it because Jessie needed me. You’re in a totally different situation. It’s okay not to know your next move. It’s okay to be lost and confused right now.

  “So, I think you should—“

  “Give myself grace?” Ellen rolled her eyes.

  I nodded, though. “Yeah, something like that. Take your time, figure out who you want to be, then figure out how to get there. Who does Ellen—not Eleanor Traynor, but Ellen—want to be when she grows up?”

  Ellen went quiet for a long time. Deimos slowly turned east as we followed the 303 Wall’s curve. Then she typed in the console for a minute, and the car pulled a U-turn and started heading south and west, back toward home.

  Jessie was close to understanding, but not there yet.

  The one word, ‘Crone,’ had been translated. It had appeared too many times not to—even if she’d thought it was just ‘old lady’ at first. But the rest of the first line in the Arboreal ledger was still a mystery. None of the words were used anywhere else that she’d managed to translate.

  Kade hadn’t actually told her anything she didn’t already know. He’d just confirmed a couple of things. Confirmation was good, but it wasn’t progress, and at some point, Dr. Teller’s team was going to have a breakthrough. Jessie had no idea why she thought she could beat a GC-funded linguist, but she knew she needed to. She had a better source of information than anyone else did. This should be solvable. But until she knew the rest of the ‘Crone’ sentence, it wouldn’t be.

  Her friends weren’t much of a help, either, but they were better than anything else.

  J-Dawg: I’m stumped.

  User295: J-Dawg, I already told you everything I could about language translation. You need Yreanne. They’d be able to help you out. But I’m buns at this, and you know it.

  J-Dawg: I don’t think it’s a language translation issue, 295.

  J-Dawg: What if…in some of my classes, we’re talking about intended and written law.

  User295: What are you, a sophomore?

  J-Dawg: Shut up.

  User295: You totally are, aren’t you?

  J-Dawg: Not important. The Hyperboreans are writing like the reader will know at least a little about what they’re doing. We should know who the Crone is, what she’s all about, and so on. But we don’t. Without that information, we can’t translate this accurately. Which means the GC has a massive advantage. If they can get the portal people to talk, they may have that context.

  J-Dawg: So, we need to figure out how to get it before then.

  User295: Kidnapping is something else I’m buns at, J. And it attracts attention.

  J-Dawg: Jesus, 295!

  J-Dawg: I’m not saying we kidnap them. Just that we make contact with them somehow. Do you know anyone who’s good at getting places they’re not supposed to be?

  User295: We’re all good at getting places we’re not supposed to be, J.

  J-Dawg: I meant in meatspace.

  User295: Oh. Nah.

  Her messages went silent. Jessie sighed. She’d been hoping that someone in her online friend group would be able to help her out, but if they couldn’t…If they couldn’t, she’d have to use a hammer when a scalpel was the right tool. Fortunately, the GC had given her a hammer. She just hoped it’d be a big enough one.

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