Mel didn’t need any further instruction. She had been waiting to test out her lute in a live event ever since Dr. Suresh had shown her how it worked. She had briefly considered trying it out at the Silver Gate the first night, fingers itching to pluck the strings, but was worried she’d get in trouble for it.

  Slipping sideways through the underbrush, she moved far enough away from the rest of the group that the animals in the clearing wouldn’t see them as they did what they needed to do.

  She smiled as she lifted her lute and stepped near to the edge of the clearing, still under cover of the light brush. She wasn’t really sure how long it would take to have any effect on the sounder.

  She smiled. She was the bard. And now she was going to do her job and shape the mood of this battlefield.

  She cleared her throat silently, and plucked quietly at a few strings, thinking about her song. In her vision, she pulled up her HUD and activated the HRI setting. She immediately felt a light buzz in the instrument. Looking up, she stared at one of the larger animals in the clearing. The HRI locked onto the target.

  She plucked a string, more loudly. She could feel the buzz in her chest. Harmonic Resonance.

  A soft ambient glow bloomed along the strings as she brushed the first chord. It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t dramatic. It was a low, steady tone. She needed a tune with repeating rhythms and harmonic overtones. A tune to soothe a wild beast.

  The way Dr. Suresh had described it was that everything alive vibrates a little. Muscles, organs, nervous systems—all of it runs on tiny electrical and mechanical rhythms. When an animal is angry or agitated, those rhythms are fast, jagged and out of sync. The Harmonic Resonator built into her lute would take her music, and amplify it out with a little something extra that would interfere with their stress signals. Something that would force their bodies to slow down.

  It wouldn’t put them to sleep, or prevent them from attacking. But it should calm them down enough that they might not want to attack anymore. If she got the music right. She strummed another chord, louder this time.

  “Music to soothe the soul,” she said, smiling. And then she played.

  ***

  Alex felt it before he consciously recognized it—a subtle pressure change, like standing too close to a speaker at a concert. Something rippled through the mana across the clearing. That was interesting to watch. The mana itself wasn’t moving or interacting exactly, it just ‘jittered’ on certain notes.

  The boars closest to Mel spun towards the forest edge, but very quickly slowed. One, that had been pawing at the ground, did so slower and slower until finally it just stood there, watching the forest.

  Further back, heads lifted. Tusks dipped. Aggression bled away in visible stages: snorts softened, stamping turned into hesitant steps, squealing quieted. One of the younger boars angled its head, ears twitching.

  Alex snapped a shield into place in front of Mel, shaping it into a translucent wall just like he had created before. Just in case. The mana flowed easily, smoother than it had before. He could see it pull towards him, towards his hands and will, then flow out to form the wall.

  None of the boars moved toward Mel.

  “That,” Rae muttered, staring at the clearing, “is deeply weird."

  Danny shook his head slowly, eyes darting between Alex’s illusion, the sounder, and Mel. “This would make hunting unfair.” Jay tapped him on the shoulder and they left at a trot with Sarah, circling around towards the illusion side of the clearing.

  Alex turned slightly. “Rae.”

  Rae pulled her gaze away from Mel and pulled her hood up.

  She touched the charm at her throat once—more of a new habit than something that was strictly necessary—then engaged her Phase-Veil cloak. The fabric shimmered subtly, edges blurring until reality seemed to lose interest in her.

  Rae didn’t think of it as invisibility of course. She thought of it as opting out.

  She smirked at the thought and moved towards the flag. Not fast. But not slow either. She paid attention to her feet, only occasionally glancing up at the captivated animals in the clearing.

  She slipped out of the shadows of the forest edge and paused in full sight the animals, pausing for a moment to make sure there was no reaction. There was none. Perfect she thought.

  Leaning towards each band of shadow, she stepped across the back of the clearing, her thoughts calm, almost detached. Twenty more feet to go.

  She saw Jay, Sarah, and Danny spread out around the opposite perimeter. The animals on that side of the clearing seemed to have calmed a little as well, but they were further away from Mel and her song and, unlike pigs closer to her, they were still wandering around and occasionally snorting at Alex’s illusion. She wondered if it was actually still an illusion when it was made out of drones you could technically touch. Not that it mattered right now.

  She brought her focus back to what she was doing. She watched as Jay cracked a large branch with a loud crack and threw it at some of the more active animals, then he retreated back into the forest.

  Distractions. But not for her. Rae reached the flag.

  Up close, it felt a little absurd. She wondered if she had ever actually held a flag on a pole before. Shaking her head she pulled it out of the punky tree stump and turned back the way she had come. All of this blood, chaos, and risk… for a stupid flag.

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  Her HUD chimed softly in her ear.

  >> OBJECTIVE SECURED

  Rae didn’t smile. She turned and slipped back the way she came, presence rapidly dissolving into shadows at the edge of the forest.

  Alex watched her progress with a focus so intense it bordered on obsessive. He realized that he could easily track her progress. First, he could see her footprints in the loose, torn up dirt. But more interestingly, he could see a disturbance in the Mana as she moved. It wasn’t the same as seeing her of course. But in his sight, there was clearly something there, moving away from him.

  He chuckled as she retrieved the flag and started back. While she was invisible to their sight, the flag wasn’t. It looked like it was floating across the clearing on it’s own. Idly, Alex wondered if he could have wrapped it in mana and just pulled it back to him without all this effort. He would have to test that later.

  For now, Mel, Rae and the others were having their moment and he didn’t want to undermine that.

  When Rae stepped up beside him and disengaged her cloak, flagpole resting on one shoulder, Alex finally exhaled a breath he didn’t realize he had been holding.

  “Okay, now we fall back,” he murmured.

  “And collect our prize,” Rae said, then stopped moving and looked at him. “There is a prize right?”

  “Fans I think,” he answered, smiling as she rolled her eyes. Rae put on this emo act but he could already see through it. She was bouncing up on her toes and he knew she couldn’t wait to go show Mel the flag. Those two had really bonded in the past couple of weeks, despite being complete opposites in every way that Alex could think of.

  Alex focused on his HUD and sent the team a message.

  >> [#Squad] @Alex: 'Aight - Flag recovered. Time to fall back. Great work everyone.

  >> [#Squad] @Sarah: Want us to come back to you?

  >> [#Squad] @Alex: No, Fall back in the direction B Class went. The path they came in on has to be closer than the one we used. I don't really want to wander back through the forest trying to find it.

  >> [#Squad] @Danny: You know the minimap tracked our path, so we can just retrace it... right?

  >> [#Squad] @Alex: Yes, but I still don't want to walk back through the forest off path. There's giant bugs out there! ;)

  >> [#Squad] @Mel: Do I have to stop playing?

  >> [#Squad] @Alex: No, keep it up until we get away from the clearing. I assume you can walk and play?

  >> [#Squad] @Mel: Duh

  Rae snorted beside him as he brought his focus back to the forest. He ignored her, but as they stepped back away from the clearing, he was smiling.

  They walked in silence as they collected Mel and headed around the clearing to meet up with the others.

  Alex focused inward as they moved, breathing deliberately, remembering Hiro’s words. Don’t force it. Just, imagine it entering your body as you breathe. Make yourself open to it.

  He pictured mana not as something external to be pulled, but as something already present, already part of him. Or maybe that he was a part of this system, like everything else that lived here seemed to be.

  A heavy sensation settled into his core as he walked, like a weight he hadn’t known he was carrying. That was new.

  The forest opened up into a wider path before he could think more about it. Jay, Sarah and Danny stood there with B Class.

  The group was talking quietly as they walked up. Up close B Class looked a lot worse. More so than he would have expected from what he saw in the clearing. Actually, even Maddie and Victor seemed to have rips and bloodstains on their clothes and they hadn’t even been out in the clearing with the others. What had they even run into?

  Connor turned as they approached, his eyes locking onto Alex.

  “Nice trick,” Connor said.

  It wasn’t admiration. It wasn’t mockery.

  It was resentment. And completely unnecessary. Alex was tired of the insults. Connor had issues and he’d tried to be understanding of that, but he was sick and tired of Connor’s issues spilling over onto him.

  Alex stopped walking and stared in shock. Connor just stood there and sneered back at him.

  Something inside Alex snapped.

  Weeks of restraint. Of swallowing comments. Of watching Connor posture and push and threaten.

  Alex didn’t think. He felt the pressure build around him and drew it in. He couldn’t see the mana, he was too focused on the smug face in front of him, but he could feel it rush at him in a torrent. He could feel it flow into him. There was a slight pain in his stomach, but he barely registered it.

  He took two steps forward and punched the air between them with a strangled, frustrated yell.

  Mana exploded out of him.

  It wasn’t refined, or planned. It was barely shaped. It was raw intent translated into force. A compressed wall of energy that slammed into a very shocked Connor. The impact hit him harder than the boar in the clearing, lifting him up off his feet and throwing him backwards through leaves and dirt, sending him tumbling hard before skidding to a stop.

  Alex continued to walk forward, vision blurring, wanting to end this once and for all, but Jay rushed over and stepped in front of him. Alex moved to step around but Jay raised an arm and blocked the way. Alex looked up into his face, ready to yell at the big man to get the hell out of his way. The look on Jay’s face stopped the words on his lips. What he saw was understanding. That was it. Alex didn’t have a response for it.

  Behind Jay, Connor surged to his feet, fury blazing, sword already half-drawn. He took a step forward and listed sideways, almost falling over.

  Alex felt the mana still buzzing under his skin, wild and intoxicating. Part of him wanted to step around Jay and hit Connor again. Harder.

  Hands grabbed arms.

  “Enough!”

  “Stand down!”

  Marcus and Keiran stepped in. Hiro had a hand on Alex’s arm. The older adventurers stepped towards Connor and told him to back off, voices sharp with authority. Connor stopped, chest heaving.

  Alex’s own breathing was ragged. His hands shook—not with fear, but with the aftershock of what he’d just done. He had lost control and couldn’t even remember the last time that had happened.

  Jay just looked down at him, expression unreadable.

  Mel stared, eyes wide and, turning to Rae, mouthed O.M.G.!

  “It’s been a day folks, but it’s winding down,” Marcus said. “Everybody take a few deep breaths and let’s head out. We have a long walk in front of us still. A Class, wait over there,” Marcus pointed down the path towards the clearing. “B Class, head out. We’ll follow in a few minutes.”

  Alex took a couple of deep breaths and then let Hiro pull him backwards. He shrugged off the hand and moved over to where Marcus had pointed.

  B Class headed out with Kieran and Laina.

  They had only made it twenty feet down the path when a roar thundered through the trees.

  “What the hell was that?” Sarah asked, shock in her voice.

  Marcus just shook his head. “New plan, let’s go now. Double time.” He ushered them down the path right behind B Class, Hiro taking the lead and walking beside Laina.

  Another roar burst through the trees around them. A few large black birds burst out of the underbrush further up the hill and fled through the canopy.

  ***

  There is a bear inside the Silver Gate Inn. It’s stuffed. Forever rearing up on its hind legs, brandishing its claws and roaring at the room.

  According to the Ops team the bear harassed Alpha Base in its early days. Coming at dusk to raid food stores, it would leave a trail of destruction in its path. The locals call it a frost maw. Its coat is a patchwork of grays and browns that blend into the brush of its forest home.

  It took a week to track it down and three teams to take it down.

  Did I mention that it is almost thirteen feet tall? And that the locals thought it was a juvenile?

  Operations Log, SHIELD

  Outer Perimeter & Scout Coordination

  Lt. Pavel