They arrived at the waypoint 3 supply depot after an hour of walking on paths weaving through chambers.

  There weren't as many people as Arcen expected to see. There were just four or five with Echo Raider outfits hauling boxes and a group of climbers resting on empty crates with crushed beer cans all around them. The climbers looked beaten, tired, and injured, but they were loudly talking over each other. Some of them pointed at Arcen and waved excitedly. He waved back at them with a polite smile. From their perspective, seeing him here would've been as absurd as seeing a circus clown.

  A woman in a uniform hurried up to them as they approached the main tent. She had a clean buzz cut, sharp gray eyes, and a long chain around her neck.

  “Delivery from Mr. Barnes,” Elena said before the woman could even ask.

  “Right this way, Miss, Sir,” She said, courteously waving her hand at a tent where someone was hammering a piece of metal. Walking inside, Arcen saw two topless men working on a strange contraption with a lot of metal parts. It looked like a canon made of polished gold. One was hammering a huge cylindrical piece, and the other was cutting a piece of metal with a gas-powered grinder that Arcen had never seen before.

  They're making some sort of cannon for sure.

  “Ah, Tet-rods arrived so soon?” The man with the grinder stopped, lifted his safety goggles, and rubbed his grease-covered hands on his trousers. The short-haired woman helped Arcen untie the straps. He felt really good when all four heavy metal rods were taken off his back.

  “Where is Mr. Colin? We were supposed to deliver this to him,” Elena asked the woman with a quick sideways glance at Arcen.

  “He went back to the base camp for a meeting with Miss Rika. You should've met him along the way,” the woman said, untangling the nylon straps from the boxes as she carefully arranged them on the ground.

  Then why did Barnes tell us to give it to him?

  “We didn't see him. Did he say he's going to do something else along the way? Asking because I have another thing I need to give to him.”

  That was a lie. Barnes didn't give them anything else to deliver.

  “I'm not sure. Maybe he went somewhere else,” The woman looked at them, tilting her head. “I can check his office; there should be a note. Just give me a minute.” She gestured at a tent nearby. “Please feel free to grab anything to eat or drink.”

  They walked over to that tent and picked something to drink. Elena took a water bottle that was just seconds away from freezing. Arcen found a light beer from a brand that he recognized. These Echo Raiders seemed to have a full supply chain of goods coming into the tower. The only thing lacking was a branch of a fast-food chain.

  They found a nice spot to sit far away from the earshot of anyone and quietly enjoyed their drinks. Arcen didn't enjoy the cold beer as much as he thought. He tasted the first few sips and then just swallowed it down in a single gulp. He let out a loud burp and crushed the can under his foot.

  Elena sipped the water like it was a beverage. He couldn't imagine that level of cold being enjoyable in any way. He felt a chill on his teeth just watching her drink water like it was wine.

  “What do we do about this Colin fellow if he turned out to be Wells?” Arcen asked when Elena closed the bottle and nudged it towards him for a sip.

  “What do you do? I'm just here to help. What do you want from him?”

  Arcen washed the beer in his mouth with ice-cold water and put the bottle down. “I want to know if Jenna made it out,” He paused for a moment, “And I want him dead.”

  “Forget about that. It's like I told you. If you kill him, you're going to get killed too. I don't think we even need to do that,” Elena said, leaning back on a nearby crate. “Wells shot you and your buddy. We just have to figure out why. If we prove it, others can deal with it. I know Rika would.”

  “How do we prove anything?” Arcen asked with a sigh. He only had a bunch of memories. That wouldn't convince anybody. It was his word against theirs. “Can you like mind hack him or something?”

  Elena raised her head suddenly and looked around. “Don't talk about that in public.”

  Hold on now, that can't be a secret?

  “You're telling me now no one else knows what you can do?”

  She raised herself with a groan and scooted closer so she could whisper. “Three things: my face, my name, and what I can do. Very few people know about all three at once. Zuhara knows, Rika knows, and then there's you. So, don't talk about it so casually. You never know who's listening.”

  Wait, can I just blackmail her with that then, just like she did with my suicide reports?

  It couldn't be that simple. He knew there was a caveat in here somewhere. There was something that kept Zuhara and Rika in line, not talking about it to anyone. Both were accomplished climbers, powerful people. Arcen wanted to be trustworthy with her if he ever wanted to get close to the black egg.

  “Besides,” Elena continued whispering, “People get freaked out when a mind hacker is around, especially if they can't defend against it. If you spill the beans, it'll be bad for both of us.”

  “Bad for me how?” Arcen asked, also whispering now.

  “For one, I won't be your friend, and I won't help you with anything anymore.”

  Thinking about it, it was actually that simple. Zuhara and Rika wouldn't be worried about a mind hacker because they surely have ways to prevent it, but they would surely have lots of things that only Elena can do for them. It was a secret not out of the good will in their hearts; it was a tactical advantage in towers. Making an enemy out of this kid was a bad idea after all.

  “Can you help me with Wells then? Can you see his memories or something?” Arcen asked, tugging at her arm before she leaned away from him again.

  “That's not how mind hacking works. I can't just be him, like what you can do with those Chronos contracts. Now, I can't do anything with Mind Matrix, that's not available from inside towers-”

  So she can't hack me and see my Osiryn quest? Is that what she's saying?

  He had to be careful with this. So far, he'd avoided getting mind-hacked by her because she never had a reason to. The quest had to be hidden from her in any way possible. He was paranoid about her mind-hacking powers.

  Even in this explanation, she could be lying to throw him off.

  Arcen held up a finger. “Can't do anything with Mind Matrix in towers? That's not true, is it? I checked my bank account when I was on the ground floor.”

  “That's a workaround. There are transmitters, maybe even underground wires. Electronics like that don't work on higher floors. Don't tell me you didn't know that?”

  Ah, so they had some sort of tech to make Mind Matrix accessible inside towers.

  “Well, hate that I have to ask this so bluntly, but what can you do?”

  “I can tell you if he's hiding. Who or what he is, I can speak to him in Rootsong like the tower does, stuff like that.”

  She can speak in Rootsong? I remember hearing about it, but how?

  “Rootsong?” Arcen asked.

  “That's just another name for Panlangra. It's from a poem found in a book after the first tower collapsed. It ends like this,” She said, straightening her back. “...the lyrics of Rootsong from the marrow of bones, knots of gold etched deep in your eyes,” She recited in a semi-singing voice.

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  That's not what I wanted to know at all.

  Arcen thought it was just plain weird for anybody to be writing poems inside towers. Then again, he saw a history book in Zuhara's tent. Towers were perfect for lunatics like that.

  “Alright then, you can do that, and find out if he's Wells. It's easy enough, isn't it?”

  “Not exactly,” she brought her voice down to a whisper again. “Think about it, if it's someone scheming with a bunch of different fake names, chances are they already know what mind hacking is. If he detects me hacking him, that'll be a huge problem. How do you know if he's not a mind hacker himself?”

  Oh shit. That would explain what happened before he shot me.

  It still felt way too elaborate a setup to just shoot someone in the head. Arcen could come up with plans that were at least ten times easier. Regardless, Elena's point made sense. Someone juggling multiple identities was definitely likely to be a mind hacker, or at least familiar enough with that world to counter being mind-hacked themselves.

  “I'll only do it to confirm it if it doesn't look like Wells. If it's actually Wells and he figures out who and what I am, that's a bad thing. I told you already why killing him is not an option,” she said sternly.

  Arcen scrunched his nose, trying to think of ways to trap this man in a way that could force a confession out of him. Elena interrupted his thoughts.

  “We have to catch him lying, or doing something he's not supposed to do, then we have an excuse to figure out who he really is, doesn't matter even if we get caught.”

  The woman with the buzz cut emerged from a tent and quickly walked up to them.

  “That meeting's been postponed. He's running some supplies from the bar to the doc's chamber. You can probably meet him there.”

  “Bar?” Arcen raised an eyebrow. “There is one?”

  The woman stared at him, eyes blank as if she never expected to hear such a question. She looked sideways for a second, frowned, and looked back up at him again. “Yes? there...is?”

  “Come, let's go,” Elena said, pulling him by the hand.

  The bar was in a separate chamber at some point between the waypoint 3 supply depot and the basecamp. They walked back through the Yerdecin chamber with the mysterious tree. It would've been hilarious if the bar was just a turn away from the religious hotspot, but that wasn't the case.

  It was off to the side in the chamber right next to it, a trail of muddy planks and yellow nylon ropes that led into a dark forest with luminous, blue things that looked like snakes with four pairs of legs.

  Wow, that's just what I want to see when I'm drunk and shitfaced.

  Walking this path while stumbling drunk was a challenge put on earth by Satan. He couldn't imagine what genius came up with the location for the bar. He'd never been more sure this tower really was full of lunatics.

  He would've actually preferred it if this bar were in that giant rayfish chamber. At least you couldn't suffer too long if that thing fell off the ceiling. He didn't really know if these legged snakes were dangerous or not, but he could easily imagine one of them crawling where light doesn't shine. He kept one hand ready to defend his crotch, shuddering at the thought.

  They arrived at the bar after a few minutes of walking, surprisingly fast now that he wasn't hauling four heavy gold rods.

  The chamber was quite weird. It was about a quarter of the size a chamber should be. He hadn't imagined chambers ever being this small, simply because he never set foot in one that could be somebody's backyard in the suburbs.

  “Why is this place...small?” Arcen asked, looking all around him.

  “Some chambers are like this, nothing new,” Elena answered.

  As small as it was, the chamber was packed full of people and cluttered with a huge mess of luminous vines that pulsed slowly at a constant rate. Combined with the wooden aesthetic and the diverse outfits of people, this place looked like a dating spot in a Renaissance fair rather than a place for traumatized climbers to drink themselves into a coma.

  To be fair, although the location looked more romantic than it was, the crowd that lay strewn all around in various chairs looked exactly like traumatized climbers. There was just one couple slumped over in a corner, and Arcen was surprised to see they were both knocked out where they sat, about ten or fifteen empty beer bottles at their feet.

  Now there's a date I would've loved.

  He had never gone on such adventurous dates. The only girl that he ever seriously got drunk with was his sister, and she could barely make it through one-tenth of what he drank just to feel something. It always ended in her turning pink in the first hour, and him having to be a teddy bear to a grown woman.

  Remembering it made him smile. He would never whine about it again if he ever made it out of this hell tower. Hell, he would be her full-time teddy bear if that meant he could put all of this behind him like it never happened.

  “There he is,” Elena said, pointing at a tall man sitting at a table in the far corner, scribbling something on a notepad.

  Colin Fraser, or potentially Wells, turned his head up as they approached. There was a hint of surprise when he saw Elena, but he didn't even look at Arcen. It was like the man couldn't even be bothered to acknowledge his presence, much less be startled by it.

  “Hello, I was looking for you all day,” Elena said, climbing up one of the tall chairs. She almost slipped on her oily feet, but she managed to do it without help. Arcen couldn't tell if he was supposed to sit or stand; he just stared blankly until Elena patted the chair next to her.

  “Really? I'm sorry for any inconvenience caused, miss El,” Colin said, a courteous smile on his scarred face. He talked to Elena the way an adult talks to a child when they pretend to be as serious as the child wanted them to be.

  Arcen was sure Elena heard it in his tone and the words that he was using. She was playing along like she never even noticed.

  “I want to know about my bodysuit. Delivery's a bit too late, isn't it?” She asked casually.

  Is she waiting for a bodysuit delivery?

  Arcen remembered seeing what she wore beneath the long coat. It was some combination of underwear, bandages, and duct tape. He had to sort through a tent full of dead people's goods to find his current outfit. There was no dead ten to twelve-year-old gymnast there to loot a bodysuit from.

  “Ah, I checked it two days ago, actually. The courier ran into an issue on the 231st floor. The package is safe, don't worry. It'll just take another five or six days to arrive.”

  “Six days?! Oh man, I wish there was a shortcut or something.”

  Arcen twitched, and three of his tentacles curled. Colin's brow twitched about a millimeter, and his eyes quickly darted back and forth between them. It was a split-second reaction that Arcen couldn't immediately categorize as suspicious, but it was weird that it happened at all.

  Regardless, Elena was a natural. She had just narrowed this conversation down to the shortcut in three sentences. She had a plan, one that didn't even occur to him with his Ceph intellect. He wasn't used to plotting against people at such sophisticated levels. It was plain impressive how she danced around someone when they dropped their guard because of her apparent age.

  I'm actually scared to ask her how she learned all this by twelve.

  “I wish there was a shortcut this far up,” Colin sighed, placing his pen neatly next to the notepad. “That would make my job a lot easier.”

  “Imagine if there was one that went all the way down and we could just get off at whatever floor we wanted,” Elena said with all the excitement of an actual child. “We could just raid towers in the morning and go home to sleep.”

  Colin smiled, paused, and then laughed politely, nodding back and forth. Anything about the shortcut made this man's expressions lag for a few milliseconds.

  Do I have anything to toss into this?

  He had to be careful when picking his line.

  “I mean, isn't that how people already work on the ground floor?” He asked, joining in casually. “Wasn't there some corporate camp down there?”

  He couldn't stare at Colin directly as he said it, but he made sure to keep the man in his peripheral vision as he kept his head turned towards Elena. He caught a glimpse of what could've been a small jolt at the mention of the camp. He just hoped Elena noticed it, whatever it was.

  “Oh, I've heard about this. There wasn't anything there three months ago when I started. You didn't see it when you started, either, did you?” Elena asked Arcen with no change in her expression, just lying as naturally as she breathed.

  “Nope, we just climbed eight floors on day one. I saw some corporate trucks and SUVs parked outside, though,” he said, without even pausing to think. He couldn't afford to ruin this moment.

  “Was it there when you came in?” Elena asked, turning back to Colin right away.

  “They were wrapping up their operations, I think, I saw some trucks as well,” Colin said, reverting to his calm voice.

  “Huh. Maybe they got bored,” Elena said, tapping the table with her forefinger. She let the awkward silence marinate for about half a minute, just fiddling around with apparent impatience.

  “I'm getting bored too. Alright, time to go,” She announced, startling Colin as she stood out of nowhere. Arcen flinched as well, but he was used to her shenanigans by now.

  “Let me know when my bodysuit gets here, okay?” she said, looking intently at Colin.

  He nodded right away. “Of course, Miss El. I'll bring it to you myself,” he said eagerly.

  Their conversation was interrupted by a drum roll and a cymbal smash. Arcen jumped, and all the groggy drunks around them shifted where they slumped. New people came pouring in, chatting loudly among themselves. The seats had slowly filled up while they were distracted by Colin.

  “Oh! I'm going to sing!” Elena said, clapping her hands.

  Arcen stood, following her lead.

  “What do you mean?” He asked, bending to talk with her above the noise of the drummer's warm-up reverberating on the walls.

  “I'm gonna sing. Just have to put my name into the list,” She said cheerfully.

  “You can sing?”

  “Ha! You'll see!” She said with a mischievous glee in her eyes. “Wanna join me?”

  Arcen recoiled like a gun was pointed at his face. Of all the things that he couldn't do, this was one of the most impossible. In fact, he would much rather climb another floor in this tower than sing in public.

  “Hell no,” he said, raising his hands and backing away.

  Elena laughed, grabbing his jacket. “Clap for me then,” She said, nudging him towards an empty seat at the front. Arcen turned to go, completely caught off guard by this singing thing she was going to do out of nowhere. He couldn't see how this connected with pressuring Wells.

  “Oh, by the way,” she said, stopping him just before he started walking away. “That piece of shit was lying to our faces!”

  “Wait-”

  She hurried off towards the band before he could ask her what that meant. Arcen took one glance at Colin, nodded, and found his seat at the front.

  Just you wait, you greasy motherfucker.

  Greasy Colin, bodysuit deliveries and singing in a tower bar.

  It's going to keep getting wilder and wilder.

  Next chapter on Wednesday.

  Regular reminder to rate/review if you’re enjoying the ride!

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