Chương 45: The largest organization in the world

I have spent thirty years in this faction and I have learned to fear very few things. The Task Force, when provoked. Certain individuals whose names I will not commit to writing. And PfP. Always PfP. Not because they are powerful in the way we understand power. Because they are everywhere. Because they know and remember everything. And because everyone and almost everything depends on them. - From the private correspondence of a senior First Brain faction official, year unknown The figure behind the desk looked up.

Kara had half a second before his Sixth Sense, Safe Haven and Fluid State skills all fired at once - the way it always did around this particular person. White hair. Salt and pepper beard. Perfectly still behind the desk. Shanks.

"Khatarnak Arafel," Shanks said. Not a question.

"Sir." Kara absorbed the surprise as cleanly as he could and crossed to the chair across from the desk.

"I didn't think we'd be meeting again so soon. I mean I'm glad to see you again. Thank you for the opportunity."

"I'd imagine not." Shanks set down what he had been reading and gestured at the chair.

"Sit." Kara sat. The virtual office was open on one side entirely - no wall, just the edge of the floor giving way to open air, mountains visible in the middle distance, a river somewhere below producing a sound that was almost too natural for a constructed space. He looked at it for a moment.

"The office," he said, the wonder clear in his voice.

"I've never seen anything like it."

"One of the perks of the station. Well, former station to be precise. Some things carry." Shanks said it without elaboration, clearly bored of the same remark being made for the thousandth time. He folded his hands on the desk.

"What do you know about PfP?" Kara considered the question honestly.

"Not much," he said.

"I learned a little at the festival - enough to tell me the scope was significant. Beyond that, very little."

"To start of with, I can assure you whatever scope you thought of wouldn't do justice to the actual numbers," Shanks said. He paused, weighing how much ground to cover, rather than building an effect.

"PfP operates on every planet in the solar system. It is the largest organisation in the known world - larger than the Task Force, larger than either faction, larger than both combined if you measured by personnel." A pause.

"Practically all the work that keeps society functioning day to day - the care work, the logistical work, the maintenance that nobody thinks about because it simply happens - that is us. We are the hands and feet of society as we know it." Kara thought, without meaning to, about the rotating younger caretakers who had passed through his paternal grandparents' community. He filed it and kept his face still.

"We are not powerful in the conventional sense," Shanks continued.

"A small handful of our members are exceptional. The rest are ordinary people doing necessary work. But power is not only grade and tier." He looked at Kara steadily.

"We have eyes and ears and hands in every room on every planet. We know, with reasonable reliability, everything that happens. Every faction understands this. And every faction understands what it means to offend us." You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

"Strategically sensitive information," Kara said. Something shifted very slightly in Shanks' expression, a quiet mark of credit for a connection made without being led to it. Just short of approval.

"Passed at the appropriate moment to the appropriate parties," he confirmed.

"Several smaller factions have ceased to exist as a direct consequence of miscalculating this. A few local arms of larger factions have had to rebuild from the ground up. It is not a lesson that requires repeating, generally." Kara sat with this. The mountains in the distance were very still. This was exactly where he needed to be. It arrived as recognition rather than ambition, the same settling he had felt the first time Instructor Ken demonstrated the umbrella. Information. Presence without visibility.

Eyes in every room.

"Why should we hire you?" Shanks asked. The question arrived without warning or preamble. Kara's mind went completely blank, the kind produced by walking into a conversation he had not known was coming. He caught it before it showed.

"Can I have a minute to think?"

"No." He thought anyway. Faster.

"I've spent the last several months operating under an alias in an environment where multiple people had active reasons to find out who I was," he said.

"None of them have. I carry high rarity skills that a mentalist set out to read and could not. I've maintained parallel objectives simultaneously without either visibly interfering with the other. I don't draw attention when I don't want it, and I can draw it when I do." He paused for half a beat.

"And my reasons for wanting access to information have nothing to do with personal advancement." Shanks regarded him for a long moment. The silence was long enough that Kara had time to identify two things he could have said better. Then Shanks let out a slow breath and said something very quietly, more to himself than to Kara. Something about repaying an old favour. He moved on before Kara could decide whether he had heard it correctly.

"You will report to the Alderton Building in the University 11 city," Shanks said, back to his usual register.

"One day after semester ends. Everything will be arranged. You need only be there."

"Understood." Kara let a beat pass.

"Can I ask a few questions?"

"If you have them."

"The weapons training. I'm working with Instructor Ken on both umbrella and chain dart, but he's not a specialist in either. I'm behind relative to students with dedicated instructors."

"I've been briefed by Narak." Shanks said it without looking up.

"I'll see what can be done." He glanced at Kara then, briefly, with something that was almost dry.

"We both know what you actually want from this placement. It will be arranged." He meant Gomot. Kara nodded once and did not push it further. He should have left it there. He was aware, as the question was forming, that leaving it there was the sensible choice. But the words had been sitting in him since the festival, heavy, with nowhere yet to put them down.

"The phrase you said to me," Kara said.

"After the chase. About truth and the world." Shanks looked at him, waiting for him to finish.

"Those words are on the walls of our virtual ancestral home. My family's. I grew up reading them. I don't know where they come from, but my parents had them put there." Shanks was quiet. A man reaching a decision, rather than stalling for one.

"How much do you know about your family history?" he asked. Kara thought for a bit. Was he talking about his brother? His parents were ordinary enough as far as he knew.

"My brother is special," Kara said, carefully.

"Remarkably talented. His situation is complicated." He paused.

"My parents - both mid G-grade, a rare skill each. My father is a biologist, he used to travel often. My mother taught history virtually. There was nothing unusual about them that I could see."

"I asked about family history," Shanks said.

"Not present." The distinction sat between them. Kara looked at the mountains and began to think back.