Chương 3: N.O.I.R

O. I. R The Pietas' engines expelled a hot jet that swept a thin layer of snow from the green grass of the partially winter-struck plain. Steam escaped from the iron joints in regular pulses, driven by the pistons cycling fuel and lubricant through the machine's skeleton.

With a practiced precision that the machine's age shouldn't have allowed, the steamship eased itself into the iron mouth of Hangar III, a broad structure of heavy black sheet-metal that, in full afternoon light, appeared to emit its own faint purple luminescence from the treated hull. The engines wound down in stages. A low whistle, then a pressure-release hiss, doors opening.

A long segmented staircase extended from the hatch, its plates held together by thick red cables, long enough to reach the hangar floor below. The first footfall rang against the top step with a crisp sound, and then the steps became a rhythm. A woman in a wide blue cardigan and matching wide-leg trousers came down first, a white floral shirt underneath, blonde hair moving in the air current sweeping through the structure.

"Come on, Lance, or you'll make us late for your own introduction." She looked back up at the hatch. A tall figure emerged. Dressed entirely in black, wearing a beige coat that the wind immediately took hold of. His eyes were tired: dark circles were visible even behind the pair of disposable pilot glasses Monica had scrounged for him, since NOIR apparently didn't keep prescription sunglasses in stock. He descended without a word. Both of them set foot on the hangar floor. Lance looked around slowly.

He let his attention settle on the snow outside the wide entrance: the bizarre coexistence of that bitter cold with a landscape that appeared, in every other respect, to be in the middle of spring.

"Welcome to Dielmon," Monica said, pulling him toward the interior.

"First impressions?"

"Peculiar..." He answered without looking at her.

"That's what everyone says." She flagged down an engineer near a cluster of red containers, a man in overalls with a pencil above his ear, who nodded, bowed, and disappeared into the maze of steam pipes and storage tanks at the back of the building. He returned minutes later at the wheel of a compact three-wheeled vehicle in dazzling white. The bodywork was tapered and smooth, almost organic in its lines. Touches of purple ran through the interior detailing: black leather, clean and carefully maintained.

The engine made almost no sound at all. Lance drifted toward it without fully deciding to. Monica shook the engineer's hand in a way that turned his face an impressive shade of red, then vaulted into the passenger seat with the easy athleticism of someone who'd been doing it for years.

"Would you like to do the honors?" She tilted her head with a smile that clearly expected an interesting answer.

"I don't have a license." He admitted.

"I've never touched a wheel... Legally." He looked down for an instant.

"Don't worry." Monica grabbed his sleeve and dropped him face-first into the driver's seat.

"Neither do I." Once Lance had settled, adjusted the seat, and quietly made peace with his anxiety, he buckled his belt and tried to recall the basic mechanics from those illicit countryside runs. He pressed the accelerator. The car left the hangar like something fired from a mechanism, wrapped in a cloud of white steam and red sparks, and Lance's hands were already moving, right hand on gears and brake, left managing the wheel through turns at a speed that probably violated several ordinances.

"Fairly impressive for someone with no license!" Monica observed, tracing a route on the central mirror display.

"I'm surprised myself." He said, keeping his eyes on the road.

"I seem to remember more than I thought."

"Where are we going, exactly? I'm following the map on this thing, but I'd like context." Monica pointed. Ahead, through the green-and-snow patchwork of the landscape, a mountain rose: a monolith of black rock wrapped in a permanent crown of dark, flashing clouds.

"First, that thing is a screen, pretty advanced Lambdite technology!" She puffed her chest, even if Lance had the idea that she indeed wasn't involved with it." Nothing wrong in trying to look cool." He was brought back to reality by the sudden pointing of Monica's finger.

"You see that? That's where we are going." She said. Lance took a half-second to look at it.

"That's an unusual location for a base..."

"Everyone says that too!" She settled back.

"The base wasn't always there. Before I became Commander, Dielmon experienced a severe conflict. After it ended, the land was contaminated by the Hel, and now the island operates outside normal seasonal cycles, outside standard natural phenomena. The contamination has been here long enough that it is the environment now."

"You're the Commander?" He turned to look at her.

"Yes—""AND YOU DIDN'T THINK TO MENTION THAT!" The car hit a bump. The suspension disagreed with the road loudly. Both of them reached for something.

"I'm sorry!" Monica held her stomach.

"It's a real pain to be at my level, you know that?! That's a real problem I have, but I didn't want to overload you with notions!"

"The way you're saying that is making it harder for me to follow you." Lance turned back to the road and began, somewhat restlessly, sliding the map display left and right with one finger.

"I know..." Monica's voice lost some of its lightness.

"It's not easy to be Commander when you didn't—" She stopped. The rest of the sentence simply didn't come. He saw her throat bulge, and her breath started to be more and more laboured. Lance brought the car to a smooth stop. He put a hand on her shoulder. He was clearly uncomfortable doing it, but he did it anyway.

"Sorry, I am still shocked by all this new stuff..." He said, trying and mostly failing to meet her eyes.

"If you don't want to talk, then don't." She recovered, a breath, a blink, the posture reinstating itself. Then she lifted one finger and gently pushed his head back to face front, smiling.

"You're a good person, Lance. I can tell by looking."

"Really? You trust people way too soon!" They drove on. The road entered a dark forest lit at intervals by small purple streetlights, the same shade Lance had been learning to associate with everything in this organization. He recognized the lights from somewhere he couldn't place exactly. Something in the sight of them stirred the clearing, the blood, the smell.

"Still thinking about the clearing?" Monica asked, without looking at his face.

"It's not that." He watched the trees.

"I'm sorry I couldn't say goodbye to some people. Other than that... I have to get ready for what comes next."

"Hold onto that." She smiled.

"You'll need it." She extended a thumb toward him. He returned it.

"You mentioned a thing called Hel." Lance said after a moment, "And a war... Can you be more specific? I can't function in a state of general ignorance. I've tried, and I only ended up lost in the forest..." Monica laughed.

"Fair, but for the most part, it will be our scientists to explain all the complicated stuff." She snapped her fingers.

"To be as brief as possible... Hel is a reality that exists in symbiosis with the material world. You could call it the afterlife, but that's reductive. It's closer to say that it shapes things like the earth, living beings, phenomena, and even emotional states. It intimately permeates everything we see. And some individuals are connected to it more directly than others."

"I wouldn't call a place so ominous and beyond comprehension intimate?!"

"Because defining it as a location is wrong. Its entrance exists everywhere, simultaneously. The Hel is in the ground, in humans, in the weather. It's the underlying texture of reality. The emotion you feel now can be traced to it in one way or another." She tilted her head left and right, working through the phrasing.

"Sometimes it overflows into the world. That creates Singularities, a real pain in the butt to deal with. Sometimes, if the conditions are right, it allows certain individuals to be born differently."

"Us, I guess?"

"The Meta," She nodded, visibly pleased.

"Or as the boring scientists insist on writing in their boring reports: humans demonstrating positive feedback response to Hel Frequency." She puffed her cheeks.

"Meta is better and shorter. Doesn't confuse you with all that science stuff!"

"I agree, easier to say too."

"See! Everyone agrees! I've been trying to get it formalized for years." She bit her thumbnail.

"Well... That's for the rare case condition aligns, but what if they don't?" He clumsily steered the car, avoiding some branches. Monica's voice changed.

"If the organism that comes into contact with the Hel isn't predisposed, or isn't strong enough to sustain the mutations that follow, they typically die. Or they become something that can no longer be called human." She kept her eyes on the road outside.

"Those creatures in the clearing. They were Helspawn. That's what the Hel produces when a human being fails the process. They retain enough instinct to seek out other humans, believing, on whatever level they still believe things, that consuming them will restore what they lost, but it's all for nothing. They are shells that cannot come back." Their voices stopped, replaced by the eerie winds that circled through the forest.

"NOIR exists to keep them at bay," she continued.

"And to keep the population of Andimica safe from Singularities and what they produce. Those Helspawn in the clearing were among the lowest classification creatures Hel generates."" So those things were only a small part..." Lance swallowed. He gestured at the landscape outside, the impossible springtime and the cold existing in the same view.

"And this? This isn't natural." Monica was quiet for a moment.

"I guess you have the right to know about what happened here sixty years ago..." She was interrupted by Lance's dumbfounded face.

"SIXTY?!?!" He exclaimed, only to be pierced by the cold smile of the strangely young miss right next to him.

"Meta tends to live a lot longer... And it's not nice to call someone old!" Lance lowered his gaze, muttering some excuses.

"Sixty years ago, something happened here. A confrontation between NOIR and a Meta, the strongest ever recorded, by any system we have." Her voice had gone careful and measured, the way voices go when the speaker is deciding, word by word, how much they can say.

"The agency couldn't stop it. We were forced to sacrifice part of the island to exile it into the Hel and to tamper with the natural order in a way that left permanent marks. What you're seeing are those marks." Lance watched her face. Two tears, close to falling. The slight pallor of something reopened.

"Who could do that?" He asked.

"Something that strong... Could that be a person?"

"No." Her hands tightened in her lap.

"Could be many things, but not a person. NOIR determined long ago that it was better not to reference it by name in any report or official document. We called it the Boogeyman, the Count, Obscuritas —" She listed them on her fingers, and each name made her flinch slightly.

"But eventually, those names became too attached to what it is, and the name that amalgamation of lies used kept resurfacing. Now we use only a designation." She paused." The Unnamed." The name settled over the car like a change in pressure.

"Monica..." Lance didn't know what to say.

"I don't know what to tell you. I didn't know those memories could still be that painful." She raised her head. Her eyes were bright and full, ready to overflow, but she held them back.

"It killed my sister. Neither I nor the rest of the agency could do a single thing." She exhaled.

"I swore I'd take her place as Commander, even though I wasn't suited for it. Even though I'm still not sure I am." Her voice cracked only a little on the last word.

"Does that seem childish to you?" Lance said nothing. He lifted his hand and set it on her head, running his fingers once through her hair. He was clearly mortified to be doing it, but he did it anyway.

"I've also lost people I loved." He said.

"I've been looking for my sister for years without anything to show for it. But I never once thought of that hope as naive. If I had, I probably wouldn't have survived long enough to be here. So no, it doesn't seem childish. Not even slightly." A single tear slipped down her cheek while a smile was forming.

"Thank you, Lance." She wiped her face.

"You really are a friend."

"Feels nice to hear, even if you have known me for just half an hour!" He smiled and looked back at the road, which was finally emerging from the forest.

"Lance..." She tried once more.

"I read your file. I wanted to say—""I have amnesia." He said it evenly, without blame, cutting gently across whatever she was about to offer.

"I remember almost nothing from before my current life, and when I push against the blank spaces, I get migraines. I want answers eventually, but my sister comes first." He paused.

"There is one dream I keep having, though."

"What kind of dream?"

"Rain... A burning forest on a stormy night. There I see two people fighting. A white light engulfs them and then..." The forest ended. In front of them, filling the windshield, was the monolith: a column of black rock so tall it disappeared into the cloud layer hundreds of meters above. It did not look geological. It looked placed.

"Nine thousand two hundred and thirty-seven meters above sea level." Monica said quietly, noting his expression.

"Higher than any known mountain. The Hel saturation around the island makes it invisible to any outside observation. Aerial photography, coastal sighting. The island doesn't register. For practical purposes, it doesn't exist." The car arrived at the mountain's base. Monica directed him to a white structure with two entrances lit by soft purple light. Lance pulled into the first tunnel, a vehicle elevator, as he correctly surmised, and cut the engine.

"This might be a bit of an experience..." Monica warned, fastening her seatbelt.

"Why would you say it like—" The elevator launched upward like a shell from a barrel. For approximately two minutes that felt significantly longer, his skin attempted to remain attached to his skeleton, his eyes struggled to stay open, and his stomach filed a formal protest with every available organ. The car was caught by a mechanical arm at the top and deposited on a platform with clinical precision. Monica stepped out and stretched her arms.

"It's always fun! Did you enjoy it?" Lance rested his chin on the car's body, pale and very quiet.

"An interesting experience indeed." He said, after some time, carefully keeping everything down through an act of concentrated will. Monica bent double with laughter and made no effort whatsoever to conceal it.

"Your face right now is a year's salary." She composed herself enough to hand him a thin pink comb. He took it without comment and found the car mirror.

"Now you're ready!" She said and pressed her palm to a black panel beside the heavy door.

"VALID CREDENTIALS — WELCOME, NET — COMMANDER IV." The door wheeled open on a burst of steam and gear noise, and on the other side of the blinding light: people. Some sitting, some leaning on the stairs, some standing against the walls. Black uniforms, white coats, and an embroidered N somewhere on each of them, and all holding improvised confetti devices, several of which discharged immediately. A large red-and-gold banner hung above the entrance." WELCOME, NEW RECRUITS!!" Lance found Monica's face.

She was already grinning. She threw another handful of confetti directly at him. He stood there, looking like a scarecrow at the end of a festival, covered from shoulder to knee in colored paper.

"Lance Klint, I presume." A hand found his shoulder from the side.

"I'm Edvard Ross, a gloriously substandard guarantor of orderly proceedings." Edvard was an average-sized, solidly built man with a red shirt that matched the streak in his hair, with some blondish highlights. The hair itself was long enough to fall to the nape, and his face was young but carried something fatherly in its default expression.

"Nice... To meet you." Lance shook his hand firmly. He was slightly intimidated, but he didn't show it.

"A firm grip, excellent. That's the first test passed." Edvard shook the arm vigorously enough to leave it faintly numb.

"Test?" Lance had just enough time to form the question before Monica dragged him onward, murmuring something that he was fairly certain was don't ask about the tests.

"Your coat, if you'd like." A quiet voice behind him. He turned. A girl with long white hair, partially gathered under a black bow, stood with her hands lightly clasped. She was tall enough that her eyes met his chin. She wore a modified maid's uniform with a long dark skirt, matching leather shoes, a black-and-white dress under a well-cut beige blazer that coordinated better than it had any right to.

Lance removed his coat immediately, became comprehensively tangled in it within two seconds, and required her assistance to escape. Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!

"Lance..." Monica said, tapping the back of his neck with one fingernail.

"You didn't introduce yourself."

"I— Yes. I'm Lance Klint." He extended his hand with the mechanical precision of someone who had read about handshakes rather than practiced them. The maid smiled, perhaps also briefly flustered, and removed her glove to offer him her slender fingers.

"I already knew that. I'm Arte Gentile, the base's attendant." She presented herself with a small curtsy, lifting the edge of her skirt with her free hand. Her grip, through those thin fingers, was approximately twice what he'd expected. He managed not to react.

"Sit, sit." Monica seized his arm and dropped him into the long circular sofa with deep blue cushions, velvety fabric, and a pleasant smell he couldn't identify. Above him, a spherical chandelier with glass pipes running from it, carrying some flowing red liquid. He made a note to ask about that later.

"Would you like something to drink?" Arte asked. Lance wanted nothing. Monica's expression made clear that wanting nothing wasn't currently an option.

"Tea, if it isn't any trouble." He made himself as small as possible on the sofa. For someone of his build, it was a limited success. Arte nodded and disappeared into the white corridors at the room's edge. Monica settled beside him and introduced him to the gathered group with the enthusiasm of someone presenting an interesting acquisition.

"Lance is talented and a good person. He's simply a little shy." She lifted his arm like a trophy.

"I'd appreciate it if you didn't speculate about me." He attempted to reclaim his arm. It was a negotiated process. A shadow rapidly approached from across the room, papers scattering from the folder under an arm, and left where they fell. The figure bent over Lance at an unnatural angle, a tall man in a coat with yellow-striped detailing, broad-shouldered overall, wearing a white gas mask fitted with what appeared to be lead-plating over the filter housing.

He breathed with the audible concentration of someone making an event of it.

"Lucas Hoppenheimer, I'm head of research. Lucas is fine." He introduced himself with one free hand while the other attempted to maintain the folder. A sheet escaped and landed on Lance's lap. He caught it before it could fall further.

"Meta Categorization Proposal - Compiled by Lucas and Monica." Curiosity defeated embarrassment. He moved it out of reach of both of them.

"I'll return this. But first—" He set it on the table.

"What is it?"

"Following significant advances in Meta research, the Commander and I developed a classification framework for ability types and development levels." Lucas straightened, voice slightly processed by the mask filter.

"I'm genuinely interested." Lance prevented Monica from reaching the paper with one elbow. She had retreated into the sofa cushions to hide from the embarrassment of having her name on it. Only blonde tufts and one green eye remained visible.

"The Commander selected the terminology." Lucas continued with the tone of someone being scrupulously accurate.

"The names are very good." Said the sofa.

"We identified three primary classifications. Normal Meta possesses an ability that develops from some aspect of their existing character or accumulated experience, a direct extension of the self. Within this branch, development levels proceed as follows: Zwei, Schritt, Herrscher, or Kaiser." He tapped the paper.

"I preferred Kaiser as the series name. The Commander chose Zwei as the entry point because she felt it was more distinctive and would avoid confusion."" Are these university topics?" He supplied, smiling and nodding while trying to seem smart. Monica's sofa fortress made an affirmative sound.

"The second classification is Null and Singular, Metas who fall outside the standard parameters entirely. Exceptions are an Irre who retains full cognition under conditions that should destroy it; a Herrscher whose ability doesn't evolve in the standard direction but instead extends laterally. Currently, our primary research focus."" I can't grasp half of this! Hope that the next one will be easier..." He smiled, while doubts about his attitude started to lurk in his mind.

"And the third?"" Korrupt." Lucas's voice changed slightly, not much, but enough.

"Metas who have progressed beyond sustainable mutation and who have become, in functional terms, more Hel-creature than human. Early-stage Korrupt may be classified as Berserk. If the condition advances and the subject survives it, the designation shifts to Monstrum, or in rare cases, Teufel. Some early-stage cases are stabilized in time. Others stabilize into what we call Irre, still human in form and cognition, but with sustained and significant psychological damage."

"You have a list of the most dangerous Meta?" Lance folded his hands.

"The highest-category threats are placed in the Jury," Lucas said, more carefully now.

"Some were excluded from that designation entirely."" The Unnamed." He didn't say it. He was almost certain Lucas already knew he was thinking it.

"I know what you're about to ask. I presumed Monica told you." Lucas's voice through the filter had gone cold and precise.

"And the answer is that two Jury-level Metas were insufficient to keep it at bay. Leave the question there for now."

"I'm sorry for pressing." Lance lowered his head, both from genuine apology and from the weight of that answer.

"Curiosity is important. Don't be sad about it." Monica's voice from the fortress. One hand appeared and pulled him back down by the shirt collar. The atmosphere settled when Arte returned with a silver tray and two Oriental-style teacups. The greenish tea she poured released a warm steam that hit Lance's face and pulled something loose in his chest, the particular comfort of small, familiar things inside a strange situation. He took the cup, lifted it, and let the taste land. His sleeve had slid back.

He didn't notice the room, noticing the arm underneath.

"That's very good!" He said, setting the cup down. He looked up and found most of the room watching him with an expression he couldn't immediately interpret.

"Lance..." Monica had emerged from the cushions.

"Are you genuinely of age?"

"Yes. Why wouldn't I be?"

"Your musculature and your attitude are both significantly out of range for your stated age." Lucas delivered this with the neutrality of a finding. Lance's expression disappeared. He stared at the gas-masked scientist in the antique filtration hardware who was accusing him of being secretly middle-aged.

"What Lucas means," Monica said, with the speed of someone defusing something, "is that you carry yourself in a remarkably mature way. Which is elegant... The word is elegant. That's what we were saying." She looked at Lucas hard.

"On the muscular observation, I stand by what I said..." Lucas added. Lance began constructing a fortress out of sofa cushions.

"Changing the subject." He said from behind it, "Who are we still waiting for?"

"Your partner. Another recruit." Monica tried to dismantle his fortifications from one side.

"You'll work well together... I have a feeling." Before he could ask anything further, footsteps came from the corridor where Arte had disappeared. The girl who entered wore a large white sun hat with a twisted red thread around the crown and an oversized white sweater embroidered with lines of blue and golden yellow. Wide-leg trousers to match. A summery look, worn in the cold with a kind of unconscious confidence.

What he noticed most were her eyes: deep, magnetic blue, full of brightness despite being clearly embarrassed, full of life despite being dragged on the floor. She walked with a natural, unhurried sway that didn't seem to be for anyone's benefit. It was simply how she moved. Lance stood and crossed toward her, hand extended. Monica gave him a helpful push from behind.

"Lance Klint." He smiled. He was slightly red. She took his hand lightly, her fingers trembling a bit.

"Jeanne." A pause.

"Goghette." Another pause.

"The pleasure is..." She finally looked up, showing her small patches of freckles.

"M-Mine." Neither of them let go until Monica separated them by inserting herself between the two and depositing them both back on the sofa with the air of someone sorting laundry. Lance sat between them with his hands folded over his abdomen, staring forward, occupying as little space as possible and accomplishing almost nothing through that effort." Do I look strange? Am I taking up too much space? Should I be doing something?" The anxiety was interrupted when someone came down the stairs.

The man was walking slowly, completely unbothered. He arrived in front of Lance and stood there, looking him over from head to foot with the methodical calm of someone evaluating something they hadn't decided on yet. He tapped his own forehead, fueling Lance's paranoia. The man was roughly his height, wrapped in a white coat with blue circular patterns over black stretch trousers, wearing a peculiar, wide-brimmed black hat with the same motifs.

A mechanical device of some kind pressed gently against the back of his neck from the collar. A silver flask materialized from somewhere in the coat.

"Recruits... I'm glad to see you in adequate condition." He removed the hat. Extended his hand.

"I expect significant things. Small things are also acceptable, within reason, provided they don't create unnecessary interruptions."

"I'm Lautre Clerc, trainer and Lieutenant Major of NOIR." Both Lance and Jeanne stood immediately, shook hands, and answered in unison.

"The pleasure is ours." They realized this at the same moment, and both went slightly still. Lautre's eyes were a striking, unusual red but cloudy. His features were sharp. A black tuft fell over his forehead as he assessed them both, and there was, beneath everything, a faint but persistent smell of alcohol. He gave a small nod of what appeared to be genuine approval, turned, and walked toward the corridor, raising one hand in a casual farewell, the flask already open.

"The other members are still on assignment," Monica explained, helping them both off the sofa.

"They'll return tomorrow."

"I'm grateful for the welcome," Jeanne said quietly, setting her hat in her lap.

"Even if I'm not sure I've earned it."

"Same here." Lance agreed. He looked around at the room, the banner, the people. The entire situation was so far outside the life he'd been living yesterday that accepting it felt like a kind of surrender. But he was here.

"You're the first recruits with genuine promise we've had in some time!" Monica said warmly, her palms resting on both their shoulders.

"Commander..." A voice from the stairs, the same spot it had been watching from since Lance arrived.

"Could you manage honesty, for once?" The figure descended slowly. Thick dark hair, long at the nape. A scarf with an ochre cube pattern covered most of the lower half of his face. A wide green coat. He was young, well-built, and carried in every line of his body the particular confidence that came with advancing age. As soon as Lance saw it, a strange distress pervaded his heart.

"The truth," he said, addressing the room rather than anyone in particular, "is that everyone here is relieved to finally have new material to run through. No one harbors any genuine hope for either of them, or for the new operations." He reached the last step. He didn't jump. He stepped down with precision and kept walking.

"Net... You've been trying to compensate for the failures of the past ever since that incident, and you're doing it by dragging the rest of us along." He placed a hand on Monica's shoulder.

"Do you think Bluette would agree with me?" Monica's fists closed. Several things crossed her face in the space of a second: pain, resentment, something older than either, before she brought it under control and raised her head.

"This isn't the appropriate moment for this, Maliard." She said, holding her smile in place by visible effort. The boy made a sound with his tongue and turned to Jeanne.

"You." He took her wrist.

"Do you think you're ready for this? Or are you just frightened?"

"I—I—" The grip was tightening. The words wouldn't come. Panic was shortening everything out.

"Nothing to say? I can't hear you." He lifted her arm. Jeanne cried out. The impact came from Lance's fist against his cheek, fast, hard, and without preamble. Maliard's head turned. He released Jeanne's wrist. Lance shook out his hand and stepped forward.

"What the fuck am I doing now?"

"I don't know your position here..." Lance said, holding the space between them, "but it doesn't give you the right to do that!" He looked at Maliard for a moment. Then he said what he had apparently decided to say.

"I heard what you said earlier. I read your file when Monica told me about you. You've clearly had a very difficult past." He held the stare without softening it.

"I don't care about that now, but people who act this way make me sick. Would you apologize?" Maliard tested his wrist. It didn't move. He drove his heel into Lance's chest instead, a sharp, deliberate strike, forcing him back. He coughed twice and kept walking forward. Maliard began removing his glove. A hand came from behind and took his shoulder. Monica's hand.

"Leave it, Lance." Her voice was barely above a whisper, and it was layered with things she clearly hadn't intended for anyone to hear." No... I gotta end this."

"Your name is Maliard?" Lance asked. Monica's hand fell away.

"Yes. And you're Lance Klint?"

"I want you to apologize. Here and now."

"You have the look of someone who sees only results." Maliard's mouth curved into something that wasn't quite a smile.

"Are you from Sector I, perhaps?" He tilted his head.

"You want a challenge? If you win, I'll apologize. If you lose, I want you both gone. The goldfish and the quiet one. Do you accept?" His mind was racing; all his flesh trembled, but he struck the deal. Maliard didn't take it. He turned and walked toward the corridor, adjusting his glove.

"One hour. No help from anyone, and you forfeit if you ask. Come to Arena I when you're ready." He disappeared around the curve of the passage without waiting for an answer. Lance stood in the middle of the room while the noise of other people's opinions filled the air around him. Monica grabbed his collar and spun him around. She hit him across the cheek, not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to mean something.

"DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU JUST DID?" She pulled at his collar with both hands, her frustration, fear, and something else entirely coming through in equal measure.

"What I thought was right..." He said with a feeble voice, casting his gaze back. She released him and looked at him for a moment. Then she walked down the corridor, taking Jeanne with her, and the room emptied around him until only the sound of mechanisms and gears remained. He stood alone.

"FUCK! Why the hell am I such an idiot? I wanted to help..." He said to the empty room.

"But I can't seem to." He picked up a few of the fallen papers from Lucas's folder.

"Damage is done. Now I have to think." Thirty minutes passed in utter silence, and he had made almost no progress.

"Without knowing how to use my Frequency, this is a duel between a naked knight and a soldier with a revolver."

"Why did I feel so much rage? Could it be a side effect of the medicines?" Lance almost covered his face with the back of his hand when his eyes landed on a slip of yellowed paper caught under the sofa leg. He pulled it out. It was covered in dense notes and cross-references, clearly from Lucas's folder. The header read: WAYS AND PROCEDURES OF CATEGORIZATION He began to read." A Meta's abilities can be refined in the same way any talent or physical capacity can—through practice, through understanding, through time.

The core classifications represent an extension of that development toward its limits. Zwei—a term from the West Northest dialect, signifying a doubling, a fundamental change in kind. Schritt: progress. Herrscher: sovereign. These represent an organic evolution of ability, driven not only by training but by increasing attunement to one's own Frequency—as detailed in earlier documents." He nervously skimmed to the end.

"Subjects categorized as Singular are exceptions for the categories: Irre, who maintain their sense even in impossible conditions or, Herrscher who do not present a direct evolution of their abilities but only an expansion in it are some examples, while Nulls are existences completely beyond the reach of our experiments, their frequency is so intricate that it is impossible to study and their characteristics are too varied and unique to fit into a single category."

A footnote drew a long curved arrow toward a set of marginalia in a different handwriting:" Supporting evidence: the Frequency of a Meta can be experienced as a current of electricity, or as a cold sensation traveling from the center of the skull down into the fingers or extremities, depending on individual tuning. A Null-classified Meta likely experiences their Frequency as something more internal — more personal. The majority of subjects tested responded positively to this description when in the active state.

Based on my current working theory of how Frequency originates in an individual, the emission source appears to be either the brain or the heart."

"I didn't feel like I was myself. Maybe this place has a bad influence, but now it's not the time to cry!" Lance set the paper down.

"It's basically like playing Saltacavallo! I just need to feel the right card from the deck..." He breathed slowly and reached for it, that sensation from the clearing, from the moment he'd woken up. Not the pain, not the power. The feeling, before both of those things. That counterbalance of cold and warm, an impossible combination, the sensation of something that had always been there becoming audible for the first time. His hands began to hurt as he held onto them. His face contorted.

The elements tried to refuse each other. It burned until a sphere of light appeared in his palms. Black and white together, emanating a pale, unsteady glow. He directed it with his fingers, and it moved toward the window, back toward him, hovering and responsive. It drifted too close, tilted, and pressed toward his forehead as if trying to go home.

"Yes! I don't know if it will be enough, but progress is progress!" He exhaled with everything he had. The sphere faded. His body was burning with the effort, every muscle in his arms registering protest. Yet he was smiling. He had taken a step. The female robotic voice activated from somewhere in the wall.

"LANCE KLINT, PLEASE PROCEED TO ARENA I — FOLLOW THE BLUE TRACK." A line of lights lit up along the right-hand corridor. He rose, rolled his shoulders, and walked toward the light.