Chương 6: Chapter 5: Welcome to Work

It looked almost like itself, the street outside Palazzo Valperga. There were cars parked on Via Alfieri rather than locked in gridlock, because the streets here were too narrow to generate the kind of cascading obstruction that had sealed the main boulevards. The scale of the grid had worked in their favor. You couldn't build a proper catastrophe in a street barely wide enough for two cars abreast. The problem started where the streets widened. Dario took them out of the garage and turned the car northwest.

He drove the way he did everything, without any visible effort and with his attention everywhere at once.

"Military vehicles when I came through this morning," he said.

"Two of them parked across the north end, by the mouth of Corso Principe Oddone. Nobody stopping anyone, but it bottlenecks." The boulevards confirmed him. Where the streets opened out, the disaster had room to assemble itself: cars left at angles across two lanes, a delivery truck turned sideways and abandoned with its doors open, a half-built barricade of dumpsters and shop furniture that someone had started and then thought better of. They threaded the side streets instead, and the side streets held.

At Piazza Statuto the two military vehicles sat where Dario had left them in his account, angled across the top of the square, men standing near them doing nothing she could see except being present. Nobody was being stopped. The traffic that still moved simply folded itself around the obstruction and slowed. The closer they got to the neighborhood, the more she saw evidence of movement without destination. Small groups walking together, sometimes with bags, sometimes with nothing. They weren't looting.

They didn't have that purpose. They looked like people who had been at home when the world changed and hadn't wanted to stay there after. That would be a problem tomorrow if it wasn't one today. The city was holding together by habit and by a shared inability to conceive of what to do instead. Habits didn't survive many nights without reinforcement. Dario slowed the car.

"We're here." The building was one of five in a row, all built the same year, all identical down to the color of the doors. Four stories. No external fire escape. A metal gate across the front walk that had been designed to look like an invitation rather than a restriction. The building had the look of a place that charged for parking. They went up the walk to the front door. It was propped open with a brick. The lobby inside was small and white-tiled, with four doors leading off it.

Bianca's contact was a young man in a jacket too large for him, sitting on the stoop of an adjacent building. He met Cecilia's eyes when she arrived, gave a small nod, and went back to watching the street. She noted the position and the sight lines he'd chosen. Bianca had placed him well. She looked up at the building's facade. Third floor, third window from the left. A gap in the curtain that was slightly too even to be accidental.

The kind of gap someone made when they wanted to see the street and didn't want the street to see them looking. She checked the agreement in her pocket, the one with her signature already on it, and the space left for his. The terms were clear. Matteo had clarified the compensation language. He'd have made it air-tight.

"Let's go," she said. Dario followed her up the stairs without a word. The building had the closed-up quality of a place where the people inside had agreed not to be heard. She climbed at a steady pace. Three doors off the second-floor landing. Two of them silent. The third had a television running at low volume behind it, a news channel cycling through a loop because there was nothing new to add. She passed without slowing. The third floor had four doors.

Three of them matched the institutional pattern of the floors below. The fourth had been painted dark green by a tenant who'd thought paint was permitted and had been right about that. She crossed the landing. The door opened before she knocked. The man on the other side of it had a black marker in his right hand and the door handle in his left. Taller than her by half a head, lean, dark hair pushed back by a hand that had been pushing it back for some time. Glasses.

He'd been wearing the same shirt long enough for the collar to have surrendered. The marker had left ink on his thumb. He looked at her face, at the empty stairwell behind her, and at her face again. Then he let the door open to the stop chain.

"You were on the street," he said.

"Yes."

"You stopped and looked up at my window."

"Yes."

"Are you alone?"

"No." She leaned forward and met his look.

"The man behind me isn't someone you want as a first impression." It landed. His jaw tensed. She read his attention shift past her to confirm the shape behind her, saw him register it without showing surprise, and then bring his focus back to her. The marker stayed where it was. He seemed to make a decision. He closed the door. She waited for the chain to rattle, and instead heard the sound of a bolt disengaging. Then the door swung inward without the chain on.

"Come in," he said, stepping back.

"Close the door." The apartment was a single room divided by furniture rather than walls. A small kitchen against the right-hand wall. A dining table doubling as a desk, with a closed laptop and a stack of A4 paper covered in notation spread across it. A door at the back, open enough to show the corner of an unmade bed. The window he'd been watching the street from was on the far wall, the curtain still positioned with the small, deliberate gap she'd seen from below. Dario closed the door behind her.

The work was on the table. Three sheets laid edge to edge, marker annotations branching across them in a flowchart she didn't have time to read in detail. A printout of his forum post sat to one side, with corrections in the margins in red. A coffee cup that had been there long enough for a film to develop on what was left in it.

"You've been working since it started," she said.

"I haven't been doing anything else." She turned to face him. He'd stayed near the door with the marker still in his hand. The marker was, she registered, the only thing in his immediate reach that resembled a tool. He'd brought it to the door without thinking, the way someone brings a pen into a meeting because they were holding it when the meeting started.

"Archimede," she said. He flinched. Small, contained, visible mostly in the way his shoulders set.

"Do I know you?"

"Not yet." She moved a step further into the room.

"My name is Cecilia Leonelli. I read your thread." A range of expressions passed across his face without settling on any of them. He worked through them in roughly the order she'd predicted.

"Are you... a reporter?"

"No." She watched him. His shoulders had the set of someone who didn't rely on height for effect.

"I'm someone who understands what you've done. And I'm making an offer of employment."

"You're making a what?" She drew the folded paper from inside her jacket and held it out. He looked at it for a moment before taking it. He unfolded it once, registered the letterhead, and folded it back without reading the body.

"You're with the mafia."

"That's one word for it." She watched his hand around the paper.

"The Leonelli organization conducts business in this city. I oversee its operations."

"Including..." He gestured vaguely at himself, at the apartment, at the entire situation.

"Including strategic recruitment. Which, given the last thirty-six hours, makes you an asset." He stood with the contract in his hand and worked through the variables. She gave him the time. His eyes didn't move toward the window. He had registered before she arrived that the fire escape was not currently a route. The door behind her was the only other exit, and he'd opened it himself.

"I'm not a fighter," he said.

"If that's what you think I am."

"Neither am I," she said.

"I solve problems with other methods."

"By recruiting strangers on stairwells?" It was said dryly, which was a sign that some of his composure was coming back.

"I need talent," she said.

"You've demonstrated talent. This is how business works."

"By making non-optional job offers?"

"Read it before you decide what kind of offer it is." He read it. He read it carefully, the way someone who had spent years in financial documentation read contracts when they were the party at risk. She let him. Halfway through, his eyes registered the compensation figure and didn't react to it visibly, which was its own piece of information. This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

"And if I refuse?" he said.

"You're free to decline." She tilted her head slightly.

"I would advise against it."

"Why?"

"Because the people we won't work with tend to fall into categories we can't ignore. At some point in the next twenty-four hours, the System will have been leveraged in a way that affects our interests. If I haven't hired you by then, I'll have to assume your next employer will be someone less favorable to us. It becomes a security question at that point." He set the contract down on the dining table, weighting it with the marker so the draft from the open window wouldn't carry it away.

She noticed that he'd chosen to set it on the clean part of the table, away from his work.

"You're threatening to kill me if I don't take a job I haven't been offered the details of yet."

"I'm explaining consequences, Mr. Terranova. There's a difference." Luca Terranova. She hadn't said his name out loud yet. The reaction to his handle was enough, but this was something else. Hearing his real name in her mouth shifted the context in his mind. Made the threat less theoretical. He ran a hand through his hair, looking at the ground.

For a moment, he looked exactly what he was: a young man trapped in a building, hungry, sleep-deprived, and uncertain how he'd gone from a normal Tuesday to a landing at the wrong end of a forced recruitment. Then the moment passed, and he looked at her again.

"And if I agree?"

"We start working," she said.

"Immediately. I have a building in the center of the city that needs to remain a stable operational node. Your job will be to analyze the System's mechanics and develop models for anticipating Scenario patterns and class progression paths."

"How much have you already analyzed?"

"You'd be my primary advisor," she said, which was a way of answering. She could have made a claim about expertise. She chose not to. Let him assume that meant nothing. Let him be impressed by that, too.

"You're talking about game theory," he said.

"Among other disciplines. Economic modeling. Systems architecture. It's all relevant." She stepped to the side slightly, giving him a clear path to the stairs if he wanted to leave. He didn't move.

"I also have a secondary office complex currently undergoing secure conversion to support operations. Your expertise would apply there as well. This is a senior role, Mr. Terranova. You'll have resources, a team, and the authority to use them." He stared at her. She let him. She had learned to be comfortable with silence when the stakes were high, because the other person rarely was. The one who was most comfortable waiting tended to be the one who got the answer they wanted.

"This can't be legal," he said finally, not as an argument, but as an afterthought.

"This city is out of order. What's legal right now is a function of what you're willing to enforce." A window shattered somewhere outside the building. A car alarm sounded a few streets away, high and tinny. In the distance, there were gunshots, though not close enough to distinguish the type. The world had been doing that for two days. Dario glanced at the window. He didn't reach for his weapon. Luca listened to the sound of the alarm and the echo of the gunshots fade. Then he looked back at her.

"This is a temporary situation," he said.

"The government will stabilize."

"It might," she said.

"But the System is the new permanent variable. Even if the government stabilizes, the people who understand the System first will control the environment it operates in." Luca was quiet for a moment. She could see the shape of the choice forming in his mind. It was close enough that she stopped talking. He looked at Dario properly for the first time, taking in the tailored jacket, the way he stood inside the room, the fact that he hadn't said anything. Dario nodded at him, friendly and untroubled.

"You're not taking this lightly," Luca said.

"No." Cecilia held his eyes.

"Are you?" Another window broke, somewhere nearer this time. Luca started. The sound settled him, or broke him open to a decision. He looked at her for several seconds, then picked the contract back up, folded it carefully, and put it in his pocket.

"You understand," he said, "that I don't have any experience with this kind of... environment. What I do is systems analysis. Not threat response."

"I understand."

"You won't be happy if I fail."

"I'll be happier than if I hadn't tried." He stared at the wall just above her head for a moment. Then he nodded.

"Then I'm in," he said.

"But I need some time to shower and pack."

"We'll have someone collect what you can't carry." He started to nod again, then stopped. A shadow crossed his face. It came with a silence she hadn't asked for, but was prepared to handle.

"And my sister."

"What about your sister?"

"She's staying with a friend. Across the river." He looked her in the eye.

"If I do this, she comes under the same terms." She hadn't planned on recruiting his sister, but now that he'd placed her in the equation, removing her was inefficient. It was better to control the asset than to create the risk of its uncontrolled movement.

"Of course," she said.

"I'll send someone to retrieve her immediately. Give me her location." He did. She had Dario send the details to Bianca through the gap in the signal. Bianca would move. Cecilia didn't mention to Luca that the apartment was now being surveilled.

"You have thirty minutes," she told him.

"I'll be in the hall." She stepped back through the door with Dario. They left the building fifteen minutes later. Luca had been efficient about it. A backpack, a duffel, and a laptop case that looked like it contained more than the laptop. She'd told him they'd be sending someone for his sister within the hour, and that she'd be brought to a safe location. He'd accepted this without much comment, which was the right response. He'd asked three more questions about the contract, and she'd answered all three.

The answers had satisfied him, or he'd decided they were as good as they were going to get. Now, in the car, he sat with his bag at his feet and looked out the window as they drove. She sat in the back with him.

"The thing on the river," she said.

"Tell me about it." He didn't turn from the window.

"You saw it too?"

"Yes."

"Which one?"

"I don't have a name for it. Four legs, roughly a meter at the shoulder, armored spine." He nodded, thinking.

"I haven't classified them. Not yet. I've seen two types so far. The one you described and another one that's... taller."

"Are they predators?"

"Definitely." He hesitated.

"I think they're part of a test. The System's first scenario."

"Explain." He rubbed at his temple, looking tired again, but it was the focused kind of tired now, the kind that got energy from doing the thinking rather than resisting it.

"In the games I play, scenarios are events designed to test how you respond under pressure. Some are individual. Some are team-based. Some are city-wide. They have objectives, hidden rules, and rewards for completion." He paused.

"The things on the streets... they don't behave like wild animals. They behave like mobs. They have triggers. They react to patterns. I think they're a scenario. I think we're supposed to learn how they work and survive the night."

"How many nights?"

"I don't know yet. The System didn't say." Dario met her eyes in the rearview. She held his gaze for a second, then looked at Luca.

"What do you make of this?"

"Of the scenario?"

"Of everything. It doesn't seem like you're surprised."

"I'm not." He leaned back against the seat.

"I always thought it was possible. The simulation argument, the anthropic principle. The idea that we're in a system we don't understand. I just didn't expect it to be so... direct." He sounded more irritated than anything else. Like someone who had spent his life arguing a theory that nobody took seriously, only to have the proof arrive in a way that made his life exponentially harder.

"Do you think it's a game?"

"No. That's the mistake people make. A game is something you can walk away from. This isn't like that." He glanced at her.

"But the logic is similar. You learn the rules. You identify the mechanics. You exploit them." She was glad she'd been right about him. He'd moved past fear to analysis faster than anyone else she'd met. That was worth the cost of the contract, and she hadn't even paid the first installment yet.

"And the class selection?"

"It's an aptitude test. The System is giving us a toolset based on what it thinks we'll be good at. But it's also giving us a chance to make the wrong choice." He shook his head.

"The number of people who would pick a class based on what it sounds like instead of how it scales..."

"Is the advantage," she finished for him.

"Yes. If you understand what to look for." She thought of the red-haired girl in the street. She'd understood something important, but she'd understood it by instinct. It wouldn't scale. Luca had understood it methodically.

"You're not going to tell me what your class is, are you?" he asked.

"Not yet."

"But you're sure it's the right one."

"I'm sure." She looked out her own window. The sky was darkening, the purple deepening toward violet.

"You'll see why." He nodded. He didn't look entirely convinced, but she didn't need him to be. She just needed him to be curious enough to keep working. He'd see the evidence of it in practice. Dario turned them into a narrow street, avoiding a pile of debris on the main road. The car's engine was quiet enough that she could hear the sound of something moving in the distance, high and skittering, too fast for an animal. It passed quickly. Luca heard it too. His hand tightened on the strap of his bag.

"The two types I've seen," Luca said, eventually. He'd picked the thread back up from somewhere inside his own head.

"The one on the river was the faster one. Ground-level, designed for pursuit across open terrain. I've been trying to work out if they're the only type or if there are others I haven't seen yet, but it's difficult to build a taxonomy from a window."

"You've been inside since it happened?" she asked.

"Mostly. I left the building twice. Yesterday afternoon to gather information. Early this morning to get a better view. I didn't want to be on the streets at night. That was the right call."

"You mentioned triggers," she said.

"Yes. They respond to movement patterns. Large groups, running. Sudden noise. I think they're drawn to panic."

"Is that a hypothesis or an observation?"

"Observation. I saw a group of people running north on the Murazzi. One of the river creatures crossed from the city side and... I didn't see what happened after that. But they went for the movement." She didn't say anything to that. She thought about what she'd seen from the windows at Palazzo Valperga over the past thirty-odd hours. The military convoy pressing down Corso Regina Margherita on the first afternoon.

The way the APCs had stopped short of whatever was moving through the intersection ahead of them, then proceeded slowly. She'd taken it as caution. Maybe it was an encounter.

"There are human predators too," Luca said.

"The other reason I stayed in. I saw what happened in the food riots. People are worse than the creatures right now." She glanced at him.

"That might change." He nodded.

"It will. That's what I'm afraid of." Dario parked and came around to open the door for her. She stepped out first. Luca followed with his bags. His eyes moved over the building's exterior, then up to the upper windows. Assessing. She liked that he wasn't pretending indifference.

"You're not what I expected," Luca said.

"No?"

"When I saw who'd come for me. I thought..." He gestured vaguely.

"I don't know. More theatrics. The kind of thing that's in the movies. It's not like that, is it?"

"No," she said.

"It's more boring and more dangerous."

"Which one am I going to see?" She looked at him. He was still looking at the building, but his attention had turned back to her. Waiting for her answer.

"Both," she said.

"It depends on the day." Ruggiero approached them from the main entrance. He looked at Luca, then at her, a question in the slight shift of his shoulders.

"We have an agreement," she said. Ruggiero nodded once and stepped aside.

"Welcome to work," Cecilia said, and led Luca inside.