Chương 56: Chapter 55: Arrivals

"It's time," I said. Ella didn't look up from the desk. She had her hands on the laptop, the screen lit the green-and-white of a spreadsheet, and for a moment I thought she hadn't heard me. Then she closed the laptop with a click.

"Finally." She stood and reached for her jacket — one of mine, the dark one, sleeves pushed up.

"They're here?"

"Bill says the whole team. Everyone. The truck's at the lot."

"Good." She was already moving.

"Let's go meet them." The facility was awake. The corridor channels glowed their steady amber. Ella walked ahead of me, boots on stone. She put her palm flat on the panel. The gate opened. She took her hand away. And it stayed open. A man stepped through. He had a shaved head, a gray jacket zipped to the throat, and he did something I'd never seen anyone do on first crossing. He didn't look at the gate. He didn't look at the room from the middle.

He stepped to the wall, put his back to it, and took the whole chamber in at once — the steps, the panel, the two of us, the corridor behind him.

"Zieliński," he said.

"Marek." He'd already found the corridor mouth without turning his head toward it. Then he nodded once and stood aside, and the next person came through. That was how the rest of it went. A line of them, one after another, out of the rippling air and into the stone room. Names and hands and bags. I don't remember most of the first seconds. I remember impressions. Andrej, thin, quiet, already looking at the walls like he was counting the channels. Daphne, bright, talking even as she came through.

Tomas, big shoulders, calling over his shoulder to the corridor he'd just left. Nadia, already frowning at a seam in the wall armor, assessing. Julien, calm, one hand resting on a canvas bag, listening quietly. Sofia, carrying a white medical case, her eyes moving over the two of us for injuries out of pure habit, found none, relaxed slightly. Mara, gray-streaked hair, walking to the wall and touching the stone, lips moving in what I took to be an insult to the masonry.

Lukas, younger, quiet, hands loose at his sides. Bill came through last, a folder under his arm, and the gate closed behind him smooth and silent. He looked around at the team.

"Everyone, this is Arcene and Ella." Then he gestured toward the others.

"Arcene, Ella. This is everyone." We unpacked everything from the truck together. Food, medical supplies, farming tools, equipment, ammunition — enough supplies to make the thirty-six-ton truck look like a military resupply. It wasn't exactly peak discretion, but it was necessary. Ella helped us unload. A few months ago, she couldn't have done that. Leaving the panel would have closed the gate. Now she moved back and forth with the rest of us, carrying boxes like it was nothing.

The truck driver never left his seat. He only spoke when Bill went back to tell him we were done. Then he drove away. We walked everyone through the corridors to the road, where the carriage and my car were waiting. Tomas slowed as we passed the carriage, which I'd more or less expected.

"This runs on what?" he asked.

"Magic." He looked at the wheels, then at me.

"Magic?"

"Magic." He considered that for a moment.

"After the gate, I'm willing to believe you." The carriage took as many people as it could. The rest squeezed into my car. We left the luggage and most of the supplies at the facility. The only thing we took with us was Sofia's medical case, which ended up on Lukas's lap. Andrej and Lukas were squeezed into the back, knees pressed together so tightly that I wasn't sure either of them could still feel their legs. It was going to be a long ride. We drove home with everyone asking very few questions.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. The village took shape ahead of us between the trees, stone cottages with their light spheres just beginning to wake in the long afternoon, and I heard Mara make a sound like a verdict.

"There," she said.

"That's what a walled farmstead looks like. Open water beside the road. The land falls away from the houses, so the runoff clears quickly. Whoever built this knew what they were doing." The house assignments were quick. The cottages were mostly identical, after all. I put the girls closer to the bathhouse, then started pointing at houses more or less at random whenever we reached a new one.

"You take this one."

"That one's yours." The village had more empty cottages than we needed, and worst case, there was an entire empty city on the other side of the mountain. The registrations came next. I'd told them about the terminal — how the village kept some kind of record of who lived there. Bill had seen it on an earlier trip and called it"weird sci-fi bureaucracy" before moving on. I'd never actually bothered to look at it again. There had always been something else to do.

The screen had sat in its dark alcove in the study for months, waiting patiently. Ella walked toward it without hesitation. She was the one who finally explained what it actually did. She placed her palm against the black stone, the same way she'd once touched the throne's panel. The terminal woke. The surface brightened.

"One at a time," Ella said.

"Stand in front of it." Marek went first. He stood where she pointed, expression unreadable. The screen changed. A moment later, the golem that always sat in the corner moved. It approached Marek, stopped in front of him, and scanned him. Light passed over his body. Then the golem returned to its place. On the screen, something took shape. A portrait. Or at least the machine's idea of one. It flickered beneath a line of symbols I couldn't read, then settled into place.

"Next," Ella said. Daphne stepped forward.

"It reads them?" Bill asked quietly.

"I think so." I watched her portrait appear beside Marek's.

"It did the same thing to me." Bill glanced at me.

"The first time I touched it, anyway. The golem scanned me, then registered me."

"And that's it?"

"Apparently." I looked at Ella.

"She says that's how the system keeps track of residents." Ella nodded without looking away from the terminal. One by one, they stepped forward. Andrej. Tomas. Nadia. Julien. Sofia. Mara. Lukas. Bill. Each time, the same thing happened. The golem scanned them. The terminal recorded them. Another portrait appeared. Another green symbol lit up beside the previous ones. By the time everyone was done, the screen held a row of unfamiliar faces beneath mine.

"No dark ones," Bill said. I looked at him.

"What?" He pointed at the symbols.

"They're all green." I looked back at the screen.

"Yeah." I didn't know what that meant. Neither did Ella. But at least, apparently, none of them were dead. Daphne leaned closer to the screen.

"I can't read what it says."

"I know." I looked at the symbols beneath my own portrait.

"I can't read what it says," Daphne said quietly.

"I can," I said.

"It'll just take me a while." She nodded, apparently satisfied with that answer. Ella turned and walked out of the study, and everyone followed. The village slowly filled with people. For the first few minutes, I mostly just pointed at empty cottages.

"You can take this one."

"That one's yours."

"There's another one over there." The houses were almost identical anyway, and there were more empty cottages than we needed. I put the women in the houses closer to the bathhouse and let everyone else pick from what remained. Nobody complained. Daphne opened the door to hers and looked inside.

"This whole house?"

"Yeah." She looked back at me.

"Just for me?"

"For now." She smiled.

"I think I'll survive." She stepped inside. Tomas stopped me a moment later.

"How do I turn on the heating?" I pointed at the magic core on the wall beside the door.

"That rune." He touched it and turned the ring. The room began warming almost immediately He stared at the fine magic circle engraved into the stone.

"That's not electricity."

"No."

"Is this magic again?"

"It is." He nodded slowly and walked inside. Nadia had found one of the cleaning golems. It was standing quietly in the corner when she approached it. It immediately moved, bowed politely, and returned to its place. She watched it for a few seconds.

"Does it clean?"

"Just the surfaces it can reach. The rest is maintained another way."

"How?"

"I don't know. You should ask Ella. She's the specialist." Nadia frowned at the golem. I was starting to think we'd accidentally recruited nine people who couldn't stop working. With everyone settled, Bill and I went back to the facility to finish moving the supplies we'd left behind. There was no point dragging everything to the village before we had somewhere to put it, and now that the cottages were occupied, we could finally start spreading things out properly. I took the carriage. Bill took my car.

We went back and forth for the rest of the afternoon, bringing over food, equipment, tools and everything else we'd left stacked inside the gate chamber. It was tiring, but there wasn't much to think about. By the time we were done, the golems were already busy cleaning up after us. For the first time in centuries, they finally had something to do.

"Nine houses," he said when I reached him.

"Felt like that should be harder."

"It should've been." He looked toward the lit windows.

"The bigger problem is food. Nine more people eating every day is going to add up quickly."

"We're stocked."

"For now." He pulled out his phone and checked something.

"Cem says the next truck should be ready in a day or two."

"What's on it?"

"Food. A lot of it. More farming supplies too." He glanced toward the yard.

"And the second hardware shipment."

"For Andrej?"

"Mostly." That got my attention.

"What did you have him bring?"

"Solar panels. A lot of them. Batteries, inverters, cable, switches, a proper router, network equipment. Whatever else Andrej put on the list." I looked toward the sky. Two suns.

"Solar makes sense."

"That's what I thought."

"And we have enough space."

"More than enough." He put his phone away.

"Cem says he'll send me the final inventory when the truck is ready."

"Good." The bigger fish was sitting in the study, three laptops spread across the desk. Ella had the old laptop I'd pulled out of the closet for her months ago open in front of her. Andrej and Julien had each been given one of the laptops we'd brought for the team. Ella was completely absorbed in the discussion, moving between the screens and the notes scattered across the desk. Andrej was already running tests, while Julien watched the results and occasionally pointed something out. Bill followed my gaze.

"She's been waiting for this."

"For people who actually understand this stuff."

"The internet?"

"The internet. And the gate." I glanced toward the facility, hidden somewhere beyond the village.

"The gate is the big one. She wants to connect it to a computer and figure out how to calculate other endpoints." Bill nodded slowly.

"So she can move it."

"Exactly. We can't keep using the same spot on Earth after that video." He glanced toward the study.

"And Andrej thinks he can help?"

"That's what we're about to find out." Bill nodded toward the laptops.

"Then you should probably go."

"What about you?" He shrugged.

"I'm staying here."

"Doing what?"

"Learning." I raised an eyebrow.

"Magic?"

"Magic."

"You finally got her to agree?"

"She offered."

"Really?" I looked at him for a moment.

"You just want to shoot lightning."

"Obviously." He didn't even bother denying it. I laughed.

"You know it's basically useless, right?"

"It's lightning." He said it like that settled the matter. I couldn't really argue with that.

"Fair enough." I started toward the study.

"What about your work?"

"I'll commute."

"You can make that work?" He shrugged.

"The next hearing isn't for months. I have plenty of time to figure out the schedule."

"And the clients?"

"They'll survive without me for a few hours." I smiled.

"Fair enough." I headed toward the study.