Mark sat back in a lounge chair in Blackthorn’s penthouse lounge, trying to ignore the world as he read about adamantium forging on his phone. The sun shone in at a nice angle, warming Mark’s legs, but his upper body lay in the shadows and the light of the penthouse. He was wearing shorts and a plain shirt. Snow layered on the boughs of the large tree on Blackthorn's penthouse balcony, and on his winterized garden, but it was warm in here. Comfortable.

  Mark was trying to be as comfortable as he could be, because ever since they finished the day’s hero/villain scenario everything had been horrible.

  It was 12:30 right now.

  The first complainers of Mark’s ‘mind control’ had shown up at Blackthorn’s tower 2 minutes after Blackthorn had dropped them on the balcony, and rushed them inside. Those first people had been some on-site organizers for the Collective. Blackthorn had met them in the parking lot of his tower. He did not let them inside. Mark didn’t know any of them and he still didn’t, but he had felt them in the background the whole time he had been out there during the event, acting like Blackvein.

  Eliot was already there in the tower when Blackthorn dropped them all off. He had not been happy.

  And then Isoko said something about them using shavallian in the prop coffee at the beginning and Mark had needed to speak on that again, and he had gotten only a few sentences into that before the representatives of the Collective down below had activated some sort of sound system. Their words reverberated through the building, telling Mark that he could come out willingly or be dragged out to face the consequences of his actions.

  That’s when Eliot had sent his vector outward and looked at the videos of the event.

  He had not taken well to the fact that Mark had basically mind controlled every person within the nearest 400 meters or however wide it had been, including all of the paladins of the Collective and all of the actors and all of the real cops…

  Eliot had backed away, walking toward the bedroom.

  Isoko went after him, and so did Sally.

  Isoko ended up talking with Eliot in the other room, and Sally… Well. Sally had been freaking out very, very quietly.

  The Collective had gone away, but they were going to send someone in a few hours.

  And now Mark was reading about how to forge adamantium in order to take his mind off of all of that.

  He was pretty sure that Isoko was perfectly fine and truly quite happy with how everything had worked out. Isoko had eventually come back out of the rooms and sat down across from Mark, several meters away on the other couch. She had been texting non-stop since the shoot this morning, smiling most of the time, except when she was perturbed by whatever was getting said in her chat.

  Eliot was kinda numb. He had come out, too. He was currently sitting on the other side of the room, looking at a screen, his mind far away. He was somewhat scared of Mark and mad at himself for being scared by Mark, and also mad at some people out there, but as for who those people were, Mark had no idea. Mark was waiting for him to talk first.

  Sally had been briefly mad and scared of Mark, but now she was furious at the Collective. She was up on the second interior story of the penthouse, right up the staircase over there and sitting in the sun one floor above. She was furiously tapping away at a screen, too, and Mark was pretty sure she wasn’t texting any friends. Mark was pretty sure she was texting some Executioners of Drakarok. Whoever her contacts were. Mark had no idea about any of that; he didn’t ask and Sally didn’t volunteer that information.

  Mark was pretty sure that the only people involved in today’s complete and utter mess were inquisitors and some paladins of the Collective, and not the main body of them, either. Just the ones who were under the sway of various other forces out there. Which forces? Mark had no real idea. The Collective was a loose organization of paladins and paladin-adjacent peoples, like the clerics and priests of the gods of the Pantheon. Most people who worked for the Collective also worked for other places, like how Mark and Isoko were both in the Slayers hunter organization, until they joined the settlement project.

  But Mark did know that two of the big hitters were Aluatha and Okuana, for sure. But how exactly? Why exactly? And yet...

  All he really cared about was knowing why Lola was involved. Why David had grabbed Eliot and whisked him away. Why was David involved? What did Citadel Freyala and the Freyalan superhero Justicar and High Priestess Holy Mother Julia Garin have to do with all of this?

  And also, Mark supposed, what did Freyala have to do with this?

  As the video about adamantium forging played on the screen and Quark’s speakers rested in Mark’s ears, Mark wondered what he thought about today’s incident.

  Was he sorry he had mind controlled all of those people?

  The actors, yeah. Mark was sorry about that. Those people didn’t deserve that done to them at all.

  The cops —the real cops— who had gone along and worked on the Collective’s behalf to try and apprehend Mark? The paladins and inquisitors that were there, working at the behest of the Empires of Daihoon, and whoever else? Whoever had put shavallian in that prop coffee?

  Not really.

  And as for Tartu, Kardi, Shawn, and Lenny…

  Isoko had said something about kicking Tartu when he was down, but the more Mark thought about what had happened…

  Tartu and his team were probably pretty messed up right now.

  And yet, Mark was not sorry about dominating them at all—

  Eliot came back to himself and he was looking at Mark, without looking at him. He was thinking deeply about something and he wasn’t sure how to say it.

  Mark glanced up and met Eliot’s eyes.

  Eliot freaked out a little bit… But then he breathed and looked at Mark, and said, “Promise me you’ll never do that to me, and we’re good.”

  Isoko instantly stopped what she was doing the very second Eliot started talking, and when he finished, before Mark could reply, Isoko said, “And what if you’re already being mind controlled, Eliot, and there’s no way out of it but to control you back?”

  Eliot glared at Isoko, and Isoko was not bothered at all by that glare.

  And while Mark kind of agreed that Isoko had a point, on the other hand...

  “Okay, Eliot,” Mark said, “I promise.”

  Isoko instantly turned to Mark. “Don’t make such a stupid promise.”

  Eliot was relieved, though, saying, “Look. I trust you a lot. If you have to do something to me to get me un-controlled, then that’s fine. But that was fucked up. I saw it all on the replay… it was fucked up.” And then, in a much lighter tone, he said, “I found out who tried to slip shavallian in that prop coffee, though. You’re not going to like it.”

  Mark guessed, “It was Inquisitor David, right?”

  Isoko’s eyes went wide. “Nooo! … oh?” She looked from Mark to Eliot, saying, “Uhhh?”

  Eliot had a tense little grin. “Yeah. It was David.”

  Mark had a lot of emotions at that moment. And then he went right to saying, “Quark. Call up David… fuck. What’s his last name?”

  Eliot began, “Tur—”

  “Turner!” Mark finished. “Right. He’s… high up there.”

  Paladins who took on the last name of their god’s mortal existence were rather devout and strong members of those clergies. David had the last name of Turner, as in Nurse Emily Turner, the woman who would become Freyala. Lola also had the last name ‘Turner’.

  Quark was already ringing, though. Of course he didn’t need the full name. He knew who Mark was talking about.

  Isoko sighed and said, “It’s actually ‘David Chain Turner’. He kept his original last name as his middle.”

  “Yeah, but that’s just for official paperwork,” Eliot added. “He never actually uses that one.”

  Mark, meanwhile, felt a bit foolish. “I didn’t know he kept his last name as his—”

  And then Quark clicked.

  David had picked up.

  “Hello, Mark,” David said, “Glad you called. So I’m in the city and I want to talk to you about this morning.”

  Just brush past everything and get right to the point, huh?

  Mark simply asked, “Why should I trust you ever again?”

  Mark had asked the question, but there had been no heat to it, because Mark couldn’t conceive of a reason that David would truly try to fuck him over. So the guy must have had a reason. Mark just needed to ask.

  It was probably stupid of Mark, but that is how he felt.

  “Lola and I want to talk to you. Can we come in? They’re not letting us be a part of the convoy to meet with you and yours at Blackthorn’s tower today, but if you request our presence then that gives us some standing to demand to be a part of the convoy.”

  “That doesn’t make sense at all, David,” Mark said, trying not to get mad. “You’re Paladins of the Collective. Inquisitors. You go wherever you want and…” Anger boiled beneath the surface, threatening to erupt, but Mark kept the heat out of his voice as he said, “Does Citadel Freyala know what you did today? Trying to dose me with shavallian?”

  “I discharged about 20 accumulated favors to do that today and gained several favors in turn. I was pretty much the only one who could do that, too, because I have nothing against you, Mark, so you didn’t notice my vector at all until I whisked Eliot out of there. Everyone else would have been noticed too early. I’m glad you spat it out, though I can’t imagine it was completely ineffective.”

  Mark touched the dim spellbreaker hanging on his neck, as he said, “… It almost got me.”

  “Yeah. It’s tricky stuff.”

  A moment of silence.

  Mark asked, “You know the truth of these allegations, right? Lola has told you?”

  Mark had never told David about being adamantium blooded, but… surely he knew anyway, right? He just pretended he never knew.

  “Invite us to the meeting at the tower, please.”

  “… Yeah, sure. Okay. How do I do that?”

  “Contact COFR and she’ll take it from there.”

  Eliot spoke up, “Ask him why he pulled me out of there.”

  “Eliot wants to know why you pulled him out of there.”

  “Freyala told me to. I didn’t know why until the rest of the event happened; I just did what I needed to do for him, just as Orissa and I did when we pulled you out of the wreckage of your house in the middle of that kaiju fight after your Tutorial. See you soon.”

  David hung up.

  Mark stared at Quark in his hands for a few moments.

  … Yeah. There was a good reason Mark trusted David with his life, though to point out the reason for that trust kinda eroded that trust a little. Like he was bringing it up to justify his actions, to justify why Mark should still trust him, or something like that. Mark wasn’t quite sure.

  Eliot was looking a bit… weird. His vector going oddly in multiple directions.

  Isoko, however, looked like she was having a deep moment. With a voice filled with awe, she said, “Freyala got involved.”

  “Yeah…” Eliot said.

  Isoko looked at Eliot in turn, her vector turning intense, as she said, “That’s why.”

  “Why what?” Mark asked.

  Isoko said to Mark, “I could barely protect myself and Sally. If Eliot had been there then I would have tried to protect all of us. I would have failed.”

  Mark felt shocked, his heart beating hard. “… But I didn’t even target you?”

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

  “It spilled everywhere, Mark,” Eliot said. “It went… You don’t even know how bad it went. Everyone within 500 meters stopped and bowed to you. You only saw the center of it. But the tapes… The tapes are extensive. People 4 blocks over, far away from the effect, stopped and got out of their cars to look in your direction and either bow or kowtow. There were about 1,100 people directly affected and another 1,200 partially affected, which includes one apartment building far to the south and a few restaurants and some daycare centers—”

  The very second Eliot said ‘daycare’, Mark felt his insides twist hard. Every word before that had been a revelation into what Mark had done wrong this morning, but ‘daycare’ made him want to crawl into a hole and die.

  Eliot’s voice was a hammer as he said, “This is a mage city, which means Curtain Protocol is pretty low, but… You forcibly Awakened at least 26 kids between ages 8 and 16. Mostly 8 year olds from the daycare. All of them have Knacks, now.”

  Mark felt his insides rip.

  Eliot added, “From preliminary investigations into 10 of the kids, their Knacks are variations of ‘Empathy’, ‘Knowing of People’, and ‘Knowing of Power Dynamics’. So they’re like… the best possible Knacks to have… According to some… people. Hmm.”

  Mark wanted to crawl into the deepest hole possible and die a few times, just to be sure.

  Isoko said, “It happens, Mark—”

  Mark shot her a glare.

  “Don’t get me wrong!” Isoko said. “It’s bad, but also, it happens.”

  Mark was speechless. He almost said something, and he wasn’t sure what it was going to be, but then—

  “You have money,” Sally said, walking down the stairs and joining the conversation. “Sell some adamantium. Give them all 300k goldleaf to choose their own future, later. With Knacks like that and since they’re living near Mage Society anyway, it will be easy for them to get into a good arcanaeum and not need to sign any predatory contracts. They’ll still have to sign contracts, but at least they have the chance to choose.”

  … For a moment, Mark felt something better than a crushing weight of responsibility and horror.

  And then he remembered Addashield setting down a little bit of adamantium onto his bedside table and talking about how money didn’t solve all problems but it did make most problems a lot easier to stomach. Was Mark going to go down the same route?

  Mark spiraled.

  He came back rather fast because Sally had just said a weird thing, hadn’t she.

  “You’re suggesting arcanaeum? You?”

  “If the kid is living here that means their parents are here and they’re already mage or mage-adjacent, so they’re probably destined for arcanaeum anyway, but, if they have money, then they can make their own choices.” Sally shrugged. “Tell them to take their Knack and become a paladin instead of a mage. It’s a lot better than dealing with demons.”

  Mark thought about that.

  Isoko interrupted his thoughts, saying, “Crystal Tower has assistance programs for kids Awoken by accident. I don’t know much about it, but… It does happen, Mark.”

  “Every place has programs like that,” Eliot said. “Memphi probably has a few programs, too. They’re tier 4 so they don’t even have a real Curtain Protocol neighborhood, not like Orange City; they can’t. Too much magic everywhere.”

  Mark, Isoko, and Sally were all surprised by that.

  Sally asked, “There are programs for this?”

  “Freyala has accidental Awakening programs?” Isoko asked.

  “Citadel Freyala has a big accidental Awakening program,” Eliot said, and then he turned toward Mark. “And I don’t think you registered what I said earlier about all the Knacks you caused being good ones. Knowings of people and social dynamics are always highly sought-after Knacks, but they never really happen. Not in any controlled sort of way.”

  Mark didn’t believe that. Sally didn’t believe it either.

  Isoko voiced, “I don’t believe that people don’t influence Powers when they can. Someone knows how to Awaken specific knacks, for sure. And Powers, too. Like Addashield and Freyala.”

  “And all the nobility of Daihoon,” Sally said.

  “And a few places on Earth, too,” Mark added.

  “I mean… yeah,” Eliot argued, “But hereditary magic is strong most of the time so there’s no human experimentation. And that’s what you’re talking about. That’s human experimentation and it’s usually frowned upon, as in heavily frowned upon, as in exile in most cases. Death in a lot. Inquisitors go out there and kill most people who do most human experimentation.”

  Mark almost wanted to laugh at that. Instead, he merely said, “Unless you’re powerful enough.”

  Sally darkly said, “Yeah.”

  “Whatever about all that,” Eliot said, waving a hand. He continued, “Point is that those kids are going to be fine, but they’re probably scared right now and their parents are probably furious. I can look up whatever accidental Awakening programs there are in Memphi, but I think you should just talk to COFR and the paladins of Freyala when they show up.”

  “Don’t say you’re sorry to them or anyone else, Mark,” Isoko said. “Never in public. If you do, you’ll be apologizing for the rest of your life, because this is going to happen again, for sure.”

  Mark fell silent as thoughts swirled in his head.

  No one else spoke; the conversation dropped.

  Mark looked at Quark in his hands and said, “I need to call Lola and… and COFR. Just COFR.”

  Eliot went back to tapping away at an invisible keyboard as his mind went elsewhere, his sight fixed on things far out of Mark’s range.

  Isoko went back to texting whoever she was texting.

  Sally sat down to the side, and though she pulled out her phone and started looking at things, mostly she was focused on everything else. She was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  Mark went up the stairs that Sally had just come down to get a little bit of privacy as he tapped away on Quark… And then he realized he didn’t need to tap at the screen at all. Mark sat down upstairs and said, “COFR please, Quark.”

  “Connecting…”

  Quark’s silver surface sort of moved to the side of a black screen, and then a golden light appeared.

  COFR’s feminine voice spoke, “Hello, Mark. How can Citadel of Freyala Resources help you today?”

  Mark found himself suddenly relieved to hear COFR’s voice. She was calm, and professional. That spoke a lot about things that were happening far outside of his own sight. If COFR had started off mad or declined the call then that would have indicated bad things far out of sight. Her professionalism could have been a trick, of course. That’s what ‘professionalism’ meant, after all. To be ‘professional’ was to be untrue to your inner feelings in order to project an air of… well. Professionalism.

  But Mark thought COFR wasn’t mad at him, anyway.

  Mark said, “I accidentally Awakened some people today. Some kids. I want to make amends with some monetary donations to get them set up for later in life, to try and make up for my mistake today. Do you have a program for… for helping with that?”

  Mark wasn’t sure what he was saying or asking, but he got the point across well enough, he thought.

  “The name of the program you’re asking about is Unintentional Awakenings,” COFR began. “We do not like to advertise that it exists because that leads to people thinking that spending money will absolve them of their guilt, but I don’t think you have that problem. You know you did wrong, you’re young and every powerful young person makes this mistake eventually, and you want to make amends. So the program exists for you. I can reach out to those affected by the day’s event on your behalf once we go through some paperwork and we receive the actual donation. But first, how much would you like to donate?”

  “A kilo of adamantium,” Mark said.

  That was about 55 million goldleaf, and that was a good start. Donating that much would put him at 7.6 kilos, but he could concentrate for a few hours and extract more from his body and make up for most of that loss. He already had maybe half a kilo in his bone marrow right now, and that was before today’s event. Mark needed to extract whatever he had inside of him, and soon.

  Getting back up to 10 kilos felt like a good goal.

  But COFR said, “That’s not an acceptable form of payment since you’re currently under investigation for trafficking in dragon goods.”

  “… But you know the truth.”

  “I do. That doesn’t change public perception. If you would like, I could put you into contact with Crystal Tower’s Unintentional Awakenings program. I believe they will have a lot to say about today’s event, and they are probably wanting to talk to you, too. They will have merchandising deals to go over, along with image rights, royalties, and otherwise. All of that can be used as donations to a UA program.”

  Mark said, “Sure, yes…” Mark moved on. He asked another big question, “Do you have any guidance for how to solve this problem of the Empires fighting over me, and wanting to stick me into an adamantium farm? Should I just go public?”

  “I would not give this advice to most people, but I would tell it to every paladin I know, and also you: Fight your battles how you want to fight them, or you will always be fighting battles for other people. Make sure when you do fight battles for others, that they are the kind of people you wish to fight for.”

  Mark leaned against a wall, taking that in, staring down at the golden light on his phone. And then he looked up and outward, past the windows, to the skyline of Memphi and beyond.

  Mark openly wondered, “Maybe I need to be scarier and they won’t mess with me.”

  COFR did not reply.

  Mark shook his head, and said, “Can I get Inquisitor David and Inquisitor Lola to come to the group… that’s coming for us? To the meeting. I’m not sure how that works.” Mark added, “The Collective issue happening right now.”

  “I’ll inform a few interested parties. And Mark, if you want to go public about being adamantium blooded, then Citadel Freyala will gladly take adamantium as a donation to Unintended Awakenings. It will go a long way to helping children in need of assistance for unfortunate events like the one you caused today. This is not an endorsement for you to go public. That is still your choice, completely.”

  “… Yeah. Thanks for… that information.”

  “Good day, Mark.”

  “Good day.”

  COFR hung up.

  Mark stood there thinking for a little while.

  He made a decision, and then he went and told his team about it.

  “I’m going to out myself as adamantium blooded when this whole thing is over, and I can prove that I’m not one to be messed with. If I can be scarier, then that should make most people back off. I’m not sure who I should tell, though. Or how it should happen.”

  Isoko, Eliot, and Sally all took that in, their vectors pointing at Mark and then inward and then back outward in toward other things that Mark did not know about.

  Isoko guessed, “Probably for the best? You need to be scarier. You’re right about that. I don’t know, but… Maybe.”

  Sally instantly said, “Yes. Scarier is good.”

  “A real costume will go a long way to preventing people from fucking with you, and with us in turn,” Eliot said. “A real reputation will do a lot of that.”

  “Don’t tell the Collective people about this plan,” Isoko instantly and solidly said.

  “Yes. Don’t do that,” Sally added. “Just don’t. In fact, don’t speak about this anywhere ever again, until you actually tell people what’s up.”

  “… I mean, okay?” Mark asked. “I get that, but… The Collective might back off if they knew the plan?”

  “And then they’d think that they didn’t bring their full forces to bear against you, and that they could change that,” Isoko said. “Let them do whatever they want and we’ll deal with it if we can.”

  Sally countered Isoko, saying, “I agree, but also that’s wrong. The point of not telling them is so that afterward they realize they’re being used for the personal gain of the empires, and that’s big. I doubt many paladins out there would agree to enslaving Mark if they knew, and so Mark has to let them try and then prove they can’t, and then prove why they shouldn’t in the first place. They’ll always think they could have done more, though; that is never going to change.”

  Isoko wiggled her head back and forth, weighing what she was hearing, and then she said, “I mean… Yeah?”

  Eliot said, “You’re both right. But the bigger thing here is that right now the Collective is the enemy and you don’t know how they’re connected to the other enemies out there who are really pulling the strings.” He looked to Mark, saying, “Don’t give them more strings to pull until you’re ready to tear down the board, and we’re not anywhere near that level yet. I think we should play this whole thing out, all the way to the end, and then you can talk about… the truth.”

  Mark nodded a little—

  Isoko added, “As for when? In the middle of the big battle at the gate, to demoralize the Collective.”

  “Oh, no,” Sally said, “Sometime when it’s all over.”

  Eliot said, “We should just drop this conversation and never speak of it again, because even if we’re in Blackthorn’s tower people are still spying on us. The magic on the windows obscuring our lips and faces is not present everywhere.”

  Isoko smirked as she mimed zipping her lips and throwing away the key.