The Last Dainv-Chapter 104

The Last Dainv-Chapter 104

The downtown rush hour of TD's lobby had men and women in suits rushing out of the elevators. Gale and Ollie stood just away from the lobby's soft couches where Mia, Andrew, and Jacob sat.
"Gale, are you kidding me right now?" Ollie glanced back at the group of three. "You brought mundanes to my doorstep. That's a big headache, you know that, right?"
"It just happened, okay? I didn't exactly plan this," Gale said.
"This isn't some arcade. A random Aurian that works at my labs could kill them with a sneeze if they were in the same direction." Ollie rubbed his eyes. "Look at them."
Andrew stared at Ollie, wide eyed like a deer, hyperventilating, mouth wide open as Mia tried to shake him out of it. Jacob openly stared at the whole lobby. Even waving at the front desk guard reception.
"Shit, that one looks like he's about to piss himself," Ollie muttered, eyes pointing at Andrew.
"He's a fan, I guess," Gale shrugged.
"A fan?"
"Of you. When I mentioned your name. Something about Forts Under 30?"
Ollie's face softened slightly. "Oh. That."
"What is that?" Gale asked.
"It's nothing. Just some mundane stuff," Ollie said, fixing his tie. "The point is, you brought mundanes here for Aurian business. I'm not going to get in trouble, but they could get into a whole lot. I'm serious, Gale."
Gale shrugged, forcing a smile. "I didn't know what else to do. They saw things at the asylum. They took the documents. They already know about me."
"So you brought them here? For what?" Ollie rubbed his eyes again.
"Mia, don't you know who that is?! That's the one and only Oliver Glory. The tech prodigy. The-Ow!"
Mia elbowed him in the ribs. "Shut up, weirdo. Just act normal."
"I mean," Gale said, putting a hand on his neck, "I didn't know what to do… I needed help. I'm just… a kid. It just happened."
"A goddamn kid that can level this whole floor if you wanted to." Ollie sighed, shoulders relaxing.
"Isn't there like a memory wiping thing you can do to make them forget all of this?"
"This isn't a movie, Gale." Ollie started pacing back and forth. "We haven't done that since the 90s. Gave people permanent brain damage. Plus, it was expensive, so it was never worth it."
Gale hunched his shoulders. "Then what do we do?"
"It's probably best they join the Path, for their own sake." Ollie turned to him. "It's not like mundanes don't join Aur anyways. In fact, I know a good detective named Frank who does a lot of my dirty investigative work. Damn awesome detective too."
"What do you mean?"
"It means they can still be useful, but they need to join a faction," Ollie said.
"Unlike me?"
"Unlike you." Ollie's phone buzzed. He checked it, frowning. "You're special."
"Is there a different meaning to special?" Gale asked.
"What else would it mean? You know what, never mind." Ollie grabbed his arms and pulled him aside further. "Let's be clear first. There's no going back for them after this. If they learn about Aur, there's no going back. They're in it for life. Got that?"
"I get it… not sure if they do," Gale said.
"Just like old times, huh?" Ollie let go of his arm. "You showing up with strays."
"They're not strays. They're..." Gale paused. "They're my friends."
"Your call," Ollie said. "But they're your responsibility."
Gale nodded.
"Alright, let's do this." Ollie took a deep breath, then looked back. "Follow my lead, got it?"
"Got it."
Gale and Ollie walked towards the group still sitting in the lobby chairs.
"Mr. Glory," Andrew stammered. "I'm-uh,-I can't believe your TED talk on quantum computing was-I mean-"
"Fascinating?" Ollie said dryly. "I'm sure. Now everyone, let's go up to my office."
The group stood up stiffly. Mia as well looked like her neck was stiff as her eyes turned sideways to Gale. Ollie walked forward and waved at the reception guard to open the small gate to the elevators.
Gale watched Mia's eyes squint at Ollie putting his palm onto the key card. Blue light glowed under his palm, and the elevator started moving without pressing any buttons.
"Holy shit, dude. That's some MIB-level technology," Jacob squealed.
The elevator quickly went up two floors above the restaurant and opened with a ding. Walking outside, the group was met with glass walls until the end of the corridor where glass double doors sat.
Pushing it open, Gale gestured to everyone to go inside. Ollie went in first, followed by Mia, Andrew, Jacob, then lastly, himself.
The broken frame and its fragments still lay uncleaned by the right side of the office. The others looked at it, Gale and Ollie ignored it.
Sitting down behind the desk, Ollie snapped his fingers once. Blue light outlined the bench at the left side of the office, and it moved to face the desk, allowing everyone to have a seat. Jacob whispered something inaudible to Mia, who just shook her head.
"Sit," Ollie said, pointing at the bench in front of him.
Mia, Andrew, and Jacob all sat at the bench, Gale following them from behind.
"Gale, what are you doing?" Ollie whispered loudly.
"Oh, right." Gale stood back up, looking down as he went to Ollie's side. He took a wide stance and puffed his chest out beside him.
"So," Ollie sighed, clasped his hands together, and looked at the people in front of him. "You're Gale's... friends."
"Classmates," Mia said.
"Co-investigators," Jacob said at the same time as Mia.
"Friends," Andrew corrected both of them.
Ollie side eyed Gale, but he just shrugged.
"And now you know things you shouldn't," Ollie continued. "About rifts. About creatures from other dimensions. About
magic
."
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. the violation.
"Magic? Holy shit, so you mean the Force could exist?" Jacob's tone raised up excitedly.
Ollie side eyed Gale again, this time he shook his head. He could only respond with another forced smile.
Andrew raised his hands. "We saw everything at the asylum. The skin walker, the shifting corridors, the magic that you're talking about."
"Yes, yes." Ollie leaned forward. "The question is what to do with you now."
"Do with us?" Mia straightened her back. "We're not property."
"No, but you're liabilities," Ollie said bluntly.
"Ollie." Gale tugged at Ollie's sleeve.
Ollie ignored him. "Look, kids, this isn't a game. It's not an adventure. It's war. A fight against what's coming out of those
rifts
. One wrong move and you're dead, either from a monster or, more likely, another person."
"We already survived once. We can do it again," Jacob said confidently.
"You ran," Ollie corrected. "Gale fought
and
survived. There's a difference."
Jacob's smile instantly disappeared. The room went quiet. The only sound was the tapping of Jacob's leg.
"Those documents Mia found," Gale said, breaking the silence. "Ollie needs to see them."
Mia held her bag tighter. "Why? What are they to you?"
"Insurance," Ollie said. "Knowledge. Power. Take your pick."
"That's not an answer," she said, hugging her bag away from Ollie.
"Well, that's too bad. It's the only one you're getting."
Andrew leaned forward. "Mr. Glory, sir, we really just want to help. Your company, I mean Glory Industries, it's changed computing forever. If this is all connected somehow..."
"In ways you can't even imagine," Ollie said. He looked at Andrew for a moment. "Fan of my work, are you?"
Andrew nodded quickly. "Ever since your keynote at MIT three years ago. The stuff you talked about for haptic neural interfaces was ten years ahead of anyone else."
"Try 50," Ollie muttered.
"What?" Andrew blurted out.
"Never mind." Ollie looked at Gale. "Your friends have seen the tip of the iceberg. You really want to drag them under?"
"They deserve to know what they're mixed up in," Gale said.
"And if knowing gets them killed?"
"Hey! We're right here," Mia interrupted.
Ollie turned to her. "Fine. Direct question: what will you do with what you learn here today?"
"Use it to help stop whatever's happening. With the rifts, the monsters, all of it," Mia said without hesitation.
"Noble," Ollie said. "And naive."
"What would you have us do?" she demanded. "Pretend we didn't see anything? Go back to our lives knowing there are things out there eating people?"
"Most people manage it," Ollie said.
Jacob sat up straighter. "Wait, most people? Like, other normal people know about this stuff?"
"Some do," Ollie said. "They work for organizations. They have training, resources, protection."
"Like what?" Mia asked.
"Like the Path," Ollie said. "One of three major factions that maintain order in our world."
"Our world?" Mia echoed. "As opposed to...?"
"Aur," Gale said before Ollie could stop him. "The world behind the mundane."
"It's not behind anything," Ollie corrected irritably. "It's right here, layered over everything. Hidden away from mundanes."
Jacob's eyes widened. "Like a parallel dimension?"
Ollie sighed, leaning back in his chair as his eyes glanced at the ceiling. "No, not a parallel dimension. It's right here; same world, same space. We exist in plain day. That coffee from downstairs? The barista is Aurian. The elevator didn't have a number 58. I used my ether to get us here. So technically, all of you already walked through Aur."
"We did?" Andrew asked, tone sounding like he didn't entirely believe it.
"But why hide it?" Mia crossed her arms.
"Because mundanes like you tend to lose their sanity when they see fireballs, magical knights fighting, glyphed guns that could level a whole building." Ollie sat straight up again. "Can you imagine the chaos? The panic? We hide in plain sight because the alternative is mass hysteria."
Gale noticed Jacob's leg shake harder. He did literally lose his mind in that asylum. Not to mention, the mundanes in the Eclipsed started vomiting when he let Breath of the Void in the first time.
"Look, I'll figure out what to do with you three later. Right now, I need those documents," Ollie said, rubbing both his eyes with his fingers. He held out his other hand toward Mia.
Gale nodded at her.
Mia unzipped her backpack slowly and pulled out the thick folder. She handed it to Ollie, who grabbed it quickly.
Ollie opened the folder and scanned the pages faster than what seemed normal.
"QPES," he muttered. "Here we go."
"What are you looking for?" Mia asked.
"The Quantum Portal Emergence System as you mundanes call it," Ollie said without looking up. "The most valuable thing in this entire file."
He pulled out the section with the yellow sticky note and spread the pages across his desk.
"But why?" Andrew asked. "It's incomplete technology, right? They couldn't make it work properly."
Ollie snorted.
"Because they were looking at it all wrong. Trying to open a door but forgetting to build the frame first." He tapped a diagram. "This here? They thought it was about creating tunnels through space-time, but it's about finding existing weak points and exploiting them. So then how would you keep that weak point weak to keep the rift open without the resource to do it?"
Jacob leaned forward from the bench, trying to peek at the document. "So what's the big deal? Why's this stuff so important?"
Ollie looked up without turning his head. "Private rifts."
"Private rifts?" Mia asked.
"Think about it," Ollie said. "Controlled access to whole other dimensions. Not just the scary monster-filled ones, but places filled with resources this world has never seen. Materials with properties that defy our physics. Energy sources beyond anything we have here."
Andrew's eyes widened. "Is that how you... I mean, your company's breakthroughs..."
"That TED talk you're so obsessed about neural interfaces?" Ollie grinned. "All based on tech we recovered from rifts. And that's just scratching the surface."
"Holy shit," Jacob whispered.
"With private rifts, the possibilities are unlimited," Ollie stood up and paced. "New technologies, new energy sources, new materials. And most importantly..." He paused, smiling. "Profit. Lots and lots of profit."
Jacob jumped up. "Are we gonna be rich? Like, split the profits? Because I've got an OSAP student loan that needs some payin' back."
"No," Ollie said.
Jacob fell back onto the bench. "Oh."
"Getting rich is part of it, but it's not truly about getting rich," Ollie said. "It's all in the name of..."
He stopped, looking at Gale, something passing between them.
Of course, it was about the dust research that Ollie wanted to progress the most. At least now, he contributed something to it. Maybe his friend will take that as an apology.
"Medical research," Gale said.
Ollie nodded slightly, turning back to the documents.
"Medical research?" Mia's eye brow raised. "What kind of medical research requires interdimensional portals?"
"The complicated kind," Ollie muttered, still flipping through papers.
Mia, Jacob, and Andrew didn't know about dust. The horrible crystallization process that it did to human bodies. Hopefully, they never get to see it. It's better that way for them.
"So what happens now?" Andrew asked. "With us, I mean."
Ollie looked up from the documents. "Now? Now I need to study these. Figure out exactly what these asylum doctors knew and how close they really got to creating stable rifts."
"And us?" Mia asked.
"You three?" Ollie looked at each of them. "You know too much to go back to normal life, but not enough to be useful yet."
"Yet?" Jacob perked up. "So we could be useful?"
"Potentially," Ollie said, glancing at Gale. "Your friend here seems to think you're worth keeping around."
Gale shrugged.
"True," Ollie said. "And those twins will be looking for them once they realize the documents are missing."
"What twins?" Andrew asked.
"Some assh-I mean, some rival operatives."
"They're coming after us?" Andrew asked, eyes darting between Ollie and Gale.
"Eventually," Ollie said. "The Path doesn't give up easily when they want something."
Mia frowned. "That's one of those factions you mentioned?"
Ollie nodded. "And I'm technically part of it, though my relationship with leadership is... complicated."
Jacob looked between Ollie and Gale. "So you two work together fighting monsters and stuff? Like partners?"
"No," Gale said at the same time Ollie said, "Sometimes."
They looked at each other.
"It's complicated," Gale muttered.
"Very," Ollie said.
Silence filled the room. Andrew looked back through the glass doors as if checking if something or someone was coming their way. Jacob couldn't stop shaking his leg the whole time.
"This is nuts," Jacob finally said. "Like, completely nuts. Two weeks ago, I was just studying chemistry and physics to get a G.E.D. Now I'm standing in a billionaire's secret magic office talking about monsters and portals to other dimensions."
"Welcome to Aur," Ollie said dryly. "Where nothing makes sense and everything and everyone tries to kill you."

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Chapter 104