I broke surface at 2:47 PM.

The Undercroft clerk glanced up as I returned the Floor 3 permit. Took in the C-rank insignia I had exchanged for my previous one at the rank office before I left for Floor 3. Glanced back up at me.

"You’ve moved up in the world," he told me.

"Guess so."

He made a notation in his log book and took the permit from me. "Your access to Floor 4 begins effective today. Permits can be acquired between six and six. Updates to the bounty board at dawn."

"Thanks."

He focused again on his logbook, and I focused again on the city outside.

C-rank was different only in one practical sense and not at all emotionally speaking.

That practical difference was that people acted just ever so slightly differently with the rank badge in place. Not drastically, certainly; Ashveil was a big city where B and A ranks wandered about daily, after all, but the change was measurable. If you had spent enough time as a D-rank to be able to feel it.

The emotional approach didn’t amount to much; after all, I’d been working my way up to this point for the past twenty-nine days, and now here I was, and it seemed more like a revision than an accomplishment: STR 18 instead of 12. AGI 23 instead of 17. Rebalanced shortbow scaling. Threat Assessment I in the skills list, doing whatever it is Threat Assessment I does.

It popped up while I walked.

---

SKILL — THREAT ASSESSMENT I

Purpose: Overlay upgrade modifier. Adds threat tier identification to Observe ability. Low / Moderate / High / Critical. Dynamic assessment based on current combat statistics and proximity data.

Restriction: Intelligibility correlates to Intelligence attribute. Present value: 24 — 71% accuracy on classifications above B-rank.

Remark: Does not interfere with Pattern Recognition II. Functionality operates as secondary layer.

---

Accuracy rating of seventy-one percent for everything above B-rank. Vorn was rated at A-minus. In other words, the skill had a thirty percent chance of misidentifying his threat level when confronted.

Good to know. Extremely reassuring.

I tucked it away and continued walking towards the Broken Crown Inn, where I could get a drink and some place to sit that didn’t require me sitting on a dungeon floor.

The inn was quiet. No one for lunch yet and no one for dinner yet. The lady who worked the bar here, Sena by name, judging by the perpetually unimpressed look on her face and the fact that she had been doing this job long before the canonical game story began, set down a cup without being asked when I sat down. We had an agreement.

I finished half and went online to check the wiki.

Vorn first.

---

VORN — CURRENT STATUS

Lyra pathway: SUSPENDED — permanent

Daren contact: ONGOING

Relationship / Daren: 147 — up from 128

Flag 1: Lyra — SUSPENDED

Flag 2: Daren — ACTIVE

Flag 3: [generating — 34%]

Flag 4: [REDACTED]

Direct engagement with Kai: COMPLETE

Assessment: Kai ranked C — noted. Recalculation pending.

Mira assessment: ACTIVE — foreknowledge confirmed, role refusal confirmed, threat tier: HIGH

---

147 with Daren.

Nineteen points gained since morning. Vorn had reached out to him again. No doubt brief and casual, like all things involving Vorn. Some talk at the permit queue, some words exchanged at the quest board — nothing Daren would find unusual at all since he had no reason to be suspicious.

That was the difficult aspect of Vorn’s strategy to combat. The corruption mechanic, I could get around; I knew how it worked, I had my cheats enabled, I could even interfere directly. Organic relationship-building, however, didn’t have any flags that could be suppressed. Daren simply liked the guy, and Vorn was, in truth, a likeable individual when he wanted to be: patient, well-informed, and treating Daren like an adult.

There wasn’t anything I could do to change that, as I’d reminded him myself in the alley.

The important thing was what happened to 147 before I figured out the significance of Flag 3.

I finished the water and ordered another.

Mira walked into the inn at 3:12 PM.

She caught sight of me right away — the room was only about half full — and made her way over to the bar without breaking step. She sat two stools down from where I was sitting, nodding at Sena, who gave her a cup of water with the same efficiency as she’d given mine.

"Floor 1," I said.

"Clean," she said. "South passage, east corridor, full loop. Four Skitterers, two Stonebacks. Forty-two EXP."

"Unclassified rank on Stonebacks is rough."

"It’s fine. I have range."

I looked at her. "What weapon?"

She reached behind herself and tapped her shoulder where the strap from what I’d taken to be her backpack lay against her body. That hadn’t been her backpack. Longer than a shortbow. Slenderer.

"Crossbow," she replied. "Tier 2. INT scaling."

INT scaling. I had AGI scaling on my shortbow. Stat priority differences led to damage differences. Optimal range for each was also slightly different.

I realized that I was starting to think of our tactical synergy, which was interesting to note. Perhaps I needed to study that.

"INT scaling Unclassified rank," I commented. "What is your INT?"

"Twenty-six."

Greater than mine. Mine was at 24.

"STR?" I asked.

"Nine."

Less than mine. Even more glass than I’d been at D-rank.

"AGI?"

"Nineteen."

Sufficient. Not high, but not a problem.

"You’re backline," I stated.

"Obviously," she replied. "You’re mid-range skirmishing."

"Obviously."

We considered this for a moment.

---

WIKI — ALERT UPDATE

Entry: Mira

Generation: 98%

Status: Holding — unlock condition unmet

Relationship / Kai: 44 — generation continued

Note: Proximity and information exchange acknowledged. Generation threshold nearing.

---

Forty-four. Thirty-one before meeting up in the dungeon.

Whereas Daren was quick to generate, Mira generated differently — less warmth driven and more information driven. Everything factual between us pushed the needle. It made sense because she had entered as a reader. Information was what she dealt with.

"Vorn connected to Daren once more," I told her.

"Yes, I saw them both at the quest board at noon. 147."

"Are you tracking it?"

"Naturally, I’m tracking it." She looked at me sideways. "Think you’re the only one with an interface?"

Right. Of course she would have one. She was a non-game character, post-canon insertion. She must have the interface as I had.

"How would you assess Flag 3? The generating one?"

For a while, she said nothing. The sort of silence that indicated she had her assessment but wasn’t sure what I wanted to hear.

"It’s not a target flag," she started. "Nor is it a corruption flag or a means of building a relationship. The generation pattern is different from Flag 1 and Flag 2." She spun her cup round and round. "I think it’s a contingency flag."

"For what, specifically."

"For when he is unable to reach his main and secondary targets." She regarded me. "Yes. Lyra’s closed. Daren is organic, but not heading down the right path for Vorn’s mechanics; friendship just doesn’t work for him in that respect. He needs leverage. And he’s working on contingency."

"For?"

"I don’t have enough data for now. The generation rate has dropped to thirty-four percent. More data needed."

I considered that. A predator building a contingency flag while his first goal was suspended and his second wasn’t heading in a useful direction. An adaptable predator.

"About the redacted flag," I said. "Flag 4. What do you know."

Longest pause so far. Even longer than when she spoke to me from the junction.

"It existed before the game," she told me.

And I stared at her.

"Because in the developer’s forums I found an entry — it’s from a partially-leaked discussion prior to the release of the game. Someone datamined it from an early version of the game. This is something that exists before the official canon begins. This isn’t a game mechanic, or a corruption vector, or a relationship, or a contingency. This is part of a character’s history."

"What history."

"The thread got taken down before all its contents were archived." She put her cup back down. "All I have is two sentences, transcribed from a screenshot someone took before it got deleted. Sentence one: The Bull was not always the Bull. Sentence two: Flag 4 holds the condition under which he will stop."

Silence.

We were alone in the inn. Sena wiped down the bar on the far side. Outside somewhere, the market district was winding down in preparation for the night.

Condition under which he will stop.

Vorn had a stop condition. It was built into him during development, before the game went live. Something in his past, when activated, brought an end to everything.

"The wiki doesn’t mention this," I noted.

"The wiki was constructed using the publicly available version of the game. This information is pre-launch." She put her cup down. "This flag was supposed to have been deleted pre-launch or intentionally left in place in preparation for an ending scenario that never came about."

"And what if it’s still there and no one has found the trigger?"

"Yes," she said. "Exactly."

---

WIKI — ALERT UPDATE

Entry: Mira

Generation: 99%

Threshold: APPROACHING

Relationship / Kai: 51

Note: One exchange remaining before final unlock.

---

Fifty-one. One more exchange until that last percent unlocks.

I studied her. She was staring into her cup, contemplating something that she couldn’t say yet.

"Mira."

"Yeah."

"What’s your objective. The hidden flag?"

She looked up at me, holding eye contact for a full three seconds.

"I entered the game as the rival," she said. "But then I refused the role. Yet the system has still assigned me the rival’s canonical ending." Her voice paused. "In the original game the rival character — before she’s cut out of the game in act three — realizes what Vorn is planning. She is the only one who discovers his plan before the Point of No Return. And in the canonical version she didn’t tell anyone else because she was coded as being jealous of the relationship between Daren and Lyra."

She set her cup back down on the table.

"That’s the flag," she said to me. "Discover everything that Vorn is doing, including Flag 4."

---

WIKI — ALERT UPDATE

Entry: Mira

Generation: 100% — COMPLETE

Hidden flag — UNLOCKED:

Type: OBJECTIVE — INTELLIGENCE

Content: Determine Vorn’s full methodological strategy inclusive of redacted flag information. Pass intelligence to friendly group. Canonical goal rejected — objective maintained, motive reversed.

Alignment: CONFIRMED ALLY — conditional period ended

Threat classification: ASSET

---

I reviewed the finished flag.

Then I looked at her.

"I’ve been passing intelligence all this time," I pointed out.

"All this time," she affirmed.

"And you needed to know if I was worth telling."

"Yes."

"What settled it."

She almost smiled. "Because you reset a ninety-two-point corruption build with STR 12 to make sure that your NPC friend wouldn’t get hurt." She took a drink. "It was enough."

Out there, the market was winding down for the evening. The lamps lighting up along the canal. The sign for the Broken Crown swaying in the breeze.

I had my C-rank, a confirmed ally with fourteen percent extra foreknowledge over mine, and a partial lead on the stop condition of the man who was currently sitting at 147 relationship points with my best NPC friend.

Progress, by a very liberal definition of the term.

---

CURRENT STATS

STR: 18

AGI: 23

INT: 24

Skills: Friendly Conversation / Moral Support / Observe / Evasion I / Throwing I / Fast Learner / Precision Shot II / Enemy Analysis I / Pattern Recognition II / Threat Assessment I

EXP: 15/1500

Rank: C

MIRA — FINAL PROFILE

Name: Mira [surname pending]

Rank: Unclassified

Origin: Non-game confirmed

Foreknowledge: HIGH — exceeds Kai index

Relationship / Kai: 51

Relationship / Daren: 23

Hidden flag: UNLOCKED — Intelligence objective, active

Alignment: CONFIRMED ALLY

Threat classification: ASSET

VORN — FLAG UPDATE

Lyra pathway: CLOSED — permanent

Daren contact: ONGOING — 147, organic

Flag 3: generating — 34%

Flag 4: [REDACTED] — stop condition confirmed, trigger unknown

Kai classification: CONFIRMED OPPOSITION — C rank noted

Mira classification: CONFIRMED OPPOSITION — intelligence role confirmed