After grabbing what they could from the small kitchen by the dorm's communal area, Kyle and Joey got back to work in the lab. Joey kept looking through the locked lab door, waiting for some unexpected problem to rear its ugly head. They’d managed to figure out the first saboteur, and Kyle had his observer golems scouring the plant for Lavernius to track his motions with thermal sensors. She'd also made a casual check with Zameren–he is scheduled for second shift today, and he hadn't seen him yet, and put in a maintenance ticket for their lab. They hadn’t told Curtis who it was, not until they had a plan to bring in both saboteurs at once.

“I think the second saboteur is Curtis.” Kyle’s stark statement leaves her mouth agape, and she almost chokes on her egg and cheese sandwich. After spending a few seconds coughing, she puts a hand up, as if to stop him from continuing further.

“You want to run that by me again, Kyle? Curtis? The man who helped us expose one of the saboteurs already?!” She takes a sip from her water bottle to clear her throat. His assertion flew in the face of facts! “That’s completely absurd.”

“No. It’s exactly what I would do if I were a master espionage expert like King,” Kyle added quietly. “And there are a few clues why I think it might be the case."

“No, hold up. Why would Curtis help us find the saboteur?” She’s already got her notes out, scouring for something she missed the first time, something she didn’t think was relevant. “If we didn’t have Curtis, we’d never have gotten this far!”

“True. But, King is a manipulator. He wanted Lavernius to be caught. Don’t you find it a little convenient, a little too neatly wrapped up in a bow, that they sitting there under a camera with King off-screen, spilling the plan? Or that these particular cameras have audio pickup, compared to standard fare? Or that the logs for access to the lab areas were wiped out and unrecoverable, in a very convenient manner? Lavernius wouldn’t have had access to those records, only the security office has the means to get into them or doctor them. He couldn’t have done both. And he didn’t have time, either.”

“Kyle, this is conspiracy land level! You’re saying that Lavernius was supposed to be caught, and give a green light for the other saboteur to do his dirty deeds, unimpeded?” When she said it aloud, from a higher level, it sort of made sense. For an operation that hinged on having an inside man, having a backup would have been highly recommended, or outright essential. It was tough enough to get security clearance into Asqualia as it were. But she wanted to hear this out first. “Okay. I’ll play along. What evidence do we have to support this conjecture? Lets posit that King was lying, and he did have two men. We must also assume that Val has her man here, independent of their actions. Give me a rationale.”

“As the security officer of Asqualia, Curtis would be well-versed in defensive tactics and holding the facility in case of an assault. He would know ingress, egress, hard points, and vulnerabilities. He would, aside from Zameren, with maximum access, be the ideal inside man, and would be able to misdirect volunteer defenders when the attack does occur. He could rig weapons in the armory, compromise armor, and set traps. His military background would make him an efficient killer, skulking through back-lines.”

“That’s conjecture, not evidence,” she counters. “What evidence do we have?”

“Curtis claimed the logs were busted. I might be able to buy that, but the timing is too suspect. Who else has access to the security ward?” Kyle repeats.

“Zameren, and his backup, Arthur. Who is currently on vacation,” she adds with a hint of anger. “The security volunteers have access to the armory and his office. But not passcodes to his laptop, most likely.”

“Alright, see my point?” he asks.

“Not yet. What else do you have?”

“Curtis wears military-style boots. Always has. And he keeps a couple of pairs and cleans them. Trust me, I notice these kinds of things. One of the boot prints we saw was from a deep-treaded, unworn boot. Brand new, practically.” Kyle’s laying out the logic, and it makes sense. But it’s not irrefutable proof. “Now, ask me what else I noticed about him yesterday.”

“There was something else?” she echoes.

"Yeah. He was too quick to jump onto the bandwagon. This whole thing is lunacy to the max, and he jumped right on. Curtis is normally a by-the-numbers guy, and this whole experience is a trip straight through crazy town."

"Still not hearing evidence," Joey sighs. She needs Kyle on her side, and not chasing shadows, even though she worries his take does have merit. "Look, we know the second agent has to be working here, too. What else are we missing? Let's take it back a step, I think you were on the right idea, at first. Who could be compromised, or in such a position to do the most damage?"

"That could be a lot of people, Joey. Reeves is in charge of inventory, but he's the one who brought up the missing mana primer. That would bring way too much heat if it were some kind of ruse. Zameren would be perfect, but he loves this place. He cares about the staff here, and he's not a sociopath.”

Joey jots down a list of candidates and crosses off some of them. "Who's in charge or has access and knowledge to operate the mana reactor?"

"Huh? Why?"

"The battlements have mana batteries that could tear a tank to shreds or vaporize soldiers on the ground, and there are numerous sentinel golems around the grounds that activate independently if the building is attacked. You can't just take an axe to the reactor, you need knowledge and patience to use it, and there's layers of security on that console to prevent abuse or mishaps, based on my discussions earlier with Joel." Kyle looks unimpressed.

"I thought you hated Joel."

"I don't hate him, but I was furious with him, because he almost burned down the lab on my first day on the job, while trying to show off," she states with a restrained tone. She grabs her half-finished coffee and gulps down the rest, because it's starting to teeter between that nice range of warm and comforting, to lukewarm and unenjoyable. "Joel was telling me last month about the reactor. You've done a tour there too, right?"

"I have done a little work in there to boost the power to my unexister engine–my furnace," he hastily corrects when she raises an eyebrow, "and I know the basics. But that's a far cry from knowing how to short it out. Where are you leading this?"

"Tactical options. The building has many defenses, internal and external, though most are well hidden. Didn't you pay attention to orientation?" She asks softly. She doesn't wait for him to answer. "Look, if you want to break in, you have someone cut the power. It will disable some of the systems in the building and make it easier to enter and secure key areas. Derek would be a key component of that."

"Derek's middle-aged and happily married with two teen kids. I don't buy it."

"That's what I thought about Lavernius, and look how wrong we were!" She was still mulling over the existing evidence. Derek would know a lot of uses for mana primer too, and how to transport it safely. Safety boots would be mandatory equipment in the power plant, heavy boots with enchantments to further enhance protection against discharge of the reactor load. Boot prints like the one they saw earlier. Okay, it's a theory. Who else?

"Do we know anyone who's utterly miserable or has serious personal problems?" She asks in a change of course. Kyle raises an eyebrow and stays notably silent. "That doesn't include me, Kyle. I know what you're thinking, even without psionics."

"You need more coffee. Then again if it were you, I would only say it's because of your seething hatred of the Conclave," he adds quietly.

"Hate is a strong word. A stronger word would be loathe, but it still has some decent people in it. I hope." She peers down at her now empty coffee mug. "I don't know, this whole experience is just messing with my head. How can teenagers with attitude be the only people in our corner?"

Kyle scoffs at that. "That sounded a little mean."

"It wasn't supposed to be. I'm talking about kids only a few years younger than us, being thrust into a battle of survival against the Talons that they have no business fighting. Where are their parents? Where is the cavalry? Why are Levine and Nick treated like they're collectively a basket case?" Kyle is notably silent and reserved at this bristling statement. "This whole situation should have been handled by better people than us."

"Nah. You're on the case. Which means there's a chance. And as much as I think Nick's crazy, him and Levine, and those kids? They've shown exceptional bravery." She decides its wise to not linger, and keep focused.

"Anything on your golem, uh, Yuma?" She quickly remembers the name.

"No. That shack has been devoid of life, and I've got her on alert to ping me if there's any motion." He drums his fingers on the table, and looks distinctly fatigued now. "I'm tempted to send out a ping to Darci, and see what Drenar and company are cooking up. It's a risk, but I'm worried what the cost of doing nothing to speed them up is going to be.”

"I already looked up all the research journals on the drakensouls earlier in the week. There's nothing in there that seems valuable," she conceded. "But Crosomer's journals are another matter. They're still in the archives, based on the logs. I'm tempted to just go in there and…hide them."

"Man, anyone could waltz in there and just steal it. There's no security in there, minus the safeties for the defunct artifacts of doom on display. Let's go in there and scan the entries as fast as we can, and walk out. Just as a backup."

"Well, that's not a terrible idea. But the one in the vault…eh…that's going to be tougher to get to." She knows that there are likely automated defenses, and more than a few subterranean monsters in there, plus golems. No one knew exactly how deep it went below Asqualia. Volkir did, but he's been dead for seven hundred years.

Unless that's also an assumed truth, too. If Volkir is alive…what has he been doing for seven centuries? King seemed convinced he was alive.

"What's so important about that journal?" Kyle asks.

"Keys to the kingdom, according to Drenar. We already know it reinvigorated a dead magical zone and enhanced others nearby," she adds. "They said the machine was overlaid with hundreds of runes. Like command codes for the desired effect. But pressing buttons without a translation could be catastrophic.”

"So this machine could do a lot of things?" he asks worriedly.

"Yeah, Kyle. It's the deck of many things but in real life, and real consequences for screwing with the fabric of reality. I don't know who built this thing, but it's a little disconcerting that such a device wasn't smashed with a sledgehammer, thrown into a volcano, or at least better guarded than it was," she states irately. "I don't even know what it's called! Hang on. Wait...I think Drenar briefly mentioned that the device was researched by Crosomer. Maybe there's a chance we could find something here, in regular academic journals. Crosomer's were all forgotten about after his revolution, so we won't have to go through a death gauntlet to get to it--unlike Volkir's journal."

"So, that's our next stop, while we bide our time?" he asks. "What about the second saboteur?"

"We have golems eyeing the teleportal. Nothing is going on in there at present," Joey states calmly. "We can at least get some information that could be helpful later. Maybe."

She's made up her mind. The best person to tell her the value of the research would be Crosomer's own words. "Let's head to the archives. I am curious to see what the former head of the Conclave and a former Luminaire has to say about his academic years." Right now, they had to wait it out until the golems sweeping the area found him. Ultimately, Lavernius would go back to the storage shack.

And they had to be ready. Joey thinks back to the equipment in their lab, and hopes that today isn’t the day that she has to use it against other people.

Because it’s not going to end well for them.