Valentine's gaze subtly shifted to Nik, careful not to arouse suspicion. Nik seemed engrossed in the map updates provided by Edy's report. Yet, Valentine had a hunch Nik's thoughts were spiraling elsewhere.

  In their separate introspections, Nik and Valentine grappled with the same question, which seemed to echo in the silence of their shared space: What was the Nexus?

  Up until the Eschaton, the world was composed of towns and cities. Now, communities were called nodes. Valentine thought it sounded silly, but the idea caught on. A community was officially a node once it had an STM. When you have a group of nodes, it becomes a cluster. It was like having a bunch of small towns grouped into a city. The only difference was the physical distance. A node could be located hundreds of miles away from another node but still be part of the same cluster. But a Nexus? Valentine snorted.

  Nik broke the murky atmosphere. "Power will always consolidate." Valentine saw everyone's attention shift to Nik. "That has to be it. People naturally seek to build or expand when left to their own devices. Some people do this through the community. Others do this through conquest. A nexus has to be some kind of capital that manages the subjugation of nodes.”

  "This guy is something else," Valentine mused to himself. When they first began building the Bilocation Network, Nik made Valentine the chairman. To be perfectly honest, Valentine had no idea what he was doing. At the time, he thought Nik would have made a much better chairman.

  After the Eschaton began, Nik's role sharply contrasted with Valentine's. Most of the time, Valentine had performed duties he thought a chairman should do. He delegated responsibilities, made executive decisions, and more or less managed their progress in the Bilocation Network's expansion. But it felt like Nik was doing something more profound the whole time. Instead of involving himself with the significant decisions, Nik involved himself with the people. It didn't matter who came to their little cluster. Nik had to see to it that they were welcomed and felt safe.

  Safe? That was a precious rarity in times like these. Nik had a knack for offering a semblance of it, but the cluster nearly imploded when he vanished. People deserted in droves. Some had even committed suicide. It required every ounce of Valentine's resolve to prevent the Bilocation Network from descending into chaos.

  After he disappeared, the attacks against the Bilocation Network only intensified. He remembered reports of hordes of teleclones rushing through node after node, killing or enslaving everybody in sight. There were other weapons of war, but the teleclones were the most disturbing by far.

  Valentine's first experience with them had driven him to the brink of insanity. He had reviewed dozens of reports of teleclone attacks, but none prepared him for what he had witnessed firsthand. The teleclones he had encountered weren't psychotic militants coked out of their minds on PCP. They were mere children, armed only with small knives. An endless swarm of them had surrounded a small node he was trying to develop.

  What exacerbated the horror was their unsettling demeanor. They stormed in, silent as specters, absent of speech or reason, and launched their assault. It was as if they had given themselves over to absolute self-annihilation.

  Eventually, the defenses cracked either from overwhelming guilt or lack of bullets. What followed destroyed something inside Valentine that day. Children were supposed to be the most innocent of human beings, but something dark and vile within the bowels of the Eschaton had corrupted them into soulless puppets.

  They would surround their victims and pin them to the ground. Next, they would carve the screaming person into an unrecognizable pile of bloody flesh. Once finished, they would silently move on to the next person they could find. Throughout the entire ordeal, not a single human emotion crossed their faces.

  In Valentine's memory, the escape had been a chaotic blur, with only a handful of people making it out. The last snapshot before he plunged through the STM would forever scar his mind.

  The children started to speak, their voices echoing in unworldly unison. His name reverberated through the space, over and over again, like a haunting mantra: "Valentine. Valentine. Valentine."

  Their onslaught wasn't aimed at ransacking the node for its resources or people. They were on a hunt for one target: Valentine. After that, he committed himself to solitude.

  His self-imprisonment lasted months. Thank God for Erica. She was the one who held what was left of the Bilocation Network together. How she juggled all that, alongside virtually single-handedly raising Heidi, was beyond Valentine's understanding. He came out of his pitiful self-isolation only because he received a message from Erica that someone had seen Nik.

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  From the depths of oblivion, he had returned. Valentine's first glimpse of Nik amid the pandemonium of the rescue operation shook him, making him doubt his senses. He had braced himself to encounter a Nik mirrored in his own jagged scars, a reflection of the trials endured.

  He had anticipated a Nik rendered darker, more cynical, perhaps a soul fragmented as his own. Yet, reality confronted him with an unanticipated image.

  When Nik met Heidi for the first time, the unexpected truth dawned upon Valentine. Nik had returned with an undying spark as if the flame within him had remained unfaltering, defying the darkness they had traversed.

  After that, the temperament of Valentine, along with the general atmosphere at Vector, had undergone a seismic shift. No longer were they operating purely from a survival instinct. The return of Nik transcended merely filling a vacant role; it endowed them with purpose, a sense of direction, or whatever term might encapsulate it.

  In many ways, Nik had breathed new life into Vector. Valentine might have held the mantle of leadership, but Nik, in his essence, was their redeemer.

  "Quit daydreaming, old man. We have work to do," Edy chided, nudging Valentine out of his reverie. "Guys, we know there's a big bad Nexus out there, but don't forget, we still gotta crack the nut already in front of us."

  "Right." Valentine quickly stood up, making himself lightheaded for a moment. After shaking it away, he steadied himself and strode over to Nik. "We have the facility's layout and its armaments. We also know of a possible power conduit. Time to strategize." He glanced over at Erica, looking for approval. Heidi was sitting in her lap. Erica rolled her eyes at Valentine, but her smile told him everything he needed to know.

  "Does anyone know where that conduit leads?" Erica probed. Her question was met with silence. Despite the unease stirred in Valentine, he knew Edy was right. The priority was to crack open that prison camp.

  “The conduit mystery would need to wait. First, we need to plan our routes of attack." He could feel his chest swell.

  "We probably shouldn't just blow a hole through the walls again," Edy suggested. "They'll have security beefed up by now.”

  "Then we'll attack from the inside out," Nik said. He was still staring intently at the map. Valentine saw where he was going with things.

  "We already have one secret entrance," Valentine hinted, glancing at Edy, who shuddered involuntarily. He couldn't suppress a grin. "Why don't we make some more? We'll start by liberating everyone in the mine."

  "One problem," Erica chimed in. "They probably have a contingency in the mine. After all, they would have already thought of ways to quell prisoner uprisings. Who's to say they don't have the means to collapse the tunnels?"

  "We would need a way to prevent that," Nik said. Valentine thought hard. Even Edy looked stumped. Valentine loved Erica, but damn, sometimes she was too clever for her own good. Suddenly, a thought crossed Valentine's mind.

  "What about the conduit tunnel?" he proposed. Edy's face lit up.

  "Of course, all we have to do is excavate an entrance."

  "Don't you think that tunnel is a little small for a full-scale assault?" Erica said suspiciously.

  "What if it wasn’t for an assault?" Nik spoke up. "We could send in some kind of strike team to cut the power to the facility."

  "That's right. If we insert a small force to sever the conduit and destroy the facility power reservoir, they couldn't signal to collapse the mines. We can even send in an infiltrator to cut the communication lines to the mine.

  "No power, no comms. I like it," Edy said, nodding his head. He glanced at Erica, waiting for her to find another flaw in their plan, but she seemed satisfied.

  "Ok, who's going to be the infiltrator?" Valentine asked.

  "They kinda know my face," Edy said.

  "Mine too," Nik added.

  "Oh please, I'm going." Erica put Heidi down and stood up.

  "Not a chance," Valentine protested. Erica walked over and squared up with Valentine.

  "This whole time, I have been stuck with administrative work and medical crap. If you don't let me do this, I will never make F?rik?l for you again.

  Valentine could feel the color drain from his face. That was his favorite dish, and only Erica knew how to make it how he liked. He felt his face scrunch up.

  "Fine!" But you're leaving a save-state behind.

  "We all are, you big oaf," she said, satisfied. Valentine felt himself deflate.

  "Honey," he pouted. She reached for his face and pulled him in for a smooch.

  "Don't worry, bear. I still love you," Erica reassured softly, leaving Valentine's face burning with delight.

  "Yucky!" Heidi screamed with glee. Edy sprinted across the room, reaching for a trash bin.

  "HORFOROFORF!" He fake-vomited into it.

  "I think we need to add one more step to our plan," Nik interrupted.

  "Wa's that?" Valentine asked, looking over Erica's shoulder.

  "By now, they've already realized that infiltration is possible. That means they probably have an updated guard roster. If we're going to give her enough time to work. We need a distraction big enough that they won't notice her."

  "Ooooh, pick me, pick me." Edy wiped the imaginary barf from his face after leaping up from the trash can. "Just send me and a group of Vector assholes with big guns. We'll blow some sizable holes in their walls and make a lot of noise. While they're turning their grey pants brown, Mrs. Erica can leave them some nice presents."

  "Weren't you the one who just said we shouldn't just blow a hole into their wall?" Erica asked sarcastically.

  "Times change," Edy shrugged. "Besides, it's not like I'm about to rush face-first through it."

  "Sounds good to me," said Nik. "Are we ready to get down to the nuts and bolts? Like, who's leading the main assault on the mine?"

  Valentine suddenly puffed up. "Leave that to me," he said mischievously.