It wasn't just humans and human-like monsters being torn apart and put back together in here.

Ellen coughed, trying not to gag as we looked down at a pit filled with…something. They could have been big rats, small wolves, or spiders. But instead, they were all three; four legs to the ground, a pink tail and too-long teeth, and four flailing, convulsing legs that dragged behind them. "When we get out of here, I'm heading back to the library for more research. This isn't a portal archetype I'm familiar with at all."

"I agree. I think we're in over our heads on the information war. For now, let's deal with them." Jeff pointed at the churning pit.

It made my stomach sick just watching them.

Experiment Five: E-Rank

"I'll do it," Ellen said. She used Shadow Boxing. The stone-bricked chamber echoed with screams for almost a minute as the spell and Arcane Resonator did their work. By the time the last whimper faded, Zeke and Yasmin were both covering their ears.

I watched the entire time. I hated spiders.

When the pit was nothing but slurry, Jeff started working his way across the narrow catwalk that wrapped around it. "Wait until I'm across, then one at a time," he said.

All I could do was watch as the rusty metal groaned under his weight. It made sense for him to go first here; if the structure could take his weight, it could take any of ours. "I'll watch our backs," I said, readying Tallas's Dueling Blade.

The fighter headed across next, then Ellen and Yasmin.

"I guess I'm up, then?" Zeke said. "God, I hate heights."

'You'd hate Arboreal worlds, then," Ellen called from the other side. "Ever climbed a tree? How about one that's thousands of feet tall?"

"No."

"You will," she said ominously.

I laughed in spite of myself. "Just head across, Zeke. You'll be fine."

He took one step. Then another. Then a third. His hand gripped the railing like a lifeline. Then I blinked, and in the moment I wasn't watching, the railing collapsed. So did half of the walkway—the wrong half. Zeke went over; only one gauntlet-covered hand on the rusted iron kept him from swimming with the vivisected and stitched-together Experiment Fives.

"Help!" he screamed. His yelling echoed around the room as I lunged forward and pulled. At E-Rank, a fully-armored man with a two-handed sword would have been a tough haul, but I was D-Rank now, and I yanked his arm hard enough that he screamed a second time as something popped. His aura shifted to the healing one as I dragged him back to safety. More railing and walkway collapsed as he flailed his legs, trying to find purchase.

By the time we were back on solid ground, there was a twelve-foot gap between us and the rest of the team.

"We can jump over," I said. I hadn't tried long-jumping, but my body could definitely get me twelve feet.

But Zeke shook his head. "I can't make the jump. I'm sorry! I panicked when it started breaking up!"

Jeff cleared his throat. "Do you want us to look for another way through? This place is a maze!"

I thought about it. Jeff, Ellen, Yasmin, and the fighter whose name I couldn't remember were a mostly functional team, while Zeke and I were…an E-Rank support and a D-Rank spellblade in a C-Rank portal. We didn't have the firepower to solo. Not like we needed to. We'd have to be cautious and avoid the risky fights—just like the Rime portal we'd survived.

"Plan. Jeff, start moving. Mark your path so you can get back here easily. Turn right when you can. We'll do something similar, try not to pick fights, and turn left. We'll try to link up out there. If we're not together in an hour, or if you find a way to bridge the gap for Zeke, come back here. If you find the boss room, don't fight it," I said. "We'll see you soon."

Ellen was pissed.

She couldn't prove what had happened on the catwalk, but when she'd walked across it after Jeff and Raul, it had been totally fine. It hadn't shifted at all, in fact. Granted, she hadn't been shaking it intentionally, but come on! The thing could take Jeff's weight, and even in full armor, Zeke wasn't anywhere near the C-Rank tank's bulk. Something was fishy.

Was it the way Zeke had fallen? Or maybe something he'd done to the railing as he went down? She didn't know. But she didn't like it.

Ellen shouldered past Raul's spear. He lifted it a bit, letting her maneuver under the vicious, cross-guard tip with the tiny axe blade on one side. Then she tiptoed up to get next to Jeff's ear. "I don't trust anything about this."

"What part of it? The part where Kade keeps getting separated from the team? Or the part where Zeke's an annoying little shit who probably won't be able to help him? I don't like it either, but our best move is to keep moving and try to find a way across—or a way through. The pit's a problem. I don't think we can beat the boss without Kade and Zeke, so either we get them over here or we wait for the portal to break and a team of B-Rankers to clear it for us."

Ellen sighed. Sometimes, Jeff could be kind of stupid. "I don't trust Zeke."

"Me either," Jeff said. "I think Kade was right. He's hiding something, but I have no idea what it is."

The tank stepped into the next room. A single monster sat in its center—but it wasn't a single monster. It looked like dozens of men, women, and animals of various types had been cut apart and put together to form a single, massive worm—one with arms and legs that stuck out in all directions. Some of them held weapons, while others flailed at the air.

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Experiment Forty-Nine: C-Rank

Ellen stared at it for a moment. Bile rose in her throat, and she swallowed it down. Everything reeked of death, shit, and embalming fluid. And they hadn't found even one of the people responsible for this horror. She'd expected to find necromancers like the Revitalists. But no. Nothing was alive in this hellish labyrinth laboratory.

Experiment Forty-Nine's eyes shifted onto her, then onto Jeff as he sidestepped between them. His shield was up, his sword held horizontally and feet in a wide stance, ready to receive the thing's charge. "Ellen, Yas, behind me. Raul, any openings you can find. I think we can kill it by sections."

The monster moved. Jeff moved impossibly quickly in response: before Ellen could even follow what was happening, the C-Rank tank and equally strong monster impacted in the center of the room. The horror's 'jaws,' a dozen sabers held by as many hands, clamped shut around his thick, solid armor—but none of them broke through. The centipede's body curled around him like a massive, forty-foot-long python. "Ellen, now!"

Ellen used Shadow Box. Then she used Arcane Resonator, doubled up her skill, and resonated that one, too. Damage rippled around the boss—and across Jeff. His shout of pain filled the room.

Something lit up in Ellen's mind. Arcane Resonator, her second-to-last skill, had finally hit the D-Rank Law. She held off learning it for a moment; the horrific Experiment Forty-Nine was still ripping into Jeff, and so were her spells. Even if she could learn the Law mid-fight, Ellen doubted she'd be able to concentrate on it until this thing was dead and she was sure Jeff was safe.

Until she was sure she wasn't killing him.

Black, chunky blood erupted from the monster's dozens of torsos as her Shadow Boxes shredded it. Ellen couldn't help but stare; she'd become a bit of a one-trick pony. None of her E-Rank spells could compete with Shadow Box on raw power, and as a mage, nothing else mattered.

Raul ducked in, spear flashing and off-hand dagger ready. The spear tip punched into a woman's stomach at the snake's midpoint. A horrific scream filled the air—both male and female, foxlike and like a wildcat. Ellen shook despite herself. It was the sound of suffering. Long, long suffering.

Then a dozen hands wrapped around the spear's shaft. They ripped it from Raul's grip and jammed it into his chain mail. Rivets popped. So did ribs. Raul screamed in agony as the blunt end of the spearshaft hammered through his chest.

"Oh shit!" Yasmin yelled. She ducked under a few flailing arms and dragged the downed fighter away from the monster.

Ellen checked her Mana.

Mana: 231/550

That'd be enough. She pushed all of it into a barrage of spells and skills. Shadow Boxes, Orbs of Darkness, and a handful of other spells that might work against Experiment Forty-Nine. Massive chunks of skin peeled off as pure shadow ripped the monster apart. Screams echoed through the room and down the halls—dozens of different voices, every one of them in agony. Exhaustion set in, and Ellen felt…empty. "I'm out!" she yelled.

"Got it," Jeff said. He activated his Unique skill and started trading blows with the monster. Ellen stepped back to make room for Yasmin in the hallway as she dragged Raul to safety.

Mana: 13/550

She'd broken team protocol, but that didn't matter. If they lost Raul, there was no way the three of them could regroup with Kade, and right now, that was Ellen's biggest worry. Her second biggest was bleeding on the floor in front of her. She ducked down next to the team's support.

Raul's chest was caved in, but as they cut away his clothes and pulled the shattered, sprung mail away from his body, a massive cracking sound filled the air, and he convulsed.

Ellen turned. The smell of shit and embalming fluid was bad enough. But she'd just watched a half dozen ribs correct themselves. Violently.

What kind of healing power did Raul have?

He pushed himself up, hand wrapped around his dagger in a white-knuckle grip. His teeth were clenched so tightly she could see his jaw straining. "I'm okay," he said. "I'm okay, let me up!"

Yasmin shoved him back down by the shoulders. "You got stabbed through the lung!"

"Yeah, but I got better. I'm better now. Get me back into the fight!" he yelled, agony dripping from every word. He fought Yasmin, throwing her to the side, but she rolled and landed on his dagger arm, pinning it to the ground.

As she struggled to keep the D-Rank fighter down, Ellen stared. Then she pinned Raul's other arm below her own weight and hung on for dear life. Something was wrong here. He shouldn't be fighting like this. Adrenaline explained some of it, but not all. She made a note to ask him about his healing skills; this was ridiculous.

Then all she could do was hang on, hope Jeff could beat the badly wounded Experiment, and worry about Kade.

This portal was a disaster.

Zeke and I backtracked.

And he didn't shut up the entire time. Blabbering on about how this always seemed to happen whenever we ran portals together, as if two was a fair sample size.

It was a long way to the next left turn, but that was the plan. A right turn wouldn't buy us anything; it'd just angle us away from where we needed to be.

I'd been isolated from my team before. In the Arboreal portal, I'd been solo, and in the Rime portal, it had been Zeke and me against the rest of Andrew's team. But this time felt different. This was a C-Rank portal. We needed to be on top of our game—and Zeke couldn't shift off of healing. His Power of Friendship skill had one massive advantage over a regular healer. He could hit everyone in the portal with it at the same time. Not much, but a little.

And since we couldn't see Jeff, Ellen, and the others, we had to assume they were hurt.

"Okay," I said, "you stay twenty feet behind me, let me deal with anything we can't avoid, and we'll get grouped up again."

"I have a better idea," Zeke said. "How about we stop and talk for a few minutes?"

"Now's not the time, Zeke. We need to get back to the team."

Zeke shook his head. "The team is fine. This is a low C-Rank Surgurist portal world. They've got a tank, support, and good damage. It'll take them a while to win, but I'm going to give them a little boost to make it inevitable."

My half-healed wounds scabbed over so quickly I could see the flesh healing. I stared at Zeke for a second. His skill hadn't been anywhere near that strong the last time we'd cleared a portal together. A pit formed in my stomach. I'd been right; Zeke was up to something. Then Tallas's Dueling Sword appeared in my hand. "Alright. Talk."

"I'm not going to hurt you, Kade," Zeke said. "I couldn't even if I wanted to."

"I don't believe that for a second." Everything was finally coming together. This was it. The missing piece of the puzzle that had started with him pulling me out of the freezing water. He'd beaten the D-Ranked Ice Troll with no problems. The Governing Council team had treated him like a superior. And now, he was unleashing his full power through his Unique skill. "Who do you work with?"

"Not with. For. What I'm about to tell you has to stay between us. It's my job on the line, and I've been doing this too long to ruin it now. I barely got permission to tell you, and only because the boss wants you bad." The goofy, annoying Zeke was gone. It had been replaced by something else, almost like a doppelganger had replaced him. Everything about him looked the same: the baby face, the armor, the whole package. But the person inside the skin was different. Serious. All business.

"My name is Ezekiel Elwood. I'm the top recruiter for the Portal Tyrants. B-Rank. And the Tyrants want to extend a formal invitation to join them."

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