While I knew this style of Link worked differently, it did not feel like it from the inside. Everything felt exactly the same as I stepped through my normal portal onto the streets of the Hub, and I couldn’t tell that my body remained motionless and cradled within the tiny Link in the back of the van. I swept my eyes over the courtyard that the portal dumped me into and noticed a squad of serious looking guys in dark suits that broke out from the ever present swarm of foot traffic and moved towards me in the little patch of calm around the entry portal.


    One of them, a large man with neatly trimmed blond hair and thin lips pulled into a flat line, adjusted his tie and looked me over before meeting my eyes. Everything in my past experience told me that he was sizing me up for a fight as him and a handful of smaller identically dressed goons fanned out to block the path. I clenched my hands into fists and took a step forward, ready to throw down, before I remembered where I was and that fighting was impossible here.


    I stopped and held my palm out at them, turning my mind away from fighting and instead thinking over the many options of who might have sent these guys, leaving my mouth to break its leash and spout off. “Easy there, fellas. The portal to the barbershop quartet convention is down the street, if you hurry you can sign up for the therapy sessions afterward.”


    Max laughed in the back of my mind and the big guy’s eyes registered confusion, but one of the smaller guys to his side got it and scowled back at me.


    I expected them to start blustering, answering my smack talk with something hotheaded and angry. Getting people angry and to act recklessly when I was ready for it had worked for me before, although never against more than one or two people. Before Max, I’d have been more diplomatic and differential, but I was feeling especially confident after having just torn apart a whole convoy of rebels with nothing but my bare hands and a welding tool. Plus, I was no longer numb and beat-up, and the sweet relief of an injury free body had me feeling limber and loose.


    To my surprise, all he said was. “Our boss wants a word, Mr. Spenser.” Then they just stood there, no side chatter, ear whispering, or ‘hold me back bro’ antics at all. Maybe they were familiar with the Hub after all, or they were professional enough to not snap at the first smartmouth comment.


    I frowned, and glanced to either side, thinking I could probably jump over the short barriers that sheltered the portal''s little courtyard. “Tell him I’m not taking any meetings today.” I answered while I sidestepped closer to one of the barriers.


    “That’s not an option.” The same guy said, while his flunkies circled around me.


    I raised an eyebrow and swept my gaze across them all, backing up a step. “You suits realize you can’t do anything here, right?”


    “Suits? That’s the best insult you can come up with? C’mon, call ‘em a bunch of piss-breath butt touching pumpkin-faces, or… Oh! Ask them if they’re looking for Soma!”


    The guy who had scowled at my earlier insult spoke up. “Where you gonna run to? You gotta come in and talk, Nick.”


    I blinked, thrown off as Max and the guy talked over each other. “Soma?” I asked, causing Max to start laughing and the big guy to give me a confused look.


    Without skipping a beat, the smaller guy answered. “I don’t care where Soma is, you’ll never make it there. You’re surrounded and you know it, we’ll find you in whatever basement you’ve gone to ground in. Your best plan is to come in and talk, maybe you can make a deal.”


    Max was laughing even harder now, “Aaahhhahaha, he said it! Tell him it''s a state of mind!”


    I sighed, unsure what the hell Max was going on about, and equally unsure of what else to say. “It’s not a place, it''s a state of mind.”


    The big blond guy’s eyes narrowed and he replied before the smaller guy could. “What? That doesn''t make any sense.”


    Max was hysterical, he was laughing so hard that I couldn’t even make out any words. If he had a real body, it sounded like he would be rolling around on the floor and struggling to breathe between waves of laughter.


    I shrugged and looked at the guy. Waiting for Max to calm himself and feed me the rest of the line because I still didn’t know what his punchline was. “Why not?”


    “Because… you can’t go to a state of mind?” The blond guy said, before turning to his only vocal lackey for confirmation.


    Max simulated heaving in a deep breath, calming himself slightly so he could give me the next part, which at this point I was getting curious about too. Max’s comedy was generally immature and vulgar, but that kind of thing sounded like exactly what I wanted to throw at these guys.


    “Tell him, haha, tell him that''s where the mind goblins are from. Hahahaha” Max finally managed to say.


    I wiped my palm across my face, finally understanding what Max was doing but in too deep to turn back at this point. In a tone reminiscent of Rin’s deadpan, I set up the rest of the joke while Max continued to laugh his ass off. “That’s where the mind goblins are from, ever heard of them?”


    “We don’t care about your off-planet allies.” Answered the scrawnier guy.


    “What about mind goblin soma?” I continued halfheartedly.


    My comment seemed to have no effect, and he continued. “Just come in and talk to us, Nick. We can talk about your outside contacts and come to some agreement, you’re making too many waves to just be running around, you gotta come in.”


    The two of them that were capable of speech exchanged a look, before the blond guy added. “Soma can’t help you. We just want to talk, the director has questions.”


    I nodded, glad that following Max’s prompt had at least shaken out who their boss was. Still, that didn’t mean I wanted to talk to director Howard right now. I only had an hour to buy and set up all of the gear we would need before I was supposed to be back, and nothing to gain from speaking with the man. It might be a good idea to eventually speak with him though, the Hub was a perfect neutral meeting zone by design.


    Half heartedly, I finished Max’s joke for him. “Oh I don’t know, it might help if you don''t mind gobblin’ soma deez nuts.” I answered, giving him an equally serious look while Max howled in the background.


    “Bahahahaha. Oh man, my qutrits hurt, hahaha, I can''t breathe.”If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.


    The main blond guy stared back at me, and his mouth opened, then closed, and he looked over at his buddy for backup.


    Having learned who their boss was, and not wanting to waste any more time dealing with them, I turned and ran for it while they gawked at each other in reaction to my dumbassery. As I legged it, I shouted over my shoulder, “Get back to me on that, alright? Have his people, well…” I jumped up onto the barrier at the edge of the courtyard and turned to face them for a moment. “I guess you are his people, so you people email my people and maybe we can set something up.”


    They all scrambled after me, and without giving them a chance to catch up or to yell anything back, I jumped back down to the street and shoved my way into the crowded stream of foot traffic.


    I dashed across the wide walkway and through a gap in the heavy traffic that flowed through the middle. The vehicles all slammed to an immediate halt, and I dodged around a long barge-like hovering platform loaded with tall stacks of boxes, then joined the flow of foot traffic on the far side of the street.


    A pop-up appeared near the top of my HUD, informing me of a 15 credit jay-walking fee for disrupting the traffic, and I bumped into a familiar looking guy that was out walking a long lizard on a leash, tripping over the wire and nearly falling as I ran past. He yelled something after me as I kept going, but I didn’t hear it over the noise of the crowd and all of the honking from the inconvenienced vehicles.


    I took a series of turns, making sure to stay in the human Neighborhood and moving from the dwarven border area near the Zk’Aek’s zone on the inner ring, to closer to the less busy Thoo side. After paying 50 creds for a temporary privacy net from my menu, which looked something like a beekeeper or mosquito net to hide my face and name-tag for the day, I found a quiet spot and checked my messages.


    “I could just paste the stuff up on your HUD, or we could walk you through it.” Max said as I started reading the list that he and Rin had come up with.


    I scanned down the document and answered him out loud, knowing anyone that saw me would assume I was just in a voice call while going through my menu. “Yeah, talk me through it and throw it up like a quest.” I noticed I still had the Trials quest line open, the two completed objectives crossed out above the ambiguous “Explore, Equip, Entrench” that still called to be finished. I really did need to get back to my row and pull my weight through the test, but not yet. Hopefully things were still going well for them.


    A sudden thought raced through my mind, a possible consequence of the crappy day I had not yet considered. Would the dwarves even want me there anymore if my own government was hunting me? It was followed immediately by an unexpected wave of euphoria that washed it away as Max’s giggles finally died down.


    “No worries, man. The dwarves won’t kick you out mid-trial, and if you pass, then you’re one of them even if your old “clan” disowns you. That was f’n hilarious though, thank you. I think we both needed a good laugh. You play an alright straight-man, but could use some work on your delivery, you sounded like Rin back there.”


    “I do not sound like that.” Rin answered, speaking up as a second voice in my head. “They did reveal who their boss is though, maybe we should talk to him.”


    “Screw that, that’s exactly what he wants, Howard is a talker and a schemer. We should meet him on our own terms, sir.” Ali added.


    I stood up a little straighter and blinked in surprise at hearing their voices. “Group chat? Really?” I asked Max.


    “Why not? We don’t have anything else to do back in meatspace, other than cower in the van.” Max explained.


    “We are infiltrating the enemy line, now cowering.” Ali muttered.


    “Fine, fine, in any case, we’re bored back here.” Max’s words came with the implication of an unseen shrug. “Now let''s do some shopping, we have a whole bunch of stuff we need and you gotta spend money to make money, baby!”


    It took more like an hour and a half, but after eight stores and three lengthy phone calls with mercenary staffing agencies, I had arranged everything we thought we needed immediately. The ‘Kern-tech Cafe - Daybreaker Massive-Mugs’ were easy enough to find, each second hand store had either a shelf or bin dedicated to the things. But I also arranged some spare parts for the van, more fuel, a long list of assorted tools, tents, sleeping gear, and a bulk crate of cheap drones.


    While the material goods were easy enough to source and arrange for pick up, we ran into a roadblock when it came to trying to hire an armed escort for our planned supply run exfiltration. There were thousands of agencies that represented whole networks of groups within the Link that you could hire for the Factions server, but finding a group that was working dirt-side was much more difficult.


    After calling every agency that was registered to the city of Green’s Ash, we had come up with nothing, and Tevin’s absence hung over me more strongly than ever. He was the only one in our group with any experience or knowledge of the niche industry of guns-for-hire. While Max insisted that the transfusion would allow him to patch our injured soldier up enough to wake up within a couple of days, we hoped to be finished with the supply run and into the buffer zone by then.


    Unsure who else to call, we decided that they would have to hire a group in person at the Travellers station, helped by Max and me remotely through whatever he could hack into. As I walked between pawnshops and thrift stores collecting coffee mugs, we hashed out a plan to mitigate any risks we could think of. Between Rin’s intellect, my street smarts, and Ali’s military training, we came up with something we thought would work.


    By the time I stepped back through the portal and pulled the Link helmet from my face, I was 15 thousand credits poorer and exhausted. The military had passed us by on either side, and Ali was already driving the van down the path again, slowly navigating the crushed stone road on our way to the next step.


    We could see signs of where the military had moved. Freshly cut ruts where dozens of vehicles had crossed through fields or bowled over small trees, confused looking groups of people standing in their yards, and torn-up sections of road where the heavy treads of tanks had destroyed the ill-maintained pavement. We passed it all by, driving at a moderate pace through the rest of the day and dodging around the scattered fortified positions and roaming patrols as we zig-zagged our way through the sparsely populated countryside.


    We took turns sleeping in the back of the van as the hours went by. Rin caught a three hour nap first, and then convinced me to take the next one. I only agreed after making Rin promise to keep an eye on Ali, who was keeping herself alert by lecturing Raschel on what to do if we were attacked while she was off on the supply run. I worried that she would crash out from the mix of drugs she’d taken through the day, but she insisted that she was good to go and had things covered.


    “This is nothing. I’ve been on 36 hour combat patrols, and we trained for 48 hour assignments. This is just a quick day trip to the next city over, sir. I’ll be fine.”


    Despite her insistence that she was fine, I was second guessing sending her into the city in her injured state. I had forgotten that she had been shot in the leg, and despite it being a relatively clean through-and-through, I still ordered her to spend some time hooked up to the medkitand told Max to work up a second infusion I could give her to help recover.


    This time the infusion felt weird, because apparently we had a less compatible blood type than Tevin and I, so Max had to isolate the transfusion as it was made. Apparently that meant growing an apple sized boil-like nodule near my armpit that I had to eventually stick the needle into. It was weird and uncomfortable, but after an hour of gestation and 10 minutes of being plugged into the other side of the medkit it was all over. Ali noted a tingling and burning sensation as the tiny folded protein bots made quick work of starting the healing process on her leg wound, but did not complain.


    With everything settled and nothing to do but to wait, I nestled into the least uncomfortable position I could find on the cluttered floor of the van and tried to relax. I ate the sandwich and drank the beer from earlier, chewed through half of the extremely tough and slightly sour tasting jerky for more protein, and spent some time trying to come up with an actual plan for the future. Now, more than ever, everyone was relying on me to make this work, and the weight of responsibility was both grounding and terrifying.