When Atlas arrived at the Sparring Grounds, hungry and tired and annoyed, there was  a dense crowd of hunters already gathering at the entrance.

It was a veritable throng, dozens of them, all outfitted in workout gear and holding dense orange folders full of paperwork. They were focused intently on a tall set of double doors, with two heavyset guards in all black keeping watch silently while they waited.

Their orange boxes were all overlapping, one over the other, heinously bright and impossible to ignore. [A-CLASS]  [A-CLASS]  [A-CLASS] over and over again, with smaller text that was impossible to read from this far away.

Atlas shoved his hands in his pockets and stared.

Was he meant to compete with them? To earn his place? Or was this some sort of bizarre show of power meant to intimidate him?

He began to head towards them, hands in his pockets and eyebrows raised, when someone caught him by the elbow. 

"Atlas."

Atlas snapped his head around, ready to shout, but it was just Izar. He didn’t say a word, just continued to guide Atlas in opposite direction before the crowd could clock his arrival.

“They’re the applicants,” Izar said finally, once they turned the corner. He cut another left, then they slipped into an unlabeled gray door with a slick wave of Izar’s neon keycard. "They're doing the examination today."

He was in his white labcoat today, the ends of his sleeves stained some strange yellow color. When Atlas didn’t say anything, Izar cleared his throat and gestured vaguely. “Just…Don’t let them see you. They’ll try to woo you to get a leg up, and it will just delay this whole thing even more. This was supposed to happen a week ago.”

“Applicants?”

Izar slanted him a look, then sighed when Atlas stopped to scope out the strange locker area they had suddenly found themselves in. “I guess she really doesn’t tell you anything. I don’t understand why.”

Of course she didn’t. Atlas didn’t make it a habit to make the Guild President’s life easy when she didn’t intend to return the favor.

“Atlas. Come on, we need to get up there.”

Atlas rolled his eyes and wrinkled his nose, but followed anyway. “What do you want me to say? She's never told me shit.  You’re just realizing this now?”

Izar ignored him in favor of digging through his pockets for a stout metal key. He let them into a second small, unassuming door leading to a set of stairs. “They’ve been rounding up promising A-Class hunters from across Portal Group. They need to build Last Bastion back out before people start to panic. You might be able to control the S-Grade if it reappears, at least temporarily, but there are A-Grades that appear every day. We need a few teams on hand if one of the A-Grades gets out of control. Last Bastion is our last resort, it has to be ready.”

Atlas followed him up the steep metal stairs and around a corner to the next set. He could hear his own boots against the concrete, heavy and echoing.

“So why am I here, and not Ace or Senka? Are they making me earn my spot? They had me sign already, I don’t get it.”

Izar paused, his hand hovering over the railing. “You really don’t know?”

Atlas scoffed. “Come on, Izar. You said it yourself two seconds ago. She doesn’t tell me anything. I’ve been sitting in the penthouse all week. They didn’t even tell me when they hard-launched that I had awakened.”

Izar didn’t speak for several long moments. He began the climb again, and they hit the third staircase in record time. It was almost like he was fleeing. “They want you to be the figurehead. The new leader. Of Last Bastion.”

For a moment, he couldn’t speak.

Because what did that mean?

Atlas was a nobody. He was worse than that, to Portal Group. He had been a routine and purposeful nuisance. He had snubbed summons and caused trouble on purpose, because if he couldn’t have a life where he mattered, he’d burn the people who’d ever made him believe otherwise.

He was a chain-smoking, ill-tempered orphan with an attitude problem.

“Charon is still alive,” Atlas said, because what else could he say? “What happens if he gets better? He’ll want his spot back.”

“He’s out.” Izar pushed open a final door at the very top of the stairwell, propping it open for Atlas with his shoulder. “Even if he lives, even if he recovers, that trust is broken. He let half of his team to their preventable deaths. The public won’t accept him back.”

Atlas froze.

“Wait. You’re being serious.” 

The bite of the autumn air slapped him hard as he walked through the door. It was cold out, today. Damp, and drizzling, with gray overcast. 

They were on a thick, open-air bridge with tall glass railings. The tiles were rugged and slip-resistant, but the water was a long way from freezing, so it wasn’t bad in his boots.

Sparring Grounds A were the highest grade sparring facility at Portal Group. It was an uncovered, grassy field atop one of the connecting buildings, a level higher than even the Penthouse, and six times as wide.

Portal Group’s campus was…complicated. It had been fashioned from several former skyscrapers in the center of the city, connected by sleek, newly designed skybridges to grant secure access between bureaus.

Only the main headquarters was new. Exquisitely designed, one of the first expenditures they’d made with the blank check to deal with the portal problem.

“They want me to be the leader of Last Bastion?” Atlas asked, slowly. Dumbly.

Izar paused at the railing overlooking the field. They were just outside a series of rooms overlooking the candidates where they now filtered in. A handful of other Portal Group employees were peppered across the distant spaces. “You are the most powerful hunter alive right now. Especially with Charon indisposed. You are the only choice.”

“I have no training.”

“We can fix that.”

Atlas began to pace, biting the corner of his nail. “No one will respect some washed up loser in his late twenties. I don’t even want to be in charge. I was doing fine. before all of this.”

Izar gave him a beat to take a long, steadying breath before he spoke again. “Atlas, you don’t have a choice. It’s too late to hide what you can do.”

“You could have hidden it for me.”

Izar blanched. “You don’t understand. I can’t. Not when you’re the only one who has the power to fix this. We have no one, Atlas. Half of Last Bastion’s power slid into that fissure in the S-Grade. Without them, without you, we’re sitting ducks.”

“So you can lie for yourself, but not for me?”

Izar stiffened. 

His eyes were hunted, expression frantic. “What do you mean?”

“Don’t think I can’t read your Class, Izar.” He flicked his gaze to the orange panel, glowing and bright, that hovered just above his head. “I know you’re an A-Class. I don’t know how you’ve fooled everyone else, but you’re not fooling me.”

“Why would I hide that?” Izar asked. And his voice was a little too reedy. Full of a little too much air. “It’s better to be stronger, these days. I would’ve risen even higher than Acquisitions. I could’ve been Vice President by now.”

“I don’t know, Iz. But you are.” 

Atlas scoff and turned on his heel. He was pacing more frantically now. He itched for a cigarette, but he’d left them in his room. All he could do was flick his lighter. Spin it between his fingers. “I need you to get me the information they keep from me. I’m going into all of this blind. I’m going to get caught off guard.”

“I can’t do that —”

“You have to.”

Atlas’ voice was strangled. Mean. “You have to, Iz, or I’m going to tell them what you did. I don’t like doing this, but I need you on my side, and you won’t be unless I’m holding something over you.”

Izar blinked. “You’re…blackmailing me?”

Atlas shrugged. “How is it that much different that what you did to me? You had information that I probably would have liked to keep quiet, and you gave it away. I’m just giving you a choice here.”

And it hurt. It hurt to do it to this person who was one of the few constants in his life.

Atlas didn’t like Izar, not lately, but he had always respected and appreciated him. He’d held Zig’s life together after their parents died. He’d guided him into a safe and stable career trawling low-grade portals for materials, and kept him from his worst impulses.

But he hadn’t been on Atlas’ side. Not in a long time. Not since he had become a part of Portal Group, and Atlas just another one of the hunters he managed.

“You’re going to regret this, Atlas.” 

Izar faced away from him, pocketing the key. “We can talk about this later. For now, we need to get to the box. They expect you to watch and give input on the recruits.”

Atlas shivered.