The Guys (story)

Day 17, Month 4, 400 RVY

The slow rumble of the aetherworks above collected in the resonant room. Vin could imagine a single note on a violin, and even without such loud rumbling, it would be entirely destroyed by the echoes. Places like this were terrible for music, were terrible for conversation… Why The Guys were meeting here, rather than at their normal meeting place was beyond him. But, down the wire came the command, and so this is where he ended up. Their normal collections of random bits of conduits, the piles of tools and knives left behind by Entelan workers, those were nowhere to be found. There were benches jury-rigged against the wall, made of miniature metal barrels of waste left over from jamming aether and heavy oil together in a fancy tube. The faint smell of smoke was left in the room, as if someone had tried to get the aether back by burning the waste and then noticed that wasn’t going to work.

Vin had been told to bring a notebook, which was unusual on its own. Why bring something that could be traced? Vin got a new one specifically, and he had been careful to write, as neatly as possible, a name that wasn’t his.

Inra showed up second. She seemed to have just been shopping, given that she was now wearing a fancy green dress from somewhere outside of the plane of Daira. He could also recognize the sigil of Solari, a deity that was brought by the Entelan first contact crew and now had a place in some of the hearts of Dairans. … Though, he hadn’t considered Inra to be someone that was especially religious.

“Yo,” she said. “Got the message?”

“Maybe, maybe not. Just come back from church or something?”

“Oh, no, I just like how it looks.” Inra spun around, though she definitely knew that Vin wouldn’t be interested, so she was probably just having fun. “And like, the Church of Solari’s not a terrible people. Got a few friends in ‘em.”

“That does sound more like the you I know. You know why we’re here?”

Inra paused and looked at Vin. “I guess you didn’t, then. Arvy’s got a new contact, but apparently she’s a gigantic insider threat, so we’ve gotta avoid our normal place and names. We’ll be going by colors.” Inra motioned down to her dress. “I’m Green. Arvy’s Violet. Think Ora said she’d take Red. No one else is s’posed to talk with her, so it’ll just be us.”

Vin looked down at himself, and his entirely dark sweats and the leather jacket he had imported. “Guess I’m Black then. Gotta clue what he means by ‘insider threat’?”

“Means she might get stuff back to Entela that we need her to not.” Inra sat herself down on a bench across from Vin.

“No I get that, why’s she such a hazard? Ain’t it just not worth it if she might turn on us?”

“Gonna have to ask Ar— Violet about it.” Inra —no, Green — paused a moment, and Vin didn’t say a single other thing until he could confirm that the footsteps he started hearing in the silence were Ora’s. Sure enough, within another few seconds, Ora entered the room, found herself a place in the center, and sat herself on the floor. She had a set of shiny red pants and a jacket, both of which would almost definitely stop being shiny after an hour in this nonsense place, and she had a black bag hanging from her arm. Her skin and hair were much darker than either Inra’s or Vin’s.

“Green and Black, huh?” Ora asked into the room. “Sup?”

“Info threats, ‘parrantly,” Vin replied. “You know what this is about?”

“Not a clue,” Ora returned, “Hope it’s good though. Don’t want to take risks on threats if we aren’t going to get anything good out of them. He ain’t here yet?”

“Nah, guess he’s getting held up,” Vin continued. He noticed that Inra tapped her head, but waited for her to say something.

As if she knew what he was expecting, Inra started communicating a message. “Should be here in a few — she got caught up at the tunnel, apparently.”

“That’s a pretty alright info threat,” Ora confirmed. “Gotta get her through security, might be worth it.”

“Doesn’t really say much,” Inra argued, “Dunno that I’d call anyone an info threat if they already live here.” Inra paused after she finished her sentence and pointed at the door, and as if she had summoned them, Arvy and some random girl walked in. Arvy had dark skin like Ora and hair like he had bleached it and forgotten to dye it afterwards. He was decked in the fanciest dark purple he could find — though, Vin noted, a lot more like a royal purple than a violet.

The other girl was… weird. She seemed to normally have exceptionally pale skin, but it looked like she had gotten sunburned yesterday and was still feeling the effects of it. She had a blue lab coat on, mark in her favor, but it wasn’t as cleanly done up as the other officials. She was also carrying at least two aether canisters in a backpack — why two was beyond Vin — which was a second mark in her favor. This girl had a golden necklace emblazoned with the Solari emblem around her neck, which was something that Vin had never seen alongside a lab coat before, and she had a very powerfully enchanted ring with some Volarian scribbles around it.

She also had a transceiver, one of those expensive bracers that Volarians had that served as a watch, a communication device, an encyclopedia, and who knew what else. Those were very disallowed from being in the hands of anyone from Daira, as said by some law from a government that didn’t exist anymore. At least half of all smuggling into Daira could be linked to getting those devices through the tunnels, since their multipurpose nature and restrictions made them very valuable.

“Yo, listen up,” Arvy said.

“This better be good, uh, Violet,” Ora replied.

“You know it,” Arvy confirmed. “This girl here, her name’s Hannah. Delcarlo... Nisita, she from the main Entelan capital.” The girl, Hannah, waved.

“That’s a good name,” Vin agreed. “One of them important ones, from what I heard.”

“Aaaand one of the Saints of Solari,” Inra noted.

“Yep, daughter of one of the ten Importants of Volaria, fancies herself the future Head Engineer of the entire thing.” Hannah took a polite Entelan-style bow, the kind all of them did. “Sympathetic to our cause, so she’s gonna be something of a tutor. Hannah, these’re The Guys, your new friends. They’re color-coded for your convenience.”

Hannah looked around and smiled. “Sooo… Green, Red, and Black, right?” Somehow, Vin wasn’t expecting she could speak the same language, and was ready to have to understand Volarian. Instead, she spoke Arghivi, the language spoken in the capital that everyone else was speaking in. Kind of. She didn’t sound fully natural yet. But she could speak it.

“Yo,” Vin replied. “Sympathetic, but ya don’t trust her?"

“‘s not a trust thing, unfortunately,” Arvy replied. “Not sure if ya heard the stories, but rumor has it that the Master of Entela, the head honcho, has the power to read minds. So trust or not, it doesn’t matter, she comes in range of that mind reading and that’s it. So we got this place, we got these names, and that’s all she’s gonna know of us in case things go south. Y’all got that?”

“Yeah, but got a question for her,” Ora responded. Hannah waved again. “Why’re you puttin’ so much on the line? Your Master catches you, that’s a real bad time.”

“Mm…” Hannah faltered, even if only for a moment. Vin couldn’t have told if he wasn’t paying tight attention, though, because she was straight again before she kept talking. “Because… because it’s the right thing to do. And I think Master Sara knows it too. Every time I talked with her about it, she talked about ‘image’ and ‘diplomacy’ and stuff as if she didn’t believe the stuff she was saying. It’s like we’re… doing the thing we’re doing for no other reason than to show to others that we can keep promises.”

“Hope for all our sakes that that’s true,” Inra said with a nod. “Might be more lenient on ya if you get caught if she’s also sympathetic to it. So, whatcha got?”

“Uhhh, I was told you guys didn’t get, um… aether reactions, oscillation, stuff like that. So I thought maybe we could start with that.”

“We got aether reactions, though, it’s what powers everything,” Vin noted.

“No, no, I mean like… ones that turn aether and aethersteel into more aether, the big ones, the ones that don’t leave stuff behind. Those ones.” Hannah looked around at the barrels. “And not… this.”

“I heard stories about clean aether,” Ora said, “Those’re true?”

Hannah looked at Ora like she was an idiot. “Until a couple weeks ago, I didn’t know you could have not-clean aether reactions. Here, let me show you.” Hannah set down her backpack, kneeled beside it, and pulled out one of the aether canisters. It was… empty? She placed it on the ground, reached around to pull some detritus out of her bag, and scattered it near her. Some of it was random bits of metal, some of it was a conduit that Vin had seen only a few times before. It looked like a bendy metal cylinder, but four sides were flattened to black panels. The curvy bits had a wiggly golden line drawn on them, occasionally spaced with sets of seven lines perpendicular to the wave.

“Here, let’s start with a simple oscillation circuit. It makes aether over time.”

“And costs…?” Arvy started.

“Time,” Hannah repeated. “It costs time. It grabs aether from the blind eternities and puts it in a box, with no other expenditure of resources other than time.”

“Really? And you use these things in Entela?” Vin asked.

“Yeah, for anything that doesn’t need a lot of energy all at once,” Hannah began. She started putting conduits together, without using any tools, and they just seemed to fit together. “... Or only all at once. It’s really, really slow, but it’s good enough to use it to charge a transceiver or a tunnel if you’re not going to use it for a bit.”

The assembly that Hannah was working on took less than a minute to fully assemble, and while he didn’t have much practice, Vin could feel the steady drip of a very small amount of aether entering the vessel when it was finished. It looked like a wire that entered the canister at the top, left at the bottom, and corkscrewed around the canister to get back to the top.

Hannah pulled another chunk of metal out of her bag, but this one was clean and around the size of a screwdriver. It looked vaguely like a tuning rod. “The hell’s that?" Ora asked.

And again, Hannah stared at her. This time, she looked around at everyone else too, and everyone returned the same silent expression. “You guys really don’t learn anything about this, huh? I get it now. So anyways, this is a, uh... what do you call it in Arghivi? An aether tuner. You hit an aether circuit with it...” Hannah tapped the side of a conduit with the tuner, and a bright blue line of light placed itself inside the circuit, following its path while somehow remaining visible the whole way. With this light, Vin could see that at numerous points along the conduit, rather than just a straight wire going around the canister, there were tight coils. The lines expanded into a box halfway through the conduit, as well as at the entrance and exit to the canister.

“... the circuit, isn’t it?” Arvy asked.

“Sure is. This one’s super simple, we use a resonance array in the loop — that’s the mess of solenoid things all around the outside — which causes a back and forth motion in the aether in the conduit. That hooks up to a condensation coil — this middle box here — which translates the oscillations into more aether by resonating with the blind eternities. Then at one end, there’s an inductor to pull aether out of the canister and into the conduit, and the other has a condenser to put aether from the conduit into the canister.”

“Why’re we pulling aether out of the canister if we want it in the canister?” Inra questioned.

“The condensation coil doesn’t work if it doesn’t already have a small bit of aether, and the resonance coils can’t move aether around if it doesn’t exist. We end up condensing more aether than we induct — obviously, since the aether is coming out of the blind eternities and not going anywhere — so it slowly accumulates until the resonance array reaches equilibrium with the condensation coil at around 4.7 syr —” Hannah clearly noticed the confusion of the other people. “— It’s a concentration unit, don’t worry, we’ll get there later.”

Hannah disassembled the circuit into its component parts. Now that Vin knew what to look for, there were only really a few pieces. Three of the metal bits were the things she pointed out. There were two bits of conduit wire, which were around the same length. There were also a few metal bits that looked like washers with four short claws coming out of each of the faces.

Holding up one of the pieces of metal, which looked kind of like a box with a cylindrical shaft down the middle of it, Hannah started, “This is an inductor. See, there’s a wire in the middle of it. These’re cheap, and they’ll break before anything else in your circuit. We use them to put aether or energy into conduits because if they break, they collapse and stop the circuit from going. It stops more expensive bits from breaking if you put too much aether in it.”

Hannah passed it to Ora, who looked at it a bit, looked down the middle of it, and passed it along. While Inra looked at it, she asked, “So these’re used a lot then, huh?”

“Yep, any circuit that might have a lot of energy going through it — or ones with expensive pieces of equipment — should have one, maybe two or even three of these. They come in different sizes, so they’ll break if the concentration of aether gets too big. See how there’re five lines on that one?” Inra looked at the side of it, then showed to everyone else that there were, in fact, five golden lines on it. "That means it’ll break at five syr. Remember how I said the oscillator gets to around 4.7?  If it gets higher than that, bad things might happen, so we break the circuit at five.”

Hannah held up a metal box with two cylindrical holes with some scores down the sides. “This one’s the expensive one. This is our condensation coil. It doesn’t like being in lots of aether, which is why we need the inductor. It has this pattern on it, in Volarian that says Condensation Coil, and that’s how we recognize it. It goes both ways, so it doesn’t have a ‘backwards’, but we like plugging it in so the words are facing somewhere convenient.” Hannah handed that one around while she continued. “This one’s a condenser. See how it looks kinda like a spout? It takes aether from a conduit and puts it into whatever it’s pointed at. It’ll only do that if the conduit’s holding at least a certain amount of aether — this one has one line on it, so that means —”

“It needs a concentration of one syr,” Ora suggested.

“Right!” Hannah handed the condenser around. “Circuits like these ones don’t work if the conduits don’t have enough aether, so the condenser makes sure that there’s always enough aether in the conduit.”

“Where did the aether come from at first?” Vin asked.

“I used magic. But, like… You could break an energy cell, or pump a little bit in as a primer. Bigger circuits sometimes use aethersteel — ones like the big aether reactors.” Hannah reached to one side and picked up one of her conduits. “This thing is a conduit. They all look kinda like this. They’re long, they have markings on them, they’re kinda bendy, and they’re mostly hollow. They don’t break unless you’re really strong, and they don’t cut unless you have knives edged with crystal. I—“ Hannah paused to dig through her bag. Nothing, evidently. “— didn’t bring mine, I can make sure I do that next week. This one’s built with a resonance array circuit inside of it. On the side, there’s sets of lines. Those’re the solenoid things you saw earlier. When we need to cut these to fit them in circuits, we can’t cut through the solenoid or everything breaks.”

Vin was about to ask a question when Hannah reached down to grab one of the clips. “These’re really simple, they’re just clips. They connect the conduits to various devices, including the inductors and condensers.” She handed the conduit and some clips up to Arvy. “Here, try clipping those.”

Vin watched Arvy as he clicked a clip onto the conduit, then lightly squeezed the conduit and pulled the clip off. He did that a second time, then noted, “Intuitive.”

“Yeah, those’re super simple,” Hannah agreed. “Standardized across everything but the most special circuits.” Hannah gathered up the components and placed them separated on the ground. She then motioned towards them. “Alright, I’ve taken it apart. Let’s have you guys do it now.”

//

After a month of weekend classes, the meeting place looked more like a workshop and much less like the hole in the wall it started as. Hannah had figured out how to get here before anyone else, and she wasted no time in being set up long before Vin arrived. This time, the set-up in question looked like a welder’s tool, hooked up to one of those ‘oscillators’ they talked about in their first class and sitting next to a set of elemental cartridges. She had her small conduit knife — a scalpel-looking one with a blue crystal edge that she said she wouldn’t mind being taken — and was cutting down a standard directional conduit that they talked about two weeks ago. Rather than the wiggly line of the conduit they used in the first class, this one only had a straight line down it.

“Hey, Black,” Hannah greeted as Vin walked in. “You remember how we talked about fluid elemental energy last week?”

“Sure do, you were talking about how it’s used in weapons, yeah?”

“... Yes, but I figure it’s better to talk about tools instead of weapons. I’m not really a military engineer, I only know how weapons work when they’re the same as tools.” Hannah went back to cutting her conduit. “You know where the rest of The Guys are?”

“Nah, I’m always the first one.” Vin and Hannah both stayed silent. Vin hadn’t had a good non-work conversation with anyone since starting their classes, so after another minute, Vin continued with something else. “Hey, Hannah, mind if I ask ya something about your personal life?”

“Oh, yeah, go ahead.”

“You’ve got a ring on, yeah?” Hannah looked at her hand and the ring on it.

“Yep, still there. What about it?”

“Why ya got that? Special someone at home?”

“Yeah,” Hannah confirmed, staring at her ring. “Or, well, I guess Karina’s probably not at home right now. But you know what I mean.”

“Kinda enchants’re on it?”

“Oh, just, you know, projectile deflector and transmission extender. Helps make sure my transceiver can find her even if we don’t have a relay there so she can keep getting vitals and stuff.”

“How long?”

“About 19 years? Depends how you define it, but that’s how long we’ve been together.” Hannah smiled watching her ring.

“‘S she like?”

“Oh, just the best. She’s the most adorable person I’ve ever met. She always wants to protect me, so she’s usually around the first time I go somewhere. She used to work with the Seventh Circle Initiative back when they existed, doing a bunch of mapping and exploring. She has this really cute way of stammering when she gets embarrassed. It’s happening less and less, though, now that she’s believing in herself more.”

“She as religious as you?” Vin made a motion with his hand around his neck to point out her Solari necklace.

“No…?” Hannah waited before saying more, but Vin had the time to wait. “That word’s hard though. Like, neither of us need to believe in Solari, we’ve just, you know, met her. But I do a lot more of the usual Church stuff than she does.” Hannah readjusted her necklace. “You have someone?”

“Oh, pff, not in my line of work. Exactly what I’d need, more ways for Entela to track me down and more people to risk by doing what I do. None of us keep more people around than we need.”

“Is this stuff really that bad?”

“No, probably not, but… well, not allowed to tell you more, insider threat.” Vin could see the sudden remembrance in Hannah’s face.

“Right, right. Of course, sorry.” Hannah went back to work — though Vin no longer knew why. What else could she need to cut the conduits for? “Mind if I ask something? You don’t have to answer if it’s too much information.”

“Sure, let’s hear it.”

“Why’re you called ‘The Guys’?”

Vin chuckled. “Huh. That’s a new one.”

Hannah looked away from her work again to look up at him. “It just feels… not very descriptive.”

“Well, ‘s kinda the point. Even if word got back to Entela about some mystical rebellious whatsits, if they’re called ‘The Guys’ it’s gonna be impossible to track ‘em down. Like, you try ‘n ask someone if they know ‘The Guys’.”

“Right, okay.” Hannah paused briefly at the same time Vin heard the footsteps approaching. “Very echoey hallway you’ve chosen.”

Vin shrugged. “It’s good to know people are coming.” And after only a few moments…

“Yooo,” Ora called out as she entered.

“Oh hey, Red,” Hannah said back, “What’s up?”

“Sup?” Ora chuckled and smiled. He hadn’t heard that laugh in at least a month. Maybe everyone else was finally getting as comfortable around Hannah as he was. “You want to sound natural, drop the ‘what’, just say sup.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Hannah agreed. “Sup?”

“What’re you guys talkin’ about?”

“Rings, mostly,” Vin noted.

“And my amazing final partner,” Hannah added.

“Also church. Kind of.”

“Oh, hey,” Ora started, “Ask Greeney about the Church when she gets here. She had some questions to ask ya and was afraid to start it.”

“Can do,” Hannah nodded. She held up the conduit in her hand. “Hey, we talked about this last week, remember what kinda conduit this is?”

“Standard, right?” Ora answered. “Just like, move stuff from one place to another place? Straight line along the side and stuff.”

“That’s the one. How about the ones that have a blue line across the straight line?”

“Energy filter,” Vin piped up this time. “That what this class’s gonna be about?”

“That’ll be for tomorrow. Want to talk about the kinds of circuits we can make today.” Hannah perked up at the sounds of probably-Inra’s footsteps and watched the door. She must have been almost right behind Ora, huh? Inra did walk in, and Hannah immediately said, “Hey Green. Sup?”

Inra stared at Hannah blankly, prompting a wide grin from the Entelan girl. “The hell, when’d ya learn to do that?”

“Two minutes ago.” Hannah paused. “Red corrected me. Also said you had some questions for me?”

“O-oh, we’re cool asking those kindsa questions?” Hannah nodded energetically at Inra. “Well, cool then, okay. You’re a Saint for Solari aren’t ya? How’d ya manage that?”

“Oh, that’s kind of simple. Solari granted my Karina and I an extended life. Not that I can tell yet, but Master Sara noticed.” Hannah extended her arms and looked down. “You know, I’m 29, it’s only been like four years, so nothing really to happen here yet.”

“How long’s the extended life you got?” Inra pulled out a notebook from her pocket and started writing in it. “And, like, what’d you do that got you that?”

“Uh, until something kills me, I guess. She described it as ‘age-locking’ once so I guess I just don’t age at all.” Hannah started to answer the second question, then stopped, then started, then stopped. Finally, she came to something. “Uh, quoting her, ‘being adorable’. I don’t really understand her motives any more than anyone else. Spirits are kinda like that.”

“Do ya work with the Church much? Haven’t seen much of ya, and I figured I’d’ve heard more of ya if you showed up a lot.”

“Kinda? Mostly with the veista up in Ekl, little bit away from here. I’ve been to the veista here a couple of times, but not really doing anything but sightseeing. I did that bathing thing once, the people were fun to talk to.” Inra stared at her, though this time with more questions than concerns. “Oh, Solari loves baths. They’re warm and relaxing, and they make you take time out of your day. She liked to use them to talk to people, so Church people’ll bathe and talk about whatever every however long.”

“You do that frequently?” Vin asked. “Didn’t know that was one of those things Solari cared about."

“Oh yeah, taking time for a bath is super important, even just on your own. Part of the rituals some of the spell-people do and some people say it can make them feel like they’re with Solari. It’s also one of the rituals for new priests or bishops to bathe with Solari or the Master of Theria. I join the Church sometimes, but I still feel a bit weird about it when I’m not with Karina. Totally different from how I grew up.”

“That’s neat,” Ora interjected. “What do y’all talk about?”

“Oh, last time we talked about studies, food, and some random ritual stuff. In Ekl I was asked about meeting Solari and some romance stuff. One of the kids there asked about how life was when I was a kid in Entela, and that started a real long conversation about being kids in places. Apparently being a kid here sucks.”

“Oh, yeah, being a kid here now is the worst.” Arvy seemed to materialize into existence, as Vin hadn’t noticed him enter, and Hannah’s jump seemed to indicate that she didn’t either. “So much crap, living in a time with so many restrictions and dangers. Parents go missing or stop caring so much too, so tons of kids just end up without parents.”

“Like the ones at Ekl,” Hannah agreed. “That’s why I spend so much time there. It’s how I learned things needed to change. I can help, and I’m going to.”

“Well, helping’s what you’re here for. Got something special today?”

“Nothing special, just, you know, more energy stuff. We’re going a bit more rapidly than I would try to teach people in Entela.” //

Info breach.

Three months in, that was the message Arvy had sent. No other context. No other context was required for that. In some senses, that was longer than expected. In others… Vin had started to kinda like their makeshift tutor. He’d miss talking to her, and talking with her about her final partner. Maybe with her extended life, they might find the time to talk in the future. If Vin managed to live that long and the issues with Entela dissolved. But now, the time came for business. The next step was to get their own information — namely, determining if they could retrieve materials. That was Vin’s job. The others were better at fighting and talking. Arvy could talk his way out of an execution, Ora could fight like no one else, and Inra was best at keeping info safe and secure, but no one could get as close to people as quietly as Vin could.

… Of course not. When Vin arrived at the location, there was nothing. Entelans had already come in here, disassembled everything that was set up. It looked much like it had when Vin had first come here. At least now it had less aetheric waste, as they took that too. All that remained was a short letter. It started off written in fancy Volarian script, which was then crossed out and was rewritten in proper written Dairan.

Hi.

So, Master Sara caught me. Which we knew would happen. She let me write this letter to properly say good-bye, but any travel to Daira is gonna be under super close watch. She says it might cover my tracks, since the Church is doing that now anyways. I hope whatever I managed to teach you was worth something. Here’s hoping the future is better.

~ Hannah Delcarlo-Nisita

Just as soon as he had finished reading the letter, he was out of the room. This place was no longer safe if the Entelan enforcers knew about it, and he would much rather avoid being caught in an incriminating location. He watched his tail, watched his flanks, and once he was sure no one was watching, disappeared into the shadows of an alley.

As Vin entered the normal headquarters — a large warehouse in the industrial district that had lost its function — everyone was watching him, either ready to jump on him or invite him in. There were around twenty people here, most of which he had met with over the weeks to transfer what he learned from Hannah. Arvy sat atop a long-emptied aethersteel barrel that probably used to contain water. Others sat in the rafters, including Ora, and still others found places on the heavy shelves that now stored booklets rigged with explosives.

“So?” Arvy asked. Straight to it.

“Place is toast, everything was stripped.” Vin held up the piece of paper. “‘Cept for this note from Hannah.” Vin handed the piece of paper to Arvy, who proceeded to read it aloud.

“Here’s hoping the future is better,” Inva repeated. “I like that.”

“Huh.” Vin thought. He then repeated it too, “Here’s hoping the future is better.” The phrase traveled around the group, with people trying it out with different intonations, trying to see if they could ascribe some meaning to it.

“Sounds like we’ve got some new code,” Arvy suggested. “Bet we can use that.”

“Think it’ll trace back to her if we do?” Vin asked.

“Doubtful,” Inva decided. “They couldn’t even trace back that thing we jacked from the nobles, she’ll be fine.”

“Seems like it’s settled then,” Arvy decreed. “See if we can get that to spread. Get it to the people interested in a resistance. Maybe up to the high princess, if she’s up for it.”