The expedition leader had already filled in Eli’s share before Eli reached the table.
He had written one percent in the space marked porter. The figure was small, neat, and underlined twice.
The meeting room was a rented room above a repair shop, with a borrowed table and nine mismatched chairs. Packs stood against one wall. Someone had left an open box of new rope on the floor, its coils bright enough to look decorative. Through the window Eli could see traffic edging around the barriers on the road to the gate. The repair shop below had closed for the meeting, and the scent of oil rose through the floorboards.
Tessa stood beside him, reading the other sheet. She had put on a clean jacket over her clinic clothes. Her medical bag rested at her feet, closed and buckled.
Across the table, the expedition leader tapped a pen against his thumbnail. His name was Corvin, and his newly issued license described him as C-rank. He had introduced himself by holding the card up long enough for everyone to see the letter.
“We leave tomorrow morning,” he said. “If you want a place, sign tonight. Another gate closes soon, and the crews who miss it will be looking for work here.”
Eli read the share again. One percent of what? Gross proceeds, after expenses, after the leader paid himself for organizing, or after he announced the crystal had been damaged and sold for half its value?
He had seen all four arrangements in his first life. The difference between them could be a month’s rent or the privilege of carrying someone else’s profit home.
“What expenses come out first?” he asked.
“Necessary ones.”
“Which ones?”
Corvin smiled at the two fighters already seated beside him. “You want an itemized account before we’ve even gone in?”
“Yes.”
One of the fighters—a broad man with a shaved head and a bandage around two fingers—looked away. The other kept watching Eli, perhaps waiting to see whether he would back down.
Corvin pulled the contract closer. “Gate fee, transport, equipment, and any supplies the team consumes. Then we divide the sale.”
“Who values the equipment?”
“I do.”
Eli rested a finger on the line. “Then it doesn’t say what my share is.”
“It says one percent.”
“Of a number you can change.”
The smile left Corvin’s face. He looked at the woman beside Eli. “Is he always like this?”
“When someone hands him a contract like this?” Tessa said. “I hope so.”
She turned her own sheet around. Several lines had been left blank, including the section describing supplies.
“You said you needed a medic,” she continued. “This lists my duties, but not what you’re providing.”
“You’ve brought your bag.”
“My bag belongs to the clinic. I brought it to show you what I have and what we’d need to replace. I didn’t agree to give you the contents.”
Corvin leaned back. “Are you treating this as a negotiation or an inspection?”
“Both.”
The door opened before he could reply. Anton, the independent applicant Eli had met at the registry, entered with a canvas pack over one shoulder. A thin older woman followed him, her gray hair tied back under a cap. She wore a hard plastic guard on her left forearm and carried a walking stick with a metal tip.
“Sorry,” Anton said. “The guard wanted to check our permits again.”
Corvin pointed to the two remaining chairs. “Sit. We’re signing.”
The older woman did not sit. She took the contract from the table and read it from the top. Her eyes moved slowly, and she held the sheet closer when she reached the smaller print.
“What’s your name?” Tessa asked.
“Vera Holt.” The woman glanced up. “I used to work rescue. Before gates.”
“Medical or extraction?”
“Extraction. I can manage a splint if someone tells me where it goes.” Vera looked back at the contract. “Doesn’t say who’s responsible for carrying people out.”
“Everybody,” Corvin said.
“Then write everybody.”
Corvin’s pen stopped moving.
Eli felt a small, unreasonable surge of relief. He had been bracing himself for another room in which everyone treated the F-rank porter as an inconvenience. Vera had her own concern, and Tessa had hers. Neither needed him to speak for her.
Corvin held out his hand. “Let me see.”
Vera kept the contract. “It also says the leader decides when the team withdraws.”
“Someone has to.”
“What if your medic says someone’s going to die without evacuation?”
“Then I listen to my medic.”
“Write that too.”
Corvin looked toward the door as though calculating whether he had time to recruit replacements. Outside, a cart rattled over a seam in the pavement. The gate was beyond the road barriers, out of sight from the meeting room.
“We aren’t going into a war zone,” he said. “It’s a small gate. The first team surveyed the entrance and came back.”
“How far did they get?” Eli asked.
“The first chamber.”
“What did they see?”
“Stone. A passage. No monsters.”
“Did they map the passage?”
“No.”
“So they didn’t survey the route to the crystal.”
Corvin’s eyes narrowed. “Who told you there’s a crystal?”
Eli had been careful not to mention its location. He had assumed the leader knew what he was pursuing, but the notice at the checkpoint had only promised recovery fees and a share of any resources found. A stabilization crystal was valuable enough to explain the expedition’s urgency; saying so plainly might make Eli appear more knowledgeable than he should be.
“You mentioned another gate closing,” Eli said. “I assumed you were looking for something to sell.”
“We’re looking for anything worth carrying. That’s why we need a porter.”
Tessa’s gaze shifted to Eli. She knew he had hoped for a crystal. He could tell her later that his assumption had been stronger than he had made it sound, and why the distinction mattered. For now, Corvin had not actually confirmed the prize.
Anton sat on the edge of a chair, his hands pressed between his knees. “Do we have to decide everything in here?” he asked. “My mother’s waiting for me to call before we go.”
“You should call her,” Tessa said. “And you should know what you’re signing before you do.”
Anton gave her an embarrassed nod. He pulled out his phone but did not dial.
Corvin pushed another sheet toward Tessa. “I have two field kits. Bandages, antiseptic, splints. One is in the packs.”
“Show me.”
“You don’t trust me?”
“I haven’t met the kits.”
Vera’s mouth twitched. The bandaged fighter made a noise that might have been a cough.
Corvin stood, crossed to the wall, and unbuckled a green pack. He brought out a sealed kit and set it down. Tessa checked the seal, opened it with his permission, and laid the contents in rows. Eli watched her count dressings, examine the scissors, and check the dates on packets whose printing had blurred beneath the wrapper.
“There’s no airway equipment,” she said.
“We’re seven people in a stone tunnel. You expect me to bring an ambulance?”
“I expect you to tell me what I have to work with. Do you have a second kit?”
He retrieved it. The second contained fewer dressings and a packet of gloves with a torn corner. Tessa set the damaged packet apart.
“I can supplement these,” she said, “but the expedition needs to replace what I use from the clinic’s stock. At cost. Write it down.”
Corvin began to object, then checked the clock on his phone. “Fine. At cost, with receipts.”
“And the kits stay where I can reach them.”
“They go in the porter’s pack.”
“They go where I can reach them,” she repeated. “If someone’s choking, I won’t wait while he unpacks rope.”
Vera tapped her stick against the floor. “One on the outside of his pack, one with you. That’s easy.”
Tessa considered it. “If the straps hold and Eli can release it without taking the pack off.”
Eli picked up the green pack and checked the side loops. “I can rig a quick release.”
Corvin wrote the change on the contract with the air of a man conceding a kingdom. Tessa read it before he moved on. She crossed out a phrase that allowed him to choose whether her stock needed replacing, and wrote a clearer one. He initialed the correction.
Next came evacuation. Corvin accepted that Tessa could order a retreat for a patient who needed care outside the gate, but added that the leader would decide whether the rest of the team continued.
“That could leave an injured person with one carrier,” Vera said. “Or no carrier.”
“I won’t abandon anyone.”
“Then write the number of people who go with the patient.”
They settled, after an argument about the size of the team, on enough able members to move the patient safely, with a minimum of two unless Tessa judged one sufficient. It was an imperfect promise. If the group split or half its members were injured, a line on paper could not manufacture extra hands. Still, the line gave Tessa a way to challenge Corvin before a disagreement turned into a delay.
Eli returned to the money. The advertised daily fee was guaranteed separately, including if medical evacuation ended the mission early; Corvin wrote that explicitly. Deductions applied only to recovery proceeds, never to the fee. Eli checked the figures on both copies. Corvin would not increase the recovery share beyond one and a half percent. He did, however, list the gate fee and transport cost, set a limit on equipment deductions, and agree to show receipts. The share applied to recovered proceeds even if Eli did not fight.
“You want a share for standing behind us,” the bandaged fighter said.
“For carrying the things you want when you get tired of standing,” Eli replied.
The man looked toward the packs. “Fair enough.”
Corvin did not look convinced, but he signed beside the changes. Each member initialed them in turn. Vera told Eli quietly that Corvin had paid a worker she knew after an earlier job; she had checked before applying. It was a narrow reference, not evidence of how he would act in danger, but with the written evacuation terms and Tessa’s agreement it made taking the job a risk they could assess. Anton called his mother while the others read; he turned away from the table, speaking quietly, but Eli heard him promise to call again when he came out.
When Tessa signed, she did not use the clinic’s name. She wrote her own and drew a line beneath the clause about supplies. Eli signed after checking that his copy matched Corvin’s. He folded it and tucked it inside a waterproof sleeve.
The next morning, by the time they reached the checkpoint, the damp road was beginning to dry. A pair of registry workers directed a delivery van around the checkpoint. Beyond it, the gate stood between two concrete barriers: a vertical sheet of wavering light, neither fully opaque nor transparent. People who approached it appeared stretched, their outlines bending before returning to shape when they stepped away.
Corvin distributed the load. He gave one fighter a coil of rope, the other a box of lamps. Anton took a compact tool bag. Vera carried her own gear and a second rope. Then Corvin placed the remaining packs at Eli’s feet.
There were three of them.
Eli crouched and lifted the first. Dense metal shifted inside. The second held water and food. The third contained spare lamps, the second medical kit, and what felt like an unreasonable quantity of climbing hardware for a route whose survey had ended at the first chamber.
“You said you could carry,” Corvin told him.
“I can. I want to know what’s in each one.”
“You’ll know when I ask for it.”
“I need to put the medical kit on the outside.”
Corvin gestured for him to get on with it.
Eli spread the packs on the pavement. The weights had been arranged badly: metal concentrated in the first, water sloshing low in the second, smaller items loose in the third. He redistributed what he could without opening sealed containers, placing the first kit where Tessa could pull it free. His shoulders protested when he fastened the straps.
Anton watched him try the weight. “I can take some.”
Corvin shook his head. “I need you fresh.”
“My ability shifts weight,” Anton said. “I can take the water for a while without using much.”
“You’ll need it inside.”
Eli tested one step, then another. He could carry the load, though his pace would be slower and his hands less free. Corvin knew it. It was a punishment that did not break the contract: a reminder that the man who controlled the expedition could make the porter pay for every question.
“Save your ability,” Eli told Anton. “If I need a hand, I’ll ask.”
Anton frowned but moved away to check his own equipment.
Tessa took the end of the medical kit’s release strap. “Show me.”
Eli turned so she could reach it. She pulled once; the buckle stuck. He loosened it, adjusted the cord, and had her try again. This time the kit slid into her hand. She put it back and repeated the movement until she could do it without looking at the buckle.
“If we get separated,” she said, “where do we meet?”
“The entrance chamber, if it’s safe.”
“And if it isn’t?”
“Outside the gate. At the left-hand barrier, facing out.”
She repeated the location, then checked the strap on his shoulder. “Too tight.”
“If it’s loose, the load moves.”
“Your hand is already tingling.”
He had flexed his fingers without noticing. She adjusted the strap by a small amount and watched him lift the pack again. The pressure shifted from the edge of his shoulder to the broader muscle below it. He did not thank her until she had finished checking the other side.
“You’re welcome,” she said. “And if you can’t feel your hand, tell me before you drop something on it.”
Corvin gathered the team. He pointed into the gate and described the formation: two fighters in front, himself behind them, Anton and Tessa in the middle, Eli and Vera at the rear. His plan assumed a corridor wide enough for two people to walk side by side. The entry survey had not established whether the whole route was that wide.
“What signal means we leave?” Anton asked.
Corvin pointed at the gate. “When I say so.”
Tessa raised her hand. “Under the contract, I can call for evacuation when a patient needs it. We need a signal everyone can recognize over fighting.”
Corvin’s jaw tightened. “Three whistles. Short, short, long.”
“Who has whistles?” Vera asked.
Corvin produced one from a pocket. Vera had another attached to her vest. Tessa took a third from her medical bag. She demonstrated the pattern, then asked Anton to repeat it. He whistled too quickly the first time; she had him do it again, leaving a clear pause before the long note.
The bandaged fighter rolled his eyes, but he listened. Even Corvin waited until Anton got it right.
Eli checked the gate one last time. In his first life the expedition had entered a week later, by a road without barricades. He remembered a passage and a turn, a chamber where the crystal had protruded from the floor like cloudy glass. He remembered the buyer’s excited voice. He did not remember Vera, Anton, or Corvin. He had not gone on that earlier expedition; he had seen the map afterward and helped carry the find.
The map was knowledge, but it was not a promise. He had written that in his notes the previous night, then read the sentence twice before sleeping.
Corvin stepped to the barrier. “Ready.”
Tessa looked at Eli. She had made her own decision to be here. He could still tell her he was afraid; he could not make the decision for her.
“The entrance chamber, if it’s safe,” he said.
“Left barrier outside if it isn’t.” She touched the whistle at her collar. “And you tell me when that load becomes a problem.”
Corvin passed through first. The light swallowed him without a sound. One by one the others followed, their shapes rippling and then vanishing. Eli tightened his grip on the pack straps and stepped forward.
Cold moved through the fabric at his shoulders. The street disappeared. For one disorienting instant he could feel the weight of the load but not the ground beneath his feet.
Then his boots met stone, and the gate closed behind him like water settling after a hand had passed through it.