A Necromancer's Guide to Clearing a Game Like Tower

Chapter 200: Chapter 200 — The First Offer III

”Priority target?” Ronan asked.

”She picks it for you. She goes for the support line first, always — she isolates healers the way we’d focus a boss. The formation’s whole job is making that impossible.”

”Thralls?”

”Same as the city. Restrained, not killed. Some of her shields are hostages.”

James moved his finger across the map, tracing lines that weren’t printed on it.

”Her real body of work is the threads. Authority connections running to the room, the silk, the reflections. There’ll be someone on the roster who can see them, if Maeve’s roster rule gets followed. Expose them. Cut them. Make her spend power rebuilding what you broke.”

”And that wins it?” Cillian asked.

”That spending is the win condition. Every rebuild leaves her unstable for a window. The windows are when the raid unloads.” He looked up. ”Not before. However open she looks. Before the window, the opening is bait.”

”Reserves?” Ronan was writing fast now.

”Deeper than feels reasonable. Mana, healing, the emergency skills, all of it.” James paused, and made sure he had both of them. ”She has more than one final phase. When she falls the first time, the fight is not over. Whoever’s leading needs that said out loud to the whole twenty before they go in.”

”Her falling down isn’t her dying,” Finn said. ”It’s her reloading.”

Ronan copied the points down in his blunt block capitals.

Nowhere in any of it was a black ring, or a coin, or the name James had carried up out of dark water. Nowhere did the three survivors’ careful sentences so much as lean toward the gap where those things lived.

”Last thing, then,” Ronan said, setting the pen down. ”Any road we can walk in with you three? Support slots, observers, anything?”

”No,” Finn said. Flat, but not unkind. ”The twenty places belong to people who need the floor. That’s the design and it’s the right design. We can train your roster to the teeth. We can’t clear your floor for you.”

”And then?” Cillian looked around the table.

Under the lightness his voice always carried, there was, for once, a bare wire.

”Say we do it. Say we’re standing there with the clear. I want to hear somebody say the next part.”

”You clear twenty,” James said. ”Then all five of us enter twenty-one.”

”Nobody jumps early. Nobody ’just scouts it.’” Cillian pointed at each of them in turn, ending on Finn. ”You especially.”

”Cillian.” Maeve waited until he looked at her. ”Why do you think the three of us have been standing outside an open gate for two months?”

Cillian looked at her. Then at Finn. Then at James.

He did the arithmetic on eight weeks of the world’s three most famous Challengers conspicuously not climbing, and something in his shoulders came down an inch.

He took a biscuit, finally. Which meant it had landed.

They moved into the practical calendar after that.

Full-roster training sessions at the Bureau facility. The four fives drilled together, then deliberately scattered and reformed, formation-recovery reps until regrouping was reflex. Mental-resistance drills on the TRB’s interference simulators. Confirmation runs on both Purify specialists.

And a command ladder for the ugly case nobody liked saying out loud: who runs the raid if the raid leader is the one the floor takes.

Dates went on the wall.

It had stopped being a warning session and become a schedule, which was the Hale house working exactly as designed.

Then James’s phone buzzed on the table.

He’d have ignored it, except the screen lit face-up, and the subject line was in capitals.

PARTNERSHIP INQUIRY — TEAM ZERO

James read it once quickly and once slowly. The room watched his face change gears.

”Read it out,” Finn said.

”It’s from the partnerships director at—” he named the sportswear company, and Cillian sat up, because everyone on the island owned something with that logo on it.

”They’re contacting me directly because, quote, Team Zero has no registered management or business representation they could identify.”

He scrolled.

”They want a private introductory meeting. Photography campaign. Team Zero-branded training range. A commercial. Promotion across their platforms. Limited use of names and likenesses, with, quote, scope for a longer-term ambassador relationship.”

”Money?” Finn asked.

”Indicated as a range, not a number.” James turned the phone flat. ”The range has six figures in it.”

He looked up.

”And the meeting request is for me, Finn, and Maeve.”

The words sat on the table.

”The three Floor 20 survivors,” Maeve said, without inflection.

”As the, quote, public centre of the campaign.”

Cillian leaned back in his chair. He was smiling, but it had gone thin, and his eyes weren’t in it.

”So they want the name all five of us made,” he said, ”and three fifths of the people. Grand. Very tidy. Did they misspell my—”

He stopped himself. Rubbed his jaw. Dropped the voice he told jokes in.

”It’s not about being in a photograph. You know that’s not it. It’s that some office we’ve never met has already sorted us into the ones that sell and the ones that don’t.”

”Which is exactly why we take the meeting,” James said. ”It’s an inquiry, not a contract. Nothing’s agreed by sitting in a room.”

”You want to go?” Ronan asked.

”I want to go, correct the roster assumption to five or nothing, and find out what they think we’re worth before we tell them what we are.”

”We don’t go anywhere near that room without a lawyer.” Maeve had her own phone out, reading the forwarded mail. ”This likeness clause is doing a lot of quiet work.”

”Quiet how?” Cillian asked.

”’Limited use’ with no definition of limited. No term, no territory, no approval rights.” She looked up. ”You sign the friendly version of this, and your face is on lunchboxes in Korea, and you’ve no say and no cut.”

”It’s bigger than one email,” Finn said slowly.

He was staring at the phone like it was a map of a floor he didn’t like.

”If this crowd found us, others have. They’ll come one at a time, and they’ll come to each of us separately. That’s how it’s done. Split the group, better price.”

”So we need—” James started.

”We need one person who negotiates. Approves every photo and every ad. Fronts every interview request. And tells anyone who approaches any single one of us to go through the team.” Finn exhaled. ”We’re a guild-sized target with a group chat for infrastructure.”

Nobody laughed, because it was true.

Somewhere in the last two months, while they’d been training a raid and burying eleven people and standing still outside a gate, Team Zero had become worth money. Real, corporate, six-figure money.

And the sum total of its business apparatus was James’s unread inbox.

The strategy room door opened.

Marcus came in carrying a folder.

Finn was on his feet before the door had finished swinging. ”We’re in a meeting. A private one. You’re supposed to be at the guild—”

”I was. I came back.” Marcus stayed calm, which had always been the most infuriating thing he did. ”And I’ve been standing in my own kitchen for the last forty minutes instead of opening that door, because what I’m carrying concerns all five of you, and I wasn’t going to walk in and talk to three.”

”Talk to—” Finn stopped. ”What do you know about three?”

”The same sportswear company put a call into the Spire’s commercial office last week, fishing to find out whether anyone represented you.” Marcus looked around the table, at the phone lying face-up between the maps. ”Nobody does. So I’d guess whatever they finally sent asks for the Floor 20 survivors and leaves two of this team out of the room. Am I close?”

Nobody answered him, which answered him.

Marcus crossed the room and set the folder down in the middle of the maps, square to the table edge, and stepped back from it.

”A proposal. Formal, written, from Emerald Spire.”

”Absorbing us,” Finn said. ”There it is. Two years of asking, and now—”

”Not absorbing. Read before you swing.” Marcus’s voice stayed level. ”Team Zero comes in as an autonomous division. Not members. A division.”

”Meaning what?” Ronan asked.

”You keep the name. All five of you stay together — that’s structural, in writing. James remains team leader. You control your own climbing schedule and your own floor decisions. The guild has no authority to send you anywhere or hold you back from anywhere.”

”And the Spire gets the shirt off our—”

”The Spire provides what you’re currently missing.” Marcus counted it plainly. ”Contract lawyers. Negotiators who eat companies like that one for a living. Professional security for all of your families. Permanent training facilities. Floor analysts.”

”For free,” Finn said. ”Out of love.”

”For a negotiated percentage of commercial and loot revenue.” Marcus met his son’s eyes without flinching. ”Every term in there is open. Including the percentage.”

He looked around the table.

”You’re already carrying the weight of a guild. The money’s found you. The attention found you months ago, and the political pressure is in the post. What you don’t have is a single piece of the machinery guilds built to survive those three things.”

He paused.

”I’ve watched this exact gap kill better-run teams than yours.”

”No,” Finn said.

He said it without reaching for the folder. Without opening it. Arms folded.

And the history in the room — every year of it, the hospital bed, the silence at the memorial — stood behind the word where everyone could see it.

”You haven’t read it,” Marcus said quietly.

”Don’t need to. I know who’s offering.”

Marcus didn’t rise to it. He nodded slowly, the nod of a man who had expected the hit and priced it in, and reached to take the folder back.

James put his hand flat on it and stopped it where it lay.

Finn’s head turned. He stared at James’s hand, then at James.

”You’re actually considering this?”

James looked at his phone, lying on the table with the capital letters still on the screen. A company that had never met them, already planning the photographs.

Then at the folder under his hand. The maps beneath it. The schedule on the wall, for a raid that would carry two of his people back into the worst place any of them had ever been.

He opened the folder.

”I’m considering why a company we’ve never met already knows how to make money from Team Zero,” he said, ”and we don’t.”

Marcus pulled out the chair opposite and sat down.

”Then read the offer before you refuse it.”