"This is probably the stupidest thing I've ever helped someone do," Maya said, spreading maps across her desk. "And I once helped my cousin try to domesticate a Forsaken."
August looked up from the survival manual he'd been studying. "How did that go?"
"We had a lovely funeral. Very small. Not much left to bury."
"That's reassuring."
"It's supposed to be." Maya pointed to a route marked in red ink across the map. "This is your best approach to the southeastern deep zones. Follows the old survey roads for the first thirty kilometers, then you're on your own. Should take you about three days to reach Arthur's usual operating area, assuming you don't die, get lost, or decide to turn around and come home like a sensible person."
August studied the route. It wound through terrain that looked increasingly hostile the further it went from Edgeharbor. "What are these symbols?"
"Hazard markers. Blue triangles are reality distortion zones—places where physics works differently. Red circles are active Forsaken territories. Yellow squares are temporal anomalies—areas where time moves wrong." Maya tapped a cluster of symbols near the end of the route. "This whole section is basically a catalog of everything that can kill you in creative ways."
"And the purple zones?"
"Arthur sightings. The darker the purple, the more recent the encounter." Maya's finger traced a path through the deepest purple area. "This is where you're most likely to find him. It's also where you're most likely to wish you hadn't."
August made notes on a separate sheet of paper. Over the past week, Maya had been giving him a crash course in Disputed Zone survival, and his notebook was filling up with increasingly alarming information.
"Tell me about the reality distortion zones again," he said.
"Think of them as places where the laws of physics had a nervous breakdown. Gravity might work sideways. Time could flow backwards. You might walk through a door and find yourself underground, or in the sky, or somewhere that doesn't technically exist." Maya pulled out a folder of incident reports. "Last year, a survey team went into a Class Three distortion. They came back speaking a language nobody recognized, insisting they'd been gone for six months when they'd only been missing for two hours."
"Did they remember what happened?"
"They remembered being in a place where the sky was below them and water flowed upward. They also remembered meeting people who claimed to be their own descendants from a future that hadn't happened yet." Maya shrugged. "The psychological evaluation team is still working on that one."
August rubbed his forehead. "And my Foundation will protect me from this?"
"Maybe. Adaptive immunity works by analyzing threats and developing countermeasures. But if the threat is reality itself behaving incorrectly…" Maya shook her head. "Your Foundation might adapt, or it might just get confused and stop working entirely."
"Wonderful."
"Which brings us to the equipment list." Maya pulled out another document. "Standard survival gear—food, water, shelter, medical supplies. Plus specialized items for zone survival."
August read down the list, which included items like "reality anchor" and "temporal stabilizer" alongside more mundane things like rope and bandages.
"How much is this going to cost?" he asked.
"More than a message runner makes in six months. Fortunately, I know some people who owe me favors." Maya stood up and walked to a locked cabinet. "I've been collecting zone gear for years, just in case. Consider it a loan."
She began pulling out equipment that looked like it belonged in a science fiction movie. The reality anchor was a small device covered in crystalline components that hummed softly when activated. The temporal stabilizer looked like a pocket watch crossed with a compass, its needle spinning wildly before settling on what Maya claimed was "true present."
"This is the important one," Maya said, handing him a device that resembled a chunky wristwatch. "Personal emergency beacon. If you get into serious trouble, activate this and every monitoring station within a hundred kilometers will know exactly where you are."
"And then what?"
"Then we'll know where to look for your body."
August strapped the beacon to his wrist. "You're really not good at this encouraging thing."
"I'm not trying to encourage you. I'm trying to prepare you." Maya's expression was serious. "August, once you leave the city perimeter, you're going to be completely on your own in one of the most dangerous places on the continent. The equipment will help, but ultimately, your survival will depend on making good decisions under impossible circumstances."
"What qualifies as a good decision out there?"
"Anything that keeps you alive long enough to make the next decision." Maya returned to the maps. "The cardinal rule of zone survival is that your perceptions can't be trusted. You'll see things that aren't there, miss things that are, and encounter situations where the logical response will get you killed. When in doubt, trust your equipment over your senses."
August nodded, adding this to his growing list of survival rules.
"There's something else," Maya said, her voice dropping to almost a whisper. "Something I haven't told you about Arthur."
"What?"
"The monitoring stations track more than just energy signatures. We also monitor communication frequencies—radio chatter, emergency beacons, anything that might indicate human activity in the zones." Maya pulled up a display on her computer. "For the past six months, we've been picking up transmissions from the deep southeast. Very faint, very irregular, but definitely human origin."
"Arthur?"
"We think so. The signals are too distorted to decode, but the pattern suggests someone trying to communicate. The thing is…" Maya hesitated. "The signals have been getting weaker. More fragmented. Like whoever's sending them is… fading."
August felt a chill that had nothing to do with the room temperature. "Fading how?"
"We don't know. Could be equipment failure. Could be interference from zone activity. Or it could be that Arthur is… changing. Becoming something that can't maintain normal human communication." Maya met his eyes. "If that's the case, you might not find the person you're looking for. You might find something else entirely."
"Then I'll deal with something else entirely."
"And if that something else doesn't want to be found? If it sees you as a threat?"
August thought about his Foundation, about adaptive immunity and the power to survive anything once. "Then I guess I'll find out what my Foundation can really do."
Maya was quiet for a long moment. Then she pulled out one more item—a small journal bound in leather that looked like it had seen better decades.
"This belonged to someone who knew Arthur. Before the Severance Wars, before the power, before everything went wrong." She handed it to August. "Maybe it will help you remember who you're really trying to save."
August opened the journal to a random page and immediately recognized the handwriting—neat, careful, with the kind of precision that suggested someone who thought about every word before writing it.
Day 47: Still no sign of the others. The corruption is spreading faster than we anticipated. Sometimes I wonder if we're fighting the symptoms instead of the disease. Arthur thinks we can contain it, but I'm starting to believe containment was never the point. Maybe we're supposed to adapt instead of resist.
August looked up at Maya. "Who wrote this?"
"Someone who cared about Arthur enough to document his thoughts, his struggles, his hopes for the future." Maya's voice was soft. "Someone who believed Arthur could save the world, right up until the day Arthur stopped believing it himself."
August carefully closed the journal. "Thank you."
"Don't thank me. Just… try to come back, okay? I'd hate to think I helped you commit suicide by map and good intentions."
"I'll be careful."
"No, you won't. If you were careful, you wouldn't be doing this." Maya began gathering up the maps and equipment. "But maybe you'll be lucky. Sometimes that's enough."
As August prepared to leave, Maya called after him. "One more thing. When you find Arthur—if you find Arthur—remember that he's been alone out there for years. Alone with power that can reshape reality and problems that can't be solved by normal means. He might not be happy to see you."
"I know."
"Do you? Because this isn't a story where the hero gets saved by the power of friendship and good intentions. This is reality, and reality doesn't care about narrative satisfaction."
August paused at the door. "Then maybe it's time someone taught reality a few things about better storytelling."
Maya shook her head, but she was almost smiling. "You're either going to save Arthur Solvain or die trying. I'm not sure which outcome is more unlikely."
"I guess we'll find out."
August left the monitoring station with a pack full of equipment he barely understood, maps of territory that defied description, and a growing certainty that he was about to attempt something that would either be the most heroic thing he'd ever done, or the most elaborate suicide in recorded history.
Maybe both.
The sun was setting over Edgeharbor, painting the impossible sky in shades of gold and purple. Somewhere beyond the city limits, in zones where reality went to die, Arthur Solvain continued his solitary war against forces that August was only beginning to understand.
Tomorrow, August would begin his journey to find him.
Tonight, he was going to eat Marta's stew one more time and pretend he wasn't terrified of what he might discover in the wasteland beyond the world's edge.