‘And I was having such a nice day,’ John thought as he hurried over to the military base on Guild Hall territory. Rather than have Ted give him the entirety of the intel immediately, John had called for an emergency meeting with the generals. A select few other individuals were also in the room. Advisors, governors of affected areas, and high-ranking officers, for the most part.

It took over an hour to cobble all of that together. The most notable people in that room were John, Nia, Scarlett, the generals Chemilia and Ted, Alice, and, joining them via video conference, Ahanu, Elu and Wendy. All of them were looking at a map at the centre of the room, showing the border of the Death Zone. It was layered, courtesy of the exact line across which people started disappearing being unknown. John wondered how far they would have to adjust it today.

“Alright, everyone is here,” he started the meeting. “Tell me exactly what happened.”

“Step by step,” Scarlett added, blowing smoke out of the window she was purposefully seated by. “If you want the best analysis, give us the facts.” That ruffled some feathers with the present military intel team, but Scarlett had never cared much to be agreeable. “Stop your grumbling, this is about effectiveness. Lives are on the line.”

“Just start,” John demanded, before any time could be wasted.

Chemilia took the lead, moving over the table. It was, essentially, one large touch screen and it was hooked up to several other screens that hung from the stone walls of black and deep red. The Fusion Fortress was equipped with all kinds of modern gadgets that made planning an easier affair. The people witnessing the planning could do so via one of several cameras in the room. Scarlett's personal programs were ensuring their cyber security, and if that failed, there were always covers and mufflers applied to the appliances between uses.

There was one potential security breach, however, and that was Undine. Unlike John and Salamander, who had removed the Lorylim infection in their own ways, the water spirit was still contaminated to some minor degree. For all they knew, the parasitic horrors could still listen in through John, even if they could no longer manipulate him, but it was prudent to isolate Undine for the moment. The abysstide elemental was out of hearing range and kept her mind to herself just as much as she was shut out by the others.

With a stylus in her hand, Chemilia tapped on an area beyond the eastern border of the Death Zone. “Ever since the Gestalt affair, and especially after the New Libraria conflict, Fusion had troops alongside the Death Zone borders. The majority of the forces have been stationed more than fifty kilometres away from the border, but a subsection was placed a mere one kilometre away. That subsection was our scouting force and they were to report any developments in their areas that seemed out of the ordinary.”

John and most of the present people nodded along with the reminder. This was the formation they had agreed on and it had been without issue since they put it in place one and a half months ago.

“Last Wednesday this changed; a contingent along the Florida border stopped reporting.” Chemilia circled the corresponding area on the map.

“Why was I not informed of this then?” John demanded to know. On Wednesday, he had done absolutely nothing aside from playing video games. “This is exactly the kind of crisis that justified interrupting my vacation.”

“There was no need to,” Chemilia told him, brushing her pale pink hair back. “This was a situation outlined in our emergency protocols in regards to the Death Zone.” John was ready to complain further, but ceased when the general raised her hand. “Please, hear us out first. You can decide afterwards whether you being in the know would have changed anything.”

“…Fine,” John conceded. Little as he liked it that there were important ongoings in his realm that he didn’t know about, this was the unpleasant reality of a growing nation. As long as he was clued in when it became an issue, that was all he could ask for.

“Because it was only a specific group along the border that disappeared, we followed three different segments of the protocol. First, we stayed tuned for any attempts of the group to reach out to us besides the dedicated channels. It could have been a mere equipment failure, after all. At the same time, we sent another group to check on the last documented location of the missing soldiers. Foreign meddling was the second option we were worried about.”

“What about the other soldiers among the border?” someone else in the room asked.

“They received no additional orders,” Chemilia responded.

“You have reason to believe that the Death Zone is expanding and you didn’t tell them to fall back?”

“At this moment of time, we only knew that there was a specific area along the Florida border where an irregular phenomenon was occurring.” Chemilia tapped her boots audibly on the solid stone floor. “I know what you are getting at. Yes, we were willing to sacrifice the lives of soldiers along the border. The only way to know where the Death Zone starts and ends is to lose people to it. We either sacrifice some for accurate information or throw all into the unknown abyss later. We decided to keep the soldiers in place for this moment.”

“The reality of warfare,” Nia added. Since she was a general herself, the pariah would have known about all of this already. That she deemed it unnecessary to tell John about this eased his mind a little bit. For all her oddities, the blonde was highly effective at cost-benefit analysis, especially in the military context.

John sighed and waited for things to continue. Obviously, he wasn’t happy about the missing, and likely dead, soldiers. It was, however, part of the job to subject oneself to this kind of risk. They would get their honours for their sacrifice in time.

“The search party arrived on Thursday evening. They were in continuous communication as they searched around the perimeter. Since they were inside for several hours, we grew more confident that this was a foreign meddling situation and the search party agreed to remain in the area to search for clues. However, on Sunday they suddenly vanished.” Chemilia looked over to Ted, who pressed a button on his phone and caused a horrible crackling sound to be played from the boxes. It played for about three seconds, then came to an abrupt end. “The original was much louder.”

“Teleportation interference,” John stated the obvious. Signals didn’t like it at all when they were pulled through spatial contortions and the resulting interference was distinct from more traditional issues with communication. Faking it was theoretically possible, but Occam’s Razor suggested that the simpler explanation was the more likely one. “Previous reports on people that have vanished in the Death Zone has indicated teleportation interference as well, so the pattern fits.”

“We came to the same conclusion,” Chemilia continued the report. “We are still not sure why it took over three days for the soldiers to vanish. Regardless, we monitored the situation for a couple more hours. As other groups along the border started vanishing without a clearly established pattern, we gave the command for everyone to fall back four kilometres from their current position. They remain there as of this moment.”

“So, the Death Zone is expanding at random segments at a rate of a kilometre every couple of days?” John summarized.

“That is the best we can currently surmise, yes,” Chemilia confirmed.

The Gamer stood up and checked where the soldiers had gone missing. “Scarlett, come over here,” he told the Technomancer, who did as asked. “Can you layer me a map of the measured leylines on top?”

“That’s going to take a minute,” Scarlett told him. “I’ll have to find the latest maps, cut out the correct segment, hope that the resolution is high enough and… done.”

“Didn’t know that a minute was only ten seconds long,” John dared to joke a little bit, while checking on his hunch. Obviously, Fusion had no data of what was going on inside the Death Zone, but for their own territory, they had measured the path of the leylines a while ago. It was vital to prevent any Natural Barriers from gestating some monster that could turn into a large issue.

The overlap on the map was only minor and could have been pure coincidence. “That’s not it,” Scarlett commented the obvious.

“Yeah…” John agreed and looked at other markers on the map, “…give me a geographical map.”

Scarlett switched and they both clicked their tongue at the same time. “What?” Chemilia wanted to know.

“The disappearing regiments were all close to sizable rivers. The Death Zone is going upstream.”

“Except the first expansion,” Scarlett added. “Looks like that one is going along the coastline. It’s attracted to the ocean.” The Technomancer took a long huff of her cigarette. “Seems like we identified one of the reasons for the Death Zone’s odd shape. Whatever magic it uses orients itself on water.”

“Yes…” The Gamer rubbed his chin. “The speed of expansion is not exactly worrying. At one kilometre every couple days, it will take it forever to get anywhere important. Regardless, we should act as early as possible. It will only become harder to get further inside the more we let it grow.”

“You are proposing we take care of this immediately?” Chemilia asked.

“We have to, I won’t let this threat resume and run the risk that its growth may accelerate.” John told her. “More specifically, I will personally lead an attack on the Death Zone.”

“Mister President, are you sure this is wise?” one of the advisors asked. “Your power is what keeps Fusion secure and unified. If you get lost charging into unknown territory...”

Scarlett extinguished her cigarette by dropping it on the stone floor and stomping it out. “There’s no option for proper scouting operations, so the only option to even hope to get any intel is for John to send the Mandala Sphere in,” the Technomancer reported.

“What she said.” John nodded. “I won’t invade personally, at least in the first wave. I’ll send my double, Aclysia and Beatrice. Perhaps they can gather some intel and teleport in, before I take the rest of my girls with me to lead the proper attack.” He sighed and rolled his neck. “I don’t like jumping headfirst into danger and, yes, Fusion will probably collapse should I die. More than an obligation to maintain our new nation, we have an obligation to leave an habitable continent, though. The last thing we want is the Death Zone to cover all of North America.”

The advisor lowered his head and conceded the point.

“Alright, Chemilia, Ted, Elu, I want you three to draft a strategy that keeps our army as an observation ring around the Death Zone and keeps them retreating in accordance with expected expansion. No storming of the area until we know just exactly where these teleports go.” They nodded and he rose from his seat. “Inform every member of Parliament that we are having an emergency session tomorrow. Include a breakdown of the chain of events in the mail. Send the information to the press eight hours later.”

“Yes, sir,” the leader of the military’s intel team answered dutifully.

“I’ll send Jack out right now. We’ll have another strategy meeting in roughly two days, to discuss what my double finds. Until then, dismissed.”