“Not my agency, Jeremy,” said Belinda, shaking her head. “The President himself has seen this file and ordered that the Technomancer be taken out. We’ve just been waiting for an opportunity. The Technomancer is in with some seriously bad people. For a long time, he was on our radar as a low-level goon with black market connections, but he’s gone too far now. These cyborg experiments… we think he’s working with a foreign power to get the details and the parts for this horrific tinkering. He’s become a risk to national security, as well as a menace to the vulnerable. He needs to be taken out, but it needs to be done quietly, so that whoever he’s working with doesn’t realize we’re onto them. What better way than for him to quietly disappear right here?”

“It’s not murder, dear,” said Kyrine kindly, “it’s feeding. I’m so hungry, and this villain’s approach is the perfect opportunity to gather new power to myself.”

“Kyrine is right,” said Astrid. “The dungeon needs to grow in power, and quickly. Most of the time, it will be enough to just entice adventurers in with the promise of rewards. They will expend mana, gain rewards, and go away happy. But just now, Kyrine needs a bigger boost than what she’d get from adventurers expending mana. The Technomancer’s arrival gives us a perfect opportunity to give the dungeon the boost she needs, while wiping out a particularly nasty villain in the process.”

I looked around at the three faces turned to me, Astrid, Belinda, and Kyrine. I had to admit I could see their point.

“All right,” I said, “you got me there. After all, this guy sounds like an asshole of the very first order, and he’s already tried to kill me once this week. I guess I owe it to him to return the favor. Perhaps we might get some clue about his connection to PentaTech while he’s here. But listen, how long do we have until he arrives? From what you said, it didn’t sound like he was in a hurry.”

Astrid and Belinda looked relieved that I was seeing things from their point of view, while Kyrine smiled at me proudly. Belinda answered my question, looking at the smartwatch on her wrist. “There’s no suggestion he’s hurrying to get here. It’s probable that he doesn’t know exactly where the mansion is yet. I think we will have some time yet, probably several hours at least. It’s a pity we can’t be in more direct contact with headquarters…”

“I will know as soon as anyone even touches the outer wall,” Kyrine said reassuringly. “There’s no possibility of us being taken by surprise.”