The barracks loomed ahead, a sturdy stone building lit by flickering torches. Evan moved cautiously, his heightened senses scanning for signs of danger or surveillance. His nanites had recalibrated from the exertion of earlier, but he could still feel the drain on his energy reserves.
He reached into his tunic and touched another of his hidden devices - a small disc that resembled the simplest wooden medallion. It was actually an advanced medical scanner, capable of delivering fine-grained biological information about any one in range. With mental command, he activated it. Streams of data began to flow through his neural interface.
The guard at the door straightened up as Evan approached. "State your business".
"I'm here to see Marcus," Evan said, allowing the scanner to scan the guard's biological signatures. No sign of the Aether contamination he'd seen earlier, but there were other anomalies in the readings that troubled him.
Marcus came out a few minutes later, his condition far worse than when they'd met at the gate. Evan's scanner confirmed his initial diagnosis: a severe infection complicated by unusual energy patterns in his cellular structure.
"Follow me, Marcus growled, moving Evan to a small private room. When the door closed behind him, the guard's mask of stone broke. "The pain. It's getting worse. And there is something else. Dreams. Dreams of blue light and floating cities."
Evan's sensor crystal thrummed with response to those words. He dug another piece of equipment from his backpack; a small metal cube which looked more like a puzzle box. He manipulated it subtly, and a privacy field sprang up around them, preventing any noise of their conversation from finding its way into anyone's ears.
"Tell me about these dreams," he said, preparing a more conventionally appearing herbal remedy to keep up the charade. The scanner kept feeding him data, revealing patterns that shouldn't exist in this medieval simulation.
Marcus spoke of visions that sounded hauntingly similar to memories of Habellion—though that was impossible for a human born in simulation. As he spoke, Evan stirred the herbs with a carefully measured dose of medical nanites from his secret stashes.
"The fever makes me see things," Marcus went on. "Patterns in the air, like flowing water made of light. The other guards think I'm going mad."
"You're not mad," Evan said to him, giving him the medicine. The nanites would heal the infection while simultaneously altering Marcus's ability to perceive Aether energy, hopefully preventing any more complications. "But you have to be careful who you tell about these visions."
As he worked, Evan's mind ran through all the possibilities. The infection had made Marcus somehow sensitive to Aether energy, much like the woman in the square. Was this a symptom of the simulation's degradation or something more deliberate?
"There have been others," Marcus said quietly, as the medication took effect. "People seeing things they shouldn't. The church calls it divine revelation, but. "he trailed off. "There are stories about the cathedral. Mysterious lights in the highest tower. People entering, and then not coming out again."
Now the ambient energy spiked sharply into a broad blip on Evan's scanner. He flipped on a second hidden device-this was a copper ring that could help him visualize the flow better. What he saw sent no comfort: waves were emitted from the cathedral, yet with an unnatural regularity suggesting technology.
"How long has this been going on?" he asked, adjusting the flow of nanites in Marcus's treatment to provide better protection against Aether exposure.
"The dreams? A few weeks. But the lights in the cathedral? Those started months ago, after they brought in the new relics."
"Relics?"
Marcus nodded; his eyes dropped slowly, giving fully to the effect of the drug. "Ancient relics. found in the ruined town outside the city limits. The High Priest says it's holy relics from the miraculous age, but.".
Evan waited for Marcus to be fully asleep, then pulled out a last device from his arsenal: a small crystal sphere that appeared to be just another common fortune-teller's globe. In reality, it was a sophisticated quantum scanner capable of detecting technological signatures through solid matter.
He dialed it up, orienting it to the direction of the cathedral. The readings it spat back confirmed his suspicions: something like advanced technology was locked inside the ancient structure. Advanced technology, by rights, shouldn't exist in this medieval simulation.
The implications were nothing less than mind-boggling. The simulation, either somehow generated its own Habellion technology, or someone-or something-brought some Habellion devices in from the outside. Neither alternative boded well.
The remainder of Marcus's injuries was taken care of by Evan with an enlightened combination of simple medicine and tender manipulation of Aether; and the guard would recover to present once more as only a gifted healer, but Evan's head had long since gone on to better things.
He had to see them in that cathedral. If they were what he suspected-toys from an actual Habellion world machine-the possible answers could lie within the unstable factors between worlds. But that meant breaking into the religious center of this world.
As he packed away his supplies, carefully concealing his advanced devices among more period-appropriate tools, Evan reviewed his assets. He had healing abilities that would be seen as miraculous in this world. Combat enhancements that made him nearly unstoppable in physical confrontations. And a collection of advanced technology disguised as simple trinkets, each waiting to be used at the right moment.
But he also held questions that multiplied with every passing hour. How had Habellion technology infiltrated simulation? Why did people like Marcus start remembering things hardly experienced? And most importantly of all, who or what was using this cathedral in order to maneuver the flow of this world's Aether?
The night was deep, and his neural interface reported that his energy reserves were running low. He needed rest, but he needed a plan as well. Tomorrow would bring more battles and more challenges, and he needed to be prepared without giving away too much of his real self.
As he walked out of the barracks, his sensor crystal pulsed with an urgency he had never felt before. Something was building in this medieval city—a convergence of technology, faith, and power that threatened to tear apart the barriers between reality and simulation.
And Evan, the E-ranked medic from a dying world, was the only one who could stop it.