Dol Mercer opened his second month in business with a problem he hadn't expected: too many customers.
The word-of-mouth network that had started with Mr. Chen's enchanted locks had spread through four residential buildings, a commercial office complex, and the artisan district's shared workshop space. Dol's reputation was built on three things that surface repair shops didn't offer: he showed up on time, he fixed things right the first time, and he charged fair prices.
"The other shops charge 8,000 gold for a barrier relay recalibration," Mr. Park told his neighbors. "Mercer charges 3,000. And his work holds for twice as long."
This was true, and it was the part that puzzled Dol.
His repairs lasted longer than they should. A standard relay recalibration held for three to four months before the dimensional degradation eroded the fix. Dol's recalibrations held for eight to ten months. He used the same tools, the same replacement parts, the same procedures. The only difference was him.
He noticed it first with the locks. A lock he repaired at Mr. Chen's apartment was still functioning perfectly six months later, while identical locks in the building repaired by other technicians had already degraded. Dol pulled the lock apart, examined it, and found that the crystal core -- the component that interfaced with the dimensional barrier network -- was vibrating at a higher frequency than he'd set it to.
The crystal was self-correcting. Not dramatically. A fraction of a hertz per week, drifting upward, toward optimal. As if something in the repair process had given the crystal a tendency to improve instead of degrade.
Dol didn't understand why. He attributed it to good parts selection and precise installation. "If you set the initial frequency right, the crystal maintains itself better," he told Joss over dinner.
But Joss had a different theory.
He visited the repair shop on Day One Hundred and Twelve, under the pretense of bringing lunch (Wes's wolf steak, still warm). Dol was at the workbench, disassembling a dimensional barrier relay from the office complex. His hands worked with the practiced ease of twenty years' experience, each motion economical and precise.
Joss activated Loot Sight. Not on a monster. On the relay unit.
The golden overlay appeared, but instead of a loot table, it showed the dimensional composition of the device -- the threads of game-system energy that powered the enchantment, the crystal core's frequency signature, and underneath it all, a faint trace of something else.
The pre-Merge substrate. The same energy that pushed against the barrier at Sector 12-Alpha. The same energy that hummed in Joss's chest. It was present in the relay unit -- not as a primary component, but as a residual imprint. A fingerprint.
Dol's fingerprint.
When Dol touched the relay, his hands imparted something to the crystal core. Not consciously. Not through the game system's Maintenance Worker class abilities. Through whatever latent capacity existed in his body -- the capacity that made his bones hum near dimensional anomalies, the capacity that had been suppressed when his class assessment was tampered with.
Anchor Guardian. The class that could interact with dimensional infrastructure. The class that someone had overridden and replaced with Maintenance Worker, D-Rank.
Dol Mercer was unconsciously performing Anchor Guardian functions every time he repaired an enchanted device. The crystals lasted longer because he was stabilizing them at a level below the game system's awareness. His repairs didn't just fix things. They healed them.
"Dad."
"Hmm?" Dol didn't look up from the relay.
"Your assessment. When you got your class. You said the process was strange."
"The assessor was nervous. Took twice as long as normal. Said my results were 'processing' for five minutes before finally displaying Maintenance Worker." He fitted a spring. "Why?"
"Did the display glitch? Flash anything before the final result?"
Dol stopped. Set the spring down. Looked at Joss.
"How did you know that?"
"What did it flash?"
"I only saw it for a second. Two words. I've never told anyone because it didn't make sense." He paused. "It said 'Anchor Guardian.' Then the screen went blank and came back with 'Maintenance Worker, D-Rank.'"
The room was very quiet. Dol's hands rested on the relay unit, flat and still.
"What's an Anchor Guardian?" he asked.
"A rare class. Possibly unique. It can interact with dimensional infrastructure -- sense instability, strengthen barriers, interface with the Merge's core systems."
"Interface with..."
"The stuff you do every day. The repairs that last longer than they should. The crystals that self-correct. The humming in your bones near dimensional anomalies." Joss leaned forward. "Dad, you're doing Anchor Guardian work without the class. Your body knows how to interact with dimensional energy. Someone suppressed the class and gave you Maintenance Worker instead."
"Who?"
"I don't know yet. But I'm going to find out."
Dol looked at his hands. The same hands that had fixed pipes in the underground for twenty years. The same hands that had carried Joss above the flood water. The same hands that disassembled enchanted locks with a precision that made master technicians look clumsy.
"I thought I was just good at fixing things," he said.
"You are good at fixing things. You're also something more."
Dol picked up the spring. Fitted it into the relay. The click of metal on metal was precise and final.
"I need to think about this," he said.
"Take your time."
"I always take my time." He looked at Joss. "But if someone tampered with my assessment -- if there's an organization that suppressed my class -- then they might know about you, too."
"What makes you say that?"
"Because whatever you're hiding behind that trader's face of yours, it's bigger than legendary gear and a successful shop. You don't visit your father's repair shop to bring lunch, Joss. You visit because you're looking for something. And you found it."
The trader's face held. Barely.
"I found you," Joss said. "The rest, I'm still looking."
Dol nodded. Went back to the relay. The conversation was over, but the information lingered in the space between them like a charge waiting to discharge.
---
That afternoon, Joss accessed the Field Ops Level 3 database and searched for "Anchor Guardian."
The search returned four results.
Result one: a dictionary entry in the class registry. "Anchor Guardian -- Rare. Combat/Support hybrid. Abilities: Dimensional Sensing, Barrier Reinforcement, Core Interface. Classification: Restricted. Note: All Anchor Guardian assessments are flagged for review by the Merge Advisory Board."
Result two: a redacted personnel file. Most of the text was blacked out. The visible sections read: "Subject: [REDACTED]. Assessment date: [REDACTED]. Original class: Anchor Guardian. Override authorized by: [REDACTED]. Reassigned class: [REDACTED]. Reason: [REDACTED]."
Result three: a statistical note in the Merge Advisory Board's annual report. "847 class overrides were authorized during the first six months post-Merge, affecting underground citizens exclusively. Override justification: 'National security considerations.' Override authority: [REDACTED]."
847. Eight hundred and forty-seven underground citizens whose class assessments were tampered with. All underground. All overridden for "national security."
Result four: a single line in the Field Ops founding charter, the same document Wuan had shown him. "Anchor Points are maintained through the interaction of the Overseer's maintenance cycle and the passive dimensional resonance of Anchor-class entities."
Anchor-class entities. The barriers weren't maintained by engineering alone. They were maintained by people -- people with Anchor Guardian classes whose passive dimensional resonance strengthened the dimensional infrastructure just by being near it.
And someone had suppressed 847 of them.
Joss sat at the terminal and stared at the screen. 847 overrides. All underground citizens. His father was one of them. There were 846 others, scattered across the underground, living as Maintenance Workers and Laborers and Seamstresses, their true abilities locked behind a classification stamp and a lie.
The barriers were failing. The Fog was getting stronger. The system was running out of power to maintain itself. And somewhere in the city's underground, 847 people who could help stabilize the dimensional infrastructure were fixing pipes and sewing clothes because someone had decided they were too dangerous to be what they were.
Joss closed the database. Stood up. Walked out of the outpost into the evening air.
The Fog was rolling in. 6:30 PM. Right on schedule. The green-gray mist covered the world beyond the walls with the mechanical precision of a machine that didn't know it was dying.
847 people.
He needed to find them. He needed to find out who had suppressed them and why. And he needed to do it before the barriers failed and all of it became academic.
The university exam was tomorrow. The answers he needed were behind the walls of Shikang University, in the department of a professor who studied the Overseer, on top of a sealed dimensional rift that pulsed with the same energy that hummed in his chest.
Joss went home. Ate dinner. Studied until midnight. Fell asleep to the sound of his mother's tomato plants rustling on the balcony and his father's steady silence from the next room.
Tomorrow, the exam. Then the real work would begin.
