The New Life Sect headquarters was in complete chaos.
Hundreds of people rushed from desk to desk, crossing entire wings of the Massachusetts State House just to deliver critical information where it needed to go. The building's electronics were under siege from both technological and cultivation based attacks. DDoS assaults hammered the NLS servers while multiple long-range array formations interfered with communication artifacts.
This coordinated assault had reduced their communication capabilities to unsecured radios for long-distance contact and physical runners for everything else. Within the State House itself, even short range communications required hand-to-hand delivery, turning the once efficient headquarters into a frantic relay race of messengers and paperwork.
Under the golden dome of this fortress of panic sat a timid, wiry-looking man, nearly buried beneath towering stacks of paperwork. More documents continued to pile up on his desk faster than he could process them.
He wore broken glasses with the left lens long since shattered, and a mop of black hair that fell almost completely over the remaining frame, obscuring most of his face.
He was typing away at a laptop covered in various stickers and decals, working on what appeared to be a supplies allocation request that was nearing completion.
Just as he reached for the print button to send it to the hardwired pr inter in the corner of his desk, his laptop slammed shut on his fingers, causing him to yelp in surprise and pain.
Looking up, he saw a very familiar and very angry face looming over him.
"Outer Resident Lee! Why are you the only person in this entire building who has this much paperwork on his desk?"
A man with a stern, chubby face loomed over Alex Lee. His receding hairline gleamed brilliantly under the fluorescent lights, reflecting the beads of sweat covering his forehead.
Alex looked down to his lap and was beginning to stammer out a response when another stack of papers landed on his desk from a passing worker.
A vein began to bulge on the angry man's forehead as he watched the stack hit Alex's desk.
"I'm going as fast as I can, Inner Resident Miles. I swear I am," Alex said quietly, speaking downward into his desk, seemingly too afraid to make eye contact.
"But I will go faster!"
Inner Resident Miles sighed heavily. "If this is your self-proclaimed fastest, then I'm reassigning you."
Alex looked up with wide eyes.
"I have no combat capabilities! Please don't send me to the front! I won't be able to help!" He spoke in a fast stammer, as if his mind couldn't keep up with his words. "I-I'll be more of a nuisance there! You have to know that!"
Miles rolled his eyes.
"Of course I know that. You're not even able to be a runner, which is what I really need right now. So until then, you'll be on guard duty."
Miles began walking around to the other side of Alex's desk while talking.
"Don't worry, you won't be expected to hunt anyone down if they escape. Just provide food and sound the alarm if an escape does happen."
Alex quickly grabbed his now-closed laptop just in time and shoved it into a satchel hanging from the side of his chair.
Just as he finished, Miles grabbed the handles behind Alex's seat and began wheeling him backward away from his desk.
Alex always hated this helplessness. Since the "Day of Awakening", or whatever people are calling it, people tended to just push him places without asking.
As they rolled away from the desk, the full picture became clear: Alex sat in a classic hospital wheelchair. Obviously not as comfortable as a personalized one, but you take what you can get when the world's supply chain collapses.
Stickers and decals covered the wheelchair frame, very similar to those on his laptop. Different band logos and programming language icons dotted the metal, turning the medical equipment into something uniquely his own.
Even though he'd acquired everything through bartering or flea markets, and true, he didn't know half the bands on the stickers, it felt good to have something that was truly his. Everything else in his life, his apartment, food, clothes, even his basic mobility, was provided by the NLS. But these small decorations were something that belonged to him alone.
As they moved through the corridors, Inner Resident Miles began explaining exactly what was happening.
EPS scouts had been captured and were being transported to headquarters for interrogation. This wasn't entirely unusual, but apparently there were spies within the NLS ranks that were captured as well. Alex's role would be to pose as a weak, harmless guy that the prisoners might confide in or accidentally leak secrets to.
If there was good cop and bad cop, Alex realized his role would be "pity cop."
It didn't feel great, but even before losing the use of his legs during the Day of Awakening, he'd never been particularly imposing.
Before long, the two of them had made their way to the elevator that would take them to the basement of the Massachusetts State House.
As the main headquarters of the NLS, the building's cleanliness and craftsmanship made it seem as though no time had passed since before the awakening. Everything was pristine, well-maintained, and fully functional.
The contrast was stark. Throughout the Outer Residences, water damage, rodents, and insects plagued the buildings. When winter approached, some didn't even have working heaters. The NLS's solution was simple: with the reduced population, they just moved Outer Residents to different buildings. There were plenty to spare.
The Inner Residences, however, had crews of Outer Residents whose sole job was maintaining everything for the Inners. It was a system Alex had always despised, but right now he was just grateful that the elevator worked and he wouldn't have to slide himself down multiple flights of stairs.
The elevator ride was tense, to say the least.
Miles stood quietly behind Alex, and Alex swore he could feel holes being drilled into the back of his head. It was probably just his imagination, though.
'Why would an Inner concern himself with me?' Alex began to ponder as the elevator continued downward. 'He's probably thinking about what he wants for lunch. Yeah, that's it. I'm not important enough for him to spare a thought.'
The self-deprecating internal monologue continued until the elevator opened, greeting him with the sound of roaring machines.
Before everything went wrong, this basement had housed power generators. Now it served mostly the same purpose, but arrays covered the walls and floors throughout the space. It wasn't as busy as the ground floor, but Array Smiths scurried around like ants maintaining a nest, correcting failures in the arrays and repairing where age had worn them down.
Alex was actually one of many failed Array Smiths in the NLS. He had enrolled in the program after his previous boss "volunteered" him for it. The logic was simple: if you can't walk, find something you can do while sitting.
It wasn't bad reasoning, so Alex had thrown himself into his studies. He'd actually been the top student in the theory portion of the classes, memorizing countless array characters and the patterns used to implement them.
However, theoretical knowledge only helped if you could excel in the practical application of arrays. Given that he was now being escorted to serve as a prison guard, it was clear he'd been terrible at the hands-on work.
He had never managed to activate a single array successfully, so he was quickly kicked out of the program. Ever since then, he'd been pushing papers at headquarters, watching others succeed where he had failed.
He was glancing at the arrays all around him when Miles suddenly stopped.
"Alright, Outer Resident Lee, this is where you'll be working."
Inner Resident Miles gestured toward an isolated corner of the generator room. There stood a large steel door that definitely hadn't been there when the world was still normal.
Leaving Alex where he was, Miles approached the door and, after fumbling with some keys, swung it open. The entrance revealed a long hallway flanked on either side by eight similar doors.
The only difference was that these doors had small flaps built into them.
Alex stared through the doorway in wonder. 'Wow, I didn't think actual jail cells had food slots, but now that I think about it, I guess it makes sense.'
Alex slowly began pushing himself forward with the wheels of his chair.
As he approached the doorway, he felt something strange begin to happen. The Qi throughout his body started to circulate violently, completely beyond his control!
It began to overwhelm him almost immediately.
Before he could feel too scared, Miles began to speak.
"No need to fret. Out in the hallway here, you're just getting Qi backwash from the arrays inside each of the cells."
As he spoke, Miles walked over to one of the cells and opened it with the same key ring.
Wheeling over quickly and pushing through the uncomfortable sensation, Alex peered into the cell. It contained just a single bed and a five-gallon bucket. No bed frame, no mirror and sink, and he had to assume the bucket served as the toilet.
But that wasn't what captured most of his attention. After scanning the room, he looked up at the ceiling and saw one of the most complicated arrays he'd encountered in his life.
Concentric circles blossomed from the center of the ceiling, intertwined with perpendicular straight lines and triangles throughout. Glyphs and scripts flowed along the curves and angles with a precision that boggled his mind.
He couldn't help but remember looking at circuit boards of his old home computer. Everything there has a purpose but there is just so much that it seems like magic.
Focusing his vision, Alex began to make out some small details of what this array accomplished.
The first thing he noticed was that the array drew power from anyone inside the circle and the residual Qi they gave off. This wasn't unusual, most arrays required some sort of starting energy, whether ambient Qi from the air or, for more intensive arrays, actual Qi from a living being.
But what shocked him most was that this array was doing both, and to an insane degree!
If the innermost circle was the initializer, then every other glyph, circle, and straight line was being used to drain all the Qi from this room, effectively creating a null zone. No Qi in and no Qi out.
The sensation he'd felt when entering the hallway wasn't violent Qi like the reports he'd read from the EPS front lines. No, it was the natural Qi of the atmosphere hitting a solid wall, being rebuffed, and causing roiling waves throughout the hallway.
Miles began to chuckle with a patronizing air while looking down at Alex's stunned expression.
"I knew you'd be the only paper-pusher up there to really appreciate this level of craftsmanship."
Alex looked at Miles with absolute glee painted on his face, a wide toothy smile replacing his previous scared expression.
Miles cleared his throat and continued in a matter-of-fact tone, as if explaining something obvious to a child. "Now don't get any foolish ideas. If you go in there, your legs won't magically be fixed. Your meridians are still damaged regardless of whether Qi is inside them or not."
Alex's smile dipped slightly.
He hadn't even thought of that. He had long given up hope of walking again, but Miles' casual dismissal still stung.
Alex solemnly nodded, and Miles closed the door with an air of finality.
"Now," Miles began as he finished locking the door, "you will be eating, sleeping, and shitting in this hallway."
He moved behind Alex again and began pushing him toward the far end of the hallway, away from the entrance. At the end stood another steel door, but this one had no food slot, similar to the entrance.
Moving around to face Alex once more, Miles produced the key ring and opened this final door.
Inside was essentially the luxury version of the cell he had just seen. There was a desk with notebooks, pens, and an old timey landline on top, a bed with an actual frame positioned in the corner, and what appeared to be a compact shower-toilet combination unit.
It was certainly better than the prisoner cells, but Alex couldn't help feeling deflated. He had spent so long making his apartment in Cambridge feel like home and ensuring it was wheelchair accessible.
Now he would have to go through the exhausting process of adapting a new space to his needs all over again.
Alex gave a soft smile and glanced over at Miles, still ensuring he wasn't making direct eye contact.
"Thank you for making this accommodation. I will be sure to stay on guard as long as I am here."
Miles snorted and pointed to the phone on the desk.
"Your only job here is to stay in this room and pick up that phone when there's a problem. Report if a prisoner is seriously attempting an escape or if they're hurting themselves."
He began pushing Alex further into the room while speaking.
"And as for food and clearing the buckets - that's someone else's job."
After a beat of silence with Alex staring at the wall, Miles violently spun Alex around, nearly making him spill out of his chair. Miles crouched down to head level with Alex and stared at him directly in the eyes.
"And if anyone says anything to each other, I want you to write it down. No matter how insignificant it may seem."
Alex quickly averted eye contact and nodded like a child being scolded.
"Yes sir, Inner Resident Miles! I will make sure to do that!"
Before Miles could respond, a pager on his belt began buzzing insistently. He unclipped it and read the short message before chuckling to himself.
"Well, looks like perfect timing. We have the first three coming down right now!"