All in all, Luca thought that Ontario had been interesting.

  Caleb's team met the specs. Four people from some remote corner of northern Ontario, the kind of place where the nearest hospital was two hours away and the System had been the first exciting thing to happen in decades. They'd clawed their way from local portals to the Moon to Mars, hit sixty, and now they were stuck, hungry for more.

  Luca liked them. Meera, their data analyst, had the sharp-eyed intensity of someone who actually wanted to understand the System and exploit it. Ash could apparently keep a vehicle running through thick and thin. Sophie knew hull integrity better than most engineers twice her age, while Caleb, their leader and medic, kept them patched up with the confidence of someone who'd earned his leadership the hard way.

  The dinner conversation had gone well. Ryan and Chris's portal stories about level 64 portals had them leaning forward like kids hearing about buried treasure. They asked the right questions about duties, expectations, and chain of command, and they accepted the answers without negotiating. By the time dessert arrived, Luca could tell they were already sold.

  "We're not making promises tonight," Luca said. "This is just a conversation. But your skills align with what we need, and you've got the right attitude."

  Caleb's jaw tightened, and Luca saw determination there, not disappointment. "We'll be ready when you call."

  That was the thing about people from nowhere. They didn't have anything holding them back.

  The next meeting was three hours north, three hours in a frozen rental SUV with a heater that couldn't keep up with the wind, all for a team that Sabine had flagged as "high priority."

  The Aurora Rangers had a headquarters that looked like it belonged in a design magazine, all glass and steel rising out of the snow. Solar panels covered the roof, and the lobby had actual art on the walls.

  A charter bus was unloading when they pulled up. Teenagers in matching gear poured out, laughing and shoving each other while instructors with clipboards herded them toward the entrance.

  It hit him then. This wasn't a team headquarters. This was a leveling resort.

  The lobby confirmed it. Registration desks were staffed by cheerful employees in branded polo shirts, and digital displays showed portal schedules and difficulty ratings. A gift shop in the corner sold Aurora Rangers merchandise. Parents in expensive winter coats stood around drinking lattes while their kids got fitted with armor mods.

  Luca felt his jaw tighten. Three hours of driving for this.

  The team matched their building, professional and polished. They had a UER commission to manage the regional portals and contracts with three different mining operations. Good money, steady work, and zero hunger.

  "Two years?" Their leader, a woman named Diane, raised an eyebrow like Luca had suggested she eat glass. "Off-world? No thanks."

  "The opportunity to break the level cap," Emily said. "Access to portals you can't reach from the solar system."

  "We're comfortable where we are." Diane's smile was polite but final. "The business is good. The work is steady. We've built something here."

  Right. They'd built a summer camp for rich kids.

  Luca smiled and nodded through forty minutes of tour he didn't want, looking at facilities he didn't care about, listening to success metrics that meant nothing. Diane was proud of what she'd made. She should be. It was impressive, if your ambition ended at profitability.

  Back in the cold, walking to the SUV, Ryan muttered, "What the hell was Sabine thinking?"

  "Maybe they were different once," Danny said. "People change."

  Six hours of driving for forty minutes of polite rejection, all for a team that was never going to say yes because they'd already gotten everything they wanted.

  Luca needed a better system.

  The Granite Hawk was where they'd left it, no signs of anyone trying their luck this time. Luca ran through the pre-flight while the others piled in, their breath still visible in the cabin as the heating kicked in.

  Luca lifted off, watching the frozen landscape shrink beneath them. Snow and endless white, broken only by the occasional road cutting through like a scar. Beautiful, in a hostile sort of way. He could see why some people would want to stay.

  But he wasn't one of them.

  Two years was a long time. They needed crew who wanted it badly enough to leave everything behind.

  Luca hoped Chicago would deliver.

  Gary Chicago International Airport was small and mostly empty when they touched down. Luca had expected to park the Granite Hawk and call for a ride, maybe find another airfield manager who moonlighted as the entire transportation department.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  What he hadn't expected was Sabine.

  She stood on the tarmac in a dark coat, checking her watch as they powered down. When Luca stepped off the ramp, she looked up and nodded.

  "Right on time."

  "Sabine?" Luca stopped at the bottom of the ramp. "I didn't know you'd be here."

  "Change of plans." She tucked the watch away. "Karen thought it made sense to centralize. Instead of you flying all over the region, we're bringing teams to you."

  It was a good idea. Obvious, even. They'd wasted six hours on the Aurora Rangers, and that was just one bad meeting. Multiply that across dozens of prospects scattered from Minnesota to Texas, and you had weeks of travel for conversations that might last thirty minutes.

  Emily pushed past him and pulled Sabine into a hug. The older woman accepted it with the awkward tolerance of someone who wasn't built for physical affection but understood it was part of the deal.

  "It's good to see you," Emily said.

  "You too." Sabine patted her back twice and stepped away. "Let's get moving. I've got a car waiting."

  Luca watched them walk toward the terminal, Sabine already pulling out her tablet to show Emily something. He should be grateful.

  He was grateful. Mostly.

  The hotel was downtown, nicer than the Northern Inn by about a thousand percent. Sabine had booked them a block of rooms on the same floor, with a conference suite they could use for meetings.

  "Five interviews lined up for tomorrow," Sabine said as they rode the elevator up. "Three the day after. More coming in through the week."

  "That's a lot of people," Danny said.

  Luca agreed, yet she wasn't wrong. Eight interviews in three days was efficient. It just wasn't what they'd talked about.

  Young teams, they'd told Karen. People our age. People who fit our dynamic.

  The first interview was that evening.

  Luca noticed the age difference immediately. The team waiting for them in the hotel bar looked like they had lifetimes of experience between them. Mid-forties at the youngest, maybe even pushing fifty. Not that there was anything wrong with that, they likely had the experience and discipline to survive deep space.

  Yet, part of him wondered how a forty-five-year-old was going to feel taking orders from a twenty-year-old captain.

  This wasn't what they'd asked for.

  The team leader was a woman named Amari. She had close-cropped gray hair and a scar running along her jawline. Her handshake was firm enough to hurt.

  "Captain Rossi," she said. "Heard a lot about you."

  "Good things, I hope."

  "Interesting things." She sat down and gestured for her team to do the same. "Let's talk."

  They'd come up from Englewood, survived the gangs, and lifted the whole neighborhood up with them. Portal after portal, clearing the overflow while everyone else ran, building an adventuring company from the ruins.

  "You get used to it," Amari said when Luca asked about running portals without support. "We never had much help from anyone else, so it's just been us and the portals. Every level we've gained, every skill we've learned, it's all been hard-earned."

  These weren't people who'd had anything handed to them. Luca respected that. He also noticed the way Amari's eyes kept flicking to Ryan, to Chris, to Emily, sizing them up the way you'd size up anyone you might have to trust with your life.

  She wasn't sizing up Luca the same way.

  She was sizing him up the way you'd size up a boss.

  "So," Amari said, leaning back in her chair. "You're what, twenty? Twenty-one?"

  "Twenty."

  "My daughter's twenty." Her expression gave nothing away. "She's level thirty-two. Runs the portals back home."

  Luca felt the conversation shift, not hostile but honest in the way of people who didn't have time for bullshit.

  "You pulled Englewood up," Luca said. "Portal by portal. Built something from nothing." He held her gaze. "That's what we're doing out there. Not just running portals for loot and levels. We're building the road for everyone who comes after. First footprints on new worlds." He leaned forward. "You want to keep clearing overflows from Chicago, that's fine and good work. But if you want to build something bigger than a neighborhood, something that changes what humanity can become, that's what we're offering."

  Amari studied him for a long moment. Then something shifted in her face, not quite a smile but close enough.

  "Fair enough." She nodded slowly. "Fair enough."

  The conversation continued with stories of portal runs gone sideways and creative solutions to stay alive. Emily took notes. Ryan and Zoe asked questions. By the end, Luca could see it working.

  But he'd learned something. These people would follow him because of what he'd done, not because of who he was. He'd have to prove himself every day. Every decision. Every order.

  That was the price of leading people who'd survived longer than you'd been alive.

  The next two days were a blur.

  Teams came and went. Factory workers from Gary who'd traded assembly lines for portal runs. Tech workers who'd optimized their leveling with spreadsheets and min-max calculators. All of them had clawed their way to sixty. All of them were older than Luca and his team.

  Emily kept notes. Chris and Ryan grilled them about equipment. Some teams were better fits than others. Some had the skills but not the hunger, or the hunger but not the skills.

  By the end of the second day, Luca was tired. Not physically tired, but the kind of tired that came from smiling through conversations that weren't going anywhere. They'd talked about young teams, hungry teams, people like themselves who wanted something more than Earth could offer. The So?adores had been exactly that. Ontario had been close.

  These weren't those teams.

  Four million people at level sixty on Earth. Surely some of them matched what they'd actually asked for.

  When had the criteria changed?

  Or had it changed without him?

  Had anyone told him?

  Luca watched for that moment in every conversation, the flicker when they registered his age, the calculation behind their eyes. Some hid it better than others. None of them hid it completely.

  The last Chicago interview was scheduled for breakfast.

  Luca walked into the hotel restaurant expecting another group of weathered veterans, more former blue-collar types with decades of life experience etched into their faces, more proving himself.

  What he got was five people who looked like they should still be in high school.

  They were already seated at a table by the window, talking animatedly among themselves. One of them had acne. Another was wearing a hoodie that looked like it had been slept in. The oldest of the group might have been eighteen, and that was being generous.

  Luca stopped in the doorway. Emily nearly walked into his back.

  "They look..." Emily started.

  "Young," Luca said flatly. "They look really young."

  After two days of being the kid in the room, suddenly, he was looking at actual kids. The reversal should have been funny.

  Young teams. People our age.

  Well. He'd gotten what he asked for.

  Luca thought about the meetings still to come. The teams in Houston. The California prospects. All those hours, all those conversations with people who actually looked like they belonged on a starship.

  He could skip this one. Send Emily to handle it. Check a box and move on.

  These kids had everything ahead of them.

  Luca took a breath and walked over to meet them.