Fintan wrung the mop in the bucket using a twist handle to tighten the weave until the water streamed from the coarse mop head. The doctors were more advanced than the Zeusopolans in almost every way. His bucket was made of plastic from a mold. The handle was also plastic, and it popped into the top of the bucket where two holes were drilled, likely by hand, since they were slightly off-center.

  It was still a technical miracle, although, with the mist, he could produce a perfect bucket. It didn’t have metal reinforcement at the joins, and he mopped with care—broken tools would be deducted from his pay.

  The floor was white tiles, likely cut from the bedrock, but then they were grouted into place to create a level surface. The white crust under the ground wasn’t level. It was nearly impenetrable and smooth, but it wasn’t flat.

  He mopped under a bed with broken plumbing. The man under the wet coverlet trembled. He was strapped to the bed for his own protection. An IV with flying serum was taped to his arm, and the bag dripped slowly.

  The rictus of a smile on his face told Fintan he was not trembling in pain—at least not what people thought of as pain in the traditional sense.

  More doctors had arrived by wagon. The ogres kept a steady watch over the portals, looking for recruits. They had an idea of the numbers they expected every day. A low half-wall separated each patient, and he could hear an introduction not dissimilar from his own.

  The new doctor had they same questions he thought himself when he saw the line of beds.

  “Why would you do this to anybody?” Colin asked. Fintan’s boss, Leslie was giving him the tour. In fact, Leslie was his boss several times removed, but he was easygoing and oversaw the barracks on this side of Bannerburg. Both the Bomb Midges and the Ogres liked him, although he was known as something of a prankster. He had grey hair and blue eyes. His days as an Ogre were over, the serum no longer worked on him. Instead of leaving him angry, it left him with a permanent befuddled expression.

  “Have you ever tried it?” Leslie asked.

  “No, I’ve only been here for two days,” Colin said. “I came in through the portal gate. The one on the other side of the city.”

  “Then you tried it,” Leslie said. “All new recruits are given a dose to make sure they aren’t spies. Knocks out any hidden gilders better than the best laxative.”

  “It made me sick afterward, but not like this.”

  “That’s because we mix it with purified river water. That nullifies some of the worst effects.”

  Leslie reached into his lab coat and took out a small glass spritzer he kept in his pocket. The fluid was red-colored.

  “Take a shot,” he told Colin. “It won’t hurt. You can see we have a lot of happy customers.”

  Colin dutifully raised the spritzer. Fintan was beyond the wall, but he knew exactly what would happen. Colin coughed, and there was a dull splash on the floor.

  “I crapped myself,” Colin said.

  “Really,” Leslie said. He took a shot of the mist in his mouth. “Tastes fine to me. We are going to need a cleanup over here, Fintan.”

  The last was called out, but there was no need. Fintan wasn’t that far away, and he wheeled his bucket around the corner.

  Colin’s pants had exploded, and his white lab coat hung plastered to the back of his legs. Fintan pointed to the shower, not far away.

  “There’s a cleansing station right there,” Fintan said.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  He’d have to clean up the trail of feces. In the afterlife, you didn’t have to poop unless you wanted to, but the flying serum emptied everything out of you until you shrunk into a Bomb Midge. Every morning, he helped outfit the Midges in flight suits and bombs. He took care of the male Midges while RuTing assisted the female Midges.

  After an hour of the serum, they didn’t have many thoughts, and they vacillated from euphoria to mad aggression. The wing suits let them glide hundreds of feet, and cue cards kept them on track. Ogres good, Centaurs bad.

  The doctors had cue cards for hundreds of armies, but Fintan had only seen two attack the city.

  Colin wasn’t out for long.

  “What’s in the serum?” he asked Leslie.

  “That’s a secret,” Leslie said, “but I can tell you its a binding agent that extracts heavy metals out of your system. The metals cause the corrosion. We don’t know why.”

  “Does the agent have a name?”

  “Not officially, but we call it weightlossy.” Leslie grew more serious. The old man could change in an instant and switch to complete sincerity. “The opposite serum is what we use to defend the city. The Bomb Midges help, but every doctor is expected to fight.”

  “Ogre serum,” Colin said.

  “You’ve been given a flask?”

  Colin retrieved the flask from his lab coat. It was one of the few metal items in Bannerburg. The metal wealth of the city was in the library and in the serums.

  “The flasks preserve the serum,” Leslie said. “Don’t try to put it in glass. We use glass for our bombs. They work great short-term for explosives, acids, and aerosol defenses. I’ll show you the rest of the lab. You will be taking care of the patients and, in a few years, mixing your own serum.”

  Leslie led Colin away while Fintan continued mopping the floor. He changed the water and was careful to dump the filth in a large drain that was piped to the furnace works.

  The cloud of steam that hovered around the giant pipes was not the same as mist, and an ingenious set of turbines powered a centrifuge to spin out the metals from the lesser organics in the feces.

  The old man wasn’t lying when he sprayed the formula in his mouth. Somehow, after years of Ogre serum, the flying serum didn’t work on him the same way, but Fintan knew the effects of the water were still strong with Leslie. He couldn’t leave the barracks or the bunker.

  Fintan suspected Leslie chose this barracks because it was closest to the river and Leslie’s eyes turned in the direction of the water whenever he wasn’t focused on the task at hand.

  That led him to the conclusion the Orge serum worked much the same way as gilders.

  If the doctors were right, they could drain the levels out of a person. He hadn’t seen it happen, but they were confident. The armies they fought all had unique Skills, but they didn’t seem like him or RuTing. They hadn’t returned to the library, so their knowledge was far from complete.

  After he finished mopping the floor, he met RuTing for lunch. They both ate at the barracks. The kitchen was open twenty-four-seven. Sometimes, the battles raged all night. Apparently, no one liked that because the nightmares could interfere with the battles and many whispered the Adversary was helping the Zeusopolans.

  The food wasn’t as good as what he could manifest, but it was more substantial than what he created near the river. Living in the dry air all day sapped their reserves, and while he and RuTing were stronger than everyone else, they had to eat to keep that strength. They also had to feign weakness and blend in.

  Everyone around them visibly perked up after eating.

  Fintan chewed through the tough vegetables on his plate, although he didn’t recognize most of them. The leafy salad was bitter.

  “Kale,” RuTing responded to his unasked question. She was very observant. “The Union doesn’t have kale. It was lost after the war with the Federation.”

  He grunted, unsure what to say with a mouthful of leaves. He made an effort.

  “It’s fresh,” Fintan said.

  Like most people, the plants were the best versions of themselves. The Union had guidelines for produce, but they lived in a land where much of it was grown indoors. In Bannerburg everything was harvested as soon as it was full grown, and Fintan wondered. If they left the plants to grow longer would they see variations? People were affected by their thoughts. He held up a leaf of kale, studying the white midrib, and wondered if the kale had the intelligence to perceive imperfection.

  “It’s not the enemy,” RuTing said.

  Apparently, she’d misinterpreted his expression, so much for her observational skills.

  “We aren’t getting anywhere,” he said. He bent closer. She was across the table. They were the only two people in the dining hall. The adjacent kitchen had helpers but they were busy with the kale. “I’m not going to spend the next hundred years being a janitor.”

  “We don’t know where to go.”

  They both knew there were other cities. They even had an idea of which roads to follow to get there. They needed more time at the library.

  “We should go back tonight.”

  Their passes weren’t revoked, but everyone else was too tired by the end of the day. They worked before first light till at least two hours after darkness, a twelve-hour shift every day. Leslie wasn’t hard on them, but the dry air was. The ogres who drank too much serum stayed overnight in the barracks and usually came out the next day normal-sized.

  The Bomb Midges were dumped into their rooms.

  “I have an idea,” RuTing said.