Chapter 376 — No More Limits I

The Waiting Room was quiet in the way it always was after a broadcast cut, and it took a minute every time for James's ears to stop expecting the chat.

Nobody moved much.

Finn sat on the floor with his forearms on his knees and his head hanging between them. Cillian lay flat on his back a few metres away with one arm over his eyes, breathing through his mouth like a man who had decided dignity was for other people. Ronan had his shield face down across his thighs and was working at a buckle on the strap that did not need working at, pulling the tongue out and threading it back through, over and over, because his hands still wanted a job.

Maeve was sitting cross-legged with her panel open, scrolling the clear notifications with one finger.

James stood. He did not know why he was the one standing, but his legs had not got the message yet that it was over.

His body felt new again, the way it always did in here. The Waiting Room had given back everything the floor took, and the ache that should have been in his shoulders was simply gone, which somehow made him more tired rather than less.

Ronan's buckle clicked. Cillian breathed out through his nose.

Then the chime went.

It was not the flat tone of a clear notification. It was higher and harder, and it cut across the room so sharply that all four of them had their heads up before it finished. 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ

`[GLOBAL TOWER ANNOUNCEMENT]`

`[WORLD-FIRST MILESTONE ACHIEVED]`

`[FLOOR 38 CLEARED]`

`[CLEARING PARTY: TEAM ZERO]`

`[REGION: IRELAND]`

"Grand," said Cillian, from under his arm. "Another one."

Nobody had time to answer him before the panel expanded underneath.

`[TOWER SYSTEM UPDATE]`

`[FIXED PARTY-SIZE RESTRICTIONS HAVE BEEN REMOVED]`

`[ELIGIBLE CHALLENGERS MAY NOW ENTER UNLOCKED FLOORS INDIVIDUALLY OR IN PARTIES OF ANY SIZE]`

`[ENCOUNTER PARAMETERS WILL ADAPT TO PARTICIPANT COUNT]`

`[PREVIOUS-FLOOR ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS REMAIN IN EFFECT]`

James read the third line, and then he read it again.

*Individually.*

Every floor he had ever climbed, the Tower had decided how many of them walked in. It had never been a choice. You found your people, you fit them to the number, and that was that.

Now one person could go in alone. Five could stay five. A country could send fifty.

The decision had moved. It was his now, and he stood there with that for a second and did not take it any further.

Finn had lifted his head. He was reading his own copy with his mouth slightly open, and James watched him get there.

"We could bring a seventh," Finn said. "Or an eighth. A proper second healer. Somebody who does nothing but carry."

"Sixth," said Maeve, without looking up.

"Sixth, then. You know what I mean. On Thirty-Eight we could have had somebody who just held relics."

"Dozens," said Cillian. He still had not moved his arm. "Forget sixth. Governments are reading this right now and thinking in dozens. Somebody's going to walk a hundred soldiers into Floor Twelve by next Tuesday."

"And Floor Twelve is going to be bigger when they get there," said Ronan.

He had stopped with the buckle. He tapped the scaling line on his panel with one gloved finger.

"It says it adapts. More of you doesn't mean the same room with the same number of things in it. You bring twenty, it's built for twenty."

"We don't know that," said Finn.

"We don't know it isn't."

Maeve closed her notifications. "It doesn't matter yet what it does in the room," she said. "Every guild on the planet was built around a fixed number. Contracts, rosters, sponsorship, insurance, the Bureau's own registration. All of it assumed the Tower would tell you how many. That stopped being true about twenty seconds ago."

She said it the way she said most things, like a person reading out an invoice, and nobody argued with her.

Cillian lifted his arm an inch and looked at the ceiling. "So what you're saying is it's paperwork."

"I'm saying it's everybody's paperwork."

James listened to all of it. He did not decide anything. He did not think anything needed deciding in a room with no windows while his body was still getting used to being whole.

"Home," he said. "We'll look at it with the lights on."

---

Guild Zero was loud before they had got through the second door.

It was not loud in the way a stream was. It was a building full of people all getting the same news at once. Phones went off on desks one after another, buzzing against wood and skittering. A printer was running somewhere down the corridor and nobody was collecting what it printed. A member of staff went past them with a tablet held flat against her chest, said "Well done" without slowing down, and turned into the operations level still walking.

Every wall screen on the corridor had been replaying the Floor 38 clear when they went in that morning. They had all been split since.

Four boxes on each. Four broadcasters. A Korean anchor with a graphic of the panel text over her shoulder. A German panel around a glass table. RTÉ with a reporter standing outside the Bureau in the rain. The fourth was American, with two men in suits who were both talking at the same time.

Four languages, one panel of text.

Somebody's coffee sat untouched on the edge of a desk by the stairs, a skin already on top of it.

"Well," said Cillian. "That's everyone's day gone."

---

The operations area had a big screen on the back wall, and half the recruits were in front of it.

They should not have been. Team One had a session on the schedule in the lower hall, and James could hear the training floor empty below them, no weights going down, no Ronan-style shouting from whichever instructor was covering. Five of them were bunched around the screen instead with their arms folded, and two more had drifted over from the stairs to listen.

They were arguing.

"Two shields," said Team One's caller. He had his back half to the screen and was counting on his fingers. "That's all I'm saying. You put a second shield on the back line and the whole thing changes. We've been doing gymnastics round one tank for months."

"And then it gets two of everything," said the woman with the green trainers. "Did you read it? It adapts. You bring more people and you might just make it worse."

"You don't know that."

"Neither do you."

Then one of them saw the founders in the doorway, and the whole group went quiet so fast it was almost funny.

Nobody stared. They turned back to the screen and folded their arms tighter, and James carried on walking with the others toward the stairs.

The voices came back up behind him, lower.

"…think he'd take twenty of us next time?"

"…if it scales, it's harder the more you…"

"…not with *us*, he wouldn't. Are you mad?"

"…Team Two's already asking if Saturday's still on…"

He heard enough to know exactly where their heads were. He did not turn round.

---

The lobby was worse.

There had been press outside all day because of the clear. There was more of it now, and it had a better story. The front of Guild Zero was glass from floor to ceiling, and the rain had beaded all the way down it, so the whole crowd outside looked slightly melted. Umbrellas. Cameras held high. Flashes going off white against the wet glass and throwing the light back into the lobby in sheets.

The questions came through the doors flattened and overlapping, so that half of each one landed on top of the next.

"—Floor 39, James, will you take the recruits—"

"—staying at five? Is Team Zero—"

"—national raid force, is Ireland going to—"

"—can anyone actually solo a floor now, is that—"

James did not slow down.

Two of the security staff had already moved to the internal door without being asked. One of them held it. The other walked a step ahead of Maeve, and the founders went through the back corridor behind reception and up the service stairs, and the doors closed and took the noise down to a hum.

Only one of the questions stayed with him going up the stairs, and it was the one about the recruits.

---

The founders' room was on the top floor, and the rain was louder up there against the long window than any of the noise downstairs.

Maeve put the international coverage on the main screen and stood beside it with her arms folded.

The frontier board sat in the top corner, the one everybody in the world had been watching for a year. Ireland on the top line, Floor 38. South Korea and the United States directly underneath. China, England and Japan behind them. Below that, a long tail of flags that had not been on the board at all twelve months ago, countries clearing floors that used to be walls for them. Two of those teams had publicly credited Team Zero's licensed strategy data in their clear statements.

Finn dropped into the chair nearest the screen. Cillian took the one furthest away and put his feet up on the one beside it. Ronan leaned on the wall by the door with his arms crossed.

Maeve ran the coverage.

A Challenger organisation in Seoul had put out a statement inside the hour. It was "reviewing larger raid compositions", with a spokesman standing at a podium saying nothing else in several different ways.

A Chinese bureau had paused an attempt that had been scheduled for the weekend. It was a fixed-party run they had been building to for weeks, and it was postponed until they had tested how the new scaling behaved.

A European panel was halfway through an argument. One analyst was saying more people in a floor meant more survivors. The other was saying it meant more of whatever was in there and more ways for the thing to go wrong, and that everyone was going to learn that the expensive way.

"That one's right," said Ronan.

"You don't know he's right," said Finn.

"I know he's not wrong."

Then Maeve moved to the American box, and James sat up a little.

The two men in suits had stopped talking over each other. One of them had a chart up.

"—the point people are missing is the other direction," he was saying. "Everybody's talking about bigger. Think smaller. If you're the strongest individual Challenger in your country, you've spent two years trying to find four people who can keep up with you. You don't have to any more. You can just go."

"Solo."

"Solo. And tell me which gets more attention — the fortieth team to clear a floor, or the first person to walk into one alone and walk out again."

Maeve paused it.

Nobody said a name. Everybody in the room was thinking of one, and James left it there.