Chapter 308: Finding the Loopholes

Quin arrived at the rescue course carrying a ladder.

It was longer than he was tall, light enough for one person to move, and completely within the equipment restrictions. Max watched him set it against the starting shelter and climb until he could look over the outer wall.

"The first house has an open roof." Quin said.

"Yes."

"And the next one."

"Several were damaged."

Quin descended, moved the ladder, and spent the next ten minutes opening a route that avoided most of the main street. He could not carry everyone over it. One survivor’s injured back made that unsafe, and another could not climb without help. But he could reach them, count them, and learn where the others had gone before committing his team to a street fight.

Max left the route intact.

Anna stood beneath the ladder with her notes. "Does it make the whole event too easy?"

"He still has to bring them out."

Quin leaned down. "And somebody has to keep the ladder from being knocked over."

A creature in the street struck its lower rung while he spoke. Quin scrambled onto the roof and pulled the ladder after him. He had found the route, but he had also demonstrated what happened when nobody watched its base.

They continued with a full rehearsal. Max’s test rescuers entered with a mixture of ordinary equipment and capabilities chosen to resemble eligible parties. They received the same instructions competitors would get. Max watched without adjusting anything once the attempt began.

The first problem emerged at the extraction point. A survivor who could walk reached it beside a rescuer, was counted, and then followed the rescuer back toward the street because he had not been given any reason to remain. Anna stopped the test.

"Someone needs to receive them."

Max added two attendants inside the extraction shelter and a bench out of the fighting. The attendants would confirm the count, take charge of arrivals, and tell the returning party how many people remained to meet the minimum. They would not heal away the consequences of a bad evacuation or reveal locations the team had not discovered.

The second run reached six survivors with nineteen minutes left. The rescuers tried for the remaining two and lost one of their own while forcing a narrow passage. They still completed the task with seven. That was useful. A passing team could push for more, and doing so could have a cost.

Quin asked to speak to the survivor beneath the beam.

"Could you crawl if this moved a little?"

"Not with my leg like this."

"If I made a sling?"

The man considered the length of cloth Quin showed him and explained where it would pull. Max watched the exchange. He had given the survivor an injury and enough knowledge of his own body to object when someone tried to use the injured part as a handle. That seemed more useful than a fixed dialogue demanding one approved solution.

Quin found another way to brace the beam. They marked the successful method in the test record without putting it in the public instructions.

At the medal grounds, the testers separated. Anna timed the walk around the stream. Quin attempted to reserve the ferry, fail to appear, and reserve it again. The operator refused the second booking until he completed or released the first. Max watched a combat group clear the nearest guarded ruin while a practical group worked on the mill.

The combat group earned its medal first. It also reached the finish with two injured members and most of its prepared mixtures gone. The mill group arrived later with supplies intact. Max compared their times and moved neither station. The choice had produced different consequences without giving one approach an automatic win.

The tower was less satisfactory.

Its damaged mechanism required a part hidden in a chest. The chest key was in another room. Quin climbed the shaft, opened the medal case from behind, and asked why the mechanism mattered.

Max inspected the opening. The case had been left exposed to the shaft so maintenance could reach it, but a person standing on a crossbeam could operate the latch by hand.

"I could close that." He said.

"Or decide whether I earned the medal by getting here." Quin replied.

They studied the route. Climbing the open shaft required gear, a steady hand, and somebody below to manage the line. It took less repair work and more physical risk. Max removed the pointless chest and made the two methods explicit in the station’s construction. Restore the drive or climb to release the latch directly. Both required doing the work.

Anna returned from the stream and reported that the long route cost enough time to matter without making the ferry essential. She had also found a place where a person could throw a log across a narrow channel.

"Leave it." Max said.

"I did. I want to see someone try."

The treasury test began after lunch.

Quin carried a forged work order. It was a good forgery because Max had supplied an exact copy of the real form. The first guard accepted it, but the maintenance clerk noticed that no task number appeared in the day’s ledger. Quin talked for several minutes, claimed the office had failed to enter it, and was told to wait while the clerk checked.

He left through a window while she was away.

That got him inside. It did not give him a map of the inner wing. He entered a room containing stored accounting books, took a wrong stair, and found himself beside the public counters. The test ended when he tried to cross a restricted gate without the proper token.

"The paper helps." He said afterward. "It isn’t everything."

Max was pleased enough to save the sequence for future comparison. The guards had used records and observations. They had not learned Quin’s location simply because Max knew it.

The next test involved a direct assault. The treasury defenders lost the delivery gate but kept the inner doors shut. Once the attackers committed to the southern hall, the commander moved a reserve through the northern passage. The resulting fight cost the attackers time they could have saved by disabling a side door beforehand.

Anna asked the commander whether he would make the same choice against quieter intruders.

"If I knew where they were." He answered. "Otherwise I would keep the reserve where it can reach both wings."

They tested a false alarm next. It drew a local patrol but did not empty the entire treasury. A second false alarm produced more caution, not more guards running blindly toward the noise. Max wanted bluffing to work when convincing, not whenever someone rang a bell.

The interference tests took longer.

One test involved leaving false tracks toward an unused gate. The pursuing group followed them, lost several minutes, and returned to find the real entrance crowded. Anna allowed it. Another involved painting an official-looking arrow on a wall. That was rejected when the testers could not distinguish it from the event’s own directions. Max chose a particular border for genuine notices and included it in the booklet. Competitors could lie in their own names. They could not pretend Max had changed the course.

Quin tried a third variation, hanging an entirely truthful notice that said the south door was locked. It was locked when he hung the notice. Two minutes later, another group opened it.

"Still legal?" He asked.

"Yes." Anna said. "Anyone who relies on your sign can check the door."

She added a blank space to the judges’ records for the time an action occurred. A ruling made after the event would need that detail. Max tested the recording and found he could follow a disputed door from both sides without exposing either team’s unrelated plans to the other.

Quin shut a door in front of a test competitor. Allowed. He braced it with a loose bench. Allowed, provided doing so did not trap a person in immediate danger. He held the handle while the competitor pulled from the other side. That became physical restraint through the door, and Anna marked it prohibited.

"What if I stand on the bench?" Quin asked.

"Then you’re still holding the door shut with your weight."

He got off it. They tested closing a bridge, buying the last useful map, and moving a free-standing ladder. Taking away a ladder while someone was on it was an attack. Moving an unused ladder before a rival arrived was interference. The distinction was concrete enough to explain with a drawing.

Max placed a warning light at the edge of the test area. Officials could halt a dangerous action and apply a penalty or disqualification where needed. They would not offer tactical advice. A team could ask whether an act was legal before doing it, but the answer would be limited to the rules.

Anna read the growing list and crossed out three examples that added nothing. The booklet needed principles and the disputed cases, not every possible way to touch a piece of furniture.

Near dusk, Max inspected the eight targets. They differed in appearance but shared important limits: each could be carried by one person, each had an alarm arrangement that could be defeated, and each vault offered more than one practical approach. Teams would receive their assignments by lot after qualification. None could choose a target to fit a plan made before seeing the grounds.

Quin asked to try the lightest target.

"It isn’t assigned yet."

"I’m checking the alarm."

He placed a bag on the pedestal, shifted the target, and heard a sharp bell. The pedestal measured more than weight. Quin returned the object and examined the narrow line around its base. He could work out how it operated, but doing so required getting close enough to inspect it rather than assuming a familiar trick would work.

Anna checked the time.

"Last test."

Quin requested a length of thread and a mirror. Max provided ordinary examples. After twelve minutes, Quin had exposed part of the mechanism without sounding the bell. After another five, he admitted that a second pair of hands would help.

Max joined him on the floor.

"Hold this where I can see it." Quin said.

Anna moved her notes off the pedestal before either of them rested an elbow on it. The warning bell sounded anyway when Max shifted his knee into the base.

Quin closed his eyes for a moment.

"You are the reason we need a rehearsal."

Max steadied the mirror and waited while Quin reset the thread. Outside the vault, the commander sent a guard to investigate the bell. Anna met him at the doorway, explained that this was a stopped test, and moved aside so he could record exactly where the intruders were sitting.

"The next group may be more competent." She told him.

The guard recorded their positions and returned to the hall. Quin reset the thread while Max steadied the mirror. Anna moved the lamp closer, and they began the test again with the corridor door open for the next inspection.