My own fault for being cocky about getting out of that slum without a fight.

  All three men felt like rank 1s to Sorin, probably without even five soulprints between them. Two of them were tall and broad-shouldered, the result of Musclebound or some other basic soulprint giving them their physique. The third one was almost scrawny, just over five feet tall and whip-thin. He had a bandoleer of throwing knives crossing his chest that he kept running his hand across.

  Sorin mentally dubbed the short one ‘Twitchy.’ The other two were ‘Blocky’ and ‘Bulky.’ They weren’t the most original names he’d ever come up with, but he didn’t suspect he’d need them for more than a minute.

  “Sorry, but I’ve got other plans,” he said as he sidestepped to get past Blocky. Of course, the idiot threw an arm out to block Sorin, thus signaling his intent to force a fight he probably thought he had zero chance of losing.

  “Cancel them,” Bulky said. “You just got a new job.”

  “No thanks.”

  Of the three, only Twitchy was armed at the moment. He’d be the first one Sorin dropped when the fight broke out. Blocky would probably make the first move, unless Sorin took a step backward. Then Bulky would start things off instead. They weren’t planning on letting him go, and Sorin had no interest in being pressed into being their mule.

  “Guess we’re doing this the fun way,” Blocky said with a smirk. He slammed a fist into the palm of his hand, then lumbered forward two steps to grab onto Sorin. Instead of stepping back like Blocky expected, which would just put him in Bulky’s grips, or moving forward to meet Blocky’s advance like an idiot, Sorin darted right and slammed the heel of his boot down on Twitchy’s toes.

  “Yaargggh!” Twitchy howled. He fell out of formation and hopped backward, lopsided and off balance from taking his weight off his injured foot. That was all the opening Sorin needed to put his knuckles across Twitchy’s face, breaking his nose and knocking him on his ass in the process.

  Blocky bellowed in rage, an angry bull seeing red blood, and lunged out to grab Sorin. Pound for pound, he had the advantage, but unless Blocky could grab hold, it wouldn’t matter. And he was far too predictable for Sorin to ever let that happen.

  Sorin twisted his body sideways, his arm perfectly presented for Blocky to grasp. The idiot fell for the trap without a second’s hesitation. Fast as a striking jewelfang, Sorin’s hand snapped up and caught Blocky’s wrist as he closed in. He pulled the big man forward into a stumble that ended with Sorin’s knee driven hard into Blocky’s groin. While the big man was wheezing in pain, Sorin kicked out his ankles.

  Blocky went down, writhing on the ground, and Twitchy was actively backing away from the fight now, leaving just Sorin and Bulky still standing. “Boy knows how to fight,” Bulky sneered. “But he’s got no soulprints.”

  “Doesn’t seem like I need one,” Sorin told him.

  Bulky rushed in, surprisingly quick, and threw a wild haymaker. Sorin ducked away, his shoulders hunched and hands up to block if necessary. For all Bulky’s speed, though, he was every bit as predictable as Blocky. Every punch was telegraphed, so laughably easy to read that Sorin actually found himself wondering if he’d ever been this bad at fighting. There must have been a time when he’d been young and dumb, but he couldn’t remember it.

  He would have run if he’d been part of a group that had picked a three-on-one fight, only to have the other two beaten down in a matter of seconds. That was the smart move in this situation, but Bulky was too arrogant to imagine he could lose to a guy who was probably fifty pounds lighter and didn’t have any soulprints to his name.

  It took less than ten seconds to prove him wrong. Sorin kicked out both of Bulky’s knees, drove his knuckles into the man’s kidneys, and kicked him once in the head after Bulky was on the ground. The big man grunted in pain—though not as much as he should have, probably thanks to a weak Iron Body soulprint protecting him—and laid still.

  “Idiots,” Sorin snorted as he stole Bulky’s coin purse off his belt. It was lighter than he wanted it to be, and a quick peek showed it had nothing but some kind of tin coin that he didn’t recognize. Of course the money’s different, too.

  After adding Blocky’s funds to the purse and confirming that Twitchy had disappeared into the nest of alleys, Sorin walked away, whistling as he went.

  * * *

  It wasn’t just the tower and the money that were different, though that was strange enough. Sorin stood in front of a large, three-story building that had no less than five entrances to different businesses on the ground floor. One led to the bank, another to a butcher ready to buy whatever edible kills the climbers brought back, which only got its own entrance because no one wanted carcasses being hauled through the lobby. The third led to bunks for climbers needing a place to sleep, and the fourth to a gym with training facilities.

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  All of that was normal enough, even if the locations didn’t line up with Sorin’s admittedly spotty memory. He could have dismissed that as just a change after so many years of being away from Floor 0. Even the different exterior wasn’t that disconcerting. The problem was the fifth entrance, the heavy wooden double doors leading into the main lobby of the building.

  Specifically, the problem was the sign mounted proudly above the doors, which read ‘Climber’s Union.’ Any other changes Sorin could have dismissed, but he’d been part of the Climber’s Society for most of his life. There was no Climber’s Union. It had never been called that, not on a single floor, and unless they’d changed the name just last week while he’d been away, there wasn’t one now.

  It was yet more proof that he wasn’t trapped in some mental prison, that this reality wasn’t an illusion. The whole point of that kind of ability was to keep the victim ignorant that they were even under attack at all. Sending him back to Floor 0, putting him in a younger body, and changing how the tower looked were all counterproductive to that goal.

  But this… Some kind of alternate dimension? Everything is familiar but not quite the same. Are the rules different? How much of what I know is still right? And, most importantly, how the fuck did this happen? That doorway in the mosaic? But I never saw anything like that before it showed up in my soulspace. I’m missing something.

  He shook his head and pushed through the door into the Climber’s Union. Despite the change of name, the lobby looked pretty much like he’d expected. There was the counter with two attendants off to one side, the job board in the back, and a few chairs and benches scattered around tables with low-ranked climbers eating at them.

  The chairs were worn smooth, the varnish peeled off so long ago that only the bare flecks of it still dotting the wood proved it had ever been there at all. The tables, by contrast, were discolored with the stains of a thousand tankards of ale and goblets of wine spilled across their surfaces. Deep grooves were worn into the floorboard from the front door to the counter, and from there to the job board, left by generations of climbers walking those paths day in and day out.

  Sorin followed them up to the counter and waited for one of the attendants to be free. It only took a minute for the line to empty—the man in front of him was turning in a bag of animal teeth, which required a thorough counting to confirm the total—and then it was Sorin’s turn.

  “Hello,” the attendant said with that fake, cheery tone ubiquitous to the service industry, the one that anyone who’d ever had to deal with a customer while their boss watched them work could recognize. She was young, perhaps sixteen years old, with flaming red hair and a splash of freckles across her nose and cheeks. “May I see your union card?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t have one,” Sorin said. Another change. It’s probably their equivalent of a society emblem. “I’d like to register with the Climber’s Union.”

  “Of course. The application fee is thirty danirs, and dues are five danirs per rank each month, with the first month due upon joining.” The attendant rattled it all off, her smile never faltering. Her ability to sense soulspaces must have been good, because she quickly added, “Rank 0 climbers are prorated to two danirs per month.”

  There were two problems there. First, Sorin didn’t know what a danir was. He hoped it was whatever the tin coins he’d stolen were, but even if that was the case, he didn’t have thirty-two of them. Putting on a rueful expression, he dropped the purse onto the counter and tugged it open. “This is all I’ve got. Is there any way to make it work?”

  She peered inside, then lifted the purse and gave it a gentle toss to get the weight of it. “Twenty-two, maybe twenty-four danirs. I’m sorry, but the fee is the fee. I’m not in any position to make exceptions for potential applicants who can’t afford it.”

  Sorin let out a glum sigh and nodded. “I understand. What facilities can non-members access?”

  She blinked at that and shook her head. “None, sir. You need a union card just to get in.”

  “None at all? Not even the job board?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  Damn it. Now what? I guess I could go find someone willing to pick a fight with me and mug them, too.

  The attendant glanced over at her coworker out of the corner of her eye and, upon seeing he was busy with another climber, leaned forward to say in a low voice, “There’s a bit of a back-alley Climber’s Union at a place over on Lamor Street. It caters to a particular clientele, ones who aren’t interested in paying union dues. The selection is a bit… bare, and I wouldn’t ask any questions about where the goods were acquired, but you might make that purse stretch a bit farther there.”

  Sorin leaned in and asked, “You mind giving me directions?”

  “Certainly,” she said, flashing him a conspiratorial smile. It was the first genuine expression Sorin had seen on her face. “They call the place the Club House, but the real climbers usually refer to it as the Meat Grinder.”

  The directions were simple enough, and, providing he could manage the walk without getting into another fist fight, Sorin could be there in less than twenty minutes. He thanked the attendant and was about to leave when she grabbed his hand.

  “Be careful on your first climb,” she said. “Statistically speaking, that’s where most climbers die. Go for something easy and safe, then come back when you’ve got the danirs to apply. The Climber’s Union has a lot of resources to help new climbers survive.”

  “Don’t worry, I know what I’m doing. This won’t be my first climb,” he said.

  She nodded, but he could tell just from the look on her face that she didn’t believe him. It was hard to blame her. Most climbers managed to get at least one soulprint before they even started climbing. To be rank 0 with no soulprint at all and claim he’d already climbed to Floor 1 was a bit of a stretch.

  “Good luck,” she told him. “I hope to see you again soon.”

  “Thanks again.”

  The Meat Grinder, huh? Sounds about right for a group of non-climbers looking to get in on the game. Just the place for me to get started.

  Sorin walked out the door.