Maren took a deep breath, but the anxiety rioting through her guts never settled. She clenched her hands tighter, the thinning bark from the top branches of the alder tree which she’d climbed rough in her grip. The ground seemed so far away from this vantage. The distance seemed to grow every moment she looked down, her stomach tightening.

Maren looked up, clenched her eyes tight, and took another breath. She’d have preferred to do her job with her feet planted firmly on the ground. However, even the peak of this hill didn’t give her a good-enough vantage point of the region she needed to spy upon: Linick’s dumpsite.

It was no place for the city’s normal trash, which would either be recycled or placed in size-changing dumpsters and hauled away. This was a place for the worst material created in the city, but material that was too valuable to simply be placed far away without a watchful eye.

The site was entirely within a large, hollowed hill. From what Maren knew of dumpsites, the hill’s exterior was meant to be solid. This one, however, had several gaping maws along the hillside, from which odd red and purple lights glowed.

That didn’t bode well. Even with the dumpsite’s normal protections – like the tall, thin towers standing at regular intervals along the hill’s base, which formed a barrier to prevent entry or exit – it was known that a venom seeped into the land from the dumpsite. The effects were evident: for more than a hundred yards around the dumpsite, no grass grew and the soil was a pale brown, displaying several cracks along the surface. Horror stories came to mind of employees whose hazmat suits had a small breach; said people were known to have all the life drained from them. The lucky ones to survive spent the rest of their days in a hospital bed, hooked up to God knew what to keep them alive.

Most damning of all, according to most people, is how not even the Titans would near the region of the dumpsite. It was truly a despicable place.

So how much worse would it get with the hull of the hill breached?

Movement at a farther tower drew Maren’s attention, but she couldn’t make out details from this distance. She wrapped her leg around the thin upper bark and squeezed herself close, heart hammering as she removed her tablet from her nylon bag. It was the size of her knuckle, but she pressed two of the opposing edges for a second, then expanded it until the screen was larger than her face. She entered her camera application, then zoomed in on the movement.

 Technicians surrounded two of the nearest towers, while five workers bearing large firearms filled the space between – approximately one hundred yards. All were wearing hazmat suits to keep themselves as safe as possible.

Maren steadied her hand, then took a picture of the workers. It was too blurry to make out many details, so she ran her photo through a different app that would help clear up the picture. In the meantime, Maren made a quick search for which companies had branches in Linick which were given access to the dumpsite.

Maren sighed at all the names. There were too many for her to memorize, so she documented them to keep in her records. Obviously, Talam’s largest companies used the dumpsite, like Trulson Tech Inc, Nadar, Star Weapons, and H&A Weapons Company. Plenty smaller companies had access, too, Grant Inc, Rossen Power, Sekko Research, Lazer Corp, CFE, and Diverse Electric. Not to mention the government’s own specific branch for Research and Development. 

But... no. This issue didn’t come from the government. Their division wouldn’t have blundered so badly as to loose monsters into the countryside. And if they had, no one would have survived to report it. 

A red light blinked in the corner of her tablet. The scanning app had finished improving the photo’s quality. In a small corner of the hazmat suit’s back, a swooping logo was barely visible. She ran the image through her secured database and found that the swooping design belonged to Trulson Tech. 

Doesn’t mean much, really, Maren thought. Trulson could be here fixing the breach. But they could be trying to fix their mistake. 

A flash of orange drew Maren’s attention. One of the men standing against the dumpsite’s entrance was bracing himself, bright fire engulfing something out of sight. Looked like there were more horrid beasts in there, wanting to get out. 

So, what were her options? She could take a suit, explore the dumpsite, find the inevitable tunnel that led to the city’s interior, and find out exactly where these abominations came from. But how would she even get a suit? If she took one from the men protecting the breach, or the technicians trying to fix it, there were several problems already: one, she’d have to cross more than one hundred yards of barren, poisoned land; two, she’d likely have to fight the workers for a suit, which would be easy given that she was a Wielder; three, however, they were only doing their jobs and likely didn’t deserve to lie, suitless, in such a toxic place.

No. Maren would do this the long way.

She searched the locations of the previous companies within the city and created a map with their buildings highlighted. If she used the flat land between the dumpsite and Linick, she should find herself in the city in a few short hours.

Time for some investigative work.