Corvayne didn't move as he waited for the monk who had killed him previously to come back for a repeat performance. He wasn't sure how Mister I just shrugged and started eating bacon again. Corvayne felt a little envy at how the monk seemed to just be totally okay with whatever the universe threw at him.
Seru was swiping her phone, having unfolded it for more screen space. From what Corvayne could see she was flipping through cameras trained on the outside.
“It looks like he's gone.” she said then exhaled. “I'll tell everybody they can come eat!”
“I think they will be more excited about being alive, but sure.” Coravayne felt himself deflate a little as the tension eased out of his body, and he pulled his gear out of storage as well as Mister I's bag and bow. Wick came into the dining room looking both ways before sitting back down. Nyx and Lady Blood Claw followed when she motioned for them to join them.
Wick was split between relief and outrage. “What the hell? That was too close!” She pointed at the front door with an egg covered fork.
“He knows we exist. Which isn't how I wanted to start this encounter. Ideally we got information on him that makes it worth him knowing we exist. I suppose knowing he is working with the police is a good start, maybe.” Corvayne sipped his coffee.
Nyx sat where had been before, just looking out the window. He reached for the mug he had before and Corvayne had to hold his hand out to cover it. Nyxion looked confused before Corvayne pulled his hand back. “He drank from your mug.”
Nyx looked down then pushed the mug forward. “Oh, I wish I had spit in my own coffee then.”
Seru beamed. “I mean, you did pretty much anyway thanks to me!”
Wick laughed. “Just like the conversation, we were not prepared. Seru, he might come back or have someone follow you. I think we gotta eat and go. If he comes back or they find a bunch of us here he'll be on us in no time.”
As they dug into plates of eggs and bacon, Seru looked down. “Hey Corvayne?”
“Hmm?” He chewed and swallowed.
“I wanted to say sorry about the phone thing. I didn't get it before I opened the door and was face to face with him.” She was dragging her fork across her eggs. Oh no. She looked like she was about to cry!
Corvayne held up a hand. “You saved us all there by not panicking. If he forced his way in and you objected he might have searched your whole home. That was the most critical point to act like you had nothing... important to hide and you succeeded. Playing a slightly pushy host who was insisting he stay made him want to leave.”
Seru wiped her eyes and laughed. “See? I told you I was a good addition!”
Corvayne saw Nyxion staring off into space before he shook his head then looked back at everyone. Corvayne thought he had seemed out of it since they came back from the dungeon. The nobleman gestured to the table, regaining a more focused look of impatience. “Well, now what?”
Wick thought about it. “I think we fuck off before he decides to come back... I want to investigate the paintings and gather up before we leave Cascadia, however. Grunt, Hari, Mosh... if they are okay then we clear out. We might not see Hari if she's safe and sound where she came from, that was her whole thing, getting home. We also need to build a new car or hover car or a space ship or something so we can leave town. Ideally faster then his helicopter.”
Corvayne nodded. “Fine. Seru, you said you knew about where the suburb paintings pointed us in the suburbs, right? Can you drive us there, we'll see if we can locate a treasure or whatever, then if we can get a ride home that'd all be super.”
At Wick's urging they piled back into the van. Nyx had gestured with a plantive look at the other four cars in Seru's huge garage, which prompted Corvayne to wonder how the oversized jeep would handle, but Wick insisted they take the least conspicuous car. Seru pulled off the highway into town further north then the city proper, following another four lane road out of pine trees and into suburban sprawl. The trip took them into the same sort of neighborhood that the sixth floor had resembled. The homes themselves looked very different from the ones in the tower with more smooth surfaces and larger windows, but the organization itself of a grid of low traffic roads and fenced parcels all lined felt similar. The main difference between houses was there was a set that had overgrown lawns and a set that didn't.
He wasn't sure how she could tell the neighborhood they entered apart from a very similar looking one that was on the other side of the highway. Perhaps Seru had something like his sense of orientation out in the desert. She pulled over to the side of the road and let Wick show her the pictures again, then drove them through the neighborhood. Corvayne had her keep the window rolled down to listen for helicopters. Instead he heard sprinklers going off, dogs barking at each other in the distance, and at one point the sounds of kids splashing in one of the pools.
Twenty more minutes of driving up and down twisting streets prompted Lady Blood Claw to throw her hands up in the air.
“This is pointless, these houses all look exactly the same.” She growled out, a statement that Corvayne found himself nodding along to.
Wick thumbed through the photos of paintings. “There's the same single house in all of them, and there are other houses in the paintings that look like these, but nobody painted the street signs or house numbers in.”
Nyxion opened one eye. “You guys are getting all worked up when maybe, just maybe, Seru got the neighborhood wrong.”
“Shut up you dick! I am totally right here. There's a LOT of roads in this place.”
Wick turned in the front seat to address Nyxion. “I hate to admit she's right, but I'm pretty sure Seru has the right neighborhood. This is ABSURD though. Why the hell are there slums at all if there's thousands of homes? The place isn't even full either, all those little posts mean the company that built them never sold these!”
If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
Looking again out the window, Corvayne spotted all the overgrown homes had little signs on posts with a phone number. Oh that's it, it was the same phone number. He had wondered if he didn't need to put his number outside the factory or something. He looked between Wick in front and Mister I in the back, ideas forming in his mind.
“Can I see the pictures again?”
Wick turned around in the front and thumbed through them. They had moved through the neighborhood street by street, and hadn't seen the right style and colors combined. Every house was just a little bit different. What about the colors there?
“Okay. So these paintings... two of them are at sunset with sunlight on the house.”
“Or morning.” Nyxion snorted. “You can't tell if a photo is taking during sunrise or sunset. Even dew being in the picture you'd have to know for sure it didn't rain before it was taken.”
Wick took her phone and flipped it back to look at it. “I'm missing it... the pictures don't tell you which it is.”
Mister I looked forward, puzzled, then beamed at him and clapped. “Ah Corvayne! I wasn't aware you were an artist!”
Corvayne didn't respond, just smiled and nodded at Mister I.
Seru had stopped the van as she wanted to look at Wick's phone too. She put a candy colored nail on her lips. “I don't get it either. You really can't tell, no matter what.”
Corvayne felt what Wick must feel when she goes into lecture mode. “You can tell if it's night or day because they are not pictures of the house. They are paintings of the house. When people paint a sunset, they almost always use darker colors and deeper reds. Sunrise paintings use brighter ones.”
Everyone besides a giggling Mister I was staring at him. Wick adjusted her glasses. “How the FUCK do you know that? You kill a bunch of lizards with a paintbrush?”
Corvayne laughed at the image of him stabbing a lizard with the back of a brush, then shook his head. “We had lots of art books in the library back home. Sadly, nobody who would barter with me had paint.”
Wick started chewing on her thumb, moving across the pictures they had taken of the paintings. “So, the house is facing probably south and west? It's almost certainly west. We are looking for white with forest green details. It's got two homes on either side, one across the street... driveway looks to be concrete.”
Even with some better ideas of what they were looking for, they drove back and forth for another half an hour before Wick yelled “Stop!”
She pointed at a home, one of a dozen on the street unsold, that looked to be the wrong color. Some of the bushes and trees had grown bigger, and the grass was only trimmed enough to form a ten foot non-feral lawn in front, but it was pretty close to as-is with the painting.
“It's all different colors, but this is the house. Look at the windows, the type of pillars on the porch. The placement of the storm drain out front... back up three feet!” Wick barked at Seru, who rolled her eyes and crept the van back a few feet.
Corvayne saw what she meant. It was a perfect match, just with a coating of gray and red paint. The other homes next to it remained the same colors they were painted. So why was this one special?
Mister I shrugged. “I think white isn't popular as a color for a home right now? They probably built these assuming they'd need a lot of homes when the colony became a major stopping point for expansion... but the gamble of Cascadia growing turned out to be a poor one.”
They got out. Corvayne walked a little away from the van and looked around. This street was quiet, with all the homes showing the same minimum of care. It was still morning and there were gaps in the clouds for the sun to shine, but everything felt subdued too. Like, the shadows were a little to long.
Wick tugged him out of his stupor. “You need sleep Corvayne? Cmon, wake up. We're doing CRIMES again!”
She strode up to the house and took her hairpin out. Corvayne stepped onto the porch, looking around. He could spot a few spider webs in corners. As others came up he heard crunching from dry leaves. The window next to the front door had a layer of dust on it. He stepped back from Wick quietly futzing with a black box next to the door.
He heard Seru ask Wick what she was doing as he was walking away.
“Real estate agents leave the keys in these lock boxes. If I can't pick this I'll just blow this one up.”
Corvayne started looking up and down the street. He kept thinking something was wrong about a set of homes on this street. “I'm going to go look at something, be right back.”
He jogged past the houses in the painting, stopping as he saw the grass on one lawn, a barely mowed rough mix of weeds, give way to a soft carpet of well kept grass as he arrived where the street met another. The four houses at the end of the block, all of them had markers that stated they were never sold. He glanced back and saw Seru coming up to him.
She had a smirk on her. “Don't split the party. It's one of the ten commandments!” She was probably thinking of a way to flirt. Maybe to piss Nyxion off? Not important right now.
Corvayne motioned her to come over. “Seru, can you take pictures on your phone for me? I don't own a phone yet.”
“Oh, yeah. What's kinda photos? Gotta take a leak?” The woman looked up at him impishly, then darted her eyes over to the side of the house before looking back at him, finger pulling on her lips. He did not think it was entirely a joke but let it wash over him, instead stepping next to her and pointing.
“These four houses on the end are wrong.” He looked between them, then felt Seru jump away from the homes. Good foot work. She was getting better at it.
“What? Are they going to attack?” She pulled out the brass knuckles from the village smith and slipped them on very fast, her hands shaking.
“Easy there.” Corvayne put a hand over her fist and he felt her stance loosen.“No. They are just regular houses.” Which was what he was trying to point out.
She with a practiced motion slipped them back into her jacket, still looking around suspiciously. “As long as they don't turn into a gazebo. My dad told a story about one killing a PC in one hit.”
“Seru you said you want to be a journalist, right? That's someone who hunts information and discovers things. What do you see that's wrong here?”
“Well, these four are well taken care of... but all four of them are on the market.”
“Well done. That and the number on the marker is different then the real estate company's number on every other sign.” He pointed at the sign.
Seru crouched and took a picture. “That's a lot of nines....” Not one to wait, she shrugged and punched the number into her phone.
Corvayne couldn't tell if that was really smart or really dumb, given how much Wick stressed that phones were both vital for some things but in others were an annoying liability in terms of being a record of everything you did. Seru didn't seem worried, just had her ear to the phone. She nodded along with something, then frowned, then bobbed her head some more. She closed the phone.
“It connects me to Cascadia City Planning's answering machine.” Seru turned her phone off and put it away. “But it might just be random, because 999-9999 is not a normal phone number.”
Corvayne glanced around to make sure nobody who wasn't with the group was watching, then walked up to one of the homes. He smelled fresh paint. Looking at the door, the glass on the front was sparkling clean. Looking into the windows he could see it was empty inside. He jogged back down the porch steps, without a single creak.
“Okay. Well, my next question is why these homes are brand new...”
Seru snapped a picture of the house. “I'll try to find it on the website and see if it shows up, then try calling the number for the other houses and ask about it. But you're right... there's no reason to keep building...” She pointed down the street to a point where bare roads stretched out to a woodline that was creeping towards the neighborhood. “They like, didn't sell most of the homes in this place as is. More telling, you see any construction vehicles?”
Corvayne stepped over to the crossroads and looked both ways. One direction had houses for a few blocks and sloped slightly downhill, the other went another block with two empty lots before it ended in a line of pine trees. He looked back at Seru. “If you could explain why that is a further issue, I'd appreciate it. I'm not familiar with this terrain.”
Seru looked really smug as she held a finger up in the air. “WELL! You don't build a house or even two and just pack up and leave because there's one set of people who do foundations and bricks, then another group builds the frame, another does the roof, walls, insulation... they generally go down the street since it's more efficient to not transport equipment back and forth. Even then, if this house was finished a month ago... look at the grass!” She stepped on it. “It should be lines of sod. When you build a house, you make a mess of the ground getting it level... it's not impossible that they mowed the lawn, put a layer of fresh paint on, kept the windows clean. But it's more like they just popped into existence a few days ago.”
Corvayne pointed over his shoulder. “Tell Wick about it, because it sounds like the kind of thing she'd do research with you on.”
A few houses down he saw Wick waving, so he trudged back. She swung a keyring around her finger, smirking.
“We'll just let ourselves in!”
She opened the door, turned the handle, and stepped inside. It was cool in the house, with the faint smell of something sweet mixing with a hint of decaying plants. The boards creaked under his feet. Wick only took a few steps in, then laughed.
“Jackpot!” She pointed and he followed her finger.
The stairway upstairs was odd. Moss hung on the outside of the door frame, and he could see it was made of stone. More importantly, there were blue stone steps, glowing faintly with walls that looked to be hewn in stone and looked to go on beyond where the second floor or side wall of the home would be before it curved.
Lady Blood Claw folded her arms. “Three on one world... what's going on here?”
The paintings had lead them to another tower entrance.