Three days had passed since my conversation with the Inquisitor. Even though the perk didn't trap me in the learning space for days, I still slept through an entire day. It left me with a day and a half to prepare for the raid thrown into my lap.
The armor and all my projects were tossed onto the back burner as I threw myself into learning. I started with the Mystical Agriculture book, skimming through each page in an attempt to memorize all I could about potential threats.
I didn’t realize it at first, but there were too many pages in the book considering its size. The book seemed to have some kind of enchantment on it that allowed far more pages than there appeared to be. I couldn’t quite figure out how it folded space to store more than it should, at least not logically. It hurt my head to try, so I moved on to other things. At least, for now. If I could figure it out and replicate it through technology though, I'd be able to make some crazy cool inventions.
I finally found out what that haze liquid was. It was the nectar of a plant called the Hibisen Bloom. I’d probably just continue to call it haze liquid, but it was nice putting an actual name to my tools. Apparently, the plant was fairly common in the Shattered Isles.
There were far too many plants in there for me to get a true grasp of everything, and there were some that were downright unbelievable. Hell, there was supposedly even an extremely rare flower in Coltis known as a Phoenix Spring that could rejuvenate a person, healing them of any injuries and diseases. It sounded too good to be true.
On the flip side, there was a tree called a Spirit Cleaver somewhere in Cwalu. Its bark was said to be so sharp that it could kill someone just by caressing them. To make matters worse, it experienced rapid growth when exposed to blood. Once it reached a certain point, it could cut into the Aether itself, draining the life out of anyone who approached.
I wasn’t sure how much I believed some of the plants to be real. Some of their effects were just too fantastical. At the same time, North Arkhanika was plagued by the Eternal Sandstorm, which quite literally hasn’t stopped since it started, so there was no denying there were strange occurrences and effects all over the world.
When I got bored of reading, I swapped to tinkering on my newest toy. It had been a pain in the ass to make, purely since gasoline was so hard to find these days. I had to pay nearly fifteen Rayn a gallon when I finally found a gas station that sold it, which is just absurd. Outside of that, making Molotovs was actually quite easy.
For my uses, I didn’t necessarily want it to stick as much as start a small fire, so I didn’t add anything to it. It was as easy as filling a bottle with gasoline and then sticking a ripped-up shirt into the mouth of the bottle. I only made two of them, though I could probably make seven or eight if I really wanted to.
They were bulky and hard to carry though, so I just stuck with two. Hopefully, I wouldn’t even need to use them. The book had raised my paranoia about plants several times though. That, and my- erm, recent experiences with the blasted greenery.
The main point of it all though was learning how to make them and adding gasoline to the canteen. Now I could make Molotovs just about anywhere in the city. Bottles and discarded clothing were fairly easy to find by rifling through trash, and I had an infinite source of short-lived gas now. Course, assuming I set the canteen beforehand.
The time off also gave me time to really think about what I was dealing with. There was something larger at work here, I just couldn’t quite place my finger on it. I didn’t have nearly enough information, and the Inquisitor had been on a need-to-know basis. At most, I could guess they were trying to cause strife throughout the city, though not to what end. It was annoying, but hopefully, I’d have some answers soon.
For now, though, I only knew a few things about the group. They were obsessed with plants, at least from what I've seen so far. That, and they weren't the good guys, not that such a thing even existed these days. They just seemed ever so slightly more evil than the other shadowy cabals scattered around. Probably a biased opinion considering recent events.
A timer went off on my phone, causing a yawn to leak from my lips as I set the Mystical Agriculture book down and tapped on my phone. I stretched out, popping my back several times as I snagged my Crusade hat. As I threw my hair into a ponytail and tossed the hat on, I thought better about leaving the book and slid it into my bag.
I put on all my gear, the thick trench coat causing me to sweat a bit as I went around gathering my stuff back up. I also decided to bring a couple spare bottles and some bolts of cloth for in-the-field Molotovs if I needed them.
Then I was off back to the Blue Crusade HQ. Instead of going in like normal, I headed around the back of the building towards an underground parking garage. Crusader Cruisers filled the place, to the point I couldn’t see anything not of the Crusade. There were a few sexy-looking bikes scattered around, but for the most part, everything was either KS’s Keep or Cavalry model.
The Cavalry Models were fine pieces of machinery, each one capable of hitting top speeds in mere moments. They were more akin to an old sports car than anything, emphasizing a fast and sleek design. The Keep model was the exact opposite. They looked closer to watered-down tanks, with the durability to match. I remember seeing one drive through a building without even stopping when I was younger.
Hope sat in one of the Cavalry Cruisers with her feet kicked up out the window. I headed over to her, catching the rank fishy whiff of Grees as I passed one cruiser in particular. I rapped lightly on the passenger side door as I looked down at her.
Hope yawned, her jaw stretching so wide it looked like it might crack. She slowly slid back into a normal sitting position and unlocked the doors. “Your stuff is in the back.”
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I nodded to her then moved to the back to get at my newest toys. The best part? They were free. And Inquisitor Ligh hadn’t skimped out on me either.
I immediately threw on the ballistic vest, marked with the Crusade’s crest right over my heart. It came with a harness for everything else I received from the Inquisitor. Unlike when I originally got some Crusade equipment, this time I actually got the stuff and not just the clothing.
I checked through all the equipment, trying to memorize where it all would sit and what all I now had. Most of them were common sense items. For instance, I got a pair of handcuffs, a taser, flashlight, pepper spray, baton, knife, and a second radio. Then there was the pistol, neatly in a holster.
The new pistol was Knight Security’s Saber-19, a rather sleek and powerful pistol. It was definitely more lethal than my Sidewinder, at least. It came with seven mags, five of them black and two of them gray. It took me a moment to realize the two gray ones were silver bullets. Probably for Dune Walkers and their ilk, if I had to guess.
As soon as my hand wrapped around the pistol grip, time seemed to slow down ever so slightly. My brain kept up its normal pace, but everything around me felt and looked as if they moved just a little bit slower than they should’ve. The effect made me slightly nauseous and my body felt sluggish as it moved faster to keep up with my mind. The feeling faded as I mentally toggled Dexterity off for now.
My newest Perk, instead of just making me a bit faster, seemed to make everything else a bit slower. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure how it worked, but my best guess was something along the lines of the time dilation effect from the learning space. It wasn’t truly dexterity, to the point its name and description were entirely misleading.
I strapped everything else in and headed for the passenger seat. As soon as I slid in, Hope kicked the Cruiser into drive and we were off. The radio played the newest hits of the city, though it was so quiet I could barely hear the horribly written songs.
I stared out the window, enjoying the silence that sat between us as the city drifted by. It wasn’t till we were just passing the Corporate Quarter that she spoke up. “You ever been to the Underground?”
”A couple times.” I replied. “Not the best spot to go for vacations though.”
Hope laughed lightly as she rubbed at her eyes. “You can say that again…”
"You?"
"Once, when I was young and dumb..." It sounded like there was quite the story there, but she didn't contiune.
I remained silent for a few moments. “What even is this ‘circle’ that we’re hunting down?”
”Honestly?” Hope tossed her shoulders back. “I have no idea. As best I can tell, they’re a bunch of nature fanatics. Wrong country to be one of them though.”
Fair, the country was almost entirely desert. Unless they worshiped sand, there really wasn’t all that much nature around these parts. “Weird.”
”Chek. Inquisitor Strumgard first caught their scent three months back on a botched heist down by the docks. He thinks there is something larger at foot here. Some grand scheme to bring down the city.”
“Is there?”
Hope let loose a big yawn, swerving into the other lane as my heartbeat spiked. She regained control and continued like nothing happened. “Probably not. Though Ligh is well known for being in the right place at the right time to end major conspiracies, so who knows? It's above our pay grade anyway...”
We returned to silence as Hope pulled off the inter-city highway. Not long after that, Hope pulled into a decrepit alleyway filled with trash. She bulldozed right through most of it, taking several zigzagging turns almost too tight to fit. We nearly smacked a homeless dude as we went around a particularly tight corner.
At some point, the alleys slipped underground, buried beneath newer buildings and streets. The signs of habitation faded as we drove deeper, eventually pulling into a long-forgotten parking garage. Burnt-out remains of cars sat scattered around here and there. The place looked largely abandoned to the rats. Just like most of the city then.
”How’d he even know of this?” I asked as I stared around the parking garage. It was one of those places in the city that were so buried under progress that everyone forgot about it. Not even the city archives showed this parking garage to exist when I scanned the thing.
”Good question.” Hope turned off the car, and popped open her door. “Probably a meeting point from some old case of his, if I had to guess. Or maybe he was just lucky and stumbled across it?”
That did seem like the kind of bullshit the Inquisitor would pull. At the end of the day, it didn’t really matter how he found it, just that he did. “He said to look for the elevator shaft.”
I looked around, the darkness no problem to me as I spotted the elevator up against the far wall. “Gah!” My hands flung to my eyes as a bright light seemed to pierce through my retina.
Hope flickered her flashlight away, twisting it to the side of the garage. “Oh, sorry.”
”Yeah, yeah… you got the masks?” I asked as I clicked on a flashlight of my own. I didn’t need it, but I might as well play along. Not that I thought Hope would turn on me for the oddity, but it was better to hold my cards close to my chest.
”Here.” Hope tossed one to me as she slid her own onto her head.
I grabbed the thing out of the air and looked it over. It looked closer to the conventional double-filter gas mask than the last couple of masks I'd used. The Jade Fang’s masks were of a high quality, no doubt. Funny that a gang has better equipment than the Crusade, at least in this regard. Crusader armor is top of the line maybe only up there with BosSpace stuff.
Still, it was better than nothing. I took off my hat and slid it on, having to adjust my ponytail to get out of the way of the straps. I threw my hat back on and took a tentative breath through the mask. The air came across clean, though it had a plasticy artificial taste to it. I strapped my flashlight to my vest while I was at it.
I glanced over to see Hope giving herself a final check-over. She popped the trunk open and retrieved two rifles and a bag full of magazines. I recognized the model as the one Mira used way back when. The KS Squire-14, I think. Right, it also had a 'recoilless barrel' that was a blatant lie.
She handed me one, along with a dozen mags that I slid into my backpack. “Inquisitor Ligh managed to get us some heavier stuff under the pretense of ‘ordnance training’.” She also handed me a couple of flashbangs I promptly strapped to my chest.
Normally, I’d doubt their effectiveness since flash resistors were a fairly common feature in chrome eyes, but we were going up against fanatical plant Adepts, so they would probably actually work. That, or the psychos had some super photosynthesis plant that would absorb the light and devour us. I don't think I saw anything like that in the book, but who knows?
“Nice… We ready then?” I asked as I started walking over to the elevator. Hope joined me a step later, her silver armor reflecting some of the light from our flashlights. She held a rather massive spool of wire and two harnesses slung over her shoulder.
The doors were shut, though that proved to be a nonissue. Hope easily pried them open, revealing the elevator shaft. Normally, elevator shafts had a ground floor. This one, though, gave way to a deep dark drop into the abyss below.
I heard Hope's tired sigh as we stared down the deep shaft.