"I'm not going to kill you." I stare down both Padus as hard as humanly possible, "Either of you."
Retard Padu seems to relax slightly at my declaration but his counterpart Fancy Padu remains disconsolate. If anything, the expression on his face become even more complicated.
"It doesn't matter what you want, Adam." Fancy Padu sighs as he reaches for the bottle of tequila on the counter and pours himself a fresh drink, "This is something you're meant to do."
"Give me that," I snort and snatch the bottle away from him, "Drinking too much has given you brain rot. I'm not killing either of you and that's all there is to it."
Fancy Padu flashes me a dubious look as I place the bottle of tequila safely out of his reach. I'm not in the least concerned with the Padus, after all I hardly know them. But I do have a vested interest in not playing a part in their fated end. If the Padus live, that means it is possible to foil the fated end. At least that is what I believe.
"So let me get this straight," I ask the Padus, "Delacroix and Andrew placed you here as part of an experiment. An experiment to see if this artificial space could keep your death at bay?"
"Pretty much." Retard Padu pipes up, "Delacroix called it "destrudo" but otherwise your guess is correct. He warned us that you were working for the sensorium and would one day return to finish what you had started."
"That's crazy. I've never worked for the sensorium." I protest.
"I remember a guy wearing a shopping bag over his head intruding into our match." Retard Padu snarks back, "Who was that, your bloody manager?"
"Crap." I facepalm, realizing I had been looking at things from the wrong angle. Breath had said that he had hired me through Phoenix Guild, that was the reason why I never considered myself working for the Sensorium. If Breath was on the level, I would still be a Guild employee. But what if Breath had been lying to me about this point?
No wonder James sounded so weird when he called me up the other day. My deployment to Pay 2 Win is unauthorized. I've effectively gone AWOL. Not that going AWOL is a problem, my plan was always to disappear from Crossroad City. Except now my association with Breath has painted a huge bullseye on my back, tying me to whatever agenda the Sensorium is pursuing.
And from what the Padus are telling me, the Sensorium's agenda is directly opposed to whatever the old grandmaster had been planning. I've managed to get closer to Delacroix but in the worst possible way.
"You had better get going Adam." Retard Padu rouses me from my consternation, "As long as you fuck off far, far away from us, the array should stabilize and we'll be safe."
"I keep telling you," Fancy Padu butts in, "it isn't that simple! Our destrudo has already been set in motion."
"And I'm trying to stop it from killing us while someone," Retard Padu fixes an annoyed glare at his counterpart, "is more interested in moaning and groaning like a woman."
Fancy Padu merely shakes his head in silence, clearly not convinced that anything will change. Although I sense he is forgetting something important.
"Delacroix survived the Starfall Detonation didn't he?" I point out to Fancy Padu, "And you guys did say that the detonation was caused by Delaroix himself."
"I know what you're trying to hint at, Adam." Fancy Padu turns to look at me, "You think the Starfall Detonation was brought on by Delacroix's destrudo."
"Its a fair guess, don't you think?" I push the point, or perhaps I'm just trying to shore up my own convictions.
"But that's all it is, a guess." Fancy Padu shoots back, "The detonation could just as easily been caused by something Delacroix had done. From how it was explained to us, destrudo is not something you can run away from."
"Well, whatever. I'm off." I shrug, eager to leave as soon as possible, mindful at how my presence causes Padu's life to tick away, "You two take care of yourselves."
With my farewells said, I immediately begin striding towards the door, just in time for my phone to start ringing. I don't recognize the number but accept the call anyway.
"HOLY CRAP ADAM!" its the tout, literally screaming in my ear, "Things have gone crazy out here."
Distantly I wonder how in the world the tout managed to get my number, before remembering I had given it to him to arrange a refund for my bus ticket. The tout barrels on, too excited to take a breath.
"Damn! There's cars and vans just charging up the road! Armed men storming the building!" the tout yells excitedly, "What the hell did you do?"
"Turn on the security cam feed!" I shout urgently at the Padus and Fancy Padu obliges, picking up the TV remote. But instead of camera footage, all we on the screen get is a haze of static.
"The camera feed must have been cut." Fancy Padu says grimly, "Only someone with Guild level access would have been able to do it."
The tout's phone call abruptly cuts out and is followed up immediately by a video call from the same number. I accept the video call and my phone's screen fills with shaky footage, streamed live.
"Holy shit."
An absolutely massive crowd of Guild troopers quick marching down the main corridor of the orphanage's main building. The camera angle shifts awkwardly as the tout tries to score me a shot of whomever is leading this force. Rachel's sister is there, looking close to tears and jabbing away at her own phone. But there are two very unwelcome faces at the head of the crowd.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
"Damnit, Excelsior and Latour." I grit my teeth at the realization that the small army had nearly reached the strong room door separating the artificial space from the rest of the orphanage.
Without wasting a second, I sprint for the door and slam down the massive handle hard. The girthy locking mechanism triggers with an audible clunk, the bolts slotted neatly into position. From the video the tout is streaming, I can tell that the two Guild Captains on the other side heard the door locking down as well. Rachel's sister finishes fiddling on her phone and right on cue, there's a ringing noise coming from the penthouse's sound system.
"You're on speaker, Charlotte." Retard Padu croaks as loudly as he can, "Is there anything I can help with?"
"Its happening, Padu. The day you talked about has come ..." Charlotte blabbers incoherently and from the video I can see that she's well on the way to having a break down.
"Calm Charlotte." Retard Padu says soothingly, "We knew this would happen. Go to the bunker. Do what we discussed. Soon, everything will be over. One way or the other."
I glance at Retard Padu while his counterpart flashes me an innocent look. Of course the Padus are working their own angle here. They had known, or more likely suspected, that Delacroix's experiment would not work. So the Padus had put in place a contingency of their own. Charlotte nods rapidly on my phone screen before Latour roughly grabs her handset.
"Everett. We know you're in there. Don't even think about harming Padu." Latour's voice booms from the penthouse's speakers.
"We're fine Captain Latour." Fancy Padu speaks up, "Adam just dropped by for a chat."
"Good." Latour snorts derisively, "Now, Everett, you are going to disarm and surrender yourself. Do I make myself clear?"
"On what ground?" I shout back, cold sweat running down my back.
"Being away from the Guild without leave, conspiring with a hostile party, making unauthorized payments to yourself from the Guild account and stealing property belonging to Captain Excelsior's family." Latour calmly rattles off a list of charges.
"Hey! Most of those things can be explained and I never stole anything from Excelsior!" I instinctively retort as both Padus stare at me with open mouths.
"We did some investigation of our own. Remember Hanlon Jewels? Hanlon certainly remembers you. Especially after seeing some old photos from your days at my school." Excelsior is on the phone now, "Just stop with the lies Everett. Come quietly and it will be easier for everyone."
"You're pretty hardcore Adam." the tout's voice whispers over the line, "Never would have expected it from just looking at you."
I want to scream that things are more complicated than one those two oafs are making them out to be, but the expectant looks from the Padus pull me back to reality.
"I am not going out there." I say defiantly.
"You promised you would leave us in peace!" Retard Padu hisses and I give him an ugly look.
"I'm going to get disappeared by Latour and Excelsior." I fold my arms across my chest, "And I can't fight my way past them. So no."
"I told you so." Fancy Padu shakes his head in resignation, "Like I said, what you want Adam, doesn't matter at the end of the day."
We faintly hear Excelsior hang up and from the tout's video feed, I can see Charlotte take back her phone and scurry off somewhere else. Latour puts on his trademark tiger face helmet and gestures vaguely to the heavies around him. A pack of high level Warriors march up to the door, bearing a battering ram. With a great heave, the mounted titanium head of the ram is slammed into the door and I hear it buckle.
"We're finished. Its over." Retard Padu slumps into his bed, resignation all over his eyes.
The door is made out of heavy reinforced mahogany. Its strong, but will eventually yield to the battering ram. And once the penthouse is breached, the array keeping the Padus alive will collapse completely. The intrusion of so many people is guaranteed to short out the array, given its current condition.
No matter what course of action I take, Padu is done. We're all done.
No. That's loser talk. I won't let myself die here, after all the compromises with myself that I needed to make. There has to be a way out of this. Otherwise the voice of my heart would be losing its mind. I just need a moment to center myself.
Focus. Like Boggs said, I am an Awakened. Someone with senses beyond the capability of other men, even adventurers.
The decaying array pulls my attention like a magnet and I focus further, following the threads of gossamer thin energy running through the apartment, holding the reconciliation together. And I notice something.
There are two circuits of halo energy running through the penthouse. The reconciliation is mainly supported by the array but there's an auxiliary source of power supporting it.
"Did Andrew ever explain how the array was configured?" I ask the Padu's urgently, scrutinizing the array's installation.
"No." Fancy Padu frowns, "Why would he? We would not have understood."
I grunt noncommittally, looking at the locked compartment at the stem of the plinth. Unlike the elaborate security system protecting the array itself, this compartment is guarded by a simple lock. More a formality than a serious attempt at keeping it safe. Invoking minor polymorph, I use my cat claws to tear through the cheap plywood keeping the compartment sealed, bypassing the lock entirely.
"A circuit. And a basic one at that." I nod, gazing at the arcane symbols that serve as the array's configuration system. Fancy Padu makes an uncomprehending noise and I don't blame him. If I was relying on mundane sight alone, the incomprehensible nature of the symbols would have floored me as well. But my Awakened senses let me see the currents beneath the symbols, making working backward child's play.
The door judders again, resisting the onslaught from the men outside. I'll have to go with my gut, there's no time to carefully test my assumptions. Grabbing the symbol governing the flow of energy from the auxiliary power source, I twist it like a switch, turning the slow trickle of power into a tidal wave.
"Shit!" Retard Padu cries out in distress as the penthouse's temperature crashes like a stone. We've gone from room temperature to walk in freezer level within a second.
The array is drowned under the wave of fresh energy and I understand why the Fat Man had set up a limiter. Left uncontrolled, the auxiliary source would cause a massive blow out of the array. But the rot caused by my presence has changed things, blunting and dissipating the fresh energy as it enters the array. Rather than causing a blow out, the additional energy manages to stabilize the array, suppressing the spread of the rot.
"Alright. I don't think you're going to die any time soon." I say to the Padus, jacking up the aux power to maximum. The cold becomes a deep, marrow destroying freeze but I endure. At this level of output, the array would be able to resist a direct breach of the penthouse.
"We won't last long in this cold!" Fancy Padu protests but I have no time for objections.
"Get some blankets." I snort, tracing the circuit to the window displaying the skyline of Crossroad City. Andrew obviously didn't want to rely too much on the aux power source because of the side effects but we don't have any good options here.
"There it is. The aux power is on the other side of the window." I mentally confirm my findings and draw love from its holster. Other than going through the door, the window is the only other way out of the penthouse.
Love thunders in agreement, bullets smashing the glass and destroying the illusion of Crossroad City's skyline. What roars through the gap is a savage blizzard, howling like a damned soul.
"See you around, Padus." I wave my hosts goodbye and take off sprinting toward the breach.
Throwing myself blindly into white oblivion.