“So what does a perfect person do with unlimited strength? They get better. And they get stronger.” - Matt, Superman and the Utility Of Strength -
Morgan woke up in an actual bed, for the first time in a week. And despite the perfect warm embrace of the worn brown cloth comforter that he was wrapped in, he sat bolt upright as soon as his eyes opened. Hair that was a little too long tangling around his neck and face as he tried to remember where the hell he was.
Then his eyes settled on the glowing red orb on the nightstand, casting a strangely comfortable aura of light around the room, and it all came flooding back.
He’d met with someone who didn’t seem entirely sane. And he’d gotten news about his mom. And then, he’d gotten… not answers, really. Morgan had more questions than ever. What was this place, who were these people, what kind of monsters were those snakes, why did they think he was so important, why was everyone here so *nice*?
Did he actually want to talk to them?
He didn’t need to. James had tried to make that clear, and the snake things had vanished when he’d told them Morgan needed space. He could just leave. And a very big part of him wanted to.
His chest hurt, and not just from the bruises. She was dead. His mom was dead. Not ‘maybe’ anymore, not ‘missing’ or ‘presumed’ anything. She was gone. Her body was in the other basement. He could see her if he wanted to. And the feeling was so painful, so hard to even touch the edges of with his thoughts.
Morgan had cried himself to sleep last night, and only stopped now for lack of tears.
He could leave, and forget it all. Put it behind him, and just strike out with a new start at life.
Or he could stay here. Multiple people had said it was okay. No one was going to kick him out. He didn’t have to go back to sneaking food out of the shitty apartment he technically shared with his dad, sleeping at friend’s places or under the bleachers behind the high school, and being afraid all the time.
Well, maybe he’d still be afraid. The snakes scared the shit out of him. He’d seen them around, some of them watching him, some of them trying very hard to pretend not to. Morgan just didn’t get how everyone could be so okay with the things being all over the building. They were monsters. They could freeze people by looking at them. They’d killed people.
He’d said as much to Nate when the chef had asked if he’d had any questions. The stocky, tattooed man had just given him a level stare, and asked, “What do you think makes us any different?”
Snakes or humans. Everything in this building was worth being nervous about.
But even with all that. He could still stay here. And there was just so much to be curious about! Even if he didn’t want to talk to the things that killed his mom, he still *needed* to know what was going on here. The curiosity in the back of his head that never shut up pushing him to stop being such a coward, and ask a million questions about this building, these people, and his place in all of it.
Morgan fully sat up, pushing the blankets away, and getting dressed. His own clothes were off somewhere else; either being washed or burned, depending on if the girl he’d talked to had been joking. But there was a dresser here that was stocked with basics that he was told he was welcome to. He avoided the sundresses, though. Not his style, and they seemed more personal.
For all the fear and sorrow he’d spent yesterday grappling with, he felt *better*. Better than he had in months. He had a real answer now, not just more uncertainty. He’d been fed, more than one meal in a day even. He’d gotten real sleep.
James wasn’t a perfect person, wasn’t all powerful, and made some stupid decisions sometimes. But he understood one thing very closely. If you took away someone’s anxieties about basic survival - food, water, warmth, shelter - then it didn’t take long for that person to be able to take a breather, and make rational decisions without panic over where their next sandwich came from.
Morgan took a deep breath, and opened the door to the small basement room that he’d been set up in.
In the concrete corridor outside, lit by blueish fluorescent ceiling lights, waiting patiently between a hand truck and a sheaf of folded cardboard boxes that were left in the hall, three camracondas faced him. One of them larger than the others, one of them with a blue-green patterning that looked almost like a normal snake. All of them watching him.
Morgan paused. The snakes bowed. To him.
“Oy!” A girl’s voice bounced around the concrete walls. “We talked about this!”
Morgan glanced to his left, to see a short girl with half a head of bright blue hair, stomping toward the camracondas with a furious scowl on her face. She was wearing literal wizard robes, too, and… no, wait; Morgan corrected himself. She was wearing a black bathrobe, and looked like she’d either just awoken herself, or hadn’t slept at all in the last week.
One of the camracondas spoke, jolting him back to the situation. “We are…” the snake looked around itself, camera eye settling on the bundle of cardboard boxes behind them. “...Packing.” It lied.
The girl - Momo, Morgan was pretty sure her name was - stared at the three snakes. And suddenly, he understood how his mom had felt every time he’d lied about doing his homework in the least convincing way possible. She didn’t have to speak to emit the feeling of someone crossing their arms and saying “Really.”
The snakes withered under the look she gave them.
Something about it was just so… Morgan wanted to say ‘human’, but that word clearly wasn’t as all encompassing as he’d thought. But they were people. Kids, almost. They reminded him of the freshmen at school, doing stupid stuff in obvious ways and obviously getting caught. Before he knew it, he found himself grinning.
“It’s fine.” He said, almost tripping over his words as he took the initiative in conversation for the first time in a while. “They’re not hurting anyone.”
Momo gave him a side glance, and he saw her silently snort a laugh at the shirt he was wearing. “You sure?” Momo asked after he humor passed.
“What’s so funny about my shirt?” Morgan demanded.
“Nothing, nothing. It’s… classic rock is great.” Her voice started to crack with giggles. “Come on, let’s get you breakfast, and then you can figure out what your day looks like.”
Morgan gave a confused, worried look to the camracondas who still hadn’t left and were still glancing at him when they thought he wasn’t looking. The three of them took in his shirt too, but all of them put off the aura of a shrug, which was impressive without shoulders. He glanced down again at the worn band logo he was wearing.
“What’s wrong with The Doors?” Morgan muttered to himself as he followed Momo. And found, he’d already made his decision, without really thinking about it.
_____
“Yo! JP!” Dave called after his friend, jogging to catch up with where JP was already heading for the front door of the Lair. He was panting, a little out of breath, having jogged down here from where he’d landed Pendragon on the roof after spotting JP hauling a suitcase into his car’s trunk.
JP glanced back, and gave a crooked half-grin at his friend. He was wearing a goddam suit, some kind of tan and white creation that made him look like he was trying to join the Rat Pack. “Hey buddy!” He greeted Dave with a friendly clap on the shoulders. “What’cha been up to?”
“Lots of stuff.” Dave shrugged. “Flying people around with Pen, doing some aerial reconnaissance, looking for land we might want to buy for James’ city thing. Also watching The Expanse.”
“I hear that’s fun.” JP nodded sagely.
“I mean, flying doesn’t really get old.” Dave grinned at him, as JP caught up to the reply to the wrong part of the conversation and swatted at him. “Are you leaving again?”
The last words were said with a fair bit of unhidden disappointment. Not that Dave was ever good at, or inclined to, hide anything about how he felt. But still. Even as a lot of people were settling into new roles in the Order, like the new girl who was casually slipping into the back behind where Dave was talking to his friend, some people were spending less and less time actually around. Dave was one of them, honestly, but since JP was too, the two of them hadn’t really gotten to hang out in a long while.
“Yeah, I’m off to… well, it’s probably best if I get in the habit of keeping stuff secret.” JP mournfully added the last part flipping up his collar and turning away sadly.
“Oh get fucked!” Dave told him with a bark of laughter.
JP laughed back, turning back and setting down the briefcase he was carrying as he leaned against one of the chairs out here in the main lobby. “Yeah, yeah. But seriously; I’m investigating something, and it might actually be a good idea to not spread it around too much. Heading down to Utah, looking into a cult there.”
“Again? Always with the cults with you.”
“Hey, someone’s gotta do the intelligence work.” JP said. “You wanna make James a spy? Huh?”
Dave thought for a second, then his eyes widened and he shook his head rapidly. “Noooo, I remember that time Anesh tried to run an espionage RPG. James kept breaking people’s legs. It’d just be that but he’d be more frustrated.”
“Exactly! Also, where is Anesh anyway?” JP asked, glancing around, and spotting the new girl from before now leaving the warehouse area and sprinting back around past the elevator, and down the corridor toward the dining room.
Dave shrugged and sighed in equal measure. “Eh. Everyone’s always gone now. I barely see you guys anymore. I miss D&D! I miss arguing about anime!”
“You are the only one who misses that second one.” JP informed him politely. “Also, how can Anesh be gone all the time? I know for a fact there’s three of him, even if one is out of state.”
“He’s busy with things.” Dave told him. “I dunno. Experiments? Math, I guess? Making out with James?”
“Please don’t make me imagine that.” JP grimaced.
Dave pressed the attack. “Oh, come on. They’re our friends. They’re cuuuuute.” He sidled up to JP and elbowed him in the ribs. “You’re just mad you don’t have a magical boyfriend.”
“I am mad that *I* am not a magical boyfriend.” JP retaliated. “Watching my friends kissing is weird. It’s always weird, because they always break up eventually, and then there’s… fewer friends.”
His voice dipped down into actual concern and not just friendly mocking for a minute. JP didn’t make friends easily. JP made contacts, business partners, dates, and marks easily. Those didn’t always turn into friends, or even long term connections. His last girlfriend was dating a snake now, which *sorta* hurt his sense of masculinity.
“Whatever. When you get back from Utah, we should do a thing.” Dave suggested. He gave an excited inhalation; “Oooh! We should start a board game night!”
“Oh, sorry, I’m busy. I have work that day.” JP countered, picking up his briefcase and stepping back.
“I didn’t say what…”
JP nodded at him. “Yeah, I get ya.” He cut his friend off. “It’s just so important that someone be scouting out any potential new threats or allies. I knew you’d understand.”
“I didn’t…” Dave gave a comically annoyed shake of his head.
“Anyway, you should probably deal with that. Good talking to you!” JP pointed over Dave’s shoulder, and he turned around to see a small collection of four or five of their new members, all jogging toward the warehouse, and presumably, the roof access.
“Dragon dragon dragon dragon…” Dave heard a couple of them quietly chanting as they hustled past.
He sighed. “I should deal with that.” He turned around. “You be…” JP was gone, the front door swinging shut behind him with not a trace of the weasel left. “...safe. Alright, yeah, I value your friendship too, jackass.” Dave rolled his eyes. “Now I’m just standing here talking to myself. James has been influencing me too much. Great. Okay.”
In all truth, Dave saw the point. It was important that they have a diplomatic wing of the Order, even though that’s absolutely not what JP had said or implied. But you couldn’t do diplomacy without knowing who the players on the board were. And making contact was the most important step.
Were they alone? No one knew. But being part of a secret group that most people simply wouldn’t believe the truth of could feel very isolating. And really, while Dave was a bit miffed that JP had just Batman-exited on him, he did understand his friend’s desire to get moving.
There was a whole world out there to explore. Presumably some of it would, eventually, be friendly.
_____
James had drug a couch into the back operations area, what had used to be a warehouse and was now a chaotic mess of desks and whiteboards. Maps of the Office dungeon, briefing spaces, and a whole third of the floor space partitioned off for use fabricating the armor and weapons that it was easier or more possible to make than to buy.
And a couch. Because James was reading, and he felt like relaxing while he did it. His office was nice and all, but it was… an office. It was not a good place for careful study. His office was where he had printouts of dry thesis statements on things like ‘Accounting for Human Needs vs Technical Concerns’ and ‘Use of Color in Urban Environments’. Things he needed to have a grasp of, but not exactly mastery over. Here, on this couch, in this mostly dark room where the only distraction was a group of people running toward the roof access yelling the word ‘dragon’ over and over, was where he could read things for fun.
In the past, James’ idea of fun was science fiction. Today, his hobby was trying to build a science fiction future as a reality, so his idea of fun had shifted a little. He was reading a book about silly things that people took for granted in city design. It was witty, lighthearted, and made him realize that no matter what they did, he was going to get so many things ‘wrong’ at some point. Not, like, oops-the-arcology-is-on-fire wrong, but more like not-quite-enough-stairs wrong, or mildly-inconvenient-statuary wrong. Fun wrong.
He’d had, early on, this vision for an arcology powered by magic and human compassion. Some kind of stalwart structure, towering over the landscape, a beacon for a better world that contained that world in microcosm within its walls. And as time had gone by, that vision had only gotten more ambitious, not less. More magic, more people of more species, more solutions to problems that really shouldn’t exist in the world.
Then, when other members of the Order had started to come around on his dreams of megaproject habitats, they’d started to actually… start. He’d had help, and people to push him forward, and suddenly the project wasn’t just a dream, it was something they were *working on*.
He’d had a virtual meeting earlier today with a man who ran a contractor company that mostly specialized in building sewer systems. That had been an eye opening experience, learning exactly how much space and effort was devoted to building pipe networks. Then, there’d been answering emails from a few freelance architects and graphic designers, answering questions about the details of the project that they’d been hired for, sketching out a practical but beautiful vision for the design of some of the concourse areas.
They were doing this. Maybe not all at once. Maybe it would take a decade or five. But they were *doing this*.
An arcology. The term went back to the sixties, when a designer had coined it as a combination of architecture and ecology, to discuss planned communities and cities that were ideal human habitats that didn’t damage the environment. The vision James and the Order were working on went a step farther, working to build a government, a society, that intentionally maximized human happiness.
Their plan right now was to construct a self-contained, self-sufficient city, using combinations of human engineering mastery, and dungeontech exploits, that would be capable of sustaining a population of a million people. As a proof of concept.
And then, do it again. And better.
James got lost sometimes, in the absolute scale of humanity. There were almost nine billion people on the planet. Building something that would be good for everyone wasn’t really possible for just him, or just the Order. And the plan wasn’t to pack all of mankind into arcology structures and abandon the rest of the world. It was more to undo the damage done by suburban sprawl and heavy industrialization, to create environments that minimized waste, minimized emissions. And hopefully, to do it before modern humanity wrecked the natural environment beyond repair.
It turned out, nine billion humans could do a lot of damage under certain conditions. Earth, at this point, was basically just a large scale version of the Tragedy of the Commons. Again, the scale of a lot of problems was so far outside what James could easily wrap his head around, it was hard to see where to start on solutions.
But they had to start somewhere. So, a perfect city. Or at least, a better city. And in the meantime, they’d keep working to protect people, to save lives, to help where they could.
“What’re you reading?” Dave’s voice snapped James out of his wandering thoughts.
“Uh?” He looked up, eyes refocusing as he glanced down at the book propped open on his chest. “Oh, hey. I guess I’m not really reading anything, I’m half napping. But the book is about default design choices. What’s up? I didn’t hear you come in.”
“Impossible. I said hi to you when I got here.”
“Not from the roof, you asshole. I knew you were *in the building*. I mean, what brings you to my reading cave?” James rolled his eyes.
Dave gave a single short laugh and a smug smile, which James had to remind himself only looked smug, and wasn’t actually hostile or anything. “I’m just here on Response shift.” He said. “And I was talking to JP. You know he’s trying to spy on people?” Dave asked.
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James bit his tongue a bit before answering. “Yeeeeah, I dunno how to feel about that. I think he and Nate want to form a… I dunno how to phrase this, but a bastards division?” James pushed himself up off the couch and leaned over the back of it while he talked. “I don’t mind having some kind of intelligence happening around here - gods know I don’t have much myself to spare - but I don’t want them recreating the CIA, you know? Like, my utopian future has us eventually peacefully replacing governments, not backing violent coups against them.”
“I don’t think you can do better than the government.” Dave bluntly told him.
“Well of course *I* can’t.” James protested. “Also, hey, rude. But it’s not about any one person doing better or worse; it’s about building a system that’s for everyone, that fixes large scale problems instead of causing them.”
“Fair enough.” Dave said. “By the way, who are the new people that just came through?”
James grinned and dropped back to the couch cushions before rolling off onto the floor and bouncing to his feet. “The ones who just scrambled to the roof to fawn over Pendragon?” He asked rhetorically. “Mars and Chevoy are engineers, Marcy is a talk therapist that’ll be on site for us when Lua isn’t around and is also taking a shift on Response as a dispatcher, and Pete is one of our interns.”
“And they just get to… run around unsupervised? You aren’t afraid any of them are someone else’s version of JP?”
“That’s delightfully suspicious.” James snorted. “But yeah. I’ll admit it. I’m kinda worried about that, especially now that you said it out loud and put that evil in the world. But we need more people, we need to grow. And we are running background checks and calling references and then going one step farther and doing a little digging into people. And we’ll be careful. You know, not start people off by handing them a skulljack and a gun and telling them to go nuts, right?”
“James, you literally did that with Virgil.”
“First off, Virgil was awes… grea… Virgil was *very proficient* at…”
“You can just say he was a dick.”
“...he was great though.” James said with a soft smile, and he and Dave let the words hang for a moment as they remembered their fallen comrade. “But seriously. I still don’t know how he convinced Neil to give him a skulljack on day one. But it was the right call. And for all that he bulldozed his way through social situations, he was a good person. So yeah, I wouldn’t mind if maybe we had a few people who we overtrusted, who ended up paying off.”
Dave didn’t look convinced. The opposite, if anything. “What if they betray us? Or worse, just take the powers we hand out, and start using them for evil?”
“Evil is kind of a vaguely defined thing, but I get what you mean.” James nodded. “I mean, what do you want, tracking chips in every member of the Order?”
“Okay.”
James coughed a little bit, dropping the book he was idly spinning in his hands back onto the couch. “Uh… no. No, we won’t be doing that. For one thing, it’s a huge security risk.”
“I’m sure Research can figure something out. Get the new people to work on it.”
“The new people… that you want to put tracking chips in…?”
“Yes.”
“Dave… no.” James pinched the bridge of his nose. “Look, I get that there’s a risk. But we *have* security protocols, we’re getting better about this. And at the end of the day, trusting people is really the only way we get the world that we want. I’m sure some people are going to lie to us, try to screw us over. I’m also sure that they’ll be able to do it a lot easier if we already don’t trust each other.”
Dave thought about it for a second, and then nodded. “Okay, I get that. So no tracking chips?”
“You *really* want the Order knowing when you’re using the bathroom?” James demanded.
“I have changed my mind about the tracking chips.” Dave conceded.
_____
Morgan was having breakfast with a snake.
It was a bizarre experience. There were a few other people at different tables in the cafeteria, but none of them bothered him. There were a *lot* of the camraconda things around this building, Morgan was noticing. And all of them were always looking at him when they thought he didn’t notice.
And when he’d come out of the kitchen, having been exiled by the chef that was seemingly omnipresent in his stained apron and gruff expression, he’d seen one of the camracondas sitting and gently picking at a plate of carrots. So, swallowing the ball of nerves in his throat, Morgan had sat down across from him… her? It? Whatever the snake was. A plate of eggs and toast had joined the snack of carrots, and Morgan noticed then that the camraconda had a tablet on the table too that it was flicking with its tongue to scroll through the text.
It had glanced up at him, done a slight double take, and then given a greeting in halting English. Morgan had said hi back, and then they’d settled into uncomfortable silence as he’d eaten.
Eventually, though, he had to ask.
“Is it… hard to read that without hands?” Morgan spoke, and then instantly wished he could take the words back, feeling like the biggest idiot in the world.
The camraconda looked back up, the aperture of its eye narrowing slightly as it focused on him. “Yes.” It said, digital voice coming out of the speakers it wore on its sides. “Not made for us.” The fact that it just took the question at face value made Morgan feel a little better.
He was trying to figure out how to ask if it would rather have a better tablet, or hands, when a bunch of other laughing humans drew his attention to the hallway into the rest of the Lair. Four people, all of them looking a little bit out of breath like they’d just been for a jog, made their way back into the room laughing and chatting. They reclaimed a nearby table that had coats and half-eaten food on it, with a couple of them glancing over at Morgan. In fact, he noticed, they did exactly the thing the camracondas did.
“Okay,” He leaned forward and quietly spoke to the snake he had been sharing a table with, trying not to be noticed by the others, “I get why you guys do the glancing thing. But why are *they* looking at me strangely?”
The camraconda looked up from its reading, and pivoted its head in a wide arc to take in the table next to them. “Ah.” It said. “Those are new.”
“So am I, though.” Morgan protested.
“Those not know. Also, those are very…” The camraconda paused, before settling on the word it wanted, “...*excitable*.” The way it emphasized the word with reverb made Morgan crack a smile. Then the camraconda nudged aside its tablet, and looked back at him. “I am Color-Of-Dawn.” It said.
Morgan nodded, before the manners his mom had drilled into him for fifteen years took effect. “Oh! I’m Morgan. Nice to meet you.” He said it almost automatically, and extended a hand to shake on autopilot. Color-Of-Dawn looked down at the offered hand, and Morgan’s eyes followed. “Uh…” He pulled back, blushing a furious red.
“You already know, I have zero hands.” The camraconda said.
“I’m sorry!” Morgan dropped his head to the table and tried to burrow into the sleeves of his shirt.
“Not mad.” Color-Of-Dawn replied. “Amuse.”
Morgan peeked up, keeping his head on the table. It was… difficult for him to tell. The serpent *said* it was amused, but it lacked any kind of facial features to read. Unless the head tilt meant something. “I still feel bad. And I don’t wanna be… I dunno.”
“You are new.” The camraconda nodded in a bobbing motion. “You will learn.”
“If I decide to stay.” Morgan added, giving voice to his internal questioning. “I dunno if I can… be here. I guess.”
“Understand.” Color-Of-Dawn told him. The camraconda had set aside its reading entirely, and was now entirely focused on their conversation, though it took a moment to flip another carrot into its mouth and crunch down on it. Morgan saw rows of fangs made of what looked like pen tips, shredding the vegetable.
“Really? You seem kinda at home. I mean, this is your home, right?” He asked, curiosity getting the better of him.
Color-Of-Dawn made a wavering motion with its head, and Morgan got the impression it was shrugging. “New here. New everywhere.” It turned the volume of its voice down, and the lower tone sounded sad in contrast. “Could leave, but where? Here is home, but did not choose.”
“Oh.” Morgan said. “I guess… I understand. James sort of explained what happened to you.” He said, trying not to pick at anything uncomfortable. “I guess you can’t really leave, huh?”
“Could leave!” Somehow, Color-Of-Dawn infused its voice with indignation. “Like it here. But. Unsure.”
“It’s got good food.” Morgan admitted. “And everyone is…”
“Kind.” The camraconda finished. “But.”
“Yeah.”
Morgan realized that he’d opened up to one of the creatures he’d been afraid of an hour ago, almost without thinking about it. And, beyond that, felt like he actually understood Color-Of-Dawn, and was understood by it, more than any of the humans he’d talked to in the last day.
He finished his eggs, while the camraconda went back to its reading, and the two of them fell into a more comfortable silence.
_____
“Daniel!” James cheerfully answered his cell phone. “How ya been? How’s your camping trip?”
There was a moment of dead air in reply. “...What?” Daniel’s voice came back with confusion so thick that even the bad audio quality on James’ phone picked it up.
“You’re on vacation, right?” James asked, momentum faltering.
“No?” Daniel’s voice was uncertain. “I went camping last month, though? Is that what you’re thinking of?”
“Probably.” James replied, now confident that he wasn’t imagining things. “What’s up?”
“Officium Mundi agents.” Daniel said, and James felt his heart rate spike as Daniel spoke. “A lot of them, this time. And, you’ll like this, Tyrone is pretty sure he’s got the breach point down. So that’s cool.”
“No! Not cool!” James snapped. “What are you talking about, agents?! Stuffed shirts? And you’re just… letting them go?”
“Pff. No.” Daniel gave a nervous chuckle, and then, after a pause, his tone got apologetic. “Oh, right! You were in a coma when we started this! God, I’m sorry. No, we figured out which cars are dungeon constructs, and put GPS trackers in them! Fuck, my bad. I didn’t mean to panic you; we know where they are.”
“Okay,” James said, already heading to the elevator to the basement that housed their armory, “and what about if they’re out here to *kill people*?” James demanded.
Officium Mundi, that magical existence beyond the stairwell doors in an otherwise normal office building that the Order explored and exploited for powers beyond mortal ability, was, sadly, not stupid. Or, if it was stupid, it was on a very different scale than human stupidity. It had access to a lot of information that it maybe otherwise shouldn’t, like when it tried to intercept and kill potential employees of the mundane office building if they were delvers in other dungeons. How could it know that those people were going to be interviewed, or had exposure to other dungeons in the first place? Where did *its* intel come from?
Regardless of how it knew the things it knew, though, it was actually quite possibly their best source of new knowledge.
Because the last time it had tried to kill someone, it had led the Order directly to the Akashic Sewer. And after that, well…
Things had gotten weird.
Which didn’t detract from the very important point that the *office dungeon sometimes tried to assassinate people*, which was what James had challenged Daniel on.
“I know it might be a problem!” Daniel responded, indignant. “That’s why I called you! You’re… the person to call! Right? Like, you can stop them?”
James sighed as the elevator doors opened. “We can do what we do best.” He said. “Call Harvey, get him in the loop. I’m going through a tunnel.” He said as he stepped in and jammed the button for the basement with his elbow.
“What does…” Was about what Daniel got out before the elevator got him far enough underground that the call dropped.
James shook his head as he half jogged through the hallway, dodging around camracondas and Research staff until he made his way to the vault.
At some point, he realized as he opened the biometric locks, they needed to get more space down here. An extra Basement would be nice. Or maybe just excavate out into the surrounding reality, assuming they could avoid hitting sewer mains. Because having the vault be a combination magic item containment zone, camraconda ritual area, memorial wall, and armory, was kind of asking a lot.
“Priestess.” He nodded politely to the camraconda on her eternal watch. “How’re you?”
“We are well.” The camraconda spoke back, digital voice kept flat. She didn’t talk as much as the others did, and didn’t have the same practice socializing. “We await the arrival.”
“Of Morgan?” James asked as he opened a padlock on a locker, one of a dozen set in two facing rows in the corner of the increasingly crowded vault. “I dunno how he’s doing, I haven’t checked on him today. Give him time, okay?” He said as he pulled out a .308 marksman rifle, and after he’d checked it and slung the strap for that over his shoulder, added a case full of the improved thermite bombs the Order still made good use of. Though “case” in this instance was just the best term James had to describe what was essentially a fancy version of one of those fast food drink carriers. Only full of firebombs.
If there was one thing he’d learned, it was that the paper pushers, creatures made of literal paper, no matter how irrationally strong they were, still caught fire.
“We can wait.” The Priestess replied to James as he added a side holster with a 9mm pistol, and then added a handful of telepads to his coat pockets as he headed back for the cracked vault door. “We are very good at waiting.”
“We’ll fix that eventually.” James called back, as he turned to leave. He lurched slightly as he was about to let the door seal itself shut behind him, and caught the handle, holding it open for the cluster of other Order members currently moving around the edge of the Research space toward him. “What’s up?” He asked Simon as the young man jogged up and took the door from him.
“Harvey’s coordinating us on the shirts. Go; one of them just stopped.” The duel-minded young man jerked his head at James.
James didn’t bother to run all the way back to the elevator. He just pulled one of the telepads out, twirled a pen in his fingers, and wrote down ‘Order of Endless Rooms cafeteria’, then tore the page.
He arrived boots first on the table between Morgan and Color-Of-Dawn, eliciting a startled scream from the human and a high volume electronic “WHY” from the camraconda. James didn’t waste time on an explanation, though, instead hopping to the floor and bolting through the open door to the side office that had become the home for Response.
James had been in here before; hell, he’d helped set the place up. His role as IT, it seemed, would never truly leave him. But still, it was one thing to install cabling and set up monitors, and another entirely to step into a command and control array for a combat operation.
The far wall was just screens. The main one, currently, was showing a map with the GPS positions of the tracked cars. There were six of them, all of them spreading out from the point on the map James recognized as his old workplace. Smaller secondary monitors were showing what looked like feeds from traffic cameras, one of them had the Order’s discussion server up on it, and to the side, a pair of stacked screens were divided into views of this exact room from a low angle. Body cameras; James spotted them lined up on a filing cabinet under the desk.
The rest of the room was taken up by racks of body armor and light armaments, as well as tools to solve potential problems. Restraints, rebreathers, first aid kits, drone loadouts, the things they’d discovered response teams needed often enough to justify having them on hand. And then, there was the open space on the floor, kept intentionally clear and marked off with duct tape in a deliberate pattern. Their telepad arrival point.
There was a similar marker concealed in the upper floors of two hospitals nearby. James was proud of those arrangements.
Harvey was here, running dark skinned hands through darker hair as he kept an eye on the movements of their quarry, the headset he was wearing making the motion tricky. Harvey was almost always here, lately. The Response teams weren’t his idea, but as soon as the project had gotten rolling, he’d found a passion for it that eclipsed everyone else’s. He pulled twelve hour shifts alert on the phones, just in case someone called. He sortied out with teams at least every other day. He made calls to hospitals and fire departments in small towns across the country, working to build a protocol for the Order’s future helping people. And his job, while at first may have involved a lot of relaxing and watching Youtube, had picked up a lot.
People were noticing that the number the Order had quietly passed around was real. That you could, if you needed help, call. It hadn’t made it onto the news, they hadn’t been called by any government. But a lot more people were aware of them than before.
They needed to hire more, James realized. And they needed to do it quickly.
“James.” Harvey’s voice snapped him out of his thoughts, his enhanced brain easily filing the reminder for later. “One of them just stopped. Address.” Harvey pointed to a monitor, where he’d pulled up big bold text of a point on the map. James found a clear spot on the desk and started scrawling it onto a telepad with a hand he didn’t realize had started shaking. “You’ll be okay.” Havey told him. “Just take ‘em out, and come back. We can scoop the area later.”
“Scoop?” James let out a nervous laugh that was almost a giggle.
“It’s what the kids say.” Harvey informed him, and he did it with such a straight face that James wasn’t sure if their dispatcher was lying to him. Harvey was just like that; he’d laugh at jokes, but it was hard to tell if he ever made any himself.
James just shrugged, and stepped back, rolling his shoulder to adjust the strap of the rifle he was wearing. He made to tear the telepad, but just before he did so, and hand landed on his arm.
He turned his head, and saw Anesh standing next to him. His boyfriend was wearing one of the Status Quo bracers, along with the garishly unmatching glove. A compact headset sat over his ear, with the cord trailing down to his phone. Anesh plucked the case of grenades away from James, and met his boyfriend’s lips for a quick kiss, before both of them squared their stances up, and James pulled the page off.
In the Response office, Harvey rolled his chair over to a specific keyboard, and checked to make sure that a call had connected. “Comms check.” He spoke, and a second later, heard Anesh reply on the other end. “Next team’s going out now.” Harvey told him as he glanced over his shoulder at where Simon, Deb, and Frequency-Of-Sunlight had just come in and were copying down the address on the screen he pointed them to. “Good hunting.” He turned around in his chair, then, and repeated himself again. “Take out the target, then return. We’ll scoop the area later.”
“Scoop?” Frequency-Of-Sunlight asked, her shaky motions smoothing out a bit as she spoke, letting Deb rest a hand on her head for the impending teleport.
“It’s what the kids say.” Harvey informed them.
“That can’t be tr-“
“Team two is away.” Harvey reported to Anesh, spinning around in his chair again. “Team two, comms check. Okay. Good hunting…”
_____
“They go to fight. To save others.” Color-Of-Dawn was telling Morgan. The two of them had moved out to the back patio behind the kitchen, where Morgan was smoking a cigarette he’d bummed off Nate. Neither of them wanted to stick around a place where members of the Order were teleporting in and falling out of the sky.
“Sounds kind of self-righteous.” Morgan’s reply was bitter as he leaned back and puffed a cloud of acrid smoke into the air.
“Is bad?” The camraconda asked.
Morgan shrugged. “I dunno. People like that always think they know what’s best. It can get stupid.”
“Sss.” The camraconda hummed in crackling static. “Better to have others tell you of righteousness?”
It took Morgan a minute to puzzle through the statement. But he was quickly learning that one of the perks of talking to a camraconda was that they had no expectation of instant replies. He was almost expected to take his time and think about stuff. It was a hard habit to break, but it was...nice. “Fair point.” He eventually conceded. “They just seem really political here.”
“Meaningless word.” Color-Of-Dawn hissed.
“What, political?”
“Yessss.” The camraconda sounded almost spiteful. “Every definition, different. Every conversation, every person, their politics normal, others not.”
“Ah, like, people think they’re normal?” Morgan asked. “Wait, that happens here?”
“Not.” Color-Of-Dawn shook its head. “Internet. Reddit.”
“I feel like… you’re a new person, right? Like, hold on, how old are you?”
“New. Not child. You?”
“Same, I guess.” Morgan flicked ash of his cigarette. “I guess I was gonna say you shouldn’t be online. But maybe no one should, huh? But yeah, so, they go fight people?”
“Fight monsters.” The camraconda corrected. “Hard to be people. Most Life not. Almost no Puppets are.”
The human shook his head. “How do you pronounce the capital letters? I heard James do that earlier.”
“Learned from him. Not sure where he learned.” Color-Of-Dawn cracked its maw in a grin. “Clever trick. But yes, they fight. Keep people safe. They are good, self-righteous or no.”
Morgan looked over at his new… friend?... friend. “Do you fight?” He asked quietly.
The response didn’t come for a long time. “No.” Color-Of-Dawn finally said.
“...Is it okay if I ask why?” Morgan said, dropping his used butt into the tin of discarded smokes that Nate was collecting out here. “But, like, only if…”
“I am not enough.” Color-Of-Dawn told him. And then, a minute of quiet later, “Good enough. Brave enough. Faithful enough. Not I.” The digital voice resonated with a vibrant sorrow.
“Is that why you didn’t care about talking to me?” Morgan asked. “Like, everyone else like you keeps staring or looking like they want something from me. But you don’t?”
“Not believe, I.” Color-Of-Dawn nodded, a bobbing motion. Its tongue flicked out to taste the cool afternoon air. “Not good enough, to believe.”
“Believe in what?” Morgan asked.
The camraconda looked over, lens of an eye widening and narrowing in short bursts of motion as it focused on his face. “In Her. In you. In them. I am not worth believing. Not good enough.”
Morgan licked his lips as he gave an open mouthed stare at the snake next to him. “Wait, your religion is… you have to be good enough to join? Or think you are good enough? That’s…” He was going to say ‘weird’, but that would be rude. And for a second, he remembered that the thing he was sitting on a carved wooden bench next to was one of the things that killed his mother. But then the feeling passed, and his heart didn’t start hammering in panic. “...what makes you not good enough?”
“That, not ask.” Color-Of-Dawn said. “Maybe. Later.”
“Do most of you… like, you-snake-people-you… do they actually worship my mom?” Morgan asked quietly, trying to change the subject to something only slightly less awkward.
“They do.” Color-Of-Dawn replied, voice a bit less loud, perhaps relieved that it wouldn’t be pressed for answers.
“Why?”
“She freed us.”
“But you killed her.” Morgan’s voice cracked on the last word, the accusation heavy in the air.
Color-Of-Dawn looked away, staring out over the top of the fence that separated the patio from the parking lot. “Yes.” It said. “Will never make it up.”
“That’s why they help people? To.. what, apologize?”
“No. Maybe. The Order saved us. Were kind. If us kind, too… no words. No words this.” Color-Of-Dawn shook its head frantically.
Morgan held up his hands, trying to calm the camraconda down. “It’s okay, it’s okay. I think I get it. It’s… you pay it forward, right?”
“Pay forward?” The digitized voice asked.
“Yeah,” the organic one replied, “like, someone did something good for you. You can’t repay them, but you can do it again for someone else. And then they’ll do it to someone else. Everyone you help, it adds up. One big chain, right?” Morgan winced. “Maybe I don’t have the words for this either.” He muttered.
But the camraconda took to it instantly. “The chain of kind. Yes. Yes.” Color-Of-Dawn bobbed enthusiastically. “They add to it.” Then the enthusiasm faded a bit, and it glanced away again. “They do. I not.”
“You don’t have to fight monsters to be a nice person, dude.” Morgan told it, suddenly invested more than he expected to ever be in the emotional well being of this biomechanical serpent creature. “Just… be good. It’s okay. I know… I know my mom…” He stopped talking, his jaw clenched as he ground his teeth together. But then he steadied himself, took a breath, and kept going. “My mom, she never expected me to be the best or anything. But she always told me I had to try. Whatever I was doing. Even when she caught me skipping class...” He grinned, the smile coming with a small silent sob at the memory, “...she caught me skipping class, and told me that I better not get caught next time. I think it woulda been different if I was hurting anyone, you know? But I wasn’t, and she didn’t care that I was breaking the rules. Just that I do *my* best.”
“Best…” Color-Of-Dawn mused next to him. “Are you, your best?”
“Nah.” Morgan said, wishing he’d swiped more smokes from Nate. “But fuck it, it’s never too late to try, right?” The camraconda nodded back at him. Slowly at first, then more vigorously. “Hey… do you think… do you think you can show me where my mom is? Not...I don’t wanna see her. Yet. But I wanna know.”
“Yes.” Color-Of-Dawn told him simply. “Follow. Inside, less cold.”
“Yeah, this state’s winter sucks.” Morgan agreed, rubbing at his ears as they made their way back into the kitchen.
_____
James and Anesh appeared on the fourth floor of a parking garage.
It took the two a few seconds to get their bearings, James whipping his head around to try to spot their targets. But aside from a concrete structure about a third full of cars, they were alone.
“You go up.” Anesh nudged him. “I’ll go down.”
He nodded, got a firm grip on his rifle, and started moving, splitting up from his boyfriend as they went in opposite directions circling through the parking lot’s corkscrew aisle.
James lost sight of Anesh quickly. But he didn’t panic; his partner was just as experienced at this as he was. And even though ‘just as experienced’ in hunting down rogue agents of a hostile dimension in a parking garage meant ‘not that experienced’, they were both armed, and this time, *they* were the ambush party.
Two floors of parking structure later, James had seen no sign of the suits. However, he had passed by a woman pushing a stroller, and despite the mask covering her features, he was pretty sure she’d had a panicked expression on. As he looped around the top floor and made his way to the elevator, he saw her fumbling a cell phone out from down the main ramp.
‘Spotted. Civilian calling police, prob.’ James messaged back to Harvey, knowing it’d be passed along to Anesh.
‘Ground floor. Contact.’ Harvey texted back as James boarded the second elevator of the day and rode it down, adjusting his grip on the rifle and making sure the safety was off as the doors slid open.
From his vantage point, he was perfectly positioned to see Anesh sail through the air perpendicular to the elevator’s door, just as those doors slid open. His boyfriend’s arms and legs outstretched as he hammered into a concrete wall and rolled to the ground. James stepped out, noting the presence of both paper pushers advancing on Anesh with their backs to him, and also a cluster of teenagers around a white van nearby. They were cowering. Possibly because there was a puddle of fire covering the main aisle of the parking structure from where Anesh had lobbed thermite before James arrived.
James lined up his first shot and blew away the midsection of a paper pusher before they even knew he was there. The .308 round designed to penetrate flesh easily carving the cardstock skin away and shredding the body with a rippling shockwave. The other entity turned toward him, and actually *ducked* the second bullet, and as James started lining up shots and pulling the trigger in rapids succession, it started moving toward him.
He caught it in the arm, but it just grabbed its own limb out of the air and reattached it, uncanny valley face showing something just a little too unfamiliar to be recognized as real anger. He tried to keep it from closing in, feet steady as he sidestepped to his right, putting distance between them. But these things were far too fast to avoid by backpedaling while still trying to aim. And even with his boosted aim stat, it was almost on him.
Then the grenade Anesh threw from the side detonated in midair, spraying streamers of metallic sparks across the paper pusher’s face and torso. It caught *instantly*, and screamed in an animalistic way as its paper form was reduced to ash.
Then there was silence. Well, except the ringing in James’ ears. And the distant sirens.
“Was it after any of you?” James yelled at the teenagers who probably hoped he hadn’t seen them. After all, crazy people with guns were… well, scary.
One of them stood up, though on trembling legs. “M...me.” The girl said. “Don’t hurt them. They don’t know.”
James rolled his eyes as he advanced on her, slinging the gun back to his side and making sure the safety was engaged. “Our card.” He said, offering her a slip of paper. “Give us a call when you’re ready, or if you need help.”
Behind him, staggering to his side, Anesh was shoving the two recovered baseball sized green orbs into his pockets. “Police are here.” He said, and winced as James clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Bloody hell, ow!” He exclaimed. “Not so hard!”
“That wasn’t what you were saying last-“
And then the two of them were gone, and the only things left in the parking structure were some very confused teenagers, and a small bonfire.