“Good morning Hank it’s Tuesday” -John Green, Vlogbrothers-

_____

“Alright, let’s go over the whole thing again.” The words were punctuated by a rough slap of paper as the old fashioned notebook Nate liked to use was flipped back a dozen pages and tossed onto the bedside table.

James groaned. “We have done this three times.” He protested. “Do you not have, like, anything else to do today?” James peered at Nate through narrowed eyes. “Wait, actually, I just realized, you’re basically always working. Nate do you not have a social life?”

“Social lives don’t pay well.” The irrationally hard working man grunted.

“We don’t pay you hourly!” James protested. “And I know you have what you need already. Why are we doing this again?”

Nate glanced away, and for once, didn’t have anything to say right away. The small show of hesitation actually caught James off guard; he was more or less used to the man being constantly composed, on top of things. Nate was… well, to James, he read as an *Adult*, in a way that a lot of his personal friends didn’t. Sure, James was doing his best to be a mature and complete person, but he wasn’t “an adult”. But now, in a moment of sonder, he saw one of the cracks in the illusion of adulthood around Nate.

Maybe adulthood wasn’t what he’d assumed it was.

“You know this whole cascade of madness wasn’t your fault, right?” James said, hoping he’d hit the mark.

Nate grunted at him again. “Bullshit.” He challenged. “And you know it.”

“I made the call, in the end.” James said with a shrug. “I was the one on the ground.”

“It shouldn’t have been.” Nate said flatly. “Shoulda been mine, and I shoulda made it. It *was* mine. I pushed it off onto you so you’d say go, because I thought it was worth the risk.”

James nodded from the infirmary bed he was laying in, his leg propped up on a folded pillow. “Figured.” He said. “But Nate, it *was* worth the risk. And yeah, fuck you for putting me on the spot there when that wasn’t my job. But it would have been *so much worse* if we weren’t there.”

Folding tattooed arms over his chest, Nate glared down at James. “We took injuries, expended resources, and failed our primary objective.”

“Yeah, but we also saved some lives, and *this time*, we can *not* get the trio of plucky teenagers killed! Imagine, learning from our mistakes.” James closed his eyes and reclined into his pillow. “Plus, we have better intel on, like, three different things now.” He cracked one eye and looked up at Nate, who was still trying to glare him into submission on something or other. “It worked out fine. Nate, injuries aren’t even permanent for us, once we get the Shaper Substance working right. We lost nothing. Also, *also*, we totally swiped a bunch of guns from that militia! Everybody wins!”

“Well, not the militia.” A knock on the door and a voice from outside the room called his attention. James grinned as Alanna let herself in. She’d changed out of her field outfit at the first opportunity after coming back, and his partner looked somehow casual and deadly all at once in just black sweatpants and a tank top. “But fuck em! Hey Nate.” Alanna greated their intelligence director.

“Agreed. Mostly.” Nate conceded. “Alright. We can go over this all later.” James rolled his eyes at him. “We *will* go over this later, as a group. Until then, stick around the Lair. Harvey’s gonna want to talk to you later.”

“Whu oh.” James raised his eyebrows. “What did I do this time?”

The stare Nate gave him was perfectly incredulous. He didn’t even say anything as he turned and left, shaking his head.

“Well that was ominous.” Alanna said, leaning on the bed and getting a yelp from James when she pressed into his leg. “Shit, sorry!” She exclaimed, shifting around. “How’re you doing?”

“You are, no joke, the fourth person to ask me that, and I’ve only been conscious for an hour at most.” He said. When Alanna gave him a wry grin, James ticked off names on his fingers. “Deb, obviously. Knife-In-Fangs, who I think might have thought I was someone else, but I appreciated the thought, and Sarah, who just left. And now you!”

Alanna snorted a laugh. “Wait, not Nate?”

“Nate does not engage in pleasantries.” James said sternly, before cracking a smile. “Anyway, I’m good. Between Deb putting me back together, Nik filling me with blood, and, like, a half dozen purples, I’m good to go.” He said confidently. Which was exactly the wrong thing to say, as Alanna looked at him with a frown, and jabbed a finger at his elevated leg. “Ow! What?! No!”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” His partner grumped at him. She stopped assaulting him, though, and shot a guilty look over, meeting his eyes briefly. “I was worried about you.”

James’ smile softened as he looked up at her. The words were simple, but it always felt warm to hear that someone cared.

So he tried not to be dismissive of what she’d said. “Thanks.” He said, explicitly avoiding saying anything about being fine. “So, how’d you and Karen handle it?”

“Oh, Nate didn’t tell you? He fuckin’ spent long enough asking me.” Alanna complained.

“He’s dedicated, I’ll give him that.” James said.

“Anyway. I got her into the upstairs office over that birdfeeder place, on the other side of the strip mall.” Alanna shrugged. “Triggered invisibility, hunkered down, watched the door. Stressed out about how many of those bullets were hitting you and Sarah.”

“Shockingly few.” James admitted. “Shields did a lot of work. I can’t wait until we have enough of those operational for me to just make a shirt out of them and be protected from twenty things.”

“Heh. Man, remember how in D&D, buffs from items don’t stack? Like, you can’t wear fifteen strength belts?” Alanna let the stray thought out with a casual ease as she relaxed on the bed.

James shook his head. “Fuck that. I’ll make a belt-suit if I can get away with it. And, *and*, good news! We can get away with it in real life!”

“...There’s a kind of twisted joy that comes from being able to actually say “that isn’t how it works in real life” when we’re talking about magic items.” Alanna admitted. “Anyway. Once it was clear where the action was, Karen sent me back to check on if you needed help. And so I got to see you splatter all the cops, and then talk down the old lady.”

“God, grandma was a fucking trip.” James groaned. “What even… just *how*, you know?”

“More importantly, what’d you say to her anyway?” Alanna asked.

James shrugged. “I asked for my gun back. Politely.”

“And…?”

“And that’s it.” He said. “There was… something off about her powers. Not like how the Big Names are or anything. But every time she was doing something physically superhuman, she was bleeding this weird feeling into the area.”

“Yeah, it felt really nice.” Alanna admitted. “Which is weird, but also cool. I wish I made people feel good when I went jogging or something.”

“Oh, you do.” James easily said, and then moved on rapidly. “So, I just took a gamble, I guess. I figured, I’d play into the feeling, and see if it was a restriction or a hard limit or something. And if she said no… I mean, she already defenestrated me once. What’s the worst that could happen? Aside from further damage to local plate glass windows.”

“Literally that.” Alanna told him, trying to ruffle his hair and just getting her hand tangled in the mess of long black material. “You get thrown through another window. But worse.”

James laughed. “Well, it worked.”

“It was terrifying.” Alanna told him, suddenly quiet. “It… can I ask you something?” She said, shifting where she was sitting to press against James.

“Of course.” He didn’t hesitate. But also didn’t pressure her.

She took a minute to actually put the words together. But eventually, met James’ eyes and spoke. “How are we supposed to actually fix anything?” Alanna said.

James cocked his head to the side. “What do you mean?” His voice was confused. “We’re already fixing things.”

“I mean… anything. Like, anything big.” Alanna said. “How are we supposed to change the world? Like we are. Because… James, we just lived through a a fight with at least three different people or groups that have been around longer than us, that are stronger than us, and that are… that are… we’re *not ahead of the curve* here!” Her voice rose. “We’re not the frontrunners in this whole dungeon thing! We’re late to the party, and we don’t even own a helicopter! How are we supposed to compete against anyone else that’s been doing it longer, and either doesn’t want things to change, or has already changed things to how they want them?” Her voice faltered. She wasn’t panicking, but she was obviously having trouble with this, and looking to James for anything like an answer.

He didn’t *have* a good answer. He hadn’t even thought of the question. But all the same, James pressed his fingers together in front of his mouth, and said the first thing that came to mind. “We could probably buy a helicopter.” He saw Alanna’s face twist into annoyance, and he smiled at her. “But seriously, that’s my answer! We could! We’re behind? Really? Are we?” James threw his arms out to the polished infirmary room around them. “I’m sitting here in a magical hospital that we built in one of our fifty basements, you’re bulletproof, and we can pick up a few centuries of expertise in an afternoon with the right orbs. Alanna, if we’re behind the curve, we’re in a lot of trouble. But we were *already* in a lot of trouble. We’re two hundred people. We can’t kill capitalism like this. We can’t reset the world’s problems. All we can do, all we were ever going to be able to do, is our best. And we’re already doing that.”

“And what if it’s not enough?” Alanna said. “I pushed you and Anesh into this. Don’t think I don’t remember that. I wanted us to be the people who use power to improve the world. And now…”

“Okay, hang the fuck on!” James protested. “I actually also wanted to make a better world! This isn’t entirely on you! But also, you know, it doesn’t have to ‘be enough’. How many Response calls have you taken? Serious ones.” He suddenly asked.

“Uh… like, a couple hundred?” Alanna hadn’t kept track, and a lot of them were still minor things or prank calls that didn’t quite get filtered out. “Why?”

“For every person you helped. Do you think it was enough?” James asked softly.

Alanna blinked at him. “I mean… yeah? But that’s just for those people. That’s not fixing the systems that caused half the problems in the first place.”

“No, it’s not.” James admitted with a nod. “But…” He trailed off. Because he’d realized something. Alanna wasn’t saying this because she was worried, or panicked. Well, she *was* worried, but that wasn’t where this was coming from. No, there was something else in her words. A core of heat and bitterness that James didn’t hear from her very often these days.

She was *pissed*.

“We’re supposed to be doing more, man.” She said, and James heard that anger again. “We’re supposed to be building a better world. And it feels like… suddenly we’re surrounded by walls, and all those walls have magic we haven’t seen before.” Alanna frowned like a storm. “And none of them are changing anything.”

Now to that, James had something to say. “We can’t prove that.” He told her. “Now, granted, a lot of them are probably making things objectively worse. But… not gonna lie, I had some entirely reasonable and unpleasant biases against a group called a *Wolfpack*, but they seemed… reasonable.”

“You just like that they called you paladin.” Alanna snorted a half-laugh.

“I should never have used that title with anyone ever.” James nodded in faux agreement. “But okay. What do *you* think we should be doing?”

At that, Alanna went still. And despite the fact that she was the one with the empathy power and James wasn’t, he was pretty sure he knew what she was feeling right now. The kind of indignity that the world not only wasn’t fair, but seemed stacked against you, personally. “We…” she started to say, looking at a hand she was repeatedly opening and closing into a fist, “we should just be doing more.” She said. “I don’t know how. But we’re sitting on this massive secret, and we should be leveraging it harder. We have a fucking replicator, for Christ’s sake.”

“We use the replicator to cure cancer.” James reminded her.

“Yeah, and is that *enough*?” Alanna demanded. “I’m just… I dunno, I’m just worried. I don’t honestly know how you aren’t. The Alchemists, the Wolfpack, the… magical grandma, I guess? Oh, and the far right militia that was apparently buying potions. So *that’s* a thing. And we just keep doing what we’re doing?”

“Hey, you want to deal with a far right militia, just say the word.” James told her. “Just teleport in, take all their shit, and vanish. I’ll do it!”

“That’s not the… okay, put that one on the back burner… but that’s not the point.” Alanna sighed, rolling sideways to press her shoulder up under James’ arm. “Everyone’s stronger than us already. Entrenched. I don’t want another Status Quo fight, I just want to fix this shit.”

James’ voice was a note of soft hurt. “Alanna, everyone was always stronger than us. Bigger than us. Doesn’t matter if it was the dungeon being a hundred thousand square miles or a federal intelligence agency not wanting us to introduce disruptive technologies. We’re tiny. You want to know why I’m calm? Because it doesn’t matter. It’s not a win-lose thing. We’ve got some stuff we can do, now. And we’ve got some stuff we can do, with some planning. So we do, and we plan. And also, you know, we dungeon.” He wrapped his arm around her upper body, his other hand coming across to pet her hair. “Good *lord* do we dungeon. You think it’s bad that some people are stronger than us? Imagine how everyone who has to put up with you being bulletproof feels.”

“Bullet resistant.” Alanna muttered, pushing herself back into his touch.

“I’ll update your character sheet.” James told her. “But yeah, there’s probably more we could do. What, I don’t know yet. Food security? A better society? Undermine the police? Topple dictatorships? Space elevator? We’ve got so much to do, and… two hundred people. And roughly a quarter of them have only been exposed to the existing human culture for about a year.”

“The camracondas are… they’re so fucking smart.” Alanna latched onto the tangent. “You know how I can feel other people? Well, when they got here, pretty much all of them had two emotions; curiosity and a sort of deep exhaustion. And now, they’re… I mean, they’re basically whole people. Way more earnest than most humans, sure. And *someone* taught them to be funny for some reason…” She wriggled against James’, thumping his chest with the back of her head. “But they grew *so* fast. Except they never lost the curiosity. They’re kinda great.”

“They really are.” James agreed. Then he sighed. “I worry sometimes, about how people might react to the camracondas, or the ratroaches, or even just the various different infomorphs we make friends with.”

“Badly.” She said, half her own thought, half echoing the anxiety roiling off him.

“Yes, thanks, badly.” He flicked Alanna’s nose. “It’s just a distant thought. But it’s part of why… why we need to build our own place. Why we can’t just keep living under all the old behemoths you mentioned earlier.”

“There is no way I used the word behemoth.” Alanna protested. But that was her only protest.

They lapsed into silence, and just sat like that for a few minutes. Sitting together, comfortably waiting for nothing. Until, eventually, Alanna’s arm fell asleep from the weird side position she was laying in, and she rolled off the hospital bed, lithely springing to her feet. And then raised her eyebrows as James kicked the blanket off his lower half and moved to stand up himself.

“What?” He asked. “This hurts like hell, but I’ve got stuff to do, and Deb isn’t here to glare at me.”

“Risky move.” Alanna said, helping him stand, holding her arm out like an iron bar for James to balance on until he was sure his leg wasn’t going to collapse underneath him. “What’cha got left to do today?”

“Just check on everything, I guess.” James said. “Talk to people. See where the current takes me.”

Alanna pulled the infirmary door open for him, revealing the bright hallway outside, a space that could never fit into the area that it occupied in a basement that was only tenuously connected to reality. “I feel like we might need a better organizational structure.” She admitted.

“Shit, right, I need to talk to Harvey too.” James snapped his fingers. “Thanks for reminding me.”

“How…” Alanna gave a half frown, before nodding to herself. “Right, Response has an actual command structure.”

“Yeah. Anyway. I’m gonna go look cool in front of a bunch of high schoolers and… you okay?” He stopped, pivoting back to look at Alanna as much as his injured leg would allow. His partner had stopped two doors back, and was taking a moment looking through the observation window of the room.

“Hm?” Alanna looked up as James turned and limped back over to her. “Oh. Sorry.”

He didn’t answer, just looking in on one of their newer guests.

Not the students they’d brought back from Utah, no. Those three were upstairs somewhere, probably still talking to one of the potion people. Instead, this room was occupied by a life form that had dragged itself out of the Akashic Sewer.

The girl - as far as James knew it was a girl, so he was using that until they were conscious enough to actually ask - had black plumage with the sickly texture of an oil slick, with splotches of rust red and decaying orange mixed in. Feathers that didn’t quite cover the whole body, even the parts that weren’t currently under a blanket. The Sewer creation had a strange four legged anatomy, but those legs, James knew, ended in spikes and not feet or paws or anything sensible. On this one, all but one of those spikes had been broken, and while it had only been a week since they’d brought the creature in, they showed no sign of healing. Her eyes were closed, all five of them; two on one side and three on the other, offset and multifaceted.

Half crow, half wasp, and currently asleep. Chest rising and falling, IV drip secured to one of their wing arms. No longer their newest guest, and somehow, not even close to the most problematic.

“She’ll be okay.” James reassured Alanna.

“I know.” Alanna said, with a firm conviction that wasn’t just optimism or belief in their growing medical team. When James cocked his head at her in question, she added, “Because if she gets worse, I’ll just give her a skulljack, link up, and chug a bottle of Shaper Substance.” She clarified.

“Ahhhhhh….” James quietly screamed trepidation. “Maaaaybe… uh…” He stopped, realized he was worrying. More than that, he was *fretting*. James stopped himself from saying anything else. His partner was strong, in a lot of ways, and she was also as compassionate as he was. The kind of person who’d do something stupid and painful and risky for a stranger. So it was fortunate that pain tolerance seemed to be one of the ways she was strong in. “Well, let me know if you need to. I can help.” He decided to say.

Alanna smiled at him. “It’s weird that I can feel when you do that.” She said. “Your mind’s a goddamn roller coaster. Anyway, let’s go. You’ve got places to be.”

“Probably.” James acknowledged, as the two of them headed out of the sterile folded infirmary space. He kept up with Alanna pretty well, even with the ache in his leg.

_____

James and Alanna grabbed some lunch, met up with an Anesh who was mildly put out that he hadn’t gotten to actually pilot the asphalt mech into the mess to save James’ ass, and had a fairly good time arguing about what form of group hierarchy was an acceptable compromise for half an hour before Alanna excused herself for a Response meeting and Anesh valiantly threw himself between James and a group of Research members who had a question about dungeon orb randomization.

Several questions, actually.

It was actually more Anesh’s thing anyway, and by the time James snuck away under the guise of doing their dishes, he was deep in conversation anyway. So it wasn’t much of a cost to him.

With some free time on his hands, James took it upon himself to do what he was best at. Wander around the Lair and just see what was going on. It was actually very cool, to him, that sometimes the Lair could feel just as wonderous to explore as any dungeon. There was a vibe in the air sometimes, that people were trying new things, learning new things, that magic was happening, that around any corner could be a random encounter that would change his life. Not combat, really, but just… a casual and uplifting conversation, that taught him something new, or gave him a new perspective.

He loved this place. And not just because he’d helped build it, although that was certainly a part of it.

The front lobby was bustling with activity. Quite a lot of it tense. There had, after all, been a skirmish earlier today, and that was the kind of thing that put members of the Order who’d been here a while on edge. But while there were certainly people on alert, there were also groups of friends or peers. Relaxing, discussing, sharing, or just working on their own.

When he came out of the hallway that led back to the dining area, one of the teenagers - Morgan, actually, James felt bad for not recognizing him right away - pointed James out to the camraconda he was talking to. And with an abrupt turn, the camraconda pivoted to face James, and slithered over at a brisk speed, which caused James to pull up short and lean against the wall, supporting his leg a bit for the conversation he was about to engage in.

The camraconda came to a stop just in front of James and looked up at him with a sleek grey box of a security camera. This wasn’t one of the survivors that James had seen liberated from their hidden tower, this was one of the *new* ones. The ones that they’d been kidnapping from the dungeon when possible, and integrating into their society. He could tell because of the diamond LEDs that patterned its back, something the older ones simply didn’t have.

“What are your favorite words?” The camraconda asked abruptly, in a stilted mechanical voice. The new ones were… well, new. They didn’t have the year of experience with the skulljacks and audio equipment that the older ones did. Or, it seemed, with casual conversation. But that was fine, James hated small talk anyway.

He thought for a second, and then answered directly. “I’m partial to ‘resplendent’, ‘horticulture’, and ‘conflagration’.” James said.

The camraconda’s lens widened and narrowed slightly in rapid succession. “Thank you.” It said, before turning and slithering away.

Nearby, a small group that were talking about green orb effects took notice of the interaction. “What,” one of them asked her friends quietly, “was that?”

“Camracondas pick their own names.” One of the veteran Recovery members told her. “The new ones have been asking people about words all week.”

“Wait, we can pick our own names?!” One of them replied.

“Well, I mean, the camracondas…”

“I choose Thermoclese!”

James stifled a surprised burst of laughter and moved on, heading back toward where he actually wanted to check on before Harvey had time to talk to him later. The back area of the Order’s ground floor, where they kept their collected intel and held briefings, where just a couple days ago their whole membership had participated in the discussion on how to deal with the Alchemists.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

They’d have to use it again soon, probably.

For now, James just wanted to get a…

A crash interrupted his thoughts, and James found himself already jolting into motion. Something solid had just slammed into one of the walls separating the back room, and the pain in his leg vanished in a burst of adrenaline as he threw open the side door and rushed in, checking his corners as he burst in, blood rushing in anticipation of whatever problem had just come up.

What he found was a fight in progress. Or, a fight that had just been interrupted.

One of the new kids James had promised answers to was standing just off to the side of an upended table, a scattering of notepads, pens, and one unfortunate laptop coating the floor around it. He was holding a sword in an uneasy grip, and glaring over at the wall James had just come through, where someone was slumped down on the ground.

The other two kids were in the process of scrambling out of their chairs, but they weren’t the only people here. The teen with the blade wasn’t moving, at *all*, because one of the camracondas in the room had locked him down almost instantly. And one of JP’s rogues had interposed himself between the knocked down person and their attacker before James had even entered the room. Two more Order members were already in the process of rushing over, too.

There was some yelling going on.

James wasn’t interested in the yelling.

“Hey!” He cut in, projecting his voice out in a way that was unmistakably ‘in charge here’.

The Order members noticed instantly, and stopped their own shouts instantly, but one of the kids didn’t. “Let him go!” The other teenage boy was screaming, his own hand out to the side, in a gesture that felt strangely like it was trying to be threatening. “You can’t-!”

He cut off as a second camraconda briefly silenced him. The third kid, the girl who had only just pulled herself to her feet, looked around with uncertainty, but ultimately just raised her hands, shrinking in on herself like she’d given up.

James strode through the middle of this mess to the person who’d been kicked into the wall, and extended a hand to help them up. It was, he realized as they took his hand with a too-fast motion, one of the potion people. The girl who he’d first met wearing a tattered metal band shirt, and who now was bleeding from the nose. At least her all-black outfit wouldn’t stain, though.

“You okay?” He asked. And she just nodded twice rapidly as he helped her to her feet. “Alright.” James turned back to the others, making eye contact with the teenager who wasn’t currently under camraconda lockdown. “Care to tell me what’s going on? Also, guys, let them go, just don’t let them stab anyone.” He motioned at the camracondas.

They dropped their locks, and the two boys jerked into motion. One of them staggering back and falling into his chair, the other one trying to finish his sword swing and getting frozen again.

James just sighed. “Someone tell me what’s going on.”

“That’s our friend.” The girl muttered in a shell shocked voice, pointing limply at the potion person. “But you did something to her.”

One of the rogues jumped in, an androgynous face with hair long enough for James to be jealous by the name of Max. “We were trying to put together how they got into this.” They said. “Getting a picture of their dungeon, infomorph infections, that kind of thing. As part of the Alchemist problem, we asked one of the potions to come up to consult, and… uh… Lincon tried to stab her. And now this is happening.” They looked at James with a quiet confidence. “So… postpone this for a bit, huh?”

James sighed again. “Okay. So, you… uh, what’s your name?” He asked the girl. “Also help me with this.” He bent down and tried to flip the light table back over, the kids moving stiffly as they helped, but the normal motion seeming to help a little to put them at ease. When it was back, James pulled up a chair and settled in, getting off his leg. “Your name?” He asked again.

“Emma.” The girl said, sounding on the edge of crying.

“Alright Emma. Can you… uh…” James glanced sideways. “Can you get your friend to calm down?”

“Lincon, stop it.” Emma said flatly. “Or I’ll break your arm again.”

The camraconda holding the kid irised his eye in mild astonishment. “Ah. Threats. Always useful.” He said, but tried dropping the lock anyway. This time, though, the teenager didn’t keep trying to stab anyone, and instead stumbled at the sudden motion, dropping his sword which dissolved into motes of grey light. “Hm.” The camraconda hissed slightly at the change in behavior as the kid just dropped to his knees.

“Yeah, don’t learn the wrong lesson from this.” James told him, before turning back to the girl. “Emma, we didn’t do anything to your friend.” James said. “Though something was done to her, and I’m sorry in advance.” He kept his voice calm and level, even though he keenly felt the tragedy of the situation. “We have some questions about how you crossed the Alchemists, but I depressingly suspect that I know the answer now.”

“The old guys?” Emma asked, and James nodded. “We… uh… I mean, we aren’t detectives or anything. We just started looking for them by accident. Brittany, uh, our friend… one of our friends ran away from home. And then vanished. Everyone said she’d been kidnapped, but she’d told me about a place she was gonna check out where you could make money somehow. It sounded… you know.”

“I know.” James grimaced. “But go on.”

“So we tried sneaking in, and almost got caught. They had guys with guns. Like, real guns. So we… well…”

“We needed to be stronger.” The other kid said. He hadn’t sat down, still pacing back and forth behind the table. One of the camracondas nervously watching him.

“Sorry, I didn’t ask your name.” James addressed him.

“Liam.” He said suddenly. “I’m Liam. Who are you?”

“Oh! James. Nice to meet you, barring the circumstances.” James said. “So. You wanted to find your friend. And you knew a place where you could get more power. And you kept following the Alchemists?”

Liam nodded. “I started skipping class. Found where one of them lived. Couldn’t get into his house though.”

“Yeah, I keep meaning to ask them about that.” James shook his head, and dropped the line. “Anyway. The fight today. You were there because you wanted answers, and saw one of them alone?” He remembered the Nobel who was present. “Well, mostly alone.” James gave a small shrug.

“Yeah. We thought… we thought we were ready.” Emma said quietly. “And then… everything.”

“Oh, yeah, believe me, we weren’t ready for that either. Especially since someone *threw up a weird fog dome over the whole area*.” James crossed his arms at her. “We’ll talk about that later, I think. Anyway.” He turned and motioned the potion person to come over, and she obliged with rapid steps before taking a seat. “We’re going to do what we do best, and fucking talk about this.”

“That’s not Brittany.” Liam said with the force of anger only a teenager could feel. “Something’s wrong with her.”

“You are correct.” The potion said. “And I am sorry. I cannot give your friend back.”

“No…” Emma whispered. “Why?”

“Because I killed her when I was made.” The potion said. “I can read her life, but I cannot be her. Not really.”

The kid with the broken arm looked like he was about to summon another sword and take a second swing, but the rogue that was with them quietly stepped up and laid a hand on his shoulder. James nodded to them thankfully. “They aren’t actually being completely accurate there.” He said, seeing the horrified looks on the kid’s faces. “But… well, your friend is gone. I’m sorry. The Alchemists took a lot of people that they thought wouldn’t be missed, and they used them as test subjects. And one of their potions…”

“Replaced them.” The potion said. “Made those like me, and turned our hosts into masks. We were made to be weapons.”

“That’s… Emma, they’re like…” Liam turned to his friend, a wide eyed look on his face.

The girl nodded, and swallowed hard, trying to pack down the tears that were forming in the corners of her eyes. “Okay.” She said, after struggling to bring in a deep breath. “Okay. You’re not her.” She said. “I won’t be mad at you.” The girl decided suddenly.

“You said mask, there.” The boy still held down in a seated position by Max half-asked. “Does that mean you knew her?”

“Yes.” The potion said in that flat, inhuman tone. “Everything about her.”

“All her secrets? How she thought?” The kid - Lincon, James remembered the name - pushed.

“Yes.”

“Can you… be her?” He asked.

“Oh, hell no.” James started to say. “That is not-“

But the potion had already flickered over to being someone else. To being the life it had stolen. “Yup.” She said, in a completely different voice. “It’s not even that hard. Gotta try not to though, since it’s really fucked up and I don’t want to live in a graveyard.”

“Brittany.” Emma’s voice broke as she looked over at the imitator of her dead friend.

“Sort of! Not really though.” The mimicking potion person said. “I can tell you what I thought, or what I’d say. I won’t tell you any secrets, though, because… uh…. I don’t want to? Obviously. But I can be me for a bit, sure.”

“You… we could… but…” Liam stammered out. “But you’re right there.” He whispered. “How are we supposed to deal? With you being dead?”

“Well,” the imitation girl said sarcastically, “what do you want? For me to tell you we’ll meet up in heaven? Here’s a weird thing; actually being dead, I think it’s a lot easier to tell you that’s all bullshit. Don’t tell my dad though.” She rolled her eyes. “You don’t have to deal with anything.” She added. “You’re good. Look at you, bunch of nerds with swords and magic and stuff. You’re as cool as you always wanted to be. You can go fight monsters. You don’t need me around. Besides, I was a bitch to you all the time anyway.”

“No you weren’t.” Liam muttered.

“You were our friend.” Emma added.

“Well, I mean, you were also the worst.” Lincon said, breaking out of his exhausted glare to say something that took the other two off guard. “But… you were our friend.”

“They can both be true!” The potion person said cheerfully. Then her smile turned sad. “Look, you know I’m not real. I’m just pretending. But that doesn’t matter. You three, you’ll be fine without me.” She shrugged, and when none of the other teenagers had anything to say, just shook her head. “You already know it! It’s okay to be fine, you morons.” And then, pushing back her chair and standing up, she stretched her arms over her head and wrapped up what she was saying. “I’m gonna put this person away now. One of me wants to be kind to you, but the me that’s Brittany, just kinda doesn’t give a shit. And she knows that you can make better friends anyway. So, see ya later, I guess.”

“Yeah.” Liam muttered, numb. “See ya.”

“B-bye.” Emma stammered out, while Lincon just let out a long breath and didn’t say anything.

And then that person was gone, and there was just an infiltrator in its place. “I would like to leave now.” It said in its hollow voice, turning directly to face James.

“Yeah.” He said sadly. “Let me know if you need to talk later, okay?”

“Yes.” The potion said. And then, with rapid steps, stalked out of the room.

There was a moment where the only sound was the hum of the air conditioning and the motion of the other Order members moving around. James signaled to them that he’d handle this conversation, and the group that had been nearby slowly moved away, dispersing and leaving him alone with the three teenagers who were all in various states of beat up, both physically and emotionally.

“Sorry I tried to stab her.” Lincon said eventually, one hand rubbing at the arm that had been broken up until a few hours ago when they’d teleported back here and given him a purple orb. His voice held that kind of young-person shame, where they realized they’d done something wrong, but didn’t really want to *talk* about it. Because their culture sucked, and didn’t teach kids how to talk about problems.

James hated it, and so, decided to bulldoze over the awkward feeling. “Yeah, that was bad.” He said with a nod. “Going straight to violence when faced with an unknown is not a good sign, and seriously cuts down on how likely it is that we’ll want to recruit you. That said, we’ve got a number of good therapists around here, or we can work to help set you up with someone around your home. The process of maturity is, after all, a process. One screw up doesn’t mean you’re a bad person.”

“Uh…” The kid flushed bright red, looking like he wanted to be anywhere but here.

His friend jerked his head up, though. “Wait, recruit us?” The other boy asked.

“So.” James leaned forward. “I’m given to understand you can make swords? That’s neat. Want to talk about that, or do you have questions for me, first?”

They did, in fact, have questions for him, first.

_____

James had gotten a poke from one of the interns that Harvey had dispatched to fetch him before he could learn exactly *how* a bunch of teenage students could summon swords, which had disappointed him immensely. But with the promise that they’d at least write it down, he’d cut off the flow of their questions and handed them over to a couple members of Recover to handle their more immediate needs in terms of shelter, food, and letting their parents know they weren’t dead.

They had parents. It was… James had forgotten people could have families. Well, not forgotten, but he’d gotten used to working with his family. To the Order being most of the world, for most of the people in it.

He didn’t really *miss* his parents, exactly. They hadn’t been awful, they’d raised him okay. But there were just too many small moments that he could think of that had left him feeling betrayed or unsupported. Before they’d been relocated courtesy of Status Quo, James hadn’t even talked to them for almost a year. They’d sent his sister to stay with him without even a phone call, they’d casually non-invited him to family holidays; they were as absent as they could get.

James shook off the feeling of being mildly jealous of a bunch of teenagers for having families that cared about them, and pushed open the door to the Response basement, intent on figuring out what Harvey had wanted to talk to him about in person.

Things felt tense down here, and there were more people than James had expected. The halls were kept clear, which was basically mandatory, but the small break room held more than a few teams, and more people were waiting in the teleport landing station and in the large open dispatch room. James took in the crowd, and the quiet air, with a knowing grimace. It still hadn’t been more than a day since they’d fought people who might have a vested interest in hurting them back. And this time, no one wanted to be caught flat footed.

Even the newer members of Response, the people who had been recruited recently and had never watched their friends die, knew what was up. And as James walked through the halls toward the side room Harvey had converted into an office, he felt eyes on him through the windows that the Order had replaced portions of the concrete down here with.

Before he made it there, though, James was intercepted by an only partially human shape stepping out from one of the quiet side rooms they used when they had to bring civilians back and they needed a place to recover. Arrush, his modified ratroach form looming over James in a way that he’d gotten practice living with from Alanna but still wasn’t used to this magnitude of, gave an awkward wave of his two left side arms and cracked his muzzle open in greeting.

“Oh, hey.” James said, pulling up and steadying himself on the wall, looking up at the ratroach with some surprise. “Fancy seeing you here.”

“Taking. Precautions.” Arrush rasped out, voice still harsh, badly placed lungs making talking harder for him than it should have been. “Someone. Started a. Fight.”

“Okay, it wasn’t my fault this time.” James said. “But also, good to see you anyway.” He smiled. “How’re you and Keeka doing? Everything alright out there?”

Arrush nodded, alternating rubbing at his furred arms with different sets of clawed hands, his five limbs working more in sync than James had noticed before. “It is… clean.” He said, with what looked like a distant grin.

“So are you, you look good.” James nodded at him. It wasn’t an empty compliment, either. Arrush had taken a wicked amount of punishment when they’d last ventured into a dungeon together, and despite Deb’s furious understanding that ratroaches were built to break, he’d healed up dramatically with proper care. No signs of broken bones or chitin, and the long term benefits of life with the Order had led to all the infected lines where his skin and chitin joined gradually receding to fur-obscured blendings. His eyes even looked clearer; the sharp cunning there that he’d kept hidden for so long finally allowed to shine. “Are you two okay with… you know… all the people here?” James asked with concern.

The two ratroaches who had joined their ranks were… well, “shy” was a word that got thrown around a lot, and it was technically accurate but also didn’t quite encompass just how uncomfortable the two could be around *anyone*. The remnants of their literal toxic upbringing taking more than just an abrupt relocation to shake off.

“Keeka is hiding.” Arrush said simply. “Effectively.” The ratroach gave a slow dip of a nod, a motion he’d practiced to make sure he didn’t spray his acidic drool onto the floor when he answered. “I am… learning.”

“Oh?” James couldn’t help a small smile. “Making friends?”

“I don’t… know yet.” Arrush admitted. “Don’t know… what that means.” He rasped out, chest starting to rapidly heave as he had to take more shallow breaths to keep up. “And am not… human. Don’t fit. Not proven.”

James made a rude sputtering noise, and when Arrush cocked his head at him, he explained. “Okay, I get being worried, because humans outnumber everyone else here, for now. But ‘human’ isn’t a measure that the Order is interested in, okay? I know… I know you’re not used to it yet. I know how hard it can be to trust us. But what matters is that you’re a person. Not what you’re shaped like.”

Arrush gazed down at him, mismatched and misaligned eyes narrowing. “Small… humans… think I am… monster. Not a person.” He gasped out, swapping between English and Spanish when the words were shorter.

The reminder sparked an ember of anger in James’ chest. “Yeah, I know.” He said. “And I know that they’re wrong.” He reached out, without thinking about it, and grabbed one of Arrush’s rough and chitinous hands, setting his other hand on one of Arrush’s arms, the ratroach flinching back at the sudden contact. “You’re a victim, and a person, and it really doesn’t matter what they think because they aren’t in charge here, and you will always have a place with us. Okay? You don’t have to prove anything. The worth of a life is not based on whether or not you’re ‘being useful’. It’s inherent to who you are.”

“Could be… more useful…” Arrush protested, tilting his triangular head up to stare at the ceiling, the sudden compassion and closeness taking him off guard.

“Sure, if you want to.” James said with a nod. “But only if *you* want to. Ask around, see if anyone needs help with something that interests you. Find your own place. There’s no rush. And if you need to, you can always go back to the empty city for a while.” James grinned. “Also, ‘small humans’ are called kids, and… actually, wait, you do know how human life cycles work, right?”

“…no?” Arrush was more confused than sheepish. The question had never occurred to him.

“Ah. Okay. So, I need to get to a meeting, and this is absolutely a longer conversation than I was expecting. I’ll be around later tonight, if you want me to try and fail to explain it. Or, like… Deeeb? Deb could explain… Deb is busy.” James licked his lips, a concerned expression on his face. “Who would be good at… Sarah! Go talk to Sarah! She’ll either be good at this, or it’ll be incredibly funny.” James decided.

“Thank… you.” Arrush said suddenly, tightening his hand around James’.

“Of course.” James answered easily. “I need to go now. Do you… would you like a hug? I’ve been trying to make that normal around here.”

Arrush suddenly found that his throat wouldn’t move to make the words he wanted to say. A feeling, something akin to the fear he was used to living with, but sideways, different, flooding through his limbs. But all the same, he was used to it, and these days, he found, it wasn’t enough to stop him. So he slowly nodded.

With a smile, James slipped inside Arrush’s guard and wrapped his arms around the ratroach’s torso. Fur that used to be wiry and matted, now clean and almost silken, tickled against his face as he leaned into the larger frame. Slowly, with a languous trepidation, one of Arrush’s arms folded around James’ shoulders. Then another, and another, until all five of his hands were laid across James’ back. They held that moment, of quiet companionship and unconditional compassion, for a good minute.

Arrush, finally, let his muscles untense, stood down his preparation to be assaulted, and just let himself be there. All fear, for a moment, gone.

Then he shifted slightly, and a single drop of glowing blue saliva dropped from the corner of his maw onto James’ cheek.

“Yawp!” James exclaimed, jerking backward and rapidly freeing one of his arms to swipe at his skin. Arrush, hearts suddenly hammering, whipped away and unconsciously brought his guard up while James frantically wiped at the hissing spot on his exposed face. “Ow, ow, nope! Ow!” He brought his shirt sleeve up, sacrificing the cloth to scrub the substance off. “Dammit, forgot about that.”

“I… I…” Arrush stammered, pressing himself back toward the door.

“Oh.” James’ expression softened, the pain rapidly receding as he got the tiny drop of matter off his skin. “Hey. No worries. It happens.” He said, poking at the red mark on his skin. James sighed at the small spike of pain, on par with a bad sunburn. “Look, at this point, I’m pretty much resigned to my face never getting a break. Accidents happen, and they’re not something to get mad over. You’re fine, okay?”

“Okay…” Arrush whisper-rasped. Still not sure, but then… well, maybe James hadn’t been lying at all. Maybe it was unconditional. Truly.

“Alright.” James nodded, patting his furred shoulder one more time. “Now, I actually have to go before Harvey gets busy. Remember, what *you* want, yeah?” He said, stepping past Arrush and continuing down the hall to the sharp corner that led to Harvey’s office, waving over his shoulder as he did so.

Arrush stood there staring after him for some time. Until, at least, an airy voice that sounded like it had many of the same problems as his own whispered down from where Keeka was crouched on top of the ventilation pipe overhead. “I like him.” Arrush’s boyfriend said.

“Yes.” He agreed.

_____

“Yo. Is now a good time?” James asked, pushing open Harvey’s door.

“No.” Harvey replied, but waved for James to grab a seat anyway. He looked… not tired, really. Though his short, fluffy hair was more salt than pepper in its salt and pepper coloration these days, Harvey had a fire to him that James had gotten familiar with as he’d worked more with the man.

Running Response had consumed what was left of his life after surviving Officium Mundi. But more than that, he had consumed the role. And it had given him focus. Direction. Purpose. All things Harvey tapped into, to produce an inexhaustible wellspring of energy.

Harvey worked harder than James and loved it, and while James didn’t *get* that, he was eternally grateful that Harvey had chosen to stick with them.

“I heard that Matt and Ethan both got hurt during the whole… thing.” James opened with. “If you need someone to cover their spots, let me know.”

Harvey looked up with eyebrows raised so far they threatened to leave his forehead. “Didn’t you get thrown through a window and then most of a building, and nearly bleed out?” Harvey asked. “As in, that happened three hours ago?”

“Yes.” James confirmed with a nod. “I got better.”

“Fine. You’re on call from six to eight tonight then.” Harvey accepted him at face value. “But that’s not what I need. Are you familiar with the field effect?”

“Reed’s been talking about it lately. I’m under the impression that this is one of those things that’s currently a theory but is probably correct?” James said.

Harvey nodded. “More or less. And as far as Research has been able to actually find examples, it seems to hit larger scale organizations and bureaucracies harder than people like us.” He paused, then looked up from his laptop, spinning it around to face James. “Which is why Youtube videos of you throwing half a road around and teleporting away don’t get promoted by the algorithm.”

James gnawed at his upper lip, letting out a low “aahhhhhh” sound as he watched himself from the perspective of a professional camera operator, looking like an action movie protagonist backed up by a full special effects department. “Okay. In my defense…” He started to say.

But Harvey just waved him off, pulling his laptop back and closing it to set on top of a stack of clipped reports that towered on his desk. His whole office was half furniture, half bankers boxes full of backup copies of documents, a fallback defense against surface level infomorph attack. “I’m not actually mad.” He said. “No one is. We just need to decide what to do when one of these sneaks by, and we *do* go public. Or if we should go public on our terms. And I mean more than just Response, yeah.”

James leaned forward on one arm perched on the edge of Harvey’s overloaded desk. “You mean go public, *as the Order*, right?”

“Exactly.” Harvey said. “It might actually be our best defense against, say, the FBI. Being in the spotlight. Being *known*, even if some infomorphs push back.”

James blinked. He’d realized that Harvey had wanted them to step up their operations, and they *had been*, but Harvey was the one who always pushed to move faster, to do more. And now, here he was, basically asking…

“You want to break the masquerade.” James said.

“Beg your pardon?” Harvey turned the sentence into a single word.

“It’s a nerd term, for when magic in a fictional world is somehow unnoticed. The masquerade. Pretend that everything’s normal, or enforce that normality.” James nodded to himself. “And you think we could get more done, if… well…”

“If we could raise paper airplane dragons to run search and rescue. If we could start making large scale folded space apartments freely available now, not just when we build a future city. If we could make the exploration and use of dungeon resources for the betterment of the planet a large scale endeavor, not just something that fifty people do once a week. If…” Harvey stopped himself, and met James eyes, just waiting to see what James said in reply.

“Yeah, okay.” James answered easily. “You don’t need to *sell me on this*, man. I’m already on board with basically everything you said. My only concern is if we get hit with a predator drone before we can stop it because we piss off the wrong people.” He shrugged. “I don’t think being public saves us. But then, it’s not like we’ve been hiding. And part of that is because I wanted to test… how the world reacts. How things change, when we start going out to Home Depot with camracondas, or tipping people with skill orbs.” James looked over his shoulder. “How people might react to someone who looks like… a monster.” He said, refocusing on Harvey.

“Badly.” Harvey said, pessimistically.

“I heard that already today.” James said. “But yeah, the fact that dungeons have *really* harsh infosec makes this a challenge. And the presence of bad faith actors makes it a huge risk, if we don’t think we can keep people safe. And I hate, absolutely *hate* being the person saying ‘wait until the right time’. But I don’t think we’re ready. We don’t even have an organizational structure, just a developing culture.”

“So we make one of those.” Harvey said. “I’ve got some ideas.”

“Everyone does!” James grinned. “That’s the great part. We’ve got a place now where everyone has ideas, and talks about them, constantly.” He gave Harvey a questioning shrug. “So, let’s do that. Let’s get started on the foundation. Our contact with the Alchemists is stalled out while they recover from… uh… everything. There’s nothing stopping us right now. Set up one of those big group meetings. Set up a few of them, so we can really dig into this! Let’s figure out how we want to organize ourselves.”

Harvey slowly looked down at a sheet of neatly written notes that he had in front of himself, then back up at James, then back down at his notes again. He sighed. “You know, you skip a ton of steps in these conversations.” He said eventually. “I thought you might do the thing you do where you’re afraid of change.”

“I’m not afraid of change, I’m afraid of changing into something that I hate.” James said. “But… Harvey, you’re in the same building I am. You know the kind of people we work with, who we’re building this with.”

“I do.” Harvey cut him off. “Good people. And not all of them started that way.” He pointed out. “We recruited some real assholes for Response.”

“How’s that experiment working out?” James asked, suddenly curious.

“You can only work here for so long before the rough edges get worn away, or you quit.” Harvey said. “Or get kicked, I guess. We’ve fired a couple people who wouldn’t learn. But even they left better than they got here.”

“I’m glad.” James said. “Glad it’s working. So yeah, let’s move forward. You don’t need my permission, though.”

Harvey glared at him briefly. “Everyone here listens to you. Mostly because you saved everyone’s life at least once, mostly.” He said bluntly. “You don’t wanna be in charge, but you can steer things anyway. I had a whole speech about how if you really wanted to set aside authority, we had to build a system where authority was official and spread out, and you made that useless.”

“But you got to say it now.” James pointed out with a grin.

“It’s not the same.” Harvey said. “Alright. I’ll have Karen start setting things up. In the meantime, I want to recruit a couple people to run online presence for us.”

“Oh… uh, why?” James asked.

“Because you keep getting in fights on camera, and algorithm or not, people see that. It’d be worth having someone who knows how to be civil in the comments section, and represent us well.”

James nodded begrudgingly. “Find a couple people, and I’ll make time to interview ‘em.” Harvey gave him an incredulous stare, and James held up his hands defensively. “I like doing the interviews!” He said. As Harvey shook his head and laughed, and James stood up, he had one last thought. “Oh, what *is* the comment section on that video like? Do people… uh… fuck this is gonna sound stupid. Do people at least think I look cool?”

“Oh.” Harvey opened his laptop and scrolled down just to see if anything had changed since he last saw it. “Remember, this kinda got buried, so it only has a couple thousand views. And… well, look, there was a camraconda in shot toward the end.”

“So?” James asked.

“So all the comments are just people saying ‘magic snake’, and that’s basically it.” Harvey told him.

James stared at him for a good long moment, before he took a deep breath and turned to leave. “I’m going back to bed.” He said. “Wake me up when I’m as cool as a camraconda, in the internet’s eyes.”

“You’ll get bored long before then.” Harvey said as James stalked out of his office.