“The child naively believes that everything should be fair and everyone should be honest, that only good should prevail, that everybody should have what they want and there should be no pain or sadness. The child believes the world should be perfect and is outraged to discover it is not. And the child is right.” -Rabi Tzvi Freeman, Wisdom To Heal The Earth-

_____

“Hey.” James spoke softly to Zhu as the two of them took refuge under one of the shade tents that were set up. They were by themselves for a bit amongst the rapid bustle of everything going on; even Arrush had been called away to try to be an example of a nonhuman for their new guests. James didn’t have a chair, but that was fine; there was a chunk of rock that wasn’t unreasonably uncomfortable that he was leaning on, and James was too tired to worry about the little bugs that were investigating his shoes. He waited a bit for Zhu to respond, but when no answer came, he continued on his own. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“Wasn’t it?” Zhu’s blunt response wasn’t really a question. “I’m supposed to be your protector, and instead, I was used. Used to try to kill you, even if on accident. I didn’t have to do anything for it to be a problem that only exists because I do.” Zhu’s dusty orange glow clawed at his own feathers, and James couldn’t figure out a position to move his own arm where Zhu couldn’t keep up the nervous tic.

“Technically I think I’m your guardian. Or parent? Or a bit of both. Whatever.” James sighed. “Keeping me safe isn’t your responsibility.”

“Why not?” Zhu asked. “I’m a tool. And I don’t mean that just to make you uncomfortable; my life is my function. I love travel, I love movement. I love you, too. Why wouldn’t I want to-“

“Everything you just said precludes you being a tool, so maybe pick better language.” James scoffed as he cut in. “I love words, and you’re using them badly. You’re essentially saying that I’m a tool for reshaping carbon, because I have to eat and breathe. It’s not the same thing.”

Zhu clenched his claws in a motion that would have ripped flesh apart if he were actually solid. “But I almost got us killed.”

“Oh, like I didn’t?” James tried to catch Zhu’s hand in his own, but the navigator deftly dodged. “Me, the guy who said “okay JP, let’s raid a Status Quo building with no prep or intel during a massive clusterfuck of third parties”? You think I’m not responsible for everyone who got hurt?”

There was a pause, and Zhu pivoted the eye on James’ shoulder to look up at him with sympathy. “No one died though.” He reminded his friend softly.

“Yeah, and that includes us.” James said. “So if you’re not mad at me, I won’t be mad at you. Alanna might be mad, though! But Alanna gets angry sometimes.”

Zhu gave a short gravely chuckle. “Also you are not my parent. More like…” He trailed off. “I don’t know. Something else.”

They watched as a group of younger humans and camracondas, here helping out, struggled to get another tent up together. James wanted to tell them that they needed someone giving directions, and that if the camracondas froze the tent poles, they could save two steps, but he let them figure it out themselves. The extra hands were still helpful, and it felt like half the Order was out here right now.

“I need to get up.” James said as he looked toward where all the bugs were milling around in a slowly dispersing flock. They weren’t unattended or alone, but it was clear they were becoming antsy. James wasn’t sure if the Order even knew how to help them, but he was sure that letting a few hundred members of a new species into the woods of Yamhill was a great way to get some of them shot by twitchy farmers, and then permanently disrupt the ecosystem.

“You’re trying to forget that I was used to try to kill you.” Zhu reminded him rudely.

James sighed as he sat forward, already feeling the burning ache in his legs from the combination of a lot of exertion and also the adrenaline crash that was still sort of happening. “I don’t… I don’t care.” He muttered to his friend. “I got by just fine with hostile antimemes trying to kill me, I’ll get by better without them but with one potential problem from you. If you have to look at it as a balance sheet, then I’m picking the option with the fewest vulnerabilities. But don’t look at it that way. Because I’m choosing to tell you that I’m prioritizing you. And if it’s really a problem, well, let’s find you a couple more people to spread to, and you can stay with them when I’m on combat ops. There’s solutions to this that aren’t just you fucking being depressed about it; I’m here, there’s already enough depression in this relationship.”

There wasn’t a verbal response right away. Or at all, really. But Zhu did stop trying to pick at his own manifestation, and slowly let his feathered arm wrap around James’ own limb in something like a hug. Feathers and smoky light held tight against his sleeve and skin.

“Okay.” James whispered to himself. “Time to get this cleaned up.”

Standing up was hard, but he had a feeling it was going to be the easy part.

_____

There was a laundry list of problems to tackle, but while James was more than willing to get to work on any or all of them by himself, that kind of overworked martyr complex wasn’t exactly useful anymore. Or ever.

The Order now boasted members with enough scattered skill orbs that they had people for interrogation, healing, crowd control, logistics, cryptography, and anything else they needed rapidly in the wake of their battle. James could, and would, roll up his sleeves and help wherever he was needed, but that wasn’t exactly what he was best at.

What he was good at was what his now accepted title meant. Being a paladin. And that meant, in times like this, that his job was to go to all those people, and make sure that if there was anything someone else needed to know, they got to know it rapidly. The Order lacked the kind of standard bureaucracy that streamlined communication like that, and frankly it probably would for a long time. The way that a single delve of a new dungeon could upend the positions and capabilities of a dozen people meant that having forms and protocols wasn’t as robust as it needed to be.

So James only briefly checked in with the new species. They were spread out, but loosely ringed by the tents and workstations the Order had set up. Some of them were poking at dirt or grass with their clawed legs. Others seemed to have either decided to nap, or had gone catatonic, and had all six of their legs folded up under their shells, with not even their eyes showing through the shadows of their organic shields. They looked like a field of spiked rocks like that, clustered up in patches. A lot of them, though, just stood watching the Order members that were keeping their distance.

They didn’t approach, and the Order gave them space for now. Which seemed to be safest until they could figure something out.

“They have eggs.” Arrush told James as he approached. The ratroach was standing, still in his armor, on the perimeter of the field that the bugs were in. His boyfriend had joined them, and was working with a particularly energetic camraconda nearby to drag a water tank out of a truck and over to the field. Everyone except Keeka looked a little nervous, though; there was a sense of tension that hadn’t gone away yet.

James nodded as he didn’t quite process what Arrush had said, instead just being kinda glad to see the big ratroach doing okay. Then his brain caught up. “Sorry, what?” Arrush pointed toward the center of the field, and James realized that the scattered bugs weren’t quite so scattered. There was a cluster of them in the middle, and many of the ones that had strayed out to explore were still focused in a circle around them. The bugs clearly saw Arrush pointing, and a lot of the more alert ones shifted their focus his direction, until James reached up and slowly pulled the ratroach’s arm down. He turned away, and looked out of the corner of his eye, only enough to confirm what had been passed on. “Okay, yeah. Those sure look like eggs.” James sighed. “That doesn’t change anything about how we’re going to treat them, but it does mean they’ll be skittish, probably.”

“Yes.” Arrush nodded, still watching the field. “Nik says it would be… an ecological disaster.”

“Okay, Nik doesn’t get to comment on this. Nik constantly does risky shit with magic.” James grumbled. He waved slowly at a passing bug, it’s squat leathery face peering at him curiously from under the cover of its shell. “I’m realizing that they needed a name for these guys.” James sighed. “I don’t want another ratroach problem.”

Arrush tensed up. “I’m a problem?” His voice was a strained almost-squeak.

“What? Oh, shit! No! I meant…” James leaned over to hug Arrush with one arm. “I meant the name. Christ, I’m bad at this. The name ‘ratroach’ isn’t a good one, but we’re all used to it, and no one can agree on what to change to. So if we’re going to name a species that doesn’t have a name for itself already, we need to actually think before we just call them turtle-bugs or something.”

“Oh.” Arrush sagged against James. “Is this why… JP told some to stop calling them antlions?”

James blinked, eyebrows going up of their own accord. “Wow, shit, they do look a bit like antlions, don’t they? Huh!” He grunted in surprise. “Also yes. Also don’t call them that. We’ll ask them when we can. If they’re even sophont! We haven’t even confirmed that they’re smarter than, like, dogs.”

“Your dog is in college.”

He couldn’t hold back a laugh at Arrush’s statement, amusement mixing with another feeling in his chest. “I fucking love seeing you get better.” James shook his head as Arrush titled away, flushing green around his eyes. “Okay. I’m gonna go see what I can learn about all these new friends. Take care of them, okay?”

“Okay.” Arrush nodded, glad to be given a simple instruction that he didn’t have to feel any embarrassment about. “I am going to help with the water. Good luck.”

James nodded, and headed away from the field. There were about forty people there right now, they didn’t need him getting in the way too. Or almost forty, depending on how Marlea counted. The pair of bodies that had decided to be a single person was helping to rope off the chunk of the prison complex that had been dropped here, setting up a barrier warning people away just in case it shifted.

It was good proactive thinking, and James appreciated it; he wasn’t too ashamed to admit he probably would have stood next to it and gotten crushed by a falling piece of architecture if he wasn’t actively warned.

Assured that the new bug friends weren’t going to be an immediate problem, James went to find someone who could tell him what he needed to know.

_____

The gravel parking lot that the Order was getting into the habit of using as an emergency teleport landing spot did have a house on the property. It was run down, but not crumbling, and they’d bought the whole thing for cheap. There was even a barn and a few other structures too, on what used to be a pumpkin patch and was now a test ground for orange totems that happened to have pumpkins on it.

The house was where they were keeping their one prisoner. Along with all their stolen Status Quo documents, and the laptops that some of the rogues were using to try to access the files they’d stolen off any computer in the building that Yin and Myles had gotten their hands on before they’d had to bail.

The farmhouse also didn’t have power, exactly. It just had two copies of the magical power strip that he remembered looting from Officium Mundi what felt like a lifetime ago. The other ends were probably plugged in back at the Lair, driving up their power bill, but keeping the laptops and lamps on.

James gave a nod to the handful of humans and camracondas who were either irately tapping on keyboards, or just glaring at screens their skulljacks were plugged into. He was ignored, but that was fine, because he’d check in on them later. For now, he made his way to one of the mostly empty upstairs rooms.

They were under no illusion that the building could hold the woman they’d brought back with an old wooden door. But at least if she tried kicking her way through the walls, they’d have some noise as warning. And in here was farther away from the bugs outside, and James had some questions about that.

In here there was also one of their new security teams. The people who they’d recruited and trained up specifically for anti-human violence when it was called for. James still felt weird about the Order having soldiers, but that was a complicated knot of emotions that he didn’t have time to sort out now, and at the moment, it was better that the group was available and not needed than the other way around.

Two of them were standing in the hallway near the door to the room, and one of the pair let him in with a professional knock and without a word. All of the security team in the building were wearing skulljack braids, and silently getting better and better at operating as a unit with them. In contrast to a lot of the Order that developed their skills through dungeon delves or frantic survival situations, these young men and women started with a foundation of demanding training, and then had orbs and books stacked on top of it. They were partly an experiment, but while James hadn’t had much time to talk to them personally, he was aware that the lot of them were exceptionally loyal. After all, they’d been given something that had been a distant wish before running into the Order of Endless Rooms; an opportunity. Also a lot of money, and the well being of any family they had. Powerful motivations.

He’d need to catch up with them later though. For now, James silently tried to not interrupt Ben and Alanna as they interrogated their prisoner.

“Sounds pretty hard.” Ben was saying, nodding empathetically to the woman across the table from him. She’d had the zip ties taken off her wrists, but it was still obvious she was a prisoner, if only because there was another of the security team, as well as an armored camraconda in the corners of the room. “Was the pay good, at least?”

The woman’s mouth twitched in a scowl. “Not really. It’s insulting. Once you’re in, you get informed that you can’t really leave. The pay was good at first, and the benefits are top notch, but there’s basically no raises. But what am I supposed to do? Quit? Even if they don’t kill me, it’s not like I can go anywhere else.”

“Understandable.” Ben leaned back. “I’m in a similar position, for different reasons.” He said in that same kind voice. “You’re probably out of a job now, though.”

“Yeah, well. They also think I’m dead.” The woman said with a shrug. “Maybe I can crash on your couch for a while, until I figure things out.”

“Maybe.” Ben stayed noncommittal as James sat down on Alanna’s other side. Alanna, who was writing on a pad of paper, showed something to Ben, who nodded ever so slightly.

James had actually assumed that it would be Nate in here. Someone with actual ‘I did this job in the real world’ experience when it came to asking questions and getting answers. Maybe a good cop bad cop thing going on with someone else.

He’d forgotten about Ben. About how terrifying Ben’s innate ability actually was. How anyone who met him found him instantly familiar, and that Ben had an amount of control and could turn that up to eleven when he needed to. It was a good thing that Ben was James’ friend, or else James would be really worried about that power being used against him.

Catching Ben’s eye, James made a questioning motion at their prisoner. When Ben gave a tiny nod back, James spoke up for the first time since entering the room. “One quick question.” He started.

He didn’t get farther than that before her face turned sour and she practically spat at him. “Piss off.” Was the instant reply.

“It’s fine,” Ben spread his fingers as he held a hand in front of James. “I’ll vouch for him.”

The bloodied woman instantly relaxed, though Alanna signaled something that made James think their prisoner was starting to at least realize that emotional manipulation was being used on her. “…alright…” She said, still apprehensive. “You and your buddy tried to kill me.”

“You started it. But also, neither of us succeeded, so no hard feelings.” James lied, shook his head, and moved on. “I need to know about the bugs.”

She cocked her head at him like she was confused. “What about them?”

“Anything you know, please.” Ben said quickly taking over for James. “I’d appreciate it.”

“I mean, we’re friends, but it’s still classified. I guess if you’re friends with this asshole you already know a little though.” She snorted, which turned into a cough, and ended with her hacking up a small amount of blood into a towel. “I’m fine.” The Status Quo shock trooper waved them off, even though they were all keeping on the other side of the table and hadn’t offered to help at all. “Not like there’s much to tell. They’re a source of extranormal power, but you probably already knew that, since you attacked us over it. Dangerous, too. The current generation might not know it but they’ve killed at least a dozen of my coworkers this year.” She shrugged. “Not my problem really.”

“You seem… apathetic…” James ventured.

“Nah. It’s a little muted these days, but I’ve got anger just fine. And humor. Not annoyance though, but whatever, I won’t miss it.” She narrowed her eyes. “I’m not stupid, either.”

“No one said you were.” Ben offered.

The prisoner’s glare didn’t soften this time when she turned to him. “No, but you’re being a really shitty friend.”

The line of questioning shut down after that. Influenced or not, the woman refused to say another word, and while the Order might be able to come up with some magical ways to force people to talk, that was a fuzzy line of ethics that none of them were quite willing to play with right now.

James and Alanna stepped out, leaving their captive still under guard with Ben making idle attempts to talk to her while he laid out everything that they’d learned onto a bullet point document that would get saved to the Order’s files later.

“Well that was weird.” James sighed as his girlfriend leaned against the kitchen wall downstairs and cracked open a can of soda with a metal snap and hiss. “You doing okay?”

“Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?” Alanna asked, raising her eyebrows as she felt James’ concern for her.

He eyed her warily. “The last thing I heard from you during the scrap was you saying you’d been hit, then teleporting out.” James said slowly.

“Oh. Right.” Alanna rubbed the back of her head with her free hand. “I’m fine. Between the hardening potion and the authority, it fucking stung, but… I guess I really am bulletproof now, huh?”

James caught the small amount of strain in her voice. He might not have magic empathy powers, but he knew his lover well enough to recognize when she was worried. “Part of me wants to ask what’s up with the authority, but fuck that part. What’s going on?”

“Eh. Further and further from human, I guess.” Alanna shrugged. “I didn’t think it would bother me. But suddenly it feels like a big deal. Everything feels bad all of a sudden, and I kinda hate it, since it’s really useful for me to be able to take shots for people.”

James nodded, for once actually aware of what was going on. “Is this the hardening potion crash?” He asked rhetorically. “Because that always gives me anxiety.”

“Oh right. Probably.” Alanna shrugged. “It might also be my authority… uh… getting demoted?” She raised the can of soda in her hand to tap at the green hoop earring she was wearing. “When I took command of the fight, it was like it was waking up. Not exactly alive, not talking to me, I dunno. But a lot more solid. And when I got shot, I could feel them pulling all the damage away. Because I was a field agent, and I had the responsibility to not get shot in the head.”

“Cool. You got shot in the head?” James’ kept his voice as steady as he could while internally he was screaming incoherently. He tried to quiet that down too when Alanna gave him a perturbed look. “Don’t… we need to stop doing this.” James said abruptly, everything catching up to him. “Dungeons are one thing. But this is different. I don’t want you to get shot. Ever. Or anyone else either.”

“Well too bad, because we were all in on this, and a lot of us did get hurt.” Alanna snapped at him. A human and camraconda pair that had been walking into the kitchen to grab drinks caught her tone, and slowly inched back out again. “But no one died. Well, almost no one. Hell, almost no one from Status Quo died. That’s so fucking weird. It’s like playing paintball where the stakes are life or death somehow.” She shook her head and locked eyes with James. “You already know what I’m gonna say. Just because they aren’t from a dungeon doesn’t mean they aren’t monsters. And you know it too, because I know you do.”

“I regret giving you open permission to read my mood.” James grumbled. But he didn’t rescind it, because she was right. “I just don’t want to lose you. Or anyone, really. But mostly you.”

“Yeah. I get it.” Alanna let out a long stream of breath. Then she gave a single chuckle. “Imagine how Anesh feels.”

“I don’t have to. We’ll probably get to do it ourselves when we plug our brains together tonight. Wait, you can just do it now.” He rolled his eyes at her, a little levity restored. “Okay. I’m… I’m sorry. For everything. Worrying you, being worried, being an idiot, all of it. Also later we’re gonna have a large talk about what it means to be human, and how it doesn’t matter and I’m not gonna stop loving you!” James pointed at her as he headed for one of the kitchen’s door.

Alanna waved him out, but James caught the tiny smile as she turned away.

_____

“Update please.” James was quick with his words for the task force working on the files from Status Quo. The documents, laptops, and whatever digital information the rogues were able to grab before they had to abandon the building were either liberated or looted depending on your perspective, and right now, they were also covering most of the farmhouse’s expansive living room.

There were a lot of people here James didn’t know by name, but recognized as faces that worked with Research or Recovery, as well as a half dozen rogues who were helping sort stuff out. And Planner, their sprawling manifested series of tentacles and eyes hovering in the middle of the room in a strangely comforting way, assisting where they could.

Eight people tried to talk at once when James asked for an update, and he held up a hand to try to get them to stop while his other hand pressed into his temple, trying to fend off a headache. Zhu joined him in motioning for everyone to shut the hell up, and soon he had a chastised group of investigative researchers waiting for him to pick who should talk first.

The main thing he’d gotten from the clamor was that they were working on different things. Not at cross purposes, but there were a thousand different threads to follow, and everyone was going different directions looking for anything that was needed now. So James started with what he was really here for specifically. “The bugs. Who’s got anything on that?”

“I do.” Myles raised his hand from where he was going through a banker’s box of manilla folders. “Not much, but I’ve got a file I know is referencing them.” He motioned James over, and spread the document out on a nearby end table that had only recently stopped being a dusty relic and been put back into use. “Here, look at this.”

James looked. Page after page of printed spreadsheets, annotated where Myles had indicated that they were looking at different years, columns of numbers and cryptic labels for each line. The skill orb James had in cryptography put its work in as he started to draw patterns in the numbers. One of the columns was always the largest number. The others were smaller, and it didn’t take his brain long to find the formula; one addition and three subtractions to the main column each line, with an additional column that didn’t relate. “You’re sure this is for them?” He asked, a pit starting to open in his stomach.

“We’re still getting a count of how many of the bugs you brought back.” Myles said, tapping the main column. “But the last recorded number is pretty close to the estimate. Some of these notes are clearly referencing other documents, but we either don’t have them, or don’t know we have them, so we’re working on that. I just don’t know what the other numbers are.”

“This one is births.” James said, clenching his jaw and not looking up. He heard Myles make a questioning noise, and took a long breath through his nose before explaining. “They have eggs. Hard to tell how many, but this line, the one that’s added every… month, probably… it’s the birth rate. They were down there generationally.”

“Oh.” Myles looked at the rest of the spreadsheets. “So the others are… death rates.”

“Yeah.”

Another voice in the room gave a quiet. “Oh god.” And James realized that everyone had stopped what they were doing.

“They weren’t keeping them as prisoners.” Myles said slowly. “They’re livestock.”

“It… seems likely…” James said.

“Are they…” Texture-Of-Barkdust turned away from the laptop she was working on to fix James with a wide sad look of her camera eye. “…are they people?” She sounded so small, in that moment. So distant from the professional figure she usually projected.

“We don’t know yet.” He sucked air into his lungs, and tried to project the image of someone calm, and not ready to either throw up or start breaking things or both. “Okay. This starts to explain some things. Does anyone else have anything I need to know?”

Planner spoke up in a subdued tone, their soft voice sounding like a highlighter on an old document. “There were a few infomorphs hidden in the documents. Dumbfire weapons, self-censors. I eliminated them, and there do not seem to be more, but we do not know how much was lost, and we should in the future proceed in considering Status Quo documentation to be trapped.”

“Got it. Anyone else?”

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Nik raised his hand, and James stared at him until the young man slowly let it back down and cleared his throat. “Uh… I don’t think they were related to Status Quo?” He got incredulous, or outright angry, stares at the comment, and quickly backtracked. “I mean, our Status Quo. I think they’re different. Almost entirely different.”

Myles frowned. “But they have the same operational procedures.” He said, not really making it a question, just thinking out loud. “I wasn’t around for the first one, was anyone here?” Four humans, Planner, and every camraconda raised their hands, tentacles, or snouts. “Did anyone ever figure out where they got started?”

“No, it was an artificial agency.” Nik said. “Or at least, that’s what Reed and Momo called it. And I get it, cause I’m seeing some of the same signs here. Their print documents that go back farther than a few years get… uh… simple?” His eyes narrowed as he tried to explain it. “They look fake. I don’t know about the digital files though.”

“We’re still trying to get into them.” Texture-Of-Barkdust said, her mind plugged into a laptop, camera eye glaring at the cracked screen. “It will not take long.”

He nodded at her. “So, they look like Status Quo, talk like Status Quo, authoritarian police action like Status Quo… how are they different?” James asked the room.

Nik shrugged. “It’s less like they’re branches of the same tree, and more like they’re just two of the same species of tree. Maybe it’s just human nature that some people will be shitty, and if they’ve got secrecy infomorphs and guns, they’ll do this.”

“Unless opposed.” James sighed. “Harlan tried to tell me about this. Said that groups like this pop up all the time. They called them… fuck, what was it? Watchers? I don’t remember.” James nodded at the group. “Okay. I’ve got my phone on me, and it’s not shot this time, so keep me up to date if you learn anything pressing. I’m looking for more info on the bugs, prisoners, or any ongoing operations they had that we need to intervene in.”

“Got it boss.” Myles told him with a worryingly respectful tone, before the room threw themselves back into their work.

James didn’t have the emotional energy to fight it right now. He was still scowling as he stalked out of the farmhouse to find his next target.

_____

James passed by the youth group that was helping out as he left, the teenage humans and developing camracondas apparently having been tasked with finding one of the cats that still haunted this mostly abandoned pumpkin patch. He almost smiled at their antics as they made a strategic plan, and felt like whichever adult had sent them on their task was doing a great job keeping them out of the way.

But he wasn’t feeling very happy right now. And small things that would have normally amused him felt a lot less funny when contrasted with the fact that Status Quo had been keeping the poor creatures milling around the field prisoner for so long that none of the ones here would have ever even seen the sun.

He made his way to the medical tent that had been set up, where a pair of the Order’s bootstrapped healer team were in the process of treating the injuries of some of the knights that had been minorly hurt. It was bizarre to him that they were at a point where ‘shot in the chest’ was a minor injury, but between shield bracers, authorities, potions, and random other effects, there wasn’t a lot of serious damage. Simon was getting glass shards picked out of their cheek, and Alice was being fussed over by a worried young camraconda while their medic stitched up a gash in her forehead.

But no one was dying here.

James waited until one of the healers was done, and had disposed of their bloody gloves. “Excuse me.” He caught the man’s attention.

“Are you hurt?” He asked instantly.

“No, I’m looking for the new people. Ruby and Prince.” James said, naming the mimics that he knew JP had brought out. “Also the other human prisoners we rescued.”

“I don’t know about the rescues, but if anyone was seriously injured, they’ll be in the Lair for surgery and camraconda support.” The healer told him. “If they’re one of the ones that didn’t make it…” he looked away with a pained grimace.

James froze. “Who didn’t make it?” He dreaded asking.

“We have nine bodies, none of them Order.” The medic’s voice was a rasp, as he struggled with the sudden presence of violent death in his own life. “The tractor shed over there has been converted into temporary cold storage until we can figure out… anything. I don’t know.” The man’s professional attitude cracked. “The actual knight is in there with her sister. Also someone setting up the cold magic.”

“Thanks.” James nodded. “Good… luck?”

“You too. Also you sure you’re okay? You’ve got blood on you.”

“It’s not mine.” James answered, and only realized that was probably not reassuring when he was halfway across the dirt field specked with little wild vine sprouts and weeds.

The woman who wasn’t Cam, two of the gangsters, two squos, four prisoners. The bodies were laid out on tarps as James pushed open the door and rapidly shut it to keep the rush of cold air from flooding out. Some of the corpses were covered, owing to the excessive amount of damage they’d taken and the bloody messes they’d become. Actually, most of them were covered.

Bill was here, too. The big man huffing and out of breath as he continually created magical heat exchange tunnels along with a couple of the guys he’d hired to help with the Order’s various ongoing construction projects. James got a nod from him as he entered, as well as from the knight that was watching Camille. James was pretty sure the woman’s name was Ann, but he was also pretty sure she had been injured and not present for this fight, so he reaffirmed his desire to build a system that would tell him people’s names on demand, and headed over to where Camille was kneeling next to her sister’s corpse.

“It is Ann.” Zhu whispered in his ear. “You are very bad with names, how is this possible? You can remember dungeon patterns down to the number of left turns.”

“Ann looks a lot like… uh…” James whispered back, hoping the woman didn’t have super hearing. He tried to think of who, exactly, the middle aged red headed woman did look like, and came up empty.

Zhu’s glowing eye, ringed in feathers, emerged from the back of James’ hand to glare up at him. “You are impossible.”

“Hey Camille.” James pivoted his arms behind his back, getting an irate squawk from Zhu as he prioritized the armored woman over his infomorph friend who was currently poking at him. “Long time no see.”

The girl in bullet pitted plate mail looked up at him with eyes that shimmered behind held back tears. Then she blinked, like she hadn’t noticed James approach, and her face was a professional mask again. “We have never met.” She said. And James felt his stomach drop. “I am Camille the Azure, and I know who you are already.”

“You do?” James wasn’t sure if he should be sympathetic, or running right now. He hedged his bets and got ready to dodge to the side, past an old metal barrel, if he needed to. “How’s that?”

“My sister spoke of you.” Camille - they were apparently all named Camille - said, looking back down at her sister’s bisected corpse. Pieces held together with what was left of her armor plate, the smell of gore heavy around what a was left of her. “Not this sister. Violet. She was…” Camille stopped, as if she had to think a long time about a specific word. “She was kind to me.”

“How’s she doing?” James asked.

“Dead. Already being replaced. Violets do not last long.” It was said without malice or regret, like it was just a fact of the world.

James fucking hated it. “I…” He trailed off. What was he supposed to even say? “I tried to help her.” He said, pitifully.

“You did. She remembered. Even though she was ordered not to.” Camille’s eyes met James’ own. “She told me that when I decided to run, I should come to you.”

He raised his eyebrows, but it was Zhu that asked the question. “How did she know you would run?”

Camille seemed momentarially confused that the infomorph had addressed her, but she recovered well enough. “Azure’s always run.” She said. “Or try to.”

“Okay.” James took a deep breath. “I can empathize with that.” He muttered, before continuing in a conversational volume. “I’m sorry to dump this on you, but I need to know some things, though I promise we can talk later. And if you’ll follow our rules, you’ve got a place with us where you can be safe and comfortable.”

“I wouldn’t…” Camille winced, and cut her words short. The facial tic was a tiny one, but James still caught it. A few skills and his own life experience filled in the unspoken blanks; here was a woman who wasn’t supposed to speak out of turn, and had just caught herself doing so.

He didn’t even come close to caring about that. But he also knew that there was no way to just tell her it was fine. James had been there. The only solution was repeatedly showing that things were okay. It was, actually, alarmingly close to how they dealt with the new ratroaches. “We can sort out the details later.” He said, instead of the more sympathetic words he wanted to say. “It’ll be okay. I promise. But right now, questions.”

“Ask.”

“Okay. In no particular order; why were the two of you there, why is Lloyd operating in - sorry, why is the Last Line Of Defense - operating in New York, what do you know if anything about the bugs we have outside, did your sister have a loot drop and what do you plan to do with it, is the Last Line going to come after us in a way we need to prepare for, and then just in general is there anything I need to know before it bites me in the ass?”

Camille stared at him, and then back at her sister’s corpse. She raised a gauntleted hand to pluck something out of a leather pouch at her side. A small burning white ember, flames licking up the sides of her fingers without heat. “Her power, I take your meaning.”

“Yeah.” James eyed the prize briefly, but didn’t linger on it. “By our own laws, we will respect her wishes if she had them, and they aren’t harmful. Giving it back to Lloyd counts as harmful. If she didn’t have anything she wanted done with it, then… well, I don’t think we’ve ever really had surviving next of kin. So maybe it’s your call. Either that or we can keep her with the rest until we find out if we can return them.”

“No.” Camille spoke suddenly, the word snapped out, eyes open in alarm. “Please, no.” Her voice cracked, ever so slightly. “She should not be returned. I don’t want it. No one should. Take it, do what you will. But do not bring her back.” She thrust the ember out to James, who nearly dropped it before Zhu’s feathered hand snagged it and pulled it close to examine with his eye.

“Okay.” James said softly. “We’ll let her rest.”

Camille nodded, mollified. “For the rest of the interrogation, I have only some answers.”

“It’s not…”

“My father is in this city to combat the actions of the Chain Breaker, and the Right Person At The Right Moment. Both of them have been working toward destabilization, and my sisters and I were dispatched to track down and stop their various plots. You ask if my father will seek me out, and the answer is no. The projected casualty rate was over eighty percent, due to the interference of the Long Arm Of The Law, and the Hitsuyō Aku.” She paused to think, then continued as if she was just putting her own pieces of the puzzle together. While she did that, James filed away the new proper noun for later. “I have been… I have been failing in my duties for months.” She admitted. “I devoted small parts of my power to finding you, or your people where possible. Looking for an opening. Today, many of my sisters were diverted to intercept Chain Breaker attacks, and I saw my chance. I did not… I didn’t think that she would… I…” Camille stared down at the corpse of her sister, the tears slowly reemerging in her eyes. “It was never supposed to be this way.” She said. “Even if she was expendable.”

“I’m sorry.” James said softly. “I really am.” He wasn’t sure why, since Camille had such a viscerally negative reaction to the idea of bringing her sister back, even if it was only a slim possibility in the far future. But he understood pain and guilt plentifully. “What about the bugs?”

Her stoic facade returned. “I know nothing of them. They seem to be outsiders. Monsters. If you need assistance, I will need a weapon.”

“No!” James spoke a little too sharply, getting another minute flinch from the woman that could probably crush his skull with her bare hands. “No. Please, understand. If you want to come with us, you’re going to be living alongside a lot of outsiders. Right now, though, I need to know what their needs and thoughts are like, so we can work on communication.”

Camille stared at him blankly, until Zhu chimed in. “Because we like people who are different!” The navigator clarified. “Which is why you are here. Sooooo…”

“Zhu, be nice.” James murmured, tapping at his feathered arm. “She’s having a hard day.”

“No, your companion is correct.” Camille countermanded him. “My sister sent me to you for a reason. I will trust her. And… I will try.” She clenched her hand into a fist, metal plates rasping against each other. “I am nearly exhausted, but I could search for something fortuitous for you, or something that will be a risk. It is up to you.”

James grinned. “Give me a little luck.” He said. “We’ll handle the risks.”

The woman nodded once, then closed her eyes. “You liberated prisoners. There is something about them that will help.” She said simply. “That is all I can find. I…” She slumped, shoulders drooping. “Ah.”

“Sit. Rest. Do you need water or a snack?” James asked her, motioning Bill over from where he was using Mountain magic to effectively seal one of the many gaps in the shed walls. The man was putting in a lot of work for a temporary morgue, and it occurred to James that a lot of the people here were probably scrambling to find ways to be useful in an event that… there wasn’t a lot they could do about. “Just ask Bill if you need anything.”

“Ma’am.” Bill nodded at her, still breathing heavily and colder than the rest of the chilled interior. James gave him a confident tap on the shoulder as he walked past, slipping out the shed and pulling a telepad from his pocket.

He had one more thing to check.

_____

The Lair’s medical facility had gotten a lot more use than James had ever expected - or hoped - that it would. Between the Underburbs quarantine, the number of knights or responders who took injuries on operations or delves, the number of people just around the lair who got hurt in their daily lives or by drinking new potions that they shouldn’t have, and also Deb having sourced supplies of common vaccines to distribute to anyone who needed them - mostly ratroaches and camracondas - the place saw almost constant use.

Deb herself didn’t run the place anymore. Karen had come through finding someone to deal with operations and management, which had freed up Deb and her staff to streamline their own day to day jobs. And she’d used that new freed up time to double down on expanding her magical knowledge.

Yellow orbs, mem files, applied use of totems and grown programs, skulljack research, medical and biological testing on new species, potions. Deb had always wanted to be a doctor, but had settled for the more affordable career path of being a nurse instead. Now, though? Faced with a dozen ways to rapidly expand her knowledge base, and a dozen more things to use that knowledge on, she was finding an experience much like James did when it came to skipping the boring part of a new hobby.

Deb was smart. And if she’d wanted to do anything else aside from heal people, you could have called her worryingly smart.

When James walked into the space, Deb was in the middle of rapidly moving from performing surgery to remove a bullet, to getting fast updates on the status of other triaged knights. She was also, at the moment, both smart, and irate.

“You nearly killed my girlfriend again.” She fired off at James as he entered. Though this time, there wasn’t quite the same level of actual anger as previously.

“To be fair, I think Sunny can take more shots than I can, and also she was on evac duty and not even getting shot at.” James defended himself. Then, in a softer voice “But also… is she doing okay?”

“Rattled, but not bad. Camracondas… well, the older ones… they don’t fear death the way they should. It’s not healthy.” Deb’s words seemed backward to James.

He said as much to her with a curious quirk of his brow. “You sure? I’d like to not fear death.”

“You’d get eaten by a dragon within the day if that were true. Now, I’m busy. What are you here for?” Deb cut to the chase.

James decided to drop the banter and respect her time, especially when his friends and companions might still need to be put back together. “I need to see the prisoners we brought back. Preferably any that can talk?”

Deb nodded. “Most of them are waiting on infomorph surgery. Mercy needs to rest, and I’ll be asking for more help on this front, so be prepared for that. Two of them are half-awake, two of them are resting after having their parasites removed.”

Frantically waving his hands between them, James stopped her with a horrified expression. “Woah, woah woah woah, what?”

“Hm? Oh. The SQ captives were all infected with a strange form of inert infomorph. Not even alive, more like the mental equivalent of a brick wall, according to Mercy. She needs physical brain help to even break through, so we’re getting the knights who need to rest anyway to work with her.” Deb explained quickly, as a short Hispanic woman slipped up next to her and muttered in her ear. “I need to get back to it. Room twenty three and four for the ones who you can talk to right now.” Deb pointed down the hallway that was longer than it should be. “Also if you have a way to remove these things, I’d appreciate it.”

“Call Ben.” James said. “Actually,” he turned to the aid behind the nurse’s station desk who was keeping up with the paperwork, “you call Ben, because Deb is gonna glare me to death if I try to give her more work right now, and she’s right to do it. He might have something, but don’t count on it.” Deb gave the man a quick nod, and pointed to the list of reference phone numbers pinned to the raised back of the desk for him. “Okay. I’ve got to ask some questions pretty quick. Thanks, and… well, thanks.”

“We’ll catch up later.” Deb promised him. “Honestly, this isn’t that bad. We’re doing better, and no one died or is gonna die. So, good job. Making my job easier.” She paused as she waked away, yelling over her shoulder, “And all the magic helps too!”

James headed down the hospital’s sterile hallway, passing more than one room containing a wounded knight or recovering ratroach, until he got to where Deb had pointed him.

He knocked, and didn’t politely wait before pushing the door open, which he maybe should have as he heard a yelp on the other side. “Rude.” Zhu was already prodding at him as he walked in. “It’s like you’ve never worked in health care before.”

“You were cuter when you didn’t sass me.” James grumbled.

“Really?”

“No.” James focused on the person lying in the hospital bed staring at him, and then on the wounded calico cat sitting on one of the guest chairs. The human was barely out of their teens, if at all; a frazzled black bob cut of hair, over a rounded face that James was pretty sure showed off Chinese ancestry, but he didn’t actually want to start guessing given his limited real world knowledge. Nor did he, in truth, care. The cat was a cat, though it was staring at him with wide intelligent eyes and one of its legs had a bloody ragged hole through it. A large bloodied bandage pooled on the chair next to the feline. “Hi. I’m James.” He spoke softly to the girl in the bed.

“I…I’m… Mary.” She said, lying to James face. “This is my… cat… Opal.”

James paused, standing at the foot of the bed, and pressed the tips of his fingers together in front of his mouth. Trying desperately to keep his face steady. Behind him, Zhu’s tail flicked rapidly in excited glee as he did no such thing. “This is perfect.” The infomorph’s voice was like tires on smooth pavement. “This makes it all worth it. Is this what the end of a journey is like for you?” He asked James. “Oh, I can feel how smug you are, it’s practically lewd.”

Clearing his throat, James opened his mouth, then closed it again before he figured out how he wanted to approach this. “Alright.” He said slowly. “Good attempt. I see what you’re going for, and I think you’re on the right track. Don’t give information to random people who may have kidnapped you. A plus.” He shot the confused girl a thumbs up, while the cat, who already saw where this was going, was rubbing a paw on their scrunched up face in frustration. James nodded to the cat. “Here’s the thing. I dunno if you’re trying to Keyser Soze me or not, but in general, it’s not a good idea to have fake names be secret cute references. Now, you had no way of knowing, but I’ve already met Ruby - hi Ruby - so the matching name just looks very… uh…”

“Deeply hilarious!” Zhu chimed in. James wanted to contradict him, but it was hard to figure out how, so he just shrugged and pointed at the infomorph in agreement. “Also hello Ruby. Should we call a nurse back for the bandaging?”

“The staff don’t know he’s here.” James said with another sigh. “That’s a makeshift dressing, he snuck in. Somehow. And for some reason. So yeah, Zhu, go get a nurse or something. Or a vet. Is Liz here? Ruby are you a cat normally? We have a veterinarian.” Zhu bristled his feathers like he was preparing to spring before James had finished, and was off down the hallway in a spear of orange light without waiting for an answer.

The cat that had been an FBI agent a couple hours ago made a very human paw motion at James, that it took both of them a moment to figure out was a middle finger that didn’t work. “I can’t change for a while, and you made me panic. Asshole.”

“You know him?” The girl sagged back, letting the tension out.

“I mean, no. He helped us get you out, but he could still be an asshole.” Ruby’s voice wasn’t even remotely catlike, and James felt a pang of unexpected disappointment.

He repressed the urge to ask Ruby to meow. “I try not to be. And you’re not a prisoner. But I’m kind of working on an unknown clock here, so do you mind if I ask some quick questions?”

The girl who’s name wasn’t Mary looked at the cat, who gave her a somehow grudging nod, before she turned back to James. “Okay.” Her voice was tired, but less scared now, which he took as a win.

“Okay. The bugs. What’s up with that?”

“I… the what? There weren’t… do you mean spiders?” The girl looked confused.

James gave an irate huff, though not aimed at her. “Damn. Okay. How about being taken prisoner? Anything you can tell me in general? I’m assuming you’re delvers.”

“I… we… yeah.” Her head dropped to her chest, and she stared at the white blanket draped over her form. “I guess so. We were. I don’t think I want to…” she stopped talking, biting her lip to hold back tears. “They killed…” she stopped entirely, and James just let her have a moment, looking away. He couldn’t leave yet, but he didn’t have any grounds to comfort this person. Shortly, though, she wiped her eyes, and sniffed. “Sorry, I just…”

“Don’t apologize.” James’ voice was rough, but not unkind. “I know. I’ve lost people too. Never anyone that close to me though. Not that I remember anyway.”

She sniffed again, wiping her nose on the bedsheet, before taking a steadying breath. “They were… the men who captured us, before they rushed us to a cell, they were asking questions. They wanted to know what we could do, how much… they called it something stupid, but how much magic we had.” She stared at James, like she was waiting for him to ask the same questions, but he didn’t. “Before they stopped, two of them were betting how many steps we’d be worth. Were they… were they going to kill us?”

“I don’t know.” James said, stepping aside as a woman who was as short as she was scowling strode into the room, her scrubs identifying her role here. He just pointed at the cat still sitting on the chair and got an irate huff as she pulled a cart with stitches on it in after her. “But you’re safe now. And you can leave whenever you want, if you want. But also maybe don’t, until Deb clears you?”

“I’ll hold you to that.” Ruby said, getting a jump from the doctor, who intensified her scowl at him and switched from trying to make cautious and soothing movements to simply verbally demanding he hold his paw out.

James didn’t say goodbye, just slipped out and to the next room.

“Christ’s sake, Prince.” He said immediately on entering and seeing a golden retriever hiding in the corner with a gaping chest wound. “Zhu?”

“I’ll be back.” The navigator fluttered in a sigh before zipping away again.

The questions with the young man in this bed didn’t exactly go smoother, but they did go faster. He had mostly the same information for James; they were being evaluated, and there was something about how much they were ‘worth’ as a resource.

From what he vividly remembered of the last Status Quo, their idea of “Human Resources” was literal and disgusting. But the prison complex hadn’t been an abattoir, and the prisoners, while clearly under negative influence, weren’t being drained or bled or sacrificed. At least, not obviously. James was much more concerned about that treatment being applied to the bugs themselves.

He tried to check on one of the other prisoners who had undergone the extraction of the hostile infomorph that was keeping them placid, but the man was asleep. The next guy was awake, but still recovering, and could only barely answer James. Though he was clearly frantically forcing himself to try through the residual mental fog. He’d been there for what felt like almost a year, and while he had no real clear impression of the passing of time, he knew that the Status Quo staff had regularly run the elevator. The sound, he said, meant that the people he could see through the bars would change. Different prisoners, people shuffled around or removed. Probably about once a month.

_____

The pieces came together, and James didn’t really like it.

In the bigger picture, there was the Chain Breaker. A myriad of small operations and attacks around a major city, from her and her allies and hired goons. A distraction tactic. For this? For the bugs? Was her intent to wipe them out, and if so, why this roundabout way of doing things?

She wasn’t trying to hurt Status Quo, obviously. Or at least, not beyond simply removing an asset. The bugs were clearly an asset. So was the building she’d been fine destroying. And ‘civilian casualties’ weren’t on her list of things to be concerned about, either. So what did she want?

Maybe this was a distraction, too. Maybe the Order had just been the outside context problem this time; a weird quirk that interrupted more than one plan at a time. Maybe there’d been some other thing the Chain Breaker was late for. Some kind of uncontrolled demolition she’d needed to run off to oversee that kept her from killing the rest of them, or the Last Line Of Defense encroaching on a city block that she wouldn’t stand for.

But there was another, deeply cynical part of James’ thoughts, that had an idea he didn’t like at all. That this had been her plan. That the Order of Endless Rooms was an accounted for variable in the web of nonsense. That forcing their hand with an exploding building and a pack of spiky shelled refugees, inciting a mass teleport and a large scale rescue to parts unknown, was what she wanted.

She could have just killed him. And Daniel, and TQ, and everyone else. But she didn’t. She let him go. Let him run, and take her goal with her.

James wasn’t sure how to feel about that. He would have preferred if she’d just asked nicely. He would have saved the bugs anyway.

Saved them from Status Quo. Which was the second, more relevant part of this. Because they had to take care of them now, somehow, and James was also starting to see what had been happening.

Population charts. High monthly death rates. Agents with uniform power sets. Skittish bugs that had never been outside and had clutches of eggs. Prisoners that were evaluated by their levels; even if they didn’t call them levels, James defaulted to the term.

Status Quo - either Status Quo - didn’t kill delvers they kidnapped; they used them. They found ways to convert people to the powers they wanted. You could kill a delver and take their magic, as far as he knew. But that wasn’t the way you got a standardized set of powers that you could pass out to your employees and train a group on. He knew that the hard way. The Order tried to have builds, but it was actually pretty hard to do with just one copier.

But if you killed a dungeon creation, you tended to get consistent rewards.

Camille knew they were dungeon life. And James believed her.

In the Office, and the Sewers, at least, dungeon life could kill, and reap some part of the rewards for themselves.

“Ah, fuck.” He whispered, leaning on the wall next to the enlarged doors to the hospital. “I wanted it to be anything else.” Zhu wrapped his tail around James’ legs, silently offering comfort. “Okay. Let’s go.” James said as he broke the quick embrace, and pulled out what was left of his telepad. “I have one more question for someone.”

_____

The interrogation of their Status Quo prisoner wasn’t happening currently. Instead, she sat reading an old paperback book someone had brought her, looking bored out of her mind.

James didn’t have much respect for her time or feelings at the moment. He practically kicked the door open and only took a few steps into the room, not bothering to sit. “Do you get the notification when you kill them, or when you hit the threshold to level up?” He demanded.

The woman, whose shirt was still soaked in her own blood even if the wound had sealed up, tipped the book down slightly and gave James a cruel grin. The cold glint in her eyes much more apparent now as she stopped hiding, having decided that there wasn’t much point anymore. “Each of them.” She said. “Why, haven’t tried it yourself yet? I can give you some pointers on indirect traps if you squeamish about-“

“Lock her down.” James snapped at the camraconda knight, who froze the Status Quo trooper mid word. “Double the guard on this room.” He said to the Order security team as he stalked out.

Everyone got out of his way as he stomped out to the field where the hundreds of refugees were still waiting for… for anything, James supposed. He didn’t know. The Order had started getting food and water set up, and from the way they were eating, it was clear the creatures had been on something approaching a starvation diet. Either that or they thought this was a last meal.

Alanna was chatting to Arrush, the two of them covering an arc of open dirt and weeds as James approached. They weren’t specifically who he was looking for; just the first two people he encountered. “Yo!” Alanna greeted him, looking more relaxed. “Good news! The… holy shit, what’s…”

James tried to force himself to relax as his girlfriend’s empathy caught the white hot rage that was threatening to turn his insides to cinders. Metaphorically. Probably. “Tell me the good news first.”

“[Move Person] doesn’t work on cats.”

“Okay?” James was caught off guard enough that he lost some of the anger. “Why does - oh, because it worked on them.” He nodded, and instantly felt the fury come back even stronger, the taste of bile in the back of his throat. “So as far as the Office cares at least, they’re people. Great.”

“…so… that’s good.” Arrush said slowly. “You did good. Right?”

James looked past them, to the repurposed pumpkin patch and the confused and scared clusters of shells that moved with a kind of bobbing wiggle as the creatures danced about and tested the dirt and plants and sometimes approached the Order on the edges cautiously for something to eat.

He didn’t know what to do. But that was okay. He didn’t have to. There were dozens of his friends and allies here to help. And he was pretty sure Nate had been preparing to fight off a siege ever since the first Status Quo attack.

“They know.” He said.

“What?” Alanna snapped her posture up, eyes narrowing.

“Status Quo. They get kill notifications, including for indirect deaths. They know the bugs aren’t dead.” James told her. “I need to let people know.”

“Yeah.” Alanna said, one hand patting her chest like she was just realizing she didn’t have armor on. “Me too. Arrush…”

The ratroach nodded. “Go. I will keep watching.” He looked at James with wet eyes. “Thank you.”

“Why? All I ever do is bring bad news.”

“You could have done nothing. You never do.” Arrush said. “So thank you. Now go. And this time I will be with you for it.” He cracked a glowing fanged smile, and stumbled as Alanna laughed and patted him on the shoulder. “Ow.” Arrush muttered as she ran off, before turning back to James. “Go?”

James swallowed, and smiled back tightly. “Yeah.” He said. “Okay.”

He took off at a jog, looking for Nate and JP. And shortly, around the field, the Order’s activities shifted to something with a much more deliberate purpose, and a much higher sense of stakes. They couldn’t know how long it would take for retaliation to come, but this time, James refused to let the Order be caught off guard.