“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.” -Ursula K. LeGuin, Those Who Walk Away From Omelas-

_____

They teleported to a safehouse; one of many that Nate had apparently set up when he had a free day, which just made James even more curious what the rogues were actually doing. It was kind of funny, but also, he was zero percent okay with a secret cabal within the Order that didn’t explain their actions and weren’t accountable to anyone.

That wasn’t really what he wanted to focus on right now, though.

“Audio’s coming through.” Ben said, looking down at the laptop he seemed to have become inseparable from. “Should I be recording this or something?”

“Absolutely.” James nodded, doing some basic stretches like he was warming up for an afternoon exercising and not preparing for a phone call with his newest enemies. “The last time I talked to one of these assholes, I only had my own memory as a record, and even though we can share those now, it’s still really unreliable.” He dropped his arms with a sigh of content relief. “It’d be nice if everyone could hear this one. Even if I screw it up. Heck, especially if I screw it up.”

“Please don’t ideologically undermine our entire organization.” JP said in passing as he walked past where they were set up, heading to the small apartment’s bathroom. “We don’t want to make Squo propaganda for them.” He added loudly from down the hall as he threw the door shut with a heavy clunk.

James snorted softly. “Wasn’t planning on screwing up that badly.” He muttered. He was going to keep complaining about JP’s quip, but a comforting presence settled into reality around him drew his attention. “Hey Zhu.” James said aloud as the orange feathers of his friend on his shoulder and arm announced the navigator’s active state. “How’re you doing?”

“Tired. Why are you up this early, and where are we?” Zhu asked, sounding mildly curious mixed with equally mildly confused.

“Rogue safehouse, apparently.” James said. “Is this place reading as weird to you?”

Zhu fluttered in response, one large eye forming and blinking at the walls of the mostly unfurnished apartment. “It tastes bad.”

“I’m guessing that’s just takeout containers in the trash no one has emptied.” James snarked. “But also, hey. Remind me to get Deb to feed you insulin later to see if that’s possible. Not right now though because I’m gonna try to pry information out of a Status Quo kill team that got sent after us and is closing in on the now-empty pumpkin farm.”

The navigator flicked his ethereal feathers at James’ face, getting a sputter in reply. “I am not even two years old and I already have the context to know that you aren’t supposed to say things that stupid, that casually.”

“You’re stealing an imprint of my own personality, you don’t get to pretend you’re a baby!” James was grinning as he twisted his own arm away so that Zhu couldn’t keep trying to poke him. “But yeah. I’ll be doing that… soon?” He looked over at Ben and Nate with a cock of his eyebrow.

The two men were looking at something on Ben’s screen. Nate silently held up three fingers without turning back to James; Status Quo were close. Personally, James didn’t think they’d actually just drive their rented SUVs into the parking lot and charge in with their guns out. So three minutes might be a bit of a worst case scenario.

Then again, this was a version of the group that had tried to kidnap or murder three high school students and one guidance counselor, not just in broad daylight, but at the high school, during class hours. So it was entirely possible that ‘thinking through plans beforehand’ just wasn’t a Status Quo strength. James knew they weren’t actually the same group, but they sure looked pretty fucking similar in what they were doing, if not exactly why.

He’d know why soon enough. If he could get any answers out of them, that was.

James hadn’t realized he was clenching a fist until Zhu tried to pull his fingers apart. He sheepishly let go, just in time for a pop of air to signal the arrival of a group of people in the apartment. Alanna and Arrush, he knew, but the two camracondas were unfamiliar to him. Rufus was a surprise, sitting on Alanna’s head like he belonged there. The last person was a kid - an actual kid, not just someone any amount younger than James - one of the older high school students that were participating in the Order’s arranged mixed species extracurricular activities. Out of everyone, he and one of the camracondas looked the most out of place.

“Sup?” James asked.

“Got your text.” Alanna said. “Good job not getting yourself killed! This is why I love you; always adapting!” She shot him a thumbs up as Rufus scurried down her arm. The strider elicited a shocked twitch out of Alanna as his pen legs carried him across to her hand where he leapt off and onto the scratched up kitchen counter of the empty apartment.

James bumped his own loose fist, along with Zhu’s own clawed hand by proxy, into Alanna’s. “I’m capable of learning. Why’s everyone here?” He asked, fully stating his actual question. “Especially the kids.”

“We are moving together. Picking up your stragglers.” The other non-child camraconda said. It was hard for James to actually tell camraconda ages, but it did seem to hold true that Officium Mundi had made a change to the style of its creations within the last few years. All the older camracondas, all the ones that had come from their hidden tower that the Order had first liberated, had boxy camera heads and thicker, dull colored cabling. And those styles did still show up in the Office. But also, there were different variants out there in the dungeon’s wilds.

The younger one here had a smoother black dome with a shrouded lens inside for an eye, and a line of red diamond shaped LEDs down its spine. Which didn’t specifically mean it was a kid, but it did make them stand out as not from the one that James recognized as one of those older rescues, even if he didn’t know their name.

“Yeah, it’s a field trip.” Alanna said. “Which I sternly disprove of, because we’re still sort of in a combat zone, even if there’s hopefully zero chance Squo finds us here. These guys are taking the people who came with you back down to Townton. Conserving telepads. We can make a ton of them but no sense wasting the things, eh?”

James nodded in agreement as the members of the Order that had come along with them when they’d left the farm, the couple engineers and the last Recovery members who had been clearing the farmhouse, making sure no stolen documents were missed or opportunities were left behind, linked up with some of the new arrivals. They gave James respectful or exhausted waves and nods as they teleported away, leaving Alanna, Rufus, and Arrush behind.

“So, what about you?” He asked.

“We’re here for support.” She said simply, Arrush nodding along with her. “Either if we do get shot at, or if you just need someone to tell you why the shit they’re saying is… uh… shit.”

“I could do that.” JP countered as he walked out of the bathroom, crossing his arms at her.

“So could I, you’re not special.” Zhu shot back from his spot on James’ shoulder.

Alanna stepped between them. “Boys, please. We can all tell James to not believe the words of the evil secret cult. What’s important-“

“You know I have a coherent worldview, right?” James asked them, slightly annoyed. “Also, Nate, how’re we looking?”

Nate finally turned to look back at them. “Some assholes showed up in our safehouse to flirt with our negotiator, is how we’re doing.” He ground out the words. “And they’re taking their time, but approaching the main building.” He made a motion, and James left Arrush and Alanna to figure out where they should sit in the barren apartment while he went over to watch the camera feeds.

Traffic feeds weren’t the only thing the Order had access to. Sometimes, it paid to just set up your own security cameras, and that was what Ben had them watching now, with help from Planner to display extra windows that the laptop didn’t helpfully provide.

James watched over the friend’s shoulder, getting a good view of the different angles of approach to the farm, both the cluster of buildings and the main fields.

There was no sign of the vehicles themselves, so they must have just left them on the street, but the Status Quo agents looked comically out of place trudging through the dry ditches and overgrown weeds that ringed the property. Suit jackets and slacks, like they were extras in an office sitcom. The weapons they were carrying didn’t really make them look much better, it just shifted it so they were more like extras in a bad FBI drama.

Keeping count of them was a challenge for James. Fortunately, he was the worst person at that game in the room, and while Nate and Ben seemed to be keeping their own tally under their breaths, Planner just stuck a number up and tagged each individual agent on the cameras. Sometimes James was curious exactly how much mental might Planner had to bring to bear, but he’d ask about that later when it was less of a tense moment.

The twenty six agents approached cautiously. It was obvious when they saw the chunk of their own secret prison because there was a clear pause and a tenuous raising of guns and blades. It was also clear from how they moved in the open that these were people who just weren’t afraid of being shot; James hadn’t had a ton of time to run drills with other members of the Order, but Nate had made damn sure that he’d gotten some basics down, and cover use was one of them. The way the Squo people just moved in a line like they were doing a Civil War reenactment was almost painful to watch. But it was important, because they weren’t stupid. They could use unconventional tactics and not worry about the big empty space of the gravel lot and pumpkin field because being in the open wasn’t a problem for them. Not in the same way it would be for anyone else.

Still, there was no one left in the area to challenge them, so while they may have felt tense, they closed the gap without incident. Half of them started circling where the disc of concrete floor from the stolen building had tipped sideways and was holding the whole thing up. A few of them, covered by the others, even moved under and onto it, checking the three or four now empty cells on the edge, or seeing where the line of the teleport had cut through the floor and left part of the thing hanging suspended in a dirt crater.

The rest moved on. The Order’s blanket of cameras on the site wasn’t perfect, so James only sort of caught when some of them broke off to check the tractor shed, or the larger barn. They’d find those places empty too, except of the Status Quo bodies. The remainder of the dead had been moved to the Lair, where Recovery would work on informing next of kin and laying them to rest.

All in all, the farm they’d come to raid following their tracking signal was silent, except for the summer breeze and the noise of the birds and occasional cars passing on the rural road nearby. The only signs the Order of Endless Rooms had been there at all were the stolen concrete, the splatters of fresh greenery like dripped paint on the landscape wherever the chanters had been milling around, and one more thing.

The first agent into the farmhouse spotted the camera watching the door instantly. The way the man’s face twisted into a snarl of pure rage upon seeing it actually took James aback. He was taking this personally, in a way that hadn’t been there before. Though, to be fair, James had probably shot a lot of his friends, even if it hadn’t actually gotten through. The camera was promptly unplugged, but it was far from the only one they had in the building.

Others came in from the kitchen door, or the attached garage, men and women dressed like they were on their way to be late for a meeting coming in with guns up and the intent to kill anyone they ran across. But there was no one there to greet them.

Well, there was one person upstairs, but she was still tied up.

It took them almost no time at all to find the phone. Currently on a call, though not specifically to the phone James was holding. They weren’t taking chances on this one. The first agent to see the old flip phone on the table looked like he was planning to either shoot or interrogate it at gunpoint. He also kept his gun trained on the back of the next agent to approach it, who did pick it up. As if he was prepared to kill his teammate if he got infected with a hostile meme or something.

James had thought that derisively as he watched on the cameras, but as soon as he articulated it, he realized that was a perfectly normal fear for people in their line of work to have. He would have just… not had it, exactly. Because of Zhu, or Planner, or any of the other Order-aligned infomorphs.

Just like with how they moved in the open, how they answered the phone told James something valuable about these people. Status Quo didn’t have memetic defenses.

The man on the camera feed picked up the phone, saw it was on a call, and slowly raised it to his ear as two others joined them in the room. James could dimly hear a cry through the farmhouse for their companions to get in there over the line, but he was focused now on his new conversation partner.

“Good afternoon.” James spoke first, before the agent could get a word in.

“Who is this?” The agent demanded, with no attempt at polite conversation. James raised his eyebrows, looking around the safehouse with a mock offended look. He ignored Nate shaking his head back at him; he already knew not to reveal anything, they’d hashed out a rough outline of this conversation in advance. “Who do you represent? Wolfpack? Administration? Or do you think you’re a hero?”

And that was why. All he had to do was say good afternoon, and someone who wasn’t prepared would offer up delicious gobs of gooey intelligence. James blinked to himself. “I might be hungry.” He muttered under his breath. Then louder, into the phone; “Let’s leave who I’m with aside for now. How’s your day going? Not great, I’m guessing?”

On the camera, the man with the phone tensed as one of the other agents approached while unfolding a laptop of their own. The agent spoke with a badly stilted tone as they held the phone out and let their companion try different connector cables before finding one that fit the older flip phone. “My day has been going very well.” They said slowly.

“Stalling for time.” Nate commented with a thin bark of laughter. “That won’t work.”

James agreed. But it did mean he had a semi-captive audience for at least as long as it took them to realize their trace of the phone call wouldn’t get them anywhere. “Okay. So. Let’s get to business.” He said, losing some of the friendly attitude he’d opened with. James was relying on his skill ranks in negotiation and etiquette that might match up to people like this to guide how he pulled the strings on the conversation, and further leaning on having the advantage of seeing body language when the other man couldn’t see him. “Your organization recently experienced an… asset loss…” James felt gross even saying that. “And I’d like to tell you to let it go.”

“You attacked us, stole our property, were responsible for valuable personnel deaths, and you want us to forget you were a problem and write it off?” The man sounded incredulous. He glanced back to the others, one of whom shrugged at him and made a ‘keep him talking’ motion. “Are you insane?”

“Yes.” James said so cheerfully that it got quiet snickers out of Alanna and Zhu. The sounds of the others in the room with him gave him a comfortable smile as he did what the other man wanted and kept talking. “To the first part. Maybe the second. But mostly the first. Write it off, back off, stop hunting us, stop trying to recover what you lost, and forget this ever happened. And we’ll let you.”

Nearby, Ben abruptly elbowed JP to get his attention at a movement on the feed. The agent with the laptop looked up and nodded, as if confirming something, but there was no indication that they intended to end the call. Instead, an older man entered the frame from the side, and took the phone, still connected to the laptop. The agents who were still training their guns on their speaker also lowered them, which meant something.

If they were worried about an intohazard before, they weren’t now. So they weren’t tracing anything, they were securing the call.

“Zhu, Planner.” James said, covering his phone. “Keep an eye out for anything coming back along the connection. Scream if I need to hang up.”

He put the phone back to his ear just in time to hear a man’s voice speak, confident and firm. “You cannot seriously believe that we would listen to this idiotic request, could you?”

James sighed. This was more his element. Mouthing off to an authority figure. “No, I don’t.” He said, keeping up the veneer of cheer. “But I figured I’d make the offer. You seem like you’re more in charge, wanna tell me who I’m speaking to?”

“No.”

“Kay. So, here’s the deal, in clear text.” James said. “My people and I don’t like fighting. Not really. We’re not pacifists, but we’d rather everyone get along. But that means everyone, so when someone like you comes along, running your secret prisons and using slaves as livestock to power up your people, we take offense to that.”

The man on the other end gave an equally cheerful laugh. “And you think that because you managed to steal from one facility, that you have the moral high ground?”

“No, I think that we have the tactical high ground. I know we’re morally superior, because we don’t breed people just to kill them. Try to keep up.” James no longer had a happy tone, and he could see the way his friends looked at him as he started to get mad. So he took a deep breath, and got back on track. “The thing is, I’ve met people like you before. I’m sure you just wanna keep the world safe. And I get that. We do too. So I’d like to offer you the chance to evaluate what you’re doing, and change, so we don’t need to be enemies.”

“Oh, boy.” The man’s words put James on edge instantly, which he realized through the filter of his skill ranks was entirely the point. Knowing when someone was intentionally aggravating him actually made it surprisingly easy to not care about it, which helped him calm down instantly. “Do you think you’re helping anyone? You’ve unleashed a plague on the world.”

James somehow refrained from asking how the man knew about the Underburbs. Actually, he joked to himself about it being ‘somehow’, but really, it was getting easier to dismiss the dude the more he spoke. Still, that demanded an answer. “Which part?” James asked. “Your prisoners, your other prisoners, or a more literal plague you were hiding in your offices?”

On the camera, the man twirled a hand near his head, as if forgetting that James shouldn’t be able to see him. “The people are unimportant. Oh, they’re bad for humanity, don’t make a mistake. But they can be recaptured, or will be handled by other safeguards. And we might take extreme measures, but we would never tinker with bioweapons. No, you know damn well what you’ve done. You probably think you’re quite the savior, don’t you? Letting a bunch of poor, maligned beasts free from their cages?”

“Kinda, yeah.” James agreed. “That could be my motto, honestly.”

“Do you have any idea what they are?” The agent laughed at him. “They’re monsters, you stupid child. You’ve let them go to run rampant, and now they will multiply, and overrun the local area, and it will be months before we can round them up and put them back in their containment. You’ve caused real human deaths here, with what you did.”

James flicked his eyes to JP, who gave a smug nod. Status Quo had no idea where the chanters were. “We’ll handle it.” He said simply. “You can go now.”

“You won’t.” The agent replied with utter self assurance. “You’re not freeing prisoners; they can’t even think. You’re just dumping an invasive species into the wild’s of… Oregon?… and assuming that you’re the good guy for doing it. This is why containment is important. This is why safeguard exists. Because petulant little children like you cannot cope with the idea that hard choices are necessary, and that disrupting the world is a bad idea.”

There was a scratching sound from behind James, and a soft “Yo” from Alanna. He turned his head, still listening to the trail end of the asshole’s little speech, to see his partner sitting on the kitchen counter and Arrush next to her frantically writing something on a folded notebook. When the ratroach held it up with two of his left arms, James quickly read the words on it. “Lying. SQ records of int tests. They know shells smart.”

His mouth warped into a thin line. It was hard to have a conversation with someone who was willing to casually lie about something as fundamental as their own recorded facts. Which sort of meant that as far as an ethics debate went, this was right out the window. But at least he could try to get some usable intel out of the man.

James ran through a couple responses, dismissing the point about how they were hypocrites for not killing the chanters if they thought the creatures were a threat. Instead he settled on something designed to provoke a response. “Look, Oregon is half invasive species anyway. It’ll be fine.” The implication that the chanters were still in Oregon would act as a casual smokescreen for their actual location being ‘literally anywhere else’.

“Oh yes, I’m sure the alien megafauna will fit right into the region.” The agent sarcastically replied.

“Yeah, like horses. Look.” James tried another approach. “Here’s my bottom line. You aren’t equipped to fight us, and you don’t have to either. You want to keep people safe, so do we. Release any other prisoners you’re holding, and work with us, and I promise you’ll get better results.”

There was a snort that didn’t carry well over the bridged connection. “No.” Was the admittedly efficient reply. “You don’t understand. The level of change you’re trying to bring about, it’s not survivable for humanity. You might make progress at first, but all too soon if left to your own devices, you will find yourself overwhelmed. And everyone around you will pay the price.”

James felt like this might be coming from somewhere personal. He shared a look with Zhu, the infomorph on his shoulder twisting and shifting as he kept an eye on the connection, but still taking a moment to look at James with earnest curiosity for the journey this particular agent had been on. “You used to be a delver.” James heard himself say out loud as soon as he realized it.

“Is that what your generation calls it? Well. You don’t need to know either way.”

“Is that what this is? You fucked up, and you think everyone else would fuck up the same way?” James demanded. “It’s not too late to change.”

The agent laughed at him. “Change is the entire problem.” He stated firmly, a hint of real anger creeping into the words. “Every time the world changes, men die. Mundane or supernatural, it doesn’t matter. Do you know how many people ridesharing apps killed? It wasn’t zero. And you want that, but with real power? No. No, we will not be working with you. Quite the opposite, really.”

“I… I’m not sure I understand your point.” James gave an incredulous look to the people around him. Alanna was mouthing swear words at him to repeat, which he ignored. “Are you saying that technological advancement is bad? Like, are you anti-airplane or something?” He let out a hum, and then corrected himself. “Actually, let’s skip that and cut to the real point. You say change is destructive. I say change is where everything cool in the world comes from. My dude, we are talking on cell phones. Come on.”

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“Humans aren’t equipped to handle the supernatural.” The agent told him with a shake of his head on the camera. “When you give someone an advantage, they invariably use it to cause harm. Over and over we see people, normal people, corrupted by the power that they acquire. Our mandate is to stop them before they get out of control, and we have another unmanable crisis on our hands.”

JP spoke to the other two rogues off to the side. “I’m sorry, did this dumbass imply that Lyft is magic? Is that what we all heard?” He muttered. James almost laughed at it, but he was too busy being irate.

Keeping on track, James tried to angle for names. “Who, exactly, do you think has gone mad with power?” He asked. And then added a piece of information that he knew the agent already had. “Harlan? I mean, I’m not gonna argue about them, but I somehow doubt that’s normal.”

“It isn’t a single person, or even a group. No, not even Harlan and their little… unit…” The agent told him with a grimace. “It is in aggregate. Humanity should be for humans. When people become twisted by power, by the supernatural and mystical, they become something other. Something wrong. And their influence is disproportionate.” He paused, and James measured the time as almost exactly what his negotiation skill told him was the right amount to drive home a point. “You say we could work with you. Well let me tell you this. It isn’t too late for you to surrender yourself to us. Come join the right side of history. The only side that will ever last longer than a single generation.”

“I’ll consider it.” James let the lie dance over his lips. “You know, you talk about keeping people from getting too powerful, and, like, I’ve got some words about billionaires for you. But you know I wasn’t the only one hitting your territory, right? Like, did you miss the girls in plate mail flattening your foot soldiers?”

The man looked around at the other agents in the room, staying silent on the line as he pointed at two of them and waited for them to leave. “Ah, yes.” He told James after the two were gone. “Them. Cultists of the worst kind. On that front, we would be willing to offer an alliance, at least when required to repel them.”

“…seriously?” James asked, watching Nate’s head snap up to stare at him with wide eyes. “Uh… you wanna tell me why?”

“They are believers in powers that humanity cannot afford the attention of. And they are attracted to the smell of the mystic, like sharks to blood. Staying two steps ahead of their activities is a constant battle. The other day was simply… bad timing.”

“And so you want them gone, because they’re… what, calling down the wrong gods?”

“Fundamentally, yes.” The man said easily. “Humanity cannot survive a world with things like their masters in it.”

James moved the phone away from his ear and stared at it with disbelief. Muting the connection briefly, he looked around the room. “How in the dark are these guys?” He asked. “Does he not know the pillars are here now?”

“Keep him talking.” Nate said bluntly. “We don’t know if this is the end of what he knows.”

“Keep him talking.” Planner added. “Because his ritualist with the laptop is trying something and I want to see where this goes.”

“Keep him talking becuase this is fucking hilarious.” Alanna called from her seat on the kitchen counter.

James sighed and shifted the phone to his other hand, letting Zhu flow back from where the navigator was manifested around his fingers before he put it back to his ear and unmuted himself. “Okay.” He said. “Temporary alliances aside, I just need to ask. Do you realize that you’re hypocrites?” He took advantage of the fact that the Status Quo agent clearly wanted him to stay on the line to take a shot at his integrity. “Because you say that humanity can’t handle magic, can’t handle change, and that powers corrupt people, but you’re wandering around bulletproof.”

The man smirked on the camera feed, like he’d somehow trapped James in his rhetoric. “As are you.” He said. “The only difference is which of us acknowledges it is something to be fought.”

“My dude, I might be one of the early adopters for magic, but I’m not gatekeeping it.” James said. “Imagine a world where everyone was bulletproof. You don’t think that might be better, somehow? I mean, pick a power that doesn’t require murdering people you’ve been keeping as livestock, but whatever. You get my point.”

If the agent did get his point, he didn’t say it. Instead, he turned his head as someone else ran into the room where the small cluster of Status Quo personnel were lingering as the conversation continued. The woman who’d just entered whispered something to the agent on the phone, who nodded and spoke again to James like nothing had happened. “You left my subordinate alive.” He said.

“Consider it a gesture of goodwill. We don’t execute prisoners.” James said dryly.

“Hm.” The agent hummed at him. “It’s almost impressive how much more restraint you have than the sorts of people I’m used to dealing with.”

“I refuse to accept that compliment since I know you deal with Harlan.” James quipped before he could stop himself. “Alright, look. This is going nowhere. Here’s my last offer; you want to keep people safe, and I get it. But by claiming that you’re the sole authority on the subject of the future of humanity, you’re denying every human the right to choose their own path, or even who their friends are if those friends happen to be another species. And yeah, don’t think I didn’t notice that you use the word ‘human’ a lot, when you know there’s nonhuman life out there. So let’s set up a real talk. Sit down. Hash this out. Figure out how you can protect the world, without kidnapping delvers, without keeping people as livestock, without the clandestine murder and torture and shit. Okay?”

On the cameras, the agent looked sideways to hear something from the Status Quo member who had stopped tapping at the laptop and was holding one finger over a single key, looking back at him with an expectant stare.

James barely heard a sigh through the connection. “You know?” The agent said. “I almost want to believe you. It sounds so nice when you take out all the death and despair you’ll cause. But those with power cannot ever be trusted with it.”

“Yes!” James agreed vehemently. “Like fucking you guys!” He was getting increasingly frustrated, and the agent wasn’t actually giving up any useful intel.

“It’s been a pleasure speaking with you. Almost enough to offset what it will take to clean up your mess. Goodbye, ‘delver’.” The agent nodded once at his tech, and the other man dramatically rapped their finger down onto the laptop’s keyboard as the agent held the connected phone out away from his head.

No one in the safehouse said anything. And then Planner’s tentacles shifted into a fractal net, and there was a sensation of something ripping. “I-“ Nate cut his hand across the air as Planner started to speak, and tapped his own ear. The infomorph sheepishly condensed their manifestation, sliding around Nate’s neck to whisper to him.

James opened his mouth to say something over the silent line, when Nate cut him off with another slash of his hand. JP, also listening to Planner, held a finger up to his lips, and mimed dropping the phone. So James shrugged and did so, letting it clatter to the floor.

On the camera feed, the agent and the tech nodded to each other, and the suited Status Quo commander politely closed the flip phone before setting it back on the chair that his subordinate had found it on. There was an exchange of words, but the surveillance didn’t have an audio feed.

“So…” Alanna’s voice almost made James jump as it cut through the silence.

“Kill command.” Planner said. “I would call it childish if it weren’t made by people older than myself. It took them time to set it up, and I believe it would have only harmed James himself. The air gap method lessened it significantly, but it would have been trivial to block regardless.”

James looked at the phone on the floor. “For anyone you’re screening.” He said softly.

“Ah, yes.” Planner agreed matter of factly. “Any unprotected human would be badly affected by it.”

“That’s… kinda terrifying?” Ben spoke up. “They can kill people over the phone? What?”

Alanna hopped off the counter and paced over to stand behind James, leaning on his shoulders, and by association, partly on Zhu. “Not the first time we’ve dealt with this kinda thing. Sometimes infomorphs can stop people’s hearts.”

“Conditionally. A new assignment or navigator couldn’t. A lot of species I don’t think could at all. Memeplexes can if you spend so long in them they get their hooks in.” JP spoke up, though he still glared at the phone on the floor, and then back up at Planner. “Next time don’t take that risk.” He said, more snippish than his normal suave and languid voice.

“I had it contained.” Planner replied, pulling away to drift on unseen currents in the air over the center of the mostly empty room.

JP’s nose twitched, like he was suppressing a sneer or a snarl. “And what if you missed?” He asked. “Whatever. Nate?”

“Right.” Nate held up a different phone with an undialed number on the screen. “Want them gone?” He asked, pointing at the displays from around the farmhouse.

It took a brief moment for James to remember that the farmhouse was still inundated with explosives, and to connect the phone in Nate’s heavy hand to the act of detonation. And from there, to the seeming easy choice of whether or not to push that button.

“Uh…” James said, instead of a real answer.

“They did just try to kill you.” Ben pointed out.

“Also, also, fuck ‘em.” Alanna added. “Like, okay, sure, rules of warfare and all that. But this is just shooting back at someone shooting at you, right?”

James glanced down at Zhu, who just gave a feathery shrug with an extra manifested arm, unbothered either way. He was about to say something, but Arrush spoke up and surprised him. “Don’t.” The ratroach said, quintet of eyes locked on Nate while he shook slightly with unspoken anxiety.

“Why not?” James asked. “Actually, why not. Because I’d like a reason to not kill anyone, but these assholes…”

Arrush twisted his chitinous neck to focus on James. “We don’t have to.” He answered in a rasping voice. Breathing was coming easier to him now, but speaking was still a bit rough even with enough air to do it. “That’s all.” The ratroach, taller than everyone else in the room, imposing and built explicitly to be a threat to human life, nervously broke eye contact to stare at the floor.

And James sighed at his words. “That’s the best argument so far.” He admitted. “But Alanna’s right. Nate and JP are right too, though they’re not arguing out loud. I want to say they’re potential short term allies against the pillars who might try to kill us, I want to say they’re redeemable, but I also want to point out that everyone in that building went there to recover their breeding population of slaves and then they lied to and tried to kill me during what could have been a civil conversation?”

“Right.” Nate pushed the button on the phone.

It was so anticlimactic, it was hard to process what had just happened. Nothing in the empty rented apartment changed, except Arrush looking away sharply and Alanna sliding off James to bump her shoulder comfortingly into the big ratroach. But something, somewhere, had just gone horribly wrong for a lot of people.

“I wasn’t actually done monologuing.” James cleared his throat awkwardly as the camera feeds from the farm cut out abruptly.

Deftly pulling the older cell phone apart and stripping out the battery and SIM card, Nate answered without looking up. “Yes you were.” He said.

“Alright, fine.” James admitted. “So, what now? Do we… do we go deal with whoever is left?” He watched as Ben and Planner cycled through other angles of more intact surveillance. “Because…”

The two angles they still had intact showed an utter ruin of a building. The farmhouse was still, somehow, standing, but it was engulfed in flames and already listing. The upper floor had split in half, old wood and worn shingles sloughing off the side like it was a sandcastle falling into the waves. And on the ground, a hundred chunks of debris that were blown outward by the blast burned in the dirt and gravel that surrounded the building. Some, thrown farther, had already lit up the dry grass of the property.

If there weren’t ditches running around the property, James would have worried that they were about to be responsible for a springtime wildfire. Hell, they might still be. As soon as the remnants of the Status Quo agents cleared out, he planned to call the local fire department with a heads up.

The wreckage of the building wasn’t the thing that really bothered him, though. Neither was it the potential for fire damage. No, it was the way the agents who were outside, and far enough away from the blast, came running to help their companions. It took James a second of watching to realize that the few lumps on the ground scattered around the front yard of the farmhouse were people, who had been either thrown or knocked out by the concussive force of the bomb or bombs that the Order’s worryingly skilled demolitions team had left behind. And the Status Quo agents knelt next to them, going through motions that even through the odd angle of the cameras were clearly medical checks.

There had been twenty six agents scouring the property. And while the explosion had done a lot more than James had expected, they hadn’t even cut that in half. But it was still a little terrifying and grim to see people charge toward the house before recoiling from the blaze still consuming it.

“They aren’t fireproof.” He heard someone say in a dead voice. And then realized he was the one speaking.

There was something he found repulsive about this. Intellectually, he didn’t feel that bad about it; the people he’d been talking to had literally just tried to murder him. And anything they said about working together or feeling bad about things was suspect from the moment the agent had lied to James through his teeth.

No, it wasn’t that they weren’t a legitimate military target. It was more that it was so… cold. Dispassionate. James actually would have felt better if they’d been actively shooting back. This kind of distant warfare was exactly what he didn’t want to become normal. Part of him wondered if this was what a military tech felt when pushing the button for a drone strike.

It was so easy. Low risk, no blood on his shoes, and it didn’t even really feel that bad.

That last part was what felt worse. It didn’t feel that bad. And maybe, actually, killing people should feel just a little bit unsettling. Or at least, James thought so.

“Oh look.” Ben said, snapping his fingers to point at one of the surviving views. “That one’s fireproof.”

And sure enough, a silhouette of a person was staggering out of the inferno of the house. The building titled and finished collapsing down to a single level as the surviving Status Quo agent woozily walked out of the blaze. It might have been the older man James had talked to, but it was hard to tell. His clothes were burned away, leaving only smoldering scraps, and his skin was covered in the bubbling red flesh of fresh burns. But not nearly as bad as it should have been for someone who’d walked out of a fire like that.

One of the other agents spotted the walker and pointed, yelling a command, and motivating someone to run to the damaged human and hand over something from a small tube. It looked like a pill of some kind, which the unharmed agent had to help the burned man get into his mouth.

It didn’t reverse the burns, or seem to heal him at all really. But it was clear that everybody there had untensed as soon as the pill had been swallowed.

“Did we get any of those?” James asked softly.

“No.” Planner spoke authoritatively. “Despite the volume of different forms of records recovered, we did not acquire many physical trophies of the battle.”

“Hm.” James grunted in mild frustration. He’d love to know exactly what those little pills did, considering the woman they’d taken prisoner had used one and apparently shrugged off having her throat torn open afterward. Maybe it was unrelated and she just healed fast. He healed pretty fast, though nowhere near as fast as Sarah could, and both of them had magic helping from different sources, so it was hard to look at any one thing that Status Quo used and say ‘yeah, that, that’s the thing’. “Okay. What now?”

He was still breathing shallowly, bottling up his feelings for later. Right now, they were still on the clock.

“Now?” JP said, trying to claw back some of his cocky bravado. “We keep watching. See what they do. Get every rogue who we trust to do it following them when they leave. Track them back to safehouses or their headquarters, assuming they weren’t lying about that office not being their main site.”

“That guy lied about a lot.” Alanna offered.

“Oh, hey.” James had a sudden thought. “Any empathy insights on that?”

“It doesn’t really work that well over the phone, even if I could see him. But I can tell what points got you pissed off.” She grinned at him. “Wanna guess?”

James stared at her blankly. “I… I don’t have to guess. I was the one doing it.”

“I think…” Arrush said in a quiet rumble, “…that it was when he was talking.”

There was a pause as James watched his friend to see if Arrush was going to say anything else. The ratroach was fidgeting with some of his claws, the smaller arms scratching at patches of chitin or wiry fur. But he stopped speaking, and it took a moment before Zhu let out a rumble of laughter. “No, that’s it!” The navigator added. “He’s right! You were angry every time your opponent spoke!”

“Conversations don’t have… you know what? I’m not litigating this.” James laughed, still on edge, but slowly coming back to focus on the world around him, feeling less like he was drifting through his own head, and more like he was present. “Yeah, screw that guy. He actually tried to kill me over the phone. Holy shit.” The fact actually caught up to him. “What a jackass.”

On the other side of the empty room, JP tapped his phone off and unplugged the skulljack braid from his skull. “Alright. Rogues are in position.” He’d learned from Nate, and done what he could to alleviate suspicion on the tails. No one would be following Status Quo away from a burning farmstead on a rural road that only existed to connect isolated farms to the tether of the highway network. Instead, rogues were scattered in their cars at busier intersections ten, sometimes fifteen miles away. The road only went to a few places, which made it a lot easier. And if they did head to the airport to leave, that was even easier; it only took one passing rogue to see where they were going and teleport to meet them. No dangerous chain of stalking required. “And… that’s it.”

“That’s it?” Alanna asked. “You don’t want us to, I dunno, blow up their cars or something? Didn’t we steal a rocket launcher at some point for exactly this?”

“What’s a rocket launcher?” Arrush asked, curious.

James held up a hand, planning to answer that later, probably with a screening of one of his favorite Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes. “Pause on that. Alanna, no blowing up rental cars, that’s rude. JP, what do you mean that’s it?”

“I mean, oh glorious leader, that that’s it.” JP shrugged smoothly, flicking a finger across the side of his head in an idle motion. “They go home, and we track them down and then repeat this process. Or they scatter, and dissolve as an organizational threat, and we do nothing except keep developing our security. Or they keep trying to find us, but they won’t, because of Planner’s hard work.” The ghostly sequence of tentacles shifted patterns in silent pride at JP’s words. “So that’s it. Ideally? It’s the first one. We’ll observe them, hone rogue training on them, and try to get more intel about the shape of the magical world. Because… fuck, you were the one who told me this two or three decades ago, man. We don’t even know if there’s dungeon nations or wizard guilds out there. But they might.”

“Did we ever get that orrery working?” James asked, remembering the thing they’d liberated from the surrendered Alchemists Guild. Or Guild of Alchemists. Whatever.

Nate and JP glared at him in unison. Ben looked between the two others, and then fixed James with a confused half-scowl in solidarity, but also offered a shrug to go with it. “That stupid fucking thing.” Nate grumbled.

“That means no.” Alanna interpreted cheerfully.

“What is an orrery?” Arrush asked with a wet sigh. “Or am I not allowed to learn today?”

“Oh, it’s a… series of objects suspended on rods or bands around a central focus, meant to emulate the movements of stars or planets or something.” James realized he was explaining this badly. “The one we have, supposedly, is magical, and tells the relative strength of organizations? But we have no idea how to read it, or set it up, and everyone who did is dead.”

“Ah.” Arrush nodded. Then stopped nodding, and shook his head, a few drops of corrosive blue drool splattering to the floorboards with a hiss. “No, that doesn't make sense.”

“That’s what I keep saying.” Nate gave Arrush a single jutting nod. “Anyway, JP’s right, annoying as that is to say. We’ve got time now to prowl through the files we stole, there’s no real way for Status Quo to track us, so we’ll keep an eye on them and try to farm them for intel. Intervene if we have to. But aside from that…?”

“We’re good?” Alanna asked.

“We’re not good.” JP rolled his eyes at her. “We’ve got a whole new species of dependents, weird cursed liberated prisoners to get new dungeon information out of, whatever the fuck Ruby and Prince are being a nuisance to my ex, the rogues have a ton of new work because of this, we’re going to need a new piece of rural property for testing whatever dangerous shit Research is playing with, and Camille.”

“What about Camille?” Zhu asked. “She seems… like Camille.”

“That, pretty much.” JP said. “Wait, hang on. Weren’t you out when she was around? How do you know that?”

“She was over for dinner. Don’t you read your texts?” Zhu challenged JP. “Don’t give us that look. Someone texted you.” He twisted his feathers around, orange light shielding his central eye from JP’s glare.

Nate caught James’ attention by zipping up his jacket and pulling a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. “Look, there’s one thing this shitshow drove home, that should matter to you. And that’s that we need more of an edge.” The broad man headed for the apartment’s back door, which led to an untended shared lawn. “Too many close calls, not enough anti-tank weapons on our part.” He pointed his lighter like a baton at James, Arrush, and Alanna as he stuck the end of a cigarette in his mouth and spoke around it. “So get back to work. Go find something that helps us win a fight. Stop fucking curing cancer and get a magic knife that gives you laser vision or some shit.”

“You sure?” Alanna asked. “Because it looks like the cancer cure thing would be relevant to you.”

“Fuck off.” Nate said by way of a goodbye as he roughly slid the back door shut.

It was a little bit later, as everyone milled around and James was reluctant to leave right away just in case, that Alanna approached him. He was having a quiet conversation with Zhu about the Underburbs affliction they probably shared, and how to handle it, when his partner slid up along the bare white wall next to him. “So.” Alanna opened with.

“Yeah, so.” James said.

“What now?”

“I mean, now all the things JP said.” James answered. “Oh, this is highlighting something for me, which is that none of our core group has rogue training. We should really get someone to teach us how to be spies.”

Alanna bopped a loose fist on his shoulder, after making sure it was the one Zhu wasn’t populating. “You get that we just call them rogues for fun, and they aren’t super spies or some shit, right?”

“Wait, really?” Zhu asked with fluffed indignation in his dusty orange light. “That’s disappointing!”

“They’re more like good listeners, if you want to be literal and unhelpful about the description.” James nodded. “But we should still get some practice in. Especially me, if I’m gonna insist on people calling me paladin.”

Alanna gave him a smile that James couldn’t quite describe as her posture softened and she leaned against him slightly. “What I meant, aside from that, was, what now? For us? What do we do next?”

“We take a day off.” James said. “And then… we do what we’ve been doing. We get the victims back on their feet. We work on an integration plan for the chanters. We get more magic.”

“They’re gonna need a place to live, and it’s not like we have the orange orbs to whip up another thousand apartments.” She folded her arms over her stomach as she tapped a foot and looked up at the ceiling in thought. “We could get some though, I guess!”

“Subtle.” James smirked, and his partner laughed. “Okay. You’re really asking what dungeons we hit, huh?”

Alanna turned a hungry grin back on him. “Yeah. What’s out there? We’re not even close to hundred percenting the places we know, and we might have more dungeons coming up in the near future. We should be doing deep explorations of… of everything.”

“Okay.” James said suddenly.

“Okay?” Alanna cocked an eyebrow.

“Okay?!” Zhu burst out.

“Okay. Let’s… let’s do that.” James took a deep breath. “Stacks first, I’m thinking. There’s a lot of potential there, especially in the dungeontech, but we know basically nothing about it. Climb, for sure, but that’ll need a real team if we intend to spend a week in it. Maybe we can hire some sherpas. Wait, actually, do you think we could? That might be the smartest thing I’ve said in months. Uh… Office later, obviously. Scout it out for establishing a between-doors base. We know we can telepad out of these places, even if we can’t easily telepad in and leaving fucking sucks and hurts, so we can make this work.” He paused and thought. “Not huge teams, but bigger than we normally operate with. Twenty people, maybe? Depends on who can be spared from the current plethora of projects. Pack for two weeks at a time. Find the most exploitable resources and harvest the shit out of them. Find ways to get everyone in a hundred mile radius upgraded.”

“…okay.” Alanna said, turning back to look ahead of them at the unfurnished room and nodding. “Yeah. That’s the hottest thing you’ve said to me all week.”

“Didn’t need to know that, but I am also invested.” Zhu said. “We are going to explore.” The infomorph radiated a thrilled excitement.

“Yeah.” James said softly. “I think Nate got me thinking of something I’d been trying to put together, but was missing a key thought on. I shouldn’t be trying to solve problems by being like everyone else. We should be solving problems like the Order of Endless Rooms solves problems.”

“With explosives?” Alanna asked.

“Nah. By finding weird magic, and figuring out how to use it to solve a completely different problem.” James said with a smile across the apartment to Arrush. The ratroach had just learned there were no cups in this apartment, and was trying somewhat successfully to lap up water from the tap with a thin glowing tongue. “And finding whole new problems along the way.”

Alanna followed his gaze. “And then getting a crush on those problems?” She asked coyly.

“Or the other way around!” Zhu added unhelpfully.

“Problems is the wrong word.” James laughed at them. “Opportunities.” He mused. “Or… no. Yeah, that’s it. Opportunities.”

He nodded to himself as he half-listened to Alanna saying something lewd and Zhu sputtering in defiance. Opportunities sounded like exactly what he wanted right now. A day off, maybe one more to double check on everything in Townton and make sure Status Quo was settled for now. Another low stress day or two to lay the groundwork.

And then out. Into the wilds of reality. Where things were dangerous, and everywhere they looked, there were new opportunities. That was where James belonged. Not here, feeling the inky smoke of a remote bomb like it was seeping into his thoughts. Out there, where conflict was honest, and triumphs felt good.

He knew that was a little naive. A little silly. But also, he knew that if he could just accrue enough magic for the Order, then maybe they could cajole this world into a shape that suited them more. A kinder place, with cooler daily lives. He hadn’t been kidding when he’d told Alanna that he’d love something that could upgrade people in a radius. Consent pending, of course.

Yeah. Out there sounded nice right now.

James was looking forward to a vacation.