“Crises. Precipitate. Change.” -Deltron 3030, Virus-
_____
One of the things that made Rufus’ life hard was that his first human friend had gotten him interested in a card game, and now he actually wanted to play it.
On the surface, this was the most petty complaint that Rufus had ever dredged up. He lived in a place where he had comfort, safety, temperature regulation, a lack of hostile tumblefeeds, and even a special ‘walkway’ for people his size down all the major hallways and an increasing number of minor ones at this point too. Despite being a non-verbal stapler with a diet limited to yellow orbs, staples, blood, and for some reason refined sugars, Rufus had a pretty good thing going here. There were even other striders around now! He was never really alone, mostly because he liked his personal time to work on whatever project he had hyperfixated on, but also because he had Ganesh or Frederick as constant companions. But now he was not alone in a way where he didn’t feel like an outlier.
He wasn’t special. He was just… another person. Another fiercely loyal member of the Order of Endless Rooms. And that suited him perfectly well.
What didn’t suit him well was that James had never managed to rope any of his myriad lovers into playing Magic The Gathering. And Rufus had gotten similar poor results trying to entice Ganesh. Even Fredrick, who was obsessed with abstract board games and their use as puzzles, wasn’t interested.
So Rufus had approached his problem the way that he approached all problems. With methodical determination, and a backup smoke bomb in case he needed it.
No one who was working on the education project had wanted to play. Many of them, many people in Recovery in general, enjoyed card games of varying sorts. But Rufus didn’t want to play poker, Rufus wanted to play the game that let him pretend to be a wizard.
He’d hoped for more luck with the younger interns, but even Morgan, the most likely to be distracted by some form of entertainment, didn’t bite. Morgan said he was ‘busy’ with ‘training’, which Rufus was fairly certain meant he was playing video games.
Rufus hated video games, because they were stealing his potential opponents. There was a video game version of Magic, but Rufus had a really hard time manipulating a computer at the speed needed. He was sort of planning to get a skulljack at some point, assuming they even worked for his species, but in the meantime that left him with fewer options and he was doing this to get away from his dread laptop anyway.
He kept asking. Kitchen staff? Even the person who was interested was too busy today. Response? Two people who did play and were in the process of being deployed for a domestic disturbance. Research?
Actually Research was probably an excellent place to find opponents, but Rufus was low key a little intimidated by their whole thing. Even though, technically, the little experimental garden that he and Fredrick tended was a part of the structure of Research. But the most dangerous thing Rufus grew was either the highlighter pods, the withered attempts at yellow orbs that only gave a tenth of a skill rank, or the thermovore vine, and none of those came close to what could go wrong with the rest of Research when they were messing up.
The ratroaches, or camracondas, maybe? Other nonhumans, who could approach this game with a similar perspective as him, looking at it as part enjoyment and part archeological delve into the specific wedge of human culture that had made it.
That plan almost worked. He did end up finding out that Ink-And-Key enjoyed complex fictional-setting deckbuilding games. It was just that Ink-And-Key enjoyed something called Netrunner, and Rufus lost eight minutes of his free time learning that the enormous white camraconda had somehow made a deck with only snakes in it. How that worked, and also why the game about cyberpunk hackers had snakes in it at all, Rufus wasn’t quite clear on, but Ink-And-Key seemed excited about it in his own nervous way.
Actually listening to him, Ink-And-Key did make the game sound rather enjoyable, so Rufus would circle back to that later.
It was after hours of searching that Rufus was preparing to admit defeat. He’d just failed to convince either Daniel or Pathfinder - talking to people with infomorph partners meant he could fail twice as fast at least - and was prepared to just find something to eat before going back to work finding an HVAC contractor for a building renovation. But Daniel stopped him before he left the dining table.
”Why don’t you just ask James?” The human inquired.
Rufus, through a mix of pen gestures and emotes from his convenient keyboard tunic, conveyed that James was in Utah, so that wasn’t much of an option.
”No, I mean…” Daniel floundered as Path’s radiant orange manifested limbs clasped her hands together in silent mirth, the eyes on them glittering as she let Daniel work through his confusion. “I mean, text James, and ask him where he played. He didn’t just… collect cards for twenty years without anyone wanting to play with him, right?”
Honestly Rufus had sort of assumed that was the case. James seemed like that kind of human, and after giving Daniel a long look, he got the other human to admit that James could have done that.
With Daniel’s willing help for the sentence syntax, Rufus got a message out to James, who sent back a mostly garbled response. And then, twenty minutes later when he’d woken up properly, a corrected response where he’d given Rufus an address to what he called a ‘friendly local game store’. Though he’d later requested that Rufus take a friend the first time he went there.
He was too late on that request. But Rufus did okay. And he didn’t even have to use the backup smoke bomb in any of the interactions with the local commander players, which he felt was an impressive exertion of will. Probably the hardest thing anyone in the Order would have to do today, especially James, who as far as Rufus knew had spent the whole time asleep.
_____
James woke up, replied to a text, rolled over onto Arrush to go back to sleep, got reflexively bitten, and decided that was a good time to get out of bed for real.
After replying to the text for real, showering, deflecting an apology from Arrush and making him go back to sleep, taking a perfectly healthy amount of ibuprofen, taking an actually healthy amount of his antidepressant, saying good morning to an equally sleepy Zhu, and strapping his worrying amount of magical equipment to his body, James was ready for the day.
He wished he was hanging out with Rufus playing Magic, but he wasn’t, so he had to be ready instead.
There was a lot of bullshit to do down here.
_____
Over a meal of bacon and eggs that James was told was vegetarian, they worked out assignments. “Okay. Alice, you’re the face for your group, so-“
”We all have faces my guy.” Dance interrupted him, her digital voice betraying none of the slumped exhaustion that her body did as she rested the edge of her lens flat against the table’s surface.
”It means she’s your social expert.” James didn’t want to get into the details. “I… assumed? Charlie, do you want to do the subtle and clever part of the socializing?”
”No.” The stoic man said stoically as rapidly prepared more scrambled eggs.
James shrugged at the camraconda who was still in the process of staring at a tablecloth. “There ya go.” He said. “I just kind of assumed Charlie was the muscle and brains, Alice was the voice and heart, and Dance was the… uh…”
”Carefullllll.” Alice smirked down at the sleepy camraconda next to her. Before James could come up with a noun for her adopted kid, she pointed her fork his way. “Also I’m the muscle. Charlie’s the brains and the raw animal sexuality, though.”
“Oh, have we reached this part of the conversation?” Charlie asked as he served Dance her bowl, patting her on the back of her long neck affectionately as she rose up with a gasp and immediately started trying to eat her eggs without bothering with utensils. “Sorry, neither you nor Arrush are my type. I am the brains though, I’ll take that.”
Nodding around a mouthful of overly peppered eggs, James decided to try to get them back on track. Mostly. “Well I’m glad that I was at least considered.” Before getting back to real business. “Alice. Go take Dance and Arrush as backup, go talk to the therapist that Yin met who had a spellbook on their shelf. Be direct, but not pushy.”
”Why Arrush?”
”Because I’m going to spend the whole day sitting in a library alone and I don’t want him getting bored. Unless he wants to take an easy day? Just ask him when he gets up.”
Alice nodded down at the table as her fork clinked against her plate. “Sure. Are you giving me the least dangerous job?” She inquired in a casual voice.
”Yes.” James answered bluntly. “Because there’s two options. Either A, there is a dungeon based monster problem in this town, or B, there is an artificially created monster problem in this town. I can take care of myself, and Zhu’s gonna be up soon anyway.”
”’m away now.” Zhu’s voice had a sleepy slur to it, and James couldn’t tell if it was in his head or out loud. He checked himself for feathers, and found nothing, but if Zhu was active, he could at least help James find his way through any chaos that popped off.
The stove clicked as it was turned off, and a few seconds later Charlie sat down at the head of the table with his own precisely rationed breakfast. “Where am I splitting up to?”
Alice made a noise, and flipped her binder open, pulling out a notecard with a name and a few addresses on it. “Cause I’m addicted to social media-“
“We can fix that. We have that wizardry.” Dance interrupted her, mouth full of eggs that she chewed in a bizarre sight with too many sound effects on top of her speech for James to not smile at.
”-I found out what meetinghouse one of the kid’s family’s goes to.” Alice and Charlie shared a professional moment as he took the card from her. “Remember how they talked about their bishop? Odds are good it’s this guy. Russel Anderson. If not, it’ll be Carl Young. Here’s the building address, but since it’s Wednesday, there’s good odds they’re at home, or playing golf. The bottom address is their country club.”
”Thanks.” Charlie said simply. “How do you want me to play it?”
James snapped his last piece of bacon in half and ate half of it quickly, the fake meat doing a great job of making him forget its deceit. “Be yourself.” He said.
James didn’t know Charlie that well. Despite having worked with him before, trained with him and his team a few times, been on a week long delve together, and been in multiple different security and civics meetings with him. He suspected that there were only a couple people who did know him very well, and those people would be Alice and Dance.
But what little he’d gotten off the man gave him… not a picture of a person, so much as an impression. Charlie was blunt, direct, and allergic to subterfuge and innuendo in a way that led to him asking repeat followup questions if someone tried to hint anything at him. James was also aware that Charlie was a competent fighter, with an attitude that bordered on soldier sometimes. Maybe he was ex-military; he was old enough for it. Probably.
The important thing was, while Charlie didn’t have a lot of practice or skill ranks in social graces or etiquette, what he did have was a kind of blunt force presence that made him ideal for disruption.
James didn’t expect him to get answers. Neither did Charlie. He expected to fill the role that James quite loved using against hostile groups. Show up, brazenly, and ask flagrantly pointed questions. Then sit back and see how the enemy reacted.
As much as it was a hilarious tactic to workshop, it was actually incredibly hard to pull off. Even in training and practice situations, a lot of people even in the rogues showed cracks in their emotional state and personas when they had to perform that way; and it was a performance. Charlie, though? Charlie was perfect for it. Which freed up the others to track down smaller leads.
“Understood.” Charlie said simply.
”Are Myles and Yin back from evading the cops?” James asked.
Alice blinked. “Oh, they came back briefly after you and Arrush went to bed.” She said. As if summoned by his name, Arrush padded silently into the room, looking at the breakfast like he was even now still uncertain if he was allowed to ask for any. He didn’t get a chance to, before Charlie was back in the kitchen, twisting around the edge of the counter with a smooth motion to start another plate of scrambled eggs. “They took the weird coin for duplicating, the others are for us to use because we’re the most likely people to need them in the near future. Our backup should be down here later this afternoon, they’re sorting out who actually shows up. Uh… I guess the Order is busy or something.”
”Yeah go figure.” James laughed lightly. “We decided to solve every problem, and it turns out, that means that we have a lot of problems to solve. Who knew?”
”I knew.” Zhu rumbled, and this time James could tell the navigator was still in his thoughts. The words came across weird like this; it was more like James was thinking them himself and only barely realizing they weren’t his. But he was just glad Zhu was doing okay.
“So we’ll have a couple rogues probably later.” Alice continued, not hearing Zhu. “They also need to get a navigator to help, I guess? This whole place is under a weird memetic effect where it’s hard to remember it’s important if you’re outside it. Planner says they can’t do anything, but navigators can cut ‘holes’ for people. It’s just slow and exhausting.”
”Correct.” Zhu added silently.
James clicked his tongue. “Yeah, Zhu remembers that. Is it messing with us here, do we know?”
”Not enough information yet.” Charlie said. “Which is a cyclical problem. We don’t know what we don’t know, and it isn’t bothering us.”
”We could maybe get some navigator eggs?” Dance suggested, starting to wake up more.
Arrush looked at her, slowly becoming more comfortable participating with this group of people. “They… would be young. New. Can new navigators fight something this big?”
”Oh. Yeah, nevermind, I take my idea back!” Dance declared. “Actually, new topic! How do new navigators find the shit they offer if apparently this entire dumb world is covered in memeplexes and dungeons and creepy stuff?”
”…that… is a good question.” James admitted, tapping his chin as he offered Arrush the last of his bacon and got the morsel plucked out of his fingers. Arrush actually just snagged it with his claws, which James found refreshing, considering half the people he knew from Alanna to TQ would have just tried to eat his whole hand and sort out the food part later. “A question we can deal with later. Arrush, you up for bodyguarding Alice today?”
”Not… not you?”
”I’ll be sitting in a public library all day.”
”…I also want to sit in a public library.” Arrush said, a sad tension entering his raspy voice. “Sometimes… I don’t like this world.” He said quietly.
”I understand.” James said. “And I swear to you, this is not how things will always be. Really, I promise.” He had a lot of anger underlying that little oath. The kind of thoughts that turned to James being willing to bring the whole world to the ground if it resisted his desire for an equitable utopia. But he kept that to himself this morning; it was too early for ideological rants and he wasn’t sure he’d be able to get through it without exhausting himself anyway.
Arrush didn’t look at him. ”I know.” The ratroach said, tugging at the loose black shirt he was wearing today, his hoodie either forsaken or something he planned to put on later. Instead of talking more with James, he tried to focus on Alice. “I.. I can help you.” He offered.
”Happy to have ya!” Alice gave him a grin. “We’re looking to get some answers and some more spellbooks. Oh! Do you have spell slots?”
”N-no?” Arrush twitched at the sudden enthusiasm.
Dance twisted herself off the chair and hit the hardwood floor with a thump. “I’ll get you some of the coins. They’re yours anyway!” She happily proclaimed. “Then you can make towels! The worst magic possible!”
”There’s other spells.” Alice tried to defend the low-use magic system that she’d been one of the first to discover for the Order.
”The other spells are worse!” Her camraconda kid yelled back.
Arrush blinked his eyes in a curious sequence. “I… I could use towels.” He admitted. “I go through a lot of them.”
”You can wash towels big guy.” It was unclear if Dance was trying to sound friendly or condescending or both at once.
Alice came to Arrush’s rescue. “He means through towels you brat. Hey, I’m not raising you to be a jerk to people!” She fixed Dance with a disappointed look that James felt was about a seven out of ten on the Mom Vibes Power Scale.
Leaving them to their nonsense, James stood and stretched, cracking his back and wishing that his magic made him heal supernaturally fast instead of just quicker than a normal human but not quick enough for it to be a power. His side still hurt. Arguably it hurt more now, even though it had already begun to put itself back together.
All his muscles still ached though, and with a wound like that still healing, a sip of exercise potion was out of the question.
But they had stuff to do. At least he got to sit all day, and watch a book. That was the easy job.
”Alright. I’m gonna head out.” James stopped behind Arrush to slowly wrap his boyfriend in a hug. It was challenging, because Arrush’s extra arms meant James couldn’t press up against his back the same way he would to a human, and he had to sort of tilt himself asymmetrically to properly do the hugging part. But also, it was nice, because Arrush had enough bonus arms capable of facing backward that he could awkwardly return the physical contact even while he was busy inhaling his breakfast like it was the best and last food he was ever going to get. “Oh! Charlie, Arrush needs an expendable phone for today.”
”I do?” Arrush asked, making a distressed squeak as he drooled on his plate and part of the tablecloth with a glowing corrosive hiss.
”You do. Here.” Charlie handed him a flip phone. Our numbers are in it already.”
”Did you just have that ready?” James asked, impressed.
Charlie nodded once. “It came up last night. I decided to be proactive. I’m also going to go now, start checking addresses. I’ll see you all tonight, or when a crisis happens.” He swept his gaze across the group, pausing only on Alice to share a small smile as the two of them watched Dance slither back to the table and spit a handful of spell slot coins in front of Arrush. “Everyone be careful.”
”Always am!” James said as he headed for the front door.
No one bothered to tell him he was a liar. They all knew he already knew.
_____
Contrary to how James tended to conceptualize suburbs, they weren’t just endless expanses of roads and houses. His experience in the Stratified Underburbs aside, the real world had things that prevented that kind of absolute homogeneity. Suburbs were where people lived, and people needed things. Things like shops, or schools, or hospitals; and despite the fact that the suburban area was a wasteland hellscape designed to punish anyone who didn’t own a car, there still had to be things that met those needs somewhere.
They showed up in asphalt oases amidst replicated construction. Subdivision shopping centers, the growing city actually doing something James approved of and building multi level buildings that incorporated larger parking structures and made use of vertical space. More spread out buildings still filled the parking lots around them, but there were places where you could go to your doctor’s appointment, then go downstairs to mail a package, next door to have lunch, and then around to the back side of the concrete jungle of a parking structure to get in a few games of bowling.
It was a strange sight. James had, in his ongoing research into the art of balancing density with happiness, filling needs with filling souls, seen quite a few cities from around the world. There were places in China that would look at this level of compression and laugh. This was amateur by comparison. There were apartment blocks in Japan where you could see the same number of restaurants, with a tenth the number of parking spaces. This wasn’t exceptionally impressive.
And yet, North Smiths was… trying? As a city, as a collective space, it was at least making an attempt. Maybe it was just following construction fads from other parts of the US; James didn’t really care. Because at the end of the day, it was better than it could have been, and that was kinda cool.
The library that Charlie had found the book at was one of three public libraries in the city. And, while that number seemed low for a place that was closing in on seventy thousand people and aimed to break a hundred and twenty k by the end of the decade, James could at least say that he approved of the library buildings themselves. Modern construction, some actual curves on the outside instead of just a big brick box, plenty of big glass windows and an inviting atmosphere.
James parked in the side lot between a motorhome and a little gravel patch with what he was pretty sure was a decorative and fake cactus sticking up through the middle of it. It was too… archetypically perfect, too much a cactus to be a real cactus.
”Do you know,” a much more awake Zhu pushed the thought through his mind as he let the different route lines he’d been holding in James’ vision for the drive drop away, “that when you think stupid things, it makes me think stupid things?”
“I’m not thinking stupid things, I have a perfectly reasonable and verified distrust for fake plants.” James reminded the navigator. “I mean, it’s been a while, I know you know about Ferndinand and Tyrannadonny and you also weren’t around in the early days, but I’ve been beaten around the bush too many times to not keep an eye out.”
Zhu broadcast a wave of the circular thought of both getting a pun and hating a pun at the same time. ”Terrible. Just terrible. I’m going back to what I was working on.”
”What are you working on in my head?” James asked, curious. In reply, he got the sensation of a dream, the drifting ephemeral quality of being nowhere while he was someone else, and the crystal clear sensation of a single step along an endless baking road. James blinked as he shut the driver’s side door of the rental car, leaning forward on the hot metal as he caught himself. For just a moment, it had been incredibly real; a dream that was a static construction in his thoughts. And for another moment, he felt a little scared. But he didn’t hold onto that fear; Zhu was his friend, and more than that, he trusted the navigator with his life. He wouldn’t fuck up James’ thoughts too badly, and James’ thoughts weren’t always that great anyway. “Neat.” He said. “Alright, I’m here.” He added, declaring the journey at an end.
The marker of finished travel let Zhu fade out of his conscious mind. “And I’m going back to my creative rest. Scream if you need your life saved.”
”Always.” James smiled to the sidewalk as he headed for the front door.
It wasn’t just him. The building was at the end of a larger commercial plaza, so James considered getting pizza for lunch at the corner restaurant he could see a couple blocks away afterward as he walked past families and couples, groups of friends and single professionals. There was a different vibe to a lot of the pedestrians than James was used to, though. A little more uniformity in dress styles, a lot more button up shirts than he was used to for a summer day, far more smiles divided across people with a strange passion and people with a strange tightness to the grins.
In the same way that the new construction made him feel mildly positive, the people made him feel mildly negative. It was only with a hand pushing the library’s front door open that he realized he was getting a few stares and frowns from just out of where a normal human’s peripheral vision ended. But he legitimately hadn’t done anything, so he tried to figure out what made him stand out.
”Is it my hair?” James muttered to himself as he held the door open for a woman and the five kids she was exhaustedly trying to shepard out of the building. He gave her a polite nod and used the motion to disguise sweeping his vision across the people sitting on benches and walking past. Yeah, he was definitely being clocked as an outsider. “This is very… uh… that one movie with the black and white town. That.” James walked into the library humming the classic Doors song People Are Strange to himself.
Replacing the book wasn’t the hard part. He just spent some time browsing the shelves, before finding himself in the horseshoe corner that Charlie had given him precise directions to, and then slipped it back into its place. Grabbing a different random book, James retreated to one of the old tables that had line of sight to that little cluster of wooden shelves to pretend to read and to watch.
The library was odd, he decided. Air conditioned, modern building, but shelves that looked mismatched and secondhand. Chairs that creaked and shifted, tables that had all the varnish worn off and a dozen divots and splinters on their sides. It wasn’t like the library he’d grown up with, and it also wasn’t like the Library he delved. It was something that felt like it was almost an exhausted shrug of a location.
And yet people were here. Not a lot of people, but there were a handful of kids picking out books under the watchful eyes of mothers that kept vetoing choices, a few older folks who might just be sitting and reading to get out of the heat for a bit, and a pair of librarians hard at work reshelving and looking bound and determined to make this place work.
James cracked open the thick hardback crime thriller novel, the plastic film it was wrapped in to preserve the cover against the hands of a thousand readers cracked and rough, and settled in to wait.
Not to read the book. He wasn’t that desperate yet. Murder mysteries were low on James’ list of preferred genres; he knew it was a little silly, but he liked stories where the hero could actually prevent the atrocity, and not just clean up after it. So instead, he waited patiently, and by playing sudoku on his phone. He would have liked to do it with his skulljack, just for the practice, but despite the engineering group in the basement continually making improvements to the skulljack braids, they were still clunky and obvious things. James’ more than most, since he’d kept one from a while back and felt like it was silly to upgrade when this one worked fine, and that someone else could use one of the new ones more, and he abruptly realized he was doing exactly the thing Arrush had rightly accused him of.
”Oh good, I’m predictable.” James whispered.
It was worth a laugh. Here, surrounded by daylight and books and people, he felt the potential emotional crisis take a backseat to just how funny it was. It also made it easy to just decide to upgrade when he had the chance. Maybe Mike or whoever was their primary skulljack developer could get some use out of James’ older braid for testing purposes.
He thought about it, and also about if this was a way he could pursue self-improvement outside of his ongoing crisis response and magic utilization practices. He also got distracted by his sudoku, in between thinking about it, and subtly eyeing everyone who moved through that little horseshoe of bookshelves with the affiliation glasses he had on.
The affiliation glasses were quite possibly the most useful thing the Order had copies of for work like this. It was also endlessly frustrating that no one had really managed to imbue anything similar on their own. The dungeon remained at the top of the leaderboards for magic item creation, for now.
Part of what made blue orb imbuement fun to James was that the possibilities weren’t actually endless. There were clear qualifiers to it that felt like solid guidelines; it worked better on things you could find in an office and it worked better when you made something do what it already did but ‘more’. When he had quiet downtime like this, he liked to take notes on stray ideas to try when he was back at the Lair. Different magic items he wanted to try to make, different ways to mess with the process. It was fun, and he wanted to get more involved in that side of the Order, even if most blue dungeontech just wasn’t good gear for combat or industry, since it broke way too easily.
The muffled quiet of the library soothed him as he waited and watched. He’d needed a little alone time, and despite being on a stakeout, this was a good opportunity to decompress and relax a bit.
A couple hours went by as James texted his partners, answered an honestly very polite email from one of Auberdeen’s professors about the fact that he’d enrolled a dog in her contemporary media literacy course, solved a crossword, and eventually broke down and read the first two chapters of his camouflage book as the minutes stretched on and no quarry appeared.
It wasn’t that James was bad at stakeouts, exactly. It was that he was feeling silly for giving Charlie the fun job of antagonizing authority figures. Silly, and mildly envious. Sure, quiet time was nice, but he could be engaging in unfriendly banter with a… bishop? James looked it up. Bishop was correct, and lined up with what the kids last night had said.
He looked up from his phone as motion out of the corner of his eye caught his attention, noticing just a moment too late someone actually approaching the spot where James had replaced the stashed spellbook.
In all likelihood, it was probably nothing. But it couldn’t hurt to make sure. So with a yawn that was only half faked, James thumped the novel on the table closed and stood up, heading to swap it out for something else, and also get eyes on whoever had slipped past while he had his head down.
James legitimately didn’t think it would be anything. Which was why he was surprised when he rounded the corner, book in hand and ready to pretend he was just there to exchange fiction, and came face to face with someone he recognized.
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”Pardon… me…? Lincon?” James’ eyebrows shot upward, his whole face crinkling in confusion as he practically ran into one of the three kids who had started this whole expedition. One of the three missing teenagers. Who was currently crouched down, black slacks and white shirt looking deeply uncomfortable on him, spellbook in one hand, a look of panic on his face as he stared up at James like he wasn’t sure if he should be sprinting away right now.
”Yes sir?” He started to say in a loud squeak of a voice, before he blinked and a look of confusion crossed his own face. “Wait, you’re… paladin?”
”James.” James said quietly, motioning for Lincon to quiet down. “Lincon, what are you doing here? What happened to you? And to Liam and Emma? And your families? What is happening in this stupid fucking city?”
”Slow down!” The teenager inched away from James, still looking like he was considering running as he glanced out of the concealed section of shelves and toward the library’s front doors.
James frowned as he noticed it. “I’m not here to be your enemy.” He told Lincon. “Please. I could really use a hand here.”
”…When… when we met you…” Lincon had shifted to a standing position, one foot planted like he was ready to launch himself away and out of the shelves, the spellbook clutched to his chest. “What were we doing?”
”Technically I met you when you fucked up my diplomatic contact with… uh… Euphrates? One of the Alchemists, I don’t remember which one. One of the ones that didn’t make it. But we actually properly talked for the first time when you tried to stab either one of the inhabitors or one of my knights, because you thought we’d killed your friend.” James said as softly as he could, checking his own side of the aisle for anyone passing by. “And you don’t think I’m the real me. Which is… concerning.”
Lincon actually relaxed as James gave his answer. “One of the demon species are shapeshifters.” He said, still watching James with suspicion.
James made a quick decision, and took his glasses off, handing them over to Lincon. “Here.” He said, watching as the older teen gave him a sarcastic look before slipping them on. “I suppose this could be part of an elaborate trap, but honestly, that seems like more work than I’d want to put in, personally.”
”Your last name is Lyle?” Lincon asked him, incredulous.
”I have no idea why that’s what gets your attention.” James held out a hand and took the glasses back. “Where are Emma and Liam.” He phrased it less as a question and more as an insistence that he would have an answer for.
Lincon’s shoulders sagged, and it seemed like he might start crying as he leaned himself back on one of the shelves, his weight threatening to knock part of it over. “Prisoners.” He said. “The church calls it ‘extended repentance’, but they aren’t allowed to leave, and no one knows where they are, so they’re prisoners.”
”Lincon, I’m gonna ask you a question,” James said, feeling an aggravating pressure building inside his skull, “and I need you to tell me, when you say ‘the church’, that you mean… I don’t know, a sect? A splinter group? Some kind of small, manageable cult. Okay? Ready?” Lincon nodded at him unsteadily. “Okay. What church, Lincon?”
”The… the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-“
“God dammit.”
”Don’t use God’s name that way.” Lincon said like he was on autopilot. A moment later, a furious expression came over him, and he set the book down on the shelf next to him so he could pull out a small pocket knife. Fumbling a thin blade open, he got his sleeve rolled up and the knife placed against his arm before a shocked James intercepted him. “Stop! Give that back!” Lincon demanded as James took his knife away.
James was not going to be doing that. ”No! What the fuck are you doing?!”
”It’s the only thing that… that…” Lincon’s eyebrows folded down in part anger, part confusion. “You don’t know?”
”Know what?!” James asked, too loud for the quiet library.
Lincon took a breath, his constant glances and twitches showing off a paranoid attitude. “It helps with the curse.” He said. “I don’t know why. Maybe it’s just… uh… operant conditioning? But it helps.” The kid clearly saw James winding up for a question about that, and preempted it. “They make us use the spell that makes us believe what we say. I had to do that. A lot.”
”I’m going to kill a lot of people.” James hissed out, his hand clenched into a fist so hard he felt his nails digging furrows in his skin. He might not have the full picture, but just that small piece of the puzzle was enough for him to get a little upset. “Okay. Why are you here?”
”To get this.” Lincon said, holding the leafy spellbook up. “I’d leave it for the others, but… I need it.”
”The others. This isn’t here by accident, is it?” James pursed his lips as he put the pieces together into a small portion of the situation. “No, wait. If people your age are being forced to use certain magic, that means you have spell slots. But they’re probably controlled, aren’t they? Either by private time or spellbook availability. So anyone participating in counterculture would have… what, an underground library? Books stolen or delved on your own, and stored in places people can get to?” Lincon nodded, suspicious again and still twitching when people walked past the end of the shelf alcove. “Shit. That’s… really not secure, but I get it.” James puffed his cheeks out before huffing out a long exhale. “Where are Emma and Liam? And all the others who are disappearing?”
”What… what others? They got taken months ago, and I barely got away, and you weren’t there to help.” Lincon was vibrating with anger as he yelled out the last part of the sentence. “You put us back and left us!”
James wanted to glare back, but forced himself to stay neutral. “We returned you to your families, and heard nothing afterward. Partly because there’s an active memeplex that makes this whole area hard to return to or something, but that’s no excuse. You didn’t call.”
”We couldn’t!” Lincon yelled, and now it was James’ turn to check to see if anyone else in the library was watching them.
”Let’s take this outside, and not bother the librarians.” James said quietly, but when Lincon gave him a wide eyed fearful look, he just sighed. “Okay, then keep it down. Look, I’m sorry we fucked up, okay? You’re right. We dropped the ball. But I’m here now, so let’s get you out of here. You and everyone else, once you tell me where they are.”
Liam’s face twisted in anger. “I can’t.” He said, forcing his voice down, flinching as a man passed by the end of the shelves they were hidden in. “Leave. I can’t leave. They did something to… to everyone. Something keeps us here. I don’t know where they take the people they take; I’ve sorta been…” he trailed off, choking on his words and badly holding back sobs.
James looked at the teenager again. Actually looked. He was, if James remembered correctly, halfway to being nineteen, and he’d been a football player when he’d arrived on the Order’s doorstep. Now? Now, he… wasn’t looking good. James didn’t just see Lincon when he looked again, he saw someone who had too many thin white scars on his skin, who hadn’t showered or washed his clothes in at least a few days, who had dropped a lot of weight and wasn’t eating right.
”Lincon, where are you living?” James asked.
”Nowhere.” The word was a pitiful admission of shame.
”You got away, you said. You’ve been here since last year, dodging being picked up. Holy shit.” James wiped a hand through his hair. “Okay. I’ve got a house rented down here, let’s get you an actual lunch, okay?” James offered softly, instinctively using the same tone he did on new ratroaches.
Lincon sniffed, an embarrassed red creeping across his face as his stomach audibly rumbled. “Okay.” He muttered. “I… I can give you everything. You’re going to help? Really?”
”Really.” James held out a hand. “Come on, let’s get out of here.” Lincon stared at the hand, until James cleared his throat. “Sorry, uh, telepad.” He waved the backup copy of the magic item that he’d kept on him. “Needs contact though.”
”Oh.” Lincon nodded like being told someone could teleport with a small spiral notebook was normal. But he took James’ hand, and pressed his eyes closed with a wince as James tore the page.
Normally, teleports with the telepads were instant. Or perceived as instant, anyway. The A-type telepads that James was using had a slight second long delay before they actually moved you, but you still basically didn’t feel anything between the page being ripped and the appearance at the new location.
What didn’t happen was feeling like you’d been plunged into an icy grey void, smoke and fear coiling around you like a cosmic blackberry vine, holding you in place with the threat of evisceration from thorns made of angular bronze weakness.
Normally.
James choked on a cough as the teleport slammed him back into exactly where he’d been standing in the library, Lincon staggering back clutching his spellbook with a terrified expression on his face and his free hand fumbling away from James and going for his knife. “Ow.” James said. “What the shit was that?”
“I’m gonna throw up.” Lincon said openly.
”Not in the library.” James forced his eyes to stay open, seeing glittering spots dancing in his optic nerve. “What the hell.”
Lincon braced himself on the end of the shelves. “That’s what… that’s like an easier version of what it feels like if I get too far away.”
That was information James would have liked to have had earlier. “Alright. Driving it is. We can stop at McDonalds, and you can tell me everything you know.”
”But…”
”No, it’s not… we’re not leaving the city. The house is here. I think the teleport just moves us ‘too far’ for you.” What James didn’t say, but was thinking, was that it hadn’t just been Lincon who had been stonewalled by the burning grey fog.
James had too. Something had stopped him, and he knew from experience that telepads could leave someone behind if there was an effect acting on them. Camille had done it to him. The first Camille, the one who was dead now.
He felt a wave of mental exhaustion as he realized how often “someone who was dead now” came up in his thoughts.
Not physical exhaustion though, which was good. Because if something was keeping him pinned to the material plane, that meant he was going to have to get a flight back to his home state, which sounded actually horrible. James was spoiled by teleporting.
The important information he pulled from this was two things. One, Lincon was in a lot of trouble, and two, someone at least similar to the people after Lincon had already begun targeting James. When exactly was unclear, but he suspected it was last night, when he got in a fight with a pack of furred screaming razorbeak things. If there was an enemy wizard around, James wasn’t going to notice during that kind of fight.
Either way, they needed to get back to somewhere safe. Or at least less out in the open than a public library where Lincon had been shouting and at least one librarian would probably like them to shut up and leave.
So James patted down the young man’s shoulders, and sized him up. “Okay. Let’s move. Got your book?” He asked, and Lincon nodded. James nodded back once. “Keep ahold of that.” He said, and turned to start confidently walking out, shaking off the lingering phantom pain of the attempted teleport, checking his peripheral vision to make sure his new pickup was following him. Past the line of sparsely occupied tables, around the corner of the shelves of the self help section, and toward the front door.
“Mmh. Odd.” Zhu’s voice uncoiled in James’ thoughts.
James sharpened to more alertness than he was already at as he heard the navigator. There were two librarians at the front counter, a half dozen kids running around, one harried looking parent, a couple younger people dressed like Lincon waiting in line, and four men walking through the front doors and scanning the library the same way James was. Not hesitating, James grabbed Lincon’s shoulder and pulled him down to a crouch behind the back shelf in the series of low parallel rows that filled the space between them and the exit with colorful children’s books. “Okay. That’s a problem.” He looked at Lincon. “They can track you, huh?”
”Yeah… sometimes. They always found me when I tried to get away at first.”
”Okay next time tell me that.”
”I thought you’d…” Lincon trailed off.
James snorted sarcastically. “Yeah. I’m really all about abandoning people as soon as it gets a little complicated.” He snarked. “That way, around to the right. Stay low.” He checked his concealed holster, but was more than a little hesitant to pull a weapon with people around. So James started rotating through spells in his thoughts like bullets in a cylinder. Ice arm, friction canceling, invincibility, bone strength or speed on an exchange, pave, snow cat, short range teleport that was probably out, asphalt manipulation that was out of reach from inside the building.
Options. Not a lot, but some. And a handful of other tricks besides. He kept a hand on Lincon’s shoulder as he guided the crouch walking kid to the end of the aisle, peeked down it, and then turned him to push them through the parallel rows of shelves. Crossing between one of the rows, a kid that couldn’t have been more than five met James’ eyes, and James grinned and waggled his eyebrows, holding a finger to his lips. The kid laughed, and held up a book in front of his face like he knew how to keep a secret as James moved them forward.
Then he heard a loud male voice, not quite a shout but the sort of tone someone who was used to never worrying about volume control used. “Excuse me!” James wasn’t sure if they were talking to a librarian or the whole library. “We’re looking for a young man! About sixteen, thin, brown hair. He’s run away from home, and his parents would very much like him back safely. Have you seen anyone come in that looked uncomfortable or suspicious?”
James saw Lincon flinch, staring back at him with wide eyes. He shook his head, keeping a hand on the kid’s shoulder. It was a good tactic; Lincon wasn’t a minor, but odds were good he didn’t have ID, and people would give him up without checking anyway. He kept the two of them moving to the end of the aisle, just twenty feet from the door. “Stay down.” James whispered as he rose to his feet calmly, like he was a normal library patron.
There were two of the men by the door. Button up shirts and business casual slacks, the picture of the harmlessly polite professional. Both of them had… not guns, James couldn’t tell what their concealed weapons were. Tasers, maybe? One of the men was talking to the front desk, the other was moving through the library casually looking for Lincon.
James nodded to one of the men as he made eye contact, but opted to not say anything. He didn’t know if they had a description of him, so keeping his head down and his involvement minimal was best. But he still needed a distraction. And on the far edge of the front desk, in a little display with a small pyramid of CD cases that were available for checkout, he found one.
Crouching back down, he turned to Lincon. “Move to the end. When I stand up, stay behind me, we’re going to walk calmly for the front door and bolt when we pass them. Gonna keep this nonviolent, okay?” Lincon nodded uncertainly, and James smiled at him. “The car we’re going for is out the door to the left, and it’s a silver sedan. Okay?”
”Okay.”
”Good. You’ll do fine. You’ve survived worse, and now you’ve got help.” James grinned with a confidence he hoped would bleed over. Then he peeked around the corner, just enough to see the old radio on the counter, and burned most of his Velocity on a casting of Dial Breach.
Which was a shame because he’d spent a lot of time and leveler crown charges compacting his Velocity, and he’d wanted to use that on something fancy. As it stood, he mostly just got to hit play and turn the volume all the way up on whatever happened to be in the thing, which by chance was a CD of ABBA, and so James got the unique pleasure of flooding a very quiet library with Man After Midnight at full blast.
It wouldn’t have been his first choice, but it certainly got the startled attention of the men by the door, both of whom moved almost reflexively to help the shocked librarian as she screamed in abrupt fright before laughing it off and struggling to figure out how to turn the old stereo off.
James stood, and started walking, Lincon so close behind he was nearly stepping on James’ heels. It was a tense moment, and one of the librarians even gave him an apologetic look as he walked out, James waving to her with a smile and a conciliatory tilt of his head. Her own gaze narrowed as she saw Lincon behind him, but when James turned and started casually talking to the teen, she seemed to assume things were fine and let them go. “So the thing about making a getaway.” James said smoothly. “Is that you need to be prepared for the next problem.”
”How many getaways have you made?” Lincon asked, teenage sarcasm overriding his fear for a moment.
”Well, we can’t add this one to the list yet.” James grimaced as the outside sentry barked a command for the two to stop. “Run.” He said, pointing a finger gun at the man running at them and paving him in the gut with the last of his Velocity as Lincon obeyed instantly and started sprinting. The assailant doubled over thirty feet away, vomiting his breakfast onto the sidewalk and making James feel like he couldn’t have hit him that hard. But it wasn’t his problem right now, and he took off after Lincon.
The key fob alerted the teen to which car he should be running toward as James unlocked it, flipping the keys around in his hand as he practically slid across the rocky parking lot walkway and wrenched the driver’s door open. The sound of both doors slamming shut as Lincon got in was like a gunshot, and James was sure that someone would be after them shortly as he started the engine and performed a rapid series of turns to get them out of the lot, cutting someone off as he pulled out and getting an earful of horn for his maneuver.
”Well that went well!” He said as he took them across an intersection and onto a more narrow side street lined with cracked sidewalks and old mailboxes.
”No it didn’t!” Lincon looked like he was coming down from an adrenaline high, his voice as cracked as the surrounding concrete. “We almost got shot!”
James gave a brief chuckle as he checked his mirrors to make sure they weren’t being followed. “Nah, they didn’t have guns. So. I need to know things. First off, what kind of fast food do you want, and second, everything you know.”
Burger based bribery worked really well on Lincon. Though James did two loops of the area and nearly got hit by someone who didn’t know how left turn lights worked as he made sure they weren’t being followed. Whoever could track Lincon, they obviously couldn’t do it too fast, so he was hoping that they would back off long enough for him to feed the young man. And also to hear his explanation.
”How much do you know?” Lincon asked as he scarfed down french fries.
”Okay.” James sucked in air and organized his thoughts. “There’s a dungeon here somewhere, and either part of the church or people using the church as social cover are exploiting it. At least some people think that spell levels correlate to demon attacks, which only ever happen at night. There’s a bunch of spellbooks around the city in places like this where kids can slot spells without their… parents? Bishops? Elders?” Lincon nodded to all of those as he sucked down milkshake. “Authority figures can’t stop them as easily.” James’ jaw tightened for the last part. “People are going missing. Whole families. But you didn’t know about that, so that seems different from the prison camp for kids that someone is operating. So there’s at least two factions at play, possibly three since there’s the Seventeen Impressive Bastards around here too, and four if you count the Order. Actually, at least five, because you and your friends were obviously resisting somehow, and I’m gonna put you in your own group for now.” He gave a rapid shake of his head as he went back to the important part. “We know there’s at least a few different magics at play, probably all dungeon spells of the type you use. One that can blank memories in an area, one that can kill lights, one that can tie someone to an area. Oh, and the one you said that reinforces belief. Now, what did I miss?”
He’d talked for long enough that Lincon had eaten a large fry, half a milkshake, and was working his way through a double bacon cheeseburger with enough speed that James worried he’d choke. While Lincon swallowed and composed himself, wiping his mouth on his sleeve and leaving a red ketchup stain on the white shirt, James took a second to double check that they were still in the clear. Sending off texts to the others with a quick update, seeing how much of his Velocity had refilled, and then getting them rolling again. He needed to get gas at some point, a mundane chore that James hoped he could find a blue orb for at some point.
It wasn’t that he felt like he was above it or anything; James tried hard to keep from getting an outsized ego like that. He just didn’t want to, and he was apparently entering the stage of his life where he just asked if magic could fix every problem. Regardless of his preferences, he stopped worrying about it when Lincon started talking.
”Uh… yeah? Guess you know more than me anyway.” He said with bitter anger. “They started the magic years ago. Everyone who did the private sacrament with our bishop got given the coins. You know them, right?”
”Yeah, we have a few.” James said easily, deciding not to disclose that they had copies just yet. “Mostly the level one with a few level two. Recently found one with some kind of ruby through it, but I sent that back north.”
Lincon sat up straighter, making an energized mmph sound around his milkshake straw. “That’s a good one! It lets you sorta exercise it for one of the books!”
There was a sudden realization, sitting at a red light as Zhu lit up navigation lights in James’ vision so he could get them home, that Lincon was probably sharing anything he thought James would find useful so that James would find Lincon useful.
”Okay.” James nodded, and decided to just assuage him now and deal with the root issue later. “Good to know, we’ll look into it, thanks. So, the bishop thing?”
”Oh yeah.” Lincon’s good mood evaporated. “We didn’t know it was all of us for a while. They told us it was a secret, and… I mean, I was thirteen, you know?”
The grip James had on the steering wheel threatened to break either it, or his bones, and he wasn’t sure which would give first. ”I know.” He said as flatly as possible.
Lincon, if he noticed James’ anger, didn’t say anything about it, continuing his story. “Then every private sacrament had us doing the magic book thing. The spell is called ‘mindful reverberation’, and it… kinda hypnotizes yourself? You use it, and then you believe the next thing you say. It’s not permanent, but if you’re doing it every week… and later every day…”
”Cognitive conditioning.” James didn’t bother hiding his anger now. “Brainwashing. Building up a library of things you have to believe, and then putting everything else on top of that. Yeah. That’s… I am upset.” He ground out the last word through gritted teeth, feeling Zhu’s own paired anger curling around his thoughts as he drove. “But you and Liam and Emma didn’t just stay like that, did you?”
Surprising James, Lincon started laughing. It wasn’t a happy laugh, and it was threatening to spill over into something uncontrollable, but it still wasn’t what was expected. “Oh, yeah!” The young man crushed his burger wrapper into a ball and threw it onto the floor of the car between his feet. “They… they made a mistake. They made us believe.”
”I don’t follow.” James frowned as he escaped the main roads of the strip malls and commercial subdevelopments for a few minutes, driving down a side street to a different main road of strip malls and commercial subdevelopments.
”When I… we… when…” Lincon took a deep breath, staring out the window with his hands twisting around the now empty fast food cup, slowly shredding it. “Eventually I gave up.” He said. “I just let myself believe, because it was easier. But the things they made us believe - things like devoting ourselves to God, meeting challenges in His name, being proper members of the community to set a good example - we believed those things.” He looked back at James, the single meal not having changed that he was malnourished and exhausted. “So we started acting like we believed we should.”
Now James got it. “Ah. Fuck.” He winced as Lincon winced, the mindfucked kid sawing teeth into his own lip to stop from saying anything about James swearing. “You started delving because you thought you were supposed to.”
”I guess.”
”All the other spell slots, shared spellbooks, it’s not… it’s not a resistance movement at all, is it?”
”…not really.” Lincon whispered, voice blown away by the car’s AC.
James put the information together out loud, letting his passenger confirm. “You, because your minds were shaped for it, decided to take action. You found the dungeon, somehow-“
”There’s lots of ways in. It’s pretty big.” Lincon fidgeted before making a decision. “It’s in a parking lot. The… dungeon thing. The entrances are all over, but they’re always in big parking lots in the real world.”
”-good to know, you can show us those later. But you fought, found more coins, became dangerous… you told your families, didn’t you?”
Lincon’s reply was vibrating with bitter rage. ”Of course. Good sons inform their fathers of everything important.”
Gut twisting at the scope of the abuse perpetrated against the person next to him, and all the others with him, James continued. “But they didn’t stop you? No, because it was working, they just didn’t expect the results, is that it? So your family’s started delving with you. Maybe put in groups by your temple or whatever?” He got a nod. “That explains a lot of what’s going on, but not even close to everything. Why the hell would people keep doing this if there were random demon attacks every night?” James stopped at a stop sign, much to the annoyance of the car behind him, and took a second to impact his forehead on the steering wheel. “The demon attacks aren’t a dungeon thing, are they?” He asked.
”Nah.” Lincon said. “Or if they are, it’s for some weird reason. Never happened to us before. Still doesn’t happen to me.” He was warming up to James as the more experienced adventurer openly solved the puzzle of the city he was trapped in. “Uh… can I ask a question?”
”Yeah sure!” James was actually happy that Lincon seemed to be calming down and engaging more. “Sup?”
”You… you said families are going missing.”
”Yeah. Yours too.” James said, and saw Lincon wilt. “Not dead, I think. Because if they were then…” He stopped himself. He’d been about to say it would have been easier to just shoot them, but not everyone had infomorph cover for their crimes committed in broad daylight. Even so, the way things were happening was still so much effort compared to just murder, so James felt like he was on the right track. “Well, I don’t think they’re dead.”
Lincon sighed and spoke with resignation. “But you don’t know.”
”Not yet.” James promised.
”And what was that about… bastards?”
At that, James gave an honest laugh. ”Oh, yeah! Some guy we ran into. He’s sorta read in on the magic, clearly been in town for a while. I dunno if he’s saving people from demons as a hobby, but he said he was planning a gold heist? Honestly, weirdest part of my vacation so far.”
”Oh, that makes sense.” Lincon said in the kind of voice younger people used when they felt like they didn’t have to explain something.
”…Explain why?” James prompted.
Lincon looked at him with confusion and surprise. “Because one of the spells makes gold? Well, it turns stuff into gold. Some stuff. I… I kinda thought that was what you were after?”
”Okay, explain why you thought that?”
He shrugged at James. “Because when I was your prisoner, I heard a lot about your budget problems from the one girl that was always around?”
James was pretty sure he was talking about Liz, which made sense. Karen’s daughter would probably have a line on those particular complaints. But…
”The Order isn’t hurting for money. I had no idea about that spell, and honestly, I don’t need it.” James shrugged. “I was just amused by the gold heist! Now I’m learning that there’s actually gold to heist! Today has been weird.”
”It’s going to get weirder.” Zhu said openly, orange feathers shedding dusty light blooming across James’ right side along with the navigator’s eyes. Lincon squealed, but the two ignored him. “You’re being followed.”
”How bad?” James asked with crisp professionalism.
Zhu hummed like an idling engine. “They stop you within three miles.”
”It’s noon.” James let the professional paladin visage crack as he decided to complain. “Who sets up a roadblock at noon?!”
”That really isn’t my job.” The navigator said coyly, turning a large eye onto Lincon. “Hello. You may wish to buckle your seatbelt.”
James ignored the byplay of Zhu terrifying their new friend, again thinking out loud. “We’re not far from the rental house, but we can’t lead them there. Options?”
”Turn the ambush?” Zhu said, almost a little too eager to get in a fight.
”I do like the sound of that, but I don’t want a war. Let’s settle for aggressive evasion instead.” James agreed, eyes flicking to his rearview mirror where he could see an old blue pickup tailing him, even as he began to get deeper into the suburbs. “Lincon, he’s not kidding, buckle up. Zhu, new route. Take us to the undeveloped area.”
Zhu fluttered, a taloned hand rising out of James’ arm and taking the wheel along with his friend. “An open road.” Well, barring construction, though James kept that thought mostly to himself as they navigated through streets lined with houses and front yards and lampposts, deeper and deeper into the suburbs. The driver duo kept within the speed limit, but Zhu nudged them through odd turns every few streets to spoil the trap their pursuers were setting up ahead.
It made it very obvious that the two cars tailing James, the pickup and another silvery grey hatchback, were following them. It wasn’t even subtle; the people in the cars were so laser focused on keeping up and they clearly didn’t care if he knew it. Which made him not feel too bad about what he was about to do.
”Ready?” He asked the others, rolling down his side window.
”No! Ready for what?!” Lincon demanded.
”Yesssssss. Punch it! Go!” Zhu declared, the cloak of feathers that was his form billowing out from James like a wing that was far too large for the cramped interior of the car they were in as they took the last turn before the neighborhood stopped being occupied and started being construction.
Skeletons of houses lined the road now, wooden frames that would later support domestic life. There weren’t even streetlights here yet, just trailers and piles of material and gear under tarps. Men hard at work on some of the sites, but, importantly, no one in the road.
James floored it, shoving himself and Lincon back into their seats as Zhu rotated around him, talon still holding the steering wheel while he formed a more full winged limb along James’ left arm. Behind them, James could actually see the driver of the pickup yelling something as whoever was riding shotgun with him pointed after their fleeing form. And then they abandoned subtlety entirely as they also hit the gas, trying to gain on James’ fleeing sedan.
They might be able to; this was a rental, after all, and speed locked by the company that the Order had borrowed it from. But James didn’t need to go fast, just fast enough.
The thing about Velocity was, it recharged based on three factors. Your relative speed compared to the planet, how much control you had of that speed, and how much Velocity you currently had, with more Velocity slowing down the process of raising it further. James and Zhu were technically splitting control of the car, though James probably got more of it from working the gas pedal.
The spell Pave was not that expensive. Three Velocity, though that could still take a while to charge up at low speeds. But as a third car joined the two pursuers, and the construction workers threw expletives at their roaring passage, James and Zhu hit one of the mostly straight and empty lines they’d mapped out days ago and accelerated to the point that three Velocity was coming in roughly every second.
Both of them stuck their left side limbs out the window, air resistance flattening them back against the side of the car even for the partly ethereal navigator, but both of them still angled toward the pickup that was thundering after them as the driver decided that they eighty miles an hour was reasonable. ”Get fucked!” James and Zhu barked together at no one who could hear them.
The first pair of Paves hit the side of the pickup truck, the force of the strikes not even scratching the paint. Neither James nor Zhu knew this, but that didn’t stop them from casting again as soon as they could. And then again, and again, and again.
Against the force of the air made more solid by the speed they were going, James could actually feel the Paves as they left him. Kinesis rippling around his fingers and palm before whipping away through the air, blind firing backward at a target he could only glimpse in his rearview mirror as he focused on keeping the car on the road and not slamming into any errant wildlife or contractors. Zhu handled the aiming, feathers tugging James’ hand into position to keep up the directed torrent of force, adding his own shots downrange guided by the manifested eye in his long wing.
The next shots hit the truck on the wing mirror. Then the frame. Then the windshield. Then Zhu held the two of them in place, letting the truck swerve as the driver panicked at the sudden impact. A metronome of hammering thuds as Pave after Pave hit the windshield in paired impacts, tracing a line across the surface. They didn’t even crack the glass yet, just made an impact, but that was enough to startle someone who didn’t expect their quarry of an unarmed young man to fight back.
James could have just shot at them. But oddly, this was way easier than making bullets go where you wanted from a moving car, as a number of Horizon delves had taught the Order in a general way. Next to him, he registered Lincon yelling something as he looked backward between the seats. Ahead, he saw a curve coming up that he turned the wheel into, bleeding speed and dropping their rate of fire but playing it sort of safe. Behind, the curve gave Zhu just enough of an angle on their pursuers that he tracked James’ hand backward and slammed a series of strikes across the hatchback’s side, at least one of them going through the open window of the men who were probably having a grand time revving their engine on the empty road right up until someone nailed their driver in the head.
In reality, it was only a single Pave clipping him in the ear. But the effect was so outsized that none of the escaping delvers would buy that. The driver let go of the wheel as he panicked, and at the speed they were going, hit the curb half a second later. A wheel exploded, and while the low center of gravity meant the car didn’t flip, it did mean that their friend right behind them slammed into their rear end before going off the road themselves and into a hopper full of gravel at high speed.
The pickup slammed on the brakes, all three men inside leaping out and running to their crashed companions, vanishing into the distance as James didn’t let up on the speed.
”Pursuit shaken!” Zhu declared with a vibrating glee. “Now, let’s see if we can ramp off one of these trailer trucks!”
”Absolutely not.” James laughed, a thin and high pitched giggle as the adrenaline rush burned through his veins. It sounded like Zhu was dealing with a similar rush of euphoria; they’d lived, they’d made it, and they needed to calm down before trying to catch sweet air started to seem like a good idea. “Get us a loop out of here. We can park in the house’s garage, and then I need to get Planner down here to cloak this kid.”
”I’m not a kid.” Lincon protested, white knuckles still tightly latched onto the car’s available handholds.
”Oooooo. Dizzy.” Zhu muttered as James rolled the window back up. “That was… a lot. That was a good journey. I need to… need to…” his feathers drooped across James’ body.
”Get some rest.” James said softly, his own adrenaline crash offset by his worry for his friend. He had gotten cured of the Underburbs disease that gave him essentially magical diabetes, but Zhu hadn’t, and the ongoing symptoms of that problem were still fucking with both their lives. “I’ll get us home.”
”Go left.” Zhu told him in a woozy voice.
”I’ll go left.” James promised. “Nap. We can get everything sorted out at the home base.” He sighed as Zhu faded back into his skin, looking over at Lincon. “He’s… having a hard time.” He confided in the teenager.
And Lincon said the magic words that made James instantly like a person more. “Is he gonna be okay? Can I help or something?”
”I dunno.” James muttered. “But hey. Let’s get you to a safehouse with a shower and a bed. Definitely a shower.” He added, and Lincon pulled a face as he sniffed his own shirt. “And then we can meet up with the others, and figure out how to break your friends out of church jail, break you all out of your conditioning, and then break everyone who thought this was even remotely okay.” He didn’t comment on Lincon’s face twisting in a riot of emotions, as some of that conditioning clearly still remained. “Don’t worry.” James tried to sound supportive and reassuring. “Everyone else probably had a way easier day, and this’ll be something we can wrap up by tomorrow afternoon.”
”Really?” Lincon asked, knowing he was walking into a trap.
James sighed theatrically. “No.” He admitted. “I’m gonna be surprised if the safehouse isn’t on fire, and I bet you a dollar that someone tried to murder my boyfriend today.”
As it turned out, when they got back to the nice home they’d rented amid the suburban sprawl, James learned he was wrong.
No one had technically started out trying to kill Arrush.