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1.23 A Friendly Game

Okay, he definitely expected a response now. "Oh yes sir, it's very impressive! But um, drinking this early would break Cyracorp policy. But thank you! Sorry, Mr. Fairbanks. Sir." Phanya managed to keep most of the shame internalized, cringing only a little bit at her own words. Ricky would never let her live it down if he saw what a fool Phanya was making herself.

Fairbanks, instead, just raised an eyebrow. "Well then, it seems you have me at a disadvantage."

That sounded like a punishable offense and Phanya almost choked on the sudden spike of fear. "What? No sir, I would never! Um, how would I have you at a disadvantage?"

"You know who I am and you know Cyracorp policy, and yet I have no idea who you are or what you're doing in my little corner of the world." The manager spread his arms in a small shrug, speaking with the level of measured patience that Ms. Uxral adopted when a student just wasn't getting it.

Phanya released a breath she didn't know she was holding. "Oh that's easy sir, I'm Phanya and I live in Fableton. Erm, I mean the recycling facility's auxiliary habitation site. I help the adults get ready for a productive workday in the mornings." The mounting ramble cut short when she noticed the manager swirling his drink in thought.

"You live there, hm? How curious. And what about the rest of your family, do they live in the area as well?"

Some edge in the manager's voice sent a chill up Phanya's spine and she swallowed hard to suppress the shudder. "No, no family, sir. I'm just a TICO kid."

"Hmm." When he did look up at Phanya, the bored niceties were fully replaced with cold calculation. "How convenient." Phanya's mouth made little 'O' shapes, but before she could work out a question Fairbanks continued, "The transference of inherited contractual obligations, I mean. You walk around like that, and no one would ever question why you don't have a family, or any family name to speak of. It's a solid backstory, but so very dull. Zero points for originality, though I'll admit I'm impressed at your capacity to live in that stench without any shielding. How do you manage?"

"It's, um... it's all I've ever known. Sir." The more Phanya talked to Caspian Fairbanks, the more her reverential fear of the manager faded against brighter tones of confusion. She just wanted him to give her a straight answer for once, so she cleared her throat for a bit more confidence that didn't manifest. "If I might be so bold —"

"Yes, I daresay you ARE so bold," Fairbanks cut her off and Phanya recoiled half a step back. He stood from his chair thing, the forgotten drink swirling in his hand as he continued, "Bold enough to walk around my property as a, what did you call it, 'Fableton TICO kid' without any sort of disguise. That means you knew I had been banished here without the resources to monitor all the auxiliary sites. So were you hoping to sneak in the back amongst the proles, or is this charade just to insult me?" The manager punctuated his question by indicating the entirety of Phanya with a swing of his glass, and Phanya felt a hint of cold rage seep through the man's polite façade.

But then it vanished, replaced with a weary sigh as Fairbanks glanced upward and continued, "It was just one little party foul. Everyone does it, how was I supposed to know that was my cousin? At least he fully committed to the disguise, but the bastard still blacklisted me afterwards. And I didn't even charge him for the reconstruction! I bet that tidbit got lost in the rumor mill…"

The manager was still staring off into space, lost in his own thoughts, but he was standing so uncomfortably close to Phanya that she couldn't keep waiting silently for him to say something of substance. She managed to squeak through the fear, "Please sir, I don't know what you want from me. I just want to go home."

A bark of bitter laughter cracked the air at a joke that only Fairbanks could hear, turning his back on Phanya to throw his arms open at a random wall. "Oh don't we all! My punishment should've ended eons ago, how I long to rid myself of this dump!" Fairbanks turned back to Phanya, naked accusation on his face. "But in the meantime, I'll settle for you telling me why a coil gun went off on my property. Yes, even my secondhand sensors picked up that much. None of those workers should have that tech and yet I find you standing in the blast area, bold as brass!"

By the end Fairbanks was nearly yelling, but a quiet and delicate clearing of the throat instantly cut the mounting tension down to nothing. Both heads whipped around at the source, it was the other man Phanya saw speaking to the manager. Probably? Same form-fitting dark gray uniform, only this person wasn't wearing the hat/mask combo and his bald head gleamed in the light.

On a closer look Phanya realized this man wasn't just bald, he didn't have eyebrows or a single hair anywhere on his head. And his other features were just as skewed when studied — his skin looked pallid instead of porcelain, the streaks of red highlights were faded and oddly matched by red eyes, his sharp nose was crooked from improperly healed breaks. Somehow, he managed to look both more and less human than Fairbanks at the same time.

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"Lunch is ready at your convenience, sir." The man's utterly monotone voice shook Phanya from her thoughts, and the same went for Fairbanks as well. He blinked rapidly a few times before he downed the 100-year-old tequila in a single gulp, tossing the glass carelessly over his shoulder.

Phanya stepped to catch the glass before it shattered, but a small flying drone zipped out from a hidden compartment to catch it and promptly disappeared into the wall again. She looked down from the distraction and flinched again at the manager's undivided attention on her.

"He's right, I've been getting ahead of myself. In truth I should commend you for getting this far, it's been quite some time since I've been challenged like this! So please, join me for some braised steak, imported straight from the family farms. We'll put the game on hold, and then we'll see who gets to go home first."

By the time he finished speaking Caspian Fairbanks' demeanor finished its long loop back to that of a polite, friendly businessman. Gone was the exasperation, the sarcasm, and the cold rage, replaced by the original glassy dead eyes and plastered pearlescent smile. His posture froze in the tiniest fracture of a bow, leaning forward with one hand extended and waiting. Phanya stared at it, her mind racing to catch up with the whirlwind of implied meanings and half-statements that the manager had really said, and she came up blank.

But she did know the importance of a good handshake, and with a start realized that she had likely been staring dumbfounded too long at the outstretched hand. That was an insult all by itself, so she grabbed his hand with both of hers and tried to remember Ms. Uxral's lesson. Solid grip, two shakes, and hopefully she looked friendly and not pathetic.

The instant that skin met skin, Phanya heard a chime in the air and her body locked into convulsions. A wall of pain slammed into Phanya and overwhelmed all her senses at once, not even allowing the grace for her to scream before the sweet solitude of unconsciousness saved her from the torture.

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"I don't know how long I was out, but I woke up inside of some weird, cramped pod that just dumped me like trash outside of his dumb little dome." Phanya was sitting on the ground, legs hugged to her chest, and she squeezed tighter as a shudder ran through her body. "Fucker did something to me, everything feels wrong now... violated." She knew it wasn't a good idea to spill everything like this, but once she started talking Phanya couldn't stop.

Tapper, to his credit, sat and listened utterly enraptured the entire time. "Miss Phanya, if you were injured by this man then we will seek recompense, but in the interim I have a regeneration potion on hand that may help ease your burdens." Did Phanya catch a gleam of anger in the robot's eyebrows?

"Thanks, but there is no way that I'm drinking that weird-ass sludge you put on my foot, because whatever Fairbanks did is inside of me. Probably some brainwashing or spyware nanites, I can feel it watching me." Phanya shook her head sharply to fend off more shudders and continued, "Anyway, I started walking and some raiders jumped me while I was still disorientated. Guess I should actually be thankful, not like I can go home now and just… spy on Fableton for Fairbanks. Can't believe this is what he considers 'games.'"

"Incorrect, Miss Phanya." The complete sincerity in Tapper's voice shook the brooding out of her thoughts. The robot really just told her no, and so confidently. "I overheard raiders speaking of a salon here that can cure wounds like magic. In fact, I believe that finding you here is a sign that I am on the correct path to conquering this dungeon!"

A chuckle escaped Phanya's mouth and lightened her mood ever so slightly, despite every effort to remain as despondent as possible. It was just like the weird little robot to say something that almost made sense. "Whatever you say, Taps. Think you could start by busting us out of this, uh, dungeon prison? Someone just came by to feed me, so it'll be a while until we see another guard."

Tapper scuttled side to side on makeshift limbs in a little dance that was joyful to him and disquieting to her. This is exactly the sort of proactive thinking that Tapper needed to prioritize! "Worry not Miss Phanya, I will make this lifetime last but a moment." His first immediate thought was to escape from here the same way he escaped from the bar, since logically every storefront here would contain a similar area for employees. But the door in the back of this dim cube refused to open, either because the store wasn't open or because Tapper wasn't an employee.

Dutiful and undaunted, the robot crawled his torso over to the front of the store, where a metal grate descended from the ceiling to block any egress to the hallway. Simple and sturdy, the gate rattled when Tapper tried it but wouldn't budge. He didn't expect to lift the gate right away, otherwise his much more capable proprietor would have already done so, but he did confirm that the grate wasn't secured to the ground in any way.

Phanya watched the little robot work in silence for a time before she chimed, "I don't think it's actually locked or anything, just too heavy for me to pry open. Whenever a guard comes by to feed me some scraps they just push it through the bars, they haven't actually opened this since they threw me in here. But I did see the grate roll out of that box on the ceiling, the first time."

While his proprietor spoke Tapper shifted himself to the side to better study the grooves in the wall that held the grate in place. "And they run along these recessed lines... synonymous with tracks." Tapper could already feel his social algorithms starting to stretch in preparation of his half-formed plan. It strained credulity, but so did everything else that used magic and Tapper's review of the system messages during his duct crawling remained fresh in his mind.

[The real fun comes from combining words, because the end result is only limited by your imagination. Create Light can do just what it says on the tin, but it can also act as a distracting flashbang, a damaging laser, a highlight for easy tracking, anything the magician can bend to their will! This is when spells start to cost exponentially more mana, but it's also when you are no longer limited to what you can hold in your hand. Spheres! Rays! Cones! Multiple targets! The sky's the limit when you start combining spell components.]

"Miss Phanya. I will require a moment to compile the program, but I may have a stratagem."