First I need to make sure things won’t get even worse. She must not report me. The corpse must not be found and their bosses must think that they are elsewhere.

This is a very serious situation. I feel an overwhelming urge to either run or go for a quick murderous fix

She is not happy as I frisk and pat her down thoroughly. No backup weapon. A wallet. „Stefanie Heilmann“. Keys. And here it is: a phone. Specifically an older iPhone.

I dislike frisking a corpse, but telekinesis makes getting a phone out much easier. While I am at it, I put his corpse into their car.

I get Bock’s Car #1 out to send it on a last, complicated mission. Why can this thing see, but I have to teach them about walking? Later. I get my maps out. This is my most complicated command so far. It boils down to following a certain course roughly identical to a road until it hits the Autobahn, then to follow the Autobahn for a certain length of way and then to head north-north-west forever, which amounts to until it dissolves, being made from conjured material from [Equip the Army]. I put both their phones into the payload hold, give it as much mana as I can and let it fly.

She looks at me with interested eyes. I have let her see this. Probably a mistake. I close my eyes.

Fear. Indignation. Discomfort. And something else. Reading her is hard, much harder than most people. Police training?

„You don’t have to do this. There is always an option.“ - I guess she is trained to say such things.

The geek in me just can’t stay quiet. „Your understanding is based on incomplete knowledge“.

„You are not a criminal. You are an educated man. You don’t want to do this. We can talk about it.“

I am new at this and she is in part factually right. And that is bad, but even I don’t make the same mistake twice. Though I am quite likely continuing it by letting her stay alive. I step behind her and conjure a hose of an opaque version of my material. It goes over her head.

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She is initially alarmed, then reassured with a lot more discomfort. She does understand that me caring about what she sees means that I haven’t decided to kill her. Should I wish for her to be stupid? What am I doing?

First things first. The corpse needs to go. A thick piece of conjured cloth goes over her ears. The next part requires me to chant. The corpse, their weapons and the car are disposed off.

I grab her by the arm, much harder than necessary. I want her to feel that her needs and welfare are tertiary to me, at best.

I need a way to make sure she cannot trace us. We go back into the pharmacy’s basement to the box of the good stuff and the dangerous stuff meaning stuff that can burn. Yes, they have solvent. I spread a few bottles. A spike of fear. She is smelling it. I lift the second piece of cloth. „Only the building will burn“. I would take the whole box. It has too many traces of unusual work. My inventory does not take it. I get the impression that the combined size and density are too much. Well, then only the full content, making my work spent on selecting stuff a waste. The sound shield goes onto her again. I trigger [Immortality] and promptly spend much restored mana on disappearing an armored box. I uncover her mouth and force it open. She struggles quite a lot but down go the tranquilizers.

For a moment I struggle with myself. Leaving her unconcious form here would be so easy. Over my shoulder she goes. Up the stairs I find myself confronted with an unusual problem. I don’t carry matches. Yes, they are part of my cooking equipment, which came in a box, which I stored as a box. A box which now is standing on the counter in the kitchen in my temporary base as the dishwasher is running because I wanted to clean the gear.

Who am I kidding. I want to do this. I walk towards the car. I see no traces, the car has not been discovered and at a safe distance I conjure it.

A WW2-vintage piece of rocket artillery loaded with incendiary ammunition. For practical purposes there goes the rest of my mana, but who cares? There goes the building. Do I care about traces? No. I looked at my guns. They indeed produce projectiles, but those last only a minute or so after having been fired.

I am greeted by two sleeping cats as I back out and return to base by another route.