Chapter 18: Plan C (Patreon)

“Children?” Zlesk whispered, clenching his fists. “This man you’re hunting is reaping children?”

“Yeah, I mean, why did you think I started an orphanage?” Jeb asked, raising a brow.

Zlesk’s expressive brows furrowed in thought, then he shrugged. “Because it was the right thing to do, obviously.”

Jeb and Smartass burst into laughter as Zlesk looked progressively more and more pissed.

“That’s exactly the kind of attitude we look for in our faculty here at The Admiral Orphanage.” Jeb said between gasps.

“You fat veek, you’re using the children as bait?”

“They’re a lot safer now than they were before.” Jeb said, his humor fading away. He didn’t know what a veek was, but he didn’t like being called one. It was something about the former sheriff’s tone.

“If it makes you feel better, once we catch the guy, I’ll leave the orphanage running. I’ll put someone who likes children better than me in charge.”

Zlesk opened his mouth to respond when Mrs. Lang approached from the front of the mansion, her expression alarmed. “There’s keegan at the door, and they’re arm-ack!”

Mrs. Lang was bodily pushed aside and two keegan in snazzy black robes with silver trim oriented on Jeb, their gazes travelling down to his missing leg, then back up to his face.

“Jebediah Trapper?” the one in the lead asked.

“That’s me,” Jeb said.

“You’re under arrest on suspicion of Reaping.” They stepped forward and hauled Jeb to his feet, twisting his arms behind him.

Well, it looks like our reaper has a political presence. Shit. This just got complicated and dangerous.

“Zlesk, Plan C.” Jeb hissed.

“You didn’t get around to telling me any plan,” Zlesk said, watching Jeb get dragged away with an amused expression. “Let alone plan C.”

“Ask Mrs. Lang!” Jeb shouted, craning his neck to peer through the doorway as the goons dragged him outside. The last thing he saw was Zlesk waving him off.

“If you’re a Citizen, you have the right to legal counsel, and will not be required to testify against yourself. Citizenship also confers the right to request the use of a Truthseeker in matters both criminal and civil in nature.”

“So…what do I get if I’m not a Citizen?” Jeb asked, to which their response was a swift cuff on the ear. “Yeah, I thought so,” Jeb muttered, ear stinging as they shoved him into the carriage.

At least alien jail was relatively cushy. It all came down to accommodating species that were on average a foot taller than humans were. That meant that there was plenty of legroom in both the carriage and the bed.

Usually you hear horror stories about tiny cots, and cramped spaces, but when humans were midgets, size wasn’t an issue.

This bed probably wouldn’t fit Zlesk, though, Jeb thought, stretching his toes down to the bottom of the jail cot, stretching his arms over his head. He glanced up at the ceiling, a familiar sense of unease knocking on the door to his thoughts.

Nope, Jeb turned onto his side and closed his eyes. He didn’t have anything to do but wait for the Bad Guys to show their faces, or get executed for not being a citizen. Hopefully Plan C would be enough to bail him out of the fire and give them a solid lead to work on.

In the meantime, Jeb didn’t have anything to do but stew…and practice. Jeb pictured the lessons he’d learned from Principles of Myst sensors and behavior programming 101.

A Myst Trigger is similar to a Rupert’s Drop mixed with a radio, Jeb thought to himself.

To the uninitiated, a Rupert’s drop is when a bit of molten glass is dropped into a bucket of water, creating a teardrop shape with a long, thin tail. While the teardrop portion is rather rigid and tough to break, the long tail is brittle and can easily be snapped off. When it is, the entire droplet explodes from released tension.

Jeb’s science teacher in high school didn’t let them do their own because teens are stupid, but the sight of Mr. Clemmins digging a sliver of glass out of his palm must have made an impression.

In this case, the trigger portion was the thin glass tail, connected to the reservoir of pre-programmed Myst, which Jeb pictured as the explosive teardrop of tensioned glass.

The tricky part was the trigger. Jeb had to make it respond only to specific actions by making it resonate with the events in question, dialing it in like a radio to a specific station. When the right song came on the radio, it would resonate and wiggle the fragile trigger until it broke and unleashed the stored energy.

This was the part that required experience and experimentation to get the feel for it, something that had faded from Jeb within moments of being bitten by the snake...book…thing.

If in the Myst dimension, every event has its own unique resonance frequency, I should be able to figure this out, eventually. Jeb sat up, cross-legged, opening his palm and consulting his memories of the Tutorial. He had some experience setting up Myst triggers, even if he was on autopilot during the entire thing. He’d at least been present.

Packaging the Myst and programming it was easy. Jeb understood programming, or at least understood the concept of predefined actions. Jeb followed the instructions in the book and made a tight bead of orange-gold Myst ready to blow a gentle gust of wind into his face.

Creating the trigger was the hard part, as the instructions in the book waxed somewhat metaphorical, giving instructions such as touching specific strands from the Weave of Creation like the spider, Venaxus.

Jeb interpreted it to mean quantum radio. He tried to picture himself closing his right hand as a narrow band of possible events out of the infinite spectrum of possibilities that could happen, and he pictured the fragile trigger resonating with those narrow bands until it burst.

The trigger fired prematurely, blowing a gentle wind into Jeb’s face before he’d even thought about closing his hand.

Well, at least it triggered on something.

Jeb glanced up, and not a single prisoner or guard was paying attention to his antics, and it didn’t look like they would anytime soon. Probably letting him stew in fear for a while before they started interrogating him.

Jeb shrugged and took a deep breath, drawing Myst in to fuel his growing Core before siphoning it out, forming it into a tight knot.

It might take a while, but Jeb was determined to be able to do this on his own.

*** Zlesk ***

Zlesk watched as the annoying human was dragged away, looking like a squirming rabzi pinned between two hunters, his gold-inlaid wooden foot beating out a staccato rhythm on the floor.

I could just let him get raked over hot coals. I’m fairly sure the human has done something to deserve it.

Zlesk glanced out at the human fat-monkeys running around wildly outside the kitchen window, screaming obnoxiously and pulling each other’s strange hair.

Completely free of worry that any minute their safe haven might crumble to the ground due to the machinations of evil men. He could stand to let Jeb suffer, but to allow the orphanage to collapse was not an option he cared to entertain.

The murder-savant had done something good here, even if it was in service of his hunting.

Zlesk sighed and set his chin on his palm.

“What was plan C, Mrs. Lang?”

Mrs. Lang rubbed her disgustingly obese hip and scowled at the retreating sentinel carriage with her disgustingly obese lips.

“Right this way.”

Mrs. Lang guided him to Jeb’s room on the second floor, right next to the staircase and closest room to the front door.

On the nightstand next to the bed was a human electric lamp, which Zlesk had never seen before. For a moment he was distracted by the unflickering pure light as Mrs. Lang produced a series of envelopes from the drawer.

“Lets see…” She said, flipping through no less than a dozen envelopes until she found the one she was looking for.

“Plan C: Corrupt government officials.” Mrs. Lang said, opening the letter and spreading it out on the desk.

She frowned as she read it. “Use deputy plate and Truthseeker to shake the tree. Hire extra manpower from Working Stiffs to catch what falls out? Deputy plate is under my pillow, truthseeker is in the nightstand.”

“What a vague plan.” Mrs. Lang said, turning the piece of paper over to check the back for more.

“It’ll work,” Zlesk said when he saw what lay under Jeb’s pillow.

An Enforcer’s Mark. Only given to people Enforcers had the highest confidence in. Often the kind of people who went on to become Enforcers themselves. It allowed a non-citizen to challenge a Citizen, and it gave an actual Citizen a substantial amount of freedom from censor.

Why anyone would give such a thing to Jebediah trapper was beyond Zlesk.

A small part of him knew he could sell it for a small fortune, or leverage it to climb back into society’s good graces, and right a few wrongs along the way.

But it wasn’t his.

Zlesk stomped down on those quiet desires like a squirming colee as he picked up the mark. He would behave honorably, or what right did he have to be a Citizen in the first place?

***Jeb***

“As your legal counsel, I advise you admit your wrongdoings before I break the other arm!” The angry melas interrogator twisted Jeb’s left arm up and behind his back, applying just the right torque to make the entire thing feel like it was about to wrench out of every socket he had. Wrist, elbow, and shoulder all screamed in protest as they hovered on the verge of dislocating.

Jeb’s other arm was busted, having already been through this lovely process.

“Okay, okay!” Jeb shouted, slamming the table with his forehead as a way of tapping out, prompting the Melas to ease up on the pressure just a little.

“I spied on some of my friends having sex when I was a teenager. I knew it was wrong but she had the biggest tits I’d ever–“

Pop. Jeb’s dislocating arm sent an unpleasant echo through his entire body. Not to mention the pain.

“AAAGH!”

A lot of people think of a tough guy as someone who can muscle through the impulse to scream, but those kinds of people don’t really exist outside of Hollywood.

A real tough guy sticks to the script after the screaming is over.

“Seen, and the way they were bouncing was just fan-fucking-tastic.” Jeb shuddered as adrenaline worked through his veins like battery acid.

The other ‘detective’ pulled up Jeb’s face and smacked him around, loosening Jeb’s teeth a bit and filling the inside of his mouth with coppery blood. Jeb’s vision was starting to get a little blurry.

I really hope they get my plan. Shit, why wasn’t step one of Plan C rescue my ass? Why didn’t I write steps!?

“Ever since your orphanage popped up, Kids have started going missing at a prodigious rate. We have it on high authority that they’re going missing from your orphanage.”

High authority, huh? I wonder who specifically pushed that narrative.

“And really, the only time you can enjoy teenage tits completely guilt free is when you’re also a teen, so I figured –“

Crack!

“AAAAAGH!”

There goes the other one. Damnit!

“Why does he keep talking about tits!?” the melas standing in front of him said, throwing Jeb’s face away in disgust.

‘A great way to get through grueling P.T. is to have something you can focus on really really good. I like to think about boobs.’ – Drill Sergeant Sean Morgan

“The reaper’s legal counsel has arrived,” A keegan woman said, peeking her head into the claustrophobic room.

“’The reaper’? What happened to innocent until proven guilty, lady!?” Jeb demanded.

“Thanks, Sue,” the interrogator said, waving her off.

The woman gave Jeb a dismissive glance and ducked her head back out the door.

“How the Roil did this scum get counsel?” the Melas in front of him asked, scratching his head.

“I don’t know. I know this boy didn’t get a message out. He’s been by himself since we got him.

“The sentinels said he was screaming something about plan C on the way out.”

That must be Zlesk! Jeb thought, eyes widening. Zlesk was gonna come in here and flash the badge and totally flip the script on these goons. One look at that and they’d be eating out of his palm.

If I could lift my palm, Jeb thought glancing down at his slowly swelling arms.

A grip tightened on Jeb’s skull and yanked his head back.

“I bet you’d like to talk to your lawyer, wouldn’t you?” the melas behind him demanded while the other one left the room.

“I would like that very much,” Jeb said, his first non-boob related answer since they began.

“Well, tough luck, because if your lawyer isn’t a Citizen, then –“

“Um, Croz?” the other Melas said, leaning back in the door. “The dude’s a Citizen.”

“Ehehehehe,” Jeb chuckled evilly. The dumbfounded expression on their faces was almost worth the busted arms.

Well, no, it wasn’t. Not even close. But it did help it hurt less for a couple seconds.

“Shit,” ‘Croz’ muttered, shoving Jeb’s head aside as he went for the door to the interrogation room.

“You’ve got an hour, Reaper scum. Then we start over again.”

The two of them stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind them, leaving Jeb blissfully alone. If Jeb could move his arms, he would have steepled his fingers ominously, channeling his inner Hannibal and Kaizer Soze.

This was the moment where everything went off the rails for these two.Less than a minute later, The door opened, revealing a Keegan man in plain robes.

Notably not Zlesk.

Who the fuck is this guy? Jeb thought, raising a brow.

“Good evening, Mr. Trapper, I am your legal council,” The man said, reaching into his robe, presumably for legal documents, or a snack, or a pen, or something.

Jeb would have preferred any of those to the foot and a half of razor sharp steel that emerged from the assassin’s robes.

Crap. Well, that can’t be good.

Desperately, Jeb reached under the table with his Myst and lasso’d the man’s legs. As soon as the man decided to move at super-speeds, it was game over for Jeb. Jeb simply didn’t have the Nerve to perceive people moving at top speeds yet.

“I’m here to deliver a messa-ACK!”

The Keegan flopped backwards, his feet torn out from under him. Midfall, the keegan whipped his arm out as Jeb seized the air in front of himself, creating a cone of telekinetic force.

The short blade bounced off the shield and hummed through the air, burying itself in the wall a few inches from Jeb’s cheek.

When the going gets tough, the tough start screaming.

“HEEEELLLP!” Jeb shouted at the top of his lungs, leaping out of his chair and yanking himself up with telekinesis.

The Keegan hit the ground and drew another blade, swiping at Jeb’s feet under the table, cutting the fancy spring-loaded toe off of his expensive ‘Remónd’ brand prosthetic, which was too dumb to pull itself out of the way.

Another sword burst through the underside of the table, showering Jeb and the ceiling with wooden shrapnel and drawing a line of blood across Jeb’s good leg.

Goddamnit, I only got one of those! Jeb thought, aiming his fancy prosthesis at the table.

Jeb’s newest idea for the Annihilation lens was a void-gun. It was a fairly obvious application of two void lenses with a simple oscillation mechanism between them, rapidly shifting the focus of the lenses forward and then back.

By shifting the focus back and forth rapidly one time, Jeb was able to create a machine that cut a thumb-sized hole through everything between itself and about thirty feet out.

A machine that was currently embedded in his fancy footwear.

Jeb fed a trickle of Myst into the annihilation lens, cutting a hole through the assassin’s Last known location, along with the bottom of his heel.

Whomp!

Unfortunately, the sound it created wasn’t a cool ‘pew, pew,’ rather something akin to a tennis ball travelling out of a plastic tube at high speed, due to air collapsing in around the travelling focal point.

“Agh!” The remains of the table bucked up and swatted Jeb out of the air, sandwiching him against the wall.

“What’s going on back there!?” the sound of running feet outside made it into the tiny room just as Jeb peeked above the edge of the frayed table pinning him into the corner of the room.

In the center of the dimly lit interrogation room, the assassin clutched a bleeding hole in his shoulder, watching Jeb with fury dancing in his eyes.

“Stay or go?” Jeb asked, shakily aiming his foot at the attacker. He honestly didn’t have any idea what he could do if the man decided to take Jeb out real quick before he fled. There wasn’t much he could do at this point.

He’d already exhausted the element of surprise, his hidden ace, and his ability with Myst, in about five seconds of combat.

But the other guy didn’t know that.

With a wordless snarl, the assassin drew a cowl over his face that faded into nothingness, before turning and running, slamming into the door and blowing the interrogators off their feet.

I hope they broke something just now, Jeb thought sourly as he watched Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum roll on the floor in agony through the unhinged door. The closer one clutched his wrist where it had been smashed by the handle.

Hah! Jeb sobered for a moment of thought. Seems awfully premature to send an assassin after me. The people who were ‘dealing’ with the problem Jeb represented had barely begun to exercise their legal options. Why on earth would they default to an assassin when arresting him was pretty much a slam-dunk?

Unless…the assassin is working for someone else?

From there it didn’t take much effort to figure out who Jeb had pissed off over the last couple months.

Most of them, like the sand pirates, were dead already, but Jeb could think of one person in particular that might have both a pulse, and an itty bitty bit of a sore spot in regards to him.

Garland Grenore.

I wonder if he actually paid the assassin, or just gave him an I.O.U.?

Of course, nothing was for certain, but it made a lot more sense than the Reaper sending a hit man after him when Jeb was a relative unknown who was already being taken care of.

Oh well, when I see him again, I’ll kick his ass…wait, what did he look like?

Jeb’s memory of the entire time before the man pulled down his translucent cowl showed him a blurred face. Jeb’s only clue was that the man was a Keegan male. Probably.

Goddamn magic hoods! Now he can walk right up and try to shiv me again!

Matter of fact, why did the assassin try to kill me now when he probably assumed I’d be killed on Reaper charges in less than a week?

*** Kol Rejan***

“That was stupid,” Kol muttered, staunching the wound in his shoulder as he leaned against the wall of his room at the Inn. He’d assumed the human would be easy pickings after being worked over for an hour by the local police.

Slip in, take the Impact, slip back out, easy as hosh-spice. Kol knew he could’ve waited for the human to get convicted and executed and called the job done, but he got lazy and greedy. He wanted to cut his time in Solmnath short, and hated missing out on levels.

All those motivations convinced him that killing a human with two broken arms would be easy. And it should’ve been.

“Fucker hid a wand in his leg,” Kol muttered as he disinfected the needle and thread in melasian moros. The drink was only good as a disinfectant/firestarter/explosive anyway.

Fucker’s also a Myst-user. Which would have been nice to know, Grenore.

Kol shook his head. My job, my responsibility. He should’ve done more research into this Jebediah Trapper, but he was a human. Why bother? There, Laziness popping up again.

Unless it was one of the few humans that miraculously survived the Impossible tutorial, they couldn’t hold a candle to Kol’s power. At least, hypothetically. Kol had memorized the list just in case, too, and there was no Jebediah Trapper on it.

Apparently I was wrong. Should’ve charged more.

Kol hissed with pain as he began sewing the wound shut.

Now I’ve got a big-ass hole in my shoulder because I was lazy. Lesson learned.

Kol’s new strategy was to hang around Solmnath and heal until they executed the human, then call it a job well done.

And if he doesn’t get executed…I’m going to have to re-evaluate my strategy.

That nagging tug from Kol’s Class continued to point out the location of his prey, even as he finished dressing the wound. He wasn’t moving. Excellent.

***Jeb***

Once the assassin was gone, the two ‘detectives’ asked some rather pointed questions about who the man was, and while Jeb had some idea, he couldn’t say anything for sure without possibly lying. Of course, these questions eventually turned toward why there was a twenty-four foot hole in the floor, and not being able to directly lie, this led to Jeb’s improvised weaponry being confiscated.

Several hours into the second round of questioning, there was another knock on the door.

“Boys, um… there’s another man here who says he’s the reaper’s legal counsel.” The keegan woman said, peeking her head into the room.

“Oh, come on!” Croz shouted, dropping the pliers from Jeb’s fingernail. “We haven’t time for another imposter masquerading as a Citizen. The judge is breathing down my neck to have this confession ready to turn in tonight!”

The judge? Jeb thought, barely cognizant enough to catch that little slip.

“I’m sorry, he’s just really, really insistent. Do you think you could–“

“I’ll deal with him,” Camort said, setting down the salt and  heading for the door.

“Out of the way,” A familiar voice spoke before the secretary was roughly shoved out of the way, Zlesk barging into the room, whipping the Enforcer’s Mark in front of him like a priest warding off Dracula.

It seemed to have the same effect as the melas detectives recoiled in horror, minus the hissing.

“Sit down,” Zlesk said, speaking with the authoritative tone of someone who’d been studying to be sheriff half his life.

The two melas flopped down on either side of the new table, their knees folding out from under them.

“You guys okay in there? Should I get help?” The secretary asked through the door Zlesk held closed with his foot.

“We’re fine!” Croz raised his voice.

“All good in here!” Camort shouted, eyes fixed to the Mark.

“…Okay then.” From the tone, Jeb could picture the woman shrugging and turning away.

“Excellent, let’s begin.” Zlesk said, pocketing the Enforcer’s Mark.

“What took you so long?” Jeb asked.

“Your friend haggled for a great sum in exchange for his assistance. He seemed rather doubtful that we were working together.”

“Goddamnit, Ron,” Jeb groaned. His haggling cost Jeb a couple fingernails. Do those even grow back?

“You two know each other?” Croz asked, glancing between the two of them.

“Indeed,” Zlesk said, coming up behind Jeb and patting him on the shoulder before leaning forward to whisper in Jeb’s ear.

“Let me handle this. They’ll respond much better to a keegan Citizen with a Mark than a maimed human.”

Jeb grunted. It was about as much mental effort as he could devote to any one thing at the moment.

“This, detectives, is my fat, ignorant patsy.”

Jeb grunted again.

“A juicy wriggling grub to catch a vreek. He’s no more guilty of trafficking children than you or I.”

Jeb smacked his split lips and tried to work up some unbloodied saliva. This part was important.

“Judge. Confession.” Jeb struggled to speak, his voice hoarse from screaming.

“Oh?” Zlesk said, peering at Jeb then to the two detectives gradually paling from orange to yellow under the former sheriff’s scrutiny.

“Is there a particular judge driving the investigation against my friend here?”

“Umm…”

Zlesk reached out and lifted detective Croz one-handed and stuck him to the ceiling with his Class Ability. He took the man’s seat and sat down in front of Camort, still a head taller than him.

“Gentlemen, perhaps you don’t understand the gravity here. This judge of yours has already taken my bait. Defending him will bind your fate to his. And there’s only one fate for a Reaper.”

“Now,” Zlesk steepled his fingers in the exact way Jeb wanted to, staring down the flustered detective.

“Do you want to live?”