Trust in Oneself, Draft 1, CH 05-06 (Patreon)

Chapter 5

Thomas’s stories of his trip from San Francisco to Denver was nothing like what Paul was experiencing. For one thing, he was driving, while Thomas had spent the time in the back of a van having sex. For another, he didn’t have to debate how much he could push for things being done his way, when the person he was traveling with was dealing with the entirety of her live thrown in shambles because people were out to kill her, while he’d had to settle for food out of a drive in instead of Judith’s cooking.

There had also been no talk of stealing a car, or Shila hacking one of the rare cash machine, possibly the only one in Santa Rosa so they’d have money to pay for a motel room. That the clerk hadn’t even flickered an ear when Paul paid with some of that cash money made him question the wisdom that everyone had gone electronic decades ago.

They were somewhere near the Oregon border. Paul had driven a long as he’d been able to, but he had been up early to pack away his apartment, and since his thesis hadn’t been something requiring long days and longer nights, he hadn’t become someone running on coffee, so after the second he’d bought while the car was charging, he’d insisted they needed a place to stop for the night.

The motel was small, not a franchise, and offered charging free of charge with their stay. Even better, because the town was just large enough to have a night life, there was a late night convenience store on the other side of the road.

There he did get something of a look when he paid cash, but that had been annoyance as the clerk had to go in the back to get his change. Paul had expected to be informed that if he didn’t buy the exact amount of the bill he was using, a twenty, he wasn’t getting change.

It wasn’t his money, so Paul had been ready to lose the three or four dollars that he’d be owed. It wasn’t like the money belong to anyone. He expected Shila had simply told the cash machine the transaction was in order and to hand out the money. The bank would be taking the hit, and they had insurance against these kind of things.

Well, probably not against magical hacking, but it was still hacking, and that had to be covered.

He entered the room and the pangolin was stretched on her bed, looking at her phone, but not typing, and not looking only this side of freaking out.

“I have burgers, drinks, fruits and cookies,” he announced. “A better selection than I expected considering we’re as close to nowhere as I’ve ever been. How are you feeling?” he handed her one of the burgers with a selection of condiments for her to add. She hadn’t looked in a state to field a questionnaire about what she wanted to eat. She’d had a burger at the drive through, so he’d known that was safe.

“This place isn’t going to help me get into the FBI, but their server’s solid enough I was about to install extra protection. No one’s going to find us unless they already know we’re in this building and I’ve added everything I could think of to scramble precognition, remove viewing and whatever far-something someone might be able to cobble together up to them having access to your cum.”

Paul stared at her.

“You do know what someone can do with that, right?”

“Just about everyone I know in the magical community is Society,” Paul replied. “Yes, I’m well aware of what’s capable with that. Which is why I’m not in the habit of leaving any lying around.”

“Shower?” he asked. The air was slightly humid, but scales didn’t show the result of one as readily as fur.

“Go ahead, already had one.”

He ate first.

Once he was washed and as dried as the two towels allowed him to be, he stretched.

“If you want to surf the net, you can do that, I’ve anonymized your phone, but don’t contact anyone. I have no way to know the kind of power the Chamber had set up to intercept calls to your friends.”

“How about messaging? I can get on a public site, create a one time account to let them know.”

“Already done.”

His phone buzzed and he looked at the message from a Sheallie Fortune, out of GroupTalk that had been sent to her nearly two hundred friends. A quick check of the list showed him many names he knew among a lot more he didn’t.

“Is everyone real?” he asked, noting a name that concerned him.

“Yeah. I grabbed them off the site at random. The Chamber would notice if it was all bots except for the people who matter. The message’s veiled enough the rest won’t care all that much.”

Paul read the message.

“Hey friends, me and Paulie are off on an adventure after my place was forcefully redecorated(don’t ask). Don’t worry, he’s just as safe as I am, but we’re going to be off the grid for a bit because what goes with an adventure but a lack of safety net, right? Chat when we come up for air.”

He looked at her. “My Mon’s in that list.”

“Figured you’d want her to know.” The pangolin looked at him. “She does know, right?”

Paul nodded. After what Henry had done to his memory, and everything else that had happened around the Hertz, the only way his mother could have been kept in the dark was to have someone alter her memories. It was suggested, but not recommended. Not that Paul would have allowed it.

So enough had been explained to his mother that she’d understand when Paul had difficulties differentiating real memories from the ones that had been recovered. She hadn’t wanted to know more. Paul was fortunate that as someone Henry paid attention to late in the whole thing, he hadn’t had a the chance to make the multiple changes he seemed to enjoy doing. He’d gone extreme on Paul, but he only had five different sets of them, instead of the dozens or in some case hundreds some of the others had to work through.

It had still left his mother worried about what else was out there that could hurt him. Not enough to try and keep him from leaving Minneapolis for his studies, but enough to try and convince him to find a place closer than San Francisco Bay. It was a big city with a lot of not too great rumors about it. But San Francisco University had one of the best Biotech course short of going to the big names.

She didn’t know Shila, but she would be suspicious enough to contact the Hertz, and Eric and Nadia would ask Thomas who, if he hadn’t worked it out by then, would check in with people in San Francisco.

He really hoped they were to convince her he was fine… well, as fine as he could be. It wasn’t like he was the target. Otherwise she was going to freak.

* * * * *

Paul rushed out of the bathroom, having hears Shila’s string of nos that signaled she was panicking as he shut the water off.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Shila, what’s wrong?” he repeated when she wouldn’t look up from her phone. She glanced him, eyes wide. Instead of saying anything, she swiped toward the screen on the wall and it came on with a news segment.

“As of two hours age,” a fox in a suit seated behind a desk said somberly, “a state of emergency has been declared for the city of Denver, an a quarantine has been imposed. Information is still difficult to obtain, but we have Jennifer standing by in Parker, where the Military had been setting up one of the check-points. Jennifer, what can you tell us?”

“Not very much, Gregory,” a woman answered, the still of a bovine wearing glasses in a sports jacket appearing over the fox’s right shoulder. “The National Guard is preventing anyone from entering unless they have medical credentials. The CDC is reported to be on site, but I haven’t been able to confirm it. The little I have managed to gather is terrifying enough.”

“Jennifer?” Gregory asked when the silence stretched. He looked to someone off camera and opened his mouth when she said.

“It’s the Black Death, Greg.”

Chapter 6

They were stopped in a town less than thirty miles from Denver and forced to park in a mall when they couldn’t show some kind of credentials from the medical field. It didn’t matter how much Shila tried to refer them to the extensive site she’d created for them during the drive. Without a piece of plastic the soldier could scan, they weren’t getting through.

Unfortunately, those were beyond the capability of her phone.

Ultimately, it wasn’t the Black Death. The CDC had been on site, and the day after the quarantine went up they’d given a statement. It was severe, possibly on par with the Black Death, but they had confirmed it wasn’t it. Which was both good and bad news. As deadly as the Black Death had been, it had been studied, and could be fought easily. This new strain was proving more difficult to pin down.

“But,” the older beaver had said, “so long as we keep our heads, take precautions, and work together, we will get through this.”

Shila hadn’t had much flattering to say after listening to that clip, and Paul wanted to be more generous, but one thing history classes, all the way back in high school, had showed, was that as a country, his wasn’t great at doing the right thing in an emergency.

Paul rested his arms on he steering wheel and looked out on the parking lot. It wasn’t a full as he’d expected it to be. It had been three days since the quarantine had been put in place and while they were on a back road for another reason. The National Guard’s presence showed they expected people to try to brake it this way.

Most of the vehicles were news vans from agencies so small some didn’t even have names on them. They made Shila nervous, and he understood her. While the Chamber couldn’t expect them to come here, it was only a question of money to set up face recognitions software to look at all video feeds these days. And one thing Paul had noticed was that magic people had money. His Thomas, who’d grown up solidly middle class with him, was now rich because of what his magic let him do.

It was why they’d avoided the major roads or cities on the way here.

“No, no, no, no.”

“What—”

“Move,” Shila ordered. “We need to leave, drive, now!”

Paul drove toward one of the lot’s exits.

The pangolin looked over her shoulder then sank down in her seat. “The Chamber’s here.”

“How? You said you had programs hiding us, right?”

She looked terrified. She’d seemed so confident that it would be enough. Paul couldn’t imagine what it could be like to realize that someone was strong enough to undercut your protection like that.

The soldier stopped them, and Paul explained they were leaving the area since it wasn’t safe. She looked in the car, then arranged to have two other soldiers escort them to the road and see them on their way.

“Did they see you?” He asked. If Denver was off limit because they were expected there. Where else could they go? Paul knew of cities in the country where Society families were in charge, but other than the Richards, who he only had had indirect contact with. He didn’t know anyone who would listen.

“No, she was giving a report.”

Shila was looking at her phone, typing and swiping. Paul parked at a charging station just out of the town. They might as well get that down while they worked out their next move.

She showed him her phone, on it a calico cat was talking about the emergency. She was petite, in a blouse, with her face fur trimmed in what Paul thought straight men found appealing. He’d seen the style on the girls at school.

“I’m not seeing it. Is it the microphone? Is that the staff?”

Shila swiped and symbols trailed her fingers, and the blouse and well trimmed fur dissolved into a plain looking calico dressed in the most garish coat Paul had ever seen. There were so many colors on it, no one in their—

So many colors.

“Are you telling me the coat of many colors is a real thing?” he asked, dismayed.

“How the fuck would I know that? I don’t know where that thing’s from. Ask Grant. He’d the vaunted know-it-all when it come to staves. But she means they’re here. So—”

“Are you sure she’s here for you?”

“Who else would she be here for?”

“I don’t know, but Donal is in Denver. Do you know of any other Practitioner there?”

She opened here mouth, then closed it, looking outside. “Merlin.”

“I’m going to guess that’s a different one than the the round table one.”

She nodded. “He’s a doctor. A plague would be the perfect thing to draw him out. He was in Denver last time I checked on him. Attached himself to a private security company years ago as protection from the Chamber, but this… if that’s for him. He won’t be able to stay out of it, so all the Chamber needs to do is have people near the hot spots and they’ll get him.”

“Can we help him?” Paul asked. “Should we? I mean if they capture him, is he in danger, it’s his staff they want, right?”

“They can’t get it unless they push him to Apotheosis. He’ll be dead,” she cut off his question, so not an ascension the way he’d expected. “That’s all that matters for us. Then they can take his staff.”

“So do we help him? Can we help him if the Chamber is also after you, or can they get you to reach that apotheosis state too?”

She shook her head. “They already tried in San Francisco. The attack on my home was about pushing me past my limits, but I was smarter than they were. I have breakers in place, you could call them. They blew the servers before I could reach my limit and also threw what they were doing in shamble long enough I could get out, call you and we could run.”

Paul nodded. “Okay, so the way I’m seeing this. The chamber cut you off from anyone who could help you, then stressed you until you, died.”

“It’s not death to me. But it’s complicated.”

Paul nodded again. “But being isolated was key to pushing you to that state. So it’s probably what they’re doing with this Doc Merlin here, right?”

“Probably.”

“Then the best we you can be safe,” he said, starting the car. “Is by increasing the number of allies. We get to Donal. He’s a local, so he’s going to know where the doctor is, right? That’s going to be three Practitioners together against whatever the Chamber has. That’s got to be better than just one, right?”

She nodded. It was hesitating, but it was a nod.

“Good, now, please tell me that my little speech got your imagination going, because I have no idea how I can get us past the National guard.”