Dark Fate, Chapter 83 (Patreon)

Chapter 83 – Visitors

The response from the pilots was fairly quick. All of them had seen my girls, and wanted a piece of that action. Of course, I had to turn down some requests, as a few of them wanted specific people, such as celebrities or people they knew before the Apocalypse, to be enslaved for them. Most of them accepted that I wasn’t going to bring that kind of attention to my operation, and picked again. A couple had to be further corrected, and I made a note to keep them under observation, but they all picked acceptable choices in the end.

Combined with staff for the station and the ground crews, the total came out to just over one hundred and sixty slaves to be brought on board. I got bulk rates on Atlanteans, which were roughly human, but with blue anime hair and more of an aptitude for magic. The thirty-six personal slaves for the pilots, however, were bought out of their own pockets. If they needed funds, well, I would forward them the money, but it was coming out of their pay. Not that they needed that much money, since the only thing they were paying for would be creature comforts.

Rule of thumb was that you would typically be paying 30% of your gross income in housing, just on rent. Food, utilities, health insurance, and all of that piled on top. Not to mention car payments and car insurance, as well as anything else that you might need to do. And housing sometimes got to be much more than 30% of people’s income, depending on where they lived.

As employees of the Dark Lord Industries Company, registered and run out of Ceres, they were technically working abroad. If they stayed on Ceres for at least 330 of the next 365 days, they didn’t count as living in the US under US tax law, and wouldn’t have to pay US income taxes. Same for me, as well, which was great, because I wasn’t planning on reporting my previous timeline income anyways.

My official residence had already moved to Ceres, actually. The teleporter pad at my old house received an upgrade, allowing me to reach the matching pad in my quarters on Ceres, but everyone else needed to take a shuttle down, if they wanted to visit Earth. Not that there was much need for that. Part of designing Ceres Base included a mana-based internet connection, and the System Shop already had its own branch on station. Basically, the only reason anyone needed to go down to Earth for was to see family for things that couldn’t be handled in a zoom call.

Of course, normally a zoom call wouldn’t be possible, either, since light took just shy of sixteen minutes to get from Earth to Ceres, meaning you had a lag in lightspeed transmissions of over half an hour between when you stopped speaking, and when you’d hear the person’s response. Not ideal for most conversations, but I knew plenty of people where the delay would make things much more bearable. However, thanks to magic and the System, we had communications relays set up, so that latency was basically nil. Something that the gamers all appreciated.

Thankfully, all of this happened very quickly, because, two days after I moved most of my operation into space, a black car pulled up to the gate of my home. Not the bait house, but the actual house I won from that idiot, months ago. On the security camera, it looked so generically black that it was obviously some kind of government vehicle.

I did not have any kind of divination or scrying spells (something I really ought to fix), but being the owner of a properly warded property gave me some ability to cast my senses through the wards. It was something that required concentration, so I couldn’t listen in on someone across the house while carrying on a conversation, but I could cast my senses of sight and hearing into the car as it pulled up to my gate, just inside the wards. And I was glad I did.

Three people sat in the car. Two were clearly agents of some kind, wearing nice suits that just screamed ‘fed’. The third was actually military. No clue which branch. One kind of camouflage looks basically the same as another, to my untrained eye. Interestingly enough, the military representative and the agent not driving the car were both ladies.

The female agent frowned as she looked through the windshield at the gate and wall surrounding my property. “Are you sure this is the right place? This looks nothing like the plans on file. There’s supposed to be a simple gate, and a basic security fence. And I thought I saw some kind of tower as we were driving up!”

The man shrugged. “This is the address Atlanta Police gave us. Apparently, the owner helped them with a bunch of System-related issues until they were able to train up their people on the new realities. Maybe he made some improvements with the System’s help? We still haven’t figured out everything it can do, after all.”

“I’m sure,” the military representative said, “But how did he know so much about the System, and in so short a time? It seems to me that there is a lot we don’t know about this man.”

“I’m also interested in how this Greene character came to ‘own’ this property, since records say that it belongs to the Turner family, and the most recent resident was the son, Bill Turner. The rest of the Turners died in Aspen, when a yeti spawned in the middle of their ski trip, but no one has heard from Bill Turner since the Apocalypse.”

The male agent looked to his partner. “You think he had something to do with that?”

“Maybe. But let’s go ahead and press the call button. See if anyone’s home.”

I let my senses return to my body as the driver reached out to touch the button on the gate’s intercom. Picking up the nearby tablet that ran the security system, I hit the button to respond, getting an image of the driver’s face. Generically handsome, short brown hair, not really athletic. More likely FBI or NSA than CIA, if I had to guess.

“I’m sorry, we’re not expecting any deliveries today. All other business by appointment only.”

The agent frowned, and brought out a leather card holder, flipping it open to reveal his FBI credentials. “Agent Cooper, FBI. May we come in?”

Hmm, the actual FBI, huh? Well, this could be interesting. I triggered the gate’s automatic opener, causing it to swing inwards. “Very well. I will open the gate for you. But I warn you not to go off the path. Don’t want to trigger any of the defenses by mistake.”

I turned off the camera as the agent rolled up the window, and sent a quick message for the servants to make themselves scarce for a while, and for Lilith to get the door. I wouldn’t trust the agents to not have some kind of skill like my [Appraise Value], and if they could detect titles, then that would just give them information that they could use against me if they found out how many people were slaves here.

To try and tilt things my way, I made sure that my pheromones and glamour were in full effect. Another benefit of the others being out of sight is that they wouldn’t be crawling all over me trying to get some while I was working on corrupting the visitors. Fortunately, between Lilith and I, that would be easy enough to sway.

I was sitting in the lounge when Lilith brought them in, wearing nothing but my shadow armor, taking the form of a robe tied about my waist. Lilith, on the other hand, was wearing a black bikini that did little to hide her assets (especially with the G-string in back), because she had intended to do some sunbathing before this little visitation. That reminded me, I should check in with her mother, at some point, and see how she was doing. She should be about seven months in, by now. I’d just need to arrange some way to ‘accidentally’ meet her.

Louis Cooper

Human   Male

Level 15 Seeker / Investigator

Titles:

Highest Attribute: WIS

Market   Value: 5000 gp

Laura   Ward

Human Female

Level 15 Archivist / Scientist

Titles:

Highest Attribute: INT

Market   Value: 6000 gp

Yasmin Walker

Human Female

Level 20 Assassin / Analyst

Titles:

Highest Attribute: CHA

Market   Value: 12000 gp

A quick appraisal of the three left me mildly impressed. None of them had titles, but that wasn’t too surprising. What was surprising was the classes they had.

Assassin was the least unusual of the three, and even that was rare compared to the more generic Rogue class. While Rogues had a wide array of utility type abilities, such as disabling alarms, picking locks, and so on, Assassins were specialized in taking living beings and turning them into dead ones. Stealth was one part of that, sure, but there was more than one type of assassin. Given that her profession was Analyst and her highest attribute was CHA, I figured her for the ‘black widow’ type. Seduce her way into places, and then use her analytical abilities to recover information or intelligence while she was there.

Archivist, on the other hand, was, in essence, a Priestess of Knowledge. They were book-smart clerics, who cast their chosen god or ideal’s spells through the spellbook they filled out. And they were likely to know a little bit about everything. An interesting choice, for an FBI agent.

And then there was Seeker. The class came with zero combat abilities and skills, though it didn’t prohibit those who had it from picking them up in other ways. However, the focus of the class was on seeking things.

A Seeker on the hunt was said to be as dangerous as a Seer with a vision. While they didn’t get shown visions of events or people like Seers did, once they set a target for their [Seeking] ability, they had what amounted to a mental compass, showing them the direction they needed to go. Of course, the basic version didn’t have things like how far they needed to travel, or anything like that, so someone who inadvertently started seeking for someone on the other side of the country would be very disappointed.

The biggest weakness of the Seeker was that you needed to know, at least to some degree, what you were looking for before the [Seeking] ability activated. Seeking for a specific magical artifact? That was certainly possible, though most magical artifacts had wards to prevent divinations, which could block a Seeker’s ability, or at least reduce the viable range dramatically. Seeking a specific person? Same deal. Seeking ‘the way to destroy the demon lord’? Well, that wasn’t going to work. Best case scenario was that you’d get multiple hits (sometimes many multiples).

The man’s Investigator profession covered for that weakness quite nicely, though. With it, he’d be able to search for clues rather efficiently, ferreting out information. And then he could use that information to launch [Seeking], or to refine his search criteria further. With the proper backup, that agent could be a real terror to people on the wrong side of the law.

Of course, all three were already looking a bit flushed. Agent Cooper couldn’t keep his eyes off of Lilith as she walked over to sit next to me on the couch, and the two women were little better, the way they stared at me. And the way their eyes flared when they saw Lilith sit by me? Perfection.

“So, who might you be, and what brings you to my domain?”

Agent Cooper slowly pulled himself out of the pheromone-induced stupor, and said, “Ah, I am Agent Cooper, and this is Agent Ward, of the FBI. Specialist Walker is with the US Air Force. Are you Zayn Greene?”

“Yes, I am. But please, why don’t you take a seat. It is a little annoying to have you all standing around like that. But seriously, what brings a Seeker, an Archivist, and an Assassin to my doorstep?”

Agent Ward coughed once to clear her head as she sat down across the living room table from me. “We got your file from the Atlanta PD. You did some work for them, regarding the System, and related threats, yes? We wanted your opinion on a few recent developments.”

“Well, if it is consulting work like I did before with the APD and their task force, I’d be happy to help. But perhaps you could give me some specifics, first, before I commit myself one way or the other?”

“Yes, well, the first thing is the sudden disappearance of thirty-seven people in the last couple months. All thirty-seven were involved in the e-sports scene, and all thirty-seven attended a meeting of some sort here in Atlanta. Others also attended the meeting, but they cannot speak about what happened, due to an NDA that has System backing. Shortly after that meeting, all thirty-seven dropped off social media, and have stopped gaming.”

“I see. Well, I can understand why the FBI might be interested in that, but I fail to see what brings the Air Force to my door?”

As I turned to look at her, the assassin nodded. “Our interest involves the classified research materials that found their way into the hands of the Boeing corporation, and have been distributed to other military contractors. In addition, there are some satellite images of activity out in the asteroid belt that are quite concerning to us.”

I chuckled. “Yes, I’ve seen the pictures and discussion online. Very interesting stuff. So, you decided to seek out an expert on the System, then, and got my name from the APD?”

Agent Cooper nodded. “Yes, and when we did, we crosschecked it, and found that an account registered to you was present on the Community Building and Civil Defense Chat message board, under the name DarkLord. When we checked through your public post history, this brought up many more questions.”

“Yes, I can see. Well, ask your questions. I promise to either answer with truth, or not at all.”