The Daily Grind - Chapter 112 (Patreon)

I am here to report with shame that I missed my deadline for "one a week" by *fourteen minutes*.  I make no excuses, and will report to the stockade alongside George Martin at once for the fate of all delinquent authors.

Fifteen minutes now, since I took my sweet time writing that.
_____

Hospital waiting rooms sucked.  James, at this point in his life, had a lot more experience with emergency waiting rooms than he’d really expected to ever acquire.  And right now, walking in with an injured high schooler’s arm over his shoulder, the experience didn’t get any better.

At least the waiting room chairs still looked comfortable.

The entrance had been… awkward, at best.  James had lied his ass off, and in a twisted form of fortune, news of an active shooting at a certain high school had already started propagating.  He’d gotten the kid - gotten Matt.  His name was Matthew, James couldn’t just keep thinking of him as ‘the kid with the nose’ forever - into a complementary wheelchair and in the door as fast as possible, trying to keep the time away from the camraconda to a minimum.  After a brief encounter where a nurse who hadn’t quite noticed all the blood insisted the two of them wear face masks, though, people had started to take notice of the bullet wounds, and the dripping red mess that was being wheeled into the ER.

And *then* the lying started.  Kind of.

“There were these guys in suits and sunglasses.  Looked like bad movie extras.”  James had told the hospital security.  They were keeping a very close eye on him until the police arrived to confirm that he wasn’t involved; James had no intention of trying to bluff being the FBI past these guys.  They were roughly the size and dimensions of silverback gorillas, but with better sticks and much better handcuffs than the animal kingdom produced naturally.  “I saw them shooting, saw the kid… Matt, I guess… fall over.  When they weren’t looking, I got him into my car and floored it here.”

The story would, James realized, actually cover for his speeding earlier in the day.  As long as no one looked too closely at the time stamps.

The security goons flanking James said nothing, unless you counted radiating an aura of suspicion.  The nurse behind the intake desk had actual questions.  “Did you see how many times he was shot?  This could be important for the surgery.”

“I did not.”  James half-lied.  “Two, maybe?  I tried to have him keep pressure on the wounds.”

“Okay.”  The woman nodded, typing and not really acknowledging if James had done the right thing or not.  “Does he have any medical conditions you know of?  Any allergies?”

“I met him ten minutes ago.”  James was starting to get frustrated.

Another round of rapid keyboard tapping.  “And have either of you traveled to China in the last month?”

“I… what?  No.  I mean, I haven’t.”  James cocked an eyebrow.  “Why…”

“Just a precaution.”  She told him.  “Please have a seat.  Harold here” the nurse gestured to the smaller of the goons, “is going to sit with you until the police arrive to take a statement.  Standard policy for gunshots, don’t worry.  You did fine getting him here, but next time, call 911.”

“People were shooting.”  James gave a flat stare.  “This isn’t Shadowrun, the EMTs aren’t DocWagon.”  Ignoring the nurses’ blank look, he turned to go find a seat in the waiting room, trailed by Harold.  He was starting to get annoyed.  Yes, of course, there were policies.  But… well…

James caught himself.  Here he was, already thinking he was beyond the law.  And that wasn’t quite true, nor did he want it to be.  “The Rules”, such as they were, didn’t really apply to him as much anymore. But that didn’t mean he should just ignore policies that were set for actual reasons.  Maybe the EMTs could have kept Matt stable for the duration of the trip.  Maybe the 911 call would have given him first aid advice.  There were things here he wasn’t fully considering.

Of course, *they* weren’t considering the technorganic basilisk in James’ back seat.  But that wasn’t their fault.  He could avoid sassing the hospital staff for ten minutes.

In the space between the desk and the chair he settled himself into, James generated about six different ideas for sticking camracondas into the backs of ambulances.  People didn’t need to *know* where they came from or what the broader context of inter-species cooperation was, really.  There were at least twenty of the little guys back at the Lair that were, in a word, *bored*.  The whole world was at their finger… fangtips… and they were stuck inside.  Maybe James could quietly strike a deal with the ambulance company to open up job positions for mobile safety-devices-and-stabilization-units.

James sat down, leaning his head back to thunk into the exterior wall of the ER.  He breathed softly through the mask for a second, trying to ignore the security person standing next to him, and then swept his vision across the waiting room.

Chairs were still here.  Better vending machine, too.  He wondered if anyone had *noticed* the orb that he and Anesh had used so long ago.  Maybe someone had tried to remove one of the chairs at some point, only to have it turn to ash.  That would be awkward.

There were other people here.  It was, after all, evening on a Friday.  The place wasn’t packed, but there were more than a few kids here with their parents, an elderly man laying back across a few chairs set up like a bench, one middle aged woman who looked like she was about to throw up, and a handful of people that were most likely just waiting to hear results or be told they could come back and visit friends or relatives.

Oh, and Lua and Momo.  Though they were in the last category.

James met Lua’s eyes, and gave a tiny shake of his head.  It wouldn’t do to have a supposedly random stranger approach him right now.  But if they were here, that meant Simon was here, and at the very least, being treated.  James hoped he was alright; he’d gotten hurt on James’ order, fighting someone else’s battle.  Even if he was a member of the Order, James still balked at the idea of using people as weapons.

They sat quietly for a while, James mostly just wondering when, if ever, the police were going to show up.  He supposed they probably had a lot on their plate right now, what with the whole ‘dead bodies in a school parking lot’ thing.  He’d cop to that; that one was firmly his fault.

In his defense, James entertained the grim thought, maybe they shouldn’t have provoked him.

“James!”  The voice snapped his head up, and James realized he must have dozed off a bit.  “Are you alright?!”  Dave demanded, face a riot of concern as he half-jogged across the ER lobby.  The security Harold raised an arm to stop him, but the younger man, wearing a shirt that just said “Dogs?!” along with a pair of dangling earbuds that didn’t seem plugged into anything, just dipped under it, moving with a fluid grace that James vaguely realized he must have picked up sometime in the last six months.  “Is anyone hurt?”

James flicked his eyes to Harold, who was saying something about how Dave had to step back, and being firmly ignored.  “I’m fine.”  James said.  “Just waiting for the fuzz so I can give a statement.  I’m thinking of calling sergeant Madden just to speed this up.”  He sighed, stretching out his legs in front of him.  “What’re you doing here?”

“Do you not look at your phone?”  Dave demanded, incredulous.

James blinked.  He hadn’t looked at his phone, actually.  “Did someone message me?”  He asked, digging into his pocket, and pulling out the brick of technology.

Brick was the right word, it turned out.  “Oh.”  Dave said simply, while Harold silently widened his eyes and stopped trying to catch the elegantly dodging man.

Three bullets lined the back of his phone like it had been hit by the world’s worst bedazzler. James gave a mournful ‘awww’, as he looked on the ruin of his most useful possession in the world; screen shattered in a spiderweb, battery smashed in, circuits snapped.  And then, another, louder ‘awwww!’, as he reached back into his pocket and realized that those bullets had also torn up his pants.

“You were shot.”  Dave said quietly.  “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine.”  James told him, reassuringly.  He aimed a pitch to lob his phone into a distant garbage can, but was stopped by a light cough from Harold.

“The police are probably going to want to see that.”  The hospital security said, trying to be polite now.  Apparently, having literally been inches away from shot raised James’ estimation in his eyes.  Maybe they’d all assumed James himself was the killer up until now.

James nodded, thankfully, to him.  “Good point.”  He set the ruined lump of technology on the chair next to him.  “So, anything I need to know about before I get back to this serious waiting?”  James asked Dave, trying to broadcast the need to be circumspect.

“Alanna and Pen… um… Penelope… are waiting in the parking garage.”  Dave said, sheepishly withering under James pursed lips and wide, disbelieving eyes.  “We got here as soon as we could to make sure you were okay.  Anesh wanted to come, but he can’t get ahold of… his… brother?”  Dave cleared his throat, trying to find a word that wasn’t “clone”.  “Or his family.  Or *your* family.  Or… um… Alanna’s family.  Actually.  And it’s…. James, wait!” 

“Sir, please sit down!”

James ignored both Dave and Harold as he shoved himself to his feet, grabbing Dave by the shoulder as he stepped closer.  “What?”  He hissed quietly.  “Is going on?”

“I don’t know.”  The way Dave said it, hard and worried, froze Harold in his attempts to ‘restrain’ either of the two men.  “We don’t know.  Something is wrong.  What do we do?”  There was fear in his voice.

His feet froze in place.  What did they *do*?  Why was James the one being asked that?  He stood there, his brain trying to figure out *anything*, while Harold gave up on keeping him there for the police and stepped off to the side to say something into a radio.  Across the room, Lua and Momo were looking at him with concerned eyes.

Oh, that was why, it clicked for James.  They really did think he was qualified to be their leader.  And the depressing thing was, he probably was.

“Okay.”  He said, breathing as steady as he could.  “Get back to the Lair.  Take Momo.  Also get the kid and the camracondas out of our cars.  Get Pendragon *off the roof of a hospital parking garage*.”  James narrowed his eyes.  “Actually, shit, Nate’s still here.  Here, give him my keys.”  James fished his car keys out of his pocket and handed them off.  “Get everyone ready.  We’re going to go have a little chat with Status Quo after I talk to…”

“Excuse me, sir?”  Harold had finished his conversation over the radio, and had stepped back up to talk to James.  But this time, his posture was different.  Less aggressive, a little confused, emotion visible even through his face mask.  His hands held at his sides, passive.  Also no one called James ‘sir’, so that was weird too.

“No one calls me sir.”  James said.  “What’s gone wrong?  Wait, shit!  Is the kid… Matt… okay?”  James felt his heart leap into his throat.  Had they been too slow?  Too careless?  Did the camraconda lockdown effect hurt people somehow?  “Did something go wrong?”

The security guard blinked, then cleared his throat.  “I don’t think so.  The Director of Surgical Services would like to talk to you.  If… you have time.”

“Um.”  James faltered.  “What about the police?”

“He… uh… said that it’s taken care of.”  Harold looked *beyond* concerned.  “I can take you to him, if you’d like.”

James thought about it.  Really put thought into it, processed the words.  It wasn’t free, in terms of time cost, and he was in a bit of a hurry.  But cutting ‘the police’ out of his schedule probably saved more time than the director wanted in the first place.  And something had changed.  Hospital security had gone from acting like an obstacle to being respectful in the course of two minutes.  That alone had James curious.

“Okay.  Yes.”  He nodded at Harold.  “Dave, go.  Momo!”  James called across the waiting room, causing the young woman to jump in shock.  “Get up!  Get moving!”  He looked back at Harold, who now looked even more confused.  “Let’s go.”

The walk through the hospital was snappy, and James found himself struggling a bit to keep up with the taller guard.  But he wanted to move as fast as possible, so he ignored the itching pain in his leg where the bullet cuts were rapidly healing, and matched pace so the other man wouldn’t slow down.  He had questions, but kept them private.  Harold wasn’t gonna know the answers anyway, most likely.

In short order, after one elevator ride up to the fifth floor and another stupidly long hallway, they arrived through a suite of office spaces to a brown wooden door, waved past by a secretary who seemed prepared for James to have shown up there.  He felt like he should be out of breath, but half a year of longer hikes on this same kind of carpet had left James’ legs hardened for exactly this sort of thing.

Harold knocked twice, then opened the door for James.  “Go on in.  He’s expecting you.”

The ominous nature of that statement made James want to roll his eyes.  But then, this was a guy who ran who-knew how much of this hospital.  And he’d asked to speak to James personally.  There was a desire to use sarcasm as a barrier against the anxiety of dealing with an authority figure like that, but he tamped it down, galvanized his manners in preparation.

The office James stepped into looked… used.  Comfortable, even.  It instantly put him more at ease to see it in contrast to the typically uncanny valley rooms of Officium Mundi.  Bookshelves on the left wall where half the books were stacked sideways after having not been put away properly, a desk covered in paperwork and that classic ‘collection of things acquired over years of not moving desks’ that most people had, all topped off by a skeleton in the corner that James *assumed* wasn’t real, but who knew?

The man behind the desk looked a bit tired, and like he’d been tired for the last ten of his fifty or sixty years.  Short hair in a buzz cut that really did a lot to hide the receding hairline, wrinkles on an aged his face that showed an equal number of laughs as scowls.  Skinny eyebrows, and a pointed chin.  He was one thin moustache away from looking like a comic villain.

“Good evening.  I’m Doctor Nikita.”  His voice instantly killed the villain vibe as he rose to shake James’ hand.  It was warm, with a hint of a Russian accent, and the implicit feeling that he *cared*.  “Have a seat, please.”

“James.”  James introduced himself, sitting in a chair that he was *sure* had been swiped out of the waiting room.  “So… at the risk of being too direct, what can I do for you?”

“I am comfortable with direct.”  The director of surgical services said, folding his hands in front of him.  “You have a great deal of heart.”

“Thank you?”  He replied, with a confused but polite grin.

“Ah.  Apologies.  You have a great *number* of *hearts*.”

James froze.  “Beg pardon?”

Doctor Nikita opened a small notebook in front of him, and read off his own notes.  “You are, it would seem, an associate of a one Alanna Byrne.  A woman who injured a number of hospital staff last month, in the process of delivering to us a number of… human hearts.”

“No?”  James said, feebly.

The doctor turned a page in his notebook.  “You are also an associate of a one Anesh Patel, who was treated here.  Several times.  During one of those visits, the very chair you are sitting in appeared in this building.”

“When you say ‘appeared’...”  James started before the doctor waved him off.

“The chair is less important.  I merely bring it up to prove a point.”  He said, his voice still calm and grandfatherly.  “I have a question for you.”  Nikita casually leaned to the side and opened a desk drawer, causing James’ combat instincts to spark to life until the doctor pulled out a simple wooden case.  “Can you bring us more?”

“What.”  James asked flatly, now beyond confused.

“More hearts.”  Came the simple reply.  “They are… amazing.  Perfectly functional, no matter how long they are exposed to the air.”  The doctor looked up from the now open box and its single human heart, still under the stasis effect Sarah had put the first one under before they started duplicating them.  “They aren’t from humans, are they?”

James cleared his throat.  “That’s an interesting question, that… I am going to… decline to answer?”  The doctor didn’t say anything, just giving him a level stare until he relented.  Remembering that he was on a time budget here, James threw his hands in the air, and looked away, not making eye contact.  “Alright, fine!  Technically they’re not from humans, no!”

“Why?”  The doctor asked.

“Why what?”

“Such braggadocio.”  The old man shook his head with a smile.  “Why did you bring them to us?  These hearts, this gift.  It saved lives, but we didn’t ask for it.”

James winced.  “Honestly, we didn’t know exactly how to put them into circulation.”  He let out a small cough again.  “Also, if you want more, I’ll need that one back, so we can… um.”  He paused.  “You probably don’t need to know.  But yeah, we brought them to you because we wanted to help.  That’s all.  Clearly I didn’t do my research correctly on how many hearts were actually needed.  Look, that’s not important.  I actually really need to go, I’m in a hurry today.  Thank you for dealing with the police, I think?  But yes, I can bring you more hearts in a week or two.”

“The police are no matter.”  The aged doctor made a short chop with a flat hand.  “When they are told the report was a mistake, they leave.  They do not waste time on thinking too hard.”  He stood, reaching out to shake James’ hand.  “Go.  I will take care of your people.  And you will bring me hearts, and I will get them where they need to be.”

James shook the offered hand, blinking slightly at the strength of the surgeon’s grip.  He turned to leave, but paused at the door.  “Are you sure it’s okay?  You’re kind of breaking all the rules here, aren’t you?”

Nikita laughed, a deep chuckle that filled the room with its sound.  “Child.”  He said, shaking his head.  “The point of being in charge is to know when the rules are there to guide us, and when they are obstacles.”  His eyes narrowed slightly.  “Now?  I choose obstacle.”  He waved James on, out the door.  “Go.  Go.  I know the look in your eye.  You are needed.  And if you have this… power… then I can only imagine what it is that you are needed *for*.”  He waited as James gave him a nod and started striding away with a rapid gait, holding his pose sitting there at his desk, hands folded.

It was only after the door closed that he sighed, and let his composure slip a bit.  “Well.”  The old doctor said to himself.  “Well well.”  He sighed again, and then picked up his phone.  Time to make some calls.  If the child could deliver?  Well.

More things in Heaven and Earth, were opportunities for those who saw them.

_____

“I think it’s pronounced ill-ip-eed.”  Was the first thing James heard as he slid under the heavy garage door in the back of the Lair, not waiting for it to fully rise.

“But that’s stupid.”  Alex bluntly replied to Daniel, eyebrows raised in incredulity, as if it strained the limits of belief that anyone could make such a mistake.  “It’s a pun on iPhone, right?  So it should be eye-leh-peed.”

“But that’s awkward to say?”  Daniel gave a feeble defense, casting around for anyone would could come to his aid.  “JP, help me out here.”

“No.”  JP ruined his hopes, the word coming out actually kind of hard.  He was sitting a few steps away at one of the little pods of desks, his workspace an absolute disaster area of printouts and clutter.  He also had no interest in getting into this fight.

He wasn’t the only one.  Across the warehouse, members of the Order sat in tense quiet.  Murmured conversations between twos and threes that regularly lapsed into silence.  Everyone had arrived here, rapidly thanks to the persistent and worrying effect of the green that reduced travel time, in response to James summons.  But while rumors had gotten ample time to develop in the time it took him to meet with the doctor and get back, they hadn’t done much to make people worry any less.

“You can say it however you want.”  James’ voice sounded booming against the muffled quiet of the room, especially as all the whispers stopped when he started talking.  “It’s like gif.  The correct pronunciation hasn’t stopped people from fighting over it on the internet, so just say it the way you’re comfortable.”  He looked around as the door continued to roll open behind him.  “Where’s Nate?”

“Getting the new kid some food.”  JP said, looking up from his desk.

“And Dave? Alanna?”  James hadn’t seen Pendragon when he’d arrived in the rideshare he’d summoned, realizing too late he’d handed off his own car to Nate.

“Checking up on Alanna’s sister.”  Sarah said, approaching James with the longest steps she could manage, and wrapping him in a sudden hug and getting a shocked oof out of him.  “Are you alright?”  Her muffled voice came out of his coat where she’d shoved her head.  “I heard there was a fight.”

“Yeah.”  James said, awkwardly patting her head.  “There was.  I’ll tell you about it in a second.”  He looked out at the dozens of sets of eyes staring at him, stepping out of the hug to address the crowd.  “Alright people!  Gather up!”

They did, with a few vocalized questions of ‘what’s going on’ or ‘did something happen’.  This back space, used mostly for briefings, some manufacturing of armor, and workspaces for people like JP who preferred to do finance crime at an at least marginally hidden location, was pretty large.  But around the furniture they’d added to it, it still surprised James just how many people had showed up.

Nearly everyone.

The other James was here, looking just as concerned as Momo as the two of them stood near the front.  An Anesh had entered at some point, with the buzzing figure of Ganesh on his shoulder.  He stood next to Secret, the two of them having been exchanging words but fallen silent since James spoke up.  Even Harvey and Karen were here, with a handful of the unaffiliated victims of the dungeon who they’d been happy to help out, but had never committed to joining the order like others.  Others like the over excitable Ethan, who stood next to the glowering Neil.  Two opposites of personality, one begging to get into the dungeon again, the other roped into it almost by accident.  The whole research team was here, too; Reed still looking continually sheepish about the incident with Curious.  Nate and the high schooler coming at the back in response to Deb fetching them at some point.  El had showed, too, though she stood near the back, making her lack of connection a bit obvious.  She stood almost alone, but near her, also notably alone, the most surprising person to have arrived was Theo.

There were more, too.  So many names and faces that James had trouble sorting them all out for a minute.  A handful of camracondas, a few people James had ‘hired’ over the last month, one of the friendlier shellaxies, Rufus, all of them here.  Waiting.  Listening.

“Okay.”  He started, and took a deep breath.  He was getting better at speaking to crowds, but this was kind of intense.  It didn’t help that everyone here had picked up on the slightly panicked mood.  “Just to get everyone on the same page.  There was a fight.”

A ripple ran through the crowd.  A murmur of quiet confusion from some, and bitter conviction from those who were more aware of the situation. “What kind of fight?”  Sarah asked, cracking her finger bones in a nervous pattern.

“The kind where some people got shot.”  James said.  He inhaled through his nose again, and then started giving a rough outline of the battle.  The call, the arrival, the gunfight.  The second gunfight.  Simon’s injury, the kid getting shot.  The hospital.  He wrapped it up by saying, “Lua’s still there, in case they need to contact us.  The doctor seemed uninterested in blowing our cover; I think he’s in our corner.”

“You left Lua there alone, after that?”  Karen demanded, anger on her face.  “After those men tried to abduct her?!”

“She has my telepad.”  James said.  “She can blip back here whenever she needs to.  And we needed someone there just in case.  The hospital security is keeping an eye on her, and not even the police know she’s there.”

Anesh cleared his throat.  “You were in a school shooting.”  He said, quietly.  “A shooting at a school, anyway.  Someone’s going to have video of that.  This might be a problem.”

“I don’t think that’s the important part here.”  El cut in, voice raised over the crowd from the back.  A few heads turned to look at her.  “You’re missing the big picture. J already said it.  The agents were MIBs, weren’t they?  They had *Powers*.  And they were there to *kill kids*.”  She shot a glance toward the kid in their midst.  One of the targets.  He shrank down into his chair as a few people turned pitying, angry eyes on him.

Silence.

James felt the sneer on his face more than he actually meant to make it.  “Yeah.”  He hissed out.  “They were.  Lua, too.”

“Are they government?”  Harvey asked.  He didn’t seem surprised by it.  Just sad, and determined.

“No idea.”  James said.  “We have one lead on them, and that’s *if* they’re the same people.”  He gave a quick outline of the encounter with Curious, for those who didn’t know, and her words about the organization of Status Quo.

“So, were you guys delvers, kid?”  Neil bluntly directed the question at the kid.

“His name’s Graham.”  Nate cut in, voice hard.  He hadn’t been having a particularly fun day so far, and wasn’t in the mood to suffer foolishness, even by accident.

“Um…” Graham fidgeted in his seat, the curly haired youth absolutely uncomfortable speaking in front of a room full of adults who were all focused on him.  “I don’t know what that means? We were just… um… just…”

“A delver.”  James said quietly, giving him a much needed respite, “Is someone who intentionally enters a Relevant Space with an objective in mind.  You might call it something else.  A dungeon, probably.  A lair, a trap.  You might think it’s a one-off anomaly.  It’s not.”  He cleared his throat, sheepishly.  “You may have noticed that there are non-human life forms in the room.  They’re dungeon Life, more or less.  You, ah, don’t need to be afraid of them.”  He gave one of the camracondas nearest Graham an apologetic look.  “Sorry.”  He said, realizing that half the kid’s worry was probably the proximity to the snake.

Graham had gone silent as James was talking, and when he’d finished, he had a look in his eye.  Like something had been confirmed for him, and he’d found his voice.  “There’s a room, in the school…” he started.

“It’s a pitch black maze of pipes.”  James said, softly.  “Full of bugs, and rats, and worse.  And it wants you to kill to leave.”

“Yeah.”  Graham said.  “We thought it was bullshit.  But then our friends kept going missing.  And then the counselor lady showed up, and we thought it might have been her.  And then… we started asking questions… and...”

“And then you fit all the outward apperances of a team of adventurers.”  Sarah sighed.  “And this mysterious agency shows up.”

They turned back to the front of the room, and Alex raised a hand to ask a question.  “So, is that what they do?  Status Quo, right? Do they just try to kill anyone who knows about the dungeons?”

“They were wearing magic gear.”  James frowned, holding up his wrist to show off the bracelet he’d pilfered.  “Uniform, too.  They also didn’t go for the dungeon itself, just the kids.”  He thought for a second.  “Dave said… Dave said that you couldn’t get ahold of your double, Anesh?  And Alanna couldn’t call her sister?”

“Yeah.”  Anesh said.  “And your family isn’t replying to you, and your sister’s on vacation?”

“Graham.”  James asked quietly.  “Where are your parents?”

“They… died last week.”  He said, choking on the words.  “Car crash.”  The kid looked like he was about to start crying, and only barely holding it together.

“Uh huh.”  James said.  “Oh, fuck.”  He turned away for a second, a way of emotions crashing into him.  He hadn’t been paying attention; he’d focused on his own shit again, delving and building the Order and trying to find ways to help people. And he’d ignored little things.  Left them to lie until suddenly, there was an unearthing of the real problem.  The root of the evil.  “We’re so fucked!”  He barked out the words like they were supposed to be a laugh, but inside, all he felt was overwhelming despair.

Was his family even still alive?

He heard a cracking noise, and felt a sharp pain in his hand.  With a grimace, he looked down at where he’d punched one of the standing whiteboards, smearing a sector map of the Office with his hand.

What the hell was he supposed to do here?  He was supposed to be the leader here, and instead… he just felt adrift.  Everyone was looking to him to keep them safe, to keep them adventuring and growing, the Order saving the world together.  And now, here they were; this sudden question of if even associating with him would get their family killed by some shadowy government organization.

For the third time today, a hand clapped onto his shoulder.  This one light, but crossed with a half dozen small white lines of old battle scars.

James turned his head to look at Sarah, as she stood beside him.

“Hey.”  She said.

That was all she said.  James looked back at her, looked into her eyes as she watched him.  There was something there that scared him, more than any mysterious agents with guns.  There, buried in those bright green eyes, was the most dire weapon, aimed straight at James.

Hope.

And it wasn’t just her.  He could feel it from everyone here.  It took over the atmosphere; things were tense, but not impossible.  Their *job* was to beat the odds.  Again and again.  He breathed again, letting out the strangled breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.

When he looked out at the crowd, he was ready.  His expression and words were steel in the cool air.  “Deb, get the new kid to one of the basement rooms.  Get him settled in until we can make sure it’s gonna be safe. Momo, Anesh… anyone with combat experience, stay here.  I’m going to need your help planning this.  Virgil, Neil!  Surveillance!  I’ll get you the address, but I need to know everything about that building and the people in it possible.  Don’t bother being discrete, just untraceable.  JP, open the vault, literally and otherwise.  Get them what they need.  Reed, if you guys can bring out every dangerous and damaging object we have, I’d appreciate it.”  He turned, and started to say, “Alanna…!  Hm.”  James frowned.  “Sarah, can you get Alanna and Dave back here?  We’re going to need them.”  He almost grinned as the girl saluted with dramatic enthusiasm and pivoted away, phone already out and up to her ear.

“What about the rest of us?”  Theo asked from the back.

“Do you want to be here?”  James asked her, bluntly but without malice.

She paused.  “No.”  She settled on.  “But I owe you.  And I’m here.”

James nodded at her.  “El, how about you?”

“I’m not a member of your clubhouse.”  The girl shrugged theatrically, the long flaps of her trenchcoat dancing around her.  “Hell, you guys practically wrecked my life.”

“Alright.”  James turned away from her, prepared to move on.

“Hey!”  El dragged his attention back to her.  “I had more to say, jackass!”  She snipped, and a few people laughed, James among them.  “I’m not a part of this.  But… fuck, man.  You and Secret are the only friends I have.  Do you want my help?”  She stared at him, wavering.

“Yes.”  James said.  And meant it.

“Then I’m with you.  Fuck, look at this place.  You called, and fifty people showed up to fight for you.  Do you get that?”  She cut through to the heart of what everyone was thinking.  “You save people.  That’s *rad*, man.  Even if you messed up everything I was doing, you weren’t trying to be an asshole.”  She held a hand off to the side, and clenched her fist before spreading her fingers.  When she spoke the next words, there was a crackle around her, like the air itself was *faster*, even if it wasn’t moving.  From her open palm, the sensation of an endless highway washed over the room.  “There’s a million roads forward.”  El intoned.  “But the one you’re taking is *worth something*.”  She stared at James.  “You say these guys are fuckers.  Alright.”  She nodded around at the room, at the people who had paused in stirring into motion to watch her.  “You’ve got all these people.  Let’s take the road that *ends them*.”

James met her eyes across the room, and nodded once.  “Alright.”  He said, then went back to barking orders.  “Nate!  Set up a watch shift with everyone who’s left over!  I don’t want the building getting surrounded by goons while we’re busy plotting!  And get *everyone* guns!”  He pointed a finger at the navy chef as he ordered him out of the room.  “I dunno how much you and Neil blew the budget, but I’m really hoping it was a lot.”

Nate cleared his throat.  “I didn’t let Neil buy the stupid cannon.”  He admitted.

“Hey!”  Neil yelled from where he was tossing a skulljack drone plug to Virgil.  “I…”

Nate cut him off, ignoring the younger man.  “But we have a lot more of the ones that can kill them.”  He said.  “They’re not bulletproof.  Just tough.”

“Someone get me a whiteboard that doesn’t have stuff on it.”  James commanded.  “We’ve got a lot of stuff that everyone’s going to need to know.”  He muttered quietly as one of the support group members started wheeling a blank board from the corner of the warehouse over.  They bought ten of the things when they moved in, and were starting to run out of unused ones that didn’t have important notes on them.  “Alright!  Before we start planning out how to blow up a government building, does anyone have any pressing questions?!”  He called out to the assembled Order that was now starting to move in waves as those with jobs grabbed those without and enlisted them to help.

“I yes.”  Came a mechanical voice from the middle of the room.

The shuffling of human feet cleared a path between the speaker, and James.  He looked across the short space that had been opened up to the cluster of camracondas that had joined them for this briefing.  The elder was here, along with Frequency-Of-Sunlight, though there were a handful of others now, and it was one of the ones that had been bold enough to accept a skulljack with no questions that spoke now.  “Don’t worry.”  James smiled at him.  “You guys aren’t involved in this, it’s okay.  You don’t need to do anything.”

The camraconda looked around, craning its long neck of bundled cable to peer its singular eye at the variety of people in the room, all of them paused briefly in their motion to carry out James’ orders and prepare the Order for war.  “You need neither.”  The camracaonda spoke.

It was, frankly, *amazing* to James just how quickly these guys had mastered sarcasm.  He suppressed the urge to roll his eyes as Anesh snorted a surprised laugh next to him.  “No.”  James agreed, after reining in his snark.  “But we’re going to.”

The camraconda nodded.  “I am Spire-Cast-Behind.”  She said, the mechanical voice having taken on a more feminine tone, albeit one with ice in its words.  “Us all, declare for yours and you.  You fight?  We fight.”

The english was imperfect, but the meaning wasn’t.  James straightened his back.  “You’re sure?”

“Debt owed.”  The camraconda echoed Theo’s words from a few minutes earlier.  “Debt redeemed with joy.”

“Alright.”  James nodded to the group.  “Split up, add yourselves to the task groups.  You’re with us for assault planning.  Virgil!  Leave the drone shit to Neil, your new job is to spend whatever you need at Best Buy to outfit these guys with speech capacity!”  He turned eyes back to the camracondas.  “If you’re all okay getting wired in?”  James tapped his own skulljack quizzically.

One of them, one of the younger ones that had been so excited to meet humans in the first place, nodded, and nosed forward at one of the delvers.  Spire pivoted her attention between the other snake, and James, before saying, “Who gives, important.  Accepting.  Trust.”

“Okay.”  He said.  He felt like he was saying that a lot today.  “Okay.”  This time there was more conviction to the word.  “Let’s get started.”

_____

Eight hours later, a plan had started to take rough shape.

No one was going home tonight.  The beds in the basement weren’t enough for everyone, so a shockingly well armed caravan of a couple vehicles and a handful of delvers had sortied out to the local sporting goods store to pick up one Order’s worth of sleeping pads and bags.  As the secondary basement was converted into an awkward sort of communal sleeping area, more members of the Order kept watch from the roof of the building; overwatch on the parking lot and road around them.

Nate had handed off watch shift management to someone else - Lance, James was pretty sure - as soon as it had become clear that they were going to need to be here for a while, and had promptly run off to the kitchen.  James got the feeling that the man’s excuse that they wouldn’t want to order food for operational security was *accurate*, yes, but didn’t really cover the fact that he was really just trying to reclaim the place where he was comfortable.  He’d killed people today, after all.  That wasn’t something that was easy to shrug off.  So James didn’t begrudge him when he spent more time taking control of his kitchen domain and dragging random untasked members in to be prep cooks.

The news had been checked at some point, and it didn’t look good.  For one thing, there was actual FBI on the scene.  Or at least, people taking crediting for being the FBI; recent events had led James to believe that no one actually *checked* on if someone was a member of the agency.  He wondered, briefly, if this was by design, or if the Bureau we just constantly offended at the inability of people to place a phone call.  They probably had a department just for that.

According to news reports, both on local TV and on the internet, there had been multiple casualties among the staff and students.  Names weren’t being released, but James felt a chill go down his spine as he considered that They might have just killed people to maintain a cover story.  There was no mention of the Order’s intercession, no mention of the agents killed.  And no one, for a minute, believed that the fight hadn’t been witnessed.  Which meant that bodies had been disappeared and any details about it were being actively suppressed.  Though just looking at the comments thread on the Reddit post, it wasn’t like that was exceptionally hard.  The top three comments were, respectively, someone citing articles about gun casualties in the US and calling for legal reform, someone making a broad generalized statement about how their heart went out to the victims of this tragedy, and someone claiming that this was what happened when you tried to have a society where different religions were allowed to exist together.  The comments thread was locked.  Propaganda department hard at work, or just the internet being the internet, the platform to get the word about about first hand accounts of the incident was gone.

As for the battle plan, they were working on it.

They had an insane advantage here; they actually knew the home address of their enemy.  And James intended to exploit that to the extreme.  Since it was basically impossible that Status Quo didn’t know they had a rival on the board, he’d ordered his surveillance team to ignore stealth and just get him results.  And with that in mind, Neil and Virgil had, with the help of the frankly disturbingly impressive skulljack skills of the Support Group, unleashed a swarm of camera drones that would have made anyone watching either very worried, or very convinced there was some kind of park party happening nearby.

They had trouble getting close to the building.  There was some kind of jamming field around it, in a near perfect circle, that disabled the drone’s connection before they could get too close.  Not instantly, but once they crossed a certain line in the sand, there was something that dropped them out of the sky.  So, with that in mind, the team set about programming the drones for independent operation.  And after someone started slapping a blue Activation on the things that concealed them, they started getting results.

The video footage, combined with JP’s omnipresent ‘I know a guy’ friend at the county clerk’s office who’d gotten them actual blueprints, laid the foundation for their planning.

The building was three stories tall, each one a simple L-shaped hallway connecting rows of supposedly independent business spaces.  On the blueprints, these were marked as having main interior walls that separated them from each other, but drone footage as they swept by the windows showed a much more open interior.  This was, at least on the upper two floors, a very different building than what had been reported.

One shot of the footage that everyone had been pouring over for hints showed something troubling, too.  On the video, there was a brief glimpse of a short, balding man getting into an elevator.  The doors closed, and as the drone hovered as far away as it could while still getting a good angle on the building… nothing happened.  The view, which had a clear line of sight to the second and third floor elevators, showed no one getting out of them.

So they had a basement, too.

“We can’t discount the fact that there may be spatial fuckery going on in there.”  James told his mission team.

“We could burn the building down?”  Sarah, of all people, suggested.

“No.”  James shook his head.  “There’s a very real chance that they’re keeping prisoners in there.  Especially if they have a basement.  Any operation is going to have to focus on seizing territory and holding it long enough for a search.”  He looked up at them, and noted the grudging nods.  “*Then* we can burn it down.”  He’d reassured them.

In their own basement, orbs and items were being handed out to anyone who needed them.  The entire order had been issued blues, dipping so deep into their emergency stockpile that they ultimately ran out of the things.  But everyone, planning to enter combat or not, had at least one Activation power ready to go.  Using this many, Anesh had noted that the patterns tended toward creation or alteration of states of matter.  One person got sublimation again, but liquify or solidify were also popular powers.  Only about thirty percent of them were simple verbs, and those were the most flexible and dangerous.  James himself was still loaded up with ‘attach’, which made him wince when he remembered the fight with the agent and how he’d completely forgotten to use it at all.

In the back room, the injection moulding machine they had hissed as it printed off another armor breastplate.  Material more durable than it should be, production faster than it had a right to.  It got added to a pile; there were more to do before tomorrow.

They took breaks.  They rotated through conversations with everyone in the building, for sanity checks.  James vetoed anyone trying to ride the cloaker cat into battle.

When Dave and Alanna arrived again, Pendragon making a slightly more graceful landing on the roof, he was there to greet them.  A nod for Dave, and a reassuring hug for Alanna.  They had been looking for hours, and hadn’t found any sign that the house Alanna’s mother and sisters lived in had been inhabited.  No sign of violence, either.  But the people were gone.

Alanna held it together until James and Anesh got her alone sitting behind the kitchen in the little patio break area.  Then he held her, while she wept openly, until there were no more tears left.  James didn’t have anything to promise her, except that they were going to try to get them back; and if prisoners weren’t a thing Status Quo did, then they’d raze them to the ground and break the back of their organization.

Restitution first.  Revenge, if it couldn’t be had.

The hours wheeled by.  Every time he thought they had a plan, someone would point out a flaw, and they’d start over.  There was no room for error here, either; they were going up against armed human enemies who would be doing their best to kill them.  They didn’t have a lot of leeway, and they were going to have to kill, and keep killing, if they wanted to get through it without losing everything.  That thought rattled James.  It didn’t stop him from putting his best forward, but it did sit there, in his core, exhausting him further as the day wound on.

It rattled him more when Graham found him.  He was sitting by himself at a table in the dining area, eating a chef salad and staring blankly at his phone, waiting for the next problem to be messaged to him while he pretended to be reading the news.  He was skimming headlines.  There was something about China harassing Taiwan with its air force, which felt disturbingly prophetic.  Also a storm somewhere.  Also a foreign film won the Academy Awards.  James’ eyes glazed over as he flipped through stories without reading them, trying to sort out whether he was going to die to the hurricane, the plague, or the election coverage.  He was failing, and he almost welcomed the distraction when the high school kid sat down on the bench across the table from him.

“I want to fight too.”  Graham opened with.  James looked up, and raised his eyebrows, making the effort to keep his eyes open despite the wave of sleep threatening him.  The kid was about James’ height, 6’2” or so, which was actually unusual given that he couldn’t be more than seventeen.  But his skin showed off no muscle.  He wasn’t fat, exactly.  Just soft.  Flabby, if you wanted to be rude about it.  He had an expression on that he probably thought made him look like a badass, but James just huffed out a breath at it, and shook his head slightly.  “Really!”  Graham insisted as James turned back to his salad without saying anything.  “I can do it!  I have to!”

“No you don’t.”  James said, twisting spinach around his fork.  “In fact, the entire point of the people in this building is so you don’t have to.”

“No, you don’t understand!”  Graham half-yelled at him, his voice cracking a little.  “I… need to do something!”

James set the fork down without taking the bite.  “So, what?”  He asked.  He wanted to like this kid, to admire that he’d been one of the people who’d taken the initiative to try to hunt down the weird and dangerous.  But this wasn’t the right time for him; he was on edge, exhausted, and start to get that hollow itchy feeling that anxiety brought along whenever he got too tired.  “What do you want?  For me to slap a rifle in your hand, an orb in your wrist, and send you out to kill?”

“I…”

“No.”  James cut him off, uninterested.  “We are not in the business of child soldiers.  We’re not even in the business of soldiering ourselves.”  He looked at the anger playing across Graham’s face, and shook his head again, this time with a sad purse of his lips.  “You’re not the chosen one.”  He said quietly, doing his best to break the kid’s expectations without sending him over the edge.  “You don’t know what to do, I get it.  Your friend’s in the hospital, and the other one’s missing.  You think I don’t know how much that hurts?”  He felt his brow flicker through a glare for a moment. “Of course I know.  And I know how much you want to tear apart anything that did this to you.  But you can’t.  You aren’t a fighter yet, and you aren’t enhanced either.  You’re just… a victim.  Someone who stumbled into the cosmic trap and hasn’t fought their way out and earned their stripes yet.”  James saw he wasn’t exactly getting through.  He felt himself starting to give up, his face going slack into a sad frown.  “Look.”  He tried, reaching into his shoulder holster and pulling out his gun.

Graham went wide eyed as James set the firearm on the table.  “You’ll let me fight?”

“No.”  James said.  “This is to prove a point.  I can, with this weapon, hit something without looking at it.  My fingers know the trigger better than I know the layout of my own apartment.  My actual soul is upgraded to the point that I’m about fifty percent less likely to miss *anything*.  I can reload this weapon with a thought, and fire bullets faster than the gun actually loads them.  And I can move faster than most living humans while doing it, when I want to.  And I’m telling you this, so that when I say that I’m terrified, and I don’t want to fight, that *you understand what I mean.*”  He slammed the Walther back into his holster.  “That’s *one* of my weapons, and I am *scared*, kid!”  James felt the last word come out as almost a sob.  “And you want me to, what?  Give you a magic sword and send you out to die?  No.”

“I’d die if I could help.”  Graham whispered, like the words were a magic spell.

“No.”  James said one last time, standing up and shoving away the plate with his food.  It felt sour in his mouth now, and he wasn’t hungry anymore.  “You’re not cannon fodder.  You’re not a part in the machine, kid.  And believe me when I tell you that I understand wanting to die for something that mattered.  But I’m gonna tell you to do something I know from experience is a lot harder now, and tell you to actually value yourself.”

He walked away, and Graham didn’t argue anymore.  But somehow, James didn’t feel like he’d come out on top in that conversation at all.

It was dark out by the time the plan was proclaimed workable.

Anesh and Alanna were already asleep somewhere; someone had given up one of the coveted basement bedrooms to the two of them, and James had no desire to go knocking on doors and waking them up.  He was, in a word, exhausted.  Drained.  He’d been putting on a face for the whole day, trying to keep everyone confident, trying to keep *himself* feeling like he had any idea what he was doing.  And now, he was just looking for somewhere to sleep.

What he found instead was Sarah.  She was at the top of the elevator as it dinged open; James having decided to take it down the other way and sleep in the vault.  And she stepped in without waiting for him.  “Okay, you’re going to bed, sleepybutt.”  She said, hitting the button for the residential basement.  “No arguments!”

“I was *trying*.”  James protested in a tired huff.  “All the rooms are taken.”  He told her as the elevator started moving.  He *could* have tried to hit the button for the other basement, but so far, no one had ever hit both buttons at the same time, and now didn’t really feel like the proper time to test it.  James was pretty sure there wasn’t a proper time to test that, actually.

Sarah grinned at him.  “Ah, I have a reservation!”  She told him with a mischievous glint in her eye.  Her expression went quietly serious for a second, then.  “But really.  You do need to rest.  We all do.  We’re not going to be useful tomorrow if we’re all burned up.”

“We?”  He asked, fearing the answer.

“James.”  Sarah said in her soft, sad voice.  “You know there’s not enough people for me to sit this out.  We’ll have surprise, and a lot of surprises, but they’re going to outgun us, and you can’t tell me to just sit this one out.  You wouldn’t tell Alanna that, would you?”

“Alanna is my partner, I don’t make decisions for her.”  James said as the doors opened, and Sarah led him stumbling by the arm down the basement corridor.  “And I said that and instantly realized it was kinda screwed up.  I don’t make decisions for you either.”  He told her.

Sarah shrugged.  “Whatever you may think, I’m a knight in this Order of yours.  I trust you to call the shots.”  She told him as she unlocked and cracked open the door to the last room on the right, shoving him in.  “James, we were best friends for… forever.”  Sarah continued as she shut the door behind her and slumped against it.  “And I know you lost that, and you’re trying to put it all back together, but I never did.  I love you, you dummy.  And if you say you’re going to fight for something you believe in, then *fuck you* if you think I won’t be there next to you.”  An accusatory backhanded wave sent his way as he sat nervously on the edge of the bed.

In his heart, past the fog of sleepiness and the itch of anxiety, James felt something jolt on instinct.  He didn’t remember, but the habits of a lifetime of friendship had bled into so many things, that he still had this ghost of a shape of what his life with Sarah had been like.  And she was right; he’d been trying to put the pieces back together, and it hadn’t yet felt like enough.

“Yeah.”  He whispered.  “I know.”  He said, and meant it.

He raised his eyes, and Sarah tilted her head up, and they looked at each other, for what felt like the first time in a month.

“I miss you.”  Sarah said.

“I miss you too.”  James said.  And then laughed, once.  When she tilted her head in concern at him, he laughed harder, and then explained.  “You know, we could have solved this months ago if we’d just… you know.”  He tapped at his skulljack.

Sarah’s hand unconsciously found its way to the back of her neck.  “Yeah.  But…”  She shrugged, trailing off.

“I know.”  James said, with a reassuring smile.  “It’s okay.”  She smiled back, and they sat there together for a handful of heartbeats.  Until James broke the silence.  “Well, I should probably sleep.”  He said, his voice stumbling a bit as darkness closed in.

“Yeah.”  Sarah muttered, standing up.  “Okay, move over.”

“What?”

“I’m tired too, you dork.  And this is *my* bed.”

“But…”  James didn’t have time to protest, as Sarah toppled him backward with a one handed push, and climbed under the covers, wedging James farther and farther out of place as she did so.  “I…”

“James.”  She said.  “We have spent so many hours today preparing to get into a lethal fight with the government.  And it has been non-stop social stuff, too.  I love talking to people, and I love you, but we both know neither of us has it in us to get from the door to anywhere that has a place to sleep besides the hallway.  So lay down, and give me a hug, okay?”

He sat up awkwardly, looking down at his friend curled under the blankets.  And she was his friend, for all that had happened.  And in that moment, he saw in her the same tired bleakness he felt sometimes, and he knew exactly what she needed, because it was what he always needed.

“Okay.”  He said.

The hug was warm, and comforting, and neither of them knew what to do with their other arm that was pinned down to the bed, and they were asleep before they knew it.

They slept the sleep of the just.  And even the worries of what was to come tomorrow weren’t enough to wake them.  Only one thing interrupted their sleep, and it happened at the very beginning, before they dozed off again.

<| Corridor Filled : Bond Formed - Rest : Transfer - Contact : Rate - 74 minutes / second : One Corridor Established : Zero Corridors Empty |>