The Daily Grind - Chapter 119 (Patreon)

Is this one shorter?  Longer?  I can't tell anymore.  Either way, hope ya'll enjoy.

_____

James and Alanna pressed their backs against a low wall of lockers, trying desperately to ignore the smell of whatever was leaking out of them, while on the other side of the hall, Sarah and Cold-Wind-Friction did the same.  It turned out, their camraconda ally was remarkably flexible for their kind, with more of the cord ‘muscle’ in his back than the others had.  This came in handy when hiding involved contorting into specific positions for minutes at a time.

They were hiding because, for all of James’ bravado, they had rapidly run into something they couldn’t easily stab to death.

The thing was a rat-king designed by someone who had *heard* of rats, in theory, but only ever seen close up pictures of their skulls.  Two meters across, it was almost a ball of jutting muzzles and teeth.  Near its center, fifty panicked, furious, unthinkingly hungry red rat eyes peered out at the world.  Skin and muscle were pulled across it in taut and random sheets, sometimes it was exposed bone, sometimes it was almost a normal rat.  Except that each of the ‘heads’ that made up its creation were three feet long, with snapping fangs and crushing jaws and *far* too much flexibility and motor control for what should have just been an unconnected mouth and neck.

They were hiding because so far that had proven effective.  The things - there were three of them in the school so far - were near-blind, deafened themselves with their constant rodent screams of fear, and probably couldn’t smell anything over the choking scent of sewage any more than the group could.

The twisted fusions of rat faces were also pretty dumb.  So, as soon as it passed by their little hiding spot, Cold-Wind-Friction froze it, briefly, and everyone slipped around the corners of the locker segments they were on.  The squealing picked up at a higher volume a second later, but the team was already moving on, unspotted.

“I hate those.”  Alanna whispered to James.  “Also I’m really not clear on how this place could grant fuckin’ *empathy* as a reward.”

James glanced around the next corner ahead of them.  The upcoming hall seemed clear; straight shot to the rear stairwell, and Lua’s office was right off of that.  He replied to Alanna in a low voice as he motioned the other two forward.  “Gotta know how people are feeling in order to maximize trauma.”  He shrugged lightly, regretting the gesture as he felt the soreness still baked into his shoulders.

Cutting off a growl while she crouch-ran across the open hall, Alanna ducked behind the solid central railing of the stairs.  “Looks clear.”  She called back to the others.  “I see Lua’s door.”

Rising up, James walked forward.  Not normally; he was still absolutely on guard.  But moving in a sneaky position was only so sustainable for someone who had only really been working out for half a year or so.

They were *all* on guard.  The team had to fight through hell to get here.  Ratroaches were one thing, but when the skull-kings started showing up, and the carpets of beetles, and the animate sludge tendrils where the leaks had gone on too long, it turned every step into a potential ambush with something seemingly designed to make them gag.  Every one of them was uncomfortably marked by ichor, blood, or sludge in some pattern, to the point that Cold-Wind-Friction had started asking about whether it would be more effective to put him in a shower, or a dishwasher, to get the scum off.  And he wasn’t even waterproof, fully.

Their running duel with the dungeon’s forces through the halls had also led to them ‘claiming’ two more spawn rooms.  Both of them had been empty of human presence, and they’d had to double back to reclaim one when a squad of ratroaches broke past them in a skirmish.  It led to a working understanding of the dungeons that they’d never quite put together before, but that fit for both the Akashic Sewer, and Officium Mundi.

The dungeons were perfectly capable of changing things in their territory.  And, it was becoming increasingly clear, ‘their territory’ was not specifically the compressed outside-real-world bubbles that they tended to find them in.  There seemed to be an almost physical restriction on them, though; if they wanted something to be territory, they had to *take* it, and hold it.  And so far, there hadn’t been a single change made while anyone was capable of seeing it happen.

Observation, and occupation, were the limiting factors.  And it had clicked in James head fairly quickly that this matched the Office as well; they had claimed the tower by the door, and for whatever reason, the Office never claimed it back.  It never reset, because it was their territory, not the dungeon’s.

James gripped his pilfered shiv in as comfortable a way as he could.  He missed his spear, eaten by one of the skulls in a terrifying display of jaw strength.  He also wished the wifi here was working, so he could connect to Alanna.  She’d found one of the makeshift weapons that was a pair of prongs, and it was apparently close enough to a traditional jitte that her long-unused skill had fired up and turned her into even more of a nightmare for the average ratroach.   James was stuck with mostly punching them, and while he was getting used to it, the sensation of chitin and flesh crushing under his knuckles was still stomach-turning.

“Body.”  Sarah pointed out, a sad pain in her voice as she leveled a finger at the shape on the dimly lit floor.  At least there were exterior windows nearby, so they didn’t need to rely on the overhead lights.  

James approached first, kneeling down to check for a pulse that he knew he wouldn’t find.  He couldn’t see a face, but the person was clearly in a police uniform, and maybe he had a gun on him.

Rolling the body slightly, though, James jerked his hand back and let out an involuntary yell of panic.  Alanna was at his side in a flash, while James flailed backward, shaking his hand furiously.

“What, what’s going on!?”  She demanded, Sarah echoing similar sentiments from behind them.

Not knowing how to explain, James just pointed, trying to distance himself from the body.  Or what used to be a body.  And he didn’t have to explain.  Because out from under where there should have a been a human face, tragically twisted in death, there was instead a wave of glistening white maggot-things, inching their way across the rug, disturbed by James shaking their home.

They spread out from the officer’s body, the hunched uniform deflating as more and more of the maggots flowed out, following their brethren.  Where once there had been a corpse, now there was only a writhing mass of insects, slowly finding a collective direction, climbing the wall.

Climbing the wall.  James made a mistake, and looked up.

Overhead, the ceiling was covered in cocoons.  Dangling white protrusions, finger length, hanging from the ceiling like a layer of grass.  The maggots climbing the wall seemed intent, now, on joining the others, as the whole swarm shifted directions; slowly inching their way upward.

“Oh fuck.”  Alanna bit out, looking behind them.  Patches of the ceiling along their current path were likewise covered.  Probably everywhere they’d found a corpse.  “If one of those got in my hair, I am going to vomit.”

“I might just anyway.”  James tried to say, gagging on the words.  “Let’s… just fucking get Lua and leave.”  He pushed himself off his ass and dusted off his pants, vigorously.

With silent agreement, and careful steps that kept them out from under the ceiling patches where the pale worm things hung, the group moved up.  It should have been easy, but when James reached for the door handle, they got another unwelcome surprise.

“Sixteen.” Read the number in red neon, projected just past the handle and sitting as a clear marker that the door was not just locked, but *sealed*.

“That’s bad.”  James said, tilting his head to catch the attention of the three others who were circled around him, watching the halls.  “Check it.  The dungeon locked the door.”

“If they’re in there, that contradicts what we just thought we learned.”  Alanna groused.

Sarah clicked her tongue.  “Maybe it’s just harder for it?  Or maybe the door’s only locked on this side.  Or… they’re…”

“Yeah, enough of that.”  James reached out again to pay the sparks out of his growing pool of death points.  But again, held off at the last second.  “Seventeen.  *Eighteen*.  It’s ticking up.”  He grimly concluded.  “And fast, too.”

“Oh, that solves a lot of puzzles.”  Alanna sighed in relief.

“What?”

It was Cold-Wind-Friction that replied to James’ confusion, digital voice the same calm tone it always was.  “It telegraphs.  We are moving.  It is watching.  Does not want the outcome; obstacles.”

“Yeah, what he said.”  Alanna agreed.  “It locked the door *now*, because it saw us moving for it.  It’s upgrading it as fast as it can, but it must be hard because we’re watching.  Open the damn door before it gets out of range.”

James didn’t argue, just gripped the handle, and felt the heat of thirty-odd red sparks flowing out of his fingertips.

Then he pulled, and the door handle rattled.  Locked.

“Okay, *this* I can deal with.”  He announced, dropping to one knee and pulling out the lockpicks from his inside coat pocket with a practiced move.  His hand brushed against where his gun should have sat, and the absence made him feel mildly naked for a moment, before he started selecting tools.  It took him about two minutes to get the cheap school issued lock to crack under his ministrations, and from that point, there was nothing to do except swing the door open.

A blast of sound and light greeted him as he pulled the handle.  His brain barely had time to register, even with his enhanced sensory suite, that there was someone kneeing being a desk with a gun.  He just caught a bullet on his bracer shield, lines of light bursting to life, and making him glad they hadn’t encountered anything that had made him switch targets yet.

Another three shots further deafened him, followed by the distant sound of multiple people shouting, before the gunfire ended and he could see again.

The downside of constantly keeping his cognition up was that he saw *everything*, and that meant that when the shield light went off, it was a quite painful form of sensory overload if he wasn’t ready.

“Stop!  Stop it!”  A woman’s voice was yelling, alongside another younger voice, still female, adding “Cut it the fuck out you shithawk!”

The yelling wasn’t required.  Cold-Wind-Friction had very neatly locked down the school’s police officer, finger halfway down the trigger of their weapon as they were prepared to continue unloading into James.  Their dress uniform looked torn and rumpled, daily attire that didn’t include body armor hadn’t stood up well to the horrors that had emerged this afternoon.  They had an almost crazed look in their eye, like they’d already given up on rescue ever being an option.

James stepped over the threshold, motioning everyone to follow and *very carefully* not breaking the camraconda’s line of sight.  They piled in, Alanna closing the door behind them after a sweeping glance down the halls outside.  “Hey Lua.”  He greeted the woman slumped against the filing cabinet to the right of the door, hands over her ears, still crying out softly for the uniformed man to stop shooting.  “Hey… okay.  Everyone else.”

There were students here.  Lua’s office was not that large.  It included a desk, a couple filing cabinets for records, a leafy green potted plant that looked *suspiciously* mobile where it was leaning over toward James’ as he walked in the door, and no windows.  There were three chairs, one clearly Lua’s, the others for the kids she saw.  One desk, overturned.  The desk wasn’t quite pressed up to the door, but with the chairs packed to the side as an extra barricade, it did leave a fair amount of floor space behind it for… James counted, six, seven, eight, *nine*.... students to huddle together on the floor.

They didn’t look happy, they didn’t look comfortable.  Most of them were staring at Cold-Wind-Friction as he moved up between the adults, security camera eye never leaving the cop who was protecting them.  But they were *alive*.

“Stop that.”  James casually brushed away a knife-sharp leaf from the potted plant that was edging toward his throat.  “We’re here to help, you jackass plant.”  He stepped up, keeping a questioning eye on their camraconda for confirmation, wrapping an arm up, over, and around to the back of the cop’s grip to carefully pull the gun away.  It went into James’ shoulder holster once the safety was on.  Then, and only then, did Cold-Wind-Friction let the officer move again, and his finger immediately slammed down like the trigger was still there.

“Freeze!”  He shouted at the rescue team, like that would do anything.

“No?”  Alanna asked, sharing raised eyebrows with Sarah.  The two girls nodded to each other behind James’ back.  “Yeah, no.”

“Is anyone hurt?”  Sarah asked, stepping over their barricade and taking a knee next to Lua.  “Hey.  Hey.  It’s okay.  We’re here.  We came.”  She started softly talking.

Half the cluster of students started to rise to their feet, and another half erupted into questions.

“No, everyone sit down.”  James ordered.  “Yes, we are here to get you out.  Yes, this is happening.  Yes, I am a wizard, thank you. Yes,” the last sentence was directed with a pointed glare at the officer who was also rising to his full height and glaring at James.  It also didn’t answer any question that had been asked.  “yes, I *am* annoyed that this is the second time today the police have shot at me.  You know, I’m starting to think that ya’ll don’t like me much.”

“Who are you?”  The cop demanded, voice loud and silencing the students behind him.

“Order of Endless Rooms.”  Alanna introduced them while James brushed past the cop.  He saw the man tense up when he did so, like he was considering striking out.  But James calmly ignored him, and moved to start checking on the students instead.  “We’re here to evacuate the building.  You assistance is appreciated.”

“Shouldn’t we go with ‘FBI’, instead?” Sarah asked from where she held a sobbing Lua, gently stroking the older woman’s hand as she let the stress of the day catch up with her.

“Oh yeah.  FBI.  We’re here to…”

James tuned them out, and started talking to the high schoolers.

It had been a while since he was in high school.  But he still remembered how it felt, and how no one had ever talked to him like he was an adult.  He hadn’t *been* an adult, of course, but it wasn’t like the dismissive attitude had helped him be less rebellious.  So it wasn’t with an orb skill or JP’s lessons on impersonating law enforcement that he brought to the conversation, but his own experience, filtered through a day of hard fighting and stress.

“Hi.”  He opened with.  “We fight monsters.  What can you guys tell me about what the fuck is happening here?”

With quiet words and a tone that made it clear he was listening to them, James got a piecemeal account of the day.  

It had started off with a fight.  A couple of the kids had seen a handful of other students, ones the group more or less agreed were assholes in some way, arguing with a couple of the nerdier denizens of the school.  There were mixed reports of if it was an argument, a conversation, or a good old fashioned bullying.  But either way, by the end of it, the whole group of them had stormed off together.  This was sometime around first period.

When they’d vanished into a shack out by the football field that no one remembered being there before, there’d been some outlandish rumors flying around.  When those rumors had hit the school security guards, they’d reacted by calling the police, instantly on guard about another shooting.

James bit his lip and didn’t make eye contact when they talked about the last shooting that had happened here.

That had been just after lunch.  There had been some weird noises, strange smells, and fewer kids than normal in each class during third period.  Then, the lights started going out.  The monsters began roving the hallway.  The police showed, and died.  And the only person who seemed to have any idea what was going on was the woman who everyone thought was the counselor, grabbing everyone she could get her hands on, striding through the halls like a demon, snapping the neck of anything that got too close.

James smirked.  Lua had probably burned every charge of her blue for this.  ‘Rotate Sixty Degrees’, as it turned out, was one of those subtle verb use cases that was instantly lethal if used properly.

After that, they’d hidden here.

The timeline helped put things together, but it didn’t explain why today, of all days, the dungeon had decided to freak the hell out and start trying to eat the building and everyone inside.

“Has anyone seen Secret?”  James addressed the room, cutting off the conversation that Alanna was having with the officer, or the bonding moment between the camracaond and the plant.  Though that last one might have just been the two pieces of Office Life suspiciously eyeing each other.

“Which secret?”  One of the students asked.

“We’re changing his name after this, I swear.”  Alanna said, exasperated.  “Every time.  Every time, James.”

Rolling his eyes, James explained as best he could.  “He’s blue, kinda snake-esque?  Either four feet or ten miles long, depending on how long you look at him? Lots of eyes?”  He saw horrified expressions from some of the students.  “Friendly?”  James added, in a questioning tone.  “No?”

“Lua, where’s Secret?  He was with you.”  Sarah gently asked.

“He led off one of the pipers.”  Lua said, composing herself to look up at James.  “He said he’d find us, but he hasn’t come back.  He couldn’t hurt them; said they weren’t in his domain?”  She sniffed, wiping at the corners of her eyes.  “I’m so glad you came.  Sorry to complicate your day off.”

“I haven’t had a day off since that time I taught a stapler how to play Magic.”

“*That’s* why you’re familiar!”  One of the students burst out.  “No one believed me!”

James snorted a laugh.  “Okay.  So.  What’s our goal now?”  He turned questioning to Alanna and Sarah.  “Get them out, then… the dungeon?”

“Yeah.”  Alanna nodded.  “Whatever happened, it was after the kids went in.  So maybe we can stop it today.  Otherwise… get Research to build us another foundation cracker?  Bring the whole place down?”

“I’ve heard worse ideas.”  James admitted.  “I’m worried about Secret, though.  If he can’t fight back because the Sewer’s out in the open, then that’s official Bad News.  He’s manifested right now.  I’m not actually sure he can *die*, but I don’t want to find out.”

Alanna sucked in a breath through her teeth.  “We cut off its territory up here, and it saves everyone. The sooner we do that, the better.  Wasting time on evac just means more potential problems, more things we’ll get sidetracked on.”

“What are you *talking* about?!”  The police officer, a one J. Clarke, according to his name badge, demanded.  He’d been, to his credit, trying to be patient.  Especially once Alanna identified them as FBI, however tentatively. But they were talking about monsters and ghosts and one of them had stolen his gun.  “Who *are* you?!  Why is there a snake thing?!  What is going *on*?!  I’m the fucking adult here, and I’ve got the badge, and I’d like some answers!  And my sidearm back.”

“Alright.”  James said, turning to him with a cold anger in his voice.  “Mister adult.  You’re the resource officer here?  Well, you work in a building that has a bubble of extradimensional space ‘below’ it.” He made finger quotes to punctuate his words.  “If I were to describe it with human emotions, I’d call it angry, spiteful, and cruel.  It’s made of bugs and sludge, and it hates you.  Sometimes, it lures students in, and gets them to kill each other for books that don’t have words in them.  You are unequipped to deal with it, and never noticed it existed.  Now it’s out of its self-imposed cage, eating people, and taking over a chunk of the real world.  And no, I’m keeping the gun, because you shot at me.  Give me your extra mags.”

James glared down the officer, the two of them each trying to project authority over each other.  Before any more words could be exchanged though, one of the students raised their hand.

“Um… I found a book?”

“What?”  James glanced over.

“It just appeared in the corner over here.  One of the filing cabinet drawers was open, and this thing just popped out and jammed it?  When I took it, the drawer slammed closed and it won’t open now.”  She demonstrated, and the drawer flashed a green ‘one’ at them.  “Is it… is it important?”

“It could be.”  James nodded, sighing.  “May I have it?  It could be useful to us.”

“Sure.”  The girl shrugged, and handed over a tome that looked like a legal textbook.

James looked at it in his hands for a minute, turning it over a few times.  Sure enough, something about it felt… off.  Like it didn’t quite belong in the real world.  It was a feeling he was starting to associate with some of the items from Officium Mundi.  Though, interestingly, not the orbs themselves.

“Sarah.”  James said, handing it to her.  “Alanna and I both have one, and I don’t wanna find out now that stacking them is a bad idea.  You’re up.”

She nodded, dusting off her knees as she got up, helping Lua up alongside her.  “We should fall back to Nate before we move for the breach.”  She said as she took the book.  “Get these kids out of here.”  Sarah opened the book.  The room filled with the sensation of pages turning, and learning occurring.  And then, the whole thick tome crumbled to dust in her hand, the specks of crumbled paper and leather vanishing from reality the same way they came in.

[Lesson Begun : Sex Ed 0/100]

“Good?”

“No.  The Sewer has a sense of humor.”  Sarah scowled.  “And it would be funny from the Office, but this is just gross.”

“Tell us later.”  Alanna whispered from the door, her ear tilted toward the frosted glass pane.  “Something’s coming.”

“What kind of something?”  James whispered back, drawing the cop’s gun and checking the magazine.  Four bullets left.  Not worth it he thought, jamming the gun back into the holster.  He could punch his way to a new knife. He scowled at the officer who still looked like he was planning to choke slam James to get his gun back.  “Students?”

“No.”  Alanna’s huff was a grim acceptance of the incoming fight.  “Ratroaches.  And… crying?  Shit, they have prisoners.”

“Well, so much for hiding.”  James said.  “Cold, target any holding students.  Sarah, left, Alanna, center.  Lua?  You got anything left in the tank?”

“I used all my charges.  I’m sorry.”  She still sounded on the edge of a breakdown.

“It’s fine.”  James said, while Sarah flipped over one of the chairs, and started snapping the legs off with loud stomps.  “Stay back, keep everyone else clear.  Clarke, you want in on this?”

“Give me my gun back and we’ll talk.”

“No.”  James repeated, watching Sarah drag the pencil he’d given her across the wooden dowels of the chair legs.  “Everyone ready?”

“Don’t forget Ferndidnan!”  Lua exclaimed.  “Don’t leave him here.  Please.”

“The… right.  Yeah, of course.”  The potted plant.  It had been up in the air if the things ever could be domesticated, considering they all seemed to be bloodthirsty jerks.  But the one here in Lua’s office looked content enough, even if it was pushed off into a corner away from where anyone might casually poke at it.  James pointed at a couple of the kids.  “You two look tough,” He buttered them up, “can you haul this potted plant with us?  I know it sounds dumb, but I swear it’s a good idea.”  They nodded.  “Okay.  *now* are we ready?”

Voices, digital and human, called assent.  

Alanna signaled from the door where the noises were getting louder.  They were noticed, obviously, and their foes were surrounding them.

They didn’t give the ratroaches a chance.

Alanna slammed the door open with her shoulder, catching one of the creatures in the jaw and staggering it backward.  It didn’t break, though; they were getting tougher.  But it did clear a path for the combatants to plow into the unsuspecting pack that thought itself the ambushers.

The revealed scene was one of about a dozen ratroaches, four of them holding a pair of human teenagers in vice-like grips.  They were arrayed around the door, with the kidnappers being near the back and the better armed ones up front in a loose semicircle around the door.  James noticed that their weapons were different now.  Some of them still had filed down shivs or table leg clubs, but at least a couple had knives made of unpolished bone.

Alanna smashed into the central one with a thrown elbow, bringing her makeshift jitte up to catch an incoming club, twisting it to the side, and ignoring the assailant as she rained right hooks down on the staggered ratroach in front of her.  Behind Alanna, James kicked off the doorframe and delivered a punch to what should have on a human been a kidney to one of the ratroaches to the right.  The mangy fur rippled under his knuckles, and he felt something inside the creature rupture.  It still lunged for him, bile dripping from the sides of its diseased maw as its organs broke.  James punched aside one of its arms, caught the other two on his own raised arm, punched it in the stomach hard enough to make it bow over, and then planted a foot on its head to leap over and lash out at the next shocked target.

Just behind them, as soon as they’d cleared the zone, Sarah brought destruction down on the ratroaches that didn’t move fast enough.

She moved like a dancer, arms extended, metaphysical muscles straining, as she warped the magnetic field around her.  Both arms down, step forward, slide one foot past the other, one arm up, one arm back, pull, and… *snap*.

The field collapsing was almost audible to an unaugmented human, as she turned herself into an organic railgun.  One of the chair legs, modified by the dungeontech pencil to be magnetic wood, cracked forward so fast it basically vanished from view and then reappeared through the skull of one of the ratroaches.

The thing never knew what hit it.  One second, it was snarling with dripping green ichor, a claw and a knife lunging for James’ back.  The next, its brain matter was splattered across the far wall in a whorl pattern, chunks of bone and flesh and eye painted in a horrifyingly violent deconstruction.

The ratroaches faltered.  Perhaps… perhaps they had miscalculated?  Gotten too greedy.  After all, they already had two captives.  A retreat, then…

Another head exploded.  Alanna planted a captured knife through first one heart, then the backup on the same creature.  James dug his thumb up to the second knuckle into an eye socket, ignoring the screaming until he cut it off by slamming the rat’s skull against the floor with a throw and a slam designed to crush the less durable bone these things had under their patchwork skin.

The survivors tried to run, and found they couldn’t.  Any time one of them turned to flee, they froze, and were cut down.  Methodically, painfully.

For the first, and last, time in their short lives, the hunting pack of ratroaches understood what it meant to be afraid.

“Clear!”  James voice echoed off the hall as he bloodily yanked the edge of the makeshift club he’d stolen out of the shattered chitin of the last one on his side.

“Clear!”  “Clear!”  “Foes no more.”  Voices came back to him.

“Lua!  Get the prisoners!  Let’s move, before they send something else!”  James ordered, grabbing up the knives around them and sliding them through belt loops on his pants.  He tried to wipe the grime and blood off his hands, and found that there was no longer a clean spot on his pants to do so.  “I fucking hate this place.”  He muttered to himself.

_____

“Welcome back.”  Anesh greeted him when James stepped through the door to their first ‘claimed’ classroom.  “You just missed Simon’s crew.”

“How’re they doing?”  James asked, tired.  His head hurt, his knees hurt, and his hands could barely grip properly, which made stabbing very challenging.  “Also hey.  Brought some friends.”

“They got two classrooms evacuated.  A lot of students got sorta herded in there? We’re getting them out.  Also, bad news.  Nate’s gone.”  Anesh said it with a calm voice, so James started when his brian caught up to the words that didn’t match the tone.

“Dead?!”  He demanded.

Anesh blinked, startled.  “What?  No.  Oh!  No!  No, we decided to try to rearm, after the second wave of rats came through and he ran out of ammo.   I made the call to send Nate to get us our weaponry.  Telepad out, but no one can teleport *in* to the school.  So we can’t do repeat trips.  Confirmed he’s not dead; just that we can’t get anything in.  Texts, too.  Total blackout, one way.”

“That’s fucked up.  So, the Akashic Sewer is trying… what?  To make a hell for the people inside? It doesn’t seem to care about anyone outside.”

“Yeah, this feels weird.”  Anesh agreed.  “Oh.  Reed got up, then got stabbed by a ratroach.  He went out with Simon’s team and the students for first aid.  We need some kind of medic orb, not gonna lie.  Other James got hurt, too.  He’s out of the fight, though he should live.”

“So where’s Nate?”

“Outside, past the increasingly dangerous police barricade.  Signaled him to not try to get in, especially since unlike you, he’s not bullet resistant.”

James groaned.  “We need to start duplicating bracers.  Not this one, though.  I’m down to five blocks left.”  He shook his arm.  “Another idiot tried to shoot me.”

Anesh gave a sideways glance to the glowering police officer that’d come in with Lua and the other rescued students.  “Hm.”  Was all he said.  “We should move to Canada.”

“Do they have dungeons in Canada?”  James retorted with a smirk.

“Almost certainly.”  Anesh shot back without thinking about it.

The two of them paused as they considered that.  Status Quo had been, at the end of the day, *wrong* about the dungeons.  They weren’t just centered in this part of the world; they were all over.  El and her own experiences were proof of that.  Why, then, wouldn’t there be dungeons in Canada?

“We’re gonna need passports.”  James said, throwing his head back to gaze idly up at the ceiling.

“That’s a tomorrow problem.”  Alanna cut in, stepping up to them.  “Hey.”  She shot at Anesh.  “I’d give you a hug, but I’m covered in intestines.”

“Gross.  Thank you.”  Anesh offered her a fist bump, which she took with a smile.  “So, what’s the plan? Where’s Secret?”

“No idea.”  James shook his head, sadly.  “He can’t fight them.  Did you know he can only hurt things that are secrets?  Now that the school’s just exploded out into the spotlight, he’s weak to them.”

“Weak like fire on water type, or weak like electric on ground type?”  Anesh inquired.

“He’s not a pokemon, man.”  James rolled his eyes.

Anesh gave a half shrug in agreement.  “I mean, he’s more of a… you know what, anime references later.  Do we *have* a plan?  Are we retreating?  The entryway is still rubble, I don’t think the dungeon can recover from that, so we have a path out if we need it.”

“Earlier today,” James explained, “a group of kids went into the dungeon.  Then this shit started.  So whatever they did, they set this off.  And I fucking wish I knew if it was because they made it mad, or made it *afraid*, or something else.  But if they did something to trigger this, then we need to try to put the monster back in the box.”  James didn’t like saying it, and it was clear his partners agreed with him.  “We’re in real trouble if this gets out of hand.  I’ll be honest, I do believe the military could handle this, easy.  But how long would it take to put soldiers here? And how long would they take to contain it? What if it keeps going? We’re in a suburban residential area; if the dungeon starts taking over houses, or parts of those parks that are all over the place, it’s going to get out of control basically in a day or two.”

“So we stop it now.  You don’t need to convince me.”  Anesh told him.  “Are we going in after it?”

“Yeah.”  Alanna said.  “Though I’m not sure I agree with James.  About the military thing.  I’ve been talking to officer Clarke.  You know, without antagonizing him.”  She poked James in the shoulder.  “And he is just fundamentally not ready for this. The police didn’t even think of shooting the busses outside that’re alive.  And we’ve seen more than a few dead cops inside, too.  And teachers, and students.  I’m not saying that the students here are wimps, I’m saying that, like, a football player could probably take a ratroach straight up.  Maybe two on one.  But the students would have outnumbered the monsters massively at first.”

“Fear kept them down?”  James mused.  “No, that doesn’t add up quite...”

“It’s not just fear.  *Lua* was afraid.  But she got up and fought.  James, you’ve got a cut just about your eye; were you afraid that was gonna blind you?”

“I mean, yeah.”  He shrugged, then made an ‘ah’ noise.  “We’re all afraid.”  He said.  “And we’re carving through them.  So it can’t just be fear.”

“They hesitate.  And it’s not just that they aren’t trying to adapt.  It’s almost like the reverse.  They’re forgetting solutions they already have that might work.”  Alanna cracked her knuckles against themselves.  “And I don’t know why we’re immune.”

“Secret?”  Anesh suggested.  “He is active in the building.”

“But not here.”  James said.  “And that matters when he’s physical.”

“What if it’s… Okay, this is kinda weird…. Alanna thought about what she’d just said, and shared a snicker with her boyfriends as they all realized the absurdity.  “Okay.  James, you can feel magic items now, right?”

“Yeah, the book too.  Even though it’s… not the Office.  Hm.”

“We’re changing.”  Anesh said.  “And not just because of the rewards.  That’s your point?”  Alanna nodded at him, and he rubbed at his chin.  “I don’t think I like that.”

James cut through the center of their conversation with a slash of a flat palm.  “Okay, I’m putting this scary talk on pause for a bit, to get us back on track.  We have a plan.”

“We do?”  Anesh asked.

“We do.”  Alanna confirmed with a nod.  “What is it?”

James wanted to roll his eyes, but was too tired to do so.  “We split the group; enough combatants to get the students out, and the rest of us to the breach.  We go in, we stab what needs stabbing, then we run.”

“What if we die?”  Anesh asked politely, like he was posing a question at a business conference and not a asking about their mortality.

With a considering nod, and a an appreciative hum, James answered, “Don’t do that.”

“Okay.  Good plan.”

“Wanker.”  James shot at him with a smirk.

“That’s my word!”  Anesh gave a mock gasp. 

“Guys, you’re adorable, really.  But we’re on a clock here.  We should get what we need and move.”  Alanna prompted the two of them.

They agreed, and got to work.

By the time they’d evac’d the other students, and Lua, and Deb who’d refused to leave everyone behind despite her injury, Simon had returned, alone, along with the mongausse and a story about what a pain it was to drop off the rescued students and dodge the police and news crews.  And with a little organization, they had their final strike team.

James and Alanna, tired, sore, and still ready to fight, their pockets and belts full of stolen knives.  Anesh, much more ready to scrap, despite being the last one of his bodies left.  Sarah, currently sharpening table legs into magnetic spikes.  Dave, wearing a bomber jacket and fiddling with a pair of laser pointers, which James hoped he didn’t get mixed up.  Cold-Wind-Friction, bloodied and messy, but still ready to fight, along side Frequency-Of-Sunlight, out for punitive revenge on behalf of her friend.  Virgil, fiddling with the laptop and trying to pretend he was calm.  Simon, gently petting the distortion that was the mongausse, and trying to pretend he was okay on his own.

They were all a mess, needed a change of clothes and a two hour long shower.  They were hurting, bruised and cut and scraped.  And they were *pissed*.  Even Virgil seemed to have a fury to his motions as he snapped the laptop shut, placed it in a sling on his side, and clipped it into place.  He might be a condescending jackass sometimes, but that didn’t mean he was in any way okay with murder, and this place was gonna pay for thinking it could step out of line like that.

James reloaded their one pistol with the magazine Alanna tossed him, pilfered off officer Clarke during their chat.

“Ready?”  He muttered, more to himself than anyone else.

They were.

They moved.  Fast.  Down below on the first floor, they could see over the railing of the balcony that more of those massive rat things were nosing around.  They kept to the inside, out of sight, and made a new route.  A straight shot toward the back of the school, and the wide windows on the balcony that looked out over the football field.  They only had to kill a couple ratroaches that tested them, and with the camracondas present, it wasn’t even a fight.

The plate glass was double pane, vacuum sealed, and durable enough to handle abuse from rowdy high school students, which was saying something.  

Sarah spiked it in three spots with her magnetic spears, planted her feet, and shoved the wooden stakes apart, rending a ten foot hole in the window and shattering most of it into shards that tumbled to the ground below.

The noise absolutely attracted attention, but they were already moving.  Despite it being the second floor, they had an easy way out, in the form of Dave, and one of his four slotted blues.  Raise Floor, once, twice, three times, and once the grinding noise ceased, they had a series of reasonably survivable jumps instead of one twenty foot fall.

James went first, boots scattering broken glass and slipping a little on the uneven surface.  Dave had a lot of magic, but he was still working on fine control, and it showed.  But it got the job done, as the group made the drop ahead of the skull-ball-thing rapidly closing in on their rear.  Sarah was the last one down, covering their retreat and the slower camracondas with a magnetic snap an a launched spear.  No red sparks indicated that she hadn’t killed the thing she’d already decided to call a skullaton, but it shattered a couple of the leering visages and elicited a pained scream that bought them time.

They hit the ground, and formed a loose line as they started moving to the fenced gate to the field.  The revolving metal bars were kept shut for high school sporting events, but otherwise should have been open.  Now, though, a glittering red “two hundred and twenty” shown on it.  James paid the cost without thinking; he’d killed enough ratroaches today that he’d need a dozen doors to even start to dent his pool of deaths.

He still held it open, though, cheating the dungeon of its kill tax as he ushered everyone through, before letting it slam behind them and giving the finger to the pack of ratroaches carefully crawling down the makeshift staircase they’d erected.

It was a straight run across the field, and they took it at a reasonable pace.  Nothing was chasing them, so they jogged, or slithered, enough so that they were moving quickly but not enough to exhaust themselves before more fighting.  Overhead, two helicopters did lazy circles; news or police, it didn’t matter really.  James spent the whole time waiting with his nerves on edge for part of the field to unfold into some kind of spiked pipe trap, or a cloaked football monster or something.  But it didn’t.  And they made it to the sheet metal shed on the other side without incident.

The structure looked like it might have belonged, if you hadn’t already been told it didn’t.  But once you knew, it was clear this thing had been put here as either a prank, or a mistake, or some kind of outside malevolent force that had no design sense.  In this case, James knew it was the latter.

The door was locked.  Alanna just snorted derisively at it, stepped back, and gave it a sideways kick hard enough to break one of the flimsy hinges.

Inside, there was a hole in space, hovering with evil intent over a blackened dirt floor and surrounded by rotting sports equipment.  It looked like math had gotten mad at the universe, and just torn a piece of it away.  It led *somewhere*, and it made it known that somewhere sucked.

“Last chance to back out.”  James told everyone.  No one said anything.  “Alright.  Let’s go kill this thing.  See you on the other side.”

Hands and fangs reached out together.  And then, they were gone, and reality had only the sounds of sirens and helicopter rotors to keep the empty field company.