The Daily Grind - Chapter 120 (Patreon)

This one is a day or two late, due to depression.  If anyone out there is aware of a way to stab the abstract concept of depression, let me know!  I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

_____

“I’m telling you, I don’t know where they went.”  Nate pointedly told the exact truth to one of the officers manning the cordon around the high school.

There was a sea of flashing lights at this point.  Two dozen cop cars, four firetrucks from two separate stations, a handful of ambulances, and, for reasons he wasn’t clear on but hadn’t questioned, a park’s department patrol vehicle.  This mess of wheels and steel was complemented by backed up traffic of frantic parents trying to get to their kids, cars left abandoned as a press of people both concerned and just casual observers threw themselves right up to the line of the police tape.  It was then further complicated by the army of news vans that had descended like locusts.

Nate didn’t have a high opinion of the press.  Being in the navy had sort of drilled into him that talking to reporters was a Career Ender, and then his time keeping secrets for the FBI had given him a clear picture of just how wrong about some big things the cameras could be.  Not that they didn’t try, or have a little help getting to the wrong answers , mind you. But they’d always added another step to any job he was doing.

His time with the Order, short as it was, had blown a hole in the veil of the world.  Magic was real.  So were monsters, though he’d always known there was a perfectly human flavor of those walking around.  Five months ago, he would have called his new prep cook a ‘monster’.  Now he just called them Knife-In-Fangs, and showed them how to skin potatoes.

The point was, it highlighted just how his initial suspicions that ‘the news’ didn’t have the whole truth were totally accurate.  So when a news van rolled up, Nate kept track of them, but made sure his face was always pointed away from camera.  A challenge when the cop he was talking to kept trying to get him to move.

And also answer questions. Questions Nate didn’t have real answers to, and wouldn’t have given real answers to even if he did.

“So you’re telling me.”  The captain, an older, barrel-chested man with a round face and flushed cheeks, was saying. “That you.  And your ‘friends’...”

“Fellow agents.”  Nate corrected firmly, tapping the FBI badge on the table.  It wasn’t actually his; he’d had to ask JP to make him a forgery of his own badge, which had stung.  He was leaning into it right now, though.

“Entered the building.  Saved a bunch of students.  Got in a gunfight.  Split up.  And you don’t know.  Where the rest of them are?”

“Yes.”  Nate, with Herculean effort, avoided rolling his eyes.  “Which is why I’m talking to you, asking you to keep me…”

“And the snakes?”  The police captain interrupted him.

“Are being *very* polite to you.”  Nate folded his hands in front of him, pressing his fingertips together.  “Look, I don’t know, or want to know, what your problem is.  I just need you to follow orders, okay?”

The captain narrowed his eyes.  “No.”  He drawled out in a rough, deliberate voice.  “There’s been a lot of reports around here lately.  Of people impersonating the FBI.  And I don’t think.  You’re bureau at all.”

Nate wanted to headbutt the nearest wall until the knot behind his eyes went away.  Or, if he couldn’t find a suitable wall, this guy in front of him.  Or just *James*, for fucking this all up.  He was the actual FBI!  He was the only one *not* committing fraud!  Why was it all falling back on him?!

“I am being *polite* by informing you of our presence…” Nate started with, but he’d seen the look in the captain’s eye before.  No matter where you were in the world, there was a sort of attitude that was universal when people had decided they were right, and you were screwed.  “Oh, fuck it.”  He turned, grabbing the potted plant that had frustratingly been left in his care.  “James is a bad influence on me.”  He muttered as he stalked away, ignoring the protesting shout from behind him.

He almost worried the captain was going to shoot him.  But the man had bigger worries on his plate than Nate right now, and besides, he’d already adjusted his bracer to match the .45 ACP on the man’s hip.

The bracers were so absurdly unfair.  He would have killed to have one when he was a more active field agent.  He literally *had* killed for less.  Getting used to stuff like that was just part of his new world.

“Reed.”  He called out to the young man who was sitting cross-legged against one of the wheels of a cop cars.  “Get whoever’s left, and let’s move.  See if anyone has a ‘feeling’ about where we should be; you’re all too good at that, right?”  Nate paused, then asked.  “Why are you handcuffed?”  He demanded.

Reed looked up at him, and Nate noticed a pattern of bruises on his neck that he couldn’t be sure had been from dungeon combat.  Reed looked like he was going to say something, but the quiet young man just got out a wet cough instead, spitting a wad of blood to the side before answering.  “I am under arrest.”  He stated.

“...Why.”  Nate didn’t bother to ask, just expressed annoyance.  “Get up.”  He said instead, reaching a hand down to pull Reed up from under the shoulder.  Turned him around, and reached down the the handcuffs.

Nate didn’t have a blue absorbed right now; he still couldn’t actually do that like the others could.  He also only had his bracer and bracelet for magic firepower.  And he also didn’t have a library of bizarre orb skills to draw on like everyone else.

But he was, and always would be, a smooth operator.  And he carried handcuff keys.

“Hey, what are you…!”

“I outrank you.”  Nate snapped at the officer that was coming around the car toward them.  “So does he.”  He nodded at Reed.  “Let’s go.”  The words came out hard and angry.  “Make sure they didn’t arrest anyone who needed a doc, and then go figure out what else we need to shoot.”

“Yes sir.”  Reed gave him that weird salute the Order used, and Nate resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

Then he realized something.  “This is how James feels.  All the time.”  He sighed.  “Fuck.  I bet he doesn’t have to deal with this.  He’s probably having fun right now, while I have to go see if the local LEOs are trying to find the off switch on the camracondas.  God dammit.”  Nate stalked through the mass of parked cars filling the street like he owned the place, which was usually enough to get people out of his way.

If it weren’t for the fact that he knew James actually was probably having a harder time than he was, Nate might have been serious in thinking this was unfair.

_____

James spat onto the ground, trying to clear the burn of bile off of his tongue.  The transition to this space, this disgusting underground sewer hellscape, still felt like it was intentionally painful and disorienting.  Though it was only his second time here, so what did he know.

He wasn’t the only one to have thrown up, losing whatever was left of their lunch.  ‘Fortunately’, the smell was lost among the overwhelming acrid stench of human waste, black mold, and whatever the hell the probably-toxic wisps of fumes in the air were made of.

They were in a different entry room this time.  Similar, but still noticeably different.  A shallow bowl of needlessly rough concrete, stained black in patches from blood and bile and probably a million other things James didn’t want to know about.  The wall around them was studded in points where the joints of pipes escaped the concrete, but most of it was intact except for a few randomly placed faucets that dripped a thick orange sludge down into open grates below.

“Status check!”  James called out.

A chorus of affirmatives came back at him, along with a few people still coughing.  The camracondas looked out of it, too, and Cold-Wind-Friction had spat up some kind of oily fluid.  But everyone was here.

They still had armor on, if they were wearing it, too.

James snaked his hand inside his coat.  The gun was still there.  “Something’s up.  Anyone missing anything?”

Alanna looked down at her person, and the two dozen knives she’d confiscated, stuck through her belt and pockets.  “No, shockingly.”  She said, wiping the back of a gloved hand across her mouth.  “Fuck something’s changed.”

“I think we crossed the bridge of ‘something changed’ about four hours ago.”  James rebutted.  “Alright.  Everyone take a minute, but get ready to move.  Virgil, get that local network set up.  Frequency, keep an eye on the hall please.  Everyone else, just stretch, breathe… shallowly… and when the network’s good to go, we’ll network and move out.”  Simon raised a hand to ask a question, and James answered without needing to hear it.  “I brought the intermediary plugs, you don’t need to do a full dive with us.  Also I’m sorry James isn’t here.”  He said.

Simon shrugged.  “It couldn’t be helped.”  He said.  “Thank you though.”

While Virgil flipped open the laptop and started creating a wifi hotspot that would hopefully encompass their group for the duration of their stay here, James looked around the room.  Alanna was handing out knives, Dave was poking a finger through a ragged hole in his jacket and scowling, and Simon and Sarah were both taking the time to clip more hardware into their skulljack braids.  James took their lead, and plugged his own braid in, while he kept scanning.

The walls.  There was something weird about them.  His instincts knew it, but he hadn’t quite figured it out yet in a way he could put into words.  They were that same grey concrete as ever.  Jagged rocks and pipes, splatters of some dark goop, random graffiti, flickering red emergency lights, jutting faucets and spikes…

There was graffiti here.

It was written in pens, in highlighter, and in a couple cases, in blood.  But there was a *lot* of it.  And it had *names*.

“Guys.”  James nudged Anesh, who was trying to get some chunk of debris out of his shoe without letting his foot touch the floor.  “Look.  No name eaters.”  He pointed around the room, and everyone’s eyes followed.

“You think Secret was here?”  Sarah immediately asked.

“Doesn’t feel like meme corpses.”  Alanna mentioned, like that was a sentence people were allowed to say casually.  “But the last time we were here, we could barely make out the words, and especially not the names.  So what changed?”

“‘What changed?’ Is the million dollar question of the day.”  James sighed, trying to breathe through his mouth.

From where he was tapping away at the keyboard, Virgil asked, “Is the smell new too?  Because it is vile down here.”

“No, this is basically the same.”  James confirmed.  “This place sucks.”

Dave snorted, spitting out onto the corner of the floor.  “I didn’t believe you about how bad it was.  I was wrong!  You were right.”

“Much as I love hearing that, are we good to go?”  James asked Virgil.

“Network’s up.”  He replied, closing his eyes and probing the wifi hotspot through his skulljack interface.  “Stable enough for light connection.  You three, avoid full connectivity.  This isn’t the best laptop, and if the battery dies or I get thrown off a cliff, you’ll be in trouble.”

“Are there cliffs here?”  Sarah asked quietly.  “I’m hoping no.”

“Not last time, but it sounds awful, so *probably*.”  James rolled his eyes.  “Alright.  Anything else before we move?”

“Can we have a soundtrack?”  Alanna asked.  “If we’ve got the wifi running anyway.  I could stream some Linkin Park to everyone.  Really set the mood, you know?”

Everyone stared at her.  Even the camracondas, that didn’t have the same context as everyone else, gazed unblinking eyes at the bloodied woman in the middle of the room.  There was a moment of silence.

“No?”  Alanna said.  “Sum 41 maybe? I’m just thinking that if we want the authentic high school experience…”

“Lights on, link up, anyone with good low light vision to the front.  Virgil in the middle of the pack.  Frequency, front, Friction, rearguard with the mongausse, Simon, make sure the distortion dog stays away from the laptop in combat if possible please.”  James drew his gun.  “Sarah, with me.  Dave, with Alanna.  Alanna… I’m not saying I don’t love your music taste…”

“I’ve got some Offspring on my phone too, if you want something more contemporary that fits the theme!”  She offered.  “And I even have my phone this time!”

James wanted to rub at his eyes in exasperation, but his hands were covered in flecks of dried blood and ichor.  He couldn’t even sigh properly without feeling like he was poisoning himself.  But he saw what Alanna was doing, and he appreciated it.  He just didn’t have the energy left to play along. “Just keep an eye out please.  Let’s go kill this thing.  Or at least enough of its minions that it thinks twice before trying this again.”

The group, feeling just a little less tense, moved into the pitch black of the tunnel.

_____

“Oh yeah, this is definitely infected.  Or would be anyway.”  The woman poking at Deb’s ankle wore tangled black hair in a simple ponytail, and a messy white coat with the sleeves rolled up.  “I can get you a rabies shot, and bandage this up, but you really ought to go to an actual hospital.”  The veterinarian told her.

Deb tried to smile, but it turned into a wince and a hiss as the other woman dabbed disinfectant on the claw gashes on her ankle.  She’d already accepted that her favorite pair of jeans were either getting turned into shorts, or getting thrown away.  And Deb wasn’t sure she was prepared to be the kind of person who wore jorts.

“Thank you.”  She told the vet, instead of saying any of her other thoughts out loud.  “I do really appreciate it.  You were just close by and open, you know?”

“Sure.”  The vet looked up at Deb sitting on the counter, like she wanted to say something else.  “Well, I can’t take human health insurance for anything but the cost of the rabies shot, so I may have to charge you a bit.  Unless this was someone’s pet, then they might have insurance for it?”

“Oh, no.  Not a pet.”  Deb clenched her teeth and shuddered.  “Not a humans anyway.”  She muttered.

“Um, what?”

“Shit, I thought I said that quieter.”  Deb laughed.  “Just a joke.  Sorry.”

“Uh huh.”  The black-haired woman looked over to the duffel bag Deb had carried in with her, complete with hard shell knee pads sticking out of a corner mesh pocket.  She glanced back at the young woman who’d limped into her business, and asked for help with a ‘scratch’.

Two in a week.  Her dad had always said that ‘once was happenstance, twice was coincidence, three times was enemy action’.  But she’d always figured you had to go through times one and two to get to three.  And maybe if people asked at the second one, they could dodge a third.

So the vet decided to say something, after she’d wrapped the wound in clean cotton and administered the kind of shot they really only kept on hand because it was required, and not because rabies was a problem anymore.

“Hey.”  She asked, as Deb was gingerly testing her bandaged ankle and ignoring the throbbing pain in her arm.  “I have a question.”

Deb looked up with raised eyebrows.  “I can pay, I swear.”  She said.  “Um… might have to expend account it, I guess. Not sure how that…. But it’s fine!  Charge what you need to!”

“No, not that.”  The vet took a deep breath, prepared to run and lock the door and call the cops if this turned bad.  “Are you… have you…” She stumbled over her words.  “Do you like the snakes?”  She blurted out suddenly.

“What?”  Deb asked in confused surprise.

“I’m sorry!  I know I’m not supposed to say anything!  I just wanted to ask!”  The vet held up her hands defensively, prepared to bolt out to the front lobby and get her receptionist to help her hold the door shut.  “I won’t tell anyone, I swear!”

“Oh.  You mean the camraconda!”  Deb realized suddenly.  “Holy shit, wait, is this the same place they brought Neil?  That’s… whooooops!”  She laughed.  “Sorry, hey, it’s okay.  No one’s mad about anything.”  She tried to reassure the doc.

“You’re not going to be in trouble for this?”  The vet asked.  “Or me either?”

“Nah, it’s fine.”  Deb waved a hand.  “We have a common sense policy on secrecy.  And yes, I like the snake.  Though not the one you met.”  She gave a little grin and glanced away.  “Um.  Anyway.  I can pay you and go if you’re uncomfortable…”

“Are you the good guys?”

The question was blunt and brave and almost caught Deb off guard.  But by the time the words were done, she already  knew the answer.

“Yes.”  She said with a firm nod.

“What did that to your leg?  Really?  Because it wasn’t a dog.”

“Giant rat.”  Deb sighed.  “Oh hell, I’ve become a cliche.  Anyway.  I should get going. I need to make sure some other people are okay.”

“Right, of course.  Um… *should* I give you a bill?”

It was a real question.  Was it right to bill people who fought monsters?  And it did seem pretty apparent that the girl who’d limped in here did that.

Deb nodded simply, though.  “Yeah, I can leave a phone number or something.  I’m easy to get in touch with.  Would you accept gold or magic items as payment?  Just… in case I want to avoid our accountant.  Again.  Oh, and would you be open to helping us if we need first aid?  Just in case.”

“Yes!”  The vet cleared her throat. Adopted a more professional tone. “Um…I  mean, yes, that would be acceptable.”

“Great.  Here.”  Deb wrote down a number on a scrap of paper from her wallet, and handed it over.  “Thanks again for your help.  Nice to meet you…?”

“Oh!  I’m Dr. Marris!”  She paused.  “Amy, though.  If you want.  I don’t know how to… process most of this.”

“That’s common.” Deb admitted with a bob of her head.  “I’ll be in touch!”

She limped out of the clinic, shaking her head with a tired smile.  One thing after another, she thought, as she pulled out her phone and messaged the Order’s chat server.

“Possible medical contact.  Owe her for some help, seems nice.  JP, wire me money for the bill, unless you want me giving her magic glasses or something.”  Blunt social force seemed to be the easiest way to get JP’s attention.

Deb closed the app without waiting for a response.  Still no contact from anyone at the school.  She tried, and mostly failed, to quell the acidic worry in her stomach.  It had been hours.  She hoped they were okay, but panicked stress filled her as Deb imagined the dozens of things that could have killed everyone by now. Hell, even just getting past the police line had been a feat she had to thank Nate for next time she saw him.

No matter what, Deb thought as she headed back to the operation zone, no matter how messed up her leg was; she was having an easier time than James.

_____

“This is too easy.”  James said.

They’d been walking for half an hour, on high alert, and it had started to wear on him.  On everyone.  Keeping their eyes open, ears tuned to even the smallest sound, muscles ready to spring into action in response to an attack, a trap, even just a slight stumble.  All of it added up to an exhausting experience.  Human bodies weren’t really designed for guard duty, and the energy it took to keep yourself constantly rechecking the surrounding environment really burned through any kind of mental focus.  The fact that they were all mentally connected through the skulljacks partially eased the burden, but also added a new layer of stress to it that was mostly novel and a challenge to deal with.

And worst of all, was the fact that *nothing was happening*.

As they stole their way with rapid footsteps, moving as fast as a walk could take them without tripping over tails or breaking into a jog, through a maze of pipes and unstable floor and pitch black concrete, the strike team failed to encounter a single thing.

No tiny chittering bugs that tried to bite chunks out of their flesh.  No dripping rat-things, liquid sacs ready to burst and spray caustic fluid across them.  No gnashing teeth or screaming beasts.  No forgotten corpses.

Nothing.

“Agreed.”  Alanna said, responding to James.  “What do we do?”

“Keep moving.”  Anesh said, voice firm.  “It can’t be empty.  Not entirely.”

“It could be.  We don’t know the rules.”  Sarah said.  “We never have.  We’re playing the game blind.”

“We keep moving.”  James agreed with Anesh.  “But I think we go a bit faster.  Everyone take a few minutes.  Battery and water check.”   He announced.

They paused, taking a moment to double check the power levels on the phones they were all using as flashlights.  They had actual flashlights, too.  Small ones, anyway.  The entrance hadn’t taken away any of their kit, and James kicked himself for not at least trying to bring one of the rifles in here.

He sipped at one of their bottles of water, stretching the soreness out of his legs while everyone else largely did the same.  They didn’t know how long they had to go, so they were pacing themselves.  But it didn’t seem like they were going to get any easy answers.  James rubbed his eyes, trying to push back the exhaustion, and gradually felt a second wind settle in his chest as they took a short rest.  He wasn’t close to getting used to this place enough to actually relax, though.

“Okay.  Everyone good?”  He asked.  They’d taken their break largely in silence, no one wanting to waste breath on words, especially if it meant they’d have to breath in more of the smell afterward.

Everyone agreed, and they started moving again.  Faster, this time.

It was ten minutes of a slow jog later that someone called a halt.

No one was too tired to keep going, though Virgil seemed to be largely putting up a facade of athleticism that everyone else had authentically earned through constantly running away from threats to their lives.  And the camracondas didn’t ever get tired, as far as anyone knew.  Maybe they did, but they weren’t saying otherwise.  Instead, it was Anesh who brought them all up short.

“Hey.  Door.”  He said, swinging his light around to highlight the rusted red metal door embedded in the side of the network of broken pipes and concrete.

James took a second to look at it, and motioned with a nod of his head.  Alanna stepped forward while Anesh held the light, and stuck her hand out to the pitted metal of the handle.  A red ‘twelve’ flashed in the air over it, and she looked back at the group.

“No.”  James shook his head.  “These are just side rooms, remember?  I don’t want us getting distracted by every door we pass.”

“Could be an access tunnel or something.”  Simon suggested.  “It’s not like we have to go in.”  He said it with the voice of someone who absolutely did not want to go in.

“We could split u…”  Dave started to say, and then stopped, holding up his hands to fend off the array of incredulous glares shot his direction.  “Okay!”  He acquiesced.  “We can’t do that!”

“I’m opening it.”  Alanna said, letting a stream of sparks flow out of her palm and into the door.  She shouldered the rusted hulk open with a few jerking blows, and then once it was loosened, stepped back to deliver a kick to the base of the door that swung it inward the rest of the way.  “Lights.”

They pivoted some of their lights toward the inside of the room, cutting away the inky black.  It was a room, too.  A single small box of something that may once have been a classroom.  The light didn’t do much for the blackness on the walls, because that blackness was a creeping dark mold that was gradually consuming the drywall.  Instead, it showed off a few rows of single piece chair-and-desk setups, cramped so close together that there would be no way to walk between them without rearranging the whole room.  The teacher’s desk at the front was set against a massive blackboard, cracked down the middle like a fault line, and with words and numbers carved into it with what looked like imprecise claw strikes.

There were skeletons in some of the desks; desiccated strands of both flesh and clothing dangling off of them.

Alanna shut the door.

“Okay.  No distractions.”  James ordered.  “Let’s get moving.  It’s a straight line to the arena.”

They moved on without complaint.

They took breaks every mile or so.  A few minutes to recharge before moving on again.  Still nothing attacked them, nothing jumped out.  They passed by more doors, and one whole side tunnel.  But they kept going in a straight line, aiming for where they at least knew there was an exit.

During one of the longer breaks, James found himself talking to Anesh.

“You know,” Anesh was saying to him, “the telepads don’t work here right now.  But they might work in the Office.”

James was too tired to quirk an eyebrow.  “We know they work in the office.”  He said instead.  “Why?”

“I mean, for the heart.”  Anesh told him.  “That’s what we’re all thinking, right?  That we can actually find the center of this place and stab it?”

“Okay, yeah.  When you say it like that it seems insane.”  James muttered.

“More or less than…”  Anesh motioned an arm around limply at their surroundings.  “Anyway.  We could just use the telepads on the Office.  Or any dungeon we happen to find.  Once we know what to call the center, anyway.”

“What if they’re also protected?  Also, holy shit, we need to learn how to protect from stuff like this ourselves.”  James groaned.  “We’re so far behind, and we don’t even really have context for it.  It just feels impossible.”

“James, focus.  Telepads.”  Anesh shook his boyfriend lightly by the shoulders, then grimaced and wiped off whatever drying fluid had been on his coat.  “We can protect against a lot of stuff with a moon base.”

“...You lost me.  No, wait.”  James held up his index finger, closing his eyes for a moment while he thought.  “Okay, I’m caught up.  No.  That’s pointlessly dangerous.”  He countered, looking around for anyone else who looked like they had the energy to back him up.  “Sarah, do you want a moon base?”  He asked his friend.

Sarah and Frequency-Of-Sunlight paused the conversation they were having, looked over at James, then back at each other.  They did this twice.

“What is a moon?”  Frequency asked, her digital voice bouncing loudly off the nearby pipes.  It would have alerted every monster nearby, if there’d been anything to alert.

“The bright white light in the sky at night?  The big one?  That’s the moon.”  Sarah filled her in.  “It’s actually a rock orbiting the earth and I just realized you guys probably didn’t get taught orbital mechanics.  Okay.  We’ll come back to that.  James, are you guys ready to go?  We’re just gossiping about camraconda sex over here if the break’s over.”

“Why.”  Dave and Cold-Wind-Frequency asked with a single voice.

“This could save our lives, Dave!”  Sarah’s serious protest was a shattered illusion with the smile she wore on her face.  “I now grow stronger by learning about..!”

“Yeah, okay.  Let’s go.”  James agreed, cutting that line of conversation off and pushing himself off the cleanest pipe he could find that he’d chosen as a bench.  “Anesh, if we survive this, we can work out the limits of the telepads.  I promise.  Now everyone make sure you’ve got your knives, and let’s go.”

Another three miles before they got anywhere.  James counted himself lucky that he normally dealt with a dungeon that encouraged much longer treks, otherwise his legs would have given out by now.  And when they finally did get toward that room lit in flickering, sticky orange light?  When they all flicked off their lights, pulled their weapons, moved into a ready combat position, and prepared to fight for their lives?

They stepped out into an empty arena.

No jeering, snapping crowds of ratroaches in the ‘stands’.  No single monster to greet them with a knife and an offer of an easy exit.  Just an empty floor, freshly carpeted in crushed asphalt from their last visit, an unguarded rusty iron portcullis, and those standing tilted lockers over by the exit.

“Anyone got any green sparks?”  James asked grimly into the silence, motioning to the lockers as his voice echoed flatly like he was all by himself in a gym.

“Where the hell *is* everything?”  Anesh asked, confused, arms falling to his sides, stolen makeshift knives dangling loosely in his grip.

Alanna strode past them as they fanned out, searching the room.  Dave hopped up into one of the stands with a boost from Sarah, checking around the hewed stone benches with a shrug.  James just stood there, trying to work out what the hell was going on while they failed to turn anything up.

“Anyone wanna go home?”  Alanna asked, voice weary as she held out a hand to the portcullis.  “Exit’s still *on*, it’s just… no one’s here.”

James tapped at his chin, staring at the ground while everyone turned to look at him for an answer.  “No.”  He eventually said.  “There’s still something wrong here.  Let’s keep looking.  Virgil, you’ve been mapping this whole place, right?  Not that it isn’t mostly just a straight awful line.”  The other man nodded, tapping at his laptop.  “*Why* is it empty?”  James demanded.

“We don’t… know?”  Dave asked, wary.

“No, I mean, that’s the point.”  James said.  “Why is the dungeon empty, and Upstairs full of monsters?  What the fuck changed down here?  And, if we’re in the clear from name eaters and critters, why the hell haven’t we found any corpses?  You remember what those kids said.  Like, eight students came down here earlier today.  *Where are they*?  No, we’re not leaving.  We double back to that turn, and keep checking.  Unless anyone has an actual explanation?”

No one did.  So, they did the usual.  Took a break, then moved out.

Half an hour later, when they found another empty arena, James was starting to get annoyed.

“I can *feel* something.”  He hissed out.  “We were getting closer.  But it’s not here.  What’s going on?”

“No, I got it too.”  Alanna nodded, and a glance at Dave and Anesh showed they had similar reactions.

They were standing in the middle of another one of the exit arenas, though this one had polished wood for its floor.  It could have been elegant, or at least a useable basketball court, if it didn’t also have intentionally jagged splinters and rusted nails pointing upward every few feet.  The gate here was a single slab of granite, also eager to charge them a few hundred red sparks to, presumably, head back to reality.

James idly flipped the knife in his hands.  “Okay.”  He said.  “We’re getting closer.  Let’s backtrack to the last intersection, and try again.  Virgil, still good on battery?”

“I’m plugged into the Lair’s power, so yes.”

“Wait, what?”

Virgil shrugged.  “I brought the power strip that’s connected to itself no matter how far the distance is.  The laptop has infinite power.”

“Did you… and I can’t believe I’m saying this ten miles deep into a dungeon… did you bring an iPhone charger?”  Alanna asked him.

“I don’t use an iPhone.”

She rapped her knuckles together in amused surprise.  “That’s not what I asked!”

“I’ve got one.”  Sarah cut in, before casualties began to mount.  “We can switch off as we go.  But we should get moving.  I feel something too, and it’s… weird.”

“Right, you’ve got more delve time than all of us, huh?”  Alanna nodded.

“Not really.”  Sarah admitted.  “I’ve spent more time inside a dungeon, but I think there’s a difference when you’re a prisoner.  Like, Frequency and Friction don’t have the same sense you guys do, and they literally grew up there.”

“Same with Magneto.”  Simon added from where he was watching the door back to the tunnel, deliberately running his fingers through the magnetic field of the monguasse.

“We see feel more and less.”  Frequency-Of-Sunlight confirmed.  “Nothing special.  Cannot hear the interference you can.”

James nodded.  “Okay.  Well.  Next time we hit an intersection, we should try to lean into that.  Let’s go.”

More tunnels.  More pipes.  They skipped over doors in the walls and a hatch in the floor.  They passed by a question about bats written in blood on one of the small patches of exposed concrete around them, which Dave answered without thinking, earning him a flaring addition of a few green sparks.  They still failed to find anything trying to fight them.

When they hit the next intersection, they waited for the more experienced delvers, the ones who had been inside Officium Mundi long enough that they were starting to develop these strange new instincts, to stand in front and try to feel for where they needed to be.  They chose a direction, and started out again.

The next time they took a break, they ran out of water.

“Why didn’t anyone bring a bottle that’s connected to the faucet back at the lair?”  Anesh joked.  “Virgil brought infinite power.  It just seems reasonable that we have an endless supply of all our basic resources attended to by literal magic.”

“It’s not infinite, it’s…”  No one listened to Virgil pedantically correct the statement.

Alanna cut him off, mostly unintentionally.  “Oh man, we should have brought the lunchbox of holding!”  She announced, the humorous realization restoring some of her mental energy for a brief flash.

James laughed.  “Oh, hell, that’s a really good point.  We should test if that thing keeps food fresh, too.  If it does, we could have an emergency ration pack for any kind of, you know…”

“Thirty mile hike through a dungeon that smells like shit?”  Dave asked.

“Okay, when you say it like that, I don’t really want lunch.”  James admitted.

“How’s your feeling, by the way?”  Dave asked.  “Mine kinda went away.”

“Same.”  James said.  “Though it really felt like there was *anything* this way.”

“Light shown in far distance.”  Cold-Wind-Friction chimed in from where he was keeping watch on the upcoming tunnel.  “Something is ahead.”

“Okay.  Well.  If this one turns out to be nothing, we can leave.”  James announced.  “Being stuck down here dying of dehydration doesn’t seem like a winning move.  Everyone ready?  One more go.”

They were.  They started moving again, even Virgil, who was currently lagging behind and using the skulljack wifi connection to *text everyone complaints*.  James put a stop to that pretty quickly by transitioning to using the text overlay system to keep a running tally of things they passed for ‘statistical analysis’, correctly guessing that Virgil’s untampered *need* for organization would prevent him from cluttering up a useful source of information.

They approached at a walk, not wanting to rush and be tired for what might be an actual confrontation.  And it turned out to be something of a good call, when they made it to the tunnel’s mouth.

There were bodies lying here, just on the threshold of whatever lay beyond.

What lay beyond was actually difficult to see.  It looked like another arena, but the light was cold, like it was covered in a thick fog that their flashlights weren’t enough to overcome.  But unlike the others, this one lay on the other side of a *door*.

The door was huge.  They’d sort of noticed, on approach, that the corridor around them had been getting wider, but here it opened up to something almost cavernous.  Just to support this massive steel blockade.  It looked like a hatch, or the door you might see on a bank vault; and unlike everything else in this place, it was *pristine*.  Untarnished metal, untouched by anything hostile, sitting down here alone in the tunnels.

It was also sitting open.

The bodies were exactly who James feared.  The strike team moved up cautiously, with both camracondas on watch to freeze anything that might even pretend to be a trap, but nothing jumped out.  It just put James more on edge as he knelt down and rolled over one of the limp forms.

“High school kid.”  He said, his nose filled with the scent of blood now added to the aroma of the dungeon.

Nearby, Sarah checked on another one, while the rest of the team examined the door.  “Looks safe to go through?”  Alanna muttered.  “What happened here?”

There was a metallic ping, a noise that cut through the rest of the dripping, creaking sounds of this sewer.  James looked over to where Anesh scuffed his boot against the ground again, getting a repetition of the sound, before bending down and plucking a small object off the floor.

“Bullet casing?”  He said, confusion in his voice.

James moved his hands down the prone corpse in front of him.  The kid bore wounds that spoke of this place’s monsters.  Bites, scrapes on the arms under a torn hoodie, bloodied knuckles, and a massive bruise around one unblinking cold eye that looked an awful lot like he’d run into a wall.  No phone, no weapons, no anything; when he’d come in, either he’d done so totally unarmed, or the interdiction had still been in effect.  And then, he found it.

“This kid was shot.”  James announced.  “That’s what killed him.”  He looked over to the next corpse, and saw a similar red starburst stain on the chest of the football jersey that one was wearing.  “Him too.”

“How did anyone…”  Anesh started to say, before he was cut off.

“I know this guy.”  Sarah suddenly said, jerking back like she’d just picked up a snake.  “This is… this is Scott!”

“What?”  Dave and James chorused together, both of them moving closer along with Simon to shine an extra light on the student’s face.

It was, undoubtedly, one of the two kids they’d saved from Status Quo not even a week ago.

“I never met him.  What the fuck is he doing here?”  James demanded, staring down at the dead kid’s face.  “*How* did we miss this?  Who *shot him*?!”

“Better question.”  Simon asked in a small whisper of a voice that almost went unnoticed.  “Why is he smiling?”

James scowled.  “Why weren’t we keeping an eye on him?  What the hell happened?”

“Lua was watching him a the hospital.”  Simon said.  “When she and Momo came back, they brought the other one, but Scott had his sister there with him.”

Alanna snapped her fingers, the noise startling half the group.  “His what?”  She demanded, pointing at Simon.

“His… sister?”  The younger man repeated.  James was suddenly struck by just how barely out of high school himself Simon was.  “Graham stayed at the Lair for a while, after Status Quo, but he went to stay with Scott when…”

“When he left.”  James stated.  “Because he couldn’t stay with his parents anymore.  Because?”

“Because Status Quo wiped their families.”  Sarah murmured, eyes going wide.

“So who the fuck picked Scott up from the hospital?”  James asked.  “And where’s Graham now?”

A shiver of chilled fear passed around the group, and everyone turned their eyes back to the ajar vault door.

“One way to find out.”  James said, rising, and gingerly stepping over the fallen bodies.  He approached the vault door, rested a hand on it, and applied a little pressure just to make sure he’d have some advanced warning if it was going to slam shut on him.  Then, with a deep breath and a worried glance back at everyone behind him, he slipped through the gap.

He flicked his light off as he stepped into the room.  It was useless in the cold glow of the interior, anyway.  Not just because it didn’t shine over the ambient light, but also because the room was *huge*, on a scale that James was having trouble comprehending.

It felt like he’d stepped outside.  But not onto anywhere on Earth.  No, there wasn’t a vista on the planet that could make him feel as *small* as this room did, and that counted the time he’d almost fallen into the Grand Canyon.

The floor was smooth concrete, tinted slightly blue by the hostile cold of the light that emanated from nowhere and everywhere.  It stretched off for hundreds of miles, into the far distance. Maybe thousands.  Maybe more. There was no horizon.  There was no orienting line where lines of sight stopped.  Overhead, the ceiling was simultaneously too close, and too huge, to feel anything other than crushed.  The entire room was filled with a feeling of being all too real.  Like the concept of A Big Room had been dropped here and left to wait for them.

The party fit inside easily.

“What the fuuuuuck…”  Dave might have meant to mouth the words more than say them, but they came out anyway.  Beside him, Cold-Wind-Friction pressed against Dave’s legs, both the camracondas trying to keep themselves as rooted to the ground as possible.

James empathized with that.  It did feel like he could just float away at any second here.

“There’s something over there.”  Alanna pointed off in a random direction.  James followed the line of her finger, and sure enough, there was… well, it was just a spot.  It could have been miles away, but it was there.  Somewhere out there.  He glanced back again at their entry point, and jerked in surprise to see that the room extended around the massive vault door.  The door itself was just perched in the middle of the flat plane, like everything else.  A portal back to a realm that itself had only one open portal back to reality.

“Virgil.”  James commanded.  “Keep that fucking mapping program going.”

“I’m doing it manually using…”

“Just… dude, just don’t let us get lost in here.  If we lose track of the door, we’re dead.  Slowly.”

“Right…”

“Let’s go.”  Alanna said, taking the lead.  “And no one break off.  I don’t wanna lose anyone here.”

They huddled close together as they crossed the plain, no one wanting to accidentally wander off and lose sight of the group.  Not that it would be possible, really; they could see things out to a million miles away.  But it *felt* possible.  Like it would one misstep away from getting lost in the enormity of the place.

And it was, lacking any other defining features, enormous.

The walk went on for so long, one of the camracondas got tired.

They stopped to rest a dozen times, and still, the one thing they could see in the distance didn’t appear much closer.  By the third rest, James was thirsty.  By the tenth, no one had said a word for an hour.  Even Frequency-Of-Sunlight, who would often make small comments or ask little questions about odd things to them, had lapsed into quiet.

By the time the object started appearing to grow larger, James’ feet hurt so badly, he just wanted to sit down for a week.  No one else was in better shape.  They’d long ago left everything that wasn’t needed for a straight up fight back at one of their rest sites, lightening their load as far as it would go.  But they’d easily hiked, jogged, and sprinted a combined total of twenty or thirty miles today.  So less carry weight could only go so far.

When they got close, it happened rapidly.  All of a sudden, James’ eyes resolved on what they were approaching, and then, they were practically *there*.  No time to rest, to recoup.  Just a sudden arrival, due to a misjudged distance in this bizarre, endless, massive place.

The single distortion in the floor was a pyramid of stone steps.  At its peak, arms stretched up into the air, was the soft figure of a familiar curly haired high school student that James had rescued.  Graham stood with his back to the group, but James still recognized him almost right away, just based on the context of what was going on.  He didn’t react to the sounds of footsteps, heavy breathing, magnetic distortion, or tails slithering on concrete.

At the base of the pyramid, which was only maybe six steps tall and none of them the monolithics that Dave had carved out of the grounds of the school overhead, there were two things.  The first was a gun.  It lay on the ground where it had been dropped, slide racked open to show the last bullet had been fired.  It wasn’t like any gun that James had ever seen, though it was undeniably a firearm.  A sleek black piece of hardware, with too many low angles in it to ever be comfortable to grip, and a trigger too far forward to be stable.  This was a strange creation of a weapon that felt closer to a failed experiment than a gun.  And it *did* feel off to him, when he looked at it.

Not as off as he felt when he looked at the other thing, though.

“Oh look, visitors!”  The girl spoke, voice outwardly cheerful, but with an undercurrent of promised violence that made James’ teeth itch.

She was tall, with long red hair that dropped thick curls down onto her shoulders.   A round, grinning face with wide eyes, looking at the approaching party the way a cat would a mouse.  She was also short, with trimmed back black hair; ears that looked a little too large against the sides of her narrow skull.  She was well muscled, she was rail thin, she had ivory skin and she had an almost ashen complexion.

James grimaced, tilted his head sideways, slapped himself, and looked at her again.

She was a lot of things.  That’s what she looked like, really.  A lot of things.  A human composition, but not a human.  Not like they normally came, anyway.

“Oh, interesting.”  She hummed in five different voices.  “You shouldn’t have been able to see that.”

“What are you doing here?”  James asked.

“Helping!”  She replied, unhelpfully.

“Wow, yeah, walked into that one.”  He muttered.

Sarah stepped up next to him.  “You’re Scott’s ‘older sister’, aren’t you?”  She asked.  Her voice echoed against the open concrete around them, before muffling itself against the endless expanse.

“For a while, yes!”  The girl giggled, bright and oppressive in the cold light.  “And you… mmmh.  Yes.  You’re a prisoner, aren’t you?”

Sarah frowned, but said nothing.

“Such an interesting collection, come to see my…”

“Please, stop talking.”  James cut her off, and turned slightly to face the rest of his group, purposefully ignoring the thing’s mock gasp of indignation.  “What do we do here?”  He asked them.

“Graham’s doing something.”  Dave pointed out.  “That thing isn’t… normal.”

“Grab the kid, run.”  Alanna shrugged.  “Get him away from her, anyway.”  She inclined her head toward the grinning woman standing between them and the pyramid.

James tilted his head back.  “Hey, are you here to fight us?”  He asked.

“Not at all!”  She happily admitted in a way that made James’ spine ache.

“Okay.  So, we’re…”

“But I’m going to anyway.  Alas!  We cannot have things the easy way!”  Her grin hadn’t slipped, but she also now wore a frown, and a thin line of a mouth, and a scowl.  “You brought me this delightful opportunity.  So I think I’ll let you walk away.  I can feel the Movement you have on you; go ahead, get out.  I won’t stop you.  But you’re not interrupting.”

Movement.  She said the word, and James’ eyes unconsciously flickered over to Anesh and Dave, who were holding their exit telepads.  Anesh caught his eye, and gave an almost imperceptible shake of the head.

“Problem.”  Cold-Wind-Friction stated as the woman continued to patiently tap her foot and hum to herself while she waited for them to decide.

“What?”  James asked, glancing down at the camraconda.  

“She moves.”

“Yeah, she… wait.”  He narrowed his eyes.  “You’re freezing her.”

“Both of us.”  Cold-Wind-Friction said, not breaking eye contact with the woman.  “She moves.”

“Hm.  Might be the only reason she isn’t trying to kill us right away, though.  Keep it up.”  James muttered.  “Alanna.”  James got her attention, and jerked one thumb out to the left.  She nodded and started moving around the woman, while James began circling her from the right.

“Oh, well this hardly seems polite!”  She exclaimed, like they were at a tea party and not the heart of some monstrous sewer network.

James took the blunt approach as he slid a knife out of his belt and tested its weight in his off hand, his right going to the grip of the gun in his coat.  “What are you?”  He asked her, directly, still trying to look through the mess of *things* she was projecting.

“Beyond you.”  She said, and it sounded like the first honest words she’d said all night.

“Let’s find out.”  James snapped his hand up, and started shooting.

He and Alanna were forming a V around the woman, so that his partner was kept out of his line of fire when the bullets started.  Not that it would have mattered; James didn’t miss much these days.  His Aim adjusted his arm automatically, and the shots flew exactly where they…

The woman was *gone*.  She just moved, taking a light step forward with casual grace, but with a speed that James could barely track.  He adjusted his aim, compensated for how fast she was, put three shots around where she *could* move, and then had a sudden problem as she turned and rushed him.

One shot hit home, splattering through her arm and spilling something that was almost blood behind her as she flew through the air toward James.  Then she slapped the gun out of his hand, and he felt bones grind against each other at the impact as he was disarmed.

She was right there in front of him, mirage flesh and a massive grin, and James knew that she could hit him fast enough to kill him outright.  He didn’t even have the energy to try to dodge as he saw her fist ball up.

Then the mongausse hit her from the side, and the melee lost all sense of order.

The magnetic dog bowled her over, ethereal jaws snapping at her face in a way that almost seemed to concern her more than the gun had.  But then the two of them skidded to a stop, and the woman had come out on top, in a crouched position with one hand holding the mongausse by the throat.  She jerked her arm, and *flung*, and Magneto sailed through the ranks of the strike team that were charging her.

The two camracondas fanned out, doing their best to push her momentum toward zero, but while they could keep her explosive bursts of motion from being too powerful or frequent, they weren’t actually able to stop them from happening.  Dave planted his feet before her and lashed out with one of their stolen spears, and she just punched through it, shattering the weapon and nailing him in the ribs and sending him staggering back, while Simon ducked around Dave’s flailing form and tried to stab at her.  The woman laughed with contempt and kicked backward, easily avoiding the strike, but they kept moving forward as a unit.  James tapped into the local wifi network with his skulljack, still operating out of that laptop, and they started coordinating, sending Alanna around to keep her hemmed in, even in this massive open space.

Dave recovered and took another swing at her in unison with Simon, their timing perfectly set up to push the woman to use one of her bursts of speed.  She did so, twisting to the side like a dancer, laughing in delight to see the two men almost hit each other.

But then she was where Sarah wanted her.

A magnetic snap was all the warning anyone had before a spike of wood splattered through the woman’s leg, tearing it out from under her.  She sprawled to the ground in a gory mess, but caught her self with a single hand, flipped over, and was gone before the second one scored a line on the concrete.

James rushed where she landed, knives out and teeth clenched.  They didn’t need to kill her, he reminded them through the link.  Just keep her away.  A silent order saw Sarah moving up to the pyramid to retrieve the kid, while the rest of them kept the fight going.

“Interesting.”  The woman said, eyes narrowing, then flickering between James, Sarah, and finally settling on Virgil, still in the back rank with one of the camracondas.  He had a club, but he was far more useful keeping the network smoothly running than actually fighting here.  “You’re cheating.”  She accused, mildly.

James wanted to say something witty, but he was basically out of strength at this point, so he saved his breath, and just flung a knife at her before pulling another one out of a coat pocket.  She slapped it aside without looking, and then, without James really understanding where she got it from, she drew her weapon.

It was a sleak, angular, sword of a rifle.  Four feet long, tipped with something from beyond the stars, and loaded with bullets of bone and silver.  The design, James instantly recognized, was the same as the pistol on the floor.  But this was a gun that asked for trouble, and demanded war.  It would cost someone a *lot* to fire that gun, he realized.

When she aimed it, James’ eyes went wide.  “Virgil!”  He screamed out, diving forward to try to intercept, to throw her aim off, to do *anything*.

The shot punched a hole through Virgil, just like a normal gun would.  There was a brief flicker on their network, and then, the wide eyed blond haired man in their back rank toppled to the ground like a puppet with his strings cut, blood pouring out of the wound in his chest.  The laptop at his side clattered to the concrete with him, and the woman sniffed lightly as she put another round through it, too.

The skulljack link cut off.  But at this point, James wasn’t listening to it anyway.  He was too busy rushing the thing that just shot one of his people.

Alanna came in from the opposite angle as he did, and the woman, standing on a single intact leg, slipped the gun back to where it had come from as she turned to grin at him.  The shots had cost her, though, as James knew they would.  For a little while, she was… weaker, perhaps.

She seemed almost surprised when James slammed a knife into her throat, even though she had successfully grabbed Alanna’s strike and snapped Alanna’s forearm in the process.  Then, Simon came in, sliding into a tackle that took her leg out from under her and sprawled both of them onto the ground.

James, Dave, and Alanna all piled on, pinning her down with knees and knives in a furious attempt to contain her.

Doing so was a mistake.  The carefully maintained lines of sight for the camracondas, devoid of the backup of the skulljacks for planning and visualization, were broken all too rapidly.

The woman flowed like water, a million pieces of a human pooling backward and reassembling themselves near the base of the pyramid in the blink of an eye.  This time, she carefully kept herself flickering with motion to wherever the camracondas couldn’t see her; though the two of them began circling too, and soon at least one of them would be able to lock her down.

The strike team formed a crescent around the monster.  And behind her, James saw Sarah exhaustedly surmounting the last step of the pyramid.  They just needed to keep her attention for a few moments longer.

The woman, now without any wounds and still wearing that arrogant grin, looked back at them.  “Children.”  She scoffed.  “Playing my game.  Playing with my toys.  How very rude of you.”

“I didn’t see any posted signs.”  James called back.  “Maybe you should have explained the rules first!”

She laughed and laughed, throwing dozens of heads back to let out the sound of bells.  “Oh dear, no!”  The thing chuckled.  “That’s the first rule of them all!  The only thing that keeps you safe” her voice took on an instant, dark, edge, “is your ignorance.”

Then she leapt forward, and the fight renewed in earnest.

Up on the pyramid, Sarah crawled around to Graham’s front to face the kid.  He was still standing there, arms raised, face looking upward.  He didn’t acknowledge her approach at all, so she glanced up to look at what he saw, and instantly regretted it.

He was reaching for something wrong.  A point where the universe had lost its grip.  A crystalized piece of everything and nothing.  It was raw, unmitigated, potential.  Bound only by the imagination.

It was absolutely not something a human was supposed to be touching.

“Graham.”  Sarah whispered to him, shaking him lightly.  “Wake up.  We gotta go.”

He didn’t look at her, but he did answer.  “I can’t.”  He said.

“What?  No, come on.  We need to run before she kills anyone else.”

“She won’t kill anyone.  She’s nice.  She’s Scott’s sister.”  His voice was somewhat monotone.

Sarah hissed at him.  “I doubt that very much!”  She said, peering down at where the thing that absolutely was *not* the late Scott’s sister was slamming Simon into the ground.  “Please!  We need to get out of here, and deal with the dungeon before it kills any more people!”

“The dungeon can’t kill anyone.”  Graham informed her.  “I’m dealing with it.”

She looked at him, shocked.  “What?”  Was all Sarah could think to ask.

“Scott showed me how to get here.  And his sister gave me the tool to open the door.  Now I own this space. The dungeon can’t hurt anyone now.”  He said it like it was all perfectly logical.

Sarah winced as she heard bone breaking and light laughter.  “You shot them?”  She asked, horrified.  “You killed Scott, and the others?”

“We had to open the door.”  Graham sounded confused, like it was obvious, like it should have been obvious even to himself.  “What… Scott?”

“Dead.”  Sarah said, her voice breaking.  “And the people up on the surface.  People are dying.  Graham, whatever you’re doing, the dungeon isn’t *gone*.  It just isn’t *here*.  You’re not saving anyone!”

“Oh dear.”  The voice from behind Sarah made her eyes go wide, but she didn’t turn around.

“Graham.”  She said as calmly as she could.  “I know you can let go.  No one’s mad at you.  But we need you…” Her eyes flicked up to that point of nothing and everything, that *thing* that was, blatantly, the point from which this whole dungeon had grown.  “We need you to put it back.  To let it back in.  And then I need you to *run*!”

The last word came out as a strangled noise as the creature picked Sarah up by the throat, stared at her for a second, and then turned and flung her down at the ground.

Sarah had a brief moment of realizing she was in freefall, and then, she hit the concrete head first, and felt something inside her break.  She tried to roll to her feet, but her legs weren’t obeying her.  Nothing was, actually.  Distantly, she heard James screaming something in a hoarse voice.  And then, some kind of rushing noise; the sound of dripping pipes and molten mold all flowing back into place.  She heard Graham yelling that he was sorry, over and over, heard the thing-that-was-not-a-woman scream in frustration, before that noise was abruptly cut off.  She tilted her eyes as far up as she could, and saw Virgil’s body on the floor, about thirty feet away.  One of the camracondas, too.  Her heart ached.  People were dying again.  Just like last time.  She’d known this would be a mistake, but she’d trusted James.  She could just barely see James’ legs as he sprinted toward her.

Oh, poor James.  He was going to hate himself for this, Sarah though, as she closed her eyes.  The rushing noise pooled in to fill her ears, until there was nothing else.  Just the feeling of a hand on her shoulder, and a small spark.  And then, everything went black.

_____

James jerked upright in bed, sucking in a massive, gasping breath of air.  The remnants of his nightmare clung to him like spiderwebs, but he’d already forgotten the details.  He held a hand to his chest, panting.

Then he realized that he felt like he’d been hit by a truck.

Repeatedly.

James looked around.  He was in one of the Lair’s bedrooms; the lights were on, which was weird.  He must have been unconscious and just recently dumped here.  But then his eyes landed on the IV drip next to the bed, and the tubes going into his arm.  He… didn’t have an explanation for that one.  He looked down at himself, throwing the sheet back, and saw a cast on his left leg, and another on his right hand.  They’d both been signed.  A lot.  And they *itched*.

What the hell?

He rolled sideways, kicking his feet off the edge of the bed.  He had underwear on, and also a coat of bandages, so he wasn’t technically naked.  That was good enough.  James gingerly settled his feet onto the floor and, using the IV stand as a cane, started walking himself to the door.

The hallway was certainly familiar.  He really was in the Lair’s basement.  Either that, or having a massive trauma induced hallucination.  But James figured if he was going to hallucinate, it’d hurt a hell of a lot less than this.

He’d almost made it to the elevator when he got caught.  To be fair, he got caught when the doors opened, and Anesh and Alanna had stepped out.  “Oh *hell* no.”  Alanna instantly said, and in short order he was half-ushered-half-carried back to his room and bed.

“What” James demanded, “happened?”

“Okay.  Well.  What’s the last thing you remember?”  Alanna asked him.  She’d pulled up a chair next to his bed, and from the way she and Anesh moved, James got the distinct impression that they had *favorite chairs* here.

“Sarah dying.”  James said, without thinking about it.  “I remember… trying to do something.  And the dungeon coming back?  And then I blacked out.”

Anesh nodded.  “Almost right.  Sarah’s not dead, let’s get that out of the way.  *You* nearly were, though.”

“What?”

“Sarah broke her neck, and a lot of other things.  You, in an effort to stabilize her, dumped ‘about three months’ worth of whatever ‘rest’ is into her.”  Anesh explained.  “Now, we know that ‘rest’ isn’t exactly sleep, because that *would* have killed you.  But you either dipped too deep, or you wrote a check that should have bounced, because *you* have been unconscious for two months, and unhealing for the first one.”

“Oh.”  James leaned back into his pillow with a sigh of relief.  “Okay.  Good.  Is Sarah… okay?”

“She can walk, if that’s what you’re asking.”  Alanna said.  “Whatever you did kept her alive, and Frequency stabilized her until we got to a hospital.  It was close, but you really did save her life.”

“What happened after that?”  James probed.

“You should rest.”

He snorted.  “Come on.  I’ve been asleep for months.  Let’s do this.”

“Graham restored the dungeon.  Whatever he’d been tricked into doing, he was pushing the native dungeon out of its space, which is why it was in the real world.  Sarah got him to undo it; all the monsters and weird shit dragged back in, mostly.  Some of the stuff like the mold or broken furniture or … um … monster corpses… are still out and about.”

“Uh oh.”  James groaned.

Alanna nodded.  “Yeah.  That’s bad.”

Anesh countered.  “It’s not that bad.  No one knows what to do with them.  The FBI was on site - the *actual* FBI - and Nate made contact with them.  They’re now aware of us, and we’re classified as a special consultant group, just so you know.  Someone will absolutely wanting to be talking to you now that you’re awake.”

“Why?”

“You’re our leader, asshole.”  Alanna informed him.

Anesh nodded. “Yes, that.  All of that.”  He kept going, though, rattling off points rapid-fire.  “We’ve only done three Office runs since you’ve been down.  Mostly to hold up the bargain with the doctor to provide more hearts, and to replenish our telepad supply.  Momo thinks she can maybe make a teleport defense thing.  Graham’s been locked up here since the incident, by the way.  He’s not our prisoner, he just won’t leave.  Blames himself for everything.”

“I should talk to him.”  James said quietly.

“No, you should nap.”  Alanna reminded him.  “You can talk when you’re a hundred percent again.”

“That’s never going to happen.”  James smiled ruefully.  “This is my fault.  I should have been better.  People died because I didn’t pay more attention to… everything.”

Alanna slapped him on the back of the head.  Hard.  James yelped while she lectured him.  “It’s not your fault when other people make choices!”  She announced.  “You can do your best, but ultimately, other humans get to have a say in things too!  And sometimes they fuck up!”  Her face twisted into a sad snarl.  “Sometimes we fuck up.”  She said, quieter.

“Virgil and Cold-Wind-Friction had funerals.”  Anesh told him.  “They… we said goodbye.”

“They shouldn’t have…”  James stopped.  Of course they shouldn’t have died.  But they did.  They had.  He could sit here and bemoan it, or he could pick himself up, and try to do right by them.  “Okay.”  He breathed out.  “Sorry.  What else is going on?  Is the world panicking over the dungeon thing?  What did the news see?”

“Feds spun it as a school shooting gone horribly wrong.  Everyone forgot about it in a month.”  Anesh clenched a fist in front of his face before looking up at James.  “Your country sucks.”  He said.  “You know, if we link up, we technically all have Canadian citizenship, and we can just *leave*.”

“No way I’m explaining that to the border guard.”  Alanna ribbed at him.

“Oh.  We opened our link.”  Anesh snapped his fingers as he remembered.  “We can share awareness, and at a pretty high range too.”

“Awareness, as measured by we *think* time spent searching something?”  Alanna shrugged.  “As long as we can hear each other.  Which makes cell phones kinda powerful.  As has ever been the case.”

“Attic’s doing okay, too.”  Anesh added.  “I dunno if Sarah ever told you, but she calls it *Clutter Ascent*, which is kinda cool.”

Alanna gave a short ‘heh’.  “Yeah, it’s nice.  Deb and Alex mostly took over managing that one.  It’s very… kind.  Comforting.  They’re trying to encourage it.  I guess that’s something we can actually do, huh?  Weird to think about.”  She looked at James.  “Um… what else.  The pandemic got worse?”

“Oh *good*!” James drawled out.  “That makes everything so much better!”

“Well, it does mean no one’s at the building you used to work in.  So getting in has been a lot easier.”

“Wait, so like… is everyone dead?  Is this the end of the world?”  James tensed up.  “I’ll be honest, I assumed it’d be something dungeon related.”

Anesh corrected him.  “No, it’s just everyone has to stay home.”  He shrugged.  “It’s not like it’s too bad.  Though it does suck not being able to go to the diner anymore.”  He looked over at Alanna.  “Is there anything else?  What am I forgetting.”

Alanna stared at James, her eyes worried.  “Are *you* okay?”  She asked her boyfriend.

James thought about it for a while.

People had died because he’d led them to a fight they weren’t prepared for.  They’d learned more in that time about the dungeon than they had in the last year, though.  They’d also saved who-knew how many lives.  He thought back to interviewing Virgil, and how he’d said that he wasn’t ready to die to make the world better, but he’d still be up for the small stuff.  That smug jackass had helped to put a living nightmare back in its bottle, kept an unknown number of people from their own grim fates.  It was… well, it wasn’t fair.  But it probably never would be.

“I’m not okay.”  He settled on.  “But I will be.  What happened to the woman?”  James asked.

“Gone.”  Alanna told him.  “Soon as Graham came to his senses, she just vanished.”

“So, what was she?”

“As near as anyone can tell?”  Anesh laughed.  “Nothing.  She was a ghost.”

“Ghosts aren’t that well armed.”  James protested.  “She had a gun that… I think she seriously overestimated our defenses, because I could *feel* the thing from fifty feet away.  And she pulled it out of nowhere.  It looked like the gun that Graham… used.”

Anesh hummed. “Graham said that Scott’s sister gave him the gun.  And she and Scott had learned how to kill the dungeon, needed his help.”  He cleared his throat, looked away for a second while he composed himself.  “I think he was hypnotized, or something like it.  Or maybe Scott was, and spread it to him, like a memetic hazard.  He sure as hell spread it to the other six kids they took down with them into the dungeon.  And then Graham just… shot them all.  To open the last door.”

“Why?”

“He doesn't remember.  All he knows is that it had something to do with a secret door.”

“Oh shit!  Secret!”  James exclaimed.  “What happened to him?”

“Oh.  He, and you’ll love this, he got *lost*.”  Alanna cracked a grin, dispelling the dark mood for a minute while she looked at James' disbelieving face.  “Yeah!  Turns out, when all the maps are public and everyone knows how to get places, Secret can’t take directions for shit!  He ended up in the gym, cloaked a whole bunch of kids from a skullball, and then hid until Nate found him.”

“So we’re still here.”  James said, feeling his energy start to drain.

“Yeah. We’re still here.”  Alanna told him, taking his free hand.

A second later, Anesh added his own hand to the pile.  “Not going anywhere.”  He said.

“Okay.”  James said.  “Alright.”  He muttered, feeling his eyes droop.  “I gotta get… caught up on… paperwork.  And we … we need to find… that chick.”  He closed his eyes for a second.  Just a blink, really.  “Find her and shoot her.”  He clarified. “And then…”

Anesh and Alanna held his hand while he fell back asleep.

“Okay.”  Alanna said after a minute.  “Back to work?”

“Back to work.”  Anesh agreed.  “Gotta make sure this place doesn’t burn down until he wakes up.”

“Yeah.”  She agreed.

The two of them left, silently closing the door behind themselves, and leaving James snoring.  They didn’t begrudge him the rest, though.  After all, he’d had a *really* long day.