The Daily Grind - Chapter 128 (Patreon)

Suggested listening.  You'll probably know when to start it.

_____

The first thing that happened was that the lights went out.

Bullets ripped through plate glass, leaving dancing fragments of glittering glass and red-hot lines of tracer rounds falling through the air of the front room.  A camraconda by the front went down, before the rapid response of the shield bracelets they wore flared to life, and a low collective barrier against the incoming fire lit to life in brilliant gold. The explosions that rippled across the building opened holes in the exterior, one of them blasting in the side door of the lobby, even as the tracer rounds from the machine gun curved up and over the heads of the serpent guard.

Men in black tactical gear rushed in, guns up.  They had the extended lenses of night vision goggles down over their eyes as they burst through the breach, scanning for targets.

This would be a fatal mistake for most of them.

James had always referred to the green orbs as a form of casual ‘house magic’.  Most of them didn’t do anything too fancy, but they were all kind of cool in their own little way.  Even the thing that let them partially teleport back to the Lair wasn’t *huge*.  But every single one of them did something that James, or anyone else, had really considered.

They warped the battlefield.

And this battlefield, right now, had an extra thirty four minutes of natural light a day.

So while the outside was cloaked in the twilight just after sunset, and the building’s electrical grid was down, *inside* was still flooded with the golden rays of late evening.

James advanced on the momentarily blinded assault team, charging forward with a snarl and exactly no plan.  He operated on instinct as he slammed into the first attacker, flaring a blue ability to turn the man’s bulletproof vest to glass before pouring bullets through it and the man it covered.  The others turned to the noise as their eyes adjusted, and James lashed out a hand, exercising finer control of his ability and glassing just the spring on the inside of the UMP-9 the closest goon was training on him.  Smaller target, less backlash, and more time set aside to turn his charge into a slide.  He swept his leg through the knees of one of the attackers at high speed, dropped the man down to his own level on the floor where his slide had left him, and shot through the face mask in a spray of blood and brain matter.  Then he rolled around, shooting the last man with a working gun, as the other one charged forward and kicked the Walther out of his hand.

James flared his other blue, repossessed it, and shot the man with a pair of burst fire shots off the bracelet that traced him from hip to neck.  The assailant collapsed, and didn’t get back up.

He stood up, and turned around, just in time to see that these weren’t the only people coming through his fortress.

Men in black masks and holding a variety of small arms poured through the front doors and shattered windows.  The camracondas, not even close to trained for this kind of fight, were falling back, overwhelmed with target selection.  Behind the counter, Randall laid down cover fire for them, dropping one hostile while the others moved up to turn tables and support pillars into cover of their own.  And then, the line of shields switched to different weapons, the support weapon roared again from across the street, bullets pounding in at a downward angle that sawed through the window and ripped Randall’s position, and Randall himself, to shreds.

James pressed himself up against the corner wall as the agent died, firing out at the incoming crowd himself to buy the camracondas a few more seconds.  “We need to kill that!”  He yelled to Daniel, who was only just pulling himself out of the collapsed heap he’d been thrown into when the first blast hit.  “The gun!”  James pointed out at where tracer rounds were still flying in overhead.  The counter, the walls, nothing would really offer any reasonable cover.  As long as that person was firing, they had zero chance of staging a defense.

So when Daniel scrambled for the bag he’d dropped under the counter, struggled with the zipper for precious seconds, and pulled out a bright orange and red nerf gun, James only hesitated to check his bracelet for a split second.

[Bind Firearm - 3 - 68 / 300 - 99:14:3:18 (1)

Cluster Shot - 34 - 6,994 / 84,000 - 10:12 (12)

Munitions Dump - 23 - 302 / 2,000 - :04 (39)]

“Here!”  He hoarsely screamed, pulling it off his wrist and flinging it around the corner as Secret tried to remanifest, through the hail of gunfire, to the floor at Daniel’s feet.  “Suppressive fire!”  Unheard by everyone over the shots ringing out, James muttered to himself, “God I hope that’s not the one that shoots spiders.”

Daniel.  Daniel wasn’t quite in the same headspace as James and his companions.  Oh, it wasn’t that he was totally unique in the Order of Endless Rooms.  But he was the kind of person who didn’t actually want to be in fights.  Didn’t like the feeling of adrenaline.  And for months, ever since James had rescued him, he’d felt like a damn coward because of his past actions, and because he didn’t actually *want* to redeem himself in any way.

He knew he didn’t have what it took to be a knight.  And it didn’t matter, because the Order didn’t care.  They didn’t want him to fight, they wanted him to adventure.  Daniel and his infomorph passenger were totally alright with that.

But right now?

The air smelled like cordite and blood and screaming.  And Daniel, for the first time, took the impossible knot of fear in his chest, and crushed it down.

James popped out from around the corner again, firing back at the slowly advancing line of attackers.  He stuck his head and arm out just long enough to draw fire, and he trusted that Daniel would take the chance.  Ducking back only at the last second as the machine gun fire pivoted to chew away at the heavier support beam that made up the corner he’d posted up at.

Then a thunderous roar split the air.  James felt his ears pop from the pressure and the sound, as a trio of two foot wide fireballs erupted in rapid succession from Daniel’s point behind the splintering counter.  They carved through what was left of the top half of the big windows that made up the front facade, clipped and melted the overhanging roof outside, and screamed across the street to impact near the roof of the opposite building.  The plasma punched holes in concrete and steel, tearing a gap out of where the machine gun fire was raining down on them from.

And then, in the silence that followed, anyone who wasn’t deaf from the blast would have heard Daniel loudly cocking the nerf gun, before he fired a cluster shot again.

Over and over.  Cock, shoot, cock, shoot, reload.  He burned through every point of cluster shot the bracelet had left, turning the front of the Lair, and the upper floor and rooftop of the opposite building, into molten slag.  Around Daniel, James could just barely make out the orange outline of the infomorph Pathfinder as she adjusted his aim with light touches, the two of them sweeping every possible firing position, and undoubtedly killing whoever had them pinned down.

Then one of the goons took a shot at Daniel, and the bullet grazed his forearm and elbow in a way that made him drop the gun and follow the falling object shortly after himself, as he dove for cover on the floor.

There were still people coming in through the door.  Out of the corner of his vision to the right, James caught sight of more people storming over the corpses he’d left by the hole that was the side door.  The front lobby was a melee, the injured scattered across the space between the door and the shredded wood of the counter; furniture and support pillars turned into cover that the both invaders and the few armed knights and camracondas were using to shelter from bullets or break line of sight.  James added two more shots to the mix, his Aim letting him get closer than he probably should have been able to, but he had no idea if he even hit his target before he had to move.

There were people coming in, and they were blinded for a second, but he had to move before they flanked him, and he was running out of bullets.  ‘Partially around a corner’ was *not* a sustainable defensive position.

His legs lurched him into adrenaline powered motion as someone turned an absolutely illegal automatic on his position.  James had been thinking about slipping back and into the little storeroom area before the back workspace and briefing warehouse, but he didn’t have time now.  He crossed the gap to the hallway in a flash, and shouldered his way through the door to the bathroom, as the squad of new arrivals rushed after him.

One of them kicked the door after him, only to be shot back by James’, now in a position of cover behind the counter.  Even as he toppled backward, the masked attacker still pulled the trigger on his gun, though.  James kept his head down as bullets ripped through the sink and the wood paneling, tearing gaps in it that would have left him partially exposed for the rest of them.

Warped battlefield, though.

When the next two took positions at the sides of the door and started pouring fire into the bathroom, James already had a recovered position.  And even as their shots started to break through, the minimum real dollar value of the bathroom reared its head and said, quite firmly, “No.”  The countertop broke away under the sustained gunfire, and instantly started to reform; the walls and cabinets reshaped themselves.  The holes patched over; the bullets conspicuously absent.  After all, the dollar value of a bullet hole is a very, very high negative, depending on your property location.

The attackers noticed this.  One of them made a motion at the others, and James watched through a closing gap as most of them broke away to run down toward the kitchen.  He tried to lean out to take a shot, but the last one stayed where he was, and instantly tried to pick James off.  A bullet grazed his wrist, and he jerked back, but kept hold of the gun.

He was stuck here for now, along with the infomorph still circling around him in ghostly form, because the man at the door clearly had no interest in doing anything other than keeping them where they were.  And the first line of defense was breached.

James hoped everyone else was doing alright.

_____

“...And two tomatoes!”  Nate had been saying, just as he caught the movement of two figures in ski masks out of the corner of his eye.  His brain had exactly enough time for two concurrent thoughts, mostly because one of them was a very reflexive thought for a man like himself.  The first, easy, thought, was “What is this, amature hour?”

The second thought was more complex, and was how to handle the two people in the room with him.

So, as the door to the back patio was exploding from the world’s most poorly placed breaching charge, Nate was grabbing Knife-In-Fangs by the back of the neck, and flinging him into the walk-in fridge.  He collided with Ann, who was in there already, but was about to come out with the tomatoes he suspected he wouldn’t need tonight.  Nate caught the edge of the door and was swinging it closed on them as goons started to step past the hunk of dented metal door that was still hanging by a hinge.

Unfortunately, Nate hadn’t had much time for the third thought of getting himself out of this alive.  But he already had some momentum, so he rolled with it, flung himself backward down the aisle between the flat top and the grill, and rolled sideways.

Bullets pinged off the stainless steel around the room as Nate flipped onto his arms and crawled forward.  He wasn’t worried.  No way in hell they’d have had time to get to him yet, and someone sent these two idiots in first.  They were expendable, and stupid, and absolutely a mistake.

The chef grabbed the gun out from under the oven where he’d hidden it, flicked the safety off, dragged his body up to a crouch, and pressed up against the back of the wall.  He glanced out; one of them was watching while his buddy checked the dish pit; looking under the sinks, maybe?  Didn’t matter.  Nate popped out in a split second, and put the .308 round they’d bought to kill dragons through the man’s head.

He was briefly glad the door was listing open, or he’d have had to clean that mess up later.

The other one yelled something in Russian, and then ran around the corner, gun up and finger on the trigger.  Nate shot him too, the body collapsing over the one already on the floor.

The heavy door to the walk-in was starting to crack open as the people he absolutely didn’t want in the line of fire started to react and check to see what the hell was going on.  Maybe they said something, Nate had no idea.  He was deafened by the shots already, and was focused on the breach.

Which was helpful, because it meant he could open fire as the next three came around the corner.

The military training in him processed that these ones had different weapons, and actual armor, but it didn’t change that his finger was already pulling the trigger.  He caught one of them in the shoulder, and their gun whipped backward as their arm turned into useless meat.  Switched targets with a flick of motion, fired again.

The bullet slammed into a geometric pane of golden light, a web of lines forming out of it to give the outline of a dome centered around the target.

“Shit.”  Nate muttered, ducking back as assault rifle fire started chewing up the tile he’d been crouched on a second before.  His ears were ringing, but he could hear the sounds of combat from outside his kitchen, too.  “Alright.  Let’s go.”  He crouch-walked back into the aisle that separated the cooking surfaces from the front hot wells, closing just a little more space between himself and the incoming thugs.  Then, knees cracking in protest, Nate pulled the handgun out of the holster in the small of his back, jerked himself to his feet,  and unloaded on the trio.

The thing the Order got almost instantly, which Nate appreciated and that Status Quo never seemed to figure out, was that the more things you did manually in a battle, the better off you were.  Yes, automation was the way of the future.  But in a fight, you wanted your fingers on as many dials as possible.  And because they hadn’t gotten that, and they had never had to deal with combined arms fire to the degree that the camracondas let the Order dish it out, Status Quo had taken massive losses in their first fight.

Now, here they were again.  And Nate had rolled the dice on one big hope.

Six bullets, two for each agent.  The first one might have hit, the second one didn’t; caught on the shield bracelets they all wore.  The light was near blinding, but it didn’t stop them from firing back.  Bullets rained down on Nate, who had already target selected his own shield to 9mm.  He fucking knew what their guns sounded like, and he wasn’t about to take the first one or two hits before the shield’s automatic reply kicked in.

He dropped the pistol, letting it clatter onto the flat top, grabbed the grip of his DMR, and started shooting again.  Nate was moving blind through the light of his own shield charges ticking away rapidly, but the people he was shooting at weren’t.  They couldn’t; they had no idea where anything was, and *tripping* would be lethal here.

Not moving was also lethal.  Their shields didn’t adjust to the first shot, and his bullets carved explosive holes out their backs as he nailed two of them.

Before he could congratulate himself on being clever, and just as his eyesight returned, Nate caught the last guy ducking behind the low wall that separated the kitchen from the dish pit, and lobbing a grenade over his head.

“Shit.”  He growled, and made a choice.

He couldn’t leave the other two here to die.  Nate’s brain had a half second to process that he could have made it to the door, and then he didn’t do that.  He ran forward, instead.  Gun in a hip-firing position, putting round after round through the flimsy ass wall the agent was crouched behind, following the shield flares to stay on target.  His gun accessory letting him reload the weapon at will, though he saved the burst fire charges; didn’t need them now.

Nate made it out the door to the patio before the grenade went off, ruining the quiche he was making for dinner, making a huge mess of his kitchen, and sending multiple shards of shrapnel into his back.  He didn’t stop firing at the agent, even if his shots were wildly inaccurate and the recoil ripped at his muscles as he had to turn to shoot when he ran past the cowering asshole.  And as soon as the blast had gone off, Nate turned around, dashed back, and dropped all three hundred and fifty odd pounds of weight he had onto the man who was still too blinded by his own protection to see it coming.

Nate’s knees slammed the guy’s chest back into the wall.  Then Nate dropped the gun, grabbed his head, and added another much larger hole to the drywall.

He stood up as the other man slumped down, unconscious and maybe not dead.  Nate didn’t give a shit.  He wobbled over to the walk in, and yanked it open.  “Forget the tomatoes.”  He said.  “We’ve gotta go.”

“You’re bleeding!”  Ann exclaimed.  “What’s going on.”

“Grab a gun.”  Nate told her.  “And let’s go find out.  Knife, you good?”

The camraconda nodded; dazed from the toss, but alive.  “I survive.”  He said.

Good attitude.  Nate liked it.  He took a step toward the door, and then stumbled.  Dropped to the floor, and had to take a second to pull his legs in front of himself to a sitting position where he didn’t have to press his wounded back against the wall.  He looked down, and checked himself, and saw holes in his left leg.  “Alright.  You two are on your own.”  He told them, and followed that up with, “Don’t fuckin’ argue.  Keep your heads down, and don’t leave the building until we’re clear.  I don’t want you getting your heads taken off.”

“Understood.”  Knife-In-Fangs answered, rearing up from one of the figures with a pair of frag grenades held gently in his teeth.

“Got it boss.”  Ann nodded along with him, checking the magazine on the light machine she’d picked up, pocketing a pair of extras.  “You okay here?”

Instead of answering that, “Go.” Nate said, nodding to the door, and the sounds of war.

The knights nodded at him, once, and obeyed.

_____

In the back parking lot, Other James had hung back from the game of basketball he and Simon had been playing.  Or rather, it was more fair to say, the body they shared that had the keys to the car that they needed to get a bag from had hung back.  It was a bag full of takeout sushi, and it was great being able to enjoy two different tastes simultaneously.

The two of them were… different.

Everyone else had taken to the skulljacks in different ways.  For members of the support group, it was reclaimative.  They’d been used, but now, they were the operators in control.  For James and his partners, it was a deeply intimate function of sharing their lives.  But for Other James and Simon?

They’d stopped being two different people at some point.  Their unique behaviors, memories, quirks, they’d all been sifted down and blended together, and now, even when they weren’t connected, they maintained so much of each other that they were closer and close to just one soul that shared two bodies.

Not quite all the way there yet, but closer than anyone else knew.

It wasn’t romantic, exactly, and nor was it clinically utilitarian.  It was just… it was who they’d become.  It was useful, and it was kind, and it was *fascinating*, even to them as they drowned in it.  One day, they wouldn’t be two people communicating, they’d just be one person, that sometimes had to check in with themself.

At that point, someone would probably ask them to choose a name that wasn’t either of their original names.  Other James didn’t mind; James was way too common a name, and he was *always* the one that got stuck with the nickname modifier.  They were thinking something like Alduven, just to confuse delivery drivers.

But that was for later.  Now, one of their shared bodies had to grab a bag out of the back seat of an old grey toyota.

The sniper took the shot as soon as he stood up with the sushi, which would historically be considered a dick move.  But in the moment, there wasn’t much time to consider anything.

His chest hurt.  And he was looking up at the sky for some reason.  And the fragment that was entirely Simon was screaming in his head; out loud too.  Something about tracing it back, someone on the roof of the city government building that was next to theirs, but past the little two hundred foot wide patch of pine trees.

Oh.  He’d been shot.  That’s what Simon was freaking out about.  Impressive, he could barely feel it.  Except that his head hurt from where he’d hit the pavement.

He couldn’t really feel much of anything, honestly.  Except his fingers were cold.  And the rest of him was warm.

James felt his eyes closing, even as he tried to struggle to keep them open.  To keep himself focused on the stars overhead.  He could feel Simon, just inside the warehouse door.  Knew he was trying something.  Just needed to give him a little time.

There was the sound of boots hitting the ground, people running around his prone form.  Shouts and yells and gunfire that Other James actually heard this time, even if it sounded like it came from underwater and far away.

Then someone noticed he was still awake, and a woman with cold eyes leveled a gun at him.  Through their connection, Simon screamed as she put a bullet through his skull.

For a brief moment, Other James was still a person.  He had, technically, his own body.  His own thoughts.  His own stupid nickname that he couldn’t even shake in internal monologue anymore.  And then, he wasn’t, anymore.  But he wasn’t quite gone, either.

Eighty feet away, past a half dozen cars, up a few concrete steps, behind the metal rolling door of the warehouse, Simon caught his fleeing soul through a wi-fi connection, and held on like it was the last piece of the universe left.

Part of the geometry of James’ self was already gone, along with the damaged hardware that was running it.  But so much of who he was in that moment wasn’t a singular thing.  It was shared, between two bodies, two people becoming one.  In minutes, Simon’s electric mind combed over the remnants of what left James as an individual.  Memories were digitized, and transferred.  Opinions, ideas, plans and goals, all of them were swept into the still-functioning port of the skulljack like sand into a bucket, even as that sand threatened to drift away on the wind.

In moments, as he bled out on the ground, holes in his shell, there was nothing left of what was this James.  His body died.  And maybe, too, would his name.  But within Simon’s mind, for as long as they could hold on, there was a survivor.

_____

Two figures in black fatigues quietly followed a third as he pushed open the door at the bottom of a stairwell.

One of them was the one the other two had been commanded to take orders from.  It was a job, and they were getting paid a *lot*.  Which made sense.  They’d been shot at to break away and get to this part of the building.

They were men who knew how to use guns.  Tough.  Used to scraps.  But not like this.  This was more like war.

The lights in the basement were off, which made sense.  The lights everywhere were off.  The night vision they’d been provided with let them see well enough anyway.  And as they checked the hallways, and approached the first door to start clearing rooms, a bright spot burst around a corner and into their vision.

It was maybe the size of a baseball, hovered at head height, buzzed, and oriented on them almost right away.

“Camera drone.”  The man in charge snorted in scorn.  The enemy had used these when they’d raided his organization.  “Knock it down.”  He motioned one of the other men forward.  The hired muscle stepped forward, approaching the drone and raising his rifle one handed to knock it out of the air.  It was stupid, but the agent didn’t need smart people, as long as they shot the people he told them to shoot.

Then the drone dodged the man’s swing, which instantly set nerves on edge.  The green blot moved too fast, too fluidly, especially in pitch black where they could see and the pilot shouldn’t have been able to.  In a single elegant motion, it looped over around the back of the grip the hitter had on his rifle, and landed perfectly on the back of his hand.

Then it exploded.

The second goon was kneeling down, trying to help his friend whose hand had just been reduced to ragged strips of meat instead of a working limb.  But the agent kept his eyes up, and raised his gun to his shoulder.  Sure enough, a second later, two more drones came around the corner, visible through the small cloud of acrid smoke now filling the dark hallway.  He opened fire, killing one of them without any incident.  But the second one moved like a living thing, looping up and out of his line of fire, then back down again faster than he could readjust his aim.  It moved at a reckless speed, and in under a couple seconds, it slammed into the side of the kneeling hired hitter who was just now getting his own gun up.

Then it exploded, too.

The agent heard another drone from around the corner.  He didn’t hesitate, leaping over the smouldering corpse and kicking off the wall to change directions faster than a human should be able to; enhanced physiology and the greave he wore on his right leg assisting with that.  He ducked the drone that he saw coming, and followed it back to the source.  There was one door down this hallway that was ajar.  The agent rushed it, shouldered his way in, ignored the startled shout and the bullets that didn’t even come close enough to trigger his shield, and opened fire.  The drone in the hallway behind him clattered to the floor and went silent, undetonated.

It was just a kid, he realized.  Large, sure; taller than he was for sure, but still a kid, visible in the glow of a couple dim digital lights in the room that weren’t on the power grid.  There were a half dozen drones here on the floor, a roll of duct tape, and what looked like an early attempt at an IED.

Just a kid, but still one of the enemy.  He’d done worse, and would again before the day was out.  One down.  More to go.

His hired muscle was dead.  The agent needed more expendables; he’d try to link up with another group before continuing.  This safehouse was turning out to be a lot better defended than expected.  But there was no way they were leaving without recovering the artifact.  And personally?  He wasn’t leaving without killing at least one or two more of the enemy.  The agent, it could be said, held a grudge.

He closed the door, and moved on.

_____

A grenade went off, the explosion’s noise doing more damage than the blast itself.

Someone had thrown it, and then Alex had instantly lobbed it away.  Momo was pretty sure the woman had been aiming for behind the buffet counter, but it went *into* one of the recessed spaces there instead, and the blast had been both loud, and still dangerous.  Being the one in cover closest to the explosion, Momo had grabbed the person sheltering with her, spun around, and put her back to the blast as it went off.

“Stay down.”  Momo hissed at Liz, not hearing her own words.  Her friend, one of the only normal friends she had these days, had picked absolutely the worst day to agree to sneak into the one building her mom didn’t want her in.

They were behind a table in the cafeteria while around them, people fought, bled, and died.  Bullets traced overhead, sometimes pinging off the cover they’d made, the gunshots deafeningly loud in these close confines.

Liz was in a white skirt with bluebells printed on it.  It looked cute on her, really highlighted that it was a warm summer night and that she was just a kid, here to have a little fun and break a small rule.  Momo was in black body armor, with some mild shrapnel damage to the back, holding a matte black longsword low by her side as she peeked around the table.  It highlighted that the blue power that let her [Change Outfit] was overwhelmingly powerful, and she was glad she’d spent the time wasting charges of rotating wood or solidifying helium to clear the slot to get this one.

Momo was trying to stay calm, but her head was pounding.  She knew the location of every hostile entity in this building, and the building was not small.  Nor were the numbers of the enemy.  She also knew a lot of other random things, but right now, this was the big one.  Momo needed to be somewhere, needed to hook up with James or Alanna and coordinate their defense.

But she couldn’t.  Because there were three men with assault weapons, pinning her, Liz, Alex, a couple other people she didn’t remember the names of despite her orb powers, and several camracondas she *also* didn’t know the names of, down behind these lunchroom tables.  Liz was screaming.  Momo wasn’t surprised, but it wasn’t helping.  It was drawing fire their way.

She’d already thrown an offensive totem, but it wasn’t stopping them.  And she hadn’t had more red orbs to machine print replacements for yet.  Which left one, very stupid, way to do this.  They needed to get these assholes into the line of sight of the snakes, and then, stab them.  Well, she could stab them, the others could do what they needed to.

Momo traded nods with the snake across from her, hoping that he/she/they/it would move fast enough once she started moving.  Then she patted Liz on the shoulder, and vaulted over the table.

Gunfire trained on her immediately.  And Momo just ran, jerking as a few bullets found her, just being someone who could soak up attention, and maybe weapons fire, unitl…

The shooting - in this room at least - stopped.  Momo turned, and started running again, though this time not weaving through the cover of the buffet counter.  One guy, fumbling to reload, the other two locked in place.  The other Order members rushed them, unarmed and pissed off.

A shield flashed on the other side, the camraconda’s gaze broke and the shooting started almost instantly.  Someone went down - Lance, was that his name?  Momo felt guilty for not knowing - and then the others were on him.  The shield couldn’t protect against being grappled, apparently.  Momo arrived a second later and stabbed him through the bit where his vest ended.  The sternum.  She knew that one from both Deb lectures, and one of her totems.

Alex wrestled the gun out of his spasming grip, turned, and fired from the hip to mow down the other frozen guy.  Then the last one, ducking around the door to the small room that they sometimes used for personal meetings or romantic dinners, started shooting back.

And they took cover.

Momo didn’t have a totem for this, but she figured this process would repeat until one side was out of people.  But they had more people, and she was pretty sure that Lance - Vince? -wasn’t dead.

Her blood was pumping, her heart pounding in her ears.  She couldn’t hear anything, could barely see through her fuzzy vision and the terror of being in a fight like this again, but on the defensive, on the back foot.  As she slumped her back against the table, Liz looked at her with wide eyed horror, and Momo realized there was blood on her armor.  Probably not hers.

“I’m sorry.”  Momo said, eyes fluttering shut like she was about to pass out.  “I should have seen this coming.  I need to be better at the witch part.”  She didn’t know if anyone heard the words.  And then, having caught her breath, she struggled to her feet.  Same song, second verse; draw some attention, hope the armor holds while everyone else shoots back.  Only this time their side had guns.

She might not be the best at the witch bit, but Momo was getting disturbingly good at the ‘war’ part of her title.

She had to.  She knew how many armed hostiles there were in the building.  She couldn’t afford to fail.

_____

James was, slowly but surely, moving past the unrelenting terror of having someone with a very dangerous weapon firing at him, and into the territory of being annoyed, and then pissed off.

He could hear other sounds through the building.  The place was mostly concrete and aluminum, so sound carried fairly decently.  Enough so that shouting, screaming, and shooting from both of the back room areas reached his ears where he was, cowering behind a seemingly invincible bathroom sink.  It had been minutes, which felt more like an eternity, and the shooter at the door refused to do anything more than spray a burst toward James’ head every twenty seconds or so.  And at this point, James was considering just rushing him to try to break out of the corner he’d put himself in.

“Bad idea.”  Secret whispered in his ear.  “He’s waiting for you.”

“I know.”  James muttered back, wishing he had a backup firearm bracelet.  Maybe he could take this dude’s, after he shot him.  “I could surrender? Throw my gun out, then repossess it.  I’ve got a blue for that.”

“He’ll just shoot you.”  Secret reminded him.  “Call Alanna.”

“My phone got shot.”  James muttered.

“What?”

“I said my phone got shot!  The one thing I said basically never happened on dungeon delves?  Yes, it happened.  To me.  Now.  Thank you.”  James snapped, far too focused on everything collapsing around them to take jokes right now.  “Now the guy at the door thinks I’m crazy, too.  So he’s going to murder me, *and* it’ll be embarrassing.”

James’ monologue was cut off by bullets ricocheting off the tile to his right.  None of them hit him, but it was startling and he actually wasn’t getting used to being shot at.

While James wished he was anywhere else but trapped here, Secret went looking for solutions.  His ghostly form, still weak from the energy he’d been spending lately, wasn’t even enough to block one bullet, and he knew it.  But he could still take a look.  He roamed up and down James’ crouched form, poking his ethereal nose into pockets.  Eventually, he glanced up with several eyes at James’, who was still staring in the direction of the door, worried about being ambushed if he dropped his guard for even a second.

“Here.”  Secret said, tapping James’ back pocket.  “Call Alanna.”

James didn’t need Secret to remind him twice of what he was carrying.  He felt a little stupid for forgetting in the first place.  Keeping one hand on his gun, he braced his shoulder against the counter, and reached down to pull out the skulljack wifi adaptor from where he’d been keeping it safe.

“Wait, the power’s off.”

“We have backup power for Research, to ensure the cat doesn’t escape.”  Secret prodded James’ hand.  “I promise you, Virgil put the internet on that circuit.”

James snorted.  “He would, yeah.”  He said, and plugged himself in.

It took longer than James was comfortable with to see wifi networks available through his new hardware.  Which had always been the case, since humanity had invented smartphones, but he’d had this feeling that maybe magic brain computers could bypass that weird lag.  When the next burst of fire came, James answered it with a a couple bullets of his own, drawing down his ammo reserve, but hopefully making the invader stall for at least a little longer.

He dropped onto the local network.  It was still up, a minor miracle given how today had been going.  Reaching out, James felt more than saw the available devices that had connections.  Dozens of PCs, all grayed out and offline currently.  Security cameras the same, that really *should* have been on backup power.  Simon.  Not who he was looking for, but a good backup plan.

And there.  Anesh and Alanna.  James tapped their mental shoulders, and accepted their open invitation to join the call.

And then he was three people.

There was one Anesh in the building.  He was in the briefing warehouse, taking cover behind an increasingly distressed Pendragon. They had their situation in hand, and after they mopped up, Pendragon and Dave were going to start evacuating people.  There were, in theory, two other Aneshs out in the world.  So even if this Anesh went down, he wasn’t dead.

There was only one Alanna.  She was in the stairwell to the Research basement, and she was getting her ass kicked.

James breathed out, and let go of his own ego for a hairs breath.  Just long enough to become one person with Alanna, feeding her the martial arts and shell enhancement orbs he’d picked up over the last year.  The two of them turned the close quarters brawl into a real fight, and not just four people pinning one twenty year old woman against a stairwell landing and beating her to death.  Anesh added his own abilities, and the three of them, in one body, caught an incoming baton.  Turned it into a flip, broke someone’s arm.  Held up their own arm to ward off incoming small arms fire.  Kicked someone down the stairs, fell backward from the momentum, swept someone elses leg on the way down.

It was a fight, but there were more people on the stairs, and it wasn’t enough.

Alanna’s body had a telepad on it.  The parts of the mind that were James and Anesh were screaming at her to use it, but the part that was Alanna knew that she couldn’t let them get past her.  Research wasn’t full of people who could fight, it was where the non-combatants had retreated to.  It was vulnerable, it was more valuable than any one of her.

James and Anesh disagreed.  But the whole of them knew it was true.

Then Alanna’s body took a rifle stock to the forehead in a ferocious strike that rattled her physical brain so hard that her conscious self dropped out of their link.

Last line of defense or not, she wasn’t getting back up.  And without her away, piloting her body was a losing fight either way.

Anesh’s mind snuck into her limbs.  Grabbed the telepad from a pocket without looking at it; scratched out two words on the thing, and then ripped the page.

Both Alanna and Anesh dropped off the link, leaving James dazed for a few seconds as they *both* vanished, hardware and soft.  He tilted forward in real space, almost falling out of his cover.  But James wasn’t worried; he’d caught Anesh’s intentions in the last moment, and he had faith in his partner.

“Hey!”  James shouted toward the door, not bothering to pull the wifi braid out of his neck.  “I desire to communicate!”

“N…” The shooter suppressing him started to reply, and in that moment of distraction, Anesh fell on him from the warehouse ceiling and drove a sword through his back and lung.  As it turned out, shield bracers took one strike from a new source to adapt.  So, Anesh made his a good one.

“Come on.”  Anesh said, stepping back into the hallway.  “We’ve got…”

The sniper’s bullet threaded through the high windows around the cafeteria, over the skirmish there that was mostly out of sight to them, and hit Anesh in the upper right arm.  The high caliber bullet fragmented as it rent a path through his muscle and bone, into his torso, through his lung and heart, and out through his ribcage, leaving a gaping, ragged wound.  The body was dead from shock before it hit the ground.

James screamed something even he didn’t know the words to.  Scrambling across the bathroom floor to his boyfriend’s corpse.  He dragged Anesh back onto the tile flooring, futilely checking for a pulse.  Intellectually, he knew that there were more Aneshs.  His partner wasn’t ‘dead’.  But seeing this… James would be having nightmares for weeks.

“There is no time.”  Secret whispered to him.

James nodded.  He knew.  He lay what was left of this body down on the floor, blood pooling beneath it and sticking to his hands.  Grabbing one of the paper towels on the bathroom sink, he wiped off what he could, and then pulled what was left of the telepad out of his partner’s pocket.

‘Behind the sniper on the roof of the building next door to this one’.  He wrote.

James took a moment to grab the gun bracelet and shield bracer off the dead agent, scowled at the lack of Bind Weapon charges, took the agent’s gun too, and then, as ready as he could get, ripped the page.

_____

Graham looked up from the bedsheets he was staring at.  He wasn’t ‘in bed’, really; just kind of sitting on it, thinking.  Everyone thought that he’d completely shut down, but he hadn’t really.  He needed time to think.  To mourn, to grieve, and to drown in the ocean of guilt he’d created for himself.

Everyone here tried to talk to him.  Tried to make him feel like it was okay, like he could go back to daily life.  But how? He’d done the worst thing possible; he’d killed his best friend, and hundreds of other people.  He was a *monster*.

And he needed some time to come to grips with that.

It didn’t really feel like anything he could ever do would help set the balance right.  He could start working with the Order of Endless Rooms, sure, but they… they were heroes, weren’t they? He didn’t belong here as anything other than a prisoner.  He could try to be a vigilante or something; but the last time he and his friends had tried that…

And now he was the only one left.

So when the explosions started, Graham just kind of shrugged it off and didn’t bother getting up.  Weird stuff happened around here all the time.  But when the screaming, and the sounds of gunfire, made it into his well appointed basement prison room, he knew something was wrong.  When the lights went off, he knew something was *extra* wrong

When he heard the barked orders from just outside his door, his mind started to wake up.

They were under attack.  The Order was, anyway.  But… and Graham knew this for a fact… they were the good guys, right?  So, who would be attacking them?

It sounded like they were in trouble.

Maybe.  Maybe this was… his chance to help?  He had a dungeon skill book, he’d been in a couple fights.  He could do this, at least.  Be part of the defense.  Maybe he… maybe, just maybe, he could find some measure of redemption.

Graham opened his unlocked prison door, one hand on the short staff someone had left leaning against the wall last time anyone was down here.  And a woman in a black ski mask, tactical helmet, and night vision goggles fluidly pivoted and shot him three times in the head.

Graham died ready to save everyone, including himself, but too late to do anything but fall to the floor.

_____

Deb slumped against a hallway wall, in the middle of a ring of three camracondas.

Around them, coming from both sides of the hallway, were enemies.  Men and women, at least some of them absolutely from Status Quo, who were here apparently just to annihilate the Order.  They had bigger guns, better coordination, the element of surprise, and numbers.  They were winning.

For some reason, that thought was mildly surprising to Deb.  Maybe it was the blood loss she was currently experiencing.  She’d been shot a couple times so far; nothing lethal, yet, but it was inconvenient, and she hadn’t actually used enough purples to have some kind of mutant healing power.  Yet.

Maybe not ever now.

But it felt weird.  The Order were supposed to be better.  Heroic.  Undefeatable.  Or maybe that sort of hubris was why this was happening in the first place.  Maybe they should have just killed every member of Status Quo at the time.  Deb wouldn’t have agreed, though, and she was glad the choice hadn’t been put forward.

She wanted to be a doctor.  A healer.  She’d taken the Oath, and made it clear to everyone that it overrode anything else.  And in her wildest dreams, she’d never expected James to just agree, and then start brainstorming some kind of similar oath for the Order itself.  That put life over convenience, ethics over wants.

And for them, she’d violated the Hippocratic Oath a half dozen times.  She’d done harm, intentionally and viciously.  And she’d do it again, to get to the world the Order wanted to build.  If she could just find the strength to stand, she’d slit the throats of every one of the frozen gunment around their last stand.

But she couldn’t.

“Am sorry.”  The digital voice of her partner, her unexpected sparkling joy of a lover, came to Deb’s ears.  The hallway was quiet, for now.  Until the camracondas got too tired to keep up their stares on multiple targets, and the bullets cut them down at last.

“Why?”  Deb asked Frequency-Of-Sunlight.

“Let us down.”  Frequency said, the small speakers sewn into the lining of her leather coat expressing more sorrow than you’d think a digitized voice could.

What a name, Deb thought, for someone who’d only recently forged their new identity, their ego for the world at large, and done so entirely because they loved the colors of the sunset.  What a person.  What a bizarre life Deb herself had led, to go so far thinking everything was so normal, and then to end up… here.

Would her father approve of her choices?  Would her mother understand why she’d done what she’d done?  Deb probably wouldn’t ever know.  They remembered her, which was more of a boon than most people who’d been saved from the Office got, but she just hadn’t told them everything.  Or anything.  How do you have that conversation?

“Dad,” she’d say, “mom.  I’m a lesbian.  And also a wizard.  And a doctor-slash-mechanic.  And my girlfriend is a snake.  Happy thanksgiving?  I brought cornbread.”  And then, somehow, she’d end up sitting on the couch in her grandma’s living room while her aunt made impossibly awkward small talk with Frequency and her cousins asked her equally impossible embarrassing questions.  It would be great.

Deb started giggling.  Laughing so loud some of the camracondas twitched, but didn’t dare break line of sight on their targets.  The laughter rapidly turned to sobs, tears streaming down her face as fought for breath, manic giggling and crying overwhelming her.  It was all so *mad*, she thought.

Tilting herself over, Deb wrapped her arms around Frequency’s tail.  “It’s not your fault.”  She said simply, her voice shockingly level.  “I wish… I just wish we’d had more time.”

Frequency-Of-Sunlight wished she could look at her human.  “I too.”  She spoke sadly.

Deb looked up at the people, the monsters, who meant to kill them all.  Frozen in place, fingers on their triggers.  It wouldn’t be long now.  But it was okay.  She’d said her goodbye.  And she’d die here, with the person she loved.

Most people never got that.

Also the person she loved was a snake, and that thought would have her dying with a wild grin.  One last screw you to the people who’d come to their home and started shooting.

_____

James appeared on the rooftop behind the sniper, snapping the air around him with the smell of blood and the pressure of his arrival.  He had a gun up and braced it on his shoulder as he took his other hand away from the telepad in his coat pocket, adjusted toward his target in a split second as his Aim told him where he needed to keep it level.

She was faster.  James caught sight of grey hair under a black baseball cap before the old woman tossed *something* out of her left hand.  Over her shoulder, not even sparing a contemptuous look for the idiot teleporting in right behind her.

Suddenly, James was standing back in the bathroom.  Same pose as he’d been on the roof, but with the feeling of being dragged *backward* lurching in his stomach.  He spun, looking around confusedly.  Something had changed.

“You have unwound.”  Secret hissed at him, still coiled around James’ shoulder.  “Your time was eaten, but the world moves on.”

James snarled.  “Okay, fine.  We’ll try it again.”  He checked the shield bracer he was wearing;

[Stockpile “Temporal Displacement” - 19 - 709 / 22,000 - 4:12:59 (41) <A>

Battlefield Alteration - 4 - 199 / 1,000 - 1:01:22 (2) <A>]

Already switched over to what he needed.  James killed the automatic on the Alteration; he’d turn it to what he really needed when it mattered.  And two charges left to switch to what he needed afterward.  Forty shields left, too.  He’d need to finish this before any more automatic weapons fire came his way.

James pulled out the telepad, dismayed to see that it only had one page left.  Apparently him being rewound hadn’t refunded him any resources used.  He pulled out a pen from a coat pocket, and thought for a second, before beginning to write.

“Slightly to the left of the sniper on the roof of the building next to this one.”

Tear.

James and Secret cracked into existence, and James pulled the trigger before the woman could readjust her magic.  The first burst of bullets splashed against her own shield, and then, James’ bracer flared light around him as a winding invisible *thing* crashed into it.  He couldn’t feel it, but it looked like someone had compressed a sliver of time into a ball and then forgotten about it in the fridge for a month or two.  It was ugly, and only lasted a second, and then he kept shooting.

“Stop!”  The woman yelled, and James felt it was more than just a request; it was a Command.  Something flashed into being, and then, Secret caught it.  Somehow, her speech had a direction to it, and Secret took the hit meant for James; a claw like a link of chain, in green ghostly light, manifested around the infomorph as the Authority the old woman called upon hit the first target it ran into.

The woman pivoted, bringing her own gun up, leaving the long barreled sniper rifle braced on a bipod on the ledge of the roof.  James saw it, recognized it, and switched his shield to .45 just in time to catch two bullets.

He lashed out with his blue orb, using precision and a tiny target zone to minimize the headache, and turned the tendons in the woman’s right knee to glass.

As she finished her pivot, already in motion, the glass in her leg cracked, exploded into shards, and she toppled sideways.  But she didn’t stop shooting.  And with her free hand, she made a motion that grabbed the side of James shoes and *yanked*.  He, too, fell backward, slamming his head against an HVAC unit and slumping on the gravel surface of the roof.  He also didn’t stop shooting.

Both of them burned through charges on items like they were water.  James didn’t know how many shield uses she had left, but he knew that his were counting down.  Thirty; he rained bullets down on where he was sure her position was.  Twenty; the dome of light around him was blinding, and he couldn’t see anything past it, only the golden glare.  Ten; James felt his heart pounding.  He swept his fire left and right, panicking.  But he didn’t stop.  His gun bracelet had two more ammo refills, and he didn’t have time for any of them.

Five.  James heard someone yelling at him.  Four.  They could negotiate.  Three.  Their organization had room for competent agents.  Two.  He missed what they said here.

One.

The enemy’s shield shattered at the same time James’ did.  Both of them still laying with their backs against something, firing into each other like it was the last thing they’d ever do.  Except James’ opponent, enhanced or not, looked like she was sixty years old, and there was only so much that you could do against an automatic rifle.

He tilted his head back in the sudden silence, as her gun listed out of her hand and clattered onto the gravel, looking up at the stars.

“We don’t negotiate with terrorists.”  He said, voice hoarse.  Then he coughed, and tasted blood.

James looked down.  There was a hole in his shirt.  That was bad.

“Secret.”  He said.  “Secret.”  James spoke up, and felt the tugging pain at his skin start to set in.  In the distance, he could hear gunfire from the Lair.  The fight wasn’t over.  He could also hear sirens, which were *probably* for them, but were too late no matter whose side they’d end up being on.

Secret, still pinned down by the Authority, dragged his form over to where James lay.  “I am here.”

“I… I think I’m out.”  James whispered, closing his eyes and trying to hold the cold terror away.  “Get going.  Go help them.  Tell Anesh and Alanna I loved them.  And you.  Always.”  It wasn’t working.  He was scared.

“I can not leave.”  Secret whispered back.  “Not now.”

“They’re dying, Secret.”  James said, shifting his shoulders against the air conditioning unit.  Damn whoever built these things for not considering how comfortable they’d be to lean on.  “You can’t be waiting for me to die.”

The pale blue serpent tried to shake his head, but couldn’t.  “No, this thing, it has me.  And even if I could move… I am weak.  I’ve done too much, too often.  There’s no small secrets left for me.  No large ones to break for a moment’s power.  I am as helpless as you.”

James thought for a second, feeling his blood already starting to clot.  He healed faster than most humans ever would, but he knew it wouldn’t be enough.  Not for this.  His heart screamed with every beat; he’d been hit somewhere too important this time.

“Take what you need from me.”  He said.

Secret balked.  “What?”  He asked, knowing damn well what James had meant, and was asking.

“They are *dying*.”  James screamed.  “Our friends!  Our family!  And I’m going out anyway!  So… so do what you know you were made to do.  Dig in.  Take whatever you need to out of my head, and use it to save who you can!”  James sobbed suddenly.  “I’m dead anyway, and I don’t believe in anything after.  My soul is one of two things; gone, or *ammunition*.”

The two of them locked eyes.  Secret staring into James’ with a dozen of his own, struggling against the clasp that the Authority had on him.

James broke the eye contact first, looking over to where the old woman… it had been Marion, hadn’t it?... twitched slightly.  Ah, that was it.  He propped his gun up on his knee, and emptied it into her body.  The Authority on Secret scattered to the winds with her now-actual death.  “No excuses.”  James whispered.  “Get on with it.  I’ll… maybe I’ll see you again some day.”

He closed his eyes.

Secret didn’t.  He looked up.  Up at the stars, at the sky, at the shape of the world around them.  He looked through himself, at the idea that he was, and the people who dreamed him.

He could do it.  He could tear James’ mind apart, and burn long enough to fight back.

Or he could do something else.

“Here.”  James cracked one eye as something dropped into his lap.  It was a yellow orb; a large one, too.  It had fallen from where Secret had formed himself into a figure eight overhead, and was slowly looping on himself.  “You aren’t dead yet.  Stop giving up on yourself.”

And then, Secret *pulled*.

There were so many people who knew him now.  He had friends.  He had family.  He had peers, in the form of other infomorphs, and parents, in the form of James and Anesh.  There were dreamers across the country that had seen him briefly, and he’d talked to in those moments of passing sleep.  There were members of the Order, human and otherwise, who willingly gave his Self a place to be.  There were students and teachers who owed him their lives, who spoke silent prayers to him when they thought he wouldn’t hear.  There were some federal government employees who knew of him, and were terrified, but apprehensive about it.

Secret gathered them up, found all the threads, and yanked.

The weak ones came first.  Little moments, little dreams of something blue, something with a lot of eyes.  Something friendly.  He took it in like water, filling his form, solidifying himself.  Then, the outliers.  Those who thought he was a threat, those who thought he was a parasite.  He took those too, grew himself more fangs.  Then… those closer.  He couldn’t stop now, or it would be for nothing.  The Order.  Alex thought he was cute.  Nate thought he was hilarious.  Randall… Secret couldn’t find Randall.  There were missing connections.  The dead and lost.

He ate the memories of himself.

It wasn’t enough.  He kept going, pressing them down into himself, the pressure of *who* and *what* and *WHY* he was growing stronger and stronger as he stole from the people who made him those things.  Alanna was next, along with Dave and JP.  Pendragon and Rufus and Ganesh.  The camracondas who thought he was like them, but secretly knew the truth.

It wasn’t *enough*.

Secret gave in.  He held nothing back.  He latched onto James, and every eye he had focused down on his friend and father as he took, and took, and *took*.  Why was he?  Who was he?

None of it mattered to James.  Secret didn’t need a reason, he just needed to be loved.  And in that moment, as James screamed at him from the rooftop before forgetting why he had been so upset in the first place, Secret understood.

He was himself.  Finally.  Every part of him collected into one physical place.

There was a form of ignition.  And then, a new form of matter, the likes of which had never before existed on this world, sparked into being.

Secret was not made of solid, or liquid, or gas.  Plasma or gel or Bose-Einstein condensate.  He was made, now, of an idea.  Literal physically earthed information, given purpose and brought into reality by sheer density of ego.  Unstable in the extreme; he knew he had only minutes to live now.  Untethered to any one person, answerable to no gods or kings.  Secret was here, and everywhere.  Something new, and something horribly glorious.

He had left himself notes.

The new creature wasted no time following the directives it had given itself, the purpose that had been laid down.  It identified the intercessors that were attacking the Order of Endless Rooms, and it reached out to them, and it *bit*.

Every living thing within fifty miles shivered, twitched, and screamed, as they all felt the presence of fangs in the dark.

Secret’s teeth found purchase in his target, and he paused.  The lines and threads reached down to the people, yes, but they also reached upward.  And he didn’t wait or think about it; he clawed his way up the ladder, and shredded it as he went.  Mauling away at the very concept of the thing that was Status Quo, all the way to the top.

The first thing that happened in the Lair, as far as anyone knew, was that the enemy lost unit cohesion.  They stopped flanking, stopped firing in waves.  Then they started yelling at each other.  One of them panicked, made as if to shoot one of her teammates.  But the finger never made it to the trigger.

Because the next thing that happened was that every single one of them dropped like a puppet with their strings cut.

They forgot, for a moment, that they even existed.  Their hearts stopped beating, their lungs stopped pumping.  Their brains just… shut off.

Six hundred miles away, a Status Quo team on assignment dropped dead in the middle of a Denny’s.

On the other side of the planet, a contractor who still had some loyalty to his cause suddenly collapsed, toppling out of his surveillance perch.

In a warded room in the basement of the pentagon, a man no one knew existed ceased to be midway through signing off on a command.

Everything, suddenly, went quiet.

Secret came back to himself slowly, the power he held now burning too hot.  He was eating himself away, and suddenly realized *who* he was, not just what he was supposed to do.  He… had he helped?  Was he a monster now?  Secret couldn’t tell.  He’d lost something critical, and his body - his *actual* body - was dying for it.

He opened his mouths, and tried to speak.  To say anything else to James.  To anyone.  “Remember me.”  He tried to say.  “Remember I love you.”  Secret screamed inside himself, but nothing came out.  “Please... “  The newly remade Life was breaking apart, fast.  Pieces of himself were peeling away, flaring into nothingness with touches of orange and red.

Secret couldn’t say anything.  He’d cut himself away from them, could barely remember them himself.  But it didn’t stop the feelings, his *own* feelings, burning hot inside his newfound form.  “I… I don’t want to go.”  He screamed the words into the void.  “I’m scared.  And… and there was so much left to do…”

But he’d known.  He’d known what he was doing.  And the pact had been signed willingly.

Secret sighed.  The destabilization, his approaching death, didn’t hurt. It was just… another idea.  One far stronger than himself, for now.  He looked back at the loop of his own tail, seeing the dissolution of his novel flesh in full.

“I burn the color of sunsets.”  Secret whispered.  He thought for a second, as more and more chunks of his self went up in false flames.  “There was… someone.  Someone who would have liked to see that.”  The serpent shook his head slightly, in a gesture he’d stolen a long time ago from a human of some sort.  It shook loose more scales that caught like shooting stars as they turned to nothing on their descent, and it put gaps in his form that the true night sky could be seen through.

And then, the instability took hold.  And with nothing more than a satisfied hiss at a task complete, the last of Secret’s self rippled into scattered motes of memories and ash.

He had, he decided at the last moment, been *good*.

____

On a rooftop, James listened to the silence.  The only shouts left in the distance were those of people he recognized, organizing medical aid and trying to recover from the attack.

It was over, he thought lightly.  We must have won while I blacked out.

James looked down.  There was a yellow orb in his hands.  How had it gotten here?  Blood loss was making him forget things.  There was another form of loss, too.  The back of his mind was screaming at him, that he’d forgotten something, that something was *missing*.  But he didn’t know what.  It just added to the pain in his chest; the familiar tug of depression settling over the unfamiliar feeling of having a bullet lodged in his heart.

He still had a chance.

It didn’t take much mental effort these days to absorb a yellow; James just didn’t do it often.  This one gave him six hours of operational time, and did absolutely nothing for the pain.

He staggered to his feet.  He had to do… so much.  Six hours wasn’t going to be enough.  James checked his coat pockets, found his car keys still in them.  He felt okay enough to drive himself to the hospital.  “Alright.  Minor surgery, and then I’ll come back and make sure everything’s okay.  No need to get in their way, right?”  He said to… no one.  He was alone on this roof, with a corpse.  Of course.

James slid over the edge of the roof, into some bushes, and stumbled off into the night, shock and cold anxiety settling over him.

It sounded like they’d won.  But he felt more alone than he ever had in his life.  He didn’t even stop to check in with anyone before he lethargically pulled his car out of the parking lot, the hole in his chest not exactly bleeding, but still shooting with itching pain every time the seatbelt or his shirt pulled across the edges.

His brain tried to organize the future.  Hospital.  Clean up.  Rebuild?  Was that even possible?  Rebuild how?  He’d tried to set the foundation for a better world, and it had taken thirty people with guns and mild magical powers to rip it all down.

James stopped thinking.  He’d… he’d deal with it later.

He wished Anesh and Alanna were here.

He hoped they were alive.

He was so very, very tired.

_____

END BOOK TWO


_____



Okay.  So.  Author's note here.  As with last time, there will be an epilogue, because I'm not *that* evil.  Followed by a Q&A.  Any Q's can be attached here, or to the epilogue chapter, or just messaged to me.
After that, I'll be taking a break.  Not a super long one, I think.  Maybe a month or so, just to get through the holiday season without having extra stress, and I might still be writing in that time anyway cause that's the kind of person I am.  At the end of my break, I will almost certainly go back to writing the next book of The Daily Grind.
The public chapters will continue updating normally, every week, until they too reach the end.  At which point they'll have a break of the same length as you guys did, before they start updating again.  In this way, Patrons will dip in how far ahead they are for a while, but will keep the same lead you've always paid for after I catch back up.  Just wanted to be clear on that.
And, if I haven't said it before... holy shit, guys.  Thank you for letting me do this.  I never would have come this far without your support.  And I hope to keep making art for everyone well into the future.