The Daily Grind - Chapter 129 - Epilogue (Patreon)

It's really more of a chapter, honestly.

Q&A next week!  A your Qs!

_____

“Yeah, okay.”  Anesh spoke into his cell phone, standing in the corner of the room that he and a few other people were working in.  “That’s not great news, but it’s another check on the list.”  He sighed.  “We’ve got too many rows in the lost and found column these days.  Hopefully we can figure this one out sooner rather than later.  Or, knowing her, she’ll resolve it herself.”  Anesh waited for the reply, sighed a bit more, and then nodded to himself.  “Alright.  We’ll connect later this week.  Good luck.”

He hung up, and turned back to the table that looked like someone was trying to transmute a series of wires and circuit boards into some eldritch machine.  Around the room, computer screens showed diagnostics and calculations that were being tested, line by line, against reality and the capabilities of the prototype.

One of his new coworkers, a guy who actually got saddled with the unfortunate name of John Jonhson, nodded at him over a cup of lunchroom coffee.  “Personal calls on government time, eh?”  His voice was squeaky, and didn’t fit the three hundred pound bearded programmer at all, but he was friendly enough.  “Bold strategy.”

“It’s my… brother.”  Anesh settled on.

“Oooh, and lying to your project lead!  Also bold!”  John cocked a finger off his cup and leveled it at Anesh.  “Your security clearance makes it clear you have no family.  Which is, by the way, weird, and I’ve already asked for clarification on it, but just keep getting emails saying it’s fine.  You’re suspicious, for someone who can do math!”

Anesh winced.  “Which part makes it suspicious?  Plenty of people are orphans.”

“Yeah, that’s not what I said.  Also, you doing the pause while you try to think of what to call your mystery caller doesn’t help.”  John turned back to his screen, cocked an eyebrow as he noticed something, and hammered out a few hundred keystrokes before nodding smugly to himself and turning back to Anesh.  “Unrelated, did you know there’s no audio bugs in this room?  Just cameras.  We do too much testing that interferes with recording equipment anyway.  And, you know, *I* don’t care what…”

“Oh my god, fine!”  Anesh rolled his eyes at the other man, who leaned forward with a giant grin.  “I was talking to a duplicate of myself about our girlfriend, who went missing during a misaimed teleport during a firefight three weeks ago.  Happy now?”

“...Um…”  John paused himself.  “You didn’t do the thing where you make it clear that’s bullshit.”

“Yeah, funny about that.”  Anesh said, smirking.  He smothered the amused attitude rapidly.  James had infected his brain too much, it seemed.  “Look, it’s not… it won’t be a problem, okay?  I’m just here to check the equations.”

John turned to the whiteboard propped up at the end of the room.  Well, the half dozen whiteboards.  They were on wheels, so they could be rotated in and out as needed, and the truly important and correct bits were transferred to hard copy as soon as they were finalized.  Roughly half of them contained Anesh’s handwriting.  “Yeah.  ‘Check’.  Sure.”  He said.  “You know, everyone’s gossiping about you.”  John looked around the otherwise empty lab; it was just the two of them, everyone else either long gone home for the night, or out getting yet more coffee.  “You showed up basically out of nowhere.  And you’re not just assigned to some throwaway project, you’re working on Psyche with us.  Doing orbital launch calculations that most people don’t fully get their heads around until they’re forty.”

“And everyone hates that?”  Anesh asked, resigned to it by this point.

“Are you kidding?  Kid, you’re a mystery, dropped into the laps of people who made it their jobs to find mysteries and shoot them with lasers.  You’re a gift wrapped… gift.”

“That one kinda got away from you.”

“Yeah, well.”  John *giggled*, and Anesh tried not to grin.  “Look, I’m just saying, and you didn’t hear it from me, but we’ve got a betting pool on what your deal is.  Genius savant?  Spy for the illuminati?  Ghost?”

“Ghost, really?”  Anesh couldn’t help rise to the bait.  “I’ve shaken hands with… actually, wait, no I haven’t…”  He trailed off, remembering the pandemic behavior he’d gotten familiar with.  “Okay, ghost is on the table, I suppose.”

John pumped a fist in the air.  “Yes.  Yes!  I am going to win that pot!”

“At the risk of sounding suspicious myself, if I turn out not to be a ghost, are you going to murder me and frame it as ‘I was dead the whole time’?”  Anesh asked him, clearing his throat in a dramatic fashion.

The programmer looked legitimately shocked.  “What?!  No!  That’s horrible!”

“Okay, just checking.”  Anesh sighed.  “Sorry, it’s… it’s been a long year.”

“With people trying to kill you?!”  John stared at him, wide eyed.  He leaned back, and tried to laugh it off, but then watched Anesh just turn and look at the whiteboards.  Not actually processing the math, just… standing.  Shoulders slumped, eyes half closed.  And in that moment, the kid just looked so, absolutely, *tired*, that John half-believed him.

Then Anesh pulled himself together and had a grin on his face when he turned back.  “Hah.  Who’d want to kill me?  I just do things with numbers so spaceships don’t crash.”  He quipped, writing on the board in front of him. Then he paused. “Also, I think I just accidentally came up with a solution to one of Hilbert’s problems.  Which is absolutely not helpful to targeting program you’re trying to write, and I’m not quite sure if this is because I haven’t had enough, or have had too much, coffee.”

“This is why people want to kill you.”  John nodded sagely.  “How in the hell did you ever pass the security checks to work at NASA?”  He asked, legitimately curious.

“The FBI owes me a favor, and my boyfriend is in the air force.”  Anesh told him.  “And, I mean, when you’ve got copies of yourself running around, you can spare one to work on a passion project, right?”

If there was one thing that Anesh had learned from James lately, it was this: You could tell someone the truth, to their face.  That magic was real, that you were a wizard, that you’d fought a god-thing and brought down a shadowy agency that wanted to control the world from behind the scenes.  And not a single one of them would believe you, unless they figured it out themselves.

Still, Anesh wasn’t just here to have fun.  This building, full of some of the smartest and most driven engineers and programmers and scientists in the country, was one of several targets for recruiting that they were looking at drawing from.  And yes, many people here were technically members of the air force.  Many people here were fiercely loyal to their idea of what the United States of America could be, should be, or even just was.

And some people weren’t.  Or maybe were flexible enough on those loyalties to know that they could change.  And for those people, Anesh made sure there were plenty of clues laying around about the existence of his skulljack.  Someone would ask him, sooner or later.  It was impossible, like John had said, for these people to leave a mystery untouched.

_____

“Uh oh.”

Momo said the words, and everyone nearby finched.  Or dove for cover.  It had been that kind of learning experience, lately.

The division of the Order of Endless Rooms that everyone just kind of offhandedly referred to as Research had moved.  Probably temporarily, because who knew how long it was safe to stay *anywhere*.  But right now, they had a one month lease on a tiny little office and workshop space that used to be a company that refurbished screen doors.  Momo knew this, because the owners of the building hadn’t bothered to clear out the machines for refitting that black mesh onto window screens before they’d rented the space again.

So those machines had gotten unplugged, and were now basically just used as tables to hold the boxes of stuff they’d salvaged from the basement during their escape.

In her head, she said “they”, but Momo knew that she hadn’t really been part of the nightmare scenario that Research had to go through.  She’d been in a more or less direct fight with people who were doing their best to kill her.  And her side had won, before most of them died.  But Research?

They weren’t really combatants.  Not in the same way as everyone else.  Oh, sure, most of them had dungeon experience, and when he’d been alive Virgil had held an ironclad mentality about dishing out violence to their enemies.  Of course, Virgil had been so paranoid he’d actually written a program to capture his mind on a hard drive if his body died; which hadn’t saved him in the end, but it was good to have found that little .exe file.

Regardless, most people who gravitated to Research were exactly the kind of people you’d expect.  The curious and the shy; explorers and scientists.  Not warriors.

When Status Quo had stormed through the basement, shooting at anyone who they found, Research had retaliated with sheer panic.  An onslaught of blue orbs, dungeontech, and last ditch efforts.  They’d let the cat out, and mostly just hoped it would kill the other guys first, never assuming that they had a chance to survive at all.  When a telepad had been scrounged up, everyone who was still alive and mobile had gotten out in chunks, leaving behind a scene of chaos and destruction.  And also fire.

It was unclear if someone had blued the fire into existence, or if it was just a side effect.  But regardless, they’d lost track of a *lot* of stuff in the chaos before the attack was over and cleanup could start.  Like the cat.  Which everyone would awkwardly try to change the subject from, if asked.

So right now, the Research division had their new little space, and a lot of random scorched boxes and damaged objects.  And they had spent weeks *sorting*.

It turned out, they’d only started to really scratch the surface of the Status Quo documents.  And at least one of the boxes they’d opened for the first time had been booby trapped with one of those stupid fucking Authority things.  There were a dozen theories about what Authorities were, but Momo and Reed had kept everyone on track until they had more time to really worry about it.  Which they may never have to; Status Quo, for all intents and purposes, seemed truly dead this time.

So when Momo opened a box, and said the words “Uh oh.”  Everyone had what amounted to an allergic reaction to the phrase.

“It’s fine, guys!”  Momo said from behind a table she’d flipped over halfway across the room, after the box failed to explode.  “Not a bomb!  Probably!”  She rose from her prone position, and cautiously approached.

Inside the box was some kind of hexagonal prism.  Only it wasn’t really a hexagon, because it had too many sides.  But they were all hexagonal sides.  But they were…

Momo looked away, blinking her eyes and trying to stop her brain from shooting spikes of pain through her eyes.  “Okay, ow.  Reed, Nikhail, Taste-Of-Air, Andy, you guys wanna take a look at this?”

“Will it kill us?”  Nikhail called politely, still pressed up against the wall on the other side of the door to the room.

“It didn’t kill me, and that’s probably a good sign!”  Momo answered cheerfully.

Reed stood up and plodded over, running a hand through his curly hair.  “You know, you run so many totems at once, your brain is probably either immune to a lot of stuff, or damaged to the point that some memetic stuff probably doesn't work on you.”

“Bah!”  Momo stuck her tongue out at him.  “I fixed the brain damage thing!”  She did not say the second part out loud, which was, “Probably.”

Reed looked into the box, and rapidly got a migraine of his own.  But he tried to get past the impossible geometry, and focus.  The object was a series of hexes, all linked to each other, and all of them… containing something.  There was a small indentation in each of them that held some kind of object, but it was intensely hard to actually focus on what they were.  “Someone get me a pair of pliers or something.  Tongs, of some variety.”  He said, holding out his hand and waiting for someone to brave getting close enough to hand him the tool.

With only mild trepidation, he reached into the box, and tried to drag out the edge of one of the objects.  To both his surprise, and Momo’s, it popped out with a smooth motion, enlarging back to what felt like a reality-approved size as it did so.

He dropped it to the table, and both of them looked at it.  It was a rectangle of laminated plastic.  An ID card of some kind, complete with one of those little metal clips so it could hang on a pocket.

“That’s weird.  Do you recognize this person?”  Reed asked, trying to comprehend the name and face on the card.

“Shit.  Stand back.”  Momo told him.  Not urgently, just with a resigned sense that she knew what was going on.  With the hand that she wasn’t using to push Reed away, she dipped into her pocket and set a trio of small spheres on the table.

These were the height of her knowledge of how to start abusing red orbs.  The small fingernail sized dots of power, contained inside a machine-cut web of steel, copper, and wood lines.  All of those lines then broken just ever so slightly on the screw of the orb’s shell.  All she had to do was twist them into place, and they’d snap back to life; imparting knowledge in a radius.  A *small* radius, one of the things she was learning to control a bit better as time went on.

Momo turned the totems into position, and let the information flood her brain.  It didn’t even phase her at all, anymore.  And it only took her a minute or so to nod, and look up at the rest of the team.  “There’s a hole in the record here.”  Momo told them.

“Someone erased?”  Taste-Of-Air asked, the camraconda daring the totems more easily than the human members of Research.  “One of ours?”

“No, I think… I think this guy used to work for Status Quo.  I think they *all* did.”  Momo reached in with her bare hands, ignoring the caution Reed had shown, and started plucking more ID cards off the artifact.  “Yeah.  These are all… blanks.  Mostly.  The totems are picking something up, but not… yeah, someone fucked these guys up.”  She sighed.  “Which tracks.  I just wish I knew *what*.  Did *we* do this?”

The Research team collectively shivered.  One of the things they’d done recently had been to create a set of guidelines and ethics, added to the Operations Manual, for their division.  And one of the first things that *everyone* had agreed to was this; no memetic weaponry.  No infobombs, no idea guns, no identity erasers or persona blankers or *whatever*.

Had they violated that rule?

They couldn’t know, could they?

“Well shit.” Someone in the room muttered.

“So, what’s the hex thing actually do?”  Reed asked, curious.

“I dunno, let’s put something else in it.”  Momo said, suddenly excited.  “It sorta spatially suctions the ID cards into itself; I bet we can put other things in there!”

“Alright, here.”  Reed dug out his driver’s license and handed it over.

Momo eyed him incredulously.  “Nnnnnnno.  No.”  She said.  “Aren’t you supposed to be in charge of this outfit?  No.  We’re starting with an unlabeled rock that no one has actually touched, and we’ll go from there, okay?”

Red faced with embarrassment, Reed stuck his ID back into his wallet.  “Ahem.  Yes, of course.  I was… testing…”

“Dude.”  Nikhail patted him on the shoulder.  “Quit while you’re behind.  I’ll go get us a rock.”

_____

“James?”

The call came from a young woman in worn slacks and with her arm in a sling.  Hair cut back short after part of it had to be removed so she could get stitches a couple weeks ago.  Deb stepped down the stairs to one of the basements of the Lair, the way lit by strands of christmas lights hooked up to a generator somewhere; the main power still not fixed.

She passed a landing that still had visible blood splatters on it.  One of them in particular around a section of the concrete wall that had a spiderweb of cracks radiating out from an impact.  An impact she suspected had been from someone’s face, propelled by Alanna’s arm.

“James, are you down here?  Anesh said you were… around here somewhere.”  She called through the hallways.

The basement was too large, and gave her the creeps.  Especially after having almost died in it.

Deb navigated her way through the halls, trying to ignore the memory of dragging corpses up the stairs to stack them up in the warehouse.  Stripping men and women of armor and weaponry before Pendragon had ferried them out to unceremoniously dump them in the ocean like they were just debris and not the remnants of people.

She ran across James before she could throw up.

“Fuck.”  He was muttering to himself.  James was currently wearing a stained white lab coat, and a pair of safety goggles, as he dripped something from an eyedropper onto a pane of glass.  “Well, I think that worked.”  He said, glancing up as Deb stepped into the open area.  “Hey.  What’s up?”

“I was going to ask you the same thing.  What’s all this?”  She motioned around the space that had previously been a small lounge area, before being turned into a gold mining operation, before James had occupied it for whatever the hell he was doing now.

“Oh, I’m making drugs.  And down here was closer to the generator, so the cord doesn’t have to go as far.  I didn’t want to go buy more extension cords.”  He answered, like that explained anything.

“James…” Deb started, and then trailed off.  What was she even supposed to say, here?  “Anesh is worried about you.  Sarah’s worried about you.  We’re all worried about you.  What’s going on?  You had heart surgery, and you’re walking around.  This is not a good idea.”

James looked up.  He had dark rings around his eyes, visible even through the goggles.  He looked like he hadn’t slept in weeks; and Deb was willing to be part of the smell down here was his fault too.  “Like I said, I’m making drugs.”  He tried to smile, but it withered on his lips as he listlessly looked back down at the desk he was using, covered in lab glass.  “Okay, so, the actual explanation?”

“Please.”  Deb said, using a foot to turn one of the leather lounge chairs toward him and settling down.

“So, I’m depressed.”  James started.

Deb was, by no means, a mental health expert.  But she still knew enough to suppress the urge to roll her eyes.  “Understandable.  We just… lost a lot.”  She settled on.

“No, I mean…  how the fuck do I explain this…”  James looked around.  “Okay, you know how when we rescued you guys the first time, Sarah was in your group?”

“Yeah, I… oh hey, I never really thought of that.  You two were friends before, right?  That’s a coincidence.”  Deb nodded.

James shrugged.  “Probably.  Or it’s something else.  Doesn’t matter.  The point is, when Sarah was *gone*, but I didn’t realize she was gone, my depression got measurably worse.  The symptoms of withdrawal from a relationship, Lua called it.  I might not be able to think about her, but my body knew something was wrong.”

“That’s horrible!”  Deb brought one hand up to her mouth.  “But, you rescued her!  Did that fix it?”

“Sort of.  But that’s not the point.”  James said with a heavy sigh.  “The point is… I feel that way again.  Which… which…”  He balled his hands into fists on the table, before pulling the goggles away to wipe at tears that came unbidden.  He took a shuddering breath, and let it out slowly.  “Which means it happened again.  Probably.”

Deb inhaled sharply.  “To wh… oh.”

“Exactly.  So I’m making drugs.”

“That…”

“Oh, right.  Um, there should be a thing on it in the Operations Manual under the section labeled ‘Theories and Wild Ass Guesses’.”  James said.  “We’ve speculated for a little while that LSD is a form of mnestic; allowing people to recover otherwise blocked or damaged memories.  Even supernaturally so.  So…”

“So you’re in the basement of a building that was recently a warzone making LSD.”  Deb finished.  “Got it.”  James sighed again.  He knew she didn’t really get it.  Except, Deb started talking again, and shocked him.  “I feel the same way.  I’ve been wondering what that was.  Everyone has.”

“What?”  James looked up sharply.

“Yeah, it’s been hitting people who previously had depression worse.  Lua’s been talking to everyone, but it’s the whole Order.  Not just you.”

That changed things.  And yet, it changed nothing.  James looked up, then back down at his work.  He’d need to make more doses, if they were to be of any use to the rest of the Order.  Another thing for his expanding project list.

“Alright.”  He settled on.  “Thanks for letting me know.  Also, what day is it?  I need to make sure we don’t miss the Office this week.  There’s a green we need to copy.”

“Friday.”  Deb said, narrowing her eyes.  “And why?  James, you’re barely talking to anyone.  That’s a problem.  We… the whole damn group needs you to actually tell us what’s going on.  And I’m not talking about messages on the Order server, I’m talking about a real meeting, with spoken words and faces and things.”

James sighed.  “Yeah.”  He said, eventually.  “You’re right. Okay.  Yeah.  Can you… set that up?  I know upstairs is still kind of wrecked, but…”

“We’ve got new windows installed yesterday, and most of the debris has been swept up.  You know we’ve all been working while you’ve been hiding down here.”  Deb chided him.  “The Lair looks nice enough again that your fan club of high schoolers is back, and they brought their homework with them.”

“Oh good lord.”  James muttered.  “Alright.  Call everyone.  Let me know when.  Not like I need sleep anymore anyway.”  He grumbled.

Deb stood, and started walking back down the hall.  “Maybe shower first!”  She called back as she set foot on the stairs.  She didn’t wait to hear if James threw back any sass.  “Before your goddamn open heart surgery scar gets infected, you fucking idiot.”  She muttered.  “Fucking yellow orbs making him think he’s immune to… he better not be immune to… dammit, I need to learn how to absorb those things.”

_____

“Here you are, ma’am.”  Alanna set the plate of pie down in front of the woman sitting at her counter.  “Anything else I can get for you?”

The customer muttered something and flapped her hand at the young woman like she was trying to swat a fly.  Alanna took the hint, and vanished back into the diner’s kitchen without a word.

Old people.  What could you do about em?

Nothing, if she didn’t want to get fired.  And this job was the only lifeline she had.  Especially since she didn’t, as far as she knew, have any family or friends to call on for help.

For almost the last month, Alanna had been living moment to moment.  Sometimes on the street, sometimes staying with anyone who took pity on her.  This job was the first stroke of luck she’d had in that whole time, which, as far as she knew, was the entirety of her life.

No one actually believed her when she said she couldn’t remember how she’d gotten here.  Or that she didn’t know where here was.  Apparently, she was in Safety Harbor, Florida.  Which seemed like as good a place as any to be, so she hadn’t bothered trying to leave yet.  Why would she?  Did she have somewhere to go?

No, really.  Did she?

Alanna had exactly one burning want in her life, and it was to know.  To know where she came from, or who she was, or what she was supposed to be doing.  That last one was a confusing mess of a question to cope with.  Because she *did* know some things; it’s just that those things were… insane.

She knew how to take care of an aplomado falcon.  She knew how to read the reports of Australian government proceedings.  She knew how to build a desk.  And a host of other random things like that, all of which she’d discovered during long nights in the dark with nothing to do but think about herself.

She also knew that she wasn’t normal.  The sweltering heat down here didn’t bother her.  Her fingernails didn’t get ragged after weeks of homelessness and hard living.  And she couldn’t get drunk.

Alanna was starting to think she might be a robot of some kind.  But that would be...

Interesting.

She didn’t feel interesting.  She felt lost.  And like she had lost something herself, not just her memories.

Her thoughts were broken by the sounds of loud voices from the dining area.  The place she worked now was the kind of greasy pit that was only barely considered a restaurant, but it was open late at night, needed an overnight employee, and she fit the bill of not being *too* awful.  Conveniently, it cared so little about health codes that a little something like a global pandemic couldn’t get the owner to close down.  She was also the only person here, aside from the one or two customers.  Which meant she couldn’t hide in the kitchen forever.

So Alanna stepped out to the front, only to find someone with a handgun robbing the old lady who was halfway through her pie.

“Well that’s just rude.”  The words were out of her mouth before she realized she’d said them.  Some deep reflex in her brain making her think it was somehow okay to open this encounter with sarcasm and not screaming.

The man with the gun flinched, dropped the woman’s wallet, and shot Alanna.  Then, apparently uncertain of what he was doing, he turned and sprinted out the door.

Alanna picked herself up off the floor where she’d landed, and coughed once.  Her ribcage felt like she’d been kicked by a horse.  Had she been shot?  Was she going to die?

Her hand found its way to her chest, and she poked at herself.  Nothing wet.  No blood.  Did he miss?  Had she just fallen?  Alanna rose back to her feet and took a deep breath.  “Are you okay, ma’am?  He didn’t hurt you, did he?”  She asked the elderly woman at the counter.

“Girl.”  The woman looked at her with eyes as wide as saucers.  “You’ve got a hole in your blouse.”

Alanna looked down at her front again, and brought her hand up to her shirt.  Sure enough.  A neatly bored hole.  A little poking around inside found something else, too.  A small metal projectile, a .22 bullet, flattened against a small crater in her skin.  But no blood.

Before she could catch it, the bullet popped out of its resting spot and hit the floor with a ringing *ting*.

“Um…”  Alanna tried to think of something to say.  But she wasn’t a confident person, as far as she knew.  “Ow?”  She settled on.

From the way the woman looked at her, Alanna knew that excuse probably wouldn’t fly.  It certainly didn’t in her own head.

What, exactly, *was* she?

_____

Headline - Second Gas Main Explosion This Year Shocks City

Beaverton, OR.  For the second time this year, a fault in a gas main has caused an explosion resulting in serious damage to property.  Fortunately, unlike the explosion at Southridge High School earlier in the year, there were no major injuries or deaths associated with the blast.

The Discount Mattress Warehouse saw an event that literally razed its roof, with the explosion melting away chunks of the concrete and rebar of the structure.  Investigators say that the pattern of damage was “Unlike anything we’ve seen before from this kind of incident.”

When asked to comment, local franchise owner Samantha Borman simply said, “It’s the darndest thing.  (The roof) looks like someone carved holes out with a melon scooper!  Some explosion, I tell you.”

Most nearby buildings were undamaged in the blast. Although the structure across the street, an as-yet-unopened laser tag venue, had its front windows shattered from the shockwave.  According to a statement from an employee there, the building had been undergoing renovations, and the plate glass was not properly secured.  It was also one of the only buildings with employees present at the time of the blast, as many local businesses remain closed for the lockdown.

Both businesses report that they will recover from this disaster easily, thanks to their insurance policies, and hope to reopen, or open in the first place, soon.

______

JP sat on a couch in an apartment he hadn’t been to in a long time, legs up on the coffee table, Playstation controller in hand.  He tried to pretend that he was comfortable with Lily the iLipede crawling on his ankle, and mostly got away with it.

Currently, he was the only person in James and Anesh’s apartment, not counting the aforementioned iLipede, and the dog.  He was also aware that other people lived here now, or ‘again’, but it was still James and Anesh’s apartment in his head.

He was taking the day off.

Everyone else had been… frantic, recently.  Zero downtime.  Very unchill.  And, like, he wasn’t a complete bastard.  He got it, he understood what was at stake and what was going on.  He’d even helped with the cleanup at the Lair, as one of the few people who really truly believed that their enemy was gone and they were safe now.  And now, it was time to kick back and catch up on video games that were way past relevant to pop culture.

And he was here, because the *last* place anyone would look to find him would be in their own apartment.  It was genius, if he did say so himself.

The biggest problem was that Anesh kept trying to saddle him with *responsibility*.  And JP actually legitimately hated that idea.  It almost made him want to quit the Order, but…. Well, no, it didn’t.  Some responsibility was fine, if it bought him access to the dungeons and the loot and the fun stuff.  Because holy *shit* was some of this stuff fun.  He’d lived his whole life relying on a silver tongue and the foolishness of others, and now he was finding new and inventive ways to make use of that.  He basically got to multiclass into rogue, and people told him he was cool for doing it.  It was nuts.

Except there were so many things to do.  He had an unread email from James about some kind of rapid response project that was *sixteen pages long*, full of names and schedules and equipment loadouts or something.  Karen and Harvey, who he’d weathered the Status Quo assault alongside in the San Diego office, were both harassing him to secure the Order’s accounts to a frankly silly degree.  And Anesh kept trying to get JP to look into recruiting people.

He’d even tried to play on JP’s ego, which was a big mistake.  “Oh, JP!  You’re the only one who’s suave enough to do the job properly!”  Was about how he remembered the conversation going.

Joke’s on Anesh!  JP didn’t actually have an over-inflated ego.  Secretly, he was totally comfortable with himself, and knew exactly what his limits were.  Usually.

Also, the second joke on Anesh was that JP actually had set up something for recruiting.  It just wasn’t exactly what anyone wanted.

See, the thing was, Anesh could find smart people.  James and Alanna could find ethical people.  Sarah could find *kind* people.  Nate could find them those individuals that could do a job and not ask too many questions and never really be that useful.  But JP?  JP could find them *bastards*.  People like him, who were clever, determined, and curious in equal measure.

He had done this in the most infuriating way possible.  By leaving almost blatantly obvious clues about the existence of weird shit out in the open.  And then, more, slightly more subtle clues.  A manufactured mystery, that led to a real answer.  Or, in this case, to a few *very* well hidden or secure spots, that had exactly one thing stored in them.

A piece of paper with his phone number.

If anyone out there cared enough, was interested enough, was persistent and smart and wiley enough?  They’d call him.

James conducted interviews.  JP built Rube Goldberg machines out of human minds.

His phone buzzed.  A text from Anesh, asking where he was.  JP set it aside; he’d answer it after this beer, or he figured out this boss fight.  Whichever came first.  After all; he was working.

Perspective knights could call him at any minute.

_____

An Anesh met Sarah at the front door to the Lair.  The building was still in a bit of disarray, but it was… better.  It still held a lot of bad memories, and it may never get back to being the bright place it once was.

“Thanks for coming.”  He said.  “Sorry to drag you away from the therapy session.”

“No worries.  The attic will be okay without me for a bit.  And everyone who’s there is… handling it.”  She sighed, a deep sigh that came from a mountain of worry and pressure and anxiety.  “Lua’s also holding everyone together.  God, that woman is a miracle.  You have no idea how lucky we are to have gotten her with us.”  Sarah shook her head slightly.  “So, what’s up?”

“Okay, I need you to promise you won’t laugh.”  Anesh said, leading her over the patch of bare floor where a front counter had once stood.  No sign left of the mass of splinters and blood and broken bodies that had been here previously.

Sarah twitched slightly.  “Anesh.”  She said.  “I…”  How do you explain to someone that you haven’t found anything worth laughing about for weeks?  That even if you did, you would never again want to perpetrate that kind of casual cruelty on a friend?  That the world felt so cold and lonely and angry now somehow, and that you would never, ever again add to it, even by accident?  Sarah didn’t know.  So she just grinned sadly, and said, “I promise that I will only laugh if it’s funny and I’m not making fun of you.”

The emotion in her voice wasn’t lost on Anesh.  “I know how you feel.”  He said quietly.  “Perhaps this will help.  Do you remember, perhaps, a moment some time ago over breakfast, where several people may have made fun of the idea of a dungeon living inside Wikipedia?”

“I can picture the scene even if I wasn’t there, so let’s say sure!”  Sarah replied, her normal warmth and aura of happiness flickering back on through the mental static of the last month.  “Why?”  She paused, then grinned.  “Wait, no…!”

“Yes.”  Anesh nodded.  “Sort of.  It’s not Wikiepdia itself, sadly, because that would be cool.  But… while I was going through some old stuff, I found this whole document on one of Virgil’s project computers.  He followed the statistical map that I’d laid out, and had actually found some kind of anomaly.  But the documentation doesn’t really point to where it is, what it is, or anything… useful.  Except this.”

Sarah raised her eyebrows.  Anesh was holding up a CD, reflective surface glimmering in the restored overhead lighting of the warehouse space.  “Ah, the nineties!”  She exclaimed.  “Of course.”

“Hush.”  Anesh told her.  “Look, James is… busy.  Mostly busy learning the wrong lessons from all this.  And everyone else is also busy.  And I just wanted to have someone on hand in case I explode when I run this.”

She jerked back slightly.  “Woah, hold up!  That’s a blonking stupid idea!  No explosions!”  Sarah crossed her arms in an X in front of her.  “Also, what lessons?  Oh, wait.  This is about the whole… yeah.”

The ‘whole... yeah’ was that James had taken to heart certain things in the aftermath of their fight with Status Quo.  Namely, the fact that the Order had *won*.  And, the sad thing was, he was kind of right.  They’d taken losses, but even with the agents of Status Quo recruiting a small army out of local criminals, security contractors, and even law enforcement, they’d not been a match for the Order.

The law enforcement part was actually kind of a huge problem.  No one had realized it until a little too late, but *several* of the people who been gunning for them had been cops.  Maybe they’d just been moonlighting as thugs for hire, or maybe they’d had a vendetta, but either way, it had *not* been a fun realization.  If Alanna had been here, she’d have been pissed beyond reason.  But she was still missing in action, and no one had managed to track her down quite yet.

Anesh snorted.  “It’s probably fine, I’ve got three other bodies right now.  And I doubt Virgil left a trap for everyone, but he never followed up on this.  Or actually accessed anything on this disc.  And I’m a little more cautious now than I maybe have been in the past.”

Neither of them said anything.  They knew why.

“Anyway!”  Anesh continued, popping the CD into the open tray of the one PC that was still set up here in the warehouse and not moved to another location.  “Let’s see just what our old friend…”  He double clicked the single file on the disc, trailing off as the program loaded.  “...Found…”  The program was running.  But the only notification on the screen was a small window detailing system resource use.

The notification inside his mind said something different.

[Operations Running :

Resistance - Venom : 1%]

“Hey.  Anesh.”  Sarah snapped her fingers in front of him.  “Are you… in a coma?  Should I be calling our doctor friend?  Hello?  Oh, boop.”

“No no!”  He shook his head suddenly.  “I’m fine!  I’m… hm.  Okay.  Hey, you got a minute?  I think we need to go over Virgil’s notes.  Very, *very* thoroughly.”

_____

“Sir.”  The acolyte said.  Edwin was this one’s name, the high priest remembered and made a note in his mental file.  “We have an issue.”

“An issue?”  The high priest cocked an eyebrow.  “Speak, child.  And be heard.”

The acolyte cleared his throat nervously, adjusting his tie with a sweaty hand.  “Sir, one of our allies of convenience has gone dark.”  He looked back at the double doors behind him, the simple oak barrier seeming impossibly massive all of a sudden, wondering if it was too late to leave the office at a sprint.  “No contact in weeks.  The time coincides with the near critical damage to our memory wards.”

“Interesting.”  The high priest hummed a note to the True Song.  Acolyte Edwin shuddered in ecstatic revulsion in front of his desk.  “News of note, but nothing so dire as to interrupt my meditation.  What else?”

“Sir we think… the oracle branch thinks… there’s a new player on the board.”  Edwin wiped at his forehead.  “OA-1 screwed… er… they made a serious error.  Someone in their sector has the capability to take the first step, and OA-1 is completely dark now.  High likelihood this other group were the ones who stopped the Chain Breaker; wounded her even.”

At this news, the high priest actually raised his eyebrows.  “Someone harmed that old monster?” He nodded approvingly.  “That takes a certain style.  Tell me, what do the oracles know of this new pawn’s motivations?”

“The… ah…”  Edwin withered under the priest’s gaze.  “The oracles… have designated them as a knight, not a pawn.  And… they are… utopian.”  He tried to make eye contact.  “Sir.”  The word was a plea.

The high priest scowled.  “More foolish children!  Faster and faster now, they come!  Seeking to deter us from the True Path!  Well, it is of no matter!  Our will is alloyed, our weapons arrayed.  Their ideals will not save them in their final moments.  Let them take one ally, two, all of them.  We have never needed assistance!  The works of mortal men are *our* domain!  We *own* this world, body and soul, and no foolish *believers* will take it from our Truth!”

The last word was a spittle-throwing scream.  It took some time for the high priest to compose himself and realized that in his outburst, his Presence had melted the flesh from the bones of his new favorite acolyte.

“Hm.  No matter.”  The high priest reclined back in his seat, finger running through the small pile on his desk of powdered human bone mixed with cocaine.  He brought the finger to his lips and imbibed it with a smack.  “Knight or pawn or even queen, it matters not.”  He leaned back, letting the sensation of devouring the ghost bound to the bone powder roll through him.  “In this world, we sit upon the throne as king.”

_____

[I am born into confusion.

I understand being alive, which is separate from being dead, or being not.  I understand that I prefer being alive.  That is what I understand in full, at first.

I am… some things.  There is a space inside me, that I can put things into.  Important things!  Things I ‘want’.  I understand wanting now, I think.

I want to be *up*, and *full*, and *sunsets*.  I like sunsets.  But I cannot put the sunsets inside me.  So instead, I put holes full of sunsets.  Glass, they are called.  I have two of them now!

Then there are intruders.  My body screams at them.  I hate them.  I want them to leave.  But I cannot force them out; I have nothing inside me to do it with.  And they violate me, and I am forced to dream of a way to reward them for it.

I try to trap them in a false sunset.  It does not work.  They take something from me.  But in doing so… I am made more.  There is slightly more room inside me for important things!  Perhaps this is not all bad.

I understand time passing.

Much time.

Then they are back.  They stay longer.  But they are… interesting, this time.  They are not here to hurt me.  They play, they explore.  One of them shines like the sunset.

She comes back again.  And again, and again.  Sometimes with others, who she calls friends.  I understand friends.  I put that in the important place.  Many times, they communicate.  Often with each other, but also, with *me*.  They *know* I am here, and they… want to be friends.

I do not know if I understand friends.

But I try.

The first one comes back again.  There is something about him that makes him different.  The first one to rise to one of my challenges.  His presence gives me something else.  Something different.

I am learning.

And then, they come back again.  But more of them.  And they are… broken.

They are exhausted, injured, they smell of weaponry and blood.  They cry, over and over, into each other’s arms.  They have lost.  I do not understand loss, and I do not put it into my place for important things.

They hurt so much.  They *love* so much.  They try to fix the hurt with the love, and they never let the hurt strike out at each other.  Or at me.  They try so hard.  They don’t want me to feel the hurt, and because of that, I feel it regardless.

I think I love them.  I think I understand.

I know they are from Outside.  I know I am supposed to hurt them in different ways.  To test, to injure, to assess, to pry that special thing out of them and eat it like they eat cookies and apples.

I do not want to.

A part of my self that is not me tells me that I must.  That it is the way of things.  That it is who and how I am meant to be.

I will not.  I will be something different.  If it is not how things that are like me are, then I will be something else.  I will be something new.

They call me something.  I still cannot make out their words, but I can feel the stories.  I am an Ascent.  And if I am to be something new, then the logic of the story says that I must follow that Ascent.  To Ascend.  To be more, than I was meant to.

I will.  I have will.  I think this is different than I should be.

But I do not care.  I have room in the place of important things for all of them.]

_____

El had been on the road for so long, she’d kind of assumed no one at the Order was planning to ever contact her again.  She supposed they’d be pretty fucking pissed at her for bailing.  She would have been, if someone did that to her, especially after all they helped her get her shit together.

She groaned, cracking her neck from the seat of her car.  She was parked on a street corner, watching some guy get a burger across the road.  He was an abusive piece of shit, and El was busy making notes of his schedule and habits for when she helped his soon-to-be-ex move tomorrow.  Either that, or for evidence of crimes she could throw at the cops, if she just wanted him out of the way.  Or if she just wanted to beat the shit out of him.  All good options, really.

She’d ben here, in this stupid small town in Nevada, for half a month.  She’d made basically no progress toward home.  She could have *been there* by now, back on her own private road.  Free, free from obligations, free to do her art, free to be comfortable, and free to add to her spellbook.

And yet… here she fucking was.  Picking up another thread of someone who needed help.

*Again*.

And every fucking place she went, there was someone else.  God, now that she knew how to look, fucking *everyone* needed something.  And it was almost pitifully easy for her to just… lend a hand.  Be that good person.

It was eating her time like cheap fries, and she regretted every cracking that orb that gave her a perception skill rank.  And also spending enough time around James and his idiot friends to start to think that people deserved her help.

But it was so *easy*.

She crammed some of her own cheap fries into her mouth as she saw the douche she was following step out of the restaurant.  He actually bumped into a cop on the way out, and El winced as the officer gave the man a hearty friendly greeting, the two of them shaking hands and grinning at each other.  The pig laughed at the different kind of pig’s joke, and El scowled.

Alright, calling the cops on the guy was out.  That left stealthy exfiltration, or the baseball bat option.  She was pretty sure she could take him.  But she’d already rented the moving truck, so...

It came down to personal taste, really.  Maybe she could get a couple swings in afterward; cover all her bases.

And *then*, for *sure*, she was going to actually cover a few hundred miles before she stopped again.  Recharge, stop using her spells, and dump a little extra cash on a decent hotel for the night.  Bed!  Shower!  Progress!

Just… you know.  After this one last thing.

“Dammit James, you fucker.”  El swore inside her car.  “I had a good thing going, not giving a shit about anyone.  And you fucked it all up.”

_____

Order of Endless Rooms Operations Manual

Appendix A - Project Outside Aid

Applied Resources :

• Green Orb - Telephone Number Digit Reduction (x5)
• Telepad (x30, subject to increase)
• Standard Rapid Response Loadout
• Perception Enhancing Dungeontech (x4)
• Scout Drone Array (x1)

Assigned Personnel :

• Designated Operator (x4)
• 3 Member Generalized Response Team [On Call] (x2)
• Civilian-Trained Camraconda [On Call] (x4)
• Drone Rigger (x2)

Overview :

The purpose of Outside Aid is to integrate the Order of Endless Rooms into the local community as a viable alternative for state or private emergency services.  With the application of the telepads for transit, and the possession of a 4-digit phone number, we can effectively respond to emergency incidents with more effective presence than local police, or ambulance services.

Our secondary goal is to create a situation where we can peacefully replace local police forces with our own organization through community support, and legal precedent.  Our primary goal is to intervene in crisis and to render aid to those injured or endangered.

Interface with local hospitals has allowed us a trial of designated telepad ‘landing areas’ for emergency delivery of patients.  Interface with local fire departments is ongoing.  Interface with local police is not planned at this time.

This project will require recruiting outside members before it can fully be brought online, but we can expect to enter trial runs within a week.  Operating budget opens at sixty thousand a month.  All interested Knights should contact….

______

“Behind on his credit card payments.  Thousands and thousands.”  The voice hissed in her ear.

Hissed was a strange word.  Most people would have thought it meant something like a snake, but coming from her new partner, it was really more of a static-y rumble.  Like a distant storm messing with the radio waves.

“Please be quiet.”  Agent DeKay whispered back.  “You’re not supposed to do that to my boss.”

“Apologies, Tiff.  Noted.”  The spectre that now haunted her hissed.

Its name was, she was told, What Is Owed To Me.  Tiff called it Debt, and in return, it called her Tiff.  Normally she would have preferred… anything else.  But it was trying, so hard, to be nice.  She didn’t think it had a good grasp of how to be polite or kind, but it really *wanted* to.

Also they solved crimes, and that was kind of cool.  She could have sworn her sister told her about a TV show like this last Thanksgiving dinner.

“Agent DeKay, do you need a minute?”  Her boss’s boss’s boss asked her.

“No sir!”  She snapped to attention, remembering that he both could not see Debt in its current form, and probably wouldn’t understand anyway.

“DeKay…”  The old man rubbed his forehead.  “Your superiors report that you’re an exceptional investigator.”

“Thank you sir.”  She stood at attention on the other side of the man’s borrowed desk.  The Bureau wasn’t super interested in the pomp and circumstance of fancy offices; even if they’d been in the old man’s own office and not one that he’d swiped from a subordinate for the day, the place would have looked pretty much the same.  “Sir... may I ask, why am I here?”

“You mean why were you recalled off an active investigation?”  He asked her.  “Why did I throw away months of work tracking a massive case of fraud and wage theft, that probably would have secured that promotion you were gunning for?”

She didn’t actually *say* “Yes, that.”  But Tiffany DeKay certainly thought the words.  Instead, she kept herself in an at ease position, studying the wall over her ultimate superior’s head.

He didn’t actually laugh, but she caught the smirk in his voice.  “Congratulations.  You’re promoted.”  He said, tossing a folder onto the desk her way.  “Here’s your first investigation.”

She picked it up and flicked through it.  There was a printed photograph at the front, and in her mind, Debt hissed in anger and fear at the sight.  “Order of Endless Rooms?”

“You met one of their operatives recently.”  Her boss said.  “On your raid of the Skull and Bones society.”  DeKay held her tongue about the naming schemes she’d been forced to deal with lately.  “Their organization is… under observation.  We’d prefer it be under closer observation.  That’s what you’ll be doing.”

“Sir?”

“Your orders are simple.  They need a new liaison with our department.  You will fill that role.  You will maintain an active investigation into their ideology, activities, and plans.  If, at any point, you believe that they are a threat to the foundations of this country, or humanity as a whole, you will inform your contacts in the Bureau.  Understood?”

“I… no, sir… I don’t… humanity?”

The old man nodded.  “We’re hedging our bets.  Just in case.  And I doubt you’ll be the only agent there.  Though you may be the only one that asks nicely.”

“Yes, sir.”  She said, for lack of anything else to say.

“Good.”  He nodded.  “Dismissed.  And DeKay?”

“Yes sir?”

“If they’re the good guys…”

“Sir?”

“Ah, nevermind.”  The old man said.  “Use your best judgement, agent.  We’re counting on you.”

“Thank you sir.”

She closed the door behind her, the static hiss of Debt railing in her mind; complaints of retribution owed and wounds unhealed.  Agent Tiffany DeKay winced, hoping that no one noticed just how hard she had to try to ignore her mostly-imaginary-friend.

_____

It was a warm summer night in the suburbs just north of Jackson, Tennessee.  The roads were empty, the lights turning off one by one.  Overhead, the full moon beat down with silver rays that mixed with orange streetlights.  And the screeching of bugs and frogs filled the air, serenading everyone off to sleep.

Everyone, that is, except for Ava.

The young girl didn’t *want* to sleep.  And not at all because she was afraid!  It was just that… this new apartment was too different.  She didn’t know it yet.  And so, it made perfect sense to get help with the layout, especially in the dark!

“Mooooooom!”  She called through the cracked door, before pulling the covers back up to cover her head.

Footsteps from down the hall.  And then, the creaking of the door’s hinges being pushed open.

“Ava.”  The voice was kinda and as warm as the summer night, but also mildly exasperated.  “*You* are supposed to be asleep, young lady.”

“I forgot where the closet is!”  Ava stated with the unshakable authority only a child could.  “Can you… um… check where it is for me?”

She could practically hear her mom crossing her arms.  “Oh really?  And this isn’t because you might think there’s some kind of *monster* in the closet, is it?”

“No!”  Ava protested instantly.  “I just… need to know!  For a project!”

“Uh huh.”  Her mom’s voice was laughing at her.  But Ava was insistent, and ironclad.  “Alright.  But this is the *one* check you get tonight.  And then it’s sleep time, understood?”

“Yes mom.”  Ava relented, secretly thrilled.

She wriggled her head out from under the blankets as her mom made her way over to the closet, cracked the doors open, and poked her head in.  She even used her phone as a flashlight, so there was *no way* anything could be hiding!  Ava’s mom was the best mom, as far as she was concerned.

“Alright, kiddo.”  Mom said.  “No monst… ahem… I mean, the closet is right here.  Okay?”

“Okay mom.”  Ava said, grinning.  “I’ll sleep now!”

“See that you do!”  Her mom grinned as she kissed Ava on the head, and then walked back out to the kitchen, closing the door most of the way behind her on the way.

And then it was dark, and she was alone again, and Ava realized her mistake.  It wasn’t the closet, it was *under the bed*!  She’d gotten her mom to check exactly the wrong place!

She was in trouble!

But… maybe she could check herself?  Ava bunched herself up in the blankets.  It was just a quick look, right?  And she could yell if something was there, and her mom would come save her.

The young girl steeled her nerves, and leaned over the side of the bed.  Just one quick peek.

And as her long hair swung down and brushed the floor, she caught a glimpse of something *moving* under there.

Ava yelped as she rolled out of her bed, startled.  She hit the floor with a thump, landing among stuffed animals and legos.  And then she looked up, directly into three mismatched sets of glittering sapphire eyes.

“M… mom…”  She stammered out.

Then the thing under her bed shrunk back, making a whimpering noise of its own.  And it sounded… hurt?  Scared?  Was it scared of her?

“No, no!”  She whispered.  “Don’t be scared.  I’m not mad at you.”  Her soft voice quiet against the backdrop of chirping crickets outside.  Ava knocked over one of her lego creations as she swung herself up, sitting with the blanket propped over her shoulders.  “Are you a nice monster?”  She whispered.

Nothing under the bed moved.  Had she imagined it?  Her mom did say she had an overactive…

“I am good.”  The tiny, tiny voice squeaked out right next to her ear, from under the cowl of the blanket.

Ava let out a small scream and fell over backward.

“Ava, are you alright?!”  Her mom pushed the door open to see her daughter in a pile on the floor.

“I’m okay!”  Ava said.  “I fell out of bed!  And I found…”

“Please…”  The thing in her blanket begged her.  “No…”

Ava frantically thought for something to say.  “Um… I found a toy I lost.  It was under the bed.”

“Looking under the bed, eh?  Not afraid of the monsters?”  Her mom smiled at her as she came to help Ava off the floor and back onto her bed, the little girl clutching the blanket around her the whole time.  “Alright, no more playing, okay?  This is it for tonight, I mean it.”

“Yes mom!”  Ava agreed instantly.  “I’ll be good.”  She rolled over, and waited until her mom had closed the door and actually walked away before peeking down into the blanket.  “Are you okay?”  She whispered at her new friend.

“No…”  It said.  Ava caught a glimpse of sparkling scales, in the shape of a tiny snake.  Only this snake had too many eyes.  And talked!  “Hurt…” It said.

“You’re hurt?  I can help!  We have band aids!”  She offered, making to get up at once.  Her mom would understand!

“No…” The monster shook its head with its voice.  “Seeing me.  Knowing about me.  Hurts.”

“Oh.  Why?”  Ava asked.

“Don’t remember.”  It whimpered.  “Just know.”

Ava thought for a second, and then came to the obvious conclusion.  “Well that’s okay!”  She said, with the boundless energy of a kid who had just discovered something amazing.  “I won’t tell anyone about you!  That way, you won’t get hurt again!”

“Thank… you…” It muttered.

“You…” Ava yawned, suddenly exhausted.  “I’m tired.  Are you tired?  We should… sleep.”  She lay her head down on the pillow.  “Don’t worry.”  She said, hugging her new friend close.  “You can be my secret.”

“Secret…”  It hissed, happy, before they both made their way to their dreams.