The Daily Grind - Chapter 155 (Patreon)

Nothing special to say this week.

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“To quote a great sage, ‘Answer unclear. Try again later’”  -A. Lee Martinez, Helen and Troy’s Epic Road Quest-

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“Not even a little okay with that thing being out here.”  James was shaking his head as they drove the winding wooded road back toward the lights of the city.  “I know I said this whole place felt dungeon-y, but if the actual life is coming out? That’s just dangerous.”

Anesh groaned and rolled his eyes.  “James, you spent fifteen minutes trying to pet a raccoon yesterday.”

“And?”

“And raccoons are dangerous!”

“First of all, do not disparage the proud bloodline of the trash panda.  Second of all, and I feel like this is more important, *raccoons are not a garbage disposal for human limbs*.”  James shot back.  “*Third* of all, it’s what it represents that’s bothering me most.”

That, at least, Anesh could get on board with.  The fact that the world around the dungeon felt ‘dungeon-y’, for lack of a better term, wasn’t that worrying.  The office building James used to work at felt *really* dungeony.  The house that Clutter Ascent was housed in similarly had a vibe to it, though that might just be the people living there.  The high school…

Okay, high schools always felt like dungeons, but for a different reason.  Probably.

So dungeons could alter the vibe of a space.  That was odd, but it wasn’t a *problem*, exactly.  Dungeon life leaving its home space to cause problems?  Now that was a problem.  And a big one, if their experience with the Office was anything to go on.  Dungeon life from the hostile highway was already a big worry.  And if it was moving onto the real roads, even just this one small creature, then they had something they needed to look into.

Because it meant that larger creatures could follow.  Follow, or be dispatched.

“Alright, point taken.”  Anesh said.  “What do we do now?”

“Well,” James spoke slowly, focusing on the car for a second as he took a curve.  It was too dark for him to feel safe working entirely on autopilot.  “We could try to track it down, but I doubt our chances.  Maybe a more thorough sweep of the city?  Look for any other… hrm.”

“Yeah, ‘hrm’.”  Anesh mimicked his sound of consternation.  “Because even though most of the town is empty, it’s still *huge*.  You wanna poke through three thousand empty houses?”

“No.”  James sighed.  “Okay, let’s just be direct.  Start asking people directly.  Maybe put up signs.  Fuck subtly.”

“Yeah, we could try that.”  Anesh shrugged.  “I mean, we’re edging closer and closer to just being public anyway.  And besides…” He trailed off, screening his eyes against the headlights of the truck passing in the oncoming lane.  And then the next truck, and the car after that.  A veritable convoy passing them by over the course of a minute or so.

James let out a small laugh.  “Friday night, eh?”

“They’re headed toward the dungeon gate.  Is that a problem?”  Anesh turned in his seat to watch the taillights vanish around the bend behind them.

“The first cars we pass all night, and they’re all one big group?  Nah.  They’re either a bunch of friends going camping, or a bunch of friends who already know the dungeon is there.  Either way, I kinda doubt that any of them are gonna accidentally fall in.”  James shrugged.

Anesh had a thought.  “We should actually try to find anyone who’s a delver, huh?  There has to be more than just El, right?”

“Maybe.  There is still that communication filter to get… woah!”  James had just finished pulling them around another long curve in the road, and ahead of them, the slope down into Townton’s city limits was mostly a straight line for the next few miles.  The trees thinned out here, with nice wide gravel shoulders before the irrigation ditches between the pavement and the farmland that had been fenced off out here.  None of that was what had caught James’ attention, though.  He’d done this drive multiple times now, and the view was nice, but nothing really spectacular.

Instead, his exclamation was because there were a couple of people walking on the side of the road, an adult and a kit, with the taller of the two trying to wave their car down as they passed, illuminated for a half second in the car’s headlights.

“What’s up?”  Anesh said with a worried sweep of the terrain around them as James started to slow the car.  On his second check, he caught sight of the light of the hitchhiker’s cell phone, a point of light in the otherwise dark environment of the highway.  “Oh!  Um… we’re giving them a ride?”  He asked James.

James shot him a frown with raised eyebrows as he pulled the car over and parked.  “Yeah?”  He half asked, half stated.  “Why?”  The word was almost a challenge.

“Who tries to bum a ride at two AM in Tennessee?”  Anesh asked with concern, watching the duo approach in the wing mirror on his side, the crunch of shoes on gravel becoming audible as they got closer.  “Serial killers?”

James stared at him flatly for a second, before shaking his head and ignoring that comment.  “Hey, let’s make sure the guns and armor are stowed in the trunk, yeah?”  He said, popping his door and going around to empty out their back seat of anything that would mark *them* as the horrifying serial killers in this situation.

He had just clipped shut the case on his P90 and slid it over the back seat into the trunk while Anesh did the same with a pile of armor plates, when the woman who was making an exhausted attempt at a jog caught up to where he’d stopped, kid in tow behind her.

“Ah.. ha… could… would you mind if we got a ride with...you?”  She panted out, holding her side.

“Oh yeah, of course!”  James smiled back.  “S’why I stopped.  Sorry, I just had to clear out the back seat.”  He dusted his hands off on his pants, and held one out.  “James, nice to meet you here on this deserted stretch of road in the dead of night.”

“I’m Jeanne.”  The woman took his hand in a firm grip, and James smiled at how solid she felt.  “This is my daughter, Ava.”

“Oh, hey!”  James said to the young girl who was breathing heavily, trying to catch her breath.  “I recognize you guys from our motel, so we’re going the same way.  Come on, come sit.  You two look tired.”

He turned and twisted himself around the open doors to prop himself up on the driver’s door, looking back at the mother and daughter standing on the gravel, the older of the duo holding back the kid, eying him suspiciously.

“Are you following us?”  She asked, nervous anger in her tone.

“What?  No.”  James glanced into the car at Anesh, who just shrugged at him.  “The kid tried to take my ankles out with a ball in the parking lot.  Made an impression!”  He gave what he hoped was a reassuring smile.  “But seriously, no, not following you.  But if you’re worried I can summon a rideshare for you.”

The offer of an alternative seemed to reassure her enough, and Jeanne’s shoulders sagged as she let out a great breath.  “Sorry.”  She muttered, just loud enough for James to hear.  “It’s been a long night.”

“Yeah, you’re in the middle of nowhere.”  Anesh said from his seat, nodding politely at the two as they settled in and buckled up.  “Hi.”

“Hello.”

James intercepted the polite nothings with a question, as he pulled back onto the empty dark road and started them on the home stretch toward the city limits.  “Yeah, what are you doing out here anyway?”  He asked, failing to completely smother a grin as he watched Ava give a massive yawn in his rear view mirror.  “He- heck of a walk.”  He unconvincingly cleared his throat, remembering at the last second how little parents appreciated it when he swore around their kids.

“Um…” Jeanne dropped her hand from her mouth, showing the tail end of her own yawn.  “I don’t know.”  She said, sounding confused.

“Well that’s instantly suspicious.”  James said dryly.

“I’m not-!”

“He doesn’t mean *you’re* suspicious.”  Anesh stopped her with a soothing tone.  “He means that, traditionally, people with holes in their memories point to something that we’re used to dealing with.”

“Used to?”  James rolled his eyes.  “Or maybe I should roll my eyes at ‘dealing with’.  Yeah, let’s take this again.”  He paused, then tilted his head at Anesh in exactly the same way again.  “Dealing with?”  He said, rolling his eyes.  “Please.  We survive, barely.”

“Cause you’re a wizard.”  The young girl in the back seat spoke up for the first time since getting in the car.  She’d grabbed one of the balls of rubber off the floor that they hadn’t thrown in the back seat, and was rolling it in her hands.

“Yes.”  James nodded once.  “Thank you!  Finally, someone gets it.  Also please be careful with that, probably?”

Jeanne crossed her arms, shaking her head both to reject what was happening and to drive off the sleepy haze that was coming down around her.  “No, no.  I’m sorry, what is all this?”  She said, shifting nervously in her seat.  “What do you mean, you recognize this?  That cannot be a coincidence.”

“Oh, it’s not.”  James said, maybe a little too cheerfully.  “But look, it’s not… okay, this is gonna sound mean, but it’s not about you? Like, we’re not here now to give you a ride because *you* are experiencing memory loss.  We’re here, in this town, and coming from that direction, because we’re here looking into the thing causing the memory loss, and you just happened to be… you know.  Around.  In need of a ride.  I’m not gonna just leave someone on the side of the road!  That’d be mean!”  He caught Ava’s eye in the mirror, and winked, the kid ducking to hide a smirk as she kept poking at the ball of rippling rubber.

“None of this makes sense!”  The mother yelled.  “Who *are* you?”

“Wizards!”  James announced, causing Ava to break into peals of childish laughter.

“Hi.  I’m Anesh.”  Anesh said.  “That’s James.  He thinks he’s clever, but he’s not helping.  Look, what questions can I answer from you, that would help? Because I’ve got some of my own after.”

“Are you dangerous?”  Jeanne asked quietly, one arm out between the front seat and her daughter.

Both of the boys were silent for maybe a little too long.  Until James broke the tension by saying, “Oh yeah.”  In a voice that sounded a little too sad and far away, before he followed up with, “Not to you, or your daughter, though.  I swear it.”

Something about the way he said it left the car with a heavy quiet for a while.  It was so earnest, so open; Jeanne had never actually met someone who admitted to ‘being dangerous’, and yet, the way James made it sound, she felt safer here in his backseat than anywhere else on the planet right now.  The absence of tension was so abrupt, she almost felt like she’d fallen asleep, until she jolted back up and asked her other question.  “What’s going on?  I don’t know what’s happening.  Please.  We just woke up on the side of the road miles outside of town and alone.  And you say you know, so, what is this?”

James shot a look at Anesh, who sighed and turned in his seat to address them face to face.  “Okay, you’ve been here for a few days at least.  Have you noticed how empty the city is?”

“We only got here yesterday.”  Jeanne said.

Anesh blinked, and looked back at James, who was giving a low ‘noooooooo’ from behind the wheel.  He turned back to Jeanne, who was staring at him with eyes that hid an ocean of fear.  “No,” Anesh said, “you didn’t.  Ava ran into James twwwwoo?  Two days ago.  Three days ago.  And James saw the two of you again last night.  You have been here for some time.”

“No.  No no no, that’s impossible.”  Jeanne laughed nervously.  “We’re going to visit my mother in North Carolina.  This is just a stop on the way for the evening.”

Instead of answering, Anesh just handed his phone to her, pointing at the date.  “I’m sorry.  You were here before us, we don’t know how long you’ve been here.”  He said.  “But it’s been more than an evening.”

“Wh… what?”  Her voice sounded so small as she held the phone in both hands, staring at the screen long after it shut off.  “No, no no no.  We were supposed to… this can’t be right.  This is a joke, right?”

“Mom, don’t be scared.”  The young girl next to her said, leaning against the confines of her seatbelt to try to hug her mother without giving up the new toy she’d found.

James spoke calmly from the front seat.  “Deep breaths.”  He said.  “Clench your fists, hard.  Then slowly let go.  Repeat.  Keep breathing.”  He gave slow instructions, slowing the car as he did so and moving to the side lane so that he didn’t have to focus so much on the road.  “This sort of thing *is* scary.  But you got absurdly lucky, and we’re here to help now, okay?”

“...Okay”

“Now, I have a question.”  James said, half watching the lights of the semi-truck that barreled past in the other lane.  “Anesh started to bring this up, but the town is emptying out, and I’m sure you noticed.  But so far, you’re the only people we’ve seen walking out of town, and then waking up and walking back.  So.  Can you tell me, what’s going on with *you*?  Why are you being targeted, and *why isn’t it working*?”

In the back seat behind him, their passengers sat silent, neither of them providing James with an easy answer.

“Might have something to do with the fact that the kid can clock an augmented human out of nowhere.”  Anesh muttered to James.

“Yeah, wait, I didn’t really ask about that, did I?”  He paused. “And she’s met El, too.  Same deal there.  Huh.  Okay, that’s kind of… have we met *anyone* with built-in human powers?”  James asked his partner.

“I mean, Elizebeth is immune to antimemes.”  He replied.  “Does Alanna being able to pick up a couch count as a ‘power’?”  Anesh caught James’ comically disapproving look, and chuckled.  “Okay, rescinded.  So not really.”

James sighed.  “I’d be willing to bet that’s it, entirely.”  He said, meeting Jeanne’s eyes in the mirror.  “Ava can see more than most people.  Not sure how that translates to you two waking up from the compulsion, exactly, but it’s a good bet that's why you’re being targeted.  Also, is anyone hungry? I haven’t eaten in a while, and… is McDonalds the only thing open?  Bah.”

“You got too used to eating real food.”  Anesh poked him.  “Now you have to sufferrrrr.”

“I’m teleporting back and getting Nate to make me tikka masala.”  James threatened.

“Don’t waste our telepad.  It’s got two uses left, and it’s a giant pain to go into the vault to get more.”  Anesh told him.

James frowned.  “What if I just teleport into the vault?”

“That’s a breach of protocol.  Don’t do that.”

“But… I’m hungry…”

“Then it’s McDonalds for you!”  Anesh gloated.

“I want fries!”  Ava added from the backseat.

Her mother laid a hand on her head, and smiled as she added, “And some water would be nice, too.”

“Oh, heck!  I should have offered you water!”  James said, pulling a bottle out from under his seat.  “That was shi- bad of me.  Sorry.”

“I know we only met twenty minutes ago, and my life is falling to pieces around me, but I don’t think I’ve ever known someone who apologized for not being *enough* of a life saver when they’re giving a free ride.”  Jeanne said.

It was Anesh’s turn to roll his eyes.  “He does that.”  He said.  “Also I want a pie.  One of those stupid tube pies.  I have earned it.”  He told James as they made their way off the freeway and onto the streets of the city, lit with a mix of orange and white glows, all of them seeming to be leading to a single drive thru.

Jeanne had more questions, mostly small things that they fielded as they ate fast food garbage.  Ava obviously had questions too, but for someone who looked between the ages of eight and eleven, she was doing a shockingly good job of eating her fries without interjecting every other sentence.  Jeanne was shocked to learn that she was older than James was, if only by a few years.  And by the end of the meal and her tired interrogation, she was somehow less sure this was real, and more terrified of the world in general.

“Okay, all of this sounds bad.”  James admitted, as he and Anesh walked the two of them back to the motel from their car.  He was carrying the gun cases and projecting as hard as he could that these were just normal luggage, hoping that no one would question him.  “But it really isn’t *that* bad.  The death rate to dungeons appears to mirror the death rate to...um...people, in general.  Which now that I say it, is pretty scary.  But you aren’t at more risk than before; now you just know what’s out there.”

“You said you don’t even know if you know everything.”  She accused him.

“We’re working on incomplete information a lot of the time.”  Anesh agreed.  He was slightly out of breath, since he was carrying a box of armor, and also Ava riding on his shoulders.  Exercise potion abuse or no, he wasn’t built to give indefinite piggy back rides.  “I wish we weren’t, but we’re a tiny group, compared to even just one state.  We haven’t had time to learn everything.”

James nodded, illuminated by the white glare of the motel’s outdoor lights, as he set down a case long enough to unlock the door to their room.  “Alright, so, quick thing.  Don’t worry about *this*, okay?”  He said, pushing the door open.

“Worry about wh-“ Jeanne’s voice cut off with a scream of panic as Ganesh blitzed out the open door, spinning around Anesh twice before alighting on his head to turn and peer up at Ava’s curiously delighted face.  “What is-?!” Jeanne started to swing a hand in a wide arc to take out the massive bug threatening her daughter, when James slipped in front of her.

“Nope!”  James held up his hands.  “I shoulda been more clear on that, and Ganesh needs to stop being so enthusiastic.  It’s fine, really.  He’s friendly.”

“He’s like a pokemon!”  Ava exclaimed with joy, carefully hoisting Ganesh up to sit atop her own head instead, turning regally to observe her kingdom.

“Alright, time to get down.”  Anesh told her, sliding the kid off his back.  “Come on in.  We’ve got one last thing to do tonight.”

Despite her instinct to trust them, and the help they’d given and offered, Jeanne was still suspicious.  “What?”  She asked, not quite stepping into the room.

“Guard rotations.”  James said glumly.  “Rufus!  Where are ya?”  He called out, shooting a friendly nod at the stapler as the little guy crawled out from under one of the pillows.  “Okay, so-“

“What is that?  What is *that*!?”

“Okay, first of all, these are our friends, please calm… no, that has never once worked.  Okay, this is Rufus, the drone-mantis lookin’ fellow that your daughter is wearing as a crown is Ganesh.  It’s alright.  They’re with us.”

“I didn’t…”

“You didn’t really know if believing me about the monsters and stuff was a good idea, even though one weird thing had happened.  I get it!”  James made an appreciative noise.  “Just because you were wrong about one thing doens’t mean you’re wrong about everything.”

“Hello Ganesh!”  Ava reached up a hand to pet the drone, which the little guy leaned into.

“So here’s the deal.”  James said.  “This place isn’t exactly secure.  But if we just leave, we’re never going to figure out what’s going on, and there’s no promise that whatever it is won’t just chase you two down.  So.  We’re going to grab as much sleep as we can, and tomorrow, Anesh and I are going to start really investigating this town.  But right now, we need to make sure at least someone is awake and keeping watch.”

“There’s only one bed in here, we can’t all fit in this room.”  Jeanne mentioned.  “What about your other room?”

“We only have this room.”  James said, a self-conscious challenge in his tone.  “Anyway, the good news is, we have a couple of loyal guards right here.”

Ganesh buzzed in acknowledgement, while Rufus crossed his forelegs and narrowed his eye up at James.

“Don’t glare at him, you were asleep all day.”  Anesh admonished.

Rufus mimed out a series of motions that indicated that he’d taken a vow of silence, and didn’t have a way to wake anyone up.

“Well you’re in luck.”  James said, unzipping a backpack parked on the tiny side table the room held.  “I bought you a thing for this earlier today.  Did you know Walmart sells air horns?”

“No.”  Anesh recoiled.

“No?”  Jeanne looked a little confused.

“Yes!”  Her daughter answered, seeming happy to be involved in the conversation.

“Well… they do.”  James said, handing the noisemaker to Rufus, who took it like it was some kind of holy relic.  “Don’t make me regret this.”  He added.

“So we’re just supposed to go back to bed? Act like everything’s normal?”  Jeanne demanded.  “You can’t expect us to just fall asleep after all that.”  She said, punctuating her sentence with a traitorous yawn.

James noticed.  “Yeah, go to bed.”  He said.  “You were just out walking for *hours*.  Even if you don’t remember it, your legs sure will.  Rufus will keep an eye out, and if anything comes up, he’ll let us know.  Right buddy?”  He offered an open palm, and Rufus clattered up onto the back of the chair to slap both his front legs into James’ hand.  “Yeah, he’s got ya covered.”

“If I were more awake, I’d have a good reason why this is a bad idea.”

“If you were more awake, it wouldn’t be a good idea.”  James retorted.  “Now go to bed.  Ava, do you mind carrying Rufus with you?”  The girl nodded, braid whipping around her neck as she agreed.

There wasn’t much left to say after that except goodnight.  And in a few seconds, James and Anesh were left mostly alone in their room.

“This got complicated fast.”  Anesh sighed.  “What are we gonna do now?”

“Exactly what I said, I guess.”  James stripped off the shirt that was stuck to his back with a layer of sweat from the blazing desert of the road.  “We get caught up on sleep, and tomorrow, when we’re fresh, we follow any lead we can find.  Look into the empty houses, contact local government officials, explore the city, whatever we need to.  And in the meantime, we keep an eye on them and make sure they stay safe.”  He stepped into the bathroom, starting the shower and trying to not be disappointed with the anemic water pressure.  “There’s one thing that bothers me though, and I wanna get your take on it.”

“What’s up?”  Anesh asked, bundling up their dirty clothing into a laundry bag.

James took a second to compose his thoughts, staring at the falling water, occasionally checking with his fingers to see if it was hot enough yet.  “So, you know everything that’s happened, right?”

“That is so impossibly vague.”  Anesh said, from behind him, wrapping around James in a hug that he quickly retreated from.  “Ugh, you reek.  Get in the shower.”

“I am *trying*!”  James laughed.  “Also I mean… Everything past Officium Mundi, I suppose.  The school, Status Quo, all that.”

“What about it?”

“It’s all come to us.”  James said.  “We just kind of blunder in, and these things seem attracted to us, somehow.  And now this.  What, really, are the odds that we’d run into two people walking off a memetic attack, here, while we’re on vacation?”

“The odds don’t matter.”  Anesh told him.  “Because it happened.  And we have to deal with the reality of that, not the chance that it might have never been.  That’s just something you’ve gotta learn in statistics.”

“I’m not talking about *math* odds.  I’m talking about, I dunno, ‘fate’ odds.”  James replied, deciding the water was as hot as it was going to get and immersing himself under it.  “I’m talking about how this all keeps happening to *us*.”

“Oh, narrative law.”  Anesh nodded, seating himself on the side of the tub while they talked.  “There’s a few people at the Order who talk about that sometimes.  But I’ve got an actual counterpoint: would you be surprised that a firefighter ended up in burning buildings a lot?”

James paused, staring at the tiny bottle of cheap soap the motel had provided.  “Nnnnnno.  No.”  He said.  “But this is more like… a TV show about a firefighter, where he’s constantly trying to go on a coffee date, and then the cafe explodes, and he has to rescue people on his day off.”

“It is not that dramatic.”  Anesh reached around the shower curtain to try to swipe at James, who deftly dodged his boyfriend.  “Look, you want to know why we ran into them?  It’s because there’s two freeways out of this town, and only one of them goes to the dungeon.  The easiest answer is that the dungeon is drawing people in somehow.  The *question* we should be asking is, *why didn’t it work*.”

“I have no idea.”  James shook his head, flinging water out of his hair.  “The kid is weird.”

“She’s… odd.”  Anesh said.

“Okay, that *sounds* mean, and coming from anyone else, I would be annoyed, but you’re doing that voice where you’ve noticed something and you don’t want to believe it.”  James said, poking his head around the curtain.  “What’s up?”

“She didn’t react to any of the weirdness.  You were driving, but I was watching their faces.  Jeanne? Jeanne is terrified, skeptical, and angry.  Ava, though? She’s *curious*.”

“Like a kid.”  James said.

“No no, you don’t understand.  Kids aren’t stupid, I know you already know that.  When she saw Ganesh, her response wasn’t ‘this is weird but cool’, her response was ‘this is *normal*, and Ganesh is cool because he’s *friendly*.”  Anesh sighed, tapping his feet on the tile of the bathroom floor.  “There’s a difference.  The difference is that she’s used to things like this, somehow.  And in the car, she just zeroed in on the rubber.  There’s something going on with her, and I don’t know what.”

“She’s got hidden depths.”  James agreed.  “We could just ask tomorrow.  It’s possible she just didn’t want her mom to know what’s going on.”

“Mmh.  Possible.”  Anesh looked up as James stepped out of the shower and tapped him on the shoulder.  “Hand me a towel, and your turn.  And then *bed*.  We need sleep, too, if we’re gonna get anything done tomorrow.”

“Ugh.”  Anesh pushed upself up.  “Tomorrow is going to be exhausting.  I’m already sore and tired.”

“Well, maybe El’s map pile will get one of us wizard powers.”

“Then I’ll be sore, tired, and a wizard.”

James laughed.  “I love you.  Enjoy your shower, I’m gonna go pass out.”

_____

They made it through the night without any kind of airhorn wakeup surprise, and awoke feeling refreshed, but sore.  The kind of sore you got when you’d been spending a large amount of time the day prior running, climbing, and getting in high speed gunfights.  James and Anesh both downed an exercise potion with their breakfast, and sighed in unison as the magic went to work repairing a good portion of the damage to their muscles.

Then, after checking in with Jeanne and her daughter, they got to work on their extensive to-do list for the day.

The first thing was meeting up with El, who was currently upstairs and still asleep.  She was upstairs because James and Anesh had once again decided to accept El’s mom’s offer of breakfast, which was hash browns today.  Anesh was reading the local paper while James was making idle conversation with the older woman about magic.

“Nah, see, the thing is, most of the stuff we can do is specific to an almost comical level.”  He was telling her as he helped wash the dishes.  “And we don’t write our own spellbooks, if that makes sense.  We’re just salvaging these powers from outside sources.”

“So with the road yesterday…” She asked, back to giving off a boisterous ‘mom’ personality, but a little more tentative and willing to listen than before.

“Control over asphalt.”  James confirmed.  “Which is, let’s be real here, *super cool*.  And it turns out that most places people are these days have roads near them.  But it’s limited.  And refilling its uses is...um…” He shrugged, giving a sheepish grin.  “Still, pretty cool.”

“So would it be rude to ask you to fix the pothole at the end of the block?”  She asked.

“Mom, don’t ask people to use their powers to cover for bad municipal policy.”  El said, shaking her head as she slunk into the room.  She sounded tired, probably because she didn’t have the benefit of coffee yet.  Or maybe because she hadn’t slept much at all.

James disagreed though.  “Actually, that’s a really cool idea.  We haven’t really started to make maximum use of the powers that we can resupply, and road work is *expensive*.  Not to mention it takes forever.  We might actually be able to do some real good with this, in a way that gets us paid, and saves cities money.  Everyone wins!”  Then he cleared his throat.  “Also as payment for this idea, yes, I will fix your pothole.”

“Why are you two in my house again?”  El asked, sitting at the kitchen table and tracing patterns on the worn green tablecloth.

“Eleanor Chase, I will admit that I was wrong about a lot of things, but you be *polite* to guests when they are in *my house* young lady!”  Her mother barked out, hands on her hips.

James didn’t even try to hide his quivering smirk as El withered under her mother’s gaze.  “Yes mom.”  She said.  “Um… good morning, friends.”  She said, voice drippingly fake.  “What delightful activities do you have planned for… no, I can’t do it.  I’m sorry, I just woke up, I don’t care.”

“Ah, it’s fine.”  James forgave her, while Anesh just tilted down a corner of the paper to look at her with a cocked eyebrow.  “We’re here to do a pass on the maps, and to fill you in on what might be a problem.  Then we’re off for the day to talk to clerks at city hall.”  James shook his head, staring out the window at the day that was already shaping up to be too beautiful to spend tracking down records.  But, there wasn’t much he could do about it right now.  “Mind if we get started on that first part? Then we can be out of your hair sooner.”

“Please!”  El cheerfully waved at him without really looking up.  “Box is in the same place.”

The two of them headed up the increasingly familiar creaking stairs, Anesh adding another thank you for breakfast, and ducked into El’s room.  The space had only continued its descent into chaos since they’d last been here, almost to the point that James wanted to just roll up the blanket on the bed with all the clutter in it, and drop it on the floor so they’d have a clear space to work.  But he refrained from messing with El’s comfort zone too much, and instead just stacked pencils, snack food, tangled headphones, and stuffed animals over to the side.  He even took the time to separate the trash into the wire bin on the floor that El seemed to have forgotten existed.

“Okay.”  Anesh said, starting to lay out the scraps of paper depicting various maps on them.  “I’d like to make this easier on everyone, for the future.”

“What’cha thinking?”  James prompted.

“Spreadsheets.”

“Joy.”

“Oh, it won’t be that bad.”  Anesh settled himself on the floor, pulling his laptop out of its bag and getting set up.  “How many are even in there?”

James had laid the scraps out in a grid, and did a quick bit of mental math.  “Eighty, plus ten, plus three… ninety three?   Plus the four more I have here.”  He pulled the new ones from his pocket.  “That’s kind of a lot.”

“Okay, here’s how we do it.”  Anesh opened a spreadsheet and started labeling columns.  “Continent, country, state or province or… county?”

“Counties are part of states.  At least here.”

“And city.”  Anesh finished.  “Nothing too detailed.  Just so that, if we need to go through this again, we’ll at least know where to start looking.”

James looked down at the physical objects spread on the bed.  “You do realize,”  He said slowly, “that we don’t have a way to actually keep these sorted, right?  El’s just gonna throw them into the box again.”

Anesh paused, holding a bit of the map of Maritoba county, halfway through looking up where that was.  He looked up at James.  “But… organizations…”

“Not gonna work.  Now take these two and start looking for pairs.”

Anesh groaned, but dove into it anyway.  Pattern recognition and enhanced memory helping him to burn through the sets of mismatched and poorly aligned road networks and topological maps.  By the time he’d finished comparing both of his, and had come up empty, James was just finishing his first pass.

So Anesh settled back down, listening to El and her mom clattering dishes downstairs and El’s thudding, uncareful footsteps up the steps as she came up to join them.  When she came through the door to her bedroom, he was holding the map shard taken off the dead vulture, flipping it back and forth in his hand as he tried to figure out what its actual shape was.

“Yo.  You two done yet?”

“James is slow.”  Anesh said.  “And won’t let me sort your maps.”

“Oh yeah, I tried that once.”  El said, kicking her desk chair out of the way so she could start shoving stuff into her pockets.  Keys, knife, wallet, knife phone, mints, knife, knife…. Anesh blinked.  Where the hell had those all *gone*?  “It does’t work.”  El continued.

“Because they magically unsort themselves?”  James asked, curious as he checked his last map piece against the pile.

“Because I add more to the box when I’m tired and don’t sort them.”  El said, while James shot Anesh a look that said “see?!”  “Anyway.  Any luck?”

James sighed as he picked up one of the last bits of old hiking map.  “Nah.  I don’t even know what this one is a map *of*, so I’m just tapping them together and trying to…”

If he’d still had a physical body, in this outside space, he would have given a full body sigh with enough emphasis to make his high school drama teacher applaud.  But he didn’t, and so couldn’t, and so just observed.

Below him, rotating, over and over, was a pure black sphere.  It rolled in the void, somehow darker than the nothingness around him.  It was a *real* blackness, not simply the absence of anything.  Except, except…

The ball wasn’t completely dark.  There, turning near its base, was a tiny dot of *something*.  He tried to focus, and the ball slowed its turning.   In the thick inky nothingness, James’ view focused in, closer and closer to that one spot.  It glowed, to his nowhere perception.  A kind of mental beacon that it had not yet been acknowledged properly.  He approached closer, and closer still, until he couldn’t even tell what he was looking at was part of a ball.  It was a sweeping curved plane, and then just an overhead view of the empty material.  And right in the middle, a little speck of the space was filled in, by a road map of six square blocks of a small city in the mountains, connected to a strip of map outlining a series of hiking trails somewhere in South America.

And as soon as his mind focused on it with that context, he felt something flowing through his veins, burning into his bones.  A rattling electricity that surged across his skin and told him that he needed to *go*.  It was, he instinctively understood, the Velocity that he’d built up in that hidden space inside himself.  But now, unleashed.  Given a channel to the outside world through this window of map on the darkened globe.  And then, he *knew*.  Knew how to activate it, what it did, what it cost, everything.  And most importantly, he knew its name.

James blinked, sitting in El’s bedroom, the wispy ash of two small pieces of paper floating away from his face, and a set of words on the tip of his tongue.

Maker’s Hand Upon The Wheel.

He reached out his hand, opening his mouth, and caught a pillow in the face that sent him reeling back, sputtering.  “Why?!”  James demanded of El as he blocked the second incoming pillow.

“Because you were gonna cast it!”  She yelled at him.  “In my bedroom!  And you were gonna, I dunno, blow up the wall or turn my canvas into a live bear or, or something!  That’s what you *do*!”

“I…!”  James started to protest, then he took a deep breath.  “Actually, you know what? Good point.  It would be rude of me to blow up your room.”  He cleared his throat and looked down at Anesh.  “Hey.  You ready to go get started on the day?”  He asked.

Anesh shoved the map shard back in his pocket and took James’ hand up.  “Yup.  You were out for seven minutes, by the way.”  He said, checking his phone.  “I filled El in on the kid.  She’s gonna keep an eye on them today while we go investigate dungeon crimes.”

“Thanks.”  James said.  “And sorry I almost blew up your wall.”  El waved him off, looking a bit put out that her righteous indignation had just kind of worked and then sputtered out.  “And thanks for the map.  I added our other three to your collection.”

“Yeah, yeah.  Now get out of my room.  I’ve got places to be, you know?”  El said, pushing them out to the upstairs hallway while James held back a laugh.

“Is that actually what it does?”  Anesh asked James as they headed down the stairs.

“Not even a little bit.”  He replied.  “It improves fine control, relative to my current speed.”  James paused as they got to their car and cracked the doors, waiting for the interior oven heat that had built up in the sun to fade a bit.  “And to be clear, that’s ‘speed’ as in ‘how fast I am travelling’, not the abstract thing that we can share.  Unless I’m using it to move.  I am explaining this badly.”

“I think I get it.”  Anesh said.  “So, control in terms of, letting you react at appropriate speeds while driving over a hundred miles an hour?  Or control in terms of, being able to draw perfect circles or something?”

“Yes.”  James replied, getting in and starting the car, praying that the AC did its job before he melted.

“Good to know.”  Anesh grinned.  “Alright.  First thing on the list today, county clerk’s office.”  He propped his phone up on the dashboard, map already open.  “It’s about ten minutes away.  Let’s get to work.”

_____

Their time at city hall felt, James decided, like an absolute waste.  More than a normal waste of time, like when he spent all day playing video games.  This was like the time had been extra wasted; like it was specifically formulated to provide negative value to his life.

They’d spent an hour and a half in the lobby, waiting, even though they were the only people there.  When they finally got shown back to the offices to talk to a city official, it wasn’t even someone who had been told why they were here.

The two of them were, at this point, impersonating the FBI.  And James was starting to get a serious feeling of bureaucratic apathy.  The desk clerk didn’t care.  The city planner assistant they met with didn’t care.  And when they finally just started walking through the halls looking for occupied offices with people they could ask pointed questions at, they discovered that the building was barely occupied.

Apparently, it was Friday, and most people didn’t come in on Friday.  Not that many people worked here; they’d downsized recently.

Eventually, almost by complete accident while he was waiting for Anesh to get out of the bathroom, James stumbled across a frantic looking young man who was carrying way too many documents, delivering to various desks and offices.

The guy’s name was Malory, and he’d been doing an internship here for about three months.  In that time, he’d acquired more and more temporary responsibilities, and no one ever seemed to show up to relieve him of them.  So, like a good government employee, he just worked harder and harder, rapidly going mad with burnout.

James empathized with him, really.   It was, he told Malory, unfair that he was this overworked.  Especially since he seemed to be the only one in the building actually doing anything.  He nodded with sad appreciation for the tireless labor of the hapless intern.  Then he told Malory that he needed to know how many people lived in the city, and also to arrange a meeting with the local chief of police.

By the time Anesh got out of the bathroom, James had maps of the city, recent voter registration statistics, and a date at the local police station.

While James went in to flash his credentials - the actual ones the FBI had given him, for his vaguely official consultant position, that he’d remembered he’d had after using the fake ones initially - Anesh sat in the car and started trying to figure out what was happening with the actual property in the city.

An hour later, James stomped out of the building, face a stony mask, until he made it to the car, calmly shut the door, and unloaded every piece of profanity he’d ever learned in one long burst.

Anesh looked up from the realtor's website he was looking through listings on, and asked the meaningless question of how James’ meeting had gone.

It had, surprising no one, gone poorly.  But not for the normal reason that police interactions went poorly for James.  No one had tried to shoot him this time; instead, the chief of police - a pudgy man for whom this was somehow a secondary job - told him that they’d love to help out with the missing persons thing, but they just didn’t have the manpower.  When James started questioning as to *why* they didn’t have the manpower, he ran into the alarming fact that there were only three active police officers covering the whole town, and the chief was one of them.  Everyone else had quit, or moved away, over the last couple years, and with taxes down and funding cuts, they hadn’t bothered to hire anyone new, because crime was basically non-existent anymore.

The ‘no more crime’ thing burned in James’ brain.  But according to what few reports had been filed by the remaining active officers, practically by every metric, this place was turning into a peaceful utopia.  Theft, vandalism, assault, all basically at zero.  Crime rates dropping far out of proportion to the dwindling population.  It had, the police clerk happily told James, really boosted the value of his house.

Still unable to completely shake the mindset that he’d never be able to own a house, James had scowled at him, made copies of the reports, and left as politely as possible given that he’d just been told there’d be no help dealing with several thousand people disappearing.

Anesh, meanwhile, had made a quick call back to the Order’s home base, and made a request for some digital support.  Partially with the help of a rapidly grown emerald program, and partially just with a quickly hashed together database that one of their new programmers made to help, Anesh started the process of comparing the total missing population against the addresses of homes sold in the last year.

And it was a lot closer than he’d expected.  He and James had been assuming something like a fifty percent loss rate to the dungeon, but the number of homes that were actually listed as sold by the two major realtors in the city covered a huge portion of the people who’d left.  It pointed more to the dungeon ramping up its defense of sending people on wild goose chases, than any kind of malicious action.

The two of them compared notes, and caught each other up, while getting ice cream.  There was one single solitary ice cream parlor left open in the city, and James figured he’d sifted through more than enough dusty records today to have earned it.

“What I don’t get,”  He told Anesh as he held a waffle cone full of mint chocolate chip, sitting on a streetside bench, “is why everyone was willing to sell for so cheap.  I know realtors need to publicly list properties they’ve been part of the transaction on, but it almost feels like they’re bragging about how little these houses are getting sold for.”

“That is weird.  Also didn’t you say the clerk at the precinct was talking about his property value going up?”  Anesh asked, strawberry ice cream melting in the bowl he’d set aside and rapidly forgotten.

“Yeah, hang on.  That doesn’t check out at all.”  He frowned.  “Open that one.” James pointed at a listing on Anesh’s laptop.  “Four bedroom house, yard, no HOA, this place looks like what I always dreamed about buying and living in with a motley crew of friends.  Why did this sell for *eighteen grand*?!”

“It says the house was assessed, but they don’t list that price.”  Anesh’s frown deepened.  “Why would the owner even sell at this rate in the first place?  Is this map influence kicking in? Because that’s… probably a huge loss.”

James stretched out, folding his legs up on the edge of the bench.  “Well, think about it.  If you’re leaving to pursue the assorted target of your dreams, maybe you just want the cash to fund the trip and don’t care about anything else.”  He crunched into his cone, chewing as he thought.  “Here’s what’s bothering me, though.  Who’s *buying* all the houses?  If no one new is moving to town, who’s actually paying for these things?”

“Buyers are… not listed.  Huh.  Hang on, that should be illegal.”  Anesh narrowed his eyebrows as his ice cream turned into more of a puddle next to him.  “Hm.”

“Okay, to be fair, we do illegal stuff all the time.  I spent today telling people I worked for the FBI.  And now that I know there’s only two cops in this town, I could get away with *anything*!”

“Are you going to?”

“No, I’m busy with this.  So, buyer.  How do we find that?”  James prompted.

Anesh closed his laptop and took a sip of his ice cream soup, watching the street as a couple of cars pulled through the intersection they were sitting near.  “I… do not know.  Talk to the realtors?  But if they’re hiding something it’s not like they’ll just tell us.”

“We *are* the FBI, you know.”  James waggled his eyebrows.

“Fine.  I’ll find their address.  It’s, what, four PM? We’ve got some time today.”  Anesh cracked his knuckles, trying to work out the stiffness in this arms that had set in as he’d spent the day sitting in awkward positions on a laptop, mostly in a car.  “Oh, I wanted to ask you something.”

“Shoot.”

“Is the Map… influencing you?”  Anesh eyed James out of the corner of his eye.

“Not that I can tell.  It’s there if I ask, and it’s a set of steps to get where it’s offered me to go.  I think that the path there is actually simpler, because it’s leading somewhere easy?  Like, compared to ‘take me to true happiness’ or whatever.  I can’t really tell, though, I can only see the next waypoint.  But I get that impression.  Why?  Curious about why people would pack up and move on a promise?”

“No, no.”  Anesh pulled his own map shard out of his pocket.  “I’m thinking… you made a deal with yours.  Or, I guess, you told it what you wanted, and it agreed, right?”

“Right.  It wasn’t evil or anything.  Just… single minded.  Created to do one thing.”  James felt really awkward about that.  Created life forms were a massive ethical black hole, that he didn’t really want to brave the event horizon of.

“Okay.”  Anesh nodded once, still holding his little abstract piece of map.  “I’m thinking of asking it to take me to Alanna.”

James perked up instantly, a kind of excited anxiety running through him.  “Oh.”  He said.  “Oh!  I don’t know if it can, but… yeah.  Yes.  Why didn’t I think of that?”

“Because you have the worst track record with new powers.”  Anesh informed him.  “And you usually don’t map out an array of choices before you just go for something.  Which is usually cute, and so far hasn’t cause any active problems.  But, you know…”

“I’m not that bad!”  James protested.

“You nearly killed yourself when you absorbed your first blue orb.”  Anesh reminded him.

“I got better?”  James pursed his lips.  “Actually, no, I don’t want an itemized list of my fuckups.  Do the map thing.  Then, property crimes.  Then… we’ll figure it out.  Our new mantra.”

“Our *original* mantra.”  Anesh smiled. And then his hand folded around the map shard in his hand.  He blinked, one long closing and opening of his eyes, and when he looked at the world again, it was with fresh eyes and an impulse toward a waypoint.  Two blocks down, take a left.  He knew, with certainty, that would take them to their partner.  “Done.”  He said.  “It worked.  You were right.  The Maps aren’t evil, just… wow.  Very, very enthusiastic salespeople.”

“Right?”  James couldn’t hold back a smile.  “Sooooo… abandon this town to its fate and go find her?”

“She can, and will, punch you into space.”  Anesh reminded his boyfriend.  “But now we have something to do next.  So.  Property crimes?”

“Property crimes.”  James nodded, standing and dusting off his shorts.

_____

Ava hadn’t been afraid of monsters for a long time.  Well, long to her, anyway.  Sometimes, she had little moments of realization of just how much longer everyone else had been doing things than she had, and everything seemed so *big* in perspective.  But those moments didn’t last too long, and then she could go back to feeling like it had been a ‘long time’ since she’d been afraid of monsters.

She’d stopped being afraid of monsters about the time she’d actually met one.  Though, despite looking like a cross between a snake and a deep sea slug, Hidden did *not* like being called a monster.  Ava also knew that Hidden didn’t like being compared to a deep sea slug, but it had been *months* since she’d decided the strange creature was her little sister, and Ava was culturally aware of the fact that sometimes you just had to compare your sister to a deep sea slug.  It was the law, or something.

And in the last eternal summer of subjective time, from Ava’s perspective, she’d also gotten used to Hidden helping her pull useful information out of nowhere.  Sometimes, she used this to solve very important mysteries, like the mystery of who flagrantly stole the brownie out of her lunch at school.  Other times, Hidden would just tell her small secrets that she found drifting on the wind.  And *sometimes* Hidden would tell her when someone was… different.  Like her.  Maybe with their own snake-slug friend.  Maybe something else.  Always something magic.  And sometimes, Hidden would take information away from other people.  Let Ava get away with things, or keep them both invisible to the bullies.  Hidden was a good sister.

Hidden wasn’t ‘around’ all the time.  When she was, she hid inside Ava’s hoodie, and didn’t really like coming out.  But there was a lot of moments where Ava would realize she couldn’t feel the weight on her shoulder or arm, and it would be because Hidden was inside her head for a while.  That had been scary at first, but it was more like napping than trying to eat her brains, so that was okay too.

All this was to say that Ava was an absolute *expert* on monsters and secrets and wizards by this point in her life.

Which made it a lot worse that she was terrified of what was going on.

Suddenly waking up, in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere, was bad enough.  Learning that they’d been here for several days when Ava just remembered rolling into town and getting ice cream *yesterday* was also pretty scary.  And not knowing why, and feeling like her mom - who was supposed to be invincible - was just as scared as her, as they waited in the boring motel room all day, was also not good.

Ava had never been bored and scared at the same time before.  She decided she didn’t like it.  She liked it even less when Hidden started nipping at her neck - the universally acknowledged signal for “I have something to say, and your mom and the creature that looks like a stapler are both in the room, and I don’t want to come out.”  It was an efficient form of communication, but it made Ava jump and yelp in a way that made her feel silly afterward.

Which is how she’d ended up hidden in the bathroom, whispering to a ghostly blue snake that had coiled up so its set of eyes was right in front of her face.

“Something wrong.”  Hidden whispered to her in that tiny vibrating voice she had.

Ava rolled her eyes, a trick she’d picked up from her mom recently.  “I know!”  She told Hidden.  “Where were you?  You left me!”  The young girl hissed.

“Forgot.”  Hidden sounded… scared.  Her sister had never sounded scared.  Not since the first night they’d met.  “I forgot.  Woke up, with you, in the car.”  There was a pause, and Ava silently willed the little snake to stop wasting time; they could only hide in here with the sink running for so long before her mom would say something.  “Weak.”

“Weak?”  Ava asked.  “I had to walk for *miles*.”  She drew out the last word.

“Not you.  Me.  Weak.  Tired.  All sudden, less of me.”  Hidden really did sound worried.  And Ava looked closer at the absolutely-not-a-slug body of her little sister.  Did she look smaller than before?  Ava couldn’t tell.

So instead, she asked.  “Why?  You said you could make people forget.  But you’re not supposed to...” Ava gave the shimmering snake a sudden angry look.  “Did you make us forget?”

“Think so.”  Hidden said.  It looked like there were tears forming in some of her eyes, and Ava instantly felt bad for sounding angry.  “Don’t know why.  Something else, too.”

“What?”  Ava was now more curious than angry.  This was something more interesting than anything that had ever happened to her.  Of course it was scary.  But she wanted to know, now!  She’d gotten used to always knowing everything.  No reason to stop now, just because it turned out the world had actual monsters in it.

Hidden glanced toward the closed bathroom door, where the sounds of shuffling feet could be heard on the other side, along with the muffled voice of Ava’s mom.  “Something in the air.  Screaming.  Crying.”

“Who’s crying?”  Ava was confused.

“An echo.  From yesterday.  And before.  Me.”  Hidden said.  “My crying.  Asking for help.  Don’t remember saying, but I hear myself.  And… getting quieter.  Something else is… stopping it now.  Yelling over it.  In the air.”

Ava didn’t quite understand.  But she knew that it sounded important.  And when when something was important, and she didn’t know what to do about it, there was exactly one clear path forward that would always be the right answer.  “We need to tell mom.”  She said, sliding off the edge of the bathtub she’d been sitting on.  “She’ll know what to do.”

“No!”  Hidden hissed at her, recoiling in Ava’s hand as she stood up.  “No…”

“We have to!”  Ava told her serpentine sister.  “You can hide, and I don’t have to tell her about you, exactly, cause I know it hurts, but I need to tell her something!”  She wasn’t exactly keeping her voice down anymore, having mostly forgotten about the need for secrecy.

There was a pause of Hidden glaring at her with all ten of her small gemstone eyes, before the little creature blinked in a wave and turned away.  “...Scared…” She said, a tiny vibrating whisper in the air.

“Me too.”  Ava admitted.  “But… but… mom is cool.  You know mom is cool!  She’ll know what to do, and you’ll be okay, and telling is important, because… because…”

“Because we do not know.”  Hidden said, trembling, but not arguing.

Ava stuffed her sister onto her head, and pulled her hoodie up over the blue slug-snake.  “Uh huh.”  She said, moving over to the bathroom door.  “So we tell mom, and…”

She had pulled open the bathroom door, and there, arms folded, was her mom.  “Tell me what, honey?”  Jeanne’s words were calm, despite the situation, but Ava had seen that look before.  It was the kind of look that said, in pretty clear terms, that she was *probably* going to be in trouble after this.

And honestly, at this point, Ava didn’t have a good argument against it.