The Daily Grind - Chapter 158 (Patreon)

“I dreamt like a war machine // and woke like a child.” -Lo Kwa Mei-en, Arial-

_____

The girl who’d been with Alanna was named Katie.  Ragged blonde hair, a razor thin nose, and a layer of dirt that had given way to reveal a series of scrapes and scratches after she’d taken a half hour in the shower.  She was, after getting over being timid, honestly kind of a rude person.  Older than James had initially assessed, too.

She was one of three people sitting around a milk crate table with James, who had finally hauled himself out of bed and was more or less upright.  The other two were a pair of brothers, *probably* twins, by the names of Nick and Henry, who couldn’t have been older than twelve and had spent a lot of time hiding around corners trying to peek at James like he was some kind of mythical creature.

The table, made out of milk crates and a flattened cardboard box, was the only piece of furniture in the room aside from a Joan Jett poster on the wall next to the window that overlooked the backyard, which made for a confusing and barren aesthetic.

They were playing cards.

“Go fish.”  Katie told James with an almost petty grin.  He didn’t do more than raise an eyebrow at the pile of cards she was holding, but didn’t *say* she was cheating.

Instead, he made a mistake, opened his mouth and said, “I don’t think that’s the game we’re playing.”

“Incorrect rules.  Draw a card.”  She told him with a wider, snarkier grin.

James looked down at his own hand, well out of range for winning, and frowned.  “I don’t think I *like* this game.”  He muttered.

“Complaining.  Take a card.”

“Dammit.”

The entire affair was not helped by the fact that the only deck of cards they had was two incomplete sets of playing cards shuffled together.  Or by the way that new rules got added in secret every game, and James was *never* in on the secret.

“So, how did you all fall in with Alanna, anyway?”  He asked, trying to make conversation while he puzzled out why the twin to his left had just thrown out three cards from his hand in complete silence.

If the table was quiet before, it was silent now.  This lasted another couple of plays, before the twin James was *pretty* sure was Nick spoke up.  “Our parents left a couple weeks ago.”  He practically whispered.  “Then the sheriff told us we had to get out of the house.  And… and… Alanna found us, trying to get to our grandma.”

“Sh- ah.”  James stopped himself swearing.  “Did your parents… what happened to them?”

“They just left.”  The other brother said, voice on the edge of breaking suddenly.  “Took everything, but not us, and drove off.”

James winced.  Then he pursed his lips, and tried to give as good news as he could.  “If it helps, it probably wasn’t their fault.  The thing that’s eating this town is messing with people’s heads.  If you didn’t leave with them, it might be that you’re immune to it.  Which… I mean, right now, that’s not good, yeah.  But we’ll find your parents, get you back where you wanna be.”

“I don’t want them.”  One of the brothers scowled bitterly, hands partially crumpling the cards he was holding.

“They’re victims too.”  James said softly.  But the kid was, at the end of the day, a kid.  And it was hard to understand how something could happen and not be someone’s fault when you were young.  James still remembered that, pretty vividly.  So instead he turned to Katie.  “How bout you?”

“Boyfriend got in a car crash.”  She shrugged.  “We had a lot he was gonna build a house on.  Some asshole kept trying to get me to sell it, since Kent was dead.  I kept saying no.  Then a couple nights ago, something tried to eat my car.  And some nutjob came out of nowhere and saved my life.  So I’m here.  Got nowhere else to go, right?  Not if there’s monsters all over the place and the world’s ending.”

“It’s not the world, to be clear.”  James told her.  “Just this city.”  He leaned to the side, testing his leg to see if it hurt less yet, hoping his endurance was good enough to keep him going.  It didn’t, wasn’t.  “I need to learn more crab facts.”  He murmured to himself.  “So, you’re all just, what, holed up here until everything blows over?”  James asked them.

“I guess.”  Katie said with a shrug, dropping half her hand of cards quietly to the floor in a motion she probably thought James didn’t catch.  “Sometimes other people come through. Alanna goes out for food or other stuff sometimes, we’ve got water and lights.  I think this is one of the houses that got bought, and’s just sitting around, you know?”

“I’m aware of the cartoon villainy going on around here, yes.”  James shook his head with a glare.  “Do you know roughly where we are?  Like, could you give me directions back to the city center area?”  He asked them.  “Oh, also, take a card for cheating.”  He pointed at the girl, card game not forgotten while all this was going on.

“Why?”  One of the kids asked him angrily.  “You gonna leave too?”

“Uh, yes.”  James nodded.  “I’ve got people counting on me, and at least one or two more ill-advised heroics left to do today.”

The differences between the twins suddenly turned from minor quirks into a huge gulf, as one of them got an excited look on his face and gazed at James like some kind of superhero, and the other one just made a rude noise and loudly proclaimed that was, in his words, “Gay.”

“First off,” James realized suddenly that he’d been through too much in his life to be offended by some shitty child anymore, “it’s not gay until I link back up with my boyfriend and we start making out.  Those are the rules.  Second of all, your life getting upended doesn’t give you license to be an asshole.”  He offhandedly turned back to the older member of the group, permanently ignoring the increasing volume of protests from the kid.  “So? Directions?”

“Alanna said not to let you leave.”  Katie told him.  “Also take a card for discussing the rules.”

“I… what?!”  James reeled back.  “Okay, no.  I’m conceding this game, if only to simplify this conversation.  Seriously, Alanna doesn’t get to give me orders, whether she remembers me or not.  I’m fine, I can walk, and I’m not good at sitting around while everyone else is out there being potentially threatened by whoever tried to kill me.”

“Alanna told us to not let you leave.”  Katie repeated, folding her arms with all the conviction of a student who had been left in charge by the teacher for five minutes.

James pursed his lips and shook his head at her.  “Sure.”  He said with a sigh.  “Alright, well, I’m gonna go see if my socks are dry yet.”  He grinned slightly at the suspicious looks of the people sitting around the makeshift furnishing.  “I won’t leave yet, don’t worry.  Knowing my luck, I’d probably pass everyone one street over, anyway.”  He sighed and stretched, eliciting a satisfying pop from his back as he turned to head to the kitchen.

The kitchen, because this place had been *aggressively* stripped of furnishings, and the only place he had to dry his socks was the oven.  A process that was both anxiety inducing, and also very inefficient.  But it was still better than having one sock encrusted with his own blood.

And because he’d left the closed off space of the extra bedroom that they’d been playing cards in, James had an incidentally great view of the front door.  Which was convenient, because as he braced himself against the wall to stand on one foot and pull on his warm-and-still-a-little-damp socks, he got a clear look at the door’s deadbolt turning.

The deadbolt to a house that they were hiding out in.  A house none of them had keys for.  Where Alanna had climbed off the back porch to get in and out.

James could, it turned out, run really fucking well on a leg that had been speared through by a piece of shrapnel.  Just so long as he had something to worry about that wasn’t the spike of pain.

He was already through the door to the bedroom the others were playing cards in by the time the door had swung open in the front hallway, silently shutting the bedroom door and clicking the flimsy internal lock behind himself.  His shoes were still in the other room, next to the bed, along with his coat.  But there was no time for that now.

“Where’s my gun?”  He hissed in a silent whisper, striding across the room and sliding open the window as softly as he could, before gripping the thin metal edges of the screen and popping it out of place.

“What’s…” Katie started to say in a normal tone, before a sharp hiss and a worried look from James silenced her.  The sound of the front door slamming shut bringing wide eyed looks to everyone in the room.  “What gun?!”  She whispered.

“Did Alanna bring *anything* from my car?”  He whispered, ignoring the heavy boots making echoing thuds across the hardwood floor outside.  Multiple footfalls, his brain told him.  Three people, possibly four.  “Like, any long black plastic cases, perhaps?”

“No!”  Katie was panicking now.  “Who’s-“

James raised a hand and she went silent, just as the footfalls came to a stop outside the door, and the handle rattled.  He’d already motioned the two kids up, and they had displayed a healthy level of silence as they approached the window he’d thrown open.  James was boosting one of them up, wincing at the scraping noise they were making, when someone tried to kick the door in.

The sudden slam of a boot on wood, cracking the aging frame and splintering part of the door, drew a scream out of Katie, and a startled jolt from the twin going out the window.  The kid twisted, and pitched forward, and James had to hope that the soft dirt would arrest his fall enough that he didn’t get hurt.  Because he was already trying to get the other brother up, cupping his hands and lifting the kid up to let him climb out smoothly.

“We know you’re in there!”  A man’s voice came from outside.  It was slightly muffled, and not just from the door; James assumed the guy was wearing a mask, and not just for pandemic reasons.  “Open the door!”

“Hard pass!”  James called back, trying to motion Katie over.  But the girl had pressed herself into the corner, and was frozen in the kind of fear he recognized as being paralyzing if you weren’t prepared for a situation.  “Fuck off!”  He tried yelling, but his words were drowned out by another heavy kick to the door, wood cracking in protest as the flimsy handle bowed inward from the force.

“Give us the kid, and you can leave!”  The voice shouted again.  And suddenly, James recognized it.  He’d spoken to this man, not even four hours ago.  Tried to drag information about the property scam going on out of him.  Because this guy was one of the realtors.  “Just hand over the little girl!”

That statement stuck in James’ mind.  He needed, he knew, more time to break that down.  But just on the surface of it, his immediate reaction was that there was no way they were talking about Katie.  As he’d gotten older, and breached into his thirties, he’d noticed that he mostly referred to anyone under the age of twenty five as ‘a kid’.  But at no point had he considered calling a twenty something woman a ‘little girl’.

Which meant either these guys were somehow, by impossible coincidence, at the one house they were hiding out in, *or*, they were here for something else.

“I’m so regretting not keeping the power that let me melt wood.”  James grumbled, grabbing Katie and hoisting her up to the window, giving silent thanks to JP’s procurement of the exercise potions that had allowed him to put on the muscle needed to make this work without killing himself.  “Go!”  He whispered.  “Take the kids, cut left and then run.  I’ll catch up!”

James didn’t actually intend to catch up.  He intended to escape, yes.  But his main plan was stalling, and diverting, leading these assholes on a wild goose chase.

Katie might have recognized that.  But as James gave her a push out the window to the tune of another hard kick to the door, she didn’t have any complaints about it.

And then James was alone in the room, with no one to help him but the moral support of Joan Jett staring down from the wall over his shoulder.

There was another kick at the door.  They were coming in a steady rhythm now.  No more demands, just repeated slams and breaking wood.  “Hey!”  James yelled, and the kicking stopped.  “Was Invincible by Joan Jett?”  He called through the broken wood.

There was a pause, and low voices.  A woman’s voice yelled back, “That was Pat Benetar, you moron!” Followed by someone telling her to shut up.  The door to the bedroom, at this point, had bowed in around the handle, and there was light pouring through the gap.  The man’s voice that James recognized boomed into the room, from right at where the hole was.  He saw an eye peeking into the room too, before the light was blocked off by the man’s bulk.   “Look, buddy, just hand over the kid.  You’re just here for the money, you don’t wanna risk your-“

James didn’t even bother rolling his eyes.  He just braced his injured leg as best he could, pivoted, and kicked the least splintered part of the broken area of the door.

He didn’t hit it very hard, but there was a yelp of panic and the noise of someone landing on their ass, followed by more yelling.  Someone started shouldering the door again, and the frame cracked, about to give way.  James wasted no more time, he turned and used a milk crate as a step to haul himself up into the window frame.  Then he paused, waited for a second for the door to burst open behind him, and turned just enough to see who was coming in and say something snarky.  In his head, he had planned to make a comment about the song Cherry Bomb, maybe startle them a bit, then drop out the window.

The three people who stormed in were angry, obviously untrained, and stupid.  And the one in the back was already shooting with the pistol in his hand.  So in addition to deafening his supposed teammates, the dude also had his field of fire blocked off, and the first two bullets just smacked into the wall to James’ side.  The next one was a bit better, and shattered the glass pane over his head, and by that point, James had decided to not stick around to gloat, pitching himself out the window and rolling across the barkdust of the yard.

Instantly he realized the scope of his mistake, as barkdust stuck in his hair, clothes, and especially *socks* with an evil rough feeling.  But there was no time for that.  James turned, and bolted off into the night, hoping darkness would give him a little cover, but not so much that they wouldn’t come after him.

He got four blocks, weaving back to street side and out of the untended backyards just in case, before an engine rumbled to life in the empty neighborhood behind him.  “Shit.”  James gasped out, putting on all the extra speed he could.  He could, at least, take a couple corners before the caught up to him.

It turned out, while endurance was really bad at healing major wounds, even with his purple orbs helping out, it was *exceptional* at letting him find that next breath he needed, helping him make that next pounding footfall as he ran.  And James had a *lot* of experience running.

He had gone two more streets down, up a hill that had left him out of breath but hadn’t stopped him, crossed a small park, and had just dove over a low brick retaining wall into a grocery store parking lot, when he decided to take a break.  Endurance had long since kicked in, keeping his muscles from aching, keeping his lungs from burning, but as far as he could tell, it wasn’t helping him recover any faster when it wasn’t amplifying his purples.  Maybe that was just because James felt pushed pretty far past what he thought was his limit.  But then, he had been in a car crash less than twelve hours ago, and the aches and pains from that had only gotten worse, even if they weren’t *stopping* him.

So James leaned against the wall, and took deep, heaving breaths, sitting in the shadow of the parking lot lights, hoping none of the few scattered cars in the parking lot at this late hour had people in them.

And then a yellow hummer whipped into the parking lot, the newest car James had seen in this town so far screeching to a stop in the middle of the orange lit asphalt desert.  The doors flung open, and three familiar masked individuals hopped out, scanning the area.  One of them looking down at a glowing orange circle hovering over their outstretched hand.

“Oh fuck me.”  James groaned to himself.  They had found him *way* too quick.  He couldn’t actually run as fast as a car, but he’d been sitting here less than a minute, and he’d crossed so many potential side streets and hiding places.  It was statistically unlikely they’d just stumbled on where he’d crouched for a rest.  “They’re using Maps.”  James realized with a grunt of exasperation.  Of course they were using Maps, he thought to himself, they were *allied with the dungeon*.  Why the fuck wouldn’t they have a way to track him?

It also explained earlier, his brain shakily realized as the trio swept the front of the store, but didn’t go in.  They might know he was ‘in the parking lot’, but not where. One of them broke off to circle around behind the loading dock, while James stayed unmoving, hoping he’d have a few more seconds of rest.  Earlier, when the lead man had yelled at him to give up the girl, made a lot more sense now; they were after *Ava*.  And they obviously couldn’t find her, because Hidden was the perfect counter to being found.  So, they just went to the next closest person, and ended up on James.

Fuck, they probably ended up on Anesh and Jeanne, too.  James had to get back even more, now.  This could be messy.

But then, he had an idea.  A really, really, mean idea, that left him with a grin a mile wide.

This little wall area and the desperate foliage that was holding on to life here had a bunch of palm sized rocks as ground cover around it.  James grabbed one, rose up as much as he thought he could without being spotted, and flung the rock as hard as he could against the metal dumpster off on the side of the building.

The clang echoed through the early night.  From behind the building, James heard one loud shout of alarm, while the two standing by the front also turned toward the noise, and started rushing toward it.  They both had guns out now, and weren’t hiding anything.  No illusions as to what they intended if they actually caught James.  And no matter how awesome he thought he was, or how stupid they were acting, he had no intention of trying to take on three armed goons with just his fists, a few martial arts tricks, and two charges left of asphalt shaping.

So he waited for them to hustle by, the bigger man panting and wheezing as he rounded the corner after his smaller counterpart.  And the instant they were by the shadowed patch James was crouched in, he stood, and bolted.

Straight for their car.

They’d even left the engine running for him.

Apparently, everything James needed to know about evading pursuit, he’d  learned from stealth games.  His aching feet spiked with pain every time his foot slapped down on the asphalt, but the upside of only wearing socks was that his steps were muffled, and despite the splinters digging in between his toes, he was most of the way to the car before a cry of anger rose up behind him.

James almost, *almost*, wasted energy laughing when he heard the guy yell “Don’t shoot my new car!”  A bullet slapped the asphalt near him; someone wasn’t listening.  Another one hit the runner on the hummer; they were aiming for his legs.

And then they were too late.  James was in the driver’s seat, not bothering to close the two open doors on the passenger side.  He slammed his own door behind him, just in time to catch a pair of shots, and then threw the car in drive and floored it.  He whipped a dizzying U-turn around a parked truck, took out someone’s wing mirror, tried to keep his brain from screaming as the sudden acceleration sparked pain across the inside of his eyes, and then swerved out onto the road.

He didn’t relax.  They’d catch up, eventually.  But right now, he had two big advantages.  Their car, and a destination in mind that would have backup.

He wove his way toward a main road he recognized, and oriented himself toward El’s place, exhaustion held off by little more than willpower and fear.

And also a little bit of glib amusement, that he actually got away with this.

_____

Alanna pulled up outside the suburban home and stopped her car with a weary sigh.  She needed to get gas again, and was entirely out of cash at this point.  She also needed to grapple with the fact that someone had recognized her, and it had… changed nothing.

She didn’t feel any different.  There was still that itch in her head, like there were so many things she should be thinking of.  And yeah, that feeling that had dulled over the last few months had come back in force when James had been talking to her.  But nothing had broken through, nothing had suddenly revealed itself to her.  She was just… well, who she’d been being.

And that wasn’t bad, exactly.  But she still felt forgotten, as much as she had herself forgot.  And she couldn’t put her finger on why.

She was stalling, she knew.  Running thoughts in loops while she avoided knocking on the door.  Because someone else who knew her was supposed to be in there.  And the last thing she wanted was more of that *dread*.  That feeling in her gut that she wasn’t just affected by a condition, but fundamentally broken in some way that made her permanently disconnected from her old life.

Of course, she could only reasonably stall for so long.  There were, after all, murderers and monsters out and about tonight.

Alanna found herself in short order standing on a creaking wooden porch, rapping her knuckles as politely on the worn paint of the door.  And then, there was silence from inside.

Mostly silence, anyway.  She could hear the distant scraping of a chair on the floor, and the soft footsteps of someone intentionally sneaking.

She knocked again, and heard a voice from the other side of the door in response.  “What do you want?”

It sounded like a woman only a little older than Alanna herself.  She stepped back, putting herself in view of the tall windows to either side of the door, and spoke.  “Sorry, I hope I have the right house here. James sent me to check in with Anesh.”

The door swung open, revealing a woman who clearly had some qualms keeping the handgun she was holding pointed in Alanna’s direction, but did it anyway.  Behind her, down a short hall that led to a little kitchen and dining room, a small girl’s face peeked out from behind a corner.  “James is alive?”  Jeanne asked.

“Last time I saw him, yeah.”  Alanna said, shoulders untenseing.  She had gotten the right house, then.  “Are you Anesh?”  Her eyebrows furrowed as she asked.  “You don’t look… um…” She fumbled for the right adjective.

“No, he’s not… he went out to…meet someone.”  Jeanne sagged a bit, gun lowering.  “He isn’t back yet.”

Alanna was going to ask if it was okay if she waited outside when El’s mother rounded the corner.  “Oh for goodness sake,” the older woman grumbled, hands on her hips, “if she’s not here to kill us, invite the poor girl in.  She looks like she’s been through a *time*!”

Jeanne shot Alanna a sheepish smile, which she returned, motioning the younger woman into the house.  Alanna nodded politely and stepped in, kicking off her shoes into the pile by the door.  In short order, she was led back to a kitchen table where a pot of cheap coffee was wafting a grim and inviting scent through the room.  The kid watched her from over the back of a couch, and Alanna glimpsed the flicker of something ghostly around the young girl’s head.

“Um…” She didn’t know how to say this.  “Is that…?”  Alanna shot a nod at the young girl.

“Ava.  My daughter.”  Jeanne said, sitting down stiffly as El’s mom went to get them another mug.  “I’m Jeanne, by the way.  You must be Alanna.”

“Do you know your kid’s haunted?”  Alanna asked, before her brain caught up.  “And do we know each other?”  She asked.

Jeanne sighed.  “I know.  They say it’s okay.  And she won’t… give it up, anyway.  And we’ve never met.  The guys just talked about you a few times.  And Anesh said that his ghost had spotted you at the crash site.”

“Oh, they’re not ghosts!”  El’s mom settled into her own chair.  “They’re *maps*.  Though with how my own rebellious daughter described things, I’ve decided they need a better name.  They can’t have two strange miracles called maps, that’s just rude.”  She turned to Alanna.  “Cream and sugar?”  She asked with a friendly smile, taking an answer and passing over the coffee before continuing.  “This is all a lot for an old lady like me to take in, you know.  But between the dog walking, and this, I don’t even need to bother with TV to entertain myself these days!  Much better than the status quo, eh?”

Alanna froze, hand gripping her cup so hard she briefly worried it would crack.  The itch in her head intensified, something in the shroud around her memories broke away.  “The what?”  She whispered, a vision of blood and concrete filling her mind.

“Oh, it’s an old lady term for normal.”

Jeanne snorted.  “You’re hardly old, Majorie.”  She said into her coffee.  “And I’m going to be petty and say I’m jealous that you’re adapting to this better than I am.  It’s *terrifying*.”

“Yeah…” Alanna whispered.  “I seem to remember that.”

The other two women glanced at each other, eyebrows raised.  “Honey, are you…?” The older of the two started to say, before a thin voice cut through the air.

“Fog.”  Ava said, drawing three sets of eyes to the couch she was still lurking behind.  “She says it’s like really heavy fog.”

“My memory?”  Alanna asked tiredly.  “Yeah, I know.”

“It’ll move when… when there’s wind.  But it’s been sitting too long.  Don’t worry.  You’ll remember.”  Ava slid back down behind the couch, leaving just the top of her head visible, waiting until attention wasn’t on her before she dared to peek again.  The words she was passing on from Hidden had stung the infomorph, but not as much as revealing her would have, and maybe not as much as it would have a week ago anyway.

“You’re got amnesia?”  Jeanne asked.  “Like, the real version, or the movie version?”

“Movie version.”  Alanna confirmed with a nod.  “I’m glad someone else recognizes that, honestly.”  She allowed a soft smile as she stared down at her cup.  “I tried talking to a couple doctors, one therapist, they thought I was making it all up.”

“Mm.  Magic, then!”  El’s mom decided.  She really had adapted with startling grace to the new reality of her world.  “Well, good news.  My daughter and her friends have plenty of that to go around.  I’m sure you’ll be just fine.”  She reached over to pat Alanna’s hand.

Alanna was going to say something pessimistic and possibly rude, but was interrupted by a thud from the door.  Everyone froze, then Alanna moved before the others could, snatching Jeanne’s gun off the table and taking up a crouched firing position at the end of the hallway.

The door handle rattled, and a young man’s voice, tinged with an English accent, came through the thin glass of the windows.  “Ahem.  Forgot it would be locked.  My mistake.”

And then another voice.  Female, but deeper.  Angrier.  “Then I shall-“

“No!”  The first voice echoed.  “Jeanne!  Door please!”  Mixed with a frantic knock.

“It’s Anesh.”  Jeanne sighed in relief, darting past Alanna, who rose to her feet and calmly added the gun to her belt.  Jeanne ran to the door and unlocked it, throwing it open to reveal a young man with short black hair and olive skin, along with a stern faced girl in…

Alanna did a double take.  Plate armor?  That was new.  The girl was also posed like she had planned to punch the door down, and Alanna got the terrifying impression that it would have worked without her even trying too hard.

Anesh also did a double take, seeing Alanna standing there in the hall.  And then, without hesitation, he launched himself forward.

Alanna barely had time to react before he’d barreled into her, wrapping his arms around her in a crushing hug.  “I knew it!”  He half laughed, half cried.  “I knew you were okay.  And you’re here!  How? Why?!  Is there…” He trailed off, seeing the confused and awkward look on Alanna’s face as she looked off to the side, not making eye contact with him or returning the hug.  “What…”

“Movie amnesia.”  Jeanne said, closing the door and walking past them.  “Also who’s your new friend?”

“Oh…” Anesh released Alanna and stepped back sheepishly.  “I’m sorry, this is probably really uncomfortable then.  Apologies.  And this is… um… okay, this is gonna require several explanations.  This is Camille, I’ve been calling her Cam to annoy her, and… well...”

He gave a rapid recap of the night’s events from his perspective.  The town was cut off, both physically and magically.  The Last Line Of Defense apparently both existed, and was kind of a jackass.  And they had a rapidly diminishing deadline before people like the girl who had followed him in swept through the city, destroying and killing, until whatever anchored the dungeon was gone.

“So why’s this one following you?”  Alanna asked.  “Is this some kind of weird honor thing, or is Cammy just an idiot?”

“My name is Camille the Violet.”  The girl spoke for the first time in her rough voice. “And you will-“

“Oh man, you said that title like it was a *rank*, not a name.”  Alanna bitterly shook her head.  “That thing has its hooks deep in you, huh?  Damn, that’s just sad.”

The armored girl scowled with barely contained fury, fist clenching on empty air with the force of a bulldozer.  But before she could respond or retaliate, El’s mom came through the room.  “Excuse me girls, argue later.  You have someone you need to talk to.”  She patted Alanna on the arm.  “Come with me dear, we’ll get you some coffee, and some iodine for that cut you’ve got.”  And with the force of experienced mom conviction, she ushered an unprotesting Camille off to the side bathroom to get the wound Anesh had left on her face looked at.

“Please don’t antagonize the god-thing’s kid.”  Anesh sighed at Alanna.

“Why does that sentence sound… right?”  Alanna asked softly.

Anesh gave her an apologetic look.  “I want you to think about that sentence, and then realize just how weird our lives both were, and are.”  He said.  “You talked to James, right?  Did you not get any of this from him?”

“Just a persistent sense that all this weird shit is a little too common, and the feeling that he uses humor to hide how afraid he is.”  Alanna summed it up, glossing over all the other emotions she could read on people as easily as breathing.

Clearing his throat awkwardly, Anesh gave a small nod.  “That’s almost exactly what you said when we started dating.”  He told her.  “Also, if that makes you uncomfortable, I can just not bring it up?”

Alanna blinked at his question.  She must have shown some discomfort on her face.  “It’s… I don’t know.  I feel like I don’t know you, but I do.  And I can tell how obviously both of you care.  So I’m not mad or anything.  I just don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing here, you know?”

Anesh nodded.  The two of them stood there like that for several breaths, neither sure what to say.  Eventually, unsure of how to continue, he asked a question that had been fermenting in his brain since he saw her from the door.  “Out of curiosity,” Anesh said, “can you take perception from me?”

“What?”  Alanna asked, puzzled.  But as soon as the words settled into her ears, she felt it.  There was a bridge of some kind between them, a channel over which she could push something indescribable.  Push, or, she realized, pull.  Alanna, almost without thinking of it, drew something from Anesh into herself.

He blinked rapidly as his own ability to notice details was cut down, but for Alanna, it was like the whole world opened up.  Suddenly she saw, understood, and internalized a dozen small things all at once.  The pattern in the wool blanket over the back of the couch, the brand of cheap coffee they were drinking, the burst fire pattern of dents on Camille’s armor, the smell of Anesh’s shampoo mixed with cordite, the living stapler watching her silently from on top of a shelf.  And more than that, the emotions she could pull from microexpressions and body language and tone of voice were suddenly amplified to an impossible degree.  She could feel, deep in her heart, the mom-worry that the older woman in the kitchen felt for Camille.  She experienced, in real time, the awe and fear of a small girl dumped into a world she didn’t understand but was still part of.  She knew in her *bones* that the stapler was, while unhappy about it, still willing to die protecting anyone in this house.

Anesh gently pulled back his viewpoint, and the world dimmed back to normal.  But that itch in the back of her head had cracked again.  So many small sensations, adding up to the days and weeks she’d lived in her before times, could not be so easily ignored.  The fog shifted, light shone through, for just a second.

Alanna titled her gaze up to the stapler on the shelf.  “Rufus.”  She said quietly.  “Your name is Rufus.  Somehow.”

Blinking away tears he didn’t bother to hide, Anesh smiled at her.  “Okay.”  He said.  “That’s good to know.”

“Can we-” Alanna started to ask him.  What she was planning to ask, she wasn’t sure.  To do that again, to go talk to the others, to just take some time to *process*.  It had been a long day, a long year, and she wasn’t sure what she was doing, and maybe what she needed was to sit on the couch and let someone else worry about it for a change.  Maybe that’s what she could ask Anesh; to take care of things while she decompressed.  She knew, because she remembered a small moment of it, that he would say yes.

But whatever she was going to ask was interrupted by a heavy pounding on the front door.

“We know you’re in there!”  A man’s voice bellowed into the house.  “Give us the girl!”

Anesh, who had jumped when the pounding had started, now shared a glance with Alanna.  She looked back at him, and raised her eyebrows.  Wordlessly, he unslung his rifle and shifted into a firing position, while Alanna moved, keeping herself out of view of the windows, to crouch in ambush behind the door.

From the kitchen, Jeanne panicking and Ava crying out in fear reached their ears.  And then, another voice, right behind them.

“What is this?”  Camille said, grim displeasure in her voice.

Before Anesh could answer, the man pounded on the door again.  “Hey!  Fuckers!  Hand over the kid, and you get to live!”

“I think,” Anesh said, “we’ve found whoever was trying to kidnap Ava this last week.”

“...Of course.”  Camille said, bitterly.  “And what do you plan to do?”

“Uh… not let them?”  Alanna looked back over her shoulder like the armored girl was insane.  “What the hell do you think we’re going to do?”

“Mmh.”  Camille hummed.  And then, Alanna was shocked to get a vibe of awkward curiosity off of her.  “Do you mind if I…” She waved with one hand toward the door, where someone was now rattling the lock, and someone else was peering in through the side window.  And while asking, she pointedly didn’t make eye contact with them.

“Uh…” Anesh glanced at Alanna.  “Sure?”  He said, not really capable of denying the woman anything anyway.  “Oh!  Leave them alive!  We need answers!”

“Very well.”  Camille said.  She closed her eyes, and tilted her head.  “Cover the rear.  Two are circling around.  Neither are armed.”

Alanna slipped around to the kitchen, and Anesh made to follow.  But before he did so, he had to know.  Turning to speak over the yelling from outside and the sound of someone hammering against cracking glass, he asked “Why are you helping?”

“I have...” Camille said, and he thought she sounded almost wistful, before she hardened her face, “It is not my place to play at being a hero.”  She idly reached over and picked up a magazine sitting on a side table with a stack of junk mail, rolling it into a thick tube.  “I think I would like to try, at least this once.  Perhaps it will be amusing.”

Someone reached through the broken window to try to unlock the door, and Camille lanced forward like a fencer.  The rolled up magazine pinning their arm to the door frame with a wet splintering crack of a noise that came from *bone* and not the undamaged wood.

“Go aid your companion.”  She ordered Anesh over the shriek of pain from outside.  “I will clean up here.”

And she didn’t have to tell him twice.

_____

El had a weird feeling as she drove back to her house.  Well, her *mom’s* house, as she had been reminded recently.  But still.

It was a feeling of something going on.  Like that sensation you got when there were just a few too many sirens a couple streets distant, or in a more positive way, when it was a holiday you’d forgotten and the streets were empty of all the people spending time with family.

Right now, it was a mix of those two.  There weren’t any other cars out, really.  The occasional single vehicle passing by in the oncoming lane, and a couple of times an intersection she had to stop at while a lone car made a left turn.  But that was it.  There weren’t any pedestrians either, but that was less uncommon for this hour of night anyway.  This wasn’t a college town, wasn’t a place that had anything to attract young people to move to it.  It was a city that was a little too far off the big route, rolling along mostly out of momentum and a couple big factories.  Dying, slowly, as everyone who wanted something better left.  Basically, it wasn’t the kind of place where there was much going on to get people out of their houses late at night.

El’s feeling of unease solidified when she tried to go through a Taco Bell drive through on her way home, and found the primary employer of persons under the age of twenty in this city was closed.  Lights off, doors locked, nothing going on inside.  Her feeling got worse when she passed by what looked like a crash site - two cars that had clearly impacted each other - but saw no sign of flashing lights or human reaction.

In a way, the creeping sense of dread was reassuring.  Because El had been worried about *nothing* for weeks, and now, being worried about *something* sounded pretty nice.

In another way, it was terrifying, because it was a sudden shift from a feeling that something was off, to evidence that something was actively going wrong, *right now*.

And there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it.

What was she *supposed* to do?  Kill the dungeon?  She couldn’t even *fight* the dungeon!  If James and Anesh, the literal professionals, hadn’t figured it out, what was El supposed to do about it?

She didn’t know why people were vanishing, why it was so quiet, or why apparently the police and fire departments had just decided to take the night off.  El had two tools to deal with this kind of thing: one was her car, and the answer was just running away, and the other was her spell that traced a path forward, which was awesome, but she didn’t have the Velocity for and it didn’t help anyone else anyway.  Running away didn’t help anyone else either.

So she’d been poking around, talking to some old friends and acquaintances and enemies.  Trying to find any hint, however thin, that she could pass on to the actual heroes.  And she’d turned up pretty much nothing.

And now, full of nervous fear, she drove home and tried to think of how to convince her mom to flee the state with her.

Then she turned the corner down the street her mom lived on, and the panic intensified to a sharp peak.

There were cars around her childhood home.  Several of them parked in a way that walled off the street and clearly showed that they weren’t here for a polite visit.  Even as El approached, gut clenching as she found she had no other plan than to run in, another vehicle barrelled down the road from the other direction, coming to a jerking halt in front of her home just as El pulled up more smoothly on the other side by the sidewalk.

Her relief when James jumped out of the massive bright yellow truck thing was like water in the desert.  Though the pained stumble he gave, and the lack of any resources beyond a torn shirt and a lack of shoes, reignited a new fear in her chest.

El got out of her own car, pulling the shotgun she kept under the passenger seat with her.  She didn’t have a secondary for James, but she could at least back him up.  “What’s going on?”  She called to him.

“Someone tried to kill me.  Guess they got here first.”  His voice was dire, and betrayed just as much fear as she was feeling.  “I’ll go first.  Watch my back.”  He said it simply, like he *trusted* her, and El felt a burst of angry indignation that was quickly overwhelmed by a tight feeling in her chest that she didn’t really know how to place.

James didn’t wait for her to deal with her emotions, he just stalked low across the lawn, only taking a second to try to brush something off one of his socks on the dry grass.  El followed, gun up but pointed off to the side as the two of them moved on the door.

One of the windows that she’d pressed her nose into as a kid was broken. To the side, the rhododendron her mom insisted on trying to keep alive had been crushed into the ground.  The door that she’d gone through thousands of times lay open, inviting them into a house that still had the lights on.

James had described to her once the aura of fear that the attic dungeon they’d found could put off.  How it left someone feeling like the last thing in the world that they wanted to do was walk up those steps.

Right now, El didn’t need a dungeon to get that effect.

They swept into the house together, James checking corners and El coming in behind him ready to kill anyone that had hurt the people who were supposed to be safe here.  And then, a voice from the kitchen froze both of them, before James nodded and crept forward.

Both of them cleared the hallway at the same time.  James tensed up mid step, El froze her finger on the trigger.  And then, taking in the scene in front of them, they both let the anxiety bleed out of their hands and shoulders.

“Oh hey, you’re back.”  Anesh said, just finishing up a heavy double knot on the rope he was tying around an unfamiliar person’s hands.  “Sorry about the mess.  We had a thing.”

Six humans, all of them restrained in some way, were lined up on the carpet around the room’s fireplace.  One of them was glaring at James, but the rest were either unconscious, or had a terrified look in their eyes.  A pile of stuff sat on the kitchen table next to a cold pot of coffee, the pile of guns, knives, handcuffs, and one police badge watched over by a grumpy looking Rufus.

“Where’s my mom?”  El asked, instantly.

“Upstairs.  She’s helping the new girl with something.  And Jeanne and Ava are fine too, just taking a nap in your bed.  Sorry bout that, there wasn’t much space.”  El had already bolted up the stairs, and Anesh just finished the sentence with a kind of incredulous shrug fired after her retreating form.  Then Anesh met James’ eyes.  “We’ve got a big problem.”  He said.

“Bigger than these idiots, anyway.” Alanna added, lurking in the back corner with her arms crossed.

“Though these idiots are part of it.”  Anesh countered.

“Allegedly.”

“Allegedly, yes.”  He rolled his eyes.  “Also, good to see you up.  You doing okay?”  Anesh asked James, who was watching the two of them with a goofy grin on his face.

James just kept smiling.  “I’m doing great.”  He said, settling into a chair and high fiving Rufus.  And then, after a wince of pain, added, “But I would like some painkillers.  And shoes.  And my gun.”  He directed a look at their bruised captives.  “And then, after that?”  James let his voice get serious.  “I think I would like some answers.”