The Daily Grind - Chapter 182 (Patreon)

“This place is not a place of honor... no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here... nothing valued is here”  -Sandia National Laboratories, Long-term nuclear waste warning message-

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“You know,” James said from the back of the van that he was sitting in, “I actually expected my dramatic gesture to make this faster, not slower?”

He was leaning with his back against the interior wall of the van, one leg dangling out of the open back doors toward the street, idly juggling a trio of small blue orbs with magically enhanced precision.  A single rogue cloud had crossed over the path of the sun, and the temperature had dropped ten degrees, which somehow hadn’t changed how the day actually felt.  Dave and Frequency-Of-Sunlight were sitting deeper in the van, playing some compact card game that Dave had brought, while Alex was farther into the van’s depths giving Pendragon belly rubs while the dragon rolled against the expanded confines of the van’s wall.

James briefly wondered what it would look like outside.  Would the van rock everytime Pendragon moved like that? Did it take proportionally more energy from her, here inside this orange-warped space, to produce the normal effect outside of it?

The thought distracted him for a good two minutes.  Which was good because no one had responded to his comment.

“Urrrrgh.”  James gurgled dramatically, tipping his head back to repeatedly tap the metal frame of the van with his skull.  “I should have brought a laptop or something.”  He complained.  “I am bored!  Why am I so bored!?”

“Because having nothing to do while also having the upcoming tension of a potential confrontation amplifies the feeling of helplessness.”  Dave said in a voice like he’d rehearsed that line a few hundred times, before adding another card to the scuffed cargo bay floor.  “Also, three here, two there.  Get rid of your thing.”  He pointed at a card on Frequency’s side.

The girl made her own grumbling noise, though it was really more of a disgruntled hiss, as she awkwardly plucked the single card to place it into her growing discard pile.  “I don’t even know the rules to this.”  She complained.

“There’s a copy in Pen, you can just look them up through the link.  That’s what I’m doing.”  Dave said.

“It’s hard!”  The camraconda exclaimed.

“So, you’ve been enjoying the stakeouts?”  James asked Dave casually.

His friend hummed softly.  “Nope.”  Dave said.  “I’m bored all the time, and we’re on a telepad budget so I’m not even going in to work while we do this.  It’s been weeks since I got to give a golden retriever a bath.”

“What…” Frequency-Of-Sunlight started to say, before pausing. “How do you bathe others?”  She asked, in a casual tone that was way too suspicious.

“Depends on how energetic the golden retriever is, I guess?”  Dave answered, missing all subtext.

James sighed.  “Sunny, a golden retriever is a breed of dog, and for the other bit I’ll give you a real answer later.  Dave… Dave, are you still working at the animal shelter?”

“Uh… yes?”

“While raising Pendragon, working Response shifts, *being a knight of the Order of Endless Rooms*, and… a billion other things, I assume?”  James added.

“Yeah, that sounds about right.”  Dave said.  “Wait, is this about how busy things are?  JP complained about this too.  You aren’t allowed to!  I’ve already prepared a defensive list of the sixteen different jobs you do.”

James scratched a bit of grit out of the corner of his eye.  “I appreciate that you consider me highly enough to preemptively counter my arguments.”  He said in a kind of ‘yeah, you got me there’ tone of voice.

“You know what *I* appreciate?!”  Alex called from thirty feet deeper into the van.

“Adventure.”  The three others all muttered at once.

“A goddamn adventure!”  Alex continued.  “James, we’ve been here for two hours, and nothing is happening!”

“First off, it’s only been two hours.  I admit, I’m also bored, and all that stuff Dave said is probably true, but chill.”  James turned to look toward the picturesque suburban house.  “Give them some time.  Some jackass just threw their lives into disarray, we can wait a bit.  Also, Alex, bad news.  You probably won’t need to survive and triumph against overwhelming odds today.”

“Bah!”  Alex called back.

“To be fair, they could be trying to run away right now.”  Dave pointed out.

James shrugged.  “Eh.”  He offered.  “For one thing, I’d bet money JP already has GPS trackers in all those cars-“

“He does.  He made me put them there.”  Dave interrupted.

“- and also, I don’t think I care?”  James let out a long exhalation.  “Like… okay, they’re dangerous, sure.  But are they?  I mean, they’re created by killing people, but are the resulting life forms dangerous?  More dangerous than just a normal person, I mean.  Like, anyone is dangerous with a gun.”

“Not to me!”  Frequency-Of-Sunlight chimed in, twisting to wiggle her tail and show off the shield bracer magically resized for a camraconda.

“...Sure.”  James briefly conceded, still rolling the trio of blues in his hand. “Anyway, point is… I dunno, I feel like we put a lot of time and effort into tracking these things down, just to learn that they’re not the overwhelming existential threat to the world that we think they are.  And I’m having a hard time feeling angry enough to actually hunt them down if they do panic and run.  Like, just let em go, you know?  We have so many other things we could be doing.  Also it’s rude to relentlessly pursue someone like that.”

“Manners are important.”  Dave agreed with a stoic nod.

Frequency-Of-Sunlight glanced up from the shared game, and back and forth between James and Dave.  “Why?”  She asked.

“Why what?”  James said, trying and failing repeatedly to spin a blue orb on his fingertip.

“Why are manners important?”  Frequency asked.  “They seem to be a human mother concept?  Also arbitrary.”

James smiled a bit.  “Oh.  Manners are… okay, yeah, they’re *mostly* arbitrary.  Some of them have cultural origin points that are rooted in a specific need, though. Like, handshakes were meant to show you weren’t hiding a weapon, for example.  I think.  That might be a myth.”  James cleared his throat as he backtracked.  “Anyway.  Being arbitrary doesn’t make them bad, specifically.  They’re meant to be… how to frame this… they’re like a signal to everyone else that you want to be polite?”  He thought for a second and then nodded.  “Yeah, that sounds about right.  The point is that we’re all sort of collectively agreeing that certain behaviors are meant to show respect, or kindness, or whatever.  The gestures themselves don’t matter, just that we’ve all decided what they are.”

“And everyone decided hunting people is rude?”  Frequency-Of-Sunlight asked, trying to wrap her head around the monumental task of getting eight *billion* people to agree on anything.

“Well, I’m being kinda sarcastic.”  James said, which alleviated a lot of confusion.  “Manners are more about actively doing petty non-things, rather than avoiding murdering people or whatever.  Or, like, the things you avoid are the inverse; small meaningless gestures meant to signal something negative.  Like flipping someone off!”

“I do that frequently.”  The camraconda said, looking at the floor sheepishly.  “Manipulators are challenging.”

The sight of a distressed camraconda drew a small noise of pity from James.  They really needed to get the ball rolling on making magic items themselves, so that they could start equipping the new serpentine population of the world with arms that actually helped.

“Hey Dave.”  James said, eliciting a ‘hm?’ from his friend before he continued.  “You’re the one who probably has the most insight into the blue orbs.  Why *aren’t* we making dungeontech with them?”

“Oh, we just don’t know how.”  Dave said with a shrug.  “Sarah says that they come from totems, but she couldn’t remember why she thinks that.  Personally… I dunno.  Maybe?  I actually think they’re not something we can make.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah.  They’re, like, like the traps you know?  The traps drop reds, but we *know* what reds do when they’re broken, totemed, and shaped.  And I doubt absorbing a red turns you into an Indiana Jones problem, right?”  Dave shrugged.  “I just don’t think we can make a ‘magic item’ like the dungeon does.  Sorry, man.”

“Dang.  Cause I was gonna say ‘magic camraconda arms’ and then do this and see what happened.”  He threw one of the blues he was holding in an overhand arc.  Dave lazily caught it out of the air, just over Frequency’s snout as she traced its trajectory.  “Also, ‘shaped’?”

“I would have loved magic arms.”  Frequency-Of-Sunlight said off to the side.

“Made into life.”  Dave said, rolling the orb in his fingers, holding it up to catch the overcasts light from the open backdoors of the van.  “Like Pendragon.”

“Hey, wait!”  Alex called, before her thudding footsteps heralded her sliding across the van’s floor to join their group, leaving a grumbling Pendragon behind without a source of pets..  “Just make blue life!”

Dave and James shared a glance.  Dave shrugged, but James had other plans.  “Alex, the blues are conceptually aspected toward being tools.”  He said calmly.  “We don’t make life to be tools.  That’s just not something we do.”

“No, but see, it actually makes sense!”  Alex breathlessly exclaimed.  “Half the stupid magic items have these weird fuzzy boundaries around what they can do, right?  And all those weird quirks suddenly make a lot of sense if you imagine that the items are a tiny bit alive, and making decisions!  Like, why does the paperweight ignore force from one direction, but *not the orbit of Earth*?  Because it’s alive, and not stupid!”

Frequency-Of-Sunlight twisted her body, flopping her front half over her tail to stare up at James, now upside down in her vision.  “I apologize.”  She said.  “I should not have complained.  Now I have a headache.  Apologizing is good manners.”

“You know, half the time, I can’t tell if your people are messing with me with the things you say.”  James told her with a smirk.

“We are learning quickly, yes.”  Frequency-Of-Sunlight replied with a bronze-toothed camraconda grin.  James appreciated that more of them were becoming more comfortable actually showing their fangs when they smiled; it had bothered him more than seeing the stabby rows of teeth when he’d learned that a lot of camracondas just didn’t smile so they wouldn’t alarm anyone.

“Guys, I’m serious!”  Alex said, spinning on her knees on the metal floor to face Dave.  “Dave, you agree with… Dave?”

Dave had checked out, and was now intently staring at the orb in his palm.  “A living tool, huh?”  He muttered.  “Thought following task…”

“Dave, no.”  James admonished him.  And then, realizing Dave had that look in his eye of someone who was experiencing a deep insight into the mystical reality of their world, the kind of which usually ended with a breakthrough or an explosion, added, “Dave, no!”

“Dave, absolutely no.”  JP’s voice from the street outside drew their attention, causing Dave to fumble the orb which Frequency snatched out of his grip with pretty good precision for her adopted limbs.  “What’s Dave not doing?”  He asked, not waiting for an answer before adding, “Also someone’s waiting for you.  Probably you specifically.”  He cocked a finger gun at James.  “Want a bodyguard for this? Not too late to just set everything on fire.”

“Yes it is.”  James said, voice suddenly hard.  “They’re people, JP.”

“They could be really shitty people.”  JP said blandly.

James sighed.  “Alex, Sunny, you’re with me.  We’re doing *actual diplomacy*, okay? So, you know, pay attention, let me know through the link if you notice anything I should know about, but don’t be antagonistic.”

“I would never-!”

“Understood.”  Frequency cut off Alex, rotating like an uncoiling spring to rise up to her normal height and bobbing her head solemnly.  “Alex understands too.”

“I-!”

“Good.”  James said, smiling.  “But seriously, Alex, I know you’re fine.  Just don’t say anything stupid.  That’s my job.”

James waited until he got an affirmative nod from Alex, the girl’s expression going from jokingly belligerent to serious and ready to go in a split second.  He returned the nod, and rolled out of the back of the van to his feet, looking where JP nodded to see a tall Japanese man in a loose tan suit sporting truly impressive sideburns waiting at the end of the nearby house’s front path.

He looked up at the sky, shading his eyes.  Checking his phone would have been easier to get the actual time, honestly, but knowing it was getting well into midday was basically all he wanted anyway.  James took a breath of the fresh air, flavored differently to what he was used to at home, and then focused his sight on the waiting figure, and started walking forward.

Feet hit the ground behind him as Alex followed, Frequency coming after her a couple seconds later.  James didn’t look back, but saw through his skulljack link as the two of them formed up on either side of him like a vanguard.

“Hey.”  He said to the man at the end of the path, the one he knew wasn’t quite human anymore.  “Are you the representative?”

“No.”  The potion thing said with an economical shake of its head.  “We have decided.  Please… come inside.  We will talk.”  He sounded like he thought this was a terrible idea, but was going along with it anyway.

James gave a polite nod.  “Alright.  Lead the way.”

The occupied man turned sharply, and walked ahead, pausing to hold the door open for James.  He didn’t say anything about the two behind him, so it seemed a pair of guests were okay.  James pinged a confirmation through his skulljack back to Dave and JP that everything was fine so far, and stepped into the house.

The polite ‘thank you’ that Frequency-Of-Sunlight said as she passed the held open door made him realize that he’d just encountered a real moral dilemma.  Was he supposed to take his shoes off? He always took his shoes off in homes.  But he might have to throw himself through a window at a moment’s notice here.  What was the protocol?

Fortunately, the decision was made for him.  “This way.”  The man said, walking through the entry hallway, past a curving staircase, shoes still on.

James sighed in relief and followed.  He made a mental note as he passed by a wrought iron side table with what looked like a pretty extensive ikebana arrangement on it, and took similar notice of the photos of a coastline on the wall.

Then they were in a wide open room, where the polished hardwood floor met carpet, and a trio of couches had been arranged in a pleasant semi-circle around the core of the room.  Small touches made the place feel like a real home; details on the walls, the well used dishes of snacks laid out on the counter separating the space from the kitchen, the general atmosphere just felt comfy.

Eight other human shaped individuals, and one golden retriever, filled the space.  Either sitting on the couches, or standing rather rigidly in a few spots around the room.  The woman who James had first greeted at the front door, presumable owner of the house, was standing looking out the glass door to the back patio, and didn’t even turn as James entered.  The Alchemist who they’d tailed here - ex-Alchemist, maybe - was sitting closest to the cold fireplace, rounded glass goblet of some amber liquid perched in his hand.

As they walked in, several of the seated people stood wordlessly, vacating the couch that sat opposite the others to move to other seating arrangements.

“Please, sit.”  The man who’d led James in said.

James looked around again, letting his brain absorb the ambiance of the room, and the small details of the building.  Then he shrugged, and moved through them, unable to avoid noticing how everyone he passed tensed up, taking a seat on the padded white cloth of the empty couch.  Behind him, Alex leaned on the back of the piece of furniture, while Frequency simply coiled up to the side.

Only a few of the people here were looking at him.  Most of them were finding things to stare at out the windows or on the wall, or just looking down at their own hands.  The dog was in some kind of staring contest with Frequency-Of-Sunlight, which it probably wouldn’t win.  The atmosphere was, in a single word, tense.  The room was dominated by people in their early twenties, with only a few outliers.

“Okay.”  James broke the awkward silence.  “We have some things to talk about.”  He looked around at the group, before asking something that had been on his mind.  “Quick check, are you a hive mind of some kind? Should I be addressing you as a group?”

“Do you not-“ An early twenties girl in a hoodie sporting tour dates for a metal band started, before being cut off.

The Alchemist James had riled up weeks ago spoke.  “No, we aren’t.”  He said with a sigh. “He doesn’t know.  Obviously.”  He spoke to the group at large, taking a swallow of his drink.

“Hey again Columbia.”  He started.  “And yeah, that’s sort of the problem.”  James said.  “We don’t know anything.  Except that we know, vaguely, where you all come from.  And honestly, that’s scary, but I’m kind of getting the vibe that you aren’t the civilization ending threat that we thought you were.  So I’m trying to be polite, and part of that is knowing how to address you.”  He paused.  “Look, I’m kind of new to this.  You’re all obviously on edge.  Why don’t you ask *me* questions?”

“You may call me Kando.”  The Japanese man said from the kitchen counter he was leaning on.  “Are you here to kill us?”

“Wasn’t really planning on it.”  James said.  “So, you’re all individuals? Why the weird quiet and short sentences? Oh, we were wiretapping the house.  Actually sorry about that, feels like a shitty invasion of privacy now.”  He rubbed his hands together in an awkward motion, like he could somehow wring the discomfort out.

The Alchemist with Columbia as a pseudonym met James’ eyes, and something *shifted* slightly.  Like a veil pulled just an inch to the side to show off something underneath.  “We are new.”  He said in a dull, empty tone.  “When we are our true selves, we have no history.  No development.  So short sentences, less personality.”  He blinked, and suddenly, was who he had been the whole time.  In a much deeper voice with some frustrated resentment in it, the old man continued, “So when you’re around to fake it to, we’ll use the faces, okay?  Just save us all a headache.”

“Mmh.  You sure?”  James said, raising his eyebrows.  “I’m fine with it if you want to be yourselves.  I am literally the last person on the planet who would judge you for not being human.”

“We are human.”  Three of them chorused at once in that dull tone.  It didn’t sound angry, but somehow, James could feel the ire baked into the statement.

He nodded.  “Okay.  I’m fine with that.”

“You said we could ask you questions.”  The homeowner said, finally turning to face him, a wavering expression on her face.  “Why did you track us down, if you didn’t know what we were?”

“Well, to be clear, we tracked down him.”  James pointed at Columbia.  “And then spooked him enough that he collected you.  Who we’ve been watching for a little while, but decided to contact now.”  He stopped himself before saying more that might give away the limits of their information.  “As for why? Well, Columbia more or less knows, and I assume told you.  Sometime in the last year, a friend of mine purchased a potion from the Guild of Alchemists, which tried to kill me.  They said it would cure depression, and I suppose that is *technically* correct.”

“The worst kind of correct.”  Frequency-Of-Sunlight said smoothly from her spot on his left.

The room looked startled when she spoke.  James ignored them and kept talking.  “Yes, exactly.  So, that began our espionage campaign against the Alchemists.  Which has led us to here, now.  And the question of what to do about a situation where they’re selling potions that kill people, and seem to either don’t know, or don’t care.”  He looked around the room at the chaotic collection of people.  “So, I guess now it’s my question.  And I really need to know.  What *are* you?  And not just the basics, but, what’s the story here?”  He said into the quiet air.  And then leaned forward to patiently wait for an answer.

The group shared a number of silent glances, blank faces giving away nothing.  The silence of the room aside from rustling clothes and the sound of people shifting on couch cushions would have been overwhelming if James wasn’t spending a chunk of his brainpower reading messages through his skulljack from the others.

“They sure seem to be communicating for people who aren’t a hive mind.”  Alex sent.

“Are they lying about anything?”  Frequency asked.  “We should ask questions we already know the answer to.”

“Oh, yeah, also, they were startled to see Sunny.”  Alex added.  “They’re not used to weird shit.  They might think they’re unique.”

“Well, had thought, anyway.”  James added, keeping most of his focus on the silent room.

And then, the woman who owned this house stepped forward and spoke up.  “The Alchemists made us to be weapons.”  She said.

“Ah.”  James’ blood went cold.  “So they are killing people on purpose, huh?”

“Doesn’t track.”  JP sent through the link, watching from outside.  “The other Alchemists were legitimately confused about it.”

And in a few words, the woman speaking validated that.  She shook her head, and continued.  “They don’t know.  That their project worked, that any of us are alive.  We are… a side effect.”

“A fortunately profitable failure.”  Columbia’s voice was grimly bitter.

“Okay.”  James said.  “I think I’m seeing the picture.”

“We…” Columbia faltered, and then wiped away the emotion to speak in his other, timeless voice, “They were trying to brew a substance that would turn anyone.  Instant conversion.  Sell to governments, intelligence agencies, drug cartels, warlords, anyone.  Who would not want the power to make your worst enemy share their secrets willingly?  Die for you willingly?  They had a marketing campaign ready.”  They talked at a steady pace, not pausing when humans normally would.  “The first test was a perfect success.”

James gave a pitying frown.  “You?”  He asked.

Someone else spoke up instead.  A young man who looked almost perfectly nondescript.  Short brown hair, sports jacket, jeans, absolutely normal, and quiet up until then.  “Me.”  He said, in the same dull non-voice.

The woman behind the couch spoke again.  “And then me.”

“And me.”  A scarred blonde woman chimed in.

“And me.”  A young man with a pair of tattoo sleeves added his voice.

“I came later.”  Columbia continued the story, switching back to human.  “The problem with making a potion that turns someone into the perfect infiltrator…” He gave a sardonic grin, and downed the rest of his drink.  “Well.  Turns out, we didn’t know a damn thing about what we were doing.  Par for the course, really.  The subjects lied, well enough that the Guild assumed they’d made a totally different potion.  A few more tests, and we had a product that was expensive to make, had a limited market, and just wasn’t really worth producing a lot of.”  He glanced over at the homeowner.

“Our plan worked.”  She said.  “No more of us.  We thought.”

“So…” James cupped his hand around his mouth, as he thought.  “So what *are* you?  Are you… okay, when you’re the potion, are you alive? Or is that just a catalyst for change?  Is there anything left of who you were?  Because if you’ve got all their memories and feelings… how is that different from being them?”  He let his thoughts wander slightly to a question that had been bothering him, and gave it voice.

One of the potion people shook his head.  “We can see who our victim was.”  They said.  “But it is distant.”  His voice switched to more human, and in a cheerful Mexican accent he added, “Like how reading Sherlock Holmes doesn’t make you a druggie detective.”

“Well, not right away, obviously.”  James gleefully returned the snark, before realizing that it… wasn’t real.  Not really.  “Okay.”  He said, face slowly falling.  “So, you’re new people, then.  Just… with a record of the body you’re in?”

“Correct.”  Columbia said.  “The book metaphor is good, actually.  Because on a long enough timeline, we can understand the feelings of our victim.  Though we often don’t have time alone to consider.  And it takes us time.”

“You keep saying ‘victim’.”  James pointed out, taking a cue from Alex.  “Can we go back to the earlier question? Are you alive when your potion is brewed?”

“No.”  The homeowner said, shaking her head in an elegantly precise movement.  “We become aware at the moment they are beyond recovery.”

“So, why are there so many of you?  Are you all test subjects?  Also, and I need to ask, why the dog?”

Everyone in James’ link breathed a sigh of relief as he finally asked about the dog.  There were multiple messages in his vision about that.

Again it was the Alchemist who explained.  “We didn’t *stop*, boy.”  He said bitterly.  “Oh, we convinced the Guild, through lies and through my own words as lead on the experiment, that it wouldn’t do to sell the potions to spies and murderers.  I put more effort into making it only appear occult to those with mental health disorders than I did into researching the base brew when I was myself.  But they wanted to keep making them.  I made it expensive, but not impossible.”  He shrugged, setting his empty glass onto a side table as he switched back to non-tone. “There were several more made.  Sold to wealthy concerned parents,” he nodded to the young woman in the hoodie, “or to mentally collapsing executives,” a gesture toward Kando, “or, once we organized ourselves, bought by us through proxy.  Securing as many as we could, to keep them unused.”

“Okay, that’s good.”  James said.  “Worrying, kind of.  How many… no, wait.  The dog?”

“We wanted to know if we could coexist.”  The Hispanic kid said.  “So we tried guiding the process.  Didn’t work.  Just made another us.”  He reached down to pet the dog’s head, but the motion was mechanical.  So was the dog’s reaction, a wagged tail that was too rote to be a real reaction.

James watched with a feeling in his chest somewhere between empathy and distress.  His thoughts in conflict with each other as he sat on the normal couch in the normal home and faced almost a dozen constructed life forms that required a death to be born.

He’d already decided they were people.  What made a person, in the end?  It wasn’t the body; there were plenty of people James knew personally with bodies far from human.  And even besides that, infomorphs didn’t even have bodies beyond the grey matter they borrowed, and they were often people.

It wasn’t the way they viewed the world.  Again, infomorphs saw the world in different colors of idea.  Planner saw things as schedules and dates, Hidden saw things as secret places and escape routes.  Pathfinder, and the growing cartomorph in James’ mind, saw the world as a series of journeys and destinations, a series of small adventures.

It certainly wasn’t their point of origin.  James had met too many people who devalued even human lives just because of what side of a line on a map they were born on.  And he had no interest in joining their shitty ranks.

So these were people.  But the question now was…

“Alright.”  James said.  “What do you need?”

They all stilled, the veneer of humanity they wore like masks slipping slightly as the creatures inhabiting the bodies processed that.  “What?”  Someone asked.

“What do you need?”  James restated.  “You guys aren’t responsible for the actions of the Alchemists, you aren’t killers.  From what I can tell, and what my rogue tells me, you’re all more or less trying to live normal lives.  Except Columbia, who I assume is still an Alchemist for… cover? Sabotage?”

“Yes.”

“Right.  So, what I’m mainly seeing here is that you are, collectively, victims yourselves.  And you’re constantly paranoid about being found out.  Also, you said something about keeping a stockpile of more of your own origin potions, so that’s also an issue.  And… I mean…” He shrugged, and looked at his two allies in the room.

Alex leaned forward on the couch, putting her weight on her own crossed arms.  “We help people!”  She cheerfully added.

“Pathologically.”  Frequency-Of-Sunlight supplemented the conversation with a nod.

Everyone looked like they really wanted to ask about the camraconda.  But James had other conversation plans.  “So, *I* almost died to the process that makes one of you, and that’s an issue.  But it’s not your fault. You’re as much victims of this as the people who have died.  The Alchemists are killing people, and they’re doing it because they tried to make life to be a tool.  We have a *very* strong policy about that.”  His voice was hard.  “So we’re going to have to deal with that.  Columbia, or however you’d prefer to be addressed, your help would be appreciated there.   But in the meantime… I mean, you’re functionally refugees.”  He said.  “The Alchemists are almost certainly aware something is up, and that’s *our fault*.  So we’re here to help fix that, and keep you all safe.”  James sighed.  “I’m not sure how you feel about the lives you’re living.  Do you have families? Jobs? Do you *like them*?  We’re gonna have to talk about this.  Work some stuff out.  But fundamentally, I want you all to be okay.”  He checked a message through his link, and then added,  “And also we have a. vault we can keep the potions in, along with the one that almost killed me, until such time as we find a way to hatch them properly.”

“Uh… properly being without killing anyone.”  Alex clarified, as she realized James had gotten sidetracked by his line of thinking and hadn’t made that explicit.

The woman in the stylish dress that looked like it had been spawned by the concentrated essence of the 90s gave him a long look.  “You don’t act like a normal secret society.”  She said flatly.

“Well, we’re not a secret, for one thing.”  James quipped.  “*Very* bad at the secret keeping.”  Then he realized what she’d said. “Also how many secret societies do you know of?  Aside from the Alchemists.”

“None.  So as far as we know, they’re normal.”

“Touché.”  James chuckled, ignoring that it hadn’t been a joke.

“You don’t know what you’re offering.”  The dog spoke up.  And now it was James’ turn to blink with mild surprise.

Only mild, though.  “How do you talk, as a dog?”  He asked.  “I have a roommate who’d probably like to know.”  A quick ping from Alex came through his link, and he got a series of short clips of them talking.  Before anyone could answer him, he made the connection.  “Wait, how are any of you talking, without actually moving your mouths?”

“We are inside the bodies.”  The golden retriever told him.

“Okay, we’ll table that for later.”  James sighed.  “What do you think I’m offering?”

Columbia paused in pouring himself more brandy to face James and speak with his dull voice.  “You offer to stand against the Alchemists.  You do not understand what that means.  What they do.”

“Make potions?”  Alex spoke up sarcastically.

James waved a quieting hand at her.  “No, hang on.  Think about it.”  He addressed the potion people.  “You said you were made to be *weapons*.  That kind of implies that research and development is ongoing in the Alchemist manor, huh?”

“Correct.”  Columbia said.  “You think they are old men selling minor magic.  You do not know what weapons they have stockpiled.”

“I mean, I’d like to.”  James said, trying not to roll his eyes at JP’s internal request-slash-demand that he pry that information out.  “I know that they’ve got something that allows for selective corporeality, which is neat.  But I mostly did assume a lot of the potions they sold were minor things.”

“We sell what we can make on the cheap.”  Columbia’s human voice took over, and he finished pouring his drink, before offering the bottle around the room to the others who looked at him with not-quite-human eyes and a degree of alien frustration.  “A lot of that crap, costs a lot to make, so it’s not even worth selling to Blackwater or Castle.  We keep it and use it to make nobels.”

James leaned back, throwing his arms over the back of the couch. “So there’s a bunch of high burst foot soldiers, huh?”  He mused.  “I mean… how many do they employ, anyway?  We have *some* experience with this, it’s not a dealbreaker.”

“Sixteen of the things.  Always.”  Kando said, bitterly.

“He killed one, once.”  A tired looking wisp of a woman spoke from the corner of another couch.  “They just replaced it.”

Frequency pinged their link.  “They keep saying it or thing.”  She mentioned.  “Nonhumans?”

“Probably modified humans.  Slave soldiers?”  Alex’s words showed disgust through the text.

James sighed, rolled his shoulder to alleviate stiffness, and addressed the room.  “Yeah, I’m not gonna let that stop us.  Still in your corner.  We’ve got-“

“James.”  JP’s voice came through the link, an interruption and not a message.  All three members of the Order turned as a unit to look back toward the front door, the sudden cutoff of conversation, drawing concerned looks from the others in the room.  “The police are here.”

“Why?”  James said out loud, and to JP.

“Why wh-“

“Not you.”  Alex silenced the question from Columbia.

JP’s response put James on edge instantly.  “They’re claiming the van was reported stolen by the company that owns it.”

“The fake plumbing company?”

“Yeah.”

“Uh oh.”  James and Frequency said out loud at once.  James continued.  “What’re you doing?”

“Cooperating.  But they’re gonna open the back in a second.  Also, Ben’s not reporting in; at least one of our rogues is missing.”  JP paused.  “I don’t think this is normal, I don’t want to send Dave and Pen away if it’s gonna get hot.  How do you want it handled?”

James stood off the couch, ignoring the flinches from the potions.  “Something’s up.”  He announced.  “Ready check.”  He pulled up the menu for his shield bracer, noting that he had a full twenty blocks, and four switches to new threats ready to go.  Then reached back and adjusted his holster, made sure his gun was in reach.  “Do the Alchemists know about this place?”

“They shouldn’t.”  Columbia said.  “But you shouldn’t either.”

“We were followed?”  Someone said in a quiet whimper.

“You brought them to my home?”  The tall woman’s voice was in the dead potion tone, but had a strange warble of emotion to it.  Which made sense, somewhat; she was one of the oldest.  She’d been learning.

Alex and Frequency-Of-Sunlight nodded to James as they made sure they were prepared.  “Full on breath.”  Alex said.  “Stay behind me when someone starts shooting at you.”  James didn’t bother to deny that was a likely situation.

“Okay.  JP?  Breakthrough tactic.  Overwhelm them, get ready for teleports home.  Links open.  Stall for two minutes, then go.  Columbia, or… ma’am I don’t know your name.”

“May.”  The homeowner said simply.

“May.  Get the potions you have stockpiled.  Everyone get up, we’re getting out of here before it’s too-“

From the street in front of the house, there was a bellowing roar, and the popping of gunfire.  It was, perhaps, already starting to be too late.  James watched through his skulljack as Dave and Pendragon exploded out of the back of the van, slamming the two muscled, bald figures in police uniforms to the street.  They were both wearing the fancy looking face masks that looked like cyberpunk rebreather things, but their eyes shimmered with anger as they glared at the the dragon holding them.

Before one of them slipped out, then the other, briefly fading to vapor under her claws to roll sideways and reform slightly farther away, guns already out and shooting again.

“Oh yeah!”  James bit the words out.  “They know you’re here!”  The people in the room jerked to their feet, trying to spread out, looking to each other and the members of the Order with blank and confused expressions.  Only Kando, tan suit jacket hanging open, grip of a handgun visible in his waistband, seemed like he was at all prepared for the chaos.  “Everyone get moving to the front!  We’re gonna evacuate you all!  Wait for them to disable the ghost cops before you leave the build-!”

The side window in the kitchen exploded inward.  Frequency-Of-Sunlight, whipping her head around with lightning reflexes, zeroed in on a small object just before it dipped below the kitchen counter in her view.  A grey cylinder with a metal handle coming off it.  A grenade of some kind, maybe non-lethal, but not good.  “I got it!”  Alex ducked past someone who was stumbling toward the door, the wordless motions of the potion people making an eerie scene as they all moved without speaking.  She checked line of sight through her link with Sunny, then grabbed the grenade in a way that didn’t obscure anything, and started leveraging herself against it.

When the camraconda ‘let go’ of the object, Alex felt a spike of pain in her hand as she absorbed the force it had been holding onto, and then applied her own in reverse, flinging it back out the window before it exploded in a burst of sound and light a second later, the noise loud enough that it left her ears ringing.

The next volley held three more of the flashbangs, and came from two other windows.  The house was thoroughly surrounded.

James stood in the hall, trying to usher people toward the front door.  Alex was covering the back, and he saw her shield flare suddenly through the link and the corner of his eye.  The sound of small arms fire filled the house as Kando took a stance at the shattered kitchen window, firing through with his handgun before a bullet hit him in the neck, a thick spray of scaled black blood exiting his body before slowly being pulled back in.  He didn’t stop shooting except to reload.

“Go!”  The thing wearing the form of a Japanese businessman said in an empty voice.  “There are nobels.  I will hold them.”

“Three people in the garden, closing in!”  Alex reported after peaking the window.  “Nine mil SMGs, they all look like the dudes up front!”

James tried to breath, and found himself coming up short.  Things were getting too chaotic, too fast.  There were five threats around the building, with the element of surprise.  They needed to get out, now, and regroup.  He had one telepad, JP had another, Dave the third.  Just barely enough for everyone, and they couldn’t afford to split their forces.

Tactical decision, and quick.  Alex and Frequency could hold the house behind them, he needed to clear the way through the front.  He spoke the command over the tactical link, and started moving, gun already in his hand, to the front of the silent pack of human shaped people.  They looked like they were equal parts terrified, and resigned, as the sounds of combat picked up around them.

James dashed through the front hall of the house toward the door to give JP and Dave some support, and was a bit surprised when a humanoid figure in grey-black fatigues blurred through the wall under the stairs to his right, and swung a glowing red right hook at his head.

“Nobel!”  Someone yelled.

His eyes widened as he managed to mentally scream at his bracer to switch to blocking ‘punches’, but didn’t have the time to hope that would work before it connected.

The golden dome of light around him was blinding, but James kept his eyes open as it soaked the blow, and miraculously deflected the secondary effect too, though not the stomach-churning blast of noise that came with it.  When the dome dropped, the hallway around him had been blasted away; varnished wood splintered away in a semicircle around where his shield had sprung up, edges of what was once a structure glowing cherry red, some of it straight up on fire.

“Oh!”  James exclaimed as he realized what had happened.  His gun was already aimed in a one handed stance when the shield came down, and he just unloaded repeated burst fire shots into the man standing before him, only having enough time to realize that most of them were just phasing through before another punch was sent his way.  A quick left jab that James just shot, rapidly shifting targets.  These bullets actually landed, drawing too-small pricks of red out of the oncoming burning arm before his shield triggered again.

James tried to pivot, to slam the man into the wall, and was half successful.  When the shield flashed down a second later, the house was even *more* on fire around him, the chandelier in the entry hall making glass chimes as it rattled overhead.  But at least his target was half buried in a wall.

“Everyone go!”  He yelled, closing the gap as he kept shooting.  He had *plenty* of gun bangle charges, and he could at least keep the bastard pinned down.

People started running past him for the front door, and James had no time to focus on them.  His opponent lurched back to his feet, breathing heavy through his gas mask.  Long, hissing gasps as he took stock of James.

“Yo.”  James said, mugging for time as two more people slipped past behind him, trying desperately not to think about the fact that he was standing in the middle of a small ring of burning building.  “So, you want to try…”  The man sucked in a breath, a small plume of vapor coming out of his mask, and his skin warped into a stony substance, one fist starting to glow red again while the other brought an MP5 up to bear down the hallway.  “Nope!”  James flicked a hand, and the chunk of asphalt he’d pulled from the road spiked through the gun and wrap around it in a ball around the man’s hand, his own reloaded pistol taking another trio of burst shots into the man’s annoying ethereal face before his enemy took another swing.

James braced for the shield to flare up, but then the Alchemist foot soldier held back his hit, and *kicked James in the stomach*.

James slid back into the burning wall, knocking over a potion person as he coughed up a mouthful of spit.  He wanted to know how everyone was doing, but he had to cover the last two people out the door.  Everyone else was spilling out into the street, and he heard a roar and the scream of metal as Pendragon threw a car at someone.  They were *fine*.  They had a dragon.  He had a pistol and an immortal angry ghost trying to kill him.

The man stepped over him, aiming another kick to James’ head.  James dropped his pistol, and caught it in both hands, before the leg turned to mist, and the man flipped it back down to bring a knee up to his neck instead.  James grabbed it, and rapidly yanked the enemy fighter off balance, using the force to start rolling forward, sweeping his pistol up as he went by.

This fight was going nowhere.  He could do this all day, thanks to Endurance at its second mark, but he couldn’t *kill* this guy.

“One down!”  JP pinged over their link.  James was barely processing everything going on.  The fight had gotten rapidly out of hand.  But he could see Alex and Frequency’s view shift as they pulled back from the back of the house, and started moving toward the front door.  Toward him, and the two potion people cut off from their escape.

One of his opponent’s hands was still encased in road; maybe it holding the gun was what was keeping it stuck, James didn’t know or care.  But he did know he had to shift the fight out of the way so the last people could get out.

His opponent had clearly figured out that he probably couldn’t kill James right away either.  So, uncaring of James’ interference, he pivoted and slammed his fist into the closest potion person who was trying to find an opening to get by.

James screamed something, opened fire, but his bullets barely moved the arm that he could actually hit while it was in flight.  Then the strike connected, and he got to see the explosion of flame from two angles as the ball of fire spilled over him, Alex, and Frequency-Of-Sunlight all at once.  It stung, and he felt splinters pelting his exposed skin, but it was fast and didn’t kill him.  But he hadn’t been at the center of the blast.

When it cleared, the two people who’d been holding back at the mouth of the hallway were just *gone*.  They’d died silently, without even screaming.  The support beam overhead creaking as it swung down and phased through the monster standing there.  The man who’d just murdered two people, without a word.

“*Red light*!”  Frequency screamed from down the hallway.  And then a screaming Alex slammed a kitchen knife through the man’s jaw, just as James shot him in the head repeatedly.

A human turned into a gory mess of meat in a heartbeat, blood and brain matter spraying into the building that was now burning in earnest.

“Scratch two.”  James horasely spoke over the link.  “JP, situation?”

“JP’s out.”  Dave said.  “I’m covering the last one out here.  Pen says actually EMS are coming in, minutes at most.”  He sounded calm even as James could feel him reloading and firing again.  “What do you want us to do?”

“Telepad out with the rest.  We’ve got the house.”  James said, fumbling his own telepad out with stinging fingers.

In the hallway, Alex threw up, leaning against a crumbling wall, ignoring the splinters.  “Kando’s dead.”  She coughed out.  “We’re it.  There’s two more coming.”  To punctuate her words, a flashbang went off in the kitchen.

“May ran upstairs.”  James said.  “Let’s move.”

“Here.”  A voice from overhead caught his attention, and he looked up to see the woman whose home was burning around them standing behind the upstairs railing, holding a briefcase.  “Had to get them.”  She said.  “I’m ready.  We can-”

Her voice was cut off as a hand reached out of the wall behind her, and grabbed around her neck.  She didn’t even react, except to meet James’ eyes, and release the briefcase over the edge of the upper floor, just before the masked soldier flexed his hand, and she collapsed in a boneless heap.

Still breathing, James noticed.

That didn’t bode well.

Frequency grabbed the briefcase while James laid down suppressive fire up the stairs, and Alex took his telepad, scrambling to write their destination on it.  “R-ready!”  She yelled.

“Look out!”  Frequency cried as James tried to get close to them.

From down the hall, from the living room that had been so homey and normal not even five minutes ago, a masked bald man in grey black fatigues was charging forward toward them, green light simmering out of the skin of a cocked fist.

In a smooth motion, Alex flipped the telepad back, to be caught by James, stood to her full five foot five height, braced her feet, and extended a single flat palm toward the charging brute.

Then she *breathed*.

James hadn’t ever actually asked what spell she’d gotten from the mountain; from the book he’d made from his own Endurance power.

In a flash, the temperature of the whole house plummeted.  The fire burning around them fighting the sharp and sudden chill.  Alex shifted slightly, like she wasn’t sure of where her feet were, and then, twitched her hand just enough to catch the thrown empowered punch.  Just as she breathed out, and her spell took hold, for just the barest instant.

She timed it perfectly.

The attack stopped.

Just stopped.  It wasn’t deflected, or canceled, or grounded out.  It *stopped*.  For one moment, she was inviolable, immovable, *invincible*.  Then her mana ran out, and she half collapsed back to be grabbed by Frequency and dragged to the floor next to the corpse they’d made, thrown down at James’ knelt feet.

The attacker didn’t fare so well.  It turned out, when something stopped a mass of kinetic energy, that energy had to *go somewhere*.

Just before Alex fell, the assailant’s arm and half his torso *pulverized*, a spray of blood and bone chunks thrown backward by the rebound of punching what might as well have been a mountain.

Down the hall, the other soldier paused, showing the first sign of concern so far.  Behind them, James saw an older man in a pressed black suit stepping through the wreckage of the patio door, dusting himself off like he was on a park stroll, not walking into a battlefield.  James recognized him from one of JP’s intelligence briefings.  Alchemist Amazon.  One of the upper echelon of the reclusive gang of wealthy monsters.

James wrapped a leg around Alex, tagged a hand on Frequency’s head, gave the Alchemist the middle finger with his hand holding the briefcase, and tore the telepad with his teeth.

This was gonna be a bigger mess than normal.