The Daily Grind - Chapter 186 (Patreon)

I have torn out chunks of a thousand words or more and rewritten them at least three times on this chapter.  I'm still not sure I *like* it, but it does what it needs to do.  So, uh... narrative, go!

_____

“Fill my wounds with molten gold, and make me whole again” -Aisha’s Embrace, Destiny 2-

_____

There was a certain weary demoralized collapse that occurred in places like strip malls that James had never been able to fully articulate.

Sometimes, they were okay.  Especially ones that had a certain amount of overlap, with courtyards and restaurants and such.  Downtown streets where there were apartments built over small businesses also tended to avoid the process for longer.

But the majority of copy-pasted strip malls that he’d experienced in the US would, inevitably, tend toward decay.  Not even a lack of maintenance or a lack of business, but a more psychological decay.  Something twisted and collapsing in the emotional space that overlayed on the physical.  Small exhaustions amplified larger and larger until there was nothing left but a dry, soulless zone of pure commerce and no humanity.

These were spaces where people arrived, made purchases, and left.  No one enjoyed being there, no one lingered, no one met friends there.  You didn’t have a favorite memory from the grocery store, or a faint historical fondness for the mass market casual clothing outlet.  People just got in, got their stuff, and got out, and tried not to think about how empty it all was.

Unless, of course, you were here to meet someone in a public place, for the purpose of opening a diplomatic channel.

This strip mall was one big circle with shops on both sides, which was a great way to make traffic in the central parking lot a living hell.  One side faced outward with your usual massive grocery store, flanked by an omnipresent Starbucks, a couple small restaurants, a place that sold lawn ornaments, and a half dozen other small businesses doomed to failure. On the other side of the parking lot was another row of mostly restaurants with a few business offices mixed in; great for if you wanted lunch and to get your taxes done, or file an insurance claim while you waited for your pizza.  That space had a little courtyard in the center of it, with a tall clocktower and a scattering of old wrought iron tables, before you would come out the other side to the other half, dominated by a movie theater.

It was a lot going on, really.  It was also mostly entirely empty on this dismal Wednesday afternoon.  Grey skies threatening to drizzle but not full on rain, a scent on the air like wet sand, only a fraction of the parking lot occupied, and a clammy feeling just from being outside.  James was wondering if maybe, just maybe, they’d picked a slightly less public spot than he’d expected.

Two days ago, a small group of Order knights had started putting together a plan.  Method of contact, team roster, contingencies, escape routes.  Two plans, both as simple as they could make them; one for nonviolent contact and resolution, one as a fallback for failure.

The Order had a lot of resources at its disposal.  Not on the level of a military, or even a major city sized police force really.  Response wasn’t actually doing the job of *every* aspect of the police they were trying to obsolete right now after all; they just had the advantage of selection and teleportation.  But that didn’t mean the Order didn’t have a hundred tricks up their collective sleeves, and their initial plan worked to leverage as many as possible into an overwhelming advantage if needed.

One day ago, James had spent some time in Officium Mundi.  Nothing serious or strenuous, just something to keep his brain distracted and rearrange his sleep schedule so he’d be awake properly for this.  He’d gotten a skill rank in a blueberry strudel recipe, among other things, which was probably going to be the highlight of his week, and accidentally cracked an orange which netted him an associates degree in interior design, which would *not* be the high point of his week.

This morning, he’d woken up in the Lair’s residential basement, detangled himself from Anesh and Alanna who were also waking up, gotten dressed in the outfit that had been assembled for him to be as nondescript as possible, and blearily made his way upstairs to sit in the dining area mostly by himself and pretend a nutrigrain bar and water was breakfast.  And then, settled in to wait for the rest of the team to collect.

It took him some time to shake off the feeling like he was a teenager about to get on a flight for a family vacation at ‘way too early’ o’clock.  The presence of teleportation made this much easier, really.  The presence of Nate giving the group their last minute refresher on orders helped too.

“Karen and Alanna should be the only ones to make contact.”  Nate said.  “Specifically Karen.  Alanna, you’re the muscle; listen, keep alert, be eyes and ears for everyone in the link, but don’t talk to them.  Let them think you’re stupid.”  Nate’s orders were dry and clinical, a mechanical process, the definition of ‘nothing personal’.  “Team one,” he turned to Sarah and James, one of the two of them - the one who wasn’t James - saluting him energetically.  “You’ll be going in a half hour ahead of time.  Get lunch.  Settle in.  You’re on a date, and you’re not important.  Fade away, don’t engage unless explicitly told to.  Use the glasses, people watch, check out *everyone*, got it?”

“Lunch, spy things, pretend I’m fawning over James.  Got it!”  Sarah snapped her fingers, leaning over to drape herself across James’ shoulders.

“Hey…!” James started to protest, then just paused, and let the sentiment die.  “Yeah, sure.”  He said with a chuckle.  “Petition to change our name to Team Romance?”

“Absolutely not.”  Nate turned away to look at the larger chunk of nine people sitting around in more obviously dangerous gear.  “Team two, you all have your squad positions.  Rooftops and skies, stay in pairs, your job is to look for anything obvious coming at us, and to call it out.  Again, don’t engage unless ordered.  Stay out of sight if you can.  Dave, keep Pen as high as she can go, got it?”

Nods and reliable looks.  Team two was the only mixed team, camracondas and humans and one dragon.  They were backup.  In case things went wrong, they were the ones who would come in shooting.

“Team three, on site within half a mile of the Alchemist’s home base.”  Nate said, repeating what they already knew.  Team three was actually just a response team, *mostly* made up of people who had, and still were, Nate’s prep cooks in the kitchen.  “Do literal nothing unless we verify hostages.”

Ann nodded, cracking her knuckles.  “Got it boss.”  She said.

Next to her, Knife-In-Fangs made a mechanical hiss.  “Understood.”

“Last up, team four stays here.”  Nate nodded once at Anesh and Reed and a few other Research members.  “In the event that any one part of this goes to hell, you’re here to cover our exit.  Don’t…”

Reed cut him off.  “Don’t do anything unless ordered?”  He asked cheekily.  Which mostly got Nate to just glare at him, until he relented.  “We won’t do anything until ordered.”  He quietly said, sinking down in his chair.

“Good.”  Nate snapped.  “Teams two and three leave in an hour, team one hour thirty.  The meeting is in two hours.  Any questions?”  There were none.  “Everyone double check everything you can.  We’ll deploy out of the briefing room.  See you then.”

An hour of helping Alanna fit her bulletproof vest, flicking through skulljack protocols, listening to Karen rehearse her offer, and generally trying not to have an anxiety attack later, and James was in Utah again.

The last time he was in Utah, someone had tried to blow him up, twice, before he’d redecorated a wall with his attacker’s brains.

So far, this time was going better.

Mostly because he and Sarah were sitting in that little courtyard outside a restaurant called the Ham House, which had been a powerful enough name for James to become amused and not really lose the feeling even as he knew they were creeping closer to the appointed time.

“You know,” James said as he rapidly drummed his foot on the brick ground of the courtyard in a nervous staccato, “having lunch is a different experience like this.”

“What, overpriced but dressed up as middle class?”  Sarah asked, picking at the salad she’d ordered.  It had, unsurprisingly, strips of some kind of smoked ham in it.

James rolled his eyes.  “You know what I mean.”  He challenged.

“Yes, but we can’t talk about it.”  Sarah reminded him with a sly smile.  “We’re on a *date* after all.  Romance, James!”

Narrowing his eyes, James focused as best he could, and split his attention.  Tuning out the noise of a semi truck backing up and the winter chill, he pulled a trick he’d been working on with Anesh and Alanna, and spoke out loud while at the same time saying something different through the skulljack link tucked under the scarf he was wearing.  “Right, romance!”  He said out loud, while through the mind-machine interface he said “Just let me know if anyone walks by behind me.”

“Oh, that’s neat!”  Sarah said cheerfully.  “How do you do that?  Years of zen training?”

“Orbs.”  James drew the word out with a vibrating tone of voice, getting a laugh out of Sarah.  “There, see?  Humor.  Classic date stuff.”  The motion of someone walking behind Sarah across the courtyard caught his eye, and he pinged her across the link as she laughed.  “Hang on, checking someone.  Make small talk.”

While Sarah said something out loud that James didn’t process but was probably more relaxed than he would be, he looked past her and focused on the other person with the Office procured glasses he was wearing.  The floating note of ‘Sarah Moyle, Order of Endless Rooms, Knight’ blinked out as he looked over her shoulder, trying to focus just enough to get the glasses to trigger but not enough to draw the other person’s attention.

‘Richard Daniels, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Bishop’ was what he got from the man walking past rapidly with his head down carrying a nondescript tote bag.

“Okay, probably nothing.”  James said, turning back to Sarah.  “Unless the Mormons are… no, no.  I don’t wanna finish that thought.”

“That’s right you don’t.”  Sarah snorted.  “Don’t make us into… uh… heretics?  Apostates?”

“One of those is probably correct.”  James took a light sip of his drink, following Nate’s *very explicit* command to not drink too much and end up needing to use the bathroom during combat.  “Sorry, I’m just jumpy.”

Sarah shrugged.  “I mean, I get why.  But we’ve still got half an hour or so, and this place is just flat out empty.  So I’m gonna enjoy my date!  It’s been actual years since I’ve had an actual date, and I love everyone in the Order but it’s not the same.”

“Shit, you know, we didn’t talk about this much.  I feel bad for not asking; were you in a relationship before…?” James made a kind of circular gesture with his hands, struggling to convey ‘dungeon kidnapping’ with interpretive dance.

Sarah stuck her tongue out and made a dismissive noise.  “Nah.  Uh… I actually…” Her cheeks had a hint of red creep in, which got raised eyebrows from James.  Sarah was kind of the least embarrassed person he knew, in general.  “I’d been going to ask Alanna out.”  She said.  “Just, you know, see how that went.”

James glanced away, not wanting her to see his grin, instead watching someone ordering their own lunch through the windows of a nearby food place.  ‘Michael Holt, Rainy Day Insurance, Insurance Agent’.  James shook his head at the man’s misfortune and looked back at Sarah.  “You know you’re absolutely still allowed to do that, right?”  He said.

“Hah.”  Sarah shook her head with a sad smile, looking down at her folded arms on the table.  “I dunno.  Everything’s gotten weird.  And it’s great and all, but maybe dating while I don’t know if I’m gonna be in another life-or-deather next week is a bad idea?  Also I don’t wanna step on your toes.  We’re friends again, and that’s great and I don’t wanna mess your life up!   Also… actually, is Alanna not straight? I didn’t really want to ask, but *since we’re here*...”

“This is a great lunch.  My date is asking me about other women.”  James hummed to himself, scanning a woman pushing a stroller past the mouth of the courtyard and into the parking lot.  “Sarah, you’re the most… most.  You’re the most person I know.  I don’t know how to say that better.  Just *ask* her.  But also I’m pretty sure Alanna’s sexuality is like a hurricane, unconfined by human conventions, but also sometimes like an incredibly embarrassed hurricane, which is adorable.  You’re either perfect for each other, or terrible for each other.  Just ask her.”

“You’re a good friend and terrible at advice all at once.”  Sarah told him.  “On your six.”  She sent at the same time through the skulljack.

James grinned as she picked up the trick almost right away.  Raising his arms over his head in a stretch, he twisted himself around to reach down and rustle through one of the pockets of his coat, vision briefly flicking over the heavily tattooed woman in a thick bomber jacket that had taken a seat a few tables away from them and was reading a local newspaper.

His grin vanished as his glasses supplied him with a name and title.  ‘“Violence” Melody, Harlan’s Wolfpack, Enforcer’.

James slapped the smile back onto his face with enforced emotion as he turned back to Sarah.  Opening up his link to the rest of the group, James sent out an alert.  “Hey.  We’ve got someone here from that group that Nate ran into that took the chemical plant dungeon a few months back.”  He relayed the woman’s name and a memory file of her appearance as he’d seen her before his brain mixed it up too much.  “Do we call this off?”

“Hold on.”  Nate’s dry, professional message came back.

The two of them waited, seconds seeming to creep like hours.  After a couple bites of salad that lasted roughly one epoch, Sarah cocked her head to look past James, then turned back to him.  “I like her hair.”  She said in an effortlessly casual voice.

“What?”  James startled out of his tense waiting.

“That girl’s hair.”  Sarah said, and James saw through their shared video link that the ‘girl’ in question, the *enforcer* in question, flicked her eyes up from her paper toward Sarah and the back of his own head.  “It’s cool!  All purple and sparkles and stuff.  I should get hair like that.”

James let slip a laugh bordering on a giggle that surprised him as he made the noise.  “Hey, maybe ask *her* out.”  He said.  “Bet she’d share her hair secrets.”

“That’s a good plan.”  Sarah tapped at her chin.

“That’s a terrible plan, don’t listen to me.  Ever.”  James replied.

The casual talk still hid an undercurrent of an edge in their voices.  If nothing else, the woman behind them worked for people who committed acts of industrial violence inside the US that *never made it to the public eye*, and on top of that, she literally had a moniker of Violence.  Sitting with his back to someone like that was just a tiny bit stressful for James.

On that thought, Nate decided to get back to them.  “We’re going ahead.  Team two on alert.  Frequent status updates.  Team one, stay there, prepare to leave if the meeting isn’t a trap.”

James kept himself from nodding at the digital words.  “Roger.”  He sent back.  “How’s the salad?”  He asked Sarah out loud.

“Hammy.”  She said with an emotion James could only describe as cheerful disdain.  “You doing okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”  James answered both the spoken question and the unspoken ‘are you okay with this twist’ at the same time.  “Also what did you actually expect from a Ham House?”

“*The* Ham House, James.” Sarah reminded him.

The words had him grinning despite his worries, and he kept that smile on his face as a smartly dressed middle aged couple walked past and into the insurance office just down one of the outdoor paths out of the courtyard.

‘Jim Reese, Central Intelligence Agency, Field Support’ and ‘Cathy Balker, Central Intelligence Agency, Nobody’ came back to him through the glasses.

“Uh…” Sarah couldn’t help raise her eyebrows she saw the same thing he did through their link.

“Nate!”  James called in silently through the skulljack.  “What are the odds the CIA needs insurance from a town of three thousand rich old guys in Utah?”

“Zero.”  Nate said instantly.  “Anyone else?”

“Not yet.”  James looked around the sad brick courtyard with its faux Roman columns and general sense of apathy seeping into the air.  “Just us.  And the Wolfpack girl.  And the CIA.  Are you sure we should…”

Nate cut him off, which was impressive when they could send skulljack messages roughly as fast as they decided to.  “Team two reports the Alchemists arriving.  This is turning into a mess, but we can still come out of this with something of value.  Your call if we leave.”

It was a cruel thing to ask James; someone who even at the best of times would make what he knew were bad choices to avoid disappointing anyone.  He tried to step back from that impulse to just agree, and rolled the decision in his head.  Then, he remembered that he didn’t have to do it alone, because his head was shared with a dozen other people in a small way right now.

“Karen.  How do you feel about this?”  James asked.

“If we cancel now, they may not agree to another meeting for some time.”  She said.  “And that is time we don’t want to waste.”

“Not what James asked.”  Alanna’s signature jumped in to the conversation.  “You up for this?”

Karen paused before replying, and James could imagine the woman sighing deeply.  “Teleport us out the instant something goes wrong.”  She addressed Alanna publically.  “But yes, I am ready.”

Out of the corner of his eye, James watched a trio of teenagers with thin coats and thick backpacks go by, laden down with plastic takeout bags.  The glasses identified them as students at a Moth Hill High School.  He shook his head as he nostalgically fabricated memories of a time when he, too, would have snuck off his closed campus to buy lunch, though he stopped as soon as the group of students split around a pair of men entering the courtyard.  The kids sat thirty feet away, loudly chatting about which teachers they hated, while the men stopped, standing underneath the clock tower.

The older one, grey hair and a charcoal suit jacket, pulled an honest to god gold pocket watch out of his jacket pocket and checked the time.  Two steps behind him, his companion who was both younger and taller than him, sporting a hooked nose and a resume of scars on his face, slowly scanned around the pavilion, eyes narrowing as he glared at the students that paid them no mind.  Big bodyguard energy, there.

“They’re here.”  Sarah sent through the link.

‘Maximilian Hart, Alchemist’s Guild, Alchemist’, ‘Joey Kim, Alchemist’s Guild, Nobel’

The thought James kept to himself was ‘holy shit, they actually call them Nobles on purpose.’

“They’re late.”  The voice of the Alchemist snapped out, making the unpleasant weather feel just a little chillier.  “Or are they planning to just shoot us and be done with it?”  He demanded of his bodyguard.

The mercenary leaned down and spoke softly into the Alchemist’s ear, getting a snort from the older man.

“Hey.  Normal date stuff.”  Sarah muttered, reaching over and grabbing James’ hand in her own, making a sappy face at him.  Over the link she added “The Nobel just said neither of their watchers are snipers, and he wasn’t talking about us.”

“Noted.  Team two groups, begin rotating to secondary positions.  Watch for reaction.”  Nate commanded.  “Let’s not keep them waiting.  Envoy arriving… now.”

Without any other preamble, there was a small pop of displaced air, and Karen and Alanna appeared about ten feet away from the Alchemist.  The ornery telepads even getting their facing right, for that extra dramatic touch.  And without a moment of hesitation, Karen stepped forward and offered a handshake.  “Good afternoon.” She said, like she wasn’t just someone who had teleported onto the field.  “Our apologies for being slightly tardy.”  Karen brought an effortless calm to the interaction that James envied.

Sarah made an easy show of glancing over her shoulder at where James was staring.  Both of them staying in character as people who weren’t involved.  She muttered something out loud, before shrugging and turning back to pretending to have a conversation with him.  James played along, trying not to think about the fact that the Nobel had twitched for a weapon when the other members of the Order had appeared, and trying *really* hard to not think about the risk his partner was in personally right now.

“Shall we sit?”  Karen offered, motioning to one of the dozen remaining empty tables.  “I wouldn’t want to inconvenience you.”

James listened through the link for a few more lines as Karen and the Alchemist - who identified himself as Euphrates - went back and forth making passive aggressive verbal snipes at each other, before he realized he needed to stop focusing on that and pay attention to what he was supposed to be doing.  Otherwise he’d be helplessly snickering at Karen running verbal loops around the man for the rest of the meeting.

“They seem like good friends.”  Sarah said out loud, listening in physically to the meeting.  She said it with such earnest cheer that James was inclined to give a snort of laughter along with the Wolfpack woman who obviously overheard and disagreed.

“Uh huh.”  James failed to agree.  “So, what’re we doing after lunch?  Did we have plans?”  He felt like he was getting better at the veneer of the casual, even as he kept his eyes open.

“Eh, we’ll figure it out when we’re done eating.”  Sarah said, sending silently, “We should stick around for the whole thing.  This shouldn’t take long, right?”

It probably wouldn’t.  This really was just a preliminary meeting to talk about future interactions.  There was originally one big barrier, and now there were two potential problems.  At first, it was just that most of this would come down to what the Order could offer the Alchemists in the short term; the term they cared about with their profit motive ideology.  And the answer to that was, they just didn’t have a lot on that front.

The Order wasn’t poor, and in the next few months, they stood to begin bringing in truly absurd amounts of money from mass material sales.  JP was already talking about messing with the commodities market, but James was reasonably sure that wasn’t a realistic expectation.  But *one* Alchemist had been worth almost two hundred million.  A number so patently absurd for a single person, James still hadn’t fully grasped it.  The Order of Endless Rooms didn’t come in at that net worth *total*.

Though dungeontech kind of skewed actual monetary value.

Still, the biggest issue here that wasn’t the CIA poking around was that when it came to negotiations, they were essentially offering a promise of an optimistic future, in exchange for a change in behavior now.  And the Alchemists didn’t have a *lot* of reason to listen.  Like Reed had said, life was already pretty good for them.

So they turned to other offers.  Security, information, new dungeontech to explore.  Things the Alchemists might value over money.  James wasn’t sure if it would work, but… well, Karen was still talking.

The new problem was that the CIA *was* poking around, and the presence of two other groups who really weren’t here by coincidence was not good.  At all.

James checked in on the developing plan for what to do about that.  Currently, it was ‘finish the meeting, then tail everyone’.  But even as he read that standing plan, something more went wrong.

From a nearby rooftop, a message came in from Ethan, watching the more open space around the courtyard.  “Hey guys? Four dudes with guns just got out of a camo pattern truck and are standing around.  Magic glasses say they’re ‘Utah Patriots’”

“Two of them are.  One is a driver for a shipping company, one is a teacher at a middle school.  They’re all in camo though.”  Simon corrected his squad mate.  “Nate?”

“Newly formed far right militia.  They don’t like being called a militia.  No one gives a fuck.  What guns?”  There was a pause as Nate, new to skulljack operations, linked into Ethan and Simon’s feeds.  “M15s.  Shields to 5.56 when they start shooting.”

“When?”  James tensed up, sending and saying the word out loud at the same time.

“Yeah, when.  These guys are gonna be loud, stupid, and you’re going to piss them off.  Karen, report.”

Across the courtyard, Karen cut herself off mid sentence, another comically effective power play, and raised a hand.  “Excuse me.”  She said politely, turning her head slightly to communicate with the group.  “They are open to negotiations.  I am unsure if they have captives, but I would estimate no.  Euphrates doesn’t seem to know why they began their infiltration experiments either, and if nothing else, we may be able to turn him personally.  In fact, I am not sure if he represents their entire organization, or just a splinter faction.  He is nervous.”

“Good.  Keep talking.  You’ve got five minutes to wrap this up.”

“Understood.”  Karen turned back.  “My apologies for the interruption.  Let’s discuss lines of communication…”

James tuned them out again, and cast his attention wide.  The courtyard was seeing more foot traffic, and he dutifully picked out each one of them with his identification to check if they were an immediate threat.  Students and the business crowd, a few contractors, nothing that stood out to him.  He tried his best to keep up with Sarah’s cheerful small talk, realizing halfway through that he probably was doing a better job convincing people he was in an exhausting relationship than a healthy one, but that it would be convincing enough all the same.

Then Dave deployed more bad news.  “Yo.  Police cars are all headed your way.”

“All?”  Three people on the link asked at once.

“Everyone shut up.”  Nate ordered.  And then added, “Dave.  All?”

“Yeah, like, we can see eight of them.  Nine.  Shit, twelve.  Different city markings, too.  They’re from all over.  All headed… uh…!”  Dave’s link messages were a lot more in the moment expressive than most people’s.  A second later, he elaborated as to why he dropped off.  “Helicopter!  Came out of nowhere.  Almost hit us.  Pen’s fine. Cloak is still up.”

James snorted, and felt a sudden clarity in his bones.  He’d been trying to take a back seat to this, let other people who were more qualified make the calls.  James didn’t *want* to be a leader.  But right now, his instincts and common sense were howling at him from every direction that this was a stupid idea.  Right now, he was the qualified person.   “Alright, that’s it.”  He said.  “I’m calling it.  I want no part of this.  Everyone out.  Karen, wrap it up.”  He smiled at Sarah.  “Hey, you wanna get out of here?”  He spoke.

“Oh yeah.”  She sighed, moving to stand up.  “Thought you’d never… uh oh.”  Sarah froze, one hand still pushing herself up the table.  James followed her wide eyed line of sight to where another woman had just entered the courtyard.  Her long grey hair, braided with what looked like small knives tied into the ends, dropping like gravity had only just caught up with it.

She grinned as she stood up from her arrival point.  Where she’d fallen from the sky.  The woman - *old*, James realized, skin stretched over bones and a birdlike face - brushed off the patchwork coat she was wearing

The glasses said *nothing* about her.

“Euphrates!”  The woman cried in a voice that sounded like an enthusiastic grandmother greeting her favorite child, the kind of voice that didn’t overwhelm with volume, but that everyone always heard clearly.  “Time to die!”

“Alanna.  Get Karen out now.  This is *not* our problem.”  James said, trying to keep calm.  “Nate, we need…” He paused.  The connection was down to Nate, half of team two, and everyone else.  “Sarah?”

“Reading.”  She sent back.  “Let’s run like hell.”

“Good call.”  James stood and turned, mildly alarmed that the Wolfpack girl had vanished, and found himself facing down a cobblestone path out of this mess that was currently occupied by four angry looking men with angrier looking guns.

“Alchemist!”  The foremost, and largest, one yelled.  “You fucking gypped us and we’re here to collect!”

“Mister Moyer.”  A soft, deadly dark voice of a man said suddenly as one of the CIA agents stepped out of the cover of a doorway, pistol leveled at the militia.  “I have some questions you are uniquely situated to answer.”

“Absolutely fuck this.”  James said out loud, pulling out his telepad.  Across the courtyard, Alanna slapped a hand on Karen’s shoulder and did the same.  They tore their pages at the same time.

Vanished.

James had a brief vision of a wall of burning grey flames.  Solid, smooth, and entirely uninterested in offering him passage.  The light and fire didn’t hurt, but it did *deny*.  The vision lasted only a brief moment, barely enough to even be sure it was real, before he smashed back into reality.

Sarah reappeared next to him.  Across the courtyard, Alanna and Karen reappeared as well, only a tiny wisp of pale grey fire following them back.

“Get me out of here!”  The Alchemist was screaming at his bodyguard, the Nobel already moving to screen against the number of people who had apparently decided *now* was the time to take a run at his employer, two more of the mercenaries visible rushing toward them on one of the nearby flat commercial rooftops.

“No one’s going anywhere.  We’ve got questions too.”  James heard a young woman’s voice say, cracking with nervous panic as she yelled.  Looking past the clocktower, over to an outdoor table between a chocolatiers and a tiny art supply store, he saw the young students; one of the boys standing behind the other two, arms outstretched, a grey radiation the same color as what had cratered their telepad attempt seeping out into the ground.  The other two held swords and bucklers, and James instantly gave up on trying to figure out how dangerous the weapons were at a glance.  With high school students these days, they could be anything from theater props, to cheap crap they bought online, to actual ancestral magic blades pulled out of some underground vault.  That last one seemed likely, given how his day was going.

“I feel perhaps that I have chosen a poor time…” The old woman joked with a razor sharp grin on her kind face.  Her words were mostly eaten up as the yelling began and people did what people did best.

Made a chaotic mess of things.

“Alanna?!”  James flung over their link.

“All good.”  His partner replied.  “Telepad failed.  We need an out.”

“We can just make a run for the parking lot.  Nate’s gotta notice we’re cut off.”  Sarah said.

“It seems this man has some enemies.  This explains why Euphrates was so nervous.”  Karen said, somehow still looking completely unfazed by anything happening, ignoring the escalating shouting and threats of violence from just feet away from her.  “And why all these people are here.  I shouldn’t have doubted Nate’s people; they all tracked the Alchemist.  This could be worse.  We can still just walk away.  No one knows who *we* are.”

James nodded, even as the yelling and threats of violence escalated.  For all that half these people had brought guns, no one wanted to fire the first shot it seemed.  “Move toward us.”  He told them.  “We can-“

The sudden noise of sirens cut in, and James whipped his head around to see a thin membrane of grey peel back, like the parking lot was separated from them by an unnoticed wall.  Whatever the thing the kid was doing to keep them from teleporting, it didn’t seem to stop people coming *in*, and the noise of a half dozen different police and sheriff cars pulling up horizontal to the curb was enough to get some attention.

“Oh good!  The police are here!”  James yelled sarcastically.

And then, James realized something.

This was it.  This was exactly where he wanted to be.  There were five different groups in play, all mad at each other and not him, half of them had magic, one of them was some kind of immortal wizard that looked a bit like his grandma, and he was *prepared*.

That calm rush of cool understanding came back to him.  Through his link, he complied and shared a relative map of where everyone was and what their tactical objectives should be.  Get Karen out first, keep the kids safe, kneecap the militia if possible, get out alive, grab anything that looked even remotely useful.  This wasn’t a disaster.  This was an *opportunity*.  For that moment, he saw the world as Nate must have; risky, yes, but a risk that could catapult the Order’s strength forward.

Then, just as Sarah was ducking behind a brick column and Alanna was slyly handing Karen a backup shield bracer where they were crouched behind a row of bushes, James saw the *other* CIA agent raise her gun and shoot her partner in the back from through the window of the insurance office.

The gunshot and breaking glass silenced everything for a half second.

And then all hell broke loose.