The Daily Grind - Chapter 243 (Patreon)

“In the stories my people tell - the old ones, the ones that matter - the hero loses her mentor. She lives, grieves, and moves on to save the world. … It should have been me. Not her.  My hero is dead, and all she wanted, all she fought so hard for...was just a home. The simplest thing. The smallest.”  -Ajani Goldmane, Release-

_____

James popped his head around the corner of a small hallway.  The things spread like connective tissue through the building, linking up rented offices, public bathrooms, scattered vending machines, and stairwell access doors.  Currently, he, JP, and the two non-FBI agents following them were on the second floor,

There were six men and women in slacks and dress shirts just outside a pair of glass double doors, in the process of checking pistols and splitting up.  The web of hallways meant that they might not come this way, but James wasn’t going to bet on it.  “Six SQ agents.”  He pinged to JP.  Mostly uselessly, too, since JP was also watching his visual feed through the skulljack.  “Options?”

“Back off, avoid the stair and elevator spots, see if we can loop past them.”  JP offered.  “Seems unlikely though.  There must have been cameras coming through the stairs.”

“I didn’t see any.”  James was glad he couldn’t sound defensive over text.  “But they must have seen us coming in through the back.”

“There’s a lot of people coming in.  I doubt we’re a priority.”

“We shot their front desk guy.”

“Ruby and Prince shot their front desk guy.”  JP corrected.  “Also I bet it’s hard to keep track of teleporters in a fight like this.”

James gave a small nod, and dared to take another peek.  “Two, headed this way.  We need to be across the building to our left, right?”

“Going off what we got, yeah, there’s an ‘urgent care office’ there that the victims got taken into.”  JP sighed in physical space, before adding, “Tell whoever’s job it is to hurry up making or growing or whatever a proper map HUD for these things.”

“Sure.”  James rolled his eyes, and then shot a look at the duo pretending to be FBI agents and switching to talking out loud.  “Alright.  That way.  We’re gonna circle around to get to where they took your friends, find them, then teleport out.”  There was an impact from what felt like directly over them, hard enough that bits of dust shook loose from the lightweight white ceiling tiles and the building felt like it rattled.  “If we move fast, we can avoid that.”  He added, pointing up.  “Zhu.  Wake up.”

“How are you doing that?”  The male mimic, Ruby, asked with curiosity, looking between James and JP.  “And how are you doing that?!”  The second question was asked with a little more concern as Zhu’s feathery form of orange light and avian eyes unfolded from James’ shoulder and left arm, dusty illuminated smoke rippling down to create a body for the navigator.

“Magic cybernetics, and magic… uh… friendship.”  James answered.

“I am a separate order of morphology, I am not made of friendship.”  Zhu sounded exasperated.  Though he did add, “But also, we are friends.  Now go this way.  As of mapping, there is one conflict between you and your goal.”

“Great.”  James said flatly, checking his gun’s magazine and watching as the others did the same.  “JP and I in front.  You two watch our backs, don’t fire if you’re more than three feet behind us.”

“Why?”  Prince demanded in that sharp and direct voice of hers.

James took a deep breath, trying to focus through the knowledge that he was about to get shot at.  “Shields.  Going out is fine, going in is bad.  Limited uses.  And it looks like everyone in this fucking building is using nine mil, which is a huge oversight.”

“Oh, is that all?”  She held up her gun and seemed to glare at it, and there was a soft ripple around the object.  Like a soap bubble about to pop.  And then it settled in, and the gun slowly changed, blotches of it becoming something else.  “There.  Different caliber.”

“Oh.  Uh… yeah, okay.”  James titled his head in the universal gesture for someone who should have seen that coming.  “Well don’t shoot me.  Let’s move.”

The group started moving in the direction of the hall that Zhu pointed James down, and James instantly realized how weird it was working with people he hadn’t been training with.  JP moved two steps back from him, on his left, the man checking the doors they rapidly moved past just in case.  They gave each other exactly enough space, and when they reached the first intersection, they checked each side in unison.  In contrast, Ruby and Prince walked too close behind him, and James had no instinctive idea what they were doing.

It didn’t matter, they had other problems.  Though he did indicate they should keep more distance, he wasn’t sure if they’d listen.

The hallway they were coming up on was the main hall for this floor, the backbone with the elevators.  They needed to cross it, and then there was just a quick left turn to get where they were going.  But James and JP’s quick check showed that there were twenty people out there, spread across each direction, and it didn’t look like they were preparing to head down.

He listened to their chatter for a few seconds.  The elevators were out, they were saying, and they needed to get upstairs, there was some kind of monster attacking.  James gave a bitter smirk thinking about Camille’s ongoing rampage, though he absolutely wanted to be out of here before meeting either of the sisters.  Last time, it took focused relationstick powers from twenty people to let him almost injure one of them, and this time, they hadn’t had time to gather those people, and also there were no communications out anyway.

Then he had a stupid idea.  “I just remembered we’re not in armor.  Walk like you mean it.”  He ordered the others.

Then he dropped one hand to his side to hold his pistol against his leg, straightened his back, let Zhu slip under his clothing, and then stepped out of cover.  Walking with purpose toward the other side of the wide hall, like he owned the place.

“Shit.”  JP said, and moved to follow, slapping a scowl on his face like he was annoyed at the person in front of him.  A good scowl in situations like this was worth a lot.  People didn’t want to get in the way of a scowl.  “Come on.”  He muttered to the others, and was annoyed to see in his peripheral vision that they weren’t walking right.  Too nervous.  JP knew how to lie in his walk, and James just used whatever bullshit confidence he’d found in himself to overpower the situation, but the two new additions would be what gave it away, if anything.

James felt like every one of the Status Quo agent’s eyes were on him as he walked across the hall, though logically he knew that not all of them would be looking at him.  He didn’t even glance their direction.  Either this worked or it didn’t.

It was only about ten steps, and then he back in the cover of the side hall’s walls and the mass produced abstract wall art that covered them.  JP was right behind him, and then their two new friends hurried to catch up.

Maybe they hurried a little too fast.

The shout from behind them was short, and quickly went quiet.  No sense letting someone you’d noticed know you were onto them.  “Shit.”  James said as he heard running footsteps coming up behind them.

“Your plan was shit!”  Ruby yelled at him as he fired a trio of shots at the corner, causing whoever was following them to jerk back but also absolutely ruining any chance that someone would think that this was just a misunderstanding.

Footsteps turned into shouts, and then a muffled quiet, while JP grabbed Ruby’s collar - which James tried not to think of as skin in the moment - and yanked him forward.  The hall didn’t end, but it did have a T intersection coming up that was their goal, and James knew from years of power walking though hostile office environments exactly how long it would take them to reach that corner.

Then, between a beige padded bench and a square pot that held a fake plant that was somehow dying anyway, the door to one of the small office spaces opened.  And ahead of them, a woman holding an axe and crackling with small sparks stepped out ahead of their group.

“Oh come on!”  JP bemoaned loudly.

James spoke fast, words running into each other.  “I don’t suppose there’s any chance that you’re not with the - shit.”  None of his shield bracers were set for axe, and the woman’s eyes locked onto them with a violent intent only a second before she rushed them.  James ducked the first swipe, a brutally efficient swing that stopped on a dime after it was clear it hadn’t hit him, and then sprang up inside her guard, trying to connect with a punch while she was out of position.

It didn’t work.  The agent let go of her hold on the shaft of her weapon, grabbed it in a reverse grip, and slammed her own loaded fist back at James’ face.  The encounter quickly turned into a rapid sequence of traded blows, both of them moving faster than humans were normally supposed to, though James was pretty sure he had the advantage there.  What he didn’t have an advantage in was in raw durability, as evidenced when he did manage to connect a hook into the side of her neck, and didn’t do more than rustle the collar of her dress shirt.  It also left James with his hand tingling from an electric shock, but he was pretty sure from the mild surprise on her focused face that it was supposed to hurt him more than that.

Then she knocked him off guard, and twisted her axe around in a downward chop, which was stopped only by a mix of Zhu catching it and her having to reposition to handle JP coming in from the side.  His human friend body-checking her and yelping at the sparks while the navigator caught the weapon at an inhuman angle, before JP took advantage of the short space created to shoot her twice.  In the legs, JP wasn’t aiming to kill, but still.

It didn’t do anything, except for rattle James a little even through his ear protection.  At most, it knocked her back a few steps.  “Okay!”  He said.  “That is really unfair that-!”  He didn’t get to finish as the people at the far end of the hallway started shooting in their direction, at least a few bullets being deflected by his bracer.  James wasted an impulsive second checking how many charges he had left, and didn’t like that it was under thirty.

Behind them, the two mimics took cover behind the open office door and started shooting back at the agents down the hall, none of whom were particularly bothered.  James would have taken the time to be irked about how none of these people seemed to be bothered by being shot, but he was busy trying to not get chopped in half.

“So, we’re here because you guys kidnapped some people!”  He yelped out as he rolled over a rapid slice, the broad head of the weapon almost catching his pants before JP kicked the woman’s arm and stopped a followup strike.  “You seem pretty cool, wanna be the anime trope where we beat you in a fight, and then you become our friend?”

“Stop talking.”  The woman said, flicking something out of a pocket inside of her sleeve and popping it in her mouth.

JP shifted to the side, flanking her with James, both of them aware that this was wasting time and they couldn’t afford to get surrounded.  “We could go another way.  The whole office attire barbarian look is really hot, if you want - hurgkh!“ In response to JP’s attempt at flirting, the woman mule kicked him back into the potted plant, keeping her eyes on James as she dismissed JP as a threat and whipped her axe back into position.  With James hemmed in by the hallway, he wasn’t in a good position to dodge.

So he didn’t.  Instead, going off a rough outline of a plan he and JP were throwing at each other over their link, he leaned on [Move Person], and brought his friend up right at the woman’s flank as she lifted her weapon.

And JP stabbed her.  It took him some effort, but his sudden appearance and the element of surprise meant he had time to get his knife up to her throat, and pull hard back against the woman’s dense skin.  Hard enough that it was a surprise when after he drew blood, the rest of the blade followed in a sudden jerking motion.  He kept his grip as the enemy agent stumbled back, the blade ripping out with a wet tearing that sprayed blood out of her throat onto the carpet, her hands dropping the axe, eyes going wide as she leaned forward and stared up at them.

“Oh shit.”  JP whispered to himself.  He wasn’t used to this.  He wasn’t some professional killer.

James wasn’t either.  But he also wasn’t in the mood for charity for someone who was acting as door guard for a bunch of kidnappers.  So he kicked her in the chest and sent her sprawling to the ground, still trying to hold her blood in.  Maybe she’d make it, James didn’t care, what mattered was she was out of the way.  “Let’s go!”  He ordered everyone, flinching as another bullet hit his shield.  “Now!”

Behind them, barely respecting the suppressive fire Prince and Ruby were putting down, Status Quo agents started approaching.  Taking cover behind doors or the furniture that lined the hallway, but mostly just shooting back.  Some of those offices, James realized, weren’t Status Quo’s.  Most of this building was, but there were legitimate civilians here, and the screams of panic he could hear were legitimate.

Then, as they approached the corner, James got a fantastic message from over his skulljack.  “Almost there.  Coming up the stairs.”

At the other end of the hall, a door was flung open, and two people stepped out.  James and his group were running now, and he had to yell at Ruby to not shoot at Alex, as the four of them made it to the turn in the hall they needed.  Shoving the mimics first, covering them from being shot with their bracers, James and JP followed rapidly.  There were two men waiting for them around the corner, and James was shooting before he really processed that he was supposed to be getting ambushed.  The bullets didn’t kill them, just knocked them around, but he was pretty good at putting bullets where he wanted them to go, and emptying his magazine twice into one of the guards was basically the same as pinning him to the wall with rabbit punches, by which point James had advanced enough to actually just punch the guy until he dropped.

“Okay.”  He was breathing hard and fast.  “This door?”

“This door.” JP nodded, adjusting his collar.  “Take a breath.  You two okay?”

“Less talking!  We need to move, they’ll be right behind us!”  Prince snapped at him.

James didn’t laugh, because he didn’t have the energy.  “No.  We’ve got cover.”  He said.

As if on cue, a roaring ball of plasma flashed past where they’d just left the hallway.  Then, a second later, another three in a perfect spread pattern.  The sound was like a thunderclap in the confined space, overwhelming James’ ear protection briefly.  He wondered if the mimics had some kind of magical hearing, or if that had just really hurt.

Behind them, the gunshots stopped.  And then the sound of screaming intensified.  “We’ve got you covered.”  Alex’s message across their link came.  “Get ‘em and get out.”

“Thanks.”  James messaged back, a perverse part of his brain feeling like he should say more than that.  Or at least say something cooler.  That would have been a good time for an “Acknowledged.” Or something.

Neither knowing nor caring about James’ badly timed social anxiety, JP shoved open the doors to the fake urgent care office, and led them in, gun up.  The place was empty, just a front waiting room with too-bright lights, and a dominating multi-person desk flanked by two doors that led to presumably back exam rooms.  Despite being empty, though, there were signs that at least some people had left in a hurry recently.  One of the phones was dangling over the front of the desk, the boxy plastic base hanging by a cord as the handset lay on the floor.  Papers were scattered on the floor, slowly being pushed by the air conditioning.  And one of the back doors was ajar.

Not a soul in sight.  It was, after running into a dozen Status Quo agents just walking around the hallways, unsettling.  James noted with an eye to design sensibilities as they moved in that the benches and chairs were set up so there were straight lines to the back of the office; a poor use of the space if you actually expected people to wait, but excellent if you were planning on bringing captives through and basically nothing else.

“Probably out looking for us.”  James commented.  Though he wasn’t sure if he believed that.

“Or the Cams.  Or any of the fifty other people here today.”  JP mused.  “Left or right?”

“Left.”  Zhu spoke authoritatively from James’ arm.  “Because the other one is sealed and it would take more explosives than we have to breach it.  Also I don’t like this.”

“Left it is.”  James reasoned that if the door was ajar, it was less likely to be locked or trapped.  “You two doing okay?”  He asked the pair of fake feds following them.

“I’m not used to being shot at this much.”  Ruby commented, trying to sound bold and casual about it but giving up the game when his hands shook as he smoothed out his hair.  “I’m good.  Didn’t get hurt enough stop me.  Prince?  Hey?”

“Hm?”  The woman looked up after a second of delay.  “Oh.  Me.  I’ve been hit.”  She held out her arm that had a nasty looking hole in it, the false organic nature of her jacket revealed as the sleeve bled.  “I’ll live.”

“We can teleport you out.”  James offered.

She shook her head.  “It doesn’t matter.  I don’t need the arm, and no offense, but we don’t have the same priorities here.”

“Fair enough.  Let’s move.”  James stepped up to the door, JP taking the other side.  Both of them kept their guns drawn and angled forward.  With a glance and a nod, James kicked the door and swung it inward, while JP crossed in front of him with his gun up and James followed to cover the other side.

Again he got a reminder that their new allies weren’t good at this, when they just walked in side by side, but that was the least of his worries when he realized what they’d just walked into.

James hadn’t actually been expecting a doctor’s office. He wasn’t sure what he expected, but despite the camoflauge of the waiting room’s rows of chairs and bad lighting, he knew that any space where a Status Quo esque group was taking prisoners wasn’t going to be good.  Still, despite being prepared for some kind of weird surprise, it actually did catch James off guard to be walking into a prison.

And not just a prison, but what appeared to be the lower level of a prison with at least three floors overhead. Metal railings and cells with iron bars formed into a cylinder, with wide hallways that had space for ramps leading up or down at three points on every level.  Then James realized that even this level had a railing in the middle instead of a solid floor.  They weren’t even on the ground floor.  Though he wasn’t sure if the other floors had the massive vault-like door on the far side that this one did; a goliath of hardened steel and concrete that was presumably keeping something safe.

“James, we just lost your GPS.”  Alanna’s signature sent a text message his way as James and JP moved past the abandoned guard post.  “You alive?”

“Yeah.”  He sent back.  “We found… this.”  He opened up his visual feed, spending bandwidth to let the others see what he and JP were looking at.  It was hard to find the words to describe the place.  Because through the red emergency lighting and the sharp angle, it wasn’t hard to see that some of the cells here were full of people.

“Well fuck me.”  Ruby’s warbling voice breathed out.  “How are we supposed to find them in this?”

“We’re not.”  James said with a frosty conviction.  “We’ll get them all out, and sort it out later.  Anyone see any-“ a bullet pinged off the lines of the dome of light his shield bracer threw up at the last second to keep him safe.  “-guards.  Dammit.”  James didn’t even bother taking cover, he just lined up his pistol on the second level where the shot had come from, and when the Status Quo prison guard popped his head out again, James triggered his gun bracelet and pulled hard on his aim enhancement, and put three bullets into the man’s skull.

It still didn’t kill him, which was getting a little weird, but if that didn’t give a guy a headache and buy them some breathing room, James wasn’t really sure what he was supposed to do.

Behind him, JP was making plans.  “We’re gonna need an exit for… oh, shit, I dunno.  Thirty people or so?  And this place is warped somehow, it cannot fit in the building.  Keep them off us for a little bit while we work.  Any updates on the others?”

While he plotted, James stepped up to the railing and looked down.  Two more levels below them, two more above.  They needed to get moving.  And none of the prisoners were even reacting to the gunfire, or their presence.  Everyone was just… idling.  He looked at the few occupied cells on their level, and saw people just staring at the walls, or laying on cots unmoving.  Still breathing, still alive, but like they were in a daze.

With a focused effort through his skulljack, James accessed the USB stick that stored internet connection, and from there, got into a certain emergency supply email address the Order used.  He had a few ideas on how to get people out, but [Move Person] had limited charges, and even if it didn’t, James and JP had a limit to how much use of it they could withstand.  So instead, James opened a few attachments, and started grabbing strips of thermite out of the air as they appeared.

“Our backup is falling back to the medical office.”  JP reported to James as he collected tools to rip open cell doors.  “We can collect people there.”

“Alright.  I look forward to this plan falling apart.”  James handed him a rope of thermite.  “Let’s get to work.  And I hope things are a little less chaotic outside.”

The look JP gave him was expected, but still a little worrying.

_____

Frequency-Of-Sunlight was, technically, in the kind of danger that Deb had really really nicely asked her to stop putting herself in.  Though, also technically, Deb hadn’t really asked; she’d just sort of heavily implied it, and then hugged Sunny, and then one thing had led to another and that conversation never got finished exactly.

Assuming she survived, there was probably going to be a much harsher version of that conversation.  Her girlfriend wasn’t exactly happy with her drive to really earn her knight title.  Right now, though she was staring at an incoming grenade, and trying to solve a puzzle.

It wasn’t clear who had thrown or fired it, but once the shooting started, the screams of the civilians in the area had escalated.  Sunny’s team had been sent in from the reserve to get as many people out as possible; Nate had given them clear orders to not bother checking if someone was Status Quo or not; if people were leaving the fight, let them.  And they’d arrived just in time to funnel twenty panicked people away from where someone in the target building kept blowing up cars.

Then there’d been an explosion from the third floor; part of a wall and a window vanishing in a cloud of smoke and debris, tiny chunks of concrete and plaster raining down around them.  She didn’t really remember who called it, but someone saw the second grenade coming in, and Frequency-Of-Sunlight had stopped it in midair while her teammates shoved and cajoled everyone into the parking structure that offered a lot more protection from errant bullets.

One of the screaming office workers, a girl who reminded Frequency-Of-Sunlight a lot of Alex actually, had clipped her on the side when running past.  It wasn’t much, but it jolted the camraconda’s view just enough that she’d ‘blinked’.

Now she was staring at a grenade that was quite a lot closer to her head than she’d wanted.  And inside her shield bracer range too, not that she even knew what to set it to for this.  The grenade was olive green and kind of oblong, and it had some writing on the side that was upside down right now.  What did you tell a shield bracer to make it stop that?  She hadn’t even gotten a chance to yell ‘red light’ at it, which meant she couldn’t be amused as she stared with deliberate care at the object of her doom.

Sunny focused.  She needed to get away.  A quick check with her teammates through the skulljack showed that they’d gotten most of the people clear, and there was no one near her.  Actually that was bad on its own; a single camraconda half in the open was a target.  It took her teammates too long to reply, too; humans were too slow on the skulljack interface.

“How big of an explosion do these make?”  She asked to anyone listening, sending an image.  “I don’t want to get blown up again.”

Nate answered her in his ploddingly slow text three seconds later.  “Fifteen meters safe distance.”

Too far for [Move Person].  But not if she wasn’t the only one using it.  She relayed her rapid thought to her team, and then counted down on their channel before shoving herself backward.  As soon as she did, the grenade plinked off the sidewalk, and she found her perspective jerked again as she was moved, and then moved once more, the light shifting as one final jolt pulled her into the interior of the parking structure.

Outside, the grenade exploded, but the only casualty was a bed of azaleas.

“Thanks.”  She told her teammates, projecting the word into her physical voice as she reflexively hissed out a sight of relief.  Then she tilted her head slightly as she focused on a second message.  “Unconfirmed civilian has been shot on the east side of the combat zone.  We are closest.  Shall we?”  The question was an invitation, but also she was already moving, and trusting the others to follow.

The ground was a little rough on her cables, and she had to really push to move as fast as a sprinting human, but Frequency-Of-Sunlight believed in leading by example.  And right now, their job was to make sure no one died if they could help it.  At least, not outside the building.  Inside, she was sure, was a picture of chaos.

_____

“Fuck.”  Was the first thing Nate said when their communications went down.  Followed by a much louder “Fuck!”  And then a series of attempts at increasingly creative swears that didn’t really amount to much.

He and Ben weren’t the last two here, but they were close.  There was one more rapid reaction team, but it was pretty much just Ethan and his Winter’s Climb crew, which meant that they were a last resort.  Nate would deploy into the field himself before he sent them; they were kids who had a problem killing actual dungeon monsters, they weren’t prepared mentally or skillfully to be fighting humans.

Though they did know their Mountain.  Nate still found actually having magic fucking weird, especially the kind that made him feel chilled to the bone to use it, but having the option for a moment of invulnerability, or potentially setting someone on fire from twenty feet away, were both game changers.

Right now, though, he was busy swearing, while Ben and Planner tried to reestablish connections.  “I can still feel them.”  Planner stated.  “Communication at range is… challenging for me, on this scale.  But I could speak to single people.”

“Testing something.”  Ben said, then he tore a slip of paper and vanished.  Twenty seconds later, the friend was back with an unhappy look on his face.  “Telepads in and out work.  Magic works.  It’s electronic jamming, and it’s absolutely magic bullshit, because they’ve got comms up inside it.  Alanna is taking command.”

Nate folded his arms and stared at the series of camera feeds Planner was projecting for them.  He took a deep breath and let it out through his nose.  What he wanted to say was to demand a skulljack braid, and get in there himself to make sure everything ran smoothly.  But… there whole point of having an operator here was to feed information to the others.  Jumping in wouldn’t solve the problem.  “Planner, focus on Alanna if you can.”  He ordered.  “Ben and I will point out anything you need to bring to her attention.”

“Yes, sir.”  Planner was always uncomfortably deferent to Nate, and it made the man’s teeth itch.

He didn’t correct the informorph this time though.  “What’s the situation look like?”

Ben grimaced, sitting back down and flicking his eyes across a dozen viewpoints.  “We’ve got all the exterior cameras, and everything from the other two buildings, plus street cams.  But the building Status Quo are using doesn’t have anything on a wireless network; we know they’ve got internal cams though.  That street gang made the back of the building under fire, three people down, Frequency-Of-Sunlight is retrieving them now.  The building has a semi-circle of exploded cars that are still on fire now, because someone lacks restraint or target prioritization.  James found a spatially contorted prison facility, and picked up new friends.  And it looks like he’s in the clear because Status Quo seems to be mobilizing everyone to try to stop the two Camilles.”

At the last one, Ben made a physical and mental gesture to Planner, and the infomorph enlarged a video feed from a commandeered traffic camera that was now aimed in the direction of the office complex.  The quality was poor, to say the least, but Ben rewound it to just after the two sisters had breached the third floor, and Nate winced as he mentally counted casualties through the windows.

Platemail had gone out of fashion for a reason; enough metal to stop a bullet was enough metal to just build a tank.  But despite wearing gear out of style for a hundred years, neither Camille seemed to care about the gunfire sent their way.  The first blast that rattled Nate’s teeth through the camera and took out a chunk of the building also failed to stop either of them as they punched through the growing ranks of defenders and deeper into the building.  He was pretty sure one of them had slapped a grenade out of the air.

And when they did hit someone, that person tended to stay down.  Both women were carrying maces that looked more like chunks of rebar than real weapons, and durable or not, the agents weren’t giving them much trouble.  Not from what Nate could see at least.

“That’s going to be a problem.”  He heard himself mutter.  “Where’s the map of the building?”  Nate asked openly.

Ben fumbled for a second, while Planner just reached over to the desk with a grasping hand and pulled up the blueprint they had unrolled there.  “Here.”  The infomorph held it up against the main board, and then made a scribbling noise like they were deep in thought, before dropping glowing points of light around where they knew people were.

“The sisters went in the third floor, but where are they going?”  Nate asked.  “What’s the orientation of that camera, did we see where they left that outer room?”

“I can follow them across to… here?”  Ben said, and looked up, raising an arm to point to a spot on the blueprint.  “No, that… dammit, I’m not a cartographer.  Or an architect.  We should have kept James… here.”  He pointed to one of the doors more certainly this time.  “Why?”

“They’re headed into the building.  It wouldn’t surprise me if Status Quo has all sorts of secrets they’re hiding, but let’s skip to the part where we know they’re going to intercept team one.”

Ben stared at the map, then the replay of the swath of destruction the girls had left, on loop again.  “Fuck.”  He muttered.  “Planner, can you stop… wait, sorry.”  Ben turned back to one of his computers and reset the video himself to a live feed.  “So, what are we supposed to do?  Pull them out now?  It’s safest.”

Long ghostly teal tentacles and hands shifted around the room, forming a frame as Planner spoke.  “They have found prisoners.”  The infomorph stated.  “We can’t abandon them.  They won’t have a second chance.”

“We won’t have a second chance if this goes bad.  We’re banking on no one being ID’d, and being able to get out clean, otherwise we’ll be on the back end of this shit again.”  Nate growled.  “It would be easier if shooting them killed them.”

“We have yet to try higher calibers?”  Planner suggested.

“Good point.  Ethan!”  Nate barked at the team leader, who flinched in a way that reinforced Nates thought that the kid wasn’t ready.  “Armory! Get me a rifle!”

“What…”

“M24, full load, mundane bullets if that’s a thing we have to give a fuck about now. Move.”  Nate’s voice didn’t really invite argument.

Ethan snapped off a salute, the kid who’d been big enough to play football not even five years ago in high school suddenly looking quite small.  “Yes sir!”  He practically squawked as he bolted off.

“You’re going in?”  Ben asked, starting to clear space on the table between them.

“You have a problem with- what are you doing?”

Ben pointed to the things he was pulling up from under the desk.  “Hardening, reflexes, incorprit- incorapal- ghost potion, exercise for if you need to run.”  He tapped a series of color coded flasks on a belt.  “Skulljack braid for linking up when you’re in the AO.  Switch your shirt to this one, it makes you harder to notice and I already had it fit for you.”

“…” Nate wanted to make a comment, but he was caught completely off guard.  “Not gonna tell me to not murder people?”

“We barely know anything about these people, but all the evidence is that they’re a different copy of the group your… our records have some pretty extensive notes on.  Mostly cause you stole all their archives.  Nate, what the fuck do you think those people would do to me if they found out I was even alive?”

Nate shrugged.  “Hadn’t thought about it.”

“They don’t say it, but they’re just human supremacists.  Not just that, but mundane supremacists.  Baseline or bust.  And, like all Nazis, they’re hypocrites, because it’s fine if they use magic to get what they want.”  Ben took a shaking breath, he hadn’t realized how angry he was.  “James is worried about our friends getting hurt, you’re worried about us getting tagged and followed home, you know what I’m worried about?  I’m worried that you’re wasting time not changing your damn shirt, because there’s people who need a bullet in the skull, and you’re inexplicably a better shot than James is.”

There was a moment when Ben was worried that the human was going to litigate his use of the word Nazi.  But then, abruptly, Nate gave a tiny incline of his head, and started unbuttoning his shirt, revealing a barrel chest of hair and concealed tattoos before he grabbed the dungeontech that Ben was offering him and slung it on.  Ben was mildly impressed that Nate got dressed faster than anyone he’d ever seen, a weirdly niche skill put to work here as the man strapped the belt of potions on, and spent the most time awkwardly trying to clip a skulljack braid into an augment that he was still new to.

Then Ethan arrived with his weapon, and Nate took it from the panting young man’s hands, mechanically checking every part of it.  “Got any messages I should pass on?”

“Planner’s working on the important stuff.  Keep an eye out for that one guy in a suit that snuck in the back door?”  Ben said.

“They’re all wearing suits.”  Nate refrained from rolling his eyes, that wasn’t his style.  But he still put some disdain in his voice.

Ben scoffed at him.  “He had a nice suit.  Three button jacket, perfect cuffs, lapel roll to two, it’s a good suit.  And he looks like a fucking model in it, Nate.  I look like what people want to see and I don’t look that good.”

“What the fuck is happening here?”  Nate muttered as he grabbed the telepad and yanked it, putting him on top of building one of the office complex.

Ben stared at where the man had vanished from.  “Just trying to lighten the mood.”  He sighed, turning back to stare at video feeds and watch for unforeseen crises.  “And some asshole gave me a suit skill orb.  Also it’s a nice suit.”  He stopped muttering as he realized Ethan and Marlea were staring at him with worried looks.  “Ahem.  Planner, can you relay to Alanna that there’s a group of civilians sheltering on floor two of the target building here?”  He pointed to what he hoped was the right office.  “Send Frequency-Of-Sunlight and her team to get them out.”

“Right away.”  The infomorph said.  And then, adding in a quiet voice while they split their focus, added, “I, too, would be undesirable in their perfectly normal world.”

“Yeah.”  Ben muttered.  “Well.  Good thing we’ve got Nate, and a series of progressively larger guns.”

“They have guns too.”

“They don’t have Nate though.”

_____

“There’s fire trucks approaching from the freeway.”  Momo’s text over to Alanna was about six seconds ahead of Planner’s voice whispering the same thing to her.  One message from a girl high in the sky in the larger of the two paper dragons, the other from an infomorph relaying from a guy who’d hacked every traffic camera in the US.

Alanna processed the information, then sent a request for clarification.  “No police?”

“Nope.”  Momo shot back instantly.  “Police scanner doesn’t show them riled up about anything either.  It’s like they just don’t know.”

“Cool.”  Alanna grunted as she followed Myles in a crouch walk around an inside wall of the parking structure.  After she’d taken a shot at the guy with the car-exploding spell, her position had been the next point the Status Quo agents that weren’t occupied had focused on.  Now she and Myles were moving to another spot, where Alanna would mostly hunker down and try to direct the fight without getting shot at.

Being shot at was terrifying.

Even with the shield bracers, there was no promise that you were set to block the right kind of bullet, or that you had charges left, or that you wouldn’t get caught by a grenade or something.  And Alanna was really, really durable, but when her brain had caught up to the noises like wasps taking chunks out of the concrete around her head, she’d realized that someone was trying to murder her, and she’d almost dropped into a panic state.

Humans weren’t meant for this.  It was different in a dungeon fight; things there were more honest about how they tried to kill you.  Or her time in Response, because most people just didn’t want to hurt anyone at all, really, not once you got them talking.  This was different.  And terrifying.  And she was having a hard time focusing on any word aside from terrifying, which she’d thought six or seven times now.

But Alanna’s secret weapon was that she was also fucking furious at these assholes, and right now, that was getting her through.  She’d talk to James about dealing with PTSD later, after the trigger happy wizard police were gone.

Risking a peek out of the parking garage, she saw a group of people running across the target office’s rooftop, and they didn’t look like they were armed.  Using her rifle scope to take a closer look, it became clear they were civilians, and she had a brief spike of fresh anger that Status Quo had just taken over half of a building and let everyone else keep using the rest of it like it was normal.  It made it really hard to just, for example, demolish the whole thing in a fireball.

“Davedragon.  Panicking civilians on the roof.  Get them out of there please.  Calmly.”  Alanna sent.

“Do not call us that.”  Dave and Pendragon sounded exasperated in a way that Alanna knew was all on the big girl and not on her human friend.  Dave didn’t really express exasperation.  “Descending now.”

“Team four.  Watch for anyone taking shots at Pendave.  Call it, but don’t fire back.”  Alanna sent to Bea’s group.  She could trust the inhabitor to keep calm.  “Does anyone have eyes on James?”

“I’m inside a magical prison, no one should see me.”  James sent back.

Alanna wanted to quip with him.  But she crammed that urge down.  It would make her feel better, it would help her be less afraid of instant death in the form of a stray bullet, and it would certainly just be fun.  But there was more going on that she had to focus on.  Sort of.

For all that there was gunfire nearby, and a half dozen different groups throwing themselves into the fray, the Order wasn’t really in it.  The most contact they’d made were Alex and Smoke-And-Ember laying down cover for James and his cadre.  And those two had already backed off, staying out of range of a flank and drawing away half the agents anyway.

Part of Alanna’s brain wondered if JP had made a mistake, and this wasn’t actually a Status Quo cell, or sect, or whatever they were called.  But it was hard to argue with the way their agents had a shoot-first-question-maybe-later policy.  If the kidnapping and creepy prison facility wasn’t enough evidence, that would at the very least tip her toward not trusting them.

“Problem.”  James sent across the link, and Alanna tensed up as she followed Myles around a corner and up a ramp to find a new vantage point.  “The prisoners are inert.”

“Dead?”  She sent back.

“Not moving.”  JP clarified.  “They’re alive, their eyes are open and they’re breathing, but they aren’t reacting to anything and fuck shit incoming.“  His message ended in abrupt profanity.

Alanna considered what their options were as James and JP flagged themselves as in combat.  Then she tapped Myles on the shoulder.  “We’re moving in.  Get Yin.”  She ordered.  Alanna checked something rapidly with Planner and a few other viewpoints.  And then  over her skulljack connection to everyone in the area, sent out a broad command.  “All teams not helping civilians or in the air, prepare to telepad to building rear entrance.  Potion and orb precombat use now.  Get ready.”

She nervously flicked a thumb across the battle rifle she was carrying as Yin came running up to them.  “R-ready.”  The girl announced, saluting like she’d been conscripted.

“You two can sit this one out.  I know you’re not fighters.  Fuck, I’m not either, and I’ve literally been training for this.”  Alanna muttered.  But neither of them made any move to do anything except offer her a hand and a telepad.  “Alright.”  Alanna tried to keep her expression serious.  “Let’s go.  Make sure your bracers are set, okay?  I don’t wanna watch either of you die.”

“That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”  Yin commented brightly.

Alanna caught Myles giving the girl a very put upon look.  “You had the worst childhood I’ve ever heard of, and I grew up Catholic.”  He grumbled.  Then, before Alanna could think too much about that dynamic, he tore their telepad on the countdown with the others, and they blipped into place just outside the building at the same point James had made his second entrance.

Slinging her rifle up to a shooting stance and dropping into a half crouch, Alanna moved to the front and kicked the door open.  “On me.  Let’s go.”  She said without preamble, a part of her watching the viewpoints of the others behind her as she walked in and swept across the hallway, stairs, and the package sorting room.

It felt a lot more comfortable going into a fight with a couple camracondas at her side, at least.

Time for Alanna’s least favorite hobby; bailing her boyfriend out of a fight.