The Daily Grind - Bonus Chapter 3 (Patreon)

And this one is between 124 and 125.  Book 5 will be out November 8th of this year, audiobook included.  Of course, Book 4 isn't even out yet, and that one comes out on May 7th.  Currently Book 4 is up for preorder.  Books 4 and 5 will close out the early arcs of the Akashic Sewer, Status Quo, and the worst day anyone in the Order has for a long time, and I'm really happy that I get to share them with you all again.

Thanks for reading, enjoy this bonus little delve.

_____

Alex felt deeply out of place sitting on the floor in the shadow of the massive stack of cubicles just inside the door to Officium Mundi.

Partly it was the dungeon itself.  It was a dungeon.  Like from a video game.  That was… stupid.  Deeply, intrinsically stupid, in a way that she hadn’t said out loud to anyone yet.  And even that was for a divided; she didn’t want to make any of the people who’d saved her life feel weird about it, but also it was still really cool.  In a stupid way though.

Who in their right mind would look at a place full of monsters and start thinking about how far into it they could go without dying?  Well.  Her, maybe.  Assuming she was still sane.  Alex couldn’t discount the possibility that she was in a coma somewhere and this was all an intense hallucination.  But even with the large assumption that it was real, at least the first time she’d been here it had been because she’d been technically kidnapped.

The first group, people like James and Alanna and Dave, they’d come in here on purpose.  Because it could be profitable, or empowering, or fun, the way they sometimes talked about it seemed so hard to grasp for Alex.  Like, she knew people did stupid shit for a good time; skydiving was on her own list of things to try eventually.  But she didn’t have ‘bare knuckle boxing match with a coffee machine’ on there, and it felt like some people here did, and that left her feeling a little too sane for this gathering.

So she was in a building that wasn’t really a building, inhuman architecture stretching off to a faraway horizon that wasn’t even a real horizon and made it look like they were on some kind of miniature ringworld.  She wasn’t sure if she even wanted to be part of this kind of action, but felt like it was one of the only real ways she could prove that she was meant to be here.  And to top all of that off, she’d joined up with a group that she didn’t have a single clue how to talk to.

”Oh good, you’re ready already.  Maybe?”  Simon’s voice made her look up from where she was staring out at a distant part of the landscape where it looked almost like there was static hanging over some of the cubicles.  She was pretty sure it was a flock of printer paper, though, which was a thought that just didn’t work in normal life.  Normal life that she’d left behind.  “Are you okay?”

Alex held a hand up and let her teammate for today pull her to her feet.  She felt doubly out of place going out with Simon and Other James, both because one of them was a half decade older than her, and also because she couldn’t tell if she was supposed to address them as one person or two.

She didn’t bring that up right now.  “Yeah, I’m fine.”  She said, dusting off the back of the fencing jacket someone had loaned her.  Not that there was any dust in here.  For a place that went untouched by anyone for months at a time, this dungeon was surprisingly fastidious.  “Being slowly choked out by my armor, but I’ll live.”

They hadn’t had an extra of the Kevlar and hard plastic riot armor sets that fit her, since some damage had ‘occurred’, according to Nate’s suspicious explanation.  So Alex was wearing that dull white fencing jacket and matching gloves, ensuring that no stapler was ever going to get close to biting into most of her body.  She also had her old soccer guards on over a pair of jeans, which was… not perfect, in a place where sometimes things spat lasers at you.  But they weren’t going anywhere today that should murder her outright.

It was a crime against fashion, though.  Not much of an issue here, as much as she normally did try to make a statement with what she wore that went beyond saying ‘I really didn’t want to get stabbed’.  Her look was completed by a shoulder bag with their medical supplies in it, a baseball bat tucked across the top of the pack’s loops, and Alanna’s shotgun in a long holster that sat across her back.

Alex felt like she was cosplaying a character from a post apocalypse movie, except one without a budget.

Simon just nodded at her, his own equipment equally weird.  Neither of them were actually that used to being armed, or outfitted like this at all, or around others that were the same.  But Simon and Other James had done it a lot more than she had.  This was only technically Alex’s third or fourth delve, while they’d been in here a dozen times each.

She followed Simon out to where Other James was waiting.  “Okay, I gotta know.”  Alex said as the trio did one last check of their stuff while they prepared to head through the line of cubicles and vanish into the grey jungle of Officium Mundi.

”Yeah?”  The two boys looked at her in unison.

Alex pointed at one of them.  ”Do I still call you Other James when you’re the only James in this dimension?”

Other James thought about it for a good thirty seconds.  “Nah.”  The broad shouldered man eventually settled on.  “I’ll get used to it, and then it’ll be weird when we’re back.”

”You’re way too understanding.”  Simon said with a snort, one tanned arm sticking out of the backpack he was quickly reorganizing.

”There’s always too many Jameses.”  Other James shrugged easily.  “We ready?”

Alex had one more question.  “You two sure you’re okay with me being here? I mean, shouldn’t this be Momo’s spot?”

Simon and Other James sighed in a single shared huff.  “Momo’s busy with… Momo stuff.”  Simon explained as he zipped up the pack and slung his arms through the straps, settling it onto his armored frame with a series of shifts.  “We mostly just go on our own now anyway.  You’re not gonna be in the way, just back us up and it’ll be fine.”

Alex wasn’t too close with Momo, but she did spend a lot of time around the Lair, so the description of ‘Momo stuff’ plucked a string of knowledge she’d absorbed over the last few months.  Small conversations overheard about weird Research requests, glimpses of someone who’d merged goth fashion with legitimately never sleeping, and occasional flashes of random information as a new red totem was put together and quickly broken again.  Alex knew what ‘Momo stuff’ meant.  Everyone did at this point.

”Cool.”  She said out loud, though without any enthusiasm.  And then there wasn’t much else to say that wouldn’t be an overt delay.  They were sort of on the clock; six hours to explore and accomplish the goals that Simon and Other James aimed for every week, and to pick up a few extra orbs for themselves on the way.  So Alex followed them toward where the forest of cubicles really started to grow from the floor.

She paused only briefly to turn back and look at the tower near the door.  Not to look up at its pinnacle; that was a headache, because it was way too tall to fit here under the ceiling and she didn’t need to be worrying about that right now.  Instead, she caught sight of Deb getting ready for her own exploration into this place, and waved a goodbye at her friend.

Deb waved back, and Alex smiled, a little extra spark buoying her as she turned and walked after the other delvers.  Stepping past the invisible line where the outer ring of carpet and drywall that looked like just a large office ended, and the infinite expanse of cubicles began.

Twenty steps in, and she may as well have vanished.

Being back here was still kinda terrifying.  But Alex swallowed that fear, and did her best to keep up.

_____

Exploring on the way to their destination had been kinda fun.  The trio had quickly worked out where they liked to be as they walked, and how they liked to fight.  Which was respectively with Alex bringing up the rear, and not much.

The thing that Alex hadn’t really realized about the dungeon was just how much combat didn’t need to happen.  The times she’d been in here before, especially while being rescued, it felt like something was always trying to kill her.  And to be fair, that did happen at least once, when something that looked like a computer mouse had darted out from under a desk to take a shot at electrocuting her foot.  But what also happened were a dozen different passive interactions.  Their group passing quietly by hermit crab computer towers and nests of living staplers without a problem.

Especially when they weren’t looking in every single cubicle, but instead following a map.  It was almost peaceful, except for all the tension.

But they still paused sometimes to look at interesting things.  A vending machine with the row of buttons stretching on for what felt like forever, a perfectly normal three thousand dollar laptop left sitting out before it went into someone’s bag, a hallway where printer paper grew like vines across their path and some sneaky staplers had woven strands of paperclip web across the path, a cubicle that was totally empty except for a single briefcase sitting on the floor.

Small moments of amusement or wonder or profit.  All of which, slowly, made Alex feel even more like the odd one out, as it became more and more clear that Other James and Simon were reacting to each other way too fast, without ever speaking.

“This says we need to deliver three designated packages to cubicle Z-Z-1900-22-A.”  Simon said as he stared at the work order on the briefcase that simply would not open.  “I don’t think we can do that.  I don’t even see any packages.”

He said it without looking up, but Other James was sweeping his eyes across the empty cubicle and all the ones around while Alex kept watch down the hall.  She still noticed though.  “Okay, I’ve gotta ask.”  Alex said as she tried to not fidget with the baseball bat she had been told to stop tapping on the floor in case it attracted anything.

Other James and Simon sighed at exactly the same time.  “Go ahead.”  Simon told her.  Maybe.  Maybe it wasn’t really Simon.

Alex had been aware that the two of them were connected a lot more than anyone else.  Most of the survivors of their time being prisoners in this dungeon, herself included, kind of… didn’t like the skulljacks.  They couldn’t get rid of them, but they could ignore them forever.  Or only use them in controlled ways.  Alex wouldn’t lie and say she didn’t think it was cool as fuck that she could kinda sorta use her phone with her brain.  But she also wouldn’t ever think of going back to being plugged into someone else.

But these two did.  And she really wanted to know why, but as soon as she’d started to say anything, she realized they probably got bothered about it a lot.  And so far, both Simon and Other James had been nothing but friendly and helpful, with the bigger of the two even going so far as to tackle a computer that was trying to eat her about half an hour ago.

So Alex abandoned her dumb question of asking them why, and instead went with something a little more irreverent.  She didn’t really put too much thought into it, either, just grabbing the first stray thought and pivoting to it.  “Is one of you, like, the top in this situation?”  She said.

The two guys both stopped what they were doing and pivoted their heads at the same time to stare at her with their mouths half open for a reply that had been totally derailed.

Simon recovered first.  “It’s… not like that.”  He said.

”I’m straight.”  Other James informed her.  “So, you know.”

”It’s true, he literally never stops thinking about asses.”  Simon told her with a confidential shake of his head.  “He’s disappointed, right now, that camracondas don’t have an ass.”

The other man nodded.  ”It’s a waste.”  He declared, his deep voice making the comment even funnier.

Alex did find it funny, and did want to laugh, but she was busy being utterly embarrassed.  “No, not like that!  I mean, if you’re… you know…” She waved her bat around in their direction.

”Plugged in?”  Simon offered her patiently.

“Sure.  So, is one of you in charge?”

”It’s not like that.”  Other James said defensively.  They were back on the common ground for questions he’d been asked a bunch before.  “We don’t… do that.”

”Well, we kinda do that.”  Simon countered.  “Hey, do you remember…” he waved a hand toward the deeper part of the dungeon, the place where the cubicles formed chasms and hills, and where a simple conference room had held them hostage for months.  “That?”  Alex didn’t really have anything to say, finding a lump in her throat, so she just nodded.  “Remember how it didn’t matter when you got plugged in?  There’s no battle of wills or resistance or anything, you’re just… there, right?”

Alex did remember.  She thunked the end of the baseball bat into the cubicle wall next to her, turning away from Simon to pretend she was keeping watch again.  “Yeah.”  She tried to say without her voice breaking.

”Okay, well, it’s always like that.”  Other James said, picking up the conversation, but using words that sounded off coming from him.

Simon spoke like there was no pause between the two of them.  ”We’re both here.”  Both boys tapped their skulls.

”And it doesn’t matter who’s talking-“ Other James’s tone shifted mid sentence suddenly, “from whose face.”  Then back again.  “Though I like my own face.  I know where all my teeth are.”

Despite the existential fear of having her individuality stripped away by a wifi connection, Alex had to admit, that was a pretty cool party trick.  “Okay, I was trying to say something that you hadn’t heard before, but seriously, why?”

They both paused for a moment before answering.  “It’s just kinda nice.”  Simon said eventually with a shrug.  “And we’re used to it now.  And we can do this.”  He tossed the briefcase, and Other James caught it with one hand without turning around.  “Anyway.  Should we get going?  The tower’s still a half mile away.”

_____

They stood four cubicles and one open gap away from a beige ramp that led up into the dark interior of a dark structure, Alex crouched between her two delving teammates as they pointed things out and gave her advice for her first time tackling one of these.

It was shorter than the tower at the entrance, but not by much.  Too tall to actually fit in here, its walls a mess of angles as each layer of cubicles stacked atop the other jutted out in odd ways.  One, maybe six or more layers up, was much wider than the others, and it created a kind of awning that blocked Alex’s view of the higher up levels.  The way the harsh white lights overhead shone down on it, it felt like half the thing was in almost complete shadow.

The inside she could see from here was going to be only just tall enough for her, and Other James was definitely going to have to crouch-walk everywhere.  Nothing moved on the circle of linoleum flooring around the base.

”The thing is,” Simon told her, “we don’t actually know if the dead zone is for anything in particular.  Last week we were taking a break, and we saw a few of the shellaxies wandering by, and they refused to set… foot?… cable?… whatever, they wouldn’t walk on it.”

”Is it dangerous?”  Alex felt like it probably was.  Everything in this place was dangerous.  She saw Other James shake his head, but she didn’t believe him.  “I think it’s dangerous.”  Alex muttered to herself.

”Keeps the cubes from growing too close.”  Other James half explained, half guessed.  They had no idea if the endless rows of cubicles actually grew.  But something certainly seemed to repair and restore them in between delves.  “We going?”

”Yeah, yeah, we going.”  Simon’s spoken reply felt like it was almost a performance for Alex’s sake, but she appreciated the two of them still speaking out loud when they clearly didn’t have to.  “Remember,” he told her directly, “the stuff in there is going to be a lot more aggressive.”

Alex nodded, the nerves she was feeling making her come across as irritable.  ”I know, I know.  Shoot anything big.”  She was their backup plan for if bats and swords didn’t cover it.  The plan was a bit more involved than that, but not much.

She followed the others across the open expanse, half expecting a pit trap to open up and dump her into a giant living paper shredder or something.  But her steps landed on the material of the ramp without incident, the rough fuzz of the sloped cubicle wall bending lightly as she followed the guys up into the dark interior, feeling the closest she had so far on this trip to being an actual dungeon delver.

Then a stapler had dropped on her head, pen legs scrambling wildly as it tried to get leverage to punch a disposable metal fang into her skull, and any feeling Alex had of being a cool professional or a smooth operator went right out the window as she accidentally flung the baseball bat away and flailed her hands at her own head to grab the thing trying to bite her.

The tower was way worse than the rest of the dungeon.  Everything here wanted to fight, and wouldn’t listen or hold back like the other things out there would.  Within a few minutes of being inside, they’d been attacked by five striders and a potted plant that had almost choked one of the guys to death, and they were barely past the door.

But they needed to be here.  These places were the only spots where they could find the bags of magical coffee grounds that powered the duplication ritual.  A sentence that Alex’s brain rebelled against, but was still true.  And so she held her ground behind the other two, taking downward swings at stalking staplers that skittered across the walls around them and threatened to leap onto unprotected heads.

She wasn’t new to fighting, but she still didn’t really think about how hard she had to swing to actually hurt something.  The first few striders she swatted down were certainly disrupted, but they were on their pen tips and scurrying across the floor to bite at her feet almost as soon as she knocked them down.

Stomping on one of them had felt really unpleasant, as its form popped open and a kind of inky blood spilled out.  After that one, Alex tried to commit more to her swings, using the bat to really smash into the things that crawled around them in the gloom.  In the light of the camp lamp that Simon had tossed into the middle of the cubicles of this first floor, she wore her arms out rapidly as she learned exactly how hard she had to swing to crush a living stapler.

The first floor fell quiet abruptly after the sound of ceramic smashing.  Alex, panting from exertion and feeling a tingling in her fingers from the repeated heavy impacts of the bat she was holding, jerked her head around sharply as she looked for anything else approaching.  But that was it; a dozen staplers and one potted plant, and maybe a few other things that Other James might have had to deal with once he was out of her line of sight.  And it had felt like a war.

Her heart wouldn’t slow down.  And she was pretty sure she was hyperventilating, which Deb had warned her could happen in stressful situations like this.  This was much worse than the fights they’d gotten into on the way here, this felt like when she’d participated in the attack on the Status Quo building.

A gloved hand brushed her shoulder, and Alex nearly nailed Simon in the face with a bat as she whipped around.  ”Hey.”  He said calmly as he stepped back, holding his hands up.  “Breathe.”  She was breathing, that was sort of the problem.  “I know this has never actually helped, in all of human history, but try to calm down.”

Alex stared at him.  The utter audacity of telling her to be calm in a situation like this somehow cracking through the shell of panic that had been closing in around her thoughts.  She straightened up, letting the bat pivot around to tap its ichor stained tip against the floor.  “Really?”  She asked him, still catching her breath.

”Yeah, not once.”  Other James confirmed as he rejoined them.  “I should know, it never worked on my wife either.”

It was a casual joke, but it put a sudden bitter damper on the proceedings, beyond just the stress of the fight.  This place, this dungeon, had taken a lot from all of them.  Not just their agency and freedom for a period of time, but their families, their homes, sometimes their whole lives.  Other James had been married, and the small sudden reminder that he was one of the people who no one outside ever remembered was jarring.

Simon came to their rescue.  “Let’s grab the orbs, and find any coffee down here.  It’s usually not much on the first floor, but we can stack it by the door for later.”

They needed the coffee.  It was quickly becoming one of the most important things the Order had access to, especially since apparently today Anesh was going to be making copies of some of the stuff they’d looted off of the Status Quo agents.  Alex wasn’t sure if it was going to work, but she looked forward to a world where she never had to take off a shield bracer.  Where maybe she could feel safe all the time again.

”Here.”  Simon said before they ascended the ramp, holding out a pair of small yellow orbs to her.  “Use ‘em.  You earned it and they’re cool sometimes.”

”You fucking liar.”  Alex accused him, even as crushed them into glowing dust.

[+1 Skill Rank : Manufacture - Wrought Iron - Lamppost - Norwegian Style]

[+1 Skill Rank : Cooking - Ingredient - Tofu]

”Well?”  Simon asked.

”I stand by what I said.”  Alex said as she walked next to him up the ramp that sagged slightly underfoot, leading the way to the second floor.

It was when they were in the middle of a fight on that second floor, and a 2.0 was drawing wobbly black scorch lines on her jacket while Alex tried to break open it’s friend with her bat while elegantly shouting obscenities, that she had a fun thought.  They didn’t have enough shield bracers right now, because they were all sitting in the basement and recharging.  But if they made copies, then anyone could have one all the time.  This was basic math, and it was only the start of her thought.

Other James interrupted her briefly by being kicked out into the hallway that Alex was fighting in, crashing through one of the cubicle walls and making the ceiling overhead that it was holding up bow downward in a very scary way.  But he was rolling sideways and throwing the magical returning paperweight that they’d found at his paper humanoid opponent, so Alex focused on her own fight.

She managed to finish off the 2.0 that she was crushing as Simon came to her rescue with the second, before it could laser her, and Alex had that strange sensation of her thoughts making connections mid battle again.  Yeah, it would be nice to have a shield, but so far in this single assault, she’d been lasered, choked by a cable tentacle, stapled, and headbutted.  A single shield bracer wasn’t going to keep her safe if she planned to be the kind of moron that made  this part of her routine.

No, Alex decided as she brought the baseball bat around in an uppercut into the brittle plastic of the 2.0 that Simon was holding away from his body as it fired its front lasers in a trio of frantic sweeps.  What she needed would be several shield bracers.

”I’m gonna trade every share of whatever loot we get for eight shield bracers.”  She told Simon as he tried to hand her a green orb.

He looked at her blankly for a second, then started to say something before realizing his mouth was full of blood.  Spitting a glob into a napkin and throwing it away in a trash can, in a move that was strangely polite for being mid-dungeon, he coughed and turned back to Alex.  “I don’t think you can do that?”  He told her.  “Also you still have to carry your own orbs.”

”Why not?”  She asked as she double checked to make sure her fencing jacket wasn’t on fire, before moving to help the boys search in drawers and under desks for more bags of the ground coffee that they craved.  “We use magic items all the time.  Your… uh… not boyfriend, other half?  Partner?”

”Sure, partner sounds good.”  Other James yelled from the other side of the floor.

Alex rolled her eyes.  “He’s abusing the magic paperweight he can’t lose.  You’ve got that pen that liquifies stuff…”

”I think it turns it into ink.”  Simon said idly as he ratcheted open a filing cabinet drawer.

”Sure.  So why can’t I use a bunch of shield bracers?”

He shrugged at her, hitting his shoulders on the desk that he was crawling underneath.  “I mean, you’re welcome to try.  I just don’t know if magic items stack.  They never stack in games, anyway.”

Alex stopped, standing in the two foot wide gap that was pretending to be a hallway, and turned to stare at Simon with a growing sense of worried disbelief.  “Someone’s tried, though, right?  Like… no one’s dumb enough to think that because a video game did it, real life works the same way, right?”

”…We’ll borrow a few when we get back.”

”Holy shit, I cannot be the one who’s most qualified for this.”  Alex muttered.  “That’s… not allowed.  That’s gross.  No.”  She stopped her quiet complaining as they moved up to the third, and then fourth floor, but was still having an internal crisis as she started to feel like maybe none of them knew what they were doing.  Like maybe everyone was just making it up as they went along.

That has been true in life outside of the dungeon.  In the normal world before all this crap had started piling onto her, before her kidnapping and erasure from school and medical records, before her boyfriend forgot she was real, before all that, Alex had gone through the same process as everyone else.  Slowly realizing that no one knew what they were doing, that every adult was just stumbling along and doing their best most of the time.  That being an expert in a field just made someone an expert in that field, and didn’t exactly mean they had the answers to things like how to deal with the trials and tribulations of life in general.

But she’d sort of started to hope that maybe the people who had saved her life, that wanted to be some kind of wizard superheroes and change the world into something better, might have had a better handle on things.

”Hey.”  Alex told the other two as they finished clearing the fourth floor and stacked up twenty pounds of ready to brew coffee by the ramp.  “I don’t wanna be the smart one here.  So I’m gonna need you two to step up your game.”

”On it.”  Other James said instantly, giving her a supportive thumbs up.  He paused only briefly, before a shadow of doubt crossed his face.  “How do I do that?”  He asked, turning to look at Simon.

Simon didn’t even glance back, just meeting Alex’s eyes.  “Sorry, you’re screwed.”  He said.  “And I guess if we’re sharing the one brain cell today, so am I.  Next floor?  I think we can go one or two more before it becomes too dangerous.”

____

The rest of the tower they handled without incident.  It was scary, and intense, and Alex was pretty sure she was never going to be good at fighting, even if she learned the proper moves and tactics and stuff.  But they were successful invaders and looters, getting out with a bunch of coffee grounds without taking any injuries beyond scrapes and nicks.

“We are so good at our jobs.”  Other James said smugly, muscled arms folded in front of him as he nodded at the pile of loot that Alex and Simon were sorting into their backpacks.  The two glanced at him before Simon shook his head and went back to smushing bags of coffee grounds into pockets that wouldn’t zip up all the way.  “What?”  The bigger man asked.  “We are!  And Slugger here did a great job!”

”Please, I’m begging you, do not make that my nickname.”  Alex’s voice jumped an octave as she squeaked out a sudden plea.  “Come on, you know how bad nicknames can get.”

”Oh, Other James is the best James-based nickname he’s ever had.”  Simon told her as he stood and hoisted the hiking backpack onto his shoulders with a grunt.  “He likes it.  I can feel it.”

”Impossible.”

Other James nodded sadly.  “When I actually worked at the techie wage slave side of the office, I got either Football James, or Boring James.”  He told her with a look like he was reminiscing as far from fondly as possible.  “I don’t play football.”  He spread his hands out.

”You play basketball.”  Simon said, and then his connected partner turned a flat expression his way, clearly thinking something uncharitable before Simon added “Fine, you play basketball now.  I could make you like football.”  He muttered the last bit under his breath.

”You already did that.  I have to enjoy football every time you watch a game.”  Other James complained as the trio did a quick check of the linoleum dead zone around the base of the cubicle tower, and then started carefully making their way back to where they’d left a trail marking.  They did have a map, but the map relied on them going the right direction.

Alex stretched her arms out as she followed them, shoulders and arms burning from exertion and the weight of her cargo, but still feeling oddly relaxed compared to when they’d come in.  “Are you sure you two aren’t dating?”  She asked casually.  “You make it sound like you’re dating.”

They declined to answer her, instead the group lapsing into a partly grumpy and partly amused silence as they walked, keeping an eye on the refreshingly passive strider pack that was crawling along the upper edge of the towering cubicles a row over from them.

Endless beige and grey surrounded them as they headed back.  As the cubicles rose around them and blocked out the view of the ceiling, the only splotches of color became speckles of green in the otherwise dark grey hard carpet, or the occasional glimpse of red or dark blue from a desk lamp or stack of binders sitting on a desk as they passed.  It wasn’t quite monochrome, but it was disorienting.  Like a fundamental part of the world had been sucked away and replaced with the distilled essence of a sterile corporate environment.

When Alex had gotten a holdover job doing tech support, she had kind of figured that she’d never have to actually get used to the cubicles and the little partitioned workstations.  She was there for a few months, then back to college.  If she’d known that it was going to somewhat literally grow to consume her world, she might have spent more time hating it before it got this out of control.

At least the dungeon was a lot more creative with its walls than any human corporate overlord would be.  Like when their path back had to diverge a little bit, and they ended up with a curved hall that wrapped around a support pillar.  Or rather, they could see the support pillar, white speckled drywall in the middle of the path rising up into the ceiling.  But there were more cubicle walls wrapped around it; long sheets of the beige barriers forming a kind of octagon that surrounded it entirely.

”How are we supposed to get into that one?”  Alex asked out loud.

Simon and Other James both jolted slightly in a synchronized twitch of surprise when she spoke for the first time in half an hour.  And she realized she actually felt legitimately kind of offended that they’d been talking to each other the whole time and leaving her out of it.  “Uh…” Simon said, clearing his throat.  “I don’t think there is a way in.  I don’t even know if it’s a cubicle.”  He looked up at the tall walls, ten feet of tan obstacle that didn’t have a single entrance anywhere in the shell it was forming.  Other James shoulder twitched up in a shrug, but it was Simon who kept talking.  “No, she’s right.  All the cubes have doors.”

“I…” Alex stopped, cutting off the slightly bitter words.  She had been about to reflexively say she wished they wouldn’t do that.  But… why?  Because it was weird?  Yeah, that was totally a valid reason these days.  “Alright, maybe it’s just a wall so we don’t break the big pillar or something.”  She said instead.

”Could be.”  Simon said, circling around to the right and giving the water cooler there a bit of space.  The things were probably safe, which really just meant none of them had exploded yet.  Instead of trying to yell back to them as he got a different angle of vision, he switched to speaking through Other James.  Or maybe it wasn’t a switch at all, and this was just both of them acting for Alex’s benefit.  “It’s weird though, right?”

She shrugged, looking away from the weird construction to instead keep an eye on where a sleepy looking shellaxy was wandering across the hallway behind them.  The computer that could bite her arm off looking kinda cute as it wobbled from one cubicle to the other without noticing her.  “We don’t have to go into it!”  She told Other James.  “I just thought it looked different.”

”Yeah.  Okay, let’s keep going.  We should be able to take the path on the left up here and get back to where we started.”  He shrugged easily, and let Alex take the lead as he hung back to meet up with Simon when they wrapped around the octagon.

Which made it weird when that didn’t happen.

”Uh…” Alex looked back at her delver buddy with raised eyebrows.  “Where’s Simon?”

”He should be right here.”  Other James said, tilting his head in the way a lot of people unconsciously did when using their skulljack.  “He circled around.  He’s… literally here?”  The two of them looked around the space, but there was nothing more threatening than an immobile fax machine, and certainly no Simon.  “Well shit.”  Other James turned and started jogging back around the side of the circular hall, Alex in tow.

They met up with Simon in a few seconds, but he looked just as confused as them.  “What the hell?”  He asked as they all came to a stop facing each other.

It didn’t take long to figure out what the hell.  If they followed the path the way Simon had, to the right, then they never passed the fax machine, and instead ran into a vending machine and a suspiciously still potted tree, before another path opened out of the circle into the cubicles.  If they kept going, they’d eventually find themselves back at start after wrapping around the whole thing again.

If they instead went left, they’d get the fax machine, two offshoot paths, and then a bulletin board with a bunch of work safety notices on it, along with a big motivational poster that instructed them to “Submit to Unity”.  Simon stole that one.

”Are you sure that you two-“ Alex started to jokingly rib them, tension fading now that they knew how the space worked.

”Shaddup.”  Two playful voices told her in the same tone.

The real problem the warped space caused was that they didn’t actually know what direction the different overlapping hallways that led out of it went.  And they also didn’t know if one of them went somewhere totally new, so they didn’t want to just start smashing until they found the source and broke it.  Especially because if they were already somewhere else, it could strand them deep in the dungeon.

So they backtracked, again, and chose a totally different route around, eventually making it back onto their map and heading home.  Everything easy and clean and smooth.

Which was when the camracaonda ambushed them.  A couple hundred pounds of tightly bunched cables lunging out and slamming into Simon, getting a shout of surprise from both him and Other James as he went down.  Half the shout cut off as the camraconda locked its security camera eye onto Other James, freezing him in place with a fist balled up and halfway into a weak jab.  The rest of the snake’s body thrashing to find purchase to pin Simon down onto the floor as the man tried to wrestle the heavy creature off him, or at least divert its gaze.

Alex was pretty sure it hadn’t even seen her before it lunged.  Well, she would have been, if she could think.  For a moment that stretched on for a long time, she was frozen, staring as Simon tried to get one of his arms free while the other one got gnawed on by a snake that couldn’t quite break through his armor with the way he was grabbing at its jaw.

She snapped out of her paralysis for no real reason.  Just that her brain finally caught up to the fact that she needed to do something.  Her hands were shaking like tiny earthquakes as she shoved her bag away and fumbled for the borrowed shotgun.  Drawing the long barreled weapon out of its case and taking a stumbling step forward that led into a more confident charge as she ran toward the fight.

Alex might have shouted something, because the camraconda started to look her way.  Not enough to let Other James go though, before she jammed the barrel of the shotgun up against the base of its throat.  Or… was it a throat?  Whatever snakes had that was where their jaw ended.  Alex didn’t know why her brain was focused on that and not the vibrating grip she had on the gun.

It would have been so easy to just squeeze the trigger and end the fight.  But she didn’t.  And as soon as she hesitated, Alex knew that she couldn’t.  But she wasn’t just going to let the serpentine creature hurt her partners for the delve.  “Get off of him.”  She ordered the camraconda with a high pitched squeak of a voice.

The camraconda didn’t move.  Either to try to look toward her, or to get off of Simon.  It was perched, tail half-wrapped around the man on the floor, head tilted upward, feeling the metal of the shotgun shoved against it.  Almost like it was considering the situation calmly.

”Off!”  Alex shouted, her voice suddenly explosive.  “Get off!”  She punctuated it by kicking at the tail, making the poor choice to have the worst footing possible as she threatened the creature.

But it did start, slowly, to slide backward.  Simon helped as soon as he had both arms free, shoving it aside and then getting bopped in the side of the head by Other James’ jab in progress as the big man was freed.  The two of them froze again for a moment as the camraconda swept its eye over them, but Alex shifted to circle around it.

”Fuck off!”  She told the camraconda.  “Stop it!  Stop!  Get away!”  Like she was yelling at a stray dog to shoo it away.  It almost got its head around to look at her, but she jabbed the end of the shotgun into the flat surface of its camera face, pushing it away and using the weapon as leverage.  “Leave, you asshole!”  Alex ordered the snake.

It hissed at her with a kind of unconcerned ire.  But then, surprising both the guys who were in the process of picking themselves up off the floor, it did turn and start to slither away, only giving a short glance behind itself as Alex stood in the shadow of one of the cubicle doors with the shotgun braced to her shoulder, aimed down at it.

The camraconda turned the corner, and Alex gasped out the breath she’d been holding for what felt like the last hour of her life, letting the gun sag to face the floor.  “Holy shit.”  She whispered.  “Are you two okay?!”  Her voice rose as she scrambled wide eyed to check on Simon and Other James.

”Disoriented.”  Simon muttered.

”Ugh.”  Other James added poetically.  “Their freeze tag thing doesn’t stop thinking, but it does stop wi-fi, so… headache.”  He grabbed a heavy hand at the back of his neck, like he could massage the skulljack connection open again faster.  “You okay?  You didn’t shoot it.”

Alex’s shoulders slumped, and she ducked her head, not looking at either of them.  “It… I couldn’t.”  She muttered.

Simon looked at her, eyes narrowing in concern.  “Did you get cursed?”  He asked.  “We can get Secret to eat it.  I think that’s a thing he does.”

”N-no!”  Alex sighed as she realized she was going to actually have to explain herself.  “It was… it was the colors.”  She looked down the hall after where the camraconda had fled.  “I just kinda couldn’t not notice.  It’s the same colors as my friend’s girlfriend.”

Simon let Other James haul him to his feet, the two of them dusting each other off and checking the backpacks for how much loose coffee was going to be in every pocket for the rest of time.  “Oh.”  He said simply.  And then, when it caught up to him that humans didn’t normally have skin in that color pattern, “Oh!”

”Yeah.”  Alex said, not sure if he really understood why she hadn’t just taken the enemy’s head off.  “It’s… I dunno.  I guess I shoulda actually paid attention in history class, because it turns out, it really is hard to fight something when you see it as a person.”

”That is why we’re trying to kidnap more of them out of the dungeon.”  Other James pointed out.  “Kidnap in a nice way.”  He added in a way he probably thought was reassuring and was in reality the exact opposite.  “Politely kidnap.”  He continued digging himself deeper into the hole.

Simon shook his head at his friend’s failing social skills as their skulljack link reestablished and their minds brushed against each other again.  “Well.  It worked out.  And good thing, too.”  He pointed to the shotgun hanging limply in Alex’s hands.  “Safety.”

”I know gun safety!”  She protested.  “Look, it’s pointed at the ground even!  I know how to not shoot you guys!”

”…no, you… you left the safety on.”  Simon told her awkwardly.  “Anyway.  Let’s keep moving.  If we go quick, we can get this stuff back in time for them to make a copy of the blue orb I have now, since my magic pen snapped under the weight of my magnificent ass when I got tackled.”

Alex snorted a laugh as she slung the shotgun’s sheath off her back so she could carefully replace the weapon.  “That’s a weird way to talk about yourself.”

”Don’t blame me.  Blame him for getting into my head.”  Simon jerked a thumb at Other James as the other man made a similar hand gesture, also at himself.  “You good to go?”

Alex wanted to laugh, or maybe cry.  But they were in the middle of a dungeon made out of hostile cubicles and angry office supplies, so she figured she could hold off on both until she was safely back in her bedroom.  “Yeah.”  She said with a huff of air.  “Let’s go.”