Solomon's Crucible 71. Extracurricular Activities (1) (Patreon)

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Solomon didn't run into any trouble on the stairwell. He thought about ducking out onto another floor to get some questions answered before he ventured outside, but he decided it was too much risk for too little gain. It was slim odds that he'd be able to have a quiet conversation with anybody and walk away peacefully. Solomon didn't want to massacre his way through the dorm and he especially didn't want to get swarmed over and killed.

Besides, he already had the most important piece of information. He knew his sister was being kept in the football stadium, and he knew how to get there. The only open question was how much blood he was going to have to shed on the way.

There was no military squad waiting in the lobby of the dorm to take him on. Solomon put his little paper packet of magic powder back in his pocket with a feeling of relief. Looked like the new bosses were stretched thin. Or they'd underestimated him. Or they didn't really care about a few humans killing each other.

Solomon frowned. No point in speculating. He squared his shoulders and did his best to look like he belonged as he walked through the lobby and outside.

It was sunny outside. Students were walking around, going about their business. There weren't as many of them as there should have been, but the campus was hardly deserted to the point that he would have noticed if he hadn't been looking for it.

Solomon was by far the most heavily dressed person in sight. He felt sweat starting to gather between his shoulder blades before he'd gone half a block. There was nothing for it but to keep going. 

His overt display of school spirit, combined with a prominently displayed armband, did serve to help him blend into the crowd. At least as far as he could tell, nobody even gave him a second glance.

His accidental choice of a white armband seemed to be helping with that. It was by far the most common color that he saw other students sporting. He saw a few people wearing green and blue armbands, but both the red-armbanded guards and the overt aliens were nowhere to be seen, much to his relief.

He was just starting to think that he might enjoy a quiet walk to the stadium when he heard a scream from up ahead. Solomon followed the sound to find a pair of women under attack by a swarm of rats.

He broke into a run. It was on his way, and he didn't need to draw a gun and out himself to help out. As he drew closer he saw that the rats had received the same boost from the system as every other animal. They were almost the size of cats, and had nothing but murder in their eyes.

Solomon was surprised to find that he wasn't the only one running toward the fight. Even the two women who had been attacked seemed more surprised than scared. After the initial fright passed they had each armed themselves with a club and started whacking at the rats with abandon.

Solomon stomped a couple of the little bastards to death, then found himself without any further targets. Looking around, he saw a group of six students surrounded by a little over twice that many dead rodent bodies.

"Good job everybody!" one student said. He put Solomon in mind of an RA, although the more relevant qualification was probably his blue armband. "Rooting out the little ones stops the big ones from showing up."

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a stack of coupons. The students formed a line. Solomon followed suit, not wanting to stand out.

Each student received a firm handshake, a pat on the back, and one of the coupons. As Solomon reached the front of the line he could see that each coupon was marked with a symbol that matched the emblem on everybody's armband, together with the number one. 

He accepted his coupon and shook the green armband's hand, looking him in the eye and pushing down the urge to kill him on the spot. He needed to focus on finding his sister first. Figuring out what to do about collaborators could come later.

More coupons were on offer for students who would help pile up the corpses and guard them until somebody came along to harvest the valuable parts of the rats. Solomon begged off and continued on his way. Fortunately, the other students were eager to volunteer.

Once he was well away from the group, he shook his head. For now, he was glad that he wasn't being press ganged into guard duty. In the long run, though, nothing that he was seeing boded well. He had envisioned alien rule being enforced with an iron fist. Humans chafing against the invaders' tyranny.

Seeing instead that the locals were competing to earn the favor of their new rulers really brought home Kanmi's warning. He wasn't up against an invading army. He was up against a business. Business on a scale that dwarfed even Earth's mega-corporations, but a competitive industry all the same. All the idiots had been weeded out by failing on some other world. The ones who had made it this far knew what they were doing.

He wasn't ready to give up all hope just yet. After all, enough students had refused to go along with things that the aliens had needed to set up a prison camp. They might not be in armed revolt, but that could be due to shock and uncertainty in a world turned upside down. The fire wasn't burning, but the kindling was there. Solomon just needed to provide the spark.

He might not go for it. All he really wanted was to save his sister and get Kanmi back. If he could do it without any more violence, all well and good. If the only way to achieve his goals was over the bodies of the alien invaders and their local toadies, well, that was fine too.

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