The Daily Grind - Chapter 378 (Patreon)

Second chap today!

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“And I can be whatever I want, but you can’t be free, not once you’re caught.” -Honeyblood, Sea Hearts- 

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One might believe that eventually, James would get used to being shot at.

It would be a misconception, of course. James had gotten used to not locking up in fear, to continuing to move while under threat, and to making decisions while bullets were flying.  But he was fairly certain there wasn’t a timeline out there where he was used to the part where a gun barrel was leveled at his head while someone pulled the trigger.

Which was unfortunate because that kept happening anyway, and James would have liked to be an impartial action movie hero that wasn’t bothered by coinflips with certain death.

The dozen men firing on them from a couple hundred feet away, their camouflage pattern coats and hats making them slightly harder to stop, didn’t all fire at once.  Half of them didn’t seem to shoot at all.  But the ones that did weren’t holding back.  The motley collection of guns opened up with the sound of a small war starting; heavy thumping booms from the shotguns, cracks from hunting rifles, and the steady yet still shockingly loud tak-tak-tak of fire from the semi-automatic AR-15 one of them was holding.

The noise came at the same time as everyone’s shield bracers lit up in a golden wall of overlapping light.  It was almost beautiful; layers of gold lines and flares of illumination cutting through the cold day as bullets were stopped dead.  Some of those bullets definitely wouldn’t have hit, being too high to impact a target but close enough to trigger the bracers, but the slight duration of each shield meant that even for something like buckshot a single charge could catch a lot of pellets.  Those charges were still burning away as the magic set to automatic caught projectiles in flight faster than any of the Order could have reacted naturally.

Unnaturally, though, was a speed that at least two of them could react at.  James did rapid battlefield math in his head without even really realizing what the equations were, and came to a quick understanding.  There was going to be a pause in the shooting in a split second when their shield bracers faded, and then there was going to be more shooting.  Odds were good there were more bullets than charges, and he wasn’t feeling especially charitable toward the people who had opened fire on the group without even a ‘hello’.

They hadn’t shot his drones, so while his eyes couldn’t see through the golden wall of light that well, he could see an overhead view of the semicircle of dudes spread out ahead of them.  And that was enough.

Through his skulljack, he painted red triangles around the two with the most dangerous guns.  The symbol for camraconda targets, followed by the sigil for ‘take cover’.  They’d know what to do.  They’d practiced for… well, not this, but James placed his faith in his friends.

Then the second was up, and while the others were still falling into kneeling positions and bringing their weapons and dungeontech up, James had shucked off his backpack and was gone.

Appointed Arrival, one of his several stockpiled casts of it that was triple advanced, dropped James onto the flat asphalt of the street eighty feet away.  A single step tearing him and his navigator passenger through space to put him at an angle for his approach and out of the line of fire.  He was off and running for a good three seconds before return fire cracked back from the Order’s line, building speed as his Pylon skills allowed him to make full use of his absurd acceleration to close with the side of the enemy’s formation.

’Formation’ might have been a strong word.  Two of them were huddled behind trees that must have been fairly young with how thin they were, and another two were sharing a flat chunk of rock that looked less like it was natural and more like it had been deposited to the side during highway construction and just left there.  The others were just standing in the open, and not just because the camracondas had started locking people down.  They were watching to see what had happened after they’d taken their shots.  One man, unshaven and missing a couple teeth, stuck his tongue out of the corner of his mouth as he methodically broke his shotgun open and popped out the shells, reloading with only a single replacement.  Another shaded his eyes with a hand that was holding a pistol as he failed to realize that Alanna was shooting back at him.

One of them saw James and Zhu coming.  Which was his mistake.

He shouted a warning and twisted to level his rifle at them, at which point the small sliver of roadway James had brought with him skewered the gun’s barrel, plugging the rifle up fully before James ended that Manipulate Asphalt cast.  On Zhu’s orders, his next step flung him forward at an angle, and a few scattered shots scraped the air behind them, out of shield bracer range.

As James let the loamy earth catch his heels so he could turn and close the rest of the distance, Zhu gave him another alert.  Someone was going to shoot them.  Which would have been bad, if James hadn’t been watching the guy with the shotgun carefully zeroing in on them, his shooter’s stance tight and practiced in contrast to his ragged appearance.

The second camera drone nearly took his nose off as it buzzed his face.  The man’s arms jerked and his shot went wide, nearly taking out one of his friends as he fired wildly.  Then James had pulled his backup up and away, and another smaller Appointed Arrival dropped him directly next to the frozen guy with the AR-15.

Spire let go of him as soon as James had a hand on the gun and a thrown punch in the air.  And then James was holding a rifle, and the man he’d just hit dead center in the throat was gasping for air on the ground as James stepped over him and used the assault rifle’s butt like a club to crack the side of the head of one of the men knelt on the ground who was scrambling to pivot as James rampaged into them.

Someone else froze as Spire switched targets, and bullets started splintering the trees the farther targets were using for cover as James watched the man with the plugged rifle pull the trigger anyway and blow a hole in the side of his gun.  Then he punched that guy rapidly, his jab twitching around the attempt to swat him away with the rifle to crunch into the man’s sideburns and send him reeling.

More of them were realizing James was fucking up their line, the whole group yelling obscenities and slurs at him now, which James processed only enough to realize that it was incredibly funny to have the people who had tried to murder him be offended that he was fighting back. Then he twisted past a man that tried to grab his arms, let Zhu hit that guy as the two of them dodged, planted one foot forward, hit the gun that was pointed at his head with Separate Alloy to rip it into useless pieces of metal, and while the wielder was staring at their destroyed weapon, James lashed forward with his rear foot and kicked the guy in the dick hard enough that the dude folded up on the ground and vomited.

That might have been enough of them, he thought to himself.  Perhaps now could be the time for diplomacy, James considered.  ”Put your weapons down!”  James bellowed in the spirit of allowing for negotiations to begin.

”That’s never going to, oop, there!”  Zhu’s body flickered, an orange spike of direction appearing near James and guiding him to flinch as a guy threw a knife at him.

It was a terrible throw.  And with his newly modified reaction time, it was almost trivial for James to clasp his hand around the hilt as it whiffed by his head, then flick his wrist and shoot the blade into the trunk of one of the trees right next to one of the attacker’s eyeballs.  The bear of a man who’d just thrown away his weapon charged James with a bellow of his own, helpfully blocking his friend’s lines of fire, looking like he was planning to just wrap James in a hug and crush him.  Which James didn’t feel like letting happen, so as he dodged, he slapped a hand onto the guy’s exposed wrist, and discharged every scrap of electricity he’d been building up in his skin since he’d last had to manually taser someone.

It might have been an overreaction, as it only took a kick to the knee to send the guy tumbling into the dirt next to one of his incapacitated friends.

And then, very abruptly, the fight was over, as James’ backup arrived.  TQ and Spire freezing the last two that were actually still holding their guns, as Alanna and Tyrone rushed across the distance while the people James had disarmed weren’t shooting across the open ground.  James briefly noticed that there was a low dirt wall back where the Order expedition had come into this space, which was presumably where the others were taking cover at the moment.

Except Arrush, who emerged from behind the big rock holding two men at swordpoint, one of them already bleeding from a slice down his arm.

He and Alanna started kicking everyone’s guns into a pile, where Tyrone rapidly stripped them of ammo.  “Woah.”  The human said with raised eyebrows as he got through the third or fourth gun.  “They didn’t really shoot that much, right?”  He asked, voice starting to vibrate with the telltale sign of someone crashing on adrenaline.

”Not really.”  James answered.  “Why?”

”No bullets dude.”  Tyrone held up an empty nine mil magazine.

”Enough bullets to try to fucking kill us.”  Alanna spat out as she ripped a derringer out of a hidden holster that a man who was holding his hands up grimaced about.  “The fuck were you idiots thinking?”

James took a deep breath of cold air and the smell of gunfire and various human fluids that had leaked onto the dirt, and then let it out, trying to make sure his voice didn’t shake as he looked around the dozen humans that were being shoved into a cluster by the knights.  Several of the people were unconscious, due to James-based interactions.  But some of them lashed out, trying to grab or punch, but Alanna and Arrush were entirely uninterested.  And at least a few of them shut up and watched with wide eyes as Spire examined the man Arrush had wounded, and then let her authority loose to seal the wound and purge any infection.  Alanna gave a similar treatment to a guy who had been hiding a bullet wound in his leg, though the lack of painkillers meant that her authority reaching inside him with needle-thin green fingers to extract the bullet was unpleasant.

”I’d like to hear what the fuck you’re doing, too.”  James said, his voice coming across with a steely calm as he helped Tyrone and Alanna zip-tie hands together.  The fact that Alanna had an industrial quantity of zip-ties on her was kind of funny, but he held off on the joking for the moment.

A bunch of the people tried to talk at once, and James waited for a pause that he could insert a stern demand.  One of them, just before Tyrone got to him with the zip-ties for his hands, jerked his hand into his coat and fumbled out a heavy cannon of a handgun.  He got about halfway to pointing it at someone before TQ froze him, and James took the gun with ginger fingers.  “Ah, the Desert Eagle.  A classic in the genre of compensation.”  He mused as he unloaded it, finding only a single bullet in the chamber.  “Weird.”

”Is this a thing with you?”  Tyrone asked.  “Are you gonna be one of those dudes with commentary on every gun that means someone has a small dick?  That’s mean, dude.”

”Why would anyone have to compensate for that?”  James and TQ said at the exact same time, the human beaming a grin while the camraconda just gave a flat stare that made it unclear how much he was messing with anyone.  Which was, of course, his idea state to exist in.  “Anyway, no, I’ve just only seen this from Squos before.”  James said as he looked at the side of the gun to see it engraved with a fairly intricate American flag and the word patriot.  “Eugh.  So!”  He raised his voice over the thin protests of their prisoners.  “Who wants to talk first?”  He said without humor.

He wasn’t actually asking them, he was asking Alanna.  She was already mentally cataloguing the group of people - eleven of them, not the full dozen James had guessed - with the different emotions they were leaking to her senses.  Mostly angry or afraid, but there was nuance to it all.  While she did that, James actually took a moment to really look at the people he’d been punching.

They were… not exactly soldiers.  They barely qualified as a militia, and he had kind of been wondering if this was some sort of illegal paramilitary thing that had only shot because they’d been interrupted and thought they were rumbled by the government or something.  But more than just looking unprofessional, they looked like they were half-dead already.  Like they hadn’t slept or eaten properly in at least a week, and while James couldn’t guess how long since they’d had a shower, it must have been a while if even Arrush was making tiny high pitched coughs as he caught their scent.

Barely any bullets, no plan, no backup judging by the empty plain and roadway leading.  James had to actively fight the impulse to think of them as some kind of post-apocalyptic raider gang, with how bad their engagement was.

”This guy.”  Alanna said suddenly, pointing at one of the kneeling men on the cold dirt.

The man was wearing a plain green baseball cap with a pair of rough holes in it that showed off a thinning hairline underneath.  He had, like the others, been weakly throwing insults and profanity at the Order team, but he’d clearly been put off balance by the presence of the nonhumans, and he was more thrown by Alanna singling  him out.  “Wait, hold on!”  He began to protest immediately as Alanna and Tyrone pulled him to his feet and started moving him away from the group.  “Wait, I have a kid!  Don’t kill me!”

James actually paused, giving him a tilt of his head and replying loudly enough to be heard by the whole group.  “We aren’t going to kill you, Jesus, calm down.  We’re gonna ask you questions but far enough away that your buddies won’t interrupt or keep calling me names.”  Those buddies had quieted down, now that they weren’t the ones being picked.

Moving a short distance away, James and Spire kept Alanna with them to help while the others stayed back to guard the prisoners.  And also to make sure Karl was doing okay; that was a kid who was definitely not used to being shot at, and this experience was probably something awful from his perspective.  James hoped he’d be alright, and also hoped they could get through this quickly so that Spire could go talk to him.

Personally, he also wanted to see what was up with the buildings in the distance.  The flat road, cut off now in the opposite direction, led down toward a bend around a giant’s finger of a rock wall that had been revealed when they’d slid into this place.  But before it could fully disappear around the corner, it was possible to see a few old houses and two story commercial buildings.  Telephone poles, too.  There was a place here.

”Alright.”  James said as they got far enough away.  “Hi.  I’m James, this is Alanna, and Spire-Cast-Behind.”  He stopped, and looked at the man, waiting expectantly and eventually raising his eyebrows and leaning forward to highlight what he was waiting for.

”…Tanner.”  The battered human said, hands tied behind his back so he couldn’t wipe the smear of blood off his nose where someone - probably James - had hit him.  “What the fuck-“

James cut off the angry voice with a calm and even tone.  “You shot at us, unprovoked.  Why?”

The man, Tanner, clammed up instantly, his eyes betraying an almost animal level of violence that Alanna had to stop from flinching away from as she felt it roll off him.  “I’m not telling you shit.”  He said suddenly.

”Well, he certainly knows why.”  Spire said with a hiss that James heard as a pleasant little addition but which clearly unsettled their captive.  “Odd.  Most humans would become more cooperative when told they would not be harmed, instead of less.”

”Nah, humans are idiots.”  James said, getting a supporting gesture of agreement out of Zhu.  “Alright then.”  Silently, he checked with Alanna, who gave him an affirmative over the skulljack along with a tiny nod.  “Was it political?”  He asked, and then without waiting for Tanner to answer, continued.  “Racial?  Human race or species, I don’t care.”  Both got negatives from Alanna.  “Territorial?  Just a bad reaction?  Desperation?”

”That one.”  Alanna flagged the spike in the man’s emotions.

Zhu’s feathers flattened down in a subdued look.  “You guys look… rough.”  He vocalized what James had been thinking.  “Were you just planning to rob us for granola bars?”

There was a moment of silence as Spire started to prepare her own questions, but then was cut off as Alanna’s jaw fell open.  “Holy shit.”  She said, the constant feed she’d been providing getting updated seemingly on mental momentum as she flagged the guy as having a massive pulse of shame that was quickly flooded with anger; anger at himself for failing, quickly expressed outward.  That last part became clear as he tried to charge at James and Zhu, only to have the paladin deftly step away, leaving his rush ineffective with his hands still tied.  “Wow, yeah, Zhu fucking nailed it.”

”F-fuck you.”  Tanner spat out, gasping for breath as they backed off into a semicircle to let him turn around.  “Bunch of fucking… whatever you are.  You don’t know!  We’ve been dying in here!  Yeah, you want to joke about it? Fine!  We’re fucking desperate!  No food for weeks, barely anyone comes in, and it’s only gonna be an hour before Kane’s gang comes back to check around the highway!  We had to try!”

”Try to, again, shoot us.”  James said flatly.  “You get that you’re lucky Arrush is a pacifist, right?”

”You’re also a pacifist.”  Alanna pointed out happily.

James waved a hand to his side dismissively.  “Only to people, it doesn’t count if you’re not an architectural pacifist too.”  He bantered with his partner, much to the growing infuriation of the man that really had no fucking right to be annoyed with him.  “Okay, so, let me see if I understand this.”  James said, voice shifting on a dime.  “You guys are stuck in here, there’s no supplies or food, and when you see a bunch of outsiders come through the wall, you instantly shoot them to take their stuff?”  Tanner glared back at him, until James added, “I am actually asking.  Is that what’s going on?”

Slowly, their ambusher nodded.  “Yeah.  Yeah, if you just… say it like that?  Yeah.”

Spire-Cast-Behind hissed sadly.  “We have food supplies.  You could have just asked.”

”You’d say no.”  The man’s quiet reply sounded one hundred percent faithful to the words.  Not just resigned, but entirely purely believing that it was the case.

The camraconda tilted her head toward James.  “I have seen this before.”  She said sadly.  “Often.  We need to establish a supply line here.  Logisticor, perhaps?”

”Good luck.  Outside communication is gone.”  Alanna pointed out.  “We can teleport out though.”  She raised her eyebrows as Tanner’s face went through a brutal series of grimaces.  “You wanna share?”

”…The wall…” he looked back toward the flat grey barrier surrounding the excised terrain of North Dakota.  “The wall kills you if you try to cross it.  Seen it a few times.”

”Teleporter though.”  Alanna pointed out.  “But, I get what you mean.  We’ll call that plan M.”

”For Maybe.”  James clarified.  “Also, I hate to admit this, but we don’t have enough food for more than one good day, even just splitting with the group.  Still, bad opening.  But look, you talk, and we’ll at least give you a granola bar, okay?”  A nod in reply, though an angry one.  James got the impression this was a man who had had food weaponized against him a lot recently, and he kind of regretted doing it himself.  “How big is this area?”

”All of Castleton, out almost to one of the rigs.”  Tanner answered.  “There’s about… I mean there were about three thousand people.   Less now though.”

”How long?”  Spire asked.  “Since the wall, of course.  How long have you been trapped, and how long since things got truly unstable?”

He shrugged, camo jacket rustling.  “Three months maybe?   We don’t know, the days are fucked and no one noticed for too long.  Things got bad after a month.  Got worse a couple weeks ago, when Kane started some trouble.  Someone set a house on fire.  And food’s been almost out for a while.”

”Well shit.”  James muttered.  “Okay.  Factions.  Your guys?”

”Our guys?”

”A name, maybe?  Purpose?”  James prompted.

Tanner shrugged again.  “We’re just neighbors.  Porky’s in charge I guess.  Most of us used to be decent hunters, so we’re always near the wall hoping a deer wanders in, but we’ll take birds if we can get ‘em.  Like your guy said, though, we’re low on ammo.  Everyone is.”

”And Kane?”

Tanner shuddered.  ”Big guy.  Not fat, big.  Lots of tattoos.  He was in town with some friends already, and they bunkered down in the Wal Mart.”  James winced.  Of course it was a Wal Mart.  His prophecy was approaching.  “Only gave out food to the ‘right people’.  Really put everyone on edge, but they went right to killing, and no one wanted to argue.  I think… I think we thought the wall would come down, you know?  And he’d get his.”

”How many of his tattoos are swastikas?”  Alanna asked flatly.

”…I dunno.”  Tanner sounded pathetic as he answered.  “I mean… he’s that kind of guy, I guess.  But I don’t think he’s that kind of guy.”

”Good thing James isn’t a pacifist.”  Zhu said with vicious cheer.

James shushed the navigator.  “I’m not gonna just start blasting.”  He reminded Zhu.  “Who else?  Groups we need to know about.”  He asked Tanner.

”There’s other people, yeah.  We aren’t eating each other, we just look out for our families first.  There’s some people holed up in both churches, and I think some guys in the school.”  Tanner coughed suddenly, moving like he was trying to wipe his mouth before remembering he was sort of handcuffed.  “It’s not like we can stay in our houses.”

”…Why?”  James asked slowly, bracing himself for some kind of horrible answer.

”No lights, no gas, looters coming in?  Why do you fucking think?  It’s safer in a group.”  Tanner answered.

James felt like there was something weirdly deflecting in that answer, and a check with Alanna told him that while the guy wasn’t putting out the normal emotional markers for overtly lying, he was terrified of something.  Just not consciously.  A fear he’d buried so deep he wasn’t even really ‘feeling’ it, even if it was changing his behavior.

James and Spire traded a glance, eyes and lens narrowed in mild suspicion, before the camraconda refocused on their prisoner.  “How many people remain within this zone?”  She asked him bluntly.

”What do I look like, a fucking spook?  I don’t know.”  Tanner snapped back sarcastically.

”Guess.”  The camraconda bluntly insisted.  “A percentage perhaps.”

”Half?”  The man’s glare didn’t really break, but he did look down at the frozen ground.  “Lot of people died early trying to leave.”  He said, again giving James that weird vibe that there was something else he was covering up.  Alanna’s glance his way came with pursed lips and another message about that weird fear Tanner was holding in his subconscious.

With a few sighs, the trio decided that they weren’t going to get much more tactical information from this guy.   ”Take him back to the others.”  James said.  “I’ll catch up.”  He stepped off to the side, speaking in a low voice to Zhu.  “Hey.  I know it’s not your area of expertise, but what’s our antimeme situation look like here?”

”Well, the whole place feels weird.”  Zhu said, his big eye staring off at the grey barrier that carved a line across the landscape.  “I’m trying to guess if we could teleport through that.  You know how telepads actually go in a big curved line, right?”

”Sorta.  It’s why the Mormons could block it, right?”  James shoved his hands into his pockets, the gloves not really enough to keep the cold out.  He wasn’t freezing, but he wasn’t happy that they were maybe going to be staying this cold for a while.  “The wall feels like that?”

Zhu’s feathers flicked orange light against James’ armor. ”Nnnnno.  No.  This feels like something else.  I think if we try to get out, it dumps us back in here?  And before you say that’s not so bad, if that dumbass isn’t lying, then it kills people who are just walking.  It’d probably frappe us if we try to teleport through it.”

”Cool.”  James said.  “Though!  Charms?”  He tapped the silver clip he was wearing on his armor’s collar that had once been a shotgun, and was now a get-out-of-dying-free card.  “We might survive.”

”Yeah but we’d just be back here anyway and then when someone shoots us you won’t have Kiki’s thing.”  Zhu pointed out.  

“That might not… I mean… maybe this time…” James started to say, and then, abruptly, broke out in a laugh.  A laugh that went on for a little too long.  As the adrenaline ebbed away, and the objective was traded for the after-action sense of a persistent problem and no clear path forward, James found that familiar old anxiety clutching at his heart.  The chuckle that had begun to turn manic came to a stop only when Zhu abruptly swatted him in the face with his feathers, the infomorph’s manifested body still uncomfortably painful on cold skin.  “Okay ow.”  James said flatly.  And then, a second later.  “Thanks.”

The navigator settled in against his host’s body, manifested arm layering over James’ own and wrapping talons around in a way that would have been unhealthy for a biological creature, making himself look like a much cooler addition to the arm guard.  “No problem.  We can have a breakdown when we’re out.”

”We?” James inquired, turning to rejoin the others.

Zhu huffed.  “What, are you kidding?  I’m once again in a cage with no horizons.  I’d puke if that were an option.”

”…Can you even get sick?”  James asked suddenly, his voice shifting back to that casual friendly tone he used every chance he could get.  “I mean I know the Underburbs, sure, whatever.  But I mean actually sick.  Can you get… like… navigator COVID?”

”That’s your go to disease.”  Zhu’s own voice was incredulous.  “You couldn’t think of anything else?”

”I mean my first thought was cancer but we’re both immune anyway.  Oh, shit!  You’re immune to cancer, which implies that you could have gotten cancer!  Purple orb foresight strikes again!”  James snapped his fingers in amusement, speaking loud enough that his tone would carry, putting on a small reassuring show as he walked up to the rest of the group.  And their prisoners.  “So!  How’s everyone been behaving?”  James asked jovially.

TQ answered him first.  “I have been learning many new profanities.”  He told James.

”…That’s… great…” James closed his eyes and sighed as he saw Alanna biting down on a snicker.  He shook off that wave of whatever emotion he experienced whenever he talked to TQ, and faced the captive men.  “Cool.  So, you guys up to speed?”

One of them, grimacing in pain around the bullet he’d taken during return fire, had a surprisingly quick answer.  “Magic is real, monsters count as people, we can’t make jokes about queers anymore, and you might not kill us.”

James blinked.  “I… okay, yes.”  He sighed.  Everything the man had said was technically correct, and James still felt a headache intensifying.  Or maybe that was Zhu cackling inside his subconscious.  ”Alright.  Let’s make this clear.  We’re not here to kill you, we’re not going to let any other gang do it either, and ideally we’re going to figure out what’s going on and shut it down so we can get everyone back to the real world.  We’ve got a little food to share, but not enough, but we’ll still do what we can.  What we need right now is a base of operations, and local intel.  So I’ll make you all a deal.  Apologize for trying to murder us, show us around, and we’ll give you some granola bars and cut those zip ties off.”

”…Do we have a choice?”  The hunter in the most bizarrely contradictory plaid camouflage coat James had ever seen piped up.

”Yes.”  Spire-Cast-Behind answered.  “Your choice is to help us save you all from otherwise certain death, or to not do that.  I have learned that it is a human trait to make bad decisions on purpose, and I would not risk my coterie interfering with that.  I would advise you take our offer, though.”

Alanna folded her arms and growled at them.   ”Yeah James is being super generous.  Some of us are less forgiving about being ambushed by marauding bandits.”

”We aren’t fucking bandits!”  One of the guys snapped back, leaning forward on his knees in the cold dirt.

“You sure as shit aren’t champions of justice.”  Alanna retorted.

Tanner’s muttered response of “Got a kid to feed.” reached James’ ears even if it wasn’t meant to.  And, James considered, maybe that made sense to the man.  He had made a choice to prioritize the most important person in his world over anyone else, and there was a conviction to that which was almost respectable.  James didn’t really know what he’d do in a similar situation.  If it was Alanna, or Anesh, or anyone he actually knew starving, would he be willing to go to the same lengths?  He liked to think he’d be better, but despite the jokes, he wasn’t a parent and didn’t really understand that kind of devotion.

So instead he just sighed deeply.  “So agree to our terms, and let’s get your kid some food.”  He said quietly.

There was some more bickering.  A few more shouts.  But there was also an uncomfortable reality to the situation.  Possibly, it was that reality that was adding to the captive men’s anger and bitterness.  Right now, these guys who had, even in horrifying circumstances, been providing for their community and probably prided themselves on being tough, were completely at the mercy of a group of weirdo outsiders.  And the fight hadn’t even been close.

They could take the deal.  Or, as Spire had said, they could make a bad choice.  And… then what?  James had already said they wouldn’t kill the dudes, but what would actually happen?  Left here in the dirt to freeze, their weapons emptied out, and nothing to show for the day?  Marched back into town tied up, paraded in front of everyone that knew them, just to be kept as prisoners?  Killed anyway?

These guys were angry, and desperate, and willing to lash out.  They were trapped in here, and if Zhu was already feeling like a caged animal after half an hour, they were probably feeling it a fair bit worse after three months.  But for all that, and despite James finding some of their bullshit offensive, they weren’t complete morons.

So they took the deal.  And a couple of them even sounded sincere in their apology.  But all of them got their zip ties cut.

_____

“I cannot fucking believe that I’m the one waiting outside.”  James griped.  Though he wasn’t really mad, he’d done this to himself.

He was currently getting colder and colder, his hands starting to go numb despite his magical protections and also gloves, as he stood with TQ at the top of a set of steps outside one of those big mixed-use office buildings.  There was still no wind, but the sharp light of the sun hanging overhead was doing nothing to drag the temperature above freezing, and he had hoped to at least get inside, even if there wasn’t actually HVAC keeping the building warm.

He and his camraconda maybe-more-than-friend were outside and keeping watch, while Alanna and Riho took the back entrance, so that the people who had made this place their communal shelter could all get together and talk about what was going on.  James had been inside briefly, so he knew it was still pretty chilly, but he’d also gotten more than a few conversational snippets of people yelling at and threatening their family and community members when they’d learned that the hunting group had tried to murder James’ party.  Apparently, the end of society was no reason for an actual proud North Dakotan to be so rude as to shoot someone.  At least, according to what the woman smacking the shit out of her husband had said.

They probably could have circumvented a lot of the arguing and yelling if they’d just kept quite about how they’d met.  But James and Spire both agreed that they’d experienced too many problems caused by dishonesty, and had simply cut through any shame or guilt with blunt words of explanation.  It had been enough to get them through the ‘guards’ on the front steps, too.

The fact that the Order team had obvious nonhuman members had gone a long way toward showing off that they weren’t from around here, and might have some kind of hope to offer, though.  But the families that lived here had still insisted that everyone be present for their talk about the situation, and they absolutely didn’t want to leave the doors unprotected.  So James had foolishly volunteered.

The building was located near the southern border of Castleton, and its parking lot had contained a small army of Ford F-150s and Crown Vics when they’d arrived down the road that had split off before the city proper.  Even before hearing from the people inside, James had known just from the vehicle selection that this place was probably a field office for an oil company, and that had ended up being correct, among other different local companies that had rented offices here.

Castleton, whose town sign bore the slogan ‘We aren’t Cassleton!’, was very spread out.  Houses often had two or three empty parcels of land between their neighbors, and while the main road through town had a couple fast food places on it, the local Wal Mart was apparently the monopoly on groceries.  Aside from a single primary school that served every grade level needed, and a fairly recently built hospital, there weren’t that many big buildings here.  It was possible for James to see two of the three churches in the town from their fancy steeples, and if there wasn’t a mountain in the way he’d have been able to spot the third too.  This office complex, also newly built with oil company money, was kind of the biggest place in town.

Which was sort of why a lot of the survivors had congregated here.  Pooling their supplies, limited material to make fire out of, and sometimes furniture, this place had been set up as a relatively safe spot to try to wait out the town’s severing from the rest of reality.  They’d set up blankets against as many windows as they could, sealed off parts of the interior, and dragged empty barrels inside to be ‘safe’ fire pits that kept the place at a non-fatal temperature.  And, yeah, they were armed.  And apparently increasingly hostile to the other groups in the city.

It wasn’t friendly, exactly.  But it was something James found commendable.  A lot of the people here clearly didn’t get along, but they’d also been on the edge of throwing down against the Order’s double paladin team for the sake of their neighbors, before everything had been rapidly explained.

The food they’d brought definitely wasn’t enough.  They had backup snacks.  Not enough to feed the almost two hundred people in this building.  Though James still handed over everything he had, at the same time that he learned that Alanna apparently had a habit he hadn’t known about of always carrying a copy of the Wallet Of Inconvenient Folding stuffed with partly mangled granola bars.  So at the very least, there was something.  A dent in the massive wall of a problem.

Of course the real problem was the real wall.

Riho had been the one to realize as they were leaving the skirmish site.  The wall itself was cleanly behind where they’d all landed, and the reason they’d been able to tell they were being aimed at before they were in?  Well, the ground close to the wall itself wasn’t quite ‘inside’ yet.  They were actually looking at the spatial slide itself.  And you could safely walk through it, too.  But whenever an animal - or people like them, clearly - wandered in, they’d be visible for a little bit before the bubble of space snapped shut and they became actually inside.

James thought this might be a critical clue.  But he didn’t know how yet.  It was just something he filed away.

”Spire-Cast-Behind is a better diplomat.”  TQ skewered James’ through the heart with his casual comment.  “And we are better protectors.”

That, at least, was definitely true.  The men who had been camped out here, seated in folding chairs and bundled up in coats, looked like they were half dead when the team had arrived.  James hadn’t wanted to take their chairs; the things looked like they’d freeze him through his armor.  So he was standing leaning on a rough concrete planter, while TQ just coiled next to him.

“Mh.”  James made a noncommittal sound.

TQ waited for slightly too little time before speaking.  “Share your thoughts?” He prompted.

James felt a smile tug at his lips despite the situation.  He really did like TQ’s directness.  “We need to figure out what’s doing this.”  He said.  “And fast.  Because we also need food, and even you and Spire won’t be able to eat when our batteries run out and we don’t have security footage to snack on.  But I don’t know where to start.  This place isn’t that big, it’s… like… three or four hundred houses, and a handful of other places.  I think the truck dealership they have takes up more square feet than their government buildings.”  James actually knew that for a fact, he’d been scouting with his drones this whole time.  “But we still don’t have a month to scour the whole town.”

“A month is a substantial amount of time.”  TQ agreed with a stiff bob of his insulated body.  James had only just realized that the camraconda was wearing one of James’ coats wrapped and tied around the outside of his armor.  It was kind of a cool look on the camraconda, though, and staying warm was important, so he didn’t comment on it.  “Every month we acquire a new species.”  TQ commented.

“…No, that can’t be right.”  James said, already dreading checking his mental timeline.  But no, TQ was almost precisely correct.  Crocamaws, then baby chanters if that counted, then umbral, then the ratlings… there was a break in there for the month when the Underburbs had tried to fuck everything up, but yeah, almost once a month lately.

Once a month for problems, too.  Well, the big ones that ate up all of James’ time.  Which this could not afford to be.

“Time both glides and tangles.”  TQ said cryptically.  “And we endure it all.  But now, we endure Castleton.  How do we cease enduring it?”

”I’m already searching for any obvious distortions.”  James said, tapping his skulljack braid with a gloved finger.  “Priority one is figuring out if there’s an off switch somewhere in here.  Whatever had Tanner rattled, I don’t see it.  So it’s probably just a human drama thing.  No weird creatures in the streets, no bizarre visible phenomena, no one showing off superpowers.  So far, anyway.  After that… contact with the Order, start figuring out if we can get supplies in or anything out.  If we can’t break this place open, but we can still escape, then we can just evacuate it and fence it off.”

TQ hissed merrily.  “You.”  He said with a twisting shake of his head.

”Me?”

”You.  Silly human.”  TQ repeated.  “You are so busy worrying that you did not notice that you already know where to start.  And have started.”

James felt his cheeks heat up, and turned his head away, even though his actual focus was on entirely different eyes hovering overhead in the sky.  “Well I wasn’t gonna just sit around.”  He grumbled.  “But… yeah.  You’re right.  It’s easy to freak out and forget that we have practiced for this shit.”  He sighed.

TQ hummed softly.  “We have.”  He said.  “And for some of us, our Compiled Wastes rewards might offer an escape if we can last long enough.  But that is a failsafe, not a plan.”

”If you want a plan for contacting people, I’ve got dream draught doses primed!  I’ll drink the ones for Anesh and Keeka and have good odds of being able to contact them in the next day or two”  James said happily, finally vindicated in that preparation.  “I mean, you’re in my rotation, you know!”

”I am aware.”  TQ said with amusement.  “They taste unpleasant.”  And then,  “After this, if we survive, I would like to share a dream for no reason.  Perhaps then I can spend time with you without…” His mechanical arms unfolded like a spider holding up the sky, shrugging at all this.

James was mid chuckle when the door to the office complex was kicked open and Karl stormed out, just barely stopping himself from slipping on an uncleared patch of ice at the top of the rocky grey concrete steps.  James let his laugh trail off as he and TQ both turned to look at the young human.  “Sounds like diplomacy is going great.”  James commented.

”They’re all idiots!”  Karl said with the untainted conviction that teenagers often used.

”…Ooookay.”

”Fascinating.”

James and TQ turned back to face each other, the human addressing the camraconda first.  “So I’m thinking after the search, we’ll hit the bigger buildings, then start checking basements?”

”The standard pattern, I am familiar.  Fortunately the lack of apartments offers a lower density of complexity.  I am assailed by complexity enough at home already.”

”I still don’t know where you live.”  James realized.  “You always show up at my place.”

”Oh, I am always somewhere.”  TQ shifted his mechanical limbs around.  The pack wasn’t light, and it limited his capacity to contribute to the group’s logistics.  He needed to get some of his own cold resistance so he could replace them with ice limbs.  It was to the camracondas understanding that a person could feel through those, too, which would be convenient.  And also, Breath replenished easier than battery power, in some situations.  “Where was-”

Karl made a disgruntled sound.  “I know what you’re doing.”  He said.

James snorted.  “Good.  Do you want to elaborate on what you said, or just brood?”

”They’re idiots!”  Karl repeated loudly.  And before TQ could remind him that this was not an elaboration, added, “They’re treating us like tools!  They just want us to fight the group at the Wal Mart for them, like we’re… we’re…!”

”An adventuring party?”  James asked with a sly smile.  “Yeah, I got that vibe.”

Karl wasn’t done though.  ”They’re saying we owe them for shooting that guy.  That we have to go find antibiotics for him!”

”…Why do they not have antibiotics?”  James asked, confused.  “Didn’t they say something about a pharmacy?”  He’d admittedly not been listening closely to Spire’s attempt at diplomatic relations, instead paying attention to TQ, and to his drones.

Shrugging aggressively, Karl fumbled to zip up his coat against the chill.  “It’s stupid.  They tried to kill us!  We don’t owe them anything!”

”No, but I’ll put it on the sidequest list anyway.” James said calmly.  “Angry?”  He asked simply, looking over at Karl, who had moved to sit on the edge of the frozen planter box.  A move the kid would surely regret soon.

”Yes?  Yes!”  The kid’s shaggy blonde hair poked out from under his hat as he whipped his head over to glare at James.  “I’m not an idiot though.  I know we’re going to help them, because that’s the right thing to do.  But I’m still pissed at them!  They’re just… morons!”

”Little harsh.”  A gruff but friendly voice said from behind them.

James smirked as he watched the man approach out of the corner of his eye.  The guy was wearing his coat open, unbothered by the cold with red and black plaid underneath.  He would have probably been someone that the more actively gay part of James’ brain would have called handsomely chubby, three months ago.  But no one here was doing well in the weight department, and it showed.  “Well, to be fair to the kid, you’re treating us like we’re here to solve all your problems.”

”Aren’t you?  Wave a magic wand and make it all better?”  The man asked with a chuckle.

TQ hissed in amusement, and the man glanced down at him with raised eyebrows but no flinch or nervousness.  “Our wands are for causing problems, mostly.”

”Hey that’s not fair!  Zhu and I made that one that solves a very specific security issue!”  James protested, before shaking his head and turning to offer a hand to the guy.  “Hi.  James.”

”John.”  The human was a little older than James, and from his grip, probably used to hard work.  “Not gonna tell you I’m in charge here, but a few people listen to me.”  His smile got a little sharper as he shrugged.  “You might’ve noticed, but we’re not really much of a unified city anymore.”

James grimaced.  “It’s come up.”  He said with a carefully neutral tone.

John nodded in understanding.  ”Well, just wanted to let you know, some of us appreciate what you’re doing here.”  He said.  “If you need a hand, I’ve got some of the boys ready to go.”

”Might take you up on that.”  James said, relaying the information to the others along with his quick profile on John through their skulljacks.  Understanding that there was factionalism and drama going on in the shelter was easy.  Understanding that they might have at least one of those factions as helpers in hunting for a solution was much more important.

Really it was something James had expected from the moment they’d been more informed about this place.  There was no power.  No electricity meant limited heating and barely any light, yes, but also no phones, no computers, no TV, no video games.  Batteries had long since run out for everything fun.  With that in mind, the options for entertainment were limited to board games for the kids, sleeping around for the adults, and gossiping about the sleeping around for everyone as a generational bridge.

“A question.”  TQ asked the new arrival that Karl was grudgingly trying to not glower at, the camraconda staring up at the blue sky.  That sky was so strange; thin wisps of white cloud, and crystal blue lit by the sun overhead, right up until the flat grey wall took it away.

John didn’t hesitate to address the camraconda like a person.  “Shoot.  I’ve got some free time.”

”The sun.”  TQ said.  “Does the wall occlude it?”

“Oc-what?”

”Block.”

”Oh!  Yeah, yeah, we’ve got short days here now.”  John’s voice was obviously stressed as he answered.  “No more sunrises or sunsets either.  No rain at least, though.  All those clouds?  That’s what we’ve got.”

That caught James’ attention, and he tilted his head, trying to figure out what was wrong with that sentence.  Then it suddenly struck him.  “The wall isn’t a wall.”  He said abruptly in realization.

”Scuse you?”  John cleared his throat.

”It can’t just be ‘a wall’.  If it was a wall, it would let light and rain through along with people.  But it’s not really doing that.  And there’s that strip of border land, too.”  James felt like he was rapidly assembling a more full picture of what this place was like.  “That’s how we found it.  Every time it snaps shut, it was messing with weather patterns.  Pressure fronts.  So it probably does it a lot.”  He looked out to the upper edge of the wall, visible over the small flat topped mountain that the town was built around one side of.  “If it’s only rotating to let living things in… that’s like hunting.  It’s acting like a dungeon.”  James said, as he straightened up, turning to look back and forth around them at the top of the concrete stairs, like he was expecting a dungeon creation attack at any moment.

But nothing happened.

”The hell’s a dungeon?”  John asked.

”A place like this, but with an exit, and it gives you superpowers.”  James said idly.

”So where’s the exit?”  Karl asked the question James had left open.  “Everyone says the wall…”

Kills people.  That was what they’d been told.  And that was the story the graves James had observed from overhead told, too.  Out of town, not the direction they’d come from but farther north, there were a lot of fresh mounds of dirt off the severed asphalt of the road.

Some of them had headstones or other markers.  But there was a story in the progression.  The farther from the road, the more haphazard the graves got.  There was even what looked like a filled trench and a mass grave, the backhoe still parked there.

It was one thing to be abstractly told that half the town had died.  Another to see the graves, if not the blood and bodies themselves.  A lot of the early ones were from hitting the wall before anyone knew what it did.  A lot of people had died that way.  After that…

Cold.  Hunger.  Disease.  Or just desperation, sending someone to dare to try to cross because out there would be better than in here.  Which never worked.

James knew the saying that a population was never more than three meals away from rioting.  Castleton had been going three months without those three meals.  The fact that there were buildings standing at all was a testament to the restraint of the population.

Or maybe it was something else.  Maybe it was the buried fear, that Alanna had reported on from all of them.  That they didn’t seem to even know they were feeling.  Maybe it wasn’t just for warmth that the survivors had clustered in only four or five buildings together.

“Welp.”  James said, dusting off his armor.  “Sounds like they’re finished in there.”

John gave him a weird look.  ”How do you-“

“So I’m gonna go thaw out, pick up my belligerent feathered scarf, and get to work finding that exit.”  He said, like it was all in a day’s work.  “John, nice to meet you, you two, come on.  We’ve got a bunch of idiots to save.”  He smirked at Karl for a moment, the kid clearly unhappy to be embarrassed in front of an actual adult.

“Yes,” TQ said as he followed after his paladin, “it is clear you are lacking in motivation or starting points.  Do you need suggestions?”

”I need a coterie that doesn’t sass me!”  James said as he tugged on the slightly iced external door.

TQ’s hiss was like distant happy rain, pouring through James’ ears.  “It is good that you are wrong, because you cannot have that.”  The camraconda said as they went to begin the actual hard part of this sortie.