The Daily Grind - Chapter 381 (Patreon)

"There is no such thing as “away”, when we throw something away it must go somewhere." -Annie Leonard-

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There was something incredibly unsettling about an empty superstore.

Not empty of people; it was actually full of people.  Though in one of those weird quirks of logistics that James sort of academically understood but hadn’t seen firsthand too often, it wasn’t crammed.  Six hundred people, give or take, were in here, divided up between a few different ‘holding areas’, and yet it wasn’t crowded.

The maximum occupancy of the building was nine hundred people.  Before the wall cut this place out of reality, before the starvation and violence started, this building could have had a third of the town walking around and shopping in it and not gotten a warning from the fire marshal about their obvious failure.

The shelves being stripped bare of food, the piles of bulging trash bags around the place, the fact that the most heavily defended and hard to access part of the building was where they stored their strategic reserve of dog kibble, the only light being from flickering firelight and what grey sun got in from the high windows, the smell of hundreds of humans who hadn’t bathed in months, all of it made this place feel like a miniature version of hell.  But it was the numbers that really hurt James.

This building, even as big as it was, could have held almost the whole population that was left.

People had died.  People had died in here.  James was almost afraid to look at the scroll they’d recovered from the church, because he really didn’t want to know how many lives his communication nap had cost.

There was something unsettling about a place that was supposed to have everything a person needed, being stripped down to shelves that were rearranged as walls.  But there was something equally unsettling to be walking into it as a person who hadn’t missed a meal recently, who was armed and augmented and ready to survive anything, and seeing all the people who were barely hanging on.

At least it wasn’t freezing.  Which made sense; James could understand people having gathered here for food initially, he could understand how it turned into a small dictatorship, and he could understand how things slowly slid into being bad.  But more than the food or amenities, it was the cold that made him understand why the mass of hundreds of people didn’t simply make a breakout attempt.

No one wanted to get shot, sure.  But also, it was still below freezing on a daily basis, and there was no power.  No gas.  No support.  Not out there.  At least in here, they weren’t frozen to death.

Though it was pretty obvious that the people in the cage of the produce section, kept in through positive reinforcement of warmth and negative reinforcement of barbed wire on the dead refrigerated shelves that had once held boxes of salad, had given up.  These were not people holding on for rescue.  These were humans that were pretty sure they were going to die, and just didn’t want to quite yet.

”I do not like this.”  TQ said softly from James’ side as they moved through the barren front of the store, through checkout aisles that hadn’t been operational for months and impulse buy racks that had been stripped down to the last breath mint.  “If this were a dungeon, I could understand.”  The camraconda said, shifting his armored form to look back and forth at where a few dozen people were visible curled inside blankets or laying on cardboard mats.  “We make gambles with our lives every time we step inside.  But why did this happen?  Why here?  Why these victims?”

James didn’t have an answer.  The words from TQ grabbed him by the throat and wouldn’t let go, because the simple answer was that there likely wasn’t a reason.

Something bad had happened, and a lot of people had died.  That was a daily occurrence on Earth.  This time, though, it wasn’t war or economic collapse or base greed.  It was almost worse, because it just… happened.  For no reason at all.  No one to blame, and no one to fight to stop it.

When James got out of here he was going to find someone he could beat up that was causing some kind of capitalist suffering, just to prove that he could push back somewhere.

For now, though, there was a much less direct way of solving the immediate problem.

”We need to get everyone out of here.”  James said instead of answering TQ.  “And there’s basically no working vehicles in the city since there’s no gas.  No buses, period.  We can requisition the ones from Townton, which’ll suck, and shows that we really need a backup for that, but at least it’ll work.  We just need to… tell someone.”  He frowned as he kept walking, half-following Kane and his two still-standing friends and fellow ‘bandits’ into the store.  His eyes landed on a spot in the middle of the furniture section about a whole city block away through the wide interior aisle of the store as they moved, and he almost laughed as he spotted the fold in space.  “Well, I found where my demiplane slip landed.  Guess this is a social hub after all.”

”Is this the one you can take furniture through?  Because it’d be a great opportunity to get a bed in there.”  Alanna pointed out.

“Not really the time.”  James said quietly, still processing the deeply uncomfortable feeling of just how much of a collapse they were surrounded by.  It was on a small scale, yeah, and Townton had been through so much worse, but… with Townton, it had been so quick.  The Order, sometimes James personally, had cleaned up the life of every survivor, and got to work making sure the husk of the city didn’t burn down as they emptied it of valuable salvage and turned old foundations into a new home.  Here?  Here, it was slow, painful, and ongoing.  So his humor was a little dampened.  “Also it’s not that one.  The furniture one spawns on highways.”

Alanna clicked her tongue.  “Of course it does.”  She said.  And something in her voice made James glance over at her to see the hard mask that his girlfriend had put on.  Not the literal alchemy mask that was slung around her neck, but the emotional one where she had bricked away her reaction to the situation.

”Shit.  Sorry.”  James said quickly as he realized that Alanna probably wasn’t having a good time with the Empathy feedback from him, much less from everyone else in the building.  “Wanna wait outside?”

”Nah.  I’ll handle… getting people ready.”  Alanna says.

A quick flick of James’ head goes unnoticed by his partner, and Arrush stops fidgeting with his armor’s straps to speak through the mask he is actually wearing.  “I can help.”  The ratroach steps aside with Alanna, smiling unseen at James and giving away the emotional game as James and TQ continue on.

”I’m fine.”  Alanna tells him.

”Oh, good.  Because I don’t know what to do.”  Arrush tells her as they head toward one of the now-unmanned barricades to start telling the survivors that they are going to survive and not merely perish slower.  Getting the barbed wire down, Alanna thinks, is going to be a problem, unless some of the shelves have wheels.

Kane looked back as they left, the two guys who had been with him lingering almost awkward by the front door.  “They know what they’re doing?”  He asked like he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to question.

”We’ve done some rescue operations before.”  James said blandly.  “Now let’s go meet our Watcher and then you get to tell everyone directly that we’ll be getting out of here.  Hopefully today.”  His footsteps sounded too loud on the scuffed flooring, even over the sounds of people talking or coughing or softly crying; the building just echoed too much.

Soon enough they got to a stairway, a narrow little row of plastic-coated steps that led up into an almost totally dark upstairs space.  Kane’s apprehension spiked as he stopped James when they got closer.  “There’s gonna be a couple people-“

”All clear.”  Spire-Cast-Behind’s out loud voice called down to them.  “Watch out for the top step though, it is sharp.”

“…It gave Kenny something to do that wasn’t harassing people.”  Kane muttered defensively.

James didn’t answer, just heading up the stairs, TQ on his heels as he fended off the claustrophobia of ascending through a space that his armor made him feel too wide for, up into darkness that he couldn’t really see into.  At least the camraconda was armored, so the ‘sharpened’ top step, apparently designed as one more line of defense against anyone trying to challenge the people in charge, just rasped off his armor plate.

Spire met them in a space that she and Tyrone had already set up lights in, a row of a half dozen humans lined up in seated positions against the wall, their hands and sometimes ankles firmly tied up, a stack of guns and hunting knives piled on a desk that looked like it only hadn’t been overturned because it was bolted to the floor.  “Good, you are here.  We have cleared all rooms except the manager’s office.”

”And I’ve got a key.”  James said, spinning the small object he’d gotten from Kane on a finger.  “I’m guessing that’s where all the scrolls are too, but I don’t know if we care about those right now.”

”I certainly do not.”  Spire told him, her digital tone unhappy.  “This is pointless.  We are here to give them a way out, and they shot at us.  I am unhappy with your species today.”

TQ curled his body around to peer at the other camraconda.  “Are they the same species?  James is not a Dakotan.”

”Uh.”  James paused, his flashlight beam oriented down one of the side hallways that seemed to form a loop, offices or meeting rooms on the sides with windows looking out on the store, or the back warehouse area.  “I’m reasonably sure the Dakota people are an actual Native American tribe.”

”Oh.  Once again human racism interferes with my whimsy.”  TQ sulked.

James let that go as he headed toward the back office the last prisoner was in, taking a moment to look out the narrow one-way window down to the store’s floor where Alanna was quietly going person to person and telling them things were going to be okay.  It was fun spotting Arrush trailing behind her, the ratroach standing out by his tails if nothing else.  Equally fun was seeing someone on the far side of the Wal Mart, over some of the taller shelves in the housewares section that hadn’t been completely ravaged of product if only because people couldn’t eat plates.  Kiki stood out to James because he knew what she was; to the people she was walking amongst, she was just another person.  Except, she clearly wasn’t.  There was something that drew the attention of the people she passed, that made people huddled under blankets and in small private areas look up and take notice.

And she was talking to people.  Stopping regularly, kneeling or sitting with the survivors.  James watched as she handed someone a cookie, and felt, from across the fairly expansive interior of the store, as something broke and reformed inside the man she was offering food to.

Most of the time, James felt that Kiki was one of the better names a pillar could have.  But right now, he was wondering exactly what she was doing to all the people she was in the process of killing with kindness.

He knew Kiki held back, a lot, because she was afraid of hurting people.  Because she was afraid what she did to people was evil or immoral or maybe heretical if she happened to be religious.  James had never asked.  And he’d often pushed back on that attitude from her.  But he’d never really considered what it would look like if she embraced it.

This, maybe.  Cookies that rebuilt a human spirit from the ground up.

He shook it off and kept moving through the dark upstairs hall to his target.  The floor here was cheap wood paneling, which James found amusing; Wal Mart would be the sort of place that would skimp on the budget to their back areas.  But it also smelled like someone had kept using the employee bathroom up here well past when the plumbing had stopped working, and he sped up, in a hurry to get the last prisoner out and get moving.

The room that Watcher ended up being stored in was a cold office with three different desks against the walls.  Computer monitors that hadn’t turned on in months sat in the shared space for keeping store inventory and lecturing employees, along with a guy wrapped in a sleeping bag like a burrito who was positioned on a ragged couch in the corner.  There was a pyramid of bags of dog food on the floor, and James wondered how much longer the stockpile of two hundred pounds of kibble would have lasted all these people.  The last of the canned food on one of the desks looked like it was deliberately there to draw attention, and James pointedly looked away from it as he swept the space until his eyes landed on a banker’s box behind a desk.  That was where he’d hide a pile of magical artifacts.

He knew Kane had split the scroll stockpile.  The bunch in the break room were what the rest of the bandits knew there was.  But here, out of sight by virtues of being innocuous, were the rest of them.

”Oh good.  More torture then?”  The man on the couch asked glibly.

”You seem rather comfortable for someone who has been tortured.”  TQ said, the camraconda hanging back out of the prisoner’s sight line.  Spire-Cast-Behind gave him a look with a minutely widening lens before she realized this was only partly a rescue, the other camraconda keeping out of sight around the corner as well.

The man in the sleeping bag, who was very clearly tied up underneath that layer of padding, twisted to look at James from a sideways angle.  “The very picture of relaxation, I’m sure.”  He said.  “Here to kill me, then?”

”Hardly.”  James snorted, examining the figure that was trying to look like he was lounging, and wondering if the eruption of a moustache had existed before his capture, or if it was a recent addition.  He’d place the guy in his late forties, at a guess, so it could have gone either way.  “Watcher, I presume?”

“The very same.  So, not one of these thugs then.  Slightly polite.  A high bar to clear here, nevertheless.  What brings you to my humble abode?”  The man asked.

James stepped up to the guy, crossing his arms and looking down at him.  “Well, nominally I’m here to rescue you.  Though it’s kind of a side effect of being here to rescue everyone.  I’m just wondering if I should untie you first.”

”I’d appreciate it?”  Watcher ventured with a lopsided smile as he looked up at James.  “Forever in your debt, owe you my life, all of that of course.”

”Really.”

”No, of course not.  Though I suppose it is easy to offer when our lives are somewhat stuck in here at the moment.”  Watcher shrugged inside his sleeping bag coccoon, and James froze his expression in the unamused look he was using as he made a sudden realization.  “Really, though, I suppose the most I would truly offer is getting you out of here when it is time to leave.”

“You have a schedule?”  James asked, hiding his face by looking back at the door where the two camracondas were lurking along with Tyrone.  “I’d love to know it.”

Watcher laughed pleasantly, a polite society chuckle that made it seem like he was in complete control of the situation.  Or at least that he felt he was.  “These little bubbles all have similar rules to them.  I’ll admit, this one is a little strange, but I’m confident I’ll be leaving.  Which is, of course, why I’m being so patient.”

”You’ve seen something like this before?”  James didn’t have to pretend to be surprised.

”Personally?  No, no.  But the Coalition has, and we do so love our after action reports.  I’d say this one will collapse either after an arbitrary number of days, or when everyone that isn’t holding one of those little illuminating scrolls is rather dead.”  Watcher’s pleasant affectation didn’t slip even a little as he described it.  “In light of that, well, ‘escaping’ this place seems rather pointless, doesn’t it?  Rather limited in places to go until after it’s time to quit the field.  And, from what I understand, all the pubs are empty.”

James nodded sympathetically.  “So I’ve been informed.”  He said with faux pity.  “You do know you’d have to go through a lot of guys with guns, right?”  He asked Watcher.

The man on the couch laughed at him.  “Please.  Since you’re in here, I’m assuming you know how easy that is for some of us.”  One of his hands moved inside the sleeping bag, like he was making a placating gesture on reflex.  “Of course, I could.  It would just be an inconvenience.  An expensive one, too.”  That, at least, sounded actually honest.

Shifting his footing, James sighed.  ”Fair enough.  Look, I’ll be honest, I’d love to just let you go, but I’ve heard some stuff about you.  You wanna tell me what’s up with you goading people into killing each other?”

“Well I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have a vested interest in being the last man standing, as it were.”  Watcher said.  “Though I think you’ve had things misexplained.  Perhaps deliberately.  I would never goad citizens to their deaths, that defeats the purpose of being the Coalition.”  He said that almost passionately.

”And the people who died at the wall?”  James prompted.

”A misunderstanding.”  Came the instant reply.  “And a sad one, at that.  I made the critical error of speculating, and it was taken as gospel.  Which, of course, has led to my imprisonment here, like so much stocked product.”

That almost sounded reasonable.  And if James hadn’t felt something off about this man from the moment he’d seen him, he could have even believed it.

He wasn’t Alanna - though he was going to get her up here, to double check - but James didn’t need enhanced Empathy to have a gut feeling.  And one thing that he’d been learning a lot lately was that he needed to listen to his instincts when they told him something was wrong.  It wasn’t a great plan to believe his instinctive reaction every time, obviously, but if something seemed weird, it cost less to check why than to ignore that part of his brain and pay for it later.

And there was just something about this guy that made James upset.

”Hey.”  Zhu said, out loud, from his supposed hiding place, getting a raised eyebrow from the captive and a sigh from James.  “You gonna ask him about the Coalition thing?  Cause that seems relevant to everything.”

”Wow, yeah, good catch.”  James tapped the toe of a boot against the couch.  “I am sure you heard that.  So?”

Watcher’s pleasant smile didn’t even momentarially dip into discomfort or anger, or even mild confusion, which was part of how James realized he was looking at a very good mask.  “Interesting.”  He said.  “Well.  I suppose it isn’t worth keeping secret, given the circumstances?” James just raised his eyebrows down at the supposedly bound man.  “The Coalition is dedicated to the defense of life on this world.”  He said simply.

”Oh.  Another one of these.”  Spire hissed angrily from the door.  “Did anyone have this on their schedule?”

”We could blame Planner?”  TQ suggested.  “Though.  It does happen regularly, doesn’t it?”

”Hold up.”  James narrowed his eyes at the paladin’s comment, holding a hand behind himself at them.  “There were less qualifier words in there than normal.  Just… life on this planet?”

”Well, we only have the one, so far.”  Watcher said comfortably.  “We may have to change our sales pitch if we ever reach Mars.  Though from my understanding, the one man pretending to be dedicating his fortune to that is quite bad at the process.  So it may be some time.”

James actually did let himself breathe out a laugh at that statement.  “All life?”  He asked.

”All of it.”  Watcher said, and this time, James’ instinct told him that this wasn’t a mask.  Wasn’t a lie.  He meant that part.  Even if he did follow it up with just one qualifier.  “So long as it isn’t about to wipe out all the rest.”

”Then what the hell are you doing here, dude?”  Tyrone asked from the doorway, Spire’s coterier filling the the lull after the statement from Watcher.  “Double that if you think you’ll get out by outliving everyone else!”

Watcher stopped smiling very abruptly, his expression turning to something that was on the nastier side of neutral.  “I am waiting for a tragedy to conclude.”  He said bluntly.  “And it won’t be long now.  Frankly it is surprising so many have held on for so long.”

James stared at him for a long moment, outwardly silent while in his head he was talking to the others.  “This guy seems… ruthless but not openly evil?  I dunno.  Do we take a risk on this Coalition?  If they’re another Status Quo…”

”Any information we give out is a potential risk.”  Cam’s reply was the first, with no hesitation.

”Spire, wander past him.”  Alanna said.  “Just give me your sight feed.  I’ll tell you what his reaction is.”

”He did say all.”  Arrush added, his reply coming slower as he tried to edit the words through his skulljack while still working alongside Alanna.  “Am I part of all?  That would be…”

”Novel. “ Spire-Cast-Behind’s interjection was smoother than the others, her experience and skill with her skulljack shown off.  “On a basic level, we will not be able to remove him without him learning who we are.  Our only options are to either fully expunge his knowledge, perhaps with Moon or Mercy’s help, or to provide him information on our own terms.  Or kill him, but that falls under the first category.  And while he is suspicious, his crimes are unknown.”

James gnawed on the inside of his cheek as he thought through that.  “Also we’re more into restorative justice anyway.”  He sent back.  “I’m leaning toward trying to make friends, but… I really want to know what his actual plan was here.”  He prodded Alanna’s skulljack through the connection, opening his senses up to his partner.  “Spire, want to move in?”

”If he flinches I am shooting him.”  She announced silently, while out loud, she broke the lingering silence with her armored tail scraping against the floor and the sound of her voice. “You may find you do not need to last as long as you suspect.”  She directed at the captive.

Watcher’s casually polite attitude didn’t even crack as he caught sight of the camraconda.  “Well that would explain the insistence on my wording.”  He said with an acknowledging nod her way, his head bobbing around where the sleeping bag was tied up at his neck.  “If you’re worried, then no, the Coalition won’t be sending a strike team for you.  Well, not over that.  Though inconvenient or not I might just drag one in here if no one unties me.”

”Wow, he’s fucking weird.”  Alanna sent to them.  “Empathy reads him as arrogant and amused, but it’s muffled.  Not standard narcissism, something else.  He might actually be shielded somehow.   Different flavor than the earrings, but same general area.”  She took a second to look closer through James’ eyes.  “He’s serious about protecting people, but I think he already thinks everyone in here is dead.  Yeah.  Yeah, that’s definitely it.  He’s one of those ‘cut your losses’ guys.  And he does believe he could have everyone here killed.”

That was horrifying on its own, but it made what James had been told about Watcher quite a bit worse.  If he was operating under the assumption that the whole population of this spatial trap was going to die, he would apparently have had no issues getting any of them killed.  Or doing it himself, James suspected.

But it also meant that the best way to neutralize him as a threat was to just tell him they could leave.

“Cam.  How far out are you?” James asked.

”Three minutes. Less if needed.” Cam replied.

”Okay.  I’m going to give him limited information, and hope we can figure out diplomatic contact with whatever his Coalition is after this.”  James told the others.  “Even if he’s an asshole, he’s not… pointlessly violent?  And I think we need to know if there’s a group like us.  Object now if anyone thinks this is a terrible idea.”

Spire looked at James, then back at the man on the couch, before she moved over to search through the boxes and desks with her mechanical limbs moving like a particularly dexterous spider.  “Oh, I do.  But you are right, we have finite options.”

”Great.”  James said out loud, noting that this at least got a flash of puzzlement from the man he was talking to.  “Well, get up.  There’s no one here keeping you prisoner.  Someone’s grabbing your fancy watch for you too.”  James was pretty sure that was where Kane had run off to.  “Anything else you need?”

”I wouldn’t say no to a steak dinner.  Care to untie me?”  Watcher smiled up at James.

”You’ve been untied the whole time.”  James pointed out, which seemed to ruin the man’s fun.

Watcher shook his head as he pushed the sleeping bag down, revealing a stained and rumpled dress shirt and only slightly less distressed grey pants covering a skinny athletic body.  However old he was, he was in good shape.  James also found it amusing that no one had removed the holsters he had; one on his belt and one smaller on an underarm sling.  No guns, obviously, but it was still such a petty thing to leave him with those lumpy protrusions while keeping him locked up.  “You could have said something, I would have found a more comfortable position.”  He complained, rising to a seated pose and stretching.

“Honestly I was waiting to see if you were planning to kill me.”  James told him.

”That happen to you a lot?”  Watcher easily exfiltrated himself from what was supposed to be at least a minor obstacle, standing and twisting one of his ankles around like he was trying to fix the joint just by messing with it.  He turned that smug grin on James.  “No, no, I can see it.  You look like the kind of hero that lasts maybe… three engagements.  Which one is this, for you?  Probably already had the struggle for life and death.”  A tilt of his head and a waggle of his eyebrows indicated Spire, who had surreptitiously already stashed all the scrolls in her bag and was now watching them carefully.  “Is this the one where it’s smooth sailing and you think you’re on top of the world?  Or will this be your third act fall?”

James considered if he could render a man unconscious with his willpower alone.  He knew telepathy was real now, it was an option, maybe.  “Leaving you tied up is still an option.”  He said with bland frustration.  Before he sighed, and shook his head.  “Okay.  Come on.  This is act two, and we plan to put a hole in that wall soon.  I’m assuming you know how to drive, so you’re going to be ferrying people with whatever cars we get working.”

”Putting yourself in charge?  You’ll fit right in with us if you live.”  Watcher laughed as he casually led the way out of the room at James’ gesture, passing TQ and Tyrone like they weren’t even there.  Though in a way, that casual dismissiveness was a signal that he might be serious about being comfortable with nonhuman life.

Still, worth checking.  “Alanna?”  James prompted.

”He’s still muffled.  I’m getting weird details, like artistic appreciation for our snakey friends, but nothing that would tell me if he’s full of shit.”

”Great.”  James shook his head and followed, hoping to get this over with soon, and get answers later.  Though hopefully those answers wouldn’t come stapled to a recruitment attempt.  

In the past, James had sometimes wondered if maybe the way he recruited for the Order was a little bit like press ganging people.  The Order’s ability to let people pick from a growing list of jobs and just be good enough at it to get started meant that a lot of the strays that landed on their door chose to stay with them as a career, instead of just as civilians passing through.  But he did often find people, especially delvers, at the lowest point in their lives, and give them enough support and more importantly hope that they signed on permanently.

He’d done it to Vex and her girlfriends, he’d done it to Tylor and Joob, he’d done it to fucking Debt, and it happened seemingly regularly to whole species, from ratroaches to camracondas to umbral to chanters to whatever was next.

James didn’t actually think he was taking advantage of anyone.  In fact, the Order put a lot of effort into making sure that they had robust systems for handling abuse as fast and effectively as possible.  But, especially right now, he did have to acknowledge that it was a little weird being on the other end of the ‘after this disaster, want to come work for us?’ gambit.

He had so many more questions.  Who the hell were the Coalition?  Were they like the Order?  Were they a threat?  Magical?  Self-serving?  Good?  Where had they been this whole time, when the Underburbs were cresting into reality and pillars were running rampant?  What would they think of the Order?  Was it even smart to reveal the Order to them?  Not that they were exactly shy about operations, but there was a difference between not being a secret and telling a maybe-Status-Quo about their existence.  And, the question that was most important…

What did they want?

It took him until he was back in that paradoxically cramped room at the top of the stairs, looking out of the tinted window at the crowd of people below who looked like they were just starting to realize they were very eager to get the fuck out of here.  Alanna and Riho were doing a great job of keeping people calm, though James could see Arrush had nervously retreated to linger by the front door, and he had no idea where Karl had gotten.  Kiki was still being enigmatically concerning in a very optimistic way, though, and James decided that he was being too much of a hypocrite, so he just smiled as she leaned into her embodiment and did some kind of magic that he was pretty sure was going to keep some of these people alive.

“We have half an hour until when Cam told us to be ready for the test.”  Spire said as they collected, the group deciding on the next step.  “We will not have everyone ready in time.  Going house to house for our marked survivors will be a further challenge.  This will take time.”

”Yeah, but we can at least feed everyone if it works.”  James said calmly.  “We can get that time.”  He noticed Watcher staring at him with arched eyebrows, and then turned farther at motion from down the hall to see Kane approaching, the big man cautious of the freed captive.  “Oh.  Before we forget.  Spire, can you and Tyrone make sure the people you left on the roof get brought in?  And I think Cam’s almost here, I’m gonna get her to pull in the guys from the parking lot.”  He drummed his fingers on the pommel of the summoned sword at his side.  It felt awkward.  There was a reason he left the thing in a spell slot until he needed it, after all.  “Kane, you look ready to punch someone.”

”Just one guy, really.”  He said, scowling at Watcher with eyes that could melt steel.  “You know what he did?”

James shook his head minutely, just for Kane to see.  “I’m caught up.”  He lied.  “Is that the thing?”  He asked, looking at a box in Kane’s hands.

”Yeah.”  The man handed it over and James started to pop the case open.  “It’s been-“ he stopped talking, rolling his eyes as James let the high pitched sound the watch in the box was making out into the room.  “That.”

Before James could say anything, Watcher had a hand clamped on his wrist, jerking James’ hand away as the man grabbed his tool from the opened case.  “Oh no.”  His voice held an actual note of dread, which was enough to stop the group of people in the room from mass tackling him as he shoved James’ arm away and slipped the watch onto his wrist.  “We have a problem.”  He said.  “What was inconvenient has now become mandatory.”  He ran two fingers through the air over the watchface in a crisp pattern.  “If you really plan to evacuate the population, I advise you start now, before whatever is in here with us kills them all.”

”Shit.”  James said bluntly.  “Okay.  We’ll sort out… everything… later.  For now, what did you do?”

”Called in backup.”  Watcher said with a firmly determined voice, no hint of his playfulness as he checked the pistol he’d pulled from his side holster.  He did something that silenced his watch, though James could still hear it softly buzzing on his wrist.  “Damn and blast.  Wonder when it wandered in?”  He mused to himself.

”A monster of some variety?”  TQ asked him.  “You will need to tell us something, before this is over.”

The man looked at the camraconda with only a hint of irritation.  “It will look like a human.”  He said.  “Probably.  One of those ‘end all life’ things I talked about.  This one, we shoot on sight.  Though I doubt that will work exceptionally well.”  He moved to the narrow stairs, placing one hand on the smudged and marred wood wall.  “If we all die, it was pleasant enough to meet you.  If you survive this, well, the Coalition has an outpost in Minneapolis.  Find us there.  We could always use people like you.”  He said, before he was on the move, heading down the stairs three at a time.

”Just gonna let him go?”  Kane asked, annoyed.

”Of course not.”  James said.  “I don’t think he’s trying to escape though.  If you’ve got a job, get to it.  If not, go support Alanna, keep the civilians here safe.  Yeah, you too.”  He pointed at Kane.  “Let’s go, I don’t like the way the obvious wizard just ran off like something was on fire.”

He wasted no time after that racing down the stairs, Spire and TQ doing a really impressive job of keeping up with him given their morphology.  “You will need help.”  TQ said.  “I am not going to let you die.”

”Hey, I’m still here!”  Zhu called from inside James’ coat.

”And you can help too.”  TQ told the navigator bluntly.  As he slithered next to James, a couple of his mech arms unrolled one of the scrolls that he’d acquired from Spire.  “According to this, the population is stable since our last check this morning.”

James stalked across the ground floor, boots squeaking on the flooring as he scanned the shelf walls that were in the process of being dismantled and moved aside.  The air here was much colder than the upstairs office, even with those fires going, and he felt like he should maybe clip his mask into place.  “Stable means some people died.”  James said with a frown.  “Because we’ve been adding people.”

”Yes.  But there is no large drop.”  TQ clarified.  “If there is something dangerous here, it is not killing at a high rate.”

”You think Watcher’s lying?”

”I believe he has the symptoms of a human that thinks they will not be held accountable for their bad faith deceptions.”  TQ said almost placidly.  “It is strange seeing you defer to him.  Normally you place people like that in Townton, where we can break them of their habits.”

James nearly choked on his response.  “I don’t think that’s…” he let his denial trail off.  “No, okay, yeah, that’s exactly what we do.  Also I didn’t… notice?  No, shit, I didn’t notice, you’re right.  There’s something fucking weird about that guy.”

Zhu manifested fully, getting some shocked gasps from the more normal humans that were still sitting in mostly the same spots they’d been kept prisoner in, no reason to move before it was time if moving meant going out in the freezing cold while still starving.  The orange glow of his feathers was cleanly visible in the dim interior, and he was very obviously something weird.  “You want me to fry his sense of direction?”  He asked.

”Can you do that?”  TQ inquired.  “Do that.  See what he does.”

”Do not do that.”  James cut off the plan.  “Spire, give me one of those scrolls.  Actually, give a scroll to everyone in our group, and keep the rest for emergencies.  Just in case.”

She nodded in a bob before her mech arm stilled with its manipulator on her bag.  “Kane?”  She asked.  “And Watcher?”

”Yes and no.”  James said decisively.  “In that order.”

”Understood.”  The camraconda slithered away toward Alanna and Arrush, her armored form rattling slightly.  “Where is Kiki?  She might want one as well.”

James froze, and Zhu’s feathers bristled across his armor.  “Oh.”  They both said in unison.  “Shit.”  A human shaped monster that had arrived recently.  The man from the mysterious Coalition wasn’t talking about an actual threat.  He was talking about Kiki.  But he had no way of knowing that.  And James had no idea where the guy had gone.  ”Who has eyes on Watcher?”  He demanded over the link.

Arrush replied.  “He went outside.  Quickly.”

Looking across the trash-cluttered checkout stands to his boyfriend, James saw the ratroach lurking by the square of light that was the front door, peering after the man who’d stalked out without a coat or a care for the cold.  “Okay, we just need to find Kiki and-“

”Hey kid.”

James definitely flinched, but he was pretty sure the squeal of alarm came from Zhu, and he’d be telling everyone that if they asked.  “Kiki.  Hi.”  He recovered smoothly.  “Please get out of here before someone shoots you.”

The woman looked at him over her beak of a nose, eyes dancing between a few amused forms.  “I could say the same to you.”  She said.  “Just wanted to keep you in the loop.  No one here’ll die before you manage your little field trip.”

James rubbed a hand on his face, Zhu’s talons overlapping the gesture in a surprisingly gentle way.  “How is it that you getting more comfortable has only made me more exasperated?”  He muttered.  “I’m serious, we know nothing about this Coalition, but I think they know about you, and I don’t want you getting hurt.”

”…You know I can’t do that, paladin.”  Kiki said, in a voice that James had never actually heard from her before.  “There’s too much here.  People on the edge that could be broken and remade with just a touch.  Violence that needs to be met.  I-“ She snapped her head to the side like she’d just been slapped, her face settling back into the familiar form Kiki had presumably been born with.  “Whoof.  I gotta apologize to your Researcher when we get back.  Maybe telling me about everything is a bad idea.”  Kiki admitted with the voice James’ grandmother had used to joke about her cancer diagnosis.

Shaking off the inexorable feeling that something great and terrible had just opened the oven and let the smell of baking cookies fill the building, James grabbed Kiki’s arm like she was a normal person.  “What if I told you that it would mean a lot to the people you’ve been helping, if they saw you at the exit?  How about that?”

”I… I can work with that.”  Kiki said.  “I’m not jumping in here though.  Don’t wanna break the sky.”

”That’s so cryptic, I love it.”  Zhu declared.

James didn’t comment.  Instead, he just started making things move as fast as possible.  Which was, surprisingly, not as hard as he’d expected.  The Order, partly at his direction, had spent a while now accumulating tools and practicing with them, and when the main thing they had to contend with was time and not enemy action, they could get a lot done.

Alanna’s authority gave him a voice that reached everyone in the building, his partner taking a break from dragging zip-tied assholes out of the parking lot to tap a hand on his shoulder and let the solid green-tinted substance of the infomorph wrap around James until it came to rest around his neck.  And then, he got to monologue, but only briefly.

”Attention everyone!”  James said, and waited a short moment for people to stop freaking out about the voice that came from nowhere but was still meaningfully understandable.  “As you may have heard, you’re not going to be prisoners anymore.  And we’re about to test something that could put a hole in the wall around Cassleton.  Now, I trust my people on the outside, but it’s a long walk to the wall, and I know everyone here is probably a little hungry.”  He didn’t pause for anyone to laugh, because almost no one found it funny when they had to live it.  “We’ll be working on getting some transportation in here to start an evacuation once we have a stable hole, but in the meantime, anyone who thinks they can make a few mile walk, we can start evacuating now.  Anyone with people they don’t want to leave, or who can’t easily do that, or who just thinks walking sounds like hell?  No worries.  We’ll sort this out.  Just stay put, and know that we will get all of you out of here, and it’s easier if no one panics or gets shitty about things, okay?”

A single thin voice yelled back, a good twenty seconds after James was done talking.  “Who the hell are you?”

”Oh.  Right!”  He smiled.  “I’m James Lyle, from the Order of Endless Rooms.  We’re here to help.”  He motioned at Alanna and she took her authority back.  “And now, you get to help, because I need to sneak an embodiment out of here.”  He told her.

”You take me to the nicest places.”  Alanna said, leaning in to bump her forehead against him.

”Sarcasm this time?”  James asked, actually curious.

”Half and half!”

”Love you too.”  He snorted.  “Now, for the hard part.”

The hard part was, Cam had arrived.  With a vehicle, which James hadn’t actually expected.  He’d kind of assumed that the reason she was making good time was because she was… well, Cam.  The girl who could run faster than James, which these days was a feat reserved mostly for vehicles with engines.  So when she pulled up in a commandeered pickup truck, James had a brief moment of deja vu, but wasn’t complaining.

Before she could get out, he was ushering Kiki through the passenger side door, and tossing one of the scrolls to Cam.  “Just in case.”  He said.  “Now drive.  Get us to wherever Research is set up.”  He felt weird leaving the space where his demiplane slip was.  Like he was stepping away from a backup plan.  It didn’t help that he was leaving half his actual backup, too.

”It would be better if you drove.”  Cam said, exfiltrating herself from the driver’s seat.  “I am…” she shrugged her wings, climbing into the back seat of the truck and letting those wings settle across the whole back of the cab, while James passed around the front and wondered if the reason she was handing him the wheel was that she was more comfortable somewhere she could flex her limbs, or because the damaged bumper indicated that Cam just wasn’t a very good driver.  

Fortunately James did know what he was doing.  Though as he waved out the window to Alanna and Spire, he noticed that Kiki was gripping the little handle over the passenger door like she was worried James was going to flip the truck.  Which was a little insulting for someone who couldn’t die by conventional means.

He filled Cam in as he looped around the biggest cluster of parked cars, trying to orient himself to leave the lot by the way he wanted.  Subconsciously, both James and Zhu were doing the exact thing he’d noticed earlier; playing by rules that should have been suspended.  Not just driving over the rocky islands and leaving via direct route.  “Okay!”  He called back to Cam, Zhu’s hand ‘helping’ him on the wheel.  “Pretty sure the Coalition is an anti-pillar thing!  I might be wrong, but why take the chance?  No idea what Watcher’s backup is, but the guy has some kind of weird mental field around him, so be careful of that.  How long until Research turns on their thing?”

”It should be momentarially.”  Cam said.  “If they have not already.  Though you know how they are with schedules.”

”Bound by arcane law to them?”  Zhu pointed out as he very directly pointed James toward the way out of the oversized parking lot that they needed.

”I realized what I said as I said it, yes.”  She called back.  “Hold.”  Cam’s eyes flicked over the street with the rapid movements she often made when she tapped into one of her extra senses.  “Breacher sense says we’re going to be late.”  The winged girl steadily reported.

”Late means it’s working!”  James laughed.  And then two seconds later, the horizon shuddered and cracked, the sound of a feral roar as the fabric of space took notice of what was going on reaching them, Research apparently having figured out where the ‘on’ switch on their totem array was.  “See?”  James said, motioning.  “And we’re all still alive, so it must have gone well.“  He’d admit, he’d been a little apprehensive about that.  The knot in his stomach eased as they failed to explode, though.

Cam ruined that moment.  “Engine noise.”  She said, looking sharply out the side window.

The nervousness even spread to Kiki.  “Yeah, kid, I think I need to be somewhere…” her hand strayed to the door handle, and James almost slowed down reflexively as she started to pop it open.  “Wish I knew why, but-“

Zhu suddenly flared so brightly that even James almost had to blink.  “Dodge!”  The navigator screamed, yanking the wheel, James only a fraction of a second behind in reacting and hitting the gas hard.

There was a split second where James realized that the plume of flame headed their way was attached to some kind of heavy ordinance, and another instant where he saw Watcher moving with a squad of humans in black combat fatigues.  If he’d had more time, he might have had more thoughts on that, but then, the rocket propelled grenade detonated just behind the truck and shredded their rear wheel.

James hadn’t been moving the car very fast, but what momentum they did have and the force of the blast sent the oversized truck tipping wildly, glass crunching next to James as the driver’s side mirror flattened into the ground and he suddenly found himself with his left arm pressed against a breaking window sliding against the pavement.  He expected Kiki to land on him, but the woman’s door had flung open and she’d apparently been thrown free; it was more Cam’s wings that slapped into James’ face.

”Ow!”  He yelled more in anger than actual pain.  “Fuck!  Cam, windshield!”  He ordered, unclipping his seatbelt as he wondered why the fuck he hadn’t just been smashed back by an airbag.  Also who was shooting at them.

Cam flipped up, holding herself on one of the seats that bowed under her weight as she kicked the cracked windshield.  Too hard, on first blow, just putting her boot through it.  But the second kick smashed it out and gave them a clear view ahead of them.  Out there, seemingly unfazed by having been shot with an explosive, Kiki was dusting her blouse off as she waved kindly at the soldiers that had taken up cover around the space she’d landed.  From behind cars and low walls and one lamp post, guns bristled at her, while the embodiment of transformative compassion just gave them a knowing smile.  After she looked back at James and Cam without turning her head, checking on the two more mortal people who’d been in the car.

”Bit rude as far as introductions go!”  Kiki said with a chuckle.  “But I can…” James heard her trail off, a kind of confusion entering her voice that he only ever really heard when something like her suddenly had their special aspect disrupted somehow.  “Hold on, there’s nothing there.”  Her eyes locked on to Watcher, who had his back against a battered Dodge caravan, head tilted very slightly to keep her in his line of sight.  “What did you do to these poor-“

”Kill it.”  The man’s voice sliced through the air.

James had already upgraded the problem level from ‘uh oh’ to ‘fuck’, but his ribs and head hurt from the car flipping and his reaction time was just a little too slow, even with the coffee still filling his blood with magic.  Before he could Move Person himself out of the car, the soldiers started shooting.  They didn’t hesitate when given the command, and they didn’t pause in confusion as Kiki’s anti-death charms started shattering in her braided hair.  They didn’t stop shooting either, even as Cam dragged her body out the front of the truck with James using her as a handhold.

It took less than two seconds for them to break through Kiki’s defenses, and then, the stunned woman was ripped apart in a bloody hail of bullets from the lethal military rifles that were pointed her way.

James, Zhu, and Cam felt the moment that she died.  Even knowing that it wasn’t permanent, knowing that Kiki could walk this off, it didn’t… matter.  It was like watching someone drown a golden retriever puppy.  James felt a cold cut through him that had nothing to do with the weather, the sensation like a severing of everything good in the world away from himself.  On his body, Zhu made a noise like a dying engine, his manifestation wavering as Kiki’s pseudo-body hit the ground in a wet mass of blood and shredded flesh.  And slightly ahead of him, Cam collapsed, arms and wings hanging limply as she knelt on the shattered remains of the truck’s windshield.  Just staring, eyes seeing something that couldn’t be possible.

”Mom?”  James barely heard her whisper.

”Cease fire.”  Watcher’s command was all too audible even through the ringing in their ears.  The man peeked out from behind his car, though at an angle where he couldn’t easily see James and Cam.  Some of the soldiers must be able to, but they didn’t react to the Order members who were having trouble doing much of anything right now.  Watcher stepped out from behind his cover and paced toward the downed figure in the parking lot, though still keeping a careful distance.  “Good.”  He said, though it wasn’t a compliment to the black clad soldiers.  And then, quieter, “Good.”  Watcher exhaled.  “It won’t last, but… if it was here, maybe it can’t leave.  We’ll need to keep the bubble up.  I suppose now we are prisoners too.”  He motioned to the soldiers.  “Split your squad.  Four of you manage the saint.  The rest, with me.  There are people in the supermarket that are trying to ‘solve’ this problem, and if we are lucky, we can explain to them why they cannot.  Otherwise, at my signal, kill them all.  Minimize civilian casualties.  We will need them alive to maintain the containment.”

He started walking, and James finally figured out how to react, flattening himself down with his face on the cold ground, one hand grabbing Cam and pressing her flat too.  Just in time for Watcher to pass by, the man clearly seeing what he thought were their bodies, and giving a sad sigh before moving on, muttering about how it was such a waste.

Fuck, James had almost liked him, too.

“Cam.”  He tried to say, and then remembered he had a skulljack.  “All Order in the AO,” James sent, the template helping his thoughts focus, “five hostiles entering the Wal Mart.  Four more in the parking lot.  They’ve disabled Kiki, and plan to detain or kill us to keep this bubble up.  React accordingly.”  He paused, and realized his hands were shaking.  So was Zhu’s, talons trembling on his arm.  “Cam and I are going to kill several of them now.”  He sent with a coldly clear calm that surprised him.

“James?!”  Alanna sent back instantly, with Arrush’s frantic demand that he be okay hot on her heels.

James just sent back the standard ‘not dead’ ping as he rose to his feet, clipping his mask into place and making sure the potion containers hadn’t exploded.  Pulling his sword from the truck’s cab with a metal rasp while he drew his pistol with his other hand.  He wasn’t ambidextrous, but Aim compensated for a lot.  Next to him, Cam stood with a much more shaking movement, taking a stumbling step forward that was punctuated by one of the soldiers firing a single round into Kiki’s unmoving body.

Then she screamed, a pained shriek that was something entirely novel to her, and James had to move really fast to keep up with her.  He flicked his invisibility on, noticing that charges of the earring’s ability that shoved aside hostile notice started dropping rapidly anyway as he ran after Cam.  The soldiers saw her coming, and one of them, a young man with a skinny face, called out an iron-voiced command to stop.  When Cam didn’t stop, two of them pivoted their rifles her direction, moving with precision to keep distance from her.  They also didn’t hesitate to open fire on her, either, just like with Kiki.  There was no remorse or hesitation, and James wondered if they felt anything at all.

Half the bullets never met Cam.  James flicked one of his bracers to 7.62 and Appointed Arrivaled himself into the path of the gunfire.  Golden light splattering gunfire away as he casually ignored his dropping shield bracer charges and offhandedly shot one of the other soldiers in the head.  Several times, just in case.  The gunshots got attention, and the soldier he was blocking stopped shooting, making an annoyingly smart snap judgement to switch to a handgun and take two shots in the general direction James was in while he charged forward, offhand going for a knife.

Zhu caught one of the bullets, while the other hit James in the forehead.  It stung, and would probably bruise, but Projectile Deflection was his new favorite spell today as the borrowed magic from Jubilance bounced the low caliber round off him.  Still invisible, James took his own quick step following Zhu’s guidelight, and then flicked a charge of Perfected Strike out of his earring and thrust as hard as possible with his sword, the metal roughly ripping through the material of the rushing soldier’s fatigues and the light armor layer underneath, and into his chest with a hungry blossoming of grey fire.

The kid’s eyes softened as he looked down at the hole in his body, James flickering back to visibility as the soldier dropped the weapons he was holding, his whole form sagging back with a wet slurp off the blade.  “W-what…?” He started to ask, before James slapped him in the side of the head with the flat of the blade in a heavy hit, and he toppled to the pavement next to Kiki’s unmoving body and James turned to find his next target.

Only to see Cam, hand clasped around her own prey’s throat, crush her fingers together and twist her hand, snapping the soldier’s neck before she threw his dying body thirty feet away into the side of an old crown vic, the car’s alarm going off and adding to the cacophony.

“Spawn!”  The last soldier yelled, running for cover while shooting back.  James launched one of his Tongue fireballs at the guy, the sensation still very odd to him, while Zhu tagged the burning orb with a Pave and sent a splash of fire out between them and their enemy like a smokescreen.  Another pair of Paves cut through the distraction, James’ hitting and Zhu’s going wild, and sending the soldier stumbling, his shots going high.  His recovery was actually an impressive feat of athleticism, but James had been lining up a more mundane shot and waiting for the slight pause that came when someone rose to a running position, and also for the fire to fade.  And his enemy didn’t have a bracer or charm to stop the bullets that took him out.

”Clear.”  James said out loud, leaning down to grab the rifle and two extra magazines off one of the corpses, handing the gun to Zhu who braced it against James’ armor in a way that he knew was going to sting but didn’t care about right now.  A bullet pinged off his shield, draining another charge, as the four other soldiers that had definitely noticed them opened fire.  “Less clear.  Cam!  Get to-“ He cut himself off, seeing the girl’s distant and empty stare as she stood over the bloody ruin of the old woman they were friends with.  “Cam, stay with Kiki.”  James ordered.  “Get her to cover, now!”  He barked, as the other soldiers started firing on them.

Two shots flared off his shield bracer while James tuned another of his defensive tools to the same caliber as his backup, sprinting at an angle across the parking lot to draw fire away from Cam.  Zhu kept shouting dodge commands at him, but the soldiers were frustratingly good shots, so as he forced his legs to turn from noodles into usable appendages again, James ran from car to car, using the parked vehicles as bulwarks.

Soon, the single alarm was joined by a honking wailing chorus of others, as bullets shattered windows and set off any of the vehicles that hadn’t had their batteries die sitting in the cold for a few months.  “I’m almost impressed by some of these!”  James told Zhu as he flattened himself to the ground, Frost Vector chilling his blood and taking away the friction of his coat on the ground as Zhu used the rifle he’d taken like an oar to propel them underneath a truck without losing a sliver of momentum.

”Stop being impressed!”  Zhu yelled back as metal pings announced that they were still being shot at.  But not by as many guns this time.

James checked and saw the others inside the store had engaged the soldiers from behind, pinning the group with less cover than James had.  A couple soldiers in a vanguard had tried to rush inside, and had been taken down, while the last two were now trying to cover Watcher.  Poking his head out, he saw Watcher in particular standing in the open next to a frozen black clad shooter.  Except unlike his summoned minion, Watcher was still moving against whichever camraconda had him pinned.  Sluggishly, but still enough to haul his arm up and level his handgun toward the store.  James didn’t wait to see what that was going to do, instead taking his own shot.  A Cluster Shot from his gun bracelet before he used the same tool to reload and do it again.

The last of the mobile soldiers dove in front of his line of fire, which was a good way to down one of them, but James felt a momentary flare of rage that his enemy was making use of the power of friendship too.  No real logic behind it, just anger at the guy who’d ordered this much casual violence over something they could have fucking talked about.

A couple of the shots hit Watcher in the arm, and James was gratified through his enhanced eye to see blood puff out of the impacts.  But Watcher still pulled the trigger in his slowed state, and a blue streak of eye-searing light flashed out of his gun and through the front doors that were being fought over.  A thunderclap of air following the railgun shot, deafening where the light had blinded.

Even Watcher looked shocked at that.  While James blinked stars out of his eyes, the battlefield went still, the man in the open looking down at the pistol in his hand like he was afraid it was going to bite his fingers off.  His mouth moved silently, the words what the hell unspoken, but his confusion so great it must have distracted him from the fact that James was still going to kill him.

Unfortunately, before James could do that, the last soldier snapped out of the camraconda lockdown, and grabbed Watcher’s shoulder, shoving him forward toward the now slightly more demolished front entrance, his gun barking as he suppressed whoever was inside.

James saw one of the viewpoints through his skulljack jerk suddenly, and then noticed that one of them was entirely dark.  Alanna.  TQ.  He didn’t have time to crumble though, he needed to make sure it didn’t get worse.  The defensive positions inside must have crumbled because he saw the soldier shoving Watcher’s bleeding form inside, and James poked his head around his cover, nodding as he wasn’t shot.

”Zhu.”  He said.

”Which one do you want me on?”  The navigator asked, half-reading James’ mind.

”Take the mook.”  James rose up, steps firming up as he began sprinting.  The navigator’s grip on the stolen gun tightened, and James heard him whispering self-affirmations about precision as he rushed the couple hundred feet at high speed.  In his most reckless move of the day, he tapped the button on his alchemy mask with the grip of his pistol, inhaling deeply as the aerosolized potion flooded in.  “Don’t miss!”  He told Zhu as he reached the dead automatic doors.

And just kept running.

James hated the feeling of having metal and glass inside him, even while incorporeal.  Zhu’s manifestation, a little affected by the potion, flowed like molten liquid around the obstacles before reforming on James, maneuvering the rifle like it was a priceless artifact until they were through on the other side and James was leaping over TQ’s sprawled form.  Ahead of them, Watcher was yelling something and had his gun leveled at Arrush, who was standing between him and the civilians, a two foot wide hole from his first shot that had punched through some of the shelves having left a trail of devastation through what was left of the store.  To one side, the other soldier had his rifle planted against Spire’s neck, the two of them equally unmoving, though whether it was a hostage situation or a standoff was unclear.

James didn’t care.  He felt a pounding on his torso as Zhu opened fire, the stock of the rifle hammering James’ in his already aching ribs.  But he just kept running, awkwardly trailing his steps through Alanna, and using their link and the technical physical contact to steal half his girlfriend’s strength from her.  Which meant she was alive, which was good.

Watcher turned at the gunshots and his eyes flared in anger as he saw James.  But he only had a split second before James rushed through the checkout stand, emerged through the wire rack that had once held candy and gum, and grabbed Watcher’s wrist, yanking the gun upward.

The man jerked and pulled the trigger anyway, but the shot from it wasn’t nearly as devastating as the first one.  It did rip through the tip of James’ earlobe though, leaving a burning sting and judging by the sudden absence of a mental menu to order off of, destroying his leveler earring too.

It didn’t matter.  James’ other arm punched Watcher in the gut, before he got a mostly reasonable grip with both hands and Zhu’s help as well, and used every scrap of his enhanced might to fling the man bodily through the waiting slip into James demiplane.

Stalking past Arrush, who barely had time to lower the paws he had raised in surrender, James walked out of reality and into his personal space.  Boots making hollow thumps on the bamboo pathway as he stalked toward Watcher and then kicked the sprawled man in the chest.

”Hey Zhu.”  James asked with cold fury in his words, eyes looking toward the door at the end of this part of the amalgam of odd spaces here in his demiplane.

”Oh hey, that door is working!”  Zhu told him out loud, far too loudly.  Words that didn’t match at all the mental impulse to avoid that door at all fucking costs.  “So what now?”  He asked, talons extended outward off James’ arm as they both stared down at the groaning man.  “Murder?”

“It’s not murder if it’s a fight to the death.”  James said, kicking the man’s gun off the edge of the path and into the absolute nothing that surrounded the parts of the demiplane that actually had stuff.  It didn’t fall.  It just… stopped.  Like it wasn’t even subject to time anymore.  “What in the fuck were you thinking.”  He demanded of Watcher.

The man coughed and pushed himself up on his uninjured arm to look up at James.  “That I had a chance to contain one of the worst threats to our world.”  He said with a wheezing pained gasp.  “That we are all expendable if it comes to it.”

”You were going to make the threat worse.”  James snapped.  “Do you have any idea how those people work?!”

”It’s all we have.”  Watcher slid back to a kneeling position, groping behind himself for his weapon but finding nothing.  There was blood dripping from his arm and over one of his eyes, but he ignored it, instead taking breaths like he was steadying himself to attack James.  “We stop their plans when we find them.  Don’t you understand?  Ideas aren’t meant to be alive.  They tear things apart just by walking around!  You can’t let someone who is literally a necessary evil do anything!  You can’t let it go to the fucking grocery!”  His hand clutched at his stomach, and James saw him sliding for his backup weapon.  Which he still shouldn’t have, so that was odd.

James held up a hand, playing up his own panting for breath.  “Kiki is different.”  He said.  “I swear she is.  Is there… is there any way I can convince you to talk this out?”

”No.” Watcher said almost sadly.  “You… you’re compromised, and you likely don’t even realize it.  You’re not going to stay human for long.  Not in a way that matters, at least.”  He coughed, wincing at the pain in his chest.  “I’m sure your people are going to keep putting holes in the battle royale bubble.  I likely can’t stop you from leaving.”  His neck tensed, as he almost looked back at the door behind himself.  “But we have a unique opportunity to keep one of the saints actually contained.”

”You really don’t.”  James said.

”That isn’t your choice.”  Watcher said with an angry retort.  “You think an eight man soft situation team was the extent of what the Coalition has?  That was me packing light!  Unprepared!  I’ll be laughed at when I get back for it.  The next time they open a gap, and I can actually call out, you’ll lose any option to leave this place alive.  I’m offering you… an out.  As a personal favor.”

James stared at him, face scrunching up.  “You think that’s a favor?”  He asked.  “Leave all these people to… well, you probably won’t let them die, will you?  But come on.”  He shook his head, pacing around Watcher on the wooden side platform, moving to block his access to the doorway that led to the Compiled Wastes.  The man’s head tracked him, and James saw the twitch of his mouth as his eyes landed on the freestanding doorway.

”Yeah, you’re a fucking moron.”  Zhu added, his voice humming like he was high on the navigator version of adrenaline.

Pointing at the downed man, James spoke plainly.  “If you’re going to call for help to do something monstrous to my friend as soon as you get out of here, then I can’t let you leave.”  He said.

”That’s not your choice.”  Watcher said, swaying to his feet, and pointing James’ gun at him.

James actually hadn’t expected that.  Actually that was his trick.  Was this what he’d been doing to people?  This felt awful!  “Rude.”  He said out loud.

Zhu’s eyes locked onto the weapon, and he gave a sudden laugh.  “Okay that’s actually funny.”

James chuckled coldly.  ”Less funny is that you’re apparently deciding to destroy people based on your random fears.  Is this how you’re planning to treat people like me, if we get a little too much magic?”  Even now, he still just wanted to know.  About the Coalition, about their ideals, even if they were filtered through one bleeding man in his demiplane.

”Of course not.”  Watcher said, clasping his hand tightly around the bleeding holes in his arm while keeping James’ Walther leveled mostly steadily.  “You aren’t a threat to life.  Neither are those usurpers in London.  Neither is the Gold Dream, or the Catholic church, or any other ruinous idiot with too much power and too little self control.”  His eyes flicked as he mapped out his escape route, his evaluation of James a little closer to reality now.  “People, even people like your inhuman friends, don’t want to annihilate everything.  And as long as we’re still around, collectively, then things can get better.  The Coalition stands for one thing, and it is the right to continue.”

”Holy shit I don’t want to kill you.”  James said, almost pleading.

”Then it is a shame that… that it changes nothing.”  Watcher said, shaking his head.  “You’re dangerous, I’ll give you that.  But I’m getting out of here, and you-“

He punctuated the sentence by unloading the rest of the magazine on James.  Bullets slipping past shield bracers with how close they were, but thudding off James’ stocked Projectile Deflection.  But James still toppled backward; a calculated maneuver that left him in a great position to kick Watcher from as the man bolted past, sending his own gun flying off into the void too while the Coalition agent ignored the disarming and ran for the door at the end of the hall.

”Don’t!”  James yelled after him.  One last chance he couldn’t not give.

Watcher turned for only an instant, his hand on the handle of the unassuming portal.  “In another version of things, I think we might have worked well together.”  He said with a smirk that was a little too tilted toward smug for James to believe him.  “Next time we meet, I’m bringing a tank.”

He turned the handle and pulled on the door.  And the effect of the spatial bubble they were technically inside flattened him into a gory smear.  It moved so fast James could only barely understand what had happened, but it looked like the kind of wavering pane of force that the outer wall was made up of just swept through the space, and hit Watcher so hard it pulped his body, while ripping most of him out of reality.  There wasn’t enough blood, was most of what James slowly processed, as he noticed that what blood there was had splashed across his demiplane, and also onto himself.

”In another version…”

”He was less of an asshole.”   Zhu finished for James, flicking blood off his talons.  “Wow that’s fucking gross!  Did his watch survive?”

James felt like he was going to throw up, the adrenaline crash coming fast along with the nausea at the violent deaths he’d participated in.  “I’ll look later.”  He said, leaning off the side of the path to carefully retrieve his pistol.  He left Watcher’s though.  Less evidence that way.

As far as the Coalition was ever going to know - and James did intend to find them at some point - this was a tragedy the Order had no part in.  Nine of their people went into a dangerous anomaly, and never came out.  The Order never even intersected them.

He almost walked out of his demiplane in that moment, but a small chime stopped him.  The noise was like a pleasantly metallic wind chime on a summer day, and James felt a pull toward it.  He had to get back, he had to check on people, but he still took the ten seconds needed to hop through the gravel patch and into the area where the sound was coming from.  It was emanating from the jewelry box, sitting innocuously on its shelf, and with no patience left James flipped it open.

Inside was a perfect copy of the earring that had been shot off his head.  James picked it up, and checked the status of it, finding that not only did it have exactly the same levels as the last one, it had the same charges.  Did the box recover destroyed trinkets?  If he scoured the bloody tile floor of the Wal Mart, would he fail to find the chunks of the first one?

He’d check later.  Pocketing the leveler since there was nothing but a bloody wet nub where he used to have an ear piercing, James rushed back to his demiplane’s entrance and back into the semi-normal world.  He was met with screaming and crying, but he ignored all of it and ran for where Alanna was dragging herself up.

”Shit, don’t move.”  James ordered her as he slid to a kneeling position and set a hand on her arm, feeding her strength back to her.

”Oh that’s why my arms don’t work.”  Alanna exhaled.  “Ow.  Fucker shot me.”  She said, pushing James away.  “I’m good.  I’m fine.  Bulletproof, remember?  Get TQ, go.”

James nodded, and let his touch linger on his partner as he rushed over to where Spire and Karl were rolling TQ over onto his front.  His stomach turned at the ruin of the camraconda’s face, his lens smashed in from the upper right like he’d had a melon baller scoop out a chunk of his eye only to leave cracked glass and warped metal behind.  “Is he…” his voice came out thin.

”Oh good, you are alive.”  TQ’s voice was as belligerent as ever.  “I would be very upset if I survived only for you to die without me.”

”Shut up.  Shut up shut up shut up.”  James frantically let out the words as he knelt next to the camraconda, not sure what the fuck to do for a wound like this.  “What do we do?  This isn’t covered by my first aid anything.”

”He will need shaper surgery.”  Spire-Cast-Behind said, supporting TQ with the one working arm she had left.  James hadn’t even noticed that her backpack had been damaged, but three of her limbs dragged after her like dead weight, so something must have occurred to it.  “But he is stable.  For now.”

”It is ironic that blue orbs work so well on us!”  TQ declared.  “However the painkillers administered are not working.  I am in agony.  If only a noble figure of fantasy could kiss my wounds to make them better.”  He ‘looked’ toward where he thought James was.

James just pulled the camraconda into a tight hug, their armor threatening to catch together.  “I’ll see what I can do.”  He promised, before letting his friend go and standing up.  “Okay.”  He needed to stop saying that.  “All Order in the area, threat handled.  How’s the hole in the wall going?”

”I have forced the first group to evacuate.”  Ami’s voice, supposedly identical to Cam’s but missing some of the warmth and humor, returned over the link.  “The breaches last approximately ten minutes.  Research has a schedule.”

”Good enough.  We can- oh shit, Cam.”  James stumbled upward.  “Kiki.”

”Go.”  Spire pointed.  “We will organize here.”  She turned and began calling orders through her authority-amplified voice, directing Arrush to secure a prisoner and for the civilians to report any injuries, while James navigated through the wreckage of the front entrance and back to the parking lot.

His jog felt like a lot more effort on the way back.  “I know she can’t die.”  Zhu said with a subdued tone on his arm.  “But… why did it hurt so much?”

”Watcher might be -  have been - an asshole, but he’s right.  We’re all infected.  I just don’t give a shit.” James replied as he took them to where Cam was kneeling with Kiki’s bloodied wreck of a body half laying across her lap.  “Cam.  You hurt?”

The girl looked up at him with a face streaked with tears.  “She won’t wake up.”  Her voice sounded so small, so young, among the endless howl of car alarms.  In that instant, Cam wasn’t an agent or a fighter or anything, really.  She was just a kid.  She looked so afraid, and she was just a kid, and James suddenly had a harder time feeling bad about Watcher’s death.

James was also going to destroy every single car in this lot if they didn’t shut up soon.  “Cam.  Hey.”  He dropped to one knee, reaching out and getting his hand swatted away with enough force that he felt his bones grind.  “Cam.”  He repeated as she stared down at the shattered form of Kiki’s face.  “She’s going to be okay.  Come on.  You’ve probably seen the Line come back from worse.  Cam.  Hey.”

”I…” Cam blinked like she was dragging herself out of a mental fog.  “I know.”  She said, with clear confusion.  “I know that.  That thing has never taken this much damage though.  Why am I… what did…?”  She stared down at herself, limbs covered in a lot of slick red blood.

”Hey.  Look at me.”  James said, guiding Cam’s sight to his face.  “It’s Kiki.  She’s an embodiment, she can’t really die like this, right?  You know that.  It’s okay.”

”Yeah kid.”  Kiki’s voice said from the ground.  “Though I won’t lie and tell you this is good for my back.  Mind giving a frail old hag a hand up?”

Zhu’s laugh as James got up and offered them both hands to pull themselves up on was a little frantic.  “Okay good!  I was worried!”  He declared.

”Thought you knew I’d get back up.”  Kiki said suspiciously.

”Knowing isn’t the same as… where’d all the blood even go?”  James asked suspiciously.  “Holy shit, even your clothes are fine.  That’s unfair.  But…” he trailed off as Cam, abandoning decorum entirely, crushed Kiki from the side in a sudden hug.  “Uh…”

Kiki gave James a kind smile.  “Don’t pester her, she’s had a hard day.”  Kiki told him.  “What happened to… oh.”  She looked around at the scattered corpses.  “Well that answers that.”

”Kiki, what did happen?”  James asked.

”They didn’t have anything for me to hook into.”  Kiki said.  “There was nothin’ there to change.  They aren’t even really weapons; you can be kind to a weapon.  They were… just blank.  Nothing people.  Well, not this one.”  She looked sadly on the kid James had stabbed through the heart, the body curled up on the ground, one hand trying to hold the wound shut.  “What did they do to them?”  The embodiment sounded a million miles away.  “I’m going to have to go.”  She said.

James winced.  “How long?”  He asked.  “Can you get back to Clutter?”

”Right.”  Kiki’s smile made his heart melt.  “Forgot for a second there.  I’m not exactly required to just roll over for it, am I?”  Kiki laughed.  “Okay kid.  I’ll see you all back at home.  As for these poor fools…” she motioned, and the bleeding magic that she’d been flooding the area with collected around her hand.  Calling back the part of herself that had been seeping out like radiation, though not the wisps of it James could feel in himself.  Probably not from Cam or Zhu either.

A moment later, the bodies were just gone.  A moment after that, there was a little memorial, somehow emotionally shorn away from the mood of a desolate Wal Mart parking lot.  It sat almost in another world, in one of the little rock-filled islands that were meant to stop cars from ramming pedestrians quite so often.  No names, no markers, but something to acknowledge the tragedy that had happened here.

”I don’t even know who this gun is pointed at.”  Kiki said with a breath of exertion, her arm coming down to wrap around Cam’s back, flattening the girl’s wings.

James had a reasonable guess.  But they could talk about it later.

They’d have to talk about a lot later.

_____

Full extraction took almost the whole day, which was both an impressively short span of time, and far too long.

Recovery had, upon learning more about the situation, immediately started staging buses for transport and food and medical supplies outside the wall.  So when the totem team opened up another hole, it was to let out a series of effectively loaded batches of survivors who were then immediately seen to by the people outside who had hands on practice with this exact kind of work.

Finding everyone was a challenge, but the scrolls that spawned - one a day, the number became clear once they had a full understanding of the timeline - made sure that no one got missed.  A lot of people were scattered through random houses or hiding spots, and convincing everyone took some work.  But it wasn’t hard to hear the sound of the wall being ripped open periodically, so it got easier over time.  Especially for the people who had their own scrolls, and could see the population counting down.

There was also the matter of the one surviving attacker from Watcher’s summoned reinforcements.  How he’d summoned them was anyone’s guess, but whatever was wrong with them, James could now say one thing for sure.  Stabbing them with the Breaking Forge blades cut away the external influence.  He knew this, because Arrush had sliced one of the attackers that had made it into the Wal Mart in a non-lethal way, that had brought an amount of frantic emotion back to the target.  So that guy was thoroughly searched, and then moved back to one of the Rogue safehouses for questioning after they made sure he wasn’t going to bleed out.

The people who had been acting as bandits got a less charitable treatment.  Some of them, the worst who had been identified as having carried out extra cruelties, harassments, and in one case rape of the prisoners they’d kept, were going to Townton’s rehabilitation center.  For how long was a matter for the future, and would be determined when they were less shitty people to the extent that they could be vaguely trusted to exist in a healthy society again.  The rest were just going to Townton, to be kept essentially on parole for basically the same reason.  After most of them had watched James and Spire’s coteries cut down the other group of much better trained and armed attackers, none of them protested.  Well, not more than just yelled insults.  They didn’t try to hurt anyone or escape, at least.

Kane was going back to his family, at least for a while.  He had a grandfather who he was worried about, and, according to him, thirty cousins to deal with.  But the Order had extended an offer, and he was seriously considering.  A lot of the other people were going to be going through the process of being helped back on their feet.  Some would probably end up in Townton, some would go their own way, some would end up back with their own family or friends that the Order could help them find.  None of them would be left out in the cold, and James had repeated that over and over today during the process.

By the time night - real night - was falling, they were down to the last bus to leave.  James and Spire were the last ones out, their wounded and shaken coteriers having been sent ahead, with even Zhu being plastered to Alanna to make sure she didn’t overexert herself.

”That’s it.”  James said, checking the scroll he was carrying.  They had a stock of the things now, so if they ended up being useful, at least the Order could make some copies.  They’d definitely skipped the ‘intended’ solution to this crisis. “I’m kind of angry at every part of how this went down, but is it bad that I’m most annoyed that this took more than a whole day?”

”No, I am equally irate.”  Spire told him, staring back at the crescent of rock that made up the mountain the town was built through.  “I am equally annoyed that after this we will be immediately heading to Utah, assuming Simon and Alex have not outpaced us.”

”Don’t.”  James shook his head.  “They’ll handle it, or call for backup.  Remember, we can split up to tackle problems.”  He raised a hand as the last bus rolled past toward the breach in the grey wall, the fog peeled away in a tunnel as an orange totem forced its way through.  “Hell, I shouldn’t even be annoyed.  Over a thousand people.  Alive.  Because of us.”

Spire hissed angrily.  “Perhaps this will make some of them less rude.”  She said, hopelessly.

”Don’t hold your breath.”

”Oh, I am exceptional at that.”  The camraconda straightened up, her one working arm crossing over her body.  “I have been practicing.”

“Practicing…? No, nevermind.”  James sighed.  “Come on, let’s get the fuck out of here.”  He said as the bus rolled out of the zone.

And then the wall collapsed.  Shattering into shards of grey sky that crumbled away as the whole thing vanished.  The scrolls Spire and James were holding, the last two people in the zone, both with the spawned items on their person, burned away in the same fashion.  Little chunks of fractured polygonal paper and glowing ink crumbling and sifting into nothing.

Both of them, suddenly, knew that they owned this territory.  An equal split between the two of them, with all the benefits that came from that.  A glowing grey line inked on the ground that denoted the extent of their new property, possibly only visible to the two of them.

”I refuse to give a shit about this right now.”  James said flatly.

”Agreed.”  Spire echoed in a near-identical inflection.

“Come on, let’s get the fuck out of here.”

”Agreed.”

And the second time he said it, it actually worked.