"He says the best way out is always through." -Robert Frost, A Servant to Servants-

  _____

  The shadow hit Alanna as soon as she walked into the room. Part of her wanted to react with aggressive self defense, and between seven total martial arts skill ranks and about a thousand hours of real practice, it wouldn’t have been overly difficult for Alanna to turn a deflection into a vigorous counterstrike. But she refrained.

  Alanna didn’t just let herself get punched in the head, though. The shadow, emerging off the wall like it had pooled there in two dimensions, had thick arms that were a lot beefier than the smaller one it had tried to smack her with a moment ago out in the hotel hallway. But the attack was, to her Empathy senses at least, telegraphed so openly that it took basically no effort to just keep walking into the room, and letting the fist whiff into open air behind her.

  ”Stop that.” Alanna said with a sigh as she sat down on the bed, watching the living shadow peel itself off the wall. It looked a lot like they were stepping through a portal in a way, their body smoothly moving without resistance into a three dimensional form. The shadow’s head, or whatever they wanted to call the upper part of their body, twisted to look back at the door behind them in the short hotel room entrance. “There’s cops out there. Because, you know, someone was shooting at my boyfriend.” Alanna said, staring at the shadow. “And I doubt you’re interested in meeting them for some reason.”

  ”…what do you want?” The shadow’s voice still sounded like it was cut through with static, but the effect was lessened when they weren’t yelling. More like a vibration than a distortion. “Another captive? You’ll have to kill me, gatekeeper.” The shadow shifted, lowering their center of gravity, the quartet of arms that apparently made up their torso extending outward in a wrestling pose and leaving them looking like they had a hole in their middle.

  ”Stop calling us that.” Alanna snapped. “Holy shit, I thought Momo was bad at being impulsive. This is just lazy.” She stood up roughly tugging her sleeves up to show off the shield bracers she was wearing and watching as the shadow flinched at the sight, its upper tendrils flattening back like a kicked puppy. “Did it occur to you for even a second that we might have taken these from people we killed?!” She demanded, keeping her voice low even though she really wanted to start shouting.

  The living shadow jerked back, the motion only slightly difficult to track because of how its form naturally messed with light. “Liar.” They said.

  ”Sure, fine.” Alanna didn’t really have a good way to bluntly refute that accusation. “I can’t actually convince you, and we both know it. But I’m also not gonna hurt or kill you, so let’s skip the part where you’re scared of me.” She tried to make it sound glib. It didn’t work. It hurt when people were scared of her, in a way Alanna had a hard time explaining.

  These days, it was a huge part of why she valued her partners so much. And also why it had been a momentous secret occasion for her on the day when she met up Arrush for a morning run, and for the first time, he hadn’t been terrified of her even a little.

  The shadow, meanwhile, was a blend of all sorts of emotions, and most of them sucked. Fear, anger, and panic were all high on the list. Most of them directed at or because of Alanna herself. “You’re a monster.” It told her bluntly. “Your people chose to be the enemy of my people. You would say anything to lie to me, I will not trust you.”

  And Alanna sighed again, sitting back down on the bed. “Yeah, I know.” She said quietly. “That last part anyway. You’re wrong about most of the rest of it. Look, you just tried to murder someone close to me, and I’m trying really hard not to be pissed at you. I’m actually not going to do anything to you, but we are staying in here until the cops are gone. And then you can apologize to James.”

  ”I will not.” The shadow spat out at her. “He is a gatekeeper! He tried to have me captured!”

  ”…when?” Alanna asked with dry confusion. “Like actually, when? We haven’t been here long enough to really start causing problems.” She had already reevaluated Tylor and Jubilance’s claim that the shadows ran this town. But now it was looking more like this shadow at least was worried about something entirely different. And if James was right, and Status Quo was here, either a different branch or the last survivors from their encounter with the Order, then there was a whole new issue.

  The shadow person curled two of its arms back into its body, slowly shifting as it realized Alanna wasn’t going to attack it. Not that she really knew how anyway; it felt solid, but if it could sink onto a two dimensional surface like an actual shadow then she didn’t exactly have a way to make this a fair fight anyway. “Hours ago. He tried to threaten someone into hunting me.”

  ”…Ah.” Alanna nodded. “I guess I could tell you that he was bluffing that whole conversation, but, right, reasons to believe me.” She unfurled a hand in the air next to her head.

  Both of them went still as the noise of loud and commanding voices from the hallway filtered through the hotel room’s door. The shadow looked torn between fleeing in any given direction, clearly not wanting to be near the outer hallway but also not wanting to get closer to Alanna. “He is lying to you.” He told Alanna, shifting tracks. “Using you. He is not a good person. They do this.”

  Alanna had a lot of practice from her Response work keeping her own thoughts to herself, and she used that now to not roll her eyes at the dungeon life that was currently trying to convince her that James was a bastard. “You’re misunderstanding the situation. A problem that seems to be going around lately.” She shook her head. “And-“

  ”I misunderstand nothing!” The shadow’s static hiss snapped at her. “Even if you are not with the gatekeepers, it does not matter! You… you…!”

  Arching her eyebrows, Alanna made a show of waiting patiently. “No no, go ahead, tell me why it doesn’t matter if you were completely wrong about the guy you opened fire on without warning.” She said, a little bit of her dire anger reaching her tone. “You were prepared to kill someone because you had a hunch? At best you’re an idiot. And tha-“

  She was cut off by a tiny pop of displaced air as Spire-Cast-Behind appeared at the foot of the bed, the camraconda teleporting into the room without preamble. Alanna kept herself from flinching. The shadow didn’t. “Ah, good, things are going well.” Spire said, shooting a look toward their guest. “The police are searching the room. James is being himself.”

  ”Fuck.” Alanna stood up. “Himself how?”

  ”Appearing both polite and baffled.” Spire replied. “He was showering when they knocked which distracted them.”

  ”They super do not have the legal right to enter without permission.” Alanna stated. “I’m gonna go-“

  ”He knows. He is probing.” Spire said. “Or so he said, he might be smugly showing off his scars. The police are, as ever, a complicated entity in our strategic calculations.”

  ”They are slavers and bastards.” The shadow person interjected, drawing a slow look from Spire that they flinched back from again, pressing against the wall like they were considering reverting to a flat pool of darkness. “Maybe you have that in common.” It hissed bitterly at Alanna.

  Spire slithered with slow confidence across the short length of the hotel room until she was staring up at the shadow’s odd colored eyes from a few feet away. “If you refer to me as a slave again, we will be finding out if you can survive that fall.” She said bluntly. “I have had a long day. I do not like needing to hide who I am. And you tried to kill someone important. Stop being an asshole.”

  ”I am-!“

  ”You are.” Alanna agreed, relaxing as more time passed without actual physical violence, and it became clear this person wasn’t going to just try to kill them again. “By the way, I’m Alanna, this is Spire-Cast-Behind. Do you have a name?”

  ”Yes.”

  The two Order members watched the shadow in anticipation before Spire gave an almost amused hiss and turned away. “Ah.” She said as she realized what was happening.

  ”Yeah I walked into that.” Alanna sighed, just before a heavy pounding knock resounded at the door. “Yeah?” She yelled out. “Hang on!” Alanna stood and waved the shadow back into the room, Spire slipping past her flank as she walked with heavier steps than she needed to so the camraconda could position herself around a corner and out of sight next to the bed.

  The voice that responded was the kind of bored yet tense anger that she’d grown up thinking was the same thing as authoritative. “Ma’am, open up please.”

  Alanna did so, keeping the chain lock on, to see a pair of officers. The uniforms were different, but it wasn’t like they weren’t recognizable. “Yes?” She prompted.

  ”Sorry to bother you ma’am.” The taller officer, a woman who was so far from being genuinely sorry that Alanna almost laughed, spoke. “We’ve had a report of gunshots on this floor. Can we come in?”

  ”No you cannot.” Alanna said, though without any bite to her words. “It’s impressive how fast you showed up, but I don’t really want you seeing my underwear.”

  ”It’s a normal security measure ma’am.” The tall girl’s partner said, and though he sounded like he was auditioning for a role as a medieval torturer, Alanna was surprised to find that his emotions were actually just polite and businesslike. “We’re just making sure no one is holding you hostage.”

  Alanna gave him an honest smile, putting on her best talking to the police face. “That’s really kind of you, thank you! I can save you some time; you won’t find anyone else in here, and also you can’t come in.” Alanna set her hand on the edge of the door.

  ”You’re very unconcerned about this.” The male officer pointed out.

  ”I’m visiting from the US.” Alanna said by way of explanation.

  The unified ah the cops gave her actually made Alanna a little sad. That was not the reputation she wanted to be able to weaponize. “Of course. Sorry to interrupt your night. If you remember any details, or have information, please call the non-emergency number.” One of them said, before moving enough that Alanna felt comfortable bidding them a good night and closing the door.

  “It occurs to me now,” Alanna spoke as she locked her hotel door again, “that Long probably knows what I…” She walked back to see the shadow halfway to trying to grab Spire, frozen in midair. “Really?” Alanna set her hands on the lunging figure so that when Spire dropped her gaze, Alanna was ready to twist and pin the shadow to the bed. “Would you fucking stop that.” She didn’t bother making it a question. It was pretty clear from how the shadow was thrashing against the thin hotel blankets that it wasn’t planning to give up.

  ”Doubtful.” Spire-Cast-Behind confirmed. “But this raises a question. What do we do with them?”

  ”Tricky.” Alanna sighed as the shadow started biting at her arm with the waving forms of its… Alanna wanted to call it hair, but it was honestly impressively flexible. It put her in mind of Medusa’s snakes a little; could be tentacles or manipulators grabbing things, could be long mouths, could be just hair, very cool. Also couldn’t cut through her skin. “Killing is out, obviously. Stop trying to eat me please.” She tried to use her own stare to freeze the shadow and found it didn’t work, as usual. “And we don’t really have a way to hold a hostage that can turn two dimensional.”

  Spire made a contemplative tapping with her tail. ”We likely do. If it could escape while flattened, it would have done so by now.”

  ”I will tell you nothing!” The shadow yelled.

  ”Yeah, we got that, thanks.” Alanna waved her free hand as she pressed down on two of the overlapped torso-arms, keeping the struggling shadow person writhing on the mattress. “I guess we let them go. Definitely keeping your gun though. Do you need a coat or something? How the fuck did you even get in here unnoticed, now that I think about that too.”

  Spire leaned over their captive, examining the shadow’s rapidly moving eyes as they flicked from side to side. “I do not think they believe you.” She said with a hiss.

  ”Good for them.” Alanna stepped back, letting the shadow roll in a burst of limbs off the mattress and up against the curtained window that looked out over the city’s interceding river. “Please don’t break another window. I assume you have a way to sneak out, so use it.” She pulled her wallet out, selecting a thick business card and offering it to the shadow. “You’re not gonna find us here again, but call us when you realize we’re not your enemy and you need help.” She said.

  The shadow just stared at her, then down at the card, keeping it clutched in one of its tendril limbs as it slowly crept backward, before coloring into motion and rushing the door. The sound of the latch echoing loudly through the room as their half-guest half-assailant fled into the hallway.

  Alanna calmly walked after, catching the heavy door just before it slammed shut, and peeked her head out. Aside from a half dozen hotel staff cleaning up broken glass and taping over the shattered window at the end of the hall, and an equal number of gawkers, there wasn’t any sign of anyone out here. No one gave any sign of having seen the shadow come by.

  ”Well that’s just fucking impressive.” Alanna stated as she shut the door and turned back to Spire. “What do you think? Generally good first impression?”

  ”I think you are a lunatic.” Spire told her. “But yes. A successful encounter.”

  Brushing her hair back, Alanna looked up at the ceiling, like she was waiting for something important that she only half remembered. “Kinda thought we were supposed to level up from that.” She said eventually. “Do you think James did?”

  ”We should go find out.” Spire said. “Once the hallway is emptier. I do not believe I can Move Person myself through a wall again tonight. My casing aches. This is miserable.”

  ”Sorry you’re having a shit day, yeah.” Alanna rolled her shoulder as she looked at the dividing wall between the two rooms. “Uh… we’ve got an adjoining door. You could just…”

  ”I am going to kill that door.” Spire declared.

  ”Cool. You do that, I’ll go check on James.”

  _____

  “I swear I’m fine.” James lied, halfheartedly fending off Zhu’s frantic attempts to somehow strangle him into being less of an idiot. It wasn’t going well for the navigator, so James didn’t really put much effort into it. “I think I might be experiencing some kind of human transcendent mind state? Or adrenaline. Either way, everything feels pretty normal, and I already got all the post-event terrified sobbing out of the way in the shower.” He smiled serenely. “So how’s the shadow?”

  Alanna stared at her boyfriend, and then considered helping Zhu with the strangling. “I let them go. Gave them one of our cards. They’re not… they don’t believe it was a mistake James. And they were working up to taking drastic action just to get out or die trying. Besides, how do you keep a shadow prisoner anyway?”

  “Zip ties.” Zhu said instantly.

  They both ignored the offhanded joke. As his partner never actually used his name when they talked, James took notice of the serious nature of the statement. “Does the card have a tracker in it?” He asked.

  ”What?” Alanna tilted her head. “No. Do we have those?”

  ”I assume we have those. Or at least, I assume Nate had someone make those.” James admitted.

  Zhu let his manifested arm fall down to the side of their shared body, talons running across the bedsheet that James was sitting on as he stopped trying to kill his friend. “Not JP? No, no, I said it and then realized JP doesn’t plan that far ahead. JP’s not a schemer.”

  ”What in the fuck gave you that impression?” Alanna barked a laugh.

  If there was a single person in the Order that was currently actively scheming then it was JP. She and James both knew it. Nate might make plans, people like Ben and Karen probably had contingencies, but JP? JP was scheming. Probably right now.

  Zhu was undaunted by her laugh and just shifted his feathers across James. “Anyway the smallest civilian GPS tracker is still, like, bulky. You can’t hide one in a business card. There might be smaller military ones, but I can’t really feel those.”

  ”You can feel GPS signals?” James asked, a little surprised.

  ”I… I guess I can!” Zhu was just as curious about it. “I mean, it’s like a map! And I can kind of draw on any map. So I guess so? Maybe I can’t see the military ones because they’re not really for travel, they’re for… military… things. War? War. Sorry I think James’ transcendence is influencing me.”

  Alanna flicked James in the forehead. “Stop transcending.” She ordered as Spire slithered into the room. “But also holy shit, I’m glad you’re okay. Never do that again.”

  ”Agreed.” Spire spoke as she deftly pulled herself up onto the end of the bed and came to rest with them. “But since you are alive, and unharmed, I have a question.” She waited for James to give her a permissive gesture, the human paladin grateful that at least one person wasn’t making a big deal out of his meteoric fall from grace. And a window. “Actually two questions. First are we moving rooms?”

  ”No. I lied.” Alanna said. “To the shadow specifically. Though we are getting Ben’s invasive and possibly evil program to tell the system we’re swapping rooms. Which is easy because a lot of people are, because of… you know. The violence. And also the broken glass everywhere.”

  The hallway had looked like the hotel staff were making a fast effort to clean things up, but having a tenth floor floor-to-ceiling exterior window absent, or at least containing a person-shaped hole, was a great way to make people demand refunds. So they were quietly offering moves to other rooms. The Order team had ‘accepted’ one such offer, then further changed their rooms, though there were only so many empty rooms they could redirect the system to, especially with most of this floor vacant now.

  “Second question. Zhu, did you learn anything?”

  ”Ah!” Zhu’s feathered shot up as he was called on without having prepared anything for the class. “Yes! Sorry, I got a bit distracted with…” he waved at James’ head.

  James extended his own arm away from himself so Zhu had a harder time reaching him. “Yes yes, my certain demise, heard it all before. You know I’m starting to think people don’t trust Kiki’s safety charms.” He complained.

  ”Is that how you survived the fall?” Spire asked, her head twisting to look contemplatively at the charms clipped painlessly into her surface cables in the camraconda equivalent of a piercing.

  James made a sputtering noise. “No. I used a Mountain cast and went through a truck.”

  ”You what.” Alanna hadn’t actually seen that part.

  ”Anyway! Zhu! Fill us in!” James deflected quickly.

  Obliging his friend, Zhu started laying out how things had gone once he’d split off from the others.

  The obvious issue with following the police is that the place they’re most likely to end their journey is at a police station. A condition Zhu didn’t really feel like having to deal with; not that they likely had a way to catch or hurt him in his lesser detached form, but he was noticeable and traceable. So his goal was to wait until the unmarked tan sedan he had stuck himself to split off, and then check the trunk at the next stop.

  According to his recounting, he had needed to ride around in the undercarriage for twenty or thirty minutes until that stop happened, which meant that it was probably just before James had gone into his own meeting.

  While the plainclothes officer left the car, Zhu had taken the opportunity to infiltrate. Though only going for the trunk, because he didn’t want to be on camera if there was a dashcam. Slipping into the locked compartment wasn’t an ability navigators naturally had. But exerting himself and forming his detached manifestation into a lockpick set was something Zhu could do, now that he was better. And James had taught him how to pick locks, so all the better.

  The trunk had contained a duffel bag with personal effects like a change of clothes, a neatly stowed set of body armor, a shotgun clipped to the underside of the trunk’s lid, and a prisoner.

  ”Sorry. No. Stop. You have to lead with that. What the fuck do you mean a prisoner?” James demanded. “Like, they kidnapped someone?”

  ”Yeah.” Zhu confirmed. “It was dark, and by that I mean the person they were keeping. So probably one of your shadows. I didn’t actually see them that well, but this one was definitely smaller, and looked kind of like a crab I guess?”

  ”How the hell do you keep a shadow person prisoner?” Alanna demanded with an equally upset tone.

  Zhu’s eyes swiveled to look at her. “Zip ties.” He said. “I told you. They didn’t seem hurt, mostly just… bored?”

  “Zhu foreshadowing doesn’t work on normal conversation.”

  “No it was just the one shadow.”

  Stifling a groan and expelling it as a long breath through her nose, Alanna fixed him with a stare. “And… what then?”

  ”Well I can’t exactly talk that well while I’m not manifested on someone.” Zhu reminded James slowly. “Nor do I have hands. So I kinda just made a discrete exit.”

  Alanna’s palm enveloped most of her face. “Oh my god.” She let out, punctuated by Spire’s wince of a hiss. “Zhu!”

  “What was I supposed to do?!” The navigator asked plaintively. “I decided to go get help, and found this dumbass falling from the fucking sky!”

  James shook his head slowly. ”No one’s gonna let that drop, huh?” He said, and then started laughing at his own unintended little joke. “Drop. Heh.”

  ”Okay. This is becoming a problem.” Alanna groaned. “How do we salvage this?”

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  Spire deftly took charge. “First we reunite with our local delvers. Then we establish surveillance on the mayor to locate the Status Quo remnants. Then we kill them. In parallel, we need to make contact with more local groups. Whatever free shadows there are is one such group. Any surviving delvers are another. It would also be worth seeking out the local non-emergency persons who made a deal with the mayor, and spying on them.” Spire considered for a moment, lens closed as she flicked through a skulljack checklist. “At this point, access to the shadow dungeon might be the fastest way to force an encounter.” She said.

  ”I like that plan.” James snapped his fingers on the hand that wasn’t muffled by Zhu’s feathers. “I do remember someone saying something about sniper overwatch though? So I need replacement charms. Or more shield bracers. Or superpowers.” He accepted at face value the idea that they were hurtling at full speed toward a confrontation with whatever Status Quo variant existed here.

  Alanna sighed. “What do you guys think about bringing in backup?” She asked. “Same way we got here; teleport outside their detection range and drive in. We could have people here by tomorrow.”

  ”A good plan.” Spire said. “I will acquire us more knights. You answer the door.”

  Turning toward the room’s door, partly shrouded in darkness by the simple geometry of the hotel that didn’t use overhead lights, James raised his eyebrows.”Why would-“ a knock sounded. “Oh.” He stood and padded over on bare feet to crack the door open and then let Tylor and Jubilance in. “Hey. You missed the fun.”

  ”Sure, yeah, hey how the fuck are you alive?” Jubilance asked as she shouldered past.

  Tylor nearly tripped over his own feet as his surviving teammate came to an abrupt stop in front of him, the man twisting sideways to slide past and lean on the hotel’s dresser precariously close to touching the eighteen dollar individually wrapped cookies in the minibar. “It’s magic. It’s always magic. Hey, glad you’re alive. We’ve got news.”

  ”Yeah? How?” James asked curious as he followed them back into the room only to find that Alanna had stolen his seat, and the room’s chairs were already in the process of being confiscated by the others.

  ”Spied on the fuzz.” Jubilance stated with obvious pride. “The mild news is that the cameras on this floor didn’t catch any of your fight, which means they also don’t know it was you. Apparently the malfunction hit the elevator too, so no one gets to see you riding up twice.” She inclined her chin to James. “The spicy gossip is that they very obviously know this was a shadow. They called it an ‘umbral’”

  ”Damn, Fredrick’s gonna need a new name.”

  ”Not how names work.” Alanna gently kicked James leg from her place on the bed as he leaned back against the room’s rough textured wall. “Continue.” She directed Jubilance with a much more direct voice.

  The newest active member of the Order gave them a weird look, as if realizing she was an idiot for not knowing they were dating before today, before she kept talking. “Yeah. Sure. Uh… no that was kind of it. They know about the shadows. Oh! They called it a protester. But not as a name, like they were complaining that it was resisting or something.”

  ”That checks out.” Alanna said, her face twisting in an unhappy frown. “Can I paint everyone a picture?”

  ”Please, paint away.” James waved his hands, with Zhu joining in on the gesture to make the invitation look more dramatic.

  She stood and started pacing the thin strip of space they had available. “You say that you get xp from the dungeon toward level ups by delving it, getting deeper in, killing things, or making stuff. That’s broad. And it’s likely that there’s other ways too, with a spread like that. Zhu says at least one of the cops had a shadow - sorry, an umbral, assuming that isn’t a derogatory slur the cops are using - tied up in the back of one of their cars.”

  ”They what?” Jubilance looked confused. “No, that doesn’t… make sense. They’re working together, aren’t they?”

  ”Are they?” Alanna asked openly, not having an answer. “Moving on. The mayor is selling services to some people, and also ensuring that his people in local government get that same service. It’s clearly magic, because he’s doing this with the permission or tolerance of some kind of Status Quo. He recognized the shield bracers, after all.”

  Tylor raised a hand. “Real quick. I’ve never actually seen a shield bracer. It hasn’t come up. Can I see one?”

  ”What? You should have been issued two for this.” Spire looked at him like had grown an extra arm without a good reason. “Do either of you read your messages in the knight task manager?”

  ”No? The what?” Tylor dug himself deeper into the hole.

  James groaned. “We clearly need to set up some mandatory training for… I don’t know, you two specifically? Anyway, this.” He rolled up his sleeve to show the bracer he’d put back on after cleaning off the sticky mess of dried carbonated beverage that had coated it when he’d hit the juicy insides of the delivery truck. He’d meant it to be a quick thing, but from the way Tylor’s eyes widened, and the flash of an alarmed look Alanna gave him, he knew instantly something was up. “Tylor?” James asked. “What’s wrong?”

  ”I’ve seen that before.” Tylor said in a dry voice, a cold anger trickling into his words. “I know what that is.”

  ”…because the Order uses these extensively?” Spire asked, already knowing she shouldn’t hope for a good answer.

  Jubilance set a hand on Tylor’s shoulder. “Oh fuck me.” She said quietly. “That’s Chris’s thing. He got that from the dungeon before we started working together. Or… he…”

  ”He told us it was a magic item from the dungeon.” Tylor said with the kind of calm that you didn’t usually see on someone who was learning a very important fact, unless they were distracted thinking of how they were going to murder someone. “He said… Chris… that motherfucker.” He concluded.

  Spire hissed to draw attention to herself as she dropped to the floor. ”New addition to our task list.” The camraconda said. “Visit Chris.”

  ”He’s dead.”

  ”Then his home. Or where he told you was his home.”

  ”Y-yeah. Yeah, sure.” Jubilance looked shaken, scratching at her angular neck tattoo. “I know where his place is. We can go there… now?”

  ”Good. I will accompany you. Alanna, the remainder of your theory?” Spire turned to look up at the towering human woman.

  Alanna pulled her thoughts back to what she’d been saying, which was no easy feat given what had just been revealed. “Right. Skipping the drama, I think the mayor is selling captured dungeon life. It’s probably not as effective, but we should assume anyone in on this, which means at minimum every cop, firefighter, sanitation worker, and city clerk, is going to have at least one spell.”

  ”We never took long term prisoners.” Tylor was still staring at James’ arm, even if the bracer was covered. He shook his head suddenly as he looked up at Alanna. “So it could work? You can never see how much xp you have anyway. We were always guessing at so much. Except when Chris…” he trailed off again.

  ”So the umbrals. Umbral? Whatever plural.” Zhu’s talons waved dismissively in the air. “They have to know more, right? We need to talk to them.”

  Alanna’s snarl wasn’t happy. ”One of them just threw James out a window!” She reminded them.

  ”In their defense, my defenestration happened right after they called me a gatekeeper.” James said. “We kill SQ agents all the time. I don’t hold it against them.”

  ”In not their defense, that’s a fucking shitty defense.” Alanna countered. “I get what you mean buddy, but they did no legwork to confirm who you were. We’re not that sloppy. We will never be that sloppy.”

  ”Which is why,” James said with a coy smile, “we need to talk to some umbral.”

  Alanna gave him a long look. “What are the odds that you’ll just fucking stay in the room and rest if I ask nicely?” She asked, and didn’t wait for an answer before shaking her head. “No, nevermind, I knew what I was getting into with you. Fuck, remember back then when you and Anesh were worried I was the overly driven one? Christ. Get your backup coat on, let’s go.”

  _____

  James was of the opinion that it would be perfectly fine to split up again. An idea that was, in no uncertain terms, shot to hell and back by everyone else. Even Jubilance got in on it, which was kind of reassuring.

  The newcomers had joined the Order, but they weren’t really part of it yet. Still a kind of outsider, in a small way. And with them coming to a sudden realization about their own dead companion, it would have been entirely understandable that they’d both clam up and keep to themselves even more.

  But they didn’t. Or at least Jubilance didn’t; Tylor still looked like he was struggling and he mostly kept silent. James tried to bait him into opening up by making a verbal jab about how neither of them had seen a shield bracer despite needing to check out the standard knight kit for this mission, but that didn’t get very far except for Jubilance to tell him that she’d just grabbed the cases from pickup and added them to the van without looking in them.

  That was a hard mindset to deal with. They were delvers, they were interested in magic, but it was like their curiosity had a limit on it.

  It wasn’t an antimeme. Or at least not any that their specialists could find. They were just kind of like that. James figured it was trauma, because he figured most maladaptive behaviors were trauma. Probably from spending months of their lives watching their friends die as their city got taken over.

  So while they tried to get out of the hotel, James decided not to press things. At least, not with their two new companions. He was somewhat less understanding when the hotel concierge told him that the street was currently blocked off ‘due to an accident’, and that they might have to wait a bit for their van to be extricated from the underground parking.

  One of the notable downsides of vertically stacked city living was that there wasn’t much room to maneuver when things went wrong. James had tried being charming to the woman at the desk, and had at least gotten an unhappy admission that they could open up the garage’s second door on the rear side of the hotel. But, she had told him with a pained wince, the guy who normally did that had gone home for the night, and it took them a lot of time, and they were sort of busy with the incident…

  James had politely thanked her and told her not to worry about it, then gone back to worry about it with the others.

  After being told that Jubilance could totally take people through into her pocket dimension, and that its exit could go to any of the slips she had active, and then being told that she had one active slip in the city and it was probably on the seventh or eighth floor of this building, James decided to just pay to summon them a ride share.

  They waited a block away from the traffic disaster James had caused by destroying a semi truck, while Spire complained that she was going to run out of earring charges very fast if she kept having to avoid being noticed, and then spent an equal amount of time complaining that someone - James - was an idiot for deciding they needed a nonhuman on a clandestine mission. No one contradicted her, though James was pretty sure Spire had volunteered for this.

  Their driver made small talk with Alanna while ignoring the increasingly bad road conditions and also several stop signs. But against those odds, they arrived a couple blocks away from their destination more or less intact. Because they had no idea how they’re been found the first time, or if they were being watched or followed, they chose to walk the rest of the way, with everyone cracking one of the many, many spare blue orbs that interfered with being tracked.

  Currently there were only a few orbs using Nik’s special patented method for mass duplication, but already they were paying off. This was a different variety of the orb that had previously been in the rogue toolkit, and James was pretty sure by the end of this trip he was going to be getting incredibly small fractions of the associated skill rank in trash can fabrication.

  The place they were checking out - the last known address of Chris, no last name ever known, though Jubilance thought he might have been called Michales once - was one half of a duplex just a couple turns off a highway on the other side of the river. The kind of single family home that was made in bulk fifty years ago, and had lasted through a combination of stubbornness and excessive maintenance costs. Too small to be the sort of thing that made up the worst sins of suburban sprawl, too nice of a yard to be the kind of thing James would ever afford.

  ”I just realized,” he said as they approached, “that I could buy a place like this.”

  ”…Yes?” Alanna drawled. “Yeah sparky, you can… do you want a house? Like I’ll go where you go. I dunno if I ever said that, but-“

  ”No I mean, I was thinking that the housing market was totally inaccessible to me.” James said as he stepped over a giant puddle in the empty driveway. “And then I remembered I’m richer than some countries.”

  ”Well, the Order is.”

  ”The Order would buy me a house.”

  ”Do you want a house or not?”

  Tylor suddenly snapped at their banter. “Would you two shut the fuck up?” He demanded as they approached the house. “Come on. I want to know what…” he didn’t finish the sentence.

  The house was completely dark, and the front door looked like it had been jammed shut after its frame had been broken. It had a pair of tall slim windows on either side, one of them cracked in half but both mostly intact. Jubilance had tapped one and flickered through to the other side with her own magic, unlocking the door and opening it after a moment of struggle with a firm kick. “Come on in.” She said, trying the light switches and finding the power was off.

  James and Spire both tossed enchanted hovering flashlights into the air by their heads while Alanna just relied on her authority for night vision, all of them stepping through the splintered front door.

  ”This place is… uh…” James started, looking around the little dining room and kitchen that were partly walled off from the front door. “You guys knew this dude, was he a messy guy?”

  ”Not like this.” Tylor said, stooping down to grab the edge of a table that had been knocked over, and pulling it upright, broken glass sliding off the piece of furniture as he put it upright. “This looks like he got in a fight here.”

  The kitchen was a mess of broken porcelain and a spilled garbage can that smelled rancid after being left here for however long this place had been abandoned. The living room had a linear series of holes in the drywall that Zhu felt he could accurately describe as ‘human head sized’. And throughout every room of the house, even the bathroom, every drawer, cabinet, and anything else that you could store something in, had been opened and tossed onto the floor.

  ”No blood anywhere.” James said. “You said Chris was dead. How do you know?”

  ”He died when we were trying to leave the city. That was when we learned they were watching all the roads out.” Tylor said, his focus elsewhere as he picked through a scattered pile of video game cases on the floor. “He never told us he got in a fight here.”

  Jubilance shook her head as she used her phone’s flashlight to light up the rest of the room. “We were friends.” She said quietly. “I mean, he was a dick. But we were… friends. What is this?”

  ”Okay, look.” Alanna announced bluntly. “There’s a lot of potential bullshit going on, but this doesn’t mean the guy was lying to you. It means there was a fight here. Did he live alone?”

  ”As far as I know.” Tylor said bitterly.

  Alanna nodded. “Okay. You two check the bedrooms. James, bathroom. Spire, help me go through the kitchen. We’re looking for anything more out of place than this.” She waved at the dark room.

  Between their lights and Zhu’s helpful glowing, they made decent time going through everything. The problem was that if there was anything suspicious, it seemed like whoever had been here before them had taken it away.

  “What are we even looking for?” Zhu asked James as the human lay down on the floor of the lone bathroom in the house to stick his head under the sink. “Like, I’m thinking what you’re thinking. This guy was SQ, right?”

  ”Probably.” James muttered back. “But I’m not saying it out loud. I don’t think they’re taking it well.”

  ”Or they’re faking it.” Zhu spoke with the revving tone he used when he was being quiet and half inside James’ head. “And they are also Squos.”

  ”Or that.” James agreed. “But I doubt it. Also Alanna would notice. Ah ha!” He maneuvered an arm under the sink, his overly flexible elbow joint letting him get around the sink’s pipe and grab the thing he could see the edge of, taped to the back of the black tube. “Jackpot.”

  Extricating himself, he sat up and used a combination of his flashlight and Zhu’s feathers to hold up what he’d torn free. It was just a piece of folded paper, and after James pulled the tape off and opened it up, he read the note that had been hidden here, written in sharpie.

  House was an ambush site. Site two is compromised, use three. Burn the expendables, xeno’s recruiting them, one of ours defected. If you read this, don’t do anything stupid.

  It was a strange mix of tactically to the point, and personal. This wasn’t just a command from an army to a soldier, it was a note from a person to another person, at least one of whom was dead.

  “Got something?” Tylor said from the doorway. When James looked up at him with what Tylor thought as an already too-familiar stupid fucking pitying frown, he returned his own scowl. “What’d you find?”

  ”Hidden note.” James said, pushing himself to his feet from the floor cluttered in the contents of the emptied drawers and medicine cabinet. There was less here than a third of what was in his own bathroom, he realized. Which kind of made sense if this was a single guy’s place, but also tracked with this being a constructed identity. No time to accumulate the clutter of life. “Let’s go talk to everyone.” He moved, but Tylor didn’t, and James stopped to give him a shake of his head before Tylor finally stepped aside.

  Walking back into the living room, Alanna’s voice echoed from the kitchen. “Found a purification brooch in the freezer!”

  Spire slithered through the door to the kitchen. “There are not enough cups here.” She said. “Though that may be a human failing.”

  ”Not enough of a lot of stuff.” James agreed. “I found a thing.” He flipped the paper open, and shared the note with everyone. “So. This was left for someone. It isn’t specific, but-“

  ”It was him.” Jubilance’s voice was hollow. “Wasn’t it? You’re being nice about this, but it was Chris, right?”

  While James and Zhu grimaced in unison, Spire actually answered. “It would be likely.” She said. “Which means it is also likely you are the expendables.”

  ”There were six of us.” Jubilance said, taking halting steps toward the sliding glass door that led to an overgrown backyard. The house hadn’t been abandoned that long, Chris just never did any gardening. “How many? Just him? We were… we were in this together. We fought together. Oh holy shit.” Her voice broke as she slapped the back of a clenched fist on the door with an echoing thunk, staring out into the darkness.

  Alanna glanced at James, silently sending him a message through their skulljack link. “The umbral at the hotel did think you were using me.” She told him, giving a tiny nod as James looped Spire into the chat without the others hearing them. “It obviously doesn’t matter to them the actual ideology of who’s shooting at them, but this might be how Squo is operating here.”

  ”We need answers.” James announced out loud, getting an agreeing nod from Tylor, and absolutely no movement from Jubilance who just kept staring out the back door. “Before we start figuring out what to do to fix all this, we need a clearer picture. We need actual contact with the umbral, and with whatever Status Quo-ass group is fucking things up here. We also need a followup conversation with the mayor, because I get the distinct impression he’s playing both sides.” He looked outside through the window over the TV that had survived the fight here intact. The sporadic snow had stopped for now, and the sky was an apocalyptic orange as the undersides of the low clouds were lit up by ten thousand streetlights. “I think we stop for tonight.” He announced.

  ”We can’t stop now.” Tylor said with dull determination. “No. We got a half dozen leads. We should do something.”

  ”We should go back.” Jubilance said without turning around, her voice bouncing off the glass. “We need to go back to the dungeon.”

  ”We absolutely do not.” Spire twisted her body to give the girl an unseen stare. “Not now. Humans are less likely to open fire from ambush during daylight. We go tomorrow.”

  ”Why do you know that?” Tylor asked.

  Alanna’s mouth twitched in a disappointed frown. “Because humanity sucks sometimes.” She said. “And also because we got tired of getting shot at. Well most of us did.”

  ”I will not be apologizing for getting ambushed in a hotel.” James shot back, trying to lighten the mood. “Spire’s right though, we need a break. And time to make connections, put everything we’ve learned together. Also time for our reinforcements to arrive.” He took a breath, looking down at Zhu, who was still sweeping his own vision across the small home. “You good?” He asked the twitchy navigator.

  ”Yeah. I mean. I agree with whatever you said.” Zhu said idly. “Hey, does this place have a basement or something?”

  Tylor shrugged. “No, it’s a one story place. No crawlspace or anything either. I…” he paused, then took his own deep breath. “I spent a lot of time here in the last few months.”

  “Weird.”

  ”Zhu, what’s up?” Alanna’s prompt dragged the navigator to attention.

  Zhu splayed his talons out away from James’ arm. ”Just feels like we’re missing something.” He explained.

  “Antimeme check.” Spire called.

  ”What check?” Tylor asked.

  For once, Jubilance actually had attended the training session on this. “For something eating our memories.” She said, finally turning. “You think we were mindfucked?” Her voice was painfully hopeful.

  “No clue.” James stated. “Okay. Time check, clear. Location check, clear.”

  Alanna moved past him, running her hand across the wall in a continuous line, knocking on every part of the flat surface as she looped the house. “I’m not feeling any closets or bedrooms we missed.” She said, determined to never encounter that particular nightmare again.

  Spire swung her head around as she slithered back and forth across the living room, brushing aside some of the scattered game controllers and empty cans that had ended up there. “Parts of a building.” She began to recite. “Single floor home. Bedrooms. Bathrooms. Front yard. Driveway. Backyard. Kitchen. Windows. Doors.” She stopped speaking. “That is incomplete.” The camraconda mused.

  ”Yeah, you forgot…” Jubilance trailed off. “Holy shit that is fucking weird to experience firsthand.” She admitted. “You forgot something.”

  ”Authorities.” Spire said, calling on her own while also directing Alanna to do the same. “Something is keeping part of this building hidden from us. Stop it.” The ribbon around her neck flowed like neon green quicksilver as it crept up to her lens, ringing the camraconda’s sight as the authority began screening her thoughts. The temporary diversion from its normal role protecting her left her feeling vulnerable, but unless they were supremely unlucky, no one was going to shoot her now.

  ”Oh, duh.” Alanna slapped her forehead. “Garage.”

  Four other people in the room all gave her blinking stares and said “What” at the same time.

  ”The garage.” Alanna noted their reactions, confirming the antimeme was definitely localized there. “Okay. Wait here. Spire, cover me.”

  The camraconda signaled assent, moving without speaking to flank Alanna as the pair moved through the partly cleared kitchen, to a side door past the counter containing the sink that they hadn’t seen before. Or had seen, and had simply been unable to process. Not for the first time, Alanna wished her authority was a little better at taking the initiative.

  Alanna moved to the opposite side of the door, hand on the knob as she looked at Spire, who had one of her hand crossbows out in her mechanical arm as she nodded back at the human. Opening the door, Alanna moved slowly as she unlatched it, then gave a quick shove as she threw it open, Spire rushing past and down a short step into the dark beyond.

  Hot on the camraconda’s tail, Alanna moved in as well, and finding the garage to be… mostly empty. She tried hitting the light, which also didn’t work, and so just leaned on her authority for even stronger night vision.

  No car, which made sense because it would have been this guy’s car that got taken out trying to flee the city. No crime scene of blood and bodies. The space was also devoid of even the simple false front that the rest of the house had, which meant there were no heavy buckets full of rusting gardening tools or half-finished projects sitting on workbenches.

  What there was though was an armory. It was missing a few pieces, but from the looks of things, Chris had actually expected to survive and return here from whatever situation had ultimately killed him. It also reinforced the thought that this was a Status Quo safehouse, because while a single person’s gun collection might includes a variety of options, typically a single person didn’t stock eight SMGs of identical make.

  A militia might. But there were a finite number of guns one person could use at a time. Same thing with the handguns and body armor. This was a place that was prepared for a squad to arrive at and equip themselves for a real fight if needed. Two of the three metal cases on a nearby bench were locked, but the third one contained slots for shield bracers, two of which were still there.

  ”Yup.” She said bluntly. “Hate this.”

  ”At least we can safely say that our own shield should be set to nine millimeter at all times.” Spire said, examining the firearms. “Do you think they will also have authorities? A new hive would be beneficial.”

  ”You’re skipping the fight and assuming we get the loot?” Alanna asked, before snorting a laugh. “Yeah, no, okay. Welp. This is confirmation, but it doesn’t tell us much of anything. Also what the fuck do we do with all this? It’s not like we can just stash it in a hotel room.”

  Spire considered the empty garage, before giving her own hiss of defeat. “Nothing?” She posited. “We will have a shield team here tomorrow. They can secure these things. And if anything changes by then, then we will have another lead”

  ”Grim but good point.” Alanna nodded. “Let’s go get the others.” She turned to leave the mostly dark garage, but stopped as she noticed something out of place on this side of the doorframe. “The fuck is this?” Alanna pointed for Spire’s benefit at the small chunk of diamond shaped piece of metal that at first looked like it was clamped onto the doorframe, but as she looked closer, revealed itself to just kind of be hanging out there.

  ”Does it smell strange?” Spire asked.

  ”Like magic smell or normal smell? Because the whole garage just smells like garage.” Alanna told her.

  ”Magic.”

  ”Can’t tell.” Alanna decided to risk it. “Get inside, I’m gonna pick it up.” She said, waiting for Spire to pass by before she gingerly wrapped two fingers around the dull edges of the object, and pulled it off. It came away easily, like there was just a light magnetic pull towards the doorframe. Alanna moved it around a bit, and found it wasn’t attracted to walls or herself or anything except the strip of wood that marked the mundane portal back into the house.

  ”Oh!” Came Zhu’s yell from inside the duplex. “The garage!”

  ”Welp.” Alanna said, pocketing the metal trapezoid. “That’s gonna casually change everything again.”

  She returned to the group, quickly filling them - but mostly James - in on the garage and its contents. Tylor and Jubilance were just not in a good mental space right now, and despite their valuable local knowledge, Alanna figured it might be a good idea to send them away for the rest of this conflict. Especially if they had backup coming, and weren’t going to be doing any active delving in the near future.

  They took a moment to test the weird and obviously magic device Alanna had found, and quickly confirmed a few things. It could render a room mostly unknowable from the perspective of a single entrance. It didn’t work if it was put on the outside of a room with only one door while someone was inside; they couldn’t forget the whole house, and if the effect was ever pushed through even a little, it lost its hold on someone. And also, whatever it was, it wasn’t a leveler item.

  ”One more mystery for the pile.” James declared as he walked out into the increasingly cold night. “Let’s get out of here before someone decides to ballistically add any more.”

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