"In all those stories about people who sold their souls to the devil, I never quite understood why the devil was the bad guy, or why it was okay to screw him out of his soul. They got what they wanted: fame, money, love, whatever. Though usually it turned out not to be what they really wanted or expected. Was that the devil's fault? I never thought so." -James Anderson, The Never-Open Desert Diner-

  _____

  The question was where to start.

  Tylor and Joy were of the opinion that James, Alanna, and Spire represented some form of Superman-esque figures. Swooping in to fix everything with a wave of their mighty hands and or tails. James was more of the opinion that while he was provably very difficult to kill, he wasn’t exactly capable of or willing to solve all his problems by punching things.

  They were here to find evidence and make contact as diplomatically as possible. The Order wasn’t exactly a global superpower, but as an organization, they were determined to not repeat the mistakes of the past, and that meant asking for solutions to problems before just going to war.

  Which meant they actually needed to know who they were talking to, and why. Which meant finding some of those shadow people.

  ”Is it, maybe,” Alanna tapped at her chin as the group sat on the rough carpeted floor of one of their rooms, looking at an unfolded map of Saskatoon on the bed, “a bit too bold to just walk into city hall and start asking questions?”

  ”Guys, I gotta say it again.” Tylor gave them a pleading look. “They shot at us. Repeatedly.”

  ”How much did you shoot at them?” Spire-Cast-Behind asked, though not maliciously.

  Tylor’s shoulders sagged. “Not enough I guess!”

  ”Not much at all.” Jubilance said. “I know you’re Americans, but come on guys. You can’t just ‘get a gun’ around here.”

  James hummed. ”And you can’t teleport somewhere you can get a gun.” He said idly as he compared places on the map to various photos he was pulling up on his phone. “But you have fought back. Arguably you started the fight when you went into their dungeon.”

  ”Okay, yes,” Tylor pushed himself to his feet, “and I’m not an idiot, I know what colonialism looks like. I’m not saying it’s my turn to plunder now just cause I’m Mètis. But they weren’t there when we got there. So I think we actually get the excuse of ‘we discovered it first’.”

  Alanna turned to James with an unenthused look. “I am annoyed.” She said, and before James could ask why, continued with “Because these dumbasses apparently have a more morally sound early delver experience than we do, and we spent a while discussing what our ethical lines were with Officium Mundi.”

  ”You know, I haven’t heard anyone say that one out loud yet.” Jubilance cut in. “That’s not how I was reading it.”

  ”Anyway. On task now. We did not get in any fights.” James waved a hand rapidly between himself and Alanna. “We can just walk in. Spire cannot, except Spire can be invisible-“

  ”We can all be invisible, I brought enough for everyone.” She added, killing some of James’ momentum.

  ”…right. So I propose we split up, and…” James stopped, looking around at the group, before pointing loosely at Alanna and muttering. “So you’re Velma, Tylor’s obviously Shaggy, we have one nonhuman so sorry Spire you get to be Scoob… does this make me Fred?”

  ”What in the fuck are you talking about?” Jubilance asked.

  ”No, she’s Fred, you’re Daphne.” Alanna told him, wrapping an arm around his shoulders in a conciliatory hug. “And now who’s off track? Team assignments, what’re we doing here?”

  ”Right. Okay. Spire, you’re with me, we’re actually going to try walking into city hall and going to the mayor’s office. Who’s mayor right now?”

  Tylor had an instant answer. ”Drak Silverson.” He said with a tone that implied that he wasn’t joking. “He came out of nowhere to ‘win’ the election about three weeks ago, beat out Block, who was the objectively correct choice.”

  ”His name is… Drak?”

  ”Don’t make fun of people’s names.” Alanna flicked him in the neck, which James twisted away from. “But also that’s the most villain name I’ve ever heard.”

  ”It’s a little on the nose.” Tylor admitted. “But, like… I hang out with Joob, and she’s the least happy person I know.” He ignored his friend’s yell of indignation. “So maybe he’s alright. He’s not, because he’s probably a plant, but he could be nice at least.”

  ”I’m gonna go meet mayor Silverson.” James refrained from any sarcasm as he continued after letting them get their comments in. “Spire, you okay coming with me?”

  The camraconda turned away from where she was watching out of their hotel window to the river below. “Assume wanting…” she paused and then started over. “I am assuming you want me there if he requires proof of goodwill toward nonhumans?”

  ”And also for when someone shoots at me.” James said happily. “But yeah, also because the sooner we establish the Order as an independent group, the sooner we can have an open negotiation about these two.” He nodded with a slight frown toward their two newest members.

  ”A sound plan. I will get dressed.” Spire slithered to the short hallway by the room’s door, cracking open the closet with her fangs without bothering to be gentle, and shoving her head into the space her luggage was stored.

  ”Sorry, has she been naked this whole time?” Jubilance asked. “Are all camracondas nudists? Wait! I’ve seen them in coats and dresses and shit! Hey how come they get to walk around naked but no one else does?”

  ”Internal genitalia mostly.” Spire’s synthesized voice called from her closet. “You will need to apply for shaper substance use if you wish to do the same.”

  ”Ignoring that.” James said with a voice that made it clear he was trying to manifest that ignoring through force of will. “So you three, I want to check out their dungeon entrance.”

  ”Woah, hey.” Jubilance jerked back, crossing her arms in front of her in denial. “No? No and fuck you? We’re not getting near their home base like that, what are you, high?”

  James chuckled. “Never really tried that much, so I couldn’t tell you. But probably not. And I’m not saying I want you to go in, I’m saying I want to know what the entrance is like. You said they took control of it and pushed people back, right?” He got slow nods in reply, and returned his own. “Right. So see what’s different now. There are no pictures I can find online of the area you gave. So are they concealing it? How do they have it protected? Is anything built there? That kind of question we need answered.” James rattled off a list of requirements, sending a checklist to Alanna through their personal skulljack network. “Don’t make contact, but do see if you can spot any of them entering or leaving. If they return there, or draw fresh manpower from there, then that’s a thing we can use to start mapping out the full web of contacts.”

  Nodding along and listening intently, Alanna smoothly rose to her feet and went to grab her own coat in preparation for going outside. She was cold resistant, but not immune, and November here was grim. “First off, it’s hot when you do the leader thing.” Despite being used to her antics, James still blushed in embarrassment to hear her say it in front of other people, which Alanna smiled at. “Second, you want us to do this before you to go say hi to someone, and maybe alert them?”

  ”Mmh. Good point.” James agreed. “Actually having you in position when we do go would be great for monitoring any increases in activity. Anyone have suggestions for where we should check out before then?” He queried the room.

  “Yeah, check out Ace Burger.” Tylor said instantly. “Oh, you meant… not for lunch. Right. For the thing.” He scratched at his chin through the side of his fluffy beard. “Maybe start looking into the black and blue?”

  ”The… what?”

  ”He means cops.” Alanna informed her boyfriend. “Not everyone uses the US color scheme.”

  “And thank fuck for that.” Jubilance bit out the words. “Your country sucks at aesthetic design.”

  James let Alanna haul him to his feet. “Alright gang.” He said, a plan in place. “Let’s split up. And by split up, I mean that Spire and I are gonna listen to police scanners for a couple hours while you all go get juuuuuust close enough to a wasps nest to not get murdered.”

  ”I take back what I said about your leadership.” Alanna said as she navigated through the cramped room and looked out the window. “Oh good, it’s snowing. Also where the fuck is Zhu?”

  ”Here!” Zhu pulled himself out of James’ shirt. “Sorry! I didn’t have anything to add and I didn’t want to be assigned a character from a cartoon that is thirty times older than I am.”

  Jubilance and Tylor both tilted their heads and made the exact same pained noise. James clicked his tongue at them in a pitying sound. “Yeah,” he told the duo, “the worse part is when you hear it from a human child. Alright. Everyone has your assignments, let’s get started.”

  ____

  “That’s a post office.” Alanna said, as if by saying the words with a strong enough undercurrent of snark, she could somehow will it to not be a post office. “Why didn’t you tell us it was a post office? Is this more antimeme malarkey?”

  ”Malarky?” Jubilance asked with an expertly arched eyebrow.

  ”My girlfriend doesn’t swear and it’s rubbing off on me.” Alanna didn’t avert her gaze from the red brick rectangle sandwiched within a line of two story commercial buildings that ran the length of the block. She wasn’t worried about openly staring; there wasn’t much of anyone out in the wet snow to see her, not that there was anywhere for someone to be except for a greek restaurant on the corner that looked abandoned. Still, she and the others were on the other side of a fenced off parking lot, peering over cars and wrought iron as they stood underneath the cover of a towering apartment structure. So if not ‘out of sight’, then at least ‘not too suspicious’. “Also don’t change the subject.” Alanna added. “Post office. Why?”

  ”Technically it’s a Canada Post. I don’t think it’s the same economic niche as the American…“ Tylor cleared his throat as Alanna slowly began to rotate her head in his direction. “It’s not like we can’t talk about it. I thought we did? I mean, we gave someone the address. It’s just that it’s not a ‘post office dungeon’ like the other one is an ‘office office dungeon’.”

  ”You said they pushed everyone out.” Alanna pointed out, tapping a finger on her bicep as she kept her arms crossed..

  Jubilance nodded. “Yeah. It’s closed. It’s been closed for months. No one in our out, the doors are sealed shut. The roof access is sealed shut.”

  ”You tried that?”

  ”I mean, once. Someone shot me.” Jubilance muttered the last bit with her head turned to the side.

  Alanna didn’t specifically think she had a double standard, but she did feel like the level of chaotic fucking up that these two had was a little above average for the Order. Not counting a few outliers, anyway. “Okay.” She exhaled and watched her breath twist like a coiling mist dragon before the wind pulled it away. “So where is it?”

  ”Second floor, there’s a side door to a hallway that no one ever uses. The dungeon opens up if you injure yourself while touching the door.” Tylor didn’t look happy about that at all.

  Alanna caught the vengeful vibe from the Canadian man, and glanced over at him. “It’s always accessible?”

  ”If you’re willing to bleed, sure.” He shoved his hands deeper into his pockets, shifting nervously as he kept watching the distant building. “I know, it’s not like yours, people keep saying that. I get it. We’re weird.”

  ”I’m more wondering how the mythical shadow people I haven’t met yet get reinforcements.” Alanna said. “Or actually, how they got out in the first place. Door opens from the inside I assume?”

  There was a bitter laugh from Jubilance. ”You know what happens when you assume.”

  ”…Door doesn’t open from the inside.” Alanna frowned. “But I cannot help but notice both of you are both here, and alive.”

  ”Yeah, got lucky.” Tylor’s voice was tight and curt, a sharp swerve from the friendly facade he normally put on. And yet, to Alanna, this was him finally being honest. She could feel, painfully, just how bitterly angry he was all the time. And in a way, she respected the strength it took to not give in to that. “You’re right though. We don’t know how they got out either.”

  Alanna pondered. If the door didn’t open from inside, that meant the shadows had gotten lucky too. Or they’d been intentionally let out, or recruited, or any number of other options. Interesting information, and she’d remember it, but it wasn’t blowing open the doors on anything.

  The building itself really was just a red brick rectangle too. From here, with her own mildly enhanced vision, Alanna could see that all the windows were screened, and the only reason that only half the ground floor door was covered was that the other half of the brown paper blocking it had come unstuck and fallen halfway to the floor. The inside was standard ‘we remodeled in the nineties' grey and white, and she planned to take a jab at Jubilance later for this country having an identical color scheme for the interior design of semi-government buildings. There was a lot of caution tape both in and outside, though the stuff on the exterior was draped in loose strings after having been subject to basic weather.

  It really did look like it was just a perfectly normal derelict building. Just one that used to be a critical piece of infrastructure.

  ”Google says this is the place to go if you want all-day PO Box access.” Alanna commented, changing the topic. “Where’d people go when that got taken away?”

  ”How the hell should we know that?” Jubilance bit back.

  Alanna suppressed a sigh. “I’m thinking out loud.” She really wasn’t, she’d actually hoped they’d have an answer. JP annoyed the fuck out of her sometimes, but he was both her friend, and alarmingly competent at just having answers to things like this ready. Maybe she should get him in here instead. “Alright. I want to circle the area a couple times. I’m going that way, spiral pattern inward until I pass by the front door.” She pointed around the ten story apartment tower they were sheltering against. “You wait here. Scream if someone shoots you again.”

  ”Oh yah, no problem.” Jubilance said dryly.

  ”Also, at the risk of being talked down to again,” Alanna said with an equally unamused voice as she took a single step down the miniature staircase that led to this covered back entrance, “you said this place is ‘normal dungeon’ a while back. And I just wanna know. What’re post offices in Canada like that it could find columns and sconces and shit?”

  Tylor’s undercurrent of anger cut off entirely for a second as he opened his mouth to say nothing at all. It took him a second, sharing a look with Jubilance, before he turned back to Alanna. “Do they… have to do that?” He asked. “Steal ideas?”

  ”Far as we know.”

  ”Okay. Well. That’s… fucking weird then, yeah.” Tylor shrugged. “Ancient burial site?”

  Alanna closed her eyes and shook her head as she turned and started to walk into the snow. The impact of thick and wet white flakes slapped away from her skin as her authority replicated a trick she’d seen JP pull, keeping part of her a little less damp than she should be.

  The streets weren’t empty. There were still a lot of cars moving around, and even on the cracked and pitted side street that Alanna took so she could start making a long loop of the area, there was still a trio of opposed Toyotas honking at each other to get out of the way. Alanna didn’t exactly ignore them, but she didn’t offer the distraction more than a cursory look; if anyone was keeping a watch on this area, then they wouldn’t be in a moving car trying to muscle their way into a half empty gated parking lot.

  One thing she noticed about the city was that it had a very different style of big architecture than home did. A lot of the smaller buildings, the restaurants and office structures and pawn shops, they looked the same. Relatively newer constructions especially were basically carbon copies that felt like they could exist in any city on the planet. But the bigger stuff, the government buildings, the university campus she’d seen on the way in, and especially the apartment blocks that felt more like skyscrapers than half the ‘tall’ buildings where she’d grown up? Those were a style Alanna hadn’t seen much of. Lots and lots of concrete, but not just blank rectangles; they used rectangles like the things were a religious icon, constantly extending and overlapping the shape within the same uniform material to create repeating patterns that were almost illusory to look at.

  It was kind of cool, and it was also very weird to have something like a relatively low income apartment building looming always in sight over her shoulder while she focused on getting closer to their target for the evening.

  She kept walking, passing by a dog walker that gave her space on the narrow sidewalk and a pair of barely awake girls with umbrellas that didn’t even notice Alanna had to dodge out of their way. It was a little harder to be mad at people when she could know for certain that they weren’t being malicious, but only a little bit.

  Eventually, her route took her along a sidewalk in front of another row of the kind of businesses that people didn’t just drop in on impulsively, and gave her a view of the front side of the brick post office structure. All the windows on this side were equally shaded, the glass doors actively blocked off by a stack of cardboard boxes.

  ”Oh that’s clever.” Alanna muttered, pausing briefly. The boxes gave the structure the impression of a place being renovated or perhaps moved into. Like a place in progress. But if the boxes were empty, then it would take no effort to shift them to allow access to anyone who wanted to leave or needed to get back in.

  The main question then was, what about anyone who might see? Alanna started looking around the rest of the area, and quickly noticed something else.

  All those nearby business, the hole in the wall restaurants that were probably delicious, the hairdressers, the shoe repair place, the two different dog groomers…

  They were all closed too. Not sealed up, but they were all empty.

  ”This whole place is dead.” Alanna muttered to herself. And yeah, except for the apartment towers, it seemed like the cars passing by were passing by. No one was stopping in the area, because no one had any business to do here. “Defense by buffer zone.” She decided quietly.

  Why bother setting up barricades and checkpoints, after all, when you could just make sure no one ever found a place because no one had a good reason to be near it. It was actually a way more effective method of deterrence in the modern day, because even with memeplexes and infovores fucking everything up, people did still tend to notice sustained gunfire eventually. But no one noticed if a few blocks stayed empty, even if it was for years.

  She did another circuit of the area, walking past closed businesses and parking lots empty of all but a few scattered cars. And then, on her approach to the shuttered brick Canada Post building, Alanna felt it.

  Less a feeling and more just polite but certain knowledge, really. Either way, the tie she was loosely wearing around her collar like she was about to become an anime protagonist let her know the exact moment someone swept a weapon’s aim over her.

  Just for a moment. But it was there. Someone had pointed a ranged weapon at her, probably a gun. Not just pointed, aimed. The tie was specific enough that there weren’t false positives.

  Alanna didn’t stop walking, and she also didn’t react outwardly. There was no way this was targeting her specifically, not already. So that meant, instead, that someone was probably checking the whole area, and she just happened to be in it. It was way less likely here that a random gun owner had accidentally pointed a pistol her way than it was in the States, after all.

  She took a circular path out of the area, before calling Tylor. “Hey. Meet me at the Starbucks a half mile north of you.” Alanna said simply, hanging up before Tylor could ask her which direction north was.

  At least she was pretty sure she had the right place. The only question now was, where had the targeting come from? Probably not any of the rooftops, which left the upper floors of two different offices, or the apartment tower itself. Alanna had been pretty close to the wall at the sidewalk level, so it wasn’t really possible for any of the tower structures on the other side of the main roads to have been the source.

  So probably the apartments they’d been huddling underneath the whole time. Great. That was actually very annoying, because if they were planning to go this whole trip without any teleporting, Alanna was certain she was going to end up trying to figure out a specific apartment.

  “James better be having more fun than me.” Alanna grumbled as she tugged her coat collar up and headed toward the rendezvous point.

  _____

  For once in his life, James was actually kind of having fun sitting around a hotel room and waiting.

  He had a long history of family vacations where he had ended up in a place he wasn’t familiar with, with no clear goal and no resources, just sitting around and killing time until his parents and sister were ready to do something. James didn’t think of himself as the kind of person who didn’t know how to relax, but if he was on vacation, he wanted to actually be on vacation, not be dying to air conditioning that was always too cold in hotel rooms that never smelled like they were meant for living in.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  There was actually a clear break in his enjoyment of vacations, after his grandparents had passed away. Mostly his grandma, who had been like him; even if it was just going to a hotel bar and playing bingo, she knew how irritating it was to go to a foreign country just to stay inside. James missed that woman and her tactless disregard for anyone trying to tell her that she couldn’t go on yet another cruise around the arctic to look at whales.

  So here he was again, in a hotel room, albeit one with an amount of subterfuge and skullduggery attached to it, and waiting. But he didn’t feel nearly so restless as he normally would have.

  It helped that he was actually doing stuff. Even if it was just looking out the window while Spire-Cast-Behind messed around with the probably-illegal police radio band scanners that they’d brought along.

  It had not slipped James’ mind that the Order, if they ever actually needed money and didn’t have a replication, could make a bloodied fortune moving contraband around. Not that they even needed to go that far anymore. Breathe Quartz as a spell was more than enough to keep the Order afloat through gold creation while being environmentally beneficial, and if they’d needed more than one copier ritual a month for platinum, James would be pushing for moving them to a gold standard for income. Or they could just sell bespoke and obtuse inventory programs from the emerald chips. They had options, was his point; and becoming gun runners wasn’t really that high on the list.

  All of these thoughts were because James was having a hard time actually finding anything useful through the several different pieces of perfectly legal eyewear they’d brought into the country.

  “Okay. That’s the memorial park.” James said as he looked down from the room’s window. He could just see the glowing lights through the foggy snow that was less ‘gently blanketing’ and more ‘choke slamming’ the city. “Which makes that highway number five. Interstate five? However Canada calls it. And that’s the university.” He tracked his eyes back to the majority of what the view offered; a dense residential area dotted with convenience stores and small businesses. “And I can’t see shit with these.” He set the magic glasses aside and reached for the next pair. “Spire, any luck?”

  ”Several officers are unhappy with working while it is snowing.” She informed him. “Also I believe I am confident many of them are aware of their change in leadership.”

  ”It’d be weird if they weren’t.” James commented as he slid the affiliation glasses over his face.

  ”No it wouldn’t?” Zhu commented dryly. “What? Have you been under a fucking rock? That would be the most normal. Especially with Long fucking around.”

  James opened his mouth to protest, but couldn’t really come up with a good retort. “I sort of assumed Long was an American thing.” He admitted. “Which is probably dumb.”

  ”Yeah, sure is!”

  ”But also that calls something into question.” James said as he started focusing on the small figures braving the streets below. “If Long’s… doing whatever he does, being the Ur-bastard or whatever… but he hasn’t interfered here?” He rolled his shoulder to nudge Zhu’s eyeline up to his own. “The pillars are all about containing status quo changes, right?”

  From behind them, Spire gave a short hiss. “So either the status quo has not changed, or they are overwhelmed. Both are options. The Arm was not willing to fight us in Springfield. And we know how willing he is to fight anything.”

  ”Well, how willing to fight Harlan anyway.” Zhu commented.

  James snorted. He was pretty sure Zhu hadn’t been there for that, but his memories of his own personal history were not to be trusted. “Okay. So, we don’t actually know if Long possesses every cop. Maybe he’s just not active here. Maybe it’s not important to him. Maybe another pillar is already ‘on it’. Or… fuck I hate saying this… the worst case scenario is that there’s no pillar, because things are getting bad.”

  ”If they’re scrambling, we’ll be scrambling soon too.” Zhu finished the thought. “Think we’ll have time for some dungeon delves? I kind of want to see if I can get my own private demiplane.”

  James snapped his fingers while still trying to stare down into the streets below. ”Demiplane. That’s the word I’ve been trying to think of!” He didn’t actually answer the question, though. Because the answer was probably kind of gloomy.

  They weren’t going to have time. They were on the clock. They were on the clock. And James felt a deep and painful anxiety, an unignorable need to wrap this shit up, add to the Order’s collection of dungeons, and get to work preparing for whatever was coming.

  It almost felt silly to be still be working on legal transportation networks and public service cheap electricity at a time like this. But actually, it was the most important thing. Public services were good for everyone, and if the Order got experience making and maintaining them, then they’d be able to put that to use too. It wasn’t as flashy as dungeon delving, but it was still important. Hell, this was important too, because it could mean more allies or opportunities. It just didn’t feel like it.

  ”Stop stressing out and look at that suspicious guy.” Zhu directed James, pointing at a distant figure lurking on a street corner.

  James gave a tiny lopsided grin as he obeyed his friend. “Hm.” He grunted as he looked down at the far off person. “First off, I don’t think that guy is suspicious, I think he’s waiting for a traffic light. Second of all… did anyone know that these things only show affiliations by the person? Like that is some small text. Can we record these somehow? Or maybe get me some kind of vision enhancement?”

  ”You are literally eagle eyed.” Zhu sounded very done with James’ complaining.

  ”If the complaining is over,” Spire cut in, “I think they are using personal meetings to talk. Not sure where yet. But there is a pattern of conspiring.” She glared at the scanner she was listening to, her rogue training not actually having covered this. Mostly she was working off of skill ranks in various forms of perception, but none of those made it easy to just generate a map of relationships. “Where is the iLipede that generates a map of relationships?” She asked.

  Pausing in the middle of switching to his latest pair of glasses, James grimaced. “That one died, sadly. We don’t know exactly what their lifespans are, but… I dunno, it feels like a minor miracle that Lily is still around, at this point.” He sighed. That, too, was a noose slowly closing. The Order had a couple ways to slightly extend someone’s life, but… not enough. And it was hard to know when it was important to use for a more animal intellect that didn’t communicate.

  ”Disappointing.” Spire’s voice was as it ever was, but there was a long pause that made James turn back toward her with concern. She ignored him, still listening to police chatter. “This city is very mundane.” She added. “But I do not-“ the camraconda went quiet.

  ”Yeah?” James asked, trying to not sound too pushy as he kept watching her worriedly.

  Spire-Cast-Behind pulled back from the radio equipment, one of her mechanical arms gingerly removing the connection to her skulljack. “They do not understand how their world has changed. And I have a meeting point that might be a lead. Shall we?”

  ”We shall!” Zhu rumbled.

  ”We shall not.” James laughed. “I’ve got a meeting, remember? I used the blue orb and everything.”

  Spire was already moving to clip a fitted plate to her underside, the camraconda equivalent of putting her shoes on. ”A meeting for when?”

  ”…two hours from now.”

  ”Time enough to spy on the police.” She stated flatly.

  ”I love spying on the police.” Zhu poked at James’ ribs. “Come on, you love spying on the police.”

  ”Everyone here is a bad influence on me.” James whined.

  But he was already getting his own shoes on.

  _____

  “I actually didn’t live too far from here.” Jubilance said morosely as she angrily drank a Starbucks americano like the beverage owed her a blood debt. “Duplex about a mile that way. Wonder if my stuff is still there.”

  ”You think your opposition stole it all?” Alanna asked.

  Jubilance shook her head sharply. “Nah. I think my fiance might have tossed it all.”

  ”Oh.” Alanna paused. “Wait.” She said with a sudden firm tone of realization.

  ”Yeah I know.” Jubilance scowled. “But what the fuck am I supposed to do? He doesn’t even know what I do for a living. Safest thing to do is just stay the fuck away.”

  A glance from Tylor caught Alanna’s attention, and she tried to keep her expression neutral as he gave her a tiny shake of his head where Jubilance couldn’t see it. That didn’t seem good at all, and the constant cold anger from Tylor didn’t tell her anything more about the situation either.

  She could ask later. “Okay. Next step, we check out the other dungeon. Does that one have any weird requirements I need to know about?” Alanna asked.

  ”It’s only open for an hour a day.” Tylor told her. “Aside from that, no. Oh, you can be inside when it closes, that’s okay.” He shrugged. “No time twister nonsense like everything you guys go into has.”

  That seemed a little judgemental for a guy who the Order had invited to dungeon delves. Alanna just gave him an unamused stare as she stood and tossed her cup. “Are we gonna need transport?” She asked, trying her best to not start a fight. There would be plenty of time for that later.

  As it turned out, they did, and it was about half an hour of bus travel. Alanna used the opportunity to fill the others in on the sentinel near their first dungeon - someone needed to name that one - and to get a feel for the city. Or, more accurately, to pair on the ground observations to the maps and camera feeds she had access to through her skulljack. JP and Ben’s horrible dystopia project giving her access to traffic cameras and letting her snoop ahead of the bus route was fun for a bit, as long as she didn’t think too hard about it, and it was good practice for if she ever needed to do it under pressure.

  The second dungeon location was an empty office park. Like, really empty. On the northern side of the city’s business district, surrounded by a thin shell of trees in an emulation of nature, the trio disembarked from their bus about three blocks away and started following Tylor as he led them there, casually sharing a story about how this walk was a million times less fun when it was summer and they were trying to do it in biker leathers.

  As they turned down the street that led to the turnoff into the business park’s lot, Alanna got another bad feeling. Not that she was being aimed at this time, but that something was wrong. “Keep walking.” She instructed the others.

  ”Why?” Jubilance asked, confused as to why they were wasting so much time. “I’m freezing my nips off, can we at least keep walking around to the door we broke the lock on?”

  ”No.” Alanna’s tone allowed for no argument. She was trying to figure out what was wrong, what she’d noticed, as they walked past. And as they got to the middle of the ill-maintained and iced over crosswalk, where there was a nice little tunnel through the trees to the fancy crescent of professional buildings and streetlights currently turned off since the abandoned complex hadn’t paid an electric bill in years, she saw it. Or at least, she saw something.

  There was a pair of white panel vans sitting on the side of the parking lot. Over behind another island of dirt and plants that were missing all their greenery for the winter. Totally innocuous for an operational facility, or even for a place being remodeled. They would have been right at home on a construction site.

  But this place was supposed to be abandoned.

  ”There’s people in those.” Tylor said abruptly.

  ”You can tell?” Alanna asked in a low voice, not knowing if they were being listened to even over the wind and from what was probably over five hundred feet away.

  He shrugged, pulling his collar up to cover his arcane neck tattoo. “Heat vision.” He said simply. “I ducked into a slip while we were waiting for you, and refreshed it. Got it for another hour or so.”

  ”…you teleported, in a city where teleportation is detectable?” Alanna asked blandly, trying to keep her own simmering anger down. She was this close to just sending these two idiots home and hanging out with James all week. James was a dumbass sometimes, but she honestly loved him enough that she was willing to play into it. Tylor was just being tactically stupid. “Why would you do that?” She added when Tylor didn’t say anything.

  ”Because they couldn’t find the slips before.” Jubilance came to her friend’s defense.

  Alanna decided to drop it. “Okay.” She settled on. “I’m starting to see the problem you had though. If everywhere of interest is under surveillance, that’s… yikes.” She took a deep breath of cold winter air as they kept walking like they were headed somewhere in particular. “I think that we… uh… wait what the fuck.” She didn’t stop moving, just tilted her head in a way that guided the others’ attention. “Hey, Captain Infrared, look at that one for me.” Alanna would never point at a clandestine target.

  But she did slightly incline her chin toward the car parked down a side street. It there had been anyone else on the road, it would have probably not caught her attention, but the way that it was wedged almost deliberately in a spot where no streetlight cast a glow seemed weird.

  Tylor glanced that way, and then did a double take. “Uh, yeah. There’s people in there.” He said. “I think they’re shadows.” He added. “Hard to tell; they tend to be colder, but if they’ve been in there for a while the air heats up and… you don’t need to know the details. Yeah. People.”

  ”So why are they here?” Alanna asked.

  ”Backup for the guys in the lot?” Jubilance suggested.

  ”That doesn’t track.” Tylor shook his head. “They have no problem with mixed groups.”

  Alanna sighed. If she were James, she probably would have just gone to say hi to one of the groups by now. But despite her ideology being one of direct action, she still held back. There was something tense and hostile in the air, beyond just the wet snow that was making even her cold-resistant ass uncomfortable.

  Their little walk, and Tylor’s heretofore undisclosed fucking infrared vision, revealed two more cars with occupants, though they were in places where it was more normal for cars to be lined up on the curb. If not for the first one Alanna had pinged off of, they might not have really noticed any of them.

  Two of them were set up to be able to see the one paved entrance into the business park’s front lot. The third was in the parking lot of a big seafood restaurant, its nose facing over a dirt embankment in a way that put it roughly in the right direction. The restaurant was not abandoned, and in fact was doing decent business, but that one car stood out to Alanna’s instincts.

  “I need to call James.” Alanna said after they’d gone into the overpriced seafood place, opting to just get a meal in case their weird route had triggered anyone’s notice. “Before we end up with another Alchemist clusterfuck.”

  ”…Hey, do you ever get tired of not explaining stuff?” Jubilance asked her as they sat on one of the plush fake leather benches in the entry hall, shoes squeaking wetly on the stone floor.

  ”No.” Alanna said as she dialed via skulljack, preferring to have this conversation as silently as possible.

  Multiple vehicles in different points watching not just the dungeon, but each other? That really only meant one thing. This was going to be another situation with nuance and factionalism, and Alanna…

  Well she knew the world was just like that. Hell, it was a minor miracle already that the Order didn’t have any secret cults within it unless you counted whatever the fuck Momo and El were doing. But just once, she wanted an obvious bad guy she could defenestrate.

  ”You know I haven’t gotten to defenestrate anyone even once?” She asked James as he picked up her call.

  ”I love you enough that I can arrange that. Also I’m in the middle of something, what’s up?” Her boyfriend sent back, his voice that weird form of muted and flat that talking over skulljack without an intermediate program caused.

  Alanna filled him in rapidly.

  _____

  Spying on the police was actually kind of a boring task.

  ”I think they’re legit just talking to a CI.” James said as he watched the plainclothes officers have their shady meeting with an as yet unidentified third party. “And honestly, I think that makes me a lot less suspicious?”

  ”They are doing more skullduggery than we are.” Zhu reminded him. “And we’re actually infiltrating a government.”

  ”Well no, we’re not.” James laughed lightly, regretting it as the freezing Saskatoon air cut into his lungs like it was planning to kill him. “But also, I feel like keeping their CIs actually C so that the I part doesn’t get them retaliated against is kind of a good policy? I know in an ideal world, this wouldn’t be a problem, but both organized and violent crime do exist, and it would be irresponsible to pretend otherwise. So I don’t actually hate this.”

  Well, he didn’t hate that the cops were having a clandestine meeting in the shadow of a grimy warehouse. He did hate that he was out here on foot, the location between their hotel and his next stop in a way that had made him think we don’t need to get the car out of the parking garage.

  He couldn’t dawdle for too long, because just standing on the street corner and watching the police was very noticeable, even with the leveler earring that deflected hostile attention. But also, he couldn’t dawdle long because he was going to die of hypothermia. James had no clue how Spire was okay with this level of cold; it was way worse than snow at home. Somehow it was wetter.

  Zhu just ignored the snow entirely by cramming himself inside James’ clothing. “If you don’t tell me what CI stands for, I am going to shoot you. You said it six times now and explained none of them.”

  ”We didn’t bring guns.” James pointed out through a clenched jaw.

  ”I’ll find one. There’s cops right there.” Zhu threatened.

  ”Confidential informant.” Spire said from where she was adjusting her cloak and looking through the window of an unlit bakery they were passing. Keeping herself behind any obstacle available whenever they moved meant she was less likely to be spotted, since she was saving her invisibility. “How do you not know if James knows?” She asked Zhu curiously.

  James rolled his eyes. He was going to make a joke about how his thoughts were impervious to anyone that wasn’t as weird as him, but stopped as something caught his attention.

  There was a figure on the roof of the car dealership next to where the police were having their little meeting. And it was ‘a figure’. Even though it wasn’t even four PM, night had fully fallen with the smooth dark clouds overhead and the sporadic snow. But there were city lights in the distance, and a number of respectably tall skyscrapers visible behind the side street and the bridge over the river that they were lurking on. So the figure should have been at the very least a silhouette.

  But it was more like a cresting wave. Only there was no motion to it, just the black outline of something that was pressed against the ledge of the roof it was on, watching the cops and their meeting below. Or, no, James got the impression it wasn’t actually looking at them somehow. It was looking at one of the unmarked cars.

  ”Zhu.” He said softly. “The car on the right, the tan one.”

  ”Yeah.” Zhu’s eyes blossomed out of James’ coat, squinting against the occasional snowflake strike. “…Weird.” He said, without elaborating.

  ”You feel up for hunting?” James asked.

  ”On it. If you need me back, just scream really loud when someone stabs you or something.” Zhu said, the dusty orange of his form blurring as he flowed like a spear of light down to the ground, flashing forward across the dark slush in the street and through a chain link fence to attach himself to the underside of the car in question.

  James shook his head. “Why does everyone think…”

  He was interrupted by Spire. “Because you could find someone to stab you in an empty building.” She said. “Is there anything else to do here, or shall we proceed?” The camraconda asked bluntly.

  Valid question, James figured. And no, there wasn’t really anything to be gained by lurking here and spying on cops that actually did seem to just be doing their jobs seriously. With careful steps along the sidewalk, and amusement at the shifting furrow that Spire carved with her own passage, the remaining duo made their way through the downtown streets and toward the city hall.

  Earlier in James’ dungeon career, the idea of a blue orb absorbed power that could Arrange Meeting was funny. It was such a weird little thing; meetings were an abstract organizational construct, they weren’t a physical thing. So in a way, all the orb was doing was bouncing around arbitrary information for a time slot. But that was kind of underselling it, and the James of today was more than a little creeped out by how smoothly the blue power cut through the nonexistent mental defenses of mundane humans.

  The information being rearranged, after all, wasn’t just on calendars and memos. The orb wasn’t politely sending an email. It was arranging a meeting, come hell or high water. And sometimes, often even, that meant it was adjusting someone’s own memory of what they had scheduled that day.

  Maybe it shouldn’t have bothered him so much. He lived under the influence of Planner, after all, and had actually been kind of hit hard by the infomorph’s absence for the last few weeks. It sucked to not have that kind of magically regulated structure. But also James trusted Planner, and had more or less consented to having his schedule fucked with. Whoever was between him and the mayor’s office had definitely not, and just because there was something suspicious going on that needed investigating didn’t exactly give James the ‘right’ to tamper with their memories.

  He still absolutely did it though. He had a lot of what he felt were valid reasons, and he did fire off the spell, but that didn’t stop him feeling a little weird as he and Spire got closer to the flat white concrete and dotted trees that made up the entrance to the local city hall. James had looked up pictures of the building, but for some reason, his brain had still thought there would be some kind of fancy steps leading up to it. But no, nothing of the sort. Just a smooth open space that had a pair of trodden trails through its layer of snow, and plain front doors to the concrete box of a structure.

  By the time they were near it, passing by some kind of monument by the front of the building, there were enough people around to make Spire’s presence something of a liability. She’d been more or less out in the open the whole time, but the weather and the time of day had meant there just weren’t that many people around. Now though, they were near a major building where weather couldn’t stop those who had jobs to do, and it was the time of day where everyone was ready to leave. So the camraconda vanished, following close at James’ side and moving mostly through one of the already cleared trails so she didn’t draw too much attention to her passing.

  The front lobby of the building had a little waiting area that looked mostly abandoned, and a small rotunda in front of the passage through to the rest of the building. There was more security here than James had expected from what he’d looked up, and the presence of a metal detector and a duo of uniformed officers working as guards was clearly not part of the building’s original design. It stood out as ineffective, and there was a lot of room to just walk around the metal rectangle. Which was good, because that’s what Spire was going to do before meeting up with him on the other side.

  James, though, didn’t have that luxury. “Hey there.” He said with a friendly smile as he approached the checkpoint, nodding politely and smiling at the pair of women carrying briefcases that were on the way out as he was headed in. “I have a four thirty upstairs, please tell me I don’t have to take off my shoes.”

  One of the officers laughed with warm amusement. “Nothing like that, nah. Just empty your pockets and head through. Got a belt on?”

  ”No, though…” James almost winced as he was setting his wallet and phone on the provided table. “Hang on.” He rolled his sleeves up, unclasping the shield bracers that he had on. They weren’t entirely metal, but they were probably metal enough to count, and honestly, they really weren’t weapons. So he felt fine about this.

  ”The heck is this?” The officer that was standing by the metal detector looked down at the two bracers James had added to his pile with raised eyebrows. Though where he was confused, his partner was looking at the items with a sharp eyed gaze. Setting down the magazine he’d been reading, the second man quietly got up and walked off, pulling a phone from his pocket, which James found so comically suspicious he almost looped back around to thinking it was normal.

  ”Cultural heirlooms.” He told the cop. “It isn’t specifically religious, it’s fine to take them off. But I would be more comfortable keeping them on.” He said as he walked through the metal detector and got nary a peep from it.

  The officer shrugged, and slid his stuff through to the other side. “They look pretty cool. Where’d you get these things?”

  James smiled. “Like I said, heirlooms. They were inherited.” Technically correct. The best kind of correct. “Thanks.”

  ”Yeah, have a good one.” The cop waved him on, already bored of the encounter, but still being polite.

  Taking the cue for what it was, James headed into the building, found the elevator, held the door open so Spire could slither in next to him, her head bumping against his hip to inform him that she was there, and hit the button for the floor he wanted.

  The mayor’s office itself was a simple room. Nothing lavish, this wasn’t some Soviet era official or American industrial baron after all. Just an office with a desk, and room for several chairs and an extra table that had what looked like a presentation on local parks on it. Spacious, well decorated, but not ostentatious. A secretary let James in, the young man telling him he was just on time as he held the door; Spire blinking past him with Appointed Arrival, letting herself in without impacting the human.

  And then James came face to face with something unexpected.

  A completely normal man with a short beard and a slightly messy dress shirt. Who looked entirely prepared for James to enter, leaning back in his red leather padded chair, one leg crossed over the other so he had a foot up in the air, an almost immaculate image of someone who was in confident control of a situation.

  “Well! I didn’t know it was time to renegotiate already.” He said, voice pleasant, but not really bothering to hide an obvious frustrated disdain. “Want to take a seat, or is this going to be one of the more threatening meetings?”

  James blinked. And then he realized he recognized this tactic. The tone, the posture, the man he was speaking to had a clear idea of who he thought James was, and he was working from moment one to put James on the defensive. Because he had his own agenda, and wanted to turn this conversation to his advantage.

  This conversation that, James reminded himself, was a fabricated meeting that the mayor shouldn’t really have any clear information on.

  In fact, the only thing that the mayor might know about them, with only a tiny amount of advance warning, was what the security officer downstairs had spotted, and run off to call in. The presence of the shield bracers James was wearing.

  Uh oh. Spire’s thought was sent directly into James’ brain through their shared skulljack, at the same moment he sent that exact thought to her.

  Out loud, though, he made a snap decision, and decided to do what he did best. “I could sit.” He said with a pleasant smile, ignoring the sudden sensation of someone aiming a weapon at him as he lowered himself politely into one of the chairs. “So!” He asked like he was an old friend. “How’s your evening going?”

  The look he got in response made James feel like he was about to have a very informative conversation.

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