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The Daily Grind - Chapter 177
🕑 Added 2022-01-15 01:47:38 +0000 UTC“Because when you’re a millennial, you promise to do extravagant yet trivial things, to bring a sense of narrative purpose to your life.” - Harry Brewis, XOXO Festival 2019 -
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When Deb looked back at the trajectory of her life, she got this weird sense of perspective. Because in retrospect, she could see clearly where every decision had spiraled out of control into some kind of twisting mess of consequences and outcomes. But at the time, none of those decisions even felt like she was doing anything at all.
Getting a summer job to desperately try to cover the costs of textbooks for her next year of med school, for example, had led to… well, everything.
Being kidnapped, held prisoner by an inhuman monster, used as a living router. And then, being rescued. Meeting James, and the others. Learning her family had forgotten her, and her school records didn’t exist. Going back into the dungeon. Getting *good* at going back into the dungeon. Helping people, healing people, learning, growing. Meeting her partner. Somehow being the most qualified medical practitioner in the building. Ending up in charge of things in this particular bit of hospital in this particular weird basement.
She *could* have just said ‘no’ when the interviewer asked her if she wanted the job. Might have saved her a lot of scars. Deb idly rubbed at one of the scars on her left arm as she thought; a long white line courtesy of a knife strike from one of the Status Quo agents.
What would she say, if offered the chance to change that one answer? The idle question made her give a sardonic smile to the paperwork she was doing. It wasn’t much of a question, really. For all the chaos and confusion and pain and hardship…
Well, she found herself at home here.
A sibilant utterance drifted out of one of the rooms down here in their temporary infirmary. Deb looked up as the hiss continued, and then slid out from behind her desk with a practiced move. She moved with the kind of quick yet unhurried efficiency that she’d learned to master in her time as an RN, a handful of steps letting her reach the door to Texture-Of-Barkdust’s room rapidly.
Deb’s glance took in a lot of information about the camraconda lying spread out on the bed in quick order. For one thing, she’d unplugged her speaker rig somehow. The IV was still properly set, but the bag was emptier than it should have been, which she noted. Maybe camraconda blood moved faster? That sounded stupid, but exactly like the kind of thing the Office would cook up. The feverish serpent had also rolled such that her upper half was draped off the side of the bed, long tongue lolling toward the floor.
In theory, Deb knew the floors were clean. In practice, she did *not* want anyone licking them. She suppressed any kind of sigh she might have wanted to make, and moved to get Texture-Of-Barkdust back up onto the bed.
“Come on.” She murmured softly through her mask to the sick camraconda as she knelt to slide her arms under Texture’s upper body. “Let’s get you comfortable.”
Texture-Of-Barkdust hissed at her, a sputtering noise that Deb thought sounded a little too dry. For a brief second, as the camraconda rolled in her grip, Deb felt her body completely freeze, all motion ripped away in a split second before her limbs began responding again with a small jerk.
It was a feeling she was familiar with, but she didn’t chastise Texture. The girl was sick enough, she didn’t need any extra problems.
Deb calmly replaced the IV bag, recorded the time and Texture-Of-Barkdust’s temperature and breathing rate - camracondas didn’t have a heartbeat, which made the fact that they had blood at all incredibly suspicious - and made sure that the cold pack was placed where Texture could roll onto it if she needed to.
The camraconda was getting better. Far faster than a human with the flu would, actually, which made Deb suspect this was either a different illness, even though the test kit had returned a positive, or that camraconda biology interacted with Earth pathogens differently. Or both. Almost certainly both. Though it was obvious how this particular affliction could kill an untreated camraconda; her temperature had spiked early, and in an environment like the Office where camracondas didn’t really drink, and certainly didn’t have access to ice, a fever like that would have been lethal to pretty much anything.
Still, even if this version of the flu was something that couldn’t even jump to humans, she still went through the process of disposing of her mask and gloves, and scrubbing her hands down thoroughly. No sense taking risks.
*Now* Deb sighed, out of earshot of her patient. A day and a half of someone feverish and belligerent was enough to strain the nerves, especially when they were someone you knew. Deb had practical experience distancing herself from her patients, but not when they were people who personally mattered to her.
Still, Texture-Of-Barkdust was recovering. That was good. It looked like she was going to pull through, and that was good enough.
The same, Deb thought with a frown as she checked through the window of the other room, couldn’t be said of her other patient.
Alanna had come by a couple times to check on the creature, but Deb had turned her away after Texture was quarantined here as a precaution. The quarantine rooms they used as hospital beds now serving a double purpose, as the strange Sewer creation Alanna had brought back was kept isolated.
It was, Deb thought with a shake of her head, a lot like the ratroaches. A painful mix of what looked like a crow and a wasp; feathers that seemed more stabbed into flesh than growing out of it, bright red infected lines where skin and exoskeleton met, shattered stingers and broken bones. A body that wasn’t designed to do more than cause damage to an enemy and then die.
The creature was sedated while Deb had its ‘blood’ tested. Wounds bandaged as well as they could manage, comfort chased after. They weren’t doing well, honestly, and Deb wasn’t sure if this one would recover.
Arrush and Keeka were broken creatures, but they were built to hurt, and keep hurting. This thing seemed built to kill, and to *die*.
Not that she was just going to let that happen.
She just didn’t know enough. Not really.
Deb settled back in at her desk and pulled over to her the small plastic case that Anesh had brought down for her earlier this morning. Popping it open, she looked at the row of yellow orbs inside. Four of them, all things she’d been looking for. She’d been busy, and hadn’t gone into the Office this week to wrench its secrets out of its beige claws, but someone else had come through for her.
[+.3 Skill Ranks : Biology - Mammals]
[+.8 Skill Ranks : Anatomy - Reptiles - Snakes]
[+1 Skill Rank : Medical - Surgery - Brain]
[+1 Skill Ranks : Therapy - Physical - Massage]
The former nurse sucked in a slow breath as she took in the new information running through her. A few hours on Wikipedia and six years worth of high intensity college courses all at once flooding her mind. Deb closed her eyes and sat back, rapidly rotating through things she *knew*, mixing them with things she’d learned the hard way, slowly folding the cheat of the skill orbs into her constantly expanding foundation of skills relevant to being a healer of the living.
Annoyingly, she rediscovered, snakes had little in common with camracondas. She’d done quite a lot of reading a few months ago, and had come to the same conclusion, but the shoring up of the yellow orb’s skill rank confirmed it. Still, the new points were never something she would turn down.
In fact, far from wanting to turn them down, Deb found she wanted more.
The thought was one she’d been struggling with for a while now. And was part of why she’d found herself ‘busy’ on the last few Officium Mundi delves. For all that James said it was perfectly safe, and that the orbs weren’t something that they’d found any problems with, Deb wasn’t completely convinced. There was something, always in the back of her head, that warned her about this. Warned her to not get too deep.
Because while she wasn’t experiencing any symptoms, she was still concerned that addiction might be a real thing. Compulsion, at least.
Where was the line, exactly, between needing to know more to be good at your job, and just wanting to feel the rush of an encyclopedia’s worth of knowledge flooding you, sticking with you, becoming part of you without *any* effort? Deb didn’t know. Hell, maybe she should have just left the small case shut and left the orbs alone.
Deb’s train of thought was interrupted by her phone buzzing. Shaking off the grim worry she was carrying, she slid her finger across the smartphone screen, and answered with an easy “Hello?”
“You’ve gotta stop asking me for weird favors, girl.” A beleaguered woman’s voice came back.
“Hey Soph.” Deb tried to keep the grin out of her voice. It wasn’t that hard; she was pretty tired herself. “It’s not a favor if I’m paying you.”
“You should start paying me then!” Sophia replied. “I had this whole gossip thing going on, about how my boyfriend had an interview at a place that I *guess has teleporters*, and you know what he tells me when he gets home?”
“I do, yes.” Deb said, scratching a note on the back of a torn envelope that at least one of their interviewees was bad at keeping secrets.
“Yeah, I bet you do!” The other woman’s voice sounded torn between anger and laughter. “You were way less weird when you were an RN, you know?”
“Soph…” Deb’s voice was strained as she massaged her forehead. “Are you gonna waste your whole break on this?” She took a shot in the dark on speeding up the conversation.
There was a half second of pause before one of the last people from her old life who remembered her, even tangentially, replied. “No…” She sounded almost disappointed. “Alright, fine. I asked around, and I think I can get you an in with the tech. The whole hospital is crammed, but it’s not like anyone needs more X-rays than normal.” There was another, almost imperceptible pause. “Why do you need secret X-rays, anyway?” Soph asked her old coworker. “You got an alien you’re taking care of or something?”
“Secret is less important than secure.” Deb answered without thinking. “And they aren’t an alien, they’re from Earth. Technically.”
“Girl. Please. You cannot just fuckin say that.”
“Where and when am I meeting the tech?” Deb asked with a sigh, listening as Soph gave her a name and the time the guy had lunch every day. “Thanks Soph. I owe you one.” She said after getting the information.
She could almost hear the other woman shrug. “Don’t sweat it. But also… uh…”
“Yeah?”
“Can I see the alien?”
“I’ll talk to you later Soph.” Deb said, ignoring the ‘no, wait!’ from the nurse on the other end of the line as she hung up. “Okay.” She muttered to herself, pulling up the Order’s chat server and firing a message off in the ‘requests for help’ channel.
Needed later today; two people to help transport via telepad a sedated patient to hospital X-ray. Must be comfortable wearing armor. Message for details.
Deb rapidly sent the message as the chime on the quarantine area’s door went off, leaving out details to drag herself up onto sore feet and go check who or what was demanding more of her attention.
The who, in this case, was Ann, supported by another member of Response, still in her armor and bleeding from a messy looking gash on her forehead. The what was… well, the bleeding, Deb assumed.
She admitted them rapidly, making sure the door to Texture’s room was closed, and the two humans had masks on for safety. “What happened?” She asked rapidly, pulling up a chair for Ann to settle into.
“I fell down some stairs.” Ann said woozily.
“She fell down some stairs after someone shot her.” Her Response teammate said. “Bullet deflected, but she hit her head on the way down.”
Deb snapped on a pair of disposable gloves, and started pulling back Ann’s hair out of the gash, wiping away blood with a wet towel to see how bad it was. It was… well, it could be worse. But head wounds always bled worse than anything else.
The cut was over her right eye, and the knight kept flinching as a thin trickle of blood would drip down into her vision. Deb pressed the towel down, and instructed Ann to hold it in place. “This is going to need stitches.” She said, popping open one of the cabinets to gather what she needed. “Why didn’t Nik close this up?” Deb asked, realizing that this was the first Response injury she’d had in a while.
“He’s out with another team.” The new guy told her. “No one else has a medico yet.”
Deb nodded, looking around for a place to set down the suture, tape, and other tools she’d grabbed. Eventually, she just cleared off part of her desk and got help dragging Ann’s chair over to nearby. She knew, in her heart, that she’d have to sanitize this all extensively later, but right now she was focused on the patient and the injury.
She moved quickly, hands that had only mild practical experience doing this being guided by a dozen overlapping skill ranks. Deb let the compassion resonance she had guide her work, easily picking out when Ann’s winces and hisses of pain were needed to make the proper repair to her body, and when to use them as guides on when to ease off.
It took her three minutes. It almost took her longer to get the bandage adhesive to smooth out properly.
After directing the other Response aspirant to get Ann to somewhere she could sit or lay down, and to make sure she drank something, Deb waited for the door to close again, and then sagged.
She still had to clean all this up.
She needed more staff here. Hell, she needed to *be* staff, she didn’t want to be in charge.
Or maybe she could get Reed to make her hospital space bigger. They were doing cool stuff with the orange totems, right? Maybe another twenty rooms down here. Some real equipment. Copy a vitals monitor a dozen times, get an actual pharmacy…
Deb was getting ahead of herself. She had blood to clean up, and a tech to meet about giving a giant wasp an X-ray.
The plus side was, being a nurse and being in med school had both prepared her for not sleeping much. So that was good, at least.
_____
Morgan’s life had gotten weird.
Weird in a good way, he supposed. He didn’t have to live with his dad, anymore. He had reliable food, no one hit him, and he’d actually been able to sleep without nightmares for one night last week, which was a big improvement.
His best friend was an artificial magical life form, who had technically killed his mom, which was… something. He didn’t know *what*, but it fucking for sure was *something*. His other best friend, aside from Color-Of-Dawn, was Liz, who was mostly only his friend because they’d survived a few of the same things, but that was kind of enough.
He lived in the basement of a converted office building. One of the basements. Morgan thought the basement thing was awesome, but while the literal magic of it seemed permanent, the emotional magic wore off the third time he had to take the stairs back up because he’d gone down to the wrong one.
On a given day, Morgan didn’t really know what weird thing he was going to see. What new strange creature - or person - was going to walk in the door. What small magic might be going on in the common area. Or what everyone in the dining room would be talking about.
It was pretty great.
The problem was… he didn’t really know what he was doing.
It was, unbeknownst to Morgan, a problem that afflicted basically everyone his age at some point. And it wasn’t like he didn’t have stuff to do; he helped out around the Lair sometimes, he read a lot, that kind of thing. But he wasn’t actually one of the Order’s aspirants, and he didn’t have a *job* here. He didn’t go on ‘delves’, he just… existed.
Existed and played a lot of video games.
Part of him had this constant dread that he wasn’t building marketable job skills, like his mom had always wanted him to pursue. Or that, by essentially abandoning high school altogether, he was going to end up illiterate and broke for his whole life. But Morgan didn’t know how to *fix* that, and asking people for help was terrifying, so he hid in his room a lot and tried to distract himself.
Which only worked until Liz found him and dragged him to lunch. Color-Of-Dawn would just hide *with* him. The camraconda had gotten one of the original sets of mechanical manipulators that their people used, as the engineers built more streamlined and stronger versions; but the original was still good enough for soft control, like, say, for playing Street Fighter.
Morgan was good at Street Fighter. Color-Of-Dawn was *also*, it turned out, good at Street Fighter. They hung out a lot.
Liz, though, was good at convincing the both of them to try new things. And that meant they couldn’t hide forever.
It was one of the *normal* strange things. Liz was actually really shy, always quiet, and would often imply more than she’d ever say out loud. But *she* was the one that kept nudging them to help the landscaping efforts, or take a guitar class, or something else that had popped up on the community board this week.
Today, Liz had dragged him up to the dining area, to a social gathering, and Morgan was *absolutely* sure that she had gone crazy.
Because the people they were hanging out with were high schoolers.
Other interns. Well, interns. Morgan and Liz both had special circumstances, so they didn’t really count as part of that particular program the Order was trying. Color-Of-Dawn had basically the same special circumstances, but way more extreme. And now, Morgan was realizing that despite the similarities in lifestyle upheaval events and being the same age, he had *nothing* in common with these kids.
“Yeah, it’s kind of hard.” Jess was saying. She was a junior, and like every other one of the half dozen interns at the table, she was a huge overachiever. Her face, kind of round and showing off her Mexican heritage, was twisted into a grimace as she talked about her history class. “I mean, AP classes are all hard, right?” She asked the table, and got a couple sympathetic answers from the other students. “We’re covering the Great Depression right now, and it’s, like, two hours of homework a night.”
Morgan felt himself shrink into his seat, gnawing on some of the sliced fruit that Marjorie had deposited into the middle of their table when they’d arrived, trying to put his anxiety into chewing. The conversation kept wrapping back around to school, and every one of the other people here seemed smarter than he was. Not for the first time, he felt like maybe following Liz this time had been a mistake.
Color-Of-Dawn came to his rescue, partially. “Is Great Depression worse than normal depression?” The camraconda asked, pivoting to look at Morgan.
Because he’d been asked directly, it was hard to fade away and just let one of the actual students answer. “Uh… no, it’s a historic event. Or, a few years, I guess? I don’t know how long. About ninety years ago, there was a thing where a bunch of mistakes made money and food run out all at once.” Morgan knew, *knew*, that his description wasn’t even close to the whole answer, but he hoped no one would think he was dumb for it. “It’s not the mental health thing. That’s just regular depression. Er… ‘depression’. No regular.”
Instead, he got the somehow worse option. “Oh! Are you in the US History class too?” The guy across from him, an *impossibly* tall guy with a long red scar down the side of his face named Bryan asked him. Morgan was pretty sure the guy was on the basketball team.
“Uh…” Morgan floundered. “N-no. I don’t… I don’t go to school.” He said quietly.
“Oh, getting a GED or something?” Bryan asked him. Not unfriendly, just curious.
Morgan didn’t really relax, though. “I don’t know.” He muttered. “I’m just kind of…” he waved a hand around, trying to express… anything.
Surprisingly - to him, at least - no one said anything mean. There was actually just a moment of quiet, and a set of sympathetic or pained expressions. Morgan almost jumped out of his seat when he felt Liz set a hand on his arm. But when no one made fun of him, or looked at him like wasn’t important, it started to click with him.
His circumstances weren’t actually that unique.
Everyone at this table had lived through something they maybe shouldn’t have. He glanced again at Bryan, realizing that the scar cutting across his face probably came from a ratroach knife strike. How many of them had scars like that, under their clothes? Or had friends they wouldn’t ever get to talk to again?
Morgan didn’t exactly relax completely, but he felt some kind of connection that he hadn’t before.
He surprised himself by breaking the silence. “Should I try to get a GED?” He asked. “I don’t even know what that would take. Like, I’ve been learning math by listening to Mars lecture me when we’re weeding.”
Another girl spoke up, a rail-thin kid named Maddie who tried to hide how skills she was under a layer of thick sweatshirt. “Wait, you get to get high with the engineers?” She said with an affronted tone. “*I* want to get high with the engineers!”
Liz’s giggle made Morgan smile in turn. “He means gardening.” Liz said. “We help out with the garden and farm stuff. Mars does too, sometimes. He says it’s ‘meditative’.”
“I mean, it’s probably more important than learning math.” A guy who clearly hated math said, folding his arms and grumbling.
“Yeah, but plants are borrrrring.” Jess drawled, reaching for more of the shared plate of fruit on the table.
What he wanted to say was ‘Plants are cool!’ In defense of this small personal hobby that he’d stumbled across but felt a weird connection he couldn’t explain toward. What he said instead was… nothing. Morgan did what he was good at. He kept his head down, and didn’t challenge the other kid. Besides, it wasn’t like she was trying to be a bully or anything. Jess probably didn’t realize how bad it felt to hear that, and…
While Morgan was busy stewing in his own teenage angst, though, his friends *did* have something to say. “Hey, plants *are* cool!” Liz said, the cocoon of shyness around her shredding away as she catapulted herself to her friend’s defense.
“Yes.” Color-Of-Dawn agreed with a bob of its head. “Your world’s plants are beautiful. And most of them do not try to kill you. They are cool.”
Morgan flushed crimson, but felt a swell of confidence in his chest, and spoke up himself. “Uh… Rufus actually has some non-killing plants from your world, too.” He told Color-Of-Dawn. “They’re sweet. He lets me help trim them sometimes.”
“The skitterer grows them here? On purpose?” Color-Of-Dawn jolted upright.
“If you’re not growing them on purpose, they’re weeds!” Evan, one of the other interns who hadn’t spoken up yet chimed in.
Morgan rolled his eyes. “And that’s why the rainforest is dying.” He snarked.
The conversation kept going, eventually looping back to complaining about school, or parents, or whatever. Morgan didn’t have much to add to those parts, but he didn’t feel *excluded*, exactly. Not anymore. He mostly just sat quietly, feeling himself get more familiar with these people.
One thing he noticed, that he was *certain* Color-Of-Dawn spotted too, was how often the other kids gave the camraconda looks. They all seemed right on the cusp of asking questions of the non-human at the table, but no one ever crossed over that line.
At one point, he leaned over and muttered to his friend, “If you wanna leave, we can. I think Liz’ll let us go.”
“It is fine.” Color-Of-Dawn murmured back, volume of their speakers pitched low. “Just a reminder that I am… different.”
“I hear ya. Just let me know, okay?” Morgan tried to reassure his friend. “Tap me or something.” Color-Of-Dawn hummed back, and he leaned back and tried to catch up on the conversation, catching a smile from Liz as he did so.
The interns were, for all their shared trauma, still a fairly excited group. A half hour of chatter and friendly complaining, blended with sharing what they’d been involved with in the Order, all flowed together to Morgan. Until someone made it awkward.
“I saw one of *them* around here, the other day.” Maddie stressed the word, face like a storm. “I dunno what the fuck anyone is thinking.”
Everyone at the table seemed to get it instantly, except Morgan, who looked over at Liz, who had a similar confused expression. “Them?” He asked, puzzled.
“One of the rats.” Bryan’s voice was… well, not really a growl. But what a kid trying to emulate someone tough thought a growl was.
“Are you…” Liz’s voice was uncertain, and she looked to Morgan, like she was just trying to make sure she still had social backup at the table. “Do you mean Arrush?” She asked.
“It has a name?” Maddie sounded somehow angrier.
Morgan frowned, speaking up defensively. “Uh, yeah? He does. People are allowed to have names.” He said. Maybe not his best work. “Why are you so mad?”
“How do we even know it isn’t the one that kil- that hurt me?” Bryan demanded. “They’re *monsters*. You can just read the entries for that *place*. They’re just monsters.” His hands were claws on his arms, like he was trying to avoid rubbing at the scar on his face.
Jess, tone uncertain, added, “I mean… we don’t know that for sure. And the Order is trying to help them, I guess. But it’s still creepy seeing one walking around.”
*Something* about this whole conversation topic set Morgan on edge. But, unfortunately, he hadn’t yet mastered the art of taking a step back and analyzing things when he was mid-conversation. Instead, he just felt like there was something *wrong*, and couldn’t pin down what. He opened his mouth to say something, not knowing what he should even say, when he got cut off.
“Yes.” Color-Of-Dawn said. “Things from dungeons are disturbing.” The camraconda stated in its mechanical voice, letting the sentence stand on its own as they leaned themself over the table to pluck a slice of apple off the rapidly emptying tray.
Jess backpedaled rapidly. “That’s different! The rats *killed* people!”
“Color-Of-Dawn’s killed someone.” It took Morgan a second to realize that the asshole who’d said that was *him*. The camraconda twitched, freezing up like it’d been hit by its own gaze. “Doesn’t matter, though.” Morgan continued, desperately trying to keep his voice from breaking. “Still my friend. And it’s… dumb. It’s just dumb, to be afraid of a whole species, because some of them got used as weapons. You’re not helping anyone.”
A week ago, Morgan had talked to James about it. His therapist had recommended it, because James had the closest thing to a similar experience. And he had a question for the Order’s leader.
How do you not hate someone for something they did?
James knew what he was actually asking, though. And after a long and winding tangent about crime statistics, he’d gotten to the point.
It wasn’t fair. But fair wasn’t the point. The point was to build a better world. And sometimes, that meant you had to let go. To not blame someone, even though it felt ‘right’. Because it wasn’t going to help you, or them.
Morgan was butchering the words, but right now, he was pretty sure he got the point perfectly. Like he could see it from a broader perspective.
“Also he’s not a bad person.” Liz folded her arms defiantly. “He wouldn’t be here if he was. Right?”
“Yeah, well…” Evan leaned forward, propping himself on his elbows and facing Liz. “If he’s not a bad person, why was he beating up your mom?”
“What?” Liz looked confused.
Bryan leaned over and smacked Evan on the back of the head. “A your mom joke? Really, dude?” The tension didn’t go away, but it diffused slightly.
“What? No!” Evan insisted. “Down in the gym area! Ms. Landry’s your mom, right?” He asked Liz, and got a nervous nod. “She and the rat were totally brawling!”
Morgan gave his friend a sympathetic look. “Uh, yeah, he’s right. *Sort of*. Your mom’s one of the knights teaching Arrush how to fight without hurting himself.” He said. “He’s not bullying her or anything, though. She could absolutely kick his ass. He’s still hurt, you know? From the Climb.” Morgan shuddered. He did not have good memories of the mountain dungeon.
“What?!” Liz burst out. “Since when?! How do *you* know this?”
“I just… am around?” Morgan shrugged, feeling guilty. “Like, stuff happens while you’re at school, you know.”
“You’re sure it’s *my* mom?” Liz looked uncertain.
“Yes? She usually works with Arrush after her kendo class. That’s how I know.” Morgan shrugged. “Like, I *do* do stuff when you’re not here.”
Liz looked like her world had been upended. “My mom is learning kendo.”
“Your mom’s the teacher.”
Before Liz’s whole concept of her mother could crumble around her, one of the other interns spoke up. “I get it.” He said. “But…” The kid looked down at the table, going quiet. “But they’re just…”
“Scary?” Morgan asked, not unkindly. Just as quiet.
“Yeah.” The word was a whisper. But no one contradicted it.
“I think I’m a bad person to say this,” Morgan admitted, “because I’m scared of, like, whether I can get a job, you know? But I don’t think it gets less scary if you just let it eat at you. Maybe ask to talk to one of them, sometime. Just… say hi. Let it get to be normal.”
Jess gave him an disbelieving look. “You have a job.” She stated.
“No?” Morgan was kind of annoyed *that* was the part of his attempted heartfelt statement that she focused on.
“You work here.”
“I *live* here.” Morgan told them. “Where else am I gonna go?” He said bitterly.
Bryan scratched at his face. “I kinda don’t want to.” He jumped back in the conversation. “I kinda want to just hate ‘em.”
“Then you belong here less than they do.” Color-Of-Dawn snapped with sudden anger that made the student flinch back. It looked over at Morgan, camera eye blinking as one manipulator arm tapped him twice on the shoulder.
More overt than Morgan had intended, but he still nodded. “Okay, well, we need to go.” He interrupted the protests from the others at Color-Of-Dawn’s words. “And I’m bad at this. But, like, nice to meet everyone?” Some of them didn’t look super happy, but half of them waved or said friendly goodbyes, despite how the conversation had turned out.
Liz spun out of her seat and followed them, waving backward as Morgan and Color-Of-Dawn headed down the hallway to the main room and the elevator. “You didn’t have to leave too.” Morgan told her. “You were having fun, right?”
“Yeah, but we can go back later.” She shrugged. “You looked upset.”
“I was.” He said. “Am. Whatever.”
“I am upset also.” Color-Of-Dawn spoke from ahead of them. “They are… children.”
“You’re a children too.” Morgan poked fun at it. “So are we! I can’t even buy weed!”
“Still! You had a conversation!” Liz elbowed him as they waited for the elevator. “Where’d all that stuff come from, anyway?”
Morgan smiled. “James, I guess. I talked to him about…” He glanced over at Color-Of-Dawn, and sighed. “About this, sorta. I *get* that they’re angry. But it’s not okay to hate someone who didn’t do anything.” As soon as he said it, he realized he’d left part out. “Or even if he did. Hating doesn’t fix anything. It just… I dunno, maybe I’m stupid.”
“You’re not!” Liz’s words had a sudden fire to them. “You’re not.” She repeated. “You know, my family left, right?” Liz whispered. “My dad, my brothers, they just… forgot everything. Forgot my mom. *Ignored* me, so hard they left me too. Because of something like Planner. But my mom’s *friends* with Planner. You two are friends.” She pointed at him and Color-Of-Dawn. “Aren’t you… happier?”
Morgan froze as the elevator doors opened, watching Color-Of-Dawn as the camraconda slithered through the doors and turned to poke its snout into one of the buttons, waiting patiently for Morgan to follow them.
Happier. He was happier, somehow. He was nervous all the time, scared of the future, and still felt useless and stupid. But he was happier. And he knew, suddenly, in his core, that he would never be happy if he’d held onto hating.
“You coming?” Liz asked from in the elevator, holding the door for him.
“Ah! Yeah!” Morgan jolted, and followed. He’d have time to think about it all later. For now, there were video games to play with his friends.
_____
“Okay, thanks.” Myles suppressed a groan as he spoke into his cell phone. “Yeah, I’ll let them know. Have fun.”
He hung up, and let the groan out now that JP wasn’t within earshot.
Which was kinda funny, because he was currently occupying JP’s ‘office’ in his boss’ absence. He put ‘office’ in air quotes because it was actually just one of the larger rooms at the Red Lion, the only hotel in this city, and the building that they were operating reclamation efforts out of these days.
Myles said ‘they’ a lot, but he wasn’t really a part of this effort. He was just filling in for JP for a few days while he and everyone else who knew what they were doing ran off to… fight a cult? Myles wasn’t clear on exactly what the nature of the problem was. But it sounded important enough.
Myles was mostly here to help with communication and planning. His time as a spy, it seemed, was on temporary pause. A fact he and Yin both found kind of insulting. The two of them had been basically left on standby here while JP pivoted to the Alchemist case, which, *yeah*, really made it feel like his boss didn’t trust him to not get himself killed.
So instead of letting him chase after a bunch of potion-chugging body snatchers, Myles was dropped into a crumbling city full of angry necromantic hunks of clawed asphalt.
God, he was so angry at JP right now.
“What’d he say?” Yin asked, looking up from where she was crossing off buildings on the wall map. She’d stolen the more interesting part of the job that was split between the two rogues, and was basically in charge of the exploration of the city.
“The depressions haven’t moved much or said anything since yesterday. So he and Dave are just… doing a stakeout, I guess?” Myles glared at the phone in his hand, as if he could somehow transfer his ire to JP through the cut connection. “So… we’re on our own here, I guess? Again?”
“Could be worse.” Yin told him, scratching a red X through a house that had been demolished by the asphalt assault during the Mechanic’s last attempt at apotheosis. “I mean, we’re not *really* on our own. We can always ask for help. It’s not like there’s any emergencies going on.”
Myles winced at the invitation to bad luck. “You literally do not know that.”
“Oh, come on!” Yin gave him a grin with some barely contained rude glee in it. “What could possibly go wr-“
“Please.” Myles begged her. “You *know* what we do. You *know* that could actually do something.”
She gave an overdramatic artificial sigh. “Fine. But look, it could be worse. At least the hotel doesn’t smell anymore.”
The hotel didn’t smell anymore because he’d managed to get ahold of some copies of the green orb that removed garbage. It was small enough to go in the one miscellaneous copy run every week, and Bill had handed them off to Myles when he’d come down to help assess building stability. The diminishing returns on skills meant that it made more sense to let four different people crack them, so Myles had handed them off to the ex-cultists to learn about birds or something. The diminishing returns also meant that the building only magically vaporized twenty five-ish pounds of trash a day, but it had been a few days already, and the smell had apparently gone out with the random gross things in the various room garbage cans, and *especially* all the rotting food in the commercial kitchen.
“It doesn’t smell anymore, no.” Myles agreed. “Anyway, we’re here for at least a week, probably. So, do you wanna, like, trade off on…?”
“Nope!” Yin jumped in. “I like this part.”
“Yeah, I know! I do too!” Myles rolled his eyes, pacing back and forth next to the hotel bed that had been shoved over into the corner of the room. “I wanna do the exploring thing for once! I’m… Jesus, am I really gonna say this?... I’m tired of spying on wizards and running comms all the time.” He realized how stupid that sounded. “I never get to actually do the fun urban exploration shit. I *like* urban exploration.” Myles tended to not say much that often, but here, with just another rogue around, he let his guard down for just a minute. “Christ, Yin, I joined a magical secret order. I didn’t do it to be a… a… whatever this is.”
“Talk to James about it.” The girl shrugged casually. “Get on a delve team or something. Oh! Did you see the update on the server last night? Rogue armory got a new toy. Next time Bill comes down he should have a purple for us!”
“For you.” Myles commented, checking his phone for any messages from the currently deployed team. The city had pretty bad service, what with how a psycho with a mace had demolished the local cell towers. The Order had gotten *one* working again, barely, and only because Camille hadn’t been through about her job, which was enough for them to make iffy calls. But it left Myles constantly paranoid about communication with the exploration teams, radios or no.
“For… us?” Yin rebutted. “You’ll like it. Chat says it gives improved manual dexterity. You know, for…” She waggled her eyebrows at him suggestively.
Myles ignored the innuendo. “Nice. Have fun with that.” He said. “I’m gonna go check in on everyone before the teams rotate out. You’re looting the Kroger tonight, right? And everything in that little strip mall?”
“*Exploring*. Also yes. Also hey! Get back here!” Yin scrambled over a chair, launching herself toward the door after Myles as she pursued him. “Have you not been using armory orbs?!” She demanded.
Myles shrugged as he made his way to the elevator, before remembering that this building’s elevator had a bad case of ‘being stabbed with spikes of stone’, and sighing toward the stairs. “No?” He said, tentatively, before reaffirming it. “No.”
“You work for a magical secret order!” She accused him.
“Yeah, and I don’t have magic. Weird world, huh?” Voice echoing off the bare concert of the damaged stairwell, Myles had to admit, he was enjoying this. He got why JP did this kind of thing now. “Are Arrush and Keeka back, or are they still lounging around the Lair? I’m still not sure if they’re, like, working here.”
“Lair. Also *why*?!”
“I mean, because they’re refugees, not employees, right?” Myles gave her a confused look over his shoulder. “Oh! The orbs! It’s for the Old Gun.”
“What?”
Myles sighed again as he shouldered one of the fire doors open with a metal *chunk*. He hated doing the explanations. Hell, he didn’t really like talking to people. Yin was friendly enough, but Myles just liked working alone. “I’m an experiment Nate’s running.” He said. “The Old Gun, and Lloyd, both did this thing where they sort of knew what magic was-“
“Lloyd?”
“We’re not playing this game.” Myles shook his head. “The point is, they can sense magic. Or something like it. *So*, if you want someone to *run surveillance on things like that*...”
“You need someone with no magic.” Yin finished. “Oh, buddy.” She moved in to hug Myles. “That’s so sucky! I’m sorry!”
He dodged the hug. There was part of him that wanted to let her know that the amount of catchup magic he’d been promised far outstripped what he was giving up, and that *patience* was something he was good at. But Myles was more or less done sharing for now.
Also Myles was not a hug person.
Lots of stuff had changed in his life, but he wasn’t quite there yet. Though, if there was one thing that was nice about working for the Order, it was that no one ever made him feel pressured like he *had* to get hugged. That had been an alarmingly common problem in his past.
He ducked Yin’s second attempt, and pivoted with the move he’d been drilled on to move in for a tackle. Except he executed it *away* from Yin, and hopped away lightly, gaining some distance. “Okay, well, nice talking to you.” Myles stated dryly, heading toward the common room where everyone tended to gather. “Go check your stuff for tonight. I’ll let you know if Nate comes up with a job that’s actually *for us*.” He waved at her.
Yin just flipped him off, doing a little loping stride as she made her way out the side door of the hotel, heading for the garage where they stashed everything. Still, Myles noted that the girl was one hundred percent alert; her head made small twitches as she scanned the area for any of the necroads that might have wandered in.
There were too many of those. Myles didn’t dwell on it.
He didn’t have time to dwell. He’d been cursed for not being fast enough to get assigned to one of the Rogue teams that were hijacking traffic cams or trying to blackmail FBI sub-directors. And now he had to deal with people.
The people here were used to JP, so Myles fell easily into mimicking his boss as he entered the open meeting hall area. A deep breath, and he let the persona slide over him: easy smile, hands in pockets, don’t slouch but don’t march either. Eye contact and snarky encouragement. He could do this.
Kirk and Dorothy were sitting by themselves, reading printouts of the Order’s operations manual and taking notes. Dorothy, hair going gray a lot faster these days, looked like she was prepared to set the whole binder on fire with just her raw irritation. Kirk looked like he was prepared to treat everything in there as a vacation destination.
Myles gave them a friendly greeting, being up front about just checking in, not wanting to waste their time. They were both ready to go for tonight, he quickly found out, which was a relief. Dorothy was… well, she was older. Early sixties, Myles knew. And while the Order had found a few purple orbs that did a good job improving her health and comfort of living, she was still not someone who you could just expect to be okay with expeditions on a nightly basis.
Which was a shame, because she had two spells that were both incredibly useful to the reclamation crew. Being able to draw stability out of roads and direct it where she chose was a good way to secure buildings they needed to sweep that were at risk of collapse. And the spell that shaped gasoline and other fuels was sometimes the *only* way they’d ever dare risk sweeping a gas station or anywhere that had a highly flammable spill.
By contrast, Kirk was ready to go basically whenever. Myles had actually had to *stop* him from taking extra runs, and this conversation was just a reminder of how damn eager the kid - well, no, Kirk was older than him, but whatever - was to get out there and see and use magic. He could render a journey “safe”, which sounded like the kind of causality violation that the operations manual warned against. But was a boon for getting back okay, especially after a taxing run in with some of those bone and asphalt claws.
They were both doing okay. Which was good. Myles didn’t bother reminding them of anything; they’d gotten in the routine at this point. He was just being friendly, making them feel welcome. He didn’t overstay his own welcome, though, and moved on.
Bill was trying to get his phone to connect so he could keep up on what Research was doing with the orange totems. Myles could empathize with that, really. You finally find the one thing you love doing, and then you get sent off to somewhere else. And it wasn’t that either of them hated having actual jobs to do, but they were both itching to get back to their real work. Bill *got it*, and knew Myles did too. He let the older man talk about his kid’s school play for a bit, before moving on.
Myriad-Shining-Stars was new here. She looked kind of out of place; most camracondas did when they came here. Myles thought it was because it was the first time they realized just how *big* the world was. Not just one city, but several. Dozens. Hundreds. He made sure she was settling in okay, let her talk as often as he could, and got *just* loud enough in his replies about her interested to drag in one of the other Order members who was lounging around and killing time in the area. He left the two of them to talk about astronomy, and how clear the sky was here, and moved off with a grin.
Make sure everyone was okay. Make sure everyone had what they needed to have, knew what they needed to know. “Leadership”, or something. It was *exhausting*, and if Myles hadn’t just been pretending to be JP, he would have been overwhelmed.
When he found himself with some free time, he took advantage of being in control of the building, and climbed up to the roof. The hotel certainly wasn’t the tallest structure in the world, but it was enough that he could look out over a good chunk of nearby city.
Cold, damp evening air chapped his lips as he surveyed the buildings and streets near them in the blue-gray light of the late afternoon. A trio of vehicles rolled out from the attached parking garage, the second team moving out to scout a little more of the city as the Order continued efforts to secure and clean up the area. In the distance, the cries of animals and birds sounded; the urban area suddenly devoid of humanity being rapidly reclaimed by the coyotes and raccoons.
Were they coyotes? Myles went to look it up on his phone, and then remembered the data limits with a disappointed scowl.
He caught motion on the roof of an office building a mile away. A small black humanoid figure, perched on the edge of an AC unit, twisting back and forth as it stared at the city just like he did, and it seemed that it noticed him just as he noticed it. It was almost a moment of comradery.
Myles pulled his radio off the clip on his belt. “Necroad on the roof, coming up on your right.” He called in to the exploration convoy. “Doesn’t look berserk, but be careful.”
He sighed, letting his breath fog the air around him, pulling his coat over his chilled arms. He couldn’t wait for JP to get back. He just wasn’t made for this city.
