Chương 102: CDM 2, Chapter 38: Factory Visit

The Banning #2 Mine video neared 2 million views the next morning. Drinking so much and sleeping at Megan and Beth's was a mistake because I had to get up even earlier than usual. My poor choices added a hungover commute to my apartment to get ready for work that morning. When I first learned that goblins were the least active at sunrise, I thought that was another example of why goblins were stupid. If your existence was a cruel and greedy fight for survival, why would you ever let the nest drop its guard?

Yet, every time I had to get up at the same hour, I often thought I'd be okay if someone murdered me just then if it meant not having to be awake yet. So, I am no more intelligent or competent than a goblin, and I realized that fact as I squinted because that trip to my apartment meant driving directly into the rising sun. This had to be the first morning in months where the sun actually came out. Every day until that one had been dark, eye-friendly gray.

We don't need to get into how a few minutes of forethought could have solved any aspect of this morning problem that was entirely self-made, nor do we need to point out that I forgot about the visor that could fold down to spare my eyes. Let me complain. The discourse around the new video was as varied as any other comment section. Some people believed it was staged. Some people loved it. Some people hated us personally. Some people told us explicitly about their physical desires.

Some people insisted that we were the ugliest, least attractive women on the planet. A few people pointed out that flooding a combination abandoned mine and goblin nest was unwise. Old mines were filled with undesirable chemicals, and a concentrated amount of anything's sewage was nasty. These commenters argued that our tactic was incredibly bad for the environment, perhaps more so than a goblin nest by itself. And, yikes. They actually had a point.

I hadn't considered the ramifications of redirecting a little bit of river water like we did. Mine runoff was a well-known problem, and rainwater leaking into an abandoned mine system–and then leaking out–was the exact mechanism we enabled, except we introduced far more water than any rainfall would. We needed to be more mindful of risks like that. Our safety and the financial costs of the hunt shouldn't be my only considerations.

When I got to my desk, I had an email from Investigator Dempson:"Reached out to a buddy of mine who works in processing. He's got three dragon toads on the schedule for today and is willing to talk to you. See what he thinks of your suspicious monster corpses theory. His information is attached." Enforcer Cortez was 20 minutes late to his morning shift.

"Sorry about that, brother," he said.

"Ready to watch more home videos?"

"We're taking a field trip, actually."

"And me without my permission slip signed." As we pulled out of the garage with Boski & Sons Processing in our GPS, Cortez began the conversation I expected to have the instant he saw me.

"Did you watch the Dungeon Divas special last night?"

"Mmhmm."

"I like that they're adding more hot chicks. I'd be good with more regular swimsuit content." One of those hot chicks was my sister. Cortez didn't slow.

"Where do they get these ideas? Water pumps on railcars? Like, what?"

"So, you liked it?" Cortez laughed.

"When she grabbed that hose out of the tunnel, I said, 'oh shit' out loud. I don't care if they staged that somehow. That was fucking cool."

"I thought so too." Boski & Sons was on the outskirts of the city. With their day-to-day work of processing dungeon monsters, they needed a lot of space, and delivery drivers greatly appreciated not having to thread an over-sized load through downtown Pittsburgh. The main processing building reminded me of an airport hanger. Megan and I went hunting at an old airport a few months back, so that frame of reference was relatively fresh in my mind.

This hangar was refrigerated and was outfitted to make butchering giant monster corpses as safe and as efficient as possible. When Cortez and I told the front office we were CDM, we were escorted into the processing room and left in the corner while the front desk guy went looking for Dempson's buddy. A fire salamander, this one a little smaller than a tractor trailer, was splayed out on the floor. Chains stretched its legs away from the body to make more of the monster accessible to a team of men with chainsaws.

Wrapped in bodysuits not unlike what we wore when we collected the pieces for a crawler recovery, a few worked from the ground, but several were in harnesses, walking along the back of the creature or cutting into its side, suspended in the air like rock climbers. Backhoe-looking machines were parked at one end of the building. Interchangeable attachments sat nearby, like the largest chainsaws I had ever seen in my life, big-bore drills, grabbing claws, and crane hooks.

Everything I knew about this part of the business came from a single episode of Dirty Jobs, but video didn't do the scale of the operation justice. The show also didn't fully convey the intensity of the smell. Though these buildings were cleaned regularly to avoid contaminating a fresh monster, the sheer volume of blood and viscera soaked into every corner of the work area couldn't be completely eliminated. It was like sticking my head inside of a bloated roadkill deer and taking a big sniff.

"Enforcer Gray, Enforcer Cortez?" A scruffy man with goggles on top of his head asked. If his beard weren't gray, I would have guessed he was in his 30s.

"I'm Jim. Don't worry about suiting up. The cutters are due for a break. Got a dragon toad for you this way." Stolen novel; please report. We followed Jim across the building on an elevated gangway. A curtain of plastic divided the hangar, and a dead dragon toad sat on the other side. Its back legs had already been removed and processed. When the legs were attached, a dragon toad looked fairly close to any generic Earth toad.

They were massive and had more spikes than bumps but were still basically the same, aesthetically. Jim walked us down the stairs to the processing floor, and we stopped in front of the monster's head. It felt like standing behind a garbage truck with its back door closed.

"Dempson said you had questions about dragon toads. How can I help?"

"One of our enforcers thought it was weird to see a dead dragon toad with its mouth tied shut. Do you agree with that?" Jim nodded.

"Yep. Sometimes they die with their mouths open, but that's not typical. You familiar with how these hunt?" Cortez and I both shook our heads. He pointed up at the corner of the toad's mouth.

"Their jaws lock shut. The bone literally locks in place. See, its mouth is always under tension to open. A dragon breathes fire, but a dragon toad is more like a burp. Their mouth snapping open compresses their lungs like bellows to push the breath. When they scoop up a meal, the jaw locks in place. They cook whatever they eat in their mouths before they swallow, and their prey can be pretty strong. We think that jaw lock makes it easier to keep food trapped."

"Why would it be rare for their mouths to be open when they die?"

"They barely open them. The gas they use for their burp builds up in their mouth, and it can't build up if the lid is always off, you know?"

"That makes sense," I said. Jim whistled at one of his workers.

"Grab me the spreader, will ya?" Turning back to us, he continued.

"Getting their mouths open is a one-way street. Saved that part for you." Two men approached. One carried a sledgehammer, and the other carried a device that reminded me of a pallet jack, a simple two-pronged tool that made it easier to move full pallets around a warehouse by hand. Instead of just two prongs, this one had four. Two on top and two on the bottom.

The man with the jack lined it up with the toad's mouth, and the second hit the back of the prongs with a sledgehammer to force them between the monster's lips.

"We need to step back for this part," Jim advised, guiding us to a wall about 20 yards away. When the prongs were set, the two men joined us.

"Watch this," Jim said as one of the men operated a dial on a remote control. The spreader groaned as it strained against the strength of the toad, but after about 30 seconds of ever-increasing pressure, the mouth snapped open with the violence of a mousetrap going off. The jack clattered across the floor, expelled by the sudden force. When the toad settled, the mouth was wide open like the lid on a toilet seat. Jim walked us back to the toad.

"I don't know anyone who can pop a d-toad without breaking the jaw. That little locking mechanism I told you about? We don't have a way to mimic the muscles the monster uses, so we force it. Shatters the bone."

"So now you can't close it again," I guessed.

"You got it."

"Are there any practical reasons why someone would break the jaw on site?" Jim shook his head.

"We prefer them to come in closed. We can extract some of the gas they use that way. If the mouth is open, most of it seeps out before we get to it."

"If the toad died with its jaw open in the dungeon, would harvesters tie it shut to prevent that?"

"I mean, you could," Jim answered.

"I've never had one come in like that, though."

"Can you think of any other reason why someone would tie the mouth shut?"

"Depending on the transport, you wouldn't want that big windtrap open, so maybe you strap it shut then. I've not seen that done, though." I nodded, thinking.

"Making sure I'm clear on my understanding, but I'm hearing it's pretty damn strange to see their mouths tied shut on a harvest site?"

"Pretty damn strange, indeed." I shook Jim's hand, and Cortez followed suit.

"Appreciate your help. Thank you."

"Tell Dempson he needs to start paying out on these beers he owes me," Jim said with a grin that had a touch of seriousness to it. Before we left the facility, I emailed Dempson what we learned and CCed Enforcer Chapman. The short of it: If anyone sees a dragon toad with a mouth tied shut, we should probably check it out.

"I fucking knew it," Cortez exploded. He tossed his phone on the dash.

"What's wrong?"

"You gotten called for a gate since you've been back?" I shook my head.

"This guy I interned with back home ended up in logistics. That's the department that manages gate assignments. He says that not only are we competing against doomers for gates, but the system deprioritizes you more the higher your level gets." Cortez was at level 9. I was at level 10.

"That's so fucked up, man," Cortez groaned.

"Only way around it is to start leading the culls."

"You're not interested in that?"

"Have you looked into it?"

"I haven't," I admitted.

"There's a cap on how many leaders they can have at any time. You have to wait until one bows out for good or get lucky as an alternate. When a spot does open up, getting it is purely politics." I agreed with Cortez. That sucked.

"Please don't tell anyone this," Cortez began, "but I'm taking a New Eden contract. I interviewed with a crawler security company a few days back, and this bullshit just cinched it. I'm going to sign it."

"I'll miss working with you."

"Same, brother. The recruiter pumped me pretty hard for referrals. I got the sense that if I sent them someone competent, they were pretty much guaranteed to get the gig."

"Thanks, but I'm good for now."

"Don't hang on too long," Cortez warned.

"You've seen the lifers around the office. You don't want to become one of those." My phone buzzed. I had a text from Megan.

"I thought you should know we got a big contract offer today. $15, 000 a piece for the Divas to get into the adult video business." I considered that possibility seriously for longer than I should ever admit.

"That's funny," I texted back.

"Nathan is mad I turned them down. He says I don't get to decide what Kimmy does with her body."

"This Dungeon Diva stuff is going to keep getting weirder, huh?"

"For sure. I can't wait."