Chương 127: CDM 3, Chapter 3: Secret Shopper

Enforcer de Saint and I were 20 minutes out from our next harvest inspection. I sat in the passenger seat, watching scenes from a Pennsylvania winter roll by as we left the interstate for backroads.

"I'm sorry that you have to do a Mill Rats site on your first day back," she said.

"That really sucks."

"There's no avoiding it as long as I'm in Pittsburgh."

"I know, but I still feel bad. Do you want to wait in the car while I do the inspection? I don't mind doing it alone."

"No way," I answered.

"I'm not sitting here while you do my work for me. That's very kind of you to offer, but no. I'll manage."

"If you're sure." We pulled off the side of the road and walked across a cornfield to a C-ranked harvest operation. This gate was near its expiration, so our inspection focused more on clean-up procedures than harvesting practices themselves. Any garbage left behind was an infraction. Any major damages to the property that weren't self-reported by the harvesters were infractions. Equipment and material still on-site 24 hours after a gate closed would be an infraction.

Like every other code or rule we enforced, these sorts of policies came about because harvesters used to do the opposite. In the early days, dumping bad diesel into the grass or abandoning makeshift latrines was common practice. Prior to satellite gate detection, crawling outfits knew how much they were needed and sometimes acted like protection rackets. They got away with a lot in those early days.

Modern harvest operations were more efficient on all fronts, including waste management, so we rarely cited someone for blatant teardown violations. I'm not saying they didn't happen or that harvest operations were clean, just that they were more put together than the operations of yesteryear. A few sites got busted for major waste violations from time to time, but those were usually coupled with more elaborate cover-ups. Dumping in the river right next to a gate was an amateur move.

Now, they would drive it across town before they dumped it, some place without drones or nosey inspectors. That amount of coordination was a team effort, and that made cases complicated. This Mill Rats site was pretty ordinary. When de Saint and I were on our way out, the crawl team assigned to close the gate was on their way in. Brennan Kielar was in the party, and he looked at me like his great uncle's death was my fault. The two crawlers closest to him joined with their own glares.

Theirs came with an unspoken invitation to fight, if I was man enough to test them. I felt myself reach for my bow, just in case. When I remembered I was doing an inspection, not running a gate, I became hyperaware of how quickly 6 adventurers could overwhelm me.

"What was that?" de Saint asked when we were inside the car.

"What was what?"

"With the crawlers. Why did they want to hurt you?"

"The mage was Brennan Kielar. He's why I was arrested."

"Oh."

"Yeppp." She sighed.

"Sorry, Gray."

"It's fine. Who doesn't have a bad customer service story or two?" De Saint laughed.

"That's one way of looking at it. Do you worry about your safety at all?"

"Sometimes," I admitted.

"I'm sorry. That was a rude thing to ask."

"Can I get back at you by asking you a personal question?" De Saint chuckled.

"Sure."

"Are you happy your parents kept your class hidden?"

"Geez, Gray."

"You just asked about my time in prison. That was pretty personal."

"Your 'time in prison,'" de Saint drolled.

"Alright, alright. You're not the first person to ask me that. My parents sheltered me in a lot of ways, and keeping my mage class a secret was just one of them. I don't know how to feel about any of it most of the time."

"What do you mean?"

"I like who I am. I wasn't happy about no movies over PG and no dating until I was 18, but I don't know. I'm here. I don't hate my life."

"That's a very mature and mindful perspective," I said.

"We don't need to go that far," de Saint said.

"I think a lot about what life would be like if I got a mage scholarship when I was a kid, but I don't know… I can imagine it, but it's like imagining if the sky turned into tuna fish. Just because I can picture it doesn't mean I'm going to base decisions on it."

"Uhh…" I thought I'd come up with a response any second. I didn't.

"What? You know that makes sense. There's nothing I could do now to get me to that imaginary life. If I have to pick between two paths in front of me, yes, I imagine what life could be like in either direction. I have the power to make one of those futures true."

"No alternate timelines." De Saint pointed to the ceiling of the car.

"Yes! That's exactly what I mean. No alternate timelines."

"How- Jesus. Fuck."

"You okay over there?"

"That just makes so much sense," I said.

"Putting it that way made something click, and I'm not even sure what."

"You're welcome. I take most major health insurance plans."

"Who would have thought an old ass building with no insulation would be so fucking cold?" Nathan said, repositioning the space heater to aim directly at his feet.

"Do you wish we stayed in the apartment?"

"Fuck no, dude. Lil' Dorion loves all the room to run around." I laughed.

"It's not so bad," he added. Megan and Beth stepped through the door and stomped snow off of their boots. A few paces into the apartment, Megan said, "Nope. This is not 'a little drafty.' This is basically outside. We're going down the street."

"Betholemeau, do you agree?" Nathan called, leaning to look past Megan.

"With Megan? Yeah. You two are nuts."

"Be brave, boys," Megan continued.

"We can get used to a new bar." My general anxiety of new places and social situations made a joint proposal to the rest of my brain that this chapter in my life was over. Bars were in my past, for good. With that decided, I had no reason to try a new bar and one fewer reason to leave my house in general. Yet I ended up in a jacket, walking down the sidewalk in the snow. This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work. We had two bars near the guild house.

The first had the kind of hole-in-the-wall charm we were looking for, but their food was shit, and the bartender straight up asked us if we wanted to buy cocaine, as if it were a typical menu option. The next closest bar was around the corner. In addition to being a slightly longer walk, the return trip was uphill. We all agreed that was problematic, but we had no choice. The High Bar Pub–that was really its name–was like a saloon and a lodge cross-pollinated.

Then they hit a rebellious phase and painted everything black. Now older and wiser, the black paint was worn off the edges of the bar, and the path between the door and the bathroom was like a game trail where the original flooring showed through. Two pool tables were at the very back, as was a jukebox that used actual CDs. It was broken, though. We arrived early enough that Beth didn't need to be 21 to get in. These were still restaurant hours.

Beth once asked me to explain why she could legally bartend at 18 if no one under 21 was allowed inside, whether they were drinking or not. I told her it had something to do with puritans and down-home family values, but I didn't really know. I considered my new surroundings.

"I don't hate it yet," I said.

"Has a solid local feel." Nathan stroked his chin.

"Yes, the patina is promising."

"How was Frank today?" I asked Beth as we all sat at a table.

"Cranky," she replied.

"The FBI spent like 3 hours asking him a ton of voidwood questions. The mechanics of the material, who he knew who had access to voidwood, who he knew who owned voidwood bows, and on and on." Nathan raised an eyebrow.

"They let you listen to all of that?" Beth shrugged.

"They stood at the counter and talked like friends."

"I know that voidbows are rare," Nathan said, "but it can't be that hard to get one under the table." I bit into an appropriately crispy French fry, a very good sign for a potential home bar.

"I don't think they will catch whoever it was because of the type of bow they used."

"The type of bow is the only evidence they have to go on," Nathan countered.

"It doesn't make sense, though. When crawlers kill someone, they stick to the most basic spells and abilities because higher-level unlocks can reveal who they are. That's crime podcast 101 stuff."

"Right."

"A voidbow with a Fire 3 enchantment is the opposite of basic. Someone who has access to that kind of bow and who can make that shot would know how unique all of those variables are."

"Maybe they wanted to be sure the shot did the job," Megan suggested.

"What's your theory?" Beth asked me. I shrugged.

"I'm only saying it feels off. It's the kind of evidence that feels left behind intentionally."

"If you're right, then the ruse definitely worked," Nathan offered.

"Does Frank have a take on this?"

"His opinion is that the enchantment is rarer than the bow material," Beth answered.

"He says maybe 4 people in the world can do Fire 3 enchantments. The tricky thing is that a market exists for off-the-books enchantments, so there could be someone capable that has never revealed it." Nathan tilted his head.

"Wouldn't you make more money advertising that level of enchantment to the public?"

"You'd think so, but I don't really know. I'm just repeating what Frank said."

"Has he said anything about the shot itself?" I asked. Beth nodded her head and did her best raspy Frank impression.

"'I don't know why everyone is so impressed that an archer hit something.'" We all laughed. Megan set her glass down.

"Alright, Dor, if they put you on the case, what would you do?"

"Take a dive and never solve it."

"If the victim was someone else then," Megan said. I thought.

"Come at it from the angle of motive. There's probably a specific profile for someone who chooses a public assassination. Kielar had handlers and such, but it's not like he was the president. If they wanted the murder to be sneaky, they could have done it that way."

"If they were making a statement by doing it at a memorial, what was the statement?" Nathan asked.

"No idea," I said. Beth spoke for the first time in a minute, and that made me realize this Kielar banter was incredibly insensitive. She said, "Must be dozens of people who would have killed him if they had the chance." Nathan made a timeout gesture.

"Let's reset. We got real fucking serious there. New topic: Rainy showed me and Dor a prototype of the crowdsourced bestiary idea."

"She's crazy smart, right?" Megan asked.

"It's so weird she ended up at the CDM instead of on a research team or in some kind of tech field."

"She's gun-shy about collabing on the bestiary because she's been burned before," Nathan said.

"I get it but don't know how to convince her this would be different." Beth wrinkled her face.

"Burned how?"

"The Group Project Law. She ends up doing all the work, and half the people just stop showing up but want the grade anyway."

"Hard not to think she would feel better if she knew about the Divas," I mused.

"You're ready to bring her into the circle like that?" Nathan asked.

"Man, I'm so scared of this suddenly falling apart because we messed with the formula," I said.

"I don't want to change or risk anything. I was only saying that it sucks having that credibility but not being able to use it."

"We said we'd ask Nad-Nade for budget if we had a cool idea," Nathan pointed out. Everyone laughed but Beth. She was deep in her thoughts.

"The next time you meet with Rainy, can I come?"

"Why? What are you thinking?"

"I'm emailing and DMing every brand I can to pitch sponsorships," Beth explained.

"I can only do so many of those a day, and I want to learn more about marketing. I don't know if I'll be any good at it, but I'd like to try and promote the tool. Maybe get sponsors involved."

"With all of your free time?" Megan teased. Beth didn't bartend anymore, but she still spent 9 to 10 hours a day in the shop with Frank and then used her evenings to work on the Dungeon Divas brand. The three sponsors we had were her doing, and she was on the hunt for more. Megan might have asked the question playfully, but it had truth in it. Beth really didn't have time to spare.

"I like being busy," Beth answered. Nathan turned his attention to me. I leaned back.

"Don't look this way, man. It's Beth's call. Not mine."

"I'll be fine," Beth said.

"I will gladly take your help," Nathan replied, raising his glass.

"Anyone up for a game of pool?" Megan jumped out of her seat.

"Pretty eager to lose, I see." She poked Nathan in the ribs, prodding him toward the pool tables with a competitive grin on her face. They exchanged trash talk all the way to the back of the bar, and I suspected it wouldn't stop until they were done playing.

"Mom and dad fly out for New Eden soon," Beth said when it was just the two of us.

"I've been thinking about that too." What I didn't tell Beth was that I thought about our old dog Thunder. When we last visited, our dad made sure to say that Thunder would be put down before they left, so every day closer to February 1, the day my parents planned to leave, made that reality all the more certain. She could be dead already, and I hated myself for not being there.

"When does the guilt I have about leaving them go away?" Beth asked.

"Around year 4 of being on my own, I turned a corner where they felt so far away in time that they couldn't reach me. Like they were finally behind me."

"And then I showed up."

"That's not what I'm saying," I assured her.

"Time does help. It doesn't fix or resolve anything, but for me, the volume on a lot of things that tore me up went down."

"It's like there are two of me in my head. One me knows that I stood up for myself and got out of a bad situation. The other me knows I'm a disgusting sinner, like I can feel the flames of hell already and anything bad that happens to me is a sign from God."

"Leviticus 19: 26. Do not interpret omens."

"What?"

"You said bad things feel like a sign from God," I explained.

"A 'sign' is a more modern word for 'omen.' If God tells us not to interpret omens, it would be silly if he tried to go and communicate through them. Don't read the mail, but also I'm going to talk to you exclusively by mail. Doesn't make sense."

"I kind of hate that I feel better hearing that."

"I hope it's different for you, but the church conditioning hasn't gone away for me. I've tried to rip it all out, but nope. I'm afraid of hell right now, right here. Sometimes the only way to quiet that down is to play along with my doomer brain and look at reality with Bible rules. Placating the doomer brain, so to speak."

"Like a vegetable plane," Beth said.

"I don't know what that means."

"Sometimes feeding a child means entering their world, working with their brains rather than against them. You know that kid needs to eat vegetables, so you give the baby brain what it wants."

"And in go the vegetables."

"Yeah." Sighing, I said, "Now I'm going to picture feeding myself with airplane noises every time I have to feed my doomer brain."

"Rrreeeerreaarrr. The Leviticus airplane is requesting clearance to land. Whooooosh rreearerrre." She committed fully to her airplane noises, and I respected that.

"Maybe that's why I struggle with interacting with kids. Babysitting myself is far too demanding for me to have patience for anyone else's child."

"Britney Mason was due for her first before I left," Beth mused.

"She could be on number two already. I can't imagine that. I'm still a child." I shivered.

"Right?" Beth added.

"Or maybe I'm jealous that she's so sure what she wants from her life, and I don't have any idea."

"Shit. You got me there."