Chương 35: Vision Board

I opened the apartment door to let Jonathan inside. I hesitated when I saw his black eye and a scabbed-over scrape that ran from his cheekbone to behind his ear on that same side. He smiled.

"It's not as bad as it looks. I slipped bringing a keg up from the basement. Hurt like hell, but I'm fine." Wincing, I said, "Yeah, that doesn't look fun." Nathan and Megan had planned to join us for dinner–Beth made some insanely decadent mac & cheese–but Nathan got offered overtime at the airport and couldn't turn it down. In true Beth fashion, she insisted to Megan that she was still welcome, so dinner that night ended up being me, Beth, Jonathan, and Megan.

Hanging out with your best friend's girlfriend might sound strange to some, but after working and hunting together, having Megan around felt ordinary and commonplace. Another fact that might sound strange, based on the reactions I get from telling this story, was that my relationship with Megan developed in a purely platonic direction. No secret crushes. No suppressed physical attraction. Sitting next to her on the couch was no different for me from sitting next to Nathan and Beth.

And when I insist that was the case, some asshole always chimes in with something like "you doth protest too much," so there may be no winning on this front. In a world where dragons made of starlight were a real threat to Earth, a man and a woman being friends was still implausible. Anyway.

"How does 12 dexterity feel?" Megan asked as she dumped hot sauce on her mac & cheese.

"I haven't gotten to try it yet. I'm a bit worried about it, to be honest."

"Why's that?"

"Most of the guides say to get a better bow at 10 dexterity. The speed and repetition are too much for a basic recurve to handle. At best, you only break a string. At worst, you snap one of the limbs completely. I have to be more careful with my speed now."

"Sounds like another advantage to just hitting stuff," Megan joked.

"I can break a sword, but a bow sounds way more fragile." Jonathan leaned forward.

"You have 12 dex now?"

"Yep. I hit level 5."

"Damn! Congratulations. That's so cool."

"Thank you," I replied.

"It feels good to make progress."

"Do you have a new bow picked out?" I laughed.

"If the CDM quartermasters don't loan me an upgrade, I won't get one for a while. Can't afford it." Frowning, Jonathan nodded.

"Yeah, that sucks."

"I'll make it work." Beth looked at Megan.

"You're pretty close to level 6, right?" She smiled.

"Two more D gates, and I'll be there. I can't wait." Jonathan finished chewing and swallowed.

"Are you taking Battle Hardened for your next unlock?"

"Someone knows their shit." He blushed slightly.

"Doesn't everyone read up on unlocks? Hard not to dream." In Jonathan's defense, I had done the same reading. Battle Hardened was one of the most likely options at level 6 for a brawler, and while it wasn't complex or unique, it was useful: Battle-Hardened Class: Brawler Type: Trait Cooldown: None Duration: Perpetual Gain a 10% bonus to damage and to damage resistance. Pretty much every melee class chose Battle Hardened at some point in their build.

The flat buffs to power and durability were too significant to ignore.

"Have you guys looked at the international crawler jobs, by chance?" Jonathan asked a short while later. Megan shook her head.

"Like what?"

"Canada is doing a resettlement program where you get land if you clear gates. South America is promising permanent licenses and lifetime supplies of gate rights for crawlers who relocate there permanently. Taiwan is in the early stages of expanding to the mainland, I hear. Japan is trying to stop them, but they would resettle what used to be Korea and expand from there. They're not promising residency like the other programs, but the pay looks pretty good."

"I hadn't heard that Taiwan was looking to make moves like that," Megan replied.

"Only have to be level 10," Jonathan explained.

"They provide everything else, including your gear. Dorion's talk about needing a better bow brought it to the top of my mind." After thinking a moment, Megan said, "That does sound pretty appealing. Part of me worries it's too good to be true, but that would also be a heck of an adventure."

"Right?"

"Would you do something like that?" Megan asked me.

"I'd be lying if I said it didn't sound appealing. I like Pittsburgh and would prefer to stay here if that's possible, but I might feel differently by the time I get to level 10. For what it's worth, I read that New Zealand was considering doing something similar with Australia."

"No way is level 10 a high enough minimum for that," Jonathan said. Beth looked around the table, confused.

"Why's that?"

"Australia has an above-average number of B and A gates," Jonathan explained.

"I've seen a lot of people call it the most dangerous place on Earth, to the point that most governments consider it a lost cause." I added, "But anyone who found a way to get it under control would have more high-level dungeon resources than any other country. A few members of New Zealand's parliament have said outright that it will make them a global superpower if they succeed."

"Yeah, I'll pass on that one," Megan said, chuckling. I nodded that I agreed.

"If you decide to go CDM," Megan said to Jonathan, "let us know. We don't pull a lot of weight, but if we can help you get in, would be happy to." I also nodded my agreement to that.

"Thank you," Jonathan replied.

"I might take you up on that."

"Heard you sniffed out a few million dollars' worth of blight slimes," Enforcer McDouglas said as we pulled out of the CDM parking garage. His polo shirt was a plain white. This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. This was the first time I had been paired with him since Chapman booted me off of the crasher investigation. I was worried I might not get to shadow him again. Grensmith wasn't as bad as everyone said, but I still preferred- Wait.

"Did you say a few million dollars?" I asked.

"Yep. Harvesting those things is hard as hell to do, and you can sell it by the milliliter. I've never heard of any harvest, legit or otherwise, that even came close to one hundred forty-three gallons. Most I've seen on a report is eleven."

"Really?"

"Congratulations on setting a CDM record," McDouglas said with a grin.

"You'll hang on to that one for a while, I bet."

"It's worth that much?"

"Did you hear about Typhoid Mary? Not the original. The serial killer in Northern California."

"Yeah. She poisoned a bunch of people over the course of, like, six years."

"Few drops of blight slime was all it took."

"That's the poison she used? For real?" McDouglas nodded.

"That didn't get published to avoid copycats, but yeah, she got her hands on a little bit of blight slime and stretched it pretty damn far."

"Wow."

"Like I said, that was a good score."

"It was just luck, really." He shrugged.

"That's all it ever is. Doesn't change that you caught it."

"Yes, sir."

"I'm surprised you haven't asked me about the crasher case," he added, almost nonchalantly.

"I figured it was confidential, and I'm not on the project anymore, so…"

"Right answer." Geez. That was a test too? McDouglas' phone rang.

"We can take it. Is it close? Okay. Sounds good." He pulled off to the side of the road and punched an address into the GPS.

"Grab the light. It's behind my seat." I had never been on a call where we got to use the emergency lights. I handed the single red light to McDouglas. He flipped a switch on the bottom, starting the light, and reached out the window to slap it on the roof.

"A D gate in Brighton Heights was double-booked," he explained, yanking the wheel and pressing on the gas. My whole body snapped against the seatbelt from the lurch.

"We're ten minutes out, so listen closely. Get your kit on now, and when we arrive, I want you behind the car with your phone on the roof and your bow nocked and ready. Do not follow me to the crawlers. Do not fire unless I say so or something happens that takes me out of the picture." I swallowed.

"Nine times out of ten, the heat dies down as soon as we show up," McDouglas assured me.

"But this gate is half a block away from an elementary school. I know both party captains involved. They're assholes. So between that and the school, we aren't taking chances."

"Indies?" I asked as I grabbed my kit from the back seat and dressed right there in the car.

"One indie party, one Homestead Strikers. All level 9s and 10s, by the way. Law enforcement is on the scene already, and more CDM is on the way. We should have backup a few minutes after we arrive, if we're lucky.

""Understood." This D gate was an entrance to an old mineshaft, the kind you might see in an old western, and was in the corner of an undeveloped, partially wooded lot. On that side of the street, residential homes stood on both sides. The other side of the street was a steep hill, but homes were up there too. Even if they were out of sight, they were in danger if spells started to fly. We jumped the curb and slid to a stop in the grass next to two cop cars.

Four police officers stood between two parties of crawlers, six members in each. The crawlers shouted over the police, and other than the odd insult or curse word that floated out, there were too many voices shouting at once to understand what any one of them was saying.

"You have your orders," McDouglas said to me as he jumped out of the SUV. He opened the back door and grabbed a sheathed sword. He slung it over his back as he marched toward the crawlers. I took up position behind the SUV as I was ordered. I had an arrow nocked, but the idea of using it on a human filled me with dread. McDouglas tried a few times to talk over the chaos. When that failed, he yelled, "Shut the fuck up if you don't want to die."

Most of the crawlers went silent, but one from each party turned their shouting on McDouglas.

"I said, shut the fuck up!" McDouglas turned and pointed at me.

"My guy there is a level 15 dex archer, so shut your damn mouths and calm down, or he'll put an arrow through your faces." Everyone who wasn't McDouglas looked at me with grave concern, including the cops.

"That's better. Neither of you was in the wrong until you started threatening to blow up the neighborhood. There was an error in our system, and this gate was sold twice. That's what this was. A simple computer glitch."

"My people took off work for this run," one captain with a shield and a warhammer said.

"That's a whole day's wages they're losing. If we can't run this gate, we've got bills we won't be able to pay." I guessed that to be the indie captain. The wear of his party's equipment suggested as much already, but that confirmed it.

"We've all got quotas to fill," the other captain barked.

"We're career crawlers, not weekend warriors. This is the only job we have."

"Weekend warriors?" the first captain hissed at the other.

"Fuck you, motherfucker."

"Hey!" McDouglas yelled to recover control of the situation.

"Here are the options: One, I book all of you and put your licenses up for review. Two, one group gets their money back and a twenty-five percent credit toward their next D gate. The other group closes the gate." Looking over his shoulder at me with a smirk, McDouglas added, "Option three is the arrow thing I promised you earlier." When the party captain from the Homestead Strikers went to argue, McDouglas raised a finger.

"Let me remind you that the Strikers have several altercations on their record for this year already. Do you want to be the party that puts your guild under CDM review?"

"Fine," the Strikers captain said with venom.

"We're leaving." No other members of his party protested, but their expressions made it clear that they disagreed with their captain's call. A few minutes later, they were all in their vehicles and began pulling away from the gate. To the indies, McDouglas said, "If you don't want me to write this up, drop it now and go run your gate." With a scowl, the indies doublechecked their gear and entered the gate.

"Really glad you got here when you did," one of the younger police officers said.

"That was getting ugly, fast."

"I'm sorry an error on our side put you in that position," McDouglas replied.

"It's been a while since I've seen a double-sold gate. I'm putting a priority on tracking down the cause for this mistake." The same cop shrugged.

"If your system is anything like ours, it's ten years out of date and was a piece of shit even then." McDouglas laughed.

"That sounds right. You know, it's a small apology for what you went through, but can I buy you guys a beer?"

"We wish. Shift's not over for another seven." He motioned to the police officers for them to follow. All four officers followed McDouglas as he walked toward me and the SUV. Patting me on the shoulder as he passed, McDouglas opened the hatch.

"Each of you can grab a case if you want," McDouglas said.

"You CDM guys drink a lot when you're working?" the same young cop from before joked.

"Nah. I'm having some people over tonight and saw a deal I couldn't pass up. Seriously, take a case of whatever you like. It's the least I can do to say thank you for keeping your cools back there." That was all the encouragement they needed. Four cases of beer and several handshakes later, McDouglas and I were back in the SUV. While he called off the backup, I began the incident report. McDouglas put down the phone and rubbed his face.

"So stupid. Good work, though."

"I didn't really do anything."

"They saw how you held your bow. They knew I wasn't bullshitting about you being an archer." Chuckling, I said, "Yeah, but not a level 15 archer."

"They weren't going to put that claim to the test. All of those crawlers have done enough runs to have a healthy respect for archers. Seeing if I was lying or not would never be worth it."

"For archers? Really?"

"Oh yeah," McDouglas replied.

"Once you see a decently leveled archer in action, just thinking about them aiming at you instead of a monster gets buttholes to pucker. Out in the open like that against an archer whose dex is probably way higher than theirs? Nope. That's a dumb fight to pick if you're a typical martial class."

"What if they recognize me later and figure out it was a bluff?" McDouglas gestured for me to hand him the tablet. I passed it over. He started to tap the screen.

"First of all, you were wearing a helmet. They don't know what you look like. Second of all, I'm wiping your name from the report." Handing the tablet back to me, he added, "Let's get back to our actual assignments. This puts us way behind for the day."