Chương 60: Audition

Simple, benign questions mutated into burdens the more I had to lie to people I loved.

"Work going okay?" Nathan would ask.

"Anything interesting in all those trainings?" Megan would inquire.

"Has there been anything new at the office?" Beth would probe. This part of the job felt like it would be tiring for any person who wasn't a born sociopath, yet there was never a mention of that challenge on the CDM side. Maybe if I had gotten the traditional preparation for undercover work, I might have learned how to compartmentalize my life and navigate the torrid waters of mental anguish, but that topic never came up. Very little of anything came up, actually.

After having tea with Larry_High_Gax, I went right back to watching the clock in a local library, doing my best to stay busy with reading. Enforcer McDouglas didn't give me any other updates or direction. Though he did insist this was how these things went, I liked context. I liked knowing what orbited important things because they helped me to better understand what was happening and why.

For example, if the context was stripped away from Rick Young's campaign to build a new nation in South America, the actions taken by the leaders of the United States would make little sense. A crawler showed up on the doorstep of the White House and asked for all the funding, resources, and support necessary to establish a new country, to build it from nothing, and within days, all of that was in motion.

Reddit was filled with people complaining about how slow government moved to address any other problem–like healthcare for veterans, updating infrastructure, or repairing that one damn pothole that had been ripping up neighborhood cars for six years running–yet Rick Young got what he wanted right away. With context, you could understand why the government was motivated. As soon as government support was announced for Rick Young's promised land, which the news had taken to calling "New Eden," tensions lowered.

Crawlers and doomers were still clashing all around the country, and the vitriol between the groups was still strong, but it wasn't growing anymore. Overall, the conflict lessened, and in a few places, the conflict receded rapidly. In short, if the church communities in an area unanimously pledged their support for New Eden, the back and forth between crawlers and doomers stopped. With their attention on preparations to leave the continent, doomers had little reason to continue occupying dungeon gates.

At that point, however, only about a third of American church communities were fully in support of Rick Young's vision, so don't get the wrong idea. This giant national conflict didn't end overnight and still had a lot to resolve, but seeing positive progress of any kind gave everyone involved a little more hope. Nico's phone buzzed a few days after I met Larry at Denny's. All it had was an address and a time: 11 p. m. in the parking lot of a shuttered convenience store on the north side of the city.

That was just a meeting place. Gate crashers couldn't schedule a crawl ahead of time the way licensed guilds and teams did. Their best chance at getting in and out without getting caught was to hit a gate as soon after its appearance as possible. Ideally, within an hour or less. Professional crawlers rarely mobilized so quickly because they didn't need to, but the longer a gate sat, the riskier it was to crash.

Therefore, most crashers picked a spot to camp, watched for good gate opportunities, and then sped off to hit a good target. A group of serious crashers could hit three or four gates in a night if luck was on their side, but it was also possible they wouldn't hit any before the sun rose. Sometimes the gate ranks and placement just didn't line up right. Prior to meeting up with Larry, I joined McDouglas in the surveillance van again.

"The camera is built into your helmet and is always on. You don't need to do anything about activating or monitoring it, but finding an excuse to wipe it off from time to time is a good idea because blood on the lens is a real possibility. When you do that, don't just wipe off the spot with the camera. That makes it obvious." McDouglas handed me the helmet and pointed at a clip mounted on the side.

It looked like the same clip I would use to attach my GoPro to my personal helmet, but there was no camera in this case, obviously. Instead, the camera was hidden inside of that clip, which I thought was pretty clever.

"When you're inside of a gate, you're a crawler first and CDM second," McDouglas continued.

"Sometimes people change how they crawl because they're on a case, and that puts everything, including yourself, at unnecessary risk. You've run gates before, so focus on doing that. We don't need anyone to confess to anything, so don't worry about steering conversation either. Prove you're a legit crasher. That's it." I nodded.

"We will see what you see up until you enter the gate. From there, the camera records to local storage until a signal is available again. If something goes wrong in the gate, we have no way of knowing, so again, be a smart crawler over anything else. We won't come in after you unless the team that actually owns the gate rights shows up and heads in behind you."

"Understood."

"When you get the gate address, check the location from satellite like any real crasher would. We'll see what you enter and follow you there. If the gate is purchased quickly, we'll send a push notification from a food delivery app to let you know. If that notification mentions a 'last chance' deal, that means Mill Rats specifically bought it."

"What if-""You won't get any stray notifications," he answered before I finished my question.

"If it pops up on Nico's phone, it's from us. No question."

"And if I'm in trouble, say 'Memphis.'""Right. Remember that there's no signal once you're in the gate, though."

"Got it." McDouglas offered me a handshake.

"Good luck, crawler." If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. Larry_High_Gax was parked in the lot when I arrived. When I got out of my car, he said, "Two more will be here soon. Hoping we have a good night."

"Me too."

"Do you know how this works?" I nodded.

"Good. Once they're here, gear up, and we'll start fishing."

"Fishing" was the word crashers used for finding and picking gates. Like I said a long while back, only licensed crawlers could access the portal for bidding on gates, but it was an open secret that crawlers leaked that data regularly. The number of licensed crawlers in the country made it impractical to enforce the non-disclosure clause. The best the CDM could do was ask nicely that crawlers not leak information.

Those leaks made crashing possible, but they were also inconsistent since leakers had to share them manually. A gate could potentially sit for an hour or more before someone pushed the information to the public, making fishing an even more unpredictable process. If leaks were slow that night, crashing would be too. A second minivan with honor roll and local sports stickers on the back window pulled into the lot.

A short, round woman got out of the driver's seat, and a younger, lanky man got out of the passenger seat.

"Fap, meet Bonnie and WarriorsHonor," Larry said.

"We call him 'War' for short. They're both fighters. Guys, meet Fap. He's the archer audition I told you about." Bonnie and War both shook my hand.

"Alright," Larry said.

"Gear up." We stood around Larry's minivan in our kits while he sat inside with the passenger door open. I couldn't see the screen on his laptop, but I knew he was refreshing whatever sources he relied on for gate information. A D-ranked gate popped up that sounded promising, but when we looked up the location, the area was too high-traffic. Another hour and two more dud leads later, Larry smiled. As he read the gate address aloud, we each punched it into our GPS apps.

This gate was in a small wooded area surrounded by homes. That would have usually given me pause, but this location was on the outskirts of the city, so many of those houses were likely to be unoccupied. The ones that were occupied had residents who believed in minding their own business. The gate was relatively near one of the streets, making it easy to guess where crawlers would park for convenient access.

We could park on the other side of the wooded area to hide our vehicles and make the short walk through the trees to the gate.

"How long has this gate been up?" I asked. Larry looked at the time on his phone.

"Six minutes."

"Huh? You got a leak that quick?" Grinning, Larry shook his head.

"That's proprietary."

"Well, shit. I've never gotten a leak that fast. Ever." Addressing the group, Larry said, "I think we park on Poplar Street and hit the gate from there. Anyone disagree?" No one did.

"Let's get it." I followed the others in Nico's car through nine minutes of aggressive driving and fast turns. At this time of night in this part of the city, we were the only traffic around. Still, struggling to keep up with minivans was a little weird for me. We pulled off the side of the road and ran from our cars into the woods. On the way, I glanced at my phone. No push notifications. This gate was a cave-ish entrance with leather nailed to scrap wood as a door. Larry tossed it aside and went right in.

The rest of us went in behind him without hesitation. In the few seconds it took me to get inside, Larry had run down the lone cavern corridor. I could see his light and the rough outline of his silhouette. He started to yell and bang his sword off of his shield. The air around him shimmered briefly, which I assumed was his Taunt ability activating. That was a smart strategy for a crasher, I thought. Bringing monsters to us cut down on travel time. When we caught up, he started running again.

"Goblins," he said. I could hear them too. Larry set his stance. Bonnie and War joined him. A batch of eleven goblins charged us. I eliminated four before they struck the frontline, and then we were running again, Larry yelling and banging his shield the whole time. I wondered how long his cooldown for Taunt was because he hadn't used it again yet. For most classes it was a minute, if I remembered correctly.

Another swarm of goblins closed on us, this time at an intersection where several could stay out of my line of sight until just before they struck. I didn't notice it before, but my party's attacks were wild and unsophisticated. I had grown accustomed to Megan's disciplined shield work, which relied a great deal on thrusting strikes, so seeing these three martial classes swinging like they were on a Roach Run surprised me.

If Megan was a boxer who understood the value of a jab, the members of my party were barroom brawlers that threw nothing but wild, heavy haymakers.

"Forward!" Larry yelled. We started running again. In the midst of fighting another five goblins, Larry's phone went off. That was his timer. Twenty-five minutes had elapsed, going far more quickly than I expected, meaning we had five minutes to get out of the gate. Even before Larry put down the last goblin, Bonnie and War had their knives out to collect the mana crystals inside of our kills.

"Hurry it up, newbie!" War yelled at me when he saw my harvest technique. Where everyone else made several deep stabs and then dug around inside with their hands, I used my usual method of long, deep slices, moving slowly enough that I could distinguish the difference between my knife tip hitting a bone or a crystal. CDM crawlers taught me to do it that way to reduce the messiness of the process. Crashers didn't care about a mess. They cared about speed. Stab, stab, dig, dig, move on to the next goblin, and repeat.

We ran out of the gate as quickly as we ran in, cut back through the woods, got in our cars, and drove back to the rendezvous point.

"31 XP?" War said, his eyes out of focus like someone looking at his system profile.

"Pretty good way to start the night. The new kid's hella fast too."

"Thanks," I replied. In my mind, I was shocked. 31 XP was "pretty good?" Good god. Usually, running a whole D-ranked goblin gate would mean coming out with a couple hundred XP, especially if you encountered some upgraded goblins and got to be part of the boss fight. 31 XP wasn't nothing, but it was pretty damn close. That night, we ended up crashing one more gate, an E-ranked vermin dungeon.

I walked out of that with 8 more XP and checked my system profile: XP Progress: 665/3200 If that was an average night, and I got the sense that it was, I would have to spend another sixty-some nights crashing to get to level 7. That sounded insane to me. The extra money from the mana crystals wasn't awful, but it was a pittance compared to the risks we took. Beth and Jonathan had done this more than once? I tried to put that out of my mind. Imagining Beth making this kind of gamble put me in a bad headspace.

Part of me was still mad at her for hiding her crashing hobby from me.

"Hey, Fap," Larry said as I walked to my car.

"Good work. Welcome to the group."