Chương 68: CDM 2, Chapter 4: Post-Launch

"I don't think you need to worry about view counts," Nathan said from the apartment couch. Megan sat next to him. Beth would have been there too, but she was working a shift at Milly's. He continued, "That was crazy intense. Like, dude, my heart was pounding out of my chest."

"You sure that's not because you know me?" Megan asked. He forced a chuckle.

"I mean, that didn't help, but that shit was scary. No fucking way would I go into a cave like that."

"I don't know that we will again either," I admitted.

"If you took all the goblins from an E gate and put them in a cave like that, I think the encounter jumps to C." Megan nodded.

"There were so many places for them to hide, and it was clear they knew the caves really well. I don't know that we would have spotted those first two archers in time if they weren't already dead. If that champion got any sort of jump on us? Yikes."

"I'm glad it's the EPA's problem now," I added.

"Think they'll take it seriously?" Nathan asked.

"Evidence of a goblin champion as well as human victims? I think they have to take it seriously now. It's not like they can brush Domonkos off again when he has that kind of proof."

"What will you do if you find another big nest?" I shrugged, and so did Megan.

"They should be rare, in theory," she answered.

"Chestnut Ridge should be an exception if the EPA is doing its job, but then again, goblin nests have popped up in other places recently where they should have been discovered quickly but weren't." I assumed Megan was referencing a goblin nest found in the middle of Baltimore at an abandoned mall as well as the recent discovery of goblins in the Paris catacombs.

"I honestly don't know what we would do," she continued.

"Walking into a cave is a whole different animal from some old warehouse. Even if the poison trick worked again… Well, it's clear shamans are either immune or could cure themselves with magic. If one was smart enough to cure the champion…"

"No caves," I said simply.

"Not until we have a plan we feel good about. YouTube views aren't worth dying for." Megan breathed out.

"I'm glad you agree."

"Me too, bro," Nathan echoed.

"I was very aware of my mortality in there. I'd take a hobgoblin dungeon gate over that. Any day."

"Hopefully the views we get justify all that effort," Megan mused.

"I'm going to try and not look until tomorrow." Nathan laughed. Megan grinned.

"I did say 'try.'" Enforcer Cortez and I started our official work as partners that Monday. We spent the day in the field inspecting harvest sites. Occasionally, the RAID team back at headquarters checked in with us. They had more drones to monitor than just the one at whatever gate we happened to visit, so their assistance wasn't ever present. When they could pitch in, they spotted a myriad of parking and distance violations.

The drone's ability to instantly measure according to preprogrammed standards made it easy to see if a tanker truck was parked too close to a gate or hazardous dungeon materials were too close to a residential structure. By the second harvest site of the day, it was clear to me that we would be writing far more citations with RAID in the mix. Guess how excited the harvest foremen were about this development. That's right, they hated us even more. All those extra write-ups were issued by the enforcers on site.

Me and Cortez, in other words. To anyone working there, I looked like a huge asshole. I was more than fine to have a drone catch something that was a clear violation, but the tech was good enough that we were writing harvesters up over an inch or two in some cases.

"You moved to Pittsburgh just in time for winter," I said as Cortez and I pulled out of our third harvest site of the day. I drove.

"Nevada gets snow sometimes. Everyone thinks a desert has to be hot. Locals get a kick out of tourists showing up on the Vegas Strip in little black dresses in the middle of December."

"You go to Vegas often?"

"Probably more than most," Cortez replied.

"I lived in Henderson. It's only a few exits away from Las Vegas." I already knew Cortez was level 9. He finished his internship two months ahead of me, and apparently the Las Vegas office saw an above-average amount of unclaimed dungeon gates. At the same time, the staff was much smaller in comparison to Pittsburgh, so Cortez got to run two or three gates a week sometimes. That was especially common in the summers but was more or less like that year-round.

"What do you think of RAID so far?" he asked, but his voice had a hint of hesitation.

"You don't sound excited."

"I don't mind it, necessarily," Cortez admitted.

"When they told me it was a new enforcement program, I didn't picture it being an office job. I thought maybe they'd train us to arrest crawlers with all the crasher and doomer conflicts." If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

"You say that like that's what you wanted."

"It's exactly what I wanted." I nearly wrecked the SUV.

"For real?"

"Think about it," he said.

"They'd have to level us. They wouldn't have a choice, and it's not like high-level crawlers cause trouble that often. We'd probably be dealing with indies starting shit most of the time."

"But would still get the XP to deal with the high-levels." Cortez smiled.

"Yep. That's an acceptable level of risk for what you get, in my opinion." I thought about George Baker and his stupid fucking mustache. When he caught me crashing his gate, he was downright gleeful. His enchanted sword of Scorching bounced in his hand, like he couldn't wait to cook us with it. In reality, Baker's party could have wiped all of us, but McDouglas bluffed him with the lie about the CDM beaming undercover footage out of the gate. Competing with Baker would take more than levels.

You would need enchanted gear and a ruthlessness that matched his.

"I'm not stoked for drones," I said, "but I think I'd pass on squaring up with crawlers." Cortez shrugged.

"The posting could be worse. Being on an experimental project like this looks real good on a resume."

"Why's that?"

"Because it's harder than the status quo, where they've figured out every wrinkle. We're going to run into all kinds of issues no one expected, which makes us more adaptable and creative." I laughed.

"Maybe I should ask you to help me with my resume." Changing the subject, I asked, "Did you move here alone or with a family?"

"Just me. Single. No kids. I've got an older sister in the Navy, and my mom has basically fused to a slot machine. Dad got prostate cancer a few years back. Didn't make it." In my effort to learn more about Cortez, I overlooked the inevitable consequence of asking someone about their family. They turn around and ask about yours.

"How about you?" Cortez asked.

"My little sister is eighteen and lives with me. We don't talk to our parents."

"Sorry, brother."

"Nah, it's okay. How you liking the city so far?"

"It's not so bad. You all need to get your taco affairs in order, but other than that, it's nice."

"What's wrong with our tacos?" Cortez looked at me incredulously.

"You need an exceptional density of Mexicans to get good tacos. I've seen a few hombres around here, but it's nothing like the southwest. Then I think you need to be within so many miles of the Mexican border. Stuff up here just tastes different."

"Like New York pizza water."

"Huh?"

"You've not heard this? Some people believe New York pizza can't be replicated anywhere else because you can't get the exact same water as they have. All of the ingredients and whatever can be identical, but it still won't taste right."

"I've never heard that."

"Okay, so maybe it's not common knowledge," I admitted.

"But I did read that somewhere."

"I'm sticking with Mexican density. Our power grows the more of us are around. You think I'm joking, but it's true." Partnering with Cortez was turning out better than I had hoped. He was funny and, so far, was easy to work with. We had an hour break in between inspections and our first RAID night shift. Cortez went to his car to nap, and I went across the street for a cup of tea.

I beat Cortez back to the RAID room, as we had taken to calling our wing of the office, and checked in on the view counts for our goblin nest video. Megan uploaded it late last night, and we neared 200, 000 views and climbing. In my mind, I was already picturing how I would spend whatever ad revenue this netted us.

"Dungeon Divas fan, huh?" Cortez asked as he came in. I don't know how he saw my screen so quickly.

"Don't be embarrassed. I follow a few attractive crawlers on Instagram, and I recognized the video. That's the new goblin nest, right? I haven't gotten to watch it yet."

"You watch the Dungeon Divas?"

"Two beautiful, badass women? Of course I follow them." This was an entirely new form of social discomfort I had never experienced before. Right then and there, I vowed that Nathan and Megan could under no circumstances ever hear about this. They'd rag on me until the end of time. A light attached to one of the monitors lit up. That meant a drone had recently moved into position, and we needed to verify that the recording footprint met all the privacy requirements.

I had expected a rush to accompany a shift change, but since RAID was always in motion, the activity on our side was relatively steady. We had sat there for ten minutes without receiving a single alert until that point. This dungeon gate was toward the outskirts of the city and was half-on-half-off a side road. There were no residential structures nearby, so we didn't need to black out anything. Then we settled in to watch the monitors and complete our routine checklists.

In addition to providing manual intervention whenever a drone needed it, we had tasks due each hour. For example, we had to flip every monitor from night vision to thermal vision so we could check for activity around the more remote gates. We saw a few deer, a family of opossums, and a fox. No crawlers or crashers. Then we had to remotely raise and lower every drone by a few inches and log the time. The exercise seemed silly to me, but our drones weren't cleared for perpetual, unmanned surveillance.

We had to confirm that we were still in control of each active drone and "demonstrate" that the drone was being actively monitored. It was the drone equivalent of wiggling your mouse to keep your status from drifting to idle. Lastly, we had to check in on harvest sites. We didn't check every site every hour. Instead, we rotated through them, reviewing each site once every three hours. The exception was if an enforcer on the ground asked for assistance or if we spotted something blatantly unsafe.

Harvesters were already giving the drones wary looks and the occasional middle finger. To the harvesters, the drone was always watching. They hated being monitored like this, and I couldn't blame them. I would hate it too.

"Want to grab a drink sometime?" I asked Cortez in the wee hours of the morning.

"I'm not mister popular, but I would be happy to introduce you to a few other people who are pretty cool."

"Yeah, maybe some other time. I'm pretty wrecked by the time our shifts end. It's like I'm still tired from the move or something."

"Yeah, no worries. Open offer. I know moving to a new city can be tough."

"Appreciate it, brother." That first shift was mostly uneventful. As 6 a. m. approached, I started imagining how nice sleeping in my own bed would be. Beth would be leaving for Frank's at about the time I got home, so I wouldn't have to sleep on the couch. And no one would be home. Even the stomp sisters that lived above us would be at work or in class. But then the automatic crawler detector picked up a name that soured my mood. Martin Kielar and his party of Mill Rats were heading into a B gate at 5 a. m.

His nephew, Brennan, was too low-level for this run, so that little piece of shit wasn't there. Just remembering that the Kielars existed filled me with disgust, and that ruined the wonderful sleep I had dreamed of. All I could think about was how scared Jonathan must have been when he realized he was going to die in a dungeon gate. There was no sleeping with that image in my mind.