Chương 79: CDM 2, Chapter 15: Fiscal Year

The apartment door opened, and I heard the distinct sound of work boots hitting the hallway floor. Beth hopped off the couch to hug Nathan.

"Welcome home," he said.

"When'd you get back?"

"This morning."

"Have a good time?" She smiled.

"It's apparently more touristy in the summer, but I thought it was nice. Did you know ice can make dunes? The freezing lake water hitting the beach makes the weirdest shapes." Unlocking her phone, she showed Nathan photos.

"Damn. That is wild." Intentionally raising the volume of his voice, Nathan added, "I bet they would look really cool from a drone."

"Did the channel get drone money all of a sudden?" Beth asked. I shook my head.

"No, but we have to figure it out soon. The close calls are adding up, and that makes me nervous."

"Did something happen?" Nathan yelled from his room, "You didn't tell her?!"

"Hadn't come up yet," I answered.

"Tell me what," Beth demanded.

"Those caves your boy and Megan cleared?" Nathan began as he reentered the room.

"There was a ghost salamander kicking around in there. A full-grown fucking ghost salamander."

"Is that bad?" I laughed. Nathan pushed out an exasperated breath as Beth followed him to the kitchen. I stayed on the couch.

"Dude, where do I start?" he mused.

"Okay, you know how elemental salamanders use frost and fire breath like dragons do? A ghost salamander's breath is a giant Wraith Touch. It jacks up your serotonin on contact, and a full hit is something absurd like quadrupling it instantly."

"I know that's bad, but what does that do exactly?"

"I'm definitely going to send you some videos. They explain it better, but basically you lose the ability to feel emotions. You hallucinate to the point of feeling Ego Death, and then to really stick it to you, all that spirals your body into hypothermia and gives you the runs. That's on top of them being like 40 ft long."

"Ego Death is basically your brain disconnecting from your body, like you forget what you are as an entity," I interjected, knowing Beth would ask that next.

"And 'the runs' is a crude way to describe diarrhea." Beth's huff was clear, even from the kitchen.

"I know what the runs are, Dor."

"Just making sure."

"So yeah, dude," Nathan said, "a ghost salamander is crazy scary. They don't even have eyes. Don't need them. They can smell your life force or some shit."

"Why didn't it bother Megan and Dorion?" Beth asked.

"Dumb luck," Nathan scoffed. Nathan flopped into a chair with a beer in his hand while Beth reclaimed her spot on the couch. She was still enraptured by the ghost salamander topic. Her mouth had yet to stay closed. Raising my hand, I said, "I read about that actually."

"Yes, Dorion, please share with the class," Nathan replied in his best professor voice.

"This biologist in Austria says a ghost salamander's digestive anatomy is like an olm's, which is this blind white salamander native to Earth, but ours doesn't grow past 10 inches. They can go 10 years without eating and live to 100. They believe ghost salamanders can do the same." Nathan screwed up his face and pulled out his own phone and started typing a search.

"That sounds like a really long time to not eat. Oh, shit. Yeah, that's true. Bro, that's crazy to just not eat for 10 years. Did they figure out how the breath works?"

"I didn't see anything about that," I answered.

"It is confirmed that they can eat undead, though. They don't understand how that works either, but they can live on only undead and be just as fine as if they were eating the living versions." Beth shivered.

"I don't know why, but eating undead is the creepiest out of everything I've heard so far. Where in the cave did they find it?" I shrugged.

"I don't know. Domonkos only saw the EPA bust up some rocks to get it out of the cave. He was never inside, and they were pretty peeved about him taking photos, so they wouldn't really tell him anything when he asked. If the ghost salamander does have the same metabolism as olms, it could have been hibernating. Maybe it pops out to snack on bats once a year or something and then goes back to chilling."

"How long was it down there?" Beth asked.

"Another great question that I can't answer," I replied. Nathan half-slammed his phone down.

"This settles it. You guys need a better way to scout shit. I have half a mind to call firetruck on this until you do."

"Bro, we haven't used firetruck in years."

"We enjoyed a period of peace, yes, but peace always comes to an end." Beth looked back and forth between us.

"Should I even ask?" The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"Why yes, I can explain," Nathan said, sitting up straighter with a big grin.

"It's a safe word."

"Like permadeath?"

"Yes, but for actions instead of conversations. Say one of us has had a few and starts to insist on driving. Calling firetruck means, 'Bro, if you fucking do this, our friendship is in jeopardy. That's how strongly I believe that what you're about to do is a big goddamn mistake. End of your life big.' When you found out Dorion was hunting and called him on it, that was a firetruck moment. Now that you know the word, you won't have to explain as much the next time."

She nodded and seemed to stiffen before turning slowly to me.

"You would have called firetruck on gate crashing, huh?"

"Definitely."

"I knew that already, I think. That's why I didn't tell you." Nathan leaned forward.

"Geez, Betty. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have brought that up."

"It's okay. Sometimes I get a few hours where I forget that he's gone. Then it all comes rushing back."

"Sadness or guilt?" Nathan asked.

"Both." Shaking his head, he said, "Nope. That's a firetruck moment right there too. You have every right to be sad, and don't let anyone tell you how long that should last. They don't get it, and I'll always have your back about that. Guilt? Nah, dude. Off the table. You're not responsible for him going missing. No matter how hard you try to twist it, just no."

"What happens if someone violates firetruck?" Nathan shrugged.

"You can't tell me?"

"We've never broken it," I said.

"So we've not had a reason to figure out the answer to that."

"I see." Beth thought.

"Why did you choose 'firetruck' to be the word?" Chuckling, Nathan answered, "It used to be siren noises, but that had too many limitations. Tonally, it was all wrong too. Going 'woo woo woo' when your buddy is about to call that ex again doesn't match the moment, you know?"

"Dorion shut that down, huh?" I nearly jumped out of my seat.

"Absolutely not. I was completely pro-siren noises. Nathan vetoed it."

"We're all reasonable adults," he insisted, and though I laughed at that, he continued.

"The breaking point was this one really bad night. This chick broke my heart, and man, she pulverized it, like really dropped the People's Elbow but didn't pull shit. Your genius brother convinces me to go out that weekend to just get out of the dorm room. What do we see? My ex dancing up on some gym bro." Beth grimaced.

"When we get back to the dorm, I'm a mess, dude. Dorion sees I'm about to call her, and that mofo busts out a siren noise. I ignored his ass, so he just got louder and louder. Like, picture that guy's face nose-to-nose with you making siren noises at the top of his lungs, and it's what you think is the lowest moment of your life."

"I stand by my siren," I said.

"I have no regrets."

"Can I do a video about the ghost salamander for the channel? Domonkos is cool with us using the photos. I asked." Megan sent that at 1 a. m., but I didn't read it until after 3. She was working an overnight RAID shift, and I had just wrapped a decent D goblin gate. I know. Another goblin gate. I don't want to talk about it, so please stop bringing it up. I got 577 XP and didn't have to crawl with a settler.

"If he's good with it, then I am."

"Okay. I'm taking it live now."

"Aren't you working?"

"I recorded it earlier. I just have to publish it. I wasn't sure if it was a good idea, so I waited to ask you until I was. I swear I was always going to ask you."

"I wasn't worried about that."

"Okay, good." Enforcer McDouglas had also left me a text while I was in the dungeon. It simply asked for me to call him regardless of the hour and followed it with another text that apologized for being ominous because this wasn't.

"Good crawl?" he asked when he picked up the phone. He sounded plenty awake for how early it was.

"Generic goblin run."

"Boring is good sometimes. Thought you should know that Larry wanted to talk to you."

"Larry as in the gate crasher?" I asked.

"That's the one. We can't do that, obviously, and he understood why. Anyway, he wanted me to tell you 'thank you.' He knows you saved his life and is very grateful. It's important to him that you know that."

"Even though I got him arrested?"

"Every once in a while you run into someone reasonable," McDouglas replied.

"Arrested is better than dead, and that's what he could have been if another crasher was there instead of you. This is a win you pack away for a rainy day. Bring it out when you feel like shit and want to quit."

"I appreciate you telling me."

"Tell me about this EPA project of yours."

"Uhh…"

"This isn't a Chapman test," he said.

"I promise."

"It seemed like we should do something with monster sightings. I don't know if it will make a difference, but the first one was pretty far away from any nest the EPA was aware of."

"And you asked them for GIS access?"

"I get the feeling I'm telling a story you've heard before." McDouglas chuckled.

"Yeah, fair. What else would you do if you could?" Oh Jesus. For once, could one of these tests be scheduled ahead of time?

"What's the objective?" I asked.

"Let's leave it open-ended and say the objective is the most productive use of RAID. Put aside CDM dogma. Assume that's irrelevant right now, and use your own definition of productive."

"If the priority is protecting people from monsters, the drones cover a lot of ground getting to and from gates. That seems like an opportunity to do some kind of passive monitoring. The crawler detection does a visual scan to ID them, but the presentations bragged a lot about how it uses a ton of biometric markers, like their gait and their voice. Do that but for goblins on the way in and out." There was a pause.

"How much do you know about training that detection? I'm assuming you'd need a runway to get through all the false positives."

"Actually-""Oh, you could use temperature. That's smart. Pilot it on goblins and then train other types of monsters if it moves forward."

"Yeah."

"Is the wild monster problem big enough to justify that?"

"When I started with Sean, he said goblins were considered eradicated in this area. That's not looking like the case. A few big cities have missed nests right under their feet even."

"Huh. Interesting. Alright. You have a good evening, Enforcer Gray." And he hung up. I looked up and realized I had been parked outside of my apartment for a while now. Was that a test? Did I pass? If this ended up being my imagination running amok, I was going to be so pissed. Megan texted me a news story on my way up the stairs. The headline read, "EPA covering up wild ghost salamander in the Allegheny Mountains?" She sent another: "Wild ghost salamander found. How many haven't we seen?"

And another: "Ghost salamander nests infesting Pennsylvania."

"I think people are watching our video."

"I don't know what gives you that idea."