“You know what Michael, I do have a answer for you. It would have been the answer to Jack Welch if someone had done it earlier in his career, but it could still be the answer to a lot of bastards.  Legally I’m not allowed to say it on air, but it rhymes with shmargeted smesmashinashon.”  -Behind The Bastards, Jack Welch Is Why You Got Laid Off-

_____

The Order of Endless Rooms had grown somewhat since they started.  There were over two hundred new people involved now: hired humans, rescued camracondas and ratroaches, incepted infomorphs, and refugee inhabitor potions, all of them living and working together.

It made group meetings slightly more of a logistical problem.  It also meant that they were absolutely going to need some kind of improved system for their improvised form of democracy at some point.  Right now, either the whole Order was invited to vote on actions taken, or else there was something like an expert committee that would listen to votes for direction but wasn’t bound by them and was instead tasked with responding quickly to problems.  Everyone had a vote, though that vote could be willingly handed off to someone else you trusted.

It was essentially recreating representative democracy, just a little more direct, and with a few other changes from people with education and magical skills who wanted to experiment while they had the chance.

Though right now, the meeting James was part of wasn’t a forum open to the whole Order.  Or rather, it was, if anyone wanted to sit in.  But this was much more one of those groups of experts who were trying to rapidly solve problems before they turned from problem to crisis.  In this case, they had a webcam set up and a live feed for anyone who was interested.

Part of him found it a little incongruous to have their security briefings be public knowledge.  Public within the Order at least.  But also, James wasn’t especially interested in secrets.  If he thought it would help, he’d have streamed the meeting on a Twitch channel.  After all, this was more strategy than specific tactics; it wasn’t like someone was going to be able to use this to ambush a specific rogue team.

Currently he was sitting with his back to an elevated view of LA, the blinds down so the sunlight outside didn’t cause glare.  Nate was on the other side of the table, the man looking like a peeled potato as his eyebrows hadn’t regrown yet.  Planner occupied a large segment of the end of the table, a dozen tentacle limbs precisely moving manifested pages around to save on paper.  James actually wondered if Planner could be seen on the camera feed, or if this was going to be a weird experience for anyone watching.  Harvey was going to be here, but was busy, and had sent Marcus instead, the young man nervously looking at something on his phone as he waited for the meeting to start, a growing brace of various pride pins adorning his coat.  Knife-In-Fangs and Charlie rounded out the group; in any other circumstances the two of them would represent the actual people who went out and took care of problems, but almost everyone in this room filled that role, so their perspective - while unique - wasn’t as critical.  Both of them were also still healing; Charlie’s arm was in a sling, and Knife-In-Fangs had a pressure bandage wrapped around the coil of his body.

“Is JP coming?”  James asked, looking around their office conference room.  “I feel like JP should be coming.”

“He’s busy.”  Nate grunted.  “We’re all set.  Planner?”  The man gruffly turned to the infomorph.  “Let’s get moving.  We’ve got a lot to cover.”

“Yes.”  Planner’s voice of pen scratches drifted through the room.  “I have a number of items for us to address, which I would like to list first, before we begin more chaotic discussion.”

“Go for it.”  James couldn’t help a small grin.

Planner nodded and began handing bits of manifested paper to everyone.  Briefly, James had a stray thought that this was essentially Planner’s skin , which was a bit weird.  But if the infomorph wanted to make copies this way, it was certainly easier on their supply of toner.  They still hadn’t figured out an easy way to tap the ocean in Officium Mundi.

Then Planner started speaking, and everyone paid close attention.  “Without ordering by what I believe is the proper threat ranking, we have a number of ongoing problems that either require a choice on the part of the Order, or would benefit from our attention.  They are : the ongoing and escalating battle in the finance world of New York, Harlan, the existence of the Stratified Underburbs, the recently received information on the missing city of Morocco, Ohio , the new information regarding the whereabouts of a number of Status Quo victims, Harlan, the quarantined members of the Order still contagious from the Underburb disease, the potential sightings of the being known as the Old Gun - possibly the identity of the Chainbreaker - near our dungeon operation site in Texas, the renewed efforts by the FBI to coerce behavior from the Order, the ongoing activities of Priority Earth, and the number of missing persons relevant to the potential new dungeon in Utah.”

James stared down at the page he’d been handed by one of Planner’s tentacles.  Then back up at the gently glowing teal infomorph suspended at the end of the long conference table.  He felt a sharp pain in his mouth, and realized he’d just been biting at his cheek so hard he’d nearly drawn blood.

“I’m going home.”  James heard himself say, starting to push his chair back from the table.

“Sit your ass back down.”  Nate ordered him with a glare.  Though it was harder to tell if he was glaring without the eyebrows to help make it clear.

James stopped his escape, and sighed.  “Okay.”  He said, looking around the table and seeing a few other people who were considering making a break for it.  “Holy shit , that’s a lot.  Oh, also, you actually did miss something, Plan.”

“Oh?”  It was odd that Planner  could raise their eyebrows at James when Planner didn’t have eyebrows at all.

“Yeah, sorta tied to the Priority Earth stuff.  The intel we have about their targeted strikes against coal plants and industrial processing facilities.”  James jutted a thumb toward Nate.  “Which, you know, we finally successfully checked out.  But I think it deserves its own mention, because the current Priority Earth doesn’t seem invested in that kind of thing.”

“Also you said Harlan twice.”  Knife-In-Fangs said.

“No, that’s fair.  Harlan is a double problem.”  James winced.

“Noted.”  Planner rippled, and the pages in front of everyone changed.  “Now.  Where shall we begin?”

Marcus raised his hand, the young man looking woefully out of his depth.  “I have a lot of questions.”  He got a go ahead nod from Nate, and cleared his throat.  “Uh… should I even be here?  None of this is really Response  stuff, right?”

“Half our knights are in Response, and you’re a good liaison.  Also, you’ve got a good head on your shoulders, and the more people who learn to do this job the better.”  Nate said.

“Yes, you are a good example of a human.”  Knife-In-Fangs added.

Charlie let out a small chuckle.  “You can be our sanity check.”  The man offered.

Taking a deep breath, cheeks puffed out as he processed that, Marcus just held up his hands and sat back, not willing to fight on the matter.  “Alright.”  James tried to repress his own sigh.  “Let’s start with what we can handle easily?”  He looked to Nate for confirmation and got an accepting nod.  “What was that about Status Quo?”

“Oh, I know this one.”  Marcus spoke up.  “From finding Alanna’s sister, Recovery figured out what all those Squo documents were talking about.  They actually did redact a lot of their own details, but they can narrow down all of them to at least a zip code if it’s in the US.  That thing that looked like a zip code?  It was a zip code.”

“I…” James paused.  “I’ve been out of the loop.  Alanna…?”  He trailed off, then smiled.  “That’s great.”  James settled on, and meant it.  “Zip code is kind of a broad target.  But that’s great!  We can start working to find Anesh’s parents, right?  And also anyone else who got affected, to at least tell them what happened to their family?”

“Uh… yes?”  Marcus glanced around the table, a concerned look in his eyes.  “Some of them have UK postcodes, so… probably.  You, uh.. you know your parents are also on that list, right?”

“Oh, I know!  I just don’t care.”  James shrugged, running a hand over part of his face that looked fine but still ached from the damage he was in the process of recovering from.  “I’d be happy to know they’re okay, but I have no interest in contacting them.  My family wasn’t great to me, for a whole bunch of personal reasons that aren’t important here.  Is this a security thing, though?”  He asked.

Nate answered roughly. “It’s a security ‘thing’ because your family is a pressure point that can be used against you, personally.  Having them secure is important.”

“Okay, makes sense.”  James nodded.  “I mean, I assume we’re going to find them anyway.  This is mostly just good news, right?  Do we need to do anything except let Recovery do their jobs with alarming competence?”

“No?”  Marcus shrugged.  “Not really?”

There was a rush of relief that came from the satisfaction of definitively checking off a box on a list.  “Great!  Next item!”  James proclaimed.

Nate took control of the meeting.  “Let’s start with the pressing shit.”  He said, rolling the false paper in front of him with heavy fingers without looking at it.  “A lot of this will either wait on us, or isn’t gonna kill us, but some of it’s an issue.  The feds are an issue.   Harlan  is an issue.  Also, the Old Gun fucking around near the Stacks is an issue.  And I keep fucking saying ‘issue’ but what I mean, I need you all to get, is ‘pants shitting high alert problem’.  Okay?”

“Unprofessional, but acknowledged.”  Planner spoke dryly.

Knife-In-Fangs gave an odd shrug of his mechanical prosthetic arms.  “You become used to this.”  The camraconda said.

“I don’t think Harlan is as much of an issue as we’re worried about..” James said.

“Bullshit.”  Nate and Knife-In-Fangs spoke at the same time, before the human kept going.  “They show up out of nowhere, have knowledge of how we operate and where you live, have a good fucking reason to bear a grudge against us, and have an unknown number of combat assets ready to go.”

“That actually overlaps the Priority Earth situation, yeah?”  Charlie asked, reading off Planner’s notes.  “Because there’s a branch of the Wolfpack there, that’s what started a lot of the recent mess, right?”

“Right.  Actually, that’s  who we should be looking into.”  James winced as he remembered.  “Someone was willing to suicide bomb a whole building full of people, just to kill Harlan.  And they showed up out of nowhere.  We know Harlan can teleport.  We don’t know anything about the other guy, who might very well be part of a group that’s out for our blood now too.”

While James was talking, Marcus signaled Planner, who snaked a tentacle around the table next to the young man.  He whispered to the infomorph, and got a new page deposited on the table in front of him.  Scanning quickly, Marcus nodded and then added to the conversation.  “We do have security teams now, by the way.”  He said.  “It’s gonna be a while before they’re up to our base standard for teamwork and culture, but between armory packages and group training, we have multiple new teams we can deploy just to keep an eye on things and screen for threats.  So we don’t need to get ambushed quite so bad next time?”

“Good start.”  Nate said.  “Are we giving those kids skulljacks?”

“It’s up for consideration.”  Marcus answered.  “It’s an ongoing conversation.”  That was code for ‘a lot of people disagreed’, and that they should move on.

Nate nodded, catching on.  “Well, good start anyway.  That can at least keep us from getting caught out.  But it doesn’t cover everything, and it doesn’t actually deal with the Old Gun or the feds.”

“Yeah, actually, back up to that.  Planner, why are the FBI fucking with us again?  I thought we had an amicable arrangement with at least Malcom and his branch.”

The infomorph opened a few eyes to look over their own paperwork.  “We do.”  Planner said.  “That is not the issue.  Currently a number of our ancillary members who are managing the anti-cancer project have received pressuring meetings from agents, and are also under surveillance.  Monitoring was discovered just yesterday, and appears to be a form of subtle threat?”  They turned to Nate.

The man ran a hand over his bald head.  “It’s a threat, but it’s not very subtle.”  He growled.

“Wait, why are they mad that we’re curing cancer?!”   Charlie spoke up, clearly confused.  “That doesn’t make any sense.  There’s no valid reason to act that way?”

“There is if they think they can get the cure off us.”  James intercepted Nate’s own explanation.  “Or, if they can’t, if they can rig our system somehow by pressuring us.  They obviously don’t give a shit that we aren’t FDA approved, since if they actually did we’d have gotten a phone call from them.  It’s not like it’s hard to contact us.”

“It should be harder to contact us.”  Nate muttered.

He was ignored.  “Well… they can’t do that!”  Charlie continued.  “That seems super illegal.”

“We are also breaking laws, in fairness.”  Knife-In-Fangs offered.  “As far as my understanding of local legal codes stretches.  Which is substantial!  Thanks to the several frustratingly specific skill orbs I have consumed.”

“The FBI doesn’t actually give too many shits about legality.”  Nate reminded them.  “Not to say they’re a completely chaotic mess; they’ve got rules, and they play by them most of the time.  But there’s so many fucking loopholes in a lot of laws that spying on a random citizen can basically always be justified as an emergency act, and they’re accountable to no one.  Odds are, Malcom doesn’t even know this is going on.”

“What if he did?”  James mused quietly, eyes fixed on the grey wall over Nate’s head.  Everyone went quiet and waited for him to continue, and he blinked as he realized they were listening.  “I mean, what if I just make a call, and tell him to fix this?  Think it’d work?”

“Nonviolent, simple, possibly effective.  I like this plan.”  Charlie nodded.

“He does owe you a favor or five.”  Nate nodded grudgingly.  “Worst case he says no.”

“Do we plan for a no, or do we try first?”  Knife-In-Fangs asked.  “We are not prepared to fight a government intelligence agency.  It would require more people, at least.  Or less ethics.”

“So more people.”  Marcus tried to sound lighthearted, but it didn’t work.  Still, everyone nodded at his words.

James made a note on his phone’s to do list, and moved it to the top.  “I’ll take care of this after the meeting.”  He said.  “Okay.  Next thing.  The Old Gun?”

“Yeah.  We’ve spotted something that could be her a few times in that town the Ceaseless Stacks are in.”  Nate looked like he’d taken a bite of lemon as he said the name.  He liked being serious all the time, and the fanciful nature of how they named dungeons didn’t appeal to him.  Still, he muscled through.  “There’s a real chance it’s looking to pull something like with the Akashic Sewer on the Library.  And we don’t have a way to handle that.”

“Last time, it required her to manipulate someone into mass murder, and then… do a weird ritual thing to the dungeon space?”  James let out a long breath, pushing away the emotions of the event and staying clinical for the meeting.  “We can work with that.  We just have to keep the space itself safe.  Like, the outside space.  Stop any human crimes against nature in the area, and she won’t be able to move in.”

“Yeah, and what if she kidnaps Momo while she’s out getting chicken wings before a delve?”  Nate asked with a pointed irritation.  “Cut our losses?  Do some kind of stupid heroic rescue?”

“…I don’t have a good answer.”  James said.

“Yeah, that’s ‘cause there’s no good answer.”  Nate drove home.  “We don’t even know if we can deal with something like that.  We can try , we’ve got more guns and more magic than the last time, but the kid of one of these things can shrug off full auto five seven, so maybe we aren’t geared for it.”

“Avoidance isn’t a bad plan.”  Charlie suggested.  “We can just pull out if we need to.  Losing the Library is bad, but… the alternative?”

“What, and just let her kill people?”  Marcus looked sick.  “Wait, is it her, or it?”

Planner made a clicking sound.  “Unknown.  The creature presents as female though.”

“Also I don’t care.”  Nate rolled his eyes.  “ What do we do about it ?”  

“Charlie’s… depressingly… right.”  James said, the words coming out strained.  “We probably can’t win a stand up fight.  So we need to be prepared to either give up the Stacks, or ruin her plans, or both.  Nate, how easy would it be to rig the building for controlled demolition if we need to?  And… who here is our delver rep?  Charlie?  What would be the viability of pivoting all our delve teams to the Library now so that we can get as much out as possible before we lose access?”

“Why do you think I know how to blow up buildings?”  Nate asked.

“Okay, Planner , same question.”  James snorted.

Planner set the tips of several of their tentacles on the table’s edge.  “Not especially viable with mundane technologies.  Explosives cannot be easily concealed at the levels needed for controlled demolition, it would require us to do extensive remodeling of the structure.  With the theory that the dungeon actually extends into Earth space on the second floor of the library, it is even less likely a demolition would succeed.  I believe it would be more realistic to have an area teleport prepared at all times to deploy the largest fuel air bomb we can construct into the building’s basement.  This could cause an uncontrolled demolition, but would be effective at unleashing rampant chaos within the space, and has the best odds of spoiling the Old Gun’s plans.”

There was a moment of silence around the table.  Followed by Marcus letting out a nervous laugh that bordered on a manic giggle.  “Wow, that’s terrifying!”  He squeaked out.

“Wow, that’s… okay, good.  Let’s get that set up.”  James said.  “That’s actually great , because we can keep the bomb disassembled and safe until we need it.”

“Yeah, that’s  the perk there.”  Nate looked like he didn’t know what he was arguing about.  “So, our plan is cutting our losses?”

“If needed.”  Charlie pointed out.

“The alternative is worse.  And we should not be careless with the power of the territory we hold.”  Knife-In-Fangs added.

It did suck, but James agreed.  There wasn’t really a good answer here, there was no right option that got them everything they wanted with no downsides.  At the end of the day, whatever the Old Gun wanted, there was a very good chance that it was going to hurt a lot of people.  Which mean stopping that was a higher priority than the Order of Endless Rooms keeping ahold of a source of power.

“Well, that’s one dungeon thing tentatively decided.  What about the other two?”  James asked.

Nate nodded.  “Pick your poison.  Underburbs, or Utah.”

“Utah first.”  James said.

“That’s me.”  Charlie nodded on the other side of the heavy oak table.  “A few people know this already, but I think a recap is worth it.  My team and I followed up on the kids in Utah, at James’ request.  If anyone watching doesn’t know why that’s relevant, don’t worry, we’re bringing in anyone who we need, and it taxes infomorphs to reveal too much.”  He scratched at his stubble with his good hand.  “They’re missing.  So are their families.  Evidence we recovered shows that this was a multi-generational delver group.  It goes back at least two generations.  We brought back some dungeontech from the empty houses; it’s on the list to be copied.  It’s another spell-based magic, too.  Tokens open slots, and then you need to spend X amount of time with one of the books to fill that slot with a one use magic.  I’m sure we don’t know all of it.”  He made an inscrutable small motion with his head and free hand.  

“Wait, at least two generations?”  Marcus perked up as he took the opening.  “I’m actually into the history thing, was there anything about, y’know, how old their dungeon was?  So far the oldest thing we know is the potion tree, and we can only trace that back five decades.  About.”

“Only five?”  James wanted to dive into that tangent now.  “I thought all the Alchemists were older than that.”

“None of the ones here were recruited by someone who talked about who brought them in, so we don’t have a verifiable chain.”  Marcus answered.  “Dungeon history is hard , you guys!”

Something stuck out to James suddenly.  “Is this just a hobby you’re pursuing in your free time?”  He asked, curious.  “Because I basically always ever see you in the Response basement.  Do you have, like, notes or something?  Send those to me, I wanna see later.”

“Yeah, sure.  But, uh.  Sorry Charlie, kinda cut you off there.”

“It’s fine.”  Charlie started to shrug, then stopped with a wince as he pulled on his arm sling.  “I don’t have sufficient information to give you an answer anyway.  We can’t verify anything.  We can’t even prove they aren’t just on a long family delve, or just on vacation.”  His somewhat dry tone contrasted with how amused the words made James, but also highlighted that Charlie did think it was a real option.  “Still no details on where the dungeon is.  If we want to investigate, we’ll be spending a lot of time and work hours looking.”

Nate rapped his knuckles on the wood, getting everyone’s attention.  “And that brings up the Underburbs.  I’ve had a couple rogues sent out to narrow it down.  We lost the signal fast, but GPS led us to somewhere in nowhere, Missouri.”  James opened his mouth to make a joke, then bit it back when he remembered this was supposed to be the professional meeting, and also Nate glared him into silence.  “Half our knights are injured right now, with things we can’t purple orb away.  The other half need actual downtime, especially James .  People, we don’t have the manpower  for everything.  So we gotta make a choice here.”

“Underburbs.”  James said instantly, subconsciously folding his arms and staring at the edge of the table.  Nobody said anything, and after the seconds of silence stretched on, he realized they were waiting for him.  “Oh.  Uh.  The Dungeons and Dragons Dungeon sounds fun and all, and I’d love to meet a delver family unit because I think that could give us some insight into how our future society would work.  But there’s no active rescue to be doing there, and there’s way, way more ground to cover.  The Underburbs, we’ve got narrowed down more, and also, it’s… it’s one of those places like the Climb, or the Sewer, where even if it’s not evil, we should be setting up a cordon and keeping people out.  It’s dangerous.”

“Utah could also be dangerous.”  Charlie pointed out simply.  “We still have no real information.”

“We’re guessing.”  Knife-In-Fangs made it more obvious.  “Except you feel personally attacked by the Underburbs.”

James nodded, pursing his lips as he did.  “I do!”  He admitted.  “That place sucks!  And I seriously worry about sending anyone in there without a hazmat suit made out of shield bracers and a rocket launcher.  But it’s a confirmed source of magic items, and repeatable skills.  The other one, we know it gives spells, but the utility of those spells is… questionable.”

“Don’t we know one of the kids could block teleports?”  Nate asked.  “Teleports out, at least.  That’s a tactical advantage I want.”

There were a few tactical advantages that the magic offered, as far as James knew.  The ability to make a chair on command, if nothing else, was exactly the sort of extra dramatic bullshit that he could easily put to use for style points.  That… that one was actually less tactical than being able to spawn swords on command, but it was the first thing his brain thought of.  Also swords were just less tactically useful than James had been led to believe by a lifetime of fantasy media.  Not useless , exactly, but it wasn’t like dungeon creatures were spontaneously weak to swords and resistant to bullets.

“I agree with James.”  Marcus interrupted his thoughts.  “Underburbs we at least want contained, right?  Because if someone does survive it, and comes out, that’s a plague.  And… we don’t… like those?”

“We don’t like those, no.”  Knife-In-Fangs started to give a bobbing nod, then made a sudden hissing and froze, slowly inching back in his seat.  “Ow.”  He said.  “I forgot.”

Even Nate gave the injured camraconda a worried look.  “Yeah, don’t do that.  Anyway.  Charlie, Planner, you have thoughts?”

Charlie gave a jerk of his head and a thin line of a frown, abstaining.  Planner, on the other hand, made a noise like shuffling through a filing cabinet.  “I would prefer we cover as much as possible.  Could we simply address the core issue, which is lack of available knight hours?”

“…so hire more people.”  Nate said flatly.

“It would alleviate the problem of decisions such as this.”  Planner, if they detected Nate’s sarcasm, didn’t react to it.  “More knights would let us search for both dungeons, and allow more flexibility in the future.”

Knife-In-Fangs gave the infomorph’s tentacle body a titled look, lens of his eye irising to a narrow dot.  “Planner, we’re already constantly adding to our knights.”  The camraconda stated.  “There are reasons, good ones I believe, for not moving faster.”

“Those reasons are mostly based off not wanting to hire assholes, right?”  Marcus asked.

Nate coughed once.  “Assholes or infiltrators, yeah.”  He said.  James shot him a raucous grin, which he ignored.  “Also to allow time for training up to being not a total fuckwit, and to do that thing where we slowly convert them to James’ idea of socialized.”

“We’ve got glasses for infiltrators.”  Charlie dismissed that.

“And… I mean, I think a lot of people here know someone, right?”  Marcus asked slowly.  “I know a bunch of people who’d be into this.  Half of Response has friends who don’t believe them.  We could get people.”

“Training, though.”

“I kinda meant as… like… volunteer delvers?  Free up some of the knights, while learning how to be action movie protagonists?”  Marcus ventured.  “Is that not what we do here?”

“Is that what you’ve been doing?”  James asked, suspicious.

Marcus shook his head rapidly.  “Oh, heck no!  I answer phones and fill out telepads!  I’d die in a dungeon!”

“And you have friends who would be… cool with that?”  Charlie sounded confused.

“Yes?”  Marcus looked a little sheepish.  “Sorry, I’m getting us off track again.”

James nodded.  “No, I get it.  If I had a friend who came to me with this offer five years ago, I would probably have said yes.  And then gotten myself killed by a living and angry screen saver or something.  But I woulda said yes.”

The meeting was brought back onto the rails by Planner.  “Recruitment is a long term solution.”  They said.  “I will accept that.  For now, I will concede that the Underburbs are the best choice to avoid further disruptions.”

James blinked, and looked at the others around the table.  “That… isn’t…”

“Yeah, good enough.”  Nate said.  “So.  Utah on the back burner.  Charlie, you’re not doing fieldwork for a while anyway, you’re the coordinator for this.”  He said it in a way that didn’t sound like a question, but if Charlie took offense he didn’t show it.  Just nodded and gave a thumbs up with his good hand.  “What’s next? Do we wanna talk about carriers, since we’re on the Burbs anyway?”

“Ah.  That.”  James winced.  “So, one of the medical staff accidentally got reinfected by one of the people who had the arm hole nightmare disease, but never showed symptoms.  She’s fine, don’t worry.  But the next time Deb did a blood test, there were no remaining antigens for the thing.  In either of them.”

“That’s good, yes?”  Knife-In-Fangs asked.  “A few people can get new skill points, we can make sure they don’t die, and then that fixes the quarantine problem.”

“And now it’s my turn to say something fucking stupid.”  Nate sighed.  James was already frowning, knowing what was coming, but the others hadn’t gotten a key piece of information yet.  “The ratio is about one in twelve.  For becoming carriers.”  Nate nodded as he saw recognition on some of their faces; Planner in particular pulled their tentacles in on themself, wrapping up the limbs that were only recently healed.  “Yeah.  So.  We could wipe it out, at least locally.  Or, we could keep a revolving door going, and farm what we know is survivable for skill points.”

James spoke almost instantly when Nate finished talking.  “I just want to make it clear that I have personally seen this infection kill about twenty people.”  His voice was quiet, and trembled slightly, but his words came across perfectly clear.  “This isn’t something we should be hanging on to.”

“We have information on that though.”  Charlie countered, a little confusion in his voice.  “It was the teleport, right?  Some kind of immune system shock? But we don’t have that, and to everyone else… no one died here .”

The way he said it hurt.  James knew he didn’t mean it as a critique, or some kind of subtle dig.  At least, he hoped not.  He didn’t know Charlie that well, but the man seemed pretty direct.  And yet it still sucked to be reminded that everyone here had simply had a bad couple of hours, while on James’ side the majority of the infected fucking died .

It wasn’t even anyone’s fault.  At least, not anyone that Harlan hadn’t shot seven or eight times.  It was just the nature of a weird interaction, that left a swath of people dead and James a little bit on edge.

The others were still talking while he tried to grapple with that.  This meeting wasn’t about his feelings, even if they were based off experience.  It was about getting results, in a way that was safe, yes, but also effective.

Which meant that, when he sat aside his trepidation and dread, he was left with experience that actually was useful.

“Okay, I think I need to veto this plan.”  James said suddenly.  It looked like Nate was about to argue with him, though the others were mostly curious.  Except Knife-In-Fangs, who was immune to both the problem and the reward in this case.  “I think… I think that if we could absolutely ensure that we kept it contained, then I’d say yes.  On a volunteer basis, obviously , and I worry that not enough people would be into grinding lesions for skill points to actually make it viable to not keep people in quarantine for weeks at a time.   But , that containment clause is reallllly important, and there’s a problem with it.”

“We can take precautions.”  Charlie pointed out.  “We’ve been doing it this whole time.  The quarantine rooms in the hospital work.  Otherwise this would have been a problem days ago.”

“Uh huh.”  James nodded.  “Hey, remember how infomorphs can get infected?”  He asked.

“ Yes .”  Planner’s word was like a flourished check mark on a page.  “I do  remember that!”

James nodded, seeing grudging realization on Nate’s face.  “Yeah.  All it takes is one mistimed manifestation - which we cannot quarantine against, remember - and we’re facing another outbreak.  And yeah, this thing burns itself out fast, but we actually don’t know how it spreads via infomorph.  What if someone gets infected while in the middle of a Walmart?  It only takes one slip up, for a thing that we can only defend against with scheduling.”

“I am  good at scheduling…” Planner admitted.  “But even I refuse that risk.”

Nate made a grunt of discontent.  “I don’t like it.  It means our only source of points is back in the Burbs, and that means facing new shit we won’t be prepared for.”  He shook his head, looking like he was irritated at the whole situation.  “But fuck, you’re not wrong.  We should at least get what we can out of the solution, though.  Planner, you wanna open up invitations to anyone who wants another point?”

“Already asking.”  Planner’s tentacles relaxed.

The camraconda at the table shifted back and forth, looking for a more comfortable position. “I have no stake in this.”  Knife-In-Fangs reminded them.  “Though does anyone else find it strange that we seem immune because we have no arms?  The disease also carries a fever, which my people are very  bad at managing.  Is it weird?”

“It’s weird.”  Marcus confirmed.  “But, like, sanity check.  You’re made out of cables and are from a dungeon?”

“I am!”  Knife-In-Fangs gave a much less strenuous nod.  “Any of those things could prevent camraconda infection.”

Charlie shook his head.  “Not the dungeon life part.  Ratroaches got it too, and if anything it was worse for them.”

Spreading his arms out over the table, James got their attention.  “So, specifics aside, we’re okay purging this?  No need to loop carriers or anything, especially not now that we’re short on people?”  He got a series of affirmatives.  “Alright.  What’s next?  We’ve got Morocco, New York, Priority Earth, and bizarre hypnotic plant life eating power plants.”

“I love this job.”  The words from Marcus were probably meant to go unheard.

“Serious talk; what are we supposed to do about a missing city?”  Knife-In-Fangs asked.  “We already have a missing city, and we don’t know what to do with it.  We didn’t cause it.  The national government knows about it.  Let it be their problem.”

Nate let out a grunt.  “My prep cook is right.”  He said.  “Pretty much all we can do there is be creeped out all the time.”

“We could at least find it.”  Charlie said.  “Get some of the programming emeralds started on making code that looks for where cities are supposed to be?  Or just have Recovery use their free time looking for holes in surveillance or road networks?”

“When you say ‘Recovery’s free time’, it makes me know that you don’t know what they do all day.”  Marcus said.

“Touché.”

James tried not to laugh.  “Okay, so, I think Charlie has a good point.  We do  want to know where it is, at least, because the more information we have on shit like this the better.  Code emeralds are a good investment for almost no time on our part, so let’s start there.  Planner,  can-“

“Done.”  The infomorph looked about as smug as a spatially folded half-octopus could.

“Okay.  New York.”  James said, already shaking his head.  “What are we doing about this?  We’re no closer to answers than we were a month ago, we don’t seem to be actually stopping the pillars, or whoever else is involved, and… I can’t even say things are getting worse?”

Nate shook his head. “They’re not.  They’re the same as they were at the start.  And I mean, the same .  The spyware we have in the employee records of some of the places that got hit shows they just replaced everyone almost right away, and nothing changed.  If I didn’t know what was going on, I’d just think they had some turnover.  Or that there was a weird horror show playing out in slow motion.”

“Cool.  Cool cool cool.”  James did not think it was cool.  “Nate, help me out here.  What the fuck are we supposed to do about this?  I’d been hoping this would be our way in to learn about pillar shit, but the closest we got was a copy of Camille who we haven’t seen since.  Actually, everyone  get in on this.  What is our damn objective in New York?”

“…stopping the murdering?”  Marcus asked.  “I thought that was kinda obvious.  That’s what we do, right?”

Charlie gave a stare to the ceiling tiles.  “That, and gathering information, so we can make better choices.”

“Yeah, kid,” Nate said the word and James tried not to bristle as his brain instantly told him he was being talked down to, ”sometimes intelligence takes time.  Sometimes it never works.  We can be making no progress, and still be in the right place.  And we are picking up leads and contacts.  Not to mention getting some good hands on training for the rogues.”

“So… what, just keep on keeping on?”  James asked.

“Persistence!”  Knife-In-Fangs said with a fanged grin and a laughing series of hisses that overlapped the spoken words.  “Though it is a bad feeling to be unable to help.”

“Yeah, well, you don’t really blend in.”  Nate spoke with his characteristic lack of tact.

Knife-In-Fangs slumped slightly.  “I would be good at a stakeout. I am very patient.  And no one can escape me.”

“Not a bad point.  We should maybe get some camraconda backup over there, if we’re going to keep up normal operations.”  James said.  “If anyone is interest-“

“Yes!”  Knife-In-Fangs leapt at the opportunity.

Planner ruined their dreams.  “If any uninjured camracondas are interested in beginning rogue training, or assisting with active operations, I will have a list for you by the end of the day.”

“Get it to Ben.”  Nate said dismissively.  “I don’t run the roster.”  Planner gave him an assenting tentacle wave.  “So.  Speaking of things we’ve picked up from New York.  Priority Earth.  Any thoughts on that?”

“Isn’t Malcom and his FBI secret cabal supposed to be handling that?”  James asked.  “I’ll be honest, I kinda figured by the time I woke up from my temporary coma, they’d have solved it by now.”  He looked through the notes Planner had given him for anything on Priority Earth, and came up weirdly empty.  “Wait, hang on.  We’re watching them, right?”  Nate nodded at him.  “Okay, so, what the fuck are they doing ?  If whatever hit they took in New York is done, and they aren’t back there, are they just… lurking around their compound, doing nothing?”

“Yup.”  Nate said blandly.

“Uh…” Marcus looked around the table, looking as confused as James felt.  “Why?”

Planner hissed.  “Yes, very inefficient.”

“Yeah, also, we got what we wanted from the Wolfpack when we started copying their teleporter.”  James said.  “I’m not saying we stop paying attention, or have a contingency plan, but what the fuck is the current version of Priorty Earth doing?”

“Nothing.”  Nate said.  And then he tapped the table, underlining his words.  “And that’s why we should be watching them.  Something happened  to those fuckers.  There was a group of ecoterrorists that wrecked some civil infrastructure and trapped me in a cocoon, and they are not the same people as the people living in their cabins.  Something fucked is going on in that place, and I want to know what.”  He said it with the tenor of a man who had no eyebrows, and a mild grudge about it.

“I have an option for us.”  Charlie said.  “If we’re okay taking a risk.”

“Sure, what’s up?”  James focused on the injured man.

Charlie pulled up the paper he had on the new teleporter.  “Well, they keep guards, but they have routines.  Why don’t we just steal the cabins when they’re asleep?”

James fought back a wide eyed series of blinks.  His brain had been so focused on the idea of using the teleporters to commandeer global shipping that he hadn’t even considered grand theft building.

It felt like a terrible idea.  Like it was opening a can of worms that could never be shut again.  The Order dipping their toe into a world of magical alpha strikes that weren’t compatible with a healthy civilization.

But then, that was kind of where they already were.  That was literally why they had a growing strength infomorph cloaking their buildings, and why a good chunk of their operations took place in a city no one remembered.  Also, so far, James instincts for being cautious with magic use had almost always been wrong, and it had been nothing but to the Order’s benefit to keep using magic to do bigger and dumber things.

Distributing anti-cancer potions and orbs, building apartments and hospitals that defied space, running a magical civil peace unit, all of it was just… going pretty well.  No matter how terrified James was that something was going to go wrong, they kept putting out vulnerabilities to the world as a show of good faith, and being rewarded by having the operations run…

Well, “smoothly” would be a fucking lie. But they ran.  They got stuff done.  It was working.

“Stealing buildings sounds like a really stupid idea .”  James found himself saying.  “And I kinda love it.  If nothing else, we can hit the cabin they had the antimemed closet in, and secure the magical blueprints, plus all the other useful intelligence material in the form of records and notes there.  But that should maybe be a contingency plan?  Like, we could fire that off if we ever see the FBI making moves toward that place.  Or if Harlan shows up to collect their army.”

“Right, the Wolfpack.”  Charlie shook his head.  “Any value talking to them?”

“Oh, sure.”  James shrugged lightly.  “Harlan was fine .  Like, I wanna be clear about this.  Harlan was a fucking asshole, and a bad person, and I would never want them in charge of anything.  They have almost certainly been paid to kill innocent people.  But also they didn’t lie to us, and they’re open to making fair deals.  And I see no evidence the Wolfpack is any different, just that the ones up in Alaska are borked somehow.”

“And Harlan knows where they are.”  Charlie pointed out.

“Do they?”  Marcus asked with sudden curiosity.  “Because… didn’t they wipe their memory of James, as a whole?  Wouldn’t that include the coordinates?”

James shook his head.  “I wrote it down for them.  Though they could have lost it?   So maybe?  Also, we need an official stance on the memory bullets.”

“Agreed.”  Nate said.  “Kinda hard to do mass testing with them, since they need to kill to respawn, and they fuck up infomorphs.  Reed and Nik were fucking going off about using skulljack stored memories to loop optimized bullets, and I think I understood, but also they hadn’t found anyone to test it with.  I’ve got a Climb run coming up though, I’ll be taking a mag of the things and seeing if I can get us a test supply.  But until Research tells us they aren’t causing brain damage, I say we don’t fuck with them.”

“I like that plan!”  Marcus agreed instantly.  Charlie and Knife-In-Fangs looked slightly disappointed, but both of them had part of Planner in their brains anyway and so they were exempt from making more memory bullets to begin with.  “We end up with some messed up stuff, huh?”  The young man asked, fiddling with one of the pins on his jacket.

“Alright.  Home stretch.”  James took a deep breath.  “That coal power plant, and the hypno-flower.  What’re we thinking?”

“Nuke it.”  Nate said without hesitation.

A chorus of disagreement met him, especially from Planner  of all people.  “No, no!”  The infomorph twitched their tendrils in frustration, as everyone else deferred to them to speak.  “The creature may be alive, we should not simply kill it for being different!”

Knife-In-Fangs hissed out a laugh while he replied to that.  “I doubt Nate cares it is different.  He wants to kill it for entirely personal reasons.”

“Well, veto on those too.  If I can put my personal shit aside, so can you.”  James told Nate bluntly, and got a look of grudging respect back.  “I say we leave it, for a number of reasons I didn’t count before starting this sentence.  One, having a place that’s only safe for people with a properly tuned infomorph seems like a good fallback.  Two, it didn’t kill anyone .  I don’t think I can stress this enough; the Priority Earth document on taking out that power plant was from years ago, and none of the people in those pods died.  I haven’t heard from Deb on any of them yet, so I dunno if there’s long term side effects, but anything that can store a human for that long without killing?  We should absolutely study that.   Hell, we’ve got the money now, thanks to Texture-Of-Barkdust and our abuse of our matter replicator, we should hire every botanist and geneticist we can get our hands on.  Three… I mean, it’s a non-lethal mass weapon that we can deploy via teleporter.”  Marcus and Charlie looked two different shades of appalled by the words, but Nate made a low grumble of recognition.  “And four, it is a cool new form of life.  And making friends with new forms of life is, like, what we do.  I dunno if it’ll work since it’s a plant that doesn’t seem to talk to anyone, but we can find out! ”

“I would like to add to your note on study that it is also a heavy memetic effect, and yet, it does not have a presence in my world.”  Planner noted.  “It is either entirely physical, or its informorph form is contained within itself quite tightly.  Which I personally find interesting.”

“Yeah.  And, to be clear, we’re not the group that decides if we study it or make friends with it or date it.”  James said, waving a hand.  “We just need to decide how to be safe  about it.  And I, personally, think we should hit all the other Priority Earth sites, make sure that this isn’t a fluke, rescue everyone we can, and go from there.”

“Oh, we can recruit from the people we rescue.”  Marcus noted cheerfully.  “We do that, right?”

“Yeah, we do that.”  Nate rubbed at his bald forehead, sounding exhausted.  “Fine.   Fine .  But if it tries to eat me again I’m fucking setting it on fire.”

“Noted.”  Planner sounded like they were as close to laughing as they ever got.

James nodded, satisfied, and feeling the tension fading as the end of the meeting approached rapidly.  “Alright.  So.  Keep watch on the New York and Priority Earth situations, set up two teleporters for contingency plans for the Library and the one Priority Earth cabin, explore the Priority Earth targets and study the magical flora, purge the wizard plague, find the Underburbs, ask our FBI contact for a favor, reunite a bunch of people with their families, recruit more delvers, find Morocco but ignore it, anything else?”

“That is a succinct summary.”  Planner complimented him.  “I believe that is all that is needed for now.”

“Alright.  So hey, I know who’s on a few of these things, but what should I be doing?”  James asked.  “Like, what specific task should I take?”

Nate clapped a hand on his shoulder hard enough that his bones rattled as the big man walked behind him.  “Nothing.”  He said.  “And I know you won’t do nothing, but take some downtime.  Hang around the Lair, do an easy delve or two, help a few people, solve some problems.  We’ll have a new big thing for you soon enough.”

“Are you telling me to relax and unwind by going on dungeon delves?”  James asked, jokingly incredulous.

Nate’s eye roll was almost audible it was so dramatic.  “Yes.”  He said bluntly.  “Now, everyone get to work.”

After everyone else had filtered out of the room and Planner had retrieved the bits of themselves that had been briefly displayed as pages of notes and issues to address, James stood leaning on the floor to ceiling window, staring out over a chaotic, messy, inefficient, and yet alive  human city.  He briefly wondered what it said about him that he felt more comfortable exploring a slightly deadly magical office than he felt exploring the streets of a place like this.

“Dammit.”  He muttered begrudgingly.  “Nate’s right .  I’m gonna go find Arrush and Alanna and see if they wanna go to the Library tonight.”