Chương 161: CDM 3, Chapter 37: Mandatory Training

"I really don't like this theory," Enforcer de Saint said when I told her about my discussion with Agent Porter the previous night. We were on duty in the RAID room and had just finished our start-of-shift checklist.

"You see a flaw?" De Saint shook her head.

"No, I don't see any flaws. That's why I don't like it. That whole concept is terrifying."

"Because it could be accurate."

"Yes, but worse than that, what other time bombs did the system introduce? Latent viruses are pretty scary in their own right, but that's something that we already understand. We knew viruses existed. We knew how they worked. If we only recently figured out how to detect active mana, could we be missing something else?" I didn't have anything to say to that. De Saint continued speaking, but her out-of-focus gaze made it seem more like she was thinking out loud rather than holding a conversation.

"The ghost salamander you found was believed to be hibernating. That was the only way to explain why no one had seen it despite its apparent age. There are desert toads that do something similar. They can live underground for years and not wake up until heavy rain comes. Then they breed like crazy.

"Wolbachia bacteria infect numerous bugs. In fruit flies, the infection makes them more fertile, sometimes radically so. Then all sorts of creatures base their reproduction on photoperiodism without bacteria being involved. Photoperiodism means their behaviors change when days are light for longer. When days get longer, they get more fertile."

"Oh," I said.

"Yeah, any of those situations with monsters is bad."

"Really, really bad. If any of that is true, I doubt we'll react quickly enough to do anything about it."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"The United States didn't ban lead paint until 1978. The Lead Industries Association lobbied the hell out of it."

"Ha.

'Big Lead.'" De Saint turned to me.

"Do you know when other countries started to ban it?"

"Oof. Umm… 1950s, and that guess is based on absolutely no knowledge of this whatsoever."

"Austria, Belgium, and France banned it in the early 1900s. Germany banned the use of lead interior paints in 1930."

"Christ," I said.

"That's a whole generation of Americans that didn't have to be exposed."

"Yep. With that kind of timeline, we'll have to wait for about as long as the gates have been open for a response to go into effect."

"We can't be the first people to think of this."

"Nope," de Saint replied.

"That's the other fun thing about situations like this. Someone, somewhere, always knows it's a problem decades before action is taken. Tobacco, PFAS, Red Dye No. 3." I had only just sat down to begin my shift, and I already wanted to go for a walk to clear my head.

"Should we tell Enforcer Chapman?" de Saint asked.

"I emailed her last night and gave her a rundown of my EPA convo. She's not sure how much further she can push the CDM's response. Getting them to put current precautions in place was pretty difficult from what I understand."

"Fair." Our conversation lulled. We each had a few privacy blackouts to adjust and harvest sites to scan for potential issues.

"Shit!" de Saint said abruptly. I nearly jumped out of my chair at the outburst.

"What's wrong?"

"Drakes and salamanders are moving south more than ever before, right?"

"That seems to be the case. Domestic Dungeons scraping backs that up, doesn't it?"

"It does. Guess what often motivates species to expand beyond their usual habitat?" I sighed.

"Overpopulation."

"The kids can't find enough food because there are too many mouths already, so they range farther than their parents ever did."

"Cool. More good news." De Saint stood.

"Do you want tea from across the street? I need to stretch my legs." Damn. That was a good excuse that I wished I had thought of.

"Yes, please," I answered. She nodded, already lost in her thoughts, and stepped outside. My phone buzzed. When I saw the text was from Beth, my chest clenched. She had reached out to me in distress so many times that my stress spiked every time she sent me an unexpected message. I hadn't realized that was happening until right then. Stacking that stress on top of the dread de Saint's theories had stirred up made it all the more stark.

"Nad-Nade is unhappy. They said our upload cadence has been too slow, and not being flexible about this photoshoot didn't help. I think they're implying our sponsorship is in danger as a way to 'motivate' us to play along." Losing that revenue stream would hurt. That money hadn't been coming in for all that long, but we quickly got used to having those funds available. If that disappeared, we would have to refactor all sorts of plans, namely the guild hall buildout.

I felt guilty enough already about how little I was able to contribute to that relative to what Nathan had spent.

"Chrissy suggested they hire models to represent the Divas since no one would know the difference."

"That's less gross, but I'm still opposed to our brand being tied to UnderDome."

"When is our next Diva hunt?"

"I don't know. We're 'off' tomorrow but have wilderness training. Maybe we could find something for Sunday? Idk."

"How should we handle this?" If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. My mind was too cluttered to think. Having all these thoughts in my head at the same time was like needing scratch paper, but every inch of the paper I had was already full.

"Can we talk about this later? I need to focus on my work."

"Yeah. I should be doing the same." Maybe Enforcer McDouglas had leads for us. That could solve the Diva content problem. The material he gave us for the Over-the-Rhine hunt was equivalent to at least a month of our own research, and a decent chunk of that intel came from sources we couldn't access. His phone went right to voicemail. Since no one listened to those, I hung up and emailed him. An automatic out-of-office reply said that he wouldn't be back until next Thursday.

He hadn't mentioned having to go out of town, but then again, how much of the Unsung Heroes' work could be formally scheduled? Very little, I imagined. He could be running an S gate right then for all I knew. De Saint and I had already reviewed the RAID-flagged monster sightings. They were all associated with known SOCs, but pillaging a tiny goblin nest would be boring for viewers, especially if I used voidwood to kill the majority of them before they were even in sight.

No compelling tips had come in through the Diva email; nothing better than small goblin nests already known to the EPA. Bugbears were still active in West Virginia. That could turn into a long road trip, and we learned from watching the EPA work that bugbears were highly nomadic. By the time we got to a place where bugbears were reported, they could be long gone. A harpy nest at the southern edge of West Virginia was interesting.

Presumably, that type of monster would be slow to relocate their nests, as seemed to be the case with Earth fowl. But a harpy nest in a mountain would be hard to find and even harder to access. That was the whole advantage of being a bird. They could build nests where predators couldn't reach. Fuck. De Saint reappeared and set a cup in front of me.

"What if we leaked Porter's work?"

"Huh?"

"Domestic Dungeons traffic is growing steadily. We could leak this news about Stage 2 viruses and reproduction and force a response."

"I can't think of any instance where leaking material accomplished anything at all," I said.

"No matter what the leak contains, the public doesn't give enough of a shit for anything to happen, and the leakers end up locked in a hole for the rest of their lives." She sipped from her cup.

"I want to say you're being cynical, but I don't have an example to counter that. But what's the alternative? Sit back and watch the world burn down?"

"We're not sure about any of this."

"We don't have to be sure to be concerned. The possibility only needs to be plausible given available evidence. The concern motivates further research."

"I'm not disagreeing with you."

"I know," she said.

"I'm just frustrated."

"We need content for the channel. Maybe we should go to Buffalo to check out the werewolf tip."

"That's a big haystack. I think you made the right call on turning that down. I'll keep thinking too, though–about hunting and about this Stage 2 bullshit."

"Me too." McDouglas had yet to reply to my email, but Chapman sent us the details for the wilderness training he scheduled for us. We drove out to Carlisle, which is near Harrisburg at the center of the state, to meet Guy Asuta at his campground. He had sites for tents as well as RVs and ran a small store that sold camping equipment. Guy had shoulder-length silver hair and a beard to match. He wore a long-sleeved camo shirt and stained blue jeans.

He smoked a cigar as he led the Cold Rollers to a garage next to his shop.

"These days, I help folks get ready to hike the Appalachian Trail," Guy explained.

"Fewer people are taking on the challenge, though. Everyone is scared of Stage 2."

"How long have you been doing that?" Nathan asked.

"Twenty-something years. Was a Ranger before that."

"Aw hell ya," Hornby said.

"Army man?" Hornby nodded.

"Giago too."

"Benny always had good taste." He lifted the garage door. I had expected to see a bevy of outdoor survival gear–tents, sleeping bags, canteens, machetes, firestarters, inflatable rafts–but Guy's garage was just like any other garage I had ever seen. Miscellaneous boxes were stacked here and there, and a disorganized workbench ran the length of the back wall. He pointed at a few folding chairs while he pinned a map to a corkboard. We took the hint, and each unfolded chairs on our own.

Despite the chill, Guy left the garage door open so he could keep smoking the cigar and not bother us with the smoke. The open door didn't help nearly enough.

"The nice thing about y'all working domestically is that we got a lot of maps to work with," Guy began.

"Before we do anything in the field, we are going to learn to read all the maps we can get our hands on. Nature is always unpredictable, but since you're going to be off-trail for hunts, digging into these will save ya all sorts of headaches." He stepped back to reveal a topographic map of the Carlisle area, a sort of wood-grain design representing changes in elevation. The town itself was relatively close to sea level, with mountains rising to the north, west, and south.

I was struck by how the Appalachian Mountains looked like one big, long smear cutting through the state and into West Virginia.

"Nature never sits still," he continued.

"Never forget that. A good rain could change something big, and folks sometimes get lost when they run into something that wasn't on the map. They think they're in the wrong place and get themselves all kinds of confused. GPS is an easy solve for that, but that shit is cheating. We don't cheat in this house." Guy pointed to one of the lines on the map.

"Most basic thing to remember is that the gaps between lines represent a change in elevation, but make sure you check the map key. Different map keys use different contour intervals because cartographers are assholes, so make sure you're using the right distance. If it's 40 ft between intervals, but you think it's 75, you're screwing yourself. From there, the closer the lines are, the steeper the grade." He unfolded another map and pinned it to the board.

It covered the same area as the first and topographical lines but added an assortment of textures, colors, symbols, and markings.

"This is an orienteering map. If you don't know what orienteering is, it turns getting unlost into a sport. We're going to learn other kinds of maps first, but these babies are great if you can get your hands on them.

"A good orienteering map accounts for the runnability of an area. Tells you how thick vegetation is, where big boulders are, old fences, whatever–anything that might get in your way and slow you down. You won't always have all that, but a topographic map should be available just about anywhere. The satellite versions are pretty decent if you're in a pinch." I knew about topographic maps prior to this but had never learned how to read them. I never had the need to, really.

Orienteering, on the other hand, was completely new to me. I didn't know the sport or those types of maps existed. Their value was immediately apparent to me. Even if we never needed to get "unlost," which might have been wishful thinking on my part, the level of detail an orienteering map provided was way more useful than the satellite recon we had been using thus far. Seeing a hunting site ahead of time was helpful, sure, but satellite images didn't interpret anything for us. Orienteering maps did.

I could see the excitement in de Saint's eyes. She was stoked to learn about these maps.

"Here's how we're going to do this," Guy said, pulling a stool out to sit in front of us.

"Learning to navigate keeps you from killin' yourself. Then we'll get into how to keep the Rule of 3s from killin' you. 3 minutes without air makes you dead. If you struggle with that one, nothing here will help you." We laughed.

"If the weather is bad, 3 hours without shelter gets you dead. Then 3 days without water. Then 3 weeks without food. First aid and not being as skittish as a baby deer come before that, but we aren't getting into that stuff here. When we dig into techniques, we will look at the best-case scenario: You still have all your shit. And we'll look at the worst-case scenario: You lost all your shit and one of your dumbass buddies is injured.

"After that, we'll get into the stuff that will keep monsters from killin' you. Tracking, traps, forest combat tactics, all that shit. If you think that's more important than the rule of 3s, you're wrong. Learning those basics will make the monster part a lot easier. Now, I know two of you have been through Army training, but the three of us served with all kinds of idiots. Some of those idiots get promoted and teach shit like wilderness survival.

If what I tell you is counter to what one of your instructors taught you, do it my way. I promise ya, they were wrong." Hornby and Giago, especially, thought that was funny.

"Got any questions, or can I keep talking?" he asked. Nobody spoke or raised a hand. Most of us were still taking notes on what he had shared already.

"Good start," Guy said and turned to continue the lesson.