Chương 170: CDM 3, Chapter 46: Marketing Ethics

"Soooo Nad-Nade sent over the photos from the Underdome shoot," Beth texted. The attachments followed.

"They didn't skimp on the baby oil, huh?" I asked in reply.

"Is it canon that the Divas have implants now?"

"Absolutely not."

"The taller one is obviously you. Maybe you're missing your calling by not modeling."

"When do these get published, and are we back in the good graces of our energy drink overlords?"

"Next week, and it's hard to tell. I'm optimistic."

"Guess we wait and see."

"Hey!" Nathan barked, his head poking through the doorway.

"I'm not paying you to play on your phone, jack ass. How was that? Could I be a foreman?"

"Sounded pretty convincing to me," I replied, picking my paint roller back up.

"Nad-Nade photos came through. Dungeon Divas have bolt-on implants." Nathan laughed.

"Dude, I've always said you would look phenomenal if you went up a few cup sizes." I looked around the apartment. One more wall, and we were officially done painting. Once the floors were down, we could start to move in. The kitchen and common area were still pretty raw, though. Those would take some time, and we still had the whole first floor to build out.

"Looks like a real home, huh?" I asked.

"Sure does. Did I tell you I got a guy who can build the cage for the vault?" I shook my head.

"Hey, Dorion. I got a guy who can build the cage for the vault." Laughing, I replied, "Good to hear."

"He's in the Steamfitter's Union. Knows his shit about welding. He'll basically build the thing from scratch right here."

"Damn. That sounds awesome."

"Legit as fuck, my dude. Legit. As. Fuck." Nathan studied the room for a moment.

"This feels like a dream, doesn't it? Like, this is ours? We live here?"

"You made it happen." A mixing stick–a dry one, thankfully–flew across the room at me.

"Man, you got me here. My mom's passing fucked me up, and you gave me some leeway to spiral for a bit, but not too much. You let me get it out and then reeled me back to stable. This friendship has always been a two-way street, you get me?"

"Yeah."

"Good. Now get back to work. If I wanted to waste money, I would just give it to my ex-wife. How was that for a foreman?"

"Sounded perfect to me," I replied.

"Nice." Nathan stepped away from the doorway. I heard his boots on the bare floor get partway down the hall, pause, and return. He came into the room with his eyes locked on his phone and brought it to me. He hit play on an Instagram video. A man and a woman who were maybe in their 30s were in the middle of the frame, and they both had the fit builds of moderately leveled crawlers.

"Making this video has terrified both of us," the man began.

"My wife and I have been members of the Cowboy Crawlers for 15 years. If you haven't heard of that guild, that's because it's relatively small and based in Wyoming, but the guild itself has been around for 60 years. We love our work and the people we work with, but our lives changed abruptly a few months ago." The woman took over.

"We both have lycanthropy. The virus is active, so, yes, we transform into full werewolves. In the interest of protecting our friends and family, we have moved to an isolated location so there is no chance that we hurt someone. We believe that werewolves can learn to control their different forms, and we can prove it." The video cut to a clip of someone filming a large wolf in a small kitchen. The voice behind the camera sounded like the woman's, and she said, "Say hi to Insta for me, honey."

The wolf looked at the camera and howled before hooking the fridge door with its nose and popping it open. When the door closed again, the wolf had a whole ham in its mouth.

"Are you going to share?" she asked. The wolf shook his head.

"If you're really my husband, turn 180 degrees." The wolf rotated in place, putting his wagging tail in the camera.

"Okay, good. Now turn back." And the wolf did. The footage cut to the couple.

"We believe that lycanthropy is manageable and can exist within a safe, functioning society," the man said.

"We are not disclosing our location, but if you or a family member is struggling with lycanthropy and you fear for their safety or the safety of others, let us know. We are building a community where werewolves and their families can thrive, and that means keeping us safe from people who would hurt werewolves for being different." A URL flashed across the bottom of the screen.

"That sounds pretty smart to me," I said. Nathan nodded.

"Would be awesome if they prove lycanthropy doesn't have to be dangerous. Like, I don't give a shit that you turn into a dog. I give a shit if you eat me."

"Or your cows."

"Correct. No eating anything that doesn't belong to you, people or otherwise. Do that? We're cool."

"Agreed." This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version. Nathan was about to walk away, but paused again.

"Do you have time later to give me a hand? I need to pick up the cabinets for the kitchen."

"Yeah, sure. I thought those were out of our price range right now, though."

"Lucked into a good set from Habitat for Humanity." I stared at Nathan, dumbfounded.

"What?"

"We're stealing cabinets from a nonprofit that builds homes for people?"

"Fuck, dude. No." Nathan started laughing.

"They have these stores where they sell damaged or flawed products from the big box home improvement stores. Usually they've got like a single scratch or some shit, but if you can live with it, you save a ton of money." I laughed in return.

"Okay, yeah, sure. I'll help you with the cabinets."

"Good. When we're done with that, we're going to rob a soup kitchen and kidnap a seeing-eye dog." I shut the door to Enforcer McDouglas' office and sat. He wore an ash gray polo today.

"Wraith's Touch is a son of a bitch, isn't it?" he mused.

"I was not a fan." McDouglas chuckled.

"I'm sorry about the wisps. We heard they might be in the area, but I wouldn't have sent you if I thought for a second there was a nest of them."

"I know."

"You made the right call, hauling ass, by the way. We cleared out seven of the bastards."

"I wasn't really part of making that call."

"Right. Because of the Wraith's Touch."

"You said 'nest,'" I pointed out.

"Is that just an easy way to say a group of them, or do you mean they breed?"

"Wisps reproduce. They are far closer to being corporeal organisms than, say, a wraith or a banshee. We don't know anything about how that works, but we do know that two will become three and continue multiplying from there."

"Damn."

"And here's a question I never expected to ask: Do you drive an ice cream truck now?" I nodded.

"Yep."

"So that's your actual vehicle. That's what you drive each day now?"

"Yeah."

"Uncle Gray continues to surprise," he said, laughing.

"Does it still play music?"

"Oh, definitely."

"Incredible." After a pause to let the moment settle, his demeanor shifted.

"I need to talk to you about Martin Kielar." Great.

"Do you have any theories about who killed him?" McDouglas asked.

"I'm not buying that this El-Tijani Bashir did it."

"I was starting to think you guys did it." And no way was I mentioning Frank. His eyebrow shot up.

"You thought we assassinated a crawler?" I shrugged.

"You mentioned 'putting down' crawlers that went crazy."

"What would we gain from this, and why would we do it out in the open like that?"

"Other than knowing he was a dick, I don't have any ideas about motive. The investigation was looking like a high-level crawler. That's all."

"Listen, I'm not sad he's gone," McDouglas said, "but no, this wasn't us."

"Do you think I had something to do with it?"

"Not directly, but somehow Uncle Gray is always involved when weird shit goes down. I thought maybe you knew or heard something." I shook my head.

"I always thought it was weird the assassin used such a unique bow, but I don't even have a theory about who might have really done it." McDouglas looked into my eyes as if searching for clues that I might be lying.

"Well, damn. I was hoping you had something."

"All due respect and whatnot, but why do you care about finding who did it?"

"A high-level badass is out there who has demonstrated both the skills and the willingness to hurt people. Despite how we might feel about Kielar, that person is still a murderer, and they are also really fucking good at it. Like you said, the bow choice was so specific that it should have been an easy case. Instead, no one found shit. It's like the killer picked the bow as a sort of taunt."

"They arrested Bashir and recovered the bow," I said.

"I know. Bashir is strong enough to have done it, but I'll send you his resume. Take a look at it, and you tell me if the Kielar shot sounds like him."

"Alright."

"That was why I wanted to speak with you, that and to say good work with the wraiths."

"May I ask a question?" McDouglas gestured for me to continue.

"When is the next round of leveling?"

"I know you're hungry, but you've already skipped half a dozen 'mandatory' steps. Give the Rapid Response work a few months and try to forget leveling for a bit. It will come around but never as fast as you want it to."

"Yes, sir." When I returned to my desk, I shoveled through my emails. Very few of them were directly actionable, but I still wanted to be aware of developments and changes elsewhere in the CDM. For example, my involvement in black market and smuggling investigations was limited to training the AI image detection algorithm. I wasn't looking for leads or picking out suspects, but I saw value in staying in the loop.

A dash of selfish curiosity might have been in there too, but the majority of my motivation was strictly professional. In pursuing local leads, the CDM had uncovered evidence of a national black market that implicated local guilds like the Allegheny Dungeon Extractors and Dungeon Industries Inc., as well as national operations like the Dungeon Delvers Guild. Though crawl teams seemed to be the most frequent offenders, at least a few guild higher-ups weren't afraid to break the rules if a big profit was to be had.

That blight slime I found early in my career was one such instance. Harvesting, transporting, and selling that kind of dungeon resource came with expensive handling processes and rigorous documentation requirements. If a guild simply chose not to report harvesting such a material, they stood to make a huge, non-taxable profit. As I finished that email chain, the background information on El-Tijani Bashir that McDouglas promised to send appeared in my inbox. I skimmed through it.

Leveled to 10 with the Sudanese Special Forces, the legal max level for soldiers according to the Geneva Convention. He re-upped for 8 years but went AWOL in year 6. Since then, he had been linked to a number of criminal organizations known for drug and human trafficking. At a glance, I counted 15 murders where Bashir was the primary suspect. Oh, I saw exactly why McDouglas was skeptical.

Witness accounts and surveillance footage suggested he used an ironwood bow for most of his career and graduated to silverwood within the last 3 years. No reports mentioned enchantments, and no reports mentioned voidwood. I didn't know if I was a good example of a typical archer or not, but I know that I for sure would not want to switch bows, especially for what was an "impossible" shot. On top of that, Frank had described running voidwood as requiring a different mentality entirely.

After using one for a bit, I had to agree. Not only was an archer unlikely to abruptly switch bows, but they also weren't likely to switch to one with such a radical difference in handling.

"Gray," de Saint called from the RAID command center. I pushed my chair away from the desk and went to see what she needed. Her RAID screen showed two bugbears sitting at the edge of a clearing with their bows.

"I think they're hunting game," de Saint said.

"I already checked, and the EPA doesn't have an SOC for this area."

"Where is this?"

"A few miles west of Parker Dam State Park." That was where we went to watch the EPA hunt bugbears. Was this a different tribe, or had their cull missed some bugbears after all?

"I don't know where the nest is," de Saint added.

"We have a second drone en route, so I can scout with one and keep eyes on these two."

"I guess we send it to Chapman and see what happens."

"Already did." Enforcer Chapman came out of her office with a messenger bag over her shoulder.

"The rest of the team is getting called in as we speak. We should get going too." So the hunt was on.