Chương 176: CDM 3, Chapter 52: Video Archives

We arrived at the dungeon surge an hour and a half after it had begun. For the people on the ground sheltering in their homes, that was an eternity. The early concentration of gnolls marauding through the town and its college campus spread out, and the initial feeding frenzy turned into small but separated packs. Some of the humanoid hyenas broke into homes looking for food and entertainment in the form of civilian victims. Other packs, having eaten their fill, sought shelter.

Even dungeon monsters had limits to how long they could maintain the pace of a fight. At some point, they had to sleep. The smarter gnolls looked for ways out of the town first, but several of the monsters chose the nearest unlocked sheds and detached garages to curl up in. A little less than half of the total surge was dead before we arrived. Local crawlers saved dozens of lives by arming up immediately and taking to the streets. Then Blast Furnace arrived thirty-some minutes later.

They had a goblin call nearby and were luckily able to get to Grove City more quickly as a result. When we arrived, a few homes were on fire, and the fire department was waiting for an escort or the all-clear to go in and fight them. Several streets were clogged by car accidents. None of them looked particularly catastrophic, but a pack of gnolls suddenly popping out of the bushes was enough to make any person jump.

So, people driving at the time hit parked cars, three telephone poles, two fire hydrants, and one Honda Civic, which went through the front wall of a laundromat. Nathan wanted to get a photo of it for r/yinzhittinbilldins, but the car had been removed by the time we finished our work. 63 civilians were killed by the surge. Naturally, the homes closest to the gate got the worst of it. Whole families were shredded by teeth and claws, and we saw evidence of people attempting to hide in closets and under beds.

Gnolls had exceptionally keen senses of smell, so we found scratches and blood where a door had been ripped open, or a person had been dragged away, all evidence that someone had tried and failed to hide. Seeing desperate human claw marks in wood and walls among the damage wrought by gnoll paws put into focus how outmatched people were when it came to monsters.

We finished the seek and destroy part of our mission in the town in three hours, and then worked until noon the next day chasing down gnolls in the surrounding wilderness. RAID drones made that relatively trivial, but we still had to hike through the forest in order to catch up with our quarry. Hyenas weren't that different from wolves, and wolves ran far faster than we could, so the distance between kills could be substantial.

"Kimmy and I debriefed Chapman," de Saint said when Megan and I returned to the van. Giago and Hornby weren't far behind us.

"She's swamped with post-surge tasks and said we can head home as soon as we've packed up."

"Thanks for taking care of that," Megan replied.

"I'm so freaking tired." Nathan bumped de Saint.

"What?" Megan asked. De Saint gave herself a moment to organize her thoughts before answering.

"The surge looks intentional. The crawlers who bought the gate were actually at home in bed. Chapman thinks someone might have hacked their accounts to make the purchase."

"Weird."

"... and they reported the gate was cleared. CDM enforcers were dispatched to investigate, but there's only one road that passes near where the gate was. They were about 3 miles out when boards with nails were thrown out of the weeds. They didn't have time to miss them. Their tires popped, and the SUV rolled."

"Oh no! Are they okay?" Megan asked. De Saint nodded.

"Beat up but whole." Megan and I were both relieved.

"Hell of a time for dungeon terrorism," Nathan grumbled, the rings under his eyes dark and puffy.

"This looks bad for the RAID program," I said.

"No one will care how understaffed we are. A drone was sitting on this gate, and it still surged?" De Saint nodded.

"Do people lie about clearing dungeons often? Sounds to me like we weren't prepared for a scenario where crawlers told the portal the gate would close, and then no person or automation noticed that the gate was still up."

"Or that no crawlers had gone into the gate at all," Megan added. Nathan shook his head.

"We are so not ready for Stage 2." The Heavenly Rock Baptist Church issued a statement: Fear the Lord thy God. The Lord spoke, and you did not heed his words. Now he is making his anger known. The antichrist convinced world leaders to fund his false utopia. The Mark of the Beast is spreading, and the government wants to give it sanctuary. Internet culture has spawned thousands of false gods and false idols. Sodomy and promiscuity run rampant, and you happily feed children to their champions. Gays are marrying.

Races are mixing. The wicked have corrupted our planet, and our only hope for salvation is to welcome the end times so that our Lord can reign once again. Stand with the righteous, or be struck down with the rest of the sinners. Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon. The message came with a list of dungeon surges from the night before. The Heavenly Rock Baptist Church claimed credit for 9 such incidents across the country.

When I was 18, I held the fanciful notion that I could run away from the church. But that was naive. No one was allowed to opt out. Whether you were a believer or not, the church could reach out and twist up your life. Enforcers Black and Wilson were injured in the car accident and were put on leave. Not only had they been attacked and injured on the job, but they were on duty and should have noticed the false report of the gate being cleared.

Never mind that none of us had ever encountered crawlers lying about finishing runs or that our billion-dollar program didn't automatically flag when the gate was still open despite having "closed." With 41 other gates active at the time, and more than half of them being C-ranked or higher, Black and Wilson missed that one D gate. With 10 other surges happening that night, they weren't the only ones who made mistakes.

Offices around the country with and without RAID setups allowed surges to slip through, and over 600 people were dead as a consequence. Though we hadn't really slept, Megan, de Saint, and I were back in front of the RAID command center as soon as we had showered. The CDM was short-staffed, and at least one terrorist group sought to turn dungeon gates into weapons of mass destruction.

"Gray, my office, please," Enforcer Chapman said as she passed by. I had seen her tired before, but today she looked positively sickly. Her face was gaunt from lack of sleep, but the pits were deeper. Had she not been eating? I followed her and took a seat.

"You've worked with Intern Ali a good bit," she began.

"What are your thoughts on him?"

"Smart kid. Works hard. He might be really good at faking it, but he has come back from his injury way more optimistic than I ever would be."

"Is he RAID material?" I thought about that.

"What qualities are you looking for?"

"Teachable, organized, comfortable with technology, trustworthy, committed."

"He came back to work after losing an arm, so I'd say he's pretty committed. He's been nothing but attentive when I've spoken to him, and he hasn't given me a reason to believe he is untrustworthy. I can't really speak to his organization or his tech savvy, though. Those aren't as apparent when all I see is how he behaves when he's shadowing."

"Would you have any objections if we moved him to RAID?" Chapman asked.

"One. This program puts a lot of responsibility on small, sleep-deprived teams of people who are still entry-level in terms of skill and experience with this kind of stuff. I think he has promise, but even without the Stage 2 gate messing up his life, I would hesitate to dump that much responsibility on him."

"Don't think he could take it?" I shook my head.

"That's not it. He's capable and is the kind of person I would want to work with. I just don't think it's fair to his development to force him into a hot seat and ask him to perform like an expert CDM veteran with less than 2 months of intern training." Chapman nodded as she considered my words.

"For what it's worth, I also don't think I should make the decision for him," I added.

"He might want this position more than I know, and it's his life, not mine."

"Thank you for the perspective," Chapman replied.

"That was all I needed."

"Can I do anything for you?" I asked.

"No, your plate is already overflowing as it is."

"That was a two-lane question. What about personally? Can I do anything on that front?" Chapman studied me for a moment before taking off her glasses and rubbing the bridge of her nose.

"Can you get me 24 hours of uninterrupted sleep and convince everyone of my bosses and their bosses to have realistic expectations?"

"I was thinking I could go across the street and get you a tea. Maybe a donut too. With sprinkles." Chapman broke into laughter.

"It's all so absurd, isn't it? We constantly hemorrhage talent because we refuse to pay our people better. The ones who stay do the work of two or three people, and then everyone is shocked that a mistake slips through. I need at least 6 more competent bodies on my team. I could get away with 4 if they didn't have to split their time between RAID and field inspections. I mean, your team is the best example. You shouldn't have to be here today. At this point, hunting should be your only job."

"I'm sorry," I said.

"It must be especially frustrating for you."

"Why especially for me?" she asked with her head tilted.

"Because you care and can see all the ways things could be better but aren't able to do anything about it."

"Yes, that is frustrating," she admitted.

"I also shouldn't be dumping my complaints on my team members. Thank you for letting me pick your brain about Intern Ali."

"No problem." When I returned to the RAID command center, I found a cup of tea waiting for me.

"Did you do this?" I asked de Saint.

"Yep."

"Thank you." I uncapped the lid and let the warm, fragrant air waft into my face.

"I don't know if there's enough sugar in the world to keep me awake right now." My phone buzzed. Enforcer McDouglas had texted me. In his usual style, all he did was send me a link to a news article.

"Leaked video shows governor hopeful George Baker killing gate crashers." I clicked. According to the story, a local dungeon podcaster received a hard drive full of video files recorded by George Baker's helmet cam. The podcaster put them online, and now the news was spreading. Once upon a time, Baker had told McDouglas and me that he only recorded his runs occasionally, but this trove of footage proved that was a lie. Baker specifically kept crasher videos as a sort of trophy collection.

"You good, Gray?" de Saint asked. I handed her my phone.

"Oh my God," she gasped.

"If these are fakes, they are really good ones." Naturally, the Baker team had already insisted that the videos were doctored as part of an anti-crawler smear campaign. I didn't doubt their veracity, but the internet was split. That didn't matter, though. It was only a matter of time before each video was connected to gate records and missing persons reports. De Saint returned my phone.

"You were never shy about not liking Baker. Is this why?" I shrugged.

"Right. If it was, you couldn't talk about it." Chapman was on her way out of the office but stopped behind us.

"Enforcer Gray, did you suggest to Intern Ali that he might be a good fit for the investigation team?"

"That does sound like me." She sighed.

"He took that to heart, apparently, and connected with Investigator Dempson somehow."

"Ah, so he can't come work for us?"

"Nope. Dempson is using him and already submitted the request for Intern Ali to join him when his internship concludes." I winced.

"Sorry about that." Chapman shook her head.

"No, don't be sorry. You did exactly what a mentor is supposed to do. If Dempson likes him, then whatever encouragement you gave him was well-placed. Good work."