Chương 76: Cracks

Addy In a room that felt empty, there sat a tanuki on a bench in a changing room, listlessly. An old TV show played across her interface, the lasers and drama not enough to drown out the silence. It was a physical thing, this silence. It was a drill boring through her skull, the noise growing and growing until finally with a snap! she shot to her feet. Her eyes were bloodshot, her heart was thundering. She was in the changing room adjacent to the sports field, having dozed off mid-break. Sleep paralysis.

Ever since that night when Addy woke up in a dark place surrounded by the panicked sounds of fae, she couldn't sleep, not for longer than an hour at a time. She only needed two, or four every other day, but the memory was eating her alive. Fear. Was she afraid that her body could be puppeted around at night again, despite Clem's potion? That's part of it. Months had passed, and Clem was making more of them at an industrial scale; a good third of the werefolk Custodians on campus were inoculated.

Yet, in spite of every type of preparation, alchemical ingredients were still disappearing, if less frequently than before. Pixies were just that slippery, and volunteers for standing guard during the semester were few and far between. She rolled over onto her back, staring at the ceiling. The TV show was paused. Her mind hovered over a folder filled to the brim with pictures. Even though she knew it would hurt, she opened them with a mental click.

And there she was, a happy girl smiling at the camera; tall, lanky, with cheeks made for laughing. Addy always thought that next to her, she either looked positively morose or perpetually pissed off.

"We're like ice and cream, like the plus and minus on a battery," Sam had said.

"There's a tension there that wants to be resolved, like so. Zap!" And then she'd bopped Addy on the nose, not realizing how the ice cream in her other hand had just flopped onto the ground. I miss you. Her mind returned to the scene of a man made of plastic delivering Sam's backpack, complete with a bawling gnome. There was a splatter of blood. He'd said some words that never registered in her brain as she tried and failed to understand that the best person to ever happen to her might very well be dead.

How dare you? It was their fault. Not just some pactmaker, though she'd make him pay his dues soon enough. Everyone. The wizards, Custodians, none of them cared about making the world a better place, none of them tried, not as much as she did. Maybe it was too much to expect the world to change in a day. But it had been three months. The Free Poker League was alive and kicking, self-sufficient by nature of its grassroots design.

She knew distantly that Orianna and Becca did most of what little managing was necessary. But the organization lacked fangs; it was full of wet noodles content to stay wet and noodley. That was also by design. It was a place to relax and mingle, not to rail against society. It still felt like treason. They could at least have shown some gratefulness to their founder, but no, associations with murderers were bad for your image.

Even if in Addy's opinion, saving the world would be so much easier with a bit of murder here and there. After the trial, none of the lodges bothered picking a bone, too cowardly to press this issue. After the sleepwalking issue was 'resolved', they left it at that, and awfully quickly too. They didn't like their boat rocked. Tinkerers were wizards after all. It would be bad to get on the bad side of your arms merchants. The cabals were useless slobs. The professors were either a Fowl, or they were in on it too.

The Fowls had a majority stake in professors and deans at the Madagascar Academy for decades now. They determined who gained tenure and who didn't long before Addy even caught a whiff of Academy air. There was a distant commotion, a cheer. The dim light in the changing room shook. [Timer up. Back on the ice, big girl!] She grabbed her hockey stick so hard it nearly splintered. It didn't matter if you had the bigger stick if nobody allowed you within range to use it. It was up to you to brook that distance.

As in hockey, so in life: the only way forward was to break through. I'll just do every-fucking-thing myself then. +++ Becca Down in the storage of alchemical ingredients under the Academy, I was busy being a block of cinnabar. Blocks of cinnabar didn't do much. They could do very little for a long, long time, until someone tried to steal them that is. It got boring, waiting for the right moment for weeks on end.

I entertained myself through video streams and online feeds, viewed through a camera in a hollow in my blocky being.

Rebecca Polluck [Mimic Queen Lvl 21] Body: 112 Sense: 63 Mind: 94 Soul: 88 Free Stat Points: 0 Silver Soulcoins: 299 Average emotion-crystal-core efficiency: 270% (Expand List) Essences (5/5): ERROR I, ERROR II, ERROR III, ERROR IV, ERROR V Passives: [Compressed Mimicry], [Swift Mimicry], [Precise Mimicry], [Tremor Sense] Spells: [Copy Paste - Disgust] Augments: GPS I, Minimap I, Calorie calculator, Scale IV The current stream I was watching followed the semesterly hockey tournament.

The full-contact sport had grown out of a need for a replacement for settling grudges, which used to be carried out in the late 19th and early 20th century through mage duels and students jumping each other in between classes. The modern sport was only a tad less barbaric. I watched an irate Addy yelling at the ref she had cornered behind the goal. The long-term effects of magical angry-herbs in the cafeteria food seem to be worse than anticipated.

Then she picked up the weretapir guy nearly twice her height and tossed him into a stand selling poutine and fried pickles, to much general shock, then cheering, jeering, and laughter. Or maybe that's just normal for Addy. I wished that I could tell Addy all about their super secret plan, but she'd been sleepwalk-abducted once before. The risk was too great. Addy didn't know that we, The Free Poker League, had organized in the shadows.

We had ranks, codes, and we were this close to cracking what was possibly the biggest case of fraud the Society has seen in a decade. For that, secrecy was paramount. Nobody would look at a bunch of novice Custodians playing cards and think that they were plotting plots and planning the downfall of ne'er do wells. And oh the wonders one could make with a bunch of idle, angry, and mentally augmented Custodians while nobody was looking.

You could come up with elaborate traps for one, and adopt an entire system of codes on the side. <<This is Queen of clubs to Queen of spades. Queen of spades, status, >> Orianna said via a system message. <<Ten-eight, ten-eight. Spading away, as usual, >> I responded. Still sitting here, waiting. It's what I do best. <<Ten spades is a ten-seven. Seven spades is a ten-seven. >> Translation: The other two traps failed. Pity. I sat there, being cinnabar. It was quite zen.

The desire to move about had been tortuous in the first week, but after buckling down and getting over the hump, that mimic-like part of me… grew quiet. And in its place, I grew content. Today I could be cinnabar, tomorrow a soccer ball. What would I be in a week? A month? A year? The answer was anything. No constraints. No worries. Well, a couple worries, but I couldn't undo Sam's voluntary exile any more than I could eat the damn wizard responsible.

Not in the least because I was just a level 21 Custodian, but also because I didn't have the faintest clue as to what he looked like. Though, that might change if this operation was a success. <<Sooo, once you're done with your mission, how about a visit to Caspers, you and I? >> I blinked in spirit. <<Is that code for something? >> <<No, it is not. You're working hard. I wanted to thank you. >> Oh. That makes sense — is what Sam would think. She's coming on to me. Hard, for a fear monocaster. Why, though?

She's stressed. Needs to get away from the Academy and unwind. We all do, I suppose. Why me? Did she see my cool new robot body? It's still all wires and bones! I haven't had the time to make an outer shell that covers everything. It's not even nice looking! Belatedly, I realized that I'd mentally rested my pointer on the Z-key, making it look like I had fallen asleep on the keyboard. <<Sure, I can do Caspers. Anything else? >> I asked, to which Orianna answered awfully quickly. <<Ten-Ten. Jack of spades, out.

>> +++ A day passed. Then another. Then another. Then, on the forty-second day of our operation… <<Ten-eighteen, ten-eighteen! Queen of spades, reporting contact. >> <<Ten-four, >> Orianna shot back. <<Give us a second, people are stuck in the cafeteria rush. >> <<I don't have a second, I am about to be picked up! >> I was typing nearly as quickly as events were happening. A pixie had found me and, after giving my surface a lick, disappeared in a crack in the floor, only to reappear with a dozen other pixies.

"It's a big one alright," said one of the pixies.

"But that ain't cinnabar. Look, the coloring's off, and the texture gradient— oof!" Another pixie jabbed him in the ribs. He stared at her until she rolled her eyes and whispered something into his ear.

"Oh. Okay. Sure, guess magic does that to cinnabar on other worlds. Weird." The small swarm of pixies picked me up. Under groaning, cursing, and general complaints, they maneuvered my body to the crack, and knocked on the ground seven times in an irregular pattern. The crack widened just far enough to let me through. And then I was in. The drug lab was just how Sam described it: all dim lighting and haphazard conveyor belts.

The pixies deposited me on an awfully small mound of dried and poor-quality herbs and magical doodads before buzzing off somewhere else. Unlike her descriptions, this place was not busy in the slightest. It almost looked abandoned, except for the ugliest leprechaun I'd ever seen sitting at a workbench, doing whatever leprechauns did. I'm in. <<Queen of spades is ten-seventeen. How copy? >> There was no answer. Just as expected, the druglab was shielded against telecommunication.

The system used mundane means for its communication, as telepathy was both vastly more expensive and more vulnerable, hence the tiny Custodian brain implant. The Fowl clones were proof. Their network was at the center of iterative improvement and magi-scientific progress — until it was co-opted for evil. Or… something. Time to find out what that implies. Slowly, I activated my new ability.

[Copy Paste] - Disgust Charges: 7/8 Charge cost: Variable You can reproduce any nonmagical object you have consumed via expunging your own biomass. Biomass cost may be replaced with emotional charge cost, though objects produced with below a minimum amount of biomass used disappear after a period of time. Emotional charge cost depends on the amount of biomass replaced. Object fidelity scales with Sense. Gain an extra charge every [15] Body.

I cut mass equal to 57% of the block of cinnabar off of my body, using the rest to form a scrunched up, and suspiciously heavy ball of paper. The cinnabar block remained where it was, a perfect decoy until someone decided to cut it apart. With any luck, the block of stone would delay discovery of my infiltration. I rolled through the main hall into offices and an awfully small common room, taking note of every speck of dust and scrap of paper.

Who would notice that I ate important-looking documents when I could just replace the thin sheafs of paper with ease? What pixie or gnome would stop and look twice at a ball of paper sitting among office supplies? It was the perfect disguise. Let's see. Inventory registries, notes on pixie insubordination x3, notes on leprechud demands for wages x5, bills for utilities, potion recipes — Clementine might want to have a look at those. I spent another half hour going through everything.

I was only interrupted twice by a pixie buzzing past. My disguise held just fine. Welp. I think this is about it. Only one problem left to solve. This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. I had no way out. Gnomes held absolute sway over who could and couldn't pass through cracks in the wall. The cracks were nearly impossible to find from the outside too. Unless of course you had an inside-slime.

Wrapped within my slimy self was a toy monkey, so small that it could fit on an open palm. He had crossed-out eyes and a shit-eating grin. [Inter-dimensional warbler] A toy monkey holding two cymbals that clap together when activated. Claps warble interdimensionally. Guaranteed very loud to people with eyes to see 'the wobbles' of space time. Price: 150 Soulcoins. Sorry gnomes, this might get uncomfortable. I sat the monkey down and yanked the chain in its back. Its eyes lit up as it went and did its thing.

Its cymbals clashed. For a moment, it just walked in circles, mechanical whirrs filling the air. It walked against a chair leg and tipped over. Instinctively, I turned into the next-best object — a paper ball that had missed the trash can by five feet. I'm totally getting caught because this stupid monkey is taking too long— The wall next to me unzipped. One moment there was brick, the next a giant zipper undid itself with a loud zipping noise from top to bottom of the wall.

The unzipping power belonged to a level 20 vampire Custodian named Kyle. Kyle's whole thing was transporting more combat capable Custodians across tens of kilometers. He'd made his entire build to enable just that. And this little thing would allow him to pinpoint exactly where I was. Here comes the cavalry — huh? I was expecting familiar faces from the Free Poker League, maybe spade five with her orbiting acid balls of disgust, or spade two who could turn his entire body into steel, including his natural claws.

Instead, I got a pair of twins that looked like cyborgs with neon purple and green hair, and a woman with the countenance of something I'd only ever seen in fantasy: red scales, a thick tail that ended in a curved blade, and eyes burning like embers. She was a dragon. Even if I hadn't been a small piece of scrap paper on the ground but instead grown to my full height, I could have comfortably hid in the shadow she threw across the room.

"Zebs, Ledi, secure the perimeter." She gave the orders as casually as one would ask for the bill, and the cyborgs followed her just as naturally. They peeled off, leaving me alone in the room with the dragon woman. I was starting to sweat, metaphorically and physically, as the temperature in the room was starting to rise. She stared at the monkey still walking in circles before her eyes fell squarely on me.

"You there, the piece of paper leaking fear. Reveal yourself." Oh come on, she can see fear? That's just unfair. Who even is she? [Genesis, Custodian Lvl 1] Bullshit. If this woman was level one, then I would voluntarily spend the rest of my life as a horseshoe. The system was hiding her level, much the way it had for Sam. Except level one was… unbelievable. Either it was being incredibly audacious, or the obviously fake level was a warning: don't fuck with this Custodian.

I undid my transformation, growing until I was a slime just about reaching to below her elbows. I didn't have little mass with me, she was just that tall.

"Custodian Rebecca." Her face remained rigid even in confusion. She extended a hand, probably trying to find a shoulder to pat me on. She settled for patting me on the top of my blob.

"Good job finding the lab. Me and my crew are taking over this investigation."

"What about my team?" I warbled.

"They're on standby, we can offer assistance—""We are taking over," she said more firmly. There was a commotion in the back. The Leprechud and a couple gnomes were being led out, arms tied behind their back with a glowing rope. I stared the draconic woman in the eyes to see if she was serious. She was, one hundred percent.

"... we'll wait outside," I said, immediately sending a message to Orianna once I stepped through the zipper. <<Giant dragon lady crashed our investigation. Thoughts? >> <<... what? >> <<I'll gather more intel. Wait one. >> The dragon lady and her cyborg friends had entered the druglab from some sort of basement. My system GPS told me I was somewhere in southern India. Which couldn't be right. That would imply… One of them is strong enough to teleport a group across over a thousand miles away.

These are definitely some sort of society government spooks. Hey, at least the Society at large is finally taking this whole debacle seriously. That explanation rankled with me. But I had other problems. How do I get back? The nearest teleporter was a hundred miles north. No matter how confident I was in my ability to create a robotic body, running that far without malfunctions was… unlikely. My slime body was slow as heck, and rolling as a ball only worked until I had to go uphill.

Luckily, the trio exited the tear in the wall shortly after. They had secured both the fae workers and the missing alchemical ingredients, or at least what was left of them. The workers were guided through another zipper-tear, and the bag was tossed through a third. Quick, efficient, orderly. I would've stared in awe if it wasn't awfully clear that the dragon woman was herself staring holes in me.

"Am I getting an explanation, or is silence your idea of cooperation?" The dragon woman laughed. It was a toothless laugh, quick and deep.

"Custodian Rebecca, do you think Custodians like being told who they can and cannot help and hinder?" Judging my silence as interest, she leaned in close, producing an odd spiky-looking device.

"This is an emotion spoofer," she said.

"Think of it as a device that can induce one specific emotion in a target. It's much too weak to work on humans, but it can piggyback on digital communications, making it especially dangerous for Custodians. This prototype can induce miscasts up to a hundred feet away, but only after it has already breached the mental firewall. That is what made The Pactmaker so confident to confront us, and why his actions seemed so tinged with fear."

"This is proof?" I asked and she nodded.

"So what now, are we gonna arrest him?"

"No. No arrests. This is treason." She snorted.

"The system can't reward quests against people of earth, and it punishes those who harm them. But that just means you need to find someone who's willing to take that punishment. It is not our place to remove the Jack the Rippers and Hannibal Lectors from polite society, even if we can be ten times more effective than a squad of cops. But we will. Mark my words." She clapped me affectionately on my gooey head.

"Now that that's done, where do you need to go?" she asked.

"Madagascar Academy," I blurted out immediately, before kicking myself. This woman was dangerous, and the less she knew about me and my fellows, the better.

"Oh hey, I went to Madagascar Academy," the green-haired cyborg said.

"Go Winebloods!"

"Ugh, more zippers? This is totally going to give me a migraine later," the purple haired one said. He unzipped the wall — same spell as Kyle — and we walked through and we were right outside the hockey rink. The rink was rebuilt on the lawn outside the Academy main building every year using a variety of magics, Custodian spells, and good ol' fashioned muscle. A game started by one person issuing a challenge to another, followed by people volunteering for either side until a team was filled.

Currently the Winebloods were playing against the Fowls in a student vs faculty exhibition match, a clever ploy by Orianna to keep as many professors as distracted as possible during our operation. Orianna, who was sitting under the bleachers, frozen in place with half a hotdog in her mouth and her hands typing away on an old tablet. Her eyes were wide as I pretended not to see her. Genesis gave Orianna a cursory glance. Someone outside scored a goal. The crowd roared in victory.

Genesis smiled and put her hand on my head again.

"There we go. Back where you belong. Apologies for the sudden interruption."

"I believe it's for the best," I lied.

"It would be a shame if we lived in a world in which everyone's fates hinged on the actions of a couple undergrads." She smiled, at no one in particular, a smile that didn't reach her eyes. Gosh her teeth were sharp. And then she left. Just like that, Orianna and I were alone.

"If efferything ten-four?" she asked, nearly choking on her mouthful of hot dog. She had pickled onions on her hand, as well as some orange sauce. I oozed over to her and slurped it up out of instinct, not missing the jolt that went through her body as I did.

"Sorry." I gathered my thoughts.

"I… don't quite know if I'm ok with this or not." I was feeling snubbed. As if we were somehow robbed. Of what, I couldn't quite tell. It wasn't like we needed this victory for ourselves, after all, with the drug lab gone there should be a marked uptick in herbs and other alchemical ingredients for everyone. The Free Poker League wasn't some professional gathering of people. We were students, Custodians yes, but still just students.

People wanted to flex their magic, make themselves useful, but the majority just wanted to relax, chill, and talk about hobbies and other petty things. Fighting crime wasn't why people gathered together. Was it my ego? Was I angry that my plan was hijacked by an arguably more competent group of people? Or was it envy, at the idea that there were people out there who weren't just better than me, but were casually showing it off? I sorta want to go and do something crazy and level a bunch, like Sam tends to do.

I sighed, blowing bubbles out of my body.

"Whatever, the drug lab situation has been wrapped up, the day is moderately more saved than before."

"So true, miss goopyface."

"Oh shaddup. You got my hot dogs?" Orianna presented a plastic bag of twenty dogs. She'd bought them at a supermarket, not the local concession stands, since it was cheaper that way for my frugal vampire friend. A good friend. If she wanted to unwind and go to Caspers, then she deserved it. I added the protein-rich biomass to my stores, refilling what I'd lost.

And yet, the more I thought back to Genesis and how she'd just coincidentally arrived next to Orianna, the more the idea festered that this could be interpreted as a threat. +++ The following day, I was trying out my robot body for the umpteenth time. Wires and hydraulic lines in the hundreds ran up and down my humanoid frame. The head was a CCTV camera for now; I was still split on a human face with completely realistic mimicry, or something more abstract.

The uncanny valley was a problem few billion dollar companies bothered to deal with. Abstraction seemed the simpler choice. Orianna glued a pair of fake eyebrows onto my camera, making a V shape.

"And now the robot is angy," she said with a giggle.

"You mean angry."

"I said what you heard."

"Mhm." One step in front of the other.

"Catch me if I trip and fall."

"Yes ma'am." Humans never thought much about how difficult walking was. You had these two stilts you were standing on, with variable foot-extensions that were made of too many bones, ligaments, and muscles to count. Those had to impact the ground at just the right moment, then work in tandem with your ankles, knees, hips, and upper body just to stay upright. That was a lot of motion for such a simple thing. But simple didn't mean easy. Gyros whirred. Actuators actuated.

I was hyper aware of every bend of every joint all at once. Lucky me that I didn't bother trying to build something biological. My brain would be overloaded just trying to listen to the cells located in the tip of my pinky.

"Baby's first steps. I'm so proud." Orianna mock-sniffled, wiping away a tear.

"Is this how you always are when you're not hiding from Addy, teeth chattering with fear?"

"Ha-hah, maybe?" She fiddled with her hair.

"I mean, I feel relaxed around you. Like, really relaxed. And I'm trying to get better about not letting my charged emotions control my real emotions."

"They're one and the same, far as I'm concerned," I said. A hop, a leap. Yes, yeees, progress!

"Somewhat? But you can't let your emotions take control of you. What would the world be like if everyone ran away the moment they felt afraid of a math test, or punched someone in the face for daring to correct an honest mistake? We'd be like animals, like the dumber ones. Not crows, like… tardigrades."

"Tardigrades?"

"Tardigrades. They're these little critters that are super resilient. When the environment doesn't suit them, they ball up, dry out, and wait until temperature or levels of moisture around them become acceptable again." She paused as I stumbled, but caught myself, arms swinging outwards.

"Then again, that seems quite smart. We'd be something dumber than tardigrades, and that much more dangerous. Wait, Becca, don't—" I took a long hail-mary step. The impact shook me from the tip of my toe to the lens of my camera. Then I took another, longer and longer strides pushing me forward. I was laughing. I was falling. I was falling forward and catching myself with every step.

Walking, after such a long time spent oozing and rolling, came naturally again, like riding a bicycle, though with some big room for improvement. And it was fun. So fun in fact that I forgot that the hallways had to end somewhere. I ran straight into a wall. And bounced right off. There was no pain. Thanks to my stat points in Body, the damage was minimal. Any dents were quickly buffed out because despite being currently made of metal, ceramics, and plastics, I was still a mimic underneath.

My ECC was acting up a bit, but that was because I couldn't focus on running, damage reports, channeling emotions, and reacting to Orianna all at once. I waved her off as she stalked around my twitching body in panic.

"H-help me get up, please," I said and she did, while I tried not to charge my various mimicry spells with useless joy. What's all that joy doing here anyways? A moment of introspection passed. Huh. I suppose being fussed and worried over is… nice. I waved her off. And returned to the joyous fact that my robotic body worked. It worked! The principles of robotics and electronics could be imitated with mimic power. I was going to make the coolest fucking robot body ever. I was going to make two bodies. Ten.

I could make however many I wanted and it was liberating. Maybe I'd get to recreate my own network and operating system. That would imply learning how to code and, I can't believe I'm saying this, learn how to code networks. A shudder ran through my body. I used to code as a hobby, but after seeing the crash of so many entry level programming jobs during the AI bubble, decided that there was more security in being a mechanic.

Coding turned into a hobby, mostly the kind where I gained the bare minimum necessary knowledge so I could lord it over other people in group chats. Networks were… well beyond me. But I was a Custodian. I could be anything, if I wanted to. Even a network engineer. Probably gonna have to code my own security systems, firewall, etc. Wouldn't want to make all this only to get a virus by clicking on… a… huh.

"Hey, what's up?" Orianna said, poking my lens and smudging it.

"All your motors just went quiet." Slowly, I turned to her.

"The Pactmaker doesn't need a virus to pass the system firewall. He just needs to make people let him in voluntarily." +++ Professor Sandman was probably the oldest professor on campus. Nobody was sure exactly how old he was, only that he sometimes made allusions to having owned a parcel of land during the time of the Carolingians. He had a beard that hit the floor, and a pair of spectacles that always looked ready to fall off of his face.

He was absolutely not the kind of person you just picked up by his lapels and shook like a half-open pinata. I picked him up by his lapels and shook him.

"Sandman you god fucking damn bastard!"

"Aaah, mercy, mercy!" he cried while Orianna tried to pry me off of him. Too bad, I could lock my joints, effectively becoming a solid brick of aluminium, titanium, and steel.

"Goddangit, Becca, talk to me! And stop shaking him, he'll get a concussion!" My camera turned to her.

"He's the source. The source of it all."

"I-I don't know what you mean—""Hypothetically, if you wanted to beam knowledge into a person's brain, you'd use telepathy, right? And hypothetically, that means everyone's minds you touch are connected and open to you, correct?" The man nodded.

"Oh god, yes, but I made sure to modify my spell to allow for privacy. No one would join my lectures if they knew I read their minds!"

"Which means information can go in, but not out," I said, the whimpering old man nodding like a woodpecker.

"Yes, yes, but only a little bit, and only at certain times, during lecture hours."

"Once a day, six to eight AM," Orianna frowned, looking at the clock. The next lecture was fifteen minutes.

"That's not a long time."

"It isn't. I've never used it for anything untoward." He swallowed deeply.

"E-except, maybe, well… I-I connect my lecture slides to the area of the brain that induces joy. People remember boring things more if they're happy. But that aside, I'm innocent!" I stared him in the eyes for the longest time.

"Hypothetically, if someone tried to tap into your mind, could they access the ones you are connected to?"

"I… suppose." I dropped the man on the ground. Orianna caught him, ensuring that he didn't topple over.

"It's a watering hole attack," I muttered.

"Dammit Becca… a what?"

"Cyber security term. Most companies with strong online presences have equally strict security measures. How do you get past them? Attack a less secure service provider, piggyback them into the target's system. As a bonus, you spread your net of infection vectors to potentially every connecting service consumer."

"Which in our case, means every Custodian that has taken the snooze cruise," Orianna said.

"Which is a mandatory class for first years." We both shared a look. Professor Sandman was sitting in his chair, staring in shock at us.

"The Pactmaker has the connections, and he has the emotion spoofers, but he's not used it," I said.

"Why?"

"We're Custodians," Orianna said.

"We've got Mind to resist mental influence. It's the second-most picked stat after Soul, and before Sense. And if there's a system firewall, maybe there is a… system antivirus?" I gave her a prolonged stare until she turned flusterd.

"I-I'm not an expert, just… maybe he has the connections, but can't do anything with them?"

"Or he's waiting for something big. Something that'll make it worth revealing his presence." If I had a stomach, it would have dropped well below sea level. While we were busy running after his pawns, he already had us in checkmate. Anything could be the trigger to his plan, anything. Though, if he was trying to cause as much damage to the image of Custodians as possible, he would wait until… No. He wouldn't. For all his evils, he's still human. He lives on this planet.

Obstructing Custodian business wouldn't just be suicidal, it would be actively detrimental to his own security. Except, he's already proven that he's fine with that. What if he's such a miserable character that he doesn't care if the world burns? … we need to inform everybody about this. Everybody. Custodians probably won't panic if they know they can get an influx of foreign influence beamed into their skulls at any time, right?

"Fuck," I said, the word coming out robotic and glitchy.

"Fuck," Orianna agreed. On the way back to our dorm, Alarms blared all over. Red warning script appeared on every screen and every device, whether on or off. [Major convergence event warning] [Confirmed Murderbot presence in Cauldron-space above: Madrid, Paris, Hamburg, Saint Petersburg, Hongkong, Sydney… (341 more). Major Custodian response required. All Custodians above lvl 30 must report to one of the named cities. All Custodians below lvl 30 are advised to move in groups and in accordance with quests and battle plans. All Custodians below lvl 10 may voluntarily deploy, but are not required to.]"Shit. Shit, shit, shit." Too late. Too slow. Figured it out only in time to suffer with the knowledge that things were going to go sideways no matter what. Even without the pactmaker's influence, this was as big a catastrophe as the mimic event. God, that wasn't even half a year ago. Millions died globally.

How many will die this time? No matter. Just gotta move forward, one step at a time. Just gotta keep on pushing. Orianna and I grabbed our things, met up with as many people as we could.

"I'm going to Sydney," said two of spades, er, Tywin, a werebadger.

"My mum lives in the city, and my sis commutes every day."

"I'm going to Oslow," said Isaac, the peacock man.

"What about you two?"

"Paris is looking pretty dire. They're dropping right on the Champs Elysees." Dire meant more bots. More bots meant more xp, more coins, and more parts for me to copy and cannibalize. I needed those levels, needed any upgrade I could get. Maybe if we'd been smarter, faster, stronger, this could have all been avoided.

"We're going to Paris." The Free Poker League split up. And just like that it was just Orianna and I. The campus was in pandemonium. The queue at the teleporters was a hundred yards long. Under clouded skies, a storm was brewing. A bit of rain would be nice. It would help in keeping a cool head, get my mind on track to eat away at this stupid impossible— I paused, turned, looked up at a tree waving in the wind. The tree turned back at me.

"Where the hell did that giant fuckoff bird come from?"