Even as I prepared to leave the rooftop, a million warring thoughts about Ellison battled for attention in my mind. They dulled to a distant siren as I replaced the mask, and felt the chaos in my mind dissolve to almost nothing.

Later. Focus on what matters.

I flicked on the and stepped off the roof, using the nearby storm gutter to slow my descent. Even with the weight reduction, I landed hard enough to rattle my teeth, took a stunned half-step forward before my gait normalized, and I ran towards the Humvee. The vehicle had pulled up next to the curb adjacent to the crackhouse.

Among others, Roderick and Bob stood on the grass as two armored Users unloaded several injured men from the back of the Humvee, passing them off to people waiting to help. One of the casualties was gray faced, his chest unmoving.

Roderick took the survivor in better shape aside, moving out of the way for Kinsley as she jogged up to join the cloister.

“What happened?” Roderick growled. He seemed less put together than before, confidence shaken now that the other half of his group had been called into question.

“They came out of nowhere.” The man had a bandage wrapped around his head, slowly staining more and more red. That, the fact that his pupils were blown to hell and the sluggish manner of his voice belied a concussion at the slightest.

“Take a potion, if you haven’t already,” I said, taking a position next to Kinsley.

“‘M fine.”

“Do what the Merchant’s Guild Lieutenant says, Max.” Roderick prompted him. I glanced over, blithely wondering if Kinsley had arbitrarily given me a rank or if Roderick was just creative with his introductions.

Max appraised me once more, looking me up and down. Then took his potion. His pupils shrunk almost immediately. Not quite a normal size, but a definite improvement.

“Now what happened?” Roderick said, the desperation in his voice clearer than it was before.

“Users. Don’t know ‘em, but they’re organized. We were trying to do the motorcade bullshit, so the trucks were all in a line. Didn’t know what was happening until the spike strip blew the wheels.” His voice sounded clearer, better defined. “Then, they swarmed us. More than a dozen. Decked out and armed to the nines.”

“They let you go?” I asked.

Max shook his head. “I have a tactical—Can we trust these guys, Guild Leader?”

“As much as we can trust anyone,” Roderick said, his mouth tight.

“I’m an Estranged Officer. That’s my class. No clue what that means in the greater scheme of things, but in practice, I’m a complicated melee class with tactical analysis,” Max said. “I’ve taken a few feats to round out the tactical side of things. Short version, I can grade the likelihood of success from 1 to 12. Twelve being a sure thing, one being impossible.”

“On anything?” I interjected, unable to stop myself. Depending on his answer and the limits of his power, no one seemed to realize that Max might be the most valuable person in the city. Definitely not the person you send out into the field.

“Anything within five hundred yards. Outside that range, I can still give estimates, but it's based purely on the information I have. Can’t account for unknown variables.” Max told me, a suspicious look on his face, as if self-conscious about the limits.

It took everything in my self-control not to turn to Roderick and scream at him for risking such a valuable asset.

“How did you miss the ambush?” I asked, not bothering to mince words.

“There’s a cooldown,” Max said defensively. “And our odds were on the lower end of the success side from the beginning. Ranging between seven and eight. It dropped to four on our way back, then shot back up to eight when we detoured around a region. Figured it was just the chances of running into something that spawned out of this clusterfuck until it dropped to two.”

I was struggling to understand why anyone would go to so much effort. We weren’t in the dark hours yet. People were panicking, but the hysteria wouldn’t truly start until various regions started to realize how unlikely it was that they’d finish their receptacles in time.

Then things would turn ugly.

“Once the fighting started, our chances slid to almost nothing. I gathered as many people as I could and retreated.”

“Where did this happen?” Roderick asked.

Weird thing was…” Max licked his lips nervously. “They hit us in region three.”

“They-haven’t they already fortified?” Roderick glanced at Bob.

“More than an hour ago, now.” Bob confirmed, his brow furrowed.

I silently absorbed that with the rest. Whatever that meant, it was bad for us. Region three was a neighbor, and if our neighbor was actively attacking people trying to bring lux back to our region, it was a giant disadvantage.

“Tagging onto that,” Max said. “The lux was almost an afterthought. They grabbed it last, and weren’t being cautious about it. Maybe because their receptacle was filled.”

“You’re talking like you were there,” Kinsley commented. “Like you didn’t just dip as soon as the numbers came up bad.”

Max paused. “I wanted to see if there’d be an opening. They were going out of their way to take people alive, so if I used my ability and went back in at the right time, it’s possible I could have gotten more of us out.”

“You saw where they took your people?” I asked.

Max gave me a grim nod.

I rubbed the underside of my jaw. “If a region is fortified, and they’re still gathering lux, they might be hoarding it. To give to another region or…” to sell to a vendor “… some other reason. How many did you have?”

“Fourteen, split between the SUVs,” Max said.

My eyes widened. That was a helluva haul. Between the initial number and the likely possibility that region three had even more lux ferreted away, it was too tantalizing to ignore.

“Whoever they are, they’re sloppy,” I said. “Trying to simultaneously capture Users and hoarding lux is just asking for disaster.”

“You have a plan?” Kinsley asked. The others looked at me as well, curious.

“What else?” I shook my head. “Hit them back. It’s nearby, they have at least fourteen lux that we know of, probably more, considering how smoothly that ambush went for them. It’s not like they can bitch about it after the event is over, when they were holding on to it after their region was already fortified, so there’s no political capital to be lost.”

Max’s eyes widened until they appeared ready to bug out of his head. “You’re going back in there?”

“No. We’re going back in there.” I said, turning to Rodrick. “I need your second, Max, and at least four others well enough to fight.

“Hold on,” Max’s drawling accent became more pronounced.

Roderick ignored him. “Certainly. I’m happy to provide anything that helps smooth our recent turbulence, doubly so if it means I get more of my men back.”

I couldn’t help but smirk. Roderick was trying to double-dip, simultaneously working to win back some of our favor while using us to salvage his guild. It was a politically savvy move, and raised my opinion of him slightly. Luckily for him, both goals aligned with ours.

/////

I studied the people lined up next to the APC. It wasn’t a group I had a huge amount of confidence in. We had the recently concussed Max, who kept trying to wipe something dark and viscous off his boots to the point it looked like a nervous tick. Bob, the soft-spoken bruiser. Now that I looked at him, I would have put money on him being in the legal field—not a lawyer, but paralegal or analogue, albeit one that spent far too long in the company gym. Two nearly identical agendered spell-casters who were standing near enough to each other that their hips touched. The last occupant was a Samoan melee fighter that was low level, but apparently held a high-level proficiency in crafting explosives, and referred to herself as Chastity. She giggled when she said it, like there was an in-joke.

I didn’t ask.

We were at least two people shy of the number I wanted. Rodrick was making an effort to scrounge up volunteers. He wasn’t having much luck.

Grayscale floated to the surface of my mind. The User that had tried to bar my way when I first arrived in the region. When I’d probed his mind, I’d gotten the impression that he was likely going mad waiting for something to do. Might be a waste of time, but one more person could do a lot to make our assault look legitimate.

I looped back around, looking for him, finding him leaning against a dying tree a few feet away from the receptacle. “What’s up with the lodge people? They look like they’re trying to put out fires with gasoline.”

“Trouble,” I said immediately, keeping my voice down. It wasn’t in my nature to be this direct, but we were running out of time, and he wasn’t the type of person that responded well to coyness. “There’s a fortified region hoarding lux, and ambushing Users that pass through it.”

“Bastards,” Grayscale spat.

“We’re doing something about it.”

“Oh?” He raised a quizzical eyebrow. “You’re with them now?”

“This problem affects our entire region, regardless of what you think of Roderick.”

“So, what, you’re going to kill them?” Grayscale asked. There was something there, some fragment of trauma I had no idea how to interpret.

“No.” I shook my head, though we had to be prepared for the possibility it would come to that. “Smash and grab. Get the lux, free the Users, get the hell out. As little bloodshed as possible. Want in?”

He did. I could see it in his eyes. But before Grayscale could respond, a rich tenor voice spoke from behind me.

“I volunteer.”