Then

“C’mon dude, you’ve got this!” Eron kept his voice low as he encourage his older brother.

“You’re distracting me,” Remy said through grit teeth. His eyes were shut tightly. There was a sheen of sweat forming on his forehead and starting to drip down the furrows formed by raised veins.

Cal pulled his youngest brother aside to give Remy some space. “Are you sure you can do it?” He knew the answer to his question, but asked anyways to distract Eron.

“Yeah, no problem,” Eron said. “I’ve been practicing. I can get up there easily.”

“Hundred percent?”

“Relax man. I’ve got the ‘leaping tall buildings in a single bound’ thing figured out… mostly.”

“Well, in this case it’s just a short one,” Cal said as his gaze went to the sniper on the roof of the community center lazily watching them.

“Yo. Are we doing this or what?”

“Gene. I told you to wait for the signal,” Cal said.

“What’s he doing anyways?”

“Remy’s weakening the fence. When the time is right he’ll open up a gap right where the cops are,” Eron said.

“How’s he gonna do that?” Olo joined Gene, crowding closer, more than Cal liked.

“He’s got magnetic powers,” Eron said in a terrible display of operational security that had Cal shaking his head.

“Dayum, that’s fire!” Bastien said. “Straight up Magneto-shit right there!” He said it with a short e, like in the word net.

“You’re saying it wrong, bro,” Johnny said. “It’s Magneeto.”

“No way! That’s not how it’s spelled.”

“They named him after the magnetoshpere and that’s how they pronounce it.”

The teens looked to Eron, as if he was a wise sage to render the correct judgment.

“He’s right.” Eron nodded at Johnny to the delight of the teen.

“Okay, enough!” Cal said with a little too much heat. “Go to your spots and stay there.”

“You know this would be easier if I had some quiet,” Remy ground out.

At least the teens had the decency to look ashamed as Cal shooed them away.

“This is why I keep telling you that you need to practice,” Eron said.

“Not. Helping.” Remy’s frown grew even deeper.

“I’m just saying that people are getting antsy,” Eron said. “We don’t want the racist cops to start thinking we’re up to something.”

Things fell into an uneasy silence as Cal and Eron kept their eyes on the men standing guard on the other side of the fence. There were nine in total. Two on each side of the roughly square-shaped fenced-in area and the single sniper on the roof of the community center.

The other imprisoned men milling about were doing their best to look like there wasn’t a plan to break out at any second. They had a simple role to play, but it was fraught with danger and Cal could sense that they were extremely anxious, dreading the moment to come. It was unfortunate that none had any sort of powers, which was ridiculous as far as he was concerned. Around two hundred men and the only ones that had gone to the spire was a small group of teenage gamers.

“Jesus…” Remy opened his eyes. “Okay, I’m ready, but we need to start before I lose my grip.”

Cal took a deep breath. Now it was his turn. The throbbing headache hadn’t subsided in the hour or so while they had been getting their plan ready and spread out among the imprisoned throng. He wasn’t looking forward to this.

He focused on the nine cops, on their minds. All he needed to do was distract them for a split second, so the stabbing feeling in his brain wasn’t quite that bad. More sewing needle than bowie knife.

Cal raised his hand.

Eron crouched, gathering his legs beneath him.

One second.

Remy took a deep breath.

Two.

The gathered men tensed as they stood at their places.

Three.

Cal pushed into the cops’ minds, while at the same time he brought his hand down.

Eron reacted first. He leapt, leaving a deep impression of his shoes in the grass. His arc carried him easily over the eight-foot tall fence and up on to the roof of the community center a good thirty yards away. He landed within a few steps of the Cal-distracted sniper. Before the sniper knew what was happening Eron knocked him cold with a tap on the head.

While that happened, Remy pushed his magnetic powers to the limit. The groan that escaped from his lips mirrored the sound of protest from the chain link fence as it was torn open.

Like when a dam bursts, the men at the designated spots, on each side of the fenced in area, nearest to the armed cops rushed forward in a wild mob.

At any other time they would’ve been assured casualties as the cops would’ve been able to bring their guns to bear on the first line, but thanks to Cal’s work. They were too slow. The men fell on them in a mass. Pulling the guns from their hands and battering them down with enthusiasm if not skill.

Part of Cal was worried that the mob might get carried away and do real damage to the racists. Most of him decided that they brought it on themselves. After all, evil deserved whatever it got.

It was over in a matter of seconds. Cal watched as Eron gave him a thumbs up and disappeared over the far side of the roof. He trusted the other men to keep the cops secured, while he moved on to the next and more difficult part of the plan. Disabling the remaining eleven cops inside the community center so that Eron could quickly restrain them without risking any collateral damage to the women and children being held inside.

Cal focused on their minds. He had their signatures, for a lack of a better word, from when he touched their minds several hours ago, so it didn’t take long to grab hold. There was nothing delicate about what he did next. He took the feeling of his throbbing headache and pushed it right into their minds. They got the same pain in a single moment.

“Did you get them?” Remy pulled Cal to his feet.

“Huh?” Cal didn’t know how he ended up up his backside.

“You’re making a habit out of bleeding out of your head,” Remy said. “It’s concerning and really disgusting.”

“I’m fine. Let’s get in there. Eron might need help.”

“He’s safer than anyone else here.”

“Still—”

“Yeah, let’s go, but you take the lead. You’ve probably got more levels than me.” Remy pushed Cal forward.

“What about us? What should we do?” Gene and his party came up to the two Cruces brothers.

Cal didn’t have enough mental energy to deal with the annoying kids. It was taking a great deal of effort just to keep standing.

Remy must’ve realized this. “The plan stays the same. You four are going to take care of any mutant squirrels or birds that might’ve been attracted by the chaos.”

The brothers moved toward the community center’s rear doors without waiting to see if the teens had listened.

As soon as they entered they saw two cops on the ground, clutching their heads and struggling to rise. Cal pointed to the one on the left, while he made for the one on the right, the one closer to standing. He half staggered, half ran and planted a soccer kick right under the man’s chin. A flying tooth made Cal worry that he might’ve put too much into the kick. As it was the cop lay unmoving flat on his back.

A quick glance to his left saw Remy in the process of hog-tying his own unconscious target. Cal flipped the cop over onto his stomach and did the same using the man’s own cuffs.

The pair encountered two more men as they made their way further into the building and handled them in a similar fashion. They carefully made their way into the large open hall that served as the center of the community center. Cal could sense that the vast majority of thoughts inside the building were gathered in there.

Cal noticed two things as soon as he entered the hall. First, was the large group of women and children seated on the floor in the middle of the room. Second was that Eron was off to one side, currently in the process of unceremoniously dumping a half-conscious and restrained cop in a pile with others. A few had regained their senses and were currently shouting vile curses at anyone and everyone in sight.

“Hey, Eron!” Cal called out. “Can you do me a favor? We left four guys out towards the rear doors, can you bring them over too? Then can you bring the guys outside in?”

“Sure,” Eron said as he walked over. “What do you want me to tell the dudes outside?”

“Keep them outside, tell them they’re on their way out,” Cal gestured at the scared and confused looking people on the floor. “I don’t want a huge group of people in here.”

“Where’s Megan and my kids?” Remy looked wildly at the crowd.

“Uh… Rem… I didn’t see them,” Eron said hesitantly, “but I haven’t checked out the whole place. There’s a bunch of rooms.”

“Remy, why don’t you you ask them if they know or saw anything,” Cal nudged his brother.

He waited for Remy to make his way over there before he turned back to Eron. “Nila?”

“Sorry, Cal,” Eron shook his head. “Didn’t see her either.”

“That’s alright, we’ll find them,” Cal said as he went over to join Remy.

“They took them,” Remy said as soon as Cal reached his side. “They took all the white people.” The look on Remy’s face betrayed how ridiculous he thought the entire situation sounded.

“Where did they take them?”

“Excuse me?” An older woman that reminded him of his mother approached Cal. “Could you please tell us what’s going on here? Why did the police separate us from our husbands and sons?”

“Cause apparently they’re Nazis!” Remy threw his hands up in frustration before he stalked off toward the captured cops.

“Remy! Wait!” Cal barked. “We’ll handle it together,” he implored his brother to keep calm.

Remy waved him off, but at least he merely found a chair and sat down.

“Ma’am, everything is alright,” Cal said. “Your husbands and sons are fine, they’re just outside.” He raised his voice to encompass the entire room. “Just give us a few minutes and you’ll be able to join them.” He turned his attention back to the older woman. “Now, do you know where they took the…” he cleared his throat, “white people.”

The old woman shook her head. “They just separated us as soon as we entered the building. We ended up in here, I don’t know about the others.”

“Okay, thank you,” Cal sighed then he addressed the crowd. “Did any of you happen to see a Chinese woman? Twenty-eight, just a little shorter than me, tiny build, black hair in like a bob or pixie? I’m not sure what it’s called. Her name is Nila. My girlfriend.” He looked around hopefully.

A teenage girl raised her hand and made her way quickly to him when Cal gestured her forward. “Yeah, I think so. She was a little behind me in line when they took this white woman and her kids away. Your girlfriend fought back. Took like five cops to get her down.”

“I saw them taking her through there,” another woman pointed to a closed door at the far end of the hall, toward the back.

“Thanks,” Cal forced a smile. “Just a few more minutes and you’ll be free to join your families.”

Cal rushed to the door. A thousand different thoughts rushing through his pounding head. The best case scenarios, the worst case ones, and every thing in between. He reached the door at a run. He grabbed the handle. It was locked he growled and pulled with all his might. The door flew open, nearly hitting him in the face. He rushed into the room expecting the worse ready to explode only to find a small fist careening toward his face.

In the split second before impact he recognized its wielder. He twisted his torso and turned his head so that he merely took the blow to the side of his face. Rolling with the punch allowed him to alleviate the damage, both to his face and the puncher’s fist. It still hurt.

“Ouch.”

“Oh my god! Cal? I’m sorry!” Nila stared at him open-mouthed and wide-eyed. “I thought you were someone else.”

“Nope, my bad, I shou—”

The words were stopped as Nila jumped onto Cal and hugged him tight, her lips clamped over his, as she kissed him fiercely. Cal was surprised momentarily before he returned it just as strongly. He held on to her like he didn’t ever want to let go again. He allowed himself to get lost in the moment. Forgetting the violence, the sharp spikes pounding into his brain. It was just him and his love.

Reluctantly, Nila broke the kiss and embrace.

“They took Megan and the kids. I tried to fight them, but there were too many.”

“You did good from the sound of it. Took five guys to stop you,” Cal looked her over, “did they hurt you?”

Nila shook her head. “Punched and kicked me a little, but it didn’t hurt as much as I always thought it would. I’ve felt worse when we sparred.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re okay,” Cal smiled at her. “Did they happen to say where they were taking Megan and the kids?”

“I don’t remember if they did or not,” Nila said. “It happened so fast.”

“That’s alright, we’ll just ask them,” Cal said as he looked back to the restrained pile of cops.

It took some time for the large hall to be cleared of the women and children. Cal waited patiently as several thanked him on the way out. It didn’t pass his notice that the majority seemed to be looking at him with suspicion and some with undisguised fear. To her surprise Nila received a much more favorable response, many times someone would stop and thank her for being so brave and fighting back.

Remy and Eron stood near the restrained cops, glaring at them, challenging. A few had shouted vile curses towards them and the women. The profanity was typical of such filth, based on racial and gender lines. A very angry Eron shut them up really fast.

Cal was deep in thought. He was looking and, or listening, like usual he couldn’t quite tell the difference, to the update to the quest. He found it strange that it hadn’t popped up as soon as he had freed Nila from the locked storage room. In a game the quest notification usually shows up as soon as it succeeds or fails, at least that’s what he remembered. It seemed that in whatever was happening to his world things were a bit mindful of real life circumstances.

He was glad though that it had waited for his reunion with Nila before chiming in with the quest update. Cal had been deathly worried about his girlfriend, even if, he reminded himself, she had Captain America-like strength and was working out hard to get stronger, even taking his, very amateur, boxing lessons.

Cal let out a sigh.

Congratulations!

Partial quest completion.

Rescue your loved ones: 1 of 4, 229 of (?)

Defeat your enemies: 20 of (?)

Reputation Gain: Varied.

Reputation Loss: Varied.

Partial Reward: 5000 Universal Points.

Cal’s eyes widened when he got to the end of the message. That was unexpected.

He made his was over to his brothers. “Hey, did you guys get the quest update message?” Cal kept his voice low.

Remy and Eron both nodded.

“We’ve got enough points to unlock the information on our sheet,” Eron said while throwing up the traditional air quotes. “Plus we can get the basic tutorial and I’m thinking maybe the tutorials for our classes.”

“Shouldn’t we spend some on gear or items, like, I don’t know, healing potions, stuff like that?” Remy frowned.

“Nah man,” Eron said. “That voice said that we can’t use the marketplace yet.”

“Right, but it might open up at any time,” Remy said.

“I’ve got a theory on that. See, I’m thinking that we’re like in a tutorial stage and in games that usually last around an hour or two,” Eron said.

“This isn’t a game,” Cal said.

“No, but you can’t deny that there are a lot of similarities,” Eron said.

“I see what you’re getting at,” Remy said. “Internal game time runs at an accelerated rate, so the equivalent of a few hours in a game is a lot longer in real world time.”

“Uh… yeah… that’s totally what I meant,” Eron said.

“I was at the spire eleven days ago and the marketplace was still restricted,” Remy said.

“It’s been about two months, give or take a day, since this nightmare started,” Cal said.

“I guess you’re right,” Eron looked to Remy, “we should probably plan to save some points then.”

“Looks like the crowd is out,” Remy said as he suddenly nudged Cal.

Cal looked over to Nila, who was walking over to join them.

“Okay, time to ask these guys some questions,” Cal said.

Cal moved to stand near the restrained cops. Roughly half were seated, cross-legged their hands cuffed behind them, while the rest were on their stomachs, hands wrists and ankles locked together behind them like trussed up hogs. There was a certain sense of justice in it. Especially since Cal needed them to squeal on the rest of their group and where they had taken his sister-in-law and nieces.

“We’re not saying anything to you, wetback.” It was the same cop that had interacted with them at front of the line.

Cal held the man’s glare without looking away. He didn’t say anything, he didn’t move, didn’t even blink. He pushed a bit of the contempt he felt into the man’s mind. The certain knowledge that he was in control and there was nothing the man could do about it.

It was too much for the cop, he was a bully used to throwing around his authority, his size, to get what he wanted from the world around him. It had been that way for him for as long as he could remember. It was overwhelming to learn that was no longer the case. He looked away with a sharp jerk of his head.

“You douchebags are just stupid,” Eron said. “We’re not even mexican or hispanic,” he laughed. “At least get the racial slurs right, dumbasses.”

Cal studied the cops. All of them were sporting heavily bruised faces and bodies. Whenever he locked eyes with one the individual in question quickly looked away. Maybe he realized it, maybe he didn’t, but there was a noticeable sense of malice that was being projected from his very being.

“I have questions, which you will answer,” Cal said.

“Fuck you, chink,” a cop whose hair was stained red from the ugly cut at his hairline.

“Wrong again,” Eron barked out a harsh laugh.

“They’re flips?” One of the cops whispered.

“Ha! Finally, but let me tell you,” Eron zeroed in on the whisperer, “as far as ethnic slurs go, that’s weak. I mean how lazy are you? Although, I guess it makes sense. You’ve got to be pretty low on the horsepower when it comes to what you’ve got in here,” he tapped his head with a finger, “to believe in racial supremacy in the first place. I mean if I were to remove your skin,” he pointed at the now shaking cop, “and compared your corpse with a different race’s skinless corpse, it’d look the same… right?”

Cal felt a moment of concern at the ghoulish leer on Eron’s face. His youngest brother was being very convincing at the moment.

“Look, just let us go and we won’t tell them it was you,” another cop said. This one was noticeably older than the rest. Middle-aged as opposed to being in his twenties. “We’ll say that it was a bunch of people with masks on.”

“Shut up! Don’t say shit to this trash!” the cop with red stained hair spat. “Jay will fuck ‘em like we fucked that chink bitch!”

Cal’s head jerked over to the cop. He saw red and was a moment from doing something he might regret when a blur moved past him.

Nila reached out and slapped the offending cop upside the head, he flopped over onto the man next to him, bonelessly, out cold. She glared at the restrained cops, fire in her eyes. “I fucked you up. It took five of you just to push me into a storage room and you barely managed it.”

“I’m sure you don’t want anymore of that,” Cal said. “Just answer a few questions and you won’t feel further pain. Why don’t we start with who this Jay is.”

“Whatever you’re threatening, it can’t possible be worse than what will happen to us if we talk,” the middle aged cop said.

“You got a name?” When he looked them over earlier, Cal noted that none of them had name tags and the badge numbers were useless to him at the moment.

The middle aged cop shook his head.

Cal had a sudden thought. Could he pull the name from their heads? It should be doable. If he could place things into their minds, then he should be able to take things. That’s how telepathy worked in all sorts of fiction after all and the changes to their world were definitely closer to make believe than the accepted laws of science. No, he decided against it. Trying something new was likely to add to his headache or knock him out cold in the worst case.

“Hey?” Another cop called out to Cal.

“Got something to tell me?” Cal moved closer to the man.

“Yeah… you and yours are dead. You might be able to throw a punch, but Jay will take your midget ass and tear it in two.” The cop spat in Cal’s face.

Cal’s arm moved faster. The glob splashed against his jacket sleeve. He stood straight and regarded the man for several long seconds. “Okay. I tried to be nice. Tried to be civil. Even when you deserved nothing. You’re making a concentration camp. An evil act by every objective standard.” Cal nodded to Eron and Remy. They had discussed this earlier in case the questioning wasn’t working.

Cal pointed at two of the restrained cops. Eron took one of the hog-tied ones and lifted him like a grocery bag. The cop grunted in pain from the strain on his limbs. Remy roughly lifted one of the seated men by his arms. The cop tried to kick and struggle, but Remy half-lifted, half-dragged him like a small child throwing a tantrum.

Cal looked at Nila, “Like we talked about. If any of them so much as move feel free to cut loose. You’re life is more important than theirs.”

She nodded back with a determined look on her face.

Cal picked out his target among the men. He had been probing with his telepathy the entire time and had found the one that would give him the answer he was looking for. The young man struggled, but Cal lifted him by the arm with frightening ease. His strength was growing at what felt like a constant rate. He focused on being careful. He didn’t want to break something, accidentally. He trailed after his brothers. Information in hand, ready to be cracked.