“Every day of my life has been better since you’ve been in it. Every single day.” -Superman, The Son Of Karl-El #17-

_____

James woke up in a hospital bed with a nurse unclipping his IV bag. He came back to consciousness slowly, but as his eyes opened, he realized he actually felt pretty good.

He opened his mouth to say something to the young man coiling up a plastic tube to be sterilized, but just yawned broadly instead. The nurse, who bizarrely had a name tag on reading ‘Aaron’, glanced down at him. “Ah, good. You’re awake.” He said, in a tone that more or less sounded like he didn’t actually think a lot of things were good or bad at all, but that this was expedient. “Let’s get the IV out of you, and we can see if you can walk.”

“I can walk.” James gave a nod, banishing the rest of the hazy sleep from his mind. “I actually feel great. Why do I have an IV though?”

“You were dehydrated and deficient in certain nutrients. Deb decided to solve those problems, while you were out. Also the saline mix has one of the newer exercise potions in it as a painkiller. Probably why you feel great.”

James blinked slowly, trying to put together the timeline. “How long was I sleeping?” He asked.

“About eight hours. It’s morning now, day after you came in.” Aaron made quick work of pulling the needle out of James’ arm, rapidly moving fingers pinching the hole in his body shut while his other hand set the sharp object aside and pinned him closed with a bandage. James barely even had time to feel the mild pain, much less worry about it. “Think you want to try walking?” He half-asked.

There was a brief moment where James wondered if this guy was just a little too cold to be working here. But then, he cut himself off mentally. If he was here, then he was at least worth a chance. There had to be room for improvement for someone to improve, after all; internal and external. So he just nodded and swung his legs out, flexing his knees and making sure he was good to stand. “Yeah, I’m good.” He said. “Thanks.”

“No problem. You’re marked as checked out now. There is, as you may have guessed, no bill.” Aaron gave a magnanimous tilt of his head to him.

James snorted a laugh, caught off guard. “Yeah, socialized health care is easy when you can mint new doctors and duplicate the equipment.” He concedes. Then he plants his feet on the floor, and tests his weight, finding that he can stand easily enough. “Uh… are there pants around here for me?” He asks. The other man, now fully engaged with his rapid cleanup of the room, just points over to a cabinet where Anesh left James’ a change of clothes.

He got dressed quickly, but couldn’t find any shoes. When asked, Aaron just shrugged. “I think they got thrown away.” He told James. “You bled a lot into them, and they were half torn up anyway.”

Bemoaning the loss of his boots, James made his way out of the hospital area. Some of the duplicated rooms still had new ratroaches in them, the scared creatures adapting to a new uncertain life with soft beds and warm food as the antifungal and antibiotic regimen purged the infections from their bodies. One of the rooms had a human woman in it, her caramel skin contrasting sharply with the shock-white fur of the ratroach she was talking to that was curled up on the bed clutching a stuffed shark in their three misplaced arms.

James tried not to stare or linger. The newer ratroaches they were rescuing from the Akashic Sewer were… fragile. Not just physically, but emotionally; they were terrified of everything, especially of giving answers they thought were ‘wrong’, and that unfortunately included telling the medical team about if they were hurting or hungry. Keeka and Arrush had been similar, when they’d arrived, but not this bad. Or maybe that was just him misremembering. Or, perhaps, the two of them took a strength from each other that these lonely versions didn’t know yet. James could understand that; he’d throw himself into a lot of scary stuff for his own partners.

He ran a hand over his head, idly toying with his long hair as he nodded to the nurse in the front room of their small hospital and pushed his way out the door and into the Lair. James still needed to talk to Arrush, actually. Hell, he needed to talk to a lot of people, he realized. But the ratroach was the one occupying his thoughts at the moment.

Right before James’d fallen asleep earlier, Anesh had told him the big guy had a crush on him. Though his boyfriend had probably used better words like ‘infatuated’; James didn’t really remember, and he had the excuse of having been shot, so he didn’t need to. He’d gotten the implication.

It was weird. He’d never actually been this well informed about someone else’s attitude toward him before like this. And now that it was happening, he had no idea how to feel about it.

James thought as he wandered through the basement. He liked Arrush well enough; both him and Keeka, really. They were… interesting, he supposed. But in a comfortable way. A way where at no point did James ever feel awkward or unpleasant around them, even when they asked questions he had never thought to answer with words before. But that was a bit different from being into someone, as far as James knew. Not that James actually knew that much about romance or attraction anyway, even if he was currently embroiled in a chaotically unpredictable relationship.

Actually, he thought to himself, that would probably be a good place to start on working out his feelings. Talking to Anesh and Alanna, the people he trusted more than anyone else in the world. At the very least, he could look forward to Alanna teasing him in creative ways. Which, well, it wasn’t that James was into that, but it was just always fun to see her come alive when their banter got sharp.

With that emotional snarl momentarially pushed to the future, James considered who else he needed to talk to today. He solved most of his problems by talking to people, after all.

And then he remembered that he’d been shot, and he should probably find Nate or JP or someone. Also, he was supposed to be doing a handful of interviews today, and he was reasonably sure that wasn’t going to happen.

“Alright.” James spoke to himself. “Update first, then check in with Karen about interviews, then… then I’m going home.” He let out a long, long sigh. “I’m so tired.” He whispered to himself, the feeling having nothing to do with how he physically felt, and more to do with just how overwhelmed by life he’d been the last week or so. He tilted his head back down from where he’d been staring at the ceiling, and looked around. “Also how did I get here.” James had not been paying attention to where he was walking at all, and this basement was perhaps slightly unkind to anyone who got lost in it.

Glancing around the hallway, he tried to remember where exactly this particular part of this particular basement was. He was pretty sure that this was near where Rufus kept his little garden, maybe he could stop in and ask. If he could remember which corner it was near, and if the posters and notices on the walls hadn’t changed since he was last here.

He was shortly saved from his awkward attempts at navigation by a couple of people passing by. “Morning.” Chevoy gave him a cheerful nod, while next to her, Mike, one of the other engineers she’d been hired alongside, grumbled something similar into his coffee.

“Hey.” James nodded at them. “Uh… how did you get down here?” He asked. “So that I can get out of here. I am lost.”

“Oh! That’s my bad.” Mike admitted. “I added an extra quarter mile of hallways the other day. Sorry.” He didn’t elaborate, just sipping his coffee and wincing at the heat that he wasn’t quite ready for.

James and Chevoy slowly turned away from the man to face each other, giving a shared look that indicated they didn’t know if he was joking or not. “Anyway!” Chevoy said, clearing the mood. “You’re basically right around the corner from the elevator. Just go back past the server room, and take a left at the end of the hall with the bedrooms.”

“Thanks. Also why do we still have bedrooms here?” James asked. “Didn’t we build a whole apartment block to better organize space or something? Also since when do we have a whole server room.”

Chevoy shrugged, shifting her grip on the plank of wood she was carrying, slinging it over her shoulder. “The server room is new-ish, and really only has the two servers that we got from that one orange. It’s mostly where we keep the hardware that runs the copied immunity programs, and then has the interface for swapping out users.”

“Hell, that was the thing I was supposed to do, uh… a year ago.” James jammed a knuckle into his forehead, just over his nose. “Well, at least that one is less of a tactical blunder.”

“I dunno, it’s kind of cool.” Chevoy shrugged. “We’re still trying to figure out how to get more of the things. Almost none of the ones we have are practical, or very effective. The venom and wood ones are still the best. Oh! Though! We have enough to give someone a hundred percent wood immunity now!” She swung the plank she was holding down to the ground and planted it like a sword on the floor. “Which is cool.”

“…I’m gonna regret asking this I think but what happens then?” James asked, feeling like every word he spoke took him farther from getting both breakfast and a proper update on the actual crisis.

“Then they’re immune to wood.” Mike said bluntly.

Chevoy gave a more complete answer, ticking off on her fingers as she propped an elbow on the two by four. “No kinetic transfer, no penetration, no splintering - you can technically use a human as a sort-of perfect lathe with this, except for…uh… actually - it’s got a really weird interaction at the molecular level where there’s a kind of air-gap. Doesn’t work on fire, though? Like, wood that is on fire still burns you. Fire isn’t wood, I guess. Oh, it does work on varnished wood. Don’t ask why.”

“I love that you’re becoming an encyclopedia for all the corner cases down here.” James told her.

The engineer just smirked and tapped the back of her neck. “I’m not. I’m just on our network constantly. It’s actually insane that more people don’t use these things all the time.” She told him.

“I use one, just not right now. Hence being lost.” James pointed out. “Anyway, thanks, you guys have fun with whatever you’re up to.”

“Oh, we’re prototyping the space elevator.” Chevoy said, like that was normal.

James wanted to ask more questions. He really did. But he restrained himself long enough to get to the elevator, and head upstairs, before his curiosity overwhelmed him.

When he’d started, started all of this, it had been a personal quest for self improvement and making rent. Then it had been a quest to rescue who he could. Then it had been… what? Trying to save the world? Like that was a thing he could just do? The scope of James’ goals had rapidly eclipsed his grasp. But he was still accomplishing stuff. It’s just that a lot of what he accomplished these days was dragging some weird magic out of a dungeon, dropping it on the collective population of the research basement, and then letting them figure out how to make use of it.

Case in point, they were apparently going to have a space elevator. In theory, James knew that was a thing. But, like… they were still working on it. It wasn’t some fleeting thing. It was like Bill and Reed plowing forward with the duplicated apartment thing. James brought them the tools and materials, but they were the ones who spun them into miracles.

He couldn’t wait to go to space, he decided, as the elevator dinged open and he stepped past a tired looking camraconda with a somehow equally tired authority flickering green lines around her. Stepping out into the lobby of the Lair, the place a lot more sparsely populated at seven AM than during the late afternoon when James was usually here and awake, he headed to the dining area to grab some breakfast, and go from there.

Breakfast was eggs and coffee that was probably magical. James found himself sitting at a table with Karen and Texture-Of-Barkdust, the two women connected via skulljack and silently eating their food as they both read through folders full of documents, occasionally sliding one across the table to the other. It was a surreal experience, and James actually wasn’t sure if he was still asleep.

“They are… on an odd journey…” Zhu had whispered in his ear, the ethereal feathers of the navigator tickling at James’ neck as he partially manifested.

“I think they can still hear us.” James told Zhu. “They’re just getting work done. Which… we cannot possibly have this much work to do. Karen, don’t you have an entire department that works for you?”

“Yes,” the woman said without looking up at James, “and that means an entire department to verify and keep up on the work of.” She pointed a fork his direction, still without looking. “Accounting sign-offs, sales contract oversight, updates on the victims under our care, Response numbers, operating totals. The sooner we are started on it, the better.”

James glanced down at his shoulder where an orange eye ringed in feathers glanced back at him. Neither of them had missed that by the end of the sentence, Karen and Texture-Of-Barkdust were speaking in unison. “Kay.” He said simply. “Also, hey Zhu. How’re you doing? Sleep okay?”

“I don’t sleep.” The navigator said. “Or… do I? I go somewhere I do not go, when you are sleeping. I didn’t notice. I don’t like it.”

“Out of curiosity,” James asked, “can you propagate, as an infomorph? Like, can you spread to other people? Because if so, there’s almost certainly someone who would take you on here, so that you would have less total downtime. At least one of us would always be awake.”

Zhu hesitated. “I don’t… know.” He said. “I like it here, though.” He said ‘here’, and James got the warm impression of himself, a place where the infomorph was comfortable, and felt safe. Which was perhaps a little bit inaccurate, considering how often James got shot at, but it was a nice feeling to have.

“Well, let me know if you change your mind. Anything that improves your life is worth checking out.” He told the navigator, before taking a large bite of his omelet before it got cold.

The feathered manifestation bobbed, before Zhu started to recede again. “I will. Also, a traveler approaches you. She is angry.”

“Wha-“ but Zhu was already gone. “Okay, that’s-“ James looked over at his table mates, but they were ignoring his conversation. Then he glanced up at the entrance to the dining area, and spotted El, looking like she hadn’t slept since yesterday, standing there and staring at him like she was working up a good bout of righteous anger to come talk to him. “Ah.” James pushed his plate away, and stood up, heading over to her first. “What’s up, and how can I fix it?” He asked, undercutting whatever ire she had going.

El stared at him with uncertain eyes, before her shoulders straightened up and she tilted her chin up at him. “I’m done.” She told him. “I’m out.”

“Of… the Order?” James’ heart sank. But… well, it sucked, but it was the way of life for people to move on. “Oh.” He found himself saying sadly. “Okay. Uh… I think you should probably tell Karen, we can get someone to cover for your youth program slot. And, uh… do you wanna keep living here, or…?” He wasn’t sure how to handle this. No one had ever quit on him before.

Well, El had, actually. Once. But she’d done it by just vanishing. This was the first time anyone had told him. Usually people who left either died, got fired and teleported back to the FBI, or… no, that was it really.

“No you fucking… no!” El’s voice brought him back to the conversation. “I mean, I’m done getting in fights! Stop assigning me to combat roles!” She made a gesture that was really more just panicked flailing with her hands than anything else. “I don’t… I don’t wanna fight anymore, okay? I don’t care how important it is, or if I’m useful, or-“

James cut her off, because this was much easier to answer. “Oh!” He said with relief. “Sure! Fuck, of course. Sorry, I had some anxiety there for a second.” The words slipped out of his mouth with some of that anxiety still attached. “Yeah, of course you don’t have to. This last thing wasn’t even supposed to be a fight, and I’m actually really sorry you got shot at. Yeah. Okay. So, no active operations, no… uh… delving? Do you want to stop delving?”

El jerked back like she’d been caught off guard. “Nnnnno?” She said slowly. “I… uh… maybe? Fuck, I don’t know now.” The exhausted girl leaned against the wall, turning half away from James. “I didn’t think you’d just agree like that, I had a whole thing planned.”

“What, to convince me to stop sending you into combat?”

“Uh, yeah?”

“Okay. Well. Uh…” James looked around them, hamming up his confusion. “I don’t think we’re a military unit. So, you know, I can’t really make you do anything. But actually, we’ve got so much flexible redundancy in our combat capability, it’s not a serious loss or anything, and also… I dunno, I’d rather you just be comfortable with whatever you’re doing? For reasons both practical and emotional.”

“You really ruined my rant, though.” El told him. “I had a good thing planned.”

“Do you… do you wanna use it anyway? Like, pretend I told you that you’re a soldier and you have to follow orders, and just really give it to me?” James asked her, raising his eyebrows.

El scrunched up her face and turned away from him in a huff. “No, it’s ruined now.” She said. “Also I’m too tired anyway.”

“Go sleep or something!” James told her. “Oh, actually, how was your date? I was unconscious. Did you get to go on your date?” He paused, then winced and slapped a hand over one of his eyes. “No, wait, fuck, sorry. That was Momo. I’m getting you two confused. Sorry.”

“To be fair, I also had a date.” El said with a small grin.

James nodded. “Alright, well then. Glad it went well. Anyway, was there anything else? I need to go get briefed on whatever’s going on. Unless you can catch me up?”

“Nah, I’m gonna go sleep. Go bug Nate. Or, I guess, anyone that’s not me or Momo.” El pushed herself off the wall and shuffled back a few steps, turning with a wave to James. “Thanks, too. I’ll get back to you on the delve thing.”

“Yeah, no worries.” He called after her. Then, a second later, his brain caught up with what she’d said. “Wait, hang on.” He muttered. “Was her date with Momo? Am I just getting that? Am I not paying enough attention to my friends?” He paused. And then, decided he didn’t really need to pry. The two of them would either be perfect for each other or really not perfect for each other, and he’d almost certainly find out about it either way. “Alright. Breakfast done. Interpersonal issue solved. Time for the mystery of ‘who shot me and why’.”

He turned and headed back toward the kitchen itself, hoping to catch Nate at his other job.

His plan was foiled by the absence of Nate, anywhere in the room of stainless steel and warm ovens. Instead, Marjorie greeted him cheerfully as she pulled a tray of bacon out of an oven, sliding it deftly into a holding pan to serve to the Order as they woke up and trickled in to eat. “Morning dear!” She called to him as James entered. Over in the corner, a sleepy looking young man who was arranging plates of fruit glanced up at him too, but decided that offering a greeting was too much work.

“Hey Ms. Chase.” James said politely, nodding at El’s mom. “Your daughter says hi.”

“Oh, no she doesn’t.” Marjorie waved a spatula at him. “She’s too busy with her own life for me these days. Also she’s probably still asleep.”

“Actually just going to bed. I really did just run into her. The message was implied.” James smiled at the older woman, who gave a confused smile back, not fully understanding his sense of humor. “Anyway. Is Nate around?”

“Not today. He’s got the day off.”

“Hm.” James pursed his lips and glanced off to the side. “I… don’t know where to find him when he’s not here. This hasn’t happened before.” The gears in his brain turned slowly. “…I could find… JP?”

“Or you could call Nate.” Marjorie offered.

James winced. “Oh, I lost my phone again.” He said with an uncoordinated hand gesture. “I’m thinking of just abandoning it in favor of plugging my brain into the internet all the time. It seems like it’s going well for some people.”

He said a quick goodbye, stole a piece of bacon, ignored the kind of confused nod El’s mom was giving him, and wandered back into the Lair. Passed by Keeka and gave a smile to the nervous ratroach, who was trying to see how many of the small pastries from the snack bar he could fit in his skirt as he turned the garment into a pouch. Waited patiently for the group of researchers, including both an inhabitor and an ex-Alchemist, to clear the hallway and take their argument about linguistics in potion making out of his way so he could get past. And then, made his way to the briefing warehouse.

James was still waking up. He felt pretty good, but he’d had a lot of his mental energy drained already today, and he wasn’t ready to touch either of those problems quite yet.

Instead, he found himself walking up to the ring of desks and tables that was quickly becoming the impromptu command center for Rogue operations. In the middle of it, with headphones in and fiddling with an unbroken relationstick, Ben sat listening to something while he scrolled through archived aerial photos of the area of Alaska they were in, trying to figure out when exactly the rival group had shown up.

“Yo.” James greeted him, and then repeated it louder when Ben didn’t look up.

Ben’s head snapped up quickly, and he popped his headphones out. “Oh, good, you’re here. I have an update for you.” He didn’t wait for James to say anything, and James barely had time to sit down before Ben started burying him in words. “The bullets that hit you read as manufactured by Harlan’s Wolfpack. We can assume with high confidence that they are a separate group from Priority Earth, who appear to be a defunct ecoterrorist organization. Antimemetics are in play, though to what extent we can’t tell-“

“Obviously.” James nodded, glancing over at a trio of exhausted people entering the warehouse through the back entrance before turning back to Ben.

“-yeah, well.” Ben shrugged in a stilted way. “We still don’t know why the Wolfpack are there, or why they tried to kill one of our people. Though the phrase ‘ecoterrorist group’ does sort of explain why they were killing finance execs.”

“Sort of.” James sighed. “I have a problem with… a lot of that, but okay. So, Harlan’s back. Fuck. I hope they aren’t mad I killed one of their people.” James paused. “I mean, I hope they stop trying to kill us too. Any news on what was up with the bullets themselves? They went right through the shields.”

Ben nodded rapidly. “One of our arcane specialists analyzed them, and says they contain memories. Not in the same format as Officium Mundi loot drops, so most likely some kind of weaponized form. The unfired ones you got from the FBI as a sample have them, the one we dug out of you didn’t, so it’s some kind of magical catalyst, probably. Also, the bullets may have a self-replicating property, though we don’t know how to trigger it.”

Part of what the man had said caught up to James, and he gave a rapid double take, shaking his head. “Sorry, hold up. One of our arcane specialists? We only… you can just say it was Momo, there isn’t anyone else here who’s even close to earning that title.”

“What about you?” Ben asked.

That got a derisive snort out of James. “I sometimes have good ideas, and I poke my nose in places enough that I have access to more facts. That doesn’t make me clever, or good at putting patterns together.” He admitted. “I’m not saying I’m dumb, mostly because my therapist says I should stop doing that, but I am saying that I’d a million percent trust Momo or Anesh or Davis to make connections better than me.”

“Alright then.” Ben nodded flatly. “Also you’re taking this well.”

“I’m not awake enough to really have it sink in.” James sighed. “Where’s everyone else, anyway?” He asked.

“Nate is looking into locating the Wolfpack to make contact. JP said he was going to sleep, but I suspect has set out to locate other signs of Priority Earth activity in New York.” Ben said it like he was absolutely certain that was the case.

James smirked. “You know, at this point, you could probably benefit from actually snapping that with one of them.” He said, pointing at the relationstick Ben was still tapping on an open book near his elbow.

Ben froze. Only briefly, but noticeably. “No.” He said.

“Kay.” James shrugged. “Anyway. Do you have any insight on how to proceed with this? Like, we obviously could just take out the whole group, and hope that ends the problem. But that seems needlessly vicious, and also we don’t even know what the bigger picture is.”

Ben relaxed slightly. “Well, we know that they’re partly responsible. But you’re right, it seems like nothing about this organization ties back to what you experienced in the fight with one of the daughters of the Lloyd-“

“Just Lloyd. I know that he’s The Last Line Of Defense, but I feel like giving that any respect is kind of dumb, so we’re gonna say it wrong.” James corrected.

Without any questioning, Ben accepted that. “Sure. But you’re ignoring the important part, which is the lack of connecting intelligence. We don’t know how these guys are involved, or why, or if honestly. And that lack of knowing could get people killed if we keep pressing in the dark.”

“Hm.” James frowned. “So, this is a great opportunity to find a corner piece to the puzzle, huh? But ‘middle of Alaska’s wilderness’ seems like a tricky place to do it. It’s not like we can just keep them under drone surveillance, or wiretap them. Hell, even just having a person there watching is a huge risk, because they actually do patrols, and they’ll absolutely be on high alert now. Oh, and they’ve got random magic.” James tilted back in his chair, staring at the shadowed collection of ventilation pipes and uncovered wiring that was the warehouse ceiling. “Can we sneak someone in again? How much total invisibility do we have access to? The Alchemists had that cloak, right?”

“The cloak won’t work if it’s too cold.” Ben said. “And if we stack all the SQ earrings we have that can do the invisibility thing, then we have a total of three hours and six minutes.” He stared at James. “With a roughly four day cooldown time.”

“Welp. Infiltration is out.”

“It… doesn’t have to be.” Ben said, his voice suddenly having a nervous tone to it that James quirked an eyebrow at. His fidgeting with the relationstick rapidly ramped up, the tapping on the pages of the ecoterrorist manifesto book turning into a staccato. “Can I talk to you for a minute about something?”

“We are literally doing that now.” James nodded.

“I just…” Ben took a deep breath. “Promise you won’t be mad?”

“Absolutely not!” James folded his arms. “But I doubt you could say anything that’ll actually be a huge problem, and I promise not to be a dick. What’s up? Did JP do something recklessly idiotic?”

Ben grimaced. “Probably. But no. Um… what if I said that infiltration was an option?”

“Then I’d have a lot of questions.” James felt like he should have had more coffee with his breakfast. “Is it?”

“I… I could do it.” Ben said, ducking his head.

“Oh?” James quirked an eyebrow, seeing where this was going. “You sound like you don’t want to, though.”

With a deep breath and a clench of his hands into fists, the Rogue closed his eyes and said something critically important. “I’m not human.” He told James.

“Yeah.” The word was a single dry, almost bored syllable, coming from James’ mouth with minimal consideration.

“I’m from the place you call the Winter’s Climb.”

“Again, there is no ‘the’.” James gave a half shrug. “Though this time it’s not out of lack of respect. It’s just we didn’t put a definitive article in the name. Though, being fair, I didn’t name it. Ask Liz and Morgan and Color-Of-Dawn if they wanna add a ‘the’, I guess?”

“I’m… not kidding…?” Ben said. “I’m not a person…”

“Yeah, I mean, we know.” James told him, feeling kind of awkward with the confession. “I’m… actually sorry I guess? Maybe we should have said something earlier, if you were this stressed about it? Karen spotted you about a week after we got out. You can’t actually baffle documents the way you do people. Also, the assignments and navigators see you as a kind of indistinct blob, when they look closely. You did get by Planner though, so points there! But yeah, I figure it was that long to find us, after you tailed us out, because I know you didn’t latch onto our teleport.”

“…this isn’t how I expected this to go.” Ben admitted, voice shaking somewhat. “And yes, I have an instinctive draw to… to my prey.”

“Eh.” James gave a nervous smile. “It was weird at first, but you seemed like you were legitimately fitting in, so it wasn’t a problem. Oh, though, you aren’t a great infiltrator when you actually talk, just so you know. You contradicted stuff you said about your past a lot. Like, you sound more or less human, but you come across as someone who’s hiding something constantly.” He remembered what they were talking about, and frowned. “Actually, that… yeah, no. You absolutely should not try to infiltrate these guys. I know that your innate ability would make it easy to get in, but you just said they have antimemetic abilities, and we don’t know what those are, so I’d rather not risk you on a gamble like that. Damn, actually, if you’d said something earlier we could have maybe gotten Nate to set up a training plan to maximize your whole ‘thing’ for exactly this situation. But that’s not on you; we could have asked too.”

Ben was staring at James with a weird expression. “I don’t understand how you’re so calm about this.” He said. “I’ve been… I mean, this is…”

“I’m gonna say ‘eh’ again, and I want you to know I realize I’m doing it too much.” James informed him. “Eh.” He flattened a hand and chopped it in Ben’s direction. “You’ve been here for months now, you know we’re okay with non-humans. And instead of killing anyone, you’ve decided to just… be a rather effective tactical manager for our intelligence division? Uh, okay I, guess? Ben, in the time you’ve been here, at least three people have shot at me, one of them successfully, and none of them were you. I don’t understand why you think it’s a big deal. Peaceful mutualism is literally our thing.”

“Oh. Oh… okay?” Ben composed himself as best he could. “Well, in that case, I have no further suggestions. Though we might request help from more experienced combatants to keep an eye on their compound later, because we do need to know what they’re up to.”

“I agree.” James said. “Though hopefully not me for at least a day.”

“No, we have enough people to make it work.” Ben assured him. “Though the delve teams get annoyed if we break them up to use as security.”

“Yeah, we’re big on unit cohesion around here.” James said idly. “Talk to Sarah, actually. She knows how to do this kind of thing smoothly. Assuming she has time.”

“Alright.” Ben glanced at him. Still a little suspicious. “Are you sure you’re okay with this? Me?”

“Well you did say prey a second ago so I’m curious what’s up with that. Also what changed? Like, why settle in, why tell me, you know? I’ve got a lot of questions, but I’m kinda tired and we’re both in the middle of things.”

Ben gave him a strange, blurred look. “I honestly don’t know. Maybe a random skill orb. Maybe I never needed to… Ah. Who knows.” He took a sharp breath and changed tone to something more professional and abrupt. “What… what should we do, about the Wolfpack, if it comes up?” He asked. “Are we flagging them as enemies?”

“Oh, hell, I don’t think I’m qualified to answer that.” James groaned, jolting as his attempt to brace himself on one of the desks caused the desk to slide and him to almost lose his balance in his tipped chair. “Yeah, even if they shot me. Something weird is going on, and I think we should be very careful going forward. But we’re absolutely not at the shoot-on-sight point of our relationship. Besides, I was breaking into their secret base at the time.”

“You’re way too understanding.” Ben accused him.

James cracked his knuckles and stood up. “I’ve heard that at some point earlier in this conversation. But no, pass it on to Nate too. And any other Rogue! Until we know what’s going on, this is a one-off misunderstanding, and we hope we can salvage something out of it, okay?” He didn’t notice that he was rubbing at his neck where Nik had plucked a bullet out of him not even a day ago. “I’ll live. Let’s not fuck everything up just on my account, okay?”

“Sure.” Ben didn’t look like he fully agreed with James, but at the moment, James was the closest thing he had to a leader, so he agreed to go along with it. “I’ll keep you up to date on anything we learn.”

James stood and stretched. “Alright.” He said with a strained voice as he arced his arms over his head, taking advantage of having elbows that bent well past human normal. “Keep me apprised.” He turned to go, but then stopped, looking back over his shoulder and wishing he had a cool coat to make the dramatic moment really work. “Oh, and Ben?” He waited for the Rogue to look up at him. “If you ever refer to yourself as ‘not a person’ again, you’re fired.”

And with that out of the way, James strode away, deciding he could tackle maybe one more problem before he headed back to his apartment. Dipping into the reserve of mental stamina that he never really knew the source of, James crossed the warehouse space over to the area where delve teams grouped up before heading out, and met to offload loot and information when they came back.

He offered a wave as he approached the trio of humans, all of them dressed in gear that wasn’t specifically armor, but was the closest thing you could wear in public without getting too many weird looks. They looked like they were coming back from a biker meetup, basically. It also struck James that it was kind of amusing that he was more thrown off by the fact that the team was all human than whatever they were wearing.

Charlie tapped two fingers to his forehead in a greeting as James approached. He was one of many people that James was personally responsible for keeping alive, having been one of the original survivors of Officium Mundi that they’d rescued so long ago. He’d taken a lot of time to adjust to the Order, to the massive change in his world, but he’d settled in eventually, and now his little team was sort of a catchall for random tasks that weren’t specifically dungeon delving.

“Boss.” He nodded to James, who didn’t bother to correct him. “Have you met Alice?” He asked, motioning to the woman who was trying to shuffle off the leather longcoat she was wearing without knocking the thick glasses off her face.

“Hey.” James nodded at her. “How was Utah?”

“A mess.” Charlie sighed. “Good news or bad news?”

James groaned and wondered if it was too late to hide under one of the desks in here, and let someone else worry about this. It actually probably wasn’t; the Order had a lot of momentum without him, he could probably get away with it. But he didn’t consider it for too long; he’d get bored. “Gimmie the bad news first.”

Charlie didn’t exactly frown; he always seemed to have a vaguely unhappy look on his angled face. “We haven’t located the dungeon.” He started with. “Or any of the students that were sent home.”

“Fuck.” James couldn’t keep the word from slipping out.

“Exactly. Fuck. That’s what I said!” Alice snapped her fingers. “And then Charlie got mad at me.”

“It’s unprofessional.” Charlie continued like no one had said anything. “Investigation turned up something insane, though.” He tilted his head to the table where their third member was stacking up what looked like a bunch of flat metal coins, along with a trio of books. “In the kid’s houses, we found at least three of the spellbooks that they talked about. The less useful ones, if you’re curious. Create chair, create towel, turn frog into bat. But we also found these, in one of the basements. And another stack in an attic.” He grabbed one of the smaller coins and held it out to James. “Careful, it’s a dungeon reward.”

James took it gently, and turned it over in his hand. It was a simple bronze disc, with a few markings on it that he couldn’t identify. Vaguely patterned looking etchings around the edge. “What’s it do?” He asked.

“Spell slots.” Alice told him. “That one should be one slot at level one.”

“Huh.” James said, setting it back down without breaking it. Any unused dungeon loot had a value way above a single use, since the Order had access to the copier. “Wait, in their houses? But they weren’t there?”

Charlie nodded. “Yeah. From what we can tell, the families are generational delvers. We think that’s how the kids found the place to begin with. The grandparents are all dead, though, and that’s most likely where the stockpile came from. Parents were… vaguely aware of it. I don’t have the words for it.” He reached over and plucked a notebook out of Alice’s hands, getting a ‘hey!’ from the younger woman. “They were aware that we’d dropped their kids off, and talked about the dungeon, but they didn’t focus on it outside of the conversation. They don’t seem to know about the dungeon itself, which makes us suspect that it developed information defenses recently. We’re looking into the wills of the deceased grandparents tomorrow, and also a safety deposit box they left, if we can get to it.” He looked up at James with a click of his tongue. “No information on where the kids went though.”

“I’m terrified to ask, but what’s the good news?” James said.

“Oh. Roberto here got accepted into MIT.” Charlie’s mouth quirked up in a proud smile as he looked at their third teammate.

“He’s taking credit for it, because he helped me with the application.” The young man said sheepishly. “Also it’s not that big a deal.”

“Hey, no, congrats!” James told him. “It’s easy to forget around here that the rest of the world exists sometimes! But also Charlie should feel bad for saving that news until after telling me about a bunch of missing kids!”

“He’s not very tactful. That’s what I’m here for.” Alice informed James bluntly as she snatched her notebook back. “We’ll need a new third team member, though.”

James felt like that might be the least important part of this conversation, but he promised to see what he could do, as the team informed him that they’d have a more put together debrief ready and posted on the Order’s servers later that day.

“Oh, do you actually know how the magic works, now?” He asked Charlie before he left.

“Insufficient data for a meaningful answer.” The man said instantly.

Alice rolled her eyes. “He says that to sound good about how we’re clueless.” She informed James.

He said a goodbye while he was laughing, high fived Roberto, quietly reminded the man that the Order would absolutely cover his tuition just so he wasn’t worried about that, double checked with Ben that nothing had gone wrong in the five minutes he’d been away, told Planner he was going home and that people could find him through one of his partners, and then got out of the building via telepad.

He was taking the rest of the day off.

Not that he didn’t have a million things he should be doing. Interviews, check ins, stopping the engineers from lifting the building into orbit or something, and also at least one dungeon delve was probably going on today that he’d love to be part of.

But he’d been shot. And that was a great excuse to just take a day to play a few video games, maybe take a walk to the cafe with his loves later, and generally let someone else handle the small stuff for a little while.

He’d be back tomorrow.