by Tao Wong
And truth be told, I might be a bit of a geek, but even I can get tired of reading.
Since Caleb had been of little use in understanding what was actually trapped beneath, I figured I would spend some time researching the building. I was curious if the enchantments had been built from the start or something that had appeared recently. It certainly seemed strange that if they were going to add an enchantment to a building, they didn’t do what everyone else did: add it in the foundations, out of sight. It made things so much simpler, and stronger in most cases.
With that in mind, I made a visit to the archival room of our public library. It was only when I arrived I found out that not only did they not keep building plans, access to building plans at city hall also required me to get the permission of the owners. Oh, and there was no guarantee they’d have plans for something as old as the orphanage.
“So what can I find out here?” I asked, slightly exasperated.
Thankfully, the librarian—a thin, weedy-looking guy who looked like he needed less time in the sun—didn’t take offense with my question and directed me to the microfilm section. There, he then pointed me at the various resources available, patiently explaining that no, there wasn’t a web search that would give me all the information contained. And then, the bastard left me.
Four hours later, I recalled why I hated libraries. I gently dropped my head onto the giant tome that blandly described the history of social housing and welfare for children in the city. It was intensely boring, but it did at least mention the orphanage… if not in the context I required.
“May I be of assistance?” a soft voice asked me, and I twitched, tilting my head sideways. Next to me was a bespectacled, bird-headed creature with coffee-colored skin. I stared at the creature for a second, my brain trying to locate the particular type. Its feathered head bobbed slightly as the creature continued to speak. “I am Adom.” Lowering his voice even further, Adom said, “I am from my lord Thoth’s lineage.”
“Oh…” My brain scrambled for a second, thankful for long, long D&D sessions and a rather weird obsession with all things mythological. Thoth was the Egyptian god of knowledge. Details came back from an abandoned campaign, filling in further details. Egyptian gods were generally decent, and since he was just someone from that lineage, I should treat him like any other supe. “Depends. You good at research?”
“I have some small skill,” Adom said, inclining his head.
“Perfect,” I said with a grin. “I need to know everything you can find about the Brixton Orphanage. In five days.”
“Lord mage, I fear you misunderstand. Good research takes time,” Adom said, shaking his head disapprovingly.
“I know, but I’ve got a time-limited quest here, so chop-chop,” I said. “Not that I mean you should. Ummm… how much would I owe you?”
Adom cocked his head to the side now, regarding me for a time. “Five days of dedicated research. Rush order. Two thousand dollars.”
“Two thousand!” I yelped and got glares from the few people around. I simmered down, shooting a sheepish glance back at the library attendees I had disturbed. “That’s daylight robbery. One.”
“Deal. Should I meet you here or at your offices?” Adom said immediately.
“Wait a second. I feel like I’ve been cheated here!” I grumbled. Damn it. Luckily, this was real life, or I’d probably receive negative experience for negotiating. “And here is fine. Probably for the best.”
“Pleasure doing business with you,” Adom said, offering his hand. I shook it while standing and walked out of the library. A thousand dollars. Gah! At least, if we completed Alexa’s quest, we should still see a profit. Still. A thousand dollars.
Cursing myself, I made my way home.
Chapter 11
“Why are we doing this stakeout again?” I grumbled as we sat in the car, in a new spot overlooking the building. This was the second lookout spot we had used in the last few hours, Alexa having decided that moving more often was a better idea than having the police called on us again. Not that I disagreed, but…
“Intelligence before an attack is important. Do we have a Link?” Alexa said and prodded me. I stared at the small circular makeup mirror we had purchased for this very purpose, figuring it was easier than constantly adjusting the rearview mirror.
“Yes. The usual,” I said and shifted the mirror for Alexa to look. I swear, these guys desperately needed to find something better to do than stare at the idiot box all day. Who cared what horrible food was being eaten, which long-lost cousin with amnesia was being released from jail, or how to bake a double-chocolate-fudge cake. Actually, maybe the last one.
“Let’s just keep watching,” Alexa said in reply after she looked.
“Fine. But what are we waiting for?” I said with a grimace. Still, I sat back and focused on feeding mana to the image while doing my utmost to draw in as much mana from the surroundings as possible.
“Either another shipment or payment. They were paid recently, so it’s not likely to be the second. But if they receive a second shipment, we can hit them and destroy it. Maybe even take their money at the same time.”
“You don’t mean to launch the attack when the courier is there, right? Because we’re a bit far away to do that…”
“No. We can take the three, but I don’t know how many would be with their courier. Or when it’d arrive. Better for us to just destroy their product,” Alexa said.
“Actually, I think taking their money would be better. See, the product is probably quite cheap to make, but the money they earn is, well, money.”
“Why’d you think it’s cheap to make?”
“Isn’t that how drugs work? The product is cheap but gets marked up because it’s illegal?” I asked with a shrug. “Or gets marked up because of the cost of lost product due to law enforcement, which in this case would be us.”
Alexa frowned at my words but, after a moment’s consideration, slowly nodded.
“Great. Then let’s go home, and we’ll plan the hit.”
“Can we not talk about it like that?” Alexa asked. “We’re not assassins.”
“Fine,” I said, maybe a bit pitifully. I guessed she wouldn’t accept wearing black masks too?
“Masks are a good idea,” Alexa said with a nod. “I’ll put up my hair and wear a wig too.”
“Wait. You’re good with a mask?”
“Of course.” Alexa nodded firmly. “We don’t want to be caught. And you should put a glamour on us too. Just in case.”
“Sure,” I said, readjusting my thinking. I then stared at the sketched-out map of the house before us on my grid paper. Who said buying all this erasable grid paper for my RPG games had been a waste? Har! Though, when I had pulled it out, I’d realized how long it had been since I had a good game. Ever since my last group broke up due to interpersonal conflicts—seriously, how many times did we have to repeat “do not date in your game group” before people got it—I hadn’t had a good game. Then again, I was living an urban fantasy campaign. But… well, there was still something missing.
On the grid map, we’d sketched the inner layout of the building as best as we could gather from my repeated uses of Scry. Added on to it, we had another section for the second floor. Theoretically we should have had one more for the basement, but considering we’d never seen the basement itself, it was currently empty.
On top of all this, we had a printout of the satellite image for the neighborhood and a map of the roads around the location itself including one-way streets, exits to the nearest highway, and other viable and contingency roads. I’d also taken the time to mark where the nearest police station was, though as we’d found out, the police did have a few roaming patrols.
“I’m not sure if I’m impressed or disturbed by how competent you are planning a robbery,” Alexa said, watching as I jotted further information onto the map.
“Blame Shadowrun,” I said.
Lily snorted at that, while Alexa looked a
t me blankly.
“This is so a Shadowrun job. You’re even going to go in the front door, guns blazing!” Lily giggled.
“There are no guns. Wait, are there guns, Henry?” Alexa asked, staring at me.
“No guns. It’s just a saying.” I cocked my head sideways at Lily. “Though I’m surprised someone knows it.”
“I like reading fanfic,” Lily said. “And other people’s recounting of their games.”
“Ah…” I paused, considering the jinn. “You know, you could just sign up to play a game.”
“I could?” Lily paused, her gaze turning unconsciously to the ring on my finger. After a moment, she smiled and nodded. “I could!”
“Did… did you just not realize it?”
“You try living a few millennia trapped in a ring,” Lily said with her arms crossed. “I forget I can, you know, do things.”
“Ahem.” Alexa cleared her throat and pointed at the map. “So what are we looking at?”
“Well, if things go bad, we’ve got about ten minutes before the cops arrive—give or take—from the station. Probably five if there’s a roaming patrol car,” I said, tapping the map. “The neighborhood is mostly made up of double income earners, so I think going in during the day at around ten would be best. At night, there’s a lot more people, so we’re more likely to get spotted. Better to do it when everyone’s out.”
“Sounds fair,” Alexa said.
“Right. We go in during the day. If we wait till they’re all upstairs, we can walk right up to their front door. If I spend the rest of tonight, I’m pretty sure I can make the equivalent of a lockpick,” I said. “Which will get us in the front door. Then we just have to—” That’s when I stopped, realization hitting me.
“We’ll have to deal with them.”
“Right. Yeah…” My brain stuttered to a stop again, a pause that made Alexa frown at me.
“What’s wrong, Henry?”
“I’m not sure about our plan. If they resist, we’re going to have fight them. They’ve got guns and…” I paused, drawing a shuddering breath. “And I don’t know if I can put them down without killing them. If I’m willing to kill them. If I can. What if I freeze? What if you get shot while I freeze? What happens if my shields can’t hold up against the bullets? What if the bullets bounce and hit them? What—”
“Henry.” A hand falls on my arm, squeezing it so tight, my breath hitches and my rambling stops. “You haven’t killed before, have you?”
“Yes, I have,” I said in protest.
“I don’t mean rats. Or demons. Or obvious monsters,” Alexa said. “I mean humans. Or those close to them.”
“I…” I shook my head. “Why is it so different?”
“Because it is.” Alexa shrugged. “We all have our own mental hiccups. It’s not a bad thing. It doesn’t make you weak. But I need you to think about this, very carefully. Before we make any more plans, I need you to know where your lines are.”
“And if I can’t kill them?” I whispered softly.
“Then we’ll know. And plan around that,” Alexa said.
I nodded dumbly and took my arm back from her. I realized with a shock that my hands were shaking, adrenaline setting my nerves tingling and my heartbeat rocketing without any real escape. I stumbled to the couch and sat down heavily, breathing slowly as my mind spiraled.
Could I kill? Should I kill? They were gangsters. Drug dealers. Bad people. But I wasn’t the Punisher. I was no soldier who got up in the morning and chanted songs about shooting my enemies in the head. I was a gamer given a gift, and I’d mostly used it to do good. Sure, I’d been in a few fights, but killing a demon or Devil Rats wasn’t morally reprehensible. They were pests. And demons. I’d have to be really messed up to have a moral problem with killing demons.
I paused, realizing I was shying away from the topic at hand once again. Killing humans. The drug dealers. Was it right? If they tried to kill me, sure. I could do that. Eye for an eye. No problem. In the heat of battle, it made sense. But here, I was planning to break into their house and fight them. It was so cold. So, wrong.
Was that why the law had differences between premeditated murder and murders of passion? Because planning and acting on a plan was so much worse? That you had to steel yourself to do it? But weren’t these drug dealers doing the same? With their drugs.
Where do we—do I—draw the line? I was no saint. I wasn’t going to say I would never kill. That only worked in comics. Hell, considering how much damage Batman did on a regular basis to the average mugger, in the real world, he’d eventually accidentally kill someone from a medical complication, an unknown heart condition, a seizure, a blood clot entering the brain. Humans were fragile.
But it didn’t mean I was about to go around killing others. Or that I should. Somewhere, somehow, there should be a line. At least for me.
I sat on the couch, staring onto the busy city street while pondering exactly where I drew the line in my new life. Where do I, Henry Tsien, mage, decide it was okay to take a life.
Hours later, I looked up as dinner was set in front of me. This time around, it was Alexa’s turn to cook, which resulted in tasty but simple tomato, ground-meat pasta. As the still-steaming dish sat in front of me, taunting my empty belly, Alexa took a seat before me and spoke.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes. I think. I guess, I just never really thought about what it meant,” I said softly. “Getting jumped and attacked by orcs or werejackals was one thing. I could justify doing whatever I needed to do to guard myself. And if it was scary, well, what hasn’t been? But breaking and entering… killing people. The morality of it is a lot greyer when it’s real life.”
Alexa cocked her head to the side for a time before she nodded slowly. “It’s one thing I admire and pity about you, Henry. Your innocence, your optimism and belief in people. While we were taught that everyone is loved by God, we were also trained to kill, to see supernaturals as less than human. Even other humans, those who dabbled in magic and the supernatural world, were considered tainted, unworthy.
“It was simple, theoretically. I was a faith healer. It wasn’t as if I was supposed to fight them directly. While we all received the training, for me, it was less real. Then I was sent to you, and we’ve interacted with—done quests—for the supernatural. Talked to them. Done wards for their newborns and light shows for their graduation parties. They stopped all being monsters, but…”
“But?”
“But the bad ones are still bad. The Templars are here to stop those who are bad, who are wrong. Whether it’s dealing drugs or killing people, if they’re human or supernatural. If they’re doing evil, my job—our job is to stop them,” Alexa said.
“But I’m not a Templar.”
“No. You’re not.”
I rubbed my face again, picking up my fork to twirl the pasta around as a distraction. After a time, I shook my head and dropped it. “I don’t think I can choose to do that, Alexa. I know what they’re doing is wrong. I know it. But killing them when they’re not trying to kill me, I can’t do it.”
“Then let’s plan to capture them,” Alexa said simply. “If we have time, I can have the Knights take them in.”
“Kill them,” I stated with some horror in my voice.
“Not necessarily,” Alexa said. “I’m sure they’d have information we could use.”
“Like?”
“Their supplier. Who they work for. Their goals,” Alexa rattled off.
“Oh…” I could push her, ask what happened when all that information was given, when they had learned everything they wanted. But really, I knew that answer too. And somehow, I had to admit, I was willing to let it happen. Perhaps it was hypocritical of me, to condemn men to death but not want the blood itself on my hand. But if so, it was a level of hypocrisy I could live with. And sleep with.
“Capture.” I prodded the pasta again and then firmly nodded. “If we’re going to do that, I better get planning.”
It was only later that night when Alexa had retired for the evening and I had come back downstairs, my mind still whirling with minor alterations to the plan when the jinn spoke.
“Are you really okay with this?” Lily asked as I pushed the little robed mage and paladin miniatures around the board.
“What? The plan. Of course, I made it.”
“Doing the Templars’ bidding,” Lily said, tapping her keyboard to pause her game and turn directly toward me. “It’s not really your quest. You don’t have any personal penalties for failing.”
“Except I might lose Alexa.”
“Except that,” Lily said, conceding my point. “But while she might be friendly now, do remember that her job is to keep an eye on you and to keep you alive till you hit level one hundred, and the ring can come off.”
“At which point everyone and their boss is going to come after me,” I said flatly. “I remember. And that’s why… That’s why I need to do this.”
Lily hummed slightly, prompting me to go on, and I sighed.
“I’m not a killer, Lily. I mean, sure. I’ve killed imps. And the demon. And Devil Rats and evil ravens. And those weird llama creatures,” I said, ticking off the violence I’d conducted in my time. “But I’m not a killer. Not like her Templars. Or the orcs. Or the werejackals. I wasn’t brought up to kill.”
“So, you’re going to make it clear to them you won’t kill?” Lily asked, slightly incredulously. “How’s that going to help you survive?”
“Because if I’m going to survive, I’m going to need to push myself, and killing them is easy. Simple. But my life isn’t going to be simple, and this isn’t going to be easy,” I said slowly, reaching inside to explain a thought process I had barely grasped. “If—when I hit level one hundred, when the ring comes off, I’m going to have to fight them all. If I can learn to handle myself now with gloves on, maybe I’ll be able to handle them all when the gloves come off.”
