Her orders followed in a series of truncated bullet points.
The list continued in this manner for the next three pages. Then there were the specific targets like the Tyrant Par’su. Sarah would have skipped over the lot of them if one entry beneath the [Local] header hadn’t accidentally caught her eye.
Sarah glanced up and saw Denise reach the same line within a hairsbreadth of herself.
Sarah was careful not to blink.
Denise didn’t look like she believed her. In her defense, thirteen points was close to what they’d earned for their insertion, and that hadn’t been a small reward. To put it in perspective, Sarah had only earned one point for applying herself during training. Killing dissidents had merely gotten her three. Thirteen? Between that and what she’d already banked, there was enough there to buy another upgrade. Maybe even a couple if she rooted through the Network's bargain bin.
Sarah didn’t get a chance to contest the accusation.
“Uh… Sis,” Tyrese called out, his pitch rising in concern. “You’re going to want to take a look at this.”
The young man turned his screen around. There at the top of the [Tasks] tab was a message from the Offal Sea. [Contract - Subversion], the burning statement read. [Divert The Red Letter Society from the collection of Mana to Merit - 21 points].
A blinking carmine light waited below the offer.
“Say, [Yes],” Denise ordered when she realized the implications. “Say, [Yes] right fucking now.”
“I don’t know,” her brother prevaricated. “Have you seen what it’s asking people to do? This new system seems super evil.”
Denise didn’t care; if the man refused to play ball, then someone would come for his head. It was simply the nature of the game. You were either with the Sea or against it. Sure, it might cut you a break, should your motives prove sufficiently selfish; however, organizing the competition? Building an institution? That was a hard, ‘no.’ Especially when it came to the Light.
“Listen, Tyr. I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but this asshole is promising to pay me for your corpse. Are you seriously trying to tell me that it’s worth it to…”
The parasite's mouth slammed shut as a new window opened beside her. [Contract], the Light proposed. [Accumulate 20,000 mn across Red Cross Splinter-Faction #43]. [Reward: 3000 mn / 60 minutes, Purity = 0.975, Alignment = ‘Restorative’].
Neither of the medics knew what to say. The Sea did and immediately issued its counteroffer by displaying an entry in its [Upgrades] tab.
A few seconds passed, then an additional screen appeared beneath the first.
‘Well shit,’ Sarah thought as the pane returned to the [Upgrades] tab. 'That’s certainly a bribe.’ A heavy handed one too. The Sea usually didn’t contact you unless you had something profound to offer. If the Network was putting its finger on the scale for users at their level of acclaim, then the war must be going well. ...That or it wanted to present a strong front to the newly initialized humans.
Tyrese's reaction to the window made her suspect it was the former. “Is… is it over?” he inquired, half expecting a reply from the Light. “Does anyone else want to send me a pop up, or am I free to get back to my day?” He sounded rather annoyed, despite his air of general bemusement. Apparently, it was fine to receive messages from outer space, but the second they started serving you ads, then that became a bridge too far.
Sarah could almost relate; the numb shock of the Sea’s arrival was giving way to anger and anxiety. “You know what?” she growled quietly. “Yes. Yes, you can. Because I officially have bigger shit to deal with than quibbling over crap with your sister.
“Yeah?” Denise drawled, too pissed to sound properly sardonic. “Alright, I can get behind that. Let’s all bury the hatch and then get the fuck out of here."
Sarah felt the urge to flip her colleague off on general principle. She still began slipping into the woods while Raul climbed down from his perch. The last she heard of the retreating duo was Denise failing to convince her brother to compromise on his moral intransigence. Sarah wished her the best of luck; Denise would need it if the sound of their argument was any indication of her likely success.
“Hell of a way to end the day,” Raul noted as he emerged from the rocky brush. “Are we really going to ignore her friends after going through all this trouble?”
Sarah dipped her head in a jerky nod. “Yeah. I get the feeling that I just dropped from the radar of every federal agent who was inclined to give a damn.”
Raul pulled his window up. He skimmed over the ninety-page document that outlined their objectives in New England. “Okay; fair enough. I can’t imagine we’re a priority when the Sea‘s contracting sabotage missions via the freaking classifieds. With that being said, there’s an easy three pointer if we hit the substation on our way back. Any objections to making a pit stop?”
The worm in Sarah said to go for it - wrecking the power grid was easy money, and the points wouldn’t be there forever. If they didn’t take it out? Someone else would, and at that point they’d be leaving cash on the table over what was essentially squeamishness. She still hesitated to open her mouth. Sarah tabbed over to the summary in her [Overview], instead. The second line stood out. [Warspawn Infiltrator 269733c]. Did she really want to work for someone who referred to her as just a number?
A minute passed while Sarah waited for the Sea to offer to correct her status. Nothing happened. Clearly, she was beneath its notice. “I’m going to suggest we give it a pass," Sarah denied. "I don’t want to trip over another warspawn, who’s just had the same stroke of brilliance.”
Raul looked like he wanted to argue that there shouldn’t be any in the area. Denise’s appearance ensured his counterpoint was dead on arrival. “Fine,” he grumbled as they wandered into the parking lot. “In that case, what’s our next move? Back to the field hospital?”
“Yeah,” Sarah sighed, her shoes slapping against the asphalt. “We’ve already gotten what we came for; it’s time to see if it was worth the hassle.”
Raul started heading for the passenger’s seat until Sarah stopped him with a shout. “Hey!” she called out before lobbing the keys across the hood. “You drive this time. I need to take care of something on the way.”
Raul nearly fumbled the catch, forcing him to cup the fob to his chest. “Say what? The hell can you do from the car?”
Honestly? Fix her sleep schedule: Sarah had been up for the last two days. Add in the excitement, and the lingering ache from her wounds, and the trip had hit her like a week-long bender. She could take the strain, of course - warspawn only required about twenty hours a month - however there was no reason to invite the extra stress when Sarah had the ability to stay abreast of the pressure. Besides, it made her feel more human if she checked out every night. Especially since her sensorium always got a little weird after the insomnia started to build. Something about the way her host interfaced with her brain created moments of sluggish dissonance. ‘Input lag’ would be a good way to describe it. The delay between her decisions and their implementation always drove her slightly up the wall.
Raul arched an eyebrow when she reluctantly conveyed as much. “You know, they make drugs for that. You can even buy them over the counter.”
Sarah grimaced at his suggestion. “Thanks, but I’d rather not waste my paycheck on lattes and frappuccinos.”
“Your loss,” Raul conceded before climbing into the cab. “You want me to wake you up when we get back to Concord?”
Sarah shook her head. It was hard enough to trust the guy not to shank her while she was asleep; no way was she giving him enough rope to lynch her dumbass too. Easier to just set an alarm to go off in the next couple of hours. Her phone even had the right kind of app for it, sparing her a search through Google Play.
Pallsburg typed in her password without either of them needing to think about it. An icon immediately popped up letting her know that service across the network was down. ‘Must be congestion,’ she thought as she pulled up the aforementioned program. ‘I suppose this saves me the trouble of feeling like I should call ahead.’
Amanda was probably losing her mind, given her issues with the war and the Sea. Pallsburg’s absence couldn’t be helping matters, either. Without her girlfriend close by, it’d be trivial to imagine the woman meeting her end on some misbegotten shore. They’d certainly seen it happen often enough during the course of their respective careers.
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
A surge of revulsion climbed up Sarah's scale-covered spine. She proceeded to bury the memory in the same box as the littoral massacre before settling herself behind the C-Max’s dash.
“Hey,” Raul suddenly chuckled after he turned the key in the ignition. “If you’re taking a nap, does this mean we’ve technically slept together?”
Sarah buried her face in her palm. “Just drive the fucking car.”
Raul drove the fucking car. It normally took about ninety minutes to travel from Squam Lake to Concord; however, due to the damaged roads, it was more like two or three hours. Sarah dozed the whole way through. In fact, she probably would have remained unconscious in the parking lot if the chaos of the aid station hadn’t roused her before her alarm could.
“Ugh, the fuck’s happening now?” she grumbled wearily.
Raul shrugged and waved at the white-capped tents that had been erected in the empty field. “Looks like security’s up in arms. I don’t think they’re letting people through.”
Sarah blinked and rubbed a speck of filth from the corner of her eye. Sure enough, there were at least four additional patrol teams embedded around the encampment. One of them was by a row of stanchions that had been strung together to form a crude gate. Another was near the waiting room, which Sarah had rested in earlier. Both groups seemed to tense up whenever anyone tried to get by.
“Well, that’s not good,” she groused with a still half drowsy whine. “You happen to see what set them all off?”
Raul shook his head while Sarah fiddled with the lever to her seat. “Nope,” he replied aloud once the plastic had finished creaking, "which makes me think it has to be the Sea. If it was another breakout by the fungaloids, then most of their attention would be on the perimeter.”
“I’d buy that,” Sarah agreed after she was no longer parallel to the floor. “I don’t know how many of the volunteers are over the [Contract]'s 'half K' cutoff, but it’s got to be at least six or seven.”
“Mmm.” Raul shaded his night-vision from the bright fluorescent lights and watched an ambulance pull up to the curb. The EMTs seemed to be having less trouble with the sentries than a woman escorting her children. “We could sneak in,” he suggested, his tone the opposite of enthused. “It’d be a pain in the ass, but we could do it.”
Sarah wasn’t exactly stoked. “Nah, I think I’ll just take the same approach as the last time I had to be sociable.”
Raul lifted an eyebrow. “You mean when you and your partner came here for treatment, right? ...Right?”
Sarah didn’t reply; she was already out the door and headed for the reinforced guard post. Raul caught up to her about thirty feet from the gate. Since he didn’t say anything, Sarah merely slowed her pace to match and then nodded at the men on duty.
“Evening,” she greeted them, hunting for the right mix of harried and polite. “Do I have to re-check-in with the nurse, or can I just cut through to the Recovery Ward?”
The security team all wore a copy of the same aggrieved expression. Sarah got the feeling they’d been having this conversation all night. “I’m sorry miss,” one of them eventually apologized, “but visiting hours are over. I know the administration has promised unrestricted access to your family; however, we cannot justify the risk at this time, given recent events.”
“The risk?” Sarah repeated, her register shifting into an indignant squawk. “What risk? I’m not showing any signs of Covid.”
The guard winced. “That’s… not the sort of risk we’re talking about. There are some… health concerns… following reality’s recent hotfix. Have you looked at the new window by any chance? The red one that just appeared?”
Sarah pretended to be confused and appalled by the delay. “What? No! I refuse to pay attention to any of that rot.”
“Well, it’s introduced some perverse incentives. Until we can screen out the bad actors, we’re limiting access to the staff and patients.”
“For how long?” Sarah snapped as she flailed around in exasperation. “You can’t just keep my partner trapped because some jackoff got a bit spooked!”
The guard rubbed the back of his neck. “…I think they’re setting up an approved guest list?” He checked with his equally ignorant co-workers. “I’m not sure. They told us they’d have more information when our shift ended in the morning.”
Sarah blindly unlocked her phone. “If all you need is confirmation, then take a look at this! Does it really look like I wouldn’t make the cut?!”
Sarah pulled up the explicit picture she’d stumbled across at Bently’s. Saved to her hard drive, in an album titled ‘U and Me,’ the image depicted Amanda’s naked back as she ate out her blindfolded girlfriend. A pair of handcuffs bound the latter to the bed frame. The only reason you could tell it was the warspawn was because they’d positioned a mirror in the background beforehand.
“Uh… I’m not sure…” The rent-a-cop seemed torn between staring at the photo and trying to spare her dignity.
Sarah thanked him for the consideration by shoving the device closer to his face. “No? Then how about this one?” she hissed as she furiously scrolled between nudes. “Or this one? Tell me, does it look like we’re unacquainted?”
Pallsburg burned with embarrassment every time Sarah’s finger threatened to twitch. Personally, the parasite thought she should be more concerned about the close-up currently on display.
One of the guy’s friends finally came to his rescue. “I think Steven’s seen enough,” he told her, half-heartedly choking back a laugh. “Why don’t you just go on through.”
Sarah refused to wait around where someone could potentially object. “Thank you. I appreciate your consideration. Good luck with the weird magic window.”
A grateful murmur was her only response until they broke line of sight with the guard post. Then Raul coughed into his fist. “So… you and Amanda. What’s the deal there? You two on the outs? Open? Prepping a scheme for work?”
The sound of Pallsburg’s footsteps transitioned from asphalt to hard-packed dirt. “It’s complicated,” Sarah deflected after weighing whether to answer at all. “Why? Are you asking for yourself?”
“Sure,” Raul replied, a roguish grin peeking through his indifference. “Is that a problem?”
Sarah shook her head. Irritating behavior aside, she knew she could find a use for someone she didn’t particularly care for. Meat shield; extra muscle; a way to top off her core: the possibilities were practically endless.
Only one of them really mattered, though, and it came into sharp focus as Sarah ducked through the flap of Amanda’s tent.
“...o, they’re panicking,” its occupant was relaying into her phone. “I think it’s the font of all things. Common convention holds that red-” Amanda cut herself off. “Nevermind, we can talk about this later. Sarah and her tagalong just walked in. Let me switch to speaker mode, so I can rope everyone into the call.”
Kennedy’s voice emerged a couple seconds later. “Sure. And hey,” he greeted them, the salutation less troubled than the last time she’d shown up on his porch. “Amanda’s been filling me in on the trouble with the cell and the Sea. How are you doing? Anyone else get shot?”
“Nobody worth mentioning,” Sarah dismissed with a scoff. “What about back home? Did Simon ever get in touch?”
The speaker crackled as Kennedy sighed. “More or less. The police picked him up. They caught him trying to break into the sixth precinct, so he could ransack their evidence locker. The case against him has gotten buried, though, what with everything else going on. To be honest, I’m not sure it’s going to amount to much since shit will kick off pretty soon.”
“The Governor’s imposing martial law,” Amanda explained, a bit too sore to beat around the bush. “There’s also news reports of seeds spilling forth; however, the footage doesn’t look quite right. I’m pretty sure it’s actually the Sea deploying elements of the Fifth Wave. Now that the Network’s arrived, they’re trying to establish a beachhead.”
“Where at?” Sarah asked, her eyes closing for a moment in pain.
“About four hundred miles off the coast of Baja. Another between Brazil and Liberia. There’s probably a couple others, but the net’s been kind of spotty.”
That would put the invasion in the middle of two different oceans. They must be coming through in force if they’d been noticed by naval intelligence.
Kennedy’s concerns were closer to home. “What are their numbers like up there?” he asked her before they could get too far off-track. “Are they making landfall as well, or was the recent noise due to the Light?”
Amanda’s gaze slipped towards Raul. “The latter,” she said with only the barest hitch in her breathing. “We went and confirmed it ourselves. I can’t make any promises about whether the area will quiet down, but it’s definitely not the fault of the Sea.”
Sarah struggled to give a shit. “Let’s circle back to this ‘martial law’ business. What the hell does that mean for Boston? Is there fighting in the streets? Just an extension of the ongoing curfew? Put it into perspective for me.”
The phone spat a wave of static as Kennedy softly hummed. “Ah, well: could be worse; could be better. Police are out in force, but that’s nothing new. There’s also signs that they’re going to establish a series of checkpoints; however, the logistics are slowing them down. It’ll probably be a couple of days before any of the blockades are fully operational.”
“You don’t seem worried,” Sarah muttered, unable to say the same.
Kennedy huffed and slapped the side of his chair. “You might have missed it, but I haven’t been terribly quick or subtle in years. It removes much of the sting.”
“It’s still a problem,” Amanda opined from atop her lumpy pillow. “If not for us, then for the city’s conventional residents. After all, what’s it say about the government’s confidence if they’re sticking a platoon on every corner?”
“That it’ll be a warzone,” Kennedy conceded after pausing to weigh the question. “Do you think they’re expecting to encounter the same level of enthusiasm as they saw last month for the Light?”
Amanda’s shoulders twitched beneath her threadbare blanket. “Sure. It’ll be a different demographic, but someone will appreciate the appeal. It’s why I suggested you pull out earlier - maybe hit the countryside for a while. You’re not exactly in a position to handle that level of chaos.”
“And you are?” Kennedy countered, bemused by the pat advice.
Amanda shook her head. “No, but we’re not in Boston, either, now are we?”
Sarah shot her ex a look. She knew that insinuating tone: it was the same one Amanda used whenever she wanted to treat her opinion as a fait accompli “Hey, I’ve got business in Boston. Don’t go putting words in my mouth.”
The diminutive warspawn speared her with a frigid glare. “We can talk about this later.”
Sarah refused to shut up just because Raul was in the room. “Let’s talk about it now. You know why I’m here - you know why I agreed to come.”
“Sure,” Amanda replied, the admission flat enough to cut. “But the situation’s changed. The Sea’s appearance guarantees that.”
A sharp snort brushed the top of Sarah’s lip. As far as she could tell, the only thing the Sea had ensured was trepidation from her erstwhile ally. “And how long are you expecting me to wait? A week? A month? A year? Until it’s safe? We both know that’s a pipe dream.”
Amanda nearly threw her phone across the room at the tarp between her windswept guests. “And that makes it okay for you to be cavalier with your life!?”
“You mean Pallsburg’s life,” Sarah corrected her pointedly. “Let’s not pretend the two are the same.”
Raul glanced between the incensed infiltrators, ambivalent to their rising hackles. “I feel like I’m missing something. Does anyone want to explain?”
Sarah betrayed her ex out of habit. “Amanda’s spent the last year dating my current ride. Needless to say, she’d prefer to keep things vintage.”
For a brief moment, Sarah could see the games fall away as her ex actively plotted murder. Then the parasite took a deep breath, and her expression slipped behind a pretty wall. “Okay,” Amanda pronounced. “You want to do this? Fine. Jason? I’m going to have to call you back.”
“Hold on a second, I don’t know if-”
The phone banished his complaint with a beep.
Sarah was harder to shut up. “Cute. Are you going to remove any other witnesses, or do you happen to like these odds?”
Amanda wrinkled her nose. “Wow. You seriously think I’m going to take a swing at you? Me? With my empty core and broken hip? I’m pretty sure you’d win that fight with a firm push down the fucking stairs.”
“I-”
“I-I-I,” she stuttered mockingly. “Shut the fuck up. You sound like a hungry five-year-old. Smell like one too. How many people have you killed since we split up this afternoon?"
"Three?” Amanda pressed when Sarah refused to answer. “Ten? A hundred? Do you even remember the number? Hell, do you even care? Or is it just one long high from start to fucking finish?”
“...You think I’m getting off on this?” Sarah hissed once she'd finally found her tongue. “I’m not the one shooting pornos of stuff normal people have to see in 2d.”
Amanda rolled her eyes. “Don’t change the subject.”
“Bitch, I have photos on this phone of you probing Pallsburg’s ass! That isn’t hyperbole, Amanda! You’re lucky I scrolled past them before the guards could ask me what that weird black dildo was!”
“Better than someone asking you why your shoes are covered in blood. What, were you too busy shooting people to stop and wipe your feet?”
Sarah glanced down at the clumps of sand sticking to the bleached leather. “That’s just mud,” she dismissed distractedly.
Amanda smacked the bed with her palm. “Like hell it is! You think I can’t tell the difference between dirt and the shit that comes out of a corpse?!”
It took a second for the sensation to register, but Sarah caught a whiff of Amanda’s original core. That’s right, she'd managed to save a reserve of ‘Scent’ mana, hadn't she? Or was it a verb like ‘to Smell?’ Sarah supposed the distinction was academic. Either way, it’d be trivial for her to identify each flake of crusty brown muck.
“Well?!” Amanda screeched while the motes surged and withdrew.
Sarah ignored the incidental leakage. “Well, what? Are you really going to insist I mourn a bunch of homicidal lunatics? Fuck off. Half the reason we even met them was because you pointed us in their direction.”
“Yeah, to help people,” Amanda spat. “Not to prop up my partner’s body count!”
The echo of Amanda’s voice was swallowed by the canvas walls of the tent. Were it not for the heavy cloth muffling her seething reverberations, the security team might've put in an appearance.
Sarah merely raised her voice to match. “I’m helping you, aren’t I? Or is that not good enough? It isn’t, is it? I bet the patient has to be a complete fucking stranger before they qualify for your deranged sense of charity.”
Amanda’s lips pressed flat. “Oh, I'm sorry. Why don’t you come a little closer, so I can praise you for sucking your own dick.”
She beckoned with her fingers like every prick who’d ever learned kung fu.
A wave of heat spread from Sarah’s nose to the top of her delicate cheek bones. Despite herself, she began to stomp over until Sarah halted by the foot of the bed. “You miserable, sanctimonious jackass. Do you even want my help?”
Amanda wasn’t bothered by the way her ex was throttling the air. “What I want is for you to keep my girlfriend safe and your own ass relatively unshot. If that means stopping you before you charge into gunfire, then I’ll put in the necessary time.”
Something about the way she said that made Sarah’s hair stand on end. It took her a second to figure out why. Then she got it: it was because of the way the mana had shifted after Amanda had opened her mouth. What was -
Sarah lashed out with her ‘Purity’ core, disrupting the subtle twist. “Bitch, did you just try to enthrall me?!”
“I don’t know; did it work?” Amanda’s voice was strangely calm as she kept warping the mote’s alignment. First, to an aspect like ‘Core Memory Induction’ and then to a process that could best be summarized as ‘Adherence to the Thought.’ It was almost impressive. She must be spending mana like crazy to compensate for the poor conversion rate.
The simplicity of Sarah’s ‘Purity’ core ensured her own efforts were much less costly. “No,” she ground out while carefully clearing the room with her flows. “No it did not.”
Amanda increased her output until it couldn’t be anything but deliberate. “A shame. It really was for your own good.”
Sarah didn’t reply; the consequences of letting the spell dig in were a little too grave to countenance. Instead, she simply backed up. The closer she got to the door, the more a genuine snarl stole across Amanda’s face. “Bitch,” the latter cursed. “Why do you always have to be so stubborn?”
“For the same reason you’re never honest: I suppose it’s just in my nature.”
With a muffled grunt, Sarah enveloped her ex in a billowing shroud of ‘Purity’ mana. Held at the edge of her skin, right above her stomach, the pressure tore at the oncoming motes until their ingrained orders began to break down.
Amanda screamed like she was peeling from the burn.
Sarah didn’t buy it. “Nice try," she heckled, "but you hit me with worse on the beach. No way you’re going to fry unless I crank it up another notch.”
Sure enough, Amanda vented a stream of mana right as she hit a high note. Had Sarah hesitated or been preoccupied, the plume would have burst through her defenses. Instead, the motes kept up the pressure and reduced it down to an anemic spurt. A quick side-step handled the rest.
“You done yet?” Sarak asked while Amanda panted in frustration and pain. “Not that this hasn’t been fun, but I’ve got places to be.”
Amanda struggled to rise and collapsed. The muscles peeking through her gown trembled like a plucked string. They also lacked the strength to make a second attempt. The warspawn continued to strain herself, regardless “You know there isn’t anything back there for you, Sarah. If I ever lied, it was when I had the temerity to suggest otherwise.”
“Maybe,” Sarah agreed. “But so what? Who cares? It’s not like any of us have ever been endowed with a surfeit of common sense. If we were, you’d have waited for me to heal you before choosing to jump down my throat. Now, look where we are: you can’t even get out of bed.”
Amanda clicked her tongue. “Whatever. Just know that someday you'll be stuck in this position as well. When you do, I want you to remember that I gave you the chance to walk away.”
Sarah raised an eyebrow. “Is that supposed to be a threat?”
The parasite closed her eyes with a sigh. “Figure that part out for yourself.”