The building Errod was in, judging by the fate thread extending towards him from Katrin, was not a place I felt comfortable trying to get into. Not only did it have a fence around it with barbed wire along the top, but there were guards actively patrolling thanks to the presence of protestors... some of which were wearing ridiculous inflatable costumes. Maybe I should have checked the news, clearly there was some shit going on. Human Callie had seemed pretty upset about it though, and I didn't want to get drawn into anything when I was just passing through.

Speaking of... "We should message human Calliope and tell her to establish an alibi in case this goes wrong."

Zoey chimed in from the back. "Already did. She's not in Jersey though, she's in Virginia."

"The fuck? Did she try to follow us or something? We haven't been there in days."

"No," Zoey said, "she's not at that little town, she's at the capitol."

"She's in Richmond? Why would - no, you know what, I don't care. It's fine, whatever. Right now, the problem is that my usual methods for getting somewhere I'm not supposed to be don't work when there are armed guards that are actually paying attention. I can't just be sneaky, I can't walk in like I'm supposed to be there, I can't act lost. I keep coming back to full on attacking, but that's what I was trying to avoid before."

Katrin couldn't do invisibility spells, sadly. Or she could, in theory, but they were very tricky and best done with magic items. Even then, they were easy to disrupt. Thinking about magic items did give me an idea, though. "Grunkle doesn't have the bracelet. What if I say I'm an interpreter? Even if they make me wait while they try to figure out who called me that could get me inside."

Zoey shook her head. "No, the problem is they won't even care that they can't understand him. Hell, it probably makes their job easier. I don't think they're super concerned about stuff like letting people talk to their lawyers right now either, so I don't think there's any reason they'd need to talk to him."

Well, damn. I swiveled around to look at her and reply, but something caught my eye. "Why do I have a fate thread going to my backpack?"

I hadn't originally explained the fate threads to Zoey and Matlyn, but I'd been slipping so much that they'd ended up getting the short version. "Do you have one that goes to something you normally carry on you," Matlyn asked, "But you dumped it in the bag?"

I did not. I pulled out the bag, dug down to the bottom, and... oh. It was the box with the stupid Jar-Jar Binks action figure. How had I forgotten that? "Ugh, never mind." I opened the box to show everyone, then closed it again and put it down. "It's the thing I found at Worthington Hardware, someone somehow attached a fate thread to this stupid toy from a movie and then just left it there in a box. I don't know what it is, or what it does."

They didn't seem interested. Matlyn was worried about Errod, Katrin was... probably also worried about him but being way more stoic about it, and Zoey was searching stuff up online to try and come up with ideas. I went back to the front of the shuttle and stared at the protestors some more, mentally willing something amazing to happen. Nothing happened.

Errod's fate thread had stopped moving around, pointing at one specific part of the building. Probably he was in some sort of cell, but I was worried about what was going on with his hand. If I could just get in there, I could do something. Somehow. Or could I? Was I just relying on the fact that against all reason things had sort of worked out so far?

Sure, I'd been tortured, and nearly killed a ton of times, and had my memories erased, and... okay, a lot of bad stuff. But it still felt like I was going to figure something out no matter the odds. Was that just normal teenage feelings of invincibility? Or was it the fate threads, the knowledge that the world wanted me alive for now? I knew for a fact people with fates attached to them died without fulfilling them all the time, though.

Speaking of fate threads... "Why do I have a fate thread going to my backpack?" I started to get up, but... wait, no. No, I'd just done this ten minutes ago. "Hey guys... do you know what's in my bag that has a fate thread attached to it?"

Zoey shook her head but kept looking at her phone. Matlyn opened her mouth to say something and then stopped and looked confused. Katrin sat up very straight and squinted like she was glaring at someone who had insulted her. "You have... a thing," she muttered through clenched teeth, "that... that was from the hardware store... and it's... it's something stupid or incongruous no, fuck, it's slipping away."

I followed the thread to the box and opened it, and took Jar Jar out. The thread wasn't going to the doll. It was going to the box. I hadn't even considered that before, because the box... wasn't important. It was so completely unimportant that even now it was hard to really look at the details of it. "Everyone listen, please. Don't look at what I'm holding, just listen to my voice. I have a box that makes you not pay attention to it, and then forget you saw it. I'm going to ask you about it in a second, and I want you to remember that I have it."

I put the box back in my bag, but kept staring at the fate thread. Fuck, no wonder Coelestis had left this magic item behind. They'd probably walked past it a hundred times and ignored it; if it wasn't for me following a fate thread right to it, it would have sat in that store until the end of time. I shunted my mind to the memory palace and made a big sign that said "YOU HAVE A MAGIC BOX THAT MAKES PEOPLE FORGET IT, CHECK YOUR FATE THREADS" just in case, but I could feel that with my mind separated from the box it was starting to sink in.

"Okay, it's been ten minutes. Pop quiz, what magic item do I have in my bag?"

Zoey looked confused. Matlyn looked excited and said "It's a!" and then couldn't seem to finish the sentence. Katrin took a deep breath and looked me dead in the eyes. "It's... a box, with memetic defenses. Probably used for smuggling things? I don't know what it looks like, though, or how big it is. Probably now that we're talking about it without looking at it the idea will stay with us better, at least until we look at it again."

Score one for Katrin's rapid learning abilities, I guess. "Okay so the question now is... what all can we fit inside that box that might help me break Errod out?"

Katrin frowned as she thought. "You're thinking of getting yourself arrested, and planning on them not taking the box from you since they won't think it's anything to worry about?"

I nodded.

"Hand me the box, let me take a look at it."

She examined it for a while, occasionally getting very frustrated when she stopped paying attention to it. "It's from after the Clockmaker invented High Imperial, and I've managed to read the runes, but reproducing it will be difficult because it's not purely based on the runes themselves and I suspect some are hidden. The metal inlaid into the box is part of it, and there's some other magic bound in here. This is a very impressive artifact."

She kept working for a while, then pulled out her spellbook and the mana battery and began tinkering.

And then...

"Okay," I said, "this is enough sitting around. We have to do something. Matlyn, Zoey, either of you have ideas?"

Zoey shook her head. "Nothing coming to me. Even with Earth's collective consciousness on tap... I can know some procedural stuff, like I could maybe talk a good game and know what forms to reference, but I don't see that helping here."

Matlyn shrugged. "If we decide to attack, I can help with my plants. Right now I'm prepared to do a cloud of itchy pollen, some vines, maybe crack a hole in the wall with something growing quickly... though I guess Katrin would be better for that sort of thing, if we aren't being subtle."

"Yeah," I said, "but since it's just the three of us we might need to rely on that. Where did she... she was with us earlier today, right?"

Zoey and Matlyn nodded, but looked unsure. Katrin had for sure been with us though, she'd... she'd been talking to me about something, we were working on some project? I looked for the fate thread that attached us, and it went... to Katrin, who was sitting right there with us.

I walked back to her and sat next to her, taking her hand in mine. "This... is so fucking strange." She might have laughed, and almost certainly said something. I wasn't sure what. "Katrin, I don't... I'm not really hearing you."

Suddenly she was there, fully there, as if a bubble had popped and left her behind. "It's threatening to damage the box," she said, "but so far everything is holding up. I have to concentrate on it, and channeling that much mana is going to wear me out. I think we have about eighteen minutes of continuous use before either the box melts or I do."

"Okay, and if we stop and let it cool down?"

She shrugged. "Depends on how long. I'll monitor things right now, see how I feel, but I only did it for about six minutes this time and it could be an exponential drain on me."

I geared up while Katrin prepared, then gave Zoey the keys and put on the mask; the box wouldn't have any impact on the cameras, and I didn't want to cause human Calliope any more trouble. Katrin gave the all clear, and warned me that she could only keep me immune to the field's effects for so long before I would forget she was with me. If that happened, there was a chance I'd wander away from her or do something else ridiculous.

The gates were open at one spot, where a single heavily armed agent watched the protestors calmly. We walked past him, looking ridiculous as we huddled close with the overcharged box between us, and as we did he turned to look at us for just a second and then turned away, unconcerned. Some part of him had seen us, but he'd instantly written us off and forgotten.

We proceeded inside, right past everyone. There were cameras, and surely someone somewhere would see that we were walking in, but it was likely they wouldn't see right away; I'd long since learned that not all camera feeds were monitored, especially when there were so many actual people around. You just trust that if something was happening, there'd be a commotion.

We found Errod's hand first, but getting to it was tricky. It was behind a locked door, and while there was a window with a person stationed at it to buzz people in, that didn't really help us. "You could break the door lock, right?"

Katrin scowled. "No. Well, yes, but I'd have to de-activate the box for a moment. I suppose if I put it back up the second I was done with the door that would be okay... you've said they have - not wards, but - alarms? Should I be concerned about that?"

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"Maybe, I could imagine it either way in this case. Actually... Okay, I only see one camera that'll be pointing at us if we're right by the door. See it? We're going to walk over there, and break it while standing right under it. Then we wait a bit, I'll tell you when to hit the door - if we even need to, we may not."

As soon as the guy at the window wasn't looking, I had Katrin zap the camera with a teeny bit of lightning and then start the field back up. The guy caught us anyway, but then his eyes seemed to slide right off of us as he decided that, while odd, we weren't the cause of anything he cared about. As planned, a moment later a phone or intercom or something beeped at him and he started talking to someone.

"No, it just fucking fried itself I think. This whole building is going to burn itself down one of these days. No, nobody was... who? No, it's just me here. Are you sure you were looking at the right camera? I'm the only one here. Okay. Yeah, fine."

I looked at Katrin. "Some people are going to come in here in a second to check for us. You're still good?"

She nodded, but looked... a little waxy. "For now. At this rate I don't know if we'll have enough time to get back out though."

I'd already been assuming that. We were going to have to find somewhere to lay low and recover soon. Thankfully we didn't need to wait long before two men walked in, hands on their guns, and scanned the room. One focused on us for a second, then rubbed his eyes as he turned to talk to the other man.

"Hey, there's..." He paused, uncertain. "There's, uh. Fuck, I hate when I do that. I completely blanked out."

The other man sighed. "Jesus. Focus, Carl." He stepped back so he'd be in view of the camera in the hallway and looked at it as he spoke into a phone. "There's nobody in there. I'll check the back to be safe."

They both walked up to the door, and the guy behind the window buzzed them in. Katrin and I followed, and found ourselves surrounded by shelves and boxes. We could see the desk the guy behind the window was sitting at, but other than him we were alone; the others left almost immediately, presumably to report that everything was fine and there was no sign of whoever had been noticed on the cameras. Perfect.

I led us over to Errod's hand and grabbed it, tucking it into my jacket. I felt it squirm in and get comfortable, so clearly it was still okay; I'd been a little worried about it being too far from him and starting to die or something. First priority done, we found a discrete spot behind the furthest shelf and Katrin sagged in relief as she stopped channeling mana. She didn't look great, but I couldn't risk asking about it with that guy still in the room. Instead we just sat there, resting.

After about ten minutes she nodded at me and stood back up. She was looking a little better, but clearly forcing a metric fuckload of mana into a strange magical device to make it do something well beyond what it was designed for was wearing her down. She turned the field back on and we marched through the door, causing the guy by the window to glance over curiously before glazing over. When we got back out into the main hallway, I grabbed Katrin and made her stop.

Greg was here.

He looked the same as always - bad teeth, slightly hunched, age somewhere between forty and ninety. He was scowling, and wearing a corduroy jacket that looked like it was from the 70s rather than some sinister all-black outfit. The person next to him was wearing a suit and had "I'm in charge here" vibes, and they were talking.

"You'll need to turn off the cameras," Greg said, "and delete all footage of them - and me."

The man in the suit frowned. "Yes sir, mister President, but -"

"Don't call me that here," he said, "you're the only one that knows who I am, remember? Call me mister Simpson."

Suit guy nodded seriously. "Of course. Shouldn't you have a Secret Service detail with you? I can arrange - "

"No," Greg sighed, "it's fine. Just have your men delete the footage back to when the two I called about were brought in, and turn off the cameras."

Unless I was very mistaken, Greg had mind-fucked this guy into thinking he was the president of the United States. That was a big fucking swing. He hadn't noticed us, which was a relief, and I started to wonder if we could just take care of this whole thing right now. "Katrin, right now he doesn't know we're here. We could just walk up to him and kill him."

She nodded. "Okay. Should we get Errod first, though? He's going to be headed that way anyway, an extra person can't hurt."

Fuck. I really wanted to just do it now. But... she was right. We headed off, and got to the actual holding area where we lucked out and were able to follow someone inside. It was... pungent. They clearly weren't super concerned with giving these people showers or anything; this wasn't a proper jail, and I had to assume it was a temporary thing before they were moved elsewhere. Honestly, it felt more like a shitty kennel than anything; just big concrete rooms filled with miserable people.

We found Errod easily enough, and he was staring right at us despite it taking obvious effort. He was squinting, and a vein was bulging out on the side of his head, but then he grinned and stepped forward. I squeezed the hand through to him and he clicked it into place, and then I also slipped him a knife - not his chosen weapon, but I knew he'd be able to make good use of it.

"They're coming," I said right in his ear, "Greg is here. We'll attack once they open the cell to let you out."

He nodded and stepped back, deftly palming the knife without anyone around him seeing it. He then looked mildly confused as he forgot about us, and patted his newly-returned hand before his expression shifted to one of resolve. I was pretty sure he had the message, but even if he didn't I trusted him to figure shit out on the fly. Katrin said we should find Grunkle, who had to be in one of the other holding rooms, but before we could Greg walked in and marched towards us.

"These two are dangerous," suit guy said, "they shot one of my men when they were being brought in. Mister... Simpson... I don't think it's safe for you to -"

"Bring him out," Greg snapped, maybe regretting his choice of personas a bit, and suit guy waved someone forward to haul Errod out. Once the door was open, I stabbed Greg in the back of the neck, severing his spine and killing him instantly.

Well, that was the plan, anyway.

Instead, the knife bounced off a magical shield and a crackling red dome of energy rippled out from Greg, blasting everyone back. Suit guy was immediately killed, my arm was burnt to shit and my jacket was melted, and a few others were injured to some extent. Holy shit. He spun, confused, looking all around him. "An assassin, eh?"

That ridiculous attack that had killed at least one bystander was... just an automatic reflexive thing? Jesus, I thought I was callous sometimes but this dick had countermeasures that could murder innocent people or his allies. He didn't seem to have seen us yet, so I lashed out with my ghost but recoiled as its hand was burned away like it had never existed. Fuck that.

As Greg turned towards me, somehow sensing the failed attack, Errod calmly stepped forward and gently put a hand on Greg's jacket before violently wrenching him to the side and slamming him into the bars - the initial movement hadn't seemed attack-like enough to set off any defenses, and by the time he yanked he was already holding onto the jacket which seemed to also bypass some rules. It was brilliant, and I wasn't sure if Errod had figured it out himself from having that shield brooch or if one of the ghosts had explained it.

Katrin dropped her focus on the box, and started hammering at Greg with magic. The shields that formed around him shattered, and the blasts of energy that shot out from him were redirected. It was very impressive, but I couldn't help thinking Greg was winning. Even if the shields weren't lasting long, they always seemed to be just enough to keep anything from getting through before they broke... and he was smiling.

Sure enough, abruptly there was some sort of horrible high pitched sound and everyone other than Greg started bleeding from their skin. Katrin's casting faltered, and by the time she switched to her silence spell we looked like we were dressed up as Carrie for Halloween. Greg was somehow on his feet, and Katrin had to go into defensive mode as he threw spell after spell at her. Some I could see, and were countered by her shields or that redirect trick she'd picked up somewhere. Others I could just feel in my bones; painful waves of pressure, whispers in my head, a taste of ashes in my mouth.

Katrin was doing something to fight back the onslaught, but she was getting weaker. Finally we had a moment of reprieve as someone started shooting at Greg; the first few bullets hit shields, but as they kept coming it was starting to overwhelm him. He made a gesture, and the man exploded. Yikes. Was that one of the things Katrin had stopped? I had considered coming in here alone! What the actual fuck.

I waved Errod towards us, and whispered to Katrin - her silence spell worked in a dome around us, so we could still hear each other. "Get ready to make a flash and then activate the box at the same time. Drop the silence as soon as Errod is here."

He reached us, shielded from a few attacks on the way, and then Katrin lowered her spell and the hallway was filled with screams. "We've got him," I yelled, "teleport out, now!"

Taking the cue, Katrin set off an incredibly bright flash as she re-activated the box around all three of us. Greg blocked his eyes for a moment, then scanned the hallway and sighed as he failed to see us. "Fuck!" he spat, and stormed towards the main area. As people rushed in with guns he casually blasted them to pieces. "Thank you for your service," he sneered, "but I'll not be leaving any witnesses."

Errod's hand squeezed my arm. "All these people," he said, "we can't just let them be slaughtered."

Greg was out of the hallway, focused on killing the people with actual weapons. We had a moment. "Fine. Katrin's Atmospheric Hammer - make a hole in the wall, that way is outside. We'll open all the holding areas, but then we're getting the fuck out. I don't think we put a single scratch on him."

We moved fast, and thankfully the people being held there were motivated to get the hell out of the building. Many were carrying children, or people that were sick or injured either from Greg's attacks or whatever had happened before they'd been locked up. A decent amount were covered in blood.

We watched everyone stream past, but in the confusion we didn't see Grunkle anywhere. Finally we were alone in the hall other than some bodies. "He should have been in with everyone else," I said, "I think we just missed him somehow."

Errod nodded. "I saw him at one point, he was at this end. It's possible he could have left the other way, or that he could have been taken somewhere before Greg even arrived. I don't see why, though - they weren't particularly interested in us after dumping us in here. I let them take my 'prosthetic' hand, and they searched us - though we left almost everything in the hotel anyway - and that was it. They asked a few questions, just names and other basic information, but they didn't seem concerned that Grunkle couldn't answer them."

There were more bodies. Greg was cleaning out the place, probably just to cover up that magic had been flung around. We huddled together and moved down the hall, though I stopped and grabbed some guns just in case. I hadn't ever fired a gun so I wasn't confident in my aim - nor was I sure how to reload, or take off the safety, or anything like that - but it seemed silly to just leave them behind.

Sadly, we didn't find Grunkle first - we found Greg. He had some random agents around him, all slightly glassy-eyed, and was barking orders at them. "Gather these bodies, throw them in with the prisoners and kill them as well. We'll start a fire when everyone is together and blame it on the protestors. Anyone tries to leave, you shoot them. When the building is confirmed secure and the fire is going, kill yourselves."

The men nodded, although there were some furrowed brows at that last part. Without proper minds, they were effectively defenseless against thought magic that was custom-tailored to work on Earth humans. They spread out, and I heard a few gunshots as confused Homeland Security personnel were murdered.

I could feel Errod tense, desperate to do something to help but not sure how. Katrin whispered in my ear that we had to keep moving, but as we did Greg froze and began scanning the room. He could feel us. We sped up, back the way we'd come, and shuffled out the hole Katrin had made.

The mind-controlled agents were firing at everyone.

The protestors had scattered, but I could still see some brave ones filming from behind cover. We hurried along the side of the building and, once we'd reached a fence, Katrin dropped the concentration on the box and let out a shaky breath. We'd show up on any video that was filming the scene, but nobody would have deliberately focused on us and at this point we were far enough off to the side that even without magical assistance we'd sort of dropped off the radar.

Katrin discretely clipped a hole in the fence with magic, and then turned the field back on long enough for us to get to cover - she couldn't keep it going any longer than that, and Errod and I actually had to carry her between us as we took a circuitous route away from the area.

We got a call from Zoey a few minutes later. "Jesus you guys, what the fuck did you do? I'm already driving, and I'm fucking bad at it. I had to move the car when shit got crazy, and then I had to sneak back and watch for you through my phone so I wouldn't forget right away, and... I'm parking, you have to come to me. I already hit a parked car."

Katrin handed me back the box, which felt... different. "I might have broken it," she said, "or maybe just temporarily overdone it and made mana crystals form in there somewhere. No way to tell if it will work again other than waiting."

"You did great," I said, "now we just need to get back to the others and... fuck, I guess wait for Grunkle to find a way to call. Unless... unless he's dead? Although even if they shot the Behemoth..."

I suddenly imagined an eyeball, flopping along the ground and dying from lack of ambient mana as it desperately tried to find a new host somewhere in Albuquerque.

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