Wish upon the Stars chapter 1008

Walking among the employees at LeClair’s compound as LeClair would have been just asking to get approached, so as soon as I was around the corner, I did a quick switch to another random employee who had left around the same time. I’d gotten a pretty decent catalog of potential forms from the stakeout, given Dantalion’s range and the time I’d spent.

The new guy, Bill, was an unobtrusive porter. He didn’t talk to anyone and was pretty much always moving around the complex, so I was unlikely to get stopped.

After walking for about fifteen minutes, I stopped outside of a large brass door covered in gears. It was set flush into the wall, and all the gears were built around a central wheel with a handle. You turned the wheel in in a complete rotation and the gears would withdraw bars of metal that were driven into the brick at intervals up the length of the barrier.

Reaching out, I rapped on the surface in a particular pattern. The sheer amount of insignificant details I’d picked up after a few hours of Dantalion research on this compound blew my mind. The longer I stayed, the deeper I got. Names, dates, food preferences, allergies, composition of items. Luckily this place was just a business owned by a C-ranker. If the materials were too advanced my senses would have bounced off. As it was, it had taken me quite a while to deconstruct the safe. I could do one rank higher with enough time invested, but that was my limit for Dantalion.

The clanging of my knuckles on the door rang out through the hallway, breaking the strange stillness of this area of the compound. It was quiet here. Unnaturally quiet. An oppressive, overwhelming stillness that made it seem like someone had killed everyone who had ever set foot here.

One minute after my knock though, the gears began to spin, and the door popped open, releasing a cacophony from the other side. Waiting to see if anyone invited me, I shrugged and pulled it open, stepping inside.

Marco sat suspended from a harness in the middle of the room, a large can of some kind of chemical accelerant burning in a tight, controlled jet. I’d have called it a blowtorch, but the flames looked like they were made of glass and had frozen mist coming off them, so I wasn’t sure that was the right word.

In front of him, hanging from the ceiling by a series of thick chains, a giant mechanical spider dangled. He seemed to be working diligently to perfectly merge disparate pieces of metal with the torch, and where it passed, the surface became smooth and conjoined like they were being remade into a single unbroken plane of metal. He was wearing a pair of thick goggles covered in lenses that could be flipped down or up in succession, and he had several of them down and was observing the melting metal.

“What is it Bill?” He called, distracted by his work. “I’m on a deadline today. I need to get this done for the Rayken Expo on Saylar 4 next month, and the transit time is going to be hell. I have three hours to get everything sewn up.”

“Think you’re going to miss your deadline,” I said wryly as I withdrew his contract from my ring. “In fact, I think you’re going to miss a lot of deadlines. Your sister sent me.”

He paused, flame hanging in the air, tongues off glass fire warping the space strangely before he switched it off. Turning in his harness, he pushed up his goggles to stare down at me in confusion.

His face was shockingly young. Not like actually childish, really, he was probably physically around the same age as me. But he had round cheeks and big eyes that made him seem excessively youthful. One eye was green, the other blue, and under his mop of curly dark hair, they stood out even more than they would on most people.

“How do you know I even HAVE a sister?” he asked suspiciously. “LeClaire can’t mention her to anyone. That was part of my-”

“Your contract,” I interrupted. “Yeah, I know, I’m holding it right now. I know what it says. But I don’t work for LeClaire. Bill does, but I’m not actually Bill, as you may have already begun to surmise. I’m your sister’s new boss, and I’ll be YOUR new boss too, if you accept my terms and allow me to get you out of here.”

He seemed too stunned to react. “I…what?” He was staring at the contract. “Where did you GET that?”

“From the safe,” I said with a shrug. “Where else? Now you ready to go? Because I’ve got stuff to do today. I can explain the details once we’re out, but your sister drew up a job contract for you to sign.” I produced it and flicked it up to him. “Don’t sign it now, wait until we’re out, just read it over and let know if it works for you.”

Frowning, he scanned the information. Anyone that deep into crafting would be heavy on the Focus, so remembering and reading over a contract wasn’t hard. It was a little denser than most documents, but he finished it quickly, then tossed it back.

“You said my sister already works for you?” he asked slowly. “I can believe she helped write this. The rider forbidding me from gambling sounds like her.”

“Yeah, I’m not letting you do that,” I informed him bluntly. “It got you into trouble last time.”

He scowled. “Because they CHEATED. I calculated every possible vector for that horse race. Physical condition, windspeed, I even modeled the potential interaction values and the chances of injury. They were doping those horses. The whole thing was a trap to get me into their service. I don’t have a gambling problem.”

“That’s a relief,” I said cheerfully. “That means stopping immediately won’t be hard for you at all. Look, your sister told me that you only started gambling to pay for materials to grind your skills. After so long working for LeClaire, I’m guessing that's not an issue anymore, and I’ll supply your mats once you’re working for me. You’ll be too busy to play the ponies anyway. So are you coming with me or not?”

From what Holly told me, the situation with Marco really WAS LeClaire’s fault. Marco wasn’t so much a gambling addict as a desperate scientist in need of funds. He’d managed to calculate several optimal strategies for gambling when starting out, and had made lots of money for his work. Unfortunately, he’d gotten arrogant and become obsessed with winning. He’d forgotten the first rule of gambling: never bet anything you can’t afford to lose.

Honestly I had no issue with gambling, having been to casinos myself, but if this guy was going to be my Master of Development I needed him focused on ACTUAL development and not trying to calculate odds for horse racing. Hence the stipulation.

Holly seemed pretty sure he’d do it. She didn’t think he really cared about the gambling itself, he was just unhappy with giving up when he was beaten. Eventually, he sighed and nodded.

“Excellent,” I said with a grin. “Now, since we’re here and not coming back, why don’t you tell me which of these things is valuable so we can steal literally all of it.” Breaking into the safe had me feeling heisty, and I had zero qualms about robbing someone who fixed a horse race to trick someone into eternal servitude.

He blinked at me, thrown by the rapid tone shift. “Umm…ok?” he said slowly. “There are a few valuable materials earmarked for other projects, and a couple pieces of equipment that he bought at my request.” He raised his hand to show off the glass flame blowtorch. “Like this Freearuk Condenser. The fuel comes from the blood of a rare mutated offspring that belongs to an A-rank monster called a Valbeshir. They are extremely dangerous and difficult to catch, and that’s when they AREN’T mated.”

“Cool, pass it,” I said, holding up my hands. He tossed it over and I put it into my ring. Marco himself didn’t have one, presumably for this exact reason, so I was going to need to carry everything personally. Which I was fine with. I had the space.

So we spent the next hour or so grabbing everything that wasn’t nailed down. And some things that were. And the nails that were securing them. We ended up with quite a haul. A lot of machines I had no context for, but also some really interesting materials. Various types or rare energy infused ores and metals, gemstones with special properties, and even a few plants still in the pot.

When we were done, I glanced around the room and couldn’t help but let out a soft whistle. The floor was totally empty, with big outlines where machines had been, and only the odd bolt rolling away from the empty spaces we’d cleared. We’d even taken the door off its hinges (apparently it was made of some special silencing metal that was pretty expensive on its own), and now it was definitely time to go.

With the security out of the way and the contract retrieved, I dismissed Astaroth and called Murmur into existence. Seeing me turn from Bill the inconsequential porter to a six and a half foot tall behemoth in high grade armor wearing a frankly terrifying mask was understandably jarring for Marco, but after the last hour or so he was getting used to surprises, and he barely even flinched.

“Now that we’re under concealment, I can introduce myself properly. My name is Shane Wyndham, have you heard of me?” He nodded slowly and I smiled. “Good, that makes this much easier.” He hadn’t heard of the cabinet positions, being much too young, so I filled him in on everything, including his own potential position. Then I pulled out HIS contract with LeCLaire and burned it up with a casual flex of Mephistopheles.

He didn’t hesitate for a moment after that, requesting the contract his sister had written out and signing it immediately. I just laughed. “Impressive resolve. I like it. Come on, let’s go see your sister. Don’t worry about anyone noticing us, we won’t be seen.”

My Dantalion stakeout had given me absurd levels of data about this place, down to the bedrock. Murmur contained Dantalion as well, which was why it deduced and improved stealth from sitting in place for a long time, but after hours of mapping the complex, my Stealth was pretty much unbreakable by anyone who wasn’t an A-ranker. It wasn’t as good as Astaroth, but it was good enough, especially with another person on hand to hide.

As expected, we ran into no issues strolling out of the place, even after someone noticed the missing door and all the stolen materials and activated a lockdown, we strolled right through the panicking security like they weren’t even there.

We met Zeke outside, and he was grinning at me with what I could only describe as overwhelming pride. “You robbed them!” he said enthusiastically. “I was worried you’d just get in and out with no benefits.”

“They tricked Marco into eternal servitude,” I said with dignity. “They deserved it.”

Marco nodded along, and Zeke just laughed. “Of course they did, kid.” There was a lot of subtext there. Zeke thought anyone who had something he wanted deserved to get robbed, and that I was making excuses. Which I wasn’t. But it didn’t matter.

“Come on,” I told them with an eye roll. “Let’s get out of here.” As we walked down the street I left Murmur active, and I chatted with Marco about what it would be like working for me and what his duties would be. It was a nice, pleasant conversation. And if we occasionally got sidetracked discussing where to sell the materials we didn’t need…well that was pleasant too. For me at least.