Chapter 14 - Visitors

  Morgan raced through the woods of the lower forest. Trees and monsters blurred past, but none of the locals even had time to register her presence. A level twenty Kicker with four primary class evolutions was such overkill for all but the toughest monsters in Curahee that she might as well have been walking past squirrels and ducklings in the park. Even the fully-grown drake-hounds that preyed on the wood-men let her pass unmolested.

  She didn’t trust Cole, but he also didn’t seem like the type of cracked to murder another hopeful in cold blood, and the clubs he carried weren’t exactly neck-slicing material. The helmet cam hadn’t been any help, either. Bart had leaned over to loot a drake-hound pup, and then his head just fell the last foot or so to the moss. Something had dragged him back to the tree and then rummaged through his rig and his bag—all off camera. That meant human intelligence. Monsters in Curahee didn’t reposition bodies and search them.

  Bart had been fine when she’d checked in on him a few hours before, watching from a nearby tree-top as the medic tore through a pair of wood-men with an M249 SAW as though he were the second coming of Rambo. Roxy and Howie had linked up almost immediately, each traveling along the base of the ridge until they found each other. Smart move, even if they’d lost some time. The two foreign-born Kicker hopefuls linked up by following converging waterways not long after that. The Lewis Field let them break the language barriers and find a lot in common. Neither were murderer material.

  As for Besson? He was like Morgan: putting on a tough, asshole front so he didn’t get seen as soft and pushed around. Hell, imagine if the other Kickers ever got wind that she’d stolen her callsign from her favorite book... But just like her, underneath the asshole, Besson was a cinnamon roll who just wanted to be left alone with his doggo. No judgment. Game recognized game. Last Morgan had checked on the pair of them, they’d been doing fine.

  Which all should have been great, except for the gaping wound where Bart’s neck ought to be. Cole had guessed it in one: there wasn’t anything in the lower forest that should be capable of causing a wound like that except the Kickers themselves. Which meant she really had to fucking find Nona. Nona had fallen off her radar almost immediately—which was worrying for someone who hadn’t seemed concerned that everyone around her had brought at least a rifle-caliber weapon. Logic dictated that the woman should be decomposing in the belly of a fungal dead-head, but Nona had been level three already when she was rescued. Which means that she’d killed stuff in her captive otherworld, just as Morgan had been forced to do years ago. But details on the woman’s past were clamped down. Instinct told Morgan that Nona was alive and well, and probably further along than any of them. And guts were worth more than logic in this line of work.

  Morgan headed northwest, tracing the direct route from Nona’s rappel point to the mountain. At full tilt, Morgan could cross the distance in a little over two hours, slightly slower under NODs. But she took her time, lest she blow right past the sneaky bitch.

  One of her passive abilities triggered, sending a pulse of warning that made her skid to a stop, motionless in the dark. Someone had used ethereal magic nearby—a real spell with some real oomph behind it, not a recruit testing out the first cantrip of a new class to ground slam a pair of dead-heads like a video game character.

  Morgan turned toward the source and burned an ability charge. The debris in the air fell even slower as a time dilation bubble expanded from her. She hefted her hammer and ran again, stopping once she drew close to a clearing where a perfectly circular area had been cut out of the trees. Perfectly cross-sectioned branches glowed orange with heat, sizzling in a constellation of embers above a patch of scorched ground. Not seeing anyone nearby and not feeling any additional magic, Morgan moved forward to investigate. She stepped over the smoldering ring of moss and into the center of the circular area, where a blackened translocation rune was burned onto the ground.

  Someone had opened a portal here within the last few hours—not DOR faking a Lewis Field, but with genuine otherworld magic. And not just for a single person, either. An otherworld had touched Curahee. Not the first incursion she’d ever seen, but they were rare enough to be worrying.

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “But were you coming or going?” she mused under her breath, looking out into the forest. Well, the good news was that Nona was off the hook. The bad news was that the lower forest might have something actually dangerous lurking in it, for once. Time to find some answers on what had happened to Bart. She scanned the ground for any indication of their direction and found part of a muddy boot print on a patch of bare stone. Tightening her grip on her hammer, she set off after the intruders.

  * * *

  Roxy and Howie weren’t hard to track. The two made a trail like a family of wild pigs, and weren’t much quieter, either. Cole heard them long before he caught sight of them through the trees. The northbound duo were fighting the forest, rather than slinking through it. It was clear that neither of them had ever hunted a day in their life. Cole shadowed them for a couple of kilometers, getting closer and closer each time they moved. The pair were looking around, covering their angles, but not seeing. Not surprising for a Navy medic and… well, he was pretty sure Howie was a Marine, but not recon. Finally, he decided to announce himself by whistling the opening to the only Fallout Boy song he remembered, which he hoped would get Roxy’s attention and not her bullets.

  Howie spun, raising his gun. Roxy was quick to put a staying hand on his wrist, but she’d hefted what looked like a medieval round shield in her other hand.

  “Hold up, I know that song,” she said, then raised her voice. “Friendlies!”

  “Coming out,” called Cole. He stepped out from behind his tree, startling both of them.

  “Jesus Christ!” said Howie, basically jumping out of his uniform. "How’d you get so close? You get a stealth class or something?”

  “Nah,” said Cole. “Ya’ll are louder than cats in heat. Maybe keep your voices down.”

  Roxy visibly relaxed, tension leaving her shoulders as she lowered her shield. “I saw the flare to the east earlier. Worried that was you.”

  “It was me,” said Cole. He closed ranks so he could switch to a field whisper. “Had to call Morganstern to me. Bart was killed.”

  Howie just deflated, but Roxy threw her shield to the ground. “God damn it!” she angry-whispered. She stalked back and forth for a moment, venting her anger on the moss under her boots. She looked up at him. “How’d you find us so quick after that?”

  “She told me where you were. Wanted us to link up.”

  “Bullshit,” said Howie. Cole noticed he was keeping his M4 a little too close to hand. “No way she’d give you help through Curahee. Even if you are last-minute.”

  “Something’s up that has her spooked,” said Cole. “Bart wasn’t killed by wildlife. Someone took his head off. With an edged weapon.”

  “How do we know that’s true?” asked Howie.

  “It’d be a stupid fucking thing to lie about,” said Cole.

  The kid’s grip relaxed just a touch. “That’s not wrong.”

  Roxy stopped her pacing and picked up her shield again, fitting her arm through the strap and gripping a rung on the back. Now that he was closer, it looked like it was made of the same wood as the bigger fungal monsters. Not something Cole would want strapped to his body, but more power to her.

  “So what do we do?” asked Howie.

  “We keep going,” said Roxy. “What else can we do? Morganstern didn’t come tell us to fall back to the ridge camp for extraction. The tryout is still on?” She looked at Cole. He nodded, so she continued. “We’ve got three days to make it to the castle before the portal home opens. We stand a better chance with all three of us, especially if we’ve got classes that can cover each other’s weaknesses.”

  “What about Ken and Han?” asked Cole. “Morganstern told me they were camped out northeast of us. Once my ability finishes cooling down I should be able to spot them.”

  “That’s good to have in our back pocket,” said Roxy. “But you missed a lot when you skipped training. Concepts like parties and quests have power in a Lewis Field. That’s why it’s so important that Kickers pick their own assignments and teams. Everything the Kickers have told me says bigger groups start to draw monsters like flies to shit, and five is the magic number on Curahee. We’re not going to make any headway if we’re under constant, increasing attack. Not to mention that whatever has Morganstern spooked might be keen to follow up on the noise of a massive firefight. Even with suppressors.”

  Cole checked his watch. “In that case, let’s keep moving. If day and night are the same length, I figure we’ve got about an hour left before we need to camp if we want to get at least four hours down before dawn.”

  “Alright,” said Roxy. “Well since you’re apparently the master of stealth, how about you lead the way and show us how it’s done?”

  “Step one is to grow up in the Georgia boonies,” said Cole.

  “Well, shit. That ship has sailed,” said Howie. “Would you also accept the Philadelphia suburbs?”