Bob ordered pizza for lunch (Wendy got a Caesar’s Salad with chicken) while Roland finished telling them a somewhat shortened version of the events of the previous hours, give or take twenty-five days. He glossed over his visit to the Chapel, summarizing it with: “I went to a Training Dungeon and picked up some kung fu moves.”

  He also didn’t go into Marcus’ parting gift and his damaged cultivation. No reason to worry them, and his other abilities should still let him protect them until they could protect themselves.

  “So, we’ve got twelve to fifteen days, more or less,” Bob summed up as Roland finished off the last slice; nobody fought him for it. “And then, what?”

  “System Integration. Trix... my Guide hasn’t given me the details. But it’s supposed to be nasty.”

  “If we’re gonna stay in Connecticut, it’s gotta be at Uncle Gorman’s place in Litchfield County. If he lets us in, that is. Place is like a fortress, but he’s very particular about visitors.”

  “That’s exactly what I was thinking,” Roland said through a mouthful of pizza. He had missed junk food during his weeks at the Chapel, and he was probably going to miss it even more in the near future. “You told me the place is like a bunker under the Colonial exterior.”

  “Pretty much. He’s been improving it on the down-low for decades. He’s got a bomb shelter, all kinds of supplies, and weapons. His for-real bolt-hole is in Vermont, though. The one in Salisbury is in case the shit hits the fan suddenly and he needs to hole up temporarily.”

  “You never mentioned any of that,” Josh said.

  “Hey, man, we’ve been buddies, but this is family stuff I’m talking about. Need to know stuff, you feel me? You did some work for us, but you didn’t need to know.”

  Josh nodded, still looking less than thrilled.

  “I didn’t even tell Roland any details, and I’ve known him forever,” Bob continued. “He did some work for Uncle Gorman through my dad, after he left the Army.”

  “Yeah,” Roland agreed, suppressing a frown.

  Working at Uncle Fred’s junkyard hadn’t been a great experience for Roland. After his OTH discharge from the Army, he spent a year and change working with junked vehicles, pulling parts out of dead cars, that sort of stuff.

  The pay had been decent, but he’d noticed some shady stuff going on around him, and when Fred started sounding him off about joining in some borderline illegal stuff, for a lot more money, he had politely declined.

  His prudence had paid off when, a year later, a couple of Fred’s employees got caught driving a stolen car. Fred hadn’t been implicated, but one of those guys ended up doing time.

  Gorman Acosta’s name wasn’t anywhere near Fred Acosta’s junkyard, but Roland knew he was a shadow partner. Gorman made much of his money in real estate, but he had a lot of fingers in other pies. The guy owned two stripper joints, one in Bridgeport and another in Stamford, although those properties were separated from Gorman through a few dummy corporations.

  Like his brother Fred, the guy was a libertarian with Sovereign Citizen leanings, except that, unlike your average Sov-Cit nutjob, he was smart enough not to get into pissing contests with the authorities.

  Roland wanted nothing to do with any of it, but that was back when the world was normal and had rules everyone had to abide by. Recent and near future events would make people like Gorman useful, people with the means and motives to build a defensible position and zero respect for the government.

  Roland briefly wondered what would happen if he did the patriotic and law-abiding thing and went to the Feds. He’d be lucky if they laughed him out of their offices. And Trixie had warned him that if the authorities began to react, Integration might start earlier.

  If this was a natural disaster, it would be different, but something so far beyond normalcy couldn’t be handled through normal channels.

  “I’ve got my Pathfinder game tonight,” Bob said, bringing Roland back to the here and now. “You know Barton and Dahlia. I think we should bring them in on this.”

  “Yeah,” Roland agreed.

  He’d been part of Bob’s Sunday game for a while before they changed his hours at GameDrop. It was a small miracle he was free that Sunday. Not that it mattered, since he had no plans to go back there again.

  Now that he was gathering a party, he might as well add people who were familiar with the concept of dungeon-crawling.

  “They are coming, and a new guy you haven’t met. Dan, he’s okay, but he gets really emotional even while we game. I don’t think he can handle anything real, you know?”

  “Okay, disinvite him, tell him the game is canceled or whatever. I’ll convince Barton and Dahlia that this is for real, and if they are up for it they can join the party,” Roland told him before turning to the other two.

  Josh had quieted down after his foot got fixed, probably still processing Roland’s story. Wendy seemed to be equal parts relieved and glum; relieved for being around people who believed her, glum about the stuff that was going to happen.

  “The same goes for you two,” Roland told the siblings. “You can join in if you want.”

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  “Yes,” Wendy said.

  “Winnie...”

  “I said yes and I mean it.”

  “Before anyone says yes or no, I want to make things clear,” Roland said, interrupting the siblings.

  “This isn’t a game, even if it follows rules like a game. People can die. At the teaching Dungeon, at least seven or eight people didn’t make it out. As in, they died in that kung fu temple. Eight out of twelve hundred students. Lower casualty rates than in wartime, but this was at a school. Almost one percent dead during training. If we go into a dungeon crawl, there is no telling what we’re going to be dealing with.”

  “We can die in there,” Wendy said. “I know.”

  “Yeah. I’ll do my best to protect the party, but I can’t guarantee everything will be peachy.”

  “If you did, I’d call you a liar,” she told him. “I’m going. If I don’t, chances are I’ll get killed when the monsters come for us.”

  Josh looked at her like he wanted to yell at her but instead shook his head and turned to Roland.

  “Fine. I’m in, too. I took my CQB course. Did more training when I was at the ‘Stan.”

  “Did you see action?” Roland asked him. Josh had talked big before, but this was for real.

  Josh shrugged. “Indirect fire, three times. And once we took some sniper fire and shot back at movement out in the mountains while we waited for air support. That’s about it,” Josh admitted.

  “Didn’t kick any doors or anything. My MOS was 91B. Wheeled vehicle mechanic.”

  Roland nodded. It would have been nice if the guy was a Navy SEAL or Green Beret, but most people in the army didn’t see actual combat even at the height of the War on Some Terror.

  “Still, it’s more than I did when I was part of the big green machine,” he told Josh. “And yeah, dungeon crawls and Close-Quarters Battle have a few things in common. Less likely to have hadjis with AKs waiting in ambush, but it won’t be a picnic.”

  “I’m gonna need some guns,” Josh said. “Didn’t bring any.”

  “I’ll dip into my stash, now that I know what is going on,” Bob said. “You’ve both seen some of my collection, but under the circumstances I’m going to break out the good stuff.”

  “And if you can shake loose more stuff, I’ll cover it.”

  “You’d better.”

  “I’ve got thirty more coins.”

  Bob nodded. “That’s a good hundred, hundred and twenty grand. Cashing them in would take a while and would attract the wrong kind of attention, but I know people who will happily trade some Krugerrand-like coins for goods and services.”

  “Also, now that I think about it, see if you can get us the best noise-canceling earplugs for everyone.”

  “Yeah, makes sense.”

  Shooting guns indoors was a good way of ending up deaf as a doornail. Even though Roland had noticed that his tinnitus had disappeared since his introduction to the System, regenerating eardrums took time and he preferred to protect them with good earplugs when they went a-hunting.

  “I can shoot too,” Wendy said. “But how about a Taser or a stun gun as a backup?”

  “I might be able to get those tomorrow,” Bob said.

  “If you don’t think you can shoot to kill, Wendy, you can’t come with us,” Josh told her firmly, glaring at Roland as if expecting him to disagree.

  He didn’t. “Your brother is right. The things we’ll be fighting aren’t human, but some of them are people, just from another species. I froze the first time I ran into one, and it almost got me killed. Think carefully before you commit to something like this.”

  “Oh, no, I can pull a trigger,” Wendy said. She turned to Josh. “I never told you this, but I shot Eddie in the leg when he wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

  Josh looked more shocked by that revelation than he was by the disappearing shotgun trick.

  “That was you?” Wendy nodded. “That sumbitch. He said he hurt himself cleaning his gun. I’ll kill him!”

  “He left me alone after that,” Wendy said. “I have a feeling he’s not going to make it through this apocalypse thing anyway.”

  Roland shook his head. Weird world, where the girl in the pixie cut has more close-quarters combat experience than all the Army vets in the room.

  “So, no, no problem shooting a gun,” she confirmed. “I just have a feeling Tasers will be useful. Even more useful than guns for some of the people in our group.”

  “Trust her feelings, bro,” Josh said. “I never believed in weird stuff, except her weird stuff is real. Because it works.”

  “Barton and Dahlia don’t shoot, do they?” Roland asked Bob.

  “No. We talked about it, I even offered to take them to the range one day. Barton is afraid of them, Dahlia just wasn’t interested.”

  “Tasers might come in handy then. Assuming they want to trust their lives to non-lethal weapons.”

  “I can get them. I know a guy who supplies the New Haven PD. Might take a couple of those gold coins, though because the police models aren’t available to us filthy civilians. Gonna have to grease some palms.”

  “I’ll give you ten of them, do what you gotta do, get us outfitted. First aid kits, police flashlights, NVGs – that’s night vision goggles,” he explained to Wendy. “Hearing protection, body armor if you can get it. Don’t think Kevlar or any soft armor is going to help much against knives and spears, but...”

  “The guy I know also supplies the Department of Corrections,” Bob interrupted him. “He’s got some anti-stab suits. Aramid fibers and Kevlar, rated to stop knives. Spears might be more than they can handle, but hey, it’s better than nothing.”

  “You don’t know the half of it,” Roland said. “When I was getting shish-kebabbed by rat people last night, I would have given anything for even a leather jacket.”

  “Not something I ever thought I’d hear outside a game, but I hear you. I'll see about getting plate carriers. Level IV would be great, level III otherwise.”

  "Sounds good."

  "You can hang out in here until Dahlia and Barton arrive. Do another show and tell, and then we can do the dungeon run tomorrow night after I get the rest of the supplies.”

  “You still got that den in the basement? I need a quiet place to conduct a ritual. A ten-hour ritual.”

  “I kinda use it for storage right now, but I guess I can clear you some space. How big does it have to be?”

  Roland consulted the details of the Ritual, which hadn’t appeared under the Skill description and were listed under a new tab titled, amazingly enough, Known Rituals:

  * Primordial Call Ritual: Draw a ritual circle at least six feet in diameter, using red or black paint. Draw the six symbols shown in the attached diagram within the circle. Once the circle is prepared, sit outside it and concentrate on the nature of spirit you wish to call while repeating the ritual’s phrases (listed below) regularly. Every hour, feed 15 Unbound Essence into the circle. Upon the end of the tenth hour, recite the last phrases of the ritual and visualize the Affinities you wish the spirit to embody.

  You can enlist the help of others; up to five assistants can aid in the ritual, down to a minimum of one hour. Each assistant will reduce the time to conduct the ritual by 1 hour, or 2 hours if they have the Ritual Magic Skill.

  A successful ritual will call the spirit. All participants will gain a new Skill: Ritual Magic (Uncommon, Beginner).

  After Roland read the description, Bob nodded. “Yeah, I can make the room. I just have to roll up the carpet, you can paint your magic circle on the concrete floor. Red or black paint you’ll have to get somewhere. And maybe Google the Latin words to make sure you’re not doing some satanic ritual or some weird shit.”

  Roland grinned. “I’m fairly sure it’s not satanic but I’ll check. As to weird crap, I think that ship sailed last night, and it’s not coming back.”