Chapter One Hundred and Eighteen - Staying in Bed

  I woke up, and decided that no, I wasn't going to get out of bed today. I rolled over, pspsps'd at Mister Couchtop, then when he was close to the edge of the bed, I yoinked him up and under the blankets. He struggled, but it was for nothing, it was snuggle time and he was my unwitting pillow.

  I woke up to my phone ringing, and regretted ever giving anyone at Luna Corp my number.

  So, I Reloaded, and when I woke up a second time, I begrudgingly got out of bed. I went to what passed for a kitchen in my no-bedroom apartment, put some bread into the toaster, and pressed it down.

  The power went out.

  "Fucking... fuck this."

  I Reloaded, and this time I didn't get out of bed. Though I did reach over and grabbed my phone, then flung it across the room and smacked it with Shadow Bolt.

  The fourth attempt at waking up worked better. Mostly it was guilt gnawing at me to get out and do stuff. Since I knew more or less when the power would cut, I got to have some toast, charge my phone a little, and got a warm shower in before the lights went out.

  That had to be those rolling brownouts. The lights would dim, then the breakers would pop. I was pretty sure there was still power, it's just that Misses Tone took twenty minutes to go check on the breakers every time.

  Last time I'd looped through this week, the power flickering had been annoying, but I'd also stayed up all night watching cartoons, so it has been a signal to go to bed and so I'd missed a lot of the inconvenience.

  Setting out, I got on my bike, then discovered that the grid of street-lights was down.

  Alright, so Brightbarrow Interlink was fucking with the grid again. I never did learn what they were up to, but I couldn't recall them getting up to anything big in the... first time I've lived through this nine month period.

  Man, English was not suitable for all of these weird future-tense things.

  I arrived at work, with a slight detour to grab some coffee along the way. I got one of those little box coffee things and a box of twelve doughnuts. That turned out to be a good move when Terry zombied her way into the Squad B space and lit up on seeing the food.

  "My apartment was all bzz, bzz, this morning," she said. I was pretty sure she hadn't showered since yesterday. "So I stuck my finger in an outlet and tried to fix things, but apparently I only made things worse."

  I blinked. "That does sound like a pretty bad idea," I said. "Are you okay?"

  "Huh? Oh yeah! When you use an element a lot, you grow kind of immune to it? Fire mages can stand in saunas, and Water mages... actually, I think they still need to breathe, so it sucks for them."

  "Uh-huh," I replied. "And Nature mages? Dark?"

  "Shit outta luck?" she tried. "Oh! But I think Light mages don't sunburn, so that's cool?"

  "Nature mages tend to have better immune systems against bacterial infections," Erde said as he stepped into the room. "Oh, hey, doughnuts. Did you guys hear about the strike?"

  We chatted for a while about unimportant shit. The prison warden strike that had happened in my last loop of this week happened again. Yesterday, in fact, but it was an ongoing thing.

  Usually, when people went on a big strike, the corps got real prissy about it unless it was a strike made up of lots of rankers, but in this case, the wardens and the cops were in the same union, and so they couldn't just be brought in to break it up. A few corps had volunteered to do it, but then where would they put the wardens if there were no wardens... wardening the jails?

  It was a bit of a weird mess. The union might even get what it wanted in the end. They were pissed off about that little gang's jailbreak last week. They wanted bigger guns and better gear, and the cops were asking for the same.

  Actually, that wasn't a bad thing, necessarily. When the Breach happened, the police had been a decent second line of defence, even if they mostly concentrated around the corporate district and along the edges of City Centre where the richer sorts lived.

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  Eldur eventually showed up, looking fresh and in a good mood. "We have a nice opportunity today. One of the higher-ups from the head office needs a guard team."

  "Parade or..." Erde asked.

  "Parade, yes," Eldur replied.

  Terry groaned, folding down onto the table. I reached over and patted her on the back.

  The rest of the day was a waste, but it was kind of interesting. As it turned out, Luna Corp was trying to make a small play, and that meant making a show of force. Or as much of one as they could.

  We got dressed in our best, all the shiny armour and better gear that Luna Corp had. It was a few steps below what one of the bigger corps had, but it wasn't all bad. And then we went up onto the rooftop where we boarded a large transport chopper and rode out to the centre of the city.

  That was neat. I'd never flown like that before. It was only seeing the others so relaxed about it that kept me calm. We were guarding a fifty-something looking man, an E-ranker from the feel of him, to a meeting with some bigwigs at one of those bigger hotels.

  There were reps from a few other companies, but the one that stood out was the rep from Seraph. He looked like he could boil an egg by glaring at it. A C-ranker, and one filled with enough rage that it was palpable.

  Apparently having anything past an E-ranker as a rep was a faux-pas, like walking into a business meeting with an assault rifle. Seraph was doing it on purpose though.

  Squad B was made to stand to one side of a large room, all serious and boring as shit. The actual contents of the meeting were held behind closed doors, with anti-interference magic in the air and white-noise generators to block more technological listening devices.

  Eldur would glare at any of us who asked anything, so we didn't learn what it was all about until two hours later, when we flew back to the HQ.

  That morning, two C-rankers from Seraph were injured in a C-rank portal. They'd failed to contain it, and it was threatening to breach, so now they were clearing it on their own, but since it was particularly dangerous, they didn't want to just send in waves of D-rankers to die.

  It was turning into a bit of a mess, and now other corps were looking to elbow into Seraph's spot on the hierarchy.

  It wasn't gonna work out. Luna Corp didn't have the clout or the personnel to handle a C-rank portal that was that dangerous.

  Seraph was down two C-rankers. Luna Corp only had two C-rankers.

  That didn't mean that Luna Corp couldn't be in the room while others rubbed mud on Seraph's face. There was probably something to gain from it. I wasn't well-versed in politics, let alone corpo politics, so I didn't quite get it.

  Nor did I give that much of a shit, to be honest. It wasn't my thing. Maybe Fran would enjoy the games being played here, but they weren't for me.

  We got back, got undressed from all of the stuffy armour that we never wore otherwise, then Eldur basically told us to do whatever as long as we clocked out at five. I was more than happy enough to go to my little, undecorated office and just... waste an hour scrolling through memes on my company laptop.

  I had to build a bit of a rep as a mediocre employee, and this was ideal for that. Also, I was feeling a bit lazy and annoyed, so... yeah.

  I was out of the door by five sharp.

  Time enough to ride back home and see if I couldn't get in a few more hours of practice. Maybe I could also slip over to the gym on my last loop?

  It wouldn't hurt to work on my musculature a bit. Get some real-time training in before it was too late. But before that, guitar and French. I was spending enough time on both, actual dedicated time, that I was feeling like I was getting pretty good at them.

  Next time I had to talk to Lousie in French, I wouldn't bungle it... as much.

  And... yeah, I didn't know if the opportunity to play the guitar would ever actually come up, but maybe. I bet I could serenade Fran's tight little office worker pants off with a love ballad... And Jane would be down regardless.

  Good reason as any to pick up the instrument, that!

  ***

  next section, which is like... insanely hype, but... yeah, I lost my grip on the pacing for a bit there.