Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 83: Old acquaintances, new problems

“You know, we really gotta stop meeting like this, Isaac.” Habicht commented as he saw them arrive.

“Eh, we both work on fixing [System]-related messes, it’s inevitable that we’ll keep meeting like this. But how about you, I was under the impression that your unit wasn’t ready yet?” Isaac asked.

“Oh, you know how it is with a bureaucracy. One moment, nothing is ready and won’t be for months yet, the next there’s a need and suddenly, everything is a-okay and you get yelled at for having been out of the door before anyone could even order you to do so.” Habicht replied “But we’re dealing with a terrorist group and potential wild mon-“

“Holy fuck!” Patrick yelped, having entered far enough into the building for his [Aura] to touch the holding cells ... and see the people within.

“What’s wrong?” Isaac asked, concern evident in his voice, and extended his [Aura] in turn “… fuck.”

“Would you two mind not snooping in a police precinct? I know the soundproofing isn’t up to snuff, but could you at least keep your [Auras] to yourselves?” Habicht sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose “And yes, those would be the people responsible the monsters. Someone chopped them up like that and called the local police station with a noise complaint.”

Ah yes, a slight but noticeable difference from what had really happened, Isaac had, in fact, called in to complain that people were fighting. But if anyone actually knew that and let that slipped, that would pretty clearly implicate them. Not bad.

The important question was if Habicht actually suspected either of them, or if he normally did stuff like that.

“So, is this another Krebs situation?” Patrick asked, worry creeping into his voice.

“First of all, what the hell is actually going on?” Amy interjected “We were summoned here, probably as witnesses, and then the two people with sensory [Auras] freak out. Seriously, what’s happening.”

“There’s a bunch of mutilated people in the holding cell.” Habicht sighed “And this might be another Krebs situation.”

“Might be?” Isaac frowned, hard “That looks pretty nasty up there.”

“Might be.” Habicht confirmed “See, they’re all still alive and were worse than any of Krebs’ victims ever were. Every single one of those people knew about the attack with the sharks and most were even directly involved. This was what Krebs could have been if she’d cut the unnecessarily brutal execution methods and did her due diligence. The scene might have looked like a horror movie set rejected for being too gory, but the attacks on the people themselves, it was almost surgical.

“I’m of half a mind to just assume that this was a BND operation they wanted to fork off to the police.”

“BND?” Amy asked.

“Bundesnachrichtendienst, German intelligence. It was a pretty decent operation, took down everyone and got us thoroughly involved …” he trailed off “… you know what, I shouldn’t be about this in the lobby or with you, I’m sorry. Would you all please follow me so I can take your statements on the incidents yesterday and the day before yesterday?”

“Actually, I wasn’t there for any of that, I’m here because I have an idea regarding as to why they did what they did.”

“The attacker?” Habicht frowned, hard.

“No, the people who summoned the sharks. I was up most of last night and I think I figured it out, it really reminds me of another, pre-[System] phenomenon that sparked off myth and folklore. But in this case, instead of a new monster legend being created, it was a demented cult.” Isaac said. It was a new idea he’d had only recently, one that could seriously help paint a target on the Systemers’ backs.

“But is there a profiler we could loop in, just for a sanity check? After all, I’m not a profiler myself and my imagination might have gotten away from me.”

“Hm, Dr. Sarai got roped in a couple of hours ago. But we’ll talk about this in a more private place, even if some people can still hear everything going on within.” Habicht replied, giving some of them hard looks.

“Sometimes, it feels like there’s only a handful of people in law enforcement dealing with the [System].” Patrikc noted “Wasn’t Sarai the guy from Leipzig?”

“Yeah, that’s actually the [System’s] fault.” Habicht explained “The people who dealt with the initial big cases had the highest [Skill] and personal Levels, so they got assigned to the next big case, this one. And so on, and so forth.”

They headed forward, ending up in a large room that, if not for its size, would have looked exactly like an interrogation room, complete with cameras in the corners and some serious soundproofing, but otherwise, this was a conference room style setup.

Habicht dialed the phone and placed it on the table in speaker mode.

“Hi Zorawar, it’s Franz. I’m here with Mr. Thoma, who I’m sure you remember from Leipzig. He had a theory on the cult and he’d like to get a professional’s opinion on it. Go ahead, Mr. Thoma.”

“Thanks. Alright, so basically, what do you know about the succubus?” Isaac asked.

“They’re a Tier 6 monster?” Habicht suggested, making Isaac snigger.

“It’s my job to memorize summoning lists, but how come you were able to remember that so quickly?” he teased, but then grew serious once more.

“Jokes aside, this is about the origin of the myth. Myths, and monsters in general, were created as a way to deal with, given a face to or explain certain phenomena.

“There’s the Wendigo, embodiment of winter and hunger and what people are willing to do out of desperation. There are countless versions of the story, from the glutton that grows fatter and stronger with every victim, its appetite increasing alongside everything else, to the eternally emaciated, starving beast that devours ever more in a vain attempt at filling that void in its stomach, but in the end, they all tell the same tale, represent the same thing.

“Then, you’ve got things like the countless variety of sprites, pixies, brownies and what have you, all explaining various forms of misfortune and household accidents, or things suddenly being cleaner than one remembered.

“You can find such a logical and rational source for most mythological creatures, including the myth of the succubus, which originates from the phenomenon of sleep paralysis. People would wake up, unable to move, and assumed that demons were responsible.

“Later, clergymen would blame their impure thoughts and morning wood on demonic influence, which eventually combine to create the myth of a sex demon that preyed on people, sucking out their life force, leaving them prone and unable to move in their own beds.”

“This is all very interesting and I can either confirm some of that and the logic tracks for everything else, but I fail to see what this has to do with the situation at hand.” Sarai asked, sounding exhausted. He’d likely been awake for quite a while but without a Fortitude high enough to avoid the effects of getting so little sleep.

“In essence, I think that’s what happened here.” Isaac said “The phenomenon of the [System] was turned into a some kind of guiding principle or deity. We know that the [System’s] messages will not wake people who are fully asleep, but what if some of that trickled through anyway, or someone was half asleep during initialization and got parts of it and their minds cobbled together some kind of pseudo-religion?

“If people can turn sleep paralysis and unwanted boners into a demonic woman that visits them at night, who’s to say that they couldn’t turn a thing that quantifies the world into a divine message to destroy all other forms of understanding the world?”

“That tracks.” Sarai sighed “The going theory was charismatic high school dropout cult leader, someone who got screwed by the current system, but that’s a really good point.”

“There are chapters of the ‘children of the [System] on other continents, though. They have to be connected somehow, how does that make sense with the ‘delusion theory’?” Habicht asked.

“The internet is a fantastic way to connect with others. Also, there’s such a thing as a shared illusion. People start to see things after hearing about them, like someone claiming to have seen a ghost and suddenly, that shadow there starts to look particularly spooky. It’s the power of suggestion, basically.” Sarai explained “Someone cooked up this ‘divine message’ that Mr. Thoma suggested, posted it on the internet, and suddenly, people start to recontextualize their past experiences with the [System] as being a part of this message.

“A concrete ideology begins to form and all of a sudden, you have people going after scientists with summoned monsters all over the place. Having an actual, tangible thing with proven supernatural capabilities to put on a pedestal certainly won’t help matters.”

‘go after scientists with summoned monsters’

That phrase continued to rattle around Isaac’s head. Why? It was something he knew had happened to his team, hell, it had happened in the other timeline as well, at least occasionally, so what was with it?

And then, he got to his feet and facepalmed with enough force to make the door rattle, making Habicht jump in fright.

“What was that for? Why’d you get up?”

“I got up because I didn’t think the chair would survive that, and I did that because I think I just figured out something I should have realized long ago. You mentioned there were chapters of the ‘children of the [System]’ all over the place. There wouldn’t happen to be one or two in California, would there?”

“You think they were responsible for the LA incident?” Sarai asked, surprise and skepticism painfully clear in his voice.

“Maybe.” Isaac shrugged “I’ll need to have someone back home check, but after releasing our first paper, the one on monster-summoner tracking interactions, we got a really pissy letter from a Californian professor who was researching the same topic. Now, I don’t know if this professor was from LA, all I know is that they were from the state in which LA is located, but it’s possible, isn’t it? You know what, we do have some support staff back at the university, I could have one of them che- …”

He trailed off as he caught a good look at Habicht. The police officer face had turned an alarming shade of red, and steam was practically rising from his ears as he glowered down at the tablet in front of him. It took a brief moment for Isaac to read the title upside down, but once he’d managed it, it became clear that this was a report on the California incident, the single most lethal incident since initialization.

Well, technically, the Event had killed a lot more people, but the actual deaths had occurred in a series of unconnected events, rather than a single monster’s rampage.

“Regardless, anyone who’s a member of the ‘children of the [System]’ will be on all the lists by tonight.” Sarai commented “One of the group’s chapters already committed an act of terrorism, and their overall ideology condones things like that. That group won’t survive for long.”

Habicht took another deep, fortifying breath and added “I’ll make sure everyone who needs to know about this knows, Isaac, could you please get someone to check for that letter. I’ll talk to your colleagues soon, but could I talk to you after that? There are a few questions I’d still like to ask.”

“Sure, see you later.” Isaac replied and left, grimacing internally.

He’d ever so slightly lost his temper back there. There was no set of circumstances in which he’d have left those bastards alone to keep doing what they were doing, also, he’d have always ensured that the people who came to investigate didn’t come face to face with a dozen people over Level 20 and one over Level 25 and, well, end up dead.

The end result would have been similar for the Systemers, but there were a lot of things he could have done better. For example, he could have circled around further and come running in through several smaller villages on the rout from back home to here, making sure to get caught on camera in the process.

Mind you, not in an obvious way such as buying something at the gas station, that would just scream ‘trying to get an alibi’. Instead, he’d run along the highway that ran through town, passing through the line of sight of some random camera and that would have been that.

Then again, being too slow to show up, taking longer than it should have, given his publicly known speed, would have also raised some uncomfortable questions.

As it was, though, there was no way in hell anyone could prove it had been him who’d done that. There was no physical evidence thanks to [Fleeting Presence], which had hit Level 10 during the fight and gained a new effect.

Fleeting Presence (epic, Level X)

There one moment, gone the next. Completely gone.

This Skill tells the user how to erase all traces of their presence, such as footprints, avoid breaking branches and trampling shrubs.

However, it also stops the user from shedding all the usual traces that all humans leave behind, such as skin and hair cell.

It also prevents the oils found on human fingers from leaving behind fingerprints, though it will not prevent fingerprints from appearing if the user were to touch a material that is easily imprinted upon, such as soft wax, putty or a heavy layer of dust, instead disturbing the material until the fingerprint is no longer visible, but that by itself could be spotted.

Likewise, nothing will transfer from the user’s clothes or shoes to any surfaces, and footprints will be removed, but the signs that something was removed might still be visible.

In other words, you’d have better luck finding proof of a yeti than of him having been in that arena. Well, the cryptid yeti, that was, not the Tier 6 monster and its pain in the ass frost [Aura].

In addition, while many of the [Skills] he’d used were ones people knew he had, but they were the most basic of [Skills], ones anyone with a melee [Class] could get.

… well, most of them were common, anyway. But no one knew he had [Crippling Blow] or [Fleeting Presence] and while the way [Phantom Step] grew cheaper when unobserved was rather unique, that wasn’t something people could tell from the outside.

You might as well try to track a person based on the fact that they had green eyes. Sure, those were rare and only found in 2 % of the population, but that percentage of just the local area was still a gigantic number of suspect.

End of the day, could that have gone better? Absolutely.

But had it gone terribly? Absolutely not.

Now he just had to endure whatever talk Habicht wanted to have and hope it wouldn’t be an interrogation.

Mind you, without a confession, there was no risk of him getting convicted, but if people thought he was responsible, well, then that would still be a massive problem.

Isaac pulled out his phone and called up one of the team’s support staff. The core group was still the same, original team that he’d met months ago, given that they had the Levels and high rarity, combat and research applicable, [Classes] to stay at the forefront of science, researching monsters that a mere fraction of a percent of the human race could face and survive, but six people couldn’t do everything on their own.

Well, seven people if you included Wechsler, their government liaison, but he rarely showed his face anymore, instead working dutifully to file paperwork and ensure that things ran smoothly on the bureaucratical side of things. After all, they’d all managed to get a good, solid handle on what was acceptable and what wasn’t, reducing the need to finagle out the specifics for most experiments, and he’d simply become too busy to sit in on meetings.

Still, he’d been a godsend and Isaac had slipped him an Aspect to show his appreciation. Each of those was still valued at a vastly greater price than they would be in a couple of years or so, but Isaac still had a pretty decent supply, which made them pretty effective brib- … er, gifts. Gifts to inspire loyalty, gifts to convince people that continuing to work with them was a great thing.

Therefore, Bailey had hired more people. They didn’t work out of the new building as only the basement and first floor were finished, and neither of those had the needed office space, instead being located in their old place, but they still helped immensely.

A lot of what they did was grunt work, data entry and the like, but eventually, they’d be able to choose to help out in the summoning rooms … once they were a high enough Level. A level-up program was in the process of being instituted, but it was slow going, something about how they were a research team, not a battle squad, but Bailey should be able to ram it through eventually. And until then, they could just have them summon monsters and send a trickle of XP their way like that.

The phone rang a couple of times, and then the call got picked up.

“Hi Khaled, it’s Isaac. Do you have time to check something in the archives real quick?”

“Sure, what do you need?” came the reply mere moments later. Khaled had been one of the first people to join Professor Bailey’s team during the second round of hiring and he’d been incredibly helpful ever since, always able to jump in for things like that.

“Thanks, I need you to tell me where a specific letter is from. We got it on the Monday after we published our first paper, the one about how monsters track their summoners. It was very unpleasant, and it originated from California, but I need the specific city. I don’t think we got another letter from that area, so there should be only one, but if there’s more than one, it’s the one that sounds the most like the writer wanted to strangle Professor Bailey.”

“Ok, I’ll do that, how soon do you need it?”

“As soon as possible. Thanks, you’re the best, see you soon.” Isaac bade him goodbye and hung up.

If that theory was true, then he actually felt bad about his actions last night. Bad because he hadn’t done worse things to them.

In hindsight, it was rather obvious, as was the reason why he hadn’t figured things out before.

If the Stormheart Gestalt hadn’t been summoned to farm it for XP, then why else had it been summoned? Why, to kill someone, or destroy the city, of course, but then why summon it in a comparatively isolated warehouse?

But there was another reason, and they hadn’t thought of it. The very concept of summoning was poison in LA right now, and therefore, so was the idea of [System] research.

If the researcher who’d sent that letter really had been on the precipice of making the same discovery as Bailey had with Isaac helping him, then he must have been very good indeed.

And then, the [System] research in LA had ended before it could ever really begin, in both timelines, before anyone had ever really been aware of the Systemers and thought of them as suspects.

Now though, after this mess, they were under immense scrutiny after getting caught for trying to kill a group of researchers. And if the LA incident turned out to have also been aimed at stopping research, well, that was one mystery solved.

He just hoped he was right about that. He also hoped no one discovered he was the person behind the fight last night or suspected him strongly enough that it ended up ruining his reputation.