Chapter 41: Paying Granny's Dues

Even though he wasn't technically any safer, Rick felt relieved when he finally stepped out of the car. Granny Whitney gave them a cheery wave and then her vehicle shot up into the sky, disappearing above the clouds. Just like that, he had underworld obligations again.

Setting aside those concerns, Rick turned to look at Tom. The larger man shifted uncomfortably, as if he wanted to start walking away but was held by something. Possibly guilt. Though Rick was pissed off at him, he knew that venting those feelings wouldn't accomplish anything. A moment later, he realized that there was actually a better way to exploit the situation.

"A long time ago, after I lost an arm helping you win a fight, you promised to help restore it." Rick eyed Tom coolly. "This is what you had in mind for repaying me?"

"Look, I didn't..." Tom winced and avoided eye contact, but didn't move away. "Granny Whitney took care of your injury and after that we were on opposite teams. And now... I didn't want it to be this way, I just..."

Though Rick felt a bit dirty, like he was taking a page out of Granny Whitney's book, he knew he couldn't afford to play this situation clean. "I know she pushed you into a bad situation. But now you've put me in a position where I could very well end up maimed or killed."

"You... deserve better than that. Sorry."

"If you really want to apologize, make it up to me with your technique." Rick stepped closer and stared up into Tom's eyes. "I want to test my defensive core against your lightning technique, under completely controlled conditions."

Tom blinked in surprise. "Uh, now?"

"No, not now. I need to take care of Granny Whitney's problem and I'm betting things will get worse with Jack before they get better. But soon."

"Okay." Tom took a deep breath and nodded to him, his nervousness giving way to a hard expression. "After doing this to you, that's fair. You have my number, so just call me."

"Thanks, I'll do that." Rick was about to leave, but hesitated and looked back at the other man. "Tom, you should already know this, but you could use a reminder. Making yourself useful to her will just get you pulled in deeper. You need to make a deal that lets you get out."

Tom nodded but didn't respond. They stared at each other a while longer, then they headed in opposite directions. After walking for a time, his thoughts overflowing, Rick manifested his bike and hopped on. They'd been dropped off not far from his apartment, but he didn't want to wait any longer to get started.

Along the way, he thought over the messages he'd seen recently at work. The quotas had been getting more difficult and judging from some of the threads, a few surveyors had been fired. He had a comfortable buffer thanks to the allowance from his time in the demon realm, but it was obvious that his life was going to get more difficult. That was before he even thought about Granny Whitney's demands, though at least she would let him take credit for the find.

Back at the apartment, he found Melissa sitting in the middle of the living room floor, surrounded by several books. They all looked like old technical manuals from the library, some of them a bit strange. She glanced up and grinned at him, though, so he decided that she must know what she was doing.

"Hey, Rick. Meeting go okay?"

"Uh, no. Got kind of a shitty surprise, but we should talk about it later."

"That's cool, I have a lot on my mind." Melissa frowned and then pointed to the small table. "Right, Lisa dropped off some more stuff for you. It's not just mixtures this time, she wants you to give something to whoever you got the jackalope extract from."

"Thanks, sis." Rick padded over and found the box from Lisa. In addition to the usual complement of experiments, there was an odd package that was actually vacuum sealed. Presumably a derivative of the extract that she wanted Adsila to test in some way, because there was no note or explanation beyond what Melissa had said.

Rick stared down at the box, wondering if he'd seriously messed things up. Lisa seemed so distant these days. Even though it had been an awful and stressful period of his life, he missed the time when he could just enjoy hanging out with various friends. The peace made everything more complicated.

Deciding that he would get out to the Peakless Wildlife Refuge later, Rick instead just put all the mixtures aside. Instead he spent time online researching the area Granny Whitney had indicated, trying to get a feel for the area before he went out to survey. It was too far to reach that day, but the actual area wasn't that large and had some old abandoned buildings, so hopefully it wouldn't be a pain to fulfill her request.

As soon as he thought it, he regretted it. Not likely. Rick sighed and went through his exercises before going to sleep.

~ ~ ~

The next day, Rick got up bright and early to head out to the site. Though the bike ride was refreshing, everything else was not. By the time he arrived, the sun was beating down unpleasantly and he knew that it would only get worse.

When he first made an attempt to use the surveying technique, he got a large amount of feedback - not natural feedback, either, but a nasty residue that he could almost feel instinctively. No wonder no one had located the anomaly yet. He had to wonder if there even was one, or if this was part of some trickier scheme by Granny Whitney, but decided that was paranoia. Locating anomalies was the only real thing she was likely to want from him, since she had access to plenty of stronger fighters.

For an hour he simply moved through the region, surveying periodically to get a sense for the distortions. It wasn't a random route, however, as he moved to target the buildings he'd seen from the maps online. Even if those didn't contain the anomaly, they would serve as good reference points and he might be able to get some shade if the sun became oppressively hot.

The first of the buildings came into sight sooner than he expected: a vast concrete structure, still in solid shape except for the stains creeping up the side. Huge painted letters read "Branton Lucrim Depository" - or at least that was what he thought it said, guessing about missing pieces. It had been a long time since lucrim had been stored in such crude containers, so it wasn't a surprise that the building was abandoned.

As he got closer, he found himself wondering about why it had been so far outside the city. He didn't think the city had moved all that much over time. Maybe it was to discourage anyone from making attempts on it... he did see a few bits of concrete rubble that might once have been defenses.

Fortunately he was close to the entrance, so he headed for it. The doors were locked with a rusted chain, so after checking the windows, he left it for now. If necessary, he could break through the chain later, but hopefully that wouldn't be required. When he tried the technique again, the surveying aura vibrated strangely. Probably not an anomaly, but he couldn't put his finger on why exactly he thought that - it was just instinct from his work so far.

Instead he headed around the side of the massive building, partially surveying more and partially marveling at the size. Technology really had come far, to store lucrim so much more efficiently. For a moment he wondered how they had ever done it in the ancient world, then he realized that of course they didn't store it in the same way. Lucrim was always in their bodies or in the environment.

Though he mostly checked the surveying aura between his hands, Rick made sure to keep watch on his surroundings as well. Not so much to search for threats as because there was a lot of broken glass and occasionally a rusty piece of metal jutting from the earth. His defensive core wouldn't be hurt by those, but he still didn't want to run into them.

Then he spotted it: a small furry body lying in the dirt. Rick glanced around and then advanced cautiously.

To his surprise, it was a jackalope. It had been dead for some time, though he didn't know enough about decomposition to guess exactly how long. The strange thing was that a hole had been torn through its head. What kind of creature could create an injury like that? Certainly not another jackalope, and a dragon or wolf would have left a bite. Maybe a lucrim-using scorpion - he and Melissa had watched a documentary about the "Pueblo Assassin" once - but he didn't think they had any of those this far north.

Rick carefully checked the area, wondering what might have caused it. He didn't see any animal tracks and didn't know a damn thing about tracking in any case. There was a broken bottle lying nearby that didn't look like it had any dirt on it, so he headed in that direction.

There was a broken concrete wall ahead that could easily have hidden an animal, but as Rick circled it from a distance, he realized that he had entirely the wrong idea. Instead of an animal's nest, he found an old camper. It looked in bad shape, but still functional. Worse, there was blue smoke emerging from the top, so he realized what he was dealing with.

It was a fucking meth lab. And it was making meth with lucrim somehow, judging from the wild distortions of the aura between his hands. Dumped waste probably explained why the area was distorted, but he was more distracted by the idea of what lucrim meth would even do to a person.

Wouldn't that be horribly lethal? Meth itself took enough of a toll, wouldn't enhancing it make it burn straight through a person's body? Then again, if people were strong enough, sometimes normal drugs ceased to have any effect. Were these drugs for addicted fighters, the truly desperate, or something even more nefarious? Knowing Granny Whitney, probably all of the above.

A gunshot rang out and Rick felt pain in his shoulder. He immediately turned and spotted a wild-looking man emerging from an abandoned-looking outhouse. Judging from the sores on his face, he might be sampling his own supply, but more importantly he was holding a gun.

Rick reached up and rubbed his shoulder. His defensive core had crumpled the bullet before it damaged his skin, so that wasn't a major threat, but surely a drug manufacturer had better weapons. At that moment the man finished pulling up his pants, dropped the pistol, and leveled a shotgun.

"That was a warning shot." The man stared at him with wild eyes, then gestured with his shotgun. "This baby fires lucrim bullets."

"Look, I'm not here to bother you." Rick raised his hands in the hope that it would make the man calm down - if the shotgun really fired lucrim, that could be dangerous. "Granny Whitney sent me to take care of a little problem."

"Eh? Who?" The man's disbelief was so stark that Rick found himself believing it. Of course, it probably made sense that Granny Whitney only operated several levels separated from someone like this.

"It doesn't matter, the main thing is, I'm not here for you. I just want to do some work and go."

"You might..." The man licked at the sores on his lips, his hands twitching as he aimed the gun unsteadily. "You might report me. I'm not supposedta kill anyone, but..."

Rick burst into a Bunyan's Step, shooting mostly sideways in case the man fired in reaction. Yet the drug manufacturer just looked shocked, staring at the place where he'd been. So Rick used another Bunyan's Step to zig-zag back to the man, grabbing the shotgun out of his hands.

"If I wanted to kill you, I could." Rick stared down at him and the man quailed. "But I'm not here for that. Just stay out of this area for the next few days..."

"But... we need to get a batch made..."

"You're attracting too much attention here. Without my work, you're going to get caught. I don't care what you do, but I don't want to see you again. Okay?"

Since the man was trembling in fear, Rick waited for him to nod in agreement, then handed him back the shotgun. The man quickly retreated to the camper, and though Rick was on guard for a treacherous attack, none came. He waited for a while and though the camper didn't move, the blue smoke did begin to fade away. That would have to be good enough.

As Rick backed away from it, he wondered just what he was doing. He'd never been a vigilante and there was plenty of drug use in his extended family that no one ever imagined reporting. Yet actively working to keep meth manufacturers in business... it might be hypocritical to make them move out of sight, but he needed to do this or Granny Whitney would punish him.

The region continued to give off strange readings as he surveyed it. Had he made this attempt when he'd just started the job, he almost certainly would have given up. Yet now, he had a feeling that he could see patterns in all the noise. It wasn't just dumps of byproducts from drug manufacturers, he thought he saw traces of an anomaly as well.

Rick began heading out in a wider circle, periodically using Emily's variation of the surveying technique in order to build a mental map of the whole region. Since it wasn't terribly large, he thought that he could cover most of it and then have a clear idea which area contained the anomaly. Once he had it narrowed down, it wouldn't be that hard. In theory.

Eventually Rick spotted another building, a shack out in the middle of nowhere. He actually wasn't sure what it was, other than that he assumed it was now being used to make drugs. Bracing his defensive core again, Rick headed toward it.

"Hello? If you're thinking of attacking me, I'm not here to fight." His call went unanswered and he tried to search for any lucrima souls in the area. Nothing, though a skilled fighter could be hiding.

A wolf howled in the distance and Rick straightened in surprise. He looked around, as if expecting it to be right beside him, but of course the wolf wasn't anywhere near. Wild animals who weren't rabid or desperate - or jackalopes - tried to stay away from people, after all. There was still no sign of anyone nearby or in the shack.

There was a very crude latch holding the rusty tin door closed. When Rick's knock went unanswered, he kicked the door open. It was shockingly easy, the door slamming open to reveal an empty shack. He stepped inside cautiously, looking around the dim chamber.

He spotted some rusty silverware and a few cracked syringes that he guessed had been used for drugs at some point, but they looked extremely old. A thick layer of dust covered everything, rising as he walked in. Apparently this location had been abandoned in favor of the rolling lab. Though he checked through the few cabinets in the room, it contained nothing of note.

Just in case, Rick bent down to survey for the anomaly, but there was nothing amiss. Well, it was another point in his mental map of the region. He got back up, feeling strangely dizzy, and headed back out the door.

Rick stepped into the cool night. He reeled in surprise, looking around him, yet it seemed to have inexplicably become midnight.

Could the time have gotten away from him so drastically? It had been getting later, but there was no way it could be later than evening. He couldn't deny the night sky overhead, dark except for too many gleaming stars, yet there had to be another explanation. Maybe he dozed off in the shack? Rick got out his phone to check the time, yet the screen only flickered meaninglessly.

At that moment, he heard a howl. Much louder than before. He looked up and stared into the eyes of an enormous silver wolf.