The Lesser One Chapter 20: Sparkling Grape Juice

Sparkling Grape Juice

I stand in front of twelve conjurers, wearing a lab coat that is fitted perfectly. Only one is younger than me. The oldest is seventy-five—part of the first wave of spirit manifestations ten years ago. Every single one of them is a copper-steel conjurer. There are five women and seven men.

“Okay, um,” I say. “Today we’re going to be learning about the, uh, the crystal structure of Rearden Metal. I think that, um, most of you probably know about that …”

No one answers.

“Does anyone have a materials engineering background?” I say.

Two of them nod.

“Okay, um, what have you been doing up to this point?” I ask.

“We’ve been working as slaves,” says one man, a rather skinny fellow with red hair and an Irish accent—Archey Dempsey.

I shuffle through the profiles I have stacked in my hand.

“Okay,” I say. “Archey. You worked as a … Extrusion specialist at Mandy Metals. Uh,” I say, “Can you tell me what that means?”

“It means I was paid a pittance to produce metal for building material,” says Archey. “Damn near bankrupted myself with how much I had to eat.”

I frown. “Okay, so you’ve never tried to make an alloy before?” I ask.

“Eh?” Archey says. “All I did was make what they told me.”

“Okay,” I say. I have prepared a PowerPoint. I click it on, and the first picture is of a microscopic view of Rearden Metal Type I.

“You see those little crosses?” I say.

“Yeah,” says Archey. “They look like bathroom tile. Like they’re made for pissing on.”

The other conjurers chuckle.

“Well, this is why it’s so strong,” I say. “This is type one. It’s got a really high resistance to stress and strain.” I then click the slide show. A new picture, this time of long overlapping crystals, shows. “This is type two,” I say. “This type is for really high-tolerance uh, extrusion. If you wanted to, you could control exactly how many of these crystals overlap at any point.” I click the slide again. This one shows a sort of jagged, triangular crystal structure—though it is very regular.

“This is type three,” I say. “Built for places where it will experience a lot of interaction. Like car motors or jet engines.” I click the PowerPoint again. It shows a diagram.

“You take your anima extrusion,” I say, “And you imagine the type of effect you want. Then you mix your copper and steel spirits and get them to like each other and repel each other at the same time.”

“I think I get it,” says one of the women conjurers. Samantha Warren. “So, you make your spirits like each other.”

“Exactly!” I say. Then I point to a lab table. “Would you like to try? Try creating Rearden Metal Type One.”

Samantha approaches the table, holding out her hand. A small bar of misshapen metal extrudes and lands on the surface.

I take the bar and put it in the testing machine. It doesn’t even stand up to a quarter of what Rearden Metal can. I sigh and cut a small sliver with a water saw to place under the microscope.

“It looks like your crystal structure is way too haphazard,” I say, turning away from the microscope. “Though it probably would be about as strong as steel in a building application.”

“Well what use is that if we can already produce steel?” asks Archey.

“Um, I’ve never been able to produce good steel,” says another of the women. Blaire Gumshoe. “All the steel I try to produce is brittle.”

“Where did you work before this?” I ask.

“At a power company, making copper cables. I never really used my steel ability,” says Blaire. “I just thought that something was wrong with my conjuring.”

“Um,” I say, “You’re probably going to have to figure out how doing it right feels.”

Blaire shakes her head. “I don’t know if I can do it. I really don’t feel qualified for this job.”

“Well it’s my job to help you work through this,” I say. “We have plenty of time. Two months, to be exact.” I turn to the table. “I’ll make a sample of each of the three types.” Red cracks run through my hands. Three bars of metal extrude from a small light in the center of my palm and land on the table with a clink. I pick up a bar of Type II.

“This is type two,” I say. I hand it to Blaire. “Just get a feel for it.”

Blaire nods, and holds the bar in her hands. She squeezes it and closes her eyes. Then she opens her eyes and puts the metal down.

“I think I have it!” she says. She extrudes a small bar onto the testing table.

I take the metal and sigh. This isn’t going anywhere. The metal is not nearly the strength of Rearden Metal. Though it is about equivalent to steel.

Why was it so easy for me to produce Rearden Metal? What things did I do right?

The balrog I defeated must have something to do with that. I spend the rest of the day teaching the twelve conjurers about Rearden Metal. By the end of the session, I am no longer sure that I’ll be able to teach them in two months.

After we wrap up, while the sun is almost setting, I leave the Esmex lab and enter my limo. Sebastian is driving.

“So what have you found?” I ask, a I crack open a sparkling grape juice. I’m getting a little tired of it.

“Before that,” I say, “Can you stock this fridge with diet root beer?”

“Diet root beer?” says Sebastian. “Are you sure you want to offer guests that kind of plebian drink?”

“Um,” I say, “It’s probably not healthy for me to drink this much sugary stuff.”

“It would be equally unhealthy to drink that chemical-laden diet soda. If you do really wish to drink, ahem, diet root beer, then we shall acquiesce. However, we must keep it in a separate compartment. Champagne and classic whiskey are what we should be serving guests of age, and this particular brand of non-alcoholic beverage is quite popular among the gentry. Especially, say, the young teenage daughters of wealthy billionaires.”

I am struck by lightning. “Great!” I say. I hadn’t forgotten about Alice during all the happenings recently, but I hadn’t been thinking specifically about her and what it would look like to have her as a guest. “But keep the diet root beer in a hidden place, because I like that stuff.”

“As you wish,” says Sebastian. “Now about your question. We have discovered that the leader of Brine Marsh, Gena Anatolievich, is the one who controls the Shinigami. She used her portal minions to create a crime empire that spans most of the globe.”

Could I do the same? Well, if I did have an empire, I would want it to be an empire of good—despite the fact that devils are, inherently, aligned with the “lawful evil” side of the alignment chart. I’ll have to figure out a workaround for that. I don’t want them running amok.

Sebastian continues. “Gena wants to absorb the minions that would spill out of this S-class portal when it is unlocked. By my prediction, she has some method of destroying the ‘boss’ that would emerge, thus slaving all the A-class monsters to her will. With that, she would be able to enter—” Sebastian pauses. “Well, we can talk about that later.”

“Um, is this the same ‘later’ that Lacy was talking about when she didn’t tell me what organization Crayton wants to join?”

Sebastian shakes his head. “This knowledge is a memetic hazard.”

I understand what that means—I learned it in Monster Taxonomy I. It’s basically a piece of knowledge that hurts you somehow when you know it. Like a book that causes pain when you read it.

I sigh. “Well, if it will hurt me, I don’t want to know.” I lean back in the comfortable all-leather limo seat. “We’re heading to the place on the Brine Ward business card, right?” I say.

“Indeed,” says Sebastian.

“Good,” I say. “I don’t really have a plan, but I do want to see what I can do by talking to them.” I take out the phone I got from Barley, flipping it open. There is only one address stored in its memory.

“Barley,” I say, when the phone connects. “I want to work with you. I’m heading to Brine Ward’s front business building.”

“Good,” says Barley. “I was expecting your call. We’ll have a handler meet with you at the address I’m sending you. Go there first.” He hangs up. A minute later, a text appears displaying an address far from the city center.

We cross the Thames, then head to where we will meet the government handler. Sebastian pulls us into a dirt lot that is surrounded by old fence. There is an unmarked car parked there, along with three government agents.

One of them is one of my devils—though I doubt the government knows this.

I step out of the car. The man in the center of the three agents approaches me. “Markus, correct?” he says.

“Yes, that’s me,” I say.

The agent extends his hand. “My name is Josh Parry. It’s nice to finally meet you.”

I shake his hand. “So what am I supposed to do?”

“Get as much information as you can,” says Josh. “We will be monitoring you with this,” he says, pulling out a small wire mic. “Be careful. We don’t know what their agents are capable of, as they are not human.”

“I think I can handle it,” I say. “I have help of my own.”

“Don’t be too trusting of your agents,” says Josh. “Be careful out there. That’s my number one maxim. Staying alive and free is better than any gain you can make through subterfuge.”

I understand this. My stomach is curling in on itself—I am about to infiltrate a mafia family. One that has aims to conquer the world and join the ‘rich kids’ club’ that everyone keeps hinting at but not talking about.

Sebastian bows. “Master, I have an idea that I would like to share with you.” He looks at Josh. “In the vehicle.”

I smile at Josh. “Are we good?”

“Let me test the wire,” says Josh. He clicks a few buttons on a walkie-talkie-type device. “Great. You’re good to go.”

“Thanks,” I say, as I get back in the car. Sebastian pulls us out of the lot and onto the street.

“What were you going to share with me?” I ask.

Sebastian is silent for a moment. “You can manipulate light, right?” he asks. “I do not know as much as I should about your ability, but I do believe that the testing you were put through at Ixtham was incomplete.”

I think for a moment. I get a flashback to the Shinigami attack. “You mean, you think I can go invisible?”

“It would not hurt to try,” says Sebastian. “Some of our own agents can manipulate light in this way.”

I concentrate. Light waves flow around me, reflecting off me, warming me. I try and bend them around my body. When I try to look at my hand, I cannot find it. In fact, I cannot find any part of my body. A disorienting nausea fills my skull and I can’t even sit correctly.

“Looks like I’m going to have to practice this,” I say.

“I believe you will be able to do it in the time it takes to get to our destination,” says Sebastian.

“How far is that?” I ask.

“Three hours,” says Sebastian.

“So, then, not near London,” I say.

Sebastian looks at me through the rearview mirror. “Indeed. It would not make sense for a major crime operation to be in plain sight in one of the most surveilled cities in the world.”

“Ah, right,” I say. “London cameras and all that.” I lean into the comfortable long seat at the center of the limo as I turn off and on my invisibility. It takes me few tries, but eventually I am able to maintain the cloak for about twenty minutes. We reach the location of Brine Ward’s front business three hours after leaving London. When we stop, I take the time to change into my business attire.

After straightening my tie, I step out. Sebastian steps out next to me. “I will be your bodyguard for the official negotiations,” he says. “We can’t be too careful.”

A smartly dressed woman flanked by two Shinigami in human form approaches me. She lifts up her sunglasses.

“Markus, correct?” she says, with a slight Russian-British accent.

I nod. “Indeed.”

“And this is a devil?” says the woman.

Sebastian bows. “As you can tell, that is who I am.”

The woman lowers her sunglasses. “Good. My name is Gena.”

I look up at the building behind her. It is a mattress store—Bloomer Mattress Sales! Twenty percent off!

I had always harbored suspicions about mattress stores and front businesses.

Gena turns around. “Follow me. We need you to see something. And get that government wire off your shirt. Those bumbling idiots don’t need to hear what we’re going to talk about.”

“Oh,” I say. I take the wire—about the size of a penny and hidden well—off of my jacket.

I turn to Sebastian. “Well, that was quick.”

Sebastian nods, and hands me the same magic earpiece as before.

Sebastian: Again, I must stress that you are careful. I will generate an apparition of you when the time comes, so that your presence will not be missed. However, you must watch vigilantly and be ready to pull out at any time.

I look at Sebastian and nod. My mission is to find the key using my invisibility and steal it back. I’m going to need all the help I can get.

I step into the mattress store, clenching my fist. One mistake, and I’m dead. I’m not dealing with humans anymore.

I’m dealing with a whole different world.