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  Everything after the Twenty-Three blurred together to be honest.

  Rudy ended up clearing up the remains of the hive, and even disposed of the Model Seventeen that had been orchestrating the entire event. Its corpse looked different from what I thought: some odd mixture of the Model Three and the Model Seven, just with much tougher hide, disgusting prevalent pores, and way more eyes. Apparently Rudy’s choice to blast music was less the Samurai levels of flamboyance that I expected and more the entire reason he could track the slippery worm down; combining it with some new echolocation tech let him catch the movement of the connector strings and follow them back down to the source. I want to say I’m proud of how my junior has grown up, but I’d known him for less than four hours and I guarantee my solution to the Seventeen problem would involve trial-and-error and a lot of punching aliens dead.

  Say what you will, but I have a style and I’d like to stick to it.

  We pinged Hazel and her freshly assembled squad as soon as we deemed it safe enough to bring other people in, and they arrived shortly after, although with the caveat I had to dissolve the web grenade that I had almost completely forgotten about and was embarrassed to have done so. Hazel looked to have regained some of her composure, now taking the command of her mooks which I didn’t even get names of very seriously. Was that composure due to coming to terms with Barrett’s death, or wrestling back control of her mental state because there was a job to do I couldn’t say, but the gusto to come back to the grind after everything earned yet more of my respect. I even passed her the remains of the Deathnail, both for her to use as leverage down the road and also because I didn’t want to carry a half-destroyed chunk of metal in my backpack. That boy was filling up.

  Quickly after she arrived and once it had been determined that the squad could handle the rest, me and Rudy were discharged and told to rest up from the remainder of the day. Rudy initially objected on the grounds of wanting to get more points, but I was able to convince him to take the time off; while not as intense as my first foray as a Sam’, I still knew first hand how day one tended to hit you like a sack of bricks once your veins weren’t coursing with adrenaline every waking second.

  Personally, I was delighted to get off the hook for now. Death Punch may have been the name I was stuck with, but I wasn’t particularly fond of smelling like death as a part of the bit. Luckily all of my equipment was sufficiently waterproofed, so an hour of cleaning later from within the Murdock branch showers the stench on my equipment was noticeably less horrible than before.

  I did wait to fully decompress until I arrived back at base, that being the painfully mid motel room I had reserved for the next couple of nights. Some people at that motel may have heard me moan in relief once I got my skin under refreshing hot water, but there’s no evidence that was actually me. Just hearsay.

  What I will confess was that as soon as body hit bed I was out like a light, and even after rising late in the night I remained thoroughly uninterrupted for the remainder of that day. Cal, the saint he was, made sure to block out any calls or messages from the relevant parties unless there was a blatant emergency that required me specifically to handle it. Anything below a Model Twenty immediately went to voicemail, essentially.

  The only thing that got through was a message from Rudy, asking me to come to a brief meetup with him, Hazel, and Campbell. Even in bleary, half-awake delirium I had a hunch as to what the meeting would be about, so I obliged.

  The next morning, after running a few errands, I trudged back into the Murdock building, just like I had the day before. Luckily Rudy had sent me directions to their little office in the building, so I didn’t have to deal with the reception again. This was as much a mercy for me as it was the receptionist, as it was the same one from yesterday and the reaction of her face turning white when I walked in today wasn’t lost on me. It’s a bit mean to say, but that did amuse me quite a bit.

  I arrived at the Dust Devil office, which was a far less simple affair than getting to Shermanson’s fancy schmancy office, and the mood could most politely be described as ‘dire’. All involved parties stood in tense, awkward silence around the office table, both Hazel and Rudy uncomfortably drumming their fingers against their legs while Campbell scratched at the singed remains of his facial hair. I was about to blurt out that it was like somebody died in here, but the silver canister at the table's center labelled ‘Barrett’ reminded me that someone dying is almost exactly what happened.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  I kept that thought to myself, and just softly poked my head through the door as greeting. “Dust Devil office, right?”

  Campbell of all people was who retorted, his voice noticeably more tempered than the day before. “Max, I assume.”

  “In the flesh,” I replied. “Though I could still just be a cosplayer who likes intruding on funerals for all you know.”

  That earned a snort from Hazel, and the air in the room seemed to relax a little. “That's Max alright. What's with the bags?”

  She pointed to the grocery bags in each hand, contents obscured by the milky white coloring of the plastic. “Just had to run some errands before heading over. Y'all got a fridge? Got some shit that melts.”

  Rudy scooted to the left from his spot leaning against a counter, revealing a mini-fridge in the corner. “Why even run errands? You have a magical AI that can summon whatever the hell you want.”

  “Ah, but the journey is more important than the destination, young padawan.”

  This time Campbell gave a snort. “Star Wars in the year of ‘54, who woulda guessed.” More perplexingly, he turned over to Rudy, and gave an awkward little cough into his hand while scratching longingly at his chin. “Uhh, Rudy, you wouldn’t have to…have something that could regrow facial hair, would you?”

  Of course he did. Knowledge of how Catalogs worked had spread decades ago so that question may as well have been rhetorical in nature. Even still, Rudy’s response came out uncertain, hands more blatantly beginning to fidget. “...I might.”

  Campbell gave a slow, confirming nod of his head, but it didn’t go any further than that. “Ah, I see. Just thought I’d ask.”

  The strained air around the two sat in silence for a minute, neither me nor Hazel particularly willing to interrupt it. Eventually, a little container of cream popped into Rudy’s hand, which he slowly gestured for Campbell to take.

  “Oh…thanks,” he said, carefully removing the canister from Rudy’s palm and slipping it into his pocket. “How…how much do I owe you?”

  Something subtle shifted in Rudy’s eyes after hearing that. “Uhm…don’t worry about it. It’s on the house.”

  Okay, I just couldn’t watch this anymore, especially with the bout of silence that followed. “So I’m guess y’all invited me here for a reason?”

  Hazel followed suit. “Yes, we thought you may like to be present for Barrett’s…funeral service.”

  Just as I hoped the mood was beginning to lighten, the temperature in the room dropped another two degrees. Nice going, Max.

  All I could do was awkwardly laugh out, the kind imbued with that artificial brevity that may as well have been transparent. “Yeah, I appreciate the invite then. Though, wouldn’t funeral proceedings usually be handled by his family, like spouse or parents or whatnot?”

  “He didn’t have any left,” Campbell replied. “Dude’s been single for as long as I’ve known him, and from what he seldom told, the last of his family passed in an incursion.”

  “Mmm.” Met a few guys like that back in the ring. Ones who were looking for a reason to go on and threw themselves into fighting in the hopes of feeling something. Most hardly spoke and had this distant look in their eyes, as if entirely checked out to what was happening around them. They usually didn’t last too long, either taking a hit too nasty and not getting up or finally giving in and buying a rope. “Didn’t speak to him much, but he seemed nice.”

  “He was.” Hazel gave a long sigh, as if reminiscing on the memory. “We–me and Campbell–have been with him since we joined Dust Devil, long before we ended up forming this squad. PMCs are always a revolving door because people either don’t come back after a shift or they…don’t come back, but somehow the three of us stuck together. He was actually the one to convince me to make a squad, actually.”

  Another bout of silence passed through the room. “It’s not gonna be the same without his ginger ass.”

  “He liked the piano, or I guess more accurately piano music,” Rudy said next. “Said that the sound of the keys tickled his brain in a particular way that he liked. Got to show him some of my favorite pieces, which I haven’t really been able to do much here in Orson. Even tried to teach him the piano once, but everything I told him didn’t stick.”

  “With all due respect, Rudy, your method of “teaching” Barrett was shoving a dozen documents in his face and word-vomiting music lingo for an hour straight,” Campbell replied. “Not sure anyone could pick up anything from that, to be honest.”

  “Hey, it's what worked for me.”

  I saw my chance. “Yes, and you’re now a Samurai. Which is basically the gold standard for being objectively weird and insane. The only reason people listen to us is because we are really good at exploding those who disagree.”

  Chuckles of various magnitudes swept through the dingy office, with Campbell sucking some water down the wrong pipe in the act and spending the next minute coughing out his lung.

  “Yeah, calling you here was the right choice,” Rudy said. “I think…it’s helped us kind of break the ice a bit. Without you, all of us would probably be moping around in silence.”

  “Least I could do, especially since…” The words ‘it was me who let him die’ tried to bubble up, but I managed to push them back down. “Never mind. Let’s keep the mood up, shall we.”

  I moved over to the fridge and brought out the three gallons of ice cream contained inside, ones that I had bought earlier. “Anybody got a sweet tooth?”