It was after midnight, and I was looking for Frank. He was supposedly on the roof with my walkie-talkie and in communication with military command. I was curious as to what they had figured out on their end. I headed to find the roof, but it took a lot longer than I had originally anticipated. There were a lot of people in the building now and people sleeping in all sorts of unusual places, like stairwells. It wasn’t easy, but I did eventually reach the roof.

  The night sky wasn’t what I was expecting. There were all sorts of lights in the sky. I saw lights from buildings and vehicles, certainly, but it was the constant light from explosions. I had heard some of it in the stairwell, but the insulation wholesaler and warehouse did insulate a lot of different parts of the building. The medical offices must have just gotten some fringe benefits from that. We were in a war zone. The brief flashes of gunfire, with the slightly longer blooms of light from explosions, made a spectacular display. This was impressive and disturbing at the same time. We were bombing our own cities. We were destroying our own buildings. It was all in service of containing the demonic invasion, but a part of me worried about how we hoped to rebuild. Another part of me worried what would be left. How many buildings would we destroy? How many lives would we end unnecessarily?

  A series of explosions went off to the northeast of me. Based on the distance, I hoped that was Hampton Avenue. The booming sound was deafening at times. My ears rattled; hell, the building rattled a little bit. The explosions were bright too, so bright that they made me think of something between fireworks and daylight. It was both and neither at the same time. With all the intermittent light coming from the explosions, looking around for Frank wasn’t difficult, but certainly surreal. We’d have starlight and streetlights one moment; the shadows on the roof were so deep and thick to be unpierceable. The next moment, the whole roof and skyline were bathed in light both near and far. I ducked down after the first one of those. If anything had the presence of mind to look our direction, I bet a random human standing on a rooftop would stand out like a sore thumb.

  Within a few minutes, I spotted him, well, just his head behind a large standing vent. And then I heard him. Then I heard Nora. I put two and two together, and I went back down the way I came. She must have woken up from her class up nap. I was not going to be the first person to ask if classing up made a person horny. Nah, let Billy be the person to ask that.

  I realized that I had better find any scout team members to see what was happening there. Finding Ted would probably be helpful, as he would know what Rick was up to. Well, at least that was the idea. I spent an hour or more walking through various hallways until I found a door between the two businesses. It was another 20 minutes of wandering on the insulation business side of the building to Ted, Harry, and Phil, all sitting at a table drinking sports drinks and playing poker.

  Ted looked up at me; I really wasn’t as quiet as I thought I was. He just nodded, “Evening, Cap’n.”

  “Hey guys, do you all know where the scouts are at, or any kind of a plan that might have developed while I was resting?”

  They all looked at each other before looking back at me. “Rick, Joe, and a handful of others scouted things out. We have a plan, well, really an outline of one.” He paused for a long moment, “I take that back, we have ideas for a plan. Maybe you have ideas as well. Hopefully, they are better than what we’ve come up with.”

  As they explained to me the ideas they had, they really already had the beginning of a serious plan in place. There wasn’t much that needed modification. I added in some of the magic items that had been identified to what was already going to be used, and that just shored up the sneaky portion of the operation. I made the guys stop their poker game to haul some of the items I had identified up to the main floor. We needed to get things closer to where we would actually use them.

  By the time I get Ted and Company down to the room I was resting in, it had been two hours from when I woke up. I immediately went to identify some more of the backlog. There wasn’t too much left.

  I identified a beautifully ornate quiver that held 300 arrows. Instead of extra dimensional storage, it shrank the items inside the quiver. That was for Brittney.

  There were several pencils that imparted literacy and writing capability for one language they could speak. They were for illiterate orcs to send back written messages. Maybe they would make good teaching tools, or for people with some sort of writing impairment.

  There was an ugly red Belt that increased a person’s lifting and carrying capacity. One of the guys in the squad could benefit from that. Lastly, there was a hardened leather helm. It had a thin metal coating on the crown of it, and a significant amount of padding on the inside. It made people from more than 10 meters away pay less attention to you. It was the Helm of Obfuscation. However, if we styled it better, it could totally become the Where’s Waldo hat. That seems far more entertaining to me. It wouldn’t work for me when I needed to get people’s attention, but for anyone we wanted to stay fairly safe, it was a godsend.

  The question became whether to give it to Will, Vern, or Natalie? Will was obviously an easy choice. It was straightforward. Protect the teenager who could give us more abilities. Vern was all those arguments, but for the guy who could copy those abilities to spread to everyone. Vern was up to level four, and making four copies of the tier 1 ability for a group of people in under a minute was powerful. Natalie was the other choice. It was entirely for personal reasons. A part of me wanted to protect her and keep her safe. I wanted to do that for her more than for anybody else. Emotions crept up enough so that I felt them. Damn, I really never stopped liking her. I reminded myself not to say that out loud.

  Ted looked at me, “Anything any of us should be using?” There were all of the things that I had identified so far strewn across the bed.

  “All of it needs to go upstairs, but the ugly red belt needs to go to anyone who has to carry a heavy load.” They all looked at each other briefly, then Harry stepped forward and put on the belt. The rest of them grabbed what they could and took everything back to where they had their poker game.

  On the way, I texted Nora and Frank, “When you two are available, I would love to know what is going on with the area and the military. We have the beginning of a plan in place, but help from the military when we have to move several buildings, kill a bunch of lupin, and figure out what the hell is the deal in the train yard itself.”

  It was a few minutes before I got a response from Nora, “Sure, we’ll be down in a few minutes.”

  “I’m in a break room on the Insulation side of the building.”

  “We’ll find it, don’t worry,” was Nora’s reply.

  As long as I didn’t have to track them down. I saw the time on my phone: 2:20 am. Only a few hours of darkness left. In August, sunrise would be really early, and even before sunrise, the predawn time was always a bit more lit up at this time of year. Once I was back in the break room with the guys, I got together all the items that would be useful that weren’t automatically assigned. We had a ring of jumping, armbands of haste, a whetstone of sharpening, an amulet of purified air, a ring of swimming, a ring of light, the range master short bow of accuracy, 2 short swords of the ogre slayer, 4 uses of dust of invisibility, the malicious claymore of outsider bane, and a helm of obfuscation. There was also the Cloak of slow fall, which was going to Joe, and the Gorgon leather armor that was going to Frank. I almost forgot, there was the quiver of arrows that Brittney would use.

  The three rings all had value, especially when combined with a few other items. So now all I needed were Frank and Nora. Both of which came in while I was thinking about item distribution. “Hey Frank, I think I have armor for you to wear,” while pointing at the leather armor for him.

  “Awesome, anything else I should be taking with me?”

  “Depends on what your sword does now, or if you wanted to use the axe I recovered from Hank?”

  “I’ll use Hank’s axe. It really shredded armor and the thick skin of the orcs pretty easily.” Frank shot me a look of satisfaction that could only improve morale. He should be strong enough to lift the axe and his shield at the same time, so he seemed even more frightening than he did before.

  “Frank, please catch me up on what the military is doing, as well as what I get them to do to help us take the lupin groups out.” It really wasn’t a question. It was a statement. I needed information.

  “The Air Force and Air National Guard have been laying down missiles and small bombs on Hampton Avenue, Manchester Road, and have taken out the bridge for Hampton that goes over this section of Rail all in an effort to keep monsters boxed out of Interstates 44 and 64. It has been successful from what we see. North of us, right near Interstate 64, is Oakland Ave. They have been hitting that consistently as well. Civilians are all being advised to flee west.”

  “Why West?”

  “There is a defensive perimeter on McCausland Avenue.”

  “Isn’t that almost a mile and a half from Hampton?”

  “It is less than that. Reports are saying that people are streaming west, and military forces on the ground are using the largest weapons they have to keep the demons held back. It ain’t pretty.”

  “Do you know what they are willing to do to help us tactically retreat to the train yard?”

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  “That major, Major Grant, is part of the Defense Intelligence Agency. He has ensured we get completely locked down. He wants you arrested for insubordination.”

  “Fuck!”

  “I was worried the bravado would backfire eventually. I figured I had more time than that.” I wasn’t surprised he used that against me. I somehow talked him down and made a bit of a fool of him in front of a whole bunch of people. I still wasn’t entirely sure how I did that. It was one of those weird situations that somehow worked in my favor. Now, though, it was going to come back and hurt me. I sighed and looked at everyone in the room before returning my attention to Frank, “What does he really want out of this? People of Fenton are likely to kill him the moment he throws his weight around.”

  “That’s easy. He wants half of whatever you produce and a full copy of everything you learn about the system. I got the impression he was going to combine any of our efforts with other efforts to try and do a census of classes. He wants half of the ability tokens that we have.”

  “We don’t have many of those at this point. So, I don’t consider it much of a loss. If we can get Nora to learn the ability stealing and ability copying things, then I won’t be worried at all. By the way, Nora, does your new class give you mana every level?”

  She smiled and nodded, “It gets one every other level. I also get half my charisma as well. That stacks with half of my intelligence. So, I will soon have a fair amount of mana to go with a large number of abilities slots. Didn’t have a ton of fire abilities, but had fireball and fire bolt spells. I have learned those. As you saw earlier, I definitely have enough mana to cast Fireball.” She sounded almost chipper. All depressing things aside, she did finally get a new class. She also got some sleep, and sex probably wasn’t too bad either.

  “Frank, I’ll make the deal with Grant. We will meet him in Fenton at the end of this and walk him through all that he will be getting. I imagine he will be keen on seeing our manufacturing of enchanted weapons and ammo. Those are as valuable as ability tokens and class cores.”

  “Oh, he will absolutely want those once he sees them. He made a big stink about the ability tokens. He seems to think we have hundreds of them. I told him I don’t think we’ve even pulled much more than 100. Billy probably has the answer for that piece of trivia, though.”

  “Just wonderful. Nora, I wrote down a tiny bit about each of the items I’ve identified. It isn’t a full explanation of any of it, but you should use that for any plan we develop. And by we, I mean mostly you and frank. I have to deal with Major Asshole.”

  I found an empty room that gave me a tiny measure of privacy. It wasn’t much larger than a closet, and after looking at the contents, it looked an awful lot like a closet. Great, I was in a closet negotiating my life. It could be worse; I could have sent Billy in to negotiate on my behalf. With that in mind, I picked up the radio and called in to headquarters, “Command, this is Cassland I need to speak with Major Grant.” I almost said Major Asshole, probably wouldn’t be the way to start a conversation.

  “Cassland, this is Command. We will track down Major Grant. He might be asleep, though.”

  “He’ll want to be woken up for this.”

  “This is Command, we understand. Over and out.”

  I sat there thinking about all the ways negotiations could go badly. I reminded myself that I held most of the cards. I gave away a few notebooks of shared information, but that was static information.

  Our knowledge of classes, abilities, skills, and more would grow. We would gain more magic items and would be able to document details of the enemy. We will learn better crafting techniques and build up a massive backlog of magic items. Grant wouldn’t know what he couldn’t possibly know: our desire to figure this out.

  I mused on all of that for a long moment. I figured they would communicate back to me on the radio, so I was surprised when my phone rang with a private number for the caller ID. It was probably Grant. He was clearly the kind of guy who would block his caller ID. With nothing else to do, I answered, “Hello.”

  His dry voice seemed more ominous over the phone, “Neal Cassland. I’m impressed you picked up.”

  “Figured it was the best idea at the time. I’ve heard that there are things that need to happen in order to get the level of artillery and air support that we need to secure the safe passage of my folks and nearly a hundred civilians.”

  “Yes. I want all of the ability tokens, class cores, and magical technology you have developed. In addition, I want several of the people working for you now to be handed over to military intelligence.”

  “That seems like a pretty hefty price. I’m willing to negotiate, but you’ve set the bargain in a very difficult place.”

  “There will be no negotiations.” I decided now was a great time to record the conversation. I quickly activated the voice recorder app.

  “That’s not how negotiations work. I understand you want all our tokens, class cores, magical technology, and even some of my people. That is a bridge too far. I am more than happy to give you a large chunk of ability tokens and most of our class cores. I will split technology gains with you, but my people are off limits. They aren’t objects to barter about so easily.”

  “You don’t have any kind of upper hand in any discussion.” His voice grew slightly angry. He was less ominous and more frustrating now than anything else.

  “But I do. We have the things you want with us. It doesn’t sound like you are willing to spend boots on the ground to come take those things. So, I do have some power in this negotiation.” I had to keep my voice even. I couldn’t let myself sound smug in the least. I kept my breathing steady to keep my voice even.

  He chuckled, “So you would condemn yourselves to death in order to deny me?”

  “I’d consider it. You aren’t discussing this at all in good faith. What do you really want? What thing is it that you actually desire? I have to believe that something matters more to you than the rest.”

  There was a long pause. I swear I heard a sigh over the phone. “Ability tokens are the greatest pressing concern. I think you have gotten hundreds of them in the last few days.”

  I laughed. “What makes you think we have gathered much over 100 in these opening days of the apocalypse?”

  His voice ratcheted up slightly higher, “You have an ability stealer that is probably level 8 or higher.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. “What makes you think I have anyone with me who is level 8? That isn’t exactly the easiest threshold to reach this fast.”

  “I have a source that suggests you level people really quickly.”

  “I’m not really doing anything special. I just make sure that people with important abilities spend time in the field to gain some extra experience. Using an ability in a controlled environment isn’t the best way to help them level up. I can assure you that I never amassed much more than 100 ability tokens, and most of those have been used already to give people abilities that might need them.”

  “I was assured that you had over 300 ability tokens.” He sounded genuinely shocked. “Why should I believe you?”

  “It's easy, if you were here right now and used assess you would see that Will, our best ability stealer by far, just reached level 6 yesterday at some point. He hit level 5 early in the morning when we helped defend the Sunset Hills portal, and he gained the next level late in the afternoon. Mostly because he was manning a 50 caliber machine gun and was getting experience for kills. That means before yesterday, he was level 4. He had that for one day in its entirety. So he amassed about 20 ability tokens. The day before, when he leveled up, he was gaining them one at a time until the last use of the day, when he had an extra level. None of the rest of the ability stealers are past level 3. Most are level 2. We don’t have dozens of these people just flitting about, either. We have less than 10. If they all reach level 6, then at some point we could generate that many tokens, but we also have to keep them alive, which isn’t always easy. Your sources are wrong.”

  There was silence. I didn’t say a word either. This felt like that moment in a negotiation where the first person to speak loses. I remembered my father and grandfather telling me as much. I sure hoped they were right.

  “What you say may be true. Tell me about what it is you actually have.”

  “Right now, we don’t have any duplicates. We used all of them on soldiers this morning and afternoon to help boost our troops’ chance of survival. When we are back in Fenton, I would be happy to give you a whole list of the ones we have. I will then personally ensure that we have someone make copies of everyone that we can so that you can have your own master set to work from.”

  “No duplicates? How is that even possible?”

  “No. We have people in the field who would die without even the most basic of abilities. Heightened initiative and increased health may be very basic in terms of power scaling, but they are life savers. Make a soldier just a little more durable and have a slightly faster reaction speed to new danger. The Bigger guys have been getting some constitution and strength based abilities, but nothing earth shattering. We haven’t really gotten the great stuff yet. I would say that we are getting very common abilities that a military would use. Heck, we shared everything information-wise with you already. That is why I gave you those notebooks.”

  “Interesting. How much have abilities increased survivability? And did you encounter new abilities yesterday?”

  “To your first question. Absolutely, yes. I am alive because people have abilities. Hording abilities doesn’t help anyone. They need to invest in people early and often. To your second question, yes, but not sure how many. I was bleeding pretty badly at one point, so I wasn’t super concerned with each and every ability we learned.”

  “You will need to add those to the list of abilities that you need to copy for us.” His voice was becoming calmer, but almost intrigued. He sounded like he really wanted to know what else we gained. I wondered if he was looking for specific abilities?

  “That’s fine. I can accommodate you on that request.”

  “You will need to provide us with all of the guns and ammo you are making in Fenton.”

  “I’ll give you a portion, and I will allow you to have one or two of your guys work with mine so that you can see what techniques are being used.”

  “Hmmm…. I can accept a third. And I need all of your class cores.” He was actually negotiating. I guess laying out exactly how little we had kind of ruined the whole robbing us of everything useful.

  “You can have all but one. We have one set aside for Joe, but it might be copyable.”

  “That sounds fair. Of your people, I need Nora. She seems to be the smartest person in your group.”

  “She is the smartest person in the group, but I can’t give up any people. She’s like family. In exchange, I have a bunch of magic items that I can’t utilize in any way. You can have them for some sort of reverse engineering project.”

  “I’ll accept that. What are these items?”

  “They are magic items that are racially restricted to demons and devils. I figure you probably have a guy in a lab somewhere wanting to reverse engineer all of the things they have like this.”

  He actually laughed. “We have a team. Yes, but they are a ways off in terms of reverse engineering the items.” He revealed something there. He is normally pretty cagey. Maybe I’m loosening him up a bit.

  “I will ask Nora if she wants to work with any of your people on a specific project. However, she won’t be available for even that much help until we get through this initial time period. Once we have Fenton secured, I’ll ask her if she wants to assist. She is allowed to set whatever terms she wants, though.”

  I could almost hear a smile on the other side of the phone. “Agreed.”

  “I need to be exonerated of anything you were considering charging me with.”

  “Fine.” He agreed to that almost too quickly. “We will begin our aerial campaign near you in about two hours. That should be enough time for you to get people in place. Manchester will be a no-man's land for almost an hour. We will keep several drones in the area to ensure that demons do not cross that road.”

  “I’m happy with that. With any luck. We will see you in less than a day. Not sure how long it will take us to get a train going.”

  “Funny that, we have a team at the train yard already. They have been stuck there since the middle of yesterday afternoon. If you have anyone who is versed in locomotives, then you should be able to get them out, too.”

  “We can do that. How many are there?”

  “Thirteen soldiers and about 200 civilians.”

  “Okay then. Have a good day. We’ll be waiting for the fireworks to make the biggest parts of our moves.”

  “Good day.”