Vol. 3 Chap. 44 Insufficiently False Flag

Vol. 3 Chap. 44 Insufficiently False Flag

Truth woke in the middle of the night. Sudden, urgent movement outside the door. They were only Level Threes, so he wasn’t worried about the owners of the house, but...

“Maddie. Maddie wake up! You have to see this.”

“Linh? What? What’s wrong?”

“There’s been an attack. You have to see the news.”

“Damn. Are we in danger?”

Linh laughed, an ugly noise. “Right this minute? Probably not, but who knows?”

Fair point, Truth thought. The murderer is in the house already. Not that he had the slightest intention of harming his involuntary hosts. They kept a very comfortable, very luxurious home. He wasn’t planning on spending any longer in Buran, but he would definitely patronize their establishment again should he return.

He lay in the guest bedroom (ensuite bathroom, direct access to the wrap-around balcony and striking views of the coast, total size approximately 90% of the apartment he grew up in), deciding whether he was going back to sleep or not. The scry came on, loud enough for his superb hearing to make out every tiny detail of the soundscape the top notch enchantment system created. He didn’t approve of how they balanced the highs and lows. He had heard better. Truth silently sighed. He was not getting back to sleep. Might as well see how his atrocity was reported.

The scry ball was superb, of course, emerging from a pedestal wrapped in golden vines. He didn’t recognize the make or model, so he assumed it was custom. Because, sure, why not? Once you owned the penthouse with the wrap-around balcony, infinity swimming pool, and hot tub, what’s a custom scry ball?

The presenter was a custom job too, but that was normal. Strong looking woman, this time. A subtle widening of the jaw, serious hair, no risk of plunging the viewer’s gaze down the front of her dress. Still staggeringly beautiful, obviously. Things hadn’t collapsed that far. He couldn’t help but think of a well-groomed dog. Bred for purpose, styled for purpose, made to perform, and at no point was their opinion needed or wanted or relevant. A “valued asset” should focus on generating value, not problems.

“Shocking news tonight from Buran. A party barge with three hundred and forty people on board crashed today in what authorities are describing as a clear act of terrorism.” The program cut over to a heavily warded crime scene. So heavily warded, in fact, that you couldn’t see into it.

“We have been unable to capture footage of the crime scene directly, as it is under a heavy police cordon. But here is what we have been able to learn.”

She carefully walked through the events of the evening. Taking care to emphasize the innocence and inherent goodness of the citizens on board the platform, their charitable donations, their families. It was not currently clear how the barge was made to fail, but it was, according to official statements by Buran Public Security, clearly intentional.

“While crashing a party barge would be a horrific act in its own right, what elevates murder to atrocity is that the barge was clearly, deliberately, crashed in front of a Ghūl nest.”

His hosts inhaled, a sharp gasp, grabbed ahold of each other’s hands, knuckles turning white.

“It seems particularly cruel that the most obscene product of denizen degeneracy was used to torture and defile decent, ordinary citizens. The crash was clearly intended not merely to shock the public or to murder citizens but to humiliate them. A humiliation to all the decent people of Jeon.”

“What? Why? I’m not going to be mopping or doing the laundry!”

“Wouldn’t kill you. But no, me either. It’s just... they use denizens as the cleaners, right?”

There was quiet from the other room. “Yeah, they do. Everyone does.”

“I just think, maybe for a week or two, we could see how a golem cleaner might work. Or even a bound demon or something. I hear those have been getting a lot more reliable.”

There was another long period of quiet. Then a soft “Yeah.”

“I just want us to feel safe. I just... want us to be safe.”

Truth walked out onto the balcony and looked out over the city. Eight million people lived in Buran. Most crammed into the slums, stacked up in the hive-like apartment towers. The rest of the city was a glittering gem. Cleaned by magic and muscle, fed by more magic and muscle, watered almost exclusively by magic, transportation entirely by magic, with the bits of the economy that weren’t about taking pleasure in the efforts of others being driven entirely by magic as well.

Maddie must have known that her “safety” was a bubble-thin illusion, Truth thought. She just didn’t want it to pop for as long as possible. He didn’t feel any need to burst that bubble. It would pop on its own soon enough.

____________________________________________

The next day was spent largely indoors. No need to get out onto the streets. No need to risk leaving a trail. He reclined on a lounger on the balcony and started working through the technical gazettes he picked up. There hadn’t been any dramatic changes to talisman design in the last couple of years, but the art was always progressing. The tolerances got finer and finer, the positioning got more exact, and the designs more complex and sophisticated.

Take his old friend, the Ke-Te-Wo Type 61 Streetlight Talisman, still fraudulently claiming a five-year service life. It wasn’t any more durable than when he first studied it in technical school. Actually, it was less reliable. However, the luminosity and color of the light were now programmable. It was an order of magnitude more complicated, with numerous subsystems and several mildly innovative sigils. All based on older, familiar stuff, just a little bit better, and assembled in new ways.

He was quietly surprised to find, after a few hours of reading, that he was enjoying himself. It was easy to lose himself in the comfortable rhythm of memorizing diagrams. It was a form of running away from thinking about what he did, but it was a productive sort of running away. Running away to self-improvement. He’d done worse.

Maddie and Linh stayed around the apartment, too, burning through a whole jug of oil for the communication altar. It’s not like anyone could tell them off if they didn’t turn up at the office. They also spent a lot of time cultivating. Too little too late, but still never a bad thing.

He noticed that they performed a sort of dual cultivation. They sat on cushions back to back, letting their backs touch. They synchronized their breathing so that when one breathed in, the other breathed out. He could almost see the energy cycling through the room. He definitely could see the incense swirling around them.

It was quietly intimate- a spiritual closeness as well as a physical one. He decided to follow their example and cultivated under the heat of the sun. When he had taken in as much as he could stand, he switched to the Meditations. The cosmic rays were thinning. It was subtle, but he could just about feel it now. He better grab what he could while he could.

The scry got flipped on and off for most of the day. The news segments repeated a lot, sometimes with a tiny smidge of new analysis or a fresh picture. Then someone would get sick of the constant negativity and switch it off for forty minutes, then turn it on again “just to see if anything new had come up.” There were raids, of course, people brought in for questioning, various parties claiming responsibility. Truth wondered how much of that was real. He certainly wouldn’t take credit for someone else’s atrocity. But then, he was new to this racket. Maybe that was normal.

Who exactly were they arresting? Was there some collection of usual suspects to round up? Nothing he could do about it. Instead, he turned his mind to the thought of using money to wash away sin. Based on what the priest said, the origin of the money was immaterial. Truth looked up into the afternoon sun. He was going to scrub away sin with stolen loot.