Diellan_

Garent and I did a lot of work on this when he was trying (and succeeding) to solo AVs with his Storm/Sonic Defender a year or two ago. This was before the discovery of ArcanaTime so they're a bit suspect, but the basic gist of it was that, with a perma-Hasten build, the strongest attack chain was Screech > Shout > Scream > Shriek, mostly because your stacked -Res debuffs would hit 5 applications and with momentary spikes of 6. -120% Res is nothing to sneeze at.

I've been working on a new tool to calculate attack chains that includes Procs, and I could try and throw in -Res debuffs, but those are a lot more difficult, mostly because of trying to figure out the timing of when damage is applied (dependent on random factors like projectile travel).

The only thing I'm noticing as getting harder to buy and more expensive are the more valuable Hami-Os*, probably due to the fact that the only methods of gaining them (STF, LRSF, Hamidon Raids) both have an option for taking merits instead of the enhancement.

I haven't tracked them specifically, so I can't say for certain. But I'm not use to seeing -ToHit/-Def/End at the 50-80 million mark before.

Also, Lord Recluse has the following attacks (not counting resists and summons):
[Lord Recluse.Channelgun]
[Lord Recluse.Suppression]
[Lord Recluse.Energy Punch]
[Lord Recluse.Energy Smash]
[Lord Recluse.Spider Strike]
[Lord Recluse.Slice]
[Lord Recluse.Arm Lash]

Of those, Energy Smash is knockup, and Spider Strike and Suppression are both knock down (with Suppression being a massive knock down). Energy Punch is a mag 3 stun. Channelgun is -50% End and -200% Recovery. Slice is lethal and toxic damage. Arm Lash is -Defense (there's your Defense Debuff).

The four towers, as listed at Paragon Wiki, give the following:

Red: +KB Magnitude, +Stun Duration, +105% Damage (Smash, Lethal, Energy), +105% Resistance (Smash, Lethal, Energy)
Orange: +200% Defense (all), +17.7 Protection (Hold, Disorient, Immobilize)
Green: Healing, +150% MaxHP, +2000% Regeneration
Blue: +30% ToHit, +1000% Recharge, +200% Run Speed

The blue tower lets him get through defense easily, with Arm Lash tearing through afterwards. The red tower is why he has such crazy high knockback powers, making him hit anybody without KB Resistance.

And to top it all off, at +4, you're looking at a 1.44x modifier (or 1.55x at +5) to all his damage, kb magnitudes, stun durations, and defense debuffs.

Chapter LVIII
In Which Brains Triumph Over Brawn

The soldiers were riding single file at a casual gait with their rifles resting lightly in one arm. With their helmets on, I could not read their faces, but they sat with an ease and confidence which initially surprised me; perhaps they had not seen the destroyed outpost? But, no, Rostov Kushan had said that they had been in a hurry earlier and were constantly looking up on the hillsides for ambushes.

I saw one of the soldiers shift and turn his head, trying to look over the trees of the orchard to the hilltop beyond.

Of course: they were still wary and suspicious, but having travelled this far without incident and with Shubat Anshar this close ahead, they had decided that the threat had passed. They would soon discover how wrong they were.

I darted back behind the tree as they approached. The sounds of the wood had died down – the birds and small animals having hid – and so I was left with ringing of hooves and the deep breaths of Mister Ward and myself. He could not hear these sounds, and even my running subvocalized commentary keeping him informed could not supply him with any of the environmental suspense, so he was even tenser than I.

I heard the sound of suppressed gunfire and the whinny of horses; if all was going to plan, the four soldiers would be dead or dying at this very moment. Just in case, though, I span around the tree and charged, stumbling a few times as my bad knee refused to cooperate with the dense foliage surrounding the trees. I broke through the green in time to hear the sound of an assault rifle burst.

Objective: Remain undetected… failed.

Two of the horses were on the ground and I could see another two running down the road, riderless. One of the Columnists was standing in the middle of the road, firing wildly into the brush on the other side, where I assumed Mister Kushan had taken flight after his sneak attack failed. I quickly glanced to the sides and frowned, only seeing one other Columnist, who lay in the dirt, a pool of blood growing around him.

I raised my pistol, aimed it at the soldier, and fired three quick shots. He tumbled forwards, but did not fall, so I aimed more carefully at the joint between his body armor and his helmet, and sent another rapid trio of hot lead into him. He collapsed satisfactorily, clutching his throat.

There was movement in my peripheral vision and instinct took over; I leapt backwards and behind a tree, which soon became the target of a hail of machinegun fire. Apparently one of the soldiers had been using his downed horse as cover. When the burst halted, I resisted the urge to peek out from the tree and see if he was still there; such a move would be fatal. My only hope was for-

More automatic gunfire, joined quickly by a second set, neither of which was in my direction. I now took the liberally to sneak a look and had my suspicions confirmed: Mister Kushan had swapped to his assault rifle and was now exchanging shots with the Columnist. The ground was covered with blood from his poor animal, whose flank was littered with holes from the rifle. While I was certain that the beast wouldn’t be enough to provide complete protection, it appeared that it was absorbing enough kinetic energy that the bullets wouldn’t be able to get through the Columnist body armor.

Very useful… I made a mental note to confiscate some of the armor. While it would be far too large for anyone – except, perhaps, Rostov Kushan – to wear, we might be able to cannibalize some parts to provide us with some survivability. Better than nothing at all, at the least.

I made my way through the brush quietly. So far, Mister Kushan had proven himself to be faster and more accurate than his opponent, but he had been unable to score a solid shot and I was worried that the Columnist would get lucky; we couldn’t afford any gunshot wounds. If I could just get past the horse...

The rifle exchange came to a halt while I was still passing behind some dense shrubbery, the result of the battle obscured. I cut through the foliage and took a quick look, find myself near the two downed horses. One soldier lay beneath a horse, apparently crushed by his own horse after Kushan had shot it in the initial moments of the engagement. I saw an assault rifle sans magazine where the other soldier had been taking cover, but its owner was missing. Had he taken flight? I stepped out of the orchard took a look up and down the road, without any luck.

A crunching sound in the grass beside me was the only warning I had before a hand grabbed my wrist and a knee crashed painfully into my stomach.

As a young man, I was thoroughly trained in swordsmanship and was well known duelist. At Oxford, I enjoyed the rugged sport of pugilism. While I am one hundred and forty years, I have taken good shape of my body in ways both natural and magical. That was enough for me to get through a handful of starved peasants with inferior weaponry. This was a Fifth Column soldier - a recipient of a veritable cocktail of strength and endurance enhancing serums and thorough training in martial arts. He would easily overwhelm me in a fair fight.

I twisted my arm, trying to swing my pistol around to get a close range shot, while he grabbed my hand and tried to pry my fingers off the grip. I stepped into him to prevent him from being able to kick me again, but that resulted in him trying to trip me – a quite painful affair putting a lot of pressure on my knee. Luckily, he soon focused on the pistol and began successfully prying it from my grip.

“Dammit, Lorenzo, you’re in the way!” I looked across the road and saw Rostov Kushan with his rifle pressed against his shoulder.

I slipped my thumb across the catch and dropped the magazine to the ground, then kicked it to the side. I caught the eye of the soldier and gave him what I hoped was a convincing look of triumph. He screamed in frustration and let go of the pistol. With lightning speed he punched me in stomach and wrapped an arm around my neck, positioning himself so that I would remain between him and Mister Kushan.

“If you don’t tell him to let me go,” the Columnist ordered, “I’ll crush your throat.”

I snorted, aimed the pistol down at his foot, and discharged the bullet that had remained in the chamber.

Moron.

While his body armor could do a good job deflecting bullets and absorbing impacts at a distance, it could do little to stop a .45 calibre bullet fired from less than a meter away. He released me and I span away quickly, moving to the side. My companion quickly took the advantage and peppered my assailant with bullets, sending a bloody and silent corpse into the tall grass.

“That’s four,” Rostov Kushan said as he crossed the distance, swinging the rifle around as he surveyed the battlefield.

I nodded in reply. “We should double-check that they’re all dead. We do not want any unpalatable surprises.”

“Agreed.” He looked down at the man he had just killed, and quickly fired a single burst into its chest, then gave me a wink. “Check.”

As he went down the road, confirming the deaths of the other three soldiers, I picked up the ejected magazine and counted the bullets remaining. I had lost seven rounds today; an unsatisfactory amount, given that I had no way of replenishing the stock that we had carried. The Fifth Column only seemed to carry 5.56mm NATO rounds, which is a common round and was good for Rostov Kushan’s assault rifle, but bad for our pistols, including his silenced one.

And I didn’t even want to think about how many rounds he had wasted of those.

“Last one!” he called out as he fired a fourth time, then began to collect the magazines from the bodies. “We can pull these guys out, but the dead horses will be a problem.”

“Hmm?” I looked across the corpses. “Ah, yes… I do not believe we should bother. Our chance for silence is ruined anyways, so we should just scavenge what we want and make a tactical retreat; who knows how long we have until somebody comes to investigate.”

“Probably not long.” He pulled off one of the helmets and examined it. “The headshots didn’t work well – just knocked them off their asses… horses. See!” He tapped a spot on the back. “Here’s where I got this guy. Nothin’ but a small dent.”

I sighed. “Now we know for the future, I suppose.”

“Maybe next time we’ll ask them to take their helmets off before we fight,” he laughed.

“I do not think that will work,” I replied, maintaining a deadpan monotone.

He bought it. “That was a joke, Lorenzo. Lighten up.”

“My apologies.” I gave him a small smile and began to walk/hobble back to where Mister Ward sat waiting with my much-needed cane.

Real Numbers doesn't give you the option to view Knockback Resistance in the Combat Attributes, but you can see it if you go into the right-click info of the power. They give powers KB Resist on top of KB Protection when they want people to be absolutely immune to KB... For others, like Fire, Dark, and Elec, they just give the protection, so that it's theoretically possible for high mag KB to overcome the protection and knock you back.

Also there are Unresistable KB powers, like Statesman's, which will knock you back no matter what.

To sum up: without KB resist (which most sets have), you will get knocked back by very high levels of magnitude. In this case, you're getting hit by a -25.9 mag power and you have only 19.6 protection, so it beats you by 6.3 (see the second screenshot) and knocks you back.

Chapter LVI
In Which Understanding Dawns

The sunlight reflected brightly off the face of my pocketwatch and I winced, hastily tucking it back into my jacket. The occlusion of all reflective objects is a basic rule of fieldwork, and I chided myself for not being more careful. I did a quick inventory of my apparel, and was quite pleased to find that even the metal buttons would not give me away, as dull as they had become from several days of dust and dirt without cleaning.

“I’m still not sure I like this plan,” Mister Ward announced quietly as he sat on the ground, leaning against a palm tree. Being a short man even when standing, he was now hidden almost completely amongst the growth of fronds and grasses that surrounded the base of the tree. Or were part of the plant itself? I am not an expert on date palms, sadly.

“If you can provide us with a better alternative,” I replied, “we will gladly take it under consideration.”

Mister Ward sighed, obviously unable to come up with something else. Safer plans had been discussed, but they always came down to the issue of trying to eliminate the 5th Columnists before they could get a single shot off. Our ambush point was located at the beginning of the hills, out of sight of Shubat Anshar and its surrounding farms, but still close enough that any gunshots would be heard from the city. Furthermore, we only had the one suppressor at our disposal, so Rostov Kushan alone would need to shoot four men on horseback fast enough and clean enough that none of them would get a chance to pull a trigger.

We all hoped they had left their safeties on.

Frankly, with Mister Kushan’s cybernetically enhanced skills, it was well within the realm of possibility that he could succeed and eliminate them all singlehandedly. We had only come along in case there were complications – though, to be more accurate, I had come along for that purpose and brought Mister Ward along because I wouldn’t dare leave him alone in the shomera – and if we had to give up on preserving stealth, we would have them trapped in a pincer.

I peered around the tree, trying to find our associate hidden in the orchard on the other side of the road. He was very good at this, even without the use of magic to cloak himself, and I probably would not have spotted him if I didn’t already know where to look. He caught my eye and gave me a thumbs up.

A rustling sound came from behind and I span around quickly, preparing to draw my pistol. Much to my surprise, instead of wandering supersoldiers, I was faced with a group of Akkadians, wearing very little and armed to the teeth with what I surmised were peasant implements – a sickle, a pickaxe, a mattock, and some kind of bow and arrow. The latter already had an arrow drawn, though the man was pointing it down at the ground.

One of the men shouted something at me in Akkadian and I sighed as my brain tried to parse it. Given the armaments, it was unlikely that these were bandits, and far more so that they were somehow related to the owner of this orchard. They probably thought that we were bandits. I couldn’t shoot them, as easy a solution as that would be; my gun was not silenced and would immediately ruin our ambush. I couldn’t really chase them off…

“What do we do?” Mister Ward whispered. The men stared past me at my companion and made agitated sounds at each other. He gulped. “Oh no… They must think we’re with Auer.”

That settled it. I had no real choice…

I took a few steps forward, making a show of using my cane as support. One of the men – the one I figured to be the leader – shook his head and shouted a command. This word I knew, even though it took me a bit to get past the pronunciation: “stop.”

I halted and lifted my cane in the air. In what I hoped to be a universal sign of a gift, I extend my hands palm up, with my cane draped across them. They exchanged puzzled looks and I resumed taking slow and measured steps, keeping the cane at chest level, trying my best to ignore the complaints of my knee.

“For you,” I declared in a feeble attempt at Akkadian. My pronunciation might have been kilometers off, but it is only a single word in the language and hopefully the meaning would become clear.

“Gift,” I added helpfully.

“Lorenzo?” Mister Ward asked plaintively, his voice touched with worry and fear. I had stepped outside of the range of his telepathy. “You okay?”

The Akkadians’ attentions all turned in his direction, the man with the bow and arrow raising it. Taking the minor distraction as my cue, I tripped the spring-load on my cane, and lunged. I struck first at the man with the bow and arrow, cutting a tendon in the arm to render it useless, and then moved on to the others.

These men were not fighters and probably had only used their tools as weapons when dealing with wild animals – your average bandit probably ran away. They were slow, inaccurate, and had much shorter reach than I; to say that they had much of a chance in a fight would be quite forgiving. Even if I was fighting on a bad knee.

“Lorenzo?” Mister Ward called as I returned to him several minutes later. “What happened?”

“What do you think happened, Mister Ward?” I replied, wiping the blood off the blade.

He stared in my direction for a few long moments before replying darkly, “They’re all dead?”

“Indeed.” I looked over my shoulder at the four corpses. Well, three of the corpses; one of them had attempted to run but a thrown cane had tripped him up before he made it more than a few meters. “I had little choice. I had nothing to gag them with and I couldn’t let them ruin the ambush by screaming.”

“I guess…” He sighed and looked up from the ground, where he had been idly drawing symbols and shapes in the dirt, and tried to stare in my direction. “That doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

I calmly slid the blade back into the sheath and began leaning on the cane once more. The change in stance drew further protests from my knee. I gave him a critical eye. “What makes you think I do?”

“Huh?” He scratched his head. “It never seems to bother you. How many people have I seen you kill, anyways?”

“As many as I felt necessary, Mister Ward.”

He pointed an accusatory finger in my direction. “And if ‘what you felt necessary’ always came to pass, the world would be a very different place, wouldn’t it?”

I felt as if I had been slapped, though I set my jaw to keep my composure – something I immediately felt silly doing with my blind companion. He was, quite obviously, referring to the incident in 1938, where I decided to destroy all magic on Earth. The plan was relatively simple: the creation of spirit bombs (called an arcano-bomb these days) large enough and numerous enough to bathe the planet in spiritual fire – harmless to normal matter and life, but deadly to magical ones. I would free humanity from the curse of ghosts and the influence of dark gods at a cost of countless lives… Tens – perhaps hundreds – of millions of people who carried the blood of the Mu or had other magical genes would be as susceptible as the cult members of the Banished Pantheon or the demon serving Oranbegans.

In fact, my first target was to be the Spirit Tree and the ghosts that tended to it. But old friends of mine came to the Nerva Archipelago and interrupted the ceremony, causing an explosion that ripped a hole between this dimension and the astral plane, where I was trapped until only recently.

In the last seventy years, magic had grown and become more of a part of human affairs and culture. Magic had even played a vital role in saving the humanity from the Rikti, building a barrier around their dimension and ending the devastating war. As international travel eased and globalization increased, the blood of the Mu became more widespread. I am told that as many as one out of six people alive carry it now, in some small fraction or another… people who would not exist if I had succeeded. Like Garent Ward.

I had been so sure, so certain, that I was doing what was necessary. That freedom from the shackles of hungry gods and vengeful spirits would be worth any cost. The survival of humanity depended on me! Even when I was inadvertently summoned to the present, I had thoughts in my mind of continuing what I had started… The Blood Book was still around, and the Circle of Thorns had even created a ritual that would allow the complete annihilation of magic users in one fell swoop. For a time, I even had enough pages of the Malleus Mundi to reshape humanity! And yet…

“I…” I swallowed. “I never claimed infallibility.”

He gestured in the direction of the bodies. “I’m sure they’re comforted by the knowledge that you might be wrong.”

“I do regret the necessity of their deaths, Mister Ward” - and I did, yes, even if I saw it through the lens of a soldier – “but in this I had no other options. If I had magic, yes. Or even rope and some cloth for gags.”

“If we had magic…” He mumbled, sounding wistful and subdued. The stark contrast between his fiery accusation and his sullen musings struck me with some force and I was… concerned.

The sounds of hooves in the distance interrupted these moments of mutual understanding and I knew the time for the ambush had come.

Amusingly enough, this is already dealt with in CoH canon, in Scirocco's second patron arc, where he tries to use the Malleus Mundi to accomplish the same thing.

One of my two mains has a similar attempt in his own backstory (since reformed, sort of), and the cross-faction SG that he heads (along with my other main and my wife's main) has, as one of its main focuses, stopping any such attempts at, basically, robbing people of free will and removing self determination from the human species. Or, as they like to call it, "keeping humans human".

In religion (and philosophy), this shows up a bunch, and a lot of theodicy comes down to this kind of problem, with the answer being something like "evil is necessary for Free Will".

The thing is, in all of the literature that I am familiar with, the "force everybody to do good things via x" is always seen as a Bad Idea (at best) and downright villainous at worst. It seems to me that the jury has long gone out and come back with a guilty verdict (guilty of being an extremist?) as far as nearly everybody is concerned.

(parenthesis)

The big one I'm curious about is Grounded. Your Energy resist is already capped from Charged Armor and Conductive Shield, you've got capped End Drain resist from Static Shield (129.75% at level 50), and if you've got CJ you've already got Immob resist (that isn't dependent on being on the ground - god I hate jumping when hit by an immob). So all it's really good for is the 10% Negative Energy resist (whoo), and the mag 10 KB protection (which doesn't bring KB resist), which is incredibly easy to make up via sets nowadays (esp. if you're already abusing Blessings of the Zephyr for defense bonuses).

It's not an optimal drop - since stacking it with BotZs can help survive Nemesis blasts, and a bit more Neg. Energy is nice for the ITF and CoT - but I'd certainly drop it before Lightning Reflexes or Power Sink. On Brutes it's a good pick for capping your Energy, but for the other ATs, it feels rather superfluous.

Chapter LIV
In Which a Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste

I will admit, I was nervous. Madam Rabinovich, while being the most suited of us all to blend in amongst the natives without being discovered, had gone unprotected into unknown territory with unknown threats. We were altogether unsure of what kind of presence the Fifth Column had in Shubat Anshar and what sort of condition the city was in. Had it been turned into some kind of ghetto, where the people were starving and somehow both isolated and crowded together at the same time? Would there be laws regarding movement in the streets and hours of activity which she might easily break? And would the punishments be severe and executed on the spot?

The variables were many, the dangers were high, but the need was great. So we waited.

The nervousness was exacerbated by the boring tedium of our wait. Mister Ward was completely sullen and withdrawn, huddle in a corner, while Mister Kushan restlessly moved from place to place, observation point to slitted window, trying to keep watch in all directions simultaneously. At any moment, he seemed to expect the owner of the shomera to return, or for the Fifth Column to start scouring the countryside after the outpost fails to respond to their radio calls.

The discovery that the Fifth still had working radio here had disturbed me. Yes, it was completely standard for all military squads to carry some form of portable self-powered communication equipment, but they required batteries to run; batteries which could not be recharged or purchased here in the past. For the soldiers in the post to have kept theirs in standby mode for an indeterminate amount of time meant that they were unworried; either they had a significant number of replacement batteries stored somewhere, or they had some means to recharge them.

Yet, they used torches instead of flashlights or portable electric lamps.

It was one of the many conundrums that kept my mind occupied during those long hours. If we had Mister Rabinovich here – or even young Victor – then I might’ve gotten a satisfactory answer; my own knowledge of electric generators and rechargeable batteries was, admittedly, pedestrian.

“I’m going to go try the radio again,” Mister Kushan announced suddenly, breaking the unnerving silence. There was still no sign of his brother and it was putting him on edge; at first he was content with sending out an SOS message once a day, but it had recently been upped to two times. This would be the fourth time today.

“Watch for patrols,” I replied automatically and he rolled his eyes at the useless, obvious advice. If he was going out, though, he would be trying to reach a high point to broadcast – a hill or one of the other small towers used as observation points by farmers and Fifth patrols. “While you’re out, perhaps you should do some looking around? Maybe venture a little further than normal. At some point, the Fifth will send a patrol to investigate the outpost.”

“Sure, I’ll keep an eye on the pass.” He tapped his temple, indicating the cybernetic implant.

I gave him a half-smile and rose to the bait. “I would rather you keep it inside your head and merely watch the pass.”

He started to laugh, then suddenly went sober as we were both reminded of his brother, the incorrigible punster. I grimaced and started to make an apology, but he had already spun on his heel and quickly left. It was unnerving to me to see the normal calm and callous Rostov Kushan in such a mood, but completely understandable. We were all being thrown off balance by these circumstances.

“Who left?” I heard Mister Ward whisper. Apparently, he could feel our footsteps through the ground or the movements of the air, and the mercenary’s quick departure had drawn his attention. “Anybody still here?”

I stood up from the lotus position I had been using for meditation and made deliberately hard steps across to Mister Ward. His head snapped to my direction and he stared blankly at me. I took off my fedora and dropped it on his lap.

“Oh, it’s you, Lorenzo,” he said, no longer whispering. I guess he had been afraid that we had run off to stop some patrol nearby, so he had been silent so as not to be heard. “I guess that was Rostov who left, then.” He snorted. “I shouldn’t be so worried; he’s probably just going to use the bathroom or something, huh?”

I sighed heavily. This was stupid; here he was, forced to guess at things and have empty conversations and untold worry, all because I was reticent to have somebody reading my thoughts. Unlike him or Madam Rabinovich, my only psionic defenses had been a well-organized mind and strong will, and a hefty layer of magical shielding. The shielding was now gone…

I kneeled in front of him and grabbed one of his hands.

“What’s going on?” He asked, then swallowed heavily. “You don’t know sign language, do you? I learned as a kid to read sign language done in my hand, like Helen Keller.”

I reached out with my other hand and tapped him on the forehead.

“Seriously? You want me to- ow!” Perhaps the thump I gave him on the forehead the second time was a bit too strong. “Alright. I can’t really do much beyond read surface thoughts. So you can either think something strongly, or if you talk or subvocalize, I can catch those as-”

“I know. Madam Rabinovich told me.”

He scrunched up his face. “You even think of her as Madam? Sheesh. Don’t you think that’s a little overboard?”

“No, Mister Ward.” The title and last name had been, at one point in my life, the proper thing for a gentleman to use. Nowadays – well, in the early 21st century – it was a quirky little anachronism that drew a look or two until people got used to it. For some reason, the more I modernized, the more important I felt it was for me to keep this up. A last bastion of resistance, I suppose.

“Wow, I never thought of it that way.”

Startled, I released his hand.

“Wait!” He lurched forward, grabbing me by the wrist. “I don’t have any range whatsoever.”

“I’m sorry. You merely read a thought that I hadn’t intended for you to.”

“Oh.” He looked down sheepishly. “I’m sorry. I thought- With Sofia, all I can hear are the things that she specifically gives me; her mind is too slippery otherwise. So I was just figuring that whatever I hear is okay…”

“Perhaps you can listen a little less well,” I replied, still on edge, with annoyance in my voice. I have no idea how well that translated into thought.

“It translates pretty we-“ He cut himself off and groaned. “That was a private thought, wasn’t it? Geez, do you have to think so loud?”

I laughed. “You aren’t the first to ask that. Normally, I have defenses which prevent it from being an issue. I generally think clearly and strongly as a way to organize my thoughts… I shall be more careful while we maintain contact.”

“You can try…” He reached up and scratched his head. My thoughts turned momentarily to the possibility of lice and fleas; a common problem in a society like this without much of a cure. He grimaced and I couldn’t help but laugh.

“Where’d Rostov go, anyway?”

“To do some scouting and try to radio his brother again.”

“Vic…” He shook his head sadly. “Our best is that the Fifth Column snagged him and are keeping him alive as a prisoner, isn’t it? How’s he taking it?”

“Not well,” then I added, “for a Kushan. He’s upset, but you wouldn’t be able to catch it if you didn’t know him.”

Mister Ward nodded. “We’re all like that, rea-”

I put a hand over his mouth and turned to the entrance. I could hear someone running outside. I drew my pistol and waited patiently as the steps approached… Then thought better of it and took out the swordstick. If it was a Fifth Column soldier, I might have little choice but to use the gun to get a first strike, but otherwise, it would be better not to have a loud gunshot give away our position.

“It’s me…” Rostov Kushan announced before coming in, thus voiding all my preparations. “I saw a patrol.”

“Where?!” Mister Ward and I asked simultaneously, causing him to give us a weird look.

“Not here, but coming down the pass.” He jerked in the direction of the destroyed outpost with his thumb. “Pretty determined looking, too.”

“Lovely.” I looked back and forth between my two companions. “We had hoped we’d get at least one more day before someone reported in.”

“But why not radio it in?” Mister Ward asked. “Why are they doing it on foot –er, horse?”

“Maybe they don’t have one strong enough on hand.” Kushan grinned, baring his fangs. “We kind of disabled the one there.”

That meant the soldier would need to be within a few kilometers of the city and free of any obstructions. We could easily move to intercept him and stop the message from getting back.

“But won’t that give things away?”

I glared down at Mister Ward, who grimaced, then turned back to Kushan. “If we do nothing, then they report in and the Fifth find out now; if we stop them, then the Fifth will have to wait at least a few more hours before deciding the patrol has disappeared and isn’t just late. I would like to buy Madam Rabinovich as much time as possible before she can no longer move freely.”

The look on Mister Kushan’s face was positively wolven. “Then let’s go.”

Chapter LI
In Which a Use is Found for Beer

Thirteen days passed since I woke up in that wheat field outside Shubat Anshar. I don’t have any pen and paper and they still won’t let me use my computer, so I’ve been keeping track of the time by making notches in the wall, like they do in prison cells in the movies with a screwdriver I stole awhile back. It takes a little bit of doing, since the walls are stone unlike the clay ones in the other buildings in the city, but I’ve got plenty of time.

There’s been no sign of the others, which is making me pretty worried. If they’d remained in the future, then they’d’ve rigged up a time machine and would’ve been waiting for me in that field, so I can assume they got snatched up in the same vortex. But if so, where were they? The vortex was pretty inaccurate, it seems, and dropped us off all over the place – hell, the 5th got here a few months before I did! – but was it simply that the others hadn’t appeared yet? Or did they got dropped off hella far away? Were they lost?

Well, wherever they were, bro would get free and get to me. And the longer it took, the more pissed he’d be… I wouldn’t want to be a Nazi when bro gets here.

Speaking of, it was almost time for my daily chat with Heinrich. Well, report. With the others still missing, I’d decided to try and weasel my way into working with Nazis (ew, I know) in order to find a way to escape. It turns out that their engineers are pretty crappy, so I’ve been doing a lot of maintenance on their tech. That’s how I got that screwdriver. Among other things. So old Heinie likes to talk shop and see if I’ve gotten any of the generators and whatnot to be functional. There’s not a lot gasoline in these parts, or fissible materials, so I’ve been trying some alternate solutions. I’m this close to making them run on the natives’ weird barley beer - which, by the way, is disgusting but gets you drunk good.

I waited impatiently for the guard to open the door and permit me to leave the room, and busied myself by drumming my fingers on the little table and whistling “Time in a Bottle”.

“Oh, god, not that song again…” The soldier muttered as he escorted me down the hall. “Can’t you do something else? Like nothing?”

I turned my head and whistled louder. He growled and tried to grab me, but I danced away, trying very hard not to ruin my song by laughing. I might not have my super speed, but I’m still faster than most of these jerks, super soldier or no. He tried again and again, and I hopped further and further back down the hallway.

And backed right into another soldier.

“Hehe…” I snickered, and looked back over my shoulder. “You got my back, pal?”

“I’m not your pal,” the second Nazi growled, and kicked my legs out from under me. I fell hard on my side as I tried to catch myself, and winced. There was going to be a nasty bruise on my elbow from that one.

“Thanks…” I started to pick myself up, when my guard grabbed me by the collar of my uniform and yanked me up to my feet. The Nazis didn’t bring any civilian clothes, and I couldn’t just keep wearing my own, so I’d been given some of their uniforms to wear, and I kept mine at the foot of my bed. Heinrich didn’t allow people to wander through the temple wearing a helmet, so I was never given one. Too bad – it would’ve made for a great disguise.

“Come along, brat.” I glared at my guard, who now kept a firm grip on my upper arm as he guided me down the rest of the hallway.

“That’s good, Victor,” Auer said when I told him about my idea with the barley. “That’s very good.”

I couldn’t help but to smile back; at least somebody appreciates my work. Anybody who isn’t also a mad scientist just gives me weird looks.

“I have to admit, the lack of generators has caused me significant frustration,” he went on. “Our batteries can only last so long, and I’ve had a variety of ideas about how to impress the populace beyond brute force.”

I snickered. “They remember the warwolf plenty, though.”

Heinrich sighed. “Yes, yes, but I am beginning to doubt the wisdom in utilizing him in this position. You see, due to the amplification effect of the Gem of Etnekhsa and the Magen Anshar, he’s unable to transform back and it’s starting to get to him.”

“So, what, he’s going wolf?” I asked, while filing away this whole ‘amplification effect’ thing. I don’t know what a ‘magen anshar’ is either, but apparently it’s behind my power loss. Good to know.

“He’s certainly losing some of his humanity…” He waved a hand. “Nevermind. Once you’ve got the generators going, we can put on some spectacles of our own to keep the masses enthralled.”

Heinrich didn’t have much else to say today, which was good because it meant I could spend more time working on the generators. I did get something of a vague promise from him that I’d get access to my computer next week in order to help with the work… It was really hard to do any good engineering when I couldn’t run calculations and do some complex schematics. Or any schematics, really – no pen and paper, remember?

On my way from the meeting to the makeshift lab, I knew I’d get jumped again. The signs were obvious: a mysteriously empty hallway without the normal patrols, some of the torches dim, the doors closed, and footsteps behind me.

I started to run.

One of the doors ahead of me swung open and somebody’s arm came swinging in a clothesline, but I ducked under it. Another door opened on the other side, immediately after, and I tried to dart to the side, but I was going too fast and crashed into it. I bounced off the wood and fell backwards, and somebody grabbed my shoulder and tossed me to the ground.

I raised my arms to protect my face and the kicking started.

Heinrich was right when he said that most of the 5th Column guys wanted me dead, and they went to crazy lengths to prove it to me. At first it was just growls and name calling, and later it moved on to practical jokes and “accidentally” tripping me. It was only in the last week that they started picking fights. Mostly I was too fast for them and when I won the fist fights (or successfully ran away), they started the ambushes and beatings. After they broke my nose, Heinrich yelled and screamed and punished them, but that just seemed to piss them off more. At least now they aimed for my sides instead of my face, so that it wouldn’t leave so many marks.

Boy, am I glad that the uniform is built with a silksteel weave that absorbs some of the impact. Those jackboots hurt like hell.

Soon they got tired, yelled some stuff at me, spit a few times, and ran off. I rolled over and lay on my back for a bit, staring up at the ceiling and trying to catch my breath. My sides hurt, but I could still breathe without pain, which was good. Broken ribs would totally suck. After a bit, I got up to my feet and stumbled to the lab.

My days went mostly like that. I was safe in my room, in the lab, in Heinrich’s office, and whenever I was under escort. Outside of that, I ran and hid and dodged. I tried to spend more and more time in the lab, since it was safe and, best of all, it meant I was building stuff. I could ignore the Nazis and the bad food and the hot weather and all the stupid time travel so long as I had tools in my hands and a halfway working machine stripped and exposed on a table in front of me.

The guards in the room just glanced in my direction as I entered, and didn’t say anything about my injuries. They didn’t care. Nobody did, except Heinrich. At the least, he needed me to keep the generators going and to come up with maintenance tools for all the machines they had, and for some reason he liked to talk to me. He said it was because the Nazis were mostly uncultured, uneducated pussies or something (no, he didn’t use those exact words), and at least I’d read some books.

God, I missed books. There were a couple with us, and I’d already read them all a dozen times. I needed to get home if only to find something to read.

Home…

Here you go.

Chapter XLVIII
In Which Hindsight is Twenty-Twenty

It took us two days to reach the fields surrounding Shubat Anshar, despite the fact that we had acquired mounts. Instead of climbing the hills as we had done previously, we were forced to follow the winding trail that led between them; while the 5th Column had created makeshift harnesses and bridles, they were forced to do without horseshoes. In their defense, ironworking was still a thousand years away.

We had no encounters during that leg of the journey, which was both fortuitous and disturbing, depending upon the context. The lack of enemy soldiers raised our hopes that our assault on the outpost had yet to be discovered; the lack of civilians travelers fueled our fears that the 5th Column had established a stranglehold on the city and its inhabitants… And had done so for some time. We still did not have any serious guesses as to when the 5th Column had shown up, but given the outpost and the horses, we were already looking at a period of weeks or months.

And most disturbing of all was the lack of any sign of young Victor. Rostov Kushan had a handheld radio set to a predetermined emergency frequency, but our inability to recharge the battery meant that we had to conserve the charge and could only send and receive for minutes at a time. Our running theory was that the closer one was to the Key during the vortex, the earlier in history they appeared; Victor was closer than any of us, and should have arrived some time ago.

Sad to say, our biggest hope was that the 5th Column had captured him and was providing for him in Shubat Anshar. With such a language difference and a lack of powers, his chances of surviving on his own in the area were rather slim.

“Well, we’re going to want to survey the city anyway, right?” Rostov Kushan asked shortly before we passed the hills and entered the great plains between the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers. He always tried to maintain a rough and nonchalant appearance, but we all knew that he took his role as the elder brother very seriously. Even more so, given that their father was dead and their mother a lunatic that had abandoned them. Victor was still mostly unaware how much his brother had done for him.

“Of course,” I answered.

“So we’ll just ask around and see if anyone has seen him.”

I sighed. “I have studied Akkadian a great deal and can read the texts, but my knowledge only goes that far. This is a language that hasn’t been spoken in thousands of years.”

“Give us a month of combined work and phonetic notation,” Madam Rabinovich added, “and I’ll bet you anything I can present a credible program to work from. Akkadian is a Semitic – it can’t be that hard.”

I gave her a wry look. “That is assuming, madam, that we have a month of work uninterrupted by such minor nuisances as gunfights, captivity, dehydration, and exposure. If only I could…” I grumbled slightly. A long time ago, I had created a small ritual that allowed me to steal some parts of a person’s being, giving access to certain mental and mechanical skills – including languages – as well as some of their metaphysical abilities. A good deal of Mu and Oranbegan magics had to have been learned in this fashion, since I do not carry the blood of either nation.

“So, basically, we’re screwed.”

I gave Rostov Kushan a long look before replying: “Mister Kushan, it merely changes the nature of the challenge and the complexity of the solution. Instead of asking around, we will have to infiltrate and investigate for ourselves. The uniforms that you and Madam Rabinovich acquired will do wonders for the plan I am considering.”

“Unless the 5th walk around without their helmets,” Mister Ward announced, interjecting his usual criticism. “And if Auer is as smart as we think he is, he might have them do so. At least when word gets round about the 5th we killed.”

Kushan snorted. “Then we beat up some poor sod and take his clothes.”

“Oh sure, that’ll work,” came the sarcastic retort, “I’m sure the 5th Column soldiers will just think you’re an abnormally tall, healthy, and strong Akkadian who doesn’t speak the language. We’re in the past! You’re probably a foot taller than the average height, and have twice the muscle.”

“Not him,” Madam Rabinovich said quietly. “Me.”

“What?” Rostov reared. “No way.”

“Listen to reason,” she said under the surprised glances of everybody – well, almost everybody, Mister Ward was not truly glancing, and I was not surprised. “You can’t go. You will stand out. Nobody looks at an old woman. It’s true even in our time, and it’s even truer here.”

“She’s the best choice for it,” Mister Ward supported her. “Even Lorenzo is too tall. I’m not, but I…” He gave a face and shrugged.

We stood in uncomfortable silence as his disabilities hung over us.

“All I will need to appear invisible is a scarf and a shuffle,” Madam Rabinovich added calmly, “not to mention that, in linguistic terms, I am as well-equipped as anybody to pick anything up.”

I saw the wisdom in her decision. She could easily walk around with obscuring garments and have it be considered merely a cultural fashion. She was short and, above all, Semitic. Her blond hair and pale complexion would stand out, but that was nothing that couldn’t be fixed with some creative applications of makeup.

“Exactly,” she confirmed after I told everyone my thoughts on the matter. We discussed the plan further as we broke camp and began the final trek to the city. Once we lost the cover of the hills, we would be hard pressed to push ourselves all the way to the gates, unless we were lucky enough to find some kind of settlement or farm where we could hide from any observers.

Shubat Anshar sat in dirty folds and mounds over the broad expanse of the surrounding plains. It, like all cities of the Levant, had been repeatedly destroyed and rebuilt, so each house sat on the crushed and ground remains of its predecessors. This resulted in the city being slightly elevated over its surroundings on an artificial hill, with the Temple itself sitting just off center. The Temple, being the only stone structure, was comparatively tall and massive, and its base completely occluded by the gradually rising buildings.

Madam Rabinovich pointed in the direction of the various patches of discolored flora that could be nothing but farms, and I nodded in understanding. Specifically, she was pointing at one that looked like an orchard of some kind, and which had a squat structure sitting amongst it. That would be what Semitic languages referred to as a shomera: a sort of house-***-lookout post that was used by the owner of the orchard during harvest season to protect his investment. During this time of year, it would be empty.

“A bit exposed, isn’t it?” Rostov said nervously.

“We can hide all our packs in the building,” Madam Rabinovich responded wearily. “And if someone comes, hide inside as well. Build a fire on the cleared space, hide from the wind. Honestly, Rostov, we’re finished. We can’t go any further.”

She was right, I realized. She looked drawn with fatigue, and I myself was feeling the aches of the journey significantly. I hadn’t ridden a-horseback in well over a century. Madam Rabinovich, I realized, was doing us all a kindness by taking the burden of admitting to weakness onto herself, where Mister Ward and I might not allow ourselves to do so.

“We stop here,” I decided, and we led the horses off the trail and into the bare trees.

We put the pack with what little food remained into a corner of the structure, and made a fire, meanwhile successfully turning the floor into an insulated area by placing down Madam Rabinovich’s convenient space blanket and adding on a pair of ragged, rough ones that came in the 5th Column’s appropriated packs.

Madam Rabinovich set about attempting to improvise dinner, with myself and Rostov dealing first with the horses, then with other small camp arrangements. Mister Ward, unable to help in any significant way, due more to extreme tiredness than his present condition – telepathy must have taken its toll in energy our poor food supply could not replace – seemed to be drifting off into half-doze by the fire.

While we were lucky in finding a place to hide, we could not rest on our laurels, and after making camp, we set up a rotation for the watch. Mister Ward was growing increasingly irritated with his inability to assist in such matters, but none of us were willing to deny him his right. Hopefully, he would come to realize that his brain was an asset as much as anything else, and that his insights were useful – all four of us had different approaches and different methods of thought, and when we sat together and planned, we were able to hammer out all the kinks.

Sadly, I couldn’t tell him this without going through Madam Rabinovich, which I felt would be inappropriate. It is only with hindsight that I realize how foolish that sentiment was.

A couple things:

Indomitable Will could happily take a Luck of the Gambler special. You'd trade 0.06 end/sec for some extra Psi defense and another 7.5% recharge.

I'd move the slot containing the Regenerative Tissue from Rise to the Challenge to one of the other powers. The Heal enhancements in the same power will affect the Regenerative Tissue's bonus, and RttC is at 88% heal vs 91.78% in Fast Healing (which translates to an extra point 1.9% Regen. It's stupid minor but, hey, why not?

Stamina should go with BillZ's version, not Gruumch, who's trading 7% Recovery in exchange for a set bonus of... 1.5% Recovery? Whoops.

For Gloom you could take his slotting and replace the Acc common with something else, like an Acc/Dam or Acc/Dam/Rech, etc. Or an Acc/Dam HO. With the Devastation quad, you get 42/96/60/60. You'd be trading 15% Accuracy for 15% Damage (7.6 points of damage), 21% End Reduc (0.87/activation), and 21% Recharge. Or you could liven things up a little and put in the damage proc from Cloud Senses (14.36 damage on average), though you'd down to only 22% accuracy enhancement. I think you can afford to trade some Accuracy away, given set bonuses and Tactics, so the Devastation looks like a win to me.

Or very alternately, you can put in 4 Devastations and 2 Entropic Chaos. You'd lose the 6.25% Recharge and 2.25% Max End, but gain 12% Regen (on top of the 10% from Entropic Chaos, for a total of 22% in that power alone), 33.7 (2.25%) HP (!), and another 3% damage buff. Also, you can get better enhancement values (62/100/63/83, for an example). But losing that recharge is annoying. At least with the Purple Armageddon set you get the best of both worlds.

The fourth LotG in CJ is taunting me. The enhancement bonuses it gives are virtually non-existent, but it provides a 9% Accuracy bonus. With the addition of tactics, it might not be necessary, letting you move it elsewhere (if nothing else, Dark Obliteration is really asking for a sixth slot for a Cloud Senses damage proc or some better recharge for crowds). Heightened Sense is a bit iffier.

Chapter XLVII
In Which a Loose Tongue Tells All

After a meal of some meat and ground vegetables, they took me to a room which was supposed to be my cell. The Nazis treated me pretty well, which I guess I can thank Auer for, and let me walk around without ropes or anything – even my hands were free. If I’d had fire powers or my super speed, I’d’ve been out of there, but… I couldn’t even summon the mist or the dark blades.

And the Nazis had guns. I didn’t. So I walked along like a good boy. I made a few jokes, but they ignored them. Suck. Nazis have no sense of humor.

There wasn’t much in the room, and it seemed more like a summer camp bunk than a home – crappy little bunk for sleeping, a little table, some pottery. And there was no electricity, just a weird looking lamp thing that smelled weird. I waved my hand through the fire a few times, trying to get control of it, but the most I could make it do was flicker and wave. Having no powers sucked even more than humorless Nazis.

I tried to remember what bro had told me when he was trying to teach me to be a soldier. He kept insisting I learn to do things without my powers, even though some of our friends thought it was stupid - Not so silly now, huh, Yaphie? The first rule was to take inventory. What did I have? Squat. Not even my computer and guns. The Nazis even stole my friggin’ wallet, the thieves!

So, outside of throwin’ and swingin’ pottery, I had no weapons. If I could take down one soldier, I’d get a rifle and maybe I could take some of their body armor; no dodging bullets anymore. But that wouldn’t stop the warwolf – I’d need a rocket launcher or something. Bro probably had some silver bullets, but who knew where he was.

I decided that I wouldn’t be able to escape yet, and resigned myself to sitting and waiting and looking for an opportunity. Maybe if I let him think I believed him about Lorenzo, he’d help out a bit, let me get out… Yeah, that’s the ticket.

I settled onto the bed, which was actually pretty comfy, and happily went to sleep. I had a plan.

The Nazis woke me in the morning to serve breakfast and I spent the morning sitting in my room, wishing I had a book with me. Around midday (there were a couple tiny windows that I could see the Sun from), they finally took me in to see Auer again.

“Good day, young man,” Auer began affably when I entered his room, “I hope you slept well.”

“Like a rock,” I replied and looked around the room. It was much smaller now that I wasn’t all hazy and drugged and could gauge distances. He had some books – mostly in German, darn – and the same lamp things lighting the room. There was some electric lamp thing, like the kind used in an emergency kit in a car, but it was sitting in a corner unused. A bit hard to charge batteries these days, I guess. They just don’t make them like they used to.

“Please, take a seat.” He waved to a chair and sat down across from it. A large desk sat between us, and I idly wondered where he got it from. He must’ve noticed me looking, because he answered, “It’s amazing what one can create with a little ingenuity and a lot of wooden crates. In time, once we arrange for wood from Damascus to be brought here, we’ll make a better one.”

“Why from Damascus? Can’t you just get more wood from the future?”

“Not yet, no.” He sighed. “In this time, the Key is already in place and cannot be removed. The mechanism is silent. Of course, the priests know nothing about the Time Gate, but in time I will decipher the text to unlock its mysteries.”

I wasn’t sure whether this was good or bad. Maybe Lorenzo or Sofia could figure it out, or maybe even bro, but unless they showed up to rescue me, my only way back would be with Auer’s help. Definitely bad, I decided.

“So, what, you’re just kickin’ it here in the meantime?” I leaned back and put my feet up on the desk. He glanced at my shoes, gave them a dirty look, and I smiled.

“Something to that affect.” He looked back at me, decided to ignore my feet on his desk. “Changing history is a dangerous affair, but we have one advantage: the city of Shubat Anshar was destroyed – will be destroyed – at some point in the next century. So whatever impact we have here will disappear in that time. We may act freely.”

“Huh.” I scratched my head. I’m no expert on such things, never have been, and I’m usually told that I’m irresponsible and likely to break history if I messed with it, but his logic seemed sound enough to me. They’re all going to die anyway? Wait, that sounds kinda cruel. “I dunno. Somebody might get out…”

“Then they get out. They don’t understand guns and they can’t create them.” He laughed. “There’ll just be stories about strange, tall men who could kill people by looking at them, and a horrible man-beast. The kind of myths that show up anyways.”

I snickered. “Maybe the tales of werewolves come from people who saw your warwolf.”

He snorted. “No, no. Werewolf is Germanic, from Old English werewulf – from the prefix wer meaning man and, of course, wolf. Man-wolf myths show up everywhere, though, and given the kinds of things that you and I have seen, perhaps some of them weren’t myths, eh?”

“Yeah…”

“But enough about that.” He clapped his hands once. “Let’s talk about something more pressing and interesting: you.”

“Me? I’m not interesting…” Why would he want to talk about me? I thought his beef was with Lorenzo…

“Not every young man walks around with custom-made hi-tech equipment and throws fireballs.” He reached down behind the desk and pulled out the goggles. “These are a marvelous piece of engineering, the kind of work that modern militaries would kill for. Or pay handsomely for.”

“Er, um, thanks…”

He waved his hands grandiosely (that’s a word, right?). “Makes me wonder why you’d go hire yourself out as a common thug; you could be sitting pretty at the head of your own scientific corporation, like Crey and Aeon. Or the lead scientist for an army, like Nosferatu.”

I scratched my head. “Nosferatu? Isn’t he that crazy vampyr with the big gloves?”

“He is now.” He had that look in his eye that Sofia and Alex and Lorenzo and… well a lot of old people… get when they know something I don’t and are about to lecture me on it. “He was the 5th Column’s leading scientist – the Council’s now – and he developed the process to create the vampyr and the warwolves. A great deal of the super soldier work is by his hands.”

“I guess you learn something new everyday, huh?” Wait a minute… “Are you offering me a job?”

“And they didn’t believe me when I said you were smart!” He exclaimed. I couldn’t tell if he was sarcastic or not. “You need to think about your future. You need to decide whether or not you’ll even have a future. Right now, you are only a bargaining chip for Mondavi’s inevitable appearance. What happens if he fails, hmm? Or if we restore our connection to the future?”

“Uh… We go to Disneyland?”

He sighed and shook his head. “Don’t be obtuse, Victor. You know what I mean.”

“Yeah…” I swallowed. Bullet to the forebrain, probably.

“And that’s assuming Mondavi tries to rescue you.” He leaned back, a pleased kind of look on his face. “Knowing the cold, calculating pragmatist, he might just write you off as a casualty of war and try and level this entire structure to stop me.”

“Nah, bro wouldn’t let him,” I quipped, and immediately realized my mistake: Ros very well might, if I screw up enough!

“Your brother?” He raised an eyebrow and leaned forward, steepling his fingers. “Yes… I do see the resemblance – that bodyguard of Mondavi’s. A family business, then?”

“Ugh, I hope not.” I groaned. “I thought it might be fun, but we just run around in forests and dirt and get creepy looks while he makes us learn how to shoot guns and stuff. I only wanted this job because Lorenzo’s kind of cool – for an old guy – and the last time I went along with him we saw all kinds of crazy awesome and super dangerous things.”

He was listening very intently, and I stopped. Stupid mouth! I’d forgotten bro’s rule about not ever answering questions and not ever volunteering information! Here I was, talking about all kinds of things and even gave away that Ros was my brother. Sheesh…

“I’m sure you did.” He turned on his chair and waved a hand conjecturally. “I assume he had some kind of obscure and vague reason behind his activity. Something which sounds strange and irks you as stupid, yet somehow stands up to scrutiny? He probably used you then for some nefarious purpose or another that you will never, ever discover. That is his way.”

“Seriously, where do you get off thinking he’s so evil? Making up stories…” I rolled my eyes. “Bro and Sofia are both good friends of Hale and they like Lorenzo a lot!”

He lowered his hand slowly, suddenly very serious. What did I say? Oh geez, names again. What was coming over me? Stupid headache…

“Sofia? Your girlfriend?”

“Eww, no. Ugh.” I gave a face; he ignored it. “She’s like forty years old and kind of boring sometimes. And she’s married.” I shrugged. “Besides, she goes for old smart guys like Lorenz-“

I clapped my hands to my mouth. Did I just say that? And to Auer? Ohgodohgodohgod…

“Really?” He drew out the first syllable, sounding kind of like an old Jim Carey with emphysema. “A love interest, Mondavi? I never would’ve expected… Though I should have – how typical for the Italian to go for a married woman. Please, my friend, tell me more.”

“Nuh uh.” I shook my head furiously. “No more talkey.”

“No?” He sighed. “Very well. We can talk more tomorrow, if you are feeling up to it. It is probably time that I returned to my duties.”

“Wait, what? That’s it?” I looked around suspiciously for some kind of trap. “No tortures or truth serums or interrogations?”

“You’re my guest, Mister Kushan,” he replied calmly. “I am trying to save your life, not destroy you.” He stood up and walked over to the door. Two soldiers came in as soon as the door was opened. “I’m a patient man, and right now, I’ve got all the time in the world…”