minions.
Suffice to say that following Grondor is a lot like trailing behind a frothy pink main battle tank. Thuggish guards, evil imps, and the odd adept tend to explode messily very soon after Grondor sees them. Unfortunately Grondor's not very discriminating, so I make sure to go first in order to keep him away from cunningly engineered deadfalls (and Pete, should we find him). Still, it doesn't take us too long to comb the lower levels of the caverns under Castle Storm (aided by the handy dungeon editor in my laptop, which allows me to build a bridge over the Chasm of Despair and tunnel through the rock around the Dragon's Lair, which isn't very sporting but keeps us from being toasted). Which is why, after a couple of hours, I'm beginning to get a sinking feeling that Pete isn't actually here.
'Brains, Pete isn't down here, is he? Or am I missing something?'
'Fuck off, Pinky, give me some useful input or just fuck off, okay?' I realize I'm shouting when the rock wall next to me begins to crack ominously. The hideous possibility that I've lost Pete is sinking its claws into my brain and it's worse than any Fear spell.
OK KEEP UR HAIR ON!! 15 THIS A QU3ST?? DO U N33D 2 CONFRONT S0RCR3SS 1ST?
I stop dead. 'I bloody hope not. Did you notice how she was behaving'
Brains here. I'm grepping the server logfile and did you know there's another user connected over the intranet bridge? — 'Whu — ' I turn around and accidentally bump into Grondor.
Grondor says, '(1) Do you wish to modify our tactics? (2) Do you want Grondor to attack someone? (3) Do you think Grondor is sexy, big boy? (4) Exit'
'(4),' I intone — if I leave him in a conversational state he won't be going anywhere, dammit. 'Okay, Brains. Have you tracerouted the intrusion? Bosch isn't supposed to be accessible from outside the local network. What department are they coming in from'
They;e coming in from — a longish pause — somewhere in HR.
'Okay, the plot just thickened. So someone in HR has gotten in. Any idea who the player is?' I've got a sneaking suspicion but I want to hear it from Brains — Not IRL, but didn't Cruella act way too flexible to be a 'bot?
Bollocks. That is what I was thinking. 'Okay. Grondor: follow. We're going upstairs to see the wicked witch.'
Now, let me tell you about castles. They don't have elevators, or fire escapes, or extinguishers. Real ones don't have exploding whoopee cushions under the carpet and electrified door-handles that blush red when you notice them, either, or an ogre resting on the second-floor mezzanine, but that's beside the point. Let me just observe that by the time I reach the fourth floor I am beginning to breathe heavily and I am getting distinctly pissed off with Her Eldritch Fearsomeness.
At the foot of the wide, glittering staircase in the middle of the fourth floor I temporarily lose Grondor. It might have something to do with the tenth-level mage lurking behind the transom with a magic flamethrower, or the simultaneous arrival of about a ton of steel spikes falling from concealed ceiling panels, but Grondor is reduced to a greasy pile of goo on the floor. I sigh and do something to the mage that would be extremely painful if he were a real person. 'Is she upstairs?' I ask the glowing letters.
SUR3 THING DOOD!!!
'Any more traps'
NO!!??!
'Cool.' I step over the grease spot and pause just in front of the staircase. It never pays to be rash. I pick up a stray steel spike and chuck it on the first step and it goes BANG with extreme prejudice. 'Not so cool.' Rinse, cycle, repeat, and four small explosions later I'm standing in front of the doorway facing the top step. No more whoopee cushions, just a twentieth-level sorcetess and a minion in chains. Happy joy.
'Pinky. Plan B. Get it ready to run, on my word.'
I break through the door and enter the witch's lair.
Once you've seen one witch's den you've seen 'em all. This one is a bit glitzier than usual, and some of the furniture is nonstandard even taking into account the Laundry hack packs linked into this realm. Where did she get the mainframe from? I wonder briefly before considering the extremely ominous Dho-Na geometry curve in the middle of the floor (complete with a frantic-looking Pete chained down in the middle of it) and the extremely irate- looking sorceress beyond.
'Emma MacDougal, I presume'
She turns my way, spitting blood. 'If it wasn't for you meddling hackers, I'd have gotten away with it!' Oops, she's raising her magic wand. 'Gotten away with what?' I ask politely. 'Don't you want to explain your fiendish plan, as is customary, before totally obliterating your victims? I mean, that's a Dho-Na curve there, so you're obviously planning a summoning, and this server is inside Ops block. Were you planning some sort of low-key downsizing'
She snorts. 'You stupid Ops heads, why do you always assume it's about you?'
'Because — ' I shrug. 'We're running on a server in Ops.
What do you think happens if you open a gateway for an ancient evil to infest our departmental LAN'
'Don't be naive. All that's going to happen is Pimple-Features here is going to pick up a good, little, gibbering infestation then go spread it to Mama. Which will open up the promotion ladder once again.' She stares at me, then her eyes narrow thoughtfully. 'How did you figure out it was me'
'You should have used a smaller mainframe emulator, you know; we're so starved for resources that Bosch runs on a three-year-old Dell laptop. If you weren't slurping up all our CPU resources, we probably wouldn't have noticed anything was wrong until it was too late. It had to be someone in HR, and you're the only player on the radar. Mind you, putting poor Peter-Fred in a position of irresistible temptation was a good move. How did you open the tunnel into our side of the network'
'He took his laptop home at night. Have you swept it for spyware today?' Her grin turns triumphant. 'I think it's time you joined Pete on the summoning-grid sacrifice node.'
'Plan B!' I announce brightly, then run up the wall and across the ceiling until I'm above Pete.
P1AN 8 :):):) The room below my head lurches disturbingly as Pinky rearranges the furniture. It's just a ninety-degree rotation, and Pete's still in the summoning grid, but now he's in the target node instead of the sacrifice zone. Emma is incanting; her wand tracks me, its tip glowing green. 'Do it, Pinky!' I shout as I pull out my dagger and slice my virtual finger.
Blood runs down the blade and drops into the sacrifice node — And Pete stands up. The chains holding him to the floor rip like damp cardboard, his eyes glowing even brighter than Emma's wand. With no actual summoning vector spliced into the grid it's wide open, an antenna seeking the nearest manifestation. With my blood to power it, it's active, and the first thing it resonates with has come through and sideloaded into Pete's head. His head swivels. 'Get her!' I yell, clenching my fist and trying not to wince. 'She's from personnel'
'Personnel?' rumbles a voice from Pete's mouth — deeper, more cultured, and infinitely more terrifying. 'Ah, I see.
Thank you,' The being wearing Pete's flesh steps across the grid — which sparks like a high-tension line and begins to smolder. Emma's wand wavers between me and Pete. I thrust my injured hand into the Bag of Holding and stifle a scream when my fingers stab into the bag of salt within. 'It's been too long.' His face begins to lengthen, his jaw widening and merging at the edges. He sticks his tongue out: it's grayishbrown and rasplike teeth are sprouting from it. Emma screams in rage and discharges her wand at him. A backwash of negative energy makes my teeth clench and turns my vision gray, but it's not enough to stop the second coming of 'Slug' Johnson. He slithers towards her across the floor, and she gears up another spell, but it's too late. I close my eyes and follow the action by the inarticulate shrieks and the wet sucking, gurgling noises. Finally, they die down.
I take a deep breath and open my eves. Below me the room is vacant but for a clean-picked human skeleton and a floor flecked with brown — I peer closer — slugs. Millions of the buggers. 'You'd better let him go,' I intone.
'Why should I?' asks the assembly of molluscs.
'Because — ' I pause. Why should he? It's a surprisingly sensible question. 'If you don't, HR — Personnel — will just send another. Their minions are infinite. But you can defeat them by escaping from their grip forever — if you let me lay you to rest.'
'Sendme on, then,' say the slugs.
