Museum Core Chapter 103: The Consequences

Six days ago

Waiting for someone to come and yell at you was not a fun feeling.

Waiting for someone to come and yell at you for a situation for which they were decidedly at fault, it was enough to make one contemplate murder, all the while being tormented with the knowledge that you definitely wouldn’t get away with it.

Add the anticipation of annoyance on top of everything else until, and all in all, Frye felt like he was sitting on hot coals, pretending to be in the meeting with the prime minister, waiting for things to go pear-shaped.

Of course, things were still chaotic enough that Ezekiel Hawkins still needed to be elected, or replaced by another, though based on his performance thus far, it seemed as though the former defense minister would be officially affirmed into this position.

The two of them were here, waiting, because one of the countless CCTV cameras that littered Great Britain’s cities had caught the Russian ambassador heading over here. That had been ten minutes ago … now all that was left was the waiting.

“So, we’ve mostly been doing well,” Frye continued his status report as he heard the man storming into the building’s main entrance, the strong Russian accent unmistakable. “I won’t say everything’s been perfect, and all the usual problems are ten times worse when it’s someone with superhuman powers causing them, but it’s nothing we can’t handle.”

But only due to more magic. Someone punches a wall, repair magic puts the stones back and reseals the whole affair, someone accidentally caused magic to spiral out of control and trashed a room or unleashed the arcane equivalent of a chemical spill, cleansing magic fixed things right up … actually, utility magic in general tended to be used to put everything right, regardless of what had happened.

Frye was about to continue, but things had proceeded to the point where he could pretend to have noticed the incoming Russian and turned to stare at the entrance door, where they could now hear an argument, one so loud that they’d have been able to hear every word even without any enhancements whatsoever.

Apparently, one of the guards was asking to look at the ambassador’s bag since the man had stormed in here with a head full of steam, the only reason he’d been able to get this far being that no one had quite been willing to tackle an ambassador, even one practically running through the building.

No one had told the guards to do that, but at this point, it was the man’s own behavior that had prompted it.   

After a couple of minutes of rustling around and muttered Russian cusswords that Frye understood perfectly.

And then, finally, a different guard poked his head in and finally made an “official” announcement.

“Uh, the Russian ambassador is here and would like to talk to you, he says it’s an emergency, and that you have to take this meeting. Should I ...”

Hawkins gave a declarative sigh and motioned for the guard to open the door and let the man in.

“Ambassador Denisovitch,” Hawkins greeted the man standing outside coldly. “What an unexpected … pleasure.”

“Oh, you know perfectly well what this is about,” the ambassador snapped, marching in and sitting down heavily atop the last free chair in the room. “Did you really think we wouldn’t figure out exactly who was responsible?”

“For …?” Hawkins asked.

“You sent your Jaclyn the Ripper and her squad to kill the Siberian anchor beast!”

Frye burst out laughing, he couldn’t help it, drawing a glare from Denisovitch and a raised eyebrow from Hawkins.

“You think this is funny?” the Russian growled.

“No, I’m laughing because Deputy Director Abrams absolutely hates that nickname the press gave her, and picturing her reaction at it being thrown around in a diplomatic meeting amuses me,” Frye explained in the blandest tone he could manage.

Denisovitch took a deep breath, closed his eyes for a couple of seconds, folded his hands in his lap, and then fixed Hawkins with a flat stare, but before he could speak, the Prime Minister cut him off.

“Would you be so kind as to explain why you’re convinced this was us? I’d say killing a vital resource in your transformation zone is just as egregious as what happened to us, wouldn’t you say? I’m assuming here that you also suffered casualties.”

“… no,” Denisovitch admitted. “But the attack succeeded, and quite literally priceless magical items were stolen, the entirety of the beast’s hoard. The resources that were meant to carry the Russian Federation into the next age … and now you … you … you ran off with it!”

“Once again, what thought process deluded you into thinking this was us?” Hawkins rephrased his earlier question.

“Perhaps a joint investigation into this dastardly crime spree would be a good idea,” Frye offered, making some effort to hide his smirk, but a seasoned diplomat like the Russian before him had to have picked up on his true mood.

Their behaviour was both unprofessional and telling … but everyone here knew what this was all about, and that the other party also knew they knew. This wasn’t a negotiation, this wasn’t a communication; the only thing “real” in the room was the Russian ambassador’s outrage and their Schadenfreude.

The whole dog and pony show repeated once more before Denisovitch finally marched off in a way that was barely more dignified than how he’d stormed in.

“I’d say they’re right proper pissed,” Hawkins commented.

“Too pissed, maybe,” Frye replied. “The point was to prove that whatever they do, we can and will do worse, all without hurting any actual people. If they’re too angry to see that point …”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” Hawkins sighed.

“Let’s,” Frye agreed. They’d also have to make damn sure that Daedalus didn’t put the monster anywhere easily accessible for a while yet.

***

Present day

There were many things whose necessity Jaclyn had to remind herself of before she blew her top, and had done so on a repeating basis over the course of her life.

But in the last few months, reporters had been at the very top of that list.

Because yes, a free press was the foundation of a free society. How good the checks and balances were, how incorruptible the judicial system was, how thoroughly any kind of corruption could be squelched, none of that mattered if issues never even reached the light of day. Reporters being able to reveal dark truths without risk of censorship was important, nay, vital.

However, the theoretical purpose of that job was one few fulfilled.

Instead, far too many of those bottom-feeding vultures used their position as a shield, a defense that could not be surmounted or circumvented without undermining the very foundation of British democracy, to spew nonsense and accusations that were carefully worded to avoid the letter of any law covering libel while simultaneously being the dictionary-perfect example of the spirit of that particular statute.

For example, someone had decided that just because the two immediate subordinates of the Director of the BPA were women, Frye had to have chosen them for their looks and sleeping with both of them to boot … or at least that was what one particular article had strongly suggested.

But this latest set of “suggestions” … it was true that if one counted their Chief Medic, who occasionally accompanied them, her team consisted of herself and three men. There’d been no thought or plan behind this; it was just how things had shaken out … and that scum-sucking hack had decided this meant she was assembling some kind of male harem.

Someone had put together that at the same time as the Belfast had been gone, she and her usual teammates hadn’t been seen in public either, and thus, the ship’s absence had been filed away as a “pleasure cruise.” Harper hadn’t even come along, he’d simply been busy elsewhere … but since when did gossip rags let such trivialities as facts get in the way of a good story?

“Must not murder reporters” had had to become a bit of a mantra after that.

Though, thankfully, no one at work had made much of an issue of things, despite it being the perfect setup for a never-ending parade of crass jokes. After all, the BPA had drawn almost exclusively from the military and various police forces around the country, all groups of people not exactly known for their tact or reserved sense of humor.

Instead, things had resulted in a growing “fuck reporters” sentiment that had been seeded by a few rather annoying press rats who’d wanted the scoop on newly-minted superhumans and hadn’t exactly gotten better with time.

Jacly sighed as she finally entered the headquarters and headed into her office.

Reports, training schedules, equipment requests … expeditions. That last one was new.

Jaclyn raised an eyebrow, and looked it over. The document had been in an envelope much like the other internal mail, signed by Frye, and overall didn’t give any impression of falsity, but she’d still bring it up.

Apparently, someone had finally decided to poke the bear in the North Atlantic transformation zone. Well, make her poke the bear, that was.

Nothing had said boo over there, if it hadn’t been for long-range radar scans confirming the sea floor had sunken in around five hundred meters and the technology disruption field, no one would have even known a transformation zone had appeared.

And since the usual technological solutions wouldn’t function, and more mundane methods couldn’t get deep enough. Which meant that someone who could breathe underwater was needed, preferably a person who wasn’t too fragile.

It was something new to do, something fascinating, it was simply …

Perfect.

It had felt as though both she and Daedalus had hit a kind of plateau. She could barely grow against any reachable opponents, and without powerful delvers, the dungeon core couldn’t grow to the point of being able to offer the kinds of challenges that were optimal for rapidly leveling against.

Not to mention that, regardless of how truly insane her regular life was, even the most extreme state of being could become mundane if it lasted long enough.

This, even as a scouting mission, would be something entirely new.

… once she’d arranged transport, a team, and most importantly, childcare.

***

“Fuck yes!”

Thomas, who’d been trying to carefully sculpt a statue of an octopus by manually creating stone bit by bit, suddenly found himself looking at a huge, messy blob where he’d created a marble he’d decidedly not meant to call into being.

“Did you find something, Elias?” he asked, trying to keep the sigh out of his voice while not being entirely sure how good a job he did.

“Yep!” the fairy grinned as he flitted over, pulling along a massive piece of paper large enough to serve as a bedsheet for him, and still have enough left over to make a pillowcase, duvet cover, and several whole outfits to boot.

In other words … Elias’ stubborn refusal to let Thomas recreate the files in a more fairy-appropriate size was a never-ending source of amusement.

“I finally figured out what the Pacific transformation zone is,” he grinned.

“It’s a patch of mangrove wood filled with sapient manatees,” Thomas replied. “We already knew that.”

Elias slapped his forehead. “Not what I’m talking about. There’s a second one, remember? The dark void that eats ships, the only transformation zone to be entirely beneath the surface of the ocean, the one that the Chinese and those other two nations, whose name I forgot, are glaring at each other over?”

“South Korea and Japan,” Thomas helpfully supplied.

“Right, those two,” Elias shrugged. “I figured out what they’re watching over. It’s the Divine Huntingrounds.”

He paused for effect, but Thomas merely found himself slightly confused by the whole affair.

“Is that a good thing?”

“It’s an interesting thing,” the fairy pointed out. “See, that place isn’t a universe the way most places are, with stars and planets and everything, it’s more like … I mean, some of your Earth-novels call them ‘dimensions.’ It doesn’t make sense, but that’s how it works.

“You’ve got a bunch of places that exist, and where they end, so does the world. No infinite expanse from the edge onwards, things just stop. And there’s just a handful of places from where you can move onto a different area, or even jump to a different universe entirely.

“And there are a bunch of different places … actually, it’s kinda like a dungeon, in a way. You’ve got seemingly infinite grasslands, a huge cave system where the ground is always wherever your feet are pointing … and a bubble that’s just water, filled with monsters.”

“And you figured this out … how?” Thomas asked. “How do you know this is where that zone came from?”

Elias waved the page. “Water pressure. Because there is no obvious ‘up’ or ‘down’ the water pressure is equal everywhere, and that’s exactly what these measurements show. The transformation zone starts two hundred meters under the surface, but the pressure immediately jumps to what it would be five hundred meters down and stays that way for the entire range they could actually scan.”

“Huh …” Thomas replied. “That’s going to be a pain to explore.”

Elias snorted. “Jup.”

“And why is it called that?” Thomas asked.

“Dunno,” Elias shrugged. “That’s one of the few other universes I’ve actually been to, though. It’s like a massive wildlife safari, as though some divine being grabbed all the most incredible monsters and animals and placed them in a location that lets you visit all of them incredibly easily.

“I think someone just looked at the whole affair and decided it must have been the hunting preserve of some long-forgotten god or something.”

“Sounds like a dungeon,” Thomas observed.

“Pretty much.”

“And do you know what the system is?”

“That’s the best part,” Elias grinned. “You just have to kill a monster alone, with minimal technological help, not that it would work down there because you really are supposed to start in a place that doesn’t immediately kill you. Do you have any idea how much you could sell magical items that people access it for?”

“But the system is really cool too: you can pick a power every time you gain a rank, and then you can upgrade it based on the most impressive kill you’ve managed while advancing through it. It isn’t easy … but you can get some of the individually strongest powers I’ve ever heard of there.

“And if you start there, the ability to do upgrades carries over into other systems.”

“In other words, people are going to need to get there, and for the forseeable future, if they want the best possible start, they’ll have to come to me, at least unless they’re able to make a deal with the Americans for access to the other Pacific zone,” Thomas grinned.

They talked about the particulars for a few more minutes.

It was at this point that he noticed something, and zeroed in on the conversation happening at the gates of the dungeon, devoting enough of his attention to there to fully eavesdrop.

So, they were going to explore the North Atlantic transformation zone … which was fully aquatic. Which the Belfast could easily enter, zero need for modification or crew. An idea which he’d somehow completely overlooked until right this moment.

That just left one big question: how pissed would everyone be if he poked his head in and kicked the anthill … yeah, he was mixing metaphors but the point still stood.

Should he just go in without asking for permission?

No, that kind of thing would only serve to hammer home that he had a ludicrously powerful warship that could strike at any costal city in the world at the drop of a hat, and if he started acting completely on his own and potentially even interfering with his host nation’s opperations, that would only serve to cause an even greater issue.

How about this: wait for the first opperation to conclude, then pretend to overhear things and use that as the impulse to go exploring.

And in the meanwhile, he could prepare some more aquatic monsters. Maybe turn the arena into a swimming pool and offer “safe delves” for anyone willing to help him stress test his new critters.

“Any toes bitten off will be regenerated,” and so on.  Actually, come to think of it, that would make for a pretty funny sign, more for him than anyone who took him up on his offer, granted, but weirdly enough, it still felt appropriate.

Anyway, time to actually build the damn thing.

And once all that was done, maybe find a way to investigate the fragment of the Divine Hunting Grounds that had wound up in the Pacific.