“Guildmaster Tirmanak wants me to go back to Earth, since it would be easier for me to fit in than someone else. I don’t think I want to, at least not to do the job of a Knife. Even if I’m just assisting Margrethe, it’s not that easy! He doesn’t understand what I tell him about the way the world works. You can’t just kill people!” Helen smacked her thigh for emphasis, then straightened in her chair. She did not sound at all happy.
Helen spoke surprisingly good Bridge now. She was clearly good at languages.
Serenity sighed. He knew that Margrethe did valuable work, but he also knew that Earth was unbelievably populous and tame compared to much of the rest of the multiverse. In many places, there were consequences if you killed someone simply because they were probably going to be dangerous, no matter how powerful you were. Serenity wasn’t sure he actually wanted to change that.
He was pretty sure he actually didn’t want to. Yes, there would be people who went insane and killed those around them for one reason or another, including the incorrect use of monster cores. At the same time, he didn’t really want anyone empowered to kill without consequences. That had its own negative effects, and they were probably far greater.
Serenity sighed. “I’ll talk to him and see if we can come up with a solution that will actually work. It’ll take some work with the locals wherever you go, but maybe we can get you set up as some kind of advisor to the police? Perhaps a specialist in seeing if that’s the problem, while we let the normal system handle things. I know the entire prison system is having issues, most places, so being able to separate out people could be useful. I don’t know if they’ll be killed or not, but at least it won’t be you doing it.”
There were places that treated people who committed crimes using Pathed abilities as if they were armed and deadly. While that was often true, it also meant that the prisons were filling up. In some parts of the world, that meant that other people were being released to make room; in others, many were being killed. It depended on where you were, what you did, and who was in charge of the decision.
Serenity was deliberately not following it all that closely, but he knew Lancaster would be. “Where are you from? Do you want to return there?”
Helen shook her head. “I don’t want to go back to where I was before the Tutorial started, but my parents are still in Greece. Maybe…?”
Greece? Well, he could try. Serenity didn’t know what was happening there. “I’ll try, but it may take some time.”
Helen nodded and smiled, then bounced out of her seat. “Thanks. Maybe without Margrethe? She’s nice enough, but I don’t want to be responsible for her.”
Serenity watched Helen walk out of the room. She’d given him a whole host of worries he didn’t want; he didn’t want to be setting policy for Earth or even for his home country, but it looked like he didn’t have too much choice. He was going to have to at least make some decisions and recommendations.
In many ways, Serenity was grateful he didn’t have to make all of the decisions; at the same time, it was annoying that he couldn’t. He was going to have to make recommendations, follow up, convince people that there was a problem and then that he had a solution; it reminded him all too much of his old job. The last few months where he didn’t have to deal with more than a few people at a time had clearly spoiled him.
It was time to put on his big boy pants and do what he didn’t want to do.
A few days earlier, Aide finally figured out how to duplicate the “phone call over the Voice’s messaging system” that Tek pulled off; Serenity could now call anyone on Earth. At least, he could call anyone on Earth that he had the phone number for. Theoretically, he could also get limited Internet service, but that cost so much Etherium that Serenity was limiting himself to only phone calls.
Serenity wasn’t sure how Aide did it. He thought the connection was actually being routed through Aki and her cell phone booster tower, as if the cell phone were in her dungeon, but beyond that he hadn’t worried about it. The fact that he could make phone calls was the important thing for now; he could look into how Aide managed it when he had time.
For now, the important thing was that his parents were fine; Bethany was pleased to tell Serenity that the returnees were big news and good for his image. She was less happy at the way some people were spinning the abductions into a story about evil aliens and asked him not to mention the medical experimentation unless he had to.
Lex, on the other hand, wasn’t actually able to take the call the first time Serenity called. He was on a boat somewhere a little east of the Caribbean, looking for an island that could be one of several shown on Google Earth. He couldn’t tell which one without going there, but he called home to talk to Bethany each evening when they reached a port.
Rissa had also called her parents. Serenity found it a surreal conversation, since he had to act as a sort of relay for the communication. With Aide’s help, he managed it quickly with very little delay, but he was still passing along every message and able to hear it as it came in and left, all at the same time. Serenity could have let Aide handle all of it and only heard the mental communication piece, since that didn’t exactly run over his hardware, but it wasn’t necessary. Serenity didn’t want to cripple any of his abilities simply because they were a little weird.
Phoebe refused to talk to her; Red claimed it was because she felt a lot of guilt about how she treated her daughter. Rissa didn’t seem too upset by it; that was enough to make Serenity think that maybe he should see if she wanted to talk to someone after they got home. He had the feeling that she wasn’t telling him everything; when he asked, she just said she didn’t want to talk about it. Maybe talking to a professional would be easier.
Serenity blamed the curse far more than he blamed Phoebe. Curses were insidious things, and that one was especially bad. He didn’t know how many of Phoebe’s choices were warped by it, but he suspected many were. It wouldn’t surprise him if she didn’t really know who she was. He hoped she was getting the help she needed, whatever that might be.
Russ, on the other hand, was happy to answer Rissa’s call. He was having lunch when they called, which meant he had plenty of time to talk. He was actually in Oregon, chasing what he described as “a murderer pretending to be a Wendigo”. Apparently, the murderer was emulating the popular characteristics rather than the actual ones of the two Wendigo Russ had fought in the past.
Knowing that Russ had fought Wendigo even before he went to the Tutorial was impressive to Serenity; they were an extremely long-lived, nasty sort of undead with a number of remarkably irritating evolutions. Serenity knew Russ had almost certainly fought the simplest ones, but even then they were far tougher than anything a Tier Zero human should want to deal with.
Serenity made sure to warn his father-in-law that even if it wasn’t a Wendigo, it was possible for someone to get a Path based on myth even if it wasn’t accurate. Russ had already figured that out; he and Serenity talked about possibilities and Wendigo variants for long enough that Rissa had to step in and remind them both that it was supposed to be a short phone call, due to the cost.
He’d have to remember to do the same when he called Lancaster. More likely, it would be when Lancaster returned his call; the man was incredibly busy. He might as well try now.
Lancaster’s voice came into Serenity’s mind after the third ring. “Serenity? Are you back in New York? I thought you were off planet rescuing people.”
Serenity blinked. He really hadn’t expected Lancaster to answer and the surprise left him scrambling. “Ah, no, I’m not back yet. The rescues are done, at least; I’ve gotten everyone I can back. Well, except for one and she’s the reason I called you.”
“Me?” Lancaster sounded puzzled. “I’m not missing anyone, at least not as far as I know.”
Serenity chuckled. He definitely needed to tell the whole story. “No, you aren’t; Helen isn’t even from the US. I can’t remember, did I tell you about monster cores?”
“Uh,” Lancaster stopped to think for a moment. “All I remember is that they’re used for crafting but also toxic. I don’t remember why.”
“They power enchantments,” Serenity clarified. “Along with a few other things. I’m sure I don’t know all of them. They’re basically crystallized mana, tainted by the creature that it came from.” He now knew more about what the “taint” was, but that wasn’t important for this. “Too much exposure - and by that I mean a lot, eating them or something - can cause physical and mental changes in a person. My best guess is that the mental ones may literally be brain damage, as they start to form a monster core themselves.”
“Sounds like they brought it on themselves,” Lancaster commented. “What does that have to do with anything?”
Serenity shook his head. Lancaster couldn’t see him, but then again he didn’t need to. “Everything. You see, they can get powerful quickly and be dangerous far faster than expected. Naturally, there’s an organization that deals with that problem. The thing is, they deal with it by killing the threat. I don’t think that’s going to fly at home.”
There was a long pause from the other end of the phone line. “I’m assuming you don’t mean after due process.”
“They are the due process,” Serenity agreed. “Anyone killed is assumed to have been evaluated to be a threat. There are obviously limitations, but they’re more about people who have the power to act against the organization than they are about fairness.”
“That sounds a lot like what happened to you in the Tutorial,” Lancaster stated. “Where you had to get your own justice rather than law enforcement taking care of it.”
Serenity shrugged. “It is, but what happened to me isn’t the reason I think we shouldn’t import it; I think it’s far too easily abused.”
“Then why did you call?” Lancaster sounded a little impatient.
Serenity was probably taking too long to lead the man through his thought process; he should cut to the chase. “They can train people to detect the problem. I don’t know if we can do something to fix it, but brain surgery might work? In that case, if you can separate the affected people from others causing problems, maybe they can be dealt with without restraining or killing them?”
“You don’t know.” Lancaster almost growled on the other end. “Fine. What do you want from me?”
Serenity smiled. He had Lancaster at least convinced enough to try. “The only way to find out is to try. One of the people who was kidnapped has been training since I rescued her; she says her family is from Greece and she’d like to go there…”
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