Okay, so even by the standards of the Lane, getting held at gunpoint by your own imagination is pretty wild. I did not expect that.

I also realized that I could not allow it. And I was lucky, after a fashion. I was the only realis person present. Nobody else could make this delivery and have it stick. If Rookie shot me, it would be just as bad for their plans as if I had never agreed to do the delivery at all. They’d have to find a new human to be their patsy.

So I took a risk. I hurled myself at Maps, hitting him with all my weight. We tumbled to the ground. Hobs are stronger than they look, but not enough to make up for over a foot of height difference. Once I had my hands on his revolver--no, Boddy’s revolver--I shoved him roughly away to tumble onto his back a few feet from me.

So far, so good. Rookie hadn’t shot at me. I had guessed correctly. Unfortunately, he was bringing the barrel of his shotgun about to target Boddy, who had no such protections. Well, I had a gun now, too. I leveled it at Rookie and squeezed the trigger. The old revolver had a lot of kick, and I nearly dropped it as my palms started stinging and my elbow absorbed the shock, poorly. I missed, but I did distract Rookie long enough for Boddy to rise to his feet. He crashed into Rookie with a shoulder-check, delivering precise attacks against both of Rookie’s hands to make him drop the shotgun.

At this point I realized I hadn’t planned this far ahead. Improvising, I sprinted at the gate, fixing my mind on realis. “Boddy, c’mon!”

Boddy broke out of his fight his tussle with a knee to…well let’s just say it was very effective. He was half a step behind me as I reached the gate and flung it open to reveal a row of carefully-planted palm trees, and we dove through, slamming the gate closed behind us.

I’m not sure precisely where we ended up. The houses (lower-case h) on this street were all mansions, though. I guess that tracked. People who spent their wealth in excess would have the gate that matched Opulence. Reaching into my pocket, I found my phone. The battery was dead, but if we could get to a convenience store I could recharge it.

I tried to take stock of my surroundings. This seemed to be a private neighborhood. I saw a set of car-sized gates a little ways down the street in one direction. The other direction branched off, presumably to other streets in the neighborhood. The skyline was mostly occupied by a big hill; the neighborhood must have been built in a small valley. Probably, I realized, so that the residents wouldn’t have to look at a city skyline. That seemed right.

I took stock of what I had managed to be carrying at the time I jumped through the gate. My larger pack, of course, had been sitting on the ground when the fight broke out. That meant the food, water, and first aid supplies were unavailable. Well, I didn’t think we’d be in critical condition without those for a while. I still had Boddy’s revolver, though it now occurred to me that owning it was probably not legal wherever I had landed. Let alone carrying it, loaded. “Uh, Boddy, you should probably take this back. For one thing, you know how to use it.”

I looked around for Boddy then nearly threw my phone against a wall when a single sleek-looking bee landed on my shoulder. When I realized what it was, I froze, hoping not to startle it. I nearly threw my phone again when the bee spoke, in Boddy’s voice.

“Just pass it up here and don’t think about it too hard,” the bee said. Right, hobs could take more than human form. I guess Boddy had decided to disguise himself as a bee. I passed the bee the revolver. I managed to not think too hard about how a bee was carrying it.

“The gate,” Boddy mused, turning slowly on my shoulder, “Was a good idea. They can’t know where we came out on this side. Well, Maphandler might if he was in his role as Porter, but he’s not, so they don’t.”

“Still, we don’t know how much that construct knows,” I muttered out of the corner of my mouth. “We should get away from this gate fast.

“Yeah,” Boddy agreed.

I started to walk towards what I hoped was the neighborhood exit. “Can you fly over and see if you can find out where we are?” I asked as I set out.

“Bees don’t see so well far off,” he explained. “If you needed to track down some flowers, maybe.”

Okay, so on foot it was. My human sized feet, that is. Boddy’s bee-sized feet wouldn’t be getting quite as much of a workout. I was lucky, the exit was the sort that’s all too happy to let guests out while preventing them from getting in. There was a little push button a ways back from the gate that made it swing outward. I was also lucky in that none of the residents seemed to be present at the moment. Probably out  playing golf on company time, I imagined.

“Say, Mister Daniel,” the bee prompted as I picked a direction at random that seemed like it would lead up out of the valley. Other gated communities were visible every half mile or so along my path. There were a few cars here, but for the most part they just ignored one pedestrian walking on the grass. I was outside the wall, what harm could I be?

“Yeah, Boddy?”

“Why did you manifest a construct that tried to kill you?”

“Dunno, Boddy. I think it has something to do with this.” I tapped the flat wooden box that held the item for delivery. It had a simple leather strap that let me carry it slung over my shoulder and back. “Why’d Maps turn on us?”

“That one is a puzzler for me. I’ve been on the staff a bit longer than he has and as far as I can recall, he’s never even handled a firearm. Why would he need to? And I can’t imagine he’d turn against Master Carver willingly. Maybe one of the other Houses got to his family or something?”

“Or Master Carver told him to it. Did you have any sort of special orders for this trip? Orders I wasn’t supposed to hear about?”

“Not a one,” Boddy answered. “But then, I took over last minute from one of the other Bodyguards.”

“Really?” I hadn’t heard about that. Why would Carver allow that? If he had meant to send a different Boddy, why hadn’t Maps been suspicious of the one that came?

“Yeah,” Boddy continued. “There were some trespassers the night before we left. We all thought it was just…inflitration. It happens, sometimes, with the House. The two of us were there, off duty, having a nice smoke, and suddenly three, maybe four hobs come over the walls. We go out to confront them and Boddy--the other Boddy--takes a knife in the leg. He was okay, but I took him to Doc to get stitched up and get some rest. Told him I’d see to the House’s duties. Reported for the trip that morning.”

That…that didn’t seem like it was a coincidence. “Boddy, did you tell Mister Carver you were filling in for the other Boddy?”

“I left a note with Doc to give to him. I didn’t want to wake him as early as we had to set out.”

“What about Maps?”

I rounded a corner. As I had hoped, this direction went towards the city. At the very top of the slope of this block I could just see skyscrapers peeking over the hill.

Boddy buzzed once or twice from my shoulder. I shivered but didn’t comment. “I imagine he noticed that I wasn’t the other Boddy, yeah.”

“But would he have known which Boddy was supposed to come with him? I mean, you knew he was supposed to be coming, I assume from the Boddy who got stabbed. So he must have known.” Wait, he had known. That’s why he pulled the gun on Boddy even though Boddy hadn’t done anything. “Boddy, I think Maps and the other Boddy were both supposed to force me to make that delivery. But I got very, very lucky and the Boddy that was supposed to take Maps’s side got stabbed. So you were there instead.”

“What? That’s crazy. You think Maps and Boddy were gonna turn against the House?”

“No. I think the House, or more specifically, Mister Carver, is…subverting the House’s resources. Maps was working for the House the whole time, just…not towards the same goals as you or the other staff. The other Boddy, too, probably.” I thought about it for a minute. “And Archie’d have to be in on it, too.”

I crested the hill and saw a city at the bottom, though this particular suburb was a good distance from the city proper. Fortunately, like all good suburbs catering to rich people, it had a corner market at the bottom of the hill. Just out of sight of everyones’ balconies. Naturally.

I set my feet towards the market.

“You should probably see what it is that I was delivering,” I concluded. “But first I need to find a phone charger.