Slumrat Rising

It should have been safe. It should have. This wasn’t some dinky little road into a minor city like Gwaju. This was National Highway 10 headed into Buran- the second-biggest and second-richest city in the country. The highway was six lanes in both directions. The cost to run the checkpoint must be enormous. The cost to the city in lost income, delayed shipments, whatever, must be tens of times the cost of the checkpoint. Truth wouldn’t be surprised if this were costing Buran ten million wen an hour. He suspected he was guessing low.

The skeletal hand of anxiety started closing around Truth’s heart. Of course, it wasn’t Starbrite’s money, was it? And anyone even slightly paying attention knew that money was no longer a factor in anyone’s decision-making. Not at the top. Fucking DePonte had figured it out- what does it mean when the government stops worrying about its tax base? It means that they weren’t going to be paying anyone for anything, soon.

After spending exactly one minute feeling very sorry for himself, Truth turned his anxiety-sharpened focus on escape. He was trapped. It was a long, flat stretch of highway, foothills to the right, the six lanes running the other direction on his left. There was a high wall and a shopping complex on the far side of the oncoming lanes. They might as well have been on the moon.

The irony of being trapped on a highway to avoid the danger of getting trapped on a train was not lost on him. Was that the same golden bird? He didn’t think so, but it was very similar. The carriage rolled forward a meter. The line was moving. Slowly but moving.

“Thrush, can you make me invisible? Or at least less visible? In a way that does not draw the attention from the watchers above or the checkpoint ahead.”

“If it were just the cattle in their crates, there would be no trouble. However, the bird itself has piercing eyes, to say nothing of the mighty ones atop it. As for those… things… on the checkpoint, I don’t think any demon you would care to summon could defeat their gaze.”

“A lot of words to say “No.”

“My apologies, Master.” The carriage jolted forward fifty centimeters. The driver had apparently decided that his head would explode if he got more than some arbitrary distance away from the bumper of the carriage ahead of him. Why he didn’t set the chained demon to keep the distance, Truth didn’t know.

“However,” Thrush continued, its voice layered with “concern,” “That is not to say I couldn’t provide some aid. Your magical presence is so close to nil that hiding it will be trivial. Your physical presence is a bit more striking. It will be difficult, given my inability to perceive your glorious form. Not impossible, however. I can simply bend the air in the area around my summon token. It won’t render you invisible, but it will blur and displace your image.”

Truth grunted. He decided his best plan would be a replay of some things that had worked previously. Get low, keep the body of the carriage between him and direct observation, then either break for the mountain or try to catch a lift going away from the checkpoint.

He glanced over at the foothill. Did he like his odds evading the eyes of a hunting bird while scurrying like a rat through tall grass and shrubs? No, he did not. Hitch a ride going “away” and figure out another infiltration route, then. He was close to the city, at least. And he had a nap. That was something.

“Alright, here’s how it’s going to go. When I give the signal, I am going to slowly open the door and step out, keeping as low as I can. Your job is to make this process as unnoticeable as you can. Once the door is closed, focus on keeping me unnoticeable.”

“As you command.”

Truth waited, keeping his eye on two things- the checkpoint and the bird making big, lazy circles in the sky. He waited, watching them both creep closer and closer. Truth devoted his entire energy to being unnoticable, trying to fade from the world’s awareness entirely. Truth Medici died years ago. Who notices a lonely ghost?

Every jolt of the carriage brought them closer to the checkpoint. Every tiny roll forward increased the warning from Incisive. He suppressed the urge to bolt, to run like a rat for the shadows. He focused on breathing, on pulling in as much air as he could to calm his mind. He was not a rat. He was more than the sum of his fears. He could wait. Wait for the bird to turn.

It took fifteen agonizing minutes. Fifteen minutes of counting heartbeats, of trying to watch the clock, the checkpoint, meditating, anything to control the need to run. Fifteen minutes of agony. Then the bird curved back towards the city. He gave it exactly one more minute to build distance. The carriage jolted forward.

“NOW.”

Truth eased the door open and poured himself onto the road through the smallest crack he could manage. Lying flat on the ground, on the highway. He didn’t have time to appreciate the strange terror of what he was doing, he just eased the door shut and started crawling. The drain on Incisive and the Blessing of the Silent Forest started stepping up. Not massively, but steadily. It would get worse once he reached the median. Didn’t matter if he was low or not- no cover there.

He took a peek at the oncoming traffic. There was a one-tonne wagon, open-topped, rumbling towards him. He had a bare minute to make it to the other side of the highway. He moved as quickly as he dared, crawling on his belly. He hit the grassy median and slid down. The median was wide, grassy, and steeply “v” shaped. A way to discourage attempted U-turns on the highway and a water management solution all in one.

It was mucky down at the bottom. Didn’t matter, He started slithering up the far bank, moving as fast as he could stand. The pull was getting heavy now. Hundreds of eyes should be on him, blurred by Thrush or no. Didn’t matter. Had to get in position. Had to catch this wagon. Nothing else could matter.

He reached the edge and pulled his limbs under him. Crouching. The wagon roared up, moving in a cloud of construction dust. Truth slammed every scrap of power he could spare into his arms and legs, leaping like a frog at the side of the wagon. Iron fingers hooked the top edge of the open back. His energy was burning up like a magnesium flare, but he hauled himself over and into the back. Trash bags full of construction waste. He buried himself under them happily. Then just tried to breathe.

By his estimation. It had been less than two minutes since he opened the door of the sedan. By his estimation, that little attempt used up sixty percent of his cosmic energy. It would be impossible to fight like that. He would have to drop power to the Blessing, even stopping it from running passively. He would have to dispel much of the scales too, or change them to something suitible. He would be massively more vulnerable to being found by divination. And once you have been found, it was famously hard to shake free of the diviner.

He lay under layers of broken wood, cement, and trash, just trying to breathe. Trying to pull together a little energy. He didn’t know where this truck was headed, but he would happily go there. Buran could wait.

Fifteen minutes later, a thoroughly pissed-off Truth was dumped on the heap of the Buran municipal landfill. Vengeful, wrathful, and more than a bit fed up, he strode out of the dust. Dragging his battered, beaten, and abused duffle with him. Luckily he had kept it close. The old legend about demon worms eating the trash in the landfill turned out to be true.

____________________________________________

Truth directly gave up on the day. He found a nearby house, helped himself to a shower, and stretched out on the sofa. Entirely too close a call. Entirely too close. The enemy wasn’t dumb. Cost had ceased to be a factor, and they were determined to keep order above all other priorities. Asset stripping- burning up the accumulated stores of money and goodwill the nation of Jeon had accumulated, all to make sure Starbrite could escape. Somehow.

He looked around the house idly. Clearly, a denizen family lived here. Didn’t own it, of course. That would be illegal. Looked like the whole extended family came together to cover rent. He could see bedrolls ready to be laid out in the living room and in the hallways. Four people in a bedroom that would have been claustrophobic for one. A shared bathroom with no bottles but lots and lots of empty sachets. People bought the sachets of shampoo or soap when they couldn’t afford a whole bottle. Truth thought about hiding a little cash somewhere in the house, but he knew damn well what would happen if he did.

Besides. Changeover was happening at the end of the month. No more wen. No more money at all for Denizens. Would it be a crime for them to own paper money? He didn’t know but would bet that it would be. He looked at the neat row of toothbrushes. They couldn’t afford hardly anything, but they made sure to buy toothpaste. So much for the denizens being irresponsible. So much for not being able to trust them to look after themselves.

He tidied up and left. He didn’t want to impose on this family. If nothing else, there would be no place for him to sleep. He squared his shoulders, checked his road atlas, and started the backyard steeplechase once again.

Later that evening, Truth hid a waterproof package of all the materials he stole from the research facility in a flowerpot on the roof deck of an apartment building in the suburbs of Buran. Upon departing the building, he put three discreet slashes close together in the bright yellow paint of a carriage parked near the building. Duty done, he set off to find a hotel room. He was prepared to demand luxury.

He got halfway downtown before a shopping street cruelly ambushed him. Jeon street food struck again- its seductive aromas carefully tested and engineered to stand out in the capitalist hell of the dinner rush, then crush the evening boozers. He had missed out on fried chicken yesterday. Not again. He got a whole twenty-piece box, AND the extra sauce, AND a side of pickles, sat down on the curb and ate them on the spot.

The sweet, spicy, funky, sticky sauce got everywhere. It practically coated his hands and face. It dripped onto his shirt. The chicken was fresh out of the fryer. The batter was shatteringly crisp and delicious under the rolling sticky calamity of the sauce. He sucked the bone clean of meat, then ate some pickled radish to cleanse the palate. Perfection, perfection. A glug of water to wet his throat, then straight back in.

Bones covered in dark red sauce were scattered around him, his hands gorey with the wet remains of his victuals. His face was greasy, his fingers were sticky, and his belly was satiated. He committed food crimes here. And he would do it again. Whistling, he strode into a luxurious boutique hotel.

“Whssp. Ssswifp. Wfff. You know what, I don’t care if this world burns. I don’t.”

Snagging a box of wet wipes from the hotel shop, he made his way to the top floor, found the fanciest room, broke in, cleaned up, and went to sleep. He had earned it. By God, he had earned it!

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