POV: Casper.

  Raymond looked like a kid who’d just been told he had to go to bed because he had school tomorrow. His weasel-like face a mask of petulance and defiance all in one.

  “Ah, I get it.” He said as his smile returned. “You think this…”

  He licked his lips salaciously.

  “Demeanor of mine is unbecoming. Especially for someone of my age?”

  “I don’t care how you get your kicks.” I lied. “If you want to gloat about Carlyle getting what’s coming to him, then go ahead.”

  “Oh yes. I think I will go ahead. I’ll go right on ahead and savor this taste of victory as if it was a super-thick chocolate milkshake on a hot summer’s day. It has been a long time coming after all.”

  He pointed back at the screen.

  “This geezer sprung out of nowhere when my grandpa was doing business. And within a decade, he’d pushed us out of the energy sector in a quarter of the east coast in the US. Within two, he’d pushed us out of north America altogether and all that while crushing the competition in western Europe, south America and India. We literally could not compete no matter how hard we tried to lower prices. It got to the point where our engineers, my own father among them, started losing their minds because the output the old freak was putting out there was literally impossible to sustain at the prices he was offering. And I mean literally impossible. He said they were nuclear power plants, but that didn’t make any sense either. I know cause we tried to copy him when we were under the impression that his success could be replicated. The freaking reds went crazy with their nuclear reactors at the same time we did, but we lost our shirts on those investments. And the reds started the whole Chernobyl debacle even when they didn’t have to compete with Carlyle. Then the iron curtain falls and who rushes in to invest in the old soviet bloc? Why, Carlyle Robertson of course.”

  Raymond looked as if he were about to spit.

  “My father was still dealing with the aftermath of all the scientists and doctors saying that cigarettes killed people when it happened. We were bleeding money fast and it was all we could do to move our farms and our customer base abroad. All while Carlyle cashed in on those fragile economies and the dotcom boom. Always managing to get out at just the right time to avoid his investments blowing up in his face. Why, I remember the fall of Enron. How the geezer rode that train until the very end and got out half a year before it blew up in everyone’s faces. I remember that one event because my father started ripping out what little hair he had left in his deathbed.”

  Raymond sneered. Scrunching up his face in a manner oddly reminiscent of rat shaking their tiny fist.

  “How is he doing this!?” My daddy shouted. “How is he getting away with this!? He’s insider trading but no one can catch him! How are the plants working!? How do they keep producing so much power!?”

  Raymond cackled and let his expression drop.

  “We’d sent spies of course. We’d been sending them for over forty years by that point. Now don’t look at me like that Casper. Industrial espionage is much more benign than you think. It just so happens that one industrialist may have a working formula that they can’t get on a patent for some reason. If so, then why not try and copy them? Why not see what they were doing so you could try to do it better? Competition is healthy. The customer ends up winning in the end.”

  I nodded slowly.

  “But none of them could figure it out either.”

  “No.” Raymond confirmed. Now taking out a monster core from his pocket and balancing it gingerly on his fingers.

  “We knew there was a reactor. Like in nuclear power plants. We knew water went in and water went out. However, the water wasn’t tainted in any way and our best devices couldn’t detect any kind of radiation or chemical traces in the outflowing water. Moreover, other conventional nuclear power plants always struggled to deal with the rods after they’d been irradiated past the point of usage, and with other kinds of nuclear waste. Carlyle never had that problem. And whenever anyone in the government asked any kind of question, whether we prodded them or not, Caryle would throw money around. Along with a few smiles and promises and the whole thing would be dropped.”

  He let out a small cackle once again.

  “And now I know that magic, Magic… is real.” He gripped the core tightly in his thin fingers. “Of all the fucking things. Actual, literal Magic. Or energy M as the guys in MIT are calling it. An actual, honest to goodness alien energy that changed how physics worked. Heh. Newton’s stinky corpse would be doing barrel rolls in his grave if anyone bothered to tell him.”

  “I hear the guys in MIT aren’t doing much better.” I said casually. Stepping around another stain in the carpet. Making my way over to the couch, taking a single look at it, and thinking better of the prospect.

  “No. No they are not.” Raymond confirmed. “One of my younger nieces, a real talented girl, was working on her doctorate in physics when the news broke out. She wanted to be an astronaut you see. Now she’s seeing a therapist for the first time. Going on about how nothing is real and the universe is much more volatile and we’re all going to die the second someone triggers a chain reaction.”

  I nodded slowly.

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  I was familiar with the type, given how many new recruits I’d brought into the fold over the past decade. Oftentimes, they stared at me as if I was wearing a straightjacket. Right up until I started teleporting them around the world.

  A few went into shock and refused to speak for days. Their eyes open wide with haunted expressions.

  Yet others soiled themselves or turned to higher powers. Thinking me some sort of evil entity from their respective religion.

  Some of the women had even offered to be mistresses once we’d explained how Cores worked in humans. The prospect of teleportation apparently being too good to pass up.

  Carlyle had laughed and even prompted me to take some of them up on it, the creep.

  “In any case…” Raymond continued. “I can’t tell you how good it feels to finally have it all up in the open. To have other people finally open their eyes and see. To finally have justice for all the decent people of the…”

  We heard a crash from the adjacent room. Turning our heads to listen in on the noise.

  “Oh no. Oh no! Oh nononononononono!” A feminine voice called out through the thin walls.

  “Okay kids. Its okay. Its all okay. So what if the casserole got ruined. No problem. Let’s just put it away and start again before your father comes.”

  We heard stomping from the hallway.

  “Oh no! He’s here already! Ok kids, let’s just get rid of it quickly. Hopefully he had a good day at work.”

  “Damn it! Work was horrible!” A smashing sound came from the hallway. “What’s that smell!? Oh that stupid bitch better not have burned the casserole again!”

  “Eeek!” The feminine voice called out. “Okay kids! Got to your rooms! Do it now! Don’t get between us! You’ll only make it worse!”

  Raymond’s thug stood there. Mouth agape. Then he sighed.

  “Right boss. I’ll call the police.” The stout man said with a despondent voice.

  “You will do no such thing.” Raymond snapped. “We’re not here. You hear me? None of us were ever here. And that is all Carlyle will learn. No calls.”

  The stout man looked back at his master in astonishment. His beady blue eyes widening before suddenly narrowing.

  “Right on boss. I can live with that.”

  He reached out behind a cupboard and picked up a metal bat.

  “Don’t you worry your head sir. I can still teach a worm like this one a lesson or two. No police.”

  “Put the bat down idiot.” Raymond snapped again. “What happens to the people here is none of our business. Or do you want that fool to call the cops on us the second you leave?”

  The man stared back at his boss. With even more incredulity than before.

  Then the noises started coming out from behind the wall.

  “You burned the casserole again bitch!?”

  “Eek! I’m sorry! I’m sorry I’m sorry! I’ll whip up something else!”

  The sound of the strike carried over. Followed by a thud.

  Then another.

  “You’re looking down on me huh!? It’s not enough that I work my ass off in that fucking store every day!? You have to let me know how much better you are than me!?”

  “No!” A wounded moan came out. “I didn’t mean to, I swear. It was an accident!”

  “Sure it was! Just like how it was an accident when your mother called the police on me huh!? Now I got a criminal record! People at work are looking down on me because you’re such a stupid bitch! What are you gonna do about it!?”

  A few more thuds followed. Along with the sounds of crying children in the distance.

  “Don’t even think about it.” Raymond snapped more harshly. “She won’t leave him even if you do something. In fact, she’ll probably defend him until the last minute. And then she’ll tell the cops who you were and what you looked like and that you started it. You might even walk out with a felony for breaking and entering once all is said and done.”

  The hairy, barrel-chested man turned around in incredulity. Then, when he spoke, his words came out in guttural growls.

  “You were just talking about justice, sir.”

  “Yeah. I was. Justice for humanity. Weren’t you paying attention? What am I going to do about some idiot beating his wife? This kind of thing happens everywhere all the time. Let it go.”

  He then turned to me.

  “Sorry about that Casper. Let’s go back to talking about the future now.”

  I kept staring at the wall as thuds kept coming in one after the other.

  “Hey, earth to Casper.” Raymond said while snapping his fingers in front of me. “I need to speak with you about the Core. And the kid.”

  “Yes.” I hissed out afterwards. My fists clenching and unclenching as I tried not to think about what was happening.

  ‘I’ll come back later.’ I told myself. ‘I’ll help as soon as Raymond is gone. I still need him and his influence if I’m going to survive Carlyle and ready the world appropriately.’

  “Forgive me.” I said afterwards. “Let’s talk business.”

  “Right.” Raymond confirmed. “First off, how is our young heroic friend doing?”

  I shook my head.

  “Not well. The eggs the gnome-wasp-thing injected into him were extracted via surgery and the wounds were closed with Magic, but we missed some kind of spore infection in his lungs. In all their lungs.”

  I shivered, thinking back to the improvised hospital wing.

  “We’ve been healing them and removing more and more tissue hour by hour, but its still a close thing. The infection keeps spreading to their veins and arteries. And to their intestines. The more we remove, the more the spores dig into their tissues. At this point, forget healing them. It looks like we’re slowly flaying them open.”

  “Are you still sedating them?” The old man asked.

  “Yeah, of course.”

  “Good. I’d hate for our new friend to up and die on us before he started becoming useful.”

  Raymond moved over to the fridge and pulled out a couple of bananas. Eating them with relish before then pulling out a thick cigar and lighting it.

  “What about Uter’s boy?”

  I shook my head.

  “It’s likely he’s still holed up in the Dungeon. It’s also likely he’s the one putting out the monsters we’ve seen so far. That’s the only way to explain how few people have died so far.”

  Raymond nodded along as he drew in more smoke into his lungs.

  “I see. That’s good. The more people get Magic, the more we can hire later to offset the influence Carlyle already built up over decades. If anything, we need to make sure more of the public go down there while the going is good. I’ve been donating weapons of course. The melee kind. Swords and axes and hammers. That kind of thing. We’re also designing a steel spear that can be mass produced. But I’m thinking we’ll have to start charging for them sooner rather than later. Other than that, I’ve been thinking about…”

  There was a feminine scream coming from behind the wall. Following by children shouting an more thuds.

  The shouting stopped.

  “I’ve been thinking about raffles.” Raymond continued. “Like a lottery where you have to bring in a monster core to participate. I figure each core is valuable enough that even the biggest prizes pay for themselves, but very few people have thought to buy them in bulk so far. I hear grumbling that the military is going to start trading for them in a month after they figure out Carlyle’s tricks and see how they can implement them, so we have to move fast while the going is good.”

  He took another drag and breathed out another cloud of smoke.

  “On that note, it’s about time you get Uter’s boy back Casper.” Raymond beamed. “I mean, relocating the actual Dungeon Core is a must, but just think about the other possibilities. How good do you think a magic cigarette would taste like? Would it even be harmful? What could we do with marketing?”

  He chuckled to himself.

  “Oh yes. Just think of the marketing.”