Chapter 2012 – Arrival in San Jose
San Jose was an… interesting place.
John had no love for cities. He said that often and loudly. This one was among the worst and best simultaneously. Often called the capital of Silicon Valley, San Jose was the 3rd largest city in California. John immediately spotted some of the same issues he had with Los Angeles in the form of entire homeless camps forming under bridges and other areas of opportunity.
Once their car had rolled through these poor neighbourhoods, however, he was treated to all of the wealth that was coming into this city through the optic fibre. High rises, clean parks, massive office complexes that housed dozens of start-ups, all of it peppered with a myriad of food places that offered vast selections to accommodate people too busy coding to cook.
The wealth difference wasn’t just stark, it was gaping. A chasm had opened up between those part of the Silicon Valley economy and everyone else. John didn’t have to look into the local economic policy to realize any of that.
He also did not care to inform himself about these things. The mundane USA was moving further and further away from him by the year. Whatever happened on this side of the divide, he would be fine. Plus, he was never going to live in a large city anyhow.
The loud blare of their car’s horn knocked John out of his city-hating thoughts. He glanced over to Ehtra, who slammed the side of her hand against the centre of the wheel a second time. “Incapable creatures!” she cursed at the driver in front of her. Apparently, they had figured out they were not on the right lane to get to their wanted destination and were now halfway into making a highly illegal turn.
A turn that was obviously illegal for more than safety reasons. The car had stopped halfway through and now everyone had to wait until the idiot in the driver’s seat found a gap in the traffic or kept driving like a normal person.
“To be fair to them, I get why one would be tempted to try that manoeuvre,” John said. They had been, at best, driving 30 km/h, over the last hour. The traffic of the city was horribly inefficient and they had to fight through all of it so they could reach the inner city hotel that John had booked. “We would get there quicker if we walked.”
“If we don’t get runover,” Claire responded. “Or, rather, if we don’t get runover and then smote by Gaia for surviving it. The sidewalks in this place barely even exist.”
“Why are we staying at a hotel anyway?” Nahoa threw in another question.
“Because we’re not looking for Abyssals, we are looking for mundanes recently turned Abyssals.” John watched the indecisive wiggle of the wheels of the car in front of them. Another slam on the horns had him give Ehtra a worried glance. “I feel like I shouldn’t have let the First of Hatred drive.”
“I can feel this driver’s sins from here, a vile swindler and a waster of my time!” Lady Vengeance slammed the horn thrice in quick succession. “MOVE!”
John was equally concerned and amused by her road rage. The delay was finally resolved when the moron managed to execute their illegal turn and the congested traffic moved on for a bit.
“Sawwy if I’m, like, just too stupid, but I fail to see how them being recently turned is relevant to us staying in a hotel.” Nahoa shifted on the middle bench. There were six of them in the car and, unlike the Kingdom task force, they had managed to grab an appropriately sized vehicle after their flight. The city had plenty of services to cater to the super-rich flying in. “Couldn’t we stay in a barrier?”
“No one in this group has the ability to connect amenities to a Protected Space, so not really,” John answered.
“Alright, then how about an already existing Barrier?”
“Ah, I see the misunderstanding now.” John gave the outside a solemn look. “There are no already existing Illusion Barriers here – at least none that I know of. 90% of the Outer Mandate, the conglomerate of guilds that lived in this area, were killed by the Lorylim.”
“Ah… just another reason why Fusion can’t penetrate the area.” Nahoa nodded, now understanding the difficulties. “Okay then, hotel it is.”
They finally arrived at the ‘hotel’. It was the kind of construction that could only allure the absurdly rich. The post-modern block of a building had a shared base and four ‘towers’ that rose up three floors high. Each of them had a private balcony and a balcony that could be shared with a neighbour.
It was expected that a person would rent an entire tower at a time. A ludicrously expensive proposition and yet, courtesy of what kind of city this was, evidently taken often enough that the whole thing was operating smoothly. John was perpetuating that by having rented one of the segments.
It hadn’t been his first choice, but it was what had been open. Besides, there were worse choices. The fact that there was airspace between each of the towers meant that noise had to travel a lot of distance, which was something the Gamer always valued.
Checking in was done entirely by electronics. A QR-code on his phone was scanned by the front door, which then parted soundlessly to give them access to the common area of the hotel. It was hilariously overdesigned, possessing everything from an indoor tennis court to a canteen. Everything looked brand new and basically nothing appeared to have ever seen more than passing use.
A second electronic lock later, they were in the elevator up to their private area. A ding announced the stop of the smoothly operating machine.
They were on the lowest of their three rented floors. It, alone, was larger than the apartments of most Americans. The lack of doors between the segments was unusual, but not unwelcome for John’s lifestyle. What he did not like was all of the new-age pastel colours they had used in the design of… everything. Soft colours and hard, blocky angles for the furniture, all of it fashioned from compressed wood, glass, plastic, and stainless steel.
“God, I hate modern design,” John spoke his thoughts.
Nightingale stepped past him; a hand raised to her lips. Her wrist did a poor job at hiding her smile, like the bend of her wing would have usually done. “Your burning loathing is clear,” the pale goddess told him. Though she had to hide her monstrous parts for the benefit of mundanity, she could wear her skin colour without much worry. Same went for the deep purple, borderline black of her hair. All of that was the kind of look a rich woman could afford to hold, despite the California sun.
“I need to get it out of my system.” John marched over to the large table in the middle of the room. It had been painted with deliberately thinned, white paint, giving it that same fake-poor look as the torn jeans in stores had. He grabbed one of the chairs, lifting it up to emphasize his point. “Look at this thing, it has the aesthetics of a piece of cardboard. No carvings, no colours, just uniform pieces of wood stuck together to create the blandest chair imaginable.” He put it back down with a displeased thud. “Where are the flourishes? The strong colours? The artful usage of maintaining and breaking symmetry?” He wretched. “Disgusting.”
Claire and Ehtra nodded repeatedly, one agreeing with his opinion because it was his opinion and the other because she hated this even more than he did. Nightingale and Nahoa found his overacted annoyance amusing. Lyndell ignored all of it, instead squinting at their surroundings.
The primordial Lorylim was, for obvious reasons, the one whose appearance was changed the most by being in the mundane. Her hair was black, her skin a workable level of pale, and her eyes a human shade of blueish-grey. A long summer dress covered her balanced figure.
“It’s too bright,” she complained in a raspy voice.
“Another problem, yes,” John agreed. The pastel colours really captured the sunlight. As a person of the cave-dwelling mindset, the Gamer did not like his stays well-lit like that. Claire was way ahead of both him and Lyndell on that front.
Curtains were drawn. Lyndell sighed a sigh of relief. Claire let out a sound above that. “Accursed daystar,” she hissed. Though the sun did not burn her body of metal and magic, it was deeply uncomfortable to her to be exposed to the rays directly. It did also have the effect of burning away her Sanguine and her Household.
“Now that we see as little of this horror house as possible,” John said, “let’s start the meeting.”
The present women sat down around the table. John pulled a map from his inventory and unfurled it on the table. It was a detailed print of the city based on a recent satellite photo.
“We are going to have a few difficulties. First off, in this body, I do not have access to the Barrier Sense, so just walking around until something registers isn’t going to work.”
“Can’t we fly in a Fateweaver creature to help with that?” Ehtra asked.
“We had too few Fateweavers for the demand before we took over the rest of the continent and they had their own losses.” John shook his head. “I could have it arranged, but there’s so much going on that I’d rather have our search be less efficient than distract them from stabilizing Fusion’s economic situation.”
The declaration was met with mixed reactions. Ehtra and Claire, specifically, seemed to believe his time was worth more, but they ultimately bowed to his decision. “So we’re scanning the area the usual way?” Claire asked. “I shall walk the night. You shall walk the day. We shall listen to signs of magic?”
“Indeed,” John confirmed. “We are here, right now.” He put his finger on a spot near the city centre. “Getting the inner city scouted out will be a fairly swift endeavour. All of this…” he gestured at the urban sprawl around, “…will be our problem. Especially if our target is both intelligent and doesn’t want to be found. Which is a chance that grows larger with every passing day.”
“Latebloomers attract trouble and aid,” Nightingale added.
“Indeed. Gaia will have mechanisms to let them know about the Abyss. Worse, if they coordinate with other people that were given access to the Fusion network by now, they’ll be wise to our basic tricks.” The drum of his fingers on the edge of the table matched the racing of his thoughts. “It occurs to me how terrifying Latebloomers actually are from the outside. Every day we don’t find them, they’ll grow faster, stronger, and likely smarter as well.”
“Speaking from experience?” Ehtra asked, mockingly.
“Obviously,” he responded with a wry smile. “Though their growth will be different from mine. Who knows how much Izha’s meddling changed the usual trajectory.”
The words hung in the air as the threat they were. Latebloomers were always dangerous, but there really was no telling how far Izha had pushed them. John still was convinced that there were people the insane telepath had prepared by driving them mad with visions for months before finally springing his surprise. It was exactly what John would do in his situation. Which, ironically, was the only reason why John thought he might be wrong.
Izha always had been one to subvert his expectations. There was a decent chance he had simply decided to… let chaos direct what came next. There also was a chance he had to be too covert to plan this. Sneaking his plan under Tiamat for all that time must have been difficult.
“What’s our first move?” Claire asked.
“We wait for Fianna,” John responded.
Due to time constraints, their scout had been on the plane with them. Not exactly optimal. In order to do her job, Fianna had asked that they spend at least a day just sitting in their hotel and not do anything that could garner attention. Once the sniper had gotten an ear to the ground, she would contact them.
Until then, all they could do was wait…
…and try to make the décor bearable by having sex on every surface.