201 Planting Bugs
201 Planting Bugs
We waited in the outpost for Perry’s return, and the waiting itself became a routine. There wasn’t much to occupy the mind in a place like this, perched high and isolated, far enough from Urbanite to be safe but close enough to feel its presence like a pressure behind the eyes. We cleaned what little there was to clean, flipped through old logs filled with dates, names, and half-finished patrol notes, and took turns circling the perimeter to make sure nothing wandered too close. The outpost wasn’t meant for comfort or permanence. It existed only to delay danger, not stop it.
Eventually, boredom won out over silence.
I leaned against one of the railings and looked toward the distant sprawl of Urbanite, its skyline jagged and unreal even from here. “So,” I said, glancing between Qilin and Snap, “what’s it really like in there?”
Snap scratched at his jaw, eyes narrowing slightly as if recalling something unpleasant. “We don’t go deep,” he said. “Peripheral zones only. Edges of the city where the systems don’t pay as much attention.”
Qilin nodded. “Scavenging runs, mostly,” he added. “Branded items, tech fragments, things we’re confident we can steal and reverse engineer without setting off alarms.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Alarms?”
Snap snorted softly. “Urbanite doesn’t work like normal places. It runs on game-logic. Once you become a member, you’re a player.” He tapped his temple. “You get a system. Levels, stats, power ratings, skill trees. Quests, too, if you’re unlucky. Imagine, a quest dedicated solely on hunting you. That would be hell. If not that, a quest where failure means death… It’s nasty, I am telling you…”
That got my attention. “And if you’re not a member? Could it get worse?”
“Then you’re an NPC,” Qilin said calmly. “Or treated like one. Or maybe a mob they can farm to gain levels. It’s that kind of place.”
Snap shifted his weight. “Which is worse than it sounds,” he added. “NPCs follow rules they don’t even know exist. Step outside them, and the city corrects you.”
I glanced back toward Urbanite, imagining invisible scripts snapping into place. “You sound like you’ve been inside proper,” I said.
Snap hesitated, just a fraction too long. “I was,” he admitted. “I defected. That’s why I’m here, and why I’m on this mission. I know the lay of the land better than most.”
“And you escaped,” I said. “With great difficulty.”
He smiled thinly. “Something like that.”
I felt it then, a subtle hitch in the rhythm of his emotions. Fear was there, but not the kind that came from barely surviving. It felt more controlled, as if the danger had been anticipated rather than endured. I kept that observation to myself. Everyone in Foresthome had layers, and Snap’s ran deeper than his easy demeanor suggested.
Before I could press further, the air shifted.
Space folded, and Perry appeared at the edge of the outpost without ceremony. His sniper rifle was gone, replaced by a pair of heavy revolvers hanging at his sides, their frames thick and worn from use.
Qilin’s eyes flicked to Perry’s hands almost immediately. “Where’s your rifle?”
“Gone,” Perry replied. “Candy Beast ate it.”
Snap let out a low whistle. “That bad, huh?” He leaned back against a crate, arms crossed. “What kind of monster powers was it this time?”
Candy Beasts earned their reputation for a reason. Their anatomy never made sense, even on paper, and their powers often contradicted each other or stacked in ways that felt deliberately unfair. One moment they behaved like mindless hazards, the next like predators with tactical awareness. That unpredictability was what made them lethal, not raw strength alone.
Perry’s mouth flattened. “Teleportation,” he said. “Nullification. Speedster-grade movement.”
Snap grimaced. “That’s a nasty combo.”
“Enough about it,” Perry said, cutting the conversation cleanly. “Get ready. We’re infiltrating Urbanite through the sewers.”
Snap groaned openly. “You’ve got to be kidding me. That place is disgusting. Tell me we’re not taking the worst route again.”
“We are,” Perry replied without hesitation. “Surface access isn’t an option. Candyland and Kingdom capes have been spotted around Urbanite.”
I frowned slightly. “Source?”
Perry turned just enough for me to see his profile, his expression unreadable. “None of your business.”
We prepared in silence.
Snap took the lead, moving with the confidence of someone who had walked this route before. The sewer entrance sat half-hidden behind broken concrete and overgrown vines, its iron grate warped and stained by years of neglect. A faint, sour stench wafted upward, thick enough to cling to the back of my throat even before we descended.
Before we went in, Perry stopped us with a raised hand. He reached into his coat and produced a small, translucent pill, then handed one to each of us. Qilin took his without hesitation and swallowed it dry. Snap followed suit, barely breaking stride.
I rolled the pill between my fingers, studying it. “What’s this about,” I asked, keeping my voice neutral.
“Temporary player access,” Perry said. “You take one a day, or the System Administrator flags you as an anomaly.”
“Convenient,” I remarked. “Who made them?”
“Hera and the Divine Forest King,” he replied.
“And what’s in it.”
Perry’s gaze hardened slightly. “You’re better off not knowing.”
I wasn’t convinced. Even holding it, I could feel something off about the pill. It wasn’t psychic in the traditional sense, but there was a presence to it, subtle and unsettling, like a dormant organism waiting for the right signal. Alive wasn’t the right word, yet nothing else fit quite as well.
Still, this wasn’t a decision I could afford to refuse. If this was the price of entry, then so be it. I dry swallowed the pill, forcing it down without water, feeling a faint warmth trail after it as it slid into my stomach.
“For your convenience,” Perry said, “we wait five minutes. That’s how long it takes to sync. I already took mine, so I will be fine for the day.”
I nodded and leaned back against the damp concrete. “Who exactly is this System Administrator.”
Snap glanced over, expression sour. “One of Gameboy’s girls.”
That gave me pause. “Didn’t picture Urbanite’s boss as that kind of guy.”
Snap let out a short laugh. “Gameboy’s got the most capes out of all four factions,” he said. “Four executives, too. All women. They run different parts of the system.”
Qilin chimed in calmly, “System Administrator. Malware. Grind. Chat.”
The names felt wrong in my head, like pieces from a language I didn’t quite recognize. They followed a theme, rigid and artificial, and the more I thought about it, the less I liked it. Whatever Gameboy was, he wasn’t just ruling a city. He was managing something.
We waited.
The forest sounds faded from my awareness as something else came online inside me. My vision flickered, just for a moment, like a bad signal struggling to lock in.
[Welcome to Urbanite Online]
I stared at the system interface hovering in front of me, translucent and flickering like a bad projection struggling to stay coherent. Lines of text cascaded downward, some of them stable, most of them not.
[Name: Eclipse]
[Level: ???]
[Error]
[Error]
[Error]
[Error]
[Error]
[Error]
[Error]
[Error]
[Error]
The errors stacked until they nearly filled my vision, overlapping and jittering as if the system itself didn’t quite know what to do with me. I glanced at the others, half-expecting some kind of reaction.
“Is it normal for it to bug out this much,” I asked, gesturing vaguely at the invisible mess only I could see.
Perry didn’t even look surprised. “Normal enough,” he said. “The pill isn’t meant to integrate you. It’s meant to lie. It fools the System Administrator and Urbanite’s framework without drawing power from the city itself.”
That explained the instability. I wasn’t a player, not really. I was an intrusion running on borrowed credentials.
Perry tapped the folded map in his hand. “Our primary objective is Urbanite General Hospital,” he continued. “It’s deep inside the city.” He paused, then added, “Secondary objective is escort duty for our insider.”
Qilin tilted his head slightly. “Do they have a name.”
“Need-to-know,” Perry replied flatly.
That was answer enough. He looked to Snap. “You’re up. Lead.”
Qilin shrugged his massive backpack off and handed each of us a flashlight. The beams cut through the darkness as we descended, pale cones of light slicing into the damp, claustrophobic tunnels. The stench hit harder down here, rot and stagnant water layered with something metallic and wrong.
Snap moved ahead with practiced ease, his Acoustokinesis spreading outward in silent pulses. Every few steps, he’d lift a hand or flick his wrist, signaling what lay ahead. Mutated rats skittering behind collapsed pipes. Something undead dragging itself along a side tunnel. We avoided most of it, slipping through the sewer like ghosts.
When Snap hesitated, uncertain, I stepped forward instead. I let my body phase just enough to test the space ahead, passing through pressure plates, submerged wiring, and the kind of traps that relied on you being solid and predictable. The sewers were home to stranger things than animals. Very still ghouls that waited until you were close enough to smell them. Rabid machines that lurked dormant until motion triggered them into sudden violence.
Anything that made it too close met Qilin.
He didn’t bother with finesse. One punch was enough, his fists compressing mass into devastating impacts that shattered bone, metal, or both. Each time he struck, numbers flashed briefly across my vision, damage values rendered by the system as if reality itself were a game.
I watched him closely, concern gnawing at the back of my mind. His powers had always shined brightest in the ocean, where pressure and depth amplified him into something monstrous. Here, underground and dry, he still carried himself with confidence, landing blow after blow without strain. Either he was holding back before, or resurrection had changed him more than he let on.
Perry walked near the rear, eyes flicking between the map and our surroundings. “Right here,” he said quietly. “Then a left.”
We followed the turn, the tunnel narrowing before opening into a reinforced section of sewer that felt deliberately maintained.
“Safehouse,” Perry added.
We climbed a narrow ladder hidden behind a false maintenance panel, metal rungs groaning softly under our weight. The hatch above opened into a compact safehouse, its interior cloaked in a thin layer of dust that spoke of long neglect rather than abandonment. The air was stale, but intact, like a room that had been waiting rather than forgotten.
Snap reached for the wall and flicked a switch. The lights hummed to life, dim but functional. “At least they’ve got electricity,” he said, sounding relieved.
Qilin went straight for the sink, turning the tap and testing the water before splashing some onto his face. He scrubbed his hands thoroughly, then wandered toward an arcade machine positioned near the door. Without hesitation, he fed it a coin he picked up on the side and began playing an unrecognizable game, its sounds muted and tinny.
“The shower should work,” Perry said, already scanning the room with a practiced eye. “I’ll do a perimeter check and take care of preparations for tomorrow.”
He looked at us in turn. “We’ll infiltrate the player base by posing as players running a quest. For that to work, I need to set a few things up.” His gaze lingered briefly on Qilin. “You’re in charge while I’m gone.”
Before anyone could respond, Perry vanished in a blink, teleportation snapping him out of existence.
Snap stretched his arms. “Guess I’ll take the shower first,” he said, but his words cut off as he noticed me already phasing halfway through the bathroom door.
“I’ll be quick,” I said, already inside.
I slipped fully into the bathroom and knelt briefly by the tub, planting a small bug beneath the ceramic ledge where it would be nearly impossible to spot. Then I turned my attention to myself. The stink and grime of the sewers clung stubbornly to my clothes, but that wasn’t a problem. I phased the filth out layer by layer, watching it peel away as if it had never belonged to me in the first place.
I set my clothes aside carefully and stepped into the shower. Hot water cascaded down, and to my mild surprise, there was even soap. I cleaned myself thoroughly, then phased the remaining moisture out of my skin once I was done. Dressed again, I stepped back out just as Snap grabbed a towel from a nearby cabinet and headed in.
Left alone with Qilin, I took the opportunity to look around. The safehouse was stocked better than expected. Hygiene products lined one shelf, canned food another. There were spare clothes in multiple sizes, but I noticed a clear trend toward feminine items, an odd detail that stood out the longer I lingered. As I moved, I discreetly planted a few more bugs, tucking them into corners and behind fixtures where they’d go unnoticed.
“What can you tell me about this place, Qilin?” I asked Qilin casually.
He didn’t look up from the arcade machine. “Not much,” he said. “First time I’ve been here too. We don’t usually operate this deep in Urbanite territory.”
“You have any idea whose safehouse this is?” I pressed.
Qilin shrugged. “Perry’ll tell us if we need to know.”
I glanced at him. “You trust him a lot.”
He nodded without hesitation. “He’s the most cautious man I’ve ever met,” he said. “I’d trust my life in his hands.”
I let that sit, filing it away as the arcade machine chimed softly in the background.