Dungeon Exploiter

Here's what you need to know about the Adjuster. It didn't attack us.

It reviewed us.

Joe went in first with a shield up, by the book. The Adjuster looked at him, and stamped something, and Joe's shield-raise from four seconds ago got denied.

Retroactively.

CLAIM DENIED: defensive action

performed out-of-network.

adjustment applied.

The block Joe had already made un-happened. The hit he'd already blocked arrived. He sat down hard, four seconds late, bleeding on a delay.

"It's editing the fight," Kayla said. "It's editing the fight we already had."

That's the Adjuster. You don't lose to it now. You lose to it retroactively, whenever it gets to your paperwork.

Everyone's health bars stopped being facts and became estimates. PENDING REVIEW, said Tim's arm. UNDER EVALUATION, said the gash on Rob's shin, unsure yet how bad it was allowed to be.

You can't dodge a stamp. The dodge just gets denied.

"Fronts!" Joe called from the floor, map still in his hand, because Joe would file his own funeral. "Two fronts converging on the dock! Ninety seconds!"

The network weather. Still moving. Still renegotiating everything it touched.

Including, I realized, everything.

The Adjuster stood where it stood for a reason. It straddled the border on purpose. One foot in-network, one foot out, adjudicating both sides. The border ran through it like a spine.

But borders here don't hold still. And a thing that lives on a line has a problem when the line moves.

"Rob. If it gets caught out-of-network — all the way out—"

Rob's grin arrived before his math did, which never happens. "Then its stamps are out-of-network procedures. Billed to provider. IT PAYS RETAIL."

New plan, for real this time.

You can't herd weather. But you can herd something INTO weather, if you know where the weather's going, and the man with the grease-pencil map knew to the second.

"East front crosses the dock in forty!" Joe called. "Then nothing behind it for two minutes! It'll be dry! Fully out-of-network!"

So we spent thirty seconds being bait.

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That was the worst part, and Tim was the best at it. He stood in stamp range and swung, over and over, letting his own hits get denied — willing to be edited, again and again, to hold its eyes. Tim would let the machine rewrite him all day if it kept the stamp off the rest of us.

I poke-checked its off hand every time it reached for anyone else. You can't stamp what you can't hold steady.

"Gobi!" I called. "The map! Joe dropped the map!"

The grease-pencil map. Our whole forecast, somewhere on the dock floor with Joe bleeding on a delay.

Gobi went into himself, looking. Wherever Gobi's things go, it isn't sorted.

He produced: a lollipop.

"NOT IT."

A ticket stub. A folding chair I have questions about. A smoke detector, still beeping, which explained a mystery from two apartments ago.

"GOBI. THE MAP."

"GOBI IS ALPHABETIZING."

The Adjuster's stamp came down at Kayla. I got the poke-check in. Eight seconds left on Joe's forecast, and the forecast was in a goblin.

"THE LAMINATED ONE."

"OH. THE SHINY PAPER." And there it was, grease pencil and all, frisbeed across the dock into Kayla's hands. She read the fronts off it at a sprint.

"East front! Five seconds!"

Then the front hit.

It rolled over the dock like a change in management. The shimmer passed through the Adjuster mid-stamp — and the line it lived on wasn't under it anymore.

For the first time in its existence, the Adjuster was standing all the way outside its own network.

It didn't understand. You could watch it not understand. It raised the stamp — routine, eternal — and stamped Tim's next swing DENIED.

NOTICE: adjudication performed

out-of-network.

procedure billed to provider. retail.

It looked at the invoice. It stamped the invoice, denied.

The denial was also out-of-network. It billed too.

It denied THAT. Which billed.

The gray suit sat down on the dock, very slowly, stamping and billing, stamping and billing, a bureaucrat arguing with a mirror at retail rates. The fronts drifted on without it.

When its balance crossed whatever line balances cross, the stamp dissolved first. The rest followed in order of expense.

ENTITY OVERDRAWN.

all prior adjustments reversed.

your fight has been restored to its

original condition. we apologize for

any edits.

Joe's block un-denied itself. His color came back. The health bars went back to being facts.

We cleared the last two rooms in-network the whole way, because Joe called the weather and we walked between the raindrops.

Liya was on a pallet by the exit, tail over her nose, watching me the way she does when I've done something she isn't going to compliment.

"You keep asking permission," she said, "from things that never asked yours."

"Meaning what?"

She yawned. "Meaning nothing. I'm a figment."

Then she was asleep, or performing it, and no amount of asking gets a tiger to footnote herself.

The payout was flat, like the posting promised. Honest money. It went to the funeral balance, like everything.

The gig board had the keynote on again. Same jacket, same crest. DOUBLE ULTRA, most rank ever put in a rank, preorders Friday.

The other reader was there.

I don't know his name. Gray guy, older, reads every posting all the way down like I do. We've traded maybe ten sentences in a year, all of them about fine print. He's the only person at that board who's never once asked me for anything.

"They buried the differential in clause six," he said, not looking up. "Night rates count as day rates if the dungeon disputes the sunset."

"Seen it. There's a worse one in clause nine."

"There's always a worse one in clause nine." He almost smiled. "You look tired, kid. Count your hours like you count your rooms."

Then the board chimed. New posting. Top slot.

CONTRACT — PRIORITY ASSIST. GRADE-B. NAMED PARTY: JON LEE.

I read it twice. The board doesn't do that. Gigs go to queues, ranks, whoever's standing there. Gigs don't do names.

"Huh," said the other reader, already back in his fine print. "Gigs don't do names."

"No," I said. "They don't."