The next day we made it through Oklahoma, the bit of Texas that sticks up North, and half of New Mexico. We stopped in Albuquerque, because I was absolutely fried and was going to crash us into a wall if I had to go any further, and it was... fine. Probably there was something somewhere in the city that was beautiful and unique, but I was too tired and cranky to go looking for it. Mainly it just reminded me of certain parts of Phoenix.

As was becoming a routine, we found a shitty little motel where we could pay in cash and unloaded our things. The others all went out, and I volunteered to guard the bags while I slept - I was unsure why driving was so exhausting, since all I had to do was go straight, but it had worn me the fuck out. I drifted in and out of consciousness, noting at one point that Katrin was in the bed with me which meant everyone had made it back okay. I had dreams about Bill, where he was either handing me off to Greg, or saving me from him, or just random scenes where we were all there.

In one, we were in his kitchen - I was making mac and cheese - and he was trying to explain how gravity affected the noodles. His kitchen was the diner, and Greg was standing in one corner in the waiter outfit, glaring at us. Across the room, sitting in a booth, was Tony. He was trying his best to cover his face with a menu, like he was hoping we wouldn't notice him. As I was bringing the mac and cheese over to a table, I saw that there was a hat rack by the door with that helmet on it - the one the mystery man in Brinkmar had been wearing. I asked who it belonged to, over and over even though it was clear that nobody was going to answer me. Each time I asked I felt more and more like something was sneaking up on me, and then I realized the mac and cheese was ringing.

Except no, that was a phone. It was morning, and Errod was calling.

It was specifically my phone, which was a bad sign; he was treating me as the leader for the Earth stuff, so this was probably something relevant to official business rather than an offer to go get us all donuts or something. "Oh gods," I said, "what is it? What's the emergency? Who's here to kill us?"

He was in the room next to us, with Grunkle. If he'd wanted to, he could have come over. Or just yelled through the walls, they were plenty thin. "After the girls went back to the motel I thought I saw someone watching us - no, I know I did - but I lost track of them at some point and convinced myself that it was nothing. Now... there's something going on. There's a suspicious vehicle in the parking lot, and some men putting on strange vests."

I went over to the window as Katrin stretched and yawned on the bed, and peeked past the blinds. There was a big black SUV, and four guys. They were... mismatched. Two were in camo, one was in all black like he wanted to pretend he was a ninja, and one was just wearing normal clothes. They were all wearing hats, mostly trucker caps, although one was a ridiculous floppy-brim hat that looked super out of place for a goon. All of them had sunglasses on, and three out of the four had their faces covered. The vests they were putting on looked like tactical vests, but they didn't quite match either.

I could see POLICE ICE on the back of two of the vests but not the others, and from where I was standing I couldn't see any badges or body cameras. It smelled fishy. Why would they have their faces covered? Why wouldn't they have proper matching gear? Human Calliope had said something about ICE while she was doom scrolling, but I'd been avoiding the news so I wasn't sure what she was talking about. Whatever it was, it didn't seem likely these guys were on the up and up.

Even if they were Coelestis goons, though, it's not like we could just murder them without consequences. I put the phone on speaker. "Guys, we might just be fucked. There's no back way out, and if there's any chance these guys are legit government agents then we don't want to deal with killing them. You all look foreign, and don't have any kind of legal paperwork. We also have some strange shit with us, and gold, and... fuck, this looks really bad. And our vehicle is out there in the parking lot."

We ran through a few plans. Katrin could blast a hole in the wall, but it would be loud and messy and might collapse the whole place if we were unlucky. We could absolutely take them in a fight so long as they didn't just shoot us all on sight, but then we'd be on the run from the government. We could try to bribe them with the gold, but they'd almost certainly just try to take it and still arrest us. As the four men approached Errod and Grunkle's room, I explained some things about zip ties and hung up. The bags were all in our room, because they'd gotten back too late to bother grabbing their shit, so they just had whatever was on them.

I heard the door break, and then there was a lot of yelling. Honestly, it was unreasonable; if Errod had wanted to he could have kicked their asses, but they weren't yelling 'oh god, oh no, why is my arm bent that way' or anything like that. They were yelling conflicting orders about staying still and laying down and similar garbage even though the lack of gurgling had to mean Errod and Grunkle were cooperating. I couldn't stand to just listen to that shit, so I decided to peek through the wall.

My ghost had stayed tucked away inside my body during most of our visit to Earth, but it only took me half a second to pop it out and send it through the wall. I kept low, and only pushed my head through enough to get a look at what was going on. The masked agents had Errod and Grunkle's hands zip-cuffed behind them, but were still pointing guns at them anyway. One was patting them down for weapons, though after a moment one of the others had to pull him aside and take over because his technique was absolute shit. I was getting the impression that at least two of the four were new at this.

I could see now that one of the men that weren't labeled as ICE had a patch saying he was with border patrol, which seemed a little odd more than two hundred miles from the border, but I wasn't exactly an expert. It did lend some legitimacy to them, in a strange way - if Coelestis goons had been dressing up as law enforcement, surely they would have all made sure to use the same uniforms. It did appear that I was right about the lack of body cameras, which seemed like a good thing.

Was there any way out that didn't involve killing these guys? I'd never been a fan of law enforcement, and I wasn't as opposed to killing as I probably should have been, but it still felt dangerous to jump to just murdering four people in a motel room. They were clearly too hostile to talk to, but even if they weren't what would I say? "No, it's fine, they don't have legal status because they're not from Earth! I couldn't have possibly gotten them a visa, because we entered the country via a magical portal through another plane of reality."

That would go over great.

Non-lethal was theoretically an option, but these guys were going to make that very hard. They were waving guns around even with Errod and Grunkle kneeling and zip-cuffed, and one was making "joke" comments about hoping they tried something so he could blow their brains out. In fantasyland, if I hit someone hard enough to knock them out so I could tie them up it wasn't a huge deal; they could be healed, and would make a full recovery. Here, if I clobbered someone in the head with enough force to make them black out they'd be pretty likely to have brain damage, or - if they didn't get it treated - die a day or so later from a brain bleed.

I couldn't just let them carry us off, though. It seemed like they didn't know about anyone but Grunkle and Errod, since all four had clustered in the room or by the door without even trying to secure the other room, but if they took even one of us away we were in trouble. Well, fuck it. I had to do something. Overt attack could get us shot, especially by the under-trained aggressive guy, but maybe I could cause some sort of distraction or... oh. I stepped out through the wall, standing between two of the masked men, and screeched at them.

This being Earth, they presumably hadn't seen an actual ghost before. They didn't handle it well.

I'd been expecting the one guy to shoot, but two of the four opened fire at me despite being in a small space and their buddies being right in the line of fire. Seeing a real-life banshee was just too much for them, I guess. The bullets went right through, of course, and while they were wearing armored vests that didn't mean everyone laughed it off. One just staggered back as the impact cracked his ribs, but the other was hit right in the throat and collapsed as he tried to clamp a hand over the wound.

Errod's hand was popping back onto his wrist, the zip-cuffs dropping away, and I saw Grunkle's wrists swelling to rip his cuffs away as well, but I gestured at them to stay down because right now if they moved they were getting shot. The government guys - assuming that really was what they were - were yelling and screaming and didn't seem like they were at all getting their shit together. I snapped my ghost back to my body, because I could do that slightly faster than normal movement, and then sent it back out to peek through the wall and watch the chaos.

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The one without a mask was still basically outside but clearly had seen what had happened, and was pulling the relatively uninjured shooter out of the room. "Jesus, you fucking shot him! It was a fucking Halloween decoration, what the fuck is wrong with - hey! Stop filming! Put down that cell phone!"

I couldn't see who he was talking to, but it sounded like good news to me; if someone had gotten him on video saying that we weren't the ones shooting that was great. I didn't particularly want any of us on camera, though. They got their bleeding friend out, ignoring Errod and Grunkle for the moment, and I started trying to predict what would happen next. Surely, they'd camp in the parking lot and call for an ambulance. Thinking Grunkle and Errod were secured, they'd leave them there for the moment which would give the boys time to smash a hole in the back wall - I hadn't wanted to do that, but with the spectacle of an injured cop bleeding out in the parking lot for a distraction it was less risky.

They did not follow my prediction.

Instead, two of them pulled the bleeding man into the SUV while the last one ran in, put a gun to Grunkle's head, and hauled him out there too while yelling at Errod to follow. Okay, not a problem. Grunkle could kick this guy's ass and throw him into the parking lot, and then they'd have to just leave because they already had a dying dude in the car. Then we'd be back on track - on a better track, in fact, because the parking lot would open and we could all just run to the shuttle bus and get on the road. We'd maybe have to ditch it later, get a new car, but that wasn't an insurmountable problem.

They did not follow my prediction.

Grunkle just... went with the guy. It took me a moment to even realize he wasn't fighting, but then I popped into the room all the way and ghost-hissed at Errod. "He's going with them?"

Errod looked confused and a little panicked. "I don't know! You said to not get shot, and he had a gun to Grunkle's head. I was hoping you guys had a plan in there. What is Katrin doing?"

Katrin was yelling at me to give her more information. I'd been giving her a play-by-play, but she wanted to know if she should disable the vehicle, and how safe it was to try and damage the barrel of the gun with her metal-snapping spell, and if we were worried about people seeing magic. I couldn't answer those kinds of questions quickly enough. If I'd made any progress with getting back into Nusos, maybe it would be a simpler answer; in a pinch I could do a jailbreak and ditch any amount of heat by stepping away from Earth and coming back halfway around the planet. But right now, with our current situation?

Everyone else was looking to me, as the Earth expert, before they made any moves. I had to make the call. "Let them take him."

It wasn't that I wanted Grunkle to get fucked over. I didn't like Grunkle - or more specifically I didn't trust him - but he was part of the group and I didn't want him getting vivisected. The deciding factor really was just that I needed the parking lot to be clear. I couldn't have us sit here while more and more law enforcement rolled up, nor did I want to have us all get pulled into a televised chase across the city. I blurted out a shortened version of that to Errod so he'd understand.

Errod either didn't understand, or he disagreed. He ran out the door, hands in the air. "I'm coming peacefully," he yelled, "don't shoot!"

What the actual fuck. Why was everything going wrong? Why was nothing happening like I expected it to? What was Errod even thinking? I watched as he climbed into the SUV, and there was some sort of commotion - was he starting a fight in the vehicle? But then my translation bracelet clattered to the asphalt as the door slammed shut, and they drove away. Oh. He was going after the bracelet? Hmm. Well, it meant Grunkle couldn't say shit to them, which was probably for the best, and it meant that they wouldn't have their hands on a magic item. Except... well, they'd have Errod's glove. They were sure to try and take that off his hand pretty quickly, and then there was the strange bit attaching it to his wrist as well.

Other than shutting Grunkle up, was there more of a reason to go with them? It had made sure they weren't immediately coming back, if they were only after Errod and Grunkle. And... oh. It meant I could follow his fate thread. That was actually super important. "Okay, uh. Zoey! Come with me. The rest of you, grab the bags and be ready to go but don't go outside yet."

There was nothing we could do about whoever had been filming. I could try to find the person and take their phone and hope it hadn't been streaming live, but that seemed like a lost cause. Instead, we had to make sure the rest of us weren't on camera anywhere. I went to the front desk with Zoey, where the lone employee was already on the phone with someone trying to explain that there had been an incident. I explained the plan to Zoey, and then as soon as she was out of view I got in the poor bastard's face.

"There were gunshots!" I yelled. "Gunshots, just a few rooms down from ours! I want a refund, and I need to check out immediately, I do not feel safe here." Really, Zoey and I were doing each other's parts. She would have been a better Karen, and I would have been better at sneaking around. Sadly, I needed her to be the one to try and fuck with the video recordings since she had some sort of bullshit hacker powers via the Common Local Understanding. Or... whatever it was that was going on with her.

She'd tried to figure out her limitations. She got only the bare minimum of muscle memory, so it wouldn't be any good for shit like fighting. She also sometimes lost it in the middle of doing something, which generally wouldn't be a problem but meant she didn't want to rely on it for spur of the moment decisions. She'd really enjoyed using it for things like the security and computer systems at Coelestis, and had - for the first time - been able to teach Matlyn a few things about plants. For right now, the biggest potential problem wasn't a limitation on the ability but on the basic limitations of hacking; she'd warned me that in plenty of cases there simply wouldn't be an easy way to get into a given system.

It was totally possible she'd sneak into the back and find that the computers were all locked and up to date and nobody had written their password on a sticky note. Anything could be hacked with time, but part of that was getting people to use a random thumb drive they found in the parking lot or click on a link you sent them or something like that. Still, it was worth having her check. Between my yelling and the phone conversation the guy at the desk was plenty distracted, but while Zoey was able to get back there she returned a moment later shaking her head.

I stepped away and let the man get back to his phone conversation so I could find out what the problem was.

"The cameras are old as balls," she said, "which is a very good sign that the video is stored locally. But the door is locked - I know you have those lockpicks you found in the hardware store, or antique store or whatever the fuck it was, but I doubt I could use those quickly either."

Right, she'd gain the knowledge of how to pick locks without having actually learned the feel of it or something. "Okay, what am I looking for?"

"They camera feeds will all go into a single box, which might have the drive in it or might be connected to a drive. You can look at where the wires are coming in, and see if one is labeled as going out instead. The drive could be a lot of things, but probably in this case it'll be a pretty plain rectangular box rather than a computer or something. About this big?"

I tagged her in, and she started crying and explaining that her father was shot. As I snuck past and found the door, I could hear her clarifying that no, he hadn't been shot just now, but this was still very triggering for her thanks to that memory. I pulled out the lock picks and got to work, starting with a wave rake and... immediately getting the lock open in two seconds. Huh. I slipped inside, and quickly found a box with tons of cables going into it. I started unscrewing them from the back, making sure they were all just "VID IN" followed by a number. When I was done I turned it around all the way and got a better look, and while there was an OUT port it hadn't had anything attached. I read the old peeling sticker on the front of the box that talked about its features, and saw "500 GB" listed. Good enough for me.

I tucked it under my arm. The front desk guy was still very distracted, but more people had arrived and would see me. Well... fuck it. I just tucked the box under my arm and walked out. It wasn't like the random people would know I didn't work there. I ran back into our room to help with the bags, we all piled in, and I pulled out of the parking lot before switching Threadsight on. Finding Errod wasn't trivial, since the thread went right through buildings, but after a little trial and error I got us to a hospital where... Errod and Grunkle were just being transferred to another vehicle.

He looked over at us, having spotted the vehicle, and just gave a confident little nod as they shoved him into the back of a van. Matlyn was more upset than anyone else; Katrin was just focused, muttering to herself as she thought of and discarded possible spells. I parked, since I didn't think it would be a good idea to attack them in traffic anyway, and put on the mask human Callie had given me. Not surprisingly, it fit perfectly. "I'll be right back, they've abandoned their SUV and I want a look inside."

I was still not fully convinced these guys were on the up and up. Saying the vehicle was abandoned was a bit of an exaggeration, since one of the men was standing nearby, but he was talking on a phone and not even close to looking at the car. I made it to the SUV no problem, and opened the driver's side door. There was a sort of computer built into the center console, like I'd seen in cop cars, and they'd helpfully left it up. I didn't know what I was looking for, exactly, but I took a moment to try and see what I could figure out while watching the remaining guy through the passenger side window.

Jackpot. There was a photo of Grunkle, and... huh. I knew where the picture was from. I'd seen it back in New York, when I was on the Coelestis Acquisitions computer. It was a photo the agent there had obtained, from when we were in the subway. I skimmed over the sparse information on the screen, and immediately saw what I was looking for. Anonymous tip, MS-13 gang member likely smuggling drugs. May be with six other gang members. May be heading to Phoenix, AZ from New York.

Of course. Coelestis had been running a skeleton crew, for whatever reason, and so they'd farmed out our capture to the government. Was Phoenix a lucky guess, just based on it being the other Coelestis location? Or did they know we were coming somehow? Either way, I doubted they were just going to let Errod and Grunkle sit in a cell somewhere.

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