The Simulacrum

~Chapter 143~ Part 4

"My goodness, Leonard! Why aren't you resting?"

Gowan, the sociable Head Artificer of the School, continued to mother-hen me as we waited for the elevator car to reach the underground facility. I ran into him just as he was about to leave, and he not only decided to turn around and accompany me, but he never stopped pestering me either.

"I truly mean that! Do you even know what time it is? You really should be sleeping right now."

"I'll have plenty of time to sleep after the heat-death of the universe," I jested, but he didn't get it. Shaking my head, I deflected the topic by asking, "You should practice what you preach, you know? Why aren't you resting yet?"

"Well, I would be, if we didn't meet up there," he answered with a huff while readjusting the loupe on his forehead. "I'm not the one who had to capture assassins, fight a Colossus, and stop a war today!"

"Colossi. Plural," I pointed out with just a smidgen of a hint of a shadow of a smile. "There were six of them."

"All the more reason why you should take it easy!"

I wanted to point out that I didn't actually fight those (well, technically I kind of did, as Bel, but that was beside the point), but I didn't get the opportunity, as the elevator doors opened with a soft ping, and the conversation naturally petered out as we headed deeper into the School complex. Our (or rather my, as Gowan was only tagging along on his own) destination was the holding area on the third basement floor.

In retrospect, just Phasing there would've been much more economical, but then I would've had to explain how I got in, why I did it while avoiding getting noticed, and so on, which was a pain in the neck. It would've still taken less time than walking through the corridors, and even using the stairs, but that's just how the whole 'pick your poison' thing worked.

Anyhow, since Gowan remained mostly silent, I had time to think, and there was soon an odd question rearing its ugly head in the back of my mind: I have often complained about the Simulacrum having an inexplicable obsession with underground bases and facilities all around the island, but now that I understood my connection with the Narrative, was this also my fault?

…

No, I was pretty sure it wasn't. I kind of played into it by picking the abandoned bomb shelter as our base of operations, but the rest wasn't on me. Not even on Narrative-me. I could nudge the plot, and people, if necessary, but this felt like it was a different matter entirely. Kind of a… division of labour kind of way? Was there another-me out there, responsible for worldbuilding?

In point of fact, now that I thought about it, wasn't The Man of the Emergents I saw in the no-black not-room particularly insistent on terminology and setting details? Maybe he was the one in charge of that. Maybe I should ask him when…

"One thing at a time," I whispered under my breath to shake the thought out of my head, and Gowan raised a brow at me in reaction.

"Could you repeat that? I didn't quite catch it."

"Don't mind me, I'm just mumbling to myself."

"It must be because of the exhaustion. Yet another reason why you should put your feet up."

"Sure, sure. Right after I'm done here."

That finally satisfied him, and before long, we reached the holding area in comfortable silence. The friendly artificer headed inside ahead of me, and the moment I followed, the room fell silent.

"Whit th' hell? Whit urr ye daein' 'ere at this oor?"

"Hello, Duncan," I greeted him back, purposefully ignoring the fact his string of complaints and glancing around.

We were in a large, grey concrete chamber. The side with the door through which we arrived was completely bare, while the others were covered with metal bars, with three cells on each side. It both the bars, the metal doors, and the insides of the cells looked like budget versions of a modern prison block, but considering the eye-watering glow of magic surrounding every square centimeter of every surface, I was sure this place was more secure than Alcatraz in its heyday.

Including me and Gowan, there were now five of us in the central room. On my left, Sir Duncan, looking even grumpier than usual, folded his large arms and was looking at me attentively. On my right, Lord Grandpa and Lord Taika were no less intrigued by my visit, though the former was a tab bit more annoyed than the latter.

Then, there were the occupants of the Cells.

"Ah, bonsoir!" A short man with a handlebar moustache greeted me with a toothy grin. While he, along with all the other would-be assassins, were wearing the hand-me-down tracksuits of the Knights, it would've been impossible for me not to recognize him as the power-armour-wearing bastard from before. When I didn't greet him back, he cocked his head to the side. "Or is it bonjour already?"

Completely ignoring the aggressively French mad scientist, I approached Lord Grandpa and nodded in his direction.

"Is everything in order?"

"I feel like I should be the one to level that question at you." He made a vague gesture at the cells on our left, which housed a bunch more people, and while they were also wearing plain tracksuits, it didn't take a genius to deduce that they were the Celestials causing a scene at the playground. "I was informed there was an internal altercation among the leadership of Elysium. I did not expect you would have the leisure to visit my School, especially not at this hour."

"Yes, yes, it's very late." I rolled my eyes to emphasize my annoyance with the topic. "For your information, the situation in the Elysium was already resolved."

"Really?" Lord Taika interjected, looking rather shocked by my words.

"Let me jalouse. Ye gaed thare, 'n' beat th' crap oot o' a' body wha didnae sit doon 'n' listen tae ye. Am ah in th' richt ballpark?"

"Surprisingly enough, you aren't," I answered the big guy with a smirk, earning me a huff. "It's not that important though. I'm here to ask if everything was fully resolved. Were there any casualties?"

"Our staff suffered a handful of minor injuries, but nothing debilitating or life-threatening," Lord Grandpa answered first, and the female arch-mage followed him up with a thoughtful him.

"The civilians were also uninjured. We also… negotiated with the authorities."

"Due to the large scale of the battle, fully covering up the entire incident may prove to be impossible without employing mind-altering mystic arts, and even so, the process may take weeks," the old man griped as if already seeing the mountain of work on his plate.

"Fortunately, there were no recordings of the events. I did my best to cover up the battle, but the School of Illusion still has its limits." Taika paused, and after pointedly looking at me, she added, "At least, most of the time."

"Let's hope everything stays under wrap then," I concluded and then jerked my head towards the Celestial captives. "Can I ask you to keep those guys in custody for a few days? At least until the situation in the Elysium is fully sorted out." Lord Grandpa nodded and we both turned to the cells on the other wall, more or less in unison. "As for these guys…"

"Just un instant!" the prisoner in the front cut in with a hastily raised hand. "How about we… couper la poire en deux, so to speak?"

"… What?" I blurted out without thinking, and Duncan let out a soft scoff.

"Th' bas says he wants tae mak' a deal wi' ye."

My head snapped to face the big guy, and it took me quite a bit of effort not to sound too incredulous.

"You speak French?"

"Ah picked up bits 'n' pieces ower th' years."

Duncan's tone was almost bashful, but his expression said he was quite pleased by my reaction.

"Ah, indeed. A… compromise, oui?" The imprisoned sharpshooter implored me with a grin right out of the handbook of a used car salesman. "Our first meeting was désastreux, but as they say, l’habit ne fait pas le moine! If you can look past our small désaccord, I can prove myself!"

Levelling the flattest gaze I could at the man, I let out a looong breath.

"You tried to shoot me. Twice."

"L'accent est mis sur le terme 'tried'."

"… Duncan?"

"He sa' he didnae hit ye, sae tis braw," he translated, in a manner of speaking.

"I am beginning to develop a headache from this," Lord Grandpa whispered in the back, and I couldn't exactly make fun of him this time. Between Mr. Handlebar Moustache's violent Frenchism and our Sir Minotaur's rather… esoteric accent, it was easy to get lost in the conversation. Anyhow, I turned back to the prisoner and narrowed my eyes even more.

"You did manage to shoot one of my friends while trying to assassinate another. You can't just handwave that away."

"Ah, but they did live, didn't they, the petites saucisses! Let's not get bogged down in such désagréable details. De l'eau a coulé sous les ponts, eg?"

"Wat'r under th' brig, he say," Duncan translated without any need for prompting.

"No, it's really not. There's a limit to how much I can overlook," I said in a firm tone and turned to the arch-mages. "This is getting us nowhere. Can I leave interrogating these clowns to you?"

"That was our intention from the very beginning." Lord Grandpa's voice was practically dripping with irritation, as if I just stepped on his toes. "We are more than capable of finding out the identities and whereabouts of the people supporting this group on our own."

"I wasn't implying otherwise; I only asked because neither the Ordo Draconis nor the Elysium can currently do that, for various reasons."

For the former, we didn't really have any interrogation experts, with maybe the exception of Snowy, on our payroll, while the latter… Well, let's just say that leaving these guys, who tried to assassinate Deus (and to a lesser degree, me) in the hands of the Celestial Intelligence Network was just asking for an 'unfortunate accident' to happen to them.

"Don't worry, Leonard. We'll share everything we draw out of them with you," Lord Taika reassured me, while the Frenchman in the back objected with a voice full of industrial-strength indignation.

"W-Wait! Just a minute! Can I speak with Wissenschaftler?"

"Why?"

My honest question made him pause, and he tentatively answered, "Because… If not for népotisme, I could've been the one hired by the archi-sorcier here! If now for that, our roles could be reversed right now! I'm sure he'll montrez-moi un peu d'empathie!"

I glanced at the aforementioned 'archi-sorcier', and Lord Grandpa, in a rather uncharacteristic display, didn't meet my eyes.

"Did you seriously plan to hire this guy in the past instead of Fred?"

"It was indeed in the cards," the old man answered a touch hesitantly and absent-mindedly rubbed his face. "Those were, without a doubt, simpler times."

Ignoring how Lord Taika was having a hard time holding back a chuckle, I turned to the imprisoned mad scientist again, and told him, "Well, I guess we dodged a bullet with that one, didn't we?"

"Haud yer haurses! Wis that a pun!?"

"Maaaybe?" I responded coyly, and this time, Taika actually burst into laughter, much to the chagrin on Lord Grandpa. Her expression proved to be infectious though, and soon, even Gowan and Duncan were chuckling. Maybe it had to do with the tension of the day finally dissipating. I wouldn't know, because I most definitely wasn't grinning along with them.

But alas, with this, the loose end was almost completely tied up, and I had other places to be, so I promptly told our not-so-sharp shooter, "I'll mention your name to Fred, but even if he vouches for you, don't expect to get out of jail any time soon."

The man nodded with a hint of relief, and seeing that the main reason for my visit was officially concluded, I got ready to move on. Just leaving all of a sudden would've been rude though, so I first looked around and asked, "I've been wondering, but where's Ammy?"

Of course, I could've just checked with Far Sight, but that would've ruined the point of the small talk, now wouldn't it?

"I had instructed her to head home and rest," the old arch-mage answered as if I was asking something absurd. "It was already well past her customary bedtime."

"A very sensible thing indeed," Gowan interjected and lightly patted on my back. "One Leonard should definitely follow, don't we all agree?"

"Ah think it wid be better tae say we shuid a' git some shuteye awready, nae juist him," Duncan grumbled, and Taika nodded in full agreement.

Like that, our little group left the prisoners in their cells and headed upstairs. While Endymonion and Taika broke off from our group and went to the old man's office, Gowan very insistently shepherded me and Duncan out of the complex, and would've even gotten me a ride if I couldn't convince him otherwise. Seriously, he was being unusually overbearing. Did I look that exhausted?

Putting silly questions like that aside, I bid farewell to the big Knight (he said he still had something to take care of in the Constable Inc. headquarters), I followed the usual routine by picking a deserted spot on the street first, and after ensuring that there was nobody else around, I Phased right into my room.

 The moment I arrived, I practically fell onto my bed and stared at the ceiling for a solid five minutes to collect myself a bit. I was dead tired, but with some effort, I pushed myself up and exhaled hard. While I only did the bare minimum, I tied up more or less every hanging plot-thread that could get tangled up if left alone. To be safe, I did a quick Far Sight roll call, just to make sure everything was in order. My girlfriends were sleeping. So were my sisters, Ammy, as well as Josh and Angie in the Elysium. I would have to pick them up in the morning, but that was for later.

The Abyss was still blissfully unaware of what happened, so I quickly crossed Crowey and his cronies off my checklist. The chief directors were also, surprisingly enough, on their best behaviour. Or maybe they were just too tired to scheme at this hour. Others were still active though, as Jaakobah, Kale, and Gideon (aka, the head of the Department of Military Affairs) were still cleaning up after the surprise almost-civil-war. Speaking of which, I checked on Mike and Moose, but they were both asleep already; probably tuckered out after playing mission support for the Archonists for the night.

Last, but not least, I Far Glanced at Sir Percival. He was still unconscious, in one of the more guarded chambers of the Dracis mansion, and he was hooked up to a respirator and a bunch of monitors. Needless to say, he was in bad shape, but he should be happy he wasn't dead. Of course, that meant that once he woke up, I would have to put the final nails in his proverbial coffin, since the cat was out of the bag regarding his betrayal and Celestial connections, but I would cross that bridge when I got there.

For now, I had one last task for the day I had to accomplish. One that I really, really didn't want to do, but it was absolutely necessary. For a second, I wondered if I should watch a couple of funny animal videos on the internet first to center myself, but I exiled the idea from my frontal cortex. There was no reason, or excuse, to drag my feet at this point, and it was probably better to give it the band-aid-ripping treatment than to pussy-foot around the problem any longer.

As such, I inhaled, long and deep, raised the only unique, slightly stubby phantom limb among my plethora of ethereal tendrils, and exhaled the words, "Welp. It's time to take another peek… and maybe introduce myself, I guess."

And then, with a careful stab, I entered the space-between spaces. Now, I just had to find the not-dark not-room again, and then… and then I would have to wing it, I supposed. Wouldn't have been the first time, and wouldn't be the last.