Chapter Thirty-Six - Timothy's Very Bad No Good Coffee Run

I woke up at six-thirty something, feeling super awake and more than a little refreshed. Turns out, keeping my magic use to a minimum and reasonable amount, getting more than eight hours of sleep, and maybe the massage right after a workout, did wonders for making one feel better.

I slid out of bed, did my morning stretches, then did them again just to make sure (because I was certain that I'd need it today) hopped into the shower, then got dressed in loose-fitting casual clothes while scarfing down a pair of microwavable pocket sandwiches.

I packed up all of my gear, making sure to double check that I had everything, and then I was out. The moment I crossed my entrance, I set a Save point.

This was way, way back. I figured, at best I'd save Ojou and be out of the portal by noon, which was still... four and a bit hours from now. That meant that every Reload would be sending me back a long ways, but I wanted to do this right, and that might mean some amount of flexibility.

Also, I had a sneaking suspicion that the mental tiredness that came from looping was partially literal. If I spent a loop sleeping, would it drain away?

The week-long loop I did didn't leave me a comatose wreck when I Reloaded. That was an entire week. Longer than any set of loops I'd done before, and yet some of those sets had tired me out.

So either repeated looping was tiring, or, more likely, high-strain loops drained my mental energy.

The solution then, was easy. Set a Save further back.

The solution came with a problem. The further back the Save, the harder reconstruction steps would be. Also, the longer it would take me to get back to the same point.

Annoying, but with such a high-risk event as what I was looking to do today, the trouble might be worth it. And worse case, I could take a break, spend a loop chilling. Step right back into my own apartment, remove my pants, and watch TV for nine hours while petting Mister Couchtop.

Right, time to get to the scene of the crime.

Since this loop was 100% going to be wasted, I took a taxi all the way over, not even changing out of my casualwear.

The portal was out in the outskirts of the city, in one of the older industrial parks, not too far from a wide river leading into the ocean right next to the far end of Fortress ENE. Happily, it wasn't that far from my apartment. An easy twenty-four minute ride.

On arriving at the site, I was immediately confused. There were some two-dozen warehouses and they all looked pretty much identical to me. I had the taxi drive a circuit around the area, and it's only when I noticed someone suspicious stepping out of one of the warehouses that I figured it was the right one.

And hey, wasn't that an opportunity. "Stop on the street, not too far from that man over there," I said. "He's a friend. Yeah, no worries," I said to the taxi driver.

He didn't care, he was getting paid by the mile.

I stepped out, placed my bag on the floor, then rooted around in it for my revolver. Once I had it in hand I started to follow the man. He was pretty big, six-foot something, linebacker shoulders, neck that was way too thick.

I waited until he was near an alley between two of the warehouses before I ran up after him. "Hey, you the one they sent out for the morning coffee run?" I asked.

He paused, then slowly turned. "Huh?" he asked.

I pointed my revolver up and into his nose.

"Huh?" he asked again, this time with more emotion.

"Into the alley," I snapped. "Quick."

"Who the fuck are you?" he asked.

I frowned. How could I convince this big lug to do as I asked? Obviously, he was taking me a bit seriously, but I wasn't exactly dressed to impress. So I turned my gun to the side and shot a round past his ear.

I almost lost my hold on the revolver. That shit kicked.

The kidnapper (I hoped, otherwise I was harassing some poor nobody) ducked down and brought his fists up. He snapped one forwards, and I only barely stepped back and out of the way.

I retained the gun. "Next one goes between your eyes, buddy," I snapped.

He paused, staring at the faintly smoking barrel. "Fuck," he said.

"Yeah, you are. I've got questions, and I bet people heard that, so now we're on a timer. C'mon, chop chop."

I had my new pal sit on the alley floor, hands in sight while I leaned on the wall across from him. "This is a mistake," he said. "I ain't part of no gang."

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"Sure," I replied. "The Ojou woman, where are you keeping her?"

The way he tensed told me a lot more than his denials.

"Okay, fine. What were you leaving for? You guys working in shifts?"

As it turned out, pointing a gun at someone didn't necessarily make them talk. I did get his ID, from his wallet. Timothy Thompson who lived two districts over from me. Had a driver's license, twenty-nine years old. E-ranker. Not currently employed.

I looked him up, and it seemed like he didn't have too much social media, though he was running with some street gang some six, seven years back, at least judging by the pics. "The Rusties?" I asked.

"What?" he asked right back.

"You've got a big fat tat on your back. Rusties. Ain't that some small-time punk gang wannabes? What, you got promoted from robbing corner stores to kidnapping corpo princesses? That's a big step up."

"You don't know anything," he said.

"So, how about you tell me anything, huh?"

"Don't have anything to tell," he said. He perked up when sirens started to sound, and I think both of us got the same text message.

F-ENE PD: Remain in your current location, if it is secure, for questioning. Prepare to hand over all augment-taken footage. Do not resist the F-ENE PD.

The idiot smiled.

"You... do know that I'm going to tell them about the princess, right? I'm a bounty hunter, dumbass. I'm allowed to arrest you."

I wasn't, and that wasn't how it worked, but Timothee blanched. And then he made a call. "Jack! Shit, I got made, cops are on their way! They'll find the portal!"

I let him talk, taking in what I could. Some guy called Jack was involved, that was nice. They had each other's contact info as well, which wasn't that useful for me to exploit, but it did mean that taking them out would be harder.

Then the cops arrived and I dropped my revolver and got arrested for the first time. I thought I might get a word in edge-wise, but they weren't interested, so... I Reloaded.

This time I headed out to the same place and followed Timothy.

Timothy really was on a coffee run. He headed over to a parking garage two blocks over, got in a van, and I lost him.

On the third loop, I had the taxi follow his van to a coffee place twenty minutes away, then we waited for fifteen while he got a large order. Then it was back to the parking garage.

All in all, Timothy was gone from the warehouse for a solid hour and a bit.

I decided to make that a little longer. The next time, I went to the coffee place and put in a tip one the F-ENE PD hotline that a man fitting Timothy's description had entered the coffee place armed and was trying to rob the place.

Two cops arrived a few minutes later and started asking questions. Timothy was packing, and he didn't have the right permits.

Silly boy.

That was one bad guy out of the picture and all I needed to do was get a burner and put in a tip. Easy-peasy.

Loop four had me entering the warehouse at last.

The interior was rather large and smelled like rust and worksite dust. It wasn't all that well lit, either, just the light from some sunlights in the roof high above, and those were covered by a thick sheet of grime.

I shut the door behind me, then moved along the outer edge, slowly mapping the place out in my head.

It wasn't long before I found what I was looking for.

The kidnappers had moved a few cargo containers around to form a large C around the portal entrance, but it was still... just there. A big old hole in reality, bleeding off enough magical energy that I could feel it from a half dozen metres away.

How had no detectors found it?

Then I continued moving around, looking for people, and as I did, the ambient magic decreased. The cargo containers were large enough to swallow the magic? Interesting.

That did leave some gaps in their coverage, but unless a detector was placed just right, then it probably wouldn't pick anything up. Plus the warehouse likely contained some of it.

I imagined that warehouses with lots of magical stuff in them wafted out some amount of magical energy as well, so that could explain it away.

In any case, I counted two people sitting around outside the portal. A man and a skinny woman.

Now... how was I going to handle this part?

***