Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 133: Unpleasant Revalations

It was only after the confrontation that Isaac had realized he was still wearing his Halloween costume, but then again, the fact that he’d managed to intimidate a hardened spy in an outfit that ridiculous made a rather strong statement about his abilities.

By the time he’d reached the university, the costume was completely gone, though. It would have drawn an annoying amount of attention. Besides, he’d have drawn plenty of that anyway if he hadn’t been using [Sneak] to fade into the background.

… which was a hell of a lot less effective against people specifically looking for him and further lost in effectiveness against someone who actually knew him.

So when the shout of “Hey Isaac” reached his ears, there was only a very short list of suspects even before he recognized the voice.

“Hey Sam.” Isaac greeted him at a more reasonable level of volume “What’s up?”

“I missed you, man.” Sam exclaimed, affectionately slugging Isaac’s shoulder “You weren’t here when we threw the party to celebrate your victory in Korea, but I think we can arrange to have another one now that you’re here …”

“I’ll have to take a raincheck, I’m afraid. I’ve got a lot of work to catch up on. A lot.” Isaac bade off.

“I think you work a little too much. Come on, you can’t spare a couple of hours to have a little fun? Hell, you can sober up in a matter of seconds and be fine afterwards!” Sam suggested “Blow off a little steam, maybe even find a little company? You know the whole world saw you on TV as a hero, right?”

“I’m well aware.” Isaac said, barely able to suppress a sigh “But I’m way too busy, sorry, maybe later. I’m also already too late for my first day back, so … anyway, it was good to see you, but I gotta go.”

And with that, he jetted off towards his faculty’s building.

As he ran, Isaac was cursing his past decisions, ever having gone to that damn frat party in the first place.

There was a reason he and Sam had lost touch in the first timeline. One of them was diligent at everything he did and enjoyed the occasional burst of hedonistic excess to blow off a little steam. The other spent most of his time arranging the parties that were filled with said excess, doing little but that.

Isaac had craved that feeling of freedom from burden of his responsibilities when he’d received that invitation and he’d had the time, so he’d grasped that responsibility with both hands. Hell, he’d even left his weapon behind, for crying out loud.

Later on, he’d gone to the frat for a second time, for yet another party, and then never returned.

That whole thing … was not him anymore. He was a different person now, and quite frankly, far too old to be going to frat parties. As fun as that drunken chaos had been for him in his twenties, once he’d stopped seeing it as a way to reclaim the innocence of the past, it no longer held any appeal.

Besides, there were far more adult parties happening in other places, like the Dungeon Guild, Camelot, or the general slew of diplomatic meetings. These ‘parties’ ranged from the extremely formal to something akin to a modern re-interpretation of a medieval feast, but were generally more his speed. It had taken him a while to reach this point, but he could admit that.

… even if Sam and his fraternity probably thought he was ‘lame’ now.

Isaac reached his destination in a matter of seconds now that he was moving faster than walking speed, but then he froze. The whole place had changed. Massively.

First of all, the main building had finally been completed, reaching its full height of ninety meters, almost enough to qualify as a friggin skyscraper.

Four massive summoning rooms were still in the basement and hadn’t changed any since they’d been broken in during the first event, as well as the team’s offices.

The ground floor was mostly one massive entry hall/museum with a bunch of ‘trophies’ from their various efforts.

His first Zweihänder, broken when a ‘The Crusher’ had fallen top of it.

The Hydra-skin handbag they’d made for Bailey as a prank.

And several preserved plants from the various Hunting Grounds.

Many of those things were, of course, replicas. The sword was real, but its real value was sentimental, and the same went for the handbag. Many of the other decorative objects would have been massively expensive as hell if sold on the open market, had they been real, and securing everything to the same level as the sword and Zweihänder would have gotten expensive.

The floors above contained a myriad of offices and labs, though all the labs were meant for pretty basic, non-destructive experiments. Genetic testing, dissections and necropsies, things like that.

The [Chemists] under Professor Chandler made things go boom in another building, the one right next door, which hadn’t been there when Isaac had left. It only had a ground floor and a basement, but was almost completely made out of [System] materials and reinforced to the nines by [Skills]. A half-kiloton blast from the inside might be able to break it. Might.

However, there were also a couple of rooms with the same ungodly level of reinforcement that were clearly being used by [Engineers] to avoid blowing up their regular workshops.

Behind the main building was a small underground chamber to be used for hunting grounds. Basically, a staircase that led twenty meters deep and ended in a five meter corridor with a couple of storage rooms on its sides. That way, the monster horde created by a destroyed Hunting Ground would only be able to escape single file, and right next to a building that housed some of the deadliest people on the planet. As long as everyone made sure to be careful with the Tier of space they summoned and didn’t get too greedy, there wouldn’t be any trouble. That had already been there, though.

The same went for the greenhouses that had finally been finished while he’d been gone, edifices of bullet proof glass and air filters as befitting something that housed species that were alien to this world. Though apparently, if you ignored the safety features straight out of Sci-Fi, it apparently was a near-precise replica of Munich’s Botanical Gardens.

What was new was an entire village being built in what had been a grain field the agriculture faculties had been using for experiments and unless Isaac was very far off base, it looked like that was going to be a crafter village. When the saw the map that had already been put up so people could later find who they were looking for though, it became abundantly clear that it was his crafters that were being relocated.

… and then he remembered he’d actually talked to Bailey about that a while ago. Basically, everyone Isaac had gathered and many more besides were being offered free housing, courtesy of the university’s [Engineers] and [Geomancers].

Building mere residential houses was absurdly cheap and in fact, they’d been offered for free for anyone who had the requisite abilities, moved here, and were willing to reserve a few slots for commissions specifically for the university. A similar deal to what Isaac had with them, though right now, he’d let his team use most of his timeslots.

And even further out, trees had been razed and parcels drawn out for the construction of even more buildings. By the time all things were said and done, the campus would most likely end up doubling in size.

With an expression of awe mixed with a massive grin, Isaac headed downstairs and into the team’s very own conference room.

The lower floor of the [System]-sciences faculty had originally been intended to be the core of the whole affair, but in the end, it had been almost entirely taken over by Professor Bailey and his direct subordinates.

Hence, the meeting room had very much become their meeting room, with everyone having their own chair, personally selected, a minifridge with everyone’s favorite beverages and a bunch of personalized decorations, whose number had only grown while he’d been gone, on the walls.

Between the leather seats, the table that Raul had grown and now appeared to be a massive slab of extremely expensive hardwood, and the monster trophies/weapons on the walls, it now looked like the lair of a supervillain. And while that impression was obviously wrong, it was also awesome.

“Honey, I’m home!” Isaac hollered, using [Perception Block] to make sure the sound didn’t travel up the stairs while the noise cancelling built into the structure itself prevented it from going through the concrete. This joke was meant for his colleagues and dear friends, not the random strangers on the upper floors.

“I’m not wearing the right kind of jewelry for that joke, you do realize that? … you do, right?” Patrick asked dryly as he emerged from his office, holding up his hand and waggling his hand. There were three enchanted rings on his fingers, none of them on his ring finger.

“Was that a joke?” Amy asked, emerging from the wall behind him, then fixed her eyes on Isaac “Hey, you came back just in time to witness a miracle, Patrick found his sense of humor!”

Patrick shot her a dark look, but Isaac just threw his head back and roared with laughter.

A moment later, a dinosaur-bird appeared in front of him and nudged him with its beak.

“Hey Brisa, missed you to.” Isaac said, and patted the Microraptor on its head.

“I think she mostly just missed the Aspects you get for her.” Raul called as he marched closer, arms spread wide “Welcome back.”

The pair of them hugged for a moment, then separated.

“I give those to you, though.” Isaac observed “How does she know they’re my Aspects?”

“She’s a smart little dinosaur, ain’t you, Brisa.” Raul replied, pulling the Microraptor on his shoulder and petted her.

“It’s great to see you.” Bailey exclaimed as he finally reached the group “How was your trip? Did you manage to do what you wanted to?”

“Mostly, yeah. Things are looking up, but there are a bunch of things I need to talk with you guys about. Where’s Karl?”

“Blowing stuff up in the mad scientists’ lair. He’ll be here soon.” Amy said, and Patrick added “That’s what the building that houses the laboratories hazardous and explosive materials ended up being called.”

“To be fair, that’s exactly what it is.” Raul said “Stuff shouldn’t explode during the course of normal experimentation, even I know that.”

“Hey, we’re not that bad.” Karl called down from the top of the stairs, having just arrived “We haven’t damaged the lab even once since we got it.”

“And how often did Professor Jäger’s [Accident Simulation] trigger and show you just how destructive an experiment would have been if the cooldown [Skill] hadn’t stopped it?” Amy shot back, a statement that was met with silence.

Isaac knew [Skills] like that, one’s that could stop experiments or crafting processes as they started to go off the rails, then show the person conducting said thing just how badly things would have gone if it hadn’t been for the arcane intervention. A lifesaver for the enterprising [Engineer], and given that those people were playing around with some of the most energetic materials in the world, a truly mandatory [Skill] for everyone who could get it.

“Anyway, good to see you Isaac.” Karl greeted “Did you have at least a little fun? I mean, it was supposed to be a holiday, right?”

“I went mountain climbing, but I can tell you guys about that later. For now, I really need to talk to everyone.” Isaac gestured to the conference room “Shall we?”

A mere moment later, they were all siting around the table, with everyone else staring at him expectantly.

“The reason I was late today was because I discovered that my family was being watched by the German government.”

He took a brief pause to let them react, but they kept their cool, so he continued.

“I managed to get in contact with the boss of the agent in question and he reassured me that they’re just there for their ‘protection’ and I believe that is true to a certain degree, but there’s also a certain implied threat to the whole affair. Now, I don’t think it’s possible to watch someone’s family without telling them and not be at least a little creepy, but it’s still not a good sign that they didn’t tell us.

“As the guy I spoke to put it, I ‘make a good friend but would be a terrible enemy’ and I think that’s a good way to describe all of us. They know how bad going after our families or using them as collateral could go and how much our current level of cooperation benefits everyone, Germany included, but it shouldn’t hurt to remind them of that occasionally.”

“Sounds like you had it better than I did.” Bailey commented “I’ve been contacted by every agency with even the slightest amount of skin in the game about how I should ‘come home’ and ‘have some patriotic pride’, with some darkly ambiguous comments thrown in. I’ve lived in this country for twelve years, ever since I came here for my studies, so I moved my folks here and put a stop to all of that. If I catch any German spooks sniffing around them … they can either become an official security detail or back off.”

Suddenly Amy began giggling, then tried and failed to stifle her mirth as the others turned to look at her.

“Ok, so my stepdad is a conspiracy nut, and now he’s got he [Class] to go along with it. He recently started claiming his [Skills] were telling him he was being watched, but it sounded like he was nuts as usual. And he’s cried wolf so often that no one listens to him anymore, the one time he’s actually right …” she ended that explanation with another burst of giggling.

Yeah, Amy did not like her stepfather, that had become rather apparent even from the handful of times she’d mentioned him.

“I think my parents will be flattered when they figure it out.” Patrick added “Then again, they haven’t figured out I work for the finest research group in the country, so that might take a couple of decades.”

“That isn’t going to be a problem for my folks, they’ve got their own bodyguards.” Raul shrugged “They might not be intelligence agents, but they’ve been with the family for a while, they can handle things.”

Ok, that was … interesting, and explained a lot, but wasn’t germane to the situation at hand, so Isaac filed it away for later.

“And what about you, Karl?” Isaac asked.

“What does it really change, in the end? I’m going to keep working as I always planned to, and if anyone tries anything, there’ll be hell to pay. Domestic intelligence agents, foreign intelligence agents, the Mob, doesn’t matter.” Karl said grimly.

Isaac grimaced as his friend echoed his thoughts. Nothing to do but hope nothing went wrong and take brutal revenge if it did.

“Anyway, now that that’s out of the way, I brought presents.” Isaac announced and began pulling stuff out of his spatial storage.