Chapter 18: Chapter 1-1

When I was five I had what I’d call my first awakening to consciousness. I have no memories from before that point in time and to be honest, I don’t really have many from that time either- but that’s besides the point.  My very first memory is of being disappointed I wasn’t allowed to get ice cream despite being told I could. I have no idea where we were coming from or where we were going, but I can remember sitting in a booster seat in the back of a car pouting and thinking- in much simpler terms- how I had been betrayed and lied to. 

 

The second oldest thing I can remember is enjoying a bowl of cereal. That’s it. I wasn’t even thinking about anything. It wasn’t even all that good.

 

The final thing I can remember from that period is a brief snippet of my mom and dad talking about what I now assume was one of mom’s cases. She was generally frustrated and complaining about how hard it was to work as someone’s lawyer when you knew that they were guilty. Since then I have pieced together the case in question was a lawsuit against a now-rebranded food company for unsafe working conditions that lead to the deaths of thirteen employees. The company wasn’t charged with anything in the end, but did have to rebrand due to the public backlash.

 

My next period of consciousness was a few years later when I was in elementary school. I have more memories from this time, but only a few complete- and none that feel like me in the way I know myself now. We were being lectured by our teacher about cheating and how it’s a bad thing to do. Instead of just agreeing and moving on, I was thrown for a loop. The concept of gaining an unfair advantage was so foreign to how I was raised, but also so intriguing. When I got home that day, I used the small amount of time I was given to use the internet looking into this topic. The more I found out about common strategies and that it could be applied to more than just school, the more I was fascinated.

 

In my naivety, I thought cheating would help me do better in school. I can tell you now that despite my preparations and schemes, I was a good enough student that I never needed to execute on any of them. The exercises in cheating did get me familiar with the concepts of lying, acting, and sleight of hand, though- which were unintentionally encouraged by my parents' enthusiasm in whatever I was doing. They only saw my poor attempts at street magic as an interest in that, not a building urge to skirt the territory of what was allowed. 

 

In later years, I got pretty good at card tricks- both for performance and for gaining an advantage in a game- and expanded my repertoire to other questionable hobbies. At first, my parents were concerned when I expressed interest in lockpicking- but when I explained I was fascinated by their mechanics and puzzle-like nature, they calmed down. Obviously, I wasn’t just interested in opening locks for recreational purposes. 

 

I never got in trouble for my new hobby, but there were a few times where I was escorted out of places that “should have been locked, sorry for our negligence potentially causing your concerns as parents- I know how it is when your kid just disappears.” That was back when my parents were still unknown in their fields. And when I hadn’t quite realized the quite real trouble my hobbies could get me into.

 

By the time I was a freshman in highschool, I had picked up pickpocketing, urban climbing, and an aversion to being in the spotlight. While the first are just two continuations of my previous hobbies, the last one came about when I was in middle school. Both my parent’s careers picked up- which boosted our socio-economic standing and public visibility. Motorcycle racing wasn’t- and still isn’t- that big in the public eye, but through winning a few important cups and looking attractive, my dad landed a few acting jobs. This in turn led to people recognising him more and more- and with my mom’s clients getting more high profile, I was exposed to a lot of attention. I hated it, so I started to put effort into looking and acting uninteresting.

 

With my newfound abilities and belief in my maturity, I jumped at the opportunity to break into a cleared Breach site. Was it incredibly stupid? You bet, but this was the apparent apotheosis of my self training. The sites were cordoned off by temporary fences, regularly patrolled for leftover demons and people breaking in, and full of goodies that would tempt people to do so. While I didn’t see another living thing during my time sneaking around, it was the most fun I’d had in years. The fact I acquired a few valuable items in the process certainly helped as well.

 

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A few years and excursions after that, I had become part of a weird online-auction based fencing scheme and was making a few thousand dollars off every trip into Breach or construction sites, abandoned buildings, and the occasional after-hours office. The money was nice, but I didn’t need it- I just wanted chances to exercise the skills I had been practicing for so long in ways that weren’t sneaking candy into people's pockets or my professor’s locked offices. This group also introduced me to a few of the anonymity-first crypto currencies, which I quickly adopted as a way to hide cashes of money in a myriad of accounts on the off chance I needed to withdraw some money on the sly.

 

Then, I was hit with Grave’s and all that fun needed to be put away until I was healthy again. My exposure to the doctors at the now ruined hospital-resort catalyzed my general resentment to be more focused on the falsely-generous and those in positions of power- which is why I was cautious about being brought to wherever the MGs that had gotten me out of that cell were bringing me.

 

Despite outward claims or marketing, every group of MGs are closely tied to their local or national governments- in some cases being the local government. Everything from access to military training or equipment, to subsidies, to tax breaks are given at the cost of a little oversight. And the government has many people whose job it is to look into the secrets of people of interest- which obviously includes MGs. I had no illusions that if I wasn’t currently under investigation, I would be very soon. I had never been caught in the act of trespassing or theft, but if someone was dedicated and lucky enough they might be able to make some connections between the account I used to sell items and me. Or between my anonymous bank accounts and me. Or something else I couldn’t think of. The possibility reminded me of those tabloid stalkers that used to creep on my family.

 

While I was trying not to show my concern, Emily came up to me and said, “when we touch down, you’ll have to deal with some formalities. Most of them can be put off until tomorrow- or I guess today, but after you get some real sleep. They’ll probably draw some blood then put you in a medical bed to keep watch over you, but it shouldn’t be too bad. Any questions or requests?”

 

After a bit of thought, I replied, “Yeah, one for now. Can you not tell my parents what happened?” Then as a probe at how connected their group was, I added, “maybe keep news of the Breach quiet if that's possible. I don’t want to worry my family or have people figuring out who I am- I hate being the center of attention.”

 

With a slow nod, she said, “We should be able to do that… The Breach was out of the way and the cluster is still ongoing, so there will be a few more in the next couple days- one of those is likely to open in a more important area. Even if we do nothing, it’ll probably be buried anyway.”

 

Before we could talk any more, the pilot announced we were about to land so Emily and John had to secure everything and go back to their seats. Once we landed, it was a whirlwind of filling out forms, talking to people, and waiting for things to process before I was finally taken to the medical building. As Emily had guessed, they took some of my blood to run some tests and gave me a small room to sleep in. From the little I had seen of the area while being whisked around, it was an eclectic mess of official government looking offices, boxy military facilities, and fancy college-style buildings centered in a fairly normal looking town.

 

The town itself was fortified at the edges and positioned around a bay on the western end of the northern island in the Cascadia Special Zone’s archipelago. The rest of the island was left uninhabited for whatever reason, and from what I could see while we were landing the other six trailing south looked fairly similar but with a single very military facility instead of a town on each.

 

Before going to sleep I asked Cleo- who had been silently watching the whole time, “Can you go scope out the area? I would like to know the general layout of the area and if they have somewhere we could make those prosthetic eyes you mentioned. Oh, also wake me up at five-thirty, please.”

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