Chapter 334: Chapter 322 – The Hunt Begins

Serenity followed the young man through a maze of identical-looking corridors to a door near the end of a hall; just a little farther on was an exit. Serenity knew he’d want to find out where that door led when he left, so that he could find the room on his own next time.

The young man rapped on the door, then opened it without waiting for a response and shooed Serenity in before leaving. The talking Serenity had heard through the door was stilled as the four people already in the room looked up from the map on the table and stared at him.

Serenity was suddenly glad he’d chosen to come to the meeting armed and armored in his human form, even though the armor had an opening in the back where his wings should be and he couldn’t use the boots since they were built for a digitigrade leg. Everyone in the room was armed and armored as well; it looked like a SWAT team as much as anything else.

After a moment, a tall, older-looking but still fit black man stood and stepped towards Serenity. “Serenity Rothmer? I’m Lieutenant Smith.” Lieutenant Smith seemed like the kind of man you could depend on; only time would tell if that initial impression was true or if he hid an inner weakness. Serenity hoped it was correct.

He held out his hand; Serenity shook it. “Yeah, I’m Serenity.”

The first to speak was a lithe-looking asian man; Serenity couldn’t get much of a feel for him, because all he said was his title and name. “Officer Nguyen.”

To his left was a fit young white man who looked like he was probably fresh out of the Academy. He even sounded nervous as he greeted Serenity. “Jones - er, I’m Officer Jones. It’s good to have you on the team, I, I really admire the work you did in New York City.”

Serenity shrugged. “I got lucky; everything fell together.”

“Hah! Like any of us would believe that.” The voice was harsh, clearly a smoker’s voice, and it belonged to the red-haired woman on the other side of the table. When she stood and walked around the table to shake Serenity’s hand, he realized she looked stronger than any of the men present, including Serenity. He thought she’d beat him in both height and muscle mass even in chimera form; she was clearly proud of it, too. “I’m Officer Surrey. Yeah, you got lucky, but you took advantage of your luck. Not everyone can do that.”

Serenity was struck by the diversity of the group. They could easily have been an advertising poster or the actors for a diversity-aware TV show. He wasn’t foolish enough to comment on it; that seemed unlikely to be why these specific people were chosen.

“Welcome to Task Force Kangaroo.” Lieutenant Smith’s voice was dry. “As you’ve probably guessed, the four of us all have been through the Tutorial and we all picked combat Paths. Paths that seem to be more useful for actually fighting than for subduing an opponent, so we’re not well suited for the UART teams.”

Serenity remembered that UART was the acronym for the team Lancaster headed in New York City; the term must have spread. They handled people who were too dangerous for the regular police who didn’t have a Path.

He couldn’t remember what the acronym stood for. Urban-something-something-Team, maybe? No, that didn’t sound right, it wasn’t Urban.

“That sounds pretty useful against the Sterath. Do any of you have stealth Skills?” Serenity was willing to bet that Lieutenant Smith didn’t, and it seemed unlikely for Officer Surrey - though sometimes the big bruisers did go after stealth Paths; the ones that did could be terrifying.

“Me.” Officer Nguyen seemed to not want to say much.

“Don’t worry about him; he just doesn’t want to pay for more words, so he doesn’t use them.” Officer Surrey ostentatiously winked at Serenity.

Officer Nguyen rolled his eyes but didn’t say anything. Maybe Officer Surrey was onto something there. Serenity didn’t really care as long as Officer Nguyen would speak when necessary.

“Yeah, he’s our scout. Surrey’s our big bruiser; Jones is fast, but only when he’s close. I’m ranged support; I can add magic to my gunfire. Can’t seem to do it for anyone else, wish I could. Then we could all stay back. Not sure what your role is; you were pushed on us because of politics. I’m hopeful you can be useful anyway.” Lieutenant Smith didn’t sound particularly hopeful.

Serenity nodded. It wasn’t a well-balanced team, but it was better than he’d expected. Unfortunately, the biggest thing they were lacking was a healer, and he couldn’t cover that role. “I’m a bit of a bunch of things. I can do a lot with magic, but it takes time; when we don’t have time, I’m short-range or melee. Self-healing only; I can’t heal anyone but myself but I can survive almost anything.”

Serenity paused then decided to go for it. “I hope we don’t have to test that. It’s really unpleasant to heal a major injury.”

“This is going to be awful. We might as well get started.” Officer Surrey waved Serenity over to the seat next to her.

“Why awful?” Serenity had more than half expected to be going in alone; having four other people to share the task didn’t seem like a bad thing.

Surrey gave a quick double chuckle that didn’t sound humorous. “Combat in a city is always awful. The one good thing is that the only person here likely to be causing collateral damage is the Lieutenant, so it’s only going to be awful. Could be worse.”

Lieutenant Smith sighed and tapped the map. “We have seven locations that are highly likely, six probables, and a handful of maybes. The goal for today is to scout the locations starting with the maybes; we want to eliminate any that aren’t real. These three are the first ones I’ve selected; based on the conversations with the prisoners, there’s a chain of houses from the invasion portal to their headquarters, but we weren’t able to uniquely identify any of the houses. Once we know which of these three has Sterath, we’ll be able to narrow down the options for the next one.”

Serenity looked up at Lieutenant Smith. “Conversations with the prisoners? Are they already talking?” Serenity hadn’t expected it to be that easy; it hadn’t been all that long.

“You hadn’t heard? I thought you were the one who captured them.” Officer Surrey bluntly butted into the conversation.

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“I was, but I’ve been out of the loop since then.” He’d been busy dealing with the echoes, then Ita, then Rissa arrived, then the echoes again… yeah, he really had been busy, hadn’t he?

Lieutenant Smith gave Officer Surrey a look and a slight shake of the head before he turned back to Serenity. “Turns out the Sterath don’t have much concept of opsec. Once we figured out that they’d only talk to soldiers, we had soldiers keep them company whenever they were awake. They were very willing to talk. We couldn’t exactly take them over a map of the city, but we could record everything they said and mine it for details; I understand there are a couple dozen people working on that.”

Serenity pulled up the map he’d created with Ita and compared it to the one on the table. All of the locations he’d determined with Ita were on the map; the seven “highly likely” locations were the ones they’d been confident of. Either the two Sterath had been more forthcoming than he thought they could be or someone had combined their information with Serenity’s and used them to hide the existence of another source.

Serenity knew which way he was going to bet on that one.

The three “maybes” that Lieutenant Smith had indicated as the first targets included one of the “possible” locations he’d found with Ita and two other locations they hadn’t guessed. “Is there anything else we need before we go?”

Lieutenant Smith shook his head. “You were the last thing. Much as I’d like to have time to integrate the team better, we don’t have the time. We’re going to have to do that on the job. Let’s get going; we’ll be driving to a couple houses away and dropping Nguyen off…”

It wasn’t until Serenity caught a glimpse of Nguyen slipping through the shadows, nearly invisible, that Serenity realized he’d been wrong. He did have a stealth ability as long as there were significant shadows. He’d even used it.

All it took was shifting his shape. He moved slower, but unless people were looking for moving shadows, they wouldn’t see him any more than most people would see the shimmer and distortion that revealed Nguyen as he moved.

Serenity thought he’d have been able to find Nguyen even with the window up, but with the window down it wasn’t a challenge at all. Serenity could see him even without Eyeless Sight, but Eyeless Sight helped a lot; knowing there was something there helped him find where to look for the distortion. His stealth was really pretty good for visual-only stealth.

It was Nguyen’s job to sneak up to the house and see if the people there were human or Sterath. They assumed that if there were humans there and they seemed unworried, the Sterath weren’t there. If Nguyen didn’t find any humans or they seemed like they might be behaving because they were terrified, the whole group would leave the SUV and they’d investigate the house.

Lieutenant Smith had a stack of warrants; the Sterath testimony had been considered good enough and someone had gone through the steps to get them. That was all Serenity knew about it, but it was enough. Wasn’t it?

Nguyen slipped up beside the SUV. He was still “invisible” as he stopped beside Serenity’s open window and the shimmer vanished, leaving only a faint haze where he stood. “Hello.”

Serenity heard the others in the car jump a bit, startled. Hadn’t they realized Nguyen was there?

Serenity turned to look out the window. “Didn’t find anything?”

Having broken his stealth, Nguyen was completely visible again. He seemed disappointed. “No Sterath. Why didn’t you jump?”

“You walked up beside me and said hello, why would I jump?” Serenity let his words hang there for a moment before he smiled. “I have an ability that lets me see where solid objects are; when you’re hidden, it’s like you’re made of very clear glass. There’s some distortion, more when you move. The thing is, I can tell where glass is or isn’t, even if it’s really clear.”

Nguyen hopped into the front passenger seat. “Does that mean you’re a Perception build?”

Serenity opened his mouth to scold Nguyen for asking before realizing that would be silly. He’d invited the question with his comment and anyway, they were teammates. Teammates were entitled to know some things. “No, well, yes and no. I’m a true hybrid. That includes Perception. That’s not what let me see you, though.”

“I meant your abilities.”

“Oh.” Serenity took a moment to consider the question. “Yeah, I’m a hybrid there, too. It’s an eclectic mix of stuff.” Melee, magic, sight, and some other things that were even more esoteric (what was Gaze of the Origin, really?) even before he considered his monstrous abilities.

“It must take a lot of Paths to be a true hybrid.” Officer Surrey grinned from the seat next to Serenity. “I’m going to have to take at least one more before I move to my next Tier, I don’t want to think about what it’d take to get all the stats up.”

“One per stat, more or less, depending on your Paths,” Serenity agreed. “You do get basically a free stat every Tier, but it’s best to use that at the end when you know what needs filling in.” He glanced around the car. “Are none of the rest of you valuing Perception? It’s tremendously useful. It’s not just your eyes, you also see a lot of other things.”

“Nguyen’s our scout. I punch things.” Officer Surrey said it like that was the end of the matter.

“And what do you do when someone sneaks up on you while he’s off scouting?” Serenity had seen it happen more than once.