Chapter 13: Book 1: Chapter 7 (Part 1 of 3)

The shop I had in mind was called Mike’s Bikes and was two blocks away. I didn’t have anything against Mike, well not really. I had visited the premises once, shortly after I moved to Flint. I had been looking for a low-cost bicycle to help me get about and his eyes had glazed over with disinterest when he learned my budget was roughly seventy-five dollars. He had unhelpfully suggested eBay and then made some excuse about having to check his stock. When I looked at the price tags on the bicycles, I understood that Mike’s Bikes wasn’t the place for my budget.

It wasn’t a good excuse for ripping the guy off, but it was all I had. The takeaway of the story was I knew where his bike shop was and what kind of stock he had.

We walked hurriedly through the streets. Now that we were away from the apartment blocks, we did see more people. Most of them ignored us as they hastily made their way to wherever they needed to get to.

I picked up on there being a steady flow coming from the direction of Broome Park reinforcing my assumption that a lot of people had been gathered there. Although, with so many people on the street, they now appeared to be dispersing.

A young Hispanic family passed us that I vaguely recognised. I think they lived in the block opposite mine. I tried to ask them what was happening, but the father clutched the two kids and pulled them away from us with a fearful look at me.

I belatedly remembered I had a pair of ice scimitars tucked into my belt.

I was about to send them to my inventory and advise Shana to do the same when a teenager I didn’t recognise ran across the road and stopped in front of us.

“Hey, dude. Those are some awesome fucking swords. Where d’ya get ‘em,” the youth opened with.

He was wearing a faded My Chemical Romance T-shirt and a pair of skinny black jeans. His lank hair flopped down his face and looked like it was poking him in the eye. He was clutching a pair of black-rimmed eyeglasses in his hand. Normally I’d have brushed him off but maybe I could learn something from the kid.

“Class perk,” I answered truthfully.

“You lucky bastard. That is so cool. I mean it fucking sucks for me, ya know. The fucking world turns into an RPG and I can’t play ‘cuz I’m too young or summat’,” he rattled off at me.

“Really? How’s that?” I asked.

“Yeah, like, the robot voice dude said you can’t get a proper class or nuffin’ ‘till you turn sixteen. I gotta’ stay an ‘underage civilian’ till then. That’s like over a year, which sucks ball, ya know. All the cool stuff will be done already. I wanna’ kill me some motherfucking goblins and shit. Don’t need to wear my glasses no more, though. That’s pretty cool,” he said.

I chuckled lightly. The world had turned upside down and his biggest gripe was he didn’t get to risk life and limb fighting monsters.

“Whoa, is that, like your girlfriend?” the kid said, noticing Shana once his attention was pulled away from the discussion of my ice scimitars.

“Something like that,” I said.

Shana didn’t disagree.

“You lucky bastard,” he said again.

This time it was Shana’s turn to chuckle heartily.

“Tell me, dude,” I said, getting his attention. “What’s been going on out here? We were back at my place when all this went down.”

“Shit yeah, I was at the park for that sweet, sweet BBQ when it happened. The mayor was there and he just up and lost his shit, dude. Screaming crazy stuff about the end of days. I knew he was a bit of a bible basher, but this was extreme. Scared a lot of the little ‘uns. The Po-Po had to knock his ass out and take his megaphone off him. They told us to stay put till they figured out what the fuck was happening. People listened to the Chief for a bit. Then some dumbass started mouthin’ off about terrorists and gas attacks or some such shit and they started running off,” he explained.

“Interesting,” I said.

“As if Al-Qaeda would gas you with some shit that would make us trip balls. They’d use Ricin gas or sumfing’,” he continued.

“How do you know about Ricin gas,” I asked him a bit worriedly.

“Dude, I’ve got the fucking internet and shit,” he said waving off my concerns.

“Right. Anyway, cheers for the info. You’d best get home before it gets dark. The Framework people said it would be safe for a bit, but I don’t fully trust them at their word, you know. You can’t fight what you can’t see,” I told him.

“Yeah, true ‘dat,” he said and took a few steps past us.

His expression had changed to one of worry. I think my parting comment may have dulled his excitement and got him thinking about the genuine dangers we’d soon be faced with. I felt bad enough about it that I did something on the spur of the moment.

“Yo, kid,” I said, turning around.

He stopped and faced me again, “yeah man, what you need?”

“Here,” I said.

I formed a short Ice Blade about a foot long and held it out to him, hilt first.

“Don’t tell anyone I gave you that, okay? Also, word to the wise we’ve been attacked by a few pets gone bad, so give any wandering strays a wide berth,” I said.

He accepted my gift eagerly and swished it about. “Yeah, no worries,” he said absently, barely even glancing at me, a big grin on his face. His focus was solely on his new weapon.

Shana and I started walking again.

“You’re a big softie,” she whispered as we walked.

I snorted my disagreement.

We reached Mike’s bikes after a couple more minutes. The shutters were down at the front of the store. I peered through the grating for long enough to confirm there was no power and no sign of anybody inside.

“How are we getting in?” Shana asked. “We’re a bit exposed here on the street.”

“There will be a door around the back,” I said confidently.

We moved two stores down and there was the alley that led to the back of this row of buildings. It always amazed me that these gaps were the kinds of things that people walked past day in and day out and our brains kind of ignore them unless we are looking for it. I led Shana down the alley, and we weaved our way past the garbage which had been left out and would likely never be collected.

Finding the back of Mike’s Bikes wasn’t hard. He had painted the shopfront a bright orange and either out of a need for completeness or because he had paint left over had done the same to the back entrance. The back door was locked with a flip latch that was padlocked. With Shana acting as lookout, I retrieved the crowbar from my inventory.

Rather than trying to snap the padlock itself which looked new and sturdy, I targeted the flip latch itself. I wiggled the flat bit of the crowbar’s crook in the small gap between the flap and the door from underneath. Then I levered the crowbar down. My first attempt didn’t snap the lock, but it did bend the latch a bit. This let me get even more of the crook into the gap and my second attempt popped it off the door easily.

I opened the door, drew one of the scimitars, and moved in quietly taking a quick look about. There were no alarms or security cameras to worry about without the power. My only concern was perhaps Mike, or a member of his team had been working late and chosen to hunker down here. That or maybe he had a guard dog.

My concerns proved unwarranted as the shop was devoid of life. I returned to the back and whistled to get Shana’s attention. After one last scan of the alley, she rushed to join me inside. When she was inside, I closed the door behind us.

“Welcome to Mike’s Bikes,” I said in a hushed voice.

“Why are you whispering? Is somebody here?” she asked quietly.

“No. I suppose it’s just a natural reaction when you’re about to commit a crime,” I said at my normal volume.

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Shana lightly punched my arm for my flippancy.

“Okay, to business,” I said and led the way into the front of the store.

There was an array of fifty or sixty bicycles on display, all different styles and sizes.

“These look good,” Shana said as she walked over to a rack of bicycles with five-inch-thick tyres.

“Those are Fat Bikes,” I said. “You’re on the right track, but they aren’t best for our current needs.”

“Oh,” she said with disappointment.

“What we want are the Mountain Bikes,” I told her and pointed to an adjacent rack further down the wall. “Those Fat Bikes are good for sand and snow as they distribute the weight, so the bike doesn’t sink too deeply. However, they are also heavier and require more energy to pedal if we’re on the road, which hopefully we will be for the most part. Normally for road cycling, I would have recommended the high-performance racing bikes…”

I pointed to the other side of the shop to the carbon fibre bikes designed for speed and which cost several thousand dollars each.

“…but we might need to go off-road if there are any road blockages and the dungeon isn’t in the town, so the Mountain Bikes are the way to go.”

“Sounds good to me. How do you know so much about bicycles?” Shana said.

“Couldn’t afford a car, so I did my due diligence on what was best for an urban environment and only then found out the price tag on these,” I said.

I picked out two bikes that were the right size for us. Mine was midnight blue and Shana’s red. Then I had Shana add a backup of each to her inventory. At one point she looked like she was about to select one that was a horrid fluorescent pink and I worried I may have to step in and pull rank, but she went with a more tasteful burnt orange selection instead.

“You know what, let’s take a fat bike for each of us too. We have room in your inventory for them and if we need to make space, we can dump them later,” I said.

Shana smiled and quickly touched a couple of the big bikes and they made a popping sound as they disappeared to whatever dimensional pocket formed our inventories.

“Is that everything?” she asked.

“We should grab a few spare tyres, bike lights and some repair kits from behind the counter and some of those,” I said and snapped my fingers.

I was pointing at a black cylindrical rack by the cashiers’ desk that had a selection of paper maps. This was the secondary reason I wanted to come here. I remembered seeing the maps on my first visit and without a data connection we couldn’t use our phones or look up google maps.

There were plenty of maps for Michigan state, of course. Luckily there were maps for the surrounding states as well as Ontario. I separated a set for Shana to store and then added the rest to my inventory. They were made of paper and we might need spares in the future.

Our raiding done, we exited out the back of the shop and into the alley. As soon as I stepped out of the building, I received a prompt.

You have committed an act of theft in a law-abiding town. Your shroud effect has obscured your illicit activity.

Value of stolen goods approximately 100 Gold.

+51 XP and +1 notoriety, Torin. +56 XP, Shana.

This was unexpected.

“Quixbix, will I always get experience for stealing?” I asked the imp as Shana and I navigated a path past the garbage in the back alley.

<Yes, Torin. As a corsair it is a cornerstone of your progression, so you are rewarded for it. But only if you do so from other sentients and where it is against the law. Also, there will be diminishing returns as you gain levels, you will need to steal more to get the equivalent XP.>

“Okay, so I was rewarded as Flint is considered Law-Abiding,” I said to myself mostly.

<Correct. And may I say it gladdens my black little heart to see you act in such a way. I also want you to know I understand why you didn’t clean the place out, with limited inventory space and all. I can’t wait until we get our ship and have somewhere to store all our lovely loot.>

Shana and I shared an askance look at my imp’s larcenous glee.

“Is there anything you can tell me about these legal settings,” I said to distract him.

<Yes. The leader of every settlement has a choice of one of four options. Law-Abiding you know about. They have a set of laws that apply to all equally and have an organisation dedicated to enforcing them. The second setting is Anarchic where the community agrees to a set of laws that apply equally to all, but it is the individuals or the community as a whole’s responsibility to enforce them. Third, is Despotic which also has laws and an organisation to enforce them, but the laws do not apply to an elite group. Finally, there is Lawless, and the name pretty much explains that setting.>

“Who gets to make these changes?” I asked.

<Admittedly it is a bit muddled on worlds that are freshly integrated into the Framework. Control is technically up for grabs during this transitional period, but established and recognised leaders can assume control if they know what they are doing.>

“So, we’re talking about the town mayors and the state governors, maybe even the president,” Shana said.

<Yes, Shana.>

“What about the senators and the representatives in Congress?” I asked.

<I’m not an expert on Earth hierarchical structures you know> Quixbix complained.

“Sorry Quixbix, it’s easy to forget you may not be as familiar with our culture being new to our world,” I said.

<Apology accepted. I know what a senator or a representative is but not much else, as I was given minimal information on your former convoluted democratic system. The Framework will have simplified things and as I wasn’t updated on how they could potentially fit in. This probably means they don’t.>

“Damn, there are going to be some super pissed career politicians on Capitol Hill,” Shana whistled.

“Worse than that,” I said. “It sounds like Tricky Dicky as the Governor can assume control of Michigan and make himself above the law.”

Her eyes widened as that possibility sunk in.

“There’s nowt’ we can do about that now. Get your bike out, we are going to ride back up to Corunna Road and then head west,” I said as I summoned and mounted my bike.

“Are we leaving Flint tonight?” she asked with some concern.

“Nah, I don’t want to be out in the open after dark. We’ll only be going a few miles down the road,” I told her.

“Maybe we should go back to your apartment for the night?” Shana suggested.

“As a last resort, sure, but I don’t really want to backtrack if we can avoid it. I have a place in mind. Though it may not be what you expect,” I said enigmatically.

With that, I sent my swords to my inventory and pushed off. Shana followed suit except for the bracers on her forearms and was soon riding up beside me, the wind catching her hair and flapping it about. We were on the move.

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