Chapter 120: Chapter 120

Things were not okay.

My journey in the lift started out okay since it was just me, and a secretary looking like woman who got in at the first floor, but at the tenth floor, the woman got out and a whole bunch of people got in.

My disguise was impeccable and actually legitimate (in the sense that we’d gotten the cooperation of a delivery guy who happened to live in the town to help us out there) and if it had just been a crowd of normal people it would have been fine. But it wasn’t.

Artemis Long was the last to enter and squeezed in right near the door with a perfect, unobstructed eyeline in my direction and I desperately wished I’d put my visor down at some point, even if it had looked suspicious. As it was, the lift was too packed for me to raise an arm so I just had to stand there, sweating profusely.

People trickled in and out and the lift continued to rise toward the heavens and at about the twentieth floor I started to have the sneaking suspicion that my own father could not recognise me.

And that caused a different kind of discomfort in my heart.

Would it be best if I could get to my target without being even suspected, of course it would, but for a son who was practically raised entirely by his father to suddenly be... forgotten? No, that was too much for me the bear.

But bear it I did, without even a single glance in the man’s direction as I got out of the lift on the twenty-third floor and headed down the hallway to-

I heard Artemis issue the order but kept walking, heart thumping in my chest.

His hand clapped me on the shoulder and I stopped and turned and thought I was done for.

"You need a security key to get anywhere on this floor," Artemis said with a cold, almost condescending voice. "Who’s it for?"

"Uh, um..." I fumbled with the bag and apparently my mumbling and fumbling were within Artemis’ estimates and he took no issue with it, instead lifting and turning the bag for him to see the docket more easily.

"Hmm..." He squinted. "I’ll take it in."

Artemis yanked the food bag from my hands and took it by the handles. "I’ll take it in. You can..." He waved a dismissive hand at me and went to go on.

He turned back, giving me a stern look.

I gulped and pointed at the bag. "The outer bag is mine," I said weakly. Not strictly true, as it belonged to our actual delivery guy friend, but close enough.

Artemis hesitated a second, then held the bag out to me. "Fine. I’ll lead you there."

I took the bag back. My hands were shaking and I could see that it made him look down on me even more, like I was some incompetent failure of a human being, and that made my blood boil not just because he was supposed to be my father.

I forced a smile. "Th-thank you," I said with a bob of my head.

Artemis turned away again and led the way down the hall with me following about a metre behind. As he said, there was a security door at the end that we went through after he’d tapped his card on the reader and I was suddenly rather grateful for the coincidence that led him to reuniting with my father.

I’d originally been planning on quietly blasting through walls and/or doors, but perhaps I didn’t have to get so physical.

"Do you work here?" I asked, quickening my step to close the gap between us. I had my phone out in my hand and made sure to note each security camera on the ceiling in its temporary memory. Once I’d marked them all, I tapped the ’go’ button and... nothing happened, at least not visually. Software-wise, I, or rather Yidi, had control over those cameras, which was good since I was trusting him to make sure I didn’t get caught.

Artemis eyed me, perhaps noting my non-standard accent, but nodded anyway. "Yes. For quite a few years."

"You must be pretty high up," I said as we stopped at yet another security door. "I mean, you’re free to walk around the building must mean you’ve got lots of assistants to help you out."

A glare this time. Another beep of his all powerful card. "You’re not wrong about my status," replied Artemis testily, "but I’ll have you know that I don’t just delegate everything. You would do well to do the same in your own job. It does not pay long term to slack off."

I kept the smile all through this even though the man clearly had assumptions about my work ethic. I tugged at my sleeves to make sure they were pulled all the way down.

"Ah, so that must mean you must know all about the company - it’s secrets, things like that," I said. "Like what your son really is."

Artemis whirled around in the open doorway but I’d already grabbed him by the shoulder and planted my palm on his forehead. There was a brief flash of light then the man slumped

All the way up my arms, and a little onto my chest, were hand written spells, direct copies of different spells formulated in Kunpeng that we thought would come in handy - temporary magical tattoos, so to speak. You had helped me write them out that evening, among other things. I actually had a few ideas for things we could try in the future.

I caught Artemis before he hit the floor and sat him down on the inside of the door. If things went well, I could take his keycard, then close the door to delay him getting help, but for now, the man was unconscious.

I held my hand out, palm facing the unconscious man, and slowly closed it into a fist. As I did, wispy white tendrils flowed out from his ears and gathered around my fist, waving like fire. I turned my hand and opened and the fire flattened into a circular disk.

I’d seen Choco perform the memory dive spell thing like once, and when I’d first thought of this idea of using it on a The Unity employee in the know to find out where that all powerful being was being kept I thought there was no way I’d remember it. Yet I did. Maybe it’s because we, Choco and I, I mean, are family, blood-related, so to speak.

I gripped the incorporeal disk with both hands and, gently, pulled it wider and wider until I got a proper 1080k view of the man’s memories. Now that that was done, all I needed to do was to somehow see if I could track down a useful memory.

I pulled out a small pocket notebook from my, you guessed it, pocket and slowly began to flip through the pages. As I did, the images in Artemis’ memory shifted from one to another.

Best case scenario, Artemis had visited Choco this morning and I could just suck up all that information, but of course things never turn out as convenient as that. The guy was apparently one of the ones doing a lot of the heavy lifting with that start-up presentation thing so most of his memories from the day and the day before were on that.

I reached the end of my notebook, then turned it around and kept going.

He was a busy guy, this ’father’ of mine, and it took a while of carefully flipping then reflipping through the memories to find anything useful, but even then it wasn’t a proper route to Choco, just a brief report of her status reported by Artemis to Arthur.

I turned my notebook again but even as I continued to scroll backwards in his memories, I started to wonder if I should leave him here and find someone else to mentally probe. I thought, and seemed to be right about, he was high enough ranking to know all about the Nameless Beast and the whole system suppressing the natural flow of energy around the world, but it seemed like I’d overestimated just how much babysitting the system needed on a day-to-day basis.

A movement at the end of the hallway where we’d come in caught my attention and I was only just able to slam the second security door closed right as I saw who had just arrived. Unfortunately he’d seen me too.

I could already hear his footsteps as he ran to the door I’d just closed and I knew it wouldn’t take him a second to get it open since he of all people would be high enough ranking to get it open. If Artemis could get it open, I was sure Morgan could too.

I looked around this next bit of hall and discovered, to my annoyance, that it was a dead end with only two offices on either side. I went to their doors and peered in, hoping for some glass windows I could maybe bust my way through, but instead all I got for my effort was to alert the guy sitting inside the office that there was a very suspicious individual right outside.

I scampered back to Artemis’ unconscious body, now in even more of a panic. The footsteps outside the security door stopped and the door of the office opened and I didn’t think. I just moved.

"Open!" I commanded the memory disc and the flames obeyed, widening and deepening in colour as the image became a portal into the Coil. Fresh chapters posted on noᴠelfire.net