Divinity Rescue Corps
136- Mama Heist I: The Suspensening

The weather had gotten quite a bit colder as our road trip headed further and further north. We went through the border to Canada, further north, and then back through the border into Alaska. It took days of driving, because when you look at maps, it’s always the case that people underestimate how big both Canada and Alaska truly are.

We ended up taking five days to drive the van all the way toward the portal. The story took time to tell, especially with me attempting to water down all the sex that was going on, and how my Pleasure Seeker abilities and levels impacted the events in question. In the evenings I got visitors to my room, or requests to head to the girls’ rooms.

We gleefully talked about the party scene after the god had been cured, and it was wonderful to hear those perceptions that were different than mine. Parties all night, singing, dancing, music playing, more dancing…

“That sounds lovely,” my mother said. “Very romantic.”

“Uh. Yeah. Romantic. I mean, Ivy and Isabelle here reunited after a… difference of opinions,” I said lamely.

“We had a pretty serious fight,” Ivy said. “I made a bonehead decision and nearly lost her.”

Isabelle nodded. “She almost chea—uh… forget I said anything.”

Ivy buried her face in her hands, burning with embarrassment.

“Now, we need to discuss what happens next,” I said, and turned to Cinzy. “You got them?”

“Them who?” My mother asked, probably knowing. I think my mom was a lot more perceptive than she let on.

“The boys,” Cinzy said, and gestured to the phone, which was calling. “We have to stop here because there’s residual mana bleeding through the portal.” She paused. “Yeah, we made it. Are you at the rendezvous?”

My mom leaned close. “Ohh, very spy movie.”

“I’m afraid it’s going to get rough,” I said.

“Oh.”

The Agency building on this side was heavily defended, with security measures nobody on this earth would be able to handle, even with a serious heist planned. There were guard stations, those mirrors you used to check the undersides of cars for bombs, x-rays and infrared imagery to check over incoming vehicles, all kinds of future tech here. There were a couple of stories about hires who’d tried to get their families or significant others into the portal building, only to be caught, stopped, apprehended, and finally disappeared.

If the Agency did not exist, then making you vanish from the planet was not going to be even a slight issue for them.

“We are taking a huge risk here,” I said. “But you’ve already been diagnosed and then in remission several times. It’s clear that your cancer is going to pop up again, and it’s just a matter of when.”

My mother placed her hand in mine. “Christopher—“

“I know exactly what you’re about to say,” I told her. My chest was already tight. “And it’s nonsense. You haven’t lived a full life, it’s not in the cards for you, it’s not destiny, it’s not your time. God isn’t calling you home.”

She blinked and pulled back at the venom in my tone.

“I’m furious with cancer for choosing you. I mean nobody should have it, but you have it. You and Dad love each other, and the only thing messing with this is a clump of cells growing out of control… and the ridiculous cost of healthcare.” My parents had lost their entire savings due to the chemo. I threw my hands up in the air. “Anyway, I had the same talk with all the girls, they said they were ready to do this.”

My mother regarded them, and each of them nodded.

“I had the same talk with the boys, and all three of them agreed too.”

“Even that Drat character?”

“He agreed first, if you can believe it,” I said.

“That… somehow doesn’t surprise me.”

First, we had to get my mother through security.

“The good news is that Alan now has a spell for that.”

“Wait…”

“They’re already inside.” The plan was to have them camp in the temporary barracks inside the Agency portal compound, go into the portal, and emerge back after filling their mana full. Mana required only a few short minutes to refill. They’d also bring a cache of magic items through the portal.

“Once they do, they will have an extremely limited amount of time to use their spells and abilities on this side. Tokens we use fizzle out in about twenty-four hours.”

“All of us will head into the Agency, go through the portal, and come through with Trent and the boys.” Cinzy looked over at Regina, giving her an extra little expression I didn’t understand and I wasn’t sure I liked. “We will initiate the operation minutes after we re-emerge from the portal, but we will call you first.”

“Hang on—” I started.

Cinzy shook her head. “I just notified the boys. They’re making sure everything’s ready on the other side. The clock’s ticking, Fletcher. We have about five more minutes to go over the plan before all of us head inside.”

I bared my teeth at her, and then at the slightly guilty expressions on the faces of all four of the others.

“What the—“

“The rest of the operation goes like this,” Isabelle cut in, steamrolling me again. “We come in with the boys, notify you by phone, and you drive to the entrance. At this point, Alan and Drat will join you and perform the illusion spell to disguise you as Drat.”

“We chose Drat because he will be undetectable once he comes through the portal,” I explained. “I also cooked up some potions that I hope will help everyone keep their magic powers for a little bit once they come through.” The rate of mana loss was fast, and I wasn’t sure Drat could even get out to us with any magic intact, let alone cast an illusion spell or keep the two boys invisible once the trick went off. With any luck they’d keep their magic for at least an hour.

“With all the coming and going, we expect to raise some suspicions,” Ivy went on, picking up the thread, “but Cinzy should have that handled. In addition, we will be creating a small distraction.”

“We did not discuss a small distraction,” I said. What in the frack was happening here? They were changing the plan… no, they’d done more planning without me.

Isabelle patted me on the shoulder. “It’s okay, sport. Everything should be fine.”

Plans with a lot of moving parts generally fell apart. That was why ‘put a mask on my mother and get her through the compound and portal as fast as possible’ was the plan we’d settled on.

“What about you?” She asked me.

“I stay with you,” I said. “I don’t have any special abilities or mana since I’ve been on earth for several weeks. But I do have some Tokens and I can use them if it becomes absolutely necessary.” I shot the girls a look. “Which it one hundred percent should not.”

The girls gave me looks that didn’t make sense. Pitying looks. Like ‘oh, poor Fletcher, too stupid to cotton on to what’s really happening here.’

My eyes shot open the moment the beep sounded and the girls exited the vehicle. Apparently my Ingenuity was up to the task after all… finally. I recalled the several days of fun and sexy times on the way up to BFE Alaska, and what Tara had said.

“I want to do this with you while I still can,” she’d said.

They didn’t expect to make it through the portal with me.

They were out of the car before I could voice my fury.

I turned to my mom. “I think my friends are about to do something reckless and stupid for you.”

***

Mom and I sat in silence for a time, with me thinking about what was about to happen and how stupid I’d been not to see that, and her placidly accepting the way we’d set things up. Or rather, the way they’d been planning this heist behind my back. To be fair, I’d mostly been concerned with my mom and with getting her through, with the need to evade the HQ people once we got through, and then how to make up the cure when we had her somewhere safe. I berated myself for allowing Tara’s remark to slip by unnoticed.

There was every chance that people might be taken into custody, but I’d talked through the plan with them, and we’d all agreed that nobody was going to do anything to get the authorities to open fire on us, or activate any of the other defensive measures they had in place if something crazy happened. Like Nakamamon suddenly being able to exist on this side and pouring through in numbers, or super strong people like Blake making trouble on this side.

The way we’d structured the plan, absolutely no one was supposed to get hurt. But that was my plan… and we weren’t doing my plan any longer.

“I told them no one was worth sacrificing for this,” I said, staring at my hands.

She put her hand on mine. “It sounds like you care about these girls a lot.”

I nodded numbly. “We’ve been through so much.”

“You saved their lives,” she said gently.

“They…” They had saved mine too.

“Nobody lasts long without their healer,” she said. She seemed to know the truth of RPGs without ever having played one: every group had to have one, and every player needed to keep them happy and healthy.

“Ain’t that the truth,” Drat said from behind us.

Well, after both of us jumping about a foot, I looked in the rearview to find Drat there, and not just that.

“Skulkins?” I breathed. “What the heckabaloo? Where’s Alan?”

The very long weasel with the charcoal fur chirped at us and waved one of many paws.

“Oh my goodness,” my mom said. Introductions were quick, because my mom was fascinated to lay eyes on her first non-earth creature. She mumbled quick ‘pleased to meet you’s before reaching up automatically to scratch at the creature. “May I?” she asked Drat.

“Skulkins is his own man,” Drat said.

“I’d like to pet you,” my mom said, addressing the Nakamamon. “Will that be all right?” In response, Skulkins crawled across the space between them, onto the armrest, and paused to let my mother get used to the idea that it was more like a snake than a mammal. Or rather, something like a weasel-centipede hybrid. She didn’t hesitate though, to her credit, and instead petted Skulkins several times before scratching him behind the ears. Skulkins seemed to love this treatment. He curled up in my mom’s lap and exposed all of his long, silky furred belly for more scratches.

“We’ll just cloak her,” Drat said. “It’ll be easier that way. And to answer your question, Alan has a different job. We’re going with Plan Epsilon.”

“Do I dare ask what Plan Epsilon entails?”

“I made it up,” Drat responded.

Well that answered precisely zero of my questions.

Skulkins already had an air of weakness about him, like he wasn’t at full health. This was a creature composed of mana. Like the way people were 70% water, McCauley Skulkins was at least 70% mana, and that was leaking away from him. Drat told me he’d already consumed a few drops of the potion I’d made, and it worked.

I gritted my teeth and shook my head instead of arguing. They had all been scheming without me, because apparently my stipulations hadn’t been to their liking. Stay safe, I told them. Nobody dies, and nobody is denied re-entry into the portal, I said. The only one taking any serious risk is Fletcher, I insisted.

Apparently they weren’t cool with this.

“So we’ll just be getting out then,” Drat said. “Good luck, you guys.”

Alan echoed this in his typical stuttering way.

I nodded stiffly, not trusting myself to say anything nice. Alan and Drat both exited the van and gave a friendly wave, standing there on the side of a dirt road in the middle of nowhere in Alaska. They started walking back south.

When the beep came from the girls, I put the van in gear and drove to the Agency’s compound. Skulkins immediately snuggled further into my mom’s lap, and the two of them went invisible.

“Keep absolutely still and quiet,” I told her.

“Of course, dear,” she responded from next to me.

“I’m serious. I don’t know what they’ve got in terms of listening devices or detection systems, but I’m in danger just talking about this kind of thing right now. So I’m going to stop. All I’ll say is no sounds, no matter what people say or do around you. Stick right by my side.”

They called this a campus, but it wasn’t a campus. A campus doesn’t have tall barbed wire fencing running the perimeter, or countermeasures everywhere. A campus has several buildings, free entry and exit, and that’s it.

By contrast, the compound housing the Agency’s portal building had tall fences, easily twenty feet high, guard towers, and several small prefabricated buildings at the electric gate. The vegetation of backwoods southern Alaska had been peeled away from the compound, and in its place was a stretch of grass to either side of the newly paved road. It seemed artificial and wrong.

I felt my chest and stomach tighten with anxiety as we approached the gate. The gate containing several armed men in digital camouflage, complete with helmets and guns hanging off their necks.

After passing the gate guard my ID lanyard, my mother waited with Skulkins, and I forced myself not to tap on my leg or the steering wheel or the driver’s side door, where I’d lowered the window. Instead I tried to keep still, fly casual, not arouse suspicion.

“Fletcher?” the gate guard asked, returning my lanyard to me. “Christopher Fletcher?”

“That’s right,” I said, sweating.

“Heard good things about your work,” he said.

“Uh… what have you heard?”

He shrugged. “You healed up a lot of people. Did the god of the weird footsteps. And somebody said something about flying around on a lake?”

I tried to make my chuckle sound natural, but my voice cracked. “Yeah. Insane.”

“You’re only two weeks into your R&R?”

“Bonded Nakamamon,” I said. “You know how it is. Can’t stay away long.”

He smiled, but his smile disappeared the moment he heard a soft snort from the passenger’s seat, followed by what might’ve been a weasel making a coo.

“What was that?”

Mentally, pushing past the panic, I tried to manifest my Likability. Distantly, I heard the cla-cling! and saw the twinkle of the coins out of my peripheral vision.

Let this work, I told the universe. Let this work, let this work. The tests using Physicality Tokens had worked: I’d been able to bench press my dad’s work in progress out in the garage. But I’d never tried to use Likability Tokens on people here. Instead I prayed to all the gods I’d resuscitated that I could still boost whatever amount of natural charisma or people-person-ish-ness I had. I didn’t think it was a lot, but you never know.

“I didn’t hear anything,” I said smoothly.

This is Christopher lying through his teeth.