Chapter 39: Let’s Start A Riot

“Who are they?” Thomas’s voice most certainly did not come out in a squeak. At least, that’s what he told himself. “More ‘family’ friends?” He leveled a glare at Zach.

“Dunno, but probably not. Unless they’re some rival family. But then why would they be following you?” Zach turned to get a napkin under the guise of looking around. “What are they doing now?”

Thomas had not shifted his attention from their followers for a moment. “They’ve gathered in a group. I think they’re talking about something.”

Zach brightened a little. “That’s good.”

“How is that good? You said it was a hit squad. They’re probably talking about how to kill us.” He looked around. “Should we run for it? Go to convention security or something?”

“Chiillll.” He pushed down with one hand in a classic slow-down motion. “If they’re gathered together, it means they’re not communicating with someone higher up. They’re talking things out, probably trying to figure out why the two of us are talking over hot dogs, which means they might not know exactly who we are, or we aren’t being specifically targeted outside of being strong level twos.”

“My nephews would call that copium,” Thomas grumbled.

Zach flashed a grin at him and offered the last third of his hot dog. When Thomas shook his head, he shrugged and ate it himself in two bites. “Far as I can tell we have two options: we head for the exit and deal with it if they try to stop us, or we create a little distraction and slip out.”

“First one’s out. If we head straight for my car, they can look at my license plate and find my registration. I’m not leading these people, whoever they are, to my brother and his kids.”

“Distraction then.” He tilted his head. “I could start a fire.”

“Absolutely not,” Thomas said flatly. “You don’t know who could get hurt.”

Zach looked mildly offended. “I can control a fire.”

“You can’t control how people with magical Gifts and skills will react to that fire.” He trailed off meaningfully. “Not to mention those protesters out front. Any injuries here will give them more excuse to…” He trailed off and thought. “Huh.”

“What is it?”

Thomas felt himself smile. “Why don’t we use the protesters for cover?”

Zach’s eyebrows went up. “I like it. There’s a lot of them, they’re making a lot of noise. As long as they don’t clock who we are… but how do we get out there? An emergency exit will sound an alarm.”

Thomas looked around and settled on an idea. “Meet me at the bathroom in two minutes.” This would be easier if they were both women, as going to the bathroom together was a thing women did, but it would be weird for two guys. “The family bathroom,” he said. “The one with a lock.”

He vaguely remembered reading on a website a year or two back that the Reno Convention Center had gone through a renovation. Thomas had been to the place since then and saw that part of that renovation had been to add a third bathroom option in the restroom’s hallway. Now people with younger children could take them there without having to worry about disturbing other adults. That’s why the main door had a lock.

Luckily it was unoccupied, so Thomas slipped in and went to the far wall. The bathroom had a single toilet, a sink, and a baby changing station. He ducked underneath the changing table. Hopefully this wall wouldn’t have any pipes.

He took out his curved dagger. It had cut through anything in a level one dungeon and didn’t have much problem with level two. He just hoped that extended to non-dungeon items.

The wall was made of cinder blocks and he tested the blade against the grout. It slid right in like he was cutting soft cheese. Damn, this blade was scary. He was lucky it hadn’t somehow cut its way out of its sheath.

He easily cut around one of the blocks and, using his fingers, wiggled it free. When he set it aside, he saw daylight and some scrub brush on the back side of the convention center. Beyond that was a chain-link fence, a gap, and then the back of somebody’s booth. It seemed the protesters had set up their own counter-marketplace. He didn’t think they were selling mana crystals, though.

He made short work of the next two cinder blocks and had just carefully laid one aside, careful not to make noise, when he heard a soft tap at the door.

He really hoped that was Zach knocking and not a mother with a child that urgently needed to go pee-pee.

He opened it. Luckily, it was Zach.

“What’s the plan?” Zach asked, walking in, then spied the missing cinder blocks. “Nevermind, dude. Good plan,” he said, and immediately knelt to help get the remaining blocks free.

They only removed a couple more, both well aware that they were running on a countdown timer. It didn’t take that long to go to the bathroom unless something was urgently amiss. Plus Thomas really didn’t want to destroy the place.

He and Zach squeezed through just as one of their followers moved away from the others and started heading toward the bathroom, probably wondering where the hell they’d gotten to.

They would search the men’s room first. That would grant them a couple more minutes.

The sun beat down full-on as they got to the other side. Thomas used the knife again and it sliced through the chain-link fence in a similarly unsettling fashion.

With Zach’s suggestion, they cut a line in the links, peeled it back to crawl through, then eased the cut section back into place. At a glance, it looked like there was no break in the fence at all. Then they walked around to the front of the booth to join the anti-magic protesters.

The booth’s front, by the way, had a large hand-painted banner reading: “Save Your Soul! Don’t Let The Devil’s Lies and Magic Into Your Heart!”

There was a distressing number of people around. Apparently, only a portion of them had chosen to gather at the road to wave signs and scream at passing cars.

The rest had set up a sort of alternate marketplace craft fair with scattered information tables, speaking “the real truth.” Not all of it was religious. There were plenty of flat-earthers, moon-landing deniers, and political zealots on both sides of the spectrum (apparently, enemy-of-my-enemy was a uniting force) along with people just selling crystals “for protection.” The regular kind of crystals, not the mana type.

There were also cosplayers. Thomas did not know why.

“Now all the squad are heading to the bathrooms,” Thomas said to Zach. “I think they’ll figure out where we went soon.”

“You can see that far? Sweet.” He glanced back. “Guess we’ll find out how badly they want us, or if this was just a test run.”

“Test run?”

“Sure, it’s not like a musician practices his music for the first time on stage, or a squad takes out a target first time out,” Zach replied with easy authority that was bizarre. He was not military, and it disturbed and saddened Thomas a little for him that the guy even knew this.

They had been heading to the thicker part of the crowd, which was clustered behind the main protesters. Suddenly, a man with a shaved head stepped right in their path. He shoved a flyer at Thomas. “You’re coming to the rally tonight, right brother? It’s at the Capitol Building. We’re gonna make sure those pussy fucks know we will be heard.”

“Uh.” Thomas froze as he caught the double lightning bolts on the side of the guy’s neck.

The man’s expression just started to darken when Zach stepped in, putting on a slightly mumbled hills-have-eyes tone into his voice. “Rally, at the State Capitol, you bet brotha.”

He took a flyer, offered a fist bump that the guy returned with a grunted “Right on brother,” before he shuffled off.

Zach turned to Thomas and they shared a wide-eyed, silent “yikes” look. Even though Thomas was watching him, he still missed the exact moment when Zach dropped the flyer on the ground like the trash it was.

“Let’s get out of this crowd,” Zach said in a low voice. “I’m not liking the vibe.”

His brain was re-engaging. It wasn’t every day that he had a brush with a Nazi. “You’d think that type would be off fucking their cousins in their militia bunkers, or whatever.”

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“They are,” Zach said. “That guy’s just the recruitment. Angry people with low information are exactly what they’re looking for. Some of those militia properties out in the desert probably have a dungeon on them or quick access to one. In a few days, they’ll have a new recruit convinced that they need to dive because they’re ‘one of the good ones.’ Then that’s one more dude with magic in their private army.”

“Wonderful,” Thomas said. “This whole System-reshuffling-society thing is not going to be a powder keg whatsoever.”

“You have no idea,” Zach muttered, unusually grim.

The crowd on the sidewalk was too thick to easily pass through anyway, so he and Zach wove their way back to the craft fair portion. Unfortunately, Thomas was sensing more bad news. “Our very favorite fans have split up just past the fence,” he reported. “With this many people, I think it’s going to be hard to keep track of them. I’ll probably lose some in the crowd.”

Zach exhaled, and Thomas could practically see him identifying and tagging flammable objects. Then he shook his head. “Straight charge for the far exit?”

“Let’s go.”

They passed by more booths with everything from conspiracy theories printed on paper, bound together in somebody’s basement, to leather goods, dream catchers, and a group of nuns handing out water bottles.

Then he and Zach passed by one booth where a woman sat in a chair beside about ten young children. Those couldn’t all be hers, right? She was selling some sort of glittery stones laid out on the table.

As he and Zach passed by, the stones suddenly lit up in a riot of rainbow colors and emitted long, shrill whistles, like a fire alarm.

The woman was out of her chair so fast that she knocked it over behind her. “Demons!” she yelled, pointing a long finger straight at them. “These two are devils walking around in human skin. They have accepted the evil into their hearts!”

Thomas glanced at her banner, which read: “Purity Stones: Know When Your Children and Friends Have Accepted the Dark.”

Not wanting any part of that scene, they quickly tried to walk by, but the woman was incensed and jumped over the table with a spryness Thomas hadn’t expected. She grabbed Thomas’s arm, nails biting into his skin. “Demon!” she shrieked, loud enough to be heard over the sound of the protesters.

People were starting to turn in their direction, some of them with already darkening expressions.