Chapter Ninety-One - Fixing Problems "Okay, start from the beginning," I said as I helped my new pal down. "Like... what's your name?" "Who even are you?" he asked. "Deadline," I said. "I'm Deadline. I find problems, I fix them. And I'm usually pretty quick about it. Come on, sit down, that's right. Your name?" "Martin," he said. He winced, and I tugged on the sleeve of his arm a little, hoping to see why. He hissed, though, and I let go. "It's not broken," he said in the tone of someone hoping that it wasn't broken. I nodded along. "Sure." I crouched, so that I was level with him, elbows on my knees. "So, Martin, story from the start." "I shouldn't tell you anything," he said. "Yeah, but I'm a mysterious stranger that grabbed you in the middle of the night, wearing a mask and almost all-black. I'm also a ranker, and that's very scary. Right?" "Exactly. So spill. Corp ain't gonna be angry at you, they'll be angry at me," I reassured him. I don't know if that worked, but he did spill, at least a little. "We have a portal that breached a long time ago. Orcs come out of it. Five, six per hour or so? When it calms down, we send a team in, rile them up." "Uh-huh," I said. "And this had been steady?" "For years. With only a few blips. Low turnover. Good pay. I'm just a technician here." "Cool, cool," I said. "And what happened today?" It took Martin half an hour to give me the whole story, half an hour during which the fighting inside escalated, then went very quiet. It turned out that Martin's manager was a dickbag, and had been cutting a few corners. He'd bumped heads with the team-lead for the squad responsible for keeping the portal more or less culled, and fired her a week back. She took two members of the team with her. Still worked for Synthcorp, but not for the ENE division. Figures. So, the company had this portal. It breached, and then they kept it on that knife's edge, culling monsters as they came out and immediately processing them into so much meat. I'd probably eaten orc before... gross. Anyway, keeping a portal semi-breached was, in a word, stupid. Mostly it was stupid because the portals could slowly become stronger. This one had started as an E-rank. Now it was edging closer to C. The orcs coming out of it were more numerous, and bigger, and stronger. And today, they'd stopped altogether. Last time this happened, according to Martin, it had been a second boss that spawned and held them back. The squad had lost two members that day. This time they'd lost contact entirely, and the orcs were coming out in bigger numbers than usual. So, someone in there might have been holding back the number of orcs coming out for a few days or weeks. With a couple coming out every hour, that was... a lot of orcs? I'd assume fifty or so, then double that to be safe. That was too damned many orcs. I jumped as I heard movement by the front of the building, then saw an orc stomping out and sniffing the air. Martin went still. "How long until reinforcements arrive?" I asked him in a low whisper. "The manager won't," he admitted. "He'd never call for help. We have a second subjugation squad." "And where are they?" ɪꜰ ʏᴏᴜ ᴡᴀɴᴛ ᴛᴏ ʀᴇᴀᴅ ᴍᴏʀᴇ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs, ᴘʟᴇᴀsᴇ ᴠɪsɪᴛ novel-fire.ɴet "They... went in a few minutes ago?" The bunch I saw with the armour and shotguns? Yeah, nah, they were fucked. None of them felt like C-rankers, so at best it was a bunch of D-rankers, and they probably weren't ready for the resistance they met. I helped Martin up, then snuck him around back. The orc and his pals were more interested in the hub-bub by the entrance. "Do all the workers here know?" I asked Martin. He blinked, then shook his head "No, but we're all under NDA?" "Is there an alarm or something? Fire alarm, maybe?" "In every building, yeah," he said. "Cool. Run off and pull that," I said before giving him a shove. I watched him run off, then took a moment to consider what to do next. A C-rank portal... that was beyond what I could handle. Probably. I'd have to go through a ton of loops, and orcs weren't an enemy I had any particular advantage against. Still... I was here, so might as well get a lay of the land, as it were. I had some ideas percolating at the back of my head for what to do. Some of that was experience from past loops coming into play, but I had had a few original ideas too, once in a while. Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site. I unsheathed my sword, checked it real fast, then pulled out my revolver in my off hand. I had Shadow Bolt on the edge of my tongue as well. I bounced on the spot a few times, limbering myself up, then I walked around the back of the building, heading out towards the front. An orc saw me, snorted, then brandished a large wooden club at me. He didn't seem to like the way I just kept walking towards him. Orcs were big, mean, smelled something fierce, and had tougher skin than any normal human. Physically, they were definitely upper D-ranked threats. Worse, they weren't entirely stupid. I'd looked them up. They ranked higher than kobolds or goblins in terms of raw intellect. So, as smart as a roided up teenager, but with less communication skills. I shifted my stance between one step and the next, then lunged, sword point stabbing towards the orc's neck. He batted the blade aside, but my next thrust caught him in the throat. It was enough. The stab opened his airway, and he clutched at the hole. I took that opportunity to swing hard into the side of his head and my blade bit deep. The orc fell. My arm was a bit rattled by the blow, but I could manage. I walked up and around, finding three of them walking off, and two more waiting by the entrance. Damn, they were guarding it? Since they hadn't seen me, though, I had a nice opportunity that I took. I stabbed the nearest in the neck, sidestepped while he went down, then fought with the second. This one had a crude sword, rusty metal, rough hammer blows and an uneven edge. He parried my thrusts, so I switched to cutting and used the longer blade I had to get a quick stab in past his guard and into his pecs. Didn't do much though. The orc charged in, roaring, and I found myself backpeddling to stay away. I eventually managed to jump by, landing on the ground and rolling up only to stab the orc in the calf. When he stumbled, I chopped hard into his side, landing a pretty deep cut below the ribs. The orc went down, eventually, but I was breathing damned hard and sweaty. Yeah, I needed to get better. Still, the coast was clear. The orcs that had moved to the front were messing around over there, so no one was left guarding the place. I walked in, then scanned the area. The building was obviously built to be somewhat secure. There was an antechamber with a security room to one side, then another room past that. An orc was there, eating one of those armoured guards I'd seen earlier. I swallowed past a lump in my throat when the orc looked up, blood dripping down his jaw. I shot him in the face. He looked a bit bigger, tougher. And it was good to know that my revolver could take one out in a single hit. Still, shooting indoors left my ears ringing. Deeper in was a larger room, this one clearly designed to process meat, with wheeled tables, butcher stations and trash containers. A few conveyor tables lined the room, and there were fluorescent lights above. No portal, but a few bodies. Some were techies, but it looked like the main factory floor was closed at night. There was a fridge to one side. The door was opened, a body laying at the foot of it. Within were orcs. Two dozen of them, stripped naked and hung on metal hooks within movable racks. Right... meat processing place. Three orcs, living ones, were in the room. They eyed me, so I backed up to the antechamber, stashed my sword and revolver into their respective sheathes, then picked up that guard's shotgun. The guy had a bandoleer with more shells, so I walked back in loading the gun up. It was a lot more satisfying to use than my revolver, though the effects were... meh? It was loaded with some sort of shot, I think. Buckshot? It worked to blow open flesh and sent the orcs reeling back, but didn't have that penetrating killing power that my revolver had. I reloaded it as I moved into the next room. There was a waiting space, and then a small armoury, with more of the same orc-holding racks, and finally a large, long room. Concrete walls, with metal plates over the lower half, plenty of lights above, and barricades to hide behind. At the end of it, buzzing with magical energy, was the portal, and even as I watched, a group of five orcs stepped out.