Demonic Po*nstar System

Chapter 1084: Two Steps Ahead

Age showed in the loose skin around his wrists and the trembling of the hands holding his spoon. Beyond them, the dark window reflected a man whose attendants had to help him lift his legs into bed.

He was afraid of dying. Of course he was.

The fear followed him into his appointments and lay beside him through the hours when sleep refused to come. He could afford whatever treatment anyone offered, and every consultation still ended with a discussion of managing what remained.

The woman he had watched die was standing beside Kaiden, alive and strong.

Edmund wanted that so badly that tears blurred Taigi’s face.

”We should speak to his people,” he said.

”I can contact Eclipse’s office.”

”Do that. I’d like to discuss funding their settlement. Housing, whatever infrastructure they need. We can make ourselves useful.”

His assistant hesitated over the tablet.

”We haven’t heard the conditions yet.”

”Then we’ll listen while you find the number.”

Edmund pushed his dinner away. The soup was still warm, and someone would be along shortly to ask how much of it he had eaten. For once, the thought failed to irritate him.

He was busy imagining another year, then another after that.

By the time his assistant found Eclipse’s contact details, Edmund was wondering how much money it would take to put his name ahead of everyone else watching.

...

In Washington, the President shoved his chair back and stood, forcing an aide to step out of its path.

”He can offer this to other people?”

Kaiden Grey was reading comments in the President’s private interface. The officials around the table followed the same live feed through their own invisible interfaces, perfectly in sync, while the President waited for one of them to answer him.

”Well? We helped transport those people while they trained! They died, came back, and our vehicles took them out again. Did anyone ask whether he could keep making more of them?”

”The reports concerned his existing dependents, sir,” his security adviser said. ”We didn’t... have confirmation that he intended to expand their numbers.”

”You didn’t have confirmation?”

The adviser lowered the tablet he’d been holding.

”It wasn’t raised in the briefings I received.”

”Your job is to think of possibilities and how to maneuver around them, not receive confirmed facts!”

His shout reached the corridor. Through the open door, two members of staff stopped walking while the aide nearest him hurried to close it.

Nyx’s voice came from the broadcast before the President could demand an answer.

”Kai, HomeAgainSomeday is asking whether you mean whole families. They say they can’t fight.”

Kaiden looked toward her, his expression softening.

”People have lost whole towns to dungeon breaks. If you have nowhere you want to return to, I’d like you to know there may be a home for you with us. Somewhere you can raise your children and build a life again.”

”There!” The President rounded on his security adviser. ”He’s inviting whole families. Our citizens. He’s sitting over there offering them powers and resurrection if they’ll move into his private dimension!”

He could already imagine the calls from governors whose disaster shelters were full, from mayors still begging for reconstruction funds. Grey had just offered those people a reason to stop waiting for help from their own country.

And the bastard had the gall to smile softly like the most considerate of angels while he did it.

”Get the Association Chairman on the line. I want to know why I’m finding out about this from a broadcast.”

While an aide called the Chairman, the President paced beside his chair. Across the table, the domestic policy adviser had begun scrolling through the comments on her own interface.

”Sir, the interest is coming from other countries too.”

”Of course it is. He’s inviting the entire goddamned planet.”

The questions kept coming while the aide waited for the Chairman. One caught Kaiden’s attention long enough for the President to read it.

- Old Awakener: What are these people giving up? You can’t bind a life to a dungeon and expect nothing to change.

Kaiden looked toward Taigi. She met his eyes, standing beside the steps in her bronze armor.

”The viewers are asking what it cost.”

The President stopped pacing beside his chair, just as Kaiden decreed:

”Your humanity.”

For a moment, even the aide on the telephone forgot to speak.

”I mean that literally,” Kaiden continued. ”Your race would change to Dungeon-Born. You would relinquish your bond to Earth and become part of my dungeon, in body and soul. Its core would sustain your life.”

The President stared at him. Grey was asking Americans to become another species, to give themselves to a world whose ruler was smiling at them from the other side of the Pacific.

”That’s what has happened to everyone you’ve seen. Their world is the dungeon. If its core is destroyed, they die with it. I govern that domain, and anyone who joins it accepts my authority there.”

”Jesus fucking Christ,” the security adviser muttered.

The President brought his palm down on the table, rattling the water glasses.

”This is bordering on high treason! He’s asking our people to abandon their country and pledge themselves to him!”

His legal aide opened her mouth, then hesitated when he turned toward her.

”What?”

”Sir... treason requires levying war against the United States, or adhering to its enemies and giving them aid and comfort. This invitation doesn’t establish either.”

”He’s taking our citizens!”

”He’s asking them to move, sir. We would need more than that to bring such a charge.”

The President stared at her until the aide at the telephone intervened.

”The Chairman is on the line.”

”Good. Perhaps he can suggest what we’re to do while Grey recruits an entire population for himself!”

”I’ve been watching,” the Chairman replied through the speaker. ”And your aide is right. We recognized his dungeon as sovereign ground. He is inviting people to emigrate there.”

”To a damn dungeon!”

”Which we placed under his exclusive jurisdiction. No federal agency, military body, or branch of the Association may operate inside it without his consent. Those are the terms we announced at the signing.”

The President reached for the agreement as his legal aide brought it up on her tablet. He knew the terms. He had approved the concessions and stood before the cameras to tell the country what a triumph their partnership would be.

”And when he turns those people into monsters? We’re supposed to stand here and accept that too?” But just as he finished the sentence, a terrible jolt rushed up the President’s spine. ”Wait...”

”Yes...” The Chairman exhaled. ”We granted nonhuman sentients under his authority full legal personhood, including the protections afforded to recognized citizens. Their transformation gives us no right to treat them as hostile entities. We put that in writing as well.”

On the tablet, the aide found the clause and turned it toward him.

There it was. The protection he had associated with Grey’s two monster women and that giant fucking dog applied to everyone the boy was now inviting into his dungeon.

”Then we stop them before they enter. The gate is still in the United States.”

”On what grounds?” the Chairman asked. ”Another country can invite Americans to live and work there. It can offer them benefits we don’t provide. We have recognized Grey’s territory, and the people going there would be choosing to leave.”

”You’re comparing jumping into his dimensional portal to moving abroad on a working visa?”

”What offense would you put on their arrest warrants? Wanting a better life somewhere else? Unless we intend to renounce the democratic freedoms we claim to defend, that cannot be enough.”

The President looked toward his legal aide. She had followed the exchange with her hands clasped before her, waiting for the question he now struggled to ask.

”Can we prohibit it? A blanket restriction?”

”For this reason alone... I couldn’t defend that, sir. We’d need a separate lawful basis.”

He sank back into his chair, cold sweat gathering beneath his collar.

At the signing, he had thought he was showing the world that Kaiden Grey still answered to the United States. He had praised the boy’s patriotism and smiled while the cameras recorded their partnership. Grey had made him wait through every page of the agreement before picking up the pen.

He remembered being angry about that wait.

Now he wanted to go back to that table and drag the document out of the boy’s hands.

He had approved sovereignty over the dungeon and legal protection for its people, pleased to have secured Eclipse’s cooperation. Grey and his psychopath of a mother had obtained terms that let them do this in front of the entire world.

”That bastard and his mother...”