Amazon Apocalypse 6: Chapter 49

My encounter with Walter was alarming. I needed to speak with Nakano about it as soon as I could. I arranged for a meeting the next chance I could and ended up seeing him for brunch.

"It's probably just intimidation. Walter's corporation managed to foresee our food problems ahead of time and buy most of the boats in the harbor, meaning he has a vested interest in keeping the price of food high. It's the only thing keeping his corporation afloat at the moment. People don't exactly need financial services right now. I suspect he's trying to intimidate you into throttling back on the cheap grain you've been delivering," Nakano said.

He was swirling a coffee in a mug. It was cheap instant coffee from Crownhill, but he was savoring it like fine wine. I suspected there wasn't much coffee left here in San Francisco.

"I don't know, it sounded like they had something big planned. I'm a little bit worried. My gut tells me they really are up to something." I had let myself think things over a bit and felt increasingly certain my fate bloodline was sending me another warning. Not something as powerful as its warning about hitting A-Grade too soon, but a warning nonetheless.

"If Walter and the other corporations could stop me, they would have done so already. Bringing Kogai here put an end to all their plans. Without off-world backing, they can't have access to anyone at the B-Grade. With you and Sakura here as well, our advantage is insurmountable." Nakano drained the last of his mug and looked at it solemnly until I pulled out more coffee and water, which I heated for him with a thought.

"I'll have Reluna do some divinations. My gut is right more often than not, so I would appreciate it if you took some precautions. Don't travel without bodyguards and keep the Red Torii Group's headquarters secure."

"Very well. You've proven yourself competent and experienced more than once, despite your youth. Perhaps Walter and the others are getting desperate. When I am voted in for a second term as Chairman of the Marketplace Collective at the end of the week, I'll have the time to truly secure and rebuild this city." Nakano smiled to himself. His mind was already in the future.

"And as promised, you'll have my vote. Sakura has done a good job getting Doomblade's Armory up and running, and our first shipment off-world will leave soon. I think Sakura's already putting some of the goods we're trading for up for sale at the Obelisk."

Nakano wore a face of fatherly pride. "She's whetting the market's appetite, just as I taught her. Some of these magical gadgets she's selling seem silly to me, but others like skillbooks and mana-to-electricity converters are essential. For all your claims of not making waves, your company may end up with more pull than mine in this city when the dust finally settles."

Our conversation drifted to more ordinary topics after that. I told him I'd have that wall he wanted done by the end of the week, and after that I could assign the golems and construction crews I'd trained up to repair and renovate the rest of the city. Everything outside of the major corporations was still a mess, but some work could rapidly restore this place to its former glory.

I warned Sakura about my suspicions the next time I saw her as well, and she promised to heighten security. Much to my surprise, I found Kyle standing guard outside the storefront next time I looked. He and a few other guards from Crownhill had volunteered to reinforce our storefront here while we distributed aid to the locals.

With them present, Nakano's Oni warriors were suddenly behaving a lot more respectfully to more than just Sakura and me. I got the impression they were used to humans being weaklings, but my people had brought them a change of perspective. Newly integrated or not, this world wasn't without its share of powerful fighters.

Over the next week, I finished off my ongoing projects. The wall was soon completed, and compared to the days of building it, burning enchantments onto the inside went by quickly. Pretty soon, we had formidable defenses.

These defenses were not quite as formidable as the towers, turrets, and multi-layered defenses of Crownhill, but it was comparable to the walls the Order of Sorcery and the Sages of Camlaan possessed. It would get San Francisco through the next few stages of the integration just fine.

While I added the enchantments, I sent my workers back into the city to fix up the roads, streets, and housing. Most of them had been living in crumbling ruins scattered throughout the city, and between all those ruins it was easy enough to find furniture for a big group bunkhouse or two. I would leave personal residences up for enterprising private individuals with a talent for construction. Just getting the bulk of the less fortunate out of the weather would help them a lot.

The city was rapidly transforming thanks to our arrival, and every day I saw more and more of those monster core converters I'd invented back in Crownhill during the early stages of the integration. Broken-down old world devices were working and valuable again now that we had power for them. All in all, things were looking up for San Francisco, and it was starting to look like a more populated but less advanced copy of Crownhill. That thought amused me, since things had been the other way around before the integration.

Eventually, the day for the Marketplace Collective's vote came up. Sakura was still busy managing all our new hires. Most of them were being shipped off-world for training, or perhaps permanently if they liked their new posting. Gobgob could only handle so many new employees at a time.

I would be representing Doomblade's Armory when casting our corporation's vote. As an endorsement and show of support, I would be joining Nakano's team and arriving alongside him. Truthfully, I was still worried there'd be some sort of assassination attempt on him. The only way I could keep him safe for sure was if I guarded him myself.

"Kogai can take care of security," Nakano assured me.

"If somebody causes trouble, I trust him to kill them. But he's not exactly a bodyguard," I replied.

Nakano conceded my point, and he and I left together. Bells Targo Financial Solutions would be hosting the event, so we made our way to their headquarters.

"Little foot traffic today," Nakano noted.

"Don't the roads look empty without all the broken-down cars sitting in them? My construction teams have fixed up a few other roads too, so I imagine things are a lot more spread out than before. The city probably won't feel crowded again until you bring in a few hundred thousand newcomers later on in the integration." I admired my handiwork as we passed through the city.

We arrived at the gates of Bells Targo's headquarters. They sported a modest brick wall and fence at their perimeter from before the integration, but it had been reinforced with car hoods and piles of other scrap.

"Nakano Miyamoto and Carter Smith, here for the meeting. We should be expected," Nakano said. The gates opened and we walked into the facility.

"Your private security can wait with the others outside," a local staff member said, pointing Kogai and me off to the side.

"I'm here representing Doomblade's Armory. I'm attending as well," I said.

The staff member started hurriedly flipping through papers, frowning and suddenly flustered.

I chuckled. Doomblade's Armory was new enough that we hadn't exactly received an invitation. I was largely inviting myself to this event. If they tried to kick me out, that would tell me all I needed to know and I could crash the party without reservations.

Eventually, we ignored the flustered staff member and went ahead on our own, though Kogai went to mingle with the other bodyguards, who would probably be much more interesting to him than the boring elite social gathering, Nakano had in mind for us.

Eventually, a staff member caught up to us and led us to one of the larger rooms in the facility. It was the sort of thing probably set aside for corporate functions, and it had been rearranged like a ballroom.

There was food off to one side, music played gently in one corner, and there were dozens of tables along the wall for various groups to mingle. We were led to ours and sat down. I grabbed somebody else's nametag and tucked it into my pocket before claiming their seat.

Looking around, the party did seem a bit slow. Nakano and I had planned on arriving fashionably late, but only a third of the seats were filled.

The party venue was simpler than expected, and seemed a bit like some weddings I'd been to. There weren't as many luxuries as I'd expect from such an elite gathering, but some concessions had to be made for the apocalypse.

Even the entertainment seemed mostly ordinary. Truthfully, I was a little disappointed. Like most modern people, I had a certain idea in my head about what a party for the ultra-wealthy looked like, and I'd come here expecting a shrine to pagan gods, some human sacrifice, and maybe a bit of cannibalism. But things were pleasantly ordinary.

Hell, even the naked dancing girls on the stage in the center of the room were adult women. These guys must really be on a tight budget these days.

We waited a few minutes. I paced the room, and to my surprise not many people were arriving. I checked the time and realized the first event was supposed to start a few minutes ago, and yet less than half the guests had arrived. Most of the tables were empty or had only one or two guests seated there.

The bad feeling I had in my gut grew stronger.

I went back to Nakano and whispered. "Something's wrong. I'm going to look around."

He nodded. "Just make sure you're here for the vote."

I slipped by the serving staff, who were starting to look more like guards. They couldn't see me passing by them in the shadow realm, otherwise I was certain they would have stopped me.

A quick trip around the corner showed me what I expected. In Nakano's Red Torii Group, every office was packed full of either people working or his employees' families. The walls were constantly buzzing with conversation and activity.

Here though, only the lowest-ranking employees remained. Perhaps that was why the staff had seemed so confused and uncertain of themselves earlier. All their superiors had vanished.

There was only one explanation for this sudden turn of events. I wasn't the only person who planned on crashing this party.

I turned to the shadow realm again in search of who. During my search, I discovered a teleportation array just one floor down in the basement of the facility. I appeared next to it, and immediately took in the unusual construction.

All sorts of cultures could build teleportation arrays, so it was tough to definitively identify at first. Glacia favored smooth-polished brass or orichalcum components. Themyscira used finely carved wood. The Dragon Lodge's teleportation arrays in Mucaria were made of glass and mana constructs, giving them a sophisticated and magic-rich feel.

The array before me was constructed entirely of different types of bones. Chalky white beams spanned the ground and pointed up in different directions. The whole thing had a ghastly feel to it, though I could see a few screws holding the bones together and bolts going into the floor. The kit had been assembled by locals, but it definitely wasn't designed here.

I found myself shaking my head in disappointment. All Walter's talk of wanting to keep Earthlings in charge turned out to be nothing but hot air. If he'd lived by his own ideals I could have at least respected that, but by the time he'd made that little speech to me, he'd probably already made contact with and enlisted the aid of this undead faction.

As I stood inspecting the teleportation array, I sensed mana in it building. Somebody was bound to arrive any moment now. I tapped my fingers impatiently against my leg. If I took action too early, the teleportation would merely fail, as though the destination array had been improperly assembled. I was looking for something a bit more dramatic.

Just as the teleportation array reached its apex, I overloaded the mana channels running through the array. I did it with void mana from my Sage of Forbidden Knowledge class too. Maybe if I was very lucky, one of Sharky's distant cousins would smell and investigate.

For the passengers in transit, sabotage like this was a worst-case scenario failure, similar to what might happen with one of those crude and dangerous cultivator teleportation arrays. The passengers were likely dumped somewhere out in interstellar space where they could freeze into blocks of ice long before they found their way into stellar orbit, let alone to a habitable planet.

It would be lethal for most people, unless they were either A-Grades or had access to something like my ring and throne that could open a portal to a mystic realm with everything needed to survive. Even in the best of cases, their trip to San Francisco had been cut short before it could begin.

Nakano had been right to have so much security around his teleportation array. Really, these guys should have taken a page from his book.

I dusted my hands in satisfaction. Sometimes putting all those points into luck really did pay off. I'd successfully defused this issue with moments to spare. I wasn't sure who these guys were or what world they were coming from, but now they were done. I didn't want to imagine what a pain in the ass this would have been if I'd discovered the teleportation array mere minutes later.

The tough job this time would be proving to everyone upstairs that they'd been lured into a trap, and that if they wanted to survive, they needed to rally behind Nakano and me. With their support, we could root out the traitors, and establish a more stable form of government than this corporation autocracy they had going on at the moment.

That was more than I'd signed up for in my deal with Nakano, but it was what the locals needed. My mind was already on the future as I ascended the stairs to return.

As fate would have it, the first thing I heard when I returned was the screams.

"Zombies! They're everywhere! We've been tricked!" a woman shrieked.

My shoulders slumped. Maybe I hadn't been so lucky after all.

<Note>

Or maybe Carter was lucky? It'll be a lot easier to convince people about the undead when they're right in front of their faces!

Also, Patreon changed their backend again on me. Let me know if anything is different from normal. Lots of the settings and defaults have been changed.