Time is never on anyone's side.

  Conference Room #1 became a hive of activity. A brain at the center of a nervous system that was now working in subtle ways. Brom wasn't arrogant enough to think this was for him. Well, maybe he had a small part to play in it. The same way that having an active explosive threat might encourage police to work a bit faster and frantically. The fact of the matter was, there wasn't much for Brom to do. He wasn't a part of the legal or political structure in the town. There were talks of forming some sort of organization that would deal with Players and, when that happened, he'd be on the short list to head that as the strongest man in town. But that was months of groundwork away yet.

  He ended up just sitting in his chair, people working around him, his interface pulled up as he looked over various things. His life boiled down to numbers. He busied himself studying the Grip, looking over all its various values. He still hadn't had a chance to test it out since he'd finished feeding it all the extra weapons he'd acquired.

  Name: Grip of Adamant Will

  Rank: Legendary

  Weapon Group: Gauntlet

  Weapon Type: Growth (Evolving)

  Damage Types: Physical [1] Electric [1] Cold [1]

  Unique Attacks: Damage Detonate, Elemental Infusion

  Unique Abilities: Thorns

  Unique Properties: Fae-Bane, Dread Touch

  'These bespoke gauntlets were forged in the grip of one man whose only intent was to protect his family. They will crush and consume anything for power in service of that task.'

  He'd gotten Electric damage from JJ's shield and cold damage from the animal shelter dagger. Thorns had been from the vine whip acquired from the greenhouse of horrors. Elemental Infusion came from the wand that the library instance had given him. Fae-Bane and Dread Touch had come from the playground and the graveyard, respectively. Each weapon gave something. Some boon. Provided they were at least Uncommon. Each time he fed something to the Grip, one of the runes would light up. There were dozens of these runes, but not an infinite amount, eventually he'd run out of space. He was a long way off from that, but he'd made note of it for the future.

  As for what all these things did, no matter how he prodded at the interface, it didn't tell him. He didn't even know why Physical Damage had to be listed as a separate type. He would assume every physical weapon did physical damage. Apparently, that was the wrong assumption to make.

  Brom was still rummaging through the depths of the Knowledge Base, trying to figure out more about weapon properties and getting ever more pissed off. This thing needed a fucking glossary or appendix or search function! Fucking, who made a Knowledge Base without one?! Just as he was getting ready to explode, Jonesy tapped his shoulder gently. Like a man tapping a mine with a very long stick.

  "Hey! They found TJ." Both of Jonesy's hands slammed down on Brom's shoulders as the big man tried to stand up. It was a laughable effort, like a small child holding the lead of a draft horse, but Jonesy didn't let go. "Fucking listen!"

  Brom stared at Johannes for a moment and then settled back in the chair. He was tense, radiating 'let's go' energy, but it was clear from Jonesy's behavior that the Sergeant had more to say. "Alright, I'm listening..."

  "Thank you." Jonesy hooked a nearby chair and pulled it over, sitting at an angle to Brom. "He's in one of the waiting rooms, he's okay!" The words were spoken quickly, a hand raised like he could physically forestall any explosive motion on Brom's part. "I'm going to go over there now and heal him, okay? Best healer town's got, favor to you. But," it was clear Jonesy was searching for words or phrasing, "but he requested not to see you just yet. You can come with me, stand guard outside his room till he changes his mind, but Brom? You can't go in."

  Brom stared at the other, blinking his eyes for a moment, and all that angry energy he had just turned inward. "...he's got every right to not want to see me. I let him-"

  "Look, Red, normally I'd let you run the course on that train of thought, but the whole point of having friends is you need someone to tell you to shut the fuck up every now and then. And that's what I'm saying right now. You don't know why he's requesting that. I don't know why he's requesting that. We can wait to have the crisis till we know. Okay? For right now lets just head over there and let things play out."

  Brom's brain short-circuited for a second. He blinked, staring at the Sergeant, and his slowly recalibrating brain cells seized on the most irrelevant thing as he stood slowly. "Red?"

  "Look, I've been Jonesy since as long as I can remember, family nickname, and it's really fucking confusing when people call you Jones around me. You damn near took Pope's skull off when the dude called you BJ, so I assume you're not into that. So Red it is." Jonesy stood, motioning to the door.

  Brom followed. "My name is already short as hell, I never got why people kept trying to give me nicknames. But if you insist, my friends call me Bones."

  "Oh, so you'll call me at 3am and make me think I have to figure out how to tell the Captain that you're likely facing murder one, but you wouldn't tell me your nickname? You're an asshole sometimes, you know that?" But there was a smile buried in Jonesy's tone as the two of them made their way out of the building. An attempt at lightness to keep Brom's wildly swinging emotions on some sort of even keel. "...Bones, huh? I guess it makes sense. B from Brom and Ones from Jones."

  Brom turned a little red. "Yeah, sure. That's where it came from." He was absolutely not going to recount the dog biscuit story right now. Nope. Maybe never.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  Their conversation paused as they left Conference Room #1 and made their way through the bland beige halls of Cold Bay's Guard Headquarters. He'd been in the building several times now, various meetings and conversations, and it never got any easier to be in here. He always felt like he was crawling around inside a trap, waiting for the door to swing shut and lock him in. He'd had plenty of run-ins with other law enforcement officers, and while nothing had ever gone beyond just being arrested, it left its mark. One that felt especially heavy after the last twenty-four hours he'd had.

  Johannes was efficient. He knew exactly where they were going, and he kept the number of people they encountered to a minimum. Brom wasn't sure how the Sergeant did that, but he was grateful for it, his thoughts were too much of a mess to do social well. He just kept his head down, staring at the tops of his sneakers and his faint reflection in the polished floor. He couldn't make himself small, but at least he wasn't radiating that killing aura anymore.

  Room 302 didn't look like anything special from the outside. It was a quiet room, not an interrogation room. The kind of place folks who had business but weren't in trouble were guided to. Out of the way, likely full of functionally semi-soft furnishings and plastic potted plants. It was meant to be professionally reassuring, less about getting answers to questions and more about offering quiet stability. Especially for a young man who'd been adamant that he didn't want to see anyone he didn't have to.

  Brom stood off to the side, leaning against the wall next to the room marker, while Jonesy knocked softly.

  "Hello, I'm Sergeant Johannes Avery with the Cold Bay Guard. I'm a Healer. May I come in?"

  For a long moment, there was silence. Brom didn't know who'd already been in contact with TJ, someone must have brought the kid back here, of course. Maybe a Healer of some kind had already seen to him to make sure he wasn't cursed or suffering from some heinous debuff. Maybe it had just been one of the night Guards who'd probably been a bit stunned that the kid everyone was looking for had just walked up and said 'hello'.

  "Come in."

  TJ's voice sounded a little wrong. Strained. Pained. Like his mouth was misshapen. Brom wanted to push that door open and storm in there, survey the damage so that he knew exactly what kind needed to be inflicted on someone else. Get some answers about what had happened and how TJ had gotten back here. But he didn't. He just clenched his fists, the Grip flexing on his forearms, and took a few shaky breaths. He gave Jonesy a look, and the Sergeant smiled back at him. Brom just had to trust him.

  The door clicked shut, leaving Brom outside to wait. To wonder. He could hear the low tones of Jonesy's voice, muffled and indistinct, a gentle and even level. It didn't sound like he was talking down to TJ, wasn't treating him like a scared kid, it just sounded soothing. The same calm he'd had in the dungeon when he'd been directing people to their places. Brom tried to strain a little to hear more clearly and distinctly, but he couldn't even hear TJ's responses. If the teen was even making any noises. He couldn't be sure.

  Trust. He just had to trust. He knew that Jonesy would take care of TJ, that he'd patch up whatever had hurt the teen. At least physically. But mentally? Brom winced as he thought over everything that TJ had been through. Spending his Sunday night strapped to an anchor, every moment potentially bringing his death if Brom's grip slipped. Finding out he had detention when he woke up Monday. Getting battered through instances until Jason showed up, and what a hot fucking mess that had been.

  Brom still didn't know how to feel about things. On one hand, he was physically ill that he'd ever tried to tell TJ how to feel about JJ. That he'd just claimed some moral fucking high ground and tried to preach to a teen that knew his own situation better than anyone. Brom had gotten ahead of himself there, but in his defense, even though he'd known his brother was a fucking shit-stain on the boxers of humanity, he hadn't expected him to be a total waste. The few times they'd interacted, he'd genuinely seemed to care about TJ. Turns out that either time apart or drugs consumed had just made Brom worse at spotting his brother's bullshittery. Still, he'd never encourage TJ to be violent in dealing with the situation because that probably wasn't the right way to handle it.

  On the other hand, it had been deeply satisfying to watch his older brother go down like the sack of crap he was. He'd fast-traveled away, still screaming at the top of his lungs and clutching his thigh. Thanks to modern magical medicine, he'd kept the leg, but from the rumors Brom was hearing, he'd walk with a hitch in his stride for the rest of his life. A stiff knee was a good reminder that he'd pushed TJ too far, not that Brom expected JJ to learn the lesson.

  Brom closed his eyes, taking a deep breath, relaxing against the wall.

  - Exhaustion

  Thank you passive! Even if he felt physically refreshed, the mental wear and tear and the emotional drain weren't going anywhere. He glanced back down at his wrist, reaching over and rubbing the collar a little, sighing. Fuck what a miserable goddamn day this had been. Shit sandwich all the way down. He was debating asking around to see if he could get a chair to sit and wait in when the door clicked open, and Johannes stepped out of the room.

  The Sergeant did not have an overpowered passive recharging him. He looked like a man in desperate need of stronger stimulants or a soft cot in a dark room. He still looked pretty good for a man who'd only gotten a few hours of sleep and had been running on fortitude since then. Johannes paused for a moment, gathering himself, and then managed to give Brom a smile, holding the door ajar.

  "He's decided he wants to see you after all."