Chapter 33 - City Hall

  The police force pulled back toward Haymarket, coalescing there as they merged fighting lines and pulled back in good order. A few people had taken up positions under cover and were firing spells at the enemy to deter pursuit. It was cool to watch fireballs zip by overhead, blasting apart as they hit the ground behind us. The cops might not have their guns anymore, but some of them had figured out ways to work around the problem.

  “Come on,” the woman who’d helped me up when I was in trouble still had hold of my right arm and was dragging me toward the nearby cover of the buildings ahead. “My captain is definitely going to want to talk to you.”

  I looked around, hoping to catch a glimpse of Alex and the people he was sheltering. They had to be north of us, at this point, and I needed to get back to them. “I was with some people. We were helping get them to safety. I need to find them.”

  “We can help you with that,” she replied. Now we were pushing our way through the crowd.

  I glanced at her uniform to read her name tag. “Officer Taggert, I’m not sure I have time for this.”

  She paused and turned back toward me, letting go of my arm. “Yeah, I get it. Nobody does. We’re under attack by man-eating lobsters. Man-eating! Can you believe it? I heard they’re taking captives and dragging them into the ocean.”

  I nodded. “I can confirm that. We saved a couple dozen people from them.”

  “Awesome,” Taggert replied, rolling her eyes. She popped her helmet off, letting shoulder-length dark hair drop down. She’d had it back in a ponytail, but it had come mostly undone during the fighting. She wiped sweat from her forehead. “Listen, if you want to go, go. I’m not going to hold you up. But nobody else could have done what you did with that giant crab. Man, you tore that thing apart with your bare hands! We lost six people trying to bash it down with our batons, and then you show up. You jump up, land on its back, and rip its shell apart.”

  “I’m pretty strong,” I replied, grinning a little at the understatement.

  “No shit. I’m guessing you’ve picked up a few of those crystal things?” Taggert asked.

  I nodded.

  After waiting a moment to see if I’d give her more information, she sighed and went on. “So here’s the deal. We could use your help. This invasion force is coming in from points all along the city’s shoreline. We held them near the shore at first, but then they started sending in the crabs, and we’ve been forced to pull back ever since. We can’t beat them. Even our people with spells—I can’t believe I’m saying things like that, now—can’t take them down. But you did.”

  “Well, that crab I hit was tier five,” I explained.

  How to put that into context? I looked around, taking in the nearby police. Most of them were tier one or two. Taggert was tier two, for example, but the two cops who rushed past us as they continued their retreat were only tier one. A handful of them clearly didn’t have crystals at all, yet, although that was unusual.

  “Your people are mostly tier one and two,” I went on. “Like you—you’re tier two. I’m guessing you have it in Strength?”

  “How the hell do you know that?” Taggert demanded.

  “Once you hit tier five, you can identify the rank of anyone you look at. I was just guessing about the Strength. Your grip is pretty strong.”

  “Thanks. So, you’re tier five? Based on what they said in the briefing, that’s like sixteen of the same crystal. How did you get all of those?”

  I wasn’t sure how much info I wanted to give her. How much was safe to say? I knew that we could remove our crystals. They couldn’t be stolen, but they could be given away. If they found a way to force me to remove the stones, I could be in a lot of trouble.

  There was another hint of something niggling at the back of my mind, too. I’d played enough fantasy RPG games when I was younger to remember that a lot of the time, you could loot from other players, as well as monsters. I still had no idea if you could get stones from dead humans, but I had a bad feeling about that one, and didn’t want to discover the answer was yes the hard way.

  “Yes, I’ve hit tier five,” I replied. I opted for at least part of the truth. “Got lucky early on. I was saving some kids who were trapped underground on the T when everything went to hell. We ran into a nest of bugs, and they mostly dropped the same stones.”

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  “Well, however you did it, we’re glad you came by. We were getting our asses kicked out there until you showed up,” Taggert said. “Now, if you want to go find your friends, that’s fine. But I’d appreciate it if you can pass along some of what you’ve seen to Captain MacGregor, at least. I’ll tell him you have to keep it brief.”

  A few minutes, I could probably spare, so I gave her a nod. “Sure. I can do that much.”

  She flashed me a thin smile, then turned back to the task of helping us wend our way through the crowd. All around us, the police were reforming their ranks, building steady shield walls behind their plastic riot shields. They were getting ready for when the enemy started advancing again.

  We slipped past all of them, moving back toward the plaza out behind City Hall. There were a few tents set up there, big military-style deals. Taggert made a bee-line for them, so I figured that was what amounted to the local command center.

  The city must have summoned in all their police to defend City Hall when things went to shit. I asked Taggert about it as we walked, and she nodded when I told her my guess.

  “Spot on. They called in everyone. Most of us showed. Even the people who were off duty knew that when the power went out and didn’t come back right away, it was time to get our asses in to work,” Taggert explained. “They moved everyone here, set up temporary cots and meal prep for everyone. That let us get back out there to patrol the city and help people who were in trouble. You’ve fought the other monsters we’re facing, so you know what I’m talking about.”

  I nodded. “Yup. Ratkin, goblins, giant bugs, giant spiders, skeletons, all kinds of stuff. I ran into Cliff earlier—the triceratops skeleton from the Museum of Science.”

  “Holy shit, that must have been scary.”

  “A little, yeah.” For the dinosaur, in this case. He was the one who ran away from me, in the end. But I didn’t have to tell her that.

  We were at the biggest tent. Taggert went in through the open flaps, beckoning me to follow her.

  “Need to see the Captain!” Taggert called out.

  “Over here,” a deep, male voice replied. “What’s going on?”

  Taggert brought us nearer to the man, a heavyset white guy in his fifties. He looked tough as nails, with the sort of mixed muscle and fat that spoke of someone who used his body to work on the daily. His hair was mostly silver, but his blue eyes looked sharp as anything.

  “Sir, I think you’ll want to speak with this man,“ Taggert said. She turned to me. “This is Captain MacGregor; he’s the senior officer who’s made it to us so far, so he’s in command of Boston’s police. Captain, this is the man who took down the giant crab, out there in the battle.”

  “I heard we took down one of those creatures somehow, but not the details,” MacGregor said. “Good work, man.”

  Basically, that meant he was the man in charge of defending the entire city as best he could. “My name’s Cameron Castle, Captain. Glad I could help.”

  I reached out a hand, and MacGregor took it in a solid handshake. He tried squeezing—a test, but a gentle one. His eyes got a little wider when I didn’t flinch, and my hand didn’t compress at all. Between my Strength and Natural Armor, the man couldn’t do anything to injure me. He was only tier four, so even if he’d put everything into Strength, it wouldn’t be nearly enough.

  “From the initial report I heard, you saved a lot of lives by doing that. Officer Taggert, tell me what happened,” MacGregor said.

  She gave a crisp report on my actions. No hyperbole, just the facts, but those by themselves were enough to make me want to hide. Between the leap I’d made onto the thing’s back and ripping a gap in the shell with my hands, it really did sound impressive. I suppose it was, when you thought about it from a purely human perspective. Two days ago, no one alive could’ve done what I did. Today, though, it was getting to the point where I was just used to it.

  “Can you do the same to those other crabs?” MacGregor asked.

  “Maybe. I’m not sure. Right after I took it down, the rest of the lobsters swarmed me,” I told him. “They couldn’t hurt me with their spears or claws, so they piled on. Almost suffocated me. Your officers saved my bacon out there.”

  “You saved us, first,” Taggert pointed out.

  “Then we’re definitely even, now. Anyway, I can probably solo any giant grab they send at us, yes. But I can’t take two of them at the same time,” I said. The crabs were high enough tier that their claws could do me some real damage. Two of them would mean one could always slice at me with its claws. “Not easily, anyway. And the lobsters are still a major threat.”

  Then I thought about Alex and the people we’d saved. “Also, Captain—my friend Alex and I saved a couple dozen captives from the lobster camp up past the North End. They were trying to make their way back to MGH, but I worry about them making it there without me.”

  “We could really use you here in this fight, Castle,” MacGregor said.

  “I know, sir. But those people are counting on me, too. Let me go make sure they get where they’re going, and I’ll come back to help. I promise.”

  MacGregor thought it over a moment, narrowing his eyes. I think he’d figured out from the handshake that he was going to have a tough time keeping me there if I didn’t want to be there. He wanted me on his side. Finally, he nodded. “Go. But come back soon as you can.”

  “Thank you, sir.” I turned to go.

  He put a hand on my shoulder before I’d turned fully away. “Listen, Castle. We’re losing this fight. We can’t hold them, not alone, maybe not even with you. Right now, I have every firefighter and EMT I could rally together going building to building and ordering people to evacuate. We’re sending them out via Longfellow Bridge, Beacon Street, and Boylston Street. If you come back and we’re not here, we’ve probably pulled back along one of those routes. Avoid Boston Common—it’s overrun by goblins.”

  He ran a hand through his hair. “Now that’s a sentence I never thought I’d say.”

  “I understand, Captain. This is all pretty crazy to me, too. I’ll be back to help as fast as I can.”

  “Then go. Good luck, man.”

  I turned and made my way quickly to the door, then started sprinting north. After just a few yards I shifted from a sprint to the same long bounds I’d been using earlier, each leap covering more distance as I pushed myself to eat up as much ground as I could, as fast as I could.