Demonic Po*nstar System

Chapter 973: Bullshit Test

Kaiden came down the front steps and out across the gravel with Aria a half step behind him, and the whole west side of the lot watched them go.

Forty meters out, the sixth assessor had stopped alone in the flat white afternoon, rangefinder in one hand, clipboard under his arm.

Pebble had lifted his head off the foundation and put all six eyes on him.

”Species code,” the assessor read aloud, to nobody, flatly, having found a problem he could not staple.

There was no species code. The field was mandatory. He tried it a second time in case a second pass produced an answer.

”Boss.” Doug had come out onto the top step behind them and stopped there. ”If Pebble decides that man is a threat...”

”He’s a good boy. Don’t worry.”

”One paragraph. Hazard to non-awakened personnel, and every dog law in this country gets rewritten at him.”

Kaiden had known that since the man started walking, which was why he was out here.

He could call Pebble down. One word, and the guardian would put his head back on the gravel like a good boy, and six federal pens would record that the entity required handler intervention in the presence of an officer.

He kept his mouth shut.

Pebble rose.

He did it without haste, the shadow standing up off the gravel ahead of the body, and crossed the forty meters at a walk that reorganized the assessor’s understanding of the word mandatory.

Then he stopped at a polite distance, head level, and looked down at the clipboard.

Somebody up on the steps made a small sound. Aria’s hand closed around Kaiden’s sleeve and stayed there.

The rangefinder returned a number. The assessor did not write it down, on account of his pen being fully occupied with not shaking.

Then he laughed, one short breath of it, and there was appetite in the sound.

”There’s no column for this,” he said, and he had not taken his eyes off Pebble. ”Nothing has ever been decided about him. Nobody has ever been in a position to decide it.”

His pen was moving fast now.

”Assessor Boyd.” Whitlock arrived unhurried and stood off Kaiden’s shoulder, not looking at Pebble at all. ”The prior federal report documented this resident as outside any existing regulatory framework. No species code, no hazard classification, no containment protocol.”

”Your colleague wrote that line,” Kaiden said.

”I know. It is the single most cited sentence in your file, Mister Grey. His office finds it interesting. I find it actionable.”

”Actionable?”

Pebble, who had smelled the man’s opinion of him from across the lot, lowered his head to clipboard height and breathed out once through his nose. The form’s pages stood up horizontal.

Boyd went absolutely still, and stayed that way well after the pages had settled.

”He’s saying hello,” Kaiden translated.

”Noted,” Whitlock said, and did not specify what.

...

The sub-level came last, and Whitlock wanted it that way.

Ms. Rook took the team down herself, along the guarded corridor, past the access log and the reinforcement ratings, and stopped them at the painted line on the floor in front of the gate.

”Everything on this side of that line is yours to assess, Assessor. Your Bureau colleague walked it on our intake day and wrote it up satisfactory.”

”The order covers residential facilities.” Whitlock looked past her at the gate. ”Our understanding is that the guild leadership resides below.”

”They reside past that line, and past that line is sovereign territory under the federal accord.”

She had the page ready, because she had been waiting for this one since eight in the morning.

”Declared by the Association’s Chairman on the day your President signed it, live on every channel in the country. There is no exception written into it for welfare teams.”

”You are declining a federal welfare team access to your members’ place of residence.”

Rook’s eyes narrowed for a second. These pieces of shit weren’t even listening to her. But she was a professional, and she knew bait when she saw it. So she kindly responded. ”The accord is declining you, and your own government signed it.”

Whitlock considered the painted line long enough for Marsh to look up from her folder.

”Access denied,” he dictated. Marsh wrote it down, and neither of them looked at Rook while it happened.

...

At five they assembled on the gravel, six of them, folders squared, sedans idling.

The ops floor filled the doorway behind Kaiden. Out past the sedans the lot had quietly stopped working, crews down off the dorm scaffolding, kitchen staff on the mess hall steps in their whites, the ones who had been called in still fresh from being asked what it was like to work for him.

Whitlock read the preliminary summary aloud at the foot of the steps.

”Findings pending analysis. Unfurnished residential facility. Uncompensated resident personnel without delineated hours. Food service certification disputed. Temporary structure removed prior to inspection. Unclassified entity of indeterminate mass residing among non-awakened personnel. Access denied to primary residence. Interview analysis to follow.”

He closed the folder. ”A determination will issue in due course.”

The lot waited for the rest of it.

”That’s it?” Doug said finally, from the top step. ”That’s the summary? Where’s the compliance determination?”

”In due course, Mister-” Whitlock checked nothing. ”Doug.”

Round one had ended with a man reading the word compliant aloud to the whole compound, in a voice pitched to carry. This one ended with six car doors.

Kaiden came down the steps after him, and the assessor paused with one hand on the open door, ahead on points and aware of it.

”You have a remarkable operation, Mister Grey. Loyal people, who speak of you in ways I rarely encounter in this work.” He said it precisely as one would recite an indictment. ”The determination will issue when the analysis is complete. The Bureau will be in touch.”

”You knew what you’d find before you came,” Kaiden said. He was too tired by then to dress it up as a question.

Whitlock lowered himself into the sedan without answering.

The sedans left as they had arrived, nose to tail, rehearsed.

Nobody behind him moved, and the silence held until the last car cleared the checkpoint.

”Filing’s clean,” Rook said then, loud enough to reach the mess hall steps. ”Nothing in that stack survives a challenge. The kitchen citation dies on the annex, Pebble has case law, and the hours finding dies the moment Miss Seren has a contract. We passed.”

”And when’s that?” Alexandra asked, worried. ”Hope I didn’t ruin things...”

”Don’t worry about that. You will have one before midnight, dated from the day you started running his house.”

”Do it,” Kaiden said.

Rook did not look up from her tablet.

”I believe the word you used this afternoon was partner. I intend to make it true on paper, since the federal government cannot read a kitchen.”

”That’s-” Alexandra’s hands came up. ”Miss Rook, that is retroactive classification of an employment relationship, you cannot simply-”

”I can sign an agreement tonight whose terms run from the day the work started, and pay you the arrears alongside it. That part is ordinary.”

Rook finally looked up from the tablet.

”What I can’t do is pretend it was filed months ago. So we file it tonight, honestly, with your name on it and the start date it always had.”

”...From the beginning?” Alexandra managed, and her voice went out halfway through it.

”From the beginning.”

Somebody in the doorway started clapping, and the whole lot went up.

The noise came off the mess hall steps, the scaffolding, the open dorm windows, four hundred people who had spent all day watching their friends get called in one at a time and asked whether they were frightened of the man on those steps.

”We did it! Another test passed!” the members cheered.