You must be this old to enter the Dungeon

65) A nice quiet sit down conversation

I thought about telling Wylina to make a break for it and run for home, but even if no one panicked and shot at her and the pups, anything could happen to her on the way home. I was just going to have to hope the man in charge kept his word for the moment.

Standing up, slowly, with my hands in the air I looked around, “Just tell me what you need me to do, but please don’t try to rough me up, the coyotes might do something and then everything is going to go… pear shaped.”

I was instructed to lie down, and two agents walked up, one of them pressed his knee down onto my back as they put handcuffs on me, but he didn’t rest his weight on me. The other agent made reassuring sounds at the coyotes when they began growling and whining.

The guy offered them some chips from a small package he pulled out of his pocket, but only Chubby took them, with his tail wagging, after sniffing at the offered corn chips.

As the two agents lifted me to my feet, chip guy whispered at me. “Are they really coyotes? They’re huge.”

I whispered back to him. “They’re Spirit Coyotes. As smart as people. The system lets us old farts make them so they can protect our families and the younger folk while we go into the Dungeons. And if we don’t come back out.”

The man in charge, a middle aged Hispanic looking man with a narrow twisted up face yelled at us, “Keep him quiet, and no talking to the prisoner.”

I lowered my head so he couldn’t see my lips move and whispered. “Prick.”

Chip guy had to fight back a laugh.

I was walked back to the trailers and led into what looked like a break room in one of them, before being sat down in a folding metal chair.

The guy in charge stood in the doorway, glaring at me. “We checked, you own a shotgun. I am leaving you with your animals instead of shooting them to protect my agents from dangerous creatures altered by the System. In return, I will need you to surrender the gun.”

I thought about claiming I had lost it, but after a moment I stood and turned around to hold my hands out flat, palm down over the table. “I’m going to make it appear on top of the table. But I do have a receipt with the serial number, so I will want it back at some point, and it will be this gun. Not a substitute.”

With that, I sat back down and one of the guards took the shotgun out of the room, after which the Prick sneered and walked off.

The door was closed leaving me and the coyotes with chip guy, and the other guy, who turned out to be a woman. Both of them had black tape over the patches that should have shown me their names.

Which seemed pretty wrong. So I pointed that out. “Seemed illegal to hide your names.”

The woman shrugged. “Orders, and it’s a gray area. And not worth losing our jobs arguing about it.”

We sat there in silence, which both me and the woman seemed pretty comfortable with, but the chip guy seemed to have to keep himself from talking.

Finally after Chubby began getting twitchy, I spoke up. “They need to pee.”

The two guards looked at each other. Then they looked at the coyotes.

I shrugged. “I’m not the one that's going to have to clean up the mess. It’s your call.”

Chip guy got his radio out, and someone told him to wait. After several more minutes, a new pair of guards showed up, the older one jerked a thumb over his shoulder towards the open door. “You two take them outside and let them do their business.” He looked at me. “If they run, our snipers will shoot them. With the bats gone, they got nothing else better to do.”

I made eye contact with Wylina, who began pokeing a reluctant Blue towards the door as Chubby rushed at Chip guy, jumping around eagerly in his excitement.

And sniffing at Chip guy’s pocket that he had stuffed the remaining chips back into.

After a bit, there was a knock at the door and the two replacement agents walked out.

A fit looking man in his forties, with a professional dye job to cover up his prematurely graying hair walked in and sat down in a chair on the other side other side of the table from me.

Setting a leather briefcase on the floor beside him, he folded his hands together as he rested them on the table in front of him.

After a moment of staring at each other, he finally spoke up. “Hi Dad.”

I chewed that over, and finally nodded at him. “Reed.”

He leaned back in his chair. “You are in trouble deep old man. But luckyly for you, I have some connections. People who owe me favors, and who I can make promises too. I just need you to cooperate with me.”

I stared at him coldly. “Or…”

Tilting his head toward the side of the room, a thin smile appeared on his lips. “They will start with the damaged one. It won’t even see the gun before it fires since it’s blind on one side. But that’s just to get your attention. Then it will be the full grown one since it might be a danger to the federal agents out there. After that, we’ll show you the bodies and you should finally understand how serious this is.”

He lifted his suitcase, the one I had bought for him when he graduated from college and laid it flat on the table, patting it once with his hand.

“If that isn’t enough, well, I’m making some pretty good money nowadays, and as I said, I know people. Challenging for custody of my daughter won’t be much of a problem. Even just getting partial custody would wreak Patty.”

I leaned forward in my chair and smiled wide enough to show him my teeth. “...and?”

He glared. “Next I get you declared medically incompetent. After your little escapde tonight, it won’t be hard. You’ll be locked up, and I will have control of your estate. The house, all the property you’ve bought. I will take everything from you.”

Reed nearly hissed that last part. I nodded at him, with a manic grin on my face. “Now... tell me if I care.”

He stood and shouted. “I know you care! More than you ever cared about me, or Mom! I’ll make you care!”

There was a knock at the door, and one of the agents called out something about “...okay in there?”

Reed rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “It’s fine! Its… Family issues.”

I stared at him, the dots connecting in my head. Things I had never gotten before. Understanding on a level that I had just not been capable of seeing.

Before the system shoved the ability to understand those kinds of things into my head.

“I always cared about you Reed. It’s just… I just wasn’t able to feel things like other people. There is something wrong with me, and then I got hurt so badly that I was never able to make the same connections that other people could. Not with the woman I felt enough for to marry, or our son.”

He stared at me, a blank look on his face.

Looking up at him, I gave him a slow nod. “You’re the same way. We’re both missing something on the inside. Otherwise, you couldn’t have ever done what you did.” I gave him a short, rough laugh. “Aren’t you a chip off the old block?”

Reed sat down, and stared at me for a moment, before letting out a huff. “Be that as it may, I figure you owe me, and I going to take everything you have.”

He opened up his briefcase and slapped down a pad of papers densely written in legalese. “If you cooperate, I’ll let you stay in the old wreck you call home. And your pets will be safe. But first, you are going to sign over power of attorney. After that, you’ll be taken care of and we won’t ever have to see each other again.”

Tapping a pen on the papers, he slowly smiled. “Hell, I even leave everything to the girl after I die. It’s not like I’m going to have another kid.”

As we heard the sound of shouting outside and the rumble of vehicles, I grinned at my unfortunate son.

“That’s what I can’t forgive boy. No matter how little I cared about you, I always tried to do right by you. I only thing I ever thought I had drilled into your head was that you take care of your family. Everything else I could have forgiven, but not what you did to Beatrice.”

Outside the winds swirled and collected bits of fallen and rotting leaves from the grounds of the old hospital. Along with the smaller pieces of deadfall from all the trees on the property. Even the bits of paper in all its various forms.

Paper was something that had been made from trees after all, living things that even if they had grown elsewhere but now all of it was part of this property.

By my will, all of it was gathering together as I called the Heap back to life on the land that was now mine.

“But don’t worry Reed. I do have something for you.”