Malcolm Tent
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Wish upon the Stars chapter 908
🕑 Added 2025-06-13 23:36:34 +0000 UTCHorace, as it turned out, was NOT a social creature. He didn’t spend lots of time with many people, the main suspects this time only numbered a measly three. First, we had Charles, the janitor. Charles went out of his way to talk to Horace, always reaching out and trying to be friendly…but Charles talked to basically everyone. He was an extremely friendly person according to everyone on staff, and was widely beloved.
This didn’t exactly clear him of suspicion. A lot of people tend to look for someone shady or out of place when searching for a spy, but often the opposite is true.
When looking for someone gathering information, friendly and outgoing people are a better pool of suspects than people who reek of suspicion. Information gathering is about listening, empathizing, and reaching out to those around you. If you want to find a spy, don’t look for the creepy loner, look for the person who is always listening but never talking, the person who is always there to lend an ear and ask thought provoking questions about you.
Sadly, being nice wasn’t conclusive, and it wasn’t unique among our suspects, because coming in second was Sofia. Sofia was the receptionist for the shipping portion of the winery, and was apparently the object of Horace’s (and several other people’s) affections.
They didn’t interact that much, because he didn’t often get up the courage to talk to her, but she was always happy to chat with anyone and was genuinely kind to everyone on staff. She was another integral member of the winery who could go anywhere without suspicion, and would be a perfect choice for an infiltrator.
Finally, our third suspect was Barry. Barry was, as opposed to the other two, NOT a fan of Horace. He was a rival technician who was constantly at odds with our Void captive. He was actually pretty much a stereotypical bullying co-worker, but consequently the two of them interacted a LOT. All three of these people suited multiple criteria, not just proximity but wine knowledge and general capability.
The only problem was…”None of these people are in this room.,” I pointed out in annoyance. “Which means we’re going to have to go look for them, and while we expected that, from what I can tell they’re all in different wings of this ridiculous oversized building.”
Graham nodded. He’d been a huge help up to this point, once we explained why we’d captured Horace and exactly what we were doing. Obviously my crack about being “the constabulary” wasn’t a valid explanation and we’d needed to actually tell them something about our purpose, but luckily, this was the heirworld. Locals KNEW the Wyndham name, and while there was a lot of political maneuvering between the various factions, everyone here knew that a Wyndham was their only ticket out, so the locals, barring betrayal to another Wyndham subfaction, generally didn’t make trouble.
“Basically,” he acknowledged. “Although I wouldn’t describe the area where Sofia is located as a wing, more of a central hub.”
“Yes,” I said dryly. “That was my point. The terminology was unpleasant.”
He coughed in embarrassment. “Sorry, I have a bit of a preference for exactness. It usually helps with my job.”
“You need it,” Bethy said breezily. “It smells like you used Valois as the core varietal for the hybridized grape strain here. Valois is way too acidic. The common thought process is that you want a balance of acid and sugar, but that’s because too many people overferment. Sugar turns into alcohol during the fermentation process, so if you’re not careful you end up with a super dry red with a high alcohol content, but if you lean into the acid your final product ends up without much body.”
We all stared at her. She shrugged. “I’m part maenad, I know how to make wine. You guys know this.”
“Fascinating as that insight into the winemaking process is,” I said decisively. “We need to figure out how to get all three of those people together, preferably here, and preferably soon. That’s the only way we can try to figure out the identity of the Sommelier, and HOPEFULLY flip them so we can prevent whatever tragedy that mystery backer is planning down at the crystal depot.”
“We could throw a pizza party!” Bethy exclaimed brightly. “Everyone loves a pizza party. They’d all run down here at top speed.”
Graham shook his head. “Wouldn’t work, Sofia is allergic to tomatoes.”
“How is that your main problem with that plan?” I asked in exasperation. “Nevermind, the point is we need something subtle.” I paused, an idea occurring to me. “Or something very UNsubtle. Is there some kind of emergency alert you could trigger? One we could redirect so only they got it?”
He hummed contemplatively. “I mean, there’s a subset of the tanks that have delton sensors on them. Delton gas is used in the process to reduce oxygen exposure, but it’s not exactly safe in large concentrations. If there’s a leak and it builds up, it’s not only toxic but HIGHLY combustible. The first winery building was leveled in a delton explosion, so we’re extremely fastidious about proactive detection.”
“Can we set off the alarm without ACTUALLY blowing ourselves up?” Abel chimed in. “Because I feel like a giant explosion would put a crimp in our plans, what with the gruesome fiery deaths.”
“I could most likely survive it,” I shrugged. “But yeah, probably not optimal strategically.”
Luckily, it didn’t seem to be an issue. “No, we just need to alter the feedback data on one of the tanks. The actual delton levels won’t be affected. The tricky part will be making sure only those three get notified. The delton alarms are threaded through the whole building, and when they go off standard procedure is to head to whichever wing the leak is detected from immediately to help with the suppression. There’s a bunch of air purifiers that require life energy to function, and the employees use them to clear the gas pockets before the buildup reaches critical mass.”
He continued speaking, filling us in on all the details. It was actually kind of interesting. Apparently the gas had a positive charge, and when the pockets expanded enough the charged molecules started bumping into each other and creating sparks. Enough of those and BOOM.
As he spoke, I approached the tank and controls, and deployed Dantalion, slowly comparing his words to what I was detecting in the machine. To my shock, I was able to actually SENSE the information. Dantalion could scan items for knowledge, but apparently active state information like data in machines could be directly interfaced with. It wasn’t anything I’d ever tried before, and it required a bit of trial and error to connect, but once that was done, I was able to actively manipulate the data flow in the measurement device.
It was an interesting application of Dantalion, which had already been one of my most useful non combat forms. Sadly, I didn’t interact with much machinery, so I wasn’t sure how useful it would be. If I ever had to hack someone’s scan ring it might come in handy.
Regardless, it only took about twenty minutes to figure out the notification process, curate the results, and then send them out to lure in our targets.
Once that was done, we all lay in wait. It didn’t take long, they arrived in short order, but we didn’t attack directly. Two of these people were probably totally innocent, so it wasn’t really right to just jump them. Luckily, we had considered the problem and come to a quick and easy resolution. When they entered, we had Callie waiting there for them, and when she saw them, she hosed them all down with a wave of heretic fire.
While the heretic fire COULD be used for general offense when mixed with other things, it was mainly for cleansing and damaging the void and defending the soul. Not to mention Callie, as an angel, had a substantial amount of control of what her flames did.
Sure enough, they rolled over two of the targets, the two men, without incident, and only Sofia stopped and dropped to her knees with a low groan.
I triggered Behemoth, immediately capturing her and flooding the bonds with the flame. Her eyes widened, then darted from side to side, clearly looking for a way out. She spotted the rest of us, and her face crumpled. “Graham! What’s going on? Help me! What is this? I didn’t do anything!”
“Ah, yes,” said Abel dryly. “Screaming that it wasn’t you. The first action of any innocent person.”
“That’s not helpful,” I told him with an eye roll. Sofia relaxed, and I felt compelled to add. “He’s right, obviously. You’re totally guilty. It’s just tacky to point it out like that.” I turned to my wife. “So? What’s the verdict? She’s not devolving into a gibbering mess and foaming at the mouth, can we flip her?”
Callie nodded. “Yeah, she doesn’t seem to be a lifer. She probably just got recruited and is still in the process of conversion. The actual time necessary to achieve it varies. Like Wendell wasn’t even close.” At the mention of Wendell, Sofia’s fearful expression cracked, collapsing to something harder and colder. Callie grinned. “Ah, there she is. Recognized the name? I’m guessing you flipped him?”
Sofia sighed. “It wasn’t hard. He was a pig, and kind of a loser. His ability was pathetic outside the context of our operation. He was destined to be the designated wine guy for the rest of his life, and I told him so. Honestly, the worst part was putting up with his attempts at flirting. He was a slimeball.”
“Oh, are we not doing the thing where you play dumb anymore?” I said brightly. “Fantastic. I was already sick of that. Tell us what you know about the attack on the crystal depot.”
She blinked at me. “I mean…not much. I’m fucking HR. My job is to taste the wine and to recruit people for the cause. You don’t tell your sales girl about your military distribution. I doubt I’d even know as much as I do if Horace didn’t love to brag so much. You’d think being brainwashed by extradimensional hate aliens would diminish the need to show off. It does not.”
“You know about the void and you’re still working for them?” I asked dryly. “That doesn’t seem counterintuitive to you?”
“What, afraid I’ll ruin my bright future stranded in the slums of a ruthless prison world?” she sneered. “Not like I have much to lose. I’m stuck on my Solid Path. Can’t get it to form. I’ll NEVER hit C-rank as I am. Maybe I’ll get brainwashed, but even so, I’ll have a future. Or, y’know, I would have. Except I got caught. So…sucks to beme.”
That was not ideal. It meant she had no information we could use. But I had a thought. “You put the Void taint in the wine, presumably to sway others, but to actually PRODUCE the Void taint you need concentrated misery. This doesn’t seem like the place for that, which means you need to be GETTING it from somewhere. Do you have shipments?”
I could smell lies, but I realized that I hadn’t ASKED her if she knew where the attack was being staged from. I asked what she knew about it. And she’d said not much. Which was an incredibly subjective answer. Sure enough, at my new line of questioning, she tensed. “I…yeah. Yeah I do. I pick up the Void liquid in a cave.”
“You’re going to take us there,” I said triumphantly. “Tonight.” I turned to Devlan, who was already nodding, turning away to try to contact his incoming forces. Now that we had a possible break point, we needed to move quickly. If we couldn’t prevent the initial Void attack they’d screw up OUR attack, either by taking all the crystal of forcing them to beef up security. Sofia, meanwhile, looked terrified by the whole idea. Well, she’s been right after all. Sucked to be her.
Comments
LadyLark
More like she’s an idiot, or simply just ignorant. She’s an ascended and because of that. The Void was going to kill her because she’s “loud”. She basically signed her death warrant the moment she joined them. If she knows this and still decides to join them then she’s either a really big idiot or crazy.
Anime Problem
The way this is written it sounds more like they were staring at Bethy because of the massive non sequitur not because of her "surprising" wine knowledge. Also even if you can't advance you can still be a power player at your rank she's literally just bitter about the fact that others in her position played their cards better than her.
