Wish upon the Stars chapter 1 pt 5

The doors opened to a scene I couldn't have possibly imagined. I'd  expected some kind of cave or underground room, but this was so far  beyond that. Almost a whole city was down here. Granted a very small  city, but it was easily several miles in every direction. The elevator  must have been moving insanely fast to get us this deep this quickly. I  inched out onto what seemed like some kind of grated catwalk, my shoes  causing a slight tremor in the metal as I took my first step into the  Wish Curse Palace.

Benny was right behind me, gaping  around the same as I was as we looked over the side of the ridiculously  tiny catwalk that kind of felt like it shouldn't hold our weights. Below  us was row after rows of buildings, some small, some large. The outer  sections of the "city" were clearly smaller and looked cheaper, they  were mostly single story, some without fronts, basically just shells  with tables set up inside. Despite that we couldn't get down, we had to  head to the end of the catwalk to try to find a way to reach the  underground town.

Luckily at the end of the catwalk was  another elevator, or rather a platform lift we could stand on and  activate by swiping my card. We climbed on and the lift began to lower.  Slowly and steadily we descended towards the floor of the cavern. Benny  was in awe. "Holy shit man this place is crazy. How did they even make  this? Dad controls half the miners on the planet and he wouldn't be able  to get a cavern like this built without being noticed. How long did  this take to make? What tools did they use?" I had to admit I wasn't  actually that into the whole construction aspect, but it was impressive.

When  we reached the bottom of the lift platform we stepped out into a semi  crowded street and headed for the nearest building. I had zero idea what  we were looking for other than knowing it needed to help me keep myself  hidden from the Unity when I went to do my intake. So I stopped at the  table beneath the first overhand and looked over what they had. It was  all pretty interesting stuff, weapons, gadgets, and even a few skill  crystals apparently, but they weren't really that useful to me right now  and everything really interesting was well out of my price range  anyway.

After scanning through the items in the first shop  we headed to the next building down. This one actually was a bit more  useful, lot's of disguise items and stealth tech, again almost all out  my price range and not what I needed. I decided to actually ask the  proprietor though, since the stuff here was sort of on the right track. I  headed up the counter to speak to the owner, a tall man wrapped in  bandages from head to toe, with only his eyes, mouth, and long greasy  black hair showing. When he grinned he exposed pitch black teeth that  shone like a beetle's shell. "How may I help you friends?"

His  voice was rough and low, like he was a heavy smoker who used to be a  baritone. I offered him my most confident smile, which to be fair  probably wasn't that confident. "Hi there, I was hoping you could help  me. I recently Ascended and I was going to do my intake interview, but  my ability is one that people might assume was...a bit prone to  corruption. I'd really like to avoid the stigma, is there something I  can buy to keep my power on the down low?" I tried to keep any sense of  urgency or need from my voice, since not showing how badly you want  something is buying shit 101.

The man snorted a bit at  that. "Hah. If you want an obfuscator you're looking in the wrong part  of town boyo. That's high end goods. I happen to know a place that has  one, which is lucky because usually you need to buy them at auction. I  can point you to the place, but you'll need to buy something first. I  ain't running a charity for I rankers." I winced, mostly because  literally everything here was horrifyingly expensive, but it's not like  he was charging me for the info. I would get a new toy to play with and  some information at the same time. Perfectly reasonable.

I  started to look around. I wanted to pick something and go, I got a  weird vibe here. There were little signs under the products telling what  they did, but they were mostly at the I grade with one or two H's. I  focused on things I'd find useful. invisibility was neat, but not really  something I needed. Disguise was good, and I could see it being key  once I did my intake, but considering how low level this stuff was I was  guessing anyone at the Unity would be able to see through the  illusions. There were some other neat things I liked the look of. A pair  of glasses that let you see through low tier objects and a pair of  gloves that could stick to walls.

But I finally settled on  something kind of niche. The item was only about forty thousand  credits, practically cheap by the standards of this place. A small black  ring that could hold a single object that I could pick up. I picked it  up, handing it to the man at the counter. "Good choice. Spatial items  are almost always higher tier than this and are usually much more  expensive. This one only holds one item so no one has really wanted it,  but it's a prototype for a line of smuggling rings the creator is  working on. The object inside is undetectable to anyone under C rank. It  probably would have sold anyway but it bonds to the item put inside, so  after it's used it'll only hold that thing."

I nodded,  not caring much. I'd planned to use it to store my scroll anyway, so the  fact that it would only ever hold one object wasn't a downside to me. I  passed over my black metal card before using my scan ring to send the  money. As he wrapped it up he filled me in on the specifics. "It takes a  few seconds to get things in or out, so it isn't much good for weap0ns,  but once something is in there almost anyone you meet will overlook it.  Most people won't even be able to tell its a spacial ring." He finished  wrapping it up and passed it to me, since I'd decided not to wear it  out given where I was. Finally I got it put away and looked at him  expectantly. He smiled unpleasantly, exposing his beetle black teeth. "A  deal's a deal. Up the road about a mile. The Wick and Candle. Tell them  Ivan sent you."

We nodded and headed out, and as we got  further away I pulled Benny off to the side. "Should we get out of here  man? I think we'll need a lot more money to get anything good. I'm kind  of curious what the obfuscator costs but I'm almost positive we can't  afford it. We can just come back and check for it when we have more  cash. Or wait for the auction like he said." I didn't want to stay down  here too long. I was getting nervous. It might just be the normal nerves  you get when doing something that was a little out of bounds but  whatever it was I doubted it would hurt to leave and come back another  time with more money. The extra sixty thousand credits would be enough  for some Doom Sovereign bets.

Benny  looked pensive. "I mean...the thing you want is right down the road  man? I mean sure, no way we have enough for it anyway but we should at  least know what to aim for right? Otherwise we might save up for like  weeks and come back and not have enough. Or spend months doing it and  find out we had what we needed the first day. Come on, we can just dip  in and look, we won't even talk to the counter guy so he won't know  there's a reason to pay attention to us. As long as we don't actually  tell him that Ivan sent us we'll be just another random pair of guys."

I  bit my lip, but in the end he was right. I was being silly and letting  my fear control me. I smiled sheepishly. "Right, sorry man, you're  right. as long as we don't mention Ivan we'll be just another couple of  kids. But I don't want to ask about the obfuscator. Ivan seemed to get  more interested when I brought it up. For all we know they kidnap  uninitiated Ascendants down here. We just look around the shop to see if  it's out and what it'll be worth, and if we don't see it we can just  use the name to do our own research so we know a ballpark amount to  bring with us when we come back."

With  that settled we both made our way up the street, looking for the Wick  and Candle. The buildings as we got further in got nicer and less  crumbling. As we'd seen from up top it seem like they built the best  facilities in the middle of town to start and the lesser shops just  radiated out. I got the impression from looking in windows that we were  even leaving the area where H and I grade stuff was common and were  starting to run into thing that looked fancy enough to be higher grade.  We finally found the Wick and Candle at the edge of what looked like  some kind of demarcation in the ground.

The  quality of the cobblestones on the road had a marked improvement and  even the floor of the cavern had been polished smooth, but the Wick and  Candle sat just outside that line. Like it was waiting to get into the  nicer part of a town. The next building up was actually much nicer  looking than any of the others, conforming to that line of improvement.  Despite that the Wick and Candle really was much more upscale than the  other shops even if there was quite a gap, which made me a bit less  worried about going in, though I still decided to stick to my plan to be  low key.

When  we stepped up to the door however I stopped. I could feel something  off. At first I thought it was the shop itself, but then I finally  realized that it was the sense of being watched. I'd actually had it  since we got down here I just hadn't been able to put a name to the  feeling. I turned slowly, looking behind us, but there was nothing  there, and I let out a relieved sigh at how silly I'd been being. I was  just being paranoid because I was in a new place. I turned back to the  shop door and reached out for the knob, opening the door and slipping in  as quietly as possible. I browsed around for a while, looking for the  obfuscator, but nothing had that label on it and I had no idea what I  was looking for.

Before I could  decide what to do however, a text arrived on my scan ring, a function I  barely ever used, the words scrolling across the band. 'Come up to my  office' it was from Zeke. Which was strange, because Zeke only had a  work room not an office, and if he was home he should know I wasn't  there. I was getting creeped out, so I turned to leave and bumped smack  dab into a pair of men in suits wearing VERY familiar painted masks. It  didn't take long to understand what my Uncle's text meant as one of the  suited goons growled out a command. "The Deacon would like to see you."  Huh, so that's why Zeke was never home. Fuck it, time to get some  answers.