I Clean Gods to Pay the Rent

0004 The World Beneath the Surface

    With the mindset that he'd fight like hell to stay alive — and if he couldn't, at least his family could still con a survivor's pension out of it — Cassius walked into the Oddity Cleanup Bureau, gloomy as any haunted house, followed the wrinkled direction placards down the corridor to the big office tucked deepest inside once more, and knocked hard on that familiar door.

    "Anyone in there? I'm here about the job!"

    *Creak.*

    With the stiff rasp of metal hinges, the blackened door swung open from within — only, the one who came out wasn't that red-haired woman interviewer. It was... a black goat, standing on its hind legs?

    "What are you looking at? Never seen the Soot Bishop before?"

    Seemingly taking deep offense at the shock plastered all over Cassius's face, the black goat — cigarette dangling from its mouth — blew a practiced smoke ring, then curled back its lips, crusted with suspicious white foam, glared daggers at Cassius, and growled viciously:

    "I'm honestly floored. Did somebody fucking crush your balls or something? Yours truly amplified the malice in your heart a full sevenfold, and you STILL held back from putting a knife in that fat bastard?"

    ???

    The Soot Bishop? A goat standing upright? You amplified my malice? So I wasn't actually losing it back there?

    A whole chain of question marks, big and small, went stampeding through Cassius's head — but before he could fire off a single one, a massive empty bottle came spinning out of the doorway and cracked the black goat across the back of the skull with a bang.

    After eating that critical hit, the black goat — insolence and all — never so much as bleated: its eyes rolled back on the spot, and its short-furred body went board-stiff, toppled forward, and flopped bodily into Cassius's arms.

    *Bzzt!*

    [You have encountered a special existence beyond understanding. The variant badge [Level-1 Certified Materialist] (Crimson) has activated. Your boundary of cognition has been expanded, and you have obtained partial information on this being]

    With that familiar grating whine, the strange crimson badge flashed once and vanished, and all at once a mass of bizarre script surfaced in the empty air above the black goat's head.

    [Name: The Soot Crozier (Ruin, Knowledge, Whispering)]

    [Appearance: Two jet-black horns marked with spiral ridging. Once a Welsh mountain goat has been offered as the sacrifice and the erosion ritual correctly completed, the sacrifice becomes a black goat — fond of smoking, accustomed to walking upright on its hind legs, and in the habit of calling itself a demon]

    [Ability: Malice Amplification, Vast Erudition, Occult Lore]

    [Cost: One pack of "Gault" cigarettes, or one sinful soul]

    [File: Captured and reported during the Battle of Aslan by Hesper Marlowe, head of the Oddity Cleanup Bureau's House of Buer branch, who later claimed it for her own use.

    Please note: while this anomalous object has caused no deaths since being claimed, it carries an extensive record of indirect injuries — over five years, more than 40 employees of the Department of Roads left injured or forced out of their posts]

    [Assessment: Possesses the terrifying ability to touch off a war with laughable ease, yet its true body is frail beyond help — no different from an ordinary goat — and it lives in abject terror of male humans born in Wales]

    [Contamination: 0.1]

    Somehow committing every last word to memory in under 0.01 seconds, Cassius stared at the crimson badge dimming back down on the virtual panel — black goat still in his arms — and blanked for a beat.

    Malice amplification? Contamination?

    Before Cassius could digest any of that weirdness, the red-haired woman who'd interviewed him yesterday came strolling out, an equally enormous bottle in hand.

    "Why are you back again?"

    After tipping her head back for a long pull of ale, the red-haired interviewer took one look at the bloodshot-eyed Cassius in front of her, frowned despite herself, and demanded, none too friendly:

    "Didn't I already spell it all out for you? A normal person like you has no business joining the Oddity Cleanup Bureau. You'd be better off..."

    "Wait — please!"

    Seeing that she meant to show him the door, and in no mood to let go of this final lifeline, Cassius hurried to explain:

    "I'm not normal! No — wait — I mean, I do have certain special abilities, the kind that run past the bounds of ordinary people, and they might be exactly what you need!"

    Special abilities past the bounds of ordinary people?

    At that, one of the red-haired woman's brows arched a touch, a glint of yeah-right sliding through her eyes; then she folded her arms across her chest and said, neither believing nor disbelieving:

    "Sure. Go on, let's hear it."

    Let's hear it... since the plan was to sign on here and milk a survivor's pension, obviously he'd have to show his worth first — but how exactly was he supposed to explain this "badge" business?

    After a lightning-fast audit of his own assets, Cassius's eyes rolled sideways a fraction; he made the snap decision to bury the "badge" entirely and started in instead:

    "My powers of observation are special! I can pick out certain particular things — and with direct contact, I can instantly pull down intel related to them!"

    No way...

    Hearing that, the red-haired woman couldn't help shaking her head inwardly.

    Plenty of people were indeed born carrying "anomalies," but a power that forced its way to intel like that was, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, one of the nastiest kinds around — a "concept-type" anomaly — and those only worked when the bearer's own "tier" sat stably above the target's.

    So if the kid could actually do it, his baseline tier had to be frighteningly high — rock-bottom estimate, the same league as one of those evil bells from another plane. And something at THAT level was going to come job-hunting at OUR Oddity Cleanup Bureau?

    Still, though she didn't buy a word of it, the red-haired woman didn't shoot him down either. She just tipped her chin at the unconscious black goat and said, perfectly level:

    "There you go — it's one of those 'particular things,' and you two already count as having had contact. So start talking. Show me exactly what's so special about you."

    Phew...

    At the "test question" the red-haired woman had set him, Cassius quietly let a breath go.

    What he'd feared most just now was getting booted before he got a chance at all. Now that the chance was his, so long as the "badge" didn't go sideways, the job was as good as in the bag — after all, intel had to be worth something to any organization on earth.

    Besides, if this Oddity Cleanup Bureau outfit truly prized intel work, then even if he never made favorite, they surely wouldn't spend him as cannon fodder — he might even rate some special treatment, buy a few extra rounds against that horrifying death rate they tallied by the month.

    He'd walked in here fully prepared to trade his life for a survivor's pension — but if living was on the table, who on earth would pick dying?

    ...

    Cradling the hope that this might buy him a few extra years, Cassius steadied himself and answered, picking his spots with care:

    "This goat's true body is actually that pair of horns on its head. Its ability is amplifying the malice in people's hearts, and it's carrying a decent hoard of occult knowledge on top of that.

    "It also happens to like 'Gault' cigarettes and sinful souls; right now it belongs to someone named Hesper Marlowe; over the past few years it's run up a whole lot of Department of Roads officials injured and forced out; and it's terrified of men from Wales..."

    As Cassius relayed, line by line, the intel he'd pulled off the badge, the red-haired woman's offhand expression turned gradually grave — until at last her eyes narrowed, and she began sizing up the lanky half-grown young man in front of her, over and over.

    The ability being malice amplification, the taste for Gault cigarettes — fine, those cost nothing to dig up. The stupid goat racking up injured Department of Roads employees — explicable too; a diligent newspaper reader might sniff that out. But the stupid goat's true body being its horns, and her own name — those were intel no ordinary person could ever lay hands on.

    And the stupid goat being afraid of men from Wales? She was hearing that one for the very first time herself.

    So if the kid was straight with her, the "anomaly" he'd carried from birth must be terrifyingly high-tier — even if it fell short of the evil-bells-from-another-plane class, it had to sit at least above the stupid goat, archdemon or not...

    That thought landed, and the red-haired woman tipped her head back, drained the ale in her hand, then hefted the thick-walled empty bottle and brought it down hard on the black goat's skull.

    "Ngh... where's yours truly... damn it! Hes... you stinking broad! You hit me with a bottle AGAIN!"

    Under the red-haired woman's glare, the freshly conked — and now freshly awake — black goat choked down the half-spoken name, threw a hoof up to guard its head, and groused, full of venom:

    "Yours truly used to be an archdemon, you know! Would it kill you to show me one shred of respect?"

    "Ha. After the garbage you've pulled, you don't deserve my respect."

    Tipping the empty bottle up and jolting loose the last film of ale clinging to the glass, the red-haired woman drank it down, then pointed at the visibly uneasy Cassius and said to the black goat through narrowed eyes:

    "This young fellow from Wales just gave me a fine bottle of ale worth a shilling and two pence. As of right now, he owns you."

    From Wales?!

    At those words the black goat shuddered head to tail and gave Cassius a once-over, shock and dread all tangled together — then caught on that she was almost certainly full of it, instantly crossed its forelimbs over its chest, and snorted, contempt written across its face:

    "Hah, don't try that one on me. Year-end's two months off, and Headquarters is sure to send people down for the year-end review — even you wouldn't dare screw around at a time like that!"

    "You're right, I was lying."

    The red-haired woman nodded, conceding the black goat's deduction without a flicker of shame, then let the corners of her mouth curl up and asked, entertained:

    "Though... you DO seem awfully afraid of men from Wales?"

    Damn it! How does she know that?!

    While the black goat's eyeballs rolled every which way, hunting for a way to paper over its "weakness," the red-haired woman — the intel's truth now verified — gave a soft laugh, turned, and offered Cassius her fair right hand, a warm smile on her face:

    "Very good. It seems you really are the sort we need. As of this moment, you're one of the House of Buer."

    Whew... that was NOT easy!

    Hearing that he'd been hired, the tense-eyed Cassius let out a long breath, the strung-tight look on his face easing a little. And yet...

    Hold on... was something not adding up here?

    Turning the red-haired woman's words over one more time, Cassius's eyes flew wide with shock.

    Say that again? What the fuck kind of bureau is this???