Chapter 60: Thorough Preparation
Mike sat at Connie's kitchen table after getting back from the church and thought through the problem the way he thought through most problems — systematically, starting with what he knew and working toward what he needed.
What he knew: Serena was old, fast, and strong in ways that made direct physical confrontation inadvisable regardless of his current Physique. She had a Charm ability that worked at close range and dissipated in open air. She didn't go into direct sunlight. She hadn't eaten at the picnic. She was operating outside her treaty boundaries, which meant the established institutional response to her situation — the Church's diocese structure — was already theoretically active, just not yet local.
What he needed: options that didn't require him to win a straight physical contest.
He thought about what he knew about vampires from the Twilight universe specifically — not just the general folklore, but the specific mechanics of this particular mythology. The Volturi operated under rules. They were powerful but not invincible. They had weaknesses that were real and documented and that the Church's people would know.
He also thought about the fact that Pastor Jeff had said he'd make the call today, which meant institutional help was theoretically incoming. The question was how long incoming meant, and whether incoming arrived before the offer doesn't travel became I'm leaving with or without your answer.
He needed something in the meantime.
He thought about the ranch. About the storage room his parents had kept on the Minnesota property — the hunting rifles, the shells, the practical equipment of people who lived on land that occasionally required defending.
He thought about who in Deford was most likely to have something similar.
He picked up his phone and called Lina.
She called back twenty minutes later.
"You want to borrow a gun," she said. Not a question. She'd clearly been thinking about it since he'd asked.
"A shotgun if your family has one," Mike said. "Something with range and stopping power."
"My dad has a double-barrel in the storage room," she said. "Old Remington. Been there since before I was born." A pause. "He won't miss it for a few days if I'm careful."
"I wouldn't ask if it wasn't important," Mike said.
"I know you wouldn't," she said. And then: "Is everything okay? You don't have to tell me details, but—"
"It will be," Mike said. "I'm working on it."
Another pause, shorter.
"I'll come by this afternoon," she said.
Connie was on the couch with her travel mug when the knock came at two o'clock.
She opened the door, took in Lina Torres — bundled in a long coat despite the afternoon heat, a black equipment bag over one shoulder, eyes doing the specific scanning of someone who had been watching the street on the way over — and said, warmly: "Come in, sweetheart. Mike's in the back."
Lina stepped inside with the careful movements of someone carrying something they were responsible for. She looked at Connie, then at the hallway, then at the door she'd just come through.
"He's just finishing up," Connie said, heading toward the hallway. "Mike. Someone here for you."
Mike came out.
Lina visibly relaxed — the specific easing of a person who had been tense in transit and had found their destination. She unslung the equipment bag and held it out.
"Remington 870," she said. "Twelve-gauge. Dad bought it in '87 and used it twice. The rest of the time it's been in the storage room under a tarp." She unzipped the bag to show him — an old pump-action shotgun, the wood grip worn smooth with age, the barrel clean. "I found shells in the same cabinet. Double-ought buck."
Mike examined it with the focused attention of someone who had handled firearms before and was assessing rather than admiring. The action was stiff from disuse but functional. The barrel was clear. The choke was standard.
He'd grown up on a Minnesota farm. He'd used rifles on the property, shotguns occasionally. His Level 2 shooting skill had been built on exactly this kind of practical, non-glamorous firearm experience.
This would work.
"Thank you," he said. "I mean it."
"Just bring it back in one piece," Lina said. She looked at him with the direct, even attention she had when she wasn't performing anything. "And tell me when it's over."
"I will," Mike said.
Connie had positioned herself in the kitchen doorway during this exchange with the specific quality of someone who was present but not inserting herself, which for Connie was its own kind of statement.
After Lina left, she looked at Mike.
He looked at her.
"How much do you want to know?" he said.
Connie turned her travel mug in her hands. "I know enough," she said. "I've known something was wrong since the backyard. And I know you went to see Jeff this morning." She paused. "The shotgun tells me you're being practical about it."
"I'm trying to be," Mike said.
"Good." She set down her mug. "Is there anything I can do?"
Mike thought about this honestly. "Stay away from Jeff's house this week. And if Serena comes to the door — don't let her in. Don't engage. Come find me."
Connie looked at him with the steady, unhurried attention of someone who had been asked to do something specific and was deciding whether to accept the parameters.
"Alright," she said.
He spent an hour that evening in the backyard, familiarizing himself with the Remington — the weight of it, the action, the specific mechanics of something he was going to need to be comfortable with quickly. He ran through what he knew about vampire physiology in the Twilight universe specifically: conventional weapons slowed them, didn't stop them. The real stopping power came from either the Volturi's own abilities, fire, or dismemberment.
A twelve-gauge wasn't a permanent solution.
But it was a message. And it was cover fire while he figured out a permanent solution.
He also thought about what else might give him an edge — what the Demon Body's accelerated healing meant in a direct encounter, whether the system had anything relevant in his existing skills, whether there was a chemistry angle worth pursuing.
He thought about aqua regia — the combination of nitric and hydrochloric acid that dissolved metals, including gold, which vampires in this universe were associated with in their jewelry and ornamentation. More relevantly, highly corrosive acid that reached vampire tissue directly would produce a reaction that even rapid healing would struggle to outpace.
He filed this as worth preparing. Not as a first option — not as something he wanted to be carrying around a church picnic — but as a prepared option.
He put the shotgun back in its case and went inside.
Monday arrived with the away game on the schedule.
The team loaded onto the bus in the school parking lot while the student body sent them off with the specific energy of a school that had won its last two games and had revised its expectations accordingly. The GO MEDFORD banner that had appeared across the main hallway at some point over the weekend was already acquiring the look of something permanent.
The opponent was Jefferson Prep — a public school from the next district with a program that Coach George's film review had characterized as disciplined but not explosive, which Mike had translated as: they'll be organized and they'll be beatable if we're better organized.
George had put the dual-core strategy in place before the game — Aaron running the offense from the shotgun, Mike as the primary ground threat. The geometry of the game plan gave Mike specific responsibilities and specific freedom within them, which was the combination that worked best for how his Football IQ processed the field.
He played well. Medford won.
The specific score wasn't what stayed with him afterward — it was the three-point sequence in the fourth quarter where he'd read a defensive rotation two full seconds before the snap and had already planned the counter by the time the ball was in his hands. The gap between knowing something was going to happen and being surprised by it when it did — that gap had nearly closed. The Football IQ drops, the practice with Aaron, the game experience accumulating — it was becoming something close to instinct.
Football at Level 3 felt different from football at Level 2 the way most things felt different once they stopped requiring conscious processing.
He filed this with satisfaction and moved on.
By Wednesday, the week's specific momentum had produced its own weather.
Two wins into the Summer League, Medford High had the particular quality of a school that had remembered something about itself. The hallways had energy. The team was getting the treatment that winning teams got in Texas high schools, which was considerable. Jack Pruitt had been by twice more, his Friday segment now a standing feature on KTXS, and the footage he'd accumulated was producing the kind of regional attention that small public school programs almost never received.
Someone had put a poster up in the main hallway.
Mike had walked past it three times before he'd fully processed that it was a poster of him.
He'd had a brief, specific conversation with himself about how to feel about this and had arrived at: it's useful, don't let it change anything.
Wednesday afternoon, during the window between the end of classes and the start of practice, Mike went to Coach George.
"I need to miss practice today," he said. "Chemistry lab."
George looked at him with the expression of a man who had been bracing for a scheduling conflict and was assessing whether this one was legitimate.
"Chemistry," he said.
"Ms. Ingram mentioned the Math Olympiad team is doing some crossover work with the science department," Mike said, which was technically not a lie — Ms. Ingram had mentioned the Olympiad, and the science department was adjacent to where he was going. "I told her I'd come by."
George looked at him for a moment longer.
"One practice," he said. "We're two weeks out from the quarter-finals. One practice, Mike."
"One practice," Mike confirmed.
George waved him off with the expression of a man who had decided to trust someone and was hoping that trust was well-placed.
The chemistry lab was empty at three-thirty on a Wednesday — the teacher gone, the equipment room unlocked, the specific quiet of a science classroom between uses.
Mike knew what he needed. He'd done the research the night before with the focused precision he brought to anything that had a deadline attached to it.
Aqua regia: one part nitric acid, three parts hydrochloric acid. The combination produced a fuming, highly corrosive mixture capable of dissolving noble metals and producing a chemical reaction violent enough to affect tissue that healed too quickly for most other damage to accumulate.
He worked carefully and methodically, using the safety equipment the lab provided, producing a small sealed quantity in a resistant container that he'd sourced from the supply cabinet. He labeled it accurately, because mislabeling a corrosive acid was the category of mistake that produced consequences, and he had enough of those already.
He cleaned the workspace completely.
He checked the inventory log on the way out to confirm his quantities fell within the range of normal lab usage for the week.
They did.
He put the container in his bag beside the shotgun shells he'd transferred to a smaller case that morning, and went to find Connie.
He had three days left on Serena's week.
He was going to use all three of them.
(End of Chapter 60)
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