Demonic Pornstar System novel Chapter 973

Chapter 973: Bullshit Test

Kaiden came down the front steps and out across the gravel with Aria a half step behind him, and the whole west side of the lot watched them go.

Forty meters out, the sixth assessor had stopped alone in the flat white afternoon, rangefinder in one hand, clipboard under his arm.

Pebble had lifted his head off the foundation and put all six eyes on him.

"Species code," the assessor read aloud, to nobody, flatly, having found a problem he could not staple.

There was no species code. The field was mandatory. He tried it a second time in case a second pass produced an answer.

"Boss." Doug had come out onto the top step behind them and stopped there. "If Pebble decides that man is a threat..."

"He’s a good boy. Don’t worry."

"One paragraph. Hazard to non-awakened personnel, and every dog law in this country gets rewritten at him."

Kaiden had known that since the man started walking, which was why he was out here.

He could call Pebble down. One word, and the guardian would put his head back on the gravel like a good boy, and six federal pens would record that the entity required handler intervention in the presence of an officer.

He kept his mouth shut.

Pebble rose.

He did it without haste, the shadow standing up off the gravel ahead of the body, and crossed the forty meters at a walk that reorganized the assessor’s understanding of the word mandatory.

Then he stopped at a polite distance, head level, and looked down at the clipboard.

Somebody up on the steps made a small sound. Aria’s hand closed around Kaiden’s sleeve and stayed there.

The rangefinder returned a number. The assessor did not write it down, on account of his pen being fully occupied with not shaking.

Then he laughed, one short breath of it, and there was appetite in the sound.

"There’s no column for this," he said, and he had not taken his eyes off Pebble. "Nothing has ever been decided about him. Nobody has ever been in a position to decide it."

His pen was moving fast now.

"Assessor Boyd." Whitlock arrived unhurried and stood off Kaiden’s shoulder, not looking at Pebble at all. "The prior federal report documented this resident as outside any existing regulatory framework. No species code, no hazard classification, no containment protocol."

"Your colleague wrote that line," Kaiden said.

"I know. It is the single most cited sentence in your file, Mister Grey. His office finds it interesting. I find it actionable."

"Actionable?"

Pebble, who had smelled the man’s opinion of him from across the lot, lowered his head to clipboard height and breathed out once through his nose. The form’s pages stood up horizontal.

Boyd went absolutely still, and stayed that way well after the pages had settled.

"He’s saying hello," Kaiden translated.

"Noted," Whitlock said, and did not specify what.

...

The sub-level came last, and Whitlock wanted it that way.

Ms. Rook took the team down herself, along the guarded corridor, past the access log and the reinforcement ratings, and stopped them at the painted line on the floor in front of the gate.

"Everything on this side of that line is yours to assess, Assessor. Your Bureau colleague walked it on our intake day and wrote it up satisfactory."

"The order covers residential facilities." Whitlock looked past her at the gate. "Our understanding is that the guild leadership resides below."

"They reside past that line, and past that line is sovereign territory under the federal accord."

She had the page ready, because she had been waiting for this one since eight in the morning.

"Declared by the Association’s Chairman on the day your President signed it, live on every channel in the country. There is no exception written into it for welfare teams."

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