[PREVIEW] Great Sage Above Brockton Ch 18

Evening, the same day…

“Are you done yet?”

“It’s not gonna take less time if you keep asking me that. What are you, five?”

Crusader bristled at the remark. “You’ve been staring at that shell casing for hours. Unless it has the goddamn Bible written on it, or whatever the hell the chinks worship, I don’t understand what else you’re looking for.”

Flipping the aforementioned shell casing between his fingers while holding a flashlight in his other hand, Victor sighed dramatically. “So impatient. For your information, it’s barely been ten minutes. If we want to deliver the best results to Kaiser, we cannot rush any part of this. These things take time.”

Crusader held back a growl and felt his fingers tighten over his gauntlets. “Remind me why did I ask you for help?” 

He knew the answer, but it didn’t make it less insufferable to hear.

“Because you know you and everyone else is hopeless at actually investigating.”

When Crusader failed to reply, on account of holding himself back so he wouldn’t curse his asshole of a comrade, Victor flashed a smug grin and returned to examining the casing. Crusader looked around while he worked, sneering at the posters of Asian musicians hanging on the wall. The rest of the room was dull, with grey walls long stripped of any paint, a table that was one hit away from crumbling, and a kitchenette that hadn’t seen a sponge in years. 

“What makes you think this safe house is special?” Crusader asked. 

“I have it on good word that this one was abandoned only a few days ago, long after Lung was taken out of commission,” Victor replied. “The police have their eyes on the crime scenes and we can’t just waltz there, so this is the next best thing.”

Placing the butt of the flashlight in his mouth, he withdrew another shell casing from his pocket and held it beside the one he found. After a few seconds, he pocketed them both and removed the flashlight from his mouth. 

Crusader looked at him expectantly, but Victor shook his head. “They’re not the same. Wherever the ABB got their new gear, it wasn’t here.”

“How’d you figure?”

Victor withdrew the longer casing and held it between his fingers. “This here’s a 5.56x45mm NATO round, used with M4 rifles, among other carbines. As in, the kind of rifles the Marines have access to. Not that hard to acquire, but it’s a few steps beyond the ABB’s usual roster of weapons. They stick - or, stuck - to blades, nailed clubs, and handguns. Maybe a couple of Uzis, like the 45 ACP I found here. Tell me, in all the time we’ve fought them, did they ever pull out carbines or assault rifles?”

Crusader paused as he processed the question. He’d clashed with the ABB for years, and like every other gang who came to roost in Brockton Bay, they’d settled into patterns when it came to their assaults. While Lung and Oni Lee’s presence made up the bulwark of their presence, the group managed to develop a force from its members alone. Utterly inferior to the E88’s forces of course, but still. Enough to enforce their rule and just shy of risking full-blown escalation. Carbines and other heavy-duty weaponry? 

“No,” he replied begrudgingly. “If they had that kind of firepower beforehand, we would’ve known.”

Victor nodded. “Meaning either they were spotless in their clean-up of this place, or they’re receiving supplies from elsewhere in town.” He rubbed his chin and his voice dropped to a murmur. “It would need to be somewhere they can receive supplies and train with, where we and the law enforcement wouldn’t think to look. Maybe out of city bounds? No, there was that robbery yesterday, and it wasn’t local…”

Crusader put his hands on his armored hips. “Look at you, playing detective. And since when did you become a gun nut?”

“Since one Detective Lionel Valdez interrogated me as a bystander. A dull man, even for his breed, but he had useful enough skills.”