Late Night Date Night - Prologue

August 21, 202X, 9:03 PM

Donnel City - Liora Heights

Lyle Brewer wasn’t the worrying type, no matter what his associates might say. And he wasn’t no coward, neither. Cowards labored for scraps and took what was given even when they knew the game was rigged. Lyle wasn't like that. He had his sights set on the top, and people destined for greatness learned to…take care, that was all.

“Stop twitching, Lyle. You’re starting to make me nervous.”

Raymond didn’t actually sound nervous, and a quick glance confirmed that his lip was twisted in disgust as he watched Lyle’s fingers tap-tapping on the glass counter.

“Sorry, Ray,” Lyle mumbled. He forced his jittery fingers to go still. The habit had started a few months back, after what went down at the Truffle. Now it tended to show up every evening. It was getting tougher to rein it in, what with all the rumors. Lyle wasn’t afraid, nothing like that. He just didn’t like the unexpected.

“Let’s button it up and get the hell out of here,” Ray said. “I’ll confirm the numbers went through.” The other man turned and walked through the back curtain, leaving Lyle with the unenviable task of closing down the front.

That was okay, though. It was fine. Lyle knew how to play his role, bide his time. He kept his grumbling quiet as he stepped around the counter and started down the shop’s claustrophobic center aisle. His reflection was fleetingly visible in the grimy glass of all the empty aquariums.

“Don't forget to sweep!” Ray’s bellow from the back was both dismissive and condescending.

Lyle gritted his teeth. Still fine. He locked the front door and turned the placard resting against the spotted glass to “closed.” Then he grabbed the broom and took a few half-hearted swipes at the floor, pushing the grit further underneath the shelves.

By design, there was nothing inviting about Cole’s Aquarium Supplies. The merchandise was years out-of-date and resting cozy under dust. They carried no fish. Their last sale had been two weeks ago, when a clueless man had purchased an overpriced bag of aquarium rocks. Ray had glowered the entire time to make sure the sad sack wouldn’t want to return.

Running off customers was part of the job.

The real business of Cole’s depended on anonymity and an entirely different kind of fish. Their shabby back room held ten cubicles, each one staffed by a low-level Milli associate. Cole’s was just was one of a dozen illicit hubs around the city, each one running various numbers rackets and online gambling services.

Lyle glanced toward the back curtain. Technically, he was second-in-command, but Ray had taken to keeping him up front, freezing him out of the real action. The man was a prick who lived to torment people. Lyle was certain that Ray wanted him to complain, but Lyle wouldn’t take the bait. He was too smart to pick a fight.

He thwacked the top of the broom into a shelf. He pictured Ray’s brutish face caving in. A coward? Oh no, try clever.

Growing up, Lyle had watched his old man work himself into an early grave, all to pay rent on a flophouse with bits of plaster on the floors because the ceilings were crumbling. But his father’s boss? He worked half as hard, and he’d had a pool and took long vacations.

Lyle had caught on quick: there were takers and those who got took. He’d still been a “delicate” child—the kind cosseted and fretted-over by his worrying mother—when he’d vowed to become a taker. And he had.

The Milli counting houses were nothing fancy, but collectively they generated a tidy profit. And unlike working at the Truffle or slinging the latest designer narcotics, the staff here could enjoy a low profile.

Lyle liked that. He liked playing it safe. Did that mean that imbeciles with no self-awareness, swaggering mooks like Ray, would keep appearing and moving up the ladder while Lyle stayed behind? Sure. But Lyle was playing the long game. He would keep his head down and do his job. The Milli couldn’t run solely on goons and muscle. They would need quiet, thoughtful men. Guys who wouldn’t end up in prison just because they lost their temper. Men like Lyle. He finished pretending to sweep and set the broom back against the wall, then took a moment to picture how he would make bullies like Ray suffer once he was in charge.

The overhead lights flickered.

Lyle looked up, blinking. “What the hell?”

The neighborhood’s power might be unreliable, but the building’s wasn’t—the computers responsible for moving Milli money had to be dependable. A sense of dread tugged Lyle’s mouth open as the lights stuttered and died, turning the tall shelves into pools of deep shadow.

No. It couldn’t be that. Not here. This place was too small, too unimportant to draw her notice.

“Ray?” he shouted toward the back. Then he called again, his voice taking on a shrill edge.

A clatter of curtain rings and cloth sounded from the rear of the store. “The lights are out back there.” Ray’s words made Lyle turn. He could just make out Ray’s bruiser frame coming down the aisle. The streetlights outside sent stray gleams along the nickel-plated .357 Magnum in his grip.

“I think it’s her,” Lyle hissed, moving up the aisle and away from the front door. “The Lady!”

“Bitch would be stupid to try anything while I'm here.”

Ray shouldered Lyle into a shelf as he passed. The shelf wobbled and a forgotten knick-knack tumbled from the top. It glanced off Lyle’s nose and shattered in the suddenly murky shadows at his feet. He didn’t care. For once he was glad that this sadistic idiot and his fearless swagger were here. He put his head down and moved towards the counter.

“I’m gonna check on the back…”

“Aw shit—what is that? Shit!” Ray’s voice made Lyle stumble to a terrified halt. Those words had come out in the quavering tones of a scared man. But Ray wasn’t scared of anything.

Lyle knew he should have kept going, but instead he turned, needing to see what would make Ray sound like that. He gave in to the compulsion that lurked in every heart: to gaze into the abyss.

She gazed back at him.

“God no…”

He hadn’t truly believed the rumors about the monster stalking the Milli. Even if he had, they did no justice to the thing standing on the other side of the front door. She was more than the “shadowy figure” he’d pictured. She was darkness given form. Like some mad god had punched out a woman-shaped hole in reality and revealed the sheer nothingness behind it. The lights on the street winked out behind her, but somehow this…thing…was darker.

BOOM. 

Ray’s first shot shattered the front door glass. The figure barely wavered. Ray fired again, then again, even as the woman stepped forward through the opening. He kept shooting. BOOM. BOOM. The gun’s muzzle flash was a pale flame swallowed by the encroaching blackness. The shadows lengthened and pooled around Ray, who raised a shaking gun to aim at the thing’s head. He never got off his last shot.

The shadows swallowed him whole.

Lyle heard a muffled cry followed by a floor-shuddering crash as one of the shelving units within the roiling dark collapsed. Silence. The blackness roiled and warped like a flame from some lightless level of hell. Then the woman-shaped absence stepped out from its heart and walked towards him.

Lyle Brewer started to scream.

As shadows crawled up the walls and the thing came closer on a spreading abyssal sheet, Lyle had one of the few epiphanies of his life. Maybe there were takers and those who got took, but being one didn’t mean you weren’t the other. In the end, Ray had been a taker and a victim. Just like Lyle. 

Oh God, it was all just bullshit wasn’t it?

He didn’t have a chance to finish his thought. The ebon nightmare clamped down on Lyle’s shoulders and heaved him into the row of freestanding aquariums. He hit the largest model, a grimy beast dubbed “the glass coffin,” and knew an instant of stark irony before the sound of shattering glass and screaming gave voice to his pain.

The darkness rose up.

All was silence.