Book 3, Chapter 7

One week later...

“I gotta say, Stanley, you make a pretty fuckin’ good poutine,” I said around a mouthful of gravy fries and cheese curds. I was sitting in the kitchen in a chair I had pulled from the office, using Stanley’s compatriot (whose name I didn’t bother to learn) as a footstool. Well, him and two others had the bad idea to be unhelpful when I was looking for information.

The thugs were piled up on each other in a cartoonish fashion, my heel digging into the top ones tailbone. He’d probably find it very uncomfortable if he were conscious. Standing near the fryer, a few feet away, was Stanley, a man with some mixed Latin descent and a terrible comb-over. He was shaking like a small dog, glancing nervously at the tentacles that hovered around him and in front of the door. He didn’t look like someone who knew their way around a griddle and fryer, with his leather jacket, silk shirt and expensive white pants, but I’ll be damned if this isn’t the best poutine I’ve ever had. I’ve only had it a total of three times, but still, it was excellent.

We were in the kitchen of a little mom-and-pops place that was the front for some small-time organized crime outfit in Toronto. I was wearing a new trench coat, as I’d lost the last one in a fight with the Canadian officials when I’d crossed the border. Learned my lesson there: always cross a border under attention wards. Some people take their jobs seriously!

“Now that we all know where we stand—“I paused and shifted my feet. “—so to speak—now you’re going to tell me where Whisper is. Is it Whisper? Or Whisperer? I’ve heard both.”

Stanley turned his eyes away from the tentacles and looked at me, his fear ratcheting several degrees as he searched for something to appease me. “I-I-I-I d-don’t know! No one does! Th-th-th-they only work through d-d-drops and burners! I don’t know anyone who’s actually s-s-s-s-spoke to them!”

Same as the last place. I scooped the last of the fries into my mouth from the little paper… tray? What the fuck were these things called? A basket? I shrugged internally and tossed the paper receptacle onto the counter, and stood. “Let’s go make a drop, then,” I said as I crossed over to Stanley and put a firm hand on his shoulder. He nervously looked at the claws on my fingers, particularly the pinky claw, which had accidentally poked a hole in his leather jacket as if it were tissue.

“Th-th-they’re probably watching the drop locations,” Stanley said hurriedly, but not resisting as I began to guide him out the back. “They’ll see you and know you’re watching.”

“Then they probably saw me at the last four drops, then,” I said amiably, pushing him through the fire door with a small shove. “I imagine they’ll look at the other drops from sheer curiosity or annoyance if I’m persistent enough. Each message is the same.”

Stanley almost tripped over a bag of trash and took a moment or two to regain his balance. “O-o-other drops?”

“Yeah, I’ve been looking for this asshole for the better part of a week,” I said, slipping a mask out of the front pocket of my coat and onto my face. The mask disappeared, and what remained it was my normal face, sans black skin and fucked up eyes. “Which way to the drop?”

As I stepped into the alley, I could feel several cameras pick me up as most of the businesses on this block had them mounted over every entrance, especially in the alley. I hunched my shoulders and tilted my head down so my hair covered my face in profile.

I could see Stanley hesitate, and as his eyes hardened, I could see him find his spine. Ah fuck, he misread my body langauge. No, I wasn’t nervous, you asshole, I just don’t want to destroy cameras unless I have to. I sighed and, before he could react, crossed the distance between us and knocked him out with a slap to the temple. The blow knocked him off his feet, his head hitting the ground with a “crunch” that made me wince.

“I try to do things the hard way, for you fuckers,” I muttered as I squatted next to the dying man. “I don’t want to see the things you’ve been doing, but you had to go and decide dying was better than snitching.”

I touched a finger to his forehead and began to rummage through his memories. His most recent ones erased any guilt I had over killing him. This asshole was in charge of a local prostitution ring and was… Jesus. The less I think about it, the better.

I rushed through the memories, destroying most of them in my haste to find what I wanted. I only had a minute or two before he died from shock or brain swelling. Luckily, he had made a drop just last month, and I got what I needed from him as he slipped off to whatever was next for him.

Other Me kept hinting that he knew what the afterlife entailed, but I refused to let him share the knowledge with me. Not knowing shit about specific aspects of existence is kind of crucial to the human condition. Until such knowledge was so widespread that it was part of all society, I didn’t want to know it.

I didn’t need another thing separating me from everyone else.

With a glance down the alley, I sighed and cast a small hex that specifically targeted video data, killing any recording storage and broadcasts within a square block. I adjusted my coat and debated dumping Stanley into a dumpster, but decided to leave him where he lay. I enveloped myself in an attention ward and left the alley.

I got a few looks as I rode the bus to Stanley’s drop location. My mask hid my weird skin and eyes, but did nothing to hide the unsubtle power hiding under it. People had varying degrees of awareness, whether from life experience, training, or natural inclination. You probably had a person in your friend group who always spotted a cat first, or could spot who was holding, or who was a cop, or just always knew where north is. My brother was like that last example, in that he never gets lost or can find the most obscure locations with the shittiest directions.

The skills/senses apply to the esoteric and eldritch too. I had a high school teacher, one of the few I liked, who could guess any number you picked between one and ten on the first try. He grew up in a carnival and worked one of the tables, winning quarters off the guests. Knowing what I know now, I wonder if he had some fey blood in his ancestry.

So even with subtle attention wards layered into my coat, people still felt the inherent danger I represented. That’s when I pulled out the big guns, the most powerful of techniques for getting people to consider you less of a threat:

I yawned. Big and loud. I even got my eyes to water a bit and wiped my eyes.

Imagine a big, scary man. Muscles bulging, bloodshot eyes, twitching with suppressed energy. Those are all signs we’ve evolutionarily learned are preludes to possible violence. Now, if we take away that nervous energy and replace it with a big, sleepy yawn—you get a much different picture. That’s a tired man. He’s much less dangerous because those eyes are bloodshot from lack of sleep. That man doesn’t want to hurt me; he just wants to lie down and fall into a coma.

That big, jaw-cracking yawn from me shed attention almost as effectively as a powerful ward, and was more efficient.

I yawned twice more as people came and went, and then my stop was up. I hopped off the bus and walked two blocks, into an even shittier part of Toronto, until I found a warehouse with a reinforced door on front, painted a vibrant red. I was supposed to use chalk, but I forgot to grab some, so I just scraped the paint off the door in a big X with my claws.

I spun up my future sight, scanning the futures, and grinned. I began whistling as I walked back to my hideout.

*

Whisper

“What was that about…?” Whisper muttered, their voice changer turning the utterance into a muted gurgle. Why was he smiling?

The man who had been attacking their information cells showed a worrying mix of complete competence with an uncaring disregard. He went to extremes to make sure nothing recorded his face, and seemed to know when a camera was pointed at him. Whisper was only able to get a visual of the man by possessing the senses of a red-tailed hawk.

Regardless, he was causing too much disruption and needed to be dealt with. Whisper pressed an icon and their tablet, sending the confirmation code to the mercenaries they had hired yesterday.

Each man was equipped with a gun-mounted camera and microphone, as well as bodycams so that Whisper could issue orders in real-time with the most recent data. The mercenaries had been instructed not to aim the cameras at the target before they were ready to engage, lest they alert him to their presence. Whisper had had to make up some excuse that the man had a special EMF reader that allowed him to know when he was being recorded.

Of course, Whisper knew the man's name. Whisper just didn’t enjoy using names when there was a very real chance they would have to kill someone. Made it easier to ignore the blood on their hands.

The man was living in an abandoned warehouse at the edge of the city, and her mouse and bird scouts showed he had made his living space in the office on the second floor. The mercenaries moved with smooth, practiced motions, clearing corners and silently communicating as they moved through the first floor. Half of them had entered via the first floor, while the other half were descending from the room, ready to burst in through the two large windows, their target had helpfully removed the boards from when he had moved in.

Just before Whisper was going to give the order to breach, the man spoke.

“Come on in,” he called out, loudly and clearly. “I just need to talk to your boss.”

The mercenaries paused for two seconds before the squad leader clicked his mic, silently asking for orders.

Whisper sighed, their voice changer turning the noise into a robotic hiss. They engaged their radio. “Team one enter, but do not engage unless threatened. Team two, standby.”

Both teams acknowledged by keying their mics. Team one opened the door to the office slowly, finding it unlocked. Whisper leaned close to their main monitor, watching as the many bodycams revealed the same man she had observed, except his skin was coal black… There was an air of danger around him, so much so Whisper could feel it through the connection.

“Oh,” he said with disappointment. He was sitting at a rotting old desk, both hands visible on top and spread wide. Whisper immediately spotted what looked like claws on each of his fingers. Not long, claw-like nails, but claws, like you’d see on a tiger or a raptor in Jurassic Park. “I was hoping they’d be with you. So be it, so long as they can communicate with you lot, we might all walk away from this happy.”

Whisper keyed her mic. “Ask him what he wants.”

“Keeper,” he said once the leader of Team One relayed the question. “I need his services, but he is proving beyond my capabilities to find.”

“There are channels,” Whisper snarled, the voice changer pitching the noise into an electric distortion. “If you want information, you pay—“

“And I am happy to do so, I just don’t have time to wait the three months for your little vetting process,” the man said, cutting off Whisper before the mercenary could repeat what they said. “I’d be willing to pay whatever price you want, to waive the whole song and dance, as a great many lives are in danger unless I get to that man.”

Whisper’s eyes were wide behind their mask. They almost hit the panic button, which would tell the mercenaries to engage and start the timer on the self-destruct sequence on their equipment.

“Oop,” the man said with urgency. “Now don’t go getting all skittish on me! Have one of your boys pull up that sheet on the floor there.” He angled his head to the left, where there was a bundle of cloth on the ground Whisper had noted and disregarded.

“Do it,” Whisper said after half a minute of consideration.

One of the mercenaries broke formation and approached the bundle. Without taking his weapon off the man, he knelt and jerked the cloth to the side, revealing three gold bars. On top was a picture that Whisper couldn’t make out.

“Hold the picture up to your bodycam!” Whisper demanded.

After a few frustrating moments, the mercenary got the picture in a position where the camera focused on it. It was a Polaroid. Of the man, sitting on a small pallet of gold bars. Whisper quickly did the math of how much money he was sitting on, using only the bars Whisper could see. It was over fifty million.

“I’ve got three of those,” the man said. “Pallets, I mean. If the gold market doesn’t crash in the next few weeks, I figure I’ve got around half a billion in gold. All yours, if you just tell me how to find the Keeper.”

Whisper estimation of the man grew and grew with each second. He used a Polaroid, because while they can be faked, they are a pain in the ass to do so. The gold on the ground can be fake, but the rat they had sent in behind the mercenaries was telling Whisper it smelled real.

Half a billion dollars wasn’t an unimaginable sum for Whisper. Their organization made roughly half that in a year. To make more than double their yearly income with one deal, however… that was something to consider.

All it would take would be to betray their only friend.

Whisper sighed, the sound sparking and electric. They hit their panic button as they grabbed their go bag, hurrying toward the nearest exit as all the electronics around them started to be consumed by thermite.

*

“Balls,” I said as I felt all the mercs tense. With a thought, I broke all sixteen of their hands, followed by their shins with sharp pokes of telekinesis. They had protection amulets, I assume that Whisper had provided, but I just bullied my way through them, causing them all to overheat and burn the chests of the mercs—which gave them another reason to scream. Only one managed to get a shot off, poking a hole in my belly that I fixed with a grunt and a few seconds of concentration. With another thought, I caught the rat that was trying to flee and brought it over, floating through the air in my telekinetic grip.

Whisper was good. Good instincts, very little hesitation, worked through intermediaries, and rarely in person. Unfortunately for them, I’m a bit much these days. My senses had traced the video feeds back to their base, which… was being destroyed. I felt the connection to the cameras in the room go dead, as well as any data that had been captured about me.

“Goddamn, Whisper,” I muttered, stepping over a groaning mercs on my way out, rat floating behind me like a panicking balloon. “You don’t do things by halves, do you?”

I brought the rat forward and took it in my hands, implanting many years' worth of memories of me feeding the little guy. It instantly calmed in my hand. Whisper had severed the spell connecting to the rat in the same instant they had told the mercs to attack, but it didn’t matter. Their magic was all over the little thing.

It was time to call an old friend.