The Legend of the Red Specter (The Adventures of the Red Specter Book 1)

by M. A. Wisniewski

  "THE REAL SHIORI... HAD AN ACCIDENT IN THE OBSTACLE COURSE. INJURED HERSELF. FINISHED LOW. CALIBURN SELECTED HER ANYWAY."

  "So that means—are you saying the fake Shiori was one of those kids in that same trial group?" Joy said. "And she got bumped out of the finalists by the real one?"

  The Specter shrugged. "SEEMS LIKELY."

  "Well, that's..." Joy stopped and thought that over. "You know, it's funny, but that actually makes me feel a little sorry for her. That fake Shiori, I mean."

  The Red Specter cocked his head at her, and she could tell he was looking at her stitches and bruises; her bandages and her left hand propped up on a bag of ice.

  "I mean, don't get me wrong. She was vicious and horrible and all," said Joy. "I just... I know how that feels—to work so hard, to bust your ass to get something and just... have it all taken away from you, by some stupid, obtuse, close-minded, head-up-his-ass... um.…"

  Whoops. Now she was the one getting all worked up. She tried to re-organize her thoughts, but the Specter spoke first.

  "SHIORI HAD BEEN LEADING IN THE SCORING BEFORE THE FINAL TRIAL. SHE GOT INJURED... IT WAS FROM HELPING ANOTHER CANDIDATE. CATCHING THEM WHEN THEY FELL. STILL COMPLETED THE COURSE, LIMPING TO THE FINISH WITH A TWISTED KNEE. GOOD INSTINCTS FOR A SOLDIER. THAT'S WHY."

  "Really?" Joy said. "Well, I guess I can see that. Sounds kind of noble, actually. It's funny, but that story doesn't fit the real Shiori's reputation, either. Doesn't sound like the type of thing a monster would do."

  "GOOD AT FOOLING PEOPLE. VERY CHARISMATIC.." Again the Specter's voice took a hard, bitter edge. "IT'S AN ACT. ALL OF IT. SHE'S RUTHLESS. VICIOUS. PLAYS THE LONG GAME. PLAYS TO WIN."

  "Could you tell me more about—"

  "NO."

  "Um, okay, but how do you feel about—"

  "NO COMMENT."

  Joy felt the door slam down between them again. The Red Specter was done with this topic. As if on cue, Sam entered the room with a steaming cup of tea.

  "How's it going?" He said.

  "WE JUST FINISHED."

  "What?" said Joy. "No, wait—"

  "WE'RE FINISHED," said the Red Specter, walking to the door. AFTER YOUR TEA, SHOW SPECIAL AGENT FUNAKI WHERE YOU HID YOUR CRYSTAL."

  "But you..." Joy sighed and threw her hands up. She didn't have any idea how to proceed from here, anyway. "Okay, fine. We're done... for now."

  "FOR NOW?" The Specter turned back to her.

  "For now, I'm out of questions, but I'm sure I'll have more next time."

  The mask tilted at her. "WHAT NEXT TIME?"

  "The next time I see you, of course. Next mission or whatever."

  Joy smiled as the two men stared at her.

  "What, you don't think you'll get rid of me that easy, do you? I'm a reporter, and whatever you guys are up to is going to be news."

  "Ma'am—I mean, Joy," said Sam. "We're not going to be staying in contact—"

  "You won't, but I will," said Joy. "Don't you worry about the details. That's my job."

  The Specter snorted and shook his head. "GOOD LUCK WITH THAT. SEE YOU LATER... MAYBE."

  Was it her imagination, or did that not come out as sarcastic as he'd probably intended? She waved and favored him with her sweetest smile.

  "See you later... definitely!"

  The door closed behind him and he was gone.

  Chapter 51

  Freelance

  The tea was the best she'd ever had, warm and soothing with a nice delicate hint of peaches, mixed with honey. Sam gave her a bathrobe and some fuzzy slippers (later on she'd wonder where he'd gotten them) and escorted her to a pedi-cab waiting outside.

  He nudged her awake when they reached her apartment. She'd been mortified to discover that she'd nodded off and drooled all over his jacket, or she would've been, but he didn't seem mad at all, and she was finding it very hard to worry about those sorts of things right now. She led Sam right to the potato sack with the hidden jewel, watched while he retrieved it with gloved hands, (he’d insisted, didn't want her touching it at all) and placed it in a metal lockbox with thick padding on the inside.

  He'd said his goodbyes and left before she could remember to be ashamed of the squalid, hovel-like conditions of her apartment. Whatever. She staggered over to her mattress and flopped onto it, ready for sleep to take her. Except it didn't. Instead she lay there, her head racing with all the events of the past twenty-four hours. Madame Zenovia. Yang and Chen. Gallach, MacInroy, and Brannock. Brannock was dead now. Blown up. Hsiu Mei and Lin Lin. She could see them, if she went to the Temple. But maybe they were sleeping by now. Or not.

  The bright morning sun was leaking in past the window blinds. That wasn't helping, but it wasn't really the problem either. It was the figures in her head. Daphne the Ice-Queen. Benny the Shark, but he'd really only been a man after all. Scary Shiori. No, it was Not-Shiori. Not-Shiori had held a knife to her throat, threatened to torture her, to kill her. And she'd believed it. Joy had really thought she was going to die. That had happened, just a few hours ago. But scary Not-Shiori was dead now. What was her real name, anyway? Who had she really been? Would they ever know?

  And then there was the Red Specter. Spooky, faceless, mysterious, heroic—but not a ghost. He was definitely a man. There was a human being inside that costume. She'd seen his eyes and felt his hands on her. He had pretty eyes behind the goggles. He'd said she was pretty. Like a fashion model. Or implied that, anyway. Maybe. She was too short to be a model. She knew that. Ugh, those were all silly thoughts and she should stop thinking them.

  But her head wouldn't stop. Too much had happened, and her catnap in the pedi-cab had taken the edge off her exhaustion. Her thoughts kept swarming and churning through her mind. They refused to give her any peace.

  She rolled on her side and found herself staring right at her tiny writing-desk with her typewriter and her busted office chair. Her worn-out, beat up cheap office chair, bound up with tape to keep the stuffing from leaking out. It was just like her. They matched each other. It was challenging her. Screw it. There was only one way she was going to free herself from her thoughts.

  But first things first—Joy stripped off her swimsuit and got in the shower. It wasn't as relaxing as it could've been. She couldn't allow herself to stand directly under the shower-head, or else she'd soak her bandages. She managed to sort of splash and soap her non-bandaged bits without causing too much of a mess. A nice bath sponge would've worked wonders here, but she didn't have one of those.

  She had to do the whole operation on stitched, blistered feet, which didn't allow her to stand normally. She had to balance herself in odd ways to keep at least some of those bandages dry. At least she had no problems shampooing her hair. And boy, did her hair need it. She finished up, replaced the bandages she hadn't managed to protect, threw on her old dark grey Kallistrate army sweats and a ratty pair of black canvas work shoes with flat rubber soles. The shoes held her bandages in place, so she could walk normally again.

  Then she sat on her tattered chair, fed a fresh sheet of paper into her typewriter, and let the words pour out of her. She started off simple, with a sentence or two about the rumored sightings of the Red Specter by the docks, followed by her meeting with Madame Zenovia, and just let everything that had happened to her spill out on the page.

  Her useless splinted left pinky was a major annoyance at first, but she found that re-training her ring finger for double-duty on the typewriter keys wasn't as hard as she'd feared. And once she got going, it felt amazing. It didn't feel like she was even there at all. She was just a conduit for the story. She took a break when she noticed she was having difficulty seeing the words on the page. Her room had grown dark.

  She got up, opened her blinds, and the room was light again. The sun had gone overhead, so it no longer shone directly in through her window. It was noon, or maybe past noon. By how much? Her sense of time was screwy. She took a minute to stretch, felt a series of pops in her spine, shoulders, and hips, f
elt her stiff, exhausted muscles pull at all her bruises—a lot of which she hadn't noticed until now, and she felt a hollow sensation in her stomach, a void that begged to be filled. She really should have asked Agent Sam if they had any snacks to go with the tea. And what was she going to do for food now? She was flat broke. Well, she could heat up tinned stuff.…

  No. Screw that. She was sick of that shit. She was not capping off a day like today with some pathetic pauper meal. An idea formed in her head, and she went back to her desk. She typed a bit more, until she'd finished describing the cattle stampede. That seemed like a decent point for a cliffhanger ending. She did a quick review of what she wrote, mainly for clarity. She was seeing a lot more typos than normal, but she could blame her busted pinky for that. Whatever. She picked a few major points to hit with correction ink and her fountain pen, blew on them to dry them out faster, and organized it all into a neat stack, which she tucked under her arm as she headed out the door.

  The street was a bright festival of light, color, and noise. Liberation Day was in full swing. People were decked out in red and gold, or wearing their old army uniforms, smiling and laughing. She got plenty of waves and high-fives, just for wearing her military sweats. Though some folks did double-takes when they noticed her injuries. She kept her smiles polite and kept moving until she reached the Gazette offices, grateful that she didn't have to cross the Victory Parade route to get there. She had no doubt that Garai would be working on a holiday. The news never took a break—and neither would he.

  As Joy entered the mostly empty office she noticed today's issue, lying around in stacks, as always. The headline caught her eye, and she picked one up to get a better look at it.

  "DERANGED COWS STAMPEDE

  THROUGH SWANKY DOCKSIDE RESTAURANTS.

  Are Malevolent Pixies to Blame?

  One Citizen Says Yes!"

  Joy laughed all the way to Garai's office, but managed to compose herself before entering.

  She didn't bother knocking, so she got a good look at the surprise on Garai's face as he glanced up from his desk.

  "Eh? What is..." Garai did a horrified double-take when he recognized her. "Good gracious! Ms. Fan, what happened to you? Are you all right? You look like—"

  Joy slammed her stack of paper down on his desk. "I've got your lead story for tomorrow," she said, though a part of her found his reaction unnerving. Did she really look that bad? Whatever. It wasn't important.

  "You do? That piece on the Red Specter? You have that—"

  "Yep, I got that interview you wanted, and a lot more besides. This is the first installment."

  Garai stared at her. "Is this..." he said, gesturing at her injuries, "...somehow related to the—"

  "Read it," said Joy, grinning at him. "All will be made clear. I'll be waiting right here."

  Garai gaped at her some more, but he did as she asked. She supposed something about her expression, or her wild appearance, made him not want to argue with her. He started out slowly and carefully, but with each successive page, he went faster, and his eyes grew wider with every new detail, till she started to worry they'd pop right out of his head. He reached the last page, dropped it on his desk, and stared at her in amazement.

  "It was you?" He said. "You were the crazed pixie who stampeded those cows?"

  "No," said Joy. "I am not a pixie, and that stampede was not my fault. It was the Red Specter who actually dropped the—"

  "Red Specter?" Garai started flipping back through the papers again. "Where? I didn't catch—"

  "Well, I didn't either, not completely," she said. "I caught a half-glimpse of him. I mention it here, see? At the time I wasn't sure who it was—"

  "Then how do you know it was him?"

  "Because I confirmed it later. In the interview—"

  "Interview? What—"

  "Next installment." Joy grinned. "I can have that ready tomorrow. Or—hmm... maybe the day after. But my interview with the Red Specter might not be in that installment either. There's a lot to cover in the meantime, what with me sneaking onto the Joanne Spaulding and liberating all those captives—"

  "You what? You did what? You are not seriously—"

  "Oh, I'm serious," said Joy. "Look at me, Garai. Look at this. This is my serious face."

  "But that sounds extremely dangerous," he said. "What if you got had gotten caught? If the Triads caught you—"

  "They'd work me over, threaten to kill me, and start breaking my fingers," said Joy, waving her splinted hand around for emphasis. "That'll also be in the second installment. I'm pretty sure that'll fit in the second installment. The rest might need a third section. That's when the Red Specter shows up, rescues me, and I get to interview him."

  Joy waited patiently as Garai gaped at her, struggling to regain his powers of speech. Finally, a broad, gleaming white grin split his dark features.

  "Ms. Fan, you amaze me. You have finally done it. I always knew you could. Although," he added, holding up a finger. "I did not want you going to such dangerous lengths, and I do not want you risking yourself like this in the future; still I cannot fault your results."

  He neatened up the pages of her story, laid the stack on his desk, and gestured to it. "Do you know what this is here?" he asked.

  "It's thirty cents a word, is what it is," Joy replied.

  "What?" Garai said, clearly having something else in mind. "Thirty cents a... Ms. Fan, that is three times what I normally pay."

  "Yeah," said Joy. "I'm aware."

  "Well... ah, then you should know, that I can hardly—"

  "Oh, you don't want it?" Joy snatched the stack of paper off his desk before he could react. She'd been ready for this. "Well, that's okay, I guess. I'm freelance, after all. If you're not interested, I could always shop this around to the Journal. Maybe they'd like it. Or I could try the Chronicle, see if they'd go to thirty cents—"

  "You can't do that!"

  "Sure, I can," said Joy. "I can sell this story to any paper. And you know why? Because it’s real journalism. All of it. I didn't make any of it up. I didn't write fiction."

  Joy was enjoying herself so much she was almost giddy. This was a triumph. It felt so good.

  "No, I mean you can't go to other newspapers because they all have you blackballed!"

  Joy didn't allow her expression to change. She'd expected him to bring up the fact that he was the one who'd given her the first lead on the story. She hadn't expected that. Well, she'd always suspected a blacklist, but there was something about getting it confirmed that hit her. It was a mix of anger and relief. Mostly relief—her struggles really had nothing to do with her abilities. It never had. But there was something else.

  Despite her problems with Garai, she'd always been grateful that he alone had been willing to give her a chance. But there was another way of looking at that, too. You could also say that he'd been exploiting the situation to snare a quality employee, one that he'd never have been able to get otherwise. Or maybe both things were equally true. Who knew?

  So that's how the game was played, was it? Well, fine—Garai had a business to run. But she was in business, too—and it was time she acted like it. Time for her to play her own game. Any guilt she had about haggling evaporated. She favored Garai with her sweetest smile.

  "Oh, I'm blackballed? How interesting," she said. "Well, you know, I have to wonder just how committed these editors are to their little blacklist. Especially considering their top news story for tomorrow is going to be all about a series of disasters at the docks: a raging fire, a huge bomb detonating, a massive shootout between Benny the Shark's Triads and a secret KIB task-force, and a wreck involving a golem-crane and the Joanne Spaulding, which ended up destroying the crane and beaching the steamship halfway up the docks. Are they really so committed to screwing me over that they'll turn down my eyewitness account of all of that? Gosh, won't it be fun to find out?"

  Joy thought Garai did a really great job of keeping his expression neutral at that bit of ne
ws. But she saw the effort it took.

  "Well, hmm…" he said. "Given the nature of the story, for this particular instance, I think I could make an exception, and raise the rate, for this one time, to as much as twelve cents per word—"

  "Oh, that's too bad, then," said Joy. "Looks like it'll be the Journal who gets the exclusive bits that only I know about—like how the Red Specter was working with the KIB, and all the special equipment and tactics he uses—do you know he has armor that can stop bullets? Stops teeth, too. I know this because I saw Benny the Shark actually bite him, and what happened next… well, it was something else."

  "Fifteen cents, Ms. Fan, so long as you keep that rate a secret," said Garai. "For if all my writers demanded that rate, I would surely go bankrupt—"

  "You really can't afford to go to thirty?" Joy replied. "Then I guess you'll miss out on my account of a spear duel, to the death, between the Red Specter and Shiori Rosewing."

  "Shiori Rosewing?" Said Garai. "She was here, in town? And she fought the Red Specter? The real Shiori Rosewing?"

  "Was it the real Shiori? Or was it an imposter?" Joy said. "An interesting question, and I've got the answer, but I guess you'll be reading about it in the Journal."

  "Twenty cents, and that is my final offer!" Said Garai. "And you certainly will not get any higher from the Journal, either. They are not nearly so generous as I, nor do they—"

  "Really? They really wouldn't pay thirty?" said Joy. "Well, maybe you're right. Maybe a newspaper isn't the appropriate venue for this story. Maybe this is more of a book—a bit short, but I bet the book publishers don't have any vendettas against me. And I bet there's at least one of them willing to offer a nice advance to get this story."

  "Ah, Ms. Fan—let us not be hasty here..."

  "Now that I think of it, I'm sure that with a decent amount of research, this could expand to book-length easily," Joy continued. "I could go into the history of the Specter myth and why it resonates with the public—I've already got a contact who can help me with that. Plus biographical research on a bunch of the other major figures, like Benny the Shark. Oh—and I barely even mentioned it, but there's this fringe cult of some weird god called Nibiru, and they’d managed to seize control of the City Guard. I could do more research there, and on top of that—"