by wildbow
I could have given them a scenario where their time and effort would have been worth it even if I failed, but that would have spelled out a scenario where they would go for the safe bet, and help me fail.
I continued, “I think you need to decide, Frederick. Right now. Are you staying, or are you going?”
He considered the question for a few long moments.
Leave, I thought. It would make things so much easier. It would give me room to prove to the others that there were benefits to staying in and costs to going out.
“We’ll give this a shot, then,” he said. “I’ll look forward to having a story to tell until proven otherwise.”
“I’ll look forward to proving you wrong, then,” I said. “I have things to do. I’ll be in touch, so keep an ear out. Pierre will be knocking on your door.”
The assembled leaders departed, leaving only the people necessary to manage the crowd that we’d corralled in the lab. They sat on the floor as a cluster. They outnumbered the men that guarded them two to one, but many were hurt, they were unarmed, and the men had weapons.
“All of you, too, need to decide,” I addressed the assembled workers. “Figure out if you’re in or if you’re out. The Rank are done. If you’re a problem, you’ll be escorted out. You’ll be kept out of the way long enough that other things can get done. If you’re cooperative, then it’s back to business as usual, but with better incentives.”
That got attention.
“I suspect a part of you knew this work wouldn’t be available forever. When we showed up, you probably knew that time had come. My offer to you in the here and now is to offer the same work to anyone who wants it, with better pay. Think about it quietly. I’ll see where you stand after I’m done talking to your prior employees.”
I could see the gears turning in their heads. The thought process.
Confinement changed how one thought. It made things a dialogue between captor and captive.
But they’d lived a life of confinement. Doing work they had to in order to make ends meet. They didn’t have freedom in the conventional sense.
They had the freedom to turn down my offer, to be sure. They could get away from the scariness of work that saw doors kicked in and guns fired, should they so choose. But they faced an equal, less poignant sort of scary, in having to find employment and get food.
I was offering the easier path.
I’d committed to collecting six hundred or more people under our banner. This would be a dozen, perhaps.
I turned my attention to the group of lookalikes.
“You’re raising an army?” Rita asked. Our Leah lookalike. She was smoking up a storm, going by the accretion of cigarette butts on the table next to her.
“Not an army, exactly,” I said. I fished in a pocket for a bill, and extended it toward her. She read my mind, and provided one of her cigarettes. I added, “Taking steps toward… recruitment of a sort.”
“Vague,” she said, lighting my cigarette.
“Yes. And thank you. I hope you don’t mind sticking around just a bit longer?”
“I’m not going to see any bloodshed, am I?” she asked.
“Hopefully not. Probably nothing more than you see while tending the bar.”
“Alright. But if I run out of cigarettes, I’m going to go home,” she said.
“Mm,” I said. I looked at the others. Versions of other students. “You all good?”
I got answers ranging from the affirmative to the noncommittal. Good enough. I gave Shirley some direction about hiring someone to fix the mess the shotgun had made and fix the front door, then made my way out of the lab and down the hallway, taking my time, puffing at the cigarette while I started thinking about the interrogation.
The appearance of Jessie standing just inside the doorway, waiting, caught me off guard.
“You’re awful,” I told her. “Running off and leaving me to deal with all of that.”
“I handle the timing, organization, records, and accounting. You handle the people.”
“I handle a heck of a lot more than that and you know it,” I said. I reached out and flicked her glasses, so they slid down her nose.
“Stop that,” she said.
She flicked the cigarette free of my mouth.
“That, miss, was a token of goodwill from our Leah-replacement.”
“Rita.”
“I know. I remembered the name. I pay some attention.”
“Are they good?”
“I think so. Not too bothered by current events. That young asshole we were thinking about recruiting if Rita didn’t work would’ve been freaked, probably.”
“Probably,” Jessie said, ignoring my choice of words. “I’ve already interrogated one. You’re behind.”
“Thoughts? Input?”
She shook her head. “Go in without me coloring your views any. We’ll talk after.”
“Speaking of… what’s that thing you were going to say before, that you held off on?”
“Oh. That.”
“You wanted to mull over it. Something about me and Leah.”
“Mulling,” she said. “Continue to stew. Interrogate. I’ll catch you before you move on to your next customer.”
I reached up to flick her glasses again. She caught my hand and then slapped me lightly across the side of the head, before ducking back, closing the door behind her.
I headed straight for the screamer. The kid had been screeching like he’d been set on fire for a while, but he’d gone silent. I anticipated a bit of blood, but if there was any, it wasn’t visible. The guard we’d posted had had the sense to deliver the hurt where it wouldn’t be visible.
He was tall, red haired, and wore a lab coat. His hands were bound together, behind his back, and then had been lifted up to the point that his shoulders jutted forward. The rope extended from wrist, over a beam, and down to wrist again.
I indicated that the guard should leave the room. I closed the door behind him.
Then I looked at the young man who stood before me, his arms held out behind him.
I untied the rope that bound him.
Small things would go a long way, in this captor-captive relationship. I would try at being nice first, and then if it didn’t work, I would move on to the next captive, and try a harder approach. I could riddle out how they thought and how they operated, and find the best approach to make them crack.
“Leader of the Rank,” I greeted him.
“What? No. We don’t have a leadership structure,” he said. “We’re not even a proper gang. We bake, we ship, we take in some side cash.”
“My colleague has deduced that you’re among the key individuals. It’s why we went to the trouble of finding a body double,” I told him. “Not being the leader isn’t a mark in your favor… what’s your name?”
“Leon.”
Red-haired Leon. Right, then.
“Not a mark in your favor, Leon. See, if you were leader, if you knew things about the imminent meeting with Genevieve Fray…”
I paused, letting that name hang, and I watched his expression shift in the gloom. The light from the window cast on one side of his face. In the dark, the little details were missing, but the contrast of brighter light and deeper shadow had little middle ground, making the shift of muscle and the movement of the hollow of his thin cheeks very pointed.
His head dropped a little. I could hear him say, “I knew that was a mistake.”
“So you do know something after all. Was the mistake working with Fray?” I asked.
“Yes. Too much. Too big. She ordered drugs from us. Mass quantities.”
“Which drugs?”
“Stimulants. But—”
“Hold on. When?”
“Over a year ago.”
“Okay,” I said. “Go on.”
“The drugs were cheap, easy, but the quantity, it meant good money. But Jun, he got suspicious.”
“Jun?”
“Junior, the… he’s the clo
sest thing we have to a leader. If we’re a business, then he’s the person who manages the sales and distribution. If we’re a gang, well, he decides who’s in and who’s out.”
“Alright. He got suspicious.”
“He said there wasn’t any urgency. Started after we had to delay one shipment. She didn’t care. Paid us the same amount she had when we’d been on time.”
“And this has been going on for a while. Regular payments?”
He looked uneasy, slumped on the floor. For the moment, he seemed very preoccupied with rubbing at his wrists.
“You know I’m going to find out in talking to the others, right?”
Leon sighed. “What happens to me?”
“It really depends on the quality of your answers, Leon.”
He nodded. “Junior thought, thinks, she intended to bankroll us. Get us set up. And she did.”
“But?”
“But I don’t know. She’s coming. Everyone here, we know who she is. What she is. She’s been a part of the groups fighting the Crown for the last three years. She works with a lot of people. She—she apparently wants to work with us. We’re not even that good at what we do, you know?”
“I know,” I said. The Rank didn’t actually place among the winners of Beattle’s academy rankings. They placed well enough to avoid being cut, but none of them were exceptional.
“And now you’re showing a lot of interest in her,” Leon said. “Which suggests we brought this on ourselves, dealing with her.”
“If it wasn’t her, it would have been Mauer,” I said. “And he wouldn’t have dealt with you, exactly, but the end result would have been the same.”
“End result?” Leon asked. He still hadn’t picked himself up off the floor.
“It doesn’t matter,” I told him.
I walked around the room, thinking.
He was a very mild personality. Not too dangerous.
Either Fray would make her move, or Mauer would. The forms those moves would take would be the same, but this town would be used. Its occupants would be used.
“She asked you questions,” I said. “She was curious about the city, about details, I’m sure.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Mmm,” I said. “Like you said, you’re not the leader. So maybe you weren’t privy. Which doesn’t help you. But I’ll catch you up. Fray operates in a certain way. She likes to do things that are big, understand? Start wars, start and spread plagues, create primordials…”
In the dark, I could see his eyes widen some at that last word.
“…And she’s not magical. She gets her information from places. She’s wanted and recognizable. She needs accommodations ready, especially as she brings more people with her. And if she doesn’t want to stay in one place for too long, then she needs to have people handle the preparations or initial phases. In the best case scenario, that preparation is done unwittingly.”
I saw his expression change. His head turned, not looking at me, but…
The wall.
“Yeah,” I said. “Probably Junior or Leah.”
“I didn’t say anything,” he said.
“You didn’t have to. Don’t worry, you haven’t betrayed your friend. He’s been gone a lot, has he? Handling business elsewhere? Somewhere nearby? Further away?”
I watched his reaction as I asked each question.
“The Academy,” I said.
That got the faintest of reactions. Turned out the guy who started screaming the moment he was assaulted, kidnapped, and tied up in a dark room had obvious tells.
“How long until she turns up?” I asked.
“Tomorrow,” he said. “First thing.”
“Really now,” I said. “Tell me, has she met any of you?”
“You’re thinking about the doubles,” he said, resigned.
“And I’m thinking of how cooperative each of you are,” I told him. “If it comes down to questions, I’d rather have someone who can answer questions and sell Fray on this.”
“I don’t understand,” he said.
“That’s fine,” I said. “I’ll move on. Sounds as if Junior is the one to talk to. Now, are you going to cooperate and let me tie you up, or should I use my knife and be done with you altogether?”
“Oh lords.”
“Yeah,” I said.
I waited patiently as he picked himself up off the ground, and positioned his hands where I could tie them.
I let myself out of the room. Jessie was waiting.
“Junior is the one to talk to, apparently,” I said.
Jessie nodded.
“She comes tomorrow,” I observed. I looked at the building. “That’s a tight timeline. A lot to handle.”
“But it’s doable,” Jessie said.
“And her big play involves the Academy.”
“We already had our suspicions about what that play would look like,” Jessie reminded me. “This more or less confirms them.”
“Leon in there won’t be useful for us, standing across from Fray. Leah is—”
“Dangerous,” Jessie finished for me.
“Dangerous,” I agreed. I reached up to smudge Jessie’s glasses, and she swatted at my hand.
Leah shouted something unpleasant from within the room we’d turned into a cell.
The guard of Frederick’s that I’d stationed in there didn’t whistle. Nothing important.
“Mulled,” Jessie said.
“Hm?”
“About the thought I couldn’t complete. About your response to Leah.”
“Sure.”
“You’re very readable, Sy. When you feel insecure, you push the boundaries. Even with allies. Especially with allies. You mess up their glasses, for example.”
I made a noise, more to suggest than I’d heard than to negate or agree.
“Feeling insecure, Sy?”
“With you or with this situation?”
“Either or.”
“Fray is a tricky enemy. And this won’t be easy.”
“We can back down. Skip town, choose a different path.”
I shook my head. We needed people.
We were sitting on a monumental secret. But to utilize it, we needed a voice, and six hundred were far louder than two. Six thousand were better than six hundred.
But to get those six hundred or six thousand, gambles had to be made. Risks had to be taken.
Something big.
As I’d told Leon, Fray laid groundwork and put out feelers. She likely had a hundred groups like this little drug laboratory at the edge of the world. When certain stars aligned and she saw opportunity, then she leveraged them. They gave her the in. Groups like this let her get set up and act quickly, much as the student she was tutoring had given her access to the lab with chemicals and water supply access that would let her taint the town and surrounding region. Dame Cicely’s.
Fray operated by performing the big actions, then leveraging the fallout.
We’d gotten out ahead of her, predicting the sort of place she would see as vulnerable and ready to be leveraged. Now we were undermining her groundwork.
“Jessie,” I said. “I can continue the interrogations. I’ll talk to Jun, there.”
“You want me to coach ’em?”
“Please,” I said. “Focus on Leah and Leon’s replacements. If Junior decides to play ball, then that’ll make them sound a hell of a lot more like the people Fray’s been negotiating with all this time.”
Fray would turn up and go on with business as usual.
She would, through the replacements we were setting up or a lack of awareness that we were in play, set up her ‘something big’.
And we were damn well going to steal it.
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Bitter Pill—15.4
This was proving to be a long night. The last time I’d asked about the time, it had been six straight hours of talking, negotiating, planning, and instruction. We had started at ten twenty or so, and now it was closer to d
awn than it was to dusk.
There was something reassuring about being the figure in the shadows, the member of a band or pair of assassins and investigators who fit together like clockwork. That reassurance had been turned on its head now that we were crossing the threshold.
We were no longer the unpredictable figures that were shaking the box of spiders, but now another few of the people who were making a box, choosing and gathering the spiders, and hoping that the journey that followed wouldn’t see things shaking too much.
The underlings we had recruited, a set of lieutenants who each led their own band of thugs and questionable sorts, were now gone. They went to their homes, went about their business, they talked among themselves, and each operated with their individual motivations. The workers from this particular lab and the people we had had as guards were all going home, with instructions to turn up at the usual time for work tomorrow.
Junior and the girl I’d picked out who had been wearing clothes similar to the laborers were now giving instructions to the stragglers about how to shut down the lab for the night. What needed to go where, what needed to be brought down to a simmer rather than shut off entirely, and what needed to be stored with any measure of care.
Junior was tall, his black hair parted, wearing an off-white lab coat and apron. Posie wore overalls, a shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and a puffy hat with a brim that looked more like an overstuffed seat cushion than a proper hat, but at least served to let her keep her copious amounts of hair under it.
With the exception of Junior’s would-be replacement, who I had sent home, the impostors were watching and listening. Rita or Marvin would periodically ask about the names of things. It was a bit concerning that Marvin sometimes had to ask twice.
But even that task was wrapping up. The lanterns went out at various workstations and counters. Windows were shut and locked.
“…This counter is packing. I put the numbskulls on it,” Junior explained to the impostors. “Can’t screw it up, really, and this is the stage where most would try to steal product. I prefer stupid people in that position over the smart ones who don’t get caught. After everyone leaves, I check the quantities.