by H J Peterson
“Adelric, I swear I’m gonna murder ya when we get back!” Klara said, glaring at him.
Adelric didn’t focus on that: instead, he worked on getting the powder in that gun wet.
Klara lashed out, using her metal hand to knock away the Dodger’s gun.
The Dodger tried to shoot her, but thank heaven, it didn’t work: it looked like either what Adelric did worked or he had a dud charge.
After that, all hell broke loose.
Adelric pulled out two tools from one of the pockets that lined the bottom of his sleeve: a flint and a piece of coal. He rubbed the coal all over his hand as one of the Dodgers changed his orientation, making Adelric fall towards the wall. He cursed as he hit the wall shoulder first, making pain stab at his arm, but he managed to roll out of the way as the very Dodger who’d changed his orientation joined him on the wall, landing with the lithe of a cat. He was very much used to changes in gravity like that, that was for certain; he didn’t even seem phased by the fact that his comrades were now, according to his orientation, walking along the wall beside him.
“Give it up, kid,” the Dodger said.
Adelric shoved the piece of coal back into the pouch the second his hands were blackened, then struck one of his hands with the flint.
He allowed the flames to cover his hands as he kept the coal from burning too fast with his Alchemical power. It was a little trick one of Bator’s other Alchemist taught him. Air wouldn’t combust on its own (in order for something to burn in it, one needed a spark and a medium), but coal would burn just fine. Not only that, but once there was fire, an Alchemist could make it travel through air. It made it possible for an Alchemist to “throw fire” at their enemies.
The last time he’d done this, he nearly blew his hand off; all he could really hope was that he would be a lot better at this than he had been, before.
Taking a deep breath and praying to heaven that he wasn’t about to become an amputee, he whipped his hand out, forcing the fire to come off his hand and fly towards the Dodger.
It worked. Some of the fire went from his hand and towards the Dodger.
Something told Adelric that this wasn’t the first time the Dodger had seen this. Despite the fact that he couldn’t change the trajectory of the fire, he got out of the way easily.
That was, until Adelric made the small chunk of coal he’d thrown with the fire explode.
The Dodger cursed, holding up his arm to shield himself. The small explosion didn’t seemed to hurt him, but it was big enough that it made him lose his concentration. Adelric fell to the floor, his Orientation returning to normal, thus launching him into the battle that had been going on before everything had gotten flipped.
Klara was holding up fairly well on her own. It wasn’t all that surprising. Klara wasn’t just a Basher; she was a Hazer, trained to fight Shapers. There weren’t any downed Dodgers, but they all looked worse for wear, with a bunch of cuts all over each of them from fighting her.
It amazed Adelric: how had she managed to get so many hits on so many men when those men could change her trajectory?
Whatever it was, it wasn’t going to be enough to keep the Dodgers off of them for long. Adelric began to throw the fire around, making the Dodgers turn their attention to him.
A few seconds after he did, he regretted it. That was a bad idea; how had that been at all helpful?
Luckily, Klara was still thinking. She sprinted towards the door, grabbing Adelric by the forearm and dragging him out of the hallway they were in and towards the entrance.
Of course, that didn’t exactly help their situation all that much: while they were one room closer to getting out of the police station, they were also in a room that was not only filled with a bunch of police officers (including more Shapers), but they were also in a room with a bunch of innocent people that Adelric didn’t want getting hurt.
They began sprinting towards the door and to freedom.
They didn’t get far. One of the Dodgers messed with their Orientation, again, making them fall towards the ceiling just as they were going to reach the door.
Klara cursed as they fell, but she did manage to land on her feet. Despite the fact that this was the second time in the past few minutes that this had happened to him, Adelric still landed on his back, and it hurt just as much as it did the first time.
“And that helped us how?” Adelric wheezed as he rolled around on the ceiling. Klara simply gave him another look to kill.
“Th’ next question ya ask me’ll be your last, ya little ass wipe!” she growled.
One of the other Dodgers fell towards the ceiling with them. Judging by the fact that his sleeves were all singed and his face was blackened from the dust of the piece of coal that literally blew up in his face, it was the same one as before.
“Is this your girlfriend?” the Dodger asked.
“Do I look like ‘is girlfriend, arselicker?” Klara demanded.
Klara threw one of her knives at him.
The Dodger didn’t quite recover. He managed to keep from getting stabbed with the knife, but in the process, he lost his focus on them, making them fall back down to the floor to the waiting crowd of Shapers, police officers, and inspectors below them.
Luckily, Adelric was ready for it. He turned in the air so he was going down feet first and threw fire down at the waiting police beneath them in an attempt to clear a path for them to escape through.
It worked. When the flames came down towards them, the Shapers beneath them got out of the way, just in time for them to them to get to the floor.
Once they were both on the ground, Klara grabbed Adelric by the arm and dragged him out the door, where a steam car was waiting for them. There was a guy around their age sitting in the driver’s seat, one who was smoking a cigarette out the window as he waited for them.
Klara threw open the door and shoved Adelric into the steam car, leaping in and shutting the door after him.
“DRIVE! NOW!” Klara screamed at him.
The driver hardly flinched as he pulled away from the curb and onto the road, going faster and faster as they left behind the police, making sure to change a corner before any Dodgers could come out and mess with the steam car.
Adelric sighed, trying to relax as Klara began to rub her temples. She still looked pretty pissed, but not quite as angry as she was back at the station when she threatened to murder him. Maybe she’d reconsidered it.
“Are you still going to murder me when we get back to Bator’s?” Adelric asked.
Klara turned and glared at him. All Adelric wanted to do was go in a corner and hide somewhere when he saw that look.
“Th’ hell do ya think?” she asked as she looked out the window.
Adelric looked outside the window on his side of the steam car. He couldn’t help but wonder if the police station had really been such a bad place to be, after all.
XIII. HIRO
Jonkers Press was in a seedy part of the neighborhood, even for Vergesse. They were just a few streets away from the Königstadt Immigration Detention Center, better known as the Kicks. It was where every immigrant who found themselves coming in through Königstadt passed through. Hiro remembered the place well: the week she’d spent there had been the worst of her life. The surrounding neighborhoods were the worst of the worst in Königstadt: slums packed full of families who couldn’t afford to live anywhere else, with as many as two separate families shoved into studio flats. The mob practically ran that part of town, extorting immigrants for every mark they had in the name of “protection”. People who couldn’t find work-mostly women and children, with some older and disabled men-tried to sell whatever they had in hopes of getting those few extra coins that would feed the family for the night. She saw Hanjan women selling balls of rice dough, Valtruscans selling colorful icons from their homeland, and people from all over playing instruments. She knew of people that thought of that part of town as colorful, a great place to haggle for goods, but all Hiro saw was half-starv
ed people wondering if they would’ve been better off wherever they’d come from and bastards more than willing to take advantage of them.
“You lived down here for a while, right?” Brooks asked as they drove through the narrow streets, passing people gawking at the car.
“Yeah,” Hiro said as she looked out the window. “Up until I got the money to move out on my own.”
“My Nonni still lives here,” Enrico said from his seat in the back. Somehow, he’d ended up being the lucky beat-cop to end up getting dragged to Jonkers Press with them. Hiro couldn’t believe her luck when he’d reported to them as they were getting ready to leave: what were the odds that her friend was the one that would be coming with them? “We used to go to church with her every Sunday.”
“I guess I’m the odd man out, here,” Brooks said. “My grandpa had a good chunk of money when he got here: he lived in Keitel when he first got here.”
Of course. There was a sort of pecking order when it came to immigrants in Vorbereich: Dirkhamish like Brooks were at the top of that order, even after the war. Then, it went Rocherans, Gelynians, Valtruscans, Magyarans, Alvaresans, Borusalis, and at the very bottom sat Hanjans. People like Hiro might as well have not been human to many Vorbereichers.
Before Hiro could think about it anymore, Brooks pulled up in front of Jonkers Press. The press was in the average building in Vergesse: soot stained brick that practically seemed to sag under its own weight. The storefront window to the right of the peeling green door was dirty, to the point where she could barely see through it. A wooden sign that spanned the front of the building had the name of the press in blocky letters. It fit right in with the rest of the businesses in that part of town: the kind you tried to stay away from at all costs.
Hiro had a bad feeling about it, already.
“I don’t feel good about this,” she said blatantly as Brooks turned the car off. “I think we should’ve brought more people.”
“You’re just skittish,” Brooks said. “Don’t worry about it: it’s all going to turn out just fine.”
I hope you’re right, Hiro thought to herself as they all got out of the car. I really hope you’re right-
Enrico took his rifle from off his shoulder.
Hiro bit her lip as they walked into the press. It looked like she wasn’t the only one “feeling skittish”.
There were three people in the building when they walked in: one older man, two people around Hiro’s age. The older guy looked like everyone else in the neighborhood: head down, shoulders hunched, trying to take up as little space as possible. Just wanted to be forgotten as soon as he was seen, so he wouldn’t end up in any trouble. The other two carried themselves too much like trouble for Hiro’s liking: heads down, but eyes up, alert. Every muscle tense, as if looking for a fight. Both had red armbands
And, to make matters worse, both of them were wielding billy clubs.
Damn it!
“Good afternoon, inspectors, copper,” the first man said, resting his club on his shoulder. He was Gelynian, and she got the feeling that he was the leader of… whatever was going on, there. “Are you lost? Or are you looking for trouble?”
Brooks raised an eyebrow. “Who said we’re either? We just want some information: the second we get it, we’ll get out of your hair.”
“We ain’t squealers,” the same man said. “Now, I suggest the three of you get out of here, before someone gets hurt.”
Enrico put the butt of his gun to his shoulder, but he kept it down. Brooks looped his thumbs through his belt loops and smirked, as if he thought they were bluffing.
They weren’t: Hiro could tell by the look on their faces. Brooks might have been a veteran inspector, but he didn’t know that neighborhood quite like she did, and neither did Enrico. In fact, she didn’t think either of them knew quite what was going to happen if they didn’t change tactics, and fast.
“There’s something in it for you, too,” Hiro said quickly.
Brooks and Enrico both looked at her funny, like she had something crawling out of her ear.
“Is there, now, ‘Jai?” The Gelynian asked. “What is it? I sure hope it’s good.”
“We want to know who ordered a particular print,” Hiro said, holding up the letter they’d found at the Überhaus. “Can you tell us?”
The Gelynian sighed dramatically. “Ah, well, that’s the thing: my memory’s a bit fuzzy. If only there was somethin’ that could freshen it up a bit.”
Of course.
Hiro pulled out her wallet and pulled out ten marks. All the cash in her wallet. “Ten marks.”
The Gelynian chuckled. “C’mon: ya gotta do better than that, darlin’.”
“We could just take you down to the station, you know,” Enrico said. “I wouldn’t mind having a little chat with you and your friends, here.”
“Yeah, I’d bet a beat pig like you would like that, eh?” The Gelynian said. He looked over at his friend. “Hey, Goyo: ain’t this the bastard that dragged your little brother in the other day.”
“Yeah,” the tanner of the two men said, his grip on his club getting tighter. Had to be an Alvaresan with those looks and that name. “Javier told me the pig that arrested him was some Valtruscan bastard. Same one who gave him that love tap, too.”
“Twenty marks!” Brooks said. “Twenty marks for some information and for us to forget about that love tap.”
“You playin’ ball too, now, Brooks?” The Gelynian asked. “Funny: always heard you were such an upstanding citizen.”
“Times change: you ought to know that better than anyone,” Brooks said. “Twenty marks, or we come back and raid the place and take all of your asses to jail.”
The Gelynian raised an eyebrow. “Twenty-five.”
“Twenty, no higher,” Brooks said.
“Alright: twenty marks,” the Gelynian said. “Tell me: what do you want to know?”
Hiro hadn’t realized she’d been holding her breath until that moment. “Who had this printed?”
“That letter?” Goyo asked, nodding at the paper in her hands. “Look at the bottom, bitch: you don’t see where it says ‘the Archangel’, clear as day?”
“You’ll want to watch your tongue, boy,” Enrico growled. Like someone who’d been a beat cop for thirty days instead of three.
“Should be saying the same to you, pig-“
The Gelynian smacked Goyo on the back of the head. “You mind? Trying to do some business, here.” He looked back at them. “He’s right, though: the guy who paid for it did it for the Archangel.”
“Doing things for the Archangel and being the Archangel are two very different things,” Brooks said. “Which is it?”
The Gelynian looked to the older man. “Fritz: check the books.”
Fritz looked down at the massive tome that sat on the counter in front of him. “That would be… Florian Lachance. Paid in cash. With extra for it to remain off the books.”
“I’m happy to know anything I do off the books really stays off the books,” Brooks said dryly.
Fritz shrugged. “Can’t afford to not keep track of all my business. And before you ask if it’s a real name, he didn’t look like the type to know better.”
“Still not sure if that was worth twenty damned marks,” Brooks said with a sigh.
“Well, how ‘bout a tip?” Goyo asked. “You’ve got five seconds to get going.”
Hiro frowned. “Why do you say that?”
The door behind them opened with a creak and something really, really heavy began to walk across the floorboards.
She didn’t like the sound of that. She really didn’t like the sound of that!
Judging by the fact that Brooks was wincing, he didn’t like it, either.
“What you do here?” The voice that came from behind was deep, scratchy, and Magyaran.
The three of them turned around.
The man that stood before them was practically a tree. He was bald, with limbs as thick as Hiro was wide, and ta
ll enough that his head nearly touched the ceiling. Perfect for a Basher, someone on mob payroll as hired muscle.
Perfect for snapping inspectors in half like a toothpick.
“You bother Know Nothings,” the Magyaran said gruffly.
“Now, I wouldn’t say bothering-“
The Magyaran didn’t appreciate his smooth talking. He grabbed Brooks by the collar, opened the door, and threw him out onto the street.
Enrico got his gun ready. “Freeze! You’re under-“
The Magyaran didn’t let him finish. He grabbed the gun, ripped it out of Enrico’s arms, and tossed it to the side.
Before Enrico could do anything else, the Magyaran grabbed him and threw him out, just like he did with Brooks. He cursed as he hit the pavement, grabbing his wrist.
The Magyaran went after her, next.
She was a little quicker than Brooks and Enrico, though: she ducked and ran out the door before he could grab her.
The door slammed shut after her.
“Well, that was fun,” Brooks said as he stood up. He put his hands on his back and arched back, apparently trying to pop his back. “Everyone alright?”
“I think I sprained my wrist,” Enrico groaned as he slowly stood up. “And that Magyaran bastard still has my gun.”
“We’ll get it back: don’t worry,” Brooks said. “What was that name we got, again?”
“Florian Lachance,” Hiro said. “Let’s get to the archives and see what they can find-“
“Not so fast,” Brooks said. “Why the hell should we put in all that heavy work when we have someone in custody that could help us with that? And we don’t even have to pay him.”
“Right,” Hiro said with a nod. “You think he’s been stewing in that cell long enough?”
“Only one way to find out.”
***
“He escaped?”
Hiro couldn’t believe it when Berkowitz told them. How? He was a hundred pounds wet: how had he managed to get the drop of multiple guards? Most of them Shapers?
“Isn’t that what I said?” Berkowitz gruffed. “He’s gone. Some cyborg girl came in and broke him out. A girl named Klara Schultz, according to the witnesses. She’s been on our radar for a long while: world class Basher and thief, works for the Magyaran gang Fekete Halál.”