The Assassin's Blade

by H J Peterson

  A few men kind of rolled their eyes, but they didn’t say anything, allowing Lord Totefels to continue.

  “The contents of this envelope include information regarding an affair I had with a woman during my engagement with my dear wife,” Lord Totefels said. “It also speaks of a gambling habit and a few incidents of public drunkenness.”

  Everyone looked at Totefels with very confused looks, and a few even looked a little disgusted. It wasn’t a surprise; the vices the man had just listed were some of the more frowned upon ones for a man of his stature to have.

  “Now, you might be wondering why I bothered to tell you all about this,” Lord Totefels said. “It’s this: when you do things like that, you have to be prepared for everything to come out, because eventually, it will. I say we beat that bastard to the punch, give the tabloids these stories before that Archangel bastard does, and keep the Überhaus open. And ruin this bastard’s fun in the process.”

  “I think Lord Totefels is right,” Hiro said. Friedrich couldn’t help but be a little surprised; couldn’t Hiro get fired over a scandal like the relationship she had with Friedrich? “We’ll take the fight to him over this, hold our heads high.”

  Friedrich looked up at the rest of them. None of them seemed too sure, but nobody stood to speak. He… guessed that it was time for a vote?

  “Alright, let’s put this all up to a vote,” Friedrich said. “By raise of hands, who would like to keep the Überhaus open, and get the stories to the tabloids before the Archangel has the chance?”

  About half of the lords raised their hands.

  “Who opposes?”

  The other half raised their hands.

  Friedrich sighed. He didn’t need the counts to know that they still didn’t have a solution: the Nobleman’s Council needed a 2/3 majority in order to approve a motion to go to the King’s Council and the emperor for approval.

  It looked like he had a long day in front of him.

  XXXVII. ADELRIC

  “Let’s get started on this, shall we?” Zanetti said as he picked up the pencil from the table in the interrogation room, preparing to write down what he had to say. “Who’s this mob boss that you say is working with the Archangel, exactly?”

  “Bator Kowalski,” Adelric said. “He runs a gang out of Medvye’s pub, over by factory row in Vergesse.”

  Zanetti raised an eyebrow. “We raided the place awhile ago: all we found was some old cyborg and a few women with their skirts up a little too high. The most we would’ve been able to get them on is prostitution, and since those girls weren’t technically prostitutes, we couldn’t even make that one stick.”

  Adelric found himself giving her a weird look. “Are you serious?”

  “Do I look like the kind of person to joke around about this sort of thing, Biermann?”

  “There’s more there, I swear,” Adelric said quickly. “Really: that’s where he runs his whole operation. W-we just need to get someone on the inside, and you’ll see.”

  “Whatever,” Zanetti said. “Now, who’re his underlings? The people closest to him.”

  “Well, there’s Francesca and Luciana Cabrenzo, the two girls you guys probably saw the last time you were there,” Adelric said. “And of course, there’s Klara Schultz, one of his main enforcers and Hazers.”

  Zanetti’s grip on her pencil tightened when he mentioned Klara.

  Adelric wasn’t sure whether or not that was a good sign. “I… guess you already know her, then.”

  “That bitch killed quite a few good men during Bleeding Midnight,” Zanetti said quietly. “Anybody else you think we should know about?”

  Adelric racked his mind about who the other members of the group were. In all honesty, he hadn’t exactly gotten to know any of them.

  He gave him another look. “You don’t know who the other members are, do you?”

  “No; I don’t,” Adelric admitted, looking down at his hands.

  Zanetti cursed, slicking his hair back with his hand. “Of course, you don’t.” He looked back up at him. “Listen, Biermann: my superiors really put our necks on the line to cancel your date with the executioner; the least you could do is give us more than a few names that might not even be real.”

  Adelric sighed, looking down at his hands. “Sorry. I-I guess I’m not the most helpful person in the world.”

  Before Zanetti could say anything, the door opened and a surprising face walked in.

  Zanetti stood up. “H-Hiro! I didn’t think you’d be back for awhile.”

  “I didn’t think so, either,” Ikeda said. “Berkowitz wants you elsewhere: I’ll take over from here.”

  Zanetti gave her the paper he’d been writing on. “Good luck.”

  He walked out, shutting the door behind him.

  “Francesca and Luciana Cabrenzo, Klara Schultz, Bator Kowalski,” Ikeda said. “Please tell me you have more than that.”

  Adelric shook his head.

  “Well, I guess a few names are better than nothing,” Hiro muttered as she moved to sit down. “That Schultz character is a big wig in the New Dawn, now. We’ll have to-“

  She cursed as her leg suddenly buckled beneath her, the same leg that she’d injured while she was with the Archangel. It was weird: her leg suddenly recovered, too, and she didn’t seem to be in pain over it. She just seemed… frustrated.

  “Damned leg,” she muttered to herself as she straightened herself with her cane.

  Adelric knew exactly what was going on: he’d seen it with Bator, that one time he had his bionic leg replaced, and the thing had a hard time calibrating to his body. He’d watched Klara work on the leg nearly every day for a month, mostly because Bator either couldn’t be bothered with it or was too drunk.

  He could hardly believe it. He didn’t know she’d been that hurt.

  “Let me see your leg,” Adelric said as Ikeda sat down, cursing.

  She gave him a look. “Biermann, I would choose your next words very, very carefully.”

  His cheeks began to burn bright red as he realized what that had sounded like. “I-It’s not like that. Bator had a mechanical leg that didn’t want to calibrate, too: I watched Klara work on it so often, I think I might be able to help.”

  The look on Ikeda’s face softened in surprised. And… shame. “How did you find out about that?”

  “Well, people tend to be in a little more pain when their leg buckles,” Adelric said. “How far up does it go?”

  Hiro gave him a look. “If I show you my leg, you’re going to keep your mouth shut about it. Nobody can know: not Brooks, not Zanetti, not anybody. Got it?”

  Adelric frowned. “You haven’t told anyone about it?”

  And there was another look. The message was very clear; so clear, in fact, Adelric could almost hear Ikeda’s voice in his mind: Biermann, one more question like that, and I’ll kill you, myself!

  “R-right: this is a secret,” he said quickly. “I won’t say anything; I promise.”

  Hiro gave him another look, apparently trying to decide whether or not he was lying, then rolled up her pant leg, revealing her bionic leg.

  Adelric’s eyes grew wide and his mouth gaped open. Oh, sweet heaven!

  That leg was easily worth more than his apartment. Scratch that: just one of the screws in that leg was worth more than his apartment; more than his life even. It was a Marx and Sons prosthetic: they were easily the best makers of clocks and bionic limbs in Vorbereich, maybe even the world; they used to look for noblemen with Marx and Sons limbs to pick their marks, and in all honesty, he hadn’t seen one since the night he killed Lord Saaltz. It wasn’t nearly as intricate as the ones those nobles had, but it was just as nice. It looked like it was it was made steel, one of the best metals on the market, and every one of the clockwork pieces was covered by metal panels, which flowed into one another so seamlessly that they would’ve looked like one piece of metal to the untrained eye. It was a leg that, with proper maintenance, would function just like a real limb, mayb
e even better, but was still meant to get roughed up.

  He forced himself to look up at Ikeda and away from the mechanical masterpiece. What Klara and Bator wouldn’t give to have something half this nice!

  “Where did you get the money for this?” He asked. “I mean, I know that being a police inspector is a little different from being a beat cop, but I didn’t think you got paid this much!”

  “That’s not important, right now,” Ikeda said quickly. “Now, are you going to be able to fix this, or not?”

  “Well, I can definitely try,” Adelric said, rubbing the back of his neck. “I don’t suppose you happen to have a screwdriver on you, do you?”

  Much to his surprise, she reached into her coat and grabbed one from the inside pocket. It looked like she was somewhat starting to adjust to the life of a cyborg. Well, sort of.

  He took the screwdriver, carefully opened the leg, and began to inspect it.

  He’d known that limbs by Marx and Sons looked a lot like watches on the inside, but… well, this was almost exactly a watch. Which was good: since Adelric couldn’t exactly afford to buy a new watch every time his broke, and he couldn’t afford to have someone fix it, he’d always had to do it, himself.

  Now, he just had to figure out what gears did what in that thing.

  “What do you think, Biermann?” Ikeda asked as Adelric continued to inspect the inside of the leg. “You think you can make this damned thing work, or am I going to have to make my way over to Marx and Sons?”

  “Let me just figure out what all this is supposed to do,” he said. Just as he said that, he spotted what looked to be some sort of control panel, one with little dials that were all adjusted to different numbers. He guessed that that must be what controlled the pressure, the sensitivity, everything it did.

  He reached his hand in to get to it. Well, there was only one way to find out.

  “Tell me if you notice a difference,” Adelric said as he moved one of the dials all the way up-

  “Damn it, Biermann!” Ikeda cursed, grabbing her leg just above where the prosthetic limb started, making him jump out of his skin. “Whatever the hell you just did, undo it!”

  He moved it right back to where it was supposed to be, before she could kill him. “Well, for future reference, the first dial on the right adjusts the pressure on the top part. I don’t know why you would want that, but if you ever want to change that, now you know how.”

  He went to the next dial and turned it up a few notches. Well, she wasn’t cussing at him to put it back, so it must not have done anything too major. He did, however, hear more whirring from inside the machine. “What did that do?”

  Ikeda hesitated for a second, then frowned, as if confused by what she was feeling. “Well, my stub feels kind of… warm. I don’t suppose you have any idea what that means?”

  “No idea.” Adelric didn’t even feel like sugarcoating it: truth was, it was an absolute miracle that he hadn’t absolutely ruined anything, thus far. “Try moving your leg a little.”

  Ikeda’s leg moved almost immediately. She jumped, apparently surprised.

  “Did you mean to do that?” Adelric asked.

  “I… did, actually,” Ikeda said as she began to roll the foot around. It was moving much more naturally, now. “What did you do?”

  “I think I just changed the sensitivity level,” Adelric said as he closed the panel. He stood back up as Ikeda rolled her pant leg down, again. “It was set at medium, and I guess you just needed it a little higher than that.”

  He handed her the screwdriver, and she put it back in her coat. “What was that you said about Klara?”

  “We’re going to see what we can do about that woman,” Ikeda said as she stood up. She wasn’t leaning on her cane nearly as much, now; she could probably get rid of the thing within the next few days, if that. “I’ll have someone keep an eye on her, see where this gang of yours is meeting. Then, we’ll get a man on the inside.”

  Red flags immediately went up in Adelric’s mind. That was a bad idea: inside people always stuck out like sore thumbs: they could find them within a few days, and it never, ever ended well. It was a lot of cutting up bodies and tossing the parts into the Trübe, all with the promise that anyone who said a word about it would end up the same way. And that was before the Archangel came onto the scene: he couldn’t even imagine what security would be like, now.

  “You can’t do that,” Adelric said.

  Ikeda gave him a look. “And why the hell not, Biermann?”

  “Because if you send a cop in there, they’re going to get killed,” Adelric said. “They stuck out like the devil at church before the Archangel: he’d be able to find them within two seconds, flat.”

  “Then what do you suggest we do?” Ikeda snapped. “Unless you have some nugget of information you aren’t sharing, we don’t exactly have much of a damned choice.”

  “I’ll go in.”

  Ikeda gave him a look. Are you kidding me? She seemed to say. “You want to go in? You must be crazy if you honestly think you–someone they’re ready to kill for being a rat–are going to make it out of there alive better than someone who actually knows what they’re doing.”

  “I’m being serious,” Adelric said. “I’ve prepared for roles in jobs, before, and I don’t exactly look like a cop. I can do it; really: all you’ll have to do is get a Doc to change my face around a little, and I promise you, they won’t suspect a thing.”

  Ikeda continued to stare at him, trying to decide whether or not he was serious. Then, she sighed, as if defeated.

  “Fine: I’ll talk to Berkowitz about it,” Ikeda said as she walked over to the door. “You’re going to want to practice those Alchemist powers of yours while I’m gone; if you’re going back to the mob, you’re going to need it.”

  With that, Ikeda left, leaving Adelric alone in his cell.

  He sighed and looked up at the ceiling. Had he really just volunteered to go back there? He’d barely survived the first time getting out.

  Getting out a second time would be a miracle.

  XXXVIII. HIRO

  “Biermann wants to do what?”

  Hiro bit her lip. She’d kind of figured that Berkowitz wouldn’t like hearing about Biermann’s little suggestion.

  “He thinks he might be able to infiltrate the Archangel’s group,” Hiro said. “You’ve wanted to get a man in there since that creep stepped out of the shadows, and personally, I don’t think it’s such a bad idea: just get a Doc to fix up the way he looks, give him some training, and I think it’ll work to our advantage.”

  “Or he’s going to get back to his friends and tell them everything we know, thus sending us right back to the beginning in our investigation,” Berkowitz said. “I don’t like it, Ikeda; I’d feel a hell of a lot better about this if we were to send in some people we can trust to not shit the bed.”

  “That’s just the thing,” Hiro argued. “We can’t send in one of our own people: they’ll sniff them out so fast, they’ll make our heads spin.” Not to mention the information they could beat out of a cop. Considering the hell Hiro went through while their prisoner, knowing that they wanted her alive to a point, she didn’t even want to think about what they would do to someone they were going to kill, anyway.

  Berkowitz didn’t say anything to argue with that point; it seemed that he decided that she had a point, and he was trying to decide whether or not she had enough of a point to consider her position a little more.

  Hiro found herself standing up a little taller. She had him: she just had to make sure he really knew it, as terrible as that sounded.

  “Sir, the Archangel’s planning something big,” she said. “You know it, and I know it. We have to do something about it, and we have to do something about it right now.”

  Berkowitz stared at her for a few seconds. Hiro wasn’t sure what he was thinking: was he going to do it? Would he tell her to get the hell out of his office, let him think about it? Would he fire her for being
as in his face about this whole issue as she was? She couldn’t be sure. All she could do was pray to any god (or gods) that would listen that she would still have a job when she walked out of this room.

  Finally, Berkowitz cursed, the same way he did when he lost a hand in the monthly department poker game. “Fine: we’ll send Biermann undercover.” He stood up. “But you have to go undercover with him to keep an eye on him.”

  That was not the result Hiro had been expecting.

  “Y-you want me to go undercover?” she asked as Berkowitz grabbed a book from his very cluttered shelf. “Sir, I don’t know if I can do that; I’m pretty sure it’s illegal or something, and my brother would recognize me if I were to go in there-“

  “Oh, you can do it,” he said as he handed her the book. On its old, dusty cover, it read: Vorbereich Department of Justice’s Guidelines and Regulations for Undercover Work. Funny; they’d never read that book back at the academy. “You want to know how many times I’ve heard that excuse over the years? We’ll have a Doc fix both of you up so nobody would recognize you, and hopefully you’re a good enough actress to keep your brother from knowing who you are.”

  Hiro took the book and looked back up at Berkowitz, still very confused. “Let me guess: this is all because I’m the one that suggested this.”

  “Well, that and you need to learn to learn to break rules every once and awhile,” he said. “Seriously, Ikeda: if I followed the rules as much as you did back when I was working the beat, I wouldn’t have been able to get anything done.”

  Count that under things she’d never thought she’d hear her boss say.

  “How long do I have until we go undercover?” Hiro asked.

  “We’ll give you and Biermann a week to sort everything out and to make sure that the two of you aren’t going to get yourselves killed the second you get in there,” Berkowitz said. “I suggest that the two of you get started: you’ve got a hell of a lot of work to do before you’re ready.”

  And that was how Hiro and Biermann ended up with one of the department investigation heads, trying to figure out exactly what they would be doing during this little investigation.