by Wyatt Kane
“How much?” he asked.
The man named a price nearly double what Ty had paid the last time. He hesitated, glancing at Vixen. But the dark elf seemed content to follow Ty’s lead.
Instead of taking the required credit from his wallet and handing it over, Ty shook his head. He put his wallet back in his pocket.
“Actually, I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want your drug after all. Instead, how about you tell us who you work for, and where we can find them?”
The dealer’s reaction was immediate. “Fucking narcs!” he said. “Knew you wasn’t right just looking at you!” At the same time, he dove into his coat pocket with a well-practiced flinch and brought out a blaster.
As fast as thought, Ty activated his shield and stepped in front of Vixen.
“Look out!” he shouted as the dealer started to fire.
Ty’s shield was proof against any blaster attack, but he needn’t have worried. At the same time as Ty moved, Vixen shifted between dimensions, becoming insubstantial. Ty could have ended the dealer’s life in a heartbeat, blasting away with his shield cannons until the man was nothing but an unpleasant memory, but then they would just have to go find another and play out the same scene again.
Instead, Ty wrapped his shield-enclosed hand around the dealer’s blaster and tore it out of the man’s grip.
Darth seemed to recognize the danger Ty posed. His eyes widened in fear and he uttered a yelp. He tried to turn and run, but like a ghost materializing out of nowhere, Vixen appeared in front of him.
From somewhere, she had acquired a short length of pipe that reminded Ty of the one Tempest had used to bludgeon Spit Bitch back at the art museum. With a quick, sharp movement, she hit the dealer on the side of the head, stunning him and dropping him where he stood.
Ty didn’t give him any chance to recover. He grabbed the man by the lapels and heaved him up against the wall.
The dealer knew he was beaten. He looked at Ty the way a cowardly man might look at the face of his doom and scrabbled his fingers against Ty’s wrists.
“Leave me alone, man! I ain’t got nothing you want! Let me go! I ain’t done nothing!”
“Tell me who you work for and where we can find them,” Ty said.
Despite the man’s obvious fear, he managed to shake his head. “Can’t do it, man. More than my life’s worth,” he said.
Ty didn’t have time to persuade him. He dragged the man away from the wall just a little, then slammed him back against it with jarring force.
“Ow,” the man said.
“Tell us who you work for,” Ty repeated.
But still, the man shook his head.
“Let me have a go,” Vixen said. “Hold him steady for a moment.”
Ty did as the dark elf said, wondering what she was going to do.
Vixen stood close enough to Ty that she was effectively leaning against him. She held up her hand and smiled at the man.
“Have you ever wondered what it might be like to feel your heart stop beating?” she asked. As the dealer looked on in horror, Vixen’s right hand became transparent. She moved it towards his chest, and then into him.
Ty couldn’t begin to know what that might have felt like, but from the dealer’s reaction, it couldn’t have been pleasant. The man looked at Vixen’s arm sticking out from his chest and freaked. He struggled against Ty’s grip even more and let out a series of panicked wails that grew increasingly louder.
Ty shook the man in an effort to focus his attention, but at the same time he could understand his reaction.
It wasn’t every day someone reached into your chest to tickle your heart.
Vixen withdrew her hand and smiled at the man. He clutched at his chest, puffing and panting as if he’d been for a run, his eyes wide with fright.
“I’ll give you about a minute,” Vixen said. “If we don’t have the answers we seek within that time, then I might just show you what else I can do.”
It was an undefined threat, but a good one. Darth’s eyes fixated on Vixen and grew wide with horror as he imagined what more she could do.
“What the fuck are you?” he said. “The both of you. What the fuck are you trying to do to me?”
“I’ve changed my mind,” Vixen said. “Thirty seconds.”
Part of the panic came back to the drug dealer’s eyes. Yet he shook his head.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I swear, I don’t know.”
Ty was still holding the man up against the wall. He wasn’t entirely comfortable with Vixen’s proximity, but didn’t want to draw attention to it.
“What do you mean, you don’t know?” he said.
The drug dealer’s gaze switched to him. “Man, you gotta get your bitch under control. You can’t let her do that to people. It ain’t right!”
“Ten seconds,” Vixen said.
Ty just grinned at the man. He saw the calculations in the drug dealer’s eyes, but he still shook his head.
“I told you, already! I can’t tell you. I don’t know who my boss is. None of us do!” There was just enough desperation in his voice that Ty believed him.
“What do you mean? How can you not know who your boss is? Where do you get the drugs from? Who do you give the money to?”
“Five seconds,” Vixen said. From Ty’s point of view, her count seemed a bit off. But he knew that wasn’t the point. The only thing that mattered was to get the drug dealer to tell them what he knew.
Darth seemed to deflate a little in Ty’s grasp. He looked around as if hoping to see someone who could help him, but there was no one in the alley apart from them. And maybe a few rats and other vermin further in.
“Okay, okay,” the man said. “I’ll tell you what I know. But it ain’t much.” He shook his head once again. “None of us know who the bosses are. We can’t contact them. It’s always one way. We get a message, see. A messenger will turn up and let us know where and when the pickup is going to be. I bring the money, and they bring the stash.” He tried to shrug even as Ty continued to press him against the wall.
“That’s all I know, man. You gotta believe me.”
Ty considered. To him, it wasn’t outside the realms of possibility for drug dealers to operate that way. But it didn’t make him happy. He shoved the man against the wall once again, just to rattle him a bit.
“How did you get the job?” he asked. “Who did you talk to? Where did you meet?”
Again, the dealer shook his head. “It ain’t like that, man,” he said. “I just knew a guy. That’s it. That’s all I know!”
23: Borrowed Skills
Ty kept the pressure on, but he didn’t quite know what to do next. Vixen, however, was sharper. Perhaps she had been in similar situations before.
“When is your next meet going to be?” she asked.
The man looked at her again, and Ty knew he was more afraid of her than he was of him.
“Don’t know,” the man whimpered.
Vixen wasn’t satisfied. “When was your last? How regularly do they happen?”
The man looked at her as if she was speaking a foreign language. It was like he didn’t understand why she’d asked what she did. So Ty shook him again.
“Answer her!” he said.
“Yesterday!” the man said. “I saw them yesterday. Don’t know when I’ll see them again. Maybe a couple of days?”
Again, Ty didn’t much like Darth’s answer, and by her expression, neither did Vixen. Yet, it didn’t seem likely they would get another answer no matter how hard they pressed the dealer. From Ty’s perspective, this first attempt to track the source of the AZT-407 drug back to the Master was a bust.
But Vixen wasn’t quite done. “Well, I guess that means you have plenty of stock on hand,” she said.
The dealer wasn’t entirely stupid. He understood exactly what Vixen intended, and once again shook his head.
“No,” he said. “No, you can’t.
Vixen smiled at the man, but it was far from the on
e she’d offered Ty earlier. This smile was glacial, almost. It didn’t touch her eyes in the least.
“Of course we can,” she said. “We can do anything we like.”
“No,” the dealer repeated. “You don’t know what they’ll do to me.”
But Vixen had had enough. “Nor do we care,” she snapped back at him. “Hand it over.”
Darth made a gibbering noise and gave Ty a pleading look.
“Please,” he said.
Ty didn’t know what Vixen’s plans might be, nor did he fully approve of just taking the dealer’s stash as if they were muggers or members from a rival gang. But Vixen had given him a surreptitious wink when Darth wasn’t looking, so he played along.
“All of it,” he said, doing his best to sound threatening.
Likely the man would have handed over his supply without any more motivation. But Vixen gave him another prod. Once more, she held up her hand and made it go insubstantial.
“You see the garbage all over this place?” Vixen said, indicating further down the alley. “How would you like me to leave a handful or two of that in your lungs?”
It was a hideous thought, and it was too much for Darth. He made a noise that was almost a sob and started to fumble about in his pockets.
Ty stepped back to give him some room, and within just a few moments, the man had pulled out a couple of handfuls of single use inhalers.
Vixen raised an eyebrow. “Don’t you have a bag or something?” she asked.
The man seemed to panic at this and started to shake his head. Then he changed his mind and reached into his inside jacket pocket, spilling inhalers as he did. He came away with a clear plastic bag within which was a squashed sandwich.
Vixen nodded her approval. “That’ll do. Empty it. Put the inhalers in there.”
Still the man hesitated again. “But this is my lunch,” he said.
“I don’t care if it’s the ashes of your favorite aunt. Do it.”
With some reluctance, Darth took out his sandwich and stuffed it into one of his pockets. Then he filled the bag with inhalers and handed it over.
“Thank you,” Vixen said. “Now that wasn’t so hard, was it? Now, your cash.” she said.
Darth was done arguing. He knew by then it would do him no good. With a heavy sigh, he pulled out his wallet and handed it over.
“Now the blaster,” Vixen said. “Pick it up, but do it slowly, and hand it to my friend here. And remember, you can’t hurt us with it. But if you try, remember what I said. Garbage. Lungs. I might even leave a nail or two lodged in your brain for good measure.”
As the man did as Vixen demanded, Ty got the sense that the dark elf was enjoying herself. He wasn’t completely sure he should be going along with her, but had to admit her actions had produced results, and wondered if this was what Dinah had meant about Vixen not being like them.
At the same time, she’d gone through the Architect’s original screening. Like Dinah, Tempest, and Zach. According to Tempest, the Architect had tested them for all sorts of criteria. Surely, if she was malicious at heart, the Architect would never have given her a device?
Then there was the attraction. Ty had a working theory that if their alignments were too different, there would be little attraction between them. And, even though Ty found Vixen’s manner a bit grating, he couldn’t deny that the attraction was there.
So he held his tongue and accepted the blaster.
“Thank you,” Vixen said again. “It was a pleasure doing business with you.”
With that, the dark elf turned to Ty.
“We’re done here,” she said. “Let’s go see if we can find someone with the information we need.”
Ty judged the dealer no longer a threat, and deactivated his shield. Together, Ty and Vixen left the man in the alley and headed back to the pavement.
◆◆◆
Ty wanted answers. As soon as they were out of earshot, he turned to the dark elf.
“What was that all about?” he asked.
Vixen favored him with a sly grin. “What, you mean to tell me you believed him?” she returned.
Ty stared at her. “You didn’t?”
Vixen snorted under her breath. “I take it you’re fairly new to this hero game?” she asked.
Ty frowned in annoyance. He was new. There was no doubt about that. Nor did he habitually hang out with drug dealers or random criminals before taking over Zach’s device. He understood life in the city of New Lincoln was probably more complex in some quarters than he realized.
But that didn’t mean he enjoyed Vixen holding that knowledge just out of his reach.
“What am I missing?” he demanded.
Vixen kept him on the hook for a few seconds more before finally relenting. “All of these drug gangs tend to operate much the same way. They’d like you to think there’s no traceable connection between the dealers and the levels above. But that’s more of an ideal than a reflection of reality. I’ve never yet come across one where it’s the literal truth.”
“So, you do think he was lying,” Ty said. He was thinking back to the interaction. “He was pretty convincing. At the same time, he didn’t seem to be that sharp. I wouldn’t have thought him capable of coming up with that sort of response.”
Vixen shook her head in a pitying fashion. “He didn’t come up with it. It’s a line many of them use, because sometimes it works. And, there’s often just enough truth in it to make it believable. Come on, I’ll prove it.”
Without waiting for Ty to respond, she grabbed his arm.
Instantly, it was like she had shoved him hard in the chest. Ty stumbled, suddenly unsure of his footing, and looked around at a world tinged suddenly in red.
“What the–?” he began, only to find his own voice sounded strange and distant. For some reason, he thought of the place between points of reality Lilith always went through when teleporting. But this wasn’t like that. It was like they were in an exact duplicate of New Lincoln, except … not.
Everything was exactly the same, just shifted a little on the visual spectrum. The cars still rolled along the road, and people still walked along the pavement, intent on their own business. Only the color of everything had changed.
“Don’t worry,” Vixen replied, her voice sounding like a special effect from a ghost film. It was like her voice took the long way to get to Ty. He watched her lips finish moving nearly half a second before the last part of her words reached his ears. “We’re just in another dimension.”
Ty brought his hand up in front of his face and stared at it. For some reason, he expected it to be transparent, but it was as solid as ever. Yet, perhaps to others, it wasn’t. A middle-aged woman with a small dog on a leash was walking straight at him as if he wasn’t there. Ty had to move quickly to get out of her way, and Vixen barked a laugh but didn’t let go of his arm.
“They can’t see me?” he asked. “Us?” he corrected.
Vixen shook her head. “No. To them, if they were looking, you and I would have seemed to vanish into thin air.” She was watching him closely, seemingly enjoying his reaction. “They can’t see us, or hear us, or even feel us.”
Ty stared at her.
“Go ahead,” she said. “Try to touch one of them.”
Tentatively, not quite trusting Vixen’s words, Ty did as she said, aiming to touch the shoulder of a man who was talking on a phone embedded in his hand.
But it was like he turned into a ghost. Ty’s hand went straight through the man as if he didn’t exist.
Vixen grinned at him. “We can walk through walls as if they aren’t there. Even that forcefield of yours. It’s as if the things we always thought of as solid don’t really exist.”
Ty couldn’t help it. He looked down at his feet. “Then why does the ground still feel solid?” he asked.
“Good question,” Vixen said. “And if you want to know the truth, we’re not really sure. Perhaps it’s because the world is consistent. It doesn’t change much over
time. If you’re standing on top of the ground now, in two hundred years, you wouldn’t have moved. But people and buildings are more transient. They don’t change as much.” The dark elf gave a shrug. “Or maybe that has nothing to do with it. As I say, I don’t really know.”
Before Ty could really come up with more questions, Vixen changed the topic. “Now, how about we go back and see what our friend the drug dealer is doing?”
24: Hiding In A Different Dimension
Without letting go of Ty’s arm, she led him straight back into the alley. Darth was still in the shadows where they’d left him, but had taken the time to pull himself back together. He was no longer a wailing, gibbering mess, afraid of what Vixen and Ty might do to him. Instead, he was more like a boy who’d been called into the headmaster’s office and wasn’t sure what might happen next. He was nervous, perhaps even fearful, but was no longer afraid for his life.
And, despite having said he had no way to call his supplier, he’d dug a miniaturized communication device from somewhere and was steadying himself as he made a call.
“See?” Vixen said. Ty nodded, but didn’t otherwise respond. He just waited until the call connected.
“Hey, yeah, it’s me,” the man said. “Yeah, look, I’ve been robbed. Some punk kid and his girlfriend. Look, I tried, I really did, but they’ve got these powers, like, I don’t know. Scared the shit outta me. I shot him with my blaster, but it had no effect. And she…” He shuddered. “Look, they took my stuff. Yeah, all of it.”
Ty couldn’t hear what was being said on the other side, but Darth nodded into his communication device.
“Yeah, okay,” he said, and that was that.
He hung up the phone, tucked it away in one of his pockets, and leaned against the wall with a deep sigh.
“Now what?” Ty asked.
“Now, we wait.” Vixen responded. “If he goes anywhere, we follow him. But I would bet the supplier’s coming here.”
◆◆◆
Ty didn’t really want to have to follow the dealer somewhere else. What if he hopped in a car and headed to another part of the city? Would Ty and Vixen have to ride in the car with him, invisible, untouchable, but present nevertheless? Or would it be better to follow on Dinah’s Ducati and hope that they didn’t lose sight of him?