by Megan Derr
It was a shithole of a place on the outside, the kind of apartment building filled with people one step from living on the streets. Except a lot of those people had come upon sudden windfalls and gone elsewhere, and a whole lot of non-existent people had moved in. Byron had spent good money to interconnect the apartment into something like an oversized mouse cage, with nooks, crannies, tunnels, and more secrets than the CIA.
And there were enough people coming and going to see Byron, alias Fortune—or rather, one of his many, many covers—that the rest of the world didn't notice there was anything funny about the place.
In the elevator, Dixie leaned against the back wall. The little guy—Whisker, which just made Dixie want to call him 'kitten'—remained close to the doors. Byron punched in his access code, then pressed his hand to a panel and presented his eye to another for fingerprint and retina scans.
The elevator beeped and began to move, taking them up to the seventh floor where Byron's main rooms were located. They stepped out into a dingy hall, only two yellow-orange lights giving the cockroaches and rats something to see by. Byron unlocked his door, paused briefly as discreet scanners read all three of them, then finally let them inside.
"Make yourselves at home," Byron said, throwing his keys on the kitchen island and shrugging out of the dark purple leather jacket he'd been wearing. Some days he looked like a faerie prince; some days he looked like a faerie prostitute. Some days Dixie honestly couldn't decide. "Beer? Greg, I've got wine, too."
"Yes," Greg and Dixie said together. Greg smiled faintly, then ducked his head and slipped away through the door that led to the various bedrooms.
Dixie pulled a stool up to the island and took the beer Byron held out. "Thanks. So that's Whisker?"
"Yeah," Byron replied. He leaned against the kitchen sink and took a pull on his own beer. "Gregory Raines. He's a paralegal by day. Comes in handy. He works for one of the biggest firms in town and everybody likes kittens."
Dixie snorted a laugh over his beer bottle. At least he wasn't the only one with that impression. "Do you know what he was doing collapsing in my yard? You might want to check out his head. I patched it up, but I ain't a medic by any stretch of the imagination."
Byron nodded, then set his beer aside and went to pull something out of the oven. "Get the salad out of the fridge."
"Yes, Boss."
They'd finished getting all of dinner on the table when the door creaked open. Dixie turned, and hell if he didn't feel a touch like a drunk butterfly right about then. All cleaned up and wearing jeans and a blue polo, hair still damp and standing out a little around his head, Greg looked like the bastard child of a devil and angel, something with a sweet mouth and a wicked tongue. He had pretty brown eyes that just barely faded to gold along the edges.
A soft snort drew Dixie's attention, and he tore his eyes away and went to the fridge for another beer, bringing one for Byron too. "I swear I just ate, but hell if I ain't hungry again."
"Pizza, rice, or pasta?" Byron asked wryly, in that boarding school tone of his that drove Dixie up the fucking wall. Too reminiscent of the lily white man-children who'd kept him and his parents as little better than slaves to tend the hi-tech computer system Dixie's daddy had built all on his own.
"Shut it, white boy," Dixie replied. "I ain't putting up with nonsense from a glorified bank robber."
Byron sniffed. "I'm a bit more than that."
"You really ain't," Dixie said with a grin.
Greg huffed from where he sat dead opposite Dixie at the table. "You are a bank robber, Byron. But I want to know who the hell he is."
Byron raised his brows at Dixie, who shrugged and said, "Name's Dixon Mountebank. Most folks call me Dixie."
"And the G.O.D. prefers to call him Turncoat," Byron added.
"Holy shit!" Greg almost dropped the bottle of wine he'd picked up. "Seriously?"
"Seriously," Dixie drawled, dragging out every letter. "More important question is: what the hell was you doing tonight and how did the G.O.D. find you?"
Greg's mouth pinched. "They might have found me because it was a G.O.D. house I had to break into."
Byron dropped his fork and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Why would you do that, Greg? You know better!"
"It's a favor for a friend—the kind of friend who's almost died for me and somebody I would definitely die for. He never asks for anything, but he asked for this and I can do it. Just might take me a little longer than I thought. Tonight was meant to be recon, but I didn't even make it up to the front door." He took a long gulp of wine. Dixie was thirty percent certain you weren't supposed to drink wine quite like that, but he also didn't know shit about wine and wasn't one to judge anyway.
Picking up his fork, Byron jabbed it in Greg's direction. "Whose house and what were you stealing?"
"Timothy Rekker, and something called a Mason Chip."
Dixie was the one to drop a fork that time. "A Mason Chip? Why in the fucking hell are you trying to get your hands on a Mason Chip? You don't even know what that is, do you?"
"It's a special microchip that all G.O.D. computers require in order to sync with their spooky master system, according to L—my friend. There's something he needs, but he can't get to it without the chip, and if he tries to get one himself, he'll draw too much attention."
"One, not all G.O.D. computers have them. There's a set number of access points in the world, and a tightly controlled number of people who can use them. Access to the 'spooky master system' isn't something the Pantheon permits lightly. Two, taking the chip is too much attention no matter who does it," Dixie replied. "Anyway, even if you got it, wouldn't make a damned difference. Those chips only work for the people they're given to—people already on the approved list. And that list can only be accessed by three people. You can steal a thousand Mason Chips, but without the right clearance, they won't do your friend a lick of good."
Greg frowned like a cranky cat. Dixie could practically see the wasp ears. "So we need to kidnap one of those three people."
Byron choked on his beer, started laughing—laughed harder when Dixie lightly kicked him under the table.
"What's so funny?" Greg asked with a pout. Dixie wanted to pet him, settle all that ruffled fur.
"You don't need to kidnap anyone," Byron finally said, still chuckling off and on. "If you ask Dixie nicely, he'll be more than happy to get you the information and the access you need. Our problem—" he gestured between himself and Dixie, "—is that we haven't been able to get one. But once we have it, Dixie can do the rest. We can help you and your friend, though he's going to have to step up and join the party."
Greg gnawed on his bottom lip so hard Dixie worried he'd tear it. Finally looking up, he said, "I'll talk to him, but don't get your hopes up. He keeps to himself for good reason, and he's got more trust issues than the rest of us combined."
"Okay," Byron said. "Do your best. We won't hurt him, though. If he's out for G.O.D. blood then he's a brother in arms. Now eat before dinner gets cold. We'll discuss more of this tomorrow."
"Yes, Your Highness," Dixie drawled, and snickered when Byron kicked him.
He finished eating a few minutes later and cracked a yawn that made his eyes water. "I'm going to bed. Done been awake too damned long. Wake me up if it's life or death, and woe betide the fool who wakes me up for any other reason."
"Understood," Byron replied with a smile. "Sweet dreams."
"Ya'll sleep well." Dixie pushed away from the table, deposited his dirty dishes in the sink and his empty beer bottle in the trash, then wended through the maze of tunnels and stairs to his bedroom on the opposite side of the building, a little corner room Byron always kept for him.
Most of the space was taken up by his bed; the rest of it was filled with a small bathroom, a closet, and tables crammed with various electronics that Dixie wasn't comfortable keeping in his own house. Stripping down to his boxers, setting his clothes on top of a cardboard box that often doubled as a makeshift
table, he turned out the light, fell into bed, and dropped almost immediately into sleep.
He woke up a few hours later, stomach growling for a snack. Rolling over onto his back, Dixie sat up, swung his legs over the edge of the bed, and reached for his clothes. He scratched the back of his neck, fingers running over the too-smooth bit of skin that wasn't really skin at all. His fingers twitched, trembled, and he dropped them in his lap before shaking himself and getting dressed. Dwelling had never done anyone a lick of good, and he wasn't gonna start now.
Hauling out of his room, he headed for the kitchen to seek out a snack.
Instead he found a cat leaning against the island drinking a mug of hot milk, wearing nothing but a slinky, clingy little pair of black boxers. "I didn't think cream was actually good for cats."
"Haha, a cat joke. I've never heard those before, every single fucking day of my life," Greg muttered.
Dixie gave a slow grin. "Does puss need a scritch behind the ears? Would that make you feel—" He jumped out of the way as Greg tried to thwack him, easily caught his slender wrist, then the other one when the second hand came swinging, and smoothly pinned them at the small of Greg's back.
Which put that lithe little body distractingly close to his own. Made him acutely aware Greg was wearing next to nothing, and he wouldn't mind at all finding out how it felt to have Greg pinned under him.
Dixie let him go and went to the jar on the counter where he knew Byron always kept cookies. Ooh, chocolate chip with walnuts. He shoved one into his mouth and grabbed three more, then got the milk from the fridge and a glass from the cabinet. Sitting at the island, he poured the milk and settled into his snack. "So what are you doing awake?"
"I'm not much for sleeping," Greg replied. "Too used to being awake when it's dark."
"That's gotta make doing your day job suck."
Greg laughed. "I'm a paralegal for a big fancy law firm. You know what they do with me? Give me tedious shit to research and ignore me. I take naps in the file room and library all the time." He grinned. "Helps I can go through stuff when I need to hide."
"You can't help getting yourself into trouble, can you?" Dixie shook his head and took another bite of cookie, chased it with a swallow of milk. "How did you get into thieving? If you mind telling, don't feel obliged."
Shrugging, Greg replied, "How does anyone usually get into breaking the law? We were flat broke. My mom begged for help from all kinds of people—people she'd helped a hundred thousand times. They all turned her away, and some were really fucking mean about it. Poor as we were, I never was tested, so my meteor genes were never identified and put in the system."
Meteor genes, also known as 'super genes', were the mutations that showed up in people without any rhyme or reason that science had yet figured out. In the first couple of decades after a meteor crashed on the planet in the late 1600s, enormous pieces landing all over the damned earth, not much had happened. Well, plenty had happened to the environment.
Weird shit hadn't happened to people at first. Plenty had died or been permanently injured, but nothing weird. But on about thirty or so years after, by the best estimates of historians, weirdness started showing up in people right around puberty, people that had been born in the last 15 years, give or take a few.
And that had triggered the Great Witch Burnings. Those had lasted longer than anyone liked to admit, and supers had gone deep into hiding. Didn't show up again until an especially powerful super had decided that 'inferior' humans should die. He'd destroyed half of Europe before he'd finally been killed. It was only after that the world governments came together to do something more effective, seeking out and registering supers, establishing tests, regulations, protections, etc., that life got considerably less dangerous for everyone.
Not long after, groups like the G.O.D. had sprung up. But there were plenty of supers off the grid, and 'villains' who ranged from petty criminals to those intent on changing the world in ways the government didn't agree with. About the only thing everyone agreed on was that the whole thing was a goddamned mess. Too many thought the G.O.D. was the solution, and anyone who disagreed wound up dead or lived in the shadows.
"So you turned to stealing?" he asked.
"The first time wasn't planned," Greg replied. "We were at her boss's house, trying to convince him to cut her a break, advance a paycheck, something, anything. I was only ten, was waiting in this opulent hall full of fancy, expensive shit polished to within an inch of its life. It was like being on a stage set, even back then I knew that. All for show, and he didn't give a damn about any of it except to prove that he had it and no one else did. So I took this stupid little clock just to be a jerk. I shoved it into my bag under all my homework and gym clothes… and days later, still nothing had happened. We needed money for groceries and I thought of my dumb trophy, took it to a pawn shop, and made five thousand dollars."
Dixie whistled.
"So I did it again, same house, slipped in there one day after school and stole something from his office. Looking back, I think I probably got some of his staff fired. But back then, I was a stupid kid tired of hearing his mother cry."
"Yeah," Dixie said quietly. "Ain't nothing worse than hearing your mama cry. If I'd been you, I'd've done the same."
Greg looked at him. "You had it rough, too, huh? I'm sorry."
"Ain't nobody in this business doesn't have a rough story," Dixie said.
"Still, I'd think someone with the name 'Turncoat' must have a story that packs some extra bang."
Dixie rubbed his fingers across the back of his neck. "Not many people defy and betray the Dogs and live to tell the tale, that's for sure. My dad used to work for them, and me alongside him. Ain't a story I'm inclined to share, but my parents are dead now and G.O.D. wants me back something fierce."
"I'm sorry."
"Thanks," Dixie said. "Your mom still around?"
"Yeah, though she's overseas and no longer related to me, according to the paperwork. That cost me big, but she's safe and that's all I want."
Dixie nodded, then finished his cookies and milk and stood to put the glass in the dishwasher. "How'd you get mixed up with Byron and the rest of this anti-G.O.D. crusade? I assume you're part of that."
"I steal stuff for him sometimes—what else does anyone pay me to do?" Greg asked with a crooked grin. "And I've got useful connections via the firm, so pretty often what I steal is information. How about you?"
"Byron found me, actually. Me and a friend of mine who came with me when I got out of the clutches of the G.O.D. We were both banged up pretty badly. Byron helped us get back on our feet. Now we do odd jobs here and there, chip away at the G.O.D. when we're able."
Greg pursed his lips, eyes going distant as he lost himself in thought for a minute. "You were on the news recently, up around Arrow City. There's going to be a memorial parade for the dead at the end of the week. Some new super villain was mentioned, too."
"Countdown," Dixie replied. "Yeah, shit got interesting up Arrow way. We didn't mean for Countdown to happen, but God's truth, I ain't sorry. That boy is nobody to fuck with. I ain't never seen a civilian turn villain that quickly or smoothly in my life. He's gonna be handy."
"We need all the help we can get," Greg agreed. He finished his milk and put the cup in the dishwasher, then looked around the kitchen as if hoping to find something.
Dixie quirked a brow. "You're twitchier than a spooked rabbit."
"I'm awake and have no way of tiring myself out that won't provoke Byron to murder me," Greg replied with a huff. "Or get me arrested, one way or another."
"I'm impressed you ain't been arrested yet."
Greg flashed a smug little grin. "It's hard to catch someone who can go through walls. I can get three buildings away while they're still trying to find a door."
"Cocky shit like that is why you keep almost getting caught anyway. Is there a break-in of yours that ain't made the news as yet another botched attempt by Whisker to steal this or that? For s
omeone who can go through objects, you sure knock a lot of them over."
"Byproduct of the power, okay?" Greg turned away, shoulders hunched, but not before Dixie saw the hurt look on his face.
Dixie crossed the kitchen in a few long, easy strides and caught him by the shoulder, turned him around. "Hey, I only meant to tease. I'm sorry. I ain't got much room to talk, believe me. You shoulda seen me before I got free of the G.O.D. I was skinnier than you and twice as clumsy."
Greg's face filled with disbelief as he looked Dixie slowly up and down. Meeting Dixie's eyes, he said, "Bullshit."
Mouth curving in a slow smile, Dixie pulled out his phone and punched in the long access code. He reached up to touch the back of his neck, a tiny zing shooting down his spine as he woke his systems. When he could feel the soft pulse that said they were awake and ready, he said, "Archive, family photos. Selfies, folder three."
The phone screen shimmered and flashed as it flipped rapidly through his memory banks before finally pulling up the folder he wanted. Dixie flipped through the pictures and pulled up a photo he hadn't looked at in forever. "Project image." His phone flashed and immediately projected the image he'd selected into the air.
"That's your long lost brother," Greg said. "Also, how the fuck does your phone do that?"
Dixie shot him a look. "I'm an only child, smartass. That was me a couple of years before I finally got free of the G.O.D."
"How did you go from beanpole to mechanic-themed porn?"
"I'm starting to think your mouth gets you in more trouble than your clumsiness," Dixie said with a snort. "Off projection, delete files from phone, go to sleep mode."
Greg pouted. "Seriously, how does your phone do all that?"
"We ain't done discussing that porn comment," Dixie said, catching his arm when Greg squeaked and tried to flee.
Huffing, Greg slowly looked at him and said, "You don't need me to tell you that you're hot."
