by M. K. Gibson
“There aren’t any,” Freeman explained. “Part of the agreement with the elves. To have access to their magics, we have to keep our numbers small. Sure, there are a few global teams out there keeping an eye on the myths that refused to relocate to Avalantis, but most of MORTAL is here performing intel gathering, R&D, and logistics. So here in the city, you three are it.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll stay on as senior adviser for a while. But like I said back in your apartment, I’m looking forward to retirement.”
“So, where is Messer?”
“This way,” Freeman said, walking down the wooden hallway. Turning a corner, the pair of women came to another room with a viewing window. Jessie nearly dropped her coffee.
“What the hell?”
Messer, or what was left of him, was inside a futuristic-looking cylindrical tube of bluish fluid. Through the various clear sections of tube’s outer hull, Jessie saw that large pieces of him were missing. But it looked like his body was . . . regrowing. In his right hand, he held his knife. Deek was in there, checking computers and reading monitors. Gabby sat on a stool beside the tube, not moving. Her hand rested on the apparatus. There were tears running down the elven woman’s face.
“What’s going on? Is he—”
“Alive?”
“Yeah.”
“Barely.”
“What happened to him?” Jessie asked.
“You know how you all were hit last night?”
“Yeah?”
“So was Messer. They got him in the precinct.”
Confused, Jessie turned to Freeman. “How?”
Freeman sipped her coffee. “He was questioning Vulcan back at the interrogation room. Someone had slipped Vulcan some Vitae.”
“Who?”
“Couple of APD rookies,” Freeman said. “We got it on the security feed, them bringing the vial from evidence. Hell, Messer didn’t realize that Vulcan was holding until it was too late. So at a one point, Vulcan gulps down the whole vial. And then he . . . well, he went ‘boom’.”
“Like Hermes?”
“Yeah,” Freeman said. “The explosion did massive damage to the precinct. A lot of cops didn’t make it.”
“Goddamn,” Jessie said. She looked again at Messer’s broken body, then back at Freeman. “Then how is he alive?”
Freeman didn’t say anything at first. She simply looked at the man. After a moment, she turned to Jessie. “It’s not my story to tell. When he’s back, you can ask him then. Just know that he’s . . . hard to kill.”
“So, what’s the plan?”
Freeman looked at her. “What?”
“The plan,” Jessie repeated. “They hit us. How and when are we hitting back?”
“Simple as that, huh?”
“What do you want us to do?” Jessie asked. “Keep digging up clues that go nowhere? They know who we are and they tried to take us out. What’s to stop them from doing it again? So yeah, I want to be on this. Now.”
Freeman looked at her. “We have a few things in motion. For now, please, go be with your team. When Deacon’s up and running, we’ll circle the wagons. I promise.”
“Okay,” Jessie said, easing back. “Hey, Freeman?”
“Yeah?”
“I know I’m . . . difficult. But, you know, thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
Looking at Messer one last time, Jessie walked back to the private room where Arby and Cross were. She walked in and saw that Cross was awake and looking over a data tablet. The woman looked up and saw Jessie and inclined her chin.
“Please tell me that coffee is for me.”
Jessie nodded and handed her the other cup in her hand. “From Freeman.”
“Thanks,” Cross said, accepting the coffee while setting the tablet down on the stand beside Arby’s medical tube. “Freeman fill you in on what happened?”
“Yeah,” Jessie said, pulling up another chair and sitting beside Cross. The other woman had been given a similar pair of APD sweats to wear, but she looked tired. Weary. “You get much sleep?”
Cross shrugged. “A little. Just worried about the big idiot.”
“And Messer,” Jessie added.
“Yeah . . . Messer,” Cross said. She inclined her chin at the tablet. “Have you seen the vid yet?”
“No,” Jessie said.
Cross handed her the tablet and played the video from the interrogation room. Just as Freeman had described, Messer was sitting across from Vulcan and then the god gulped down the Vitae. A moment later, the god began to glow, and then the feed cut out.
“Jesus, how did he survive that?” Jessie asked.
“I don’t know,” Cross said. “But I’m more concerned with what he said before it happened.”
“What did he say?”
“Wind it back to the very beginning of the interrogation and turn the volume up.”
Jessie did as instructed.
“Holy shit.”
“Yeah,” Cross said. “He set us up.”
Chapter Thirty
15 May - 6:50 am
MORTAL Headquarters, Medical Branch, District of Axis Mundi
Jessie played the video back a second time. “That’s, that’s—”
“Bullshit,” Cross said, finishing her thought. “We were hired to become targets.”
“This can’t be right,” Jessie said, replaying the video over. “He has to have had a reason.”
“Seems pretty clear,” Cross said. “MORTAL needed someone to draw out the Laughing Man. And we were the lucky schmucks who got that job.”
“There has to be more to it than that,” Jessie said, scanning the video again. “He told Vulcan that we were resilient, and that we—”
“Don’t try and justify this,” Cross said, taking the data pad from Jessie’s hand and setting it on the stand next to Arby’s tube. “These pricks used us.”
“But there has to be a good reason,” Jessie said. “I can kind of see why he did it.”
Cross stood and looked down at her. “What?”
“I’m just saying, it kind of makes sense,” Jessie said, leaning slightly away from the looming woman. “Freeman said that there are very few agents in the field, while the bulk of MORTAL forces are secret. Vulcan even said so on the video. So they needed public figures.”
“If they’ve been operating in secret for as long as they’ve said, then it makes no sense to expose us. Unless they needed disposable targets.”
“Look, I’m not saying it all makes sense,” Jessie said, trying to rationalize her thoughts, “but before we go all conspiracy theory, maybe we should think about it a bit more?”
Cross stepped back and rubbed her face with her hands. “Goddamn it, Jessie, you’re so naive. They needed a sacrifice, and we’re it. I get that you need to feel special, but this isn’t some fucking orphan’s fairy tale.”
Jessie eyes narrowed and a wave of anger rolled over her. Cross’s words were like an injection of ice water straight into her heart. Before she realized what she was doing, Jessie was on her feet.
“Say that again.”
Cross squared up on her. “Watch yourself, little girl. I get you’re feeling all badass right now after last night. But I’ll—”
Jessie punched the taller woman with a straight hard left to her sternum before she could finish her sentence. The sudden blow drove the wind from Cross’s body and Jessie followed it up with a hard right hook to the stunned woman’s jaw. Cross staggered back a step or two and ended up falling back into her chair. Jessie looked down at the woman, who looked confused as she rubbed her face.
“I get now why you talk so much shit and slut around. You’re just a jaded bitch and everything from your tits to your personality is fake. No wonder your husband left you.”
Jessie grabbed both cups of coffee. “I’m taking this. You don’t deserve coffee.”
Jessie left the room and walked down the hall back towards the MORTAL central command room she s
aw when she first came there. She wanted answers, and she was going to get them.
********
15 May - 6:55 am
MORTAL Headquarters, Medical Branch, District of Axis Mundi
Cassy watched Jessie leave. Her stinging, accurate, yet . . . false words rang in her head. They played over and over, like a beat, thrumming in time to the rising bruise on her face. Cassy gripped the arms of the chair and stood up so hard that the chair shot back and hit the wall.
“Cass . . . don’t,” Arby said, his eyes barely open. “She . . . she didn’t mean . . . it.”
Cassy looked at her friend, then back at the door. She was pleased to see he was awake and feeling better. But celebration would have to wait. She had something to take care of first.
“Bitch took my coffee.”
“Cass, please.”
“Stay put. I’ll be right back.”
Arby sighed. “It’s just like that time at Starbucks.”
“No,” Cassy said, reaching the door, “that time I had my gun.”
“This is why we’re never invited back to nice places!”
********
15 May - 6:55 am
MORTAL Headquarters, Operations Center, District of Axis Mundi
Jessie walked into the dark, busy room. Just like last time, both myths and mundanes were at various desks and holo-monitors working projects, talking, and running the organization.
And now that she got a good look at them, most of the MORTAL staff seemed . . . cerebral? Maybe a little bit doughy? They were desk jockeys. Freeman had said that most of MORTAL was intelligence, R&D, and logistics. This must be where they received data from The Eye and fed it to the APD, using the police force as their instrument. Brilliant, really.
But then . . . why hire them? Loath thought Jessie was to admit it, Cross may have been on to something. What did the three of them bring to the equation? For answers, she would need to ask questions. And there was no reason to start at the bottom. Jessie set both cups of coffee down on the edge of a row of desks and computer monitors.
“Excuse me, I’m looking for Mother-1’s office. Where may I find that?”
The agents—two humans, a dwarf, a selkie in its hybrid seal-human form, and a Russian domovoi—began to laugh.
“No one just walks into her office,” the dwarf said.
“She summons you,” the domovoi said, then adjusted her tiny ushanka.
“Then how do we see her?” Jessie asked.
“You get summoned,” said one of the humans, a blond man with a thick moustache.
“Then what do you do in the meantime?”
“Your job,” the other human, a woman with large glasses and a pinched face, said as she continued to type on her keyboard. “Oh look, another lost tourist.”
“I bet she is going to ask the same stupid question,” the selkie said, blinking her large, wet black eyes. “Friend of yours, ma’am?”
“Who?”
Jessie turned just in time to kiss Cross’s fist.
The punch collided with the side of Jessie’s mouth, snapping her head to the side. She stumbled back and tripped over a small trash can beside the row of MORTAL agents. Falling to her side, Jessie looked up to see an enraged Cross standing over her.
“Hey there, New Girl, was that fake?” Cross asked. The woman saw the coffee, picked one of them up, and took a satisfied sip.
“That one was mine,” Jessie growled. Pushing herself up, Jessie threw a quick uppercut directly into the only immediate target she had: Cross’s crotch.
Cross spat out the hot coffee. “Ow! You dirty bitch! Who punches someone in vag?!”
In anger, Cross crushed the coffee cup, squirting the hot liquid in Jessie’s face.
“Ahh!”
Temporarily blinded, Jessie didn’t see both of Cross’s palms come in and simultaneously strike Jessie’s ears, stunning her.
Cross followed up her attack with a knee to Jessie’s face, but she managed to slip the attack and latch onto Cross waist. With her eyesight clearing, she tried for a double leg takedown, but the larger Cross reached around Jessie’s waist, picked her up, and slammed her onto the row of desks.
“Hey!” the agents yelled as Jessie’s full body weight slammed onto their keyboards and sent desk tchotchkes, pop culture vinyl figures, and energy drinks flying.
“Stay down!” Cross barked.
“Fuck you!” Jessie yelled back.
Scrambling to get her footing, Jessie grabbed the remaining cup of coffee that had miraculously survived and threw it at Cross’s face.
“Oh shit, that’s hot!”
“I know!” Jessie yelled, then dove off the desk and took the larger woman to the ground.
The pair of them punched, kicked, and swore as they continued to fight. Some of the MORTAL agents watched, some took pictures on their cell phones, while others simply continued to work, not wanting to bother the two angry women.
“Who—who the hell taught you to fight?” Cross said, slamming a palm strike under Jessie’s jaw. In response, Jessie slammed her forehead down onto Cross’s.
“Ah, shit!” Jessie grunted from the barbaric attack. Still having the advantage, Jessie shoved her forearm against Cross’s throat. “Live on the street a while and you learn all kinds of dirty tricks.”
“Like. . . this?” Cross gasped, and bit down hard on Jessie’s arm.
“Ouch! No biting!” Jessie screamed.
Distracted by the pain, she failed to see one of Cross’s long legs come up, wrap around her neck, and slam her hard to her back. Cross’s other leg came around to cover her body while the veteran cop gripped hard onto her wrist. Before she knew it, Cross had her in a textbook arm-bar.
“You done yet?” Cross growled.
“You—you,” Jessie winced in pain.
“I what?”
“You gave me . . . slut rabies!”
Suddenly Jessie felt all the tension release, and Cross let her go. Still half-blind from the coffee, exhausted, and choking for air, Jessie cradled her arm, which had been seconds away from being broken. She looked up to see Cross standing over her.
But instead of attacking, Cross simply stared at her while her lower lip trembled.
“I—” Cross started to say, then shook her head. “Fuck it.”
Cross reached up and pulled off the long black wig she was wearing, exposing her smooth, bald head. Dropping the hair to the ground, she grabbed at the waist of her APD sweatshirt and pulled it up over her head. Jessie nearly gasped.
Cross didn’t have implants; she wore false silicone inserts.
Cross unhooked her bra and let it drop to the floor so that Jessie could see the dark red, angular scars from a double mastectomy.
“I—”
“Shut the fuck up!” Cross bellowed so loud that the entire operations room suddenly went quiet. “You don’t get to speak! You don’t get to judge me. You’re a fucking know-it-all kid who doesn’t know shit. You had a hard life? I get that. Hell, I respect it. But until you’ve had a cancer do this to you, and then be the subject of both horror and pity for how you look, you shut your fucking mouth! You don’t get to shame me for wanting to feel sexy again. You don’t know what it’s like for someone to see you as . . . this. And once they do, they don’t ever see you as anything else.”
Cross’s head shook from side to side, and the very real and raw emotion of her words shone in her eyes.
“I’m a great cop. But once they know about this . . . well, I’d rather be someone that others envy or hate rather than something to pity. So if you ever call me a slut again, I’ll fucking kill you.”
No one spoke. Jessie said nothing. How could she?
The silence was broken by the rhythmic slapping sound of bare feet on wood.
Arby came huffing into the operations room with his hospital gown flapping open, exposing . . . everything.
“Cass . . . don’t,” Arby panted. “J-Jessie doesn’t know about your—”
“W
e covered that already,” Cross said.
“Oh,” Arby said, looking around the room. “So I see. H-hey there . . . Jessie.”
“Hey?”
Arby bent over with his hands on his knees. The people behind him looked away to avoid staring directly at his exposed anus.
“Thanks for coming to my rescue, by the way. I mean, yes, it was sexist that they sent two bad guys after me and only one after each of you. But progress happens by inches, not leaps. Anyway, I’m sure Cass feels appreciative that you came to save her as well.”
“I—”
Arby stood up. “You mean to tell me you haven’t thanked her for saving your life? I know you’re mad and all. But, c’mon Cass, she took a bullet for you.”
“How did—”
Arby sighed, then held up the digital tablet. “I watched the videos from The Eye. Why do you think it took me so long to get here?”
“You’re out of shape?”
“True,” Arby said. “But that doesn’t excuse poor manners. Thank her for saving your life.”
“Arby,” Cross said, then shook her head. Lowering her eyes, she turned to Jessie. “Th-thank you.”
“No problem,” Jessie said. “And I’m sorry for being . . . stupid.”
“You can’t help it,” Cross said, picking her sweatshirt back up. Looking at it, and everyone who was staring at them, she laughed slightly. “I was young and stupid once too.”
“So, the chemo was recent?”
“No,” Cross said. “About eight years ago.”
“I thought hair grew back a month or two after?”
Cross laughed slightly. “I’m one of the unlucky few who suffers permanent alopecia. What does grow is thin and and only in patches. So, I shave it to wear the wigs.”
“I’m so sorry,” Jessie said. “This is why Ito left you?”
“No,” a voice said from across the room. “She left me.”
Jessie looked over and saw Ito standing there.
“Kyle?” Cross said. She awkwardly began covering herself as if she just realized she was topless.
Ito shook his head with his hands held out. “Cass, why—why didn’t you tell me?”
But before anyone said anything else, Mother-1 was suddenly there in the room. The leader of MORTAL appeared as she had before, an older woman in an expensive white business suit, her black hair pulled back in a tight ponytail.
