by Zachary Adam
He’d come here to suicide Clayton. After reviewing the crime-fighter’s dossier, Vidcund had concluded that Niles offing himself wouldn’t be so far-fetched as to inspire unusual levels of scrutiny or suspicion. It was easier to fake a suicide than an accident, particularly where men were concerned, as their suicides even tended to be violent or extravagant anyway, allowing all but the most shoddy craft to be explained away as self-inflicted.
Annoyingly enough, Clayton wasn’t at his apartment. He wasn’t at his office, either, and hadn’t reported in for his shift. The Detective had a Force-issued unmarked car that Agency could have tracked, but it was evidentially not what Niles was using for a day vehicle, because the car was parked right where it was supposed to be at the precinct lots, according to both the records of the National Police Force and the transponder they didn’t know the car was equipped with.
A quick search of Niles’ highly-organized home office revealed that he either kept no insurance paperwork at all, or had it all stored in the car itself. Vidcund would have at least been able to activate the civilian transponder in Clayton’s car if there was a record of it, but a key server was down today for maintenance, and he couldn’t get at the records he needed to get the appropriate Vehicle Identification Number.
It was a troubling situation, to be sure… but maybe the plan itself could be changed. Niles’ psychological profile reports from the National Police Force suggested to Agency analysts that the detective’s condition was worsening. He already had episodes of minor depression stemming from the premature death of his parents and younger brother when he was in his early teens, and it seemed that a psyche already damaged was getting chipped away at by his relatively high profile in the Zaxtonian Union’s seedy underbelly. It wasn’t yet fullblown paranoia, but Vidcund could do Niles a service – protect his reputation and clear him of the psychological suspicion by confirming for everyone that someone really was out to get the detective.
Of course, the detective wouldn’t be alive to benefit from it, but from Vidcund’s perspective that just made the situation doubly good. Now he just needed to wait for a free moment in his schedule.
Crisis averted.
--“Do you know who I am?” Niles was surprised to find that Sharona, Scion, and their unnamed, masked companions were not alone in this small vault of what seemed to be a larger mausoleum. There were two others, too, he’d failed to take into account. One was tall, lanky. He wore a grey, diamondpatterned bodysuit where everyone else seemed to wear coats, his mask a rather disturbing image of a faintly demoniac clown. Niles’ sharp eye detected a bundle in the small of the back which was probably some kind of tool kit. The man who had been speaking with Sharona was, rather than wearing a mask, fitted with some type of hood on his jacket, which had a black material hanging in front of it, creating a quite convincing illusion of shadow. The last, then, was dressed in a smart suit under his jacket, and wore a mask with one eye-slit subscribed by the international symbol for currency, the dollar sign.
Niles had taken them all in carefully before letting his gaze fall back to Sharona. “You are Eli Sharona.” “I am also called by another name.”
“Archangel,” Niles half-spat. He had little tolerance for melodrama, which had long been Eli’s stock and trade where conversation was concerned.
“You catch on very quickly, detective. I suppose that’s why you’re so good at your job.”
Scion laughed, behind his starry mask. “You slept a little longer than we expected. If I’d known you were also drinking, I might have sedated you differently.” Niles spared his ‘friend’ a nod. “I think we can safely take you off the Christmas Card list, then.”
This time, it was Archangel’s turn to chuckle. The others did, as well. Niles couldn’t blame them. There was a palpable tension in the room that needed breaking. Scion continued, “You’ll feel better in time. Most of whatever you’re feeling right now is down to sleeping on cement. Or drinking too many Spanish coffees.”
“How could you possibly-“
“Scion knows everything,” said shadow-face, “or rather, Scion likes to think he knows everything.”
Money Mask cut in, “In fairness, Prodigal, Scion knows most things.”
A shrug from the subject of the evolving conversation. “Scion knows enough about enough things to know how little Scion knows about anything.”
“Can we get to what I’m doing here, please?”
“You’re here to die, Niles.” Archangel put his flesh-andblood hand on the man’s shoulder, “Don’t worry. It won’t hurt.”
--“Receiving phone call from Redacted.”
Vidcund’s thumb tapped the button at the edge of the steering wheel that connected the call. “Därk.”
The first thing to catch his attention were the sirens. Someone was calling him from the field. “Vidcund, it’s Stamatia. I have to cancel our meeting.”
“Clearly.” Vidcund indicated, switching lanes easily as a navigation indicator appeared in the lower corner of his vision, “What are we hijacking today?”
“A school shooting. It has elements we’re interested in.” Vidcund frowned. School shootings were for the police. “Like what?”
“I’m piping you a map. You come here and tell me.”
--Donnovan Kline was into his wine. This was in and of itself not unusual, nor should the tone be considered overly accusatory. He was an oenophile, certainly, and consumed great quantities of the precious liquid, but he was rarely truly drunk. It was simply an accompaniment, like the pressed vinyl Shubert playing in the background.
He had his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and his hands themselves were marred with archival glue, which he had been applying to the spine of a particular block of pages, stitched and ready to be given their cover.
He’d had to stop because the doorbell had gone off. Visitors were few and far between, in a place like this. He lived well outside Kraterburg, deep into the Terrwald, near a rather abandoned former town by the name of Azuldorf. He shared the immediate area with as few as two other households, and all three of them liked to keep to themselves.
He was still rubbing the glue off of his hands with a damp cloth when he opened the door. “Ah. Professor.” Malvolio Coultier bowed slightly, his presumablyartificially greyed hair marking him as far older than he actually was. “Professor. Am I interrupting?”
“Not at all, not at all. Do come in. I was just finishing a reprint.”
“Which volume?”
“Something to have our friends in the ever-fashionable colour on edge and off our backs,” Kline said, leading Malvolio through to his kitchen. A large dog, bull mastiff by breed, looked up in insubordinate laziness from where he was resting, near his empty food dish. “Bridewell’s translation of Unspeakable Cults. A votre santé.”
Coultier laughed gently, accepting the glass he had been offered. Bridewell’s was tame, as verbotenwissen went. “Et a toi. Couldn’t get your hands on the original?” “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m about to take a massive risk by releasing this copy into the wild, as it were.” Kline paused, here, in pouring his own glass. “I wanted the Bridewell because it’s neutered by the errors. Last thing I need is to have some idiot call down the Demon Sultan in our moment of triumph. The 1909 edition would be too mundane to attract Agency Division’s attention, but the older Bridewell is just dangerous enough.”
“We are moving ahead with the plan, then?” “Assuming you have actually found what you think you have found, yes.” Kline sipped his wine, now muting his stereo system by means of a small remote. “I take it you have something for me?”
Malvolio looked at the folder in his hand as though he had forgotten he was carrying it. “Ah, yes. I’ve taken a photo of the Wellhead.”
Kline took the photo, studying it for a long time. “… This is a modern reproduction. Someone else has read the Manuscripts.”
“I thought so too, which is why I also subjected the capstone to full analysis.”
“And
?”
Coultier produced another document from his folder, which was already folded open to the correct page, a passage highlighted for easy reference. “In every respect, there is nothing to suggest a single tool mark more recent than several million years.”
A slow grin spread over Kline’s face. “… My dear little Brother. We are very much moving forward with the plan.”
--Vidcund had witnessed scenes of great carnage, in his life. He’d even caused a couple of them. But the aftermath of this shooting was striking to him. He stood centre stage of the school auditorium with his hands tucked into his pockets, frowning at the wreckage of seats, the tattered curtains to either side, and, most damningly of all, the nose-wrinkling smell.
“This doesn’t smell like a recent crime.” He looked to the leader of the Enforcement clean-up team. “What does this smell like to you, Sergeant Drache?”
Drache straightened, lowered his respirator, took a deep lungful, and spent several seconds settling the mask properly over his face. “Cat piss and a week-old corpse.” Vidcund nodded gently. “Ammonia and Cadaverine. There’s no way in hell this happened today.” “And yet, there’s no way in hell this could have been covered up long enough to reach this state.”
He continued to survey the scene. Lumber – what appeared to be the cladding of the auditorium floor – was embedded in the walls, and in one place, in the ceiling. Chairs in their rows of five had been cast, effortlessly, well away from the ten-foot diameter hole in the floor, or else had slid back into it. Vidcund had a mental image of a great blast at that position, and his men were presently poking around in the void beneath the seating, which had, until now, been a storage area, looking for evidence of a chemical explosive.
He turned, facing back-stage, where the last few bodies were being identified and tagged. The school’s Drama Society had been in rehearsal, and from what he could tell, they had been wiped out to a man. There were three or four students on the Drama Club roster unaccounted for – someone would be calling their parents with worse news than the others.
If it wasn’t for the fact of the smell, Vidcund may well have been prepared to declare the whole thing an ordinary pipe-bombing, with some summary “mopping up” action by whoever was responsible. But the smell had every suggestion inside it that something was wrong.
A field-armoured technician was hoisted out of the void by a companion. “Special Director!”
Vidcund turned again. “Yes, what is it?”
“We’ve concluded our sensor sweep, and can find no trace of any explosive.”
Alright, Vidcund thought, feeling a brow arch involunarily. Now, you have my attention.
--“Do you know this man?” Archangel turned his phone around, and the largish screen displayed a very clear image. Still, it took Niles some time to sort it. They said the best disguises were simple, and yet, he still found himself baffled when the look of comprehension finally dawned on his face. It had been the clothing – this sharply dressed, bespoke-wearing man could hardly have been the somewhat hipster Anthropologist, and yet… “That’s Donny Mallard.”
“I am incredibly surprised you would accept such an obvious pseudonym. Would you care to hazard a guess at this man’s real name?”
Niles shook his head. Vidcund didn’t resemble a single person he knew – except, of course, for Donny Mallard. He was too generic. Sure, the blonde hair was a little unusual, but you really needed more than hair colour to go off of. Archangel seemed to expect this, and flicked at the screen with his thumb, evidentially locking the phone as he put it away. “Donny Mallard’s real name – or at least, the closest to a true name we’ve yet discovered – is Vidcund Därk. He is an operative of your Agency Division.”
“Why on earth would Agency assign an agent to me, without just telling me?”
Archangel rose. A pall of dust hung atop the table-like sarcophagus he had been seated on, and he scratched at it with a clawed finger, recreating one of the sort-of misshapen magic circles from the scene of Gloria Creena’s faux-suicide. “I had originally thought it was simply because you were dealing with this matter. They like to linger around cult matters, no doubt thirsting for whatever magic may or may not have been involved.”
Niles rolled his eyes, folding his arms. “I’ve had more than enough woo. Science might not have the answers to every single question, but actual magic is just absurd.” “As absurd as someone walking around a corner, when they had not been in either corridor previously?”
Niles gave a slow, annoyed sigh as he clenched his jaw. “You’ve been at my computer.”
“Eight-digit passwords are hardly secure, even if they were generated cryptographically randomly,” Banker scolded.
Archangel straightened slightly. “Magic is just the science nobody’s taught us yet. Ask your average person how a processor works. Just a black box in a computer. Magic in, magic out.”
The detective shrugged. “What does this have to do with you killing me?”
“Not me, exactly. I mean, I’ll certainly be sending you into certain death, but I have every intention of pulling you out of the frying pan, when all is said and done.” “So generous of you.” Niles’s brow furrowed as he folded his arms more tightly.
“I’ll want things in return of course, but since most of those things involve getting to the bottom of the, shall we say, weirdness going on with Creena’s case, I figured you’d find the terms to be rather agreeable. Especially since you’re probably dying without my help.”
“Well, if I’m dead either way, what do I need to do?” There was, yet, hope for salvation. Niles reasoned that he could probably con Archangel into helping him, and then turn around and, with appropriate backup, bust him. He could already see the look on that psychopath’s face when he was unmasked.
It made him happy, but the paranoid parts of his mind wondered if Archangel was right, and he really was dead either way.
--Vidcund took his time in the elevator, today. This building had a particularly nice set servicing the middle floors, which were mounted to the exterior of the building, and ascended in what must have been a sealed glass enclosure. It afforded a great view of the city, which appealed to Vidcund’s great fondness for heights, but that was not the real reason he was riding them so slowly.
He was reading an email that scrolled across the bottom of his glasses, like subtitles. Drache’s team had finished securing the site of the school incident, and was now on their way to secure this building. That in itself was kind of them, but it was more pleasing for him to read that they’d accounted for all but one of the missing children, for better or worse. He dug out his phone, requested a dossier on this Maria Frost from Research, and then returned his focus to the matter at hand.
He’d already paid a visit to a room on the ground floor next to the security office, which happened to be the master routing room of the building, where most of the digital infrastructure – including phone lines, data, optic fibers, coaxial cable, and anything else that needed to be properly arranged – was organized. This happened to include the security camera network. It was trivial, with access to this room, to loop all of the cameras. A camera loop was detectable, but Vidcund was banking on that. It protected his identity, without alerting the security, and without being so sophisticated that the police would suspect anything more than efficient gang activity.
He pinched the left temple of his glasses, cycling through the many “filters” they could apply. This relied on special sensing equipment in his phone, he was told, which was patched into the Augmented Reality interpreter. Eventually, he turned all of the filters off, but only after having used them to confirm that there was nobody in either adjacent apartment to his target’s, as well as the one across the hall. They weren’t rented out, anyway, but stranger things had happened.
Drawing his Chinese-made handgun from under his jacket, and pleased to see the ammo count pop up in the bottom corner of his glasses automatically, he snugged up against the target door, and ap
plied his autokey. He could come back and force the door later, when there was no need to be concerned with alarming people by the noise.
--
The last thing you should ever tell a paranoid man was that he actually had a right to fear his impending death. Alone in the dark, Niles had returned to his vice – the drink. He had been hitting the bottle rather hard, keeping his eye on the traffic below from his living-room window, and it was in something of a drunken haze that he heard the footsteps in the hall.
Immediately, they had his attention, head snapping around like a Doberman’s, only to plague himself with an internal sense of inertia unreflected in the real world. He listened for one or two breaths, daring not to fill his lungs more than half way, heart pounding at his chest.
The footsteps stopped, replaced after a pause by a low electric whine, right outside his door. Carefully, quietly, he drew out his security blanket – his prized possession. The Colt Detective Special was not a large weapon, in fact it was a cute little snub-nosed cap gun compared to the huge, overcompensating hunks of metal that defined the modern handgun, and had decades of history behind it, this being a retooled model from the Second Series, probably produced in the 1950s. But that tiny two-inch barrel could deposit its load of five .38 Special rounds to within about a half a degree of error. As a personal defence weapon for household use it was almost ideal. As a customized variant with retooled grips, reduced pull strength, and loaded with full metal jacket overpressure ammunition, it was a burglar’s nightmare. The Union had no castle doctrine, but nobody was going to charge a cop who shot a home invader.
In the haze and off-focus of the heavy alcoholic, however, Niles’ quick-draw seemed to crawl at a snail’s pace. The door was already opening by the time he’d cleared leather. By the time his left hand was cupping under his right, it was wide enough open to see a dark figure silhouetted against the hallway lights. Even as he was straightening out his shooting elbow, lining up the sight picture, the shadow in the doorframe was snapping up its own weapon. Semi-automatic, unorthodox single-handed grip. Niles could see the muscles of the intruder’s free arm tensing, no doubt trying to draw the door back, realizing he was himself a target.
