The Legend of the Red Specter (The Adventures of the Red Specter Book 1)

by M. A. Wisniewski

The evacuees had no choice but to huddle in makeshift camps outside the city in harsh winter weather. Thousands fell ill and died, until one final freezing downpour washed the city clean, and people could finally return to their homes.

  So yes, Joy remembered all of that well enough, but…

  “What does the Brentonsville Eviction have to do with the Red Specter?” she said.

  “The Red Specter is the one responsible for the miracle evacuation of Brentonsville,” said Garai.

  “What? But that’s…” Joy stopped herself from saying ‘ridiculous.’ She had to remember where she was working. “I mean… I’d never heard that before.”

  Garai nodded. “This does not surprise me. You would not read the Gazette if you weren’t working here. I can tell. But this is why we exist—to cover those stories that other papers are afraid to. And there are many, many citizens of Brentonsville who will tell you of that day, of how they saw the Red Specter fly down from the mountains and soar across the rooftops. And as he did, his voice rang out. It was a deep sound, and it carried to every city corner, to every man, woman, and child. And everyone who heard it felt a chill go down into their bones, a chill like the bottom of a grave. ‘Death comes for this city,’ it said. ‘Death comes down from the mountains. Gather all who you love and flee! Flee now, or share in the cursed fate of the Red Specter!’”

  “That’s how it happened, huh?” said Joy.

  “That is what I have heard myself, from people who were there,” said Garai. “And they would swear to this, that it is no lie, on the graves of their parents.”

  “Okay,” said Joy, not mentioning that she’d heard similar oaths from the people who’d insisted they’d seen a man’s amputated leg grow back.

  “Okay?” said Garai. “Is that the best you can do, Ms. Fan? This is a big story, and if that’s the best you can do for enthusiasm, perhaps I should give it to someone else—”

  “No, no—don’t do that,” said Joy, remembering that this was supposed to be her last chance. “I’ve got enthusiasm. I was just thinking… trying to put it all together in my head…”

  “Is that so?” said Garai. “And what have you figured out?”

  “Well, uh…” Joy had to think quick for something acceptable. What was the point here? Well, there had to be a reason Garai was bringing all of this up now.

  “Someone in Dodona has seen the Red Specter?” she guessed.

  “Several people,” corrected Garai. “We have multiple sightings. Here is the list.”

  He handed her a sheet of yellow lined foolscap covered with notes. It took her a second to figure out which section was the list. There were marks going every which way. Garai was not a very organized note-taker, although he did have impeccable penmanship.

  “Okay, I see five names,” she said. “So I just need to interview these people, then?”

  “No,” said Garai. “I mean, you will of course interview them, but this is a means to an end. Your task is to take your knack for investigation and use it properly for once. You will find where the Red Specter is and convince him to give you an interview.”

  Joy paused and studied Garai carefully before answering. He wasn’t joking. He was serious.

  “That’s… um. That sounds pretty…” Joy had remember that she was on thin ice here. She needed this assignment. “Does he do interviews? I mean, he sounds like kind of a shadowy figure. Has anyone ever gotten close enough to him to have a full conversation?”

  “No,” said Garai, beaming. “You will be the first. And the Gazette will be first to print it. An historic event in news.”

  “Right,” said Joy, her voice sounding strangled in her own ears. Again, she had to remind herself how much she needed this job. Never mind that it was impossible. She had to do it anyway.

  She looked over the notes again. “Are there addresses to go with these names? Oh, wait—I see them over here. But um—this only looks like three addresses.”

  “What? Show me,” he said, frowning as Joy came round his desk. He stared at his own notes for a bit before flipping the paper sideways. “Right here.”

  “Oh, there. But that’s only one more.”

  “Yes, that’s right. Because this man doesn’t have an address.”

  “Then how in the world am I supposed to interview…” Joy read the name by Garai’s finger. “Trench?”

  “Yes, Mr. Trench,” said Garai. “Don’t worry about him. I thought of that, so I already interviewed him myself. The notes are here.”

  Garai pointed to another section of the page, and Joy had to flip the paper in yet another direction to read it. And found herself disappointed by the results.

  “Warehouses by docks. Shadows. Night before last,” she said, reading off the only bits of the notes that seemed useful.

  “Truthfully, Mr. Trench wasn’t the best eyewitness,” Garai admitted. “Not quite right in the head, if you ask me. I suspect he has been using Spike. It was rather hard to lock him down to anything specific. Hopefully the other people will be better.”

  “Haha, sure hope so,” said Joy. Yes, a Spike addiction would be a great thing for the rest of the witnesses to not have. “Oh, what’s this? ‘Beets, Pickles, Pork Shoulder—’”

  “Oh, that’s my grocery list. I need that. Hold on…”

  Joy waited while Garai carefully tore off about one-quarter of the foolscap and handed the rest back to her. He probably said something encouraging to her on her way out, and she probably mumbled a thank you, but she couldn’t really be sure.

  She felt kind of dazed and light headed. Somehow she ended up in the employee break room. Was there any food here? Because she sure as fuck wasn’t getting any fucking pancakes today. She found a mostly empty bakery box with one and a half donuts still left inside. One full glazed, half powdered sugar. Of course all the good ones would be taken by now. There was still a cupful of lukewarm coffee left in the machine, made from those really bitter Southern Axum grounds Garai liked. Everyone else had to endure it with the help of cream and sugar. And the cream bottle was down to its dregs, too, since Garai refused to increase the daily delivery from the milkman. Well, whatever—as a lowly freelancer it wasn’t her place to say anything. It wasn’t like she was an official employee or anything.

  Joy grabbed all the remaining donuts, combined the last remnants of the coffee and cream with enough sugar to make it drinkable, slumped down with her breakfast in one of the cheap, rickety chairs, and spent the next half hour trying to stave off a complete emotional meltdown.

  Part II

  Work History

  Chapter 7

  Impossible Assignment

  What the abyss was she supposed to do now? Final chance? She’d been given an impossible assignment. Firstly, there was no proof at all that this Red Specter was real. Some figure in a gas mask and trench coat?

  That would make him a Kallistrate army infantryman or commando of some type, because only Kallistrate had gas masks during the war. The Brentonsville story was an especially huge stretch. A man flying over the rooftops? Aside from Albion’s monstrous flying beetles, the only way for a person to fly was in a balloon or a dirigible. She knew there’d been attempts at heavier-than-air flight by various tinkers and dreamers, but their contraptions tended to crash after going a few feet. But never mind any of that—the big problem was that Joy had been in the KIB when the Eviction happened. Granted, she didn’t have the highest clearance there, but it was hard to believe any one person could have played such a major role without it becoming common knowledge in the Bureau.

  But even supposing there actually was a real Red Specter, and these five—er, four people had seen him, how in the world was she supposed to track him down? There was no guarantee that she’d be able to do it. And even if she did, there was also no guarantee that this ‘Red Specter’ would agree to sit down for an interview.

  In fact, someone who hid his face behind a mask and managed to avoid having his existence confirmed on any official records seemed to be
the type of guy who valued his privacy. In other words, someone who’d never agree to have details about their life printed in big bold type in a tabloid newspaper and spread to every street corner in Dodona and beyond.

  The whole idea was ridiculous. There was no way, absolutely no way she could do this story. It was impossible! She was being set up to fail! This place was awful—a cheap, tawdry tabloid. She hated it. She hated that it existed. She hated that it was popular and that so many people read this garbage. And she hated most of all that she had no choice but to work here—that the Gazette was the only paper in Dodona that would still talk to her.

  Chapter 8

  Hostile Work Environment

  It wasn’t supposed to be like this. She remembered back when she’d got her first job at the Dodona Journal, one of the oldest and most prestigious Kallish-language newspapers anywhere. That was… Lir’s balls, that was only a year ago. Only a year ago, but it felt like it belonged to another lifetime. She’d been so happy.

  She’d been super lucky to land a job at the Journal straight out of college. Most recent graduates would have to build their resumes working for a small-town paper before moving up to the big leagues, but she’d managed to build a nice resume based on her work for the university newspaper, her multi-language proficiency, and especially her experience working as an analyst/translator for the KIB. Her language ability was probably what put her over the top.

  The first few months had mostly gone well. She had to work hard and learn fast, but she’d felt herself rise to the challenge, and it seemed to be paying off. Mr. Hartmann had been talking about an upcoming opening for a foreign correspondent in Zipang-occupied Kankul, and how she just might fit the bill. It was a plum opportunity and she couldn’t wait to go to Kankul.

  Especially because that would’ve meant not having to deal with Quintus anymore. Another junior reporter, Quintus Vogler was charming and confident—both attractive features—but she’d noticed a few times when that confidence seemed to cross a line and turn into cockiness. She didn’t like that, and it made her decision to stick to her self-imposed “don’t date co-workers” rule” easier when he did ask her out.

  Her reservations turned out to be more than justified.

  Quintus turned out to be one of those guys who couldn’t take “no” for an answer. He kept pestering her for a date, practically every day. He left flowers and small gifts at her desk, which he’d refused to take back. For a while she tried to return them at his desk while he wasn’t there, but that forced her to memorize his schedule, and he’d just re-gift it anyway, so she’d end up just throwing them out. After the first week of this, Quintus’ gifts and comments started to take an ugly, aggressive tone. One of the gifts had been body soap with a note to “think of me while you’re using it.” Ew! Ew! Ewwww! It made her feel dirty, which made her want to take a shower, which reminded her of the note, to repeat on a loop in her head ad infinitum. The next gift was a set of lingerie that she wouldn’t dream of wearing ever, not if Quintus had been the Prince of Sarpedon. That gift she took home, set on fire, collected the charred remains, chucked it back in the box, along with a note saying, “This stopped being cute days ago. Knock it off!!!”, and hurled it on his desk at the crack of dawn the next morning. (She’d been too angry to get any sleep.)

  But of course, Quintus kept at it.

  Joy was at a loss. Of course, she’d dealt with this type of thing before, but never to this degree. None of her usual tactics were working. And her attempts to recruit some of her new co-workers for defense brought only haphazard success. Their jobs meant they were often in and out of the office at different times, but even that didn’t fully account for how little support she was getting.

  Well, when Selik said he couldn’t because he was headed out, it was because of that, but he was also friends with Quintus and “didn’t want to take sides.” He did explain why Viveka and Khloe had been acting so weird since all of this had started: Viveka had been harboring a crush on Quintus for months and was furious with her for “stealing him away,” and Khloe was Viv’s best friend, so she was avoiding Joy to not offend Viv. Joy tried explaining to Viveka that she really wasn’t interested in Quintus, and that Viv was more than welcome to him, but it did no good. Viv just glared at her and accused her of “bragging,” before storming off.

  Joy wanted to pound her head against a wall. Was this high school? Was she still in high school? Was there a particular age at which fully grown adults quit acting like children? If so, could she go to sleep and wake up again in that magical time—so she could just focus on doing her fucking job without having to deal with all of this ridiculous drama?

  And it was affecting her work. She’d noticed after the third week of this mess that almost all of her time management had become devoted to putting herself in the office when she thought Quintus would be out, and finding reasons to be out in the field when she thought he’d be in, or she could use Selik as a shield. This was ridiculous.

  She was losing focus and productivity. She’d avoided going to her boss before, because she’d really wanted to handle personal matters on her own, but she had to admit she was stuck, and now it was hurting her job performance. She really needed to take this to Mr. Hartmann.

  She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting from her boss, but it wasn’t what she got. She’d spent a couple of hours on the previous evening mentally preparing herself for the conversation, so she’d been able to lay out the full story of what had been going on in an orderly, detailed fashion, without letting herself get too emotional during the telling. Keeping her cool was the hardest part, but she got through to the end, thinking she’d done pretty well, only to have Mr. Hartmann give her a stern look and tell her he didn’t approve of inter-office romances, and certainly wasn’t going to get in the middle of one.

  Joy was so stunned that she didn’t know how to respond. She thought she must have misheard him or something.

  “I’m not…” she stuttered, “I agree with that. I think professional relationships should stay strictly professional. I said that at the beginning. But—”

  “Then why are you bringing this whole mess into my office during business hours?” he said.

  And it went on like that. Joy kept trying to explain the problem, that it was Quintus who refused to keep things professional. It was like she wasn’t even speaking Kallish. Mr. Hartmann finally shooed her out of her office with the admonition that if she wanted to hack it as a reporter, she was going to have to learn to deal with her own personal issues herself.

  Joy returned to her desk, and tried to get back to work, but she couldn’t concentrate. She was so furious she was shaking. But beyond that, her editor-in-chief’s behavior was so bizarre she couldn’t even process it. How could he not understand this problem? Joy had lost debates before, but this was something else. He hadn’t actually countered a single point she’d made; he’d just ignored them.

  That was stupid people behavior, and Flynn Hartmann wasn’t stupid. She’d read some of his work from his reporter days. They’d been held up as prime examples of quality investigation in her textbooks at Rouvas College. She’d dreamed of writing on that level herself, someday. So how was it possible for him to stare blankly at her from across his desk and not understand a single thing she’d said? It didn’t make sense, not on any level.

  So she’d had no choice but to grit her teeth and endure.

  Aside from Quintus, the Journal was her dream job. This was a golden opportunity for her career, and she couldn’t let some jackass spoil it for her. All she had to do was keep toughing it out for another couple of weeks until the Kankul position solidified. Then she’d be able to put a couple thousand miles between her and Quintus, and that would be the end of it.

  Joy pushed on with her plan, which worked well enough until the day Quintus cornered her and shoved her into a broom closet.

  Chapter 9

  Assault

  At first she froze, too shocked to do anything else.
Something in her brain wouldn’t accept it, couldn’t believe that this was actually a thing that was happening to her. She was at work. This was her co-worker. They were in an office, not an alleyway. This was absurd. No way was she really being pushed up against a stack of cleaning supplies. No way were there hands pushing her suit jacket aside and pawing at her blouse. No way. This wasn’t happening.

  Then something in her brain flipped over, and she was back in her KIB Supplemental Agent class, unarmed combatives portion. Defense against being grabbed. She twisted her right arm free (twist the wrist, release in the direction of the thumb) and drove the heel of her palm up into her attacker’s nose. (Sink down with the knees, step in, explode up, twist hips, whole body power!) She felt a weird sensation of cartilage crumpling under her palm as Quintus cursed and clutched his nose, staggering back, but she’d already kneed him in the groin. He doubled over and things got way confused as they tangled together. Joy’s body was acting before she could think, running through the steps of the combat sequence as they’d been drilled into her, over and over again. But she’d never run that drill in a such a confined space, and she couldn’t get the right angle to throw the knee.

  And then Quintus was clutching at her again. She remembered some bits—scratching at his face and slipping out of her suit jacket to get away, frantic fumbling with the closet door handle, and slamming the door back on Quintus’ fingers as he tried to stop her from fleeing into the hallway, screaming at the top of her lungs.

  Well, that was only the start of the commotion. She managed to find a group of people in the office, and some of the guys got between Quintus and her, holding him back while he screamed bloody murder, until Mr. Hartmann bellowed everyone into silence, and called both her and Quintus into his office. As soon as they sat down, they both started trying to plead their case, Joy telling the truth, and Quintus claiming she’d attacked him out of nowhere.