106

--The Enclave--

“This is the girl?” Chief Mari Landau asked tartly. She was taller than Dassah had expected, and even more regal than she appeared on television — and she oddly reminded her of Master Hunter Lithe.

Stella hugged Dassah’s shoulders as Bahena stood by, looking on protectively.

“Isn’t this girl you were talking to in-game?” Silver Hound asked Grim off to the side. Receiving a glare as an answer, he started “Then…”

Chief Landau leaned lifted her chin ever so slightly as she asked: “If you thought your life could be in danger, why didn’t you call the police?”

Dassah wrapped herself tighter in her blanket, trying to hide from the woman’s harsh gaze — but it was impossible. Instead, she focused on her feet. “I didn’t think… I didn’t think it would be… like this,” she told her, swallowing hard. “It… It was just this morning that… and it seemed like I was over thinking…”

“And what happened this morning?”

And so Dassah, once again recounted the story. Those who had heard it before, stood aside quietly, while those who had heard only parts of it — or none of it at all, in Bahena’s case — displayed a wide range of agitated emotions that caused her a good deal of distress.

Dassah did her best to avoid eye contact with Sathuren. By the time Bahena and Stella had found them, they had already gone back to their separate spaces. Embarrassed, Dassah wasn’t sure how to face him — and their inability to say full and complete sentences to one another afterward only served to make things worse. Every few minutes it seemed like one of them would awkwardly try to start a conversation, but it ended up being a lot of bumbling nonsense. Had she not spent the previous half hour decorating the front of his nice white collared shirt with her tears, it probably would have made them laugh. Maybe it still would, down the line. For now, though, she simply resolved to stop trying to face him.

Draped over her, Stella clung around her shoulders. “I was so scared,” she whimpered as Dassah finished her story. Her face was wet, and her voice unsteady, but it was hard to describe how it felt to know that she was alive. “I’m so glad — so, so glad! Everything will be alright now…”

“Me too,” Dassah whispered back, rubbing her friend’s arm.

At her brother’s side, Bahena couldn’t look up from the ground. Though she wasn’t sure where she stood with the garule woman, Dassah reached up and took her hand in hers. Bahena twitched, then gently held her hand.

“I see,” Landau nodded, then turned to Grim and said, “So at the end of the day, this is your fault, Detective Grimnar. How could I have guessed.”

“I’m not proud of it,” Grim said, clenching his fists. “At least…”

“If you are about to say: ‘At least Jackal can do my job for me’, you can shove it straight back down that arrogant throat of yours. I don’t want to hear it. I hired you to do a job, Grimnar, and I expect you to do that job. But let’s leave that for another day,” The Chief of Police then turned back to Dassah. “You said that it was the vigilante ‘Jackal’ that not only warned you that this could happen, but that he also saved you. Did he, or the woman who assiled you, say anything that could be used to find the one behind this?”

Dassah winced as Stella’s nails pressed against her arm. “Hasn’t she told you enough?” the young woman asked. “It’s over. We want to go home. It’s you people’s job to find out who did this! It’s done! We just want to go home!”

“And what makes you think that ‘It’s done’, as you put it?” Mari Landau asked, her silvery grey eyes narrowing. “On the contrary, I would rather assume that this is just the beginning. It’s far more likely that those who caused this mess today were pawns. Doing something like this and the disappearing takes… organization.”

“And those guns are probably worth a boatload of credits,” Silver Hound added. “There must be someone financing it.”

“And when there is money and a planned crime, there is usually a continuation, whether the plan succeeds or doesn’t,” Landau said, nodding. “Even if they don’t target you, specifically, who's to say that someone else won’t be so lucky?”

“And who is to say that your friend here won’t be attacked in her apartment, killed or taken hostage while you sleep the night away,” Corvex Sai, the Silver Hound said, a smile plastered on his face as his eyes glared at Stella.

Grim shot him a look. “Don’t you start with that shit, Sai,” he said, kneeling in front of Dassah and looking up at all of them. “Nothing like that is going to happen here. Based on the information that we already have, your apartments are all under watch, and rest assured that the Enclave security systems track who leaves and enters each hex, and are capable of disabling any kind of explosive devices remotely before they get anywhere near detonating.”

“Oh, come on!” Sai sneered. “Don’t go giving them a false sense of security, Grim. These guys who did this — they weren’t traced —”

“That. Is. Enough, Detective Sai,” Chief Landau stated firmly, sending him a warning look as she side-eyed him. His smile stretched long and thin.

“Just trying to help, Ma’am.”

“You aren’t.”

“Ma’am.”

Landau sighed. “Regardless, if you take anything away from this conversation, know that, no matter what the case is, the EPD is taking all of the appropriate measures to ensure the safety of all those involved — you and your friends, in particular.”

Bahena’s tail twitched, and her hand tightened around Dassah’s. “You think they would come after us?” she asked.

“We aren’t in the habit of assuming they wouldn’t come after you,” Landau said, meeting the garule woman’s eyes brazenly. “Therefore,” she looked at Dassah again. “It is all the more important that you give us as much to work with as we can so that we can either cover as much ground as possible, or even narrow our vision down as to not miss any details that might give us the clues or evidence that we need to get the criminals off of our streets.”

Taking a deep breath, Dassah nodded and tried to run the scenes through her head again. “The Hollow Man,” she said, looking up at them. “The woman, she said that… ‘The Hollow Man’ had ‘summoned’ me, a-and that’s why they were after me.” To her surprise, it was Grim and Sav that exchanged looks.

“‘The Hollow Man’?” Sathuren repeated, frowning deeply as he looked at Grim. “As in, ‘The Hollow Magician’?”

Nodding cautiously, Grim answered, “Probably.”

Magician? Dassah blinked. Magician as in…

“What’s that?” Stella asked.

Sai, looking just as confused as she did, explained, “The Hollow Magician is one of the eight demi-gods of the TheirWorld universe — otherwise known as ‘The Tenmath’. They are a part of a hidden quest line — but what does that have to do with anything?”

In a quiet voice came: “Merlyn Jace.”

Everyone paused and looked at Dassah.

“What did you just say?” Grim asked.

“Merlyn Jace,” Dassah said again, louder.

Sav knelt down next to Grim. “Dassah, where did you hear that name?”

“I… met him,” she told them. “Twice, now. In real life, not the game. By coincidence. Except… I’m not so sure now, that it was. Coincidence, I mean.”

Seemingly unaffected by the general tone of the conversation, Sai laughed out loud. “Merlyn Jace? One of the major heads of Varier? Are you possibly suggesting that one of the most powerful men on this ridiculous construct that we call ‘home’ is behind all this? Guns and all?” he asked. “Well. I guess he does have the brains and the money, that’s for sure.”

Mari Landau, however, was less amused. “To rephrase my inappropriate subordinate’s words: Are you saying that there is some kind of connection between this incident and Enclave royalty?”

“I-I don’t really know…” Dassah said, eyeing Sai. Though he had laughed, she couldn’t help but notice that his eyes never left Grim and Sathuren.

“Let’s not pretend we don’t think that he’s entirely incapable of something like this,” Grim grumbled. “And that includes you, Mari.”

Sai raised a brow as he looked over each of them. “Oh? You’ve met?”

“We have,” Sav admitted, standing back up and crossing his arms. “And he’s entirely capable, snake bastard.”

“Don’t say that just because he doesn’t like you, Sav,” Landau sighed, letting a bit of her propriety fall away.

“There are a great number of people who don’t like me for a great number of reasons, and I find the vast majority to be perfectly normal, if misguided, creatures,” Sathuren stated. Dassah almost laughed, knowing she was probably among that count. “Jace has never been one of those people.”

The Chief’s long black hair fell over her shoulder as she tilted her head in thought. “I’ll admit, he’s a little more on the eccentric side than the rest of us…”

“A bit?” Grim chided.

“Whatever the case,” the Chief went, clearing her throat. “I can’t accuse someone based on how much — or little — I like them. I need evidence. Him acting suspicious, or simply being a ‘rat bastard’, as Sav puts it, is not enough for me to make a move. Especially not against someone that high up.”

Behind them all, Dassah saw, Corvex Sai wasn’t just frowning. He was observing — and the longer the conversation among the three of them went on, the darker his expression got.

His eyes met hers, and her focus shifted. A deep chaotic blue seemed to be asking her a question — what question, she didn’t know, but she knew she didn’t like that look on his face. It was frightening — mesmerizing — as if he was reading her.

“Miss Graydon, was it?” The Silver Hound then asked. The other stopped talking as they looked up at him. “Tell me: What is your connection to Merlyn Jace?”