Chapter 24 – The Vote

“Okay, write down your vote, then put it here,” Tess said. She held up a cloth bag and threw it onto the middle of the table. “Since I’ll be too far away to direct any of you, I’m withdrawing my name. Oh, and Frost, as much as you’d like to, please don’t vote for yourself.”

“Me? I dunno why I’m being called out here.” Frost feigned offense, but a poorly hidden smile played across his thin, pale lips.

“You can drop out?” Cat asked. “I’m doing that, then.”

“Tess has a good reason,” Doc said. “You’re in this, Cat. Don’t try to weasel out.”

Cat sighed. She didn’t need this responsibility, even the possibility of it. She’d never been cut out to lead. That was Linton’s thing.

She scratched down Doc’s name and threw it in the bag. He was the only one level-headed enough to do a decent job. The rest also handed in their votes. Tess took the bag and shook it around.

“Alright,” she said. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”

She poured out the votes and tallied them up.

“Okay… Zero votes for Frost and Aeva. One vote for Hunter. Two votes for Doc, and…”

Cat closed her eyes. “Fuck,” she muttered under her breath.

“Three votes for Cat. She’s in charge until Linton comes to.”

Frost clapped his hands enthusiastically. Everyone else was silent.

“Alright, alright.” Cat stood up, a sudden weight on her shoulders. “You assholes chose poorly, you know that, right?”

“I have full confidence that you’ll do an excellent job,” Doc said with a beaming smile.

“Fuck yourself.”

“So, what now?” Hunter asked. “What’s the plan?”

“We’ll, uh, assume that the information Tess gave us is correct,” Cat said, rubbing her forehead, “and that Drakemyth is in Semic. Without him, Couldess won’t be able to perform his scary science experiments so well. I’m guessing those constructs were his work.”

“Ironhearts,” Hunter corrected.

“Yeah, them.”

“How are we going to get into this facility?” Doc asked. “I think it’s safe to assume they’ll be better prepared this time, now that we’ve crossed off one archon already.”

“Hmm. Do you think you could get us some sort of blueprints on this place?” Cat asked, motioning to Tess.

Tess shook her head. “Sorry, but you’re on your own. I’m already worried I’ll be suspected after all I’ve done. I can’t pressure my dad any further. For the time being, I can’t give you an exact location of this facility, or what might be housed inside it.”

“Damn it, really? Now’s not the time to play it safe.”

“I don’t know what to tell you—an idle agent is better than a dead one. Worse than dead, actually, if my dad were to find out. He could extract my memories, which would lead him right back to this place. To you. You don’t want that, I’m assuming?”

Cat held up a hand. “Right, right.”

“Where do we go from here, then?” Frost asked. “Can’t exactly search a whole mountain range, can we? We don’t even have a skyship. And no, before you ask, I can’t make one. Aeva’s the one who works miracles.”

“I…” Cat screwed her eyes shut and wracked her brain. “I don’t know, fuck. Give me some time, okay? I’ll figure it out.”

“Of course,” Doc said. “We have faith in you.”

“Now that this is all over with, I’ll take my leave,” Tess said. She stood up from her chair. “Is it alright if I see Linton before I go? I just want to see how he’s doing.”

“Not alone,” Hunter said. “I’ll be in the room.”

The two of them went up the stairs, the construct staring daggers into Tess’s back.

Cat despaired.

She headed over to the bar for a drink.

***

Berron stepped out of the rumbler. He gazed at the lawkeeper precinct down the street, a line of public servants in riot gear attempting to stem the tide of over a hundred enraged protestors. They shouted slurs and slogans, some throwing rocks while others brandished improvised weapons. Most of them wore blue masks over their faces. Some even had the Bluebird symbol painted or stitched onto their clothing.

What utter fools.

Three truthers stepped out of his rumbler. Another three stepped out of the rumbler behind it.

“Are you sure we have enough people, sir?” asked the inquisitor under his command. “This looks like it’s getting out of hand.”

“Yes,” Berron said. “You and your people stay with the rumbler. I’ll call if I need you.”

The inquisitor made to protest, but Berron was already walking away.

His cold, metallic body longed to spill blood. His left leg still moved a little wonky after his last battle with the Bluebirds, but he would soon be back to full operation.

The pretend revolutionaries noticed him. A few ran at him, five in all. One smashed an iron pipe over his head. It didn’t hurt or slow him down. He felt no pain. Couldess had freed him from that weakness.

He took the pipe from the man and drove it through his chest, clean out the other side. He grabbed the head of the man closest to him with one hand and threw him against the ground. His skull cracked beneath Berron’s foot when he stepped over him.

Berron caught a third by her ridiculous face mask and drove two fingers through her eyes. She screamed. He noted her agony with satisfaction.

The remaining two tried to run. Storm let several of the thigh plates on his right leg fold away, revealing a compact machine gun. He pulled it out, aim steadier than it had ever been while he was human.

He opened fire on the protestors. The two running away from him fell immediately, riddled through with half-a-dozen bullets each, and people from the crowd began to scream in pain.

He mowed down ten or fifteen, punctuated by a quick reload, before they finally understood what was happening and began to flee. He reveled in the horror on their faces. They thought they had the upper hand, so self-righteous, so oblivious to reality.

Now they knew better.

Berron let off a few more bursts before turning back to his truthers.

“Hunt down anyone you find,” he said. “Kill on sight.”

They hesitated.

“Now!”

The truthers gathered their weapons and moved out.

The lawkeepers gawked at the dead before them. Berron was sick with their weakness.

“You’re welcome,” he said, gesturing with his machine gun.

They did not answer.

***

Cat was hit with a wave of sour smoke as soon as she opened the door to the second-story apartment.

“Who the hell is this guy?” Hunter asked, looking over the mold-ridden walls. “This place is a dump. Don’t we have better things to do?”

She had brought Hunter along as back-up instead of Aeva specifically because she wasn’t interested in the wildkin’s moralist lectures. As she had quickly discovered, however, Hunter’s whinging was no better. He had been even more irritable than usual.

“Sparrow’s an old friend of mine,” Cat explained. “He might be able to help us find what we need. Just be quiet, okay? Don’t break anything.”

Lucky for her, the construct didn’t have a sense of smell, or he’d likely be complaining about that, too.

Cat entered the apartment, Hunter following close behind. The interior was grey and drab, wallpaper peeling off the walls. It consisted of a couple of rooms furnished with random bits and bobs—most of it damaged in some way—from all over Eurinos.

She found Sparrow in the living room, sitting on a futon with a few burst seams. He puffed on a hookah in his lap, thin smoke lingering in the room. His eyes were glued on a scryer screen in front of him which displayed some old comedy transmission, and he giggled to himself every few seconds.

Sparrow was a reedling, short and stubby, with wild hair that stuck out in all directions and a slender tail that tapped the floor behind him.

Cat went over to the scryer and shut it off with the flick of a switch. Sparrow blinked at her with red-tinged eyes. “Hey, what gives…?” he complained.

Then he looked over at the imposing construct standing in the corner of his living room.

He screamed at the top of his lungs and scrambled backward over the futon, kicking the hookah away.

“Oh fuck, oh man, oh shit!” he cried. “This is it! I knew this was gonna happen, I knew it!”

Hunter watched the reedling impassively, arms crossed, as the little kin crawled on his back across the room.

Sparrow made it to a cabinet standing against the back wall, got its doors open, and pulled out a pistol that was far too large for him. He pointed it at Cat, then Hunter, then back again, hands shaking.

“Drida,” Cat said, causing the gun to fly out of his hand before he could hurt himself. She caught the weapon, released the magazine, unloaded the chambered round, and threw it aside. “Relax, little guy. We’re here for a chat, alright?”

Sparrow stared at her for several moments, nose twitching uncontrollably. His eyes narrowed. “Cat? That you?” He glanced at Hunter. “You with the MOW now? Here to kill me, that it?”

“I’m not an MOW slave,” Hunter said. “But I will kill you if you don’t pipe down.”

Sparrow jerked at that, hands flying up to cover his head.

“Now look at what you did,” Cat said. She slapped Hunter’s chassis. “Go close the door for me. We don’t want any nosy neighbors snooping around.”

While Hunter stalked away to that end, Cat inched closer to the reedling. She held her hands up to show that she wasn’t armed and crouched down next to him.

“We’re not truthers,” she said firmly. “Why would you think that?”

“Y-you haven’t heard?” Sparrow asked. “That crazy construct running around murdering people in the street. Protestors, criminals, like. People were angry before. Now they’re scared. ’Fraid of leaving their own houses. I-I thought that was him with you.”

“That’s not him,” she assured him. She gestured to Hunter as he returned. “This is my friend, Hunter. Neither of us are fans of the MOW. Here, I brought you a little gift.”

She pulled a small baggie of powdered herbs from her leather jacket and handed it to him.

“Rainbow,” Cat informed him. “Good stuff. Aqithi.”

“Wow…” Sparrow said, staring at the bag in his hands as his breathing started to settle. He looked up at Hunter and blinked sluggishly. “So, you’re not here to kill me for my extensive criminal enterprises?”

“No,” Hunter said reluctantly.

“We just need some information,” Cat said. “Do you know any place the MOW would use to ship goods between Northmark and Semic? Off the books, real secret.”

“Uh, I don’t know anything about that,” Sparrow stuttered. “I’m just a smuggler, small-time. I don’t mess with scary stuff like that.”

“You’re telling me you don’t know anything?” Cat pulled another baggie out of her jacket, bigger than the first. “There’s more Rainbow in it for you. Twice what you just got.” She shook it in front of the reedling’s face.

Sparrow’s eyes lit up with greed. He grasped for the baggie with his chubby little hands. She pulled it away from him.

“Only if you give us something useful,” she said.

Sparrow huddled up and tapped the side of his head with a finger. “Hmm… I don’t know about MOW, but I had a friend, who had a friend, whose girlfriend worked at this… place. Hush-hush, like you said. Shipped stuff to Semic. She was only there to assist with the loading and unloading, but, uh, she said they would send some real expensive stuff. Like, uh, enchantments, large shipments of colored anima, that kinda shit. Anyway, she wouldn’t say much. It was supposed to be a secret that she even worked there at all. My crew and I, we were gonna try to sneak in, but the security was too high. Guns and everything, you know? Loads of guns.”

“Right, right, there were guns, we get it,” Cat said, nodding. “But was it an MOW facility? We need to know. It’s important.”

“I dunno! I mean, they weren’t dressed like it, but they looked way too well-equipped to be a private company. Whole place was fenced off, too. My guess is, one of the ministries is sending out stuff they don’t want anyone knowing about.”

Cat looked up at Hunter. He nodded.

Looks like this could be our ticket to Drakemyth.

“Okay, give me an address and the Rainbow is yours.”

Sparrow crawled over to get a pen off the floor and wrote down an address on a piece of an old takeaway box.

Cat snatched it out of his hand, threw him the second baggie, and headed for the door.

“Thanks, Sparrow, you’ve been real helpful!” she called over her shoulder.

Hunter caught up to her. “Why do you know this lowlife?” he asked as soon as they were out of earshot.

“Let’s just say open rebellion wasn’t my first foray into the criminal world,” Cat said. “Besides, Sparrow used to sell me good herb.”