Season 1, Episode 5 - The Boxtops XI - "The Canary Trap"

While West Narragansett Technical Academy won a spectacular last-minute football victory that would dominate tomorrow’s editions of the city’s newspapers (well, their sports sections, at least), the Chairman of the Academy himself sat alone on a bar stool at War Horse Tavern, located in the maze of alleyways that stretched out from the Cabot Shopping Center in the middle of his district.

“Another beer,” he said solemnly, his voice slightly slurred. The bartender - a woman in her mid-thirties with auburn hair and a happy smile – did as instructed, though maybe a little reluctantly.

“This might have to be the last one of the night, boss,” she gently suggested, sliding a can of Hokkaido Beer over to him.

Stockham sighed as he poured the can into a waiting glass. “Because of the trade wars, even our own native beer companies are losing out. The geniuses in charge of this country brought us into an economic conflict with the Unified Pact, not realizing how fragile our own domestic industries were. And look at all these bombings and murders. The people are growing angry, now that their bread and circuses are being taken away from them.”

He downed the glass in a single, long swig before placing it back down to the counter, his face turning slightly red from the drink. “What happened to this country? At least Pulaski understands that you have to placate the people. But Amien, now that Pulaski's on his way out and he's on his way in, all he thinks about is ‘by her sword, by her sword’ and purifying our people, whatever that means. Like Sparta, he says. At the end of the day, the Spartan way isn't all that great. The trade wars, the raid...all he's done is get radicals whipped up in a frenzy all over the country, both for and against him.”

Stockham took a moment to take in the beauty of a painting hanging on a wall over a fireplace, depicting autumnal scenes of the New England countryside before the government sold much of it to the State Police and the mega-corporations (though he had to admit, he himself bought up a large chunk of the countryside, too).

“Perhaps I’m part of the problem,” he supposed. “Which is why I’m trying to fix it. But sometimes, a man must do things alone.”

He looked at the empty bar stools next to him. “Osip and Ian from the Voc already had plans. I didn’t want to intrude. Shokahu doesn’t have a social life. Only God knows what Essex does on Friday nights, and I’m certainly not asking. Apparently, all my Technical Servicemen have lives outside of work, lives that make them unavailable to go drinking with their boss. And Mogami...I don’t really like Mogami.”

The bartender spoke a lot less gently this time. “As much as I respect the Chairman of the Academy, you’re cut off for the night.”

Stockham chuckled. “How it goes.” He raised a finger and gestured at her. “Family is everything. Don’t forget that. I want to make this Academy and everyone here part of one big family.”

He said the last words a little loudly, drawing a few chuckles from the other bar patrons. Everyone gave the Chairman a wide berth, sitting in scattered tables far away from the bar counter, out of a mixture of fear and respect.

“It’s lonely at the top,” Stockham concluded. He stumbled out of his stool and slid a five dollar bill at the bartender.

“I thought the Academy covers all of your expenses,” the bartender exclaimed in surprise.

Stockham threw his coat on. “It does. Consider this is a tip for listening to an old man’s story for a few hours.”

With that, Stockham headed out alone. He left the warm lights of the dive bar and its small fireplace for the cold air of a November night. The bar was located in a byzantine labyrinth of back alleys and side streets and narrow passageways at the heart of Elizabeth Pond. Between the low, flickering glow of aging gaslamps and all the crisscrossing wires stretching across the alleyway above him, he could barely see the sky.

Not that he could really see the sky, anyway. His head swam from the beer, as evidenced by him needing to take a moment to rest himself on a brick wall plastered with advertisements for the newest dime novel out of Russet Publishers.

Having regained his strength, Stockham continued on, heading deeper into the maze. He knew these dark passageways by heart, of course. He knew that he was heading down a not-particularly well-lit alleyway. He knew this part was quiet with few people, none of them currently visible. He knew he previously took this route several times in the past for all the world to see.

He stopped again, clutching at his stomach. While hunched over and resisting an alleged urge to vomit, Stockham sniffed the air. The sniffing itself did nothing in terms of smell – the point of it was just a ritual. Similar to how a baseball player has a pre-bat routine to get themselves in the right headspace, the act of sniffing the air got someone in the right headspace to notice any slight bends in reality a Rddhi user might create.

Stockham covered his mouth, apparently to hold back the unpleasantness rising out of his stomach. But behind his hand, he grinned.

He got to walking again, arriving at the spot most likely for an ambush according to the analysts at the Support Department. He rounded the corner into a narrow alleyway with a flickering, lone gaslamp for a light. He passed by a large dumpster-

There was a flash of steel, then the breeze picked up.

Stockham placed a hand on his stomach, but this time, it was due to laughter.

“I can’t believe it,” he exclaimed. “I can’t believe this really worked! I really am dealing with a child.”

Next to him stood a would-be assassin, mid-lunge. The assassin wielded a sword aimed directly for the ambassador’s side, an open dumpster lid indicating where the assassin lied in wait. He or she wore all black, a balaclava covering their face outside of their eyes, which blazed in righteous fury.

Well-timed gusts of wind essentially froze the assassin in place, unable to break free of them. Clayton emerged from the shadows, sparks of Rddhi in his hands, as he kept the wind on her. He made hand motions, and suddenly the assassin dropped their sword and gasped for breath as Clayton took the air out of their lungs. They fell to their knees, clawing at their throat.

Shokahu then emerged out of the shadows, a long piece of rope in his arms. With the assassin’s arms and legs now bound together, Clayton relaxed his chokehold on her. The assassin cried out and took in shallow breaths of air, but then Osip arrived as well. He placed a bag over their head, somebody kicked the assassin in the side of the head, and that was that.

Clayton dumped the body at the foot of the counter in the dive bar and pulled the bag off of their head. The assassin blinked to get their bearings; they realized every single person in the bar, even the bartender, had a gun pointed at them.

Stockham, flanked by Shokahu and Osip, stood in the center, an ambitious grin on his face.

“Consider yourself lucky,” Stockham exclaimed. “Any other time and you would've already been sent to the bottom of Narragansett Bay, weights tied to your ankles. But something is currently infecting both my Academy and this city. Your failure of an assassination attempt makes investigating that infection so much easier.”

He nodded at Clayton. “Let’s see who this really is,” Stockham ordered.

Clayton knelt down and removed their balaclava.

His eyes widened. “I really am sorry I choked you.”

Staring daggers back at them was a woman in her early twenties with light auburn hair. She struggled and squirmed against her bindings around her arms and legs, but Shokahu’s skills at knot-tying actually won him several informal competitions and bottles of alcohol and slices of cheese back in the trenches of the First American War (there wasn’t a whole lot to do back then), so she remained in place.

“This wasn’t how it was supposed to go,” she muttered, strands of hair falling across her face. “You were supposed to be drunk!”

Stockham shrugged, neither his face nor his body language showing any signs of intoxication. “Non-alcoholic beer. Can’t say it tastes good, but it was a necessary sacrifice. And as for appearing drunk – ‘Alas, that love, so gentle in his view, should be so tyrannous and rough in proof.’ If you did a better job in plotting my demise, you would've known that I won honorable mention in my high school’s Romeo and Juliet play for my performance as Benvolio.”

The woman didn’t seem impressed by such a high-ranking accolade. “You were supposed to be alone!”

Stockham looked around. “You seriously thought that? How could I ever be alone in my own district? And for that matter, every single person in this bar is under my payroll. The whole thing was a set-up.” He waved his arm around the room. “All those bar patrons were Technical Serviceman. Shokahu, Clayton, and Osip covered my route home. Even the bartender is our very own Ms. Mogami.”

Mogami gave the assassin a friendly wave, then placed her hand back on the pistol grip, the gun aimed at the assassin's head.

Stockham chuckled. “We knew you were listening in since the very beginning. We could sense it in the air, a slight bend in reality on the rooftop over our heads. We felt that bend move away as I left to depart, eventually arriving in a dumpster, the perfect spot for an assassination.”

He looked away, grimacing. “The part about Ms. Essex was true, though. That woman can really give me the heebie-jeebies sometimes.”

Everyone in the bar – sans assassin and Osip – nodded in agreement.

Stockham clapped his hands. “Well, now that the trap's sprung and the rat's caught, let’s get down to business.”

He nodded; Security Chief Iyeguda moved a chair over, then Clayton and Osip sat the assassin down in it. Stockham crouched to be at eye-level with her.

“Tell us your name,” the Chairman ordered.

The woman looked away. “Kill me. Get it over with.”

Stockham looked at Shokahu. “We’re not animals,” he said in surprise. “We wouldn’t kill you, not without getting information out of you first.”

Upon hearing that, she clenched her teeth. “Just kill me. I’m not telling you anything.”

Stockham sighed and grabbed a nearby chair. He positioned it backwards and sat down on it, facing the assassin. His voice remained calm. “Have you ever heard of ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’? Not only do I have soldiers under my payroll in the Congo and South America, I’ve seen war up close with my very own two eyes. There are a variety of ways to give someone a miserable death.”

He tapped his fingers along the top of his chair. “The ancient Persians would tie a prisoner to a boat and lather him in honey. They would set him to sea, and the sun and animals would make a very prolonged work of him. Much more recently - relatively, that is - the IJA in Malaya doused prisoners with fuel and set them ablaze. But that’s too simple. I prefer their method in the Philippines, when they buried guerrillas up to their necks, forced their mouths open, and poured long lines of sugar leading from their mouths to anthills. You get the idea.”

He looked back at Osip. “What’s the new-fangled method of execution they have in the Congo?”

Osip swallowed. “I’ve been to villages near where dirty bombs have gone off. Whatever military group gets to that village first...they often make the inhabitants swallow radioactive sand.”

“Radioactive sand,” Stockham mused. He looked back at the assassin. “Fortunately for you, we have a distinct lack of radiation in Elizabeth Pond, so you’re safe from that one. Ah, but here’s another good one. Iyeguda, do we have spare bamboo?”

Iyeguda grinned and nodded.

“Have you ever heard of bamboo torture?” Stockham asked the assassin, flames from the bar’s fireplace reflected in his eyes. “The best part about bamboo is that it naturally grows fast on its own, so I don’t even need the help of my plant cell-growth acceleration Rddhi user. Bamboo can grow over an inch per hour, and it can grow through anything. Not even a human body can stop its growth, especially when we sharpen the top of it.”

He leaned over, closer to her. “Do you understand what I’m saying? I’ve only run through a fraction of the ways to make your death miserable. I haven't even started on the ways to make your life miserable."

The assassin went quiet for a moment, then looked away.

“...I’ll tell you anything,” she finally answered, gritting her teeth at her defeat.