That same day (Thursday, June 2, 2022) Arizona Charlie’s, Las Vegas, Nevada, United States

Billy walked out of the casino feeling good. Well mostly drunk, but also good. Hey, he was $400 up today. He whistled to himself and made his way to where his Uber should be.

He didn’t notice the three glowing lights flash above him on the roof.

When he got to the car, he slid in the back.

“Hey,” and he fumbled for his phone to see the driver’s name, “Maqsood? Take me to The Garage!” He’d try his luck at a bar too while he was at it.

There was no answer from up front. Maqsood didn’t even move.

“Hey! C’mon. Let’s go…” Billy said plaintively, slurring his words. “This isn’t some sort of religious anti-gay thing, is it? Fuck man, I’ll report this shit.”

Still no response.

Billy leaned forward in the car.

What he saw Masqood’s head was pinned to the headrest through the eyes, two long spikes having been driven through it. His spine hung down to the seat, the rest of his body missing. There was a large pool of blood, but no body.

Billy screamed, and then threw up. Then screamed some more.

Ixus Capital, Midtown, Manhattan, New York, United States

“Fuck yeah!” Charlie whispered. She had popped in at 2 a.m. into Tommy Xu’s office and was blocked, by a large expanse of golden scales as he slept.

She couldn’t get in any further to see the rest of him, but she hopped up and down hoping to see over the wall of reptilian flesh to see any more of him. She thought she caught glimpse of a bit of a red mane.

As she backed out, she thought to herself, damn… he is huge. Even if she was no longer in physics, she still wondered where all that mass went when he was in human form.

She made her way back to her office. Kawashima was there with her laptop, finishing up some more analysis that was due.

“Ayame… are you done yet?” Charlie reached overhead and stretched. “The boss left for home already.”

“Almost, almost.” she typed a bit more and then handed over her laptop for Charlie to look at.

“This can’t be right? Oh, wait. It is… Solid analysis. Boss will like it for sure.” Charlie packaged it up, wrote a quick set of conclusions and sent it off.

“Charlie, what is going on? Mr. Xu and you have been buying up the most random assets. And then you have me do some hunting on another buyer out there, and their portfolio looks pretty similar?”

“Hey… What can I tell you? The boss commands and we obey. Let’s go get a drink or something.”

“We have to be back at seven. I am going to sleep.”

“Eh, have one drink. I have an inflatable mattress here and tons of extra clothes. We can just crash here and not waste time going home and back.”

Ayame looked at Charlie as she went to her bar cart and started pouring two glasses of bourbon.

“Do you sleep here a lot?”

“Weekdays. I just shower in the gym down the street. My boyfriend is out during the week, so who cares?”

Charlie took both glasses in her hand and turned to face Ayame. She drank one tumbler down, shrugged, and then drank the other one.

“Ah… that hits the spot. I keep telling daddy Xu I need another room to put in a permanent bed, but he complains about Manhattan real estate pricing and threatening to move us to Connecticut. Hell with that. Maybe I can get someone else fired and use that…”

Ayame looked at her manager. She had pulled out a rolled up inflatable mattress and was plugging in the built in inflator.

Eh… fuck it. “Pour me two of those also.”

An hour later the mattress sat forgotten leaned up against the wall. Ayame and Charlie sat across from each other grinning stupidly at one another.

Ayame took her hand back and sent it forward, releasing the ping pong ball bouncing perfectly and it… hit the rim and popped up into the air and… boom, right into the middle cup.

Charlie looked at the cup and then at her, “you arrreee cheeaating.” She stumbled a bit as she picked up the cup and then drank it down.

“Fuuuuck… tequila.” She said. She grabbed the ball from the bottom of the cup, shook off the drips of tequila, and threw it at Ayame’s cups. And entirely missed.

“Fuuuck.”

The next morning Tommy Xu found both of them lying on the carpet with empty bottles all over the room.

He gently closed the door behind him. He would call Miss Jindal-Witten a bit later today.

“Everett Marr?” Eesha said on the video screen. “I apologize if I say this wrong,” Ella smiled, “duzhi shangshu, let me bring in some others.”

Xu smiled at the title, even if the pronunciation was terrible. At least she tried. Unlike the one sitting across from him listening in: Charlie looked… well like a woman who was regretting her life decisions.

Two more screens appeared, one with Arcsa, and the other a woman he had not met before named Zana.

“Zana, Mr. Xu here has another item pointing to Everett Marr. If you would?”

Tommy Xu began to brief the others on the financial patterns, beginning with the strategic investments he had been making, the discovery that another person was making similar buys, and then the final bit of investigation that revealed that Everett Marr was the main buyer. There were other wealthy people like Madeleine Senner and the megachurch pastor Timothy Klein who had made investments, but Marr was the key financier.

“Two points is good enough,” Zana said. “We need to accelerate my investigation.”

“My father knows Marr pretty well actually.” Charlie volunteered, wincing at even the volume of her own voice. “I’ll talk to him later… after I sleep for about a year.”

“Miss Harris, I would love to meet your father,” Zana said.

“And I as well.” Xu added.

“Hooray…” Charlie said half-heartedly.