Section 99 - A Good Man, Part 3

The mask slips, the voice stirs and the trail points the way to Insomnia.

What happened next was a scrum of many different kinds of people wanting to know who was shooting and why there were shitkicked and bloody people lying in veterinary cages. First was the Civil Constabulary, who set up a cordon, took Van’s weapon and confirmed his registry under Section 99- IO-8160, Callsign: Canine. The media arrived, informed by their comms scanners, piling against the cordons, asking questions at the CivCon volunteers standing guard, their camera drones taking stills and video of the cages, the union workers raising mocking thumbs up and middle fingers, and the big guy in the leather jacket having a close conversation with the sargent on scene.

“I need a good lawhouse, one that can work interrogation, you know anyone?” asked Van.

“Got a good high risk firm in the city, I’ll put in a call. Sure you want interrogation, though? Might be a slower turnaround on your payday.”

“Pretty sure these assholes took someone I’m trying to get back, I need to know what they know.”

“Shit, man, sorry,” the sarge said. “Here, let me have your number, give us fifteen minutes, I’ll get things in motion.”

12 minutes later, Van’s phone rang.

“Hel--”

“Ferrel, Aldin & Vayro, calling to inquire if your posted bounty is yet unclaimed?”

They even sent a van and everything.

On the way to the firm, Van got a text from a number he hadn’t put a name to.

you get shot or something?

He thought for a minute.

somehow, no

A few seconds passed.

XP

He named the number ‘Telin,’ and then dialed it.

“So you didn’t get shot?” she answered.

“Not despite trying,” he said. “Listen, I’ve got some 113’ers on the line, I’m going get them to send some bailiffs your way to pick Dickhead up. He still good?”

“I knocked on the lockup when I got back, he yelled some toughguy shit at me, I think he’s fine.”

“Good. Sit on him until the heavies get there and I’ll get you settled up for everything you’ve done today.”

“Oho, I get a favor from the Sendra, and a bounty share as a bonus, eh? Never thought I’d win the lotto while serving my people."

“Call it a good day when you get rewarded for the right choice.”

“Fucking weird good day when the right choice involves stowing some asshole in my lockup,” she said.

---

The law offices of Ferrel, Aldin & Vayro were built for ruthless efficiency, a place of professional discipline amid sharp-cornered desks and walls. They were characterized by their easy-to-clean polished hardcrete floors and an open legal office space that was built like a cafeteria of criminal processing. Through the bulletproof glass doors he was directed to, a gracious receptionist thanked Van for choosing Ferrel, Aldin and Vayro as his high risk justice facilitators for the day. Behind him, through more bulletproof glass, advocates buzzed between collars sat beneath big shouldered bailiffs, taking their data and advising them all at once. What’s your name? You may choose to not consent to volunteer your data, but all evidence proving your identity is will be used in your case against you. Where were you born? You may remain silent, but this will be used in your case against you. Yes, you’ll be provided with a defense attorney upon your arrival at the central court. No, this isn’t something that’s going to get resolved locally, you have officially messed up.

113’ers creeped Van out.

He was ushered into a comfortable waiting room, where wrapsheet screens displayed overhead camera feeds of the processing room. He looked them over. The woman and one of the men had dead eyes, cold as the void. The man’s shoulder was wrapped in fast-cast, from where Strydom had hit him, and he mostly looked annoyed about this. The next one thought highly of himself, spitting blood on the tablet of an advocate, then smiling like it was going to get him anywhere. The last one just looked dense as hell, and seemed to not understand how much trouble he was in. He was loose lipped, enough so that his own crew were yelling at him to shut up.

The smart guy who spat on the tablet got his ear yanked by a bailiff. “Don’t look at him, look at me,” said one of his advocates. 

Then, there was the Kelso, who was vibrating in his seat and looking every direction except straight forward. The dipshit might volunteer something without realizing it, but he was going to have to hurry up before Kelso turned to flop sweat and gave up everything he knew on his way to the floor.

The gracious receptionist was suddenly beside him, in his hand a spread of bottles in an ice bucket. Van hadn’t realized how hard he’d been staring at the screen, staring at Kelso. He helped himself to a Dominguez orange, nodded his thanks, and turned back to the screen.

Weakness. That’s what he read in Kelso. He didn’t conjecture as to what his motives were, if he’d been some suborned pawn or just a born maggot. Van watched as his features twitched, as he struggled to keep the sweat out of his eyes, body sagging with fear, shame and discomfort. This was a man that was keeping other sapient beings in pet cages and who had the goddamned temerity to call him ‘sir,’ and now he couldn’t even muster the dignity to not turn to watery oatmeal while under questioning.

He twisted the cap off his bottle, and downed half of it in one gulp. The cold shocked him; he didn’t realize how hot he felt, how dry his throat had gotten.

Hang him out a window, a voice said inside of him.

“I’m not going to do that.”

Turn his knees and elbows inside-out.

“I’m not going to do that.”

Finish your drink. Break the bottle over his face, rake it in.

“I’m not going to do that,” Van said to himself, without opening his mouth or making a sound.

You’d be done by now if you were doing it.

“Yeah, which is why I’m not going to do that. I don’t do that any more.”

Van’s eyes didn’t leave Kelso, the weak link, the slowest and easiest of the group. From his periphery, he noticed the kidnap crew casting mean glances in his direction. They knew that he knew, but what did he know? They knew this ridiculous little man was their operation’s fatal error. They had to be thinking about killing him, especially out of hindsight. Van was thinking about killing him; Van couldn’t not think about killing him. His throat was so dry.

He killed his drink instead.

One of Kelso’s advocates leaned in close, and started speaking to him too low for the feed’s mic to pic up, nor at an angle Van could read. Kelso bowed his head, and his eyes squeezed shut. He turned red and started weeping, soft shoulders heaving as he eventually bent himself over the tabletop. He was still for a moment; the advocate gestured at him, and Van made out “It’s up to you.” From his heap atop the table, Kelso nodded without looking up.

The bottle cracked in Van’s hand, the neck falling loose. He’s trying to make a deal. Trying to plead for mercy. Trying to make his escape.

He’s a coward. Break him apart with every word he gives up. Make death the reward for cooperation. Make him an example.

“I’m not going to do that,” Van said to himself, a tenth as loud as before.

Go in there, you can get in. Break the bottle, feed him the glass, make him talk to spit it out.

“I’m not going to do that.”

You get in that room, and you break that little man, and you break anyone that gets in your way. You make him talk, or you make him scream, or you make him whisper, but you get everything you need to get the work done YOU USED TO BE SO GOOD AT THIS.

“How’s it going?” A voice came from behind him. He turned, and it was Telin. She stared at his cracked soda bottle, half pointing a finger.

“Good,” said Van. The voice fell away, and he suddenly felt fire in him die off, felt his jaw unclench. “Bottles are sorta defective though. What are you doing here?”

“Figured you’d need a ride to wherever you’re going next, and it’s the least I could do for the fortune you brought me today. I followed their wagon over.”

A spike of sound turned Van back to the screens- they were hauling in Weller, who was already running his mouth to the bailiffs.

“You want to know the definition of a mistake, it was laying hands on me. I know you don’t know who the hell I am, you’d have some goddamned sense if you did, set me on my way and fucking apologize like well-mannered, decent folk.”

Kelso’s advocate leaned in whispered something to him. Kelso dejectedly lifted a finger and pointed at Weller.

“Hey, fuck you, Gary!”

“FUCK YOU, KURT!” Kelso screamed through his tears.

Van took a deep breath, and counted to ten. The voice didn’t speak. It wasn’t gone, though. It was still there, like a presence he could feel in his own shadow, brushing up against him every now and again just as a reminder. Van felt in his gut he needed to hurry more than ever. The trail to Taino was going cold, and now, he knew on the inside he was running on a real ugly sort of countdown clock.

---

Whatever wall of silence the slavers were willing to put up, it crumbled as soon as Kelso flipped on Weller. Whatever stories they contrived were pulled apart by the stream of evidence both CivCon and legal aides from Ferrel, Aldin & Vayro were pulling in, on top of them being caught deadass with dozens of witnesses and a victim now recovering in hospital. 

The crew were chunkheads- Pierpont, Green, Neumyer and Melnik -a bunch of walking dead terran bodies from a defeated Imperial incursion that deserted the second it was clear their transport group weren’t in any shape to make the trip back to the Inner Galaxy. They didn’t know much except contempt for the people of the Outlands and how to theoretically get rich selling other people’s lives. The courts would not be kind to them; maybe Neumyer the dipshit could be rehabbed, but the other three looked like they were born mean and baptized in butcher knives, totally remorseless.

Turns out that Gary Kelso really was a nobody that did, at one point, operate an animal cartage service. Then he racked up the sort of betting debts that he wasn’t functionally able to pay back with money, so he got put to work instead. On that row, for years, vans and delivery drones had pulled up with shaded cages, and he showed up and punched out like clockwork. When he had his debts called in, nothing changed for him, except for the contents of the cages and the fact that Kelso seemed to be aging at an accelerated rate- Van had him in his late forties, he was 34. The courts would go easier on him; the rest of his life probably wouldn’t.

Weller was still a dickhead, and looked even more the part in his ruined dandy duds, grin occasionally glinting a silver tooth. But he was the one that linked up the chain and for as much as he was running his mouth, he wasn’t saying very much. Watching him through the screen, Van wished he hadn’t missed earlier- homeboy could do with a cut to his testosterone from where he was standing.

“Can I ask you something?” Telin said from behind him, leaned against the wall and filing her claws.

“Go ahead,” Van said, eyes not leaving the screens, not leaving Weller.

“Taino Sendra is a clan heir, he is near a prince to my culture,” she said. “Who is he to you?”

“He’s my little brother,” he said, eyes still locked.

Telin snickered, her tail flicking against the wall. “You two got real different dads, huh?” she said, grinning.

“Different moms, too, yeah,” Van said with a humorless chuckle.

On the screen, Weller tried to menace one of his advisors with a pointed finger; a bailiff bellowed at him to keep his hands to himself.

“I found myself in the company of the Sendra in the worst part of my life. Despite everything that happened, and I mean that big time, they didn’t deny me what I was needed. They helped me back up and gave me a place. That place, believe it or not, was watching that kid’s back as he grew up. That’s what I did for years- I made sure that kid got to grow up safe, so he could grow to be his best self. And I made sure he had a friend while I did it.”

He turned to her, “Kid’s a man now, and I’ve been on my own for a few years. But then he goes out on clan business, gets grabbed in my neck of the woods, shit. Janila’s got my number. She knows all she had to do was call.” Then he turned back.

Telin digested this, and studied the big terran in front of her. His clothes covered his shape well, but she read through them a broad shouldered stockiness and a focused strength- he would have been a ridiculous looking rhidlet, but only a merely intense looking terran. She noticed how calloused his knuckles were, how he kept his stance wide and stable, ever-ready. Nothing about him was relaxed; everything about him was exactly measured on a sharp edge, like he was holding himself to zero margin of error with every breath he took.

“Can I ask another question?” she asked.

Van ruffled. Not at her, the process. He wasn’t happy with how long this was taking him, even if the voice was staying quiet.

“Go ahead,” he said again, finally.

“Why just you?”

He closed his eyes and sighed. “This is going to make me sound like a total asshole but, I’m made for this sort of thing.”

“I don’t think you’re an asshole,” she said. “I believe it.”

He didn’t know what to say to that. He didn’t get a moment to consider it, either- he saw it.

Kurt Weller had a fair deal of ink done, hands, fingers, knuckles, neck, even some on his face. Weller was a dickhead, but he knew enough not to overtly advertise allegiance. At least, he was smart enough to keep it out of sight. But Weller was sweating from his nonstop stream of shit talk, and decided to take off his tie, undo a button from his shirt. Through real-res cameras, with his sharp eyes, he spotted the lines of a Huguenot cross by his collarbone.

Telin called after Van as he stormed out of the waiting room. All he could hear was the blood pounding in his ears.

---

Weller rolled his eyes when he saw Van come through the door into the processing room, flanked by bailiffs. “You see this man? This man’s my future butler once I get out of here, shit you’ve put me through today. This motherfucker is gonna live in my dog house once I get what he owes me, trust in that.”

Van walked him down with strides that would have knocked aside highway barriers. A bailiff behind him said, “slow down, sir.” Van didn’t hear him.

You know what to do.

“Yes I do,” he said inwardly.

Sic-

He didn’t let himself finish the thought fully, but he still felt the rush. It was a fraction of a dose, but enough to surge the enhancements in his body to life. With one motion, he clamped his hand on Weller’s neck and jerked him out of his seat, dangling him like a hangman over it. Weller made a godawful croak and panic-kicked as he tried to pry Van’s hand loose, digging nails into skin that wasn’t breaking, on an arm that wasn’t even shaking from strain. 

The room around Van split apart into those seeking cover, and those screaming at him to “PUT HIM DOWN.” So he obliged the second party and pounded Weller back-first onto the floor, a dull smack of flesh, bone and hardcrete reverberating from his body. Weller rolled, and groaned, and clutched at lungs that had forgotten how to breathe again.

Someone yelled, “sir, that’s enough.” Van didn’t hear him. Instead, he pulled at Weller’s collar, ripping it loose as he writhed on his back. Exactly what he was looking for- collarbone tat, Huguenot cross, paired with the epitaph “au revoir, Francois!” and no commemorating date. One small piece among a tangle of a dozen others he could make out through his torn shirt alone, but Van knew the iconography. 

3rd Exchange. Bent syndicate, purveyors of rare, unique, exotic and dangerous goods, who kept up the appearance of being a sophisticated merchant house and procurement syndicate. Known for enforcing a good reputation, despite a lot of extremely questionable merchandise having turned up in their hands over the years. 

“You on a business trip away from Insomnia? Or are you the local finder agent?”

Weller choked, sputtered, coughed and managed to get out a “fuck you” before he rolled onto his chest.

“I’m gonna guess you figured you had one hell of a score in the kid, huh? What’s the going rate on a clan heir, hey?”

“You don’t have shit on me,” Weller choked out.

“I don’t have to. Now I know what doors to kick in and the name of the guy that sent me. You imagine the kind of damage a guy like me can do to one of your fancy boutiques, huh? And all the while, it gets out you gave up your whole outfit as slavers under interro?”

“So you must want to die?”

“Trust me, pal, it’ll be so much quicker for me than it will be for you when they get to you.” Van cracked a grin, and it was not the friendly sort.

Weller managed to roll onto his back, sucking wind, staring up at Van with wild eyes. He saw the blood pulsing in his eyes, a baleful green light flickering in his irises, the cords tightened in his neck, the teeth clenched into a cringe of a smile that could take off a hand at the wrist. He tried to think of something sharp to say. He couldn’t; he was terrified.

“I want to make a deal,” Weller said.

---

The good news: Weller had enough of a brain to cooperate, and gave up names, addresses, dates and times; Van’s outburst in the processing room hadn’t soured anything with the 113’ers, and he’d be fronted his end of the bounty as soon as central credit got their proper receipts filed; most important, Taino had only been gone from Port of St. Joseph for less than a day, the ship carrying him having left in the early morning of the first shift.

The bad news: Taino was going to Insomnia, in custody of the 3rd Exchange. Insomnia wasn’t the sort of place where just anyone comes or goes as they please, not the least of which to knock over one of the organizations that ran the place. It was a station run by a board of syndicates with their controlling interests spread across every square meter of interior space of its cylindrical structure. It was a playground of Outland power, a resort destination for those with exacting, exotic or illicit tastes, orbiting at safe distance around the Deep Dark black hole. Everyone that set foot on Insomnia did so understanding that there are rules to be observed and organizations to be respected. Stories circulated of people making poor life choices on Insomnia, the kind that pissed off syndicate people with big desks and nice suits, and getting disposed of in the singularity. With pressure suits and full survival supplies, to make sure they enjoyed their trip for as long as possible.

It was a neon fortress that the local marshalls wouldn’t touch, a sovereign state built out of crooked alliances, with enough muscle and firepower to keep anything known in the Outlands polite, cordial and politically at a distance. Van would even have trouble finding fellow 99ers willing to go there on business, let alone any on as short notice as he needed.

He had a direction and a timeframe. What he didn’t have was anything close to a good play.

Telin met his eyes when he emerged from the processing room, bailiffs walking with him at a safe distance. He looked at the floor and his stomach sank.

They said nothing at first, when they left and got in her car. Telin didn’t key the motor, she just gripped the wheel and stared at the instrument panel.

“You’re going to be straight with me,” she said. She spoke with the nerve of an astronautical captain, calm, cold, in control.

Van stayed eyes forward, out the windshield. “Yeah,” he said. He felt like his insides were shrinking and hollowing him out.

“Your wirejob shit, that was something you were just keeping need to know?”

He hated that word.

“Yeah,” he said.

“And I didn’t need to know, because it didn’t matter that I knew. Cause you didn’t intend to do wirejob shit in the open, yeah?”

He really hated that word.

“Yeah,” he said.

“But you’ve been straight with me on everything else?”

Van swallowed. The voice was quiet, but its presence nudged him from his shadow. Just a little reminder that spoke without words, a familiar chill that flooded him. You will never be honest, even when you are. You will never be accepted, only feared.

He looked at her and said “yes.”

She studied him for a good long while, cocking her head from side to side, pupils narrowed to slits, a sneer that was more stern than defiant and occasionally winked a single sharp fang. Performative judgement, the kind a Rhidling parent would give to a child caught in a fib- Granny Janila had levelled it at Van more than once.

Then she sank into her seat, and let her breath out through her teeth. Claws unfolded, she combed her fluffy hair back, cracked her knuckles, and folded them back, one by one. She looked over at him, a glance felt like a dagger had just flown by Van’s face and stuck in her car’s headliner, just to make a point.

She went, “tch,” shook her head and said, “okay, where are we going?”

“The post office,” Van said.

She nodded, keyed the car, and brought up navigation.

“Telin?” Van said, voice distant.

“Yeeup?” she said, pulling into the avenue.

“Don’t call me a wirejob, ever again,” he said. “Please.”

She nodded. “Sorry,” she said.

---

From inside a private messaging booth, Van sent a simple message to the Alemeka Grove compound on Samoud:

He’s on Insomnia for now. I need an open door.

46 characters of data would need time to make the transmission via FTL pulse, at least 15 minutes, so Van had the office open up message forwarding to his phone. The wonders of the modern era, the ingenuity of post-Earth 2020- interplanetary texting via daisy chain patchwork.

Telin was still with him when he came out of the post office.

“Where next?” she asked.

“You don’t have to do this,” he said.

“Yeah, but I also don’t get summoned and dismissed by someone I decide throw in with,” she said, eying him again, arms folded.

“I gotta book passage,” he said.

“No you don’t, you’ve got me,” she said.

Van started to say something, and she raised a finger to him. “I’m supposed to grow old running cargo without a few good stories for compensation, huh?”

“Insomnia is not any place you want to get caught fucking around,” Van said.

“I know, I’ve made enough runs that my ship’s on the trusted registry.”

Van felt like an asshole immediately.

Her eyes narrowed on him. “Why, you ever get caught fucking around there?”

“Not caught,” he said.

“This another thing you might tell me about if you get the time?”

“Sure,” he said.

---

They’d arrived at an armsmith, Lock-On Fabrications, when Van’s phone buzzed. Message from Granny Janila:

Working on it.

He responded:

I’m sorry.

Telin let him out at the door, then left to prep Keeda and their lander for departure. The garak clerk perked up immediately as the door chimed, turning from a bank of screens monitoring the manifold assembly mills on his shop floor, climbing his stout mass into a high chair.

“Registered user or new applicant?” he said, his sharp teeth gleaming, whiskers bristling.

“I’m registered.”

“What can I get for you?” the fuzzy clerk asked.

“A little bit of everything.”

The holster was the quickest to come out, a better design and fit for his magnum, an extruded reinforced polymer sleeve he clipped to his belt that immediately took the chafe out of his shoulder. Magazines and bullets came next, full-house rounds he tested on the in-house range. The extra punch made the recoil jump, widening his grouping on the target.

“You want out?” he said inwardly.

The voice didn’t say anything, but it stirred.

“Then you meet me halfway.”

Nobody was there to spot the way his eyes flickered green when he dropped the empty magazine from his gun. Nor did Van notice the change in how quick and precise his hands moved when he slotted in a full one and dropped the slide. With calm confidence, he raised his weapon and found his sights; nine shots emptied out fast enough to illicit an impressed whistle from the clerk behind the counter once the sound died down.

He called the target in. Nine shots, tight enough to have ripped one single hole.

The shotgun was compact, pump-action, a bullpup design built for naval security and defense. Insomnia’s out-of-doors was foot traffic streets and tramway stations, contained and constrained, the sort of layout a scattergun would have the advantage. He printed off some two-stage flechette shells to feed it with, in the likely case of hostiles with body armour or shields. He opened the mill lid, blew the spoil-dust off and racked the pump- clean cycle, clean trigger drop. 

The voice’s presence rose with a sense of satisfaction.

The vest came out last, the most complex and the biggest hit to his resource account. The interior was a hexagonal lattice of flexible ceramic plates, and the exterior was layered sheets of artificially spun and microknit spider silk. It was extra padding for his enhancements. He was a person more difficult to kill than most, but if worse came to worst, and a whole lot of guns started pointing his way, he’d take the extra edge of some collar-to-groin core protection that could turn a full magazine of rifle rounds to a big, broad bruise.

Van’s phone buzzed again while he was putting test shells through his shotgun:

Don’t be sorry. Be at a post office, ASAP.

So he flagged down a hack and retraced his steps to the office, new acquisitions stashed in a padded bag. There, he drew the door shut behind him on a private comms booth, logged in his details and waited.

And waited.

And cursed how long it took to set up a face to face between points in space.

20 hard minutes of staring at CONNECTION OPEN and it was finally joined on screen with a block of handshake data that replaced it with CONNECTION JOINED. The image that appeared at first was a garbage jumble of cosmic fuzz, interrupted by a watermark for SecureScreen communications security. Top of the line stuff.

The person that appeared after was Maxine Delroy, high council seat for Fortune’s Wheel, one of the syndicates of Insomnia. Maxine Delroy in her ringmaster-like embossed velvet finery and immaculate makeup; Maxine Delroy, whose Casino Carnivale made a fancy and lucrative front for the deathmatch pit in the decks beneath it.

“Your connection to the matriarch of the Sendra has bought you up to ten minutes of my time, so speak carefu--” she paused, her eyes widening as the image buffered and gained resolution on her end.

“Oh,” she said, casting icicles into her camera. “It’s you…”

Maxine Delroy, whose Kashmir hotel Van had rampaged through in pursuit of a target a short lifetime ago. Maxine Delroy, who held it against the Sendra when he turned up in their ranks.

“Unfortunately, yeah,” he said.

“You have five minutes of my time. Explain to me why Janila Sendra is having me speak with you.”

“Because Taino Sendra is about to be sold off at auction at an upcoming 3rd Exchange event.”

“I would watch what you say,” she turned her nose up at him. “Much is permitted on Insomnia, but the sooner we allow Imperialist Crimes in our houses, the sooner we might as well strike our own colours and raise the Imperial banner.”

“Which is why I’m asking you to step in on behalf of the Sendra, check the ship we have incoming to you, check the site of the sale-”

“Ah yes, this is how Our Home works. I send some of my people into 3rd Exchange territory, scout out their docks, and then? I suppose, in return, they get to station some of their people in the Carnivale’s count room. Good, not like their agents have a problem with sticky fingers…”

“I’m asking this, for the sake of the mutually beneficial relationship that both you and the Sendra have enjoyed over the-”

“You seem to think I’m willing to disrupt the peace of Our Home on behalf of the people I buy my foreign information from. Were I to do as you ask, the entirety of Insomnia would grind to a halt from the sheer friction. It wouldn’t just be between my house and the 3rd Exchange, but all our neighbors that benefit from our unique position in the galaxy, all wanting to know why I’ve sent my people to get in someone else’s business. Especially when asked by the steroidal lunatic that annihilated my hotel bar in years past.”

There it was. He knew it was coming. Don’t you dare roll your eyes, she will cut the call immediately, the voice suddenly hissed to him. Instead, he chose careful words.

“I understand the difficulty of your position, and your unwillingness to bend for me in particular. I only ask you to understand the difficulty of my situation, with regards to what you know of me,” Van said.

She stared at him, ice cold.

“I know that you’re completely without elegance or guile,” she said, darkly-coloured lips flattening into a mean line. But she considered him further. “I know you don’t act on bad intel, based on personal reputation,” she said.

She looked away for a moment, then returned her nose-up posture.

“What you ask would require a joint inquiry from multiple syndicates, a collaborative cleaning of Our House. It would take a major incident in order to make those gears turn,” she said.

“A slave auction isn’t a major incident?” Van felt his anger rise.

“Not if it’s kept politely quiet and out of sight, like much of what goes on off the streets of Insomnia. We’re not interested in the active regulation of each other’s activities, even if I may personally find the 3rd Exchange to be a group of jackals that learned to wear suits.” She stared directly at him. “Which is why it would take a major incident to get the right eyes looking in the right direction.”

The hair on the back of Van’s neck rose.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “There was buffering, can you repeat that?”

Delroy drew in a breath and let it out slow. “I said, it would take a major incident to get the right eyes looking in the right direction.”

Van counted the seconds on the feed. Seven seconds of silence turned into an eternity.

“I understand,” he said, finally.

“Good,” she said, eyes narrowing. “May you be blessed by Fortune.”

The screen blinked back to its ready state, a CONNECTION CLOSED above a dialogue box asking for a rating on the call’s fidelity. Van felt like his blood had just turned to water.

“What the fuck just happened?” Van said to himself.

---