2103:11:24:18:31:49

  Dinner was even weirder than usual. Mom was more tired and thus more awkward than the norm, Michael looked irritated at something and this time it had nothing to do with Mom, while I was getting tired of them being awkward and annoyed.

  I’d hoped my conversation with him two weeks ago – and the conversations we had since, few and shallow as most of them were – would’ve changed his tune if only a little bit, but change has been… sporadic. Sometimes, he was trying. Other times, he was not. And today seemed to be a day he wasn’t, and Mom had turned to silence rather than try and coax him out of it.

  “So… did you have fun with Amber yesterday?” Mom asked.

  Well, she was silent toward Michael; she still talked to me.

  “Hm-mm.” I nodded a few times while quickly swallowing the mouthful of noodles. “Didn’t really do much. Just hung around a park near school.”

  That wasn’t code for Amber and I ‘going masking’, but the truth. I still had remedials on Friday – though the weekly check-in with my mentor (the school one, Miss Sims) had stopped, turning to monthly ones – and since remedials were periods seven and eight, with my classes only going until fifth period, it meant I had a gap from 14:40 to 15:30 where I had free time and little to do.

  Amber, to my surprise, had decided we should spend that time together. She said it was so we could build a pattern of me hanging out with her, something to use whenever we decided to go masking during the daytime.

  Well, that was what she said, but I knew that secretly she just wanted to hang out with me. After all, when I’d told her just that, she became all annoyed, which I knew was simply how she showed affection. If she really didn’t like it, she’d just stare at me coldly and tell me to, and I quote, ‘fuck off’.

  “I thought you hated parks?” she asked, likely remembering some of my complaints back during our first weeks together.

  “Not that kind of park. This one’s mostly a concrete skatepark with some exercise equipment, sport fields and stuff.”

  “Ah, Hufflebee Park,” she said, to which I shrugged. I had no idea what the name of it was.

  There was a reminiscent glint in Mom’s eyes and a smile on her face as she continued. “I remember when it was first opened… right around the time you went to high school, if I remember correctly. We went there a couple of times with you – and Michael too.”

  The smile turned strained as she turned her gaze back to me. “Well, I mean, not you you, but the you before you now, you know?” It was kind of amazing that she could simultaneously sound so awkward, yet still say such an awkward sentence fluently.

  Michael, however, was less appreciative. He snorted at Mom’s words.

  I shot him a glare and kicked him under the table. He rolled his eyes but focused on eating his noodles rather than say anything snide. Meaning it was my win.

  “Anyway,” Mom said after an awkward silence. “Did you and Amber do anything there?”

  “Meh. Not really,” I said. “Just sat and watched the skaters. Talked a little bit, met some of her friends.”

  Now that had come as a bit of a surprise, the fact that she had friends. Maybe it was a mean thing to think that just because of the way she behaved and her lack of friends at school, it meant that she was a loner, that I was her only friend, but…

  No, it really was just a mean thing to think. Maybe I should apologize? Though it wasn’t like she knew that was how I thought of her… and she’d admitted to being something of a loner herself, so it wasn’t like it was my fault entirely.

  “That’s nice,” Mom said with a smile. “Is she a skater herself? Maybe she could teach you.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “I could ask her at least.”

  “Maybe it would be the hobby you’re looking for,” Mom encouraged. “And it’s good to do thing with your friends. Like with Millie, Saga and Jolie. Helps create stronger bonds.” She then looked consideringly. “Does Amber get along with your other friends?”

  I carefully did not grimace. “I hang out with them separately,” I said.

  She frowned at that. “Have you tried inviting-”

  I interrupted. “It’s what Amber wants.”

  Mom closed her mouth, then switched tracks. “Well… maybe you could invite her here? Maybe we could have her over for dinner sometime, or-”

  “Mom,” I said. I didn’t know exactly what was going on, but she seemed oddly concerned about something. “Stop prying. Just let me do this on my own.” Masking stuff aside, she was the first friend I felt I made through my own effort, not through school policy and Millie’s introductions.

  She looked apologetically at that. “I’m sorry honey, I was just worried that-”

  She was interrupted by a phone call. One I instantly could guess the purpose of.

  She answered the call, listened while saying couple of ‘yeahs’ and ‘hm-mms’, before ending the call.

  “Sorry kids, got to go. Duty calls.” And, after a brief kiss on the top of my head and an unanswered goodbye to Michael, off she went.

  As expected, Mom had been summoned for duty again as the city continued to deteriorate. We might’ve stopped Motorgang’s plot, but that didn’t mean they had let it go. The fact that the Jannacht had managed to permanently kill one of theirs while out for revenge didn’t sit well with them. That, and wrecking so many of Motor Spirit’s maker-made motorbikes certainly didn’t help.

  In response, a suspected front of the Jannacht in Northside had been firebombed in the middle of the day, though it was done covertly in comparison. No signs of Motor Spirit’s bikes or of power usage by Motorgang’s more pyrokinetically inclined masked – Blazin, Dieselpriest or Drake Blackflame aren’t the subtle kind and would’ve likely celebrated out in the open if they’d been the ones to do it.

  Likewise, after the Sentinels’ second surprise encounter with Darkstar on the 22nd, Jagar Natha had gone on a bit of a crusade due to Rhennish nearly dying and had one or both his legs cut off. The vigilante’s legs had likely gotten been reattached or otherwise restored by a reanimator, but it had pissed of Jagar Natha something fierce. Many Jannacht henchies were hospitalized since. Which, while not Treaty breaking considering Jagar hadn’t slaughtered them, was an uncomfortable escalation.

  Add to that the less well-known or impactful masked fights happening around the city, henchie brawls and overall levels of crime still on the rise, and the city seemed to be spiraling further and further.

  It made sense that Mom still had plenty to do.

  “And there she goes off again,” Michael said, breaking me out of my thoughts. Of course he would only open his mouth after Mom left.

  “Oh please,” I scoffed. “Like you’re any better. At least she has an excuse.”

  Michael frowned, affronted. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Exactly what I said,” I replied. “At least she when she runs, she’s going towards something. All you do is run away.”

  “I’m busy with work.”

  “Not what I meant, but yeah, sure. You definitely work hundred-hour weeks, all through the weekend.”

  “You think Mom’s any better?” he countered. “There’s no way USAR requires her to pull that many night shifts or whatever. Not without violating who-knows how many labor laws.”

  “Now what’re you trying to say?”

  “Me? I’m not saying anything,” he said. “And neither is Mom, it seems.”

  Ugh, again with the- “I don’t care if she’s hiding something, at least she’s trying to do something about your relationship instead of- of trying to convince me the other person is evil or whatever.”

  He frowned. “I didn’t say-”

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  “She basically only ever says good things about you, and to be honest, I don’t understand why. I don’t care what happened in a past I was not involved in; I care about what you do now.”

  “Sam-”

  I quickly ate the last of my dinner. “Whatever, I don’t care. I’m going to my room.” I stood up, threw my and Mom’s plates on the kitchen counter, and went upstairs for some alone time.

  And yet, as soon as I threw myself onto my bed and pulled out my phone, it rang.

  Nth-Sight was calling. Which was suspiciously good timing on Nth-Sight’s behalf, especially for someone that ‘didn’t mess with civilian identities’, or whatever he’d claimed before.

  “Good evening Jester,” Nth-Sight. “I hope I’m not-”

  “A convenient time to be calling me,” I said, the Michael-induced frustration carrying over to my issues with the augur. “The moment I’m able to answer, you give me a call.”

  He was silent for a moment. “Nothing convenient about it. If you were ready ten minutes later, I would’ve called ten minutes later. And if it was ten minutes earlier, I would’ve called then,” Nth-Sight said. “I do not know why I need to call at an exact time, only that that exact time works. If I called at an inopportune moment, I apologize.”

  Whatever. “What do you want,” I said.

  “To business then. Two things,” he said. “The first one you’ve undoubtedly already heard about, but I’m here to clear up some confusion and make things clear. Your mentor and I have had a bit of a falling out about methods – something I’m sure you’re familiar with-” there he goes again, seeing gaps where there were none, “-but regardless of my differences with her, I see no need why us two could not continue working together. Agreed?”

  “Sure.”

  “Good,” Nth-Sight said, voice carrying a smile. “I’m sure together we’ll make this city return to normal before long.” He sounded sincere.

  And maybe he was. Maybe if I hadn’t been in the room when he and Crowsong spoke, and maybe if his delusions about some form of disagreement between me and her were true, I might’ve even embraced it.

  But that was a lot of maybes.

  “Now, onto my second point – one you’ve no doubt figured out.”

  “You have a request.”

  “Right in one,” he said. “The Jannacht have smuggled something into the city recently. Something that, if we do not interfere with its delivery right away, could lead to great damage amongst our city’s fine heroes.”

  I frowned. “Some kind of superweapon? A maker one?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Nth-Sight said, sounding frustrated. “All I know is that if we- that if you do not take it, it could lead to heroes dying. A handful, if we’re lucky. Juniors – Acolytes and Prospectus both – if we’re not.”

  My mind flashed to Millie, a chill shooting down my spine at the horrifying thought.

  If he was telling the truth.

  Yet my mind caught onto another thing. “Take?” I asked.

  “I’ve contacted a rogue speedster called Ceryneian to retrieve the package from you at a to-be-determined location.”

  “So you’re calling me to steal something for you.”

  “No, I’m calling because I need help. It’s not about what is in it, but what it leads to,” Nth-Sight said. “What it could lead to, unless we do something about it.”

  “But you don’t know what’s in it?” I asked. “No plans on using this to your… advantage, somehow?”

  Nth-Sight sighed. “No. No plans, no knowledge, no nothing.” He sounded frustrated.

  “Then why do you want it?”

  “I expect for the same reason you’re asking all these questions,” Nth-Sight said. “Curiosity. What item or items could lead to such a drastically different outcome? I’m not an augur for nothing. I don’t like leaving stones unturned, especially stones that can change the fate of an entire city.”

  That wasn’t exactly why I was asking questions, but I could see the point. “Fair enough,” I said. “So, where do I need to go?”

  X

  Portside wasn’t an area where people usually went to, since unless you worked there, there was little to find.

  As its name suggests, the entire district – both the northern side bordering The Hub and the southern side across the water next to Greenside, connected by a four kilometers long suspension bridge spanning the outlet of Gray’s Harbor – was dedicated solely to servicing international shipping. There were no residences, and the few amenities that were there were fast-food restaurants, coffeeshops, lunchrooms and other services catering the workers here.

  “So this is the place,” Crowsong said. Naturally, I’d called her as soon as I could.

  “Eastsun Shipping Services,” I affirmed. “We’re looking for a red shipping container labelled ESSU 377845 4.” I’d firmly planted the sequence in my mind.

  “Well,” Crowsong said, patting me on the shoulder. “Good luck finding it.”

  I blinked. “You aren’t helping?”

  “Oh, I’ll help – I’ll be on the lookout in case things go wrong, be it here or at the handover. But with Nth-Sight’s eyes on this, there’s no way I can move openly.” She then looked up to the sky and I followed her gaze. I saw nothing. “Besides, looking for a specific serial number in the dark? I’ll leave that up to your owl vision.”

  Fair enough. “But how am I supposed to get into a container by myself?” I asked.

  Without a moment’s thought, Crowsong unsheathed one of her blades and handed it to me grip first. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”

  Grumbling, I accepted the blade, then shifted into owl form and flew off.

  The search didn’t last too long, but it wasn’t easy either. The containers were densely packed together with only the narrowest of streets in between them. It made looking for a serial number from above difficult even as an owl, seeing as the numbers were painted on their doors and not the tops of their roofs. Combined with the fact that an owl couldn’t see red, and my expectations of finding it near-immediately were dashed.

  It took me an embarrassingly long time – almost ten minutes – before I remembered I could turn into a cat and search for containers that way.

  I did find it quickly after that and shifted back.

  The container was up on the top level, stacked atop three others. So I crowed-up and flew on top of it before shifting back. Dangling from the side with one hand, I pulled to see if the door had been left open. But alas, I wasn’t that lucky.

  I had hoped to open the container without damaging it from the outside, but it seemed that hope was dashed against the rocks and unrecoverable. So, after carefully examining the doors to see if I could find a lock or anything I could sheer off, I stuck Crowsong’s blade in the gap between the container’s doors and let myself drop.

  My weight carried the blade straight through whatever mechanism blocked it from opening with ease.

  Before I could hit the ground, I transformed back into a crow and flew up to the now-opened doors. The impact had pulled them ajar far enough for crow-me to fit in between the gap, so I flew in. Once inside, I shifted twice until I was in cat form and looked at my prize.

  The container held a number of differently-sized wooden crates, but it wasn’t enough to be called packed. I immediately spotted mine, the only one suspiciously left unmarked by company names, logos, serial numbers or anything else.

  I shifted, grabbed Crowsong’s sword and sliced open the lock. I dug through the hay-like packaging until I felt something solid and pulled it out. With it in my hands, I shifted into a cat and left the container, shifting back to base after landing.

  My prize was a large, heavy-duty plastic case, complete with lock. A lock I couldn’t slice through without letting Nth-Sight know I’d taken a peek.

  I took out my phone and send Crowsong a message. “Case is locked, can’t take pictures of the inside. Try and open it or go to courier meetup without pictures?”

  A few second later, Crowsong responded with a simple, “Bring it here.”

  So, after grabbing the case, I transformed and flew up and off into the sky, looking for- ah, there. A flickering light atop a goods crane.

  I descended and shifted back, putting the black case between us. Crowsong crouched and retrieved a set of her usual tiny-knife-shaped lockpicks and got to work.

  It took her longer to pick this lock than it did when we went to the storage facility to retrieve our new gear, but whether that was because the lock was more sophisticated or because Crowsong was deliberately more careful, I didn’t know.

  Either way, a small ten minutes later and the lock clicked open.

  “Let’s see what we have here,” Crowsong said, and lifted the lid.

  The space inside was filled with packing foam tiered in layers, each holding different things. The top layer held a set of electronics that looked a bit like an overly chunky cellphone along with a set of four vials filled with liquid, two red and two blue. The bottom layer held two pill-like metal cannisters the size of my forearm, each with a hole drilled into their tops and bottoms – for the vials probably.

  “The vials look like those I saw in the trunk of that Jannacht henchie,” I said. “You think they’re part of a bomb?” That seemed to be the obvious conclusion. Nth-Sight said I had to catch that guy to stop another bombing.

  “It does seem like it, doesn’t it,” Crowsong said. “Chemicals, a trigger mechanism and two weirdly shaped cannisters. Looks like a textbook maker bomb, if there were textbooks on that sort of thing.”

  “So what do we do with it?” I asked. “Just hand it over?”

  She hesitated for a moment. “Yes,” Crowsong said. “It’s not like we have much in the way of options.”

  “But it’s a bomb he himself said could kill a good number of heroes in a single strike,” I said. “ And we’re just giving it to him?”

  It wasn’t right, not with the way things had been going in the city. With the bridge bombing two days ago reigniting the fears left over by the bombings two weeks ago, giving anyone a bomb didn’t sit well with me. Motorgang’s firebombing of the Jannacht also didn’t help, even if it wasn’t seen as a ‘bombing’ as such.

  “Look, issues of trust and his blatant attempts at manipulation aside, Nth-Sight's goals align with ours. We can rely on him on that front at least,” Crowsong said. It felt odd to hear Crowsong be the one to defend Nth-Sight. “And if he’s truly up to something nefarious, cutting off contact now is a surefire way to never finding out what he’s got in store for us. For you.”

  It made sense, but it refused to sit well with me. I didn’t know if it was my Heroic Impulse acting up for once or just my consciousness, but something nagged at me nonetheless. “Can’t we… disable it somehow?”

  Crowsong shook her head. “Wouldn’t know how – at least, not without making it obvious it has been tampered with. Which turns it into the same as taking it in the first place, except that we make Nth-Sight even more suspicious of us. But there is one thing we can do…”

  Crowsong retrieved a small band-aid box from her utility belt, opened it and shook two things out of it – a small, paper-thin dot and a set of tweezers.

  “A tracking device – the smallest one I have,” she said, and with the tweezers she pulled back a thin strip white plastic. Without the white strip, the things were nearly invisible. Only the barest hint of cables thinner than a hair and a tiny, opaque bump. Undetectable if you didn’t know it was there.

  “Grab a flashlight and hold the pills for me, will you?”

  I did and gave her the flashlight, holding the bomb out in front of her. She put her finger with the tiny tracking device in the top hole of the pill and rubbed it into its side. Then we did the same to the other.

  “It sends out a signal every hour and will last for about a month. Two if we’re lucky,” she said after we were done. “If it hasn’t moved by then, it is unlikely that Nth-Sight will use it. Perhaps we can even steal it back from him by that point, depending. And if it does move, we’ll know where it is and can decide on what to do then.”

  “Why didn’t you just say that from the start?” I grumbled.

  Crowsong shrugged while she packed the items back in the case. “Wanted to see what you had to say, and if you had any ideas on your own. How else can you learn?”

  I felt my face heat up out of embarrassment. Should’ve known she was looking to see what I could come up with, but once again, my lack of creativity revealed itself. “Sorry.”

  My mentor closed the lid and fiddled with the lock for a second, securing the case once more. “For what? Learning?” She picked the case up and thrust it at my chest. “It’s my job to teach, and your job to sit there and listen.”

  I nodded, but didn’t say anything.

  “Send Nth-Sight the go-ahead for the pickup. I’ll be monitoring just out of sight.”

  X

  We relocated – me openly and Crowsong covertly – following Nth-Sight’s directions, going further north and entering The Hub once more. When we arrived at the parking lot, someone was already standing there, waiting for us.

  The man – according to Nth-Sight, he was a man – wore golden antlers on top of a likely-fake deer-pelt cowl, his eyes and nose obscured by a simple black domino mask. As for the rest of his costume… it was a green tracksuit with a single thick white stripe running along the arms and legs. Not the most high-effort costume I’d seen.

  Crowsong took a position on a nearby roof while I swooped down and shifted right in front of him, case in hand.

  The man yelped in surprise. “Jesus! Warn a guy next time, alright?” He put his hand on his chest, taking in a series of shaky breaths.

  “Ceryneian, right?” I asked. “Here for Nth-Sight’s package?”

  “Hm?” the rogue said. “Oh yes, that’s me! Ceryneian, courier extraordinaire reporting for duty,” the man said with a salute.

  When I just stared at him silently, the salute turned into an awkward head scratch. Only to be further awkward-ed by him stabbing his hand on one of his antler’s points.

  “Sorry, still getting used to this...” He shrugged.

  “First time running errands for Nth-Sight?” I asked, handing him the case.

  He accepted it. “Well, yeah, that too, but I meant the costume. Had a bit of a switch-up recently – didn’t have antlers before, ha-ha,” he said.

  “A switch-up?” I asked.

  The man startled again. “Oh right. Stupid. Shouldn’t be telling people this,” he muttered before releasing a loud sigh. “Ah, well, whatever. It’s not like it’s a secret or anything. I used to go by another name before becoming Ceryneian.”

  I froze. “Isn’t that…?” I trailed off.

  He was silent for a second, then snapped his finger in realization. “Right, you’re Jester! Charm’s premier and most promising newbie!” Didn’t know I had that reputation, but okay. “Treaty stuff, right?”

  I nodded.

  “Alright, then let this old hand at masking twice-over explain something about the Treaty: if nobody cares, it isn’t a problem.”

  I blinked. “What?”

  “Well, the Treaty’s just like any law – or social norm, or expectation, or any other type of conformist pressure dragging you down – take your pick. It doesn’t matter what it says, it matters what’s enforced. So even if I switched names three, or four, or a thousand times, it doesn’t matter so long as nobody cares to enforce it.”

  Crowsong – or rather, Amber, since it’d been during class – had said something like that before, albeit in different words. That you should look less at the actual rules, and more at examples.

  But, “why wasn’t it enforced?”

  “Simple. The rule about multiple masked identities is more about exploitation than never changing your branding. Like, no trying to get away with multiple murders by changing your mask every once in a while, or working for both heroes and villains. You know, serious things like that,” he explained. “I on the other hand, was just some minor villain switching to rogue. No gang to pursue me for switching sides, and the heroes probably saw it as another villain off the streets, so no skin off their backs either.”

  “Well,” I said. “Thanks for explaining, I guess?”

  He saluted again. “Helping their juniors is any masked’s duty! Oh, and here.” He rummaged around in his pockets and retrieved a stack of cards, pulling one from the top. “My business card. If you ever have need of a speedster ferrying goods, give me a call.”

  I looked at the card. It read, ‘The Ceryneian Hind – swifter than an arrow’. I looked up to thank him, but he was already gone.