The weekend was far from the blessed relief I wanted it to be. Casey, bless their heart, was at least still sending me an emoji update once per day, but they’d gone from a thumbs-up-down-or-neutral to just being a neutral or thinking emoji. It was hard not to read more into that than was there, particularly since I was far from literate in what was practically a new pictographic language, but even a cryptic not-message was still better than radio silence.

  Sensing I was in a funk, or perhaps having been informed by Gorou that I wasn’t having a great week, my besties Kimi and Kei dragged me out for manicures at this great spot near the Japanese Embassy, followed by a bit of retail therapy. And while that didn’t fix anything, I at least had a cute new pair of kitten heels, a sundress that wouldn’t need a tailhole, and shiny, glossy pastel purple nails.

  Now it was Monday, May 31. I knew Casey had their Bar Exam prep until one in the afternoon, meaning I likely wouldn’t hear anything until later… but that didn’t stop my anxiety from spiking when I woke up this morning. I barely managed to eat some onsen tamago over rice and have a cup of coffee before the world finally, finally gave me a distraction that I could latch onto. Specifically?

  I got an email that Wayne McCain was back in the DMV Metropolitan Area, days ahead of schedule, and was already in the Moonshot holding cells waiting for me.

  Needless to say that I sucked down my coffee faster than was comfortable, got as presentable as I could within fifteen minutes, shot an email to the practice group that I’d be out of the office to see a client, then took full advantage of my flier’s license to get to the District Court in record time.

  The guards out in front of the courthouse took one look at me and waved me past security without a word, and by the time I’d reached the elevators, I’d been joined by the same NMR trooper who had escorted me down to see Caleb Holder just shy of three weeks ago. Unlike last time, though, he wasn’t kitted like he might need to take down a rampaging supervillain. He was just in whatever a soldier’s daily wear was called — damn, I could swear I knew the name for those particular clothes, but for the life of me I just couldn’t remember it. Regardless, the man was quiet, efficient, unobtrusive, and professional. And most importantly, he seemed to actively care about making my life easier, whereas pretty much every other NMR trooper who’d ever accompanied me down to Moonshot Holding might as well have had a degree in inconveniencing me in particular.

  “If you’ve got a business card, make sure I get it so I can get you a little something for the holidays this year,” I told him as we stepped into the elevator and he fobbed us down to the secure floors, “because I can say with confidence that you’re the best damn trooper who’s ever accompanied me for this thing.”

  “No can do, ma’am,” he replied as the elevator doors closed and we began heading down. “Can’t accept gifts for doing the job.”

  “Trooper, either you tell me or I ask the Staff Judge Advocate for help,” I told him as the elevator dinged, and the doors opened. “And while she would do it, I doubt she’d enjoy having to play courier for her sister-in-law’s whims.”

  I exited the elevator and started walking down the hall, keeping one ear swiveled towards the trooper. Sure enough, I heard a notepad flip open, a pen click, and pen gliding across paper, which had me smirking in victory. When I stopped at the first of three blast doors separating the Moonshot holding cells from the outside world, the trooper handed me a small sheet of paper, torn from his notepad.

  “Much obliged, Sergeant Fielding.” I tucked the piece of paper away in one of my briefcase’s front pockets. “Shall we?”

  “Ma’am.” He unlocked and wrenched open the three-inch-thick blast door for me, and stood at attention once we were inside. “You know the drill. How long do you want me to wait before pressing the panic button?”

  “Hmm… give it two hours,” I decided. “Pyre has been nothing but compliant this entire time. Plus, I can always just overpower him if things go completely to hell.”

  “Wilco,” he said. Air Force slang? Huh. Guess the NMR wasn’t above poaching talent from elsewhere.

  I gave Sergeant Fielding one last nod, then pushed open the first of two blast doors, waited the requisite time for that one to lock, let the other unlock, then opened it and made my way inside.

  “Well this is a nice surprise.” The holding cell’s occupant started talking even before I fully got into the room, and by the time the door had closed behind me, he’d settled into a parade rest. And though his eyes laid squarely on me, there was a gentleness to them. “It’s been a long time, hasn’t it, Foxfire?”

  “I don’t go by that anymore,” I replied, my tone just as casual as his. “It’s just Naomi Ziegler now. But yes, it has been a while. And, I do wish it had been under better circumstances, but alas.”

  “But alas,” Wayne McCain, Pyre, agreed with a quiet nod.

  When you saw him in photographs, Pyre always seemed big: stocky, swarthy, broad, tall, and grizzled. The cameras always made sure to highlight the scars on his arms and neck, the set of his jaw, the blue eyes, and now-graying blonde hair. The man was the Aryan ideal, and over the years, the media had very deliberately used that appearance to enhance his whole anti-neo-Nazi agenda. After all, it was one thing for a minority to say that white supremacy was a social cancer — it was another thing entirely for somebody who’d practically stepped out of the Fuhrer’s wet dreams and used to subscribe to that whole nonsense to then turn and tell you that yes, white supremacy was a social cancer, and he’d seen it firsthand.

  In person, though? Wayne McCain didn’t look like a grizzled, hardened neo-Nazi puncher. He looked like a high school football coach. Oh, don’t get me wrong, the muscles and scars were still there, and he still very much gave off the impression of being a manly man who did manly things. But while the Pyre in the photo ops looked out of place anywhere but the battlefield? The real man, the one standing before me? I would’ve expected to find him giving a motivational speech in a locker room at halftime. The only detail to the contrary was the trio of dog tags he wore around his neck, which he’d been allowed to keep purely out of respect for his service.

  And yet, despite all of that, here he was in prison fatigues. What an utter goddamn travesty. But hey — that was why I was involved, wasn’t it?

  “So. You here to interrogate me, or what?”

  “Quite the opposite, I assure you.” I slid my briefcase off my shoulder as I approached the stone ‘cot’ in the cell, then retrieved a manila folder and pen from within, and offered them to him. “After the old lush passed, the court appointed me to be your new lawyer. But I’m in favor of asking permission rather than forgiveness, so I’ll wait until these get signed before I start to pry.”

  “Heh,” he chuffed, even as he accepted the pen and papers. “You sure about this, little lady?”

  “Well, in fairness, I don’t have much of a choice,” I griped, flicking an ear in amusement. “Either I have your case or the Chief Judge gives me a different one. And if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather one that doesn’t leave me falling on my sword again.”

  “Ah.” McCain sighed, then sat down on the stone cot with pen and paper in hand. “I might have to disappoint you, then.”

  “Well, if that’s to be the case, disappoint me after you’ve read and signed the agreement,” I reminded him. Thankfully, he flipped it open and started reading, giving me a few moments to chew over his words.

  Despite all the material I’d been provided by the court and the feds, worryingly little of it actually stood on its own. I was missing too much information to do more than make assumptions on all the granular details, the ones that filled in the picture, and the few solid facts I had served as little more than an outline.

  There were two things I knew for certain, beyond a reasonable doubt, and divorced from any other information. One: the damage to Pyre’s clothing shown in his arrest photos could not have come from the usual tools available to the law enforcement officers responsible for arresting him. Two: whatever the apparent motive involved here, the choice to interfere in the arrest of white supremacists immediately fleeing the scene of a domestic terror attack was at odds with twenty-plus years of concerted, repeated action in the opposite.

  It didn’t add up. There was some other piece of information I needed, something which might explain why he just let a bunch of neo-Nazis go at the cost of his own freedom, reputation, and decades of hard work. Plus maybe, as a treat, I’d be able to intuit a little tidbit as to why he got sent to Chesapeake, well away from anyone involved in his case, witnesses, alleged accomplices, accusers, attorney, and all… which I could then send to Megan and make heads roll!

  Unfortunately for me, the click of a pen brought that train of thought to a sudden stop, and MdCain returned both the folder and my pen. I flipped the folder open to check that he’d signed, and once that was set, it went back into my briefcase, to be replaced by a legal pad. Remember, kids: real lawyers take notes. Lots, and lots, of notes.

  “Alright,” I began, clicking the pen and writing in the date and subject at the top of my notepad. “Sergeant McCain—”

  “Just Wayne, please,” he interrupted. “No reason to stand on ceremony here.”

  “If you insist,” I acquiesced, though I made a mental note to use full formalities in any filings. “Wayne. Just so you know where we stand: the US Attorney is charging you with seven counts of federal obstruction, interference with agency functions, and aiding and abetting a federal crime. You are also being charged as an accomplice for eight counts of attempted murder, as well as for two counts of felony murder.” I took a breath, watching McCain’s face for any sign of response, but… nope, nothing. Cool as a cucumber. “Now, obviously I could argue some of these away, get everything down to a bare minimum by leveraging your years of service, but I’m not the type to press for a plea bargain when I don’t have all the information. So to that end: assume I know everything that’s in writing. What isn’t?”

  Wayne took a deep breath of his own, and exhaled in slow, measured fashion. He looked around the holding cell, eyeing the corners, walls, ceiling, and what few nooks or crannies existed in such a small, open space.

  “Who’s listening in?”

  “Nobody,” I assured him. “Cameras are on and somebody’s watching, but until I go back out, the microphones are off. Opening the exterior blast door cuts power to the microphones until the next time it’s opened.”

  “Hmm.” McCain’s hands were clasped in his lap, one thumb rubbing across the back of the other. “Okay. The numbers are wrong, but I’m guilty of the things they threw at me in sevens. Not going to deny it, even if there’s more to the story. The others are bullshit, but…” he sighed, tired and forlorn. “We can’t fight it. Not yet. Not until they’re safe.”

  … ooh, I had a bad feeling about this…

  “Wayne, please don’t play the pronoun game with me,” I admonished, ears lowering in time with my darkening tone. “I can intuit a lot, but this, I need you to spell out for me.”

  “It wasn’t seven,” he said, one hand coming up to play with his dog tags. “Went to give a talk in Arlington. The researchers I trust ID’d it as a hotbed of neo-Nazis. I know what you’re thinking, but Arlington?” He scoffed. “Looks good, got a price tag to match, but there’s rot under there. Anyways. Had two teens come up to me after the talk. Words didn’t match body language, knew they were being watched. Not something you expect to see from teens.”

  The stilted, somewhat clipped way Wayne spoke conveyed a lot of information very quickly, and made it easy to take notes, I’d give him that. But it was also… detached, I guess? It was completely different from the way he’d spoken to my contingent of the NMR way back then, that was for damn sure.

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Even so, I was starting to get a picture of what was going on, and I did not like it.

  “Kids were from local police families,” McCain continued. “Parents, grandparents. Uncles. One saw a tattoo on his dad, a Crusades cross. The other shared a photo of his dad’s Iron Eagle keychain. Said they’d seen more at a police barbecue. Wanted help getting out. Needed to be soon.”

  “Was there any reason for the urgency?”

  “Both turning 18 soon,” he said, like that explained everything. And damn it, but it did.

  There was only one conclusion I could draw: until they turned eighteen, anything the two got “caught up in” (read: forced into) could be blamed on just being teenage woes or peer pressure, and swept under a rug — including being present at a neo-Nazi ‘initiation’.

  Which meant that Arlington’s police force was at least in bed with white supremacists, or even worse, was the root of a brand new chapter thereof.

  This was less of a surprise than one might expect — declining communities bring down property values, opportunistic investors spot an opportunity, pour money into a community, and gentrify the everloving hell out of it. A known… well, okay, which term you used to frame the issue usually changed depending on your tax bracket, but a known downside of gentrification was that all the new development raised the area’s property values, and with it, cost of living. That increased cost of living priced out the lowest income groups first, which were statistically more likely to be minorities, and the struggle to not give up everything they’ve known tends to cause a gradual deterioration: rising costs meant routine maintenance became emergency maintenance, resources got stretched, and everything else got pushed back with it.

  Tightening the belt that much made these lower-income neighborhoods stand out — and not in a good way. That, alongside increased attention from moneyed investors, also prompted an increase in police focus towards any area that wasn’t shiny, spiffy, and ‘presentable’ to said investors’ money, which was, again, the slowly deteriorating lower-income neighborhoods. This left you with neighborhoods that pulled down the rest of the area’s property values, were more likely to be populated by minority communities, and whose residents grew increasingly desperate as their already meager dollars were stretched ever thinner.

  Or, to maybe put too fine a point on it: you now had different-looking people that those with power and privilege could point at and blame for all the area’s problems.

  Now, police officers made okay enough livings, but they weren’t the doctors, lawyers, or financial workers of the “white-collar” strata. They were often “lower-middle class”, if not outright as broke as the people they routinely arrested for such terrible crimes as having a visible amount of melanin in their skin. The difference lay in the fact that they had power — real, tangible power, the kind you could absolutely hold over another person — while also having not enough power to actually solve their problems. That sort of position left you looking for someone to blame, which was almost always the people whose presence impeded wealthy interests. Purely by coincidence, clearly.

  Regardless — people in positions of helplessness turn towards easy answers, such as ideologies that give them a target to blame for their problems without actually requiring them to accept their own complicity in the issue. And in this instance, the people who’d been stuck in declining neighborhoods got pulled in by white supremacist talking points that blamed their nonwhite neighbors, which led them to the police force as a way to exert power over those nonwhite neighbors. Meager police salaries didn’t actually do anything to alleviate the economic woes caused by gentrification, though, and while you would think the lack of tangible improvement would challenge those viewpoints, most of those new policemen instead doubled down on those regressive views, thereby worsening the neo-Nazi stranglehold on their communities.

  That was probably what brought Arlington to McCain and company’s attention in the first place, what had him looking at that school. And sure enough… he put out a line, and got a bite.

  All that being said… one thing still wasn’t adding up.

  “Why the inflation in numbers?” It was the one detail I still couldn’t put my finger on — McCain was facing seven of each non-victim-specific federal count, but from what he was telling, he’d only helped two people evade arrest. “Three or four counts I could understand, but seven? How do two counts expand to being so many more?”

  “Asking the wrong question,” he murmured, then nodded at my notepad. “Anything you got say who was first on the scene?”

  “My materials said FBI—”

  “Wrong,” McCain interrupted, which had my ears perking up in alarm. “It was my second from the NMR, my ‘handler’. Master Sergeant Jefferson Gillespie. He was there for the boys. Busted me up when I wouldn’t let him at them, then dumped a gun on me while I healed and met the feds halfway to me. Said he’d seen me leading seven people away before meeting up with them.”

  Ooh, that was bad.

  “You’re certain?” I questioned. “You’re absolutely certain that it was your handler?”

  “Positive.”

  “No chance of mistaken identity?” Wayne shook his head. “Not a shapeshifter or an illusionist?” He shook his head again. “A-and you’re sure he was there voluntarily?”

  This time, Wayne nodded his head.

  Shit.

  “Ugh, just great,” I murmured, and switched from writing in English to continuing my notes in Japanese, just in case somebody tried to catch a look. “So the teens were being pressed into it because of age and proximity to other members? Anything else?”

  “Yeah,” he nodded. “They’re both Moonshot.”

  A strangled yelp of shock tore its way out of my throat, my pen dropping from suddenly limp fingers into my lap.

  Ooh, no. Oh, no no no…

  “... they’re Moonshot?” I whispered, scarcely able to breathe as my mind raced. But then Wayne nodded, which just made things so much worse. “Both of them?” He nodded again, and I gulped. “W-what type?”

  “A2,” he answered. “Moderately dangerous alone. Much more so together.”

  Uh. Uh-oh, that… oh. Ooh, fuck.

  “They were getting forced into being neo-Nazi supervillains?”

  “That’s my guess,” McCain said.

  “A-and your handler, your partner, the soldier you’ve been working with for decades has been a white supremacist the whole time!?” I all but screeched, eyes wide and ears flat from the sheer horror of it.

  “Yes,” he said, quite simply. “Don’t know which thought’s worse: that he was a Nazi the whole time, or that he became one despite our work,” Wayne muttered, resignation showing in his slumped shoulders and hollow voice. And God, if I couldn’t help but empathize. Nobody expects a double-cross from somebody without red flags.

  But the instant it seemed that the tiger hadn’t truly changed its stripes, they all pretended to have seen it coming, and treated the poor tiger like scum.

  Beyond that, I doubt anyone had entertained the idea of a double agent, especially when Occam’s Razor provided the much simpler answer of the once-bad guy secretly still being bad. Which wasn’t surprising, not really… but it was still disappointing.

  “Had time to think about it,” McCain continued. “He’d been pushing us towards rival or opposed groups since the Twenty-Tens, at least. Probably also the one that got me shipped out to Chesapeake after the old lush drank his last drop.”

  That mention of Wassenberg was setting off a whole new alarm bell in my head, because yes, coincidences did happen — but when you had homegrown terrorists trying to indoctrinate supervillains, and who had a man high enough up on the inside to frame a superhero? That was just a little too convenient for comfort. Wassenberg having had a reputation for drinking to excess meant that in the absence of any other visible cause of death, the examiner on the scene would’ve just assumed that the alcohol finally got him.

  “You got shipped out of town so that nobody would know to interfere before they could re-attempt an initiation, I’m guessing?” I asked, swallowing my nerves as I tried to make my ears stand back up straight.

  “Close, but no. Bastards have to find them first.” Wayne chuckled, and cracked a wry grin, one with actual mirth in it. “Tossed them a burner, said to call the speed dial on three, say Pyre sent them. Old friend from service, settled in DC. Told Wassenberg how to make contact, but never to write it down. They should still be safe.”

  “Oh thank God,” I gasped, letting out a little giggle of relief. “Okay, okay that… that is very, very good news. But, um. Look, if they haven’t been found in the last three months, they’re not going to be found anytime soon, so let me set that aside for the moment.” McCain nodded, and there was a small gleam in his eye that wasn’t there initially. “The big issue we’re facing is a man on the inside. I can’t see any path towards a good ending for you or those boys until he’s handled, but that’s not something I can handle by myself.”

  “Elaborate?” McCain requested. While the brevity of the response could have come off as terse, or even hostile, the tone was one of genuine curiosity.

  And that gleam in his eye was still there. This wasn’t a defensive maneuver or holding action anymore, he could tell.

  It was an alpha strike in the making.

  “Wassenberg had friends in high places who could have subtly pushed for an investigation into things,” I began, setting aside my notepad and folding my hands over my lap. We were well and truly off the record now; not even the densest Japanese would stop a truly concerted attempt to breach my notes, so it was time to rely on memory alone. “I, on the other hand, have a very particular friend in the exact position to let our probes ignore subtlety while remaining inscrutable. And given what you’ve told me, our interests align enough to need little more than a tip to go off of.”

  “… hmm.” McCain’s grin faded to a thin frown, brow furrowed in thought. “How much do you trust this ‘friend’ of yours?”

  “She trusts me enough that I’m already helping her with something else off the record,” I revealed, deciding there was little point to secrecy in this matter. “And beyond that? She’s the Staff Judge Advocate for the Guard here in DC. Suffice to say that she has a very vested interest in rooting out criminal activity by her men and in her backyard. You don’t let someone shit where you eat.”

  “True,” he murmured. “Hmm… okay. I’ll trust your judgment.”

  “Thank you,” I sighed, and offered him a gentle smile before putting my game face back on. “Now, the plan: I get the ball rolling with my contact. At the same time, I’ll file a motion to extend discovery deadlines, citing the weeks between me being assigned your case and you being returned to the District. Once those are both handled, I’ll get in touch with the boys and see what I can do to more officially protect them.” I blinked, struck by a sudden thought. “When they approached you, what did they want, specifically? Just ‘away from the neo-Nazis’, or something else?”

  “If you’re suggesting what I think you are, your friend can help here too,” McCain answered, preempting my follow-up question entirely. “NMR’s still a way out. Just gotta handle the inside man.”

  “Roger that,” I told him, making yet another mental note for my upcoming discussion with Megan. “Anything else?”

  “Got ears on the ground?” he asked. I waggled my hand as a noncommittal answer, because, well, sort of? Regardless, McCain nodded and let out a quiet harrumph. “NMR and cops work together, but they’re not friendly. Lots of shit-talking. Someone probably heard something we can use, just can’t come forward.”

  “Understood,” I said. The discussion was well and truly winding down, so I grabbed my notepad and pen and slipped them back into my briefcase. “And now, the last detail I can’t put in writing: where did your ‘old buddy’ stash the boys?”

  McCain looked over at me, and kept a straight face for maybe two seconds. Then a massive shit-eating grin tore its way across his features, and with a smugness so thick I could almost taste it, he told me.

  I blinked. My ears flicked in disbelief, and I just stared at the man. But one second turned into five turned into ten, and the only change was that laughter joined that grin of his.

  I couldn’t help it. I laughed. I laughed so hard that I fell off the bench and onto the floor, my tail wagging up a storm behind me, and I couldn’t even care because it was just too damn perfect.

  Where do you hide the black sheep sons of neo-Nazis that their parents would never think to check?

  Simple.

  You hide them with the drag queens.