Chapter Seventeen

“Dex, is it possible to track Asai’s location?” I asked through grit teeth. Dex placed his hand on his chin, leaning on the steering wheel.

“I mean, there’s several ways to go about that--”

“What about stealing someone’s phone connected to Asai?”

“Perhaps if they’ve been messaging her phone directly and not through the Nobles app, I might be able to come up with something,” he told me. “Why? Big plans for her?”

“Something like that.”

“We only have a day before the deal goes down. The fuck are you planning?” Arid questioned.

“I need to go back to The Bloodbath.”

“For what purpose?” Krow asked.

“I need a change of clothes,” I answered. “And a mask.”

Dex drove us to my desired destination and I briefly bantered with Erza as she handed me my clothes and a stylized mask that covered my entire face. I headed back into the van and Dex drove me to my next and final desired destination for the time being: Uptown Haven.

I stepped out and held the van door open as Vulcon spoke.

“I’m coming with.” I held a hand out and he stopped. I shook my head.

“Stay with Arid and Erza in The Bloodbath until it comes time for the deal,” I instructed.

“How will you get back?” he asked.

“I’ll make my own way.”

With that, I shut the van door and they drove off, leaving me alone for the first time in a long while. I took a deep breath, inhaling the rich and wealthy air of Uptown. My thought process with being here was there was statistically less crime here than Midtown and Downtown which likely--in turn--meant less Nobles. 

I would have to cause a commotion of some sort to get the attention of any Nobles that may have been patrolling nearby. Something that wouldn’t immediately out me as the cause of the issue. That’s when I heard the roar of an eighteen-wheeler barreling down the street in my direction. I could have shot ice underneath it and caused it to careen off the road, but a bystander could see me do that. I’m surprised I wasn’t caught already because of the mask. Perhaps they believed I was a newborn Noble.

Instead of causing the truck to slide on ice, I shot flakes of my deteriorating black ice in a couple of its tires. It whizzed past me and as it approached a red stoplight, the tires finally popped. There was no time for the truck to stop for the line of cars in front of it. I almost felt bad for the necessary sacrifices. 

To my dismay, the truck never crashed into the line of cars. The truck never crashed at all. The driver was able to swerve the truck out of the way onto the other side of the road, all while holding the brake and the cars approaching from the other side were all able to successfully maneuver out of the way. This was too much of coincidence to not have someone messing with the probability of the circumstances. It reminded me of…May. 

Unfortunately--or fortunately--it was a Noble that intervened and he made himself known as he approached me. His outfit was about as subtle as mine: fedora, private investigator overcoat, thick mustache, and a look that made him seem like the most depressed motherfucker on the planet. 

“Ma’am, I’m gonna need you to come with me,” he said. I didn’t have time for games.

“What gave me away? Was it the mask?” I asked.

“Call it a gift. Call it whatever you want,” he said. “Plenty of time to come up with names on the way to prison.”

“Verdict!”

The voice came from behind me. I hadn’t noticed the Noble up until this point. He was clad in a mostly blue suit with yellow-patterned lightning going down the side of it. He reminded me a lot of Metaman. Possibly weaker.

“I found her Sir Charge,” The Verdict said to his partner. “She was just about to make the decision to come quietly.”

“Neither of you look like you belong in the wealthy Uptown Haven,” I said, attempting to get under their skin. “Did Asai plant you here?”

“She did some shifting around from where people normally do their patrolling,” Sir Charge said. “Something to do with fresh eyes surveying an unknown territory.”

“Guess she didn’t know she sent you to your deaths,” I said with a smirk on my face. I attempted to immediately stab The Verdict through his eye, but it missed. I really did not wish to take my chances with probability manipulation again. As soon as my attack missed, I threw up an ice wall behind me. Apparently I was quick enough to stop the electricity that surged from Sir Charge’s body. 

I took a mental note of the screams. Civilians were fleeing the area quickly. I would have to make this fight as swift as possible. To prevent Sir Charge from interfering, I created a dome around just me and The Verdict so he had nowhere to run. And as I rushed at him with an ice sword I created, a car crashed through the dome, throwing me off-balance and sending ice shards everywhere--none of which landed on or in The Verdict, of course. 

Sir Charge shot his electricity at me from his fingertips and I had to physically absorb some of the damage before I had enough time to craft my ice shield. While focusing on minimizing my damage, I had also taken a mental note that The Verdict hadn’t even attacked me yet. Nor had he used his probability manipulation to even try to harm me. He seemed hellbent on forcing me to give up and go with them willingly. With these thoughts in mind, I swapped my primary focus to Sir Charge instead. Doing this might've forced The Verdict to use his powers more, giving me a better opening.

Behind the shield, I crafted an icicle and flung it above the streams of electricity so it would possibly land in the top of Sir Charge’s head. This forced The Verdict to use his power as I predicted in order to protect Sir Charge. And while he did whatever was the requirement to activate the probability manipulation, I flung an icicle at his throat. 

It successfully pierced the Noble’s throat and when it did his eyes widened. But all he did was grimace as he kept his eyes locked on me. The icicle I threw at him was lodged in a place and angle in his throat that didn’t allow blood to escape, nor did it stop his breathing. Even with this knowledge I turned back around to now give all of my attention to Sir Charge as I tossed my ice shield at him.

He was able to punch through the shield and when he did, all he saw on the other side of it was his partner now deteriorating from my black ice as it killed the skin and flesh around The Verdict’s throat. 

While he was focused on his teammate, I used the fact that he had sympathy against him, letting him see his partner die as I snuck around him and jabbed an ice sword through the back of his spine and out his stomach. 

I believed he had given up, but he gripped the end of the ice sword that was also eating away at his insides and shouted, “NOT YET!”

Without even checking to see if I was still holding on to the sword--which I wasn’t--the idiot let out all of the electricity he had to offer through it. I walked around him and stood in front of him, cocking my head to the side with a combined look of confusion and disappointment sprawled across my face. 

“Shit,” he said. “Tell my daughter, I’m sorry.”

His words meant nothing to me. And the nail in his coffin was the icicle I threw up earlier wasn’t set off its course by hitting a bird or something else by complete chance. Instead, it landed in the top of Sir Charge’s head and instantly put him out of his misery. I turned around to see The Verdict had succumbed to the deteriorating effects of my ice. The fight was over, but I wasn’t done.

I searched both their bodies for the cell phones. The Verdict had an old flip phone that couldn’t even take pictures, while Sir Charge had one of the newest smartphones. I grabbed both and escaped from the area, using back alleys and empty side streets to my advantage to walk all the way back to The Bloodbath in Midtown. 

“How’d your hero-killing adventure go?” Arid asked, spite in his voice. Without answering, I threw the two phones I collected from my kills on the table Arid sat at with Krow and Dex.

“I didn’t take the chips out, so it’s possible they’re already tracking where we are,” I told Dex.

“No worries,” Erza said, joining us. “If they are, we have plenty of people that can hold off whomever they bring until you can escape, doll.”

Even though I was indebted to her, and she was referred to by many as a demon--The Deal Demon--there was something comforting about the way she spoke. Dex picked up The Verdict’s flip phone.

“Of course this phone doesn’t even have an application store to download the Nobles app,” Dex informed us. “He doesn’t have any text message history, nor many contacts. None of them are even Asai or Cobbs.”

“And Sir Charge’s phone?” I asked. He placed the flip phone back down on the table and picked up the smartphone.

“Uh, let’s see. Lotta text messages to his wife and daughter and…ah, here. Asai,” Dex said. “A lot of these are just one-sided conversations, if you could even call them that. Asai doesn’t respond to anything he says. Almost like this is a fake number.”

“Think she would do that?” Vulcon asked me. I shrugged.

“Depending on the type of person Sir Charge was, it’s possible. Based on our fight, he seemed like the stereotypical meathead type, but the last thing he said was ‘tell my daughter, I’m sorry’,” I explained. 

“So, would the next logical step be to find the daughter?” Krow questioned.

“No,” Arid interrupted. “The next step is to finish this deal and be done with even being associated with her.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “Once Aura Ray and Vice are awake again, I’ll have no use for you anyway. Maybe Dex.”

“You stay the fuck away from him.”

“Relax, you two,” Erza said. “There’s rooms in the back where you can sleep for the night and wait until it’s time for the deal. Until then, try not to kill each other.”

We did as suggested and I settled down in my own room trying to fall asleep. My mind kept racing about what could have gone wrong up until this point to cause my plan to fail and what could go wrong in the future, but my thoughts naturally drifted to letting it be. What was going to happen would happen, I would just have to find my way around the problem and reach a logical solution that would end in my victory, no matter the cost. I had to remind myself not to get attached to any of the beings assisting me along the way. My fear of losing sight of the end goal was part of the reason for my “outburst” today. I needed to remember what I was doing all this for, why I was being hunted, why I was labeled public enemy #1. 

That night, I had a dream about seeing my brother again in the afterlife.