16 - Mall Rats

 

The young man staggers backwards, eyes wild with fear.  His shoulders bump into the glass door and he scrambles blindly for the handle, finds it, slides the door open, slams it behind him, and runs. 

He makes it all of five meters before reaching the edge of the penthouse’s balcony.  The lights of a city he was never allowed to learn the name of swirl far below. 

“If you’re going to jump,” says his pursuer in the same awful, chipper voice he’s used all throughout the night’s deeds, “at least take this with you first.  I do believe it belongs to you.”

The young man turns around to find Sullivan Bridgewood nearly within arm’s reach and holding out the limp, hollow, feathered skin of a crane.  His skin.

“That’s -“ the young man stammers, “But you - you - All of them - How did you - Why?”

Sullivan takes a step closer and the young man flinches.  He rolls his eyes and places the crane skin on the ground.

“Yes, it is.  Yes, I did.  With lots of practice.  Because my friend asked me to help you and because I enjoyed it.  Now then, do what you will with yourself if you like, but my job here is done.”

With that, Sullivan spins around on his heel and saunters back inside.  He doesn’t bother to look up from opening the speed dial on his phone at the flap of wings behind them.  The phone on the other end only rings twice before picking up.

“The last one’s just been set free,” Sullivan says without preamble.  It’s a lie by implication.  This had been the last of the bound and sold magical beings on the list he had extracted from Logos, but he’d had to skip over one along the way.  The sorcerer had amnesticized himself following the sale as part of one of his early deals and all that Sullivan could recover was that Logos had suspected he was going through a third-party intermediary, so no lead to follow there.  But his friend doesn’t need that failure on their conscience.

“Thanks,” his friend’s voice says tiredly, “that’s a load off my mind.”

Sullivan slides into a bunyip-leather upholstered chair and begins rifling through the private desk of a very-recently-ex CFO of a Backstage pharmaceutical company.

“You’re welcome.  Maybe you can get some sleep now.”

He pries open the false bottom of a draw with a knife, revealing a phone and a tablet.  He picks them up and puts them away to peruse their late owner’s secrets at his leisure later.

“Maybe.  Eris finally talked Lacuna into going home to do the same a few hours ago and Ashan’s resting again, so I suppose I could spare an hour or three before they’re all back to run the analysis on that tattoo of Ashan’s in the morning.”  The unspoken “but…” lingers in the electronic airways between devices.

Sullivan stands and strolls out of the study, admiring the futile handiwork on the walls of now-silent guns to keep his voice casual.

“Would you like me to come back for the night?” he offers.

“No, I’ll manage.  I should let you get back to the Lachlan case.  You said you thought you were closing in on him?”

Sullivan flips over the body of one of the hired thugs now leaking much-needed color into the painfully modern white carpet and plucks the business card from its wallet. Smartdream Security.  Interesting.  He’ll need to look up what other corporate ties they’ve got later and figure out how they’d gotten word he was coming.  Sure, he’d just spent the past twenty six hours dealing with other high-profile targets dotted around the globe before getting around to this particular rich asshole, but to put together the pattern and deploy security in that time is still impressive.  Ultimately futile, but impressive.

“Yes indeed,” he replies.  “Credit where it’s due, our alchemical acquaintance was able to give quite the invigorating runaround with all his proxy portals and diversionary world hops thanks to that headstart of his, but the trail goes through Echo Plaza and there’s only one person there he could have gone to see.”

“Echo Plaza?  I thought that place would have faded out and dispersed by now.”

Sullivan steps around and over another pair of cooling corpses to see if there are any books on the shelf or art pieces on the wall worth taking back with him that aren’t blood-stained or bullet-riddled.

“It came close but the vaporwave and mallcore booms a while back - it’s a music thing, ask the techie about it - gave it one last gasp and the hardcore regulars are doing what they can to preserve their petty slices of the cosmos.”

“I see.  I’ll leave you to it then.  Just try not to rough anyone up too badly while you’re there.”

“Of course not.”  Unlike with this job, Sullivan had given his friend his word about certain aspects of his conduct ahead of time.  It had been long indeed since the last time his friend had simply explained a situation and left with no implication other than that they wouldn’t ask questions about what Sullivan chose to do with the information.  It was certainly one way to keep their conscience clean.  “Sleep tight,” he adds.

“I’ll try.  See you later.” 

The line goes silent but there’s no click of a hangup.

Sullivan moves to the kitchen, checks the freezer, and finds it surprisingly boring.  No stashed electronics, frozen potions, or preserved body parts.  He grabs a carton of ice cream, kicks another body out of the way so that its partially-crushed head won’t hold the door open anymore, and closes the freezer.  

Returning to the balcony, he leans over the railing, balances the carton on it and begins scooping out ice cream with a knife.  Much like the city vista below, it’s night black and speckled with glazed bits that reflect the glowing veins of light that run through it.  At least the penthouse’s late owner had good taste in something.

He glances back over his shoulder and blinks through his filters.  No significant signatures other than the already-ransacked saferoom.  He returns his gaze to the view, eats his looted ice cream and waits with his phone still up to his ear.

“Su?” his friend’s expected voice finally whispers.

“Yeah?”

“Am I a bad leader?”

“Of course not, everyone loves you.  They’d follow you anywhere.”

“But should they?”

“Hey, what brought this on?”

“This is twice now that Eris and Ashan have come back in bad shape, and every quest so far we all wind up separated.”

“That’s just a new team going through the growing pains of getting used to working together.  The point is they came back and it’s not been anything they couldn’t recover from, and you’ve been able to help everyone you’ve tried to help.  That sounds like a resounding success to me, especially for the early stages.”

Silence.

Consideration.

Waiting.

“Has this happened before?”

“Do you want me to answer that?”

“No.  I don’t think I do.  It’s just…”

Sullivan’s grip on his phone tightens.

“Just what?”

“I’ve been thinking about the gaps more than I should lately.”

“And?”  They should barely be able to think about them at all.

“The list of reasons I’d want to leave them empty is pretty short, isn’t it?”

The ice cream carton tumbles down to the streets far enough below to be another world.

“You trust me?”

“For happily ever after.”

How bitter the old joke between them is.

“This isn’t going to be another gap.  I would have tried harder to talk you out of it if I thought there was a chance of that.”

“Thanks.  I needed to hear that.”

“That’s what I’m here for.  Now get some sleep.  You’ll feel better in the morning.”

“I’ll try not to dream.”

 

*******

 

Sullivan’s footsteps echo throughout the empty shopping mall and mix with the slow, distorted music playing from unseen speakers.

Echo Plaza, a place that becomes more aptly named with each passing year.  

A mere three decades ago this place would have been teaming wall to wall with shoppers from Backstage and beyond.  Wide-eyed newbies who mistakenly thought it would be a good place to ease themselves into things.  Paratech hobbyists looking for the newest offworld imports to reverse engineer.  Teenage witch covens staking out corners of spellbookstores and food courts.  Offworld travelers taking advantage of their multi-day anchor world hub layover to go sightseeing.  Fairies playing tricks from the cover of palm fronds and aerial shrubbery.  Naiads presiding over the grand fountains and granting small blessings in exchange for the coins thrown in. The list went on.

Back then, when the ideal of the shopping mall as cultural centers of commerce and socialization occupying a prominent place in the collective consciousness brought Echo Plaza into being and sustained it and its occupants with an effervescent zest for life, vendors would kill for a storefront on the young pocket dimension's main concourse.  Quite literally, as Sullivan knows from personal experience and paychecks.  In those days just being here would make everything feel exciting and wondrous.  In these window displays the kitsch became cool and the mildly uncommon became alluringly exotic.

Now there are more marble statues than people.  The grand fountains are all long dry.  Food court menu screens proclaim cryptic messages over blue error backgrounds.  Shadowy suggestions of mannequins linger in gutted boutiques at the edge of a flickering neon haze.

The golden age of the shopping mall has passed, and even the subcultural revival of the concept is inextricably intertwined with emptiness and signal decay.  None but the most stubborn of holdouts are willing to invest property in a pocket dimension on its last legs before dissolution.  Only the most dedicated seekers of aesthetic and pursuers of the niche bother to put up with the permeating air of nostalgia and melancholy.

Ironic then how the recent fad for so-called liminal spaces has made the place easier to access than ever for those few who care to look.  And for those desperate to disappear.

The first sign that someone who thinks they’re being stealthy is following Sullivan comes in the form of a blurred oil slick of color at the edge of his peripheral vision flitting from empty store to abandoned kiosk to dry fountainhead.  The rapid muffled footsteps from the second-floor walkway above give away the second stalker.   When he reaches the bridge connecting the two sides of the second floor and smells the third mall ninja hiding in the shadows beneath, he waves to his would-be-ambusher and calls out.

“Nice job kiddos, real sneaky.  Now run along and find someone else to mug before you do something stupid.”

“You  are quite observant stranger,” says the twenty-something in a blank trenchcoat and fedora who steps out of the bridge’s shadow, “but that alone will not be enough to save you now that you have trespassed on our holy training grounds.”  He pulls open the flaps of his trenchcoat to reveal dozens of the tackiest knives Sullivan has ever seen holstered in loops sewn into the garment’s inner lining.  “As you can see, I am well armed and have no intention of letting you go further.”

“You have no idea who you’re talking to, do you?” Sullivan says.

“An intruder who’s about to become a training dummy for my blades,” knife jacket retorts.

“You stand in the presence of Sullivan Bridgewood.”

“Who?”

“Sullivan Prince perhaps?  No?  How about the Golden Death?  The Xanthous Reaper?  The Assassin in Yellow?”

“Is that supposed to impress me?  All I see is a scared little man trying to bluff his way out of a fight with made up titles.”

Sullivan touches his fingers to his face and shakes his head in exasperation.  “Void Without, what ever is Anthony teaching you kids these days?  For shame.  If you’re going to go into a profession, at least make the effort of learning the historical greats in your field.”

“That’s Master Antimatter Bloodflame Drips Down The Katana That Cleaves The Horizon to you!”

“That’s one of his names, yes.  He’s also Swordmaster Death Annihilator, xXx_AnimePantySlasher_69_xXx, and Anthony Lewinski the weeblord.”

“You would slander our master so?  I may have been willing to let you walk away but now you force my hand with this dishonor.  Ready yourself for I will not hold back.”  Declaration made, knife jacket tips his fedora then draws a knife with a dragon-shaped hilt and flame-shaped blade in with hand and a two-pronged dagger with a glass eye in the crossguard and a grim reaper for a handle in the other.  The reaper’s scythe looks poised to stab its own wielder's wrist the moment he twists it wrong.

Sullivan rolls his eyes.  “Kid, you couldn’t stop me from walking away if your life depended on it.  Lucky for you and your two friends trying to hide behind me however, I already promised I wouldn’t kill anyone else this week so you all get to walk away from this lesson alive.”

“What lesson?”

“Where my names come from.”

The single step Sullivan takes forward moves him out of the path of the neochrome shuriken that misses his head and embeds itself in a marble Venus statue’s neck.  A glance back over his shoulder spots another young man, this one dressed in oil slick spandex under neochrome body armor and running at Sullivan with his arms sticking out behind him like airplane wings.  The exposed blades strapped to those arms are the same pink-and-blue swirl as the rest of him.

From above, the third assailant shouts “Sneak attack!” and leaps down from the bridge.  Sullivan sidesteps and a pair of sharpened black paddles crash into the floor.  Painted in white on one paddle is “S3X-007.”  The other reads “L0V-R34.”  Dressed in all black, this one might almost pass for a proper ninja if it weren’t for the baseball cap brim sticking out from under his cowl and the prominent brand logos on his gloves, socks, and sandals.  And of course, the yaoi paddles.

Knife jacket and oil slick reach Sullivan at the same time.  They quite nearly cut down one another when he bends backwards and limbos beneath their outstretched arms.  While those two recover, yaoi paddles takes another go at him, rectangular blades swinging fast and wide, propelled forward by far too many spins, flips and verbal sound effects.  Overall, the spectacle reminds Sullivan of a helicopter failing to take off.  Silly as it looks to him, he supposes that against any normal opponent the plethora of openings would be covered by the sheer speed of the attacks.

Sullivan toys with the trio for a little while more, luring strikes into walls and scattered statuary, catching and dropping thrown knives and shuriken, and all around letting it sink in just how little any of them can do to touch him.  Carnette had given him a whole rambling lecture once on how metaphysically interesting she found the combat style back when Anthony first developed it.  At the end of the day it all came down to believing you were cool so hard that some combination of the Autogenesis Principle and a mage’s reality warping activates, causing poorly designed weapons to become deadly and laughably bad technique to become terrifyingly effective.  Easy to underestimate and horrifically embarrassing to lose to.

Of course, it carries the glaring weakness of utterly falling apart the moment the practitioner’s confidence in his own hype is shaken.

Knife jacket’s next jab with the grim reaper tuning fork is blocked by a plain and functional stiletto catching it between the prongs.  

“Now this,” Sullivan lilts, “is a real knife.”

A mere flick of the wrist is all it takes to snap the twin cheap metal blades and force the reaper’s ornamental scythe into knife jacket’s forearm just above the wrist.  The mall ninja falls to the floor, shouting in pain and clutching the puncture wound.

“Oh spare me the tears, I didn’t even nick an artery with that one.”

That which is beneath Sullivan’s skin begins to ripple and writhe before the shout behind him of “Sneak attack!” even sounds.  By the time the square blades of “S3X-007” and “L0V-R34” swipe through empty air he’s already perched on top of the second floor bridge’s railing.  The stiletto is replaced by a curved dagger carved from bone.  Sullivan makes a show of licking the blade with a tongue suddenly grown green and forked.  He leans forward to tumble down from his perch, leaving a pair of rainbow shuriken to clatter and bounce off the railing he leaves behind.

Space twists for him again mid fall, landing him on his feet half a dozen meters from where he ought to have fallen on his face.  He reaches an arm over oil slick’s neochrome-plated shoulder from behind and rests the tip of the bone blade on the boy’s neck.

“Remind me,” Sullivan chimes, “what’s that phrase the youth today like to say in situations like this?”

“Nothing -” oil slick stammers, “nothing personal, kid.”

“Oh, but it is,” Sullivan croons.

A prick of venom and oil slick’s eyes roll back in his head as he convulses, falls to the floor and goes still.  With a tilt of his head, Sullivan gives yaoi paddles a sidelong glance.

“I do believe it is your turn.”

The last mall ninja standing lets out a high-pitched battle cry and takes a running leap toward Sullivan, giving his best impersonation of a helicopter yet.  Sullivan takes a step toward the oncoming spiral of blades and slams a palm into his chest mid spin, causing him to crumple and send the paddles skidding across the floor in opposite directions.  One of them upsets a plinth and topples a marble bust.  The black-clad youth recovers, gasps, and extends a hidden blade from his wrist.  He rears his arm back to stab at Sullivan’s and then shouts as the fingers gripping his chest dig in and sharpen into teeth.  The fingers multiply and Sullivan’s palm wraps around them, becoming a lamprey’s jawless circular mouth attached to a shiny black and boneless arm.  Eyes open where there were once knuckles and wings unfurl from where there was one a wrist as rings of teeth tear through fabric to find flesh and blood.

The shouts and struggles from Sullivan’s victim grow weaker as the few spots of exposed skin go paler.  He begins to whimper and beg.

“You really ought to consider cutting back on the salt in your diet,” Sullivan responds with a smirk.  “Your electrolyte levels are simply atrocious.  Ruins the taste.”

The bang of the gunshot is loud enough that the echoes continue for the several seconds that Sullivan subsequently spends staring at knife jacket in disapproval.  He’s managed to stagger to his feet and is now aiming a pistol engraved and painted with flaming skulls at Sullivan in a shaky one-handed grip.  Sullivan tsks.

“Don’t you know it’s poor form to bring a gun to a knife fight?  I’ve half a mind to have a word with Anthony about his students’ etiquette after the rest of my business here is done.”  He lowers his victim down to the ground and a bullet bites into his shoulder.  “Rude,” he says flatly.

His arm is human again upon standing up.  He takes a step toward knife jacket.  The next bullet breaks the glass in an empty storefront behind him.  Knife jacket begins backing away, eyes wide.  Another step.  This bullet hits just below the knee, tearing a hole in Sullivan’s slacks.  He does not stumble, and no blood leaks from the wound that is presumably hidden by the fabric.  Another step.

“Get back monster!” knife jacket shouts.  

One of the next four bullets manages to clip Sullivan’s shoulder near where the first one hit.  Another step

“ ‘Get back monster?’ Is that really the best you can come up with?”

Another step.  Between the ripped fabric of ripped puffy white shirtsleeve the wound is visible.  Something dark and not blood emerges and pulls the skin shut and seamless.  That which was glimpsed beneath the skin ripples and writhes.

Another step and the meters between them are crossed in a singular motion.  Skin settles, a foot hooks around an ankle and pulls, a body falls, a hand grabs a wrist, and a forehead presses itself to the hot barrel of a gun.  Sullivan’s other hand drops three bullets and a roll of bandages into knife jacket’s lap.  

He leans down closer still and says in a chipper voice just above a whisper, “Patch yourself and yaoi paddles over there up before the two of you bleed out.”  He moves his other hand to cup over the finger still on the trigger.  “And when you see Anthony later, tell him that he owes Sullivan Bridgewood new clothes.”

The hand begins to squeeze.

 

*******

 

“I tell you Eustace,” Sullivan says over the chiming of a store bell, “kids these days have no respect for their elders.”

“Maybe if you tried looking your age it would go better for you,” chuckles the balding, liver-spotted man behind the converted boutique’s counter.  “How have you been my man?  I haven’t seen you since the wedding.”

“Oh, you know how it is Eustace; several years of marital bliss all too soon followed by heartrending bereavement.”

For a lingering moment the boutique is silent save for the muffled music leaking in from the mall outside and the hum of stark white fluorescent lights doing their best to remove every shadow from every surface of every grey-and-white chequered floor, wall, and item of decor.

“Gods,” Eustace snorts, “I see your sense of humor is as wretched as ever.  So what is it this time?  Tried partying the bereavement away too hard and woke up in bed with a mob boss’s spouse again?  Kill an offworld prince on vacation?  Or is tax evasion and fraud more your game these days?”

Sullivan clasps a hand over his heart should be with an exaggerated gasp.  “You wound me, Eustace.  I’ll have you know I remain steadfast in my loyalty to my dearly departed wife, no matter how many old flings dream otherwise.  Can’t a man simply drop by to see how an old acquaintance is doing?”

The old man gives a short, hard, single syllable of a laugh.  “The day you make a friendly visit without an ulterior motive is the day the Veil falls.  So what’ll be, eh?  I figure you can afford the full deluxe suite with your dead wife’s money.  Soulbound pocket dimension, with luxury accommodations, self-sustaining fishery and gardens, complete with constructs to wait on you hand and foot while you wait for trouble to blow over.”

“Still trying to resell that one, are you Eustace?”  Sullivan shakes his head.  “No, I’m afraid I’m not in the market for that kind of purchase today, if you take my meaning.”

“No.  I don’t think I do.  And I don’t think I care to.”

“Oh come now, Eustace.  Surely you must remember.  Lachlan Whelan?  Little gnomish looking man about yay tall?  Hunched back?  Technically human but autogenesis did a number on him, the poor sod.  Twitchy and smelling of ammonia and bromine?  Probably in fear for his life?  Would have been in the last couple weeks.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Eustace, Eustace, Eustace,” Sullivan purrs as he leans on the counter, “I thought we had an understanding.”  Face-to-face this close, the waxy sheen on the safehouse broker’s skin is far more apparent.  As is the fact he never blinks.

“Being a repeat customer and referring my services does not entitle you to information on my other clients.”  Eustace says sharply.  “If anything, you’re the one who owes me by this point.”

“Not even just this once, Eustace?”

“No!  Half my business is staked on my reputation for discretion.  If I lose that I lose everything.”  The creeping anger in his voice is at odds with the calm expression still on his face.  Sullivan hums with amusement at that.

“Oh, I know that quite well.  Like I said, we have an understanding, don’t we Eustace?”  Sullivan leans in closer.  “And understanding like that goes both ways now, does it not?  I know how your profession works, and you know how mine works.”

“Threats now?”  Eustace scoffs.  “If you understood me half as well as you say you do you’d realize that this isn’t even my real body.  There’s nothing you can do here that can hurt me in a way that matters.”

“That’s quite the interesting theory you have there,” Sullivan lilts.  “I’m sure my dearly departed wife would have quite a few things to say about that.  Eh, Eusta-”

“Enough!”  Eustace slams the counter, failing to make Sullivan flinch.  “Yes, that’s my bloody name, you don’t have to keep saying it over and over.  Do you think you’re being endearing?  Gods!  I swear you get creepier every time you darken my doorstep.  Now get out.. of… my… shop…”  His voice goes low as the words trail off in dawning realization.

Sullivan’s ever-present smirk grows a degree wider.

“It’s true, isn’t it?” Eustace stammers, “What they say she did to you.”

The smirk shows teeth.  Even through the wax figure proxy body, Eustace shivers.

“Who was it?  A hex witch?  A contract demon?  Some poor fairy that just wanted a Name of its own?”

A tongue slithers out from between the teeth and traces the smirk’s outline.

“Just a scumbag sorcerer with a passing fair grasp of nominal magic,” Sullivan answers, “the sort that no one will mourn his passing and at least a few will celebrate.  I’d say I even did a good deed removing him, but the truth is I was just handed the leftovers after associates of mine had thoroughly dealt with him.”

“And I thought you were a soulless snake before.  Fine!”  Eustace retrieves a notepad from a drawer, slaps it on the countertop and begins scratching it hard enough with a pen to be audible.  “The location of the safehouse I sold Lachlan Whelan,” he says as he rips off the top page, flips it face down, and slides it over.  “It’ll burn as soon as you read it, so memorize it the first time.  Now get out of my shop and don’t come back!”

Sullivan takes the paper, holds it up, and catches the ashes in a handkerchief that he subsequently pockets.

“A pleasure doing business with you, as always,” he says, pushing off of the counter.  Halfway to the door he spins around on his heel and adds  “By the by, if it eases your conscience any I’m actually going to save dear mister Whelan’s life.  This is one of my friend’s jobs, not one of mine.”

“It’s for Road?”

“Have I ever been known to have another?”

“Seven hells, man!  You could have just opened with that and I would have handed the damn address over.”

“Oh, I know.”

“Then why the wheedling and the threats?”

Sullivan shrugs theatrically.  “I wanted to see if I could still get a rise out of you.  You should have seen your face, even through the proxy dummy.  The real thing must have been just priceless.  Did you really think that I - what? - ate people and stole their magic?  Ooohhh, out of all the wild rumors to come out of my marriage and that’s the one you jump to?  And did you really think I’d be fool enough to seriously threaten so useful a contact?”  He chuckles and shakes his head.  “Don’t ever change Eustace.”

The exhale of relief comes through the wax proxy better than Sullivan would have expected.  When Eustace speaks, the anger is still there, but it’s duller now.  “Let the door hit you on the way out.”

Sullivan gives a flourishing bow and walks out the boutique backwards, making a show of bumping into the door to open it.

A bit of showing off in front of the youth to keep his name out there, a most entertaining spot of catching up with an old contact, and directions to what should be the last step of his hunt.  All in all, not a bad trip to the mall.  Perhaps he’ll swing by the food court on his way out to see if anyone’s still selling anything esoteric or aesthetic enough to be worth eating.