Bryce

I’d sat through countless business meetings, negotiated thousands of contracts, and entertained hundreds of potential clients. I had never once imagined that I could actually enjoy myself during one of these meetings.

The wine had been delicious; the food had been nostalgic, and the company was entertaining. After I finally stopped drinking during each of Lysc’s many toasts, I allowed myself to settle into a pleasant buzz and just relaxed.

Thea was having fun exchanging stories with our host. Meanwhile, I was content just watching her smile and laugh.

I wasn’t sure what Daria’s relationship was with Lysc. There wasn’t any romantic chemistry between the two of them, and her choice of soup wasn’t lost on me. I didn’t know all that much about vampires or shifters, but the most common stereotype was that they didn’t get along.

I was curious and more than a little tipsy, so I asked her about it. Thankfully, she didn’t seem offended, as she happily explained it to me.

“I’ve been with the Drassun pack since the founding of the city, around seven hundred years ago,” she said. “My sire was close with the pack alpha and I agreed to watch over the city while he’s away.”

“What’s that like? Watching a city grow from a colony over the course of seven hundred years?” I asked.

“Most of the time, it’s just really boring,” Daria said. “But I found a pleasant surprise recently and since then, I’ve grown attached.”

I recognized the coy smile.

“You found a partner?” I asked.

“No, we’re not going to let Daria start talking about Rashka,” Lysc interrupted. “We still have business to discuss, and I won’t be the one blamed for keeping the two of them apart all night.”

Daria mouthed an apology while hiding behind her mostly empty wine glass. That seemed to satisfy Lysc as she motioned for the serving staff to clear away the empty bottles and plates that had piled on our table.

Once the table was cleared and the four of us had settled comfortably, it was finally time to talk about the job offer.

“Before we discuss the details, I’d like to offer you a promise.” Lysc handed me the letter that had been inside the cigar box. I opened it cautiously.

It had a flowery apology for the late delivery and a promise that the contents of the crates had been upgraded at no extra cost. Below that, Teolix stated his understanding that it was likely too late to continue with the plan, but he offered an alternative: me.

He went into a surprising amount of very classified detail about the Para Vista incident. Some of it I hadn’t even known, like how the estimated death count was actually 10,000 higher than the corporations had claimed during the trial.

The letter then described which authorities could be used to blackmail me before going into more detail about the rest of the crew.

Thea’s strength was mentioned, but so was her vulnerability to being easily goaded into a fight, and the possibility of using my life as a bargaining chip if she ever got out of control.

There was even a description of Sora and Samira along with a theorized way to contact Mother in order to collect a presumed bounty.

The letter read like a thesis on how to manipulate all of us into working towards some unknown goal, but there was no mention of the cigar box or what was inside it.

“You mentioned a promise,” I said. “Could you explain what that has to do with this letter?”

“I promise that Daria is the only other person who I allowed to read that letter,” Lysc said. “And I promise that we won’t share the information in that letter with anybody else.”

Her promise hadn’t mentioned the box. It was always possible that what we found was just a bad coincidence and the box really was just a strange apology gift, but I refused to believe that.

I reluctantly handed the letter to Thea, and she read it, before dropping it to the floor as a pile of ash. The temperature in the room began to increase steadily.

“Why would you make a promise like that?” I asked.

“Because a letter like that happens when you stop seeing people and start seeing tools,” Lysc said. “You underestimate your enemies, and worse by far, you underestimate your allies. Letters like that, Captain Bryce Virra, topple empires before they have a chance to begin.”

“So, you don’t want a tool,” I said.

“I don’t need a tool, what I need is an ally,” she replied. “And Teolix has proven himself to be lacking in that regard. I suspected it when he failed to deliver, and that letter only confirmed my suspicions.”

“What do you think?” I asked Thea.

“She hasn’t lied yet,” Thea said. “Other than when she said the wine was good.”

Lysc just shrugged at that. “The wine is expensive and tastes like drinking a flower. It doesn’t sell well here.”

“Okay, you have my attention,” I said.

Lysc laughed and leaned forward. “Good. Now tell me, captain, what do you know about the Syndicate?”

I knew they were gangsters. They were prolific across the network, and they divided their territory into cells. A powerful lord controlled each cell, and one of those cells wanted Sora and Samira dead.

Overall, I could summarize my Syndicate knowledge with two words.

“Not much,” I explained. “I spent most of my recent life in New Eden, where Teolix controlled the crime, not the Syndicate.”

“Then you’d be surprised to learn that Teolix works for the Syndicate,” Daria said.

“He’s a Syndicate lord?” I asked.

“No, he killed a Syndicate lord,” Lysc said. “Daria is ahead of the story, she gets too talkative when she’s drunk.”

“I’m not drunk.”

“You are drunk,” Lysc said. “You’re tiny and we just watched you drink a bottle and a half of that wine.”

“I'm not tiny, and it was really good wine.” Daria seemed indignant, which caused Lysc to sigh.

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“Fine. Daria, who is an adult woman and who still giggles anytime she thinks about her wife, is absolutely not drunk. Now she’ll stop interrupting so that I can explain things properly.” Lysc glared at Daria before asking. “Right?”

“I’ll stop interrupting,” Daria said before commenting into her glass, “It’s still really good wine.”

I couldn’t help a smile. The dynamic between the two of them reminded me of my siblings, who used to argue in the same way. It was probably just the meal, but I missed home for the first time in a very long while.

“Where was I?” Lysc asked. “Right, the Syndicate. Most people know they are a huge crime organization that split the network into large sectors. Each of these sectors has a lord that sets the rules and keeps smaller gangs in line.”

“I know that much,” I said.

“Then I suppose you also know that the Syndicate lords all come from a single family.”

“How is that possible?” I asked. “There must be dozens of sectors spread across the network.”

“There are hundreds, although I don't know the exact number,” Lysc started.

“There are 291 of them,” Daria added.

“Like I was saying, there are exactly 291,” she finished. “And it’s possible because djinn may as well be immortal.”

This wasn’t good. Lysc seemed to imply that the Syndicate lords were a single family of djinn. A single djinn was incredibly dangerous, but a family of them? I had been formulating plans to eliminate Mother to free Sora and Samira, but this changed things.

Assuming that we somehow killed Mother, we would then have to fight off literally hundreds of vengeance-seeking djinn. I was going to have to talk to Sora about this later.

Lysc had mentioned that Teolix killed one. Maybe there was something he knew that I didn’t.

“Djinn?” Thea asked. “I have one of those.”

She pulled out the bottle of sickeningly pink liquid and sat it on the table. Lysc stared at it in for a moment in confusion before laughing.

“That's not the sort of djinn I’m talking about,” she said. “A djinn is a nearly omnipotent creature with the ability to warp the fabric of reality, not a bottle of cheap liquor.”

“Thea took that bottle from Teolix’s bar back when we were in New Eden,” I said. “He conceded it as a ‘spoil of victory’ after she nearly killed him.”

Lysc looked at the bottle with a newfound respect. “And he said there was a djinn in there?”

“He called it a bottled djinn.” I shrugged. “Whatever it is, it’s valuable. Teolix was really upset that Thea had stolen it.”

“I paid for it,” Thea said.

“Probably not enough,” Lysc said. “I think it’s a djinn. They are beings of spirit and there are legends of trapping them in strange vessels.”

“Why would Teolix store a trapped djinn under the counter of his bar?” I asked.

“It’s probably the same reason he used a bottle of Djinn’s Kiss,” Thea said. “He thought it was funny.”

“‘Why’ is the less interesting question,” Lysc said. “I can’t help but wonder who’s trapped inside this bottle.”

“I would assume it’s the Syndicate lord that is supposed to be dead,” I said.

“It could be Lord Ithnaa,” Daria said. “I wasn’t able to confirm that she was dead.”

“You just assumed?” I asked.

“The boss asked me to find a solution to the Syndicate on Drassun and one of my contacts suspected that New Eden’s lord was no longer in control of the sector,” Daria explained. “The more I dug, the more obvious it was that Teolix was no longer taking orders and when I finally reached out, he claimed to have killed her and that he could help us kill Rajak.”

“That doesn’t mean it is Ithnaa,” Lysc said. “It could be a djinn that Teolix used to kill her, or they could be unrelated.”

“I mean, we could just ask him,” Thea said. “Didn’t he leave you a way to contact him, Bryce?”

“He did, but I don’t think he would give us an honest answer. Not after reading that letter,” I said.

“I agree with the captain. Teolix wouldn’t want us knowing what it is we have,” Daria said. “But if he was willing to part with this bottle, then Thea must have scared him more than I thought. I’ll have to increase my initial threat assessment of her.”

“I increased Thea’s ‘threat assessment’ while she was walking up the stairs with the captain,” Lysc laughed. “She probably set off the danger sense of everybody on the block.”

“Well, I do look pretty good in this dress,” Thea said.

The job Lysc wanted us for was obvious and so was the danger. But a method for dealing with djinn could help us with Mother and the pack would make for valuable allies.

Besides, there weren’t many corporation-free planets as civilized as Drassun. It could be an ideal haven for us, especially after removing the Syndicate element.

“I don’t think it’s worth the risk of releasing an unknown and powerful djinn,” I said. “But I think I understand the job now.”

Thea stored the bottle again, and Lysc was nodding in agreement.

“The new djinn is an unneeded unknown element,” Daria said. “We want you to use the spell you created on Para Vista to kill Rajak.”

The mana engine spell would probably kill a djinn pretty quickly. They were beings of spirit, and non-corporeal beings usually relied on mana to exist in the mortal planes. The more mana a being had, the faster the engine would drain it.

“I refuse,” I said.

“You refuse? I don’t understand,” Lysc said. “You seemed interested a moment ago and you haven’t even heard how much payment we are offering.”

“How much payment are you offering?” Thea asked.

“Ten million credits,” Daria said.

Ten million was a lot of money. Even after splitting it between the crew, it would more than double the amount I had in savings, but that didn’t change my answer.

“I’m still interested in helping you kill Rajak,” I said. “But not with that spell, it’s too dangerous.”

“Nine months ago, Rajak moved into a new compound that we can’t penetrate,” Daria explained. “It’s heavily defended, but that’s not the only problem.”

“What’s the other problem?” I asked.

“Rajak is a coward. His compound is located deep within a stronghold on the other side of a portal,” Lysc said. “At the sign of any assault, he can close the portal and make himself inaccessible from the outside.”

So they wanted to infest Rajak’s compound with the mana engine spell and have Rajak contract it before he could close the portal.

That could work. One of the most dangerous things about the spell was that it had something similar to an incubation period in people who had a low mana capacity, like most humans.

Depending on the person we infected, we could be reasonably certain that Rajak would eventually contract it and that nobody could trace it back to the pack. It was a good plan, but had a single major flaw.

“That spell is too dangerous. I have no way of controlling who it spreads to and once it spreads, it doesn’t stop,” I said. “Everybody in Drassun would be dead by the end of the week, and hopefully this time it would just be limited to the one city.”

“You spent the last thirty years researching the spell,” Daria said. “You didn’t develop a countermeasure during that time?”

“I have a way to inoculate individuals, but I need to access and change their mana signature. That takes time and isn’t viable over a large population.”

“So you’re saying that this is hopeless?” Lysc asked.

“No, I don’t think that it’s hopeless,” I said. “I know a lot more than just the one spell.”

“What are you suggesting?” Daria asked.

“I would need to know a few more details, but I could cast a containment field preventing communications from leaving the compound while we assault the stronghold at our own leisure,” I said. “Then once we get to the closed portal, I could force it back open.”

“That would require us to siege the stronghold,” Lysc said. “Many of the pack would die.”

“Fewer than if my spell got loose and turned Drassun into a ghost town.”

“I can help with the siege,” Thea said. “It’s not like I would let Bryce go alone, anyway.”

“What do you think, Daria?” Lysc asked.

“It’s not ideal, but it could get us inside,” she said. “And there’s still the matter of actually killing Rajak.”

“I think now is a good time to give you the gift we had prepared,” I said. “Thea, if you don't mind.”

Thea cleared a spot on the table before placing a briefcase in front of our hosts. Lysc opened it and looked inside.

“What is this?” She asked.

“That is a heavily enchanted mana-enriched positron bomb. It’s virtually undetectable by magical or technological means and should be more than capable of destroying this entire city, let alone a djinn’s compound,” I explained. “It was hidden aboard my ship, and if I’m not mistaken, I handed you the triggering device for it yesterday.”

“I was going to tell you about it,” Lysc said.

“She’s lying,” Thea said.

“I was probably going to tell you about it eventually,” Lysc corrected.