“Alright shit-dicks, listen up!” Joel berates the group of men in his office as darkness washes over the camp outside. “I got a job lined up for you. Mayor’s in need of some extra cash to fund his early retirement, needs some help selling off some shit he imported from down south. Don’t know what it is, don’t care.

We already had a misunderstanding between Shrike and the mayor’s guys, so we are on thin ice enough as it is, you understand? I don’t need any more fuck-ups. We’ve been hired to mediate the transaction between the mayor’s guys and the buyer.

Shrike and her crew will be there. Y’all are just for looks to keep anyone from trying something stupid, you get it? Just sit there and look pretty is all you gotta do. Most of y’all hardly do shit around here, so this isn’t asking much, understood?”

A murmur of tenuous compliance leaks from the group numbering less than ten.

“Good, now get out there and do whatever Shrike says!”

---

“In position.” Anea’s fuzzy voice sounds way too intensely over the static of Rachel’s earpiece. She would be kept safe and out of the way in the woods with Shrike’s designated marksman, Slip.

Rachel’s crew meets Shrike’s party in a clearing outside town. Shrike and her crew were all physically fit, alert, relaxed, and focused. They wore comfortable and worn travel clothes under their nylon molle gear and leather harnesses that blended in with the dark and cool colors of the night.

There was Oliver, a tan man with rat tail, short goatee, and the sides of his head buzzed low. He wielded a reforged sledge hammer made to include a pick and a thrusting point with the smashing bit. He wore a multilayered riot shield on the back of his thick armor.

Everyone was around college age except for Dallas, the white-haired man with two handed long-sword, baton, and a short man-catcher spear at his back. Jason is the short one with wiry muscles like steel cords sporting several bolos wrapped around his waist and stomach.

Shrike had told them about her bounty hunting crew before they left to go talk to the mayor.

“What about Thompson?” Rachel had asked.

“Thompson? He’s not a hunter, he’s my friend from the stage hands. Got that scar when a cord snapped and whipped 'im in the throat.” Shrike said.

They had some pretty heavy duty firepower to complement their medieval weaponry, but it was best not to let the mayor know about those, even if they were allies for now.

Rachel couldn’t make out Slip or Anea in the woods, despite her training and experience to do just that, and knowing what direction they should be.

Shrike and her people spread out in a perimeter around the plains-clothed civilians, eyes scanning deep into the treeline, assessing Rachel’s and Touchstone, still in their costumes, and micromanaging the eight civilians’ every move with their gaze alone.

The ‘bums’, as Shrike called them, were heavily contrasted by their mundane and soft physiques, plain and dirty clothes, a tired and disgruntled look on all their faces. Rachel takes note of the only two who looked mentally present and alert.

Shrike marches up to Rachel. “You have the product?”

Rachel nods. Touch holds up a large duffle bag full of soda cans.

Shrikes gives the all-clear to someone over the radio. Less than a minute later, a black van comes rolling down the dirt road and into the clearing. Several men and women in sharp suits, earbuds, and pistols strapped to their sides step out of the van carrying a suitcase, and meet the rest of the people in the clearing as Shrike and her crew fan out.

Touch hands them the bag, which they thoroughly inspect, before taking back to their van under a three-man escort. The leader nods and hands Rachel a suit-case that rattles with hard credits.

Rachel opens up the box and verifies the credits through an app on her phone, which scans the laser-etched signature to make sure these were genuine gold and silver coins issued by the Western-Alliance Bank.

“Got ‘em.” Anea says through Rachel’s earpiece. “Two. I’ll be able to find them again.”

Rachel turns to the man in the suit, nods, shakes his hand, and watches them leave. She has no idea who they were or where they came from, just that the mayor arranged for them to meet here on short notice.

Rachel removes a modest amount of credits from the case. Thompson and Shrike already had most of their advance of five-thousand. Rachel hands them the remaining thousand to finish this mock deal.

With another exchange of nods, everyone goes their separate ways.

“Following.” Anea says. She would follow Shrike’s people with Slip, while Rachel and Touchstone double back to meet her outside the Pincher camp, well out of sight of the others. Then they could all go back to the hotel fucking sleep.

---

The next day, Rachel and her friends move into the mayor’s big house on the edge of town, continuing in their guise as his private security. He’s made a habit of sending his family away for the crowded holidays, so it was empty except for them and the mayor.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Touchstone runs support, researching the bandits and any suspects they come across; finding out where they liked to go, who their friends were, mapping out their hobbies, habits, routines. Along with pursuing whatever side projects he gets into whenever Rachel leaves him alone for too long.

Rachel, Anea, and Shrike’s crew keep tabs on the two thugs, only one of which Rachel noted the night of the fake deal, and chase down any leads they come up with, feeding intel to Touch so he can spit out more follow up leads in turn.

“I have some good news for you.” Touch says to Anea over dinner.

She smiles, “So I see. Save it for after we catch these guys.”

Within two days, Touch had mapped out most, if not all, of their activity and routines in real life and online. To include their online aliases on the freenet. There was still no sign of any mercenaries from Winston Industrial, no one traveling around with a robot dog. Though the dog they tore apart was promptly found and scavenged. They probably made someone a small fortune by leaving it behind.

“Is that really a good idea, wide-eyes?” Touch asks as Rachel pulls on her purple trainer’s hoodie, geometric wings spread across her back and shoulders.

“I think it’ll be fine, so long as I keep my costume on.”

“Why take the extra risk?”

Rachel looks down, smiling. “Me and my children designed it together. My daughter made it for me.”

“Hmm…” Touch mumbles as he goes back to his research.

Rachel bought everyone more disguises so they could alternate as needed. Anea couldn’t reveal any more bandits with any certainty, so she mostly fluttered around, training with Touch and Arch, and tagging along with Rachel and Shrike’s crew whenever she could.

“We’re not doing anything right now. Why can’t I go with Shrike?” Anea asks.

“I don’t want you spending time with them alone. We’re wanted and they’re bounty hunters.” Touch says.

“I see them all the time. They either don’t know, or don’t care.”

“We have to assume they don’t know, but they could find out at any moment.”

“Fine, let’s just tell them. If they were going to do a background check, they’ve probably done it by now.”

Touch suddenly turns away.

“No.”

“Why not?” Rachel asks.

Touch just stands there, eyebrows furrowed in thought, jaw clenched. Rachel steals a glance behind her, to Anea, her big brown eyes focused on the side of the stone man’s head. She opens her mouth as if to say something, then just looks on with a pained expression on her face.

Rachel moves closer. “I don’t understand. What’s wrong? I thought we were all friends now.”

“Because…” still facing away, Touch darts his eyes around, his hands search out, grabbing his pencil and rubs it between his fingers.

Anea steps forward as if to speak, but her voice catches in her throat.

“Touch, we’re here for you. Talk to us. I thought you liked Shrike, trusted her. Aren’t we all on the same side?”

“Shrike… Everyone turns on us, on me, eventually… I don’t want to give her the chance… not yet.”

“What about Ortega and Sal and all the friends you’ve made?”

“Business partners. Nothing more. They’ll betray me if they need to. Simple as that.” Touch’s voice is clipped and terse. His skin grows darker as he talks, somehow making him look smaller.

This is why he tells everyone to throw him under the bus. He wants to get out in front of it, so it hurts less. It’s for his own protection, as well as theirs.

“Touch, we’re your friends, we would never-”

“No! You would! Don’t lie to me!” Touch nearly shouts, brown eyes suddenly boring right into Rachel.

Rachel finds herself taking half a step back.

She suddenly grits her teeth together and steps forward.

“Fuck you! After everything we’ve done together! You think I would stab you in the back!”

“If the price is right! What about your son? You mean to tell me you wouldn’t choose him over me?”

“The hell are you talking about? I haven’t put anyone over anyone else!”

“Not yet. Your son is out there right now, tearing apart my home, imprisoning and killing my people-”

“That’s not him! I know Aris! I know Talia! This isn’t what they wanted. This isn’t what they set out to do. I don’t know why this is happening, but I know he isn’t the cause of it. If I could just talk to him, I know-”

“You naive, blind little shit. You think your children are so perfect? So pure? So incorruptible and innocent? Your son is a dictator. Whatever sunshine, rainbows, and good intentions he had when he started doesn’t mean a thing. Look at the effect he and his crew has had since taking power. Whatever he started out as, the act of being a violent dictator, seizing power, has changed him to be no better than the rest.”

“Shut up Touch! You are always going on about corrupt systems and factions and vague, abstract bullshit. Systems are made of people. Individual people making real, concrete choices day after day. There is no vague, all corrupting force that turns people into mindless drones. You can’t just group people into categories and act like you know them. You can’t just reduce people to whatever side they’re on.”

“Don’t put words in my mouth. A system influences people just as much as people influence systems. It’s fifty-fif-” Touch stops dead, looking past Rachel striding straight to Anea, taking her into his arms, her dark skin a shade lighter than usual.

“I’m sorry.” Touch whispers, squeezing the girl tight until his entire body turns white, twisting and pulsating with shades of gray fading in and out all over his skin.

“I’m fine. Touch, seriously.” Anea says after color returns to her skin.

Rachel steps out onto the mayor’s balcony to get some air and adds heated arguments to the list of things to watch out for around Anea, along with crowds. But not fights? She didn’t show physical symptoms during the breakout, with the dogs, or with her own emotional confession the other night. She’ll need to ask about that at some point.

She sighs and lets her forehead down to the railing, letting the cold metal ease her churning stomach. Why did they have to start yelling? Why did Touch have to start talking about Aris like that? She can’t remember a time in her life when it was acceptable to raise her voice at someone. She wanted to shove Touch into the wall…

Nothing about what she said back there felt wrong, but Rachel still found herself wishing she could take it back. She felt a sort of release and a relief at finally talking back and letting Touch know how she felt after all these months of quietly listening to him and what he had to say. She knew he was wrong. She tried thinking it over, seeing things from his point of view, but it just didn’t fit, didn’t make sense.

Rachel’s head jerks up as she hears a sharp whistle from the driveway below. She sees Shrike beaming up at her.

“Let’s go!”

“It’s our watch already?”

“No! We got ‘em. We got the guns!”