(1) Sinless Day (Pt. 2)- Scouting The Drug Den

--- Mercer ---

Standing on the half-torched remnants of his old apartment building he did a quick check of his surroundings to make sure he’d read the girls right and that both Scarlet and Belle had stayed behind. (Looks like it, and there’s still enough daylight that I doubt they’d be able to hide all that well. And even if they are managing to hide from me, actually following is about to be a lot more difficult for them.)

He double checked his backup -now main- grapplers as he strapped them onto his forearms. (Well, at the very least they can shoot and pull the grapple lines and the actual grip piece is intact so I shouldn’t have too much trouble latching onto things. That said, the main motors are the only ones working, while the zip-motors are pretty much shot at this point.)

Shaking his head and rolling his shoulders he fired the line towards a nearby ledge that he knew could support his weight, just to make sure something wouldn’t go wrong while he was actually swinging around.

With a nod as the grip held under a decently solid tug, he had it release and retract back into the main machine, and the line retracted into the hidden spool within -at a speed that despite the broken zip-motors he wouldn’t have to worry about it whipping through the air behind him- before the grip snapped into place just behind his wrist where it wouldn’t get in the way of his hand movements.

Satisfied that everything was in order, he rolled his shoulders before taking a few steps back and promptly running off the edge of the five story building as he shot the grapple at a nearby ledge.

There was a tugging on his arm that threatened to dislocate his shoulder as the line went taut and he was briefly reminded of how he’d had to wear a harness connecting both grapplers to his torso to spread the pressure out. (But that was back before I could do a one armed pull up.)

Bending his bicep, he spread the pressure through his muscles rather than his joint as the wire began to spin around his grapple point swinging him higher into the air where he released the grappler’s grip on the edge.

And for just a moment he felt a sort of weightless freedom as he soared through the air, before gravity once more gripped him trying to drag him down to the earth a near-fatal distance below.

A grip he easily escaped with the grappler on his other arm, before he once more found himself swinging into the air free of gravity.

---

He landed on a roof overlooking this rundown little hotel that had a bad habit of being purchased by people looking to convert it into a drug den of one kind or another.

Usually drugs were something of a gray area for him.

Stolen novel; please report.

Having grown up on the streets and with drugs a fairly common part of his life, (including an addict or two in the family), he was fully aware of the negatives of both drugs and drug enforcement.

What this meant was that personally he didn’t want them anywhere near his body, but he also believed that the ‘war on drugs’ was a scam meant to blow the police budget on messing with a mix of minorities and the poor. (Honestly, at this point we just need to slap an age limit on it, tax the shit out of it, and spend the money on rehabs, healthcare, and education.)

Because of this unconventional opinion -(that the Vigils don’t share)- he tended not to mess with drug dealers just so long as they didn’t sell to kids, and their product wasn’t killing people. (Or making super soldiers. Really hate those drugs, but that’s because they keep criminals from going down to a bullet.)

Otherwise it was no different than someone drinking themselves into a stupor off of alcohol. -Which he personally considered a drug worse than the rest.- Not something he approved of, but also not something worth wasting resources on that could be better spent elsewhere. (Such as actually saving and protecting lives.)

Unfortunately, in the same way this hotel had a bad habit of being turned into a drug den, the people who owned said dens had a bad habit of getting greedy and letting their clientele overdose rather than cutting them off. What’s worse, this was a common enough thing that one of the first things the more corrupt cops of the way did when the Den was under new management was come around to get a cut to keep the few honest cops from looking this way. (Something I’m not doing anymore.)

Given how many times he’d cleared the Den out he had the floorplan pretty much memorized, as well as an understanding of how the place usually ended up regardless of management. With the basement containing all of the actual drug production and packaging, while the penthouse was where the current boss stayed and kept all of his money, and the various rooms being places the various addicts could rent out to crash once they got their fixes.

None of this was what he actually had to consider before raiding the base.

Instead what he needed to figure out was whether to start from the top or the bottom of the building.

If he started from the bottom he could shut down this gang’s overall production delaying how long it took them to get another foot in the way at the price of likely letting the gang leader get away with a notable amount of money while he was busy destroying the drugs. Meaning while the gang’s activity would be pushed back the one actually responsible for the deaths would be getting away with a decent payday from this venture.

The top on the other hand presented the opposite problem, allowing him to take out the gang leader and confiscate a larger chunk of the money but allowing the gang to flee with a suitably large chunk of the drugs. Allowing them to reopen their drug trade sooner, if under new management that may follow his rules in the Way. (Though no telling when they’ll get greedy too.)

Considering the problem in a ‘one or the other’ manner, he couldn’t help but run a hand down his face as he remembered the days when he could sweep the entire Den without letting the gang or the boss get away. (But then the owners had to start splurging on extra security tech and spells, because they all know I’m going to have to raid the place at some point or another.)

“Gah, I miss when criminals were still stupid.” He sighed.