The next morning, Sarah awoke to the sound of her cell phone vibrating. It was a text; one from Simon of all people. 'Got a problem,' the message read. 'Call me when you can.'
Sarah clicked her tongue. She was tempted to roll over and go back to sleep, but she couldn't justify ignoring him. Instead, she blearily scrolled through her contacts until she found the entry labeled 'Fairwellow.' The line only had to ring twice. "That was fast," Simon greeted her, his mouth half-full of food. "I figured you'd ghost me until I was forced to blow up your inbox."
Sarah rubbed the bridge of her nose and glanced at the clock on her dresser. The tiny, plastic brick insisted it was '6:03 a.m.' It felt a lot closer to two. "I'm operating on about four hours of sleep, so let's make this quick. What the hell do you want?"
Simon took another bite of what sounded like an apple. "You at your best. Go throw some water on your face. Put the coffee pot on. I'll wait." There was a faint clunk as Simon set his phone down on his countertop.
Sarah bit back a curse. The gesture rapidly transformed into a jaw-breaking yawn. "I'm staying with my grandmother, Simon. I'm not going to have this conversation where I might be overheard. Now, are you spilling the beans, or am I hanging up?"
A wave of irritation radiated from her neck down to her stomach. From there it quickly spread between her four cores, inciting their power to flare. Sarah tamped down on the unconscious reaction before it could get out of hand. Once she was certain she had everything under control, she returned her attention to the phone.
Simon hadn't noticed the lapse. "You sure?" he asked her, a bit of sobriety peeking past his glib facade. "This isn't going to be a fun conversation." When Sarah didn't offer a reply, he took the implication in stride. "Alright, don't say I didn't warn you. Do you remember Carl Wellton - that dumbass who was spying on me a couple of months back? He's put in another appearance. To make matters worse, he's brought a few friends along with him, and I can see them setting up in a cafe across the street."
Sarah stared at her ceiling fan while the wooden panels blurred in and out of focus. "Are they armed?"
"Who isn't these days? They're not packing long guns, though, if that's what you mean." Simon kept eating his breakfast as he contemplated the dead air. "Listen, I've only been watching them for an hour, so I don't have an exact headcount, but I've spotted at least six of these morons, and they're not a threat I can ignore."
Sarah puffed her cheeks out and then let them slowly deflate. The escaping air sounded less like a sigh than a hiss. "What exactly are you asking me to do here? Be specific."
"I'm asking you for that thing we don't discuss over the phone because we've both seen The fucking Wire."
Sarah scoffed. With tradecraft like that, Simon might as well order a hitman off craigslist. "Stop screwing around. We both know the feds don't have the manpower to tap your damn phone line. They're all too busy watching the Grand Wizard attempt to live up to his namesake."
"Yeah, well, I bet it became a lot easier to admit that after your apartment got shot up. Since mine isn't full of holes, how about you cut me some slack?"
A grimace pulled at Sarah's lips until she could feel the pressure it was putting on her teeth. She rolled over and set the phone down atop the blanket covering her nightstand. "Goodnight, Simon."
"Hold up," he sputtered, his voice faint and tinny. "I'm sorry, alright? That was uncalled for. Would it make you feel better if I apologized in person?"
Sarah brought the device back to her ear. "No, I want you - and your creepy friends - to stay the hell away from my grandma."
"Then, throw me a bone because we both know these freaks will clock you if they dig through my personal effects." Simon let the fear of discovery dangle, certain it'd invite a bite. "But hey," he pressed when she didn't immediately respond. "Maybe you've got better things to do with your time. What do I know? It's only half a dozen dudes. I can just John Wick my way through it."
"You couldn't John Wick your way out of a phone booth. At least, Neo had Tank to help him learn kung fu: you fight like a punch-drunk Ted."
"Fuck off, I'm at Constantine's level and you know it."
Sarah's forehead wrinkled in thought. 'Didn't he spend most of that movie getting his ass kicked?' Whatever. The point was, Simon had a better chance of getting gunned down on the sidewalk than he did of plucking a bullet out of the air. In that sense, asking for help wasn't really beyond the pale. It was just... "I hate doing this, Simon. Why can't you call Dillinger or one of the brats? I'm sure they'd love to waste these jackoffs."
The warspawn sucked on his teeth. His mounting frustration leaked from the speaker like a particularly ill-tended kettle. "Because I'm not friends with our maladjusted cousins, Sarah: I'm friends with you. When I found a half-dead teenager in my backyard, after Phillip made his play in Hartford, did I tell you to drag your broken legs to the ER and to keep my name out of it? No, I hid you in that stupid Fisher-Price playhouse, my parents bought me, and then stole their first aid kit, so I could try to patch you up. And you know what? It was the right thing to do. The two of us? We're in this together. Fuck the rest of those assholes and their sociopathic, cut-throat bullshit: you know we can't go it alone."
Sarah could hear Simon struggling not to shout into the receiver. Her ears appreciated his restraint. Her guilt complex did too. Sincerity had never landed right, whenever it'd come from one of her peers. Even when she knew they were being genuine, she'd always second-guessed their motivations. Take their current argument, for example. Was Simon reminding her of their shared history because he wanted to tug on her heartstrings, or was his temper legitimately frayed? Either? Both? She could see him falling prey to the latter, for all that he'd prefer to play it cool.
A sick shiver writhed along the base of her throat. Sarah's ability to empathize with his dilemma should have been a relief, yet the sympathy stuck in her craw. The ties felt too self-defeating; she was reminded of the old witticism that 'you are the people you hang out with.' She closed her eyes. What did their association say about her if Simon was her closest friend?
"...Just this once," Sarah insisted softly. "Should someone else come knocking, you can call fucking Kennedy."
"Once is all I'm asking for," Simon agreed.
Right. Sarah would believe that lie the second the older parasite rang her up to complain. "I'll be there in twenty minutes," she grumbled waspishly before groping around beneath her bed. "In the meantime, send me a picture of the idiots in question. Maybe, if I can recognize them, I won't join them in an elevator by mistake."
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
The photo came through while Sarah was pulling up to the curb. Shot from the balcony of Simon's sixth-floor apartment, the artist had done what he could to keep his subjects in frame; however, it was still difficult to make out their faces through the blurry pixelation. At least, the colors were all pretty clear. If nothing else, Sarah could differentiate the lunatics by the clothes they were wearing until she got a chance to clarify their features.
She leaned back in her seat. It'd be awkward to pluck her cellphone out of the cup holder, every time she needed to reference the photo, so Sarah dug through her glove compartment until she found a mount she could stick to her windshield. The device slid into place with a click.
Across the road, Sarah could almost discern the men in question as they gathered around a battered laptop. It was hard to say whether they were using the machine as a prop or if they were legitimately intrigued by its contents. Personally, Sarah would have bet on the computer being part of the group's collective cover. You could play a lot of disturbing conversations off if you masked them within the context of a game. Grab a few controllers, and questions like how to move your team from 'rally point A' to 'rally point B' became far less upsetting to overhear.
Her phone beeped. Sarah pulled the message up on her dashboard, so she wouldn't have to fiddle with the touch screen.
'That you by the fire hydrant?' Simon asked her.
Sarah sent back a terse affirmative and received a string of emojis in reply. Half of the graphics couldn't be parsed by the tablet, causing them to be rendered into nonsensical code. 'Oh well,' Sarah thought. The text probably wasn't important.
Not compared to Meal Team Six over there. Simon was right, they were definitely scoping him out. It looked like... two obese bikers with digital cameras and another outdoorsy-type with a directional mike. No. Wait. There was a fourth scanner of some sort being wielded by a customer a few seats over. As with the other three, it had been soldered into a plastic case to make it look like a normal peripheral. It even had a bunch of bumper stickers slapped across the side to help draw your attention away from the lens.
What a pain in the ass. Most groups weren't this weird combination of sophisticated and starkly inept. Either you never saw them coming, and they disappeared into the ether, or they kicked your front door off its hinges and proceeded to shove a gun in your face. There wasn't any of this sloppy prevarication involved. What the fuck were they even up to? Did they think they had the wrong building?
Sarah's radiator released a muffled cough as it fought off the Autumn chill. There was a part of her that wanted to reach through the window and drag the answers into the light; however, it was smarter to operate from a distance. Even though she knew it wouldn't stand up to a serious assault, Sarah felt safer behind the wheel of her car. It was like being in the pope-mobile: she was both part of the world and protected from it.
A few of her peers disagreed with her assessment. When pressed on the matter, Amanda admitted to skipping Driver's Ed. because it felt akin to riding around in a matryoshka doll. Especially, when the radio was turned on. There were simply too many parallels to the relay she'd gotten implanted in the tip of her tail.
Most warspawn grew out of that opinion. Sarah was the only infiltrator she'd ever heard of who'd never possessed it in the first place. There was just something distinctly humanizing about the ubiquitous vehicles. Every time she got into one, she felt a little less fake. It was a sensation that had become far too fleeting after a dozen organizations had started prying into their affairs. This recent group was particularly ill-timed. It caused their presence hit twice as hard before the stakeout's drudgery abraded her anxiety.
Sarah drummed her fingertips against the top of her knee. Normally, she'd be recording her observations for future reference, but there wasn't much reason to do so when her cover had already been blown. This was just risk mitigation. She didn't want any of these chucklefucks to trace her back to Amelia.
An hour passed. During the wait, Sarah managed to get a better impression of the group as a whole. In short, they seemed to be members of a local militia. Which one, Sarah couldn't say, but you could always identify the warning signs because they'd act like their dick was in the Pentagon while their mouth was wrapped around a cheeseburger. Anyone who'd actually served in the military was much more cognizant of their conditioning. They might not be able to maintain the same level of physical fitness, once they'd left the service, but they knew where it was supposed to be. These guys had never hit those benchmarks to begin with. It'd honestly reached the point where even the way they walked was sort of fucked. Sarah almost felt like she was watching a bit.
'So, how'd they get the gear?' the parasite mused to herself because none of their equipment was standard. Did they make it? Did they buy the basics from Amazon and then upgrade the internals using aftermarket components? Sarah got halfway through texting Simon a suggestion, about how they should follow up on the group's purchase history, before she realized she wasn't invested enough to send it to him. The blinking, black cursor burned into her retinas. She might have kept staring at it until the screen turned off if the sharp shock of several police sirens hadn't jolted her out her daze.
"Fuck," Sarah cursed as she scanned the crowded street. She couldn't see their lights. Had another elemental self-incarnated? Was there spillover from a nearby seed? Her tendrils reached for the local mana field and rifled through its currents. Unlike her grandmother's bungalow, Simon appeared to be on the vertex between three distinct blooms. A single one would have left him covered in the wispy remnants of a much larger threat; altogether, they suppressed each other's alignment and left the space feeling mystically dead. "So much for the elemental theory. No way a construct would haunt such a barren shit hole."
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In fact, this was exactly the sort of place that would've become a ghetto on a more developed world. Enough time could lead to gentrification as the seeds grew in strength; however, few neighborhoods would get a chance to benefit from the gradually expanding field. Instead, the mana would become monopolized by local luminaries while the backscatter was artificially contained. It'd be a real problem for anyone hoping to emigrate to brighter pastures. Less so for warspawn like themselves. Sarah wondered if Simon had been looking forward to the cleaner air, or if he expected to be dead before he got a chance to enjoy it.
She shook the maudlin thought off. Sarah stuck her head out the window and sent the infiltrator a quick text. 'I've got noise down here coming up the road. Can you see what's spooked the cops?'
Simon wasn't as fast with his reply. 'No, they're still traveling along the parkway. You think someone's stolen a car?'
Maybe. There had been a huge uptick in the city's police blotter following the Light's arrival. A lot of drug indictments too, so it wasn't impossible the police had left to raid a poorly concealed stash house. 'Should I clear out on the off-chance things get loud?' Sarah tapped her foot against the brake. No, better to stick it out. Trying to flee the scene would just make her a person of interest. The last thing she needed was for the DEA to get involved in the train crash that was her life.
It was hard to hold onto her convictions, though, as the sirens drew steadily closer. When they were visibly just up the road, Sarah began to scan the apartments for any sign of a reaction. 'What the fuck, Simon? Did you move in next to a meth lab? How do you even miss this sort of thing?'
She didn't receive an answer. Once four police cruisers arrived to seal off the road, both parasites were panicking too hard to remember they could use their phone.
Meanwhile, the cops were piling out of their convoy with their own heavy ordinance in tow. The milestone must have spooked them something fierce because half of the officers were wielding grenade launchers and had incendiaries clipped to their chests. In fact, two of them weren't satisfied with such a 'meager' loadout and were securing what looked to be a mortar in the parking lot of a nearby Denny's.
Sarah heard a dull thump as they nailed the weapon to the asphalt with a gas gun. It felt like they were stationing themselves awfully close to be aiming the tube anywhere nearby. Had they brought it along to repel reinforcements from outside of the neighborhood? It'd certainly keep her away if she heard there was artillery in the area.
Her passenger door slid open. Simon slipped into the front seat. he broadcast while nervously reaching for the buckle.
The words bounced around in her ear until they proved difficult to focus upon. Her companion was even worse. If she hadn't been able to taste the mana literally wafting from his skin, she might have mistaken him for a stranger.
Sure enough, the SWAT team's proximity to Simon's apartment appeared fairly incidental. Rather than stack up outside his building, in order to breach the lobby, they were racing across the busy street so they could assault the cafe housing the listening post.
The reconnaissance team did not take this very well. Four of them bolted towards the kitchen while Wellton reached into the backpack, he'd set beside the foot of the table. When his hand came back into view, he was holding a cut-down MAG-7. The magazine-fed shotgun gleamed beneath the bright florescent lights. Wellton got precisely two shots off before the officers decided to waste him.
A flash of mana appeared around his chest as some sort of shield activated. It wasn't enough to do more than turn aside the first couple of rounds before they punched through the glowing barrier. Since the cops put about forty into him, he was dead before he hit the ground. "Dammmnnn," Simon drawled, his arms laced above his head. "There goes Carl. You think they caught any bystanders in that barrage?"
Sarah had ducked behind the engine block after the initial retort and wasn't inclined to check. "I'm not sure. Honestly, I'm more worried about losing a tire, given Wellton's fucked up aim. Pop your door and see if we have a flat; I'll do the same on this side."
There was a faint clunk as Simon pulled the handle towards his chest. Meanwhile, a careful glance at the wheelhouse on the left revealed there was little to be concerned about. Sarah did see a number of boots moving between the asphalt and the plastic, but they were headed towards the restaurant, so she ignored the shoes and their owners.
"They're actually trying to resuscitate the big dumb bastard. He's missing most of his head, you idiot: what the fuck do you think you're going to do?" Simon braced his fingers against the black top while he peeked beneath the door. "Yeah, that's right, he is in more pieces than you can reasonably stitch together. Maybe you should go ensure you didn't perforate a couple of preschoolers."
Sarah shot the parasite a disparaging frown for his color commentary.
Sarah's heart was beginning to climb down from her throat, so she decided to refocus on why she'd shown up in the first place.
A long wail interrupted their argument as an ambulance pushed through the frozen traffic. Bright white, and covered in orange stripes, the words 'Boston EMS' were stenciled beside a gash, where something had clawed at the metal. Sarah eyed the scar and compared it to the medics disembarking from the cramped compartment. The damage looked like it might have been a foot long for all that it had failed to penetrate.
Simon closed the passenger-side door and sat up in his seat.
<...Provided the cops don't detain him,> Sarah rotely reminded Simon.
There was a brief pause. Sarah rapped her thumb against the edge of the steering wheel. <...Do you think we can blow his cover?>
They studied the battered storefront and the broken glass lining the sidewalk.
It'd certainly be hard to get an answer if they decided to lead with the mortar. "Kennedy was right," Sarah groused, "this is fucking stupid." Simon shot her a quizzical look, so she motioned towards the crowd outside. "Think about it. Here we are, the vanguard of an alien invasion, and we're hiding in a Subaru from what's essentially a long-range pipe bomb. This isn't exactly War of the Worlds; the only way we'd be able to take this city is by drowning it in our fucking blood."
Simon quirked an eyebrow. He choked back a shiver of a chuckle. "So, what? You want to give up and let this guy walk? Take our chances that he doesn't climb up on top of a perch somewhere and start plinking people like his name's Steve Paddock?"
"Yes," Sarah bit out, only to suddenly shake her head. "No. I don't know. I'm just bitching. Do you really think you can grab him without making a scene?"
Simon scratched his chin. A dozen hairs had grown in over the past few days, granting him a patchy goatee. "Probably. Why?"
"Because I think they're letting him go. One of the witnesses just got escorted out, and he's in the same vague line."
Simon glanced back at the cafe and saw a grey-haired officer arguing with their gangly target. The disagreement seemed to revolve around his laptop and the equipment he'd brought along with him. The cop was motioning for him to hand everything over, and their observer was visibly refusing. Finally, once it became clear that he was digging himself a hole that would land him next to his buddies, he relinquished the gear with a shout. It sounded like he called the cop 'a cuck' before he headed for the door.
Sarah pulled her car out of park. "Wait two blocks," she ordered her companion as she navigated around the pedestrians who'd stopped to gawk at the show. "I'll also accept one and a half if he turns off the main boulevard."
"Yeah, yeah," Simon whined. "Calm down. I promise not to get any blood on your nice clean upholstery."
"You'd better not," Sarah warned him. "If you do, I'm telling the detectives that you were the one who put it there."
The road ahead was blocked, so they took their time rolling up to the barricade in front of the traffic light. For a moment, Sarah was worried the plain-clothes lieutenant in charge would order them to shelter in place. Then, he waved them forward and motioned for his partner to remove the gate, they'd painstakingly dragged across the tarmac.
The yellow bulwark resisted his begrudging efforts. Eventually, it let loose a hair-raising squeak before the wheels ground through the rust. Sarah didn't try to hurry the man along. The more space they could put between the cafe and their target, the easier it would be to tail Simon's fleeing stalker.
Simon jiggled his foot as the cop cursed the rusty apparatus.
A black-gloved hand waved them forward while Sarah kept her eyes on their target. He was currently about ninety meters ahead and thumbing through an app on his phone. Very few of the pedestrians standing between them and the spy were willing to turn away from the crime scene. Sarah kept an eye on the minority who made an effort.
It took Simon a minute to spot the man in question.
Simon rolled his window down and plugged his right nostril. He chuffed into the wind.
The creepy bastard stared at them until a semi-truck pulled into the convenience store. Between the obstructive container and the growing distance, it soon became impossible to make out his suspicious gaze. Unfortunately, Sarah discovered that they had merely exchanged one gimlet eye for another because their target was acting a little harried and kept glancing over his shoulder. It likely didn't help that they were now traveling well below the speed limit in order to keep him in sight.
"Here we go, I guess," Simon murmured as his core began to leak. "How about we try to keep it below five stars?" Then, without waiting for the spell to fully activate, he slipped out of his seat and hit the ground running.
No one noticed him dart ahead of the car. Even Sarah, who'd been given forewarning of the crime, found it hard to pay attention. Hell, the only reason she could remember what she'd been doing was the open door and the mana burning her tendrils. "Fuck this guy's heavy," someone complained before they banged on her trunk. "Pop it, already, I think the effect's starting to slip."
Sarah hit the button on the side of her dash and then heard a dull thump as something heavy was set down. By the time a dark-skinned young man had climbed back into the cab, she could almost recall they were friends.
"Drive - drive - drive," Simon cajoled her as the spell faded with a pop. "I don't know how long we have to get clear."
Sarah pressed her foot down on the gas while her memory regained a sense of clarity. "Have I ever told you, I hate this fucking shit."
"It worked, didn't it? Besides, if he didn't want to get hurt, then he shouldn't have been roleplaying as Jason fucking Bourne. It's not like I asked him to spy on my apartment. He made that mistake all on his own."
Sarah had been talking about the spell, but the kidnapping bothered her too. When Townsend had invaded her home, she hadn't been able to feel anything except for fear, anger and adrenaline. Her assault on the ice rink may have struck one of those emotions from the list; however, this encounter was a little different. Her target's species set him apart.
"When was the last time you killed a human?" Sarah asked the warspawn sitting next to her. "Were you ever involved in that shitshow with Amanda and her landlord?"
"No, I was out of town looking at colleges that week. My previous dust up must have been in '07' or thereabouts. It's not a complicated story. I needed some cash, so I robbed a drug dealer, who was selling meth on the corner of my block. When killing him started to seem easier than pulling some Oliver Twist-type shit, I scaled a nearby fire escape and dropped a brick on his head. The damn thing ended up cleaving his skull straight to the jawline. Must have stained half the bills I stole from him too."
He didn't sound too broken up by the fact. "How's it feel to break your streak?" Sarah asked him.
"Well, our mutual friend isn't dead, so..." Simon rolled his shoulders in a shrug.
Sarah's neck snapped around in surprise. "You didn't kill him?"
He met her astonished gaze with a mildly bemused one. "Was I supposed to? I thought we were going to shoot him together."
Sarah replayed their discussion in her head. "I assumed you were joking, Simon! I only wanted you to grab him, so we could hide the fucking body!"
"Yeah, well, now we can assuage our curiosity before we toss him into a ditch. Don't you want to know what these assholes have been up to?"
Not really. Provided his friends spent the next few months in lock up, she was prepared to leave them to rot. It's not like they'd be much of a problem once someone let them out again. Hell, they'd be lucky to leave the city without getting strapped to the grill of a car.
"Whatever," Sarah muttered petulantly. "Let's just find somewhere to do the deed. I want to stop thinking about this bullshit as soon as physically possible."