Chapter Fifty-One - An Undisclosed Chat

Emily sat on her favourite chair, pulled up a blanket, and covered her shoulders with it.

It was a small comfort, but a comfort nonetheless.

On the bed sat Teddy and Athena. Athena was swinging her legs to bleed off energy and Teddy... was still snoring. That was fine.

In the middle of the room, sitting cross-legged with his head bowed, was a very nervous Jacob, who was idly twiddling his thumbs and occasionally looking up to see if Emily was still watching him.

She was, but not with any bad thoughts in mind.

Not many, at least.

Having a boy barge into her room was a big ‘no no’ in her book. She cleared her throat and the boy flinched. “What can you tell me about, um, you called them the Cabal?”

“I don’t think saying their name out loud’s a good idea,” Jacob said before glancing around.

Emily looked to Athena, that was her power at work, she bet. “Fine, then let’s call them something else. The, um, the Clowns.”

Jacob huffed a laugh. “Alright, alright, I can do that. The Clowns then. Yeah, I like it.”

“So,” Emily continued. “The Clowns. What happened?”

“I didn’t do nothing,” Jacob said, instantly on the defensive. ‘Hardly used my powers, just minding my own business. You know, you and the bear girl kinda scared me, so I was on the watch for trouble, keeping my head down. Then I get this letter addressed to me.”

“To you as you, or you as in your, uh, persona?” Emily asked. She wasn’t entirely sure about the whole persona thing yet. She could imagine that some people were very much different in and out of costume. She shook her head, setting the stray thought aside.

For all that the situation was a little tense, she had still been through a long day, and was looking forward to doing like Teddy and going to sleep.

“Both,” Jacob said. “It was addressed to both. It had a bunch of stuff about me too. And it said that I should contact these people on a website.”

“Like Acebook messenger?” Emily asked.

“No, no like, this weird HTTP site. Just a bunch of letters and numbers for an address. I went, and as soon as I opened the site it opened up this chat thing. That’s all there was on the site. Just the chat.”

“Okay?” Emily said.

Jacob nodded. “Then this person started writing to me, asking me questions. I asked them who they were and they said they were the Cab--Clowns.”

“That’s it?” Emily asked. That was rather underwhelming.

Jacob hugged himself. “I thought so too, you know? Started telling them off. But they started offering me things, telling me stuff.”

“Could you be any less precise?” Athena asked with a huff.

“I mean, they said that they could help me become the greatest villain ever, that I could be strong, and cool. There’s like, fanclubs for some villains, you know? And they offered money for stuff. I mean, it sounded kinda good?”

“You trusted them?” Emily asked.

He snorted. “Of course not,” he said. “But they said that they were like, the top dog of villains around here, that they run the show. Course, I know that you’re around, so that can’t be true, right?”

“Right,” Emily said for a lack of anything smarter to say.

“That’s right,” Athena said with a whole lot more enthusiasm. “Big sister Emily’s the top dog of villains here. If she were a dog, she’d be one of those really big ones.”

“Uh,” Emily said.

“So, I have this thing I can do, with my power. You used it on that map, remember? To pinpoint things. I can use it to flip a coin, see if something’s a good idea or not. It takes a lot of luck though. But the Clowns, they have me cornered so I figured it’s no big loss. I flip, and it’s bad. Real bad. So I leave my dorm, and I see some people looking at me.”

“So you came here?” Emily asked.

What were the chances that he was followed? She felt a cold pit growing in her stomach. They didn’t have much by way of fighting power in the room, and any help they could get was a long ways away.

“I was sneaky about it,” he said. “Took the bus, left my phone behind, then I lucked out and found a new jacket. You know, a disguise.”

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

“And you weren’t followed?” Emily asked.

Jacob shrugged. “I mean, I don’t think so. It took a bunch of luck to get here. I heard someone talking about you, and they moved to this building, and I slipped in behind them. I don’t have anything the Clowns could track me with, I don’t think.”

Emily shifted within her blankets and then let her head thumb back against the rear of her chair. “Do you have any idea who the Clowns really are?”

“No? Not really. They’re bad news though, I know that much.” He sat up, then with a grunt got to his feet and looked around. “So, uh, I’m guessing I can’t sleep here, right?”

Emily sighed as she slid out of her blankets. “No, you can’t,” she said. “Athena, can you keep an eye on him? If he tried anything stupid tell Teddy to eat him.”

“Yes big sister Emily,” Athena said.

With a pat against her pant leg to make sure her phone was still there, Emily walked to the door and then out of the room. She was still in her socks, which got her feet cold on the tiled floor of the corridor, but it wasn’t anything too bad.

She made sure there wasn’t anyone around, then made her way to the end of the corridor where a little window overlooked the street outfront.

Thumbing her way through her contacts, Emily found herself standing there with her finger hovering over the call button to a rather familiar number.

Could Melanie help at all?

She pressed back. The heroine was nice, but she had told Emily to forget all about the Cabal.

Another name and number came up, this one a number that Emily was even more hesitant to call.

She weighted the very few options she had, then pressed to dial.

The phone rang twice, then someone picked up.

“Hello,” a man’s voice said over the line.

“Mr Handshake?” Emily asked.

“Ah, hello,” he said. “I didn’t expect you to call me. How are you doing this evening?”

“I’m well, thank you. Look, I... there’s something I want to ask you about, but I’m not sure how safe it would be to ask at all.”

“That’s a surprisingly common issue in my line of work,” Handshake said. “There are a few solutions. We could talk around the issue. We could meet in person. Or we could speak over a more secure method. There are a few systems online that are, for the most part, quite safe.”

“I... yeah, that might be for the best,” Emily said.

“You have a school email right? I’ll send you a link. You should be able to open the site on your phone. If that’s all, I’ll talk to you in a bit.”

“Right, thank you.” She pulled the phone away from her ear and hung up. A moment later her email client pinged her that she’d received an email and she was navigating over to a strange site. There was a button to connect to a room with one other person in it called H-Shake.

She joined.

“Hello?” she asked.

“Hey there. So, this isn’t all that much better, but the communication is about as encrypted as it can be under these circumstances.”

“Okay,” Emily said.

“Is this about the offer I sent to you via Melaton?”

“No, no it’s not that,” Emily said. “It’s about... do you know anything about a group of people called the Cabal?”

The line was silent for a moment. “Where’d you hear that name?” Handshake asked.

“So you do know something,” Emily said. It was nice to have some sort of confirmation that something fishy was going on.

“I won’t pretend that I don’t know anything. Nor will I actually say anything about them. Not without compensation.”

She bit her lip and shifted to the side. She had almost forgotten that Handshake’s entire job was dealing with information. “Okay,” she said. “What about, uh, safehouses? Do you know a place where you could hide someone?”

“I do,” Handshake said. “Are you in trouble?”

“Not me. Look, I... I want to explain things, but I’m not sure if I should do that for free, not to you.”

“Ah, the age old problem of context coming with a price-tag. Alright. How about I let you hear about a job I might have for you, and in exchange, I’ll tell you what I can?”

***