Chapter Twenty-Seven - Betrayal

Emily entered the Dark Cup the next afternoon, and for some reason, the place felt deeply different.

The little cafe was one of the first places she'd visited as a new mask some time ago, and she remembered it as a deeply terrifying place. In her memories, it was a place filled with suspicious people, unfriendly staff, and a palpable aura of danger.

Now she looked around as she entered it and found... a rather normal, if hip, cafe. There were some pastries behind a glass counter, a barista making some sort of drink with a loud machine by the back, and a single waitress taking care of the three occupied tables off to one side.

The people here weren't suspicious, they were just normal, boring people. Two of them were on laptops, schoolbooks piled next to cups of steaming coffee. The last pair were chatting between each other, occasionally giggling over their cups.

It was a friendly place, but she'd been too nervous last time to appreciate that.

This time, Emily was a lot calmer. She was visiting Handshake again, without telling him about it, and she was bringing enough firepower to cause a fair amount of trouble.

She decided not to reflect on the fact that her number one solution to her anxiety problems lately had to do with being surrounded by enough powered individuals to level a building. The fact that they were all her sisters didn't really factor into that.

Emily didn't linger by the entrance for long. One part because she didn't want to give people time to react to her and her sisters moving through, and the other because she worried that if she stayed in the cafe for too long, her sisters would make a fuss about getting their own cakes or croissants or... maybe coffee? She didn't want to experience her sisters on caffeine; the occasional sugar rush was enough.

She moved towards the back, only to be flagged down by the barista who waved at her. "Can I help?" they asked.

"Just going downstairs," Emily said. "I have business."

"Oh," they said. "Right, go on down."

Emily was just happy that she wasn't being questioned more than that, so she slipped on past and headed for the little closet-like room at the very back of the cafe, then she ushered her sisters on down ahead of her.

They filed on down the stairs in a little bunch, chatting between each other as they went. The current topic of conversation was the value of dolls over little toy cars, or something like that. Emily couldn't quite keep up with the chatter, especially when Trinity was holding up half the conversation defending the virtue of some action-figure she'd found in the trash.

At the bottom, they spread out within the poorly-lit basement area. The bar at the back was once again untended, and the entire place was practically empty except for one man, sitting and staring from behind the monitor of a laptop at a desk covered in papers and random pages.

"The Boss," Handshake said. He put on a smile which Emily immediately pinged as absolutely fake. "It's so nice to see you, unannounced, on a weekday. With all of these familiar little faces. You didn't bring that new one that I've heard about? Well, that's disappointing."

"Hi Handshake," Emily said. She walked across the room, then hesitated once she reached the end. Now that she was here-here, she wasn't so sure of herself or what she had set out to do. But she pushed past it a moment later, not so soon that there wasn't a long, uncomfortable pause, but soon enough. "I have something for you," she said.

"Oh?" he asked, his attention sharpening a little. "I do hope it's not a knife to the back?"

Emily shook her head, not sure what to make of the comment. "It's information," she said as she pulled out a copy of the USB stick Jezebelle had given her. It was a thumb-drive she'd bought at the college's shop, so it had the logo of a local electronics store emblazoned on the side.

He took it, then weighed the little device. "And what kind of information is this?" he asked.

"It's about Rattles. His entire dossier, I think."

Handshake's eyebrows rose over the rim of his glasses. "Well, that's interesting. Sit down for a moment. Do you want some water? And please, don't let your... sisters run all over the place in here. I pay a decent amount for the right to loiter here, I don't want to ruin what I have."

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Emily nodded. She could understand that, so she turned towards her sisters and gestured for them to move towards one of the booths to the side. The exception was Athena, who came over and sat rather daintily next to Emily. Her eyes were locked onto Handshake and weren't wavering at all. Or blinking.

The information broker's smile twisted a little, but he didn't comment. "Right, give me just a moment. I'm not in the habit of plugging in random devices into my work computer without taking some minor precautions."

"That's fair," Emily said.

She watched him grab a small box with some USB ports on it and plug it into the laptop, then he did something with the machine for a while, the light from the screen flickering across his glasses. Finally, he plugged the USB she'd given him into one of the ports and tapped on his mousepad twice.

"Huh," he said. "These certainly look like official reports."

"You've seen some before?" Emily asked.

"Here and there. Usually they'll be old, outdated things that trickle down and find their way online. I think some leaked on purpose a few times. This, on the other hand, looks a lot fresher. Where did you get this?"

"I don't think I should say," she said.

Handshake considered that, then shrugged. "Fair enough. Just having this is a federal crime. Copying it and walking out of the HRF? That's enough to land someone in more hot water than you'd ever be able to swim out of."

The pit in Emily's stomach grew. "Did you want it?" she asked.

Handshake considered what to say for a moment, then nodded. "I do. Of course, now I do have it. You didn't think I would just look without copying, did you? No, no, don't worry. I won't be a jerk about it. This is worth a fair deal, it would be bad business not to remunerate you for it. But... I have the feeling there's more to it than that?"

Emily nodded along. "Yes. Rattles is a problem. I need to take care of him, and what I got from that is not enough to really help. It's more than what I had, but, ah."

"It's dry," Handshake said. "Raw information that tells you a bit about your target, but not enough to really work with. Unfortunately, this is also more than what I know about Rattles myself. I can maybe add one or two more dates onto the list here, some more photos too, but that's about it. I don't exactly have access to our villain friend's diary."

"I know," Emily said. "I was hoping you could distribute that, though? If it goes around, maybe it'll make things harder for him."

"Hmm, clever. He doesn't strike me as the sort to wage informational warfare, so you'd be getting ahead of him there." Handshake sat up a little from his slouch. "Alright. Here's what I can do. Since I doubt just paying you for this would help all that much, I can help you distribute this. Heck, I'll sell it to everyone at a steep discount." He steepled his hands, eyes narrowing. "And if you give me a throwaway Email address, I'll send you literally everything I have on him the moment I get it."

"I don't know if that's enough," Emily said.

"I sometimes know where he'll strike before the HRF even gets the call."

"How?" she asked.

He shrugged. "Dispatchers make very little money and are open to bribes."

"I'll give you a, ah, number you can text," Emily said. She glanced at Athena, who gave her a small nod. Emily wasn't sure if Athena had blinked at all yet.

"That works," he said. "I can pay you as well, if you want. Though I hardly carry piles of cash with me."

"That... won't be necessary, not now," Emily said. "But thank you."

Handshake nodded, then glanced at the exit. "Was that... all?"

"I think so," Emily said. She realised that she had probably over-prepared for this, but that was par for the course. "Um, okay girls, let's head out. Handshake... bye?"

"Goodbye," he said easily.

As Emily started heading to the door, she checked the prompt for the latest quest she'd received, and completed.

Action Reward!

For betraying the trust of a friendly Hero, you have earned:

+1 Skill Point!

That, she realised, was going to weigh on her for a good long time.

***