The Department of Independent Assessment and Assignment for the city was located in a large, depressing building of cement and glass that was taller than it was wide. With land at a premium everybody had to adapt to living and operating in as small of a space as possible. Unless you had the money, that is—but even the rich had to sacrifice to some degree to be able to live here. Not much, but to some degree.
A very, very small degree.
Shortly after dawn, Donny had grabbed the kid and had gotten here as fast as he could, managing to just escape the already growing heat of the day before it could see him wetter than a water nymph at the Bacchanal.
But the relief of that escape was then undone by his and the kid now needing to busy themselves with doing nothing, every other mook, goon, and schmuck having also Gotten the bright idea of arriving early. He should not have been surprised; the efficiency, or lack thereof, of the department was long well-known, and he had seen it many times before, but the sight of the room near packed to the brim with freelancer like himself and hopefuls like the kid floored him every time he came here, for some reason.
At least it was cool, the temperature of the first-level underfloor of the building almost chilled despite the large number of people currently present within. Donny was even more thankful for the fact that there were not so many here that they had to wait long to grab themselves each a seat.
Still, he was expecting at least half the day to pass before they were called up, and he warned Goodie of that prediction, fully expecting the kid—weird origins aside—to still be a kid: to soon grow agitated and restless with having nothing to do.
Rather, the boy began to creep people out as he just stared off into space, the kid doing nothing, saying nothing, barely even moving at times.
He half-felt that it was intentional, that the kid was getting off on it, but knew that was not true. The wolf bitten lost something to whatever happened to them, and the boy exhibited all the typical signs of being one of them.
It was not that he still doubted Goodie’s tale…well, he did, but that was mostly just him being stubborn—no, he was noticing and classifying the boy’s behaviour because that was what this business did to you. To survive, to at least try to, you always had to be noticing things, classifying things, putting the pieces together. It rarely worked out, but when it did, all those little puzzle pieces could sometime pull your arse out from the fire.
It was like a lucky charm that even an idiot could use.
Donny did not tell the kid off for his behaviour, though, the less people that came near them the better. Instead, he hunched down and pulled his hat over his eyes to try and preserve his energy with a catnap, as indeed several others around him were now doing.
Unfortunately, the years of…experience imparted by his line of work left him with an unhealthy level of paranoia, something that was soon inflamed as his senses began to unconsciously focus in on the soft mumblings going on around him, the chatter causing the hairs on the back of his neck to rise regardless of the fact that he was probably safer here than anywhere else in the city.
“…nah, Theo and Fortino already looked into it; not a sign nor hair o’ any of them. Even the badges don’t gotta clue as to what happened—and with six girls missing already, they’s…”
“Heard it was seven now?”
“Sweet mercy! You see what I mean? Another fine mess in the making…”
Donny was not particularly interested in the idle gossip of those around him, freelancers were as chatty as little old ladies, but that was the second time this week he had heard about this particular incident.
Mind you, crime—mundane crime, that is—always held the public’s fascination, so it was not odd to hear it discussed about so often. But something about it was tickling the back of Donny’s mind, something that…
“And how much you charge?”
Those words drew Donny from his thoughts. He was not as obsessed with money like Frank was—nor was anyone, really—but it was who had said those words that grabbed his attention. The kid had apparently been talking while his focus had been on the gossip behind him. With how much trouble the boy could bring him and Frank with a simple wrong word spoken, Donny’s skin near leapt off him then, his mind now focusing to a sharp point as he moved his hat upward to see what was what.
“For?” the man asked.
Donny again recognised who spoke then. Germaine, the man who had joined them during the museum debacle, and the one they had chosen to leave behind to die after he had gotten his leg caught in a doorway.
A leg, Donny now noticed, that had been lost, the limb now absent from the man—a pair of crutches deposited to the man’s side as he sat across from them. It was his right leg too…which was…not the same as losing a right hand, but still…
“Everything,” the kid replied.
“Kid?” Donny asked, more as a warning than an actual question, his words attracting the attention of the both of them.
“Adult?” Goodie returned.
Rather than responding to that snark, Donny turned to the man across from them and nodded, then saying, “Germaine,” in greeting.
“Donald,” Germaine said back, his tone civil but cold, before returning his focus to the kid, the man then asking, “You asking to compare prices, or you looking to actually hire me?”
“Hire; full-time. If I can manage it.”
“Kid! We ain’t in a position to be hiring anyone, right now,” Donny tried to verbally bite while also not give reason for any of the many, many other ears around them to begin listening in on their conversation. “And don’t you think you should’a been discussing something like this with me and Frank first?”
“No; so far, our relationship has been mostly one-sided. And we can afford it, I do know how to count—but I’ll be paying out my pocket, so you and Frank can relax.”
There were a few things that Donny could have done then, of course, but for the life of him, he could not come up with a good reason as to why, and none of his options would gain anything but the attention he was so eager to avoid.
There were so many ways that he could screw them over, so Donny could not just leave the boy be, but without having any other recourse that would not draw the eyes and ears of those around them or result in him and the kid having to leave here, all he could do was relent.
But on considering the matter further, though his presence had been beneficial to them, Donny still did not want the kid with him and Frank—as a hanger on, let alone a full partner—so if he did do something to finally get himself on Frank’s bad side, then all the better. Question was: what exactly was the kid doing?
“Fine. Your money, your business. …so long as it is your business,” he added, trying to indicate to the boy that he should keep his mouth shout about certain things best left unsaid. Donny was not concerned about anything he or Frank had to hide—most of that had been burnt up in the museum. Rather, he was referring to what secrets the boy had to hide.
Germaine looked from Donny to the boy, then back again, silently, the man’s thoughts a mystery as he watched the interaction between the two.
That silence came to an end when he asked, “Boy? You want to hire me? Why? Can’t imagine a one-legged fool would be of much use to you?”
“More after your brains than anything else,” he answered, “and I’m sure we can organise you with a prosthetic. Less you don’t have them around here,” the kid then asked, more to Donny than the man across from him, a slight playfulness in his tone as he intentionally implied he was not local.
It was not much, and Donny was certain no one would read anything into that little giveaway, but he really wanted to smack the little shit then.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“What do you mean by brains,” Germain asked, “who’s been telling stories?”
“The adults,” Goodie said, nodding his head towards Donny.
Donny kept silent as Germain peered over to him.
“So,” the man said as he turned back to Goodie, “what is it you want done?”
“At the moment? Just be there. Another head in the room.”
Germaine looked to Donny, but he was well out of whatever this mess was.
Turning back, the man said, “So, you want me for everything, but not want me to do anything?”
“For now; not exactly going to reveal things here,” Goodie replied as he indicated the growing crowd in the room, “but it’s mostly about expansion.”
“Expansion?”
“Yes.”
“Barely a month after half the freelancers in the city are seen dead, and you wanna expand?” Germain asked incredulously.
“Yes,” Goodie.
“Why?”
“Because half of all the freelancers in the city are dead,” the boy replied bluntly, his tone apathetic.
Both Germain and Donny frowned, not understanding the boy’s reasoning, but before either of them could think to ask further on the matter, Donny noticed several ears, some subtly, and some not, listening in one them.
“Maybe keep this for later, kid? We got an audience,” he said, nodding towards the listeners, some of whom at least had the decency to feign a guilty look as they turned away.
“Fifty-five!” called out from the cues up front. “Cohen and Goodwill! Fifty-five.”
“Right,” Donny said, tapping the kid on the shoulder as he shot up. He raised his hand into the air and called out in reply to the woman before she decided to pass them over for the next number.
Several years ago, this whole procedure was utter chaos—freelancers were not known for responding well to authority and even less so for working together, so trying to organise a crowd of them into anything resembling some form of order had been utter hell. Mostly for those trying to do said organising.
For once, those in charge actually did something right and organised the lot of them with a number system. Now, when you arrived, you had to register with a man at the front in exchange for a small, wooden token with a value on it, one that would eventually be called out when those at the counter were ready.
It somewhat turned them all into sheep, but as annoying as that was, the several hours of waiting was more preferable to the frequent fights that used to break out before. Half the black eyes he and Frank had ever gotten had been from simply coming here to update their paperwork.
Once at the front, they then had to spend another twenty odd minutes waiting in one of the of the lines before they could even approach the little window at the front of the queue, where a woman named Edith who appeared older than Danny and the kid—and probably along with several other freelancers—combined saw to them.
“Yes—Cohen and Sullivan; need to update our records and reconfirm our involvement last month. Also need to register the kid.” Donny told her, nodding his head towards Goodie.
Another round of waiting then occurred as they went through the paperwork, the only thing of note being the strange look the woman gave him when she found out the new ‘partner’ their agency was reporting was the very kid that had yet to even register.
It was not the weirdest thing to have ever happened here, plenty of kids having shown some advantageous skill or two over the years, so her surprise was muted, but still, it left Donny feeling somewhat awkward for it. You heard stories about how some people would take advantage of the desperate and ignorant. Stories he would not like to be connected to, even in passing.
“You explain how this all goes?” the woman asked Donny as they eventually got around to registering the boy.
“Yeah, he knows.”
Dropping all pretence of actual concern, the woman then said, “Right, need the kid to take the oath, but before that: kid? You’re doing this of your own volition, and not being forced into this? Swear that your life and safety are not being threatened?”
The woman did not even look up as she asked him those questions, her apathetic tone one to not only match the usual one the kid maintained but also trounce it with several decades of experience.
“Yeah,” the boy returned with matching apathy. Though Donny thought it might have been false this time, detecting a slight hint of that same snark from earlier.
It caused him to frown. Donny much preferred it when the kid did not speak unless spoken to first, which had been the default behaviour of the boy when they had first met.
“Before I take this to the back, you need a gun or just the ammo?”
Donny had to turn to tell the kid what to say then. Despite the way it had been said, it was another official question, and Goodie would need to answer it himself.
“Better to take the bullets; we got the same model they offer her back at the office for you. Though we’re going to train first, these things are dangerous,” he added, parting his jacket to show the revolver holstered there.
“’kay; I’ll take the ammo,” the boy muttered in reply.
“Right,” the woman said as she then left for parts unknown. It would be several minutes before she returned with a rather uptight looking man in tow, each with a selection of items and papers within their grasp.
They went through a small and thankfully short ceremony then, where the kid swore the same oath that all freelancers took before they were officially recognised as such, the whole event made all the sillier for having to be performed through the ornate brass grill covering the small window separating those behind the counter from those in front of it.
Donny could have felt some nostalgia then, some sort of feeling at least, but honestly, it had been too long since his own swearing—or felt like it, anyway, and he was not the sentimental type to begin with, so he was just glad that they got it over with as quickly as they did.
And then the stupid shit threw him for another loop.
“Right, the woman asked then, clearly expecting nothing else, “that all, then?”
“I’d like to register a complaint,” Goodie replied.
Both Donny and Edith looked at him, one with a killer’s glare as he tried to warn the kid to shut up, and the other with a look of annoyance at having to waste more of her precious time on the idiots in front of her—and that was not just referring to Donny and Goodie alone.
“Against whom, and in regards to?” She inquired ash retrieved a small form.
“This place, and the queues we had to stand in.”
The woman looked up then, the stare in her eyes now matching Donny’s as she indicated to Goodie that she was in no mood to brook any sort of humour from him. Then, seeing the lack of any sign of it on the boy’s face, she looked to Donny and asked, “This kid serious?”
Rather than answer, Donny turned and told his now partner, “Goodie, you ain’t doing yourself any favours here.”
He made to try and grab him by the shoulder, to drag the idiot away, but the kid grabbed Donny’s pinkie finger and twisted, saying as Donny yelped out, “Start matching what I bring in and then you can boss me around. Till then, hands off.”
There was an intense moment then as Donny had to hold himself back, the anger running through him nearly forcing him to lash out at the stupid little bastard. He neither understood the kid, nor wanted to, so if the little shit wanted to dig himself a grave by annoying the people who worked here, then so be it.
He did, however, swear then and there that he and Frank would be having more than a few words after this was all over.
The woman stared at the two for a moment, torn between being entertained by the drama and being infuriated at the kid’s gall at honestly making a complaint against them.
“Right, what’s the complaint,” she then asked, the resignation in her voice indicating clearly that she fully expected something along the lines of what she heard every day from imbeciles who thought the woman on her side of the counter could not hear them talking.
“Yes, you’re doing the lines wrong; there’s just supposed to be one of them.”
“You…want the line to be longer?” the woman looking at the kid as if he was the biggest idiot in the world.
“Yes, to save time.”
“And how exactly do you figure that working out?” she asked, her eyes narrowing as she tried to come to terms with the sheer stupidity that she had just heard.
“With one que and multiple windows, the people would just have to go to whoever shouts out next. Yes, the line would be longer, but it wouldn’t be held up because of whoever’s at the front of it needing more attention or something; people would complain less if they felt like they were always moving instead of just waiting around, and if you needed to close your window for whatever reason, you could just do it without needing to get your line to move over.”
The woman’s annoyance visibly ebbed a little then as self-interest came into play, her one eyebrow raising at the realisation of how she would benefit from this stupidity—the kid having just indicated the one area that generated the most of the unspoken antagonism between the two sides of the counter.
“And I can’t help but feel a lot of time and energy is wasted on writing these forms,” the kid went on as the woman clearly but only mentally replied, “No shit,” to his observation.
“If the forms were better laid out, would it not be easier if we filled them out, then? If got some desks or a shelf we could stand at with some pens, then we could do everything here in front? Then you would only have to approve and file them, right?”
Donny was still angry, but that feeling was not enough to stop him from seeing what the kid was doing. It was not hard to figure out: the boy was clearly taking something from his world and passing it off as his own notion. He’d either used the excuse of issuing a complaint and the anger caused by it to ensure that they would listen to what he had to say, if only to know what it was that they needed to punish him for later on…or he had just gone about it in a really stupid way and gotten lucky.
Whatever the case, once he got his foot in the door, the boy then worked his way into the woman’s good graces by appealing to her clear desire to do less.
Goodie was more than a bit blunt in his delivery, and more than obvious in his intent, but the woman, Edith, was listening with rapt interest as he went on to complain more about what should be done here. And not just her—Donny could see that the woman at the windows on either side of theirs were visibly torn between dealing with their own clientele and listening in on his suggestions.
“I see, and is that it?”
“Well, not down here, but upstairs? I noticed it was a bit of a mess with the people coming in and getting lost. Wouldn’t it be better with lines? …painted ones, I mean? Not uh…I mean, with different colours for each area? you draw them along the middle of the floor with the name of where they’re going every few metres. That way you would not have strangers just wandering all over the place and causing trouble?”
“Uh-huh,” the woman responded non-committedly, though the eagerness with which she dotted everything down belied that feigned apathy.
The whole thing took barely a couple of minutes to play out, but it was long enough to see Edith have a complete turnaround, the woman genuinely smiling as she finished jotting everything down; Goodie then telling her, “Thank you very much for your time, miss Accetta, and I do apologise for the hassle.”
“Oh, no-no, it’s what I’m here for,” the woman practically cooed as she saw them off with a little wave.
Donny wanted to vomit.
They did not wait for Germain, the man not even in sight as they left, having gone off somewhere. Whatever the kid wanted with him could be dealt with in the kid’s own damn time, anyway.
As they were heading up the stairs to the ground floor, Donny, without stopping, bit at the kid, nearly yelling, “you know she’s just going to take credit for all of that, Right?”
“Just so long as she remembers where it came from, and that it actually gets implemented,” the kid answered. “I hate wasting time.”
“Yeah? Well, I hate being blindsided! Maybe give a heads-up next time, before I start thinking of ways to ensure there won’t be a next time?!”
“I didn’t know I was going to do that back there, and you’ve only yourself and the dogs to blame,” Goodie replied.
“What?!”
“You’ve had me locked up for over a month, how’m I to know how I’ll react to anyone….”
“No, what dogs…you mean the wolf? What does that have to do with anything.”
“Without whatever they…or it ate, without the fear and all the other stuff to get in the way, my minds been on fire.”
“Meaning?”
“Thought; all the time. Just thinking.”
“Yeah, that’s generally how the brain works,” Donny mocked.
“Yeah, well, not with me. I spent most of my life being terrorised and abused, all my time wasted trying to please people that should never have been allowed near other people, let alone be in charge of a child. Without all the bullshit they put inside me taking everything, tainting everything, I’m finally free to think of things. Ideas, connections, patterns. Most of it’d obvious to you, I’m sure, but it’s a freedom I’ve never had before, and I don’t know how to stop it.”
Donny said nothing then. He did know how to respond.
“Speaking of which, I need to talk to you and Frank about why I want more people with us, and some ideas for your truck. And your magic items.”
Donny almost missed a step as they walked up; they had not taken the Beast to get them here, the fluids powering it far too precious to waste on simple errands, so it was one of the many horse-drawn trams that ferried the people around the city they now headed towards. Having been forced into learning and working on the vehicle, Donny held anything to do with it with more than a little importance, but as much as he wanted to inquire as to what the boy wanted with his truck, magic always came first. Especially if the kid could figure out how to replace what they had lost.
“What’re your thinking about with magic?”
“Nothing. You guys keep warning me about it, but you haven’t taught me anything. Can’t figure out what I don’t know…”
“Right, right,” Donny cut him off as he first nodded, then shook his head. He’d walked right into that one.
Donny stopped, then. Not just with talking, but altogether—the kid walking a few steps ahead before doing the same.
“What?” Goodie asked as he looked back.
Thinking for a moment, Donny then nodded his head to the left a second later, saying, “Come; you wanna learn about magic—our magic? Place near here’ll teach you everything.”