After double-checking to make sure the door was locked, Daisy sat beside me on the bed.

“I’m taking a big risk by trusting you, Taylor. Don’t make me regret it.”

“Your time with that man from today… it wasn’t the advertised service, was it?” I asked.

“I’m not surprised you figured that out. Roberto is a very proud man who detests looking disheveled in any way. His suit is always brushed clean, ironed, without a button or bump out of place. Though I respect your guess, this sort of interaction isn’t as uncommon as you might think. Many men simply want to talk to someone who will listen, play chess, or something similar. They don’t always want the obvious.”

“Except a man like that doesn’t indulge for two hours. He’s efficient with his schedule and only spends two hours on something very important. Meetings with other important people, for example.”

She laughed. “Oh, I’d not say I’m an important person. But I’m certainly valuable to other important people. If you’re smart, you can make a man divulge all sorts of secrets in this profession. When I was a young woman, this is exactly what I did. I accumulated so many that soon, I had dirt on and leverage over just about every powerful man in this town. I learned everything I could from the best of nearly every profession, so you could say I’m… something of a consultant.”

“What did Roberto want?”

“Roberto…” she played with a strand of her hair. “It’s a bit complicated with that man. I can never really tell what he wants, but in this case he was very direct. He wants me to be the new mayor. He’s quite insistent upon it. This isn’t the first time he’s come here and spent multiple hours making his case.”

“And why don’t you?”

“Venture a guess,” she said.

“You like being alive.”

She held up her finger, grinning.

“And that’s exactly what I told him. He seems to believe that if I were to suddenly take up the role that all the men in the town would fall in behind me. That the sheriff would be forced to give up, swear fealty, and we’d all live happily ever after. Well… Roberto is not so naive as that, but he does believe it would work that way.”

“Eric is in his own world now. I don’t think anything’s going to pull him from the reality he’s made for himself.”

“Not just for himself,” Daisy corrected. “When you’re staring down the barrel of a gun, it becomes your reality as well. It’s a reality you can impose on other people.”

“You trust me, telling me all this, so can I trust you with a few important things too?”

She smiled, her expression so much softer in private than when being observed by others. You’d think this was a completely different person.

“Go ahead.”

“I’m here because PanTech released a virus during the chaos of the collapse. It’s the deadliest humanity has ever faced. I developed a vaccine, but it sterilizes those who receive it.”

“Wow… that’s… a lot to drop on someone.”

“Sorry,” I said. “You’re right. I should probably work on my vaccine pitch.”

“No, I meant you,” she said. “You’re so stressed you look like you might break into pieces at any moment. You’re barely holding it together. This is a lot for a young girl to take on alone.”

“I’m not alone. I have Ghost.”

“The falcon you mentioned when you first arrived? Where is he?”

“Attempting to make contact with the Adversity Management team that left here. Unfortunately, he’s not very talkative on our communicator. He prefers to work independently and doesn’t like to be distracted, or distract me. He cares, in his own way. Despite how it sounds, he really is a good friend.”

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Daisy repositioned herself behind me, placing her hands on my shoulders, massaging them and my neck. I relaxed my armor before she could notice it. The massage felt great. She was really good at this. And by this, I didn’t mean the massage. Getting information out of people.

“Do you have a special someone? A boy you like maybe?”

I paused briefly. If I was going to talk about this, perhaps this was the right place and time.

“There was someone… once. I only knew him for a few days, but no one ever made me feel that way before or since.”

“Oh, what was his name?” she asked.

“Linus,” I replied.

She froze. “Linus? What zone was he from?”

“This one.”

Her hands no longer moved.

“My nephew. He really did have the sorriest excuse for parents a boy could ever have. Him and his brother. His brother stayed behind, and he wanted to go and be free, explore the world, become a man in the way his father never could. So, he’s really gone…”

“You’re his aunt? Yeah… he saved me from getting killed by two other Adversity Management soldiers. A few years ago, before I joined PanTech myself.”

She resumed massaging my shoulders.

“Linus always followed his heart and took life as it came at him. Kuros, his brother, is different. He declined the chance to leave. Felt like this place was worth fighting for. Those two never did get along. To Kuros, Linus was a selfish brat who wouldn’t listen to anyone. To Linus, Kuros was bound by tradition and a loyalty that didn’t make sense. Both brothers were right, in a way.”

“I should have guessed they were related. They look very similar. I actually wanted to ask you about the Red Collar Boys camp.”

“What makes you think I know where it is?” Daisy asked, almost defensively.

“I don’t know that, but you certainly know a lot of things. It’s just one more thing to know.”

“Will you tell Kuros about his brother?” she asked.

I nodded.

A gunshot rang out, startling us both. We looked at one another briefly before rushing out of the room.

“Where did that come from?” I shouted to the few patrons below.

“Sounded like it was right outside.”

I ran out, immediately spotting a body lying on the ground near where the horses were tied. I rolled him over and checked his pulse. Dead.

Daisy walked up behind me with a lantern, and I immediately recognized the man.

It was the deputy with Sheriff Eric earlier. The one who shot the man who ran up to the farmer, Jim, after the sheriff shot him.

As if thinking of the man summoned him, the sheriff suddenly appeared with half a dozen deputies.

“What happened here?” he shouted.

I tried to explain.

“We heard a gunshot and—”

A foot connected with my stomach, sending me falling backward into the sand. My armor had absorbed it, but I couldn’t let on to that being the case. I clutched my stomach and curled up, groaning.

Daisy knelt beside me, putting a hand on my back.

“She ain’t even armed, Sheriff!” Daisy shouted.

“Well, ain’t that just convenient. The outsider’s the first one to arrive, before me and my men can even grab our guns and rush down the street.”

“We’re closer, and she was trying to help,” Daisy said.

“I find out you’re covering for her, Daisy… and so help me…”

“I was with her when the shot came. There are patrons inside that can vouch she was in a room until after the shot happened.”

Sheriff Eric nodded, looking between me and the dead deputy. For a moment, I wasn’t sure if he was going to believe half a dozen eye witnesses or the story he’d created in his mind. Eventually, he looked at his other deputies.

“Take care of the body. Wake up some of the others, and increase the patrols tonight. We’ve got us an assassin on our hands, and I reckon the Red Collar Boys might know something about it. Startin’ tomorrow, I’m issuin’ an arrest warrant for every single man wearin’ a red bandana around their neck. If they put up a fight, we’ll shoot ‘em dead. We’ll put a posse together and ride around noon. This territory ain’t too big. Reckon we can have the whole lot in boxes by supper.”

He paused, looking down at Daisy and I.

“You ladies may want to stay inside tomorrow.”

As the men left, Daisy helped me back inside and into my room again, brushing past a concerned Belle and Lucy.

“You’re not actually hurt,” she said after closing and locking the door again.

“The perks of the technology I had access to. More importantly, you need to understand that it’s now or never. If you don’t let me get ahead of this slaughter, there won’t be any armed men left capable of stopping the sheriff. Even I can’t take on a group of armed men like that. Not without taking half your town with them. Not only that, but—”

“But this town needs to be the one to solve its own problem, right? If we just let you or someone else come in and fix everything for us, nothing will improve. Maybe we’ll find some new master that’s even worse. Out the north end of town, there’s a residential section. The late Jim’s farm is near the top of a hill. Keep going straight north and you’ll find a cave that leads to a ravine. There are other ways to get to the camp, but that’s the safest. There are a few caves in the area, so Kuros has a toy soldier beneath a round rock by the entrance so they can be sure it’s the right one. You show up unannounced and they might not give you much time to explain yourself, so make it count. Say ‘three crows at midnight’ as the first words that come out of your mouth.”

I nodded. “Thank you, Daisy. I’ll make sure I get to them before anyone else does. There’s a good chance they’ll try to follow me, but under the cover of darkness they’ll never keep up. Take care of Lucy and Belle.”

She pulled me into a hug. “Good luck, Taylor.”

“As usual, I find myself needing it,” I said.