3.14

“It has become difficult to go out in public recently. I was never the most sociable, but it feels as though I have been backsliding. The… manifestations of my power are not comforting, but they are surprisingly not always bad company.

This is likely not ideal, but. Well. It is not as if it matters in the long run.”

— Vincent Hall, Encoded Notebook; Section 7, page 48

Cook’s meeting isn’t anything special. It’s kind of boring actually. It takes place at some random house in the wealthy area of the residential district. The host ends up being a blonde guy in khakis, and I’m really only able to pay attention to some of the specifics that I write down on a little notebook in the bathroom.

And then I wander out, ditch Eileen, and head back to the shack. All in all, uneventful. I manage to get some records for shipments, vague allusions to some of the routes, and…

That’s about it. Not much. Still, I write everything down, and organize it into something legible for later. I make a note down near the end to pass it all off to Ava, as well. Maybe she can do something with it.

I grab a change of clothes from Chloe’s shack and take ten minutes to readjust my face before heading out again. Racc’s been staying at Mikey’s house, and I’ve been getting — inexplicably — chains of texts from him complaining about missing silverware.

I take another random back-alley route, on a whim, and arrive fairly soon afterward.

Walking up to Mikey’s place, I can hear faint crashes coming from in side. And… yelling?

I sigh, and knock on the door.

It flies open almost immediately, and I have to suppress a twitch.

“Oh thank god,” Mikey says, gasping in the doorway. Behind him, I watch a pan fly across the room. “That kid is a fucking nightmare.”

I do not snort. I do not. “They’re not so bad.”

There’s a particularly loud crash from the kitchen, and Mikey’s expression turns to one of horror. “My plates.”

He turns back to me. “Please take them out. Out of the house. Anywhere but here.”

I smirk. “Sure.”

He herds me inside and hurries into the kitchen, bodily jumping in front of Racc, who’s waving a pot around with two hands disturbingly close to some of the dishes.

“You little shit — quit trashing my kitchen!” Mikey hisses, throwing his arms out and trying to snatch the kid’s makeshift weapon. They easily duck out of the way.

At this point, I couldn’t hold back a smile even if I wanted to. Idly, I wonder how he’s so stressed about this. Maybe Racc’s power has a toggle?

Still, Mikey’s not the only one who uses dishes around here.

“Hey.” They turn, blinking innocently.

I nod at the still-open door. “Take a walk with me?”

They nod back, and drop the pot, wandering over to the door. Mikey lets out a sigh of relief, and starts to clean up.

We head out onto the street, and I take a moment to glance at the kid out of the corner of my eye.

They’re a little twitchy. Their eyes dart around, looking at nearby alleys, doorways, stuff like that.

I frown. “Hey, if being outside makes you nervous, we can go back in. Or, uh, a friend of mine owns a shack a little ways away.”

They shake their head. “…Open spaces.”

“Ah.” I jerk my thumb over my shoulder at a little alcove nearby. “How about over there?”

Racc leans over, considering. After a moment of hesitation, they nod.

They scamper over, plopping themself down on a bench and looking around nervously. I try to suppress a chuckle as I amble behind them.

“So,” I start, lowering myself onto the bench. “Where to now?”

They blink. “Uh… huh?”

“You, uh. Have any plans for where you’re going next?” I ask.

“…Sure.”

I raise an eyebrow. “Really?”

They squirm. “Why do you care? Just drop me off at the police station,” they mumble.

That’s… not ideal. I don’t know how to deal with children, and this child obviously has not had it easy. Realistically, it wouldn’t be the worst idea to set them up with a foster family, if my suspicions here are correct.

Issue is, I don’t have the resources to do that, and I don’t trust the police to do it either. Racc isn’t out on the street because they want to be, after all.

“I, uh. I don’t like seeing sad kids,” I deflect. “If you wanted…”

Ugh. I don’t know whether this is the right decision, but…

“You could stay at the house, if you like,” I offer. “I’d come around as often as I can, and my — my associates would visit as well.”

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They still seem hesitant.

“It’s not an obligation. You can leave whenever you’d like,” I clarify.

Racc ducks their head, mumbling.

“What was that?” I ask.

“…I’ll stay. For a little.”

My lip twitches upwards. “Cool. Just, uh. Try to stop breaking stuff, please. Plates are kind of expensive.”

They scowl. “Maybe.”

I nod, and we take a minute to sit on the bench, stewing in a sort-of comfortable silence.

“Hey, uh. One more question,” I ask hesitantly.

Racc side-eyes me.

I smile. “Where’d you get that gun?”

—

As I’m dropping Racc off back at the house — and studiously ignoring Mikey’s pleas for mercy — I catch movement out of the corner of my eye.

By the time I look, it’s gone. But… I could swear I had seen a patched-up coat ducking into an alleyway.

I take a detour down that alley, but I don’t end up finding anything. I try to convince myself I’ve imagined it.

It doesn’t work.

—

I toss the notebook to Ava and drop to the concrete sidewalk with a huff. All this espionage stuff is really kind of a pain.

Even so, I managed to sort through a lot of it, and I’ve kept an index of the people I’ve made the offer to, and marked those who accepted. It’s stored near the back of the notebook, with any info I’d obtained by sneaking into Cook’s meetings cut down significantly.

The raw data remains scrawled into the messy pages near the front, just in case she catches something I missed. I find I’m relying a lot on her, these days.

I lift my head, staring at the cloudy sky above us. “You think Gordon has any experience arms dealing?” I ask idly.

Ava snorts. “About as much as the rest of us, probably.”

I sigh. “Need someone to look into a dealer near the docks, but I don’t wanna ask you to do everything.”

“Can’t do it yourself?”

“Got another ‘secret meeting’, or whatever,” I drawl, voice thick with sarcasm.

She rolls her eyes. “Makin’ me wish I worked corporate again, kid.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Ava chuckles. “This is the busiest I’ve been in years.”

That seems more like a bad thing, to me, but if she’s okay with it…

I’m still going to ask Gordon to check out the dealer. Maybe Chloe can lend him a bolt gun or something.

“So are we arming ourselves now?”

“N — no. Not now, at least,” I scowl. “Unless — you think we should…?”

“Nah,” Ava shakes her head. “Just curious.”

I drag a hand down my face. “I… need options. I don’t know how to deal with any of this, I don’t even know where to start. I guess I just want —“

I pause while I think about how to word it. Things have been moving quicker since the attack at the bar, but at the same time it feels like I’m going nowhere. I need to be doing something, but I don’t really know what.

So I’ve been… hoarding, I guess.

“I want tools in my toolbox, before I start making any plans,” I conclude. “I can’t make a plan if I don’t know what my options are. Even if I don’t really want to use them,” I admit.

Ava hums. “Makes sense.”

I perk up. “Really?”

She snorts, seeing my expression, and reflexively hides her mouth. “Yeah, it does.”

Ava turns back to the notebook, idly flipping through the pages. She chuckles at some of the earlier notes, ones which I know from personal experience are written in scrawling handwriting and include a few choice swears, but she seems to focus in upon reaching the back.

“…This is good stuff,” she mutters eventually.

I tilt my head. “Really? Thought it was kinda boring.”

“Well, it is,” she admits. “But if we can get a more complete picture…”

“I’ll work on it,” I mutter, pushing myself up from the ground. Thankfully, the sidewalk around here isn’t too grimy, but I do need to get moving.

The clouds drift. It’s not a sunny day today, and according to the Forecaster, it’ll stay that way for the rest of the week. The buildings near the commercial district, usually shining high above the city, reflect a dull gray instead, and even the crumbling downtown area seems somehow darker.

I give a nearby streetlamp a half-hearted kick. The bulb flickers, but remains dark.

They’re supposed to turn on when we’re overcast like this, and I’m sure if I made the trek over to any of the fancier residential areas, they would be. Here, though, we get basically none of them.

“I’m gonna head back to the shack. Text me if you need any help deciphering that,” I say, shoving my hands in my pockets and preparing to walk back.

“Mm,” Ava replies. “Claire?”

I turn. “Yeah?”

She gives me a funny look, closing the notebook and storing it in her coat. “You’re… you’re doing pretty good, you know.”

Huh. I…

I give her a slight smile. “Thanks.”

—

“Hm? A bolt gun?”

I shrug. “Yeah, I mean. I don’t want to just send him out there empty-handed. Why, you wanna do it instead?”

Chloe rolls her eyes. “I got shit to do, sorry. You should get used to sending your goons out, anyway.”

“Still not goons!” I protest. “And —“

I huff. “They’re not disposable either.”

“Maybe I can just wait a week, and go to the docks myself,” I mutter, flopping back onto Chloe’s couch. I’ve spent so many nights on it by now it might as well be mine, actually. “You sure you can’t lend a hand?”

Chloe eyes me, looking conflicted. I try to put on puppy dog eyes, but they must not be very good because she simply snorts and looks away.

“My power doesn’t work like that,” she offers. “Shit I make only works for me.”

Chloe grabs a contraption from her workbench and tosses it to me. I catch it automatically, turning it over in my hands. It looks like a small, brass gearbox, with a large crank attached to one end. I make sure to keep my fingers away from the other end, where some of the gears are exposed. They look extraordinarily dangerous.

“Try and crank it,” she says.

I shrug and do as she asks, shifting my grip on the box and attempting to pull the crank.

Attempting being the key word. I manage to force it a couple inches around, but the shriek of metal stops me from going any further.

Chloe laughs.

“…Is this supposed to do something?” I ask, shooting her my most unimpressed look.

“Oh, yeah, it’s uh. Doesn’t really matter. But!” She lights up. “Reason you can’t turn it is ‘cuz the gears are overstressed — ratio’s incorrect. My power doesn’t really let me build new things. It just lets me bypass the gear stress,” she explains.

“Huh. Is it just gears?” I ask. She shakes her head.

“It’s anything mechanical, as long as the individual pieces are small enough. Took me a while to figure out how to do anything with it,” she chuckles.

I turn the box around some more, peering into the internals. I don’t really understand any of it, but Chloe’s power seems extremely versatile.

I hear a ding. My phone…? I put down the box, and dig around in my pockets.

Retrieving the device, I flip it open and read the offered message.

I frown. “Ava says we’ve got a few patients, this time. Wants to try doin’ em all at once.”

“Huh. I’ll come with.”

I hum in acknowledgment. “We’ll see how it goes, I guess.”