My awareness twitches as I get ready to use the coins I left behind to relocate. But it doesn’t go anywhere near as far as I expected it to. It goes all of twenty feet away, right through the door, and connects at chest height to something outside. Both the coins I left behind.
“Shit.” I mutter under my breath and look around the room. “They already know about the spells. Even if I toss one through the window, they’ll be there in a few seconds.”
“Less than a few seconds, actually.” Pearl whispers, even though I’m pretty sure she’s speaking directly into my mind. “One of them is heavy with the tint of teleportation. The same kind of tint that was on the teleporter you repurposed, too–not one from a spell.”
I clench my teeth and hiss through them. “Double shit. What should we do?”
“Open the door. Talk to them. I’ll keep my awareness on a knife’s edge, and if they try to hurt you, kill them.” Pearl says seriously. “But they didn’t kill you before everything happened. There’s a chance they don’t want to hurt you.”
“Yeah, a snowball’s chance in hell.” I sigh and carefully drop my duffel bags behind the couch. “Fine. But I’m trusting you to keep me alive.”
Pearl nods in understanding. I glare at the door as the heavy knock rings out once more, but the lighter one doesn’t join it this time. One of them’s getting impatient. And something tells me that keeping them waiting could be very dangerous. So I straighten my back, put on my bravest face, and slowly undo the locks keeping us separated.
The door slams into my foot the moment the second lock clicks open.
“Kept us waiting long enough.” The woman from two weeks ago laughs as she easily shoves both me and the door out of her way. She watches the man walk straight to the couch, then turns to me and smiles. “Lock the door behind us.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I grumble sarcastically as she goes to join her friend. I turn all the locks and quickly turn around to see the man taking a deep swig of my diet cola. “Dude. What the hell?”
The guy points a finger gun at me and grins. “You left it out, so that’s your problem.” He says as he rests his feet on the coffee table, then takes another long drink. “Ah, still cold-ish. What are you still doing standing up? There’s a chair right over there–across from us–that looks just uncomfortable enough to keep it around. Take it and let’s talk.”
I cross my arms and narrow my eyes at him. “This is my apartment, asshole.”
His expression goes flat and he sets the can down on the table right next to the coaster. He uncrosses his legs and slowly sits up, laces his fingers together, and nods at the chair.
“Sit down.”
“What did I just–”
“I’m not going to ask again.” He says quietly. “We are going to talk. Sit down or be sat down.”
Something in his voice snaps my jaw shut. I glance over at the woman, but she’s gone completely stone-faced with an expression that could make a grizzled veteran piss his pants. She raises one hand and gestures at the chair without a single change in expression, yet somehow, she’s infinitely more intense and intimidating than a moment ago.
“Fine.” I huff and sit my ass down in Jazz’s uncomfortable armchair. “Ass in chair, just like you asked.”
The man’s face morphs into a smile that reaches his eyes. But it also doesn’t. The bottom of his face says ‘jovial and kind’, but his eyes say ‘I might kill you for annoying me’. I swallow hard as he shifts to the side to let the woman sit down, who leans back and drapes one arm over the cushion and almost around the guy’s shoulders. But she never touches him.
“Thank you for your eventual cooperation.” He says flatly. “Now I hate to start off this way, but we seem to have a problem here. See, when we first met, you took something that was ours. A Class Coin. We never thought you’d actually survive the system’s hatred for the class it would give you, yet here you are.”
He gestures at me with one disinterested hand. “Coin still lodged firmly in your existence, a shellraiser shell in your hair, and very much alive. Our client was not happy that we failed to produce him a Class Coin.”
“Not happy at all.” The woman agrees with a quirk of her lip. “He saw reason eventually, but you really can’t do much with billionaires. They think they can buy the world, and when you tell them there’s something they can’t have, it just makes them want it more.”
“So, what? You want to kill me to get the coin back?” I lay my hands in my lap and, as discreetly as possible, ready my awareness to push spells into my coins. “That’s bullshit. I survived so damn much just to make it back here. You give this coin to anyone else, they’ll die… day… one…”
Realization hits me like a brick in the teeth. Of course anyone else would die with the coin. And then the coin would reappear somewhere else, where someone new could pick it up. Or, if these two found it again and again, selling it to people who have no idea about how much the system hates Worth classes, they could keep selling one coin over and over and over again.
“That’s exactly what you want, isn’t it?” I say quietly. “Why? Does the coin reappear around here every time? Is it that much easier than going around trying to find ones randomly created by the system?”
The man clicks his tongue. “A little too clever for your own good. But that’s the entire reason you survived the system’s baptism by fire, isn’t it? All those tricks, trying to keep you away from its chosen little silver soldiers of perfection…” He sighs and shakes his head. “This would have been infinitely easier if you’d just died there instead. Now you’ve terrified the Preservation, screwed up our sale, and what? You think you’re just going to be able to run?”
He laughs harshly, grabs the can, and downs the rest of it. “You can’t run, Shelby! You’re one person against the whole world! The best you might be able to manage is a few months hiding in the sewers and changing your clothes every five minutes, and for what?!? Just to get dragged back to the other world, where you get to look over your shoulder every waking minute because the system itself wants you dead!?”
Frustration bubbles up in my throat. “Hey, screw you! I didn’t almost get killed multiple times just to roll over and die so you can get a paycheck!” I grab the arms of the chair and stand as violently as I can. “I’ve got things I still need to do. People I want to go back to. If the only way back there is over your disfigured corpse, then I’ll stand proudly in bloody shoes for the entire world to see.”
I activate relocation on the coin in the asshole’s left pocket. The world splits for a fraction of a second, and in that moment of confusion, I activate the knife on my left arm. When I appear right beside him, ripping off the right side of his perfectly tailored suit, a blade of prismatic shield is pressed to his neck. He doesn’t even flinch as I press a coin to his back, but he does casually hold up his hands in surrender.
“Well played, well played.” He chuckles. “I made the mistake of thinking those coins were afterthoughts. Turns out they were your contingency plans.”
If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
The woman stares at the man as his lips tremble. Something twinkles in her eye, but I can’t make it out. She makes the motion as if she’s going to stand up.
“Hey!” I press the blade into the guy’s neck just a little. “Don’t move, or this guy’s turning into a fountain.”
“Damn, that’s intense.” She chuckles and shows me her hands. Then she kicks a briefcase towards me, which I somehow missed before all this. “There’s something you need to see in there. If you still think you can chop off my associate’s head after you’ve taken it in, then go ahead and repaint your apartment.”
Real panic flashes over the guy’s face for a split second, but the stony asshole comes right back. He goes to speak, but his Adam's apple brushes against the edge of my shield-blade and whatever he’s about to say dies on his tongue.
I gesture at the briefcase with my foot. “Yeah, I’m not touching that. You didn’t have it on you when you came in, so you either pulled it out of your inventory or it’s some kind of spell.”
“I’m not going to argue that.” She confirms. “But I need to show you what’s inside. It’s going to happen one way or another, so how are we doing this?”
I mull over the thought while shooting as many glances at the briefcase as humanly possible to try and get Pearl’s attention. If I think it’s a bomb or something, I should get this woman to open it. But if there’s a gun inside, and she’s trying to bait me into making her open it, then I should be the one to open it. Then there’s the very real option that there’s nothing in the briefcase yet, and that something will show up in it depending on what happens.
“Shelby. There’s… nothing in there.” Pear whispers in confusion. “But it’s extremely magical. Almost as magical as a Class Coin or Card. I don’t know what that means, but if I had to guess, I’d say it’s part of her class. Some kind of… physical manifestation of a skill.”
Of course it’s option number three. So opening that briefcase screws me over no matter who opens it. I shift uncomfortably and press my shield-blade a little harder against the guy’s neck, but there’s a resistance that wasn’t there before. Instead of the soft bite of flesh, which I have to keep myself from easily cutting into, it feels like I’m pressing against an immovable object.
Except… the guy still isn’t moving. If he has a spell that hardens his skin, I can’t do anything to him. So why isn’t he trying to escape? Or… fighting back in some way? I try to keep the surprise off my face as I press the edge against his throat harder and harder, but no matter how hard I press, it doesn’t cut in the slightest.
The dude doesn’t react any harder.
There’s something going on. I just have to figure out what it is.
“Flip the briefcase over.” I say as I kick the briefcase back to the woman. “Undo the latches, and let everything inside fall to the ground. If I see a weapon, or any kind of spell, I won’t hesitate.”
With a nod she grabs the briefcase, spins it around, and unlatches it in one swift motion. I don’t even have time to react as the thing splits open, spilling out a ton of coloured confetti and glitter that piles on the floor like the remains of a murdered children’s cartoon.
I stare at it in utter confusion for more than a few seconds, along with the woman and the man. None of us can seem to believe what we’re seeing, and I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing. The woman eventually knits her eyebrows together and bangs her fist against the bottom of the briefcase like she’s trying to get the last bit of sauce out of a glass bottle.
When that produces another burp of glitter, she lets the briefcase fall with a sigh of exasperation. “Seriously? All that buildup for a pile of goddamn confetti?”
“I’m… just as confused as you are. Apparently.” I say slowly. “I thought there was going to be a gun in there. Or… at least some kind of spell. And just let me say, if this is a distraction, you did the absolute worst job of capitalizing on it possible.”
“Not a distraction, definitely not.” The man says quickly. “It was supposed to be a celebration. Since you passed the test. The test that we’ve been giving you since we barged in here. One that definitely doesn’t involve us hurting you in the slightest, or me getting my head chopped off to prove a point.”
I raise an eyebrow and pretend to plunge my blade into his neck. He screams in terror and summons two chunks of gold shot through with green to his hands, reaching up and scratching at his throat as if trying to shove the stuff into the wound. The nonexistent wound.
“I’m dying! I’m dying! I’m… fine?” He stops thrashing and lowers his hands from his neck, then composes himself and stands up straight while adjusting his shirt. “I mean, I knew you wouldn’t kill me. Of course I did. This was also part of the test, and you passed this one too. With flying colours. One of which was not red, thankfully.”
The woman rolls her eyes and sends her briefcase away. “So cat’s outta the bag now. Yeah, we were just testing you to see if you’d be a danger to everyone we’re working with. You already proved yourself more than enough by coming back from the other world with a Worth class, sure, but we had to see what kind of a person you were.”
“Because there are a lot of personalities that don’t do very well when given access to an unending well of magic.” The man adds with a waggle of his finger. “We’re pretty sure you won’t sell us out for money or fame since your first instinct was self-preservation. You made some snap decisions that weren’t really smart, since we’re a lot more powerful than we’re letting on, but you couldn’t have known that, so we’ll let it slide. For now.”
“Aw, thanks.” I say with sarcastic sweetness. “Making me think you were going to kill me definitely makes me want to trust everything you’re saying. Get out of my damn house.”
“Nope, can’t do that.” The woman says with a shake of her head. “You’re in danger, and I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if I sent you out into the cold dark where the Preservation will descend on you like vultures. We’ve still got a lot to discuss, but this time, it’s the actual stuff. No intimidation, no tests, no nothing.”
“Like I believe that.” I snort and disperse the magic in my knife with a wave of my hand. “Give me a reason to trust you. Not one of those bullshit ‘we’re all in this together’ excuses, either; I want something tangible. Something that actually convinces me that this still isn’t part of some elaborate set-up so you can get more money. Or more power.”
The man’s eyes light up at the mention of money. “Oh, that one’s easy. Let me give you my card, and her card.” He digs in his pockets, then hands me two golden cards with different names on them. “That one is my spending account, and the other is my partner’s. If you come with us, you’ll get one of your own.”
I cautiously take both of the cards, which look like they belong to a real bank, and study them closely. One of them is under the name ‘Noland Granmarg’, and the other is for ‘Ursula L. Caius’. Neither of them stick out as a good reason to think these people won’t sell me out the second I step out of my apartment.
“She’s not convinced. Almost like a card could be faked, or that she doesn’t deal in bank details like you do.” The woman says. “Maybe try actually giving her the details instead of being cryptically vague?”
“But cryptically vague is my forte.” The man sighs in defeat and swipes the ‘Noland Granmarg’ card from my hands. He pulls out his phone and fiddles with it for a second, then turns it around to show me an account with… holy shit, that a lot of zeroes. “There. We aren’t going to betray you because we don’t need the money.”
Once I manage to pick my jaw up off the floor, something comes to me. “If you don’t need the money, then why the hell are you selling class coins?”
“To spread notoriety.” The woman responds before the man can, which makes him deflate a little. “We get them into people’s hands who don’t deserve them. A bunch of them don’t come back. Info spreads like wildfire, and suddenly, there’s a good layer of fear clouding the greed. People don’t kill each other over class coins like they used to, and now everyone uses us or the Preservation as a middleman to make sure selling class coins is safe.”
The man nods in agreement, but he’s obviously annoyed he didn’t get to explain it. “We take a small fee for every sale–two point five percent. And that goes to the upkeep of the website and paying the people who go out to make sure the deals happen safely. We tried doing it for free for a little while, but that made people suspicious. We tried out a bunch of different fees, and eventually settled on the one we have now.”
“Two point five percent of ten million bucks is still a lot.” I point out. “But… that doesn’t explain why you’re still going around collecting coins to sell. Do you even have a boss to report to?”
“I am my own boss.” The man says with a smirk. “Just because the orders were my own, it doesn’t mean I wasn’t ordered to do something. Besides… there’s one very specific reason why we’d want Worth classes. One that has to do with making sure the Class Coin gets into someone’s hands who we don’t want in the picture any more.”
Pearl gasps. I frown as I try to understand what he’s insinuating… until it hits me. And it really hits me. “You’re sending people to their deaths. On purpose.”