Kass gave the street a good study before she went out into it. Keeping her eyes peeled for anymore soldiers, she took a walk around. She stopped to ask a few people a question or two. She played the part of new student looking for books because whoever sold the sorts of books a student of Nin would want probably knew where to find chemical supplies. Some, like hydrofluric acid, she would need to show ID to buy. Kass was pretty confident she had a good grasp on which ones could be purchased without ID. Sulfuric acid, for example, would also do the trick and was much less likely to raise any questions. The problem was, she’d likely need four times as much of it and in those sorts of quantities it was little more obvious. Not to mention it was more than she could carry in one trip. If not for the need for ID, 50 litres of hydrofluric acid would be the better choice. She’d suss out their purchase processes before she decided. She was confident she would be able to figure something out.
There was still the problem of disposal of course but it didn’t take her too long to learn where a chemistry lab was located. A friendly chat with a nearby animal rights protester led to information about their disposal system and a location of where she might leave an empty barrel undetected. There was still the issue of transport but Kass had a solution for that already in the form of a dimensional sack. It wouldn’t fit much more than a single barrel, nor would it reduce the weight, but it would would work well enough for what she had in mind. What she needed next was a disguise.
She stopped by a hat store and bought a hat, along with a pair of sunglasses. She made sure they stuck out. If her temporary clothing was easy to remember then the rest of her would be more forgettable. Next she grabbed the food she’d told Cat she was getting. She’d face questions if she returned to the motel room without that. She checked the time. This wasn’t a quick process but if Cat was watching the time she figured she could jut make an excuse about getting distracted by the sights again. She took note to be aware of her surroundings just in case more details were needed.
Next, she found ‘Warren’s Warlock’s Emporium’ which from a glance in the window appeared to have a chemicals and blood section. Inside, she found another section dedicated toward infusements and she briefly wondered if a proper shifted or glamour disguise wouldn’t be better, but she had little experience with that sort of magic and the prices were prohibitive.
Without being obvious she watched as a few students came in a made some purchases, one for a few litres of blood. The guy at the counter didn’t seem to be checking ID that closely which gave Kass a more solidified plan.
Initially she’d been thinking about paying a student to purchase it for her but that was risky. Possibly even riskier than just buying it herself with her own ID given the guy at the counter didn’t appear to actually be recording who bought what. He was supposed to but then this was Nin, not Mercy and these sorts of purchases were probably common. If it had been Myst, they wouldn’t even be asking for ID because you’d have to be either insane or very skilled to get away with murder in a city of sorcerers. Nin was a nice middle ground.
Kass didn’t need her own ID though. She had a few fakes, nothing that would pass a check on the computer but it would do for a simple glance. She hoped the warlock who owned the place was consistent.
She watched a few more purchases take place just to be sure. It was risky staying in the store longer but there were enough customers and she borrowed time browsing some infused necklaces. She considered buying a cheap one. Maybe she could learn to use them? But when she found the price tag she scratched that idea. The cheapest one was 60 gold, over 200 times the price of their motel room. She knew they weren’t that expensive back in Little Rock. That didn’t make sense to her though. Surely with Myst so close, infuesments should be cheaper here? Perhaps this was just a more upmarket store with higher quality infusements? She didn’t have the skills to be able to tell the quality of these though and that was the other thing that put her off. Another option was that they were just more regulated here. She wouldn’t have been surprised if most of the infusements sold in Little Rock were done so without a license.
Kass did hunt around for a few other things, things that would make the hydrofluric acid a little less suspicious. By the time she reached the counter she’d witnessed at least three other people buying blood and only getting their ID checked but not recorded. She hoped the process would be the same for the acid. Based on her knowledge of the law it wasn’t a bad assumption.
She handed over once of her fake Ids. As with the other customers the guy at the counter gave it the barest of glances. At 10 gold, the acid wasn’t cheap either but it wasn’t like she spent her money on much else, and she at least knew what she was doing with this stuff. He didn’t bat an eyelid when she lifted the barrel into her tiny sack and it promptly disappeared. The thing still weighed about 50 kg but Kass used her telekinesis to help with that. Now she just looked like a regular person walking down the street with a small parachute bag.
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She made it back to the motel and ducked past their shared room, moving fast past their window and keeping her head shielded by the hat in case Cat was looking out. In the second room she locked the door behind herself and set the food aside on the table for now. She extracted the barrel from the bag, set it on the floor, and paused to consider how to best do this.
There wasn’t enough acid in the barrel to cover the body but she hadn’t wanted to risk getting two barrels. It would likely need to be sped up with agitation and she’d probably need to rotate the body occasionally. Her telekinesis could probably help with that but she’d still need to be careful and she wasn’t quite skilled enough to do it without line of sight which meant she’d need to be in the room occasionally. Even at a distance which her telekinesis would let her keep, hydrofluric acid was still dangerous. The gases were extremely toxic.
Plus there was the smell. She’d grabbed some safety gear at the store, a decent mask and gloves. But there remained the question of whether or not she should open the window while this was occurring. Keeping the gases enclosed made this more dangerous for her but opening it ran the risk of someone else smelling it.
She had the mask she figured. Opening a window probably wouldn’t reduce the toxic gases that much but she would need to open the door occasionally and the smell would still get out then, and that was probably more obvious to a passerby than at the window. She also wasn’t sure about the bathtub. She’d witnessed hydrofluric acid used to dispose of bodies in tubs before but not all tubs were necessarily made of the same material. Had the ones they’d used in the north been porcelain? She studied the one in the bathroom. It looked to be a similar material but she knew very little about material science. What if there were different types of porcelain or different materials that looked the same? She should probably do a small test first. That wouldn’t show long term damage but she didn’t really have a better way to predict that. She’d just have to take the risk.
So, back to the window. She hopped up onto the tub, opened it and peered out. It opened not far away from the wall of the neighbouring building. Looking up and down the thin gap between the two buildings she could see the other room’s windows and she could stick her head out far enough to have a good line of sight. Perhaps that was the solution? She could leave this one closed but unlatched while she wasn’t in the room then open and close it from a distance a little bit before she needed to enter. She’d keep the internal bathroom door closed as well, to keep the smell and gases in as much as possible. As long as the smell wasn’t prolonged most people would probably ignore it.
She had several hours. That would hopefully be long enough. And for most of that time she’d keep the smell contained. That did mean she probably shouldn’t return to this room often. Maybe she could do a single airing and check in the middle of the night? That was probably wise, just in case things weren’t going to plan and she needed to think of a new strategy.
The last thing she did before getting the chemicals was go through the man’s pockets. She found his wallet and ID. Sergent John Grady was his name. She took in a shaky breath. It was never a good idea to find out their names. Even worse was the picture of his family tucked neatly into one pocket of his wallet.
She sat down on the edge of the bathtub to rest for a moment. She hadn’t meant to kill him, at least not that quickly but there hadn’t really been another option. He was chasing them. Whether rightly so or not it didn’t matter. In that moment it had been him or her. Everyone died eventually, all she’d done was change the timing. And now had a job to finish.
A familiar cold washed over Kass. A calm so perfect that nothing could have disrupted it. What’s done was done. All that remained were the next steps. But as she wheeled the barrel of acid into the bathroom she found her hands shaking. She set it down. This would not do. For a moment it was as if she hadn’t moved, hadn’t left the north. This was just another job for someone else, for a greater purpose, but Kass couldn’t remember what that was. She hesitated.
Protect Jesse? Was that her goal now? She was as much a danger to him as she was protection. What if she brought this new threat home? Had going into the desert been a mistake? What about those creatures underground?
She looked at the body in the tub and found she didn’t feel much with regards to him anymore. It was if he were distant, non-existent. She needed to get rid of the evidence. Right now, nothing else mattered. Time was ticking.
She put on her mask, then removed the lid from the acid. With steady hands and renewed focus she lifted the barrel. She could have done it from a distance but she didn’t trust the control she had over her telekinesis for that. She used just enough to make the barrel easier to lift but not so much to unbalance it.
The liquid was clear like water, so innocuous looking. She knew it smelt a little like vinegar but her mask was prevented any of the scent making it’s way to her nostrils. The acid didn’t quite cover the body but as it dissolved it should flow over. That, and she’d make sure to come and turn the body later. She could use her telekinesis for that as long as she was careful. For now she simply stirred it up with the wave of a hand. Maybe with a good enough mental image of the bath tub she could do it from the other room? It was probably better not to. She hadn’t done anything like that before and hydrofluric acid wasn’t the best first experimental substance to try it on.
She left all but the mask in the bathroom and closed the door. The mask she sat on the floor near the front entrance and out of sight of anyone peering in the window. She took the food she left on the table with her and ducked back beneath the window to their shared room. She needn’t have worried about keeping out of sight. Cat was asleep once again when she returned.