“Wait, what?” I asked Angie, taking a cautious step toward the woman who pushed the child further behind her. I held up my hands, trying to appear non-threatening. “Does that mean she’s an Augment or related to one or something like that?”

“You know if she could have answered that she probably wouldn’t have flashed that warning in the first place,” Jon chimed in, though I could hear the confusion in his voice. “Why don’t you just ask her who she is. Maybe these bikers had kidnapped them from another Augment’s family? Though why wouldn’t Angie just say it was because of the Secret Identity rule if that were the case?”

“Hey there, sorry, I didn’t know they had taken prisoners… how long have you-”

“Prisoners!? Who the fuck do you think you’re talkin’ to!? What the fuck did you do to my home!?” The woman practically screeched at me as she stepped down and over the dead body at the bottom of the stairs as if it wasn’t even there. She spoke in a thick accent that would have been right at home in New Jersey and her curly black hair bounced with each step as she waved her hand absently at her son. He retreated back up the stairs in a hurry, though the woman moved with an odd amount of confidence as she marched toward me and pointed a sharp finger in my direction. “Do you know how hard it is to get blood outta this deck!? And these guards! My hubby told me they’d keep all you nosy twerps outta our business, now he’s gonna have to go and hire a whole new setta them! Do you realize how hard it is to find good help in this fuckin’ city?!”

“Your… husband…. What?” I asked, suddenly feeling off as I stopped and took a few steps backwards. I had clearly heard what she had said, but I had to at least go through the motions, just in case I was wrong. “Look, my name’s Loophole, if you need protection, I can help-”

The woman pulled a gun from a pocket I didn’t even realize the dress had and she leveled it at me. “I don’t need your “protection” Loophole, I’m plenty aware of the thorn you’ve been in my husband’s operation. Three years now he’s been working his way through the ranks and you’re trying to upend it all in a fuckin’ weekend, what the fuck gives you the right?”

“Look, I don’t know who your husband is, I swear I haven’t been trying to mess with him. I only just got into all of this myself, I’m guessing he must be from some-”

She fired at the floor in front of me and I jumped backwards. My stamina was slowly ticking upwards, and with a few more seconds I probably could use Center of the Universe to wrench the gun from her grip, but I still needed to stall for at least another moment to be able to ramp it up quickly enough. I could see my mission tracker light up at the side of my vision as my Snake Key quest shook ever so slightly.

“You know damn well who my husband is Loophole and you’re gonna damn well know who I am too,” She said with a look of contempt, leveling the gun at me once again. “My name is Giada Travisi, my husband is Salvatore Travisi. And he’s on track to be the strongest Augment in the world, he’s gonna own this place, you’ll see.”

“Salvatore…” I said as the realization hit me. “Wait, is your husband Sal the Snake? How is that...”

“She’s married to an NPC!? How is that even possible?! Angie, can you tell us anything at all here?” Jon asked as I trailed off before I could raise the exact same question aloud.

“I’m sorry Codex, I am not authorized to discuss this NPC.”

“Of course you’re not… what the fuck is going on here…” Jon muttered as Giada continued her slow trot toward me. In the windows facing the pier, I caught the flash of red and blue lights coming up but still just out of view from Giada’s line of sight. I resolved myself to stall just a bit longer, assuming that they had to navigate through the mess that was the pier. I didn’t want to hurt this woman, especially since she seemed to be powerless and a sentient person, but I also wasn’t going to risk being shot either.

I risked a glance over toward the stairwell and saw that the boy hadn’t actually listened to his mother and was now peeking down around the railing. Whatever was happening here, the child definitely didn’t deserve to see his mother getting hurt and I refused to let myself get caught in a situation where he’d get hurt either, regardless of who he was. Giada's stare could have cut through a well done steak as my eyes met hers once more.

“I hate that damn name these cretins have started calling him, his name is Snakebite to you fuckin’ weaklings,” she snarled and held the gun up at me again. “Now what the fuck are you after breakin’ into our home for, we don't keep anything related to the business here. How’d you even find this place and who the fuck leaked it, I need to make sure we plug that hole before I get rid of you for him.”

“Snakebite is Sal? That doesn’t make any sense, even Gio referred to them as two different people, he said Sal had vouched for him…” I said to Jon as I tried to think back to the interaction.

“Maybe it was a misdirect? I don’t know… that was still before I could hear and see all of what you see, so maybe you misheard him?” Jon offered and while it was tempting to agree to, I wasn't quite sure that I had misheard him. The flash of red and blue lights had become impossible to ignore as they started to flash and pulse through the window. Even Giada finally acknowledged them as she looked over at the windows with a frustrated scowl.

“Well, looks like the cops are here Giada, let’s put down the gun, there’s no need for you to get wrapped up with these guys right now. I’ll tell them you cooperated and you won’t have to be taken away with them,” I said, trying to deescalate the situation. While I wasn’t sure that was a promise I could keep since she was probably going to get arrested anyway, it didn’t feel right having it happen with her son watching from only a dozen feet away.

“You damn heroes! Where the hell am I going to live now that you brought the cops here!? It took Sal four fuckin’ years to get me out of that dump in Chelsea, I ain’t going back!” Giada shouted. She was clearly panicking and not thinking straight if she actually thought she had a way to escape, and her expression seemed crazed as she looked over her shoulder at her son. “Oswald, go, get downstairs now, we practiced for this. Grab your go-bag, we need to get out of here.”

“The gun now!” Jon ordered and I didn’t hesitate as I activated Center of the Universe and ramped up the strength. With her attention distracted, the gun was quickly ripped from Giada’s hand, causing her to nearly stumble forward as she looked back in time to realize what was happening.

When the gun smacked into me, I instinctively tried to pull it into my B.E.L.T. but was met with a warning that read:

“Warning: This item was not generated for Infinite Ascension, you may not store it in your B.E.L.T.”

The gun fell to the floor ahead of me and I met Giada’s wide eyes as she tried to compose herself, watching as they went between me and the flashing lights in the window. She immediately turned, intent on running for the staircase when I reactivated Center of the Universe, this time focusing on people. Her son wasn’t within range, but he was still in his hiding place and had to watch as his mother was suddenly pulled backwards toward me.

“What are you doing? Are you even allowed to arrest her like this?” Jon asked as I grabbed her and deactivated the skill. She struggled against my grip but she was still only human.

“She fired a gun at me, if that's not worth at least a night in detention, I don't know what is. Besides, at best she’s simply married into a crime family somehow, but at worst… I don’t know… I have this feeling that she knows something. I can’t just let her get away,” I explained as I held her in place. She bucked wildly, shouting obscenities as I heard the clattering of new footsteps rushing up and onto the yacht. I turned my head to the side and yelled as loudly as I could. “In here, I need some cuffs!”

“My hubby’s gonna kill you for this!” Giada snarled, only stopping her frantic attempts at escape as her son started to descend the staircase. “Oh Oswald! No, you need to run!”

“Mommy? What’s going on?” the boy whimpered. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting given everything I had learned so far, but I highlighted the boy, wondering if it would give me any details on him. Unfortunately, it sent back the same [Unknown] error and it left me feeling off kilter as I heard people rushing into the room.

“Oswald please, run, don’t look!” Giada cried out and my stomach turned.

I looked back, confirming it was the police and not just some other men I had happened to miss and freed a hand to wave them forward. I couldn’t make out Lt. Nester amongst the group, but the officers reacted and rushed forward as I turned to show the woman trying to escape from my grasp.

“Whoa there Loophole, I thought you guys only dealt with the Augment threats,” one of the officers, a lanky Hispanic man with a badge that read “Mendez” on it, said. Even with his doubt though, he didn’t hesitate as he pulled out a pair of cuffs and approached Giada. Another pair of officers rushed forward and blocked us from Oswald as one knelt to speak with him.

“Yeah that’s what I thought too,” I said turning my attention back to the officer. I held a still struggling Giada in place as Mendez secured the cuffs onto her wrists and took control of her from me. He began reading her her rights as another few cops stepped forward, each taking in the scene and moving to the downed grunts to get them each cuffed as well. “Where do you end up taking all these guys anyway?”

“The bikers? We got a special place upstate we ship them all off too, you Augments bust so many of them, we’d be filling the prisons to capacity if we tried to stuff all of them in there,” Mendez explained as a few officers walked over to the young Oswald, trying to block the sight of his mother in handcuffs.

“What about her? She pulled a gun on me and she says she’s married to Salvatore Travisi, I’ve fought him a couple of times now. The dude always looks like a giant snake-man so you can’t really miss him. I’d like to be able to come in and question her if that’s possible… you know, when she’s behind a bit of glass,” I explained. Giada had started to calm down though her head still whipped back in my direction as I made my intentions clear.

“I ain’t got nothin’ to say to you,” She spat. “I want my attorney, this is unlawful entry, he’s not allowed to come in here!”

“U.S. Code AUG-1103: An Augment, deputized by the local police force, is allowed to enter any domicile their advanced sources deem to be involved in illegal activity. If you don’t like it, write your congressman… and you know… maybe don’t house over a dozen of the gang members that have been distributing drugs all over the neighborhood,” Mendez responded, almost robotically and I highlighted him out of curiosity. Sure enough, he was marked as a non-sentient NPC. He turned his attention back to me with a smile, “I’ll have Lt. Nester contact you with the info you need to get a sit down with Mrs. Travisi once she's been processed, you got anything else while I’m here?”

I thought about it for a second, eyeing the stack of notifications I still had to open but waved them away for the moment. I wasn’t necessarily expecting to level up again just yet, but I felt like I had to be getting close. To that end, I let him know about the bronze den around the corner and that I was planning to hit it after I left the yacht before giving Giada a sympathetic look. There was so much more to her than she was telling me, and I needed to understand how she ended up married to a non-sentient NPC. Not just a random officer or shopkeeper either, but one that was directly involved in illegal activity.

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“I’m sorry about your home, but I think there’s something going on here and I intend to get to the bottom of it,” I said to her before she spat at my feet again.

“Oh you’re gonna be sorry! Just you wait till Sal hears about what you’ve done to me! He’s gonna devour your entrails! He’s gonna string you up over-”

“Mrs. Travisi... I’d like to remind you that you have the right to remain silent… I highly suggest you exercise that right before we have to send you upstate with your security detail,” Mendez said as he pulled her away from me, shooting me a tired look as Giada grumbled. The other officers had collected the grunts, some having to be pulled out on actual gurneys all while I started to look around the room.

“Angie, what the actual hell? I’m not asking about her specifically since you’ll just say you can’t talk about her, but what the hell?! Why is a Non-Sentient NPC married to a real person?” I demanded once the room had been mostly cleared. The officers weren’t fully leaving the scene just yet, but they were giving me space to investigate.

“Non-Sentient NPCs, especially ones that are deployed to major cities instead of locations like Sanctuary Square often find themselves embroiled in that real world. If they didn’t behave like real people, it would kinda give away the whole thing, don’t you think Loophole?”

“I mean…. I guess, but still look at what it’s done… and a kid? Like how the hell are these guys created? Are they actually designed to reproduce?! Isn’t that going too far?” I asked as I wandered over by the television, looking toward the few photos that hadn’t been within my zone when I had used Center of the Universe. “Is this yacht even stolen? They went through a lot of trouble of putting up pictures of themselves and making it feel like an actual home… you know… if you didn’t mind all the random thugs in leather vests walking around.”

“I took a look at some cameras in the area and found the ship’s registration number while you were talking down Giada. Once I had that it was pretty easy to figure out that they either stole this thing or… who knows, maybe they are actually renting it? You’d be surprised by the things that are in public records. This ship is registered to one Andrew Merens, definitely not a Salvatore Travisi, but it’s been available to rent through multiple different party and houseboat rental sites,” Jon explained as I looked closer at a photo of Giada holding a baby. There was a man with dark hair and a goatee standing next to her sporting a wide, friendly smile on his face, pointing at his son as if the boy was his pride and joy.

“I guess I never have seen what Sal looks like when he’s not mostly a snake,” I muttered and took a look around the room again, now a mess after my rapid changes in gravity. “I just don’t get it… if she’s sentient how did she get wrapped up in all of this…”

“Hey Angie, what happens when a player chooses to go Miscreant early on, do they have to fight bikers or something like this for control over their first territory?” Jon asked, almost out of nowhere.

“Finally! Hell, I tried to bait Loophole into asking about it yesterday and he didn’t even try to figure it out,” Angie groaned.

“Hey I was in the middle of dealing with my first den and all of the bullshit with Hydramental's attitude,” I shot back as I looked in the stairwell. I could have headed upstairs, but I was curious why Giada had tried to get her son to run downstairs. I followed them down, being careful to step over the blood left by the now removed grunt and made my way to the lower levels. “I mean, it would be helpful if just once you’d offer useful information when you know I need it instead of trying to make it some sort of game.”

“It is a game, Loophole. I’ve told you, if you want to know something you HAVE to ask. That's the rule. Why is that so hard for you to remember?!”

“Can you not distract her,” Jon jumped in before I could reply, “Angie, please. How do they do it?”

“Of course Codex, I’d be happy to. While Guardians only have the option to eliminate and arrest the offending gang members to fully claim their territory, Miscreants actually have two options,” Angie explained happily. “They can just go scorched earth and eliminate them all or they can take control of the force. This provides them with a ready stream of henchmen to further their goals and a way to quickly recruit more as they need them.”

“That’s… huh…” I said and thought about it for a few moments as I entered a large, open space. Though the back had a door that opened to the lowest outer deck, this room was practically an armory and there were still a few officers within the space, cataloging and taking pictures. There were lockers lining the sides of the walls and in the direct center of the room, there was an opening… right into the water. Sitting, floating in the internal pool was a small submersible, tethered in place. “Huh… so she did have an escape plan…”

“Yeah… If they are renting this place… the owner has to know about this… right?” Jon asked. With the police still combing the area, something they generally didn’t do if there was something that the game intended for me to find in it, I decided to head back upstairs and see if there was anything on the third deck instead. “Angie, when they take over a group, do they get to… I don’t know, alter their henchmen to be more… I guess… thematically accurate?”

“Oooo good question Codex, gold star! So yes, they are given a suite of controls that allow them to give them whatever flavor they would like. I maintain that I don't think that that should include things like providing NPCs with temporary Augmentation serums, that one is still very new, but Axio did say he was experimenting with things during this years wave, so that could be a byproduct. I can't necessarily say what their suite includes at this point since you didn't go Miscreant, so all of that is pure speculation mind you." Angie explained, rattling it off rather quickly. "Now, their influence over those groups has to be slowly spread, but a Miscreant that has enough initiative could find himself in control of a group of NPC minions that span multiple neighborhoods, thus giving them control of larger and larger territories. Of course, this all assumes they want to go that route to seize control as opposed to just using brute force to strike fear into the populace.”

“Okay, what does any of this have to do with Giada and more importantly Sal?” I asked as I came to find my way up to the third deck. It was a long hallway with only a few doors. Two of the three doors were swung open and I could see a bed in the one at the far end. “Even if he was a Miscreant instead of a Non-Sentient, he’s my level and the bikers have been here since I first woke back up. Giada said Sal fell in with the bikers three years ago, wouldn’t that make him… what, Eighth Wave? He’d have to be way higher level at this point if he survived so far.”

“I think that would make him Seventh Wave if she’s saying exactly 3 years ago, but that’s a semantics sort of thing. You’re definitely right though, either of those waves would be higher leveled than you,” Jon said and I felt myself stop in place as I walked up the hall as a sudden realization hit me.

I pulled open my friend’s list and quickly opened up a new message.

“You think he actually knows something? Hell, why wouldn’t he have just told you about how it all works when you were talking to him?” Jon asked. This had been the first time I had sent a message when Jon had active access to my POV, so I was almost surprised that he was able to see it. Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised after he told me that the screen that showed my vision outside of the Safe Room included my entire interface, but it was still good to know that I wouldn't have to play a game of telephone to pass important information over to him.

“Honestly, knowing him I’d bet he just eliminated all of them, Silver doesn’t really seem like a ‘henchmen’ kinda guy. I could be wrong, but he didn’t really give me that vibe, if that makes sense. Regardless, I’m pretty sure he said he was in the Seventh Wave, which means it’s as good a place to start as anywhere,” I explained as I looked into the first room, finding what was clearly a kid’s bedroom, completely with a mess of toys littering the ground. I only spent a few minutes in the child's room before I turned and made my way over to the other open bedroom. I wasn't necessarily expecting a quick reply, but my message box refocused in my vision only a few moments after I left Oswald's room.

“He is a really weird dude for being a Miscreant,” I muttered, briefly looking into the other bedroom before turning my attention to the last room. Unlike the first two, this one was closed and locked as well. There wasn't an immediate key anywhere, and with Giada now in custody, I didn't want to go down and ask if she had it hidden on her either. But my stamina had recovered quite a bit as I had taken the time to look around. With a quick jab, I threw a Gravity Punch with just 10% of my stamina that busted the door wide open.

“New Achievement! Lock Picker. Well that’s certainly one way to get by that pesky lock, although I really think you’re doing more damage to this place than you needed to. Anyway, I’ll keep this brief since I’m way more interested with all this Sal business right now. You used your powers to break through a locked door. If you had been unlucky enough to encounter a locked door before now, I'd have bet you'd already have received this achievement, but oh well here we are. This is a Wood level achievement. Reward: You have received a D:Tier loot box.”

I don’t know what I was expecting, but a rather professional looking office wasn’t it. There were more pictures and even some glass and gold awards on a large cabinet/bookshelf combo on the far wall of the space. Practically all of the photos included the man that I presumed to be Sal. Graduating from college, playing basketball at a local court, and more than a few photos of him in his leather vest, sitting atop a sleek, pastel blue bike.

I expected those last ones given the collection of other photos and his presumed affiliation, but what I wasn’t expecting were the pictures of a pair of younger boys. There were half a dozen framed photos of this pair, one of them sporting the same dark black hair that Sal had. One was them had them playing in the leaves of fall, another had them dressed in matching wrestling gear in a school gym. But the final picture in the collection was the one that had stopped me in my tracks and was probably the most recent photo of the pair of boys.

Sal was dressed, clearly in Augment like attire, with a sleek black mask and a huge smile spread over his face. He had an arm thrown over his younger brother, unfortunately caught in the shot shooting his brother a look that I felt should have precluded this picture from ever getting framed. The boy was younger, maybe 16 or 17 in the picture, but there was something about him that felt insanely familiar.

I wasn’t sure if I actually did recognize him or not, but I also knew exactly what feature my own mask had. Though I had met a few other Augments already, there were only a few I had spent more than a few minutes interacting with. It didn’t matter to me that Jon hadn’t been in the Command Room when I first met him, and after staring at the photo for maybe too long, I finally vocalized the suspicion that was quickly growing.

“Is that… Hydramental?”