“So the drones are a bust?” Freel asked as he flew back.

“Maybe not quite… bust,” Yules said through the Dragon’s internal speakers.

“Having confirmation that he walked to the Black Rail, then away from it again, isn’t news to us,” Freel said back. “At least not to me. I don’t have any stool-shaped dents in my skull.”

The brief silence spoke volumes about how Yules felt about that. Freel didn’t care.

“Look, she has all his details! I didn’t understand the tech-language, but she does have them! I paid her to keep her drones on the lookout. Unless he goes completely to ground, she’s going to find him eventually.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

An unpleasant suspicion had been sneaking up on Freel. The stranger was good. Freel hated to admit it to anyone, even himself, but he was. And not just good, but seasoned. It took more than just training to keep people that calm during moments of intense violence. And he’d quite possibly destroyed a large drug lab all by himself. Wouldn’t someone like that be smart about not getting caught out by drones, after making enemies?

His hands tightened into fists around the controls. Damn that black-clad busybody bastard.

“Did she really check everything thoroughly?” he asked out loud.

“Her machines did, man. She’s not working by hand.”

“Fine.”

“He vanished into a pedestrian thoroughfare. That’s it.”

“Fine! It’s more legwork, then.”

Places with no prying eyes were a relative rarity in the poorer parts of Crescent. So they had their meetup in an enclosed garage, rented at an hourly rate. Freel parked the Dragon, and opened its hidden compartments. The boys, meanwhile, had been shopping.

Yules put on some pop music as they got ready. It was the chipper, mass-produced sort, filled with medium talent and metaphors for sex. Yules sang along with it, but there was an angry tone to his voice. Of course there was. They were all angry.

They put on armour; the lightweight sort that could be hidden under ordinary clothing. They equipped pistols custom-designed to be easy to hide, as well as a few other weapons, along with utility gear. And Freel had given Dunton a special little side-job, and he now handed over a drug patch.

Yules had predicted the man would just use it himself, but Dunton was about pills. This was something different.

Freel held the patch close to his mouth, pressed a tiny button, and assigned a code word.

“Operation Payback.”

The patch made a tiny beep, and Freel ripped away the plastic cover and attached the sticky side to his neck, right over the carotid artery. He wasn’t normally wild about this stuff, but these were special times. Best have something special ready. Just in case.

“Okay, boys. Let’s get serious.”

They hit the streets again. They split into two pairs to cover more ground, and went back to the places the stranger had made stops on, in the search that had led him to the Little Nest, and the Black Rail, and now spoke to more of the late-workers who had met him. It got them nothing useful, but it was worth trying, and was a lot quicker than the first search.

After that they moved to the neighbourhood around the Little Nest. Or rather, around its ruins. In terms of square metres the area wasn’t very big, but between all the high-rises and inhabited tunnels there was quite a lot of ground to cover, made worse by the crush of people in many of the places.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

They didn’t get a lot of updates on the stranger. Some people had met him, as he asked about the local shri market. Addictions were common enough that no one had been taken aback, and quite a few people reported having pointed him to the nearest dealers. That explained how he’d found the Little Nest, although no one admitted to being the one who’d pointed him at it.

In addition to this, they got in touch with some petty gangs and outfits and explained the basics of their manhunt… leaving certain embarrassing details out. One back alley pack had heard the full story, and brought it up with a snigger in their voices. The beating that followed didn’t reveal any new information, but it sure was therapeutic. Mostly they left behind promises of bounties for any information on the stranger, and a certain someone else.

# # #

“I heard you had a visitor last night, Gunta.” Freel said, as he entered a doorway. It was on the twenty-second floor of one of the high-rises. It connected with two others through bridges, and they formed the sort of society where many people only occasionally went down to the ground, and rival gangs might live just a few floors apart.

Inside wasn’t quite a home; there wasn’t even actually a door. It was more of a local meeting place, or something along those lines. Inside, two men and one woman sat on benches. Gunta himself had been pummelled pretty ferociously, and gotten even quicker and cheaper medical attention than Freel and the boys. His nose was still visibly broken, and it was the centre point for a livid bruise that covered about half his face.

“You could… say that,” the battered man said.

Freel looked around a little. A table had been broken in two, and lost a leg, and then crudely repaired with tape. It looked quite fresh. And a large cooler sported a very large dent. The sort one might expect from a human body slamming into it with great force.

“Let me guess: He was asking questions. Right?”

“Right,” the seeming leader of this den told him.

“Yeah,” Freel said. “Yeah, he spent some time doing that.”

“Who is he?”

“I’m looking to find out. And I was hoping you could help me.”

“Me?”

“Mm.”

There was tension in the air, and Freel kept it going steady. It was all a matter of subtle body language, intonation, and stiffness of the face. Drawing his words out, just a little more than was natural, made for the gravy on top. These losers could tell he wasn’t happy, but didn’t know what he was playing at.

“See… I’ve been doing my own asking. And I’ve been told that out of all the people our mystery man visited…” Freel took a single step closer to the three of them. “...YOU are the one who gave him what he needed.”

“I didn’t give him anything except bruised knuckles!” the man spat back.

“Mm.”

“Who told you that?”

“Oh come on, Gunta.”

He knew the goggles didn’t completely hide his eyes, but they did make it harder to tell exactly where he was looking. So they probably missed his looks straight at the wall behind them. The goggles let him see the heat signatures of four people. They were on their feet, and no doubt ready to spring out of the nearby hallway at a moment’s notice.

Maybe these were new precautions, after the stranger’s visit. Or maybe this petty little outfit had been notified as Freel’s group made their way up the high-rise.

He wasn’t worried. If they came with guns, then they’d be bottlenecked. And if they didn’t, then what did it matter?

“What matters is that I heard it, and that I know that you picked up your product directly from Sulli. So you knew the exact location of the Nest. Most did not. Now, what do you say to that?”

“What do you say to that?” the man replied belligerently.

Freel gave him a slow smile. He saw it enough to tell when it was covering up fear.

“You’re not at home,” Gunta went on. “You’re in the heart of MY home. So, what do you say?”

“I say that you know full well that I’m not the overall head of the shri trade. You know that I can scrape together much more than just my three boys here. You know how cheap fists are in this city. And if you think I would come at someone who messed up the trade with mere fists… think again.”

The four heat-silhouettes fidgeted. They were clearly listening to every word. Freel kept a basic battle plan in mind, in case it was needed.

Gunta leaned forward

“What do you want?!” he demanded.

“As I said: You know Sulli. I want him. Help me find him. Put your people on it. Chase rumours and ask questions. Maybe shake down your local junkies. See what comes out. If you hear anything, pass it on to me.”

Freel slowly spread his coat wide. Then he drew a knife in an equally languid fashion.

“Once I have a one-on-one with Sulli, I’ll know what exactly went down at the Nest. Then I’ll be one step closer to finding the guy who did that to your face. And, oh, by the Fates…”

He moved the knife through the air.

“... am I going to have fun with him.”

He tapped the flat of the blade against his palm.

“What do you say? Do this for me, and I’ll consider things squared.”

Freel had, in fact, not heard anything about Gunta spilling his guts. But fear was a useful tool.

“Fine,” Gunta said. “I’ll put the word out.”