They found Sulli early in the morning.

The man had put clear effort into not being found; being unreachable through both of the numbers Freel knew he had, and absent from the more obvious spots he was likely to haunt.

But now they had him. It was a dive. A genuine, full-blooded dive, the sort the middle and upper classes wouldn’t even imagine stepping into, not even out of curiosity. It was a little place made out of prefab plates, with the seams fully on display, located beneath a multi-layered intersection bridge. Its neighbours were similarly shitty, poorly lit and of course resting in the titanic shadows of the high-rises. It was actually on the ground itself, surrounded by odd streets and tunnels that spoke of tragically poor urban planning. Of course, Freel was all for that sort of planning. These places made his work a lot easier.

“Well, it suits him, doesn’t it?” Kreb commented as they lined up outside the place.

“Yeah, I’d say it does,” Yules replied.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Dunton said, and tapped his own thigh rapidly.

Freel looked around.

“Yules, go around,” he said. “Lurk by the back door, in case he makes a break for it. In fact…”

He thought for a second, and considered the view a simple fist-sized drone had given them.

“... might be best that he does. Some darkness and seclusion.”

“I’m on it,” Yules said, and started walking. “Anything to even the score.”

“Ah, yes,” Freel replied, and sneered. “The score.”

They gave Yules a few seconds to get set up behind the ugly, stained box of a tavern. Then Freel breathed in a hearty lungful of polluted air and strode forth.

There were windows, but they were covered up, and none of the people walking in or staggering out of the place paid them any heed. So Sulli had absolutely no warning when they burst through the door. Freel made sure to give it a good slam against the wall, and to put some menace into his movements as he walked past a crummy excuse of a bar.

The furniture and fittings were all old, cheap, or both. The patrons were pretty much what he’d expected; shabby, mean-faced wretches. And Sulli sat with a group of them, around the middle of the tavern floor.

“Hello, Sulli!” Freel shouted, and the man jerked in a very rodent-like fashion. “You haven’t been in touch! Let’s have a chat!”

Sulli bolted to his feet, and his chair clattered onto the floor. His companions at the table stood up in a rather more measured fashion, and Freel’s group was intercepted halfway to the table by three more men.

“Now, what do you think you-”

Freel nailed him right in the solar plexus, Kreb punched another one in the face, and the third one hurried out of the way, and out of their immediate reach. Dunton flipped over their table in passing.

Sulli bolted, and Freel and the boys started running. Kreb snatched up a stool and threw it at the man’s table-mates. The three of them ran around the group, across the rest of the tavern floor, and out through the back door.

Sulli was on the ground and Yules standing over him. The man had an odd talent for tripping people. The only other person present was sitting with his back against a trash recycler, shri-injector in hand, completely oblivious to the world.

“You didn’t let me finish, Sulli!” Freel went on, with deliberately fake-looking cheer. “Come on, we have some catching up to do!”

“Freel, I…”

Freel kicked him in the ribs. It felt good, having the impact on the other side again. Sulli lost his breath and deflated on the ground.

“Let’s go somewhere more private,” Freel said, and pointed to one of the dark alleyways behind the tavern.

Kreb and Dunton each grabbed one of Sulli’s arms and started dragging. The surrounding urbanisation rendered the tavern area gloomy. The alleys were downright dark. It was almost like stepping into a separate, unlit room. Freel took out a little light-drone, set it to ‘Follow’, and threw it up into the air. It hovered along like a good little boy, casting just enough light to see by.

“Hey!”

The voice came from the direction of the tavern backlot. Three of those fellows by Sulli’s tables, and two of the ones who’d tried to get in the way earlier were coming. Two had knives, one had a bottle, and one had a stool, and they looked ready to bust heads.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“You don’t start shit and then just walk away,” the one in the lead said through a set of bad teeth.

He wove his knife through the air.

“Oh no, you don’t.”

“Don’t we?” Freel responded, and aimed his gun at them.

The others drew as well. Freel’s plan was to scare those losers off, but the chemicals buzzing through Dunton’s system had plans of their own. He pulled the trigger, and burned a hole through one of the men.

Oh, well.

Freel, Yules and Kreb each shot one, before any of the other group could react, and the last one then took a blast to the back as he tried to run.

This way they won’t call on any buddies.

“A little further,” he ordered, and Dunton and Kreb finished dragging Sulli well out of sight of the tavern. Then all four of them crowded around him. The soft light cast everything in shades of grey, including the man’s wide, frightened eyes.

Freel cleared his throat theatrically.

“Let’s recap. You’re put in charge of a drug operation. You get to run it, and reap the rewards, for a full year. Then suddenly it burns to a crisp, and you don’t let us know. We have to find out on our own, and waste precious hours hunting you down. Why don’t you fill in the rest for me?”

“It… it wasn’t me, Freel!”

“I don’t care who it wasn’t, Sulli!”

“Look… look, man…”

Sulli started working on sitting upright against the wall, while also holding both hands out.

“I’ve been good! I’ve done good work! For a full year, like you said! There’s no need for all this!”

Freel gave him a mean smile.

“Aren’t laws a funny thing? You’re not allowed to carry a knife with a blade above a certain length… but work tools? Oh, you can carry work tools. Kreb, show him your work tool.”

The big man reached into his coat and brought out a small chainsaw. It was the sort used by scavengers and rescue workers, and was about the size of a large combat knife. Until Kreb pressed a button and the blade fully extended, doubling its length.

The sound of the whirring teeth wasn’t loud, but the high-pitched moan was very unnerving if one was on the wrong side of it. Sulli actually yelped out loud as Kreb pushed it close to his face, and tried to press himself flat against the wall.

“Talk to me!” Freel demanded.

“I don’t know his name!” Sulli screamed, frantic. “He just showed up!”

“Who, and how?!”

“Black hair, black clothes, fair skin! He just strode in and started busting heads! We tried to stop him!”

“Your trying didn’t amount to much. How many guys did you have at that lab, again? Eight?”

“Seven! Look, he worked fast! He took out two before anyone even knew what was going on! Then he bounced around like some kind of hopped-up monkey! Over tanks, over rails, into and out of shadows! He bottlenecked us! We couldn’t mob him! Look, he was some kind of professional! You gotta believe me! He just wrecked everyone, then started a fire in one of the tanks! Af… after he disabled the fire suppression!”

“But that’s not the full story, is it?” Freel said. “You talked to him, didn’t you?”

Sulli’s hesitation prodded Kreb to push the chainsaw closer, close enough that Freel got slightly worried the prick would die before this conversation was finished.

“Yes! Yes!” Sulli shouted.

“TELL ME!”

“He asked about you guys! He wanted to know where you were spending the evening!”

Freel had suspected as much, but at least now he knew.

“And you told him,” he said darkly, staring into Sulli’s bugged-out eyes.

The chainsaw continued its ominous hum, an inch or so away from the man’s flesh.

“He was standing between me and the exit,” Sulli pleaded. “The fire was blazing. I have scorches on my back.”

“Oh, poor you.”

“So, do we stomp on him?” Yules asked. “I don’t know about you guys, but I could really go for some stomping. It’d be a fun social activity. Stress release.”

“Give me something useful, Sulli,” Freel said. “What’s his name? Where does he live?”

“I don’t know! How would I know?!”

“How did he find the Nest?”

“I think some kid with a busted nose showed him,” Sulli said. “Some young street shit.”

Freel clamped his jaw together and filed that information away for later use.

“And that’s it?” he said through his teeth. “That’s all you got? Because it’s all pretty useless.”

“He… he…”

Sulli’s eyes left Freel’s and darted every which way, searching for some answer that might save him.

“He asked me something!” the man then said. “He asked if I knew about the Big Nest!”

“The Big Nest?” Freel repeated flatly.

“The Big Nest! That’s what he said! I don’t even know what that is, so I had nothing to tell him!”

Freel looked at the others. They looked back at him, their eyes slowly widening as the implications dawned on them.

“We’re done here,” Freel said. “For now.”

He waved Kreb aside, then delivered a door-busting kick to Sulli’s face. He left him broken and groaning on the ground; they might need to interrogate him in more detail later.

“Let’s go, let’s go.”

He took out his comm and called the boss, marking it as “Work: Urgent”.”

“Yes?” Jakino said in a few seconds, as the four of them hurried towards the nearest public transport.

“Boss. I think the Big Nest might be in danger.”