Issue #66 – City by the Lake
Part 5
Facsimile turned a slow circle, her enhanced nose twitching as she tried the direction their quarry had gone. A real wolf, she imagined, with all the real brain parts necessary to really make use of all the smells; their intensity and distribution, would have been able to figure out the story of what went on like the expert trackers that showed up in fantasy shows.
They’d be able to tell how the fight went, who was winning, and probably what they were saying to boot. But she just had a nose that could smell in three dimensions and a a lot of guesswork. It wasn’t like picking out Umbrage in the Museum; he’d been standing right there. She was trying to smell back in time.
Finally though, she picked up a trial that was slightly newer than the rest and pointed. “There!”
The fight had gone through the wall of the shed and into the neighboring yard. And from there, the combatants, both Noah and the sweet smelling, cigar and gunfire infused creature, had cut across the neighbor’s back yard. The crime lab hadn’t picked up on it because they’d been flying when that happened.
Not seeing any tracks or a path of destruction, Shade’s Apprentice gave her a skeptical look. “Are you sure?”
Facsimile rolled her eyes. “Would I just start pointing in random directions for the hell of it? Let’s get moving!” She didn’t wait for a reply or more arguing before striking off across the lawn.
Shade’s Apprentice looked at Zero. “Is she always like this?”
“Yes.” Zero answered honestly. “But I think she’s also still upset from the museum.”
“Great.” muttered the other woman before stalking off after Facsimile.
***
The next clear sign of the running battle between Noah and the mystery attacker was a thoroughly thrashed hedgerow in the next lawn over and turf that was torn up by claws for several yards before the combatants apparently took to the air again.
One of them have been hurt, because blood drops were spattered across the elevated, stone patio attached to that house, and on the road beyond that fence.
Across the road, something large, markedly larger than Noah’s secondary form, had hit the iron security gates at the mouth of a driveway, leaving a sizable dent. More blood spatters led up that drive. The three heroines stood before the gate, taking in the size of whatever hit it.
“It’s got to be over nine feel tall.” said Zero, “Maybe a eight hundred pounds. Definitely not Noah.”
“Then we’ve better get ready for a fight. It might be one of those Faeries monsters.” said Facsimile. She flexed her hands and caused two of the orihalcite blades she had hidden inside her arms to slide out, protruding from the spaces between her index and middle fingers.
With a nod toward the real estate agents’ sign proclaiming the place for sale, She slashed at the gates’ hinges, easily striking through them with a squeal of metal on metal. Before she could attack the hinges on the other end, a horn sounded.
The three heroines looked up the street to find a twenty-year-old, white painted school bus barreling down the street. As it drew closer, Facsimile saw who was driving through the windshield.
“Oh for crying out loud.” she muttered and touched the comm in her ear. “Codex, where are you and Umbrage? Our idiots are here and the might need some help being put in their place.”
“Try and talk them down first.” Codex replied. “We’re caught in traffic here—unfortunately, I don’t have contorl over Chicago’s traffic control system like at home.”
Facsimile swallowed a sarcastic reply because it was Codex on the other end. “I’ll try my best, but you know how these guys are.”
“That’s all I ask. Good luck.”
The bus had pulled even with them by the time Codex disconnected, and the doors made a terrible noise as they were opened to reveal Geiger. The exoskeleton-covered man put the bus in park with some difficulty, then raised his hands. “We’re not here to fight, and Kali will behave herself, we promise.”
“Only if they behave themselves.” The snake-girl shouted.
Geiger rolled his eyes and ignored her. “We have information you need before you go charging in.”
Before Facsimile could say anything, Shade’s Apprentice steppe din front of her. “We’re listening.”
“Good.” Geiger lowered his hands and started to unbuckle himself. “The ‘monster’ you’re after is a descendant, like us. His name is Noah Giles and he doesn’t have full control over himself when he’s in his second form—what’s been happening isn’t his fault.”
“You’re a little late there,” Facsimile said from over Shade’s Apprentice’s shoulder. “We know Noah, and what you don’t know is that there’s a second guy… or gal… or thing involved. One that’s way bigger than he is.”
This gave Geiger pause. “What?”
“It’s true.” Zero enveloped herself in her blue psychokinetic aura and levitated to be seen. “They fought across the whole neighborhood. We were about to follow the trial in there.” She pointed up the driveway through the partially demolished gates.
Anura leaned over the seat behind the driver’s . “Then it might not have been him at all that attacked that man or broke into those shops, right? That’s why we came here: to find him and bring him in safely before those roughnecks from the Interstate Psionic Bounty Agency got to him and did some real damage.”
Hearing the Outliers being reasonable about things made Facsimile relax a bit. “Alright then; it turns out we’re all on the same side, because if those guys show up, I’m going to kick their asses. Now let’s catch up to these two before Noah or someone else gets hurt.”
She ignored whatever Geiger said after that, and while the Outliers piled off their bus, she returned to the gates, swiftly striking through the hinges on the other side. Once that was done, all it took as a push to send the whole thing crashing tot he pavement with a terrible din.
“We’re going to have to document this with the PD.” said Shade’s Apprentice.
“You know, in Mayfield, they just us the benefit of the doubt, then Codex has people do some estimates out of out collateral fund.” Facsimile stepped over the twisted metal of the gates and up the drive.
Shade’s Apprentice made a show of lifting her skits to follow. “Yeah, well we don’t have a collateral fund.”
“Actually,” Zero floated along beside her, though she kept an eye on the Outliers as they followed as well. “Codex was talking about an idea she had to connect with other heroes in other cities and putting together a common fund—not just for collateral, but equipment and stuff.”
They walked up the driveway, past tall hedges and statues of generic women in robes. The road snaked in front of the house, splitting around a fountain depicting a lion, before disappearing down into an underground garage. The blood trail, however, went around back. By then, the fight was mostly on the ground, and torn up earth was more and more common.
“That sounds like a lot of money; where’s it all supposed to come from?”
Facsimile snorted. “Seriously? Prelates are like the most marketable people in the world. Most of our collateral fund comes from licensing. Facsimile plushies go for forty bucks, by the way.”
“Mine is really adorable too.” Said Zero. “I bought three.”
“They are cute.” agreed Facsimile, turning to explain to Shade’s Apprentice. “See, she’s got the little cape with the hood you can pull up and a little plush mask and this expression… whoa.” She stopped dead as they rounded a corner.
There, the signs of fighting had carried over to the pool area, where deck chairs had been overturned and broken, and a beach umbrella had been completely shredded. More spatters of dark blood were smeared across the pool cover, which sported a huge hole in it that gaped down into the empty pool.
As the group approached, they caught a thin voice echoing up from beneath the tarp. “Hello?”
Facsimile bounded forward onto the pool cover. “Hey!” Only once she was actually right next to the hole did she remember caution. “Um… who is this?”
“Who is this?” Came the wary reply.
A smirk appeared on Facsimile’s face. Now she recognized the voice and the paranoia. “Noah? This is Facsimile. We’re here to help you.”
There was a groan down below. “I-I’ll be fine. You need to find the others. He’s going after them.”
“What do you mean going…” Facsimile frowned. “Hold on, we’re coming down.” She turned back to Zero, Shade’s Apprentice and the Outliers. “Someone get this tarp off; he sounds hurt. Call an ambulance too.”
“No!” Noah shouted up.
“You don’t get a vote.” She replied and leapt down the hole. Using her wings to steer her descent, she landed in a crouch next to where Noah lay. The young man was lying on his side, shirtless and with four-clawed scars already healing on his upper arms and chest. What wasn’t healing was his left leg, which was bent at the knee in a way it wasn’t supposed to, and the arm on the same side, which was clearly shattered from having taken the brunt of his fall.
She took a pen light out of her arm and shone it in his eyes exactly how Codex had taught her to check for concussions. “What would your family say if I just left you down here like this?”
“No, listen.” said Noah, trying to shake his head even though his cheek was pressed hard against to the pool’s bottom. “I chased him for two days. Didn’t want people thinking it was me. Then I caught up with him at that guy’s shed—he waited for him. It was a hit, see? This guy isn’t out of control, or some random monster: he staked out that guy’s house and mauled him.”
Facsimile’s eyes widened and she almost dropped the pen light.
Expensive cigars and cordite. A hit.
“Oh… oh shit.” She breathed.
Above, there was a brief groan and the entire pool cover was ripped away in one swift move by Kronos. Neither she, nor Noah seemed to notice.
“Yeah.” said Noah. “And, well I couldn’t let him do that, especially since people would think it was me, so I jumped him. We fought a long time. I know I hurt him, because I broke one of his wings and he shifted back to human right before I fell through the pool cover.”
He swallowed and Facsimile realized he was holding back tears. “But before he left, he yelled down to me that I’d cost him a big pay day. He said he’d got a scent off me of people I cared about; that he’d pay me back for costing him.” He shuddered, trying to suppress his emotions, which were already starting the change him back into his second form. Fine, dark fur was starting to grow in patches on his face. “H-he said that it was his lucky day: that he’d smelled one of them before and that he’d get to kill two birds with one stone.”
Facsimile growled deep in her throat. After her last meeting with her father, Cyn felt like she finally understood Noah and his friends. Like her, they’d made family where they found it instead of going on blood ties alone. And she knew exactly what kinds of thoughts and fears Noah was feeling. “Like hell he will.”
She stood, tall and determined, and looked up at the overcast sky, then to the assembled descendants (plus one flutist) along the pool’s edge. “Z, lift him out so the EMT’s can get to him. Goth girl?”
“Can we stick to codenames?” asked Shade’s Apprentice.
“Whatever. Chicago’s still a got a mob, right?” If she were being honest, she would have to admit that all of her understanding of the city came from movies and television. Malady Place was set in Chicago and there was mob influence everywhere on that show.
Shade’s Apprentice rolled her eyes. “I don’t know why we have a mob reputation when there’s organized crime in every major city in the US, but yeah; Staffhammer Syndicate, the Stavelettis, the Marones… those are the big players.”
“How do they feel about descendants?”
“What?”
“Descendants.” Facsimile said, “Like, every single person here but you? How do the mobs feel about descendants rights?”
Shade’s Apprentice shrugged. “They don’t care about descendants at all beyond possible superpowered muscle.”
“It’s not that then.” Facsimile frowned. “Okay, but how do they feel about Chelsea Rimbu?”
“I don’t see what this has to do with anything, but they’d be badly hurt if she gets into the Illinois governor’s mansion and keeps even half her campaign promises: better law enforcement oversight, cracking down on money laundering, tougher gun control—she’s not their favorite person.”
Facsimile stepped out of the way as Zero flew down and very carefully folded Noah into her aura, airlifting him out of the pool. “Then we need to get to Rimbu’s campaign headquarters right now!”
“Okay, what the hell is she talking about?” Anura asked, “Why are we talking about the mob in the first place? And aren’t we supposed to be finding Noah’s friends?”
“That’s what we’re doing.” Facsimile flew out of the pool to light on its edge. “I’ve been following their trial by scent this whole way—it’s a new trick I’m pretty excited about—but anyway, the point is, this guy smells like guns and high dollar smokables. Plus Noah mentioned he said he was carrying out a hit on the guy he attacked. Put it all together and you’ve got mob goon written all over it, no matter how big the paws or the appetite for sugar.”
“Ah” said Kronos, “And then they reasoned that the only person that Noah is in any way connected with who might be that target of assassination would be Mrs Rimbu, who Ms. Reynolds works for. Excellent deduction, Facsimile.”
The golden heroine narrowed her eyes. “How did you know that –in fact, how did you know that Tillie would be at the Field Museum in the first place?”
Kronos looked at his friends, shrugged, then let out a nervous chuckle. “This was supposed to be confidential, but we were contacted by Mrs. Rimbu herself. Ms. Reynolds confided in her that she was worried that Mr. Giles really was behind the disturbances and that she was afraid that he would be hurt by the Interstate Psionic Bounty Agency.”
“She thought she was helping.” said Geiger.
“Yeah and now some seriously bad mobster with monster powers is on his way to thank her for that with his claws.” said Facsimile. “We’ve got to head him off at the pass and take him down before he huts anyone else.”
About Vaal
Landon Porter is the author of
The Descendants and
Rune Breaker. Follow him on Twitter
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