CR - Chapter 3 - Sanctuary

Although we all made pleasant small talk around the table, we didn’t really say anything important. Tess didn’t ask how our mission went, and neither Maria or I felt like sharing. Like usual.

When Maria got up from the table I grabbed her arm. “Use all the power we stole to pay off as much of your debt as possible,” I said quietly.

“But…” she started.

I just shook my head. “We have a little bit of a nest egg right now, so we don’t need to trade it in, and the sooner you pay down the debt, the better,” I told her.

Maria bit her lip for a minute before nodding, “Alright, thanks,” she whispered before pulling her hand free and stomping off down the hall. 

I caught Tessa grinning at me out of the corner of my eye, so I turned to face her. “You have something you want to say?” I asked.

“You two are so cute sometimes,” she snickered.

“Shut up,” I snarled, throwing my napkin at her in mock anger while she giggled. “I’ll clean, you can head back to whatever important invention you’re working on,” I said as I grabbed the bowls.

Tess didn’t need any further prompting, and practically shot out of the room, back towards her workshop.

I unceremoniously dumped all the dishes in the sink before meticulously hand washing everything. Even though we had a dishwasher I preferred to do things this way. It gave me time to decompress, and think. 

We’d been lucky to run into the Fae faction today. Even though they were the largest group in town, they weren’t the only one, and some of those others I didn’t have an answer for. At least not yet.

As soon as the last bowl hit the drying rack I threw my towel over the faucet and headed back towards the entrance. I grabbed my duffle bag from where I dropped it and hauled half a dozen meters further down the hall to the metal tool cabinet I’d bolted to the wall.

Inside there were about a dozen different rows, each color coded. I carefully unloaded the vector, something I should have done earlier, before hanging it up on the inside of the door. Next I placed each of the clips, and bats, back in their respective place.

Even though I had half a dozen different types of clips prepared, half of the shelves in the cupboard were left empty. Each different fraction, and type of bleed, was only vulnerable to a very small number of things. Conventional small arms, explosives, even chemical warfare were completely useless against both the contractors and their aligned faction. It was the reason many world governments had completely given up on trying to stop the bleeds, and only tried to contain the damage instead.

If you could identify what that faction was weak to, however, you could forge a weapon that could hurt them.

Identifying the weakness of a couple of the big factions had been easy, cold iron for the Fae, or silver against the Infernals. Sadly, I still had no clue what half the factions were weak to, or even if they had a weakness in the first place. During those engagements we had no choice but to rely entirely on magical power while fighting.

I sighed, and closed the closet, leaving the empty duffle crumpled up beside it.

As I trudged back towards my room I paused for a minute in front of Maria’s. Her door was closed, and probably locked. As it always was when she was dealing with her contractor. I knew she’d been practically forced into a contract, after being trapped in a bleed, but she didn’t like talking about it much. I’d got the feeling that she was more sad or disappointed about the situation than angry. Maybe one day she’d open up and tell me why.

When I finally arrived back at my room, and pulled the door open, I immediately felt a sense of comfort. Every possible wall was jam packed with cheap bookcases filled with books full of old books. Folklore, legends and sagas, all in their original languages if I could get them. The first time I’d met Maria she had thought I was insane, wandering into a bleed with nothing more than a custom built, un-tested scrap sword. 

Thankfully the weapon had worked, otherwise it was possible that both of us could have perished there. I’d been a lot more angry, and desperate at that time, now I was a lot more careful with my testing.

I grabbed the heavy, hardbound first edition book I’d been working through from the nearest shelf and dumped it on my small desk. Most people wouldn’t see HP Lovecraft’s poems and short stories as reliable information, but I’d seen enough to know his writing might be the closest we had to modern folklore. That, and I was desperate for a lead, so I took what I could get.

Before I opened the tome I logged onto my laptop and started up a VPN before checking the message boards, and my email. When the bleeds first started happening a ton of websites either provided false information about how to avoid them, or straight up scammed people. Most people quickly gave up hope of finding a solution without the help of magical contractors, and stopped reading these sites, but I persisted.

I found a mere handful of sites which appeared to be developed for people like myself, that seriously wanted solutions to the problem. I still visited the three active ones, sharing my findings while carefully reviewing what other people posted. Some of it was even helpful. 

While I was scrolling my net messenger pinged.

[J: Were you at the bleed in Calgary today?]

“Mother fucker, Maria was the one that PROVIDED you that information, who else would have been there?” I growled at my screen. 

I honestly didn’t know who J was, beyond that they worked in the government, and were willing to pay for accurate information on incoming scrapes, and bleeds. They’d been pretty reliable at getting that information out to the public, until today anyways. I’d met him through one of the information exchange websites, but I’d never met them in person. I’d been burned by that before.

[K: I’m not going to reveal that, I’m not stupid. Our relationship only extends as far as me providing you with dates and locations of scrapes and bleeds, and you releasing them to the public. Speaking of which…]

[J: Emergency message system was compromised, investigation under way]

“Yeah, sure it was,” I muttered.

[K: Was there anything else?]

[J: One of the witnesses said she saw someone engage the contractor with a bat, and win.]

“Shit,” I swore under my breath.

[K: And what does the contractor say?]

[J: That she was mangled by an especially strong figment.]

[K: Her side certainly sounds more plausible.]

[J: You can’t keep doing this on your own.]

My eyes narrowed at that, but I didn’t respond.

[J: I doubt you’ll ever agree to meet up, but if you do, or you ever need help, head to Bankers Hall East building and ask for J. They point you in the right direction]

[K: In that case I’ll talk to you later, after I put together the next list. Later.]

I shut the messenger before he could reply. The bastard was brazen, and it sounded like he was nearly certain I’d been at the site, but couldn’t prove anything. That was fine with me. As long as he didn’t try to stop me, or show up outside the door, he could suspect me all he wanted.

The forums didn’t seem the have anything interesting or new, so I shut down my computer and cracked open my book. It was slow going, looking for any hints at all. Unfortunately most stories ended up with the protagonist dying, or ending up mad. Not a good sign.

I managed to only get through three stories before someone slammed repeatedly on my door. “Keira! I need you, now! It’s important!” Maria yelled through the barrier, she sounded hysterical. When I sprinted to the door, and threw it open, Maria fell through the opening straight into my arms.

She looked horrible. Her eyes were completely black, and she was bleeding some sort of black liquid out of nearly every orifice. “What the fuck happened to you?” I asked, half leading, half carrying Maria to my bed. “Can you even see me right now?” 

“No, but that’s not important!” Maria gasped. “When I turned over the essence I was given a vision of future scrapes and bleeds, like usual.”

“Don’t tell me this happens to you everytime,” I whispered.

“It doesn’t, but that’s not important right now! Shut up and listen to me for a minute! At the end of the vision I was shown something else, something much worse! A full blown rift, one that’ll consume the entire city,” Maria yelled as she thrashed about.

“Shit…” I started.

“I’M NOT DONE! It came with a message. That’s never happened before. They said: It can be prevented. If you stop the blasphemy we will consider your contract fulfilled.”