2103:10:25:23:40:01

  Crowsong slid down the side of the building by way of claws carving through bricks, uncaring about any damage done to walls – or skilled enough to inflict only a negligible amount. She walked to a townhouse numbered 137 and stood in front of it for a second, inspecting it. I swooped down in crow form and transformed to stand beside her.

  We’d travelled further south and east than we usually went for patrols or operations. We were in between the high-rise business district of Bayside – the one around the mouth of the Hoquiam River – and where the rich of Bayside made their home further west along the North Bay of Grays Harbor. In fact, we weren’t that far off from the Bayside Boardwalk where Millie and I encountered Mauvist.

  Right now, we were in front of the basement of house 137, though calling it a basement might give off the wrong impression. While it was indeed a basement, it was the basement of an upscale city townhouse and a luxury dwelling all on its own. It certainly wasn’t cheap, and as far as I could see was well maintained too.

  Despite that, the front of it was very bland. Wrought iron bars, only minimally-decorated, were placed in front of the dwelling’s windows, and the curtains on the other side were closed – though that was not unusual, considering the time. The door was made of solid, dark wood without even a window to look through and only minimal carved ornamentation. In short, there was nothing to advertise what it contained, and most people would simply assume it was someone’s home, or assume nothing at all.

  In reality, behind the thick curtains and heavy wooden door was one of the more active augurs in Charm’s northern half: Nth-Sight.

  Usually, all contacts with the rogue happened digitally and through Crowsong alone. My mentor would make a request of Nth-Sight, who’d use his powers to find out the requested information, weigh its worth and sell it to my mentor. All done online from the comfort of the rogue’s own home.

  This time however, Nth-Sight had been the one to call my mentor, and not just for information. He had asked Crowsong for a favor – the nature of which he’d left vague – and requested to discuss it in person. No reason was given, only that he thought doing it digitally was ‘too risky’.

  Crowsong decided to agree to the meeting, on one condition: I would be there as well. She’d expected Nth-Sight to push back, but instead, the otherwise reclusive solo had agreed without issue. I suppose as an augur, he must’ve seen it coming before Crowsong had even asked.

  We walked down the small set of stairs to reach our destination. As Crowsong made to knock on the door, she suddenly stopped with her fist still half raised in the air. Instead of knocking, my mentor raised her hand further up to some place above the door, pulling a key from somewhere I couldn’t see. She put the key in the lock and twisted it, the lock disengaging with a loud clunk. After shooting me a quick glance, she opened the door and walked in. I followed immediately after.

  The inside was the complete opposite of the outside. It was an overly-decorated, ancient-looking living room only one step away from being a cluttered mess. Seemingly-old rugs of many different patterns covered the floor and hung from the walls. Brass candlesticks with glass casings around a flame – a fake flame; they were all electric – stood on dark wooden tables, further accompanied by decks of cards, séance bords, fortune-telling bones, dice, a bowl of still water and even a perfectly smooth crystal ball. It all reinforced a feeling of mysticism, of spirituality, of revealed rather than learned knowledge.

  In other words, he decorated his dwelling as close to the stereotype of the fortune-telling augur as one could make it.

  “Good, you’re here,” a gruff voice spoke from the back of the room. Nth-Sight was all but hidden in the shadows, his outline barely visible in his dark surroundings. He stood in an entrance that, if closed, seemed to fit seamlessly in the surrounding walls. A hidden space – all it lacked was the bookcase where you’d need to pull the right title.

  “Follow me,” he spoke and disappeared around the corner.

  We did as asked and entered his real workshop: a sterile looking room with metal sheets for walls, stone tiles for a floor, a simple desk with a computer and two monitors, and a fridge in the corner. Besides the computer monitors, the sole other source of light in the room were the many, many flatscreen TV’s hanging from one wall. All of them showed different maps of Charm, North America and the Unified State with varied colored dots, some connected by lines while others stood alone. One of the monitors directly besides his computer showed a fast-scrolling feed of information that went by too fast to read, while the other monitor held what looked like notes.

  Nth-Sight himself was dressed rather plainly. In fact, I suspected that except for his mask, this was his regular civilian wear. Light blue jeans and a black tank top didn’t exactly scream the ‘mystical augur’ the rest of his house had going for it.

  His mask, however, did fit that mold. It was a big and round head cloth wrapped over and over again until it covered his face and then some, almost like a beehive had replaced his head. Painted on the brown cloth were simplistic paintings of red eyes – sigils, I suppose one could call them. They occupied every inch of it in something that was not a quite a pattern, but didn’t seem random either.

  From where I stood, I saw no eyeholes in the mask, but seeing as he was facing us directly – and had been facing us in the doorway – it seemed he could see us just fine.

  “So what’s-” Crowsong started, but Nth-Sight held up his index finger to silence her. He pointed it to the screen holding the rolling newsfeed, where one particular piece flashed red and was singled out from the rest of the still-scrolling feed. The marked piece transformed into two dots, both disappearing from the monitor and reappearing on the wall-mounted flatscreens. One flew to the east coast of North America – New York? – and the other to Charm. A thread sprung up between them and connected the two.

  “Didn’t think you the type of augur that required automation,” Crowsong commented.

  “I don’t,” Nth-Sight said. “Incognito helped set this up – not the screens, those are mine, but the process. He made a program to bear some of the load so I could work faster.”

  “Why?” Crowsong asked. “He never struck me as the type to do charity, especially for a competitor.”

  Nth-Sight snorted at that. “Competitor is too nice a way of putting it. Rivals, more like. He hides, while I reveal.” I could hear the smile – or more likely, the smirk – in his voice, but he quickly grew serious again. “Which should tell you something about how serious the situation is.”

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  “What situation?” Crowsong asked.

  “What else? The Jannacht,” he said. “Their early infiltration of Portside, The Hub and Northside went under the radar, but now that both you and the big boys are on their trail, they’ll start shipping in more henchies and masked. There’ve already been some clashes between them, Motorgang and the Dusk Bandits, so it seems the villains are onto them as well. Hell, there’ve even been rumors of a low-key augur war between them and the Numbers Room too, though that’s proving difficult to confirm.”

  Aside from them clashing with the Numbers Room, this was nothing unexpected. Many, maybe even most of the criminals Crowsong and I had captured so far had turned out to be Syndicate members. That it was turning into a city-wide turf war was news to me, but not exactly surprising. The Jannacht Syndicate was ‘foreign’ to Charm – inasmuch anything can be foreign in the Unified State.

  “And what’s your angle?” Crowsong asked. “Since when have you cared about villains fighting each other? You’ll sell your info just as easily to the Jannacht as you did all other gangs.”

  “Oh? Is that a hint of reproach I hear? Against the guy you two owe your success to?” Nth-Sight said, grin once more apparent in his voice. “You certainly didn’t complain about the discounts I gave you – and only you.”

  I could almost hear Crowsong’s teeth grind as she hissed, “Just get to the point.”

  “The point, is that the Syndicate is a different beast,” he said. “Unlike some other cities in North America, Charm is a very hero-dominated city. The gangs have their territories, do their crimes, distribute their drugs, rob their stores, run their scams etcetera, etcetera. But all in all, it is small stuff compared to what happens in, say, the Bay Area or San Diego.

  “The reason for this is simple: all of Charm’s is disconnected and specialized. That’s not to mean it isn’t organized – Charm isn’t North America’s Buenos Aires or something – but all the gangs do is stick to what they know. Motorgang does drugs and smuggling, the Dusk Bandits does in-city robberies and racketeering, Dead Hive does heists, tolling and banditry, the Numbers Room does financial crime, and Magistry does crimes against reality,” he explained.

  “And the Jannacht don’t limit themselves,” Crowsong concluded.

  “Exactly. The Syndicate does it all,” Nth-Sight said. “They are one of the few truly international, ‘total war’ kind of villainous organizations that fight on all fronts. In that way, they are kind of like the antithesis of the Guardians or West Coast Wardens – which is where the trouble comes in. Right now, Charm’s heroes are up against gangs that are only good at one aspect – information, transportation, speed, stealth, you name it. That means they have gaps that make for easy exploitation by the more multifaceted heroes. But if the Jannacht get a foothold, that’ll change very quickly. It’ll go from a war where heroes defeat their enemies in detail, to a war on all fronts, all of the time.”

  “And that’s bad for business,” Crowsong prodded.

  “That’s bad for everyone,” Nth-Sight corrected. “For me, personally? The worst that could happen is I’ll be forced to join the Syndicate and get put on retainer. Less lucrative, sure, but comfortable enough. Everyone else?” He shrugged. “War knows many casualties, and few of them deserving. I’ve seen what this war could bring if it goes down the wrong path, and let me say, few benefit in the end – often not even the Jannacht.”

  Crowsong thought it over, before nodding. “What do you want from us?”

  “Nothing more than you’re already doing – except more focused, with better intel, and without any more cost,” he said.

  “Yeah, right. You wouldn’t have called us here if it was just that,” Crowsong said.

  “True enough.” He shrugged, conceding easily. “There are three reasons. The first one’s easy: in the days to come – or weeks, or months, or however long this lasts – I’ll have some requests that I need you to do. Nothing bad, certainly nothing you’ll disagree with on principle, but very sensitive. So when I say you have to do something, at a certain time, at a certain place, you do it. Deal?”

  Crowsong didn’t take long to accept. “Fine. But if I find out you’re using us as a cudgel for your own ends…”

  He waved off her concern. “Don’t worry on that front. My requests will be time sensitive, not morally sensitive. As for the second reason: a warning. I’ve already foreseen the Jannacht sending two of their heavy hitters – Darkstar and Soliloquy.” I vaguely recognized their names, but my mentor drew in a sharp breath at their mention. “Darkstar especially has a bad habit of escalation. While I doubt he’ll stoop to killing minors – especially now that he’s of majority himself – when he was a solo underaged vigilante in Charm, he wasn’t exactly bloodless. So, be aware.”

  Crowsong nodded in acknowledgement. “And third?”

  To my surprise, Nth-Sight turned to me. “The third’s about her,” he said, a chill going up my spine. What secret of mine had he learned with his powers? “Her actions… are partially occluded, which makes for a nasty headache whenever I try to get specifics surrounding her actions.”

  “Do you know why?” my mentor asked. I prepared myself to transform, ready to bolt at the first sign of danger.

  “No,” he said, to my immense relief. “Perhaps it has something to do with her civilian identity – which I steer away from, for obvious reasons – or maybe there’s augur interference going on somewhere in the chain of causality. Either way, I can’t see her, though I can see the results for the most part. And whatever she’s doing in those moments I can’t see her, it has far too much of an impact for a lower tier vigilante.”

  “How do you know?” I asked, kind of offended at being called low tier.

  “I’m a many-paths precognitive,” he said. “Less about hyper-specific doom-sayings and more about simulations on what can and what is likely to happen, rather than what will happen. So while your actions are a black box to my sights, the outcome is not. And whatever you’re doing in those moments, it can set off a cascade of events that lead to big changes – some for the better, some for the worse, but always big.”

  “Like what?” Crowsong asked.

  “Like the both of you winding up dead,” Nth-Sight returned, eyes still on me. “Which in turn sets off another cascade that’ll lead to many, many more deaths. So, you know, whenever it looks like you’re about to die, don’t.” I nodded, still not fully comprehending what was going on. “As for another example: me telling you this. For some reason, having this conversation eliminates a black box that would’ve affected me on a personal level, so thanks for that.”

  “You’re welcome,” I said. Felt nice to help someone just by listening.

  “That’s not-” He grumbled, before sighing. Crowsong snorted. “Whatever. We’re done here. Go ahead and leave – I’m sure you remember the way. I’ve got work to do.” He turned back to his screens, pointedly ignoring us.

  I took a step forward, opening my mouth to question what he was about to say, but Crowsong elbowed me and nodded towards the exit. I obeyed and we left Nth-Sight’s basement dwelling – a literal underground lair, I just realized. Much nicer than the previous one; my idiot creator could’ve learned a thing or two from the man.

  “As expected, what a waste of time,” Crowsong said with a sigh once we got outside.

  Behind my mask, I lifted my eyebrows in surprise. “How so?

  “Look beyond his grandstanding,” she said. “What has he actually told us. That the Jannacht are stirring things up? We already knew that. That they’re sending Darkstar and Soliloquy? Nice to have, but they were already on our shortlist, and we would’ve found out the moment they arrived. That the Syndicate is bad news for Charm as a whole? Any idiot could see that. The only thing of use was his little speech about you. And his little sociology lesson, I suppose.”

  “I found it interesting,” I said.

  “Interesting, sure. But useful?” Crowsong shook her head. “Maybe in a broad sense, but let me ask you this: in what way did receiving this information affect our approach?”

  I went over the conversation, both in my regular mind and through my memcordings. I quickly arrived conclusion. “It does nothing. We were already planning to fight the Jannacht, we already studied which masked we could expect from them, and we were already relying on Nth-Sight for information.”

  Crowsong snapped her fingers. “Exactly. Only three things happened. One, we won’t have to pay for Nth-Sight’s intel – which we already weren’t paying that much for, by his own admission. Two, we have to follow his ‘time sensitive’ orders. And three, he got to meet you, which somehow benefitted him and him alone.”

  “One small benefit for us, and two benefits for him,” I concluded.

  “And that’s why you should never trust a rogue. Especially augurs, and especially especially precognitives like him. They always like to be two steps ahead, always aiming to come out on top. Even among allies,” Crowsong finished her lecture.

  That seemed overly cynical to me. Sure, Nth-Sight did come across as a bit smug and egotistical, but that didn’t mean he was necessarily bad. He was, in his own way, fighting against the Jannacht infiltrating Charm.

  And as for rogues in general… They were an oddity amongst the masked. Not just because they didn’t align with either heroes or villains, but because their supposed goal was to make money using their powers. But if so, why not just become a professional? Much less risk, for maybe a bit less of a reward. Did they just like the anonymity? If so, what did they use it for? Did they do it for the thrill of it? Or did they just like money so much they were willing to take the risk? Or did they just want to break the law without being labelled-

  Crowsong snapped her fingers right on front of me. “Earth to Jester. You with me?”

  I shook my head. “Yes. Sorry. Just… thinking about what you said.”

  Crowsong stared at me for a second, before nodding once. “Alright. As I was saying while you were dozing off-”

  “I wasn’t dozing-”

  “-We’ve got one more thing on our list for today,” she finished without missing a beat.

  I waited for her to elaborate. When she didn’t, I asked, “Which is…?”

  “Why, gearing up of course.”