2103:12:06:17:26:07

  I called Amber while the abandoned office slowly but surely burned behind me.

  I knew she was fine. The attack had been on our base, and since Amber was at home being sick, she surely hadn’t been there. Besides, Motorgang had led the attack and their leader had just said that Nth-Sight would lie about exactly this event. And since it wouldn’t make sense for the base attack to be fake and Amber’s death real, the only thing that could mean was that Amber was fine.

  Perfectly fine.

  But there was one tiny, niggling little thought. An insidious worm writing what if what if repeatedly in my brain.

  She didn’t pick up, so I called again.

  Even if Amber had been at the base, I doubt they would kill her.

  What if what if

  If I understood Blazin correctly, the deranged pyromaniac villain was just playing along with Nth-Sight’s plot to put him off the trail.

  What if what if

  He would’ve instructed them not to kill Crowsong. It would defeat the purpose of the entire conversation if he hadn’t.

  What if what-

  “Hello?” a groggy voice spoke. “Sam? What’s up?”

  The thoughts went away as sheer relief replaced it, enough relief to make my head feel light.

  “Sam?”

  “Y-you’re okay, you’re okay.” I said, breathing heavy and voice hoarse. “Motorgang nearly-!” It cracked mid-sentence.

  “Sam, calm down,” Amber ordered in her Crowsong voice. “What’s going on? Start from the beginning.”

  I scraped my throat. “Nth-Sight called, said h-he had something I needed to do. He sounded hurried and like he was under attack, and- and said he discovered Motor Spirit’s maker lab or garage, and wanted me to sabotage it. Blazin was there, waiting for me.” I heard Amber take a shocked breath in, so I hurriedly said, “He didn’t do anything – well, except from preventing my escape-”

  “Sam-”

  “-but nothing aside from that! I’m unharmed. He knew I was coming, figured that Nth-Sight would send me here and wanted to talk.”

  “Another request for cooperation?” Amber asked, sneer clear in her voice.

  “No- Yes- Maybe.” I took a moment to think how best to phrase it. “He said he had suspicions about his own augur contact, and that all the rogue augurs were conspiring together. That he and everyone else was being manipulated, and things were lining up too perfectly everywhere across Charm to… recreate the status quo, I think? He wasn’t exactly clear on what the augurs wanted, but that they were working together to get Jannacht out of Charm while stopping the other gangs from expanding, collapsing or cooperating with each other and the Syndicate. At least, that was what I got from it.”

  Amber remained silent on the other end for a moment.

  “He didn’t mention some sort of end goal?”

  I shook my head. Then remembered to say it out loud. “No.”

  “And Nth-Sight is part of this… augur conspiracy.”

  I opened my mouth to confirm, but rethought it last second. I rewound my memcordings to make sure, and came to a realization. “He thinks there is only one augur,” was the only conclusion I could draw from his words.

  “Only one?” Amber asked sharply. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure that Blazin seems to think so, yes.”

  “Hmm,” she hmm-ed. “And this is what got you…?”

  I startled in realization. “Right!” I said, almost shouting as a bit of remnant adrenaline coursed through my veins. “After he let me leave, I got a message from Nth-Sight! He said you’d been killed!”

  “What?” Amber asked.

  “Blazin warned me! He said his augur informed him of our base at the Intra-Cascadian warehouse, and that he should attack it and kill you!” I nearly stumbled over my words and forced myself to calm down. “Blazin played along and sent Mangine of Destruction and Maxxellerate to attack it, but he knew you wouldn’t be there – or at least made sure you wouldn’t get killed. But, well…”

  I felt a bit sheepish all of a sudden. In hindsight, my concern seemed overblown – although I also knew it was beforehand, so maybe it wasn’t hindsight at all? Either way, “I had to make sure, so I called you as quickly as I could.”

  Again, Amber was silent on the other end of the line.

  “Alright,” she said eventually. “Can you meet me at the warehouse soon?”

  I checked my internal clock – 17:42 – and grimaced. “I can’t. Mom’s expecting me home by six and while I can get there a bit later with Millie vouching for me…”

  “Right,” Amber said. “Change of plans: we’ll meet later tonight, but not at the warehouse. I’ll send you a location as soon as I find a place.”

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  “Okay,” I said.

  “And Sam?” Amber said. “Don’t tell anyone about my survival, okay? I’ve got a plan.”

  I frowned. “Okay?” Then I remembered something – or rather, someone. “What about Millie? She knows you’re… you. I don’t think she’ll believe Crowsong died while you’re still alive. Even if you’re sick at home.”

  “Right…” Amber said, sounding frustrated. “No, that might be good actually. Invite her to our meet later tonight if she can make it. If not, talk to her after and explain what we discussed. Good?”

  “Alright.”

  “Good. See you later.”

  X

  I rushed home, and while I was late as expected, I wasn’t suspiciously late. Dinner was served (spaghetti), Michael was absent (he was getting worse with that this past week) and Mom was tired – so nothing out of the ordinary. We made small talk, we told each other about our day, then we started watching our latest evening pseudo-binge – Paladin of the Seventh Tithe, a masked medieval fantasy – on the couch, etcetera, etcetera.

  So far, so normal.

  That is, until Mom got an alert. And from the sound of it, not a regular work alert. She was reading the message when, from the corner of my eye, I saw Mom stiffen.

  I hesitated, but decided to ask anyway. “Something wrong?”

  She looked at me uneasily for a second, hesitating before deciding to give me her cellphone. It was an article from the Charming Correspondent – a collective of independent local journalists.

  It read: ‘ATTACK ON OLD INTRA-CASCADIAN: Blackhawk protégé Crowsong missing, presumed dead’.

  It explained Crowsong’s background briefly. Her debut a year after Blackhawk leaving the Guardians over an unknown dispute, their fight against Motorgang, Blackhawk’s death, the aftermath, an overview of Crowsong’s own heroic actions since then, and finishing with ‘a source’ – Nth-Sight? – telling them of Motorgang’s involvement in Crowsong’s presumed death.

  But that was tolerable. The pictures were not.

  The warehouse was a mess. The training equipment, from the benches to the boxing bags to the dummie and mannequins; everything was gone. Even the weights were destroyed, crumpled into a lump seemingly through brute force. The lounge area likewise had been overturned, the generator smashed, couch and chair torn apart, table flipped and cracked in two, the fridge thrown on the ground and the flatscreen smashed to pieces. It was a miracle Mangine and Maxxellerate had left the walls standing.

  If circumstances had been different, if Nth-Sight hadn’t turned schizophrenic – or whatever the hell was going on with him – and Blazin hadn’t caught on to his schemes, Crowsong would’ve been there. A part of the mess.

  She could’ve died. She would’ve died if Nth-Sight had had his way.

  I was angry- no, I was furious. Crowsong had worked with the man for nearly two years; practically her entire vigilante career, despite her dislike of him. And in my own time with him, we’d followed his every lead, all but worked underneath him for the past month and a half. We trusted his intel, followed his leads, dropped everything for his little requests, and for what? Just for him to turn around and stab us in the back?

  What was even the point? What kind of sick fuck would-

  “You alright Sammy?” Mom asked.

  The question snapped me out of my head. I looked from the phone – which had started groaning in my anger-fueled grip – to Mom and saw a concerned look in her eyes… as well as something underneath. It wasn’t confusion, closer to understanding in fact, as well as… grief?

  Did she know?

  That thought sent a shock through me and woke me up fully. I forced myself to calm, to relax body and unwind, and look, if not disinterested, at least less affected by the article.

  “It’s just…” My thoughts raced. “Isn’t this the second junior masked to die?” I asked rhetorically, handing her back the phone. “What if one or both of them were classmates of mine? One of my friends or something…” That thought strayed a little too close to home – not just Amber, but Millie; both involved in a life that I only now realized could spell their deaths.

  I let the thought trail off as I stewed in my self-inflected depression.

  Mom made an odd humming noise in sympathy, giving me a side hug and rubbing my arm as Paladin from the Seventh Tithe kept playing.

  X

  Millie had texted me hours after that. Many, many times she had, asking me to call her whenever I had the time. I staved it off using Mom’s presence as an excuse, then – after Amber had given me the location – asked her to meet up tonight. In costume, if at all possible.

  Even though the response was an understanding and agreeable one, I could sense the confusion underneath.

  And now, as the clock neared midnight, I was standing alone on – where else – the roof of a building. To be fair, the building was a parking garage, so this was a place where people were expected to go, if not at this particular time. But even so, it was still the top of a building.

  Someone should build a café or restaurant or something to give masked a place- no, that sounded a bit too dangerous. If Nth-Sight had proven anything, it was that there was always someone insane enough to exploit anything and everything they could. He would’ve likely blown it up had such a place-

  I blinked. Wait, was he behind the strings of bombings early in the Jannacht Wars? It made sense in the context of Blazin’s words. And why he’d had me fetch another set of bombs. And how the situation in Charm could’ve devolved so quickly. And-

  “Sa- Jester?”

  I started at the voice. Millie had spoken from behind me, which was not at all where the entrance was.

  I turned around and watched Millie touch down, descending from the air slowly with her arms outstretched.

  “You can fly?” I asked. “I thought you were an augur?”

  Millie- well, LieSpy right now, froze in confusion. “What? I’m psychokinetic, remember? I can- wait, that’s the first thing you say? Really?”

  I made to scratch my cheek, only for my hand to bump into my silver mask. “Right, about that-”

  “I’m not dead,” Crowsong said, voice still somewhat raspy from her illness.

  The both of us startled, LieSpy grasping for her heart – not feigned this time – with a, “Jesus!”

  She had the right of it. I hadn’t even heard my mentor approach.

  “Am I the only one that can arrive normally?” I asked, annoyed.

  Crowsong ignored me. “As you can see, I wasn’t-”

  “Did you time that?” LieSpy accused.

  She continued as if my words were but wind. “-at the base when-”

  “Were you here the whole time?” I accused.

  “-it was attacked by Motorgang. But-”

  “God, do you have to deal with that every day?” LieSpy asked.

  “-the real culprit wasn’t them-”

  I nodded – not because it was true, but because it was funny. “Now you know my struggle.”

  She sighed. “Can you guys take this seriously?” Crowsong said, shallowly coughing after.

  “That’s what you get for letting me believe you were dead,” LieSpy said, teasing mood evaporating in an instant.

  “Pfah! What do you care,” Amber huffed hoarsely, arms crossed. “You don’t even like me.”

  “You think I wouldn’t give a shit if my classmate was straight-up murdered by a villain?” Millie’s anger built and built. “You think I’m a hero just for show or something?!”

  Amber looked down and away, chastised but not wanting to admit fault.

  I made a placating gesture. “Guys, let’s just calm-”

  “And you!” Millie turned on me, walking up to me and poking an accusatory finger straight to my chest. “Couldn’t you-” another poke, “-have sent-” there was a lot of force behind them, “-a text or something! At least let me know she’s alive before springing this on me!”

  She was breathing heavily by the time she finished.

  “Sorry,” I said. In truth, there hadn’t been an easy way to share it. I wouldn’t share such info through my civilian number, or from my Jester phone to Millie’s civilian one, and I feared the West Coast Wardens were monitoring LieSpy’s phone, and so would lead to Nth-Sight finding out our deception somehow.

  But I was wise enough – or believed myself wise enough, at least – to not argue back right now.

  “Well…” Millie said, deflating at my instant capitulation. “As long as you know.”

  For a moment, only the blowing wind was heard.

  “As I was saying,” Crowsong began. “Motorgang led the attack, but wasn’t the one behind it. As you might’ve known already,” Crowsong shot me a look; I’d been the one to spill it after all, “we’ve been in close contact with a rogue augur called Nth-Sight.”

  “He warned you about the attack?” LieSpy asked.

  “No,” Crowsong denied. “He was the one to call for it.”

  LieSpy… looked confused. “What do you mean, ‘he called for it’?”

  Crowsong looked at me and I elaborated, telling her about our longer held suspicions, his messages to me, his attempt to drive a wedge between Crowsong and I, and culminating in my encounter with Blazin and all he shared with us.

  LieSpy was quiet for a moment.

  “…If this is true,” she said. “If he really is part of a citywide augur conspiracy, or pretending to be many augurs to manipulate everyone, why not tell anyone?”

  “Because we don’t know how wide and deep his connections run – or his powers for that matter,” Crowsong explained. “And if he really is all these different augurs, he’s already broken the Treaty and won’t hesitate to do so again. He’ll go to a different city, establish a new identity and cause a whole new era of misery somewhere else.”

  “So, what do we do?” LieSpy asked.

  “From as far as we can tell, he believes I’m dead. For how long that lasts, I don’t know. But I think it’s best for Crowsong to disappear from the masked scene while I investigate in secret. My illness will cover for my disappearing civilian identity – there’s no doubt in my mind that Nth-Sight knows it. Hopefully, he’ll be too busy to look too deeply into this, and in the meantime I’ll investigate. Find out his network, his plans, his bases, location, etcetera.”

  “And I’ll just keep doing what he asks?” I asked, a bitter note slipping through.

  “To put it bluntly: yes,” Crowsong said. “I doubt it’ll last long – trying to deceive an augur of his alleged caliber for any amount of time is difficult. Still, if you can, try and sell the illusion that I’m really gone. Ask to strike at Motorgang, or question why he’s not doing anything on that front. That sort of thing. Should help stretch the limited time we have.”

  I nodded. Seemed fair enough.

  “And what do I do?” LieSpy asked, and I wondered the same. She was never meant to be part of this discussion, let alone the plan in general. At least as far as I knew.

  “I want you to be our witness,” Crowsong said.

  “Witness?”

  “If it’s really true we’re dealing with a Treaty break here, and if he has all these different identities affiliated with all these different organizations, things might get all sorts of confusing. He might turn his clients against us, or tell the heroes that we’re the ones breaking the Treaty or something like that. So, I want you to be able to vouch for us in case things go wrong, or even if things go right and we have to justify ourselves in the aftermath,” Crowsong said.

  “A character witness,” LieSpy concluded.

  Crowsong nodded. “Yes,” she then hesitated. “And if things go wrong for both of us…”

  None of us filled in the blanks; we all understood.

  “Alright,” LieSpy said after a moment. “I’ll do it.”