On the morning of Jerry and Braxton’s returning to proper fieldwork, Jerry was once again awoken by sudden knocking on the front door. He woke up Braxton with a slap on his bare chest. Again. Braxton woke up with a cry of pain. Also again.

  “What is with you?” he asked Jerry. “If you think you can keep waking me up like that, I will force you to sleep on the couch until you smarten up.”

  “It might be him. I’m getting the bedroom gun.”

  Braxton grumbled. “Do you really think somebody who came back from the dead as Touched would be polite enough to knock on our front door before killing you?”

  “You’d be surprised since we live in this open-air asylum we call Catto Occulo.” Jerry pulled on a pair of pants and checked if the handgun he kept underneath the bed was loaded. It was. “You got my back, right?”

  “For some inexplicable reason, yes, I do. Now answer the front door and don’t give some innocent bullet holes with their breakfast.”

  Jerry crept down the stairs and skittered to the curtained windows by the front door. With the help of a paranoid curtain twitch, he saw a delivery man that looked nothing like Bradley and his work truck a few meters down the driveway. The delivery man held a small, novel-sized package in one hand, and a tablet computer in the other.

  Despite the delivery man’s nonthreatening and perfectly mundane appearance, Jerry answered the door while hiding the handgun behind his back.

  “Good morning and better blessing from the Twelve.”

  “Likewise.”

  “You get lost or something, friend?” Jerry asked.

  “I don’t think so, sir.” The delivery man read off Jerry’s full legal name and his address. “A few weeks ago, you ordered In the Dust of This Time by Kale Lindsey, correct?”

  Jerry wracked his brain. He had completely forgotten about pre-ordering the novel, but remembered he was quite the fan of Lindsey’s shorter works. In addition to this, Jerry remembered the synopsis of In the Dust of This Time. It was a military science fiction novel about human soldiers attempting to establish a new society after a bioengineered plague made by Feylians killed most of Catto Occulo’s sapient life.

  “Maybe?”

  “Either way, I’m going to need a signature to confirm you got your package, sir.”

  The delivery man faced the tablet computer towards Jerry, who signed it with his free hand. The delivery man then handed Jerry his package. Despite the completed exchange, the delivery man stood around for some time, regarding Jerry with hard eyes.

  “Can I help you?” Jerry asked.

  “May I say something I think you need to hear, sir.”

  Jerry narrowed his eyes at the delivery man. “Go for it.”

  “We cannot keep having this kind of…thing we have going on,” the delivery man said. “And by that, I mean I cannot keep answering your door for you to answer it with a loaded firearm hidden behind your back. I know it’s there and that is your right, but it’s frightening. This is the third time you have done this, and I refuse to keep quiet about how unsafe you continue to make me feel.”

  “Let me get this straight,” Jerry said. “This is my property you’re on, yet you have the audacity to tell me what to do with my firearms? They’ll hire anybody these days, huh?”

  The delivery man opened his mouth as if to speak more, but stopped. Instead, he shook his head and turned around, quickly walking away. Once he returned to the work truck, he got in and sped off in a cloud of cold, wintery dust. Jerry had glared at him the entire time.

  Jerry closed the door behind him and walked to the living room’s couch. He unwrapped the novel he knew he would soon have no time to read, examined the shiny cover and sprayed edges for a few seconds, then felt remorse smash into the back of his head like a sack of a claw hammer.

  That wasn’t the way to go about things. That delivery man was just doing his job while Jerry himself was just on edge, even more so than usual. And there was especially no need to involve a loaded firearm during a fucking early morning delivery. But as usual, Jerry’s ego was quicker to act than the sensible parts of his brain.

  What the Vullen was I thinking, Jerry asked himself. And why the Vullen do you keep doing that insane nonsense with normal people?

  Jerry tossed the novel on the coffaux table before him and sighed. Maybe a few sessions with Dr. Moenstaggers was in order.

  Braxton walked downstairs and nodded at Jerry. “Didn’t need me to watch your back, I’m guessing?”

  “Yeah.” Jerry forced himself to grin at Braxton. “I handled that big, bad delivery man all by myself like a real big boy.”

  On the day of their return, Braxton and Jerry drove to the New Chemeketa field office of the Triple I Division. It was an unremarkable, nondescript building located in the busy, beating heart of its city center. Compared to the other buildings around it, it was like a tall, older man dressed in a bland, grey suit standing near young adults into more lively, colorful, and alternative forms of fashions.

  They performed the usual security procedures such as pat-downs and hand-held metal detectors paired with the usual questions such as “Have you been outside the Mendakian Union lately?” or “Do you have any symptoms of frost tongue fever?” or “Do you feel a constant, oppressive force of pure malignancy stalking your every move?”

  Braxton answered normally while Jerry replied, “No, no, and I think that’s just called having anxiety.”

  The familiar security guard known as Cooper McRobins told Jerry that joke was funnier the first five times he heard it from him, but appreciated he didn’t answer with “my wife.” He told Jerry the jokesters in the Triple I Division thought this was the funniest joke they ever made. Jerry disagreed on account of viewing his marriage to Braxton as one of the few good things in his life that kept him alive, often thriving, and not facedown in a wet ditch.

  Once the security procedures were done with, Braxton and Jerry walked into their workplace. Compared to the wild rumors that all Triple I Division field offices were grand affairs filled with towering statues of famous Triple I agents killed in action, squads of heavily armed gendarmes patrolling the grounds, and all sorts of grand decor, the reality was much more mundane and boring.

  The only statue in the entire building was a small marble bust of Roger Darting Fish, the founder and first director of the Triple I Division, in the center of the lobby. Beneath it was a brass plaque that had the Triple I Division’s slogan—To Be Expected is Foolish—in ancient Cattonian.

  Most of the gendarmes assigned to provide security milled aimlessly about the sterile hallways, empty rooms, and vacated offices, pretending to work, talking to one another, or attempting to hit on various employees. The decor of the New Chemeketa field office was so utilitarian, bland, and inoffensive, it looked like any other office building rather than one that belonged to the most powerful law enforcement division in the Mendakian Union.

  Jerry and Braxton greeted a few of their lesser-known coworkers as they walked up the dozens of stairs that took them to the fifth and final floor of the field office. They made their way to a small, neat conference room, where all of the field agents of Rustio’s Rangers sat at a large wooden table, save for Anthony and Mr. Moon.

  While Anthony stood in front of a large, cork board full of pinned documents, photographs, and various maps connected by red string, Mr. Moon sat quietly in the corner of the room with his PTALP active. He regarded Jerry the same way one regarded a particularly large, many legged insect crawling on their pants leg before returning his attention to the PTALP.

  Jerry pretended to be fine with that.

  According to Anthony, he had made several attempts to requisition a holographic projector table for months to replace the not-so-sane-looking conspiracy board. However, he was told by Mr. Moon and other higher-ups that they weren't interested in replacing what “worked perfectly fine,” which happened to be a crusty cork board dug up from the basement.

  Most powerful law enforcement division in the Mendakian Union my ass, Jerry thought.

  “Good morning and better blessings from the Twelve,” Anthony said to Braxton and Anthony. “I hope you two gentlemen had a pleasant leave despite the incident.”

  Jerry’s face grew red and hot with deep, latent shame. “Sorry about that, boss.”

  “Just sit down already,” Anthony said. “You and Braxton are late.”

  Jerry and Braxton sat across from Mallory Xao and Howard Kamikin, who greeted them.

  Anthony took a sip from his massive mug full of steaming coffaux and asked, “Does anybody have any preliminary questions before we begin the briefing?”

  Jerry raised his hand in the air.

  Anthony sighed. “Yes?”

  “Why are you still drinking so much coffaux?” I said. “I know being a Sol makes you more or less immune to all forms of cancer, but I feel like drinking that much will give you stomach cancer. You should read those articles I text you.”

  “No,” Anthony said. “Does anybody have any questions before we begin?”

  Jerry raised his hand again.

  “Real questions.”

  Jerry lowered his hand.

  Anthony nodded. “Good. Now, some time ago…”

  For the next three hours, Anthony went into deep, grueling detail of what happened concerning Bradley Sandaux, the murders of his previous allies, and the information found as a result of it.

  Anthony explained that Bradley Sandaux wasn’t quite an official member of the Grey Man, but working his way towards joining them by taking various high-risk, high-reward jobs such as robbing trucks, which attracted the worst type of attention possible in the Mendakian Union—the attention of the Triple I Division.

  An event that could be described as interesting happened when Braxton and Jerry attempted to apprehend him, so Sandaux fled towards his ostensible allies at the Carber Carpentry Workshop, heavily wounded and sporting a few new holes. But something equally interesting happened there, and three Grey Men ended up murdered by Bradley. Anthony stated he was unsure how important any of the Grey Men that killed were, but judging by the coded documents and encrypted computer logs penned by Claude Carber, the now dispatched owner of the carpentry workshop, he seemed to be a notable individual in the terrorist organization.

  Though the documents and computer logs revealed the location of several caches and suspicious self-storage complex owners that needed a good look into, the resulting searches of them revealed almost nothing on account of them being emptied, destroyed, or even booby-trapped by a mysterious third party. However, not all was lost.

  Towards the end of the meeting, Anthony declared that there were two major leads for his Rangers to follow up on. Two names kept coming up—Lee Wortles and Charles Adnot.

  Lee Wortles, according to some digging by civilian employees of the Triple I Division was, frankly speaking, a twenty-something nobody working a dead end retail called at a supermarket chain called Vallency’s. Though the slogan of Vallency’s was “Find Value with Vallency’s,” Anthony wanted to find him instead at one of the three local Vallency’s.

  Charles Adnot, on the other hand, was currently unemployed, but had once worked with Lee Wortles and was a firefighter for a little time before being dismissed for mysterious reasons. Due to his potential to be a bigger risk, physically or flight-wise, Anthony assigned Braxton, Rosa, and Jerry to seek him out.

  What also made Charles seem more dangerous and canny was the fact he was suspected leaker of the blueprints to several federal buildings in New Chemeketa. Seeing how there was no overt evidence of any recent break-ins on the New Chemeketa City Hall, Anthony theorized that Charles was able either bluff or sneak into where the blueprints were kept, with possible Touched power usage at play.

  Anthony was well aware that finding and confronting Charles Adnot, the possible blueprint leaker of several federal buildings, could become a dangerous situation, so he assigned Braxton, Jerry, and Rosa, the heaviest hitters of his Rangers; while he assigned Noura, Howard, and Mallory to finding Lee Wortles.

  When the meeting concluded and everybody was told what they needed to do, Anthony dismissed all of them, but asked Jerry to remain where he was. Jerry had a dark, sinking feeling in his gut. It was a feeling that reminded him of the many times he was told to remain after class after being a bastard in middle school, but he wore a brave, supposedly unbothered face. Apparently Mr. Moon needed to talk to him about something sensitive.

  Jerry approached Mr. Moon and greeted him. Rather than returning the greeting, Mr. Moon thrusted a white envelope towards him. “This is for your eyes and your eyes alone. Read it once, then dispose of it posthaste.”

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  “Might I ask—”

  “Read it when you’re finished with work and act accordingly,” Mr. Moon said. “Now go join Mr. Olumana and do as you were told.”

  Jerry huffed but said nothing else. Conflict driven as he was, he was still smart enough to recognize this was not an argument worth having. Jerry also suspected Mr. Moon’s especially pissy mood had something to do with him dropping the ball in regards to not taking the report about Bradley seriously. Mr. Kirigami seemed like a fellow who was easygoing or even buddy-buddy with most folks, but also more than capable of chewing somebody out like a starving dog with a fresh bone.

  “Be on your best behavior,” Anthony said to Jerry. “I’m serious.”

  “I promise to have your darling son, Brax, home by 0600 and not a minute later.”

  Anthony refused to entertain Jerry’s joke with even a small chuckle. He waved him off.

  Jerry exited the field office and walked into the parking garage. He entered the car and immediately put his seatbelt on because safety always came first. Braxton sat in the right driving seat while Rosa sat alone in the backseat, fiddling with a small, pocket-sized copy of the Skeletal Musings. It was the ostensible holy book of her religion that followed Our Lady of Sweet Death. Rosa prayed while she flipped pages. It was one her primary rituals she undertook before potentially life-threatening ventures.

  Braxton noticed the paper envelope in Jerry’s hand. He pointed at it and asked, “What’s that about? Are you in trouble again?”

  “You think so poorly of me sometimes,” Jerry said. “But if you’re curious, I have no idea what’s in this envelope. What I do know is that if I tell you anything about it, I will certainly be in trouble.”

  “Do you think it might be related to the dance thing?”

  “More than likely.”

  Rosa stopped praying and looked at Jerry. “What dance thing?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said.

  Rosa shook her head. “Who did you assault this time?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Jerry said, raising his voice.

  “You are a miserable creature without shame,” Rosa said.

  “I know what you are, but what am I, princess?”

  “Forget I said anything to you, you immature wretch.”

  “Likewise.” Jerry punched the top of the car’s ceiling. “Let’s hit the road, Brax! We got plenty of terrorist sympathizers to catch and too little time.”

  The trio arrived near the home of Charles Adnot’s mother following a pleasant, twenty-five or so minute drive. Since her home was located in the nicer, working class neighborhood of Maruchax, their environment was disarming and quaint as could be. All of the terraced homes were well-maintained, painted a fine eggshell white, and topped with roofs of blue metal. No abandoned mattresses or piles of trash were to be seen strewn across the narrow streets. Lively, manicured ferns in marble planters could be seen near the front of every other home.

  Despite the peace all about them, the trio kept themselves as frosty as the morning air in case of danger or other expected events. In Jerry’s own words and lived experiences, sometimes the prettiest roses owned the sharpest thorns.

  Jerry took point and knocked on the wooden door of where the mother of Charles Adnot was believed to be living. Rosa and Braxton stood behind him, waiting. A few moments later, a small woman with watery blue eyes, a crooked back, and stringy brown hair answered the door. Despite her advanced age, a few missing teeth, and the menacing figures cut by Jerry, Rosa, and Braxton, she smiled with the charming grace of a mature woman at peace with her life.

  Good thing our Crazy Kamikan isn’t around this genre of woman, Jerry thought. I would need to pry him off of her with a crowbar.

  “Good morning and better blessings from the Twelve to you three fine gentlemen,” she said with a crackling, careworn voice. “This visit must be about my son?”

  “Likewise.” Jerry somehow bit down the furious urge to laugh at Rosa being falsely recognized as a man, then said, “That would be correct, ma'am. You are Madeline Adnot, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now, I don’t want to scare you, Mrs. Adnot, but my friends and I are Triple I Division special agents.”

  “That doesn’t scare me at all,” she said. “That actually makes me glad! This means somebody is finally taking me seriously. I reported my little Char Char missing weeks ago, but the New Chemeketa gendarmes told me he was an adult man who could leave whenever he wanted. But I know he wouldn’t just abandon me, right?”

  Jerry, Braxton, and even Rosa exchanged brief, but deeply pained glances before Jerry resumed speaking. “We’re absolutely certain your beloved son would never do anything as terrible as that, ma’am. You have to understand, we’re from the government, and we’re here to help you if that’s the last thing any of us do. May we come in?”

  “Don’t be afraid to let yourselves in.” Mrs. Adnot shuffled to the side to allow the trio entry. “There’s chocolatin chip cookies and lemonade on the kitchen table. I usually make them for Charles in case he comes back, but if you three are going to help bring him back to me, feel free to have as much as you want.”

  While Rosa and Jerry sat down at the kitchen’s table, Braxton helped Mrs. Adnot sit down as well. Like many people her age, she seemed to have horrible mobility issues. The kitchen and house overall was cozy and well-lived-in with many vases, pictures of Mrs. Adnot and her son, and dog-related trinkets all about. But on the other hand, the heat was insufferable from a combination of the recently running oven and cranked up air conditioning. There was the lingering, but notable “old people smell” pervading the entire home that assaulted Jerry’s sharper than average sense of smell.

  Dreadful as the entire situation made him feel, he wasted no time stuffing a few cookies into his face, veganism be damned, but stopped as soon as Rosa and Jerry struck him with disapproving glances.

  Don’t look at me like I’m grabbing money out of her purse, he thought. It would be more rude to refuse her hospitality when you really think about it.

  Rosa produced her PTALP and lancet pen for the interrogation. To avoid giving Mrs. Adnot some horrible disease, Rosa gently extracted a drop of blood from the older woman’s finger then applied the pen to her own finger. Mrs. Adnot took the tiny stab to her finger like a champ.

  “Where should we begin?” she asked.

  Jerry smiled a wolfish grin at her. “Wherever you want, ma'am.”

  The resulting “interrogation” turned out to be less of that, and more of a pleasant conversation between four people. As was common with many older, physically compromised individuals, Mrs. Adnot was quite lonely and hardly left her home. And ever since her son had gotten himself involved with some unsavory sorts and vanished weeks ago, her loneliness was all the more apparent. The trio never rushed or nudged her towards the pressing topic of Charles, but sincerely humored her until she was ready to talk about him an hour or so later.

  According to Mrs. Adnot, the life she shared with her one and only son Charles “Char Char” Adnot wasn’t an easy one. His father wasn’t an abusive or notably neglectful man, but seemed to have a poor time committing great effort towards anything, including fatherhood. He eventually walked out on both of them one random evening. Money had become tight. Mrs. Adnot had to work two jobs while couchsurfing, going to medical school, and relying on the kindness of friends. But she eventually overcame it all and became an anesthesiologist, giving Charles Adnot a solid, respectable life where he was always well-fed, clothed, and wanted for little.

  However, he performed poorly in most arenas of life. He floundered in school, got into dozens of fist fights, took up drinking at an early age, and had very few people he could call associates, much less actual friends. A gnarly criminal record of assault, disorderly conduct, and even domestic violence against his mother trailed Charles like a dark cloud of gnats. Even when Charles barely managed to graduate secondary school, he took up after his father. Charles’ resume consisted of menial, low-paying jobs that were hardly worth having before he left them months later.

  Despite all of this divulged information on Charles, Mrs. Adnot lacked any actionable information on where her son currently was. The poor old woman was a sobbing, mucus-soaked mess towards the end of the conversation/interrogation. Rosa did her best job to comfort Mrs. Adnot, but she continued her long running tradition of being as comforting as a doll made of razor wire.

  Jerry’s catcaller rang in his back pocket. He had forgotten to mute the device, making an already awkward, heart-wrenching moment much worse. He excused himself as fast as he could, then made his way towards Mrs. Adnot bathroom. Jerry looked at who was attempting to call him. He sighed. It was Mr. Moon for some inexplicable reason. Jerry answered and grit his teeth.

  “I’m in the middle of something quite serious right now.”

  “Are you, Braxton, and Rosa at the Adnot residence?” Mr. Moon asked.

  “I’m certainly not at the doctor’s office, bending over and being asked to cough to check if cancer is munching on my colon.”

  “Your crude sardonicism is unappreciated as usual,” Mr. Moon said. “But I’m going to require a special favor from you right now.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “This is part one of my efforts to help smooth over the potential legal and public relations ramifications of your violent stunt at the tangrella dance,” Mr. Moon said. “I need you to obtain a video of Mrs. Adnot denouncing her son for certain third parties.”

  Jerry sat down on Mrs. Adnot toilet because he felt angry enough to shit a brick of molten iron. “You cannot be serious right now, Mr. Moon! What certain third parties? She’s out there, weeping the tears of a mother about how much she misses the little scoundrel. What’s really going on here? Who else are you working with to fix things?”

  “Do you really want to know? I don’t think you really want to know. What’s that ridiculous saying you humans like to use? I don’t think you want to see how the sausage is caged?”

  “It’s how the sausage is made,” Jerry hissed through his teeth, “and as a matter of fucking fact, Mr. Moon, I would like to know how the whole butcher shop works unless I am not explicitly privy to that information.”

  “Your choice. Are you sitting down?”

  “Yes.”

  “In exchange for your cooperation, I'm working with the Information Warfare Division to discourage legal action from the man you assaulted. As it turns out, when you go around putting your fists into random people’s faces, there is a small, but nonzero risk of putting your fist into the face of a man who is the son of a prominent military lawyer—which is exactly what you did by the way.”

  Jerry shot to his feet without thinking. He smashed the top of his head on the low-hanging lamp of the bathroom. It fell and shattered on the tiled floor before his feet.

  “WHAT?”

  “I can hear the ego shattering in your head like I heard that lamp shatter on the floor,” Mr. Moon said. “I did warn you, did I not?”

  Like most of the divisions of the Mendakian Union, none of them were good to make enemies of. Even those pencil-necked, pencil pushers in the Maledicted Object Acquisition Division had a small, but effective subdivision of triggermen. But when it came to divisions that ruined lives without a weapon, it was the Information Warfare Division. Colloquially known as serpent tongues, federal agents of the IWD specialized in psychological operations, black propaganda, and the finest of character assassinations.

  “Twelvedamn it,” Jerry groaned. “What a mess I've made for myself, huh?”

  “You said it, not I,” Mr. Moon said. “Now act properly, don’t panic, and most importantly, do as you are told. Goodbye.”

  Somebody knocked on the bathroom door three times. Judging by the impressive sound of it, it had to be only one certain person.

  “Braxton?” Jerry asked.

  “Yeah. You alright in there? I heard you screaming and something breaking.”

  “No.” Jerry opened the door and frowned at Braxton. “I have bad news.”

  “Yes?”

  “You know how I got Mr. Moon to help me smooth over that tangrella dance thing? Turns out he’s doing that, but the catch is that he’s also working with the IWD to help me.”

  “The blood of the Twelve preserve my immortal soul.” Braxtons usually placid eyes went wide with shock. “This is why you need better self control.”

  “I know, I know,” Jerry said. “But I need your help right now. I need you and Rosa to help me get Mrs. Adnot saying something that disavows her son on video.”

  “Ethics aside,” Braxton said, “how the Vullen are we going to accomplish that? You were just eating the cookies and drinking the lemonade she makes daily for her son despite him being an all around failure of one.”

  “We did initially come here to interrogate the lady, so all we need to do is remind ourselves that’s what we came for, not cookies and lemonade and a nice little bit of chit-chat.”

  Braxton sighed. He pulled out his catcaller, typed a long message, then shot it off to Rosa. “That much is true, unpleasant as it is. This fucking job sometimes, man.”

  “One more year,” Jerry reminded him.

  “One more year,” Braxton echoed.

  The two returned to Mrs. Adnot’s kitchen, where Rosa was still comforting her. Mrs. Adnot was no longer inconsolable with tears, but her small, reddened eyes suggested she had the potential to do more crying. Jerry hoped that crying wouldn’t come so soon, but he doubted it heavily.

  Braxton, rather than sitting down, stood behind Mrs. Adnot and folded his gloved hands behind his back. He looked as menacing as a hungry bear towering over a lost, wounded hiker. Rosa decoupled from Mrs. Adnot and did the same. Jerry sat down before the poor old woman. He activated the video recording capability of his catcaller.

  Despite Mrs. Adnot's age, she was still sharp enough to notice the complete reversal of the atmosphere.

  “What…what’s happening?”

  “What we came for,” Jerry said. “An interrogation.”

  Mrs. Adnot began to tremble like a small, sickened dog. “What? Why? What have I done wrong?”

  “You have personally done nothing wrong,” Rosa said from behind Mrs. Adnot. “It’s your missing son that is the issue, I'm afraid.”

  “What? Charles has done absolutely nothing wrong! He, he, he—“

  “He is probably planning to bomb several locations for some terroristic reasons, and my friends and I would really like to find him before he does something that would not only hurt a lot of innocent people, but disappoint you beyond comparison,” Jerry said.

  Mrs. Adnot resumed her loud, mournful, body-shaking crying. “No! No! No! All of you people are lying to me! Charles was a troubled kid, but he would never, ever do anything like that.”

  “As much as I would like to believe that myself,” Jerry said, “the evidence my friends and I have collected says otherwise. It appears that your little Char Char might be involved with some real bad people who want to do some real bad things to good, decent people.”

  “I don’t even know where Charles is,” Mrs. Adnot struggled to say through her heavy tears. “How could I even begin to help you people?”

  “You can and will help us by doing the right thing,” Jerry said. “You are being recorded right now, and what my friends and I need is for you to tell us how much of a real danger Charles is.”

  “I would never do that. Charles hasn’t always picked the best path in life despite all that I have sacrificed for him, but I would never, ever speak poorly of my sweet boy.”

  “Sweet boy,” Rosa said with acerbic bitterness. “You speak of this sweet boy not picking the best path despite all that you have sacrificed for him, and how you would never speak poorly of him, but would he do the same for you? This sweet boy abandoned you at the mercy of three special agents of the Triple I Division. This sweet boy abandoned you to commit mass violence against innocent strangers. And most importantly, this sweet boy abandoned you to clean up yet another one of the messes he made. Yet this is the sweet boy, no, the creature, you will defend to your last breath?”

  Mrs. Adnot failed to respond. All she did was weep and hug herself impotently.

  “You are making this only as difficult as you want it to be,” Braxton said. “Tell us how you really should feel about Charles, then we will leave you in peace. You will never have to see any of our faces ever again.”

  “There will come a time when you will need to tear that parasite you call a son off your tit,” Jerry said. “Make today that day, Mrs. Adnot.”

  She ceased her weeping and became steely faced with hollow, haunted eyes. “When Bradley was nineteen years old…”

  Rosa, Braxton, and Jerry exited the Adnot residence some time later, collectively harrowed and feeling ten years older. Jerry started smoking and asked himself how much one man could hate himself for the things before the weight of it all collapsed on him. He generally liked to ponder such abstract questions and quandaries, but today, that one question felt like a lump of cancer growing, gnawing, and bleeding in the blackhole dense center of his damaged soul.

  Braxton tapped Jerry’s shoulder. “Are you feeling alright, man?”

  “Fuck how I’m feeling quite frankly. We just shook a sad, old widow down for shameful stories about her one and only son all because I don’t know how to keep my twelvedamned hands to myself. The shame should be burning a hole in my guts right now, don’t you think?”

  Braxton opened his mouth as if to say something, but stopped himself. The deep frown etched on his face said to Jerry the things that could fix the situation and make him feel better: Nothing.

  “Self-pity is the world’s most potent poison because you can always make it by yourself with nobody else’s help until it builds up in your system and eventually kills you,” Rosa said. “So enough of that bullshit. I despise seeing a supposedly grown man do such an annoying thing to himself, and we also have a job to do, no?”

  Jerry lacked the will and higher moral ground to bite back, so all he did was nod in agreement to Rosa's harsh words of encouragement.

  The three entered their car and began the drive to New Chemeketa City Hall to see what exactly was happening concerning the leaked maps of several federal buildings.