Chương 28: Bk 1 Interlude 3: The Lieutenant

"Stop right there!"

"Ah, the Silver Sentinel," said Professor Massacre as he turned.

"So kind of you to join me. But you're too late, I'm afraid. The Omega Device is already complete. Observe!" A crackling bolt of purple energy lashed out from the glowing orb he held, sending the Silver Sentinel diving for cover. Professor Massacre cackled with laughter.

"Yes, you shall make a fine test subject to determine the Omega Device's full capabilities. And once I've disposed of you, no one shall dare stand in the way of my rise to world domination!"

"You're insane!" shouted the Silver Sentinel.

"The world will never bow to the likes of you!"

"The only difference between madness and genius is success, boy. Now, will you come and out and face your death with your lauded courage, or meet your end cowering in fear?" Evan glanced up from his comic book as a car came crunching down the gravel road. It kept going past the driveway, so after a quick look around to make sure nothing had changed, he kept reading. Julia had asked him once what he got out of them, comparing it to a professional chef watching cooking reality shows to relax.

He'd told her it was more like an actor watching old movies for inspiration. Sure, superhero comics weren't exactly realistic, but that was the point. Reality was too messy, people liked stories where everything was nice and neat and predictable. Playing a character put people at ease, even if the character was a villain. Break character, and everyone started getting nervous, wondering what you were gonna do next. Julia had actually looked a little thoughtful at that, which Evan counted as a win.

It wasn't the real reason he read them, of course, but Julia wouldn't know fun if it snuck up and bit her on the ass. Even on the rare occasions when she joined the rest of them for drinks or something, she was constitutionally incapable of talking about anything but work. Evan didn't criticize, God knew he wouldn't want to do her job, but he still wished he could figure out how to help her loosen up a little; she definitely deserved it.

Besides, he needed some kind of hobby to kill time on long, boring stakeouts like this. This was the third night in a row he'd spent sitting in a tree watching this house, and nothing interesting had happened yet. He knew they had the right place, he'd already been inside himself and found the false ceiling in the upstairs closet hiding a couple bricks of coke.

If the intel was good, they should be about to get a much bigger shipment along with some proper reinforcements, but there wasn't any way to know exactly when it was gonna show up. So Evan got to spend the week in this little hillbilly town, sitting on his ass and reading comic books. Slanton was a town of maybe a few thousand people, around an hour and half south of Franklin.

The entire place was maybe five or six blocks in total, plus a bunch of outlying houses like this one, scattered around the surrounding countryside. The only thing to really recommend it was the dirt-cheap property; the house Evan was watching was probably big enough to qualify as an estate, on a good couple acres of land that gave it plenty of privacy. Franklin itself wasn't exactly a metropolis, of course, but it was big enough to find something at least resembling a proper club.

Here, the pair of so-called bars were both closed by ten o'clock. It didn't really matter, Evan was here on business anyway, but he'd still be glad to be done with this chore. Hopefully he'd be back by the weekend, it'd been a couple of months since Chimera showed up to squelch the gang war, and the party scene was finally starting to pick back up again. Another car came down the road, but this time, it turned into the driveway he was watching. He perked up, his comic book vanishing.

The car was a big black SUV, the windows tinted so that even he couldn't see through them in the dark, but that in itself was a dead giveaway. It drove up to the house and paused out front, still running, until the garage door opened. Evan pulled himself to his feet with a little grunt, balancing on the tree branch as the car pulled into the garage and the door closed behind it. Then, he stepped sideways.

He wasn't sure exactly how his magic worked, if it actually created some kind of pocket world, or if it was just his perspective that changed. Either way, the world became monochrome and shadowy. Solid objects turned into something like dark smoke, slightly translucent, growing wispier and less defined the further away they were from the point where he'd entered his shadow world.

Everything beyond about three hundred feet was indistinct fog; if he tried to go further than that, he'd get kicked back to the real world. The boundary crept inwards, his shadow world dissolving from the outside in over the course of a couple of minutes, limiting how long he could stay here. These days, that barely felt like a limit at all; back when he'd first gotten magic, his shadow world had been less than forty feet across, and he'd only been able to stay for a few seconds at a time.

The one thing that stood out from the shadowy background was the people. They glowed white, visible even through multiple walls, although they also grew blurry with distance. He could clearly see six people getting out of the SUV inside the garage, while another figure greeted them. Two more figures were already in the house, the same trio he'd been watching for the last three days. He watched for around half a minute as the party entered the house proper, then jumped twenty or thirty feet to the roof.

Briefly stepping back into the real world to let his shadow world regenerate, he then let himself sink through the roof, which felt a bit like sinking into thick mud. It took a few seconds to get all the way through, and another few seconds to repeat the process and get down to the first floor. The group from the car was spreading out, a couple congregating in the kitchen, a couple more heading for the bathroom. The last two were in the downstairs livingroom, along with the three original occupants.

Evan observed them for a moment, but even at close range, all details except height and general build tended to get blurred out. Instead, he pushed his way through another wall into an adjacent bedroom, currently unoccupied, and stepped back into the real world. Sound immediately returned, voices slightly muffled through the wall but still easily audible.

"-Couple of minutes. He probably won't give a shit about the living arrangements, so we'll figure that out after. For now, I just wanna make sure everyone's a hundred percent clear on their responsibilities. Go get your list, I wanna check it with ours and make sure nothing got fucked up."

"Will do," said someone else, and footsteps started ascending the stairs.

"Anything we should know before he gets here?" asked a third voice.

"Just don't be an idiot. Lancer's pretty chill, the bosses wouldn't have put him in charge if he wasn't. He might ride your ass a little, he sees this as his big chance to prove himself, but he's not gonna stab you for breathing too loud or some shit."

"Alright, cool." Evan frowned thoughtfully. Lancer, huh? Forcefield generator, if he remembered correctly, but with enough fine control over his fields that he acted more like a telekinetic in practice. Not a complete pushover, he'd been a magical for around three or four years, but a long way from a real heavy hitter. Still, the fact that there was a magical here at all meant the Cartel was at least somewhat serious. Footsteps descended back down the stairs.

"Alright, got 'em."

"Put 'em here, let's have a look." The voices mostly trailed off after that, a few comments about whatever they were looking at, another guy coming back from the bathroom and asking if there were any beers in the fridge. After a minute, Evan slipped back into his shadow world. He stayed in roughly one-minute intervals, ducking back to the real world when the borders started shrinking too much and briefly listening to see if they were talking about anything interesting.

After about five minutes of that, a new figure entered his range, notable because he was flying. He slowed to a stop directly overhead, descending and circling the house a couple of times, probably making sure he had the right place. Satisfied, he landed in front of the door and knocked. One of the figures in the living room immediately jumped up and rushed over to open it, and Evan stepped back to the real world to listen.

"Evening, boss. Come on in."

"Cole. Good to see you again. How was the drive?"

"Long, but no problems. Everything good on your end?"

"Yeah, all good. Been up here for a few days already, haven't had shit to do. Ready to get a move-on."

"Well, we're pretty much ready too. Hey, everyone! Get your asses down here, we're starting!" Evan listened patiently for the better part of half an hour as they went over the operation they were setting up, the local distributors they'd recruited or made deals with, who'd be responsible for overseeing which areas. None of it was real important, the entire thing was about to get completely uprooted anyway, but there was a chance they might drop a useful nugget or two about the Cartel's wider operations.

He did get confirmation that they'd come to an agreement with the Vegas Commission, gaining control of Reno in exchange for not pushing any further into Nevada. With Los Angeles serving as a hard wall to the south, that meant they didn't have anywhere to look except north. Unfortunate, but not unexpected. He waited until they started wrapping up, then made his move.

Stepping into his shadow world, he found everyone in the house gathered in the livingroom, most of them clustered around a coffee table with a couch and a couple armchairs arranged around it, a couple more leaning against the walls. Glancing around, he hopped up and had a seat on the counter separating the kitchen from the livingroom, and came back to the real world.

"Howdy, folks. Welcome to Oregon." Lancer was already on his feet, with his polearm out and pointed at Evan before the first word was fully out of his mouth. Evan ignored him, not even bothering to summon his rifle.

"Great state. Beautiful parks, friendly people, nice weather if you don't mind the rain. Only problem is all the fucking Californians who keep trying to move up here."

"Huntsman, I assume?" growled Lancer. He was kind of going for the futuristic knight look with his costume, all smooth chrome with black synthetic-looking joints. It wasn't much to Evan's taste, but he'd seen worse.

"What do you want? This isn't the Columbia Syndicate's territory."

"It's not the Golden Empire Cartel's territory either, now is it?" said Evan.

"So I can't help but wonder what you all think you're doing here."

"If the Syndicate wanted southern Oregon, you should've claimed it sooner. First come, first serve."

"That how they do things down south these days? Cute. The rules up here are a little bit different. They go, stay out of our backyard, or I fucking kill you."

"You think you can fight the entire Cartel on your own?"

"I think the entire Cartel isn't here. Just you and me. And them, I guess. What do you guys think? Feel like trying your luck?" The regular gangsters shifted nervously backwards, not answering. Only a handful of black masks in the country had ever gone toe to toe with an ABRA strike team and come out on top. Evan was one of them; Lancer was very much not.

"You sure you wanna start this?" asked Lancer after a moment.

"Maybe it's just me here right now, but that can change in a hurry."

"Cut the bullshit," said Evan.

"You knew exactly what you were starting when you tried to move north of the border. Trees and deer don't buy drugs. There's nothing here worth your trouble, unless you're looking to make a beachhead."

"Business is business," insisted Lancer.

"The Cartel doesn't overlook opportunities for growth, even small ones. If you do, then your loss."

"If you're looking for opportunities, I got a great one for you," said Evan.

"It's called Los Angeles. Whole lot bigger than Bumfuck, Oregon, or so I've heard. Plenty of customers. Why not give it another shot? They say if at first you don't succeed, try, try again."

"Go fuck yourself." Evan grinned behind his scarf.

"Touched a nerve, huh? Doesn't seem like the Cartel learned much from the experience, though, cause here you are, getting ready to stick your hand straight into another meatgrinder."

"Enough," said Lancer.

"You're clearly not going to change your mind. What do you want?"

"Easy. I want you and your people to get the fuck out of the state. Leave the intel and the product, I'll be hanging onto it as insurance and an apology, respectively. You, I want gone tonight. The rest of your people, I'll be generous and give a full week to pull out. After that, it'll be open season."

"I hope you don't expect us to take this lying down."

"Yeah, I kinda do, actually. There's no reason why this needs to turn ugly. The Cartel already has the entire Valley and the Bay Area. That's more people than all of Oregon and Washington combined. No need to start getting greedy, is there? We've got no interest in pushing south. Why not leave things as they are, with a nice big buffer of nothing much between us so we don't step on each other's toes?" Lancer glared at him for a few more seconds. Then he sighed, his polearm vanishing.

"Fine. I'll relay your message to the bosses."

"You do that. And you can also tell them that if they do decide to be idiots and adventure north again, they'd better come loaded for fucking bear. Cause next time? I'm not gonna give you a message, I'm gonna make you the message. We clear?"

"Crystal." Evan watched carefully as the Cartel members grudgingly packed up their effects, making sure they weren't trying to smuggle out anything he wanted. Selling this property and the other safehouses they'd invested in would probably be a pain in the ass, and they'd lose plenty of money, but it was hardly going to break the bank. There needed to be at least a little sting to make the lesson stick, but not so much that it'd demand retribution.

Of course, that assumed that the Cartel wasn't already committed to expanding north regardless. Hopefully getting caught out like this would make them think twice, but that depended heavily on exactly what the Cartel's internal politics looked like these days. The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement. Once Lancer and his goons had slouched out of the house, either flying or driving away, Evan gave it one more quick search, then departed himself.

He was restricted to running, but he could run pretty fast, especially in his shadow world, where he could pretty much ignore the undergrowth in the surrounding forest. It took him only five or so minutes to get back to the shitty motel he and his people had rented a couple of rooms at, the only one in Slanton. He didn't bother coming in through the door, just jumping straight through the wall and then rematerializing in the middle of the room.

His trio of enforcers barely even startled; they were some of his most trusted subordinates, who'd been with him since the very beginning. There was still a bit of a risk to telling even your most trusted people your civilian identity, telepaths existed, but in his opinion, the massive convenience was worth it.

"Hey, boss," said Mike.

"You're back early. Something happen?"

"Yup," said Evan, dropping his transformation and pulling off the now-stuffed backpack he was wearing.

"Message delivered, and I got some goodies to bring home with us, too. We're finished here. You guys ready to get out of this shithole?"

"God, yes. Who's on checkout duty?"

"Pete, you were on morning shift, right? Guess it's you, sorry buddy."

"Sonofabitch," complained Pete.

"I'd better be getting hazard pay for having to sleep in these shit beds again."

"Of course, I'm not heartless!" said Evan, grinning. The three of them who were leaving packed up their sparse luggage and headed out of the motel through the back exit, seeing no one. The Syndicate owned plenty of black SUVs of its own, of course, but they'd driven here in a grey Toyota Camry to avoid drawing attention. Evan took the passenger seat; rank hath its privileges, after all. It was only a little past ten, plenty of time to get back to Franklin without anyone falling asleep.

He spent a few minutes filling the other two in on what went down, or at least the high points of it. That left him plenty of time to think things over, and decide exactly what he was going to say in his report. The Golden Empire Cartel was a bit of an oddball. The large majority of gangs, from the smallest street gangs to the biggest multi-state crime families, were led by a single magical. Some gang leaders were simply the strongest, like Miles, or Quicksilver over in Denver.

Others weren't necessarily as strong in a straight-up fight, but had magic that was incredibly useful in some other way, like Machiavelli in Chicago or Pythia in New York. But the Golden Empire Cartel was led by a triumvirate, made up of Titan, Corona, and Sanguine. And while Evan wouldn't call any of the three weak, they weren't especially strong, either. He'd give himself decent odds against any of them, and they'd need all three of them together to have any kind of chance against Miles on his own.

They hadn't begun that way. The Cartel had been founded by a magical named Asmodeus. He'd started out in Sacramento, and had fully conquered the city by late '93, while Miles, Julia, and Evan were still only in the opening stages of unifying Portland. After that, Asmodeus had moved on to San Francisco and the surrounding areas, which had contained upwards of thirty black masks at the time. By the beginning of '96, all of those black masks were either dead, fled, or part of the Cartel.

Riding the high of that success, he'd set his sights on Los Angeles. By that time, gangs in most of the largest cities had generally finished consolidating into single organizations. The big exception was LA. Partly that was thanks to the huge white mask presence in Southern California, most notably Tempest, placed there mainly to encourage all of the big Mexican cartels to stay firmly on their side of the border. But the larger reason was Black Panther.

Although he'd declined to form his own gang in the wake of his failed revolution, he still considered LA to be his territory, and took a very dim view of outsiders trying to muscle their way in. Maybe Asmodeus had thought Black Panther was a paper tiger (heh), never truly recovered from his defeat at the hands of Tempest. Maybe he'd thought he could make up any difference in power with numbers. Maybe he'd just been an idiot. Either way, Black Panther had corrected him thoroughly and lethally.

The Golden Empire Cartel had very nearly collapsed in the wake of Asmodeus's death. The tiniest bit of outside pressure probably would have done it. Unfortunately, no one had been in a good position; the Vegas Commission had a strict policy of non-expansionism and neutrality, La Fraternidad hadn't reached far enough west at that point, and the Columbia Syndicate was too far north.

The white masks had grabbed a decent number of them, but their main concern had been preventing an all-out civil war from erupting, so they'd specifically targeted the most disruptive and aggressive members. In the end, three of Asmodeus's former lieutenants had come to an agreement to share power and managed to hold things together. Although the three of them always presented a unified front, there were some signs of disagreements behind the scenes.

That made them potentially vulnerable, but it also made them unpredictable. It was entirely plausible that this little misadventure into Oregon had been the brainchild of only a single member of their triumvirate, and the other two would give them a thorough knuckle-rapping for nearly dragging them into a war with the Syndicate. But only an idiot would assume that was the case. They got back to Franklin a little before midnight, heading straight home.

Home was a four-bedroom house in north Franklin that Evan allegedly rented a room in, although the rent he paid was entire fictional; the house was owned by a shell company ultimately controlled by the Syndicate, and doubled as a money-laundering operation. To all outside observers, him and his enforcers were nothing but a group of twenty-somethings sharing a house, hardly unusual for coming and going at odd times.

It wasn't the nicest place he'd ever lived, but it wasn't bad; he had the entire second floor to himself. He'd organize a meeting with the local supervisors tomorrow, to check in and distribute the product he'd taken from the Cartel. For now, he stored it in his office along with the seized documents. Then, he pulled a cellphone out of his desk, the one he used exclusively for long-distance calls, and dialed a number from memory. It picked up after the second ring.

"Yeah?"

"Hey, everything good?"

"Gimme a minute." A pause.

"Alright, we're secure. That you, Evan?"

"Yup. Gotta talk to Julia, she around?"

"Should be, I'll go get her," said Garrett, also known as Wintermute. He was one of the newer members of the Syndicate, not especially strong, but making phone calls impossible to tap or trace was just of the many uses of his electronics-controlling magic.

"You back in Franklin?"

"Yeah, just got back a minute ago."

"How'd it go, any problems?"

"Nah, at least not right this minute. How's it going on your end, anything new?"

"Nope, still pretty much the same-old. I'll let her tell you about it, though." His voice became muffled as he moved the phone away from his head.

"Boss? Got Evan on the phone for you." A bit of shuffling as the phone was handed over, and then a new voice.

"Go ahead." Evan pitched his voice higher than usual.

"Oh, hi, Evan, how have you been?" Back to his usual tone.

"Oh, not bad, just got done sitting in a tree all night for the last three days. How 'bout you?" She gave an irritated huff tinged by the slightest bit of amusement.

"Yes, thank for taking care of the pleasantries. Are you ready to give your report now?" He grinned slightly, but didn't give her any more shit.

"You guessed right, the Cartel did actually commit a magical. Lancer. Saw him off without any problems, though."

"I see. They were serious about fortifying the region, then?"

"At least somewhat serious, I'd say. They invested too much to just be testing the waters, I don't think they expected us to be paying attention. If I had to guess, I'd say they have been testing the waters for at least a few months, and we only noticed when they started bringing more people in."

"I agree. Irritating. We'll have to send more of our own people down to make sure we catch any further attempts earlier next time. How likely would you say they are to make further attempts?"

"Well, that's the question, isn't it?" replied Evan.

"I doubt they're gonna try the exact same thing again, they'll have to assume we'll be watching even more carefully now. I'd be surprised if they don't at least send a few more people, just to keep an eye on things and see whether or not we start properly expanding into the region ourselves. But I made it pretty clear that trying to come north will mean war, so if they do make another attempt, I'm expecting it to be a lot more direct. Lancer was acting like that was pretty likely.

Could definitely be a bluff, but I didn't see any solid evidence either way."

"If they do decide they want a war, they'd be idiots not to strike first. Are you prepared if they come all the way up to Franklin?"

"Short term, I'm not too worried. Even if they're thinking about making a big move, they can't do shit with Chimera in town, and it seems like she's planning on hanging around for at least a few more months." You never went all-out when the white masks got involved, the goal was always just to convince them you weren't worth the trouble.

"If I'm still the only one here when she leaves, though, they might start getting some ideas. How close are you and Miles to wrapping things up in Seattle?"

"No change. We've almost completely strangled the Grizzlies' income, but their three remaining magicals are still in hiding, and they've become much harder to bait out. I'm slowly narrowing down the section of town they're hiding in, but it could potentially be several more months before I actually locate them. At this point, it's mostly a matter of luck, or waiting for them to make a mistake."

"So there could be a window for the Cartel to make a move, then."

"There could be. What about the local girl, Schwarzschild? Can she be brought onboard before Chimera leaves?"

"She's a tricky one," said Evan.

"Needs to be handled delicately. She's the type who doesn't want to see herself as anyone's subordinate. She won't respond well to ultimatums."

"She's unreliable, then?"

"I wouldn't say that, exactly. She's reasonable, and smart enough not to start a fight she knows she can't win. Let her call herself an independent contractor, and she'll probably play ball. Besides, I doubt be she'll real happy either if the Cartel does try to move into town, so we're natural allies."

"That's more concessions than we usually offer."

"I'm aware. But if she's as young as I think she is, then she's been growing damn fast. The one thing we absolutely do not want is to run her out of town, and then have her come back with a grudge a couple years later. On the other hand, if we can maintain a good relationship with her for a couple years, I'm willing to bet her stance on just joining will start to soften." There was a few seconds of silence.

"We'll see," said Julia eventually.

"I won't make any decision until Miles and I have a chance to speak with her ourselves. For now, do what you can to point her at the Cartel if necessary. But be careful not to let yourself get too attached."

"Hey, you know I'm as professional as they come. I bet you'll like her too, though. She reminds me a little of you."

"Oh? How so?"

"She's got that whole ice queen thing going on. You know, super formal speaking, always in a monotone, looks at you like you're something she scraped off the bottom of her boot. Doesn't quite have it down perfect yet, though, one of the reasons I think the cops are wrong about how old she is. Maybe you can give her some pointers, huh?" Julia sighed, and Evan grinned again.

"Anything else you'd like to add?"

"Nah. I'll get started organizing my people to keep a more thorough watch down south. Can I expect any extra help?"

"I'll see what I can send you. And Evan. If the Cartel does come north in force, preserving your own life is your number one priority, even at the cost of abandoning Franklin entirely."

"Aww, you do care about me."

"Goodbye, Evan." The eye-roll was so loud, it was almost audible. Evan chuckled a little, putting the phone away. Julia did most of the work of actually running the Syndicate, and she was damn good at it, but Miles wasn't the one in charge just because he was stronger. Julia was a capable administrator, but she wasn't a leader. Of course, it helped that he'd never once seen the two of them actually argue, and Miles always took her input seriously.

Honestly, he had no idea how Miles had managed to charm her in the first place, he'd known her for five entire years and still only rarely got her to crack a smile. But then, Miles had always been the kind of larger-than-life figure who made the impossible sound easy. Anyway, that was all for later. Tomorrow, he'd call the Syndicate's local managers and start arranging for a more thorough watch to be kept for any potential Cartel incursions, as well as distributing the product he'd taken from them.

Tonight, he was going to relax and sleep in a real goddamn bed, an extravagant six or seven hours if he had anything to say about it. He pushed his chair back, put his feet up on the desk, and pulled his comic book out again.

"No! Impossible! How can this be?" screamed Professor Massacre as his body was wracked by purple lightning. The Silver Sentinel stood well back from the catastrophically failing Omega Device, his arms sternly crossed.

"For all your brilliance, Professor, the one thing you never learned is that evil never prospers in the end." Evan snorted, grinning and shaking his head. Honestly, he really owed it to comic books for teaching him that evil was actually very profitable, but only if you kept your ambitions a little more reasonable. Some people just never knew when enough was enough.