Blood Money ((Closed))

[Glacial Mass]

Alex waited until his dormitory was quiet. His classmates were out on patrol, out on dates, whatever. He needed time to read the files without disturbance and, more importantly, without witnesses. He needed to be alone. There was no telling how deep this went.

“You wanted proof?” the handwritten note on top of his stack of papers read. “Here is proof.”

He pulled a small data cube from a ruddy brown package sent from the Rogue Isles and downloaded its contents to his laptop. He made sure to disconnect his computer from the school's network first. He didn't know much about network security, but he understood enough to know that the best way to make a computer hacker-proof was to isolate it. It was essential that as few people as possible knew that he had this data. What he had amounted to some very serious dirt on some very nasty people with no discernible compunctions about hurting anyone they didn't care for.

His contact had been kind enough to include passwords in his package. The cube contained directories and directories, files and files. A lot of it he didn't have the context to understand completely. There was one folder, labeled “photos,” the contents of which were well within his understanding.

He flipped through photograph after photograph, each a compilation of head and body shots, with a serial number on the body of the image. Alex couldn't help but be startled by the variety in the faces. Some were male, some were female. Some were clearly hardened by a difficult life – some looked like criminals, put simply, but were they? Some of the faces were very old. Other faces were startlingly, disturbingly young. Alex's own age, some maybe even younger.

The serial numbers on the photographs corresponded to serial numbers in his large stack of singed papers. Each was a file documenting a superpowered citizen in the Rogue Isles. Their powers were summarized, their aliases listed, their vital statistics printed in unmistakable dot matrix. In dark text at the bottoms of some of the pages were the words “DECEASED,” with the names of the Wyvern officers involved and more serial numbers that he didn't have as much complete information on.

The Wyvern donation was bloodstained. Blood money. No better. Alex knew that the Isles and the States were very, very different places, knew all too well. It didn't matter. There was no indication that these criminals had the benefit of a trial. The Wyvern ops were good, were careful, but Alex knew they were not beyond fallibility. How many innocent people had been hurt, even killed, by an arrow that should have been aimed elsewhere?

Taking the donation from Wyvern was as good as taking $4 million from the Tsoo, the Family, the Malta Organization. There was talk of building a new dormitory. They would be building it on the graves of these potentially innocent people.

The last bit of evidence, a video, was not something he could stand to watch alone having been briefed of its contents. He dialed Eric on his cell.

“Eric? Our package has arrived. Come help me look at it.”

[Eric Copper]

Eric sat on the floor in Quad 7 flipping through the photos once again. He'd already looked through everything once, listening as Alex pointed things out and gave his perspective. Now Alex was getting the video ready for them to watch, and Eric was having a hard time grasping just how many people his age were shown in the photos he held.

"Okay, here we go." Alex pressed a button then scampered over next to Eric as playback began. Eric's attention shifted to the screen. The quality was like what you'd get with a video camera, complete with a bright green timestamp in the corner. However, the scene was quite clear. They're inside an apartment, with several anthropomorphic robots working to extinguish a fire. Uniformed Wyvern officers can be seen through the broken bay window. One throws a fire grenade in the apartment, exploding against a green robot, causing it to malfunction and run around the room while the other two robots try to contain the new fire. The camera then leaves the apartment through the broken window, moving smoothly, not like a handheld camera.

The camera stops next to two figured on top of a nearby building. The faces are blacked out, but Eric recognizes his voice and gray-white hair. He's only wearing a pair of flannel pants, and the short, blond-haired woman next to him is only wearing a t-shirt, shorts, and a compact hoverpack. Neither have shoes on. Given the darkness, Eric guesses they were woken up unexpectedly.

"Can you get your robots to teleport?" the boy asks. "Let 'em take it. Heavy losses, but you're okay."

"No," says the girl, her voice trembling, "My notebook, my data! We're gonna be back to square one if we let them burn it! We have to go back."

"Nifty, double-camera mode, centered on me and ----------." The name is blanked out. "Download in real-time to ISP -----------."

The screen then splits, showing the boy flying alone in one frame, the girl in the other. He reaches the apartment first, choking and coughing on smoke as he enters, though he seems unharmed by the flames as they bend away from his body. He grabs printouts, data cubes, and computer laptops, then bundles them up in some unburnt sheets from the bed before shoving the impromptu sack through the window at the woman.

"We've got to book." He blocks her attempt to enter the apartment.

"All my stuff!" she's crying. "--------, they burnt all my stuff!" He takes her by the elbow and hauls her away through the air.

"Nifty, get some vid of the Wyvern officers and flunkies coming in." The camera shot reconverges, pans low and left. The streets crawl with brown-and-blacks. One knocks an arrow, raises the crossbow, and shoots.

"Oh my god, they shot you!"

"For fuck's sake, go! Get out of here! They don't have too many fliers. I'll keep them distracted. Get back to ------------. I'll meet you there."

The agent knocks another arrow. The young man grunts, then makes a bubbling cough. He falls from the sky and lands at the feet of the shooter. A fletched arrow protrudes from his chest. And then... he's gone. The video runs for a few more seconds before going silent.

Eric buried his head in Alex's chest, crying softly.