2103:12:10:09:08:50

  I flew for fifteen minutes while continuously looking back to see if anyone was following. There didn’t seem to be – no beam of light, no lightning storm or Jauntiste-style flashes – but I needed to be sure. I feared that any change in the heroes’ actions, that anything besides dealing with Soliloquy’s aftermath might alert Nth-Sight that I had survived his trap and that we were onto him.

  It was paranoia speaking. I knew it was paranoia speaking. But knowing that I was being paranoid, and knowing that the paranoid thoughts weren’t true were two separate things entirely.

  So, I flew until one fear flipped to another, the fear of Nth-Sight finding out transforming into the fear that Amber might be discovered the longer she went without knowing what had happened.

  I landed on the roof of an apartment complex and switched back to human form. Hands shaky, I retrieved my phone and called Amber, muttering pleas under my breath. At the third ring and my third plea, she picked up.

  “Jest-”

  “It was a trap!” I yelled before she could finish. “Nth-Sight killed his family and-and set me up to die for it! He knows you’re alive! He-!”

  “Jester!” Amber bit out sharply. It snapped me out of my rant long enough for her to say, “Take deep breaths; follow my lead.” I did and slowly, I calmed down. “Good. Now, explain.”

  I told her everything I knew. It still all came out jumbled, jumping from fact to fact out of order, but with my mentor’s, my friend’s guidance, I managed to get through it.

  I told her how I arrived at Parkway Drive at the same time as Darkstar, the sudden explosion that followed, Soliloquy’s words and knowledge about Nth-Sight’s many identities, Nth-Sight’s (highly likely) murder of the villain’s family, and finally, Soliloquy’s death at the hands of the heroes. At the end, Amber was silent for a moment, thinking.

  “I don’t think he knows,” she concluded.

  I froze. “What?”

  “After my leads dried up, I used the tracker on the bomb to try and find him. It led me to a derelict house on the edge of Northside and Riverside,” Amber said. My eyes widened – if there ever was any trap, that would be it.

  But before I could say anything, Amber continued. “It wasn’t there. He’s found the tracker and disposed of it, taking the bomb with him. But what matters is that if he knew it was us that was onto him, that would’ve been the place to kill me. Since he hasn’t, I find it difficult to believe he knows that we know – that you knew he broke the Treaty when you last spoke.”

  I mulled over the words in my head, trying to find fault with them. I’d been so sure, but aside from the fact we were dealing with an augur – a Treaty-breaking and likely-insane one at that – I found little fault with her argument.

  Tension left my body, though not all of it.

  “Then what do we do?” I asked. “He still has that bomb and now we have no way to track him.”

  “Well, that’s easy,” Amber said. “Call him.”

  “Call him?”

  “Call him,” Amber reaffirmed. “Tell him Soliloquy’s dead. He was fleeing him, right? Knowing that he’s now safe from the villain’s wrath, he’ll want to return to business as usual. Try and see if you can arrange a meeting as soon as possible, before he tries to peer into the future and see I’m hunting him down.”

  Subconsciously, I nodded. “Alright,” I said. “Alright, I’ll call him right now. Just…”

  “Go ahead. I’ll stay on call.”

  Again, I subconsciously nodded.

  I switched to my contacts and called Nth-Sight. He answered immediately.

  “Jester, what’s going on?” he asked, sounding rushed.

  “Soliloquy’s dead.”

  “What?” he said, sounding surprised. “Are you absolutely sure?” There was a hint of panic in his voice. Why?

  “Yes,” I replied.

  “Shit,” he whispered. “Shit, shit, shit, shit!” he shouted and I heard the klaxon of his car as he slammed his hand on the klaxon.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, careful to keep my voice even. But my mind raced, returning to paranoia. Was he disappointed I survived?

  “What’s wrong?!” he said. “What’s wrong is that I’m still dying!”

  That sounded… good, actually. Nevertheless, “What do you mean? I thought Soliloquy-”

  “He was! I simu-” he coughed. “I saw him coming for me, but now I see nothing!” I heard the car screech as he turned it around.

  Shit. If he saw nothing, and if I was obscured-

  “Did…” he hesitated. “Did the heroes say anything? Or Darkstar – he was there, right?”

  I had to take a risk. “Darkstar was there, yes.” The truth. “The heroes wanted to speak to me after.” Again, not false. “And Darkstar wanted to ask me why I was there at all.” Which was also true. Everything was. All except the order of events, and that I hid the fact I hadn’t answered any of them.

  “Right, Darkstar!” he said, oddly relieved. “That- that makes sense.” Did it? That was news to me. “Good. Great. Alright. Jester?”

  “Yes?”

  “I know it’s been a… rough day for you, but can I- I need just one more favor from you. Can you come to Sievert Street?”

  “Now?”

  “Yes, now,” he said with too much bite. He quickly followed it up with a more diplomatic, “if you can, of course. Now that I know Darkstar’s after me, I need your help.”

  Personal dislike wanted me to immediately refuse, while the desire for vengeance wanted me to immediately accept. But my cunning prevailed.

  I faked hesitation. “I don’t know if I-”

  “I don’t need you to beat him,” he said hurriedly. “You just need to distract him long enough for the heroes to arrive.”

  “Okay,” I said, only partly having to fake the reluctance. “Okay. I can do that.”

  “Thank you. Meet me at the roof of Torkel Hall. See you soon.” He hung up.

  “He’s going to be on the roof of Torkel Hall, Sievert Street,” I told Amber.

  “Hmm, let me just… It’s in Riverside. An apartment complex by the Chehalis River. I can be there in… ten minutes, fifteen max. Did he say where he was currently?”

  Unfortunately, “No. I assume somewhere close by, but…”

  “We’ll make it work,” she said. “If you’re there before me, try and stall for as long as you can. If I’m there before you, I’ll hide and strike the moment you arrive and distract him. Good?”

  “Sounds good to me. See you there,” I said.

  “See you.”

  X

  My journey took me a bit under ten minutes. Nth-Sight was already there, dressed in full regalia – meaning that, beyond his sigil-eye-painted beehive he wore as a mask, he was dressed in bishop-like robes, except black in color. He stood with his arms crossed, one foot tapping in agitation, a restless energy suffusing his stance.

  I descended and shifted, landing with both feet on the ground. His eyes turned to me.

  “Good. You’re here,” he said.

  Amber did not attack. Either she wasn’t here, or this wasn’t the right opportunity.

  “So, what’s the plan?” I asked. Then I noticed behind him stood a familiar looking case.

  “The plan-” there was an odd satisfaction in his voice, “-is this.” He crouched and opened the case, retrieving from it a familiar looking device.

  The second bomb.

  “You want to set up a bomb?” I asked, not bothering to hide my disbelief. Not that I didn’t believe he could do it – not after what he’d done to Soliloquy and all the consequences that had – but rather that he would do it so blatantly right in front of me. “On top of an apartment complex?”

  He grabbed the two tubes from the case. “A bomb?” He sounded surprised. He turned his head and examined the device, and the vials in his hand. “Yes, I suppose it does look like one, doesn’t it?” There was clear amusement in his voice.

  “It’s not?” I asked, hiding my shock behind a veil of curiosity.

  “No.” He pushed the tubes in their respective slots, one on top and one in the bottom. They withdrew in it the moment he did. “This thing was supposed to be the Jannacht’s masterstroke in controlling Charm. A magnum opus from one of their less-well-known makers, used in all of the cities Jannacht stake a claim to.” He held up the device for me to see. “A miniature, portable teleportation device.”

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  I stepped up next to him (convenient) and looked at it more closely, pretending I’d never seen it before. It was the exact same high-tech, white pill looking thing Amber and I had destroyed back at the abandoned house miles and miles north of here.

  “It doesn’t-”

  “Look like it, does it? But with this, the Jannacht could’ve redeployed across the city instantly, limited only by its city-wide range, the number of devices they have and the number of vials they could demand from New York. Useful for any of their villains, but especially Soliloquy; for all the powers the man could conjure, he lacks- well, lacked deployment speed. To have one, let alone more in the city, with him and his cronies capable of moving north to south, east to west in an instant… It would’ve spelled disaster for all our efforts. All the city’s efforts.”

  “This was what you told me to steal,” I said.

  “Exactly.” He said, proud of himself. “Now unfortunately, I discovered the bastards tracked it with some microscopic pinger, but I disposed of it a while ago. Too bad I couldn’t get to the other in time, but it’s not like that matters much anymore now that their whole gang has all but collapsed thanks to us!” He said it with so much malicious pride, the ‘us’ sounded like ‘me’.

  He turned around and faced away from me. I started closing the distance.

  “And now, we will use their magnum opus against them!” He pressed a button and threw the device high in the air. It buzzed as it went up.

  I was almost right behind him now.

  “We’ll call the heroes in a moment and I’ll tell them of my safehouse up north,” he said.

  During the fall, the device stopped and hovered about a meter up from the floor. The device split apart in four parts, becoming the corners of what would be a two-by-two-meter portal.

  “Then, once Darkstar is there-”

  Rainbow-colored lines shot up, down and to the sides, connecting to all corners and creating the frame for the portal. The empty space within it began to fill with glistening colors-

  “-I will escape-”

  -before collapsing instantly. The device buzzed in error as it failed to connect to its pair. The four parts clattered on the ground, sounding like cheap plastic as they did.

  “-by car while you… stall… him?”

  He trailed off into silence, mourning the death of his scheme through sheer shock. He turned around, no doubt with mouth agape underneath that beehive of his, when he startled and nearly tripped backwards upon seeing me right behind him.

  “Oh,” he said. I didn’t need to see his eyes to know they had widened in realization.

  He quickly reached for something in his robes – a gun? – so I quickly jabbed him on where I figured his nose was with my right.

  “Ow-!”

  The gun fell as his body took a step backwards in reflex. I quickly put my leg out and tripped him.

  “Fu-!” he tried to shout, but was cut off by his head hitting the stone roof.

  He groaned, dazed, one hand clutching the back of his head, while his other searched for the gun he’d dropped. I kicked it away before he could even get close, and with that, he was out of options.

  Easy as pie.

  From behind me, footsteps with a light metallic ring-and-scrape sounded. I turned around and saw Crowsong – she was in full gear – calmly walk up to us, her knife-y talons scratching menacingly on the roof before she retracted them.

  “Didn’t even need the ambush, huh,” she said, no doubt smiling behind her mask. Behind my mask, I echoed it.

  “You,” Nth-Sight said, groaning as he slowly pushed himself backwards to the edge of the roof. “How… are you…”

  “Alive?” Amber said, stepping forward like a predator stalking its prey. Naturally, I followed. “It’s quite simple: you aren’t as good as you think you are.”

  He continued to crawl backwards, growing quicker as the blow to his head faded in intensity. Amber and I followed suit.

  “When-?” he tried.

  “Did we figure it out?” Crowsong cut him off, reveling in the moment. “From the moment you contacted Jester instead of me.” An exaggeration. We’d known something was up, sure, but that it went as far as it did? Not a chance.

  Still, no need to tell Nth-Sight that.

  “How?” Nth-Sight’s back hit the guard rail at the edge of the roof. “How could you have known? You?” I could all but taste the venom.

  Amber stepped forward threateningly. “Now that’s just-”

  Nth-Sight ignored her. “Don’t make me laugh. My plan was goddamn perfect. Bomb their meetings, target their infrastructure, poison their peace talks, steadily escalate the violence.” As he’d been talking, he’d slithered up against the metal fence at the edge of the roof. “The entire conflict was laid out before the Jannacht even arrived!”

  Now, he stood there with the back of his legs against the meter-high ledge, panting like a dog from his own shouting – and the likely concussion he suffered.

  “So don’t give me that bullshit, that- that you two-” his finger shook as he pointed alternatingly at us, “-of all people figured it out. I’ve been doing this for years. Every piece of intel, of- of knowledge the villains and heroes had were mine. This city has been mine since I killed Prespective six months ago! All of you were just pawns- no, you were just ants! Ants! In my garden! My rogues’ paradise! My city!”

  Crowsong snorted, but it sounded hollow to my ears. Performative.

  “Yeah, right,” she said. “You and every other aug-”

  “You think it was Blackhawk that discovered the truth,” he interrupted, spewing poison like a snake cornered. “Blackhawk? Your ‘vaunted mentor’ was a fucking idiot. Couldn’t spot a conspiracy if it crawled right up his nose and spat in his face.”

  Crowsong took a threatening step forward, knives appearing in her hand. “Don’t you dare-!”

  “I had to practically spoon-feed him the clues!” He laughed. “‘Oh, don’t you find it suspicious that Master Binder disappeared and a Guardian named Carcorant with the same exact powers pops up in San Miguel?’” He said it with a pathetic, mocking whine. “‘Don’t you find it weird that the villain Milsimile has the same height, figure and personality as Typecast in Montreal?’”

  Crowsong took a step back as if struck. “No…”

  “What’s he talking about?” I asked.

  Of course, Nth-Sight took that as permission to gloat, his attention still on Crowsong despite turning to face me. “A conspiracy. A violation of the highest order in this game we play: a Treaty violation. One performed by Charm’s own Guardians. Wrapped up and shoved under the rug as soon as people began figuring it out. With the participating heroes subsequently… retired.” Then he turned his many-eyed head to Crowsong, continuing with glee, “And Blackhawk helped cover it up. Helped them avoid take responsibility, like the good little Guardian he was.”

  Amber had told me some about why she hadn’t joined the Guardians or Wardens. About her distrust of these large institutions, how their size decreased their sense of responsibility, how their power and influence helped them hide their crimes.

  “Ironic, isn’t it?” Nth-Sight reveled at the pain he caused. “He told you that the masquerade was the ultimate necessity to maintain humanity’s upward mobility, to alter the trajectory the Dark Age set us on. Yet, in the end? He himself helped violate the masquerade, helped hide the misdeeds of his superiors. All for that same greater good. In that, he and I are the same.”

  To hear that Blackhawk had participated in that… even if her mentor had ended up leaving over it, it must still hurt he hadn’t done more.

  “You of all people should understand me. Should be grateful to me. Do you think the Jannacht would’ve failed if it weren’t for me? That the deaths would’ve stayed this low if it weren’t for me?”

  “Soliloquy-” Crowsong tried.

  “Had to die,” Nth-Sight cut her off, voice cold and logical.

  She attempted to muster some energy. “You-”

  “Killed his family?” He scoffed mockingly. “Oh please. Why go through the hassle? Just a few spare corpses, some pillaged clothes, a nice and gory flourish and a proximity trigger; that’s all I needed for his weak mind to do the heavy lifting.”

  Crowsong remained silent now.

  “His continued existence would’ve prolonged this conflict, turning it more and more deadly the longer it dragged.” I didn’t like how he attempted to white-wash the horrible act he committed. “Death tolls would continue to climb, even among civilians, incidental as they would’ve been – or claimed to be, anyhow.” Nor did I like his justifications. “Reinforcements from both heroes and villains would stream into the city and ruin it far, far worse than any of my actions did or could’ve done.” But what I didn’t like most was that Nth-Sight was growing more and more confident.

  Perhaps it would be better to kill him now rather than let him ramble?

  He must’ve sensed something, because he turned his head. “And now to you,” he said gleefully. “Or should I say, you and Peakstar.”

  “Peakstar?” What did she have to do with anything?

  “Oh yes,” he drawled. “A story that happened on the 5th of April 2096. The day our great Warden struck down Chronomaniak as he was rampaging through the streets.”

  Ah. “You know my identity,” I said.

  “Oh I know you, Samantha Pearsson. I know everything – about you and Amber both. But I’ve modelled-” modelled? “-you extensively. Thoroughly. I know about your brother Michael. Your mother Kati. Your father Pierce. And I know how both of you died at Peakstar’s hand. A tragic accident as a result of a Treaty-breaker run amok.” Nothing new so far. “Or was it?” There it was.

  There was a moment of silence. Did he think I’d say something?

  “You see,” he said after an awkward moment. “In reality-”

  I cut him off right there. “Chronomaniak wasn’t permanently harming anyone, the call that he was breaking the Treaty was wrong, the heroes claimed credit for breaking the time-freezes even though it happened automatically, and Peakstar got off scot-free for my death, her trial declaring no wrongdoing?” My gatling gun of researched factoids left him speechless. “Yes, I already know. I have eyes, own a computer, and can read.”

  Dead silence, but only for a moment. “A-ah,” Nth-Sight began, sounding rattled. “But you see, did you know-”

  “What did you mean by modelled?” I asked, capturing the momentum.

  Nth-Sight stiffened in surprise. “What?”

  I took a step forward, mirroring Crowsong’s previous moves. And some of her attitude too. “You said you ‘modelled’ us both extensively. What did you mean by that?”

  Nth-Sight remained silent.

  “I see,” Crowsong said, regaining confidence at Nth-Sight’s floundering. She stepped closer, stopping right next to me. “I see it now. ‘Many paths’ my ass, you’re not a precog at all.”

  What?

  “What are-” Nth-Sight tried.

  “You’re a predict,” Crowsong declared. Wasn’t that just a kind of precog? “A glorified statistician.” She was gloating, sounding like the cat that got the canary.

  Nth-Sight scoffed. “You don’t know shi-”

  “And a master as well, aren’t you?” That shut him up. “An orator, I’m thinking. A powerful combination: one to gather information, the other to convince your targets. Combine the two with the mind of a megalomaniac and you thought you could control an entire city all by yourself.”

  “Thought?” he spluttered, outraged. “Thought?! I had this city in my grip for years. Charm was my garden! My-!”

  “Rogue’s paradise, yes, yes. You already said that,” Crowsong mocked. “Except we found out.”

  “And Motorgang.” I joined in.

  “And the heroes soon enough, I would think,” Crowsong said.

  I nodded. “The Sentinels were beginning to suspect him already.”

  “Know what I think?” Crowsong picked up. “I think everyone just let you.”

  “No…” Nth-Sight said, forlorn.

  “As long as you provided intel. As long as all you asked for was money-”

  “No,” he said through gritted teeth.

  “-who cares that the augur has seer’s sickness? As long as he can be manipulated, what is it to us if he believes himself a god?” She laughed. “And boy was it easy to manipulate you! Say the right thing, sling a little bit of cash and they’ve got you eating out of their palms!” She laughed. “And you thought you were in control of a city when you can’t even hold your own against a single gang!”

  “No!” Nth-Sight broke again. “I had it all in hand! I cleared all the augurs! I had their profiles, their bearing, their ticks and habits, even their power-presentation down to a fucking art! I had become them in all but body, and even that I could feign!” He laughed. “And the gangs? The heroes?! Don’t make me laugh! Every move they made: predicted! Every scheme they planned: counteracted! Every thought, every emotion they had: modelled to perfection!”

  “Everyone except Jester,” Crowsong said. “That was why you wanted to meet her in person, didn’t you? To prevent a ‘bad outcome’ because you couldn’t model her.”

  “But I did!” His yell sounded childish. “I did model her! I modelled her perfectly! Every grade, every school report, every picture, every single mention of her in every database; I used everything from birth to present to create her model. I tested it, and it was perfect. It should’ve been perfect…”

  “But it wasn’t,” Crowsong prodded.

  “You were supposed to split up!” he yelled again. In a fit of anger, he removed his mask and the curly-haired, mid-to-late-twenties man threw it on the ground. “Your methods were ‘too cruel’ for her!” He began stomping on his mask. “Her bright-eyed idealism too much for your cynicism!” He stomped thrice again. “And I’d be there, the one with all the answers! The pillar she needed; the leader she’d follow!” one final time he stomped, chest heaving up and down from the exertion. “Why? Why didn’t you split up?” His body slumped against the railing, the one arm over it preventing him from collapsing entirely.

  I wondered what he was talking about. Sure, Amber and I had some rough patches – her interrogation methods, ways of capture and disabling people, the sometimes overly-bloody fights – but nothing that-

  “Because I changed,” Crowsong said, halting my thoughts. “Because she asked me to. Because her help allowed me to. Because she made me want to.”

  I blinked. I didn’t know I’d had such an impact on her. I didn’t know much about the time from before I became her protégé, but the idea of her being on the crueler side of vigilantism before meeting me was… heartwarming.

  “She wasn’t supposed to,” he replied – whined, really. “She was supposed to be too- too timid to speak up. A born follower, but one with a conscience. Easily exploited as long as-”

  “Well, that’s what you get for relying on old data,” Crowsong said. “How could you miss the fact achronal displacement wiped her mind?”

  “Do you think I’m an idiot?” Yes. “It shouldn’t have mattered. Even if it wiped all bits of the mind, all pieces of memory a person held, it doesn’t really change the person. She should’ve been the same,” he said bitterly. “She should’ve been the same…” he whispered, wonderingly.

  He turned to look at me.

  And then, like a flash of lightning, realization. I knew why he couldn’t model me despite his augury. Why his persuasion failed despite his mastery. Why from the moment he decided to make me a key part in his plan, that plan would inevitably collapse.

  It was because I’m not Samantha Pearsson. I was the android sent to take her place.

  The realization struck me cold. I’d become so… immersed in my role that the thought I was not really Samantha Pearsson felt foreign to me. I mean, I was Samantha Pearsson, and nobody around me – or even myself – doubted it. There was very little around me to connect current me to my temporally displaced alternate, and the few people that were always spoke of similarities. Never differences.

  But no matter how much I fit the shape of her, I could never be the Samantha Pearsson-that-was.

  And now, Nth-Sight was staring at me. Did he know? Did he realize what I truly was? Was he about to reveal it?

  He remained silent, but he kept staring. Staring at me, inquisitive eyes boring straight into my mine, staring into my lack of a soul. Then, they went wide with shock.

  He opened his mouth.

  I couldn’t let him speak.

  Fueled by cold logic gripping my head like a vice, I gathered all the strength I could muster and kicked Nth-Sight in the chest. His sternum and ribs broke underneath my boot. The railing behind them, held to the roof by rusted welded studs, snapped under the force. It bent backwards, floating in the air by the studs still holding on further down while creating a gap between the railing and the roof’s edge.

  For a short moment, for less than the blink of an eye, Nth-Sight hung there, arm draped over the railing while his feet dangled above the streets ten floors below them. Shock and anguish filled his face and eyes, accompanied by desperation and blood splatter exiting his mouth in forced exhalation. But hidden deep within those dark eyes I found the exact thing I feared: realization. He knew what I was.

  And now, he would die for it.

  Nth-Sight, hurt as he was, couldn’t hold onto the railing for long. His arm slipped after a final breath, and he fell through the gap and down to the streets below. With one last scream and a distant thud, he was gone for good.

  “Jesus!” Crowsong cried, and I awoke from my stupor with a start.

  Crowsong rushed towards the railing and looked down. I quickly did the same.

  Nth-Sight was down there, unmoving. The kick itself would’ve probably killed him, but the mess his body now was should’ve made him unresurrectable. Not that he would’ve been resurrected anyhow, but still.

  A sick sense of relief and gut-wrenching guilt coursed through me at the sight. Objectively, it was good he was dead – not just for me, but for everyone. My secret was safe and the Treaty honored. Objectively, I had done the right thing.

  Objectively.

  I hated myself for it. Not the act of killing itself, but the reason behind it. In the depths of my heart, I knew I hadn’t done it for the safety of others, nor for him breaking the Treaty; I’d done it for my own sake. Even if the outcome was the same, I had a motive rather than a just cause.

  My first time killing a villain, and it tasted foul. Tasted like murder.

  Crowsong grabbed me by the shoulder, dragged me backwards and spun me around. “What the hell, Sam?!”

  My body tensed under her grip. “He broke the Treaty,” I said lamely.

  “But did you have to do it-” she gestured toward the hole he’d disappeared in and the body below, “-like that?!”

  “I…” I hesitated. I couldn’t tell her the truth, but a lie wasn’t enough; I feared she knew me too well.

  Then I remembered something my therapist said. About focusing on my emotions rather than my reasoning. Logic could be countered, feelings less so. And it would be a truth, if not the whole of it.

  “I was scared okay,” I said.

  Crowsong’s grip strength halved. “Scared?”

  “He had this look in his eyes… like he realized something. Or figured something out, maybe. I feared he’d found something out, some big secret like Blackhawk’s or- or, I don’t know, something to convince me with?” I shuddered. I didn’t even need to pretend. “I didn’t want to risk it,” I finished, once more, lamely.

  The eyes within the crow-faced mask stared searchingly at me for a second, before Amber released a deep sigh.

  “Alright,” she said, letting me go. “Fine. Good, even. Better not to risk it. Let’s just-” She scratched her head and looked down again at Nth-Sight’s body. “Let’s just call the heroes and get this over with.”

  I nodded, tension lifting. For now.