Geoff takes me through the door past Tauren. I’m usually among the tallest in a room so it’s weird to walk by someone who’s head and shoulders taller than me; he’s also twice as wide and as we pass we’re close enough I can smell his slightly musty scent and see the faint scars criss-crossing his skin. There’s a part of me now that wants to spar him to see how I measure up, but right now I’m focused on revenge for everything Eddie Midlane has done to me. Tonight.
We walk down a wide, straight staircase. At the bottom are two double doors and as we’re about halfway down the doors on the left open up and the more distant sounds suddenly roar to life as a few EDF wannabes leave. We enter through the right hand doors and I actually stop for a moment in surprise. I’ve never been to a place like this before. Being young, Powerless, and a Corvin would have been asking for real trouble. And then my parents disappeared and I was in University with a different focus and direction in life.
We must be two or three stories underground and beyond the doors is a concourse about 30 meters wide and ten meters deep that opens up even further. Food and drink stations surround us and people trickle in and out of the bathrooms to either side.
“Drink?” Geoff asks me as we continue through the concourse.
“Not tonight,” I say, even though my Constitution would probably clean my system out in no time flat. “Not in the drinking mood.”
When we get to the edge of the concourse, wide stadium steps lead down another couple of stories. I look up and realize the buildings that can be seen from the alleyway and street are just shells that form the roof of this giant underground cavern that has tiers of solid concrete stone benches all the way around. Comfort is clearly secondary to durability. In the middle of the floor at the bottom is a raised combat square and surrounding it are powerful force field generators that remind me of the sparring circles at the ESF facility. A fight’s happening right now between a dark, athletic guy and a very muscular Hispanic woman, who manages to catch the guy as I’m watching with a solid straight punch that sends him crashing into the shield. He bounces back quickly leaving frost on the shield and fires ice shards at the woman, who brings her arm up to protect her face and takes some minor dart wounds to her shoulder and side. Geoff notices my gaze.
“It’s rated up to B Rank,” he says with some pride. “Depending on the Power, maybe it could be ok for some B Rank, but we’d have to carefully vet them. By the time you get to B Rank though, other than the addicts or ones who really have something to prove, everyone’s left this behind.” He pauses for a couple seconds while I continue to watch the fight with my Perception dialled up so I can track all their movements. Then he seems compelled to continue. “Where we see Villainous tendencies and we can, we try to nudge them away from it. The EDF has a scout here almost every night to find talent.”
I glance at him and I think I hear what he’s saying, and why the EDF might support a place like this in the right way from the background. I wonder why he’s telling me this. Charisma? Being a Corvin? Wanting to make sure I don’t go to the police myself about what happened in the alley? I land on the last one.
“You want a bout? We have a couple spots open on the card. Late withdrawals and the EDF is definitely scouting tonight, as is one of the local Hero teams.” He asks me in a way I know he’s just offering it up so I know the door is open and I’m welcome, rather than trying to twist my arm or fill a slot out of desperation.
“Maybe another time,” I reply, and find I might even mean it. Outside joining the EDF or ESF, how else do you really see what you’re capable of in a semi-controlled environment against people who are smart and skilled? Dungeons are great to push yourself, but you’re mostly fighting against Monsters that aren’t exactly cunning or prepare a game plan to specifically take you down.
“Bryce has his own room,” says Geoff, and he descends down the steps. The place is about two thirds full, but it could probably take at least twice as many if he wanted to pack them in. I do some spot checks of Statuses as we walk by people who are doing everything from screaming for their bet to come up a winner, to cheering for their favourite, to making out in all the excitement. Almost nobody is F Ranked, and those that are have at least a couple E Ranked people nearby. It’s massively disproportionate to the number of E or higher Ranked people in Seattle and I guess a place where they can blow off some steam together. As much as Heroes and people with stronger Powers are appreciated, there’s also the other side of envy and resentment from the 80% plus of people who have Sparks or Powers that aren’t very useful.
Two guards acknowledge Geoff and I as we take the additional small set of stairs that takes us down to the tunnel that goes under the stands. Nothing fancy whatsoever about the concrete hallway and lights at the intersection of the walls and ceiling surrounded by strong, black wire cages.
Geoff knocks on a dented blue metal door with a small, thickly reinforced window and then pushes it open and gestures for me to go inside. It’s clear he’s not coming in with me.
“What the fuck is it?” slurs a voice from inside that I hardly recognize.
I step into the spartan room and see my former combat instructor, a shell of his formerly disciplined and infinitely reliable self. Instead of the once flowing hair I remember, he’s got a buzz cut and a long scraggly beard that’s down to his shirtless chest, staring up at me from a reinforced metal folding chair in the middle of the room. Liquor bottles and pill packets are scattered around the concrete floor beneath him; all he’s wearing is baggy brown cargo shorts and dark leather braces on his forearms. The cut musculature is still there, but instead of radiating power it’s twisted and sickly somehow, like the life has been drained out of it and discoloured his skin. Nothing about him looks healthy.
I almost turn around and leave. Partly because of the shattering of the image I had of Bryce in my mind and how uncomfortable it is to look at him, and partly because if I’d made some slightly different decisions in life this could easily be me. But when Sharon managed to find out where he frequents I knew at some level I might find him like this, or a version of it, and I need to see if he can help me.
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“Holy fuck!” His words come out slurred and it’s clear he’s been more than drinking, considering his Constitution. “Calrik?” For a second his eyes look haunted, then they glaze over and harden.
“Yeah, Bryce, it’s me,” I say.
“That’s Lieutenant Markman to you!” he says belligerently, waving a bottle around as he slumps back in his chair, legs spread wide.
“Not anymore,” I say, and pull his information.
Bryce Markman (Weapons Master)
Rank estimate: B-
Level: 187
Redux: 50%
Power: Combat Mastery (Tier 2 Epic)
Conditions: Intoxicated, Organ Failure, Psychosis, Power Corruption, more…
I sense someone is through the opening to the bathroom, but my Danger Sense is silent.
“So the little puppy has a bark now.” Bryce pauses for a few seconds then raises the hand without a bottle up and mimes a dog barking. It looks like there’s dried vomit on his beard. “Yip, yip, yip.”
This Bryce has fallen so far from the man I knew and respected that different paths war inside me. Slap him? Punch him? Hug him? Turn around and walk out?
“So… come to clean me up?” he asks. “Better men than you have tried.”
A dozen things run through my mind, but I stay on target.
“I’m looking for Rakeesh. Are you still in touch with him?”
“That shadowy fucker? He’s probably sneaking around some dodgy as shit place building up his… pile of blackmail,” Bryce manages. The last bit is something he literally spits out in a way that makes me think maybe this was the wrong place to come to find Rakeesh. Something’s happened that I don’t know about.
“You get that money your parents left you?” Bryce asks with sudden interest, sitting up in his chair. I look around and can guess why he’s here - to fight for Credits to get more of whatever he’s on. And the junkie is wondering if a sugar daddy just walked in the room.
“A little birdie said you might be here,” says a voice from the bathroom, and Rakeesh steps to where I can see him from the shadows. He’s got a high grade force field up at full strength; I can hear the hum and sense the Mana that’s powering it. “But they didn’t say why.”
Bryce snorts and stumbles out of his chair. I tense, but he’s just digging into a cardboard box to find more pills and booze by the sound of the clinking and rustling. Even in this kind of a state Bryce is still extremely dangerous. While he pulls his goodies out I pull Rakeesh’s Status.
Rakeesh Dimonishankar (Intelligence Officer)
Rank estimate: C
Level: 198
Redux: 10%
Power: Infiltration (Tier 1 Epic)
Conditions: All Seeing Eye, Information Network, Quantum Encryption, more…
“I know about your Power,” Rakeesh tells me. It sounds like he’s disclosing it rather than threatening me with it. I shrug.
“I’m forging my own path, Keesh. And that includes not spending a lot of effort worrying about things I can’t control.”
“For what it’s worth, I’m glad you found his path.”
“Yeah, yeah - fucking paths,” says Bryce. He rips open a bag of pills with his teeth and pours them in his mouth then takes a few swallows of whatever he’s drinking. “How about both of you get the fuck out of here?” I can see the unhinged look in his eyes, the pain and anger and whatever else is under the surface just about to break through and cause havoc. Rakeesh darts past me, shield up and keeping his distance even though it’s useless at the speed we can cover ground. I back away from Bryce and exit the room. The door swings closed behind me and I can hear Bryce collapse back into the metal chair as it scrapes along the floor.
I half expect Rakeesh to be gone, but he’s still in the hallway. The dark fighter with the ice Power and his entourage bounce past us, clearly victorious in the last fight. They disappear into a room with a red door further down the hall, their shouts and cheers still echoing up and down the tunnel. I look at Rakeesh.
“Isn’t he going to kill someone?” I ask, motioning to Bryce’s door.
“By the time he fights, he can hardly walk. All the instincts are still there, but everything is so blunted he’s practically dead when he enters the Pit.”
I breathe out, the images I have of him from the past and now flowing through me. I thought I put a lot of this behind me emotionally, but maybe I just shoved it down into a box. When my parents disappeared so did a lot of the people in my life. Part of me wants to ask Rakeesh what happened, but it’s not something I want to get involved in. Not right now.
“I need some help,” I tell Rakeesh, and he nods.
“I didn’t think you were getting back in touch to see how I’m doing.”
Both of us know that’s true.
“Do I have anything to worry about between us?” he asks me.
“No,” I answer. “I just want some help dealing with Eddie Midlane. I need to get to him. Tonight.”
Before I can say anything else, Rakeesh disappears from sight. It’s dulled, but when I dial up my Perception and Mana Sense I can still sense where he is as he moves across the hallway toward me in a zig zag. There’s no sound or even smell, but still he can’t hide his Mana signature from me and the disturbance in the air as he moves. When he appears again, only a few feet from me, I’m looking right at him.
“Ok,” he says. “That will be useful. I can only assume you’re going after him to get your parents estate back.”
“Yeah,” I say, not bothering to deflect or deny it. A grizzled old woman steps down into the hallway and knocks heavily on the first door to our right.
“One minute!” she yells as she pushes the door open a crack.
Once she’s gone, Rakeesh looks back at me.
“You want to go somewhere to discuss?” I ask.
“About this?” he says and shakes his head. “No. If I can get you to Eddie tonight without raising an alarm and you get the estate, I want 1%. If you kill him and don’t get the estate, you work for me until you’ve earned the equivalent.”
In one way it’s an outrageous ask, and in another way it’s not - and he knows it. Even with my new Powers there’s no way I can get to Eddie at home or at work without raising a big alarm and giving him time to prepare.
“Deal.”
“Give me 90 minutes. Meet me at the southwest corner of Madison Park.”
Rakeesh disappears again and I track him going up the tunnel to the stairs. I glance at the blue door behind me and decide I’m glad I won’t be here to see Bryce stumble out to fight.
