Chapter 21: Chapter Twenty One

So, it was a pretty safe bet that the lead we were here to follow WAS the Evil Eye. The murdered Ascendant lying on the floor posed under the killers symbol (a symbol drawn in the victims own blood) was a dead give away. That said Callie was very clearly not processing anything. She was just staring it the body of her friend. I winced and grabbed the heroine, dragging her into the room and shutting the door behind us. I somehow doubted being caught with the corpse of one of their security consultants was going to go well for us.

She moved when I moved her, but once the door was shut she just stood there, frozen, staring down at the body in shock. I winced. I'd expected her to be more...stable, than this. But then again if I found Benny dead I'd probably have blue screened too, and I'd never asked how close they were. I reached down to take her shoulders in my hands and turned her to face me. "Onyx." No response. "Callie. I need you to look at me." She did. "This is rough, I get it, and I can't imagine, but we need to focus. Try not to think to hard about what's happening. Tell me...tell me how you know Attic Bat."

She blinked, her eyes looking a bit lost. "When I found out about Annie and my dad I ran away. I was mad at my dad, mad at Annie, mad at my mom for not noticing. I was just mad. I ended up in the WCP. I was only sixteen but I was mid H rank, so I thought I could handle myself. Batty lived down there at the time. He saw me wandering around and offered me something to eat. He...looked out for me. As best he could. Until I was ready to go home." She blinked, her eyes filling with pain and then tears as she squeezed them shut.

She turned and took a few steps, punching the wall. "FUCK! This is bullshit!" Her hand was shaking and bleeding slightly, but she didn't seem to notice. "I put the word out to some of my friends to be on the lookout for certain things. He wouldn't have even been looking for the killer if I hadn't asked him to. I don't even know how the hell they could have..." She cursed, spinning up an image on her scan ring. "SHIT! This is my Unity line. I didn't even fucking think..." She jerked the ring off with a scream and hurled it across the room at the wall.

I winced, but stepped up to put a hand on her shoulder. "Hey, it's ok. Just breathe. Now, you think they tracked your messages through the line? Who would have the access to do that?" I silently cursed whoever the killer was. This asshole was somehow everywhere. It was annoying how organized and prescient they seemed to be. Luckily Jessie and I didn't have Unity scan rings yet. It took a month or two for them to issue guild communications to newbie's. Cap needed to be warned in person when this was over though.

She shook her head, eyes still shut tight. "Anyone. The comms are an open system, people are constantly asking for help and we keep the logs open so we can check who responds and when. It's a fail safe in case a backup team doesn't report in again after heading out to support someone." Her voice was tight with anger, and her bloody hand was clenched in a way I was sure was painful.

I hated to interrupt her when she was so obviously hurting, but we needed to focus. "Callie." Her eyes opened, snapping to my face, still red from crying and obviously full of rage. "I know you lost another friend, this one in a much more personal way, but we're down here and the killer is obviously nearby. This blood isn't dry. We need to decide what we're going to do next. You're the boss here, what's the plan." I winced internally, it felt cold to just shove that on her, but I was positive she would appreciate having something else to focus on. I know I would have.

She closed her eyes again, but this time in an almost meditative attempt to find her calm. She exhaled slowly, then opened them again. "Ok, you're right. He's nearby and we have no backup, which is bad. It was stupid of me to come here like this. Annie being in town has me shaken." She clenched her teeth. "Forgetting a traitor could use our comms, coming here alone without even Ian as backup? I'm making the stupidest rookie calls all for the sake of my own pride and impatience. Now Batty's dead."

I snapped my fingers right in her face and she flinched back, looking annoyed and offended. "Focus. We don't have time for self pity. I know that sucks but it's true. We need to figure out our next move. Now. What would the killer do? Would he have run back upstairs? Is there a way we can figure out who's left this basement recently, or who came down here? Somehow I doubt gangsters have security cameras." Or maybe they did, who knew, I obviously understood very little about how the world worked.

Callie's eyes widened. "Fuck, they don't but Batty did! I'm an idiot!" She turned and sprinted across the room. She stopped in front of a huge framed world map. A massive thing that looked incredibly old, peeling at the edges and suspended in an incredibly thick frame. She reached down, running her fingers along the bottom of the frame impatiently as she looked for something, until she finally shouted in triumph and pressed down. With an audible click the glass and the map both slid upwards, revealing a large flat expanse of wall with a scan box set into it behind them.

She turned to me with a fierce grin. "Batty was obsessed with information. He always wired up the places he lived." She started swiping her fingers across the front of the box spinning out menus and tweaking settings and a dozen other thing, bringing up old videos and tossing them away until she found what she was looking for. "Hah. Got it. Let's see who you are you sneaky fuck." She spread the projection of the video she was looking for out across the blank expanse of wall so she could read watch it in detail, and flicked her finger to start the playback.

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The video started. Attic Bat was alone, he was standing at a table that a quick look over to one side of the room showed me had been hurled across the room and shattered against the wall. The tall, thin, twitchy man reminded me a bit of Pack Rat but with a much darker skin tone. He was moving things on the table, moving small shapes around in an endlessly shifting configuration. He was so focused on the table I didn't think he even saw the dark shape behind him until he'd already moved out of the way of the knife.

Callie paused the video, trying to get a better look at the shape, but it was completely impossible to make out any details. She shook her head in frustration. "Damn it. This was sloppy, he didn't even attune the dagger, I'm guessing he panicked and reacted before he had a chance. Still, he was insanely careful. He doesn't even know the cameras are there but he's being obsessively careful not to let even single scrap of skin show." She hit the terminal a few times, playing the video but leaving it running so slowly it was barely moving at all.

The killer attacked Attic Bat with fluid, deadly strikes, but the tall man was like a ghost, slipping around the blows as agilely as if he was dancing. He was caught by surprise though when he suddenly tripped mid dodge. The blade lashed out at his throat and opened it, blood spurting out across the room. At the last second though, Attic Bat lashed out with a kick and stomped down on the killers knee on the inside of his leg. The killer jerked back in pain, stumbling, though still not revealing anything under his full body coverage of dark clothes.

He limped over to the body, dragging it across the room to the wall where we had found it and painted that same eye symbol with the smiley face pupil. When finished he searched the room for something, but didn't seem to be able to find what he was looking for because he hurled to table over against the wall in frustration before looking up sharply toward the door and then fleeing at a running limp. Callie and I stared at each other before looking back. As we watched the screen our own forms appeared on the screen, kicking the door open.

The door the killer had used and then somehow locked from the outside only minutes earlier. With a shared glance we bolted to the door to look outside, staring down the hall to see which way he went. We both cursed as we noticed that the end of the hallway away from the way we came was an intersection. Callie tugged me back inside and shut the door again, locking it. I looked at her in confusion. "What are we doing? Shouldn't we chase him?"

She shook her head in frustration. "No. He's an assassin and we've been on his tail for a year. If he was the kind of person who would get caught in a dark underground base with four different directions to go we would have got him months ago. This place has other exits, I've visited Batty a few times here, and it's bigger than it looks." She walked back over and replayed the video. "But that might not be the only thing we have to find here. Come look at this." I followed her over to watch the video again.

When it got to the part where Attic Bat kicked him she paused. "There! See, he was limping after that hit." I gave her a confused look and she rolled her eyes. "Gods you're so green. Batty was an H ranker who specialized in Perception. It was his main stat, and Might was one of his weakest. If the killer had been an I ranker that blow would have shattered his entire kneecap." She sounded positively gleeful, but not specifically about the killers pain. It took me a second of thinking to figure out what she was talking about.

My eyes widened. "If he was higher ranked his Impact would have been at least ten points higher. Hurting someone with that much more Impact would require a seriously powerful combat ability and a ton of physical stats, neither of which Attic Bat had. The killer is an H ranker." That was big. We'd been half convinced it was one of the executives, but narrowing down the exact rank of the killer was a huge step in figuring out who it was. I pointed out something else. "What are they looking for by the way? Whatever it is they don't seem happy not to be able to find it."

Callie rewound the video to before the killer came in. Hours before in fact, and I saw Attic Bat making a call on a scan ring to Callie. As soon as he finished making the call he typed in a few commands on the scan ring, then took it off and walked to the corner of the room. As we watched, he pulled one of the bricks that made up one of the walls out and slipped the ring in, rooted around, then put it back and walked over to the table.

Callie started giggling, laughing maniacally. I looked at her in confusion. "Batty was paranoid about comms. He kept his ring in a lock box when he wasn't using it, and only took it out at certain times or to make a call." She grinned at me. "He must have gotten a picture of the killer or something. I thought the Evil Eye found out from my comm logs, but the timeline there doesn't make sense. He must have spotted Batty watching him and followed him down here. I guess Batty was too distracted to notice him in his excitement to call me." She rushed over to the wall, pulling out a brick. "We might have a lead!"

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