The Law of Averages

Book 2: Chapter 163: The Wolf Within

The tiny scrap of paper felt like a mountain in Dan's hands. It was almost unreadable, full of rough crinkles from where he'd stuffed it clumsily into his pocket. It was nothing more than ten messily scrawled numbers, ink-stained and smudged, yet it caused him more anxiety than being in a literal gunfight. He felt absurd, for such a small thing to bring him such worry.

"Are you just going to stare at it?" Abby asked curiously from behind him. She was leaning on the back of the couch, peeking over his shoulder to read the grimy message. Her long ponytail dangled well past her shoulder and tickled Dan's ear. He could smell her lavender perfume, and felt the tension involuntarily flee his body.

Dan sighed, leaning backwards into her. She was warm and soft, fresh from a shower and dressed in fluffy pajamas. He found his fist closing on the note, crushing it into a ball, and he dismissively tossed it aside. It was an entirely subconscious motion, overdramatic and a little silly. Seconds later he lunged for the paper, ignoring Abby's giggles as he pulled it taut, smoothing out the wrinkles and memorizing the numbers. Dan pulled out his phone, tapped them in, and saved it as a contact.

"For later," he explained, before crushing the paper again, and tossing it over his shoulder like nothing had happened.

Abby snorted, then bounded over the couch and plopped down beside him. The cushion bounced once, then settled, and Abby flicked on the television. The sound was kept low, little more than background noise really, and she leaned into him, humming softly. They stayed like that for a time, nothing said, nor needed to be. The indecision inside Dan settled, and fell away.

Finally, he spoke, "Do you think Anastasia would try to have Marcus killed if she knew he was around?"

Abby stirred at the question, sitting upright. She chewed at her lip, eyes distant as she thought it over. "No," she decided after some consideration. "She's said in the past that she thinks very little of him, and I believe her. Any anger towards him for his part in the Genius upgrade is long past. Vengeance shouldn't be a factor. She sees him as a coward and a fool, not a threat."

Dan nodded, having reached nearly the same conclusion. He'd heard Anastasia speak of Marcus on occasion, and Echo on more than one. While her words about the former were always bitter and biting, they lacked the visceral hatred of the latter. She seemed genuinely disappointed by Marcus, and his cowardly flight to the edge of the solar system. Dan supposed she'd expected him to at least fight for his ideals, rather than hide from his failures.

He wasn't sure he disagreed.

"Alright then," he said. "I'll let her know what's going on, tomorrow." He paused, glancing around. Then, voice raised, he said, "Unless she's still bugging my house, the nosy, shriveled shrew!"

He counted to ten inside his head, then checked his phone.

Nothing.

He glanced up, noting Abby frowning in disapproval. "You shouldn't bait her like that. Tempting fate never goes well."

Well, it was hard to argue with that. Dan shrugged, turned up the television, and put both Marcus and Anastasia out of his mind.

He woke up the next day, fully intending to inform Anastasia about the previous day's events, and the fact that Tawny had confirmed the number to be active. These intentions were firmly derailed by a call from Gregoir, asking earnestly for a meeting with him and Abby just as soon as possible.

They met at a diner downtown, just a little hole in the wall scarcely bigger than Dan's backyard. It was themed like the inside of a ship, with wooden planks lining the interior and hammocks strung up here and there. The seats were small barrels, and the tables were open chests, filled with fake jewels and gold and topped by enormous treasure maps, each made of a hard plastic and glued into place so that they lay flat.

Gregoir came dressed for the occasion, wearing a poorly fitted collarless shirt, a gaudy red jacket with wooden buttons, and a black waistcoat. The white linen barely stretched over his enormous chest, rendering it nearly transparent, and drawing the eyes of every female waitress whenever he shifted himself. He'd crammed himself into a small corner booth, his hunched shoulders and bowed head looking appropriately ridiculous to Dan's eyes.

Dan hadn't bothered with any kind of costuming, though Abby had produced a shirt with some frilly sleeves, and a pair of period-accurate breeches for herself. Also, some modern clogs. From where, he hadn't the slightest idea, but he freely ogled her as she walked, her outfit oddly alluring to him.

They each found themselves a barrel, and pulled up across from Gregoir. The big officer looked less confident than usual, and his greetings were startlingly muted. Dan found himself actually removing his earplugs in order to hear Gregoir speak, and for a minute, the thought his large friend might be getting sick. Then, Gregoir came to the point of the meeting.

"I fear my request is both unprofessional and unfair, but I must ask it anyway," he began, and then spun them a story that had Dan's head aching. Apparently, one of his little charity projects, a vigilante kid who was subtly being indoctrinated into the APD, had come to him with information that he wasn't sure he could ignore, yet desperately wanted to.

The Scales, one of Austin's gangs that had been thoroughly decimated in the brief, violent struggle against the People and Coldeyes' Crew, had spent the intervening months since their defeat quietly reorganizing. It seemed that most of their numbers had been replenished in the same way that the Crew had once recruited: the liberal use of a black market cosmic generator, and their own custom upgrade patterns, offered to those who could never afford anything other than a common upgrade.

Unfortunately, the Scales' defining feature was their enthusiasm for body modding, and the animalistic traits that so often occurred when things went wrong. It was a clever trick, really. These features could not reasonably be removed or altered, and often left obvious physical tells. It successfully isolated the recipients, whose only recourse was a gang that both accepted and exalted them.

"They're planning some sort of large action, or so I'm led to believe," Gregoir revealed. "Foolish in the extreme, but it would undoubtedly cause chaos, to say nothing of the department's response. We can show no weakness at the moment. Public faith in us hangs by a thread. Our reply would have to be swift and brutal. I don't wish to see that sort of violence unleashed once more on the city, much less participate in it."

Abby was frowning deeply. She worked at one of the rehab clinics often frequented by those whose mods had gone horribly wrong, and a significant number of her patients were former Scales. The clinics were practically revered by the gang, with the employees deemed untouchable and protected.

The clues began to click into place, and the horrible sensation of understanding settled upon Dan.

"You want Abby to go talk to these people?" Dan guessed incredulously.

Gregoir looked deeply ashamed, but nodded his head. "I would like her to secure a meeting with them, on my behalf."

"For what purpose?" Dan questioned harshly. "It's not like they'll stop committing crimes just because you ask nicely!"

"No, not at all," Gregoir agreed. "My hope, however, is to limit the damage they cause to the city without stacking corpses a hundred deep. The department is willing to... look the other way in certain cases. Truly, the Scales were the least offensive of all the gangs in the city. I couldn't care less if they sell their upgrades and mods to those willing to take a risk; it is the coercion that I will not abide."

"Is that your position," Abby asked quietly, "or the APD's?"

Gregoir hesitated, glancing around. He hunched further down, and his voice, to Dan's astonishment, dropped into a whisper, "I've been authorized to allow certain concessions, but this is very much an experiment. Command acknowledges the reality of the situation. We cannot constantly war with our own citizens. We have neither the manpower nor the morale at present."

It was a grotesque statement, made all the worse by the fact that Gregoir clearly realized it.

"You're not considering it," Dan said to Abby. It was a statement more than a question.

She was scowling now, her eyes flitting here and there, as if lost in recollection. After several seconds of this, she turned to face him.

"There's been a significant uptick of cases at the clinic," she said. "Most of them just teenagers. We all figured some fool somewhere was selling bad mod packages. None of them said a damn thing about the Scales. The gang has never deliberately sabotaged their patterns before. That sort of thing was always just luck of the draw, and they took care of the ones who went wrong."

Her face was fiercely contorted, sharp lines along her brow and thin, angry lips. There was something deeply vicious in her voice and bearing, a snarl finally unveiled. She'd never looked more like Anastasia Summers than in that one moment, and it nearly stole Dan's breath away.

"If the Scales are coercing kids into taking faulty upgrades and mods, then I'll be having words with them myself."