“She might need help.”
“R’mahr, if she needs help, she’ll ask for it.” The troll woman’s voice carried down the hall. “Cheyenne, if you need anything, please ask. We’re right here.”
The halfling’s strength gave out again and she staggered sideways. She slapped her hand against the wall and steadied herself. Her head dropped toward her chest and she sighed, taking a moment to get some strength back before she limped toward her apartment again.
“I don’t think she’ll ask—”
“Of course, she will. Now stop bothering her and come help me with the—”
The troll family’s front door clicked shut, and Cheyenne took two more slow, halting steps before she stood in front of her apartment. Her keys came slowly out of the pocket of her black jacket, and it took a moment before she found the right one and jiggled it into the keyhole.
She almost fell on her face when the door opened and wouldn’t stay still to take her weight. It was harder than it should have been to yank her keys back out of the door before she pushed it shut again and stumbled out of her black Vans. Then she dragged herself into her tiny living room and dropped into the office chair behind her huge executive desk. The force of her weight sent the whole thing rolling back across the plastic mat, but she didn’t mind.
It could have been two minutes or twenty that Cheyenne just sat there in the chair, her hands dangling over the armrests, her legs stretched out in front of her. However long it was, it was enough sitting and doing nothing without having to think or focus or move anything that she started to feel better.
I thought getting shot in the hip was bad, but this is all pain and no gain. Sitting straighter in her chair, the halfling rolled her shoulders gently and stretched her neck from side to side, hissing out a sigh through clenched teeth. Her eyes drooped heavily, her shoulders slumped, and her head dipped slowly toward her chest. Cheyenne sucked in a sharp breath and jerked upright again, slapping herself in the face. “Wake up!”
That jolted her as much as she needed, and she scooted the office chair back across the mat toward her desk with a bitter chuckle. Her new Nightstalker friend was legit when it came to fighting larger numbers of magicals on his own than Cheyenne had been able to take on. But Corian running around on the dark web as gu@rdi@n104 and claiming he had useful information on Durg was a whole different ballpark, and seeing how legit he was with that was more important right now than sleep.
Shaking her head, she turned on the main monitor and gave Glen time to power up.
When everything was running and ready to go, she logged back onto the dark web, found her way quickly to the Borderlands forum, and didn’t even have the time to glance at the most recent topic threads before a chat window popped up in the corner of her screen. From gu@rdi@n104, of course.
gu@rdi@n104: As promised. This’ll help you find him. Don’t let tonight stop you from walking down the other path you’re pursuing. I’ll be waiting.
There was a file attached to the message, unencrypted and benign, something Cheyenne was apparently supposed to trust because they’d already talked about it in person. She opened the Bunker program anyway and dragged the file in there first to scrub it. If it needed any scrubbing. I’m done taking chances.
No scrubbing necessary, apparently. The Bunker turned up the results of its scan in five seconds. Zero viruses, no malware, not even so much as a tag on the back end that might feed information back to the source if a user like Cheyenne hadn’t thought to look for it. “Okay. Looks like Corian’s done playing games too. As long as whatever’s in this file looks like the real deal.”
She pulled it out of the Bunker, logged completely off the dark web to close all her access, and opened the plain text file. The title centered at the top would have made her laugh if she’d had the energy. Durg Br’athol.
The rest of the text was a lot more interesting.
‘Registered pure O-class #19842; cataloged and processed through Rez 7 on March 4th, 2021. Two months in assimilation, no red flags, no delinquent reports. First and only transfer appeal approved. No special incidences, no specific requests for residence and/or employment.’
And at the end of the first paragraph was the last registered address of the orc bastard she’d been trying to find for the last two weeks.
The rest of the document contained the same cut-and-dried information about the FRoE reservation officer who processed the orc, where Durg had lived in Q4, known or speculated acquaintances, and the training modules he’d been put through and subsequently passed as part of his assimilation into the human world on this side of the Border. Same thing with the FRoE official who’d processed the orc’s request to be released from the reservation and shipped on out on his own almost seven months ago.
None of that interested Cheyenne because now she had an address and a clear lead. Stupid FRoE system actually made itself useful.
She typed the address into her search engine and pulled up a map of the area. Turned out the orc lived just blocks from the skatepark where he’d had his little powwow with the other halflings. Where he’d shot Ember and fled before Cheyenne had a chance to rip him apart right then and there. “I know where you live now, asshole. And I’m coming for you.”
Despite her exhaustion and the pain throbbing in her limbs and pretty much every other part of her body, the halfling leaned back in her office chair and let herself have a good laugh. She hadn’t traditionally had a fondness for weekends over weekdays—they all tended to run together—but she was really glad that tomorrow was a Sunday and she had absolutely
