Nodding to each other and saying nothing, we walked side by side deeper into the woods, further away from curious ears. We stopped beneath a tree large enough to hide us from above.
“What did you want to talk about?” we asked each other at the same time, then paused.
“You first,” I said and stealthily aimed my scanning bracelet from Yoshi at him. “Karina said you were looking for me.”
He’s clean, came the Japanese man’s voice in my head. No tracking devices. Nothing recording.
“Yeah, I wanted to…” Now Wesley didn’t look as sure of himself as he had then outside school, blackmailing me and threatening me with the Triad. “You know, Alex, I could have been in Mogwai’s place. Or in yours. You were Supreme Legate, right? Mogwai said the Nucleus demoted you for something, and then you somehow turned human again. How?”
“I don’t have time for this, Wesley. What you’re asking about… What makes you think I’ll answer?”
“I get it. Alright, I’ll get to the point. I can’t do anything to you now, everyone already knows your name. I could leak info about this meeting to the preventers or the Triad, but I didn’t, because I don’t want to.”
“What do you want?”
“The same as before.” His narrow eyes glittered with greed. “Well, minus that million I asked for. You know, ever since I became a Threat myself, just the thought of a career as a normal player makes me sick. But I love Dis! Just now all that garbage that once seemed like big achievements isn’t worth jack. It’s boring. In other words, I want to join your clan.”
“And why would we want you?”
“Because I’m a good analyst, strategist and a promising player all-round,” Wesley chuckled, his cheeks wobbling. “When you eliminated me, I hadn’t leveled up my Threat status much. So apart from a hundred thousand phoenixes, Snowstorm gave my new character a fun perk — Ferret Fancier…”
He paused, shivered, rubbed his hands — the morning was cold. Mist rose from the earth. I kept a neutral expression on my face, stayed silent, showed no curiosity. A shadow of disappointment passed over Wesley’s face.
“I know the name doesn’t sound like much. What could a ferret fancier have to offer the great and terrible class-A Threat?!” Wesley exclaimed, barely detectable bitterness in his voice. “But they aren’t just pets, Alex. That is, they aren’t pets at all. Basically, every member of the clan I’m in gets three ferrets. They can’t be summoned or desummoned, they just appear if they smell loot nearby and pick it up. The loot goes into your inventory and the ferrets disappear.”
Although my Magnetism perk made Big Po useless to me, this would benefit the whole clan. And it sounded funny, too. But I agreed not because of that, but because I’d already decided to bring him in. The Awoken was in desperate need of hands. There was nobody to level up the workers who had taken advantage of the clan loan to buy capsules! Irita was busy trading, Bomber would go off to complete his quests for Orthokon the kraken. Crawler already had a mountain of things to do; he was leveling up Alchemy to craft resistance potions for the heat of the Lakharian Desert and the poisonous fumes of the Ursai Jungle. Infect… well, he was a Bard. I never spent any time at the fort. The clan needed a good administrator.
“Alright,” I said.
Wesley seemed taken aback.
“Just ‘alright’ or ‘alright, you can join the clan, Wesley?”
“You can join,” I clarified. “I can’t decide alone, but you definitely have two votes, mine and Hung’s. As for how the others will vote, I don’t know. Now here’s what I need from you. I need you to carefully write down everything that happened to you from the moment you became a Threat. Make a holovideo, talk or write it down, I don’t care. Put it in CrapChat, you’ll get the channel from the same comm I called you on. Pay particular attention to the interaction with the emissary of the Destroying Plague who gave you the quest.”
“You want to fight the Nucleus?” Wesley guessed. “You’re gathering information?”
“I’ve decided to destroy it.”
“No way! Now that’s what I’m talking about!” Wesley brightened. “Sure, of course I’ll do that.”
“After that, you’ll get a clan invite. I’ll send you a message to tell you when and where we’ll meet in Dis. Got other fish to fry right now.”
Wesley nodded and I continued:
“As a gesture of good will, I can accept you into the followers of the Sleepers. That’ll give you a nice bonus. But only if you agree to sign a mental agreement — kind of like a psych…”
“I know,” he interrupted, nodding. “Uncle told me. They have new recruits sign those in the Triad too, before initiation. I’m ready.”
Alex, this is Hairo. On my way to you, I heard through my earpiece.
Even as a follower of the Sleepers, Big Po wouldn’t learn anything about them. Unity would appear in his list of skills, but that was all.
The bushes behind us rustled. I thought it was Hairo, but I turned and saw a ragged drunk with grass in his hair and trousers so filthy it was hard to tell what color they started in.
“Hey, kids, got anythin’ to drink?” he slurred with a grin, loudly scratching himself. “Sniff? Inject? No? Any spare change on your account? Toss a veteran a phoenix, will ya?”
The man smelled of piss and sour sweat. I saw dried blood in his unkempt beard. One eye was bruised, the other so swollen it barely opened.
Hairo appeared behind him in a holomask and barked in his voice of command:
“Sniff your
