Chương 77: An International Criminal's Guest

Kelly definitely minded.

"Just a few questions," Reggie said from the backseat, his voice a Darth Vader rasp behind the gas mask.

"Nothing major. The masks are a formality." He tapped the small case on his knee.

"First thing. Genecorp intel says you tangled with Obsidian. They had a bounty on you. A minor one. It's been handled as part of the contract."

"Second," he continued.

"You collect samples. By hand. No crew. So, do you have other backing? Private forces? Are you part of some group we don't know about? Vaughn doesn't count."

"No," Kelly said. The word came out clean, pushed by the chemically and mechanically enforced need for truth.

"I'm a one-woman army."

"The Obsidian thing."

"I didn't fight Obsidian guys, that's way back on my list after killing archangels." She could feel the explanation wanting to spill out and didn't fight it.

"It was the creatures. The ones I captured and baited and lured to Luigi's store. They did it. And they only destroyed one building. One! It wasn't even me! They weren't even the target, it was Luigi! I didn't even see the Obsidian guys until I was already driving away!" Kelly stared straight ahead, the woozy feeling from the serum settling into a low hum behind her eyes. Reggie was silent for a long moment, the hiss of his respirator filling the truck.

"Right. So. Creatures try to kill you. Then Obsidian tries to kill you. Neither works." He leaned forward slightly.

"You've handled this kind of thing before. Outside any official work. And for some reason, people decide they need you dead after, what, one conversation?" He let the question hang.

"Any idea why that keeps happening?" This was getting... Dangerous.

"Now, Reggie," the scientist said. Her posture shifted from loose readiness to a coiled, immediate threat.

"There's exactly one interior space off-limits to guests. That's my mind. You're trying to be the second entity in history to get in. The first qualified as a god, or at minimum, an extradimensional construct pretending to be one." She tilted her head, voice dropping to a cool, almost bored cadence.

"You? You're not even a cosmic fly." Reggie didn't budge.

"I'm just doing my job. Answer the question, Miss." Kelly didn't answer right away. She looked out at the broken city scrolling past her window. She considered using her tools and titles to burn through the nanoserum and any machines in her system, but the serum stripped away the urge to make a joke, even the urge to fight it. It left the cold fact underneath.

"I recently encountered a god," she said, her voice quiet and utterly serious, "the encounter showed me that there are fates worse than death. Much worse. I realised there are entities—plural—out there that can easily dish those fates out to me." She finally looked back at him, her expression flat.

"So this is my training montage arc." Reggie's mask hid most of his face, but the long, slow blink of his visible eye conveyed a profound and weary confusion.

"I think I saw it," exclaimed one of Reggie's more culturally connected grunts, peering out the window.

"Looks like a… dragon-hawk thing. From that anime." The other goon squinted up.

"Nah. That's a wyvern. Saw a clip online—snatched some idiot streamer off his balcony this morning. Ha!" Reggie coughed.

"Anyway." He turned back to Kelly, the brief distraction over.

"Do you intend to cause my employer harm?" She laughed, a sharp, genuine sound.

"They're not a threat. Unless they know what I truly am, they'd never allocate enough resources to me to even warrant causing them harm. Not now that I know how to secure their cooperation."

"What you truly are?" Reggie's voice was flat.

"That's a weird thing to say. What are you?" Kelly didn't want to admit that she was the only magical being from this dimension. She opened her mouth, then closed it, heart hammering. But she couldn't lie—not under the drug's influence. So she answered his question. She told him what she truly was. The words clawed their way up, unbidden.

"I… feel trapped," she said, voice tight, almost clinical.

"Imprisoned. Aimless. Lonely." She hugged herself briefly, shoulders tense.

"The closest friends I have are my machete and someone else's dog. Even if I make it mine today, one day it won't be when this all ends. I've been avoiding the few friends I've made here. I… I've changed so much that they don't really know me anymore. That… that hurts more than it should. So I can barely stand to be around them." Her voice was taut, the words clinical but raw.

"It's like I'm walking through a hall with no doors… every corridor ends the same way, empty and cold." Reggie's eye blinked slowly behind the mask. He leaned forward just slightly, voice flat but insistent.

"Um… I meant, like, your intentions, Kelly. With all this. With us." The drug forced her answer out, scraping her hollow. She swallowed hard, "I… I'm searching," she admitted, voice low, almost a whisper.

"For my best friend. My only real family. It's the only thing that gives me hope. More than anything else." She paused, fingers curling into her knees.

"The rest… the emptiness, the loneliness… I fill it with science. With combat. It's the only time I forget—forget the predicament, forget everything that plagues me. I can throw myself into it completely. It fills the void, even if it's fleeting." Her voice dropped, almost hesitant, the words feeling like a surrender.

"…Especially combat. That… that was new. It's different. Somehow, it makes the rest disappear, just for a moment." Kelly knew what was happening. It wasn't amusing. The forced vulnerability grated, creating a sharp, metallic tension in the air. Her wristband glowed. Her Vitality title clicked into place, a grinding, cellular process. It healed her each second. The device repaired cells, fought the invasive swarm, and crushed it through sheer, aggressive cellular repair.

"Reggie. I warned you. I know what your heart looks like in seven pieces. I know the exact length of your spine. If you ask me one more question, the deal's off, the contracts voided, and everyone in this car except Haider and grunt one and two dies." She leaned closer imperceptibly—a centimeter—as Reggie did the calculations and realised she was threatening only him. The air in the interior shifted. To everyone in the vehicle? She might as well have been nose to nose with him. The glow from her wristband flared.

"So. If you do ask a question and try to take one more look in my personal life, I will end you in ways your little poser immortality won't even recognize as dying. I will switch off every cheat your rich mummy and daddy paid for. And when I'm done, they could hire detectives for a hundred years and would find absolutely nothing. You will be an unsolved mystery that nobody misses. There won't be enough left of you for them to mourn." A faint, humorless smile.

"Do we understand each other?" He wanted the truth. Good. Now he had it. And thankfully, the guy who'd just tried to pick the lock to her secrets seemed to understand he'd almost picked a fight with a live wire.

"Oh." Reggie blinked, actually looking surprised.

"You noticed the nano-gas. At just the threshold level. You really, really aren't supposed to be able to do that." His fingers tapped a quick sequence against his palm. Kelly felt the last of the chemical fuzziness of the crushed remnants leave her system, seeping out through her skin and breath.

"Sorry about the probing," he said, and he did sound a little sorry, in that 'sorry-I-got-caught' way all corporate guys have.

"Just doing my job." The scientist went eerily still, so still it looked wrong on a living person—and when she finally spoke, her voice went calm. Too calm. Calmer than anyone had ever heard her. Dr. Haider didn't even know she came with a "calm" setting. It was unsettling, like watching a dog speak perfect French… or a woman crawl out of your screen at two a. m. Reggie, her new personal bodyguard and Genecorp's corporate investigator, began to squirm.

The nano-truth serum wasn't a tool just anyone could get their hands on and had completely caught her off guard. It was Elite-grade. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. Damn it. She hated mooks, brutes, spooks, and every last henchman that came with them. Especially when they were rich. Boundaries meant nothing to them!

"We split up here," Kelly said, plotting a course on the console.

"I'll swing back around in three hours. I'll have the armed forces I loaned from Genecorp, the rest of Reggie's crew—" she looked back at Reggie, "—I miss Greg, honestly. How is the guy? Still in anger management, or has he graduated to self-control?" She turned to the android, Dr. Haider. She was eager to be alone with the noise in her own head.

"Plus the small private army I hired for the East Grid aftermath. Their objective is to kill a god, or at the very least, annoy it with millions of bullets. Where should I drop you off?"

"A drop-off is unnecessary," Dr. Haider said.

"Any schedule can wait. You are coming with us, Kelly. To my residence." His residence? Kelly's brain stuttered.

"To your place. What, you need a hand moving furniture?" she mocked aloud, not believing he was serious.

"Let me guess, you have a guest room with mint chocolates on the pillow."

"Yes, of course, what other types of chocolate would I use?" Dr. Haider replied.

"You're welcome to join us. My people have made excellent lasagna, and my daughter brought wine and pizza. We'd enjoy having you."

"Plus, there's an individual I'd like you to meet. He can help with the… fighting." The flat agreement caught her off guard. Wait, he was serious?

"Hold up—" He cut her off before she could protest.

"Kelly, you're staying at my place for a few days," Dr. Haider said, steady and matter-of-fact, the way an older relative would.

"We're having a small get-together. You could use some normal company and a warm place to land. Someone around to help you sort through the problem that's got you in a funk. Whatever's dragging you down. It'll be good for you." He said.

"Help with the loneliness."

"But I have plans," Kelly protested, the list automatic.

"I have a building to secure, a magical cube to claim, and a pigeon-god to kill!"

"They will remain."

"Give it up, man," Reggie said to Kelly, grinning.

"Joe made himself your handler, but he's basically everyone's dad. He's the guy who spots a flat tire and has the jack out before you're even done swearing at it. If Joe suggests something, it means it's already happening."

"Joe?" Kelly asked, her tone innocent.

"He told you his first name?" Dr. Haider never did that. He was a title and a last name. This was weird. This was off-script.

"That's new." Reggie nodded.

"Arguing just makes him double down. You might as well start packing." Dr. Haider spoke with full, unapologetic bluntness.

"What you said earlier explains the slump you're in," he said, every word landing with that firm uncle authority.

"You need steady company, regular movement, clear direction, and something that locks your focus. Camaraderie brings the social pull you're missing. Physical activity drives your body back into a rhythm. Perhaps some combat training once you feel better will help with your mental health. It will give you the mental edge you're looking for."

"Hold on," Kelly said, her eyes on the unit he was driving.

"You're giving me a mental health day?"

"Yes," Dr. Haider said.

"Sorry," Reggie said, not sounding sorry at all. He pulled out a pistol, keeping it pointed at the floor of the cab.

"Doctor's orders." What followed ranked among the strangest moments of Kelly's life: getting herded, more or less at gunpoint, into having fun. At a get-together. Well, technically not at gunpoint—Reggie holstered the weapon the instant Kelly hit him with a stare that could cauterize metal—but the vibe absolutely lingered. Dr.

Haider just punched the coordinates into her satnav and then shut down the mobility systems of the unit he was piloting, transforming himself into deadweight until Kelly agreed to follow the route. Passive-aggressive artistry at its peak. In the end, Kelly figured it made sense to get a better read on the people she'd hired. They would likely be fighting an angel—and the primordial god of order puppeteering it—at some stage. A little team bonding hardly seemed like a tragic idea.

Plus, Kelly couldn't refuse free wine and lasagna.

"You live here?" Kelly said, as the vehicle cleared the last security gate. Dr. Haider's place was a modern mansion. It sat suspiciously close to the massive, federally-funded Skyward Spire—that raised-ground, tower structure reaching up to permanently puncture the sky. The neighborhood screamed money. More money than her bolt-hole, and way more money than the Mist Market where she'd almost been turned into chunky salsa that morning.

The whole district was artificially elevated land, a designed plateau of privilege. Interspersed aesthetic living towers—luxury needles of glass and composite—rose from the plateau, looking down on the lower city districts the way stars might look down on a garbage fire, if stars were smug and charged HOA fees. The class stratification had never been clearer. It was a visual diagram of wealth, with altitude serving as the unit of measurement. Her host's place wasn't quite a home.

It was a modern, multi-floor mansion with an incredible view of New York and the madness currently using it as a chew toy. Armed guards in corporate tactical gear patrolled a perimeter ringed with fences that looked decorative but were definitely rated to stop a light vehicle. There was a pool built right to the edge of the hill, a tennis court, and the whole thing was colored in rich warm whites and sepia tones. The place managed to look both understated and disgustingly fashionable.

She had only ever been to one of his houses in her youth. It had been much smaller. Illegal work, apparently, paid extremely well. They all climbed out of her truck. Some automated luxury valet system she hadn't authorized took control of the vehicle, guiding it smoothly toward the building's underground garage. It was a stupid display of money. Dr. Haider took the moment to get Reggie and his two goons to place their guns on a nearby ornamental bench.

He had them switch off the remotely piloted droid standing beside her. Kelly watched the humanoid remote unit—the one with the screen showing Dr. Haider's face—power down completely. It went still as a store mannequin. Then the front door of the mansion opened. The real Dr. Haider walked out to meet them in person. He was wearing an ankle monitor. The thick, government-issue band was clearly visible above his shoe. He didn't seem worried about meeting them.

He also didn't seem worried about the winged, screeching things occasionally diving at the energy shield over his property. He just stood there on his expensive doorstep, a man under house arrest, welcoming guests to his party while the world tried to eat itself outside his fence. He looked surprisingly young for someone his age. Kelly remembered him with gray hair and deep wrinkles when she was eleven; now his hair was dark, his face smooth, his frame solid—thanks to pricey rejuvenation tech.

She'd watched the change happen over the years. It was just another perk of his overstuffed bank account. She looked away from him, scanning the grounds. A perimeter guard opened fire on a pack of overgrown wolves the size of large cars. They howled and scattered, the bullets impacting around them and smacking into their hides. The rounds beat them back, but didn't punch through. Their fur must have been denser than it looked.

I guess crime really does pay, she thought while whistling, watching the creatures retreat.

"I see you have a dog problem," Kelly said, nodding at the perimeter as he finally reached them.

"I've been there. My dog used to chase people on a bike a lot. It got so bad, I finally had to take his bike away." Reggie gave her a strange look. She watched the next volley of gunfire send the creatures yelping into the decorative shrubbery.

"That's animal abuse, you know. I should call PETA." She tilted her head, observing the retreating forms.

"Hmm. They're kinda cute. You think I could tame one?"

"The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals does not have jurisdiction here," Dr. Haider said, his tone factual.

"And no, you cannot domesticate a class-three invasive predator. Their neurochemistry is incompatible with prolonged human contact. Without alteration, they would attempt to eat you." Dr. Haider gave a small, warm smile.

"Considering our history, my inviting you to visit my organization was long overdue." He gestured toward the grand entrance.

"Please, come inside." Reggie and his two guys were already walking past, heading for the door. They gave her encouraging, weirdly genuine smiles.

"Come on," one of them said. Dr. Haider turned, his gaze turning from Kelly to the others.

"Alright, ground rules. No psychoactive aerosols, no dream gas, no laughing gas, no drugs of any kind—weed is acceptable but restricted to the balcony. Beer is in the fridge. Use the cocaine bathroom for cocaine, not the bathroom bathroom,""No shoes, work gear, or guns inside the main residence," Dr. Haider added, his tone leaving no room for argument.

"House rules."

"No guns? No pierce-proof vest?" Kelly replied, stopping at the threshold.

"I must warn you, my entire ability to transcend time is architecturally dependent on me being well-dressed. It's a literal mechanical requirement. You take my shoes, you're basically grounding a plane." She removed them with visible reluctance.

"I feel significantly less immortal without my gun and my good boots," Kelly said.

"I feel dramatically unsafe."

"Kelly," Dr. Joe Haider chuckled, then addressed her without preamble.

"Luigi sent my brokers the footage. I saw you thrash a magical creature that was also a new form of mutant, with your fists." Damn Luigi and his big mouth. Kelly crossed her arms, her thunder thoroughly stolen. Next time she'd let it trash his store a little before she killed it with guns, like a normie.

"Really? You saw that?" Kelly complained as she removed her lab coat—and the four guns strapped inside its folds—tossing them into the weapon tray in a way that caused them to land in a perfect stack.

"Through the mist? But the feed resolution down there is complete garbage!"

"Yes, I requested the footage after you mentioned the incident this morning. It caused a significant stir with my contacts. The video made negotiating on your behalf considerably easier." Dr. Joe Haider opened the foyer door, inviting his fellow scientist inside his home. Or organization. Kelly wasn't sure which, but the vibe was leaning toward a very comfortable corporate annex.

"As far as everyone is concerned," he continued, "you're a nobody intern who used the planetary crisis to get ahead. A rare few fortunately located individuals tend to do that. No offense." The door led to a large living area that could have swallowed her entire two-room apartment, kitchen included. There was a sofa facing a massive plasma screen, a fireplace with a thick furred carpet in front of it, and stairs led to rooms above. Huge picture windows provided a marvelous view of the city being eaten alive below.

The decor was a confusing, lavish mix. It had the cozy feel of a family-run hotel crossed with the sterile, expensive gleam of a corporate retreat designed by wealthy eccentrics who believed in beanbag chairs and original art. It looked like the set for a reality show about friendly cult leaders. Three people were already in the room. A man with dreadlocks wearing a smart casual t-shirt, slacks, and loafers. A woman. Another guy with a cigarette doing something indeterminate. Kelly didn't pay them much attention.

Her gaze zeroed in on something else. Specifically, a disembodied head resting on a lounge couch.