Chapter 316

The rain began. It’d been overcast since early morning, but now the fog and early stillness was replaced with a near constant drizzle. Jackson navigated in a way few people could without GPS assistance, switching from thoroughfares to side roads to alleys and back again, all while maintaining a near constant state of momentum.

“Ever drive professionally?” I asked, making idle conversation as I composed another message.

“Not really. A little in the sandbox.” Jackson squinted, following the brake lights of a not-Range Rover that’d just blown the light in front of us. “Mostly just Ubered in the early twenty twenties, while I was figuring shit out.”

“Rough time to pick up Uber.”

“Eh, kept me locked in. Sense of danger and all. The downtime meant plenty of time to think, which made it conducive to said figuring-of-shit. Spun my wheels while I was spinning my wheels, if that makes sense.”

It did. But between the logical jumps at Miles’ flat, and the timing of him clearing the evaluation, the small, paranoid part of my mind wouldn’t shut the hell up. Miles’ had a lot of military and federal contacts. He had experience running undercover ops. So if he’d been more suspicious of me than I’d realized, it wasn’t much of a jump to imagine him pushing some of his civilian friends in the direction of Kinsley’s ever growing workforce.

“You drove here? In Dallas?”

“I did.” Jackson confirmed. “Primary source of income for a while, pathetic as it was. Kept me buoyant until some of the squaddie chuckle fucks that went private got in touch and roped me in.”

I tilted my head, deciding whether or not the question was even worth asking. It was relatively common knowledge. Especially if you’d actually worked the gig. But with the internet shuttered, common wasn’t as common as it used to be.

“God, the shit we used to argue about.” I squeezed the bridge of my nose and chuckled self-deprecatingly. “Had some friends on the apps. Not full-time, most were students. They never shut up about who paid better, Lyft or Uber.”

“Well, they were definitely part-timers.” Jackson shook his head. “Never understood the concept of brand loyalty. Sure, if you’re just stopping in for weekend money, maybe that conversation’s worth having. But if you’re out there grinding—and I mean ten plus hours a day, seven days a week, killing-your-car-in-half-a-decade grinding—you’d know the real enemy isn’t whoever you ain’t working for.”

“No?”

“It’s the downtime.” Jackson’s mouth turned downward as he relieved the memory. “Supply isn’t consistent. When it comes to anything, really, but you see it as a driver more than most. In the times you’re sitting in the back of some grocery store parking lot, idling, low-key pissed off that you’re shortening the lifespan of your vehicle for someone else’s quick queue time. So most people—the ones who really want to grind? They keep both running in the background. Take whoever pings them first for whatever ain’t a thirty-second drive down the street. Minimize the downtime. It’s the only realistic way to stay solvent. And hell, sane for that matter.

“How fittingly mercenary.” I smiled a little.

“That’s what I’m saying.”

It was the right answer. I set up a false equivalency, kept it vague and non-interrogative, didn’t lead him to it, and he still got it. That didn’t mean he couldn’t still be a plant, but the story at least, passed the sniff test.

Still, it was better to only expose him to the parts of this I was willing to let Miles’ know about. Everything else would need to be underhanded.

“Top floor?” Jackson confirmed.

“Yep.” I agreed, reclining a little in the passenger seat. We’d already made several similar drops, but this was possibly the most important. And if we failed to stop the second transposition, it would be. “You want to go over it again?”

“No need.” Jackson pointed to his shaved head as he maneuvered the car up another ramp. “Got it all up here.”

“Alright then.”

We pulled into a spot near the ramp. Across the large lot, Sara—Vice Chief of the Adventurer’s Guild—sat on the open trunk of an old, pre-system SUV, one leg pulled up to her chest, features pulled into a preternatural scowl. Not wanting to be spotted, I hit the side handle of the civic and leaned back, under the windows and out of sight.

Intuitively, Jackson pulled off, close enough to see Sara through the rearview and hear their conversation through a cracked window.

Jackson turned to me, a little more tense than I expected. “We already talked about this. But I just want to reiterate. Whatever you’ve got in there—” He pointed to the large black binder stuffed with paper on my lap. “—Isn’t gonna piss off the entire AG? Because I’m not looking for smoke. Not with them. Not with the way things are right now.”

I shook my head. “It’ll only help. Assuming they bother to read it.”

“They will. If it is what you say it is. Some anonymous motherfucker sends you a bunch of intel through a proxy, curiosity alone pretty much guarantees it. Whether they take it seriously?”

“Harder to say.” I agreed.

“Yep.”

His door opened and slammed shut, and then he was gone, moving at an unhurried pace towards Sara.

She spotted him quickly, sitting up, planting her idle leg flat on the pavement. “You the asshole that’s been blowing up my DMs since this morning?”

Their voices were faint but echoed off the pavement.

“Ahah. No ma’am. Apologies, on behalf of my benefactor.”

Sara hit a vape, half shrugged, her expression shrewd. “They happen to explain how they managed to leave their name off the messages? Haven’t seen that much.”

“No ma’am, did not.” Jackson stopped around ten feet from her, his voice warm and congenial.

“Got a name, either of you?”

“Never gave me theirs. Unfortunately, mine was recently misplaced.”

“Cute.” Sara hit her vape again, and in the time it took me to wonder when, exactly, she’d started smoking, stood and slammed the trunk of her sedan. “My first instinct was to ignore this. That was probably the right call. I don’t have time for a cloak and dagger. Let your client know when they—he, lets be real, only men do this shit and a woman wouldn’t have sent a male messenger to meet another woman alone in a parking lot—wanna stop jerking off and get serious, contact me. With their name attached.”

She fished her keys out of her inventory.

“Really sure you want to do that?” Jackson challenged, not showing an inch of concern.

“Because whatever you have in that folder is that valuable?” Sara rolled her eyes. “Yeah, really sure I do.” She spun the keys by the ring. “Gonna make this complicated?”

It was an unfortunate miscalculation on my part. I knew Sara was stressed. She’d been stressed ever since the Adventurer’s Guild’s haphazard venture into the transposition left Tyler gravely injured, on a slow road to recovery that he was still traveling, even to this day.

“You know, I’m a fan.” Jackson said.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

What?

“What?” Sara peered at him suspiciously, thrown by the sudden pivot.

“Maybe that’s a weird thing to admit, being a fan of someone who’s out there, doing the same sorta thing you could do if the system distributed the marvel powers in your favor, but it is what it is. I’m a fan.”

Sara’s eyes narrowed. “So you’re a stalker. And a civilian.”

“Civvy yes, stalker no. Just watched the footage like everyone else. You’re scrappy. Put the AG on the map for me. Same for a lot of other ordinary folks. Overseer focused on the scary bastards. But you gave us someone we could root for. Someone out there defending us squares, watchin’ out for people who couldn’t defend themselves. Lost your arm for it. Thank you for that.” There was no deception in his voice. Only gratitude.

Jackson gave Sara a casual, left-handed salute, then walked away.

She stared after him, mouth tight, until she finally spoke. “Okay, wait.”

Still facing away from her, Jackson flashed a grin, reining it in as he turned around. “Yes?”

Sara glanced away. “I’ll listen to what you have to say. But only after you tell me your name. Maybe that’s petty, but that’s what I’m asking.”

“It won’t help you.”

“Forget it—”

“Jackson,” He said.

Sara blinked, again thrown by the pivot. “Why… wouldn’t that help me?”

“Canvass the neighborhood for middle-aged black guys named Jackson, and you’ll find out.” Jackson grinned.

The Adventurer’s Guild leader very obviously held back a laugh. “Fair enough. Uh… shit. Sorry for being a bitch.” She sighed. “Wouldn’t believe the number of messages we get from looneys and would-be soothsayers who think they’re the center of the universe and hold the answer to everything.” Dropping her guard, Sara approached Jackson and shook his hand.

“Can’t speak to that, but anyone with eyes can see mental health ain’t so great right now.”

“That’s the truth. So what are we doing here?” Sara asked, regaining her seriousness.

Jackson wiggled the binder, then held it out to her. “Won’t go as far as to offer the answers to everything, but do have the honor of handing over the keys to the next transposition.”

“Really?” Sara raised an eyebrow.

“Points of leverage on every region and the guilds that hold them. Insights into a couple of places everybody has questions about, and how to approach those places should they become a threat.”

“Is that all?” Sara asked, understandably skeptical.

“No. That’s the first half. Second section is practical abstract. Strategies, worst-case scenarios, possible directions the next Transposition could take, along with methods to ensure joint cooperation in those scenarios.”