Page 86 of Witches Be Damned

Knoxe clicked buttons on his keyboard, calling up data from various logs on the Watch Tower’s large screen. While my Songbird was with Raze, the three of us spent hours combing through the files provided by the thief avatar, piecing it together. Burying ourselves in that task took the edge off from being away from her.

Loco and Serena took over for us the last three days, analyzing patterns in the phone calls, which they graphed and displayed on the screen at the side of the room.

While it was hard for me to break routine, filling in Songbird’s void of missing Raze stole most of my attention, and I barely noticed the lack of training or research that filled my standard days.

Ben stood in the corner, guarding the entry door for anyone patrolling the corridors, giving us a low whistle when units came past, and Serena called up a different graph as a disguise.

Afterward, she switched back to charts displayed of the data showing phone calls and text locations used by the fugitives and others involved behind the scenes in the breakout. Mads didn’t make our task easy by clearly mapping out the information in a legible report, and we had our work cut out for us, painstakingly examining patterns we eventually fit together. We knew from now on that if we dealt with the tricky thief avatar to be very specific with what we needed to avoid his mischievous ways.

“You can see a clear pattern of calls made to five locations across sixteen phones.” Serena’s finger traced the line graph. “Five phones belong to Guild Councilors, who we believe supplied the vampires with Guardian’s weapons and coordinated the breakout of prisoners and release of dangerous gantii captives.” She paused to let that information set in. “This supports recent evidence obtained by my son, Cole, when they arrested Guild traitors.”

“Bastards!” Astra ground her teeth.

I wish I didn’t have to wear this damn magick suppression bracelet. Without it, I couldn’t read emotions as well and was forced to rely on the subtle clues I learned in sessions with Dr. Anders. Since the warden cuffed me with the damn thing, the doctor held extra sessions for me, and said I improved twenty-percent from my last test.

“There are always good guys who turn to the dark side,” Tor added, coming at it from the superhero standpoint. He also had firsthand experience of paying off sentries to turn a blind eye to the sale of his contraband or slipping them siren porn for favors. To be fair, they were paid shit wages for what they dealt with in here on a regular basis. And many were fly in, fly out, doing shifts far away from their families.

“Not surprised one iota,” Loco muttered, Serena reinforcing his statement with a nod.

According to a private conversation with Knoxe, our team leader and second-in-command they had history with some of the players we uncovered and sought vindication to clear their names and vengeance for breaking up their families.

Discovering the betrayal hit me hard when I’d been raised to respect authority and not question it. Roots that untangled over the years, thanks to my experience in the military, where they court-martialed me for defending myself against two officers trying to kill me in my sleep, and they were praised as heroes and awarded posthumous medals. Yet my army career was over from that point on.

What little respect I had for authority crumbled when we uncovered Guild members worked in tandem to release over fifty deadly prisoners and led to my near-death experience, and the kidnapping of my girlfriend and brother, Raze. The other three officials were involved in another operation, but we pushed that aside to focus on those directly associated with the fugitives.

“How does this data correlate to what we extracted from James’ phone?” Knoxe asked before throwing back the last of his coffee and getting up to replenish his empty mug.

“There are several crossovers of numbers, which confirms the validity of the thief avatar’s data.” Serena brought up a spreadsheet of phone call records showing dates and GPS coordinates of call locations.

Knoxe took his seat, the hinges squeaking under his weight, making me flinch. “And they’re connected to crooks we’ve been tracking?”

“They are.” Serena switched to another table that displayed the numbers of Mads’ data compared with info that Cole slipped Tor.

“I shared this information with Cole,” Tor informed us, flashing an orange USB. “And he gave me what his team collected to cross-check with ours.”

Data that normally would have taken us months to obtain and comb through. Thank you, Mads.

What I interpreted as a proud smile slid across Serena’s face. “This is truly fantastic work, team. I can use these phone numbers and locations in my report to the warden seeking immediate investigation of these coordinates.”

I felt lost without my music to read the room, but this confirmed I didn’t need to rely on it so heavily, my sessions with Dr. Anders paying off.

“Obvious question here,” Astra said, nursing her drink. “But if we’re up against corrupt Guild officials, it goes without saying that we’re potentially walking into a trap.”

Serena rested her mug at her desk. “Most likely, yes, but it’s a risk we must take for the reward. Are you in?”

“I want those assholes, Devon and Eduardo, locked away for life for hurting my girl,” Knoxe growled.

“Here, here,” Tor concurred.

“Me too,” Songbird added.

“You know I’m in,” Loco set his vote. “I just wish I got to tear both of their balls off.”

That left me. Not that I’d be the deciding factor. I put my life at risk when we went out on our last mission. I wasn’t too proud to admit that anxiety scraped at the back of my mind. The logical side of me recognized this was the only avenue to get this damn band off my wrist and leave the Guardians. Pressure welled at the back of my head in need for my connection to the music to ease my angst.

I lifted my gaze to Serena’s. “When do we leave?”

She smiled and patted me on the shoulder. “I’ll go and get us clearance. You four stay here and see what else you can pull from the data that might serve us.”

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