Page 16 of Penny for Your Saints

Six months ago, I was still living in my Mom’s basement, working day shift as third tier tech support for Saleshorse—balls deep in a Galaxy of Guilds addiction; subsisting on pepperoni hot pockets, schwaggy weed, energy drinks, and the latest seinen anime serial.

I met Sébastien in an Eris server for Sorcery Battle Academy Masters. He and I had the same characters, the same ships, the same totally batshit headcanons for every little bit of show lore that wasn’t explicitly laid out by the creators. We didn’t even talk about work stuff or the so-called ‘Saints’ until almost a year after we met. I had just begun to let on my particular set of skills when it came to technology—unbeknownst to me, Seb had been considering bringing me in on a job Frank was cooking up.

Of course, when he heard my name, Cazimer Rybecki, he dissolved into manic laughter.

“Well, that all but decides it! Another Saint!”

The rest, as they say, is history.

I scrap the phones, my machines, but keep hold of my tablet and the shitty smartwatch I used to scan her tag; then gather my own go-bag, making my way back down the hall to the others just in time to witness Seb—whispering something under his breath as he draws a pale blue solution from a glass ampule into a fresh syringe.

“Oh good, petit phantom,” Seb sighs with relief as he sees me enter the room—his maroon eyes fixing me with a silent pleading. “I’m going to do my best to make sure ourpiecebrillantedoesn’t feel any pain or wake up from her beauty sleep—but I’m going to need you to hold on to her just in case, mon ami.”

My backpack rattles to the floor as I cross the room to Seb.

I swallow down the saliva flooding my mouth—the telltale precursor to a technicolor yawn.

“Hey—don’t fucking puke on me, Cazzy,” Seb warns me—catching wise to my draining color and notoriously weak stomach when it comes to blood and viscera.

“Ok—then stop dicking around and get it done,” I snap back at him, doing my best to avert my eyes.

I hear the soft hiss of breath from Louise as Seb injects her with whatever potion he’s brewed in his makeshift lab on the other side of the horsehair plaster wall. Her slow, steady, sleepy breathing fades to shallow near-silence as she slips further from consciousness.

“This is going to be quick and dirty,” he warns, tossing the spent syringe into the flaming barrel behind us, a set of gauze bandages and medical tape laid out on the nearby side table; producing a small steel key on a ball chain hidden beneath the neckline of his sweatshirt.

“Lose the cuffs—hold her down, once the chip is out, we bandage her up—and haul her down to the wheels, yeah?” Seb tosses me the handcuff key, then flicks the folding knife open—the blade shining, cruel and poised above Louise Penny’s arm.

I’m so focused on unlocking the handcuffs from the radiator that I don’t see Seb drive the point of the blade into her soft flesh—but the wave of her scent that escapes her, along with the trickling of ruby blood as Seb quests deeper in search of the tracker chip, nearly knocks me on my ass.

While the medical-grade suppressants Louise has been given don’t actively give off a false scent profile or designation, before her blood made contact with the air she had given off almostno scent at all beyond a vague, clean, sweetness. Now that her precious claret flows—so much blood for such a tiny little hole; I have to struggle not to be crushed by the velvety sweet Iris, juicy-tart green apple, and spicy, floral pink pepper.

For a dizzying moment I’m struck with the wild, possessive fantasy of pressing my lips to the wound in her arm like some vampire prince, so that I might drink of her fragrant, sanguine bounty—forever hiding part of her deep within myself; a treasured secret ever belonging only to me.

“Aha!Le voici!” Seb cries victoriously—shaking out a teensy cylinder of metal and glass beaded with blood onto the couch cushion.

I confirm that Seb has been successful, my scan clearing away any shadow of a doubt that the tracker has in fact been removed before taco-ing the tablet over my knee, ditching the watch and the hunk of metal and glass into the burning barrel.

“Go get your bag.” I nod to him, grabbing the roll of gauze from the side table. “I’ll get her patched up.”

“Bless you, Cazzy,” Seb blows out a breath.

It’s been a little over forty-eight hours since we relocated to the safehouse Quentin lined up for us on short notice, and ourpiece brillantehas decided that she’s on something of a hunger strike.

While our little pied-à-terre is hardly what I’d call luxurious; a low-income unit in the Independence City slums, built from three and a half former steel shipping containers, it serves our needs and happens to be a marked improvement over the absolute rattrap we were holding up in good ol’ New York City.

Caz and I got stuck sharing quarters with our prisoner. Me with my hammock slung by the door and Caz on a blow up camping mattress. Louise’s wrists are handcuffed and passed through a chain around her waist; the whole mess threaded through a steel fitting welded to the shipping container wall expressly for such a purpose (though, admittedly, with much kinkier original intent…)

Once it became clear that there was no one coming to save her, she stopped speaking entirely and began refusing anythingother than water—no matter how much Quentin or Frank smacked her around in attempts to loosen her tongue.

While Caz and I remain pleasantly surprised that neither Quentin nor Frank have escalated the severity of theirincentivizingLouise Penny to spill what she knows about her parent’s research and the role her bosses have played in both their research and the possible fruit it has bore—I can’t help but feel that something has to give; lest the current delicate status quo crumble under the building pressure.

Maybe it’s me being selfish, trying to shield myself from Quentin’s dark side and Frank’s unbridled rage spinning out and seeking other targets, such as myself—possibly it’s that unquenchable fire of survival instinct deep inside that’s somehow managed to keep me alive these thirty some-odd years. Or maybe it’s some tiny scrap of human decency that my survival instinct hasn’t killed off; but I cannot accept simply letting her starve herself out while Quentin and Frank try to find an effective lever—lest we end up with a dead FBI agent on our hands, along with our best hope to get to the bottom of the mysterious emergence of the Zietnot virus—and its connections to the FBI, and possibly even to the cabal known only as “The Windmill.”

Frank and Quentin are both sleeping—having taken day shift dual guard dog and interrogation duty. Caz and I, the resident night owls in the Saints—took the torch from boss man and his number two—Monsieur Merde.

Caz had barely rolled off of his camping mattress and into his temporary battle station—a pressure board desk from Mykea; the blue light of his laptop casting over the growing graveyard of empty energy drink cans, candy wrappers, and spent roaches overflowing their shallow ashtray—when I told him I was taking a step out to pick up cigarettes for me and the boys, along with a few other essentials. He didn’t question me—just grunted hisacknowledgment along with a muffled request for additional energy drinks, miniature candy bars, and sour gummies.

When I return to the safehouse, Caz is seated next to Louise on her threadbare futon—attempting to coax her into eating a spoonful of canned pasta rings in ketchup-y, tomato ‘sauce’.

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