5. BD

The end of part 1.

BD’s sky blue glowing EYE-ris rotated mechanically, contrasted with a red circle from a second implant -- Q.Pal. He was using both of the implants to drudge through as much data as he possibly could. But, Cass already knew he wouldn’t find any more than he already had.

BD frowned, and said, “I know you weren’t born last year, but that’s as far back as Cassie Kringle goes.” He slumped into an out of place dining room chair, and rubbed at his forehead while the eye implants deactivated, allowing his iris to assume its natural shade of blue.

Worried at her prospects of escape, Cass looked around the cheap crash pad bedroom, trying to find anything to her advantage. Anything that could get her out of there. But she knew the crash pads above the ’Wyse, and considering that Finnic was leaning against the door -- the only way in or out -- she resigned to escape being unlikely. 

She deactivated her EYE-ris as well, finding that BD was similarly ghostlike -- but not totally untraceable. He had military censors blocking his record, which Cass wasn’t about ready to try breaking into. Don’t want to be setting off military alerts, she explained to herself.

“So then,” Finnic started with a flat tone, “wanna tell us who you are?”

Tense, Cass shook her head. “You wanna threaten me, just do your worst already.”

Finnic’s spread his lips in a manic grin, slanting his eyes with a menacing gaze, and nodded. “Alright, torture it is.”

Taken aback, Cass jerked. Her discomfort at Finnic’s threat, not even remotely concealed. That feeling of heat in her temples was welling up again.

“Finnic,” BD interrupted. “No. Just no.” Cass looked over to the hacker, who was to her surprise chiming back up in her defense. “This is the type of person we started this thing for. To keep them safe.”

Finnic did something like shrugging, flipped his hair, and rolled his eyes. “She chose this path. That makes her a criminal, right?”

“Hey!” Cass interrupted, irritated. “You don’t know what it’s like living on the bottom-- oh...” Cass stopped her line of rebuttal, remembering the quick scan she had done of Finnic outside of the Blackwyrm. He was from the Underlow, which meant he was quite literally from the lowest level of the city.

The two captors turned their attention back at her, rather than arguing amongst each other. Cass wondered if maybe she had made a mistake by speaking up again.

“Well,” BD stood back up, and started, “if you want to get out of this alive, you need to tell us as much as you can, or else your employer is going to be pretty angry that you failed your objective.”

Objective, Cass thought. The objective was to drug a merc who spends his nights off from lawless fuckery, drinking and f*****g like a f*****g tool. 

“I’m serious,” BD continued, leaning closer to the cautious Cass. “The White Dawn hired you, didn’t they? They’re the only outfit working out of Blackwyrm right now. And I noticed your little conversation with the bartender back there. You’re from here, aren’t you?”

Cass recoiled, grabbing her elbows and looking down at her boots, bashful at how close to the truth BD had gotten. She curled her lips, showing off her nervousness, and nodded slowly while her eyes continued pointing down at the floor.

“How old are you?” BD went on.

“Twenty one…” Cass said without pause.

“Why did they hire you? This doesn’t seem like your sort of expertise.”

The Blackwyrm Bandit, Cass thought. “Well, I am a hacker,” she said instead.

BD laughed. “I can tell that from your non-existent background. This isn’t a hacking job though. What made them think you could do a job like this?”

Cass considered the truth. The unspoken threat that Rook made, about knowing who the Blackwyrm Bandit was. The insinuation that if she didn’t play along, he could make her life a living hell. She would have done it, even without the threat. She could have been able to do it. Should have been able to. But she screwed up. Jess wouldn’t have screwed up, Cass thought. It’s all this BD guy who messed up the plan. She was angry at herself for pinning him as some dedicated driver type of friend, but the reality, she now realized, is that he was one of the mercs from Finnic’s crew.

Rook hadn’t quite known everything he thought he knew about the merc crew. Cass should have known his information wasn’t good. He didn’t know as much as he thought he did about the Blackwyrm Bandit, after all. This was not the sort of job that Cass was capable of doing, even during her Blackwyrm Bandit days.

“What was in the drink?” Finnic followed BD’s lead of questioning, after Cass remained silent.

“It’s a drug,” she replied, feeling a minor swirling from the small sip she’d taken at the bar. Just a sip, but I guess Rook did say it was a jazzed up dose. She chuckled.

“What’s so funny?” Finnic pushed forward off of the door, and stood in Cass’ face, towering above her by a full foot.

Not feeling the slightest bit of discomfort at having her personal space violated, Cass held up her hand, and touched her face, laughing. “Feels like, refab-plast.”

“For Surd’s sake,” BD moaned, “she must have taken it.”

“Just a little, chill out dads.” Cass fell backward, landing with a bounce off of the springy mattress in the crash pad before settling in. The room was spinning, but not in a disorienting way, like when you’re about to throw up from drinking. It was a wholly hallucinatory effect. “Maelstrom.” She burst out laughing, unable to control herself. “F****n guy called it Maelstrom. Hah!” she croaked a singular burst of laughter. “Can you believe it.Maelstrom. Sounds like a f****n… I don’t even know what, but it doesn’t sound like a drug.”

BD and Finnic blinked at each other, taken off guard by Cass’ descent into an ecstatic high.

BD tried, “Look, Cassie--”

“Look at what?”

“The situation. Help us out--”

“Help with what?” she exploded in another fit of giggles.

“Anything, just tell us�"” BD raised his voice to speak over her.

“Okay,” Cass yelled, a sharp increase in decibels. Bursting in an unpredictable fit of anger, Cass bounced off of the bed, thudding her boots on the floor, and standing alert. “Thing is, my mom died when I was young. Doesn’t even matter really. We were living on the streets even at�"”

“Cassie--”

“It’s Cass!” Cass gritted her teeth, waving a fist in BD’s face. “It’s f*****g Cass K. Not Cassie Kringle. I threw Cassie away, and I ain’t a f****n Kringle! I just needed a name when I was workin for ’im. Hell, even Cassie was never my real name. My name is�"”, she stopped, shocked that she was about to blow her identity, and took a few deep breaths, trying to work herself down. Don’t f****n blow it Cass. Twenty one years your identity has been unregistered and clean. Twenty-f****n-one years.

“You’re unregistered,” Finnic interrupted Cass’ meltdown, and Cass turned her attention away from BD to look at him. “Hey, I’m unregistered too,” he offered as a gesture of peace.

“I know you are, but you’re tagged,” Cass almost whispered the response, as if she felt dirty breaking it to him.

“What, really?” Finnic looked at BD, who shrugged and nodded. “F**k. Must have been that thing with the Spences…”

“Spences.” Cass threw her arms up in the air, exasperated, and spun with a chuckle. “That’s why they wanted me to drug you.” She burst out laughing. “I can’t believe how fucked I am. I got hired by the White-f*****g-Dawn to drug a former tech-junkie back into addiction. Well, he turns out to be a friend of the f****n Spences. And I said yes!” She flopped back down on the mattress, covering her eyes with her hands. Feeling defeated. “What a fail!”

“Or,” BD cleared his throat. “You pretend like you went through with the job, and you work with us from the inside instead. We want to take the White Dawn down.”

Cass tilted her head, and peaked through the cracks between her fingers. “Work for you, but, they’ll kill me when they find out I didn’t drug him.” She lowered her hands, and looked at Finnic. “No offense, but you being in good health isn’t good for my health.”

“Finnic?” BD looked up at his associate. “Care to explain to the young lady why she’s safe?”

Finnic grinned, looking back at Cass with a smile. Enthusiasm which brought Cass sitting upright and at attention. “I’ve been coming here on purpose, making a fool of myself in order to bait the White Dawn into sending someone like you.”

Cass’ jaw dropped. “Someone like me?”

“Well,” Finnic began, “to be honest, we thought they’d send one of their own. Someone we would have squeezed. But, if you’d be willing to work from the inside for us, I can continue the charade. Make them think their plan is working out, and you can leak info out to us. Again, if you’re willing.”

“Uhm, I don’t really have a choice, do I?” She traded looks between Finnic and BD, who both shook their heads. “Then I guess, let’s play the White Dawn.”

Reviews

[Wathanya.5KY3]

I noticed that this chapter was -- for lack of a better word my brain can think of at 5 AM -- raw. By that, I simply mean copied from your writing software and pasted just like that, which isn't a bad thing if you don't plan to make this your main publishing platform. For that reason, I'll mainly comment on the story and non-format issues.

I knew something not-so-good for Cass was going to happen, and I knew Cass must have been the Blackwyrm Bandit! But I totally didn't expect Cass to be undocumented, neither did I expect Finnic and BD to deliberately make themselves bait. This chapter feels fast-paced to me (but not too fast), perhaps because there were quite a few revelations (and the mention of the Spences!). I am excited to see how they will trick the White Dawn in the next chapter. Who knows, maybe Rook will have seen that coming!

P.S. italicize Cass' thoughts in your original document if you hadn't already done that; her thoughts aren't in italics here.