Before she could close the door to her apartment behind her, Eliane’s keys snapped out of her hand, tossed away from her by an invisible force. She yelped as she spun around, turning just in time for a long metal bar to hit her squarely in the chest, just below her ribs. With a sickening flare of pain, she heard a cracking sound. Before she could get her bearings, another long bar took her in the ankles, pinning her squarely against the door.
There was no one holding either of the bars, but they Pushed against her nonetheless, trapping her. With a panicked shout she barely managed to get her hands up in time to catch the third bar that came flying for her neck, holding it back with what terrified strength she had.
Something wet tickled her legs and she noticed that her window was open, a thick layer of mist coating the floor. It swirled and spun, flowing towards the shadowed figure standing across the apartment from her. Drawn by his allomancy. There were some who thought of the mists as playful or protective.
Eliane had always found them sinister.
“I’ll give you one thing,” the allomancer said. He must have been anchoring himself using the appliances in her kitchen to keep her pressed to the door. “You’ve gotten slippery in our years apart. I didn’t think it’d take me nearly this long to find you. So that’s one point in your favor at least.”
He stepped forward, finally close enough to make out his face in the dim evening gloom, not that she’d needed that to know who he was. Dier Cass. Her older brother. “It’s too bad that’s the only point in your favor, little sister.”
He was well dressed, and looked calm and collected. Dark hair, even darker than hers, in a stylish cut, though the strands were haphazard and windblown. He'd been Pushing his way around the city before this, and she had a feeling he hadn't gotten into her apartment by climbing the stairs. A dark collared shirt tucked into black pants, and soft leather boots laced up his calves. She suspected there was very little metal, if any, in the ensemble at all.
Most distinctive, however, was the article of clothing that he wore over that. It was sleeveless, and made of a dark leather. From the front, it looked like a waistcoat, short and vest-like, with two rows of wooden buttons, but the back of the garment was long, trailing almost down to his ankles, and was cut into ribbon-like streamers. The underside of the tassels and the turned collar revealed a midnight blue silk lining. Some kind of new, fashionable variation on a mistcoat.
“D-Dier,” she said, still struggling with the upper bar, “what do you want with me?”
“I’m here to say thank you, actually. For holding your tongue about what happened with Dad.” He walked closer to her as he spoke, each step sending little pulses of pressure on her bars. “I mean, it was probably wise that you did so, because if you’d snitched on me, this conversation would have been a lot less civil. As it is, we're friendly. We can just chat, can’t we?”
“I don’t want any troubl--” she started, but he cut her off, grabbing one of her wrists.
“No trouble, little Ellie. Just a chat, like I said.”
“D-don’t call me that."
He twisted her arm, forcing her to let go of the bar. With his other hand he took out two silvery bracers, like ones a feruchemist might use as metalminds. These, however, were each bent and dented. They had been roughly made, and the open gaps to slip hands through were only half finished, one side still jagged. It looked as though they had once been one large bracer, cut in half and then re-bent in a poor approximation of two cuffs.
Those gaps were not wide enough for her wrists to slip through, but he didn’t seem fazed by it. With a chill she realized that might have been exactly what they had been designed for.
He forced one of the cuffs over her left wrist, and she cried out as the metal tore at her skin, then again as her arm was slammed back against the door. Her other arm received the same treatment, and the bar she’d been holding pressed against her neck, making it difficult to breathe. She tried in vain to pull her arms away from the door, but with the pain from her sliced up arms and fractured rib, and his support from the anchors behind, she didn’t have much of a chance of resisting.
“There you go. Just something to keep you from doing anything that might… jeopardize our good mood.” he said, stepping back with a smile on his face. “You’ve been keeping yourself busy these past few years, haven’t you? Little Ellie, all grown up to be an informant? That’s quite an ambitious line of work for you, sis. Dangerous too.”
Something made a beep from her desk. Her desktop computer, the one with all her database files. Dier held out a hand, and a small flash drive flipped through the air to his waiting hand. What? He’s a coinshot, he can’t Pull on metals! How could he…
Metalfire. He had metalfire. Of course, he had metalfire.
“See, I’ve made some powerful friends in the past few years. Made a name for myself, if you will. Important people like to make sure their deliveries and messages are in capable hands, want to make sure things will reach their destinations quickly and safely. Coinshots are in high demand, especially ones who know how to protect themselves out there.”
He brushed is mistvest off in what was probably supposed to be a dignified manner, then waved the flash drive in front of her. “And my powerful friends like powerful secrets. Secrets like these that you have so helpfully gathered. So, I’ve got a proposal for you, little Ellie. You keep finding these secrets for me and my friends, and I’ll let you live and keep going on about your merry way. You don't even have to worry about the market value of your intel dropping just because I’m getting the family discount. We're not selling. We'll be sure to keep everything 'in-house'.”
His smile took on a sharp edge, reminding her of a cat that had just unsheathed its claws. “I wouldn’t recommend trying to hide from me again, either. Next time you make me go searching for you, I can promise I won’t be nearly as polite as this. Not to mention, I might just have to drop by and ask some of your friends where you’d disappeared off to. Lots of good information in these files of yours, Ellie. You noted that this Sinclar person seems very nice, a trustworthy kind of person. Or his apprentice? Emalyn? From your writings about her you two sound like you might actually be on your way to friendship. I’d hate to have to have to pay them a visit just because you decided to be uncooperative.”
Eliane struggled against the bars and bracers again, ignoring the pain that flared up in her side and wrists as she did so. “Don’t even think about touching them! Th-they’re good people, Dier! Leave them out of this!”
“Of course,” he said, spreading his hands in a placating manner. “So long as you don’t give me a reason to. Don’t snitch and don’t run. They’ll be perfectly safe. Easy enough, right?”
“Y-you can’t do this,” she shouted, actually managing to pull her arms away from the door enough that they made a thump against the wood when they fell back. “You don’t know how hard I’ve worked for that intel! You can’t just sweep in her and t-take it!”
His eyes narrowed, and he closed the distance between them again. The pressure on the bar against her neck increased again, cutting off her air almost entirely. “What exactly are you going to do about it? You can’t even move, little Ellie. So long as I’m pressing this bar, you can barely breathe. If I wanted to kill you, there’d be nothing you could do to stop me. I could take that pretty little Pathian earring out of your ear and send it through your skull.”
She could feel his breath against her face as he continued, the humid warm air seeming a matched counterpart to the cold mists still curling around her legs. “I used to resent you, Ellie, back before. He never went after you like he did me. He never hit you as hard, he never pushed you the way I was pushed. Now, though, I’m glad he did it. I am what I am today because of him. He made me strong, strong enough to kill him. And if he hadn’t, I’d still be like you. Weak and powerless. Pathetic. Stepped on and walked over by those who are better than you.”
She wasn’t getting enough air. Her mouth opened and her chest heaved as she tried to get some kind of breath, but the pressure at her neck was too much. Her vision was starting to go fuzzy and her head was ringing. “Pl… Please…” she gasped.
He scoffed, stepping away. The pressure on her neck disappeared and the bar there fell to the ground, clanging against the two still pinning her on its way down. He tucked the flash drive into his pocket and threw back a vial of metal flakes, swishing the liquid around a moment before swallowing.
“Like I said, pathetic.” He gave her a look of disgusted pity, then walked over toward the window. As he lost his anchors from the kitchen, he released his hold on the metal bars and bracers, and Eliane all but collapsed against the door. The three bars he’d used to hold her flipped across the room toward him and he tucked them behind his back as he caught them. The ability to push and pull metal. It was a dangerous combination indeed.
"I like the name though. 'Casuana.' I agree, 'Cass' has too much of the old man in it still. You and I, we ought to make a name for ourselves, shouldn't we?" He stepped into the window frame, pushing the glass all the way open and letting in a fresh wave of mist. “You can keep those bracers. Consider them a gift. Girls like jewelry, right? I’ll be in touch, little Ellie. Try to keep yourself out of trouble.”
With that, he let himself fall backward, out into the misty night. Her apartment was five floors up, but the distance wouldn’t bother someone like him. He’d gotten what he’d come for and now he was off to whatever other things he needed to do.
For a little while, Eliane just sat on the floor, watching blood slowly drip from the cuts on her wrists and trying to calm down. She trembled, not even really able to feel the pain through the terrified adrenaline. She needed to move, needed to get out of here, needed to get help.
With a faltering weakness underlying her every movement, she managed to push herself back to her feet after a few stumbling failed attempts. Groaning softly, grabbed her keys from where Dier had shot them.
You have to go find someone. Someone you can trust…