We at Afterverse Studios recognize that due to current events, there is very little appetite for a story like Nihilus Rex. Similarly, due to the subject matter of said story, it has grown increasingly difficult over the last several months for us to continue writing it at the level of quality we expect from ourselves.
Our extremely active lives and schedules, combined with the challenges of our first truly co-written project have only compounded the issue, and we’ve increasingly come to suspect that Nihilus Rex may not be well suited to our usual episodic format to begin with. As such, we are stepping back from the project and placing it on indefinite hiatus.
Nils and Lash have some nice, healthy communication. Also, more jokes about mind games and preparation to deal with their enemy, rival and possible ally. As a behind the scenes note, yes, Ottendorf, Altendorf, and Altdorf are all real variants of the same type of cipher, and me and @canyouhearthelight arguing about which one was most in character to use was actually part of the gag that just went into this chapter.
Sometimes it's fun writing hopelessly OP characters where we just get to nod obliquely at all the shit our nerdy asses have picked up over the years.
You better be careful what you do
I wouldn't wanna be in your shoes
If they ever found you out
You better be careful what you say
It never really added up anyway
I got friends in this town
Miranda Lambert, “White Liar”
Nils
Class was boring - I mean, it would have been interesting, especially the political debate that came inherent in the macroeconomic discussion of regulation - but frankly with everything else going on and the plans Lash and I were hatching it felt almost beneath notice. Like a waste of time before we got to the real action.
Our weeb friend was a smarmy son of a bitch, I had to give him that, and trying to trace him took work - one of the other reasons that I was just as happy to use the challenge and draw him to us. If it worked, it let us keep flying under the radar and gave us a layer of plausible deniability, and if worst came to worst it handed us a convenient option for another patsy if he proved less than tractable. Lash and I would have to be careful in our eventual conversation with him in how we phrased everything to make sure statements could be read to assume that he was pissed that we were taking credit for his ideas to set it up properly, but it could be done with good planning. Recruit if we could, cash out the option to get the Feds off our backs if we couldn’t - because we were going to need to deal with the fibbie at some point either way.
I shared the thought with Lash to get her thoughts, and see if we could begin establishing how we wanted to lay in that contingency. “Hey, so it occurs to me, if we can’t recruit this guy, we may want to have some kind of setup to feed him to the feds when we encounter him, let them think we were just doing some dumb, edgy marketing for our totally-legal activism and the actual ‘economic terrorist’ got pissed at us for trying to take the credit. If we can’t get him on our side, better not to have him in the way, right?”
She looked thoughtful for a moment - or more accurately, like she was plotting - before asking slowly, “How likely would we be to frame him for some of the shit we’ve done? Even just stuff we did before we met?”
“I’d have to look at his profile a little more closely, but bear in mind that the hack itself doesn’t really match the profile of either of our usual patterns, and nothing we did before that rises to the level where the federal government cares enough to pay attention.”
“I took money from Microsoft and donated it to charity,” she pointed out. “Repeatedly. That would definitely land on the news, at least.”
“Right,” I said, taking a breath, trying to steady myself, “and let’s not get into my thefts from social media and various databombings on their harvested userdata, BUT that followed a very different profile than the bank job, which is what we knew drew their attention - they’re looking for the people who’d run the bank job, not people who are little more than thieving horseflies buzzing around the heads of corporate titans and taking a few drops here and there that said corporations never notice enough to report.” It was an unpleasant truth - we’d stolen probably tens of thousands between us, but not all at once, and in increments that the corporations we’d robbed could lose to rounding error.
“Hey, you said you wanted him fed to the Fed, not to go down for the loans,” she shrugged. “Wire fraud across state lines is still FBI-worthy. Not to mention that many counts.” Lash started silently ticking off on her fingers before staring at them and nodding. “Yeah, plenty of counts, for sure.”
“Fair. I’m worried they’re looking for the bank robbers and we have someone we can give them as a patsy. So when we meet with him, let’s feel him out and make sure any statements we have are set up so they can be misread as him trying to find out if we’re stealing credit for his work, yeah?”
“Can do.” She snapped off a sarcastic salute before grabbing my elbow and semi-forcing me to slow down. “Either way, our ‘viral marketing campaign’ is ready to go as soon as you set up the location for the final clue. So, make sure your sandbox is as secure as possible so we don’t get any bugs in there.”
I nodded. “Yeah. I’ll have it ready in an hour. Want me to order some pizza while I do it?” I had an extra tab open while I was getting the proxy networks set up and sketching out the ciphers for the clues.
“One meat lovers, one spinach and bacon, coming up,” she agreed, pulling out her phone. “Don’t forget to write down the address for me once it’s ready so I can translate it a couple times and hide it in the last clue.”
“Yeah, babe, I know, we’ve been picking at this for a minute.” I said, softly smiling. I wondered if she knew she talked to me the way her mom talked to her dad. I had almost finished the third cipher we were going to be doing it with. “Think three will be enough, or should we do four? At five it feels obnoxious, but if he wasn’t too paranoid to be hooked with fewer than three, he’d be a piece, not a player.”
“Forty five minutes until food,” Lash announced before looking up. “I’m going to translate it at least twice - once to hex and once to… I dunno, a sound frequency maybe? So four should be fine on your end for the ciphers.”
“You got it. Altdorf code it is.”
“Altendorf,” she corrected, scrunching her face at what she thought was a deliberate mistake on my part.
“Nope. Altdorf. Right wing computer nut, probably also a gamer. Altdorf code is a memetic variant on the classic Altendorf book cipher, named for a thing in a game franchise popular with that crowd.” I replied, smirking. Dating a girl who knew as much cryptography as I did was a blast, but it was occasionally fun to flex on each other. Loved it when she caught me out, as she often did, but it was sometimes fun to catch her off too.
“Freaking nerd,” she half-mumbled, knowing good and well I would hear her. “But if it works, it works. Provided he figures out all the clues I’m laying out.”
“And then we put all this effort into this to show off for each other for nothing…” I muttered, watching her work over what she did as I finished up selecting a handful of games, books, and comics to cipher off of, with arc numbers for each and internally contained clues within the cipher to hint at what the target should be using for the Altdorf code. Nonsensical to anyone who didn’t understand it, but comprehensible to anyone who did - if you understood the rest of the cyphers it was under, of course.
“Ew, eyewatering,” she grunted before adjusting something. It must have worked, because she was able to actually look at the screen when she was done. “And now for the clouds…”
“Those clouds look awful.” I said, idly thinking out loud. “Really bloated, data-wise.”
“That would be because they are compressed audio tracks,” she confirmed. “Which, when unzipped and played, give the hex code. But yeah, they’re ugly, aren’t they?” The door buzzed and she looked at her phone. “Pizza’s here.”
“Ah.” I stood up and got the pizza, tipping the guy. After he left I turned back to Lash. “So, now we wait. Trap is baited and set with a challenge for a new ally or an enemy we can get rid of quickly. Speaking of the question as to what we do if he is a new ally: thoughts on how we get rid of the fed? She’s poking around the white supremacist scene, and stirring them up harder might lead to more of them poking around if she gets shot.”
Lash rubbed her face before getting up to get plates. “My first instinct is to lay low and monitor. Right now, there’s no actual evidence tying us to the situation, so monitoring would be the most conservative and safest call in the immediate future. And it gives us time to plan something in the event we do need to intervene.”
I nodded as I poured drinks for both of us. “Yeah. Fair point. Give him about two days, then we’ll meet him together. Two options, either he thinks the whole made up names thing is actually bullshit, in which case he’ll want to meet both of the people he’s working with and we can establish a triumvirate, or he thinks it’s for real and is playing like he thinks it's dumb, then he’ll want to meet with the heads of both groups, which means we’ll need you there to rep one of them. What angles we play depends on what angle he hits us with.” I was still thinking about the way we could feel that out while also maintaining the option to sacrifice him and dispose of him to the feds if he wasn’t amicable to a team up, but honestly that was mostly just a matter of careful phrasing.
“If it comes to that, as long as I am repping the Icono-whatsits, I’m good.”
“No, I thought we’d have the brown, anarchic immigrant’s daughter represent the carefully crafted illusion of the violently traditionalist ones who want to restore ‘traditional values’ because that would totally make the con hold up. Tell you what, when we take it global, and we have to do this in India, THEN we swap roles and you have to play a Hindutava nationalist and pretend to be a Disciple chick. For today, the heel role is mine.”
She set her plate down with a loud clatter, glaring at me as she stood up. “And on that completely uncalled-for note, I think I need to head home for a few days. Let me know if he gets in contact, and we’ll go from there.”
I sighed, realizing what I’d done wrong, then felt a surprising flash of irritation - at her, at myself, at the fact that every time we started getting closer I said something obnoxious and that we never just got a few weeks without some shit happening. “You know what? Yeah. I’m sorry. That was unnecessarily rude. If you want to go home, I get it, but please eat first, or at least take some pizza with you. I shouldn’t have been that much of an asshole - I’ve been jittery since the Fed showed up, and I shouldn’t be taking it out on you. Know you can’t pass yourself off as a white supremacist, I mostly wanted to joke around about the fact that as this goes global, we may have to practice swapping roles for other countries. That’s all.”
Lash took a deep breath and picked up one of the pizza boxes. “I know it will eventually be necessary for me to be the bad guy, but seriously. What part of this,” she waved a hand over herself, stopping to gesture emphatically at her face, “in any way says I won’t just blow our entire ass cover if I try to be a white supremacist? It’s not like I’m shirking work or something.” The free hand shoved her hair back and she exhaled. “I think we just need a couple days to get actual sleep and calm down.”
“You aren’t shirking work, I know.” I said, trying to take a breath. “I’ve just been…I’ve been constantly trying to figure out every possible angle we can take this from, because I want to keep us out of trouble and keep the feds away, keep this prick away from your family, keep everything under control. I said something sarcastic that I thought was funny because yeah, obviously this,” I gestured at her, “was not going to be playing the white supremacist, this,” I gestured at my own face, “was. And I wasn’t looking forward to it. And it isn’t your fault I’ve been obsessively plotting, I haven’t been telling you all of it, but it’s been all of the babbling about contingencies I’ve been doing since the fed arrived. Because I’ve been afraid. And I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.” True, but I did also want her to see my perspective of how much effort I was putting into this whole thing. “And if you need me to give you a ride home tonight, I will, but seriously take a pizza. Because it’s too late for you to be walking home.”
The pizza box in her hand dropped back to the table and she growled in frustration. “UGH! And all the shit with Uber and taxis lately…” She fell back into what had become her seat on the couch. “Fine. But I’m sleeping out here. In clothes, so don’t get any ideas, buster.”
“We didn’t have time to go mattress topper shopping, so you’ll probably sleep better, and I’m insisting on plenty of blankets. And you’re eating your share of pizza.” I shrugged. “And even my Catholic ass won’t feel guilty about you being too damn stubborn to take a ride I’m offering.”
“No ride. I refuse to owe you,” she spat before biting viciously into a slice of pizza, shoving half of it into her mouth without a trace of grace.
“And thus, couch, blankets, and coping aplenty.” I said, sitting down. “You okay, Lash?”
“I am sleep deprived, stressed about the apartment being ready when my parents are discharged next week despite knowing that Mori has had it ready since the day after she got here, and I’m mad at you for being a jerk.”
“Mori took care of the apartment, you know it, you know you know it. You’re going to sleep better tonight, and I’m sorry for being a dick.” I said, coaxingly. “Things are going to be alright. Let’s eat, brush our teeth, then we can rack out, okay?”
“Fine,” she muttered, demolishing another slice of pizza.
I wasn’t certain what it said about my life - or life, in general - that “relationship issues” were causing me slightly more confusion and headaches than “FBI investigation” and “rival terrorist” combined. It definitely said something, but I wasn’t entirely certain what. Maybe it was a me problem. Maybe if I wasn’t dating someone who would do terrorism with me I wouldn’t have this problem.
This chapter has a couple things: first off, it was my chance to do something I have always wanted to do and play with the idea of secret identities from the villain end, especially when you can use conspiracy theory gaslighting as part of your cover.
It also sets up an ongoing gag with Nils and Lash being...well, you'll see.
CW for a very long chain of kink jokes.
Co written as always by the brilliant @canyouhearthelight
I apologize for the late posting, I was very busy last night and didn't get to posting this.
No stone left uncovered
Out by the light of the moon
Hell will be coming soon
Yeah hell will be coming soon
Toby Lightman, “Long, Hard Day”
Nils
The local chatter was more and more frantic about an FBI agent with a whole lot of warrants showing up. Fortunately a bunch of the men had already been signaled to destroy their hard drives and utilize intelligent VPNs to prevent detection - thank God I’d thought ahead. Still, it was a stalling tactic, because that level of organization would make her take the problem more seriously, not less, meaning we’d eventually have a bigger problem on our hands with the Feds. I was eventually going to need to give her a patsy of some kind, and ideally find a way of convincing her it tied up cleanly.
Weasel, maybe.
No, for all that he was a pasty little bitch, I didn’t know that anyone would buy he was a…hm. Actually. Hang on, that was a thought. The key though, was that if he was alive when discovered he might roll over on me and Lash and that would be a problem. Dead, he couldn’t talk, and making sure he died first - ideally by suicide so that it looked like he’d aced himself when the jig was up - would be a trick.
Convincing her that there was in fact an angry incel who was furious that all the hot girls were going out with nonwhite guys because feminism had given them standards, or whatever, might do it, but that required that it be believable he’d orchestrated the attack - and maybe, maybe it was believable for him to have hacked the banks but not for him to have gotten other guys to go shoot the place. Unless he was using a fake….No, wait. I wasn’t going to let him be fake-me. Not even to get the fibbies off my trail. Instantly I saw another problem. If the Feds arrested anyone for this, there would be a percentage of the population I needed to win over that would see that person as the actual actor in the situation, meaning that I - or my more dramatic persona, Nihilus Rex - would lose credibility, which in turn killed my momentum.
Fuck.
I remembered, ruefully, when I thought any part of this would be simple.
I finally stood up from my desk, glancing at the clock and realized that I’d been setting up proxy networks and trying to figure my way out of this for the better part of four hours. I glanced at my phone, realized Bishop had texted, and called him back.
“Goddamnit, Creampuff, what’d I say about calling me?”
“Good morning to you too, Bishop.”
“It’s afternoon.”
“Good afternoon to you too, Bishop. What did you text me about?”
“Your psychopath.”
“Yeah, what about him?”
“Check what he did on the boards.”
“Oh…” Resigning myself to a truly miserable day, I hung up and looked at whatever the hell Gray had gotten up to, and found, to my surprise, that it actually wasn’t…that bad? Or well, it was bad but in a useful way instead of the kind of bad that I was going to have to fix. There were now indicators of radicalization happening somewhere else, flaring up, using terminology that didn’t mirror ours.
“Ruckus in the east, war in the west…” I muttered. Could have done it a bit differently, but if the FBI was going to look one way or another…might as well split up their focus. Now, to see what we could do about starting a few more fires, since the stochastic terrorism on a few other fronts was getting just a little too obnoxious for my tastes. Or, at least a little too one-sided.
Westboro Baptist Church - famously homophobic, famously hateful to veterans and their families, famously hateful to gays, famously just awful. That was something to deal with - I put a pin in the idea of building a botnet for SWATTING a target.
Then I left the room, still trying to think of what I’d do with the FBI agent. Honestly, the Weasel thing was probably the best solution, I just had to make sure I knew a way of foreshadowing it to the crowd - maybe by proxy, ensuring everyone knew or memetically believed, that Nihilus Rex wasn’t an incel, thus when someone was arrested with connections (even fabricated ones) to that network, no one who I needed to win over or maintain credibility with would believe it.
The issue of course was that doing THAT required, frankly, sexualizing my persona more than I wanted to and in ways that did not appeal to me. Even more precisely, it required some ability to publicly link that persona with sexual…
Goddamnit.
Here I was trying to avoid going public before I was ready, but…wait. Another option was slithering its way through my mind already. A whole lot of people were already linking the “heroes of the hour” from as the potential badasses behind a whole lot more - but no one, definitely not the FBI, were considering that as anything more than rumor - and I was being excruciatingly careful to keep it that way, push the narrative that it was just a conspiracy in a way that made a lot of people convinced it was our cover story and would keep law enforcement away.
Meanwhile, we could…
Okay. Okay. Me and Lash could definitely afford to go out walking publicly, being obviously into each other, being visible, but maybe - crank up the obvious. Lean into some of the activist look. Make it less subtle what scenes we were playing in. Signal to those who were paying attention and slide under the radar for those who weren’t.
Then hand over Winston as a patsy and make sure he was dead by the time the FBI actually got him. That would work.
I picked up the phone and dialed Lash.
“Hey. There’s supposedly a party on campus in a few days. How do you feel about going with me?”
“Depends,” she answered, slightly distracted. “LAN party, college party, rave…?” Suddenly she whisper-shouted “Yes, it’s Nils. Yes, I’ll tell him you said hello. Yes, he’s eating.” A sound like a door closing abruptly clicked. “Mama says hello.”
“Your mom’s great.” I said, then paused. “It’s more of a college party than anything. And it’s a ‘work-opportunities' party. A ‘you-and-I-there-on-a-date-party,’ An ‘us being there publicly in this capacity is beneficial to our plans in ways we ought to discuss in person’ party.’”
“Sounds like a great idea. Just let me know when so I can have Fatima come by while I’m gone.”
“This Friday night. I only just got the invitation.” Please, love, get the hint that this idea just happened.
“That’s plenty of time,” she laughed. “I was worried it was in, like, an hour. Anyone I know going to be there?”
Yep, she got the message. “A few of our classmates from Econ, a bunch from Polisci. A bunch of the college webshow people, at a guess, which means we’re gonna wind up on camera again, given our status as local celebrities.” Signal, signal.
“I’ll be sure to have my face on, then.” She paused and hummed for a minute. “Sexy-demure, or straight up slutty? Probably demure, can’t look like I’m milking the spotlight.”
“Whatever makes you feel beautiful and powerful at the same time, Lash. We’re going for that look.” You know the one.
“Gotcha. Those boots kill my feet, but god do they look good. Gonna have to invest in something with flatter soles if you keep taking me out like this,” she teased.
“Fair enough. I’m excited for this. You’re gonna look amazing, whatever you’re in.” I said, grinning. I could imagine the smirk on her face as she talked. “Plus, we can go somewhere fun after, away from the cameras…”
Another click that sounded suspiciously like a door. “Don’t tempt me to wear a skirt with those boots. I know you’re going for a certain look, and there is nowhere near as much leather in my wardrobe as there is in yours. I will torture you all night if you keep it up.”
“That is very much the goal, and depending on what kind of torture you mean, I might be open to experiments…”
There was that laugh I loved hearing. “Let’s start with being obviously a couple, and work our way up to exhibitionism, okay?”
I blinked, wondering where my kinky implication had been misread. “That was not in fact…” Gift horses, Nils. “Never mind, you know what? Working our way up is totally good with me.”
“What time Friday?” she asked, pulling me back to the actual topic at hand.
“Starts at 8. The humanities building, apparently, though it’s likely to spill into the plaza.” I said, confidently. “Plenty of room.”
“Oooo, on campus. Super visible and public, you weren’t kidding.”
“Eyeah. We’re going public together.” With all that entails. “At the very least, I’m sure Weasel won’t be there.”
I could practically hear her shudder at that. “Gods, I hope not.”
“Oh, I think we can mellow on him just a little. We’ve finally found a use.” There was that little edge of amusement in my voice that indicated I was planning something.
“Sure….” She sounded suspicious, but it was somewhat understandable. It wasn’t like I had told her what I was planning, although I was pretty sure she would be on board. She’d practically suggested something similar previously, after all.
“How’s your dad doing?” I said, changing the topic. Better to leave the plans for later.
“Surprisingly cooperative. I think the one time he pushed himself too hard with the temporary prosthetic, he learned his lesson. He won’t be waltzing anytime soon, but I don’t think I ever saw him dance before, so….”
“Fair enough. And your mom? I should be coming over more often to visit and check in, I suppose.”
“For the love of all that you hold dear, don’t do that. They barely let Fatima take care of them, and that’s only because the girls distract them. If you came by, they would insist on being good hosts, and Mama is still not up to standing for the amount of time it takes to cook. Baba goes back to work soon, so he’ll probably be easier to deal with after that. They’re both just so bored.”
“Gotcha. Would they be more okay with it if I came over with food and then just sat and talked with them? I’d be open to doing that. Or if we both just sat and talked with them?”
“Maybe,” she confessed hesitantly. “But you would have to be very insistent that they let me get drinks, plates, all that. It’s okay to scold me into doing it, I know you don’t mean it and it will make them more likely to listen so I don’t quote ‘anger you’ end quote.”
“Okay nope.” I said, feeling a flash of exasperation. “Yeah, okay, Lash. At some point we’re gonna talk about the gendered courtship expectations within your culture and the willingness I have to play along with them, because doing anything to avoid ‘angering me’ or scolding you into doing domestic stuff isn’t really my thing -”
“Calm down,” she interrupted, laughing. “I mean ‘anger you’ as in ‘dumping me or maybe we have a disagreement’. Nothing more than that. It will literally just guilt trip them into actually just sitting and visiting. I didn’t mean anything beyond that. And I only suggested it because do you know where the glasses are in my apartment? The plates?”
“Oh.” I felt stupid. “Ah. Okay yeah that makes more sense.” Not that the pressure to marry on her, and the weird approval process I’d undergone hadn’t given me ample reason to suspect that gender roles were at least a little bit cracked there, but now was not the time. When we ruled the world though, we were going to abolish courtship by democracy.
“How does Sunday sound? Go to the party Friday night, recovery Saturday, and then you can stop by with dinner on Sunday?”
“Sounds amazing.” Gave me plenty of time to start laying groundwork, then on Saturday, I’d start getting shit actually rolling. Then Sunday, spend the day with my gorgeous girlfriend and her family, mop up the next week.
“Awesome. Meet you on campus Friday, 7:30ish so we can scope out everything before it kicks off?”
The back and forths writing this one....
Oh side note, Afterverse Studios does NOT endorse anything that Nils and Lash or their new psychopath plan in this chapter! Do not do this!
@canyouhearthelight and I did have a lot of fun going back and forth with this tho...
When you're high, who ya flyin for?
When you ride, who ya ridin for?
When you toast, who ya drinkin for?
When you play, gotta deal with the devil.
Pop Evil "Deal with the Devil"
Nils
The date with my parents and Lash had gone without a hitch - hopefully the ladies’ day would be good for Lash and my mom. And Mrs. Botelho.
In the meantime, Bishop, me, Lash, and Dickie Gray - Richard, I supposed - were meeting up to talk about our next big plan, which also had to include some kind of provision to rid ourselves of the attention of that obnoxious Fibbie who was still crawling around town. We had our minions posting about her movements to keep from getting caught flat-footed, but I still wanted her out of my city as quickly as possible.
Heh, ‘my’ city. I sounded like a mob boss.
“Bishop, you have the proxies set up to call the human-hunting enthusiast?”
“Yeah. Creampuff, Baklava, we’re gonna talk about your choice of lieutenants.”
“Yes, but later. Get the fucker on.”
The screen came to life, and that same, deeply unpleasant icon popped up. “Nihilus, Phoenix. You wanted a meeting?”
“We have FBI in town. Our next mission is going to be to deal with some eviction notices getting served - and to take care of some banking properties while we’re at it. You already called our bluff on the QAnon bullshit, so real talk - none of us here want the government or big corporations owning all the houses or all the medicine. So we’re breaking that up a bit. But we want something to draw off the FBI while we do it. We have to do something beneficial enough to build support and flashy enough to draw attention off our core command structure.”
“Is there a reason we’re going with social engineering?”
“The reason the right always loses populist games in the long term is that they don’t invest in helping people with their actual problems.”
The icon with the skull and dagger flashed. “Heh. Point. Benefits for loyalty. Can’t last forever.”
“He who comes to a principality against the wishes of both its nobility and its people should endear himself first to the people for they, who hope most not to be oppressed, shall bind themselves to their benefactor upon receiving generosity where they feared evil, where the nobles, seeking to oppress, can be dealt with as open foes, replaced with pliable fools in austerity and bribed to compliance in prosperity.” I quoted. “If I choose who to satisfy, I choose the average person. It means I have to kill fewer enemies in the long run. If the politicians could just figure that out, we’d have a lot fewer issues.”
Lash blinked. “Machievelli isn’t normally the person one quotes if they are making a moral argument.”
“And yet the argument I just made would lead to more moral governance if its tenants were followed than anything our current government is doing.”
“Still… Machievelli?” she muttered.
Bishop glowered and I abruptly realized he’d muted all our mics for us. “Children. Maybe don’t argue with each other and therefore imply internal division when your psychopath lieutenant with the survival of the fittest mentality is in the room?”
“Right.” I unmuted.
“I think I’m satisfied with your logic. Do whatever flashy bullshit you want to get the fibbies attention, and whatever civic crap you want to get the normies on board.” Gray sounded unimpressed.
I thought about it. “Right now, what are they saying on the boards you’re frequenting?”
“A lot of them are still on board with their local churches that keep raving about the current dumbfuck-in-office being anointed by god, or about dealing with those goddamn degenerates that have been making all the kids squall about pronouns lately.” His tone made it clear his own opinion on the queer community’s existence itself was likely indifferent at best, but that in his mind their true sin was not deviance but whining. He struck me as a person who would more easily respect an armed queer than an unarmed cishet, and ultimately I could follow the logic, uncomfortable though it was.
“So, as long as the gays pay taxes?” I quipped.
“Long as they don’t ask me to take care of them.” He muttered. “I don’t give a fuck what people get up to as long as they don’t need taking care of once they’re grown.”
I filed that away for later - I was getting a fuller picture of his worldview the longer this went and I was increasingly certain we were gonna need to put him down. “Where were you going though?”
“Lot of people in the far right are gonna be a little bound up with the government because a lot of their churches have a little love affair with their modern day King Cyrus, Emperor Constantine, whatever analogy they’re using this week.”
I sputtered. Christians were not being persecuted in the US, and…Stupid, stupid. Okay, something to work on. “Got it. I’ll have to work on that. Thanks for the tip.”
I glanced at Lash. “I… I honestly cannot figure out anything to say to him for this current operation that wouldn’t derail it,” she shrugged, biting her lip in apology. “I don’t agree with it, but his logic is sound enough that arguing may actually tip him against us.” Even as she said it, she looked queasy.
I glanced at him. “Alright then. This meeting is done. Keep our people that you’re supervising out of anything until I contact you again.” The meaning of those words was clear - they were still my minions, not his. The call terminated.
Churches were keeping people locked in line with the state, as churches historically tended to. Okay, so our next job was going to be to fracture…Many megachurches had a lot of people who open carried, right? Our gun nut guy might be able to tell me, and I could double check later, but that had been in the news lately. I could check which ones…
“Lash. If these hateful megachurches that love SWATing gay clubs - the ones who just love. Love. Showing off their second amendment rights in church. Who have, for years, been fed a steady diet of ‘the government is coming for your children’ and 'the government are coming for Christians’. What if, and hear me out. What if they get SWATed back? What if we get a firefight between them and the cops going? Get a wedge between the right and law enforcement, leave the state without non state actors? Re-create the Night of the Long Knives via false flag?
In a gesture I had long learned was her method for buying time, she took a long, deep drink of water before speaking. “I don’t understand guns in a place of worship, I’m going to be honest. It… it baffles me, I guess? But then I see shootings on the news, and wonder ‘why do you think guns are the answer?’. So, logically - “ She took another long drink of water before gasping for breath. “I guess I think it isn’t logical to have guns in a temple, and the police should know about that. Provided,” she hedged, “that they know there are children present and, if they need to fire, it’s at grown up height.” She held her hand level with her eyes, a hair around five foot.
I was already thinking. "If we call SWAT, they're going to go in with weapons at shoulder height." Of course, once they were fired on, anything could happen. If kids were hit, that'd be more reason for the churchgoers to fire on cops in the future, the ‘jackbooted thugs shooting Christian kids’ narrative was something we could get a lot of mileage out of…
“Baklava is a pacifist, in case you haven’t figure that out,” Bishop grunted.
I laughed, while Lash huffed. “I just hate hearing people use ‘survival of the fittest’ when they mean ‘might makes right’.”
“No she bloody well isn’t,” I said to Bishop, idly, then shifted my gaze to my girlfriend. “No, I get that, though I can’t really argue that nature miserably echoes capitalism in that survival favors those who outcompete - or at least adapt. We both want a gentler world than the rules of nature - either the bloody ‘eat or be eaten’ he imagines or the ‘thrive and adapt or die’ that Darwin actually suggests.”
Bishop looked between us and finally threw up his hands. “Okay, I’ll bite. You’re saying the same thing and rephrasing it, like it means something different. But ‘survival of the fittest’ is pretty clear.”
“Oh my god,” Lash groaned. “It’s the least clear thing in the world, apparently. You, chucklefuck on the phone, and most of Nils’ pet racists all think it means ‘survival of the toughest and best equipped to fight’, when that’s the last thing it means. ‘Survival of the fittest’ means literally that: ‘to those who adapt and fit in with the least effort go the spoils of evolution’. Why do you think mice are so common? They aren’t exactly out there whipping ass and taking names… but they are definitely having more babies and more live to a reproductive age than larger predators, that’s for sure.”
“Which,” I added, “Is also why invasive species are so dangerous. They’re usually better able to adapt really well to a variety of environments and take over niches that more specialized species rely on, which leaves a lot of things on the chopping block. I am not totally sure I trust the idea of ‘natural selection’ as it actually applies for morals either. In natural selection, you have a plague, and then everything that can’t survive it dies, and either you have enough left for a stable population or you go extinct. I’d hope we can be better than that as well.”
“Don’t even get me started on anti-Semitism as a result of the bubonic plague,” Lash muttered, covering her face with both hands and shaking her head. She peeked at me. “I know you’re the historian, but you don’t go into clean water initiatives and miss that little gem.”
“You don’t study history without noticing that any bad thing in the middle ages, they somehow managed to blame on the Jews. Except for one part in the early 11th century in Northern Germany of all places, where they blamed it on pagans in the Black Forest. And even then, they roped in the Jews and threw in a pogrom on the side.”
“Circling back to our current surprisingly less racist than most of our minions issue…” Bishop cleared his throat. “Do we - or better yet, the two of you - trust him?”
“I want to point out he’s absolutely not less racist than most of our minions, and he might actually be worse, it’s just in a very specific and far more flexible and less dogmatic way. He’s an accelerationist fash.” I said, irritable. “Put this way: to him, white people being more militarily advanced and able to conquer everything was proof that we’re ‘better’. Same time, to him, the idea of ‘white genocide’ is laughable. Most white supremacists are deep-down terrified of having to compete on equal footing with people of color because they wonder on some level if they’re actually better or if the global majority has been artificially kept in second rank the whole time, so they rely on cops. This psycho thinks that police protection is making white people weak and decadent and wants an outright race war to get people sharpened back up. So no, I don’t trust him, I want to put him down as fast as possible.”
“Which, in English,” Lash interjected, “means that while most racists think they shouldn’t have to do as much as they are doing now, Gray thinks they aren’t doing enough. So yeah, I don’t trust him as far as I can throw this mall.”
Bishop looked between us. “And…you’re working with him? You just said he’s not as bad as the average lunatic you’re dealing with but almost an order of magnitude worse. And you’re working with him.”
“Yep. Which is the other thing: any idea of how we dispose of him when he outlives his utility?”
Lash gave me a dangerous look, looking at Bishop in silence before looking back at me. “You two really haven’t figured that part out? It’s pretty obvious.”
“I thought about the police route, if that’s what you’re thinking. Set him up as our next patsy. There’s no way he doesn’t roll over on us if we play that route, unless we go way out of our way to ensure he isn’t taken alive, which…he may be harder to play that on than most of them. And we’d want to let him cook for a while before we let the ax fall on him.”
“Suicide by cop, you got it in one,” she fired at me. “Bishop, the main reason I’m willing to work with this guy - and probably the same for Nils, at least a bit - is that he doesn’t want cops involved, at all. Which is something we don’t want either. So, take a racist who hates cops, let him poison the whole batch to the same line of thought, and then we just… wind him up a bit at a time. Eventually, we might be able to make him take care of himself for us, as a martyr rather than an enemy.”
“And if you don’t, your minions Order 66 you during your moment of triumph.”
“Given the number of gun permits the guy has…. I’m betting on blaze of glory,” Lash admitted. “No one who distrusts cops owns that many weapons without being willing to use them.”
I thought about it. “The risk is setting him up at the right time and giving him time to marinate in our brand of chaotic shit. Too early and he dies before he’s gotten his minions fully trained and drilled, which is what we want him for. Too late and his martyrdom creates a spinoff force that isn’t under our control. Timing is going to be key.” I couldn’t deny Lash’s argument though - Gray was probably capable of giving a 30 minute lecture, on demand, about how the 2nd Amendment was the most important one in protecting us from government overreach.
Bishop took a breath. “Alright. So. Speaking of using him. You told him to wind up his minions in the megachurches to be worried about the deep state. Did you have a particular target in mind for the SWATing?”
I froze. “I had a few, some pastors who keep making news, ones I…figured ought to get some pain before things were out.”
Lash didn’t even seem to hesitate, which I hope made Bishop rethink his comment about her pacifism. “That crazy one down in Florida, the one that protests the funerals of veterans. Most gun lovers are either vets, vet-adjacent, or wannabes, right? Low fruit, easy pickings.”
“I was skewing towards that guy in Tennessee who keeps making news for really uniquely fucked up takes about what should be done with queer people, since there’s a lot of wannabe vets and gun nuts afraid of the ‘deep state brainwashing their kids’ in that congregation. No harm in going with both.”
Bishop blinked and stroked his beard. “You two have some grudges, I see. Love the readiness, though.” He pointed at Lash directly. “I did expect you to at least need to think about it, love.”
She shrugged. “Being pragmatic and being a pacifist aren’t the same thing, Bishop. And what is it, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few? Fewer hateful adults, fewer fearful kids.”
I was busy staring, open mouthed, at Lash, and feeling incredibly happy she and I were together.
He rubbed his temples. “You two are…I can’t say if you’re bad for each other or good for each other. Ever since you’ve gotten together, both of you have been more focused, more disciplined, come up with better ideas. But you’ve been more ruthless, Nils has been more self-destructive, and I don’t know where it’s going. I suspect I want to be there to see.”
“Nils is eating three meals a day,” Lash pointed out. “And 85% of my parents are barely out of the hospital… last time we relaxed, Baba lost a leg and Mama lost the lobe of one lung. You know how I feel about my family.”
“Yeah, I do.” Bishop took a breath. “Sorry.” He walked towards me and then whispered, “And you? You’re eating, but the medication…”
“It’s under control.” I said, quietly. I actually hadn’t double-dosed on my adderall in weeks. “Honestly better than it’s been in years.”
Bishop made a ‘hm’ sound. “My apologies. Maybe I was just rattled.” He looked like he wanted to say more, and then simply said, “I’m going to grab us some coffees.”
I turned to Lash. “What do you think that was about?”
“All I’m going to say is, I didn’t know he thought I was a pacifist.”
“Easy mistake to make, in this business: you place a high value on human life.” I squeezed her hand. “Bishop just makes the really common mistake of conflating kindness and mercy for weakness.”
“Him, we keep,” she squeezed back. “The more people to rein us in if needed, the better. Which reminds me… I think I need to tell Mori something. I don’t want my entire family left wondering if something happens to me, and Mori I at least trust to not tell Mama or Baba anything until she has to.”
Totally lost track of what day it was, this should have been posted yesterday.
There is a huge Easter Egg in here, and I can't wait for the reveal and payoff on it. @baelpenrose and I had a blast with this and the next chapter, just because of that little detail.
“Any updates from the mayor?” I asked, praying that the translation software would pick the right honorific for the person I was speaking to. After what happened in the church last week, I had buried my head - intentionally - in my water initiatives. Specifically the ones that I typically couldn’t work with if I was multitasking, due to language barriers.
Again, I was deliberately burying my head in work. It wasn’t anything I was clueless to.
“The mayor did not respond,” Ayanti responded. Which basically translated to ‘ask forgiveness rather than beg permission’.
“I’ll take it,” I responded as my phone vibrated. Nils.
I ignored it.
“How far can we push this?” I asked Ayanti. “If we are under tacit permission, assuming we don’t make him look bad?”
She hummed musically. “As far as you have resources, or until his borders run out.”
Immediately, I started tapping keys on a different machine, transferring funds. “Whole village, got it. Four hectares?”
“Three point five.”
“I’ll send enough for five.”
My phone went off again. Nils, again. Ignored. Again.
Laser focus on the issue at hand. “Were you able to see the file about the straws?” I asked.
“Are they ready for consumer?”
I paused and sighed audibly. Ayanti and I had worked together long enough that I refused to lie to her about things that were life or death to her. “They are in testing. Not ready for consumer release.”
“Can you get us four kay?”
My head snapped up to scowl at my monitor, despite the fact this was a fully voice call. “Four thousand? Ayanti. How bad is the water situation? Please don’t lie to me… we don’t lie to each other, right?”
The line fell silent for a moment and I took the time to set up the transactions for both the water filters and the straws. Legit filters were coming from the Gates Foundation through WHO and direct shipped to Daravi as a “charitable act” - no matter how large the company, good press and tax writeoffs almost guaranteed they’d never be reported. Plus they came with a steep discount, ordered by a paper-legit company with about ten shells behind it. So, about as legit as any other charity, really.
I fired off the filters on one machine and paid for them from the other. However, I held off on firing off the order for the straws. This would need some finagling, given that they were still in the testing phase. A couple labs, some money to grease palms. But it was blatant bribery, so I wanted to be sure before I pulled the trigger and sent down the labs involved.
I heard the line unmute just long enough to catch Ayanti taking a deep breath and sighing.
After a glance at a calender and some mental math, I grunted. “Yanti. Is this for monsoon season?”
She grunted wordlessly, but definitely in an affirmative. Someone could hear her, and she didn’t want to give away what she was doing. Which told me she was supposed to be mining for MMORPG gold, and this was therefore slacking off.
“I’ll contact them and have all the prototypes sent over. And any other company working on similar things,” I promised. “I’ll reach out when I have the exact quantity, but it should be far above four kay.”
“Deal.” With that, she disconnected.
Palming my face and rubbing it roughly, I vibrated with contained violence. Ayanti was in Mumbai, in the slums, and working from an internet cafe. I had no way of beating the breaks off her supervisor - most likely the owner of the cafe. So I needed to focus on what I could do.
Nine children, you could have stopped it.
I screamed in my head how hard I had tried. Begged Nils and Gray to send orders to fire higher. I tried.
A fist was shoved in my mouth. My left hand, trying to keep from screaming where Mama or Baba could hear me. I did what I could, I screamed in my brain. Digging my nails into my palms, I slapped a hand on my desktop. It forced me to bring my eyes to the monitor.
Four thousand prototype filter straws. Plus the legit water filters.
“Water filters first,” I mumbled, typing even as I dragged myself from my knees to the chair.
My phone went off again. I didn’t even look at this point. I just silenced it without a glance.
The email for the legit filters was easiest. It was the coding to get the prototypes to be shipped that took the longest. But, an hour later, I sat back with a sheen of satisfying sweat and surety that not four thousand but twelve thousand would be sent to Mumbai. It was only then that I glanced at my phone again.
More Nils.
I wasn’t necessarily avoiding him. At least not by design. I was sure it looked like I was avoiding him as I tried to claw back some concept of saving people. But I didn’t know how many the filters and straws would save, so I started stabbing code into the machine to transfer funds to medical research.
At some point, I threw my phone across the room. And still I stabbed at my keyboard, with such urgency that I had to hot-swap after a time that only could be described as ‘a haze’.
“ELAKSHI!” Mama’s voice broke in some time later. “Open this door RIGHT NOW, or I will take a hammer to it.”
“Mama, I’m working!” I shouted over my shoulder.
“You have been so-called-working for three days! Nils has called the house to confirm you are alive, and I need help with Baba.”
I groaned and stretched my neck. “I’m walking toward the door!” I shouted.
I did, too. I opened the door to see Mama staring at me in what could only be accusation.
“You stink, you look exhausted, and you clearly need food,” she scolded before walking away. It was only then that I realized that she had the phone receiver to her ear.
“WAIT!” I cried. “Is that Nils or Mori???”
“Whichever one makes you more guilty. Bathe and think on it, and I might tell you.”
Did I smell that bad? I sniffed my arm and nearly vomited. Okay, fair.
An hour later, I emerged, drying my hair and completely clean. “Check it out, I still know how to bathe!”
Mama was not impressed, at all. She sniffed. “You stink less. Sit. Eat.”
“Mama…”
“Nils and Mori called while you were ignoring the world,” she interjected. “And I know you did not eat for three days, because I know how many days you ignored me knocking on your door. And your phone.”
“It was important,” I insisted, only to be levelled with a dark-eyed glare.
“If it is so important, you need to be alive to carry it forward. Which means you need to care for yourself,” she scowled. The plate hit the table with a force that I was shocked to see broke neither table nor plate. “Eat. Give me your phone.”
“Mama -”
“Elakshi, I will sever power to this entire building if you do not give me your phone at this second and eat.”
My arm extended stiffly, palm flat, phone offered up like a mango.
She swiped it. “Better. Eat. I will tell Katherine and Nils that you are alive.”
“Katherine!???” I shouted. “Why Katherine!?”
“She called me, personally, asking.”
I shoved my spoon into the food before me. “Goddammit,” I muttered. “Mothers, always meddling.”
“If our children behaved like adults, we would not need to ‘meddle’ as you say,” Mama pitched over her shoulder in a mocking tone. “And I certainly would not need to threaten my youngest if she could only take care of herself like the woman she is and not the child she once was.”
Low blow. “I’m eating, I’m eating,” I conceded, stuffing bland food in my mouth and pointing at it emphatically.
Bringing a plate of her own and setting it down with significantly more care than she had practically thrown mine with, she sat straight and asked in her most prim tone. “And what part of the world are we saving today?”
“Clean water,” I answered. “Charity work. Monsoons are coming, so they need better resources.”
Mama nodded crisply. “This is a good work. And what part does Nils play in it?”
I stopped mid-bite in confusion. “Nils? He doesn’t have any part in this. It’s one of my independent projects.”
She shook her head and chuckled. “Katherine knew quite a lot for something that doesn’t involve her son.”
“How often do the two of you talk?” I asked in bewilderment. The confusion was enough to almost completely silence the voices tormenting me. Almost.
“Twice a week,” she nodded, taking another bite of food and gesturing for me to do the same. “Our children went through the same traumatic experience.”
“You went through the same traumatic experience, and then some.”
“Pah.” She waved the notion away. “Mothers worry, and we worry best together. Now eat and then either call your young man back, or tell me why you won’t.”
The horror at what we had done mixed sourly with the idea of talking to my mother about relationship issues. “I will message him after I eat,” I promised meekly, choosing the lesser of the two options.
Nils and Lash make up and make plans. For the record, I was SO HAPPY when Light told me what the theme of the Met Gala had been that year. I had wanted to work Paradise Lost jokes into this story so badly and that just lined it up so, so well. Co-written, obviously, by @canyouhearthelight
Nils
I woke up with arms full of Lash, feeling good for the first time in weeks. I was back, motherfucker. My girlfriend and I were working together, Weasel was on his way out, the fibbies were going to be gone soon, and we had ideas for our next step - global event.
At some point I was going to want a major publicity stunt to draw attention to the cause and grab up more followers, but that was further out than we needed to plan for just yet - something to put a pin in.
World cup had potential, for global, for America, maybe the Superbowl? World Series Baseball? I pondered as I fried eggs for me and Lash, and put on the tea. I set on some music as I worked, something quiet and slightly funky.
“Hey, babe, so…” I twitched slightly to the music. “How’s your sister holding up, by the way? And…should we start planning on ‘put Gray down’ contingencies now, or do you want to hold that for later?”
She detangled a part of her hair with her fingers with a thoughtful look on her face. “I think we still need him for expansion and rallying the troops here, at least through… Super Bowl and Oscars? That’s January and March.”
“Let’s start there then. Thoughts on publicity stunt to grab up more followers? Maybe in line with Met Gala next year? Perfect time for it, the sickening display of American capitalist decadence, thrown in the face of the desperate - and we can interrupt it with an easy logo, PFP, announcement of what we’re up to and about if we’ve gotten enough momentum going, a plea for people to join us. By then we’ll have the momentum that people will be afraid, wondering what’s going on. Swap that fear for anger at those in charge, something to believe in, and that’s one hell of an explosive mix.”
She stopped fussing with her hair and grinned in what I could only think of as a predatory way. “Oh, did you see the theme? Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination.”
“What a beautiful accident.” My mind was already whirring. “Do you have feelings on Paradise Lost?”
“As our theme, or the work?”
“I mean, we’re crashing a Catholic-themed Met Gala. I’m a scion of the white American upper class very much bringing about their doom. Can you think of a better theme?”
“I like it. Let’s do it.”
I paused. “You want to crash the party and then broadcast from inside with a recorded signal when we do it? Leave before the signal starts?”
She snorted. “Clearly someone doesn’t follow the Gala… The event has more security in the week leading up to and during than the White House at any point in time excluding 9/11. It’s literally the A-list of the A-list in Hollywood and fashion. Crashing isn’t an option, especially if we plan to live through this. Hosting a warehouse Masquerade and using it as cover to broadcast the signal? More doable. Especially if we leave that before the signal kicks off.”
I debated telling Lash that anyone at said Masquerade was almost definitely going to get arrested when the cops traced the signal, so we couldn’t invite any of our actually trusted lieutenants - then realized that that would be a delightful way to get rid of Gray, actually. Bring him, a few of his gun bros, a few of the weird, flaky chicks who’d started following us online who seemed too unstable to actually be helpful…
“Sounds like a plan.”
“Worst case scenario,” she waved vaguely, “cops show up over a broadcast hijacking, most people get out in the scramble, anyone who gets caught literally has no fucking clue what we did, they showed up for a rave. Maybe some light possession charges.”
Or we could do that. That seemed smarter. Of course getting rid of Gray wouldn’t be that easy, I cursed myself.
“Okay. So. We have a plan to get attention, raise the profile, and do some quick attacks during high profile events. I like where we’re going. We’ll have the FBI back on us after we use up Weasel, but by the time that’s done, we’ll have enough fires on enough fronts that they’ll be playing catch up.” I thought about it. “There’s probably? Something to be done with that League tournament in Korea, but I don’t know how to make that more annoying to rich people than to random gamers - data strangles on banking, maybe? Data flow is already going to be weird, there. We can always move it around more, have it blamed on the tournament.”
“Or attack something wholly unrelated, since no one will be looking at it,” she pointed out. “Like with the Super Bowl - we aren’t going after the NFL, we’d go after…. I don’t know, stupid charges slapped disproportionately against minorities or something. World Cup? Global stock market, something along those lines. Just spitballing.”
“Point. Ideally, have multiple things going. Diversions, too. There’s always more police presence around sports events, so if we can cause riots around them to pressure cops it won’t hurt us. At some point, this thing does need to allow allies of ours to either carve out autonomous zones or seize power.”
For what seemed to be a lack of anywhere better to drum her fingers, Lash drummed hers against her chin. “Spin up those who want violence to riot outside, while we attack something completely unrelated but more important? That’s what you’re saying?”
“Yep. Keep Interpol’s eyes on the agitators behind the riots, ideally - try to keep that on Gray’s side of the show. Skulls for the Skull Collector, and Gray for Interpol, since the FBI probably aren’t going to cut it with him. He destabilizes hostile forces, we get a free hand to tear open the IMF while Interpol isn’t looking.” I was already thinking about it, trying to figure out the scale of the forces involved, the institutions that would be clashing. Interpol and local law enforcement often collided over jurisdictional crap, so that would be one angle where we’d get a smokescreen, be allowed to run the game out longer. “And if it keeps Gray too busy to stab us in the back til we can Order 66 him…”
Rather than balking, Lash leaned into the idea. “Who is our current time-delay specialist? We can’t have these connected if we want to use this model - Stochastic, that’s the term you like, right? We need someone to make it look random, like an attack of advantage rather than coordinated efforts.”
“At some point, someone is going to be able to piece it together if they aren’t totally braindead,” I said, mulling over her point, “I mean, financial attacks at multiple major spectator events, with riots that draw local law enforcement? That’s a pattern after a while. But yeah, longer we can draw them off thinking it's stochastic or a chain of copycats rather than a singular entity, the better. Currently our smartest guy for timing is Bishop, but he knows some other people who might know law enforcement analysis or event timing better than we do - I’ll poke him.” I rubbed my temples, still thinking. “Once they do determine it’s a singular entity, and start targeting Gray, we need to at least think about claiming responsibility for the attacks for the credibility. Yeah, raise our profile and draw all sorts of attention we don’t want, but it’ll also draw more people to our cause in ways that…I mean, not the happiest comparison, but those ISIL dipshits were literally crucifying people and they made it work with a little media manipulation and some branding. We can definitely do it.”
“I’ll be honest, part of me feels like you aren’t seeing the big picture I’m pitching,” Lash confessed, scraping the last of her breakfast into her mouth. “I’m thinking varied delays or even lead times to the physical riots, with what seem to be unrelated attacks from the online perspective. Super Bowl riot, same time hit something. Oscars, a week before or after hit something that seems unrelated. League of Legends Worlds, hit something EssKay centric that doesn’t even matter to the U.S, maybe next day, doesn’t matter. Does that make sense?”
I slapped myself. “Yeah. okay…That…” I shook my head, trying to clear it. God. Damn. Had to lay off the drugs. I was tempted to grab an Adderall to feel a little less stupid but I knew if I did I’d be stuck back like this a few days later. “Yeah. That makes perfect sense. Though the advantage of the events as diversions only lasts if we hit while they’re on…” I bit my tongue. “We’ll talk to Bishop and whoever he can dig up, but you’re absolutely right, that’s something to think about. Getting too much attention too fast fucks us over.”
I paused. “Wait. Lead-in or followups, totally unrelated to the initial attacks, do different attacks in different styles. Convince them that everything is being done by different groups, each copying each other. Lead-ins and follow ups can be ‘sloppy’ insofar as they can be low-value targets more meant to cause chaos than actually accomplish anything. Roll a d20 or other nerd dice for number of days before or after strike, coin flip for whether it’s before or after? Convince them that there’s even more random crap happening? At some point people are gonna join in.”
She winked and shot me finger-guns. “Now we’re in the same book. Love the randomizing concept, won’t lie. Nothing they can create a pattern from, since there literally isn’t one. It’s just chance. And the more unrelated the causes seem, the harder it will be to connect them…. Especially if we cultivate imitators, right?”
“Yeah. I have concerns if our imitators start going off on tears and try hitting the same targets we do, but…” I trailed off. “Honestly as long as we don’t trip over them it shouldn’t be a huge problem, and if they get intercepted they can work as a diversion.” Wait, no that was dumb as fuck. We’d have to keep an eye out for imitators as we went. I realized that as soon as it was out of my mouth, cyberspace didn’t work like meatspace, everyone was everywhere all at once if you were doing the same thing. “No, wait, -”
“No, it’s good,” Lash confessed, snagging my plate as she headed towards the kitchen sink. “I hate it, but if we’re willing to throw right wing chucklefucks under the bus, we have to be willing to let the people who don’t coordinate reap the whirlwind.” She held a hand to her chest, carefully placing the dishes in the sink while clearly taking several deep breaths. “I want to vomit from saying that, but if I do, I’ll never get past the hard truth.”
“Focus on the fact that we have no better choices. That this chess game started before we were ever born, and the role in history we were born into was either being blind to it or to try to win.” I said, hoping I was failing to achieve my usual level of eloquence because that also sounded dumber than shit. I could do better than that normally, right?
Holding one last breath, she nodded. “This has to be done. And there are going to be people who think they are doing the right thing - and some might be right - but like those guys who got shot at the bank, stupid games, right?” She suddenly started doing deep breaths again.
“Stupid games, stupid prizes. And if we win, they win the prize that their kids don’t have to do this. Get to live in a better world than the one we’re in.”
That seemed to steady her. “Clean water. Less scarcity. Fewer diseases.” She nodded firmly before repeating. “Less scarcity. I know they say money is the root of all evil, but that’s because scarcity is the true evil.”
“Lack of racists with a monopoly on violence. Probably fewer racists. In general.” I added. “We’re doing a good thing. We’re solving problems. We’re just doing it in…unusual ways. Ways that wouldn’t be necessary if everything awful hadn’t been entrenched for centuries.” It sounded true when I said it, and I wasn’t even on triple my recommended dose of stimulants. That was probably a good sign.
She tucked herself back into the corner of my couch that she seemed to prefer, a careful positioning that never failed to fascinate me in its precision. “Redistribution of wealth is on the agenda, just to confirm we’re on the same page? I know we are, but I like hearing it out loud every now and then.”
“That is very much the goal. Giant universities. Free entry. Libraries. Free healthcare.” I smirked as I cuddled into her. “Men’s fashion that isn’t so fucking depressing. A rule on the books that says if you burn a book you go on the fire after it.”
“Unless it’s indoctrination about Dianetics?” she pleaded, grinning and tugging on my hair.
“No, that gets shelved next to the works of HP Lovecraft like everything else about Cthulhu. Obviously. Every extant copy gets big, bold stamping that says “fiction.” That’s much, much funnier. We still ban all the insane bullshit religious people do to their kids in the name of god though. No more marrying as children, genital snipping, beating for being gay, leaving them alone with priests who interrogate them about sexual sins. All that shit goes away.” I paused. “Offhand, are we actually planning on ruling the world? Like, I get the whole aesthetic, but I have…no interest in actually getting a crown on.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Ewwwww… ruling the world sounds like a ton of work. No thank you. Can we delegate it?”
“So we get to look cool, take over the world, then hand it to someone else. Love that.” I leaned in. “I am so happy we found each other.”
Petting my hair, she leaned over to kiss my forehead. “Me too. Fix the world, find someone to keep it on keel with the knowledge we can take them out of power, vanish to do boring shit and have sex until we die. Love the idea.”
“Boring…Yeah.” I trailed off, eyes wandering. “Hey. After I message Bishop, is there some of that ‘boring’ stuff you’d like to try?”
She abruptly stood up - fair enough given that I’d dropped her on the rug earlier - and walked towards the bedroom, dusky hands grabbing the back of her shirt collar. “I’ll be in here, don’t be long with Bishop.” Even as she said it, the hem of her borrowed shirt showed more and more of her underwear.
Yeah. If that wasn’t proof I needed to hire a time management guy so I could spend less time crunching logistics…
“Bishop. Do you have anyone you know who knows something about…event planning, spacing, and time management who’d like to work on our project? Who would also be a good fit?”
I sent the text, knowing it’d be a bit before Bishop got back to me - he worked during the week. I casually stood up and headed back to the bedroom.
Lash makes a deal with the devil, and sets up the dynamic of Lash and Nils' interactions going forward.
Thanks, as always, to @baelpenrose, for co-writing and beta reading this chapter.
I stood at the mouth of the river
Stared way down into the deep
Then I threw my sin and the devil within
And I never got no relief
Toby Lightman, “Long Hard Day’
Lash
“Again, I don’t have access to anything that could be considered a weapon.” I pounded into the keyboard. I was angry, but not with my contact. Instead, it was with myself: I could send water, vaccines, medical aid… hell, clothes and shelter materials nearly anywhere through a million proxies and some mostly not shady means. But it was, quite literally, a bandaid on a bullet wound. None of it helped refugees from a civil war - this one in Syria - avoid being shot or even just shoot back.
“The dead cannot eat, habibi.”
I groaned and slammed my head on my desk. Nils’ voice echoed in my head, reminding me that I would eventually have to do some really shady shit if we wanted to change the world. He doesn’t have access to arms, either, I reminded myself. His brand of anarchy was targeted more at redeeming himself, balancing some karmic ledger and not getting caught. And gun-running was a pretty big ‘fuck around and find out’ on the scale of things that could be caught.
“The money for papers and travel will be there by the end of the day. My day. The rest will be at your destination.” I sent back futilely before closing the window.
What I needed was a distraction. Anger sounded like a fine proxy for how I felt, so I started checking on the forums Grey was trolling. Nice, safe target: someone I didn’t like doing heinous shit. I could be angry in peace.
And, blessings upon him, he was delivering in spades. Winding up an army and spinning it off to do its job with ruthless efficiency. I could envision him adjusting his fedora and cackling at how easy this seemed to be - given the fact that he was on six forums at once and had all of them angry as hell, it had to be easy for him, at least. It was at least distracting me, even if I wanted to laugh and get popcorn instead of being angry. I even considered taking notes, given that I was watching him manipulate neo-Nazis into working with people of color against “Big Government”.
That’s when a comment made my eyes nearly fall out of my head.
“I can get you 15k seeds and ten shovels. Is that enough?”
No. Fucking. Way. Nofuckingway did…
“20k seeds. We have a lot of gardening to do.”
“Let me see what I can do. 15k guaranteed.”
Gray… My luck was not good enough that the solution to what I was just working on fell into my lap. While my first impulse was to reach out to Gray directly, I forced myself to calm down and do my homework. Digging through the forums I knew Gray to use, I saw similar interactions on all of them at various points. Gardening, home improvement… although what the hell someone needed five augurs for, I was clueless.
Did Nils even know? He had to, right? I sat on it, biting my thumbnail. There was no version of reality I could imagine that left Nils or Bishop unaware of this. More than likely, they hadn’t mentioned it to me just on general principle. I already knew that Nils had a mental image of me that was more….delicate than reality.
I was on autopilot at this point, tapping my chin and wandering into the kitchen to make a sandwich while I considered my approach. Gray had already confirmed he knew my family was from overseas, and he assumed I had connections outside of the country. I did, but it wasn’t through family like he assumed. Halfway through the sandwich, I pulled out my cell - Mama was very strict about food in the bedrooms causing pests, so the computer was off limits until I was done eating. But Gray couldn’t hear me chewing via text communication, so it didn’t matter.
I need to talk to you about gardening. Short, sweet, directly to the point.
The last bite of the sandwich was being chewed when the response came. You never struck me as the gardening type.
You struck me as more of a hunter.
Leave the manosphere morons to get scurvy. Every man should have a variety of skills. But what kind of crops are you looking to grow? And where?
I hesitated. This was getting a bit out of my ability to keep up with the code…. If I used something that grew in the region, would he know what I was implying? Or at least would it tip him off that I need a more secure method of communication? I decided to risk it. Worst case, he would roast the hell out of my ineptitude.
Cotton and lentils.
Those have a few substrains - did your seeds come from the Levant, or..?
I sighed in relief. Definitely Levantine.
That gives me a lot of options. Connect with me a bit later for specifics - pickup of those can be tricky, especially with some of the supply chain issues I’ve been having lately.
Biting my thumb again, I decided to go for broke. That works. I may be able to solve the supply chain issues on my end. It wasn’t exactly a secret I had shipping connections, but I needed to make sure Gray didn’t have overlapping ones that were being held up due to the unrest in the region. Just let me know what time works for you. You know how to get a hold of me.
“Understood. I have a few more shipments to manage. Call in an hour. Have a proxy by then.”
I rushed as quietly as possible back to my room to start setting things up. Keeping proxies set up was a mark of professionalism, but I didn’t want any of mine to be touched by this. Which meant I needed one that couldn’t be tied back to me and burned in a moment’s notice - one time use, only. A part of me I wasn’t proud of was exhilarated at the challenge, no easier to ignore when I managed to get everything set up with time to spare.
Taking time to refill my water bottle, I did some breathing exercises until three minutes before. Using a new account, I shot a DM on one of Gray’s favorite forums with the information for the proxy and waited. At exactly three minutes after the hour mark, Gray joined. I nodded, impressed, even knowing he couldn’t see me.
“Alright. Team building time, I suppose. I didn’t think you had it in you. Just so we’re clear. You want certain hardware delivered to people in the Levant, correct?”
“To the… less well-off in the area, yes. You know me, always about a charitable cause.” I tried to joke but even I knew it fell flat.
“Just so we’re clear. Even my contacts won’t touch certain groups in Lebanon, regardless of how you feel about certain countries, so if you have any relatives in a certain…contested zone, this isn’t going to be helpful. If this is a humanitarian effort for avoiding…certain Russian-induced famines…”
“It’s famine relief,” I assured. “I’m well aware of the Lebanon situation, I can’t even get medical supplies in there.” Not that I wasn’t trying, but everything was being intercepted and confiscated or destroyed. No exceptions. “And no, I’m not suggesting we use medical shipments to smuggle things in. I would like to avoid committing actual war crimes for as long as possible. I have some contacts in the area for getting in less essential items.”
“No, but building materials for shelters would be the place to smuggle them in. Not a war crime, and impossible to screen anywhere near as hard. Other groups are already going to start screening them soon, so we’re not doing new damage. There’s a lot I can do for small arms, and believe it or not I can get a few outdated heavy weapons through some of my old ex-mil contacts. And fertilizer, of course, for actual gardening. Or…you know.”
“What if I told you that two tonnes of building material will be arriving in the area I need it to get to within fourteen days? Both FEMA emergency shells and basic materials like nails, screws, and corrugated steel.” Not all at once, but it would all be there within the next two weeks, one way or another.
He let out a whistle. “I can get a lot in there - munitions mostly. Guns will be masked by the other metal there…yeah. Let me see what I can dig up to get in there. I probably can’t do heavy gear in that time. What’s the passage for that stuff? I may be able to intercept the packages and get them…a little heavier.”
And there was the challenge. “Iran to Iraq, Turkey, Jordan, and Haifa. Twenty seven shipments total, all mixed.”
Gray cursed. “That is…Hm. Where in Turkey, where in Iraq, and where in Jordan?”
“Beirut in Jordan, Isikli in Turkey. I know the latter is unconventional, but fishing boats. They tend to be heavy, stink like hell, and basically untouchable.”
“That works. Alright, I have contacts in Beirut, and the ones I have in Turkey can get to Isikli. I don’t love it, but there’s usually work to do there for them. You and Nihilus will pick up the check, I take it? These men don’t work for free, and while I’m happy to pay for the things stateside, the kind of order you’re placing, is, at a guess, beyond my means to pay them for. Oh, and…final question. Where in…Syria, at a guess? Are you wanting this dropped off.”
“If you can get the arms into the shipments, they’ll arrive,” I assured, refusing to give any more information than necessary. “And yes, I’ll be footing the bill, don’t worry. Whatever your expenses are, plus fifteen, I’m assuming?”
“That works. It’s a pleasure doing business with your team as always.” He sounded clipped, as though he’d thought about asking a question then decided against it.
“Once you confirm the shipment, I’ll set up a new proxy for payment details. Don’t bother using this one again, it won’t exist after this.”
“I expected nothing less. And glad to see you coming around the reality of revolution.”
Annnnd there it was. “I’m more aware of the reality of this than you will ever realize, you purulent - “ I cut myself out, gritting my teeth. We had a common cause. I needed him for this. Be nice. “There was nothing to come around to,” I finished lamely.
He laughed. “Of course. Then again, at some point, I’ll need your connections for delivering some humanitarian aid. Barbarian virtues are good, but you seem better situated to help supply the materials for the civilized ones. I doubt I’ll have anyone else to talk to by then, either. Nihilus picked well - must have known this alliance would force us both more on his track to get what we wanted.”
I terminated the proxy, furious. I’d managed to get through nearly an entire transaction with Gray and keep a civilized tongue in my head, only for him to set me off like dynamite at the end. “Barbarian virtues”, “civilized ones”... It took several minutes of reminding myself that we were on the same side to calm myself down. Veiled terms, enough that I would be at fault if I got angry. Gaslighting, textbook.
The munitions would get there, wrapped in enough building supplies that my contact would know who sent it. That was the important part. I under-promised and over-delivered, which was pretty insane on the scale I tended to make promises with. And Gray seemed at least competent enough to not risk the shipments going through Iraq.
I hadn’t even bothered telling him about the ones going through Lebanon. He’d been pretty clear on that, and I genuinely didn’t want him realizing that I had a network that could get goods leaving a war zone as effectively as it could get goods into them. Besides, they amounted to a pittance, smuggled on foot and used as barter for those leaving. The last thing they needed was to be caught with weapons.
Setting a reminder for the next fourteen days to avoid reaching out to my contact - plausible deniability was a wonderful thing - I changed into pajamas and tried to calm my mind. I would message Nils in the morning, and in no way shape or form was it to remind myself that Nils wasn’t playing us off each other.
By the time I fell asleep, I almost even believed it.
Wonder if anyone has figured out who 'Ayanti' is. Hmmmm....
Also, don't forget to keep an eye on Lash and Nils' dynamic, like @baelpenrose mentioned in the previous chapter. Huge thanks to him for helping with this chapter!
They said, "All teenagers scare the livin' shit out of me"
They could care less as long as someone'll bleed
So darken your clothes, or strike a violent pose
Maybe they'll leave you alone, but not me
"Teenagers", My Chemical Romance
Lash
Food finally settled and parents/surrogate family mollified, I took my cell out, plugged it into a charger, crammed my most comfortable earbuds in, and called Nils. Exactly zero part of me thought this would be an easy call, but at least if I was in my bedroom I would have to moderate my tone. The first call went to voicemail, but I was interrupted in my message by a call coming through.
“Ignore the empty voicemail,” I answered, my stomach in knots. “I called, it went to - “
“I was on the phone,” he cut me off, curt but cheery. It was bizarre, unnatural.
“That makes sense. And… I’m sorry for not responding for so long. I was working, honestly.”
“Same, oddly. Once I got over the dread, I reached out to some contacts in India and Central America, tried to do some good. How’re you holding up?” His voice was tense, but oddly light.
“Essentially the same,” I admitted. “I’ve probably done more charity work in the last three days than I have in the last three years. Let’s hear it for effective self-flagellation, yeah?” I chuckled. “But people in hot spots now have cleaner water than they ever would have otherwise, plus vaccines they probably would still be waiting on while they die, so hey! Net neutral to killing kids….” I ground my teeth, which I was pretty sure he could hear. “I hope so, at least.”
“Yep, and a lot of necessities for an innocent little orphanage in a truly unstable part of El Salvador, some water filters in a slum in Mumbai, and a few crates of cholera vaccines, I think we managed to save more people than we’ve hurt. Offset. If it works for the wealthy it works for us. We just keep doing this.” He took an audible breath. “Funny story though, there’s some smart, determined teenager, made some good arguments, says she wants to meet the Phoenix Queen, figured out that ANothing49BCE and Nihilus Rex were the same guy. Not too hard when she’s super smart and they have the same typing style, and the same pfp, even if Nihilus tends to be much more grandiose.” His voice hardened slightly, though at what I couldn’t tell. “I told her I’d need to discuss it with you, when she asked if she wanted to join up. I told her no at first, but she did point out that she’s being forced into adult working hours by the system, so she thinks she should get adult agency to throw her lot in with people trying to overthrow it.”
“Ugh,” I grunted. “Let me guess, this person is in an impoverished country and does some kind of child labor that doesn’t hit the radar? It’s a thing.”
“MMORPG gold farming, yeah. I’d put money down that she’s also one of those marketing video splicers, the ones that just…churn out viral content for shows that always seem to have too much fan content to keep the conversation and hype around them up? Yeah, that’s a thing that third world teenagers get hired to do too…I gave her some load lightening bots for the first thing, can’t do shit on the second, especially since she won’t say either way.”
I drummed my fingers on my knee. “That was prudent,” I admitted. “Even just a good keybinder lets five people take turns farming rather than grinding all at once.” Humming, I thought to myself about the deliveries I had promised to Ayanti less than twenty-four hours ago. “I may need to get this person connected to my contact in Daravi… There’s a girl in the slums who is doing great shit, honestly. And they sound like they have a lot in common. So yeah. Put me in touch with this person. As soon as possible, preferably - monsoon season is coming in the next couple weeks, and that shit is hella unpredictable.”
“Except the cholera it brings with it. That’s very predictable, which is why my contact was real clear she wanted crates of vaccines for that specifically. I got a few thousand doses distributed in Daravi for her - they share a slum, not that that says much in a place that big. Unfortunately that’s all I could get shipped without getting some real uncomfortable questions asked by the contractors who normally supply these NGOs.” A series of taps that had to be him rapping his desk. “She’s gonna be working for another couple hours…and her boss is a real prick, I don’t speak a word of Hindi, but I can read tone well enough.”
“Nils,” I sighed. “I’m not stupid. I literally just told you I had a contact in Daravi, who I was speaking to maybe an hour before I called you. Yes. Vaccines, water purification out the ass, all that. Literally why I want these two in contact. Local networks are stronger, especially when they can coordinate.”
He grunted. “Right, I’m sorry. Uh…Yeah. I’ll ping her as soon as I can and get you two in contact.” I heard him shifting around on the other end. “Were you okay about…everything?”
That was when something clicked. “Okay? Hell no. But… did you really think I’ve been sitting here sobbing into my hands uselessly and giving up?” I didn’t even wait for a response. “Say no, right fucking now. Because the only other option is that I am going to choke you to death in not-a-fun-way if I ever see your pasty ass face again.”
“No.” He said bluntly. “I thought you were having a nervous breakdown, which from what I’ve seen of how you react to anxiety in general - “
“Bud, you ain't seen nothing yet,” I swore. “I’ve been grinding my fingers to the fucking bone saving people in areas we don’t have influence yet. One thousand for every one we killed. If I get close to that, I can die without regrets. So, fuck ME if I don’t answer a few texts or calls while I’m saving the goddamned world - “
“ - was going to be either working yourself to death in a fit of conscience or doing something very risky.” He finished. “I am glad you’re trying to help people. I’m glad you’re helping expand what we’re doing and helping people that are outside where we already have reach. I still worry.”
Swallowing around the lump in my throat, I forced myself to nod even if he couldn’t see it. “Yeah. I’ve been focusing on that for the last several days. And every time I stop, I see… Why did those images have to go public? The kids…” I shook myself, physically. Hair pins went flying in the privacy of my bedroom, hair snarling. “Your contact. Male or female?”
“Female.” His voice was flat, the same timbre it took on when he was trying not to think about something.
“Does she speak English, or am I translating?”
“I’ve been speaking with her directly, and as I said, I don’t speak Hindi. I believe she’s pirated a language course somewhere.”
I rolled my shoulders, because I didn’t speak Hindi, either, but there were even odds this girl spoke Punjabi. “Put her through. The Phoenix Queen would love some handmaidens, I guess.”
“That does sound like a regal thing to say.” he quipped. He keyed a call somewhere, on my phone.
“Alright, Ayanti, this is Nihilus Rex, conferencing you in with the Phoenix Queen. We talked, we are at least open to an interview with you.”
The second I heard the name ‘Ayanti’, I held my breath, praying it wasn’t the same person.
Unfortunately for what ending up being the rest of my life, the girl I had just been speaking to an hour and a half ago started pouring her guts out. “Queen. I am so glad I have an audience, I’ve been trying to get in touch with you - “
I couldn’t. I just couldn’t tolerate the charade any further. “Tū chupī kutī!” I shouted. You sneaky bitch. “Iha pāśa hai!” This is Lash!
“Oh fuck,” Ayanti swore. “Lash? Shit, I didn't know…”
“And you know now… Are you profiteering?”
“Nonononono! We are in need and I didn’t want to be a beggar….”
I muted my mic. “As angry as I am, she’s legit. I know her. I was literally messaging and talking to her while I was ignoring you.”
“And we are angry because..? This does make our lives slightly more inconvenient, but this is just the Bishop situation again. We both know the same capable person, who has worked with both of us. Unless we have reason to believe it’s a scam, and - be so real, Phoenix, we both hit pretty close to our limits of what we could throw at Dharavi and it absolutely did not manage to cover ALL of what they needed - she drew from two different wells of resources to get as much coverage as she could. A twerp after our own hearts.” His voice was mild, almost amused. “Though, hey, if we had a nickel for every time my guy and your guy turned out to be the same guy, we’d have a dime, which isn’t a lot but it is weird that it’s happened twice…”
I blinked very hard. I am still, to my death, sure that I blinked “fuck you” in morse code. “Nihlus, If she had been transparent that she needed more resources, she would have had them. It’s the hiding the actual need that I’m upset about. Ayanti literally could have just avoided the confusion and gotten all resources at once.”
Ayanti cried. “No, ma’am, I couldn’t! I…you gave me a bunch, which was great, but I’m trying to get them to - “
“AYANTI!” I shouted. “Me, Rex, it’s the same source. Just tell us what you need! We can send it, we just need a heads up so it gets there before it’s too late. We’ll figure out the rest!”
“Wait, so this is going to get flagged or it isn’t?”
No,” I assured, kindly. “I have ties in all kinds of shipping and R&D stuff. This won’t be flagged any more than anything else I’ve shipped to you. So just tell me - us - what you need, and it will get there. Let us worry about the complicated parts. We’re good at that.”
Ayanti took a shaking breath at the other end. “So…am I allowed to join with you two after all? And…what are you planning, really? What’s the plan for India?”
Nils took a breath, and I realized as he spoke he was speaking as Nihilus. “Broadly, that’s up to the Indians. But specifically? It needs to serve the Dalits before it serves anyone else.”
I muted my mic and tapped out a question to NIls. I am for it if you are. I know Ayanti, she’s more solid than Bishop.
I don’t love bringing a child into this shit. She made a good argument. And if you say she’s more solid than Bishop well, that’s quite an endorsement. He didn’t have to be in the room for me to see that sad, half-laughing, far-away smile on his face.
Babe, she’s an adult by her cultural standards, and I want to puke when I say that. But it’s true. She has two full time jobs and is supporting her family. May all the gods bless that she is unmarried.
I am well. WELL. Aware. How good the argument is. We can’t say she has responsibility but no agency. I just hate it. And I refuse to make any comment on relationships.
He activated his mic before I did. “The Phoenix Queen and I agree. You’re in. We’ll develop more assets in India as we go, and with your assistance.”
