The Ties That Blind: Chapter Five

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By Christoper Mitchell

V.

Sickle sat on the bed, cleaning Dorothy while Parchment stood staring out the window of the hotel room. It had been three hours since their contact with Ink, and Sickle had grown restless. Dismantling the shoulder mount had become a great stress relief—almost as cathartic as heavy breathing in her ear—so she sat at the edge of the bed, running a length of thin rope through the barrel to clean the rifling. It had stopped pulling oxide from the grooves hours ago, but it was something to do until they received orders. She eyed the minibar, curious if a nip was in order. 

Finally, Sickle’s phone rang. She picked up, smiling at the possibility of action. Her smile died as Ink spoke. 

“I just got word from Hammer and Anvil… Rake is dead.”

The floor fell out from underneath Sickle. “How? When?” 

“Last night.” Ink’s voice sounded tired. “Evidently, after you left the docks, a Faction goon-squad snuck in and stole the package.”

Sickle’s blood froze. The Faction had their pets back. This was not good. 

Ink continued talking, not letting the thought linger long. “We don’t know how, but they found Rake and set the ophidons loose on him.”

“Are you sure?” Sickle was careful not to say it out loud just yet. Parchment’s eyes were desperate, and Sickle didn’t like the way they made her feel. She turned away from them. “Maybe it’s—”

“A witness saw the whole thing.” Ink shut down her optimism before it could take root. “Rake managed to take two of them, but…” Ink didn’t have to tell Sickle the rest; she knew. There wouldn’t be anything left to find or identify. 

She put it from her mind. “Orders?”

“Head to the docks. Look for any signs or evidence the goons may have left behind. We’re letting Hammer and Anvil take the lead on this right now.” Ink’s tone made her think that the Detroit Enforcers hadn’t given her a choice in the matter. “Until otherwise indicated, you are to avoid contact. They are not aware you’re in the vicinity yet, so keep it that way.”

Sickle didn’t have a good feeling about this. “Shouldn’t we—”

“Avoid contact, Sickle. That’s an order.” The high cleric’s tone shifted, harsher than anything Sickle had heard from her before. “Relay this info to Parchment and call with any updates you find. Do you copy?”

“Acknowledge all.” She hung up the receiver before Sickle could suggest that Ink tell Parchment her boyfriend was dead. She tossed the phone on the bed, disliking how the device felt like a coffin nail in her hands. “Parchment, sit down…” 

Sickle relayed the information to her orator… to the only friend she had.

To the only friend she’d ever had.

 It went about as expected, and she was thankful her weapons were dismantled, because Parchment looked ready to put one to the side of her head and hunt for Rake on the other side of the Aether. Sickle was uncomfortable with the wails, with Parchment clawing at her own chest, as if to remove the dagger of grief from her heart, and find herself unable to withdraw it.

Not knowing what else to do, Sickle reached in and hugged her. It didn’t make either one of them feel any better.

Parchment shoved her away. “This is all your fault!” The woman’s eyes blazed in hate.

Sickle let out a baffled scoff. “My fault? How the hell is any of this my doing?”

“I know you felt it last night, too. Something was off with that whole mission.” She was screaming now, seething, poking Sickle in the chest with her finger, and glowing red. “Why were we there? And why am I here?”

Sickle stepped back and raised her fist instinctively, causing Parchment to wince and cover her face. Sickle felt her fingernails dig into the soft flesh of her palm, then she slowly lowered her arm. She had felt it last night. That wrongness. She wondered now if Faction eyes had been watching them the whole time they worked. How long had the lackeys waited before they broke in and stole the ophidons? How many men had died in the process?

And Parchment was still hurting. To make matters worse, there was nothing Sickle could do to fix it. Sure, she could give a fuck about anyone else in her life, but Parchment had always been there. She was the closest thing she had left to family. 

Sickle let the callous grow, let it form over her heart and wash away the pangs of… whatever it was that gnawed at her. “Okay, Parchment. I’ll take your blame. Not because it’s my fault…” she put her fingers underneath Parchment’s drooping chin, looking in her eyes. “But because I need it.” She went numb, recalling an old self she’d blocked off long ago. 

“Come on…let’s go find out what happened to Rake.”  

They retraced their steps to the warehouse district based on memory. Somehow, returning to this place felt akin to visiting a graveyard. The bustle of activity from the night before stood in stark contrast to the now muted disquiet of the scene around them. She and Parchment split up, poring over every nook and cranny of the warehouse searching for clues. In the end, they were left with more questions than answers. 

How could an entire element of Primacy agents let a contingent of Faction Lackeys get the better of them? That one agent—Zero, right?—looked hard enough to break iron, so how did—

Sickle’s mind flashed with the image of Zero’s small bow from the night before. Then, she remembered that god-awful scar along his neckline.

Not a scar…

Sickle called for Parchment, who was busy using her phone flashlight to check the corners of the warehouse. Her eyes were puffy and red as she approached; she hadn’t stopped crying since they’d found out about Rake. Sickle knew she was attached to the man, but—

Not now. She chided herself. Don’t be Sickle, be a friend.

She wasn’t used to this feeling. Sympathy made her insides wriggle and sent her inner soldier laughing at the festering weakness there. She ignored that part of her and tried to be something else for a while.

“I need your help confirming a suspicion.” Sickle shaded her eyes from the afternoon sun. It was still high in the sky—they had at least three hours or more till sunset. 

Parchment pocketed her phone and looked at Sickle with all the liveliness of a corpse. She raised her eyebrows but said nothing. Sickle took that as her cue to speak.

“There’s nothing here…nothing that indicates any signs of struggle or pursuit.” Sickle bent down, touching a set of tire marks left behind in the sand. She let her fingertips disrupt the pattern, thinking. “So, my suspicion is this: what if this wasn’t a heist at all?” 

Parchment’s eyes narrowed, not following her train of thought, so Sickle elaborated. “I don’t know if you caught it, but that commander had some gnarly scars peeking from under his shirt. With what we do, my instant thought was that he’d gotten blasted by a lackey or torn into by a shroud, but—”

She’d stood and turned away from Parchment while putting the pieces together. When she looked back, her orator’s eyes were wide, Parchment’s pallor shifting from a teary red to sickly green. Sickle caught her arms as she nearly collapsed. 

That confirmed it. Sickle and Parchment had provided the Faction with Rake’s murder weapons. Zero hadn’t been a Primacy Soldier. His scars weren’t the marks of battle…

He was a Faction elder, a scarred war machine whose ilk had once torn into Sickle’s soft flesh to twist a confession from her screaming lips. 

She shuddered involuntarily and felt the warmth of rage slowly festering within. They’d been duped by Faction mouth breathers. How the hell had this happened?

Her phone buzzed in her pocket, the sounds of the ringer reverberating from the aluminum siding around her, filling the space with the sweet voice of Patsy Cline. It was Ink. Hopefully, she would have answers.

Sickle hit the accept button and put the phone on speaker. “Talk to me.”

Ink spoke in a hushed whisper. “Don’t talk, just listen.” Sickle looked at Parchment, whose eyes were somehow growing wider with each passing second. “We’ve been compromised. Something’s happening here, but I don’t know what. This whole situation has the people at the top losing their minds, and we’ve got spikes in activity happening all the way from New York to Seattle. Shroud attacks, ursids spotted outside of their territory in the Appalachians, and worse…” Sickle heard Ink let out a long sigh; she even sounded exhausted. “So far, no one has answers on last night’s heist.”

“We think it’s an inside job, Ink.” Sickle blinked and stopped her pacing—when had that started? “We spotted marks on the commander we think were Faction elder scars.”

Ink sighed again. “This just gets better and better.” Sickle could feel the high cleric’s shoulders sagging with the weight of responsibility. “How sure are you?”

“Fairly certain.” Sickle saw Parchment nodding slowly from the corner of her eye, absently agreeing with her statement. “Parchment and I could feel something was off, but we both chalked it up to the ophidons. But looking back…yeah, this was a setup.”

“I’m going to slip away from here quietly and fall back to a safehouse nearby. Don’t contact me, I’m not even sure if they’re not already listening now. I’ll call you soon with further instructions.”

“I don’t understand, Ink.” Sickle rubbed her forehead, trying to process what was happening. “What’s going on there that has everyone’s thongs in a knot?”

Ink was silent for a few moments, then her voice came softly, almost warily. “Reports are coming in that Primacy agents have been compromised across the map. Faction plants, now maneuvering against us in the daylight…” 

Ink went silent, and it took Parchment’s grief-torn voice to keep her talking. “Please, Ink…even if it makes it worse, we need to know.”

Ink let out another long exhale, then spoke. “Hammer and Anvil have been added to the names of the compromised agents. My superiors believe they were the ones who killed Rake.”

Sickle let out a sound that sounded more like a hiccup of laughter than sheer disbelief. “The Wonder Twins? You think Hammer and Anvil of all people killed their orator?” Ink couldn’t be serious, could she?

Ink was quick with a reply. “At the very least, they may know who did. I’m sending over photos now, ones that link Anvil, at least, to a known Faction elder.”

Sickle’s phone pinged with the received attachments. She opened the first file, then swiped through the carousel of photos. Each showed Anvil with a man nearly twice his height, covered head to toe in elder scars. When her eyes fell on the face of the large man, her legs nearly fell out from underneath her.

It was him.

Her mind collapsed in on itself. She was back in those three days of hell, when she’d been under the knife of men who considered torture a form of art. 

“We’re going to have quite the pile by the time we’re done, friend.”

She violently shook away the memory of her eye being tossed onto the growing stack of pieces that had once been a part of her body. It had been skin and nails up to that point, and the elder wanted to end the day with a bang.

The last picture showed Anvil and the large man outside a bus station, embracing like soldiers who’d once shared a trench. 

Those bastards

Hammer and Anvil had changed sides.

“Orders.” Sickle embraced the roiling anger cascading through her, letting it stoke into rage until she could channel it into something more useful. 

Ink’s voice was cold, hollow. “Find and interrogate agents Hammer and Anvil. Determine their level of involvement in this case and see if they can lead you to whoever’s running this operation.”

“Their survival?” Sickle begged internally for a kill order. She’d waited a long time to put a bullet in that chucklehead Anvil’s forehead.

“Alive is preferred, Dead is acceptable.”

“Acknowledged. Out.” Sickle hung up the receiver, disappointed. She’d been hoping that death was the preferable option. “Ok, Parchment,” she dropped her phone into her pocket, then turned to fully face her orator. “How many safehouses did Rake have altogether?”

Parchment stared straight ahead, silent.

Shit. I almost forgot.

This wasn’t just some random agent who’d been killed: It had been Rake. Sickle was pretty sure that it was only a matter of months before that shithead would have proposed to her orator… a match made in mousy heaven. The thought made her vocal cords tighten for some reason… what the hell was that?

She cleared her throat. 

“Hey,” she spoke to her orator as softly as she could. It must have been good, because Parchment looked up in surprise. Sickle took her friend by both hands, which made them equally uncomfortable. But they let it happen, because, despite the discomfort, it felt right. “We’re gonna find out who did this, Parchment. I swear.” Sickle held her friend’s gaze until Parchment looked away, nodding. “But we can’t do that if we don’t work through the math. So, I need you to use that brilliant mind of yours to help me get us to the right doorstep.”

Parchment nodded again and rose to her feet. Sickle helped her keep balance as she rose, and once Parchment once again stood tall, resolute, she spoke. “He has three safehouses altogether, but two of them are within a couple of miles of here.”

“Great.” Sickle smiled a wicked smile. “Let’s head to the first one.”