Chapter 307
9:15pm. Golden Mile Plaza. Gale stood beside the door of Coco bubble tea shop, leaning against the wall. The parking lot was in front of him. At this time of the day, lots of people still came about and went as most storefronts were still open. The store beside him closed at 1am, quite late.
There was something strange in the parking lot. Most people avoided parking in the darkest parts of the lot where the light pole was burnt out. Could be just his imagination that people were avoiding that. Or maybe the two Awakened just hanging out near that dark spot weirded people out, and thosewere his targets.
He had left Kyle and Clyde to do their sting in downtown Chinatown while Rachel interrogated Bonnie in her family's prison cell. Meanwhile, he'd hunt down the ones with their actual shoes on the ground.
Pulling out his phone, he opened the group chat with Mia, Jacob, and Andrew.
[Gale: might be busy for a while. something came up.]
[Jacob: cool stuff?]
[Jacob: don't forget to record with the gopro]
[Mia: stay safe]
[Andrew: let us know if you need anything]
Gale switched to Rachel's group chat.
[Gale: Kyle, Clyde, check in once you're finished. Rachel, check in after you finish interrogating Bonnie. I'll check in once I catch Big Albert.]
[Kyle: got it]
[Clyde: understood]
[Rachel: Keep them alive, if you can.]
He pocketed the phone.
The two men in the parking lot hadn't moved. One of them was watching something on his screen, his shoulders shaking slightly. A video, probably. The other one was typing rapidly and completely focused on the messages.
Distort activated.
Light bent around Gale's body, making him invisible to anyone not actively looking for a hazy distortion in the air. He crossed the parking lot, making his feet as silent as possible.
One thing he noticed about this specific parking lot, all the cameras were pointed away from the dark spot of the lot. Coincidence? Definitely not.
The man watching the video suddenly burst out laughing. "Yo, look at this shit!"
His friend leaned over to see the screen, howling over whatever meme or clip was playing.
Gale deactivated Distort directly behind them.
Then he bumped into the one who was laughing.
The man stumbled forward, his phone nearly slipping from his grip. "What the fuck!"
His friend glanced around. "Hey, watch where you're going, assho—"
Erebus materialized into a bat.
One swing caught the friend across the temple before he could finish his sentence. His eyes rolled back, and he crumpled to the ground, unconscious before he hit the pavement.
The one laughing froze immediately.
Gale grabbed him by the collar. "Big Albert. Where is he?"
"What? Who the fuck are—"
"Big Albert. Where."
The man's free hand went to his waist, pulling out a pocket knife. "You got some balls coming up on me like this."
Gale smirked, and that's what set off the man. The blade thrust towards his stomach. In a single motion, the wrist was caught, grip tightened, and a simple twist created snapping and breaking sounds of bone.
The man's mouth opened to scream, but Gale's other hand clamped over it before any sound could escape. Muffled screams vibrated against his palm as the man thrashed, his broken wrist dangling at an angle that wasn't normal.
"Ready to talk?" Gale asked.
The man weakly nodded as tears streamed down his cheeks.
"I'm going to remove my hand. You're going to tell me your name very quietly. If you scream, if you try to run, if you do anything other than answer my questions, I snap your neck. Got it?"
Another frantic nod.
Gale lifted his hand from the man's mouth. Immediately, the man gasped for air and then watched his broken wrist dangling. It was obvious that he was suppressing his scream. Presence Between's tendrils entered the man's body, feeling for his heart rate.
"Name," Gale said.
"P-Paul," the man whispered.
"Paul. What do you know about the current drug situation?"
"I don't know anything, man. I swear to god, I don't know-"
Gale's hand moved to Paul's broken wrist and squeezed. The effect was instant, as Paul squealed and breathed heavily. Lucky for him, he managed to keep it quiet.
"Try again."
"I'm just a low level distributor!" Paul's teeth clattered. "What the fuck would I know? They tell me what to distribute and I distribute it. To me, it's just normal meth and crack. I don't know shit about the bigger picture, I swear!"
Gale loosened his grip slightly, and Paul sagged against his grip.
"Is Big Albert part of the group going after the Lion and Glory scraps?"
Paul nodded. "Yeah... Big Albert wanted a piece, you know? Just a piece. None of us wanted to take over everything. We're not stupid. We know our place."
"But?"
"But then this chinese asshole showed up." Paul whispered, volume dropping so low as his eyes darted around the darker spots of the street. "Started talking to Big Albert about opportunities. About how the power structure was changing. About how there was room for people willing to take risks."
"What's the chinese asshole's name?"
"I don't know, man. I really don't." Paul shook his head. "Last time we met him, he was wearing a surgical mask and a baseball cap. Didn't show his face to any of us lowbies. Only Big Albert knows who he really is."
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Gale suppressed his desire to tighten his fist around this idiot's wrist. This man wasn't at fault. The chinese asshole he's talking about had to be Yuxuan. Who else was Chinese other than him that's fighting for the scraps?
"Does Big Albert know more?"
"Probably. In our guild, no one's higher than Big Albert. If anyone knows who that Chinese guy really is, it's him."
"Guild name?"
"The BA Guild. That's what we call ourselves." Paul laughed weakly, then winced at the pain it caused. "Stupid name, I know. Big Albert thought it sounded cool."
The man's heart rate checks out, although it is elevated due to the broken wrist. Just another low level dealer who got caught up in something bigger that they didn't sign up for.
Normally, Gale would've cared more for these people's situations. But if what Lily said was true about the drug addicts she encountered at night and the fact that the drug itself was causing a thread of corruption, then there was something different happening.
Not bigger, different.
And the assholes distributing this needed to learn a lesson.
"Paul," Gale said. "Do you want to help me get to Big Albert?"
Paul broke eye contact with him. "Do I have a choice?"
"You have two choices. Your other arm gets broken and you get forced to tell me where Big Albert is." Gale paused. "Or we do it the easy way and you just point me in the right direction."
Paul gulped.
"Which will it be?" he asked again.
"I'll point," Paul said quickly. "I'll point, I'll point. Just... please don't break my other arm."
***
Southwest corner of St. Clair East and Warden Ave. 116 Moreau Trail.
The house sat right at the main road, a two story brick building with a small front yard overgrown with weeds, open empty cardboard boxes, and beer bottles all around. No lights were on even though its still early on in the night. The windows were dark, curtains drawn, and not a single sign of life could be seen from the outside.
Presence Between's tendrils stretched toward the house, but the moment they touched the walls, they stopped. Something was blocking them from entering. Gale focused harder, pushing his perception against the barrier, and that's when he noticed it.
Then Gale noticed the odd yellow paint that covered the entirety of the house's exterior walls. Small red markings were written at even intervals in a random pattern.
Figures, it wasn't going to be this easy.
Beside him, Paul was breathing hard. His face had gone from pale to almost grey, and sweat dripped down his forehead despite the cold winter air. Must've been from the broken wrist. Definitely not because he had been dragged along the sidewalk at the speed of a car.
"If this is a trap," Gale said, "you won't see tomorrow."
Paul shook his head frantically. "It's not a trap. Big Albert is inside. I swear to god, he's inside."
Gale felt his elevated heartbeat remain steady. No spike indicated no lie. But still, he couldn't take a chance. The fact that it was covered in a literal barrier itself was suspicious.
"Go in first," Gale said.
"What?"
"You heard me. Go in first."
"But my wrist is still broken."
"You have another hand. Use it to open the door."
Paul gulped before starting to walk towards the house. His body wobbled on one side where he had hit a bench on the way here. Once he reached the door, his left hand fumbled reaching for the keys in his right pocket. Inserting the keys into the hole, he turned them and then pushed the door open.
A hand came out of the door to grab Paul suddenly.
Not even a scream escaped Paul as the door swung shut behind him from whatever grabbed him. That's when Gale could hear the muffled noises that came from behind the piece of wood.
Meat and bone crunched. Sounds of something heavy hit a body with wet slopping sounds at each impact. For a full 10 seconds, the sound of violence did not stop. Gurgling noises could be heard.
Paul was still alive, but from what Gale just heard, probably barely.
Soon enough, the sound of a body with clothes still on could be heard being dragged deeper into the house. Heavy footsteps climbed down a creaky staircase.
Erebus materialized in Gale's hand.
He didn't bother with the door handle. One diagonal slash carved through the wood and frame, sending the ruined door crashing inward.
His nose wrinkled immediately upon stepping through the threshold.
Hoarded trash created walls as tall as Gale, stacked newspapers, garbage bags, and broken furniture forming narrow pathways through what might have once been a living room. The smell hit him immediately, rotting food and unwashed bodies. Piss and shit covered the corners of the walls. Even the mice that roamed this house laid in their own piles.
The only thing that looked to be clean was a table, cleared of debris, wiped clean. On that table were empty dust vials, dozens of them. Beside those vials, in neat stacks, were taped up bricks of some kind.
Analyze.
[Poor Quality Dust Vial]
[Description: Amplifies Ether pool output by 30% while maintaing ether resource consumption.]
[Effect duration: 24 hours]
[Located additional effect. Cannot decode. Use composition analysis to search for effect.]
Gale didn't know what those were, but if they were on a clean table that was different from all the trash around, it must be evidence.
He moved into the house silently, finding the quietest spots to step on without creaking the floor. Dust vials went to his space storage first, then the bricks came in next. About 16 empty dust vials, 3 still filled, and 24 soft bricks.
Presence Between stretched outward, trying to map the interior of the house. But the house, painted yellow in the inside too, forced him to maneuver his tendrils annoyingly through walls.
Then he saw the bloody trail on the floor, still glistening and wet. Gale followed it with his tendrils, watching it disappear through a doorway that led to the basement.
Moving towards the door, Erebus by his side, he looked down into the dark basement. The blood trail continued down the stairs, and bloody hand marks covered the wall moving down along with the trail.
Then he heard the movement. Footsteps from below moved towards the staircase. Heavy stomps.
Distort activated instantly, bending light around Gale's body. He pressed himself against a corner of a wall that relatively didn't have much trash around it.
A man walked up from the basement doorway, passing through.
A giant. Had to be at least 7 feet tall. Shoulders so broad that he had to turn sideways to fit the doorframe while also crouching down. His belly protruded from his belt, massive and full of muscle. This man was basically a bear. The name Big Albert didn't seem big enough to describe the man.
He was drooling.
Saliva dripped from the corners of his mouth, which looked to be almost foamy. His eyes were bloodshot, the pupils dilated so wide that almost no colour remained. Rashes covered his skin by his neck, and he scratched at them constantly as he moved.
Assuming this is Albert, early Resonant signature. How dangerous? Very, if he was in this kind of state.
Albert shuffled into the living room where the table of dust vials had been. He searched low, under the table, to the side of the table, and then finally he stood back up.
His fist suddenly slammed on the table, almost causing Gale to jolt from where he was. A sudden spike of his signature appeared immediately afterwards.
And then the bear moved.
Gale barely had time to react.
Albert had gone straight through the walls, tearing down the trash and the foundation of the house along with him.
Gale's knee came up as Albert crashed through the wall. The knee connected to the giant's chin, causing him to launch up to the ceiling and lodge his head into it.
Heavy. Shit. His kneecap hurt too after that impact.
Then Albert pushed himself down from the ceiling, dropping back to the ground floor. Rocks began to form around his fists to create a gauntlet.
He swung at Gale with a haymaker that was larger than his whole head.
Erebus turned into a mist then shaped back into a large sledgehammer.
The thick end of the sledgehammer met against Albert's rock gauntlets. Stone shattered on impact. Fragments flew everywhere. But Erebus' momentum kept going, shattering Albert's right hand and scattering fingers in opposite directions.
Albert opened his mouth to scream, but only air came out.
Erebus swept low, not allowing him to recover. Kneecap shattered upon impact with Erebus. Next was the left. Shattered again. Two more swings took out both elbow joints.
One push with Erebus to the chest, and the bear was down on the ground.
Presence Between's tendrils entered the man's body. His heart rate was erratic, spiking and dropping unpredictably. His vocal chords were completely destroyed, not from the fight, as he purposefully avoided the area that could give him actual information.
Something then wriggled inside of Albert's spine. A parasitic like thing, thick, oily, smokey, all at the same time.
The corruption thread.
It hadn't fully manifested yet, but it was there. It was the same kind of thing that he felt from the Kulbran knights and the king. Left any sooner, and it would sprout the deranged smile behind Albert to make him insane.
But what was weird was... it looked like Albert was already insane.
His cognitive functions were gone. The rashes, the drooling, the sudden craziness that even attacked his own fellow vagrant guild member. Insanity had already taken hold of this man below him.
Gale raised Erebus one final time.
The hammer came down on Big Albert's head.
Skull cracked. Brain matter and blood sprayed across the hoarded walls and floor, dripping down from the ripped skin. The signs of life within the massive body faded as did the corruption thread within him.
[Big Albert felled...]
[Extracting Origin from Prey.]
[Description: For his big size, he was called the polar bear of the BA Guild. His dream was to own a gelato shop and feed the kids at the nearby high school.]
Pulling out his phone, Gale opened Rachel's group chat.
[Gale: Found some stuff you might wanna look at. Big Albert is dead.]
[Rachel: Got some info from Bonnie too. Everyone come to my house.]
[Kyle: got a lead on Sombra.]
[Clyde: Yuxuan ain't in Chinatown apparently.]
He pocketed the phone and walked toward the entrance, stepping over the debris of the fight that had just happened. As he reached the doorway, Distort activated. Stepping out into the cold night, he ran forward to Rachel's house.