“So,” you say, looking up at Sarah Mankiller as she pushes your wheelchair down the clinic hallway. “How long have you been with the Commune?”

“I joined back in ’87," Sarah tells you, brushing a strand of hair behind her deer antlers. “Back then, we held our meetings in the basement of a bombed-out church, with nothing but a leaky printing press to our names.” 

"Humble beginnings," you note diplomatically

A wistful expression passes over Sarah’s face “Those were wild days...we’d run guerilla soup kitchens, set off pamphlet bombs, toss crucifixes into Vampire Supremacist rallies, protest outside the Alder’s Palace…”

You nearly choke: “You guys protested outside the Alder’s Palace? And you’re not dead?”

Sarah’s nostalgic grin slips a little. “Most of us survived,” she says sadly.

Ah. I see now.

She hates the Alder.

“…you hate the Alder,” you say out loud.

Stop taking credit for my revelations, Diesel!

“Hate is a creation of the corrupt and elite, used to turn good people against each other,” Sarah says. “I refuse to give the Alder the satisfaction of hating her...but I am angry.”

The way Sarah enunciates the word ‘anger’ sends a chill running down your spine.

“So why, then?” You ask her. “Why the––?” You gesture towards your left eye-socket.

“Why did I sell out, you mean?” Sarah asks rhetorically.

“That’s not what I meant,” you protest.

“But it’s what you want to know, right?” Sarah shoots back.

You flinch.

“Sorry, sorry," Sarah says, sighing. "I shouldn’t be mad at you, It’s just…”

She slows down and pulls your wheelchair to the side. You respectively stand and sit silently in the hallway, watching nurses and Chaplins and Commune residents go walking by.

“Why do you want to join the Alder’s service?” Sarah asks you. “Why do you want to be one of her Private Eyes?”

“Well,” you say. ”That’s…”

You fall silent as you try to come up with the right words, the words that’ll explain your deepest desires without revealing too much...

“Exactly,” Sarah says. “The reasons we have for doing the things we do can be very private and painful.”

“...yeah,” you say, glancing down at your bandaged chest.

Sarah leans against the wall and pulls out her e-cigarette. For a moment, you think she’s going to take a puff. Instead, she presses the vaporizer button and watches as threads of her magical smoke dance and swirl.

“When you’re young,” she says at last, eyes haunted, “you think that nothing will shake your devotion to your ideals. You think you’ve give your life to protect them. But that’s a backwards way of looking at it, isn’t it? We shape our ideals to protect the things we care about the most. And if the things we love are put on the chopping block…”

She snaps the cap of her e-cigarette shut and tucks it away. “I’ll say this much,” Sarah tells you. “Once day I’ll find a way to break her contract with me. To break everyone’s contracts." Her nostrils flare ever so slightly. "There will be a reckoning for everything the Alder’s done…!”

“Who’s the Alder?” Fortuna asks, walking up behind you. Cookie the Pit Bull follows her, sniffing eagerly at the spokes of your wheelchair.

You and Sarah share a nervous glance.

“The Alder…” you start to say. “She’s the mayor of Cryptatown—”

“She rules Cryptatown,” Sarah says harshly. “With an iron fist.”

“Oh,” Fortuna says thoughtfully. Her brows rise up. “Could we get her to arrest that Mummy guy?”

“No!” you say hastily.

“No, no, no!” Sarah says, eyes bulging. “She hates the idea of laws! Anyone who tries to set up a code of laws…well, things get messy, I’ll tell you that.”

“Oh,” Fortuna mumbles, casting her eyes downward

“Um,” you stammer, trying to think of a way to break the ice. You pick up the Charlie Chaplin mask she deposited in your lap and hold it up. “So this mask thing,” you say. “Did you guys steal that from Anonymous?”

Sarah grumbles softly behind your back. “Of course you’d ask that,” she mutters. “No? Yes? Maybe?” She reaches over your shoulder and plucks it from your grip. “The guy who designed these masks was a bit of an Alan Moore fan."

“But why a Chaplin mask?” You ask the question you’ve had on your mind ever since you first met the masked operatives of the Commune. “Don’t you get mistaken for”—you raise a finger to your lips and trace the outline of a toothbrush mustache—“someone else?”

“Sometimes.” Sarah sighs. “But Guy Fawkes was basically a theocratic terrorist. Chaplin was a staunch antifascist and a real anarcho-syndicalist!”

Fortuna looks back, eye sparkling. “Oh!” she exclaims. “You guys are anarcho-syndicalists?”

“That’s right!” Sarah declares, raising her hand in a closed-fist salute. “We believe in a free future, where order and peace can be achieved without the chains of authority!”

“Like those peasants from Monty Python and the Holy Grail!” Fortuna blurts out.

Sarah stops pushing you. Your wheelchair squeaks to a halt. Now that you’re not moving, Cookie tries to bury his wet nose in your crotch, a friendly greeting you have to fend off with both your bandaged hands.

“Yes,” Sarah says reluctantly. “Just like those peasants.”

“Cool!” Fortuna says. She blinks. “Oh!” She points at one of the doorways. “Here’s the break room! Mom and Mr. Lynn are right inside!”

“You heard the girl,” you say, patting the side of your wheelchair. “Mush!”

“Do I look like a sled dog to you?” Sarah mutters under her breath. Nonetheless, she pushes you the rest of the way down the hall and nudges the door open with her hoof.

The ’break room’ feels like a breakfast nook in a country inn, a huge contrast to the sterile warehouse look of the Clinic: wall tapestries, a kitchen bar, a comfy couch next to a set of open windows.

Fausta Orobas sets her cup of coffee down on the table and gets up from the couch. “There you are, Fortuna!” She says. “I was wondering where you went!”

“Ta-da!” Fortuna tells her mother, stepping aside as Sarah wheels you into the break room. "Here’s Diesel and Sarah!"

Fausta smiles. "Well done, sweetie," she tells Fortuna. “Hello, Diesel," she adds, turning towards you.

“Hi,” you say softly. You wonder if you should ask Fortuna to leave the room…

…no, you decide. She’ll be hearing it from her mother anyway.

“So…that guy with the bandages is a monster assassin,” you explain. “He’s trying to track down Fortuna and kill you.”

Fortuna’s eyes go wide.

“I know,” Fausta tells you. “C shared your text message with me. I told her to send a search party after you failed to check back in.”

You tense up for a moment, a reflex that makes your stitched-up back wound throb with pain. “You didn’t have to,” you say at last. “But thanks.”

“Easy, Diesel,” Sarah says, wheeling you over to the coffee table. “Lemmie get you some coffee…or would you prefer tea?”

“Coffee,” you say. “As black and bitter as you can make it.”

“Right,” Sarah says, trotting over to the kitchenette.

Strange, you think to yourself. This small breakfast room is about as big as your single-room apartment. More comfortable too…

Enough, you tell yourself. No more self-distraction.

You take a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Fausta,” you say, the words coming out in a rush. “I screwed up. I tried to send Kayne off on a wild goose chase, but he saw right through me. He figured out you and Fortuna were in this town—”

“Stop,” Fausta barks, holding her hand in front of your face.

You shut up.

Fausta stares at you with her puffy, sleep-deprived eyes. “This isn’t your fault,” she says.

“Uh?” you reply cleverly.

Fausta sighs and slumps back onto the couch. “Listen, Diesel: this monster slayer—this Kayne fellow—must have been tracking us all the way across the continent. If you hadn’t warned us with that text message, Fortuna and I never would have known he was hunting us.”

Fortuna goes pale. She rests her hand on Cookie’s scalp, drawing on the dog’s presence for comfort. “Mom,” she whispers, soft as a mouse squeak. “Did Dad send that Mummy-Man after us?”

Fausta clenches her teeth and leans against the policeman’s hospital bed for support. “Probably,” she whispers back.

…Hooh-boy.

“Are you all right?” you ask Fausta, leaning forward in your wheelchair.

“Obviously not,” Fausta replies with a huff. “But I forgive you for asking silly questions, Diesel. You’ve done well by us.” She raises her head and stares into your eyes, a sad remorse in her gaze. “We’re not the ones you’ve failed.”

You hear a heavy, mechanical breathing noise behind you, along with the treads of heavy boots stamping against the floor.

You spin your wheelchair around. A figure in a bulky hazmat suit strides through the open door, a person swaddled from toes to fingertips in layers of squeaky green vulcanized rubber. A heavy hood with a tinted visor covers the person’s face; two respirator nozzles on the hood hiss loudly as they expel carborn dioxide.

The figure in the suit speaks up.

“Is that you, Diesel?” he says. “My god, what happened to you?”

It’s Felix Lynn, you realize. They’ve stuffed him into a containment suit so his nanotech infection won’t run rampant through the hospital.

“Any luck with your case?” Felix asks, voice squeaking with desperately eagerness. “Have you found my son?”

Next Chapter: Interlude: The Beast Breaker