I sat in a chair, AR glasses on, staring up at the roof.

  Thoughts ran through my mind, bouncing, moving, and colliding.

  I was reading forums. There were big ones, major social media sites and well known forums. But those were the giant rivers that flowed into the ocean of society. I wanted to be in the small streams.

  That was where all the good information lived, if you could be bothered to look for it.

  I loved movies where the Holmes-types could walk into a room and instantly know everything there was to know about it, but that wasn’t how real investigation worked. To piece together the larger mysteries, you had to search through all of the small crevices of the internet.

  I guess this was the old-timey equivalent of running around town and asking for clues.

  Jace Waters had a lot of contacts on his phone. It was to be expected when you ran that type of business. Now I could follow all the leads on there, but HU would be doing that. They would also be setting up operations to find his sellers and buyers as well, though chances were that it wouldn’t go through.

  A lot of criminal operations were set up with failure in mind. They expected to lose a few pieces and had ways of limping on without them. And Jace was a shapeshifter. As useful as he was, you wouldn’t trust a guy who could change his appearance at the drop of a dime.

  Beside. Whimshiemer seemed like the smart type. There was no way he’d leave any loose ends for the HU to catch onto.

  So that left the forums Jace used and the many posts his accounts had made on there over the years.

  “Won’t the Union get him though?” Mochi asked. “I mean, they have people for this kind of stuff, right?”

  “They do,” I replied. “But its all about resources. Taking down his current operation is possible, taking out Whimshiemer isn’t.”

  I ran my hands through my dreads and readjusted them. The suntanned ends were old and I had gotten them from the days I had spent out in the summer heat working on cars with my grandpa.

  I felt one of them be grasped and pulled.

  “Ah! Kimber let go!”

  The cat scuttled from behind my chair and ran out the door with mischievous speed.

  I patted down my head and kept looking up at the roof.

  “I need a break.”

  I grabbed my cane and limped next to the elevator.

  A warehouse was a big place and most of this place was still empty. The front facing part was supposed to be a garage where I would work on cars as a licensed mechanic. It had all the equipment I would need to work on cars and sometimes I did work on them. I’d buy some from the junkyard, fix them up, and sell them.

  It was more of a hobby than a business. Most of the time, it was empty.

  Grandpa had left me a decent amount of cash, about a hundred grand and most of my family thought I was still living off of that. Others did the math and realized I must have a job or something. And Caleb had even ran by here a couple of times, though he stayed outside of the building.

  I always wanted to expand the place but hard remodeling required labor and I wasn’t capable of doing it.

  Maybe with the proper outer exoskeleton I could.

  I walked through the hallway and into the kitchen.

  The problem with money wasn’t getting it for me, it was spending it. The government highered tinkers as well, and there were tinker accountants and tax collectors.

  I didn’t want any of those people coming at me.

  So, I fixed up cars and sold them both for fun and as a cover for my income. If I were to walk around without a cane and a new exosuit, the IRS might be knocking on my door.

  The Heroes Union obviously covered this for their people, but I was a vig and lacked those comfortable protections. There was a whole underground economy of money that just never managed to make it to the legal markets, but there was only so much you could buy from there.

  Or I could launder the money, but that was even more work. And it involved work with the wrong types of people.

  I walked into the kitchen and pulled out a plastic container.

  “Mochi, what is this?”

  The pitter patter of paws echoes from the couch. She hopped onto a stool and brought her nose down to a bowl.

  “Tacos. Carne Asadas!”

  “Where is it from?”

  “Chando’s Taqueria.”

  I brought up the meal to my nose and sniffed.

  “Is it any good?”

  “I’d eat it!”

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Mochi sat there, drooling with a smiling mouth.

  “Is it any good?” I repeated.

  “If you microwave it for five minutes it should sit fine with your stomach.”

  “But that would overcook the meat.”

  “Yup!”

  Mochi hopped off the chair and came back with one of her robotic hands holding a bowl.

  “How long do you want it in the microwave?” I asked.

  “Two minutes, and could you add some salt to it?”

  I nodded.

  Food went bad for me but Mochi, for some reason, had a fairly strong stomach. She never got sick and her poops were always solid. Another part of her genetic engineering.

  I sat down and ordered food.

  “How’s the research going?” Mochi asked.

  “Slowly,” I replied.

  “I thought you cloned his phone.”

  “I did, but there’s so much stuff for so little output. He puts most of his contacts into his blackline and the Heroes’ Union is the one that has actual access to that blackline account.”

  “So you’ve got nothing?”

  I shrugged.

  “I’m still searching. Its just hard now that the Union is involved.”

  “Damn Union stealing our thunder!”

  “Ha, its fine Mochi. I think the Union can make better use of that information than I ever could.”

  “Still, they steal thunder!”

  I shrugged. A vigilante was still supposed to be a force for good. If giving the lead to the Union was the better option than that was the one I would take.

  “So, what’s the plan now?”

  When facing things like this, you have options. The first option was to give up, because the Union would do everything they could to catch this guy. And for all my smarts, I was nothing compared to them.

  The second option was to do what they couldn’t. I might not be able to spend my hard earned money in any way I pleased but I could break a few laws and act within my power to figure out the truth.

  The Union would run through everything he had. So I needed to find something they couldn’t touch, go where they couldn’t.

  My mind ticked away.

  “He’ll kill me man. He’ll fucking kill me. He knows where my family is- FUCK HE KNOWS MAN.”

  That was what Jace had said.

  Tick.

  And how many drones had come down to chase us? We needed a Major A just to keep ourselves together, and Jace was only a Minor A at best.

  Tick.

  And why did Jace know his name? Why would Whimshiemer use that name with Jace? The smart thing to do would be to lie and use a new fake villain name for any of your new dealings. The only thing a villain’s name provided was reputation and Whimshiemer wasn’t well known as a cruel or evil man.

  But Jace had known him as such. Jace had been terrified of the man.

  Tick.

  Reputation was like currency in the criminal world. If people thought they could screw you over, they would. The more well known and dangerous you were the more people knew not to fuck with you. But Whimshiemer? That was a low time drug dealer, a barely known villain.

  Tick.

  But Jace had said it with terror, and he had been certain, so certain that his family would die.

  Tick.

  The only reason to send that many drones and try so hard to eliminate Jace was if Jace held crucial information of some sort. Not just a name, but something more.

  A low beep came into my mind.

  “Oh boy! My food’s ready!” Mochi yelled as she went to the microwave and put her paws on the counter. Her robotic arms reached in and took out the container of food, one of her other arms grabbed a spoon and transferred the mix of taco meat, tortilla, vegetables, and salsa into her food bowl.

  She then slowly walked over to the couch, spoon still in one of her robotic arms.

  “I call it taco salad. Its much better than regular salad.”

  Her robotic limb used the spoon to scoop up a bit of the mixture and shoved it in her mouth.

  “Hot! Hot!”

  She bit down at the air, swallowing the food before she could taste it. Then she set it on the coffee table and stared at it, ears down and tail wagging.

  I chuckled.

  “Well, did you have a good idea?” Mochi asked. “You looked like you just had a good idea! You make that face whenever you have one.”

  “What face?”

  “The, ‘I’m thinking real hard’ face. Your eyebrows scrunch up and you close your eyes a little.”

  “I never knew I did that.”

  “Well you do,” Mochi stated, eyes still locked on her taco salad.

  “Well, I think Jace knew Whimshiemer.”

  “What? Why?”

  “The effort to kill Jace was too much. Jace should be nothing but a middle man in his sales or procurement process. Jace should only know what any one of his contacts know. If Tuxedo got caught tomorrow, that wouldn’t compromise my identity, it should be the same for Whimshiemer, he should have ways of buying and selling that don’t link directly back to him, right?”

  “Right,” Mochi said through a mouthful of taco salad.

  “And then Jace was sure, almost certain that Whimshiemer would kill his family. Why? Killing is a good fear tactic, but killing also gathers a whole lot of attention. And this Whimshiemer guy is a tinker, one that managed to stay hidden from the Union for years on end. He wouldn’t do something so stupid but Jace was certain that he would.”

  “Maybe he’s just a--” Mochi took a second to gulp. “Maybe he’s just a really bad guy?”

  “Could be, but Jace called him Whimshiemer.”

  “Isn’t that his name?”

  “I think that’s one of his names, and its an important one at that. But I think Jace gave us his smallest names so that we wouldn’t follow the bigger ones.”

  “Is that our in?” Mochi asked.

  “No. The Union definitely knows all of this,” I said, pulling up one of Jace’s most used blackline accounts.

  “I think Jace and Whimshiemer used to know each other on a more personal basis though.”

  “Does the Union know that?”

  “Definitely.”

  “Then how is this useful?” Mochi asked.

  “Well, the Union probably put some readers on Jace already, or maybe they’re still going through the hoops of trying to get a mind reader or controller on the case. But either way, Whimshiemer existed in Jace’s personal life somehow, so if I can comb through his social media and many other posts and see who recently vanished from his life, I might be able to find him.”

  “But wouldn’t the Union be doing this as well?”

  “Yup.”

  “So we’re just doing extra work that they’ve already done?”

  “Think of it as the price for freedom, Mochi.”

  “I’m a dog, Burt! I long for the leash and fence as long as my meals are good and my walks are nice!”

  “That’s because you don’t even like going outside. Let’s limit your computer time and see what happens then.”

  Mochi barked at me and started attacking the taco salad, no spoon, just snout.

  I laughed.

  I might just drop this one if the Union was going to chase it down. But I’d give it a couple more days, just in case.

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