8:18 PM, Friday, November 8
I later learned that it had gone like this.
Mahnoor arrived at 24 Westwind St. after meeting with Inspector Matsumoto, who had pointed her to a clubhouse of the Stilton Boulevard Boys. The scene of Mr. Gallman’s murder was a known location of the gang’s activities, and while they had never been known to murder, they had a reputation for brutality.
Mahnoor didn’t come looking for a fight, though knowing her she was prepared anyway. The goal had simply been to talk. As she had a reputation of her own, but had never made an enemy of the SBB (as the gang was usually abbreviated), the hope was that she would be able to get information without raising too many red flags. Of course, there was the known risk that they were already aware to mark her as an enemy if, as was the suspicion, they were working with the New Moon Abductor. Mahnoor, never one to back away from risk, proceeded regardless.
She did not ignore, but did not acknowledge, the piercing gazes of the gang members as they looked up card games, whiskey flasks, and the hired “entertainment” from where they gathered in what had once been a sitting room of a dilapidated flat. The music continued pounding, but conversation fizzled as this outside presence entered their territory. They weren’t used to seeing someone who was there on their own terms, yet didn’t wear their colors. The fact she was a woman—a girl, really—probably didn’t help matters, but she coolly shrugged off an uninvited grasp on her arm, intended to lead her to the man called “the Stilton Dagger”—or simply “Dagger.”
“I can walk just fine on my own, thank you.”
The one who had touched her must have felt the danger in her voice, and seen it in her eyes. From that point on he walked ahead of her, making sure to keep out of arm’s length the rest of the way.
The noise of cynical revelry slowly returned, fading as the two made their way down a hall, the echoes of the footsteps on grimy tiles bouncing off peeling plaster walls. In a private room, the Dagger sat sprawled on a moth-eaten sofa, one arm around the shoulders of a woman who was probably being paid far too little for what she was enduring, a bottle of cheap beer clasped in his free hand. A handgun rested on the coffee table in front of him, just within reach if needed. He was just approaching intoxication, not quite tipsy, but relaxed and slow to react as Mahnoor was ushered in.
“Mr. Dagger, this is—”
“You can call me Killer Moon.”
Mahnoor would never let someone who had not earned her respect speak for her.
The Dagger likely felt the cold rush of sobriety at that title. With a wave of his hand, he shooed out his subordinate and muttered a dismissal to his companion. He and Mahnoor were left alone, with only the muffled sounds of music and conversation to accompany them.
“Well, what brings a fine lady like yourself to my neck of the woods?”
“Business, and a rather nasty business I’m afraid, but something I’m hoping we can work out.”
“Business with the legendary Killer Moon? Well, it must be my lucky day! Go on, sit down. Have a drink?”
Mahnoor took an unoccupied sofa, her pristine suit out of place among such decay, but her manners overrode disgust. Naturally, she refused the drink. “I don’t drink when conducting business. Or at all, for that matter.”
“Suit yourself. I must say—and no offense to you, love—but you don’t look a bit like how they all make you out to be. I was expecting someone a little older. Maybe more…masculine-like?”
“Oh, trust me, I’ve heard it all before. I have nothing to prove—to you, or anyone else.”
“See, you waltz in here calling yourself ‘Killer Moon,’ and I’m not seeing it. I know killers. Us lot? We’re not all good people. Some of us have done things—hurt people. Worse. You? You’re no killer, and you sure as hell ain’t Killer Moon.”
“You’re entitled to your opinion. It doesn’t change who I am, and what I’m here to do.”
At this point, the Dagger must have laughed. He was a man who laughed in the face of death, or at least fancied himself as that kind of man.
“You’re here to kill me?”
“Of course not. I have no quarrel with you. but I have reason to believe you’ll be getting a visit from the police soon.”
“Do you? And why would that be?”
“The old hat factory in Stilton—would you happen to know if any of your boys were there between 11:30 last night and 9:45 this morning?”
“And if they were, what’s it to you—or the police for that matter?”
“A man was found murdered this morning, and that old factory is in your territory. It doesn’t look good. I want to know if you have anything to do with it.”
Most people, when pushed into this corner, would have tried to deny it, presenting an alibi, however flimsy. In the case of someone like the Dagger, Mahnoor was probably prepared for anything from a hidden blade or a panic button, Instead, the Dagger grinned—a dreamy sort of grin like someone recalling a distant, happy memory.
“Tell me, Killer Moon, how familiar are you with Darwinism?”
“That concept that’s been misunderstood, misinterpreted, and misappropriated to justify prejudice and cruelty? Sure, I’m familiar with it.”
“There’s something to it, you know, ‘survival of the fittest.’ See, I reckon anything alive has to have the right mix of three traits if it’s going to make it in this world: The drive to consume, the ability to create, and chance.”
“Chance?”
“Everything’s up to chance at the end of the day. Success and failure, sometimes all it takes is one little thing out of your control to tip things one way or the other.”
“How is ‘chance’ a trait anyone can have? By definition, chance is external. You said yourself that it’s something that happens to you—otherwise it wouldn’t be chance.”
“That’s the funny thing, innit? Some folks are just…lucky. But without the other two, it don’t mean a thing. That’s why you need the right mix of all three. But sometimes, things get diluted, and you end up with a lot of one, but not enough of the others. It’s like a cocktail that way. Gotta be mixed right or it don’t do the job. Sure, it’s enough to get by for a while, but eventually…”
“What does this have to do with anything? A man is dead and you’re talking about evolution like it’s somehow relevant.”
The Dagger wasn’t listening. He spoke clearly, like a professor giving a well-rehearsed lecture, and later Mahnoor would wonder if his words were really his own. For now, she listened.
“We could use our poor dead man as an example. He got far in life, stayed on the right track, and all it took was one tiny slip up more or less completely out of his control. It don’t matter if you have 50 years under your belt or 50,000, once something you have no way of preparing for or protecting yourself against enters the environment, or someone decides they would prefer the world without you in it, all that matters is how efficiently you convert consumption into creation, and the devil called chance that will decide your fate. But in these times, consumption rules over the other traits. Creation has been turned inward, and chance has stagnated. This world has become bloated, self-indulgent, and frivolous.”
Here, Mahnoor likely noticed a subtle shift in speech patterns that continued to compound with each monologue. Still, she persisted as if she was talking to the man she had come to see.
“Using a man’s murder to illustrate your point is sick, to say the least. It sounds to me like you’re trying to justify yourself.”
But the Dagger was now in a different world. The spirit wearing his skin spoke as if Mahnoor was his audience.
“It’s a lucky thing that the dead tend to stay dead, but vengeful spirits can still hold power in this world, should their wrath remain potent. A man has died, but his spirit will not linger here. That is where our circumstances diverge.”
“Who are you——?”
“I am the one who seeks to reclaim the lost fire. I speak for my silenced ancestors. My work must not be interfered with.”
“The abductor, I presume?” Mahnoor probably gripped her wand, preparing to unzip the bag and unleash her magic at a moment’s notice. She had come prepared for a fight, but she no longer knew who or what her opponent would be.
“I offer you a chance to become an instrument of my vengeance, or else perish, your purpose unfulfilled.”
Such self-righteous talk had never appealed to her, and she responded accordingly. “I refuse to allow your vengeance to become my purpose. If you’re so pathetic that you have to control other people to do your dirty work, I think I’d die of shame if I had to call you my boss.”
“A pity.”
Though I wasn’t told in exact detail how the fight transpired, the sequence of events was likely something to this effect:
Mahnoor later estimated that roughly a second passed between this statement and the Dagger’s first strike. She placed her preemptive defense at about 0.7 seconds, but according to the logs of her jailbroken codex, it was closer to 0.9. To me, that meant very little, but to Mahnoor, it was too close for comfort. It had been time enough to expand her Fleur de Lis field, already in a semi-active state out of caution, to fill the room and transmit a brief analysis of angles, chemical composition, and air pressure to her visual cortex. Minute changes in the Dagger’s angular momentum indicated he was about to launch himself forward.
Mahnoor had an affinity for the direct route, preferring to face adversity head-on. For this reason, she did not dodge, and instead expended her first move on apportating her wand from its bag into her hand. It was a costly move, but as the ring of metal on metal filled the room, she deemed it better than the alternative.
The Dagger had crossed two meters in under a second, with a strike from a jagged combat knife that was fully intended to kill. There was no trace of ichor in his body, so any superhuman capabilities had been thrust upon him rather than honed with training. His face was vacant of all expression. By my own judgment, he would have been extremely difficult to read on all levels. Any intention in his actions was not his own, and transmitted from elsewhere.
A backflip coupled with a kick caught the Dagger in the jaw, but his only reaction was physical. He deflected Mahnoor’s wand with his knife, his fist just barely missing her stomach. She evaded, twirling with a dancer’s grace and swinging for his head for a quick, clean K.O. No such luck, and the two became locked together, holding each other’s wrists to keep their weapons at bay. With tremendous force, he slammed Mahnoor against the coffee table; one of its legs broke under the impact, but Mahnoor was only stunned momentarily, rolling out of the way of another strike. Several empty beer bottles clattered to the floor.
In a brief moment between blows, Mahnoor channeled an electric current through her wand—enough to fell a full-grown man like the Dagger. Perhaps he sensed the faint buzzing and nearly undetectable smell of burning air, as he increased the distance between them in the small room.
Mahnoor scanned for fluctuations in background radiation. If someone was somehow projecting their will from a distance, it was reasonable to assume that the signal could be blocked or dispersed.
DETECT: PHOTON FREQUENCY
RANGE: 5 METERS
DURATION: 1.8 MILLISECONDS
As such sensory experiences are impossible for my physiology, I can only guess what she saw. My perception of the electromagnetic spectrum is limited to the same parameters as any mundane human. When I picture the scene, I picture a flow of tiny particles, swirling through the air like dust in a beam of light, all traveling in the same general direction. Whatever the particulars, Mahnoor saw there was indeed something amiss. The Dagger was acting as a sort of antenna for a signal that, for all intents and purposes, resembled that of a typical cell tower. As humans typically can’t pick up cell signals with their brains, Mahnoor and I later came to the conclusion that the Dagger’s brain had been altered in some way. In the moment, this was a brief thought that in the long run held no bearing over what she did next.
Drawing out a fight longer than necessary was dangerous. Her ichor diamonds were created to compensate for the extra cost of prolonged battles, but they took time to create, and were expensive to procure from other sources. It was a question of economics whether or not to expend one or use her natural supply. Ultimately, she decided coming out of the encounter with minimal ichor depletion was the preferred outcome, even if it meant an extra expense later. The reality modification she needed would require a full vial; she carried five in the specially tailored inner pockets of her jacket.
I can’t help but wonder how it looked from the perspective of the Dagger—or whoever was using his body—to see the young woman reach into her jacket and produce a vial of blood, then hold it out in front of her while the hand carrying the wand dropped to her side. Had he some inkling of what she was about to do, or was it so far outside his realm of experience that he simply didn’t know how to react?
Sometime later I would see this for myself—the process by which blood becomes ichor. It’s often referred to as if it’s a completely different substance, but in reality, ichor is largely indistinguishable from blood in both function and appearance until the right hormones interact with it. Then it takes on a golden hue as the particles of magic divide into their constituents, making it glow like molten metal as it emits the radiation through which all magic is expressed.
This particular “order” caused an excitation of the air itself. Anything electronic, from the light fixtures to the music player and hi-fi speakers in the corner of the room, began to spectacularly fizzle out, producing sparks and flashes that filled the space in momentary light before plunging it back into darkness, over and over.
The Dagger moved between these irregular frames of visibility, taking his final chance to try for a killing blow. The connection between body and mind was becoming unstable, and this basic motion of lunging forward and hoping for a true strike was the extent of what was possible.
Mahnoor dodged—sidestepped, really. It wasn’t too much effort as the Dagger’s movements were now sluggish and inaccurate. He only just stopped himself from crashing into the opposite wall, clumsily turned, and charged again. Mahnoor evaded this one even more easily. He tried again, and again, each time losing momentum and missing his mark by an increasing distance. Finally, his legs gave way and he collapsed to the floor like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
As I said before, most of this is conjecture, combined with the information that was told to me after the fact, but it seems likely that Mahnoor didn’t rush over to the Dagger to make sure he was incapacitated. Knowing her, she probably made her way across the room at an almost casual pace, her gaze downward at the pathetic figure on the floor. A rueful smile would have crossed her lips.
“You know, that was pretty good, all things considered. Not the best technique, but you could have won through sheer brute force if I didn’t have a few tricks up my sleeve. Then again, that wasn’t really you doing the fighting, was it, Mr. Dagger?”
A groan of pain. The damage was more than just bruises and abrasions. The brain is a robust but sensitive organ, and when forced to host a mind that is not emergent from one’s own neurology, things can go wrong. Neural pathways become scrambled, synapses fire out of sync—the brain and the body become dissociated in ways that are more typically seen after severe head trauma. The Dagger was in no condition to answer questions. Still, Mahnoor couldn’t leave. Not until she was sure there was nothing else she could get out of the man.
“Someone used you to cover their tracks. Clearly, they didn’t see the point in keeping up the masquerade when I caught up to you, but that’ll be enough to throw off the police. Your only purpose was to add to the confusion, and once you couldn’t do that anymore, you were just another body to throw at me.”
“Urgh… Fuh…fuh…”
“Language, Mr. Dagger. Don’t worry, I’ll make sure you get to a hospital. I just need to know one thing: Who put you up to this?”
She knelt beside him, stowing the now depleted ichor vial back in her pocket. In the darkened room, the Dagger’s pupils dilated, and he squirmed as unknown sensations shot through his nervous system. With a quivering jaw, he began to answer in slurred, imprecise syllables.
“Muh…muh…mister…”
“Speak up.”
“Mistanuh…Mister nuh…Mister…Night s-skuh-Sky…”
Whether or not it had been the intention from the start for the Dagger to give Mahnoor this name, or it was a simple act of defiance on the part of the poor wretch, at that moment Mahnoor was set down a particular path. A path that would lead her to a direct confrontation with a man called Mr. Night Sky.
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