My Scumbag System Chapter 698: Walking Toward the Ending

"I want Jacob to fake a gas leak. He’s been complaining for a month that nobody appreciates his data skills. Give him a municipal utility database and a moral justification and he’ll close six blocks by Tuesday night out of sheer enthusiasm."

Natalia’s expression shifted into something genuinely delighted, which on her looked like a knife catching light.

"That’s actually good," she said.

"I have moments."

"You have exactly enough moments to keep me from smothering you." She saved the file, encrypted it twice, and let the hologram collapse. Then she leaned back in the chair and looked at me properly for the first time since she’d walked in.

The tactical armor came down. Not all the way. Just enough that I could see the girl underneath it.

"You’re going to be at Sector 12," she said. "Not the B-Rank. Meaning your name won’t be on the contract roster."

"Isabelle’s report will list me as command oversight. Nobody audits command oversight."

"Braxton will."

"Braxton gave me the roster and told me to accelerate my preparations. He’s not going to look too hard at how I did it."

Natalia was quiet. Then she reached over and took my hand, threading her fingers through mine, her ring cold against my knuckles.

"Two nights ago you walked into an integration chamber alone," she said. "Last night you met something wearing your mother’s face on a pier. Tonight you’re planning an unsanctioned operation against a Gate that shouldn’t exist, created by people who specifically want you standing on that block when it opens."

"When you list it like that it sounds like a lot."

"It’s a lot." Her thumb moved across the back of my hand. "I’m not telling you to stop. I stopped trying to make you stop. I’m telling you that I have watched you nearly die four times in nine days and there is a limit to what I can carry."

The bond opened. She let it. She didn’t often, not deliberately, not at full width, and what came through wasn’t fear or anger but something closer to exhaustion. The bone-deep kind. The kind you get from holding a wall up for so long that you’ve forgotten what your arms felt like before.

"Natalia."

"Don’t apologize. If you apologize I’ll know you’re planning something worse."

"I wasn’t going to apologize." I turned her hand over and pressed my mouth to the inside of her wrist, right over the pulse, and felt her breath catch. "I was going to say that on Wednesday you’ll be on that roof and I’ll be in that intersection, and I’ll be able to feel exactly where you are the entire time, and if anything comes at you I’ll be there before it finishes deciding to move."

"That’s not reassuring."

"It’s a little reassuring."

"It’s slightly reassuring and extremely arrogant."

"Those are my two settings."

Her laugh came out low and reluctant, the sound she made when she was annoyed at being amused. She leaned forward and rested her forehead against mine, which was a thing she’d started doing after the Necropolis and had never once explained.

"We have three days," she said quietly.

"Two and a half."

"Two and a half days to run drills, build formations for two separate operations, close six city blocks with fraudulent utility documentation, and convince nine people to commit crimes for us."

"Eight. Emi will just say yes."

"Emi will say yes and then bake something."

"Emi will say yes, bake something, and cry once."

"Twice," Natalia said. "She’ll cry twice." She pulled back and stood, gathering her bag, and the tactical armor slid back into place across her features like a visor lowering. "Morning briefing. Six hundred hours. Common room. I’ll have both formations drafted by then."

"You need sleep."

"I’ll sleep when you stop nearly dying."

"So never."

"So never." She paused at the door. Looked back. The moonlight caught the white in her hair and for half a second she didn’t look like an eighteen-year-old girl in a combat suit. She looked like something that had already decided how the story ended and was simply walking toward it. "Satori."

"Yeah."

"Whoever put that Gate under a daycare." Her voice went flat and cold and absolutely certain. "I want them. Not dead. Not yet. I want to know their name and I want to look at their face and I want them to understand exactly what they invited into their lives."

The temperature in the room dropped six degrees.

"Yeah," I said. "Me too."

She left.

I stood in the dark and listened to her footsteps fade down the hall, and then I picked up my bat and turned it over in my hands, feeling the dents and the worn grip tape and the eleven months of accumulated violence packed into a cheap piece of metal that had killed an A-Rank and a god made of wood and starlight.

Behind me, Maki’s tail tightened around my wrist.

"You’re happy," she mumbled into the pillow, still mostly asleep. "S’weird. You never smell happy when you’re planning murder."

"It’s not murder. It’s a public safety initiative."

"Liar."

"Chronically."

She purred once, deep and satisfied, and burrowed further under the blanket.

I looked out the window at the dark shape of the Academy against the sky, and past it, invisible from here, the direction of Meridian Heights and nine thousand people who had no idea their neighborhood had been selected as a laboratory.

Somewhere out there, someone had my father’s research and a very specific idea about what I was supposed to do with it.

They were about to learn that I had never once done what I was supposed to do.

Nel’s voice slid through the back of my skull, dry and delighted.

Audience engagement is spiking. Apollo has already opened a market on the Sector 12 operation. Aphrodite has requested that you kiss at least three people before Wednesday, for narrative balance.

"Tell Aphrodite I’ll consider it."

Nike says, and I quote, "Good. Finally something worth watching."

I set the bat down and started making a list.

Two and a half days.

Time to go to work.