A Scripta

The man in the black fedora rapped his fingers impatiently across the table and watched the woman in front of him. Her eyes were wide open, but she wasn't looking at him. Her soul was hundreds of miles away, inside the body of a Freakshow in a prison cafeteria, directing it from here. She would hear and repeat words from this man in the fedora, and speak them through the body far across city.

The woman uttered in a deep voice, "Excellent. How lucrative is it going to be?"

The man chuckled. "Lucrative. What an idiot." He tapped the woman's right hand and spoke, "What are you looking for?"

The woman repeated it when he pulled his finger back. She then blurted out: "Free rein."

The man sat back, folding his arms across his chest. "Well. That's interesting."

"He wishes to be free, master," said a small, mouselike man standing just to the left and behind the seated one. "All prisoners want to be free."

"He wants to be more than free. He wants a license to kill." He tapped the woman's hand and chuckled audibly, which she mimicked. "I'm sure that can be arranged. We will contact you. In the meantime, keep doing what you're doing. Let them think you're a loose cannon if you want. Let them think you're the penitent son. Whatever you want." Then he reached over and pulled the woman's hair, hard.

She yelped, focused angry eyes on the man in front of her, who backhanded her for the insolent look. She wilted before him. "I'm sorry, master."

"You'd better be." David Strym- under an assumed name at the moment - put his feet up on the table and his hands behind his head. "That would be an interesting one to add to my collection."

"Sir?" The mouse uttered quietly, almost cautiously.

"Masonry the War Wall as my slave. And now that he's joined with a Kheldian...yes, it would be interesting. A challenge."

"The man would easily come to you, master. The Kheldian may not."

"It's the Kheldian I'm interested in. I know I can easily break the man. Maybe even..." He grinned. It was not a pleasant sight. "I can put him in chains. Hmm..." For a moment, Strym's mind drifted to all the different possibilities, what tools he could put to that man's perfect body and face to scar it - no, maybe not. By the time he finished with Masonry, the moment he would get off the train the city know the huge man was a twink.

It depended on the Kheldian. If the Kheldian was a true Peacebringer, he would be losing patience with Masonry by now, especially now that Masonry had turned traitor. Would the Peacebringer jump into the driver's seat and stop him? He knew from his contacts that this was the old Kheldian in Powerhouse Jack, who was a relic from Statesman's time - Powerhouse threw things around and generally beat things and people into bloody pulps. There was nothing about crossing lines.

Strym's mind switched immediately to the next item on his list, the recent acquisition from Atlas Park. She was a tall blond, who would look at someone and fully heal them with just that look. She also crushed things for fun. He caught her contemplating the Atlas Park Bank. His personal telepath had skimmed her mind to see her plans for crushing the bank vault door. It wasn't hard to convince her from there.

"Let us go meet the young lady called Gravolator."