Chapter 2

-Alec-

I waved the snow away from my face as I ducked into the mall. The rush of people had receded by this hour, which meant far less pushing past the crowds competing for the discounted post-New Year's inventory for me. Barring certain jerkwads, I thought as I twitched the foot of someone who was slowly walking past the entrance to GameZone while absent-mindedly yammering into his phone. I stepped through the gap and headed for the shelves. Besides the staff, there were only a couple other teenage guys on the other side of the store. Heading down the aisle, I started examining the games on display.

Lame studio, series going downhill, what the hell is that on the cover, nobody's touching this one after those two losers made their video...

I bumped into someone, barely catching myself. Quickly looking around, I didn't see anybody else react. Good. I examined the person I'd bumped into.

It was a pale, tall girl with curly black hair that reminded me a little of my own. She was dressed in a nurse's outfit - the real thing, unfortunately, not the fun Halloween kind - and looking at her face I saw a wide smile and amber eyes.

I did not see any nerves. That explains how I didn't notice her before walking into her, at least.

"Apologies not expected, First of the Heartbroken. I am merely here to introduce myself," she said, keeping quiet.

Shit. Shit, shit, shit. She knows who I am. I started backing away, weighing the risk of drawing attention to myself versus staying near the girl. Nobody else seemed to be looking their way, at least.

"There's no need to worry, o Prince of Puppets. The man who plays with heartstrings has no sway over me, and knows not where you are. Perhaps this is to your tastes?" she said, passing me a video game she swiped off the shelf without even breaking eye contact. On the cover was a guy doing a passable Sauron impression leading a pack of... goblins?

"Even the deepest darkness can hide a hero, and the number of fortune and the number of curses are so close together... and towers of virtue can so easily hide pillars of sin."

"Look, babe, I don't know what you're up to..."

"I'm meeting the friend of a friend you don't yet remember forgetting. Call me Cassandra, young Basilisk, and when you speak to the Caged Fox, tell her that the Two-Headed Snake need not hear of the new bird."

Cassandra brushed past me, pausing to wave back by the door. Her gaze caught on a Commander Shepard poster, and she stopped to stare at it.

"What Citadel? This place is no fortress, nor a trap for anything more than careless wallets. Clearly, you're insane, ma'am!"

I approached the register, and got a better angle on the poster. That was definitely not Fem!Shep on it...

"What's up with that girl?" the cashier whispered.

"Man, I wish I knew," I answered, handing him the game.

"And your evil twin was a coward who couldn't face salvation, then died a coward's death!" the girl told the poster, before haughtily turning away.

"Saren's not his twi—" one of the other customers spoke up, before slamming his mouth shut. Thankfully, Cassandra didn't seem to notice, and walked out. I paid up and followed her at a safe distance, pulling my phone out and dialing Lisa's number.

"Alec, what— Met someone interesting?"

"Yes," I whispered, eyeing the crazy girl for any sign of reaction. She didn't appear to hear me.

"Okay. What do you know about them?"

I quickly checked for other eavesdroppers, then answered.

"Sneaky, doesn't register on my power, talks like you would if you'd lost your last marble, and really not dressed for the weather. I'll keep an eye on her, you get in touch with Brian."

I hung up, turning on the tracker on my phone just in case, then pocketed the device. The girl had stopped.

"Make me."

I froze, looking at her. She was glaring at a "STOP" sign.

"Your geometric authority means nothing to me."

I remembered the girl's argument with the poster. Is she really...

"Or what?"

The sign didn't respond.

"Thought so!" the girl exclaimed, then smugly walked past the sign, heading down the Boardwalk. I followed her, wondering what I could've done in a past life to deserve dealing with so many crazies in this one. She walked on, sometimes muttering under her breath, and the few shoppers still out at this hour gave her her space. After about twenty minutes, one of the enforcers took offense, and approached her once it was just the two of them and me in sight.

"Girl, you're scaring paying customers away. I'll ask you to leave, before we make you."

Cassandra simply glared at him, and when the thug tried to grab her arm, she ducked under the move and tripped him, jumping on his back as he hit the ground. She leaned in and sniffed, then backed off with a disgusted look on her face.

"The peddler cuts bad deals. You've sold him more years than you think."

The crazy girl got off the unlucky thug (swiping his wallet in the process, not that he seemed to notice) and continued on her journey, leaving the man to carefully crawl in the other direction. A few minutes later, Cassandra paused near a toy store, then went inside. I heard footsteps behind me.

"She's in there, then?" Lisa asked me while some teenage girl walked out of the store. "I'll have a look inside, you watch the door."

She headed in without even waiting for a response, and walked out a few minutes later, glaring.

"Nobody inside but the staff closing up. You sure you didn't miss her leave? Of course you are. Damn. Let's get back to Brian, and I'll go through the camera footage once we're back at the loft."

Brian was waiting by a car, waiting for us.

"No luck, I take it?" he asked, looking around.

"No, nothing," Lisa answered, opening the passenger door. "Let's..." she trailed off, staring at the seat. There was a bag of marbles on it, proudly displaying the sign of the store we'd just checked out.

"Oh, fuck me sideways," Lisa and Brian said in unison.

The trip back to the loft was half Lisa interrogating me for all the details I could remember, and half Lisa talking to herself. When we finally got back, she ran straight into her room. Figuring it'd take her some time to get the security footage, I fired up the PlayStation then ignored her call for quiet and the occasional "Aha!" from her room until she came back out with her laptop and set it down on the table.

"Well, here's the camera footage... for all the good it'll do. Not a single clear shot," she said, pointing at a video of me talking to a mysterious blur. "I could maybe pin her identity down if I saw her elsewhere, but the only body language that shows is her general stance, forget expressions. I'll bet the rest of it will be like this too. This one... well, she wasn't acting at the poster, I'd give it a four out of five she legitimately thought she's having a conversation. Same with the stop sign."

Lisa fast-forwarded the videos, jumping from one camera to another as Cassandra traveled down the Boardwalk. At one point, the girl in the screen stared straight at the camera, tilting her head, and Lisa froze.

"She knew. She knew you were following, and she knew we'd watch the tapes," she said, staring at the blurred face in the screen. After a short while, Tats shook her head and unpaused the video, skipping to the girl's encounter with the enforcer. The zoomed-in image of the girl leaning next to the guy's neck filled the screen, though the image's resolution made the guy almost as poorly visible as the crazy herself.

"Look at how her head's positioned. I'm almost certain she planned to bite that guy. You said she told him something about a drug dealer?"

"The girl was talking in moonspeak the whole time, but that's what it sounded like. Why?"

"So she planned to bite him, then stopped. Presumably the drugs are an issue. But why would they be, unless..?"

She didn't finish that sentence. Neither me nor Brian needed her to. Or wanted her to. There was no good way for that thought to end.

Nothing else was particularly out of the ordinary, until we got to the toy store. The girl in the camera walked right out the front door, with neither the me nor the Lisa approaching me in the image reacting to her at all.

"Wait, that was her?" I asked. I recalled someone walking out at that time, but that wasn't... Oh.

"Yeah, you didn't recognize her either. I saw her, but she didn't look important at all. Yeah, that's... I'll go through the footage again, get back to you guys later?" she asked.

"Do it," Brian nodded. "An insane, possibly cannibalistic Thinker/Stranger poking her nose around us. What a start to the new year..."

"I have to tell the boss about this," Tats hurriedly said, going for her phone. I jerked her fingers away and held up my hand.

"I forgot to mention. Minnesotan said something about a two headed snake not needing to know. Unless she meant some other 'caged fox', the message was for you."

The twitch that caused Blondie to drop her phone wasn't my fault, for a change. Well, not my power's, anyway. This must be why she likes dropping bombshells on people herself so much.

"...Snake? Who could..." Brian mused out loud. "Oh, of course. We work for Coil, don't we?" he said, looking Lisa in the eye.

"Yeah, we do. How the hell would she— ugh, this is gonna be such a headache. Alright, I'll hold off on calling him for now, and we'll discuss this tomorrow, once I've had time to look things over some more. And... watch yourself on the way back home, Brian. Just in case."

Brian nodded, and tossed the bag of marbles on a spare chair on his way out. Lisa took her eyes off the screen again.

"Minnesotan? Really?"

"Discount Siberia, winters and all. Hey, if she gets to nickname everybody else..."

She shook her head, grabbed her laptop and went back to her room.