The Young Lady is a Reborn Assassin

After a high-tension meeting with Marco, we decided to part ways with Kelly and take a break at a nearby restaurant to eat. Adrian quickly excused himself from the table and hurried to the bathroom. I was left alone with Max – who from where I was sitting remained the most enigmatic member of the main cast.

Sure, I knew stuff about Max based on my faint recollection of the game, but I learned the hard way that I couldn’t assume that it was an accurate picture of the person I was now familiar with. This was a ‘reality’ of some description and Max was more than a scattershot selection of character traits designed to appeal to an audience of female gamers.

What drove him was a mystery. He was here because he wanted to keep his brother away from trouble as a part of the regeneration plan, but unlike Adrian, he was more hesitant to use extreme measures to make that happen. His opinion of me was also an unknown factor.

Claude was doing his usual schtick, Samantha wanted to be friends despite her misgivings, and Adrian was on my side since I elected to help him in a desperate situation, but Max didn’t have a strong reason to go along with whatever I told him to do. The friction was obvious.

“This is what you do away from the academy then? Buddying up with hired killers and engaging in corporate espionage.”

“Do you believe that a thirteen-year-old girl has the time to waste doing that? I’ve spent more time learning table manners than worrying about this sort of thing.”

Speaking of friction, Max was the only person in my orbit who seemed to note the significant differences in my behaviour depending on whether I was staying in character or not. It was challenging to do under duress, and sometimes I found my accent and vocabulary slipping back.

“I’m not even going to ask. You’ve been stonewalling Sam on this for months already.”

“I said to her what I will say to you now – you already have the most consequential secret on offer. Most people would see no reason to look beyond what you know about me.”

Max refrained from saying the word ‘murder’ out loud but the subject of our conversation was obvious to him. Even cloaked in the veil of self-defence, that information being revealed to the wider public could be potentially ruinous for my reputation, and the future of the Walston-Carter family.

“That’s a load of rubbish. What good is that to me if I’m not planning on trying to ruin your life? I just want to understand what makes you tick. For all I know you could turn that gun on us and shoot us in the back at any second.”

“I would have thought that previous incidents would dispel that kind of anxiety.”

“Not really. I saw a different kind of expression on your face back during that punch-up with your mother, it made me wonder how in control you actually are. There has to be a screw loose in your head to do stuff like that.”

“Perhaps there is, but that does not mean that I am without reason. Have I ever responded to a situation in an inappropriate manner before?”

Max conceded that to me, “I can’t say you overreacted, no. I’m still worried about this one. It’s not safe to be dealing with criminals.”

“It’s good for us. Marco has a network of spies who feed information back to him, and if the price is no object, then he won’t be afraid to run up a hefty bill by using their services.”

Max sighed and hushed his voice, “Good for us? He’s a bloody murderer. He tried to kill your Uncle.”

“As distasteful as that is – we have to focus on the outcomes rather than getting bogged down in the methodology. My assessment is that sending Marco in Welt’s direction will be advantageous to us.”

“But what if it gets him killed?”

I stared at him for an uncomfortably long time.

“Problem solved.”

Max glared, “No, no. That’s not ‘problem solved’ at all! We don’t even know if he’s really the one behind this yet! What if Cedric was lying to us? It’s going to end up with an innocent man being killed.”

“There are very few innocent men once you get to that age, Max. I’m not relying on Marco killing Welt, but it is a calculated risk. I find it unlikely that Marco would invest all of his blood, sweat and tears into killing him if he wasn’t certain that he had something to do with it.”

“A lot of faith in a hired killer,” Max muttered, “Why the hell are we even in this situation anyway? I had no idea that Muwah was tangled up with this kind of bad crowd.”

“This is reality. There are a lot of nobles who do not fear the consequences of their actions, who do not baulk at the concept of what may be perceived as ill-mannered or illegal. When money, prestige and legacy are to be curried – then they will spare no quarter in trying to claim them.”

“Don’t blame my brother for this.”

“I’m not,” I snapped, “Your brother has not submerged himself in that sort of moral swamp. His only sin was not having a discerning eye for what he was investing in. I imagine that many of his other investors are in a similar situation.”

“Muwah isn’t stupid. He’s a lot smarter than he looks.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s always smiling, trying to light up the atmosphere around our home, but he always impressed our father through his decision-making skills. He always says that Muwah inherited that instinct for business from our great grandfather.”

I took my cup of tea and enjoyed a long drink. I couldn’t recall if Muwah was ever mentioned by name in the original game. I did remember that Maxwell’s character was very family-focused, so it may have been a possibility.

“It is a cold comfort, but I suspect that Muwah will be unscathed even if the matter turns for the worse. He has only invested his money and time, and not his morality.”

“He is staying away from the city for the next week. If we can be done with this by then, then there won’t be any reason to worry.”

Adrian made his belated return from the bathroom and sat down at the table with us. He grabbed one of the pastries from the selection and shoved it into his mouth in one go. He chewed it for exactly ten seconds and swallowed it whole.

“What are we going to do about Welt?” he mumbled.

As convenient as it would be for Marco to solve all of my problems - that simply was not going to happen. Durandia brought me into this world to be the difference-maker, and setting him upon my foes like a rabid dog was not something that only I could do with my specialised skill set.

“I could simply... ask him for a meeting,” I proposed.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Gerard Verner Welt is the type of man who must be interested in surrounding himself with powerful allies and supporters, and who better to curry favour with than the only child and heir apparent to a large manufacturing empire? I could express mock sympathy for the Van Walser family and have him begging on my doorstep within the hour.”

Max pinched the bridge of his nose, “Surely he has an army of avid supporters already, would he be interested in adding one more?”

“He has many supporters, but there is one key piece to the puzzle that he lacks. The King. The King has no intent on restoring the powers of the monarchy at the moment, he feels strongly that it would be the fastest way to have what’s left stripped from their house.”

“Who are they trying to put onto the throne if not him?”

“Anyone willing to fulfil their rampant ambition. The Van Walser cadet branches are filled with hundreds of such people with increasingly weak claims to the throne. They may be an acceptably royal individual for Welt – but those cadet branches are not exactly flush with money. The King still holds the vast majority of the family’s finances under lock and key.”

“So you’re saying he wants someone from inside the Van Walser houses, and nobles like us to pay the bills he incurs in trying to put one of them onto the throne?”

“Indeed. Nobles also provide legitimacy and stability to any new government. Winning them over to his side is essential to the plan.”

Adrian stopped gorging on the cake for long enough to offer a suggestion, “Wouldn’t I work better as the bait? I know your family is richer than mine – but you’re only an heiress right now, I’m actually in charge. I could get him the money he wants right away.”

“Yes, you would. The problem is that I want to be there to investigate our theory of him being the one directing those maddened killers. He would ask too many questions if I accompanied you to any meeting.”

There was another problem with that plan too. Welt and the monarchists were working with Cedric because he was second in line to get his hands on the family fortune. They were hoping that an unfortunate accident would occur that would leave the empire in his hands. If Adrian started to express interest in joining their secret club – then they’d have no reason to keep him around.

I doubted that Cedric would ever cease trying to cheat Adrian out of his inheritance, but Adrian was unwilling to kill him to make it stop. He acted tough, but acting tough and having it happen for real were two very different experiences. That bravado would turn to guilt soon enough.

“We don’t know where that meeting would happen,” Max hummed, “It’s not going to be in his home or office, that’s for sure. How much information could you gather in that case?”

I put my foot down before the hypotheticals could spin up any further.

“We have another week before the next term. I’m going to send Welt a letter this evening and see what he says. I imagine he’ll rush to arrange a meeting.”

Adrian pouted. He thought he was onto something there, but it was too risky for me to go along with. There was no reason for him to put more skin in the game with Cedric already on notice.

Max was in concurrence, “It probably is safer to let you do it.”

“Very well then. Let’s call it a day and reconvene when there’s a new development.”

Adrian looked down at the leftover pastries, “Can I eat the rest of these first?”

“...Yes?”

Adrian grabbed another piece. I never knew he loved cake so much.

---

Veronica was starting to get overly familiar with the corner she was hiding in.

It was obvious that these three men were being paid to watch out for any police officers investigating the killings. However, the ominous reality of being a WISA agent was that probable cause was more of a suggestion than a hard rule. There were some people in the office who would essentially rampage their way through a case without asking questions first.

Veronica was a ‘by-the-book’ type, even though she was brought up during a period where there was even less oversight than there was now. It was a matter of pride for her to put a clear narrative into place. It was those kinds of agents who made her feel a desire for professional redemption.

They weren’t paying attention to her. They thought she was hiding in the main room and not the loading area. They marched towards the main doors, passing her and exposing their backs.

Veronica seized the opportunity and leapt from her hiding place, taking all three of the guards by surprise. The one at the back of the group drew a pistol from his jacket and tried to spin around to face her, but Veronica reached out and gripped his wrist, seizing it with enough force to make him drop it to the ground.

The next member of the group tried to do the same. Veronica took her new hostage by the neck and stepped forward, shoving the business end of her pistol against the back of his head and causing him to freeze in place.

“Drop it.”

The gun clattered to the floor and Veronica kicked it away so that none of the men could grab it and fight back. She then forced her hostage down onto his knees by the loading dock.

“On your knees, hands behind your backs.”

They hesitated – so Veronica made sure to pull the lever of the gun in earshot so that they got the picture of what would happen if they didn’t comply. They did. All three knelt on the floor and allowed Veronica to cuff them while they faced the wall.

The ‘fight’ was over in seconds. Veronica paced back and forth in front of them. What an odd series of events. She was being sent from pillar to post today, normally it would take weeks of hard graft to get results this good. Frankfort always called her crazy for carrying too many handcuffs. Who was laughing now?

“This bitch is out of her bloody mind!” one of the men complained.

“I have probable cause to apprehend all three of you,” Veronica mused, “I could have done much worse than cuffing you and forcing you to sit on your knees.”

“Stop talking. She’s a bloody cop.”

That wasn’t very nice of him.

“Which one of you is in charge?”

The three men kneeling in front of her all resisted taking responsibility. They were like a trio of children being scolded by their mother for playing in the street. Confident that none of them were willing to take on the role, Veronica moved to the next question.

“Who’s paying you? Paxton? Rentree? I want a name.”

Veronica was impressed that this unwashed lot hadn’t cracked at the slightest scrutiny. That was how this tended to go. These people were at the bottom of the ladder, paid whatever scraps were left over and pushed to do the dirty jobs. Even her brandishing a gun wasn’t making them think twice.

“I don’t think you appreciate what kind of situation you’re in.”

Veronica took the butt of her pistol and cracked the left-most man in the nose with it, busting it open and causing a gush of blood to pour down his chest and onto his legs. The other two recoiled at the sudden outburst of violence. The man gasped for air as the blood blocked his airways.

“I don’t need a warrant, or permission, from you or anyone else to be here. I could shoot all three of you dead right now and they wouldn’t bat an eye at finding your corpses. I suggest you answer my questions promptly, or I’ll pin that dead body back there on you.”

“Shit!” the bloodied goon gasped. He couldn’t raise his arms to try and stem the bleeding. He had to kneel there and wallow in his own viscera.

“What a load of crap. You won’t kill us. They’ll have your badge!”

Veronica responded by pressing the barrel of her gun against the forehead of the man with the shattered nose.

“You are gambling with your friend’s life. I’m not going to kill you - but him - if you don’t answer my questions. I only need one of you alive. What were you using this building for?”

The man in the middle persisted, “We’re guards. We’re only here to keep the kids from burning the place down! They asked us to scare away people and stop them from breaking in or damaging it.”

“The body in the disposal area, is that one of the kids you’re talking about?”

“I don’t know anything about a dead body,” he implored.

Veronica hit his friend again, causing him to slump over onto the ground in a pool of his own blood.

“You walked into this room and declared that you were going to prevent any police officers from figuring out what was going on. It’s obvious to me that you’re all part and parcel of this criminal conspiracy. This is your final chance before I get angry. Did you keep people here against their will? There are ferdinol syringes everywhere.”

“I... I don’t know nothing.”

Veronica allowed his denial to hover in the stale, iron-tinged air. Both of his companions started to squirm and second-guess his decision. They were the ones who were going to bear the brunt of her wrath. Veronica approached the prone man, still attempting to lift his dazed head up from the floor, and raised one of her boot-clad feet high into the air.

With a sickening crunch, she brought it down on the back of his skull. The front of his already-busted face met the bloodied floor below. Not enough to be fatal – but enough to show his friends that she was entirely serious about culling two of them as an example to the sole survivor.

The man on the right cracked first.

“Don’t kill me! I’ll tell you, just don’t kill me!”

The man in the middle was furious; “Don’t be a bloody idiot!”

“Shut up! You’re not the one who’s going to get murdered over it!”

Some people saw having three hostages to question as an inconvenience, Veronica wondered why they never thought to try and pit them against one another. He turned to face her and desperately started to spill whatever information he could; “Rentree! It was Rentree, he was the one who sent us here!”

“Why?”

“He said that we had to scare off any police that came sniffing around the place, buy them enough time to move everything to a new spot!”

“This was an outpost for the project. Did they keep the assassins here?”

“Assassins?” he echoed.

“The ones you’ve been pumping full with that ferdinol, you miserly git!”

He nodded frantically, “Y-Yeah, they kept ‘em here.”

“And do you know where they are now?”

He shook his head; “They didn’t tell us. Said it was for operational security and all that. They rotate us out every so often, there’ll be a new batch of blokes doing the heavy lifting there now.”

“Are there any other names I should know about? Who is Rentree working with?”

“They try to keep all of that quiet. Paxton wasn’t involved. Rentree’s name was the only one that came up. He leased this old building from him but didn’t say what it was for.”

The stubborn one in the middle finally wizened up and realised that he was being sold down the river by his friend and that there wouldn’t be much left for him to insulate himself with if he let him keep talking. He interrupted and tried to add his own commentary.

“They said that it was a national security project, but that Verner Welt bloke has his fingerprints all over it and he’s a bloody MP.”

“Gerard Verner Welt?”

“I overheard his name being used by the lads in charge. Sounded to me like he was the one calling the shots, telling Rentree to lease places to keep the products stored and ready for work.”

“And who gave the orders to send them out? It couldn’t have been them.”

“No, not them. They have people like us for that stuff. The one in charge, Jennis, went with them to the next spot, but he was the one who told us when to use the ferdinol and prep ‘em for a show.”

His friend returned to the story, “Yeah. Jennis would come bursting in, tell us to dope those guys up, then he’d give them their orders. They’d let them out into the city, and they would come back here once they were done. Jennis said that they needed to kill as many Church Street gang members as possible, at least until Rentree got worried about being compromised. He ordered us to pack it up and empty this place by the end of the day.”

Wasn’t that the most revealing set of testimony she’d ever heard?

Veronica finally stepped back from the grievously injured man on the left and gave them some room to breathe and get their stories straight. Low-ranking members in the criminal hierarchy were not to be underestimated, they could be precious sources of information if the people in charge were sloppy with letting conversations leak out.

It only took the mention of one or two names to bring the whole structure crashing down. Names were easy to remember, they stuck out in the recollection like billowing red flags. Both of the conscious men were of one mind about the claim that Rentree and Verner Welt were directing the operation.

Welt was an obvious answer – but sometimes the obvious answers were obvious for a good reason. WISA had a file on him that was so large it almost took an entire filing cabinet to store. Trying to map out the network of connections between domestic conspiracies involving monarchists would inevitably end with him as the centre point.

The hired guns never saw Rentree or Welt in person. Orders were handed down through a chain of command to separate them from the crimes at issue. It was smart enough, but with two different people offering a story about their involvement she could apprehend them both for questioning. Jennis sounded like an important person of interest too.

Before she could leap into the fun part, there was custodial work to take care of. Her new friends would need to be sent down to the nearest jailhouse so that a written statement could be taken and charges filed for their knowledge about the body, on top of their other offences.

Where Verner Welt was haunting at the moment was another problem to solve. He was a man who travelled from each end of the country on any given day. If his home wasn’t the right spot to catch him, then it would be impossible to guess where he was hiding. Luckily WISA had an exceedingly broad surveillance network, with informants and spies digging up dirt on demand.

“You’ve earned a stay of execution. A reward for a pair of well-behaved boys.”

The third? He required medical attention.