9. Out Into the Sun (Patreon)

Levi took a deep breath and sighed. “Sunlight! Fresh air! Fucking hell, it feels so good!”

Fira glanced at him, awkward. “So, uh…”

“Your brother! Right! Let us go! Haha, lettuce.”

Fira cut a look at him. “Are you okay?”

“Nope.”

“Okay, fair.”

Levi nodded. He gave her a thumbs-up. “Don’t worry, young Fira. I have a plan.”

“Oh… you do?” she asked, hesitant.

“Indeed I do! It’s called, ‘let’s go talk to an informant.’ Whether your brother is hanging out with lowlives or caught by an ability hunter, there’s one person I know who might know where he is,” Levi said confidently.

“Might?”

“Indeeeeeed he might, indeed. I like that word. Good word. Indeeeeeed.”

Fira took a deep breath. “Levi, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Said what?” Levi asked, tipping his head.

Fira opened her mouth, then shut it. “Nothing. An informant, huh?”

“Indeed, an informant.”

“Can you stop saying—”

“Indeed I can!”

Fira took a deep breath. She put her face in her hands. “This is punishment, isn’t it.”

Levi paused and pulled up his phone. His brows furrowed. He pursed his lips and kept typing, scrolling further and further down a feed.

“What’s wrong?” Fira asked, unable to hide a hint of relief in her voice.

“The guy I wanna talk to is gone. Outta the business, if you know what I mean. I’m trying to find my second choice.” Levi paused again, thinking. He shook his head, frowning at the phone. “No. I have found him, but I don’t… I don’t believe it. It can’t be.”

“What?” Fira’s brows furrowed in worry.

He looked up at her slowly. “Rainer Drift. Is… is she that good?”

Fira stared at him. “What?”

Levi lifted his phone to show her his screen. A grown, middle-aged man screamed into his selfie, decked out in a t-shirt with Rainer Drift’s perfect face and coiffed blonde hair filling every inch of it, pink sunglasses, a woven pink bracelet with charms of music notes and little icons from Rainer Drift’s top songs, a fake pink microphone, and to top it all off, a Rainer Drift wig.

Straight-faced, he lifted his finger and scrolled. Dozens of images of the same man in Rainer Drift-themed outfits, from crossdressing in her sequin-spangled jumpsuits to wearing a shirt, pants, and hat all plastered with hundreds of images of her face.

Almost pleading, he asked Fira, “Is she worth that?”

Pulling away, Fira threw her hands up. “I don’t even like her music.”

“There’s a concert this week, isn’t there,” Levi muttered under his breath. He squinted at the pictures, pulling them close to his face, then grinned. “Look!”

Fira looked. “At what?”

Levi rolled his eyes. He pointed at the background. “Grass.” Scroll. “Street.” Scroll. “Grass again.” Scroll. “Oh, cars, parking lot get!”

Fira squinted at him. “What are you trying to say?”

Levi grinned. He backed away and shot finger guns in her direction. “I’m trying to say, our boy is broooooke. He can buy cheap costumes online, but he can’t afford those car-down-payment tickets. What is it, five k a shot? Five thousand dollars for a cheap seat ticket, and that’s if you get lucky and don’t get scalped. And he wants to go to…” He turned the phone back toward himself. “…sorry, aspires to go to every Rainer Drift concert on the continent, exclamation mark, exclamation mark, exclamation mark.” Looking up at Fira, he beamed.

“So…?” Fira asked.

“So, our boy can’t afford tickets! So, our boy is hanging out in parking lots and grassy knolls… ahem, hills, and catching the audio for free! So, let’s go grab a concert for zero buckaroos and meet our boy!”

Levi set off, humming happily to himself.

Fira paused. She watched him go for a few beats before she followed. “Is he going to be… you know. On the job?”

“Doesn’t matter. If he isn’t, I’ll make him be,” Levi declared confidently. He headed back toward the forest, leading Fira along the edge of it.

“Oh? Why so confident?” Fira commented, cutting a look at him.

“I have my ways,” Levi said, with a devious grin.

As he walked, Fira looked around them. “You’re headed back to the sketchy part of town. Oh! You’re getting the money from that junkie! Going to make that informant an offer he can’t refuse, huh?”

“Exactly!” Levi paused. “You do know what that means, right?”

“Pay him so much he can’t say no. He’s broke, right?”

Levi raised his brows and opened his mouth, then closed it. He nodded, grin turning yet more devious. “Yeah! That’s it!”

Fira opened her mouth, but before she could ask more questions, Levi bounced ahead, skipping along and humming to himself, absolutely effervescent. She shook her head and kept up the best she could, sometimes jogging to catch up when his long legs let him pull ahead.

As the sketchy part of town loomed, Levi slowed. He looked over his shoulder. “This brother of yours. What’s he look like?”

“Now you ask,” Fira muttered, shaking her head.

“Yeah, I ask now. So what?” Levi tossed a nod at one of the junkies, who jumped up and scurried off, hurrying into a dark alley.

Fira sighed, giving up the fight. “He’s fifteen. Kind of… gangly. Still real short, though, just awkwardly long limbs. Brown hair, with a patch of blue to the right of his bangs where he dyed it. A bit pale, lots of freckles, and he likes to wear his hair long. Like, uh. Jaw-length.”

“What’s he wear?” Levi wondered, looking around him.

“T-shirts and jeans, usually. You know. Teenage fare.”

“Damn, he really is ‘literally every teenage boy.’ At least he dyed his hair,” Levi muttered.

“Sorry my brother’s nondescript?” Fira said, furrowing her brows at him.

“You should be. Do you know how much easier this would be if he was red-headed like you?”

They turned the corner. The junkie Levi had given the card to the previous night was sitting there on the curb as though he’d never left. He nodded at Levi and held his hand out as Levi passed. Their hands brushed. Levi lifted the folded bills and flicked through them, giving a cursory count before he put them away. He nodded.

“Do we have enough?” Fira asked, nervous.

“This way,” Levi said, ignoring her.

He cut a sharp turn, then came to a storm drain. Lying flat, he shimmied through the mouth.

“We’re… going through the sewers? To a concert?” Fira asked, lost.

“Don’t be daft.” Standing on the platform just below the lip of the drain, Levi reached up. Tape tore, and he removed a cloth package about as long and wide as his forearm from the concrete roof of the drain. Ripping the last of the tape free, he stuck it down the back of his pants, let his shirt fall over it, and climbed up the ladder through the manhole to rejoin Fira.

“What was that?” Fira asked.

“Just another stash.” Levi tossed her a wink.

“What’s that mean?” Fira wondered.

“It means it’s time to go catch a concert,” Levi declared, and set off for the city center.

The sketchy part of the city faded away. Once more, they walked past glittering towers and nice restaurants, slowly replaced by fine dining establishments only the ultra-wealthy could afford and tiny little brand boutiques that existed more to remind the peasants of how they could never obtain such a precious branded item than to actually sell clothes.

More and more people passed them by on the streets. Businessmen and women in smart suits and pencil skirts, errand boys winding through the traffic on scooters and cycles, homeless people, wandering aimlessly, wearing the sum total of their mortal possessions on their backs. A blast of ice assaulted them as a woman in all white with a tight updo strutted past on stiletto heels. Fira flinched, looking down and away.

“Chill, girl, chill,” Levi advised her, shaking his head.

“I know, it’s just—”

“If you know, then do it.” Levi ran his hands through his hair and grinned at the sun, then stretched up toward it. “I wonder when the concert starts? Probably later today, once the sun starts to set, and everyone’s had dinner. Let’s wander until then. What say you, Fira?”

“That sounds good to me,” Fira agreed.

Levi nodded. Without looking back, he set off, leisurely strolling along the road. The sun beamed down, late spring giving way to summer’s heat. Occasionally, a neatly groomed, decorative tree dappled the sidewalk with sparse shade, never enough to actually cut the heat. No one made eye contact with anyone else, and those whose eyes accidentally caught Levi’s looked away quickly. He pursed his lips, watching everyone around him, one at a time taking them in, then dismissing them.

He yawned, then glanced over his shoulder. “Hey, Fira. I’m feeling burgers. You?”

Distracted, Fira nodded. Her eyes aimed elsewhere, staring toward the multicolored billboards and shining signs, flickering over passing pedestrians, pausing for a moment on a man dressed up in Alpha’s early Player regalia, back from his first days patrolling the streets. A few other impersonators strolled around the island, resting on the planter-bench with their big foam heads beside them, or dressed up in full armor and waving at the passing tourists, but Fira’s eyes locked on the Alpha impersonator. Her steps slowed, and she frowned.

Levi followed her gaze. He laughed, then paused, letting her catch up so he could sling an arm over her shoulder. “I take it you haven’t seen our glorious leader in his most worshipful form before, hmm?”

“I… it looks so different,” Fira muttered. She glanced at a nearby billboard, where a broad-chested Alpha beamed down at them in a perfectly tailored suit and tie. “As if he’s not even the same person.”

“Things were different back then. They called us Players, not supers. Awakened, if you were lucky. The nomenclature hadn’t really settled yet.” Something like nostalgia glimmered in Levi’s eyes at the sight of the silver-and-red scale mail, the tabard with a lower-case Greek alpha on it, the flowing red cape, and the simple silver head with the two small horns and red enameling around the rim. “Back then, the army was still in the process of realizing they couldn’t handle the Outbreaks on their own. Players—Awakened people—were able to stave them back, but no one could fully suppress the Outbreaks. Humanity was in retreat, fleeing the press of otherworldly monsters flowing out the Gates.

“That is… until Alpha arrived.”

Fira glanced at him. “I know. I paid that much attention in history class.”

Levi took a deep breath. He went to turn away, but at the last second, his head snapped back toward the armored figure. He released Fira’s shoulder and fell back a step, out of her peripheral vision.

“I’m surprised, though, Levi. You hate Alpha. The way you said that almost sounded like praise…” Fira trailed off. She looked around her. No Levi.

Sharp motion caught her eye. Fira whipped around in time to see Levi launch himself into the air, fist raised to punch. Totally unaware of him, the man in the Alpha costume struck a pose, smiling wide, foot lifted to step on an imaginary enemy, one fist raised in victory. The tourists who’d been about to snap a picture jerked back, eyes wide, jaws dropping, a scream about to break free.

Fira took a sharp breath, whole body tensing. “Fuck.”