“This is becoming more than I can chew,” Alfa groaned.

  Behind her, looking at her computer from over her shoulder, was Booker. He was a new agent. The thing was that while he worked in the Gifted department, he was not under her command. He existed outside the hierarchy, if she was to quote the commissioner.

  Booker was a tall man with a touch of Asian heritage, but he was American. He had an easy going smile and a face that belonged on someone in their late twenties instead of the late thirties that he was. He had the [Marksman] class. Once upon a time he told her that he had actually been hoping for the [Archer] class.

  He reached past her to touch a point on her monitor’s screen with his finger. “What’s this?”

  “Weather patterns,” she answered.

  It was took up one portion of her screen but was not the only thing on her screen. There were at least four other sections.

  “Why are we monitoring weather patterns?” Booker asked. “Are we somehow following an [Elementalist] class or someone that can affect the weather?”

  Alfa spared him a look but didn’t answer. Instead, she offered him a generous sigh and returned her attention to her screen. Over a week ago in Mrs. Lockwood’s pursuit of her Gifted, she had asked for weather patterns across the country.

  Using a new pattern link, Alfa suspected that she wasn’t just looking at weather patterns, she was looking at some form of air control. When she’d looked it up over a week ago, there had been confirmation of something going through the atmosphere.

  Nothing out of the usual, but when she’d reported it to Mrs. Lockwood, the woman’s words had been impossible to accept.

  So, he really jumped.

  Even now, she could remember the words very clearly. It left her wondering just how strong the Gifted was. Where exactly did he jump from? How was he supposed to handle the landing?

  She scratched her head in confusion. “What am I supposed to be hunting?” she muttered to herself, maximizing one of the windows on the screen.

  A new display came up.

  Booker leaned in, invading her personal space once more without caring. “Is that…” he leaned in closer. “Is that Romania I’m seeing?”

  “Interpol,” she corrected him. “This gives me active reports of cases in the country. Reports and the like. If someone gets into a fight and calls the cops, I’ll get a notification immediately.”

  The man stood up straight. “Detective Alfa.”

  “Detective Booker.”

  “Why exactly am I in this office with you?”

  “Because the commissioner decided that I should always update you on tasks that I am performing that not precinct related.”

  “And this is not precinct related?”

  “It is not.”

  Silence followed their little exchange. In it, Alfa pulled up another window. This one highlighted missing persons reported within the last week.

  Her lips pursed in thought. Missing persons reports, weather reports, stolen vehicle reports, unlicensed teleportation report. Alfa didn’t think she needed to be a detective to know what was going on. A lot of illegal shit, including deaths, were going on.

  Although, something else was more interesting so far. From what she had gathered so far, missing persons reports in a specific part of Romania had reduced significantly in the past few weeks. To be more precise, reports of missing children had taken a significant nose dive. Reports of the homeless hadn’t reduced by much, but there had been a reduction.

  What are you doing, Mrs. Lockwood?

  “I’m here, but you’re not going to explain what is going on to me?” Booker said, interrupting Alfa’s thoughts.

  Alfa looked up at him. “Nope. Not really.”

  “That doesn’t seem like following the commissioner’s instructions, though. You went out of your way to bring me to the office, after all.”

  “I did,” she mused. “Didn’t I?”

  “You did.” Booker moved to lean against her desk so that he could look at her. “I figured you would be willing to give me more information so that I know what exactly is happening. I’m not here to play supervisor, Detective, I’m here to help.”

  “And you’re helping.”

  “How am I hel—”

  His words were cut off by Alfa’s ringtone. Alfa’s eyes glanced at her phone. It was an office line. She recognized the number as belonging to a precinct.

  “Excuse me,” she told Booker, picking up the phone and answering the call. “Detective Alfa speaking.”

  “Good day, I’m officer Davenport,” a feminine voice said.

  “Good day to you, officer Davenport,” she greeted back. “To what do I owe the pleasure of this phone call?”

  “Dead bodies at the docks, ma’am.”

  Alfa’s lips pressed into a thin line. “One moment.”

  Switching the call to speaker, she placed it on top of the desk. Booker took one look at itt, saw it was on speaker and snapped into focus.

  “I’m here with Detective Booker,” Alfa announced. “He’s currently helping me out on a thing or two. I just put you on speaker, officer Davenport, you may continue.”

  “As I was saying,” the voice continued. “We found bodies at the docks.”

  “When?” Booker asked.

  “A few hours ago.”

  Booker looked at her, a question in his eyes. Alfa knew what the question was. they were not the only detectives in the precinct. So why her specifically?

  Gifted related, she mouthed to him. To Davenport, she said, “How long?”

  There was a pause, then some shuffling in the background. “Not entirely certain, maybe a week?”

  “You’re not sure?”

  “The body’s been kinda… drained?” Davenport sighed. “I don’t know, ma’am. I’m calling because the detective in charge gave me your number and said I should inform you. We think it might be a Gifted problem.”

  “Did the detective say anything else?” Booker asked.

  “No, sir, just that I should give Detective Alfa a call.”

  Booker gave Alfa an apologetic look, as if he had just tried to help and come up short. Alfa wasn’t bothered by it.

  “May I know the name of the detective that handed you my number?” she asked.

  “Detective Dantani.”

  Alfa frowned. This was going to be a problem. After her little scuffle with David Swan, she had come to learn that Dantani and Naymond were not strangers, if anything, they were very close acquaintances.

  If the man was referring an issue to her, then it had to have something to do with Naymond. But, more importantly, wasn’t Dantani supposed to be with Deoti in Africa somewhere hunting down the double class situation.

  “I need coordinates,” she said with a sigh, getting up from her chair. “Which of the docks?”

  “We’ve already cleared out the crime scene, ma’am.” Davenport paused. “Not that there was a crime scene to speak of.”

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  “I take it the bodies were hidden?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Alfa shook her head. Just what she needed, a problem added to Mrs. Lockwood’s problem. Shrugging on her jacket, she turned her monitor off.

  “But there is still a scene, right?” she said, picking up her phone and walking out of the office.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Then that’s were I want to see.” She paused at the door out and looked back at Detective Booker. “What? You’re not coming?”

  Booker moved away from the table quickly, smiling almost to himself. Together, they left the office.

  …

  Teofil played with a single coin, flipping it along his knuckles. It was an old trick he’d learnt as a child, courtesy of his loving uncle.

  He stared at the coin, heads flipping to tails and back.

  Today, he sat mentally exhausted at a large table. He wasn’t the only one currently seated, though. There were twelve others, men and women of varying ages, none of them were younger than fifty.

  Still, if anyone present was to be judged by their looks, they could easily be mistaken for people in their thirties, Teofil included.

  Legs crossed on the large oak table, he listened to them talk. To him, they were simply rambling, complaining without solutions.

  The room was dimly lit, illuminated by nothing but candles hanging from candle stands affixed to the walls. It made the room seem medieval, drab. He paid it very little attention, after all, he rarely ever showed up here for such gatherings.

  The chairs around the tables all had very high backs, so high that two men could stand atop each other and still not be as tall as the backrests.

  “This is a serious problem, and I warned us about it a year ago,” Nechifor barked, hands balled into fists on the table. “We needed to speed up operations but you all wanted to take it easy, be careful. You all,” he pointed an angry finger at each person at the table except Teofil, “pussied out.”

  “Language!” Paraschiva snapped at him. “You will comport yourself with decorum, Nechifor.”

  “Decorum be DAMNED!” Nechifor roared. “We are being chopped down, one branch at a time!”

  Unlike Nechifor who went for a more modern look, wearing a three piece suit, Paraschiva was a woman who delighted in looking her age. She even took to dying her hair grey and wearing it short as if it was a strain to keep long.

  Teofil paid attention to them. If he remembered correctly, they had history together, not a romantic one, but one nonetheless.

  The remaining ten at the table said nothing, allowing the chaos to play out before them.

  “Must you be so dramatic?” Paraschiva asked, rubbing her forehead with thumb and forefinger. “Ten years ago you wanted to go hide under a rock when Zenovia died. You thought we were being hunted then.”

  Nechifor snarled at her. “We’ve been hunted before.”

  “You say it like you were there,” one of the others at the table said. He was Radu. Most of the people at the table often gave him some level of deference, as if he was the oldest at the table. Toefil had seen his birth certificate. It said that he was sixty-two. It made him the second oldest.

  With his class, Toefil wouldn’t doubt if he was truly significantly older than the others.

  “That I was not there does not mean that it did not happen,” Nechifor said, seeming to forget himself. “I would rather not experience it myself.”

  Another man snorted in amusement. “They wouldn’t have to hide yours. The world would not even care if you were to go.”

  Nechifor rose from his chair in defiant anger. “You dare!”

  The man, Dorin, cocked a brow. “Sit your ass down, Nech. I’d beat you nine out of ten times.”

  Nechifor growled, baring his teeth. Teofil rolled his eyes at the man’s display of fangs. The things they had been doing had led to some permanent physiological effects. Biological too.

  Radu didn’t seem capable of being bothered by their exchange. He rarely involved himself in these levels of senseless squabbles.

  Toefil looked up, bored and trying to keep himself interested in something, anything. The ceiling above was just as boring as the people below. It was stone grey with a touch of granite blue. That was it. That was all it had to offer.

  “Nechifor, Dorin.”

  At the sound of their names, Nechifor and Dorin fell silent. It was like a command, a simple thing. There was no threat in the tone, no noticeable inflection. It made Toefil smile.

  He always liked it when Risha chose to speak. Dark skinned and mostly quiet, the general consensus was that he had Nigerian blood, descending from the Yoruba tribe. Rumors at the table claimed that his mother had actually named him Orisha, but he had legally changed it to Risha when he came of age out of respect to his ethnicity.

  Toefil didn’t get it since he had no idea what either names meant.

  Risha, however, was the quiet enforcer of the table. He rarely did anything, rarely said anything. In fact, most times he looked as if he was not paying attention.

  But they feared him. Why? Because once upon a time, someone had gone too far and Risha had killed him without even breaking a sweat. In simple terms, the group was one man short because of Risha.

  Why these people liked to boil up and throw tantrums when they knew that Risha was present just to be shut up by the man was beyond Toefil, but he couldn’t be bothered with that.

  “Now that there is silence, we must focus on what is important,” Miori, a lady with a smile that could light up any room said. “I believe it will not be far fetched to say that the [Sage] is responsible for this.”

  “The question is what [Sage],” Nechifor said.

  Naymond Hitchcock, Toefil thought, remembering the name from the message one of the lackeys had delivered to the table through the proper channels.

  “Naymond Hitchcock,” Miori said. “We all know that he has been the major reason our attempts to use the United States as an experimental environment failed.”

  Radu shook his head in disappointment. “One man has single handedly stopped our expansion into that country. How long will he hold you all back?”

  “Coming from someone who couldn’t get into Nigeria,” one of those who hadn’t spoken said in the way of a snide comment. Her name was Lessey, and she was the only other non-Romanian at the table.

  “Do not presume to know things,” Radu said, tone calm. “The United States is not the Republic of Nigeria.”

  Toefil could not disagree with that. No one at the table could. The Republic of Nigeria, after all, had the only wielder of the [Unbound] class. The number one ranked Gifted in the world. As powerful as he was, no one alive knew what exactly his powers were. For all the combat situations anyone had seen the man in, he had never used a skill, at least not a known skill. What was impressive about him was his ability to defeat any opponent with nothing but unarmed combat.

  “We must settle our score with the [Sage],” Miori suggested.

  Nechifor scoffed. “What would you have us do—pay him off? You and I both know that his vendetta with us is personal.”

  “Why?” Lessey asked, curious. “Did we offend him somehow? Is there something you know that we don’t?”

  “I know just as much as you do.” Nechifor folded his arms over his chest in a huff. “I only deduce his vendetta from how actively he has been against us. No one dedicates their life so viciously to stopping us from entering their country all by themselves.”

  “So we kill the [Sage],” Radu said.

  Dorin shook his head. “It will not be so easy. We tried and failed multiple times in his own country.”

  Radu turned his head to look at him, there was something superior in the way he did it, like a father looking at a stupid child. “He is in our country now.”

  “And has managed to destroy five of our public labs and eleven labs no one is supposed to even know about.” Paraschiva shook her head. “We don’t even know where exactly he is.”

  “There are powerful Gifted stationed at different branches just in case he breaks into one of them,” Miori said. “Last week, he wiped out an entire lab and killed the SS-rank [Dreadnaught] we had stationed there because of him. He is proving to be a bigger threat than we thought.”

  “Just two days ago, he killed the [Mage] in Sibiu.”

  “Two weeks ago he killed the titan in Cluj-napoca,” Dorin added. “At this rate, we’re losing more men than we are worth. We cannot continue to put them out there for him to kill.”

  If only the world knows just how many SS-ranks really exist, Toefil thought with a smile. Or how many of them aren’t really that strong.

  Everyone paused, all eyes except Toefil’s settled on a member of the group. He was a slender man with clean shaven head. He had grey eyes, side effects of a magical experiment done on him.

  “No,” he said without missing a beat.

  “Come on, Liviu,” Miori groaned. “You’re strong enough to deal with a simple [Sage]. Doesn’t his very presence irk you?”

  “You do not kill an ant with a gun. The [Sage] is beneath me.”

  Miori sighed, turning her attention to someone else. “Risha, what about you?”

  “I do not care what the [Sage] does.”

  Toefil chuckled at that because he believed the man. Risha could simply get up and find another group to join. He didn’t really have a stake in this. He was here for the sake of being here.

  “Something funny?” Radu asked.

  Toefil looked him, met the man’s eyes, then pointed at himself. “Me?”

  “Yes, you.”

  “Nope.” He shook his head.

  “Then what’s so funny?” Paraschiva asked.

  Toefil paused, confused. His brows furrowed. “I’m confused. Are you addressing me right now?”

  Miori gave him an insulted look. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  Toefil’s eyes widened in disbelief. Then they settled as he brought himself under control. Carefully, he placed his coin on the table, put his leg down, and sat up straight.

  “Tell me, dear Miori,” he said in an amiable voice. “Have you forgotten what death feels like? You’ve died before, haven’t you? Would you like to die again?”

  Miori rose from her chair. Toefil activated his skill.

  [You have used Oath skill Where Death Lives]

  He felt his authority suffuse the entire room. But it had a focus. Miori took upon herself the brunt of it.

  She staggered once, then turned white as a ghost. Her eyes couldn’t leave Toefil, and he knew that for all she could do, she knew what would happen if she looked away.

  “Now,” he said, voice still cheery, “sit.”

  Miori sat without delay.

  [You have deactivated Oath skill Where Death Lives]

  Done, he addressed everyone else at the table. “Please, do not let the chaos of the [Sage]’s presence and your fear of Risha lead you to forget the real monster in the room.”

  He was met with silence, so he continued. “I am not here to brainstorm with all of you. I am here to watch you brain storm, to be impressed or, at the very least, not be disappointed. And so far,” he looked at Radu, “I have been very disappointed.”

  “My apologies,” Radu said, respectfully.

  Toefil got up. “Good. Besides, I’m tired of sitting here with all of you anyway. You all reek of blood and death. You should learn to clean up better.”

  With that, he headed for the exit. The Romanian council continued to impress him in their own way. How they kept their very specific class under wraps was interesting enough. Each member of the council was a side effect of experimentation. Designed to be a shortcut to a rank up, their experimentations had led to other outcomes.

  For some it granted them a different temporary class, for others a deadly rank up that never ended well.

  For those in the council, they were granted second classes. All those seated at the table were anomalies possessing two classes. What was more interesting were their ranks. Each of them was SS-rank, and so were each of the classes they had. They were extremely unique.

  If there was one downside, it was that they were a very rare occurrence in the experiments and the second class was always the same.

  Toefil stepped out of the room and into a brightly lit modernized hallway. He took in a deep breath and basked in the absence of blood staining the air.

  “Now that’s what air should smell like.”

  Looking back at the door he’d just stepped out of, he was reminded once again of why he hated attending these meetings.

  I really can’t stand the smell of [Vampire]s.