Present Day

I had been sitting there in the dark for almost an hour now, the night outside casting lurid shadows. The sounds of the street on the other side of my window, of people living their lives filling the room.

I should be out there, not just wasting away here in the dark. The buzz of alcohol coursing through my body, dredging up memories I had long thought purged. My mind would not settle, the conversation with Levi playing again and again with malicious glee.

Reaching a decision, fighting my way out of the depths of the chair, not exactly a picture of decisive action. Grabbing my coat, crowd stopper, a wad of cash and headed out to join other people’s lives.

Arcadia had calmed down a lot in the past few years even if it didn’t look the part now. The Super who protected and ran the city has been cracking down on regular crime. Finding people who had been Shanghai’d by the White Hands or forced into running drugs for the Knockers used to be my bread and butter. Now it was more chasing married folks who can’t keep it in their pants. Not that I mind, help is help.

Standing outside the first stop in my journey, “The Loaded Run”, a bar of good repute and bad clientele. Stepping out of the streets into the plush interior reminded me that while I pretend to pay my cleaning lady, the people in here probably owned their cleaners. I got a few stares from the suited men and the befrocked ladies as I fronted up to the bar but Tommy had already seen me coming and had a fruity number waiting for me. Fastest cocktail hands in the land even if they did look like stunted lumps of meat.

No one knew where the name The Loaded Run came from, Tommy had been here longer than I had but even he couldn’t be drawn on the subject. All I knew is that he had the best information in town and he owed me a solid for the rest of his tap jockeying career.

The suits to my right shuffled away in a huff but I was already halfway through the glass of colour, sugar and fruit that was my usual. Finishing it off I spun it back to Tommy and asked for something with actual kick to it. Bless his scarred heart as the single eyebrow lift was the only comment he made. While he stalked off I eyed the ladies to my left. Their outfits alone would pay my monthly rent but no harm in giving them a grin and a nod.

“Tommy gun, as always, love the digs.” I said as he returned with a pint this time.

“Alright Sol, you are here during my work hours so you either want free liquid or info. As you are still talking after the first I can assume you are here after a good word.” He nodded towards the pint “Back on the piss I see?”

Turning away from the ladies, shining the grin onto him, I ignored the last comment “You wound me Tommy gun, couldn’t I be here just for the atmosphere and the witty repartee?”

“You prefer the heady atmosphere in the swamp you call your office and you can’t be shucked out of there for anything other than a hunt.”

He was right. I was a terrible friend if you wanted someone to return your calls or to be there to listen to you whinge about your day. However if you needed someone to say, hunt down the men who abducted your children and disappeared across the border where the authorities couldn’t follow?

Then I was your now slightly drunken man for the job.

“Alright then” I squared up as the ladies started to chatter louder “I do need information. I need to revisit an old case. I’m trying to find the Seeker.”

He stopped what he was doing, looked at me and headed down to the other end of the bar.

Picking up my drink I followed after him. “Why the spy treatment Tommy?” I said as I got to him again.

“Sol, please. You spent months chasing that phantom. You dug me dry, hell you dug everyone dry. There was nothing to find. The Seeker is dead and buried. Why you got to be bringing that corpse up again?”
I expected exasperation, even annoyance but the anger was an odd note that never crept into our dealings.

“Is this because I don’t pay my tab?” I tried, but the look I received would have nailed a lesser man to the wall. It forced me to really look at my friend in his silly little uniform covering up a 7ft tall monster, prison tatts and enough scars to construct the bar menu.

“Sorry Tommy.” I continued “It’s important. Something has come up; I need to find the Seeker. Not for me, a friend.”

We stared at each other for a while; I was willing him to believe me as what I said was mostly true.

“Okay Sol. You know I will always help you. Doesn’t mean you always get what you want though.” His words echoing my exact thoughts about Levi. “Hunting the Seeker again” my empty pint mug was slid towards him, he eyed it “Hitting the booze hard again. I don’t like sequels Sol.” He pulled me another one though, ever the professional. “What do you need?”

My hands grabbed the mug and I fought them to keep it on the counter top. “The Seeker. Last time I searched everywhere that he could possibly be. This time I need to search where he couldn’t be.”

Tommy looked at me for a bit, blankly then asked “What? Like Space?”

Tommy was a big lad, sure…

“No Tommy. Not like Space. Like, I don’t know…” I trailed off. Just saying it made me realise that I had come here thinking that he would have a brilliant new plan, another piece to the years old puzzle.

I played with the drink in front of me, working it between my hands. I had been drinking solidly for most of the day. I was worried I was falling back into old habits. I shook myself, I was not going to become that person again. I could have some drinks without it becoming a lifestyle.

I had come straight here as Tommy was my ear to both the underground and the upper crust. He didn’t run with any of the crews like the Stars or the White Hands but he had friends across most of them. No one touched Tommy as he would pound them into paste if he thought there was a chance they would separate him from his family. He had been on the straight and clean now for years but he kept the old friendships alive. Working at the Loaded Run was another facet, being the help gave him a special Super of being invisible to these people so they would flap their lips and Tommy would just soak it up.

Tommy was always my first contact when trying to figure something out, this time I came running without stopping to think. Maybe the old habits were coming back. I had almost destroyed our friendship last time with my obsession, my constant probing, pushing. I did lose a lot of friends but thankfully not him.

Here I was, starting it over again. I looked at the pint.

I really don’t learn.

Just what was I after? What did I think he could provide that he couldn’t all those years ago? I was lost in thought while Tommy had adopted that blank stare of his, happy to stand there doing nothing until a thought or Brownian motion came along.

Raising my pint to my lips I found it strangely empty. Not sure when that happened. I pushed it towards Tommy who returned it full and with an expressive shrug he wandered off down the bar.

Last time I had chased the Seeker I had started with a load of preconceived ideas. That he was like Levi at heart, a good guy, relatively speaking. What if he was bent? What if the Mirror that had jumped out had his cunning amplified or his morality shrunk? I could never be sure could I? I know that Levi has no control of the Mirrors he creates. The Great Levi Forward was proof of that. Levi always played the straight man, what if this Mirror was dodge?

The sounds of the Loaded Run fell away from me as I continued. The patterns churning through my head. I had been hunting for a recluse, a researcher.

I flagged Tommy who dutifully finished making some fancy looking cocktails for the ladies with too much fruit and sparkle, even for my taste. He ambled down past the brass taps towards me.

“Alright Tommy, what about the crews? You heard anything from there? Any new Supers coming up or causing trouble?”

He reached up and rubbed his ear between his scarred finger and thumb. “Ahh Sol, nothing like that comes to mind. In fact everyone ‘cept those Barley Boys have been having a great haul. Even the Finches, those little bastards came back from the brink. They run a tight little ship now, turn a tidy profit.”

I shook my head, great news everyone! The criminal gangs are having a bumper time. “What about from back then? Any one opened up about any weird shit? Any deathbed confessions?” I was really fishing now but such a large pond I was hoping for a nibble.

He kept rubbing his ear, lost in thought. I could almost hear the trains of thought grinding their way onto a different track. “Sol, This is starting to feel familiar and I don’t like it. I don’t even know what you are after! I mean back then weird shit was an every day occurrence! Don’t you remember what it was like? Brink trying to go nova and level the city because she thought people were going to eat her brain? Solace started his sex cult that got wildly out of hand. The Finches were almost wiped out by Dressinalia who held a grudge like nothing else. You couldn’t take a shit back then without a Super popping out!”

Nodding along, he was right. Before the city was put under the protection of Rose every damn day was another mess. Dressinalia, what an odd bitch. I shuddered at the memory of what she used to leave behind when she got hold of a Fincher.

Even since Supers began appearing a couple of decades ago life had been, well, interesting. Arcadia used to be known as York back then. Then a Super claimed the entire city as his. He could generate unlimited electricity and smacked down anyone who tried to muscle into his turf. The people welcomed the change as it meant you woke up in the same city you went to sleep in.

Now Supers were just a fact of life, before when they first started to appear the stories made it seem like the entire world went mad, it was a wild west. Even now, no one knows what happened to Australia. The entire continent just disappeared.

Tommy continued “Man, thinking back I’m surprised that any of the crews actually survived. I even hear the Barley Boys almost got taken down by a Super and you know how those lads feel about Supers.”
Pulling myself back from the memory of Dressinalia that liked to pop up and check in on me, usually around 3am. I looked back at Tommy.

“The Barley Boys? What? Those chaps have never allowed a Super near their patch.”

Tommy shrugged and his face went that special kind of slack when he is trying to recall something, letting his face just hang there while his brain retrieves whatever he needs to get a hold of.

“I got talking with Jimmy Four-hands, you remember him yeah?” I gestured him to continued. I know Four-hands, ohh yes I did.

“Well Jimmy got the big C a little while ago and we ended up flapping pancakes. He told me stories of back in the day running with the Barley Boys and all the shit they got up to. He was a bit more loose lipped now, as what were the Boys going to do to him that the Cancer was not already? Christ, just sitting there with him shitting himself? He wanted it over but between you and me, I think he was goading the Barley Boys as he didn’t have the stones to do it himself. Anyway, he told me of a job they did over in the New Town Docks. A real babysitter. It was Jimmy, Noel the Stick, Bren, his brother Canen and Threeball.”

My drink forgotten for once, I felt a tightening of my chest. This was new. I had never heard of a Super called Threeball. The Boys never let a Super into their Crew either. I had not managed to ferret out what their Super was either but they held their square tight and only used Normies. I tried to not shake Tommy to make him go faster. I essayed a casual “Ohh yeah Tommy?”

He didn’t pick up the desperation in my voice and continued.

“Jimmy said it was just holding some shinies for one of the bigger dogs, he didn’t know who though. Bren, Canen? The Barley Boys themselves on a babysit? It was important. Not to draw attention to it though so it was just the five of them, including Threeball who was an up and comer. A bit of a trial apparently to see if he would drive the Boys bat shit spending that much time together. Somehow though the Knocker Men had gotten wind of this little sit and came in swinging.”
The Knockers were not a group to fuck with. They ran the protection rackets with ruthless efficiency. You paid or you, your family, friends all went missing. Simple really. So how the hell did Four-Hands survive to tell the tale? The man was a wet blanket.

Tommy continued, unaware of my churning thoughts.

“As Jimmy put it, it went south, real south. He don’t know how the Boys survived it and they have pretended since; it never happened. Jimmy said that they didn’t know that Threeball was a Super at the time. They did by the end though, whatever Threeball’s Super was it allowed him to be every where at once. He could teleport, super speed, the whole hog. Jimmy hid out the blood bath, a real slaughter. By the time the screaming stopped and Jimmy looked it was Threeball standing there, alone. Except for, you know, the corpses of Knocker Men. He snatched some shinies and bailed. Never saw him again, figured the Boys took care of him.”

Tommy finished with a nod almost to say, yep, I done remembered good.

I tried to contain my excitement, a new lead. A dark warehouse, Jimmy no doubt trying to hide and save his own skin. An unknown Super somehow happened to show up once, get found out and bail? Teleportation, Super speed, no way he was not out there ruling a city. Not with that power selection. I ran through my known list of Super’s ruling a city and none fit that simple profile.

“What about Jimmy? He still over at old lady Watkins place?”

Tommy came back to earth with an almost contemptuous look. “Sol, No. The mans dead. Don’t you pay attention to anything?”

I shrugged uncomfortably. Sure, Jimmy was not a friend but he was not a bad guy. I swore I had been meaning to go see him when I learned about his cancer but life got in the way. God, even as I thought it I knew that was a lie, I was just trying to shit myself. Just like Jimmy…. No, Horrible. The man’s dead. I shook my head, have some god-damn compassion.

“Noel the Stick?” I was trundling down memory lane but nothing was sparking.

“Died that night Sol.” Tommy offered.

I grimaced. It was a ghost of a rumour from a man dying of cancer filtered through Tommy. It was all I had though and I had a good feeling.

“Thanks Tommy. You always come though for me.”

“I know Sol.” He agreed with me, taking my empty mug. “I am amazing.”

I laughed and headed off, letting the smile out again for the ladies as I passed. They took one look at my scared face and overcoat and ignored me. Leaving the only opulence I have in my life as I walked out the door. I knew what I need to do.

I needed to talk to the Barley Boys.