R. A. T. H

Thirty-Seven

Paul Walker stopped the audio feed coming through his pad. He would have preferred a video, but those things were not as discrete. He knew one of the voices belonged to the rat, Mare—though even the other sounded quite familiar as well.

"Interesting," He thought, 'Very interesting.'

Before he could continue his pondering any further, his pad blinked with a name he had been waiting for. He tapped the screen.

"Motherfucker! I wake up to the sound of you—you, banging on my fucking doors?! Walker, what in the bloody hell are you doing ignoring the truce we've set?! Do you want to paint the streets red again?!"

The face across the screen looked like that of a 14 year-old boy. With long black hair, pale-brown skin, and golden eyes, the male raged with fury.

"Truce?" Paul laughed and relaxed into his chair a bit more.

He found it interesting how the man looked more youthful than the last time he saw him, but his mind moved to remember the words the Reaper had told him when she came for help in exchange for simply telling her where that boy, Lux, lived. He was already behind on payments for two months, had evaded him for a month, forced him to come knocking personally, and yet he still had the gall to get in trouble with a Reaper? It had its own sort of impressiveness to it.

He narrowed his eyes to the hovering screen before him.

"The City's expanding, you idiots," He mouthed, "That truce is all but a joke now."

And it wouldn't be long before the other two lords caught wind of it.

"Wha—what? Really?"

The boy looked shocked, disbelief was written across his young face, but he didn't care whether the other Slum Lords believed him or not, especially not this one.

"Come out of your shell, Brian, give up the district. Else, I will knock harder."

"Fuck you."

The video cut off. There was silence for a moment.

"Sir?" A voice piqued up behind him.

Paul Walker smiled.

"Phase 2 it is then."

The rat might have escaped his hands, but that didn't matter. Information was only information and he would have to do things a bit more old fashioned, that was fine; there was nothing that couldn't be solved in the slums with absolute might. All that would matter was how hard he needed to knock.

"Get me Chase, as well."

Though, that did not mean he was done with her and her helper.

— — —

The ride was momentarily silent. Rose thought about her payment, but her mind still jumped to an even more important oddity she had noticed previously.

"What information were they looking for?" She turned to the passenger seat of the dune-buggy. "It's not about entering the city, is it?"

"Oh god no," Mare chuckled, "The Slum Lords already know how to do that. Bunch of stuck-ups that keep it guarded—I stole the information from them in the first place. I simply thought that would pique your interest more than the real one—it always does."

The girl hadn't seen through her fake caution, but she had been quick on her feet even before then, choosing her words carefully to rile her up to save her. Smart, Rose thought.

"Then, what is the real one?"

The info-broker smiled.

"The location of Brian Chaz's base."