Sister Cities

Part 67: Jinx (3 Years Ago)

There was fire around us, so I should have known why

The touch of his hands were as cold as his eyes

All my life, I've been heading for hell

There's glory ahead, but our love will be forgotten

If my heart was still mine, I would go to the bottom

And apologize to you until the day it went rotten

But hey, baby, take a look

We have it all

Can you hear me?

I am calling out to you for the last time

________________________________________________________________________________

I jump onto Silco's desk. "Sevika said you wanted to see me."

"Yes. I have a job for you."

I slap his favorite mug down in front of him. "Look! I decorated it."

"Indeed." He picks it up and rotates it slowly.

"Do you like it?"

"I do. Very much." He looks at the bottom of it, where I wrote "U R The Bomb (Tell Me When You See This)" with a buck-toothed smiley face shark. "Thank you, Jinx."

"You're welcome." I climb up to the support beam.

"I need your focus now," he says. "Your assignment today cannot involve any... 'goofing off.'"

"Aw, c'mon, Gramps."

"This isn't a joke."

I hinge myself on the beam at my knees so I can swing. "Okay, okay."

He sets his mug off to the side and pulls out a thick paper folder. "You remember the hijacking of the transport cart ten days ago," he says. "Instigated by the Firelights."

I stop swinging.

"I've grown tired of them," he says. "Starry-eyed vigilantes with no understanding of the position Zaun is in. I expected their little syndicate to have dissolved by now, but they appear to be strengthening instead. They've gone from an annoyance to a true thorn in our sides."

"Nah," I say. "They're not that special. I barely even notice them."

"One of my men was killed in that hijacking, Jinx," Silco says. "We can't afford that. We have people in multiple nations now who depend on our empire's survival."

I flip down and land on my feet on the floor. "What are we gonna do, then?"

He pulls a face-down photograph out of the folder. "You're going to take out their leader."

"Oh."

"The problem with the Firelights is that they have forms of technology unavailable to us, and nobody can locate their base of operations," says Silco. "If we could, I would simply have you destroy it, along with all their resources. As it is, I believe that the loss of their leader will destabilize the remainder of the party to the point of disbanding on their own. If not, our countermeasures will quickly finish the job."

My palms are sweating. "What if it doesn't work?"

"Then we shall move on to more drastic methods of defense. Despite working against their own interests, these people are Zaunites— I want to start small, in order that as many of them as possible have the opportunity to turn to the side of good. But I won't see beggars and sick children die for their sake, and sadly, communication has been futile, as has bargaining. This is our next step."