DIVISION 52 - BOOK III

CHAPTER XIII

A R T E L L A

Her blue hair was making people stare.

She always had liked incognito by making herself distinguishable and suddenly vanishing into nothing. I eyed her outer Sector clothing as we dined in a well established restaurant in Sector 5. Upper class patrons made sure to let us know as much by throwing Proximo's sister disbelieving looks after every sip.

Dazz lived for it.

She tilted the ornate chair back on two legs to appraise me more. I rolled my eyes and took a sip of wine.

"Don't you clean up nicely, Arty babes." She swooned, coming back down onto all four chair legs. I watched her over the rim of my class before readjusting my dinner jacket.

"One of us has to." I grunted. "Let's get back to the part where you almost blew my cover."

She rolled her eyes and skewered a piece of meat on her fork, watching it with a bored expression. "–Scorpion doesn't believe in fairy tales but Xavier just might."

"What the hell does that mean?" I growled.

"It means the Division still buys that Proximo is dead." She shrugged, "–From what I hear on the inner feed they all want you dead."

"Good. But Xavier?" I prompted, setting down my glass. Why was it that she couldn't accept this. She was there when it had happened. It was convincing down to a tee. Down to some poor sod wearing Proximo's face flying from the top of a gods damned building.

"Well, our little Princess was never one for following the norm was she..." Dazz drawled, picking up her wine and tipping it back like a bottle of cheap junak.

I shook my head, pinching the bridge of my nose. "She must have had additional information–another source–"

"I have been on all of their comm feeds, Art. No one in the Division has word he's still alive." She answered in a more serious voice. The only reason she had agreed to this entire game at all was the fact that she was convinced Proximo would be kept safe from the Deathless. Yet it was entirely possible she would tell them herself... If they trusted her at all it would have been an issue.

"Where are they now?"

"On their way here." She deadpanned.

I choked on my wine and onlookers stared our way.

"You didn't think. To tell me this, Dazz?" I grit out, checking the fusion pistols inside my jacket.

She blew me a kiss before answering.

"You'll live." She said with a sureness that I didn't trust. "–it's Proximo that I'm watching out for."

I sighed long before opening my eyes and asking the table, "I suppose he wants me dead too."

"Naturally." She answered, shoving a piece of meat in her mouth. I felt the knife twist inside my heart all the more. But protection came at great cost. Just as death did. Just as Dex received. But not again. Not with Proximo.

"–I think he knows enough, Artella."

I frowned at her words but when I looked up she was already leaving. Slipping on a jacket she had stolen from the back of chair and morphing her face into that of another woman entirely. I chuckled to myself as I dapped my mouth with a napkin.

Then I smoothly pulled a fusion pistol from my lapel and fired it into the ceiling.

The screaming was instant. Such things were never witnessed inside inner Merridian. But it cleared the room faster than any voice would. It cleared the civilians I knew wouldn't be safe from the vengeance Scorpion sought for me.