The Pride of Parahumans by Joel Kreissman Read Free Book Online

wide open. Sticking
out of his neck I spotted a pair of red feathered darts. Denal made
a surprised squeaking sound and I turned to see what he was looking
at. It was a pressure pistol, seemingly hanging suspended in
mid-air.
    No, not suspended, there was a shape nearby
that was colored the same as the cave wall behind. It moved
slightly and became a canid woman dressed head to toe in a
chameleon suit. As we watched she holstered the weapon and pulled
the hood off, revealing that she was a grey wolf with close-cropped
hair.
    "Well, hello there babe." Denal began but was
silenced by a threatening finger pointed in his direction by our
camouflaged savior. She walked past him to the rat she had downed
and started collecting her darts.
    I watched her do her work for a few seconds
before speaking to her. "Thank you for saving me like that.
Miss?"
    She glanced up at me to answer my query.
Instead she flashed me a comm number on her wristpad, which I
entered into my own in conference with the rest of my crewmates. Olga Wolf . I heard in a soft voice resonating through my
jawbones. I'm an investigator for Guild Wolf. Yes, I
know, creative name. Even through subvocals I could discern the
sarcasm.
    Why are we using subvocalization? Aniya asked before anyone else came up with the idea.
    Because the tetrodotoxin in those darts
doesn't always paralyze their sensory neurons . Came Olga's
response. It mostly goes after voluntary muscle control,
including the diaphragm. Only reason he hasn't suffocated to death
is the oxygen retaining modifications our designers added.
    I picked up the wannabe mugger's wrist and
put two fingers to the inner edge. Sure enough there was a faint
pulse, but I couldn't hear any breathing. Why are you so
concerned about being heard by this guy anyways? I asked
her.
    Oh, that. Well you heard him, I'm not
supposed to be here. Thanks to some pissing match between mom and
old man Jerome the tunnels are supposed to be neutral territory.
But this guy has been preying on not only newcomers like you but
our own clients who have to use this tunnel to get to and from the
spaceport. She walked towards Aniya and Denal and drew her dart
gun. So here's what you're going to do. One of you is going to
take this gun, you're all going to take this waste of biomass back
to the Marquez side, and you're going to report to the nearest
Marquez officer or drone that he attacked your friend here and you
shot him with an open-source dart shooter that you printed off
before coming on board. She held the gun out grip first to see
who would take it.
    Aniya took the gun and looked at the
inexpensively 3d printed weapon a bit apprehensively for several
seconds before stuffing it into one of the pouches on her tauric
pants, barely leaving a bulge. Are you sure they won't mind us
pumping someone full of deadly poisons? I would have thought that
the Protector's Guilds would take a bit of offense to people that
sort of thing.
    Olga suppressed a snort as she reattached her
hood. Why, is that why you left your old place? Everyone's
eyes widened a bit at the half joking accusation. Oh, well Vesta
was founded mainly on the principle of "you can't tell me what I
can't do" so you'll generally find that people here wouldn't care
whether you tip your darts with cyanide. And anyways the Guilds
operate like insurance, the more you do yourself the less they have
to pay. She finished fastening her hood and reactivated her
camouflage, I could still see a bit of an outline as she started to
walk away.
    But then I remembered some minor thing that
she had mentioned. Wait, you said something about "mom" and an
"old man Jerome", who are they?
    The silhouette paused for a few seconds. I'm a clone of Georgia Wolf, the Guildmistress of Guild Wolf.
Jerome Marquez is the Guildmaster of the Guild you guys are
paying.
    "Does everyone on this rock have two names
like a human?" Cole threw in his own comment. The rest of us glared
at him for failing to remember that we were