Domesticated, Ch 11 (Patreon)

Looking at this guy’s eBay purchase history, I could forgive him a lot. The guy’s a nerd and not afraid to show it. I mean, his eBay handle is SaintNerd_1969. The year’s not when he was born, but I haven’t made the link. He currently has a dozen bids going on memorabilia from shows I barely heard of from the aught and before that. War Planet, Beast Wars, Rayman, Voltron, and, of course, Reboot. It’s all early computer animation.

I’m currently fighting him over one of the Reboot original promotional posters signed by all the voice actors. Like I said, I can forgive him a lot for being that serious about being a nerd, but I’m not letting someone who enables pedophiles have the privilege of putting up this poster in his home.

When I jumped into the bidding twenty minutes ago, as Cr1ms0m_B1n0M3, he was going to pay just under five hundred dollars for it. I’ve been outbidding him by a hundred dollars since then. We’ve both set up our accounts to automatically bid. His does it by a dollar each time. We’re now up to three hundred seventy-eight thousand with one minute to go. I’m not worried. Unlike him, I don’t have a limit as to how much I can spend on this, while he’s about to hit his.

Doing hacks for a cartel that does human trafficking pays him well, but that money’s been going to a lot of expensive memorabilia, so there it is. With fifteen seconds to go, at four hundred twelve thousand dollars and change, he stopped bidding. He needs to be better than what I’ve seen him do to get his digits on anything that will let him.

And there it is. I now own the poster. There’s at least one item that won’t get desecrated by his tainted hands. The address I gave the account is a PO box in a courier center in a bus terminal in downtown. I’ll pick it up when I get the notification it’s arrived. It’s going to look amazing next to my rig.

Now that’s interesting, the email I had to create to get the account just received one from SaintNerd_1969, titled, We neeed to talk. He must be rushed to make that kind of typo.

If you give me a week, I can double what you paid for the poster.

That’s impressive. I can just imagine the work he’s got lined up that would let him get another four hundred grand.

I reply with something simple. I don’t even bother embedding a virus. Asyr will take care of his computers while I take care of him.

If it was about the money, I wouldn’t have bid on it. This is about keeping something precious out of your hands.

I look up while I let him fume. The house down the road from where I’m parked, where SaintNerd_1969, otherwise known as Harold St-Claire, lives, is a freehold in Canyon Trails. The grass it perfectly manicured and so green that if I didn’t know how much he spent on the gardening company that takes care of it, I’d think it was painted. Like the yard, the house is in perfect condition. Harold’s parents gave it to him when they moved to a more intimate housing community on the other side of the city.

I guess they decided that if he wasn’t going to move out of their basement, they might as well move out of the house.

His reply arrives.

This is me being reasonable. The alternative is me showing up on your doorstep and taking it by force. Do the smart thing and agree to me buying it from you.

I laugh. I almost want to update the information on the account, go home and wait for him to show up. I can just imagine what Tristan will do to him.

But Harold’s mine. I send my reply.

No go.

See you soon.

And a lot sooner than you expect. I shut down the laptop, then put it in the faraday caged bag. I didn’t see virus in any of his emails, but I’m not taking a chance he put something in it that will turn it on and get it to access everything in range.

Yes, that is a thing.

I’m going in, I text to the number Asyr gave me. I already traced it and know it goes nowhere. Once this is over, I’ll figure out where they live, and then we will have a talk about Tristan, just to make sure they understand I’m his, and they aren’t. I take the wooden box from the passenger seat and exit the car.

I barely stand out as I walk to the house. Give me a rat sized dog to carry, and I’d fit right in. Girls with so much plastic surgery I’m not sure there’s anything but plastic left look me over appreciatively while the guy holding on to them like they’d drown otherwise attempt to glare me away from their prize.

Talk about insecurity.

I ring the doorbell, and a gong sounds.

Not even ten seconds later, the door swings open and—

“What do you want?” the parody of a man before me demands.

Okay, let me see if I can do justice to what I’m looking at. No, I didn’t look up his picture. It’s the internet. How was that going to reflect this?

He’s five-two, at most, and almost that wide. Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but you get the idea. He’s fat. His hair short and has a sheen to it I don’t thin is hair styling products, and he had a patchy beard that on anyone else I’d say is a day old, but the way it’s barely growing, it could be a week for all I know. He has an End Game T-shirt on that’s one size too small. By the amount of sweat stain, and god to I hope those at the bottom are sweat stains, he had that one for a few days. Maybe he can’t manage to take it off. By contrast, the sweat pants look loose on him. I guess that down this is one part he wants easy access to.

I swear, I barely manage to hold back the shudder.

“I’m here to talk about the poster,” I reply. “You seemed to think us meeting face to face was important, so I decided to save you the trouble.”

“What are you talking about?”

Oh, I wish I didn’t have to do this. I mean, I want to, but that means I’m going to have to touch him. I should have put on my gloves already.

I punch him hard in the nose, then step into the house as he stumbles back. I close the door and look for something to clean my hand with.

“What the fuck’s wrong with you?” he demands, holding his bleeding nose.

“We so don’t have the time to go over that.” Fuck it. I hope there’s bleach under the sink.

“Get out of my house! I’m going to—”

I swing and his head snaps to the left, sending blood in a delicate line on the wall. Cleanup’s going to be a bitch, but this is going to be worth it. I punch him again and catch him before he falls.

“Oh no. Stay on your feet. I’m not dragging your ass anywhere.” I shove him into the kitchen, then drop him in one of the expensive chair by the breakfast table. I whistle in appreciation of the immaculate space. White counters, pale gray walls with blue patterns as accent. The place is so clean you could eat off the floor. The one thing it lacks is a coffee machine.

I’ve seen this guy’s take out orders. So I know this room sees no use, and that’s a shame. This is a professional cook level setup.

“Who the fuck are you?” he demands while I find a rag and, thank God, bleach. I soak it with the stuff and wipe my hands clean, doing my best to ignore the oily feeling of his skin. No one who spends his day sitting in front of a computer chair should ever feel that oily.

With my hands sanitized and dried, I put on gloves. He’s still glaring at me when I turn to face him.

“Why, I’m the Crimson Binome.” I give him a bow.

He stares at me. “You’re the guy who stole my poster!”

“I bought it, not stole it.”

“How the fuck do you know where I live?”

“Didn’t you listen? I’m the Crimson Binome.”

This time his staring is filled with a lack of comprehension, until it isn’t anymore. 

“Bullshit. You’re not him. The Binome doesn’t go after guys like me. He goes after the rich, entitled pricks.”

“No. I go after men who think they’re above the law and can do whatever they want to children.” I place the box on the table and his eyes go to it.

It’s plain, with a shiny varnish. I noticed it in the second-hand store next to the coffee shop I stopped at on my way here. It was open then, and that just called to me.

“I’m nothing like that,” he states.

“You’re right,” I say, my disgust slipping in. “You are nothing like them. You are so much worse.” I punch him in the stomach and immediately step away. Even with all that fat to cushion the blow, he felt it and the ensuing retching covers the floor. It’s chunky, and I don’t look any closer. “You are the kind of person who doesn’t give a fuck about the kind of job he does for those who pay him the money he needs to buy all those precious things relating to old computer animated shows.”

“It’s just work,” he says between gags.

“Let me make something clear, before I keep going. I’m not one of those white hats who thinks our power needs to be used for good. Me taking down those perverts’s got nothing to do with doing ‘good’. So I don’t give a fuck what kind of hacking anyone does so long as they don’t get in my way. Those who do get a slap on the wrist hard enough they’ll learn their lesson and I forget they exist. But the one thing I will not forgive…” I get in his face close enough I can smell the blood, the bile and the sweat, but I’m too angry to care. “Is that you have been making it possible for people to kidnap children out from under the nose of those paid to care about their safety.”

“What? I never did that.”

“Oh?” I smile. “So that wasn’t you me and my… associate—” Man, it feels strange referring to Asyr that way. Good thing it’s temporary. “—witnessed within the city’s legal servers, inserting power of attorney documentation so one Sophie Malone could be taken out of school by strangers?”

The fear appears so suddenly he seems surprised by it. I punch him again.

“I can’t wait to find out how many boys and girls you’re behind vanishing like that. Are you the one who did it for…” I try to remember the name of the girl who Tristan was looking for when we met. “Daniella something. Or has there been so many you don’t remember them?”

“I don’t—”

I hit him hard enough he falls out of the chair.

“Sit your ass back in the chair, Harold.”

He looks at me fearfully as he does so. When I take the zip-ties from a pocket, he bolts and I kick him in the stomach. While he’s gagging again, I tie his wrists to the back of the chair.

“You should count yourself lucky I’m the one dealing with you and not my husband.”

“Husband?”

“I’m married, you see.” I show him the ring. “Amazingly violent man. If he’d been the one here, instead of at the school, making sure the men going there for the girl pay dearly for it, he’d have you bent over the edge of the table, fucking you mercilessly, for what you did.” Tristan told me some of what he did to the men responsible for the parents seeking him out. “He wouldn’t take any pleasure in it. I doubt he’d even cum onces in the hours he’d fuck you, but he’d be rough, he’d make you hurt in the most intimate way you can imagine. The ways those children were hurt.”

I run a finger over the box. “I, on the other hand, am not going to be that intimate. I don’t think I could ever be desperate enough to let my dick touch your body.” I smile. “But I am going to love hurting you.” I open the box, and the music that comes from it is gentle. It could be a lullaby in someone else’s mind.

In mine, it’s a road map. A road map to pain, and eventually death.

I don’t know what kind of knife it is. Because of what knives do to me, I didn’t spend a lot of time studying them. The handle is the work of an artisan, inlaid pearl, onyx and gold. Flowers in various states of opening. The blade is thin. Almost like that of a shaving razor, but thicker in the center, and with a curve. It’s got to be as unique as the handle, as I am. As Tristan and Emil are. Monsters, each in our own ways. A family of monsters.

“What—”

The music moves my hand and the rest of what he planned on asking turns into a shriek. I don’t see the line initially, then red wells up on his forehead.

He babbles away, but the music is all that matters, and I don’t fight it. Men like him deserve what the music brings. Men like him make me love the music. They make me question Tristan’s training to control it. It is such a beautiful thing when it unleashes me on men like him.

* * * * *

He’s no longer a man when the music fades. He’s ribbons of flesh attached to muscles and bones. He’s also very much dead. The music would still play if there was life left in him.

I feel calm, at peace. A rare time when I don’t hate the music, or me for giving into it. Where we are one and administering—

I’m thrown off my feet as the pain from an impact on my shoulder radiates. Belatedly, the sound of shattering glass registers. I roll on my side. The window over the sink’s gone. On the floor, next to me, is a flattened bullet.

Whoever Tristan got this suit from is getting a Christmas card from me this year.

The door breaks and the music swells. I don’t question it and the knife leaves my hand. It’s in the throat of the man in a too expensive’s throat as he enters the kitchen. I have my APX in hand and shoot the second one to appear.

Thugs in expensive suit mean only one thing. The question is how? It’s not like until I found this guy slipping the legal data in while I was looking I knew I’d be coming…

Oh, you have got to be fucking kidding me.

I was set up?

I shot another one and move to a crouch, then to the side of the door. A glance shows no one, but that doesn’t mean anything. They can fit six of those in the cars they tend to drive. One of them stirs and I shoot him in the head. I shoot each of them in the head to be sure, then inch my way to the exit.

The gun appears over my head out of the living room door. I stand, pushing it up as he fires, then I shoot three times in his chest. Someone else fires, and this body takes the hits. I fire twice and someone falls onto something that shatters like glass. I look as I change magazine and the man’s untangling himself from a broken coffee table, surrounded by glass. I shoot him in the head and he doesn’t have to worry about that anymore.

I make it to the door without being shot at. No sirens yet, but someone will have called the police. Fuck, I hate doing this. I call the number.

“How long do I have?”

“Assuming a lot,” the digitized voice answers, sounding amused.

“I’m assuming you know what Tristan will do to you if I get killed or caught by the police and you let it happen.”

“He doesn’t know where I am.”

“That’s how all his hunts start. You know that too.”

“The police will be there in eight minutes. The cameras that show around the house only reveal one car with one man in it who seems to be waiting. He’s parked two streets over. Looking back through the recordings, they exited it. He disappeared and then returned. I have no indication there are any more in the area. I have scrambled recorders, but there is nothing I can do for people seeing you.”

“Eye witnesses are unreliable enough.” I head for my car at a leisurely pace. “Anything pointing to who’s in charge in his computer?”

“No, I will have to trace back provenance on the archived correspondence, but I doubt there will be anything there that will help you. Nerd was careful enough, but the sense I get from the people who employed him is that they are even more careful.”

My investigation revealed that much. “Thanks for the assist. But don’t think that means we’re friends.”

The snort gives the digitizer enough problem I have to pull the phone away from my ear. “I don’t make friends with rivals.”

“Glad we understand each other.” I disconnect, get in my car, and drive away. I’m going to have to ditch it and buy a new one before I head home, but I have a bigger problem.

For them to have managed to pull this on me, it means they have a lot of resources at their disposal and they’re working hard at finding us. How long until they bring this fight to our doorstep? SaintNerd might have been funny to imagine showing up at our home, but these thugs?

“Fuck!”

What if it’s only Emil’s home when they do?

I park on the side of the road to let myself calm down. Fuck is having a kid scary. I know he can take care of himself. Fuck, Tristan’s training him. It’s not like there is a better combat trainer out there. So why is the idea of Emil caught in a crossfire between me, Tristan, and the thugs terrifying me?

Things change when you have a family.

Is that what Grams meant?

Fuck, if they knew about me, they know about—I call Tristan.

“Yes?” He sounds his usual unperturbed self.

“It was a trap.” I fight to catch my breath, calm my fear. “They were waiting for me.”

“Are you okay?”

I make out a hint of worry and I chuckle. “This armored suit stopped everything they fired at me, but—”

“Hey already sprang their ambush on me. I’m still dealing with it.”

“Okay.” That’s good. He’s dealing with it. But what about the next time? “Tristan, when we’re home, I think there’s something we need to talk about.”

A gunshot, then he speaks. “I’ll be heading there shortly.”