Bad Beat - Chapter 28 - Deal (Patreon)

Gabriel and Mia gathered around the slowly recovering Nate. Mia was once again holding her pistol, casually aiming it at the groaning man while Gabriel stood a few steps back with his hands behind him, gripping the Deck of Infinity in sweaty palms, his face set in a serious expression.

Mia leaned forward and prodded the scruffy blond with the tip of her boot.

“Come on, asshole. Get up. It wasn’t that bad. I had it on the low setting…” she said.

Nate let out another groan before his eyelids fluttered open, and he looked at them with clouded, unfocused eyes. His gaze drifted around the room, clearly looking without truly seeing anything, before eventually settling on Mia.

“Ah… my favorite way to wake up. A goth hottie looking down at me with judgment…” Nate mumbled before shaking his head slightly. Gabriel watched clarity return to his eyes and realization slowly settle over his face regarding what he had just said. “Er… I mean… nice aim?”

Mia snorted. “Nice try, jackass.”

She took a few steps back and dropped onto the couch back-first, one hand resting on her knee while the other kept the pistol trained on Nate with lazy confidence.

Gabriel chose that moment to clear his throat.

Nate’s eyes lingered on Mia for a second longer before snapping toward Gabriel.

He smiled crookedly. “Heey… so did you talk about me?”

“We did,” Gabriel replied with a nod. “And I have a few questions.”

Nate worked himself into a more comfortable position with several quiet groans before giving Gabriel a thumbs-up. “Go on, Gabe-man. Give it to me straight.”

“If we let you join, are you willing to follow orders?” Gabriel asked.

Nate waved a hand as if fanning himself. “Sure, sure, my man. One for all and all that jazz.”

“And are you willing to share what you know about us?” Gabriel asked next, leaning forward slightly.

Even Mia sat up straighter.

Nate studied him for a moment, his eyes occasionally flicking toward Mia before returning to Gabriel, and then they gained the faraway look Gabriel had come to recognize as Nate peering into the future.

For once, he didn’t activate his own power.

Finally, Nate shuddered, and his eyes refocused as he began to pout.

“Seeing as her gothic highness would shoot me again if I said no, the answer is yes.”

Gabriel looked at Mia through hooded eyes.

She stared back without a shred of remorse. “What?”

Gabriel shook his head and returned his attention to Nate.

“Look, Nate. This is…” He swallowed. “All of this is a little weird. You have to understand that you can’t just barge in and declare yourself part of our group when we don’t even have a group.”

Nate nodded with almost violent enthusiasm.

Gabriel continued.

“So what I’m saying is that we,” he said, pointing between himself and Mia, “don’t trust you. Just putting that out there.”

“Fair enough,” Nate replied with a grin. “I don’t trust you either.”

Gabriel ignored that.

“So we’d like to do a little test.”

Nate kept nodding. “Sure. What kind?”

Gabriel smirked. “While you were unconscious, I hid a tracker on you.”

Nate’s eyes widened, and his hands immediately began roaming over his body as he tried to figure out where it had been planted.

“You give us a day to talk about this, and while you’re away, I keep an eye on you. Sounds fair?” Gabriel asked, watching the quietly panicking Nate search himself.

Nate spent a few more moments rifling through his clothing before slumping in his chair and gaining a faraway look.

Gabriel felt a sharp, vicious glee bloom in his chest as he activated the card hidden in his hand behind his back and watched the scruffy blond flinch.

And flinch again.

And again.

It went on for almost five minutes.

Nate tried to look into the future.

Gabriel waited just long enough for the power to activate.

Then he summoned a small random object into his hand before immediately absorbing it with the card, disrupting Nate’s precognitive ability.

Over and over.

This probably would have gone on for far longer, but Mia finally had enough.

“Stop it, you idiots!” she exclaimed, leaning forward and letting her gun hit the table with a metallic clank that echoed around the room.

She then pointed at Nate, who was actually pouting at her.

“You. Get out and don’t let me see your face until tomorrow.”

Then she turned to Gabriel.

“And you. Stop playing.”

Nate shook his head. “You don’t understand. We were having a manly contest of power.”

“I just like to annoy him,” Gabriel commented with a grin.

Then he turned to Nate.

“But clearly, I’ve won. So get out and come back tomorrow.”

Nate looked from Gabriel’s grin to Mia’s deeply unimpressed expression and let out a defeated sigh.

“Fine…” He began gathering himself. “I will leave.”

He stood up from the chair, put a hand on his back, and stretched while letting out a groan of relief. Then he spun around and walked over to the door, where he stopped dramatically, turned around, and raised a hand with one finger pointing toward the ceiling.

“But mark my word…” He narrowed his eyes dramatically. “You will miss me!”

Then he spun around again and left the apartment, the door closing behind him a second later.

Mia slowly stood up, opening her mouth to comment, but Gabriel held up a hand.

Instead, he walked over to the table and picked up his phone. With a few swipes and taps, he opened the special app that let him jam signals and activated it.

He let out a relieved breath. “Now we can talk.”

Mia, who had walked up next to him, looked at the phone screen with curiosity.

“You can jam signals? Since when?” Then she shook her head. “No. Never mind. What was that about the tracker?”

Gabriel smiled at her and motioned for her to follow.

They walked back to the bedroom where Sparky’s screen was already lit up and waiting for them. On it was a simplistic map of their neighborhood and a small red dot moving steadily through it.

“Anything to report?”

[This unit would like to report absolute cuteness.]

[This unit also reports that target: Annyoing Man, has ditched the burner phone.]

[Currently following the target through street cameras.]

Gabriel nodded.

“Good. Keep it up. I want to know where he lives.” Then he paused as another thought occurred to him. “Make sure to note who he talks to.”

[Acknowledged.]

[Nin.]

Gabriel smiled, then turned to Mia. “What do you think?”

She looked at him with something that almost resembled appreciation. “Good enough.”

Then she scowled. “Come on, you still owe me a talk.”

“Right now?” he asked incredulously, glancing at Mia, who was wearing socks, running pants, and an old, oversized jumper that looked like she had thrown it on in a hurry.

She scoffed as they walked back to the living room, deliberately ignoring the seat Nate had occupied not that long ago, before sitting on opposite ends of the couch.

Gabriel let out a breath, leaned back, and looked at Mia.

“Well… here we are. What do you want to know?”

Mia looked back at him with clear frustration.

“I don’t know!”

“What?”

“I want to know everything. How your power works and what the hell you’ve been doing with it,” she began, ranting as frustration bled into her voice. “But I also know I have no right to those answers. You’re helping me, not the other way around.”

She eyed him, her gaze traveling over his body.

“I also want to know how you healed yourself. The last time I saw your skin, it looked more charred than my attempts at grilling.”

She looked genuinely conflicted.

“I also hate that smug asshole,” she continued vehemently. “How dare he show up and just make demands? Who does that?”

“Smug assholes?” Gabriel offered idly.

“Right. Clearly, there’s something wrong with him,” she replied while nodding. “Who do you think he’s working for?”

Then her eyes widened.

“Do you think we should leave?”

Gabriel grimaced.

That had been his first instinct after Nate left the apartment. Just pack everything into his deck and get as far away from the district as possible.

Sadly, he suspected it wouldn’t work.

For one, if Nate found them here, he would probably find them somewhere else unless Gabriel figured out a better way to hide himself. Which wasn’t really possible in such a short time – unless he managed to figure out how to conjure powers out of thin air.

And he was fairly certain the gang occupying the building would see him fleeing and take it as an admission of guilt.

Then they would hunt him down.

Meeting Claw once had already been more than enough.

He didn’t need a repeat performance.

“I don’t think it would work…” he admitted quietly.

Mia studied him for a moment before nodding with equal disappointment.

“I hoped you had something hidden in your magic pocket.”

“I wish…”

For a brief spell, the room fell silent as both of them sank deep into their own thoughts.

It was Gabriel who finally broke the silence.

“Look, we can spend hours talking about what-ifs and things we can’t control, or we can deal with the things we can deal with.”

Mia raised an eyebrow.

Gabriel cleared his throat. “You want to know more about my power. I don’t feel like sharing right now, so let’s leave that alone.”

Mia opened her mouth to interrupt, but after a moment she seemed to reconsider and closed it.

“Neither of us trusts Nate. That’s good. We probably can’t get rid of him. That’s bad.”

“Wow. Way to state the obvious,” Mia commented sarcastically.

Gabriel smiled. “Well, how about we test him?”

“Oh?”

“We figure out a job and let him help,” Gabriel said. “Depending on the outcome, we either accept him…” He paused thoughtfully. “Or shoot him and dump his corpse somewhere nobody will ever find it.”

Mia tapped her cheeks thoughtfully.

“I have to admit, shooting him sounds rather pleasant.”

Gabriel grinned. “You do love to shoot people…”

She sent him a flat look but didn’t react otherwise.

Then, after a moment, she continued.

“Quite frankly, I have nothing better. Let’s do it.”

Gabriel let out a breath of relief.

“Bombshell is going to be here on Sunday, so we have to either move before that or later.”

“What about letting him help with infiltrating the ninth floor?” Mia asked with a roll of her eyes. “We both want to know what’s happening there, and if something goes wrong, we can grab our stuff and run.”

Gabriel offered a grin. “I still have the car…”

Mia clapped her hands together.

“So we have a getaway car nobody knows about. That’s good.”

She leaned forward, suddenly excited.

Gabriel recognized it for what it was.

Her offer of peace.

She hadn’t forgotten her many questions, but she also understood that Gabriel wasn’t ready to answer them. For now, she was willing to work with him anyway, but there was an unspoken understanding hanging between them that eventually she would need answers before she could fully trust him.

At least Gabriel hoped that was what was happening.

He had never been particularly good at reading people.

“Let’s start planning!” Mia said with a grin.

Then a loud gurgle interrupted the conversation.

She blushed.

“Sorry. Haven’t had time to eat.”

RING RING RING

Mia looked up at the ceiling.

“I swear, if that asshole is back, I’m shooting him in the dick…”

Gabriel chuckled, made another mental note to install some kind of camera system, and went to open the door.

On the other side stood a pizza delivery guy.

He had peach fuzz on his face, a few pimples, and radiated an almost weaponized level of I-don’t-care energy.

“Sup, dude. This apartment seven-oh-seven?” he asked in a bored tone.

Gabriel nodded, not trusting his voice.

“’key. Here is your stuff.”

The guy shoved two pizza boxes into his hands.

“Bye.”

Gabriel watched the guy shuffle down the hallway without a second glance, already pulling out his phone as if this delivery had ceased to exist the moment the boxes left his hands.

Slowly closing the door with his foot, Gabriel looked down at the two warm pizza boxes stacked in his arms. The smell hit him almost immediately, making his stomach tighten with sudden hunger.

For a moment, he simply stared.

Then he noticed the receipt taped to the top box.

It listed the address of Mia’s favorite pizza place, which immediately made him frown.

He pulled the receipt free of the greasy box.

There was no name attached to the order.

No payment information.

Nothing useful.

Just his address and, beneath the listed order, a note written in the special instructions box.

‘Ordered your favorite. Bon appétit!’**

**

A/N: Next chapter we get back to experimenting with power and action. And now I want a pizza...ugh