Baser Instincts

[IamLEAM1983]

Latching onto the proffered name, Forsythe's hand shot out with a burst of delicate, yet preternatural speed, grasping a fountain pen, unscrewing its top and putting the name down on paper with a few unconscious and fast flourishes.

"I am saying he was," he corrected, "but that his new line of work or personal pursuits have driven him to excise this particular chapter of his life from all convenient histories."

The mouse gave Mary a look. "Picture it. You feel the burden of your own superiority on a daily basis, are in desperate need of an enemy to lash out against, but the world has turned complacent. Peaceful. Your urges are denied, and they keep building within you. Wouldn't you take steps in order to go on the hunt in impunity?"

[Karl the Mad]

"No, I don't think I would," Mary replied pensively. "I went through that myself, upon a time. But I had my company to look after, and then your nephew came along and brought Shield into my life." She smiled fondly. "They've been a pain in my ass, but I wouldn't trade any of them for anything. As much as I've helped them, they've helped me too, helped me to see past my training and my instincts, to see that for the most part, immortals are people too."

Then she frowned and looked away. Why was she bringing this mushy stuff up, anyway?

[IamLEAM1983]

Forsythe had set his eyes on the displayed info, and seemingly tried his best to stay focused on their man. The mention of Archie and Shield made the light in his eyes shift, however, and Mary's fondness made the mouse's moustache quirk upwards. Illicit, if tacit approval.

"You're a better woman than our fellow, miss Jameson," he added. "You make it seem as though holding onto your principles would have been easy for other members of your team as well, but..."

The Chairman's shoulders sank in a silent sigh. "Mortal or otherwise, none of us stop being human. Even at the heart of the most inured of delusions of power or grandeur."

He then set his eyes on her, the hard phlegm from earlier replaced by cool inquisitiveness. "Think back to the days that preceded your implants being installed. Have you ever felt an inordinate amount of weakness before - physical or moral? Were you ever troubled? Power has a way of deluding us into believing our troubles have been swept away."

Holden scoffed. "I've never known this stereotypical perfect sire mortals imagine - the bearer of wealth and gifts, possessed of unlife's centuries of imparted knowledge; the dark mirror of all human sufferings... The man who made me was a fool, albeit a lucky one. I lost what wealth had been mine and received no wisdom. I was tossed onto America's shores and told to survive. To be a decent puppet for my master's whims."

The mouse briefly looked away. "You had an Exosuit instructor. I had an idiot who had no cares for my initial shock, my fear at what my body could now do. A good sire would have comforted me, treated me like the gentleman I am. A good sire would have understood - and a good instructor would have seen the warning signs in your squad's composition. A good instructor would have prevented Hong Kong's disaster from ever happening, by instilling your comrades with the exact responses needed when faced with fools abusing their power. A good sire would have saved me - and those mortals whose lives I touched in the first years - from humiliation and injury."

Something in what he'd said made him stop and give Mary a look. "Mister Ortega is a ghost. A well-equipped ghost. A ghost has no financial acumen - could never purchase or maintain that kind of hardware. Someone must be crediting him, enabling him somehow!"

[Karl the Mad]

"Vlastos, maybe?" Mary mused, thinking back on one of Shield's investigations. "No, no, why would he bother with a tool like Ortega." She looked back to Holden. "I've known weakness before, everyone has. I fight against it, of course, and what else am I to do? Accept it and let myself be hobbled? Hell no." The traceuse looked away again. "Nothing's impossible, I believe that. Impossible is just a word people use to make themselves feel better when they quit."

All this talk of sires and instructors, though. "We could weaken him if we can find his creditor, or creditors, and convince them to cut him off. Have you ran any financial inquiries yet?"

[IamLEAM1983]

The holographic projection shifted, showing what looked like a surprisingly barren bank statement. "We indeed have," Forsythe said, and the last public traces mister Ortega have left behind involve a prolonged stay in Tuscon, Arizona some fifteen years ago. There are only five purchases recorded, for what seems to be run-of-the-mill requirements. Shampoo, deodorant, a few sterilized port plugs for the self-management and repair of non-crucial augmentations - but they paint a rather different portrait from what Moscow's footage depicts. This is a notably more organic Samuel Ortega; the man as he was when his physiology was more in line with your own, miss Jameson."

The screen shifted to a map. "Triangulating the purchase locations yielded nothing - the epicentre is an empty lot in Tuscon's southwestern district. We began looking at gas station receipts, only to realize that Ortega's statement was selectively altered. Our man is smart enough to know we would seek to retrace his steps. Those pit stops we do have records for consequently appear haphazard; as if the man thought nothing of driving half an hour to purchase potato chips."

A mute sigh escaped him, his shoulders rising and falling. "Considering, we are left with very little usable data. I've put in a request on behalf of the Council to view the greater area's corresponding Google StreetView records or any closed-circuit traffic monitoring from those fifteen years ago that may still be available. If one leaves the subject of Ortega aside to consider the appeal of Tuscon for someone such as him, a scant few thing become clearer... The city's outskirts is where several defeated immortal Secessionists have established - felons who sought to use the Southern United States' uprising to carve out a nation of ruling vampires, Fae and aliens - and enslaved mortals."

Forsythe's jaw worked. "My nephew saw to it that it would not come to be. I gathered it has earned him a continued epistolary relationship with the Rathbones and a few descendants of the Lincoln administration."

[Karl the Mad]

"Tuscon is a hole," Mary muttered sourly, as if she had some personal experience with the place. "Whatever. We don't have to go there, do we?" Ming didn't add anything, but it seemed like he wanted to nod fervently in agreement.

[IamLEAM1983]

"Not specifically, no," noted Forsythe. "I would rather see what Google's data has to offer us, first. That said, this Secessionist clique is easy to isolate; its epicentre is well outside of Tucson - it starts in the mountain chains outside of Oro Valley."

The mouse set to work looking for image banks originating from Oro Valley, and briefly stepped aside to log into what seemed to be Tucson's Urban Planning division on another screen. Using satellite imagery overlaid with deed boundaries, he panned over to where the town stopped and the mountains began eventually stopping near the peaks and crests. A single deed number filled the screen, which, with a bit of effort, Holden correlated to its owner. The proffered name allowed him to shift to the DMV, where he recovered the driver's license of a certain Phineas Mulcahy, a mundane human of some 93 years. The man on the holographic render's constructed card looked rather feeble with his bald pate and hook nose, and his sunken eyes that evoked everyday weariness. A cheap nylon windbreaker stood on his shoulders and he was slightly hunched over.

Moustache bristling, Holden swept the ghostly card aside. "Clever devil," he muttered, "Sharpe's always known how to exploit his status as a latecomer to the Fae. With the right attitude and clothes, you would swear he is nothing but a feeble old man. All his legally declared assets fit this portrait, as well - his money-laundering scheme is a nursing home put together by his descendants, here."

The Oro Valley mountains returned, this time showing a flyby of a large estate, occupied with a large and modern compound, designed to be aesthetically pleasing and to present a sort of Postmodern take on a ski lodge. Commercial graphics were only beginning to fade into view that he paused the video, pointing to a distant glimmer in the mountains.

"There," he said. "High above the retirement home, on that crest - this is where Sharpe keeps his Faeside portal, and where his true estate lies."

[Karl the Mad]

"What is it with creepy old men and wanting to take over the world?" Mary said to herself. "Can't they get any tail the polite way? Or maybe they think being a sugar daddy is demeaning. Well, whatever," and she looked back to Forsythe. "Are you sending agents to this place to speak with him, or are we heading off that way ourselves?"