Page 91

NINETY-ONE

XERO

Good people work for evil organizations all the time. This is the entire reason why I want to destroy Father and the firm that forged us into assassins. But if the recruiter was an innocent forced to work for X-Cite Media, he wouldn’t be here tonight, marching to his death.

I stand behind a weeping willow in the garden of St. Clement’s Church, peering out at the man approaching a small figure sitting on a bench. Harlan Stills strides with the confidence of a predator who thinks he’s lured a thirteen-year-old boy for a liaison.

Camila has agreed to act as the decoy. In the dark, her smaller frame could be mistaken for a boy’s.

“Jenson?” Harlan’s soft voice carries in the wind.

Jensonsama13 is one of the thousands of social media profiles our tech team set up precisely for this purpose. The men we hunt are cautious, paranoid, and difficult to corner, but they all have their weaknesses. It’s just a matter of scrolling through the most twisted paraphilias and finding which one sticks.

It’s shocking what men will reveal to their forbidden crushes. We’ve gathered schematics, state secrets, and all manner of schemes. All for the price of an artificial intelligence bot capable of catering to an y

Targeting Harlan was easy. Once we discovered his sickening affinity for young boys, it was he who arranged this meetup.

“Jenson thirteen?” he asks.

Camila turns her head. “Momo,” she says, her voice trembling. “Is that you?”

Harlan’s username is Momotaro Blue. His profile says he’s a fourteen-year-old boy who enjoys manga, anime, and painting his nails. We cloned his phone when I slid my handset across the table to show him my portfolio. Once we discovered his favorite social media platform, we sent hundreds of profiles his way and waited for him to take the bait.

“That’s right,” Harlan says. “Turn around.”

Camila twists on the bench and shoots her tranquilizer gun into his chest. Harlan drops his bag, which bursts open to reveal a gag, a tube of lubricant, and a roll of duct tape. The syringe in his hand disappears under the weight of his body, and I mutter a curse.

If he managed to inject himself with what he planned on using to subdue the boy, then we’re screwed. Two doses of sedatives will make him more difficult to rouse. That’s more time spent away from my sweet little ghost.

Sure enough, it takes an hour to get Harlan into a state lucid enough for questioning. After I dragged him to an ambulance we converted into a mobile interrogation unit, we drove to an underground parking lot and waited.

Harlan sits naked with a hood over his head, chained to a metal chair bolted to the vehicle’s floor. Electrodes encircle his fingers, monitoring his vital signs, while a pneumograph and cardio cuff detect changes in his sweat production and blood pressure.

We’ve rigged these devices to a polygraph machine. At the first sign of lies, it will deliver an electric current to the crocodile clips on his nipples and the steel probe in his urethra. I would have added a metal cap, but I ran out of time.

His breathing changes, indicating he’s feigning unconsciousness.

I turn to Camila in the ambulance’s work area. “Jenson thirteen, override the lie detector and alert Mr. Stills. ”

Camila taps a command into the laptop. Harlan jolts, his muscles stiffening as he screams.

“Where am I?” he cries. “Who is this?”

“I’m asking the questions,” I answer. “Tell me your nationality.”

“What’s this about?” he asks.

“Jenson.”

Camila delivers another electric shock that makes Harlan thrash in his seat. I lean against the wall, my fingers twitching toward my phone. I can’t watch my little ghost sleep anymore. I didn’t think to install cameras in the crawlspace because it never occurred to me that I’d have to take her into my lair. Her mother’s eviction was a wrench in my plans even I hadn’t foreseen.

“I’m American,” Harlan screams.

“Good boy,” I say. “We’ll get along much better if you just answer my questions.”

“Alright. What else do you want to know?”

“Where were you born?”

“Beaumont City, New Alderney. Anything else?”

I continue asking Harlan a stream of innocuous questions until Camila raises her thumb to tell me she’s calibrated the polygraph machine.

“What’s your occupation?” I ask.

“Content manager,” he replies.

When the machine’s reader doesn’t waver, I raise a brow. His exact job title doesn’t matter, even though we originally thought he was a recruiter. “And your employer?”

He hesitates. “An adult entertainment company.”

“Its name,” I snarl.

His chest rises and falls with rapid breaths, making me wonder if he thought he’d been captured by a vigilante organization formed to catch predators.

“Would you like a reminder of what happens if you fail to answer my questions, Mr. Stills?” I ask.

“I work for X-Cite Media.”

There are a hundred questions I could ask about the organization, but I want to get back to my little ghost. Harlan won’t die until my operatives have extracted every useful piece of information about the firm that makes the snuff movies. Putting those aside, I focus on my most pressing concerns.

“What’s the name of your boss?”

He swallows. “I only have his code name.”

“Which is?”

“Delta.”

Adrenaline surges through my veins, and my nostrils flare. “Where can I find him?”

Harlan shakes his head. “I don’t know.”

“Elaborate.”

“He hasn’t visited the house in over a year, and he only communicates to me through emails.”

“Why?”

“I…” He gulps. “I think he could be overseas.”

My gaze darts to the polygraph, which shows no signs of deception. If Father lives in another country, then that might explain why he allowed his family to die and failed to attend the execution. It means tracking him will become all the more difficult.

“Where does he live?”

“He didn’t say.”

“Then where does he work?” I snarl.

“I don’t know. I swear to God. Delta didn’t recruit me, it was Nocturne.”

Camila and I exchange glances.

“And who,” I ask, “is Nocturne?”

Harlan babbles his entire life story, starting from graduating from Alderney State University with a Masters in Cybersecurity, before being recruited by a man named Nocturne to develop a platform to offer users time-limited content streaming.

He talks about state-of-the-art digital rights management mechanisms, including watermarking to trace the source of leaked content and enforce copyright protection. Fascinating stuff, but useless.

“Jenson, please help Mr. Stills get to the point.”

“Okay!” he yells. “Nocturne started off making BDSM porn, but he ran into cash flow problems. The market has changed. No one wants to pay to watch dominatrixes kick men in the balls. He had loans to pay, and that’s when he went into partnership with Delta.”

I nod. We’re getting somewhere, finally.

“They switched from female dominants to men in charge, which sold better, but Nocturne still couldn’t cover his interest payments. Delta offered to pay off his debts in exchange for taking ownership of X-Cite Media.”

“Nocturne is in contact with Delta?” I ask

“Yes,” he says. A second later, he screams.

I glance at Camila, who shrugs.

“Why would you lie about that?” I ask, my gaze wandering to the polygraph screen.

“I wasn’t—” Harlan screeches.

He’s trying to deflect attention onto Nocturne, who he doesn’t think is in contact with Delta. But I’m intrigued.

“Why are you directing us to Nocturne?” I ask.

Harlan slumps on his seat, his narrow chest rising and falling with rapid breaths. I give him a few seconds to recover from two consecutive electric shocks before repeating my question.

“Nocturne wants Delta dead,” he says through panting breaths. “X-Cite Media was his baby. He set it up to stream femdom content from his club and then Delta corrupted his dream.”

“Nocturne doesn’t approve of the snuff movies?”

“He hates it. Snuff goes against his safe, sane, and consensual principles. He used to run a nightclub called X-Cite. Then his patrons abandoned him when Delta switched the BDSM content they enjoyed to snuff. Some of them reported Nocturne to the police, thinking he was behind the murders. He got attacked. His home burned down twice. Hell, he even got arrested and went to jail.”

“Where can I find Nocturne?”

“He just started up a nightclub called the Ministry of Mayhem at Melrose Manor. It’s a mansion by Simon’s Pond.”

“I want you to look at a photo and tell me if this is Delta.”

Harlan trembles. “Keep me blindfolded. I don’t want to see your face.”

I tear off the hood, finding his eyes squeezed shut. Whimpering, Harlan leans away from me and bows his head, determined not to look me in the eye. It’s ironic how he curls into himself and trembles like a wounded animal, considering he got caught trying to inflict the same treatment on a child.

“You’re thinking I might spare your life if you don’t see my face?” I ask.

He nods. “Listen, I’ve answered all your questions. Let me go, and I swear I’ll keep this our little secret.”

My lip curls at the pedophilic phrasing. “Jenson.”

Camila activates the electric shock, filling the vehicle with Harlan’s screams. Grabbing his hair, I wrench him upright.

“Let’s make a deal,” I snarl. “You lead me toward your boss and then I’ll let you go.”

He shivers and nods.

“Now, open your eyes.”

He cracks open an eye, his face falling slack. “Xavier?” he rasps. “Xavier Wetwang?”

I blink, surprised he recognizes me without the hair wax or facial prosthetics, but I don’t dwell on why he’s committed my features to memory. I shove a picture I scanned from Father’s house the day I killed my stepmother and brothers.

“Is this Delta?” I ask.

“Yes.” He gulps, his gaze bouncing from the picture to me.

“Who else might have contact with Delta?”

“Dolly,” he says.

“Who is Dolly?”

“His wife, but I haven’t seen her in years.”

I unfold the picture and show the stepmother I murdered. “This woman?”

He shakes his head. “Not her. Dolly is younger, with curly brown hair, green eyes, and she’s much shorter than Delta.”

My brow furrows. Why am I not surprised Father is a bigamist?

“Second question. Whose idea was it to target Amethyst Crowley?”

“Who is that?” he asks.

“The woman who runs the official Xero fan club,” I snarl. “The woman who was supposed to die instead of Lizzie Bath. ”

Disbelief etches across his features. His eyes bulge, and his mouth gapes like a fish struggling for air. It looks like the gears in his head are turning to propel his brain toward the truth. With each shocked gasp, he tries to form words but only manages a strangled moan.

“You’re…”

“What?” I snarl.

“Y-You’re that killer who went viral on social media. The one whose execution we broadcasted.”

“And?”

“But you’re supposed to be dead.”

I turn to Camila. “Help him focus on my question.”

Harlan screams so loud my ears ring, although this time, I’m not sure it’s all about the pain. Now that it’s clear he’s not in the clutches of law-abiding vigilantes, I expect him to be more cooperative.

“Don’t hurt me. Don’t hurt me. It wasn’t my idea to go after her.”

“Then whose?” I snarl.

“Dolly’s!” he screams.

Leaning down, I glare into his hazel eyes, waiting for him to calm. Harlan thrashes from side to side, already panicking in the throes of his impending death. He’s probably worked out that the infamous killer, Xero Greaves, won’t take kindly to pornographers killing or targeting the women who campaigned for his humane treatment on Death Row.

I’m usually a patient man, but not when I’m missing out on the chance to sleep with my little ghost.

“Focus,” I hiss and snap my fingers in front of his eyes. “Why does Dolly want her dead?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

“Not to me,” I snarl.

“They’re related. Dolly resents Amethyst enough to have her killed.”

“Why?”

“She flaunts her luxury lifestyle on social media. I mean, she raises funds, gets lavish gifts, and earns hundreds of thousands from her millions of followers. That’s bound to stir up some jealousy.”

I scoff. “Bullshit.”

“I don’t get to question the boss’s wife. I just manage the content. Maybe Dolly hates the fact that there’s someone out there who looks exactly like her, only younger, fresher, and untouched.”

“She must have hinted something.”

“Fuck!” he screams. “Dolly and Delta are money-obsessed. Maybe the reason was financial.”

Like freeing up some real estate? Or riding the wave of an execution they’re still debating on the news and social media? I straighten, my heart plummeting to my stomach. We had Melonie Crowley in our grasp. She was under our noses this entire time, yet I dismissed her as irrelevant.

Melonie Crowley, whose daughter is her spitting image, only younger and more beautiful. The woman who treats her criminally insane daughter like a burden she must lock away in a proverbial tower.

The woman desperate to auction off her house, leaving her only daughter destitute.

I should have killed her when I had the chance.