Chapter 27: The People Following Them

Aurileus District filled the horizon, and it was massive.

Its skyline was crowded with towers belonging to Awakener companies, research institutes, hospitals, and guilds, their sides covered in giant screens advertising everything from Gnosis treatments and upcoming tournaments to the latest Awakener equipment.

Reinhard looked around as they drove into the city. Axom had Awakeners, but Aurileus had been built around them.

Maki noticed his expression. "Different from Axom?"

"Very."

Lily pressed her finger against the window. "That’s one of the biggest equipment companies in the region."

Reinhard glanced at her. "You know that?"

"Obviously. I watch the competitions."

Maki smiled. "She used to watch almost every Awakener tournament."

Lily paused. "...Most of them."

"So you’re our tour guide," Reinhard said.

"Exactly." She pointed at another building. "That’s a famous medical research center, and over there is one of the big auction houses."

Reinhard followed her finger to a huge building wrapped in several layers of security barriers. "People actually buy things that expensive?"

Lily stared at him. "Reinhard. You spent forty-five thousand dollars on a dead man’s paperwork. You don’t get to ask that."

"That paperwork was very important."

A few minutes later, they passed a row of display windows, and Reinhard stopped. Behind the reinforced glass sat a crystal with a small price card beneath it that read $380,000.

"That’s a crystal?"

Maki nodded. "High-grade Awakener material."

"For three hundred and eighty thousand dollars?"

"That’s considered normal here."

Lily stared at the price. "I suddenly feel poor."

"We are poor," Reinhard said. "We were rich this morning. It didn’t last."

Emily smiled up at him from her wheelchair.

Eventually, they reached the district Maki had marked, where a massive sign stretched across the entrance of a building that took up an entire block. Aurileus Rare Material Exchange.

Inside, it was enormous. Dozens of shops lined the walls around a central trading floor, people hurried between counters carrying cases of rare materials, auction representatives huddled with merchants. This was an entire industry.

"This is where we should start," Maki said.

Reinhard nodded. "Then let’s see what we can find."

He followed behind Emily’s wheelchair, and they had only gone a few steps when he felt eyes on them.

He didn’t turn around.

Instead, he stopped beside a display case and studied the jewelry inside, using the reflection in the glass to watch the crowd behind them.

There were six of them, and they didn’t look like a group. One stood near the information counter, another pretended to browse a display, two were talking near an entrance, and the last two hung farther back. They were too spread out to be friends, and too coordinated to be a coincidence.

Reinhard kept walking. Interesting. He didn’t know yet whether they were following him or someone else, so he waited. The family moved deeper into the exchange, and the six moved with them.

Reinhard glanced at Emily. Nothing about her had changed, so she hadn’t noticed them. Good.

He picked the closest man and quietly activated Mind Glance, keeping his eyes on the displays.

Original job’s a mess. The seller still won’t cooperate. We were supposed to deal with him today.

Then the man’s thoughts jumped.

Forget the seller. The woman is here. Emily Ashcroft.

Reinhard’s expression didn’t change. So they hadn’t come for Emily at all. That was useful to know.

Mind Glance could only follow one mind at a time, but he didn’t need it for the rest. His enhanced hearing picked up the faint crackle of an earpiece, and all six of them were on the same channel.

"That’s the former champion. The boss will want her."

"Follow her. Don’t make a scene."

"The man pushing the chair is with her. If he’s an associate, he might know something."

Reinhard almost smiled. There it was. They had spotted Emily by chance and changed their plans on the spot, which meant whoever sent them hadn’t known she would be here. And now they wanted both of them.

He kept walking, and the six kept following. Reinhard leaned toward Maki. "Can you take the Lens for a bit?"

She looked at him. "Why?"

"I want you to look through the displays while I take care of something."

Maki studied his face, then nodded. "All right."

He took off the Merchant King’s Lens and handed it to her. "Look for anything with a big gap between the market value and the true value. Don’t buy anything yet. Just remember the important ones."

Maki put them on, and Lily immediately leaned closer. "You look like a librarian."

"I will put you back in the van," Maki said without looking at her. Then she turned to Reinhard. "You’re going somewhere."

"Just checking something," he said with a smile. "Take care of them."

Reinhard walked away from his family, and none of the six followed him. They stayed behind Emily. He waited until he was far enough away. Let’s see how professional you really are.

Then he turned around and strolled straight back toward them, and nobody reacted. He walked past the first man, then the second, and as he passed the third, a tiny Space Tear opened beside his hip. His hand slipped through it, and on the other side, his fingers smacked the back of the man’s neck.

Smack.

The man staggered forward. "What the...?!"

He spun around, but nobody was behind him. Reinhard was already three steps away, calmly admiring a display of rings.

The man’s face turned red. "Who hit me?"

The man beside him frowned. "What are you doing?"

"You hit me!"

"I didn’t touch you!"

The first man grabbed him by the collar, and a third stepped in to separate them and got shoved for his trouble, and the fourth immediately jumped in to defend him. Within seconds, the quiet trading floor erupted into shouting.

Reinhard watched from beside the ring display. "Beautiful teamwork," he murmured.

But two of them ignored the fight entirely and kept following Emily, and Reinhard’s smile disappeared. Those two were smart, and that made them the dangerous ones.

He activated Veil, and his presence faded from the room as he slipped through the crowd after them.

The first man turned into a quieter hallway, and Reinhard stepped out behind him and struck once at the neck, and the man folded to the floor.

The second heard him fall and spun around, but he was too late. Reinhard caught him by the front of his jacket and drove him into the wall hard enough to knock the air out of his lungs, and when the man’s hand darted toward his belt, Reinhard caught his wrist.

"Don’t."

The man went rigid, and a second later, he sagged.

Reinhard crouched and searched him. He found a phone, a wallet, a small knife, and a folded sheet of paper covered in shorthand notes listing names, locations, and instructions.

None of it identified who they worked for, but one name caught his attention immediately. Emily Ashcroft.

He picked up the phone. It was locked behind a face scan, so he held it up to the first unconscious man, and nothing happened. He looked at the man, then at the phone, then at the second man. "Wrong guy."

He dragged the second man’s head up by the collar and pointed the phone at his face.

[Access Granted.]

"Much easier."

The phone held only two contacts and three messages, and he opened the first.

The group assigned to erase all traces of Gnosis Recovery made a scene in Axom. Stay low and don’t do anything excessive.

Reinhard’s eyes narrowed. So the restaurant incident had already been noticed, and not only by the Syndicate in Axom. He opened the second.

The man with her is an associate of Emily’s. He may have leverage we can use to make her comply.

Reinhard stared at the screen. "Associate?" He read it again. He had been called a lot of things since waking up in this body, a drunk, a disaster, an idiot, and a hero, but never anything that boring. "I’m her husband. I’m on her emergency contact list. I bought her a house."

He opened the third message.

Once you’re done there, head to Axom and look for the husband. He’ll be the key to making Emily... or should I say, the Ruler, more compliant.

Reinhard glanced at the unconscious man. "You were standing right next to him the whole time."

Then his eyes returned to the last line, and the humor drained from his face.

The Ruler.

Reinhard locked the phone and slipped it into his pocket, then looked back toward the trading floor. The four men were still wrestling in the middle of the exchange, and Emily was sitting with Maki and Lily near the displays, safe for now.

By the time Reinhard made it back to his family, security had arrived, and uniformed guards were pulling the four brawlers apart.

Maki looked up. "There you are."

"Did I miss anything?"

"A group of idiots started a fight in the middle of the floor."

"Sounds serious."

Maki narrowed her eyes behind the Lens. "You’re smiling."

"Am I?"

"Yes."

"Must be the city."

She sighed. "You’re weird."

"I’ve been told."

Then Maki held up the Lens. "I found several interesting things."

Reinhard’s attention sharpened. "Tell me."

Most of the materials were priced close to their real value, she explained, but a few were badly off. A high-grade monster crystal was listed at $35,600 when the Lens valued it closer to $200,000, and a damaged artifact was selling for $52,000 when the right buyer would pay more than $700,000. There were several smaller opportunities too.

Then Maki pointed across the floor. "There was one more." She looked through the Lens again. "A small artifact. Its market value is six hundred thousand."

"And?"

Maki smiled slightly. "The Lens says its true value is three point eight million."

Reinhard took the Lens back and looked across the floor at a small, plain-looking artifact sitting among dozens of other items.

[Market Value: $600,000.]

[True Value: $3,800,000.]

His eyes lit up. Now we’re talking.

A notification appeared in the corner of his vision.

[Investment Opportunity Available.]

[Target: Emily Ashcroft.]

[Current Value: B.]

[Objective: Acquire sufficient funds to obtain the materials required for Emily Ashcroft’s next stage of treatment.]

[Difficulty Grade: B.]

[Estimated Required Funds: $3,500,000+]

[Success Probability: 63%.]

Three and a half million. Reinhard looked at the artifact again. Three point eight million. There was only one problem. He had fifty-eight thousand dollars.

Lily was watching his face. "You can’t afford it."

"Not yet," he said, turning to Maki. "The monster crystal was thirty-five thousand six hundred?"

"Yes."

"And the damaged artifact was fifty-two thousand?"

Maki’s eyes widened as she understood. "You’re going to climb."

"Crystal first." Reinhard counted on his fingers. "Fifty-eight thousand buys the crystal. The crystal sells for two hundred thousand, and two hundred buys the damaged artifact, which sells for seven hundred." He looked across the trading floor at the small artifact. "And seven hundred buys that."

Lily counted on her own fingers until she ran out. "That’s three flips, in one city, before anyone notices."

"Yep."

"That’s insane."

"Another compliment."

Emily looked up at him, and something in her expression had changed. It wasn’t worry. It looked a lot more like the girl in the arena photograph, sizing up an opponent. "Can you do it?"

Reinhard looked at the artifact, then at the System’s sixty-three percent, then back at her, and he smiled. "Let’s make some money."