“Alright, alright. Makes sense. Anything we don’t spend here we can use to buy lead,” Felix said, agreeing to her desire.
They walked over to the elevator and Kit hit the button to call it.
“I think you should limit yourself to three at the most. Six will strain your ability to keep everyone in check. Once everyone is more settled and up to speed, you can increase the size again,” Kit said as they stepped into the elevator and the doors closed.
“Thank you for the advice. Are you my consigliere now?” Felix asked.
“Better. I’m someone who wants you to succeed because it gives me what I want, while providing me with the least number of problems. So I’m an involved, and willing, party to all of this.”
“Uh-huh. We’ll see,” Felix muttered as the doors swung open.
This floor was definitely different than the others. There was a tension in the air that was palpable.
Felix couldn’t pinpoint the problem or why it was so different. Instead, he looked to the conference rooms on each side of him and saw a very similar display to the ones on the floors below. There were less interested parties, but it was roughly the same type of situation.
“They have villains and heroes both on this floor. Everything below this was heroes with a certain mindset or civilians with talents.”
Felix couldn’t help but feel confused about that. Villains selling villains.
“I wouldn’t worry about purchasing villains. They’ll serve just as well. You do realize Ioana isn’t a hero, right? She falls more on the villain side of things,” Kit explained, pulling him into a conference room.
“I thought you didn’t know her.” Felix was rapidly losing control over the whole thing.
“I didn’t, I looked her up on the internet. She fights anyone who she feels is stronger or a better warrior than her. Often, she kills them if they didn’t live up to her expectations. She’s called War Maiden.”
“Oh,” Felix said intelligently.
Chapter 6 - For Sale -
“Do you think we should talk to them?” Felix asked, looking at the information displayed on terminals in front of the conference room.
Kit was standing next to him, flipping through a similar terminal.
“Doesn’t matter. I can read their minds. I think we’re better served by you using your hypothetical screen to get an idea of what we’re working with.”
“That almost seems like cheating. Reading their mind for every answer you’d like.” Felix looked at the men and women in the first conference room.
Kit sighed and looked into the room as well. “It made dating impossible. No room for white lies. Let’s start with this group, then. Give me a bit. You read through the terminal while I sort through them.”
Felix shrugged and started to read through the information available to him. In minutes, he wasn’t really reading it anymore. It didn’t matter.
Kit would tell him if these people fit the bill or not.
“Hey, Felix.” The voice jolted him from his wandering thoughts.
Looking up, he grinned as he realized who it was.
“Leon. How’s it going?” Felix asked, holding out his hand.
“Good, good. Holy shit, is that… it is,” Leon said, shaking Felix’s hand.
“Yeah,” Felix said, looking back at Kit as she did her thing. “So what’s up?”
“Huh? Oh. Nothing. Working the crowd. Building contacts. Apparently the brass were real pleased. Getting rid of their castoffs and making money at the same time really turned a head or two.
“You’ll have to tell me some time how you managed to—”
“You’re welcome,” Felix said, interrupting him. Then he turned to look back into the conference room. “Thanks for the invite, by the way. I’ll not forget it.”
“I’ll hold you to that, man, I’ll hold you to that. Alright, I’m going to go keep making rounds. Most people think she’s dead, by the way, so make sure you stick to that story.”
Felix nodded, glancing back at Kit and then to the terminal as Leon left.
Fuck that. Marcus, Caldwell, Leon, whatever. From now on he’s Mr. No-Name.
“See ya later, Mr. No-Name.” Felix tapped at the screen, pulling up the rap sheet on the woman he was looking at again.
Felix shifted in his seat and adjusted his tie again.
“Stop, it looks fine. Besides, no one can see you,” Kit said, lounging in the recliner next to him.
Being invited here by No-Name had provided them with a few benefits he hadn’t expected. Like being sequestered in a small office and watching the auction on a TV screen.
“Though this is going to be a lot easier to talk. I was a little concerned about how we were going to do this.” Kit sipped from the soda can she’d gotten from somewhere.
“Yeah, true. Hey, should I be concerned about people recognizing you?” Felix asked, putting his thoughts out there. He’d been mildly concerned about it for some time but kept putting it into the back of his mind. He hadn’t wanted to consider it.
“Not really, no. Most people who knew me as Augur knew that without my helmet, I was fairly susceptible to forced thoughts.”
“Forced thoughts?” Felix asked as the announcer on the screen rambled on and on. Until they got to the actual auction portion, he wasn’t that interested.
“My helmet protected me from what basically came down to people thinking nasty thoughts at me. I don’t have a way to block them out. Er, well, didn’t have a way to block them out. Now I just have you turn down the volume.”
“So… you don’t think we should worry because most can’t recognize you without the helmet, and the ones who do would try to break your brain?”
“Yup. Besides, you can always change my hair color with your fancy powers, can’t you?” Kit asked, swiveling her head around to peer at him.
“Actually, I think I can do that.”
“So, yeah, not worried about it. Wouldn’t matter if they did. Oh, here we go,” Kit said, turning back to the TV. “Lucky us, it’s even one we were thinking of.”
Felix nodded his head. They’d spent most of the time in the conference rooms figuring out who they were interested in and how many points they’d give back to him.
The man on the screen was a big, brutish thing. He looked more in line with a classic representation of a caveman than a modern-day human.
Before Felix could press the button to bid, the price listed over the man’s head jumped into the twenty-thousand-dollar range.
“Damn,” Kit muttered. “Not surprising, though. To be perfectly frank about this whole thing I think I already know the three we’ll end up with. Mostly because others will see them in a certain way, even if we know better.”
Felix sighed as he watched the price go ever higher. He’d wanted this one. If nothing than for the simple fact that he was worth in excess of eight thousand points.
“I never dealt with him personally. I’d heard of him. I hadn’t realized he’d come into the city,” Kit said conversationally about the man on the screen.
Felix wasn’t really interested in him anymore. He was far and away out of his price range.
“What was Miu, exactly? She clearly knows you. Well, it seems like she knows you, but you don’t know her,” Felix said. The auction closed out on the man and someone he wasn’t interested in took their place.
“Miu. She was internal security forces. For civilians. I knew of her, but didn’t really interact with her. She’d applied for higher-end teams but never put in the training or time to do it. She’s actually got a good power. Anything she is, or can do, is multiplied.
“If she could normally lift eighty pounds, she’d be able to lift one-sixty.
“So if she became a real bodybuilder, she’d probably be on par with the one we just saw get purchased,” Kit said, with a small frown curling her lips.
“That’s… odd. I wonder why she didn’t do just that, then,” Felix said.
On the screen, the auction continued, sale after sale concluding, none of which held any interest to him.