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“A security guard got killed tonight because I didn’t arrive on the scene in time. There has got to be a more efficient way to go about killing abusers, but I just don’t see it.”
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—Alex Westsmith, to Richard Caperno, regarding his vigilante pursuits under his Pyre alias.
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Rick Caperno’s living room was a plain, green-walled place, with a sofa, a coffee table, and a flatscreen television sitting atop a dark brown, wooden cabinet. The wooden floor was a light brown thing, bordered by white baseboards.
Alex and Richard had entered that room under the pretense of getting some water, so as to start loading the eavesdropping app on Pyre’s devices. Alex handed over the burner smartwatch and burner smartphone to Richard, feeling anxious, eager to get back out into the field as Pyre, eager to find and rescue Jessica. Not to stand around Rick’s living room.
“I’ll go get this set up in the guest room real quick,” Richard said, “Uncle Rick’s got a couple of rifles out, and he’s setting up targets on the firing range. Why don’t you go help him, and I’ll get with you shortly? We can plink targets. Hell, we can even make a contest of it,” Richard said, clearly having noticed—and likely decided to make some attempt to lighten—Alex’s sour mood.
“So, is there a limit to the range of this app,” Alex asked Richard.
Nodding, Richard replied, “Yes, actually. Not sure exactly what that limit is, but you’ll need to be within a certain proximity of one end of the text, call, voicemail, or email—or within a set distance of a cell tower used to relay the signals—in order to eavesdrop on them. You’ll also be able to intercept radio signals. The required proximity will vary by which medium the message is in, and you’ll need to test it out in the field. Also, I got a text from Specter’s burner phone, so we can contact her as needed now. I’ll give you her number.”
Alex nodded, saying, “That’s good. Come on, let’s set this up, and go plink some targets while it loads.”
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Jessica was cold. She’d been having to sleep on the hard, cement floor, and it made her back hurt even more than it had before. Currently, she sat in a cross-legged position on the cold, cement floor of a cell, akin to what she imagined one would find in a prison. This cell was within what appeared to be a brig, or a holding cell block, of some kind. There were metal bars along one side of the cell, but the other three sides of the rectangular cell were pure, windowless brick. There was no furniture in the cell. The only light in the cell was what artificial light filtered in through the bars, as there were no light sources inside the cells. Through the bars, Jessica could see plenty of other holding cells, but no prisoners or hostages other than herself were visible. If this area was really used to hold insubordinate members of the Crimson Blades, then they must have been more disciplined than Jessica had originally thought.
Now, Jessica sat cross-legged in the cell, looking at the four guards. They were still standing there, holding their rifles in that Marine-Embassy-Guard-style position, as though participating in some sort of ceremony. They stood disturbingly still. It was creepy, and Jessica was struggling to keep herself calm. If she was going to escape…well, Jessica had no way to fight through them physically at the moment, so she’d need to win them over to her side. Chad had military experience. So, Jessica had pondered—could the other Crimson Blades also have military backgrounds? Maybe, as twisted as they were, they still had some patriotic feelings in them. So Jessica decided to begin singing patriotic music, starting with The Star Spangled Banner.
After she had sung the patriotic American song once, Jessica noticed that some of the Crimson Blades seemed to get emotional upon hearing the patriotic lyrics coming from their captive’s mouth, judging from their body posture, and the way that they started to fidget uncomfortably. So she sang it again. After five more full performances of the lyrics, some of them were literally—and visibly—shaking in their boots.
One of them began to speak, only for the man next to him—presumably his superior within the Crimson Blades—to interrupt the first man before he could finish a single syllable, by barking out, “Damn it! No fraternizing with the enemy! That goes for the rest of you, too! Not a damned word to the prisoner!” Jessica kept singing the lyrics, until the man who had reprimanded the others—whom Jessica had assumed to be some sort of commanding officer, noncommissioned officer, or an equivalent within the Crimson Blades, by this point—aimed his rifle at her, and said, “We need you alive, for now. But if I were you, I’d shut up. As in, now.”
After this threat, Jessica shut up but managed to otherwise keep calm, while trying to think up another way out. Unfortunately, she couldn't think of anything, other than staying vigilant for new opportunities to escape as they might appear.
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Alex wore earplugs—designed only to muffle sounds loud enough to damage one’s hearing, but not to muffle sounds which were below seventy decibels—just like the other people present on the range, as Alex knelt, with his right knee on the ground, his left elbow resting on his left knee as he crouched, his right pointer finger on the trigger of the Ruger 10.22 Takedown rifle, as he aimed down the scope of the riffle, its various parts made of black plastic and stainless steel, respectively.
The earplugs Alex wore were a type of hearing protection earplugs based on a line of designs that started sometime in the late 2020s if he remembered correctly—although the ones Alex was using were a more modern version, an improved variation of the original design, which was overhauled sometime in 2031.
Alex was knowledgeable enough to know that the model of Ruger rifle he held did not come with scopes, but Rick had replaced the manufacturer’s iron sights with a scope. Alex would have preferred iron sights, even though the scope—if used properly—would improve accuracy at longer ranges. It wasn’t that the scopes were bad—these scopes were actually very high quality. It was just a personal preference—Alex didn’t like squinting into a scope.
The firing range was on the opposite side of the house from the scrapyard and was about one hundred yards, or three hundred feet, long, and ten yards, or thirty feet, wide. Massive mounds of dirt had been piled over walls of cement and cinderblock bricks on the right, left, and downrange—or far—sides of the firing range, resulting in a twelve-foot tall backstop on three sides. The purpose of this backstop was to ensure that no person was hurt, and no property was damaged; if a bullet potentially missed its intended target; went through its intended target, and came out the other end of said target; or ricocheted off the side of it’s intended target; when fired downrange. While Rick was the type of gun owner to relish having a firing range next to his house, he was decidedly not an idiot—he ran the place safely.
On the far side of the range, there were beer cans laid out at varying distances. At Richard’s suggestion—and perhaps for Rick’s entertainment—Richard and Alex were having a marksmanship contest, using guns Rick loaned them, while Rick sat behind them in an orange lawn chair, drinking soda. Rather than get drunk while handling guns, Rick would save bear cans throughout his drinking sessions—then, once he’d sobered up—recycle them as firearms targets. Hence why they had a literal five-foot-high pile of beer and soda cans next to the entrance to the range, but Rick was stone-cold sober, drinking a lemon-lime soda of some kind, without any alcohol mixed in. He was drinking it straight from the can, too.
Alex squeezed the trigger slowly, exhaling before he did so, and inhaling only afterward, to avoid the motion of his breathing throwing off the shot’s accuracy. One misconception about guns was the belief that you pull the trigger, when that would send the bullets flying over your target, and cause your shot to miss said target. You gently squeeze the trigger, not yank it back and up—assuming that you know what you’re doing. Exhaling through his mouth, Alex proceeded to squeeze the trigger, prompting one of the five beer cans down range to go flying when the bullet struck it.
“Hey, you want to know something I find odd,” Richard asked Alex.
Typical speaking volume in a polite conversation was usually around sixty decibels, so the earplug did not muffle Alex’s ability to hear people talk.
Earplugs aside, what Alexwanted to tell Richard was, Just let me focus, please.
But Alex aimed to avoid being rude to his friend, so what he actually said was, “Okay, what do you find odd?”
Richard proceeded to reply, “What I find odd is how nobody gets sick in that old superhero movie trilogy! You know, those old superhero movies made by that Nolan dude. I don’t remember the name of it, but I do remember the settings and plot. Those bats would shit all over that cave, and bats are known to be a cesspool of diseases, like COVID-19! Yet, they never show the butler dude having to power-wash that cave, or otherwise wipe down the tank/car hybrid thing with chemicals! Besides, the main protagonist takes his fucking meals down there! Don’t get me wrong, they’re excellent movies, but totally unrealistic! I mean, w—.”
Interrupting Richard, Alex asked, “Why are we here, when Jessica isn’t?”
“I’m trying to take your mind off of that,” Richard stated, before adding, “We can’t do anything to help her right now, but there’s not much use in moping around about it.”
“Yeah,” Rick said from somewhere behind them in very fluent English, albeit, spoken through a thick Mexican accent, “Besides, I trust that you two will find her!”
Rapidly pressing the rifle’s safety into the on position, Alex put the gun down on the ground—even in such stunned confusion, he was careful not to stick the muzzle into the dirt—as he pulled the earplug out of his ears, and asked, “Wait, what sir?”
Standing, Alex turned to see the slim, Mexican-born, dual US-Mexican citizen, a five-foot-tall man known as Rick Caperno, sitting in the old lawn chair. There was a twinkle in his green eyes, and an opened can of soda in his hands, having been kept cool by the blue and white, plastic ice chest next to the aforementioned lawn chair. Rick had short cropped black hair, with his facial hair grown out in a well-kept beard, and he wore a shirt covered in a pattern of yellow flowers printed against the fabric’s orange background. The shirt was entirely unbuttoned, revealing Rick’s well-toned muscles, including—but not limited to—a six-pack of abs. Despite being somewhat older, he clearly kept in shape.
“You heard me, Pyre,” Rick replied cooly, prompting Alex’s jaw to drop by about half an inch, before he continued, “What? Did you really think I wouldn’t have hidden cameras in my scrapyard to prevent theft? Luckily for you, given the complete inadequacy of the police response to Variant crimes, and crime in general, I understand the necessity of you becoming Pyre. Before you ask, I’m the only one who saw the footage of you training in my scrapyard, and I already completely destroyed that footage. Just let me know before your next training session occurs, so I can turn off the camera beforehand. As for you, Richard, I know you’re able to help him on the hacking front.”
“You mean you’re not going to report us to the cops,” Richard asked, sounding both grateful and stunned.
“I’ll stay silent on the condition that no one tells your mother that I’m aware of, or on board with, this, so as to avoid an agonizing and drawn-out death by her hands. I prefer to keep my guts inside my body, thank you very much,” Rick replied.
“Agreed,” Alex declared immediately.
Richard nodded in agreement, saying, “Definitely agreed. So what do we do now?”
With a thoughtful look on his face, as he began buttoning up his shirt, Rick asked, “Is there any way I could help?”
“I don’t think so, given you’re not a Variant or a hacker,” Richard said, only for Alex to state, “Actually, I can think of one thing.”
Rick hastily asked, “So what is this mysterious way I can help?”
“We need a new base of operations,” Alex stated, “Our dorm room at school is too visible and too easy for a criminal to track us back to, before proceeding to put two and two together, then figuring out—if not Pyre’s exact identity—at least that Pyre’s among the faculty or the student body. Besides, the amount of gear we’re keeping in our room is practically begging to be discovered by the faculty. It’s school property, so they would not need a search warrant to search it if they end up suspicious of us—or they could even find it by accident if there’s a repeat of that time they searched all the dorms, top to bottom because too many students were vaping and using e-cigs. While I’m not demanding it—you can refuse if you want to—it would be a huge help, and a huge reduction in risk for us, if you let us transfer the Pyre gear to the guesthouse—you know, the one towards the back of your property—and let us operate out of there. Given that it’s on the edge of New Hellensburge’s outskirts, with woods bordering one part of the property line, it would be easier to shake someone trying to follow Pyre, and less likely to be discovered—especially since you, the property owner, can refuse any warrantless searches. Seriously, I—.”
“You’re kidding, right,” Rick said, “Of course, you can use the guesthouse! Given the main house that I’ve been living in has three guest rooms, it’s something I’ve been maintaining, yet never even using! At least now someone will be getting some purpose out of it!”
“Great! Thank you, sir,” Alex said, as Richard asked, ''So, when do we transfer the gear to the guesthouse?”
“Today, assuming you’re willing,” Rick said, “With Jessica’s abduction, the cops are probably swarming all over the campus! If they start searching rooms, they’ll likely discover your gear, as you put it, in no time flat. The longer you keep it there, the more your risk of discovery grows.”
Nodding, Alex told them, “Today works. But first, let’s work out a cover story of what to tell them if those cops question what we’re doing.”
“Got any ideas,” Richard inquired, to which Rick answered, “Actually, yes. My sister-in-law—the current Chief of Police—knows I love camping. She also knows that the storage facility where I kept a lot of my camping equipment recently went bankrupt. So, if they ask, we just say that I got you two to do me a favor, and store some of it in your dorm until I could line up a new storage unit. Does that sound good?”
“It’s not like I got a better idea,” Alex told them.
“Agreed. Let’s go,” Richard stated eagerly.
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The scrapyard was located on the city outskirts, roughly where the Factory District and City Center met, as the city bled into the woods beyond the city limits. As such, it was a bit of a drive, or bike ride, to campus from the scrapyard—not too far though, as their school was in the southwest portion of the Midtown District.
It was after stopping for lunch at a fast food place that Alex, Richard, and Rick, actually made it to the school campus. For the most part, considering that all the gear was in duffle bags, it was really just relaying bags of gear, in the October sun, through the campus to Rick’s truck. It wasn’t snowing or anything like that—it rarely snowed in that part of Louisiana. Maybe it got a little powder on the ground once every couple of years, if you were lucky—assuming that you wanted snow. Alex wasn’t actually sure if he wanted it to snow or not, but he currently had bigger things to worry about. There were about a dozen duffle bags total, all stuffed under the bunkbed inside the dorm room Alex shared with Richard. With two or three bags carried by each of the trio, it took two trips between the dorm room and the truck to transfer them all. On the way back to the truck during the second trip, Alex saw a short, Hispanic lady in a police uniform, whom he recognized. Her work had kept her busy most of the time, but Alex had seen Richard’s mother once or twice before. Sasha Caperno noticed them, and—halting her conversation with Principle Rafkin—walked straight for them, with Rafkin following her.
Please, go talk to someone else. Please, don’t ask us what’s in the bags!
Alex’s silent thoughts and hopes—the closest thing he’d ever had to a prayer—went entirely unanswered, as Sasha walked straight up to Rick, and demanded with suspicion in her green eyes, “Rick, what the hell are you doing here? And what’s with those bags?”
At this point, Alex felt himself on the verge of panic.
Shit! Fuck! Shit! Stay calm, STAY CALM, Alex thought.
As Alex struggled to maintain the outward appearance of calm, to make himself breathe, slowly and steadily, Rick shrugged, before Rick said, “The storage unit where I was keeping my camping gear went bankrupt, so Richard offered to store it in their dorm until I could sort out a space for it at home, which I have now managed to do. So, now, they’re helping me take it home.”
Principal Rafkin looked downright furious as he told Rick, “My students’ dorms are not storage units, Mr. Caperno! Get your property off of my campus! I—.”
“Wait,” Sasha said, holding up a hand to silence Principle Rafkin, “One moment please, sir. Rick, you’re certain that it’s camping gear and just camping gear? And if I search those bags, that’s all I would find?”
“Of course! I would never lie to you, Sasha! You’re my nephew’s mother, my late brother’s wife,” Rick declared.
Sasha paused for a moment, and—if Alex had to guess—he’d say that she was assessing whether or not Rick was telling the truth.
Eventually, she told them, “Get that stuff off of school property, and keep it off of school property, Rick.”
“Of course. Right away, Sasha,” Rick replied, before telling Alex and Richard, “Come on, boys. Let's get going.”82Please respect copyright.PENANAAZB9qdCu4y
The trio then went straight to the red pickup truck, before placing the duffle bags into the pickup’s back seat. After they climbed into the truck, there was complete silence—at least, until they had driven four city blocks away. Then they all seemed to break out into roaring laughter, filled to the brim with a cocktail of extreme nervousness, and extreme relief. Not a single one of them knew who started laughing first. But once the laughter started, they laughed all the way back to the scrapyard.82Please respect copyright.PENANA5CzeJ4RWsW