09 – Plan to Succeed or Plan to Fail

Finding a hotel in Chicago, even on short notice, wasn’t much of a trial. A few hundred hotels, motels, hostels, inns, and bed-and-breakfasts were scattered throughout the city. Erika had no particular preference, as long as the place was clean and discreet. The kind of place she could get into with cash and few questions asked. Cash was the important bit.

Perhaps it was paranoia, but after having been in a massive archive that seemed to catalog everything, from street light patterns to the mayor’s browsing habits, Erika wasn’t feeling all that interested in using her card. It seemed trackable. Of course, as someone who lived in the modern era, Erika didn’t exactly carry handy amounts of physical money around with her.

Erika had a solution. The same solution she used for all her financial woes.

Walking up to a gas station with her hoodie on and her hands stuffed into her pockets, Erika felt more aware of the security cameras than ever. They never bothered her before. As she stepped up to the ATM built into the wall of the gas station, she felt like the camera was watching her specifically.

Shrugging it off as her imagination, Erika tapped her fingers over the ATM’s screen. She took in a deep breath and focused, watching as the screen flickered straight to asking her what she wanted to withdraw. Her fingers danced over the buttons in a familiar pattern, selecting a larger amount than normal. The usual trick was to keep it small, just enough to cover her immediate needs without drawing attention. At the moment, she felt more like she wanted to avoid ATMs and cameras for the foreseeable future. That necessitated a larger-than-normal withdrawal.

The machine whirred softly and, soon enough, a neat stack of bills emerged from the slot. She pocketed the cash quickly and immediately retreated the way she had come. She didn’t glance around or search for any passers-by. As far as anyone needed to be aware, she had made a perfectly normal withdrawal.

Not that there were many people about. Although the city was starting to wake up, it was far from when the city streets would be lined up with end-to-end traffic on their way through their morning commute.

Two blocks away, she pulled her ID from her pocket and cut it into pieces. “Goodbye, Fiona,” she muttered as she tossed the pieces in a nearby trash.

Erika knew she was good at breaking stuff. She hadn’t known exactly how good until a bouncer forced her to cut up her own fake driver’s license in front of him. Once she did, he went all glassy-eyed and started talking to her like he had never seen her before.

She had never been caught before. But somehow, things felt different now.

There were things out there. Harry Potter magicians, invisible government robots, whatever ‘Outsider-class beings’ were.

No matter how many times she cut up her collection of false IDs, it never affected Carter or Leah. Nor anyone at school. She assumed that was because they knew her. She spent significant amounts of time with all of them, talking with them, and otherwise was around them.

Or, perhaps, it was that they knew her real name.

Not knowing exactly how she was doing what she was doing could easily come back to bite her if these people were somehow also granted immunity.

Two blocks more and Erika returned to her pickup, parked along the road. She stared at it for a long moment. Was it a liability? The magic office worker had seen it, hadn’t he? Could she fix—or, rather, break that? What would even break it? Smashing up the license plates? Cutting up the registration or title? She didn’t have handy fake versions for any of those and getting fake license plates would be a hell of a lot harder than getting fake IDs for herself.

Her phone represented a similar problem. It was off at the moment, but she didn’t know if that would help against some government super robot.

Erika nibbled on her lip, caught in an uncharacteristic moment of uncertainty. Erika normally considered herself quite a confident woman. And why shouldn’t she be confident? She could exploit reality in ways that no one else seemed to realize existed. Her pockets were strange confluences of space and quantum possibility, able to hold anything that would reasonably fit so long as she hadn’t already shown them to be empty. She could shatter relational ideas and security as easily as she could break a piece of glass. Time… tipped its hat in her general direction… sometimes.

That was more of Carter’s thing, but still…

She had been at the top. Now, over the span of a single evening, it felt like she had sunk and was struggling to keep her head above the surface.

What else was out there that she wasn’t aware of?

Erika got into her truck with a glum scowl. She needed transportation. Unless she wished to steal someone else’s car, her truck would have to do. Despite what she had just done at the gas station, she didn’t particularly enjoy the act of theft. Especially not from individuals. All that ATM money belonged to banks and was probably insured.

As everyone knew, insurance companies were the true evil in the world.

Head on a swivel, Erika headed out to a pre-picked motel. Just a shabby little drive-up with two stories. All rooms opened to the street, not to halls. A sign outside read, Please Lock Your Car. We are not Responsible for Damage to Vehicles or Loss of Contents, which was always a reassuring sign to read outside a motel.

The guy at the check-in was pleasant, but climbing the steps to room 211, Erika did find herself mildly concerned with the two distinct bullet holes in the door. The room before hers looked like someone had bashed the door handle with a battering ram. Police, likely. Scorch marks covered the room desk. Burns from cigarettes? The marks didn’t quite match. Maybe a bong? Or heroin?

Quite the classy place she had chosen regardless.

A quick inspection of the room for bed bugs revealed nothing. At the moment, that was all she was concerned with.

Feeling the worn springs of the bed sag as she got in, Erika closed her eyes and… found herself utterly unable to sleep. Her mind raced over the events of the evening, no longer distracted with driving, breaking into ATMs, or recounting the night to some self-professed ghostbusters, she was left with the unpleasant sensation of being alone with her own thoughts.

Those thoughts were spiraling around worries and possibilities, vague imaginations, and fears that probably grew less and less attached to reality with every new idea. Some of the other words from the archives jumped out at her. Leviathan-class beings, The Mortician, The Barista, selkies, sirens, and even a mothman if her memory wasn’t playing tricks on her.

A mothman?

Really.

Really?

Turning over, Erika forced the thoughts from her mind and did her best to rest.

---

Erika woke in a cold sweat to the sound of nearby sirens. Not the mythological creature, but police sirens.

She tensed as the wailing grew louder, sounding like it was right on the street in front of the motel. A small sigh of relief escaped her lips as the sound faded into the distance. Not after her. Of course not.

Holding her phone up in front of her face, Erika glared at the time on her phone. Just after noon, Saturday. Six hours of sleep. That was more than enough. Erika got up and hopped into the shower.

She had work to do. The Ghostbusters might be willing to sit around for three days while they got their ducks in a row, but Erika wasn’t. Not when she had a teleporting wizard and his invisible robo-sidekick potentially after her.

As soon as she was out of the shower, Erika sent off a few texts. One to Carter and one to fake-Leah. She had already told both that she wouldn’t be back last night, but, not wanting to drag monsters back to her house, she would spend at least the weekend out about. If nothing seemed to happen before then, she would stop back.

Another text went to Kassandra, asking to meet up for the usual. Not for the concert tickets that she was always trying to hawk, but for something a little more useful considering her current predicament.

There was a missed text from Daniel as well, asking if she was okay. It had come in early, not long after she left the arcade. Erika wasn’t one to miss texts normally, but in fairness, she had been engaged in either plotting or executing a little harmless burglary. She sent him a polite if belated reply, stating that she had slept enough.

It was a bit late for more sleeping anyway.

The short delay allowed Kassandra to get back to her with a time and place. It was one of Kassandra’s good traits. She always had time for anyone with a bit of cash.

Throwing on her clothes, Erika went down to check that her truck hadn’t been looted.

It hadn’t.

Small mercies.

---

“I truly have no idea what you do with all these.”

Erika’s fingers tensed around the handle of her baseball bat, concealed within her long coat, only to relax as she recognized the speaker’s voice. She pulled her hand out of her coat and turned, facing the rest of the Yards’ park. It was a relatively small park. A few kids played on a playground and the swing set. Erika had been watching a few men shoot some hoops.

This might have been the first time she had seen people here. Of course, she normally didn’t stop by on Saturdays.

“You don’t really care,” Erika said, moving to walk alongside Kassandra as they headed out of the park. Suspicious-looking deals were better kept out of view. Back of the Yards was fairly notorious and neither of them wanted to get mistaken as drug dealers by the supposed owners of the territory. “Not as long as you’re getting paid, right?”

Kassandra flashed a grin, showing off her braces. “I mean, a little. Mostly curious why you haven’t bought a cheap ID card printer off eBay and just started making them yourself. You go through a dozen a month. It’d be cheaper if you did it yourself.”

“You know I’m terrible with computers,” Erika said with a casual shrug.

Both took a few glances around, checking who else was about, before Kassandra handed over a plain white envelope bulging to the point where it wouldn’t have sealed. Erika flipped open the flap.

“Twenty?” she asked, running her fingers over the cards’ edges. A few of them still felt warm, fresh from Kassandra’s printer.

“Like I said, I have no idea why you need so many. Most of my customers get away with one or two every six months.”

“I like to be on top of things,” Erika said, handing over a small roll of bills. “Thanks for meeting on such short notice.”

“For you?” Kassandra rubbed the bills between her fingers before slipping them into her jacket pocket. “Now, about those concert tickets I was trying to tell you about a few days back. Not too late to go, you know.”

“Wish I could. Honestly. I wish I could,” Erika said with a small sigh. Life had been so much simpler a few weeks ago. “I’ve got too much to worry about now. Don’t know when I’ll be able to go to another one.”

“Shame, that.”

“Yep. Listen, I know you bought those tickets for me. If you need me to reimburse you…”

“Careful, Erika,” Kassandra taunted with a wagging finger. “Someone with less moral fiber than myself might have taken you up on your offer even though I sold those backstage passes two days ago. I was just going to sell you a cheap one I’ve got kicking around.”

“Well, thank you for not taking advantage of my poor, innocent self,” Erika said with a laugh. “I hate to run, but I do have other matters to take care of before it gets late.”

“No problem. Wasn’t planning on a long hang-out anyway. Just remember—”

“Yes, yes,” Erika said, rolling her eyes. “You tell me every time.

“I didn’t get these from you.” “You didn’t get those from me.”

Bidding Kassandra a farewell, they parted ways with Erika heading back to her truck.

Halfway there, she paused, pulled out a pair of scissors and the false ID from her wallet, and cut it into bits.

She had never done that after a meeting with Kassandra before, but…

Well…

Paranoia.

“Maybe I should have asked her for forty,” Erika mumbled to herself as she slipped a fresh ID into her wallet.

---

Erika stepped up to the singular cement monolith. A cube of concrete with nothing but a door, two barred windows, and a business name painted on the flat side. Pip’s Pawnshop.

Stepping into the shop, ignoring the light jingle of the door’s physical bell, Erika found herself in a little chain link cage. She had to push open a second door on the cage, one, she noted, with electronic locks. The kind that could be activated remotely or, more likely through an automated alarm.

Trapping people indoors if an alarm went off? Wasn’t that a fire hazard?

The actual interior of the shop wasn’t much to look at. It was a simple square layout with only a few shelves in the middle of the shop. One wall was covered in power tools, mostly cordless drills. Another wall had guitars and a number of vinyl albums that Erika might have been interested in browsing through under other circumstances. There were some electronics behind glass, laptops, televisions, cameras, and even an old pinball table. Another glass cabinet protected jewelry and watches.

Erika frowned as she looked around the small shop. The one thing she had come here for, the one thing she had stopped by at three separate pawn shops for, wasn’t on display.

There was only one other person in the shop. A man maybe five years Erika’s senior with black hair and a t-shirt. He had deep bags under his eyes like he hadn’t slept in weeks, or like he had recently gotten into a fight and wound up with two black eyes. He sat behind a counter with a register—caged in a wireframed glass, doing everything he could to avoid eye contact with her.

None of the other shops she had visited were quite this paranoid, making Erika wonder just what kind of neighborhood she had wandered into. She had thought the Back of the Yards was bad.

Or… he had something worth all the extra security.

Erika approached, clearing her throat once she got to the cage. That forced his eyes on her.

“Uh, he-hey.”

“Hey. What’s up?” Erika said, watching as he squirmed under her gaze. Another odd reaction.

“Uh, how’s it going? You, um, looking to buy or sell or…?”

Erika stared a moment more. “You need a little more confidence, my friend.”

“R-right,” he said, a slight vocal burn in his throat. “So… selling? Maybe a loan?”

“Not today, no,” Erika said. “Actually, I’m looking for something I heard I might be able to find here and yet I don’t see it on display.”

“You, uh, going to say or talk around in circles all night?”

“Fine,” Erika said, smile going flat. “I heard this is the place to pick up some weapons.”

Pip’s eyes popped wide for just a moment before he took on a heavy scowl. “Now… Oh dammit. Who told you that?” he asked, running one hand through his hair.

You did, idiot.

It truly had been nothing more than a lucky guess. She hadn’t expected this much difficulty, if she were being honest. Television and movies made it seem like every pawnshop bought and sold guns, even having display cases in their front windows. Never having had much need for weaponry, Erika was somewhat ignorant as to how these things worked, but it seemed like Chicago was the exception to that. No pawns she had visited had guns at all.

There must have been some kind of city ordinance or law that she didn’t know about. There were a few gun stores, but she had done some research. She neither wanted to submit to a background check nor wait several weeks. Thus, she had sought out less reputable locales.

“He said that you might just kill him if he was found out,” Erika said.

The exhausted clerk’s gaze flattened. “Gabriel.”

“Nope.”

“Mario.”

“Wrong.”

Pip narrowed his eyes. “Nico.”

Erika shrugged, wanting to move on. “I really shouldn’t say. I just want to know if he was right.”

Pip ran both hands through his hair, ending with his fingers digging into the back of his skull. He held that pose for a long moment as a war of thought waged behind his eyes, like he was trying to decide whether to go full denial mode or if he could make some money off her unwanted intrusion.

Deciding to maneuver around his inner conflict, Erika pulled out a thick roll of bills, watching as Pip’s eyes flicked to them, intensifying the struggle on his face. Money had a way of swaying decisions, especially in places like this.

“Look,” Erika said, keeping her voice low and steady. “I’m not here to cause trouble. I just need a little something for protection. You know how it is out there.”

Pip hesitated, glancing around the shop as if expecting someone to burst in at any moment. Finally, he sighed and leaned forward, lowering his voice. “Alright, but keep it quiet.”

Erika almost expected him to push some hidden button, flipping over the shelves to reveal a whole arsenal. Instead, he just vanished through that door at his back and returned a moment later with a heavy black polymer case. He placed it on the counter with a thud, glancing around once more before unlocking it.

A dozen guns were tossed inside with little care, each with a little plastic flag sticking out of their barrels. Most were pistols, but at least one was a small shotgun with a shortened barrel that looked like it cracked open at the back. Erika didn’t recognize any by name. Her closest encounter with firearms outside this was on the other side of a television screen.

“Glock 19,” Pip said, his voice barely above a whisper as he selected one of the assortment. “Compact, reliable. Good for self-defense.”

Erika nodded, trying to project an air of confidence despite her lack of experience. “How much?”

Pip hesitated, eying the roll of bills in her hand. “Eight hundred. Cash.”

She didn’t flinch, though the price was higher than she had hoped. Based on what little she had looked up about acquiring guns legally, it was also a lot higher than she could have gotten at a proper shop. Especially given that the gun had clearly been used. It sported large gouges in one side where someone had scraped it against something—or deliberately ground parts of it away.

But she wasn’t just paying for the gun. She was paying for the gun now, off the books, and in cash.

Still, no harm haggling for a little more bang for her buck. “I hope you’re throwing in a few rounds for that price,” she said, keeping a tight grip on her roll of cash.

Pip looked like she did when she stubbed her toe. “One box of thirty. That’s enough for two mags.”

Erika hummed. It was probably still a shit deal. She thought of haggling for more. Two boxes, maybe. But, looking at his face, she decided against it. Erika was exceptionally good at breaking things. That meant she knew when things were generally close to breaking—including people. Not wanting this to get called off, she nodded her head.

“Sounds good enough,” she said as she started counting out the bills. A few hundreds. The rest twenties. When Pip slid open the little window of his glass box, she slid the bills through.

He snapped it shut immediately and proceeded to flip through, counting the cash. Erika was fairly sure he counted twice before he stopped and stared at her for a long moment. Eventually, he snapped the large case closed, leaving the indicated firearm out—though it didn’t remain that way for long; he placed the gun in a small box behind the counter.

“Let me get your cartridges,” he said, taking the larger case back with him to the room behind the counter.

Erika nodded slowly, eying him as he retreated. If he tried to stiff her… Well, she had her baseball bat.

It turned out her worries were for naught. Pip returned in short order, carrying a small cardboard box. Again, he stared at her with those tired eyes, slowly reaching for the lockbox where he had stashed her gun. “You know how to use this?” he asked, sliding it through the little window.

“More or less,” Erika said, not willing to admit her ignorance.

She had heard far too many horror stories of idiots shooting themselves with their own gun on accident and she did not intend to find herself in that statistic. Luckily, the internet was rife with tutorials and guides and other handy help that she would be perusing thoroughly before even getting her finger close to the trigger.

She was sure Daniel’s father could give her a quick lesson when they next met up, based on his ensemble. That would help.

Picking up the gun, keeping her finger off the trigger as that was one thing she was fairly certain everyone knew, she looked it over once before slipping it into one of the large pockets on her old-style coat.

Pip practically threw the box of bullets through the window, slamming it shut the moment it was on the other side. Erika flipped open the top flap, frowning at all the space in the box. She closed it again and looked at the lid.

“This says fifty…”

“We agreed on thirty.”

“Fair enough,” Erika said. That was entirely her fault. She slipped the box into her opposite pocket.

Pip nodded, already looking like he regretted the transaction. “Just don’t spread this around, right? I got enough suspicious characters stopping by as is.”

“Suspicious? Me?” Erika shook her head, heading back to the street.

The weight of the gun in her coat was odd. It should have been heavier than it was, but it wasn’t. It was just a hollow piece of metal. If anything, the bullets felt heavier, though that might have been her imagination. Rather than any weight, she felt more of a comfort.

She wasn’t sure yet how the gun would interact with her ability to break things. She was hoping for a way to break things at a distance, but even if it didn’t, it was still a gun.

If something came after her again, she at least had a way to make them back off.