26 – Prison Break

“I doubt you got visitation approval on such short notice,” Erika said.

It was a bit surreal to be seated in a restaurant in the middle of downtown Chicago, happily open on Christmas Eve, while just down the road stood a tall concrete skyscraper with narrow slits for windows—the Metropolitan Correctional Center – Chicago. She had driven past it at least a dozen times, probably more, and knew what it was, but it was still just odd to be sitting here, having a sandwich, while six hundred people were incarcerated across the street. Having done a little research on the ride over, Erika knew it held people across multiple levels of security, all for a variety of crimes; she hadn’t been able to find a current listing of all inmates, but since its construction, it held everything from mob bosses to bank robbers, serial killers to tax evaders.

“And I assume we’re not just walking into a prison. So what’s the deal? Stopping time to get past the guards? Me breaking down security barriers?”

The Fixer chuckled, shaking their head back and forth. They wore their Mister Dice persona today, complete with an overly expensive black suit with a vest, tie, and pressed slacks. It made Erika feel a little underdressed in her baggy pants and tight shirt—her coat was slung over the back of her chair. Carter hadn’t dressed up either, wearing jeans and a tee with a much puffier coat.

“Your imagination is quite active,” The Fixer said.

With a huff, Erika glared out the window, trying to figure out how she would break into the place. It wouldn’t be that difficult to simply smash a wall, but that would run the risk of being shot by the guards. Several escape attempts, including a few successful escapes, utilized bedsheets or ropes from windows, so the building clearly had poor external security. Perhaps she could scale the building from the outside, breaking handholds into the walls to reach her desired floor?

Of course, she didn’t know what floor or room she would need to stop at without a list of prisoners, which she could acquire if she got access to a computer inside, but that went back to that possibility of being shot. It seemed doable, as long as she could get to a desk, and she could get away via slicing up ID cards, but someone would stop her while she was there.

Besides that, scaling the building, even with handholds, seemed… unwise. It was freezing cold out, and while it didn’t feel slick or wet out—no snow, thankfully—the wind brought the temperature down and swept over the lake. Even a small bit of humidity condensing on the side of the building could mean a rapid descent down thirty stories before a messy, permanent stop. The darkness, for she would certainly try at midnight rather than noon, wouldn’t help much either.

Grumbling to herself, Erika picked up her sandwich, but froze as the restaurant’s door chimed. Further plotting stalled out as she reached back to her coat, slipped her hand underneath, and grasped the haft of a baseball bat from her remote storage locker. “Trouble,” she whispered, narrowing her eyes.

The Hanged Man stepped into the restaurant. Wearing a suit somehow nicer than The Fixer’s, he turned his head slowly, scanning the room while drawing in a deep breath. The sandwich shop wasn’t empty, but it wasn’t particularly full either. Even still, the way he immediately snapped his gaze straight to Erika upon sniffing twice at the air unnerved her.

“We’re not here to fight,” The Fixer said, voice calm as he placed a hand on Erika’s arm.

It took Erika a long moment to realize that they were speaking to her, not to The Hanged Man.

She glared at The Fixer, incredulous, with irritation rising as they raised their hand and beckoned The Hanged Man over. They then shot Erika a look.

Lips firmly pressed together, Erika released her hold on the baseball bat, leaving it where it was, and straightened in her seat.

“Good afternoon,” The Hanged Man said, stepping up to the table. He spared Erika a long look, sniffing at the air a few more times. “Is there a problem here?”

“Not at all,” The Fixer said, all smiles. “You are representing The Eclipse?”

“I am. You may call me The Hanged Man, though you and I have met before, several years ago, on one of your prior visitations to Chicago.” He paused, turning to Erika with a face of absolute neutrality. “The Agent,” he greeted, then turned to Carter.

“Nobody you need to worry over,” The Fixer said. “He’s merely here to observe my work.”

“I prefer fewer unknowns,” he said, dark eyes flicking to Erika, “it makes my work more complicated.”

“There will be no complications and no trouble. You have my assurances.”

The Hanged Man drew in one deep breath before slowly nodding his head. “Very well. Follow me to the waiting room; I have already prepared a set of dossiers.”

Erika felt like an idiot as realization hit her. Of course The Eclipse ran the prison. They had their fingers dug into the whole city, why not the prison as well? The fact that he was here, with a bunch of dossiers, meant that this wasn’t for the sake of controlling something; the prison, and the people in it, were used. The Fixer needed covers to hide in, vampires needed blood, who knew what other supernatural beings were out there that needed human resources.

The revulsion Erika felt was tempered only by the assumption that The Eclipse wouldn’t just nab a jaywalker off the street and feed them to vampires. Presumably.

Erika stared at The Fixer’s back as they filed out of the restaurant—The Fixer had left a large wad of cash on the table, far more than was needed to pay for the partially eaten sandwiches. They were here specifically for people who were morally acceptable to disappear.

The Hanged Man led them across the street, around the side of the prison building, and to a small set of stairs just to the side of the main entrance. Down a few concrete corridors with no signs and no security checkpoints, they arrived at a simple room bearing all the hallmarks of a stereotypical interrogation room—a mirrored wall looked into a room with a table and chair, an intercom hung against the wall, and a table on this side of the glass with several chairs sat around it, all facing toward the mirrored wall. A few manila folders rested atop the table.

“Press the red button,” The Hanged Man said, pointing to a metal panel near the door, “when you are ready to meet with one of the subjects in person.” With no further words of instruction, The Hanged Man bowed out of the room, closing the door behind him.

Erika whirled on The Fixer, jabbing a finger into their chest. “You could have warned me.”

“I didn’t know you were going to try to start a fight,” The Fixer said, voice still calm, but far more strained than normal. “You were a slight jerk of your arm away from taking his head off in the middle of a public restaurant.”

“You didn’t think I might have an issue with meeting The Hanged Man unexpectedly?”

“You didn’t act like this when The Art and The Adjustment showed up at the arcade.”

“Those two didn’t shove me into the back of a car and drag me around town!” Erika glowered at the door, grinding her knuckles into the palm of her hand. “I want to punch that smug look right off his face.”

“Let’s not threaten The Eclipse right now,” The Fixer said, sighing. “Especially not here.”

Erika clicked her tongue in annoyance, both at The Hanged Man and at The Fixer. The latter was right; they hadn’t passed any guards on the way in, but that didn’t mean the halls wouldn’t be flooded with security the moment a fight broke out.

Carter was investigating the two-way mirror, either pretending he wasn’t in their little spat or genuinely ignoring them in favor of something he found more interesting. That… was good. She was trying to build a better relationship with The Fixer, mostly on account of them barging into her life and not likely to vacate it anytime soon. Carter seemed to have managed, mostly, but it seemed like every time she learned something about The Fixer, or something they had done in the past, it just ticked her off.

Shaking her head, Erika stalked past The Fixer to the table, snatched up the first manila folder, and leaned up against the opposite wall. The dossier contained photographs of some guy’s face, a number of tattoos, and other identifying marks, as well as a full written history on the guy. It all read like a Wikipedia article, listing off personal history, personal health, crimes committed, and relations the guy had—not many. Erika’s sudden irritation didn’t let her focus on the words as much as she would have liked. She wished she could go on a brief walk to clear her head, but that wasn’t likely an option at the moment.

“I’m surprised they let us in,” Erika said, trying to focus on something else. “You know, given that we’re allegedly allied with The Puppet and now explicitly trying to create a brand new faction. Just doesn’t seem in The Eclipse’s interests.”

“Most larger cities will have a place like this and, with a few exceptions, most will allow even their greatest enemies and rivals in,” The Fixer said, having taken a seat at the table. They had another of the manila folders open in front of them, that one with a picture of some ancient man. “You’d be surprised at just how much The Eclipse is willing to overlook as long as it keeps trouble from rising to the surface. They would rather have us here than see us snatching random people off the streets. Not that we would do that.”

“Of course not,” Erika said with a roll of her eyes. “We’d just go visit the hospitals instead.”

The Fixer gave her a look, but didn’t say anything else as they went back to reading through their folder.

Erika forced her eyes back to the paper in front of her. The person listed was a serial drug user, hard drugs, though Erika didn’t know if that would affect The Fixer. The tattoos would be distinctive, the ones on the guy’s face in particular, since they couldn’t be easily hidden, and several were quite racist. Though she didn’t know exactly what The Fixer was looking for, she doubted this was it.

Setting the manila folder down, Erika picked up the next one and started browsing through its contents. The Fixer was still on their first folder, perusing more thoroughly than Erika had done, which was fair enough—if she were picking out bodies like someone browsing a clothing catalogue, she would want to be a bit more discerning too.

The next folder was some woman who tried killing her husband for a life insurance payout, and had likely done the same to a series of ex-husbands before that one. She looked normal enough, the picture of the modern businesswoman. Something about her eyes stuck out to Erika, like there was just nobody home. Erika decided to put her in a separate pile from the first guy, then picked up another folder.

After checking through the first few dossiers in Erika’s ‘No’ pile, The Fixer decided to trust her and didn’t bother with the rest. It still took three hours to go through the stack of folders Erika made for ‘Yes’ and ‘Maybe’, but considering the ‘No’ pile was twice as large as both the others combined, she felt like she shaved a few hours off the day’s task. They, with a little input from Carter, eventually pruned it down to a single pair.

The first was the black widow businesswoman Erika had found. The other was an older man who had been involved in a string of disappearances back in the eighties.

“None of these are mages,” Erika said with a small frown, looking over the entirety of the table. Not only were none mages, but none were supernatural at all—no cursed people, no psychics, no vampires, no dragons; they were all just regular humans.

“Mages would be as difficult to contain as you, my dear—”

“Ugh. Don’t call me that.”

The Fixer shrugged lightly. “They are both hard to contain, and they are fairly rare, especially around these parts. Most mages in North America tend to congregate on the west coast for access to a specific sea creature that, processed correctly, can offer a fairly large boost to magical prowess.”

“I just thought it would be good for you to get a mage, since you have experience with that already.”

“Ah. I think we would have to be extraordinarily lucky, both to find a mage in the first place and to find one desperate enough to, as you eloquently put it, make a deal with a devil.”

Erika snapped her fingers. “Right. I forgot about that part. What are you going to offer these people to get them to effectively kill themselves?”

“That is the puzzle,” The Fixer said, frowning over the open dossiers. “While I do not have to take them today, I would prefer some expediency. No more than a month. Unlike someone like your mother, I cannot offer life for life. They are not ill and freeing them, even temporarily, is likely to end poorly if they know they only have a short time before I collect them.”

“Trick them?” Carter said, earning The Fixer’s frown.

“I cannot lie when creating a pact like this. I do not know why, perhaps some enforcement of reality.”

“So you have to tell them that they’re going to merge with you,” Erika said, resting her chin on her knuckles as she sat at the table. “Do you have to tell them that you plan on suppressing them to the point where they basically don’t exist?”

“Not if the subject doesn’t come up.”

“And you can offer anything like wealth, talent, health, and even something like healing their dying mother or whatever? And reality will just bend the knee?”

“The result is less a function of reality, and more a through small openings to the outside, but yes, though it is unlikely that either of these two care about others enough to sacrifice themselves.”

Erika hummed, considering what she knew. The terms had to be clear, but the interpretation could be a bit flexible. Presumably, The Fixer either already had an idea or knew what to offer them—they were the expert in this after all—but were humoring Erika and Carter for the purposes of teaching. The whole reason they were here at all was to try to copy the deal-making ability.

The Fixer would probably offer something that they wanted, something clued in from the dossiers, and explicitly say that they would merge upon the deal’s conclusion. It seemed straightforward enough for their personality. Erika, not having thoroughly read through the dossiers beyond surface glances—mostly making sure that object to either candidate—had a slightly different idea pop into her head.

“Does it have to be a verbal contract?” she asked. “Can it be written down and signed for?”

“Both work.”

“Does the signee have to know what they’re signing away? Do they have to read it, or is the signature the only thing that matters?”

“I cannot trick them into signing it,” The Fixer said, frowning. “Slipping a contract into a stack of other papers to sign is deception.”

Erika nodded, somewhat expecting that, given what The Fixer said a moment ago. “So they have to be aware that it is some kind of magical contract, but do they have to read and comprehend it all?”

The Fixer did not respond right away, delving into a moment of thought. “As long as they are aware of the basics,” they said slowly, as if less certain than normal, “failing to do their due diligence is on them.”

“Right, give me a minute,” Erika said, pulling out her phone. She started typing, thumbs dancing across the screen with the expertise of someone who had been texting their whole life.

It took a bit more than a minute despite her skills. She wrote and rewrote, then rewrote again once she realized that it should probably sound like a lawyer wrote it. Carter and The Fixer started talking off to one side, but Erika tuned them out, focusing on her work. An hour in, and she started wondering if lawyers got paid the big bucks solely for their ability to turn a simple deal that shouldn’t take more than a minute to say into a fifteen-page slurry of words that nobody used in their daily life.

Well, that and reading and comprehending word slurries written by others.

Finally feeling mostly satisfied, Erika turned the phone around, sliding it to The Fixer. “How’s this?”

The Fixer looked at her once before turning their eyes to the screen, humming at points as they slowly scrolled down. “Whereas, the Host possesses certain resources and is willing to offer consideration as outlined herein; Whereas, the Signatory desires to accept such consideration under the terms and conditions set forth below… offering of financial sum upon execution… remain in effect in perpetuity. Joining is irrevocable and immediate, excepting in the death of the Host? Join with the Host in all things? Legally and metaphysically bound together?”

“It’s meant for the black widow,” Erika said, tapping her finger on one of the dossiers. “I tried to make it sound more like you were getting married, but using somewhat vague terms.”

“Retain the use of the Signatory for an indefinite period of time?”

“Well, I didn’t want you to actually get married, so I slipped in a few more obvious things like that. Hopefully, she glazes over them.”

The Fixer hummed a long, low note, returning to the contract Erika had written out. “Removed from the premises of the prison into the custody of the Host following signing—that is a good phrasing.”

“Thank you.”

“But this promises one hundred million to the Signatory… but all clauses take effect immediately upon being signed, including ‘joining’ with me. She won’t have a chance to spend the money.”

Erika shrugged, uncaring if the woman had a chance to spend a bunch of money. “All of her past husbands had large life insurance policies, meaning she is at least partially driven by wealth. I figured throwing that in would sweeten the deal a bit.”

“Might be a bit too sweet, a hundred million is a lot to be suspicious of.”

“Delete a zero or two,” Erika shrugged.

The Fixer hummed a bit more, going back to the document. They nodded slowly upon reaching the end, setting the phone down. “It mostly works. I can feel a tinge, like a line or two might be too deceptive,” they said, then they surprised Erika by passing it to Carter. “Thoughts?”

Carter read through it silently, only speaking twice to ask for clarification on some of the words that Erika had looked up in an online thesaurus. When he reached the end, he immediately scrolled back up. “Merging of fates. This line doesn’t work. It is unlikely that the Signatory will befall the same fate as The Fixer.”

The Fixer nodded, almost like they expected that.

“How did you pick that line out?” Erika asked with a frown.

“It just felt wrong.”

Erika’s frown deepened. “Great. Two people who feel something about bad lines. Doesn’t bode well for me.”

“On the contrary,” The Fixer said, “the fact that there are so few points of issue makes me inclined to believe that you two are more capable of this than I initially suspected. Whether or not your skills stop at contract making, whether you will be able to actually enforce a contract like this, is something we will likely put off until later, sometime when we have someone else—and a less serious contract—to test. For now, I will try offering this contract, with a few minor modifications, to the woman. If it fails, I’ll try my way with the other candidate.”

The Fixer used the call button to bring The Hanged Man back. While the two of them left to print out Erika’s document, a security guard entered the room on the other side of the mirrored window, bringing along the woman from the dossier. The photographs had clearly not been recent; the woman directed to sit was haggard and worn, wearing deep bags underneath her eyes. Her hair was frizzled and messy, brown yet filled with stray grays.

If The Fixer was disappointed, upon entering the room a moment later, they didn’t show it on their face. They simply greeted the woman, took a seat on the opposite side of the table—putting their back to Erika—and waved the security guard out of the room.

“He isn’t bringing us in with him?” Erika said with a scowl. It made some sense. It was probably easier to talk to someone one-on-one than with some glowering woman and a tweenager standing over The Fixer’s shoulders, but she wanted to see the magic up close, not through a window.

Carter simply shrugged, then pressed a button on the intercom panel, clicking on the audio from the other room.

It… wasn’t particularly interesting. The Fixer and the woman spoke for a few moments, with The Fixer explaining why they were there—using only language Erika had used in the contract—before sliding the small stack of freshly printed papers over to the woman.

The woman didn’t read it, Erika could tell by the way her eyes roamed over the words without focusing. When she flipped the first page, realized just how many pages there were, and skipped to the end, Erika couldn’t help but grin.

She had left the financial reward for the end, right above the signature line, for a reason.

“I want my lawyer,” the woman said, wiping the smile right off Erika’s face.

“There is no lawyer today,” The Fixer said. “You either sign this contract, relinquishing yourself into my custody along with fulfilling all other clauses, or you return to your cell to carry out the remainder of your sentence. This is a one-time offer that expires at… the close of the hour,” they finished, pointedly looking up at the clock on the wall.

Fourteen minutes until five o’clock. Erika wasn’t even sure that was enough time to read the entirety of the contract.

The Fixer might be a bit more sly than she had thought.

“This is bullshit.”

“Be that as it may, it is the only opportunity of this kind that you’ll ever experience.”

The woman scowled, but looked down again, turning back to the first page of the contract. She started reading for real this time, but watching her eyes, it didn’t last before she lost focus. Again, she flipped the page, this time reading a bit of the second and the third. She didn’t stop on any one page long enough to read through it. Eventually, she reached the end.

“Ten million?” she said, looking up. “Mine, not yours?”

“Yes. Ten million in US dollars, all in hundreds, delivered in a duffel bag,” The Fixer said, making Erika’s eyes narrow. All that extra specification had been missing from her original contract, but he had insisted upon revising it.

“To marry you?”

“All the details are in the contract.”

Erika snorted.

“Why?” the woman asked.

“I find myself in need of cover,” The Fixer said, deviating from the contents of the contract for the first time. “I believe you can adequately help me in that regard.”

A flash of realization lit the woman’s eyes for just a moment. “You do look gay,” she said, nodding to herself.

The Fixer didn’t respond, save to tilt their head toward the clock on the wall. Three minutes until the hour.

“So, ten million, and I get out of here?”

“We will leave together as soon as you sign,” The Fixer said with a small smile. “I can guarantee that you won’t be in prison any longer.”

“But I’m stuck with you.”

“That is a way of putting it.”

The woman chewed her lip for a long moment, then her back straightened. Some of the haughty posture Erika had seen in her photographs returned. “Fuck it,” she said, snatching up the pen from the table. With one last look at the final page, she put her pen to the paper and scrawled out a name.

Space ripped apart, like a zipper violently torn open. The woman staggered back, knocking her chair over as she slammed her back against the room’s wall. While she stared in fear, Erika pressed up against the glass, trying to get a better look.

Through the jagged wound in reality, Erika saw something unlike anything she had ever imagined. Machinery churned in the void, but not like a factory or engine—this was a living, breathing mass of infinite potential, an evershifting labyrinth of gears, pistons, and cables that twisted into impossible shapes. Some parts gleamed with the cold precision of polished steel, others pulsed with a sickly, organic rhythm, as if veins of molten silver carried the lifeblood of creation itself. Every movement was both mechanical and alive, each gear birthing new cogs, each piston splitting and rejoining, all in a dance that spiraled fractally, chaotically.

For a heartbeat, Erika felt the weight of that outside pressing against the reality she knew.

The moment that heartbeat passed, reality slammed shut, collapsing the wound and pinching off a small portion of that infinite grease-covered machine. In a strange blink, even that small bit of machinery was gone, replaced with a duffel bag, zipper open, spilling wads of dollar bills from its top.

Erika stared, feeling utterly baffled—incredulous—at the pure foundation of all creation being made to do nothing more than spit out a bit of cash.

She turned her glare back to The Fixer, only to not find him in the other room. She swept her eyes back and forth, but the only person there was the black widow, slouched up against the wall. Slowly, the woman straightened, steadying on her feet.

A shimmer encapsulated the woman, just like every time Erika had seen The Fixer change forms. As soon as the melding finished, Mister Dice stood in the woman’s spot, casually straightening his tie. He approached the duffel bag, picked it up just as casually, and then headed toward the interrogation room door.

“Wow,” Erika said, breathing out a breath she hadn’t realized she had been holding. “I don’t know what I was expecting, but… Are you crying?” she asked, looking down at Carter.

Her brother scrunched up his face, wiping his cheeks with the palms of both hands, smearing his tears rather than cleaning them up. “It was… beautiful.”

Erika rolled her eyes. “Come on. Let’s get out of here before The Hanged Man decides he wants to harass us.”