Through the winter, Vicious drifted. He no longer roamed the streets, except for an occasional visit to Sally to be sure the Colt was still where it was supposed to be. He paid no attention in school and ignored everyone in the orphanage. Father Paul was relieved; Vicious had stopped making trouble. The nuns were worried and kept trying, unsuccessfully, to bring him back to life. The other kids, wiser than the adults, just left him alone.

With the spring rains, he evolved another purpose for his immediate future. He would find his mother and discover why she'd dumped him here. He still didn't really care, but at least it was a purpose. He would leave this place to do it, too, and never return, and do it a year before Father Paul sold him as a worker to some factory. He'd never planned to wait for that event anyway. Not because he was afraid, but because he would sooner suffer torture than do anything to satisfy Father Paul.

He picked his night, a Wednesday, the one Wednesday a month when the Society of Charities was meeting at the Cathedral of St. Luke. Father Paul would be there, naturally, stressing the good works of St. Mary's and hiding with every ounce of his hypocrisy the diminution of the orphanage. The kids were put to bed at 8:00 and the nuns retired immediately afterward, and Father Paul wouldn't return until around 11:00, which gave Vicious at least two hours to find what he needed.

On that night, as soon as he was sure the nuns were settled, he climbed the wall and broke into the office from the outside. He wasn't sure enough of his burglary skills to think he'd go undetected, so he'd decided to go to the opposite extreme and make it obvious a break-in had occurred. He would never be suspected. After all, he was just a little kid.

Inside, he waited for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, all senses alert. The curtains were closed, but he went around the room, jerking the heavy material together until there were no gaps, before he turned on the desk lamp.

The only times he'd ever been here were for discipline, and since this was going to be the last time, he might as well make the most of it. A quick, careless search yielded two interesting things, a private cache of whiskey in a cabinet (Tsk, Father Paul) and a locked drawer in the desk. He left the drawer for later, took a swig from the whiskey bottle, then spit into it and put it back exactly as he'd found it. Then he faced the file cabinet for the orphanage. Father Thomas had been old-fashioned and distrusted computers, so, unbelievably, the church had paper files. This was something that hadn't been changed yet by Father Paul, although there was now a computer console on the desk. Vicious was grateful for Father Thomas, because one thing he hadn't learned yet was proficiency with a computer.

He opened the top file drawer, and for a moment he just stared at the folders, each with its neat little tab. They were in alphabetical order by last name, and it had been so long since he'd used his last name, he'd forgotten what it was. Ridiculous. Of course I know it. It's… Harrier, that's it. He moved down to the FGHIJ drawer.

His file wasn't there. Neither was Brady Isaacs' file, he noticed. Curious, he opened the top drawer and worked his way down, and he saw that a lot of kids he'd known were not in this cabinet. That was odd. He leaned his head on the cool metal and thought, but he couldn't come up with anything they had in common, him and the others. Every theory that rose in his mind matched no more than half of the missing names.

He glanced at the desk. The locked drawer was deep enough to hold files. Sitting in Father Paul's big leather chair, he bent and jimmied the lock with a letter opener. When he pulled the drawer open, he saw what he expected, another set of files, and the very first one was for Carina Anderson, one of the missing names. His own was about halfway back, and satisfyingly thicker than any of the others, even thicker than Brian Esposito's, who'd had the nickname Hellbeater when he was here.

There were colored labels – red, white, black, several other colors – on all of them. Except his. Now, what did that mean? He pulled Carina's file, which was labeled red, and the next two, one of which was black and the other white. Then he pulled his own and spread them across the desk to study them.

The color coding was actually much simpler than he'd thought, and so was the reason these files were locked away separately. On the face page of each file, at the upper right, was written an acronym, and it didn't take a genius to figure out that the letters stood for the names of syndicates headquartered on Mars. He got it immediately from the first two files he opened. Red tab, RD, Red Dragons. White tab, WT, White Tigers. Not very complicated.

Parents were listed for each of them, and when he looked a little deeper, pulling files from the cabinet as well as the drawer, he realized that the parents of the "syndicate kids" were always listed and some of them had information updated, whereas with the "regular" kids, almost none had parents' names in their files. He had no clue why the church cared about the syndicates enough to keep such close records on their children, but it didn't matter. What was exercising his mind was why his own file was in the drawer when it wasn't color-coded.

Then he remembered Rafe saying his mother hadn't worked for any one syndicate. That was probably it.

His file had another difference, he realized. His was the only one in the syndicate drawer without a father listed, at least as far as he could determine from a quick sampling. Another strange thing. Well, when he found his mother, she could tell him. Right now, he just wanted to know where to find her. But the file frustrated him. There was no known physical address for her even when he'd first arrived. In October of 2043 there was a note in Father Thomas' handwriting, saying simply, "m. Spiegel". And further down, without a date, was a note by Father Paul, "moved to District?" That was all. He grimaced in frustration. The District was a big place.

He touched the console and brought up the city directory, one of the few things he could do on the machine. There was no Spiegel listed, and no Harrier either. Not that he'd expected the latter. He didn't know where to start. He couldn't just cruise the District, asking people where the She-Wolf might be found. Not unless he felt suicidal. For a moment he toyed with the pleasant idea of torturing Father Paul for the information, but in reality, what the priest knew was probably exactly what was here, which was almost nothing.

He checked the time. He still had at least an hour of safety. He put his feet on the desk and pondered what to do next. Well, if I'm burglarizing the place, I might as well do it up right. A thief, a friend of Rafe's, had told him some of the favorite hiding places of amateurs, one of which was right in front of him, in the open file drawer of the desk. With more whimsy than any real hope of finding anything, he checked for a false bottom or side. Not finding either one, he reached up to feel the underside of the shallow drawer above it. His hand found something stuck there.

In a second he had it out, a large plastine envelope, nearly an inch thick, and not sealed. He popped it open and saw three things inside, and he pushed the files to one side to make room for dumping the envelope's contents to take a closer look.

The thing that interested him most was the money. The banded stack was as thick as his thumb, and all 10,000-woolong bills. He didn't have a clear idea of what money would buy in the outside world, but he had a feeling this stack would buy a lot. He folded it over and stuffed it in his pants pocket, where it made a comfortable lump.

The other two things were a bank e-book and a small hardbound notebook. He took a while figuring out how to access the e-book, and then it required a password. After three attempts to guess it, he tossed it aside and opened the notebook under the light from the lamp. The handwriting in it was Father Paul's, and that truly stirred his curiosity. What was this, that the priest wouldn't trust to his computer?

Only about a quarter of the book was filled, the pages divided into four columns. The first column was a date, with the first entry shortly after Father Thomas' retirement. This was followed by a column of children's names and then by what looked like a column of nicknames or code names. In the last column was a sum of money. Weird. He was about to set it aside when one of the nicknames in the third column caught his eye. He knew that name. Rooker. Where have I heard that? He closed his eyes, not concentrating but simply trying to let the name float to the surface of his mind, a technique Rafe had taught him ("Don't fight your own head, boy. Just leave it alone and let it work for you").

And it came. On a summer night two years ago, he'd been standing on a corner, waiting for Rafe to show up, when a weasley-looking man had approached him, an expression of concern on his face, saying, "Son, where are your parents? You shouldn't be out here alone."

He was trying to decide whether he wanted to punch the guy or kick him when the man suddenly veered off and disappeared down the nearest alley. Vicious turned to see Rafe scowling at him in a way that made Vicious want to disappear, too. "Don't you have any sense, boy? Don't you know who that is?"

Vicious shook his head. "Didn't look like anybody dangerous to me."

"Then you're a damned fool. Just 'cause he ain't tall and muscle-bound, or he don't carry a big ol' gun, don't mean he ain't dangerous. His name's Rooker, and he's got drugs and hyperneedles in his pockets, and a quick way about him, and he's as bad a man as a kid like you will ever meet."

That was interesting. The guy had looked meek and silly, like an accountant or something. "What would he do to me, with those drugs?"

"Just put you into a little nap. Problem is, you'd wake up a long way from here. The mines at Kessilin, for example. You're nice and strong, they could use you there. 'Course, pretty as you are, you might end up in some rich guy's asteroid mansion, chained to a wall when you're not needed. That Rooker, he's a slaver. That's what he does, collects up young kids and sells them to whoever wants them and can use them." He put a hand on Vicious' shoulder, a rare gesture. "You wouldn't like being a slave, I don't think. Not one bit. You'd last about a month, then they'd kill you. So you just stay away from the Rookers of this world for another coupla years, til you're old enough so they won't want you."

Vicious had run across several more slavers since then, but, since he was now wary, he found them easy to avoid. Like thieves, they were lazy and pursued only easy prey. Now, skimming through the book, he found several more names he knew to be slavers – Dove, Shallan, Buggsie. Dreading what he was beginning to believe, he paged forward to the latest entries. The last one was Vasily Miskovitz, who, at 16, supposedly had been sent out into the world just last week, with a job waiting. He'd gone to Shallan. Before that was Angela Burton, ten years old. They were told she'd been adopted, and they'd all been happy, because Ange wasn't pretty, and she stuttered, so she'd given up hope of ever finding a family. He scowled. She hadn't found a family. She'd found someone named RiverRat who'd taken her off Father Paul's hands for w40,000.

Sick with fury, he went through all the entries. Here was Amy, who'd once coaxed him to play kickball, supposedly adopted at seven; Rita, tall and gangly, a great basketball player, supposedly gone to work at a business on Ganymede; big, strong, quiet Horace, whom naturally they'd called Horse, supposedly adopted by a farming family. All told, there were over forty children gone to the slavers, and, he bet, a lot of woolongs in that bank e-book.

His own name appeared three times, and each time it was crossed out, as was Mike French's, whose accidental death from a fall might have saved him from much worse.

Vicious' hands were shaking, and it was all he could do to keep them from crumpling the book, as if he could squeeze it from existence. He had to do something about this. But what? He could almost hear Rafe saying, Don't go into a fight mad. If you're mad, you already lost. I don't care if it's a fight with your woman or your worst enemy. You've got to have a cool head, or you're only half a fighter, and you're gonna lose. Hearing that voice, even just in his memory, brought reason to his mind. He sat, calmly thinking, and made a cool decision. Then he planned out exactly what he was going to do, and rehearsed it in his imagination until he was familiar with every step and had plans to deal with anything unexpected.

In a corner of the room, in a cardboard box, was a pile of toys confiscated from the kids by Father Paul for various "sins", like running in the hall or shouting too loud. He fished through it and pulled out a jump rope, competently looping it into a modified slipknot. There were two ways to tie a rope for this purpose. One was the "strangler's knot," which didn't let go once it was tightened. That, Rafe said, was for when you were in a hurry or needed speed and efficiency, and you weren't too particular about leaving the victim behind, with the possibility someone would cut him loose. The other, which you had to pull, was for when you wanted to be sure the victim was dead, or you wanted revenge with your own hands. The latter was what Vicious chose.

Slinging the rope over one shoulder, he put the e-book and the notebook back in the envelope, replaced the envelope under the drawer, replaced the files, and straightened the desk. He left the desk lamp on, and the file drawer open about half an inch. The desk was situated before a window, and he slipped behind the heavy curtains, checking several times to be sure he could clear them easily. Then he waited, drawing breath calmly. He didn't have to wait long; before he had taken fifty breaths, he heard Father Paul open the office door. He put one eye carefully to the crack in the curtains.

To his intense satisfaction, the first thing Father Paul did when he came in, after fussily hanging up his coat, was to pour himself a glass of whiskey and drink it off, finishing it as he sat at the desk. Then the priest saw the open drawer. "What...?" He bent to inspect it, and Vicious heard the sharp intake of breath when he saw the marks showing it had been forced open. He then did exactly what Vicious had expected – he leaned forward and to the side in order to slip his hand under the top drawer to reassure himself his treasure was still there. As smoothly as if he'd done it all his life, Vicious glided out from behind the curtain, dropped the rope over Father Paul's head, and pulled it tight.

Even knowing, as he'd been taught, that strangulation victims could put up a good struggle in the few minutes they had before unconsciousness, he was startled by the strength in the priest. Father Paul lunged out of the chair, pulling Vicious with him. Vicious rode him with one knee between his shoulderblades, his weight balanced backward with the pull of the rope. Father Paul's head turned, the eyes rolling wildly, and when he saw Vicious, stark terror came into them and he thrashed even more violently, hands clawing at the rope. But his lungs were already starved for air and his brain for blood, and he fell. Riding him down, Vicious braced a leg to pin him there on the floor with his other knee and prepared to finish the job.

Father Paul was trying to say something, but the only word Vicious could make out was "mother." He knew damned well the priest wasn't praying to Mother Mary, and he was curious. He loosened the rope, just a little. At once Father Paul tried to get his fingers between the rope and his neck. Vicious simply tightened it again, and then when he loosened it once more, Father Paul only lay there and heaved in what little air he could.

"You were saying...?" Vicious offered.

"...knew you were... spawn of Satan... never thought... this bad..."

"That's not what I wanted to hear."

"Your... mother. That's why... you're here?"

"Good guess."

"I can tell you... where she is."

"No you can't. I saw the file."

"Not everything... in the file. Only confirmed. But I have friends. They tell me. Rumors." Every sentence was gasped, conserving air. "Let me go. I'll tell you... where she is."

Vicious laughed. "That won't do me any good if I'm in prison."

"Won't tell anyone this. My word."

Oh, right. But he could play along. "What about the mark on your neck?"

"Collar will hide it."

That was true. "All right. Tell me where my mother is, and I'll let you go."

"Girard Street. Don't know exact number."

"What else do you know? How did she end up in the District?"

"Husband died. Left them no money."

"Them?"

"She has a son."

"She has two sons."

Feeling the slight tension increase, Father Paul hastily agreed, "Yes! Two sons."

"She didn't go back to her old trade, then?"

"Couldn't. Wounded in a firefight, ten, twelve years ago. Crippled."

When he didn't add any more, Vicious said, "Is that everything you know?"

"Yes, everything."

"All right." He tightened the rope again. "This isn't for me," he explained coolly as the thrashing started. "It's for Amy, and Vasily, and Ange," he said, growling the names, "and all the others. They didn't make you any promises, you bastard."

When the struggle finally ceased, he kept the pressure on for another few minutes. (Rafe: "Plenty of men have been killed by what they thought was a corpse. You make sure before you turn your back on it.") When he judged enough time had passed, he loosened the rope and waited. Nothing. He pressed his ear to the priest's back. No sound.

Good. He sat back, untroubled at the idea he was sitting on a corpse, and looked into his own mind. Rafe had told him, "When you make your first kill, you have to consider what you feel. If you feel anything – I don't care what it is, whether you're horrified, you feel top of the world, you get sick, whatever – if you feel anything at all except satisfaction from a job done, then you haven't got what it takes to do this kind of work, and you need to get into something else." So now he sat, and he probed deeply into his own heart, because he took every word of Rafe's seriously.

I don't feel anything. Except satisfaction. Rafe was right. He didn't even feel any leftover animosity toward Father Paul. The man had sinned, and now he'd paid. It was just history now.

But the job wasn't quite done. There were others to be dealt with. Not by him, but he could at least point the way. Maybe, even, some of the kids could be saved if the police had enough to work with.

Carefully, he wiped any surface where his fingerprints would not be naturally found, and any surface that a real thief might have wiped. Using one of Father Paul's handkerchiefs, he pulled open the desk drawer and scattered a couple of the files on the desk. The plastine envelope was next, and he laid it prominently on the desk with its contents partially exposed. He kept the money. The bank e-book would be enough for the police. When he was satisfied, he stood there, absorbing the scene, to be sure everything was correct and nothing would point to him.

Then he went to bed.

~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~

Father Paul's death created an enormous scandal, much bigger than Vicious had ever dreamed. Local police officers and ISSP men were in and out of the church grounds constantly for weeks. The nuns were hysterical for almost as long. Everything came to a halt until Father Thomas arrived to take charge, hurriedly recalled from retirement to fill in for a short time. Father Thomas not only got the church's functions back to normal, he also brought the entire weight of his personality and the authority of the church to bear on the police, to be sure they pursued the criminals in Father Paul's notebook. Father Thomas saw his efforts as a holy cause, an expiation for the church's crime in allowing Father Paul to have control over an orphanage. Far from being annoyed, both the PDM and the ISSP saw it as an opportunity to have a crack-down and feel virtuous about it. The next time Vicious went to visit Sally, every patron in the bar was talking about it, annoyed as hell because they couldn't turn around lately without falling over a cop. (Sally gave him a long, searching look, but she didn't say anything.)

Except by Sally, he was never suspected. The children were never even questioned; they were protected by the nuns, their youth, and the nature of Father Paul's crime. Vicious found it amusing that the police were more interested in what Father Paul had done than they were in the fact that he'd been murdered. From what he was able to glean, the search for the thief who'd killed him was desultory at best.

He waited patiently. Eventually the scandal died. Many of the slavers were taken into custody. If any of them ever went to prison, or if any of the children were ever rescued, Vicious never heard. Talk at the bar changed gradually to other topics.

Two months after the last whisper died away, Vicious climbed the wall of the orphanage for the last time and headed for the bar to pick up his gun. He never looked back.

copyright by DragonKat, November 2002

Continue the story in Prelude, Part Six

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