Chapter Text
“Cassia visited me today.” A taciturn voice trilled out below Whisper’s top bunk. “She had some meat on her bones. Looks like the meds are working.”
Whisper allowed herself a small smile. The news was pleasant to hear, despite the spring digging into her spine. Prison beds, not quite designed to be comforting; for some reason that Whisper really couldn’t place her claw on.
Lights out at ten, up and at ‘em at eight. The routine of her incarceration trended towards pretty numbing, but she’d found ways to wile the hours away. Exercising, pointless busywork… just chatting to the other inmates that called UFSP Central their home.
On account for not causing a ruckus (‘and other tricks to win the hearts of the guards’), the wolf had small amenities. Bookshelf, extra phone time - and a choice of cell mate. The last came to be especially important. If she was going to be cooped up with another criminal for ten hours at a time, you better be certain she’d pick someone averse to night time shivvings.
Not that anyone would mess with ‘Harbinger’. Whisper acted her usual polite self, yet every inmate dodged her in the corridors. The stink of death might’ve been an affliction that would never wash out. Perhaps that was why Clove the Pronghorn came as such a breath of fresh air.
The caprid, first day in - for armed robbery - plopped herself down next to Whisper and made idle chat. ‘I watched your trial, they did you dirty’. Blah, blah.
If she sought protection, she wasn’t going to get any. Whisper swore off violence of any kind, and she intended to keep that a fact. Instead, the two simply ended up friends; by the nature of their trajectories being coloured by love and its pitfalls.
Clove committed crimes for her sick sister. In that, Whisper found a kindred spirit.
So, now they shared a cell together. Roommates, for lack of a better word. Clove and Whisper had a tendency to chat into the early hours of the morning. Both stared up, Whisper at the grey ceiling, Clove at the wolf’s bed - yet they intrinsically understood what face the other made, just by tone alone.
Tonight, Whisper figured out Clove was grateful.
“I gotta give you the credit.” Clove murmured, rolling onto her side. “For helping Cass.”
Whisper’s regrowing fringe quivered as she chuckled, shaking her head in disbelief.
“C’mon Clove, I barely did anything.”
“Barely? Gaia, Whisper, you bankrolled her medication.” Clove kicked her hoof into her cellmate’s mattress. Bump. “You threw more money at us than I ever made sticking up gas stations.”
Whisper’s mouth twitched, as a sinking feeling stirred in her stomach. Her tongue flicked the tip of her fangs, whilst she danced around the truth.
“It’s filthy blood money. The least I can do is use it to help folks.”
Clove barely registered the disdain in the canine’s voice, barrelling on ahead as if the guilt wasn’t dripping through Whisper’s fur. “That’s no skin off my nose. And I guess the same goes for the Feds, considering they didn’t seize it.”
Whisper sighed, clicking her claws against each other.
“S’not something I want to take credit for. Just, mm- just, use it where I can.”
Silence broke out within the small, cement room. Whisper faintly heard the piping judder through the thick walls, blending with the faint howls of angered prisoners. The kind of lullaby that soothed her, in a darkly roundabout sort of scene. One grew used to it after a while.
And Clove wasn’t much of a chatter-box, either. She talked the right amount, which Whisper appreciated in her most anxious moments. The wolf couldn’t show her social weakness publicly, else lose the mystique that kept her safe and sound.
“I never asked you about your old career.” Clove eventually cut through the silence. “The Harbinger.”
Harbinger. The name revolted Whisper. Every syllable sizzled acid reflux on her tongue. That miserable assassin had been long dead and buried, taken out behind the shed and capped like the sick dog she was.
Clove couldn’t know that Whisper grimaced. The two were in sync, but not psychic.
“Bet you’ve got some stories, eh?” The pronghorn chuckled. “Hey, tell you what. I was always a fan.”
That admittance sent shivers down Whisper’s spine, along the tapers of her tail and the sprigs of her hackles. Suddenly, her throat felt very dry indeed.
“A- a fan?”
The shuffle of fabric told Whisper that Clove shrugged.
“I mean- yeah, I guess. Eliminating corruption across the world, one bullet at a time. In and out, nobody sees a glimpse of her face except from tales told by scarred goons. The Harbinger. Every mob-boss and scumbag executive, looking over their shoulders, checking if today is the day they see the glow of her visor.” Clove finally sensed her cellmate’s silent tension. “It was- I dunno… Cool. And… it was sorta- justice.”
Whisper winced, half-tempted to turn over and say ‘g’night’. An urge kept her talking, though her voice was wavering somewhat, battling past bile.
“It- it wasn’t justice, Clove. Let me make that clear t’you. I did it for the money.”
“That doesn’t explain your choice of victim.”
“I needed to sleep somehow.” Whisper barked out, much louder than either friend expected. Not that she regretted it. To a point, she needed to break the illusion. “If I killed innocent people, then I- I would’ve… Gaia- I would’ve chosen not to continue. With everything.”
Clove slunk back into quietness.
“Oh.” She swung her legs out of her bunk, placing her two feet on the frigid cold floor. “I’m sorry, Whisper, I didn’t…”
Whisper herself had propped herself up, dangling her arms over the edge of her railing. Clove’s antlers were horizontal, her green and white head hung in repentance. Instantly, Whisper felt she’d stepped over a line. That ever nebulous line that shifted as easily as water flowed and eroded rock.
“Harbinger wasn’t a force for good, Clove.” The wolf hushed. “I hated her. I hated myself.”
The pronghorn scoffed, amused. “Join the club. I hate myself, too. I could’ve been an architect, made my parents proud. Instead I’m just a petty thief. If only I’d met you earlier.”
“You wouldn’t have even met me if you hadn’t made that hard decision; to break the law, to help your sister.” Whisper knocked her head back into her pillow, snout facing upwards, jutting outwards in contemplation. “In fact, blame a society that forced your hand in the first place.”
“Then… you gotta understand why people supported Harbinger.” Clove said, cold and outcast. “She challenged that society.”
For a moment, Whisper chose not to respond. Her mind cast itself back, into her early twenties - peak Harbinger activity. Clove, whether she intended to or not, prodded at a memory that she tried to bury, even deeper than murdering Mimic, crippling Lanolin, emotionally devastated her beloved Tangle (Whisper thanked her lucky stars, everyday, that she had the lemur back in her heart).
Perhaps, she could dredge up a moment where Harbinger was at her most morally broken. A straight shot of history, that’d slay any sense of awe within Clove. And maybe it’d kill off a burgeoning fanbase that she really… really didn’t want to encourage.
“Do you want a story, Clove?”
Clove glanced up, her elegant, purple eyes squinting interrogatingly. She knew Whisper well enough at this point to know a flip-flop was highly unusual behaviour.
“Sure. I’ll take one. Especially from you.”
Whisper licked her lips, shrugged off the disgust bubbling in her stomach, and exhaled.
“So. Chun-nan. Seventeen years ago.”
She checked herself in the mirror. Standard routine for the Harbinger.
The reflection staring back was a dishevelled picture of professionalism, stabled together by the bare necessities required to stave a body off from keeling over. Her eyes were blackened with sorrow, hair pulled back into a tight ponytail that exposed a mangy forehead. The fleece she wore was black, like her military pants, like her gloves and like her boots - incognito insofar nobody would pick her out in a crowd, but against the setting of this sleek hotel?
A bit of a decrepit eyesore.
The mirror itself was wall to wall, modern in the serrating sense of the word. Whisper shrunk into the image, the vast cubism and floor lights swallowing her form into a slurry. Appropriate. Such a feeling was as familiar and comforting as an extinguished fireplace.
Anyway…
Whisper scanned herself over, mostly to check if the pistol holstered under her shoulder wasn’t too obvious. A lawman would notice it… and probably the man she planned to meet would too.
That was fine. They were both criminals; assassin and arms dealer, tale as old as time.
The wolf marched down the corridor. The windows opened up, floor to ceiling clear expanses detailing the almost holographic quality of Yinhai, one of Chun-nan’s major cities. The Silver Sea shimmered in the distance, broken up by the tips of the chromatic, neon skyscrapers bundled together like crayons. She was pretty high-up - luxury loves a view - but vertigo never seized her. Harbinger had climbed higher buildings in her time.
Room 7705. The number was sleek, written in both latin and hanzi, faintly glowing in the dim rouge of the hotel’s aesthetic.
Whisper took a deep breath, and knocked three times. Paused. Knocked again seven times. Signal enough that she wasn’t a cop or a spy.
The muffled sound of multiple locks being released met Whisper’s ears. Soon, the door creaked open, revealing the gleam of eight bright green spotlights. Attached to this visor was a gangly spider Islander, two arms holding the door open, another two brandishing a shotgun.
“The Harbinger?” He asked, his accent struggling to form the words. The numerous eyes shone with glaring intensity.
“Yes. That’s me.” Whisper responded, coolly. If he decided to fire… heck, he’d be doing the world a favour.
The arachanid’s goggles clicked, swivelling down to Whisper’s shoulders. His mandibles quivered, exposing venomous fangs.
“Please, I ask; keep that gun holstered. No issues will arise. Agreed?”
Whisper tried not to let being rumbled so quickly affect her negotiating standings.
“Agreed.”
The shotgun tilted away, the spider breaking the barrel and ejecting the shell with a dull pop. His other hands gestured for Whisper to enter, inviting her through the threshold.
What should’ve been a hotel room was transformed into a veritable armoury. Guns haphazardly were strewn across a king-sized bed. Not the wispon kind, either. Harsh, bullet-spitting monsters as far as the eye could see; grey chunks of vicious metal. Bombs spilled out of the heated-tiled bathroom. Knives of various sizes stabbed sentry into the posh wooden desk.
Whisper was sure a certain kind of person would hail this set up as a gunpowder-dusted wonderland of murder and mayhem. For her, it was another dreary reminder of the people she associated with.
The spider tended to a disassembled pistol on what must’ve been his work station. His thin body bent in unnatural directions, pulling taut his musty labcoat embroidered with Chun-nan decoration. Whisper could only see the back of him, with his rough hair being styled into a top not, presumably to keep it out of his visor.
“I must say, when I got the call you were looking for my services - I couldn’t help but be a little excited, Harbinger nüshi.” He garbled out, it becoming clearly apparent that Mandarin was his first language.
“Whisper is just fine.” Whisper murmured, remaining taken aback by how such a den could reside within one of the finest skyscrapers Yinhai had to offer. “And you are?”
“Zhang Lucong.” The spider spun around, flashing a genial smile with a bow. “My friends christen me Luc, Hourglass Spider.”
Whisper noticed the cone-shaped abdomen jutting out of his back, the tip skimming almost unnaturally flat. A symbol was etched into the skin, three rings overlapping around an injected stake. The logo of The Nest - an international criminal organisation famously run by bugs. She’d dealt with them before, sometimes as allies, sometimes as enemies. It came as a small blessing that they were too large and vast to ever hold grudges.
Luc perched himself on a swivel chair, tenting his twenty fingers together into a double interrogation. “To serve the Harbinger is an honour. I’ve had many customers, mostly within the organisation I call my own. Never with the reputation of you. Never, never. If I am lucky, this boosts my reputation, yes?”
The wolf quietly huffed, ignoring the oily scent that permeated the space. “I don’t tend towards public executions.”
“Oh, very true. Very true, indeed.” Luc chattered, seemingly unable to keep still. One arm had slunk over to a ratchet, which he twirled amongst his lithe fingers. “But, the public has no interest in my services. A Harbinger kill? With one of my own creations? Let us say, the correct people will understand who supplied the hammer that struck the nail.”
Whisper picked her way around the messy space, plopping herself down onto the edge of the bed. She hunched over, feeling awfully self-conscious. Luc’s head instrument was like a magnifying glass to all her insecurities.
“One question. Why operate out of a room like this? Surely, the cleaners would arrive, and that’s it. Cover blown.”
Luc chuckled, continuing to spin his ratchet frivolously. “Please observe my shop, and surmise whether cleaners have ever visited. The answer is - obviously - no.”
He scooched forward, faintly twitching as he did so. “Though, an apt question. To respond, my bosses pay for the room and the hotel looks in the direction opposite. It is a very good deal. I get twenty-four hour gym access.”
“Your bosses… The Nest?”
“Correct. Though, to me, they are called Zhe Wo-Shen. My benefactors.” Luc slipped his goggles up, revealing two large eyes, surrounded by six beady copies. His main pair narrowed, alongside a smile plastering itself onto his face that simply didn’t match. “They did warn me. About you - Whisper nüshi. But I hope we are both professionals.”
Whisper nodded, choosing to copy Luc’s gaze with a challenging stare of her own. “Yes. I hope so too.”
The two stayed schtum for a tense moment. Whisper noted the spider’s mandibles flecking themselves with a clear liquid.
But opposed to a sudden strike for the jugular, Luc leaned back in his chair, spreading his four arms wide, friendly as friendly can be.
“Enough with the pleasantries. How may I help you?”
Whisper suppressed a grin. A rare moment of ironic humour.
“Guns.”
“Guns?” Luc repeated, surrounded by rifles and revolvers. “I can do guns.”
He slipped his visor back down, hopped up, and carefully avoided his mess, skipping himself over to a drape laid loose in the corner of the room. Every arm extended and yanked it down, revealing a display of lethal weaponry, all heavily modified. Upon showing his work, Luc cocked an eyebrow.
“I am more than thrilled to provide guns. Are you looking to replace the Dalton 87 hidden under your coat?” He snickered to himself. “Quaint. Very quaint. I could upgrade it to a Brosnan 95. It never dies on you.”
“Maybe another time.” Whisper slunk a hand underneath her jacket and withdrew her pistol, balancing it horizontal in her palm. “This one works fine, thank you. I just… need a rifle. Long-range. Precise.”
“Just… a rifle.” Luc blinked all eight eyes out of sync. “Just a rifle. She wants a rifle. Long-range. Precise.”
“I couldn’t lug my usual bolt-action through an airport. I barely concealed my side-arm.” The wolf waggled her pistol with disdain. Poisonous little tool. “Help me out here.”
Except, Luc wasn’t listening. He trailed his chitinous grippers over his gun rack, muttering unintelligible Mandarin under his breath. In tandem, Whisper heard the clacks of his incisors hitting his jaw, a bizarre thinking ritual.
“Ah-hah. SF-2012.” The spider produced a sleek model, rigid with polygonal edges. The barrel stretched out, padded with ventilation - topped off by a high-powered scope. Whisper immediately thought of it as some absurd video-game creation.
But Luc stroked the tip like it was his puppy. “Light-weight. So light-weight you won’t even feel it kick. Comes with a tripod, scope, included. Carbon-fibre finish, built in grip, sexy sexy. Trigger can be modified to your requirements, exactly.”
Whisper tuned out of the hard sell and tried to steer the conversation back to something fruitful. “How accurate? I’m a street apart from the mark. Up fifty stories too, so I’ll need to take wind into account.”
“She asks me ‘how accurate?’. Imagine a fruit fly. Now imagine it on the other side of the city. Now imagine it dead. That is how accurate my SF-2012 is.” Luc seemed seconds away from making out with the damn thing. “Automatic, too.” He chittered, as a passing addendum.
And that took the wind out of Whisper’s sails. “So, it can jam?”
“Every gun can jam, Whisper nüshi.”
“Some are more prone than others. I’ll pass.”
Luc seemed offended, tutting as he parceled his beloved SF-2012 away. With a sigh, he folded both pairs of arms. “You seek a semi-automatic?”
“I ‘seek’ a bolt-action.” Whisper muttered. “Since I don’t intend to fire more than one shot.”
The arachnid’s mouth widened into an amused smirk. “Oh-ho. Very confident, Whisper nüshi. I bear witness to the Harbinger’s skill.” He rubbed his chin, carefully considering his options in a rhythmic cadence. “Bolt-action. Bolt-action. She is a caveman but results she does get.”
Three finger snaps pattered through the air as he shuffled over to a large crate, cracking it open like a forbidden treasure chest. With a snorting giggle, he lifted a truly humongous sniper rifle into his arms, cradling it like a baby.
“This is a creation of my own. Only used by the very elite, only three ever sold. Maybe… maybe four? The Xiangliu-Sanshi.”
Whisper would let him down gently. This beast was ugly and cumbersome, better used to prop up girders than anything practical. If Whisper stood to her full height, she’d be shorter than this slab of compensatory firepower. Tumorous metallic growths bolted onto the grip, surrounding the barrel like it was chiseled out of granite. Better off as a beating weapon for a troll.
“It can shatter concrete.” Luc giddily began, straining under the weight. “Exit wounds the size of dinner plates.”
“Messy.”
“And a statement!”
Whisper shook her head. “Too heavy, too unwieldy. Very loud, judging by its barrel shape. And do they even make calibres that fit?”
“I make the bullets myself!” Luc gestured to a missile silo of ammunition, both in girth and shape. They were the size of wine bottles. Even Tangle would’ve called it overkill.
…Tangle.
Her fluffy lost love flashed before her, judging her. Those deep pools of amethyst squinting in utter disgust at what Whisper had become. Her tail retreated, slinking away. No hugs, no squeezes, no warmth. Only the bed that a dog had laid down in, and she’d long awoken with fleas.
“So, you’ll purchase?”
Whisper blinked back to the present, and Tangle disappeared into a wisp of smoke. Luc continued to offer his stupid anti-material rifle as if it was even close to resembling a prudent option.
“No.” The assassin answered, flat and lifeless. “Put it away before you break your spine.”
With the dejection of a slapped lover, Luc dumped his baby back into its cradle, and slammed the crate shut.
“You are a picky, picky lady.” He griped. “Why come to a specialist if you do not want specialism?”
Whisper brushed herself off and surveyed the room. To his credit, Luc’s selection was robust enough to equip a whole army. Shotguns wouldn’t be of any use to her, from her perch. A sniper would be slightly overkill. The collection of submachine guns enticed her, compact and professional, yet situational; and pistol-wise she had her bases covered. A very specific weapon poked her fancy, the wolf searching the room to see if the spider stocked-
Ah-ha.
“That one.” Whisper pointed to a wooden finished rifle, tucked away in the corner of the room. A faint coat of dust covered it, yet it had the elegance of a southern gentleman. Rustic and distinguished. “Crovendale 98 Classic.”
Luc sneered in bewilderment. “That… I had intentions of relieving myself of it.”
“I’ll take it off your hands.” Whisper said, selecting the antique rifle. Taking aim, she squinted down the iron sights, as Luc poked into the periphery of her view.
“An older model. Popular amongst game hunters. Renowned for reliability, but somewhat outdated by the standards of today.”
Whisper yanked the bolt back, testing the motion. She pressed it to her chest, slung it over her back, unholstered it - checking if its manoeuvrability was up to par. It passed with flying colours, smooth as butter.
“I have taken some liberties.” The gunsmith forewarned. “The wood is a custom mahogany, with a leather grip. Commission from a client who sadly passed before he could receive my work.”
The wolf stroked the varnishing, cool and slick to her touch, but with enough friction that her paws could sense the graining of the wood, tiny divots of a ripened surface. A sign of expert craftsmanship.
“It’s excellent.” She announced. “You understood the assignment, Luc. This is what I need, I’ll buy it.”
“High praise, Whisper nüshi. Thank you! Prices are negotiable.” Luc proudly chittered, rubbing his palms together.
“Name it.” Whisper spun the rifle under her shoulder, familiar like the touch of an old friend, or a goofy lemur… She shook off the regret and focused on the task at hand. “Including ammunition and a scope. I’m a sniper, not a savant.”
Luc bowed his head again. “I would not have been able to tell. Please, for me, give them hell.”