the Sixteenth Surgeon

Chapter 13 "Let it Rein"

"So where are you at, Daddy dearest?" asked Compass, snorting a line of coke and checking her laptop for the Mysterious blips. She rolled the volume up on her headphones and banged her head along with the beat. She punched a few keys and rolled the time code back to the night of Natalie's death.

"What the hell are you?" she asked, washing down her impatience with vodka as the little blue dot flickered and a few new ones appeared from nowhere.

"I don't understand, what are you trying to find?" said Silver Bullet, grabbing the bottle and having his own swig.

"You know, for a priest, you don't really act the way I imagined."

"Don't judge me. I spend my life following the path of virtue, sparing lives and following the code I believed in and it cost me everything. The only woman I ever loved left me for the excitement of sin and I forgave her, but it cost her life. It was years before I discovered she had a daughter and I raised her like my own and this city took her away from me too. That code I followed was everything, but it means nothing to those in power now and in order to set things right, I must become what I have always hated. For them."

"Pussy. You're just a lightweight drinker who wants to wash down his sorrows because Roman's city took your woman, and Roman took your little girl. Boo-hoo, get over it. You're no different than any Surgeon in this town. It's kill or be killed and everyone dies, innocent or not. If you want bloody revenge then take it, and stop hiding behind that mask of prophesy and righteousness. Your not a Priest anymore, you never were. You are a killer, raised under a veil of yet another training program with an excuse of divine providence. Face it, you like killing, you are good at killing, and people need to be killed. Who decides the rules and targets depends on the régime and this Roman Empire has outlived its time. Quit whining and be part of a better one or go crawl into this bottle and leave me alone." she scolded.

"Strong words from a woman who had more then I did just to wash down the poison you have been snorting."

"I'm the reckless generation, I poison to party, not to hide. Now tell me what this is." she said re-playing the glitch.

"A tracking signal."

"No shit, Friar tuck, I got that part. It's coded to read bio-signals based on a sample of Roman's blood, which I paid handsomely for. It wasn't until I calibrated it that I realized why the center point keeps flickering. I have Roman's blood because I am his daughter and the Damn thing keeps reading me as a partial match. I am the glitch in the center, Roman is the blue dot here...right around the time that Vampyric Bitch he has on his leash shows up, moments before your little girl goes down the elevator in a rug...this happens." she said playing it again. The blue light flickered off and two more flickered across town, one staying lit.

"He disappeared? It must be a software bug." he said.

"I thought so too, but every few days, his signal gets sketchy and I see two other blips appear for a few seconds and then Roman is gone and one of the blips stays lit, usually when he visits this facility. Roman just...vanishes into nothing and then he is somewhere else. How can he just magically teleport himself to this location? What is the second blip? The events seem to always occur when that Dracu-slut of his gets close. I have a theory, but it's not good enough to make me satisfied.

"I am listening."

"If I am his daughter, and the scans read me as a partial signal that fades back and forth...what if that bodyguard is carrying his child? Every time she shows up and he does whatever he is doing that makes him magically warp back to his lair...she lights up like a Roman too."