The Law of Averages

Book 2: Chapter 165: Compromise

The manager's office had been refurbished into a wide, comfortable suite, albeit one with heavy sewer-chic. The walls had been knocked down, the adjoining offices crudely smooshed together with rotten wood and plastic sheeting. Lights were strung along the ceiling, hanging by wires, flickering dimly. The light caught dozens of eyes, reflective and glowing, surrounding the dirty, moth-infested couch upon which Dan and Abby sat.

The newest leader of the Scales—he called himself Grimgar, which was almost certainly a name he just made up—sat across from them on a dangerously undersized wooden stool. He was eight feet tall, over half that wide, and covered in spiky, bony protrusions. His face was something between a crocodile and a jackal, teeth bulging out of his long snout, fur and scale mixed in a gruesome patchwork. His feet were bare, gargantuan, tipped with claws. His hands were the size of trashcan lids, and they flexed open and closed in slow, unconscious motions as he stared at the two of them.

He was also, very obviously, just out of his teenage years. All the bestial modding in the world didn't hide the youth of what was left of his face, his cheeks, his eyes. His posturing was juvenile. Dan had met enough powerful people to recognize when someone was trying too hard. There was tension in every inch of him, nervous, uncertain. Filled to burst with restless energy.

Abby stared back at him, face serene, while she patiently explained why he could not run his gang the way that he wanted to. It was, on the surface, absurd. The two were a study in contrasts. Abby barely reached the man's belly. Her bearing carried none of the barely-restrained violence that seemed to fill the other man. Smooth skin versus raw, mangy scales. Lithe muscles versus bulging, grotesque limbs. A calm voice against a constant, grinding snarl.

The Scale, this Grimgar, was facing a problem he couldn't apply violence to solve, and it was driving him mad. Or rather, he could attempt it, and lose everything he was attempting to hold onto. Abby was untouchable to the Scales. Her little ID badge dangled from a clip on her waist, quietly proclaiming her position as a physical therapist at her rehab clinic. It wasn't some kind of mystical compulsion. Grimgar could, at any point in time, reach across the room and attempt to squish Abby in one of his gargantuan hands, but doing so would instantly lose him the respect and cooperation of his fellows.

He'd also die instantly and messily from a sudden case of extreme blunt force trauma, but he didn't know that bit.

Regardless, all Grimgar could do was grimace and take his lecture, losing face in front of his men all the while. His youth began to show, a profound inexperience at dealing with extremely frustrating people who you weren't allowed to just kill. That is, he'd obviously never worked in any kind of customer service. He'd never had to listen to someone he disagreed with, and been forced to come to a compromise.

It showed, when his temper finally cracked. He leapt out of his seat, the little stool exploding into splinters as he stood up towering over Abby, his snarling face backlit by the dim, flickering lights. She watched him with the same bland expression one might wear while ordering a burger.

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"Silence woman!" he snarled. "You think you can walk in here and tell me how to run my business?" His voice was closer to a lawnmower than a person, a deep grinding bellow coming from somewhere within his barrel chest. It shook the the walls, the floor, the ceiling. Bits of insulation rained down from holes in the sheetrock.

Abby made a face, then delicately waved a hand in front of her nose. She leaned back slightly, and replied, "Yes."

This was obviously not the reaction Grimgar was hoping for. He bared his teeth, slitted eyes darting from Abby to Dan, his entire body shaking with suppressed violence. "If that is your belief, you should have come alone."

Dan raised a finger, before the Scale leader could do anything exceptionally stupid—like order his men to attack Dan—and said, "I was asked to come here by Officer Gregoir Pierre-Louise."

He dropped the name like a grenade, and every Scale in the room flinched away.

Some time ago, a brave internet warrior had spliced together all the cell phone camera footage of Gregoir's prolonged, vicious battle with the gang leader Coldeyes, including his mind-boggling feat of wielding a piece of ice, roughly the size of a skyscraper, like a baseball bat. It was highly probable that every single person in the room, and Austin in general, had seen that video. Multiple times.

Gregoir was no longer some faceless cop, whose only real traits worth noting were being really loud, and really hard to kill. He was more, now. A hero, a name to be recognized, an unstoppable force against the APD's enemies. He was the boogeyman to Austin city's criminals, and Dan had just told the Scales that this man knew exactly where they lived.

Even Grimgar, bold and brash and full of pride, was not immune to the horrifying implications. Maybe the young man had convinced himself he could take Gregoir; maybe not alone, but with the help of his gang. Maybe he'd imagined it in his head, ran the scenario over and over again, the thrill of victory, of conquest, of fame. The terrified gazes of his enemies, and the admiring pride of his allies. Maybe he'd pictured that moment, immortalized it as some sort of certain future, convinced himself of his own inevitable victory.

Only to have Dan slap him in the face with cold, bleak reality. Nobody sane could've watched that video and imagined, 'Yeah, I can probably take him,' and you had to be at least slightly sane to be any kind of leader. Grimgar might have character defects aplenty, might let pride or greed or lust override his rational mind. He was clearly accustomed to violence, and to getting his own way, but nobody was that kind of crazy. Not for long.

That kind of crazy was where villains came from. Real villains, not gangsters playing at it. The kind who killed entire cities because something in them had fundamentally cracked. The kind who made plans to kidnap, and torture, and mass murder, all in the name of a flawed ideology. This Scale, Grimgar, he was small time and Gregoir now played in the big leagues.

It was clear as day when reality set in. The violence clouding Grimgar's eyes washed away as if a bucket of ice water had been poured inside them. He managed not to recoil, but whatever order had been sitting on his lips died a quick death. He took a step back, young and uncertain, then caught himself and straightened.

"That name is known to us," he grumbled, angry and resentful. "What does the APD's attack dog want with us? We are nothing, now. The Crew saw to that, as did he."

"I guess he thinks otherwise," Dan posited. He flicked a finger at Abby. "As for what he wants? He would like you to listen to Abby's grievances, and work out some kind of compromise. Then, he wants a meeting with you, face to face, to see if the APD and the Scales might bury the hatchet, so to speak. Preferably in a way that doesn't end up with him knee deep in corpses."

The big Scale blew out a sharp, dismissive breath, and said, "It's too late for that," but he didn't lash out, and he didn't argue. Instead, he gestured to one of the watching Scales, and they brought out another crappy little stool for him to sit on. He dropped into it gracelessly, grumbling, all the anger giving way at once into a sullen acceptance.

Threats were something he could understand, something that slotted neatly into his worldview. He had to listen, of course, because if he didn't, Gregoir would destroy him. That was the way of his world, how he understood things. Him, and all his big, scaly buddies. There was no loss of respect here, no failure in conceding. Any strength they might have mustered had to be in anonymity, and that was clearly out the window. It was a wiser decision than Dan would have credited him with, and it was obvious now why the young man had found himself at the top of the ladder.

He gestured belligerently to Abby and demanded, "Speak," and so she did.

It was a work of several excruciating hours. Gregoir's name had opened the doors, but the lead Scale was intractable and uncompromising. He maintained that the Scales' primary source of income was in selling upgrades and mods to those who couldn't normally afford them. It was a point of business they'd taken over from Coldeyes Crew, sliding right into the wide open market that had emerged in the wake of the Crew's obliteration.

Abby countered with the obvious: These upgrades were unstable, the mods were deliberately amorphous, and creating a bunch of mutates was a really bad idea for everyone involved. This had absolutely no effect on Grimgar, who was probably pleased with the number of mutates joining his quietly swelling ranks. They argued back and forth for a while, until Abby threatened to withhold care to Scales members; something she had neither the physical, nor moral authority to order, but which Dan did not doubt she fully intended to acquire if pushed.

The statement was received with surprise and outrage, but not disbelief. Apparently, not a single Scale in the room had ever bothered reading those medical pamphlets sitting in the front of the clinic, outlining the mission and responsibilities of the therapists and doctors within. None of them appeared to know that, no, patients would not, could not be turned away. Or if any did, they assumed that such a privilege could be rescinded at any point in time.

The threat was the tipping point. Grimgar gradually, grudgingly, began to bend. His conceded to reinstating the gang's former policy of providing safety and succor to the washouts, the ones who had mutated beyond help. He agreed to pay for their medical bills and any long-term care they might require. He, with a great gnashing of teeth, agreed to pull some of his more unstable mod and upgrade patterns off the market, but only after Dan pointed out that Gregoir would demand the same.

Finally, they were done. Abby was not satisfied, but the cold, grim resolve that had fueled the trip here was spent. She was weary, ready to go home. Grimgar was little better. His anger had ebbed and flowed throughout the three-hour conversation, and nobody could generate that much emotional turmoil without the accompanying exhaustion. They parted ways, both unsatisfied and annoyed at the compromise which, in Dan's opinion, only proved that it was a good one.

Nothing had exploded. Nobody had even died. It was, for once, a completely successful trip. Dan let that knowledge sit in him, feeling a small ember of quiet triumph. It was a victory, of sorts, assuming things went well on Gregoir's end. It wouldn't eliminate the Scales, but it would eliminate them as a threat. They would remain a parasite on the underbelly of the city, but neither Dan nor Gregoir were prepared to kill them to a man, and he wasn't sure there was any other way to remove them. This was the best anyone could come up with, and Dan was happy he'd played his part. He didn't need to be the hero. He didn't need to save the day. He didn't need to solve all the world's problems.

It was enough for today, he thought, and went to bed satisfied.