Winnowwill, Part 1

-North Carolina. Somewhere Along The Northern Route Of the I-40, but still some distance before it enters into the next state, which was Tennessee-

They say you became blind to your own smells, good or bad, if you spent enough time in them. Usually, this meant that you could make a bad first impression by introducing someone to a location which, to them, stank.

It also meant that if a new scent entered your familiar abode, you might be more likely to notice it. Creed did.

His people weren’t one for antiperspirants, partly because of the nose thing, and partly because a lot of them didn’t much care anyway. The general smell of the Raghorn bar was B.O, stale beer, cigarette smoke, and an undercurrent of blood, though only Creed really smelled the last one. The faint scent of artificial flowers, the ever-faint smell of a subtle perfume…well, the fact that all his people were unconscious on the ground said plenty, but the smell gave him the clue that he wasn’t alone with them.

Well, all but one were unconscious.

The pole cue shattered on the edge of the table, splinters of wood hitting her as she dodged to the side, the backhand glancing her despite that and briefly making her see stars, before she ducked and rolled to escape an attempted stab with the newly made crude stake.

Greasy fingers tangled in her hair even as she rose; this bastard was quick, her scalp screaming as he yanked her back, pulling a switchblade from somewhere, her reflexes kicking in as she went with the pull instead of against it, flipping herself backwards up and over his shoulder, the new angle causing him to lose his grip before she kneed him in the back, He stumbled forward, and she went for her firearm.

It got knocked from her hand from the swung stool, the tough having grabbed it up by its base: good thing, if he’d used the base to hit her, ie swung it by its legs, she suspected the impact would have fractured something in her hand instead of just knocking her gun free. The fact that he immediately flipped the pseudochair over and DID swing its base at her next quickly eliminated that advantage, as she beat a stumbling retreat.

---

-Tennessee Proper-

The thing about concepts like ‘hand of the king’ and ‘strong right arm’ that tended to be misunderstood was that people who excelled in such positions had no agency of their own. They served as an extension of someone else, and that was all they did.

Hudson knew plenty assumed that of her. That she was a jumped up lap dog, who only moved when Benedictine snapped her fingers. And well…she DID devote a lot of her life to the woman. And she was happy ‘to serve’, if you insisted on phrasing it like that.

But Hudson hadn’t been extracted from Benedictine as a rib and made to be her task-doer. She’d found that position, and earned it. You don’t do a job like that WELL if you don’t exist in some way outside of it; people like that got blinders on, eventually, or, even if they were immensely hard to compromise, if you COULD compromise them, it was an utter disaster.

So yes, Benedictine ruled Tennessee with a velvet glove and an iron fist. There were 49 other states. And the state of North Carolina was right next door. And the Duke Collective School Of Medicine, which performed, among other tasks, cutting edge biomedical research.

Any good majordomo knew that their boss would always like an alternate, safe revenue stream. If that meant that one also got to occasionally work their own deals and setups, so much the better.

But never assume anything. And so Hudson had come to Benedictine to make the presentation.

---

Considering the lock on his little ‘office’ was forced, it wasn’t much of a stretch that Creed made that whoever was still hanging around was in there. Considering the lack of concealment of evidence, he just opened and stepped through the door.

His office was dim by design; he preferred it that way. He also had excellent night vision, which let him see the woman sitting in the chair, facing the door. Leg crossed, one arm over her leg, like she was waiting for a bus.

“You Creed?” A calm, neutral, clipped tone.

“...last I checked.” Creed walked over to his desk, sitting behind it, his old chair squealing as he did so. He really needed to get that oiled. “The couch is more comfortable.”

“I’ll sit.”

“Might be a bit of work done first.”

“...I am not meat for you.” The clipped tone became colder.

“Suspect my boys thought that.”

The beer bottle didn’t break,instead thunking on the side of the man’s head with a painful, wet-sounding smack. She didn’t get to make a second swing, as his part-shove and part punch knocked her backwards over the bar, crashing down onto the sticky, badly-in-need-of-a-mopping-or-seven floor. Her eyes flicked around; sometimes these sorts kept guns behind the counter for trouble…

No time; he had jumped over the bar after her, forcing her to shove herself down the floor before he stomped on her. She scrambled up, grabbing the nearest bottle of booze and throwing it at him. It bounced off, just producing a grunt, shattering on the floor, the glass crunching under his boots as he came for her. She threw another bottle, and another, all futile as he closed in and went for her throat, his crushing hands wrapping around it.

She went for his eyes, her thumbs plunging deep, the shock and pain of it loosening his grip and making him recoil, and the most recent bottle that she slammed upside his head FINALLY shattered, foul-smelling liquor spraying all over him and her as she broke free and retreated back over the bar.

She heard the click. She knew that sound. There WAS a gun under the bar; she just hadn’t seen it. He, on the other hand, had a better idea of where it might be, and had promptly grabbed it up. She ran and dove as the metal slug fired from the sawed off shotgun impacted the floor next to her, more splinters spewing up as she leapt, got next to a table, overturned it, and curled up as the man fired at said table: it was completely useless as a shield, but it obscured where she was, and that was what was going to save her, if anything…

---

“Ampronodoco Cetagrastim. Codename Tic-Tac-Toe.”

The white-silvery liquid in the helix-shaped container looked to her like it belonged more in a thermometer than a vein.

“3T for short. Grew out of an attempt to make a drug for obsessive-compulsive disorder. This is Dr. Gordon Danzizen was running out the clock to retirement being an aid on it, when he had a flash of brilliance. Saw something no one else did. The changes to the drug, well, it’s still at least a decade away from any sort of wide use. But, if you want to hope high…it could be used to treat addiction in and of itself. Drugs, alcohol, cigarettes maybe even more nebulous ones like hoarding, or sex. Or at least act as a universal help in such matters. No more need to use nicotine patches and methadone. A one stop shop…stop, more or less.”

“So what went wrong?”

“People, as usual. Dr. Danzizen suffered a stroke. He didn’t write down his whole process in notes, because the possibility and the discovery got away from him. He’s currently in a coma in the very hospital he worked at. He might never wake up. He might have brain damage. Or he could wake up tomorrow. Which would be great, because there was only one completed sample of 3T per Danzizen’s final work before his stroke.”

“And someone stole it.”

“Yes. But not in and of itself. This is Sean Hoagland, until recently a facilities maintenance technician for the same medical collective. A janitor, if you want to be dismissive. And a gambling addict. He was in too deep with some bad sorts. He stole 3T not knowing what it was, among a few other drugs and samples, likely to sell or try and offer as collateral. As you can see, it didn’t work out. Or he presented it badly.” A crime scene photo of a corpse with several bullet wounds, found in the back of a car. “Investigation has not turned up 3T or any evidence it has been discarded or disposed of. It’s in the wind. The problem is where that wind is blowing. It’s believed Hoagland was in deep with the Bitters, a motorcycle ‘club’ slash gang. Work in more traditional drugs. Meth, mostly. But the Bitters, as part of their doing of business, answer to the Inland Family. The Inland Family is a front, the actual ‘Family’ was wiped out years ago. Go past the front, and you end up at her doorstep.”

A photo of Benedictine Keele.

“But, this is too…small for her. Too uncertain. But…it has the possibility of blowing into her backyard. Which means it might land in the lap of one of her subordinates. She has a few. If they find 3T, if they realize what they have, well…the drug could be worth absolutely gigantic amounts of money. You’d have a bidding war over the ones who want to reclaim it or steal it and sell it, or take it and destroy it to prevent it from affecting their business. If the Bitters took 3T, then it WILL end up in the hands of Benedictine’s organization. Not the woman herself, but one of the seconds. Thorpe. Hudson. There’s a new face called Quarry that’s making some waves, but she might be too unestablished to properly handle something like this. But it’s not impossible. At which point, maybe Keele orders it back to where it came from, too much trouble. Or she sees the dollar signs and makes a risk assessment and decides otherwise.”

---

“So. You came looking for trouble?”

“Just information.”

“Can I get a name?”

“Winnow will do.” She had skill and talent, but she was not the sort that felt that she could fight a whole gang of bikers and come out on top. Her cousin, she was not. Instead, she’d just come in, made a few challenges of pool, worn a tight set of pants and a low cut shirt, all daring and flirty, amazed at her acting ability as she shot pool and got pawed. And as she did, the canister she’d attached to the AC pumped in the odorless tranquilizer she’d taken the antidote for. It wasn’t complete protection, but the fact that she KNEW she was inhaling an intoxicant and no one else in the Bitters did helped. She’d still had to press her toe against a tack hidden in her shoe once or twice, to keep herself sharp, and the large men, many used to indulging in their own intoxicants (and the tolerance that came with them), had not done her the courtesy of all passing out more or less at once; she’d had to walk around and spray some of them in the face with a higher dose of the tranquilizer to make them fully nod off.

“Never heard of you. That’s not good…for you.”

“So you say.”

“Came in here, dealt with my boys…but they’re all breathing still. If that was an art of sneaking thing, you’d have cleared out. But you were sitting here. Waiting. You don’t care for it. Don’t want to get blood on your hands.

“I bet it was a real nice surprise when Furnace came for you.”

Shots stopped. Reloading. She couldn’t close the distance in time, she’d fled too far out. And she didn’t have enough table to endure another barrage without getting hit,

Another bottle of liquor. A nearby unconscious Bitter, with a ragged shirt.

She amazed herself with her own speed, grabbing at the shirt and tearing a piece of it off, breaking the neck of the bottle, its contents slopping on her hands as she inhaled with her nose. Once, she’d have been clueless. Now…

It would work. She thrust the end of the shirt into the bottle, twisted it, and then yanked it out, flipping it around and shoving the other, ‘dry’ end into the bottle, her hand finding her pocket and her lighter.

The sound of a shotgun racking twinned with her lighting her makeshift wic, as she tossed the Molotov over the wrecked table and across the bar. She didn’t have to hit Furnace, not directly; all the broken bottles of liquor that had been sprayed around the bar, well…

Bikers drank heavy proof stuff. It wasn’t gasoline, but it served, the bar, and ironically, Furnace, going up in flames.

---

“...Ultimately, it came a hair’s breadth from being tossed aside as a curiosity and nothing more. What matters is the chain of command was able to stop, run a few prelims, and then pass it up that same chain.” Hudson continued.

In the office of her large home, Benedictine steepled her fingers and watched Hudson from the other side of her desk as she talked. She was considering not only her and her words, but the entailments and all that came along with them. She hadn’t risen to her lofty heights by acting with haste, and there were always angles to consider.

“If it is that same compound and not just a ghost in the wind, then it’s on its way to us by design. Now, what I’d like to do is take the chance and seize it before anyone else can get ahold of it, because then, we can pretty easily try to put it into production once we’ve fully analyzed it. Or, keep it as is and let it be someone else’s problem for the right price. Either way, our bottom line stays stable. As far as I can tell this is a low risk opportunity with a whole lot of potential.” Hudson said, clasping her hands behind herself. “What would you have me do?”

“I’m deciding that right now.” Benedictine replied, narrowing her eyes. Going through the different ways the situation could play out, ultimately, she was looking for where the vulnerabilities and weak points were in the plans themselves. The criminal underworld was shaky as a matter of its very existence, and just because a golden opportunity waltzed in didn’t mean it wasn’t wrapped in its own complications.

“Of course, there would be multiple parties interested in this sort of thing. Who would be most likely to interfere?”

“Off the top of my head, private security forces for the medical industry or mercs. This is big business and they play pretty close to our own rules when it comes to shadow work. State and local authorities aren’t a real factor, but it’s possible they could get involved. Outside of that, as far as I can tell the player count is low. There just weren’t that many people in the loop, and the ones that are, there are only a few that could bring any of your pull to the matter.” Hudson replied. “It really depends on who the Bitters ran their mouths to, if anyone. Even if there are other forces in the mix, they won’t be mobilized fast enough to do much good.”

“I see. Very well then, follow up on this matter, but be careful. There are stakes here beyond the benefits to our organization, and they won’t be taken lightly if things go wrong.” Benedictine said, before looking to her again. “Can I trust you to handle this?”

“Leave it to me, boss. It won’t be a problem.” Hudson said, bowing her head and then popping her metal knuckles.

---

“He was always like that. Some people need to cheat it, but Furnace? He could always hold his beer. Still be snorting stuff when everyone else was down and out. Like it was all just going into a fire.” His name was actually Furnas, with his first name being Mitch, or Mitchel, or something along those lines, but his ability to just process outside narcotics had made his handle much more appropriate. “...how did he die?”

He came for her anyway.

On fire. Screaming. He’d had to discard the shotgun, lest it blow up in his hands, somehow he still had the mental wherewithal to know to do that, but his hands might be enough…

It was pure coincidence that she sprayed him with a fire extinguisher. She needed a blinding agent, and the fact that it was one that would extinguish the flames was just a matter of lack of choice. He WAS blinded, and still somewhat on fire, and she had no time to hunt around for her gun or another gun. The wire she yanked from her shirt’s sleeve would have to do, as she climbed on his back.

“...not quietly.”

And wrapped the wire-cord around his neck, yanking back hard. Not a razor wire, this garrote. No cutting would be done. She'd have to keep his windpipe shut and hang on, even as he thrashed, tried to punch her off, slam her into something, grab her, and she just yanked back as hard as she could, literally pulling the strength from him by degrees.

He hadn't gone to sleep. So she’d had to put him down.

Somehow, she’d kept the contents of her stomach down as well, once it was done.

---

“There’s a nasty heads I win, tails you lose going on here. Anyone who is competent enough to try and get back the 3T, well, they’re either already under Miss Keele’s employ, or they know her well enough that they don’t want to mess with her. OR they, as in, competent outside parties, know THEM, as in, the Keele organization, well enough that them getting close before whoever is handling this just destroys the 3T sample is darn unlikely. So what we need is someone who’s competent…and more or less, an unknown. So they hesitiate.

“So. Winnow. Your mission. If you choose to accept it. That’s your name for now. We want the 3T retrieved. If you fail…well, either it will be destroyed or sold off. The latter is BETTER, as it still exists in the world, but having it back in its original hands might be best. AFTER it’s studied and a copy has been made. By us. Just in case. Once you leave this house, all you’ll have is what we’ve placed in the bolthole. You fail and die…well, no guarantee that we can come and get your body and wake it back up like we did twice with your brother with his Brawls. Especially if you run afoul of some of the sorts in that area.

“While we are fairly certain Benedictine will not be involved, you are NOT to engage with her. For multiple reasons. The woman’s not just powerful and intelligent, she’s deadly. I’d want at LEAST a four person team if we decided she needed to be…cleaned up, and I’d want one of them to be your cousin. She sniffs you out, you break off and flee. Anything else…we’ll leave to your discretion."

“And if it’s one of her seconds?”

“...again. Your discretion. Look. All the stuff we crammed into your head…it’s not a full compensation. Don’t think it will beat experience. But you’re stuck in a bad middle of knowing too much and not experiencing enough, and only certain experience will likely help. Like the limits of muscle growth with one set of weights. But at the same time…I wouldn’t have pulled you out here if I didn’t think you were a good choice. We don’t have much time, so if you say yes, you’ll need to move fast.

“So. What then, Winnow?”

“...I’m in the cut.”

---

And how deep the cut had been.

Yeah. She’d hated it. He could see it. But even hate could have its use. It could steel. And chill.

“...well, don’t worry.” Creed said. “It…comes easier the second time.”

Then he went for the gun in his desk.

She snapped up her Walter PPK and promptly put two in the man’s head, sending him flying backwards as he knocked over his chair.

“Yes.”

“Considerably.” Vesper said.

Agent Winnow had been blooded.

---

And the point of all this?

She’d found a tablet in Creed’s desk. Password protected. She knew there was information there, information the man probably wouldn’t have given up willingly, or at all. But part of that ‘password’ was a fingerprint scanner.

A dead man’s hand kept a print as well as a living one.

Vesper understood beyond-Weav tech better than some of her peers, and she swiftly got into the device’s emails and texts. Downside; not much information. Upside, it was a start, and she didn’t have to deal with encryption, which other members of the extended Benedictine family might have invested in.

She was going to keep the tablet, but she could be forgiven for dropping it when she heard the movement, turning around and seeing Creed pulling himself up, blood running down his face from the two still-obvious holes in his head, and his mouth full of unnatural fangs.

As said. He wasn’t quite normal. Maybe the likes of the dragons and other Benedictine underlings went for tech…but there was more than one way to skin a cat. Or change yourself to be stronger. Harder. More. Furnace, as said, got it naturally. Creed had to become something most UNNATURAL. He considered it a fair price.

“Soooooo sorrrryyy…but you…kinnddddd offfff…came alonggg at your BEGINNING…BAD CHOICE…!” The bullets were forced out of his head, even as his head elongated, along with his body, the fangs becoming knives, then swords, swords equally growing on his hands, his upper body stretching to accommodate all the blades. Some people told him he looked like a tryhard vampire when he…well, tried hard. But considering he was just as hard to put down as one, who cared? "BAD BEGINNING!"

Vesper had been slowly backing up, but she knew she was out of room.

And out of time.

…yet for all Creed’s enhanced senses, he didn’t hear the hard whine as something approached at great speed…

---

-The Raghorn. Later-

Hudson had NOT gone ‘nose-blind’ as one commercial put it, and hence when she entered the ruined office through the shattered wall, she immediately drew up a handkerchief and put it to her mouth.

How bad the smell was before events had happened here, and how bad it was now, she couldn’t tell. But it didn’t much matter what precise mix of ‘OG foulness, new foulness, and wind sweeping some of it away’ it was, it was horrific. Honestly, she would have preferred a bigger physical mess if it meant the smell was less pungent.

“This is how we found him, Miss Hudson.” Vici said.

Creed’s extended jaw looked even more ludicrously over the top with it flopping off to the side, blood having soaked into the ripped up old couch his head had ended up on, blood pooled on the floor in front of it, his shades broken, dull black eyes staring dumbly towards him. Hudson managed to keep from being startled when they flicked at her. The broken lights and setting sun had hid the slight muscle twitches of the…’man’. Or whatever Creed had turned himself into with…whatever. Benedictine was about Radiances and tech, but others went their own ways. It seemed like whatever Creed had done to change himself made him damn hard to kill. But not hard enough, it seemed, as his body was scattered all over what had been his office, as well as his blood.

“Gah, gah, gah, gah…” He was mutter-slurring, like it was some mantra.

“From a quick look, it seems like he’ll heal, but I do not know how long it will take. Days, weeks, months maybe. Normally I wouldn’t have asked you to come out here, but he managed to spit out ‘trouble’ when I was summoned by what’s left of his group. And THEY are all suffering memory loss, so whatever happened, only Creed here knows. And since he’s on your list involving the ‘Cross-O Project’ and it said contact you if anyone on it was…troubled…”

“You did right, calling me. Good god… What happened here? What do we know?” Hudson asked, looking over at her after tearing her eyes off the head. “Get me up to speed.”

“I don’t know. Some attack. But from what Creed’s rambling only he knows and it’s all nonsense to me.” Vici said.

“Gah, gah, gah, gah…”

“So…maybe he’ll listen to you?”

“Well, let’s hope so.” Hudson sighed. “You see how hard it is to put this guy down, and they still beheaded him. Doesn’t bode well.”

Kneeling down in front of the couch, Hudson drummed the tips of her clawed hands on the side of one of her wheels before she snapped her fingers, more for effect than to get Creed’s attention. He was already looking right at her anyway. All those sharp teeth hadn’t done much good for him after all… Hudson removed the remnants of his sunglasses before she said anything.

“Hey, pal. It’s ol’ Hudson. You’re in a bad way, if you hadn’t picked up on that already. Looks like a meat tornado flew through here, just about. We’ll get you back in one piece soon as we can, we’re good for that much.” She growled, not looking away or dropping her gaze this time. “Who did this? You get a name, a face, anything?”

The violence didn’t really bother her, but the circumstances did. Nobody random would end up tangling with Creed unless they had a deathwish, much less him and the group he was in charge of. Unless they found a body, she’d have to assume they’d managed to walk away afterward, and that spelled trouble. “Gah, what? Got? God? You gotta give me something.” She pressed. “Don’t try to tell me the whole story, just something I can go off of and I’ll take it from there.”

“Gah, gahe…gihhhh…” Turned out it was kind of hard to make words with a distended jaw, but considering he was doing it with no lungs or a larynx, Hudson wasn’t going to complain. Seemed like he was trying.

“HEEEEEEEEEEEEE…”

The tongue slopped to the side.

“...bitch.”

One would be forgiven for thinking Creed had decided to use his ‘second chance’ to insult Hudson. Heck, Vici thought that, and was about to pull her gun out of its holster to respond.

Hudson held up a hand without looking behind her. She was made of different mental stuff. And she’d picked up the subtleties. There was anger there, but…not directed at her. The eyes were almost rolled back. Perhaps a sign of recollection, or just pain. So if he wasn’t insulting THEM…

Female. His attacker had been female.

“....wiiiinnnnnnnnnoooowwww…”

It seemed like getting it out was a physical effort, as Creed’s head flopped onto its side, his tongue slapping around with a futile wetness.

“Gah, gah, gah, gah, gah…” Yeah. That was all she was going to get, Hudson knew.

“That’ll do, Creed. That’ll do.” Hudson said, before getting back to her feet. Only then did she turn back to Vici, putting her hands on her hips. “Did you loop anyone else into this?”

“No, ma’am. So far only you.”

“Alright. First things first, get a crew in here to shovel him and his pieces together. I’m not too sure he can come back from being torn apart like he swallowed a grenade, but we’ll do what we can for him on that front. Use my or Forvale’s authorization if you have to pull operatives together, and if any of Creed’s people give you problems with that, tell them to take it up with me.”

“Yes, ma’am. Consider it done.”

“I already do. Secondly…actually, wait. Is there anything else that wasn’t mentioned because the head sucked up all the air in the room?”

“Yes ma’am. Two things. The wall being broken, the way the debris is laid out, it happened inward. Something hit the building from outside. The other is you described Creed’s state as swallowing a grenade, but from what I think and saw, it looks more like it was done with a blade. He got cut to pieces.”

“...well, you heard him. There’s a lady calling herself Winnow that pulled this stunt, and there isn’t a chance in hell it was just happenstance. I want any and all of our forces and allied groups to learn that and be on the lookout for further action. Right now that’s all we know, but I’m going to dig into this and see if we can’t learn a little more.” Hudson declared, Vici nodding and then pausing. “...Do you think-”

“No, it wasn’t an inside job. I’m going to make sure of that, but off the cuff, it doesn’t feel right or make much sense for that to be the case. Someone Creed knew and trusted enough to bring here wouldn’t have had to go to all this trouble to do whatever they came here to do, much less come in through the wall. We’ve got an enemy out there, somewhere, and that means getting our guard up and putting a face to that name. We’ve had a development of our own that fits a little too well for some lone wolf, and this is just the beginning on that front.” Hudson said darkly, before looking around again and sighing. “She’s dangerous, I’ll say that much. Creed was a beast, there’s no chance some lady without hard tech or otherwise comes off on top in a fight.”

“And you, Miss Hudson?”

“I got a report of my own to make.” She sighed again. Maybe she could hold off a bit…?

No.

Too much of a gamble.

—

Her firearm lay where it had been knocked, Vesper leaning down to pick it up.

Furnace lunged up, not dead, having gotten his switchblade back, screaming…

Vesper snapped around, her gun aimed in a heartbeat.

And in his last heartbeat, all Furnace knew was the roar, And the red.