Gale shut the door behind him, tossing his keys onto the counter. Home crap… he sighed. What’s the point? He was back at the Path provided apartment, and the only thing in his fridge was a loaf of bread and peanut butter.

Kicking his shoes off, he plopped onto the bed. The dim street light came through the window, hitting his eyes directly. Was he really right to beat up those guys who probably had little sisters or brothers to provide for? He didn’t know anymore. Ollie seemed to be fine with keeping up his business. All he was doing was just running errands, right? This was part of the dust trade Ollie told him to investigate. He was just running errands… right?

What the hell do I even want?

Biggest question of his life. And in short, he had no fucking clue. Everything was bigger than he imagined. What could one Dainv do against the giant that is the dust trade?

Nothing, that’s what.

All it ended up giving him was bruises, scars, and nearly dying and becoming in debt to the Ann family.

“Mom, dad,” he whispered. “What would you have done? Should I really just follow what you told me to?

Stay low. Blend in. Survive.

In one way, Red Hat was also doing the same. He wasn’t one to judge that guy, nor was he even a police officer.

Gale stood up and paced between his bed and the flimsy, tilted computer desk. “What’s the point of dusting mundanes? What’s the point of ether tech being used by mundanes?”

Grabbing his phone from his pocket, he sent a message to Rachel.

[Gale: hey, are you busy?]

While he waited, he scrolled up on his messages to Rachel. Not much texts, just the last time she asked about when he was coming back and the days before about the hiking with her friend. He forgot to reply to her last message. Is she mad at that? She usually replies pretty fast.

Gale threw his phone on the bed, paced even more around his apartment. Maybe he was overthinking it. She’s usually busy anyways.

He picked it up back up from the bed. Still no reply, and then he threw it back on the bed. It’s been more than 15 minutes. Can’t that count as a reply? That’s a definitive ‘I’m busy’ without needing to reply that she’s busy. That’s probably it. Then should he ask Ollie instead?

No. That’s going to cause more trouble. Remember what Rachel said, ask her first before Ollie otherwise she’ll get mad. So then why wasn’t she replying!? He was supposed to be worrying about the question, now all he’s worrying about is just why Rachel wasn’t replying. Maybe this is what it feels like to be left on unread, or maybe what Rachel felt like when he didn’t reply to her.

Damn, Gale. You’re an asshole.

Shut up. I wasn’t in the mood. I was sad and moping.

No, you shut up. You think that’s an answer? The dark hunter should just answer.

Stop it with that dark hunter stuff!

Picking up the phone again, he already knew it didn’t buzz, and to his surprise, there was no reply. It’s been 30 minutes. Note to self, reply to Rachel regardless of mood.

Gale sighed. It’s only been half an hour, imagine how Mia, Andrew, and Jacob felt. Sure, he was out of commission, but he didn’t even bother explaining to them properly after he got back. Just told them to ‘go away, it’s safer that way, like some edgy loner kid. Now go back to the basics, communications 101, clear and concise. You’re a grown, legally 28 year old kid that can level garbage truck sized beasts. This shouldn’t be that hard. And with that thought, he wrote another text.

[Gale: I’m lost in my head, I want to hear your voice.]

Proper grammar, communications 101, perfectly describing his conflict, and this was probably better in a voice call. Gale tapped send and stared at the phone for 5 minutes straight, doing absolutely nothing.

If concise communication can’t even get her to reply, then she might be really busy or mad. But before Gale had put the phone back onto the bed, his phone rang.

[Voice call: Rachel Ann]

He picked up the phone immediately, saying, “Rachel! Hey, how are you doing?”

Nice, keep it up. Small talk always comes first.

“What is it this time?” Rachel asked with a clear slight grumble in her voice that even Gale picked up.

Clearly, she wasn’t busy but mad. Of course, she’d be mad. But what was he even supposed to apologize for? That he didn’t reply to her or maybe because of the things that happened at the library?

“Are you mad?” Gale asked. “At me?”

She didn’t reply, and a few seconds had already passed. God dammit, woman. She’s not being concise and communicative!

“I’m sorry I didn’t reply to your last message,” Gale said.

“And?”

What else was there? He sighed. “I really don’t know… to be honest, I’m lost. So I called you, and I was just wondering if you wanted to talk.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, really. Who else am I supposed to talk to?”

“Ollie.”

“But he just won’t understand with his… whatever he’s doing with the CEO stuff.” Gale plopped on the bed. “Do you treat me as an outsider?”

Shit. He was supposed to be talking about dust, but where the hell is this conversation even going?

On the other side of the line, Gale heard Rachel drop down to her own bed. She sighed before saying anything.

“To me, you’re not. Maybe to my grandmother. But…”

“But?”

“You’d drop everything if I needed help, right?”

“Right.” That was a dumb question. Why not? He’d drop everything that stood in his way if she needed help.

“Same for me to you. You know that, right?”

“Right, I know that.” Of course, he knew that.

“Then you ignored my message.”

Right, right, right. He ignored her message. “Ok, you see, it’s because the thing with my friends, it’s about the dust.”

Rachel laughed on the other line of the phone. “What the hell was that sentence?”

“I don’t know. It just came out that way.”

“Buy me milk tea if you really want to say sorry.”

“I can do that!” Gale pulled up his wallet. $10 in cash. Probably enough for a milk tea. Hopefully, not as stupidly expensive as a coffee that’s $7.50, which was highway robbery, by the way.

“How was your day anyway?” Rachel asked.

“A bad couple of days… really,” Gale said.

“Tell me about it.”

Gale went on about telling everything to Rachel, about all that happened after the library. Not a single detail was missed, causing the call to go over 2 hours. From having the fallout with his friends to training in the Oshawa warehouse, then chasing his friends at Yorkdale mall, then all the way to now where he simply said ‘hey’ in the text. Rachel, on the other hand, talked about watching a sci-fi fantasy movie with her best friend. And finally, Gale actually managed to hear the title that everyone around him talked about, Ymir Reborn. Her best friend complained about how the audience didn’t expect it to be more on the horror side of things.

“Rachel…”

“Yeah?”

“I’m wondering, is dust pretty rare?”

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“Not something I know much about. My family tends to avoid it, but it’s considered rare and valuable to Aurians. Common enough that every Aurian could probably use it once, but not enough to distribute publicly. Why?”

“Because isn’t it weird that the Silver Lions can get so much dust?”

“It is, but with Ollie’s research happening at the same time, I can’t say I’m surprised,” Rachel said.

He rolled onto his back, looking up directly at the ceiling while his phone was still on his ear. The Silver Lions were said to have been quiet for decades, but now why go aggressively after mundanes?

Private rifts. Dust. Mundane tech.

Wait.

Dust came from rifts. Rifts had monsters in them. The Silver Lions were a family, not a faction, which meant they didn’t have many people.

The pieces clicked.

“Gale?” Rachel said. “You still with me?”

“Yeah,” Gale replied quickly. “Wanna hear something crazy?”

“It can’t be crazier than the one you told me before, right?”

Gale laughed. “Hear me out. What if I told you part of why Silver Lions are dusting mundanes is to get them hooked on dust before they realize they’re awakened? That’ll make them dependent on their handlers.”

“This one is surprisingly not that crazy. It’s happened in the past before, around late 20th century during the dotcom boom.”

“And how is dust produced?”

“The Arcanes keep that one a secret. But rumours have it that dust originates from rifts. My grandmother also doesn’t deny it.”

“Which means that the Silver Lions could be forming an army of foot soldiers by dusting mundanes that’s hooked on their stuff. Then can’t they just conquer more rifts and repeat the cycle?”

Gale waited exactly 1 minute before she replied.

“I take it back. I think that’s crazier than the one you told me a couple of days ago, but it sounds really plausible,” Rachel said.

If the Silver Lions were building an army of awakened junkies, there would be evidence. Places where they gathered. Training sites. Collection points for dust.

He needed to find those places.

He needed to follow the dust.

Starting with the Red Jacket woman’s territory. She controlled the northeast side of Scarborough, according to Red Hat. That meant she had territory, operations, people.

Gale put Rachel on speakerphone and opened the map app. He zoomed in on the Eglinton East area. What would he be looking for? Warehouses? Old buildings? Places where people could come and go without notice?

“Can I ask you for-“

“Yeah,” Rachel said before he could finish.

“Could you send me a recent picture of the map you showed me before?” Gale asked, his tone rising from excitement, completely different from what he felt earlier before he had called her.

Rachel chuckled. “Give me a moment, please.”

“Sure, and Rachel,” Gale said.

“Yeah?”

“Did you have dinner?”

“Yup. Did you miss the Ann family food?”

“Nnn,” Gale grumbled.

Rachel chuckled again. “You’d need to up that tolerance in the future.”

“Nnn,” Gale grumbled again.

“Alright, picture sent. The link I texted you contains a high-res image. Don’t share it with anyone, please?”

“Of course not. Not even Ollie, though?”

“Not even him.”

“Got it. Trust me.”

“I trust you. I’m gonna go to bed. What about you? More research?”

“More research.”

“Ok. I’ll go to sleep first. Goodnight, Gale.”

“Goodnight, Rachel. I won’t sleep too late.”

“Good.”

Rachel ended the call first, and that was that. It was the first time he had a call that long. Not sure if his phone plan could even have that much, but who cares! That’s probably for the Gale of the future.

Gale put his phone on Do Not Disturb and then zoomed in on the map. He looked at the patterns, searching for anything that could give him a clue or something to support his theory. At first, the whole map looked random, as the heat map looked like it had no discernible pattern.

Downtown showed heavy activity. No surprise there. The entertainment district was lit up in red. The university area, too. But there were other hot spots that made less sense. Industrial parks. Quiet residential neighborhoods. Even some areas near schools.

“What am I missing?” Gale muttered to himself, zooming in further.

He tried looking for areas with no dust activity at all. Those were fewer. Some wealthy neighborhoods. Parts of North York. A few industrial zones.

Wait.

Gale zoomed back out, trying to see the bigger picture. If he were running a dust empire, he wouldn’t shit where he ate, right? He’d keep his base of operations clean, his home turf free of product.

That would be too obvious, though. The major factions would know that pattern. The Path and the United Knights wouldn’t be that stupid. They’d look for clean areas first when hunting dust operations.

But what if the Silver Lions counted on that? What if they thought it was so obvious that no one would actually believe they’d do it?

“It’s so stupid it might work,” Gale said to the empty room.

He focused on the white zones, areas with no dust activity. There were three major ones. One in North York, near the university. Another in the west end, bordering Mississauga. And a third in the east, covering parts of Scarborough.

The Scarborough zone lined up with what Red Hat had said about Red Jacket controlling distribution north of Lawrence. It was a no-dust zone surrounded by heavy activity on all sides, like the eye of a hurricane.

Gale rubbed his eyes and set the phone down. Was he reaching? Seeing patterns where there were none? It could all be coincidence.

But then again, sometimes the answer was so obvious that everyone else missed it. There was also something they didn’t have: Dainv powers that could see through walls.

The LED signs at the Lawrence and Markham intersection were off, leaving only streetlights to light up the empty parking lot. Gale crouched behind a dumpster, watching the dark front of Jian Hing Supermarket. The big Chinese grocery store was quiet, its windows dark, but the dust map had shown this area suspiciously clean.

Too clean.

The dark hunter returns to his hunt.

Gale pulled his hood lower and focused. The Breath of the Void spread out from him, probing through concrete and metal, seeking what lay beneath. The weird sensation of feeling without touching moved across his skin as the tendrils extended their reach.

No underground chambers. No hidden passages. No secret evil lairs beneath the parking lot.

But inside the store were two distinct ether signatures. One burned with a familiar heat that could only be Jackie. The other signature felt duller, less defined. Both Attuned level, if he had to guess.

Not a problem if he caught them by surprise.

Gale moved closer, staying in the shadows at the edges of the parking lot. He neared the supermarket’s loading dock, a concrete platform with metal shutters closed. Security cameras at the top corners of the store. Nothing the dark hunter hadn’t seen before. The only question was, why would Jackie be in a closed supermarket at midnight?

Suspicious? Definitely so.

He reached the building’s side wall and touched the brick. Phase Touch activated. He walked through it and went to the other side, taking in the view of the dark creepy quiet supermarket that had no one. As long as there were no ghosts, he should be fine. Probably.

Breath of the Void’s tendrils guided him to the back office past the checkouts through the bakery area and up the stairs toward the offices.

Jackie and her companion sat in what looked like a manager’s office, a small room with filing cabinets and a messy desk. The door was open just enough for light to escape.

“…don’t care what excuses he’s giving,” Jackie said. “Tell him if he can’t deliver by Friday, we find someone else.”

“But after what happened with Wang, everyone’s spooked,” the young male voice said. “Nobody wants to cross…”

Gale didn’t wait to hear more. He phased through the wall beside the door, appearing behind the man who sat with his back to him. The guy never saw what hit him, a strike to the base of his skull that dropped him instantly.

Jackie had better reflexes. By the time her companion hit the floor, she’d already pulled the same red glyphed gun with the flaming bullets, pointing it at his chest.

At the same time, Gale also had Weber pistol pointed at the Jackie.

“Hands up bad guy, we know how this is going to end,” Gale said. Shit, he was supposed to say bad woman guy.

“Should’ve knocked,” she said, finger still on the trigger. “Rude to just barge in.”

“If you shoot, it won’t end well for you. We both know how this played out last time.” Gale glanced at the body on the floor, then back at her.

Her lips thinned. The gun didn’t move. “What do you want? I already pulled my boys from Jane and Finch. Deal’s a deal.”

“Good. I’ll cut you some slack for keeping your word.” Gale took a step forward, keeping the gun pointed at Jackie. “I need information.”

“I’m a businesswoman, not an information broker.” Jackie’s shoulder twitched slightly.

“Messengers,” Gale said. “The ones working for Spotlight. I want to know where they hang out. Where they eat, sleep, relax.”

“I don’t know.”

That was almost certainly a lie. Gale took another step. The gun barrel nearly touched his chest now and so did his.

“I think you do,” he said. “And you’re smart enough to see where the wind’s blowing.”

“I tell you that, I’m dead.” There was a tightness in her voice that was immediate. “Dead. You understand? Not just me. My whole team. My family. Everyone.”

Gale looked at her. She wasn’t afraid of him. Maybe she was afraid of something else, like that red hat guy in the streets. She was doing this for someone else, or maybe it was just a way for her to live life.

“Let me try a different approach,” Gale said. Dad always said he was never great at watching for tells. Here goes nothing.

“Yonge and Finch,” he said casually. “Not much dust exposure there. Why is that?”

Jackie blinked twice. “Bad territory. Ann family members like that spot. We keep out.”

Clearly bullshit when all of Toronto was Ann territory. If the Ann family really cared, there wouldn’t be any of their dealers in the city at all.

“Lakeview,” Gale tried next, watching her face carefully.

Her eyes dropped for a split second before snapping back to him.

“What’s in Lakeview?” he moved in closer, enough to smell her breath. “Something important enough to keep dust away?”

Jackie’s jaw clenched. “You should leave. Now.”

“Not until you tell me what’s there.”

“I’m not saying shit,” she said. The gun shook slightly in her grip.

Gale sighed. “Guess I’ll have to find that out myself.”

“You’ve got no idea what you’re doing, don’t you,” she holstered her gun. “The people there? They’re not third-rate Aurians you can push around anymore.”

“That never stopped me before.” Gale stepped into the wall, phasing half his body through it.

“They’ll kill you,” Jackie said. “If you’re lucky.”

Gale paused. “What’s worse than death?”

Jackie laughed. “Oh, honey. In this world? So many things.”

Empty threats. Gale walked back out, phasing through the wall, dropping down from the 2nd floor. Deactivating Phase Touch, the night air hit him with its cold chill.

Lakeview. That’s where the dark hunter needed to go next.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep