You're usually known as the fixing guy, Someone comes in gives you money, You change their name change their home and hide them so they can't get caught, Your latest client is in a rush and afraid, Cause he pissed off the doctor.
I sat back from the terminal, flexing my fingers as I lifted them from the keyboard. The mad whorls and dendrites of the virtual world fading from my perception as I shut my eyes, taking a deep breath, then smiled as I could smell the tea on my desk. Grace was good at her timing, pouring a fresh cup just in time for it to be that perfect temperature as I disengaged from my work. I took a little sip of it, helping soothe my brain a little. Delving is a taxing process.
I'd tell you my name, but you probably wouldn't recognize it. I take pains to make sure my identity is protected, and am in a unique position to make sure that my data is secure and not proliferating. You'd probably know me better as simply 'The Fixer,' or sometimes 'Mister Fixit.' If you needed to disappear, clear your name out of the records, need a place to lie low, I can provide. Having a technopathic capability makes this very easy.
I'm a bit of a known quantity to the authorities-- the police, the feds, the Allied Heroes Commission. Less where they come to me for information, and more for my expertise. Witness protection kind of thing, and some of the heroes might need their identities scrubbed. There's limits to what I can do, of course, in this day of social media, but official records and the like are easy enough. But by and large, my clientele are those on the darker side of the legal spectrum.
My integrity is solid, since the Commission and the cops know they can't reasonably keep me locked up, not without some significant expense in setting up completely mechanical locks and cells and keeping me away from any technology. This day and age, that's hard to come by without risking human rights violations of some kind. My resistance to being turned by the authorities means the criminal sorts don't need to worry that I'll flip on them. And Grace has face-blindness and couldn't identify them herself.
She came in as I set the tea back down, collecting a folder off the desk and glancing at it. "Finished on Miss Fenchurch, then, sir?" When I nodded, she fed it into the shredder. "There's a walk-in waiting in the front room," she noted.
I sighed. "You've already warned them about emergency rates?" I didn't take many walk-ins. Having some time to prep before a client's visit was preferable, so I could more reasonably provide favorable rates to them. Walk-ins usually needed to disappear more quickly, and so I charged accordingly, and made it plain that if the authorities turned up before I could finish, that I would turn them in without a blink.
Grace nodded. "He's got cash, even, for an upfront down payment." I looked at her thoughtfully, then pushed the tea away, getting one of my energy shots out of the drawer. Seeing this, she turned to leave. "I'll send him in, luv."
The man that was shown in had a definite hunted look about him. Probably paler than he usually is, could stand a shave and-- yeah, a change of clothes. This man hadn't been back to his home since... whatever had brought him to see me. I told him to have a seat, asked what he needed, as if I couldn't guess. He ran a hand through his tangled hair. "I need the full works. Pronto. Faster than pronto."
I got his name and address (Ricky Tombole of 237 West Hill Top in the Silverhills district) and was starting to think out the process, but I had to ask the question. "Why the rush job?"
Ricky shook his head. "You don't wanna know, man--"
"If you want me to help you, you need to answer the question."
He groaned, shaking his head again. "Man, I got-- I got Doc E comin' after my ass!"
I stopped, and took my hands away from the keyboard. "You pissed off Doctor Ethereal? What the hell did you do?!"
Doctor Ethereal was one of the Commission's top heroes, not just locally but worldwide, being one of the few metas capable of manipulating energies in a way that specifically was described as magical. She was a generally level-headed woman, given how she was frequently dealing with eldritch beasts and other nasties from the other side of the veil. And this poor idiot had somehow got her gunning for him?
Ricky had been part of a gang that had been using some magical artifact to breach security at various businesses and banks, phasing through walls and doors to steal money and valuables. Doctor E had tracked them down and there had been a shoot-out. She was too well-protected against bullets to have had any problems, but she hadn't come to face them down alone. Her apprentice, some new magic-using meta called Loreweaver, had accompanied her, and he'd gotten shot by Ricky, who honestly hadn't been expecting the bullet to kill the young man.
"Well, you've got a problem, now," I told him, after he finished explaining. "Because even if I do the full works for you and get you out of town tonight, it won't do you a lick of good."
"But you're the Fixer!" he blurted out. "You make people disappear!"
"From the Internet," I spread my hands. "I can alter your records and everything, but Doctor E doesn't need the Internet to find you. There's not a lot I can do for you."
"Aw, man, I'm fucked," Ricky's head was in his hands.
"Now hold on," I raised a finger. "May not be a lot that I can do, but I might know someone that could help. I won't charge you the full price of a rush job, just half, for this info, deal?" Ricky agreed, and paid out the cash on my desk. I counted it out quickly, checked the bricks hadn't had the middles of the stacks replaced with $1 notes, closed the duffel bag up and stuffed it under my desk.
"So, here's what you're going to do," I wrote down the instructions on a notepad as I spoke. "You're going to head down to Belabol Street on the edge of Neo Kobe, and you're going to find a little club tucked away there. Called Shadow Beats. Look for a booth, probably in the back or one of the corners. There's a broker you can talk to in the one with the deepest shadows."
Ricky looked up. "He can help me?"
"It is more capable than I am of dealing with someone like Doctor Ethereal," I corrected. "Be warned that the cost is going to be a lot higher. The broker doesn't deal in money."
Ricky somehow appeared even paler, but I spread my hands. "You want to be safe? The broker's your best bet. For a given value of 'safe.'"
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