I didn’t see him die.

  Few things these days made Henry feel like he made a misstep somewhere along the line, these days. To him, failures were just part of the process. What did it matter if a he or another copy met their match? So long as one got away, the chain remained unbroken and more would take his place.

  But every so often, a curveball landed in the mix that managed to surprise him.

  Until now, there had always been some way of telling when one of his copies died. Either he was in the room and saw it happen in front of him, or a vision flashed before his eyes and dumped the information of exactly what happened into his memory.

  This was pointedly neither of those two. And that scared him.

  A sharp crack of wood against linoleum snapped his attention back to reality. Guillaume, holding a fancy cane by the top with both hands, slammed its tip into the floor.

  “Twenty five seconds,” he reiterated calmly. Too calmly, in fact. His face was devoid of expression, having skipped right past rage - and the step immediately after that - to arrive at an almost zen-like level of hatred.

  It was the face of a man who was entirely fed up with playing games. Now was the time he got down to business. There would be no clever words that would distract that level of focus in this moment. Only obeyance would be allowed.

  Henry was all too happy to tear his eyes away from his piercing glare and do as instructed. The screen in his hands lit up, displaying a conversation with a number he recognized.

  [ hnry alive in gc. top floor. deal is o n. arty hunt idk when ]

  [ UNKNOWN NUMBER: Tell that crusty relic to move up the timetable. Tonight, or else. ]

  The message he’d wanted to deliver had gone through after all. He’d considered having the copy retrieve a phone and bring it to him in his cell, until he realized he was being stupid and could just have the copy call for him. Not like he had to do everything himself, after all. Well, technically he still did everything himself, but…

  …this line of thinking wasn’t helping anything. He was just deflecting from thinking about how bad he had screwed up this time.

  Guillaume thrust the cap of the cane mere inches from his face. A detailed silver sculpture of a raven’s skull ornamented the top, the pits of its eyes gazing unblinkingly back at him.

  “Ten,” he began to count down. “Nine. Eight…”

  Pressure mounted in the back of Henry’s mind as his heart began to pound out of his chest. Despite seeing himself die multiple times over already, he realized that deep down, he still wasn’t ready for it to happen to him specifically.

  It was absolutely hypocritical. He wondered if all the other copies had the same feeling in their last moments.

  Other copies…

  An idea struck him just as his remaining time began to dwindle away.

  “Five-”

  Step one. Panic.

  “W-w-w-wait! Wait! I’ll talk! I’ll talk!”

  Guillaume only paused to listen. Henry launched into what he had to say quickly, fully expecting that there wouldn’t be a second chance if he blew it here.

  Step two. Misdirection.

  “It’s a message to the one who copied me! I needed them to know what I did so I could link up with them on the mission!”

  “Pah, you didn’t even bother to show your real face to me, then? Are you telling me you are here to waste my time?!”

  “No, nononono of course not!” Henry continued pleading with the crime lord, whose tattooed fist was clenched around the cane in a white-knuckle grip. “Matter of fact, the exact opposite is true! I can’t be the one affording to waste my time!”

  Step three. Add some truth to make it more believable.

  “You will explain now, in every last detail. Or you will die,” Guillaume commanded as he fully entered what Henry recognized as his interrogator mindset.

  “Okay, okay! Calm down! It’s because of this!” Henry jabbed a finger frantically at the crystal in his chest. “Ever wonder why I try to run around without copies whenever I can?! It’s cause there’s a kill switch in each of us new arrivals!”

  Beads of sweat coated his face. His entire body was trembling from anxiety both feigned and real, his eyes very much included in that. Every small detail he remembered from how he operated in the first weeks of the Witching Hour, he brought to the forefront in hopes of selling his performance just a little bit further.

  Did it count as method acting if he was mostly pulling from lived experience?

  “I have barely a day and a half left to live, anyways! Why wouldn’t I rather try and push through the one deal my life was made for instead of rot up here waiting for my eyes to roll up into the back of my head?!”

  “You only live for 3 days?” Guillaume asked doubtfully, a quizzical expression on his face as he tried to keep his metaphorical cards close to his chest.

  This would mark the most Henry had told the old man about the powers that got him into The Devil’s Dozen. While Guillaume wasn’t stupid, and had likely figured out much about it already, small details tended to pass by unnoticed unless pointed out.

  It was unfortunate that it required giving up information about himself to stay alive, but that was just how things landed sometimes. A problem for future him to handle, when he’d ultimately need another out from an untimely death.

  “Yes! Yes, exactly!” He was standing himself up now, gesticulating as vigorously as his handcuffed hands would allow. “And if I don’t get those supplies I negotiated out to him before I kick the bucket, he’s liable to call down the mutually assured reunion the moment he finds out!”

  This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

  Guillaume’s eyes narrowed. “You’re being awfully talkative in a way I’ve yet to see you be.”

  As far as emotional tells went, this was the closest he’d ever seen Guillaume to suspicion. Maybe he was laying it on a little too thick.

  Step four. Antagonize mildly.

  “What, because we’re copies means I have to do exactly as he would? Get real!”

  The change in his listener’s expression was immediate. Squabbling was a natural part of any conversation they’d had up until this point. If there hadn’t been some sort of backhanded insult, it would be plain as day that something was very wrong.

  Appeased momentarily, Guillaume continued prodding for information.

  “…Very well. If what you say is indeed true, then answer me – did you think hiding it would somehow benefit you in our little agreement?”

  And just like that, he’d managed to walk back his jailer from ‘murderous intent’ down to ‘typically antagonistic’. Enough to lay the groundwork for some real manipulation.

  The fact that he doesn’t seem to be seeing this coming implies that he is way too used to brute forcing obedience with his powers.

  Step five. Bait.

  “Well, why would I give away details about my ability’s limits if I could avoid it? Here I was trying to make my short life worthwhile and keep things moving, but apparently you’ve also been hiding secrets about your Domain! Now I’ve found out the hard way, on account of you killing this one without him triggering a death vision!”

  Guillaume broke out into a toothy, sharklike grin. The delivery Henry had given on that tidbit of information was nowhere near subtle, but paired with his emotional attitude, he managed to sell the impression that he had let slip even more details that his enemies weren’t supposed to know.

  “Oh, that little parlor trick? I had no idea that it hid your time of death… how informative of you to mention it…”

  Step six. Clam up.

  Henry made his face go pale, and went deathly silent in response to Guillaume putting two and two together. The goal here was to appease the man’s bruised ego and make him feel in control once again, after all.

  And so long as he was in control, why couldn’t he play along and make his supposed original think things were going his way?

  “It seems I have misjudged you. You are just a scared little brat who made the mistake of playing all of his strongest cards in the first hand, after all.”

  He continued to stay silent. But he did glance nervously down at the phone in his hands, message still displaying boldly on its face.

  A detail that Guillaume takes notice of as well. “Worried about dying unfulfilled, are we?” His voice dripped with sadistic undertones, and he hummed thoughtfully as he weighed the option.

  “…I suppose there would be benefits to moving out ahead of schedule,” he mused idly. “Some of the rank-and-file might complain, but… bah, they wouldn’t be complaining for long.”

  A clammy hand clapped Henry on the shoulder. He flinched as the old man held him in a death grip, staring at him like one might look at a particularly juicy steak.

  “Especially when they hear that the minesweeper duties have been offloaded onto someone else, oui?”

  “B-beg pardon?”

  Henry didn’t need to fake feeling intimidated just then. That reaction was one hundred percent genuine.

  The old man snatched the phone out of Henry’s hands. Humming some tune to himself, he tapped away at the phone’s mechanical keyboard and wrote a third message on the same line, momentarily refusing to elaborate.

  “W-wait,” Henry faux-panicked. “W-w-what are you doing?!”

  Guillaume pressed send. “See for yourself.”

  [ This is Guillaume. Now I have two of your bodies. Make no attempts to rescue or kill them, or your precious girl will be fed to the wolves legs first. ]

  The case of the phone creaked in Henry’s hands as he clenched his fists together impotently.

  Step seven. Lose disgracefully.

  “You… you son of a-”

  “I’d hold your tongue, boy. You might have need for it once we leave for the artifact in three hours time, and I would hate to have to cut it out before then, mon ami.”

  “Scum-sucking French bastard!”

  “Ah, I tried.”

  With one hand, Guillaume swung the conical metal tip of the raven’s beak into the side of his head. It was deliberately not enough to kill him, but the sharp point rattled the side of his head and knocked him to the ground with one blow. Stars swam in his vision as he struggled and failed to rise back up to his feet.

  He groaned in pain, which apparently satisfied Guillaume plenty.

  “Au revoir, Henry. While it's been nowhere near a pleasure, this talk has proven most worthwhile for me.”

  “...uggggghh...”

  Without another word, the door slammed shut once again.

  It upset Henry a little that he’d vastly improved his ability to lie in the past several months. The acting chops, however, had proven lifesaving in almost every end-of-the-line situation he’d managed to stumble his way in to. Dodging responsibility by pretending to be a copy – while not his most common tactic in a world that typically shot first and asked questions later – did have its uses from time to time.

  A shame that it didn’t save him from what was liable to be a concussion at the end there.

  For now, though, he’d bought himself some time. More importantly, he’d gotten exactly what he wanted out of a man that hated his guts, and even better still had a pretty good guess as to what the man’s game plan would be.

  The way he saw it, he’d be dragged along to the artifact site and put on the frontlines to deal with whatever harmful curses or hazards might be present in the area. It sucked, but he had a spare copy at his disposal, so theoretically he could manage. His two copies would likely follow behind at a distance, though how much help they’d be able to give was tenuous at best.

  Actually getting the artifact was probably going to be the easiest part, he imagined. What he was really worried about was what happened after he came back with it.

  Some form of backstabbing was pretty much inevitable. Matter of fact, he’d practically encouraged it with how downright antagonistic he’d been so far, combined with how high his demands were. The problem for Guillaume – not that he seemed to be aware – was that backstabs were supposed to be a surprise.

  He knew the time would be after he retrieved the artifact. He knew the place would be wherever he met Guillaume after the retrieval. And he knew the how would come in the form of… whatever method he had used for his silent takedown of the previous copy.

  Hm. He was realizing belatedly that he had no idea what Guillaume had done to make that happen. It was implied that the other devil had been present for the killing, but other than that he had no clues as to what specifically had happened besides that it probably had to do with his Domain.

  Guess that makes two of us who rely too much on their Domain magic sometimes.

  The angle for killing him was pretty obvious. In the event that he died but the others didn’t find out, there would be a window of time where those two that were still alive would have no idea what happened. In that time frame, it would be downright trivial to go to ground elsewhere before they decided to call in the Dryad.

  Right, then. Plan of action time.

  First, he needed to make his move the moment he knew where the supplies he needed were. Guillaume would be trying to hide that part from him until after the artifact was in his hands, so he’d need to do some more snooping as soon as possible. If worst came to worst, he could always withhold the artifact until after he got his hands on the goods.

  Or, depending on what this thing actually did, perhaps he wouldn’t need to come back with it in the first place. Never a bad idea to keep your options open.

  One thing’s for certain. I’m not letting him get his hands on it without a fight.

  < -|- -|- >

  London Subway

  3 hours later

  “Right, kid, do the thing again.”

  “Can you… hah… give me a bit, man? I just got, like… haaahh… five of them killed in the span of a minute…”

  “… ‘Ow the hell you ever end up in the Devil’s Dozen wiff such rotten magic?”

  The four expeditionary members of the Gentleman’s Club accompanying them murmured among each other with the same question on their minds. They glanced over to the Harpy for his thoughts, but only received a slight shrug in response.

  For a bunch of grunts paid more to bash heads in than to philosophize, they were apparently rather good at the latter. Because they’d just landed right on the question he’d been asking himself since that blasted marking showed up on his hand.