RWD: 5.x (Prelude)(Tattletale)

5.x (Prelude)(Tattletale)

The taxi smelled like stale cigarette smoke and pine tree air freshener, a combination so ubiquitous it was almost comforting. Almost. Lisa watched the salt-sprayed, sun-bleached signs of Old Saybrook, Connecticut, slide past the window. It was a town pretending to be asleep, all quaint storefronts and quiet residential streets that felt a little too perfect, a little too clean. An hour's drive from the barely-contained chaos of Brockton Bay, it felt like another world.

Old Saybrook. Population nine-thousand-something. Quaint. Quiet. The kind of place people retire to, not the kind of place you build a doomsday arsenal.

Her power hummed in the background, a low-grade thrum of information that was always there, like tinnitus of the soul. It fed her details about the taxi driver’s failing marriage, the specific brand of cheap motor oil leaking from the engine, and the precise probability of rain in the next four hours (seventeen percent, rising). She mentally pushed it all aside, a practised gesture like shooing a fly. Focus. The job required focus.

The taxi pulled up to a gate that looked like it had been salvaged from a Cold War-era military base, incongruous against the charmingly dilapidated sign that read ‘Saybrook Coastal Charters – We Find ‘Em Where They’re Bitin’!’ 

The charter looked exactly like it was supposed to. A wide, two-story building with faded blue siding and a large mural depicting a cartoonishly happy marlin. A parking lot, mostly empty save for a few pickup trucks and a delivery van, fronted the building. Beyond it, piers jutted out into the calm waters of the Long Island Sound, fishing boats bobbing gently at their moorings. It was aggressively, painstakingly normal.

Facade. All of it. Some of the paint is too fresh, applied to look weathered. Windows are ballistic glass, tinted against casual observation. The delivery van has reinforced tires and a non-standard suspension. A few of those fishing boats have hulls designed for deep-water operation, not coastal day trips.

Lisa paid the driver, adding the generous tip her power had suggested, and got out. The air was thick with the smell of salt, diesel, and dead fish. She walked towards the main entrance, her handbag slung over her shoulder, feeling the weight of the burner phone and the encrypted tablet inside. Her footsteps on the gravel were the only sound.

The inside was just as disarmingly bland as the outside. A small reception area, a bored-looking young woman behind a cheap laminate desk, a rack of brochures advertising deep-sea fishing trips she knew never happened.

Receptionist, Sarah, college student, pre-med. Doesn’t know what happens in the back. Salary is three times market rate, paid into an offshore account. She thinks she works for a money laundering front. She’s happy with that. Doesn’t ask questions.

“Here to see the manager,” Lisa said, offering a practised, easy smile.

The receptionist looked up, her expression unchanging. “Name?”

“Lisa. She’s expecting me.”

The woman nodded, picked up a phone, and murmured into it. A moment later, a door behind the desk buzzed open. “Through there. Ms. Popova will meet you.”

The woman waiting on the other side was a jarring counterpoint to the rustic setting. She was tall, with dark brown hair pulled back in a severe bun and a face that was conventionally attractive in a way that was entirely forgettable. She wore practical trousers and a simple blouse. She looked like a mid-level corporate manager. She didn’t look like a killer.

Anna Popova, the name tag read. Alias. Real name: Anya Petrova. Mid-twenties. Former GRU Spetsnaz. Vympel, probably. Counter-terrorism and special operations. Dishonourably discharged after an… incident in Chechnya. Recruited personally by Greg. Views him with a mixture of professional respect and deep-seated caution. Understands brutality. Understands efficiency. Understands him.

Lisa felt a headache building. Greg hadn’t felt the need to share that particular detail.

“Lisa,” Anna said. Her English was flawless, the accent surgically removed. “A pleasure. Welcome to the facility.”

“Glad to be here,” Lisa lied smoothly. “It’s… bigger than I expected.”

“The boss has many requirements,” Anna said, her expression unreadable. She led Lisa down a sterile white corridor. The illusion of the fishing charter ended here. This was all steel doors and surveillance cameras. Lisa noted the men they passed. They didn’t look like fishermen. They moved with an economy of motion, their eyes constantly scanning, assessing.

Mercenaries. Mix of ex-military and former law enforcement. The man wiping down the counter in the canteen? Ex-Delta. The taller of the guys loading crates onto a pier? Former Mossad, if the faded tattoo peeking from under his sleeve was any indication. The specialist calibrating the sonar on one of the boats? A PhD in marine engineering poached from a Raytheon subsidiary with an offer he couldn’t refuse. The entire place was crawling with them. PMCs, ex-intelligence, freelance specialists. All vetted thoroughly. No plants from the PRT, FBI, or any other agency. He pays them absurdly well, funds laundered and paid out through a labyrinth of offshore accounts. But it’s not just the money. Power picks up whispers of other incentives. Multiple points of leverage—families held in protected comfort, past crimes erased from databases, medical care for loved ones that no insurance company would ever cover. He’s not buying their loyalty. He’s manufacturing it, piece by piece, with hooks sunk so deep they’ll never get them out.

“Our primary operations are this way,” Anna said, swiping a keycard at a heavy-duty door that hissed open.

The cavernous space beyond smelled of ozone, hot metal, and strange chemicals. It was a full-scale fabrication workshop. In one corner, a massive CNC machine was carving a block of dark grey metal, showering sparks onto the concrete floor. Nearby, a row of industrial 3D printers hummed, extruding complex components from spools of exotic-looking filaments.

“This is the main assembly floor where most of the specialised parts are machined,” Anna explained, her voice barely rising above the industrial din. “It’s a bit loud, sorry.”

“It’s alright,” Lisa shouted back. 

Anna continued the tour, leading Lisa along a makeshift assembly line. Men in clean-room suits were welding large sheets of aluminium alloy into long, cylindrical tubes. Rocket bodies, her power supplied. 25-centimeter diameter. Payload section is modular. Further down, another team was working on the payload ejectors themselves—the GUPPEs. They were larger, thirty centimeters in diameter, sleek and hydrodynamic, looking like oversized torpedoes. 

Another section of the workshop was dedicated to electronics. Tinker-tech, unmistakably. High-capacity batteries were being assembled, their internals glowing with a faint blue light. Beside them, compact electric motors of a design she’d never seen before.

Greg’s design. High-capacity, high-output. Power efficiency is off the charts. Silent running. 

They passed a sealed-off room with chemical hazard warnings plastered on the door. The smell was stronger here. Sharp, acrid.

“Solid rocket motor assembly,” Anna said, not breaking her stride. “Fuel is mixed and cured on-site.”

“And the power for all this?” Lisa asked, gesturing at the humming machinery, the bright lights. “The grid must notice a draw this big.”

Anna gave the barest hint of a smile. “We are entirely off-grid. A series of containerised diesel generators, soundproofed. We have a dedicated tanker disguised as a water tender that resupplies the fuel reservoir weekly. Completely off-book. The only thing the power company sees is the light in the receptionist’s office and what’s needed to keep the charter barely operational.”

Of course.

Lisa had to admit: It was brilliant. A completely self-contained, clandestine weapons factory hidden inside the most boring business imaginable. Decentralised, deniable, and entirely under his control. Finished units—the GUPPEs, as Greg had dubbed them—were stored in racks along the far wall. At night, Anna explained, they would be moved to a secluded pier, one shielded from satellite view, and launched directly into the Long Island Sound, where they would navigate out to their deep-water loitering stations. Silent. Untraceable.

###

“These will be your quarters for when you’re overseeing operations here,” Anna said, opening a door into a small, but comfortable-looking apartment built into one side of the warehouse. A sitting area, a small kitchen, a bedroom. It was sparse, but clean.

And it wasn’t empty.

A woman was standing by the kitchenette, stirring a cup of coffee. She had short, spiky black hair and was wearing a simple grey jumpsuit. She moved with a fluid grace that seemed at odds with Lisa’s imagination of what she would be: a screaming, bomb-throwing maniac strapped to a gurney.

It was Bakuda.

Anna tensed. Wants to leave. Avoids contact with Bakuda. Sees her as unstable. A liability contained only by fear.

“We can come back later,” Anna said, her voice low, already starting to back out of the room.

But it was too late. Bakuda’s head snapped up, her dark eyes fixing on them. A slow, curious smile spread across her face. It wasn’t a friendly expression.

“Well, well,” Bakuda said, her voice a low purr. She ignored Anna completely, her gaze locked onto Lisa. “What have we here? Did Greggy dear get himself a new pet?”

Lisa’s smile didn’t waver, but her blood ran cold. The headache behind her eyes flared into a sharp, stabbing pain. She kept her posture relaxed, leaning against the doorframe. Show no fear. It’s like dealing with Rachel’s dogs, only the dog makes bombs for fun.

“Just the new supervisor,” Lisa said, her tone light. “Making sure all the toys are being put together correctly.”

“Supervisor,” Bakuda mused, taking a slow sip of her coffee. She studied Lisa, her eyes glinting with a manic intelligence. “You’re the Thinker, then. Tattletale. The one who tells him where to point his knife.”

No one tells Greg anything, but Lisa didn’t confirm or deny the accusation. She just held the woman’s gaze, pushing past the growing migraine as she prodded her power to analyse the Tinker.

The return feed was a chaotic, sickening torrent.

Hatred. Pure, vitriolic loathing. White-hot, obsessive. Fantasies of vivisection, torture, immolation. She wants to kill him. Not just kill him, but dissect him. She has detailed, graphically violent fantasies of torturing him, of peeling back his skin to see what made him tick, to wear it as a mask, of making him scream for days. She abhorred him for what he’d done to her, for the humiliation of being crippled and caged.

Lust. Intense, primal. Arousal linked to the memory of her own subjugation. His voice. His absolute control. The moment he crippled her was the moment he branded her. The power dynamic is a powerful, consuming aphrodisiac. She craves his approval even as she plots his demise.

Fear. Abject, instinctual terror. Recognises him as an apex predator. Knows he is smarter, faster, more ruthless. Knows he would kill her without a moment’s hesitation, and it would mean nothing to him.

Respect. Grudging admiration for his intellect, his ambition, his sheer audacity. Sees his vision as worthy of her talents. He is the only one who has ever truly challenged her.

Protectiveness. A bizarre, twisted loyalty. Would kill anyone who threatened him. Not out of affection, but because he is her monster, her keeper. An attack on him is an attack on the new centre of her universe.

Stockholm Syndrome. A textbook case, amplified by her pre-existing narcissism and sociopathy. He broke her, then had her healed. Took everything, then gave her a new purpose. She is utterly, pathologically dependent on him.

The contradictions hit Lisa like a physical blow, a sickening swirl in her gut. This wasn’t just a hostage situation, not some criminal bargaining chip. No, this was something deeper—something ugly. Grotesque. And as her power sorted through the psychic filth, a final, horrifying piece of the puzzle clicked into place.

Something deeper and uglier was at play here. Something… manufactured. Engineered.

She was Mastered. Greg’s a Master.

The realisation landed cold, sharp—a razor of clarity cutting through the haze. Not a Shaker, not a Brute. A Master, and not the garden-variety kind, who gave orders with a snap of the fingers. No, Greg’s power was subtle, invasive—a total, methodical process of unravelling, remaking. He didn’t just command or control people. He hollowed them out, rewrote them from the inside.

Lisa looked at Bakuda, saw the storm of hate, fear, want twisting behind her mad eyes. And for the first time in a very long, Lisa felt a chill that went marrow-deep.

“Greggy does keep interesting company,” Bakuda said, her smile widening by a fraction. It was a predator’s smile.