Chapter 168: 168. The Shapeshift Skill Do Work! I Can Disguise As Anything I Want!

Gerald made a sound that was not a specific word.

Big G looked at Mike for another moment.

"Nothing," he said again. "Go inside."

Mike held Big G’s gaze for exactly one beat longer than the situation called for. Not a challenge, just enough to establish that he was not moving from fear, which was the distinction that mattered in this particular dynamic.

Then he turned and went through the door.

He allowed the door to close until there was a small crack.

Inside the fire exit corridor, he waited for fifteen seconds, listening to the rhythm of footsteps and voices in the alley, confirming the configuration. Big G had dismissed the interruption.

The conversation had returned to whatever its conclusion was going to be.

Mike pushed off the wall.

The thing about Big G was that he was large and experienced and had the particular physical confidence of someone who operated in spaces where being big and experienced was usually sufficient. He was also, in this moment, facing away from the door and toward Gerald, and the fire exit was behind him, and he had assessed Mike as harmless, which was the most useful thing Mike could have given him.

Mike slipped through the door silently. Three meters. Two.

He moved the way he moved when speed was the priority over presence, which was different from his ordinary pace, lower and faster and with the particular economy of someone who had been in positions where the margin for error was small.

Big G heard Mike at one meter and started to turn, but Mike had already committed to his specific target: the cluster of nerves at the side of Big G’s neck, below the ear on the right, precisely where sustained pressure on the vagus nerve would produce the desired outcome.

He got his arm around Big G’s neck from behind with the left, caught the right side of his neck with his forearm, and drove Big G’s weight forward and down using the leverage of his own body and the element of surprise, which was worth approximately six hundred pounds of force on a good day.

Big G was very strong. He got a hand up and grabbed Mike’s forearm and began to apply force in the right direction, which was a correct response that would have worked eventually, but eventually was not available.

Mike maintained the pressure and used his bodyweight to drive them both toward the alley wall, which gave him a surface to work against, and Big G hit the wall with his shoulder, and the impact disrupted the hand that had been applying force to Mike’s forearm.

Twelve seconds. Fifteen. The body does not compromise when the brain is deprived of oxygen.

Big G went down.

Mike lowered him to the ground with enough control that it was quiet, which was necessary, and then stood up and looked at Gerald, who was standing at the other end of the alley with his mouth open and the expression of a man who had just watched something that did not match his model of the world.

"Gerald," Mike said.

Gerald stared.

He stared for longer than the situation had room for, which was the problem with shock; it operated on its own schedule regardless of external pressures.

"Gerald," Mike said again, at the same volume. Not harder, just again.

Gerald blinked.

"That was Big G," he said, as if Mike might not have been present for the previous two minutes.

"I know, I heard you," Mike said. "Are there more of them?"

"He’s not alone," Gerald said.

His voice was that of someone operating on the far side of shock. "There are more of them, yes... There are always more of them!"

"How many?" Mike said.

"Three, four, sometimes more, they rotate," Gerald said. "If he doesn’t come back from the alley they’ll—"

"Go," Mike said.

"Mike—"

"Gerald, go now," Mike said, and he said it with the particular flatness of someone who does not have time for a conversation and means what they are saying down to the atomic level. "Walk out to the main street, turn left, and keep walking."

"Don’t look back, and make sure you don’t take a cab from here."

Gerald looked at the door behind Mike, then at Big G on the ground, then at the end of the alley by the fence, and finally back at Mike. He was cycling through his options and arriving at the same place each time.

"What are you going to do?" Gerald said.

"Something," Mike said. "Call me when you get to Callen Street and wait there."

"You can’t just—" Gerald started.

"You have about ninety seconds before someone on the other side of that door starts wondering where he went," Mike said. "I’m aware of that, and you should be moving right NOW!"

Gerald looked at Big G lying on the ground, then at Mike, and finally at the fence at the end of the alley. "I can’t just—"

"You can," Mike said. "Go, go, get the hell out of here!"

"Y-yes!" Gerald ran as fast as he could.

Mike watched him until he cleared the fence end of the alley and disappeared, then turned back to the situation.

He glanced at Big G. Then he surveyed the alley.

His gaze landed on the large, industrial dumpster positioned against the left wall—the kind typically used by building service crews rather than residential ones, featuring a lid that closed with a latch.

He shifted his attention back to Big G, then to the dumpster, and finally returned his gaze to Big G.

"Right," he said.

He checked Big G’s pockets quickly and efficiently, finding a phone, which he did not take, and a folded piece of paper with a list of figures on it, which he photographed before returning it, and a radio earpiece, which he removed and turned off and set on the ground.

He turned the phone face up. There was no lock screen passcode, indicating the specific overconfidence of someone who did not expect to find themselves in a situation where it would be relevant.

Mike photographed the recent calls list and the top contacts before putting it back in Big G’s jacket pocket.

Then he dragged Big G to the dumpster, using a specific combination of leverage and determination to get him inside before closing the lid.

He stood in the alley, glancing at his phone.

"It seems like I finally can make a good use of this skill that came from my system."

"I do hope you’re not going to scam me or some shit because right now..."

"...it’s shapeshifting time!"

[SHAPESHIFT — ACTIVATE? DURATION: UP TO 6 HOURS. COOLDOWN: 24 HOURS. CONFIRM.]

He looked at the dumpster for a moment.

The three men inside would come out the back in the next two to four minutes. They would expect Big G to have finished with Gerald and be coming back through the front.

When he did not appear, they would check the corridor and then the alley, in that order. In the alley, they would find a space that was empty except for a dumpster latched from the outside, which would reveal the story gradually and then all at once.

He was working with the time gap between those two moments.

He activated it.

The Shapeshift skill was not dramatic. There was no mirror, no visible transition from the outside.

It was more like the interior equivalent of adjusting how you were standing, except the adjustment was total. He had watched Big G for approximately four minutes from the alley and through the crack in the fire exit, which was not a long observation window, but it was all he had.

He walked to the fence end of the alley, where the light was slightly better, and looked at the shadow his hands cast on the ground.

Larger hands. Longer reach.

He pulled out his phone and looked at the camera’s front face. The tattoo was there, on the right side, the phoenix in its spread-winged position, smaller details approximated, but the overall impression was solid.

The build was right. The face was either Big G’s actual face or a version of it designed to withstand the specific conditions of low-light gang territory recognition.

He put his phone away and took a breath.

The issue with assuming someone else’s face in a situation where that person is recognized is that the face represents only the first layer of identity. Big G’s movements across the casino floor, the efficiency of his gestures, and the specific way he focused on those beneath him in the hierarchy constituted the second layer, which was typically where things began to unravel.

Mike had four minutes of observation. He would be careful about how far he pushed the performance.

He walked toward the end of the alley.

...

The three of them emerged from the casino’s rear exit five minutes later, moving in a loose formation typical of people searching for something they anticipated finding quickly. They spotted him at the entrance of the alley, or rather, they recognized Big G at the alley entrance, which amounted to the same thing from their vantage point.

One of them said something. Mike raised a hand in the gesture that meant "handled," which was a gesture he had watched Big G make once in the alley and was using now as its own form of documentation.

"The guy?" one of them said.

"Taken care of," Mike said. He modulated his voice toward Big G’s register, lower and more controlled, which was the best he could do without more observation material. "Gerald’s not going to be a problem anymore."

The three of them exchanged a look that was like someone confirming an update rather than questioning it.

"Boss wants the full amount by Wednesday," one of them said.

"I know," Mike said. "That’s what I told him."