For a few minutes, I observed my surroundings from my position, but when I got bored with that, I preferred to dive into Occlumency. I needed to clear my head. I sorted through the fresh memories, analyzed them, and mentally ran through the entire process of anchoring emotions again. I was practically examining every single step I had taken in Adam's junkie mind in retrospect. My ancestor wrote a genuinely great manual, but putting that theoretical talk into practice was, after all, a bit more challenging.
I tapped my foot boredly against the ground. I was sitting on the most secluded bench in the park, impatiently waiting for Paul. According to the timing from Adam's memories, he should arrive at any moment. It was lunch hour; the number of people in the park was visibly increasing, and the surrounding benches were quickly filling up.
Every new face that appeared in my line of sight was scanned with a critical gaze. I definitely didn't enjoy waiting.
And finally. A relatively young guy was walking toward me with a hairstyle worn by Phil Dunphy from the sitcom Modern Family. He was wearing a gray, visibly ill-fitting suit, and he had a small, square device clipped to his belt. I had to dig into my memories of the modern world for a moment before I identified it—it was a pager. In his right hand, he clutched a black briefcase. Unlike the suit, it was relatively elegant and looked significantly more expensive.
"Hey, kid!" he greeted me with a wide, cocky grin as soon as he reached me. "I'll give you five pounds if you clear the bench," he suggested in a friendly manner.
I had to admit that Paul had a certain street charisma. An amused smirk automatically settled on my face.
"Hi, Paul," I looked at him, and instead of leaving, I offered him an alternative: "How about you take a seat instead?" I saw him taking a breath to continue negotiating the price of the bench, so I quickly and coldly added, "For your own good."
At that moment, he seemed a bit slow. It took him a while to process the fact that I had addressed him by name, and then he just stood there silently, mouth agape like a fish on dry land.
If I stood up now and let him sit, a million junkies would swarm here immediately. I could see in my periphery how several shady characters were watching the whole situation from a distance. Otherwise, Paul had pretty good cover—any normal person would think that losers were just begging for change from such a businessman, not actually buying drugs from him. And since Paul had a certain charisma with his Phil Dunphy look and seemed friendly, this cover was working for him so far.
"Come on, come on," I said again when he just stood there like an idiot, a bead of sweat trickling down his temple. "If you don't sit down, the cops who have been watching you for a while will catch you," I improvised impatiently to get him moving.
"What?!" he blurted out. This lie, however, immediately snapped him out of his lethargy, and he quickly sat down next to me.
"Yes, Paul. You don't have as good cover as you thought," I smiled at him casually and added, "You look like a drug dealer just by looking at you."
Of course, he didn't. If I hadn't been in Adam's head, I probably would have walked past him as just another office rat with a miserable salary and a thrift-store briefcase. But at this moment, paranoia was working in my favor.
"Fuck, they can't catch me," he swore quietly, but all the more desperately. "I have a family. A child," he added with increasing nervousness in his voice.
"Relax, Paul. Just give me ten pounds, like it's no big deal, and smile at me," I commanded in a calm voice. "We'll dispel their suspicion. You're just a generous guy who contributed to an unknown kid."
With a twitchy, forced smile, he reached into his pocket, pulled out a ten-pound note, and handed it to me.
"Thanks," I took the money with a calm smile. "At least I'll have enough for lunch," I thought to myself, amused.
"What now? Fuck..." he cursed distractedly, trembling like some junkie in withdrawal, staring intently at the ground.
"Look at me," I commanded with a firm voice. Paul obeyed immediately and lifted his gaze straight into my eyes. His forehead was glistening with sweat, and he looked like he was about to have a heart attack at any moment.
"A drowning man will grasp at straws," I laughed inwardly at how easy it was.
"Legilimens!"
I leafed through his mind like an open book. The priority was to go through all relevant memories concerning drugs, but besides them, I was also immensely interested in his brief life story. It was like watching an exceptionally realistic TV series. Since I lacked any truly high-quality movies in this world, I enjoyed Legilimency perhaps more than was healthy.
In short—Paul was an ordinary kid from the suburbs, the son of the lower-middle class living in a housing estate. He never had a relationship with manual labor, and in high school, he trained as a waiter, so he had no stellar prospects for the future. When he later tried to learn a trade, he always gave up because of a deeply rooted feeling of inferiority. His own mind always convinced him that he would never learn to weld well enough to be worth anything. He didn't understand electricity much either—he failed the course, and bricklaying seemed too physically demanding for him.
And what does a person without money or career prospects do when a child suddenly arrives? Of course, they jump at the first offer for easy money.
Moreover, Paul enjoyed it a bit. In his mind, he felt like a gangster from The Godfather, although in reality, he led a quite comfortable life. The family was satisfied, diapers were bought, there was always food on the table, and they even had enough left for a vacation. Although he had slight pangs of conscience at the very beginning about selling drugs, they quickly faded away. He defended himself by saying that he wasn't hurting anyone and wasn't injecting heroin into their veins.
In this strange way, I actually found Paul sympathetic. He took care of his family, and although he chose an illegal path, at his core, he wasn't a bad person. I discovered that he regularly contributed to animal shelters and sent money for the treatment of sick children.
However, I didn't need to anchor or change anything in his mind this time. „Obliviate!"
I completely erased any memory of my presence and our conversation. On my way out, I just patted him on the shoulder in a friendly manner and headed for the edge of Brixton, toward the industrial warehouses. I had exactly what I needed.
It didn't take me too long to arrive at a medium-sized warehouse. The area was surrounded by thin fencing, and even from a distance, I could see several workers with reflective gear on the property, walking back and forth quite calmly. No one was in a rush. It practically looked like a completely ordinary, bland logistics warehouse.
Even the entrance gate with a small gatehouse seemed absolutely inconspicuous.
I calmly walked up to the booth window and had to knock on the glass so the guy inside would even notice me. He was fully preoccupied with watching a small TV.
"Yes?" he blurted out a bit impatiently when he looked away from the screen.
"Good day," I greeted him with a calm, innocent smile. "I've come to see my father, David Carter."
The doorman gave me a visibly fake, routine smile and pressed a button to start opening the gate. "You can go ahead, young man."
"Thanks!" I waved to him and confidently continued directly onto the premises.
As soon as I opened the metal, annoyingly creaky door and stepped inside, the typical smell of gas, engine oil, and settled dust hit my nose. There was a bustling activity in the warehouse. In the distance, I even caught a glimpse of an electric pallet truck, although most of the guys here were handling ordinary manual pallet jacks.
As I passed between the racks, I carefully watched the surrounding people. This whole place really seemed like a legitimate logistics business. There was probably completely normal merchandise stored on the pallets, and the drugs made up just some hidden part of it. Among the employees, I also noticed women who were checking and recording marked pallets with notebooks in their hands, while the men moved them on right after their nod.
I moved through the warehouse as confidently as if I were at home. No one stopped to look at me, and no one cared what I was doing there. Everyone was diligently looking after their own work, which allowed me to start searching for the way to the management offices without any problems.
It didn't surprise me at all that the offices were tucked away completely in the corner of the warehouse. A metal staircase led to them, above which loomed a somewhat larger, two-story administrative area. The boss I was aiming for, as expected, had his office on the top floor.
When I was passing the first floor, the doors to the regular offices were wide open. A woman sitting behind a huge white computer tower noticed me immediately.
"Good day," I greeted with a rehearsed smile. "David Carter?"
The woman returned a friendly smile and raised a finger, pointing toward the ceiling: "One level up, sweetheart."
"Thanks!" I replied and continued upward.
Every step I took echoed on the metal stairs like loud thumping. Although the noise from the warehouse reliably drowned it out, just to be safe, I pulled out my wand right in front of the door and cast: „Muffliato!"
I tried to estimate the power of the spell so it would reliably cover the entire room, in case the guy managed to shout before being paralyzed. Without knocking, I pressed the handle and entered.
"Lizzie, how many times have I told you that you need to knock," a dry male voice sounded. The guy didn't even look up from the screen and was tapping focusedly on the keyboard.
I measured him with curiosity. He also looked like a proper, decent citizen you would meet every Sunday at church. He was wearing a colorful flannel shirt, ordinary jeans, a silver watch on his wrist, and a gray mustache under his nose.
As soon as he heard my youthful, changing voice, he looked at me in surprise. But I had already flicked my wand in a flash: "Petrificus Totalus!"
The white beam hit him in a split second. He froze instantly; his body stiffened like a rock and he tumbled off the chair with a dull thud, right onto the floor.
"What were you tapping into that keyboard so intently, David?" I asked with a smirk and walked up to the desk.
On the side of the desk sat a huge, deep CRT monitor with a comically small screen diagonal. Running on it was PAC-MAN, and right below it, a prominent red inscription was blinking: GAME OVER.
That genuinely made me laugh. Everyone down in the warehouse was working until they dropped, and the boss here is crushing video games. While David on the floor was desperately rolling his eyes from side to side, I comfortably sat down in his chair—although his stiffened body under my feet was a bit in the way. For a moment, I turned on the sound, restarted the game, and tried to play.
I survived about two minutes before the colorful monsters ate me, and my score didn't even reach 2000 points.
"Skill issues," I smiled, shrugged my shoulders, and began to inspect this—at least for me—prehistoric computer setup. The mouse had a classic heavy ball on the bottom, the monitor itself was massive, and the fan in the tower hummed so loud that it was clearly audible. I preferred to mute the sound on Pac-Man again so it wouldn't distract me. Just to be safe, I didn't turn off the computer, in case he had some work running in the background.
David on the floor was constantly rolling his eyes. When I stood over him, his frightened gaze met mine exactly as I needed.
"Drugs," I brought up the same keyword again to make my work easier and guide his mind exactly where I needed: "Legilimens!"
David knew significantly more about the whole illegal business than Paul, thanks to which I quickly pieced together the overall picture of the situation in London. My initial idea about a few big bosses who firmly control the whole city, however, quickly dissipated. The number of London drug bosses was a two-digit number—they had the underworld divided into smaller, regional territories and were constantly competing with each other.
This particular warehouse belonged under the wing of a boss named Jonathan Reeves. According to David's memories, Reeves outwardly acted as a serious small businessman who owned a cafe right in Brixton. And that was exactly where I planned to find him.
I quickly canceled Petrificus Totalus, modified his memory with a spell so it would completely erase me from his memories, and hastily left the warehouse. I had a few hours to spare, which was the ideal time to move to the cafe and deal with this local miniboss. If everything goes according to plan, I will still manage to visit Sirius and return home for dinner exactly as I promised Vespera. I wouldn't risk my aunt being angry again.
When I was leaving the Leaky Cauldron in the morning, under the influence of movies and series from the modern world, I subconsciously expected gangsters in tracksuits with Adidas stripes, sneakers, and pistols tucked behind their belts. Instead, it looked like a perfectly well-oiled, legal business.
It didn't take long, and I arrived at the cafe from his memories. It wasn't located on the main road but was hidden in one of the side alleys. From the outside, it looked extremely inconspicuous—the windows were tinted so that it was almost impossible to see inside, and above the entrance, the name written in elegant calligraphy shone: The Corner Cup.
Without further delay, I grabbed the handle and stepped inside. Above my head, a melodic tinkling of a brass bell sounded immediately.
"Good day!" greeted me a young blonde barmaid from behind the counter.
A pleasant, relaxed atmosphere reigned in the cafe. A wide bar counter stretched along the left side, and comfortable booths were arranged on the right. Of the six places, only one single table was occupied, where an older married couple was quietly enjoying an afternoon drink with a cake.
"Good day," I returned the greeting with a friendly smile. "I've come to see my father. Is he in the back?" I asked completely confidently.
The girl looked confused for a second, but immediately put on a professional smile and nodded understandingly: "Yes, Mr. Reeves is in his office in the back."
I gave her another smile and was just about to step toward the back when her question stopped me.
"Would you like some cake? We have fresh apple, lemon, and carrot today," she offered nicely.
I stopped and thought. "Actually, yes, I'll have the apple one, please. Could you bring it to me in the back afterward?"
When she nodded, I continued down the hall with a thank you. I hadn't eaten since breakfast, and a piece of good cake would hit the spot while I discuss his illegal business with Jonathan. Overall, I enjoyed moving through the world with a confident smile of a decent boy. Just like before in the warehouse, here too I bet on the fact that Reeves doesn't bring work home and the young barmaid on the shift has no idea about the boss's family.
***
Author's note:
This chapter was inspired by some real-world research—I spent some time picking the brain of a former criminal investigator over a beer. I wanted to capture the "power of bullshitting" that absolute legend Frank Abagnale possessed. You know that specific brand of charm and unshakable confidence? It's the kind where you could convince anyone that the world is yours—or talk your way into the cockpit of a plane. If you're a fan of that kind of chaos, I highly recommend watching ‚Catch Me If You Can'.
P.S. I have to admit, I thought the movie was based on a true story. Then the guys on YOU-KNOW-WHAT told me it was mostly bullshit... except for the part where he actually managed to talk his way into a plane's cockpit a few times. :D
***
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The shadows are shifting, and the story goes much deeper... If you can't wait for the next update, Advanced Chapters are already waiting for you.
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Upcoming Chapters – Already Written(16):
80. The Silent Partner
81. The Black Inheritance
82. The Frequency of Intent
83. Of Blood and Thorns
84. Thorns, Wards, and Sly Foxes
85. As Peaceful and Civilized as Always
86. The Twin in the Shadows
87. Their Addiction, Our Profit
88. Fake Smiles and Sharp Instincts
89. The Path to Invincibility
90. AD: Piña Coladas and Rainbow Thongs
91. Blood Traitors
92. Before the Storm
93. Arania Exumai
94. Favors and Frustrations
95. Power and Glory
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