I have fixed the patreon link that leads to my old pateron account that dont have this fanfic .
Chapter 10: The Price of Power
[West Village Apartment — July 8, 2011, 6:00 PM]
Don stared at his banking app and did the math for the third time.
Checking account: $2,340. Rent due in three weeks: $1,650. Utilities, food, metrocard, the basic architecture of surviving in Manhattan on a junior associate's salary: call it another $400. That left $290 of breathing room — the kind of margin that made his stomach tighten every time he opened the app, the kind that turned a broken phone or an unexpected medical bill into a crisis.
Five hundred dollars bought five LP.
The Library hummed behind his eyes at its usual Phase 1 frequency — dim, functional, the permanent low-grade shimmer that had become as familiar as his own heartbeat over the past four months. Fifteen LP in reserve. Enough for basic searches, tag chains, the operational tools that had carried him through MediTech and the mediation. Not enough for what was coming.
Wakefield had mentioned a new case that morning — complex, multi-party, the kind of dispute that would demand Library resources Don didn't have. The tag chains alone could run four or five LP. A full strategy reveal against a competent opponent would cost eight to fifteen. And Don's LP income depended on winning, which meant he needed to spend points to earn points, which meant the math was circular and the circle was tightening.
Five hundred dollars. Five LP. The difference between going into the next case prepared and going in blind.
Don transferred the money.
The effect was immediate. Not dramatic — the Library didn't surge or glow or announce itself with fanfare. It simply clarified. The fog behind his eyes thinned by a measurable fraction, the way a radio signal sharpens when you adjust the antenna. He ran a test search — implied covenant of good faith, New York commercial contracts — and the results came faster, cleaner, tagged with blue and gold markers that resolved at the edges of his vision like text appearing on a screen that had been wiped clean.
Twenty LP. A working reserve. The cost: five hundred dollars he couldn't afford to lose, subtracted from a savings account that now read $1,840 and dropping.
The Library didn't care about his bank balance. It cared about fuel.
Don closed the banking app and checked the time. Six-fifteen. Scottie's reservation was at seven. A bar on Lexington — her pick, somewhere she'd described as "decent cocktails and nobody from Darby International."
He changed his shirt. Brushed his teeth. Looked at himself in the bathroom mirror and saw a man who'd just spent his grocery money on a supernatural legal search engine and was about to have drinks with a woman whose firm would merge with Pearson Hardman in two years.
This is my life now, Don thought. The thought carried no grief. No nostalgia. Just the flat recognition of a fact that had stopped feeling strange somewhere around month three. He was Don Klein. He lived in the West Village. He practiced law at Wakefield & Gould. He had three powers he couldn't explain, nine seasons of knowledge he couldn't share, and a date with a woman who made the detection go quiet.
He grabbed his jacket and left.
---
[Bar on Lexington Avenue — 7:20 PM]
Scottie was already seated when Don arrived — corner booth, two menus, a glass of red wine half-finished. She'd changed from whatever she'd worn at the office into something less armored: a dark blouse, no blazer, earrings that caught the low bar light. The shift was subtle but the message was clear: this wasn't a professional meeting.
"You're late," she said.
"Twelve minutes. The Six train had opinions."
"The Six train always has opinions. That's why I take cabs."
Don sat across from her. The detection registered Scottie's signal — the same startling clarity he'd encountered at the mixer, the near-absence of social performance. She wasn't performing relaxation or manufacturing warmth. She was relaxed. She was warm. The gap between her presentation and her interior state was so narrow that the detection barely flickered.
It was, Don had decided, the most attractive thing about her.
They ordered. Don got a bourbon — not the Glenfiddich, not at bar prices — and Scottie finished her wine and switched to the same. The conversation started where it had ended at the mixer: appellate strategy, the Second Circuit's recent trend toward expanding contract interpretation doctrine, a case Scottie was handling that involved a British parent company trying to enforce a UK choice-of-law provision in a New York court.
"The jurisdictional issue is straightforward," Scottie said, leaning forward. "But the subsidiary's argument is clever — they're claiming the choice-of-law provision is unconscionable because it was imposed by the parent without negotiation."
"Sounds familiar," Don said. The Haverford unconscionability argument. The same doctrine, different application. He didn't mention MediTech — client confidentiality, and besides, the connection was obvious enough that saying it aloud would be showing off.
Scottie caught it anyway. Her eyes sharpened. "You've run this play before."
"Different context. Same principle."
"And you won."
"I restructured. Which felt better than winning."
She studied him over the rim of her glass. The detection registered curiosity — genuine, unperformative, the kind that came from encountering something that didn't fit a familiar pattern.
"You're an odd lawyer, Don Klein."
"I've been told."
"Most attorneys I know treat every conversation like a deposition. Every answer is calibrated. Every question is a probe." She set her glass down. "You actually listen. And when you answer, you give me something real instead of something useful."
The detection spiked — not on Scottie's words, which were honest, but on Don's own response. A muffled echo. Faint, like hearing his own voice through a wall. Because Scottie was wrong. Every answer Don gave was calibrated. Every moment of apparent openness was managed, the real hidden beneath the authentic, the transmigrator concealed behind the lawyer.
The lie detection caught his own deception. A dull throb at the base of his skull — the system registering the gap between what Scottie perceived and what was true.
Don took a drink. The bourbon cut through the sensation.
"I find most people worth listening to," he said. "You're more worth it than most."
Scottie's mouth quirked. Not a smile — a half-expression, somewhere between pleased and skeptical, the look of a woman who'd been complimented by too many lawyers to take compliments at face value but appreciated the effort nonetheless.
The food arrived. Don had ordered fries — a side dish, something to occupy his hands while they talked. Scottie reached across the table and took one without asking. Dipped it in his ketchup. Ate it while maintaining eye contact, as if daring him to object.
Don didn't object. What he registered was something smaller: the absence of a tactical thought. Someone had touched something of his — reached into his space, taken something from his plate — and his first response wasn't to analyze the gesture or calculate its strategic implications. His first response was to push the plate closer to her.
"Help yourself," he said.
"I already did."
They talked until ten. Not entirely about law — Scottie mentioned a theatre production she'd seen in the West End, and Don mentioned the Thai place on Ninth Avenue that he'd discovered his first week in the city, the one with the green curry that made his eyes water. She laughed at his description of the fire escape where he ate it. He laughed at her story about a senior partner at Darby who'd accidentally sent a personal email to the entire London office.
The detection stayed quiet. The Library stayed dim. For three hours, Don Klein was just a man having drinks with a woman he liked, and the supernatural architecture that governed his existence retreated to the background like a machine set to standby.
Walking home, the July heat rising from the sidewalk in waves, Don put his hands in his pockets and counted what the evening had cost. Twenty-three dollars for drinks and food. Five hundred dollars for LP that morning. And some quantity of his remaining capacity for professional detachment, spent on a woman whose laugh sounded different from everything else in his life — unguarded, unstrategic, aimed directly at him.
The phone on his nightstand buzzed when he got home. Text from Scottie: Next time you're picking the place. And I'm ordering the curry.
Don typed back: Deal.
He set the phone down. On the desk beside it, the case file Wakefield had dropped that morning waited — unopened, patient, its contents still unknown. The label on the front read: Vasquez Construction v. Allied Properties. Opposing counsel: Pearson Hardman LLP.
The associate handling it, Wakefield had mentioned, was new. Harvey Specter's hire. Young, aggressive, apparently brilliant.
Don opened the file.
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