Illusion Report

Before answering, Fu Tailan pulled a small plastic ziplock bag from his pocket.

He tipped the crinkled green leaf packed with crystal fragments onto a rolling paper, little by little, and said, "Don’t mind me — I like the process of rolling it."

Carter nodded and smiled.

"When I was your age, I had to sneak around just to smoke. Times were different back then — none of these dispensaries on every corner like you have now. Getting your hands on it was a whole ordeal. You’d have to ask a friend to find a guy, pay through the nose, and then open it up to find newspaper stuffed inside."

It was the first time Fu Tailan had smiled all day. Carter, it turned out, had a bit of an ordinary human side to him after all.

Fu Tailan lit the roll, took a drag, and asked, "...So what’s the stranger part?"

Carter shifted in his seat. "He just put in a commission with the Morgan Family. Once you take over, it’ll be yours to handle — no harm in giving you a heads-up now...

"Westley has commissioned us to enter the Nest on the 13th of every month and search for an Illusion connected to ’time’ — specifically in the areas corresponding to Saint Louis Hospital, Broom Street, and the law faculty of Blackmoor University."

Fu Tailan slowly raised his head and fixed his gaze on Carter, as though his vision had only now come into focus.

"...That’s impossible." He said it quietly, then paused. "How does he know?"

"Exactly."

Carter finally seemed to have hooked his interest, and looked rather pleased about it. "You’re a Hunter — you know better than anyone. Once you’re inside the Nest, where you end up and what Illusions you encounter is completely beyond human control. Completely unpredictable.

"And yet Westley acts as if he already knows what the Nest will produce, and when. Like he just needs a Hunter to follow a map and bring things back for him.

"He’s not a Hunter himself. He tried to build his own Hunter team once — didn’t go well. The whole thing quietly fell apart.

"So you’ve hit on exactly the right question: how did he come by this intelligence?"

Carter wasn’t finished.

"And the commission he put in with the Morgan Family isn’t the only one. From what I know, he’s placed at least one other commission elsewhere — though I have no idea what he’s after with that one. What does he want with two separate items? What’s he trying to do?"

Fu Tailan sat in silence for a moment, thinking.

The information Carter had given him was still vague — enough to glimpse only the rough outline of something. But even an outline was enough to agree: Westley knew something no one else did.

"Working from first principles — I’d assume Westley has access to some kind of... let’s call it ’intelligence.’ Armed with that, he has an objective.

"To reach that objective, he needs the Path, and at least two Illusions. Through some means, he’s learned when and where those two Illusions will emerge from the Nest... is that right?

"The real question, then, is what the Path and the Illusions actually give him — and right now, no one but Westley knows the answer to that."

"Talking to you is so refreshing." Carter poured them each another drink.

"So what do you want me to do?"

"Why, grant Mr. Westley his wish, of course." Carter let out a bright laugh.

Then he leaned forward, looked Fu Tailan directly in the eyes, and said slowly, "...And then take whatever he’s really after — and put it in our hands."

A job like this couldn’t be done by anyone but the most capable Hunter available.

That was what Carter told him, clapping him on the shoulder as he said it. But Fu Tailan honestly wasn’t sure he qualified as a capable Hunter — let alone the most capable. Not even close, as far as he was concerned.

And yet, sometimes the world seemed to have already been scripted by some unseen force beyond all reckoning — and the role written for him was simply: Star Hunter.

Case in point: less than two months after Fu Tailan had taken over the Morgan Family’s Hunter operations, the next lead on Westley came from someone he never would have expected — a finance clerk with no Path to speak of. He hadn’t even been looking.

"Yes — it just happened. I came here with a friend for drinks..."

The clerk was a young woman named Amber, and when she laid eyes on Fu Tailan for the first time, she faltered — just like everyone else. She had already started talking, but she still looked like she couldn’t quite believe it, and asked again to be sure: "You... you’re really the new Hunter Chief our Family Faction just brought in?"

"Why would I lie to you? I never lie to women."

Fu Tailan was sitting on the pavement outside the bar. He tilted his head back and smiled up at her. "Do you drink often?"

"Not really." A faint flush from the alcohol still lingered on Amber’s cheeks. "We were celebrating... My friend drinks even less than I do, so she stepped outside for some air. And in those few minutes, the last SUV in a convoy suddenly lost control — it was like something had shoved it — and drove straight into the back door. Nearly hit my friend. Look, the door’s still bent out of shape, won’t even close properly."

Fu Tailan glanced over at the bar’s back door.

By the time he arrived, the car had already been towed away — but from the marks left behind, the way it had lost control was unmistakably off.

"And your friend is?"

"Oh, she’s not a Hunter with our Family Faction. She freelances — goes into the Nest on her own, takes on small jobs. Her name’s Jin Xueli. She’s still inside the bar right now, probably chatting someone up. She ran into a guy, and it seems like he’s pretty into her."

Women, regardless of age, always seemed unable to help saying a little more than necessary when it came to Fu Tailan. Useful or not, he filed the name "Jin Xueli" away.

"The person who got out of the car was a bodyguard."

Amber walked him through the convoy’s immediate reaction and the bodyguard’s movements, then added, "I felt like I’d seen him somewhere. I kept looking, and then it clicked — he’d come to our company once before. As Westley’s personal bodyguard."

Westley had come in person when he placed his commission with the Morgan Family — Fu Tailan hadn’t yet taken over as Hunter Chief at the time, but he’d been in the loop.

Amber tucked her short hair behind her ear, revealing a small, pointed ear that looked almost elfin.

"I recognized him, but he didn’t recognize me — didn’t even notice me standing there watching. Then one of his colleagues came to meet him, and I heard the colleague say, clear as day, ’The boss is going to collect something.’ That’s when it hit me — no wonder the convoy had such tight security. Was Westley about to pick up an Illusion? If so, I thought maybe I should mention it to Longzhen..."

Fu Tailan glanced at the time on his phone screen.

According to Amber, the collision had happened twenty minutes ago. Lucky that she and Longzhen were close — and that Longzhen’s instincts happened to be sharp enough to tip him off in time.

There was still a window...

A convoy that had just had a scare would need to verify whether the situation had actually changed. They wouldn’t have been able to carry out their original plan in this short a time.

"Did you mention any of this to your friend?"

Amber shook her head.

Fu Tailan rose quietly to his feet and jerked his chin toward Longzhen, who had been waiting off to the side. She got the message immediately, turned on her heel, and went to get the car.

"Sister Amber," he said lazily, flashing her a smile, his voice low and easy. "Do me a favor?"

The tips of Amber’s ears went red. "What kind of favor?"

"Head home for the night. Give your friend a chance to spend a little more time with that guy."

Fu Tailan said this, then tilted his head, thinking it over.

"This whole thing is a bit sensitive where the Family Faction’s concerned. If your friend asks, just tell her I said you couldn’t talk about it — and that I came to find you first thing Monday morning, asked you what happened, and then told you to keep quiet. Tell it exactly like that. Can you do that?"

Amber glanced toward the bar.

"If you’re the Family Faction’s Hunter Chief, then this is the Family Faction’s call... I understand." She nodded, then added, "Xueli probably doesn’t even know yet that this convoy has anything to do with Westley."