Addendum 5A - Betrayal
Ever since my execution of that Son of Salem two months ago, my desire to continue such 'pest control' efforts kept growing. I knew that I had to walk the fine line between being ineffective and too effective, but my powers helped with threading that needle. This time, instead of walking around the city in-person, I chose to travel through the sewers as Mirielle, intent on seeing if another, more popular bar would be a good hunting ground. Lo and behold: it was; there were a number of Sons in the private room in the back.
One useful thing about being a centipede is the fact that I didn't need to walk in as a human - instead, I used my mandibles to undo the shoddy coverings of the air ventilation system and skittered inside the building that way. It was uncomfortable, but not too much; I could easily endure it. The thing that irked me, though, was that I was still yet to figure out a way to kill them all.
I wanted to engineer some sort of 'natural' hazard, but I didn't want to endanger the unaffiliated civilians.
Thankfully, my exploration yielded something I could work with: in the basement, there was a storage machine for the various spirits they had in store, and it was hooked up to some CO2 canisters. I wasn't sure about the specifics of it, but I did know that CO2 poisoning was nothing to scoff at. With some effort, I took two of the spare canisters and dragged them up onto the building's roof - I couldn't put them any closer to the other vent openings because the turns were too narrow, so that was my only option - and replaced one of those rubber hoses in the machine with a shorter one. Then, I connected the long one to one of the canisters I'd appropriated, and pointed the other end in the direction of the private room.
Given I'd snuck a bottle of seemingly-renowned wine into the male bathroom beforehand, the group was now getting sloshed. I knew I could rely on human greed to do half the job for me. Hence, the effects of the gas I'd just released into the room were not really picked up on at all - they were drinking, so surely the tipsiness was just the good wine - and, one by one, each of them fell onto the floor. Only one of them got close enough to the exit door.
Through my senses, I could feel a person coming to investigate the strange thud, so I quickly put the second canister to action. Instead of pointing it at the private room, though, I raised the hose's other end in such a way to make the gas flow in all rooms instead. By the time the investigating patsy opened the door and alerted the other guests, everyone could already faintly feel the strangeness in the air and rushed to vacate the premises. As I would later learn, six of the nine Sons were killed that day, with the other three stuck, brain-damaged, in a hospital.
Good.
I was tempted to sneak in to finish the job. It would've been easy - get in, disconnect their life support, get out. However, there were a more pressing matter on my mind nowadays which I couldn't seem to get out of my head: as I'd eavesdropped on the Sons, I discovered that they were planning a trip to the shooting range. I wouldn't have been so surprised by this normally - Sons of Salem were notorious for their 'Jesus, Guns, Babies' obsession - but one detail struck me like a bullet from one of those selfsame guns.
Kyle.
Kyle Brooks.
My estranged cousin, someone I'd thought to be dead alongside everyone else, was the one hosting their gathering. My estranged cousin, who was there that night, and notably less loud than he usually was.
I was shocked when I heard his name.
And I had to thank the stroke of luck that graced me that day yet again, because it was not even a name Kyle was going by anymore. He was 'Bradley Miller' now, apparently; a whole new person. One of the Sons was just not privy to that change at the time just yet, though he was just as quickly corrected by the others.
Too bad that there was a centipede hanging on every word.
'Bradley' will soon be getting some very pointed questions lodged in his stomach.