"That isn't answering the question," I growled, and Numera finally threw up her hands.
"I am not even real! What do you want me to do? Sign a contract with you?! We are inside your head, and neither of us is really here!" Numera snapped, and I nodded.
"I am always amazed at how well the truth seems to explain things. Fine, you don't know how, but you are going to figure it out since you have nothing better to do," I said, and then I put my hand out and pointed to my palm. "You want something, and you say you are honest? Then work for it and put some results in my hand."
"And how am I supposed to know that I can trust you?" Numera countered, and I sighed.
"With the contract that we both signed. Really, are you even listening?" I asked, and Numera blinked at me as I put a massive metal hand on my forehead.
"Hmm, I guess that will work since it is better than nothing," she said finally, snapping out of her shock.
"That is what I was thinking too. No lies, no secrets, just two mutually beneficial agreements between us. No, you have a job, and so do I," I said as I closed my eyes and opened them back up in my office.
Now that I had all this information, I had nothing left to do but to mull it over for the rest of the night while I listened to the conversations of the people that were guarding my compound. I had taken the liberty of creating more of the mini-bugs and sending them out to land on everyone that was in and around the compound. I not only wanted to hear what men were saying since Miles only seemed to have males employed, but the people walking around or near the complex. There was a good chance that there were spies, and considering how fast information traveled, the city of Wendell had to be full of them.
"What do you think of the new boss?" A guard asked as he walked around the inside of the walls with another.
"Miles looked like he had seen a demon when he gave us orders, so the new guy must be pretty scary," The other said.
"What about the family heads coming here altogether? That never happens, right?" The first asked.
"Do we get paid to walk and talk? Pay attention to your surroundings. Something tells me that this boss isn't going to put up with loose ends or people that don't do their jobs," the second said, and the first went quiet.
I marked the second of them because he seemed to understand what his job was and didn't question it, just stating the obvious. That was good, but the first one was too concerned about things that weren't important to him. A guy like that was likely to stick his nose in the wrong place. Even if it didn't have to be with me, he was a liability that Miles would be getting rid of.
There were more like this, but one of the most interesting things wasn't a conversation, and it came from outside of the wall. There was a man that I had placed a bug on that was scaling buildings that surrounded the warehouse complex outside its walls. It was clear that the man was trying to get a look inside, but it struck me as odd how mechanical the man was. On top of that, he didn't say a single word the entire time he was scoping the place out, not even a mumble.
Once the man was finished looking from all angles that he could, the man left, so I tracked him to a place that was roughly about four blocks away. I still didn't have a perfect map of the place, and this was in an area I had yet to be in, but I was sending more bugs that would get visuals from a distance. This far away, it was not as easy to control more than one thing, and I was forced to drop the control of the other listening bugs while I did this.
Before the bugs got to the location, my bug suddenly started to get hot and then went dead, but my camera bugs caught a bright flash of light from down below where it would have been. Unfortunately, when I got there, there was only a pile of ash on the ground, and after about fifteen minutes of looking, I told my bugs to give up and retrieve the melted bug from the ash.
It bothered me that the person got away without me being able to identify them, and I should have got some bugs on the guy faster, but I assumed that whoever was controlling the person would have at least asked him some questions. That meant that whoever it was, they had the ability to not only control people but pull information from their minds.
Here I thought I was the monster for putting a collar on Kyla, but it looked like there were ones with sharper teeth and fewer qualms than me. That was just fine by me, and it just meant that I didn't have to worry about how I dealt with the ones I found.
I turned back on the listening bugs to continue my surveillance, but there was a knock at my door.
"Who is it?" I called.
"Miles, there is a woman here from the Manta Clan to see you. It is in regards to the thing that you and Grand Mistress Manta talked about, according to the messenger," Miles explained as he opened the door.
"Has she been checked for weapons and magical items?" I asked, and then looked at the papers that were in his hand. "Are those the sorted documents?" I asked, and he nodded.
"Yes, but as you can see, the pile is much smaller than the original stack of documents. The rest are sealed, but I am sure you can talk to Kilna about that. As for weapons, she does not have any, and I will ask her about magical artifacts. I have her waiting right now," Miles explained and then brought the papers over to my desk. "Do you want me to send her in?"
"Strip her of all magical items and send her in," I said, and Miles raised an eyebrow.
"Her clothing is most likely magical; do you wish me to remove that?" he asked, seeming hopeful, and I narrowed my eyes at him menacingly.