Remy 2015

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By Dex. Originally posted on x_project.


They called him the King of New Orleans in whispers.

There were a dozen names, none of which anyone could be sure of. When criminals got together, they passed along anecdotal tales about the great Guilds of the Big Easy, and how they had fought and warred since the founding of the city, until in one violent month, all the treaties where shattered and the city erupted in bloody vengeance. Families destroyed families, down to the bitter last, until only a few survivors were left. They, in turn, ended up too weak and were absorbed into a new Guild. One so secretive that it was nothing but a myth until you made the mistake of crossing them. Their reach was long, their methods brutal, and all they knew was that the King of New Orleans meant fear.

They called him the Witness in awe.

It was impossible to be sure that your dirty little secrets were safe. The evidence about your military's new genetic manipulation project would just appear on a blog, a forum, an innocuous post and spread virally into it got in the hands of someone who would ask the right questions. Most theorized he was some kind of super hacker, or a top level subversive intelligence agent, or even a spectacularly puissant reporter. Others believed the Witness was a movement of dozens, hundreds, even thousands of people, who pulled together information and lit up the illegal affairs of the bastards in power. Who could forget Greydon Creed, handcuffed and frogmarched out of the Vice President's office in a scandal that would bring down the administration?

They called him Gambit in convenience.

Counterintelligence had tagged the name from a similarly insubstantial rumour from the 90s. A wetwork boogyman who appeared and disappeared at whim. Who ever it was, they had experience, patience and an organization. The FBI said the base was in a New Orleans crime family that had subsumed the others and gone underground, still operating and expanding themselves across the United States. Maybe even the world. He'd gone from a nuisance to a threat when a CIA covert team had been exposed, leading to arrests in Japan. It was rumoured they were involved in sabotage, corporate espionage, even assassination, paid for by dramatic and meticulously planned thefts and schemes. The only name they'd ever had as a lead turned out to be non-existent; a made up alias that didn't exist in any birth record, or any file.

It was fitting, because no one ever called him Remy LeBeau any more.