A Darker Path
Part Nineteen: Preparations
[A/N: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]
Atropos
As we drove away from the still-burning warehouse—all the cops were going to get out of that place was a whole lot of ash and some pretty damn toxic residue—I turned to Brian. "Okay, last stop for the day." I gave him the address. "Not drug related, this time."
"Aww." Aisha mock-pouted in the back seat. "I thought we were going to fuck up the day of some more druggies."
"The shipment won't be coming in until tonight," I said. "Accord has yet to hear about it and arrange to replace the lost product. But I'm gonna wait until it hits the city limits, just to make a point."
"Oh." She brightened. "So, we've already fucked up a supervillain's day, and he doesn't even know it? Which one's Accord, anyway?"
"He is absolutely going to be extremely unhappy about it, yes," I confirmed. "As for what he's like … you know how different Brian is to you when it comes to keeping things neat and tidy, everything in its place?"
"
God, yeah." I was pretty sure she'd just rolled her eyes. "I swear, I have to talk him out of ironing the towels."
"Hey!" objected Brian. "I'm not
that intense about it!"
"Well, you fold 'em!"
"Towels are
supposed to be folded!"
"Since when?"
I cleared my throat. "Aisha, settle. Towels are kind of supposed to be folded. Anyway, imagine someone who makes
Brian look twice as untidy as
you."
Silence fell in the car. In my peripheral vision, I caught Aisha blinking a couple of times. Eventually, she shook her head in wonder. "Holy motherfucking Smurfballs. Is he really that bad?"
"You tell me." I shrugged. "This is a guy who times his own bathroom breaks to the second."
Now Brian turned toward me. "You're messing with us." He paused, awaiting a response from me. I said nothing. "You
are messing with us. Right?"
"Oh, man," breathed Aisha, her entire being alight with an unholy joy. "I could
so totally fuck with his head."
"No!" snapped Brian. "
Bad Aisha! No poking at supervillains!"
"It's actually a bad idea," I agreed. "If someone interrupts one of his meetings, his immediate reaction is to kill them. In fact, that's his go-to for basically anything that disrupts his routine for any reason. The man has no chill. I'm pretty sure he considers 'chill' to be a dirty word."
"And yet, you've got no problem with blowing up his drugs." Aisha's tone of voice was speculative.
"None whatsoever." I half-turned in my seat, looking back at her. "I know how to handle him. And how to kill him, if he makes it necessary. So even if he comes to town, even if you happen to lay eyes on him, you do
nothing. No smartass comments, no little jabs. You walk in the other direction, and you don't stop until you're out of sight. Do you understand?"
She couldn't see my expression, but something in my tone must have gotten through to her. "… yeah, okay. I'll leave him for you to fuck up."
I smiled and reached back with my fist for her to bump. "Good plan. We'll go with that one."
Brian cleared his throat. "Okay, now we've got that settled, what's at the address where we're going?"
"An empty lot." I held up a hand. "But
near there are a couple of guys I want to have a word with."
"Wait a minute, wait a minute." Aisha spoke a little breathlessly. "I know who you're going to see. 'Cause I pay
attention."
Brian frowned. "Okay, now you've lost me. Who?"
<><>
Uber and Leet's Base
Brendan looked around as a buzzer sounded. "What's that?"
There was a thump and some swearing, then Leet stuck his head out of his work-room. "We got someone coming up to the front door. That's the proximity sensor. They'll be in camera range in a minute."
Dropping the controller, Brendan came to his feet. "Are we expecting anyone?"
His phone, on the side table, rang. Scooping it up, he looked at the caller ID, and froze. It said 'ATROPOS'. The phone rang again. Slowly, his thumb swiped to accept the call. "Hello?"
"You're expecting me," a teenage girl's voice said briskly.
"Remember? I told you I wanted to talk to you?"
"Dude, what's the matter?" asked Leet, coming out of the work-room. "Who is it?"
Brendan pointed at the screen. "A-Atropos," he croaked. At that moment, two teenagers walked into view. Both were black; one was a tall buff guy, and the other was a petite girl.
"Um, no, they're not." Leet frowned. "What the fuck are they doing here?"
"Waiting for you to let them in." The voice, that of a teenage girl, came from behind them.
Brendan whirled, setting up with a defensive martial-arts pose, while Leet just spun around with a startled squawk. Atropos was standing there, every inch of her radiating menace. Around one finger, she spun a pair of odd-looking shears.
"Where the hell did
you come from?" demanded Leet. "How did you get in?" He fumbled a cloth mask out of his pocket and pulled it over his head. Brendan followed suit, though he wasn't sure it would do any good.
"Your back door was unlocked," Atropos said. Brendan was sure she was grinning her head off behind that morph mask.
"It was
not!" Leet puffed himself up with outrage. "I made sure of it, an hour ago!"
"Well, it was unlocked after I entered the security code." Atropos shrugged. "It's all the same to me, really." She turned her head toward Brendan and gestured toward the front door with a flip of the shears. "So, you want to let my friends in?"
"That lock has a rotating security passcode that changes every minute, and changes the passcode generation seed every hour," Leet insisted. "Even if someone gave it to you ten minutes ago, there's no way it would've worked."
Brendan left him to it, and went to the front door. The screen showed them simply waiting, not even bothering to knock. He undid the latches and swung the door open. "Hello. You can call me Uber. Come on in." Whoever Atropos' friends were, it was probably a very good idea to be polite to them.
"Thanks." The big guy—about Brendan's size and heft, with an air that said he could handle himself—looked around with interest, but didn't comment.
His reticence was more than made up for by the girl, who sported a purple streak in her hair, Glory Girl's tiara, and an attitude a mile wide. "Holy shit, this place is a mess. Hey, how you doing? This is my big bro, Bravo. I'm Alpha. Because I'm just that cool."
"That's also the name Atropos told you to use," 'Bravo' said, with a long-suffering sigh. "And remember, she told you to keep your hands to yourself. This isn't just
a Tinker lab, it's
Leet's Tinker lab. We have no idea what any of this stuff does, whether it works, or if it'll just explode instead."
"Hey, he's not that bad," Brendan objected, driven more by the impulse to defend his buddy than to actually set the record straight. "Most of his stuff works, most of the time."
"Really?" 'Alpha' gave him a challenging look. "So, how many times did he lose his eyebrows last year?"
Brendan sighed. "Last year was not a good year for that, I'll admit. But it still wasn't that bad. We're both alive, and still not in prison."
"That's because you were right at the bottom of the priority list," Atropos said from right behind him, making him jump. He'd seen she was wearing knee-high hard-soled boots, and she'd
still snuck up on him.
"Jesus, don't
do that!" he protested, forgetting his intention of being polite as he turned to glare at her. "And what do you mean, 'priority list'?"
"It's a PRT thing," 'Bravo' said in a professorial tone. "When there's powerful capes they'd love to arrest and low-tier capes who aren't committing high-profile crimes, a sort of paralysis can set in. Going after the big names requires far more resources, and sometimes the powers that be can query if it's really worth putting all that effort into catching one cape, when the same level of force can theoretically roll up four or five lower-level ones. But if they commit to the lower-level ones, you get people—sometimes the very same people—asking why they're not focusing on the really dangerous capes."
He seemed to realise that both Brendan and Leet were staring at him, and he shrugged in a self-effacing way. "Sorry. I had to do a paper on it for one of my classes."
"Wait," Leet said, in a tone of disappointment. "You mean we're
not that good at hiding?"
"Pfft, hardly," 'Alpha' said dismissively. "My girl Atropos said, '
let's go visit Uber and Leet' and bingo, we came straight here."
"And don't worry," 'Bravo' said. "We're not going to tell the PRT where you are right now. This is purely a social call. Atropos is calling the shots, here."
"But why
are you here?" asked Brendan. "What do you want with us? If you're here to warn us to get out of town, trust me, telling us on PHO would've done the trick."
"Because I don't want you out of town just yet," Atropos explained. "In fact, I'm here to trade a favour for a favour. Leet, if we can just go into your workroom, I'd like to discuss the nitty-gritty with you. Uber, figure you can entertain my friends for a bit? Thanks."
Before either Brendan or Leet had the chance to object, she grabbed Leet by the arm and dragged him into the workroom. The door closed behind them.
"Well," remarked Bravo. "
That happened."
"Does it normally? Around Atropos, I mean?" Brendan had a sinking feeling he knew the answer.
"Pfft, when does it not?" Alpha grinned widely. "We met her in the park today for selfies, and before we were done, I had this as a present." She tapped the tiara. "It's genuine as fuck. Glory Girl tried to pull shit with Atropos, and did
not have a good time of it."
Brendan's eyes widened. "Holy shit.
The Glory Girl? She once dislocated Leet's shoulder. And Atropos beat her up?"
"Something like that," Bravo confirmed. "Just between you, me and the gatepost? Don't ever try to pull shit with Atropos. It's a bad, bad idea. We just torched millions of dollars worth of drugs, and she's going to keep doing it until the people sending it to Brockton Bay get the message."
Alpha pointed. "Hey, nice console setup. What games you got?" She headed over to get a better look.
"Whoa, hold back there," Bravo said reprovingly. "You can't just go poking around someone else's gaming gear."
"We've got all the classics," Brendan said, happy to show off with something that didn't make him feel second class. "You guys play? We've got a third controller around here somewhere if you're interested."
Bravo smiled in the same way that a card shark might, just before asking someone to explain how the game was played. "Oh, I've been known to sit down with my friends from time to time."
"Whoo yeah!" whooped Alpha, vaulting over the back of the sofa and grabbing up one of the controllers. "Let's
do this thing!"
"Sorry about her," Bravo said. "She gets … enthusiastic, from time to time."
Brendan shrugged as he went digging under the accumulated detritus of two guys living together for the third controller. "It's okay. Trust me, I've seen worse."
Alpha chuckled darkly. "Challenge …
accepted."
"No," Bravo said. "
Not challenge accepted. There was no challenge. Do not accept any challenges."
As Brendan located the other controller and plugged it in, he wondered why Bravo was so adamant that there was no challenge.
<><>
Half an hour later, he had his answer.
Alpha was a
maniac. Her rapid-fire delivery was nothing compared to her gameplay style. While her brother was skilled in his own right, with steady, competent button work, Alpha was chaos incarnate.
He'd never seen anything like it before, and he'd been gaming with Leet since there were console games to play. She alternated between reckless button-mashing, ridiculous off-the-wall plays, and occasional bursts of either madness or brilliance; he couldn't quite tell. While Brendan was specifically very good at controller use, she seemed to have an instinctive quality to outplay him at crucial moments, by doing something totally illogical
that still got her the win.
All in all, he was both relieved and disappointed when the work-room door opened, and Atropos emerged with Leet trailing behind. "Okay," said the black-costumed killer. "We're all agreed?"
"Yeah," Leet said. "I'll change the command recognition codes tonight. The other one will take a bit longer. Maybe a week, depending on how it goes."
"Good." Atropos' voice seemed to change, become somehow unearthly. "
Just don't screw it up."
"I, uh, won't?" Leet sounded more nervous than ever.
"Good." Atropos came over and leaned on the back of the sofa. "Okay, time to go."
"Aww, I was just getting my eye in," Alpha complained. "Bro, we need a gaming console."
"I'll see if I can ask for one." Bravo got up and dropped the controller on the sofa. "Thanks, Uber. Good game."
"Yeah, me too." Alpha jumped up, then planted her foot on a cushion and vaulted back over the sofa. "That was actually kinda fun."
"Good. Glad you enjoyed yourselves." Atropos straightened up and turned to face Brendan and Leet. "Over and above our arrangement, I'm going to leave you alone. But given that all the big gangs are out of action, you
are the big supervillain names in town right now, so you're probably on the top of the priority list all of a sudden. It might be an idea to keep your heads down anyway."
Somehow, the shears had found their way back into her hands, and she began spinning them one way and then the other, the razor-edged blades glinting in the light. "Oh, and I suggest you
never have another episode where people get hurt for real. Or you two and I will be having another chat. An extremely
brief one. Do I make myself clear?"
Brendan nodded. It didn't seem like a smart idea to do anything else. "Crystal."
"Good. I'm
so glad we understand each other."
<><>
PRT Building ENE, Director's Office
Director Emily Piggot
Emily eyed the Laborn boy. He seemed unharmed, though one foot kept twitching and he had to cradle the cup of coffee in both hands. She'd seen these signs before, usually in soldiers who'd spent too long in a hot zone. "Are you alright? Did she make you as a Ward?"
He chuckled hollowly. "In about the first ten seconds." A sip of the coffee seemed to steady his nerves. "But she wasn't worried by it. She knew exactly why I was there, and didn't even have a problem with me calling the Deputy Director."
Renick, sitting off to the side in his own chair, shared a glance with her. Then he posed his own question. "Did she threaten you or your sister to keep you in line?"
Laborn shook his head. "No. She didn't bother. The whole time we were with her, she was …
nice. Like she was making the extra effort to put us at our ease. She even told me flat-out that so long as the PRT and heroes in this town didn't aggress on her, she wouldn't hurt us. And even if one of us did, she promised not to kill them."
Emily shook her head. "Even having seen what she can do, that's a rather broad and sweeping claim. It presupposes an ability to harm or kill any hero in the city, if they happen to attack her. Did you see any capability that might bear that out?"
"She knows stuff she literally shouldn't," he said frankly. "Like the locations of those drug stash houses she destroyed. There was no checking of data, or making phone calls. She just had me drive straight there. She also knew where Uber and Leet's hideout was, and was able to enter the combination of a secure code-lock in just seconds. If she can do all that, then there's nothing stopping her from knowing any cape's weakness, or figuring out how to kill them."
Emily thought back to Shadow Stalker's autopsy. There had been a faint burn mark on the corpse.
Electrical? Did Atropos know to use electricity against her? God damn it.
"Uber and Leet?" Renick sat forward. "You know where they are?"
"She wanted a favour from Leet," Laborn said hastily. "We were essentially there under flag of truce. She asked me not to pass the location on to the PRT, and I'm honouring that."
Emily didn't like that, but she nodded. Truces between heroes and villains were to be respected, because there was no other way to induce the villains to stick to them when the heroes were on the weaker side. Still, that didn't mean she couldn't ask other questions. "Did you find out what she wanted from Leet?"
"No, they were in another room." Laborn paused. "But after they came out, she said she was okay with them staying in town, but they were probably a higher priority for the PRT now. And if they did any more shows where people got hurt, she'd pay them a very brief visit."
In other words, kill them. "Understood," she said. "What's your impression of her capabilities and her motives?"
He took a long drink from his coffee. "Capabilities? Utterly terrifying," he confessed. "When we were in the warehouse, she had me fill it with my darkness … which she flat-out ignored. She said something about how sight is overrated, then went straight into the darkness and started subduing guards. A little earlier than that, the first drug house she torched, she went in there alone, they all pulled guns … and she killed every single one before they could open fire on her. Because she didn't want anyone endangered by bullets flying through walls. As for motives … well, she's not in it for money. She walked straight past a literal pallet of cash and didn't take a dime. In fact, she deliberately burned it."
He drew a long breath, then let it out. "There's one more thing. Something I think we need to keep on the down-low."
"We're listening," Renick said encouragingly.
Laborn seemed to consider his words. "When we were in the park with her, there was an encounter with Glory Girl. We were posing for a group camera selfie when Glory Girl attacked from behind, aiming for Atropos. But because we were standing close together, she would've gotten all of us. Aisha could've been badly hurt.
I could've been badly hurt."
"What happened?" asked Emily.
He shrugged. "Atropos shouted a warning at the last instant and pushed us away, then dropped flat. Glory Girl demolished the picnic table. Atropos and I both warned her to back off, but she wouldn't. Then Atropos did something with a coin, and Glory Girl inhaled it on her next pass, and started choking. Panacea arrived just as Atropos was holding her shears right next to Glory Girl's eye."
Renick shook his head. "She'd never get through Glory Girl's invincibility."
"Except she did, sir." Laborn gestured to his eyes with one hand. "She snipped off a couple of Glory Girl's eyelashes, and she kept on smacking her on the forehead with those shears to prove she
could hurt her. Then she got a promise from Panacea for a favour if she didn't spill the beans about Glory Girl nearly hurting me and Aisha. Also, she confiscated Glory Girl's tiara and gave it to Aisha."
"Ah." Emily shared another glance with Renick. "I do see what you mean. We'll need a more complete written report about the whole event. Though did she say anything about the favour she wanted?"
"No, ma'am." Laborn looked pensive. "Just that it wouldn't be 'hugely illegal', whatever that means."
"Understood." There was no way Emily wanted to queer any deal Atropos had with Panacea.
She's probably setting aside an option for emergency healing, just in case. It sounded as though Glory Girl had learned a salutary lesson anyway. "Your overall impression of Atropos?"
"Impossibly skilled, inhumanly capable, effectively psychic, possibly precognitive," rattled off Laborn. "But she was human enough to not kill anyone in the warehouse, because she could see I was starting to get antsy over all the death. Didn't get angry with me, just pivoted to '
okay, we're not killing anyone this time' and got the job done. And she positively doted over Aisha." His head came up. "Oh, there was also the incident of the drug dealer she threw out the window to save Aisha."
Emily raised her eyebrows. "Details, please."
"We were in the car, waiting downstairs while Atropos deprived our mother of every last drug in her possession. But her dealer showed up, and left his hired muscle downstairs. One of them noticed us and came over. Aisha smarted off to him, things escalated, and he was just pulling a gun when the dealer landed on him from the third floor. Atropos had thrown him out the window."
"There was a police report of a dead man in the stairwell there," Renick noted. "Shot in the face. Atropos?"
Laborn nodded. "Almost certainly. That would be the other bodyguard. He pulled his gun before he went in."
Emily shook her head at the idiocy of some people. "Well, I'm pleased you made it through the ordeal unscathed. How was your sister at the end of the day?"
For the first time, Laborn smiled. "She's over the moon. Atropos brought along a Polaroid camera, and gave us both signed selfies with her. Aisha also got to go along and watch as Atropos destroyed literally millions of dollars' worth of drugs. It's made her entire
year."
"And how are you holding up, young man?" asked Renick. "It can't have been easy, to have someone who's killed so many people within arm's reach like that."
"Still a bit jittery," admitted Laborn. "But Aisha had an amazing day, and I think that makes it worth it."
"Good," said Emily. Now came the sixty-four-million-dollar question. "If and when your sister makes another arrangement to meet with Atropos, do you feel up to accompanying her again?"
Laborn drew a deep breath then held it, seeming to think about the question. Finally, he nodded. "Yeah. I can do that."
Renick stood. "Good lad," he said heartily. "You've done well. Go and relax for the time being. Unwind. You've earned it."
"Thank you, sir." Laborn stood up as well, and nodded toward Emily. "Ma'am." Turning, he headed out of the office, taking the coffee cup with him.
Emily waited for the door to close before she turned to Renick. "What do you think?"
Renick rubbed his jaw. "A little rough on the boy," he said judiciously. "But worth it overall, I think. The information that Atropos doesn't intend to hurt our people is very good to have."
"True," Emily said dryly. "Now, if only we could convince all the
other idiots to not get in her way."
He snorted gently in amusement. "I'm only a Deputy Director, ma'am. Not a miracle worker."
<><>
Later That Night
Atropos
I sat in Dad's car in a turnoff, just inside the Brockton Bay city limits. We had the windows open for ventilation, and so I could hear the traffic. There wasn't much at the moment, which was good. I didn't need any misguided good Samaritans trying to intervene on the other side's behalf.
"Five minutes," I said. "I've said this before, but I'll say it again. There'll be a lead car and a chase car. Each one will have three men in it. The driver's a regular truck driver who doesn't know what he's carrying; he's been offered twice the normal pay to get it into Brockton Bay tonight. There's a secondary location that Accord doesn't think I know about."
"Are you going to do something about it?" asked Dad. "I mean, since they won't have any drugs to distribute?"
"Not at the moment." I leaned back in the seat and relaxed. "I'll let him pay their wages and waste his money until they actually start earning it, at which point I'll cut them off."
"How about Accord himself?" he asked. "You did say something about how people sending their underlings to the Bay wouldn't get away with it either."
"Oh, he'll get the message when I destroy this shipment." I checked the pockets of my long-coat. I wouldn't need my last grenade until tomorrow, but the road flares should come in handy, as would the hand-held two-way radio. I'd scored it from the Dockworkers' Association, and done a little work on it to get it to the right channel. "The man may be nuttier than squirrel shit, but he's unlikely to throw good money after bad. Besides, I've got a use for him in the long term."
Dad shuddered. "The poor bastard," he muttered. I was pretty sure he'd intended for me to hear it.
I smirked. "If he didn't want to get mixed up in my business, he shouldn't be selling drugs in Brockton Bay."
We fell silent then, listening to the
vroooom of cars and trucks passing by. When the clock in my head ticked over to one minute, I removed my glasses and put them in the centre console, then opened the door and got out. My mask went on, and then my hat. I retrieved the duffel-bag from the floor of the car, and closed the door. "Stay in the car," I said.
In the semi-darkness, he shook his head; in worry, not negation. "I wish this didn't have to be you."
"It would've been nice if someone did this before I had to," I said with a shrug. "Nobody did, so it's up to me."
I turned away from the car and made my way out of the turnoff toward the side of the road. Even in winter, the trees were thick enough to make spotting Dad's car nigh-impossible unless someone drove down that exact turnoff. With ten seconds to go, I dropped the duffel in the shadows then stepped out onto the edge of the road, drawing my pistol.
The lead car, going like a demon, roared around the corner far up ahead, briefly lighting me up with its high beams. The driver and passengers, keyed up as they were, would be asking themselves, '
was that her, or was it just a shadow?'. The speed limit was seventy, and they were sitting exactly on that, getting closer to me at just over one hundred feet for every second that passed.
Unhurriedly, I raised my pistol. The range was six hundred feet. Five hundred. Four hundred. The driver decided that I was no shadow, and began to edge toward me, aiming to clip me with the corner of his fender and ragdoll me into the trees. Three hundred.
I fired three times, during which interval the car covered another fifty feet toward me. The most immediate effect of this was that the windshield starred all the way across, then crumpled inward due to wind-rush. With the driver and both passengers dead or dying, I switched aim to the driver's side front wheel and shot it out.
The last two shell-casings tinkled to the gravel at the side of the road as the car blew past, already swerving toward the Jersey barrier in the middle of the road. It struck, spun out, then flipped. I'd already put it out of my mind when I turned back to look down the road.
Raising the two-way to my face, I toggled the press-to-talk switch. "Breaker, breaker," I said. "White Peterbilt, license plate ending in Bravo Golf Two, prepare to stop. This is not a request. Atropos, out."
Dropping the radio back into my pocket, I moved into the pool of illumination cast by a streetlight and raised the pistol as the eighteen-wheeler came into view. At first, it slowed; I heard the distinctive sound of a downshift. But then it accelerated again. I smiled grimly under my mask. It seemed that there was someone in that cab who didn't want to do what I said.
Well, he heard my name. He was warned.
At five hundred feet, I fired a single shot. The semi was of a type that had two panels for the windshield, so only the passenger side starred out. Immediately, the eighteen-wheeler began to slow down again, applying brakes and gears as only a master of the art of truck driving can do.
Before it came to a complete halt, I had holstered my pistol and was running up to the passenger side. I scrambled up onto the running board, then hoisted myself up onto the cab, using the wing mirror as a brace for my foot. From there I took a running jump onto the top of the trailer itself.
The chase car came blazing around the corner at this point. I wasn't sure if they could see me, but they could certainly see that the vehicle they were charged with shepherding all the way into Brockton Bay was stopped at the side of the road.
Also, there were four more men in the trailer itself, hemmed about with crates that would stop gunfire from the side but allow them to shoot at anyone opening the rear doors. I drew my pistol again, and fired four shots down into the top of the trailer. Well, there
had been four men in the trailer. Now there were four corpses.
A shot winged past me, just close enough for me to notice it, and another
pinged off the corner of the trailer. It seemed the men in the car had noticed me. Which meant they
could have chosen to drive past peacefully, turn around, and slink back to Boston to give the bad news to Accord … or they could choose to commit suicide.
Suicide it was, then. I fired four times, and the car veered off the road into the trees. Contrary to popular belief spread by Hollywood, it did not burst into flames. I was vaguely disappointed. The next car I sent careening off the road, I decided, would explode into flames in proper action-movie style.
The driver, huddled in his seat, jumped when I swung down alongside his door and tapped on his window. He rolled it down, looking at me as though he expected to die at any second. "I'm not part of it," he quavered. "I just drive. They never tell me what's in the back."
"And that's fine with me," I said. "I want you to unhitch this thing from the trailer, and then take a message back to whoever you work for in Boston. Can you do that for me?"
He nodded urgently, very willing to cooperate with me. "I can totally do that for you."
While he was unhitching the prime mover from the trailer, I went and collected the duffel, then climbed into the back of the trailer. The eighteen-wheeler had been carrying washing machines, or so the crates that greeted me said. I appreciated the irony. Passing by two of the crates, I took the pry-bar out of the duffel and levered the top off a third. Within was stacks and stacks of cash; the money Accord had sent to pay his dealers to keep dealing in the face of my threats.
It took me awhile to put enough of it into the duffel to work for what I wanted, then I zipped the bag up and went to the back of the truck. Outside, I could hear the prime mover's engine rumbling as the driver rolled it forward, away from the now abandoned trailer.
Pulling out a road flare, I lit it up and tossed it onto the open crate of cash. The rest of the trailer would catch soon enough, and the entire shipment would become one huge bonfire in the middle of I-95. I jumped down and headed forward to where the truck driver was nervously waiting for me alongside his truck.
"Here," I said, holding the duffel out to him. "Give this to your boss, and tell him to pass it on to Accord. Tell him that this is payment for a service. Also tell him that I've already contacted Accord and told him exactly how much is coming through. Then I suggest you find another line of work. This one might get unhealthy."
He took the bag, staring at me as smoke started to curl out the back of the trailer. "Are you insane?" He shook his head. "You're paying him to do something with
his own money?"
"As soon as it entered my city, it stopped being his money," I said. "Pass on exactly what I said. No more and no less. Understood?"
He nodded jerkily. "Understood."
"Good." I watched as he climbed awkwardly into the cab, weighed down by the duffel bag. The heavy door slammed shut, and I heard the
clunk as the truck dropped into gear. It rolled off, gathering speed, the driver no doubt wondering if I was going to kill him even now.
I strolled back across the road to the turn-off, then pulled my phone out. As I watched more and more smoke begin to pour out of the back end of the open trailer, I dialled a particular number.
"
Who is this and how did you get this number?" demanded a sharp, precise voice.
"Good evening, Accord," I said. "This is Atropos. I'm calling to let you know that your shipment has been unavoidably destroyed. This is formal notice that you don't get to sell your drugs in my city, now or ever. Nor does anyone else."
There was silence for a minute, before he spoke again. "
Nobody speaks to me like that and lives."
"You'd think so. Everyone who's tried it with me has died. Now, we can be enemies—briefly—or we can have a working relationship. It's your choice. Would you rather waste resources attempting to regain your foothold in Brockton Bay, or be paid to do what you do best?"
Again, there was silence for exactly sixty seconds.
"I'm listening."
"Excellent. I'm sending the truck driver back to you with exactly five hundred thousand dollars in a duffel bag. He will deliver it to his boss, who will pass it along to you. In return, I will be needing a plan for revitalising Brockton Bay at all levels, including dealing with the fallout of a total hard drug prohibition on the whole city, assuming an initial cash influx into the city of approximately ninety-seven million dollars, with more to follow later." I didn't ask if he could deliver. That would've been the greatest insult of all.
This time, the pause was only ten seconds.
"I can have it finished by Wednesday."
"Good. I'll contact you then, and let you know where to have it delivered to."
"
Understood." He ended the call, regaining what little control he could. I was okay with that.
As I headed back down the turnoff to where Dad waited, I tapped in another number. The voice that answered was feminine and somewhat warmer than Accord's sharp tones. "
Hello?"
"Hey, frenemy mine," I greeted her. "I've got a proposition for you."
Dragon sighed. "
I thought I said we'd see about the frenemy thing."
I injected faux surprise into my tone. "So, you don't want to come help me kill off the Nine tomorrow?"
Her voice changed, becoming considerably more alert. "
Where would you like me to pick you up from?"
"I'll call and let you know."
"I'll be waiting."
"See you then."
Ending the call and dropping the phone into my pocket with a grin, I headed back down the turnoff to where Dad waited. He looked up as I got into the car.
"So, are we all done?" he asked.
"We are," I said, and pulled off my hat and mask. He handed me my glasses, and I put them on. "Let's go home. I've got a big day tomorrow."
"You got it." He started the car.
A thought occurred to me. "Dad?"
"Yeah?"
"Where can I get a fire extinguisher from?"
He sighed. "We'll swing past the Dockworkers' offices again."
I smiled. "You're the best."
End of Part Nineteen
