Little Hunter
Nanku didn't linger.
Sentiment for the dead was a human condition. The Yautja mourned and moved on. Pe'dte barely knelt over her dead sons for minutes before destroying the bodies.
And Danny Hebert had been dead a long time.
Returning to the rooftops, Nanku continued her survey with renewed vigor. From the area near the memorial, she recognized more places and names. More streets. The Dockworker's building, and some of the neighborhoods.
Still, it had changed.
When she was young, there were places she'd learned not to go. Dangerous places. Some her mother or father warned her about. Others she learned on her own.
She found a few, but they didn't seem dangerous. One was a strip of restaurants and shops, all nicer than anything she expected to find. Men and women went up and down the street with their children. Fathers and sons. Mothers and daughters.
She cycled her mask, switching from one vision mode to another.
Of all the gifts Pe'dte gave her growing up, the mask was Nanku's favorite. It expanded her vision far beyond anything her eyes alone could see, and all it required was a small implant in her temple. She could see more, from electricity behind walls, to temperature, to the physical and biological reactions of those on the ground.
Life throughout the galaxy had certain similarities, she'd learned. Pheromones were one. A fear response was another.
Animals under duress were tense. Wary and on guard.
The people in the street…
Nanku turned her head away and sat on the roof corner.
Animals.
She'd seen many. Big and small. Quick and strong. She'd hunted most and knew that the Yautja had been to Earth before. Many times. Not her clan specifically, but others. There were only a few animals on Earth worth hunting.
She'd always known humans were one of them, but she'd never explicitly thought about it before.
She came to hunt her father's killer, and whoever was responsible for the massacre at the camp. They deserved to die. The souls of the dead deserved justice. Nanku needed justice, for them and for Taylor as much as herself.
On her first hunt, she'd been afraid. It was a simple creature. Something only capable of harming her but unlikely to kill. The scraggly little thing with six legs and stubby teeth. It was quick and crafty.
Pe'dte set her to do it so she could blood herself. Learn about death.
The Yautja had a way of looking at death that took her years to understand.
And the question 'would I hunt a human' was a stupid one.
Life was life.
Death was death.
Everything that lived died, and killed. From cows eating grass to humans eating meat to hunters dancing the line between life and death. That dance, the hunt, was the only way to truly understand.
Nanku looked to her other side.
Dusk and Dawn flew overhead, looking down at the lot below. Stepping up and peering over the side, Nanku watched a man and a woman engaged in some kind of exchange. Several paper strips passed between their hands, followed by a bag of white powder going the other way.
Money.
The Yautja didn't do 'money.' That might be an obstacle to navigate.
Nanku settled into a crouch.
Perhaps the dangers had not changed as much as she expected. Searching the building behind the men, she found a basement full of barely dressed women managing packages of the powder. The bugs inside were strange. A strong chemical lingered in the air.
Drugs and crime. That was the Brockton Bay she'd known as a child.
The train yard north of the docks was active. She couldn't make out much, but she
knew that part of the city was dangerous and mostly abandoned. Or it had been.
The ferry hadn't been running either.
Nanku watched the ship leave the ferry station and navigate around the shallower water of the Boat Graveyard. That she remembered, and she knew her father had spent years trying to get the city to reopen the ferry station.
She took some solace that his 'hunt' ended in success, even if he didn't live to see it.
Now if only she could hunt the location of her house.
The twins didn't see it, and that confused her. Nanku didn't think she could forget her home. Former home.
She spent the first ten years of her life there.
Though, more time to think before facing her mother wasn't a bad thing. Explaining where she'd been, how she survived, let alone her armor or the twins. Some of those were out of the question. A hunter didn't lie, but Nanku didn't intend to expose her family. They didn't really hunt on Earth, but other clans might blame them if anything went wrong.
Police would no doubt start asking around if her return became known. She'd need to prepare for that. Make sure she had a good, plausible, explanation.
Ironically, her mother's treatment might be the best one she had.
Why would any girl want to go back to that?
She could handle that, and she needed to. Her mother might know things about her father's death and the camp. Nanku needed information. A lot of information. The kind of information humans kept on paper or in computers, or in their own minds. A very different sort of trail.
Facing her mother was inevitable, and Nanku was no coward.
Just not yet.
She turned south. Along the rooftops, Nanku continued her reconnaissance. Mapping the city would be useful regardless of how she proceeded. Between her mask and the twins, she had a good image of the northern half, but much of the city's center and more affluent areas were in the south.
The buildings were taller, and the streets tighter. Nanku mapped the county courthouse thoroughly and the police station adjacent to it. The local library—a place she knew well even after too many years—sat just across the open square. The records in all three buildings would be valuable when she got down to the grit of her task.
It was easier to move around the downtown area than she expected.
More bugs, more people, more electricity.
More ways to be seen if she wasn't careful but far more ways to obscure any possible sign of her passage. The cloak did shimmer, and there were many windows. Nanku drew the bugs closer and started tracking where people were lurking. If they might see her, she flew a fly at them or ran a spider across their hand. Something to draw their attention away.
The people in the windows were not her greatest concern.
Some people could fly.
The twins' eyes spotted the pair in the distance, and Nanku directed both onto the nearest roof. The twins crawled into the shadows of the loud AC units and went still. Nanku climbed up the roof, pulling herself over the lip just as the boys flew overhead.
One in red and gold armor she recognized. Kid-something. He'd debuted just before camp. One of the capes who built things.
The other boy was new. Younger, lankier. He flew on his own power rather than riding a board as Kid did.
They passed by, and Nanku hauled herself up to chase.
She didn't chase far. Moving deeper toward the inner city, she dropped to street level to cross a road. Dusk and Dawn flew back into the air and shadowed the pair from a distance. The two boys landed on a rooftop with a helicopter pad, talking as they casually went toward the door.
Nanku scaled a building with her wrist blades, scampering up the side and pulling herself onto a jutting cornerstone between two windows. Dusk and Dawn parted, each landing on a different roof and providing her a full view of the building. It was tall and broad, built of marble and glass.
Along the front, a sign hung over the door.
Parahuman Response Team East-North-East.
Nanku settled in a crouch.
She could hear the boys talking, but making out the words with nearby bugs was hard.
She set her mask to the task, filtering for acoustics and pressing a button on her gauntlet. The computer sputtered and whirled. Moments later, voices filled her ears, each capped with a rough-mechanical sound.
"—not happy about it," Kid said. "My career is over before it begins."
"It's not that bad," the other boy said.
"Yes, it is." Kid opened the door into the building but turned to face his compatriot. "The Undersiders run Brockton Bay, and everyone knows we let them."
"We're keeping the peace?"
"We're aiding villains."
"It's not that—"
The voice cut out as they went inside, leaving Nanku to track them with what few insects were in the building. The filters in the ventilators and the seals on the doors and windows were tight. She could map out the rooms in her mind—and the basement lairs below—but it wasn't enough.
Weighing the possibility, she was sure she couldn't slip into the building unnoticed. Not without a very well-made plan.
The building was a fortress.
Weapons hidden in walls. Sensors on every door and window. Cameras. Multiple security rooms, including cameras watching the men watching the screens. Many rooms were shut behind secured doors with electric locks and were completely sealed. Black boxes in her mind's vision.
She didn't like that.
And she doubted the giant oil rig with the shimmering shield around it would be any easier to get in and out of. That lay in the bay, surrounded by water. As a child, she knew they had a bridge of some sort, but that wasn't the kind of entry she wanted to rely on.
She'd had time to plan on the way to Earth. Time to think. If anyone knew what happened at the summer camp—or had an idea—it would be the heroes. She'd forgotten many of their names and costumes, but she knew what they did. Few people on Earth knew aliens existed, and those who did were written off as crazy.
Humans would think the R'ka were something parahuman related. Pe'dte destroyed the evidence. First, in Africa where the bad bloods crashed their stolen ship. Again across Europe, while she chased the eggs some fool of a human stole and finally over the ocean.
It was a long trail. Surely some of the investigators who followed in the wake of Pe'dte's departure with Taylor figured some things out. None of the campers but Nanku herself survived. They'd have little to go on, but maybe they knew what the logo was.
For all she knew, the world she left behind had already solved the mystery.
That would be convenient.
Lift the names and faces of those responsible, hunt them down, and
skin them alive for what they'd done.
Getting into the building and finding what she needed would take time, however. It wouldn't be done in a night.
The police station a few blocks over was far less secure. That she could get in and out of, she was sure. A place to start, at least.
Another option was the library, but on the way there Nanku noticed the lake.
She turned from the PRT building and gave it a berth as she went around.
A vast lake sat in the near center of the city. It was cordoned off by concrete walls with roads redirected around it. A single island at the center was actually a hilltop with half-sunken buildings jutting out of the water. As if a hole simply opened up one day, and several blocks of Brockton Bay sank inside.
That had not been there before.
She was certain. She'd remember a lake!
Nanku sat and breathed. Dusk and Dawn landed to either side, the giant insects encircling her like their mother's drones had done.
The sight felt like a giant reminder that she'd been gone a long time.
Some parts of the city she recognized, but only vaguely. Others were completely different or unknown. How did a lake appear? So much had changed in ten years. She'd failed to consider that.
What would she do if those responsible for the camp were already dead?
What if it had been too long to learn the truth of her father's death?
Did her mother drink herself to death when she never came back?
Dawn clapped her jaws and hissed. Nanku nodded, scratching the hornet's neck once more.
"Such a charmer," she whispered.
If her prey were dead or the mysteries answered, there was nothing to be done. She'd have to find that out first. She needed information.
The city's terrain was simple enough to map and chart thanks to her bugs and the computer systems attached to her mask.
She also needed to know what kinds of prey she was dealing with. Who and where. There'd been gangs before. She doubted they'd diminished with what she'd seen just running around in one night.
Kid Whoever mentioned the 'Undersiders.' Nanku didn't recognize the name, but knowing who they were would be valuable. She also recalled a website of some kind filled with information about capes.
Know her prey.
That was an area Nanku excelled at.
Glancing down from the roof again, she watched the people come and go along the street. A boardwalk had been built around the edges of the lake as if the people of the city had simply accepted its existence. People, like the city, were familiar but alien to her.
She recognized them, of course. Their faces were her face under the mask. Soft and pink, lacking in the ferocity of her adopted family. They wore fine clothes and ate luxurious food. Spoke with one another openly. Men and women kissed. Others walked with a stroller or carried their infants.
One—a girl in her teen years—held a small device in her hands.
A cellphone.
Nanku rose curiously. She'd forgotten cell phones. Her mother forbade them after reporters wouldn't stop calling. Constant ringing for weeks, all while she buried herself in bottles, and Nanku fled to Emma's house to escape. Her mother went to the hospital for a time. Aunt Zoe said she'd nearly killed herself.
An older bitterness filled her mouth, and Nanku pushed the memories aside.
Just another sort of ghost, one she intended to bury deep.
"Cellphone," she mumbled, testing the word.
Guiding Dusk and Dawn back, Nanku rose to her feet and searched. The devices were everywhere. Nearly everyone had one, even children. They'd changed in size and shape a bit. Flatter but wider screens. People watched movies, listened to music, and read text.
The internet.
The Yautja didn't have internet. They didn't bother with such things, except maybe the engineers. They mostly liked engineering.
On Earth, however, there were phones everywhere and computers too. Connections. She saw them in her mask. A maze of energy feeding information networks.
Every hunter needed information. She could search the internet for the logo Pe'dte followed. Maybe she could learn about her mother's whereabouts—if Annette Hebert was even alive—and any information about the camp or her father.
She could use money too.
There was game out in the woods. She'd seen signs on her way into the city, but the distance was too great. She couldn't leave to get food for herself, let alone Dusk and Dawn. She needed to find sources within Brockton Bay itself, at least while she was there.
Food and shelter.
Nanku sighed.
She would have preferred something simpler, but easy wasn't worth doing.
She'd mapped the city, at least. Well enough to work with.
So that left her to prioritize.
Food. Shelter. Information. Money to facilitate the other three as needed. She had a year. She should make use of it.
At the sound of shouting, Nanku craned her head around.
In a building a block over, two men struck one another.
Several others, all armed and smelling of drugs to the bugs in the room were watching, cheering, or shouting. Positioning bugs, Nanku watched the way the two men in the center of the ring moved. The fighters were striking one another with practiced movements.
They'd been trained to fight.
Searching the building itself, she found apartments. Many of them filled with people.
It seemed normal.
The basement was strange. There was an extensive sprawl of rooms running under the apartments. A hot one, a cold one. One with electricity running through it. Three were filled with containers and crates. The men occupied one such chamber within. Crawling around in search, she was certain she found packed and uniform white bricks, all sealed in plastic.
Many of them.
More drugs and more criminals.
Bad bloods.
Bad bloods with prizes she could make use of.
Directing the twins ahead, Nanku ran to the end of her block and jumped. Dawn swung down, one talon extended. Nanku grabbed hold of the digit, and while Dawn buckled under the weight, she remained in the air long enough for Nanku to be thrown the full distance across the street.
Landing with a roll, she stood and approached a series of air conditioners. Four in total.
Curious.
One set ran to the building itself, the other to the basement.
Settling in, Nanku waited and observed the men. They were violent. Loud and celebratory too. Some cheered the fighting men on. None tried to stop them. A few names came up in the conversation. 'Coil' wasn't one she knew, nor 'Victor.' Hookwolf sounded vaguely familiar. In a bad way.
The Internet would be handy. If she intended to hunt in Brockton Bay, she needed to know the other predators. Capes were dangerous in and of themselves. Far more than most humans. Young bloods were practically banned from hunting on Earth simply because few clans wanted to risk their youths against such dangerous prey.
It took a few minutes for the fight to end, and almost as soon as it did, another began. Money exchanged hands. More cheers and shouts mixed with groans and grumbles. She couldn't make any of the words out, but it seemed like the entire purpose of the gathering was to fight.
Fight and exchange money. With drugs in the back room. No one died though, so they weren't that serious.
It was a game, not a challenge.
Biding her time, Nanku waited the hours until the games ended, and the men began trading off with new men who entered through several doors. None were concealed, but none stood out either. Nanku wouldn't guess they all led to the same place without her power and mask to tell her otherwise.
Picking one of the leaving men—the tallest who'd fought several fights—Nanku left her hiding spot and came around the backside of the building.
She watched as the door opened and her prey stepped outside.
The first thing he did was check his phone. The second was light a cigarette. With those two tasks done, he turned to leave.
Nanku kept her steps quiet and followed her quarry.
Impatient hunters died young.
Nanku planned to live as long as possible.
***
Foreshadowing! Or post-shadowing. Whatever.
Beta'd by
@Grim Tide.
