Nightcrawler [OC, Case-53]

[Redcoat_Officer]

Lookout – 3.02

Jaeger has a van waiting for me outside. It looks normal enough from the outside; a faded and dirty white vehicle of the type that're as common as anything on the roads around here. Even the man behind the wheel looks normal enough, with his slightly portly frame and one of those vests made from that blinding yellow-green material that's so popular among Seattle's craftspeople for some unknown reason.

It's the sort of vehicle I've started to see as just part of the background of the city, part of what I have come to consider normal. Parked next to Ember's flashy sports car, with its richly-maintained blue paintjob, it looks utterly miserable, and completely mundane.

At least, until Jaeger pulls open the sliding door on its side. The van's interior couldn't look more different from its exterior, perfectly clean and sickeningly well-lit when compared to the grime that covers its sides. Jaeger steps in without waiting to see if I follow, so I swallow down the faint sense of unease that comes as I step under the bright white lights and clamber up behind him.

Once my eyes adjust to the light, the first things I notice are the two heavily-armed men sitting on a bench opposite me. I'm no stranger to being around armed strangers by now, but there's a world of difference between Ember's people and these ghoulish figures.

Ember cares a lot about how the world sees her and her district, and her people reflect that. The most people see of her security are the bouncers, whose neatly-ironed suits are about as close to civilian wear as it's possibly for a beefy security guard to get. The reaction teams wear uniforms, sure, and some of them are as well armed as Jaeger's men, but there's always an effort to keep them looking at least a little bit approachable.

With the blotchy earthen tones of their clothing and the full-face masks covering their faces, Jaeger's men just look like a death squad. It's made worse by the way they're looking at me so coldly, without any of the warm fondness I've started to see on the eyes of the security here. Wordlessly, one of them stands up and brushes past me to pull the door shut, trapping me in here.

I look away from the pair, over to Jaeger in the back of the van. He's surrounded by radio equipment and some more of those screens everyone uses. The back doors of the van are completely non-functional, being covered by a map mounted on a pegboard. The city it shows is immediately recognisable to me. I still don't really know a lot about this city, but I know enough to recognise its shape on a map. I can even point to the Red-Light district; far enough above the University District to maintain a professional distance while being close enough to draw in the district's students – as both employees and customers, depending on how well-off they are.

Jaeger is standing next to the map, holding onto a handle on the side of the van as it lurches off and we start to make our way through the city streets. I find my eyes drawn to the holster on his thigh, and the pistol inside it. He looks down at me for a moment, his eyes blank and expressionless behind his half-face mask, cast into shadow by the brow of his helmet. He seems to be assessing me, his eyes looking me up and down like an officer might look at a column of marching troops, his gaze hardening with every imperfection he spots in their uniforms or drill.

"I assume Ember hasn't told you much about where the Triad are strongest?" he asks me, after satisfying his curiosity. I have no way of knowing if I've passed or failed his cursory inspection.

He doesn't wait for me to answer, instead gesturing to the map, his hand sweeping over the upper-half of the city, above the channel that divides Seattle in two.

"We're going to Ballard, on the other side of Green Lake from the Red-Light district. It's the Triad's heartland, and it's been that way since they first arrived in the city. When they broke away from us, they took about half of our pet gangs in South Seattle with them, and that's where most of the fighting for this gang war has been taking place. Which means they aren't going to be keeping anything important there."

He takes a light-blue marker pen from a clip on the wall and starts to mark out sections of the map, outlining the Triad's area of influence. Their territory north of the Fremont Cut, the one we're heading towards, is a thick line that covers a large chunk of the city, with clearly defined borders. Their southern territory is less regular, a crosshatch of random areas of influence stretched between residential areas and the supporting industry around the docks.

I've never been that far south – the glowing towers of downtown form a pretty effective wall, and I haven't yet been able to muster up the courage to creep past them – and, looking at the map, I don't want to. If that's where most of the fighting is, I'd much rather stay up here in the dark city, where it's safe.

"We know where their territory is, but they played their cards pretty close to the chest even when they were our partners," Jaeger continues. "I've pulled you away from your cushy job because I need to get a clear picture of where their assets are within their territory. I'm talking about arms caches, drug labs, storerooms, safehouses and boltholes. Any of the infrastructure they need to keep their gang running."

He sets his pen aside, leaning in close as the van lurches around a corner.

"I need you to be like a ghost. A bogeyman hiding under their beds. If they see you near one of their sites, they'll close it up and move it somewhere else. Leave the fighting to the professionals; your job is reconnaissance and reconnaissance only. Understood?"

I nod, eagerly. As far as I'm concerned, wild horses couldn't drag me into a fight. I mean, when I'm in the Red-Light district I'll help the guards take down rowdy customers, but there's a world of difference between stepping in to defend the people I like and willingly going out to fight a bunch of armed gangsters.

"Good. We'll be launching the operation from here," he says, pointing at a spot on the outskirts of Ballard that I quickly work to memorise. "We're almost there," he says, his hand drifting over to a switch on the wall, "so I'll give your eyes some time to adjust."

The moment he flicks the switch, the harsh white lights cut out, to be replaced a second later by sparse red bulbs that provide just enough light to see by. I let out a breath I hadn't realised I'd been holding in, and start to centre myself as I prepare for the task at hand.

A couple of bangs sound out, as the driver raps twice on the sheet of metal dividing him from the rest of us, and one of Jaeger's men stands up from his seat, moving over to the door. I turn, putting my back to Jaeger and getting ready to spring out.

"Once you find something, report back here and we'll mark it on the map. Good luck," Jaeger finishes dispassionately, like he's aware it's expected of him but not entirely sure why.

The van lurches as it comes to a sudden stop, the soldier hauling the door open the moment it starts to slow. I pounce out the moment the first red glow illuminates the faded wood-panelled side of an old house. The moment my tail clears the van, the soldier pulls the door closed, leaving me alone in the pitch-black driveway of a derelict suburban neighbourhood.

I slip into the darkness, creeping up the side of the building and onto the roof. Looking around, it's clear that they've parked up in an old suburban neighbourhood that was slated for demolition after Leviathan's passing. A lot of places in this part of the city look much the same way; derelict or half-demolished houses ringed by old construction sites.

Ember says that, back in the first year or two after Leviathan hit the city, space was at a premium. The people were keen to get out of the refugee camps, and there was a lot more demand for housing than there was space to provide it. So they started tearing down the water-damaged houses in this part of the city and replacing them with four-story blocks of regular apartments.

Construction has slowed since that first mad rush – following a couple of high-profile fires and one building collapse – but I'm sure the construction companies will get around to this place someday. Or maybe it'll get tied up in red tape, like that old factory I used to sleep in, and stay a ruin forever.

I cast a last glance at the van – its faded paint and utilitarian shape perfectly in keeping with a vehicle that's been left in the site overnight by some workers who just wanted to get back early – and leap off the rooftop, dipping into the shadows to land safely on the street below.

I duck out of the shadows, sprinting under the street's one light before slowing my pace as I hit an alleyway between two low-rise apartment buildings, faint chinks of light showing behind some of the curtained windows. A sound up ahead has me ducking into the shadows beneath a dumpster, edging forwards until I can look out at the alleyway while still remaining hidden.

It's just a man, dressed in hard-worn clothes and moving at a quick – if unsteady – pace to the door to one of the apartment blocks. He fumbles with his jacket for a few moments, muttering to himself all the while, before pulling out a key and stepping into the house.

From the sound of his mutterings and the unsteadiness of his walk, I think he was just a drunk coming home. It's late; late enough that most people are either already asleep or fast on their way. It narrows down the number of people I need to watch, but even then it'll be difficult to tell who's out on Triad business and who's just out. It's not like they wear a uniform or anything, just the occasional light-blue armband when they want to tell who's who in a fight.

I can't just start following random people – if nothing else, that doesn't sound very productive – so I need to be a little smarter about this. The moment the man has stepped into the building, I slip out from under the dumpster and practically soar through the shadowed wall of the building, up four stories and onto the roof.

Ember might not think rooftops are all that useful, but that's because she's stuck on two legs. When you can move as fast and as far as I can, the rooftops are even faster than the streets. The rooftops in this part of the city are even better; they're fairly regular in size, and just tall enough that they're above the height of the streetlights. That means plenty of darkness for me to work with.

I start to leap from building to building, accelerating through the shadows of the rooftop before using that momentum to fling my physical body across the gaps. At the speeds I'm moving, there's not much of a chance of anyone spotting me and anyone who does manage to catch a glimpse might just dismiss me as a trick of the light.

As I soar through the air, feeling the wind rushing along my sides and whipping my tail behind me before plunging into the darkness of the next rooftop like a diver, I almost feel like laughing. It feels so good to be here again. In the distance, maybe a mile and half away, sits the abandoned factory I first met Mike in. I still can't think of that place without feeling a swell of painful memories, but the rest of the streets around here bring out an entirely different sort of emotions.

When I was only just starting to understand this city, these streets were the only world I knew. It's easy to remember the fascination, the wonder, with which I looked at every little thing. Everything was so new back then, from the people to the buildings to the endless lines of traffic. That fascination has faded as I start to understand Seattle more and more, but I'm starting to realise that I've only been picking at the surface of a much deeper mystery.

This neighbourhood is the heart of the Seattle Triad, but I never noticed the gangs before. Not until I pushed further south or east. They were so… visible in those places, so present.

But why would they need to be visible here? This is their heart, their safest place. All the enemies they need to dissuade are nipping at the surroundings of their territory, so they're most visible there as a way of deterring them.

But here? This is where they keep their most valuable resources; the stuff they can't risk in more volatile neighbourhoods. If they start hanging up the light-blue streamers, all they'd be doing is painting a massive target for the heroes to follow.

I slink over to the edge of the rooftop, lying down and resting my head on my forearms as I look out on the street below. There are about a dozen people on this little stretch of road alone, any one of whom could be on Triad business.

So I have to narrow it down a little. The couple staggering down the road as they paw at each other clearly aren't anything suspect, the same with the man in a suit who's currently throwing up behind the bins. The trio of young men sitting on the steps of a building could be guards, except the building itself is a liquor store and they're all far too liberal with their drinks for anyone who's supposed to be a guard.

In fact, this late on a Friday night, it's easier to pick out the ones who aren't drunk.

The young woman furtively rushing down the street with her head buried in her hoodie could be a courier, but I don't think so. If she were, she'd at least be wearing a backpack to carry things in. The same applies to the elderly gentleman who's looking at the vomiter and shaking his head in clear disgust.

Most of the twelve don't seem suspicious at all – or, at least, they aren't the right kind of suspicious. Most, but not all. There are two men walking down the street side by side, one of them a thin wiry figure with a backpack worn over one shoulder and the other a giant of a man with a big bulky coat that could conceal all sorts of weapons.

A courier and his escort.

Of course, I can't be certain, but it's better than nothing.

I creep along the rooftop, looking down at them and watching the way they move. They're both confident, but the giant is looking around with the practiced eye I've seen on Ember's people. It's not nerves; he's simply paid to look out for trouble.

He looks up, too, forcing me to duck down behind the lip of the roof. Most people don't bother looking up – it's one of the reasons I can move so freely over the rooftops – but when you're in a certain line of work it pays to keep one eye on the sky in case a hero swoops down from above.

Once I hit the edge of the roof, I leap down into the alley with a graceful dive into the shadows behind a garbage can. I'm as confident as I can be that these are the men I'm looking for, so I edge as close to the end of the alley as I can get.

A quick glance up and down the street shows that none of the people are looking my way, so I wait until the two men have just passed my hiding spot before leaping out under the streetlights and brushing a hand under the base off the man's heavy coat, slipping into the shadows between the layers of his clothing.

If I had any doubts about my hunch, they quickly scatter as I curl around the unmistakable shape of a shotgun tucked into the space beneath the man's armpit, the barrel only barely hidden by the end of the coat and bouncing slightly against his thigh as he walks.

He doesn't talk to the wiry man – which is another sign that these men are professionals. The only sound is the rhythmic pounding of his boots on the pavement, the softer sounds of the other man's trainers, and whatever street noise happens to filter in.

Unlike Ember's coat, the giant's jacket doesn't have a deep hood for me to look out of. Instead I position myself near the tail and look out at the occasional flashes of pavement as the jacket shifts with every step. With only those brief glimpses and the regular sound of my host's footsteps, I quickly lose track of time as we cross what feels like the length of Ballard.

It almost comes as a shock when my host abruptly changes direction, stepping off the pavement and up a set of concrete stairs. I listen intently at the sound of the wiry man knocking on a door, followed by a muffled conversation that's too faint for me to make out. Whatever was said, it seems to have worked; the door creaks open, and my unwitting host leads me inside the building.

Looking out the bottom of the man's jacket, the pair seem to be walking down a long, pitch-black corridor. Whether that's to make the building less noticeable from the outside, or just because they only want to pay off electricity in the places they need it, makes no difference to me. I take the opportunity I've been presented with, and slip like a ghost out the bottom of the man's jacket.

The moment I touch the floor, I creep around the walls and up onto the ceiling. I can see a faint chink of light in a door at the end of the hall – a door that's about to be opened, filling the hall with light – so I quickly rush under the gap of a different door, emerging into what looks like a storefront that's been shuttered up for the night.

I creep around racks of second-hand clothes, looking around for a way through the backwall before forming a hand to push against the ceiling tiles and slipping up into the crawlspace. From there, it's a simple matter of slinking around the gaps in the building's wiring and ducking through tiny mouseholes until I can hear some sort of sound below me.

I look around, judging whether I can fit my body up here and whether the metal lattice holding up the tiles will be able to support my weight, before emerging from the darkness with my legs resting on the ceiling and my arms taking the weight off them by gripping tightly to a set of water pipes.

Using my other arms, I pry up one of the ceiling tiles and push it aside just enough to see the floor below. When I'm not immediately blinded by a flash of light, I merge most of my body with the shadows again, leaving just enough of my head in the light to look through the gap.

Below me, the courier has his backpack open on a table while the guard looms just behind his shoulder. They're talking to a well-dressed man who's in the process of unloading wads of bills from the backpack, running each of them through some sort of little machine before someone else adds them to a neat stack.

Once he's apparently satisfied, he waves over someone from behind him and, moments later, a third man starts piling up see-through packets of a brown powder. It doesn't take me long to realise I'm watching the sale of the same sort of poison that killed Mike.

The Triad are more like a coalition of dozens of gangs that have all agreed to follow the Triad in exchange for access to the protection and services they offer. The courier and the guard must be from one of those affiliate gangs, buying poison from an actual Triad operation that's responsible for bringing the poison into the city.

I form a hand to pull the ceiling tile back a little further, and see the dozen people hard at work at the other end of the room. With the exception of a pair of bored-looking armed guards, they're all dressed in concealing plastic suits with a mask over their face and their hair in nets.

There's a stack of boxes on one side of the room, filled with what looks like hundreds of plastic bottles of some sort or another. The workers are taking the bottles and cutting them open, revealing small wrapped packages suspended in a token amount of liquid. The packages are washed, dried, then opened and the power inside is weighed before being wrapped in new packages, ready for sale.

The scale of it is terrifying; each package of powder is easily capable of filling a hundred of the needles that killed Mike, even if I don't quite understand how one becomes the other. I don't want to know. In fact, this whole place makes me sick to my core.

I slide the ceiling tile back into place as quickly as I dare before creeping out the building through a window that overlooks a dark alley. Once I'm up on the roof, I look around until I can make sense of where exactly my journey has taken me. I'm less than five hundred feet from the old factory; only five hundred feet from the place where Mike died, and I've just found the distribution centre for the drug that killed him.

I shake my head, banishing the unpleasant thoughts, and slink off over the rooftops as I move back to where the van is still parked up and silent. The door opens the moment I knock, leaving me looking down the barrel of a gun for a terrifying instant before Jaeger's soldier points it away from me and steps back to let me in.

Ignoring him, his colleague, and Jaeger standing next to the board, I reach into a plastic tub sitting next to the map and pull out a light-blue pin, sticking it in the map on the exact spot of the distribution centre.

It feels good to have it up there; knowing that, at some point down the line, our people will storm that place, and that I'll have made it happen. And yet, I'm even more aware that I've only scratched the surface of Ballard. There are more secrets hiding out there, more pins to put on the map.

I've got a long way to go, but this is a good start.

 

[Vokivas]

From there, it's a simple matter of slinking around the gaps in the building's wiring and ducking through tiny mouseholes until I can hear some sort of sound below me.

Click to shrink...

All the pieces were there, but I never considered this.

When I'm not immediately blinded by a flash of light, I merge most of my body with the shadows again, leaving just enough of my head in the light to look through the gap.

Click to shrink...

And all they could see were a pair of eyes floating in the darkness

It feels good to have it up there; knowing that, at some point down the line, our people will storm that place, and that I'll have made it happen. And yet, I'm even more aware that I've only scratched the surface of Ballard. There are more secrets hiding out there, more pins to put on the map.

I've got a long way to go, but this is a good start.

Click to shrink...

This is a big step for her, or at least it seems like it's the first physical indicator of Nightcrawler's knowledge and familiarity with the city. All of this, her power, and the extensive backstory, I don't think that's coincidental. Like, it all comes together to be a part of telling this story. All of the exposition and world building isn't just about bringing the reader into this world, it's also about Nightcrawler slowly learning the ins and the outs of the city in it's entirety.

Is that a deliberate parallel between Nightcrawler and the reader? Does that apply to Nightcrawler's power letting her traverse the city and observe it's goings on as well?

Bravo Redcoat. Now I have to wonder how much else you have layered away in this story already lol.

 

[Redcoat_Officer]

This is a big step for her, or at least it seems like it's the first physical indicator of Nightcrawler's knowledge and familiarity with the city. All of this, her power, and the extensive backstory, I don't think that's coincidental. Like, it all comes together to be a part of telling this story. All of the exposition and world building isn't just about bringing the reader into this world, it's also about Nightcrawler slowly learning the ins and the outs of the city in it's entirety.

Is that a deliberate parallel between Nightcrawler and the reader? Does that apply to Nightcrawler's power letting her traverse the city and observe it's goings on as well?

Bravo Redcoat. Now I have to wonder how much else you have layered away in this story already lol.

Click to shrink...

Back when I was first coming up with the concept for this story, before Agnes Court, Archangel, Jaeger, Ember and even Mike, I decided to build this story around two characters; Nightcrawler and Seattle. I wanted to make the city every bit a character as the rest of the cast. The great liberty of writing a story set this far from Worm's canon setting is that I have almost complete free rein to build the setting from the ground up, and to tie that setting to the characters and plot.

Nightcrawler is an amnesiac Case-53, which means she's been learning about this city at the same rate as the reader. It make exposition easy, because the story is about Nightcrawler learning about the world she inhabits. It also means that I can tie the two together, with the city's nature shaping Nightcrawler's character.

 

[Redcoat_Officer]

Lookout – 3.03

Where once there was one pin, now a forest of light blue juts out of the map in the back of the van. The past three nights have been the busiest I've ever had, with Jaeger picking me up from home after sunset and dropping me off in the early hours of the morning, just before the sunrise.

I haven't been seeing as much of Ember – our hours don't quite match up – but, when I do see her, I'm full of so many different stories that I just can't wait to tell her, even if I have to do it on sheet after sheet of paper because I haven't the faintest clue how to say "drug lab" in sign language.

I still wouldn't say I know Jaeger, even though we've been spending hours working together. He's nothing like Ember, who's so eager to explain each and every detail of her life and this city. If I have a single impression of Jaeger's character, it's that he's cold, almost detached from the world.

He doesn't seem to mind switching over to a fully nocturnal schedule for this, even though I know it's not normal to only ever see the city under moonlight. Whenever I come back to the van, he's usually just sitting there like a machine that's been turned off. When I bring in a new location – a new pin to add to the map – he simply gets out a notebook and pen and starts fiercely writing things down.

I asked him about his notebook – through stilted sign language and a fancy bit of charades – and he told me that using a 'computer' in Triad territory is too risky, with Bloody Mary potentially hiding in every reflection. He discussed the possibility of us being murdered by a brutal madwoman like it was the possibility of us getting rained on; just an inconsequential bit of information.

Still, I must admit he's very good at what he does. Each time I've brought a pin back, I've written out a little bit of tape explaining just what each building is. Drug labs, warehouses, arms depots, a couple of bars popular with the rank and file, and even a building full of accountants in suits who're hard at work on some arcane accounting that I didn't even try to make sense of.

Jaeger has taken those disjointed bits of information, plus whatever other information I can give him, and put together a complete picture of the Triad's operations in the city. I don't think he was using any sort of power either – I don't know what his power is, exactly, but I certainly didn't notice anything obvious. Just cold, logical reasoning supplemented by what he knew about the Triad's operations from when they worked with us.

We've been able to build up an almost complete picture of their sources of income, with a clear line from the port to the distribution centres to the dealers and clients, but we're still no closer to finding wherever they've tucked away their Capes. Jaeger thinks they can't have more than one or two in a safehouse, because most Parahumans are apparently volatile enough that sticking three in the same place would run the risk of only one leaving, but that means there has to be at least half a dozen targets that I simply haven't run into.

So, I'm broadening the net. Until now, I've focused on the flow of goods through the city. I found a courier who led me to a dealer, then hung around there until another courier came, before following them to their hideaways. At the end of the night, I followed the guy in charge – and his money – to the strange accountants and, from there, I could map out the whole network with ease.

But the safehouses won't be on the network, which means I need to pick a different target to follow. The people, rather than the process. That's why I'm standing on the rooftop of a low-rise tenement near the centre of Ballard, trying to remember if I want the third or fourth window along.

There's a girl that lives here, called 'Kel' or 'Kelsey' or something. I ran into her yesterday, as she was coming out of a Triad building with a backpack on her shoulder. I followed her as close as I could, hoping she'd lead me to another useful site. Instead I got a good earful as she chatted on the phone to her boyfriend, who seems to be someone halfway important, and ended up having to sneak out of her bedroom window once she'd finally turned in at three in the morning.

Tucked among inane gossip was an invitation to work for a few hours guarding her boyfriend's warehouse. It seems she's short on cash, and could use a boost, but it sounds like he's just giving her the wages as charity, and really it's an excuse to hang out after dark. My plan is to listen in, and hope they let slip something important.

It might not be the most thorough plan, but it's all I've got.

Ah, now I remember. It was the third window.

I slip down the side of the building, counting myself lucky that she lives above the height of the streetlights, and pass through her window before drifting down the back of her curtains and into her room. It's been a minute since I saw her step through the front door of the building, which means I need to hide right away rather than looking around.

It only takes me a second to decide to creep under the bed, hugging the underside of her mattress as the sound of footsteps and chatter comes even closer. Kelsey is making her excuses to her flatmates about why she's going to be back late tonight, which means they don't know she's part of the Triad.

A shame. It was probably a bit too much to hope this was some sort of gang flophouse, which would have meant another pin on the board.

When Kelsey pushes the door open, casting a deep patch of light on the floor, I pull back even further under the bed. When she flicks the light on, I have to retreat to the furthest corner of the bed to avoid being forced out of the shadows. The problem is that now I can't see anything, because the light-bleed is blocking off every possible vantage point.

I need to know what she's doing, so I decide to take a risk. I form my head underneath the bed, upside down so that I can crane my neck forwards to be able to see out into the room. It doesn't let me see much more than the sneakers on her feet and the base of her thick leggings, but that's enough for me to get an idea of what she's doing.

I almost flinch back in panic when she drops to her knees, before slowly creeping back out as she fiddles with a small grate in the wall on the other side of the room to my hiding spot. She undoes a single screw by hand, before pulling the grate off and setting it aside. When she reaches in and pulls out a matte-black handgun and holster, fear and exhilaration rushes through me in equal measure.

I watch as she buckles the holster to her thigh, over the top of her leggings. I need to be careful about this; the street downstairs is well-lit, and if she gets into a car then she'll probably reach it before I can get to her. I need to follow her, and this time I can't just do it from a distance; I need to be able to hear every word she says.

So I creep out of the shadows and edge forwards under her bed, as every instinct screams at me that she could spot me at any moment. There's just barely enough space between the bed and the floor for me to push myself along on my stomach, but whatever strange trick of my power it is that muffles my movements is enough to keep me quiet as I creep closer and closer to the edge of the bed.

I can see everything below her shoulders now, as she opens up her wardrobe and pulls out a thick pleated skirt. I watch as she slips it over her leggings, hiding the gun and its holster from sight, before shrugging a thick jacket over her shoulders. Either one of those would be good places to hide.

She steps over to the door, and I inch my way out from under the bed as quietly as I possibly can. The ceiling light feels like it's burning my skin, and I feel more exposed than I ever have in my life. As Kelsey takes a step towards the door, I take a half-step closer to her.

I almost leap for joy as her hand drifts up towards the light switch, rather than the doorhandle. It's a small window, a half-second gap of darkness, but that's all I need. The moment she flicks the switch, the room is plunged into darkness. I pounce, leaping across the room and curling up beneath her skirts before her hand has even left the switch. It was a split second decision; she's wearing the jacket because it's cold outside, but she'll probably take it off when she goes indoors.

She opens the door, and I let out a metaphorical sigh of relief as the light doesn't bleed through her skirt. It must be a tight weave; meant to keep out the chill as well as hide her gun from sight.

I listen as she says goodbye to her flatmates, who wish her luck on her 'date,' before she leaves her apartment and heads out onto the streets.

Her walk is hurried, almost like a jog, as she rushes through the frigid streets. A cold snap has moved in, bringing with it occasional bouts of near-freezing rain, and it's driven most people off the streets. In many ways, it's made my work a lot easier; with the weekend over and the cold coming in, there are a lot less people on the street after dark. It makes it easier to pick out my targets from the crowd.

Kelsey doesn't walk far; within a few hundred feet she's turned off the main road and up a set of stairs. If I remember the street right, I think this is the multistorey car park. Sure enough, I hear the click of her car unlocking before she practically slides into the seat. I couldn't actually see what car it is, but the upholstery doesn't look anywhere near as nice as the plush leather of Ember's big blue monster and there's a load of dust and junk that's gathered behind the pedals.

As we pull out into the streets, I hear a distinctive click as Kelsey flips her phone open, followed a few moments later by her voice.

"Charlie, I'm on my way now. Should be there in ten."

"Don't sweat it." I can just make out the voice on the other end of the line; deeper than hers, but not by all that much. "Things are quiet here anyway."

"Alright, see you soon. Love you."

"Yeah, see you."

"Charlie," she interjects quickly, before he can hang up. "You have to say it back."

There's a distinctly awkward pause, before the voice on the other end of the line lets out a sigh.

"Love you too, Kel."

From the chorus of 'oohs' and 'awws' that I can hear even this far from the phone, it's clear that he's not alone. That's good; the more people, the better the chance that they'll let something slip.

"Hey, shut the fuck u-" Kel clicks her phone shut with a chuckle, as Charlie snaps at whoever he's with. I can see her feet pushing down on the pedals as she drives through the streets, the movement of the car only visible by the little windows of streetlights that make it down into the footwell. After another few seconds, she switches on the radio and fills the car with music that's a little too wild for my taste, but it doesn't do to impose on a host. Especially when they're being as generous as Kelsey is.

After another few minutes of driving – long enough for one entire song and most of a second – I feel the subtle shift in the car's momentum as Kelsey pulls up outside her destination, stepping out and immediately shivering against the cold. I feel the pleats of her skirt shift as she idly brushes her hand against her pistol, before she seems to centre herself and sets off at a hurried pace.

Rather than knocking, there's the sound of a buzzer as Kelsey idles outside of a pair of metal double-doors.

"Who is it?" a gruff voice asks with a put-on sing-song lilt.

"It's me, you fucking idiot," Kel snaps back half-heartedly. "Open up already; it's freezing out here."

"Me… me… Sorry, we're not expecting anyone named 'Me' tonight. Hey, boss" – the voice grows fainter, as he shouts to someone away from the microphone – "you know anyone called Me?"

"Yeah" – it's the same voice from the phone – "Me girlfriend. Now stop dicking around and let her in."

Less than a second later, there's a buzz and a sudden lurch of movement as Kel pushes open the now-unlocked door and steps inside. I prepare myself to jump out at the earliest opportunity, only to be presented by a well-lit corridor without a single patch of darkness I can see. I'm stuck here, for the moment.

Still, it's strange that the building has the lights on. Most of the places I've found have had the lights off, to stop anybody from noticing something odd about a building that's still lit up at four in the morning. It might be that I'm somewhere new, or I might just be in a building I've scouted before. I won't know for sure until I can get out of here and catch my bearings.

I can hear conversation coming from up ahead. It's what I wanted, but I was hoping to watch from above, or from some other dark corner. Instead, I'm uncomfortably close. When Kelsey pushes open a set of double doors and is met by five different voices all raised in greeting, I feel like they can see right through the tartan pattern to the creature hiding beneath.

Kel circles around the group, the hem of her skirt fanning out just enough to let me catch a glimpse of an old leather sofa. Sure enough, I feel her shifting above me and hear the sound of her jacket as she takes it off and slings it over her shoulder in a move that would have exposed me to the room if I'd hidden there. There's a second sound, as she tosses it over something I can't see, before she sinks gracefully into a chair.

No. Onto someone's lap.

"Hey, hun," she says to her boyfriend, leaning in a little closer. "How's things?"

"Quiet," he replies, as his legs shift a little. "There're only a couple of shipments going out tonight. Got five cases of ammunition going out at three. Pickup'll be done by one of our guys; it's headed south to deal with the clusterfuck down there. Then there's a big shipment going out at four; ten crates of those fancy Russian assault rifles, headed to some cult out in Idaho. They're being picked up by one of the cult, so expect some weird bastard."

"When do you get off?"

"Stroke of midnight. Thanks for covering the late shift."

"It's no bother. Like I said, I could use the cash."

"You bring a piece, or you need me to get one from downstairs?"

"I'm strapped," she says, shifting a little so her pistol is pressed against his chest.

"You're strapped?" a voice shouts from out of my sight. "Shit, Charlie, I didn't realise you were into that sort of thing. You're a braver man than me, bro."

Laughter echoes around the room, but I don't get the joke. Honestly, I just feel like I don't belong. This isn't what I was expecting; I was hoping for a meeting in a shady conference room, not a group of friends chatting to each other. I feel like a voyeur.

"Go fuck yourself, Tom," Kel snaps, though I can hear Charlie chuckling to himself. I can feel the vibrations of his laughter, travelling through his legs.

"There anything to drink here?" Kel asks, once the chuckles have died down and the murmur of conversation has started up again.

"There's no beer, if that's what you're asking," her boyfriend replies. "Not on the job. But there's some soda in the fridge back there."

"Sweet," she says, and I lurch as she stands up and brushes down her skirt. "I need my sugar rush."

My mind is racing as she steps around the back of where I think her boyfriend is sitting. This is getting ridiculous, and dangerous. I need to find a better hiding place.

Kel moves around what looks like a long kitchen counter, and I think I've found my window of opportunity. I wait, as she opens up a fridge and pulls out a can of soda, then make my move the moment she turns away to head back.

Soundlessly, I slip out of her skirt and onto the floor of what looks like a small kitchenette, with a microwave, a fridge and a long countertop keeping me out of sight of the people who're still talking.

I almost let out a sigh of relief until I look around and realise there's absolutely nowhere to hide. The light mounted on the ceiling above me leaves no shadows deep enough for me to use, and the one window I can see has been boarded up to keep in the light, as well as being in full view of the Triad gangsters sitting on the other side of the countertop.

And then, things get worse.

"Hey Kel," someone asks, "could you grab me one while you're up there?"

"Grab your own, you lazy ass."

I hear a long, drawn out sigh, followed by the sound of leather easing as a heavy-set man stands up from whichever sofa he'd been sitting on. I have seconds, at most, before he rounds the corner and sees me. Then it'll be bullets and knives, and that's it. Life number three, down the drain.

I panic, looking around the kitchenette for any possible hiding place, before my eyes land on the cupboard built beneath the counter, right next to the gap that holds the fridge. I pull it open – just a sliver – with one hand, while reaching in with my pinkie finger until it hits darkness.

Then I'm hidden, the cupboard door closing behind me and sealing me inside my little island of safety. I curl around coffee mugs and colourful boxes of breakfast cereal, listening intently to the sound of approaching footsteps as the gangster approaches, followed by the click of the fridge opening.

I can't stay here. It's only a matter of time before one of them decides to come get a coffee and looks in here for a mug. I need a way out, no matter how bad it might be. So I wait until the very second I hear the fridge close before pushing open the cupboard door and sending my tail out to the retreating pant leg of the gangster.

It brushes against his shoe for an agonising moment before hooking onto his pant leg and getting just high enough to hit the darkness behind his jeans. With a metaphorical sigh of relief, I slip from one patch to the other. Ember says I look like a cloud of darkness when I do this, but it always goes so quickly that she's never been able to get a clear look. It could be that my body does materialise and disappear again, it's just going too fast for her to tell.

Either way, now I'm trapped between a hairy leg and a pair of jeans, being walked right back to the same space I tried to flee from. I can hear the sofa creaking again as my host sits down, before the back of his pant leg presses inwards as he leans forwards, pushing his ankle against the base of the sofa. As he opens up his soda can with a distinctive snap, I curl an exploratory finger out the bottom of his pants and use it to escape to the underside of the sofa.

There's nothing down here. From one side, I can see the pair of legs I just left and a second pair sitting next to them, smaller and wearing ankle-length boots attached to what look like thick leather trousers. On the other side, I can see out of the room and into what seems to be the hallway of a repurposed house, stacked high with crates of ammunition. It's just as bright of the rest of this place, which means I'm still stuck.

If worst comes to worse, I can poke a hole in the flimsy fabric base and hide inside the sofa until the coast is clear, but for now I'm not going to waste this vantage point.

"So, what's this I hear about some biker in town?" my former host asks, immediately snatching my attention back to the conversation.

"Word is that he was from the Spartan Legion," Kel's boyfriend, Charlie, explains. "They're some bigshots who work all over the North East, which is why the Red Pole rolled out the red carpet for him. They're transport specialists; run a lot of interstate and cross-border ops."

He pauses for a while, as something seems to occur to him.

"Hey, Mika, you were running escort, right? Get any juicy gossip out of your fellow biker?"

"Please," the woman in leather scoffs, her feet shifting as she leans forward above me. "He was riding a fifty year old American fossil, and he looked like he'd had an accident in a leather shop. I've got a Yamaha. Now that's a proper bike."

"I thought Yamaha made pianos," Kel pipes up, sounding a little confused.

"Yup," Mika agrees. "Pianos and motorcycles. Dad used to work at the piano factory before everything went to shit, but I was always useless at music."

She seems to shift unsteadily, her right food idly drifting along the ground.

"Anyway, I didn't say anything to him. Well above my paygrade. From the way he was talking to some of the others, though, I got the impression that what's going out of the city isn't as important as what's coming in."

"Think it's something to break the stalemate? Bombs, maybe?" a new voice pipes up, from the sofa opposite me.

"If the boss wanted bombs," Charlie interjects, "he'd order them in bulk through the same contacts we get the guns from. My guess is Capes. A couple of reinforcements could drive a wedge between all the bastards who're out to get us. Whatever fucking alliance is keeping them together, it can't last forever. They'll get pissed, or tired, and they'll splinter."

I hear a sharp beeping noise, before Mika's legs move as she shifts about, fumbling for something or other.

"Shit," she swears. "She's fucking hungry again. Anyone know where the fuck I can find Kimchi at this time of night?"

This sounds promising…

"The Covered Market might still be open," Charlie replies, "if you're quick."

Mika audibly slumps back against the sofa, letting out an angry sigh.

"Why the fuck can't she ask for a fucking cheeseburger or something easy like that. Better yet, why the fuck can't she pay for her own goddam food? And why do I have to be the delivery girl?"

"Because you're the one who owns a motorbike," Charlie explains.

"Yeah, a fucking motorbike. It's an enduring legacy of my lost homeland, not a fucking scooter I can lash a couple of pizza boxes to."

This sounds promising. If they've got the Capes stashed away in safehouses when they're not crushing heads on the streets, then they have to have couriers who'll fetch them food and run odd jobs for them. I think I might've hit the jackpot. The only question is how I'm going to get there.

Her boots are attached to her leather pants, leaving no way for me to sneak in like I did on the man sitting next to her. I shift over to the other side of the couch, forming my eyes and a small part of my head so that I can look out a little further. It's as I thought; the way out will bring the leather-clad girl past the back of the sofa. I can't just leave the sofa and walk out – I'd be spotted for sure – but, if she's wearing some sort of jacket, then I can hide in that and hitch a ride with her all the way to the safehouse.

It's a pretty big 'if,' but it's all I've got.

When Mika's boots move as she stands up, I pull back to the very edge of the couch, as close as I can get without being forced into the light. When she steps around the sofa, I lean half my head out into the light, three pairs of eyes and most of my upper jaw emerging from the shadows.

When she steps around to my side of the sofa, a motorcycle helmet clutched in one hand, the first thing I notice is the unzipped leather jacket hanging loose over her upper body. I could almost cheer!

As she turns back to say something to the others, I take my chance and exit my hiding spot, standing out in the open less than a foot away from the back of the heavy-set man who's still sitting on the sofa, nursing his drink. I reach out and slip my palm up the back of the woman's jacket, my fingers accidentally brushing up against her back before they hit the shadows.

I panic, pulling myself in as fast as I can and nestling in the gap between the inflexible leather jacket and her vest. She shivers a little, but seems to dismiss it as nothing. When she zips up the jacket, compacting my hiding space to almost nothing, I know I'm safe.

My anxiety starts to fade away as I feel her back shifting as she walks away from the uncomfortably bright room. It was hard, and probably one of the scariest situations I've ever been in, but it all paid off in the end. By the end of the night, I'll know where at least one of the safehouses are. From there, I can follow the Capes and the couriers and hopefully find the rest.

Once that's done, maybe things will finally get back to normal.

 

[Vokivas]

I hope you had a lot of fun with the horror movie monster and stalker stuff, because it was certainly fun to read. That, said I really doubt that it's a coincidence that this safe house is so well lit. Maybe the Triad know about her general power, but not just how small she can get.

Even then, I'm don't know if it's better or worse tactically if all of the couriers are based in the same location. But then again they don't have unlimited room to hide people, and it be a matter of trying to stay under the radar and have those lights as a countermeasure. If so, then it looks like human error is what lead to this falling apart. You need people to run these operations, but well...people are going to be people.

 

[Redcoat_Officer]

I hope you had a lot of fun with the horror movie monster and stalker stuff, because it was certainly fun to read.

Click to shrink...

I'm glad you enjoyed it! It was actually a little frustrating to write, because it's quite a visual scene in how Nightcrawler moves around the room, and that can be hard to bring across through the written word. Still, I've wanted to have Nightcrawler become a literal monster under the bed for a while now.

That, said I really doubt that it's a coincidence that this safe house is so well lit. Maybe the Triad know about her general power, but not just how small she can get.

Click to shrink...

Admittedly, Nightcrawler's interpretation of the room might be a little warped by her nocturnal lifestyle and Ember's generous decision to only use a desk lamp in her office. A very bright room to Nightcrawler's eyes might be a fairly normal-looking room to yours.

Even then, I'm don't know if it's better or worse tactically if all of the couriers are based in the same location. But then again they don't have unlimited room to hide people, and it be a matter of trying to stay under the radar and have those lights as a countermeasure. If so, then it looks like human error is what lead to this falling apart. You need people to run these operations, but well...people are going to be people.

Click to shrink...

As for this, the operation in this chapter is an Arms import centre run by a Triad lieutenant; Charlie. They take in shipments of guns and ammunition and distribute them to clients or other sellers. Someone higher up the chain asked Charlie to have one of his people act as a courier for a safehouse, and he picked Mika because she owns a motorcycle. Presumably, other Triad lieutenants are being asked to do the same with some of their people for other safehouses.

 

[Vokivas]

Admittedly, Nightcrawler's interpretation of the room might be a little warped by her nocturnal lifestyle and Ember's generous decision to only use a desk lamp in her office. A very bright room to Nightcrawler's eyes might be a fairly normal-looking room to yours.

Click to shrink...

I see your point, and maybe it's more so how her perception and experiences with light effect her world view. Based on the last chapter, it seems like normal light levels are kind of like putting a human into a really dark room. Their eyes can adjust some with time, but it's never the best and in the meanwhile they're basically blind. Just for Nightcrawler she seems to have an extra vampire like aversion to the light, and since her form isn't natural it could even be a case where light does actually harm her. There's already a conditions in humans where sunlight causes reactions, so it could be a thing.

Anyway, with her perception of things. I think the biggest thing is that she just had no real options for what felt like the first time. There was that time where she got caught in a store while snacking, because of the cape fight going on. But for a while now she's largely been in control, and has been the one who initiates.

Thinking about this, her luck is going to truly run out sooner or later.

As for this, the operation in this chapter is an Arms import centre run by a Triad lieutenant; Charlie. They take in shipments of guns and ammunition and distribute them to clients or other sellers. Someone higher up the chain asked Charlie to have one of his people act as a courier for a safehouse, and he picked Mika because she owns a motorcycle. Presumably, other Triad lieutenants are being asked to do the same with some of their people for other safehouses.

Click to shrink...

You didn't need to spoil anything. You did put enough there for people to figure out, and I think I just zeroed in on the cape stuff and the import export and the munitions stuff went to the back of my mind.

 

[Redcoat_Officer]

Lookout – 3.04

I've missed this smell. Mika's jacket doesn't leave me any room to actually look out at my surroundings, but I'd recognise that aroma of grilling meat and dozens of fragrant spices anywhere. I haven't been back to that wonderful spice market in weeks – at first because I didn't want anything to do with this part of town anymore, and then because Jaeger explained it was a Triad-run operation and that it'd be far too risky for me to head out and pinch a couple of treats.

And yet, I can still picture it as clearly as it was when I was last here. The endless stalls, nestled beneath a roof of tarpaulins and corrugated sheets of iron and plastic that offered only tantalising glimpses of the night's sky above, while rainwater streamed down dozens of gaps in a steady trickle that was just strong enough to remind everyone that this was a wild space, so far from the horrifically bright shops where most of the city goes to find their food.

The Covered Market, by comparison, is an intimate space. The wide aisles and spacious seating are nowhere to be found; instead everyone's piled on top of each other in a warren of stalls and alleyways. Where there are seats, they're stools tucked right up against the counters of some of the more robust shops, only feet away from the people who sold and cooked them the food.

The only lights are simple lamps dangling from wires tied to wooden poles, the struts of buildings and even parts of the roof. They're not enough to banish the darkness, instead creating a warm intimacy that forces people to lean in close to make each other out, to go slow because they need to watch their footing. Like the Red-Light District, it's a place where light and shadow can exist side-by-side.

It's taking all the willpower I can muster to not leap out the back of Mika's jacket, sneak myself a couple of bits of the weirdest and most interesting food I can find, then track her down again and slip back in. I have to keep reminding myself that I'm here for a job, not for myself, and that slipping out blind into one of the busiest places I've ever seen would be close to suicide.

From the feel of Mika's movement, she's reminding herself of the same. She's jostling through the crowd, pushing her way through in the way that only someone in padded leather clothes can. Every now and then, my hiding space will compress as she squeezes through a gap between two people, her shoulders shifting subtly as her head darts from side to side. The whole time, she's muttering to herself: "Where the fuck is it?" "Better not be shut already." "Fuck this babysitting Cape bullshit."

That sort of thing.

Eventually, she seems to spot something and doubles her pace, her angry muttering becoming shouts.

"Hey, you! Don't you fucking dare close!"

Someone shouts something back at her in a language I don't understand. Mika doubles down, yelling right back and pushing me a little as she pulls something out of her pocket. Not the switchblade she has in her right pocket, but something smaller from her left. Probably cash.

After some more rapid-fire conversation, switching in and out of what I think are three different languages, Mika starts to push her way back through the less-dense crowd with every bit the same amount of speed she showed on her way in, but less of the obvious panic. I listen intently as she stows the food in some sort of compartment on her bike before gunning it down the road in an orchestra of sound.

I've seen the occasional motorbike out on the streets, even if they're nowhere near as popular as cars, but there's something different about this one. Maybe it's the speed Mika's going at, but it roars like no other bike I've ever heard. It's a crescendo of sound, rising in volume and intensity before being abruptly cut off and starting again from the beginning.

Mika's jacket fits her closely, but not close enough to stop it from flapping in the wind from the sheer force of her speed. Every now and then, the rise of her collar is matched by a passing streetlight, and a beam of orange light plays down her back, sending me scurrying around her body before finding purchase just above her stomach. There, I wait, feeling the motion of the bike through the vibrations that travel up through her, and the sensation of imbalance that comes as she leans into corners.

After a while, the speed starts to slow: the jacket shakes less, the crescendos begin again less frequently, the vibrations get worse and the brief bursts of light disappear entirely. Mika is turning more, her pace slowing to a crawl at times as she weaves around obstacles that only she can see. The road stops being flat, instead rising and falling in abrupt jumps that have Mika focused solely on the controls of her bike, her arms tensing as she wrestles with the handlebars.

Eventually, she pulls to a stop, kicking out the stand for her bike and shifting her weight as she steps off. Her arms move up, and I hear a slight noise as she sets her helmet down onto the seat of her motorcycle before opening up the compartment and pulling out the food she's been sent here to deliver. It's such a low-priority item that there has to be a Cape here to justify sending a courier to deliver it. Probably one of the new ones, too. They're more likely to get this red carpet treatment, if only to keep them on the 'right' side.

I'm here to watch, not to listen, so I'm not going to make the same mistake I did last time. Staying with Kelsey might have got me here, but it's also the closest I've come to being found out since I first started spying on the Triad. This time, there's no need to take that risk. So I slip out the back of Mika's jacket the moment she starts purposefully walking to her destination, and land silently on the driveway of a suburban home.

Looking around, it quickly becomes clear that I'm not in Seattle anymore. Not properly. I'm on a short stretch of road that ends in a circle before doubling back on itself, surrounded by houses in various states of disrepair. Some of them are simply gone, with only a few scant bits of wood, concrete or metal where they might have once stood. Others are half-collapsed, without roofs and with only the skeletal remains of the walls holding up occasional patches of flooring.

The road is cracked and warped, sunken in places where whole segments have broken away and been partially swallowed by the earth. The ground around them – what might once have been beautifully manicured front lawns – is nothing but swampy marshland filled with the chitter of insects and the gentle sway of plant life that's slowly starting to reclaim the last ruins of the man-made structures around it. The steady drizzle of rain fills the air with a gentle drumbeat of ambient noise, as rainwater patters against the marsh.

The house Mika is walking towards is by far the most intact on the street, though even saying that much feels like I'm overselling it. The paint has almost all disappeared from the wooden side panelling, revealing rotten boards that look like they're barely holding together, with some parts having rotted away completely to expose the insulation within. And yet, it looks sturdy enough, with boards behind all the windows to hide any light-bleed The perfect place to hide someone away from prying eyes.

I follow Mika as she steps up to the door, ducking into the shadows beneath a parked car as she turns to look back at her bike, before dashing silently up behind her as she pushes the door open. The inside of the house is lit well enough to get me to hesitate for a moment, only to watch the door close behind Mika. There goes that way in!

I pace around the front of the building for a few moments, looking at the sealed windows before spotting a set above the garage doors that haven't been covered up. The lip of the garage and the overcast rain has cast them into shadow and the distant glow of Lynnwood, though closer than I've ever seen it, doesn't reach far enough to banish the shadows. The garage behind the doors is completely dark.

I pace back down the driveway before turning and sprinting at the doors, pouncing at the last moment and merging with the shadows, letting my momentum carry me through the pane of glass like a ghost before emerging into a damp-filled garage occupied from end to end by the shattered remains of some old life. It's clear that the people who lived here were either drowned in their shelter or in the streets or just never came back to their home; they've left everything.

There's a car parked in the garage, kept safe from the elements for all these years. The shelves are lined with tools and trinkets and all the other flotsam that gathers in any space like this. The only part of the room that doesn't look like it's from before Leviathan is the generator placed in the one spot of empty space, quietly thrumming as it pumps power through a series of wires that stretch along the walls and past the door to the rest of the house.

"Hello?" I hear Mika shout from somewhere in the house. "Ma'am? I got your delivery! Anyone home?"

I edge closer to the door, ringed by lines of light-bleed, and listen as Mika starts to angrily pace around, before she speaks again, sounding like she's on the phone.

"Hey, Charlie? She's not here. Must've got bored and wandered off, or whatever she does. I'm just gonna leave the food by the door and head back, if that's alright with you?"

There's a moment's silence.

"Great!" she exclaims. "I'll be there soon."

I wait until I hear the sound of the front door closing before opening up the door between the garage and the house. Unsurprisingly, the first thing I notice is the light. It's not as well-lit as the arms depot was, but that seems to have more to do with the house itself; the overhead lights are dark, with some of the bulbs missing their glass, and light is instead provided by a series of lamps that have been scattered about the place.

It looks like it was set up recently, but someone's taken the effort to make it feel lived-in. The walls are covered in posters for a whole bunch of bands I've never heard of, with the old family photos of whoever used to live here left scattered in heaps on the floor. Over the top of a whole wall of the posters, someone's used spray paint to scrawl a big message that just reads 'FUCK OFF.'

Shaking my head in dismay, I ignore the walls and the posters and move deeper into the house. The kitchen looks fairly well-used, with an extension cord leading to the microwave and the fridge while the rest of the appliances have been left to gather dust. I open up the fridge, seeing shelf after shelf of pre-packaged meals, cans of beer and some other food packets I don't even try to make sense of.

Looking around the kitchen some more – and turning my nose up at the empty meal packets that have been idly tossed around the room – I spot a door that looks like it might lead to a basement. Sure enough, when I open it I'm immediately hit by the stench of mold and the sight of a rickety staircase that's half rotted through, leading down to a basement that's been partially flooded by water seeping through the walls.

As much as the darkness down there looks welcoming, I know it's not likely to contain anything important. So I shut the door and head back out into the kitchen, pushing through a fairly sparse dining room and into what looks like a living room. The couches seem to be in decent condition – like they were replaced when the building was turned into a safehouse – and there's a surprisingly large stack of books piled up on and end table next to the biggest.

Idly, I pick the topmost book off the stack. The front cover has a photo of a shirtless man wearing handcuffs, for whatever reason. I set it back down on the stack, taking care to make sure it's facing the same way it was when I picked it up. If I can get out of here without anyone knowing I ever visited, that would be absolutely ideal.

Along with the stack of books, a brand new television has been perched on a water-damaged coffee table, but I leave that one alone. The screen always seems too bright to my eyes, which is why I prefer radio. Ember tried to do a movie night once, with a film she promised was as dark as she could find, but I barely made it a quarter of the way through before I got so scared I had to dive beneath the couch for safety.

I shake my head to dislodge the memory, focusing on the job at hand. There doesn't seem to be anything particularly important in the living room – except for the pistol sitting next to the books, but at this point I'm pretty numb to that sort of thing. All there really is to find here is more evidence that whoever lives here is a total slob with no concept of cleanliness or good taste.

Still, all I can do is move on and keep up the search. It doesn't take me long to find the stairs up to the second floor, which is just as desecrated as the rest of the house, with posters on every wall and the occasional spray-painted expletive adding a little extra flair. Most of the rooms here look abandoned, their bedding torn to shreds in what looks like a deliberate act of violence; someone venting their frustrations by taking a knife to the poor, innocent sheets.

After briefly glancing into the bathroom, the only room I haven't checked is the remaining bedroom. Once I push open the door, a wave of fear and exhilaration rolls over me like a tsunami.

Every inch of free wall space is absolutely covered in mirrors, ranging in size and style from a long flat mirror that could have been lifted from a public restroom to some ancient gilded thing that looks like it belongs in a museum. It's exactly what I came here to find; it couldn't be more obviously a Cape's bedroom if it tried, and I'm pretty sure I know which one. Thus, the fear.

The last thing I want to do is to run into Bloody Mary, and yet here I am in her bedroom. I can't just cut my losses and run; there has to be something here that can give me a clue as to where the other safehouses are, or a clue that points to another clue that has the answers I need. I just have to search this place as quickly as possible and get out as fast as I can. Let Jaeger do whatever he wants with this information, I just want to get this done.

The first thing that draws my eye is the vanity set against the wall. Where the rest of the house is – at best – a complete trash heap, the vanity is a bastion of order and effort. It's covered in bottles of makeup and accessories, all of them either lighter or darker than I'd been expecting, matching the black and white style of a lot of the band posters. It seems there is something Bloody Mary can bring herself to care about.

As I'm looking over the bottles, the top of the vanity seems to shake for a brief moment, as a whirr fills the air. Brushing aside a couple of bottles of very black lipstick, I find a black phone that's currently lit up by an incoming text.

'Meeting at 22:00 tomorrow, site B. Try to actually show up, this time.'

I grin from ear to ear – as much as I can grin with a beak for a mouth. Now all I have to do is figure out where site B is, but maybe Jaeger can pull something from the phone that'll tell us.

Taking the phone is a risk, but maybe Bloody Mary won't notice it's missing? I mean, she's already left it behind while she went… wherever she's gone. Besides, someone who's this untidy has to be so used to losing things they'd never even consider it was stolen.

Wrapping my hand around the phone, I turn to make my way out of the room. As I do, I catch a glimpse of something out of the corner of my eye. Something in a mirror. I snap back, but there's nothing there except my own reflection.

Fear spikes in my chest as a woman appears in an entirely different mirror, standing right behind me and dressed from her neck to her toes in an outfit made of close-fitting leather that's held together by an array of belts and straps. Her face is almost unnaturally white, with deep red lips and red hair that cascades down her shoulders. The upper half of her face is covered by a plain leather mask that does nothing to hide the manic look in her eyes.

As I watch, she drops the takeaway bag she's holding and pulls a straight razor out of a pouch on one of her many belts, slowly thumbing out the blade as her angry expression shifts into a sickening grin.

I whirl on my feet, spinning on the spot with my beak open as I put my whole body behind the bite, only to snap down on empty air. I get a brief glimpse of the woman again – in every mirror in front of me – before a jolt of white hot agony shoots through my body as she drives her blade into my back.

 

[Vokivas]

Oh man, you're really pumping them out now.

Even though these scenes give you so much trouble, they come out wonderfully. As Nightcrawler made her way into the garage and through the house, I was reminded over and over of horror games and films. Then it hit me that it was basically two horror monsters that were heading towards a showdown. Then we get that Nightcrawler can't take scary movies.

It was all a very great time, and then Bloody Mary had to be her crazy self and ruin things lol. Nightcrawler probably would've been better served just running, or even leaving with the information she got from the phone that would've let her attempt to tail them. I have to wonder if Mary has mirrors spread around in the house that let her keep an eye on things, meaning she spotted Nightcrawler and will be able to hinder her as she tried to run, and Nightcrawler only noticed the mirrors in the bedroom because of how extreme it was. Maybe the old family photos are a part of it? I imagine it would be easier to overlook someone in a reflective object if there was a picture of people there.

 

[theaceoffire]

– in every mirror in front of me

Click to shrink...

Yeah you've been taking more risks than expected, you should reflect on this.

//Eh? Say no more, say no more?

 

[Redcoat_Officer]

Lookout – 3.05

I can almost feel the knife inside me; a throbbing bar of white hot agony digging into my back as Bloody Mary pushes it down to the hilt, and pushes me to the ground with it. I feel her hand running across my back – barely a nudge among the pain – as she dips her fingers in the gushing black blood. I can see her clearly in the mirrors opposite as she uses her legs to weigh me down even further. She looks up, meeting my inhuman gaze with her monstrous but all-too-human eyes as she brings her bloody fingers up to her mouth, savouring the taste of my blood with her tongue.

"And what" – she asks, her tone leisured and aristocratic – "are you supposed to be?"

With one hand kept firmly on the knife, she grips my lower jaw and starts to pull my head up. She's not strong – definitely not as strong as Ember or Jaeger – but I don't weight all that much.

"A little Watchdog, sent scampering off into the night with the scent of blood to guide you? Or just Jaeger's rebound… thing?"

Her eyes travel lazily up and down my body, before meeting my gaze again and smiling mockingly.

"I suppose it doesn't matter now. I wonder what you look like beneath all that skin?"

I start to flail, but that just has the knife wiggling on my back. Bloody Mary laughs at my struggles… she throws back her head and laughs like a lunatic! My eyes are frantically moving from mirror to mirror, desperately seeking some way I can escape, before they settle on the vanity behind me.

I flick out my tail, running it briefly along the side of Bloody Mary's leg before drifting it into the shadows beneath the vanity. In a second, I've disappeared and hidden in the shadows, the sudden loss of my weight sending the woman sprawling to the floor.

I'm out of the shadows just as quickly, clambering over the woman's body as I rush for the exit – ignoring the throbbing and bleeding wound in my back that re-emerged the moment I left the shadows.

I almost make it, too, until Bloody Mary flows like mist out of one of the mirrors, already mid-kick. She sends me sprawling into the side of her bed, so I slip beneath its sides and hide in the space underneath.

I don't even have two seconds before Bloody Mary curls her fingers around the bed and flips it. She struggles against the weight of the mattress – and I think if the bed were made of wood she wouldn't be able to lift it at all – but the light spills in all the same.

Just like I knew it would.

I don't wait for it to force me out, instead shrugging off every instinct I have and pouncing out of my hiding spot, throwing my weight against the monster. I knock the breath out of her, sending her a half-step back before her legs fall out from under her and she crashes to the ground. I try to bite her, but she brings up her arm just in time and all I get is a mouthful of some of her stupid belts.

Giving up on the attack, I punch her in the face with one of my forelimbs and pounce towards the exit again, this time managing to just make it through the door before she makes it to the closest mirror and teleports to me.

Which means she needs to touch a mirror to travel through it. I can use that.

I sprint across the corridor, with her hot on my heels.

I'm not foolish enough to think she'll leave me alone if I can give her the slip. It would be the sensible thing to do; to run off and tell all about the spy she's found, to expose this whole operation to the Triad and make everything I've achieved absolutely meaningless.

But she won't do it. Because she's a monster.

She'll kill me first.

She steps out of the bathroom, bursting into the corridor with her knife out and an angry look on her face. Her nose looks a little lopsided, and her mad rush has sent droplets of blood scattering down her cheeks, mixing with her white make-up and leaving a spattering of tiny pink stains. Guess I broke it.

She swings at me, and I narrowly twist my body around the blow by hugging the ground and darting between her legs – aiming a kick at her as I go, but it doesn't connect. I haven't done much hand-to-hand practice, but Ember made sure that Jaarsveld and his men took me through the basics. It's clear that Bloody Mary hasn't even had that. She's fast – with a singular viciousness to her movements – but there's none of the coordination of the people I trained with.

Mind you, I'm not much better. Neither of us are fighters. I like to hide in the shadows, while she likes to pop out of people's mirrors and cut their throats while they're asleep.

Still, if there's one advantage I do have, it's that you can't fight me like you would anyone else. Moving on all fours comes naturally to me, but it means she has to swipe downwards rather than ahead of her. That slows her down; she manages to drag her knife along my back, but the cut is shallower than it could have been and it doesn't stop me from pouncing on top of the banister and leaping down the stairs to the first floor.

When I hit the carpet, she's already there, standing next to a mirror in the hall and cutting me off from the exit. She starts to edge forwards, keeping herself in-between me and the exit, as I creep deeper into the living room. Out of the corner of my eye, I spot the gun next to the stack of books and a plan starts to form in my head.

"You know you can't win, right?" she mocks, as I slowly start to creep towards the gun. I don't think she can see it from where she's standing, but I can't be sure.

"What, nothing to say?" Her mocking smile falters, slipping into an angry sneer. "How incredibly boring."

She takes half-step forward, so I hiss at her to keep her back. It's degrading, I know, but it'll keep her back as I edge closer and closer to the table. About three feet from salvation, she catches on to what I'm doing and leaps forwards with a snarl, her knife held out in front of her.

I pounce, scattering the books and hurriedly wrapping my hand around the grip of the pistol. The moment Bloody Mary spots the glint of black metal in my hand, she starts to desperately fumble with a pouch on her hip.

I pull the trigger, holding the gun as far away from me as possible and looking away from the muzzle flash, but nothing happens. I panic, trying desperately to remember how to work the slide, like I've seen some of the guards do before they go on their shift, but it's already too late.

The panic has left the monster's eyes, replaced by a psychopathic gleam as she pounces with the knife.

My tail drifts under the couch, pulling me into the shadows and leaving the gun behind as it falls to the floor of the lounge. Rather than wait for her to expose me again, I slip out on the other side of the sofa just in time to jump out of the way as she kicks it over with a frustrated snarl, leaving me without any cover at all.

I can't beat her here. This is her space, her home turf. It's well-lit, with enough mirrors around that she can slip in and out of them with ease. It takes away every advantage I have and gives them to her. If I'm going to beat her, or even just survive this, I need to draw her somewhere her advantages don't mean anything. The garage, maybe, or…

The basement!

I sprint down the corridor, heading towards the front door. It's dark outside, but there's enough ambient light and standing water around that every pothole and sinkhole has become a perfect mirror pool. I'd have my advantages back, but she'd still have hers. And I'm not a killer, while she is. On an equal footing, I'd lose.

Not that she gives me the chance to flee through the front door; the moment I get near it, a flat rectangular object flies over my head before depositing Bloody Mary in front of me in a puff of white mist.

That pouch on her hip must be full of mirrors she can use to slip away, or to throw across a room!

I'll have to get rid of it.

I throw my weight against the door to the kitchen, grateful that I didn't properly close it on my way out, and wince as the monster manages to drag her knife down my thigh as I pass her. My cuts are throbbing – each spasm spilling black blood and viscous ichor onto the kitchen tiles – but I fight through the agonising pain. Another mirror sails overhead – a flat rectangular shape that flickers and glints in the kitchen lights – but this time I'm ready for it.

Stamping down the instincts that are screaming at me to run, I pounce forwards the moment the first mist slips from the mirror. An instant later she's fully formed, her knife held out defensively in front of her, and my jaws are already closing on her hip, taking a chunk out of her costume, her belt and leaving the pouch full of mirrors gripped in my mouth.

She screams – half in anger and half in pain – as she kicks out reflexively with a leg, knocking me down to the ground and almost managing to loosen my grip on the pouch. I roll out of the way of a stab, using my tail to push myself along before springing back onto all fours and slamming my back into the door to the basement.

I tumble down the stairs in an agonising mess of twisted limbs, only feeling relief when I hit the shadows at the base and all my cuts and scrapes fade away, as my body vanishes into nothing. Without a mouth to hold it, the pouch of mirrors falls to the floor. Only sheer luck stops the small stack of rectangular glass from spilling out all over the place, and I form an arm to drag it away as fast as I can.

Bloody Mary practically leaps down the stairs, taking them two or three at a time even with one hand clutching her bleeding thigh. On her second step, there's a horrific crunch as the old wood, rotted through by years of damp air, gives way beneath her feet and sends her sprawling, rolling down the last few steps as they disintegrate around her.

I ignore the stairs, pulling the pouch of mirrors away and forming just a single hand to haul it upwards agonisingly slowly as she gathers her wits on the concrete floor. I reform my body as fast as I can, just about managing to scrabble up onto the floor of the kitchen and tossing the pouch as far as it'll go, spilling half a dozen gleaming rectangular mirrors across the tiled floor. I wrap a fist around the sole lamp in the kitchen, dashing it against the wall and plunging the room into darkness with the tinkle of a smashed bulb, before leaping back into the basement, curling my tail around the doorhandle to slam it shut behind me.

And with that, the last sliver of light disappears from the basement, leaving me with a perfect view of Bloody Mary staggering to her feet, her eyes darting around as wildly as the knife clutches protectively in her grasp, no longer stretched out to strike at an enemy but held in against her chest to guard against an attacker she can't see.

We've moved from her world, to mine.

I circle her in the shadows, drifting freely through the basement as she slowly staggers over to one wall, flinching back in shock as her foot catches on an old can. I drift up close enough to see her eyes widening in fear – her pupils like saucers as they hunt for any scrap of light. I form fingers just long enough to brush them against her neck, sending her flinching back with her knife wildly flailing at where she thinks I am.

But I'm already moving, pouncing out of the shadows and hitting her chest with the full force of my weight, sending her sprawling to the ground. I drive a foot into her wrist, her grip on the knife immediately scattering as the straight-edge blade skitters away from her along the floor. A quick slip into the shadows followed by a flick of my tail is enough to keep it out of her reach but well in my sight.

She tries to stand, so I knock her down again. All her bravado has fled her now – every bit of poise and cocky pride stripped away to reveal the cringing monster they concealed. She's not spoken a word since she fell down here, just breathing faster and faster as she slowly loses her mind to panic. So happy to tear the wings off flies for her own amusement, but so scared to find herself in my hands.

She shuffles backwards, giving up her efforts to haul herself to her feet in favour of pressing herself against the wall. I don't give her the chance, forming myself fully and pulling her underneath me, with my legs holding hers down and my forelimbs pressed against her arms.

Her head bucks as she panics, but I pay her no mind as I reach across and grab the handle of the knife. It feels heavy in my hands – even though it's just a small thing – and heavier still as I press it against her throat. She stills – completely. Her panicked breathing halts, her eyes freeze in place as tears stream down her cheeks, ruining her mascara. Her mouth is hanging wide open in a wordless plea, though I don't know if she's staying silent out of fear or because she knows pleas wouldn't work if our positions were reversed.

I tighten my grip on the knife, and…

And I can't. I just can't.

Because I'm not her. Because I'm not a monster, not like she is. Not like I look.

Black blood is pouring out of my wounds, running down the sleek leather lines of her costume, but I don't want to do the same to her. I just… don't. I have to hide away from the city, from everyone, because they look at me and they see a monster. But I'm not. I know I'm not. I have to be better than that.

I throw the knife aside and disappear back into the shadows. The breath Bloody Mary had been holding in comes out in a long, agonised gasp as her whole body jolts at the sudden absence of weight. She rolls over, scrabbing onto her hands and knees and wincing as she puts weight on her wounded thigh, but I pay her no mind.

I float to the top of the destroyed staircase, slipping underneath the door and into the darkened kitchen, forming myself at the hallway and practically throwing open the door to the safehouse, leaving the monster trapped in the basement as I stagger out under the overcast night sky.

The aches and pains I'd been pushing aside during the fight come back with a vengeance, and my leg starts to tremble and shake where the monster cut it. I slip into the shadows, creeping through the streets of the city and spending as little time corporeal as possible, to keep as much of my blood inside my body as I can.

I head south, following the distant glow of the city as I leave the flooded ruins behind. The city I know doesn't come all at once. It starts small, with a few isolated patches of streetlights like islands in the darkness, before growing into isolated villages, then whole estates, before emerging into the sprawl of tenements and suburban homes I'm familiar with.

Even then, there are still new sights. An immense fortification rises out of the north end of my city – an imposing glow I've only ever seen at a distance. It's a collection of rectangular buildings, mismatched in size but all similarly shaped. Like the security station in the Red Light district, in that it looks like the buildings once served one purpose but have since been turned into a fortress.

Behind chain-link fences tipped with razor wire, a military encampment squats in the middle of the city, lit from end to end by floodlights and filled with the sound of engines purring. As I watch, a boxy armoured truck pulls out of a gate, green and white lights flashing on top of its squat silhouette.

There's a sign by the gate, with white letters on a black backdrop lit from beneath by a purple glow. 'Parahuman Response Team. Department 20. Northgate Precinct."

I don't spend long watching it. It's too bright for me to get close, and I'm not comfortable being so near to a faction that rivals the Elite. Ember says there's nothing they could arrest me or her for, but I know that isn't true about all the Elite, and I don't want to risk it. Instead I slink back into the alleyways of Seattle and leap from rooftop to rooftop until I land on all fours just outside Jaeger's van.

My fist has barely hit the side before I'm bathed in the red glow of the van's interior, as one of Jaeger's men pulls it open with a rifle clutched in the other hand, pointed not at me but at the chest height of a normal person. The moment he spots me, the rifle is raised up and safely out of harm's way as he turns back into the van and shouts for bandages.

In an instant, his colleague is by my side, helping me up into the van and kneeling next to me on the floor as he throws open a first aid kit. I shake him off at first, looking up at Jaeger and desperately signing 'I found her.'

Jaeger takes my meaning immediately, his stone cold composure cracking for the briefest moment before he practically shoves his medic aside.

"What happened?" he asks, kneeling down in front of me. I just point behind him at the map.

In a single move he reaches back and rips it off the wall, setting it down in front of me. I take a bloody finger and mark the monster's house with a black spot, reaching back to gather more before scrawling out 'trapped' on the pristine map.

As Jaeger's medic wraps my wounds tightly in bandages – working with hurried yet professional movements – the man himself gives directions to his driver, and suddenly we're lurching back through the city streets. I slip in and out of consciousness, losing track of time and the feeling of cloth wrapped tight against my skin. I force myself out of the funk, pulling at Jaeger's pant leg until he looks down again.

'She's in basement,' I sign. 'Phone in bedroom.'

"Thank you," he replies, though his mind is still clearly focused on his rifle. The road has got worse, the van lurching more and occasionally shaking in a horrible, bone-rattling way as we pass over uneven ground. That's how I know we're getting close.

The medic ignores me once I'm safely bandaged up, going over his own preparations as the three of them wait by the door. The moment the van slams to a stop they're moving, throwing open the door to reveal a familiar view of that ruined house in the suburbs. I watch them as they sprint up the drive to the doorway, and all my worries fade away. They'll take Bloody Mary away, make sure she can't hurt anyone anymore and that she can't escape and tell the Triad about me… or hunt me down.

A brief flash of blinding lights appears through the cracks in the boarded-up kitchen window, alongside a deafening burst of gunshots that almost stop my heart again. For a second I think something must have gone wrong, but then Jaeger and the two soldiers step out the front door, looking completely unharmed. Jaeger is even holding the monster… Bloody Mary's phone in his left hand.

They're relaxed as they get back into the van, leisurely pulling the door shut like they haven't just shot someone. Jaeger sets the phone aside and puts his rifle back on its rack, before speaking into a radio set.

"This is Jaeger. Requesting a clean-up crew at a house in the marshes. Require body disposal and renovation; I don't want anyone knowing there was a fight. Address is as follows."

He rattles off the location for the house, before slumping into his chair and eyeing Bloody Mary's phone. It doesn't take him long to notice the three pairs of eyes staring up at him from the floor, and he tilts his head a little in acknowledgement.

'Why?' I sign.

It takes him a few seconds to answer, though I'm not sure if that's because he's thinking it over or he just wasn't expecting the question.

"We couldn't contain her long-term. Her power's too versatile. I couldn't trust the PRT to contain her either; if they could, they'd have caught her by now. She broke away from us before, which means we can't use her as a recruit. The only option left was to end the threat she represented to the Seattle Elite."

I fall silent, looking down at the ground. Maybe he's right, and she was a monster, but it still feels wrong. He… executed her.

I only look up again once I hear Jaeger reaching over and picking up the phone. I look up at him again, his eyes shaded by the brow of his helmet as he looks down at the screen.

'It's locked,' I sign, only to tilt my head quizzically as a wry grin creeps across his face.

"I have a lesson for you," he says, his eyes meeting my own.

I don't say anything in response. I just sit on the floor, my limbs coated by white bandages slowly staining black, and look up at him.

"You have a power that makes you superior to any human," he begins, "but that isn't enough. Bloody Mary's powers made her an excellent infiltrator, and she thought they made her an excellent killer, but that's all she ever did. She sat back and relied on her power for everything. She didn't study to improve her mind, and she only exercised to keep her looks intact, rather than to improve her body."

He turns the phone over in his hands, tossing it in the air and catching it.

"She had the niche her power gave her, and she thought that was enough. She was good at it, to be sure, but in all other areas she was distinctly… lacking."

He peels back a rubber case from the back of the phone, smiling in triumph as it reveals a small scrap of paper with a few numbers scribbled on it in pen. With a few taps on the screen, he unlocks the phone.

"The weakest part of any Parahuman is their humanity, and if you don't work to overcome it then it will be your downfall."

 

[Redcoat_Officer]

Well that took a while, didn't it? Sorry about the delay, but that fight scene was absolute agony to work through.

As a consolation prize, I offer you this rather low-effort map showing the state of Seattle in the aftermath of Leviathan's attack, to give you an idea of the effect it had. In the seven years since then, the green zones have all been reclaimed while the red zones are now nothing more than marshlands still filled with the ruins of old roads and buildings.

Spoiler: Very large image

 

[Vokivas]

That's the first time I've really looked at the coast of Seattle like that. Anyway, I think the fight scene turned out well. It definitely builds off of what was established last chapter, and I'm not sure what you found to be the hardest part. Maybe trying to strike a balance, that makes it so Nightcrawler can't just hide or something? To force that confrontation in the basement?

On another note, with how much she's done for the Elite with their conflict with the Triad, I'm wondering if there is more that she's supposed to help with. As in why she was put in Seattle. Though I imagine that things will cool off for a while, or at least her role in things. Her not killing Bloody Mary should keep them from trying to make her into an assassin, and it's clear that they still value the fact that she's a hidden asset. Maybe some more wholesomeness with Ember and her people?

 

[Redcoat_Officer]

That's the first time I've really looked at the coast of Seattle like that. Anyway, I think the fight scene turned out well. It definitely builds off of what was established last chapter, and I'm not sure what you found to be the hardest part. Maybe trying to strike a balance, that makes it so Nightcrawler can't just hide or something? To force that confrontation in the basement?

Click to shrink...

I've been giving it some thought, and I've come to realise that the way I write is heavily dependant on the narrative voice. With Ghost in the Flesh, writing fight scenes felt natural, and they flowed easily, because Sonne was a vicious bitch who felt right slinging punches every which way.

With Nightcrawler, the stuff that comes easiest are the descriptions. She's naturally curious, so it's easy to write her being enthralled by another massive part of Seattle's cityscape. Fights come harder, because her first instinct is to run, and they're technically more difficult too, because with her power it's hard to hit that balance of their being enough shadows for her to have an impact, but not so many that the victory is trivial.

 

[Redcoat_Officer]

Lookout – 3.06

I shiver, just a little, despite being practically swaddled in a cocoon of blankets and tightly wrapped in fresh bandages. It's partly lingering shock, partly my slowly-closing cuts, and partly an automatic reflex as I try to stop myself slipping back into the darkness. I've never been able to take anything with me when I shift, and that means I've already accidentally slipped out of my bandages. Twice.

It's been a few hours since Jaeger… since I got back from the Triad safehouse. I'm lying on Ember's couch, in the living room of her weird floating home. Jaeger brought me here once he'd finished up, after a long phone call with Ember full of what sounded like shouted accusations from her end. It's kind of nice to know she's looking out for my health.

Jaeger himself is slumped in an armchair opposite, having swapped out his uniform jacket for a more civilian-looking hooded coat. Absent his masked helmet, his features seem a little less sharp. His eyes, on the other hand, are still the same cold blue pinpricks they always have been. He's looking through Bloody Mary's phone, occasionally taking notes under the sparse light of a single reading lamp.

The moment we got in here, Ember drew the curtains shut. I think it's partly because she doesn't want anyone to spot us, but mostly because she knows that dawn's on its way and I'm not comfortable in the light.

Jaeger's eyes flick up from the phone as Ember walks into the room, before flicking right back down again as she deliberately ignores him. I'm taking up all of the couch, so she kneels down in front of me with a mug of some hot liquid in her hand and a smile on her face. It means she's not looking down at me – or not as much as she would standing up – and I appreciate that.

"How are you holding up?"

I shuffle around a little as I squirrel a hand out of the blanket-roll, giving her a thumbs up and dropping my jaw in the closest I can get to an actual smile. Still, the movement makes me wince a little as the cut on my shoulder pulls against the bandages holding it in place. From the look that briefly passed across her eyes, I can see Ember noticed.

"I got you a drink," she says, holding out the mug in front of her.

I lean over a little to look at it, seeing a mug full of what looks like whipped cream and tilting my head in confusion. Still, I take it and start to lick at the cream with my long tongue, getting a wry grin out of Ember. Suddenly, my tongue hits something hot beneath the cream and I instinctively flick it back into my mouth. Is that…

"Never had hot chocolate before?" Ember laughs, sliding around so she's leaning back against the front of the sofa – and my blanket-wrapped body – with my head next to her left shoulder.

I shake my head as I try to angle the cup so I can drink it – it's surprisingly hard to do with a fairly long beak, and without any lips a straw would be less than useless. The drink is warm, but without the bitter taste of coffee, and I can't stop myself from letting out a contented noise as I sink deeper into the couch – something in-between a whistle and a purr.

"I figured you wouldn't want coffee at this time of night," Ember says as I take another sip, and I nod my head in gratitude.

"You've had a rough time," she says after the silence starts to stretch a little too long. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have let you go… or I should have gone with you."

I don't say anything. She's wrong… but she's also right. Finding those drug labs, those arms depots… it was all important work, and I'd do it again in a heartbeat. But what they… what we did to Bloody Mary… it's left a bad taste in my mouth.

"It was useful," Jaeger pipes up from across the room, and I get the horrid idea that he's trying to be comfortable. "This phone is a goldmine of information."

He leans forward, his coat shifting just enough to show me the grip of the pistol he has tucked into a shoulder holster. I don't think I've ever seen him more than a few feet from a gun.

"They were keeping her in the loop, even though it's clear she wasn't interested. I suspect she either demanded it out of petty vanity, or they were worried that she would take offence if she wasn't included. Either way, it helps build a clearer picture of their network."

He continues, apparently unaware of the way I'm looking anywhere except at him.

"They're having a meeting. Tomorrow… well, tonight, I suppose. It concerns the one piece of the puzzle I have yet to find: why they broke away from us in the first place. What could possibly be worth the risk of a gang war? Worth the risk of going up against the Elite?"

"Does it matter?" Ember asks without moving from her position. "Whatever the reason, we'll beat them."

"Of course it matters," Jaeger snaps back. "They're gambling everything on this, whatever it is. If we can stop it, we can break the back of the Triad in a single blow. If we can't, then this war will just go on and on until it gets bad enough to drag Alexandria up from LA."

He pauses for a moment, his eyes flicking back to his notes before meeting Ember's stare head on.

"Which is why I need to borrow Nightcrawler, one last time."

I can't see Ember's expression from where I'm lying, but given the way Jaeger's eyes widen it clearly wasn't friendly. For my part, I can't stop the stab of fear that hits me at his words.

"The meeting is taking place in a tenement block, after dark. Bloody Mary was kind enough to note down the locations that correspond to their little codes. We don't have anyone else who can infiltrate the meeting. "

An uneasy silence falls on the room, as Ember and Jaeger stare each other down. Eventually, she speaks, slowly clambering to her feet.

"You're looking at me, but I'm not the person you need to persuade."

She steps aside, sitting on the couch's armrest and looking down at me with a warm but concerned expression.

"You've done all the work, Nightcrawler. You've taken all the risk. I'll understand if you want to back out."

My first instinct is to leap at her suggestion and get out while I still can, to go back to the Red Light district and forget that any of this happened. My second instinct betrays me, bringing up everything I've seen over the last few days. The warehouses full of poisoned needles, the family homes stacked high with crates of weapons.

I could go back, but I wouldn't be any safer. All I'd be doing is delaying the risk, sticking my head in the sand and hoping it goes away. It wouldn't – it would come for me, and Ember and everything I care about. It would come at a time of its choosing, and in numbers I couldn't hope to stop.

Jaeger is right. He's heartless, and maybe he's a monster, but he's right. This has to stop.

I wiggle my other hand out of the blankets, passing my now-empty mug of delicious hot chocolate to Ember and signing out my assent. Jaeger simply nods, like he was expecting it all along, while Ember puts her hand on my shoulder in silent support.

Jaeger stands, snapping his notebook shut and tucking the phone into one of his pockets.

"I'll head off and get some sleep, then. I suggest you do the same."

And, with that, he throws his hood back over his head, casting his face into shadow, and steps out the front door, leaving the two of us alone in the living room.

"You sure you're alright?" Ember asks from her perch on the armrest.

I just nod, even though I'm not completely sure I made the right call. I think Ember notices my hesitancy, but she's kind enough not to press me about it.

"Okay, so long as you're sure. Jaeger's a prick, but he's right about one thing; you should get some sleep."

I nod, slowly extracting myself from the comfortable blankets and clambering up the stairs to my room – those two words still giving me a wonderfully warm feeling whenever I think them. My room is east-facing, so the window is bathed in the orange light of the dawn, but Ember had some heavier curtains put in that keep the sun away, limiting it to little spots of light where the fold of the fabric lets it through.

It keeps the room comfortable, dark and intimate, but I still leap up on the bed and squirrel myself completely under the covers, to shut out the last bits of light and leave me cocooned in the darkness. I shut my three pairs of eyes, and the world goes with them.

When I wake, it's to the feeling of a hand rocking my shoulder. I shake off the last dregs of sleep, standing up on all fours and using my arms to pull off the duvet. I could have slipped into the shadows and left the bed that way – I usually do it, and it means I don't have to bother remaking it – but, next time I slip into the shadows, I'm going to be leaving a pile of bloody bandages behind. I don't want to have to wash the sheets.

Ember's standing over me, dressed fairly casually in jeans and a hooded coat that casts plenty of shadows.

"You ready?" she asks, and, in lieu of answering, I place my hand over her palm, then move it up her wrist until I'm touching the shadows beneath her sleeve. She doesn't say anything as I nestle myself in the shadows around her right arm, just scooping up the bandages, tossing them in the bathroom bin, and stepping out onto the little jetty that runs down the length of the largely-aquatic street.

Ember moves without rushing, nodding a little to the occasional neighbour but not stopping for anything. Jaeger is waiting in the car park, sitting on the hood of a nondescript blue car and dressed in a similar sort of hooded jacket to Ember. I guess that answers the question of how I'll be getting there.

"The job's on," Ember says, "so long as you don't let her get into any more fights. Understood?"

She holds out her hand to shake, which strikes me a little odd until I realise what she's doing. When Jaeger grips her hand in his own, I reach across my own arm and slip from sleeve to sleeve into his coat, curling up his back and nestling in the shadows of his hood so that I'm looking out past his face.

"There's no reason to expect a fight," Jaeger replies with what strikes me as a complete non-answer. "I assume this is the point where she jumps dramatically out of your coat?"

If I had a jaw right now, and if it was capable of the gesture, I'd be grinning from ear to ear. As it stands, I just form my hand in Jaeger's hood and give him a couple of affectionate pats on the cheek.

"Ah," he says, as his right arm tenses and jolts unconsciously towards the gun tucked against his chest. It's a reaction, but one that's hidden enough that I wouldn't notice it if I wasn't so close.

"Right," he says, as Ember grins at him before turning off and walking back to her home with a shout of "play nice, you two!"

Jaeger doesn't talk throughout the entire drive. He just keeps his eyes on the road, and his hands focused on working the car. It's only when we're actually pulling into Triad neighbourhoods, the same streets I've been busy scouting for the past week, that he decides to fill the uncomfortable silence.

"Sometimes you have to push yourself. Ember… she means well, but she's just as attached to you as you clearly are to her. Keeping safe is all well and good, but you can't improve as a person if you never push yourself out of your comfort zone. The path of least resistance is also the path of least reward."

I don't say anything in response, just looking silently out of his hood as he pulls into a pitch-black alleyway, switching off the headlights and plunging the car into darkness.

"Just something to think about. You want the tenement block two buildings left of here. There's nowhere around here to park without drawing suspicion, so you'll have to make your own way back. I'll meet you in Ember's office."

With the whole car now completely dark, I don't need to reform myself as I slip out of his hood and right through the windshield. I soar upwards, giving me enough momentum to clear the glow of a streetlight in a single leap that has me landing squarely on top of the roof. I peer over the edge, watching Jaeger's car light back off and drive back into the street, where it becomes just another part of the traffic.

The target building doesn't look any different from the rest; just another four-story block of self-contained apartments on a street full of them. I suppose that's the point; a lot of people travelling to a secret meeting in the middle of nowhere would look pretty obvious, but here everyone gets lost among the residents. Hiding in plain sight.

It doesn't take me long to decide on my approach – this isn't a well-off neighbourhood, but it's not abandoned either. That means the corridors and apartments all have power, which would make sneaking through them a nightmare. But I've started to get a better understanding of how buildings are built, so it doesn't take me long to find an extractor fan on the roof that no-doubt connects directly to the building's ventilation.

There are some places I have to reform myself – where the vents are in just the wrong position to keep the light out – but, by and large, I'm able to drift through the ventilation like a ghost, my only company the spiders and mice that call the vents their home.

I'm able to get a pretty good look at the entire building by peering through vents or oh-so-cautiously lifting up a ceiling tile to get a look inside rooms, but there's nothing that immediately jumps out to me as a secret meeting place. So far, the tenement block looks like exactly what it appears to be, with people idling in front of the television, eating late night food, passed out drunk on the floor or tucking their children into bed. As I descend down from the second floor to the first, I start to wonder if Jaeger misread Bloody Mary's phone.

Of course, if they picked a meeting place that looked like any other building, it only makes sense that they'd use an inhabited one. The trick isn't in looking for suspicious places, because they'll be hidden, it's in looking for suspicious people.

So I settle in over the building's lobby, shifting a ceiling tile just enough that I can watch the people coming and going. It doesn't take me long to spot a likely pair: a man in scuffed biker leathers, with full-face helmet and a metal skull mask covering his face, being escorted by the same biker I saw at the gun-runners place, the one I piggybacked on to find Bloody Mary. Mika, with the biker she mentioned having to show around. She didn't mention he was a Cape, but anyone who dresses like that has to be a parahuman.

As they pass me, I catch a glimpse of the back of his jacket. Most of it is taken up by a red letter A in a white circle, without the bar across the middle. There's writing above and below it, with the former spelling out 'Spartan Legion' and the latter 'Vice-President.' Could this be what Jaeger's looking for? Are the Triad bringing in a group from outside the city to tip the balance of power?

It's not enough to be sure. If I'm doing this, I need to know for certain just what's going on. Otherwise Jaeger might ask me to do it again.

I follow them as best I can from the vents, keeping an ear out for the sound of their footsteps and periodically flipping up ceiling tiles to get brief glimpses of them whenever it looks like they're about to reach a junction. Sure enough, they don't head up into the apartments, but down into the basement.

What I see down there, from behind a couple of heating ducts, is almost too strange to believe. It's like the whole tenement building was positioned on top of an already-present bunker, with the utility room in the basement built around and on top of it, and then someone has cut through the feet of concrete and steel bars to create a makeshift entrance.

I'd wonder why a city would need to build a bunker beneath its streets, but I've stood on top of the broken wall that once held the sea at bay. Whatever this is, it came from Leviathan, like everything else in this city.

Mika nods to the guard, a heavy-set man with a short-barrelled rifle, who steps aside to let the pair of them enter before resuming his watch on the door. The plastic chair sitting empty and abandoned next to him is a further sign that something important is happening tonight; if there weren't so many important people passing through, he'd probably be sitting down.

I slip into the shadows behind the boiler, creeping along the tops of the pipes as they run the length of the ceiling before dropping down silently behind the guard and creeping into the bunker.

The walls are solid concrete, which means all the wiring is suspended from the roof on metal catwalks that run throughout the compound. It wouldn't support a person's weight, and there's only enough room for a maintenance guy to lean in and swap out broken wires, but that's more than enough space for me.

I leap up, disappear, and slink through the compound on a path that might as well have been tailor-made for me to use. The bunker's abandoned state quickly becomes more understandable, as I pass great cracks and fissures in the wall that would ruin any waterproofing the place might have once had. Some of the worst-affected areas have been hastily repaired with great sheets of welded steel, while others have been left in place; whole passageways blocked off by spoil heaps of concrete and old dirt.

It quickly becomes clear that I'm running along a path that skirts the edge of a larger room, a cavernous space that was probably meant to hold the most people during an attack, while these support tunnels were supposed to provide access for relief workers, medics or anyone else who might be needed to keep a place like this running. If there's a meeting here, it'll be in that main room.

I look from side to side, checking I'm alone in the corridor before dropping to the floor and sprinting silently towards an open doorway. The bunker isn't well lit, but the simple overhead lights cast enough of a glow that I can't shift back, instead having to quickly poke my head through the door to catch a brief glimpse of the space on the other side.

What I see is a cavernous hall, several stories tall and crisscrossed by metal gantries. Far below me, the hall has been filled with trinkets and treasures, some haphazardly stacked in heaps or tucked away in the corner while others, particularly those near the far end of the room, have been put together to create what could almost be a throne room, with fine carpets and rich statuary all surrounding a richly furnished wooden chair, with serpentine dragons carved into the wood. It looks like an antique.

People are standing in front of the seat in a rough circle, chatting idly to each other. Maybe three dozen in all, and at least a dozen of them look like they're wearing costumes. There's no unifying theme, either. The room is clearly new – put together in a rush after they moved here from wherever their last headquarters were – but it has a unified aesthetic. The people don't, except for a common colour of light blue painted onto armour, sewn into spandex costumes or just displayed on cloth armbands. The only people in the room who don't have anything light blue on them are the parahuman biker and a man in a neatly-tailored suit who's hovering by the throne.

I jog silently along the catwalks, far above their heads and shrouded from sight by the lack of lighting on the highest levels. It's probably meant to give the room a sense of ambient grandness, but they might as well have rolled out the red carpet for me. It means I can merge with the shadows and drift close enough to hear what they're saying, even if I can't make out the individual words among the white noise of all the other conversations.

A door opens on the side of the room, and all the chatter ceases instantly. The man who steps out is small, especially when compared to the hulking bodyguard who's shadowing him. He's old too, hunched over, frail and walking with clear difficulty. His suit is plain, if a little unusual – with the jacket going all the way up to his collar rather than being left open to reveal a shirt and tie. It almost looks bizarre to see so many terrifying parahumans fall silent at his mere appearance, but there's iron in his eyes. This must be Lo Yiu Hong; the head of the Triad.

He manages to stop himself from collapsing into the chair, but it's a close run thing. I can't help but wonder if the chair is supposed to be a symbol of his authority, or if he's the only person sitting because he wouldn't be able to stand. And then, he shifts a little in his seat, and suddenly he's sitting straight and proud, like there's no weight on him at all. He looks over the assembled notables of the Triad, human and parahuman, before speaking in a raspy voice that carries throughout the chamber.

"Welcome. Are we all present?"

"Bloody Mary isn't here. Again." The speaker has a strange accent, and she's dressed in a dark green dress that looks to have been tattered and ruffled in a way that's reminiscent of a raging sea. Her face is covered by a light blue mask shaped into the features of woman's face, locked in a serene expression.

"No matter," the head of the Triad speaks, waving his hand dismissively. "Her invitation was a courtesy; nothing more. She has no part to play in these events."

"All due respect, sir," the woman continues, with a hasty glance to the biker and the man in the suit like she's afraid of undercutting her boss in front of strangers, "but I don't understand why you tolerate her."

"Because she would be a dangerous enemy, Rusalka. And because she was cheaply bought. The cost would have been worth it if all we had done was take her off the field; anything she contributes beyond that is simply profit. Now, on to the business at hand."

At that, the suited man starts talking in a language I don't understand. From the looks of confusion around the room, I'd say only a fifth of the people here actually know what he's saying. Lo Yiu Hong puts up his hand for silence, but it takes half a second for the man to comply. I can't tell if he simply wasn't paying attention, or if it was a deliberate snub.

"Mr Jiang," the head of the Triad speaks, his tone reproachful, "little is gained by speaking in a language few here understand, and Mandarin has never been the lingua franca of the Triad."

"Apologies," the suited man replies, his tone just humble enough to avoid causing offence. "I simply wished to reiterate the importance of this venture. A great deal depends on its success."

"That much is obvious," Rusalka snaps.

"Quite," the old man agrees, silencing his subordinate. "The purpose of this meeting is to ensure everyone understands the roles they must play in the coming week. Beginning with the transportation of the cargo. Steel Skull," he says, angling his head to look at the biker, "thank you for coming all this way."

"Thank you for being such excellent hosts," Steel Skull answers, taking a step forwards into the circle. I'm starting to get a picture of what's going on – Mr Jiang represents a client, and the Triad are facilitating the transport of something to him or his backers. But can any bit of cargo really be worth starting a gang war?

"The cargo will be coming into the city in three shipping containers," the biker begins his brief. "Security will be light, with armed drivers and guards shadowing the trucks in civilian cars, rather than bikes. We're relying on anonymity; thousands of containers pass through this city every day. I've already passed the timings onto Rusalka." The woman in question nods in acknowledgement. "Assuming nothing changes, the containers will be delivered to the warehouse, which is where my people will hand over to yours. Make sure to have specialists on standby, because we'll be taking ours with us once the delivery's made."

"From there" – Rusalka steps forward into the circle p – "our priority is in getting the containers onto the ship without drawing the eye of customs. The right palms have already been greased, so that shouldn't be too hard. The security detail on the ship will then ensure the safe delivery of the cargo to Brunei, where they'll be handed off to your people." She nods to Mr Jiang.

"And the cargo itself?" Mr Jiang ignores Rusalka, instead fixing his gaze on the biker. "How many have you managed to acquire?"

"We've got two from Boston," he answers, as a sinking feeling starts to well up in my stomach, "a brother and sister pair who pissed off some big shot. Five from the Midwest, who're a mix of opportunistic sales and people the locals wanted disappeared. The last container has three, all of them the losers of a gang war in Denver. We've got them all in induced comas, and the containers are rigged out with all the gear you need to keep them that way."

He chuckles. It makes me feel sick.

"After all, the last thing you want is a pissed-off parahuman waking up as you're halfway across the Pacific."

It's so much worse than I though. Worse than the guns, even worse than the needles. But it makes sense. I can't help but think about what Ember told me, back when I was still shaken by Mike's death and she calmed me down with a stiff drink and a comfortable seat.

She said that the Elite were formed 'by parahumans, for parahumans, and there's no way they'd stand for this. The Triad had to break away, because they knew that the Elite would turn on them if it ever found out they were… were selling people.

How much is a person worth? Enough to make the gang war worth it? To buy in as many outsiders as they need to tip the balance of power in the city?

And, if I hadn't come here, I'd never have found out. Nobody would have found out.

I have to tell them. They… we have to stop it. We're the only ones who can.

 

[Vokivas]

It mans I can merge…

Click to shrink...

Pretty you meant 'means'

Anyway, two things. I guess I'll just throw out some speculation about future reveals.

The CUI is the only group I can think of that has enough pull and is inclined to reach out to a group like the Triad. Also the whole parahuman collection deal. I imagine that this is what's big enough to get Cauldron to insert Nightcrawler. Did the CUI promise to help the Triad take Seattle from the Elite, and that's why? Does it have to do with the parahumans being trafficked? Would it be bad if the CUI gets them, or would they be of more use for Cauldron's goals with some measure of freedom and still in North America? Some combination of this? The only other commentary I really have on this is the Spartans as a group. I don't expect them to play a huge part because of how their group seems to be structured and operates, but I think they're a nice addition.

One thing that I felt like asking about is a bit more meta. With this map of Seattle, and some of the stuff you've said in GitF, suggests that you put effort into using google and google images to really ground things in reality. I guess this just makes me wonder if that process has had any impact on yourself, and your knowledge of geography. I guess that much is a given, so the better question might be just how much it has impacted you.

 

[Redcoat_Officer]

One thing that I felt like asking about is a bit more meta. With this map of Seattle, and some of the stuff you've said in GitF, suggests that you put effort into using google and google images to really ground things in reality. I guess this just makes me wonder if that process has had any impact on yourself, and your knowledge of geography. I guess that much is a given, so the better question might be just how much it has impacted you.

Click to shrink...

I've been quite subtle about it, so you might not be aware, but I'm not from America. In fact, apart from a family holiday to Florida when I was a lot younger and one brief nightmare of a connecting flight through Miami airport, I've never been to the United States. So when I come to write a story set in Seattle, or Boston, or Delhi or any of the other settings I've used, Google Maps is the fastest way to get a feel for it.

You might think that a city is a city, wherever you go, but something I've learned is that couldn't be more wrong. American cities sprawl in a very strange way, at least to my eyes. Looking at a map of Seattle, within about a mile of the city centre you have blocks full of nothing but suburban homes, all on individual lots. Sure, there's the occasional block of flats, but it all starts a lot earlier than I'd have thought, and carries on in much the same vein mile after mile, block after block, all the way to Everett in the north.

Seattle is a huge city, with a major population and its broader metropolitan area is massive in scope, but it's not very dense. The same applies to Miami, which I looked at for Lights and Waves. The city is sandwiched between the ocean and a whole load of swamps, but the vast majority of its landmass is made up of what I would call 'detached' homes. It's only when you look at cities in the north-east that you start to see denser residential areas, with taller buildings packed in closer together.

In British cities, the norm for housing is what we call 'terraces.' Rather than being based off rectangular blocks containing individual plots of land and detached homes of varying styles, streets of houses are built as one continuous building divided into different homes, all of which might look identical across whole swathes of the city. It results in cities with a completely different footprint to those in the US. If you compare Liverpool to Seattle, you can see that, even though the Seattle Metropolitan area as a whole has about a million and a half more people than the Liverpool Metro area, Liverpool looks much more dense from above.

Spoiler: Liverpool & Seattle, on as close to the same scale as I can get on Google Earth

For those of you who're unfamiliar with British cities, here's a closer in look of some terraced and semi-detached homes to give you an idea of what that looks like.

Spoiler: English streets

They're not just like that in the big cities, either. Go onto Google Maps and look at Wrexham (62,000 people), in Wales, or Buxton (22,000), in Derbyshire, and you'll see the same rows of houses, with at least two homes to a building. Even Coxhoe in County Durham, a tiny village of 7,000 people that's surrounded on all sides by green fields, has rows of terraces running along its main road.

But enough about that. This story is set in an American city, and so it's American cities that shape how I tell it.

When you picture superhero comics, one of the first images that comes to mind is Batman standing on a rooftop, or possibly Spiderman swinging between tall buildings. Big cities are as much a part of the superhero aesthetic as capes and spandex, but they're a specific type of city that doesn't really exist in the vast majority of the United States. Spiderman couldn't swing in Seattle anywhere outside of downtown, simply because there wouldn't be any buildings tall enough to swing from. Take him out of New York, and his iconic method of travelling becomes useless. And who would Batman be if he couldn't stare moodily across a vista of decaying apartment blocks? Gotham, in all its crumbling glory, is as much a part of Batman's aesthetic as Batman himself. Put him on top of a department store and have him brood over a quiet suburban neighbourhood and he'll just look out of place.

When I decided to set Nightcrawler in Seattle, I wasn't aware of just how suburban the city was. Nightcrawler, and her method of travel, would be as useless as Spiderman in a well-lit suburban environment, but the corporate skyscrapers at the heart of Seattle would be well lit at all hours of the day, as with most high-rise commercial zones in any city.

I had to do something about that, or Nightcrawler wouldn't have any room to grow. Luckily for me, Leviathan presented a handy solution. By taking away the vast sprawl that stretches between Shoreline and Everett and rendering it into a boggy landscape unfit for reconstruction, I created the circumstances for the high-density, low-rise housing north of the Fremont Cut that became Nightcrawler's stomping ground.

It's not an environment that exists in our Seattle, but it's been essential for the story. By placing the average rooftop above the level of the streetlights, I've created a way for Nightcrawler to travel around the city without it being a chore (and without having her constantly moving through the city's drains). The dark alleyways between these buildings provide places to hide, and places for people to wander into Nightcrawler's world and interact with her.

There are two things that an OC, Non-Brockton Bay story can achieve in this fandom that other stories can't, and that's creating a sense of place and character. We're all familiar with Brockton Bay, but that also limits the flexibility of a story set there because everywhere you set your scene has to fit into that existing framework. By setting the story somewhere else, you move the framework with it. Nightcrawler has to fit into Seattle, but I can still make Seattle new and interesting in ways that I can't with Brockton Bay.

That, to me, is the value of geography in storytelling. My intent with Nightcrawler has always been to make Seattle as much of a character as the main cast, and one with as much sway over the narrative. My understanding of Seattle's geography helps me shape the story: whether Nightcrawler is working in a high-income or low-income area; whether she's in friendly territory where she feels comfortable, or enemy territory where she feels hunted. Seattle's nature as a port city determined the entire Triad plot, and the effect Leviathan had on the city's geography will continue to shape the story moving forward.

 

[Vokivas]

I've been quite subtle about it, so you might not be aware, but I'm not from America. In fact, apart from a family holiday to Florida when I was a lot younger and one brief nightmare of a connecting flight through Miami airport, I've never been to the United States. So when I come to write a story set in Seattle, or Boston, or Delhi or any of the other settings I've used, Google Maps is the fastest way to get a feel for it.

Click to shrink...

When I first brought this up, it was in a more casual sense. It seems like a lot of people's grasp of geography is pretty poor. Wether that's their knowledge of their own nation, or how much they know about things globally. Oceans, rivers, lakes, mountains, tectonic plates, and that's before getting into more detail. Nations, the history of nations. Their cities, and the history of their cities. I could even get into notable 'things'. Like this area in Ethiopia that's like 130 meters below sea level, where three tectonic plates meet, that is inhospitable. I know I'm describing it terribly, but I guess my point is that there is just so much to know out there and it can be really fascinating.

But I guess if most people's grasp on this is 'poor', that's actually the average.

In British cities, the norm for housing is what we call 'terraces.' Rather than being based off rectangular blocks containing individual plots of land and detached homes of varying styles, streets of houses are built as one continuous building divided into different homes, all of which might look the identical across whole swathes of the city. It results in cities with a completely different footprint to those in the US. If you compare Liverpool to Seattle, you can see that, even though the Seattle Metropolitan area as a whole has about a million and a half more people than the Liverpool Metro area, Liverpool looks much more dense from above.

Spoiler: Liverpool & Seattle, on as close to the same scale as I can get on Google Earth

<img src="" class="bbImage " >
<img src="" class="bbImage " >

For those of you who're unfamiliar with British cities, here's a closer in look of some terraced and semi-detached homes to give you an idea of what that looks like.

Spoiler: English streets

undefined

Click to shrink...

I had never thought about this, about cities in the US and cities in the UK. I'm not sure if I have an incorrect impression of the UK, but from what I've seen and heard it's the scale that gets me. Like how you can apparently drive maybe fifteen minutes outside of a population center, and you'll come upon these smaller towns. I suppose it's just the idea that there are these quaint little towns that appear like they're in the middle of nowhere, but they're basically around the corner.

They're not just like that in the big cities, either. Go onto Google Maps and look at Wrexham (62,000 people), in Wales, or Buxton (22,000), in Derbyshire, and you'll see the same rows of houses, with at least two homes to a building. Even Coxhoe in County Durham, a tiny village of 7,000 people that's surrounded on all sides by green fields, has rows of terraces running along its main road.

Click to shrink...

This, along with the above, has me looking at my own situation differently. You don't want to seem to focus on it too much, and it seems like you're already aware of this, but I do want to explore this some.

This whole thing seems like a cultural thing, because as you said it isn't limited to significant population centers. Looking at some numbers it makes me feel more than ever that I really am a country bumpkin. Anyway…

Talking about how cities can sprawl, and how smaller towns do this as well, it makes the lines between areas less defined. I've lived most of my life in what's considered a small town by most people around here, but I did love a few years ago to a place that like 3 miles away. It's a different town and it's in a different county, but the two towns almost overlap. Maybe it's because I was on the outskirts of where I used to live?

Where I used to live has a population of 354 people, and where I am now has a whopping 809 people as of the 2019 Census. The places around here are so small and so spread out, that there is a feeder system with schools. Where they have local primary schools (though the one near me is apparently closing) and for grades 6+ there are more centralized schools. But even in that system there are only really 2 big towns that are considered part of this area. One has a population of 3,098 and the one that has those schools for older kids has 6,638, as of 2019.
That's nothing to sneeze at, but thinking about things from this perspective makes me consider how much larger one is over the other. Yes has over twice the population, but the smaller town also actually has apartments. Even then, thinking about it, the larger town seems to have more suburban areas. Thinking about things like suburban housing (more significant yards, higher income, and kind of removed from city centers) , town houses (which are kind of like 'terraces'), and apartments (multi story, buildings separated into separate 'houses' though the ones towns this size aren't really 'blocks').

Though…you called a place with 7,000 people in it a tiny village lol. But, now I'm thinking about the distances involved here. Where I am now, the closest small store is like a 30-40 minute trip if you walk. Of course no sidewalks or anything either, and this is a fairly mountainous area. There is a small gas station that's maybe 20 minutes down and back, but it's not like an actual bodega and again with the foot traffic issues.

Before I go any further off topic, I guess I want to emphasize how this is really all about having a different perspective when observing one's surroundings. I could make jokes about you maybe being metropolitan, I could go into what little I know of the rabbit whole that is the US lawn 'thing' and how the second amendment was influenced by the first settlers with their property and how they defended it, but…yeah.

Interesting stuff I guess.

When you picture superhero comics, one of the first images that comes to mind is Batman standing on a rooftop, or possibly Spiderman swinging between tall buildings. Big cities are as much a part of the superhero aesthetic as capes and spandex, but they're a specific type of city that doesn't really exist in the vast majority of the United States. Spiderman couldn't swing in Seattle anywhere outside of downtown, simply because there wouldn't be any buildings tall enough to swing from. Take him out of New York, and his iconic method of travelling becomes useless. And who would Batman be if he couldn't stare moodily across a vista of decaying apartment blocks? Gotham, in all its crumbling glory, is as much a part of Batman's aesthetic as Batman himself. Put him on top of a department store and have him brood over a quiet suburban neighbourhood and he'll just look out of place.

When I decided to set Nightcrawler in Seattle, I wasn't aware of just how suburban the city was. Nightcrawler, and her method of travel, would be as useless as Spiderman in a well-lit suburban environment, but the corporate skyscrapers at the heart of Seattle would be well lit at all hours of the day, as with most high-rise commercial zones in any city.

I had to do something about that, or Nightcrawler wouldn't have any room to grow. Luckily for me, Leviathan presented a handy solution. By taking away the vast sprawl that stretches between Shoreline and Everett and rendering it into a boggy landscape unfit for reconstruction, I created the circumstances for the high-density, low-rise housing north of the Fremont Cut that became Nightcrawler's stomping ground.

It's not an environment that exists in our Seattle, but it's been essential for the story. By placing the average rooftop above the level of the streetlights, I've created a way for Nightcrawler to travel around the city without it being a chore (and without having her constantly moving through the city's drains). The dark alleyways between these buildings provide places to hide, and places for people to wander into Nightcrawler's world and interact with her.

There are two things that an OC, Non-Brockton Bay story can achieve in this fandom that other stories can't, and that's creating a sense of place and character. We're all familiar with Brockton Bay, but that also limits the flexibility of a story set there because everywhere you set your scene has to fit into that existing framework. By setting the story somewhere else, you move the framework with it. Nightcrawler has to fit into Seattle, but I can still make Seattle new and interesting in ways that I can't with Brockton Bay.

That, to me, is the value of geography in storytelling. My intent with Nightcrawler has always been to make Seattle as much of a character as the main cast, and one with as much sway over the narrative. My understanding of Seattle's geography helps me shape the story: whether Nightcrawler is working in a high-income or low-income area; whether she's in friendly territory where she feels comfortable, or enemy territory where she feels hunted. Seattle's nature as a port city determined the entire Triad plot, and the effect Leviathan had on the city's geography will continue to shape the story moving forward.

Click to shrink...

This…how do I say this?

I want to say that this is uplifting and encouraging. That it really reflects well on you as a person, and as a writer. That this is the type of stuff that probably separates 'okay' writers from 'outstanding' ones. That hearing that you've been putting all of this effort into your work as is, makes me believe that you could have a real future writing professionally if you want to.

But, I don't know how much those words would really mean to you in this kind of format. I also don't know if throwing that out there would be me stepping out of line. I don't know if you just enjoy this process, or what. But I still felt like it should be said, and so that's why I'm trying to be upfront and just throwing it all out there.

So…thumbs up.

 

[Redcoat_Officer]

Interlude 3 – Lo Yiu Hong

2003

The entirety of the Pacific is laid out before me, in tables and charts and invoices. The lifeblood of half the world flows across that expansive ocean, my own cargo a miniscule fraction of a percentile of the amount that even now crawls its way across the seas. It skirts the line between legal and illegal, my books evenly split between legitimate trade and illegal smuggling, the two revenue streams mutually dependant on each other.

A single container vessel carries shipments of rubber from New Siam, steaming west for the Horn of Africa, to be turned into piping in German factories. But the ship will not sail straight for the Horn. Hidden in and amongst the cargo are containers full of illegal arms and ammunition, either manufactured in New Siam or imported in from elsewhere.

Those weapons are bound to the city state of Quelimane, on the east coast of what was once Mozambique, where they will be delivered to the warlord who rules that city, a powerful Parahuman made all the more so by the comparatively modern container port her city-state possesses. Whether she sells the weapons on to her fellow warlords or keeps them for her personal army is of little consequence to me. All that matters are the blood diamonds she will hand over to my people on the vessel; diamonds that will sell for a small fortune on the European black markets.

In that way, I have sustained my Triad. My people, the few that still remain, are scattered across the oceans, or manning the offices of shipping companies in cities around the Pacific and the Indian Ocean. In Ho Chi Minh city, Laem Chabang, Singapore, Jakarta, Busan, Vladivostok, Magadan and here, in Sydney. But none of them are home.

I have spread my Triad thin on the ground, holding dominion only over the waves. It has kept us afloat in the five years since our desperate flight from Hong Kong, but only barely. Where once we were the masters of our own fate, now we are nothing more than facilitators for the safe passage of others goods. Our takings are large, until you count the costs of the bribes we must pay to port authorities, the cut we owe to the local powers we are too dispersed to overcome. Even here in Sydney, with the largest concentration of our Parahumans, we are dependent on the grace of a local Yakuza clan who oh-so-kindly allow us to operate within their territory.

What little remains of our funds are reinvested in future ventures, leaving very little to be split between the dozens of members and whatever family they were able to bring with them in our desperate flight, as Kowloon was set aflame and the Yangban stormed through the streets of the city like the conquering army they undeniably were, rounding up Parahumans and crushing any who threatened the Chinese Union-Imperial's newfound hegemony.

Where once I dreamt of expansion, now my days are filled with the desperate struggle to keep my Triad afloat. To maintain the already-fragile balance between my parahumans and humans; the young blood and the old guard. And every year I grow older, my bones grow wearier, and my grip on the Triad seems to slip further and further from my fingers.

A knock on the door shakes me out of my morose thoughts, and I set the papers down, leaning back in my chair as my Triad's foremost enforcer steps into my office, his face hidden beneath a snarling red mask. To be a human in charge of parahumans is a strange thing, and I doubt I would have been able to hold my position for so long were it not for the split-second decision to take in an orphaned teenager struggling to find his place in the world. In the six years since, the Red Dragon has saved me from death more times than I can remember.

When my body finally fails me, he will take my place.

"There's an American waiting outside, sir," he says, his Cantonese clipped and professional.

"An American?"

"He's wearing a suit and arrived in an armoured SUV, accompanied by two armed guards."

I frown, steepling my fingers and leaning forwards in concentration. A potential client, then. Wealthy, or just paranoid, and knowledgeable, to come direct to me rather than acting through an intermediary.

Briefly, I consider the possibility that this is some elaborate assassination attempt, before dismissing it. The Sydney Yakuza are too busy profiting from us, the Polynesian Crew wouldn't be this subtle and the Australian Guard wouldn't be this blatant. The other powers in this city are too distant or disinterested to notice us.

"What does he want?"

"Apparently, he has a business opportunity he wishes to discuss. He says he will only talk to you, sir."

With one hand supporting my chin and another drumming out a rhythm on my desk, I weigh up the possible risks and benefits, before coming to a decision.

"Send him up. With one of his guards. Put the other guard and the driver, if he has one, in the staff lounge with a cup of tea… or coffee if you can find it."

We mustn't forget out manners, after all, and separating the guards from their getaway vehicle might come in handy if this does turn out to be a trap.

The Red Dragon leans out the doorway, directing a clipped burst of Cantonese at my secretary before shutting the door and moving to stand behind me. On the way, he pauses, his hand halfway to his face.

"Mask on or off?"

It's a fair question. I see little purpose in protecting a parahuman's anonymity for its own sake – no such concessions would be offered to me or any of my unpowered men, after all – but there is a purpose in hiding which members of my organisation are powered and which aren't. However, in this case, a show of strength would be preferable to a hidden dagger.

"Mask on."

He nods in acknowledgement, before getting into position behind me, with his hands clasped behind his back.

Mere moments later, another knock on the door heralds the arrival of my secretary, who I have known since she was four years old. She steps aside, ushering in a well-dressed man who might be in his mid to late thirties, wearing a tailored tan suit, and a bodyguard in a looser-fitting suit that no doubt conceals a pistol.

My secretary offers them refreshments, before disappearing to fetch a coffee for the man and a pot of tea for myself. I gesture for the man to sit, leaning back in my chair and looking into his eyes as I try to assess his measure. He's confident, barely even glancing at the intimidating parahuman behind me. He could be like me, but he seems too young for that sort of easy confidence, and too old for the bravado of youth. More likely, he's a parahuman himself.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr Lo," he begins, his accent smooth and easy-going. "I have been watching your organisation with great interest."

"Then you have me at a disadvantage," I reply. "You know of my business, but I do not know yours."

"Black Rod," he says by way of introduction, leaning over to shake my hand in an overly enthusiastic and distinctly American gesture.

"A parahuman without a mask?" I ask with a wry grin.

"A gesture of good faith," he answers. "After all; you aren't wearing one."

"Quite."

"You could, you know," he says, after a moment's pause. "It's something I've been wondering about. Why not wear a mask? If nothing else, there's an advantage in making people think you have a power."

"I already have power," I reply with a frown, "and I do not see my humanity as a weakness to be hidden away. Perhaps I am a relic, but I am a relic of a time in which leadership was dependent on more than just the ability to shoot fire from my fingertips."

"And I respect you for it. Like I said, I've been looking into your operation. It's very well organised, very smooth, but it isn't as profitable as it could be, is it?"

"And you're here to change that?"

"I'm the head of the Seattle Elite," he answers, and I can't help the wince of sympathy that flicks across my features. The period immediately after a Leviathan attack is usually marked by an uptick in trade, as shipping companies desperately work to move their stock in the narrow window of guaranteed safety that follows, but it always comes at a cost. A drowned city, somewhere in the world.

"You have my condolences."

"I'd rather have your support," he interjects, politely. "If you cut your operations down to a minimum, you could put a dozen Capes in Seattle by the end of the week."

"And why would I do that?"

"Resources have stopped flowing into Seattle. The Protectorate are on a war footing over this business in Switzerland. They're convinced the Simurgh is a third Endbringer, and even if she isn't then the damage she's already caused makes Seattle's troubles look paltry. The Seattle Protectorate are down to a skeleton crew, and they're far too busy dealing with whatever's crawling out of Lynnwood."

"Tragic, I'm sure," I interrupt. "But I have my own worries, my own troubles."

"Of course you do. We've looked into your finances" – I suppress a scowl at his blatant violation of our secrets – "and we know you're barely staying afloat. A lot of money disappearing into pay-outs to local gangs, bribes for anyone and everyone. What you need is territory of your own, with access to a port you control."

"Territory in Seattle."

"I like Sydney," he says, leaning back in his seat and looking around my office like he can see past the weathered walls to the metropolis beyond. "I like what it represents, and that goes double now that I know what it's like to stand in the ruins of a drowned city. More than anywhere else in the world, Sydney took what Leviathan did to it and bounced back stronger."

I say nothing, waiting for him to reach the crux of his argument.

"Seattle isn't as bad as Sydney was, but the money's dried up. The United States doesn't believe Seattle can be saved. The Elite believes differently – I believe differently – so we're pouring resources into Seattle, to rebuild everything Leviathan broke and reshape the city in our image. We're going to control every part of the city, and that means the gangs."

"So, you want us to go in and stabilise the situation?"

He nods. "Exactly. Crush the other groups who're trying to capitalise on the situation, and you can have their territory for yourself. All we ask is that you leave our interests alone, and you can run your territory as you see fit. No cut to us, no restrictions on your activities so long as they don't draw too much heat, and we'll even help you infiltrate the ports and bring your smuggling business to the US market."

I lean back in my seat, thinking the matter over. It smacks of desperation, to my mind. The terms are simply too favourable. Leviathan has cast his organisation into the ocean, and he's reaching for any flotsam he can find to stay afloat.

There is, however, one matter that needs to be clarified.

"You are not the head of the Seattle Elite. If you were, you would not be here."

From the way he stiffens, and his bodyguard's hand drifts unconsciously towards his pistol, I know I have judged him correctly.

And yet, that doesn't mean the terms aren't acceptable. They represent a chance to end this miserable state of affairs and rebuild my Triad into a force worthy of the name. Above all, territory represents security for myself, my people, and the people who are dependent on them.

"Your offer sounds acceptable," I speak, as my secretary re-enters the room with a cup of coffee and a pot of tea on a fine wooden tray, "but we must discuss the details before I can commit to any agreement. And, when I arrive in Seattle, I want to meet the man in charge and gain his measure for myself."

■​

I have never seen devastation on this scale before. Not even my last days in Hong Kong can compare to the sheer scale of the carnage that Leviathan managed to wreak on this city.

From my position on the port wing of the bridge, I can see the city spread out before me in a panoramic view. To my left, past the stern of the Panamax container ship, an immense gateway lies sundered and shattered, its remains hastily swept aside to create a clear passage for ships. The sea walls around the city itself have fared even worse; collapsed like so much sand in the face of the tide.

To my right, the ship is like a solid wall of multicoloured blocks. Five thousand shipping containers filled to bursting with relief supplies, non-perishable food, specialised equipment, tents, medicine and anything else that might aid in relief efforts. It's a gift, to see us safely into the city, and a smokescreen for the unusually large crew and the firearms hidden in sacks of rice.

All around our vessel, the waters are filled with dozens of smaller boats vying for space, from minuscule dinghies to a slab-sided hospital ship and even a Navy frigate watching over the channel. The city itself is no less chaotic, with distant gunfire echoing across the waves as flying Parahumans dart in and out of what my map identifies as Lynnwood, fighting a desperate battle against some unseen enemy on the flooded streets below.

We pass it as quickly as possible, ushered forwards by the flashing lights of the police launches escorting us through the channel. Ours is the first large ship to enter Puget Sound since Leviathan, and the escort is necessary to avoid the shallows created by debris lurking just below the surface. The Coast Guard are already working to create clear lanes of buoys to guide in traffic, but it's slow work and these supplies are needed now.

The further down the coastline we go, the less the city seems to have been affected by Leviathan. The spires of downtown Seattle rise above their intact sea walls like a defiant castle, standing firm against the horrors of the world in spite of their battered frames and shattered windows.

The gateway to Elliot Bay falls open before us, and we pass through the intact sea wall accompanied by cheers from the crowds who've turned out to see us enter the city, as the smaller vessels around us turn their hoses to the midday sky, creating rainbow-like arcs of water that glitter beneath the sun's light. There are safer ports we could have used further down the coast, and railway lines to deliver our cargo to the city, but this is as much about the spectacle as it is about the relief we bring.

This donation has been kindly funded by one of the Elite's shell companies, on the advice of an Elite-backed politician, and by bringing it into the city itself we advance their prestige.

The docking itself goes off without a hitch, and soon enough our cargo is being steadily unloaded by the port's cranes, while the ship's captain is shaking hands with the mayor of Seattle in a pre-planned press conference. I remain on board – as do most of my Triad – until the political business has ended, but while the business of unloading the ship and distributing the supplies is still very much ongoing.

The Elite have a car waiting for me at the port, as well as a trio of stout trucks for my men. It delivers me through the nearly-empty city streets, to the base of a single skyscraper among many, damaged but still looking solid enough. It still has power, enough for the lift that takes me up to the thirtieth floor. The Red Dragon is my constant shadow, taking in his surroundings with professional detachment and ready to turn on our escort without the slightest hesitation.

When the lift doors open up, it's to an office that was obviously abandoned in a hurry. Chairs are scattered around the room, cubicle walls have fallen down and papers and documents have been scattered across the floor – a problem made even worse by the steady breeze blowing in through the shattered windows.

A space has been cleared in the debris, right before one of the few intact panes of glass, and two armchairs have been set down, looking out over the desolate landscape north of the city centre. A pot of tea has been set on an end table between the two armchairs, with two porcelain cups on ornate saucers.

I take the empty seat, and am momentarily taken aback to see myself sitting opposite an immaculately-kept woman in her forties, dressed in a deep green tailored suit.

"Mr Lo," she begins. "Welcome to Seattle." A wry grin plays across her face as she takes a drink from her teacup. "I am the man in charge."

I chuckle to myself, taking a sip of my own to compose my response – and being mildly surprised at the drink's quality.

"You must forgive me. I am quite aware that I am a relic of an older time."

Although, the leader of the Seattle Elite might be the oldest parahuman I have ever met. Perhaps she is a relic of sorts, as well.

She waves me off, her expression making it clear that no offence was taken.

There's another mystery; an old accent that hasn't quite managed to disappear beneath her professional American tone.

"It seems we learned the same English."

Her smile this time is almost wistful.

"Like you, my home is a long way away. But I have built a new home for myself in Seattle, and I hope you can too."

"It seems your new home has taken a battering."

"We've come off better than others." She turns to look out of the window, out across the flooded streets and the forest of white refugee tents. "But drastic action is required to make this anything more than a catastrophe. It's a nightmarish balancing act."

"Then I am sure the supplies I have brought will come as a welcome relief."

She chuckles to herself, setting her teacup back in its saucer.

"If it were as simple as flooding the city with supplies, Seattle would have already recovered. The problem, as always, is people. Just this morning, for example, I learned that prostitution rings have grown up around several of the aid camps in the flooded zones. It's only natural – there are people in this city who saw their entire lives swept away, and who would do anything to claw it back – but if it gets out that charity workers, emergency service personnel and federal officials are paying homeless refugees for sex it could sink the relief effort overnight."

She's sitting perfectly poised, but from the minute twitch of her hand muscle I can tell she's furious.

"So I'm leveraging every contact I have to push an emergency relief bill through the state legislature, with a buried provision that will decriminalise prostitution within a designated area. Then I'll set up a makeshift red light district, to try and add even the most basic air of legitimacy to the business. All because people are apparently incapable of keeping it in their trousers."

I let out a low chuckle, before setting my own cup down and fixing her with a serious expression.

"And where does the Triad fit into your master plan?"

"As valued allies. I have most of South Seattle's gangs under my thumb, thanks to strategic offers and interventions, but I lack the manpower to secure the north. I could bring in more people from Portland or Vancouver, but my rivals in the Elite would capitalise on that. Seattle was the crown jewel of my domain; now that it's fractured, they're circling me like sharks."

I can see from here that the north is far from the choicest prize in the city. It was the hardest hit by Leviathan, and so the least valuable at present. That might be the point, come to think of it. The 'man in charge' brought me up here and showed me the north in all its disrepair, rather than trying to bury reality behind honeyed words and a plush office.

"Who holds the north at present?"

"The Bratva, the Yakuza and an American gang who were driven out of Montana. They all arrived immediately after Leviathan, and they've been feuding for control of the local gangs ever since. I don't care how you deal with them, so long as you keep things quiet until the relief efforts have finished. No attacking convoys, steer clear of the PRT and the National Guard, and finally no flashy stunts that make it on the evening news. Apart from that, you have carte blanche to do as you please. Do we have an understanding?"

"We do," I reply as I rise from my seat. "I will marshal my men and get the measure of the ground. I trust I can rely on your organisation for information and a staging point?"

She nods in affirmation.

"Then I will proceed. Thank you for taking the time to meet with me. I am sure this is the start of a lengthy and fruitful alliance."

As I turn to leave she rises from her seat and steps over to the window. The last thing I see as the lift doors slide shut is her figure silhouetted against the clear blue sky, her hands clasped behind her back as she looks down on her city in silent contemplation.

■​

It used to be a church. Perhaps it will be again, in time. It's on the very edge of the zone the government has deemed unsalvageable, and a particularly devout congregation might be able to successfully lobby the government to change their mind and shift the borders slightly. For now, however, it is nothing more than an empty hall, with rows of pews forming most of a semicircle around an altar.

For now, it serves our purposes.

A new shrine has been placed atop the water-stained altar cloth, carrying a small statue of a stern-faced Guan Yu, the Saint of War, with a halberd held in his left hand. This deep into the flooded zones, there is no electricity to light our way. Instead, a collection of battery powered lamps has created a kind of half-light that only highlights the glow of the burning incense, creating an intimate and religious atmosphere.

The pews are filled with members of the triad, both current and… potential. The Bratva, the Yakuza and the Magisters have all been broken, their grip on this city shattered. Some of their members have fled, others were killed in the fighting, but the remainder are here.

I could bring the rest of my Triad to Seattle, and within a few years we would have returned to some semblance of our old strength. But that would take too long, and the Elite would grow far faster than us. If we want to survive – to thrive – in this brave new world, we must adapt to it.

This ceremony… it is a relic of a time that no longer exists, a time that was ending even before the first parahumans shattered the established world order. The Triads were drifting slowly towards white-collar crime, and a formal ceremony such as this simply drew unwanted attention.

But its time has come again. If the Triad are to survive, we must expand, and if we are to expand without losing sight of who we are, we must pass our traditions onto the next generation.

The Christian faith believes strongly in the concept of baptism. That a person can undergo a rite and emerge a new man, with all their past sins and allegiances washed away.

This initiation serves the same purpose. Whatever flag they owed loyalty to before, whatever tongue they may speak and whatever faith they may worship, the defeated remnants of my enemies will see the stain of their defeat washed away, and they will leave this building as part of the Triad.

The first to rise is Rusalka, the most senior surviving Bratva Cape, with her left arm held up in a sling and a thick cast. She walks down the aisle with her head still held high, showing the defiant pride of a defeated but unbroken prisoner as she steps forward.

I am sitting on the foremost pew, watching the Triad's Incense Master as he stands before the altar with a bowl of rice wine in his hands. He's even older than I am, but he hasn't yet let his ailing body interfere with his duties. It's an admirable quality, and one I hope to possess as my body continues to wither and fail.

Rusalka stops before the Incense Master, dwarfing the shorter man, and waits patiently, her shoulders straight. She is the picture of elegance and obedience, and so shows more strength than if she had ranted and raved against some perceived insult.

"Stretch forth the middle finger of your left hand, which I shall prick, so that a few drops of blood may fall into the bowl held by the master," the Triad's senior administrator says, guiding her through the steps of the ritual as he has guided all our new initiates up to this point.

Rusalka leans forwards, shifting her slinged arm a little to get her finger over the bowl. Once her blood has been spilled, she steps aside as a dozen other initiates go through the same process. They aren't the only survivors, of course, just the parahumans and senior leadership of the defeated gangs. They will hold the rank and file in line, and the promise of further initiations can be used as an incentive.

"In this manner," the administrator continues, once all the blood has been spilled, "our ancient fathers, the five monks of the Shaolin monastery, pledged themselves by an oath of eternal brotherhood."

He looks up and down the line of new initiates, pausing to allow his words to sink in.

"You, my brothers and sisters, as a sign of your obedience and sincerity, will now in turn drink of the liquid contained in this vessel and thereby become blood brothers of all the members of our order. As you drink, bear in mind the solemn oaths you are therefore ratifying."

It is, perhaps, the first time this ceremony has been performed in English, but I know that is simply the first of many changes we will need to make if we are to thrive in this new land. We will bend, to ensure we do not break.

"Henceforth, the Hung society is to you as Father and Mother. Its friends are your friends, its foes your foes. Where the brotherhood leads, you must follow, and from you absolute obedience to the orders of its duly appointed officers is demanded."

With that, the Incense Master and the administrator both take a sip from the bowl, before passing it down the line of new initiates. Each of them drinks, some with more eagerness than others. Besides me, I know the Red Dragon is making a mental note of each hesitation or moment of doubt. We are building something strong, something that will last, but to do that we must ensure its foundations are free from fault.

The bowl reaches Rusalka at the end of the line. She drinks it without hesitation, before handing it to me with a deferential nod. I return the gesture and take my own sip, stamping down any visible reaction to the twinge that shoots through my arm as I lift the bowl up to my mouth.

■​

2010

As the meeting winds down, and the participants start to make their way back to their duties, I remain seated to deal with the last few petitioners. My subordinates have managed to turn this disused Endbringer shelter into a hall worthy of the Triad's prestige, but it's still just a pale shadow of the prestigious headquarters we occupied in the covered market.

Unfortunately, that location was so richly furnished that we used it whenever we hosted guests from the Elite. To use it now would be to invite a firebombing. Instead, this fortress of concrete and steel – located beneath a civilian structure the Elite, or the Round Table, would hesitate before attacking – provides an adequate headquarters for the Triad at war.

As the last petitioner leaves satisfied with my answer, I feel the weight of the world come creeping back to press down on my shoulders. It's becoming harder and harder to keep my composure in these sorts of long meetings, but without me they would quickly dissolve into infighting. I am not essential for the Triad's survival, but I am essential for its continued harmony.

I try to stand, managing to rock myself forwards but unable to carry that movement on, until I feel a hand grasp my arm as the Red Dragon steps in to help me to my feet. Of all the members of the Triad, he alone is fully aware of the extent of my frailty. That is why I don't try to hide the grateful look on my face, even as I shrug off his arm.

I might not be able to rise unaided, but I can still stand.

My temporary apartment used to be a small, sectioned-off area of the medical wing for use during triage whenever a patient has no chance of survival. The bitter irony of it is not lost on me, but most of the rooms here are too large to be comfortable.

A large amount of effort has been spent making it feel homely, with a comfortable armchair next to a heater and rich rugs completely covering the bare concrete floor, but I still miss my quiet apartment with its view over the sea wall. I sink deeply into the armchair, flick on my reading light and open up my copy of The Great Gatsby, to read about another man from a bygone age who's stayed well beyond his time.

"I think I'm done for the night," I say to the Dragon. "Thank you, once again."

Solitary man that he is, he doesn't say anything in response, simply nodding and leaving the room.

The moment the door closes, Mr Jiang steps out of the shadows.

I sigh, putting my bookmark back in its place and setting the text down before turning to look at him.

"Was there some business that wasn't covered in the meeting?" I ask in clipped Cantonese.

"I simply wish to remind you of the importance of this endeavour," he replies, his Mandarin formal and flawless. "The future of your Triad depends on its success."

"There might not be a future, thanks to you." I reply, with more than a hint of bitterness. There's no point in being polite with the man who holds my heart in his hands.

"Nonsense," he replies with a laugh. "You can overcome the Seattle Elite, you just have to be prepared to take more risks."

I frown, my head drooping as the weight of the world becomes all that heavier.

"Don't lose hope on me now, old man." The agent drops to one knee, putting a hand on my shoulder in a parody of comfort.

"After all" – he pulls his phone out of his pocket and opens up the gallery – "you have something to fight for."

He flicks through a series of images, each showing a woman in her early twenties. In one photo, she's painting on an easel. In another, she's using a computer program to give shape to a planned sculpture.

"Your granddaughter is doing very well for herself. The Imperial Family has always appreciated the cultural virtues of our nation, even as the Union embodies our relentless industry. Artists that show great promise are taken under the Family's wing, to create great works that can enlighten the soul of the nation."

And they can be crushed beneath that wing just as easily.

He closes the phone, snatching my granddaughter away from me, and rises to his feet. He looks down at me, all his false sympathy replaced by contempt.

"You know, I realised something about you yesterday. Your whole life, you have always taken the middle path. You've done exactly what you needed to do to preserve your Triad. No more, no less."

He smiles.

"It's what got you into this situation. If you had loved your daughter a little more, you would have taken her with you when you fled Hong Kong, illegitimate or not. If you had loved her a little less, then threatening your granddaughter's life becomes pointless. Either way, I would have no power over you."

I sit there in silence as he walks over to the doorway, tears streaming down my face.

"I know you don't think much of us, but a Parahuman wouldn't have made that mistake. The world is a lot more dynamic than it once was, and if you don't force your way through the currents you'll find yourself swept away with all the other relics of a world that no longer exists."

 

[Vokivas]

It has kept us afloat in the five years since our desperate flight from Hong King, but only barely.

Click to shrink...

he alone is fully away of the extent

Click to shrink...

"Don't lose hope on my now, old man."

Click to shrink...

I sit there in silence as he walks over to the doorway, tears streaming down his face.

Click to shrink...

I'm guessing this last one is supposed to be 'my' instead of 'his'.

With Agnes Court, and Rusalka still being around after another 7 years, it seems like you've layered more stuff into this chapter than just what we see with Lo Yiu Hong. Times changing, family, home, camaraderie, and finding a place somewhere new. Or something along those lines.

 

[Redcoat_Officer]

With Agnes Court, and Rusalka still being around after another 7 years, it seems like you've layered more stuff into this chapter than just what we see with Lo Yiu Hong. Times changing, family, home, camaraderie, and finding a place somewhere new. Or something along those lines.

Click to shrink...

The scope of this story is quite small, being just a small part of a single city, so I like to take steps to make it feel a lot wider. Part of that is bringing in stuff from outside the city, like I've already mentioned, but it's also about making the city feel lived in. The state of Seattle in 2010 is entirely dependant on Leviathan's attack in 2003, right down to the Red Light district itself. So the windows you've seen into the past show the pivotal moments that came from Leviathan; the formation of the Round Table, the Triad's arrival in Seattle and Lynwood's whole mess.

What you said about times changing also plays a big part of that. Lo is very much a man out of time, in fact his whole Triad are. This chapter, with its aged protagonist and air of mysticism, was meant to bring across that the Triad are very much part of the world that was. They've changed with the times, bringing in new members like Rusalka, but it wasn't enough to keep pace with the CUI - with the new world.

 

[Redcoat_Officer]

Arc 4: Enforcer​

Enforcer: 4.01

"Well, how do I look?"

Ember is standing in front of a tall mirror in her office, looking at me from out of the hood of a voluminous slate-grey cloak. Patterns have been woven into the fabric, creating an impression of billowing smoke and flecked with occasional bright sparks given life by a metallic red weave. It speaks of the potential for flame; like a tinderbox that could go up at any moment.

It's long, hanging down to her ankles, and held together beneath her throat by a dull metal clasp that reflects no light, leaving her face completely shrouded in darkness. Whenever she takes a step, the cloak will drift open ever-so-slightly, exposing brief glimpses of her skin-tight costume, the orange flame patterns on the dark grey material flashing like the fire at the heart of a furnace.

I feel so awkward under the spotlight, so out-of-place surrounded by Capes like Jaeger, or the vibrant life of the Red-Light District. I belong in the environment, with its glorious half-light, but the people are still strangers to me. They belong to a world I don't understand, one I don't want to understand, but Ember is someone who moves in and out of that world like she was made for it. Outside the District, she blends in with the crowds, no matter what part of the city she's in.

But when she's in costume, even among the riot of colour and sensations that fill the streets of our little slice of the city, she stands out. She understands the circles we both move in a lot more than I do, which is why I plan to follow her lead tonight.

"Remember," she says, flicking her hood back to check the makeup on her lips and chin – the only parts of her face that aren't covered by her ornate grey and orange mask – "tonight is about being seen, so to speak. People like us thrive on our reputations, and events like this are where those reputations are most important."

She flicks her hood up, immediately hiding her make-up efforts from all but the closest observers, and starts to fiddle with the fold.

"Everyone knows what we've – what you've – managed to achieve, but this is about more than that. It's about showing that you belong."

Once she's satisfied with the drape of her hood, she steps away from the mirror and pulls one edge of her cloak aside, revealing the pooled shadows beneath the thick material. I pace forwards, brushing aside the edge of the cloak with my beak and slipping into the darkness. I curl up her back as she lets the cloak drop, creating an almost perfect patch of shadows all around her body, and settle in the deep shadows of the hood.

She turns at the doorway, taking one last look in the mirror. On a whim, I briefly form my eyes above and below her own, my vision tunnelling down as I do and my head pounding a little at the effort of selectively bringing small parts of me out, and catch a brief glimpse of three pairs of yellow orbs staring out of the hood before disappearing as I pull them back into the shadows.

Ember lets out a short, sharp laugh.

"What the hell was I worried about? You're a natural at this."

There's a car waiting for us in the security compound. Not one of the normal ones, with their clear livery and orange flashing lights, but a fairly generic – if expensive – looking silver four door. The driver is one of the security team, wearing a uniform shirt and a clip-on tie but with his holster conspicuously empty.

He moves around the vehicle, holding the door open for Ember as she grabs her cloak and shifts it out of the way as she sits down. She leans back in her seat, her head tilted to look idly out of the car's tinted windows as the driver brings the car out of the compound and through the press of people in the Red-Light district.

We're quickly out of the district and pushing our way through the steady stream of traffic that fills the streets in the late evening, as people start to make their way home from work. Ember doesn't speak, simply lounging back in her seat with one arm idly tossed over her shoulder, resting her hand on the headrest of the seat next to her.

As the drive drags on – the driver speeding up onto the expressway that flies over the city, raised on great concrete pillars above the bustling streets below – I slip out of Ember's cloak and shuffle along the seat to look out the other window, taking advantage of the tinted glass to see the city without being seen.

At first, I can't see much of anything, just the yellow haze of the streetlights and the tops of particularly tall buildings or trees. Ahead of us, however, the glow of the city centre is growing larger and larger. Soon it grows large enough to be uncomfortable, towering walls of glowing glass rising up past the left side of the car. As the first patch of harsh yellow light hits my skin, I abandon my perch and slip back into the comforting darkness of Ember's coat.

The driver pulls us off the expressway, down into the glowing city streets. I don't see much after that, the ambient light enough to drive me back into the deepest recesses of Ember's cloak, but I can feel the car shifting a little more as we go from the arrow-straight expressway to the block after block of the city below.

Eventually, Ember lurches noticeably as the car makes a hard left turn and the colour of the ambient light changes from the yellow glow of streetlights to the harsh white light of an underground car park. It's a little dimmer, enough that I can see clearly through Ember's hood as the driver pulls up next to a nondescript maintenance door, before getting out of the car and walking around to open up the door for me and his boss.

Ember acknowledges him with a curt nod as she steps out of the car, though I'm not sure he can actually see it thanks to the hood. As she walks towards the rusted door, I hear the car driving off and parking a little way away, inside the underground car park but not so close to the door that it's drawing attention.

Ember knocks twice against the door, waiting for a couple of seconds before a pinprick of red light appears just above the frame and a recessed panel pulls back to reveal a small camera. I curl down Ember's back as she brings her hands up to her hood, pulling it down to show the camera her masked face.

A moment passes, before there's an audible click and an electronic whirr as the door lock disengages and the door and a significant chunk of the wall around it simply slides down into the floor. Behind the false wall stretches a long corridor with wood-panelled walls, a polished marble floor, and ornate overhead lights offering enough illumination to let everything be seen, without making it uncomfortably bright.

Of the three burly men standing behind the wall, two are dressed in neatly-pressed suits with red ties and blocky assault rifles held in their arms, while the third is obviously a cape, dressed in fur-lined fatigues with a half-mask over his face and accompanied by… well, I'm not really sure what it is.

It's kind of like a dog, except it's only a little bit smaller than I am and has patterned grey and brown scales instead of skin and fur. It is sitting like a dog, its head raised and attentive as the slit pupils of its eyes settle on Ember, tall pointed ears twitching on the top of its head.

"Ember," the dog's handler says, nodding towards her in greeting. "Love the cloak. Decided to shake things up a little?"

I feel Ember's lips parting in a friendly smile.

"You could say that. Figured it was time for a change, and another layer of bullet resistant fabric never hurt anyone."

The handler nods in agreement, before freezing at the same time as his dog rises up, its serpentine lips parted to reveal a row of sharp teeth as it starts to hiss like a snake.

"You bring a tagalong?" he asks Ember as his hand drifts to a pistol on his thigh, and the two men in suits bring their rifles up to their shoulders. I barely notice them, fixing my gaze right at the widening slits of the creature's pupils. It's staring right at me.

"You must have heard I have a new hire," Ember replies, a picture of calm. "Nightcrawler, this is Huntsman. Say hi, why don't you?"

I reform my eyes beneath Ember's hood, watching as Huntsman's own eyes widen in shock, before his mouth spreads wide in a genuine grin. His hound just snarls louder as I reveal myself, until Huntsman idly reaches down to scratch it between the ears, settling the beast immediately.

"I've heard about you," he says to me. "I thought the rumours were exaggerating, but you've really got the whole horror movie act down to a tee. It's nice to meet you. Like Ember said, I'm Huntsman, and this little bundle of joy" – he strokes the head of his hound, which preens at the attention – "is Duke."

"So," Ember asks, "how many people got here before me?"

"I'd say maybe three quarters of the ones we're expecting," Huntsman replies. "It's busy down there, but you shouldn't have to wait long. Enjoy mingling."

Ember nods as Huntsman steps aside to let us pass, his hound following at his heels. Behind us, I can hear the sound of the door slowly lifting back into place, shortly followed by light chatter as Huntsman strikes up a conversation with the two other guards.

"It would look a little odd to have over a dozen different people show up at the same building at the same time," Ember explains, "especially when they're coming from all over the city. So when we need to meet like this, they stagger the invites so that everyone arrives at a different time. It's fine if you get one of the later slots, but if you show up when there's nobody else here then you might end up waiting a couple of hours."

At the end of the corridor, a set of double doors slides open on hidden rails at our approach, revealing a set of stairs with a ramp on one side that drops down into a warren of richly-furnished corridors, with signs pointing off to different rooms and departments. Hospital, Tailors, Administration, Bar, Gym, Overnight Quarters, Cafeteria. It's practically an underground town, with a vaulted ceiling and walls made from some strangely-patterned stone.

"Impressive, right?" Ember says, guessing my mood even without any visual clues. "It's more of a vanity project than anything else, but, in the Elite, everything is about prestige. A fully furnished facility like this demonstrates the power of the people that built it, as well as providing us with the closest thing we have to a headquarters in the city."

I peer through her hood as she walks through the halls, noting the brief glimpses of advanced equipment, comfortable lounges, and utilitarian offices. There are a few people moving around, human staff dressed in business suits or paramedic outfits, but mostly it's just a series of empty hallways.

"It's not all for show, of course," Ember continues. "The services this place offers are a great bit of soft power. Even if a Parahuman doesn't want to formally join the Elite, they'll often accept our no-questions-asked medical service, or buy a professional-grade costume from our in-house tailors and engineers."

She turns down a corridor, following a sign that just says 'Court,' and passes through a security checkpoint, with half a dozen armed guards in suits, another Cape lingering in the background, and hi-tech scanners hidden beneath tasteful wooden panelling. The fancy stone floor has become hidden beneath a richly-pattered red carpet, and the whole décor of the facility has become a lot fancier, with landscape paintings and statues lining the walls.

The people who had been bustling around the halls are entirely gone at this point. Past the checkpoint, it's like Ember and I are the only people here. She makes another turn, pushing open a set of large double doors that swing open soundlessly, even as the noise of the room beyond them becomes audible past the soundproofing.

The room is part royal court, part corporate boardroom. The lower half of the walls are made of panelled wood, embellished with vine-like patterns of gold leaf and half-pillars of carved stone that stretch all the way up to the vaulted ceiling, two stories high. The upper half, by contrast, is nothing but television screens set in gilded frames like works of art, displaying ticker-tapes of nonsensical numbers, digital maps of the city – of other places and cities I neither recognise nor understand – and the talking heads of twenty-four-seven news channels.

The red carpet cuts off at the door, replaced by a checkerboard of black and white stone that's been polished almost to a mirror-sheen. Most of the room is taken up by a truly vast table of black stone, unblemished, smooth and without any ornamentation. Its surface provides a mirror that reflects the light of the trio of chandeliers that hang from the ceiling, set to deliberately leave the room in an intimate half-light that only heightens the masked anonymity of the Capes who fill the space.

There are so many Capes. More than I've ever seen in one place, more even than the dozen who were present at the Triad's meeting. Maybe eighteen in all – unless I miscounted – and from the way Ember spoke to Huntsman, it sounds like there are more yet to come.

I tap at Ember's shoulder, prompting a smile and an explanation from here.

"You see why this place is so big, right? Me and Jaeger, we're just a small part of a much larger group. There are one hundred and seventy six known Parahumans in the Seattle Metropolitan area, of which seventy eight operate in the city itself. Of that one hundred and seventy six, about forty percent owe fealty to this room right here. Till the Triad fucked off, it was fifty percent."

If I had the capability right now, my eyes would be dropping in shock. The sheer number of parahumans just seems impossible to me. It feels like even a world as big as Seattle would be bursting at the seams with that many titans filling its streets. It puts my little world of the Red-Light district into perspective, and just confirms that I made the right decision.

I wanted to be safe, and there's safety in numbers.

"Of course," Ember continues, "they're not all here. Most of them pay tribute to us in exchange for being allowed to operate in Seattle. Legal and illegal; there's about half a dozen Parahumans in the city that don't fight or work for us directly, but pay us a percentage of their earnings in exchange for access to legal support to get around NEPEA-5."

"But the people here," she continues as she walks into the room, "are the core of the Elite. They call it differently depending on which part of the country you're in, but here we call it the Court. We're the movers and shakers, who are answerable to the people above us but powerful enough to have assets of our own. Like the Red-Light District."

Like me, she doesn't say – probably to spare my feelings, but I don't mind. I'm not ambitious, and Ember has kept me safe so far. I'm comfortable with where I am, and happy to stay there.

Ember doesn't mingle with the other Capes, instead picking a corner of the room and silently waiting there. Most of the others in the room are similarly isolated, in twos or threes that probably match up with the people they usually work with. A couple are busy networking, moving from group to group and trying and failing to strike up conversation, but they don't approach us. Given Ember's intimidating cloak, I can't exactly blame them.

More people enter the room over time, Jaeger among them – his uniform-like costume even more spotless than usual. Eventually, after the twenty-third person has entered the room, the mood seems to shift and people take their seats at the long table – according to some hierarchy I can't make out. Ember's seat – and by extension mine – is about a third of the way down, which is higher up than I was expecting. Some of the Parahumans don't sit at the table, instead standing respectfully behind their patrons as a visible show of prestige.

The focus of the assembled Capes seems to shift as a man enters the room, rising out of their seats as he walks down the length of the table. He's dressed formally, in a deep black jacket with a white bow-tie, a chain of office slung around his shoulders and a formal hat supporting his half-face mask. In his hand, he carries a black staff, tipped at either end with silver.

"Black Rod," Ember whispers. "The head of the Seattle Elite."

When he reaches the top of the table, he surprises me by ignoring the ornate chair at the head, instead choosing to sit in a marginally less ornate seat that's set to its right. As he sits, so does every assembled Cape.

A pregnant silence falls across the table, each Cape leaning forward like they're expecting their leader to speak, but he simply sits there impassively. Ember leans back in her seat, angling her body to get a clearer look at Black Rod and, in so doing, giving me a clear view of him. He seems to be quite content, his face comfortably impassive like he's simply waiting for something to happen.

A panel in the wall behind him swings open, and everyone starts to their feet as a woman steps gracefully into the room. She's dressed in an elegant ballgown in red and gold, her entire face covered by a golden mask that's been sculpted into the features of a stern, matronly face. In place of eyes, black orbs of glass seem to silently judge the assembled Elites as she practically glides to the seat at the head of the table, sitting like it was made for her with her hands folded elegantly in her lap.

Ember whispers nothing to me – her body language as surprised as everyone else there – and, at a gesture from Black Rod, the whole table takes their seats.

"As this is an extraordinary meeting," Black Rod begins, "we will dispense with the minutes and proceed to the matter at hand. The intelligence picture of the Triad's operations has improved enormously, but that has revealed an uncomfortable truth. Parahuman traffickers are operating in Seattle."

A kind of electric tension passes through the room, as everyone stiffens in a mixture of rage and fear. The only ones who aren't affected are Ember and Jaeger, because they're the ones who already knew.

"The first order of business is to recognise those who discovered this operation. Jaeger and Nightcrawler – of Ember's cell – have done us a great service in uncovering this obscenity."

He pauses, as acknowledgements are directed towards the pair of us. Nobody applauds, limiting themselves to respectful nods, but from the way Ember subtly straightens her shoulders it's clear there's much more meaning than the gesture would imply. This entire room is dripping with prestige, and it seems that prestige is what determines a person's importance.

"This is the reason we were founded." Black Rod leans forwards, one hand resting on the table and his lips pursed in anger. "This is the reason the Elite exists. To stand up for Parahumans, and prevent them from being ground down by the world. We will find these victims, and we will raise them up. But we must proceed with caution."

Some of the anger seems to leave him, as he turns his attention to group of five Parahumans in upmarket business suits, two seated and three standing behind them. They wouldn't look out of place anywhere in the city – if it weren't for the sculpted, full-face masks completely hiding their features.

"What is your assessment of the situation?"

"The Think Tank," comes Ember's whisper. "They predict the future, mostly work as business consultants."

"It's muddied," one of the suits – a woman – answers. "We suspect Counterthinker interference. There's a rival Think Tank somewhere with an opposing goal to us, and the results of their predictions are interfering with ours."

"Creating white noise," the man next to her interjects. "Static."

"Can it be overcome?" Black Rod asks.

"Not by us," she answers. "Silver lining is it probably goes both ways unless they have some serious assets. We can't see them, they can't see us. If you were prepared to pay for some of the Gentleman's time, his staff might be able to overcome the interference, but…" she trails off, her brown eyes flicking briefly to the woman in red and gold before returning to Black Rod as he shakes his head.

"The interference raises another issue," Jaeger speaks from his position a little further up the table than us. "The Triad have no Thinkers, which means they have powerful backers. We know the Parahumans are being shipped overseas, which means these opposing Thinkers are likely beyond the reach of my strike teams."

"Indeed," Black Rod acknowledges Jaeger's contribution with a nod. "It limits our actions. It is imperative we find these captives before launching any significant strike against the Triad, in case they rush them out of the country in a panic. All we know is that they are being transported in shipping containers, and that they will be leaving on a ship. Therefore, we covertly flood the docks with hunters until we have located all ten captives. Then, we liberate our bothers and sisters and launch simultaneous strikes against every Triad target, breaking their backs in a single night."

The red and gold woman rises from her seat, and the whole room follows her. Where there was shock and surprise at her entrance, now there is just fury and determination. She pauses for a moment, the pitch black glass in her mask's eyeholes seeming to stare at the entire room at once, before turning and departing through the same secret door she entered through.

The moment she's gone, every screen in the room changes so that together they make immense maps of the city, covered in light blue markers indicating drug labs, armouries, distribution centres, warehouses, flophouses and all the other assets of the Triad, including the converted bunker that holds their leader. The fruits of my labour, given the most prestigious spot of all; the centre of everyone's attention, even Black Rod's.

But not the woman in red and gold. She left before she could see it.

Her exit goes as unspoken as her entrance, as Black Rod begins speaking to each Parahuman in turn, outlining their roles and responsibilities in either the reconnaissance or the strike. I listen as he attaches me to the search team, but my mind is elsewhere.

It's with the woman in red and gold, and the mystery she represents. The Elite is deeper than I knew, and I feel like I'm only beginning to scratch at the surface.

 

[Redcoat_Officer]

Someone recently told me that they'd been getting major Brotherhood of Mutants vibes from my portrayal of the Seattle Elite, so I figured I'd share the three villainous organisations that have most shaped my portrayal of the faction.

The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants



The Brotherhood of Mutants gave me the Elite's commitment to protecting Parahumans, their aspirations of statehood and their tendency towards Parahuman supremacist beliefs.

That last part isn't as front-and-centre as it is in Magneto's Brotherhood, but it's present in every member of the Elite in one form or another.

Jaeger is probably the most blatant. He sees his humanity as something that he needs to overcome, as a weakness that his power can't mitigate. So he works to cut himself off from humanity, taking wetwork for the Elite that allows himself to only ever interact with humanity in terms of targets to be killed. Even his soldiers are made to overcome their humanity - just a little - by being given a Cranial-made memory package that messes with their sense of self in order to create better killers.

"The Elite exists above and below the law. You and me, we're basically hired security guards. We might bend the law a little to put the fear of us in a couple of guys who don't get the message, but mostly we're safe from being arrested so long as we don't take things too far. Jaeger, on the other hand… well, he's responsible for our black-ops. The kind of work we don't want the feds learning about," she clarifies, in response to my unspoken question.

"For that kind of thing, he needs people he can trust. Remember how these guys all flinched when I called them Solomon?"

I nod.

"There was this Russian soldier, something something Solomonov. He'd been everywhere, seen everything. Afghanistan and Eritrea with the Soviet Army, then the Balkans and East Africa with the Red Gauntlet. He got old, he got injured, he retired and then he got fucked."

I flinch at the language. Honestly, would it kill her to be a little more polite?

"Don't know if it was drink or drugs that fucked him, but eventually he found himself in the States. He ran into this girl in a bar who offered him enough money to set himself up with enough booze for the rest of his life, in exchange for copies of all his memories."

That gets my attention, to the point where I stop looking around the room and fix my gaze squarely on Ember.

"The girl was Cranial. She's a Tinker… though you probably don't know what that means. She makes advanced tech, and she's part of this group, Toybox, who sell tech. They're decent business partners, even if they're not part of the Elite. Haven't screwed anyone on a job so far."

She seems to catch herself going on a tangent, grinning sheepishly at me.

"Anyway, Cranial sells Solomon's skills as part of what she calls the 'super-soldier' package. Decades of training and experience with Russian Special Forces, instilled in an afternoon spent with wires stuck to your head. Those guys" -she nods towards the unkempt figures signing their lives away- "are probably ex-military types who fell on hard times. They'll have Solomon's skills and experience implanted in their mind, turning them into highly-trained soldiers in just a few hours."

I turn away from the ragged group, looking instead at the soldiers as they practice boxing. Now that I look closer, there's a symmetry to their movements. They all throw punches in the same way, duck and weave in similar patterns. It's kind of unnerving, to be honest. People shouldn't be that coordinated.

"The thing is that a lot of Solomon's skills are tied up in his memories. They tend to bleed through, mixing in with the client's memories a little. It's a step further than I'd ever be prepared to go, which is why Jaeger prefers to recruit the desperate. There are plenty of people out there who don't mind losing a little memory if it means they have some security in their life."

Click to shrink...

"I have a lesson for you," he says, his eyes meeting my own.

I don't say anything in response. I just sit on the floor, my limbs coated by white bandages slowly staining black, and look up at him.

"You have a power that makes you superior to any human," he begins, "but that isn't enough. Bloody Mary's powers made her an excellent infiltrator, and she thought they made her an excellent killer, but that's all she ever did. She sat back and relied on her power for everything. She didn't study to improve her mind, and she only exercised to keep her looks intact, rather than to improve her body."

He turns the phone over in his hands, tossing it in the air and catching it.

"She had the niche her power gave her, and she thought that was enough. She was good at it, to be sure, but in all other areas she was distinctly… lacking."

He peels back a rubber case from the back of the phone, smiling in triumph as it reveals a small scrap of paper with a few numbers scribbled on it in pen. With a few taps on the screen, he unlocks the phone.

"The weakest part of any Parahuman is their humanity, and if you don't work to overcome it then it will be your downfall."

Click to shrink...

Ember's own bias is a little more subtle, a little more internalised, but it's there. She's lonely, and her superiors in the Elite recognise that, but she doesn't reach out to any of the humans that work for her. She's been immersed in the Elite's culture for years, and it's taught her that she needs to keep herself apart from the people working under her. Not to rule by fear, necessarily, but to demand their respect through professional detachment. It's why she latches onto Nightcrawler almost as quickly as Nightcrawler latches onto her.

"No, she didn't. I suppose that's courage, or loyalty to Ember. She's done well."

"Jaeger's report said much the same. Nightcrawler has latched onto Ember, or perhaps they've latched onto each other. Either way, it's promising."

Click to shrink...

'Everyone here respects you.'

She looks at me oddly, like I've just reminded her that the sky is black, or something.

"Well yeah, I'm in charge. Collier and Jaarsveld are both good at their jobs, and decent enough once you get to know them, but the Elite is an organisation run by Parahumans, for Parahumans. Everybody in the world wants to control us, whether it's the PRT who want us as soldiers, gangs who want us as muscle or politicians who treat us as friends or enemies depending on which way the Washington wind's blowing. The Elite is the only way we have of asserting our right to decide our own future."

Click to shrink...

As for Agnes Court, the degree to which she has or hasn't been affected by the Elite's culture has yet to be revealed.


The Hellfire Club



From the Hellfire Club came the Elite's... elitism, as well as certain aesthetic choices in terms of their costumes. While nobody in Agnes Court's faction is likely to start running around in a corset and knickers - especially in a Seattle winter - the costumes of the Seattle Elite are noticeably more ostentatious than Worm's usual fare. Worm is no stranger to knightly costumes (in fact they're probably about as common as traditional spandex, which I personally really enjoy because it gives Worm a more unique visual style) and Agnes Court has taken that image, and the trappings of nobility it implies, a step further by modelling the Round Table's aesthetic and brand after a legendary knightly order.

Beyond their Corporate Hero team, the rest of the Seattle Elite has largely embraced a more elitist aesthetic than their Protectorate counterparts, again stirred on by the example of their leader. The formal name for the inner circle seen in this last chapter is the Star Chamber, which is a very old term for a type of court within royal households comprised of Privy Councillors (the sovereign's closest advisors) and judges who could execute the sovereign's will and prosecute their enemies. Whether it's merely the trappings of nobility or a representation of Agnes Court's ambitions, it's seeped down to the rank and file members of the Elite.

Black Rod is the most obvious example of this. His very name is another position within a Royal Court, this time the sovereign's messenger to Parliament. His costume is a near-perfect match to the outfit work by the Canadian Black Rod. This connection to Britain and Canada is very intentional, by the way. Agnes Court has significant assets north of the border, and I've alluded multiple times to her British origins.

Among their other Parahumans, Ember is the only one seen so far who actually wears spandex, and that's because her breaker state would set anything else (like her new cloak) on fire. Many choose to wear uniforms in varying degrees of opulence, with Jaeger (another Canadian) being on the upper end of the scale. His costume is actually styled off of a Victorian-era Canadian officer's uniform, rather than anything more modern. He's ambitious, and so he's dressing more like a statesman than the wetwork operator he currently is.

Incidentally, though this has nothing to do with the Hellfire Club I figure I might as well share the reference image for Ember's Breaker state while I'm sharing everything else.

The Elite's elitism also has a basis in canon. It might be implied rather than directly stated, but one look at the names of every known Elite character (from Worm and PRT Quest) will tell you all you need to know about how humble and down to earth they are:

Agnes Court, Bastard Son, Blueblood, The Gentleman, Nonpareil, Patrician, Regis Rex, Uppercrust, Uppermost, Entourage, Speaker of the House, Upperhand

Click to shrink...

SPECTRE



The SPecial Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion (SPECTRE) was the final inspiration for Agnes Court's Elite. From them came the focus on business and profit, with the ominous Think Tank dressed in business suits rather than costumes and manipulating markets from the shadows. I must also credit SPECTRE with the creation of the Elite's vibe, and this most recent chapter was basically a massive homage to SPECTRE's now-legendary boardroom scenes, where the evil organisation gathers to discuss their plans along a long table, while a shadowy and mysterious figure watches over the proceedings.

Agnes Court's boardroom is essentially a fusion of the corporate minimalism seen in Thunderball with the classically elegant yet no less intimidating space seen in Spectre, and she plays the role of the shadowy mastermind. Like SPECTRE, the Elite's tendrils are weaving their way through every aspect of Seattle's society as they play a never-ending game of cat and mouse with the forces of law and order. Above all, SPECTRE gave the Elite their style. They'll take a cut from their vassal gangs and drug lords, but ultimately Agnes Court's Elite is about slick suits, carefully chosen words, lofty ambitions and ominous underground bases.

Spoiler: A comparison, for your viewing pleasure

 

[Sengachi]

This is an absolutely fascinating character study. Thank you for sharing it!

 

[Redcoat_Officer]

Enforcer: 4.02

As the meeting draws to a close, and the participants start to stand and drift off, I wait until Ember has wandered out into the halls before re-emerging from her shadow and onto the tiled floor of the underground facility. She looks at me curiously, but I momentarily ignore her, scanning the length of the corridor to make sure we're alone, before grabbing her hand and pulling her into a nearby room.

It looks like it's an office, during… normal working hours. Part of the city that I've never really seen, where the suits go before they stagger out onto the streets to drink the day's work away. The dozen or so cubicles with their fancy computers don't really make much sense to me, and the posters and pictures on the wall don't do anything to stop the space feeling clinical and isolated.

The Red-Light district has its private spaces too, of course it does, but they're different. They're more intimate than private, and the streets themselves are heaving with people. This cold, sterile room is private in a very lifeless way, and not even the darkness can bring intimacy to it.

But it is private, and that's what I need right now.

'Who was she?' I sign to Ember, watching her brain struggle to figure out my sign language for a second before her confused expression turns sombre and serious.

She sighs, pulling a chair out of one of the cubicles and slumping down into it, her head becoming buried beneath the shadows of her cloak.

"Yeah, I should have figured she'd be there."

I don't do anything in response, just sitting back on my haunches and looking up at her. She hasn't held anything back from me so far – not when I've asked, at least – and I'll gladly give her the time she needs to explain just what that was about.

"The thing you need to understand about the Elite is that we're not one unified whole. We're more like… like a whole bunch of different groups. Cells. Seattle's a bit different than most places, in that most of the city's Elite are all under the same group, but there are still bits that are kept separate from everyone else. Bits we can't know about."

Ember leans back, tossing her hood back and rubbing her temples.

"Seattle's better than most places. Before I moved here, I was working down in Vegas. Still in the Elite, but a different cell. A different… I don't know, sphere of influence. I didn't even find out I was in the Elite until my cell leader told me about this job in Seattle and not-so-subtly hinted that someone so far above her he might as well be a king was offering a big financial incentive for me to go, because Seattle would send down a Thinker in exchange."

She smiles, the tension draining out of her as she shifts forward to put her elbows on her knees, an honest smile on her face.

"Down there, I couldn't really talk to anybody except the four other people in my cell, and they just saw me as dumb muscle. But here? There's a bar in this building, over there somewhere." She waves an arm in a random direction. "You can go there in costume and just… exist for a while. No need to lie about what you do for a living, pretending you're some dumb paper-pusher when you're so much more."

The smile slips from her face a little, as her expression turns more serious.

"That's more than worth a little secrecy. So we don't talk about her, don't acknowledge she's here. That way, if anyone's listening, she doesn't get implicated in something she's not involved in. Because if she goes down, we all go down."

She pauses, as if she's worried about whether to continue.

"I figured it out about a year after coming here. You might figure it out too, and who knows how many of those people around the table know, but nobody says it out loud. All things considered, it's a small price to pay."

That's a sentiment I can understand. It's a trade – like everything else. I patrol the Red-Light district, and help the Elite whenever they need something more done, and in return I get a safe place to sleep at night, with warm covers and a door that both shuts and locks. I get paid too – I get paid a lot – but it's amazing how little that matters when I have nothing to spend it on except for food that Ember has to collect from the door for me, and when I know what it's like to go without shelter or home-cooked food.

It's another cost to add onto the pile, but the benefits are still worth so much more.

I draw my fingers across my mouth. It's a gesture I saw someone doing in the Red-Light District after agreeing to keep a secret, so I figure it'll do here. Ember certainly seems to get my meaning, standing up with a grin on her face and throwing her hood back over her head.

"Let's go. I've got a little while yet, but your new partners should be leaving right about now."

Like our arrival here, everyone's leaving at different times to stop anyone getting suspicious about the building. Ember's one of the last to go, but I'm not leaving with her. There are people trapped out there, about to be sold overseas to who knows where, and that means the search can't wait for even a moment longer than it has to.

It's more than just them, though. Jaeger and I built up an almost complete picture of the Triad in the north, but in another week that picture might have changed completely. Every hour, the information I gathered becomes more and more obsolete. So the Elite wants to strike soon, but they can't do that without freeing the captives. Otherwise the Triad will just hide them away at the first sign of trouble.

Rather than slipping back into Ember's cloak, I follow her out into the hall. It's a chance to indulge my curiosity a little more, darting ahead to peer into interesting looking rooms, and generally being more than a little nosy.

Ember takes it in her stride, but, as the sound of distant footsteps becomes audible, I slip back to her side. She might be able to unwind in the bar, but this place is still built on reputation, and I don't want to ruin hers by running around like an excited puppy where people can see me.

There's a small group waiting in the car park, standing around a nondescript van that looks like it belongs to an electricians firm, judging by the words painted on the side. Of course, I've been around Jaeger long enough to know that those words probably aren't worth the paint that went into them.

Jaeger isn't alone, this time. Or, rather, it's not just him and his men. His own personal soldiers are conspicuous in their absence, and the two Capes talking to Jaeger are just conspicuous in general. I recognise Huntsman immediately, and it looks like his dog-thing recognises me. The other man is an unknown, with a shaved head and skin that's closer to charcoal than Ember's hazelnut brown. His complexion is a little pallid, almost grey in places, and he's dressed in a tight-fitting tank top beneath an open red and gold tracksuit. His mask is a red half-skull that covers everything from his upper lip to his forehead.

Jaeger simply nods at me as I pace across the garage towards them, while Huntsman seems to weigh me up with his eyes. The third man simply crosses his arms and leans back against his van.

"Nightcrawler," Jaeger greets me. "Are you ready to head out?"

I turn back to Ember for a brief moment, before swallowing down my hesitation, looking back at Jaeger and nodding.

"Good," he replies, like it was never in doubt. "Let's get in the van, then. Cinderblock" – he turns to the third man – "it's your vehicle, you drive."

"Sure," he replies, in a deep, gravelly, voice. "You three best ride in back; don't want anyone getting suspicious."

"I'll see you soon, Nightcrawler," Ember says, giving me a wave. I return the gesture before following behind Jaeger as Huntsman holds open the rear doors of the van for the pair of us. There aren't any seats in the back – none of the advanced tech that Jaeger had on our stakeout, either. It seems this is just a regular van, meant to transport goods from A to B.

Huntsman's creature hops up behind me, as he and Jaeger move up to sit on the floor just behind the van's seats. I pull the doors shut, and the van sets off into the city a moment later. As I settle down on the floor of the van, Huntsman's dog continues staring at me in confusion for a few more moments before letting out a snort of foul-smelling breath and padding over to rest its head on its master's lap.

The van is mostly enclosed – a tight, confined space – but the light of the city is bleeding through the windshield at the front, and the two windows on the rear door. They're tinted, but that doesn't stop the glow. In fact, it just seems to get worse and worse as we approach the centre of the city, until it's almost like the unbearable light of the day.

I shuffle towards the rear doors, hunching down to try and find some relief in the space below the windows, where the glow doesn't touch. At the other end of the van, Huntsman notices me move and fixes me with an inquisitive look.

"Don't like the light?"

I shake my head, signing out an answer. 'It's uncomfortable. There is nowhere to hide.'

"She said-" Jaeger starts translating my signs, before Huntsman cuts him off.

"I heard. Worked alongside a deaf Radar tech out in Venezuela. She seemed pretty lonely, so I learned how to sign."

"You were in Venezuela?" Cinderblock asks from the front of the van, looking back for a moment before the traffic light in front of him turns green. "You an Army man, or what?"

"Fuck no," Hunstman laughs. "You think the Army would employ a deaf anybody? Nah, I used to be Army, sure, but I was out there with a PMC, working security for the oil companies and doing wetwork for the local military."

"Sounds fucking nasty," Cinderblock continues. "I saw something about that on TV once – how in South America the villains are the government capes and the heroes are the underground rebels."

"Fuck that piece of shit 'documentary,'" Huntsman practically shouts out, his disgusting language almost making me want to cover my ears. "A couple of bleeding-heart liberal arts students get suckered in by another handsome revolutionary in a beret, and suddenly the whole fucking country thinks they know shit about the way the world works."

He gets up off the floor, leaning over the front seats to talk to Cinderblock like he's giving a lecture. I get a brief flash of Cinderblock's smile in the rear view mirror – it's clear he's just enjoying the show.

"There are no fucking heroes or villains in Venezuela, there's just the good old dollar. Don't matter if you're the oil companies looking to protect your fields, the cartels looking to protect your crops, or some Cold War relic hiding in the fucking jungle and trying to take the oil and the drugs from the others, the motivation is the same. Get territory, get control, get rich. Then, if you're lucky, get out."

"I take it that's what you did," Jaeger says from where he's still sitting on the floor of the van.

"I did one better," Huntsman replies as he sits back down. "I got smart. This job doesn't pay quite as well as hunting rebels in the Venezuelan jungle, but it's not far off and it's a hell of a lot safer. The Red Gauntlet guys down there used to find this whole Cape culture hilarious, but it stops every little spat from becoming a bloodbath."

After that, the fight seems to fade away from Huntsman, and Cinderblock's satisfied grin soon falls back into an impassive scowl as he focuses on moving us through the scant post-midnight traffic. The glow of the city starts to fade, and eventually I feel comfortable enough to crawl out from my little patch of shadow and prop myself up against the doors, taking full advantage of the tinted windows to peer out at the city around us without being seen.

It's amazing how quickly the city centre drops off. One minute we're driving through a canyon of flame, surrounded on all sides by pillars of light that scrape the sky, and the next it's like I'm back in the north, with low-rise buildings and uncomplicated streetlights that are dim enough I can see the night's sky behind them. The road we're driving down is straight and narrow, surrounded on both sides by endless car parks and rectangular commercial buildings, taking us further and further away from the glowing wall that was the end of the world I knew, out into the great unknown.

"Welcome to Columbia City," Cinderblock says, as I spot him in the reflection of the window, looking back at me with a smile on his face as he waits for the traffic light to change. "First time?"

"She's never been south of the city centre before," Huntsman translates my signs almost as soon as I've made them, getting a surprised laugh out of Cinderblock.

"Nightcrawler largely works in and around the Red-Light District," Jaeger elaborates.

"Well shit," Cinderblock muses. "Guess I've got to play host. Come up front for a bit and I'll give you the low-down."

I drop down from the rear doors and move up through the van, stepping gingerly over and around Jaeger, Huntsman and his creature before quickly pouncing over the seat backs and settling down on the passenger side, looking out at the lanes of nearly-empty roads that surround us.

"The one thing you need to understand about South Seattle," he begins, "is that it's basically all built around this big fat line of industry that goes from Seahawks Stadium all the way down and out past the city limits. You've got the container terminals, the fuel terminals, the rail terminals, Boeing's own private airport and all sorts of smaller industry sandwiched in-between the rest. All the neighbourhoods around it – Columbia City, Beacon Hill, Highline, Delridge, whatever – all exist to fuel that industry. Forget the fucking suits and their skyscrapers, that's the real heart of the city."

He goes on, pointing out specific shops that do good deals, good places to get drunk each night. We pass a few people loitering on the streets corners, and he complains that the Red-Light District makes having a decent prostitution racket impossible while pointing out which group of people belongs to which gang. Eventually, I'm able to find a gap to get a word in edgeways.

'So what do you do for the Elite?'

He looks at me for a couple of seconds and shrugs his shoulders. I sigh and lean back over the seat, jostling Huntsman's shoulder to grab his attention and repeating my question.

"She wants to know who you are," he translates, "beyond just a name."

"Fair enough," Cinderblock answers, leaning back in his seat. "I run one of the bigger gangs out here, the Thirty-Fifth. We've got three Parahumans, and own pretty much all the blocks around Thirty-Fifth Avenue here in Columbia City. There's a dozen or so other powered gangs like us out here, all paying up to the Elite. Then there're the smaller groups, the ones without Capes, who pay up to us."

He stops abruptly, seeming to spot something in the rear view mirror. I angle my head to get a look for myself, and jolt a little at the sight of a pair of police cars edging into the lane next to us, their black and white livery and thankfully unlit red and blue lights as clear a warning sign as any.

I drop down into the footwell beneath the seat, slipping effortlessly into the darkness as Cinderblock quickly removes his mask and tosses it onto the passenger seat.

"Five-oh," he says to the other passengers, his tone surprisingly calm. "Stay down."

There's a couple of tense moments as I just hide there, unable to see out of the windows and spot what's going on. The absence of any sudden flashing lights is the only indicator I have that things haven't gone horribly wrong, until Cinderblock lets out a low whistle and says "we're in the clear."

As I clamber back up out of the footwell, Cinderblock puts his mask back on and Jaeger pops his head over the seat back, looking at the two police cars as they drive off into the distance.

"A van driving through this neighbourhood at the middle of the night and they don't pull it over?"

"Sure." Cinderblock's response is matter of fact, as he settles back down in his seat. "The Police aren't hard to spook. They pull over the wrong car, get their own car crushed by yours truly, and suddenly they don't want to pull any more. They'd kick the whole city up the chain to the PRT if they could, but instead they're being as chickenshit as they can. It's why there were two cars in that patrol, rather than one."

He still turns off from the road the moment the police cars drop out of sight, heading down side-streets between small homes and low-rise apartment blocks before parking up outside one tower among many.

"And here we are," he says, opening up the door. "My own little slice of paradise, and your base for the next few days."

I follow him out, as Jaeger and Huntsman get out the other side of the van. There are two men waiting in the lobby, both of them obviously guards of some kind even if they aren't wearing any sort of uniform. I can spot the distinctive outline of a sawed-off shotgun beneath one of their jackets, and it looks like Jaeger can see it as well.

"All quiet?" Cinderblock asks his men.

"All quiet."

He nods. "Keep an eye out. Don't want anyone getting the drop on us."

"The fighting down here is fast and nasty," he says, as he leads us into the elevator. "About a third of the gangs have broken away and sided with the Triad, and another third have basically splintered as some of them stick by the Elite and others don't."

'How are the Triad winning them over?' I ask, and Huntsman translates.

"There are rules that come with Elite membership. No dealing within two blocks of a school, bring disputes up to the Elite or settle them quietly, that sort of thing. A lot of people didn't like that, and the Triad basically promised them free rein if they help axe the Elite. Bunch of fucking dumbasses with more muscle than sense, if you ask me. The king's the king for a reason, and acting up's just gonna get you stamped back down."

He leads us down a long hallway lined with apartments, stopping at the second from the end. It's right across the hall from the emergency stairs, which is probably a deliberate choice, and, once Cinderblock is done fiddling with the keys, we step through into a completely unfurnished apartment.

"Sorry it's a little empty," Cinderblock says. "The last tenant's family sold off all the furniture when the old man died, but I was able to buy the apartment. Been holding onto it for a rainy day just like this."

"That's not a problem," Jaeger says as he peers out of the window. "I'll call my people and have them bring over everything we need. Camp cots, police scanners, whiteboards… that sort of thing. Could you go back down and tell your guys to expect them?"

"…sure," Cinderblock answers, a little put out, "but then I'm turning in for the night, or my girlfriend will pitch a fit. My apartment's just next door, so knock if there's an emergency."

Huntsman lets out a chuckle after he's gone, leaning back against the wall and fixing Jaeger with an amused look.

"Well look who's moving up in the world. Going from a two person spy mission on your own dime to heading up a proper, Elite-sanctioned taskforce? Takes ambition."

"There's nothing wrong with ambition," Jaeger replies, bluntly. "You don't really expect me to believe you don't harbour ambitions of your own?"

Huntsman shakes his head. "I've buried too many ambitious men in unmarked graves. Enemies and friends. I make enough to be comfortable, my work is still interesting, and that's good enough for me."

"Each to their own, I suppose," Jaeger replies, diplomatically, before walking over to the window again.

"We need to move fast about this. Nightcrawler, you should head out and get the lay of the land while it's still dark. No need to look for anything in particular, just familiarise yourself with the area and get back before dawn."

I nod, even as Huntsmen speaks up.

"Hang on, isn't it a little late? Let the poor girl sleep, at least."

'I'm nocturnal,' I sign back. Well, it's more 'I don't sleep at night.' I haven't got around to learning the sign for 'nocturnal' yet, if there even is one.

"And neither do we, until the job's done," Jaeger continues. "We have to be on standby in case anything happens."

"Understood," Huntsman replies as he sits down, his creature padding over to rest its head on his lap as he starts reading something on his phone.

I pace over to the window, propping myself up to open it and peer out across an unfamiliar skyline. I can't see much; just a few buildings before a forested hill blocks my view. I look down, and see a patch of darkness right below the window, where some streetlight or another has obviously failed.

I haul myself up and out the window, feeling the wind rushing past my body as I hurtle down five stories before hitting the darkness and disappearing into its depths like a diver hitting the surface of a lake. I let myself revel in the weightless sensation for a few moments before reforming my body and sprinting across the road to the treeline, eager to explore new spaces and help really make a difference.

To save lives, rather than help end them.