Cockroach
Erik Matthews huffed into the cold night air of a Brockton Bay January before adjusting his scarf yet again. His hands longed to wrap themselves around a can of beer, or perhaps a cigarette, but Kaiser had ordered special attention to detail tonight. Something about a big shipment coming in and the risk of an attack that brought with it. Erik was new to the Empire and figured it was some sort of test he'd have to pass. Another shiver threatened to rattle his bones and he suppressed a yawn, pushing back the thick sleeves of his jacket to glance at his watch, rifle banging annoyingly against his back at the sudden movement. Only a few more minutes and Benjamin would be out to relieve him, and he could have a cigarette.
After a moment, Erik swung the rifle around on its holster until the grip was in his hand, striding out from his little nook in the wall to look out into the courtyard below. The wall along one side was hidden behind several dark trucks, so he flicked a switch under the barrel of his weapon and pointed the flashlight across the hoods. As with the last check, nothing moved. He flicked the light off again and turned on the spot slowly, eyes tracing the chainlink fence that marked two corners of the courtyard. It was late, and he was tired, having to struggle against another yawn as he completed the sweep. The light at the far corner was still flickering.
The sound of a heavy door being unbolted and then pushed open drew Erik back to his post and the warmth now rushing out of the entrance.
"Oh thank fuck, I thought I was gonna freeze before you showed up."
Benjamin chuckled, tugging the white bobble hat over his shaven dome before proffering a pack of cigarettes. "Tell me about it. Keep me company for a bit? Two eyes are better than one, and I know you're smoking roll-ups."
Erik gratefully accepted the straight, mumbling his thanks. From a pocket deep within his voluminous trench coat Benji pulled a blowtorch, saving them the trouble of removing their several layers of gloves just to spark a light.
"Anything?"
He shook his head, surrounding himself in a smoky fog. Neither man saw the dark figure drop from one rooftop in near-perfect silence to sneak behind the trucks. "Light's still flickering. If it gets worse I'd use the flashlight to check the far corner."
Benji snorted. "Typical. No one inside is bothering to keep an eye out."
"Trucks won't be here for another hour or so," Erik reasoned. "Plus in there's television."
The other man exhaled a thin stream of smoke before tossing the stubby end off the raised doorstep. "Too right. Well, unless you want to stay out here, you'd best get in. You know what Layton is like."
Erik suppressed a wince and tugged the door open. He certainly did know how Layton, as the crazed Polishman insisted on being called, behaved, and being off-schedule garnered his smouldering rage. How the man had ever gotten anywhere in the Empire was beyond Erik or Benji, but there were rumours he'd fought in the same cage fights as Hookwolf and Cricket. There must be more to him than met the eye at first glance. The door clanged shut behind him, cutting off the sounds of his friend shuffling in place, already trying to keep warm for his hour's watch.
Sometimes, Erik wondered why he'd ever joined the Empire at all.
He now found himself in a hazy room stretching the entire side of the ground floor, filled with various Empire foot soldiers. Weapons of all kinds lay on tables or up against chairs as people quietly played cards or watched the big screen television set up at one end. Erik winced as the smell of smoke assaulted his nose - that was another idea of Laytons', smoking inside; something about keeping men out of sight in case someone tried anything. Had it been anyone else, he suspected the men would've just laughed and smoked outside anyway, but Layton was...
Well, he was pretty off the wall.
"Hey, Erik!" A voice cut through his thoughts, and he turned to find a man coming down the stairs behind him. "Up you go."
He let his head fall into his hands in mock disbelief. "Are you serious? Benji even said no one was looking outside."
Klause smiled sympathetically. "Them's the breaks. Layton..."
"You know what he's like, yeah," Erik finished the joke with a sigh. "Better not keep him waiting any longer then."
As he made his way towards the stairs, Klause called after him.
"Let him know about the light, would ya?"
Erik shook his head and finished ascending to the next floor. Klause liked to shirk his responsibilities as Layton's 'second in command', whatever that meant, and bringing the man bad news had a way of ending... badly. He tactfully decided to leave those duties to the man supposed to be carrying them out, and made his way upwards again. Layton's office space, such as it was, was on the second floor of the building, and Erik personally believed it was some kind of mad power trip for the guy. Personal opinions aside, he made sure to school his face into a perfectly blank expression before knocking on the single door at the top of the last flight of stairs.
"Come in, Matthews."
He pushed open the door, ducking his head respectfully - partly to hide his smile - as Layton turned his office chair away from the desk.
"You're late."
"Sir."
A displeased expression made its way on to Layton's face. "You were also smoking outside."
"Sir."
"Don't you have anything to say for yourself?"
Erik pushed his shoulders further out. "Sir, only that I don't like smoking inside. Unhygienic. I have kids."
The man was on his feet in an instant, hands pressed furiously against the wood of his desk. "I don't give a
damn what you like or how many kids you have! Kaiser entrusted this operation to me, and that means we'll be running it my way, are we clear? I don't want to lose men outside in that cold where we might not realise for half an hour, damnit it might even take us an hour! If they're inside and warm, at least they're awake."
That... kind of made sense, in a bit of a weird way. "Sir."
Layton returned to his seat. "Get out of my sight."
As if the words were a trigger, every light in the building chose that moment to flicker once and die, plunging the office into total darkness. Erik stumbled, mid reaching for the exit, before remembering the flashlight on his gun. A few moments fumbling had it on and pointing at the door, before a voice behind him instructed him to halt.
"Wait, stop!" Layton ordered. "Shine that over here."
He did so. The greasy-haired man pulled open a draw and withdrew a flashlight of his own as well as an automatic pistol.
"Right, good. Now, check the stairs."
Erik hesitated. "Sir, I'm sure it's just a powerc-"
"I said
check the stairs."
Not trusting himself to reply, Erik merely nodded and started for the door again, and again was interrupted - this time by the sound of smashing glass from downstairs. After a moment, a surprised shout gave way to confused gunfire. Erik turned back to stare at Layton.
"You had to say it," the man spat, pushing him aside. "Let's go, whoever it is is stuck on the ground floor. We'll hold them at the stairs."
Erik followed, mind reeling. From below the sounds of a sustained gunfight had broken out, interspersed by occasional moments of silence and the odd yell. He'd never been in an actual gunfight before, never shot a weapon outside of a shooting range in fact. The only fight he'd ever been in ended with his older brother, a football player, wading in to grab the two guys beating on him by the necks and throw them off. Benji, the gentle giant...
"Fuck," he gasped, before quickening his pace. Benji was outside.
More gunfire from below intermingled with what sounded like a scream, before it fell silent again. Layton had already started organising a barricade, the men on this floor moving the furniture towards the staircase under his direction. Several had already taken up positions with their guns and torches directed over the top of the makeshift blockade. Erik joined them, but was waved away to get more furniture.
Moving through the building in the dark was frightening, he admitted to himself, clutching the rifle tighter in his hands. Through the hallways and doors he could see beams of light cutting through the darkness, but the figures wielding them were indistinct. After a minutes search,
Layton turned and gestured to Erik. "Take some upstairs, look out of the windows. If there's anyone in the courtyard, shoot them."
Those closest to them were already moving towards the stairs going up, and Erik could do little but nod in agreement and get swept along with them. The building was large, although not overly so, and Layton's office took up the entirety of the top floor. From its windows, they could see in every direction. As they made it to the still-open door, a surprised shout reached them from below before a pistol fired in rapid succession. There was a moment of silence, then concerned voices, Layton instructing someone to move the safe upstairs. Erik let out a breath - good, they were still alive.
"So?" Someone asked him as they filed in, and he realised Layton had left
him in charge.
"Okay... check the courtyard, you heard him. Someone look on the other side, too. I'll take the back. Uh... keep together?"
That had him out of useful information dredged from various rewatchings of spy films and action series on televisions when he was younger. Two people, one a woman he vaguely recognised and another a man he didn't at all, followed him around the staircase and towards the back wall, flashlights picking out white beams in the haze of cigarette smoke. Erik cursed Layton again for instructing them to smoke inside - they could barely see! From behind them there came a thud and a muffled curse.
The three of them froze. Erik slowly turned. "All okay?"
"Yeah, just stubbed my fucking toe," someone replied, and there was a chorus of nervous laughter. Another gunshot from below silenced them, and before they began moving again the rhythmic sound of something being slammed into something, or someone, echoed up the stairs.
Erik swallowed again and hastened towards the target wall, finally pressing himself up to it next to a window with the blinds drawn. He reached down and flicked off the light whilst the other two moved to different windows, before lifting the blind carefully and looking outside. It'd gone quiet again, apart from the occasional sound of Layton's angry snarls.
"I don't see anything in the courtyard," a man's voice called, quickly followed by three confirmations.
A woman on the opposite side pushed her window open and pointed the flashlight outside. "Can't see shit - power's out for blocks around. This has gotta be some kind of trap, right?"
Erik could feel the panic in the woman's voice, panic that matched his own. He forced himself to breathe slowly, and took one final look out of his window.
A dark-suited figure stared up at him from where it hung next to the floor below, moments before breaking through a window.
"Shit!"
The gun was unwieldy in his hands and the barrel too long, forcing him to pull the trigger whilst it still hadn't cleared the sill of his window. It was loud, deafeningly so, and in the flashes of muzzle-fire he could see splinters bursting towards the figure as it charged at the side of the building, one arm covering its head. It took Erik several moments to realise the figure - definitely a cape - was already inside and stop firing.
"What the hell's going on?" The familiar woman asked urgently, own weapon up and ready.
"Cape!" Erik gasped, before drawing another breath and yelling as loud as he could. "Cape!"
The woman went white. "Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!"
More gunfire broke out from the floor below, and Erik span on his heel, lunging across the open space for the stairs. He vaulted the bannister in time to see several people frantically scrambling upwards, one firing through the door below wildly before slamming it shut. Something heavy crashed into the other side.
"What the fuck?"
The man turned, eyes wide. "I fucking shot him, I fucking swear I shot him!"
Erik turned and started to yell for furniture to block the door when a fist smashed straight through the oak panelling and grabbed the man still on the bottom step, wrenching him through with a scream of pain. In response, Erik unloaded the rest of his clip into the doorframe, frantically back-pedalling. Someone dragged him to his feet and then there were people there, firing downwards alongside him. After a moment, every gun fell silent.
"Reloading!" Someone yelled.
Erik looked around. "Oh fuck... Fuck! The windows! He can fly! Get to the windows!"
"Which cape is it?!"
"Fuck if I know, bastard took like a whole clip!"
Flashlights cut through the empty space as people rushed across Layton's office, leaving blotches across his vision as Erik threw another glance at the stairway. He was certain the cape would come through the windows like he had done before, but just in case...
"Anyone got a grenade? Throw it down there at the fucker."
Someone did. The explosion shook the whole building, leaving hungry fires to lick at the doorway.
"Won't be coming that way, that's for s-uaahAHGHGH!"
And then it was chaos. In the staccato flashes of gunfire and wildly spinning torch beams, Erik could see the figure from before. He, and it was definitely a he, was clad in a tattered black body-suit, specked with blood and what looked like shards of glass. He came through the window, taking out the speaker in an instant before throwing himself across the room at the man with a shotgun. The Empire foot soldier managed one shot before they collided.
The cape barely flinched. One target down, he turned to face the rest of the room.
And stumbled backwards as sixteen guns unloaded into his chest. What little was left of the body suit was torn and flayed from his skin as the cape fell to one knee under the assault. One bullet slammed straight through the centre of his head, snapping it back violently.
Erik cried out above the gunfire and slowly it petered out. The figure remained where he'd fallen to his knees, wavering from side to side.
"Someone put a bullet in it, for Gods sake!"
The woman from before stepped forwards, eyes alight with terror and madness. Before she could even bring her gun to bear, the figure
moved. One moment, he was on his knees, the next his arm was around the woman's throat and had flung her into the mass of Empire men. Erik was bowled off of his feet, ending up trapped beneath several unconscious bodies. Frantically he tried to pull his weapon free, watching in terror as the costumed figure cut down the remaining guards.
Several discarded their weapons and withdrew knives or piping, closing the distance to swing them into their assailant with as much force as they could muster. One man, who Erik recognised through his haze as Layton, even managed to slit the man's throat before being bodychecked into the ceiling by a short burst of flight from the aggressive cape. It didn't matter what the Empire men and women did, nothing seemed to stick. Someone even used a short sword to lop the cape's arm off, and all he did was use it to beat his attacker to the ground before using his unconscious body as a mace.
"Oh fuck, oh fuck," Erik whimpered. The sling of his rifle had caught on someone's foot, trapping the gun. He heaved, eyes widening as the figure dispatched the last man standing with a two-fisted punch to the back of the head and turned his attention in his direction. There was an explosion, lifting the cape off of his feet and flinging him sideways - one final fuck you from Layton, Erik realised. He stared at the crumpled figure, still desperately trying to free his only means of defence as it slowly, methodically pulled itself to its feet again and started towards him.
At last the gun came free, and Erik barely had it pointed in the right direction before he pulled the trigger. It barked, and the man staggered again, a plume of blood spraying out from his shoulder in the torchlight.
"Fucking die already," he screamed.
There was a moment of hesitation before he stepped forwards again, and Erik gave up whimpering in favour of screaming. Moments later he joined the rest of his companions in merciful unconsciousness.
"
This is Aegis," a voice said as the darkness claimed him completely.
"Empire safe house neutralised."
AN: And that's why Aegis is the most scary Ward.
