Thanh serves ramen out of a space on the fourth floor of an abandoned high-rise bank. Below him there is a brothel, and above is a set of apartments swarming with johns.

There’s a ten-foot-wide hole from the top of the bank to the bottom on the outer wall, exposing every floor to the ones below and above. Probably from some Affected battle – the hole is a little too perfectly circular to be anything but the impact of some kind of beam. Green cables adorned with paper leaves creep down the hole, manufactured to resemble vines.

Still, the residents make the best of things: colorful rainbows of chalk art splay across the outer walls. Homemade paintings and banners hang from every square inch of wall. Only some of these displays of art have been red-taped over by the Vanguard. Not a high priority to cover up poor people’s chalk.

I make my way up through a collapsed stairwell, which I normally use because no one else can. There’s a couple fooling around in a shadowed crevice. They gasp as I leap up the stairs, past a broken gap so wide that I have to channel some heat from my Affect into the jump.

Music wafts out of Thanh’s joint hand-in-hand with the fragrant scent of scallions and pork. A couple of street musicians perch near the door, playing for diners on the patio.

Can’t go in the front, of course, mask or no mask, since mask work is illegal. And can you imagine if Megajoule, dead for four years, just up and walked in the ramen shop you were eating at? You’d lose your mind.

No, people getting paid to do Affected work go through the kitchen. I consider that this makes me little more than a mercenary, but I don’t particularly care.

Thanh has a bouncer, some welterweight kid standing at a metal door with no outward knob. Middle of the pack as far as powers go. It’d have to be an extraordinarily bad power matchup for him to get the best of me. It’s one of Thanh’s cousins, a newer addition to his crew. The kid sees me coming, nods, and knocks. One of the chefs allows me in.

The kitchen is tiny, leading to a private room that never gets rented out and barely has enough room for eight people. Thanh uses this room as an office, and it’s stacked with cardboard boxes full of papers and other documents – ledgers for his various businesses, and a few fake passports and other legal necessities that might pass initial inspection by a Vanguard official. Thanh tells me he’ll clean the papers out if a large group visits, but from the look of the boxes, moldy and wet from rain, that hasn’t happened in a long time.

However, it’s not Thanh waiting for me in the damp backroom. It’s Paul. He clutches one of Thanh’s tablets, one of our few sources of media and news aside from our hijacked TV screen at the junkyard house. He thrusts the device at me as I enter the room and asks, “What the hell did you do?”

I snatch it from his hands, grumbling. As I guessed and feared, I’ve made the Vanguard news streams. The picture is suitably frightening: the drone caught me standing in the middle of the warehouse, my baseball jacket covered in gore from slipping in it. I glance down and see the sleeves are still bloody up to my elbows. The bodies they’ve censored for the public, but you can imagine me standing on an island of concrete amid a sea of blood.

I grimace and hand the tablet back to him. “They usually don’t show masks like this.” The Vanguard takes a policy of trying to reduce strong emotions for “bad guys” like the masks. While the capes’ engrams come mainly from positive emotions, enough fear can turn a mask into another Carnality. It’d take a lot of fear, though. A whole city’s worth of existential terror.

Paul picks at my jacket, sees some of the dried flesh. “I warned you.”

“It was an accident.” I push him away, a little harder than I mean to, and he takes a few steps to avoid falling over.

Paul doesn’t give up. “Well, you just accidentally became the epicenter of a shit storm we can’t handle. You think you can just leave town with that description floating around? I bet drones are already circling the city’s borders.”

“It was an accident. I walked into that expecting a gang, not a graveyard.” I’ve seen dead bodies before but never that many. The thought still chills me a little. The Affect impression left in the place harrowed me.

“So many dead,” Megajoule croons in my ear. “Makes you think of the lab, doesn’t it?”

“What are you doing out this late anyway?” I ask Paul. “You shouldn’t be working this much.” He had errands earlier, but he’s already got to do inventory at the junkyard tomorrow morning, and I can’t help him with that. Not unless we want a random scrap hauler shouting about how he saw Megajoule next to some rusty washing machines.

Paul gestures to the pager at his hip. “Thanh gave me a buzz when the news hit. I figured you’d be coming here. Anyway, you can’t keep me on the couch forever. I’ve half a mind to make you calm down myself.”

The last thing I want is him messing with my head. “Yeah, and if you have a fuckin’ seizure while you’re out on the job, what then?”

“I’ll call you,” he says, weakly. “What happened tonight?”

“You gonna tell him about the survivor?” Megajoule asks.

No, that’s too dangerous. As long as I’ve been out of the lab and living with him, Paul’s had the murderous gleam in his eye. I know he would kill anyone who dared to disturb our life. Anyone who knew about me. If, somewhere in our past, there is someone who knows about me, I’m sure they’re in the ground by his hand.

So, I settle for most of the truth: “I thought it’d be a normal brawl, just scaring people away. Thanh said they’d been putting the wrench to some of his trucks. When I got there, they were already dead. All of them. The gang and who knows how many other people.” I don’t need him asking me follow up questions, so instead, I ask him one: “Who is Pandahead?”

I feel nothing, not a single emotion from Paul when I mention that name. For a moment, Paul goes as cold as ice. Then he shows me the only emotion he wants me to see: anger. “Where did you hear that name?”

I don’t want to let on that I’m remembering Pandahead from the lab. If I let on that it is, once again, about a topic Paul doesn’t want to talk about, he might clam up. “So you know him.”

“I know of him. We can’t get caught in his mess, kid.”

“Who is he?” Megajoule is silent, but I can almost feel his breath on the back of my neck. He wants to know, too.

Paul puts his feet on the table and leans back in his chair like an old gunslinger. He stares past me, through me, at something horrible. The gleam in his eyes fades, the shine of violence snuffed by the darkness of real murder. “He’s a human trafficker.

“Slaver.” There’s one thing I won’t ever accept: clean words for disgusting crimes.

Paul glares at me, but continues on. “I worked a job once that crossed paths with one of his men. Half a family ghosted from their home, the other half dead, one survivor.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know.” Paul hangs his head with a heavy sigh. “I refused the job when I learned about the trafficking. I only ever found out one thing. The survivor, a young woman, had the power to turn invisible, which is why they missed her. She hid. The people that died were featherweight and lightweight. Little gimmicks, no real power. The family members that were taken, she said, were welterweight at least.”

He targets people with Affect powers. I remember what Saw Off said about the Street Devils losing a member, and wonder if there’s a connection. “You think he’s some kind of Affect trafficker?”

“How’d you hear his name?” Paul shoots back.

“One of the victims was still alive. Just whispered that name.”

“And now you were seen on one of his properties.” Paul falls into a growl, riding his vocal fry. “Shit.”

“I can keep my head down. He’ll forget me. The city will forget me. I’m going to leave anyway.”

Paul shrugs as if to say ‘we’ll see.’ “If it doesn’t blow over…”

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“It’ll blow over.”

“Only if you steer clear of this Pandahead nonsense.” Paul stands up.

I snap a glare at him. “You can’t order me around. If I want to dig around in it I’ll dig around in it, and I’ll be just fine. Not a single mask or cape in this city can step up 2 these streets.”

“And who do you have to thank for that?” Megajoule whispers.

Paul waves his hand as if I’m an annoying fly. “I’ve got more work to do tonight.”

“You shouldn’t be out.” Last time Paul spent this long out, he was in bed for a week, totally unaware of where he was. I had to sit by his bedside for hours just to feed him.

“Tough shit. You’re not the boss of me. Just like I’m not the boss of you. And if you’re hell bent on going on this trip or looking into whichever crime lord, you sure as hell don’t have any room to tell me what to do.” Paul stomps out of the room, taking his smog of anger and disappointment with him. He farewells someone in the kitchen and leaves. The someone who’d been eavesdropping on the last part of our conversation.

“How long have you been listening?” I ask Thanh, who emerges wearing a large frown.

He’s a good man, Thanh, for a smuggler and criminal. I suppose he’s the only kind of man we could have trusted when we got to Houston, a thief with honor. A stick-thin man who looks like he hasn’t aged so much as acquired wear and tear as life went on. A featherweight whose only ambition is to live comfortably as he can. No power to defend himself so he relies on cousins that show particular talent or hires out… to someone like me.

He doesn’t deign to answer my question.

“Is it true? You’re skeeved out?” I ask. “About this Pandahead?”

Thanh draws a cross over himself. Old school. “I didn’t mean to get you tangled up with him. I didn’t know.”

“But you know who he is?”

“As Paul said, he’s a trafficker.” His voice drops to a whisper, as if invoking even the profession will summon the boogeyman into his restaurant. “One with quite a nasty reputation, Gabe. Please, for your trouble. For forgetting.” He puts an extra hundred in old American twenties on the table. They are stained from use, torn and frayed, but still good in certain circles.

His heart is steady. He’s earnest.

“Bodies don’t bother me that much,” I say, pocketing his payment anyway. “But thanks.”

“You would do wise to listen to Paul,” Thanh says. Now his heart quickens. Getting involved in another family’s business is not his usual modus operandi.

I don’t know what to say, so I shrug.

“You would do wise,” Megajoule says. “But you’re not known for wisdom. You’re known for getting paid to get blood on your hands.”

It’s lucky I wear a mask, otherwise my face would betray me. I’m sure Thanh feels my spike of indignation, but he stays silent and his Affect doesn’t betray him.

“Can I get two tonkotsus to-go?” I ask. “Hungry tonight.”

Pandahead fills my mind. What a stupid name, yet the mention of it cows Thanh and worries Paul. And for some reason, his name made me remember something about the lab. That’s enough of a reason for me to investigate.

#

My misgivings on investigating grow as I return to the church. Why am I doing this, when there’s the lab to go after? What could I even hope to learn about this trafficker who apparently lives in Houston now, who may not know anything about the lab?

But when I think about giving this up, when I think about turning away, I remember my brothers. No one came to save them. No capes played the hero.

And no one will play the hero for this kid if I don’t.

Maybe I want to be that. Not a cape, but a genuine hero.

I sense no drones overheard or nearby. There’s a quiet empty field across the street. A steel statue of a baseball player holding a bat above his head stands watch over the fake greenery.

Sure we’re safe for now, I sit next the boy and wait for him to wake up, the hot bowls of ramen slowly radiating their heat into the air. My stomach is too jittery for me to eat, so instead I contemplate the broken chapel and occasionally put a bit of my heat into the ramen to keep it from going cold. I tap the edge of plastic lid and feel the energy flow from my fingertip into the broth, watch the particles of noodles bounce and vibrate in the intricate dance of warmth.

On one of the walls is a faded mural of Metis, the architect of the Vanguard. Her skin is bronze, her hair dark and splayed above her head, which is crowned by stars. Perhaps it’s a trick of the light but she almost seems alive on that wall, her deep blue costume and brilliant white cape, though faded with time, rippling in the wind.

I wonder what it was like to be one of the first capes. Or what it’s like to be deified the way she and Megajoule have been. The focus of the world’s hope, all their engrams. I guess I know a little bit what that’s like, since I can use Megajoule’s power.

The kid stirs, pulling me from my meditation. He wakes like a stuttering engine: gasping and shaking, one second seeming like he’ll faint again, and then the next he’s upright, hyperventilating.

“Hey, stop!” I bark at him, hoping that will calm him down. The kid shrieks at my voice and tumbles off the bench, kicking and punching at the air. The PK cuff should be dampening his emotions but it’s not.

“Excellent,” Megajoule says. “You did want to terrify him, right?”

“Kid, take it easy! No one’s gonna hurt you!” I kneel down next to him and place a firm hand on his chest. He punches at me feebly. I absorb the meager energy. “Cut it out, you turd.”

The turd does cut it out. He glances around at the ash-laden chapel. His eyes linger on the portrait of Metis. After a solid ten seconds, he relaxes into an expression so blank I worry he’s fallen unconscious again. The cuff must be taking hold.

“You good?” I ask, knowing it’s a stupid question.

“No.” The kid’s voice breaks. His throat is parched, desperate for water. I’d think he was about to cry except that his tone is flat and neutral.

Not quite sure what to say to that, I launch into an explanation. “You’re in Houston, in a church. I found you in the warehouse.” I pause, not sure if I should overload him with details, but decide that he probably needs to know if he doesn’t remember. “You were the only one I found.”

There’s no change in his face. However he processes the information, I don’t know. I don’t even feel any positive or negative emotions from him, nothing to indicate how he might be feeling. Idly, my eyes fall on the PK cuff. Maybe the circuits take a few minutes to kick in or maybe the shock he experienced at the warehouse was so overwhelming not even Affected tech could stop it. But now, it’s working, suppressing both his personality and his power.

“You got a name?” I ask.

“Mateo.” He slips the word out so quick and quiet. As if he hopes I won’t hear it.

“What were you doing in that warehouse?” I ask.

“Hiding.”

“Before that?”

“I was hiding for an hour.”

Megajoule chuckles in my ear. “Helpful little bug, isn’t he?”

“Okay, and before that. Who killed everyone in the warehouse?

“Mostly they killed themselves,” Mateo recites, as if for a memorized test.

“They killed themselves?” I’m not stupid. That was a massacre, not a suicide. Their bodies were brutalized.

“One next to me plucked out his own eyes. Another had her throat torn out by two or three people around her.”

“Yikes,” Megajoule says. “Are you sure you should get involved?”

“Why did they do this?” I ask.

Mateo offers nothing else.

I could spend hours with this robot kid trying to get him to tell me his story. But PK dampeners turn people catatonic if tuned high enough. Usually they’re not, usually they tune it just enough to rob someone of their power and maybe chill them out a bit. But based on how flat he’s being, I’m lucky I’m even getting sentences out of him. I sigh, already feeling the mental exhaustion before I’ve started the real work.

Instead of mining for more words, I decide to figure out how to remove the cuff. “Hold out your hand.” Mateo does so automatically without even glancing my way. He keeps his eyes forward as I tamper with the cuff.

I fill my fingertips with heat from the stockpile of energy in my chest, intending to melt through the cuff, but as I reach for the metal the heat flees, dispersing into the air with a hiss and spark. The cuff leaves a strange chill on my fingers, a bald spot in my Affect.

My power won’t help here. I’ll have to use good old physics to work this thing off. I can remove the PK cuff without a key, but I’ll have to bust Mateo’s wrist to do it.

“Are you sure you want to hurt him just to free him?” Megajoule asks.

“We may not have a choice.” While I fiddle with the device, I ask Mateo, “Who’s Pandahead?”

Mateo shudders, the first visible emotional reaction I’ve seen since he woke up. Something strong enough to override the cuff.

“Someone bad?” I ask.

Mateo returns to the flat affectation. “He owned me.”

I step away and sit down against a toppled pew, not sure what to do next.

“Gabe,” Megajoule calls out to me from the other end of the chapel. His voice echoes on the stone. His irises glow green in the dark. “Do you know what a black hole is?”

“No, Mega, I fucking don’t.”

Megajoule appears next to me, pacing around the pews. “A black hole is an object so dense that not even light can escape from its gravity,” he continues without acknowledging my barb. “If you were to see one, you’d think that maybe Metis poked a pencil in the fabric of the universe. A black hole is the skin of matter and space ripped to expose what really lies beneath it: nothing, endless nothing. Where time and space trade places and all you can do is ride the path into the dark. Do you want to know what would happen if you fell into one?”

“No, I don’t give a shit,” I say. “Why would I ever worry about something with such stupidly low odds of happening?”

Megajoule pauses in his pacing to study the church around us, stroking his chin thoughtfully at the mural of Metis. He still wears his silver, green lined armor, which casts him in a ghostly light.

“You’re falling into one now,” he says. “This kid has his hand around your ankle already, I can see it. He’s getting sucked into it and if you try to pull him out you’re gonna fall in with him.”

I sigh and tap the pew with the back of my head. “So what? What happens?”

“Someone watching you would see your body hit the event horizon, and from there, your image would redshift into oblivion instead of continuing on. Of course, you’d keep going, Gabe Babe. The howling dark would come up at you. An infinite abyss stretching further and further out. Light would wrap around the hole, and as you passed the horizon, the universe would actually fall away behind you. It would shrink and shrink into a pinprick until all around you is the dark.

“It might actually be calm, for a bit. Until you start to feel yourself stretching. Spaghettification. Your molecules would get ripped apart into one string pulled down one path. One path that you can’t get off, one path taking you into the shadow. Forever. There is no escape from a black hole, Gabe.”

“I meant what happens in real life. Not your weird space fiction.”

Megajoule rolls his glowing eyes. “It’s a useful metaphor. And I don’t know. I’m only telling you what’s going to happen if you try to help him. You’re going to get caught in something you can’t escape. Then you can’t get to the real work. The work of burning all this shit to the ground.”

A rocket burst above the church interrupts me before I can reply, followed by a massive wave of heat hitting my thermal sense. Drones swarm the outside of the building. A cape lands on the roof with a loud clang, and the outline of his armor sharpens in my senses. The metal joints whir, the shoulder guns sing.

Danger Close has found us.