A few minutes earlier.
“What are you willing to sacrifice?”
The cackling closed in. Wes rose to his feet, half-blind. Half-blind.
“Can’t see shit down here anyhow. Take my eyes.”
“Lose to gain.” His own voice intoned, low, gentle like an underwater riptide. “Your eyes for a time, in exchange for the strength to save yourself - also for a time.”
“The strength to save whatever she’s got on there.”
“I’ll say what you want to hear, then.” There was a smug smile behind those words. A grin like the Cheshire Cat. Horrid scraping of claw on stone brick, the pa-splash-pa-splash of unhurried footsteps in water.
A pair of red eyes burned in the darkness. His own, reflected in the murk that flowed around his ankles. The darkness began to contaminate the rest of his vision, a scratchy, black border inching closer and closer to the center of his field of view. It was completely painless, but that somehow made it all the more torturous. Pins and needles of fear ran down his back, and a tingle ran from the base of his neck down to the tips of his fingers -
And then, he knew.
As the curtains finally fell on his vision, Wes felt a rush of sensation that threatened to overwhelm him - but not in a hail, or tangled array of overloading sounds and smells; it was like his senses became sharp. Sharp like a scalpel - no, sharp like he hadn’t known was sharp before, sharp like swapping from a club to a precision-machined rifle.
He roared in triumph, and the sound rolled through the tunnel. This new animal sensory intuition simply read the way his shout bounced off of the myriad bricks, the individual ripples of water from his feet moving, shifting into his stance again, from the tiny gusts of wind poofing between his rapidly closed fists.
But more importantly, from the shapes flying towards him. Three in front, one behind. Four. Wes closed his eyes and inhaled, and from the shape of the air, the microtones as it whistled through claws and outstretched arms and flapping clothing. Two in front, going high. Aiming for my eyes. The other’s crouching low, probably diving around waist-height. They’re not heavy enough for a tackle - maybe trying to get where he got me before.
In one swift motion, Wes crouched as he pivoted a full 360 on his left foot. The one behind him was caught by surprise, and as he spun, he grabbed it - stupid goddamn hat - and let the momentum carry him and the small man in a graceful arc.
The instant he crouched, he felt wind gently ruffle his hair as one of the thieves sailed over his head - why are they all so small? They’re like, what, four feet tall? All of them? - Some part of Wes wondered. The rest of him laughed maniacally as his spin came back around just as the last thief scrambled back, claws clicking on the wet stonework. It snarled - actually snarled - then leaped at him from its crouched position.
With a wet CRUNCH, the forehead of the thief that was behind Wes smashed into its temple mid-flight.
Wes let go, and the two thieves continued to fly, though slower - colliding with the nearby wall and landing in a heap. The other two thieves wavered, unsure. Wes didn’t give the leftmost thief the time to decide before stagger-stepping towards him. The thief instinctively jumped back, and his friend turned to look - which was when Wes promptly kicked off his chambered rear leg and threw a superman cross from far outside the range he had been fighting from before.
The hit was devastatingly clean. The second thief’s head was turning to the side and Wes had caught him below the temple, just to the right of the ear. With a SMACK of fist on flesh, the thief’s head violently whipped - to Wes’ enhanced senses, it was almost like heat blur - and he slumped into a heap in the rancid water.
The remaining thief scrambled back, and from the clattering and the way the thief’s head bobbed, Wes knew that the camera was swinging from his neck. The thief squeaked in surprise - squeaked? - and tripped over something in the murk, falling backwards onto their back. Wes felt something roar inside of him, and he felt his lips stretching into a champion’s grin. He’d done it. He’d one. He balled up his fists, and advanced on the trembling, wet thief.
“P-P-Please, mister, don’t hurt me!”
Wes paused, his fists clenched. A part of him still screamed this is it, this is right, this is the thief, do what you must - but another temporarily countered with: That voice doesn’t sound like the cackling.
“Give me back what you stole and we’ll be square.”
The thief looked at him, confusion replacing some of the fear in his expression. “What I… stole?”
“Are you really gonna fucking play dumb at this point?” Wes cocked his right hand back. Too far back for any good punch, but an effective blow wasn’t the objective here. Wes immediately felt regret, however, and even a stab of pity when the thief simply tucked his knees against his chest, hugged them close with his hands, and began coughing sobs.
“Shit, I, uh -” And then Wes realized what was hanging from his chest. The thief seemed to realize too, and patted his chest, then looked up at Wes.
“Mister, is this your camera?”
From behind Wes, there was a sustained clanking and some labored breaths, followed by a rapid-fire descent down the handhold-ladder and a muffled curse as the person splashed into the water. Without turning, Wes called out: “Penelope?”
“Yeah. Christ, it’s dark down here.” He heard the click of a phone screen unlocking, then a sharp intake of breath.
“Holy shit, Wes.” He heard her breathe raggedly. “Was this all you?”
“Yeah?”
“Damn.” He heard her mutter. “Damn, damn, damn.”
“There a problem?”
“Oh, yeah.” Penelope muttered, still looking around at the groaning bodies around Wes. “We’ve got problems.” She turned directly to him, and as he also turned around to look, he sensed her flinch back at the sight of him. “Grab the camera. We’ll talk up top.”
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Wes had made it about three minutes on a crowded Friday night whereupon his enhanced sense finally overwhelmed him and he collapsed, hands over his ears, lips tightly pursed and holding his breath so no random smells could get to him. Penelope was forced to drag him to a nearby alleyway, much to the chagrin of the half-drunken party-goers who had begun to fill the streets. Through the mobs of increasingly intoxicated and impatient folk, Penelope yanked him against the wall next to a dumpster.
She knelt down and spoke softly, as if to a child on edge. “Better?”
“Yeah.” Wes mumbled. The red glow had begun to fade from his eyes, as well, and sight was beginning to return in patches and blurry holes. “Sorry ‘bout this.”
“Don’t know if this is the time, but you’ve just made your allegiances known to everyone like us this side of the Towers.”
“Like us.” Wes coughed. “With these powers.”
“You catch on quick.” Penelope eased into a sitting position on the floor. “Most people are more skeptical of real-life superhero shit.”
“H-had weird dreams.” Wes lifted one hand experimentally off his ear, facing away from the street, and found it bearable. He lifted his other hand off, immediately winced, and clapped it back over the side of his head. The wispy red glow finally faded fully from his eyes, and they moved slowly up to her, then the street - dour, but alive again.
“Hnn. Allegiances?”
“You’ve come into contact with two minor players and one big player in our area. First, the Red Caps.”
“That that hobo gang’s name?”
“Not exactly. The thing about Red Caps is that anyone homeless can be a Red Cap. S’ more of a state of mind that lets them function on our level than a bunch of people with powers.” Penelope sighed. “Towers just tends to make people desperate enough to get to that stage, and you’ve just pissed them off.”
“They started it.”
Penelope shrugged, then continued. “The second minor player is yours truly, and the big one you’ll get to know about if you join up with me.”
“You mean, like, a job?” Wes cocked his head at her. He had finally taken his other hand off his ear, and as he cocked his head quizzically, it turned into a kind of neck-rolling stretch.
“Yes, technically. I work for a small-time internet news company -”
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Wes held up a finger. “Do I get paid?”
Penelope raised one eyebrow at him. “Seriously? Yes. You’ll be my assistant in name but we’ll work together.” She began to stand, and Wes began to stand as well.
“If I don’t get a job soon, I might just end up a Red Cap.” Wes held out his hand. “To a new start.”
They shook hands, next to a dumpster, just slightly hidden from the roaring din of the crowd and the buzz of neon.
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That night, Wes had a different nightmare.
The hospital burned around him again. The hallway of the ward was a picture of hell - lit by the orange blaze licking up the walls and hungrily eating through the floor. Fallen tiles, half-melted lamps hanging by solitary cables and flaming support struts littered the ground and hung like sparking stalagmites from the ceiling. The sounds of increasing panic filled the air - screams, sobbing, and yells for help.
But the worst part was that Wes could do nothing except keep trudging forward. The familiar weight of his mother on his back was starting to cut into his shoulders and make his lower back ache. He held her as if she was a child riding piggyback, but she was completely unconscious - limp, dead weight that he had to hold by the shoulders to keep on himself without stooping so low that he couldn’t walk. Her head lolled against his shoulder, making his left side disproportionately heavy. Correspondingly, a sharp ache beginning at his mid-back and radiating all the way down his leg begged for him to just stop, stop for a second - but he couldn’t.
The hallway was endless, and the single door at the far end marked EXIT seemed to recede further and further as he struggled towards it. A weak wail came from a closed room door, and beyond the glass, Wes could see a figure struggling to rise from their bed. Already, flames licked closer and closer to their door. He could only grit his teeth and look away, eyes already streaming tears from the stinging smoke. This brief lapse in concentration cost him as a light crashed to the floor next to him, spraying him painfully with glass and embers. His shirt began to catch fire, and though he wanted to scream, Wes no longer had the breath. Instinctively, he let go of his mother’s hand to stamp out the fire.
A fatal mistake. The weight imbalance coupled with Wes’ exhaustion immediately dropped both him and his mother to the ground, him in a wheezing heap, his mother still unmoving. He futilely slapped at his flaming sleeve with the last of his strength. His limbs were lead and his head was a bowling ball. Wes sucked in a huge breath, preparing to stand again - and immediately coughed up the lungful of smoke he had just inhaled.
About five paces away stood a man in a dark coat and hat. Perfect mirror-circles, sparkling in the firelight, took the place of his eyes. He stood impassively, watching Wes choke to death.
“P-please.” Wes tried to call out. What escaped his mouth was a hoarse whisper. “Help.”
The man in the coat turned, and the coat whooshed against the blaze, but it didn’t fan the flames. He began walking away, as if he didn’t have a care in the world. Wes tried to call out again, but his throat was too dry to speak - it was as if his voice box itself had been baked to a crisp.
“You’ve sacrificed for power.” Wes turned his aching head towards his own voice, and looked into a pair of red eyes set into his face, shivering with translucent light like festival flags. Where his mother’s prone body had been, he looked at an image of himself; lying down on his stomach and propping his head up by his elbows and fists in a way that he himself would never do.
Wes tried to roll himself to extinguish the flame, and managed to weakly raise his arm towards his doppelganger. The flames had already eaten away most of his shirt, and he felt the gruesome sensation of severe burns beginning to set in - beyond searing the surface of his skin to feeling feverish, numb heat deeper into the tissue. He didn’t dare look, and the pain was beyond description. He tried to scream again, and coughed wetly. The smell of burned flesh - his burned flesh - was overpowering.
“Now that you’ve taken the first step,” the thing-that-wasn’t-him intoned, as it inched closer and caught fire the same way he did, but it grinned as if it wasn’t bothered at all -
“What will you sacrifice to do the right thing?”
As the flames reached his neck, Wes finally found the strength to scream.
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Wes’ first day in his assistant position consisted of him reporting to a white van parked outside of a brothel. It was 01:00 AM the following Sunday, meaning the thumping bass of Saturday night parties were still echoing well into the Crest City red-light district. Despite the name, the scene was cast in neon and sodium orange. The neon sign above the brothel - or rather, outside it, since it was on the second floor of the building - was worked into a woman’s silhouette. It promised SXY GRLS. Couldn’t afford vowels, huh. Wes thought to himself, and chuckled.
Wes swerved a drunk trio of businessmen and opened the passenger door. He was greeted by a steaming cup proffered to him, along with a certain smell. In another universe, it might have been coffee; but this was closer to car exhaust. It immediately hit him, along with the airplane-cabin scent of many late nights and plasticky, burned sort of electronic smell. Penelope waggled the cup at him, eyes fixed front. Wes took it politely, took a small sip, and tried not to gag. If the scent was gasoline, the taste was crude oil - acrid, bitter, and scorching hot.
“Thanks.”
“That’s prep for this.” She thrust a fat manila file folder at him. Wes takes it and places it in his lap. He takes another experimental sip of coffee. A light kerosene note on top of the tyre fire. Wes looks at Penelope questioningly.
“We, uh, not big Google Drive fans?”
“You’ll get used to it. When you deal with Touched, digital photography and such tends to stop working.”
“Hence your camera obsession.” Wes phrased his question as a statement, to which Penelope nodded, and gestured to the film-canister slot on her camera. “Also, ‘Touched’?”
“Working title. Eyes front, Wes. What do you see?”
He eased himself into the passenger seat fully and watched. There was definitely a block party within walking distance, judging by the echoes of a trap beat and cheering rolling through the concrete morass that was the area. Couples and roving gangs of revelers giggled, stumbled and fought through the witching hour. Apartment buildings were pockmarked with lit windows like an irregular chessboard, and a gloomy multi-story parking garage towered over the area, patches of white and orange light illuminating the inside - smartphone flashlights and trash fires. As Wes surveyed the scene, he noted a strange disparity.
“Lots of guys. And where there’s chicks, they’re already on somebody’s arm.”
“Right. That’s because the chicks you don’t see are doing business.”
“What kind of -” Wes paused, then looked again. None of the girls were dressed for a night out - rather, it was as if they had been dressed. Almost all of them were showing lots of skin, and the way they acted - too professional. None of them were drunk or stumbling over themselves, even if their partners were.
“Hookers?”
“There’s been a massive prostitution boom.” Penelope sighed. “Sex work is work, but it raises eyebrows when both demand and supply skyrocket.”
“I don’t know much, but isn’t the economy in the dumps at the moment?” Wes pondered. He flipped through the file, but couldn’t concentrate on the text - though it seemed well-organized. Blurry, hand-developed photographs of streetwalkers, escorts and strippers either working - men on their arm - or after-hours, smoking and chatting. “Combine female unemployment and frustrated guys, and it seems pretty reasonable there’s more ‘ladies’ around for their new customers.”
“You’ve got a good head for this, Wes.” Penelope nodded approvingly. “Decent thinking. But the rate of increase has shot through the roof in just the past month.” She reached over and flipped to a page in the file - a spreadsheet with very fine print. “Arrest numbers from a friend on the force. Prostitution charges were going up slowly - then almost tripled in the last three weeks.”
Wes closed the file again. He didn’t have much of a head for reading, anyway. “So what are we doing here?” He turned to her. He then thought for a minute, and raised his eyebrows.
“You didn’t bring me here because I’m a guy, right? I’m, uh, not comfortable with that.”
Penelope did a spit-take, then burst out laughing. “No! God, no. Wes. That’s -”It was almost maniacally intense, and she was out of breath enough that she wheezed a few times. Wes waited bemusedly for her to stop. “-fucked up.” She spluttered out.
After a few minutes of wheezing and giggling, she managed to calm down. “We’re here on stakeout.”
“What’re we staking out?”
“That brothel.” She pointed towards the SXY GRLS sign. “It’s a bit of a hot spot.” Penelope paused. “Pun not intended.” She snorted briefly.
As Wes watched the brothel, a solitary punk sauntered up to it, and went in. His head was trimmed into an undercut dyed neon pink, and he wore a sleeveless leather vest with decoratively spiked shoulders. His body language spoke volumes to Wes. The punk was almost supremely confident, but not in an arrogant way. It was the walk of a champion - someone that had recently defeated a major opponent.
“We’re just waiting for something to happen? Shouldn’t we interview one of them, or something?”
“No.” Penelope paused, then sighed. “I’m suspecting Touched involvement, and if I’m right, the girls won’t have anything to say.” She turned to him. “Big deal is that normals can’t see Touched stuff. My special shots, your glowing whatever. They just think they’re they’re regular old ball bearings or punches.”
“That sounds awfully convenient.”
“Well, yes and no.” Penelope took out her slingshot, and demonstrated by pulling the elastic back. “Cops will still get at us for assault if we hurt people. It’s just our powers that are obscured. Also, if the girls are being manipulated by Touched, no one will have any idea except us - not even them themselves.”
“Fucked up, if that’s the case.” Wes grimaced.
“Yeah.”
Wes leaned back in the passenger seat. Surprisingly, he didn’t feel drowsy at all, despite the time of night. At some point in the next hour, Penelope took the file and began leafing through it again. However, as the minutes crawled past, he began to get bored of the decreasing stream of nightlife enthusiasts. He was focused, but not necessarily engaged. The chemical scent of Penelope’s coffee suffused their van, which was both off and had the windows down. The combination of the stuffy van and boredom made him slightly drowsy, and he found himself having to force his eyes to remain open after the thirty-minute mark.
About forty later, the punk left. Wes’ eyes widened slightly, then narrowed. The punk’s attitude had completely changed. He had his hands in his pockets, and his eyes darted from side to side nervously. If his previous stride was him sauntering, this could almost be compared to scampering. He was like a lab rat, nervously sniffing through the maze. As soon as the punk cleared within five meters of the front of the brothel, he broke into a run, and quickly rounded the corner.
“See something, Wes?” Penelope looked up to meet his eyes and he looked over at her.
“Weird dude entered a little over half an hour ago, and just came out.”
“Weird dude?”
“Punk-rocker looking guy. Pink hair, leather. Walked in looking like he owned the place, came out looking like he’d left his balls inside. Made sure the coast was clear, then he ran.”
Penelope frowned. “I don’t like that.” She sat up and closed the file. Penelope then opened the glove box, revealing some hand cream, spare film and other knick knacks - but most importantly, a pistol.
“Holy crap.” Wes breathed. Penelope tucked the 1911A1 into her waistband. “That’s not a BB or a modified one. You’re for real.”
“Red-light district is a serious place, Wes.” Penelope said. She ejected the magazine. Wes saw that it was loaded, but not fully. She slid it back in. “For a point where the slingshot doesn’t cut it.”
“Do I get one?”
“No. I’m guessing you don’t have practice, and besides -” Penelope briefly glowed a gentle purple, and the faintest image of the big hunter’s hat faded into being on her head. “Your powers make you stronger and faster anyway. I need these to keep up, if anything.”
“You said it yourself, though. You’ve got practice, both using whatever your power actually is and -”
A light flicked on in one of the windows of the brothel. Seconds later, a piercing scream rang through the air, high above the din of the fading parties. The two in the van looked at each other, then nodded.
Mere seconds later, two pairs of feet hit pavement, and took off at a run.