Jacob skipped Becca’s flasher trenchcoat in favor of a regular black t-shirt. His face would draw enough attention—he didn’t need any more of it. Not for this job. He kept the trainee Guild crest in his pocket. Fenway had confirmed that he didn’t need to wear it unless he was acting in an official Guild capacity, such as during an arrest, a civilian interrogation, or a battle with a villain.
“Any specific leads on where I might find these two?” Jacob asked as he left the Sleeping Cat. He had both Becca and Fenway on a call, but the former had already gotten distracted and was largely unhelpful.
“No recent sightings after they broke out of the Sidewinder,” Fenway replied. “I’d start with known associates and go from there.”
“Got it.”
Jacob scrolled through the list as he walked, no particular destination in mind yet. It was a long one, full of low-lifes and criminals, but more than half of them were currently serving time. He skimmed past a drug-dealer, a murderer, a small-time villain. Who would they seek out after busting out of prison?
“The fact that they haven’t been spotted suggests they’ve found somewhere to lay low,” Jacob mused, half to himself. “Two big ol’ boys like that would draw attention quickly walking the streets. Someone must have been keeping them with food, and a lot of it too, without arousing too much suspicion.”
“That’s true. Both Hyena and Snapjaw adhere to a strictly carnivorous diet. That’s a lot of meat to transport. Not cheap to source, either.”
It didn’t take Jacob long to find a person on the list who could fulfill that kind of demand. Gordon Ellis, formerly a criminal fence who, after a stint in prison, had settled down and started his own butcher shop. Fenway tracked down the location of the butcher shop, which was on Fulmore Street 54 in the Gray District.
Destination set.
Jacob could have gone rooftop-to-rooftop, but he wanted to preserve his energy in case he had a fight in front of him. He considered getting his bike from the apartment building, but eventually decided to spring for a train day-pass. It ate into his already dwindled supply of flora, but he figured the fresher he could keep himself for what lay ahead, the better.
The odds were already looking dicey, what with there being two of them and one of him. Part of him felt uneasy that he didn’t at least have Bob as backup. But a bigger part of him was glad that he wouldn’t have to split the reward with anyone else.
Maybe taking on this job by himself was biting off more than he could chew. Maybe. But he’d get it done.
The two villains had to know they were wanted men after escaping from the Sidewinder, but if they were as stupid as Fenway claimed, maybe they had convinced themselves the heat had died down by now, since no one had come after them yet. Jacob would utilize any advantage at his disposal, and surprise was chief among them.
“Any chance the Guild might be able to provide me with some weapons or something?” Jacob asked as he walked on the train.
“Sadly not,” Fenway replied. “As a provisional licensee, you don’t have the right to requisition equipment from the Guild. Usually trainees accompany seasoned heroes as sidekicks, so any equipment needed can be issued by their supervisors.”
“Let me guess, being a sidekick doesn’t pay so good.”
“It’s not a paid position. However, it is an excellent opportunity to gain experience in the field under safe conditions.”
Jacob had to laugh at that. “Right. I like this arrangement better.”
“Sidenote—this goes without saying, but keep property damage to a minimum and avoid civilian casualties at all costs.”
“Am I on the hook for that kind of thing?”
“Not financially. The Guild has a Damage Control Department that deals with collateral. But professionally, if you want to keep your job for more than a few days, consider it of the highest importance.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Jacob said sardonically. The train started moving, and Jacob held onto the metal rail above his head, packed in between a fat businessman and a mother with her unruly five-year-old. “I do have one more question.”
“Ask away. I have nothing but time.” Her voice matched his level of sincerity.
“Do you know what level the villains are?”
“Not exactly, but they are estimated to be between Level 4 and Level 5.”
“Fuck.” The mother gave him a pointed look, and Jacob glared back at her until she looked away. The child stared up at him until he thought its eyes might pop out of its head. Probably hadn’t seen many walking corpses before. “You didn’t think to tell me about that before?”
“You didn’t ask. It was implied when I said they’ve been active for years. You don’t get that kind of experience without leveling up a few times.”
“Still, would’ve been nice to mention.”
Jacob got off at the north end of the Gray District and walked a few streets over to Fulmore. On the way he passed one of the downed urgek ships, a jagged knife of black metal that rose diagonally into the air. Kids played on its lower sections, sliding down its smooth surface and giggling with each other.
Wonder how long it’s gonna be until they get them out of here, he thought idly. Or maybe they’re just part of the city now.
The butcher shop was in an even dingier part of town than the rest of the Gray District. The road looked like it hadn’t seen any maintenance in years, and there were vagrants and addicts everywhere crowded around alleys and street corners. Many of the drab, ramshackle buildings looked just about ready to fall over, and plumes of black smoke in the distance signaled there were still fires raging in these parts this long after the end of the invasion. The butcher shop took up the first floor of a narrow two-story building, with the upper floor looking like a regular apartment.
A sign hanging in the window said ‘CLOSED’, and there were no lights on inside. A quick jiggle of the door handle confirmed that it was locked.
“Looks like our man isn’t in,” Jacob said. “Guess we’re breaking and entering.”
“I’m going to pretend you didn’t just say that. You don’t have the authority to do whatever you want, you know. There are rules for this kind of thing.”
“What, you mean warrants and stuff?”
“Yeah, that kind of stuff.”
“Sounds exhausting.” Jacob grabbed the door handle and twisted until it popped right off. “Whaddya know, it was open all along. Silly me.”
He stepped into the shop and was immediately met by the smell of decay, even with his dulled olfactory sense. He traced it to several piles of spoiled meat behind the glass counter. Yummy. Not.
Jacob didn’t call out—better not to give the people he was hunting any warning. After looking over the front room and finding nothing or no one of note, he went through a door into the back. There he found a room with various machinery and several dismembered animal carcasses on tables, a drain in the center of the floor for blood to flow into. There was a staircase on his right, leading up, and on his left there was a heavy door leading to some kind of freezer or refrigerator.
He picked left. Forcing open the rusted old door, he found two rows of pig carcasses inside hanging from the ceiling, along with another one hastily left on the floor. This one was all torn up, missing an arm and its head and covered in deep gouges.
But, despite being naked, it was recognizably human. Male, middle-aged judging by the state of the skin.
“Found a body,” Jacob said. “I’ll look around some more to make sure, but I think it’s Gordon Ellis. It looks like wild animals have been at it, so it’s safe to assume Hyena and Snapjaw were here.”
A quick search upstairs revealed no one in the apartment above the butcher shop, but he did find a pile of blankets in a corner of the bedroom that had coarse brown and yellow hairs on it, along with gnawed bones in the trash can.
They were here all right.
The corpse downstairs had clearly been there for some time. But, while the meat products behind the counter had begun to spoil, they were not completely rotted. So the owner had probably been killed in the last day or two.
“Let me run something by you, and you can tell me if it sounds about right,” Jacob said. “Gordon Ellis finds out about Hyena and Snapjaw breaking out. He offers them a place to stay. Maybe he needs them for something, maybe he’s looking to get back in the business. They stay in the apartment above his shop for a while, but things go sour, they disagree about something, and Hyena and Snapjaw make quick work of the old fella before high-tailing it out of there.”
“Not possible to confirm at this stage, but reasonable,” Fenway agreed.
“Right. So you’re dumb as bricks and you’ve just killed one of your friends. Where do you go?”
“I’m not sure, Mr. Sorenson. I believe you would have better insight into that kind of mindset.”
This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
“Funny.”
Jacob climbed out the window of the upstairs apartment and clambered to the roof. He leapt onto the side of a nearby four-story building and went to the top of it. From there he scanned his surroundings. The black urgek ship in the distance, a bloated residential area, several abandoned apartment buildings that had taken a heavy beating in the invasion.
“If I were dumb as bricks and just killed my friend, I’d go nowhere in particular,” Jacob concluded. “Just the first place that seemed convenient.”
Like an abandoned apartment building.
Jacob marked all the buildings he had in mind on his System before climbing back down. He checked each of them in turn, going floor by floor. Found a few squatters here and there, but no villains. It was time-consuming work, and not without danger. The floor threatened to collapse on him in a few places, and opening one apartment door dislodged a mass of rubble from the ceiling that nearly buried him.
Then he entered the fifth building, about seven stories tall. It had been taller, once, but the top of it had been sheared off by a crashing ship. He’d only climbed one set of stairs when he heard shuffling footsteps from one floor above, heavy ones, followed by a muffled conversation between two deep voices and the occasional animalistic snarl.
Sounds like I found my guys.
Jacob immediately exited the building and went to the roof of a neighboring one, where he sat down on the edge and waited for nightfall.
I’ll catch them in their sleep if I can. Can’t think of a better way to even the odds. Not particularly heroic, but it doesn’t need to be. It just needs to get done. Money’s the same either way.
At some point, Becca tore herself away from whatever incredibly important matter she’d been tending to to keep him company.
“Don’t push yourself too hard, you hear?” she said in a serious tone of voice. “If you get in trouble, you need to let me know right away. I’ll send Bob out to help you.”
Jacob chuckled. “Thank you. I think I’ll be all right, though. I’ve got a plan.”
“What’s the plan?”
Jacob decided to give her the sanitized version, since she definitely wouldn’t approve of what he had in mind. “They’re big and clumsy, so I’ll play them off each other. I’ll use my mobility to make them bump into each other and trip each other up, that kind of thing. Bob would probably just get in the way.”
“Hmm. Well, okie-dokie then. Do you think they’ll surrender willingly?”
“Maybe,” Jacob lied. If everything went according to plan, they were never going to get that chance.
“I’ll stay up with you the whole time,” Becca said with a badly concealed yawn.
She was a liar too, as it turned out. She fell asleep before the sun went down.
Jacob waited until the sky was a blue-black bruise before he crossed over to the abandoned apartment building. He scaled the side of it and climbed to the window of the third-story apartment he had noted as being the origin of the sounds he’d heard before. The blinds were up, but a peek through didn’t reveal much—it was too dark inside. His poor eyesight probably didn’t help.
Jacob forced the window open with a squeal of metal that was louder than he would have liked. He slipped inside on silent feet and kept low as he let his eyes adjust to the deeper darkness within.
He was in a bedroom with all the furniture cleared out, a large, prone silhouette on either side of him. Sneaking over to the nearest one, he found the unmistakable, monstrous form of Hyena, yellow-ish fur spilling out of ragged clothes, his long snout twitching in his sleep to reveal long, sharp teeth. He had a blanket pulled over himself that was almost comically small for him, both his legs sticking out the bottom.
Jacob didn’t hesitate. He plunged his hand into Hyena’s exposed throat, and with his enhanced grip strength he easily dug through both arteries and crushed the windpipe. Warm blood gushed over his hand as Hyena’s eyes shot open and he began to thrash wildly. Jacob pulled his hand back and leapt away, watching the poor villain struggle in vain to get up. He propped himself halfway up the wall before sliding back down, tried to scream or shout but only managed a long wet gurgle. After a bit over a minute, he went still, surrounded by a pool of his own blood, his clothes and fallen blanket soaked through.
A quick backward glance confirmed that Snapjaw was still fast asleep. Jacob went up to Hyena’s corpse and watched it for a good minute or two. It was not unusual for strength-enhancing Blessings like his—and indeed Jacob’s own—to come with some sort of baked-in regeneration. But Hyena’s wounds didn’t close, and he remained still as a rock, staring sightlessly into the ceiling. Jacob flicked one of his eyeballs to make extra sure.
Nothing.
He was dead.
Jacob turned to his next patient. The overgrown turtle—or tortoise?—was quite the snorer, his sharp beak scraping against itself with each rattling breath. He was the bigger of the two, smaller than Haden, but roughly equal with an urgek. His skin was leathery and coarse, and he laid on his side to make room for the great armored shell on his back.
Sorry, Michelangelo, but this is the end of the line for you.
Jacob dug his fingers into the villain’s throat, but the thick hide was tough as chainmail, and he only managed to pry off a few scales and draw a trickle of blood.
Snapjaw opened his eyes and swung an arm on instinct, catching Jacob’s shoulder and sending him sliding across the floor on his knees. The beast slowly got to his feet and shook his head to work the sleep out of it.
“Brother?” he murmured, his voice guttural and thick. “Brother, is that you?” He looked over to Hyena’s bloody corpse, and his eyes widened. “Brother…?” Jacob could clearly make out the whites of his eyes in the moonlight that fell through the open window.
Jacob sprang forward before the villain could get his wits about him. He targeted Snapjaw’s right knee, hitting it with a Dash-powered straight kick. Snapjaw wobbled, but didn’t fall, and the mute impact suggested the joint had held up.
Fuck me. What’s this guy made of?
Snapjaw’s gaze fixed on Jacob. “You… killed my brother.” There was disbelief in his voice, like he couldn’t quite believe it.
“Yeah, I killed your brother. Cry about it.”
Jacob didn’t want to get too close to the big lump. He peeled one of his own fingernails off and placed it between thumb and forefinger. He flicked it with all the power he could muster, trying to take out an eye. But it caught him in the forehead instead, producing a shallow cut. He didn’t flinch.
“You killed my brother,” Snapjaw repeated, more urgently. His hands clenched into fists.
There was nothing useful in this room, so Jacob shouldered open the door to the next one, finding himself in a living room. Most of the furniture, evidently too small for the brothers, had been piled into one corner, replaced by piles of rugs and blankets. There was a TV on one wall.
Snapjaw ducked into the living room. His stance was low, his eyes narrowed, hands held out and to his sides like a wrestler.
“YOU KILLED MY BROTHER!” he roared.
And then he charged.
Jacob jumped out of the way, watched the turtle barge right into the wall with a shower of plaster, wood, and insulation. He dislodged himself, face and arms all powdered white, and charged again.
Jacob dodged. Trailing his hand along the wall, he found a light switch and flicked it. Nothing happened. Power to the building had been cut.
Jacob assessed the situation while staying in motion. Snapjaw was freakishly tough. More than likely he’d put all his points into Vigor, picked Stoneskin as his talent, and maybe even gotten an aspect for his Blessing that increased his durability. Getting through that defense was going to take a lot.
On the other hand, Jacob was faster. Dodging indefinitely would be doable, and if he conserved his Dash usage, the villain would most likely tire before him.
So that was the plan. Run Snapjaw around for a bit, get him tired, then finish him off. He could probably go down the stairs and make Snapjaw follow him through the streets to get a bit more room to work with, but that invited the potential for collateral. He figured it was a bad idea to get on the Guild’s bad side on the first day, so he decided it was best to keep the fighting to the abandoned building if possible.
Once Snapjaw realized that just running at Jacob over and over wasn’t going to work, he instead settled into a low stance, and they began to circle around each other. The big villain clicked his beak repeatedly, turning his head this way and that.
“Why?” Snapjaw asked. He sounded like he was about to cry. “Why’d you kill my brother? We haven’t done anything to you!”
“Oh shit, sorry.” Jacob stopped, reached into his pocket, and pulled out the trainee crest. He pinned it to his t-shirt. “There you go, see?” He pointed to the crest. “Hero. Killing you is kinda my job. Today’s my first day, too, so if you wouldn’t mind, please die. Unless you want to surrender. That’s fine, too.”
“You’ll be the dead one!”
Jacob shrugged. “Yeah, I didn’t think you’d go for the easy way.”
Snapjaw grabbed a table from the furniture pile and threw it Jacob’s way. He ducked under it, and the table broke apart against the wall behind him. But when he straightened out Snapjaw was already on top of him, a big hand grasping at his shirt.
Jacob tried to pull away, but he was too slow. The turtle got a hold of him and hoisted him into the air with one hand, threw him like a ragdoll against the floor. Jacob felt bones crunch—his wrist, probably a few ribs. His Blessing let him feel just a dull specter of pain, and he thanked whatever god might be watching for that.
Snapjaw lifted him high again to repeat the procedure. Jacob swung up and wrapped his limbs around the villain’s arm. He braced one foot against Snapjaw’s neck, one against the rim of his shell, and pulled. He pulled, pulled, pulled. Snapjaw roared, tried to pry him off with his other hand, but Jacob clung to him like a leech.
There was a loud pop, and Snapjaw’s arm went limp.
Jacob dropped to the floor and Dashed between the villain’s legs to make some distance between them, catching himself against the opposite wall.
Snapjaw spun to face him, one arm dangling uselessly. He really was crying now, big tears pouring past his beak. Whether with pain, or sorrow, or rage, or some combination of the three, Jacob couldn’t tell.
“You’re awful,” Snapjaw sobbed. “You’re an awful awful person.”
Jacob laughed. “Sure. So says the cannibal.”
“We were hungry!”
Snapjaw threw himself forward into a desperate grapple. Jacob sidestepped without much effort, and the turtle landed belly-first on the floor. It cracked beneath him, and a big section of flooring gave way. They both fell through into the apartment below, everything obscured in a cloud of debris.
Jacob fell on top of Snapjaw, who enveloped him in a one-armed hug. He squeezed, squeezed so hard Jacob couldn’t get air. There was a pop that might have been one of his lungs. All he could see was a faceful of dark scales, the rough material tearing up his cheeks.
Blindly, Jacob reached up, tried to find Snapjaw’s face. A vicious bite took off the two last fingers on his right hand, but told him he’d found his mark. Reaching up higher, he buried a finger into the squishy softness of Snapjaw’s eye.
The villain heaved out a sobbing scream and let go. Jacob rolled free, tried to catch his breath, but couldn’t suck in enough air. He had probably lost a lung after all.
Snapjaw tried to get up, but he was stuck on his shell, and didn’t have the energy to roll himself right side up again. He cried openly, mumbling something about his brother. All the fight had gone out of him.
Jacob dragged himself over there, sucking in labored breaths. He climbed on top of the villain, leaned in, and bit down on his neck. He ground his teeth and managed to work them through the hide, tearing away a long strip of flesh. He spat it out on the floor.
It took a long fucking time before Snapjaw finally bled out. At least it felt like it.
“Fenway,” Jacob croaked. “You still listening?”
“Yes, Mr. Sorenson,” she replied after a while. “Luckily for you, I have no life, and enjoy working long hours.”
“Great. Listen, job’s done, but you might need to get someone to pick ‘em up. No way am I carrying these ugly fucks anywhere.”
“Excellent. Any difficulties?”
Jacob spat blood. He was too tired to get up or even roll off the villain. “Went great. It was almost fun.”
“Good to hear. Am I correct in assuming the villains are dead?”
“Dead,” Jacob confirmed.
He wished he would pass out, but was left to wallow in the misery of his failing body.