CHAPTER 9 - FISHER

The solitary staff member of the little convenience store looked up at Fisher, and then back down at her phone. “It’s just down the back, man,” she said, shrugging him off. “Can’t miss it.”

She’d looked him over just long enough to make sure he wasn’t going to cause any trouble. Fisher couldn’t blame her for the lack of interest. In Asclepion, you had to work for your stipend. Like some secular take on the Protestant work ethic. It wasn’t like that in Geneva.

“Thanks,” he said.

Yeah, if he had been in her shoes, he wouldn’t give a shit either. Buy your shit and get out, that’s what he’d say. He’d never been much good at building a community. It wasn’t something he had ever been good at, really. Had never seemed important.

“Stupid cat,” Fisher said, glancing through the selection of canned feline delicacies. “Stupid prideful cat.” There were too many to pick from and Fisher, were he a betting man, would wager that Octopus wouldn’t want anything to do with half of them.

And it was all vat-grown, too. Well, except for the tuna. He picked up one of the cans, examining it. “Tuna casserole, huh?”

There was something about the ugly, olive-green shade of the can. Shockingly military for pet food. The minotaur—that was her color, because that was where she had come from—laughed. She laughed as she drowned— as she—and he didn’t do anything because he was—

And, blood beading along her finger, she brought the machete down on his—

“Hey,” came a woman’s voice—warm, concerned, young. “You break that, you buy it.”

The minotaur’s mocking laughter evaporated, ripped away into the center of the mental labyrinth it had crawled out of. Fisher glanced down. His hand had put a dent in the can of cat food, cracked the seal. He could smell the maybe-tuna.

He looked up and fixed his eyes on the woman, concentrated on her so he could properly lock the minotaur back in his memories, where she belonged. She had the tall, toned build of an athlete with skin just shy of scorched umber. Her thick black hair was buzzed to an inch of her scalp. Dressed in the jeans and polo of retail workers everywhere, pre-Collapse or otherwise.

Her name tag read Sabra.

She stared right back at him. Green eyes. “Hey, I was only kidding,” she said, reaching for his hand.

Gently, gingerly, she pried the can from his grip. “I’ll take this to the register, okay?”

She did so. Fisher stayed behind until he’d caught his bearings, and covered up his episode by picking up half a dozen more cans. Octopus would like at least one of them.

Fisher set them on the countertop and Sabra began to scan them through.

“You okay?”

Fisher snorted. “The balls on you to be asking a cripple about his busted hands.”

A long pause. “Didn’t mention the hands, man,” she replied, and the beep of her scanner felt like a slap to the face, and then another. “But how’d you lose ‘em, anyway?”

Tact, Pavel, Mark would’ve said, tact. So, he didn’t reply.

“Well,” Sabra said, “that’s one can of Feline Fancy that won’t threaten me again. Someone call SOLAR and tell them to give you a job, huh? And people say superheroes don’t exist anymore.”

She’d taken it in her stride. That was good. “Well,” Fisher said. “They don’t.”

Sabra shrugged as she scanned the last can through, then took a moment to juggle it in her hands. “Or maybe they do,” she said. “Just not in the way we think of it. We’re all humans, aren’t we? Here I am, helping you.”

“What, you think you’re saving the world by asking an old man he’s okay? Bagging groceries?”

“Why not? Maybe that’s what people forget. Y’know, empathy and shit. I am because you are, hey?”

Fisher snorted again, but felt his lips twitch. Empathy and shit. Yeah, that was a new one.

“Christ, kid,” Fisher said, tapping his card against the terminal. “I didn’t know they still made you like that.”

“Excuse me?”

“I mean optimistic, not—Ah, forget it. Just give me my cat food.”

Sabra handed over the bag. “Have a good afternoon, okay?”

“Yeah,” Fisher muttered. “You too.”

But for a second, for some reason he couldn’t quite name, Fisher paused at the door. “For what it’s worth, kid,” he said, glancing over his shoulder. “There aren’t any heroes left. Least of all here.”

And, Fisher thought, as he stepped through the door, certainly not me.

----------------------------------------

Fisher climbed back into his car and sat there for a time, thinking. The minotaur remained an impression upon his brain. Whoever had tagged that damn icon at the Dynazon plant was just a kid playing with an old symbol they didn’t understand, and it had sent him spinning. He knew he’d regret this little trip, he’d known it from the start.

He needed a way to distract himself, and he had one. He dialed Asadi. He picked up on the fourth ring.

“Pavel?” Asadi yawned. “What’s up?”

“I need some data.”

“Right now? It’s late. Honestly, I’m surprised you’re calling so soon.”

“Maybe you can teach an old dog new tricks.”

“Maybe. Okay. What do you need?”

“A fence, I think. I’m looking for someone with links to the black market and the cape underworld. I’ll sort through it myself.”

“A bit below our usual fare, Pavel, but I’ll send over what we have momentarily. What do you think you’ve found?”

“I’m not sure yet,” he said. “G’night, Iskandar. Sorry about waking you.”

Fisher pressed the ignition switch and took the wheel, drove in whatever direction until his phone chimed with the data package. He pulled over and scrolled through it. Back in the day, he might’ve had an AI to do it for him. But no one had those anymore, not since SHIVA went mad.

That was the thing about the Golden Age. It was golden until it wasn’t.

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

Fiveaces didn’t have much information on Asclepion, and what it did have was quite old. Fisher skimmed through the list of names, dates, and tidbits of intel. Most of them were associated with names that Fisher figured were the big gangs—he ignored those. Whoever had hit Dynazon had been a lone wolf.

Which meant he was looking for a similar lead.

Five minutes later, he had one.

----------------------------------------

Fisher had to cross the whole city to ask a guy about a power cell, but if there was one good thing about Asclepion’s man-made edifice, it was the ease of travel.

From space, you couldn’t mistake the island itself for anything natural, and you couldn’t mistake the city for one that had crept outward over hundreds of years of history. Demigod had a vision, and he had realized it. Six people had done what the six most powerful nations in the world would’ve balked at—they had pulled an island from the seafloor, crafted it into a paradise, and then drafted a city of the future upon it.

The city was built like a wheel. The Citadel at the precise center, surrounded by Alpha Block. The next four Blocks, quarters of a larger circle, were the beating heart of the island. Each one of them bordered two sections of metropolitan districts and those gave way to the six outer Blocks of industry, infrastructure and what passed for suburbia.

Demigod had always said that his island was to be a sanctuary, a place of healing. An example to the world of the abilities of the empowered and a refuge against the horrors of the Collapse. The fact that it still functioned after his death was a testament to his design, Fisher thought. Yet all of Demigod’s ideals and all of his plans hadn’t stopped the sniper’s bullet.

But Marcus Kendall, the man who had wanted to know if the architect-king could bleed, hadn’t killed Asclepion. History had done that. Geography had done that. For a time, the city had existed as a historic bauble. Hell, there were still signs of battle from where heroes and villains had duked it out over the years, batting the symbol around like a cat with a toy. But even that allure had faded in time.

Still, Fisher couldn’t quite shake the feeling that the husk of the city was more and more like a powder keg. Now, driving, his mind had taken to that mystery—that thought of something more. There was something happening here. He just knew it.

Fisher pulled up in the shadow of an apartment complex in Rho Block, practically in the shadow of one of the city’s defunct geothermal complexes. The Fusion Revolution was just another nail in the coffin. Proof that, for all of his empowered co-ordinative ability, even Demigod hadn’t been able to see the future.

Leaving his rented car behind, and wondering whether it would be there when he got back, Fisher stepped into the complex. Inside, the walls were marked with graffiti and more than a few bullet holes. He took the elevator up three floors, and made for the door with a pair of guards—both of them, Fisher could see, were armed.

“I’m looking for your boss,” he said.

“Don’t know what you mean,” said the guard. He was lying, and badly at that, but Fisher knew this was a song and dance and one he had to fall into or be left behind. “You look lost. You a cop, a cape?”

Fisher shook his head. Not anymore. “I’m looking for something. Some asshole stole a medallion of mine. I’d like to buy it back. I’ve got money,” he added, “And I know he’s here.”

Lie upon lie. For one, Mark’s medallion was safe under his shirt. For two, he didn’t exactly have much money. But it worked, however, and the guards stepped forward to pat him down.

They were thorough. They checked along his waist and hips and under his jacket. Hell, they made him give up his jacket and investigated all the pockets for anything that might be dangerous. They found his photo identicard and held it up to his face, comparing the younger version to him. They laughed. When they handed his jacket back, Fisher noted them glancing at and murmuring about his hands.

Yeah, no matter what you think you’ve seen here, I’ve seen worse. Maybe done worse. Not just everyone gets hands like these.

He flexed them, heard the mechanisms in the artificial fingers click.

“Go on in,” said the guard, and he did.

The apartment stank of something heady and pungent. His contact sat on the couch in a loose singlet and baggy jeans, eyes on a Mechanical Mixed Martial match. Sparks flew as one robot struck its opponent down and the young man cheered. Must’ve been betting on the right bot.

“Achilles Jordan?” Fisher asked.

He was a young man, still in his late teens, only just out of those weird, gangly years. He had dark ink around his olive arms and neck, worn as openly as the casual indifference to Fisher’s presence. The sort of indifference that said I’m King of the World and I’m only eighteen.

“Might be,” he replied. “Might not be. What can I do for you today, old man?”

“I’m with Fiveaces Security. Got a job from Dynazon,” Fisher said. “Hoping to ask you a few questions about it.”

Achilles’ suspicion melted away, and he leaned back into his couch. “Barking up the wrong tree, man. Not my style to go right to the source, y’know?”

“Yeah, you’re a fence.” Fisher looked about the apartment, at the gaudy array of what a young man thought indicated wealth. “And it looks like business has been good.”

“People won’t deal with me if I tell every old cape my business.”

It was a good point, but one Fisher had prepared a counter for.

“Unfortunately, there’re a lot of new capes sniffing around this job. Star Patrol themselves were actually out there doing their jobs there last night. If you deal with me, Achilles, you won’t have to deal with them.”

Achilles considered that for a moment. “Okay.”

“So, let’s try this again. Do you know anything about the hit at the Dynazon factory last night? Specifically, have you heard of anyone trying to fence a fusion battery?”

“Nope.”

That was sudden.

“Nothing?” Fisher asked.

“Don’t know anything,” Achilles added.

“Is that in general or for the right price?”

“Both.”

Fisher frowned.

“So, what,” he said, “you’ve given up fencing shit? Come on, Achilles, work with me here.”

He shrugged. “I’m not doing that anymore, yeah, honest truth.”

“What do you mean?”

“Times are changing,” Achilles replied, and tapped at his bicep, at one of his tattoos. A horned beast—no, the skull of a bull, with horns that were so long and sweeping that they wrapped around his bicep—

“That’s impossible,” Fisher said.

“Nope,” Achilles said, and the idiot thought Fisher was talking to him. “I mean, I’ve seen the writing on the wall, y’know? I’ve got too much of a good thing here to let The Bull stomp it all out. Signed on with the winner.”

No, Fisher thought. No, no, no.

“But,” Fisher said, and that was all, his throat was so dry. “But you’re a fence. Doesn’t shacking up with any one gang hurt your bottom line?”

Achilles chuckled. “You’re really from Geneva, huh? Punchline, Miss Massacre, Razertazer—all their groups are gone, man.”

“So, who’s left?”

“Romeo’s people, I think. Mikey Romeo. Forgotten. Of the big players, anyway.”

Fisher rubbed at his jaw, if just to focus on something other than the unease in his belly. “And you’ve got no idea who hit Dynazon last night?”

“You okay, old man?”

“Just answer the question.”

“Okay, I mean it. I haven’t heard a thing, and I haven’t heard anything about anyone trying to sling a fusion cell. But, old man, it hasn’t even been twenty-four hours. Think you’re maybe jumping the gun?”

“Okay.” Well, maybe he was, and maybe it didn’t matter anymore. “But if you hear anything, you let me know, alright? I’ll pay you.”

“Credits are credits,” Achilles replied. “Just be careful out there, old man. Change is coming. Big change. She’s strong enough to take on all the Australian capes herself, I think.” He thumped at his arm, just below the horned tattoo. “When it comes, stay inside.”

“Whatever you say, boyo,” Fisher said, and made for the door. “Good talk.”

Outside, walking down the grimy hallway, Fisher pulled his jacket around him and reached into his pockets. His fingers were shaking, metal and plastic tapping against the screen as he fumbled with his phone. But who the hell was he going to talk to?

As he stepped out into the morning air, his phone slipped from his fingers and hit the ground. Fisher scooped it up, not really hearing the jeers of more people just like Achilles, and scowled at the dark screen. It was only one more crack in the phone’s long-suffering surface, but it was enough to do it in.

Great. Just his luck.

Fisher climbed into his car and tossed his dead phone over to the other seat. He pulled out of the parking lot, and kept his mind on the present, the hum of the electric engine—not on the shadows and terror of the past.

There was one way to figure out whether or not he was losing his mind.

It was time to see the boss.