Foot traffic usually isn’t a big problem for me, but I was stuck on an idling motorbike in a surging sea of people seemingly going nowhere. It was frustrating having to wait in place, knowing very well I could have been flying, or running, or leaping from buildings if I was feeling energetic, to avoid the mess of people surrounding us. They wore tattered, filthy clothes and smelt of unwashed bodies, but I couldn’t blame them, not even as a few of them tried to make a grab for my empty trouser pockets in hopes of finding something to eat or sell or simply run away with for their sake. From the looks of it, this entire borough in Lower Olympus was heading the same direction right now. Clamoring and shoving, pushing and desperate as they tried to worm their way forward.
It was a soup kitchen, where they were all heading to, and a tiny one at that.
Its doors were wide open, but it was packed to the brim inside. Some time in the past hour, they must have resorted to serving people outside from a row of hastily put together tables. The soup was cold, the bread they cut up and handed out was stale. I wasn’t sure if the water was clean, either, but all I could do as I tried making my way through the foot traffic was sit and watch straddled on top of this motorbike. Knuckles was beside me, her face shielded by a white helmet similar to the black one I had on me. She glanced to her side as we came to another stop behind the two SUVs we were supposed to be following, then she looked back at me. I couldn’t see her eyes.
And, to be honest, I didn’t really want to. She had a good poker face, and barely showed what was going through her mind, but I was pretty sure that she must have heard at least part of the argument I had with Ava, and probably wasn’t going to say anything about my plan of helping these people. I was still simmering inside, burning up from the gut outward, and I had to stop myself from clenching my jaw so tightly I was sure I’d crack a tooth if I continued. Being here, though, amongst people who at least had the heart to push the kids up front, making sure they ate first, ate what little was being scraped out of the large serving tins, was getting to me. And yes, I know what I said about the humans, and yes, I still didn’t like them as much as dad probably had.
But it was hard to ignore the kids tugging my trouser leg asking for something to eat.
Gods, what am I doing here? Another few meters forward, the traffic still thick. But on the other hand, what could I do? I didn’t know how to start a freaking food bank. I barely had the cash to feed myself, let alone dozens of other people! I sustained myself off fast food and protein bars, protein shakes and whatever it was that Dennie was feeling kind enough to slide under the table. How was I supposed to help some kid find his parents, too? For all I knew, they might just be the same as Alex, except they must have gotten separated in the attacks. Killed in the chaos and the destruction for all I knew. Would these people even want me anywhere close to them as I cleared up rubble from their streets? How long would it take for the White Capes to hear that Olympia was in this part of the city and started trying to make me an exclusivity just to them and their cause?
I’d just make this all a lot worse by simply being here, I thought.
I gripped onto the handlebars a little tighter as we finally moved forward, breaking through the heaving foot traffic. I let Knuckles ride ahead of me, still staying a few cars’ lengths away from the SUVs to avoid suspicion. My mind wasn’t in it, though. Couldn’t be. Not with the ruins of a city—my city, I reminded myself; not only the upper west, but here, too—was littered along the street. Bodies covered with white sheets, rotting because nobody had moved them. Flies hummed in the faint light, gathering in alleyways overflowing with garbage that hadn’t been picked up in what might have been weeks. And would the city really send the collectors down here? This deep into Lower Olympus? What the fuck was Mayor Blackwood thinking in her little office right now?
But… I sighed quietly, gunning the throttle a little more to catch up to Knuckles.
I couldn’t really point fingers when I wasn’t exactly helping the community, either. A pill I was having a hard time forcing down my throat. A pill that was being given to me day in and day out so far for the past week. Just a little bit more work, and energy, and time, and I was sure I would get there eventually, and maybe everyone would be clapping, or maybe not, but I had to find the energy to keep going for their sake because who else was going to fight for them? Just a little more, Ry. Don’t stop now. But I couldn’t give up, not even if I wanted to so desperately.
It wouldn’t be fair on both the living and the dead. I was a lot of things, I know.
But I didn’t break promises. I was trying my damndest not to.
“Tempest,” O’Reiley said, his voice coming through my ear. “There’s a route you two should use that’ll take you to Old Town a lot faster than us. Sweep the area. Give us updates. Judging by the traffic, we should be there in ten, maybe twenty minutes after you. I expect clear windows, clear rooftops, and if you do come across anyone that looks at you strangely, then you keep your heads down and your mouths shut. I don’t want any fighting until we’re there, clear?”
“What if we are encountered by hostels?” Knuckles asked over the roar of her engine.
“Then be hostile,” he said, then added: “But make sure to hide their bodies afterward.”
A minute later, new GPS coordinates pinged into the throw-away phone on the handlebars. The route took us through a wet alley and past a butcher shop closed for the night. We worked our way through Lower Olympus, through broken boroughs no different from the ones that blurred past as we raced down streets and around corners. I kept up with Knuckles, trusting her to lead the way. She’d had my back enough times for me to at least have hers, but she was also a lot faster than I was on this thing. You couldn’t blame me for not really knowing how to drive anything, because when would I ever need to? Bikes were easier. Ben taught both me and Bianca years ago.
But Knuckles tore through the streets like she was racing the shadows stretching underneath flickering lamp posts. Trash fluttered through the air as I chased after her, the thing between my legs roaring louder and louder as we slowly started sloping down toward the ocean. The stench of wet concrete, wet soil, and wet people filled my nose, penetrating the motorcycle helmet as the river started coming into view. Old Town was, by all intents and purposes, a fishing district that hadn’t been providing the city with fish for at least three decades now. It was a place I didn’t bother coming to, because old sailors who lost their jobs once the newer port was built stuck around this place like flies to fly traps. Kaiju, superhumans, and everyone in between lived here.
Lower Olympus might be bad, but you came here if you wanted to hide from something.
Or someone, I thought, passing by a defaced mural of Olympia, a noose around her neck.
At least, that’s what Jane had told me. I was up in the air most of the time, and Olympia rarely ever came this far into the city. Don’t blame me, high school literally just ended a month ago.
So if something new popped up, then it was news to me, too. It would take some time to learn this city through and through, but Rylee was going to take a back seat for the foreseeable future, so I had all the time in the world (at least, until Ava paid for my entrance into the Olympiad) to learn New Olympus. To make sure I understood it like it was the back of my very tired hands.
Slower now, Knuckles and I rode down the gentle hill that led toward the bustling hive nestled right next to the putrid brown river mouth. This part of the city was purely man-made. The concrete foundation was brittle underneath our tires, making our bikes flick loose stones behind us as we rode. The houses were squat and cramped together, packed tight like rotting sardines, and made out of old, weathered sheet metal and aged concrete. The town was singing with noise coming off boats rocking on the river, some stuck on thick brown muck, others moored to a long strip of boardwalk that ran along the river. It was wide, but seemingly not very deep. Trash clogged most of the river’s end, but that didn’t seem to be an issue to the hordes of people around us.
I’ll be honest, it felt like I was stepping into another world as we parked our bikes in an alley between two ramshackle houses. A world that shouldn’t exist in this city, because I was so used to seeing apartment buildings and normal stores that being hit with the smells coming off a sizzling marketplace selling all kinds of sea creatures was a shock to me. A freaking shanty town right here in New Olympus, filled with the din of sailor music and loud singing. But, to be fair to the people who lived here, most of it was underneath one of the larger bridges stretching over the river. Far, far beneath the looming red bridge. So far below that the people driving across it probably rolled up their windows and blasted their air conditioning because this place was nothing more than a fly-infested, Kaiju filled, superhuman riddled place that they should all just ignore.
I must have flown over this place dozens of times, so lost in my own head and what I had going on in my life that it was lost in the gurgling noise Lower Olympus always seemed to make.
Knuckles removed her helmet, shaking out her short white hair. Still wearing the mask I had given her, she adjusted it a little, then said, “You…” She silenced for a moment as a tiny oil lamp illuminated the window above us; then darkness bloomed once more. “Your presence is much appreciated. Things haven’t been easy over the past week without your help, Tempest.”
It didn’t sound accusing, so I took it as a compliment as I took off my helmet. “Yeah, well, it’s no biggie. I’ve been stuck doing things all over the city and haven’t had the time to pop by.”
She slid a pistol into a holster on her thigh, then cloaked herself in a black shawl she pulled from a bag on the side of her bike. All I got was a filthy old yellow rain jacket. “I am… grateful.”
I smiled at her, elbowing her arm. “Sounds like you’re developing a heart, Knucks.”
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Her ears were red, but maybe it was just the poor weather. “I suggest we sweep the area.”
“Want me to give you a lift through the air again to cover more area?”
“No,” she said quickly, then cleared her throat. “No, thank you. I’ll stay on the ground.”
I took to the air as she made her way through back alleys and shallow trenches filled with bilgewater (is that what it was called? I didn’t know; the ocean wasn’t my thing—go complain to Poseidon if you had a problem with me using that word) and long-forgotten trash. I had to stay lower, nearly hugging the limp power lines as I flew, making sure I didn’t cast a shadow over anyone who would notice. It took us a few minutes to work through Old Town, as much of it as we could, anyway, before deciding that the Triumvirate had people stationed nearly everywhere.
They were hard to notice at first, but they weren’t exactly blending in. Guys and girls lingering in the doorways of large floating barges kept an eye out on the river and the streams of people around them, smoking, not saying anything to anyone. They were avoided on purpose, and you could always trust someone who had lived here to give you a feel of the place. We had a specific target in mind, a guy called Cedric, but we asked a fish monger who was at the edge of the market if he knew anyone by that name; he told us to leave before he gutted us like his fish.
We decided it was better to wait for O’Reiley, Jane, Ace and Mr. Campbell to get here before we made any decisions. It wasn’t like me to wait, but I was going in blind, had nothing close to a target in mind other than a name, plus this was Ava’s plan. To hell with what she wanted. I was only doing what I had to or else she would put my friends and mom in danger. Besides, asking around for Cedric seemed like a bad idea. We would be attracting attention to ourselves, and that tended to be doing the opposite of trying to blend in. We continued skulking through back alleys and passed large barges filled with half-drunk men and women stumbling along decks and disappearing into towering house boats. Eyes were on us, passive glances from guys who were doing a bad job of paying attention to the newspaper spread out in their hands. I figured we should do a little bit more blending in, leading the way to a tiny bar in the dredges of the food market.
My guess was that the Triumvirate knew we were here, but sure, let's play their game.
“Ever had—” I paused, looking at the… thing sizzling on a grill in front of me. “This?”
It was scaled, had tentacles, but also had tufts of fur sprouting from those curling black appendages. It looked both leathery and soft, stewing in a pot of its own juices right beside the grill, steaming. The fat lady behind the grill was busy butchering another one, slamming a cleaver onto wood and right through stringy meat, then tossed it right onto the grill to make some more.
“I’ve never had seafood,” Knuckles said. “I suppose a bloated lizard does not count?”
I glanced at her, my hood still up, confused. “Well, I guess it’s not far off this thing.”
“So are you gonna ogle or are you gonna eat?” the woman asked.
“Cut me a slice for a taster first.” Before even my gut gets food poisoning.
She snorted. “What, you think this is the mall? You get chunks. Hide. Tentacles. Batches. Pieces. I don’t do tasters. Five bucks for a quarter pound of hide, and ten for a pound of tentacles.”
Knuckles pointed at a thick gray liquid seeping out of the thing’s head. “The brain.”
“How do you know that’s what it is?” I asked quietly.
“Brain smells sweet when grilled,” she said factually, as if this was something I should have already known by now in life. “I suppose this isn’t seafood. It’s a dead sea Kaiju. Correct?”
The woman stopped cleaving apart the body, looking up at us with a marble-black eye. The other was hidden by an eyepatch, though the scars littering the rest of her face told enough of a story. Slowly, she lowered the rusted cleaver, then said, “Yeah, it is, kid. Got a problem with it?”
I personally didn’t know how I should have felt about seeing a Kaiju get butchered and dismembered then splayed out on a grill. But now, as I narrowed my eyes and searched behind the woman, I saw a bucket foot of bloodied clothes and a silver watch glinting in the faint orange light of the market. She kicked it underneath the table, out of sight, but now my nose had latched onto the stink of burning flesh and boiling human-animal blood. I kinda wanted to be sick. Sick because it was exactly how Snake had smelt when I had burned him alive until he was nothing but pulp.
I wasn’t getting soft, but… I don’t know, something wasn’t sitting right with me here.
Kaiju weren’t going to get off easily for what they had done, believe you me, but this?
She must be keeping more of them somewhere here, I thought. Or just hunts for business.
For all I knew, though, she had people selling her Kaiju for her little market stall.
Knuckles glanced at me, then asked, “Is there a problem here?”
I forced my hands to unclench. “Give me a fuckin’ taster and I’ll give you a fifty.”
That got her to move, but only after I elbowed Knuckles to show her the cash we had gotten for this expedition. O’Reiley was still in my ear, parking, getting their gear ready, but my mind was here in the market, surrounded by bustling people calling for buyers, eating strange foods, a busker using his superpowers to make a tiny orbit of marbles circle a little girl’s head to make it seem as if she had a halo over her. The guys in black had vanished. I couldn’t see them. Shit. They must have slipped into the crowd, maybe trying to get a better angle of us. Or maybe they’d gotten news that O’Reiley was here and had to move out and head for him instead of me.
I couldn’t find it in myself to care when the woman tossed me a chunk of fried tentacle.
I brought it to my nose and inhaled deeply, shutting my eyes to focus on it.
And then I smelt it, that sickly sweet stench that all the newer Kaiju reeked of.
That same smell that Wraith had reeked of at the docks.
I knew I hadn’t picked up on something wrong. Knew my nose hadn’t led me here for no reason. She wasn’t the only one selling what I could only presume was Kaiju meat, but she was the closest. Anger wasn’t the emotion flowing in my veins, it was cold bitterness, from the week I’d had, from the shit I’d seen, and maybe it was supposed to be directed at Ava, or the mayor, but all I had was some chick carrying a bloody butcher’s knife to direct it towards. So I threw the piece of dirt-brown roasted tentacle to the ground and grabbed the butcher by her bloody leather apron, yanking her over the grill and through her produce and then shoved her onto the scarred wood of the boardwalk. She thumped against it, gasping. The people around us surged back, but continued on their way, paying us no attention, and for once, I thanked the people of Lower Olympus for knowing when it was time to mind their own business when they saw something going down.
“What the— Ack!”
I forced my boot against the back of her throat. “Where’d you get the sea Kaiju?”
“Tempest,” Knuckles said, grabbing my wrist. “We were not to cause a—”
I wrenched my hand free, then kicked the butcher in the ribs. I crouched, grabbed her hair, and yanked her head upward to look me in the eyes. “Answer me, or it’ll be you on the grill next.”
She smiled, exposing a row of yellow rotting teeth. “Too young to be a cop. A Cape?”
I did her a favor and tore out the gold molar in the back of her mouth. I threw it at two kids watching from behind a mother not paying attention to us, blood and meat still on the shiny metal.
She spat blood, her twisted snarl lined by scarlet. “You bitch, I ain’t telling you anything.”
Like I said, I was trying not to break my promises, so it didn’t take long for me to wrangle her onto her feet, her head in my palm and heat in my gut as I forced her good eye toward the grill. Now people were noticing, looking over their shoulders at the woman pelting insults at me. She was trying to wriggle her way free, bucking and fighting, but with my powers they were right now, it felt like I was holding watery spaghetti in my hands. I edged her face closer to the burning coles, to the grill dashed with white hot ash. She still swore. Still fought. Alright. I pushed her against it.
And that’s how I learnt what burning skin smelt like right from the source.
“Ready to tell me something yet?” I asked, pulling her off of it, stopping her shrieking.
She breathed hard and fast, pained and panting. I could guess why. “I… I don’t—”
“Don’t like how that answer is sounding so far.”
“Tempest,” Knuckles said. Two guys were shoving their way toward us.
“Cedric,” she cried, her voice cracking when I grabbed her singed hair. “He sold me—”
“And where the hell is he?” I asked, getting close to her warped face. “Answer me.”
The two guys had three more flanking them now, their hands going down to their waists. Knuckles’ head was swiveling between me and them, but her hands were warped with her power.
“Club Roho!” she screamed. I let her drop to the ground in a gasping heap. “A hole in the wall. I don’t”—she flinched when I glared at her—“The big houseboat! The one with the heads!”
We’d passed a houseboat earlier on, and the ‘heads’ she was talking about were mannequin heads perched around the railing, each of them painted in some kind of face paint to look like the Olympians. I’d seen things like that before, things that had made me burn up inside, but tonight was a night finally going my way, and maybe this was Ava’s doing, sending me here, wanting me to find something out about the attacks. Sending me directly to whoever Cedri was so she could still tug along the leash she had around my throat. I had a feeling that, even without splitting up with the SUVs, I would have ended up here at some point. Be a supervillain, Ava had told me, and I hated entertaining even the idea that she might have had at least some kind of plan up her sleeves.
But this was just another way she was keeping me on her leash, wasn’t it?
I grabbed Knuckles’ wrist and flew into the air and right toward the houseboat. I wasn’t going to waste time with the Triumvirate tonight. O’Reiley was swearing a stream into my ear, most likely having spotted me in the air, saying I needed to stick to the plan, to get my act right, but I wasn’t in the mood right now. I would leave Cedric able to breathe enough to answer O’Reiley’s questions, but not before I had my way with him first. I got my answers, Ava got her answers, and everybody went home happy. Except for Cedric, who’s going home in a bucket and garbage bags.