1.4

Two days later, I get a text on the burner while I’m practicing scales. I put down the guitar to check.

Unknown

meet @ b plaza 7 third building down 5 pm 1 cap

Unknown

8b 10b 2a 3a 1c

Location, time, and something else. Payment, probably? And then a string of numbers and letters.

I’ll have to show up tonight. It shouldn’t technically matter if I miss a meeting, but I want to do as many as I can so I can get a better idea of the operation.

Even if my parents chew me out every time.

It was bad last night, dad stayed up late to make sure he caught me, so he was pretty pissed. And apparently Stew gives you red eyes or whatever, and he thought I was smoking weed or something? Kind of trashed my room a little. I was lucky he didn’t go too far into my closet.

It wasn’t that hard to clean up though, and after I was sure they finally went to bed I managed to record mostly everything that happened last night in a fresh notebook that I kept in the closet bag until today. I plan to write down most of what I learn during every meeting, so I can’t have anyone else seeing it. Still haven’t decided where I could hide it best.

I should have time. In the meanwhile, I pick my guitar back up, and play.

—

At 4:30 pm I exit the house and start on my disguise. I could do it quicker if I wanted to burn energy, but I don’t so I just finished the transformation on the way, sticking to the alleys and the shadows. It gets easier as I get closer to the meeting point.

The place itself is an overcast street corner by Plaza B, only a little ways down the road, by a dark red brick building. Since it’s earlier in the day this time, cars pass by on the street nearby, and the plaza’s a lot busier than it was. The place isn’t exactly bustling, but the car traffic is significant, and people definitely walk around. The huge parking area in the center is even starting to fill up. Sort of.

I make my way past all that and onto the corner, where I spot the big guy I remember faintly from Mikey’s house leaning on a wall off to the side, next to one of the more common types of metal benches near the shopping districts. I stay on guard.

There’s a moment of silence as I step up to the bench. Then he just tilts his head upwards. “Yo. Gordon.”

I blink. “What?”

“My name. Gordon. What about you?”

Better stay consistent. “Alex,” I say hesitantly. I remember him blocking the door at Mikey’s. Slowly, I sit down.

Gordon nods. “Hope your first time wasn’t too bad. It doesn’t really get better.”

“Ah.” I’m confused.

It must show on my face, because Gordon scowls. “Fuck Mikey. He’s my boss, not my friend.”

I nod back. It seems like they have history. So then why does he still…?

I don’t get the chance to continue that train of thought. “He showed up earlier, gave me the stuff already and told me to show you the ropes,” Gordon says, kicking himself off the brick wall and starting a stroll down the road. I scramble to follow him.

“Usually Mikey’ll give you a case. If you take any of it you’re dead, by the way.” He glances at a nearby street label and continues without missing a beat. “You shoulda gotten a list of streets in that text?” He looks at me for confirmation, and I remember the random string of numbers. I nod.

He nods back. “Don’t need to know the subsection, you can usually guess who the client is. They repeat, too, so it gets easier. Take the money, fork over a capsule, and leave. Easy.” He coughs as we take a crosswalk to Street 8-B.

All the streets around here are sort of run down, like the plaza. The whole city is brutalist, but around here dishevelment breaks up the monotony, and there’s even a splash of graffiti color dotting the area, along with the deep red of rust and dark shades of grime.

Gordon moves his stroll along the nearby sidewalks, looking surprisingly nonchalant. I don’t even catch the moment he sees our… client, and before I know it he’s nodding to someone on a bench near us.

“Hey,” he says, sitting down beside them. I stand around awkwardly nearby, but no one seems to care. A couple people walk by, but they don’t say anything.

The person on the bench looks nervous, but they shove a crumpled mass of dollar bills at Gordon anyway. He seems annoyed, but he deftly stores them away and slides a small metal capsule to the client. They immediately jump up and speed walk away.

Gordon sighs and pats the seat next to him. I sit.

“Didn’t recognize him. Must be new.” He gives me a look I can’t interpret. “They won’t always be so jumpy. Bad for business.”

“I guess.” We sit quietly for a moment. It’s surprisingly… comfortable?

I decide to hazard a question. “So… why do you work for Mikey?”

Gordon snorts. “Where the fuck else am I gonna get Stew? Cook has a stranglehold on anyone within three feet of one of those capsules, I swear to god.”

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I eye him. “Yeah, I’ve heard you can’t detox it. Is that true?”

He huffs. “Maybe. I don’t know anyone’s ever tried. You try going to a rehab center around here asking about it, they shut the fuckin’ door.” Gordon looks at me. “Sorry, kid. You’re in it for the long hall.”

“Right,” I mutter, looking down. Technically, I used my power to clear out most of the drug’s effects. Realistically, I don’t know enough about my biology to say definitively.

“Still,” I say, knowing I’m pushing it. “Isn’t this all kind of… ethically dubious?”

Gordon scowls. “Fuck off,” He spits. “You don’t get it. Try me after another four years of this.”

I don’t respond. We sit in silence for another few minutes.

Then Gordon sighs. “Don’t do all your stops at once, spread ‘em out. Less suspicious.” He gets up from the bench, and I follow close behind as he makes his way to the next stop.

The dropoff at Street 10-B goes much smoother. Gordon casually meets the client, exchanges a capsule for another roll of bills, and we hang around for a bit before we move on. The client this time hangs around with us, and it seems like Gordon’s seen them before.

They seem nice. The cognitive dissonance here is a little staggering.

On the way to Street 2-A, we backtrack a little, and Gordon continues his instruction.

“So, you think you’ve got a good enough idea of how this works?”

I nod.

“Mm. Alright, then. Your turn,” he says, tossing a small black case at me from inside his coat. I fumble with it, scrambling to hide it away in my hoodie while glancing around frantically.

Gordon chuckles. “Don’t be so tense. Only time you need to get worried is when the heroes show up, anyway. And they basically never show up unless you’re doing higher-profile stuff.”

He looks around as we come up on 2-A. “Here, I’ll point out this first one,” he says, gesturing at someone sitting against the wall of a tiny store along the road.

I cautiously walk up to them. Gordon follows a little ways behind, I think.

“Hey.” They look up.

“Hey,” they reply. They tilt their head. “You new?”

Gordon comes up from behind me, and they relax slightly, smiling. “Oh, hi Gordy! Who’s the new guy?”

“Hey, Sarah! This is Alex. Hemight be taking this route from now on,” he says, abruptly patting my head.

I think I may have a heart attack.

Sarah. Suddenly, I’m having trouble reaching for the case.

She stands up and pulls out some cash anyways, though, and Gordon nudges me.

I fumble with the case again, but I still manage to pull out a capsule, and shove it into her hand before I can change my mind.

“Oh, woops — uh, thanks, Alex,” she says, almost dropping the capsule. “I have somewhere to be, but I guess I’ll… see you around, huh?”

I nod. She waves, and walks off, leaving us standing on the sidewalk. It’s getting a little later, and people are becoming more and more sparse.

“Getting cold feet?” Gordon asks.

I stay silent for a minute. Surprisingly, he doesn’t push.

“I had a friend named Sera,” I say.

I don’t know if I’ve been on this street before, but right now 2-A looks abnormally filthy.

“Mm,” Gordon replies.

I sigh. “Next one.”

“Sure,” he says, pulling a burner out of his pocket. “3-A’s next. I can do this one.”

I nod, and we walk further into the city.

—

I get home at the usual time, and while I don’t think my parents are really pleased by how much I’ve been going out recently, they probably don’t care enough to really do anything about it. I don’t get much trouble from them.

In my room, I go for my notebook pretty much immediately. I want to write all this down before I forget.

I plop down at my desk chair and flip it to an empty page to start with the basics.

Mike’s Gang operates in an extremely disjointed manner. Cook seems to have very minor interaction with most of the cells in his gang, and they essentially operate solely as a personal mercenary company, who only really take jobs from him.

Because he’s the only manufacturer of Stew, though, he can afford to have his cells operate without actually paying for them; instead he has individual cell leaders facilitate the induction of new members through addiction — he lets his goons get people addicted on purpose to get new members. Essentially no one in the gang is actually loyal to Cook, but he leverages his powers to make loyalty largely irrelevant.

That way he can delegate while personally keeping an insanely low profile. He might not even need to show up to most of the distributions, it’s why he’s so hard to catch.

If I want to find him, I need to work my way up the ladder. Mikey dishes out payment after jobs, and takes the earnings after our routes, meaning he has to get his supply from someone. I need to be there when he does.

Which means becoming reliable.

I pause my writing and sigh. This is so much more… gray than I thought it would be.

I look down at my notebook and its scrawled letters, names, locations, approximate payment amounts.

Maybe this isn’t worth it.

I frown. If Cook gets put away, his entire operation would collapse. It would be over. Maybe he wouldn’t get vaulted, but while he’s in jail he wouldn’t be hurting anyone, and the longer he’s in there the worse it gets for Mike’s Gang.

It’s not like the heroes are going to do anything about it. They’re too busy trying to punch out Highlander, or chasing Clockwerk around the block for twenty minutes after she robs a convenience store. No one else is going to do it.

And it’s not like someone else wouldn’t do it anyway. Gordon usually does that route. He’d keep doing it if I weren’t there. Me abstaining wouldn’t make a difference.

But I can’t stop thinking… what if that were Sera?

I wouldn’t be able to do it.

Why? Because I know — knew her?

I close the notebook. This is difficult.

I huff. Why is this difficult? It shouldn’t be. Vincent should be here. Sera should be here.

What would she want me to do?

Standing up from my chair, I march my way down the stairs and out the door. Mom’s in her room, and dad isn’t home yet, so no one stops me.

I push out onto the porch and make a beeline to the former Hall residence. I’m not even sure if Vincent still owns it.

The streets are dark, with only the occasional light on in the houses nearby, and the silence at this hour is deafening.

The house is empty. I can tell just by looking at it. It’s quiet and dark and ominous.

It’s fucking lonely.

I walk up to the porch. I bang on the door. I shout “Vincent! You can’t just leave! Where did you even go!? Vince!”

A door opens next door. “Quiet!”

I stop banging. The door shuts.

Slowly, I slide to the floor in front of the empty house.

“Fuck.”