As the meeting draws to a close, and the participants start to stand and drift off, I wait until Ember has wandered out into the halls before re-emerging from her shadow and onto the tiled floor of the underground facility. She looks at me curiously, but I momentarily ignore her, scanning the length of the corridor to make sure we’re alone, before grabbing her hand and pulling her into a nearby room.
It looks like it’s an office, during… normal working hours. Part of the city that I’ve never really seen, where the suits go before they stagger out onto the streets to drink the day’s work away. The dozen or so cubicles with their fancy computers don’t really make much sense to me, and the posters and pictures on the wall don’t do anything to stop the space feeling clinical and isolated.
The Red-Light district has its private spaces too, of course it does, but they’re different. They’re more intimate than private, and the streets themselves are heaving with people. This cold, sterile room is private in a very lifeless way, and not even the darkness can bring intimacy to it.
But it is private, and that’s what I need right now.
‘Who was she?’ I sign to Ember, watching her brain struggle to figure out my sign language for a second before her confused expression turns sombre and serious.
She sighs, pulling a chair out of one of the cubicles and slumping down into it, her head becoming buried beneath the shadows of her cloak.
“Yeah, I should have figured she’d be there.”
I don’t do anything in response, just sitting back on my haunches and looking up at her. She hasn’t held anything back from me so far – not when I’ve asked, at least – and I’ll gladly give her the time she needs to explain just what that was about.
“The thing you need to understand about the Elite is that we’re not one unified whole. We’re more like… like a whole bunch of different groups. Cells. Seattle’s a bit different than most places, in that most of the city’s Elite are all under the same group, but there are still bits that are kept separate from everyone else. Bits we can’t know about.”
Ember leans back, tossing her hood back and rubbing her temples.
“Seattle’s better than most places. Before I moved here, I was working down in Vegas. Still in the Elite, but a different cell. A different… I don’t know, sphere of influence. I didn’t even find out I was in the Elite until my cell leader told me about this job in Seattle and not-so-subtly hinted that someone so far above her he might as well be a king was offering a big financial incentive for me to go, because Seattle would send down a Thinker in exchange.”
She smiles, the tension draining out of her as she shifts forward to put her elbows on her knees, an honest smile on her face.
“Down there, I couldn’t really talk to anybody except the four other people in my cell, and they just saw me as dumb muscle. But here? There’s a bar in this building, over there somewhere.” She waves an arm in a random direction. “You can go there in costume and just… exist for a while. No need to lie about what you do for a living, pretending you’re some dumb paper-pusher when you’re so much more.”
The smile slips from her face a little, as her expression turns more serious.
“That’s more than worth a little secrecy. So we don’t talk about her, don’t acknowledge she’s here. That way, if anyone’s listening, she doesn’t get implicated in something she’s not involved in. Because if she goes down, we all go down.”
She pauses, as if she’s worried about whether to continue.
“I figured it out about a year after coming here. You might figure it out too, and who knows how many of those people around the table know, but nobody says it out loud. All things considered, it’s a small price to pay.”
That’s a sentiment I can understand. It’s a trade – like everything else. I patrol the Red-Light district, and help the Elite whenever they need something more done, and in return I get a safe place to sleep at night, with warm covers and a door that both shuts and locks. I get paid too – I get paid a lot – but it’s amazing how little that matters when I have nothing to spend it on except for food that Ember has to collect from the door for me, and when I know what it’s like to go without shelter or home-cooked food.
It’s another cost to add onto the pile, but the benefits are still worth so much more.
I draw my fingers across my mouth. It’s a gesture I saw someone doing in the Red-Light District after agreeing to keep a secret, so I figure it’ll do here. Ember certainly seems to get my meaning, standing up with a grin on her face and throwing her hood back over her head.
“Let’s go. I’ve got a little while yet, but your new partners should be leaving right about now.”
Like our arrival here, everyone’s leaving at different times to stop anyone getting suspicious about the building. Ember’s one of the last to go, but I’m not leaving with her. There are people trapped out there, about to be sold overseas to who knows where, and that means the search can’t wait for even a moment longer than it has to.
It’s more than just them, though. Jaeger and I built up an almost complete picture of the Triad in the north, but in another week that picture might have changed completely. Every hour, the information I gathered becomes more and more obsolete. So the Elite wants to strike soon, but they can’t do that without freeing the captives. Otherwise the Triad will just hide them away at the first sign of trouble.
Rather than slipping back into Ember’s cloak, I follow her out into the hall. It’s a chance to indulge my curiosity a little more, darting ahead to peer into interesting looking rooms, and generally being more than a little nosy.
Ember takes it in her stride, but, as the sound of distant footsteps becomes audible, I slip back to her side. She might be able to unwind in the bar, but this place is still built on reputation, and I don’t want to ruin hers by running around like an excited puppy where people can see me.
There’s a small group waiting in the car park, standing around a nondescript van that looks like it belongs to an electricians firm, judging by the words painted on the side. Of course, I’ve been around Jaeger long enough to know that those words probably aren’t worth the paint that went into them.
Jaeger isn’t alone, this time. Or, rather, it’s not just him and his men. His own personal soldiers are conspicuous in their absence, and the two Capes talking to Jaeger are just conspicuous in general. I recognise Huntsman immediately, and it looks like his dog-thing recognises me. The other man is an unknown, with a shaved head and skin that’s closer to charcoal than Ember’s hazelnut brown. His complexion is a little pallid, almost grey in places, and he’s dressed in a tight-fitting tank top beneath an open red and gold tracksuit. His mask is a red half-skull that covers everything from his upper lip to his forehead.
Jaeger simply nods at me as I pace across the garage towards them, while Huntsman seems to weigh me up with his eyes. The third man simply crosses his arms and leans back against his van.
“Nightcrawler,” Jaeger greets me. “Are you ready to head out?”
I turn back to Ember for a brief moment, before swallowing down my hesitation, looking back at Jaeger and nodding.
“Good,” he replies, like it was never in doubt. “Let’s get in the van, then. Cinderblock” – he turns to the third man – “it’s your vehicle, you drive.”
“Sure,” he replies, in a deep, gravelly, voice. “You three best ride in back; don’t want anyone getting suspicious.”
“I’ll see you soon, Nightcrawler,” Ember says, giving me a wave. I return the gesture before following behind Jaeger as Huntsman holds open the rear doors of the van for the pair of us. There aren’t any seats in the back – none of the advanced tech that Jaeger had on our stakeout, either. It seems this is just a regular van, meant to transport goods from A to B.
Huntsman’s creature hops up behind me, as he and Jaeger move up to sit on the floor just behind the van’s seats. I pull the doors shut, and the van sets off into the city a moment later. As I settle down on the floor of the van, Huntsman’s dog continues staring at me in confusion for a few more moments before letting out a snort of foul-smelling breath and padding over to rest its head on its master’s lap.
The van is mostly enclosed – a tight, confined space – but the light of the city is bleeding through the windshield at the front, and the two windows on the rear door. They’re tinted, but that doesn’t stop the glow. In fact, it just seems to get worse and worse as we approach the centre of the city, until it’s almost like the unbearable light of the day.
I shuffle towards the rear doors, hunching down to try and find some relief in the space below the windows, where the glow doesn’t touch. At the other end of the van, Huntsman notices me move and fixes me with an inquisitive look.
“Don’t like the light?”
I shake my head, signing out an answer. ‘It’s uncomfortable. There is nowhere to hide.’
“She said-” Jaeger starts translating my signs, before Huntsman cuts him off.
“I heard. Worked alongside a deaf Radar tech out in Venezuela. She seemed pretty lonely, so I learned how to sign.”
“You were in Venezuela?” Cinderblock asks from the front of the van, looking back for a moment before the traffic light in front of him turns green. “You an Army man, or what?”
“Fuck no,” Hunstman laughs. “You think the Army would employ a deaf anybody? Nah, I used to be Army, sure, but I was out there with a PMC, working security for the oil companies and doing wetwork for the local military.”
“Sounds fucking nasty,” Cinderblock continues. “I saw something about that on TV once – how in South America the villains are the government capes and the heroes are the underground rebels.”
“Fuck that piece of shit ‘documentary,’” Huntsman practically shouts out, his disgusting language almost making me want to cover my ears. “A couple of bleeding-heart liberal arts students get suckered in by another handsome revolutionary in a beret, and suddenly the whole fucking country thinks they know shit about the way the world works.”
He gets up off the floor, leaning over the front seats to talk to Cinderblock like he’s giving a lecture. I get a brief flash of Cinderblock’s smile in the rear view mirror – it’s clear he’s just enjoying the show.
“There are no fucking heroes or villains in Venezuela, there’s just the good old dollar. Don’t matter if you’re the oil companies looking to protect your fields, the cartels looking to protect your crops, or some Cold War relic hiding in the fucking jungle and trying to take the oil and the drugs from the others, the motivation is the same. Get territory, get control, get rich. Then, if you’re lucky, get out.”
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“I take it that’s what you did,” Jaeger says from where he’s still sitting on the floor of the van.
“I did one better,” Huntsman replies as he sits back down. “I got smart. This job doesn’t pay quite as well as hunting rebels in the Venezuelan jungle, but it’s not far off and it’s a hell of a lot safer. The Red Gauntlet guys down there used to find this whole Cape culture hilarious, but it stops every little spat from becoming a bloodbath.”
After that, the fight seems to fade away from Huntsman, and Cinderblock’s satisfied grin soon falls back into an impassive scowl as he focuses on moving us through the scant post-midnight traffic. The glow of the city starts to fade, and eventually I feel comfortable enough to crawl out from my little patch of shadow and prop myself up against the doors, taking full advantage of the tinted windows to peer out at the city around us without being seen.
It’s amazing how quickly the city centre drops off. One minute we’re driving through a canyon of flame, surrounded on all sides by pillars of light that scrape the sky, and the next it’s like I’m back in the north, with low-rise buildings and uncomplicated streetlights that are dim enough I can see the night’s sky behind them. The road we’re driving down is straight and narrow, surrounded on both sides by endless car parks and rectangular commercial buildings, taking us further and further away from the glowing wall that was the end of the world I knew, out into the great unknown.
“Welcome to Columbia City,” Cinderblock says, as I spot him in the reflection of the window, looking back at me with a smile on his face as he waits for the traffic light to change. “First time?”
“She’s never been south of the city centre before,” Huntsman translates my signs almost as soon as I’ve made them, getting a surprised laugh out of Cinderblock.
“Nightcrawler largely works in and around the Red-Light District,” Jaeger elaborates.
“Well shit,” Cinderblock muses. “Guess I’ve got to play host. Come up front for a bit and I’ll give you the low-down.”
I drop down from the rear doors and move up through the van, stepping gingerly over and around Jaeger, Huntsman and his creature before quickly pouncing over the seat backs and settling down on the passenger side, looking out at the lanes of nearly-empty roads that surround us.
“The one thing you need to understand about South Seattle,” he begins, “is that it’s basically all built around this big fat line of industry that goes from Seahawks Stadium all the way down and out past the city limits. You’ve got the container terminals, the fuel terminals, the rail terminals, Boeing’s own private airport and all sorts of smaller industry sandwiched in-between the rest. All the neighbourhoods around it – Columbia City, Beacon Hill, Highline, Delridge, whatever – all exist to fuel that industry. Forget the fucking suits and their skyscrapers, that’s the real heart of the city.”
He goes on, pointing out specific shops that do good deals, good places to get drunk each night. We pass a few people loitering on the streets corners, and he complains that the Red-Light District makes having a decent prostitution racket impossible while pointing out which group of people belongs to which gang. Eventually, I’m able to find a gap to get a word in edgeways.
‘So what do you do for the Elite?’
He looks at me for a couple of seconds and shrugs his shoulders. I sigh and lean back over the seat, jostling Huntsman’s shoulder to grab his attention and repeating my question.
“She wants to know who you are,” he translates, “beyond just a name.”
“Fair enough,” Cinderblock answers, leaning back in his seat. “I run one of the bigger gangs out here, the Thirty-Fifth. We’ve got three Parahumans, and own pretty much all the blocks around Thirty-Fifth Avenue here in Columbia City. There’s a dozen or so other powered gangs like us out here, all paying up to the Elite. Then there’re the smaller groups, the ones without Capes, who pay up to us.”
He stops abruptly, seeming to spot something in the rear view mirror. I angle my head to get a look for myself, and jolt a little at the sight of a pair of police cars edging into the lane next to us, their black and white livery and thankfully unlit red and blue lights as clear a warning sign as any.
I drop down into the footwell beneath the seat, slipping effortlessly into the darkness as Cinderblock quickly removes his mask and tosses it onto the passenger seat.
“Five-oh,” he says to the other passengers, his tone surprisingly calm. “Stay down.”
There’s a couple of tense moments as I just hide there, unable to see out of the windows and spot what’s going on. The absence of any sudden flashing lights is the only indicator I have that things haven’t gone horribly wrong, until Cinderblock lets out a low whistle and says “we’re in the clear.”
As I clamber back up out of the footwell, Cinderblock puts his mask back on and Jaeger pops his head over the seat back, looking at the two police cars as they drive off into the distance.
“A van driving through this neighbourhood at the middle of the night and they don’t pull it over?”
“Sure.” Cinderblock’s response is matter of fact, as he settles back down in his seat. “The Police aren’t hard to spook. They pull over the wrong car, get their own car crushed by yours truly, and suddenly they don’t want to pull any more. They’d kick the whole city up the chain to the PRT if they could, but instead they’re being as chickenshit as they can. It’s why there were two cars in that patrol, rather than one.”
He still turns off from the road the moment the police cars drop out of sight, heading down side-streets between small homes and low-rise apartment blocks before parking up outside one tower among many.
“And here we are,” he says, opening up the door. “My own little slice of paradise, and your base for the next few days.”
I follow him out, as Jaeger and Huntsman get out the other side of the van. There are two men waiting in the lobby, both of them obviously guards of some kind even if they aren’t wearing any sort of uniform. I can spot the distinctive outline of a sawed-off shotgun beneath one of their jackets, and it looks like Jaeger can see it as well.
“All quiet?” Cinderblock asks his men.
“All quiet.”
He nods. “Keep an eye out. Don’t want anyone getting the drop on us.”
“The fighting down here is fast and nasty,” he says, as he leads us into the elevator. “About a third of the gangs have broken away and sided with the Triad, and another third have basically splintered as some of them stick by the Elite and others don’t.”
‘How are the Triad winning them over?’ I ask, and Huntsman translates.
“There are rules that come with Elite membership. No dealing within two blocks of a school, bring disputes up to the Elite or settle them quietly, that sort of thing. A lot of people didn’t like that, and the Triad basically promised them free rein if they help axe the Elite. Bunch of fucking dumbasses with more muscle than sense, if you ask me. The king’s the king for a reason, and acting up’s just gonna get you stamped back down.”
He leads us down a long hallway lined with apartments, stopping at the second from the end. It’s right across the hall from the emergency stairs, which is probably a deliberate choice, and, once Cinderblock is done fiddling with the keys, we step through into a completely unfurnished apartment.
“Sorry it’s a little empty,” Cinderblock says. “The last tenant’s family sold off all the furniture when the old man died, but I was able to buy the apartment. Been holding onto it for a rainy day just like this.”
“That’s not a problem,” Jaeger says as he peers out of the window. “I’ll call my people and have them bring over everything we need. Camp cots, police scanners, whiteboards… that sort of thing. Could you go back down and tell your guys to expect them?”
“…sure,” Cinderblock answers, a little put out, “but then I’m turning in for the night, or my girlfriend will pitch a fit. My apartment’s just next door, so knock if there’s an emergency.”
Huntsman lets out a chuckle after he’s gone, leaning back against the wall and fixing Jaeger with an amused look.
“Well look who’s moving up in the world. Going from a two person spy mission on your own dime to heading up a proper, Elite-sanctioned taskforce? Takes ambition.”
“There’s nothing wrong with ambition,” Jaeger replies, bluntly. “You don’t really expect me to believe you don’t harbour ambitions of your own?”
Huntsman shakes his head. “I’ve buried too many ambitious men in unmarked graves. Enemies and friends. I make enough to be comfortable, my work is still interesting, and that’s good enough for me.”
“Each to their own, I suppose,” Jaeger replies, diplomatically, before walking over to the window again.
“We need to move fast about this. Nightcrawler, you should head out and get the lay of the land while it’s still dark. No need to look for anything in particular, just familiarise yourself with the area and get back before dawn.”
I nod, even as Huntsmen speaks up.
“Hang on, isn’t it a little late? Let the poor girl sleep, at least.”
‘I’m nocturnal,’ I sign back. Well, it’s more ‘I don’t sleep at night.’ I haven’t got around to learning the sign for ‘nocturnal’ yet, if there even is one.
“And neither do we, until the job’s done,” Jaeger continues. “We have to be on standby in case anything happens.”
“Understood,” Huntsman replies as he sits down, his creature padding over to rest its head on his lap as he starts reading something on his phone.
I pace over to the window, propping myself up to open it and peer out across an unfamiliar skyline. I can’t see much; just a few buildings before a forested hill blocks my view. I look down, and see a patch of darkness right below the window, where some streetlight or another has obviously failed.
I haul myself up and out the window, feeling the wind rushing past my body as I hurtle down five stories before hitting the darkness and disappearing into its depths like a diver hitting the surface of a lake. I let myself revel in the weightless sensation for a few moments before reforming my body and sprinting across the road to the treeline, eager to explore new spaces and help really make a difference.
To save lives, rather than help end them.