The Red Light district never truly sleeps. It’s full of life all through the night, even if that life waxes and wanes in intensity. At the start of the night, it’s a hurried rush of people filling the streets, loud and boisterous but with all the individual noises swallowed by the mass. Later, once the main flow has subsided and people have started to return to their own beds, the noises stand out a lot more, but they’re still there. A single drunk can serenade a whole street, at least until he’s bundled away by our security. Towards the morning, the district plays host to a small army of cleaners and laundry workers, carting away sheets by the van load. It’s quieter, sure, but it’s still alive.
The same cannot be said of the warehouses that fill this part of Seattle, crammed into every scrap of space between the freeway, the railway yards and the water. Without any houses or workers in the area, the streets are a perfectly silent ghost town, as the great slab-sided warehouses dampen the distant noise of the city. The streets might be well-lit, but the wide flat rooves gather darkness like inky-black pools, dozens of yards wide. Passing through them is like swimming in Puget Sound.
I’d almost call it tranquil, if it weren’t for the reason I’m here.
The trafficked Parahumans weigh on me like a yoke around my neck, pulling me back each time I almost lose myself in the moment. It sucks the fun out of leaping from rooftop to rooftop, but part of me feels like that’s a good thing.
It’s not right to enjoy myself when others are suffering. They deserve everything I can give, and so much more besides.
South Horton Street is a narrow strip of residential streets, bordered on one side by the freeway and cleanly bisected by a railway line. Its buildings are a mixture of industry, warehouses and small factories with wide roads in between them, no doubt meant to allow easy access for the immensely long trucks that’re occasionally parked up around the place.
But the streets are empty, the businesses dark, with only the occasional pair of headlights spotted at a distant intersection, dozens of yards away. While the streets might be lit well enough to deter burglars – and me – my body’s agility is more than enough to let me clamber up and down the rooftops as I go down the length of the street, searching from building to building.
Some of the buildings have a guard or two – sitting in a security office in front of a bank of screens, or wandering the grounds and shivering in the cold – but that alone isn’t enough to prove innocence or guilt. After all; the Triad are just as capable of hiring uniformed security as we are.
The thing is, it doesn’t take many guards to watch a warehouse. Two at the absolute most, and most of the buildings on the street don’t even have that many. So, when I find a building with three men sitting in the security office and a man and a woman patrolling the grounds, I know I’m onto something big.
I duck past one of the patrolling guards as they pass me, sprinting soundlessly up to the wall before pouncing onto a drainpipe, shimmying up it with my four pairs of hands even as my legs kick and scramble to try and find a grip. Still, I manage to roll ungainly onto the rooftop, slipping into the darkness the moment my hand touches it and drifting across the surface of the roof until I find a skylight.
It’s shut, of course, but that doesn’t matter when both sides of it are bathed in darkness. I simply slip through the glass like it isn’t even there, finding myself inside the cavernous – and almost completely empty – warehouse.
The narrow band of darkness between the ceiling and the scant few lights in the room – dangling from wires and suspended from small catwalks – means that I can freely range around the entire space, taking in the racks of shelves that fill half the room, the shuttered doors that line one wall, small windows that barely let in the orange glow of the streets, and the parked semi-truck in a loading bay, its metal container open and level with the warehouse floor, spilling white light out into the space.
There’s some mechanism on the back of the container, tucked behind the cab of the truck. A spinning fan and several boxy mechanical components, hooked up to the building’s power by long wires. No doubt that’s what’s keeping the light on in the container, as well as powering whatever’s inside…
I hesitate at the sight of the enclosed space, bathed in light, before my resolve hardens; I’ve come too far to back down now. So I drop from the ceiling down through the dark gap between the floor area covered by two of the ceiling lights, reforming myself once I hit the ground, and sprint towards the container.
It takes my eyes a moment to adjust to the blinding white light, but once they’ve settled I find myself in a cramped space with bare metal walls, mostly taken up by two beds surrounded by machinery that rises and falls as it breathes for the beds’ unfortunate occupants.
It almost takes a second for me to make out the shapes of the two Parahumans; they’re lying unnaturally still, and to my untrained eye it almost seems as if the tubes and wires are slowly swallowing them like a snake coiled around a field mouse. Beneath the utilitarian gowns and the breathing masks clamped on their faces like limpets, I can see pale freckled skin and shocks of ginger hair. The brother and sister, shipped in from Boston. Wherever that is.
The gurney rattles a little as I haul myself up to get a better look at the sister, but she remains completely motionless. I was half expecting shackles and chains, but there’s nothing. All the restraints they need are draining into her from the little fluid bag hung from the ceiling on a metal hook.
I brush aside a lock of hair and pull back her eyelid, noting the width of her pupils and the way they don’t contract in the slightest underneath the harsh white light. Part of me wonders how I knew to do that, but I brush the thought aside. Looking down at her, I’d almost have thought she was dead if it weren’t for the warmth of her body and the steady rise and fall of her chest as the machinery forces air into her body, breathing for her.
The sound of a door opening on the far end of the warehouse has me springing back in shock, landing soundlessly on the floor of the container as my head whips around to stare out the open door. I can’t see anyone, but I can hear the sound of boots on concrete as they draw closer. If I step out of the container, they’ll see me, and this space is so well lit there aren’t any shadows deep enough for me to hide in.
So I duck beneath the bed at the back of the container, cramming my body as best I can into the small space and pressing myself against the wall. I feel exposed, like I’m standing in a field in the middle of the day, but it’s not like I have any other option. All I can do is stay stock still and hope.
The boots draw closer, until I hear their wearer stepping onto the metal floor of the container. Then I see them, beneath the girl’s gurney as their wearer fusses about with something. I think it’s one of the guards, or at least someone wearing their uniform.
He leans over the gurney, and I hear the sound of cloth rustling as he moves the girl around, followed by the clicks of something being detached and reattached. Apparently satisfied, he does the same to the boy I’m hiding under – as I hold in place, my lungs straining in protest.
After a moment that seems to last forever, I hear the sound of a pen scribbling on paper before he turns and leaves the container, the sound of his footfalls slowly quieting as he makes his way across the warehouse floor.
The moment I hear the distant click of a door closing, my limbs start to tremble as I carefully extract myself from beneath the gurney, shaking and panting as my heartbeat slowly starts to calm. I prop myself up again, noting that the near-empty sedative bags have been replaced with full ones.
There’s a clipboard on a peg on the wall. It was there before, but now it has an extra row of ticks and a letter X in place of a signature. I peer closer, reading the words on the table even though I have no hope of understanding the medical jargon.
Sure enough, it’s all gibberish to me. But I recognise the sentiment behind the scribbles; these people are going to be handed off to the Triad’s clients at some point, so they need some kind of record to show they’ve done their due diligence when it comes to… well, not quite ‘looking after’ them, but it’s the same idea.
Right now, there’s nothing that I want more than to rip these tubes and needles out of their bodies, to carry them out of here on my back if that’s what it takes. It hurts to know that I can’t do that – hurts even more than Bloody Mary’s knives. I have to keep reminding myself that these are two of ten; that there are eight other people out there, in this exact situation, and that the moment we spring some of them, the others will disappear forever.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Instead I prop myself up on the sister’s bed again, staring down at her sleeping face, so very human in spite of the mask and tubes, and mouth a silent apology as I pull a couple of strands of hair from her head, balling them up tightly in a fist as I turn and leave the container at a run.
Running doesn’t make the decision to leave them any easier, but it does make it harder to stop.
Getting out is a lot harder than getting in; I can’t slip into the shadows when I’m carrying something, so I have to use them the old fashioned way. With my pitch-black hide, it’s hard to spot me in the shadows even when I’m not merged with them – so long as they don’t see my eyes – so I’m able to slip out the warehouse through a side exit and duck the roving guards by hiding behind a parked car until they’ve passed.
Then, it’s a quick jaunt through the empty streets until I find the nondescript van parked between two buildings, right on the edge of the industrial district.
I gently rap the door with my free hand, only to abruptly step back as Huntsman’s hound leaps out the opening door, circling me eagerly. Doing my best to ignore the creature, I gracefully leap up into the van and hold out the hair for Huntsman to take. He’s the one who opened the door, while Jaeger is looking over at us from where he’d been scrutinising a map of the docks.
The moment the hair is out of my hands, I start frantically signing to Huntsman.
‘I found two of the people,’ I begin, not knowing the right sign for kidnap victims. ‘I could not find the other eight. They were asleep in the back of a truck.’
“Sedated, I presume,” Jaeger pipes up as Huntsman translates my signs, writing something down in a notebook as I nod. “We were expecting as much. Do you know how?”
I hold my hands in the air for a moment, frustrated, before miming a mask on my face and a small tube coming out of my wrist.
‘They had a bag,’ I signed.
“Intravenous,” Huntsman says to Jaeger. “We’ll have paramedics on standby, of course” – Jaeger nods in agreement – “but the safest option might be to keep them sedated until we’re clear. Don’t want them panicking, or collapsing from fatigue.”
‘So you can find them?’ I sign frantically at Huntsman.
“I can,” he says, and instantly I feel some of the weight fall off my shoulders. “Duke has the taste of them now. We’ll wait until they’re moved, then tail them.”
He pulls the door of the van shut, settling down on a folding chair and leaning back.
“You look exhausted,” he says to me, pointing at a dark green cylinder tucked into a corner of the van. “I brought a roll-out mattress if you want to catch some sleep.”
I pause for a moment, before ultimately deciding that there’s nothing I can do right now, so I might as well make sure I’m awake for later. It takes me a second to figure out the mattress – it keeps rolling back up on me, until Huntsman tells me to flip it upside down – and, while it’s nowhere near as comfortable as my bed in Ember’s place, it’s still better than the rug on a pile of old junk that was my first bed.
Sleep doesn’t come easy, but with nothing else to do and nothing to listen to but the faint sounds of Jaeger and Huntsmen moving around the space, eventually I managed to drift off.
When I wake, it’s because I can feel the motion of the van shifting beneath me, putting me right under the glare of a harsh ray of sunlight. I roll to my feet, quickly shaking my head until I don’t feel groggy anymore, and move to the front of the van to prop myself up on the back of the seats, looking out through the front window.
Huntsman is driving, with Duke eagerly peering over the dashboard next to him. Jager is next to me, looking over the seats as we make our way through the now-bustling warehouse district. I can see the time on the dashboard; I’ve slept through the morning, and much of the afternoon.
“They started moving about ten minutes ago,” Huntsman says as he catches sight of me. “We’re keeping out of sight.”
Beside him, his creature turns its head as it tracks an unseen target. As with just about every power I’ve come across – my own included – I’ve no idea how it actually works, but I suppose it’s not important. What matters is that we can track the girl in the shipping container.
“They’re definitely heading for the port,” Jaeger observes. “I was wondering if they’d launch from Tacoma instead.”
“I take it you have a way to get us into the port?” Huntsman asks as he turns us around a corner.
“Naturally. Just give me one moment.”
Jaeger pulls out his cell phone, turning around to lean his back against the seat as he scrolls through what looks like a list of names. His eyes flick over to me for a fraction of a second, and he shifts his posture just enough to hide his screen from me.
A moment later, he taps the screen and brings the phone up to his ear.
“Anderson, how’s the wife and kids?” He doesn’t leave them any time to respond before he continues. “We’re approaching the port now in a blue van. You’re going to let us through without any trouble, or your indiscretions won’t stay discreet for long.”
He hangs up just as Huntsman brings us across another railway line. Ahead of us, I can see towering stacks of shipping containers, eight high in some places. Like multicoloured buildings tucked away behind a barbed wire fence.
“Anderson’s a gate guard?” Huntsman asks.
“Anderson’s with the port authority,” Jaeger clarifies. “That way, we can get in any gate we want.”
We reach the road that runs along the length of the container field, and Huntsman’s about to take us straight over when Duke abruptly presses its head against the left window. Huntsman hurriedly flicks on the indicator and pulls the van left, as a truck behind us lets off its horn in protest. I duck down at the sudden sound and the shifting light.
“They’re not on this side of the waterway,” Huntsman explains. “Harbor Island?”
“It’s possible. Keep on them.”
We follow the road as it curves to the right, ducking beneath an immense elevated highway that towers over out heads, fed by a tangled knot of ramps that stretch up and down to link it to other roads. Trucks are spiralling down one of them, joining our road as they queue up outside an exit. In-between the trucks and their containers, I can just about catch fleeting glimpses of a flat expanse of water filled with long rows of truly immense vessels, their rust-eaten sides gleaming in the afternoon sun.
“Not gate 1,” Jaeger orders Huntsman. “It’s a customs checkpoint; no point drawing more attention than we have to. Head for the rail terminal.”
Huntsman nods, skipping past the queuing traffic before exiting the road at the next junction, taking us past a small field of abandoned machinery and in-between a handful of industrial buildings before taking us right again, avoiding another elevated stretch of road that reaches over the tracks.
That brings us into the port proper, and to what I can only describe as organised pandemonium. On our left, trains are waiting in rows, metal wheels shifting and squeaking as they advance forward one by one, disappearing around the bend ahead of us. On our right lies an entire city of containers, being lifted by immense vehicles that carry them deeper into the stacks, or bring new crates to pile on top of the rest.
We follow the curve of the railway tracks, passing between a canyon of great cylindrical containers, one of which seems to be impossibly rising out of the ground as I watch it. My two companions seem utterly unphased by the scale of it all, barely even noticing each new wonder as we drive past it at a steady speed.
Huntsman, at least, seems to spot my confusion as he catches sight of me in the mirror.
“This is why they had that container stored outside the harbour,” he explains. “Thousands of containers pass through this port every day, but it’d be impossible to coordinate five containers to arrive at exactly the same time. That doesn’t matter if all you’re carrying is cars from Detroit, but our Parahumans need to be monitored and sedated constantly. So they held them in the city, and they’ll be hoping to get them on board their ship as quickly as possible.”
The curve of the road brings us past the cylindrical containers before it straightens out, running down the other side of what I’m starting to realise is an unnaturally-shaped island. It might even be entirely man-made, which would easily put it on the same scale as the sea walls.
The ships are no less terrifying than when they were looming over Ember and I in her small yacht. It takes me a moment to actually realise that what I’m seeing is a ship, rather than just another extension of the rows of containers. They’ve clearly agitated Duke as well; the creature is almost leaning over Huntsman as it stares out of his window at every ship we pass. Each one was being loaded with hundreds of containers, bound for cities I’ve never even heard of and can never hope to understand.
And this is just a single snapshot in time. These containers – these ships – will be replaced by others in a matter of hours, or days at the most, and more cargo will flow through the port. I wonder how much has passed through this port in my lifespan, as I staggered unaware through the unfamiliar streets of this city? I wonder how many other wonders and great events are happening elsewhere, right now?
“Got it!” Huntsman exclaims, knocking me off my train of thought. “That one there!”
The ship he’s pointing at doesn’t seem noticeably different from any other. It’s a little rustier, and it’s only just started being loaded with cargo, but all the ships here seem to have been built to the same model. The name on the back is familiar, though; Taiko Maru.
Jaeger has paced to the back of the van, deep in conversation with his man in the port authority. Huntsman pulls up on the side of the road, out of the way of the constant stream of trucks that drives past us. He scratches Duke’s neck affectionately and urges his creature to hop into the back with me before taking off his mask.
“The Taiko Maru is a regular here,” Jaeger explains. “It comes into port every few weeks delivering bulk goods from Asia and leaving noticeably emptier than it arrived. In and of itself, that’s nothing unusual; we’re still an importer nation. It’s registered in New Siam.”
“She’s a Japanese ghost ship,” Huntsman interrupts. This time he doesn’t need to see me to get that I need an explanation. “I’ve seen similar ships before. The Japanese government collapsed in the late nineties, but at the time they had one of the largest merchant fleets in the world. They all had to go somewhere.”
He shifts in his seat, turning so that he can look back at me.
“The crews loaded the ships full of their families, and any other refugees who could afford passage out of Japan, and set sail for ports unknown. They re-registered with any nation that would take them. Unfortunately for them, that sort of desperation means a lot of ghost ships end up tied into organised crime. It’s given them an unfair reputation.”
“An apparently justified reputation, in this case.” Jaeger retorts, coldly. “I’ll call Black Rod and let him know we’ve found the ship. Apparently they don’t have enough time left in the port’s day to fully load the ship, so it’ll be here at night. We’ll hit it then.”
He turns to look at me, staring me dead in the eye.
“After some reconnaissance, of course.”
Of course…