Jaeger keeps talking, asking me questions about all sorts of things, no doubt part of some attempt to discern my loyalty – or simply because he’s in love with bureaucracy. I think the latter is more likely, because a lot of the questions are completely irrelevant to me. He says it’s for a ‘background check’, but I don’t exactly have a background to check. I’ve never held membership in a political party, because I can’t remember what they are. I’ve never been arrested by – or worked for – law enforcement. He asks me if I can account for my movements over the last decade, and I laugh in his face.
Well, it comes out as more of a warbling whistle that borders on a screech, but he seems to get the picture.
Honestly, I can’t even imagine ten years. I mean, deep down I know I’ve been alive for a decent amount of time. I know too much for it to be otherwise, even if this whole city feels so strange and alien to me. I lived, even if I didn’t live here, but – as far as I can actually remember – my life began a few weeks ago. It’s measured in days, not in years.
The more he asks, and the more I realise I don’t remember, the more it scares me. He doesn’t seem to notice, pushing on with his relentless questioning even as my shoulders slump and my tail starts to drift unconsciously beneath his desk, the tip merging with the shadows and sending pulses of faint comfort rippling through my body.
The office has a window, barely covered by blinds that let wide bars of light into the well-lit space. Outside, clouds shift across the heavens, moving away from the sun, and the bars suddenly turn incandescent. I can feel them on my skin, a burning sensation of pure fear, of being trapped with nowhere to hide. I start to take deep breaths, my answers to Jaeger’s questions becoming more and more hesitant as my deep breaths turn into animalistic pants. Anything to cool me down and calm my panicked instincts.
And then, the light is cut off. I turn to see Ember fiddling with the blinds, closing them completely until only the faintest chinks of sunlight are getting through. She rests her other hand on my shoulder until my breathing starts to calm and that itch to hide under the desk starts to fade.
“Do you have everything you need?” she asks Jaeger pointedly, a little ice in her tone. “You’re scaring the poor girl.”
Jaeger looks at me for a second, more disgusting pity creeping through his stony face.
“That should be all. It’s surprisingly hard to vet an amnesiac, but I guess that makes them more trustworthy. I was mostly interested in seeing if she’d slip up, but her memory loss seems genuine.”
I glare at him. Why on Earth would I lie about something like that?
“Either way,” he continues, ignoring me, “I’m happy to bring her in.”
“Not that it’s your choice,” Ember says, standing up from her seat, “she’s my hire after all.”
She pauses, as I drop off my own seat and onto all fours. When I look up, she’s looking down at me, seemingly unsure which of my three pairs of eyes she should be looking at.
“Unless you want to jump ship, join Jaeger instead?”
I hurriedly shake my head, anxiously pacing across the floor to put Ember in-between myself and the dour-faced soldier with his room full of weapons. She chuckles, grinning down at me and giving me two thumbs up.
“Good call.”
“Speaking of calls,” Jaeger interrupts, “I assume you haven’t cleared this with the higher-ups yet?”
I look up at Ember in confusion as she waves a hand dismissively.
“I’ll call Rod when I get out of here, set up the financial side of things.”
Financial? I tug at Ember’s jacket to grab her attention.
“You didn’t think I was expecting you to work for free, did you?” She pauses for a moment, a slightly confused look spreading across her face. “I’m not really sure what you’re going to spend money on, but it’s nice to have some.”
I nod my head in agreement. After Mike… I don’t want to have to scrounge for cash ever again. I don’t know what I’ll do with the money either, except maybe help Ember pay for food or buy some thicker curtains for my room, but I know that it’s better to have money than not.
Ember gives Jaeger a very mocking salute before pushing open the door to his office. I follow her, eager to get out of here, as we descend down the stairs to the main floor of the sports hall. The soldiers have changed up their routine, and are now paired off around a dozen mats with boxing gloves and pads.
At the other end of the hall, a man in a suit is leading a few tattered-looking individuals over to a table, getting them to sign their details on a sheet of paper. They’ve all got the same worn-down look as Mike did, though maybe not quite that bad. They look like they’re new to hard times, rather than used to them.
“Ah,” I hear, as Ember sees where I’m looking. “He must have lost some people in Richland.”
She’s speaking more to herself than to me, but that doesn’t stop me from tugging at her suit jacket until she sees the confused tilt of my head. She lets out a long sigh before talking as we walk across the hall.
“The Elite exists above and below the law. You and me, we’re basically hired security guards. We might bend the law a little to put the fear of us in a couple of guys who don’t get the message, but mostly we’re safe from being arrested so long as we don’t take things too far. Jaeger, on the other hand… well, he’s responsible for our black-ops. The kind of work we don’t want the feds learning about,” she clarifies, in response to my unspoken question.
“For that kind of thing, he needs people he can trust. Remember how these guys all flinched when I called them Solomon?”
I nod.
“There was this Russian soldier, something something Solomonov. He’d been everywhere, seen everything. Afghanistan and Eritrea with the Soviet Army, then the Balkans and East Africa with the Red Gauntlet. He got old, he got injured, he retired and then he got fucked.”
I flinch at the language. Honestly, would it kill her to be a little more polite?
“Don’t know if it was drink or drugs that fucked him, but eventually he found himself in the States. He ran into this girl in a bar who offered him enough money to set himself up with enough booze for the rest of his life, in exchange for copies of all his memories.”
That gets my attention, to the point where I stop looking around the room and fix my gaze squarely on Ember.
“The girl was Cranial. She’s a Tinker… though you probably don’t know what that means. She makes advanced tech, and she’s part of this group, Toybox, who sell tech. They’re decent business partners, even if they’re not part of the Elite. Haven’t screwed anyone on a job so far.”
She seems to catch herself going on a tangent, grinning sheepishly at me.
“Anyway, Cranial sells Solomon’s skills as part of what she calls the ‘super-soldier’ package. Decades of training and experience with Russian Special Forces, instilled in an afternoon spent with wires stuck to your head. Those guys” -she nods towards the unkempt figures signing their lives away- “are probably ex-military types who fell on hard times. They’ll have Solomon’s skills and experience implanted in their mind, turning them into highly-trained soldiers in just a few hours.”
I turn away from the ragged group, looking instead at the soldiers as they practice boxing. Now that I look closer, there’s a symmetry to their movements. They all throw punches in the same way, duck and weave in similar patterns. It’s kind of unnerving, to be honest. People shouldn’t be that coordinated.
“The thing is that a lot of Solomon’s skills are tied up in his memories. They tend to bleed through, mixing in with the client’s memories a little. It’s a step further than I’d ever be prepared to go, which is why Jaeger prefers to recruit the desperate. There are plenty of people out there who don’t mind losing a little memory if it means they have some security in their life.”
I scowl, furiously shaking my head. It’s stupid, to carve away a piece of yourself like that. The mere idea of it makes me uncomfortable, seeing these people willingly give away what was taken from me. It’s all a bit too much, so I slip my tail underneath the jacket of Ember’s suit and disappear into the comfortable shadows, letting out a metaphorical breath as the uncomfortable itch of the hall’s lights on my skin fades into nothingness.
“I take it you want to head off?” Ember asks the air.
I form my fingers over her shoulder and tap her a couple of times. She gets the message, and I follow the sound of the click of her heels on the floor as she walks out of the building and gets into her car.
I stay hidden in her jacket as she drives through the city streets. I can’t be seen next to her while she isn’t masked, but I also don’t want to be stuck under the hot sun throughout the drive. It’s much more comfortable to travel this way, at least while it’s daytime.
Ember doesn’t talk. I think it’s because she’s giving me some space, but it could be that she’s just a little tired of our very one-sided conversations. Of course, it could also be that she’s forgotten I’m here. I’m sneaky like that.
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After a while, she reaches into her jacket, causing me to quickly scoot around to her back, and fishes out a small rectangular slab of metal and glass.
“Hey, Nightcrawler,” she says, “I just need to make a quick call, don’t mind me.”
A call?
Sure enough, a few seconds later I hear Ember talking into the strange device. A telephone without wires… I wonder if it was made by that Toybox group she mentioned.
“Good afternoon, sir,” Ember speaks into the telephone, her tone a lot more professional than usual. “I was wondering if you could arrange some cover for the district tonight? I want to show a new hire the ropes.”
I’ve moved as close to Ember’s collar as I can, close enough to make out the voice on the other end of the line.
“This is a little short notice,” he says, in an accent that’s more like Jaeger’s than Ember’s.
“I know, sir. I only recruited her last night. I’ll owe you one.”
There’s a pause, then the faint sound of someone moving on the other end of the line.
“I’ve arranged some cover.”
Ember lets out a happy sigh. Apparently, it wasn’t a sure thing.
“Thank you, sir.”
“It’s not a problem. Now” -the man’s tone turns a little more serious- “tell me about this new hire.”
Ember hesitates for a moment, shifting uncertainly in her seat. I form a hand to pat her shoulder reassuringly, to let her know that I don’t mind if she tells him about me.
“Her name’s Nightcrawler. She’s a monstrous cape I picked up off the street. A real nice kid, even though the world’s done her no favours so far.”
“And her powers?”
“She merges into darkness. It’s honestly a little terrifying. Right now, she’s hiding in-between my jacket and my shirt and I can’t even feel her.”
“Quite the valuable asset,” the voice says with sickening eagerness.
“Maybe,” Ember says, a little bite in her tone, “but she’s my asset. I’m paying her out of my share of the profits from the district. Maybe I’ll let her take on other work, but only if she wants to.”
“Of course,” the voice speaks, placatingly, “I wouldn’t want to step on your toes over this. If someone needs an infiltration specialist, I’ll tell them to ask you first.”
If I wasn’t in the shadows, and if I didn’t have a beak for a mouth, I’d be smiling right now. I’m dependent on Ember in so many different ways, and it’s nice to know she isn’t going to let anyone take advantage of me.
“Thanks,” Ember replies, mollified. “I just don’t want to throw her right in the deep end.”
“I understand. Keep safe out there; with the Triad on the warpath, things are looking a lot less certain.”
Ember snorts. “Don’t I know it.”
I don’t actually hear either of them put the phone down, or however that works without anything to put the phone down on, but I do feel Ember brushing aside her jacket as she slips the device back into her pocket. She drives in silence for a few more minutes, before I tap my fingers against her shoulders.
“Right, sorry. That was Black Rod. It’s a terrible name, I know,” –I’m not really sure what she means– “but he’s a lot more serious than his name suggests. I told you before that we’re a bit feudal, yeah? That’s why he’s not going to kick up a fuss about you working for me; as far as he’s concerned, you’re in my sphere of influence. Problem is-”
She trails off and, from the shifting weight, I can tell she’s had to concentrate on the road for a second.
“Learn to drive, asshole!” she shouts, honking her horn. “Anyway, I’m in his sphere of influence. All of us are, really. See, the Elite is pretty factional. The Seattle faction, our faction, is called the Star Chamber. About two dozen Parahumans, spread across the city and all basically doing their own thing when Black Rod doesn’t need something from us. Some of them have other Parahumans working for them, like you work for me.”
Two dozen? Ember has her… dubiously moral district and Jaeger has his terrifying soldiers, but neither had any Capes before me. It makes me wonder just how big the other groups are, and that’s only the ones in Seattle.
I’m beginning to get an idea of the scale of the organisation I’ve joined.
“If you’re having trouble wrapping your head around it, don’t worry. It’s my job to worry about this side of things, not yours.”
I can feel the car pulling to a stop, followed by the sound of Ember’s shoes on concrete. She’s talking to people, greeting them as they pass her by, and it doesn’t take me long to figure out that she must have brought me to the security station in the Red-Light district. I listen as she greets people by name, noticing that they’re calling her ‘Violet’ or ‘Miss Rucker’ rather than Ember. Maybe it’s some way of hiding her identity, like the mask she wore last night?
It’s another part of the city that confuses me. Why do Jaeger and her hide their faces? Does it help keep them safe somehow, and what does that mean for me? I can’t hide my face at all.
I’ve got a thousand unanswered questions, but no way of asking them. I can’t even take a notepad and pen with me, not without leaving it behind every time I merge with the shadows. It’s frustrating. More frustrating than this body, more frustrating than even the amnesia. There are so many different things shutting me out from the world around me, so many different reasons that I’ll never be able to have a normal life.
“Hey, Nightcrawler?” Ember’s voice shakes me out of my melancholy. “You can come out now.”
I creep out from the bottom of her jacket, feeling soft carpet beneath my forelegs before my head forms and I find myself in the middle of a cosy-looking office. The décor is much the same as Ember’s home - in fact the whole place seems like an extension of herself, right down to the empty sandwich boxes and cans scattered around the room. It makes the whole room a lot more comfortable than Jaeger’s intimidating space.
It’s made even more comfortable when Ember walks over to the window of frosted glass, glowing pure white under the sun, and pulls across a set of heavy curtains. Immediately I relax muscles that I hadn’t noticed tensing as the harsh light is replaced by a comfortable twilight.
“Better?” she asks, and I nod eagerly in response.
“I thought as much,” she says, slumping into the padded chair behind her desk. “I’m sorry about all that. I mean, I knew you didn’t like light but I didn’t know it was that extreme.”
I pause, looking up and her and miming writing with my hands, then cock my head to give her a questioning look.
“Sure thing,” she says, rummaging around in a desk draw and setting a notebook and pen on the desk.
“I wish we had a better way to communicate. It could prove difficult in the field, especially since I have a lot of the same problems as you when it comes to carrying things.”
It occurs to me that I still have no idea what her powers are, so I scribble down a question on the notepad.
‘What are your powers?’
“I’d show you now, but I don’t want to burn the carpet. There’ll be time for that later, don’t worry. Right now, though, I have to get ahead of work if I’m going to take you out tonight. Why don’t you crash on the couch for a bit? I know you didn’t get much sleep last night.”
I look around the room, spotting a couch tucked away in a corner. I practically pounce onto it, immediately sinking into its surface and curling up into a ball before letting out a long screech-like sigh. I’m exhausted, but it doesn’t feel like I can sleep. Not quite yet. I start to shift position, almost rolling off the couch in an attempt to find some magical pose that’ll let me drift off, but it just isn’t working.
I hear a faint giggle from the other side of the room, and open all six eyes to fix Ember with a very pointed stare.
“Still too bright?”
I nod.
“Grab my coat from the back of the door, that should work as a blanket.”
I slip off the couch, pacing over to the door and looking up at an ankle-length wool coat with a rich lining. It takes me a while to get it off the hook, a complicated manoeuvre involving essentially walking my forelimbs up the door to stand on two legs, or as close as I can physically get, then reaching up with my arms to fumble with the hook.
Ember finds it hilarious, in a good-natured way. Like… I don’t know. A friend, or a sister, teasing someone they know well enough to know they won’t be hurt by it.
Still, as I curl up on the couch under the coat, I can’t help but feel that she had the right idea, about all of this. I’ll never have a normal life, and I think I’ve accepted that. It hurts, sure, but I know there’s nothing I can do about it.
This isn’t going to be a normal life, but it’s better than the way things were before. At least I’m comfortable, tucked up safely under a nice thick coat. At least I have a room I can call my own, and money too once I can figure out how to spend it.
I pull the coat up and over my head, immediately cutting away the twilight of the office and surrounding myself in darkness’ welcoming embrace. Sleep comes easily, for the first time I can remember.