I dream of a sun that doesn’t hurt, of light that’s warm, rather than harsh. Of fields shimmering in the breeze, of warm smells that banish my hunger and a face…
And a face I can’t remember.
Someone brushes against my shoulder and the dream slips out of reach until not even memories remain. Only half awake, I flail my limbs ineffectively to try and ward off the attacker. The force returns, a little stronger this time, so I fight back, stronger.
Unfortunately, my mindless kick hits the back of the couch, immediately knocking me onto the floor. Ember’s coat wraps itself around me in a tangled mess as one of my arms gets stuck down its sleeve and the tip of my tail somehow finds its way into one of the pockets. I flail about a little more to try and shake myself out of the mess I’ve found myself in, only to give up and slip into the shadows. The coat falls to the floor in a heap for just a moment before I reform myself, pushing it up and shaking it off to one side.
The first thing I see is Ember, dressed in her strange costume and stranger mask, as she kneels down next to me, a comforting hand half-outstretched and a concerned look on her face.
“Bad dreams?” she asks, setting a notebook and pen down in front of me.
I shake my head as I scribble out a response. I think I dream, but I can’t ever remember what I dream about. They haven’t been bad, though.
At least, I think they haven’t been bad…
‘You startled me. I’m used to sleeping alone.’
It’s not the whole truth, but me and Mike mostly kept to ourselves. I think he was a little scared of me, even when I started bringing him money, so he mostly kept away. I didn’t notice it at the time, but we never laughed together like me and Ember do. She seems a lot more comfortable around me than he ever was, probably because she has powers too.
“Sorry about that. I’ll be a little gentler next time. The sun’s set, so I figured I’d wake you up. I need to go through a few things with you.”
I nod up at her, shaking off the last of my sleep. I guess this is my first night on the job.
“Great!” Ember exclaims as she gets a good look at my determined nod. “Tonight’s mostly about getting you used to the organisation, the area and the city. Nothing too complex, but I need to bring you up to speed on a few things.”
Good. The more I can learn about this city, the better. It still amazes me, with all its wonders and impossibilities, but that amazement is stained by the bitter reality. I know now that, however beautiful the city may seem, it can be dangerous too. Not dangerous in the obvious way, like those stitched-together men who came down from the north, but dangerous in ways I can’t even begin to understand.
Subtle ways; like needles that kill and men who buy them anyway.
I need to stop just seeing the city and start properly understanding it. For that, I need someone who knows the city, who belongs in it. Who moves through the city, its bright lights and its glittering towers, as easily as I move through its shadows. That’s Ember.
I stand up, putting the notebook aside on a bookshelf and look up at Ember, expectantly.
“Might want to bring the notebook with you,” she says. “We’re not looking for any fights tonight, and conversations are always better when they go both ways.”
I let out a sound in agreement, more a couple of clicks than anything else, and pick up the notepad and pen, clutching them close to my chest as I follow her out the door and into the short corridor. Unlike Ember’s lovely office, the corridor is a lot more utilitarian. It’s like the rest of the security station, what little I’ve seen of it, in that it was clearly painted and decorated to erase what was here before, rather than to add anything new.
Ember doesn’t take me far, pushing open the first door we come across and stepping into an expansive room that might have been the master bedroom, back when this was still a house. Whatever carpet was here before has been replaced by a hard surface that looks easy to clean, the bed, wardrobes, dressers and vanity switched out for two rows of desks with picture screens hooked up to typewriters. An entire wall of the room has been covered in more picture screens, showing people moving throughout the streets of what I quickly recognise as the Red-Light district.
Everyone looks at us as we step into the room, but most of them quickly turn back to their screens. One woman doesn’t, instead stepping up from her desk and walking towards us. She’s dressed in the same crisp grey uniform as the other people in the room, and most of the other guards I’ve seen around the district, but what most draws my eye is that she’s almost the spitting image of Ember. Or, she’s at least close enough that most people would have trouble telling the difference at first.
“This is the camera room,” Ember explains, ignoring her doppelganger for the moment. “From here we can monitor the whole neighbourhood.”
She turns, clapping a hand on the woman’s shoulder.
“Collier here runs the whole show, and also helps coordinate our people over the radio. Collier, this is Nightcrawler. She’ll be working for me from now on, so I’m showing her how we do things.”
The woman bends down a little, stretching out a hand for me to shake. She seems a little nervous about getting close to me, but she’s doing a good job at hiding it.
“Hi!” She smiles, a friendly, disarming, look that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “Nice to meet you! I’m Amara Collier and, like Ember said, this is my little kingdom.”
She steps over to the desks and gestures behind her to the wall of monitors.
“We’ve got full coverage of all the streets, and plenty of coverage of the alleyways around the district.” She leans back, comfortably typing backwards for a few moments as the image on the picture screen next to her resolves into a strangely coloured image of an alleyway.
“You might recognise this one,” she says, as the blocky outline of a case falls out of a window and into the dumpster below, shortly followed by a lithe black shape that disperses itself into shadows as it hits the pitch-black sacks of refuse, lit strangely white by the odd overlay.
If I could, I’d probably be blushing. I never stood a chance at escaping with that money.
“We’ve got night vision on most of the external cameras,” Amara continues, ignorant of my embarrassment, “and we’re slowly working on upgrading them with thermals. Most of the work we do here is about identifying threats. The bouncers all have radios, but they can’t see everything. We can pick up on fights as they happen, and dispatch security officers. What’s most valuable is the facial recognition software we have. It helps us spot pushers from the Triad or some of the smaller gangs and keep them out of the district.”
She stops talking as I scribble out a question on my notepad and pass it over to her.
‘What’s a pusher?’
She chuckles, fixing Ember with a disbelieving look.
“Where did you find her, ma’am?”
“She followed me home,” Ember answers tersely, even as she grins, before gesturing for Amara to answer my question.
“Right, well…” She hesitates for a brief moment, like she’s putting her thoughts in order. “Pushers sell drugs for the gangs. In this case, the main problem is people from Triad affiliates coming into the district and selling inferior product. Not only is it a revenue stream we don’t want them to have, it tends to bring overdoses and even deaths into the district. The last thing we need is bad quality drugs bringing down heat on our operation. Quite aside from the risks, too many cops in the neighbourhood tends to drive away customers. That hits our bottom line.”
I nod, even though I understood maybe half of that. I got the important bits; that ‘pushers’ sell ‘drugs’ and that ‘drugs’ cause deaths. It’s the last pieces of the puzzle I needed; drugs are a vice, like the vices that happen here, and Mike spent the money I brought him to fuel that vice. It hurt him, but he didn’t care.
What was it he said to me? In that alleyway, beneath the pouring rain?
I need money. I need it for food, I need it for clothes, I need it to cope with everything that’s going on. To get through the night.
This place… it’s full of vice, no doubt about that. But at least they’re keeping those needles away.
“Got any more questions for her, hun?” Ember asks me, before waving Amara back to her workplace as I shake my head. I do scribble out a quick remark once we’ve left the room, though.
‘She looks a lot like you.’
Ember smirks. “You noticed that, huh? Yeah, there’s a few like her around here. I think she worked in LA before, but when I got put in charge here the company moved her up north, along with a security officer and a HR admin who also have a pretty similar build, height and skin tone to me. As for me, Violet Rucker is on the books as an admin dogsbody.”
She looks around for a moment, up and down the corridor, before taking off her orange mask and passing it over to me. I turn it over in my hands, looking for anything particularly special about it. I thought there might be something hidden on the inside of the mask, but there’s nothing.
“As a Parahuman, the most important thing I have is my identity. It’s the only thing keeping the government from forcing me into one of their pet teams, and it’s the only thing stopping the Triad from sending Bloody Mary to kill me in my sleep.”
She kneels down, resting a hand on my shoulder and looking me straight in the eye as she sets her mask back on her face.
“It’s also something you don’t have, which means you need to be careful. I know you like to roam about and I’m not going to tell you not to, but you need to make sure that nobody can build up a connection between Nightcrawler and Violet Rucker. If you go out, make sure nobody sees you coming or going, okay?”
I nod my head and fix her with a determined stare – which is easy enough with six eyes – until her stern, worried look turns into a friendly smile as she gently squeezes my shoulder and stands up.
“C’mon, I’ve got a few more things I need to show you, and the night isn’t getting any younger.”
She takes me down the stairs of the converted house and out into the little fort they’ve built in the middle of the city, ringed by stone walls topped by strange coils of wire with what looks like sharp blades stuck to the metal. We stop at her car, as Ember takes a bland-looking raincoat out of the trunk, draping it over the crook of her arm. Then we step out of the neatly-kept compound and into the anarchic mass of deep red lights and rich shadows that makes up the appropriately named Red-Light district.
Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.
Somehow, the red lights don’t hurt as bad as the ones inside the compound, and they’re nowhere near as painful as the sun. It still doesn’t feel right to be standing in the light, especially with how everyone keeps looking at me – both the customers and the… well, I suppose workers is as good a word as any. The former are more obvious about it than the latter, though both groups tend to give us plenty of space to walk unhindered.
“Like I said,” Ember talks as she walks me through the heart of the district, “we’re mostly here as flashy security. Ninety percent of the time we’re not even needed; Jaarsveld’s boys are more than capable of dealing with a few rowdy drunks. I’ve got an earpiece hooked up to our comms, but I assume that’s not an option for you?”
I scowl, nodding my head. My inability to take things with me into the shadows is… frustrating, to put it lightly.
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll tell Jaarsveld to make sure each of his guys is carrying a notebook or a small whiteboard or something. Maybe even see about having someone teach you hand signals. If you see something that looks like trouble, go find one of the guys and they’ll radio Collier. I figured you’d be happier sticking to the shadows anyway, right?”
I nod a lot more firmly this time. I don’t mind walking down the street like this, because I understand it’s something I need to do to keep Ember’s company, and my room in her house, but I’d be a lot more comfortable in the dark.
“I get it. Feel free to roam around as much as you want, so long as you stick within the district while you’re on-shift and don’t go inside any of the buildings unless things are really going wrong. People come here when they want to really cut loose, and it’s important that we keep people thinking that they’ve got the privacy to do that.”
Ember stops talking to me for a quick second as a man in a suit jacket flags her down from the other side of the street. I peer across at them, but I don’t get any closer. I’ve had my fill of talking for now, and they’re standing right under a streetlight. I think he must be the owner of one of the… establishments here. He’s a lot more laid back than the customers, and his shirt is patterned with bright, vaguely floral, designs that’re a lot more flamboyant than the style anywhere else in the city.
As I watch the two of them talking, I can’t help but notice that the crowd aren’t giving me quite the same amount of space they gave me and Ember, and that the man she’s talking to is acting almost deferentially towards her. As she finishes up her conversation and strolls back across the street, I scribble out a quick observation.
‘Everyone here respects you.’
She looks at me oddly, like I’ve just reminded her that the sky is black, or something.
“Well yeah, I’m in charge. Collier and Jaarsveld are both good at their jobs, and decent enough once you get to know them, but the Elite is an organisation run by Parahumans, for Parahumans. Everybody in the world wants to control us, whether it’s the PRT who want us as soldiers, gangs who want us as muscle or politicians who treat us as friends or enemies depending on which way the Washington wind’s blowing. The Elite is the only way we have of asserting our right to decide our own future.”
I nod, even though it’s a little hard for me to see the difference right now. I’m with Ember because she keeps me safe, and that’s all I need. I could get that safety from other groups – maybe – but I don’t know anything about them. Ultimately, though, Ember’s the one keeping me safe. Not the Elite.
I don’t talk to Ember again, following a pace behind her as she walks a meandering route through the whole district, gladhanding with every guard and every owner of every den of vice. I start to put together a clearer picture of her role here. The cameras might keep everything safe, but they’re hard to spot – I certainly didn’t spot them. Right now, Ember is a physical reminder of what the owners of all these businesses are paying for; the sort of safety that nobody else can offer.
I’m a little lost in thought, and a little intimidated by all the people around us, to the point where I almost walk into Ember where she stops, touching her earbud with one finger as she listens to a voice that only she can hear. Abruptly, she turns off, striding down a dark alley, away from the lights of the district and into the warren of alleys that surrounds it.
I follow her, occasionally tossing my notebook out in front of me and darting through the shadows to catch it before it hits the ground. It feels good to slip back in and out of the darkness; the red lights aren’t as harsh as some of the other lights I’ve seen, but they’re nothing compared to the feeling of comfort and safety I get from slipping into the shadows. I catch the notebook with my tail and toss it high up into the air, soaring up the shadowed side of the building and snatching the book as it’s two stories high before landing, perfectly poised, on the railing of the fire escape.
The metal structure is rusted, creaking and groaning even under my slight weight. Ember turns at the sound, smiling and laughing before shaking her head and carrying on down the alleyway. From my perch, I can see the headlights of a car approaching, but Ember doesn’t seem phased. I drop down, leaping from the fire escape onto a dumpster before landing a little behind Ember as the vehicle – a van – comes to a stop in front of us.
The driver leaves the engine running as he steps out into the alleyway. It takes a while for my eyes to adjust to the headlights and see him as anything more than a vaguely masculine silhouette, but a picture starts to come together. He’s tall, with broad shoulders and skin that’s lighter than Ember’s, but not as light as most of the people in the city. His clothes are very martial, if a little rougher and more practical than Jaeger’s uniform, with a mask covering the top half of his face, held in place by a red bandanna.
Inevitably, I find my gaze drifting towards the pistol and the wicked-looking axe attached to his belt.
He pulls a cigarette and a lighter out of one of his pockets, the red glow of tobacco lighting his face up a little. His skin is weathered, and pockmarked by scars. There’s a menace to him, an air of violence and danger. Unconsciously, I creep back to hide a little more of me behind Ember.
“Nice of you to drop by, Wovoka,” Ember says, utterly unintimidated.
“Not a problem, Ember,” he says, flashing a mouth full of white teeth that has me thinking more of a snarling wolf than a smiling man. “Always happy to visit your fine little patch of heaven.”
“I hope I’m not interrupting anything important.”
“We’re all swept off our feet right now,” Wovoka begins like he’s angry, before leaning against the hood of his van and taking another drag from his cigarette, “but no, nothing important. Moving the militia into the city is slow work, but it’s something my lieutenants can handle on their own. It’s a waiting game, and Black Rod figured I might as well wait here.”
He leans forward, flicking a glowing speck of ash onto the concrete, and fixes me with a piercing stare.
“Who’s your shadow? New hire?”
“Got it in one,” Ember says, stepping aside a little as he subtly tries to peer at me past her legs. I want to slip into the shadows again, but Ember’s costume is skin-tight, without any obvious places to hide, and I’m not desperate enough to leap over to the shadows at the side of the alley.
“She’s the reason I called you in, actually,” Ember continues. “I want to show Nightcrawler the city, teach her the lay of the land, but she’s very nocturnal.”
“Not to mention quite hard to hide.” Wovoka chuckles to himself. In a mean way.
“You’d be surprised,” Ember retorts, with an easy confidence in her voice that has me straighten up and fix the intimidating man with my most piercing stare.
“Whatever.” He leers at me for a moment before his eyes dart back to Ember. “I’m assuming you want me to keep out of sight?”
“Yeah. Tune into our radio frequency and keep an ear out for trouble. Don’t transmit anything. My people know you’re covering for me, but if they’re quiet about it then they can pretend this is just anonymous vigilantism in case the PRT comes sniffing. Don’t fuck it up and I’ll front the cost of a girl for you, as a little reward.”
“Do you really think I’m that shallow?” he asks, deliberately taking in an eyeful of Ember.
“Do you really want me to answer that?” she snaps back, with a voice as cold as ice. “Come on, Nightcrawler, we’ve got a long night ahead of us.”
Ember puts on her raincoat, the thigh-length material and deep hood turning her from an obvious Cape into a woman with slightly strange taste in pants.
Wovoka simply snorts, stepping around his van and sliding open a door at the side. After a second, the headlights are switched off, leaving just a little light bleeding through the open door. Ember walks past the van and I follow by her side, putting her in-between me and the van.
As I pass, I sneak a quick glance through the open door. Wovoka is there, sitting on a filthy mattress and leaning up against the wall. Another one of those picture-boxes is mounted on the wall opposite him, showing some sort of drama if the sound is anything to go on. At the back of the van, I catch a brief glimpse of some fancy-looking radio equipment and about a dozen rifles lined up on a rack.
For the first time, I find myself wondering about the organisation I’ve signed up to. Ember is alright – I can see that she cares – but everyone I’ve met from outside her group has been terrifying, whether it’s Jaeger with his clinical disinterest or Wovoka and his barely-restrained savagery. More than ever, I find myself determined to stick close to Ember, to trust her to steer me safely through this new life.