W 46TH ST, THE VELVET COIL. HELL’S KITCHEN, NYC
NEIGHBORHOOD: CLAIMED BY GUARDIAN: LOOPHOLE (CONTESTED)
CITY: CLAIMED BY GUARDIAN SQUAD: GREAT STRIKERS (CONTESTED BY MISCREANT: BOLTDROID)
CURRENT PHASE POINTS: 12675
END OF PHASE ONE: 01D:21H:35M:01S
----------------------------------------
Axio’s daily announcement came and went with, as Pinky had aptly predicted, his normal amount of threats. Whether it was because of the threats sent the night before or something else entirely, the number of people not keeping up the pace to hit the 10k mark had dropped from 50% to 30%, though once again Axio deployed Major Level threats to them for, as he put it, "slacking off."
Pinky and BrainCraft were both well over the 50% requirement, with Pinky passing it just before the announcement herself. They had been deep in the discussion of some aspects of their new squad. Pinky had ended up getting her way with the name, though BrainCraft insisted it was only until they added a third member. We sat, talked and exchanged a few fight stories, though it did feel like I did more talking than they did as they asked about the swarm fight. Although they had been incredibly friendly so far, I still tried my best to keep the bigger parts of my ability and though they tried to needle an explanation for how I went from illusions to "super powered leaps," I managed to keep my lips sealed.
I ate while there, finding that just like with the drinks the food was quite nearly perfect. It wasn’t just that they might have been the best wings I had ever eaten in my life though, the Well Fed buff I received from eating them literally came with an additional Perfect Nutrition buff, which part of me knew wasn’t terminology that was generally used for a basket of wings, carrots and celery.
“Perfect Nutrition. You’ve eaten something perfectly nutritionally balanced for a growing Augment. +1 to all stats. Your Well Fed buff will not begin to expire until this buff expires. This buff lasts for 2 Hours.”
While it was good to know there was a buff that went beyond Well Fed, I didn’t necessarily go out of my way to rush out and utilize it either. By the time 8 PM rolled around, Jon was making me put on the nicest shirt I owned, which wasn’t all that nice, with one of my Uncle’s old blazers. We walked across the city, something that had suddenly felt incredibly mundane to me after flying over the neighborhood all day, and took in the oddly peaceful night.
I had been half expecting Angie to interrupt our plans with a Crime Alert but nothing popped up and as we got in line to enter the club, I felt myself feeling off-balance. My interface was still wanting to highlight the building, clearly marking it as a viper den, and I felt myself itching to activate my gear for a fight.
It was only the presence of a crowd of people that were very clearly marked as Sapients that held my mental finger off the button. The bouncer at the door, a non-Sapient named Frank, looked us over, checked our IDs, and then waved us in without any sort of hassle, much to my surprise. I was under no illusion that Axio would care if I was in my gear or not, the fact that there were people here he had direct control over left me at a disadvantage without my abilities.
My location panel updated with Gold Level Viper Den - Hell’s Kitchen as we entered the building. It was amazing how easily I had started to mentally ignore those little elements of my interface after just a few days with it.
The place was gaudy, loud, and far more impressive than I was expecting. Several dozen high top tables sat in the main area of the club, littered with sleek black marble columns reaching up to what I initially thought was the roof, but quickly noticed was actually a second floor to the club. There were several staircases leading down into a section with rounded off booths that had lush looking green velvet cushions, smaller tables, and even a small dance floor. I wasn’t quite sure if jazz was the kind of music people actually danced too, but it was there all the same. Most of the tables and booths in the lower section were filled with patrons and Jon led us to one of the open high top tables, grabbing it before it could be stolen from us.
“Who knew people still liked jazz,” I said as I looked around the club. I randomly selected people as I went, letting my vision highlight them just to check.
It only took a few for a pattern to become clear. Every single one of the employees that I highlighted was a non-Sapient, and while most of the people sitting at tables were Sapient, there were a few booths close to the stage that were loaded with Viper soldiers, still thankfully in human form. I nudged Jon and pointed over to them as subtly as I could.
“Damn, right in the leather vests and everything. It’s a good thing too, not like I can exactly highlight them outside of the apartment,” he said with a slight frown.
“Awww, is he missing my silky smooth commentary?” Angie said wistfully.
“I doubt it,” I thought back quickly, looking away from the stage where several members of a band in sleek black suits with emerald accents were setting up. A young woman with curly blonde hair pulled into a ponytail, ruby lipstick and a sleek outfit complete with a small green bowtie walked up to us. Her fingers drummed across the table as she came to a stop.
“Good evening gentleman, my name is Felicia and I’ll be your server tonight,” she said with a wide smile as she set down a long thin menu. “All house special drinks are on sale for as long as Miss Pearl is singin’, can I start you two off with anything?”
“Miss Pearl?” I asked and almost on queue I heard the tap of a finger against a microphone.
Standing at the center of the stage was a middle-aged woman who wore her age exceptionally well. Her deep cocoa skin stood as a stark contrast against the emerald green dress that clung to her modest curves as if it was painted on. The material of the dress looked strikingly like scales, with opalescent edges that shone in the light and she wore a pair of matching gloves that stretched nearly all the way up her arms.
“She’s our in-house resident singer, the boss loves her so she always gets the prime time spot,” Felicia explained, almost a bit peeved if I wasn’t mistaking her tone. She shook it off quickly as a wide smile split across her face, “She should be starting any minute, so the sales are starting up now. If you like something fruity, I suggest the Fangbite Fizz, although I do have to warn you, they’re dangerous.”
“I’ll take one of those,” Jon said with his I.D. already ready for her. She barely glanced at it before she turned to me and I just shrugged.
“Can I just get a Red Bull and some water?”
“Designated driver huh?” She asked with a raised brow.
“Drive? In New York? Nobody drives in New York,” Jon said and Felicia laughed as she set a hand on his shoulder.
“Well aren’t you just a little comedian," She said with a smile before moving her hand to write on a small notepad. "I’ll get these drinks right out for you.”
She sauntered off and Jon watched her go almost like a puppy.
“What’s she got that I don’t?!” Angie huffed.
“An actual body?” I suggested and she huffed again.
“Well at least I can think on my own,” she said and I resisted the urge to point out how much I doubted that before she added. “I heard that.”
“I’d put your eyes back in your head, she’s a non-Sapient,” I said, a bit lower than normal as I looked back up at the stage. Miss Pearl seemed to be having a conversation with her pianist as the rest of the band did final checks on their equipment.
“Damn… there’s always a catch, isn’t there?” Jon said with a sigh, his own tone lowering as he pulled out his phone. “Though then again, Giada was with Sal… so they are technically fully human…”
“Dude…”
“Yeah I know, didn’t feel right saying out loud,” Jon said with his nose scrunched up. “Just feels weird to see them just, integrated with normal people.”
“Yeah I know that feeling,” I said as another tap of the microphone brought my attention back up to the stage.
Miss Pearl stood there, the lights shifting on the stage to illuminate the entire band as she slowly raised her hands up to the sides. The crowd reacted by dropping to silence, and a bright white smile cut across the old singer’s face.
“Well well well, doesn’t this please this old gals heart seeing this place just packed to the gills!” She said with a sultry drawl. “Okay Zee, I think we’ve kept these fine folks waiting long enough, let’s bring them on down to the snake’s nest.”
“You got it Miss P,” a younger man with a saxophone said as he brought it to his lips and began. There were a few quick blasts, before he turned to the rest of the band and shouted “Hit it!”
The lights came to life in a perfect choreographed show as Zee stood from his stool, leaning into his sax as the band followed. His saxophone blared with sharp, staccato like bursts before the drummer’s sticks moved with the rhythm of a machine gun against the snare. Miss Peal held a tambourine at her side that she smacked against her hip in beat and the thrumming of an upright bass thumped with a steady groove that rumbled at my chest. Just as I thought the music couldn’t get any louder, several brass instruments burst into the song with bright, brassy tones that cut through the melody causing the crowd to cheer in excitement.
More than a few people jumped to their feet and hit the dance floor including, to my surprise, a few of the Viper Soldiers. They grabbed partners, dancing with practiced grace as they swung in time to the erratic beat of the music. I was never a dancer myself, but the lively sound of the music practically demanded movement and I found my foot tapping in time with the song.
I was broken from the near trance the music had me in as Felicia set our drinks down on the table along with a few napkins. I turned maybe a bit too quickly and my hand smacked the glass of water she had set down. It was probably a good thing I wasn’t in my gear, given how high my Strength stat jumped when I had it equipped, smacking i then might have sent the glass flying. Thankfully, the glass only fell over, pouring its contents onto the table as Felicia jumped backwards slightly.
“Ah shit… I’m so sorry,” I said quickly as I looked around. There wasn’t a napkin dispenser on the table nor was there silverware wrapped in napkins either.
“Happens all the time, people get enraptured by the house band,” she said with a forced laugh. “I think I forgot my towel though, so I’m going to need to go find one to clean this up really quick.”
Stolen novel; please report.
She turned and retreated quickly as I looked at the small pool of water that dripped over the edge of the high top table.
“She’s really a non-Sapient? Like, that was so real though…” Jon said, slightly in awe. Though he had seen me fight more than a few Viper now, I hadn’t really communicated with the non-Sapients outside of the shops in the square, and those ones felt so segregated from the real world that it was easy to pretend that it didn’t that they weren’t, technically speaking, “real” people. Felicia quickly came back with a fresh glass of water, setting it on the table before cleaning up the mess.
The music seemed to come to a slow, popping end as the crowd cheered and Miss Pearl stepped back up to the microphone. While I was expecting for her to say something, maybe even introduce the next song, nothing of the sort occurred. Instead, the band immediately started to play once more, this time in a slow, bluesy melody. The lights dimmed and a spotlight shone down onto the well dressed singer. And as the slow bassline thrummed and the saxophone rang in a low soothing tone, Miss Pearl began to sing.
"Hear the hum beneath the city’s bones,
A rattling hymn through the twilight tones.
Follow the shadow, where the venom stains,
Down the forgotten tracks, through the serpent’s domain."
The pianist hit a striking cord as her sultry tones filled the room and brought a hush over the crowd. Her hips swayed as she held onto the microphone stand, letting her body move with the lilting melody.
While the music continued to swell, I let my Area Sense activate, thankful I could use it without being in my gear. It was almost sensory overload as the sudden influx of new information hit my mind, but it quickly settled as I probed and felt the intrusions in my space. My sense hadn’t improved since I first acquired it, so I still couldn’t tell specific details just with my sense, so the blobs of humans, tables, and decorations that pressed against me all felt the same.
"In the heart of the city, 'neath the endless streams,
There's a rhythm that plays in forgotten dreams,
Through tunnels dark, where the echoes hum,
A venomous trail shows where to come."
On the balcony that ran above us and I could feel at least one person walking, but for the most part the close collection of intrusions meant it was probably just more seating. I redirected my attention downward instead, reaching out and investigating the basement of the building. There were at least two separate rooms I could feel, just based on the walls and doorways that I could touch, and I could feel several blobs that must have been humans. They were huddled around… maybe a table? It was hard to tell for sure.
I closed my eyes, trying to focus harder, to see if I could get a better feel by concentrating as the saxophone started to play a slow but haunting solo. The band fell silent, their absence amplifying the solitary voice of the sax, which rose and fell in slow, deliberate waves. There was a larger figure that moved from one room to the next in the basement, and it felt as if one of the blobs huddled was suddenly yanked from the group just as the sax's solo came to an end and the rest of the band joined fully back into the song.
"Beneath the gleam of the starry ceiling,
Where tracks run deep and secrets are reeling,
A whisper echoes where the lost trains sleep,
Follow the hum where shadows creep."
The brass section wailed in a demanding chorus as the song burst back to life, practically rattling me from my concentration and I struggled to maintain my focus. The hulking form was still there, but the blobs that I thought were people huddled around a table seemed to be frozen in place now. I wasn’t sure if I had missed something or if they were simply holding painfully still.
"Where the golden clock marks the fleeting time,
And feet once rushed to the echoing chime,
Slip to the dark where the rails run thin,
Fifty steps down, that's where it begins."
“Holy shit… It’s the answer,” Jon said, almost in awe. The sudden noise coming from right next to me finally broke my concentration and I looked over to him.
“Huh? What was the question? What did I just miss?” I asked, feeling the residual effects of my ability dissipating as my new sense vanished back into my ability.
“The song, she’s literally giving us the answer dude. The starry ceiling, the golden clock… Shit, let me check something,” he said and pulled out his phone. Had he been the one with increased strength, he might have destroyed his phone with how hard his thumbs went racing across the screen.
“Seriously, what the hell did I just zone out and miss?” I asked again and a moment later he turned his phone to me with an impossibly smug grin. “Grand Central Station?”
“That’s where Sal… the real Sal is. I’d put money on it. There's a few lines that go out of there, we just have to figure out which one he's hiding along and boom, we got him,” he said as the song came to a close and the audience burst into applause around us.
“Wait… but why the hell would she be singing that? Isn’t it a bit odd that literally the second song we heard the first time we came here was something that gave us clues to a location conveniently located to us? What if it’s a trap?!” I hissed in a low whisper and he turned toward me with a shrug.
“Why would you have gotten a key and a mission to hunt him down in the first place? Who's been guiding you to figuring out his involvement in all of this? Maybe it’s a trap but like, there’s no way that song was a coincidence given that this is the last place we can be looking for clues. If…” he said, starting to say something else before he turned and smiled at someone approaching from behind me. “Hi Felicia, do you think you could get me another one of these and maybe one of the appetizer sampler platters?”
“Well aren't you just a little psychic knowing what I was coming over here to ask,” Felicia said as she came to a stop by our table with a smile. “You’re not one of those Augments now, are you?”
Jon laughed and shook his head, “Nah, just a lucky guess.”
“Well that’s a pretty good guess then,” she said, lightly placing a hand on Jon’s shoulder again with a wink before adding, “I’ll put that right in for you sweetie.”
“God I hate that bitch,” Angie muttered as I watched Felicia head back toward a door tucked into a corner of the building on the far side of the main bar.
“What were you saying?” I asked, ignoring her grumbling as I turned my attention back to Jon.
“Maybe we shouldn’t be talking about this stuff in the open,” he said before nodding over toward the dance floor. “Besides, I think your friends are up to something, they're all moving in a hurry.”
I looked in the direction he had indicated and sure enough, every one of the Vipers had grabbed stuff from their booths and started to take off toward a back door. Slowly, but deliberately I slipped my uncle’s blazer from my shoulders.
“I’m uh… I’m gonna go to the bathroom real quick,” I said, pulling my wallet from my pocket and sliding a few bills across the table to him as Jon gave me a knowing look.
“Do your thing… uh… text me if something is happening and I’ll grab your blazer,” he said before thinking about it for a moment. “Actually… how bout you just leave it on the chair closer to me. I got a feeling there's no way this ends simply...”
The band started up another song and I moved as fast as I could without outright jogging. I wasn’t necessarily trying to draw attention to myself, but I still wished I had my gear on so that I could just activate my Spectrum Veil and move unseen. The Vipers were moving quickly, but in a relatively orderly fashion as they headed toward the same door as Felicia.
As they passed through their door, I slipped into a door to the bathroom that was conveniently located next to it. I barely let the door close behind me, verifying the room was a single occupancy before I activated my gear and Spectrum Veil in quick succession. Not wanting to lose the trail, I pulled the door back open slowly, inching my way back out the door and hoping no one had noticed.
Another waitress was just pushing her way through the door to what I could now tell was the kitchen, holding a tray of various plates. I pushed myself against the wall, waiting for her to pass before I rushed for the door, making my way through it just before it could close. I looked around quickly, barely catching the trailing Viper as they turned another corner. I made my way to it, peering around the edge and finding a long staircase down to a concrete wall that turned past where I could see from my vantage point. Almost effortlessly now that I was used to the mechanic, I opened the phone portion of my interface.
There was no way he was going to be able to get back to the Command Room in time to be my second set of eyes and I wasn’t going to wait that long either. I descended the staircase, watching as my Stamina dropped quickly from the continued use of Spectrum Veil. It was definitely dropping, but not quite as rapidly as it might have before I had gotten the gear upgrades that practically doubled my total amount.
I could hear the sound of voices the closer to the bottom I got, and I was careful with my steps, thankful that the staircase didn’t have any sort of squeak to them. There was a large room as I peered around the corner and I saw the Viper’s all towering over a group of older women standing around a long table.
The women looked to be sorting and organizing something under their careful observation, more than likely a drug of some sort if I had to guess, though my familiarity with anything past weed only came from television and movies. To my surprise, the women all had shackles at their ankles, holding them to the table and it left me feeling extremely uneasy. Even if they were non-Sapients, it felt inhumane.
And then I scanned one of them, discovering that the woman, a lady named Maria Owens, was a Sapient.
I felt my jaw literally drop, unable to believe that Axio would go this far before I reminded myself that it wasn’t just him behind this. Snakebite was involved as well and at this point it didn’t matter that he had to be higher leveled than me, this went far beyond just some code scribbled on the wall of a bar. This was beyond basic humanity.
I counted at least a dozen Soldiers, ranging from level 6 to 8, though luckily none of them were in snake form. I was going to have to move quickly if I wanted to protect the women and I immediately found myself wishing I could…
My mind trailed off as I thought about my most recent knowledge acquisition. While I had gained a cursory but wide level of understanding on the basics of quantum mechanics, the fundamentals were still a hard thing to wrangle in my head without giving it my entire focus.
I didn’t have a lot of time to consider every single aspect that this would entail, but I mentally reached for the equations that had become imprinted in my brain on quantum tunneling. It wasn’t about breaking the laws of physics, even if some Augments could do that without having to obtain the right knowledge sets. It was about bending the rules just enough to slip through the cracks. All I needed was the right combination of probability and focus. If particles could appear on the other side of a barrier just because their waveforms didn’t care about the rules, who’s to say I couldn’t do the same? It wasn’t technically teleporting, it was quantum problem-solving.
“NEW ABILITY! PHASE STEP! THIS IS A MOVEMENT ABILITY! I REALLY WAS WONDERING IF IT WAS A GOOD IDEA FOR YOU TO GO AND SPEND ALL THAT MONEY ON A BOOK WITH SHENANIGANS IN THE TITLE, AFTER ALL THAT’S MY KIND OF BUSINESS. BUT YOU WENT AND PROVED ME WRONG, I DON’T THINK I LIKE IT WHEN YOU DO THAT. THIS ABILITY ALLOWS YOU TO TELEPORT TO A LOCATION WITHIN YOUR AREA THAT YOU CAN VISIBLY SEE, WE CAN’T JUST LET YOU IMMEDIATELY TELEPORT TO THE OTHER SIDE OF WALLS RIGHT AWAY, THAT WOULD BE WAY TOO BROKEN. THE ACCURACY OF PHASE STEP IS NOT GUARANTEED. THERE IS A BASE 50% CHANCE THAT YOU WILL END UP RANDOMLY PLACED WITHIN 5 FEET OF YOUR INTENDED LOCATION, REDUCING BY 1% FOR EACH POINT OF LUCK THAT YOU HAVE. THIS ABILITY COSTS 500 POINTS OF STAMINA PER JUMP UNLESS YOU ARE JUMPING TO A LOCATION WHERE A VERSION OF YOU (I.E. AN AFTERIMAGE) ALREADY EXISTS, WHICH REDUCES THE COST OF THIS ABILITY BY 90%.”