Chapter 6
A Darker Path
Part Six: A Good Death
[A/N: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]
Later That Afternoon
Hebert Household Basement
Taylor
I pressed the button on the tiny remote; with a tiny whine, the jaws opened against the spring holding them closed. Releasing the button let the jaws snap shut again. I carefully didn't press the second button on the remote, which would overload the tiny battery powering the whole gizmo and deconstruct it explosively.
I hadn't even known that was possible, up until now.
Resting on the workbench were several other devices with similar applications, all constructed from the bits and pieces I'd purchased from the electronics store. I wasn't sure what they were going to be used for, but I had no doubt it would be impressive.
Setting the remote aside, I took up the key that the locksmith had engraved for me. Thirty seconds with an angle-grinder had erased some of the engraving, and transformed it into a functional key. For what, I still had no idea, but I was sure I would find out.
(And yes, I was impressed that my power could freestyle a working key in thirty seconds with an angle grinder. I mean, damn).
However, I was done here for the moment. Bundling everything together, I put it back in the coal chute and screwed the wood facing back on. By the time the car tyres crunched on the gravel in the driveway, I had washed my hands and face, and was hard at work prepping a lasagne in the kitchen.
"Hi, Taylor," Dad said as he opened the back door. "How was the rest of your day?"
I shrugged and kept on with my task. "Eh, got stuff done. Nobody messed with me."
He slapped me on the shoulder on the way past to the fridge. "Best kind of day."
Under the Medhall Building
Hookwolf
Bradley shook his head. "Oni Lee wasn't any kind of pushover," he said flatly. "I fought him enough times to know that. If this Atropos asshole offed him and says they're gonna go after you, I think you should take some kinda precautions."
"That's what I've been saying," James replied. "Max. What are your thoughts on the matter?"
Max ran his hand over his face and looked around at his two lieutenants. In his hand was an untouched glass of bourbon, the ice slowly melting into the drink. "Sorry, I'm a little distracted. When I got home, I found some of my property missing. Someone not only penetrated the security system, but filched two items out of my private collection of blades. My katzbalger and the bodice shears are gone. All the cameras caught was a shadow on the edge of the frame."
"Shit, that sucks." Bradley went for a sympathetic tone. "How much were they worth, anyway? Was it the gold-plated stuff?"
"No, and that's what I can't figure out," Max snarled. He clenched his free hand into a fist and thumped it on the table. "The thief walked straight past pieces of art worth six figures, and took none of it. They went straight to my study, opened the display case without tripping the alarm, and took exactly two pieces, neither of which is strikingly unique or intrinsically valuable. Then they left again."
James shrugged. "So we approach it from that end. Why would someone want those two specific pieces? Who would want them?"
"There's a few capes out there who like the whole medieval look," Bradley offered. "I mean, Armsmaster's got that fucking halberd."
"But that's Tinkertech," James objected. "Max's collection is all genuine antiques. A sword is just a sword. Shears are just shears. Who needs shears?"
Bradley chuckled. "Parian? You know, for cutting up the cloth for her stupid stuffed animals?"
"Wait." Max sat upright, his eyes opening wide. "Shears. Cutting cloth."
"Yeah, that's what I just said." Bradley eyed his boss warily. "You okay there?"
"Motherfucker." It was like Max hadn't heard him. "Shears. You know who else uses shears to cut things?"
Bradley shared a glance of mutual incomprehension with James, then shrugged. "Fucked if I know."
Max looked at the other two. "Did you ever learn about the three Fates in school? Clotho, who spun the threads of people's lives, Lachesis, who measured them out … and Atropos, who cut them using shears?"
A silence descended on the trio, that lasted almost thirty seconds.
"So it was Atropos," James said slowly. "They were right there. In your house."
"It might not have been them," Bradley objected, but it sounded weak even to his ears.
"Really?" Max's lips were pulled back in a snarl. "You think so? Exactly two things were taken. A German landsknecht's sword, and a pair of shears. That's a message if I ever saw one. 'I know you're Kaiser, signed Atropos'."
Bradley didn't get it. "So it's a German sword. What's that got to do with anything?"
"Because," Max said with an air of strained patience, "it was once owned by Kaiser Wilhelm the first. My father built the collection around it."
Well, that put a whole new meaning on things. "Oh. Oh, shit."
"It's clear that your house isn't safe anymore, that's for certain," James decided. "Maybe you should actually think about …"
Bradley shook his head. "Nope. Don't even go there."
"No." Max's voice was firm. "If you were about to say, 'think about leaving town', that's not a possibility. I am the Empire Eighty-Eight; the Empire Eighty-Eight is me. I inherited this team from my father, and I refuse to abandon it like this. Besides, if word got out, how would it look? All people would have to do is post a credible death threat on PHO, and I leave town? They could cripple us at a whim!"
"Your death would also be a huge setback." James took a sip of his drink. "I do agree. You must not be seen to flee from a potential assassin. But your house is clearly not secure enough for this matter. I think … right here, in this building, is the best place to be. Electronic security is one thing to defeat. But no matter how stealthy this Atropos is, I doubt they could fight their way past our entire cape contingent to get to you."
Bradley cracked his knuckles with a series of metallic pops. "Damn right."
If this Atropos seriously decided to come after Kaiser, he decided, they would regret it very fucking briefly.
ABB Territory
Lung
Despite his anger, Kenta's power lay quiescent. Nobody threatened him directly; midnight was still hours away. He looked down at the dark stain on the sidewalk where Oni Lee had died. A single shot to the face with his own gun. The autopsy, he'd heard through his own sources, had revealed a tiny mass of sodden ash at the far end of the wound channel.
Atropos had taken his gun and grenades. The final insult. She'd left Lee's mask and combat knife though, which was good. The latter had been retrieved by Isamu before he fled.
Lung had brought Isamu along with him, despite the idiot's broken arm (now splinted, and in a sling) and bandaged head. The young man spoke Vietnamese as well as his native Japanese, which would be useful; the proprietor of the shop spoke little to no English, and Kenta's own Vietnamese was limited to extremely crude subjects. He wanted exactly zero misunderstandings, going forward.
Waving to his other five men to stay where they were, he stepped forward and pushed the shop door open. A tiny bell jingled cheerily as he did so. From within the shop appeared an elderly lady, who bowed deeply and said something. One of her assistants spoke up. "Great Lung, we—"
"Silence!" barked Kenta. "My man will translate." Turning his head slightly, he nodded to Isamu. "What did the old lady say?"
Isamu cleared his throat. "She said, 'Great Lung, we are honoured by your presence in our humble shop.'"
"Hm." Kenta glared at her. She bowed again, then went to her knees. "Ask her where my money is."
Isamu spoke briefly. The lady replied quickly, barely above a whisper, trembling the whole time. Clenching his fists, Isamu stepped forward, but Kenta held up his hand. "Stop! What was that about?"
Breathing deeply through his nostrils, Isamu gritted the words out. "She says, 'I don't know. Perhaps that masked girl took it from you.'"
That was highly possible. It was what Kenta would have done. "Ask her what happened when the girl entered the shop."
A brief conversation ensued. "She says the girl required them to outfit her with a costume. After she killed Oni Lee, they were too afraid not to do what she said. The girl spoke Vietnamese fluently, better than me, she says."
"And you say she was white?" Kenta was pretty sure that was one of the details he'd been told. White girls who spoke Vietnamese that well were few and far between.
Isamu nodded, but carefully. "Yes. I remember wondering if she was a tourist."
Kenta frowned. That was actually a good point. Was this a cape from out of town, instead of a local? He wasn't sure how to check that. "Ask them if they saw the girl's face while they were outfitting her." He'd already established that none of the three men had seen her closely enough to recall any details. Concussions tended to have that effect.
Once more, Isamu passed on the query. The old lady answered, along with a hand gesture that covered the lower half of her face. When she'd finished, Isamu turned to Kenta. "She had a mask over her mouth and nose. Whenever she took it off, she turned her back on everyone."
"Of course she did," sighed Kenta. If this was a newcomer to the game, she was being very slick about it. "Did she seem to need her glasses, or were they just part of a disguise?" Isamu had mentioned the glasses, earlier, but Kenta doubted they could be worn over a morph mask.
The question made the old lady pause and think. Eventually, she shook her head. Kenta had his answer before Isamu translated. "She says no, the girl did not seem to have any sort of vision problems after she took her glasses off."
At least his men wouldn't be wasting their time looking for girls with glasses. "And she was tall, skinny, with long dark hair?"
The old lady bowed briefly and spoke a few words. Isamu snorted, then turned to Kenta. "She said, 'Great Lung knows all.' I think she is mocking you."
"I know mockery when I hear it." Kenta's tone was mildly censorious. "She would not dare mock me or lie to me." He doubted that the old lady liked him, but fear and respect were wolves that ran side by side and could easily be mistaken for one another. He didn't need friends; he just needed obedience.
"Should I tell her to hand over the protection money again?"
"Hm." Kenta considered it. "No. Tell her that in my generosity, I will forgive her the money this time, but in return I expect her to contact me immediately if the girl comes back, and to keep the girl talking until I arrive."
"Yes, sir." Isamu turned to the old lady, and rattled off a speech. Her reply was much shorter, and punctuated with another bow that put her forehead to the ground.
"She said, 'It will be done, great Lung.'" Isamu frowned. "I don't trust her."
Kenta turned toward the door of the shop. "I trust her to see to her own best interests. She knows that if the girl is seen in this shop again and she doesn't call me, I will burn it down with her inside."
Isamu followed him out; the door swung shut behind them. "But you didn't tell me to tell her that."
Turning to face his minion, Kenta smiled coldly. "Some things, you don't have to translate."
Taylor
Dad wanted to talk over dinner. I liked that he was engaging more, even if it narrowed my window for getting out and performing long-delayed retribution on some people who desperately needed it. So, after we cleared the table, we sat back and chatted.
Of course, he wanted to talk about Emma.
"What do you think happened to her, to make her turn on you?" he asked helplessly. "She was your best friend, for crying out loud!"
"I'm not totally sure," I said, though I had my suspicions. "Whatever it was, Sophia was at the centre of it. But it's not even all Sophia's fault, I don't think. Emma's always been a little … fragile. When she's got plenty of support, she's fine. But take that away, and she shatters. And when whatever it was happened, Sophia helped put her back together wrongly." I shrugged. "You saw what she was like when she lost Sophia."
"That's a little cold, isn't it?" Dad shook his head. "Emma was your best friend for years. Now she's a quivering wreck. I never knew this Sophia, but she was a human being too. You can't just dismiss them out of hand like that."
"Why not?" I asked reasonably. "They spent the better part of a year and a half doing their best to destroy me. Emma looked me in the eye and tore down Mom's memory in front of everyone. She chose to stop being my friend, and Sophia simply chose to be my enemy. I owe them nothing."
I hadn't raised my voice, but Dad still flinched. "Okay, yeah, I get it. You're still pissed at them. Believe me, I understand. I would be too. But at some point you have to learn to let things go, or it'll eat you up inside."
"No," I said. "You don't understand. I'm not angry at them, but I'm not about to forgive them either. I've literally stopped caring about them. Where they go, what they do, so long as it's not near me, I simply don't give a fuck."
He blinked. "Oh. Well, uh, that's … I suppose that's actually a very mature way to look at things. It's not one that I've ever mastered." A self-deprecating chuckle. "The best I ever did was learn to walk away before I punched someone."
I shrugged in return. "That's probably a good skill to have if your problems don't keep following you around the school. And if they'd kept it up after winter break, I would've come to you about it. But they didn't, and Sophia pulled her shit on someone who really wasn't going to take it, and here we are."
"Which is a matter of concern in and of itself," Dad noted. "Why would someone capable of that level of martial arts go after a teenage girl in the middle of school? What could she have possibly done to deserve that level of retaliation?"
"Well, I'm only making a wild guess here," I said. I was fully aware that I was lying through my teeth, but I also knew it was a lot safer for him to believe this than to be aware of the truth. "I noticed they were being a lot less enthusiastic about going after me, right?"
"Right," he said, nodding. "You mentioned it in the precinct."
"Yeah." I assumed a thoughtful expression. "My guess is that over the winter break, while she couldn't get to me, Sophia found someone else to torment, and they fought back. She's got—she had—this thing about always having to win. So, if they pushed back and actually got a punch in, she would've utterly fucking demolished them."
Dad didn't react to my swearing as he nodded slowly. "Yeah, I can see that. I've known people like that from time to time. So you think … they were related to a cape?"
I shrugged. "Or whoever it was, maybe their parents knew a cape. Maybe even one of the Empire Eighty-Eight." He looked at me and frowned, and I realised he was missing crucial information. "Oh, yeah, sorry. Sophia was black."
"Oh." He sat back. "Shit, yes. That makes sense."
"Mm-hmm." I nodded. "It wouldn't be all that hard to sneak someone into Winslow over the lunch break. She comes into the room, expecting to see her victim of the week, gets sucker-punched into the middle of next year, and they beat her to death."
Dad nodded again. "Yeah. Scary. I hope they catch who did it."
"The Empire's hurt a lot of people over the years." I said it like I was agreeing with him. "I don't think anyone's going to shed too many tears if they go down over something like this."
"Very true." He pushed back his chair. "I'll wash, you dry?"
"Sounds like a plan."
2350 Hours
Coil
Thomas Calvert slept the sleep of the clear of conscience, and those who had no conscience at all. Only in one of his instances was he actually asleep, so his dreams were lucid, populated with the goings-on of the other instance. This was a useful trick to have, so he made use of it as often as he could.
In the instance where he was awake, he was hard at work in his office in the underground base. Every mercenary was up and active. Eight were patrolling in pairs around the exterior exits, dressed as local security, while the rest were either moving through the base in regular sweep patterns or resting in their bunks, fully uniformed with their weapons beside them.
In the other instance, he was asleep in bed in his suburban house, with a pistol under his pillow. He had paid extra for a security panel that required a key to be inserted and turned for it to be disabled, and right now the only way to get to him was through one of three rooms covered by that security panel. And even if Atropos was coming after him under his real name, the house had been purchased under a false identity for just such a situation as this.
Seated in his office, he flicked his eyes at the alarm clock he'd placed on his desk. Then he picked up the radio that sat alongside the clock. "Security check, please."
"Security check, yes, sir."
He heard the names being read off and the code-phrase responses. Everyone answered correctly, as expected. But why were the hairs raising on the back of his neck?
"Check again," he ordered. "Secondary codes."
"Secondary codes, yes, sir."
This time, the names were only half done when a yellow light blipped up on his monitor. Unauthorised door opening. The sewer entrance. "Who opened the sewer entrance?"
"Blake and Senegal are out there, sir. They just answered with the correct phrases." He could hear running feet in the background, and people calling commands without using the radio net.
"Well, someone just got past them!" The hairs all down his spine were flaring now. He jumped to his feet and grabbed his pistol.
"On site now, sir. It's Blake. He—" There was the sound of a shot, both over the radio and through the base, and the signal cut out.
With the pistol in hand, he took up the radio and flattened himself to the wall next to his office doorway. "Somebody report. Now."
"Blake's gone nuts!" someone else shouted over the radio. There was the sound of gunfire and lasers going off in the background. "Get him!"
"That's not Blake." He forced himself to keep his voice steady. "That is Atropos. Shoot her."
More gunfire rang out, but he couldn't tell who was winning, or even who was firing. Slapping the emergency-close on the sliding door—it couldn't be opened from the outside without using a code that only he knew—he threw himself into the computer chair. A click of the mouse (his pistol was in his left hand, because he wasn't stupid) brought him to the feeds for all the security cameras in the base.
What he saw was … horrifying. The person wearing Blake's armour was steadily advancing against his troopers, carrying a pistol in each hand, casually side-stepping around incoming fire—bullets and lasers both—and dropping a trooper with each shot from the pistols. Thomas even saw the intruder firing in two different directions and killing both targets at the same time.
He'd only seen such impossible capability once before, but he knew it couldn't be her this time. The bogeyman of Cauldron had ways of appearing inside locked rooms; she didn't have to sneak in and kill all his men.
There was something odd with her profile as she stepped onto the catwalk leading to his office. He zoomed in with the closest camera, and blinked. Somewhere along the way, she had discarded Blake's helmet, and the rest of his armour. Now, she was wearing a black broad-brimmed hat, uncomfortably reminiscent of the Cauldron cape. Beneath that, she wore a black morph mask and long-coat, just as she'd been described on PHO. The coat was a little tattered and frayed from a few laser shots that had pierced it, but it only made her look scarier.
With a final flurry of shots, she dispatched the last of the mercenaries brave enough to go up against her. More than three-quarters of his guard force had already been destroyed, the only ones not yet dead or wounded being those who hadn't broken cover.
Now she stood before the door to his office; his sanctum sanctorum. Three inches of metal, sandwiched with radar-reflective material, ensured that she couldn't get through to kill him. In the meantime, he certainly intended to kill her.
Clicking on the mouse, he called up a particular menu. While constructing the base, installing the self-destruct explosives had been time-consuming and dangerous, but he'd made sure it happened anyway. Those who participated in that aspect all got lavish bonuses, and lovely funerals. Now, it was going to pay for itself—
The door beeped and slid aside.
What the fuck?
Caught on the back foot, he tried to swing his pistol to shoot the figure looming in the doorway, but a boot lashed upward. The gun was smashed from his hand, and he felt his trigger finger snap.
"Hey, asshole." The voice was that of a teenage girl. "Thought I told you to get out of town. It's two minutes to midnight. Any last words?"
As she spoke, she blocked the swipe of his fighting knife with what looked like a pair of shears, kicked him in the groin, and disarmed him with insulting ease. Then she smacked him on the head with the butt of the pistol, making his ears ring.
When his head cleared, he found himself wrapped up in rope, immobilising his arms at his sides. There was also a noose around his neck. "What—what do you want?" he rasped.
She frog-marched him out the door of his office, where he saw that the rope that had been tied around him was actually looped through the rail of the catwalk.
"From you? Nothing. I said you were gonna die at midnight. And it's midnight."
He felt an irresistible shove, then he went over the rail. Shit—I'm the counterweight—I'm going to hang myself—
Then he hit the end of the rope, and that timeline closed.
Safe at home, he sat up in bed, breathing hard. Fuck. That was terrifying.
"Hey, asshole." The black-masked figure seated in the armchair raised her pistol as the floor-lamp clicked on. "Thought I told you to get out of town."
Taylor
The look of sheer, unadulterated terror on Coil's face as he saw me made all the prep so worth it. I'd been wondering what the key was for, right up until I broke into the unassuming house in the suburbs to find a high-powered security system waiting for me. With that sorted out, I'd carried the armchair and floor-lamp into his bedroom and set things up to wait for when my power told me was the right time.
A sudden reek in the air told me that he'd pissed himself. In a way, he was lucky; he wasn't the one who was going to have to change the sheets. I waited patiently. In a moment, he'd remember the pistol under the pillow—
He was actually pretty fast, his hand sliding under there and out again with the gun already pointed at me. There was no bullshit about trying to tell me to drop my gun; he just started firing. Or, well, tried to. There was one dry click, followed by a lot of useless trigger pulls.
I opened my left hand and tilted it, allowing the cartridges to spill from it onto the bedroom carpet. Then I came to my feet, my pistol never wavering from his head. "Now," I said. "You were warned. It's midnight. Any last words?"
"You have no idea what you're getting into," he spat, his courage apparently building again. "I have friends—"
Pulling the shears from their sheath, I plunged them into his throat and ripped out sideways. The keen edge sliced through his carotids, windpipe and jugular quite easily, and I sidestepped the resultant spray. For a skinny guy, I had to admit, he had an impressive amount of blood in him.
Past tense, of course.
As he watched me in rapidly fading horror, red pulsing from between his vainly clutching fingers, I holstered the pistol. The costume that I'd removed from its hiding place was draped over the back of the armchair; I grabbed it and tossed it to land over his body. "That's nice," I said, stepping back from the rapidly spreading pool of crimson on the floor. "Everyone should have friends."
Strolling out into the living room, I paused in front of his high-end computer. There was a handy pen, so I scribbled down his passwords on a note I left tucked under the mouse. The Path to ending Coil's influence went quite a bit further than ending Coil himself, apparently. I'd also amused myself earlier by leaving Post-It notes saying SAFE HERE wherever he'd hidden a safe in the house. There were more than I would've expected.
When I left the house (I washed the shears off first in his sink), I thoughtfully engaged the security system, but at the lower setting so that nobody would need a key to get past it. Then I got back in the car and drove off, removing my hat and morph mask before I did so.
Why no, officer, I've never even heard of Atropos.
My next stop was the Medhall building. Kaiser would've been staying up until midnight with all his security on high alert; by the time I got there, they'd be winding it back so everyone could get a good morning's sleep. While I could sneak in and kill him now, I'd said midnight and so midnight it would be.
However, I hadn't said anything about not making preparations.
End of Part Six