13

Chapter 13

A Darker Path

Part Thirteen: Preparation Beats Luck

[A/N: this chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]

Friday Morning, 8:45 AM

Hookwolf

The flophouse was as shitty as it could get, but Brad had lived in worse. Not during his time in Brockton Bay, of course. Accepting Max's offer to join the Empire Eighty-Eight had considerably bumped up his standard of living.

In any case, he wasn't thinking about the living conditions right now. Last night, that bitch Atropos had been due to take on Lung at midnight. He didn't have access to the internet, so he was reduced to watching the tiny, decrepit TV that he'd paid a few extra bucks for. It was an ancient model, able to pick up exactly two channels, with no remote in sight, but at least he could follow the news.

And now he was learning just how bad it was. Lung was the enemy, he knew that much. He'd tangled with the scaly bastard too often in the past to think any other way. But there was a kinship between them; they both understood fighting and the warrior mindset. He liked to think there was the same kind of wary respect between them as between ancient generals, where they used stuff like trebuchets and castles.

Atropos didn't deserve that sort of respect. She was an assassin, a murderer, a stealthy knife in the back. According to Max's PRT moles, she'd snuck into Coil's house and cut his throat while he slept. Okay, fine, taking out Oni Lee with his own gun was kind of badass, but that was probably by accident or something. As far as Brad was concerned, if you couldn't face your enemy head-on and beat the living fuck out of them the hard way, you weren't a fighter.

Max had been like that. Max had been a fighter. So had Lung.

But now Lung was dead too.

More than that, he'd been burned to death. According to the hushed voice of the newscaster, accompanied by shaky footage of a force field containing a horribly charred corpse, Atropos had put some kind of acid inside Lung's body and brain, and he'd burned alive from within.

He hadn't stood a chance, especially after those Dragonslayer cocksuckers had decided to attack him first, or maybe Atropos had paid them to do that? Brad wasn't clear on that bit, but it made sense. Cowards never fought head-on. They always got someone else to do their dirty work for them.

Up until now, he'd been considering the idea of staying in Brockton Bay anyway. Sure, the rest of the Empire had bugged out, but he'd figured he could get in touch with a few of them and make a gang of his own that could stand up to Lung. Call them Fenrir's Pack, or something like that. The few, the proud, the kickers of ass.

Lung's death changed everything. Victor had said that the Empire was dead with Kaiser, and they should just leave. Brad hadn't believed him then, but he was starting to come around to the idea.

Maybe I should just go. That way, Atropos won't have the chance to shank me in the middle of the night and call it a fair win.

There was a diffident knock at his door. He got up off the bed and turned off the TV, then went over to the door and opened it. "Yeah?"

The guy who ran the flophouse, a run-down little weasel of a guy called Maury, squinted back at him. Maury squinted at everyone because his eyesight was shitty and his glasses were the cheap kind. "Mr Edwards, got someone downstairs lookin' for you. Just a kid, I think, girl, long blonde hair."

'Edwards' was the name he'd checked in under, mainly because the PRT knew his real name. He was pretty sure Maury hadn't twigged to who he was, or he'd be talking with a lot more respect. "She give a name?"

Maury shook his head. Dandruff filtered out of his uncombed hair down onto his shoulders. "She said you'd know who it was."

Which narrowed it all the way down. The valkyrie twins weren't 'kids' by any stretch of the imagination, and Maury probably would've mentioned Othala's eyepatch, so Maury had to be referring to Rune. Why she hadn't left town with Othala, Brad wasn't sure, but it could only be her.

"Right." Brad didn't have much—he'd grabbed a half-assed bug-out bag from what had once been a safehouse before moving on—but he stepped back into the room to snag the backpack from where he'd stuffed it under the bed. He very specifically didn't trust Maury to keep his shit safe when he was out of the room.

Slinging the pack over his shoulder, he double-timed it down the stairs to the dingy lobby. There was still the drunk sleeping in a pool of his own vomit in the corner, but no Rune. Not that he blamed Tammi for not wanting to wait inside; Maury oozed his very own brand of creepazoid when he thought he'd encountered someone who'd run out of options.

Outside, through the decades of shit caked on the door glass, he thought he saw a slender figure wave for a moment before stepping out of sight. He settled his pack more securely over his shoulder and headed for the doors, shoving them open. Blinking against the glare, he looked around and saw Rune, about twenty feet away.

"Why the fuck didn't you leave town?" he demanded.

"Oh, I'm about to." The voice was all wrong. He blinked again, clearing his vision, and looked again. The girl was blonde alright, and about Tammi's age or maybe a year or so older, but it absolutely was not Rune. This girl had green eyes, and was wearing a hoodie and a baseball cap pulled low to shade her face. Her lips formed a wolfish grin. "Just had to help a friend do a thing." Putting two fingers to her lips, she let out a piercing whistle.

Shit—

Brad wouldn't have gotten where he was without picking up certain instincts, and those instincts were yelling DANGER! at the top of their hypothetical lungs. Scanning up and down the street for costumes, PRT vans, or even Atropos herself, he brought the metal to just under the surface of his skin. At a moment's notice, he'd be able to pop foot-long razor-sharp claws.

"Atropos?" he growled, metal clashing in his throat to give his voice extra menace.

She stepped back away from him. "No, not Atropos." Her grin widened. "Tattletale."

Tattletale—Undersiders—fucking BITCH!

Far too late, he looked up.

And that was when the two-ton dog landed on him.

Tattletale

Lisa knew damn well Hookwolf had killed a lot of people and injured many more, but she wasn't someone who enjoyed watching torture. Rachel had told her dogs to 'hurt', and that was what they were doing; growling, ripping, tearing, but not actually finishing the job. Between the three of them, they had him at their mercy, and Lisa knew it.

"Think he's had enough?" she asked the stocky girl beside her as Angelica tore off an arm made of metallic blades and threw it aside. "I'm pretty sure he's never had his ass kicked this thoroughly before."

"He stood there and watched hundreds of dogs get maimed and killed, and laughed, and enjoyed it." Rachel's voice was matter-of-fact. "He needs to know what that's like."

"You know, I'm pretty sure he does," chimed in Alec, who was watching from a little farther away. He'd offered his services for keeping Hookwolf from getting away, though in the end it hadn't been necessary. "Right now, you're just kicking him while he's down. That gets boring after a while."

Lisa was pretty certain Alec wasn't saying it out of any mercy toward Hookwolf; he just wanted to get out of the city, as did she, and Rachel was their ride.

"Mmmh." Rachel nodded. "Okay." She whistled shrilly, and made a hand gesture. "Kill."

The dogs … killed.

World Affairs Class

Taylor

I sat watching Gladly writing on the board, fully aware of the Atropos costume currently stashed in my backpack. Nobody had tried to mess with my homework all week, which was good; it meant I didn't have to run any Paths to murder someone inside the school, or even maim them. My Path to End Skidmark's career and the influence of the Merchants drifted in the back of my mind, along with incipient Paths to deal with the various threats that were still out there.

More than I'd expected, really. It seemed a lot of people had been invested in Brockton Bay remaining a crime-riddled shithole. Well, that was just their bad luck.

"Hey, Taylor!" whispered Greg from beside me. "Guess what I saw on the news just now?"

I frowned. There were many things that could interest Greg on the news, and I was pretty sure a lot of them wouldn't grab me. On the other hand, absent the constant pressure of the bullying, Greg's cluelessness wasn't so hard to tolerate. "I have no idea. What?"

"Hookwolf's dead." He looked like he couldn't quite believe it himself. "They say Hellhound's dogs tore him to pieces this morning."

Well, that explained why Hookwolf had so suddenly dropped off my radar. I'd known he was going to cease to be a threat, but I'd actually chalked it up to getting cold feet once he saw Lung's demise. "Well, that's different. Another one bites the dust, I guess?"

"Damn right." He looked unexpectedly fierce for a moment. "One of Mom's friends is black. He got cut up by Hookwolf once. He lived, but he's never been the same since. I'd like to give Hellhound a high-five."

"Eh, she'd probably punch you." While considering how to End Coil, I'd looked into trying a Path to Ending the criminal activity of the Undersiders by recruiting them as minions, but Hellhound (or Bitch, as she preferred) needed way too many steps to keep happy, so I'd dropped the idea. Grue was in the Wards program now anyway, which I didn't have a problem with.

Though I found it interesting that a tentative Path to ending the PRT's distrust of me had suddenly snapped into focus when Aisha asked for the selfie and I agreed to meet her. It seemed her brother Brian—the self-same Grue, now rebranded as Tenebrae—was being sent along as a chaperone. Not as a Ward, just as a big brother. It seemed that if I could hang and chill with them for a bit, and Brian could bring back a favourable report, they'd be able to dial back the perceived threat level. After all, if the heroes didn't try to kill me, I wasn't going to kill them.

This wouldn't be the whole of the Path, of course, but it would be a very good beginning.

Also, unless I missed my guess, this would boost Tenebrae's standing among his fellow Wards to near-legendary status. Not that I cared one way or the other, but he seemed to be doing his best for his sister, and I could respect the hell out of that.

Though I wasn't quite sure why this part of the Path required that I bring along a quarter in my pocket. But I didn't question it. If it wanted me to bring a quarter, I'd bring a quarter.

Mr Gladly started enthusiastically explaining what he'd written on the board, and I began to pay attention once more.

That Afternoon

The bus stop was absolutely in a crappy section of town. That didn't matter; I wouldn't be there long. I stepped off the bus, ignoring the dubious look on the driver's face, and headed down the nearest dark alley.

There were two guys sleeping in it; or rather, one guy sleeping and one dozing. The not so sleepy guy woke up and attempted to grab me. I chose not to kill him, but unfortunately for him, you have to kick someone very hard indeed in the testicles before it's life-threatening.

(It is possible to kill someone by kicking them in the groin; I just chose not to do it this time.)

By the time I left the other end of the alley, I was wearing my full Atropos costume; mainly because that had slightly more chance of causing people to leave me alone than traipsing around as Taylor Hebert. While I knew exactly where I was going—Squealer's current workshop—I didn't know where it was, because my power was the one reading the map. Fortunately, I was able to just let my footsteps take their own path and sure enough, I was there within minutes. An abandoned-looking garage, looming over other dilapidated, decrepit buildings.

Acting on a suggestion from my power, I pulled aside a sheet of galvanised iron that had been artistically leaned up against a wall of the garage, to reveal a keypad mounted roughly on the wall. I zoned out, allowing my power to type in the security code; my eyebrows rose when it turned out to be an eight-digit PIN. It turned out Squealer was invested in her security.

Not invested enough, sadly. She would've been a lot more secure if she'd had her setup elsewhere. Like, say, Jersey City. In the same city as me, it would never be secure enough. She would never be secure enough.

With the entry of the last digit, a door let into the wall clicked and swung open slightly. I grinned; open sesame. Shoving the sheet of metal back over the pad, I went over to the door and carefully pushed it open farther.

It wasn't trapped; or rather, the traps had been disarmed. I stepped inside, allowing it to swing shut behind me. The garage was deserted and dark; no tools clanged, no arc-welders shot sparks into the air. That this was a place where such things happened, I had no doubt. The signs, even the smells, of recent engineering work were plentiful. And in the middle of it all … what I was looking for.

Ironically, it looked less like a total travesty of mechanical engineering than most of Squealer's work. Only a few odd-looking antennae and armatures marred the brutal lines of the oversized truck; even the makeshift armour welded onto the chassis was almost aerodynamic. But that didn't matter to me at all.

I was no Tinker, but a constant truism was that the more complicated a mechanism, the easier it was to make it fail in a truly spectacular way. The bench held the tools I needed, along with the electronic bits and pieces. While the truck door was locked, I knew I wouldn't even need the Screwdriver of Opening; Squealer had left me plenty of ways to get into her pride and joy undetected.

It took me about thirty seconds to jigger the heavily armoured, securely locked door, swing it open and climb into the cab. From there on, it was essentially painting by the numbers. The first bit of sabotage involved popping off a panel on the dash and wiring in a remote receiver; I then glued the fuck out of that panel because I didn't want Squealer getting in there for any reason.

The second bit of sabotage involved components that she'd installed but never set up for activation. This was kind of a pity, so I made sure they would activate when I wanted them to, how I wanted them to. Next, I fiddled with the pedal linkages, making sure that when Squealer tried to make a certain thing happen, a certain other thing would happen instead.

With the truck locked again, I spent some little time first with her angle-grinder then her oxy-acetylene torch (making use of her welding goggles), making sure that forty-eight specific pieces of metal wouldn't be anywhere near as secure as they appeared. By the time I'd finished, the air inside the garage was nice and toasty, which was perfect for my requirements. Almost as an afterthought, I stole one of her cans of spray-paint, a nice cheery yellow in colour.

I slipped out of her workshop and closed the door behind me, then reached in under the sheet of metal to press the button that reset the traps inside. She was definitely going to find out about my various bits of sabotage, but according to my timetable, not hers.

Humming a tune that had the Mission Impossible theme as one of its remote ancestors, I changed back to boring, normal Taylor Hebert and headed back toward the bus stop. Dad would be getting home in good time, and I wanted to have dinner started when he did.

One of the things I truly appreciated about my power was how it had allowed me to take charge of my own life and be more proactive about things. My renewed connection with Dad was a direct result of this, and I couldn't have been happier about it.

Dockworkers Association

Head of Hiring Office

Danny

Kurt leaned in through the office door, holding a cold can of beer. "Hey, Danny. Get your nose away from that grindstone. Five o'clock, time to relax and kick back."

Danny blinked, then looked at the office clock. "Shit, it is too." He looked at the next document he'd been about to peruse, grimaced, and dropped it back into the IN tray. It would keep until Monday. Standing up, he stretched, feeling vertebrae popping in his back. "Time to get home."

Rolling his eyes, Kurt waved the can enticingly. "Jeez, man, come on. Have one with us before you hit the road. You've been working like a madman all week as it is."

Danny hesitated. "I don't like leaving Taylor home alone too long. She'll worry if I'm late …"

That drew a snort from his long-time friend. "You just got through telling us how she's been doing so much better this week. And besides, she's a teenager. Knowing how to use a phone, even that relic you guys have nailed to the wall of your kitchen, is part of their genetics. If she gets worried, she'll call. C'mon into the break room and have a brewski with us."

"Okay, fine." Kurt made some good points, and the beer in his hand was looking better and better all the time. Besides, it was Friday afternoon. Danny rounded the desk and snagged the beer from Kurt's hand on the way past.

They convened in the break room, sitting around the ancient table that predated everyone there, even Danny. Someone had once made a joke about how George Hebert, his father, had salvaged it off Noah's Ark, and Danny figured that probably wasn't far off the truth. The once-pristine veneer was almost worn clean off it, and there were more scratches, ancient cigarette burns (the DWA had been non-smoking for years now) and initials carved into the surface than he could count.

Cracking the can open, Danny took a long pull of the beer. It tasted heavenly as it went down, and he felt himself palpably relaxing. Stretching out his legs under the table, he leaned back. "Yeah," he said. "This was a good idea. Thanks for twisting my arm, Kurt."

"Hey, what are friends for?" Kurt saluted him with his own beer before taking a drink himself. "Oh, yeah. That's the stuff."

Lacey, Alex and Gerry each mimicked the move, and the next few moments were filled with pleasant, silent contemplation. Danny took another drink of his beer, not so deeply this time. He wanted it to last.

"So, hey," Lacey said thoughtfully. "What do you guys reckon about this new cape? Atropos?"

"Scary as fuck," Gerry replied immediately. "I know a guy who knows a guy who said that what she used on Lung was some kind of super-acid, a billion times as bad as sulphuric. The name started with 'fluoro' or something."

Danny blinked. He'd heard about stuff like that, as part of briefings on things no Dockworker would ever be authorised to come near, let alone handle. Any substance with 'fluoro' as part of the name was generally to be avoided like the plague. From what he'd heard, the plague would be friendlier.

"Jesus Christ," muttered Kurt. "No wonder he went down so hard."

"But that's what you'd need, for a cape like Lung," Alex argued. "He fuckin' fought Leviathan, mano a mano. Name one other cape in the Bay who's done that."

There was a moment of silence to acknowledge the truth of his statement, then Lacey took up the thread once more. "But that was before he came here and built up the ABB. He could've been a hero. He could've gone and fought Endbringers again. He didn't. He stayed here in Brockton Bay, dealt drugs, ran prostitution rings, murdered people, extorted protection, and generally acted like a total piece of shit. You ask me, Atropos was one hundred percent justified in what she did."

"But she bloody well murdered him," protested Gerry. "Somehow injected that super-acid shit inside him, then watched him die."

"What, burned him to death, like his victims? The ones he didn't rip apart like a wild animal?" Alex, Danny recalled belatedly, had lost a police officer friend to the Asian crime lord. "She gave him fair warning. After Oni Lee, Coil, and Kaiser, the writing was on the wall."

"He's got a point, you know," Kurt said semi-apologetically to Gerry. "Lung was a stain on the city, and Atropos gave him fair warning."

"Just like she gave Coil and Kaiser, I guess," Danny found himself saying. "Not Oni Lee, though."

Lacey rolled her eyes. "That asshole? I'm pretty sure he killed more people than Lung. He was supposed to be nearly unkillable. If you thought you had the drop on him, he was right behind you."

"Yeah." Alex chuckled, finishing his beer and reaching for a new one out of the bar fridge. "But Atropos was one step ahead of him. Pow, bullet to the head. Wham bam, thank you, scary ma'am."

Kurt opened another beer as well. "Oni Lee didn't get a warning," he said thoughtfully. "That's because Oni Lee was a warning. A warning that Atropos wasn't going to play by the rules that everyone else thought were set in stone."

"Yeah," agreed Lacey. "The bad guys liked the rules just how they were. Even after Oni Lee bit it, they thought they were untouchable."

"But if she could kill them, she could've captured them," protested Gerry. "Handed them over to the PRT. Fair trial and all that jazz."

Danny shook his head, not actually disagreeing with Gerry's point but aware of where he was going wrong. "You know what happens when high-end villains end up in custody, especially if they've got gangs at their beck and call. It might take a few days or even a week, but they're always busted out. The last Brockton Bay villains to actually make it to the Birdcage were …" He paused, thinking back.

"Marquis and Galvanate," supplied Kurt. "Marquis never had any capes under him, and Galvanate's underlings got their powers from him, so they weren't able to break him loose."

"And now Atropos is supplying a one-way trip to the morgue instead." Alex shrugged. "Let's see 'em bust out of that."

"I can't believe you guys are being so callous about all this." Gerry shook his head. "They might've been villains, but they were still human beings."

"Really shitty human beings." Lacey peered into her can and finished it off. "Might I remind you that they've all killed innocents, sometimes quite brutally. Kaiser and Lung ran gangs that were frankly racist as fuck. I dunno what Coil's deal was, but he had to be pretty damn bad to make Atropos' list. And Skidmark … well, the Merchants are barely a gang, but they supply drugs to half of the Bay, and that includes to schoolkids. So, he's pretty damn certain got some deaths on his account too. If he doesn't take the hint … well, at midnight tonight we get a new obituary and not one single solitary thing of value will be lost."

Danny drained the last of his own beer and tossed it overhand into the trash can. It caromed off the rim then went in anyway, and he stretched. He knew he should be moving along, but the conversation was oddly intriguing. "You sound like you approve of what she's doing," he said to Lacey.

"Why wouldn't I?" Lacey gave him a hard stare. "She's taking out the trash, and it's well past time it was done. Don't try to tell me you don't agree with me, Danny Hebert. I know you better than that."

"That's not what I'm talking about." Danny shook his head, trying to muster his argument. "This has happened before. Not in the Bay, but in Boston. Remember that? The Games?"

"I heard a bit about it …" Alex said dubiously.

"Shit," Kurt muttered. "Yeah, that got bad."

"Bad isn't the half of it," Gerry agreed. "People died. Innocents. Some villains. And in the end, nothing changed. Villains went right back to running the underworld. Hail to the new boss, same as the old boss. You want to see that in the Bay?"

Lacey shook her head. "We won't see that in the Bay."

Danny tilted his head, curious. "Why not?"

She chuckled darkly. "Because Atropos isn't just doing this for shits and giggles. She's about ten moves ahead of the PRT, playing four-dimensional chess, and they still think they're playing Go Fish. You know that reference she made about skinning a cat? I asked some people I know about that."

"Yeah?" asked Alex. "What was that about?"

"The sword she stabbed through Kaiser's eye belonged to him, is what I heard," she explained. "It was called a katzbalger, which is apparently a slang German term with several meanings, one of which is 'cat skinner'. She stole it from his house, two days before she killed him with it. And I heard a rumour that she mixed up that hell-brew she killed Lung with in the basement of the Medhall building, the same night she made Kaiser's head into a shish kebab."

"So, what's this got to do with new villains coming to the Bay?" asked Gerry. "Maybe villains who aren't willing to accept that the Dockworkers are neutral?"

Lacey rolled her eyes. "Four nights, four extremely precise and well-thought-out kills, of people you and I would normally consider beyond assassination. If any other costumed idiots come to Brockton Bay, she's gonna warn them off, then she's gonna kill them. Tell me I'm wrong."

Silence fell, broken only by the ticking of the clock on the wall. Danny glanced at Kurt, who hooked his head toward Lacey and nodded; yeah, not going to argue with that. Alex seemed to be contemplating the far wall in a semi-trance; Danny wasn't sure how many beers the younger man had had.

"They … might kill her," argued Gerry, but Danny could hear the doubt in his voice.

"She walked into a room full of Empire Eighty-Eight, ended Kaiser with his own sword, and scared the rest so badly they left town," Lacey said flatly. "If any villains come to the Bay looking to carve out a chunk of the action, they'd better not start any long conversations, is all I'm saying."

"Talking about long conversations," Danny said, standing up, "it's time I bowed out of this one. Thanks for the beer and the chat. See you all on Monday."

Amid multiple goodbyes, he made his way out the door and got in the car. For a moment he sat quietly, then turned the ignition key.

Lacey's comments hadn't actually come as much of a surprise to him, but they were definitely something to think about on the way home.

End of Part Thirteen

[A/N: Part Fourteen under prep now. Expect in a day or three.]