18

Chapter 18

A Darker Path

Part Eighteen: Drugs Are Bad, Just Ask Atropos

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

Atropos

Brian frowned as we neared the location I was giving him instructions to drive to. "That sounds kind of familiar …" he said slowly.

"Yeah, no, duh, it's familiar, bro." Aisha, in the back seat, was having great fun playing with her new tiara. Between that and the Polaroids of me holding the bodice shears up behind her head like bunny ears, I was pretty sure that this was her best day in a long time.

Which was kind of sad, when I came to think about it that way.

"Wait." Having gotten the hint from his sister, Brian was putting two and two together. Impressively enough, he added it up to four all by himself. He turned and stared at me. "Are you taking us to Celia's place?"

"Otherwise known as the Hellbitch Drug Ho," Aisha chimed in. I got the impression that she might harbour a little resentment toward her mother's substance abuse problem.

"That's where we're going," I confirmed. "Now, as I understand it, she's a heroin user but not a heavy one, right?"

Aisha shook her head, the spikes of the tiara rotating one way and then the other. "Not unless she's gotten a lot more into it since I left that ass-crack of a place."

"Good." I smiled. I already didn't like Aisha's mother, and the thought of her having to dry out without the assistance of an addiction program was savagely satisfying to me.

"How did you even know that?" asked Brian. "Have you been here before?"

"Never in my life. Just pull over here." I indicated a parking spot right next to the building I needed to visit. "Whatever you two do, stay in the car. Do not try to come get me, do not call out. I'll be out shortly. Got it?"

"Are you suure I can't come up and see her face when you take all her shit?" Aisha was good at wheedling, but fortunately I was immune to puppy-dog eyes. Unless I chose not to be, of course.

"Certain." I looked at Brian and hooked my head toward Aisha. Don't let her get out. He nodded to me; the silent message had been received loud and clear.

Climbing out of the car, I strode across the sidewalk and in through the front doors. There was supposed to be some kind of buzzer mechanism but it seemed to have been damaged beyond repair by previous tenants. Ignoring the elevator, I took the stairs at a steady trot.

All around me, I was aware of tiny caches of illicit substances here and there, but I was only interested in one. Specifically, the drugs currently being held by Aisha's mother. Her habits—drug-taking and social—had screwed up Aisha's life for the longest time. Drug abuse while pregnant had left baby Aisha with a short attention span; it was manageable, but it could've been a lot worse.

I reached the correct floor and strode along the corridor until I got to the right door. There were several options for entry, ranging from picking the lock (I would've needed lockpicks) to shooting the lock off (a waste of ammunition, in my opinion) to kicking the door in (hard on the ankles). I chose another avenue altogether; leaning in toward the door, I changed my voice to a pack-a-day masculine rasp. Knocking on the door, I called out, "Celia, babe, open up. I got the stuff."

She unlocked the door immediately, of course. I put my shoulder to it and shoved it open, and I was inside before she realised what was going on. "What the fuck?" she demanded. "Who are y—urk!" The reason her question was cut short was because my hand had gone around her throat and pushed her against the wall.

I nudged the door shut with my hip and snapped the locks over, then got the shears out and rested the tip on the bridge of her nose. "You may have heard of me," I said quietly. "My name is Atropos. I killed Skidmark last night, which is why Carl's left town and Troy is taking over for him. Carl was the smart one. Do you understand?" She was staring cross-eyed at the shears, so I lifted them until she was looking across them at me. "Do you understand?" I repeated.

"Uh huh," she whimpered. "Please don't kill me." I smelled fresh urine, and noted that she'd pissed herself. It probably wouldn't be an uncommon reaction in this situation, going forward.

"Not in my plans," I said, and pointed at a chair. "Sit there and don't move. If you run, I will catch you, and it won't be pleasant."

Obediently, she sat. I picked up a crushed paper bag from the table and straightened it out. It had evidently been used to bring drugs into the apartment before now, so this was an appropriate use for it. Warily, she watched me as I moved around the apartment, zeroing in on every drug cache she had, ignoring the ones for weed. Each little baggie went into the paper bag, her face falling a little more with every loss.

"So, who ratted me out?" she asked sullenly as I finished my rounds. Not a fraction of an ounce of white powder, pills or rocks of crack cocaine had been left within the apartment.

"Nobody." I carefully folded the bag over, then moved to stand next to the door.

"Oh, don't give me that bullshit." Given that I hadn't carved her up on the spot, she'd evidently decided that I wasn't going to hurt her. "You just cleaned me out of the hard stuff without looking anywhere else. Somebody who knew where it was had to tell you."

I flicked the locks, pulled the door open, and yanked the aforementioned Troy into the room just as he was about to knock. As he was still staggering, trying to regain his balance, I locked the door again and moved in after him. "Afternoon, Troy," I said. "We need to have a chat."

His butt came up against the table and he stopped short, staring at me. "Fuck!" he said. "You're her … uh …"

"Atropos, yes." It was truly sad, the lack of education in the inner city these days. "Don't pull your gun and you'll be fine—"

He pulled his gun. Which meant he wasn't fine. Throwing the bag I held in his face, I moved into close quarters. The bag made him flinch and blinded him for an instant, which was all the time I needed to secure his wrist and take the gun away from him. Of course, he needed to be reminded why it was a bad idea to pull a gun on me, so I dropped the pistol on the table, drew the shears, and nailed his right hand to the table.

He screamed and dropped the bag he held in his left hand, almost the twin to mine, except for the fact that his was a good deal fuller. I took up his pistol and dropped the magazine out of it, then retrieved the last round out of the chamber. They were the same calibre that Oni Lee's pistol could use, and it wasn't like I could go to a gun shop and buy more ammo.

"Now," I said to Troy, who was screaming a little less now that nobody was jolting the wound. "Do I have your full attention?"

He glared at me, but a warning gesture with my own pistol stopped him from just grabbing the shears and pulling them out of his hand. "You're gonna die for this," he panted. "Nobody fucks with our crew."

"I do," I informed him. "Now, one more time. Are you listening?"

He gritted his teeth and sucked in a long breath through his nostrils. "… yeah."

"Good. What I've got to say is simple. You won't even need to take notes. As of right now, you're out of the drug trade. If I catch you dealing drugs again, I will kill you. It won't be a fair fight, or even a fight at all. You'll just die. Is there any part of what I've just said that you don't understand?"

There was a long pause, then he remembered to shake his head.

"Good," I said, then my power flared.

Something new had impinged on my awareness of danger. It appeared that my power now considered Aisha to be just as worthy of protection as my dad, because it had just told me that she was in danger.

My reaction was immediate: Path to End the danger to Aisha.

Troy screamed all over again as I yanked the shears out of the table and his hand respectively. Grabbing him, I spun him around as though we were dancing, but I made sure that he was always just a little off-balance, tottering around in a series of circles that inevitably led toward the window.

Result to Troy, my power informed me when I queried it. Broken neck, crushed skull, broken spine. Death within minutes.

That wasn't good enough. I'd promised Aisha that I wouldn't kill anyone who wasn't trying to kill me. Also, I'd told Troy that he'd die if he dealt any more drugs. I hadn't given him the chance to avoid dealing drugs in future.

Turning slightly, I amended our trajectory, so that when I let Troy go and he went out the window, it was back-first, not headfirst.

A moment later, I got the acknowledgement from my power: Danger to Aisha ended. Path complete. Result to Troy: broken arm, broken collar-bone, broken kneecap. Will live.

Tenebrae

"I wanna go up and see what's going on," whined Aisha. "The look on that bitch's face with Atropos giving her the good news must be fuckin' epic."

"She said to stay in the car, and that's where we're staying." Brian was adamant on this. He didn't want to know what was happening up in his mother's apartment. If he didn't know about it, he didn't have to report on it.

"Yeah, but—"

Aisha abruptly shut up as a dark shadow loomed next to the car. A scarred leather-jacketed man, his entire demeanour shouting 'I'm a leg breaker' to any who cared to listen, leaned down and looked in through the car windows.

The man looked at Brian, then at Aisha. "What the fuck are you two doing?" he demanded.

Brian opened his mouth to give a de-escalating answer, but Aisha got in first. "Waiting for a fuckin' train. What's it to you, asshole?"

Jesus Christ, Aisha! "Ignore her," he said hastily. "We're just waiting on a friend. We won't be here long."

His heart sank as the guy paid no attention to him and glared at Aisha. "What the fuck did you say, you little bitch?" Leaning into the car, he made a grab for her.

"I said fuck off!" she screamed, and yanked the tiara off her head, jamming one of the spikes into the back of his massive paw.

"Cocksucker!" He jumped back from the car and reached around under the back of his jacket.

Brian was reasonably certain that the asshole wasn't seeking to alleviate his back pain, so he prepared to flood the car with blackness. But before the gun even made an appearance, there was the tinkle of broken glass and a scream from above. The scarred enforcer looked up, just in time for another man to land on him; they both ended up on the sidewalk in a feebly moving heap.

The other enforcer, who'd been standing back and watching the show, drew his pistol and ran into the building. Brian glanced at Aisha, then they both stared at the injured men. From inside the building, they heard the distinct sound of a shot.

The doors opened again, and Atropos emerged. She was carrying two brown paper bags, as well as a bottle of bleach. Strolling across to where the car was, she opened the door and got in. "Drive," she said. "I'll give you directions."

"Are you okay?" asked Aisha. "That guy who ran in there—"

Atropos closed the door and put her seatbelt on. "Don't worry about it," she said. "I saw him coming."

A Small Park

Atropos

Brian and I watched as a madly grinning Aisha poured undiluted bleach over the drugs I'd collected from their mother's apartment. The plastic melted under the onslaught, and the various addictive substances bubbled and fizzed as the bleach attacked their very chemical structures. It was quite interesting, in a scientific sort of way.

"Die, you little pieces of shit!" Aisha cackled. "Die!" She poked at the mixture with a stick—a long stick, given that the fumes coming off the mess were fairly powerful—and watched with intense satisfaction as it all broke down into a formless mass.

Brian turned to me. "I have a question."

"I may have an answer." I knew what he was going to ask, but I preferred to let him keep his illusions of free will for the moment.

"When we stopped at the convenience store, why did you have me buy string and road flares?"

I grinned under the mask. "All things will be revealed in time."

When the last of the drugs were gone—washed down a convenient drain with the application of more bleach—Aisha put the cap back on the bottle and turned to me. Her eyes were bright with tears and the hug she gave me was heartfelt.

"How are you feeling now?" I asked her, ruffling her hair.

"Fuckin' amazeballs," she said, her grin back to its full wattage. "Let's go fuck up some more drug dealers!"

I nodded slowly, as though I was merely considering it, when in fact I'd already decided on my course of action. "I believe we can do that."

"Fuck, yeah!"

Half an Hour Later

Tenebrae

Atropos, Brian decided, was beyond terrifying. Not only could she and would she kill anyone who threatened her for any reason, but she also knew who threatened her and could deal with them before they were aware of her. More than that, when she set her sights on Brockton Bay's drug trade, she had somehow acquired the knowledge of exactly where all the drugs were. All the drugs.

Case in point: the innocuous suburban two-story house before them. It bore all the hallmarks of belonging to a happy couple with two point three children and a dog, including a tricycle artfully displayed in the front yard, and a cutesy little sign saying, "Forget the dog, beware of the kids". Someone had put a lot of effort into making it seem even more normal than the neighbours.

But as it happened, it was a major drug distribution hub for the south side of Brockton Bay. The dealers never came there, of course; the product was loaded into the late-model car (complete with BABY ON BOARD sticker on the rear window) and driven sedately to other locations, where it was handed out. Atropos had explained all this before she got out of the car and headed across the road.

She'd said one other thing, as well. "Call the fire department. They're gonna need it."

After a long few minutes, during which time he heard absolutely nothing, Atropos leaned out the door and beckoned to them. Brian definitely wanted to see what was going on, and so did Aisha; scrambling out of the car, they headed across the road. "What's the matter?" he asked. "Is it a bust?"

"You might say that." He was pretty sure she was grinning under the mask. "Come on in. This is where the drugs that were supplying your mom would've come from." She had her shears in her hand, and seemed to be wiping them down.

Stepping into the front room of the house still looked absolutely normal. Another doorway, not in a direct line with the front door, led to the back of the house … and his mind was blown.

There was no kitchen, no bedrooms, no living room. Carefully hung curtains covered every window. Speakers played TV sounds, and the occasional noise of a baby crying. But the interior of the house had been gutted, and the resultant room was all made over to the division and packaging of drugs for supply to the population of Brockton Bay.

"Holy fuckballs," whispered Aisha. "I'd never have known. This is where they're from?"

"It's where they go through for this part of the distribution, yeah." Atropos sounded remarkably matter-of-fact about the whole thing. "There are other hubs, but I'll get to those in time."

"So, where does this place get 'em from?" asked Brian. He tried hard not to look at the corpses lying on the floor and draped over the table. Several pistols lay here and there. There was rather a lot of blood. "And how come we didn't hear any gunshots?"

Atropos shrugged. "A firefight in the suburbs is too dangerous. The walls are too thin, and bullets might've come your way. I decided not to let them start one." She finished wiping off the shears, and re-sheathed them.

"So … we're calling the cops now as well as the fire department, right?" He eyed the various packets of white powder that lay on the table, and the further stack in the corner. "Because they're going to need to take all this into evidence."

"Nope." She pulled a road flare out of her pocket. "Not all of it would make it into evidence. I'm trying to give them the best chance to kick their corruption, so there's no sense in dangling temptation in front of them. Come on, let's go. And it's time you made that call." She pulled the cap off the end of the flare, and struck it.

Brian finished the call to the fire department as they climbed into the car again. Across the road, the first flickers of flame were showing in the front windows. Putting his phone away, he fastened his seat belt, then started the car. "Where to now?"

Atropos put her hand on his arm. "Are you okay with this? Because if you're not, we can drop you off."

He took a long, deep breath. "Before I say yes or no, is it okay if I make a phone call?"

"Be my guest," she invited. He got the impression that she knew exactly where he was calling and why.

Starting the car, he drove it around the corner and parked again, then pulled out his Wards-issue phone.

PRT Building

Deputy Director Renick's Office

"Renick."

"Sir, it's Laborn."

"Is there a problem?"

There was a pause. "Potentially. I think we've exceeded the orders you gave me already."

"Explain."

"After we left the park, Atropos had me drive her from place to place. She's injuring and killing drug dealers, and destroying the drugs. She just burned down a house full of drugs in the suburbs after killing everyone inside. I need to know what I should be doing right now."

This time, it was Paul's turn to pause. "Is your sister still with her?"

"Yes, sir."

"Is Atropos harming innocents?"

"Not as far as I can tell, sir. She did throw someone out of a third story window to land on someone who was threatening Aisha, but he turned out to be my mother's drug dealer."

Paul blinked. That wasn't a line he heard every day. "Did … did he survive?"

"They both did, but neither one was happy about it, sir."

"Alright then. Stick with her. If you can safely minimise casualties, do it. But do not—I say again, do not—actively interfere, unless she is specifically endangering you, your sister, or any other innocents. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir. I understand."

Atropos

I looked at Brian. He wasn't exactly thrilled right now, and I knew why. He'd never been comfortable with the concept of killing, and he'd been ordered to spend time with someone who killed as easily as breathing (but not casually; never casually). I'd set out to shut down one line of drug trafficking into the city, and the death toll along the way was starting to get to him.

I didn't need to feel guilty about this, and I knew it. My promise had specified that I wouldn't kill anyone so long as they weren't trying to kill me. All the people in the drug distribution hub had been doing their best to end my existence; I just hadn't let them get as far as pointing a gun in my direction. It wasn't my fault that I was better at it than they were.

And of course, there was the money aspect. Supplying illicit drugs to the population had always been a cash cow, and people were ever willing to defend it with lethal force. This meant that the farther up the chain we got, the more likely we were to meet people who were not only willing to kill, but were actually good at it. Which meant in turn that I would normally have had fewer options when it came to ending the fight without killing them.

Not that this bothered me. If they were so eager to die, who was I to gainsay them?

However, there was the extra twist of the report he was going to make to the Deputy Director. I had no doubt that Piggot and Renick would make their final determination about me using their own judgement, but such things could be influenced by reports like the one he was going to give. And if he could give the impression that I was someone who could use restraint when necessary (which I was) then it would be another step on the Path to Ending their institutional distrust of me.

"So, Brian," I said, gesturing at the warehouse across the way. "You think you could fill that with darkness?"

He blinked, then eyed the warehouse itself. As with the faux suburban house, it could've passed as being absolutely normal for its area. Except for a few minor details, of course. For instance, the guard in his little shack (bulletproof, with a code-locked door) was armed with illegally modified firearms. If he called for help, there were more guards within the building, ready to run out at a moment's notice. And inside, yet more guards were just there to patrol the interior of the building. It looked like someone was definitely willing to pay extra to protect their investment.

It was so nice to be taken seriously by people I'd never met. I might almost regret having to kill them, if they refused to change their ways.

"I … guess I could," he said at a moment's notice. "Are you going to kill anyone?"

"Not if they can't see me," I said firmly. It was very much a gauntlet being thrown down. He could save the lives of every person in there, if he was willing to use his power to help me get what I wanted.

"You realise that I'm the only one who can see through my darkness, right?" He eyed me as though unsure whether I knew about his abilities. "Nobody else can. To them, it's pitch darkness."

I shrugged. "Meh. Sight is overrated." Which was funny, because although I could see, without my glasses I was near-sighted. My power just filled in details when I needed them, all in the name of completing the Path.

We got out of the car and Brian approached the guard shack. What the guard couldn't see was that I was directly behind Brian, in the lovely great blind spot created by his muscular torso. The shack had a Perspex window with a small shelf on the outside to allow visitors to sign things—I was pretty sure this was a common configuration for these things.

The downside of a setup like that was while Brian was leaning in close (keeping his hands in plain view) and asking for directions out of the local maze of back streets, it was possible for me to duck down and slither around to where I could reach up and enter the door code. Which I did. The guard reacted far too slowly, expecting one of his colleagues to be relieving him. Me swinging off the door-frame and bouncing his head off the far wall with not quite lethal force might have relieved him of anything resembling consciousness, but he probably didn't mean it that way.

With the guard flex-cuffed (he had a store of these, which I appropriated) we moved on to a human-entry door. I'd lifted the guard's keys, and now I tapped the electronic reader with a particular fob and typed in a four-digit code. Not the same one as on the guard shack, I was pleased to see. These guys weren't stupid, just … well, drug-dealing assholes.

"Darkness, now," I murmured. Brian obediently generated a cloud of the stuff around us.

I opened the door in the secure knowledge that nobody would see a bright sunlit rectangle and two people entering. We stepped inside and I shut the door again. Then I prised off a cover, pulled two wires and touched them together, and shorted out the whole door-alarm system.

With that taken care of, we started off around the perimeter of the warehouse. We lurked around the inside of the wall, travelling in our own little blot of darkness, until we were behind a pallet—of money, as it turned out.

"Holy shit," he whispered. "This is more money than I've ever seen in my life."

That got a dry chuckle from me. "Well, feast your eyes, sunshine, because that bad boy does not survive to the end of the movie."

It took him a few seconds to figure it out. "But—"

"We can't take it, if the cops show up it becomes evidence and helps nobody, and I'm not leaving it for some drug dealer to spend on more drugs." I shrugged. "It is what it is. Now, if we can have some darkness on the issue, please?"

It didn't take him long to decide to play along. Darkness started rolling off him in great waves, washing through the warehouse and slowly rising like a horror-movie tide full of Things Man was not Meant to Eat. I heard the first shouts of alarm then, and headed off to start the cleanup.

It was kind of weird, moving through the blacked-out warehouse, not being able to see a thing, yet knowing where I was and that there was a staircase directly ahead of me. Also, there was a guard feeling his way down the staircase, one cautious step at a time.

Well, I was never one to look a gift horse in the teeth. I went up as he came down, then when I got close enough, I flipped him over the rail. His brief scream ended when he hit the concrete and knocked himself out.

Trotting back down the stairs, I flex-cuffed him, then waved Brian over. "Get him outside," I said. "Far side of the road."

"Got it." Brian grunted as he lifted the man in a fireman's carry. I could never have done that; then again, I lacked an extra hundred pounds of muscle, which probably explained it.

The rest of the clearance went more or less the same way. Everyone was cautiously feeling their way around, while I knew exactly where they were and what they were doing. Brian even assisted in subduing a few of them, which sped things up considerably.

When the last man was accounted for, I sent Brian to the door to wait for me. In the inside pockets of my long-coat, I'd been carrying several of the grenades I'd inherited from Oni Lee. I figured I might want to get some more later on, but right now, these were going to be used to send a message.

Not In My City.

Each grenade was attached to a pallet of drugs or of money; I didn't have enough of them to trap all the pallets, but I figured I had enough to make ready for the second stage. I worked the pin almost free from each grenade, and tied a length of string to it. Strings trailing through my hands, I strolled back to where Brian was waiting. He'd just moved the guy from the guard shack to where the others were, so that we were the only ones on the actual property.

"Ready for the final act?" I asked, beckoning Aisha over.

Brian hadn't been watching too closely, so he didn't know what the strings meant. "Final act?" he asked as Aisha approached. "What final act?"

By way of answer, I handed half the strings to him, and the other half to Aisha. "Pull these when I say 'three'," I said. "One. Two. Three."

They both yanked on the strings. At the same time, I pulled the cap off a road flare and struck it. It flared brightly, even though the sun was still out.

"What's supposed to happen?" asked Aisha, looking at the strings. "And what's the road flare—"

Inside the warehouse, the grenades went off. Being chemically fused, there was of course a slight variation between one and another, but they were close enough to sound like one big explosion. Smoke and powder began to billow out through the open door.

"Run," I said.

Aisha looked at me. "What?"

Brian grabbed her arm. "Run." Dragging her with him, he headed off down the driveway. I turned and threw the road flare underarm toward the doorway, then casually walked after them.

"Why are we running?" protested Aisha as she and Brian crossed the road.

BOOOM

I felt the heat of the explosion, as well as the shift in air pressure, on my back, but I didn't alter my steady pace. Brian and Aisha had dived behind a parked car, and were now peering over it as I strolled over to them. Turning to lean on the car, I surveyed my handiwork.

The warehouse was still there, though there were now holes in the walls and roof. As we watched, parts of the roof caved in. An enormous mushroom cloud climbed into the sky. Smoke was still pouring out of the stricken building, and it was easy to see that fires were blazing within.

"How the fuck did you do that?" demanded Aisha.

"Flour bomb," I explained, then went back to watching the fire.

"Huh?"

"Flour bomb," Brian repeated, in tones of enlightenment. "Particulates suspended in the air can be made to explode, especially if they're flammable. And you just blew up pallets of …"

"Heroin, cocaine, crack cocaine, methamphetamines, PCP and cash," I recited promptly. "Most of which will absolutely form clouds in the air, especially if some unkind person inserts a grenade where it'll do the most good. Cash is of course flammable in its own right."

"And we pulled the pins," marvelled Aisha. "That was so damn cool."

Brian's eyebrows rose toward his hairline as he looked over at the inferno. "That's … how much worth of drugs did we just destroy?"

"Eight figures," I said cheerfully. "Tens of millions. And that's not counting the cash. And all of it comes out of the pockets of the drug dealers. That right there? That was the next few months' worth of distribution in Brockton Bay, as well as the last month or so of outgoing profits."

"Holy fuckballs on acid," Aisha said happily. "They are gonna be so damn pissed."

"That's the general idea, yes," I agreed. "An angry enemy is one who isn't thinking straight."

"But … won't they just get more in?" asked Brian.

"Why, yes." I actually went so far as to steeple my fingertips. "I do believe they will."

Aisha stared at me. "You know where an' when, don't you?"

I nodded, once. "And now you get it."

Aisha was still laughing when we got back into the car.

End of Part Eighteen

[A/N: I am not overly well-informed on how much in the way of illicit drugs a large city will consume. If anyone has any better information than I do, I would welcome the chance to fix my numbers.]