by wildbow
Genesis dropped from the sky, exploded into a mess of dark smoke and pebbles as she struck the ground.
Feeling a moment’s panic, he checked the settings on his gun. Normal levels, no anomalies. It could heat metal and other inorganic materials, cut through more fragile materials, but against a person, it wouldn’t do more than hurt and maybe leave the mildest kind of burn.
That’s her power, he reminded himself, you didn’t kill her.
But his gun had done a surprising amount of damage. Was it some interaction with how she pulled her new shapes together? A specific wavelength, a weakness to lasers?
He wasn’t about to complain. He wheeled around, fired on the other villains.
An injured Ballistic opened fire on Vista, discharging a series of pieces of rubble at an angle. It struck the ground just in front of the girl and fallout from the impacts showered her. Each shot drove her back further, buying him a chance to limp to Sundancer’s side. He touched the darts that were fixing her to the wall, sending them flying into Weld’s face.
“Fuck!” Weld cursed, the metal spikes of the darts jutting out of his jaw, cheekbone, eyebrow and forehead, “Takes forever to get my face right after something like this!”
Trickster’s teleportations had placed the enemy’s group in the interior of the building, with the Wards surrounding them.
Surrounding one’s enemy wasn’t quite an advantage when the enemy could teleport, but for a moment, they all paused where they were, various weapons at the ready. It was the kind of momentary peace that fell when everyone was waiting to react to what the others were doing.
A wind blew past them, and Kid Win blinked as a fat droplet of water spattered against his visor. It was starting to drizzle. He glanced up at the corpses where they hung on the walls of the building.
“The water’s going to wash away the evidence if you don’t let us go and hurry to check on the bodies,” Trickster spoke.
“Crime scene techs can’t get here in time with the roads like they are,” Weld spoke. “And we’re not allowed to touch the evidence anyways. Rules.”
“Rules? You shouldn’t sweat those things so much,” Trickster chuckled. “Here, I’ll help you out.”
Weld disappeared, and the burned corpse flopped to the ground.
“Shit!” Clockblocker shouted, running forward.
Weld dropped from the wall for the second time in a matter of minutes as the restraints intended for the woman’s corpse tore free of the concrete. Vista reshaped the wall to ease his descent. Kid Win raised his laser rifle to fire at Trickster.
Dumb. He regretted it the second his finger left the trigger.
As he predicted, he found himself somewhere else in the blink of an eye, and the impact of his own gunfire slammed into his back, intensely hot. He threw himself to the ground at the base of the building, where water pooled, rolling so his back was submerged.
It’s not lethal, can’t do any permanent harm, you had it vetted, tested on pig meat.
The balance of the fight had abruptly shifted. Clockblocker, Flechette and Vista were where the three Travelers had been, and vice versa.
“Nuh uh uh, kiddo,” Trickster spoke, as the gap in the wall began closing behind his group, “Up you go.”
The flayed corpse appeared in Vista’s position.
No! Kid Win turned, saw Vista on the wall. She’d gotten tangled in the loops of wire that had been holding the corpse up. The metal wire was coiled around a shattered part of the wall, and more than one wire had caught around her neck. Another looping of wire bound her body, one of her arms caught against her side. She struggled to pull at the wire on her neck with her free hand, but it was little help. The wire pulled so tightly against her throat that Kid Win feared it would cut her skin.
“Trickster!” Sundancer cried out, horrified.
“Just run!” was the villain’s only reply. The three villains started running, leaving the building behind, their footsteps sloshing and splashing.
Kid Win raised his laser pistol, aimed carefully, then fired, landing the shot a half-foot to the right of Vista’s throat. The wires heated and split, freeing her, and she dropped a foot before catching on more wires. Nothing dangerous, this time, but it was a fair distance to fall and one slip could see her getting cut on the wire, strangled or cracking her head open as she fell.
Shadow Stalker materialized behind Trickster, catching him around the throat in a headlock. She used one foot to kick his feet out from under him, and then forced him face first into the water.
Kid Win hesitated. Help her or help Vista?
Vista. Shadow Stalker would say she could handle herself. Made a point of trying to.
He fired more shots to free Vista, missing the wires one or two times. The heroine, for her part, focused on angling the wall beneath her to allow herself to slide down instead of falling the full distance.
Ballistic shot Shadow Stalker, driving her back. The attack had left a gaping hole just below her heart, the edges wispy. The gap closed, but the attack had separated her from Trickster, and hurt her badly enough that she crumpled to the ground, a hand to her chest.
Kid Win fired a salvo at the retreating villains, grazed Ballistic. Sundancer turned, directing her orb between their groups. She dropped it into the water. Massive clouds of heated steam rose where the orb met water, obscuring the battlefield.
By the time it cleared, the villains were gone.
It took a minute to check that none of them had suffered any permanent damage. After some debate, they moved the bodies to a more secure, dry spot, inside the building. Glory Girl managed to make her way back two minutes after the Travelers were gone, helped with the last body that still hung on the wall. By the time they were done, the rain was pouring down.
Kid Win stared down at the corpses, an ugly feeling in his gut.
He was dumb, easily distracted, prone to leaving his projects unfinished, and it was moments like this that this knowledge hit him particularly hard. His dad had made him get tested, and the doctors had labeled him with ADD and dyscalculia. He held to the opinion that the ADD diagnosis was way overused—he liked to think that he was just a daydreamer, prone to getting lost in his thoughts.
The dyscalculia was something concrete that he couldn’t deny or explain away. He couldn’t keep numbers in his head, couldn’t make the most basic intuitive leaps or connections with them.
All of that had been before he got his powers. Nothing had changed, except that now he could visualize something, instinctively know how he could put it together. His disability or disabilities put him a step behind the rest. His daydreaming was worse, because his thoughts were so damn interesting, now. He couldn’t take reliable measurements without using computers to do it. Couldn’t finish half his projects without feeling compelled to move on to something else.
The PRT staff insisted he was exceptional with antigrav and guns, had it even marked in his file, but he knew it wasn’t so true. He finished his guns because they were simple, in their own way. It was easy enough to take three half-finished gun projects and mash them together. Create something with multiple settings, even. As far as he was aware, he was the only tinker in the PRT’s records that didn’t have a defined specialty, gimmick or trick. He was increasingly worried that his special talent as a tinker was being able to occasionally make something despite his learning disability. Which would suck, if it were true.
There were exceptions. He’d finished bigger projects. His hoverboard, driven by the idea of how awesome it would be to fly. Even then, it had been a chore. Monumentally stupid of him to dismantle it. The idea and motivation driving the action had been good: he was graduating the Wards in a little while, he’d be expected to change his name and adjust his methods, because an adult calling himself Kid Win was lame. He’d had an idea about a harness with a floating array of turrets that could fire different munitions depending on what gun he holstered in the main slot. Self adjusting and adaptive the way his Alternator Cannon wa
s. Except he’d gotten frustrated at a snag in the testing, put it down to take a break and hadn’t picked it up again in six days. His hoverboard had effectively been destroyed for no reason, when it might have made the difference in getting the Travelers into custody.
His Alternator Cannon was the real gem. It had been the result of a medication the PRT’s doctor had prescribed, which he’d been forced to stop after two weeks when he began to get increasingly dizzy, anxious and nauseous. While he’d been taking the pills, he’d been focused, had a glimpse, maybe, of what he could do if it weren’t for his distractibility and daydreaming. When Piggy had spoken of destroying the thing, the mere thought had been crushing. Then Leviathan had destroyed it for real, maybe the only truly brilliant thing he’d be able to make. He harbored fears it might even the only brilliant thing he’d ever be able to make.
He wasn’t the worst hero ever, he knew that. He had things he could do. He could let the worries and the dozens of unfinished projects alone, most days. That changed when his team got thrashed. Thoughts like that had been plaguing him since the Endbringer event a week ago. He couldn’t shake the notion that he was in the running for the weakest member of the team. The notion that he was dumb, second-rate. That this loss, here, was his fault, because he had dropped the ball. The people of this city deserve a better hero, a more focused one.
Weld spoke, disturbing him from his thoughts, “I just got a message. PRT is on their way. We head back now.”
Hearing the unenthusiastic replies of his teammates, Kid Win realized that the rest of the team wasn’t in any better of a mood than he was. Losing had a way of doing that.
Strangely comforting.
* * *
“Got word from the Protectorate. They’re handling the case with the bodies, we’re not to touch it or get involved in any way,” Weld spoke, folding his arms. He had what looked like acne—blisters of extra-shiny metal on his face where the remainder of the darts hadn’t yet been fully integrated into his ‘skin’. He reclined in an expensive, custom-made office chair, capable of supporting his dense, heavy body. Everyone else had found seats in the central room of their headquarters. Everyone, that was, except for Glory Girl, who had gone home. She wasn’t yet an official member of the team.
“No word on what’s going on?” Clockblocker asked.
“They’re staying quiet on the subject,” Weld spoke.
Vista leaned forward, “Maybe a serial killer?”
“We should focus on what we do know,” Weld shook his head. “As far as tonight’s patrols—”
“Actually,” Kid Win cut in, “Sorry. But I have one theory.”
“What?” Clockblocker asked.
Kid Win glanced at Weld, checking to see if their leader was okay with it. Weld didn’t say anything, which he took as assent to continue.
“There were two other crime scenes, right? Any idea if there were the same number of bodies at each crime scene?”
“Same number—” Weld raised an eyebrow, “Why… Oh. Shit. I think I follow.”
Smarter than you’d think, given his brute-force power and his appearance, Kid Win realized. Or I’m just that bad with numbers. The connection took me twenty minutes to make.
“Three crime scenes with three bodies each. So it’d be nine bodies?” Clockblocker asked, “Each killed in some different way? I don’t see what killer that would fit with.”
“Not one killer,” Kid Win answered, “Nine bodies, each for different killers.”
“The Slaughterhouse Nine,” Clockblocker leaned back in his seat, groaning. “Fuck, that’d be all we needed.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time they’ve arrived at a location in the wake of an Endbringer event,” Flechette pointed out.
“Maybe it’s them,” Weld conceded. “And maybe the Protectorate figured that much out, with the clues they have from the other two scenes. It could be someone or something else. Either way, it’s not our case, not even in our league, and we should stay as hands off as we can manage. We need to talk about patrols and tonight’s duties.”
“The grunt work,” Flechette offered a literal grunt to punctuate the statement. Kid Win and Clockblocker chuckled.
“Vista’s due for a patrol, and as a young member, she has to go with someone. Lily?”
Flechette smiled a little. “Quick to make me pay for the snark, huh? No, it’s cool, I’ve been wanting a chance to shoot the shit with Vista.” She extended her fist, with index finger and thumb extended to form a gun, mock fired it at her junior teammate. Vista rolled her eyes.
“Clockblocker, you and I will handle the night’s shifts after that. Your call if you want to patrol with me or not, we can cover different routes and go for a wider area if you’d rather.”
“Alright. We’ll figure it out.”
“Leaving Shadow Stalker. You okay with the late-night, Sophia?”
“Yeah, fine,” Sophia didn’t look up from her laptop.
“And me?” Kid Win asked.
“Special duty, tonight,” Weld smiled. “You’re recruiting.”
“Recruiting?”
“There’s a kid calling himself Chariot. Been racing around the city with a powered suit that lets him move a hundred miles an hour. Assault finally caught up with him last night, brought him into custody. Wound up calling the kid’s mom, got him to agree to talk to our recruiter. You. You’ll be meeting the kid in his home.”
“Why me?”
“Shared interests. You’re both tinkers. You have the best idea of how he thinks.”
Kid Win nodded. He couldn’t quite put his finger on what he was feeling. A measure of excitement at the idea of getting to talk to another tinker that wasn’t Armsmaster? Sure. Fear? Would he be replaced by a new tinker? It was an immature thing to be spooked about, he knew that, but that didn’t make it any less real.
“Cool,” he spoke, by way of agreement.
“You convince him, it’ll look good to the guys upstairs,” Weld informed him.
Right. Great. Pressure.
“Now, onto a more serious topic. I’m seeing that this team is really disorganized, these days. I have no problem handling the brunt of the paperwork, it gives me a degree of insight into what’s going on that the files don’t. I don’t even mind cleaning up the kitchen and showers here when the janitors are off duty. But we really need to communicate. Last night Flechette went on patrol and ran into a situation with Parian she should have been briefed on. It could have turned hostile.”
“Sorry,” Vista muttered.
“It turned out okay,” Flechette smiled a little.
“Right. It’s okay, it’s understandable, given all we’re trying to handle,” Weld reassured her, “But we can’t miss out on details and updates on the overall situation. The Protectorate have their hands full with the gang wars between Fenrir’s Chosen, Purity’s group and Coil, they’re now dealing with this serial killer or serial killers, and they’re still updating the records. So here’s what we’re going to do, I’ve checked it with Piggot, she agrees. I’m picking up an extra patrol shift, and I’ll be adjusting your patrol shifts down by twenty minutes each, moving them around slightly. With the downtime that creates, we’re going to have meetings like this, every day.”
Pausing, Weld glanced at Clockblocker, as if expecting a response. When Clockblocker only nodded assent, Weld’s eyebrows rose a fraction in surprise. He continued, “Gives us a chance to talk about our recent patrols, fears, concerns, ideas. Or hell, just talk, because I’m seeing this trend where we only see each other in passing, while patrolling or in class, and some of you are going out of your way to spend time together and hash stuff out, even at the detriment of stuff like school.”
“You’re talking about class, earlier,” Clockblocker said.
“More or less. Not saying it’s a bad thing, but we can restructure our schedules, make time for it, instead of detracting from an area we need to pay attention to.”
“Sure,” Clockblocker agreed. Was there
a note of irritation in his voice? Kid Win couldn’t tell. Dennis was playing along, at least.
“Now, about the paperwork you guys have been submitting, there’s been a few recurring problems…”
Kid Win sighed and settled into his seat. This was going to be a little while.
* * *
The building was ugly, had trash piled up on either side of the front door, a sour smell wafting out from it. The water level wasn’t so bad here, and the building was almost entirely intact. The only sign of damage was the boarded up windows on the first and second floors where the glass had been knocked out of the window frames. Red brick, it seemed like the usual sort of tenement building one would find in the Docks.
He stepped inside. A Hispanic boy in the front hall whistled sharply as Kid Win stepped inside, while a group of Asian-American boys and girls in dirty clothing ran around him, screaming at a ear-piercing volume as they continued a game, some pointing and hooting at the superhero. Occupants aside, it was dark, with only two dingy lightbulbs and no open windows.
It’s nine o’clock at night. Don’t these kids have a bedtime?
He checked the folded paper he had in his hand, found the room number, and headed up the stairs. A morbidly obese, older man sat halfway up the stairs, maybe a babysitter for the kids. Kid Win hoped the man was a babysitter, because the man was white and the kids weren’t, meaning he probably wasn’t family. If he wasn’t getting paid, there was only one uncomfortable explanation for why the man would be willing to tolerate that yelling and squealing.
Or maybe he’s deaf. Let’s go with that.
The fat old man didn’t budge an inch as Kid Win approached, forcing the boy to squeeze by. He made his way up, ignored a gang of fit twenty-something Asian guys who were standing guard in the hallway on the second floor. On the third floor, he headed past people who were sleeping on blankets in the hallway, found apartment 306.