by A A Woods
He’d never looked like that before.
The guard released him, flexing his fingers.
Joe walked to the door and shoved through it, bursting into the sun. He took a deep breath of winter air, letting it sear his lungs and chill the sweat on his skin. He’d left his jacket upstairs, but he didn’t care. He needed the cold. He needed the space.
The protestors began to chant at him, but the voices were a swirl of nonsense, like the cries of gulls.
Except one.
“Did you come to join us?” Tasha said, sidling up to him with a dark smile. Her skin glistened in the sun, a coppery brown today. “Or is it too cliché for a kid to protest his own parents’ company?”
“Please,” Joe said in a tight, tired voice. “Please, I want to know. I need to know the truth.”
Tasha’s smile fell.
She looked up at him, crouching in closer to catch his eye. He had no idea what she saw. Was Joe the frightening monster he’d been in the lobby, about to break an innocent man’s arm? Was he the nerdy sidekick who’d tagged along with Eliza as she’d dragged him into an adventure he’d never asked for? Was he the loyal son, the innocent bystander, the naïve idiot?
Whatever it was, she nodded, pressing her sign into someone’s hand. “Here, take this,” she said before turning back to Joe. This time, when she met his gaze, he couldn’t look away. “Are you sure?”
Even in his current state, he felt the weight of her question. This was the third time she’d asked, and, like a spell, there would be no going back. He was going to learn things he couldn’t un-learn, perhaps see things he couldn’t un-see.
But he was tired of hiding.
“Yes,” he said.
“Alright.” Tasha took his hand, her fingers small and warm in his. “Let’s go.”
Still fighting to hold back the violence inside him, Joe allowed a dangerous stranger to lead him into the city.
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Tag, You’re It
Moose had a day to kill and too much energy to sit still while he did it.
He’d tried browsing Reddit and watching TV, but now that he’d figured out where his next mission was coming from, he felt less invested in the goings-on around the city. After all, he no longer had to worry about finding crime and building his reputation. He had a benefactor. He’d solved the equation, was on his way to greatness.
He just had to do whatever Victor asked, including showing up at the party tonight and playing doorman.
Which he was fine with, totally ok doing. As Victor said, this was the real work. It wasn’t always fame and glory. Sometimes it was pedestrian and small. He’d made his peace, would do the good demanded of him.
But that didn’t mean he’d suddenly acquired the ability to stay put.
So, while Delilah was frantically baking a huge batch of her famous delicacies (for Victor’s party, no less), Moose ducked past the kitchen and into the hallway of the apartment complex, zooming down to catch the elevator before it passed his floor.
“Late for a meeting,” he said cheerfully to the elderly woman blinking at him in shock.
Oops, he thought, straightening his windbreaker and pretending he hadn’t just covered the whole hallway in less time than it took her to blink.
Before he could really begin to panic, the elevator was opening and Moose was stepping into noise and bustle of the city, goggles glinting in the sun, buoyant and hopeful. He walked as slowly as he could, carefully measuring his steps and making sure they took seconds instead of milliseconds. But there was no keeping the bounce out of his step.
He bought a slice of pizza and ate it as he walked, admiring the huge, old buildings and reflective panes of glass.
Pausing to admire himself in the mirror of an H&M, he chuckled. He certainly looked the part of eccentric DJ, with the wild brown hair and orange-tinted glass over the huge, multifaceted eyes that no one knew was beneath them. Dressed in a brightly colored windbreaker, equally bright sneakers, and fitted jeans, he could have slipped into any club or rave without issue. He looked cool and sleek and nonchalant.
Words none of his brothers would ever use to describe him.
Thinking about the way Otto would laugh if he could see Moose admiring his own reflection, Moose felt a strange blend of loneliness and stubbornness. Here he was, making it work! Chasing the dream! He didn’t need Aquila, who apparently couldn’t spend a day in New York without being arrested. He didn’t need Tero or Daisy or Otto. He was doing what they wouldn’t, risking what they couldn’t.
And yet…
An odd stillness to his left caught his attention.
One perk of his unnatural eyes was that he could see all around him without turning his head, which meant he noticed the stranger watching him from a few feet away. Dressed in a shaped leather jacket and skinny jeans that hugged round, feminine hips, the stranger’s face was attractively sharp, with angular features and short, choppy hair. The young woman stood still as the lunch commuters flowed around Moose, watching him, smiling.
He didn’t move, pretending to preen in front of the mirror as he tried to figure out why the stranger looked familiar.
Where have I seen her before…?
It took him a moment to remember, but then he recognized it. The cuff of the leather jacket. It was unmistakable, with two buckles and a row of studs. It was the same jacket he’d edged around in Hans’s closet to reach the suit.
One of Hans’s bodyguards!
Which meant it was no accident she’d found him.
Stretching languidly, Moose turned away and began to stroll aimlessly down the street. Glancing to the side as if to check the walk sign, he saw that the stranger move to follow him, eyes fixed on his back, one hand in her coat pocket.
You wanna play, sucker? Moose thought, rolling his ankle as he waited for the light to change. Let’s play.
In the millisecond before the light changed, Moose burst across the street in a flurry of motion. A few people gasped, but he’d blown by them before they could register the teenager in the eccentrically bright clothing. He zoomed along the side of the sidewalk, flirting with the danger of the bike lane.
But he was lightning, he was Moose.
There was no bike or car that he couldn’t see coming, couldn’t swerve to avoid.
He ducked into an alley, looking over one shoulder.
An arm collided with his chest, knocking the wind out of him.
“Fast little whippet, aren’t you?” said a breathless voice as Moose coughed for air.
He shook his head, eyes readjusting just in time to see the flashing blade.
He leapt backwards.
The blade hissed through the spot his stomach had been a moment ago.
The stranger rebalanced easily, straightening with a strange, almost manic laugh in her expression. Moose’s eyes absorbed everything in the heartbeat it took her to readjust: the heavy leather boots, the spiky earrings, the butterfly knife in her hand.
The cut she’d made on her palm.
“You should be more careful,” Moose said, bouncing on his feet. “I hear those things are sharp.”
“Gee, I’ve never heard that one before,” she said.
Moose winced. He did need to work on his hero banter.
But he had to ask… “What do you want?”
She cocked her head. “Is it cliché to say your head on a spike?”
Moose grinned. “Nope.”
Without warning, she struck again, knives clicking like mandibles as she swung them out and down, toward Moose’s collarbone.
But she had no chance, not with him watching her, not with him ready.
He danced out of her way, leapt around her, and kicked her right in the middle of her butt.
She stumbled forward, graceless for the first time since he’d noticed her.
“You incompetent shit,” she snarled, a cold rage flaring up in her previously smug expression.
“Incompetent?” Moose said, indignant. “Who are you cal
ling incompetent?”
“The one who can’t complete a simple mission without fucking it up.”
“I seem to remember doing exactly what I set out to do,” Moose answered, examining his fingernails.
The stranger seemed to take a moment to compose herself, clicking the knife back into place. Moose noticed another cut on her hand, this one dripping blood.
“Not very good with that thing, are you?” he said.
But she didn’t even look down. Instead, she flipped the knife closed. “It seems I’ve miscalculated. It won’t happen again.”
Then, to Moose’s astonishment, she turned around and began to walk away.
“Hey! Is that all you got?”
“For now,” she called back.
Moose was baffled. “Wait a minute, don’t you have a message from your employer? A threat? Something?”
“Nope.”
And then she was gone.
Moose stood there for a long minute, trying to puzzle out what had just happened. Clearly Hans had sent this girl to take revenge for what Moose had done, which was satisfying. Moose was getting under the bad guy’s skin enough that he was instructing assassins to take him out. Moose was notable now.
But then… she’d barely tried. And the way she’d called him incompetent hadn’t been with the reflected anger of a frustrated boss, but with her own frustration. As if she was mad at Moose for something he hadn’t done.
After a while, Moose shrugged it off and went back out into the city, not quite able to enjoy the day as much as before. The whole encounter had left him dizzy and reeling and really, how could he expect to make sense of what villains did? They were in the wrong, after all. They weren’t supposed to have logical reasons. If they did, then they’d be on the right side.
But no matter what he did after that, Moose couldn’t shake the feeling he was missing something.
Chapter Twenty-Nine: How Well Do You Know Them?
Joe was half expecting Tasha to blindfold him as she led him down a side-alley behind a weathered Chinese take-out place. They’d walked over in silence, the harsh winter sunlight doing nothing to soften his mood. But this little corridor between two buildings made him think of darkness. It was dirty and thick with the overwhelming aroma of fried food and noodles. Overflowing dumpsters lined both sides, and the whole area felt decrepit and untended and brutally, unforgivingly honest.
Strangely, it was just what he needed.
He noticed Tasha’s hand shaking as she unlocked the tiny door leading into the basement apartment.
Joe put a finger on her arm, ignoring the way she flinched at his touch. “What’s wrong?”
She twisted to look at him over her shoulder, trying for snarky and somehow just looking scared. “Why’re you asking me? You’re the one who stormed out demanding answers.”
Joe met her gaze, trying to figure out why she reminded him of a rabbit ready to bolt. “Tasha, I don’t care where you live. I don’t care about any of this.” He waved at the trash and the graffiti.
“I know,” she said, pulling out of his grip and unlocking the door. But she hesitated, hand on the door handle. “It’s just… I’ve never…”
“What?”
This time when she looked at him, she didn’t try to hide the fear. “No one has ever been in this apartment but me.”
Joe’s first instinct was to make a joke, to say that surely a plumber or landlord had come inside. But the seriousness in her eyes and the way she seemed ready to shut the door in his face and pretend none of this had ever happened made him swallow the humor.
“Ok,” was all he could think to say.
Nodding, as if to herself, Tasha opened the door and let him inside.
Joe stepped past her, blinking until his eyes could adjust. The first word that came to his mind was dark. The next was clutter. The third was… woah.
The whole room was packed with boxes and old computer towers, teetering stacks of them shoved into the corners, cracked monitors arrayed like little Stonehenge displays on the floor. There were crates and crates of files, stuffed full and spilling USB sticks on the floor. Every wall was a map of newspaper cutouts and tacked string, some of it overlaid on a real map, some spiderwebbing across white paint. There was only one window, currently streaming in light and illuminating the gently circulating motes of dust. Beneath it was a single twin bed, messy and unmade, more of a nest than anything.
“Wow,” Joe said, doing his best to keep the slight is she crazy worry out of his voice. “What is all this stuff?”
“I never save anything online,” Tasha said, standing next to the door and watching him the way a house pet might watch an intruder. “Too risky. I print out all my files, except the videos which I keep on those.” She pointed to the USB sticks.
Joe nodded, not sure what to say. He understood, vaguely, about the risk of hackers and paparazzi. They’d never cared much about the nerdy, media-shy son of the HNN owners, but he’d heard stories. Actresses who’d had their private photos leaked. Politicians whose shady text messages got splashed on the morning news. It was a risk in the modern world to exist online.
But he’d never seen anyone go to such extremes.
He turned to look at her, dread settling over him. “Tasha… just how scary is this guy?”
She didn’t move. If he didn’t know any better, he would have thought she was a statue, bleached by the dusty, gray light. He wondered if she’d changed her skin tone to match the wall behind her, blending in without thinking.
After a long moment, Tasha stepped around a pile and reached into a drawer. She rifled around inside, making a surprising amount of noise after the mausoleum silence when they’d first walked in.
Joe followed, looking over her shoulder.
When she straightened, she had one of the many USB sticks in her hand, this one labeled in permanent marker.
HNN.
Joe reached for it, but Tasha moved away. “At the risk of sounding like a broken record,” she said, a small, halfhearted smile playing around her lips, “are you sure about this?”
He balled his fists, trying to channel Eliza and Otto and all the things he was not. “There’s no turning back now.”
“That’s not true.”
Joe softened, let his shoulders drop. “It is for me.”
She didn’t argue, instead answering with a brusque nod, opening the nearest laptop, and plugging the USB drive in.
Joe watched silently as Tasha booted up the computer—older than any he’d seen in years—and pulled up the files. They were labeled with an odd assortment of numbers and letters, but she seemed to understand the strange language of them. She hovered the mouse over one, paused. Joe wondered for a second if she was going to ask him if he was sure for the millionth time.
Then she double-clicked it.
In less time than Joe expected, a video file was playing, taking up the whole screen, sucking him in. In it, a young woman was tied to a chair, curvy and attractive, with short, jagged hair. She was gagged, bound, struggling to free herself. Her eyes were wide with panic.
“What is this?” Joe demanded, unable to look away.
Tasha didn’t answer.
A moment later, his parents walked on scene, both of them holding long, lethal-looking knives.
“Tasha, what…?”
But Joe’s question died in his throat as both faces, those achingly familiar, beloved faces several years younger, turned to the camera. There was an eerie deadness in his parents’ eyes, the kind of awful resignation that only soldiers returning from war could understand. Joe found himself shaking his head, as if he could stop whatever was coming, deny the reality of what he was seeing. Let the girl go, he thought frantically. Untie her.
But instead, his mother raised the knife.
And plunged it into the woman’s heaving chest.
“Stop!” Joe shouted as his father did the same, sliding the second knife between the woman’s ribs, ignoring her pitiful scream, muffled by
the gag. “No, stop it, turn it off!”
To his relief, Tasha pressed the space bar, pausing the video.
Joe reeled backward, casting around the cluttered apartment, swallowing bile. He shook his head, clenched and unclenched his hands. “No, that’s not possible. It’s not possible, my parents would never kill anyone. They wouldn’t.”
“They didn’t,” Tasha said softly.
Joe’s attention snapped to her, all his panic zeroing in on the lifeline of hope she’d just thrown. “What?”
“They didn’t kill anyone.” She gestured at the screen, more slumped than Joe had ever seen her. “That person’s name is Pan, and she can’t die. Can’t even feel pain. She probably enjoyed what they did to her.”
“But they… all that blood…”
Tasha’s lips twitched and she flickered, changing color so that Joe had to focus to make out more than her eyes and the sunlight reflecting off her hair. “She’s like us, Joe. Abnormal.”
He gaped at the screen, where the video was locked in a scene of horrendous gore. His parents covered in blood. The young woman, head thrown back, screaming through a gag. “Then she must be a good actress.”
“Oh, she has lots of practice,” Tasha said, opening the drawer the USB had come from. Joe glanced at her and then leaned over, peering inside.
There were dozens of storage drives inside, all of them labeled with permanent marker. Joe couldn’t bring himself to read the words, but he could imagine what they were. Media outlets. Famous personalities. Politicians.
All with blood on their hands.
“That guy, that Hans person… this is how he controls everyone?” Joe whispered.
“Not everyone,” Tasha said, closing the drawer. “Sometimes it’s just plain blackmail. Ghost is good at what she does, and he doesn’t always need to use such, um, extreme measures.” She tilted her head at the open laptop. “But anyone Hans helps cultivate, those he places in positions of power… yes. This is the threat he holds over them.”
“A video of attempted murder.” He shook his head. It was too unbelievable, too strange to be real. “But you said yourself they didn’t kill her, right? She’s still out there. They could prove they didn’t do it.”