章 2494: 77
Chapter 77: Depravation 8-2
Depravation 8.2
"Comms check," Clockblocker's voice chimed in my ear. "Team A?"
I fiddled with the receiver, adjusting it so that it fit better in my ear. It felt weird wearing it, awkward and out of place, and it was going to take a lot of getting used to. Dragontech, so at least I wasn't lugging around a whole radio or whatever, but having a piece of metal and plastic stuck in your ear wasn't any less uncomfortable just because it wasn't attached to a bunch of wires and a box twice the size of a deck of cards.
"Armsmaster, check," rumbled Armsmaster's voice.
"Miss Militia, everything's working properly, Console," came Miss Militia's.
"Roger that," said Clockblocker. "Team B?"
"Assault, loud and clear, Console!"
"Battery, check. No problems."
"Understood. Wards team? Star Command to Vista, come in, Vista."
"Knock it off, Clock," Vista shot back. I glanced over at her. "I can hear you just fine. Vista, check."
"Please keep it professional, Clockblocker," Miss Militia said politely, a note of warning in her tone.
Clockblocker coughed. "Uh, yes, ma'am. Apocrypha, everything okay on your end?"
I reached up to the band of plastic and electronics around my neck, fumbled with the call button, and pressed it. "Um, yeah. Everything's good. I can hear you just fine."
I hadn't read up on all of the radio codes, yet. Technically, I probably wasn't even supposed to be out in the field until I had and had finished my orientation and power testing and everything, but with the city still on the road to recovery and a lot of people displaced by Leviathan's attack, the PRT and Protectorate were sending out everyone they could in rotations, so that there was always someone patrolling.
"Roger that, Apocrypha. Team A, the Director wants you to do a sweep of the Docks and Old Town. There've been reports of increased activity from the Merchants and she wants you to check that out. You're authorized to engage any of the capes you see and request backup — wow, things must be really serious if Piggot's giving you a blank cheque like that."
"Understood, Console. Armsmaster, out."
"Team B, you get to make the rounds through the relief camps and make sure everything's still going smoothly. You've got a PRT escort waiting in the garage."
"Armsmaster gets the fun job, as usual," Assault commented with a hint of a whine.
"Assault," Battery chided. "Console, are we expecting engagement from any of the gangs?"
"No, but that's not a guarantee. The Director thinks they won't want to try anything if the Protectorate has a team doing the rounds, but if it's Hookwolf and his group, they might try anyway. Keep your finger on the button — there's an emergency response team on standby and New Wave will be patrolling in the area, too. They're cooperating, so you'll have backup if things get hairy."
"Hookwolf and the Empire? Yikes," said Assault. "On second thought, Armsmaster can keep the interesting jobs. Boring and safe sounds good to me."
The Empire. Funny, I hadn't heard anything from them for weeks, now, not since the infighting started after Kaiser's death during the Bakuda fiasco. The first time I'd even seen one of their capes for myself was the Leviathan battle, and they'd lost a few people during it, hadn't they? One of the twins, at least.
It felt a little strange when I thought about it, since Khepri had tussled with them before Leviathan, so it was almost like I'd missed out on something. Not that a running battle with the second most powerful Blaster on the East Coast sounded like a fun time, but still, it was one of the things that hadn't stayed the same. If they attacked now…
I swallowed and my heartbeat picked up a little as something like anxiety — no, anticipation — coiled in my belly. Everything had gotten so busy after Bakuda that I hadn't really had time to go back out and patrol again, to hit the streets like I had that first night and just go out to be a hero. Like I was now.
The Empire was tearing itself apart, but it was still the biggest gang in the city. It was still the largest threat, the most malignant tumor that festered. If I ran into them today and dealt them a hard and devastating blow…
It would be easier to protect Brockton Bay from the Teeth or the Fallen without the Empire scurrying in the shadows.
"— crypha? Apocrypha?"
A light blow pushed against my arm and I startled.
"Hey!" Vista hissed. "You there?"
"Sorry," I said, but she shook her head and tapped her throat meaningfully, so I fumbled with the button for my mic. "Sorry," I repeated, "I was thinking about something. What was that?"
"You sure you're up for this?" Clockblocker asked uncertainly. "I'm sure the Director would let you sit out if you're still tired from Leviathan."
My lips pulled into a line.
"I'm fine," I told him a little tersely. "I just got caught up thinking about something. What's our route?"
I got enough fretting about my health from Amy, thank you.
"Okay, if you're sure. Team C — you and Vista — are making a loop through Downtown. The Director wants you to make your way to the mall, swing down around Arcadia, then make your way back from the opposite direction. You'll swap out with Gallant and Kid Win, then you get about six hours rest. Safe, easy, you'll be back in time for dinner."
Vista made a noise in the back of her throat.
"You're giving us the PR route," she accused him bitterly. "The one where we're supposed to be visible and approachable."
My head whipped around. "What?"
"You were expecting something more exciting?" Clockblocker asked dryly. "This is Apocrypha's first official patrol, after all. She didn't get a debut press conference to introduce herself, so she gets to do the newbie parade."
"It helps people feel safe and normal," Miss Militia added. Her motorcycle purred in the background. "After an Endbringer battle, that's the most important thing to keeping the situation from deteriorating. When people see you, they feel reassured that the PRT and the Protectorate are still watching out for them."
Vista mumbled something about being a mascot, but I couldn't quite make out exactly what it was. I understood the sentiment well enough, at least, because it definitely felt like I had more important things to do than run around smiling for cameras and shaking hands.
Except that was important, too, wasn't it? Making people feel at ease. There'd been some rioting over the last week (though not as much as there would have been, if things were worse off), and if my presence could help calm them down or stop one from starting, then that was definitely just as important as punching Hookwolf in the face or knocking the last of Skidmark's rotten teeth out of his mouth.
Maybe if I told that to myself enough times I'd even start to feel like I actually believed it.
"Fine," I said flatly. "Let's just go."
Vista looked over at me. "You sure?" she asked quietly, mic silent. "You killed Leviathan. It seems kinda silly to send you on a normal PR patrol."
"That just makes it more important," I told her. "If people see me, that might give them hope, might give them that little bit of patience to hold out another few days or pitch in and help out, instead of fighting or rioting. Sometimes, just being there is enough."
That had been true for Khepri, too, although in a different fashion. People had been hesitant to start anything in her territory after Leviathan, but that was because no one really knew how big her range was, so they thought she was always watching. A reputation for coming down hard on rabble rousers had something to do with it, too.
With the distance of not quite being her, I could honestly say that Khepri was pretty fucking terrifying. Being a modern day Biblical plague lent itself well to intimidation.
On the other end of the spectrum, I'd be doing the same thing, only inspiring people to be better rather than frightening them into cooperation with an iron fist. "Hopebringer" — I couldn't say I liked it, not the least of which because it sounded corny as all hell, and it put all sorts of expectations and attention on my shoulders that was nerve-wracking to think about.
But if I was going to do anything more meaningful than beat down whoever stuck his neck out, then I was just going to have to deal with it, and all it entailed, whether I liked it or not. And if, during this incredibly important, undeniably frustrating PR patrol, the Empire happened to cross our radar while we were the closest ones able to respond to it…
Well. I was the girl who had killed Leviathan. Fighting someone like that and walking away would have a huge amount of reputation attached.
"That's a very mature way of looking at it, Apocrypha. Well said," Miss Militia's voice chimed approvingly.
Startled, my hand leapt away from my throat like I'd been burned. My mic had still been on.
Vista rolled her eyes, but the quirk of her lips told me it wasn't meant to be mean.
"Well, when you give a speech like that," she said sardonically, "I guess I can't really argue with the Hopebringer."
I grimaced, and Vista let out a quiet chuckle.
I was really beginning to hate that epithet. Whichever guy on PHO came up with it, I hoped he got banned.
Although I hadn't ruled out the possibility of it being a Glenn Chambers brainchild, either. I'd probably only know for sure when the t-shirts started popping up.
Ugh.
"Let's just get going."
"Right, right."
Vista walked over to the edge of the roof, then held out one arm and gestured, and — whoa, that was trippy. I didn't think I was ever going to get used to watching her bend space like a pretzel like that.
"Watch your step," she warned cheekily.
Then, she was down on the streets below, right in front of the PRT HQ's courtyard. There was no way to describe properly just how incredibly strange it looked to have something that far away suddenly be that close.
I stepped up, too, and an instant later, I was standing next to her. Behind me, space snapped back into its proper shape like a rubberband, silent.
"Wasn't too disorienting, was it?" she asked me.
"A little bit, yes." I shook my head and slid a glance at her. "Nothing I can't handle, though."
She smirked. "You're definitely handling it well. Kid Win puked the first time."
I didn't say that it wasn't really my first experience with her powers. If you discounted the few times Khepri had dealt with it, I'd also been through it during that fiasco in the street a few weeks ago. At the time, I hadn't even realized I'd walked through a stretch of space that she'd altered. This was different, obviously, because she wasn't being as careful about being inconspicuous, but actually stepping through the altered space wasn't really that strange.
Thinking about it, it wasn't all that different from my Vantage, at least at the higher levels. I hadn't had a proper chance to test out what my prowess was like, now, but considering the feeling I got from Aífe's Noble Phantasm…
All the more reason to hope we ran into Hookwolf or…Menja was the one who died, so Fenja.
"So," I began, "the PR patrol."
"Ah, right. Let's get on that."
"Lead on."
She turned and started walking, and I fell into step beside her.
"So, the PR patrol is kinda one big circle," she started to explain. "It goes through the busiest, cleanest, nicest parts of town, which is why it's frustrating: almost nothing happens, there. What does happen is it puts us square in the public eye, right where everyone can see us and all of the bigshots and the well-to-do people get to watch us do all of nothing. The entire point of it is for us to be seen, so that everybody feels safe and feels like we're safe."
Ah. As I'd expected, then. It probably even worked properly in a city that wasn't Brockton Bay.
"Hence calling it the PR patrol," I concluded.
Vista nodded. "Yeah. That's why it's always a new Ward's first patrol, too. It's a way of showing off the new guy, letting everyone know, hey, this person's one of the good guys, and it 'helps new Wards acclimate to the way we do things.' Mostly, it's just boring. You walk for about three hours, you get your picture taken a dozen times, shake some hands, and maybe tell kids they need to say no to drugs."
That drew a snort out of me. Just imagining Vista, tiny thing that she was, trying to tell someone twice her size not to fall into drug abuse was an incredibly amusing image. Trying to imagine Sophia, surly, moody, angry Sophia, glad-handing and taking selfies with random cape geeks? It was almost enough to make me laugh.
Dennis, though, I could see getting a kick out of it. Guy named himself Clockblocker, after all.
"Other than that, there's really not much to it. I think the most eventful PR patrol we ever had was, um…was Shadow Stalker's. She, uh, got frustrated halfway through and wound up stopping a mugging."
She was looking at me, no doubt waiting for a reaction to Sophia's name. I didn't give one.
"Sounds like her," I said neutrally.
"So, yeah," Vista went on, stumbling over the words a little, "like I said, the average time for one of these is about three hours. Might take us more like, I don't know, two-and-a-half, though? The Boardwalk is supposed to be on this route, but with the Boardwalk pretty much trashed…"
I hummed an agreement. "That's all there is to it, then?"
"Yep. That's all there is… Wait, no, hang on, I forgot about the stations."
I glanced at her.
"Stations?"
"Police stations. There's three of them along the route, or at least within spitting distance of it."
"I didn't realize we had that many police in Brockton Bay."
"Oh, uh, no, no, it's not what you're thinking." She shook her head. "See, a police department for a given city — or township or whatever — is broken up into precincts, depending on how big the city is and how many police it needs. Did you know New York City has over seventy?"
"That's…a lot, I'm guessing?"
"The most in the country, I'm pretty sure," Vista confirmed. "Ah, anyway, a precinct covers a specific area of the city. Usually, there's one main police station in a precinct, maybe two, and three at the most. But usually just the one. There's also substations, though, and minor stations rented out of security rooms and the like in malls and shopping centers and places like that. Those kinds of places have just a handful of cops, compared to the bigger main stations that can have, like, fifty or more."
"And these three stations on our route — they're like that?"
"Kind of? There's one main station and two smaller ones. The idea is that we can call on them to arrest any bad guys we happen to take down that don't fall under the PRT's jurisdiction."
"Anyone who isn't a cape, in other words."
She nodded.
"These ones we'll be passing are part of the…ninth precinct, I think."
"Ninth?"
"Brockton Bay has thirteen."
Thirteen?
"Is that a lot? Compared to seventy?"
A laugh burst out of Vista's mouth. "Ha! Let me put it into perspective, a little. Brockton Bay has…what, about two-hundred-fifty-thousand people? Somewhere around there?"
"I…guess?"
I didn't exactly have the most recent census data on hand, but that sounded about right.
"New York City has six million, which is like twenty-five times as many people," she said. "And it's a he-eck of a lot bigger than Brockton Bay. And yet, we have about one-sixth as many police precincts, and the entire PRT East-Northeast Division is based out of this city."
And in spite of all of that, the Empire and the ABB and the Merchants had still carved chunks out of the city, their capes never seemed to stay caught, and the thugs that made up their ranks walked the streets almost with impunity under the helpless gazes of a BBPD stretched thin.
In other words, Brockton Bay was a hive of scum and villainy with a sky-high crime rate. News at eleven.
"I'm surprised you know all this."
Vista chuckled. "It's all a part of the crazy shi-eets they make you learn for the Wards. I'm probably the only one who's learned it all, though. Although I think Gallant knows at least some of it."
"You're censoring yourself," I remarked. It…might have come off a little accusatory.
She shrugged. The smile that curled her lips was a little bitter. "We're in public. I'm Vista, the darling of the Wards. I'm not allowed to cuss. As far as anyone is concerned, I don't even know any swear words."
I snorted. "Just the picture of innocence, aren't you?"
"How's the saying go?" she agreed. "Butter wouldn't melt in my mouth?"
A beat passed, and then the pair of us shared a short, quiet laugh together. Right then, I felt I could see Vista and I being, if not friends, then amiable coworkers, and I didn't mind the idea of it at all.
We came upon the mall shortly thereafter, and it was surprisingly busy — or perhaps not so surprisingly so, because when I gave it a little thought, I remembered that most of the businesses were likely still shut down and the schools hadn't reopened, yet. Without electricity and internet services still down for everything but smartphones, there probably wasn't much to do except hang out with your friends and family.
With the Boardwalk gone, the only place to do that was the mall.
At first, nobody paid any attention to us, and Vista took me on a slow circuit of the packed parking lot. I suspected she used her powers several times to make sure there was always room for us to stick together through the crowds, but I never caught her at it, so I couldn't have said for sure one way or the other.
Then, at the tail end of our second lap, someone finally clued in to the fact that we were there.
And then, inevitably, someone realized that they were looking at the "Hopebringer."
I knew that because I heard him shout it.
"That's her! That's the Hopebringer!"
I wanted to throttle him, whoever it was, even as I plastered a fake, brittle smile on my lips and thanked the powers that be — and not for the first time — that my mask covered most of my face.
A hush fell over the crowd (how cliché, I wanted to say), and a moment later, they descended upon me like hyenas on a fresh corpse.
The next several minutes were a blur. I had no idea how many hands I shook or how many pictures I posed for, although there were a few I remembered vetoing outright (what the fuck was a Power Ranger, and what did one pose like?) and a few that the person asking should have been ashamed to even ask for, especially from an underage girl (no…just…no).
Mercifully, it ended, and as we were walking away to return to our patrol — with me waving awkwardly back at the crowd — I had the sudden realization that I could have made that whole experience entirely more bearable by pulling on Jeanne or Artoria to help handle all of it.
Fuck. Just… Fuck.
As we turned the corner, my shoulders drooped and I felt like nothing so much as a wrung-out towel.
"It gets easier," Vista promised me sympathetically. "Eventually."
The look I gave her said exactly how unimpressed I was, and it probably would've been conveyed much more clearly if she could see more than just my mouth.
She seemed to get it anyway and shrugged helplessly. "Maybe things will die down in a month? I don't know, I've never killed an Endbringer before."
Not. Helpful.
"Let's just keep going," I muttered miserably.
"Yeah. Hopefully, we won't run into anymore crowds like that."
We kept going, and whatever god or divine power was watching at least made it so we didn't actually run into anymore crowds. There were a few passersby who got excited when they saw us and asked for a picture, but a single fan excited to meet the girl who killed the unkillable was much easier to deal with than a couple hundred people crammed into a parking lot, all in various stages of unwashed.
"It's not so bad when it's just one guy, huh?" Vista asked, smiling.
"Guess not," I allowed. "I'll still be glad when it's over. I can handle shaking someone's hand and a stranger asking for a picture, but I don't know what I'm going to do the next time someone throws their dirty underwear at me."
Vista snorted. "Okay, yeah, that is a hard one. I don't know what I would've done in that situation, either."
I grunted.
"Worse. It was a thong."
Just… Forget Hookwolf. I was ready to be done with today.
The radio chose that moment to chime in.
"You girls have fun at the mall?" asked Clockblocker.
I groaned, but he didn't hear it because my mic wasn't on. Small mercies.
"Didn't know we raised that big of a stink," said Vista. "Something happen after we left?"
"Nah. But word is that pictures of Apocrypha are suddenly popping up all over PHO. I think there were…oh, two dozen new threads, all dedicated to her? Yeah."
"You're supposed to be on Console, not browsing PHO."
"Things are pretty quiet," said Clockblocker. I got the impression of a careless shrug. "No word of anything wrong from the other teams, so there's not much for me to do. On the subject of pictures, though, might I say, Apocrypha, some of those poses you did were really —"
"Vista is right, Clockblocker," Miss Militia cut in. "You're on Console duty, which means you're watching the comms, not the latest Uber and Leet video, not checking the scuttlebutt on PHO, and you're not chatting it up with your girlfriend. This is an official channel, not a chatroom."
I sputtered. Girlfriend?
Vista was laughing behind her hand.
"Uh, yes, Ma'am, sorry, Ma'am, understood, roger that."
"Good. Keep that in mind."
"Yes, um, right. I'll do that. Console, out."
And then it was just the two of us, again.
"Girlfriend?" I echoed, still not quite able to get over it.
"Well, aren't you?"
The grin on Vista's face told me she was very much enjoying this.
"It was one date!" I protested. "One! It's not like we proposed marriage or something!"
"Taylor and Dennis, sitting in a tree," she whispered, sing-song, just loud enough for me to hear. My cheeks burned. "K-I-S-S-I-N-G!"
"Ugh!" I gave her a shove and she staggered, laughing. "How old are you?"
About ten minutes later, we came upon a completely intact Arcadia. There were streaks on the windows and lines on the brick that showed exactly what it had weathered from Leviathan, but the school itself stood strong, a stalwart testament to the spirit of the city itself.
Or the spirit the city liked to think it had, anyway.
Unsurprisingly, there was no one there. A car or two sat out in the employee parking lot, so someone was probably doing administrative stuff inside, but we didn't see anyone after three laps around the campus, so we moved on and started to swing back around the other way.
This side of the city was much sparser. Probably because it was closer to the edge and the shore, and the Docks by proxy, all of which had been hit harder than further inland had been. We didn't pass any collapsed buildings or anything like that, but there was a marked difference in the height the water had reached compared to the other side of Downtown.
It was one thing to know from Khepri how bad off a city after an Endbringer attack was, especially one that survived Leviathan, but it was another thing entirely to be faced with the reality of that aftermath and the cost it inflicted upon the economy and the infrastructure. Worse, the Brockton Bay in front of me was better off by far the Khepri's had been, and there were still veritable ghost towns, abandoned until city officials and inspectors could give the all clear for safe living.
"And the Indian subcontinent was basically gone," I muttered.
"You say something?" Vista asked.
"Ah — no, it was nothing. Just…thinking about the city."
This was the sort of damage Endbringers did. They destroyed cities, crushed countries, sank islands. They were walking natural disasters, and they were whittling away at us. The only thing worse than that was —
"Hey, teams?" Clockblocker said.
"What is it this time, Clock?" asked Vista.
"I'm getting an investigation request from BBPD."
"Request?"
"What kind of request?" Armsmaster's voice rumbled over the comms.
"It's a jurisdiction transfer, looks like. There's an open investigation that they're bucking up the chain to the PRT and Protectorate, because there's suspicion of parahuman involvement. Not much more than that, though — seems like they sent the request as soon as they realized what they had. They haven't even finished securing the crime scene."
Armsmaster grunted, muttering something under his breath about unprofessional conduct. "Where?"
"The Towers," said Clockblocker. "They just okayed some of the apartments there for habitation a few days ago. Hang on, I'm sending the address to your phones."
Vista and I pulled out our PRT issue smartphones almost simultaneously, and a moment later, a notification popped up with an address attached.
"That's a five minute jog from here," she noted.
Armsmaster cursed. "Even with our best speed, we're still thirty-six minutes out."
"Fifty," Miss Militia corrected him. "We do still have to obey traffic laws."
"In the case of an emergency —"
"And this doesn't qualify," she cut him off. "Console. Is there expected parahuman resistance?"
"No," answered Clockblocker. "The report is pretty clear on that: suspected parahuman involvement. Not one on-scene."
"Then it's not an emergency."
"Team B, we're not much better off," reported Battery. "We're kind of in the middle of our rounds, but if we dropped everything and hitched a ride with our escort… Maybe twenty-five minutes?"
"We can be there in five," Vista said over the comms. There was a trace of eagerness in her voice that she didn't quite manage to suppress.
"No," was Miss Militia's immediate response. "Team C — Wards team, you are not to engage —"
"There's no one for us to engage with," Vista reasoned. "We just have to go there and secure the crime scene, right? There's no fighting involved. Nothing to worry about."
"Absolutely —"
"Do it," Armsmaster ordered. "Vista — the BBPD can't legally sign over custody to you, but you have the basic field training. I want your report when we arrive."
"Understood!" Vista chirped, grinning broadly.
Miss Militia sighed. "Be safe. If it looks like the perpetrator might come back —"
"I know protocol."
"That's what worries me."
The comms went silent. Vista turned to me and jerked her head. "Come on, let's get to it."
She took off at a fast jog, and the effectiveness of my training with her was immediately obvious. I hesitated, and then a moment later, I took off after her.
The Towers was the major residential district of Brockton Bay. It was upscale, for apartment living, with nicely furnished flats and loads of big apartments. I'd never been myself, but anyone who lived in the city had heard of it, and anyone who didn't live there wanted to, and anyone who did live there was well off enough that they could definitely afford to live so close to the center of Downtown. The only place better off was where New Wave lived, but they were more standard housing, instead of apartment buildings.
The Towers was basically untouched when we got there. From the marks on the buildings, it looked like there had been some minor flooding, but other than that, they looked as they probably had before the battle.
We found the police cordon by the blue and red lights, flashing off the sides of the nearby buildings, where a dozen officers in blue uniforms stood outside half a dozen cars, murmuring to each other and talking into their radios. Yellow police tape had sectioned off almost half of the front of the building.
When we approached the man who looked like he was in charge, he did a double-take.
"Wards? You're not what I was expecting them to send."
"We need to see the crime scene," Vista said strongly and with purpose.
The officer looked doubtful.
"Look, um, Miss…Vista, this isn't something…someone your age…"
"I have the basic field training," Vista retorted stiffly. The officer looked like he had no idea what that was even supposed to mean.
"Be that as it may," he allowed, "I really don't think this is something you kids should be seeing."
Vista scowled deeper. "Look, Officer —"
"Detective," the man corrected. "Detective Frazier."
"Detective," Vista acknowledged, "I mean no disrespect to you or your men, but you haven't received the PRT's standard training for identifying signs of power use and classification. I have. Frankly, it's just a matter of who's qualified for this particular field. I am. You're not. My superior has asked me to examine the scene and prepare a preliminary report for him, because the earliest he can arrive is almost an hour. I need to go in there."
Detective Frazier's face twisted into a grimace. "I…understand that, yes," he admitted, like he was having teeth pulled. "And you can quote regs at me all day if you like, but I'd still prefer to wait for someone more…adult to come secure the scene."
I realized, suddenly, the source of his discomfort. "It's a murder, isn't it?"
It was the thing that made the most sense. What else would he be so skittish about showing us aside from something so violent? If it was just a case of a burglary, well, I couldn't imagine him putting up this much of a fight against a pair of capes.
Vista's head whipped around, and Detective Frazier glanced at me, then did another double-take and seemed to deflate with resignation.
"What?"
He sighed. "Yes." He shook his head. "But I guess if they've sent you, then someone's got a better idea of what's going on than I do."
Under his breath, I heard him mutter, "They sent me the goddamn Hopebringer, of all people."
A muscle in my cheek jumped and my lips twitched. That was really starting to get old.
"Sent her?" Vista echoed. "What do you mean by that?"
Detective Frazier shook his head and sighed again. "You'll see in a minute. Follow me. And… watch your step. It's not pretty."
He lifted the police tape, and we stepped under, then followed behind him as he led the way into the apartment complex.
"We got the call about an hour ago," he explained. "Caller was a neighbor from the floor below, said there was blood dripping from the ceiling."
My stomach did a funny little flip-flop. The scene of Sophia's death rose, vivid as the moment I saw it, from the back of my mind.
"From the ceiling?" asked Vista. Detective Frazier nodded.
"Lady who called it in was hysterical. Said it was coming from the light fixture above her bed. She was sobbing about her ruined sheets when they drove her down to the station to get her statement."
"Her sheets? Really?"
"You'd be surprised what people freak out about." Vista was the one that answered. "It doesn't always make sense."
That was true, I thought. Back with Sophia, hadn't I had that thought about getting the vomit out of my running shoes?
"Any witnesses?"
Detective Frazier shook his head. "None."
"None? No one heard or saw anything?"
"Most of the residents haven't moved back in, yet. The victims… Well, they had a pretty good reason for wanting to get their privacy back instead of staying in the camps."
Vista snorted. "Let me guess — alone time."
"Heh." Detective Frazier scoffed. "Wish it were that simple. No. We found a pair of costumes hidden away under the bed."
I frowned. "They're capes."
"Near as we can tell — this is the floor, here — yeah. Going by their costumes, we think they were Victor and Othala."
"You think?"
Detective Frazier grimaced.
"We…were still trying to piece it together when we put in the call to the PRT. All we had to go on was the costumes." He stopped in front of a door, warded by more yellow tape. "This is it, here."
The door swung open, revealing a fairly nice, decently sized apartment, big enough and fancy enough for someone on the upper end of middle class. It had lush, bright carpet, expensive wood furnishings, and I thought I saw a pretty big flatscreen tv further in. There looked like enough room for a family of four to live quite comfortably.
The only thing marring it all was the blood.
"It's clean," Vista said. I turned to her and raised an eyebrow, gesturing to the bloody footprints in the carpet. "Well, almost clean."
"The footprints stop at the door," I noted.
"Cleaning lady had already been through by the time we got here," was the answer.
I stepped into the apartment, careful to avoid the footprints, and looked around. Very deliberately, I didn't touch anything. Vista stepped in behind me.
There was nothing particularly unusual, aside the footprints. It was a normal, high end apartment.
"From the way you were talking," said Vista, "I was expecting something out of a horror movie. This is…pretty tame."
Detective Frazier shook his head. "Not in here."
He strode across the apartment and took a turn down a hallway. Vista and I followed behind him, stepping gingerly and trying to avoid mucking anything up. At the end of the hallway was another door, halfway ajar; I thought I saw something through the crack, but I wasn't sure what it was.
"This is it," he said grimly. "Brace yourselves. It's not pretty."
He pushed the door open and stood aside, giving the two of us an unobstructed view of what lay beyond.
My brain froze. My eyes went wide. My mouth dropped open. My stomach fell through to my feet.
It…really was like something out of a horror movie.
My mind lurched back into motion. As I looked it all over, taking in every detail, my head spun from what I was seeing, what it was that was sitting there, right before my eyes, plain as day.
Whatever I was expecting, whatever I might have thought was in that room, the reality was worse. So much worse.
"Holy fuck," Vista breathed.
I wanted to agree, but my mouth had trouble forming the words, my mind still awhirl. I struggled to grasp what I was seeing, the evidence in front of my eyes — not the gruesome and gory viscera strewn about, because that was simple enough to wrap my head around. No, what was trampling about my head and twisting my thoughts into knots was not the dozens of body parts flung almost carelessly through the apartment bedroom, but the symbol painted onto the wall in barely dried blood, only now beginning to flake.
It was a sword, a simple European broadsword with a double-edged blade, the cruciform guard shaped into a gentle curve, and it was surrounded by radial strokes that jutted away from the blade as though it were aglow. There was no way I could mistake the design, no way I couldn't have identified exactly what I was looking at.
Excalibur.
— o.0.O.O.0.o —
NOTES
Thanksgiving is this week, so Essence is on break next weekend. We'll be resuming with 8.3 in two weeks.
For now, have 6000 words of bonding, setup, and worldbuilding, because I have no idea how this chapter got to be so big.
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