It was her first stakeout. Without taking away from the seriousness of what she was doing, Carol could not help but feel a degree of excitement about it. It was another milestone. It felt surreal still, actually doing it. She’d spent years preparing and now here she was.
That being said, the actual task itself was more complicated.
Stealth was going to be the key. Even if the Open Hearts Shelter was a pig trade front, it was also still a homeless shelter in a city that consistently ranked in the top five nationally with regards to homelessness. Carol did not want to trash the place. People needed it.
So stealth. Per Gus’ intel, Open Hearts was the last place Topher Prock had been seen at. So, that was one objective: find any sign of where he went and why Gray Matter wanted him. The second objective was pure information gathering. Find enough evidence to prove what was going on behind the scenes at the shelter, and then try to deploy that information in such a way as to get rid of the trafficking without destroying the actual beneficial work.
That was maybe going to be a Marta task. She knew people in independent media, including a few journalists affiliated with Dogwatch, and could hopefully find someone to run with whatever could be dug up.
But that was a problem for after.
She’d done some initial observation during the day, hopping over to the shelter after she got out of class. She’d scoped out the place, grabbed some pamphlets, talked to some people about maybe volunteering. It was enough for her to get the sense that most of the staff at Open Hearts were not aware of what Gus said was going on. If they’d been in on it, she’d have expected everyone to be a lot more cagey about answering questions.
So she’d come back after dark. This time in costume.
Which was where things stood, as she overlooked the back of the shelter from an adjacent rooftop. The benefits of a teleporter for reconnaissance could not be overstated.
Carol sighed, pushing up her mask so she could take a sip from the thermos of coffee sticking out of a side pocket on her backpack. The display on her goggles told her it was eleven p.m., which meant she’d been there for three hours.
Her guess had been that anyone being moved through Open Hearts would pass through the loading docks out back. From her surveillance of the building’s exterior, it was the only option. But still, no sign of anything suspicious. No shady characters lurking around, no mysterious vans pulling in or out, nothing.
“...Maybe Gus’ intel was off.” She chewed her lip. It was only a possibility, one of many. It was just as likely that she had just chosen the wrong night. Maybe if she came back in a day or so, she’d find something nefarious going on. It wouldn’t make sense, after all, for whoever was running this to be shipping people out every night. Even in Gateway, that would attract attention.
Or, maybe she just needed to wait longer.
Carol tapped her foot, squinting down at the loading docks.
She could just wait.
But also, if nothing was going on on this particular night, it could be an opportunity. She could sneak in, check out the offices, maybe find some evidence without having to confront any bad guys. Just in and out, no mess.
Her foot tapping intensified. She checked the time again.
She wasn’t sure if she’d be able to commit to doing this again for a few days. She still, sadly, had a normal life with normal responsibilities to maintain. She had school, a job, the looming specter of the inevitable talk with her mom, which she would do.
Eventually.
It could be half a week or more before she could take an entire night for this. Half a week of people getting shipped off to labs, and half a week where Topher Prock’s trail would only be getting colder. Or where Gray Matter and her cronies might get to him first.
“Fuck it.” Carol kicked back the last of her coffee, and swung the backpack over her shoulder. Pushing herself to her feet, she did one last scan over the area, and made ready to teleport down. She’d figure out her next move once she was on the ground.
She pointed down at the loading dock.
“Bad idea,” a voice said softly, directly behind her.
Carol jumped, and spun around, reflexively throwing a punch. There was a blur, a dark shape casually ducking the punch, and in the space of a blink there was a hand at her throat.
“That too,” the figure whispered. The hand released its grip, and the shadow slipped back, watching her.
Taking a few steps back to the edge of the roof, Carol raised her fists, ready for a fight.
The figure didn’t move, just stared. After a few moments, their head cocked to the side, like a confused dog.
“You’re not running.”
That sentence was not a good sign, but Carol steeled herself. Whatever this was, whoever this was, she’d handle it.
“Nope. So…come on. Let’s go.” With some effort, she pushed the anxiety out of her voice, trying not to think about how easily this person had snuck up on her, or gotten past her guard. She had no information to work from, no idea what they could do other than be disturbingly quiet and fast. The whole situation was bad.
“I thought…hm.” A surreal silence followed, as the figure just stood there, and Carol did likewise. They weren’t advancing, and she was, if she was being honest with herself, too spooked to press the attack. So, they just stared at each other.
If nothing else, the impasse gave her time to think and to observe. Jarringly, they were quite short, around 5 '3". But height aside, what stood out to her was their costume. Costumes and gear were her thing, and this person’s told a story. A strange story. Even in the dark—especially in the dark—she could tell the base bodysuit covering them head-to-toe was of exceptional quality. It was tightly fitted, with no signs of adjustment, which suggested that it had been to fit them specifically. It wasn’t black, which was also interesting. At a glance it would seem black, but as she studied it, she could see the blend of dark grays, blues, and browns; a gradient that shifted as they moved, and as the light changed to better blend. Carol’s best guess was some sort of smart fabric programmed for stealth. She also guessed it was probably a carbon/spider silk composite like her costume was made from, judging by the lack of any sort of observable armor above or below the suit.
It was a really cool suit. It also would have cost a fortune to have made. But, then there was everything else about what they were wearing. First, over the suit was an urban camo tactical hoodie that had been dyed darker. Second, they were wearing a normal tool belt that had been modified to also incorporate a pistol holster. Multiple coatings of dark red, blue, and gray matte paint had been sprayed on it, as had the stuff in the belt. The stuff in question was a coupleof rolled up bundles—maybe lockpicks—two claw hammers, and a raygun.
An advanced stealth suit that fit like a glove, and accessories that screamed DIY punk.
“Where’d you get the suit?”
“...Hell.”
Carol blinked. “I’m sorry, what?”
“Hell. A hell. Not sure which, didn’t ask.”
“So…it’s magic?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay…so…you’re still not attacking.”
“No.”
“Are you going to? Like, should I keep my hands up? Starting to feel a little silly here, like I’m in a fighting game.”
“...Probably not.”
Carol dropped her hands, relaxing only a little. “Cool, cool. So why the fuck did you try and scare me?”
“Was trying to get you to leave. Thought you would.”
“Why?”
“You were going to get hurt if you went inside.”
She squinted and crossed her arms. The question of how dangerous this person was, and whether their intense weirdness made them more or less dangerous, was still very much in the air. But she had to bite.
“Can you elaborate? Also, can I get a name?”
“You were going to teleport down there, break inside, snoop around, and eventually find the tunnel hidden in the basement leading to the building next door. Then you were going to be caught on the hidden cameras the Russians set up in the tunnel. Then…you get hurt.”
There had been a number of things Carol had been expecting. Some variant on, “You don’t know what you’re dealing with,” was high on the list. She hadn’t been expecting a timeline of events—or Russians for that matter.
The figure peered around Carol to look at Open Hearts.
“Figured if I scared you, you’d teleport away, and then I could go in and deal with them. Which…there’s no captives tonight, just the Russians. So no…urgency? But I would like to get started.”
“Are you trying to shoo me? Seriously, who are you?”
“Oh. Uh…I’m the Outlier…I guess.”
Several pieces clicked into place inside Carol’s head, and she suddenly felt very dumb. She knew that there was another vigilante running around Gateway, and the last place they’d hit had been a pig farm just like the one hiding inside Open Hearts. And given what the news had reported about the brutality of their debut, the hammers hanging from the Outlier’s hips made a degree of grisly sense.
Behind her mask, Carol grinned, lightbulbs flaring to life behind her eyes. Maybe they could—
“I don’t want to team up. You’re going to say we should team up.”
“But we should team up!”
“Why?”
“Because! One, if there’s two of us, we stand better odds. Two, you have all this good intel, maybe I can help you unravel whatever’s going on behind the scenes here. Three, I don’t know what you do other than…fuck guys up and be really sneaky, but I have all my gadgets and my suit. I bet we’ll make a great team once we, uh, get going.”
The Outlier placed a hand on the handle of one of the hammers. “I—,”
“Don’t say you work alone. Come on, really don’t. No one likes that guy. If you really don’t need any help at all, from anyone, what’s your plan? Sell me on your plan, and I’ll go home, put my feet up, stare at my phone, feel at peace that the city is in safe hands.”
“Go in, take them all down, leave.”
They said this as if that was truly all that needed to be said, as if Carol was the strange one for not seeing the sublime perfection that was going in, breaking knees, and coming out. For a few moments, Carol could only gesticulate in confusion and some frustration.
“That’s it? You know all of that stuff, about tunnels and cameras and Russians? And that’s the plan? Is the final step blowing the place up and not looking at the explosion? Are you really not gonna investigate anything?”
“...I’m…not a detective. Just here to stop the farm.”
“What about afterwards?”
Just a shrug.
“So you don’t give a shit about the shelter?” Carol took a breath instead of saying anything else. She was getting annoyed, and whatever she was about to follow up with would not have been helpful.
“It’s a farm.”
“But it’s not just a farm. People need this place. And if we don’t know what made it vulnerable to this shit, who’s to say you won’t be back here in a year, beating up the next batch of assholes?”
They did not have an immediate response to that. A wolfish grin stalked its way across Carol’s face. She had an angle.
“Look, how about we do it this way. You do your thing, and I’ll do my thing. You can take apart as many bad guys as you want—not literally please—and I will poke around and see if I can figure out the story behind what’s happening here. We stay out of each other’s way, and we both get stuff done. You can even tell yourself that you’re still working alone! I’ll just be…around.”
They sighed.
“You’re just going to follow me in now no matter what.”
Carol grinned wider.
“Definitely. One-hundred percent. Just so. ”
…
Five minutes later, they were standing together behind Open Hearts. The loading dock was locked, as was the backdoor.
The Outlier pulled out the roll of lockpicks and silently set to work. She played lookout, now fully in the zone as Ragtag. The streets were dead, and the only security camera at the back had been taken care of.
“That was a good throw, by the way. Also, good spotting the camera.”
The Outlier grunted in response.
“So, what’s your, uh, what’s your thing?”
“My thing.”
“Yeah. Do you have like, a power, or are you just really well trained? I mean, you have a suit from…from Hell.”
“A hell.”
“Right. So what’s your deal?”
“Complicated.”
Ragtag sighed.
“If we’re going to work…adjacent to one another, it might help if we each know what the other can do.”
The lock clicked, and the Outlier stood up and pulled the door open.
“Might. Come on.”
Ragtag let out a frustrated sigh and followed. They stepped into a half-lit hallway, doors scattered along its length. The Outlier took point, soundlessly loping past the doors, hands resting casually on the hammers at their hips. Ragtag followed in their wake, scanning the plaques on each door for something that might be useful for her own investigation.
At the end of the hall, before it came to a tee, there was a solid-looking wooden door labelled Office. She reached out a hand to tap her reluctant partner’s shoulder. The Outlier spun on their heel, slipping away from the contact.
“Don’t touch me,” they whispered, an edge of anxiety in their voice.
She pulled her hand back, and pointed towards the office door. Before she could speak, they waved a hand, shushing her.
“Fine. Go snoop. You have…huh. Plenty of time.”
“How do you know?”
“It’s my ‘thing’…Let me get the lock.” A second of effort, and the lock surrendered. The door swung open with a gentle push, and Ragtag slipped inside.
It was about what was to be expected. A tiny, dingy office with mouldering carpet. Metal cabinets were arrayed along the walls, forming a halo around an assemble-yourself desk. The computer on the desk looked like it preceded the Anthropocene.
“Call Babbage and Lovelace, we found their baby,” she quipped, a hint of admiration in her voice despite the joke.
“What?” The Outlier poked their head in, and Ragtag noted with some amusement the outline of a raised eyebrow behind their mask.
“They have a NextPro!”
“...What.”
“It’s a WorldTree NextPro! She’s gotta be like, at least 15 years old? How are you alive?” Ragtag pushed the chair away from the desk and turned on the computer. After a pregnant pause, a disgruntled clicking began to come out of the computer tower, a promising sign of life. She gave the monitor a pat. “Nice. You’re gonna outlive us all, girl. Let’s see just how bad the password security is…God, really bad. My-password-is-password123 bad. Okay, Outlier. I just need five minutes.”
“You have thirty-two before anyone from the night shift comes back here.”
She gave them a look, question marks buzzing through her mind. Theories were bubbling in the background, questions for later. But she had to stay on task, even with a window that big. Reaching into her backpack, she pulled out a small, gray plastic box and set it down on the desk.
“What’s that?”
“It’s a cloner I made. Which…,” she looked down at the box and then at the NextPro. “This thing is too old. Making a bit-by-bit clone would take all night. Damn, I was excited to try this guy out. Oh well, Plan B.
“What’s Plan B?”
“Put a trojan on this beauty, and have it just copy and upload everything over to a cloud server, something air gapped. So long as whoever’s office this is leaves their computer on all day, I should have everything within a day or two. And then, then I can start digging.”
“What are you even looking for? Do you know?”
“Not really. Goal is to figure out how deep the roots go with this pig farm. I’ve taken some accounting classes, because I am fucking committed. And the Dogwatch has put out some guides and resources for independent investigation, including forensic accounting. So maybe I find weird money somewhere? Though—” She glanced at the cabinets. “I doubt all of that has been digitized. I’ll make do though.”
“And the farm is gonna be gone after tonight.”
“But is the farm the symptom or the disease? Like I said, if this place got exploited once, it can again. Can probably ask the Russians after you fuck them up, if they can talk. Can you leave some of them able to talk? Do you ask questions?”
They stared at her for several seconds, long enough for Ragtag to be unsure whether they heard her or were just thinking. And then they shrugged. “Find what I need to find.”
“So no. Are you a telepath? Clairvoyant?”
“Not your business.”
“Come on! If we’re going to be working together—”
“This is a one-time thing.”
Ragtag glanced from overtop the computer screen, and squinted hard at the Outlier. “Oh come on. Fucking edgelord.”
They didn’t reply, opting to just retreat back into the hallway. Ragtag sighed, and focused on getting the malware up and running, her appreciation for vintage tech rapidly dwindling in the face of geologic downloading speed.
The fact was, she had no intention of this being a one-time partnership. Even if the Outlier seemed determined to lean into the grim avenger style of vigilante, some level of collaboration was too valuable not to chase after. Being able to divide the labor just made too much sense.
The Other had worked because they were a team. Gus had told her countless stories where the crazy shit they got up to only worked out because one of them had something to bring to the table that the others didn’t. Contacts, superpowers, just different ideas as to what could be done. Watchdog fed them information and acted as the team dad. Gehenna was the best hand-to-hand fighter, but also was the one who had the most passion for taking the fight to injustice. The Counter-Intuitive handled communications and, Gus reluctantly admitted, was the best strategist. Tactically, socially, ideologically, everyone brought their own thing.
Ragtag was ambitious. She wanted to make a significant difference in the world, in Gateway. So she needed friends, as many as she could find.
After an excruciating wait, the trojan was up and ready. Ragtag did one last look over, making sure that it wouldn’t draw any attention. It all seemed in order, so she logged out of the computer and shut it off, taking pains to leave everything exactly as it had been.
The Outlier was waiting against the wall outside, practically invisible in the darkened hallway.
“I’m done,” Ragtag whispered as she slipped back out into the hall.
“Yeah.”
“So…I did my thing. You ready to go do your thing?”
“Yeah.”
“Cool. Look, I am seriously not trying to cramp your style, or whatever. And I appreciate you helping me do this, even though you didn’t want to. So…how about we start over? No weird ambush, scare-tactic shit. No name calling. Professional. That cool?”
“...Yeah. Okay.”
Ragtag offered a hand, tentatively. The Outlier looked down at it for a moment, and then took it.
“Okay. Hi, I’m Ragtag. I’m new to this stuff, but I am trying to learn fast and take it seriously. I have some gadgets, my suit has a teleporter and some other tricks, and I’m a fucking badass with tech. I want to shut this farm down, same as you. I’m also here looking for a guy.”
“Who’s the guy?”
“His name is Topher Prock. He got mixed up with some really shit people, and I think he has something or knows something they don’t want getting out. They were willing to hurt innocent folk just to find out anything about where he is. My only lead is this place.”
“...Who’re the people?”
“You ever heard of Gray Matter?”
“Heard the name. Mad scientist in the Scar.”
“That’s the asshole. Now…your turn?”
They looked around, as if for a moment taking in the ridiculousness of an exchange like this in the middle of an infiltration. But after a moment’s hesitation, they rallied.
“...Hi. I’m Outlier. New to…some of this. I’m a precog. And I’m good at the…physical stuff. I’m here…just to shut this place down. Got my reasons.”
Precognition had not been one of her guesses. She wasn’t an expert, but she was pretty sure precogs were very rare, and tended to get snapped up by corporations, governments, and CANON early. They did not end up as hard scrabble vigilantes.
But that wasn’t the important part. They had their reasons. Ragtag could think of only so many reasons why someone would go so hard specifically on pig farms. She should have considered it earlier, but she’d been too put off and, frankly, annoyed.
“Nice to meet you, Outlier.” Her voice had softened, and the Outlier twitched, probably noticing the change. Pity was not the tact here. In her personal opinion, pity never was, but especially not here. “So, you wanna go and beat up some bad guys?”
…
Evading the graveyard crew watching over Open Hearts was not a particularly hard task, especially with the Outlier taking the lead. Less than ten employees, none of whom had reason or desire to go poking around in the back offices unless absolutely necessary. The shelter couldn’t afford anything resembling effective security, so it was just a matter of her playing follow the leader.
A few minutes of creeping around brought them to the basement. It was smaller than the Other’s basement hideout beneath Terry’s charging station, just a space to store blankets, food, and other miscellanea. But true to what the Outlier had said, there was a battered wooden door on the wall opposite the stairs. The people managing Open Hearts had taken steps to keep the door shut, and someone had taken steps to undo that. An array of deadbolts, latches, and padlocks decorated it, all notably unlocked.
“So this was just here. These Russians, do they seem like…scary customers, or just a bunch of assholes?”
The Outlier paused for a moment, already pulling the hammers from their belt in anticipation of what was to come. “Assholes. Didn’t see any tattoos that would suggest ties to something bigger. No Mudretzy signs.”
“Mudretzy?”
“Hypersyndicate based in Russia. Evil. But competent about it.”
“Versus these guys?”
“Yeah.” They were quiet for a moment, and then nodded. “No guns, just bats and knives. Easy.” There was relish in their voice, an excitement that was unsettling.
Without another word, the Outlier walked towards the door, and Ragtag watched as their entire demeanor changed. She hadn’t noticed it before, but there had been a tension in their body, like a wire pulled taut, now suddenly released. Their carefully-chosen silent steps turned into an equally soundless lope, strides lengthening and footsteps bouncing lightly on the concrete floor.
She hadn’t thought about it before, but now the thought came to her: Was this person going to kill these guys? She should have asked that question before, or at least thought about it.
She wasn’t naive. Gus hadn’t out-and-out said it, but she knew the Other had used lethal force. Reading between the lines, paying attention to what her tío didn’t say and how he didn’t say it, she could tell. Even if it wasn’t the first choice, sometimes bad guys had ended up as bodies.
She still wasn’t entirely sure how she was going to approach that dilemma herself. Intellectually, she could see the logic, that some people were proactively awful enough to make the world better for their absence. But emotionally, she still wasn’t sure if she had it in her to pull that trigger.
Watching the Outlier’s hands tightening on the handles of their hammers, she could make a guess how they felt about it.
“Uh…w-what do you want me to do? Stay out of your way?”
“No.” Their head cocked to the side, as if listening. “Stay behind me, four feet back. When I open the door, count to ten and shoot the guy at 3 o’ clock. Aim for the face.”
“...Okay. Hey, uh, I gotta ask. Are you gonna kill these guys? Because you’re projecting intense nature-documentary-violence right now, and I—”
“No killing. They deserve it, but no killing.” Again, not what she had been expecting, not that she was complaining. Even if she was theoretically willing to consider lethal force, she was nowhere near up for a murder spree.
“Oh. Okay, uh, cool. That’s cool with me. Really cool. A little surprised but also…cool.”
“Glad it’s cool,” they deadpanned. “Ready?”
“Ready. Definitely ready. Are we gonna, like, sneak past those cameras you mentioned?”
“No. They’re idiots, forewarning won’t save them.”
“Jesus. But don’t I get, um, hurt because they knew I was coming?”
“...Going in alone…yeah, you did. But not now.”
They opened the door, and began walking quickly and with purpose down the decrepit tunnel. Taking a deep breath, and loading a rude bomb into her wrist rocket, Ragtag followed, four feet behind.
The tunnel was really more of a hallway, an architectural quirk that had withstood time, alien invasion, and the encroaching horror of gentrification. Light fixtures dotted the ceiling along its length, but not one produced any illumination. As she followed Outlier down the hall, Ragtag could hear the badly muffled sounds of men scrambling to action. She envisioned herself going down this hallway alone, the version of her that the Outlier had seen.
She would have heard the same activity from the Russians running the farm.
“Shhhh! They’re almost here. Quiet! Bro, find a fucking spot! Kretyn…”
Definitely would have heard them. But according to the Outlier, she ended up getting the worst of the fight. A bunch of assholes with no tech and no powers took her down. Unless they’d been lying about what they’d seen, which seemed doubtful.
She sighed, frustrated. She had a guess as to why things might have gone badly for her. Gus, Terry, Dee and even her mother’s voices echoed in her head.
You got cocky.
She shook her head, warding away the thought. There was no point in worrying about could-have-been scenarios. It did not matter. What actually was about to happen was what mattered.
Pushing the worry aside, Ragtag pulled back the strap on her slingshot, getting ready to count back the seconds as the Outlier reached the door into the farm.
They rolled their shoulders, and without a warning or one-liner gave the door a hard kick. The wood splintered, and door jam ripped open, clearing the way. They leapt forward, hammers up and already in mid swing.
One.
Russian Number One rushed forward, a janky mail-order combat knife in his hand. He took two steps, and then one hammer whipped across his face. Teeth went flying into the face of the buddy coming in on the Outlier’s left.
Two.
The other hammer went claw first into the toothless mook’s knee, and he fell with a scream. Outlier kept forward, using the ruined kneecap as a springboard to leap onto Two, who was wiping blood and dentition out of his eyes. The claws dug into his clavicle, and they began to climb.
Three.
Two strikes to the nose, pulping it, and mook number Two went down, minus the center of his face. They rolled off of him, tumbling straight into the legs of the next guy in the queue.
Four.
Number Three fell face first onto the concrete floor. The Outlier turned and kicked the back of his head as he tried to lift it. His skull whipped forward back into the floor with a crack.
Five.
They sprang back to their feet and threw a hammer, which impacted claw first into the chest of number Four. He stopped in his tracks, dropping his bat to clutch the handle sticking out his sternum, his patchy-bearded face frozen in dumb shock.
Six.
The Outlier closed and ripped the hammer out of his chest. Blood spackled across their face and chest, and then merged into their suit as if it had never existed. The other hammer swung down and up, smashing into number Four’s groin. Number Four, now a soprano, joined his friends on the floor.
Seven.
They fell back and stomped down on number Three’s ankle. Small bones buckled, and he screamed. Numbers Five and Six, still unharmed and armed with a length of chain and another knife, respectively, got close and brandished their weapons. But they did not close.
Eight. Nine.
Five and Six moved to the opposite sides of the Outlier, who watched them. Their hammers hung at their sides, heads now red and gleaming.
Ten.
“Rude bomb!”
Ragtag, unnoticed in the frenzy, released the rude bomb. It detonated in number Six’s face, just as he was about to join Five in attacking. He stumbled to the side, his free hand reflexively going to his face.
At the same time, Five let out a shout, and swung the chain. The Outlier caught it with their hammer, wrapping the links up in the claw and yanked him forward. One, two, three, four cracks of the hammer against his ribs, and Five fell to his knees. They pulled the chain out of his hands as he gasped, and cracked him in the face with the hammer.
Six, eyes red and face glittery, shouted something in Russian and took a step towards Ragtag. She let him take another step, and then shot him in the shin with a glue bomb. He tripped over his suddenly immoble leg, and before he could reorient, the Outlier ran up and drove their knee into the side of his head. Six flopped over, his glue-bedecked leg twisting awkwardly as he crumpled.
Ragtag looked around, ready to take the fight to whoever was left. There were none.
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.” The Outlier was breathing heavily, but otherwise betrayed no signs of just having incapacitated six men almost single handedly. They rolled their shoulders, and surveyed their handiwork. “Should probably use those glue-things on all of them. Just in case.”
“Uh…yeah. Holy shit.” It took almost as long for her to go from mook to mook, cementing each of them to the floor as it had taken to fight them. But it was done.
The Outlier didn’t say anything, just staring off into space. Then, as the last Russian was contained, they started.
“Huh. I was wrong,” they muttered.
“About what?”
“They do have a captive. Didn’t look far enough ahead before. Assumed they’d have kept anyone they had down here.”
“Oh shit! Then let’s go…well.” Ragtag gestured towards the wounded mass spread out on the floor around them. “What about these guys? We…good to just leave them here?”
The Outlier hesitated, spacing out again. A few moments passed, and then they shrugged.
“We’re good. Help me get their phones and wallets. We can call an ambulance on our way out.”
“Wait. If we call 911, that’ll mean cops. It might blow back on the shelter. I don’t want that.”
“They’re eventually going to need medical attention though. Can’t have them dying because of what I did.”
Ragtag raised her hands.
“I’m not saying we leave them to die. Let’s go check out the guy upstairs, and then I want to ask these assholes some questions about how they got set up here. After that…maybe we can call someone to pick them up? I know some people.”
“...Okay. So long as they don’t die, and don’t get to just…do this again.”
“Trust me. They won’t.”
“Fine. Phones and wallets then.”
The Russians did not resist much. Once everything had been gathered, they mounted the stairs up. Ragtag stopped at the top of the steps and looked back down.
“Hey fuckos! Some friends of mine are going to come grab you in a little while. They’ll get you to a doctor, but after that, consider yourselves exiled. We know who you are, where you live. And I know for a fact that this is Encounter turf, and I’m going to guess that you didn’t ask permission before you set up shop. Leave town, or my friends will give the improper authorities a tip. You understand?”
The Outlier poked their head back down. They called down something in Russian, gestured for Ragtag to follow and continued on upstairs. She glanced back and forth between her erstwhile partner and the mooks, shrugged and followed.
“You speak Russian?”
“Yeah.”
“...Neat. And useful. What’d you say?”
“Be gone in a month or I’ll do things to you that’ll make your mothers lose their faith in God.”
“...Jesus. You know, you didn’t have to upstage my threat. In their mother tongue too! That’s just rude. Speaking as your partner, that’s pretty rude.”
They chuffed. “Sorry,” they said, dry amusement heavy in their voice.
“No objection to me saying we were partners?”
“Shut up. Let’s go.”
The Russian’s hideout was, predictably, a sty. A two-story townhouse wedged up against Open Hearts, one of many to be found in Heinlein Towers. The basement steps opened up to the living, a cramped affair that stank of unwashed men and bad cologne, with the bitter reek of weed added for texture. The Russians had apparently been enjoying a night off before they’d been so rudely interrupted; a pot of mac and cheese, still warm, rested on the antique coffee table next to a half-smoked bowl and an overflowing ashtray. Gunshots and the sounds of robot-on-robot violence emanated from the television, where they’d been watching old episodes of The Ballad of Rusty Sprocket.
“I loved that cartoon as a kid.” Ragtag muttered, pausing for a moment to stare at the screen. The titular hero was in a bar fight, and had just punched another robot in stirrups so hard that gears and oil flew out of his mouth.
“Never watched.”
“It’s good. Robot cowboys in like, a wild west meets post apocalyptic sorta world. It was pretty ahead of its time, the lady who made the show—”
“Ragtag.”
“Right. Yeah. Sorry. Uh…yeah. Sorry. Let’s go.”
The Outlier looked at her, shrugged, and then headed towards the back. Carol let them get a lead, and then let out a breath, her mind wandering back towards the television.
“They got away with a lot because it was just robots shooting robots. No…gore,” she murmured, suddenly feeling unsteady, queasy.
She’d been so focused before, counting down the seconds, waiting for the moment and then when it was the aftermath of the fight, working out the next steps.
Now she was thinking about that fight. She’d barely done anything. They had just dismantled the Russians. It had been brutal in a way her fight with the Doom Crew hadn’t been. They had been brutal.
The Russians weren’t dead. And they had been running a trafficking operation. In a lot of ways, they got off light.
But she still felt weird about it.
She needed time to think. But she still had a job to do. She picked up the remote, and turned off the TV before turning to follow.
The Outlier had wandered through the biohazard that was the kitchen, and was waiting. They jerked their head towards a door tucked away in the corner.
“What was the name of that guy you were looking for?”
“...Topher Prock.”
“Huh. Kismet.” They walked over towards the door, and pushed it open.
Inside was a matchbook-sized spare room, like something out of Dickens, big enough to accommodate a single bed, a nightstand, and a radiator.
Sitting on the bed, one hand chained to the radiator, was a young white man in his early 20’s. He was wearing a rumpled sports jacket over a food-stained t-shirt and what once had been designer jeans. His long undercut had grown, the sides and back of his head matching the dirty blonde beard that was manifesting across his face. The bags under his eyes spoke to days of very little sleep.
He stared at them for a second in dull, uncomprehending fear before realization dawned and with a desperate expression of hope.
“Oh thank god. You’re heroes! You’ve got to get me out of here! Please!”
Ragtag stepped into the room, taking him in. Subtracting an unclear number of days in captivity, he matched the pictures she’d seen.
“You’re Topher, right?”
“Yes! Yes, that’s me! Please, I need help! Not just with these guys. Oh, fuck, thank god. I really need help. Did…did my Dad send you guys?”
She shook her head.
“No. But, I know some of your friends. They’ll be really happy I found you.”
“I…I really thought I was going to die in this shitty room. I, aw, I fucked up. I fucked everything up.”
The Outlier took a step back, leaning against the wall, saying nothing. Ragtag sat down on the bed, and put on a hand on Topher’s.
“It’s okay. We’re going to get you out of here, and then we’ll figure it out. I…I am going to have to ask you about some stuff though.”
His eyes widened, fear and guilt fighting for control of his gaze.
“You know, don’t you? She’s…she’s going to kill me. Do you know what she’s doing?”
“Gray Matter?”
The name did something. Whatever collision of emotions going on inside Topher Prock froze, and he just nodded. When he spoke next, his voice was small and raw.
“I didn’t know. I didn’t know what I was helping her build.”