[ 10 ]

THE FIRST TIME that Narcissa remembered being in a car was during the journey to a UN meeting. Crux mostly liked to stick to planes, finding them safer and more efficient, along with being a way of showcasing where Semper City's taxes were going, for those who bothered to pay.

Not many people, she'd learnt later on, did bother, those who did being mostly from the west side of the island that the city was built on. Some of them were rich men from the bordering Louisiana, searching for the thrill of Vegas, but closer to home. Those who paid from the South were poor country boys from Arkansas, oblivious to the city's darkness, running to Semper with open arms and empty wallets.

The South was a dump, really, but more underfunded than dangerous. The East was both - starving, stealing and strangling, in the comfort of vaguely nice houses for those who could afford them, and slums for those who couldn't. It was where the moneyless immigrants resided, those who'd arrived in Semper with nothing but the clothes on their backs.

Petra Sperova, Narcissa considered, watching the skinny young woman take a heaving breath, was one of them. She could tell from the emptiness in her grey eyes and the sickly tint to her already pale skin that Semper City was the belly of the beast for her, leaving nothing for the Usnayan. Narcissa watched her comb her bony fingers through her hair, which was a colour that might've once been dark brown but now had become so faded that it was almost purple, and felt a surge of pity over how wretched Petra looked.

On the other side of the table, the Siren looked sick. When her sister's skin was silvery and translucent, Sasha's looked nearly luminescent, greenish, as if it would glow in the dark. It was the colour of what someone would find if they looked too deep under the water, glow worms plastered to the ceiling of a cave, or fireflies crowding around a streetlamp.

She didn't look like the same girl that Narcissa had seen on broadcasts for the past few years, caught glimpses of before the static stole her voice away and the broken satellite outside whichever apartment she was renting at the time stole her face. That face, she saw in the grim light that passed through the curtain-covered windows of Nakamura Manor, was typically Usnayan.

Narcissa hadn't met many in her days, but when she had, there were often a few defining characteristics - pale skin, often weathered away into a tan marred with freckles, light eyes and dark hair. That combination made those who'd avoided manual labour appear almost ghostlike, the ones who'd escaped to Semper before the summer droughts and the civil war. It was easy to tell between Sasha and Petra which of the two had been more fortunate - though now Petra's tan had long since faded.

At last, Finn found the words to speak, tearing Narcissa's eyes away from the Usnayans for a long enough time to listen.

"I'm going to...get some of my stuff."

She observed the rest of the group before standing up as well. "Yeah, me too. Mine and Finn's weapons are in the same place, anyway."

Wildfire- Jasper, rather - cleared his throat with a good-natured ahem, masking what sounded to be a scoff.

If he knew about what had happened before she'd left-

It didn't matter, it was dumb anyway. They'd only been kids, it didn't matter. They were different people now, weren't they? The thought quavered in her mind, but she didn't muster enough energy to reply, saving it for more important matters. Namely, which gun would take out the most Crux agents without actually killing them.

Rendering them unconscious? Tame.

Injuring a limb or two? Better.

Putting them into moderately short comas, at least by her terms? Perfect.

Something to give them a bit of brain damage, just enough to get them out of the way. She wouldn't kill them, not if they weren't the direct cause of the rogue-ness. That would only come into play for snitches or traitors. Besides, Crux and/or the city jails had enough medical funding to get them out of the coma as soon as the Mayor allowed them to.

Unless Roswell Roth had gone bad, too - a traitor, as he'd always been.

As Narcissa followed Finn down the hallway, she couldn't help thinking of how much of a traitor she was.

~•~

A LONG TIME AGO, somebody had told her that the world was a steaming cockpit of trouble and chaos. Or maybe that had been something that she'd told herself, missing her parents in the months after their deaths, or missing her life in the months after running away. Either way, whoever had said that had definitely been right; the situation before her was proving that.

She'd vowed never to be Semper's hero, but as soon as they needed her, she accepted their offer with open arms. What was she doing with miserable life? Thinking about it made her realise a bitter laugh, causing Finn to look up from the bullets he was organising and give her an annoyingly understanding look, one that girls would've swooned over.

Narcissa was not one to swoon, but even she felt its effects - a strange flip-flop in her chest. Taking a deep lungful of musty air, she wafted a cloud of dust away from her face, wondering how Ayana survived living in such a huge place alone. Usually, it bustled to the brim with activity, most of it criminal, but tonight it was deadly still, a predator waiting to strike and swallow them in its ravenous jaws.

Her gaze met Finn's awkwardly, and as she fumbled for something to say, the most stupid thing that had ever been asked left her lips.

"So. Is Sasha an alto or a soprano?"

Spare the brief crease of confusion that went over his unfairly attractive face, Finn answered her with a grin. "Mezzo. She can go low enough to be creepy, but high enough for it to be pretty." Looking back down at the bullets, he added, "You're an alto."

"How do you know?" Though she'd intended for it to be a simple question, her voice sounded more like a mob boss threatening a snitch.

Ignoring the unintended darkness in her tone, Finn wrinkled his nose, an eyebrow raised, comically impervious. "I used to hear you sing, sometimes. Don't think you saw me, though."

She snorted. "Creep."

A warm smile crossed his face as he peered at a small pistol. "Just observant. You have a nice voice, too. All smoky dive bar and rock and roll."

"Great. Well, you won't ever be hearing it again, so you can wipe that memory from your mind," Narcissa muttered, covering her smirk with a sheet of black hair that swept away from behind her ear.

"Will do."

Finn looked around the room at the cabinet, porcelain dishes littered on the shelves between a picture of a woman, prim and proper with her black hair in an elaborate bun. It was only when Narcissa stood up to examine it closer that she noticed the ink - red pen, scribbled over the woman's eyes, turning them into livid red orbs.

But that wasn't what unnerved her the most - it was the words at the bottom of the photo, just where the woman's top cut off into a white line, marking the border. The frame had shifted the tiniest bit, revealing the writing. Narcissa recognised it almost immediately as Ayana's - looking back up at the woman, the similarities became unsettling. The rosy pink lips, youthful and girlish yet still managing to show her steely expression, straight nose and dark brows were all Ayana.

The caption Ayana had written sent a shiver down Narcissa's spine.

"Burn in hell, bitch."

She'd never heard her swear before - it seemed to be below her - but here it was. Jumping back as a hand reached towards the photo, Narcissa heaved an exhale as Finn gave her a questioning look, brown eyes warm in the dim light of the room. Those eyes widened as he caught sight of the words, his hand tearing away, as if the photo had burnt it. He busied himself with the gun once more, while she fiddled with a set of tranquilliser darts.

As she did, she couldn't help wondering what Ayana's mother had done to warrant such a pleasant comment from her daughter.

Narcissa didn't want to know.

~•~

THE SEWERS were terrible - they'd always been, the numerous times that Narcissa had been down them. But as dank and unsurprisingly filthy as they were, the wide tunnels and water proved to be a great place for the illegal and immoral. The makeshift team assembled around her, she supposed, couldn't have been very legal either, not in the law's eyes, at least. In Semper City, Crux was the law.

Scrounging the area underneath their headquarters, where she'd spent a large majority of her life, was a gamble, but a gamble that could pay off. If they found anything, she thought sourly, wading through murky water. She didn't want to imagine its contents, pulling her anarchist's mask over her mouth and nose and breathing in shallowly as to not fill her lungs with the sewer's nauseating stench.

It cut into her skin, as always, along the hazy red line that traced lightly over her cheeks. It didn't bother her - only bright lights showcased it, and she had spent too long of a time in the darkness to care about the light. Narcissa cleared her throat, the feeling of the mask against her lips bringing back visions of coloured smoke and crowds shouting, crooked doorways and daggers.

Running her finger around the hem of her black turtleneck, she searched for the steady weight of the Mask around her neck, only finding smooth skin and the gleam of scar tissue in a thin line at her collarbone, where a would-be assassin had missed her throat. It had been years ago, but the sound of the blade slashing through air and meeting her flesh was still fresh in her mind. Back then, the manhunt was still ongoing, before she'd used Crux's tactics (attention, annotation and admiration) against them.

Her foot met something hard, and she winced at the pain, barely peering downwards before something in her mind registered the object. It must've been contact activated - a low hiss went around the tunnel, and Narcissa let out a warning shout. Luckily, these people were soldiers - the five of them, Ayana gone with Petra to a safer location - and their brains were used to commands without context. Diving into the neighbouring canals, or sprinting away, they all scattered.

Narcissa watched pieces of brick fly into the air, a few hitting her arms, but didn't do anything, instead hearing for footsteps. Pain tugged at her biceps when the rubble collided with flesh, but she slid behind the wall, breathing in heavily and tearing her mask off. Air flooded into her lungs, sticky and dirty, but air nonetheless. The footsteps were definitely there, she observed, heart thundering.

But what she didn't hear were those behind her, slithering out from the darkness and calling her back to the place that she had once called home, the needle sticking out of her thigh as it trembled before her legs buckled beneath her, face paling and eyes shutting as if in slow motion.

Narcissa woke up to the sound of her gun smacking against the table, bullets pouring out into the floor as the store opened up. Holding back a roar of fury at the imbecile manhandling her beloved firepower, she dug her nails into the steel chains that were holding her back, feeling along them for a link. Before that, she knew that she would need to talk, provide some idle chatter, so she looked up at the blinding lamplight.

Sure enough, a face looked at her, a clean-shaven man that she might've recognised in another world. He looked like he could be someone's father - a friend's, maybe. Vaguely familiar but not particularly memorable. The Crux insignia - a cross over his chest, printed on a chest plate that covered a black Lycra suit embellished with silver thread. It tapered out into formal yet flexible pants, great for running and superhero-business but also UN meetings and press conferences.

All the Agents wore the same thing - there was no question about it. Fair, straightforward, sparked no arguments, the Semper city way - at it had been in the old days, at least.

Stall, Narcissa thought desperately.

"It's been a long time since I saw one of those in real life," she remarked, blowing a strand out hair out of her face. The Agent frowned at that, but tried to remain collected, playing the intimidation game though it was becoming more and more useless as the stares progressed. She decidedly hadn't been assigned a prodigy, that was becoming clear.

"Who do you work for?" he asked for the fourth time, turning his chair around, pretending he was a detective.

"Keep up-" she read the name tag on the badge he'd left on the table. "Jerry. I've told you three times - I don't work for anyone but myself. Does that surprise you?"

"But you're-"

"Tut, tut. How dreadfully old-fashioned of you. Is it because I'm a criminal?"

"I mean, yeah?"

"Discriminatory! I'll be letting your superiors know," she said, holding back a laugh at his hopelessness.

Between her fingers, the chain fell to the ground with a loud clatter.

She seized the gun on the table, pulling herself free.

"I pity you, Jerry. I really do."

[ end ]