Rain fell. It burbled in the gutters on its way into the sewers. It plinked on metal roof tops and discarded cans. It soaked to the bone. It shrouded buildings in fine mist and water droplets. It covered everything in sheets of quicksilver, leaving no brick, no crack, no stretch of pavement untouched. The clatter of raindrops drowned out humming zoomer engines. It hushed footsteps. It dulled the abundance of sounds of an otherwise busy city.
Tucked into the shadowed corner of an alley just shy of an intersection in the Slums, Torn surveyed the surroundings. He coughed softly and pulled the collar of his plainclothes coat tighter about his neck. He buried his face a little deeper into the red scarf covering the bottom half of his face and squinted into the rain. The dark murk of the rainy night made having to work the streets without a mask much easier. He stuck to a hood and the scarf tonight.
The activity in Haven City never ceased to amaze him, even on the darkest and wettest of nights. Zoomers crept around each other in organized chaos overhead. People hurried here and there, shielding their heads from the rain as they darted from cover to cover to stay dry. Storefronts stayed lit all night. The flow of life pumped through the city like blood through veins, steady and indispensable.
These days, though, that vitality had become strained. Harried and haggard faces passed by him in the rain. Movement seemed more frantic, more animalistic - make it to the next paycheck, make it to the next rations delivery. Find a way to pay the rent. Don't get arrested. Life stopped being about the mere pursuit of happiness and started to become more about basic survival.
Torn coughed again, harder this time. It rattled in his chest.
"I'm looking for the nearest watering hole."
The voice came from behind him, too articulate and clear to have come from the average street drunk. Torn didn't turn around.
"The Hip Hog's a fine establishment over in the Port."
"Evening, Captain."
Torn turned around this time. This was his contact – a man of average height with brown spiked hair and a red scarf also obscuring the bottom half of his face.
"What's the word, Cass?"
"There's a big meeting tonight. I'm hearing that the Shadow wants to plan their big move against the Baron."
Torn felt a thrill run through him, but the pain in his chest helped his expression stay neutral. "When does it start?"
"Not too much longer. If we don't go now, I'll be late, and they'll notice."
"Lead the way."
Cass nodded and stepped past him into the street. Torn turned to follow. His heart hammered in his chest, and the ache in his left lung started to throb with it; Dead Town still lingered even weeks later. Ashelin was probably right that he should have stayed in the hospital longer.
He just didn't have the time.
"Thank you, sir, for taking interest in this project. It took a while to make any headway with this group, which, erm, might have made leadership lose faith. But I'll be damned if these people aren't secretive. I get having a thorough screening process helps prevent people like me from getting in, but if they don't find a faster way, it'll be their undoing. They're too slow. I think this next move, though, whatever it is, will get them out and in the public eye."
In addition to their police force status, the Krimzon Guard had a very capable intelligence network. Tattoos being less than ideal to appear innocuous, Intel members did not receive them. Two of these members, Cass and one other spy that Torn couldn't remember, were selected about a year back to infiltrate a small rebel group calling themselves The Underground. Only Cass made it in. The other spy still hadn't been found.
Count Veger had recently started to mention the project with more sarcasm rather than sincerity. Two weeks ago, Cass was very nearly at risk of just getting left on his own in the wolves' den; the KG waited for no man. Then, he delivered a report about this impending meeting. Torn, fresh from the hospital and from a rather startling revelation about himself and his surroundings, latched onto the project to invigorate the effort.
"It's too risky to get you inside with everybody, but I can get you close enough for a short-range comm recorder to work. You'll be able to listen to everything that's going on."
"Have you been able to meet the Shadow?"
"Not yet. He usually has a front man to deliver missions and other bullshit to the lower ranking folks, but he does come out when there are big scale meetings like tonight. I think he used to be holed up in Dead Town and when the district fell, it forced him into the Slums, because he's been around the hideout a lot lately. He plays real close to the vest, this guy. I haven't even been able to get a name from anybody."
Success and a willing ear to bend made Cass talkative. Torn gritted his teeth. The spy seemed downright tickled to finally show off the fruits of his labor. It'd be a damn shame to ruin it.
They doubled back on their trail at least twice to shake off any potential tails. KG Intelligence was notoriously paranoid, to the point that Torn wouldn't be surprised if they'd sent someone else to monitor them monitoring meeting. They didn't come across anyone, though, and before long, Cass paused in an alleyway. He gestured across the street from them to a door under a weak fluorescent light. In faint relief on the door was a symbol – the Baron's seal with a hammer striking the crown. Not exactly subtle, but easily missed if you weren't looking for it.
Cass handed him a small communicator. Torn put in the earpiece and turned it on. "Like I said, you should be able to hear everything that goes on. I'll come back to you here when it's done."
Torn nodded once. Then, Cass turned to leave. He didn't make it out of the alley.
"Make a sound, and you'll find it hard to do so much talking with a bullet in your brain."
Torn couldn't see the expression on the spy's face. The man's back was to him, and Torn held a restraining arm around his neck, a pistol pressed to the back of his skull. By the way he stiffened in Torn's grip, he imagined 'tickled' was no longer accurate.
"Now, I'm going to let you go, but you so much as sneeze, and you're done." Torn released Cass and pushed him forward a step in one swift movement. When the spy didn't run, he prodded him between the shoulder blades with his gun. "Go open that door."
Cass headed forward. Torn stayed within arm's reach behind him. The spy didn't turn around, but his shoulders were tensed up. "What the fuck are you doing?" he hissed over the rain. His tone belied more alarm and surprise than Torn expected. He would have been ready to respond to anger, to cuff the insolence out of the man and sneer in the face of some loyalist pig. The betrayal in Cass's voice threw him off guard. Fear cut through him like a sudden shot of ice into his veins, and he shut his eyes briefly.
Dead Town. People left to die. Citizens starving in the streets. Dark Eco experiments. Do what's right.
"Shut up."
Even in the rain, he could see Cass's shoulders shaking. He fumbled at the door.
"You're gonna get us killed."
"I said shut up."
The door opened finally. Torn grabbed the back of Cass's collar and pushed him ahead, the gun practically glued to the back of his head. A close, damp warmness spread over them when they stepped inside from the couple dozen people crammed into the small space of the hideout. The sound of the rain dulled. Heads turned at their entry. Someone stopped talking.
"Meiter? What the-?"
Torn carved a hole through the crowd with Cass. The place was too dark to make out faces. He made straight for a large square table in the middle of the open part of the hideout. The light over the table revealed a burly man with black muttonchops. A scar on his lip gave him something of a sneer. It made the confusion on his face almost comical.
Cass emitted a hurk sound when Torn threw him against the table. Behind him sounded a chorus of guns being cocked. With his own pistol still pointed at Cass, Torn levelled a steely look at the man behind the table. He used his free hand to pull his hood and scarf back. Someone to his right swore violently, and murmurs scurried through the gathered rebels.
"Meiter's not his real name," Torn deadpanned. "His real name is Cass, he's KG Intelligence, and he's been spying on your group for the last year, two weeks, and three days."
The man behind the table bored holes in him with his eyes. The scar on his lip quivered. Torn couldn't tell if it was rage or shock. It didn't matter either way. All Torn knew was the hammering of his heart and the spiky chill of adrenaline hiding his own fear.
A gun – short-range, explosive, would probably kill the people on the other side of him, too – appeared in his periphery level with his eyes. A small equally fierce-looking woman with yellow hair wielded it with steady hands and angry blue eyes. She cocked it with a smooth practiced motion and then spoke.
"Gimme one good reason why I don't blow you away right here, you Krimzon son-of-a-bitch?"
She made Krimzon sound like a curse word. The people to his left scattered from her blast radius. So much for that buffer.
"Because you're gonna want what I have to offer," Torn replied.
She scoffed.
This time the man behind the table spoke. "And what would that be, exactly?"
The man's eyes still smoldered, but his head cocked to the side, and he hadn't moved to draw a weapon. At least Torn had somebody's attention. Torn dropped the magazine out of his pistol with one hand and then ejected the chambered round as smoothly as the woman had loaded hers. She was really almost too young to be called a woman. More of a girl really. He tossed the pistol onto the tabletop. Cass flinched away from it.
Torn took a breath and spread his hands.
"That would be me."
AN: Here's the first step into chapter work for me in a while. I had intended for it to only be a oneshot, but then I wanted to include more of the stuff referenced in the other Jak and Daxter stuff I've got, and things got out of control. Short start, but follow-on chapters should be longer. Let me know what you think, as always!