Once the locker's door closed behind me, I sighed and pressed my hands against the wall, allowing creeping shadows to take me away.
I found myself in a familiar empty corridor. It was similar to the corridors in school, only it looked like it was abandoned for many years. It wasn't the decay but the lack of decay. Thousands tiny imperfections you would expect from a place visited by many people every day - a small crack in the wall where somebody threw something heavy, a mark on the floor where ink was split and not washed properly, footprints left by dirty boots, a forgotten book lying around, a cigarette carelessly thrown away - could not be found here. Everything was smooth and gray, eroded into near perfection by dust and time.
There was no light, but I didn't need light to see in this place.
I spent a few moments looking at myself, judging the damage done to my clothes by the contents of the locker. I sighed again, inhaling stale air smelling of old things, and listened. In a far distance I heard music. A quiet haunting melody promising rest and peace. Following it was to invite death.
I started to walk towards its source.
The corridor twisted and turned according to a plan I couldn't fathom. One time it ended in a flight of stairs going down, leading to another flight of stairs going up, as if something enormous was pressing down on the corridor, bending it out of shape. With each step the music was becoming louder. It was changing, too, becoming more urging. I was noticed by its creator, there was no doubt of it.
I found the source of the music by a window - a rare sight around here, though this one didn't show anything but darkness yet.
Before me was a construct of flesh and metal. Viscera served as its strings, rusted pipes played the role of flutes. A face was stretched think, reminding me more of a parchment than skin. There was no blood, the creature has long dried out.
It looked at me with glass eyes borrowed from a toy, and I clasped my hands together, pulling them apart before the creature could attack me. Neon fire danced on my palms, cold and fake.
The music stopped.
"Give me life," the creature said, its voice clashing with the appearance, a voice of an old kind lady. "I will serve you."
I nodded, snuffing the fire. I undressed then, not taking my eyes from the creature, and threw my clothes at it. It caught them, its limb having both bones and metal stings in place of fingers, and swallowed into the core of its being, where leathery membranes moved unevenly.
My clothes were spat out soon enough, no trace of blood or other liquids on them now.
"There is more from where I came. Life freely given," I said. "Can you follow my trail?"
"Yes," the creature said.
I stood still while it moved, unfolding its body, creating a hole in the center so as not to touch me moving around me in the narrow corridor. I turned around and watched it crawl away, towards the locker. The walls there should be thin enough for it to snatch the contents.
I sighed again as the creature turned a corner. Perhaps what I gave it was enough for it to reach completion and escape this place. Then I'd have to deal with it.
Then I dressed up, my clothes dry and gray.
As I started to walk again, away from my locker and the creature, I heard steps following me. I didn't turn to look. The one following me could be seen only in the corner of an eye.
"Using the dead to do your choirs?" a voice asked from behind. The voice belonged to neither man nor woman. It didn't sound old or young. It wasn't a voice of somebody. It was the voice of nobody.
"I shouldn't do even that much," I said.
"It's useless to hide," the voice said. "Brockton Bay knows you. Your name is in the graffiti across the city. Your face can be seen in the white noise on television. Phantoms target you already. They are unfocused, uncertain, but with each day their attention would be drawn to you more and more. You must stake a claim before the city claims you, before you are reduced to lurking in the corners."
"Like you," I said.
"Yes. Others will notice you soon, too. Hesitation is fatal."
Others. The Merchants who had the power over lost things and made lost people. It was no wonder they were the most powerful cabal in the city, claiming a large territory as their own and leaving only scraps to the rest. The Empire with their power over crowds. My social standing was a mess, so it would take them very little effort to turn my peers actively hostile to me. Lung and his people didn't have one of us, to my knowledge, but they had to know something to survive for so long. Then there was Coil, about whom I didn't know much at all - a divination of teddy bears' inside showed only useless glimpses. Most likely he was working through the city itself, controlling surveillance systems, turning advertisements into tools of brainwashing, twisting streets into labyrinths.
All of them would soon be looking for me. Either to kill or to enslave.
I didn't like to admit it, but my companion was right. I've waited too long.
"The city is divided already among powers greater than me," I said. "Where do I stake the claim?"
"There are always overlooked places and overlooked people," the voice said. "Start with them."
I stood on the other side of a mirror, waiting patiently for Madison to arrive.
When she walked into the bathroom, I took place of her reflection.
"Tay-" she started to say.
I bashed the mirror with a steel pipe - one of my tools of power - sending glass shrapnel across the room and hitting Madison right in the head. Other people would see her skull cracking, blood and bits of tissue splattering everywhere. I saw a porcelain doll breaking, red velvet ribbons falling out from the crack.
Madison was a phantom, a fake person the city created to fill the void left by real people disappearing. There were a lot of them around lately.
I stepped through the mirror into the bathroom and knelt near Madison. Inside her skull I put a lock of my hair, patching the crack with a strip of cloth. On her eyes I placed glass contacts made by myself. There was a bit of my blood mixed into them.
That should be enough for the city and others to lose my trail for some time.
The task done, I walked away, carefully avoiding looking at the mirror shards lest they would foretell my doom.
I needed people on my side. All of my enemies had followers, and I couldn't survive alone. Not for long. Building a cabal from scratch was too slow, especially considering my standing, and too noticeable. So, one of the established groups, one lacking someone like me, was my goal.
The Undersiders were promising. They were a relative unknown, but operated for long enough to start getting glimpses of the big picture. Watching them through the eyes of pigeons has confirmed my guess. They were on a verge of discovering the underside of the city. In other words, they were on a verge of being consumed. They needed someone like me, and I needed them.
And so I stood inside their lair. Tracking the building down was easy, pigeons saw all kinds of things.
I wore no costume and no mask - either would be too dangerous in my position, too much the city could use against me - but a few mirrors were glued to my gray clothes to reflect blows should they come.
Waiting for the Undersiders to return, I occupied myself by studying pictures on the doors to their rooms. At first they scared me, being similar to the signs of power in design, but eventually I concluded they were just pictures. Someone on the team had a potential to become one us, most likely.
I heard footsteps and voices coming from the entrance and turned to face my new team.
They stopped abruptly once they saw me, a girl in a fur jacket growling, a tall boy rising his fists in preparation for a fight.
I looked at a blonde girl.
"You wanted to find out what was going on in the city," I said. "I have found you first."