Now that the ritual of the nine corners was complete, the changes made by the intruder has vanished, and the rooms, five in total, were connected by corridors arranged in a spiral. The room at the entrance to the lair was mine, the room at the center belonged to Calvert. Rooms between those two bore signs of both, colors clashing, furniture of different styles creating a contrast where there shouldn't be one.
It disturbed me, and not only because of the evidence of power Calvert held over me. It reminded me of a story about Amanda Holloway, a woman who was consumed by the city and became its chief architect. She was the one who created the red brick house, a place of many rooms or only of one room, depending on one's view. Those who ventures inside found themselves in a pleasant living room filled with signs of life. As they ventured further following turns and twists of empty corridors, they encountered the same room over and over again, each the same, each subtly different. Colors became off, furniture crowded, forcing visitors to find their way around it, bloodstains marked yellow wallpapers, invisible if one wasn't looking for them. With each iterations the changes became more pronounced, culminating in complete rejection of ordinary reality and leading visitors to the underbelly of the city. Or perhaps into its stomach. They were never seen again, the story survived only in whispers lingering in the corners.
It was not a pleasant comparison, considering there now were four rooms which I dared no enter, a bribe to the city to leave me be for a time, a part of the city used for functions I couldn't yet comprehend.
If there was one silver lining to the situation, it was the access to Calvert's room. By the patterns of dust, by the angle of the window, by the composition of furniture and by many other signs I studied his style as one of us. I didn't like what i saw.
He was perfect.
The nature of the city and its secrets could be summarized in one paradox: it needed people to exist but cared not for them. It couldn't survive without hands to build and repair, bodies to occupy houses, minds to plan the layout. But any individual person didn't matter. The city would live without the current mayor, without that friendly police officer living across my - former - home, without Principal Blackwell, without anyone I could name. Even people who contributed to it, like my dad fighting for the fate of the Docks, were expendable. Everyone was.
Calvert understood it well. When he looked around, he didn't - and perhaps couldn't - see people. He saw tools which he could use to remake the city in his image, a goal of all of us. Each of his employees was but a part of a greater whole, a cog in the machine built by Calvert and tuned to perfection, ready to be turned just right to set in motion his great designs.
I envied him that clarity. All of us were people trying to think like the city, and Calvert has advanced further than most on that path.
Of course, the source of his power was also concealing his weakness. Parahumans were the antithesis to the ways of the city. Defined by their deviations from the norm, they were hard to be made a part of a crowd or a statistical number. The Empire was a good example of that, hemorrhaging capes almost as fast as recruiting new ones. That was also likely the reason why Calvert didn't work closely with parahumans, keeping the Undersiders at arm's length.
If I hoped to stand a chance against Calvert, I had to work with other people. With other individuals.
That was the reason why I didn't snap when Brian walked into Calvert's room and interrupted my musings.
"Not much of a payoff considering the effort, huh?" he said behind me.
"The rooms can be changed, expanded," I said continuing t study the yellow wallpaper.
"Not what I meant."
"It's a safe haven from the city. The forces at play won't touch it. We've bought time and a room to breathe."
He grabbed me by the shoulder and forced to face him.
"You keep saying this stuff about forces and powers and the city and all that, but I-"
"Brian." Lisa appeared at the door. She must have followed Brian from whenever the Undersiders were discussing the recent events.
Brian was silent for a few moments, his gaze moving from me to Lisa and back. Eventually he sighed and released his grip on me.
"I need some air," he said and walked out. Lisa stepped aside to let him pass.
Once his steps could no longer be heard, she turned to me biting her lip.
"Look," she started to say.
I shrugged. "I would have left you if I knew you are working for Calvert."
"Still," she said. "I am sorry."
I sighed. "You were desperate to get some answers. He has a hold on you the nature of which you don't fully understand. When I appeared on the stage, you thought I was your ticket out of it, the answer to your problems. Honestly, I get it. There is no need to apologize."
Lisa relaxed a little, leaning against the wall.
"So," she said, "hat now?"
I considered what to say. I needed to cultivate some level of trust in the Undersiders, but how much of my plans could I tell them? Calvert had a hold on them, one bound by money and identity. It couldn't be a strong hold, but he could still use it against me. Still, I needed allies against him and the city. I could play up my mystery for only so long.
"Calvert will move against me," I said eventually. "Not right now, but soon. I will try to move against him. Can't do that openly, though, not without damaging this place and becoming vulnerable to the city. I would need to either establish a new domain, away from this place, or... use proxies." I looked at her.
She nodded, and a fracture of weight I didn't know I was carrying has lifted from my heart.
It lasted only a moment before I heard a scream.
Picking up my steel pipe, I rushed towards the entrance.
Darkness has concealed two rooms closest to the exit, Alec and Rachel were sitting in one of them, uselessly staring ahead of them. It was my place now, however, so I didn't need light to see.
I saw Brian on the floor, trying to stand up while not leaving his eyes from a figure just beyond the door. The figure was tall and misshapen. Two or three dead and decaying bodies - one human and one or two dogs - were pressed together to form a mockery of a humanoid shape. They were covered in dirt and litter which were concealing their features while holding them together.
I couldn't smell death, for the smell of trash was far too strong.
I gasped, unable to help myself. The figure before me, a roadkill, was the work of the Merchants. If they were on the move against me already...
I squeezed my pipe tighter and walked towards the roadkill, trying to keep my composure.
"You have no power here," I said keeping my voice firm. "Leave."
Dog's maw snarled, human mouth following after a moment.
"My Queen will own you like she owns all things broken and forgotten," the human mouth said, the dog's maw trying to replicate the words with whines and howls. "But not today. Today she invites you to Somer's Rock as one of her peers."
"What for?" I asked.
"Is not for me to know," it said.
She knew who I was, she knew where I lived. She could tell it to others if she so desired. Hiding was not an option anymore, not that it did me much good before. And if I were to introduce myself to the rest of us, being invited by her was not a bad option. I would no longer be underestimated, however, but Calvert knew me already and I trusted him to keep his promise to distract Kaiser since it was in his interests as well. Lung wasn't a factor in this war, and with lesser forces I could deal.
What has decided the deal for me was the invitation itself, however. She wouldn't invite me there just for some chitchat. Something important was about to start, and I had to be a part of it if I ever were to be a part of the city.
"I'll be there," I said.
The roadkill nodded. Its bodies twisted in its dirty carcass, turning around, and it limped away leaving trash behind.
"What..." Brian said behind me. "What was that?"
I turned and smiled at him.
"Payoff."
I needed to work more on this whole "winning their trust" thing.
Somer's Rock was a place beyond the reach of the city for it was its heart. Few people knew that now, but Brockton Bay has begun with that pub. It was the first building marking a transformation from a village to the true city. It didn't truly survive the passage of time, being burned down many years ago, but its shadow lingered at the edge of reality, unable to disappear as long as the city itself still lived. Stuck between being and not-being, it could only be accessed by those with the right knowledge, and only for an hour between two and three after midnight.
It was a neutral ground for people like us. Perhaps the only neutral ground. Starting something here was suicide.
I was sitting at the central table, waiting for the dead to fetch my drink. They were gathering in this place for an occasional slice of life the city would throw their way. Typically bits of consumed people.
I was studied by my peers and studied them in turn, looking at them with my own eyes for the first time.
Calvert looked like an attractive middle aged man in a pristine suit. Not his real body judging by a patch of cloth on his scalp with cracks spreading around it.
Kaiser was a heavy man clad in rusted metal armor. Slogans and swastikas crawled all over it, their movement hypnotizing people foolish enough to look at them for long.
Figures lingered in the shadows away from the central table. Followers of my peers and those who wished to have a place at our table but didn't have enough talent or clout. The latter category would most likely be consumed soon enough. By the city or one of us.
And then there was her. Sitting right against me, clad only in a mantle made of dead birds, their tiny bones cluttering with each movement. Her blonde hair was long, with cheap shiny jewelry woven into it, and her eyes were dark and inhuman.
The leader of the Merchants. The Magpie Queen. The one who claimed lost things as her dominion.
She terrified me. She fascinated me. I wanted to be her so badly, I could wore her skin as my clothes.
Our drinks have finally arrived. The Magpie Queen drank bird blood, unsurprisingly.
"Let's begin the meeting," she said after finishing her drink, a few drops of blood lingering on her already bright-red lips. "A new power has arisen in the city, and I am not talking about our new peer." She looked at me, her eyes unblinking, a faint smile like a bloodied knife, and for a moment I forgot how to breathe.
"Yes," Calvert said interrupting the moment. "New constructs appear in the city. Stairways to nowhere, walls looking like they were taken from corridors in an apartment building. Streets twist, leading people away from those additions to the city."
Kaiser nodded. "The number of phantoms is increasing. I had to purge my resources from a few of those parasites."
"Someone has interfered with my ritual of the nine corners," I said. "Unnatural alterations appeared in the claimed place, stone pillars pushed the beast around."
"Impossible!" Kaiser scoffed.
"Not impossible," the Magpie Queen said, and her long black nails left deep gouges in the wood of the table. "Someone has stolen a junkyard from the heart of my domain."
The room was silent after that proclamation. To steal a part of someone's domain... It was possible to erode the boundaries, to slowly push against the power of domain's owner and claim it for yourself, bit by bit. But to skip all that and go for something that was claimed and surrounded... It was unheard of. I didn't have a clue of how it could be done.
"It's fortunate," Calvert said. The Magpie Queen looked at him, not moving her eyes, only her head. "Now we have a place to look at instead of hunting shadows."
"I had sent a few of my possessions inside," the Magpie Queen said. "None has returned. Divination reveals nothing, either."
"As expected," Calvert said. "But perhaps the mystery would unravel against our collective effort. I think I speak for all of us when I say that we should put aside our personal agendas for the sake of dealing with this new factor."
He looked around the room, and I nodded. After some hesitation Kaiser did the same.
"Then it's decided," the Magpie Queen said. "I'll take care of Lung. It has to affect him and his people too, and if not, the threat of our alliance will."
"And I'll persuade the Protectorate to not get in our way," Calvert said. "Now, while the junkyard would be the center of our attention, we should watch the rest of the city, too. It could be merely a distraction, even if it's hard to believe..."
The rest of the meeting we spent hammering down details and assigning duties. The Magpie Queen was pleased to learn that I were adept in using glass, for it meant I could create a construct allowing for our communication and collective rituals without the need to gather in one place and risk exposing all of us to the unknown threat.
And I was rather pleased to receive her approval.
"You do know that they are all plotting to backstab each other, right?" Lisa said once we walked out of the pub.
"Yeah," I said. "I'll be looking for an opening, too. But what we face is important and most likely very dangerous. I don't think they would start anything before we know..."
I trailed off noticing a very pale blonde girl standing at a corner of an alley and trying to be discreet as she watched Somer's Rock. I thought I recognized her from somewhere, though I couldn't be certain.
I frowned, trying to puzzle out her identity, when she noticed me. Her face became a mixture of fear and determination as she marched towards me.
"Glory Girl?" Lisa asked incredulously.
"You are Taylor Herbert, right?" the girl asked me, looking me straight in the eye as if afraid to look away.
"Hebert, actually," I said.
She gulped. "Sorry. My sister... She saw your name and your face. In the signs across the city, I mean. She described you to me. Told me you're new, not yet a part of them. Talked about this place, too. What it is, what's it used for. Never ventured inside, though."
I frowned. Another person like me? No, I should have noticed if someone else was active. A connection to that new threat?
"What do you want, exactly?" I asked. "Why are you here?"
Her expression cracked, exposing raw emotions too intense to read.
"She... She's disappeared. My family... They don't even talk about it. They say..." She stopped talking abruptly, closing her eyes and breathing heavily for a few moments. She seemed to regain some control of herself as she said, "Please, I need your help. You are my only hope."