She used the concealed entrance. She wasn't in the mood to suffer through the ingratiating platitudinous bullshit from the sellers. Graceless sycophants, all of them. No, they need not know she was there until she wanted them to. And she had answers to find.
Matthew had been stolen from the mission centre.
The nun under who's care she had left him after she'd pulled him from the wreckage had told her all there was to be told. Which was not much. There had been a break in. Matthew was still very weak, but he had fought for them. And the intruder had knocked him unconscious and taken him away.
Over seven months ago.
Elektra knew exactly what IGH did to its subjects. Murakami had been almost boastful when he explained their operation. And she had helped them. Willingly. Happily. If that drunken idiot was right about this, then Matthew ...
But no. It must be a lie. A misunderstanding. Murakami would not dare. Nor would Gao. She owned them. And she had made her terms clear.
By the time she reached the summit of the mountain of stairs leading to the false bookcase in the CEO's office, she was out of breath. It intrigued her, that. How some physical activities still caused a response. Others didn't. She barely bled anymore. No matter how dire the wound. And her bones could break almost inconsequentially now.
Though her chest did feel rather uncomfortable after that oaf punched her into the river. But nevermind. The girl would be dead by now and ever since Midland Circle fell, Elektra had truly come into herself as the Black Sky. She was not so easily killed these days.
Or surprised.
The office was empty, as expected. Elektra had heard something about the old CEO being beaten into a coma. Apparently, he was still in hospital. His son had allegedly taken over the headquarters, but from what Murakami thought of the boy, she doubted he'd maintain the position for long. After all, his father had let all their living subjects escape. Something unfamiliar twisted in Elektra's gut as she woke the computer. She had heard Murakami and Gao mention the attack, but she knew nothing of it, save the inconvenience it had caused. Gao had feared it would lead to interruptions elsewhere in their networks, and with their planned departure only months away, she had ordered every operation to hasten. They would leave America in a matter of weeks.
Elektra did not have time to be here. Doing this. Which made it all the more fun.
Each of the patients had every experiment and test carefully catalogued and stored. Every byte of information was kept on these servers, hidden behind encryptions strong enough to deter all but the best hackers. After the invasion, they had been improved yet again.
But this was the Hand. And Elektra controlled the Hand. The files opened for her in moments.
She flicked through them, scanning video thumbnails and vital summaries, a sly smile growing across her lips as more and more were discounted. The drunk was wrong. Matthew wasn't here. She'd been confused. Probably by cheap whiskey.
Matthew had always appreciated good whiskey. Macallan. Neat.
She banished the unwanted memory with an impatient shake of her head and clicked into the next file. Subject Ten. No. Subject Eleven. No. Elektra sighed, already feeling foolish wasting her night here. Subject Twelve.
If her heart was still beating, it would have stopped.
Matthew.
She reached out to touch the small, grainy figure on the screen. She clicked on one of the videos. Matthew was in a cage. Bandages covered his lower abdomen and she remembered her sai cutting through his flesh in the pit. Three men pulled him free, tried to strap him down to a gurney, but Matthew was fighting back. Of course he was. Elektra leaned closer, eyes wide and uncomprehending. There was no denying it. No one in the world could fight like her Matthew.
But he was losing. He was weak. Slow. One of the men rammed a cattle prod into his gut and Matthew spasmed and fell. The others were on him in moments, mostly obscuring the pale flesh and shocking blood with their dark uniforms. One of them grabbed Matthew's hair and pulled him onto his knees. His mouth was open, his eyes drenched in blood from his temple. The third guard punched him. Hard. Kicked him harder. Matthew jerked horribly to the side, out of the other man's grip, and collapsed to the floor. He stopped moving.
The guards didn't.
They kept beating him. Kicking, stamping, stabbing with their cattle prods. The first one pulled Matthew's motionless body off the ground and held him as the others used him as a punching bag. There was almost no skin to see now. Matthew was drenched in red, wearing his blood in a parody of the suit that had given him such solace. Such freedom.
The video ended. A comment appeared as the window exited full screen.
Subject Twelve continues to resist. Three officers were forced to resort to drastic measures to subdue Subject. Subject remained in comatose state for eighty-three hours. See attached file for observations on healing capabilities. No extraordinary regenerative abilities observed. Normal testing resumed after five days.
Elektra half-fell into the chair she had ignored. There was an odd pain in her chest, unlike the dull burn of healing bones. It was acidic. Burning. Roiling through her like an ocean at storm. It slithered down to her gut and became icy and sharp.
She had not felt anything as intensely as this since Matthew's arms held her as the world caved in.
There were dozens more videos. Tens of text files. They had had him for months.
He never broke, you know, the drunk had said. Never. Not even when they fucked him up so bad he couldn't see.
Disgust and horror crashed through with the sort of force that would've scared her when she was human. What they had done to him, all that abuse, weeks and weeks of ceaseless pain and solitude and Matthew had the violence in him, but Elektra knew better than him that when that violence was trapped inside it festered. It turned to a poison that attacked its host, and Matthew had never known how to tame that fire. Stick had left before he could teach him.
She had thought he was safe. All this time. Being in New York, mere hours away, sometimes only minutes. How many times had she worried he would appear before her one night, whole and beautiful and furious she had left him. She had feared he would find the loose threads she and Gao were gathering, would follow the scent of the Hand and find her. She had hoped for it. Every day.
But he had been here. Alone. In a cage. Subjected to tortures and humiliations she knew would destroy him.
He never broke. Not even when he couldn't see.
The lights were flickering above her. The computer screen wavered around an entry outlining another failed assimilation of Subject Twelve's serum. The edge of the table buckled in her grip, the metallic screech cut short as she found herself on her feet. The power was coursing through her, stronger than it ever had before. She could feel the blackness inside her, spreading like inky wings from the silence of her heart and stretching out from her skin. Darkness enveloped the office, but she could still see. The fury was icy smoke billowing inside her, purring for release. Nipping along her muscles, eager to taste the air. To taste flesh.
It took her minutes to permanently erase all trace of Subject Twelve from the IGH servers. But that was not enough, so she introduced a virus that would cripple the entire network and burn through any and all mention of the man she should have saved.
But the Black Sky would not be sated with such bloodless action. No. No, there was a wergild owed. Pain must be paid for with pain and who better to bring such righteous justice than the dark angel herself?
Elektra could not see her eyes turn utterly black. Her lips peeled back from her teeth in a heart-stopping smile that would have sent any wise warrior running. She unsheathed her sai swords, relishing their cool pressure in her sure fingers. She turned to the door, which burst open, flying off its hinges. As she walked out into the corridor the computer bank exploded behind her.
They were peering out of their offices. Curious. Not yet truly afraid. The Black Sky stalked down the hallway, darkness consuming her path like death's own cloak, and their pitiful screams were lost to the suffocating silence of her power. Many of them ran, the men fumbling and pushing others aside, the women stumbling in expensive heels. She cut them all down with perfect economy, every strike unleashing ribbons of red into the air, decorating the drab hallway with spectacular colour, each move leading sinuously, flawlessly, into the next.
By the time she reached the elevator, the alarm was wailing through the entire building. Her smile widened. It was nothing to seal the external doors. Less than a thought to trap them all inside with her.
But she let the alarm screech on. Let them know she was coming. Let them know fear.
Floor by floor, the Black Sky descended through the building, her cloak of night consuming all traces of the massacre in which she so delighted. When she left and the Black Sky returned to its home inside her, people would see the carnage she had wrought. They would see her justice.
But she was in no hurry to leave.
Screams wove like harmonies around the steady beat of the alarm. Reinforced doors leapt gladly from their hinges at her glance, adding beautiful staccato screeches to the melody of death around her. Guards rushed at her, their attempt to overpower her laughable. She danced through their opposition, conducting the symphony of bestial chorus with the expertise of one whose skill is unrivalled and unattainable. It was no challenge, not really. Her body was not her own, not when the Black Sky was unleashed, and any injuries the valiant few may have caused were inconsequential as fallen eyelashes. She kept her mouth open in a smile that ensured every expression ended in terror, and, sweet powers, she had never tasted anything so intoxicating, so delicious, as the blood of those who had hurt her Matthew.
By the time the last unimportant corpse fell to the bloodied tiles and Elektra drew the blackness back to her, every single person in IGH was dead. Guards, scientists, patients, janitors, interns, managers. Each was worth nothing more than their dying breath and Elektra stood in the basement and breathed a heavy, satisfied sigh. With a flick of thought, the alarm ceased and a cemeterial silence settled oppressively over the building. The only sound was Elektra's heavy breathing, and the gentle dripping of blood from the tips of her swords.
Madame Gao had been right. Nothing could rival the ecstasy, the rapture of the Black Sky. None could oppose her. None would stop her.
And she wasn't finished yet.
