"I think I can get to the tracker, but the rest of it..." Lisa shook her head, leaning back and letting Taylor resettle the collar to a more comfortable position.
None of them replied. There was no point, not when they were all thinking the same thing. Especially not when any stray noise could be what gave them away.
Their transformations had worn off in the first few hours, when the tunnels still echoed with boots and shouts and the crackle of radios. Forced to dismount Rachel's dogs when the tunnels narrowed, they had only kept ahead of pursuit thanks to the enhancements.
Then they began to wear off, and Taylor's attempt to top them up brought the latest nasty surprise.
Every time she tried to transform herself, the collar would shock her and break her concentration, they'd figured that part out early. It hadn't been a big deal, Brian had simply carried her -shrouded by his power- until they had time to remove the collar. Or so he'd planned.
Unfortunately it turned out that the same shock broke her concentration whenever she tried to transform anyone else as well.
"It's shitty, looks like he slapped it on after finishing the rest. Which is the only reason...I can..." With a grunt and a pop, Lisa ripped something out of the collar. A dark grey disc of plastic, about the size of a penny.
Brian snatched it out of her hand and tossed it to the ground. A judiciously applied boot removed one of their worries. A slender body leaning against him reminded Brian of all the other ones they had to deal with.
That he had to deal with.
"Okay. Let's stop and take stock." He held up a hand for order, still a little surprised at the obedience he got these days.
Lisa scratched her head and sighed, "Well first off, the loft is burned. Unless we raid their evidence lock up in the future, we should all just accept that our stuff is now PRT property." All of them slumped at that. They'd all had precious possessions that they'd kept in the loft, either because they had no where else, or because they thought...
"Why weren't we safe?" Brian asked. Though he already knew the answer before Lisa replied.
"The boss. Coil. He must have given our location to the PRT."
Alec chimed in, "They'd trust it from a known villain?"
"No," Lisa explained, "But he's smart enough to know that. He'll have given it to someone that the PRT would trust at their word, an agent or even a hero maybe."
"Why?" Rachel spat.
"Because we refused to follow his orders." Brian answered. It wasn't hard to figure out. They'd been keeping their distance for over a month, and in the last week he'd seen Lisa decline a whole lot of phone calls. Apparently sadistic supervillain masterminds didn't deal with break-ups very well. More importantly, "What now? Any ideas?"
Aisha jumped in with, "We go to those Dockworker guys, they'd hide us, right?"
He was already shaking his head, but Taylor's response was much more vehement.
"No!" She snapped, the first time he'd heard her speak since she admitted she couldn't fight through the collar's shocks. She sounded drained, but not yet defeated. Not that he'd expected any less. "The heroes will expect that, and..." She looked around at them, pleading for understanding with her eyes. "...my dad and the others, they could already be in a lot of trouble. We can't...we just can't..."
Aisha opened her mouth, maybe to agree, maybe not to, either way Brian cut her off. "She's right. We owe them that much, and right now we'd only be bringing them trouble."
"We need to get the collar off Taylor." Rachel stated, the buff girl keeping watch on the way they'd come.
"Agreed, as long as I've got this thing on I'm no good to anyone." Taylor's voice trailed off into dejection and Brian was squeezing her shoulder before he could think better of it.
'We've already touched plenty in sparring anyway. That's all this is.'
"You're plenty good." He attempted to be comforting, with the sneaking suspicion he was failing miserably. "But you're right that we need to get it off. Which means a tinker."
Lisa sounded like she was pulling her own teeth as she said, "We could...go see Faultline. Her power would probably do it."
A low whistle came from Alec, but all of them were staring at the blonde. Her mutual rivalry with the mercenary was well known, it must have taken a lot out of her to make the suggestion. Brian was almost sad to shoot it down.
"Firstly, Faultline is an arrogant patronising asshole. Secondly, she doesn't like the rest of us much more than she likes you. Thirdly, we just got our identities blown, meaning no bank accounts in our names, and I doubt anyone is carrying much cash. We couldn't hire her even if we wanted to and she was likely to take us on."
His words won him a relieved look from Lisa. A slightly guilty look, but mostly just relieved. She continued for him, "Not to mention, there's definitely some kind of anti-tamper system on this thing. Damaging it will definitely set it off. I thought her power might bypass that, but I really can't say for sure."
"So what then?" Rachel asked.
Taylor was the one who replied. "We find a tinker. Obviously Kid Win and Armsmaster are out."
"Not necessarily." Said Alec. "Maybe it's just me, but those guys just took our home. I'm not averse to a little extortion right now. Or kidnapping."
Brian gave him a hard look, despite how much his blood howled to agree. He fought the anger down and said, "We can't out escalate the fucking heroes, not without Taylor at least. Even with her I don't know if we'd survive that."
Unsure if she'd be able to agree with him, what with the collar around her neck, Brian looked over to Taylor. His face creased with the hint of a smile when he saw her nodding, despite that she had to be at least as angry as the rest of them.
For all that Brian wanted to howl with pain and rage at the loss of his home, his life, even his things, he remembered. For Taylor, it wasn't the first time this had happened.
With the way Aisha, Alec and Rachel were all definitely not nodding, he was glad to have another voice of reason on the team.
'To think, at first I thought she was going to be another Rachel.'
Getting them back on topic, Brian counted on his fingers as he said, "Leet, Squealer, that Empire kid, and uh, didn't you say the ABB had a new tinker?" He directed the last towards Lisa.
"Yeah, but she's definitely crazy. I wouldn't trust her anywhere near Taylor's neck."
Taylor put a hand up, attempting a smile. "I'm not sure I trust any of the others near my neck either. Leet's...Leet. Squealer's a drug addict. As for the Empire kid..."
There was no need to say it. It was hard to imagine that any member of the Empire would have their best interests at heart.
"That just leaves hiring an out of towner. Maybe we head for Boston?" Brian summarised and put the idea to the group. He got a round of half-hearted nods in return. Aisha in particular looked so rebellious that he had a sudden terrible image of her sneaking off to attack the heroes by herself.
"I'm not saying that we run." He didn't bother to keep the fury out of his voice, letting it chill his tone and deepen his voice. "Once we're back in shape, we come at them and we show them what it means to fuck with us. Right now though, we need to get to the surface, access our back-up accounts, and find a way to sneak out of the city."
This time the nods were more enthusiastic, even from Aisha.
"Okay, then we-"
His words and thoughts hit a brick wall. A murmur had echoed down the tunnel that they'd come from, a distinctly unknown voice.
It was shortly joined by another.
The Undersiders tensed for battle, then Aisha grabbed his hand and Alec's and they remembered that they didn't need to fight at all.
'Assuming those assholes haven't already figured out a counter for that too...they can't have already figured that out? Surely?'
Hoping that the world wasn't going to play another shitty joke on him, Brian groped in the near dark for Taylor's hand and glanced around to check that the others were all holding onto one another. Then he nodded to Lisa and she killed their light.
Alone in the dark, they all tried to quiet their breathing. It was a little comforting to know that he wasn't the only one who still followed the habit even knowing it was pointless. Not that anything could be all that comforting when pursuit was this close.
The distant murmurs became low voices holding some kind of conversation. Already Brian missed the enhancements to his senses. It had to be downright awful for Lisa. She overused that aspect of the transformation constantly. Hell Brian couldn't remember the last time he'd gone this long without being transformed. It had to be at least two weeks ago. More?
Distant voices became close voices, and the tunnel began to fill with dim light reflecting around a bend. These tunnels weren't part of the routes they normally used. In fact Brian wasn't sure they even counted as that kind of tunnel, since he was pretty sure they were disused storm drains and dated to a more recent time than the prohibition days. Then again, those like Lacey proved that the smuggling was alive and well in the Bay, so maybe it still counted.
Slow breathes were held completely as the voices came right up to the near corner. Then they turned and a collective sigh of relief was released.
It was a group of homeless people.
A couple of trundling shopping carts took the lead, pushed by figures wearing enough different jackets that they looked well built. Brian's eyes darted to their exposed wrists and necks though, saw the signs of malnutrition there. He doubted any of them were close to a healthy weight.
Further back were what looked like the more recently homeless. At the sight of them he felt more than heard a gasp from Lisa. Rachel just growled at her own memories, and Brian was tactful enough not to draw attention to either.
Some of them looked almost healthy. Only their dirty clothes and greasy hair gave them away. The clothes were still well maintained and their bodies still had plenty of meat on their bones. Most of them were Asian looking, making it easy to figure out what had driven them to this, but amongst the pool of black hair he could see various shades of brown and blonde, even a muddy platinum blonde near the back.
"We could blend in with them." Aisha's voice made them all jump. For a moment Brian feared he'd lose his grip on her, but he managed to hold on despite himself and none of the homeless group screamed and pointed to the sudden appearance of fugitives. Not that this lot were likely to know anything about that.
Once they'd all remembered that they could talk freely without breaking their stealth, conversation began again. Albeit in unnecessarily hushed voices that had Aisha smiling at them all, ever so slightly.
"It might work." Said Lisa. "Trust me, nobody pays attention to the homeless."
Rachel agreed, "We mess up our clothes, roll in the muck."
Not the worst plan to get out of the city. It really wasn't...but Brian could feel the tension in Taylor's hand, and he had to admit he was feeling it too. Of course she wouldn't say it, not when she was surely blaming herself for bringing all this down on their heads. So it fell to him.
"No." He got a chorus of pointed looks at his denial, but he didn't let his voice falter. "We could get them killed. No."
There were sins he was willing to take on his shoulders, getting innocent people killed wasn't among them.
So they all stayed quiet and let the group past.
When the light was just a flicker in the distance, they released one another with a chorus of stretches and groans that Brian had to rush to shush, and set off down the tunnel. When they came to the first fork in it, they went the way the homeless had not.
From then on they followed Lisa's directions. Even though she admitted to being unsure of them, none of them had any better ideas than to take the turns as she called them.
It went on for hours, until Brian felt utterly, hopelessly, lost.
The tunnels changed textures and materials and ages, but it all blended together. Noises echoed and overlapped and Brian swore he heard someone following them several times, only to dismiss it moments later as their own footsteps echoing around behind them.
Finally, with Taylor leaning heavily against him, they came to a ladder that Lisa nodded to and said. "I'm certain of it. There's no PRT or hero presence anywhere around here. We can surface."
Missing daylight as much as he did, Brian didn't argue the point. He did however take point, calling a wave of darkness around him as he climbed the ladder and pumping it out the moment he lifted the manhole cover. The sliver of light that would have blinded his darkness adapted eyes was filtered through his power and did nothing. Meanwhile he filled the ruined warehouse beyond with his darkness.
Only then did he climb up and look around. Other than a strange sense of deja vu, the result of too much time spent in these old places, it seemed safe enough.
"Come on up." He called down the all clear. Banishing the dark immediately around the manhole. He helped each of them up in turn, careful to show everyone the same firm and supportive grip.
When they were all topside, he dismissed the darkness completely. The sun was already going down, so they didn't waste any time before walking towards the hole in the wall where there was probably once a door.
"Okay then, we need to stay hidden as we move, but this looks like the Docks so that shouldn't be too-"
Lisa tensed in the corner of his eye, but Brian could already feel it. What he was feeling, he didn't know. A scent? A sound? A glint of light where there should be nothing reflective?
Whatever it was had him roaring, "Back to the tunnel!" Even as he turned to sprint for the manhole himself.
Yet again, it was too little, too late.
Before he'd even finished turning, there was a man in a costume standing between them and the manhole.
He wore a red waistcoat beneath a black jacket and a similarly coloured top hat. His mask was white, styled as a skull and reminiscent of some legend that Brian couldn't quite remember.
Whether he was distracted by the rising horror in his gut, or the massive tumour on the cape's neck, it was hard to say.
"Hello and welcome." Rasped the cape, holding up a slender cane and bowing to them. "I am so very glad you came to this place. Ma cherie judged it likely enough to send one of us here, but I am so glad to have served a purpose in-"
bang
Lisa's pistol rang out and a spray of blood erupted from the side of his neck, the side opposite the tumour. Even as he tumbled to the ground she was yelling, "It's not really sentient, just an echo of personali- oh fuck it's not dead!"
She fired again, blowing apart the top hat in a chunky spray of red, but she wasn't quick enough.
The corpse slumped to the ground, and a nearly identical figure poked it with his own cane. This man had no tumours -he looked perfectly healthy in fact- and was arm in arm with a pretty woman in a costume that was basically just a gymnastics leotard with a few pouch-laden belts slung across her hips. From what Brian could see it didn't even have a back.
'So definitely a brute then. Or just very stupid'
Arrayed to either side of them, and casually spreading out as he watched, were another six capes. One woman, lithe of build, wearing a full body costume of black with stylised suns emblazoned across it in a rainbow of colours. Two men, broad shouldered, geometric patterns stitched in black across their red armoured tops and pants. Though one of them had a hunchback and limped as he sidled towards a stack of crates.
The last three were...monsters? There was no other word for them: A weird floating octopus thing; A misshapen four armed gorilla; And a man-sized turtle with what looked like a cannon poking out of it's shell.
Standing between them, the woman and the man stepped forward. Then the woman patted the man's hand and he -reluctantly- let her go. She spoke clearly, but with an edge that Brian recognised. The introvert forcing themselves to speak publicly.
"Greetings. My name is Myriad, leader of the Travellers. I'm afraid we've been hired to bring you in."
"To the authorities?" Lisa asked, a sick smile stretched across her face.
"Oh no. No we've been hired by your old employer. I'm afraid Coil would like a word with all of you."