A drop of sweat rolled off Korra's brow. She wiped it with her wrist but soon after another started to form in its place.
She didn't remember being this anxious before a mission in her whole adult life. So many things were on the line that no matter how hard she tried not thinking about it, she couldn't keep the thoughts from filling up her mind. From the possibility of finding Akemi's brother, to facing Nilak and her apparently impending doom, Korra didn't feel like herself going into this.
She gave her own thigh the death stare when it started twitching, and dried her sweaty hands on her shirt. She needed to pull herself together.
Korra inhale deeply. At least Asami was safe and sound with Akemi in Air Temple Island. Her nightly encounter with the tattletale had made her acutely aware of how vulnerable they were when left alone with the girl. So, despite Asami's protest, they had agreed to be around people when they weren't together. So far it was working out, and if anything, it was nice having an excuse to see their friends so often.
A pebble hit her temple with suspicious accuracy. She glanced across the alleyway, from where Lin was shooting daggers at her, noticing Korra's scattered look. She shifted in place, trying to refocus on the task at hands, and looked up at the ugly building, something akin to vertigo settling in her stomach.
Locating the hideout had been surprisingly easy. It was an abandoned warehouse in the outskirts of Republic City. Back in the day it used to be an up-and-coming industrial area, but had been heavily run down by the Spirit vines after Harmonic Convergence. It wasn't a residential area, so fixing it was in no one's priority list and by the time the City had enough funding to do something about it, it had already been taken over by the triads.
It was the police first and only guess, and checking which building still had running water and electricity led them straight to the warehouse. It was three stories tall, but the top one was inhabitable and had shown no activity during reconnaissance. The other two, however, had every window boarded up from the inside and seemed like an ideal place to harbor illegal operations. According to the police, that was, in Korra's eyes the whole place looked like a lost cause, ready to fall apart. It sent chills down her spine thinking kids were being kept inside.
Korra heard the sound of metal soles retracting at unison and she knew it was go-time. A small team of sensing Earthbenders appeared from the shadows and circled a patch of grass to the side of the building, right above where the basement should be, according to the blueprints Asami had provided. They were going on a limb assuming the kids were hidden in the basement, but it was their best bet if they wanted to get them all out of there before things got ugly.
Korra hated this kind of sneaky approach. She wanted to burst through the main door and bend every and each one of those lackeys into oblivion, and burn the whole place down in her way out. No intelligence, no tacticians, no elite task force needed. Only her, the four elements and the sheer hate that filled her.
But as she saw the Sensing earthbender team opening the ground beneath them with the finesse of a scalpel tearing through flesh, Korra understood why they didn't have any other option. They couldn't risk endangering the kids, nor letting any of the perps escape in a fool's quest. If they ever wanted to find Nilak, they needed one of his lackeys to crack, and the police force had gone to great lengths to ensure a successful mission.
And it showed. Now with the City behind them with their full support and funding, no resource was spared. A couple dozen agents were stationed around the building and in nearby areas. Specialized task forces were entrusted to raid the building, some on the ground alongside Korra, some waiting in adjacent buildings, they were even some on the rooftop in case someone tried their luck through there. They were ready, and they were sending Nilak a message: we can also be force to be reckoned with.
The earthbenders disappeared into the ground, and everyone stood by silently, trying to listen for what was happening out of their sight. After a few minutes of quiet suspense, rustling of little steps and muffled whisperers filled the night, and after them came the children, peeking through the tunnel one by one.
A collective sigh of relief was let out by everyone watching. Korra, Lin and a few other officers approached to help the earthbenders get the kids to the surface. They were scared, but also old enough to know they were there to help them, so they remained quiet for the most part. Korra wrapped them with blankets on their way out and guided them towards the police cars. She felt lightheaded with relief when the last one came out seemingly unharmed, no sign of spiritual meddling.
There were eight kids total, five boys and three girls, all of them older than Akemi. She didn't get the chance to talk to them before the police took them away to safety, but she knew they were too old to be Hakue.
Her feeling of relief was suddenly hijacked by grief washing over her. Until now, she didn't know how much she had counted on finding Hakue. The alternative, once too tragic to consider, now faced her head on: she would have to explain to her daughter that on top of everything else, she had also lost a brother. That a little boy had lost his life, as many before him. All thanks to one man.
She glanced at the warehouse chained doors, her sadness rapidly morphing into bloodthirst anger. She ran towards it, seeing red, a column of water following her. With a quick flicker of her fingers, the water froze around the chains, that shattered under Korra's kick.
Korra and the legion of agents behind her stepped inside, immediately feeling the musky scent of mold and humidity thickening the air. Flames started combusting around her: firebending officers lighting their way through the open floor. Korra took a quick look around, searching for someone to aim all of her fury at, but all she saw were rancid brown walls with humidity stains creeping up all the way to ceiling, makeshift tables and spools made of old wooden crates tossed across the floor.
The officers started swiping the place, checking for hidden spots, but Korra was too riled up for that. Her tunnel vision led her straight to the spiral metal stair in the corner. She climbed it two steps at a time, some kind of warning coming from behind she was to deaf to hear.
The second floor was in even worse condition than the previous one, splintered wooden columns shakily carried the weight of the ceiling above. Instead of tables and spools, there were bare mattresses tossed haphazardly on the ground, the humidity reeking from the wooden floor beneath them taking over the cloth, big moldy patches darkening the flowery pattern.
And next to them, to Korra's delight, were about five of Nilak's lackeys, all looking dumbfounded and defenseless. Korra approached one of them looking for a fight, feeling the rage bubbling in her chest like hot lava. She jumped wielding a fire knife, her defense up, expecting some resistance, maybe an attack from behind from one of the remaining four.
Korra landed on top the woman, and she fell backwards into the mattress, arms covering her face, chest heaving with anguish. But she wasn't fighting back, not even a push. None of them were, in fact. Korra looked around at the four shadows, kneeled in the darkness, arms held high in surrender.
The Avatar froze up, unsure on what to do, wielding the knife mere inches away from the woman's face right under her. The warm glow of the fire shined on her soft features and on the purplish scar that covered her eye socket all the way into the eyeball. It was like staring into the void.
She was just another one of Nilak's victims, Korra understood, lowering the knife. She gently pinned the woman down to the ground as she waited for the officers that flooded the place a heartbeat after to take them all out of the building in cuffs.
Confusion and worry fought for Korra's attention inside her head. Five of them, only one of her, and still, they didn't even try taking her down. Something was wrong. She counted beds. There were six mattresses on the ground, only five people, and one story left to check. There were no stairs this time, only a gaping hole in the ceiling looking up at the sky. She propelled herself through if with airbending, reaching the final story.
Debris was everywhere, from big chunks of concrete, fallen rafters to shattered columns, it hung in the air around them as specs of dust and rubble, subtly lit by moonlight seeping through the broken ceiling and the cracks on the wall. It looked eerie, as stepping into another world.
But when she tried taking a step, the floor threatened to collapsed under her weight, as did every plank she set foot on as she carefully made her way across. The complaining sounds of rotting wood added to the pounding of Korra's heart and her labored breathing, filling up the empty room in a symphony of echoes. And in the midst of all the sounds, a new one appeared, a more hopeful one, that made Korra's heart flutter with a sudden rush of hope.
A cry. The high-pitched cry of a baby startled awake, quickly followed by a futile attempt at muffling it. Korra ran to where the sound appeared to come from: a nook beneath a big piece of rubble leaned against a wall. Inside was not only the baby, but a man who tried rocking the bundle back to silence.
Korra took a good look him. The green scales covering his face reflected the moonlight like tiny mirrors, sparkling with his every move. The scales faded back into bluish skin at his neck, scab like calluses covering his arms all the way to his wrist, were it ended in webbed hands, now covering the boy's mouth, muffling his cries.
"Let him cry, he can't breathe!" Korra said alarmed, watching the baby's face reddening beneath the webbed fingers. The man looked down, a shadow of worry crossing his face for a split second. But he didn't let go, instead he looked up at Korra defiantly "Let him go. We already know you are here" her fingers set aflame, letting the man see the officers appearing behind her through the gap on the floor.
He looked at them and then back at Korra, slowly easing his hand off the baby's mouth, the cries invigorated by the sudden rush of oxygen.
"Hand him to me" Korra asked with all the calm she could muster. She held both hands out but the man didn't let go of the baby, and when Korra gave an insisting step forward, he swiftly uncorked his water skin, freezing the water that came out into a sharp icicle, inches away from the boy's face.
Panic filled Korra at the sight, but remained stoic. The boy must have been shy of two years old, big enough for the man to struggle to get ahold of as he squirmed and cried, the pointy end of the dagger shaking dangerously close to his face. But it didn't escape her how the man was still rocking him, almost like an ingrained mechanism that came alive when the boy cried.
Korra looked back at the officers, and dismissed them with the wave of a hand, eliciting alarmed looks, she could almost feel Lin swearing at her for high-jacking the operation. But Korra repeated herself, sure of what she was doing. Sort of.
She crouched down to look at the man in the eyes.
"You are not going to harm him" It was half a question, half a statement. The man didn't speak up, but brought the dagger closer to the boy's face, the translucid surface of the weapon refracting a beam of moonlight coming from the ceiling.
The effect lasted mere seconds, but it was enough to catch the boy's attention. He stopped crying and stretched his chubby arms up to grab the dagger, but the weapon turned back to water before he could reach it, a gasp of concern escaping the man. That was all the confirmation Korra needed.
"I know you care about him" she stated "Why would you carry him all the way up here if you didn't? Why not leave him in the basement with the other children?"
"He is my hostage" Korra was surprised by the man's raspy voice.
"And how is that working out for you?" Korra was growing impatient, and wanted to yank the baby away from him. Even if he cared about the boy, he still had some connection with Nilak by the looks of it "If you care about him, hand him over, you know what his future will look like if he stays here" the man brought the baby closer to him, almost protectively "Give him a chance at a normal life" the man hid his face in the boy's blanket as he cradled him, and gave him a kiss goodbye before handing him over to Korra.
"Please, keep him away from here… from him" the way he said it sounded ominous.
"I will" and she meant it.
Officers approached her from behind to cuff the man up, while Korra stayed frozen in place, terrified to move now that she held the boy. She had expected for him to cry as soon as he left the man's arms, but he hadn't, and she was now terrified the slightest of moves would make him do so.
She took a good look at him for the first time, as the boy stared back at her with the same intensity. Korra couldn't quite make up the color of his eyes in the darkness, but they were big and watery from crying, framed by thick eyelashes, scrutinizing everything around him with somber attention. He had dimples in both his cheeks even when he wasn't smiling, and freckles sparkled around his nose. But his hair might have been his most prominent feature, Korra had never seen a toddler with that much hair before. She carefully ran a hand through it, earning herself a curious look from the boy, and in return, he reached for her face and tugged on Korra's hair loop. The Avatar couldn't suppress a smile.
"Hi there…" she realized she didn't know his name.
"Wait, what's his name?" She turned around just in time to see the man being escorted out by the police. But before disappearing downstairs, he managed to respond.
"Hakue"
A/N: I'm back! Thank you for your patience, I needed a break to catch up with writing and uni work. How are you all holding up?
I wrote this chapter's first draft like two month ago in what I thought was English, but upon re-reading it yesterday I seriously considered tossing the whole computer to the bin and setting it on fire. I spent more time spellchecking this thing than actually writing it. Hope it payed out cause I phisically can't read it one more time. Enjoy.
-TypingMitten