THREE
When she woke again, the room was dark. She was in pain now, real pain.
Their fury would've killed her if the Big Guy hadn't come in to see what they were doing. He'd thrown them off her, halting their punches and kicks, and bawled them out.
"We gotta wait for the Nightwatcher!" he'd screamed. They'd cowered, instantly subdued by his rage. "I want her alive til then, unless he's not here in three days. But he'll come. Just be fuckin' patient."
They didn't dare look at him, staring instead at the ceiling and floor, their fists clenched and jaws tense.
"When he gets here, we'll kneecap him, break his arms, and then make him watch while we have a party with her. Then we'll kill her." Suddenly, he'd backfisted the guy nearest him so that he spun around and hit the wall. "Got it?"
Silent and sullen, they'd nodded, one or two shooting her a vicious look. Wait, those looks said. Just wait.
"Now get the fuck back to your posts. José, you stay."
At these words, they all jumped and moved quickly out the door. The one they called José pulled a battered chair up to the table and sat down, ignoring her as she coughed up a mouthful of blood and passed out.
José was no longer there. She was alone in the room, lying in the dust and her blood. Slowly, gingerly, she made an attempt to sit up. Her head screamed in protest as she did, and there was a sharp, shooting pain in one arm. She sat still for a moment, waiting for the room to stop spinning, and then threw up a mouthful of bile and blood.
The room she was in was small and filthy, its walls peeling plaster and paint, and its floors a mess of exposed boards, cracked and creaking. Beams were exposed in the ceiling, and apart from the table and a couple of chairs, there was no furniture. Nor any windows. Along one wall she could make out large, pale spaces against the grime, indicating there'd once been things fixed up against it. Spying a gas outlet, she guessed this had been a kitchen before it was gutted.
Wincing, she began to move her limbs, checking for broken bones. They'd concentrated their assault on her torso and legs, but nothing felt broken. They hadn't had enough time – mere seconds – before the Big Guy had come in.
But she was already turning purple in various places, and there was a lump on her head that was tender to the touch. It was slightly difficult to breathe, as well, and she thought she might have a couple of cracked ribs. She was in a lot of pain, but on the whole, it was nothing that was going to be unbearable to deal with until they came back for her.
In the end, when it was clear she didn't have enough to kill herself, she'd split the smack she'd had left in half, leaving her with two reasonably big doses. Now she did up the other shot and sat back, her arse aching where she'd been kicked. Before injecting, she lifted up her skirt and gave herself a quick examination. The lube combined with her lack of resistance and relaxed muscles meant there was barely any damage. She didn't think many of them had gone before they'd gotten bored.
She pulled her bottle of gin from her bag and took a few hard gulps. Then she remembered the dream she'd had before, of Raphael holding her on her bed back in her parents' home in Jersey. She supposed she was going to die without saying goodbye to him, which really wasn't fair. She hoped he wasn't going to be too upset, but knowing him, he'd probably blame himself. She wished… if anything, she wished she could tell him that she didn't blame him. And that she wished she'd – There was a warm wetness on her cheeks then, and she wiped her face hastily. That was life. She picked up the syringe and wrapped the belt around her wrist, pumping her hand. When the vein sprung up, she plunged it in quickly and a few seconds later the pain retreated.
She eased herself back down, curling into a ball. Then she slid a hand down her calf and into her boot, feeling around until she located the cylinder, warmed by her skin. It was intact. She smiled to herself. Hopefully José would be back soon.
-------
He got into the building through the rooftop. It was dark inside, almost pitch black, and he sat down in the darkness and waited twenty minutes until his eyes had adjusted to it almost completely. Leo would be proud.
Then he moved silently down the hallway, past apartments whose doors were hanging off their hinges or not there at all.
Ninja training had taught him how to 'lift' his weight so that he was at once silent and light on the floorboards, but nonetheless, he moved slowly and with great care. A creaking floorboard was all he needed to fuck everything up.
At the end of the hallway was the stairwell and an elevator shaft, sans door. Taking a peek inside, he saw the old elevator itself several floors down. The whole building was only eight floors and he was on the top. He figured he'd go down to the fourth first, take care of things there, move back up to the sixth, and then finish business on the fifth. This was going to require a lot of care, and using the shaft would be stealthier and easier than trying an unreliable staircase.
He tested the cable, and when satisfied it would take his weight, swung onto it and began to swiftly and silently slide his way down.
He counted the floors as he went, noting with satisfaction that the doors on floor six hung open at a crazy angle and those on floor five were gone altogether. But he cursed inwardly when he reached the fourth floor. The elevator doors there were only a foot apart – no where near wide enough to climb through.
He had two options: He could climb back up, use the stairs and risk alerting floor five to his presence before he was ready, or he could try and get the doors opened wide enough to slip through without alerting anyone.
He opted for the latter.
Balancing himself on the edge of the fourth floor doorway, he placed his hands between the gap and steadied himself, drawing in a deep breath, before slowly and steadily exerting force. At first, the doors refused to budge, but then, with a whisper of a groan, they began to slide back. He paused a moment before the sound could get any louder, aware of his heart beginning to pound harder as he waited in the darkness to see if they'd heard. Nothing. The doors slid further when he tried again, still catching in their runners, until with a sudden screech, they unexpectedly loosened and slid wide.
He leapt out through them and darted for the stairway, ducking beneath it just as one thug came out of a doorway down the hall, gun cocked.
From where he hid, Raphael could hear a muffled voice asking a question, and the thug in the hallway whispered back: "Thought I heard somethin'. Just checkin' it out."
He came creeping down the hall, attempting silence, but the floorboards were merciless beneath his inexperienced feet, creaking and groaning with every third step. He reached the elevator shaft and peered into it, the nose of his gun going first.
Raphael sprang.
The butt of his sai made contact with the back of the man's head, and he went down without a whimper. Raphael caught him and carried him to the stairwell, where he was swiftly bound and gagged. Then he moved forward down the hall, his own feet whisper soft, feeling out the loose parts of the wood and carefully sidestepping them.
When he reached the door for forty-six, he drew up against the wall and very carefully took a glance around the edge of the doorframe. Three guys on this floor, he remembered. One was already down. The other two had to go down in silence, as well, or it was all over.
There was no one in the first room of the apartment, which had probably been the living room at one stage. He edged his way in and moved silently around the walls, moving closer to the open doorway that led through into the rest of the apartment.
And then he froze as a voice lifted from beyond it: "I'm gonna go check on what that dickhead Marco is doin'. He keeps gettin' spooked by the rats."
In the darkness, waiting, Raphael grinned.
The second thug came through the doorway, oblivious to his presence, and once again his sai cracked dully against a man's skull. He laid him down carefully on the floor, and then moved through into the other room, where a man sat near the window, looking at a porn magazine, his gun by his feet.
Raphael raced forward, and the guy looked up in astonishment, barely managing a "what the fu –" before Raphael laid hands on him. Then he was down, as well.
Raphael hissed out a long, slow breath. His heart rate was even and calm, and his breathing was measured, controlling his exertion. But sweat slicked his forehead, hot and wet, and he knew better than to think it was going to keep on being so easy.
He went to the window of forty-six, looking out and upwards. He could catch the faint gleam of lights coming from apartments fifty-five to fifty-seven above him. He could move between the windows easily to get up to sixty-six. He pushed the shuko onto his hands, and then slipped out of the window, finding easy purchase on the wall stretching up above him. As he moved, steadily and with ease, a faint memory from childhood came back to him. Strength training. Splinter saying they were not ready for chin-ups yet, because they had to master push-ups first. Raphael had already mastered push-ups, and he was starting to do them one-handed. Leonardo was angry at him, and he didn't understand why, except that Leonardo was doing twenty extra push-ups every day even when Splinter said he didn't have to. Leo was overworking his young muscles, even though he couldn't actually do twenty, but usually wobbled around sixteen and fell flat on his plastron. And Splinter was telling Raphael that he had to wait for everyone to be ready to do chin-ups before he could.
But Raphael wanted to work on them now, when he was ready. It wasn't fair. When Master Splinter was meditating one afternoon, and Donatello and Michelangelo were watching Biker Mice from Mars, and Leonardo was reading (again), Raphael had gone into the tunnel just outside their lair, where several exposed pipes stretched down its length, in different sizes and thicknesses. He'd crouched, sprung upwards to grab hold of the lowermost pipe, grunting a little as his hands chafed against the rust, and tested his grip. The pipe was dry, and the rust made the surface rough, so he would not slip. He hung there for a few moments, managing his breathing and building himself up. Finally, he'd taken a great breath in through his nostrils and, in a great exhalation through his mouth, poured all of his power into his arms and back, hauling himself up.
For just a second, his chin hovered just below the top of the pipe, and he tipped his head backwards to raise it above, eyes bulging with the effort to keep sight of his progress, arms quivering with the strain, stars and spots dancing in his gaze. He felt a hot, giddy glory. He'd done it.
He'd dropped back down, feeling his biceps and triceps trembling from the exertion. He looked about him, unable to help grinning, only for his triumph to dull when he remembered he was alone, and no one there to see him.
He was unable to do another one, after that. Just the one.
But the next day he did three, and the day after that, seven. And in another week, when Splinter decided push-ups had progressed enough for them all to begin chin-ups, he could do twenty. And Leonardo was angry with him again.
By now he was at apartment sixty-six, the solid musculature of his adult form comfortable and unstrained from the climb. Nowadays, he could do an easy fifty chin-ups one-handed. Scaling a short wall barely registered as an effort.
He paused in the darkness outside the window of sixty-six, listening carefully. Unseen within, the two men there were talking.
"So, my wife is up me again to find a 'real job,' as she calls it. You gotta get a real job, Mickey, she says, can't raise a kid like this. I keep tellin' her, no one willin' to hire me with my record. Can't get no jobs, cept washing dishes or lugging trash. Menial shit, man. How I supposed to raise a kid and keep a family on that kind of salary?"
"I hear ya, man."
"She up me all the time, ya know. Gotta get a real job, Mickey. I say, fuck woman, you go out and get a fuckin' real job if it's so important to ya,"
"You got a death wish, man,"
"I say that, then she start screamin' at me to get out, yellin' that I'm a bum and a crummy bastard and to fuck off, and she'll raise the kid by herself, and I won't get to see him."
"Aw, man."
"So then I'm all like naw, come on, Tiff, was just kiddin', but you know it's hard, baby. And it is hard, man. So fuckin' hard."
There was silence for a long, heavy moment. The night was warm and humid and in the distance a motorbike engine roared.
"So anyway, she let me stay. I tell her I got a job mixin' drinks. That's where she thinks I am tonight."
It's funny, Raphael thought, they sound just like the guys down at the bar on Thirty-Fourth after their shifts'r done.
In the darkness beyond the window, they did not see him when he glanced around the window frame. They sat at an old table laden with beer bottles, playing a card game and using cigarettes as chips. One smoked, the other chewed gum. They were both young, one black and handsome, the other white and ugly. He could make out no distinguishing tattoos, no signifying colours that indicated they were in the same gang, just like the others below. They were wholly unremarkable, their faces those of hundreds of young men that roamed the streets of New York.
But there was something familiar about them, nonetheless.
He watched them in silence for a moment.
That was it. They were just like so many he'd seen before. So many he'd encountered on the streets, who he'd brought down and halted in the acts of crimes both petty and horrendous. Just two more faces.
"We should just dust the bitch now," one of them grumbled, the one who was not Mickey, and Raphael tensed, gritting his teeth. "Too damn risky keepin' her alive like that. Oughta just cap her, be done with it." He threw his cards down, folding the hand, and Raphael put one foot up on the window ledge and pushed off, propelling himself into the room.
He landed on the mug, his fist cracking hard against jawbone. Mickey had leapt back as the table toppled, beer bottles clattering to the floorboards, a 'Hey!' in his mouth before Raphael's leg kicked out, connecting with his gut, one hand still clutching Not-Mickey's collar. Not-Mickey's fist came arcing through the air and landed a glancing blow off Raphael's temple, but he shook off the sting and knocked the mug out with a brutal uppercut.
His gun had been knocked aside in the tumult, and Mickey was scrambling for it when Raphael landed on his chest, seething. Mickey was rendered speechless with fright at the spectacle of this snarling, vicious thing, which had exploded out of the night in a whirlwind of green and bone armour and veined muscles. The weight of it on his chest was steadily crushing him even as a row of large, square white teeth bared uncomfortably close to his ear.
"Looks like wifey'll be raisin' the kid alone after all, bub," Raphael hissed.
There came a sharp, hard tapping from below, and Raphael froze, sweat cooling along his neck and arms as he paused. A muffled voice drifted through the floorboards:
"Oy! What're you idiots doin' up there? Don't fuckin' play if you can't stand to lose!"
Mickey's terrified eyeballs rolled back in his head, connecting with Raphael's own wild gaze. The turtle considered a moment before leaning in even closer; close enough to smell Mickey's sweat.
"It's up to you whether you see 'em tomorrow or not, pal."
Mickey swallowed, trembled and opened his mouth. At first it was just a croak, thin and crackling, but then he swallowed again and, never taking his bulging eyes from Raphael's inhuman face, he shouted to the room below:
"S'cool, man, Louis just kicked my ass. The old la-lady'll kill me."
A second later, Raphael's elbow connected with his temple, and Mickey was out of the game.
-------
José would not go near her.
He would not even look at her.
He sat near the door, playing Solitaire with a grubby deck of cards, chain-smoking relentlessly. Her throat constricted at the smell of the nicotine, the bald need for it making her a little dizzy. It set her on edge, however, and an edge was what she needed right now.
She coughed and shifted on the ground, moving one leg around in front of her. The smack dulled the pain. She knew it was there, but couldn't respond to it. She needed that, too.
"Give us a cigarette," she drawled, drawing one knee up to her chest. The corner of José's eye flickered, but other than that, he gave no indication that he'd heard her.
"Come on, honey," she continued, before coughing again and pushing back her long hair. The palm of her hand brushed over the small patch of short, soft spikes on one side of her forehead. They couldn't have thought to cut from the back, of course… "Don't a dyin' girl get a last request?"
He froze in the action of laying a card down on the table; not long, but just long enough for her to catch it.
"It ain't much to ask, José," she persisted, gazing at him steadily from the floor. He was short and stocky, this guy. Kinda like Raphael, except not, cos no one was like Raphael. Latino, with a goatee and hair that fell into his eyes. He wore a grimy singlet and ragged blue jeans, and his arms were covered in blue jailhouse tattoos. There was one, on the back of his neck, of hands pressed together in prayer. "If you're gonna act as God, José…"
His hand had been resting on the table, but now the fingers of it curled inwards, tightening into a fist. She could see the current of tension that ran up it, all the way up his arm and over his neck, finally clenching in his jaw.
"It ain't personal," he muttered.
A smile flickered across her mouth, and her eyes rolled back to the ceiling, running along a length of black, coiled wiring. "It never is." Her gaze flickered back down to José. "You got a sister, José?"
José's jaw tensed. "Don't be callin' me that."
"What, your name? Why not, José?"
He did not respond.
"My name's Amber," she continued conversationally. "Figure if you're gonna kill me, you might as well know my name. Dunno if that's important or not, but it's gotta make a better story, right, the day you dusted Nightwatcher's ho. Right, José?"
"Shut up." José's voice was low, a growl. She chuckled.
"I'm gonna die, José. Surely if you're not gonna let me say goodbye to my mom and my dad and my ass-kickin' boyfriend, I at least get a few last words, huh? I mean, what if it were your sister here, baby?"
He flung himself across the room at her, his words a strangled whimper-cry. "Shuttup!"
As his hands closed around her neck, she moved, faster than she thought she could with this much junk in her system.
The impact against his arm startled him so that he stopped. He looked down in mild surprise at where her fisted hand rested against his bicep, his brows furrowing in puzzlement. She could see that he was trying to figure out – what's she playing at? Was that a punch? She think that gonna hurt me? – and, smiling, she released her hand and let it drop back down, limp, by her side.
That's when he saw the butt of the syringe, its needle embedded in his arm.
She'd never seen a dark-skinned guy go so pale before.
He rose slowly to his feet and staggered backwards, a funny, high-pitched whine coming from his throat. The fingertips of his other hand hovered in the air, made as if to grab the syringe, and then pulled back again. He seemed afraid to touch it. She watched him quietly, her eyes wide as she slumped in the dirty corner in a sticky, damp mess of her own blood and sweat, fascinated at the sight of his hand trembling, inches away from the barrel of the syringe, and at the sound of the strange, strangled whine he emitted.
"Wh – wh – what was in th-that?" he managed to gasp finally, his eyes still fixed in wide horror on his arm and the unnatural device that seemed to grow out of it, like some especially bizarre tumor.
"Blood," she said quietly. He finally looked at her, his face collapsing in numb, gasping terror. She met his gaze calmly. "My blood."
-------
He slipped out into the hallway. He had to move fast, now. No way Mickey's act would be convincing enough to last. They'd shrug it off for a moment or two, but any second now they'd be rethinking it, remembering the tremor in his voice, the pause and the clatter that had come before it.
He still didn't know where Amber was, but he knew that she was alive.
The knowledge did not bring him relief, but rather increased his urgency, the need to find her. He was not too late. He could save her. He could stop them from doing whatever it was they had planned.
There was no strategy here. There was a plan, certainly, but no strategy. Just who was he dealing with? Whoever it was, they were relying on him being as brute, as simple and as crude as they themselves were.
He slipped down the stairs to the floor below, feeling a tightening across his chest as he drew closer to his ultimate goal; a fierce and keen urge now that he was so near. Soon, soon, he would lay hands upon them. Soon he would feel their bones break beneath his blows, hear the soft whump of flesh crumpling under his attack. No one did this to his friends. No one.
When he reached the fifth floor, he moved through the darkness swiftly. He saw in it now as easily as if it were starkly illuminated, and what he didn't see, he could sense, its presence looming out of the shadows as palpably as breath against his neck. As he edged closer towards the apartments where the last of the enemies waited for him, raised voices broke the silence, and he froze, listening intently.
"Fuck ya, Rex, you ain't got nothin' over me! Ya ain't got nothin' over any of us!"
"If it weren't for me, you bums wouldn't even be here! Which one of you losers woulda had the foresight to put this operation together? Huh?"
"Let's get this straight, Rex. We're here as a team for one purpose only: to bring down the Nightwatcher, pay him back for all the wrong he done us, but that's it – "
"Who brought ya all together then, Tommy? Was me, that's who. Without me, you'd all just be sulkin' in the gutter talkin' big about how you'll get even one day while snatchin' purses and holdin' up convenience stores."
"Hey man, just cos it's your idea don't make you top dog. Ever since you brought us here, you've been actin' like you think you're king of the mountain or somethin'. I'm getting fuckin' sick of it, Rex, we all are. You gotta step back, man."
"Or what, Tommy?"
There was a pause. Raphael could not tell if it was one of apprehension, or a moment where the two battlers were locked in each others' eyes. After a moment, he heard Tommy snort a little.
"Or otherwise, I'll take you down, Rex. We got no ties, you and me. We got nothin'."
That explained why none of these guys had markers that connected them. Just a group of punks he'd squished who'd decided to get even. No big time crims, no organised mob. Just a bunch of punks.
And the only thing binding them together was him.
He heard the unmistakable sound of guns being cocked, and a grim voice said, "I'd think real long and hard about this, Tommy."
"I would, too, Rex."
"You guys needed me to keep control. You woulda killed that bitch already if I hadn't stopped ya. No one's tryin' to muscle you about, but someone had to keep their head. How about you put the gun down?"
"How about you first?"
There was another silence, and Raphael crouched in the hall, still and hard as marble, almost as if waiting for their words to come drifting down the hallway so that he could pounce on them. Maybe they'd take each other out. Save him the trouble. Deny him the fun.
"Yo, man." It was a new voice now; a lighter, huskier voice, tinged with nervousness. "Come on, guys, ease up. Take it easy now. Save the 'munition for the Nightwatcher, hey? No sense in us all goin' off mad and shootin' at each other. Let it go."
Another new voice piped up to join that one, a deep baritone that was deceptively gentle and almost nonchalant.
"He's right. Both ya put the guns down and stay cool. No reason we can't sort this out like gentlemen."
Yet another pause, one in which the dark silence of the tenement seemed to buzz, and then there was a metallic clatter as Rex and Tommy took their fingers from the triggers, placing the guns down on some sort of wooden surface.
The released tension flowed down the hallway like a breeze, and Raphael unexpectedly let out a breath.
Lowered words were now exchanged, too quiet for him to catch. He began to ease forward again… when from out of that apartment, two figures emerged, one storming ahead and the other struggling to keep up.
"I don't take orders from no one," the agitated one growled, "Rex's in for a whole world of pain when we done here,"
"I dunno, Tommy, I think this all getting' outta hand," the other said, struggling to keep his voice low. "Feelin' real bad 'bout what we're doin' to that kid. Shit, man, she don't look much older than my sister's kid. Shouldn'ta beat her like that. Shouldn'ta took her. Man, I ain't never killed no one before."
Tommy drew to a stop, staring blankly ahead into the darkness. "Don't think about it. Ain't our fault. Nightwatcher should know better. He brought this on her. It's his deed."
The words hit Raphael with the force of a freight train, hard enough that his knees buckled. Tommy suddenly twitched, his faraway look replaced by something keener. Inexplicably, he'd sensed Raphael's presence.
It brought him back to himself. Carefully, he reached into his belt as Tommy held up a hand to his companion, indicating for silence. Raphael had brought the manriki with him. The Nightwatcher's weapon. In these sorts of situations, it was ideal.
The iron ball slammed into Tommy's forehead, catapulting him backwards. He didn't make a sound, but his companion, the edgier younger guy, needed only the time it took for Raphael to haul the weighted chain back to him before he reacted. He spun around on his heels so fast he tripped, stumbling over his own feet, but it only served to propel him further back down the hall, towards the door he'd emerged from.
"He's here!" he shrieked, "Nightwatcher's here! He's here, damn it!"
Still concealed by the shadows, Raphael's grip on the manriki clenched, and he was flooded with the thrill of anticipation.
------
When the hail-peal of bullets racketed through the old tenement, a distant barrage of thunder that rumbled the crumbling walls, Amber started, and then grinned at José, who had finally grabbed the syringe barrel.
"I reckon my ass-kickin' boyfriend might be here," she sneered.