Listen to: "Dead Island Trailer Theme" by Giles Lamb for the first part, "Time" by Hans Zimmer for the apartment scene, and "Slow Life (with Victoria Legrand) by Grizzly Bear for the last scene. O

"Right, this is the tricky part . . . okay . . . good, good." The music petered out. "Remember to keep the harmony steady on your left hand."

"Okay."

"Remember to practice, okay?"

"Okay."

"See you on Monday, Samantha."

"Yeah. Have a good weekend." The studio door closed softly. Jackie stood and walked to the window, pushing the curtain back a tiny bit with a finger. Her eyes followed the girl until she got in the car and drove away; she felt obliged to make sure she was safe. As she was about to turn from the window, a person walking on the sidewalk caught her eye. Sighing, she walked back to the piano bench and sat down facing away from the keys, waiting. A handful of seconds later, there was a knock on the door before it opened.

The visitor was a tall man, with short-cropped hair that wasn't quite black and features that suggested an easy smile. His eyes were sympathetic as he moved to sit next to her. He reached over and picked up her left hand, careful not to lean on her right shoulder. For a few minutes they sat like that; he stared at her, and she stared at the floor.

He was the first to break the silence. "How's your arm?"

Her response was slow to come. "It's fine. Wish I didn't have to wear this fucking thing." She flopped her right arm, which hung in a blue sling close to her middle.

"You need to." He rested his forehead on her temple. His breath was too hot on her neck. "I want you to get better."

"Jack," She moved away from him a little. Her face was neutral, but her eyes were hard as stone. The irises were dark, making for a positively unnerving effect. "I can't take this. I need to go out and do something. It's been a week and a half. I'm tired of sitting around."

"Jacqueline." He murmured her name into her shoulder. She winced and shrugged him off. "If nothing else, do this for me. Please. Promise me that I won't turn on the news one day and see you lying on the concrete."

"Don't call me that." The words came out sharper than she meant. Pinching the bridge of her nose, she stood and walked around the studio. She ended up at the window again, looking out at the morning light on the buildings. "I'm going out tonight. Screw my shoulder." She looked back at Jack, still sitting on the piano bench. Half her face was lit in pale, yellowish light. Her voice was quieter now, but in the tall room it still sounded like a shout. "And I would promise you that . . . but I can't." She looked back out the window. "It's not a promise I'm sure I can keep."

There was a pregnant pause, and then a pair of arms wrapped around her middle. A little kiss on her neck accompanied the whisper, "Just be careful, spider."

She turned her head a little, the shadow of a smirk on her face. "Always am."

" . . . Thank you."

-w-

Phalanx slammed hard into the wall, hissing in irritation and pain. She waved a knife tauntingly at the knot-top, wanting almost too badly to cause the man pain. He charged forward, baseball bat raised, and she cut a neat, shallow line from his collarbone to his naval. It wasn't fatal, but it was enough to stop him in his tracks. She backhanded him hard with the hand holding her knife, and he fell to the ground and did not get back up.

Panting heavily, she ran a hand under her neckline again to wipe the sweat away. Gasping, she fell against the wall again, holding her shoulder. Pulses of dull pain resonated down her arm to her fingertips. Sucking in a breath, she turned and jumped up, pulling herself up the building. Gritting her teeth against the growing pain, she moved higher up. Eventually, she came to the end of an easy path and was forced to jump to the side to a better handhold, but the majority of her weight landed on her arm. Crying out at the sudden yanking pain, her grip loosened and she fell down to the hard concrete.

Her vision flashed red and white. In the time that it took for her to breathe in, she was utterly numb. Then, the pain came. It leaked into her skull, down her spine. For a small eternity, all she felt were tiny pricks of rocks or glass in the soft sides of her mask against her face. Another thousand breaths and she let out a noise somewhere between a groan and cough. Pushing herself up, a sharp wave of vertigo struck her, followed by a similar wave of nausea. Without thinking, she tore off her mask and heaved thin bile on the ground—there was nothing in her stomach. Burning, unintentional tears streamed down her exposed face. Groping the back of her head, she swore at the pain near her crown.

Wiping her mouth, Phalanx pulled her mask back on and started walking. Her fingers were clenched tight around the hilt of her knife. She found herself, to her annoyance and frustration, keeping a hand on the passing buildings to keep herself steady. Her vision was swimming, and everything was in rotating doubles, but she refused to stop. She wasn't sure precisely where she was, but the best she could do was walk.

Every few seconds she would come into a large circle of yellow light, and pass out of it again. The air smelled foul and of pollution in the warm summer night. Someone laughed loudly above her, in an apartment. A bottle broke somewhere, the tinkling glass adding to the quiet symphony of the night. Footsteps and talking echoed in an alley not far behind her. Too late, she realized that she had unintentionally wandered into one of the worst parts of town. Not the worst by far, but bad enough that she knew she wasn't safe. Most of the outside noises were partially drowned by a persistent, disorienting ringing that resounded in her ears.

Stumbling forward a few more steps, she caught herself on the corner of a building and took a shuddering breath. She needed to get somewhere safe—the motel. The footsteps behind her were clearer now. Clenching her jaw, she pushed herself from the wall and started walking again, but did not get very far. As darkness crept in around her vision, accompanied by a slowly worsening headache, she wondered mildly why the uneven concrete was suddenly right up next to her face. Then she felt no more.

-w-

Jackie sniffed. Something was tickling her nose. She wriggled the cartilage around, to no avail. Finally, the tickle got so bad she sneezed, sharply and loudly. Yawning, she rubbed her eyes. "Hm, Jack? You wake me up like that again and I'll . . ." She stopped talking when she realized she wasn't in her house. She was on a sofa, somewhere. The place looked comfortable enough, but fight or flight began to kick in. Her eyes flicked across the room, until she saw what she was looking for—her mask and belt of knives, sitting below a coat rack.

There was no hesitation. Jackie jumped from the sofa, ignoring the massive pang of nausea, and snatched her mask. Picking up her belt, she noticed a curious weight on her head. Patting her skull, she felt layers of bandaging around the top of her head. She rubbed her temples; things were blurry. Taking a quick look around, she saw that no one was guarding her, for the moment. Her momentary hopes of running, however, stopped when a door a few feet away suddenly opened to reveal Nite Owl, goggles hanging around his neck and his hood pulled back. He seemed surprised to see her.

After an uncomfortable silence, the vigilante gave a smile of nervous relief. "Oh, you're up. For a while there, we thought you might have been dead."

Jackie blinked and looked out the window. The sky was stained with dark blue of pre-morning sun. Gritting her teeth inwardly at her own stupidity, she asked, "'We'?"

"Er, yeah." He said, seeming a little uncomfortable. As she thought about it, in the short time she had known the man, everything he seemed to do was at least a little uncomfortable. "Rorschach found you, lying in the middle of the street. He brought you back here."

Sighing, Jackie removed her mask. "I guess I don't need this right now. What happened?"

"We were hoping you could tell us that." He said.

"I don't know." She furrowed her brow. "Couple weeks ago, I dislocated my shoulder . . . jumping from your ship. I thought I could get back to work." She racked her memory. "I think . . . I think I fell a couple stories from a building I was on. But that's it. The next thing I remember, I'm in here." She looked behind her, outside, and then started walking to the door. "Thanks for the help. I owe you one. Oh!" She peeked back in the door, her face now covered in her doll-mask. "And if you see Rorschach, tell him to stop following me."

Only through running very fast and taking the quickest back-routes she knew of. When she reached her motel, she decided to take another shot at climbing. Only a few handholds up, she was grateful for the relatively chill morning air. Her head throbbed and her arm screamed in protest. Now, she was starting to wish for her annoying sling. Groaning, her entire body crying out for her to simply stop, she finally reached her window and pulled herself in. Collapsing on the floor, she couldn't suck the oxygen into her lungs fast enough. Pain ricocheted through her limbs. After catching her breath, she pushed herself up to her knees.

"Ugh, Jesus . . ." She muttered, hands falling back to rub her neck. Something brushed against her leg as she did so, and then jumped up to scratch her leg. "Ah! Oh." She stroked the smooth, black fur of the feline, taking a relieved breath. "Don't scare me like that, Cat."

Jackie had never given the animal a real name. Cats, in her opinion and experience, had never responded especially well to being called this or that. Sometimes his name was Leo, sometimes it was Oscar, sometimes it was Liquorice, but most of the time it was just 'Cat'.

"Come on, lovely." Jackie mumbled, mussing up the cat's short hair. "I'm tired." She fell onto the bed, and was asleep before her head struck the pillow.

-w-

Jackie walked down the cold street, keeping her head down. The stars were still invisible. The breeze kept the hot sweat off her neck and hands. She continued walking, listening to the symphony of the night; breaking glass bottles and loud laughter, threatening footsteps and scraping gravel under her feet. Another few steps, and she stopped to look up at an apartment building. It was familiar—Jack lived there. Putting a hand on the brick, she paused there before jumping up and grabbing a window ledge with both fingertips, a standard strategy.

As she put a foot up, she found she did not have to climb. She could walk, now, on the wall. Stepping across the building, she made her way up the floors to Jack's window. When she arrived at the glass, she crouched down and peered into the room. Jack straightened up in his bed, and she blinked in wonder at how his mask moved and twisted like a lava lamp.

Thunder crashed above her. She looked up, expecting rain, but none came. She looked back at Jack in the window. She wanted to keep watching the mask. Again, however, thunder rumbled, but now in three distinct booms. Jackie glared at the sky again, and as she did so the thunder changed into three more, less weather-sounding bangs, and finally it sounded like someone was knocking on the sky. Before she could turn back to look in the window again, her feet gave out and she plummeted to the cement.

-w-

Cat yowled and hissed, jumping away from his owner as she jerked awake with a yelp. Jackie glanced around the room; it couldn't have been earlier than late afternoon, meaning she'd slept all day. Taking a few deep breaths, Jackie ran a hand through her hair, gathering greasy sweat from the roots. Shaking the strange dream from her head, she climbed from bed and looked in the peephole of the door. At first she didn't see anything, but then a young, terrified face swam into view. Jackie blinked, then instantly slammed open the chain and lock and threw open the door. She was almost knocked off her feet as Samantha barrelled into her, hugging her around the middle and sobbing. Jackie craned over the close the door again before sitting down on the bed. Samantha trailed after, still desperately clinging to her torso.

"Samantha . . . hey, girl . . . what's wrong?" She tried to console the girl, but she was an absolute wreck. So, unsure of what to do, she gently patted her back and waited until the body-racking sobs subsided and the snivelling slowed. "Can you tell me what's wrong?"

"I . . ." Samantha sniffed and rubbed her face to get rid of some of the tears. "I came home today from school . . . and I-I found my mom, and she was just lying there, and there w-was so much . . . so much blood . . ." On the last word she broke down again, wet tears soaking into Jackie's costume. "A-and I knew t-t-that she was g-gone and I just didn't know w-who to go to!"

Jackie blinked as the weight of the story crashed down on her like a tidal wave. The realization of what had happened, and what was going to happen, to Samantha infuriated her to no extent. Shoulder or not, concussion or not, she was going to find the low-life who did the horrible deed. Samantha wept until the sun went down, and Jackie was forced to pry her away for a moment to turn on the light. The girl stayed face-down into the messy sheets, whimpering and shaking. Jackie, figuring she would be fine, went into the kitchen with real pyjamas and quickly changed. Picking her thin robe from the back of a chair, she tied it chokingly tight and put on a kettle. She brought out two mugs and put earl grey tea bags in them. She was rifling through the freezer in search of the ice cream she had bought earlier in the week when the quiet sniffing stopped with a little gasp.

"Oh, yeah." Jackie said, pushing aside boxes of frozen food. "That's, um . . . just call him Cat." She stood up and realized that it wasn't Cat who had startled Samantha. Her window was shadowed with the shape of a person. A gentle clicking was coming from the window as they tried to pick the lock, not yet realizing that she had forgotten to lock it the previous night.

"Get away!" Jackie was there in a second, pushing Samantha into the kitchen and grabbing a knife from her discarded costume. The intruder had just realized the window was unlocked and pulled it open before landing inside. Jackie squinted in the dim light, then groaned, tossed the knife on the bed and walked back in the kitchen.

"If you break into my house again, I'm pushing you off." She snapped, opening the freezer again. Pulling the pint of ice cream from the freezer, she handed it to Samantha with a spoon. "Here," She said with a little, awkward smile, her tone now much softer. "Eat as much of this as you want. It'll make you feel better for now, but we should talk after you're done." Samantha's lip was still quivering, but the corners of her mouth twitched up a little and she sat at the kitchen table.

Jackie moved in front of the girl and faced the newest guest to her room with a glare. "Why are you here?"

"Daniel wanted me to follow you home. Make sure you didn't pass out again." Rorschach answered grumpily, sounding not too pleased with his newest task.

"All right, how nice of you. That still didn't answer my question."

"Heard crying from the street. Couldn't be too sure."

"Well, then." Jackie folded her arms. "Thank you for being so . . . thorough." She glanced behind her at Samantha, then sighed a faced forward again. "Just . . ." She gave a dry laugh. "Just knock next time, all right?"

The short, slightly tense silence was snapped apart by the whistling of the kettle. Jackie turned and flicked off the heat, pouring the boiling water into the mugs. Clouds of aromatic steam curled up from each cup as she set them on the table. "While you're here, do you want some tea, or . . .?" She looked up at an empty room. The thin curtains rustled wispily on the window. "Ugh!" Jackie sat down with a huff. The chair squeaked against the floor as she dropped into it, frustrated.

A little sniff interrupted her quiet seething. Samantha was drooped over the pint of ice cream, the spoon dripping melted chocolate and spit on the table. Little tears were rolling down her face again, shoulders shivering. Jackie wasn't sure how to handle the situation anymore. She'd never had children, and this was far out of her league.

"Hey, er . . . I have a shower just over there; if you want to use it and relax we can talk afterward." Jackie suggested awkwardly. "You can use some of my clothes when you get out, if you want."

Samantha clumsily wiped at her face and nodded a little. She stood and walked to the bathroom, closing the door behind her. Jackie took a deep breath, grateful that things had not gone so terrible. She picked up the ice cream carton and put it away, wiping sticky sugar from her hands. The water of the shower sputtered on from the bathroom as she picked up the discarded spoon and wiped down the table. She left the window open, as the breeze relieved some of the stifling heat that had accumulated from the shower and tea. Oscar jumped onto her lap when she sat back down at the table, rubbing against her robe and leaving short black furs along her middle.

For a good while, Jackie sat and pondered what she was going to do. She couldn't keep the girl, but there was something distinctly cold about just tossing her at the nearest foster home. Several minutes of thought later, Samantha emerged from the bathroom in a cloud of steam. Jackie had laid out a set of pyjamas of her own for the girl to wear on her bed.

"You can go change over there," She jerked a thumb at the doorway to the bedroom. Samantha nodded, a dead expression now decorating her face instead of a grieved one. Jackie looked after her, the neutral expression even more offsetting than the former one, but saw something strange on her back. Just leering over the line of the towel and peering through wet locks of dirty blond hair was a patch of discoloured skin. "Hey, wait a second."

Samantha froze. "Yes?"

Jackie, frowning, stood up. "What's this?" She pulled the edge of the towel down a tiny bit, just enough to see the spot of skin. A short hiss of breath sucked in between her teeth. The bruise was yellowish, already a little healed, but some parts were blackish. "What the . . . where did these come from?"

Samantha stepped away quickly, keeping her face to Jackie now. "I, uh, I fell in the shower a minute ago."

"I didn't hear anything."

"Well, the, uh, shower was pretty loud."

"That's true, but that bruise is starting to heal; there's no way an injury that size healed that much not five minutes ago." Jackie narrowed her eyes a little as a horrible thought began to creep in on her mind. "Did you encounter the man who killed your mother when you got home?"

"No, it was—it was just her." The girl answered shakily.

"Very well, then would I be correct in assuming that the bruise came from your mother?"

"What? No!" The answer was far too quick. "She would never—she wasn't like that!"

Jackie made a little noise, but seemed to drop the topic. She smiled, trying to be reassuring, and gestured to the bedroom again. "Go on, get changed. I'm sure you just fell and I'm mislead." Samantha let out an almost indistinguishable breath of relief and walked off. As soon as her back was turned, Jackie's smile dropped instantly. Something didn't smell right.

When she came back in the room and sat down, Jackie was brooding over her empty mug. "Do you have any living relatives?"

"No. My dad left me before I was born and my mother was an only child. So am I." The blonde sat down with a sad frown.

The other woman thought for a long moment. "Samantha, you know that in these few months I've felt as though you were my own daughter."

"Huh? Really?" The girl looked a bit too pleased.

"Yeah. Listen, I don't want to give you up to any sort of foster home, but . . . I really just can't afford to take you in."

"Oh."

Jackie sighed. An idea, a purely irritating idea that was going to burn her pride to ash, began to leak into her brain. She clenched her teeth until they hurt and knotted a hand in her hair. Somehow, even this idea felt more painful than her shoulder and head put together. Her self-hateful string of thoughts was broken off by a light clearing of the throat.

"Um, Jackie?" Samantha asked hesitantly. "Are you okay?"

"Huh?" The woman relaxed a little, but stood and walked into the bedroom. She picked her watch up off her bedside and checked the time. Eleven forty-seven. She had plenty of time. She grabbed her costume off the floor, tossing off her robe and pyjamas. "Sam—can I call you Sam? Listen, Sam, I'm going out for a second. Feel free to stay here tonight and help yourself to the fridge, careful with Liquorice because he bites strangers, and sleep in the bed if you get tired. Close this window but make sure to keep it unlocked." She pulled on her mask and picked up her belt. "I don't know how long I'll be gone, but I'll be here in the morning for sure. Imitate your mum's voice and call yourself in with the flu. Oh, and one more thing." She turned back to a blinking Samantha, her mask peering blankly, but her eyes smiling. The knives at her hip rattled like a macabre wind chime. "Don't tell anyone about this. It's our little secret now."

Putting her weight on her left arm, she pulled herself out of the window and slid down the building face to the pavement.

-w-

She walked for an hour, grumpy and with already injured pride, in the seediest and most filth-stained alleys of the city, coming across punch-outs, knife fights and the hiring of prostitutes before she found what she was looking for. It was a fight in a particularly dark and mud-puddled street, apparently nothing special. Something seemed different, though—it didn't look like a scuffle between gangs. Without hesitating, she turned down the alley and marched up to the nearest gangster. He was circling in a wrestler-like manner, and didn't see her walk up behind him. She may not have been able to use her dominant arm, but her legs were just fine. As he circled close to her, she swung a leg up and kicked him square between the legs. The reaction was instantaneous; he groaned dropped to his knees in the wet alley, and Phalanx swung her leg up again, and her toe connected with his temple.

She blew a breath out her nose and stepped back. The fight had died down, and the remaining man standing was walking back towards her. Before he could say anything, she held up a hand. "I don't have a lot of time. I need your help."

"What?" Rorschach sounded as close to amused as he seemed he could get, which was, unsurprisingly, not very.

"You heard me, I won't say it again." She folded her arms, wincing a little. "And it's not so much help as . . . advice."

"Why me? Go to Daniel. Better with advice."

"You broke into my house. You owe me one."

"I owe you nothing."

She glared at him for a beat, silently still entranced by the moving mask. "You remember the girl in my house earlier?"

"Hurm. Your daughter." He stalked past her, walking out to the street. She jogged after him, gritting her teeth.

"No. A . . . friend. Her mother was murdered tonight and she came to me. She doesn't have any living relatives, her father is gone and I'm fairly sure she was being beaten." To her surprise, Rorschach stopped in his tracks, and she ran into his back. Backing away, she went on. "For obvious reasons, I can't keep her, but a foster home seems cruel." Phalanx glanced over her shoulder, then pulled her mask away. Her hair, already messy from earlier, was now a veritable rat's nest. "I don't know if you can help me. I just don't know who else to go to."

She waited. She counted sixty-three and a half seconds. "Fine. Then at least help me catch the woman's killer."

"Why?" He turned around, and even under the mask she could tell he was glaring at her.

"It's only right."

"Woman beats her child. Why should she be avenged? Not right at all. Her death was justice."

"Yeah?" She shoved him harshly, but it was more like pushing herself away from a wall. "It was justice? It was justice that Samantha is going into a home now? It's justice that she'll be traumatized for decades? If that's your definition of justice, then maybe I don't want your help after all." She crammed her mask back over her face. Her eyes were black, glaring stones in the pale, peaceful face. "See you around."

Cat needed to be fed, anyway.

Plot? Oh, the tantalizing string of it is hanging in there.