Little Hunter
The car didn't linger long, but long enough.
Nanku made it down from the roof and passed a tracker off to a large wasp from her swarm. Getting the thing back from Dean had been a small adventure. One she could have avoided if she'd thought of the trick sooner.
The bug couldn't fly with the device, but it could walk.
The truck idled long enough for the bug to waddle over, dodge a few hurried feet in the dark, and climb into the wheel well.
With that done, Nanku flew the wasp off and stretched.
If Vista and her mother could see through the cloak, Nanku wanted to take as few chances as needed.
It was a good night for a challenge. The dark was still young. She was blooded already. Adrenaline still pumping.
Dusk and Dawn were hungry.
She suspected the man in the truck was the same man who'd been on the phone. If not the same man, then someone related. Now she only needed him to lead her to wherever they hid.
The den she'd stalked was some kind of front. A place that did one thing while really doing something else. Dealing drugs to kids, apparently. A crowd of them was still being processed by the enforcers with Battery and Laserdream asking questions.
Neither noticed the truck.
That was sloppy on their part, but no matter.
As soon as the truck drove away, Nanku was off.
She sent Dusk and Dawn wide and maneuvered her swarm carefully. She didn't want Laserdream noticing either. Most of the smaller bugs were easy to hide at night. The beating of a thousand wings was easily drowned out by the sounds of the city, and the police and crowds around them. Dusk and Dawn had to fly low and out, circling as Nanku ran from roof to roof in the direction of her tracker.
The truck didn't go far from the den she'd struck. Nanku wondered why it took so long to appear. Maybe whoever was on the phone was worried about someone doing exactly as Nanku.
That would make them fairly clever.
Another complex, but with offices instead of apartments. But, just like the apartment building the lower floors appeared normal, while the higher were different. Cleared floors filled with wooden pallets stacked with boxes, bags, and cases. An odd place to store so many drugs, but Nanku could see a large industrial elevator toward the back of the building.
There were guards throughout the building and at the back of the loading dock. A staging area. Hidden in plain sight so they could spread drugs throughout the city.
It connected directly to a loading dock, precisely where the truck parked, and the men got out.
Nanku arrived barely in time to catch a glimpse.
A tall and thin man, albino white and looking bored as he spoke. His suit matched his skin. Completely white with a pink undershirt and a black tie. Nanku didn't know Earth fashion, but the color combination looked wrong.
"—saying we need to deal with Stalker," her mask picked up. "She's targeting us."
Another man walked beside him, dressed in a dark suit and looking at his phone. "That wasn't Stalker. She's carefully where she leaves bodies now. Whoever this was dumped corpses on our lap."
The first man was Alabaster.
Nanku made sure to brush up and memorize all the known capes in the city. Even the one people didn't seem to think actually existed.
"Who else?" Alabaster asked. "Undersiders and their lot are soft. Killed Accord, and they barely responded."
"Doubt there was any love lost between them. Accord was an asshole."
"So we did them a favor?"
"In a way."
"Lame."
"Either way, it wasn't any of them."
"Who then? Teeth?"
"They're not around here right now." The man shook his head and proceeded toward the elevator. "Send it up the chain. Figuring it out is over our heads."
"We lost a lot of product," Alabaster said as he followed. "Not to mention the whole point of selling it near cost."
"Kids like drugs. They'll be back."
"Yeah… Guess someone did kind of gib a bunch of our guys."
"Yup."
"Should do something about that."
"Yup."
Alabaster stepped into the elevator. "Guess I'll tell everyone to do the thing."
"Scramble, Alabaster. It's called 'scramble.' Everyone dump their phones. Dump their numbers. I'll get the new phrase book passed around once you get all the new numbers to me."
"Yeah. Yeah. I'll do it."
Nanku smiled behind her mask.
Interesting.
She hadn't planned to go after any parahumans so soon. She wanted time to observe their habits. Get a feel for the best time to strike. She wanted to dance the line with death, not run headlong into it, and parahumans were so dangerous most Yautja clans no longer hunted on Earth.
The ability to gain access to the Empire's communications, however…
Nanku considered it might be a trap only for a moment.
Even if it was, she'd go anyway. The prize was too great. No more having to meticulously stake out locations and follow people around to obscure how she was doing it.
It was a lot of work.
Nanku didn't mind work.
Hunting was just more fun.
She drew her swarm closer and searched the building thoroughly. There were security systems. Subtler than the basic alarms and cameras she'd found around the city. Laser and temperature sensors of some kind.
Nothing she couldn't deal with.
The curious part was the electric grid set into the walls, floors, and ceilings of some of the rooms.
Nanku researched Shadow Stalker too. She'd come across the name too many times.
A vigilante turned Ward who went back to being a vigilante. Her power was the ability to become a black fog that could move through objects.
Supposedly, electricity had violent reactions with the ability.
Nanku might feel a kinship with her tactics, but letting a weakness like that slip was stupidity. Amazing the stupid girl wasn't already dead. Especially if her enemies were explicitly taking precautions against her greatest advantage.
That kind of foolishness would get her killed.
Nanku knew better.
She needed a way to access Alabaster's phone that wouldn't give her methods up too easily or too quickly. Hunting him would have to come later. If he disappeared or died, they'd do whatever they were doing again, and she'd lose her advantage.
For the moment, she watched her quarry and tried to look for openings.
Alabaster went straight to the top floor. The other man parted ways, staying only a brief time before leaving. Nanku wanted to follow him, but the phone was a more valuable prize.
Listening in through bugs was spotty.
A few words here and there. Nothing specific or useful.
Until Alabaster got up and left himself.
His vehicle was still tagged, and Nanku followed.
His home.
If she could find that and wait until he went to sleep, she could do something. The man had to sleep.
Patience.
~ ~ ~
Patience sucked.
Nanku scratched Dawn's jaw vigorously while Dusk sprawled across her lap and chittered.
After leaving his drug den, spending yet more time on his phone, and eating a meal, Alabaster sat down in front of a TV and kept sitting. He wasn't asleep. Nanku flew a fly about to check, and he always swatted.
…
Did he just not sleep?
~ ~ ~
How did he not sleep?
The sun would rise eventually, and she'd have to head back to one of her hiding places. The day was too bright to move Dusk and Dawn around the city. Nanku couldn't just keep waiting.
Stewing in frustration, she considered just killing him for the trouble, but that was impulsive. The very thought brought Pe'dte's future chastisement to mind. Impulsiveness got good hunters killed.
Alabaster's power was apparently immortality. Going in without a very good plan would be foolish, even if she knew there was no such thing as immortality.
Everything died one way or another.
Even an immortal.
But…
Nanaku snarled and rose to her feet.
For the moment, she wasn't going to start that fight. She still needed to think of a way to gain access to the information on his phone. Something that would be significantly harder if he never went to sleep!
Then again, maybe it wasn't worth it.
This was all a distraction in the end. Something she did solely because finding her actual prey was difficult. A slightly more rewarding hunt to keep her edge sharp and her mind from spiraling.
Maybe it was time to try speaking with her mother again…
Nanku turned away from Alabaster's home with a shake of her head.
The Protectorate complicated things too much.
Getting in and out of the police station would be easier, especially now that she had ideas. She needed to hit another location. One not associated with the Pure. A smaller group of bad bloods. Ones who wouldn't have capes to fall back on.
Then she'd follow where the enforcers took the bodies. If they went to their HQ, then she had some way quietly inside that didn't rely on not bumping into anyone at a door. That she could work with.
As for her moth—
Stupid.
Nanku chastised herself.
She didn't need Alabaster's phone. Any phone would do so long as it was someone multiple people might talk to. Alabaster had plenty of cronies around him. He had to talk to some of them. They had to have access to at least some of the code they mentioned.
…
Nanku rushed back to the warehouse.
There was still time before sunrise if she hurried and laid her trap well.
She reached the building with barely enough time. Sweeping through the building with flies and mosquitoes, Nanku searched for anyone—There.
One man directed the others. On the top floor. They all answered to him. At least one he yelled at and became physical with.
All the other men on the floor took orders from him as they moved pallets of drugs about.
And when he wasn't yelling orders, he checked his phone.
Nanku grinned.
Removing a disk from her belt, Nanku tracked the man as he moved through the building.
They were packing drugs to take somewhere. That much was clear. Distributing new poison to replace what she'd cost them in her little raid?
The pallets went into the industrial elevator and from there to the loading dock. Someone moved a truck into place. Larger than a van but smaller than a semi.
Her quarry oversaw the loading, standing off to the side and speaking to the driver.
Nanku flicked her wrist, and five curved blades shot out from the disk.
She liked the shuriken. It was a weapon that took significant practice and skill. It was also impossible to simply lose, and if she somehow missed—unlikely—she'd have another chance.
"Finish this," her mask recorded as the man spoke. "Gonna get a smoke."
Her fingers programmed the computer quickly.
The plan was risky but acceptably so.
She moved, wasting no time as he stepped down from the dock and around the corner of the building. Out of sight. It was still dark.
Positioning Dawn, Nanku reared her arm back and took aim.
The man went a little further down the alley. Around a corner. Into a small inlet with a dumpster.
The thought drew Nanku's attention to the other side of the alley, and she directed Dusk to the right location.
Dawn darted to the roof and landed quietly. She loomed over the man, positioning herself at the roof's lip with no prompting. Her eyes peered down at their target, her hackles vibrating in anticipation.
On the other side of the building, Dusk slammed into some trashcans, knocking them to the ground and sparking a racket.
At the same moment, Nanku threw.
The shuriken ripped through the air in an arc, the sound of the weapon obscured by the clatter and the voices.
Her prey's head lifted, cigarette in one hand, lighter in the other.
The moment his lips opened, the blades sheared through his throat in a clean cut. It took the man a moment to realize something was wrong. His lighter hit the ground, and the only sound was a gurgling of blood from his mouth.
Nanku threw herself from the roof, dropping down to the alley while heads looked the other way toward the trash.
"Hey, boss," one of them called.
Nanku crashed, and her cloak shimmered. A fly smacked the one man starting to look her way in the eye, and the shroud was back in place by the time he finished swiping the air.
"Boss!" the first voice called again. "We ah—"
Nanku stepped into the alley, her target's eyes wide as he tried to speak.
Dawn dropped from above, talon stabbing into his collars and dragging his body back into the alcove.
Nanku looked down the alley and tapped her computer.
"Boss!"
"What!?"
Nanku's voice was calm, but her bio-mask transformed it into an angry shout in her target's voice.
The man at the end of the alley flinched.
"Um. There's ah—There's a—"
She'd heard enough through the bugs to know the limited vocabulary of the Nazis. They weren't very bright.
"Grab your balls," Nanku said, "pull them up, and go check! You're not nigs. You don't need direction to do basic shit!"
One of those words left an oddly foul taste in her mouth. Honestly. Their obsession with the epidermis was beyond barbaric.
"Um—Right. Okay."
The men moved toward the cans, but Dusk had already crawled back onto the roof.
While those fools were busy, Nanku turned back to her prey.
He was still alive but fading as she allowed Dawn to bite into his throat and crunch down on his windpipe. Nanku stopped her from tearing the man open. She didn't want a mess.
"I'll make it up to you," Nanku swore in a low voice. "There's plenty to eat."
Dawn shrilled softly but held the dying man still as Nanku reached into his pocket and found both phones. She checked them and used his hand to unlock one. A quick look found dozens of texts. Some of which she couldn't read, but that seemed to be what she wanted.
"Thank you," she whispered before turning away.
"Boss," the men down the alley shouted. "Nothing—"
"Stop wasting my time with it then," Nanku said, her mask again translating her voice into his. "Finish up. I'm bailing."
The man lingered, and Nanku readied her shuriken. They'd find out she'd killed the man eventually, but a few days would be helpful.
At first, the caller seemed like he might approach. Then he stepped back and turned.
"Um… Okay. Whatever you say, boss."
Nanku huffed and waved Dawn back. With her knife, she severed her prey's wrist, and with him and all his clothes and items on his person—save the phones—Nanku popped the cap and poured the cleaning solution over him. He was dead and didn't react.
She lingered only long enough to be sure nothing of the body remained.
No one came looking until she was gone, and they found nothing. Not even his lighter that she'd tossed into his pocket.
When no alarm was raised, Nanku left with her prize.
Nanku started back toward the Bakeman house to rest for the night and hitched a ride atop a large truck. It afforded her time to look at the phone and its messages.
The coded ones she couldn't decipher, but there was a text containing a file with a similar jumble of letters and numbers.
The message itself read, 'Delete this.'
She'd figure it out. In the meantime, other texts were plainer. Not coded at all, and those were interesting. The first few informed her the 'dens' were attempts to recruit college and high school students through drugs, alcohol, and sex.
Not a lick of honor, but that didn't surprise her. They were Nazis.
Distraction or not, Nanku was pleased. She'd made her first strike. Gained limited access to the Pure's communications—enough to learn more of their operations. Maybe that would afford her more time to deal with her real mission.
Which she still had to do.
Emma and Dean clearly lied about not knowing her.
A direct meeting was too risky, but maybe she could send a message through them. See if she could entice the woman to try and talk to her. That would carry risks too, but risks Nanku could control.
…
Nanku pulled the phone closer and read the message again.
0456: waste of time
0456: weaver won't take the bait
0456: she's a thinker
0833: don't matter maneuver
0833: just do what we're told
0833: stuff between rain and weaver ain't ours
Nanku went back and looked at older messages.
Talk about traps. About luring 'Weaver' into the open. Laying ambushes. A lot of people thinking the plan wouldn't work but wasn't their problem.
Nanku growled.
No one said the word, but they didn't need to. The intent was clear. The goal transparent.
Nazis were trying to murder her mother.