Little Hunter
A good hunter didn't rush.
She gathered her swarm first. A cultivated mass of bugs she'd collected in her treks across the city and kept close. No one had reason to suspect she could control insects. That was a surprise to keep in her arsenal until it could do the most benefit.
She kept the swarm close to—or even on—Dusk and Dawn as they flew and darted about the city.
Some she slipped into the building. Some Earth insects had better eyes than others. Good enough for her to make out the shapes she needed.
Nanku crept down the side of the building using her knife, blade stabbed into the stone.
Too quiet to draw any attention from the men two stories down.
Loud enough to draw attention from the man in the room on the top floor.
Nanku hung just beside the window and rotated her shoulder.
The first step had been to ensure the security of her methods.
She didn't want anyone tracing her actions to how she found her prey. Many criminals came to the clinic to avoid hospitals. Apparently, the facilities reported to local enforcers when they found certain kinds of wounds, or the police checked the hospitals for certain people. Local bad bloods didn't want to go there, just in case.
Good to know, and meant she could use the clinic in more ways than one.
In the building, her target looked through the window with an annoyed expression.
Not close enough.
Sliding a small stone she'd gathered earlier from her gauntlet, Nanku tossed the rock.
With a snap, the cracked window gained a new line, and the man opened it so fast he nearly ripped it from the frame.
He leaned out, voice rising and fist reaching out to shake. Whatever he meant to shout never came out. Instead, a wail broke through the sounds of the city, and the men below looked up just in time to see their ring leader slammed into the concrete and shatter half the bones in his body.
Voices shouted, and several men jumped as the man bounced on the street.
"Fuck!"
"What the shit happened?"
"Did he jump?"
"Someone call 911!"
The reactions were typical. Most of the people in the building were normal. Normal people going about their normal lives. Human normal anyway.
Nanku only cared about the top two floors and the lookout at the corner across the street.
The girl already had a phone in hand. A few rings later, one of the other men on the top floor answered his.
They spoke, and in an instant, the alarm went up.
Across the rooms of the top story, people started pointing and calling out.
In an office at the corner of the floor, a man drew a gun and reached for a phone.
"One," Nanku counted.
On the same floor, Four men immediately left their room and drew guns of their own. They moved quickly. Two stopped at the door to the stairwell to stand guard.
"Three."
Two more moved did the same on the third floor.
"Five."
Nanku continued to wait by the window until two more men with guns came to the room.
"Seven."
One last man went to the roof and began sweeping his gun back and forth.
"Eight."
Eight bad bloods with guns.
The commotion drew reactions elsewhere. On the first and second floors, heads turned up and away from the windows. Two dozen people, all watching and waiting. One took a gun, but he burrowed with it. Pulled a woman and two children behind himself and covered the door.
Nanku didn't care about him.
A normal human. Hiding in his den.
Nanku focused on her real targets and waited as the two men who'd entered began searching the room.
The third and fourth floors were different.
There were only a few beds, most on the third floor where people lay asleep and alone. There was one in a cleaned room hooked up to a fluid bag just like at the clinic, but he bore no injuries Nanku could find. The fourth floor was littered with men and women, some older than others. They drank, laughed, and smoked from pipes.
They reacted to the noise, but most were too dazed. Those who tried to get up and move were pushed or pulled aside by other boys and girls who seemed less dazed. Looks were exchanged among those ones. Like they were shepherds minding a flock.
Nanku found packs of white powder in one of the rooms, tucked into a closet space under lock and key with five large men standing about the room waiting.
Drugs Nanku understood.
The rest was less clear.
One man burst through the fourth-floor door and sprinted down the stairs. Nanku tracked him from her position by the window. He scrambled out the front door of the building and barreled through the people trying to help the man on the ground.
The broken body wasn't dead.
Between strangled gasps and rasping breaths, he pointed the arm that wasn't broken up.
Eyes followed, and Nanku swung her cloaked form around the corner of the window.
The man's gun fired as she grabbed his wrist and pulled, and another scream broke through the night as she pulled him off his feet, through the window, and flung him into the air.
He hit the street with a snap, neck-breaking on impact. The body crumpled while the people outside screamed.
Nanku pulled herself through the window and threw the gun she'd taken. The other man flinched as the weapon materialized into the air from under the cloak and fired blind. Nanku hit the ground, and he fired again as her cloak crackled around her. She rolled with the impact, hooking her foot around the corner of a chair and pulling her leg in.
The legs creaked over the floor, and she threw it at the man as he fired again.
The chair hit him in the side, throwing his aim off and sending the bullet into the floor.
Jumping to her feet with wrist blades ready, Nanku punched the man in the chest and pierced his heart.
The pain didn't register at first. She saw it in his face. That, or the blood still pumping through his veins was enough to keep him going.
The man's elbow came down on Nanku's shoulder, and she lifted him along the wall and slammed his head into the ceiling. Nanku released his body and let it drop before too much blood spilled onto her. The corpse hit the floor as she moved toward the door and turned toward the stairwell.
"Two," Nanku whispered to herself.
On the roof, the third barely had time to turn before Dawn slammed him onto his back and tore his throat out. She dragged the body into the shadows, where Nanku directed her talons to mar the injury.
"Three."
While Dawn tore, Dusk grabbed the lookout across the street from behind and dragged her into the shadows. Both his claws drove through her back, piercing the woman's chest and lungs and rendering her silent.
The men guarding the stairs turned as she ran at them.
At least one saw the faint shimmer of her cloak but was too slow.
The spear extended from Nanku's hand, and she drove the shaft through his throat. His body slammed into the ground while her cloak shimmered. The second guard fired. Nanku shielded her face with her arm, but the bullet went wide. The round whipped past her head through the air, and she twisted her spear.
The tip ripped the man's throat away on one end, and the one cut a deep line across the second guard's arm.
A scream tore through his throat as his arm recoiled. Nanku grabbed the gun and twisted his hand, sparking another wail before the sound of gurgling blood. Her wrist blades ripped his neck open like the rest, and Nanku shouldered her way through the door before he hit the floor.
"Five."
The man from below had already made it back up the stairs by the time Nanku moved into the well.
Nanku stepped aside, and he passed by her unaware as she continued up the steps.
Again, she took her time.
The last man with a gun wasn't alone. His back faced the woman and the two nervous men while he frantically spoke on the phone.
"… protect us…"
Nanku reached the door and opened it.
The man on the other side turned at the sound of the hinges. With a forceful push, Nanku rammed through the door, ripping the hinges from the wall, and crushing the man against the wall. Her spear followed, skewering him through the chest and piercing his heart.
"Six."
The other guard spun, but her blades severed his arm at the shoulder, and her spear cut the artery in his thigh. A quick hand silenced him as he dropped to the floor.
"Seven."
Heads turned throughout the floor, but not in the office on the far side.
Two unarmed men came running, but neither noticed Nanku slipped around a corner and proceed around the other way.
"Where… don't know," the man said. "I… know! Where… you?"
Calling someone for help. Someone he expected to protect him.
Nanku didn't want to wait.
Turning her spear and reading her wrist blades, Nanku charged at the door. At the same moment, Dawn reached down with a long talon and tapped the window thrice. Every head in the room turned, looking out toward the dark.
The whole room started leaning toward the glass when the door blew out of the threshold.
Nanku's cloak rippled, and one of the men gave a girlish screech.
She planted her feet, twisted her hips, and threw.
Her spear ripped through the air and struck her target as his gun came up. The spear's edge ripped his arm open and stabbed into his shoulder. The weapon pierced bone like paper, pulled the man back, and impaled him against the wall where his legs gave out, and he screamed like the rest.
Brockton Bay's bad bloods were lacking in determination.
One of the other men—eyes flickering toward Nanku as her cloak pulled back over her—threw a punch.
She grabbed his wrist and brought her forearm against his elbow. As the limb snapped she threw him across the room and kicked the knee-high table into the second man. It slid and stuck him in the shins.
He at least had courage.
He pulled a knife.
A shame he was too slow.
Nanku drove her wrist blades into the back of his neck as he struck the table.
The building was still. Those in their rooms were hiding or watching doors warily. The man she'd passed in the stairwell was on his way out of the building. A coward, but one who intended to live. At least it was honest.
Stepping over the table, Nanku ignored the stiffly sitting woman and proceeded across the room.
There was little in the space save a pair of couches, a table, and a deck. Several phones off to one side that were answered by whoever. Nanku had watched the operation for a week and found little rhyme or reason to it. Their methods were spontaneous, and only the setup in the building had any thought put into it.
Her real prey was still hidden. Behind the scenes.
Crouching, Nanku picked up the phone and raised it to her ears.
"—sing you're dead about now so… That sucks."
A male, and he sounded bored.
An odd reaction when the ringleader of the brothel was still snarling and whimpering on the wall. He'd managed to cut his hand up to grasp at the spear. It wasn't something he could just pull out.
Nanku cocked her head.
The youths were still holed up in the rooms. A few men and women—the shepherds—had dared to look into the halls, but no one knew anything.
The men Nanku avoided were on their way back.
"Hey!" the male on the phone shouted. "Anyone alive in there."
She dropped the phone to the ground, stood, and grasped her spear.
"No," she declared.
Ripping the weapon from the man's shoulder, she cut his throat with her wrist blades and spun. Her second throw gutted the woman, slamming her to the floor and sending the knife she'd grabbed bouncing across the floor.
The woman managed to lift her head. A cough choked her throat, and blood splattered across her chest.
Nanku stepped over her and crouched down. Gently, she took the woman's head and turned her chin up.
"Brave," she commended. "Braver than them."
She stabbed the woman's throat and twisted her blades to end her pain. Nanku had no particular interest in human trophies. The Yautja didn't keep them when killing each other. Something about it was just too morbid, and Nanku couldn't see herself carrying some woman's skull around with her.
No.
She'd end the pain, retrieve her spear, and leave the woman to her rest.
The blood and the corpses would be her first message.
Time to go.
Standing, Nanku looked toward the only living man still in the room. The one she'd thrown aside.
He stood shakily, eyes focusing and unfocusing as he tried to see her.
Nanku moved slowly, keeping the shimmer of her cloak to a minimum. His broken arm bent awkwardly, but the unbroken one searched the floor.
She waited. Watching.
He coughed and reached for the first thing he could see.
A phone from the table.
Nanku shook her head and turned to leave. If he wanted to fight, she'd honor it. Branding a phone wasn't a fight—
The phone flew past Nanku as she moved toward the door and shattered against the wall.
The pieces splashed over her cloak, and she spun.
The man let out a cry before the spear ran him through, and Nanku rammed her knee into his other arm to break it.
"Eleven then."
Nanku turned her head as she flung the blood from her weapons.
Men were in the halls and searching.
She hoped to leave with anyone who'd seen her dead. Given that the last two witnesses chose to be brave instead of cowards, that was easy.
Better for her. Now it would be a mystery who'd killed the operators of the drug den.
Best not to waste their deaths making more witnesses.
Nanku went out the window and scaled to the roof. She ran, guiding Dawn ahead of her as she leaped to the next roof and then the next.
She kept her swarm close and subtle as she settled in and waited.
The police arrived quickly but waited before approaching. Nanku supposed the local enforcers without powers didn't see a point. They parked their vehicles with the lights flashing and cordoned the area.
More vehicles followed, but Nanku couldn't pick out which were the PRT.
The hero who came was one she'd found pictures of online.
Battery. A petite woman with a charging speed and strength ability. Not someone Nanku worried about too much.
Did they send her alone?
Nanku searched the surrounding blocks and moved Dusk onto another roof to see further out.
"There."
Nanku hid Dusk and Dawn and looked up as Laserdream flew from the south. She was quick but not remarkably so. About the speed of a fast car.
She landed beside Battery, and they both talked to the enforcers taking control of the scene.
No sign of Vista.
No sign of her mother.
Good.
Nanku could watch how the enforcers of Earth did things.
~ ~ ~
The enforcers of Earth did things slowly.
Agonizingly. Laboringly. Painfully.
Slowly.
Nanku laid herself down and watched through her swarm. No one seemed to find a lot of bugs around dead bodies all that odd.
The enforcers rounded up all the youths. The shepherds were rounded up and separated from the others. No one seemed to trust them and the feeling was returned.
For all the talking they'd done to keep the other youths rounded up and away, they were awfully quiet in the aftermath.
Teams of men and women swept the building. Spoke to residents. Looked at the scenes.
The corpses in the alley and on the roof hadn't been found yet.
The bodies that were found were meticulously surveyed. Nanku had to give them that. These enforcers were thorough.
Only after everything had been examined, photographed, measured, and recorded did anyone try to move the bodes. They were put into large bags and loaded onto a police truck.
Nanku sat up at that, her mind pondering.
She still needed a way into the police station to get at their records. That had to be easier than the PRT.
Where did they take dead bodies?
Nanku was prepared to track the vehicle to see, but someone else caught her eye.
A dark vehicle pulled up at the end of the block. There were no bugs inside, unfortunately, but she could see inside with her mask.
Two men in the front. Both armed. A third in the back with a phone in hand.
Something about him.
The way he sat.
Like he was bored, and this was all a waste of his time.
Nanku jumped to her feet and brought Dawn to her side. The insect chomped her bloody teeth and fluttered her wings.
"You feel it too?"
Something about him felt different.