Gonna get my pound of flesh
Burn it 'til there's nothing left
Think you you can handle this?
Yeah, you wanna bet?
~ "Mutiny" – Neoni
It smells like rotting rainfall.
Exiting the air-conditioned oasis of the Hexadraulic Elevator, Vi is engulfed in the stench. It is one she'd always associated with the Undercity. The smell of home. The first thing that hits is the humidity: like being folded into a sodden body-bag. The second is the texture in the air: slick and gritty at once.
Above, there is a scudding of storm-clouds. A hazy ring of green smog traces the skyline.
For a moment, Vi just—breathes. Her heart is beating fast; she'd put it down as nerves. Her gait feels unsteady; she'd dismissed it at the same. Now she realizes it's the change in the atmosphere. In Piltover, she'd been caught off-guard by the cleanness. Or better put: the absence.
The Undercity is different. A presence, so palpable she can feel its foul density pushing into her lungs.
Vi takes a slow breath, and exhales.
It's just air. She'll get used to it.
Six months since she's been down here. Things have changed. The aftermath of the Undercity's standoff with Piltover still irradiates the atmosphere. It stains each surface, from the crumbling old mortar buildings at the Promenade, to the patched-up neon casinos piled gaudily along the Riverside harbor, right down to the construction cranes and cyclone fencing beneath the shadow of the Old Hungry. Here and there, Vi glimpses bombsites, unnerving in their emptiness; like holes blasted into a beloved face.
Life is already creeping through their cracks. Catastrophe robs Fissurefolk of everything but their will to keep living.
Vi nearly smiles. But sorrow has calcified her muscles. Her lips barely twitch.
Her two Enforcer escorts—big of muscle and stupid of eye—step beyond the checkpoint. One coughs and fishes for a gas mask. The other breathes audibly through his sleeve.
"Cho'Gath on a cracker," he grunts. "It's bad as ever."
"Like raw sewage." Jerome wheezes into his mask. "With potato fries."
Vi scoffs. "You'd eat 'em anyhow."
They crack into laughter. Not because they have a sense of humor. Their laughter is just a way to prove their manliness. Or whatever the hell passes for pride with Piltie menfolk. They try too hard. It makes them easy marks.
Thank Janna Vi is making the trip alone.
"You must be happy," Jerome sneers. "Home sweet home, eh?"
"Home stinky home, you mean," Timothy sniggers.
Vi deadpans, "Yep. I'm all choked up."
They burst into laughter again. She lets them. She doesn't care what they think. She never cares about the opinions of people who look down on others for being different. And these men are soft, on top of stupid. None of them would survive a night in Stillwater, or a bare-knuckled brawl in the Lanes.
Or, let's face it, a sip of the tapwater.
"Now remember," Jerome says, wagging a finger. "No insubordination."
"Right."
"You follow the rules down here. Ours. Not theirs."
"Uh-huh."
"Go straight to the local liaison. Like the Council ordered. No detours. No delays. Got me?"
"Got it."
Timothy sets a hand on Vi's shoulder. "Be a good girl, Vi-pie"
Vi meets his eyes, and congratulates herself for not decking him. There's no friendliness in the gesture. Just another attempt to assert dominance. Play the big man to the little woman. The high and mighty Piltie lording it over the lowborn Sumpsnipe.
She pastes on a false smile. "Sure." A beat. "Timmy-Wimmy"
His face flushes an ugly color of purple. Vi's smile turns real.
Shoving her hands deep in her pockets, she shoulders past them. Their angry stares burn into the back of her neck.
She doesn't care.
Nothing matters except why she came here.
Beyond the steel barricade sit the Boundary Markets. Late evening, and the city throbs with life. To the left, the bright-glassed storefronts and festooned awnings of bazaars. To the right, the green-gray slice of the Pilt between monochrome office buildings. Practically anything of value—iron, glass, wood, leather, wire—has been salvaged from the disaster sites for resale. The sidewalks are crowded with pedestrians: clerks spilling outdoors after work with loosened ties and unbuckled galoshes, shopgirls collecting their laundry in brown paper parcels, families on trips to the grocer with children squabbling at their heels.
Language is a familiar medley. Vi shuffles through the voices like a deck of cards: Standard, Shuriman, Ionian, Va-Nox. High on variety, low on content. Just the usual brays of, "How much?" "D'you want to get a drink?" "Shit—there's gunk on my shoe!" "Is this a good club?"
The anthem of post-apocalypse.
All the hurly-burly can't conceal a haze of shellshock in the air. Or maybe the shellshock is all Vi's? She'd barely slept the night before. Her dreams were disorienting—a hellish redness like at the Bridge. She'd turned her head to where Mom lay crumpled on the cobblestones, her eyes staring glassily. Except it was Vander, his hulking coat of muscle unzipped into spoiling purple meat.
Powder was crouched beside him. Everything about her was misshapen—her braids too long, her skin etched with tattoos, her smile too wide. She'd been whispering as she played with something. Vi couldn't see what. Maybe a gadget? A toy? Pow was always talking to her toys, remarks that used to crack Vi up. Sometimes, she'd stand outside their shared room at the Drop's basement, listening in. Sometimes Vander would be there, his eyes shining as he mouthed, Where's she come up with this stuff?
Then Silco stole everything.
Stole Powder, and broke her, so now whenever Vi remembers her sister, it's from inside the eerie glittering shell of Jinx.
The rage builds in Vi like a strangling scream. At the Bridge, she'd seen Jinx's carnage unfold. The firelights. The bombs. The bodies. She'd let Ekko handle Jinx—I'm so sorry Ekko—and crossed with Caitlyn to the other side. She'd felt the rumble of the grenade blast in her bones. She'd stood trapped behind bars of striped shadow while the smoke faded. She'd watched Enforcers swarm the scene.
She'd done nothing.
Meanwhile Silco took her sister, and she'd let it happen. Again. She'd failed to protect Powder, and failed Ekko, and Vander, and everyone in the Lanes, and she could never take it back. She couldn't take back the past, but she could change the present, the same way the past had changed hers.
She wasn't the girl thrown into Stillwater. The girl whose family was devoured by a monster. The girl who ran away when she should've fought. That girl is gone, and she'd grown into someone who has survived, and bided her time, and grown stronger. She won't run this time. She'll face the monster.
No.
Scratch that.
The monster will face her.
In the sky, the clouds thicken and the green drains into gray. Raindrops begin pattering the pavement. Within moments, like a bucket upending, it becomes a downpour.
Vi ducks under an awning. There is a pocket umbrella stowed inside her jacket, but she doesn't fish it out. She uses the moment to catalogue her surroundings. A sumpsnipe's reflex that the Police Academy has layered with more sophisticated tricks. Evasive maneuvers. Vigilance. Stealth.
The Peacekeeper Academy.
Vi would never have set foot inside the place. Not unless handcuffed. And yet violent circumstances belowground had compelled Vi to make a choice once unthinkable.
She'd joined the Enforcers.
The Enforcers, who'd amputated her and Powder from their parents. The Enforcers, who'd spread brutality in the Lanes. The Enforcers, who'd kept the Undercity in squalor for the sake of safeguarding Piltover.
The Enforcers, who had access to Piltie funds, government databases, and legal resources. The department was mired in corruption—but the Council, under the pretty-boy Talis, was finally doing something about it. The Peacekeepers were a newly formed division, meant to serve as both liaisons and buffers between Piltover and neighboring territories. They could act with a measure of diplomatic immunity, and had clearance to pass between nation states.
Including Zaun.
Vi could say her reasons for enlisting were rational. Pragmatic, even. She knows better. The weeks of carnage between Piltover and the Undercity were horrific. She'd seen bystanders blown apart by shelling. She'd seen an old man twitching in death throes at the Bridge. She'd seen a little girl floating facedown in the bloodied Pilt. So much death and suffering. She needed to protect people, people like Powder, and she felt diminished, powerless, by what she couldn't do for them.
During the conflict between Piltover and the Fissures.
During the reunion with her sister.
During the disaster at the cannery.
None of those events transpired in a vacuum. A monster created them. The same monster who sat at Zaun's pinnacle, ready to hurt more people. Ruin more lives. She hated him. She needed to stop him. Not just his schemes and stratagems. She needed to take down his empire.
And save her sister.
The Peacekeepers were a means to an end. But Vi never expected to land the position. Sometimes she wonders if Caitlyn's mom pulled strings. Something to get Vi standing on her own feet, with a salaried job and a place of her own. Her two-week layover chez Kirraman had already stretched to a month. Caitlyn would have let Vi stay longer. She'd told her plenty of times, with that sweet confiding smile that could've melted chocolate.
But Vi refused to survive off charity. She'd survived off worse.
So she'd applied with the Peacekeepers. She'd endured a battery of interviews. Then came the tests: physical fitness, background checks, polygraphs. Her criminal record had been expunged by the Council for information on Silco, and an insider's view into the Undercity. Caitlyn had pulled all-nighters with Vi to prep her for the written portion. The physical, she'd passed without breaking a sweat. There was nobody she couldn't crush on the mat or outpace in the obstacle courses.
The polygraph gave her a little trouble. She'd practiced saying the right things. She'd done a trial run with Caitlyn on equipment that they'd… borrowed… from the office's interrogation unit. She'd passed with flying colors. During the real interview though, she'd had blips on a few questions: Have you committed any major crimes? and Have you ever inflicted physical injury to a child in your care?
The indicia weren't enough to trigger alarms. But the interviewer brought them to Vi's attention. She'd stuck to her answers: No, on both counts.
Afterward, she'd broken down sobbing in an empty alleyway, and cracked the wall with her bare fist.
The rainfall skitters off the awning like marbles. Vi takes a slow breath, and leans against the wall. She observes the oily froth of traffic, attuning herself to the rhythms of the Undercity.
Zaun.
To look at her, you might believe she was still a local. Her street clothes are nondescript: red-striped jacket, white undershirt and jeans, the labels cut away. Her boots are the same: plain, but with strong grip. Good for staying on her feet during 12-hour patrols in downtown Piltover, but also for vaulting to the closest rooftop in an emergency belowground.
Low-key in all but one respect: she is armed to the teeth.
Beneath her untucked shirt, clipped with a belt at her spine, she carries a spool of grappling wire. A switchblade is tucked into the specially-stitched pocket of her pants, and an Emerson folder is concealed in her wallet.
Hardly her full freight. But the precautions are necessary.
She wasn't allowed to take the Hexgauntlets. She didn't have the clearance with the Wardens. Even if she did, she was less concerned with administrative crap than with personal headaches. It already took a month of back-and-forth bullshitting—oops, her bad, diplomacy—between Councilor Medarda and Silco to let her set foot belowground. Next they'd taken forever on the regulations for Piltovan firearms within Zaun's borders.
In the end, Vi was allowed a pen-sized canister of mace. Not Academy-issue. The kind of crap a tourist would carry.
Well, Vi thought, Fuck you too.
At the final checkpoint, Zaun's blackguards had searched her top-to-toe. But she'd still managed to smuggle the contraband inside. A security guard—a schoolmate of Caitlyn's—had stashed the weapons in the Hexadraulic Lift. Vi had collected them during the last leg of her journey. Zaun's security was none the wiser.
It might blow up in her face later. But she doesn't care. She doesn't care about anything except getting to Powder.
Raindrops hit the bridge of Vi's nose and trickle down her cheekbone. On a surge of bitter nostalgia, she shuts her eyes.
(Soon, Pow-Pow.)
(I'll get you out of here.)
The rain softens to a luminous mizzle. Vi takes her cue. She palms a cherry-sized gizmo from out of her pocket. And tosses it into the air.
It leaps high—and flits off.
Likewise, Vi pushes off the wall and takes off. In her ear, Caitlyn's voice thrums. "All clear."
"Okay," Vi says.
They are keeping touch with a tiny pair of microprocessor earpieces. A Hex-technology that hasn't yet gone public. Each earpiece operates in burst transmissions to preclude eavesdropping by a surveillance team. The equipment is a convenient proxy for other methods of communication, like radios, which can be jammed.
Vi can't ignore the prickling paranoia that this is an elaborate setup on Silco's part. Nor, apparently, can Caitlyn. To preempt the possibility, Caitlyn is currently dawdling at the vibrant night-markets by the Boundary. She has a video-fed controller wired to a cherry-sized Hex-drone. The same one that Vi just tossed skyward. Through it, Caitlyn can observe the periphery.
For tails.
Or threats.
Vi moves smoothly, fitting through the small spaces in the crowd. So far, no one has set off her radar. But that means nothing in and of itself. If Silco is having her shadowed, his crew will be pros. They won't favor the soft-target strategy. Most likely, one half will handle recon, the other half action. The last few will stay back, potentially with reinforcements, and serve as a makeshift mission-control.
The natural question is, Will they hurt me?
Vi ignores it in favor of what's more relevant to her survival, How do I get rid of 'em?
She knows, if she puts her mind to it, she could evade them as long as need be. She knows the terrain. But why bother? She's not interested in a game of cat-and-mouse, always looking over her shoulder and second-guessing. Nor is she interested in politely contacting the Zaunite liaison.
She's not here to play by Piltover's rules. Or Silco's.
If there are tails, she's ready to disorient them. If there are threats, she's ready to trounce them.
Vi passes beneath the colorful awnings and smoking chimneypots of Nosh Avenue. It was named after the coffee-stalls, patisseries, delicatessens and tea houses glowing through its hivelike streets. Nothing fancy. The poky little establishments would've appalled any Topsider daring a closer look. But for Vi they always held the powerful allure.
She remembers wandering the jumbled paradise with Mylo and Claggor. Sometimes Powder would tag along, little fingers folded through Vi', her eyes aglow with childish glee. They'd laugh together, boiling over with restless energy: Mylo and Claggor jostling, Powder making cute little wisecracks, Vi keeping her eyes peeled for a spot they'd liked the last time.
Shops popped up and vanished so quickly in Vander's heyday. Most were driven out of business by gangs. Others lost custom because Enforcers prowled the streets, regularly stopping and frisking anyone who looked at them cross-eyed.
Nosh Avenue looks so different now. The hodgepodge of stalls has been swept clear as if by a gale. Instead, there is a glossy honeycomb of dinettes and cafes, tier upon tier, festooned in neon and brightly glassed. A declaration of a different future, one where the grime and incongruous charms of the Undercity will be replaced by a Zaun that's no different from Piltover: posh, paved and pristine.
It would be almost attractive. Except, of course, it's Silco's handiwork
Vi wends her way through the increasingly dense crowds. Stopping to eye the barbecued wares behind the soot-flecked glass, and the reflections of the moving pedestrians, she says, "Nothing so far."
"Stay alert."
Vi drifts on, her gait steady, while a small piece of her gut chews itself to pieces. She doesn't like to think of Caitlyn, alone, her unarmed body at the Boundary like a living vein of vulnerability. She's taking risks on Vi's behalf. Too many risks. If something happens to her—
Vi pulls the plug on the thoughts. She has to stay focused.
She has to get to Powder.
She is near the intersection when she spots the first tail. A long-boned male, with a bald head and an intricate geometric tattoo on one sinewy arm. The man is at a noodle stand, the semi-shaded booth offering both privacy and an unobstructed view of the streets.
Vi thinks, That's #1.
Outwardly, she stays relaxed, offering no sign that the man has even registered on her radar. Her tail is similarly discreet. When Vi stops at the traffic light with the other pedestrians, the man maintains a safe distance. Once the light goes green, he doesn't follow Vi so much as bob in and out of the margins, a cork in the tide of the crowd.
Halfway down the street, Vi spots the second tail. A woman, in a brightly-patterned caftan, her hair gelled into green cornrows. She lounges at the outdoor dining patio of a café. She meets Vi's eyes only in passing, exhales something under her breath, and looks away.
On the mental tallyboard, Vi marks, That's #2.
Her heart judders in her fingertips and temples: the first lick of adrenaline.
Casually, she strolls along the glossy shopping district, where sleekly-groomed women and sharp-dressed men spill in and out of an emporium's revolving doors with oversized bags. Watching them gives Vi a pang. Following the war, there were rumors of riots and curfews in the Fissures. Piltover's border patrol, from their vantage at the arrow-headed promontory, reported bursts of flame from the darkened city stretching below.
Now it's like nothing happened. The meandering strip of the Promenade is contoured in neon and flush with trade. And yet there is still so much poverty—beggars, homeless bums, children practically in rags, some toiling away as slop-cleaners, others as bootblacks.
They were around in Vander's tenure too. But the fancy shops and flashing lights make their presence that much starker.
Silco may have brought more money to the Undercity. But it's only for a special few.
Vi pretends to browse the luxury goods on display in the storefronts. She pops in and out of a few more downscale shops, before reemerging with a blue shopping tote in one hand. To onlookers, it seems as if she's picked up a last-minute gift.
In the periphery, her pursuers keep pace. She pegs them as the reconnaissance unit: logging her routes and giving their counterparts the run-down. The latter won't converge until she is well clear of the tourist district. They are still too close to Piltover. The number of uniformed Piltie patrolmen at the Boundaries would inhibit even the ballsiest hit-team—no matter how Silco spins it afterward.
From a vending machine, Vi buys a bottle of cherry soda. Popping the top, she takes a sip, and murmurs, "Just made two tails."
In her ear, Caitlyin says, "All clear on your left and right."
"I'm crossing into Entresol. Can you gimme a visual at the next chokepoint?"
"I can, and will."
"Thanks, Cupcake."
Gradually, the seething crowds grow sparser. The street cuts sharply south, spanning a narrow incline that splits into a spider's web of alleys. In the distance, Janna's Temple looms. Vi remembers it as a bare stone façade with leftover scorch-marks from Bloody Sunday—the night Enforcers flung grenades at six-dozen worshipers, killing mostly women and children. The bloodbath had triggered riots and culminated in the Day of Ash.
The night Vi lost Mom and Dad.
The Temple isn't bare now. It is a world of mirrored lanterns and brightly colored smoke against a darkening sky. In the small courtyard, worshipers throng, hands reaching toward the painted golden gates in invocation. Drumbeats stir the air in a hypnotic rhythm. Vi catches the sweet whiff of hashish and the more savory aroma of stew bubbling in the open kitchens.
The goddess' maxim, Janna Omnia Amat—Janna Loves All—glitters on a plaque festooned in cavern-blossoms.
Janna can afford to love all. She's a damn goddess.
Vi's own life hinges on nastier choices.
As her route progresses, she switches tacks—from nonchalant strides to increasingly aggressive twists and turns, no longer luring her tails, but forcing them to either retreat or come out in the open.
Within minutes, her two pursuers fall back. It signals no relief. Now the secondary team—the bone-breakers—will come out to play.
Sure enough, once Vi turns a corner, footfalls echo after her.
Vi doesn't glance around. She moves down a narrow potholed alley. In the late-evening hours, it is a remote green-lit dreamscape, lined on each side by ashen buildings. They give off the dank, weeping smell of old gravestones. There is no other sign of life anywhere.
Then, in the puddles along the cobblestones, Vi glimpses the reflection of a flitting shape.
The Hex-drone.
In her ear, Caitlyn says, "Two targets spotted. One behind you at thirty meters, one ahead at fifty meters."
"How long 'till they converge?"
"One minute and ten seconds."
"I'm signing off," Vi says.
"Vi—please be careful."
"I will."
She sips her soda, the adrenaline icing up her spine. At the same time, she makes her first offensive move, finesse inverting to speed. Breaking rhythm with the footsteps behind her, Vi darts to the right. There are a cluster of neon signboards below an old-fashioned alcove in the alleyway, half-enveloped in darkness. Eye-blink fast, Vi vaults the farthest one, and climbs the gritty walls, using the crevasse of pipes as footholds.
There, she crouches in darkness, balanced on a dusty overhang. An aluminum vent bellows on her left, its outline a hellish orange. A heat exchange whooshes to her right, sucking air into the brickwork building. The sounds, like the wings of monstrous metal birds, muffle the crinkling from Vi's shopping tote.
From inside, she fishes out a pair of pantyhose, in black nylon. Into each toe, she slips two identical souvenirs, heavy-duty metal and shaped like oversized dice, then ties the material above the ankles, so their weight clacks solidly together. Then she takes another sip of her soda.
Below, her first pursuer passes the jumble of signboards. Vi listens to his footsteps, clattering in the dark, then fading as he crosses Vi's hiding spot. Taking a steadying breath, Vi gives the man five seconds to realize that he's lost his target. At the opposite end of the alleyway, the other goon—now face-to-face with his counterpart—will come to the same conclusion.
Their surprise offers Vi a critical window.
Now.
Vi drops like a shadow. The moment her boots touch the cobblestones, she charges.
Her periphery blurs into blackness. There is only her unstoppable momentum and the whistling wind and the red-lit halo of the alley's mouth where the two heavyset goons stand below a neon wire artwork—a pair of red boxing-gloves—in featureless silhouettes.
They turn towards Vi as one. The first goon's mouth drops on a ragged, "Oh fu—" while the second, with better reflexes, lifts his right arm up and out. A snub-nosed chem-taser glints in his fist. He flicks the switch.
A whorl of purplish energy punches through the air, streaking towards Vi.
Vi dodges left, feeling the blast buzzsaw millimeters from her ear. It slams into the wall behind her, shards exploding in all directions. Vi doesn't falter or slow, but leaps forward in the same path of movement.
Before the goon can fire off another shot, Vi lashes out with the weighted ends of the pantyhose. They collide with the side of the man's jaw, a satisfying crunch. The goon staggers back in shock, his eyes losing focus, and his lapse buys Vi enough time to whirl in the same movement, kicking out at the second goon's knee. The man howls and lurches forward, his head at an angle for Vi to spit a mouthful of tepid cherry soda right into his eyes.
With a cry of pained disgust, the goon lifts a hand to swipe at his face. Vi's own hand is faster. Her fist slams against the man's nose, and tendrils of blood pop off her knuckles. The K.O. is instantaneous. The man jerks like a marionette, eyes rolling back, then drops as if his strings were cut off.
Blam.
A second walloping of energy nearly catches Vi's left shoulder with enough force to shove her sideways. She feels the fabric of her shirt singe, feels a streak of blood spread hot and slick against her skin. She rolls, drops down sideways, her stance low and narrow.
The first goon has recovered from the blow with the dice. Now he braces his chem-taser like a beretta fired straight from the hip. The energy blast shoots out with a strobelike flash. Vi evades, and a hole punches through the wall behind her, plaster flying to reveal corroded metal undergirding.
The goon torques his torso to fire off a third shot. By then, Vi has already struck, lightning-fast and going for broke, her grappling wire whipping out to wrap itself around her opponent's upraised arm. She yanks, and he stumbles face-first.
Right into her slamming kneecap.
The impact drives itself so deep into the man's face that it nearly inverts itself inside-out. In the next breath, his head caroms off her knee and he stumbles backward. His expression is dazed, as if he has utterly no frame of reference for the magnitude of pain he is experiencing.
Tough shit.
Vi hits him with a rapid-fire one-two. The man drops to the pavement with a boneless thud. Out cold. Meanwhile, his partner twitches to life. Vi steps over the first body and goes to him. He is stirring feebly, his shallow breaths intermixed with retching sounds. When Vi approaches, he tries to crawl away. Vi plants a foot between his shoulderblades and slams him back to the ground.
Time is short. In the next five minutes, the recon duo will notice their teammates' radio silence. Alarms will be raised, and back-up deployed.
Vi needs to complete her interrogation in that time-frame.
Five minutes in total.
With a quick efficiency, Vi pats the man down for hidden weapons or wires or wallets—something she'd never have considered before the Academy. He's unarmed. But from the pocket of his trousers, she retrieves the wallet. She flips it open. No ID, but a business card. Kieran Marshall, a captain of Zaun's blackguards.
Beneath Vi, the man croaks, "Wait—you—you—"
Vi comes down hard on top of him, knees pinned to his hips. Snatching up a fistful of damp hair, she yanks the man's head up and back, throat bared to the enfolding vise of her elbow.
"Any special reason you guys were following me?" she asks.
The man makes a wheezing sound, working his jaw back and forth. Vi's attack probably dislocated it. Still, it's hardly an excuse to turn shy. He is just stalling for time.
Keeping arm around his throat, Vi makes a wedge of three fingers in her other hand, jabbing them hard into the man's side. There is a burbling noise like someone flailing in the deep-end of the pool. The blackguard spasms, then forces himself to still.
"All right," he pants, "All right. We—we work for the head of War and Treasury—"
"Who?"
"Sevika," he groans.
Vi cocks her head.
Sevika? In charge of war and treasury?
Shit—Silco really is turning nepotism into an art form. What's next? Will that tatted-up henchman from Stillwater be Minister of Education? This entire business—Zaun—is as rotten as Silco, and the stink will seep into every square inch of her home unless she can stop him.
Conversationally, Vi says, "You still haven't explained why you're following me?"
"We're s'posed—to keep an eye on you."
"Why?"
"I d-don't know. My orders were to—"
Vi slams the blackguard's chin to the cobblestones, his teeth colliding with a brittle crack. The man yowls and struggles, but with his arms pinned, he's like a fish flopping furiously towards the water's surface.
"You got three minutes left," Vi says. "Make 'em count."
"Okay, okay." A rivulet of blood pools the corner of the blackguard's mouth. "We're here on Sevika's orders. To keep you busy. Keep you away from Jinx."
"Jinx." The name sours in Vi's mouth. "You mean Powder."
"Whichever. Look, I'm just—"
"Shut up." She digs her knee pointedly into his kidney. "Listen."
He obliges.
"You're gonna tell me where Silco's keeping my sister. You're gonna tell me fast."
The blackguard works his jaw. Either testing the damage, or anticipating worse.
Finally, he nods.
"She's at Bridgewaltz. The Lodging Project. Top floor."
"What? The Last Drop didn't cut it anymore?"
The blackguard gives Vi a blank, blindish look. "Well—yeah. It blew up."
Vi absorbs this in shocked silence. An unpronounceable feeling bubbles in her chest. No. Please no. Bad enough Silco had stolen their home like he'd stolen her sister. Yet Vi had still counted on the Drop being there, as if it was part of some potential future that she didn't halfway believe in anymore, but clearly hadn't rejected either.
Now that's gone.
Like Vander. Like Benzo. Like Ekko.
Fuck.
Must Silco destroy everything he touches? He's like a wasting illness. Just when you believe you're in the clear, the next bout hits you, worse than before, a paroxysmal sucker-punch right to the guts.
Worse, it spreads to everyone in your life.
Vi stares down at the blackguard, weighing her options. She needs to knock him out. Then she needs to haul ass to Bridgewaltz. Reinforcements will arrive soon. Then it's only a matter of time before they realize Vi's up to no good. To assume otherwise would be stupid.
Powder. The name is a pulsebeat in the aching debris of Vi's heart. I need to get to her.
To the blackguard, Vi says, "Tell Silco I said Hey."
His eyes bulge. "Wait—don't—"
Matter-of-factly, Vi squeezes her elbow around his throat. The man's liquid gurgles fill the alleyway. Once she feels the barest thrum of pulse, Vi lets his unconscious body fall.
Dusting off her hands, she rises. Scattershot plans gather at the edges of her mind. Bridgewaltz. She needs to get there before the inevitable secondary attack. She needs to cover her tracks so the reinforcements can't trace her. She needs to reach Powder, and convince her to escape. She needs to—
A little voice, the same pitch as Vander's, pops into her mind:
Steady, girl.
One thing at a time.
Vi turns and starts walking. The further she gets, the faster the adrenaline leaks out of her body. Suddenly, she feels the heaviness of moisture in her jacket. A rivulet of sweat runs down her spine. She takes a moment to drag in a breath and wipe her face. Then she presses her fingertips to her temples, to clear them of the high-pitched buzz.
The same sensation she grew up with in the Undercity—breaking bones and winning brawls and yet so fucking scared of losing herself.
The sensation she never wants to feel again.
(Soon, we won't have to.)
(Neither of us will, Powder.)
(I promise.)
Nightfall.
The rainfall has slowed. There is barely a smattering of isolated water-drops, the neon striking off them. The street-lit world is no longer dominated by brilliant marketplaces, or the background clamor of hundreds of people eddying in and out.
The Entresol block is quietly lantern-shaded, with a maze of high-arched rowhouses and cobbled streets that are reminiscent of Piltover's upscale neighborhoods—except they are stained black with decades of soot. At corners glow a modest collection of shops, their signboards flashing in the gloom. A chop-house serving sump-vole flanks with river herbs. A tavern exuding gin fumes and piano skirls. A respectable-looking dry-goods store, the kind of place where you can buy loose cigarettes with a carton of milk. In the periphery is a rusted playground, where sump-children are playing keep-away beneath the sprawling branches of a neon-wire tree that throws a surreally blue glow over the space.
It's cleaner than Vi remembers. But why wouldn't it be? This is the milieu of Silco's headquarters. All of Zaun's big-wigs have probably congregated here. They like things to be nice for themselves. But in the lower reaches, there are likely still shabbier neighborhoods and poorer Fissurefolk, grubbing for scraps.
Silco can pretty up the façade to his heart's content.
Inside, it's as hollow as he is.
Vi keeps to the shadows. At intervals, she carries out countersurveillance moves. In semi-private spots, she checks in with Caitlyn for a visual via the Hex-drone—and for a morale booster. She can hear the stress-notes in Caitlyn's voice the deeper Vi travels into Zaun. But her steadiness never wavers. Talking to her always steadies Vi in turn.
It had scared Vi at first; tried to make her keep Caitlyn at an arm's length. It didn't last long. The first time she'd kissed Vi, something unfurled with the slide of Cait's lips against her own: soft, sweet, breathless. It was like the first time Vi had seen sunlight at the blue skies of the Boundary, its glow limning Piltover's cityscape.
A dizzying sensation of flight.
Sex would've made their dynamic easy to nail down. Or not nail down. Even as a teenager, Vi was used to wielding the physical stuff as a shorthand for no strings attached. But with Caitlyn, it was more than that. They both knew it. Sometimes, tangled together in the cool cotton of bedsheets, Vi joked that Caitlyn must've reincarnated from a past life as a turd-polisher. Caitlyn would shush her with good-natured impatience.
From the start, she'd say, kiss-shaped against Vi's shoulderblade, There was something about you.
Oh yeah?
Your eyes. A softening sigh. They didn't match the rest of you. There was this… hurt in them. It was like a puzzle that didn't fit.
You like puzzles, huh?
I like you.
Just a little?
Yes. A thumb tracing the ridge of Vi's knuckles. Or a lot.
The memory makes Vi smile.
She needs it. She's too keyed up. She needs something positive to focus on. As the hours wax, she wonders if this is a rescue mission—or a suicide run. She remembers the carnage at the Bridge. She remembers her sister's crazed laughter. She remembers Ekko's warning: All that's left is Jinx and she belongs to Silco.
What if Powder is upset to see her? What if she lashes out? What if Vi can't convince her to come back?
Vi grits her teeth. She realizes that something about being in the Undercity, its gloom and grit, is draining away the hopefulness she'd felt in Piltover. It's making her feel like her old self, the teenager who'd lost everything. She'd thought that girl was gone, and lived on only as a lesson, a warning to do better.
She'd been wrong. That girl is still there.
But if she is, then maybe Powder is too?
Vi can still reach her.
Silco's headquarters loom in a glittering twist above the cityscape. A skyscraper shaped like a helixing braid of burnished metal. The chrome surface is new; there is no tarnishing of soot. At its zenith, a glowing green triangle, like a shark's fin, slices through the clouds. The effect is both surreal and unnerving. The building might as well be its own insignia, like the tacky Eye of Zaun.
A message to the masses: If you cross me, I will cut you.
The headquarters are fringed by a neighborhood of low-slung architecture. Vi scans them, first with a sumpsnipe's eyes, then with a Peacekeeper's. One of the primary attractions of this spot for Silco's security team must be the multiple points of egress: through the main roads, through the side-streets, through the alleys. The second is that the narrowness of the district obstructs any attempts at large-scale ambush. Third, there is a refreshing absence of the electrical wires otherwise tangled across the Undercity's rooftops, thus curbing any acrobatic hijinks.
Vi's heart sinks a little. She'd hoped Powder would be somewhere out in the open. Except Silco wouldn't let his prized prisoner loose. Not as Zaun's First Chancellor. He'd keep her close—and closely hidden.
But nobody is unreachable.
Vi squeezes through an arterial-thin alleyway—a ginnel, Vander used to call them—between two buildings. Her senses stay tuned to sounds. It is harder than it seems. The airwaves of the Undercity are different from Piltover. In the latter, residential districts are so hushed you can hear the leaves dropping from the trees. Here, there is an ambient tide of generators and music and motorcars, rolling in and out in waves.
Vi had grown up memorizing this soundtrack. Once, she'd barely paid it mind. Now, every little noise makes her jumpy.
Easy.
You can do this.
Vi takes a deep breath. Fixes on the building that is tallest and closest to the skyscraper. Then she catches hold of its piping, and climbs. It's a slow ascent. Blackguards are roaming the streets. She'd glimpsed their shadows as she'd woven in between the buildings. She'd heard their footsteps, so sickeningly similar to the marching boots of Enforcers from her childhood. Like an army of darkness, they flooded the area, so nothing felt safe.
Nothing was safe. Not in Silco's nation.
(I won't lose you to him, Powder.)
By degrees, Vi hauls herself up and across the roof's edge. She crouches low, chest heaving. The humidity is suffocating. Her body is lathered in sweat. She hasn't realized how accustomed she's grown to the pleasant climes aboveground. Her past had toughened her to a different world; oppressive and violent and dark. A ration on food. No hot water. Threadbare sheets and summer blackouts. She'd never forgotten it. Certainly not in Stillwater—which was barely a cut above, and in some ways, a cut below.
Now she realizes staying in Piltover has unfitted her from her old life. Her real life?
She'd expected everything to click seamlessly back into place. Instead, it takes effort. Like a conversation with someone you no longer have much in common with.
Focus.
The discomfort doesn't matter. Her insecurity doesn't matter.
Nothing matters but Powder.
Vi slinks toward a good vantagepoint. A sniper's aerie, but that's Caitlyn's expertise. Vi isn't here to shoot anyone. She just needs the elevation, so she has a perfect line-of-sight to Silco's headquarters.
And the top floor.
The blackguard said it's where Powder was kept. But Vi isn't going to take his word for it. She needs to check. Her location is ideal: near-total darkness, with just a little secondhand radiance from the shops below. The air is perfectly still. She wipes her face with a shirtsleeve, then fetches a narrow tube from her jacket.
A monocular telescope.
Vi kneels, perfectly balanced, elbow braced on one thigh. She aligns her eye to the scope, and sights along the cityscape. It takes a moment to zoom in on the skyscraper's top floor. Its triangular peak is distinctive. The eye-popping green. Vi flicks the switch to magnify the lens. For a moment her vision is studded in pixelated dots. Then the images sharpen. The headquarters' top floor is an atrium, she realizes. More than that. A penthouse suite. She can see the intricate scrollwork of stone masonry. She can see tall casement windows covered in heavy swagged billows. She can see the elegant curling banister of a balcony.
Vi's pulse skips.
Was the blackguard telling the truth? Is Powder there? In the highest tower?
She flicks the magnification switch again. Her view enlarges. The balcony has a smooth-tiled patio set into it. Fancy. The kind of thing she'd see in a Councilor's digs. There is an oblong-shaped pool, its underwater lights casting a dreamy undulation of blues. The water looks so pure. A glittering temptation in the nighttime boil.
Vi sees someone there.
A girl.
Vi's pulse doesn't skip. It stutters wildly. Her breath rasps through her nostrils.
In her ear, Caitlyn's voice crackles: "Vi—what's happening?"
Vi can't answer.
Powder is there.
Right there, miles away and yet up-close. She is perched on the diving board, legs dangling playfully. Her small body is clad in a black two-piece swimsuit. The lens is so sharp that Vi can see each detail. The underwater ambience throwing eerie ripples across the tattoos on Powder's arm and torso and thigh. Her skin glowing-white and gleaming-wet. The insanely long blue braids undone and dripping around her face.
Oh, Vi thinks.
A tsunami of love and grief and pride engulfs her. She forgets her surroundings. She forgets the last time she and Powder squared off on the Bridge. She forgets the brutality and bloodshed. She forgets Jinx, and Silco's tainted darkness oozing from her pores.
She just sees Powder.
Gods, she looks so grown up. Seventeen now, right? Same age Vi was when she'd gotten sent to Stillwater. Except Powder has none of Vi's scruffiness. In the fall of her loose hair, her graceful profile, Vi sees their Mom. She is the replica of her, but daintier. It's crazy. Her smart, funny, amazing little sister, who has grown up in six short months into such a—
In her ear, Caitlyn says, "Vi?"
She jerks back to the moment. "I'm here."
"What's happening?"
"I—I've got a visual. On the headquarters. Top floor." She swallows dryly. "Cait—she's there."
"She?"
"Powder. She's right there. Now I just need to—"
"Vi. Hold on." Caitlyn's voice is rigid with strain. "You have a clear view?"
"Right into Silco's bougie-ass balcony."
There is a beat. Then Caitlyn says, "I'm circling the drone across your location. Don't move."
Her stressed-out tone cuts through Vi's euphoric fog. "What's wrong?"
"Stay put." She hears Caitlyn's forcible calm. "I need to check for sentinels nearby."
"Caitlyn—"
"You shouldn't have an unobstructed view into Silco's balcony. Not unless your location is also a guardpost for his network."
Despite the heat, a chill crawls across Vi's scalp. "What're you saying?"
"I'm saying it's too easy. Practically an open invitation to snipe your sister."
"Maybe I got lucky?"
It's a joke, and a poor one. It's also a stalling tactic. Vi knows she should hightail it. Except her eye is still glued to the telescope. She can't help it.
Powder is there.
Right fucking there.
As Vi watches, she slithers off the diving board and into the water with barely a ripple. Cuts across the pool in smooth strokes, then climbs out, dripping wet. She shakes herself like a cat coming out from the downpour, her hair shimmying around her body. Vi recognizes the motion from their childhood, when she'd haul Powder out of the old metal wash-tub as a kid, then bundle her into a towel.
Someone is waiting with a towel.
Vi's equilibrium crashes like a freight train. Shock—then rage.
Silco.
The shuttered balcony doors have swung open. He stalks out. Fully-dressed, in a three-piece suit, a towel slung over his arm. He moves in the same prowl Vi remembers: loose-limbed and languid. Predatory. The nightmare shape she'd seen from the casement window at Benzo's, coalescing out of green fog to wreck her world. Take Vander away.
Take everything away.
Powder doesn't shy from him. She walks over to him. Not just a walk—a—a fucking sashay. Like a showgirl across a stage. Like the girls at Babette's beneath the blacklights. Vi remembers one girl saying that the trick was to pick a spot above the crowd's heads and focus there—so they wouldn't have to look at all that sick crawling greed oozing everywhere.
The same greed in Silco's eyes.
Vi's mind spins. She watches as Powder takes Silo's hand. She lifts it high over her head and turns a playful pirouette, like a ballerina in the music box from Caitlyn's dressing table. She radiates the innocence of a little girl. Except nothing about her and Silco together seems innocent. Not the way he drapes the towel around her shoulders and pulls it closed over her near nakedness. Not the way he takes her wrist and tugs her back indoors. Not the way she clings to his side, rubbing her cheek against his arm.
Nausea bubbles in Vi's gut.
Sevika had called Jinx Silco's daughter. Yet as far back as Stillwater, pounding Silco's goons into mincemeat, Vi remembers rumors. The kingpin and his loose cannon. The girl he'd taken off the streets. Someone he'd groomed into an asset in more ways than one. Someone who rested her bones in Silco's lap, and broke bones at his command.
They'd called her Jinx.
Big deal, Vi had thought. Just another of Silco's mad dogs.
She'd never fathomed who the girl would be.
Powder.
Fuck—there is no way. Powder wouldn't let that monster touch her. Not that way. It is obscene to imagine it, when he's already brutalized her into becoming Jinx.
Brutalized them all. Their family. Their home.
Suddenly, Vi wishes the telescope was a sniper's scope. Wishes she could put a bullet right between Silco's freakish eyes. Wishes she'd brought her Hex-gauntlets, so she could smash through his headquarters and pulverize him into a smear on the balcony.
It's the least of what he deserves.
"—Vi!"
She snaps back to reality. "Wha—?"
"Vi—something's wrong!"
"What is it? Is there someone nearby?"
"Blackguards."
"Where? Above me, or below?"
"No—they're here. Where I am. At the Boundary."
Adrenaline cranks up Vi's body like a furnace. "That's—that's impossible. That's Piltover's territory."
"They're with Enforcers. They're all heading my way. Shit. Vi—get out of there!"
"Caitlyn—"
"We've been made! Silco knows you're there!"
"I—"
"Run."
It sounds like Caitlyn says something else. But the words are strangled off into static. The connection cuts off.
Vi stays frozen. Staring into the scope, into her sister's sweet smiling face.
Then Silco shuts the balcony door.
The effect is like being clubbed with a two-by-four. Suddenly she is hyperventilating. Something splits down her center: terror for Caitlyn, terror for Powder. Worse is the sickening déjà vu. Her memory rewinds so she's back at the old cannery, eye-to-eye with Vander. She still remembers the way his body, strapped in the chair, went completely still, his face ashen where it wasn't streaked with blood.
"Oh Gods. You have to get out. Now."
Spots dance in front of Vi's eyes. She'd done it again. She'd been reckless, an idiot; she should have planned all the way through. Now Caitlyn is in danger, and Vi needs to get to her, get moving, before—
Something glitters on Vi's wrist. Something alive. A firelight? No, it is too big for that. A dragonfly, or something resembling a dragonfly. How long has been clinging to her? Vi squints in the half-dark. Then she gasps. The creature's shimmering thorax with its shroud of translucent wings is all copperplate and gears. A machine. Something Powder would design.
No—not Powder.
Jinx.
Vi jerks her wrist. The creature skitters off. She braces herself for an explosion. Instead, the contraption's wings flicker. In an eyeblink, it vanishes. Maybe it's jumped off the roof. Or flown off into the muggy atmosphere. Whatever: it's gone.
Vi needs to get gone too.
She stashes the telescope away. Keeping low, she creeps along the ledge, and over it. The climb up the building hadn't felt long. She was so juiced on adrenaline. Now, the adrenaline is replaced by a clammy dread. The Undercity throbs around her, no longer a familiar presence but a sinister one. In the variegated neon glow, the streets seem alien: the air itself seems to whisper about the interloper in their midst.
Vi's boots hit the concrete. The alleyway is empty. She hears no footsteps of prowling blackguards. It's thirty minutes from Entresol to the Boundary.
If she redlines on the last of her endurance, she can—
A rustle in the background.
Vi turns, and comes face-to-face with Sevika. Her muscled shape is folded into a form-fitting black suit, jacket wide open, pimping d-cups and a hardbelly in a tight maroon crop top. She radiates a tough sleekness, hair cut short and shiny, lips licked a nasty shade of red that matches the sharp twist of her smile.
Seeing her, Vi glowers her old defiance before falling perfectly still.
Fanned around Sevika in a semi-circle are six blackguards, their tac-suits contoured by the stark red neon of the streetside signs. Their guns are out and ready.
Aimed right at Vi.
"Officer," Sevika greets.
Then she punches Vi.
It is a brutal overhand fired straight from her hip. It connects with Vi's solar plexus, sending her sailing back several feet. She hits the alleyside wall and slumps in a heap. Pain rebounds through her ribcage. Sevika had used the mechanical arm. The kickback is like taking a shot from an elephant gun.
Sevika struts closer. Her steel-toed boot prods Vi's shoulder. Reflecting the red neon lights, her eyes seem to be the color of blood.
"Get your ass up," she says. "Silco wants a word."