With Great Power: Finding a Trail
Finding a Trail
“Please! Oh, god, please! Don’t do it! I’ll do anything! Just put that thing down, okay!?”
The shrill, jagged voice echoed off of the walls of the alley and felt like sandpaper as it scraped against Sophia's ears. It was the cry of someone who knew their time was up, and she had heard it a million times before, almost always in the same way.
She loomed in front of the mouth of the alley, a dark shadow draped over the only entrance, or in this case exit, from the trap she had lured the skinhead into.
Honestly, lured was a bit generous. It didn't take much to get him in here, though she couldn't say the same about getting him out.
The red dot of her laser sight danced across the man's forehead, briefly settling on the tattoo emblazoned on his forehead. The swastika was scrawled in thick ink. It would make him a target in any city other than Brockton Bay, why not use it like an actual one? A bit of poetic justice.
The skinhead noticed her sights lingering on him and whimpered like a pathetic dog. He huddled deeper against the bags of trash, his trembling hands waving in front of his face. He looked like he was about to start crying
Fucking pathetic, Sophia thought, a sneer twisting her lips beneath the darkness of her mask. What kind of asshole has enough courage to get that shit plastered on his forehead but cries when he thinks he's about to die? What a bitch.
It was always the same. These assholes spent their days strutting around like they owned the pavement, talking big just because they joined their little club of neo-Nazis. They acted like predators, but the moment things didn't go their way, they showed their true colors. Sheeps, all of them.
“I... I got money! I can get you whatever you want!” the man blubbered, his voice cracking. A string of snot dangled from his nose, and his breath was coming in short, ragged gasps. “Just... please. I got a kid, man! Don’t do this!”
The mention of a child didn't stir an ounce of pity in Sophia’s chest. Everyone played that card. Half of them were lying and the other half hadn't seen their kid in so long the brats couldn't even remember their name.
She stepped forward, her boots crunching on the wet asphalt. The man flinched, pressing himself harder against the trash, a whimper escaping his throat.
Sophia's finger ghosted over the trigger as she considered. This guy was scum, the kind that nobody would miss outside of a report at the police station and a quick funeral. Even if she bought the whole kid schtick, she'd be doing them a favor by making sure a man like this couldn't influence them.
Ultimately, she decided she wasn't in the mood for the heat that came with a corpse. She was already treading the line; she didn't need the PRT on her ass again.
She shifted her aim. The red dot slid down his face, past his throat, and settled on the center of his right bicep. Her finger squeezed the trigger, the clock of her crossbow making the man flinch in panic.
“W-wait, what are you—”
Her crossbow fired with a snap. The man let out a shriek like wounded animal as the shadowy bolt tore through the muscle and pinned his arm to the wall behind him. The force of the impact jerked him sideways, his eyes rolling back in his head for a second as the shock set in.
To make sure that the message stuck home, Sophia stepped forward before the man had time to scream. Her boot connected with his jaw with a sickening crack, sending his head snapping back. He slumped against the pallets, pinned by the bolt, his eyes glazed and vacant as a pool of dark blood began to spread across the front of his shirt.
He'd be in the hospital for at least a week – maybe longer if she heard his jaw break like the thought she did. He belonged in a morgue or to be rotting in a landfill with the rest of the trash, but she couldn't afford to kill someone right now. With any luck, he'd have a brain hemorrhage or something before anyone found him.
Sophia reached down and snatched the smartphone that had fallen from his pocket during the scuffle, not sparing the man a second glance as she strode out of the alley.
~~~
A moment later, Sophia was perched on the edge of a rooftop across the street, watching the moon ascend over the city. She scrolled through the messages on the man’s phone. It didn't. It didn't take long to find what she was looking for, guys like that didn't have enough of a brain to hide their shit.
Still, there wasn't much. Nothing worth going after tonight, at least. She tossed the phone away and leaned back against a chimney, looking out over the flickering lights of the city. Her city. The one she had just rid of another Nazi, even if only for a little while.
She thought about the other ‘heroes’ – the leashed dogs in the PRT, the idiots in New Wave. They thought they were making a difference by putting skinheads and gangbangers in cuffs and sending them off to a system that would spit them back out in six months. They treated the symptoms, but they were too afraid to cut out the rot.
Sophia wasn't stupid. She knew that people didn't learn through kindness or rehabilitation. You didn't get sheep to stay in the pen with suggestions; you do it with an electric fence. You had to make the consequences of stepping out of line so terrifying that they wouldn't even dare to look at the gate.
And that's what most of the assholes she ran into on the street were, just sheep pretending to be wolves. They flashed gang colors and guns, walked around in packs like real predators, but at the end of the day, she was always there to remind them what they really were: Prey.
As she sat there, savoring the quiet thrill of the hunt, a flicker of movement caught Sophia's eye. She turned just in time to watch a silhouette dive in front of a light in the horizon, falling headfirst towards the ground from at least forty feet up.
Instead of splattering themselves on the pavement, the figure moved their air and suddenly whipped back up into the air. Sophia's eyes tracked her through the darkness, watching as her one-time partner passed her by from a block away.
Looks like someone's out past their bedtime, Sophia thought as she stepped away from the edge of the roof. She recalled their last interaction, the promise of what Widow would do to her if she ever saw Shadow Stalker crossing the line, and felt her lip curl as Widow passed right by the alley with the skinhead passed out inside.
Her fingers tightened around her crossbow and she briefly entertained the idea of following the girl, to see what she was doing out so late but she dismissed it almost immediately. And the two of them had already tried that whole timing up thing and it clearly hadn't worked out. Hebert was too soft for her. She didn't know how the world really worked and Sophia didn't have time to teach her.
She turned away, slinking back into the shadows and dropping down into the alley below. The night had just started, and she had work to do.
~~~
“ So you saw that too right?”
“Yeah, I saw her,” Taylor’s gloved hand latched onto a cold railing as she pulled herself over a rooftop fence. She landed on the other side and jumped onto an AC vent, crouching down.
She turned back in the direction that she had come from just in time to catch Shadow Stalker’s cape dip down into an alley. Her danger sense has tipped her off to someone watching her, but she didn't expect it to be Sophia of all people. What was she doing out here?
Probably the same thing as always, Taylor briefly wondered if she should take a look around for any maimed citizens, but the train of thought was stopped short.
“Found another one,” Emma's voice flower into her ear. “A couple blocks to your right, just keep heading in the direction you were heading and I'll guide you towards it.”
“Right,” putting Sophia out of her mind for now, Taylor got back on the move.
Emma's theory about the side effects of Transit's tech proved to be spot on. They'd been working for about 3 hours now and already they'd found at least four different spikes in the electromagnetic field within the city. The source? Small devices clearly made by a tinker that spiked energy like crazy.
“You see it?” Emma’s voice crackled in her ear.
“Not yet,” Taylor whispered. “Wait… yeah. I found it.”
Taylor reached down, plucking a small black box from between a pipe and the wall next to it. It was no larger than a wallet, crafted from matte and topped with a blinking blue light. Just like all the others, it made her hair stand on end.
Taylor held it up for the camera. The sound of clicking could be heard on the other side of the connection, “All right, so that's… 5288 Mithers. It's the third one in that area. He must have a lot of stuff around there.”
“ Or maybe they're just easiest to get to,” Taylor suggested, “There's a lot of construction around hereIt wouldn't be hard to just climb up here and plant it as long as you're wearing the proper uniform.”
“That's true. Okay you can put it back now. I marked it down.”
Taylor put the device back where she found it, making sure to place it in the same position as before.
“So,” Emma said, her voice sly as Taylor took to the sky once more. “If we find this guy, are you going to web him up and leave him for Armsmaster, or are you actually gonna let me get my hands on some of the good stuff.”
“Assuming he's the type of guy to leave his Tinker tech out in the open,” Taylor said, a smile playing at her lips, “You can have your pick.”
”You won't cuck me again and give it all to Armsmaster instead?”
“I'm not really sure what that means but no, if we find a bunch of tech up for grabs, I'll make sure to grab some for my favorite Tinker.”
“You better,” Emma sniffed, “You have a bad habit of doing the right thing when the wrong one would benefit me. It's starting to become hurtful.”
Taylor rolled her eyes good-naturedly. “Twas never my intention to hurt the fair lady’s feelings. I'm a woman of the people, and unfortunately that includes the government that decides whether or not I have to worry about the police when I'm rescuing cats from trees.”
Emma clicked her tongue and Taylor swung under a bridge, feet skimming along the concrete before she popped back up. “So do you have an idea of how these things work?”
“Sorta. There's only so much you can tell for a camera, but I'm pretty sure they're some kind of relay. They receive information from somewhere and send it somewhere else, sorta like how my headset connects to your goggles except on a bigger scale.”
“So he doesn't necessarily have to have a base anywhere near here,” Taylor surmised.
“Not with how many of these things he's put around. If they're all over the city, then there's theoretically no limit to where he can teleport things to or from.”
This guy just got scarier and scarier. A tinker with a teleportation Focus was already kind of freaky, but this guy was currently setting up for something big. Whether it was heist or some sort of takeover of the entire city, Taylor didn't really want to find out
“Is there any way to track them?” She asked, “Read the inputs and trail them back to the source?”
“They're definitely encrypted, and even if they weren't, depending on the method he used, only someone with his powers would be able to read them anyway.”
Right, because tinkertech was practically a black box all on its own. Even capes with similar specialties had trouble wrapping their head around one another's tech, much less if one of them were actually trying to hide what they were doing.
“Actually…” Taylor’s ears perked up as Emma made a thinking sound, “If he's doing what I think he's doing, then we might be able to find the relay he's using to give the orders. We might not be able to find them, but we should at least be able to stop him from sending more.”
“And if he's not?”
“Then we're shit out of luck until he pokes his head up again. Grab the next one you find and bring it back.”
“Yes ma'am,” Taylor laughed, swinging off into the night.