I shiver, just a little, despite being practically swaddled in a cocoon of blankets and tightly wrapped in fresh bandages. It’s partly lingering shock, partly my slowly-closing cuts, and partly an automatic reflex as I try to stop myself slipping back into the darkness. I’ve never been able to take anything with me when I shift, and that means I’ve already accidentally slipped out of my bandages. Twice.

It’s been a few hours since Jaeger… since I got back from the Triad safehouse. I’m lying on Ember’s couch, in the living room of her weird floating home. Jaeger brought me here once he’d finished up, after a long phone call with Ember full of what sounded like shouted accusations from her end. It’s kind of nice to know she’s looking out for my health.

Jaeger himself is slumped in an armchair opposite, having swapped out his uniform jacket for a more civilian-looking hooded coat. Absent his masked helmet, his features seem a little less sharp. His eyes, on the other hand, are still the same cold blue pinpricks they always have been. He’s looking through Bloody Mary’s phone, occasionally taking notes under the sparse light of a single reading lamp.

The moment we got in here, Ember drew the curtains shut. I think it’s partly because she doesn’t want anyone to spot us, but mostly because she knows that dawn’s on its way and I’m not comfortable in the light.

Jaeger’s eyes flick up from the phone as Ember walks into the room, before flicking right back down again as she deliberately ignores him. I’m taking up all of the couch, so she kneels down in front of me with a mug of some hot liquid in her hand and a smile on her face. It means she’s not looking down at me – or not as much as she would standing up – and I appreciate that.

“How are you holding up?”

I shuffle around a little as I squirrel a hand out of the blanket-roll, giving her a thumbs up and dropping my jaw in the closest I can get to an actual smile. Still, the movement makes me wince a little as the cut on my shoulder pulls against the bandages holding it in place. From the look that briefly passed across her eyes, I can see Ember noticed.

“I got you a drink,” she says, holding out the mug in front of her.

I lean over a little to look at it, seeing a mug full of what looks like whipped cream and tilting my head in confusion. Still, I take it and start to lick at the cream with my long tongue, getting a wry grin out of Ember. Suddenly, my tongue hits something hot beneath the cream and I instinctively flick it back into my mouth. Is that…

“Never had hot chocolate before?” Ember laughs, sliding around so she’s leaning back against the front of the sofa – and my blanket-wrapped body – with my head next to her left shoulder.

I shake my head as I try to angle the cup so I can drink it – it’s surprisingly hard to do with a fairly long beak, and without any lips a straw would be less than useless. The drink is warm, but without the bitter taste of coffee, and I can’t stop myself from letting out a contented noise as I sink deeper into the couch – something in-between a whistle and a purr.

“I figured you wouldn’t want coffee at this time of night,” Ember says as I take another sip, and I nod my head in gratitude.

“You’ve had a rough time,” she says after the silence starts to stretch a little too long. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have let you go… or I should have gone with you.”

I don’t say anything. She’s wrong… but she’s also right. Finding those drug labs, those arms depots… it was all important work, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat. But what they… what we did to Bloody Mary… it’s left a bad taste in my mouth.

“It was useful,” Jaeger pipes up from across the room, and I get the horrid idea that he’s trying to be comfortable. “This phone is a goldmine of information.”

He leans forward, his coat shifting just enough to show me the grip of the pistol he has tucked into a shoulder holster. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him more than a few feet from a gun.

“They were keeping her in the loop, even though it’s clear she wasn’t interested. I suspect she either demanded it out of petty vanity, or they were worried that she would take offence if she wasn’t included. Either way, it helps build a clearer picture of their network.”

He continues, apparently unaware of the way I’m looking anywhere except at him.

“They’re having a meeting. Tomorrow… well, tonight, I suppose. It concerns the one piece of the puzzle I have yet to find: why they broke away from us in the first place. What could possibly be worth the risk of a gang war? Worth the risk of going up against the Elite?”

“Does it matter?” Ember asks without moving from her position. “Whatever the reason, we’ll beat them.”

“Of course it matters,” Jaeger snaps back. “They’re gambling everything on this, whatever it is. If we can stop it, we can break the back of the Triad in a single blow. If we can’t, then this war will just go on and on until it gets bad enough to drag Alexandria up from LA.”

He pauses for a moment, his eyes flicking back to his notes before meeting Ember’s stare head on.

“Which is why I need to borrow Nightcrawler, one last time.”

I can’t see Ember’s expression from where I’m lying, but given the way Jaeger’s eyes widen it clearly wasn’t friendly. For my part, I can’t stop the stab of fear that hits me at his words.

“The meeting is taking place in a tenement block, after dark. Bloody Mary was kind enough to note down the locations that correspond to their little codes. We don’t have anyone else who can infiltrate the meeting. ”

An uneasy silence falls on the room, as Ember and Jaeger stare each other down. Eventually, she speaks, slowly clambering to her feet.

“You’re looking at me, but I’m not the person you need to persuade.”

She steps aside, sitting on the couch’s armrest and looking down at me with a warm but concerned expression.

“You’ve done all the work, Nightcrawler. You’ve taken all the risk. I’ll understand if you want to back out.”

My first instinct is to leap at her suggestion and get out while I still can, to go back to the Red Light district and forget that any of this happened. My second instinct betrays me, bringing up everything I’ve seen over the last few days. The warehouses full of poisoned needles, the family homes stacked high with crates of weapons.

I could go back, but I wouldn’t be any safer. All I’d be doing is delaying the risk, sticking my head in the sand and hoping it goes away. It wouldn’t – it would come for me, and Ember and everything I care about. It would come at a time of its choosing, and in numbers I couldn’t hope to stop.

Jaeger is right. He’s heartless, and maybe he’s a monster, but he’s right. This has to stop.

I wiggle my other hand out of the blankets, passing my now-empty mug of delicious hot chocolate to Ember and signing out my assent. Jaeger simply nods, like he was expecting it all along, while Ember puts her hand on my shoulder in silent support.

Jaeger stands, snapping his notebook shut and tucking the phone into one of his pockets.

“I’ll head off and get some sleep, then. I suggest you do the same.”

And, with that, he throws his hood back over his head, casting his face into shadow, and steps out the front door, leaving the two of us alone in the living room.

“You sure you’re alright?” Ember asks from her perch on the armrest.

I just nod, even though I’m not completely sure I made the right call. I think Ember notices my hesitancy, but she’s kind enough not to press me about it.

“Okay, so long as you’re sure. Jaeger’s a prick, but he’s right about one thing; you should get some sleep.”

I nod, slowly extracting myself from the comfortable blankets and clambering up the stairs to my room – those two words still giving me a wonderfully warm feeling whenever I think them. My room is east-facing, so the window is bathed in the orange light of the dawn, but Ember had some heavier curtains put in that keep the sun away, limiting it to little spots of light where the fold of the fabric lets it through.

It keeps the room comfortable, dark and intimate, but I still leap up on the bed and squirrel myself completely under the covers, to shut out the last bits of light and leave me cocooned in the darkness. I shut my three pairs of eyes, and the world goes with them.

When I wake, it’s to the feeling of a hand rocking my shoulder. I shake off the last dregs of sleep, standing up on all fours and using my arms to pull off the duvet. I could have slipped into the shadows and left the bed that way – I usually do it, and it means I don’t have to bother remaking it – but, next time I slip into the shadows, I’m going to be leaving a pile of bloody bandages behind. I don’t want to have to wash the sheets.

Ember’s standing over me, dressed fairly casually in jeans and a hooded coat that casts plenty of shadows.

“You ready?” she asks, and, in lieu of answering, I place my hand over her palm, then move it up her wrist until I’m touching the shadows beneath her sleeve. She doesn’t say anything as I nestle myself in the shadows around her right arm, just scooping up the bandages, tossing them in the bathroom bin, and stepping out onto the little jetty that runs down the length of the largely-aquatic street.

Ember moves without rushing, nodding a little to the occasional neighbour but not stopping for anything. Jaeger is waiting in the car park, sitting on the hood of a nondescript blue car and dressed in a similar sort of hooded jacket to Ember. I guess that answers the question of how I’ll be getting there.

“The job’s on,” Ember says, “so long as you don’t let her get into any more fights. Understood?”

She holds out her hand to shake, which strikes me a little odd until I realise what she’s doing. When Jaeger grips her hand in his own, I reach across my own arm and slip from sleeve to sleeve into his coat, curling up his back and nestling in the shadows of his hood so that I’m looking out past his face.

“There’s no reason to expect a fight,” Jaeger replies with what strikes me as a complete non-answer. “I assume this is the point where she jumps dramatically out of your coat?”

If I had a jaw right now, and if it was capable of the gesture, I’d be grinning from ear to ear. As it stands, I just form my hand in Jaeger’s hood and give him a couple of affectionate pats on the cheek.

“Ah,” he says, as his right arm tenses and jolts unconsciously towards the gun tucked against his chest. It’s a reaction, but one that’s hidden enough that I wouldn’t notice it if I wasn’t so close.

“Right,” he says, as Ember grins at him before turning off and walking back to her home with a shout of “play nice, you two!”

Jaeger doesn’t talk throughout the entire drive. He just keeps his eyes on the road, and his hands focused on working the car. It’s only when we’re actually pulling into Triad neighbourhoods, the same streets I’ve been busy scouting for the past week, that he decides to fill the uncomfortable silence.

“Sometimes you have to push yourself. Ember… she means well, but she’s just as attached to you as you clearly are to her. Keeping safe is all well and good, but you can’t improve as a person if you never push yourself out of your comfort zone. The path of least resistance is also the path of least reward.”

I don’t say anything in response, just looking silently out of his hood as he pulls into a pitch-black alleyway, switching off the headlights and plunging the car into darkness.

“Just something to think about. You want the tenement block two buildings left of here. There’s nowhere around here to park without drawing suspicion, so you’ll have to make your own way back. I’ll meet you in Ember’s office.”

With the whole car now completely dark, I don’t need to reform myself as I slip out of his hood and right through the windshield. I soar upwards, giving me enough momentum to clear the glow of a streetlight in a single leap that has me landing squarely on top of the roof. I peer over the edge, watching Jaeger’s car light back off and drive back into the street, where it becomes just another part of the traffic.

The target building doesn’t look any different from the rest; just another four-story block of self-contained apartments on a street full of them. I suppose that’s the point; a lot of people travelling to a secret meeting in the middle of nowhere would look pretty obvious, but here everyone gets lost among the residents. Hiding in plain sight.

It doesn’t take me long to decide on my approach – this isn’t a well-off neighbourhood, but it’s not abandoned either. That means the corridors and apartments all have power, which would make sneaking through them a nightmare. But I’ve started to get a better understanding of how buildings are built, so it doesn’t take me long to find an extractor fan on the roof that no-doubt connects directly to the building’s ventilation.

There are some places I have to reform myself – where the vents are in just the wrong position to keep the light out – but, by and large, I’m able to drift through the ventilation like a ghost, my only company the spiders and mice that call the vents their home.

I’m able to get a pretty good look at the entire building by peering through vents or oh-so-cautiously lifting up a ceiling tile to get a look inside rooms, but there’s nothing that immediately jumps out to me as a secret meeting place. So far, the tenement block looks like exactly what it appears to be, with people idling in front of the television, eating late night food, passed out drunk on the floor or tucking their children into bed. As I descend down from the second floor to the first, I start to wonder if Jaeger misread Bloody Mary’s phone.

Of course, if they picked a meeting place that looked like any other building, it only makes sense that they’d use an inhabited one. The trick isn’t in looking for suspicious places, because they’ll be hidden, it’s in looking for suspicious people.

So I settle in over the building’s lobby, shifting a ceiling tile just enough that I can watch the people coming and going. It doesn’t take me long to spot a likely pair: a man in scuffed biker leathers, with full-face helmet and a metal skull mask covering his face, being escorted by the same biker I saw at the gun-runners place, the one I piggybacked on to find Bloody Mary. Mika, with the biker she mentioned having to show around. She didn’t mention he was a Cape, but anyone who dresses like that has to be a parahuman.

As they pass me, I catch a glimpse of the back of his jacket. Most of it is taken up by a red letter A in a white circle, without the bar across the middle. There’s writing above and below it, with the former spelling out ‘Spartan Legion’ and the latter ‘Vice-President.’ Could this be what Jaeger’s looking for? Are the Triad bringing in a group from outside the city to tip the balance of power?

It’s not enough to be sure. If I’m doing this, I need to know for certain just what’s going on. Otherwise Jaeger might ask me to do it again.

I follow them as best I can from the vents, keeping an ear out for the sound of their footsteps and periodically flipping up ceiling tiles to get brief glimpses of them whenever it looks like they’re about to reach a junction. Sure enough, they don’t head up into the apartments, but down into the basement.

What I see down there, from behind a couple of heating ducts, is almost too strange to believe. It’s like the whole tenement building was positioned on top of an already-present bunker, with the utility room in the basement built around and on top of it, and then someone has cut through the feet of concrete and steel bars to create a makeshift entrance.

I’d wonder why a city would need to build a bunker beneath its streets, but I’ve stood on top of the broken wall that once held the sea at bay. Whatever this is, it came from Leviathan, like everything else in this city.

Mika nods to the guard, a heavy-set man with a short-barrelled rifle, who steps aside to let the pair of them enter before resuming his watch on the door. The plastic chair sitting empty and abandoned next to him is a further sign that something important is happening tonight; if there weren’t so many important people passing through, he’d probably be sitting down.

I slip into the shadows behind the boiler, creeping along the tops of the pipes as they run the length of the ceiling before dropping down silently behind the guard and creeping into the bunker.

The walls are solid concrete, which means all the wiring is suspended from the roof on metal catwalks that run throughout the compound. It wouldn’t support a person’s weight, and there’s only enough room for a maintenance guy to lean in and swap out broken wires, but that’s more than enough space for me.

I leap up, disappear, and slink through the compound on a path that might as well have been tailor-made for me to use. The bunker’s abandoned state quickly becomes more understandable, as I pass great cracks and fissures in the wall that would ruin any waterproofing the place might have once had. Some of the worst-affected areas have been hastily repaired with great sheets of welded steel, while others have been left in place; whole passageways blocked off by spoil heaps of concrete and old dirt.

It quickly becomes clear that I’m running along a path that skirts the edge of a larger room, a cavernous space that was probably meant to hold the most people during an attack, while these support tunnels were supposed to provide access for relief workers, medics or anyone else who might be needed to keep a place like this running. If there’s a meeting here, it’ll be in that main room.

I look from side to side, checking I’m alone in the corridor before dropping to the floor and sprinting silently towards an open doorway. The bunker isn’t well lit, but the simple overhead lights cast enough of a glow that I can’t shift back, instead having to quickly poke my head through the door to catch a brief glimpse of the space on the other side.

What I see is a cavernous hall, several stories tall and crisscrossed by metal gantries. Far below me, the hall has been filled with trinkets and treasures, some haphazardly stacked in heaps or tucked away in the corner while others, particularly those near the far end of the room, have been put together to create what could almost be a throne room, with fine carpets and rich statuary all surrounding a richly furnished wooden chair, with serpentine dragons carved into the wood. It looks like an antique.

People are standing in front of the seat in a rough circle, chatting idly to each other. Maybe three dozen in all, and at least a dozen of them look like they’re wearing costumes. There’s no unifying theme, either. The room is clearly new – put together in a rush after they moved here from wherever their last headquarters were – but it has a unified aesthetic. The people don’t, except for a common colour of light blue painted onto armour, sewn into spandex costumes or just displayed on cloth armbands. The only people in the room who don’t have anything light blue on them are the parahuman biker and a man in a neatly-tailored suit who’s hovering by the throne.

I jog silently along the catwalks, far above their heads and shrouded from sight by the lack of lighting on the highest levels. It’s probably meant to give the room a sense of ambient grandness, but they might as well have rolled out the red carpet for me. It means I can merge with the shadows and drift close enough to hear what they’re saying, even if I can’t make out the individual words among the white noise of all the other conversations.

A door opens on the side of the room, and all the chatter ceases instantly. The man who steps out is small, especially when compared to the hulking bodyguard who’s shadowing him. He’s old too, hunched over, frail and walking with clear difficulty. His suit is plain, if a little unusual – with the jacket going all the way up to his collar rather than being left open to reveal a shirt and tie. It almost looks bizarre to see so many terrifying parahumans fall silent at his mere appearance, but there’s iron in his eyes. This must be Lo Yiu Hong; the head of the Triad.

He manages to stop himself from collapsing into the chair, but it’s a close run thing. I can’t help but wonder if the chair is supposed to be a symbol of his authority, or if he’s the only person sitting because he wouldn’t be able to stand. And then, he shifts a little in his seat, and suddenly he’s sitting straight and proud, like there’s no weight on him at all. He looks over the assembled notables of the Triad, human and parahuman, before speaking in a raspy voice that carries throughout the chamber.

“Welcome. Are we all present?”

“Bloody Mary isn’t here. Again.” The speaker has a strange accent, and she’s dressed in a dark green dress that looks to have been tattered and ruffled in a way that’s reminiscent of a raging sea. Her face is covered by a light blue mask shaped into the features of woman’s face, locked in a serene expression.

“No matter,” the head of the Triad speaks, waving his hand dismissively. “Her invitation was a courtesy; nothing more. She has no part to play in these events.”

“All due respect, sir,” the woman continues, with a hasty glance to the biker and the man in the suit like she’s afraid of undercutting her boss in front of strangers, “but I don’t understand why you tolerate her.”

“Because she would be a dangerous enemy, Rusalka. And because she was cheaply bought. The cost would have been worth it if all we had done was take her off the field; anything she contributes beyond that is simply profit. Now, on to the business at hand.”

At that, the suited man starts talking in a language I don’t understand. From the looks of confusion around the room, I’d say only a fifth of the people here actually know what he’s saying. Lo Yiu Hong puts up his hand for silence, but it takes half a second for the man to comply. I can’t tell if he simply wasn’t paying attention, or if it was a deliberate snub.

“Mr Jiang,” the head of the Triad speaks, his tone reproachful, “little is gained by speaking in a language few here understand, and Mandarin has never been the lingua franca of the Triad.”

“Apologies,” the suited man replies, his tone just humble enough to avoid causing offence. “I simply wished to reiterate the importance of this venture. A great deal depends on its success.”

“That much is obvious,” Rusalka snaps.

“Quite,” the old man agrees, silencing his subordinate. “The purpose of this meeting is to ensure everyone understands the roles they must play in the coming week. Beginning with the transportation of the cargo. Steel Skull,” he says, angling his head to look at the biker, “thank you for coming all this way.”

“Thank you for being such excellent hosts,” Steel Skull answers, taking a step forwards into the circle. I’m starting to get a picture of what’s going on – Mr Jiang represents a client, and the Triad are facilitating the transport of something to him or his backers. But can any bit of cargo really be worth starting a gang war?

“The cargo will be coming into the city in three shipping containers,” the biker begins his brief. “Security will be light, with armed drivers and guards shadowing the trucks in civilian cars, rather than bikes. We’re relying on anonymity; thousands of containers pass through this city every day. I’ve already passed the timings onto Rusalka.” The woman in question nods in acknowledgement. “Assuming nothing changes, the containers will be delivered to the warehouse, which is where my people will hand over to yours. Make sure to have specialists on standby, because we’ll be taking ours with us once the delivery’s made.”

“From there” – Rusalka steps forward into the circle p – “our priority is in getting the containers onto the ship without drawing the eye of customs. The right palms have already been greased, so that shouldn’t be too hard. The security detail on the ship will then ensure the safe delivery of the cargo to Brunei, where they’ll be handed off to your people.” She nods to Mr Jiang.

“And the cargo itself?” Mr Jiang ignores Rusalka, instead fixing his gaze on the biker. “How many have you managed to acquire?”

“We’ve got two from Boston,” he answers, as a sinking feeling starts to well up in my stomach, “a brother and sister pair who pissed off some big shot. Five from the Midwest, who’re a mix of opportunistic sales and people the locals wanted disappeared. The last container has three, all of them the losers of a gang war in Denver. We’ve got them all in induced comas, and the containers are rigged out with all the gear you need to keep them that way.”

He chuckles. It makes me feel sick.

“After all, the last thing you want is a pissed-off parahuman waking up as you’re halfway across the Pacific.”

It’s so much worse than I though. Worse than the guns, even worse than the needles. But it makes sense. I can’t help but think about what Ember told me, back when I was still shaken by Mike’s death and she calmed me down with a stiff drink and a comfortable seat.

She said that the Elite were formed ‘by parahumans, for parahumans, and there’s no way they’d stand for this. The Triad had to break away, because they knew that the Elite would turn on them if it ever found out they were… were selling people.

How much is a person worth? Enough to make the gang war worth it? To buy in as many outsiders as they need to tip the balance of power in the city?

And, if I hadn’t come here, I’d never have found out. Nobody would have found out.

I have to tell them. They… we have to stop it. We’re the only ones who can.