Authors: Matt Stephens
"World got woken up. When you live in the shadows; there's nothing worse than having all the lights on." Yasi said quietly. "Eventually, the panic faded, and we all went back to our lives. But for the first few months, our people were sitting down there wondering: is this the day they find us? Is this the day we get noticed?"
Vincent bit his lip and pushed the bag of Danish toward her. "Yasi… I wondered for a while… if that would be such a bad thing."
She looked at him sharply, coughing on a mouthful of pastry. "What?"
"When you wanted me to cover for you all… I wondered if it would be so bad, the world noticing you."
Yasi sipped her coffee, not taking her eyes off his. "We've created something… unique. Something that's never happened before. Our culture has grown, right under your noses. It gets dragged into the spotlight, and more than the people losing their homes, the place itself will become a sideshow. You drag us out of our element, and what will be left… it won't be us."
"I agree." Vincent nodded. "Which was why I let it alone."
Yasi's face softened. "I never said thank you for that."
"You didn't have to." He assured her. A moment later he was suddenly aware of how close they were, sitting on the bench, close enough to brush against each other innocently. Yasi's expression was relaxed and open for the first time since they had met. With her face lit by the soft glow of the distant city, Vincent was suddenly aware of how beautiful she could be.
She turned her head to face him, their gaze bringing them closer. "Thank you Vincent. Thank you for keeping the secret, and protecting my home." She said; soft as a psalm.
There was a loose strand of hair falling across her forehead. He reached out and tucked it behind her ear without thinking. She didn't stop him.
After a heated glance, Yasi leaned in and kissed him gently. Vincent returned it. It was hesitant, uncertain. After a few moments, Vincent pulled back.
They sat like that for a long moment, their foreheads touching gently.
"We can't." Yasi said finally, ignoring the fact that she'd started it.
"More than that, we
shouldn't
." Vincent agreed. "I mean… Yasi, you're here because I got your Watchers to hunt down a man without your permission."
Yasi pulled away, sliding back on the bench, giving them some distance from each other. Two feet was all they needed. "When this is done, I'm going home, and we most likely won't see each other again."
Vincent scrubbed his face with one hand. "Plus, we're only having this conversation because my best friend is lying in a hospital bed. This is most definitely
not
right."
"Agreed." Yasi stood up, and so did Vincent. The intensity of the moment faded, but not awkwardly. They were still smiling at each other, Yasi tucked her hair back herself, and Vincent collected her empty coffee cup, finding a bin to drop their garbage in.
"Why here?" Vincent asked finally. "I know why I like the Bridge; why do you?"
Yasi grinned at him, her teeth flashing brilliantly again. She drew a fob watch out of her pocket and flipped it open. Vincent glanced at it casually and noticed it had four hands instead of two. Yasi flipped it closed again and took his hand. "Come with me."
She led him to the base of the Brooklyn Bridge support struts. Vincent followed her to the foundation. Yasi drew a small metallic handle out of her leathers, and fit it against the brick surface of the wall...
There was a clicking sound, and suddenly a hidden door opened, revealing a space behind it, narrower than a coffin. Vincent could hear wind whistling and peeked inside. The narrow space was completely hollow. There was a rope hanging a down from above in the hiding place, with a loop at the end.
Vincent divined its purpose immediately. "Oh lord. Really?"
"Afraid so." Yasi nodded. She gave him that look again, daring him to chicken out.
Forcing himself to squeeze into the stone hollow, Vincent fit his foot through the loop, and held onto the rope tightly, like a childhood rope swing. His weight tugged the rope down slightly, and Vincent heard something click...
And suddenly he was rising. Extremely quickly.
There were only a few inches of clearance on either side, and Vincent pressed his face against the rope awkwardly. If he hunched his shoulders, or ducked his head, his profile would change and he would be scraped along the walls like roadkill...
Quite suddenly it was over. A shock of cold air hit him, and he inched one eye open. At the top of the shaft, a grate over his head. The drop beneath him was far enough he couldn't see the ground any more, and he quickly pushed the grate up, climbing above. The rope pulley unspooled the second he took his weight off it, and he clambered up out of the way.
He was suddenly up above it all, at the top of the Brooklyn Bridge tower. Above the gantries, above the walkway, above the safety rail. He was literally on top of everything he could see.
There was a whirring sound as Yasi appeared next to him; and she set the grate back into place. "Have fun?" She teased brightly.
"More or less. Why are we here?"
"We're meeting someone."
Vincent looked around the twelve square feet of bare rooftop. Nobody here but them and a few pigeons. "Who, in the name of whatever, could we be meeting? And will they get here before the cold makes my legs go numb and I fall over the side to my horrible, horrible death?"
Yasi grinned. "They're already here." With that she went over to the pigeons.
"Carrier pigeons?"
"Yup. Pigeons are like Lostkind. They're everywhere and nobody even looks at them. You train one or two to fly between specific places, and nobody notices them among the thousand odd sky-rats that just happen to be there."
The Warrior Woman picked up the one pigeon that hadn't flown away in panic. There was a message tied to its leg.
Vincent looked out over the city. He wondered how many people had come here. Not to the bridge, but to this point, several dozen feet above the gantry.
Yasi unrolled the message. "Wotcha found him." She said sharply. "Your Loan Shark is in an ask-no-questions Motel on the edge of the Bronx."
Vincent felt his face harden. "Call the cops."
"The cops will want to know where this information came from." She put a hand out gently and rested it on his shoulder. "We've done this before Vincent. Watchers see a lot of things. Some things we have to tell. I'm telling you, there might not be a lot the police can do. Monroe loaned money. That's not illegal. Gill tried suicide. It
wasn't
an assault."
"You're not telling me to leave it alone." Vincent stared at her. "Are you?"
"Of course not. I'm telling you to let
me
handle it." Yasi said seriously. "I am Shinobi. I protect the Underground. I know how to get the truth."
Vincent suddenly realized how... terrifying Yasi could be. "Are you... Will you... Is he going to..."
Yasi straightened, her posture becoming like a statue. "Do you really
want
to know?"
"Not really, but I'm the one that asked you to find this guy. If he's found dead in his room tomorrow…"
Yasi didn't smile. "Don't stress Vincent, I'll handle it right."
Vincent nodded, accepting that at face value, as she launched the pigeon up in the air, it's wings flapping furiously.
"Do we have to take the same route down?" He asked plaintively.
"You can take the stairs if you like, but there are cameras. Someone might notice and wonder why you're going down if you never came up."
Vincent sighed and made his way back to the rope.
He turned back to ask her something…
She was gone.
~oo00oo~
Yasi considered the motel for a moment. The place was not unknown to the Lostkind. In fact, they used it themselves sometimes. They had little use for currency in the Underside, but they had access to it from various sources. If someone was injured and needed a safe warm place to stay for a few hours, or someone had something to hide...
Places like this asked no questions, kept no records. Cash was preferred, and no one came by their room unless asked for.
The Lostkind liked it that way.
Yasi went into the lobby, checking for cameras. There was one, but it didn't seem to be hooked up. She glanced around. Front counter, office behind it, storeroom to the left. Paint was cracked and wallpaper peeling, the carpet had old cigarette stains...
She could hear the desk clerk in the storeroom, not expecting customers at this hour. She picked up a pamphlet about the motel and went to the payphone at the lobby. She dialed the number for the Motel, and heard the phone ringing in the office behind the counter.
A muffled cursing came from the storeroom, and the clerk came out, moving quickly through the lobby, a few mini-bar bottles in his hand. She left the phone off the hook and vanished as he passed. He never noticed her. He went around the counter to the office and picked it up. "Hello?"
Yasi wasn't there. She was already at the counter, grabbing the motel roster. A quick scan of the page saw four men giving the name ‘John Smith' had checked in over the last two days. She found the most recent one, who had checked into room five; and put the book back.
"Hello? Anyone there?"
Yasi catwalked out, not making a sound; hanging up the payphone without breaking stride.
~oo00oo~
The door to Room Five was locked. She went in the window. Getting it open from the outside was a trick that any Lostkind knew.
She found Monroe a moment later.
The Loan Shark was dead.
~oo00oo~
"Dead?" Vincent repeated in fear. His eyes flicked to the sword slung across her back before he could stop himself.
"Before I got there. For at least half a day from the look of him." She assured him. "Which would be almost the moment he checked in at the Motel. He was stretched out on the bed, throat slit from ear to ear."
"Any ideas who did it?"
"I didn't stop to investigate. You said Gill believed he was feeling the pressure. Somebody must have got to him."
"Wasn't a suicide?"
"Nobody kills themselves with a knife across the throat." Yasi waved that off. "I snuck out, fixed the window so that nobody knew I opened it, and I got out of there. The Motel staff will find him sooner or later."
"How'd you close the window from the outside?"
"We're good at getting into places. What worries me is: How did the killer do it? The door was locked, so it was the only way. But that's not our problem. You can tell your friend his Loan Shark won't be back."
Vincent smiled his thanks and they stayed that way for a moment, he standing against the kitchen counter, her perched on the edge of it, ankles crossed. She never sat in a chair.
Short silence.
With the mission over, reality was catching up. "You're going to get in trouble for this." Vincent said. It wasn't a question.
Yasi answered him anyway. "Probably. I'm on pretty good terms with Keeper and Archivist. They hate extortion too."
"What do you think will happen?"
"To me, I don't know. To you... Well, for sure this is the last time you get to play Lostkind."
He chuckled despite himself. "I know. It was worth it. Gill's a friend, and I've been neglecting that friendship. The result of which was, he wound up in hospital."
"You can't blame yourself for that." Yasi said kindly. "You can't confess to a suicide attempt."
"I don't blame myself, exactly." Vincent agreed. "But I was so proud of myself for being aware of what was going on around me for once... I didn't see my best friend was in trouble." He let that go for a moment, before chuckling a little. "Tonight was... exciting." He said finally. "I know it must be normal life for you, Captain of the New York Ninja, but for me..." He actually laughed. "Sending a secret team to track down criminals, and avenge a friend in trouble? That was... that was like something out of a comic book."
Yasi chuckled. "Felt good?"
"Felt great." He chuckled. "Thank-" He turned to face her mid-sentence. She was gone. "-you."
~oo00oo~
Returning to the Underside was always a relief. When she made it to second level, the solid darkness welcomed her peacefully.
Yasi made her way through the labyrinth and paused. "Dorcan?" She called. "You trying to sneak up on me?"
"Sort of." He called back casually, and fell into step behind her. "So, here's something interesting." He said after a while. "Wotcha found Owen Niklos."
Yasi straightened. "Where?"
Dorcan sighed, as though something he'd secretly worried about was just proven true. "He's at the City Planner's Office."
Yasi flushed. "What?"
"He got a job there
very
recently."