Authors: Matt Stephens
"Call me back in two hours or I'm sending a search party." Connie said, concerned.
"It'll be fine. Call your guy-friend, have a nice night."
"You know about that?"
Tap! Tap! Tap!
"Bye." Vincent disconnected the phone line and turned to Yasi, sitting on his windowsill.
"I don't know why I'm here, so don't ask." She said as soon as he opened the window for her. The Shinobi looked wrung out.
"You never needed to offer a reason before; but I'm glad you're here, there's something I need to ask you about…" Vincent started to elaborate, and paused, looking her over. "What happened?"
Yasi said nothing. She came in and just stood there for a moment. She looked sick to her stomach, and scared out of her mind. The sword was loose in its scabbard, ready to draw at a moment's notice, and her hands were opening and closing compulsively.
"Yasi? What happened?" Vincent said again.
Yasi waved a hand incoherently, not speaking. She went from scared to furious and back again, before giving up and starting to pace.
Vincent felt cold deep in his stomach. Whatever it was, it had to have been bad. "How about I get you some coffee? Because a couple hundred volts of caffeine would probably be good for you right now."
Yasi unhooked her sword from her back and held it in both hands, staring at the grip like she was searching for meaning in it. Vincent went to the kitchen to brew, and she collapsed on his couch, seeming to cave in on herself.
The Coffee Machine took several minutes. He half expected her to be gone by the time it was ready, but she was right where he left her, slouched on his couch. He set the coffee down next to her, not looking in her direction. She slapped the couch next to her and he sat down. They didn't look at each other.
"You asked me once, where Lostkind go on vacation." She said. "I told you we never needed them."
"From anyone else, I would have found that hard to believe." Vincent admitted.
"I have this powerful urge to go somewhere far away from New York and spend a few weeks... Somewhere else." Yasi whispered.
"Where would you go?" Vincent asked wistfully.
"Somewhere warm. Somewhere you can always walk in the sun." She dreamed aloud. "Someplace with no crossbows or tunnels."
"I could see you on a beach somewhere in a Hawaiian skirt." Vincent admitted. "Your head would explode from boredom, but I think the look would work for you."
"Five minutes in tropical sunlight, I'd probably burst into flame. Live long enough underground…" Yasi sighed. "There's no coming back. After a while, you just don't belong up here. And you never miss it; but it does tend to box you in."
"It's a hell of a box." Vincent said neutrally. He was being very quiet, trying madly to figure out what had happened that made an Amazon like Yasi so… introspective.
"Yeah it is." Yasi suddenly noticed the coffee cup beside her and took a sip.
"Yasi." He said softly. "What happened?"
Yasi sniffed. "Something terrible happened today in Europe."
Vincent reacted. "Berlin?"
Yasi sighed. "Berlin. We don't have all the information, but it looks like Vandark tried to pull off a coup. They knew he was coming; and were ready for him, but he never came. Then The Monster broke Rule Number One."
Vincent reacted. "He exposed the Berlin Underside?"
"He was going to." Yasi nodded, her voice low with dread. "He diverted the Havel River, so that it flowed into their Underside a lot more than normal. He tried to drown them all. There were Lostkind in those tunnels. He just… drowned them all like rats. The water came bubbling up out of sewer grates, gutters, subway tunnels… The whole city is trying to figure out where it came from. VonGunn did something to change the river back where it belonged before… before they were discovered. It worked, but more than two thirds of the Berlin Underside was drowned." She rubbed her face. "God, all those people…"
Vincent was stunned. "Why would Vandark do that?"
"Because he didn't want Berlin." Yasi said simply. "He didn't want it, or couldn't use it… so he destroyed it all. Wiped out the whole secret city. Everyone who might know about him; might talk about him to us or others..."
Vincent stared at her numb. "Have… were there any survivors?"
"Not many." Yasi said quietly. "We're almost too scared to bring any of them here. London took some of them… There's plenty of room; since there aren't that many refugees left."
Vincent suddenly put it together. "You think he's coming here."
"He's here already." She scorned. "Three years. Three years that we know about. He's been planning a strike on us for three years, and now he's committed himself. There's nowhere for him to go back to. It's not just that he's unwelcome in Berlin Below; it's GONE!"
"What does VonGunn say? Has he been in touch?"
"VonGunn is dead." Yasi said quietly. "He died getting the waters to stop rising. The authorities will wonder where it all came from, but any tunnel they might investigate is underwater… and so are all the people."
Long heavy silence.
"How many?"
"Thousands, at least. Hard to tell; since we've only had a few conversations in the last fifty years." Yasi wiped her eyes and changed the subject. "Y'know something I never had in my chamber at home? A carpet."
"Really?"
Yasi nodded. "It's not because of the job. Shinobi have a certain... Spartan quality about them. But I never kept a rug because I track dust and mud in on it. We don't have front doorsteps like you do; just open walls leading out into the Twelfth Level. Don't have a doorstep, you can't have a doormat. I have to keep my floors clean by hand; so I keep it bare stone. I've never had a carpet before." She lowered her head into her hands.
Vincent was starting to get really worried about her. For the first time since he'd known her, it looked like she was going to cry. "Take off your boots."
She didn't respond in any way for a moment. "What?"
"Your boots, take them off."
Yasi sighed and did so. Her socks were mismatched.
"Why can't the Borrowers ever take socks in pairs?" Vincent asked in amusement.
"I don't know; but they have a good reason." She waved vaguely at her feet. "I think if you lost a pair, you'd wonder if someone took them. You lose one; you assume you lost it somewhere." She pulled her socks off and rested her bare feet on his thick rug. Vincent wasn't certain, but it looked like she was relaxing a little. She started gripping the carpet with her toes unconsciously; and the more she relaxed, the more upset she seemed. It felt like walls were coming down, melting away before his eyes, and the unbreakable Yasi nearly burst into tears.
His reaction was instinctive. He put his arms around her, and she returned the hug gratefully. "I don't know what to do Vincent. First time in over ten years I don't know what to do."
"You've been lucky." He whispered to her. "Most people live out their whole lives not knowing what to do."
"I'm sorry about this." She hissed stubbornly, keeping her voice level. "Never cried on somebody's shoulder in my life."
"Shh; don't be embarrassed, it's okay." He promised her. "Tell me what you're thinking."
"I don't know." Yasi admitted. "I guess a wall came down. I've been keeping my chin up since this whole thing began. I can relax around you; be myself; I can't do that with anyone else..." She looked up at his face; and blushed again. "Oh. Sorry, forget I said all that."
They stayed like that a while, almost hugging, breathing each other in gently.
"Keeper wants me to come up with ways to secure The Underside." Yasi whispered. "The only way I can do that is to paralyze it. If that lasts for long, we'll starve. And for all that, we can't block the River."
"He won't do that with New York." Vincent said with certainty. "Owen said that having New York and keeping the Underside a secret was his whole plan."
"I know." Yasi admitted. "But what if we win?"
Vincent looked at Yasi. The poor girl looked like her universe had just crashed down on her head. Which, in a very real way, it had.
Vincent reached out to her, hesitated, and let his hands drop. "It's a long way from here." He offered.
Yasi's voice was flat with barely contained anger. No. Not anger. Terror. "Vandark has nowhere to go after this. He just burned his own backyard. His only chance is to get to us, and get us in one piece. Or at least, enough of it that he can call it a victory. If we drive him off, what's he going to do? Things, people, whole communities that he can't control or can't use? He kills them. I know, because I've seen the bodies."
"Can he get in?" Vincent asked with worry.
"No, I made sure of it." Yasi was certain of that much. "But every time we've thrown up a roadblock, Vandark found a way around it."
"You'll beat him Yasi." Vincent said with certainty. "You'll find a way."
"Beating him will be hard. But the real thing is… we may not
want
to win."
Vincent blinked at that, unclear. "I don't understand."
Yasi threw her cup against the wall so hard it shattered, suddenly livid. "WHAT don't you UNDERSTAND?!" She exploded. "Vandark is coming FOR US, and he's made sure his people have NOWHERE else to go. They won't hold back for anything now. They won't take anything less than everything." Her voice dropped, cold and deadly. "And even if we
win
, now we know what he'll be willing to do for revenge if he loses!"
Heavy silence.
"Yasi..." He said quietly. "You know that you could always have a place here. If somehow the worst happened, you would have somewhere to go."
Yasi's eyes narrowed, her face growing harder again. "I ain't gonna need it." She growled, suddenly tougher than any working class girl to come out of the Bronx. "Our home ain't gonna fall. Not to him. He's bluffing, and if..." She shook her head and headed for the window. "This was a mistake."
"Yasi…" Vincent called after her. His heart was pounding. "You're the strongest woman I've ever met. I get why you have to be, particularly now… but you've never treated me like you do any of the Lostkind. You don't have to be a leader with me. You can admit it."
Yasi's eyes searched his face for a moment, then flicked to the coffee shards against the wall. "I'm… worried." She conceded finally.
He just looked at her. She balled her fists tightly. "I'm
scared
." She confessed. "We've never faced anything like this before, and… none of the rules or protections we've always had can help us this time."
Unsure of what else to do, Vincent reached out and laid a hand on her shoulder in support. He felt her tense and suddenly remembered how the Lostkind were about getting too close...
And yet he couldn't seem to take his hand from where it lay, giving her what support he could without speaking.
Yasi licked her lips absently. She hadn't blinked once since he'd asked her to stay. The last time they had been this close, she had kissed him…
After what felt like a lifetime, she brought her own hand up to rest over his wrist gently, before tilting her head to rub her cheek over the back of his fingers. "Rule number one…" She said finally. "Rule number one is: Be Invisible. If we want to keep rule number one, we have to lose. We win the big fight, and he can still expose us. The act of Spite. He can't have New York, so nobody can."
Vincent didn't know what to say.
Yasi took a breath and got herself together. "I'm sorry about all that. I needed to vent. Usually I can vent to my parents, but they're looking to me to win a war right now, so..." She scrubbed her eyes for a moment and met Vincent's gaze. "Sorry. You wanted to ask me about something."
It took Vincent a full four seconds to shift topics. "Oh, that? Naw, that'll keep."
"Tell me." She pressed.
He shook his head. "You have enough on your plate."
"Which is why I'd like to change the subject." Yasi insisted.
Long silence.
"Yasi." Vincent said quietly. "There's a story in the papers about a body being discovered in the Hudson. Got washed up with the tide. The body didn't have a head, but fingerprints say it was a missing cop. Officer Archibald Grey."
Yasi said nothing for a long time. "Well, that's just the icing on the cake." She muttered thickly.
"All the Riverfolk I've seen use spiked clubs and crossbows." Vincent volunteered, feeling nervous. "There's only one person I know who might have a problem with Grey,
and
use a weapon suitable for beheading purposes."
Yasi said nothing, but her eyes flicked to the sword, propped up against Vincent's couch.
"Yasi..." Vincent continued, trying to get a response of some kind. "What did you think I was going to do? Did you think I was going to turn you in? Did you think it would matter if I tried?"
Yasi said nothing, but she wasn't looking at him.
"Yasi." Vincent pressed. "
Look
at me."