Pariah #1: New Arrival: Perils of Azure City (3 page)

Kruger's fist connected squarely with his man's face and knocked him out for the count. 'Argh!' he roared as he tried to close her down again. She quickly darted back once more but not before he grabbed a handful of her cloak, preventing her from moving any further away. 'I got you now, bitch! You're not so flash if you can't get away, are you?'

She pulled back against him but his grip was solid, and he started heaving the cloth in. In one deft move, her hand went up and undid a clasp around her neck, and suddenly the cloak came free of her. All of Kruger's force on the cloak was suddenly unmatched and it easily came with his pull, firing over him and enshrouding his vision. Groaning in annoyance, Kruger swept the cloak aside only to find the woman spinning in the air before him, her flying kick easily connecting with his unguarded face. The hit knocked him from his feet and sent him a few paces backwards, landing with a loud
thump
.

The woman landed in a crouch and slowly drew herself back to her feet, breathing hard. Free of her cloak, her blonde hair cascaded down her face, blowing lightly in the wind. There was some anger in her eyes now as she looked down at Kruger's supine form.

As she came to finish him off she was interrupted by the sudden return of Fang and Coil, recovered from their earlier beatings. The snakes were tough hoods, not just because of the lives they had lived but because of the swirling cocktail of stimulants that filled their veins. Their bodies carried on past the point that the average body would shut down - Fang and Coil gave evidence to that.

Their unexpected recovery, combined with her focus on finishing Kruger, meant they got her somewhat by surprise. As Coil launched in to attack her again, she dived to the side and found herself in the waiting arms of Fang. He was a big man, only marginally slighter than Kruger, and his mass dwarfed that of the woman.

His arms enveloped her and he lifted her into a great bear hug, forcing air from her lungs. 'Ugh,' she wheezed as she pushed against her attacker, the muscles of her body tensing with effort. With her feet lifted from the ground she had lost leverage to move her body, and furthermore her arms were trapped within Fang's vice-like grip. Though she was strong, she had no hope to outmuscle the brute.

'Yeah, you got her, Fang!' cheered Coil as he closed in on the two of them and enjoyed the view. The tight body of the heroine undulated as she futilely tried to escape the hard muscle bearing down on her.

'You made me look bad in front of my boys, lady,' Fang rasped into her ear as he squeezed with all his might, 'so I think I'm gonna settle that score.' She coughed and spluttered as she struggled in the big man's grip. Pressed in so tight, he could feel every contour of her body and he savoured the sensation of her toned figure writhing against him. 'Hah, I gotta admit, you were pretty scary back there... But now look at you, you're not strong, you're just a weak girl with a death wish.' He breathed heavily into her ear as he redoubled his efforts to crush her, 'Well guess what, sweetheart? I'm gonna grant your wish!'

Acknowledging that she couldn't break Fang's grip, the woman relaxed her muscles and shifted her focus. 'I...ugh...tried to be nice... but...
enough
!'

The air rippled around the two of them for a moment, followed by a blue glow as the particles in the air were forced to act against conventional physics. Fang barely had any time to take it in before he was hit by an expanding wave of force from the girl. The wave of glowing blue force threw him through the air and he connected heavily with a dumpster before bouncing off and falling to the floor. Rocked by both impacts, Fang tried to struggle to his feet but passed out in the attempt.

Freed of the brute, the girl landed back on her feet and turned her gaze upon Coil, her blue eyes seeming to glow slightly with the same eerie light as the wave of force that had just hit Fang.

A moment ago he had been enjoying the sight of his friend squeezing the life out of a little ragdoll, and now that moment felt like so long ago that Coil couldn't remember what it was like.

She was a meta.

The realization struck Coil like a hammer. He took a step backwards away from her, raising an arm in front of him as if he could ward her away, 'Okay! Okay, I'm done! You win, okay? Let me go.' He kept backing away from her, wanting to flee but scared of turning his back.

The glow remained in her eyes as she stared him down, her shoulders rising and falling as she recovered from her tussle with Fang, 'Much,
much
too late for that.' She gestured her hand towards him, and the air around it shimmered with the same light as it had done when she blasted Fang.

Coil felt the air around him shudder, and saw the faint light that revealed the influence of her meta abilities. Before he could protest, he was violently pulled towards her by the very air. He hit the ground hard at her feet and looked up just in time to see her conjuring another wave of force. He raised his hands to protect himself, but it was a plaintive gesture as she brought her fist down, sending a solid bolt of force to his head and knocking his lights out.

With the last of the henchmen finished she turned to the sound of heavy foot falls as a resurgent Kruger tried to charge her. 'You think you can come to my neighbourhood and fuck with me and mine!? No! I don't care if you're a meta! I'm gonna mess you up!' As he screamed at her he launched a flurry of attacks which kept her ducking backwards.

With a grunt of effort, she reached her hands out and enveloped the leader in a cocoon of force, freezing him to the spot. He struggled in the blue telekinetic bubble, making it stretch and contort under the strain. She winced from the effort of will to keep him in place, giving her own frustrated groan before flinging the bubble at the nearest wall, sending Kruger crashing into it. His impact on the wall was immediately followed with her presence in front of him; she doubled him up with a knee to his kidney before twisting one of his arms behind his back and forcing him to his knees.

He tried to rise and she kicked him in the face, dizzying him and keeping him down. He felt the air rippling around the arm she was holding behind his back, and the hairs over his arm stood up as the air became charged with strange motion. The blue glow in the air was brighter than it had been before, emanating out from her hands and around his restrained arm.

He was hit with a sinking feeling that something very bad was about to happen.

She lowered her face so that she spoke into the back of his ear, 'I wasn't here for you, miscreant, you weren't even on my radar. You could have walked away from this and we'd probably never meet again. But no, now I'll be keeping my eye out for you. If I catch you being anything less than the ideal citizen, I'll come back for you.
All
of you. Trust me, you don't want a repeat visit.' She rose back up above him, fierce blue light flashing from her eyes, 'I figure you're the type that forgets easily, so let me help you remember this...'

The force around his arm increased massively and pushed in multiple directions as she focused it. The big ganger screamed as the sound of cracking bone filled the alley, and soon the pain became so much that the man simply passed out.

Releasing her grip, she let him fall to the floor at her feet and turned to walk back towards Crowley. The blue light gradually dimmed from her eyes until there was nothing there at all when she scooped down to recollect her discarded cloak. In a swift motion she wrapped the cloak about herself and refastened the clasp to hold it in place, yanking the hood back over her head.

The fight had been a rapid affair, with an awful lot happening in a small frame of time. Crowley had watched it all, trying to gather his senses and recover from his treatment at the hands of the snakes. He had reached the point where he felt able to run away, but something compelled him to stay. This woman had come for him, she had saved him, she had been fighting his fight - it felt uncomfortable to leave her. Upon the revelation that she was a meta, and a mean one to boot, Crowley felt good about the decision not to make her track him down again.

She stepped over the fallen snakes and made her way towards him, her cool blue eyes locking with his and that hint of a smile that he saw earlier returned to her face. 'I'm impressed. I thought you'd run.'

He bobbed his head, 'Thought about it.'

She reached out her hand to bring him back to his feet, 'But?'

'But I decided I was too comfortable sat here to bother moving,' he quipped as he took her hand and wearily climbed back to his feet, trying not to gaze at her curvy figure now that she was up close. She gave a soft chuckle and helped him to support himself against a wall. 'I have to admit, I have no idea why you would possibly come for me,' he mused. The thought suddenly alarmed him, 'Am I in trouble?' He gestured around at the unconscious gangers that, moments earlier, were going to torture him to death, 'More trouble, I mean.'

She gave a slight shake of her head, 'No, not more trouble, anyways. Don't get me wrong, Crow; you're a thief, a dealer, a user, probably a murderer and certainly a jaywalker... perhaps in another city you would need to watch out for me, but in this city? You're small fish. I'm not interested in you.'

'I guess that's a good thing,' he allowed, 'But for the record, I'm not a murderer.' She raised a dubious eyebrow at him but he pressed on, 'So what is it that you
do
want?'

'I'm glad you ask, Crow. I'm after traffickers. From what I gather they do a bit of everything: drugs, weapons, people....,' her voice trailed off and her manner stiffened, 'Specifically people,' she glanced meaningfully at Crowley.

He paled as he realised who she was talking about, 'You...you're after Underhaven?'

She nodded, 'And you're going to help me, Crow.'

His shoulders sagged as he weighed up his options. Underhaven were not enemies he wanted - they were exactly the opposite. On the other hand he felt like he kind of owed this stranger something in return for saving him. Besides that, he had the creeping sensation that this wasn't really his choice. She could force him to tell her what she wanted. She could probably force him to do anything - and he believed that she would do if he refused her.

'Ugh. Out of the frying pan and into the fire, right?' He watched her carefully for signs of sympathy or wiggle room to negotiate, but saw only iron resolve staring impassively back at him.

He gave an over the top sigh, 'Fuck it. Why not? What do you want from me, ...er, what do I call you?'

She span on her heels and started leading him out of the dark alley and back into the half-light of the street.

'Same as everyone else, you can call me Pariah.'

Part Three: Underhaven

Turning to a man like Markus Crowley was a thorny road indeed, and Pariah considered it a necessary, if still treacherous, path to tread in order to understand the parts of Azure that only eyes like his had seen. Much of the criminal underworld of Azure existed well out of the light of the city at large and was largely invisible to those who existed outside their very particular world.

So she made a point of looking for someone who had seen it from within and had a thorough understanding of that world - earned from living in it. They would need knowledge, they would need to be reliable, and they would need to be low profile. Beyond that, it would be good if they had the means to be an on-going informant.

Crowley had been her choice. His rap sheet was as long as her legs and his employment history made for colourful reading. He was a low-life who largely flew beneath the notice of both the law and the higher end crooks he had worked with. In his own way, he was a success; he had taken the poor hand life had dealt him and had managed to carve out a decent living. He had formed connections and he had found his way to having a finger in many pies over the years.

A final, crucial, factor played into his selection. There were the embers of a good man somewhere under all that he had done in the name of 'getting by'. He had come close to being somebody once, working his way towards the inner circle of the shadowy group known as Underhaven. He had abandoned it, though. Word on the street was that he thought he could take what they taught him and try to make a go of it on his own, dealing narcotics without being beholden to them. Pariah didn't think that was true. He had always been practical in the past, and he would have known that sticking with Underhaven was by far the more lucrative path. No, she was pretty sure that he walked away because he couldn't stomach the increasingly horrific things that Underhaven did. If that were true then he still had some integrity stored away somewhere.

He would have been Kamura's choice.

They had snuck their way back to the garage lot where Crowley based his activities - his workshop. It was a ramshackle room filled with all sorts of detritus, the air filled with the stale scent of metallic chemicals. From the looks of it, it had been recently roughed up - most likely by the snakes that they had left bloodied back in the alley.

Crowley had been unfazed by the state of his base and had quickly gotten to work packing it up, lugging out large leather cases and haphazardly dumping armfuls of gear into them. Pariah stood at the entrance watching him pack. It didn't escape her notice that most of his gear was illegal.

He gave her a coy look as he packed away a large case of 9mm bullets, 'So, umm, how is this going to work?'

'The main thing that I want from you is information, Crow. If this works out well, perhaps I might ask you to actively gather specific information, but let’s see how we get on.' She spotted his worried look and raised her hands in a placating gesture, 'No one will know that you are informing me. You're invisible, Crow, any info that you give me could just as easily come from hundreds of others. I certainly won't be telling anyone.'

Crowley nodded slowly. He turned his situation around in his mind, still absently packing away the garage. 'I don't suppose I have much choice...'

His statement hung in the air, unopposed.

He ran a hand through his greasy dark hair and sat down on a recently cleared work bench. 'I suppose I should thank you,' he muttered, 'I think you made yourself an enemy in the Snakes - those guys know how to hold a grudge.'

She gave a nonchalant shrug, 'Perhaps. Or perhaps they'll be too afraid to even think about crossing me again. Break the leader and the pack tend to split. Either way, it doesn't really matter.'

Crowley smiled at the reminder of Kruger's fate, 'If you say so, but you haven't met that dude's mean ass sister...'

'Enough,' she interrupted, stepping further into the room, 'Let’s talk about Underhaven, shall we?'

He licked his lips and took a moment to respond. 'Okay... what do you know about them?'

'As I said before, they are traffickers. They act as an underground black market, dealing in illicit materials. It seems they have gotten very good at it. They started out in narcotics but have since branched out and grown. They now specialise in vice. They have a habit of kidnapping young women and... indoctrinating them somehow into becoming sex workers. Those are the girls that reappear, at least; many disappear and I have my suspicions that they are sold on as slaves. They are well funded, they are organised, and they are difficult to find,' she reeled off her knowledge as if she were reading it from a book, and she left emphasis on her final point, looking to Crowley expectantly. 'I've busted pimps with connections back to Underhaven, and a few dealers, but so far I've found no way to reach them directly.'

Crowley listened, his eyes occasionally straying down her body. He couldn't hide his surprise at her depth of knowledge, 'Wow,' he said, 'you really are a super heroine, huh?'

Again he was met with a vague shrug of the shoulders, 'Something like that, I suppose. Now, stop deflecting. Tell me what you know. Tell me where I can find them.'

'Alright, alright,' he took a breath, 'These people are serious business. I was only ever on the fringes, but I saw enough and heard enough to know that they're on another level than most outfits in this city. Like you said, they deal many things to many people, and that gives them far-reaching influence. They got plenty of people on the payroll and they even have a few metas working for them.'

Her eyes narrowed, 'Who?'

It was his turn to shrug, 'I don't know, I only have what I was told. They have a crew of four metas who act as serious enforcers for whoever the head hauncho is. All I know about them is that they scare the crap out of even their own people. Word is that they are kept on side by being allowed to, erm,
partake
of the various materials that Underhaven deal. Apparently they clashed with Lady Avalon a while ago, so it probably says a lot that they are still working the streets. What I
do
know is that there is another meta who helps run the show; they call her the red mistress, and she is some kind of telepath. So as you can imagine, these guys have a lot of firepower.'

She listened to him carefully, the implications of his words sinking in. 'Good to know. I'll see what I can learn about this crew and about this red mistress. Now, point me where to look.'

'That is a tricky one. See, a lot of their safe houses and the like get moved around a lot. Not much would still be where I remember it.'

'But some of it would,' she pressed.

He nodded, 'Yeah. I can point you in two directions. The first is a place they have in the 'gate where they stockpile product and hold it until it can be shifted. In the later days, before I left, they started...'

His gaze dropped to his feet.

'They started processing some of the girls there. Due to its importance as a storage spot for large amounts of product it’s not the kind of location they will have changed. There's another place that they opened up in the 'gate but I never found out where that was - but it was basically a sister site to the place I know. I guess their expansion required more room to operate, and Gallowgate has plenty of places for them to do that.'

She frowned, 'If you only know where one of those places is, then that's one direction, not two.'

'No, no, I wasn't finished. The other place I can point you to is an easy one. You heard of club Surrender? Right in the heart of the Honeypot district? That joint, and probably most of the establishments down that way, is heavily connected with Underhaven. Nothing confirmed, but I'd stake a lot on Underhaven operating out of that club. It’s probably where a lot of your girls go missing.'

Pariah gave a predatory smile from beneath her hood, 'Excellent. Now, where is this storage site?'

Crowley got up from his seat and gave her a careful look, something approaching concern written over his face. 'Look… These guys... With all the influence and funding they have, not to mention experience, they've gotten quite good at what they do. They get into your head, you know? Under your skin. All the girls that they kept holed up in that place... They didn't even
want
to leave, do you get what I'm saying?'

'You're saying they've developed methods to manipulate women, I get it,' she said, waving her hand dismissively, 'And
I’m
saying that they are disgusting monsters who should be visited and dealt with immediately. So tell me, Crow, where am I headed?'

*****

Later...

Pariah sat perched atop the corner of a rooftop overlooking the former depot. The black and green of her tight bodysuit reflected little light and combined with the shrouding black of her cloak, she was all but invisible. It was a good spot to survey the area, and she had been sat there scanning the building opposite for the past thirty minutes. Her eyes scoured the building, drinking in every detail and taking note of the slightest sign of activity.

It was obvious, really. She felt a twinge of embarrassment that she hadn't spotted this sooner. She hadn't thought to look at places like this; she hadn't expected this kind of audacity.

In better times it had been a postal depot for a private courier service. Much of the post that flowed through Gallowgate had once passed through here as a central hub. As the situation in the 'gate worsened the private firm had pulled out and left their depot to public service. Even then the US postal service retired the depot in favour of streamlining their operations to a mega-hub down in the Glades. The increasingly unfriendly nature of the site only hastened their decision.

So it had been left, with seemingly no plan in place to recycle the building into something useful. Or, she considered carefully, perhaps it had been bought by a new private owner and no questions were asked. She made a mental note to check up on that in the morning - a paper trail would be most helpful.

Any notion that the place was abandoned or unused was dispelled with even a cursory glance. Each window had been taped over from within, preventing any visibility in or out of the building, and two vans sat idle in the loading bay around the side of the depot. More telling still, two burly men in casual clothes had stood sentinel outside the main entrance the whole time Pariah had been watching. It was difficult to make out in the light but she was confident that they were both concealing weapon holsters under their jackets.

She supposed it might have been ironic how the depot had been converted into a sinister parody of what it had once been. They could load and unload whatever they wanted from their vans right into the seclusion of the depot's loading bays, and they had built-in storage to easily hold whatever passed through. It was a perfect set up, and it sickened her to think how coldly corporate the whole thing was.

After surveying the scene for long enough, she was satisfied that Crowley's information was accurate and she felt rising anticipation that she had finally found her quarry. Crowley had told her to expect at least a dozen men inside, perhaps as many as twenty. Each would be well experienced in Underhaven's trade and many of them would be armed. There was also a high risk of hostages inside given the likelihood that they were holding kidnapped women.

She considered her options. If the men became desperate it seemed inevitable that they would make use of a hostage, and she wanted to avoid that if she could. That meant hitting them hard and quickly; end the ordeal before any of them thought to turn to such measures. Being shot at also seemed inevitable, so she would need her powers at their sharpest in order to manage that threat - and it would be best if she could keep them from getting behind her. Focusing her telekinesis to such a level required great concentration and it needed her to be able to see the area she was trying to connect to. If they shot her from behind, she doubted she'd manage to deflect it.

She eased herself into a standing position, her cloak catching the wind and blowing lightly over her shoulder. She flexed and tensed her body in preparation, absently checking herself for battle-readiness and limbering up for what was to come. She was still a little sore from the earlier fight with the Snakes, but it was nothing she couldn't handle.

These people had played at slavers for far too long. Tonight the consequences had finally caught up with them. Pariah had no intention of taking it easy on them like she had with the Snakes - they would get no mercy from her.

You're mine, now
, she thought with satisfaction.

Pariah leapt from the rooftop, her fall speeding her towards the street four storeys below and whipping the tail of her cloak into the air above her. As she neared the ground she gripped the air with her telekinesis and guided her speedy descent towards the depot entrance. At the last moment, she focused on the air to hold her and killed all of her speed before dropping lightly to her feet barely a meter away from the stunned doormen.

As her cloak settled back around her shoulders Pariah flashed the thugs a predator's smile, blue embers lighting her eyes from beneath the hood, 'Hi there, fellas. I'm looking for a band of sadistic, spineless miscreants who like to enslave women - any idea where I might find them?'

The astounded doormen shared baffled looks before their brains finally kicked in. They both went for their holsters, reaching for slick black pistols.