Chapter Text
June 2011.
I stood outside the Iron Wheel. I could hear the music playing from within, and the boisterous calls of the drinkers packed inside. It had taken me three weeks of patrolling the streets to even find a member of the Empire Eighty-Eight. It had taken me another two weeks to follow that man to a group of other gangsters, and then another week to find this bar. Tonight, I was going to take on every Empire member inside.
I had a single source of vision from within, an Empire gangster I’d run into last week. I’d knocked him out with my power, but the PRT had released him for lack of evidence within two days. He was currently being treated like a king by his friends, buying him shots and huge mugs of beer, all to celebrate his surviving an encounter with “The Torturer.”
Not my choice in name, obviously, but it was what the media had taken to calling me. I could admit that my methods weren’t pretty, but they were my only option. Of course, all they wanted to talk about was my “pain touch” power, and not the number of crimes I’d stopped, the number of Empire goons I’d taken off the street, if only for a short time.
I checked my costume. All black clothes, a black cloak, and a white mask. It was just a featureless plastic mask, bought from an art store near downtown. I could change how it looked with my power, giving it a more fearsome appearance to my enemies, and a softer one to those I was trying to protect. In either case, I looked serious. Like a real cape.
I slammed the door open. Half the bar turned to look at me, and I felt my bugs spread out through the crowd. One of them yelled in shock, stumbling to his feet. He pointed at me. I smiled under my mask.
“Torturer!” he roared.
The rest of the bar turned to look, and I gained a complete hold over the entire room. For as much as my nickname annoyed me, it was useful in moments like this. Fear had a grip over the room.
To their eyes, I glided forward, making straight for the man who had yelled. In reality, I began to slowly navigate the room, poking each man in turn, gaining access to their sense of touch. They tried to lunge at my image, but he swirled his cloak about, blacker than black, and vanished, reappearing a short distance away. I continued my circuit of the room as “Torturer” led the men on a wild goose chase.
I reached across the bar to tap the bartender on the arm. He was digging around beneath the bar for his pistol. I left him be and continued to loop through the bar, poking everyone I could reach. Another man had fumbled for his phone and was frantically sending a text message. All it read was “he’s here.” I wasn’t worried. I’d be gone before reinforcements arrived.
The more they chased after me, the more they thought about the Torturer, the deeper my power’s grip on them became. One of the men just tried to run, out the front door. I flared pain across his body and he went down screaming. The bar froze, staring at him in shock. From their perspective, “Torturer” had never touched him.
I tagged the last three men, then used my power on everyone at once. It was the simplest way I had to disable someone. I could blind them and deafen them, but I was still just a teenage girl. I had limited options for stopping someone from just running away from me. With touch, however, I could make them feel anything: bugs crawling across their skin, a thousand bee stings, or hot fire spreading up their clothes.
I often just went for pure pain, the kind you felt deep in your bones when you hit your elbow wrong, or stubbed your toe, only spread across the entire body. The entire bar hit the floor at once, some of them landing on top of each other. I alone remained standing. I tuned out their screams of pain.
None of these men were arrestable. Half of them just had Empire sympathies and probably weren’t full members of the gang. This was just about sending a message, warning the Empire that I was onto them. That there would be consequences for the rank-and-file who decided to stick with them, even after this. My power didn’t go away quickly, either. Each of these men would lead me to more Empire hangouts, and hopefully eventually to an Empire cape.
I surveyed the scene. Satisfied that I’d debilitated everyone inside, I turned and stepped back out onto the street.
Something was wrong. A mist had descended while I’d been inside. Instantly, my power hooked onto a new sense, one I’d never felt before. It wasn’t anything like seeing, or hearing – it was more like feeling. I could feel myself inside the cloud. No, I was feeling myself through the cloud.
This was no mist. It was Fog.
I turned and sprinted away, trying to get out from within the yellow cloud that surrounded me. I held my breath, but it was hard. I was already half out. The text message I’d ignored – he hadn’t just been calling reinforcements. Fog must have been hiding nearby, waiting for me to attack. How had they seen me coming? Was I really that predictable?
I reached out to Fog’s senses. I had to do this quickly. I wiped myself from his “cloud sense” at the same time as I created a feeling of me turning to the side and running down a nearby alley. I felt the cloud shift, moving to track the sensation of me running away. I turned left, moving in the opposite direction.
No one else could see me, not at the moment. Fog must have been stationed here alone; maybe they’d posted capes all over the city, at places where they’d thought I might strike. If they had, they hadn’t told my targets. They’d kept it a surprise, kept it within the inner circles of the gang.
I tripped. I’d been thinking too hard, too focused on Fog’s senses. As I stumbled, I instinctively drew in a breath. I gagged, feeling the fog burn its way down my throat. A moment later, I burst through the cloud, free and clear. I continued manipulating Fog’s senses, leading him to believe he was chasing me further and further away.
I tried to breathe in some fresh air, but I couldn’t. It was like my whole body was burning up. Dumb. I’d been so dumb, going after them in the open like this. I’d just made myself a target. All for what? Hurting a bar full of idiots?
I slowed to a walk, drawing in slow and short breaths. Every one of them hurt. I needed to go home, to rethink my strategy. I’d been a fool, and I could have died tonight. It was almost summer break, anyway, and I was set to go spend it in Pennsylvania with Gran. I’d take that time to rethink my approach. I refused to let it end here, with nothing but a few hurt Empire guys to my name. I’d make that gang bleed, if it was the last thing I did.
I tried a deeper gasp of air, but it hurt just as bad as before. There was a tightening in my chest. I winced. I didn’t know enough about how Fog’s power worked. I was sure that, eventually, the pain would go away.
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