John and Helen Anderson's faces appeared on the screen, looking younger than how Phoenix remembered them. He lowered his eyes to the timestamp in the corner; on that day, he'd only been alive for a year. Alexa was around four. The background of the video was the living room of the Rochester house, the one that burned to the ground in the middle of the night and was never rebuilt. All that was there now was damaged land that no one wanted.
John extended his arm and adjusted the camera angle. He mumbled something that the microphone didn't pick up, and when he was done fixing the setup, Helen took a deep breath.
"Hello, Lex, hello, Nick," she said with a small wave. "In our time, you're both asleep upstairs. In your time...wherever you are right now, I hope you're happy and well."
"There's no way to ease into what we're about to tell you," John continued. "All I can say is that I hope this doesn't change your life for the worse, but you have or had two older siblings."
Have or had.
"Their names were Eleanor and Jack." Helen took another deep breath, shakier this time. "Twins. I had them two years before Alexa. One day, when they were four months old, we came home to find the babysitter tied up in the closet. She had no idea what happened, and the kids were gone."
Her voice was getting progressively tighter, and John squeezed her hand.
"We'd been on an extended leave of absence from work," he explained. "We hadn't yet told our supervisor, Hazel Diop, that we had children, and after they were kidnapped, we decided we weren't going to. If we asked the League for help, news of the search might've reached the kidnapper's ears and prompted them to hurt the twins, so we looked for them on our own. We were the best agents at the time. If anyone was going to find them, it was us."
There was a long pause. Phoenix felt his heartbeat drumming in his ears.
"We didn't find them," Helen said softly. "We didn't find even a single clue. And that meant...I can't be certain what it meant, but it wasn't anything good. And when Alexa came along, we had to make a choice. We knew that the work we did as agents, the lives we led and the enemies we made were why Jack and Eleanor were gone, and we couldn't risk it happening again. We quit the League permanently and left it all behind us to settle down."
"I don't know if we'll tell you any of this when you're older. We might not. This recording is a precaution in case we never get the chance to tell you ourselves. If we lead long, happy lives, and everything goes right, you'll never see this."
It went wrong. It went so, so horribly wrong.
"I'm sending this to my friend, Jacob Walker," John continued. "If anything happens and you need the truth, I have faith that this video will find its way to you."
Helen leaned forward to look directly into the camera, her eyes glassy. "Though I truly hope you're not, if you are watching this..." She smiled and blew a little kiss. "We love you."
The screen went dark. Phoenix stared at it for a long time, and then he blew a kiss back. I love you, too.
"I'm sorry I couldn't get this to you earlier."
Phoenix turned around. Walker was still sitting at the desk, balancing his glass of orange juice on his knee.
"My father died abruptly," Walker explained. "He never got the chance to tell Sofia about the video or leave behind instructions. I found it five years ago, and I did watch it, but I had no idea who you people were or what I should do. So I did nothing."
Phoenix shook his head. "It's okay." Somehow, he found it in himself to smile. "I'm glad you were drunk last night. You probably wouldn't have brought me here otherwise."
Walker laughed and removed the drive from the computer. "Here."
Phoenix took it carefully. It was light as a feather, but what it contained made it weigh a thousand pounds. He was glad, he got the explanation he wanted. Yet now that he had it, now that he knew how complicated it was, he felt numb.
"I should go now," he murmured.
"Of course. Sofia'll drive you back."
"And don't you dare say no!" Sofia exclaimed, stepping out of the elevator she'd just taken down.
Phoenix hadn't planned on declining; he was tired, and walking all the way back to Jethro main would kill him. But after refusing to leave the foyer last night, he understood why she assumed he would be stubborn about it.
"Thanks," he said.
He started toward the elevator, but he stopped when something on the wall caught his eye. It was a framed newspaper, dating back five years. The headline was sensational: Nightwalker Helps Capture Notorious Serial Killer. Police Confirm: Hero, not Enemy.
There was nothing else on the walls. Not a single photo, not a single painting, no tapestries or shelves. Of all the things to decorate with, Walker had framed this newspaper.
Why?
Phoenix slowly turned back around. Walker was watching him calmly. Silently. Sofia was hiding most of her face behind her tablet as she pretended to be interested in the closest cabinet.
"Is that..." Phoenix slowly pointed at the paper, a little afraid of how awful this accusation would sound if he was wrong. "Is that you?"
Walker blinked innocently. "What do you mean?" There wasn't even the slightest hint of panic on his face, and there was no denial, either.
Phoenix swallowed. "Are you Nightwalker?"
Sofia made a noise—a surprised laugh? A worried gasp? He couldn't tell.
Walker kept unwavering eye contact, gently swirling the orange juice. "Now what on Earth makes you think that?" he asked dryly.
"The paper. This." Phoenix gestured around the high-tech work lying around the basement. "And what you said in the alley about helping people—that some people do it anyway, and it is possible to make a difference. Even if everyone thinks it's hopeless."
Walker raised both eyebrows. "Wow. Nearly word for word. I'm glad you liked my speech."
"I thought you were just rambling," Phoenix said, "but you were speaking from experience, weren't you? I read about Jethro. About Nightwalker, the powerless hero. Everyone called him crazy for trying to help the city, but he did anyway."
"Fine," Walker sighed. "You got me." He didn't sound concerned. At all.
Phoenix stared at him, dumbfounded. "Why did you let me figure it out? You didn't have to bring me down here. You could've given me the drive upstairs."
"Because," Walker said, "I may not be a superhuman, but I understand. And if you need help, or someone to talk to, I'm here."
Understand what? Phoenix wanted to ask, but he already knew the answer. It was the 'world' Kate said he was part of, even if he didn't mean to be. The world of superpower complications and villains and heroes.
Sofia was as nonchalant as Walker, waiting patiently by the elevator. Their calm confused Phoenix; he could blab to the press for all they knew. At the same time, he understood that if Walker was confident enough to take this risk, then it only reinforced what Jethro learned after calling him crazy: Nightwalker was not to be underestimated.
"You've been a hero for five years," Phoenix said quietly. "You've done a lot. Seen a lot. Heard a lot."
Walker took a second to answer, clearly confused by where this was going. "Sure."
"Then..." Phoenix hesitated. "Do you know anything about what happened to my family?"
Walker tapped his fingers on the desk, thinking. "The city's full of connections. Secrets. I know more about certain things than I want to know. But regarding the contents of that video, your parents, or Jack and Eleanor..." He shook his head.
It was a longshot anyway, to hope he also had the other answers. "I should get going," Phoenix said.
"Goodbye, kid. Let me know if you ever need help."
Phoenix followed Sofia up the elevator. She was silent on their walk out of the house, and she was silent as they got in her car. He leaned against his seat and watched the view as she drove. The long stretch of road was less ominous in the daylight. The sparse trees and towering gates that had looked like foreboding monsters last night were now just trees and rich-people fences.
"Where are we headed?" Sofia asked suddenly.
"Oh." He realized they had no idea where he was from. "The train station. I'm going to Queens."
Jethro had dozens of stations, but the NJ-NY train only ran through the big one in center-city. In the morning rush, it would take a while to get there, but Phoenix had nowhere urgent to be. He only hoped Sofia was okay with it.
She simply shrugged. "That's fine. I had to pick up some things, anyway." There was a pause, and then she asked, delicately, "What happened with the woman in the alley? Are you in trouble?"
Phoenix glanced at his phone; there were no missed calls or texts from Kate. What Violet told him was meant for the League, but if Jethro was involved, then Nightwalker should be warned, too.
"Have you heard of Ravager?" he asked. "Or the Azure Snake?"
Sofia thought about it for a moment but shook her head. "No. Who are they?"
"Supervillains. The woman in the alley was warning me that they might be in Jethro, and they're planning something."
Sofia sighed. "There's always someone planning something," she mused. "Always."
.....................................
The blood wasn't coming out.
Sharmistha Kapoor rocked back on her heels, her spine aching. She'd spent the last half-hour on her hands and knees, scrubbing the floor with industrial bleach and a brand-new, stiff-bristled brush she had bought after looking up how to get blood out of concrete.
She glared at the stain. Jethro's unsavory problems were no secret to anyone, especially not to reporters, who were always going undercover in hopes of writing the next great exposé. One had contacted Sharmistha, and she, knowing it was a reporter and not a potential drug dealer like he claimed, made the mistake of bringing Evan along to meet with him. The guy got too specific with a question about a missing person, and Evan shot him in the shoulder. Now, while Evan was out returning the guy home and threatening him to shut the hell up, Sharmistha was here, cleaning the mess.
If the 'dealer' hadn't asked the question, Sharmistha would've done what she usually did to reporters: smile, nod, lie straight through her teeth, and redirect them to a gang that wasn't hers. Well, the Nameless weren't technically hers. She just ran the show and fixed everything and kept people in line, but she was only the right hand. The true leader was a behind-the-scenes type, and he, like the leaders before him, didn't bother coming up with a name for his empire. It had started as an elusive ring of criminals in the 40s, doing their self-serving work in the shadows, and the leaders kept the group nameless. But the decades passed by and the underground of Jethro had to call them something, so they got super creative and chose The Nameless.
Sharmistha thought it was tacky, but it was only fair: it was the original leaders' fault for not naming themselves when they had the chance.
She gave the stain one last look. At this point, it could pass for an aged chemical spill or discoloration. This used to be a warehouse, after all. She wasn't going to spend another hour scrubbing just to mitigate the small chance that someone would come upon this and think it was blood.
Sharmistha pulled off her gloves and threw them into the bucket along with the brush. The bleach water bubbled from the impacts, cleaning off her prints. All that was left was to throw this away.
"Hello, Sharmistha."
She whipped around so fast, she got dizzy. The Azure Snake was standing by a column, and he glanced at the floor near her but pretended not to see the stain. He had a black eye but looked composed otherwise.
Sharmistha raised an eyebrow. The Snakes kept in contact with the Nameless, but she wouldn't call it a partnership. She'd never even met the other four; Azure was the spokesperson.
"What do you want?" she asked.
"To talk about a change in leadership."
"You want my position?" She was surprised; the Snakes and the Nameless were two very different types of criminal. "Why? You've got the Snakes."
"The Snakes have disbanded, Black and Amara are dead, and no, I don't want your position."
Sharmistha froze. What had they done to lose two of their members? "So you're the leader now?" she asked.
"The Snakes have disbanded," he repeated indifferently.
"Then what change in leadership are you talking about?"
"A temporary one. Big things are happening, and I need you to do something for me."
Sharmistha scoffed. "I don't take orders from you. If you want control of the Nameless, go kill the leader."
It was an alarming statement coming from a right hand who was supposed to be loyal, but Sharmistha didn't care about her boss. If Ladock died and someone competent replaced him, whether it was Sharmistha herself or Azure or whoever was next in line in the family, it would make things easier for her.
"That's not necessary," Azure said. "I'm not taking over permanently. You'll still need a leader when I'm done."
"Done with what?"
He looked at the ceiling as if actually considering telling her, but she knew he wouldn't. This was a game. "It won't matter to you," he said eventually. "So, what do you say?"
"You're right, I don't care about your ultimate plans, but what do you want me to do with the Nameless?"
"Nothing."
She narrowed her eyes. "Nothing?"
"I want you to do nothing." Azure shrugged. "Put everything you're up to on hold. No dealings, extortions, theft, or making people disappear. I need you guys to lie low."
Sharmistha laughed. She couldn't help herself. He said it so calmly, as if it were that easy.
"I decline," she said, grabbing the bucket and swinging her purse strap over her shoulder. "Goodnight, Azure. Turn off the lights when you leave."
He listened, but not in the way she intended.
Suddenly, Sharmistha couldn't see two feet in front of her. The air was clouded by a thick gray haze. She waved her hand through it and felt nothing. No cold, no heat, no particles of dust or mist. Just dark air.
She looked up. The ceiling lights were still on, but they were only pinpricks in the haze.
"What did you do?" she yelled into the void.
"Is it surprising?" Azure asked, amused. "That I'm superhuman? Everyone's been freaking out."
Sharmistha turned in a circle, trying to figure out where he was, but she couldn't even see his outline. Of course she was surprised; why would she suspect him of having powers when he'd never shown them before or even implied it?
So why was he using them now? What changed?
The darkness started dissipating. She thought she saw a figure in the fading haze and threw the bucket. It turned out to be a column, not Azure, and the bleach water splashed against the concrete and dripped into a puddle. Azure was to her right, standing between her and the door, and as soon as they locked eyes, Sharmistha took her gun out of her purse and aimed it between his eyes.
"Unless you want that pretty little head of yours splattered on the wall," she snapped, "you should get out of my way."
"You don't want to kill me."
Her grip tightened. No, she didn't want to kill him. She didn't want to have to hide a body, and she didn't want to figure out how to keep the other former Snakes from finding out. "Let me leave," she demanded.
"Only if—"
Sharmistha shifted her aim inches to the left and pulled the trigger. As the bullet flew by his ear and he jumped aside, Sharmistha ran past him toward the door. She slammed into it, reaching for the handle...
And it didn't turn.
Sharmistha whirled around. She'd already lost her advantage; there was no harm in her shock. Strange darkness was one thing, but locking a door from afar bordered on crazy things like telekinesis or metal manipulation. If he had that, too, then running away was futile.
"How did you do that?" she asked.
Azure blinked. "Do what? Stop the door from opening?" He shrugged. "I didn't do that. I don't think I can do that."
It was simply locked, then. Damn it, Evan. Sharmistha didn't know what the mechanism was, but he would because the warehouse was his find in the first place. He'd likely latched this door and gone out the back door himself when he left with the reporter.
Azure slowly held up a hand. Tendrils of black were curling around his fingers. It was different from the haze; these were pitch-black and sharp.
She didn't want to find out what they did.
Sharmistha raised her gun again, and at the same time, Azure shot up the tendrils like projectiles. The darkness hit the support beams overhead, and she watched in horror as the metal creaked and screamed as the shadows contorted it.
The section above her came hurtling down, and Sharmistha dove to the side. The tangled beams crashed into the floor where she'd been, and she landed on her shoulder, pain shooting through her bones.
"Nothing's going to change," Azure said, calmly walking around the destruction he created. "I just need you to listen to me for a short while. When I'm done, I'll leave, and you'll never hear from me again." He leaned down in front of her. "Deal?"
Sharmistha glared at him. She still had her gun, but it was a lost cause. She wasn't bold enough to try and shoot him again, and he clearly knew that.
"Fine," she spat.
Azure straightened. "Good. And, don't tell your boss." He winked. "This stays between us."