Nocturnal Gale

Chapter 14: A Silence Louder Than Words

Dusk can't remember the last time she slept eight hours straight, but it feels good. She's fresh and energized the next morning, and she makes herself a decent breakfast, from the barely working fridge in the other room.

She's not underground this time, but rather in a run-down building near collapse. It has windows, though, making it nicer than the rest of her spots. The sun climbs and peaks through the glass as Dusk sits at the table eating some toast. She feels close to normal, as close to normal as someone who's an actual Weapon can be.

She goes over to a space where the floor is made out of tile and lifts a piece away, grabbing a laptop from the hidden space. Then she gets a blanket from the armchair. She wraps it around her shoulders and goes over to the table again, sitting down and opening the laptop.

She fires it up and enters the passcode. The screen blinks on and she clicks a few keys, then browses through her camera views. They're technically not her cameras. She just hacked into all of the other gangs' ones so she can see what's going on around here.

She's learned a lot since she first started out as the guardian of the alleys, and has made a lot of efficient progress so far, the cameras being a part of it. It's been two years now, and she's gotten used to this life. It's not like she can help it. She can't go back to being normal—she never even had a chance to be normal. She's a weapon, meant for destruction, and though she doesn't follow that path, rather turning her destructive ability against the ones who made her, she can't just forget her past and move on as a civilian. That's not how this works. Especially since she can't forget. Her mind is special—only a few people in a million have photographic minds. Though it's often helpful, she wishes she isn't one of those few people. But she is. She's part of the one percent that has an unusual ability to remember things completely and exactly as they were seen, read, heard, smelled, touched, et cetera. She can never let anything go. Time doesn't heal for her, time doesn't dull the pain. Everything she's experienced, everything she's seen, stays with her always and forever, like she's living the moments over and over again.

The only thing that has kept her from going insane over the years are the walls she has raised in her mind, corridors and keys and locks that keep most of the memories at bay, and the realization that without her mind being the way it is, she would never have gotten out of Deathbolt. She would have been turned into a stone-cold killing machine if she had been normal. Being how it is, however, she'd been smarter than even the gangsters in Deathbolt had realized and had remembered her life as a one-year-old. She'd figured out what Deathhunter's plans had been for her and she'd played them. For almost thirteen years she'd lived a façade.

Then Shade had entered the picture and he'd almost died at the hands of Quickknife, but Dusk saved him and got him out, then escaped herself. She'd struggled to find her place in the world, her and Shade both. Together they'd forged new paths for themselves which made them into what they are today—him, a sniper for one of the good gangs fighting for justice, and her, a Weapon turned against the ones that had created her.

For her, it was hard, especially the struggle of her mind. It was hard to learn how to deal with it, but she was victorious in the end. Now she can focus on the present, consciously pushing the past behind her walls, until it's only a throbbing in her skull that she's gotten used to. Sometimes at night, when she doesn't actively shut her mind off for the night, the memories break the mental dams and flood into her dreams, forcing her to live her life all over again.

Dusk looks up from the laptop and stares out the window into the warm shafts of sunlight without seeing it and sighs. She wishes she were many things other than who she is now. But that is not her choice to make. All she can do is stop this from happening to anyone else. Though it seems impossible, Deathbolt will be brought down. Eventually, one step at a time.

Dusk stops her reverie and turns back to her task. Since everything seems calm in the alleys this morning, she switches from the cameras to the files she'd downloaded from Deathbolt seemingly ages ago. There are many, but the ones she focuses on are the alliances between her ex-gang and others.

She'd taken care of Guttermouth for good hopefully, at least for a while, and then there's Carakter, which she hasn't been able to hit effectively yet. But they respect her which is a start, and it will require more planning to take them down since they are the gang that has been allies of Deathbolt the longest and closest in the United States. If she can take Deathbolt out of the picture though, every other gang will suffer or go down altogether.

Deathbolt is the center of the black market trade and they have their fingers in everything, everywhere imaginable. They're centered here in New York City of course, but they have stations throughout the United States, into Canada, and down into South America. They also have outposts in Russia, Europe, and even a few in Africa. Australia has always been an area of rivalry since it's a favored spot—easy to maintain and defend since it's an island, and isolated—but the gang that controls it currently holds strong sway and won't give away their hold so easily.

Dusk wonders how long Deathbolt will take their defiance and how it's turned out over the last two years. She can't believe it's only been that short of a time since she got out. It seems like a lifetime. But when she lies awake at night, staring into the dark, she's reminded of her short life outside of the one she'd known since she'd been two years old, no matter how hard she tries to forget. She can't forget, just not consciously think about it, so that's what she does. She's used to the life she leads now; helping people and stopping gangs is what she's best at, and that's what she'll continue doing.

Dusk sighs again and turns back to the alliances. There's White Salmon, but they're in Seattle, so a little hard to get at right now. They also keep a low profile and don't make too much obvious trouble, so she's not going to worry about them for now. There's another gang in Russia that has close ties but...they're in Russia. Yeah, they'll have to be dealt with later. There are a few other gangs that have minor, unstable ties with Deathbolt that aren't anything to worry about at the moment. All in all, if she can take down Deathbolt, many of the other problems will go away.

Dusk shuts off the laptop and puts it back into its spot in the floor.