Ace in a Hole|Chemical X Trilogy (Book II)

Miss a Little, Lose everything

"Y'know, I don't like this mystery stuff, Arturo."

"Me neither," admitted Arturo ominously.

I just huffed and rolled my eyes.

I knew he meant about me, but I was not saying anything till I saw his mystery first.

Stiff and dizzy though I was when I stood, I had the strength to get up normally enough to follow him. I felt kind of like I was still dreaming otherwise or maybe that I woke up inside an entirely different body and was having trouble getting used to a whole new heft and height. I shook it off— or tried to.

Idly, I shoved my hands into my pockets to hide their shaking, but then I noticed most of my clothes were basically shreds. With a shrug I just shoved my hands in what was left of the pockets, anyway. There was enough to lean on. That was all that mattered to me. Though, not having boots was kind of a pain. Socks in alleys? Not the best mix. Stepped in oil, dragged it with me making it easier for stuff to stick to the material. There was a matting of gravel, and garbage, and even a nail.

Cringe. Yelp. I threw it against the brick wall.

It was weird that I never thought about it before, but Grubber must have had soles like a gorilla to walk barefoot in a junkyard. Going barefoot was better than grimy socks, though. I lost those right after the nail.

We went deep into a twisting maze of alleys, staircases, ladders and even hopped a low roof or two with saggy shingles that crumbled like coffee cake when we slipped along it. We scooted through spaces between buildings that were too narrow to even call them alleyways, closing in around us almost too tight, but then I was pretty lean and Arturo just all-around small.

I had to admit that we were entering into places I had never been to. The skin on my back crawled— maybe my spine itself was doing a bit of crawling on its own too, but I was preoccupied with my surroundings more than myself at the moment. In a city I prided myself in knowing so well, this clandestine sector was like discovering a family secret that changes the whole family history. Nah, more like finding out you had this crazy birthmark on your back that no one told you about and you found it accidently in a room of mirrors. I almost forgot we were diving beneath sea level here to find Grubber.

Well, Grubber could rearrange himself like a cat even before the green. If anyone knew how to hide I knew no one better for the job, and Arturo must have been hiding with him? They were like a pair of strays.

I knew Grubber was more thin-skinned than he let on about things. I mean, he did insist on talking to no one but us for ages, cuz we were the only ones who understood his raspberry tongue. I never would have guessed he would have slunk off like this unless he was up to something.

This was when I noticed that we were not alone. It was not the graffiti; though, it made me uncomfortable not knowing who made it. I thought I knew all the great artists, but there were some secret genius works of art here that had to make me wonder if I really was dreaming.

I stopped.

"X Means Extinction," one read; it may not have been the biggest but it was the most skilled with pinks, greens, oranges, whites, and outlined in sharp black.

I bristled like a stray cat myself now on the wrong turf. They could have just been talking about the Powerpuff Girls being out of the picture, and yet... I really couldn't just not know about this place, could I?

Was it all new? Without the Gangreen Gang was there already people trying to fill in the gap left from our absence? The underworld was brutal for competition, and the reality of that was slowly sinking into my soul. First their art, then their figures started to appear.