Worm (Parahumans #1)

Chapter 19: Agitation 3.2

I was pleasantly surprised to find that the bus line that ended at the old ferry put me only a fifteen or twenty minute walk away from the loft that Lisa, Alec and Bitch called home. I could be spending a fair bit of time there before I gathered enough information or earned enough trust from them to turn them in to the authorities, so the convenience was nice.

It was a nice day, if a bit windy. The air was crisp and cool, the sky was a brilliant and cloudless blue that was reflected in the ocean, and the sand of the beach sparkled in the light of the sun. Tourists were already crowding the railings or migrating to the beach, pinning down the corners of their beach blankets under picnic baskets and shopping bags. It was too cold to go in the water but the view was spectacular. I enjoyed it for a few moments before venturing into the crowd. I walked with my hands in my pockets, as much to protect the stuff in my pockets as keeping the worst of the chill out.

Living in Brockton Bay, you learned stuff like that. How to protect yourself, what to watch for. I knew that the Vietnamese teenagers who were leaning against the railing of the boardwalk were members of the ABB, even if they weren’t wearing their gang colors, because the only Asian kids in Brockton Bay that had that much swagger were already part of Lung’s gang. I knew the tattoo on the arm of the guy lifting boxes into the florist’s van that read ‘Erase, Extinguish, Eradicate’ meant the guy was a white supremacist because it had the letter E repeated three times.

The man in the uniform who was talking to a shop owner wasn’t a cop or security guard, but one of the enforcers the merchants of the Boardwalk hired to keep the undesirables from making trouble. They were why the Boardwalk didn’t have beggars, addicts, or people wearing gang colors hanging around. If your presence offended or worried the tourists, they would step up to scare you off. If someone shoplifted or panhandled in the Boardwalk, they ran the risk that one or two enforcers would drag them behind one of the shops and teach them a lesson. Anything more serious than shoplifting or panhandling, well, there was always someone on duty in the floating base of the Protectorate Headquarters. Any of the store owners or employees could call the likes of Miss Militia, Armsmaster or Triumph in, given a minute. The tourism revenue the Boardwalk picked up earned a lot of goodwill from the government and government sponsored capes.

I headed off the boardwalk and into one of the alleys leading into the Docks. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw one of the uniformed enforcers staring at me. I wondered what he was thinking. Good kids didn’t hang out in the Docks, and I doubted I looked the part of a guileless tourist.

The abandoned factories, warehouses and garages of the Docks all blended into one another very quickly. The colors of the building exteriors weren’t different enough from one another to make buildings recognizable, and the people or piles of garbage that I had been unconsciously noting my previous visit had all shifted locations or been replaced. I found myself glad for the artistic graffiti and the row of weed-entangled power lines that I could use as landmarks. I did not want to get lost. Not here.

As I arrived at the foot of the huge factory with the Redmond Welding sign, I found myself wondering whether I should knock or just go on up. I didn’t have to decide – the door opened just a second after I’d come. It was Brian, and he looked as surprised to see me as I was to see him.

“Hey,” he said, “Lisa said you’d arrived. I thought you had school.”

It took me a few seconds to get my mental footing. Any demonstration or mention of Lisa’s power kind of had a way of doing that to me, and that was on top of having a conversation sprung on me without a chance to prepare. “Changed my mind,” I said, lamely.

“Huh. Well, come on up.”

We headed upstairs. I saw Brian was wearing different clothes than what he had been wearing earlier in the morning. What he was wearing now bore a closer resemblance to his clothes from the day before – a green sleeveless t-shirt and black slacks with a lightweight fabric, like yoga pants or something.