The League

Chapter 24 - Dangerous Plans

Phoenix went to Walker's the next morning. He suspected they set up their security to recognize him, because he found the front door unlocked as usual. The entrance hall, living room, and kitchen were all empty, so he took the elevator to the basement.

The tightrope setup was gone; Walker had let him give up on that, and he was now learning basic fighting and self defense. Just yesterday, only hours before Evan and Liling dragged him into their row with Sharmistha, he'd learned how to throw a proper punch. The next lesson would be avoiding a punch. He wasn't skilled enough to do what Walker did to him during practice—grabbing his arm and flipping him onto the mat—so simply dodging was his best bet.

Sofia was sitting at the medium monitors, watching the news. She glanced over her shoulder at him and smiled in greeting. "He should be back soon."

"That's okay. I'll wait." He gestured to the screen. "Anything interesting?"

She went still. "No. It's rather...uneventful."

That should be a welcome change for Jethro, but she didn't sound happy about it. The news anchors were showing off charts, and though Phoenix wasn't knowledgeable enough about the city's usual statistics to fully understand them, he could still see that crime was down.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

Sofia casually sipped her coffee. "Nothing."

"You're lying."

"Look at the news, Phoenix. Literally nothing's wrong."

"And that's what's wrong, isn't it?" He knew he was right when she sighed into her mug. "Tell me what you're thinking."

She sighed again and muted the broadcast. "Every summer," she explained, "there's one night that experiences a strange wave of crime. Someone assassinates a rival, someone retaliates, a bank gets robbed of a specific vault, drugs get moved, things like that, all in one night. There's never anything flashy enough to get the attention of the National Guard—it's always isolated incidents, but many incidents, enough to spread first responders thin. The next morning, there'll be a news segment about the spike in activities. The first one was five years ago, and it's happened on a random summer night ever since. They call it Crime Night."

"Crime Night?" Phoenix repeated. "That's a little..."

"Basic, I know, but that's what the boneheads at Jethro News Central called it, and it stuck. No one came up with decent alternatives." She shook her head. "We still don't know how it happens, if someone plans it and gives the green light, if the gangs mutually decide to do their work at once, or if they just copy each other until the dominoes start falling. Whatever it is, the underground has embraced it. It would take a miracle to prevent it entirely."

"Do you think this summer's Crime Night is happening soon?"

"I don't know," she said quietly. "It's always Walker's worst time of year, not only because of the night itself but also because of the investigative and cleanup work that has to happen after. And now, with Ravager and Azure around, and the mysterious stall in activity?" She tightened her grip on her mug. "It feels like the calm before the storm, like everything's about to come crashing down."

Phoenix took a chair at the table, realizing it was all connected. "I think Azure has something to do with that stall," he admitted. "The Nameless stopped their activities because he made them."

"How do you know?"

"Evan and Liling forced it out of Sharmistha, and then I ran into Azure himself." Phoenix rubbed his face. "Let's just say my cover's blown, and I've been kicked out."