Killing Olympia

For a woman who was supposedly really hard to find, Lucia made it pretty simple to track her down. The first two locations were a bust, but the third was such a dead giveaway I almost thought it was some kind of trap. I wasn't used to things going my way so easily, but finding Lucia eating spicy takeout on her apartment floor surrounded by an armory of weapons I couldn't even begin to name was the clearest sign the universe has ever given me. I landed on the fire escape outside her window as gently as I could, and watched her play some video game on a boxy little TV set. The entire room was dark, save for the flashing explosion of pixels coming from the screen, lighting up the entire place. This has to be some kind of joke, right? I spent another ten minutes searching the area, combing the shadows and straining my ears listening for anything that sounded out of place, but…no. There she was, folks.

An arm's dealer wearing pajama bottoms, a stained white vest, right in the middle of crates packed full with ammunition, machine guns, pistols, grenades, and weapons I wasn't even sure the government might know about. But if this is the way the world wants to pay me back as of late, then yeah, sure, I'll take it. So I shoved the window open, and immediately got hit by enough voltage to kill someone. Not me, obviously, but whatever cat burglar who was either desperate or stupid enough to even try it would get totally fried. I shook out my hands as Lucia startled and stood up, spilling her cup of noodles and stumbling over her own two feet. She opened her mouth, but I was in front of her one moment, and had my hand on her mouth the next. She tensed and stayed still. I slowly looked around. Nobody else was in here except for a weird looking cat staring at me from the corner. I narrowed my eyes at it, and it did the same. Something about me and cats that doesn't sit right with my gut. I looked back at Lucia.

"Relax," I said quietly. "I'm gonna pull my hand off your mouth, and you're not gonna scream."

She nodded, eyes still wide and hands still raised. I could almost feel her heartbeat. A sleeve of tattoos down one arm and a piercing hanging from her nose. Grungy in the metal sense, with olive skin and old tan lines.

Slowly, I let go of her mouth and backed away. Lucia let out a gasp of air, more for show than anything else. I stopped choking people weeks ago. Turns out people don't like getting their throats crushed or whatever. Bad look for a superhero just trying to save the day, and guys like these end up telling you whatever you want to hear if it means they don't die through a lack of oxygen. Lucia knuckles away the saliva on her chin, then sighs.

"Gonna give me a heart attack, jeez," she said, grabbing the controller off the floor and hitting pause. She snapped her fingers, and the lights turned on. I couldn't help but be impressed. You didn't come across a lot of people who had homes in Lower Olympus with, well, electricity for one, and smart lights for another. She looks at me, a hand on her hip, then at the guns surrounding her. She hangs her head, then massages her eyes. "Screwed?"

"Dead to rights," I said. "Impressive collection. I personally like the guns that don't look like guns."

"Yeah?" she says, grinning at me. She points to one box beside me with a sleek, silver piece that almost looks a little too advanced to belong on Earth. "I got that one for two hundred thousand. It doesn't even shoot real bullets! It just gives people cancer or migraines." She shrugs. "Depends on the setting, I guess. Really crazy stuff."

Before coming here tonight, I first thought about letting Lucia go. After all, a part of me didn't even think Lucas was telling me the truth in the first place. But a gun smuggler doing business when half of my city is falling apart and when gang bangers are looking for ways to grab hold of what they can before Lower Olympus finds its feet again is just begging me to fold you in half. She was either stupid or confident, but with that flare in her eyes, I figured she was used to getting pressed by people more powerful than her. Shame, then, she'd never met me before.

"Cool," I said, shutting the lid over the silver rifle. "First of all, you're heading somewhere nice and cozy, probably a government black site for the rest of your life." Lucia frowned. "Second of all, I came here for info."

She paused, then raised an eyebrow. "You're not here to ruin my side gig?"

Side gig? What the hell was her main gig?

"No," I said, then thought for a moment. "On second thought, kinda. But I need to know a few things before I leave you either inside-out or so deep inside a hole you'd wish you were inside-out. Your choice, really."

Lucia sat on the TV set, rubbed her temples, then swore. "No other options, is there? Want money?"

"Five seconds."

"Fine, fine!" she said, then swore again and groaned. "Anyone else threatened me this way, and they'd be dead in a couple of seconds. God knows if I try to shoot you the damned bullet would ricochet and kill me, too."

"Smart," I said, folding my arms. "Now, what do you know about Apollo?"

Lucia frowned. I'll give her credit, she didn't look old enough to have been around during the Olympian's time, but if there's one thing I've learnt in the past few months, it's that looks really don't matter. Not when it came to what people knew about this city. "Apollo?" she asked, biting her thumbnail. "Haven't heard that name in a few years, tell you what. Fairly good-looking guy is what I remember. Had a thing for some kind of petty thief, right?" I waved my hand for her to continue. "Yeah, I knew him, I guess. Same way people know you, bi-proxy. That's all."

"Lucia," I said flatly. "I've got things I need to do tonight, so stop making this difficult."

"Someone's serious," she said. "I usually hear a bunch of guys saying you're a lot more intense, kinda edy, but I guess you are a teenager You remind me of myself way back in the day. Killed about five people before I even really learned how to drive. I even got their names tattooed." She pulled up her vest and pointed to her ribs. "See?"

The weirdos I meet, I swear.

"We're not the same," I said. "And get back on topic. I don't have the time tonight."

And this was about Bianca. For once, my heart wasn't steady and I only kept my arms folded because my hands were shaking. I wanted to grab her. I wanted to threaten her. But I was trying out this more…gentle approach. It got me further than I usually did with Sam, and it probably would've worked with Ares if Sentry hadn't turned my eardrums into blood pulp. At least, that's what I want to tell myself. I wanted to save Bianca in a way that wasn't so violent, that wasn't so…me. But I was desperate for an answer, because I wasn't going to see her tonight without at least some kind of plan in my mind on how to deal with the thing inside of her. If Lucia was buying time, then sure, we'll just take this outside. If she just wanted to rile me up, then she was doing a pretty damned good job of it, too.

My fuse isn't long, and we all know by now what happens once it's lit.

Lucia waved her hand through the air, then said, "Fine, yeah, I knew him. People in this business cross paths eventually. You and I haven't met until tonight, but it was always bound to happen. What about him? Didn't he die a while ago? Never got any funeral invitations, which broke my heart. I even had the kid's phone number."

I tensed my jaw. These were the kinds of people Lucas had Ben dealing with even younger than I was? "Yeah, he died because of people like you. But I'm here to ask about his powers. They were different from ours."

"You're different from everybody," she muttered. "But I guess you're right. The kid was special."

"What do you know about them?"

She smiled a little. "Information comes at a price, sparky. What do I get in return?"

"I don't cripple you."

"Fair game," she muttered. "All I knew about the kid's powers was that it wasn't always him in control. He'd have these…episodes, kinda like he'd have some kinda bloodlust all of a sudden and go for your throat. He wasn't a killer. He'd even make sure our binds weren't cutting through our wrists. A real sweetheart. God, I miss him. Kids like you can learn a lot from a guy like that. Long story, short, though, he'd still have his moments, and those were the times you dropped what you were doing and ran. You could usually negotiate with him, maybe as he flips around and throws a couple of one-liners at you. Then some nights he'd cave in a guy's skull with an old tire iron."

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

I tensed my jaw, then dug my fingers a little harder into my bicep. "What happened afterward?"

Lucia shrugged. "He'd vomit and start trying to make a corpse respond to 'are you okay?' as we all watched. It was creepy seeing him lose his shit over killing someone, almost like he couldn't remember doing it."

That's a lot worse than I thought it would be. Did the other Kaiju experience the same thing? Almost like someone had flipped a switch and made them want to slaughter and consume whatever they could get their hands on. Suddenly, it made a lot more sense why they could so easily throw caution to the wind and lunge for the kill. They weren't the ones doing the slaughtering. Something else entirely was festering inside of them, doing the work.

"Someone who once knew you told me you knew about his powers," I quietly said. "How to handle them."

Lucia slowly shook her head. "No. I don't. I tell you anything about that, and you'll think I'm a—"

"I don't think highly of you, not one bit. You're already on a shortlist heading for an awesome basement with barely any light and fewer human rights available than I've got fucks to give about your sob story. Tell me."

She grinned and pointed at me. "Now that's spicy. Superheroes just don't have that anymore."

"Four."

"Fine!" she said. "Christ, I was just lighting up the mood. I kidnapped the kid once, for about… How long was it again? Four, maybe five days? It felt like an eternity, but Shrike fucked me over big time, and there are a few things you don't do in this world, and fucking with Lucia Flores is the eleventh commandment. Was I proud of what I did to the kid?" She shrugged. "This is a brutal business, sugar. I've seen kids younger than you get torn apart and thrown into a landfill. I've seen old men have heart attacks in the middle of a gunfight and die. Nature's cold, and sometimes so is this industry. I wanted to make something clear, and so I had to make myself very, very clear." She glanced across the room, where an old piece of rebar, stained with blood, was encased in a glass box and sat on a box of machine guns. I swallow bitter saliva as she continued talking, her voice quieter. "Casualties of war, kid."

I gave myself a ten second count before I did anything that wouldn't help me right now. I slowly paced around the room, looking at all the weaponry, this massive, million-dollar arsenal hauled up inside a crummy apartment building that reeked of mildew and cigarettes. I looked outside the window and massaged the back of my neck, and man, this city was dark. Dumpster fires lit rubble-filled streets. The bark of gunfire was a sporadic echo. And it stank of sewage, of bodies, of homeless people hopelessly wandering through ruins searching for shelter.

I've done a pretty spectacular job so far.

No wonder the folks up in the Upper West want 'real heroes' back.

Deal with that you can, when you can. The rest will fall into place.

It better, Ry. You owe these people that much.

"Hey, Olympia?" Lucia asked. "Are you alright? You're not planning to murder me, are you? Because I'll tell you anything you want. Hey, how about I become your lady on the ground, huh? Whatever you need, I've—"

"How badly did you beat him?" I asked quietly, turning around. No golden eyes. No flares of electricity. My gut was cold as I walked up toward her and stopped close enough for Lucia to look up at me. "How long?"

She swallowed and looked around, then put on a weak smile. "Look," she stammered, heartbeat rising. "Shrike's the one that nearly got every single one of my people killed. Good people. People who weren't even all that bad, not compared to him. He went back on a deal and I had to make sure he learnt his lesson. He was harder to catch, and so was the petty thief, but the kid was…too heroic. He stuck his nose in every purse snatchers' business. Maybe he was just a little too pure hearted, y'know?" She rubbed her palms on her thighs as strands of hair came loose over her face. "I made him bleed a little, sure, but it was only meant to bring Shrike out of hiding. The fucker didn't even come and get him! So…I kept going. And going. Until one night, the kid stopped bleeding, stopped crying, and just looked at me with these eyes, these purple fucking eyes, and…" Lucia's eyes clouded over, then she shook her head and looked away. "There was something inside that kid that wasn't right. Something not human."

"Similar to the Kaiju that attacked the city, the one that was infecting a whole lot of people?"

She nodded slowly. "Yeah, like that one, except this one was…smarter. Not as reckless."

"How smart are we talking?"

"He hunted us down," she whispered. "I beat on him for a day and a half. The next three or so days, he spent making us run from one alleyway, one hideout, one apartment to the next. A lot of the boys gave themselves up. A few more of them died from exhaustion and fear. That wasn't him anymore, that's what I know for sure. The kid was methodical. Fuck me, I'm an arm's dealer, I've seen death, I've seen it on battlefields and I've seen it right in front of me countless times. I've sold to governments and I've sold to terrorists, but that?" She crossed herself and stood up. "The devil might be in this city, but that boy…" Lucia smiled. "He made you look like Peacemaker."

I stared into her eyes, so dark and walled-off you could almost see where exactly her morals stopped and the rest of her began. I've stared into Lucian's eyes, I've stared into my father's eyes, and her's were exactly like theirs. Practical. Hard. Ready to make a decision that might hurt, but hey, at the very end, the job always gets done.

"Why'd he let you live?" I asked.

She scratched the back of her head, then said, "What happens after you leave? I go to prison?"

"No," I said. "You've probably got people who can get you out and enough money to buy yourself a new life on some beach somewhere. You're going to a basement, and you'll stay in that basement until further notice."

She smiled a little. "Sure you don't want to hand me over to the cops? That's what you Capes always do."

"My trust is a little shot," I said. "I'd rather keep an eye on you myself. Now keep talking."

"It's a war zone out here, you know," Lucia said wistfully, walking past me and tracing her fingers over the boxes of weaponry, almost as if they were priceless jewels. "Million dollar market right now for people like me. My hay-day is well and truly past me, but Lady Death knows a thing or two about the arms trade and…other trades." She paused, then spun around to look at me. "Have you ever heard of the superhuman organ market, Olympia?"

My gut coiled. "What?"

She tapped her nose. "You're barely scratching the underbelly, and the longer Lower Olympus is in this condition, the bigger a hub it becomes. The ELS makes business very hard across the ocean, but the States are free range now. I can't fight you, you'll take me to whatever basement you want and keep me there, but I can help you."

"No chance," I said. I've done this too many times by now. "How did you stop him from killing you?"

"How you stop anyone," she said, shrugging one shoulder. "Drugs."

"What kind?"

"Lots of them. A cocktail of things that would get even Lucian flustered."

I grabbed her vest and shoved her against the drywall. She winced as electricity crackled and the lightbulb above us flickered. "Lucia," I whispered. "Stop talking in fucking circles and just answer the goddamned question."

Her jaw was tense, but she still found a way to smile at me. "Someone you care about has it, don't they?" She laughed through clenched teeth, then I raised my fist, cutting her off. She swallowed, then said, "It's something foreign. Nothing like it over here. It's rare enough for it to go well into the hundreds of thousands of dollars for barely a drop. A cartel owns the majority, calls themselves Nova Sangre. Nobody sees them, but their product moves. A lot. But they're the kind of people who don't like getting talked about, but they're also the kind of people who know how to get you out of a tough situation." I made electricity crackle around my knuckles. She winced, then spoke faster. "Stardust! That's what it's called. I managed to get the kid to inhale it, and it knocked him out flat. But there was this stench. Then his costume started screaming, almost like it was alive or something. I didn't stick around long enough to know what happened next. All I know is that was the last time I ever crossed his path."

Becca was going to have to do me another favor, but this time, I was going to tag-along. She knew better about how to deal with things like this, so the moment I got home, I was…shit, Bianca. I pulled out my phone and checked the time, then cursed. How long ago did I say I'd meet up with her? Fuck. I let go of Lucia and rubbed my aching neck again, then rolled my shoulders. Lucia leaned against the wall, suddenly breathing a lot deeper now.

I hesitated on calling Bianca, not in the presence of some chick who called herself Lady Death.

Instead, I called someone who owed me money.

Kincaid picked up on the first ring. "You called me faster than I thought you would."

"Ever heard about a woman called Lady Death before?" I asked. Lucia blinked, then straightened.

"Fifth page, five names down," he said. "Goes by Lucia Flores. Not her real name. The FBI pulled her bounty because she had a habit of sending skulls to their address. You're telling me you've already found her?"

"And about a million dollars worth of artillery and ammunition," I said. "But I'm not giving her to you."

He almost sounded like he wanted to argue, but instead sighed. "Can I trust you'll keep her in captivity?"

"I'm Olympia," I said to him. "By the time she's down the street, I'd be in front of her."

"What about the weapons?"

"Have 'em," I said. "There's nobody else I know who can take care of these things without wanting to either sell them or use them, which you better not do, or else the deal's off, and you've got yourself another issue."

"Already got enough of those. Don't need a demi-god on my ass, too," he muttered. "Alright. I'll send a unit to come and get them. I'll ping your phone and they'll be cleared within the half hour. Good job, kid. I'm liable to ask you questions for you to pass onto her. She's an enemy of the state and wanted in almost every country you can point to on a map." My phone buzzed, and… I started to smile as my mouth got wet. Holy shit, I just made six grand in one night! I felt like throwing my fist into the air and celebrating, but we're professionally here. Oh, man, I'm gonna buy Bianca the biggest back of popcorn ever. Hell, the machine if she wants it. "You're an ace. Keep it up. Can't offer you much else in the way of thanks except for wire transfers. The phone's got its own separate banking app. It's…almost within the bounds of what's legal. Just spend it wisely. Money's valuable, alright?"

"Got it," I said, forcing the grin off my face. "Don't take long getting here. I've got places to be."

"Copy that," he said "Kincaid out."

The line went dead. I breathed out shakily, then turned to Lucia. "Thanks for your help."

She snorted. "You either leave me a paraplegic or I talk. Not hard to choose."

"Smart," I said, grabbing the controller off the ground and sitting on a box of grenades. I hit play, then spoke over my shoulder at her. "In the meantime, you're gonna tell me where these guys are, and make it quick."

Because I've got a girl I need to take out on a date tonight.