FTA: State of the Union

Prologue - State of the Union

In Violet Machum’s defence, children operated on a far simpler set of rules than us mere adults did.

Though we often credit the children among us with seeing the world in a whole pallet of colours we otherwise ignore, the fact of the matter is, a child tends to see things in black and white. One is sick, or not. Bored, or not. Lonely, or not.

For the twelve year old girl from South Fen, most of those binaries applied, but the pressing one at the moment was Hunger, which in her case was certainly the current state of affairs. She’d stayed with her classmates for a while, after the explosion. They hadn’t had much of a choice anyway, not until the men in the long coats had come and cut open the door in the roof.

She didn’t know the Grey Men, and so, like any good child would, she had run away, until she was… where, exactly?

She knew this part of town. There was a restaurant, here, a little café called The Basket. Her mother used to take her here. What was the neighbourhood called? Figaro, she thought. The Basket could still be open. They’d let her call her mother there, and maybe let her eat something while her mother came to get her. She didn’t have much money – just her milk money for school.

Thinking she remembered the way, she set off, picking her way carefully. She didn’t want to step on any of the cracks in the road – wouldn’t do to break her mother’s back. My, were there ever a lot of those cracks.

She didn’t know one of the Grey Men was still watching her.

---

Just remember that you need to be back before dark.

Niles, unused to conversations that took place only in the back of his skull, gave a low hum, discarding one empty drawer to ransack the next in series. USB cables were a dime a dozen. Why was he suddenly having such a hard time finding one? I have a flashlight on me.

Well, remember that the rechargeable batteries drain faster. And that we’re not exactly in the best spot to recharge them.

It’s a piezo.

Niles, in a lot of ways, was not unlike the child he’d been keeping half an eye on, over the edge of what was left of the wall of the office he was burglarizing – the office tower abruptly ending on the level he was on, save for one, inaccessible terrace of a partial story above him. He was jaded to strange, now, after a long and hard autumn of it. Jaded to telepathic messages from Scion, and an apocalyptic cityscape, and living inside a bad movie. Hell, compared to his journey before all this, some of this was downright normal. The New Normal, he’d been calling it.

He was a survivor. Always had been. It was turning him into a pragmatist; that’s why he was able to ignore the persistent brown overcast and the crumbling city, and turn his attention downward, finally finding that which he sought – a USB cable and the small, cubic adapter that allowed you to plug it into a mains outlet. Ha. Jackpot.

Communication was one way – Scion was the psychic, not him. If he wasn’t paying attention, there was nothing Niles could do about it but wrap the cable around his wrist and stuff the adapter in his pocket.

Banker says it might rain tonight.

Niles rolled his eyes. Neither Banker nor Scion were pragmatists. Banker’s said that every night for a month.

Maybe. Are you coming back now or not?

Niles considered it – wondering what that must have sounded like to Scion, and how deeply the other Angel could read his thoughts. One more thing.

---

“We-e-ell now. What’ve we got here?”

Violet’s skin crawled. She’d thought she was alone. The voice belonged to a grown-up, a big, bald man, with a torn jacket and torn pants. She’d never had much patience for bald men. A trait from her mother, who seemed to hate certain bald men particularly viscously.

And here she was, red-handed, with what was probably his box of granola bars in her hand. “… Please, Mister. I just wanted one. I’m awfully hungry.”

“Ah… but you didn’t ask, did you? You know what that’s called, don’t you?”
Another man, with long, messy hair, stepped out of the shadow, into what was left of the daylight. “That’s called stealing, innit? Maybe we should teach you a lesson.”

“I wouldn’t.”

---

Niles had learned how to set an effective tail way before he’d ever joined up with the Angels, or even in the life before that, when he’d been a Lead Detective with the National Police Force. It was a skill he’d honed in his misspent youth. He was hardly the best of it – in point of fact, these days he seemed to blow it more often than not, with everyone constantly paranoid and worried about their neighbours turning on them. A child, on the other hand, was well within his remaining skill level to pursue.

The kid had no idea he’d followed her – might not even have realized he’d been watching her ever since she’d run off from the bus. He could hardly leave a child out here alone, now could he? He could see it in her face, and right now he was having a hard time trying to decide if she was more afraid of him or the thugs she was accidentally stealing from. The greasy-haired redneck turned to him, seizing him up, likely realizing that Niles was doing the same, and had already figured on the knife tucked behind the man’s back, under his unbuttoned plaid shirt. Baldy had a pipe near to hand, not that he’d need it – the man was built like a fridge, and while Niles was in some of the best shape he’d ever been in, the only fridges he was built like were the ones you might throw a few beers in.

“The fuck did you say to me, punk?”

Punk. The word had a particular meaning to Niles, not that he spent much time in corrections. Punks were bitches, pushovers, those easily put in their place. It was a term those who knew Niles – or even knew the Grey Angels by reputation – would know was misused. He was tempted to rise up and slap the bastard down – and he would – but he wouldn’t do it by slipping into the easier tongue of the same trashy language these two reprobates had brought to the party with them. “You might want to watch your mouth. There’s a young lady present.”

“Oooh, fancy boy, big damn hero. You her big brother or something, hero?”

Baldy had shoved him. A shove, Niles could tolerate. He was good on his feet. A step or two would set his balance right. “We-e-ell now,” he said, imitating the other’s drawl. Just his luck that he’d find the two surviving tourists in all of… well, might as well just call it Figaro now. “Big man on campus, you are. When you two shared a cell, I know who got the top bunk.”

Baldy was picking up his pipe. “What the hell did you say?”

Greasy was scratching at his back – no doubt going for the knife. Niles allowed himself a calm smile behind his mask – the brushed aluminum more likely to break either of their fists than let them break his nose. “Let’s take one great big step back here, fellas, and let me lay it out straight for you. I’m taking myself a little stroll down this fine trash-heap of an alley you seem to be calling home and I find this little girl. She’s lost, and alone, and hungry. Then I find these two men – that’d be you fellas – who seem fit to thrash her for being hungry. Couple of guys on their probation, from the way you act, probably glad there’s no more police running around to give them the law.”

As he spoke, he was walking calmly backward, a step at a time, pleased to see the men following him. The buildings on either side funnelled the wind down the alley, toward the back, where the two men had improvised the shanty-pantry that the young girl was, excusably, raiding. That meant he needed a little distance – and these men were entirely too pissed at him to let him just wander off.

“… You a cop?”

Niles laughed at that. He was, once – and the kind of lawman who didn’t much like the word cop thanks to its pejorative connotations. But, he reminded himself, the one thing that made him different from the men and women he helped incarcerate – the one and only thing – was that he had a sense of restraint. “Greaseball, you could only wish.”

That was enough, and right on cue, Baldy rushed in. Niles figured he would – men that mismatched and this hardened usually lead with the heavy hitter. He tucked into the man’s charge, getting under foot so badly that it was a trivial matter to grip the pipe just above where Baldy did, and use the man’s own momentum to throw him to the ground. Twisting the pipe free was also trivial (you weren’t very worried about what you were holding when you are falling, after all), and could be done with time enough to smack, almost casually, Greasy’s hand with his new weapon.

Niles had gone through catholic schooling. A wooden ruler across the knuckles hurt. A good thwack from a section of piping? That could cripple a man. Before either of them could formulate a good plan B, he dipped his left hand under his jacket, going just behind the customized grip of his Colt Detective Special for the small canister stashed behind it.

He was unsurprised to find both men hesitating immediately, once he’d held it out into the dying light, where they could see it. “… Yeah, I figure you two had done time.”

---

It wasn’t like any of the fights Violet had ever seen. She’d done a little Judo before, and she figured the Grey Man must have too, because she’d seen her mom throw other adults around like that when she was teaching it. Then, he did something with his hands – it wasn’t a gun, something else he was holding. The two men had shouted at that, like they were hurt or afraid, and wound up running back down the alley, into the street.

She’d hoped the Grey man would forget about her, but she was wrong. He turned and walked back down the alley toward her. Knowing she couldn’t run, she tried to be brave – still holding onto the box of granola bars – but must not have done a good job. When the man stopped, he reached up, and removed his mask – the weird, creepy grey one, with the star carved under his left eye.

“… Any less scary without the mask?”

Involuntarily, she nodded a little, though she wasn’t sure of the truth of it. He was still a stranger. Dark hair and actual faces didn’t change that. She wasn’t supposed to be talking to him, but… “Those two men, they were gonna hurt me, weren’t they?”

“Eh,” The man scratched his beard – he had a tiny beard on just his chin, which Violet thought looked ridiculous, and looked the way they’d run. “… I doubt it. They probably just wanted to scare you. Better safe than sorry, right?”

There was a pause. “… My mom says it’s not smart to talk to strangers.”

The Grey man knelt, letting Violet have a good look at him. He had a gentle face. He looked like a Good Person… but Mom had always told her not to rely on looks to tell if a person is good. “… Your mom’s a smart lady. Do you know where she is?”

Violet nodded, not meaning a word of it. The man reached into his coat, and showed her a shiny brass badge. “… Do you know what this is?”

She took it in her hand, trying to read it by the dying light. “… You’re a police officer?”

“That’s right.”
“You don’t look like a police officer.”

The man made a lopsided smile. “I get that a lot. My name’s Detective Clayton. What’s yours?”

“I’m Violet Machum. From South Fen.”

Niles nodded. He knew the Machums from South Fen, or at least a Machum. “… Is your mother’s name Nala?”

“Yeah. How’d you know that?”

“I’m a detective. We know everything.”

He chuckled, and she laughed, and when he offered her his hand it didn’t seem so scary as the last time. “Come on now, Miss Violet. Let’s get you home.”