Summus Proelium

With a ratty old red backpack hanging off one shoulder, Austen Deleon strolled casually past a Latino man with a shotgun as she made her way through the rear door of the old factory where several members of the Oscuro gang were working on an armored truck they’d managed to steal from a bank job. The money within had been a nice bonus, of course. But the real prize was the truck itself, which was why it had to be taken intact. Some of their people had had an idea about outfitting it with some guns before sending it into their next fight in their war with the Easy Eights. They could even reinforce it with extra armor, and soup up the engine so the thing could get in and out of conflict even faster. Those chumps would never see it coming.

Well, they wouldn’t have seen it coming, if Austen herself hadn’t secretly been the leader of the Easy Eights. Being both a low-level nobody runner for one gang, and the leader of their rivals tended to complicate things when it came to keeping secrets.

Of course, she needed to find a way to explain her people finding out about this plan which wouldn’t expose her link to them. One that wouldn’t throw any other member of Oscuro under the bus. Or at least not the wrong member. There were a few she wouldn’t mind getting out of the way with a frame job. But that could get complicated. Police surveillance that was bribed out of them maybe? Hmm…

Lost in thought about all that, Austen carried the bag through the factory, past the workers going over the armored truck, and headed for the back office. There, she found a gray-haired man reading a porno with his feet up on the desk. “Gus!” Taking the bag off her shoulders, she held it out to him. “Hank said to bring this here.”

Without looking up from the tits he was very intently studying, Gus replied, “You check out what’s in the bag?”

In Spanish, Austen retorted, “Do I look like an idiot to you?” She turned the bag so he could see the padlock on it. It was a heavy duty model, Touched-Tech. Any attempt to mess with it or the bag itself would send an alert to whoever had the remote for it. Beyond that, she knew there were no books or paper inside, no writing for her power to pick up on. There hadn’t been time for her to take the bag back to let Deicide’s people check it out. They had been expecting her here. Besides, it couldn’t be that important if they were trusting some nobody like her to carry it. Important enough to make sure a runner (or any cops who stopped her) couldn’t easily get at it probably just meant it was drugs or something.

Gus still didn’t look up from his porno. Which, to be fair, they were nice tits. Instead, he just grunted. “Not for me.” Turning the page to check out the backside of the model he had been staring at, the man gave a quick motion with his head, jerking it to one side where an open door waited. “Through there, take the stairs down. Boss wants the bag.”

Austen started to move, only to catch herself and turn back on her heel to stare that way. “Boss. Wait, you don’t mean--”

“Do you want to be the one who keeps him waiting?” Gus casually, yet pointedly asked with his gaze laser-focused on the model. “Must be dumber than you look.”

Okay, this… this was going to complicate things. Thus far, Austen had managed to avoid being around her bio-father beyond a few large group settings when he was far away and occupied with the crowd. If she was supposed to personally take this bag to him, they would be one on one. A small, impulsive part of her thought that could be a good thing. Being face-to-face with the monster she hated so much for abandoning her mother would give her a free shot at him. A shot he would never see coming. She had paper with her, naturally. If she could hit him in the right spot with it…

No, that wouldn't work. Not quickly enough, anyway. Not before he could fight back. She was under no real illusions about that. Sure, that small part of herself may have been piping up about taking Cuélebre by surprise, but the rest of her was telling that part to shut up and calling it a moron. It didn't matter how surprised he was, there was no way she would be able to kill him by herself in close quarters before he retaliated. Her power was strong, but he wasn't exactly a pushover. There was a good chance that he was the strongest single Touched in the city in a straight up slugging match. Which anything she did right now would lead to.

No, her best move right now was to get in and out while making as little of an impression as possible. She didn't want her father to pay any attention to her. The primary benefit she had in this position was being invisible, a nobody who most of the gang barely knew existed. It gave her access, a chance to know at least some of what they were doing, which she used to give her real gang an advantage here and there.

Heh, her real gang. As if they weren't also a means to an end. She had done all of this, had brought those disparate gangs together and taken over, specifically to make them strong enough to challenge her father, and one day kill him. But only after they tore apart everything he had, ripped it down around him, left him with nothing. Only then, when she could show the monster exactly who had taken everything away from him, would she reveal herself. Only then would she tell him that all of this had been payback for abandoning her, and her mother. His abandonment had led directly to her mother being drawn into that fucking cult.

He left them alone because he didn't want to be weighed down. He didn't want the responsibility, so he abandoned them. And because of that, Austen had lost her mother as well. She was going to make him pay for that.

But only when the time was right. For now, she needed to drop this shit off and leave without giving her father any reason to even think twice about her. So, taking a deep breath, she adjusted the bag and walked through the door. Fortunately, Gus wouldn't think there was anything odd about her hesitation. It only made sense that the prospect of meeting Cuélebre one on one would be intimidating, even for members of his own gang.

Through the doorway was a set of stairs, as promised. She took them gradually, letting the sound of each footstep echo through the area. It probably wasn’t possible to take Cuélebre by surprise in his own territory, but she wanted to be absolutely certain she didn’t do it even by accident. Thump, thump, thump, going down those heavy metal steps into the basement (were factories even supposed to have basements?) felt like walking to her own execution under the circumstances. Would he hear her heart beating? She wasn’t sure how good his senses were, to be honest. It wasn’t something most people tended to ask. Or at least they didn’t spread the answers.

The basement was wide open, and rather large at almost two hundred feet wide, equally long, with a ceiling a good twenty feet up. But that was to be expected when its primary resident stood about sixteen feet tall. He was truly massive, a fact Austen was reminded of when her eyes immediately fell on him. It wasn’t like there was much else down here. The floor and walls were stone, there was an enormous television taking up all of one of those walls, and what had to be a specially-made sofa built specifically for the man himself. Other than that, he was the only thing down here. He stood right in the middle of the room, staring as Austen arrived. Like he had been waiting for her. Like this whole thing was--

Breathe, Austen. Breathe. He didn’t know her from any other runner in his gang. He was waiting for the bag, the bag. That was all.

Stopping short, she stared up at him for a second. Of course this wasn’t really her first time facing the man. But every other time she’d done so was from within the safety of her paper armor, as Deicide. Or even through the lens of a camera she’d hidden inside the otherwise empty armor. This was different. Now she wasn’t Deicide. She was just Austen, facing Cuélebre.

Facing her father.

“He--” Her voice caught, and she forced a cough while shifting the bag off her shoulders to hold it up. “Here, boss. You wanted this?”

He didn't respond. At least, not audibly. After a brief moment, the massive monster extended his hand slowly and put one finger out, clearly waiting. Austen stared at it, a quick impulse to cut it off with a paper blade flashing through her mind before she handed over the bag and hooked it on his finger. As soon as it was out of her hands, she started backing up. “Well, I’m sure you’re busy with all the… everything. I know my way out.” With that, she was already heading for the steps.

For the first time, he spoke, the words bringing her to a halt. “Don’t you want to see what you were carrying? I know you must be curious. Runners like you never get to see what’s so important. I’ve been in that position, believe it or not.”

Oh, there was so much Austen wanted to say to that. But she contained herself and shrugged. “If this is a trick or a trap, sir, I uhh… I don’t think you need all the theatrics. I didn’t look in the bag. You would’ve known if I did.”

“It’s not a trap,” Cuélebre informed her, in a tone that was half-amused and half-something she couldn’t read. Pride was her first guess, but that would be weird. His other hand moved down, using a single claw to cut through the lock. Then he tossed the bag back to her, watching as she caught it. “Go ahead. You have my permission to look. I promise, it won’t bite.”

Murmuring under her breath that it wasn’t the bag she was worried about, Austen slowly unzipped it. She had no idea what this was about, why the monster was playing this game. Why wouldn’t he just let her leave? What interest could he possibly have in her. What--

Then she opened the bag to look inside, and the first thing she saw… was herself. It was full of pictures of her, photographs from Austen’s childhood, before her mother was ensnared by the cult. That hadn’t happened until she was eleven. Before then, she and her mother lived here in Detroit, with Austen splitting her time between the library and pulling cons on unsuspecting tourists so she could save up money for college. It was… a very different time in her life, one she didn’t think about very much these days aside from using the pickpocketing and lockpicking skills she’d picked up to help her guise as a minor member of Oscuro. And now, here it was, right in front of her. All these pictures, taken at school, or by her mother for their home. Dozens of them, from every stage in her life all the way up until the so-called Church Of The Lamb had dug their claws into her mom.

“She kept all those pictures,” Cuélebre informed her in a low voice. He had moved to sit on that oversized couch, lowering himself into it with a grunt. “They were in a safe buried in a lot near your old apartment. Guess she didn’t trust banks.”

He knew. That realization came screaming its way into Austen’s mind while she was staring at her own image. He knew who she was--this was a trap, it was a fucking trap and she just walked into it! She was right in front of him. Paper, she had paper, that could buy her time to break up through the swarm of troops that were obviously gathering to cut off her escape with--

“I’m sorry.” Those two words cut through Austen’s panic and brought her entire thought process screeching to a halt, her train of thought completely derailing. Cuélebre was staring at her. But there wasn’t glee or vindication in his expression. She… she wasn’t sure what that look was, or what she was supposed to take from his tone.

“I always thought my life was dangerous and stupid,” the monster muttered softly, “before all this. The drugs, the--all of it, I knew it was gonna get me killed. But I didn’t have anything else I wanted to stay alive for. I didn’t really care, to be honest. If I died, I died. Then I had a daughter, I had a little girl. And I told myself, ‘this is it, this is your reason for living, this is how you’re gonna get off that shit.’ Now you’ve finally got something to focus on that’s better than the drugs.

“Thing is, addiction doesn’t work like that. Or, it didn’t for me, at least. I didn’t get help when I could’ve. I didn’t see a professional. Having a kid, maybe that could’ve been an impetus to do the actual work it takes to quit, but it’s not gonna magically turn off the urge like a fucking lightswitch. So, I did it again. I thought it would just be one more time, just to help me chill out a little bit so I could be a good dad and focus. Then one more time turned into another time, and before I knew it, I was hiding in the basement of a crackhouse from the cops and my old dealer. When the cops did show up, I did a runner. Barely made it over a fence with the damn dogs nipping right out my heels. But that was it for me, landed wrong on the other side and just laid there while the cops were coming around the other side. Thought I was done before that orb showed up. I touched it and uhh… well, they didn’t stand a chance of taking me in after that. And I didn’t have any more addiction issues. Having a kid might not have flipped that switch, but turning into this did.” He gestured to his massively-transformed body.

Austen, who had been silent the whole time as she gradually came to understand that there wasn’t about to be a horde of Oscuro troops charging down the stairs, or even waiting for her up there, frowned. The words came before she thought about them. “You’re apologizing for being a fucking addict?”

There was a soft grunt from the monster, as he shifted himself on the couch. “I’m apologizing for my choices. The ones I could control. I chose not to get the help I needed, when I could have. I saw you, your tiny hands and those… those wisps of hair and I could have chosen right then and there to do the work to get clean. I didn’t. I thought I could do it myself, that I didn’t need to get help. I was lying to myself because I wanted it to be easy. I wanted to take that easy way and just flip that switch. I should have done the work. I failed you and your mother.”

He let that hang in silence for several long seconds before adding, “But then, I did something even worse. When I was better, when I was cured by this, I didn’t go back to you and your mother. Believe it or not, I thought I was doing the right thing. At least, I told myself I thought that. Bringing both of you into this life felt wrong. But the thing is, I didn’t check. I didn’t give either of you the choice, and I never went to see how either of you were. Maybe I didn’t want to find out you weren’t. Maybe part of me thought that if I saw that you needed me, I wouldn’t be free. Whatever the reason, I made the choice. I made the wrong choice. I’m sorry, Austen. I fucked up, and I wasn’t there when you needed me. I wasn’t there when she needed me. I made my choices, they were wrong. I uhh…. I went looking for you both after this Sleeptalk stuff started happening. I just wanted to know you were both alright. Found a note she hid about that safe and uhh… and that led to that fucking cult. I never--” He rose to his feet once more, tail lashing out behind him. “I never knew. I never knew because I never checked. And then when I found out the cult was disbanded, I asked a couple people to find one of you. Imagine my surprise when they knew exactly who and where you were. You were right here that whole time. You knew, didn’t you? You knew who I was and what…. you knew I abandoned you. But you still came. You came here to… to confront me about what happened to your mother? You wanted to yell at me, but you didn’t. You just stayed around. Why?”

He didn’t know she was Deicide. He didn’t know what she was capable of. Through a lump in her throat, Austen forced herself to speak. “I don’t know.”

For several long seconds, neither of them said anything else. There was silence. Then Cuélebre finally broke it with a soft, “Do you know where your mother is?”

She didn’t expect that question. Her gaze snapped up, myriad thoughts stampeding through her mind before her head shook. “She… disappeared. I don’t even know if she’s alive.”

“I think she is,” Cuélebre informed her, his voice barely audible. “I’d like to find her. Wherever she is, whatever she’s doing, I’d like to know for sure. I’d like… your help doing that.” He hesitated briefly before pushing onward. “I screwed up, Austen. I screwed up a lot. But I don’t want to screw up anymore. I want to find your mother and help her, if we can. I’m sorry for… for everything. Will you help me find her, please?”

When Austen’s gaze met his, the man was holding his enormous hand out to her. She stared that way, her stomach twisting itself into knots. Her mother. He wanted to help her find her mother, and… and... but she had… but he was…

Her vengeance could wait. She’d waited this long. She could keep it together and play along with him long enough to find her mom. Then… then her mother would be able to see him pay for what he did.

Putting her own comically smaller hand into the man’s offered grip, Austen replied, “Yeah.

“That sounds nice.”