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Kid Win looked up at the Shatterbird and felt...nothing. No fear, no anger. Just emptiness.
Maybe it was shock; he’d certainly heard enough about it from his regularly-scheduled therapy sessions to recognize the symptoms. Seeing your best friend killed right in front of you and being completely and utterly helpless to do anything about it has a way of inducing trauma.
Really, they shouldn’t have even been there. They’d been ordered to stand back and let the Protectorate deal with it, but...it was the Nine . In Brockton Bay. He and Dennis had both decided that they needed to do something, even if it was just search and rescue.
Funny how life has a way of subverting expectations.
He wasn’t sure why he wasn’t dead yet. He clutched his pistols in each hand, holding them in a white-knuckle grip as if they would do him any good. The glass he used to focus the beam had been shattered, and the resulting shards had rendered both devices completely useless.
It felt like they stood there for an eternity, just looking at each other. There was something oddly intimate about the moment, like two lovers gazing into each other’s eyes. Or a predator sizing up its prey.
Finally, though, the silence broke. A thousand glass shards clinked off each other as the Shatterbird crouched down to Kid Win’s level, levelling her gaze at him once more. She spoke to him in a faint Middle Eastern lilt.
“You know,” she started, “we all had to choose someone. A single person we would nominate to the Nine. Some of the others chose the real nasties. Hookwolf, Lung, even Miss Militia. But I chose you.”
Something in Chris’ brain snapped at that statement. He just couldn’t understand it - him? A worthless tinker without a single heroic accomplishment to his name, chosen by the Shatterbird? She’d killed Dennis, and he’d been more the hero than Chris would ever be.
“I’m sure you don’t truly understand the ramifications of that yet,” she added, her voice still in an off putting sing-song, “but I have an opportunity for you. You can walk away, free as a bird. You just need to do one thing.”
She reached into her dress with one hand, and drew out a simple handgun. He’d seen them before, of course, it was hard not to when you deal with criminals. He’d never handled one himself before, though. Just getting his laser pistols through the approval process had been a struggle.
She offered it to him with one hand, holding it by the barrel, and he took it, almost out of instinct. He knew that he should feel fear, or maybe relief? His brain was a mess, but he still felt detached from the situation. He was...angry at himself for not being angry.
He examined the gun for a moment, keeping the barrel pointed at the Shatterbird. He slowly, shakily, held up the gun. It was almost a point blank shot, and he’d practiced with his laser pistols enough to trust his aim.
I chose you.
What had he done? He’d never killed anyone. He’d barely even captured anyone. He had a whopping four inventions to his name, and that was counting both his pistols! She’d had a better candidate right in front of her, and she’d executed him without a second thought.
So why? Why had she chosen him? Why give him the gun? Was it a test? If he shot her, would that be proving himself as Nine material? But if he didn’t, she had no reason not to kill him right there. She’d already taken Dennis.
His mind raced, eyes squeezed shut, hands trembling as he desperately tried to work out what to do. There had to be a trick, a game, something she was doing to him. Somehow, she was messing with him, and he had to find out why.
“-id, Kid!” A voice broke through his comm, piercing the haze on his mind. His eyes snapped open, seeing nothing but a single glass shard stained red with blood.
“Yeah, I’m here.” Kid Win spoke, but he was surprised at the flat tone of his own voice. Perfectly level, without a hint of emotion or inflection to it.
“Oh, thank god. What are you doing out there? You need to grab Clockblocker and get back to the Rig, now! This isn’t a game, Chris!”
As if he didn’t know that already.
He walked over to his board, pointedly looking away from his friend. Or what was left of him, anyway. He climbed on, boots dripping from the blood that had pooled around and under his feet while he was standing there like an idiot.
Slowly, he lifted off the ground, but he didn’t head back. He went straight up until he could see over the entire city, even if half of it was blocked from view by smoke.
He rotated in a slow circle, listening intently to his comm, cycling through the channels.
“Need backup on 23rd and Main, Merchants are ma-”
“-reatures charged us, we’ve managed to barric-”
“-epeat, I repeat, Shatterbird spotted on 23rd and Main, moving west-”
He took off to the west as fast as his board would allow him, handgun still held in a white-knuckled grip. He soared over the city, and quickly realized how much distance Shatterbird had made. Was she just fast, or had he really just been stuck in place for so long? God, what a fucking idiot he was. He had her right there.
She’d killed so many people. Thousands, it had to be. Lives that could have become something amazing, lives that already were amazing. Was there some pattern behind it? Was this just a part of it? Has she done it before?
He shook his head. He couldn’t afford to let himself get caught up in his own mind. Not again.
She’d killed Dennis.
Eventually, he saw her. A glimmering bird of vibrant glass, soaring through the sky in front of him. As he drew closer, he heard her song, a wordless whisper on the wind, accentuated by the shattering of glass below her. He held up the gun in both his hands.
For the last time, Chris looked at the Shatterbird, and all he felt was rage.