Chapter Text
Being a criminal was exhausting.
As Sandra Sookdeosingh and her people rode in a dilapidated school bus through a deserted town, she wondered if her life would have been better if she chose differently. Monarch, the Titan-monitoring organization, had offered her a way out. If she had given up her friends, she’d be pardoned of every crime she committed.
But she had rejected the offer and chosen to run. She had chosen loyalty, but she had also chosen a life in which she slept with one eye open and never ventured outside without watching her back.
Trying not to ruminate, she looked out the window at the dust-covered landscape of abandoned buildings. Cracks covered the ground and an endless cloud shrouded the upper half of the ghostly apartments. Dirt-covered cars lay in the street, as aged as the massive stones around them. Rows upon rows of vines crawled up numerous walls. Across the street, branches sprawled from high windows.
Luckily, this town hadn’t been completely destroyed like the other ones Sandra had gotten to in her travels. All she knew about this place was that it lay at the border between California and Nevada. Back when this town had a name it was attacked by a Titan during the Mass Awakening. An old battered road connected this place to another abandoned city. With the camera hanging from her neck she snapped a picture out of the bus window, capturing the dusty remains of the town. But she wasn’t here for some kind of fucked-up disaster tourism.
She was here for the people who still lived in the area. Sandra withdrew into the bus and regarded the ten people with her. They were her group. Adversary. Their leader Ren Serizawa drove, not speaking except with his hard, glancing left eye. His black eyepatch covered his right eye.
For a great chunk of the civilized world, Adversary were terrorists, extremists, and vigilantes. But for her they were friends, colleagues, and even family. Her old life had been destroyed by Titans. By Monarch. But then this group found and saved her. Adversary’s modus operandi was simple. Monarch continuously fucked the world over. It was Adversary’s job to unfuck it as well as they could. Someday, the civilized world would see the big picture.
They came toward an old underpass. People in rags, old clothes, and blankets milled about on and off the road.
“This is a good stopping point!” she yelled up to Ren.
They weren’t exactly the Avengers, but as the group accumulated people they increased the amount of things they could do. Stopping Monarch wasn’t about running and gunning. It was mostly about undermining their public image.
“We’ll station here,” Ren said.
They rolled to a stop on the uneven gravel. Sandra opened the door, grabbed the wall, and hung out of the bus. She blinked and wiped the dust from her eyes. The people milling about several yards away didn’t notice them yet. All of them were potential customers. Surely they’d take a few condoms. Right?
“Set it all up,” Ren commanded.
Sandra swung back in and turned to Martin. The guy was lollygagging.
She snapped her fingers. “Martin. You’ve got the supplies.” Just because they were a non-profit didn’t mean their work had to be subpar.
The guy blinked before going for a bag of condoms. He gave them to her. Beside her, two other people carried a foldable table out the doors. One of her crew reached for a bag of needles. Ren slowly strode outside. Mitchell Walker retrieved an umbrella from the back where a couple seats had been removed to make space. He moved with urgency and caution, but she supposed that was normal for military vets like him. His sidearm always strapped to his belt, the dude was a weapon with a weapon.
Sandra looked around, then found their newest member. Beneath the red bandana on his forehead his eyes seemed a little bewildered. “Andrew,” she said. “Bring out the Narcan kit.”
“Should we do this?” he asked. “Give drug addicts free needles?”
She reminded herself to be patient with this guy. He was new, but eventually he had to learn.
“Hey,” Sandra said, stepping over to him. “Whether or not we give them anything, these people are gonna shoot up. We’re making sure they at least do it with clean needles. The Narcan’s gonna stop an overdose. Come on, bring it here.”
Within twenty or so minutes they had set up their table of supplies. Sandra stepped out and stood at the table alongside Ren and Walker.
“Any funny business?” Sandra asked Walker.
The gruff Thai dude shook his head. “Nah,” he said. “I ain’t see no one follow us.”
The wind died down and so did the dust. Slowly, the people beneath the underpass turned to look at their table of goodies. Sandra looked around at the buildings around them. The faces of old people, younger people, and even children looked down at them from the old and rundown apartments.
Andrew staggered up to them as the town’s inhabitants ambled toward the table. Before long, several of them broke into a run. A bunch of young men and women sprinted excitedly toward Adversary’s table. Sandra met the first guy with a pair of condoms.
“Plenty more where these came from,” she said, handing them to him. Andrew nervously gave a wrapped needle to another dude. Ren handed off a few items before retreating inside the bus. Another experienced member of Adversary, Sandra’s roommate, came out to replace him at the table.
Within the hour people swarmed them. Walker went back in and came out with more supplies. As they dished out all kinds of contraceptives she recognized a few faces. One of these familiar people padded up to her. Sandra took a minute to recall this lady’s name.
“Donna!” she said, smiling. “How are you?” When she noticed the small child being led by hand her smile almost faltered. She didn’t know Donna had a kid here.
“I’m good, Clarisse,” Donna said. “You haven’t seen my little girl before, have you?”
“I haven’t,” Sandra replied. The little girl waved at her and Sandra waved back. Donna took a pack of birth control pills and turned to Ren.
“Thank you, Ben,” she told him. “You have a good day now.”
Donna turned and ambled away, holding her daughter by the hand. The little girl turned back to look at them, her hair in a mess. Sandra waved to her. Ren kept his arms down and remained impassive.
When Sandra had started using the fake name, Ren had complimented her on it. As troubling as it was to keep track of her pseudonym she had no choice. Sandra liked these people, but they could never know who she was. She couldn’t afford it. Perhaps this was what it had felt like for Ren whenever he went by Ben Tanaka.
She didn’t one hundred percent get how he felt about his often-used pseudonym. She’d known him for almost two years yet she still felt like she barely knew him. She guessed that whatever he did in Apex before founding Adversary had been hardcore.
Something caught her eye.
She squinted through the growing crowd at the dusty bricks of a nearby building. Graffiti streaked across the wall spelled out ADVERSARY. Monarch had exposed them. It had been the worst and best thing they could have asked for, because despite Monarch having dragged their reputation through the mud, they had a growing base of online fans. They had even made an Adversary Twitter account. Their expert hacker, Abigail Neil, had a way of preventing outsiders from tracking them. Luckily, Monarch had exposed no name save for Ren’s.
They had been told their group name wasn’t comforting. She rolled her eyes at this. Duh, our name isn’t meant to sound comforting, she thought. Nothing about the globe’s situation with Titans was comforting. Taking the world back from them wasn’t gonna be comforting either.
Sandra lifted her camera and took pictures of their charity operation. She planned to send these pictures to Abby, who would leak them into online chatrooms. Adversary would prop itself up and chip away at Monarch’s reputation until world governments decided Monarch wasn’t worth the trouble. She knew from experience that a camera was more dangerous than a gun.
Ren Serizawa tapped her shoulder. She looked at him and he leaned in close to her ear. She barely heard him over the crowd’s chatter.
“We must go soon,” he said.
“Hang on,” she said. “The longer we stay, the more we get to know the people here.”
Ren nodded, probably knowing she was right. But his eyes narrowed. His spidey senses apparently still tingled.
“It puts us at risk,” he grumbled.
“We been to this joint five times,” Walker chimed in. “Makes it easy to track us.”
Sandra sighed, but couldn’t deny their point. Being repetitive would make Adversary predictable and that could get them killed. Despite their growing rapport with this community they’d have to abandon these people for a time. Being a fugitive was exhausting. Welcome to the life you chose, she thought.
_______________________
If one took the path from the clearest road, it would lead to the old ruins of an iron-ore mill on the edge of town. It was from here that Harper and his four fellow soldiers had followed the vagrants. These vagrants all seemed to move in the same direction with eager steps. Like a pack of stray dogs expecting to be fed, they made their way to the middle of the ghost town. The people had paid no attention to their gray van. Eventually they had parked the van and closed in toward the target on foot. They kept the yellow school bus in sight.
It had become impossible to build things out here anymore, so every building Harper laid eyes on had become a dusty monument to antiquity.
Harper and his men weren’t soldiers in the mainstream sense. Most regular people would consider people of his caliber to be terrorists. That was fine with him. His allegiance would never be with those people anyway. Their petty judgements and opinions didn’t matter.
Here they crouched in the shadows of a dilapidated building. Harper aimed his rifle at the crowd and searched through his scope for the man who would be nearby. Soon enough the man strode out of the bus door. He put his sights on him and studied his Japanese face.
“Give me the picture,” Harper murmured to his subordinate behind him. Within seconds he produced the picture and handed it to him. Studying the picture, he nodded.
“Is it him?” Austin asked.
“It’s him, alright,” Harper said. “Ren Serizawa.”
What was Serizawa doing here? Putting his rifle down, Harper asked Austin for his binoculars. Once he had them he watched the group known as Adversary. The various members of Ren's group set up a foldable table and stood an umbrella on top of it. The beggars and drug addicts of the wretched city gathered in a crowd around the table.
Harper knew better than to underestimate the actions of a man who could fake his death. When Monarch revealed his vigilante group to the world, Colonel Jonah had been impressed. Not only had Serizawa survived the violent fall of Apex, but he had built his own team afterward.
However, it appeared that today they were up to nothing more than handing stuff in bags to the needy people in this town. Rebecca came next to him and took pictures of the scene with her camera. Harper put his binoculars down. It didn’t matter what Adversary did here today. All that mattered was that he was one step closer to searching out where Ren laid his head at night.
It was time to go back. “We must let the Colonel know,” Harper said, turning around. “Let's pull out.”
The others nodded.
Harper considered himself a prizefighter. And the ultimate prize was Ren’s ORCA. Once the Colonel had that, they could do everything they had dreamed of doing for years.