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Chapter Text

Empire of Sin

A Worm AU

Chapter 1: Down Payment

The air in the Docks tasted of salt and rust.

It was a taste Taylor was growing accustomed to, a flavor profile that defined the routes she took to avoid the one place she was supposed to be. Winslow High was a black hole that warped the city map, forcing her into long, meandering orbits through neighborhoods she barely knew. Today’s trajectory had taken her toward the bay, where the skeletal remains of forgotten warehouses stood silhouetted against a sky the color of dishwater. The library, her usual sanctuary, was still a dozen blocks away.

She walked with her head down, the hood of her worn sweatshirt pulled up. It was a useless defense, a thin layer of fabric against a world of threats, but it was all she had. It made her feel smaller, less of a target. Here, the graffiti wasn't the proud, stylized tags of the Empire, nor the coiled dragons of the Azn Bad Boys. It was older, faded, layers of forgotten names and crude symbols painted over one another until the brick walls looked like bruised skin.

A flicker of movement, a raised voice. Taylor froze, melting back into the shallow alcove of a boarded-up storefront. Her heart gave a familiar, painful lurch. Trouble was a predator, and she was an expert at playing dead. She held her breath, listening.

“…don’t have it. I told you. Business is slow.” The voice was older, strained, with a thick, rolling accent that reminded Taylor of old gangster movies.

“Business is slow for everyone.” This voice was younger, sharper, laced with an arrogance that set Taylor’s teeth on edge. It was the sound of a bully who knew he had the advantage. “That’s why you pay for protection. So business doesn’t get… slower.”

Taylor risked a peek. Across the street, in front of a small shop with a faded green awning that read “Scapelli’s Delicatessen,” three figures stood over a man. The man, presumably Mr. Scapelli, was stout, with a fringe of white hair and a white apron stained with what she hoped was tomato sauce. The other three were easy to identify. Their jackets, adorned with sinuous, roaring dragons, marked them as ABB. The one speaking had a cruel, narrow face. Another, broader and taller, idly slapped a short length of metal pipe into his palm. The third just watched, his hands in his pockets, a smirk playing on his lips.

“I have nothing for you,” Mr. Scapelli said, his chin held high, though Taylor could see the tremor in his hands. “Go back to Lung. Tell him an old man sends his regards.”

The leader chuckled, a dry, humorless sound. “Lung doesn’t want your regards, old man. He wants his tribute.” He took a step forward, invading the shop owner’s space. “Or maybe we take it in trade.” He gestured vaguely at the storefront.

“You’ll do nothing of the sort,” the old man snapped, his fear finally giving way to anger.

It was the wrong thing to say.

The sharp crack of knuckles against bone echoed in the quiet street. Mr. Scapelli staggered back, a hand flying to his jaw. Before he could recover, the one with the pipe drove a kick into his shin. The old man cried out, a raw sound of pain, and crumpled to his knees.

Something inside Taylor snapped.

It was the locker, all over again. The helplessness. The casual cruelty. The smug faces of the tormentors who knew no one would stop them. They were bullies. And she hated bullies.

Her power, a constant, low-level hum at the back of her mind, swelled into a symphony. She didn’t have to look for her swarm; it was already there. Spiders lurked in the cracks of the decaying buildings. Wasps nested in the eaves of the deli’s awning. Flies and gnats and buzzing things without names swarmed over overflowing trash cans in the nearby alley. She reached out with her mind, a silent, irresistible command.

She stayed hidden, her body pressed against the cold brick, but her senses expanded. She could feel the delicate brush of a thousand pairs of legs against concrete and wood, the paper-thin whisper of innumerable wings beating the air. She drew them in, a living cloud of black, buzzing fury, keeping them low to the ground, a creeping carpet of chitin and stingers.

The ABB thugs were laughing, the leader leaning down to grab a fistful of Mr. Scapelli’s shirt. They didn’t notice the tide until it was upon them.

The first sign of trouble was a choked gasp from the pipe-wielder. He slapped at his neck, his eyes wide with surprise. Then the smirking one yelped, dancing back as a wave of black bugs swarmed up his legs, crawling under the cuff of his jeans. The leader recoiled, shouting in a language Taylor didn’t understand as wasps, bold and angry, dove at his face.

Chaos erupted.

Taylor directed them with a cold, precise anger. Spiders crawled into their open mouths when they screamed. Wasps and hornets, the true shock troops of her swarm, targeted eyes and exposed skin. Flies, thousands of them, formed a thick, disorienting cloud around their heads, their buzzing a deafening roar.

The thugs flailed wildly, their bravado evaporating into pure, primal panic. They slapped at themselves, stumbled over each other, their shouts turning to shrieks of pain and disgust. The pipe clattered uselessly to the pavement. After ten seconds that felt like an eternity, they broke and ran, sprinting down the street while still trying to beat the clinging, stinging insects off their bodies.

As quickly as it began, it was over.

Taylor pulled her swarm back, her heart hammering against her ribs. The insects dispersed, melting back into the urban landscape as if they were never there. The street was silent again, save for the distant cry of a gull and the ragged sound of her own breathing.

Across the street, Mr. Scapelli pushed himself to his feet, groaning. He looked at his own hands, then at the empty street where the gang members had fled, his face a mask of bewildered shock. He patted himself down, finding no insects on his person. Then, his eyes scanned the street, searching for his unseen savior. He pulled out a cellphone, his fingers jabbing at the keyboard as he brought it to his ear, speaking in rapid, urgent Italian.

Taylor watched from the shadows, a sliver of pride warring with a tsunami of fear. She had done it. She had helped. But now she had to disappear. Being a hero—or whatever this was—meant being a ghost.

His eyes swept past her hiding spot once, twice, then locked onto her. He saw her. His expression softened with gratitude. He lowered the phone slightly and gave a small, hesitant wave, beckoning her over.

Panic, cold and absolute, seized her. She turned and ran without hesitation.

Her feet pounded against the cracked pavement of the alley, her only thought to put as much distance as possible between herself and that man. A witness. A complication. She risked a glance over her shoulder—no one was following. She pushed herself faster, rounding a dumpster rank with the smell of old fish.

And ran straight into a solid wall of tailored black cloth.

A pair of strong hands gripped her shoulders, steadying her. Taylor’s breath caught in her throat. She looked up into a face that was calm, clean-shaven, and utterly unthreatening. The man was in his late thirties, perhaps, with dark hair and eyes that seemed to see more than they let on. He wore a simple, well-fitted black suit. He was not a gangster. And he was not a cop.

"Easy now," he said, his voice a low, smooth baritone. He released her shoulders and held his hands up in a placating gesture. "You're not in any trouble."

Taylor stared, unable to form words, her mind racing. Who was this? How did he get here so fast?

"Mr. Scapelli is very grateful," the man continued, his gaze unwavering. "And so are we. That was quite the display."

He knew. The realization hit her like a fist to her jaw. He knew it was her. Her anonymity, her most precious shield, was gone. She took a half-step back, ready to bolt again.

"Please," he said, and the sincerity in his voice held her in place. "We're not your enemy. My employers… they don't appreciate people like the ABB making a mess in our neighborhood. You did us a service today."

Our neighborhood? The phrase snagged in her thoughts. Employers?

"You scratch our backs," the man said with a slight, knowing smile, "and we scratch yours. That's how it works."

He reached into his breast pocket, and for a terrifying second, Taylor thought he was pulling out a weapon. Instead, he produced a small, stiff rectangle of cardboard. He held it out to her.

It was a business card. The cardstock was thick, cream-colored, with a subtle texture. On it, printed in simple, centered, elegant black script, was a ten-digit phone number. At the top of the card was a logo, the unconventional downward curves of a golden something, sort of like a horn.

"What… what is this?" Taylor finally managed to whisper, her voice hoarse.

"An opportunity," the man said simply. He pushed the card into her trembling hand, his fingers briefly brushing hers. They were cool and dry. "My employer believes in talent. You have talent. If you're tired of watching bullies win, if you want to do more good… then call that number. Someone will be waiting."

He gave a short, polite nod, as if they had just concluded a business meeting. Without another word, he turned and walked calmly out of the alley, heading back toward the delicatessen.

Taylor was left alone, the silence of the alley pressing in on her. She looked down at the card in her hand. It felt impossibly heavy. It was an answer to a question she was too afraid to ask, a door to a room she never knew existed.

She could throw it away. She could run home, crawl into bed, and pretend none of this ever happened. She could go back to being invisible, helpless, a victim-in-waiting.

Or she could call.

The instructions had been maddeningly simple. No password, no secret knock. Just a time, a place, and an order.

Fuller Street was quieter than the main thoroughfares, a vein rather than an artery in the city’s circulatory system. The businesses here were older, their signs weathered by years of salty air. Taylor stood across the street from her destination, the business card a phantom weight in her pocket. “C’è odore di casa,” the elegant script on the sign read. It smells like home. The irony was a bitter taste in her mouth.

Her heart hammered a frantic rhythm against her ribs, a drumbeat of fear and anticipation. This was stupid. This was insane. She was walking into a meeting arranged by a man in a suit who appeared from nowhere, on behalf of a person she couldn’t name. But the memory of the ABB thugs, of Mr. Scapelli’s pained cry, and the subsequent, intoxicating thrill of her power actually working for someone other than herself, propelled her forward. She crossed the street.

A small bell chimed as she pushed the door open. The scent of garlic, oregano, and baking bread washed over her, warm and inviting. It did smell like home, just not hers. The dining room was dimly lit and sparsely populated. A quiet couple shared a plate of pasta in one corner, and a solitary old man nursed a small glass of red wine in another. The decor was aggressively traditional: dark, polished wood, red-and-white checkered tablecloths, and walls covered in framed, black-and-white photographs of smiling families and Italian landscapes.

Taylor’s worn sneakers felt loud against the polished floorboards as she approached the counter. A sturdy-looking man with a magnificent grey mustache and a spotless white apron stood behind it, wiping down the gleaming chrome of an espresso machine. He looked up as she approached, his eyes neutral.

“Can I help you?”

Taylor’s throat was dry. “The… panino,” she managed, her voice barely a whisper.

The man’s expression didn’t change. He simply nodded, reached under the counter, and produced a small, plastic number on a metal stand. The number was 7. “Take a seat,” he said. “Be right with you.”

She paid for the sandwich with the crumpled bills she had, her hand shaking slightly. The man didn’t seem to notice. Taylor turned, clutching the number, and scanned the booths. Her eyes landed on Table 7.

And her blood ran cold.

A man was already sitting there. He was dressed in an immaculate tan suit, the fabric looking impossibly smooth and clean in the dim light. A newspaper was held up in front of his face, completely obscuring him. All she could see were two hands, nails neatly manicured, holding the paper steady. He didn’t seem to have noticed her.

Every instinct screamed at her to turn and run. This was a trap. This was a setup. But she had come this far. Taking a shaky breath, Taylor walked over to the booth, the number clutched in her hand like a talisman. She slid onto the vinyl seat opposite him. The man didn’t move. The newspaper didn’t so much as rustle.

The silence stretched, thick and suffocating. Taylor stared at the crinkled newsprint, her mind racing. Was she supposed to say something? A code word? She didn’t have one. She felt like a child who had wandered into her parents’ dinner party, hopelessly out of place.

Footsteps approached. It was the man from the counter. He moved with a practiced efficiency, placing not a sandwich, but a small, rectangular package on the table between them. It was wrapped in plain brown butcher paper and tied with simple twine. He gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod towards the man behind the newspaper before turning and walking away.

The package sat there, a silent testament to the reality of her situation. This was it. This was the job.

Slowly, deliberately, the newspaper folded down.

The man was older than the one in the alley, maybe in his late forties, with a sharp jawline and sharp, eagle-like gray eyes. His salt-and-pepper hair was perfectly styled. He wasn't handsome in a conventional way, but he radiated an aura of absolute, unshakable confidence. He placed the folded paper neatly on the table and finally, finally, looked at her.

His gaze was intense, not hostile, but analytical. It swept over her—from her cheap, worn-out hoodie to her nervous, fidgeting hands—and she had the distinct feeling she was being weighed, measured, and judged.

“You’re punctual,” he said. His voice was calm, professional, with no discernible accent. “That’s a good quality.”

Taylor just nodded, incapable of speech.

“My name is not important,” he continued, his eyes never leaving hers. “What is important is that we have a common interest in seeing this city’s vermin population reduced. You demonstrated a certain… flair for pest control yesterday.”

He leaned forward slightly, his voice dropping. “We value talent. But talent is only half of the equation. Discretion, reliability, professionalism… these are the other half. This is a test. To see if you have them.” He gestured to the package with a subtle movement of his chin. “Inside the QuickMart five blocks from here, on Jenner Street, you will find a man named Giorno. He’s with the construction crew working on the corner. You will give him this package. You will say nothing else. You will then walk away. Do you understand?”

Another nod. It was all she could manage.

“Good.”

He reached into the inside pocket of his suit jacket. Taylor flinched, but he moved with a smooth, unhurried motion. He produced a thick fold of cash, held together by a simple paper band. He didn’t count it. He just slid it across the table. It stopped inches from her hand.

“Yours,” he said. “Pocket it.”

Her hand darted out, snatching the wad of bills. It was thick, heavier than she expected. She fumbled with the pocket of her hoodie, her fingers clumsy and stiff. She glanced around the restaurant, her eyes wide, certain that everyone was watching this illicit transaction. She finally managed to shove the cash into her pocket, where it formed an awkward, obvious bulge.

The man watched her performance with a look that was somewhere between amusement and disappointment. “A piece of advice,” he said, his tone softening just a fraction. “The first rule of this kind of work is to act like you belong. Like this is normal. You walk down the street, you hand a man a package, you get paid. It’s just another Tuesday. The moment you start looking over your shoulder, you make yourself a target. Practice being casual. Nonchalant. Blend in.”

He stood up, smoothing the front of his jacket. “Go on. We’re watching.” Taylor’s head snapped up. Watching?

But the man was already walking away, leaving her alone in the booth with the brown paper package. She sat there for a moment, her mind reeling from the advice, the threat, and the heavy weight in her pocket. Then, taking a deep breath, she picked up the package. It had a surprising heft.

She slid out of the booth and walked toward the door, trying her best to look casual, normal, like she belonged. She could feel the weight of unseen eyes on her back with every step.

Once outside in the cool air, she leaned against the brick wall of the neighboring building, her legs trembling. The door to the restaurant remained closed. With shaking fingers, she reached into her pocket and pulled out the wad of cash. She slipped off the paper band and quickly counted.

One hundred. Two hundred. Three hundred.

Three hundred dollars. For a ten-minute walk. Taylor stared at the money, her breath catching in her throat. It was more than she’d had in her possession in her entire life.

The five blocks to Jenner Street were the longest five blocks of Taylor’s life.

Every shadow seemed to stretch and writhe in her peripheral vision. Every passing car sounded like a threat. The man in the tan suit had said they were watching. The paranoia was a physical thing, a cold knot in her stomach. Who they were remained a mystery. She clutched the brown paper package to her chest, trying to make it look like a textbook, a lunch, anything other than what it was.

She pushed her senses out, a silent, desperate net cast into the urban sea. She couldn’t see through her swarm, but she could feel. She felt the faint vibrations of a rat scurrying behind a dumpster in an alleyway up ahead. Likewise, she mapped the windowsills of the tenement buildings lining the street, sensing the gritty texture of accumulated dust and pigeon droppings through the delicate feet of a dozen spiders. She registered the precise location of every loose piece of gravel on the sidewalk. It was too much information, a chaotic flood of tactile data that did nothing to soothe the frantic buzzing in her own head.

Act casual. Nonchalant.

She forced herself to relax her shoulders, to let her arms swing naturally at her sides. The package, now held in one hand, felt slick with the sweat from her palm. She took a deep breath, then another, consciously trying to slow her racing heart. She imagined herself as just another teenager walking home, bored and unremarkable. As she focused on projecting an aura of calm, the spiders in the alley ceased their frantic scuttling. The flies hovering over a trash can settled into a placid, humming cloud.

Jenner Street finally came into view. The QuickMart was exactly where he’d said it would be, its garish red and yellow sign a beacon of mundane normalcy in a world that had suddenly become anything but. A large white van was parked out front, its side emblazoned with “Gallo Electrical & Contracting.” The door to the convenience store was propped open.

Taylor hesitated for only a second before pushing through, the scent of stale coffee and sugary slushie drinks assaulting her nostrils. Inside, the store was a mess. A section of the wall behind the counter was torn open, exposing a tangled mess of wires and conduit. Two men in dusty work clothes were assessing the damage. One, a lanky man with a mop of blond hair, was holding a flashlight. The other, broader and more powerfully built, with dark, curly hair and a friendly face, had a tool belt slung low on his hips. A small, plastic name tag clipped to his shirt read “Giorno.”

Bingo.

Giorno noticed her staring. He glanced at the package in her hand, then met her eyes. He scoffed, a short, amused sound, and said something in rapid Italian to his partner. The blond man chuckled and went back to studying the wires. Giorno wiped his dusty hands on his jeans and walked over to her, his work boots thudding heavily on the linoleum floor.

“That the package from Simon?” he asked, his voice a low rumble.

Taylor’s mouth felt like it was full of cotton. “Yes,” she squeaked out, then cleared her throat. “Yes, it is.” Who Simon was… she guessed it was the man in the tan suit. Or could it be the man at the counter? She settled for the former.

Giorno took the package, his calloused fingers brushing against hers. He gave her a curious look. “You’re a new face. Haven’t seen you around these parts.”

Panic flared in Taylor’s chest. Was this another test? “I—I don’t—He just told me to…” she stammered, the carefully constructed facade of nonchalance crumbling into dust.

To her immense surprise, Giorno’s face broke into a warm, genuine smile. He chuckled, a deep, easy sound that instantly put her at ease. “Relax, kid. I’m just teasing.” He gestured with his head toward the door. “Come on.”

He guided her out of the QuickMart, walking past the cashier, a bored-looking teenager who was completely oblivious, a pair of white earbuds crammed in his ears. Back on the sidewalk, the afternoon sun felt unnaturally bright. Giorno turned to face her, and for the third time that day, Taylor felt like she was being assessed. He wasn’t looking at her the way boys at school did, or even the way Simon had. It was a practical, almost paternal, once-over.

Why do they keep doing that? She wondered, feeling a flush of self-consciousness.

“You have any idea what you’re walking into?” Giorno asked, his tone now serious.

Taylor shook her head, feeling small and utterly out of her depth. “Do I… need to be worried?”

“Nah,” he said, shaking his head. “Not if you’re smart. You keep your head down, you follow the rules—the real ones, the unspoken ones—and you’ll be fine.” He paused, studying her face. “But you’re clueless, aren’t you? You don’t know who you’re working for.”

Taylor could only shake her head again, a knot of dread tightening in her stomach.

“You ever hear of the Armani Mafia?” he began, leaning against the storefront. “Big deal, back in the day. Before the capes got loud. The Armanis ran this city. The unions, the restaurants, the casinos on the boardwalk… if it made money, they had a piece of it. Then the ‘80s happened. Allfather and his freaks, the Marquis… guys like that, changed the game. The Armanis… they faded.”

He looked her straight in the eye. “Well, they’re back. Rebranded. You know what the Fortune Mafia is, kid?”

“No,” she whispered, the name sounding both absurd and ominous.

Giorno gave a wry smile. “Compared to the Empire and their Nazi garbage, or the ABB and their… well, everything they do… we’re professionals. We’re a business. Simon, me, the old man in the deli. We’re Associates. And now, so are you.”

The word hung in the air between them. Associate. It sounded so formal, so legitimate. So dangerous.

“Here’s all you need to know,” Giorno said, capping off his impromptu history lesson. “Play your part. Don’t make trouble. Be reliable. You do that, and fortune comes. Simple as that.”

He gave her a friendly pat on the shoulder, the gesture surprisingly gentle from such a large man. “See you around, kid.”

And with that, he turned and walked back into the QuickMart, leaving Taylor standing alone on the sidewalk. The weight of the three hundred dollars in her pocket suddenly felt a hundred times heavier, each bill a link in a chain she had just willingly fastened around herself.

The walk home was a blur. Taylor moved on autopilot, her feet finding their way through the familiar, cracked labyrinth of her neighborhood streets without any conscious thought. Her senses were still extended, a gossamer-thin web of awareness spread for two blocks in every direction, but it was background noise. The real storm was inside her own head.

Her right hand was stuffed deep in her hoodie pocket, fingers restlessly stroking the thick, crisp edges of the three hundred dollars. The texture was undeniable. It was real. Which meant the man in the tan suit was real. Giorno was real. The package, the deli, the silent promise of more… it was all real. It had actually happened.

Her first thought wasn't of morality or danger, but of pure, logistical panic.

The landline.

She had made the call from her house. On the family phone. A phone with a call history, a redial button. Dad wasn't tech-savvy, but even he knew how to check the last number called. What if he saw an unfamiliar number and just… called it back? The thought sent a jolt of ice through her veins. First things first: as soon as she got home, that number had to be erased. Wiped completely.

The second thought followed, a logical and damning extension of the first. She needed a phone. Something untraceable, a cheap burner she could buy with cash. Something they could use to contact her, and she could use to contact them.

And that’s when she stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk.

Did she want them to contact her?

The question slammed into her with the force of a train. Did she actually want to be a part of this? The Fortune Mafia. The name itself was a warning. It was a gang. She had just become a bagman for a gang. For all she knew, that package contained drugs, or a weapon, or something far, far worse.

But the images in her head refused to line up with the label. Gangsters were the ABB thugs, cruel and sloppy. They were the Empire 88, loud, hateful, and violent. The men she’d met today… they were different. Simon, with his immaculate suit and professional calm. Giorno, with his easy smile and friendly advice. They were… ordinary. They were men who looked like they had families, who paid mortgages, who complained about taxes. They seemed like honest people trying to make a living, people like her dad. Trustworthy.

Since the locker, since the moment she’d woken up with the buzzing in her head, she had wanted one thing: to be a hero. To stop the bullies. To make a difference. The idea had been a desperate, shining light in the suffocating darkness of her life. She had a costume, or the beginnings of one, anyway—shoved into the coal chute in the basement, hidden from plain sight and out of mind. She was so close to going out, to her first night on patrol.

But the reality of that dream was terrifying. Going out solo? Against Lung? Against Kaiser? She felt hopelessly lost just trying to plan it. The trial and error of getting her spiders to produce enough silk for a single costume panel was frustrating and slow. She was a girl in a homemade bug-suit going up against monsters. The risks were astronomical.

And then she thought of the money in her pocket. Three hundred dollars for a ten-minute walk. It was an obscene amount. That kind of money could grant her many things, grant her power. She could buy a real phone, not a cheap burner. She could buy materials for her costume and speed up the process by weeks. She could buy armor plating. The black widow silk was strong, maybe even bullet-resistant to a degree, but it wouldn't do a thing against a knife or a shotgun blast at close range. This money was a shortcut. A way to be a better, safer, more effective hero.

The logic was both seductive and sickening.

The question that had stopped her in the street returned, but now it was clearer, stripped of the initial panic and confusion. The path had forked. Down one way was the lonely, dangerous, uncertain struggle of being a hero on her own terms. Down the other was a group of quiet professionals who fought the same enemies she wanted to fight, and who paid handsomely for the help.

Does she throw the money in a sewer grate, delete the number from the landline, and pretend today never happened, cutting all ties before they could truly form?

Or does she walk through the door they had opened, stay inside their world just long enough to get the cash and resources she needed to achieve her own goals?

Standing there, a block from her own quiet, unassuming house, Taylor Hebert knew she had to make a choice.

Chapter Text

Empire of Sin

A Worm AU

Chapter 2: Headed and Gutted

Three days. Seventy-two hours of living with a secret that felt like an anvil in her gut. Every time her father looked at her, every time he asked how her day was, the lie would rise in her throat like bile. The burner phone, tucked away in a hollowed-out book in her closet, felt less like a tool and more like a secret ready to jump out and ruin her life.

The meeting spot was a bus stop on Lord Street. It was early, the sun just beginning to burn the morning mist off the bay. The air was cool and damp. Taylor arrived five minutes early, her swarm a loose, passive net of awareness around her, sensing the vibrations of the first buses of the day and the sleepy shuffle of early commuters. She felt exposed, standing alone under the faded blue and white sign.

Simon arrived exactly on time, appearing with the same silent efficiency as the man in the alley. He wasn't wearing the tan suit from the restaurant, but a simple, dark grey jacket over a black shirt. It was still far too formal for a bus stop at six in the morning. He held a cardboard tray with two steaming paper cups of coffee.

"Morning," he said, his tone as flat and professional as ever. He offered the tray to her. "Coffee?"

Taylor’s mind raced. Was this a test of politeness? Was it a power play? Did accepting mean she was subservient? Did refusing make her seem ungrateful? It was just coffee. It shouldn't be this complicated.

"No, thank you," she said, trying to keep her voice even. "I don't... I don't like coffee." The words came out sounding lame and childish to her own ears. She braced for a flicker of annoyance, a sign that she'd failed some unspoken test.

Simon just nodded, unfazed. "Fair enough. More for the other onboarder, then." He took one of the cups for himself and sipped it, his grey eyes scanning the street.

Other onboarder? Taylor’s blood ran cold. She wasn't the only one? Was this a replacement? A partner? A competitor? Her thoughts were cut short as a figure came jogging toward them from down the block.

He was a boy, maybe a year or two older than her, with an easy, confident stride. He wore clean, stylish sneakers, jeans that weren't worn or faded, and a brand-name windbreaker. His dark hair was artfully messy, and he had a wide, friendly smile that seemed to come effortlessly. He slowed to a stop in front of them, not even out of breath.

"Simon, my man," the boy said, his voice bright with an energy Taylor couldn't imagine mustering. "Sorry, almost slept in. You know how it is."

He was looking at Simon, but his eyes flickered over to Taylor, taking her in from her worn hoodie to her scuffed sneakers. It wasn't the analytical gaze of Simon or Giorno; it was the casual, dismissive once-over of a popular kid sizing up a nobody. Taylor felt an immediate, irrational spike of dislike.

"Anthony, this is Taylor," Simon said, his expression unchanging. "Taylor, Anthony. You're both Associates." He handed the second cup of coffee to Anthony. "He drinks coffee."

"Ah, lifesaver," Anthony said, taking the cup. He gave Taylor a nod. "Hey. So you're the new face, huh? Welcome to the team." He said it with the breezy confidence of someone who had been on "the team" for a long, long time.

With the introductions made, Simon turned and began walking away from the bus stop, down a side street heading toward the water. Taylor and Anthony fell into step behind him. A question burned in Taylor's mind.

"Why... why meet at a bus stop if we're not taking the bus?" she asked, directing the question at Simon's back. "Doesn't meeting somewhere and then immediately walking away look more suspicious than just... meeting somewhere?"

Anthony chuckled beside her, as if she'd asked a silly, obvious question.

"No one pays attention to a bus stop," Simon said without turning around. "People are waiting, people are leaving. They're staring at their phones or worrying about being late. It's background noise. More importantly, it's a fixed, public landmark that's easy for anyone to find. It minimizes the chances of one of you getting lost and being late."

It was a cold, logical answer. It made sense, but it still felt... sloppy. Too visible.

"So, what's the gig today, boss?" Anthony asked, taking a loud sip of his coffee. "Something exciting?"

"A delivery," Simon said. "At the fish market on the pier."

Of course. The fish market. That explained the ungodly hour. A knot of guilt and self-loathing tightened in Taylor's stomach. She'd told her dad she was getting up early to start her morning run routine. He had been so pleased, so proud of her for "taking initiative." Instead, she was here, walking toward the docks to do a job for a literal mafia, a girl who hated bullies and a boy who looked like one.

Simon pressed on, and then asked. "A simple question for you both," he said, his voice quiet but carrying in the still morning air. "What are you two looking forward to today?"

The question hung in the air, simple and direct, yet it threw Taylor completely off balance. What are you looking forward to today? It felt deeply personal, a test disguised as small talk.

Anthony, predictably, didn't miss a beat. "Hitting the mall after this," he said with an easy grin, gesturing with his coffee cup. "Gotta pick up the new Skystorm X2s before they sell out. My buddy says the colorway is sick." He spoke with the casual confidence of someone whose biggest concern was the availability of expensive sneakers.

Simon's gaze shifted to Taylor. The silence stretched, and she could feel both of them waiting. What was she looking forward to? The honest answer was a bleak, empty landscape. Not Winslow, with its gauntlet of predators. Not the lonely quiet of her house after school, waiting for her dad to get home from the Dockworkers Association, exhausted. Not reading in the library, which felt less like a pleasure and more like a strategy for killing time. She had nothing. No friends, no hobbies that weren't a secret, no part of her day that sparked any genuine joy.

The truth was a liability.

"Hanging out with my friends," she lied, the words feeling foreign and clumsy on her tongue. "We're going to the library to study, then maybe catch a movie." It sounded plausible. It was what a normal girl would do.

Simon held her gaze for a moment longer than necessary. Just a beat. A tiny pause that felt like an eternity. In that fraction of a second, Taylor was certain he saw right through her. He knew she was lying. He knew there were no friends, no movie. But all he did was nod.

"Good," he said, his tone giving nothing away. "It's important to have a life outside of this. It keeps you grounded. It keeps you from drawing attention." He turned and continued his unhurried stride toward the distant sounds of the pier.

As they walked, Simon elaborated on the job. "We're meeting another Soldato. He's overseeing a package that came in from Boston this morning on one of the fishing boats. There will be two other Associates with him. You can interact with them if you need to, but you do not speak to my counterpart unless he speaks to you first. Your job is simple. You are extra hands and extra eyes. You watch the area. If you see anything out of the ordinary—PRT patrols, rival colors, anyone paying too much attention—you let me know. Then you help move the package when told. Clear?"

Both she and Anthony murmured their assent. It was another delivery, just with more moving parts. More people. More chances for something to go wrong.

They rounded a corner, and the relative quiet of the morning was shattered. The fish market was a chaotic explosion of sensory input. The air, thick and heavy, was a pungent cocktail of briny seawater, diesel fumes, and the sharp, metallic smell of fresh fish. Fishermen in heavy rubber boots and worn jackets shouted to one another, hauling wooden crates overflowing with glistening, silver-scaled fish onto the wet concrete of the pier. Restaurant owners and retailers, a mix of men in clean chef's whites and women with sharp, assessing eyes, moved through the crowd, haggling in loud, clipped tones. The entire scene was a loud, wet, bustling organism, a stark contrast to the quiet tension of their walk.

Simon navigated the chaos with an unnerving calm, weaving through the throng of people as if they were mere obstacles in a familiar course. Taylor and Anthony followed in his wake, trying not to get separated. Taylor clutched the burner phone in her pocket, its cheap plastic shell a constant reminder of the choice she had made. This was progress. This was what she wanted. It felt like anything but.

They reached the far end of the pier, away from the main frenzy of the market. The crowd thinned out here, the noise dropping to a more manageable level. Three men stood waiting beside a large, industrial-sized white icebox, the kind used to transport hundreds of pounds of fish.

Two of them were clearly the other Associates. They were older than her and Anthony, maybe in their early twenties, with the hard, bored look of men who did this kind of work regularly. The third man was Simon's counterpart. He was built like a heavyweight boxer, with a thick neck and a bald, scarred head that gleamed in the morning light. He wore a heavy fisherman's sweater, but it did little to hide the powerful muscles of his arms and chest. He watched their approach with cold, impassive eyes.

Anthony, ever the natural, immediately stepped forward and shook the hands of the two other Associates. It was a firm, familiar gesture, met with equally solid grips. They exchanged names Taylor didn't catch and a bit of muttered small talk.

Taylor hesitated, a half-second of social paralysis that felt like a glaring spotlight. She forced her feet to move, stepping forward and offering her hand. Their palms were rough and calloused, their handshakes brief and dismissive. They were looking past her, toward the two men who were actually in charge. She may as well have been a piece of equipment. She retreated, feeling the familiar sting of being invisible.

While Simon and the bald man—Simon called him Leo—spoke, their voices were low and steady, a calm counterpoint to the market's chaos. They talked about the weather, the morning's catch, the poor performance of the city's baseball team. It was all maddeningly mundane, but Taylor knew, with a certainty that chilled her, that they weren't talking about any of those things. It was code, a language she didn't understand, spoken right in front of her.

Feeling useless, she did the only thing she could think of. She reached out with her power, trying to map the immediate area, to be the "extra eyes" Simon had ordered her to be. The pickings were slim and disgusting. A thick cloud of flies buzzed over a discarded crate of fish guts. Fleas jumped from a half-starved cat slinking beneath the pier. Maggots writhed in something she didn't want to identify. Nothing useful. She was a queen of the insignificant and the unclean.

Then she felt something else.

As her senses brushed against the large iceboxes, she didn't just feel the cold, slick exterior. She felt something inside. There was the sense of jointed legs, but heavier, and the distinct, clenching tension of claws. Crabs. Whole boxes of live crabs, packed in ice. She focused, and felt one of them shift, its legs scraping against the ice and the shell of another. She could control crustaceans. The discovery was so strange, so unexpected, that it almost made her lose her focus. Interesting.

"...the watcher saw it," Leo's low rumble cut through her concentration. "It's on the plate of another's table now."

"Does Gilberto know?" Simon asked, his voice tight.

Gilberto. The name registered in Taylor's mind. A boss?

Leo grunted. "Gilberto knows. That's why we're moving now."

The shift was instantaneous. The casual conversation was over. Leo turned away from Simon, his cold eyes sweeping over the four Associates. "Alright, listen up."

Simon stepped beside him. "The plan has changed," he said, his professional calm now holding a sharp, dangerous edge. "The package has been spotted by a rival crew. They know it's here, and it's likely they'll try to intercept it before it leaves the pier."

The air grew heavy. The distant shouts of the market seemed to fade away. Anthony's easy-going smirk had vanished, replaced by a tense, focused frown.

Simon looked from Anthony to Taylor, his gaze analytical, as if he were measuring them for the first time. "A simple question," he said, his voice flat and devoid of any emotion. "Have either of you ever been in a gunfight before?"

Simon didn't wait for an answer. He didn't need one. The look on their faces—Taylor's wide-eyed panic, Anthony's sudden, rigid focus—was enough.

"Stay low," he said, his voice sharp and rapid-fire, each word a command. "Don't panic. Panic gets you killed. Find cover and stay behind it. Do not be a hero, and if they start shooting, absolutely do not zig-zag. It doesn't work. Run straight and fast to the next piece of cover. Got it?"

They both managed a jerky nod.

"Move it!" Leo barked, and the two older Associates immediately grabbed the handles on the front of the heavy icebox. Anthony, his bravado gone, surged forward to take a rear handle. After a beat of hesitation, Taylor moved to help him.

The box was incredibly heavy, far heavier than it had any right to be. It took all four of them to get it moving with any speed. It wasn't just fish and crabs in here. As they jostled it over the uneven wooden planks of the pier, a faint, muffled clinking sound came from within. It sounded like glass. Bottles, maybe? Or just the ice shifting.

They moved as a unit, a tight diamond formation pushing a heavy white rectangle. Leo took the lead, a human battering ram parting the crowds. The four Associates, two on each side, wrestled with the icebox. Simon brought up the rear, his head on a constant, swiveling patrol. Taylor and Anthony stuck close to the back, which meant Simon was right behind them, a tense and imposing presence.

They were about to round the corner of a large stall selling shellfish when a spike of pure dread, a gut feeling born of a thousand unseen eyes, shot through Taylor. She pushed her senses out, a desperate, frantic pulse. She ignored the market-goers, the fishermen. She was looking for predators.

Her flies, buzzing near the main entrance to the pier from the street, found them. Three figures, moving with a purpose that was terrifyingly out of place. Open-sleeved leather jackets. Green sashes tied around their waists. Balaclavas pulled down over their faces.

A chill shot up Taylor’s spine. "Three of them!" she shouted, her voice thin and reedy. "Coming in from the main entrance! Leather jackets!"

As the words left her mouth, three men appeared at the end of the aisle, their green and red colors marking them as ABB. They hadn't seen them yet.

Leo didn't slow. "Keep moving!" he snarled.

They hustled around the corner, pushing the icebox behind the relative cover of the stall. Simon stayed close, his hand now firmly under his dark grey jacket. Taylor didn't need to see it to know what was there. A gun.

She pushed her swarm out again, a desperate cast of her net. The flies descended on the three thugs, a buzzing, unnoticed cloud, mapping the shapes of their bodies. They were armed. Pistols tucked into their waistbands.

Then she felt something else, a new vibration through the concrete from the street. The screech of tires. Her bugs on the far side of the market, near the smaller side entrance, relayed the information instantly. A car, a beat-up sedan, had slammed to a stop. Doors opened. Four more men, wearing the same getup, were piling out.

They were being pincered. Trapped.

"Simon!" she hissed, her voice tight with panic. "It's the ABB! They're trying to corner us! Four more coming from the other entrance!"

"It's going to be fine," Simon said from behind her, his voice an island of impossible calm in a sea of rising panic.

"How does she know that?" Leo growled, his hand also disappearing under his sweater.

That's when the first gunshot cracked through the morning air. And the world exploded in a shower of ice and pulverized shellfish.

A high-pitched ringing filled Taylor's ears as she instinctively dropped to the floor, tucking her head and covering it with her hands. The other Associates did the same, hitting the wet concrete as a unit. The heavy icebox slammed down beside them with a deafening crash. A second and third gunshot cracked overhead, punctuated by the metallic ping of bullets ricocheting off a steel support beam somewhere above.

Screams erupted from the market-goers, a wave of pure panic that washed over the pier. Taylor risked a glance, her cheek pressed against the cold, gritty ground. Simon was already in cover, crouched behind the thick wooden base of the shellfish stall, his pistol now in his hand. The three ABB gangsters were using the corner at the end of the aisle for cover, one of them blindly firing in their direction.

"Taylor! Cover! Now!" Simon's voice cut through the chaos, sharp and commanding. He waved her over with his free hand.

Her body, fueled by pure adrenaline, responded before her mind could. She scrambled to her feet, staying low, a clumsy, crouched run that felt like wading through molasses. She practically dove the last few feet, sliding on the slick concrete and slamming into the stall next to Simon. The wood felt flimsy, insufficient.

She looked back for Anthony.

He was still on the ground, halfway between the icebox and the relative safety of the stall, completely paralyzed with fear. His face was pale, his eyes wide and unseeing. He was frozen.

"Anthony! Move!" Simon shouted, his voice competing with a roar from Leo on the other side of the icebox. "Get to cover, now!"

The shout seemed to break Anthony's paralysis. His hands jittered, his whole body shivering as he struggled to crawl, to move, to do anything. He pushed himself up onto his hands and knees.

Then his head snapped back with a sickening, wet crack.

His body seized for a moment, a gruesome, rigid arch, before slumping forward onto the concrete like a puppet with its strings cut. A thin line of dark red blood began to trace a path down from his hairline, over his forehead, and into his wide, unblinking eye.

Taylor's breath caught in her throat. A choked, silent scream. Her mind simply refused to process what it was seeing. The boy who was worried about sneakers. The boy with the easy smile. He was just… gone.

She tore her gaze away, unable to look for a second longer, and frantically scanned the other end of the aisle. Leo was pressed into a shallow depression in the wall near an archway, using the corner for cover as he returned fire, the boom of his handgun deeper and louder than the ABB's pistols.

Her eyes dropped to the ground near him. One of the older Associates, the one with the bored expression, lay on his back, his arms splayed out, not moving. The other was cowering on the far side of Leo, hands over his head, completely useless.

In the space of five seconds, their numbers had been cut in half.

Beside her, Simon was a picture of cold fury. He didn't look at Anthony's body. He didn't look at Taylor. He kept his eyes locked on the corner where the ABB were hiding. With his free hand, he pulled out a simple, black burner phone—not a smartphone, just a cheap brick. He flipped it open, his thumb finding and holding a single button.

After a two-second pause, he snapped it shut, pocketed it, and brought his second hand up to steady his gun. He had just sent a signal.

Panic was a physical thing, a roaring in her ears that threatened to drown out everything else. Anthony's lifeless form was burned into her retinas. This was real. This was a gunfight. And they were losing.

A wave of bitter self-loathing washed over her. Idiot! Why didn't she have anything? Pepper spray, a taser, a telescoping baton—anything a half-prepared cape-in-training was supposed to have. She had a power, but what good was it if she didn't have the tools to back it up? Then she shut the thought down. Useless. That wouldn't help now.

She had to do something. Frantically, she reached out with her senses, grabbing hold of the meager swarm at her disposal. The flies buzzing over the fish guts. The moths fluttering in the rafters. The fleas on the stray cat. It wasn't much, but it had to be enough.

The ABB had them pinned down by sheer volume of fire. Leo was firing single, aimed shots. Simon was waiting for an opening. The gangsters were just spraying bullets in their general direction. If she could stop that, even for a second… if she could cut down their rate of fire…

She gathered the flies, a small, buzzing cloud, and sent them hurtling toward the three gangsters hiding at the corner. She didn't aim for their faces. She aimed for their guns.

It was a delicate, disgusting piece of micromanagement. She guided the insects directly into the ejection ports of their pistols, into the space where the slide moved back and forth with every shot.

The next time one of them fired, the slide kicked back, crushing a dozen flies into a thick, chitinous paste. The mechanism, designed to operate with clean precision, groaned. When the gangster tried to fire again, the slide jammed halfway, the spent casing caught in a grotesque mash of insect parts. He swore, trying to rack the slide to clear the jam, but it was thoroughly clogged.

Taylor pressed the attack. She sent more flies, more bugs, swarming the other two pistols. With each recoil, more of her swarm was sacrificed, crushed into a biological glue that gummed up the works.

A moment later, the relentless barrage of gunfire from the corner stopped. Taylor risked a peek around the edge of the stall. The gangsters were fumbling with their weapons, confusion turning to frustration as they tried to work the slides, to clear the sudden, inexplicable malfunctions.

Simon's back filled her vision as he moved without hesitation. He rose from his crouch, his pistol held steady in a two-handed grip, and fired three times in quick succession. Pop. Pop. Pop.

The gangster crouching in the middle of the aisle jerked twice as the rounds struck him in the torso, a dark stain blossoming on his jacket. He stumbled backward and collapsed in a heap. A surge of adrenaline, cold and sharp, shot through Taylor. It worked. It worked.

She turned her attention to the other end of the pier. Reinforcements had arrived. Drawing on the bugs from the neighboring blocks, she sent a much larger, angrier cloud hurtling toward the four men pinning Leo down. This time, she didn't just jam their weapons. She went for their senses. Wasps and hornets, drawn from a nest under the pier, dove at their eyes. Moths and flies swarmed into their open mouths and ears, a buzzing, disorienting assault.

Their return fire became wild, then stopped completely as they flailed, slapping at their faces, their shouts turning from aggression to pure panic.

That was the opening.

Simon exploded from cover, a blur of grey and black. He didn't run to the next stall; he ran straight down the aisle, his feet pounding on the wet concrete. He closed the distance in seconds, a predator taking advantage of a fatal mistake. Two more shots rang out, precise and economical, and the two remaining gangsters at the corner crumpled to the ground without a sound.

At the other end, Leo saw his chance. He leaned out from behind the archway, his own weapon trained on the panicked, flailing thugs. Three booming shots echoed across the pier, and the last of the ABB gangsters dropped to the floor in a tangled heap.

Silence.

The only sounds were the distant, panicked screams of civilians, the cry of gulls, and the ragged sound of Taylor's own breathing.

The silence lasted only a second before Simon's voice cut through the ringing in Taylor's ears. "Move! Now! Transport is two minutes out. We get the package to the lot."

There was no time to think, no time to breathe. Adrenaline was still pumping through Taylor's veins, a frantic, jittery energy. She scrambled to her feet, her gaze falling for a sickening moment on Anthony's still form. His eyes were open, staring at the corrugated tin roof of the fish market. His expensive sneakers were splattered with his own blood.

She tore her eyes away, a wave of nausea threatening to overwhelm her.

"Help us!" Leo barked.

Taylor, Simon, Leo, and the one remaining Associate—his face a pale, sweat-slicked mask of terror—grabbed the handles of the icebox. It felt even heavier now, a dead weight chained to them. They hauled it, half-lifting, half-dragging it through the now-deserted aisle, past the bodies of the ABB gangsters, their limbs sprawled at unnatural angles.

They burst out of the fish market and into the bright, jarring sunlight of the parking lot. The air was filled with the sound of distant sirens.

A black SUV with tinted windows screeched around a corner and slammed to a stop a dozen yards away. Two doors flew open, and two men in dark blue suits filed out, short-barreled rifles held at the ready. Her heart hammered harder in her ribs, the sight of such heavy ordinance creating a gap to everything else she had seen thus far.

"Blue!" Simon shouted, raising a hand.

"Blue!" Leo echoed.

The two soldiers nodded, their movements economical and precise. "Load it up! Let's go!" one of them yelled.

As Taylor and the other Associate struggled to heave their end of the icebox into the open rear of the SUV, she overheard one soldier ask the other, "Hostiles?"

"Seven down," Leo grunted from behind them.

"Casualties?"

"Two," Simon said, his voice flat. "One of mine, one of Leo's."

The exchange was brutally efficient, devoid of emotion. They were just numbers on a ledger. With a final, desperate shove, the icebox was loaded. The soldiers slammed the doors shut, jumped back into the SUV, and tore out of the parking lot, tires squealing. The entire exchange had taken less than thirty seconds.

Before Taylor could even process what had happened, Simon grabbed her by the arm, his grip like iron. "You're with me," he said, and started running.

She didn't ask questions. She didn't have any. Her mind was a blank slate of shock and adrenaline. She just ran, her legs pumping, following him across the parking lot to a nondescript white sedan parked near the exit. He remotely unlocked it, and she threw herself into the backseat, collapsing onto the vinyl.

Simon jumped into the driver's seat and gunned the engine. He sped out of the lot, his eyes constantly flicking to the rearview and side mirrors, checking every angle, every intersection. His calm, professional demeanor was still there, but now it was razor-thin, stretched taut over a core of intense, controlled urgency.

As the car sped away from the pier, Taylor's power, an extension of her own frantic paranoia, reached out. A cloud of insects, a mix of flies and gnats and whatever else she could find, rose into the air. She kept them at a distance, a mobile, thousand-eyed sensor net. They followed the car, sweeping the roads ahead, peering down alleyways, and watching the skies for any sign of another threat, any sign that they were being followed. She didn't know if she was helping, but it was the only thing she could do to keep from screaming.

The city blurred past the window, a smear of gray concrete and brick that Taylor didn't register. Ten minutes passed. Then twenty. Simon drove with a cold, mechanical precision, taking a long, circuitous route that avoided main thoroughfares, his eyes constantly moving between the road and his mirrors.

Taylor's swarm moved with them, a dull, thrumming background noise in her mind. The desperate search for threats had faded. There was no one following them. The seven ABB gangsters had been the beginning and the end of the attack.

As the adrenaline ebbed, a cold, sickening dread washed in to take its place. She remained quiet in the backseat, a knot of anxiety tightening in her chest. What was there to say? What could she possibly say that wouldn't sound stupid, or weak, or incriminating? Silence felt safer.

Giorno had made it sound so simple. Play your part. Be reliable. Fortune comes. He'd made it sound like an easy, low-stakes arrangement, a business transaction. Not a death sentence.

The image of Anthony was seared onto the inside of her eyelids. Every time she blinked, she saw it again. The way his head had snapped back. The line of blood. The sudden, absolute emptiness in his eyes. A boy worried about sneakers. A boy who was maybe a year, maybe two, older than her. Dead. He was dead, and she was in the getaway car.

A tremor started in her hands, a deep, uncontrollable shiver that had nothing to do with the cool air in the car. She pulled her legs up to her chest, folding in on herself in the wide backseat, trying to make herself as small as possible, as if she could physically shrink away from the memory.

To stop the image from replaying, she fled into her power. She pushed her mind out, focusing on the minutiae of her swarm. She felt the paper-thin rustle of a moth's wings three blocks away. She followed the six-legged dance of a spider spinning its web in a darkened alley. She counted the bees buzzing around a rooftop hive, sorting them, giving her frantic mind a meaningless, complex task to perform. Anything to occupy the space in her head, anything to build a wall between herself and the memory of the boy who wouldn't be buying new shoes today.

Eventually, the white sedan slowed, pulling to a stop at the curb in front of a brightly lit laundromat. The warm, chemical smell of detergent and the low, rumbling hum of industrial dryers seeped into the car's tense silence. For a long moment, Simon just sat there, hands gripping the steering wheel, his knuckles white. He let out a long, slow breath, a single, controlled exhale that seemed to carry some of the morning's tension with it. His shoulders, which had been ramrod straight the entire drive, slumped by a fraction of an inch.

He craned his neck, his grey eyes finding her in the rearview mirror. "Are you hurt?" he asked, his voice low and raspy.

Taylor just shook her head, the motion feeling stiff and unnatural. She unfurled herself, moving her legs from her chest back down to the floor of the car. She tried to sit up straight, to smooth down her hoodie, to look presentable, to look like she wasn't falling apart at the seams.

Simon pursed his lips, his gaze lingering on her for a moment before he looked away, turning his attention back to the front. He pulled out the burner phone, the one he had used to send the signal. He made a call.

"Yeah," he said into the phone, his voice once again the flat, professional monotone she was used to. "I'm at the laundromat on Fifth and Elm. The package is secure. Two casualties, seven hostiles down. I have the new asset with me... No, she's fine." A pause. "Understood."

The call ended as quickly as it had begun.

Then, in a single, explosive motion, Simon smashed the phone against the dashboard.

The sharp crack of plastic shattering against plastic was like a gunshot in the quiet car. Taylor flinched violently, a choked gasp escaping her lips. He struck it again and again, a controlled, brutal burst of violence, until the cheap phone was a mangled wreck of plastic and circuitry.

He brushed the remains from his dashboard onto the passenger-side floor mat without a word.

Chapter Text

Empire of Sin
A Worm AU

Chapter 3: Ragù Bolognese

The engine cut out, and the sudden silence in the car was heavier than the noise had been. Simon had started the sedan again after a few tense moments at the laundromat, driving them deeper into the city's residential guts. It had been an hour, maybe more, since the gunfight. The initial, frantic wave of sirens had long since faded, but Taylor hadn't rested. She kept her swarm active, a low-level, buzzing vigilance that felt like a second skin. It was a coping mechanism. She focused on the chaotic, meaningless sensory data from a thousand points of view to keep from focusing on the single, searing image of Anthony's body hitting the concrete. The anxiety, the fear, the nausea—she pushed it all out, off-loading the emotions into her swarm until the cloud of insects following them was a frantic, agitated reflection of her own suppressed terror.

They were parked in front of a small diner, the kind of place that seemed like a relic from a bygone era. "Maverick's," read the peeling script on the window, below a faded painting of a coffee cup. It was a long, low building squeezed between a pawn shop and a derelict video rental store, a holdout against the modern coffee shops and chain restaurants that had swept through the city.

Simon didn't get out. He just sat, his hands resting on the steering wheel, staring out the front windshield. The silence stretched, thick with unspoken things. He wasn't looking at her, but she could feel his attention. He was giving her space, or letting her break first.

Finally, he turned his head, his grey eyes finding hers in the rearview mirror. The question was the same as before, but the context was entirely different.

"Are you okay?"

Taylor’s mind immediately began to dissect the words. He'd asked this already. She'd shaken her head no, physically. He could see that she wasn't bleeding, that she wasn't hurt in any way that mattered on a medical chart. So this wasn't the same question. He knew she was lying before, about her friends. Was he asking again because he knew her previous answer—the silent headshake—was also a lie, or at least incomplete? What was the right answer? What answer was he looking for?

If she said she was fine, he would know it was a lie. He was a professional. He had to know what shock looked like. It would make her seem naive or, worse, like she was trying to hide a weakness.

If she said she wasn't fine, did that make her a liability? Something to be discarded, like the broken burner phone? He had just reported two casualties to his boss without a flicker of emotion. Was she about to become another loose end?

The sheer exhaustion of the mental calculus was overwhelming. The effort required to construct another lie, to present another false front, was more than she had in her. The mask was too heavy.

She took a shaky breath, the first one that felt like it had reached the bottom of her lungs all morning. "How could anyone be okay after that?" she asked, her voice quiet and raw. There was no accusation in her tone, just a vast, hollow weariness. It was an honest question.

Simon held her gaze in the mirror for a long moment. He didn't look away. The professional mask cracked, and for the first time, she saw a flicker of something human and unguarded in his eyes. Regret. "I'm sorry," he said, and the words sounded sincere, stripped of his usual professional detachment. "I'm sorry you had to see that."

He finally broke eye contact, looking back out the front windshield. "This wasn't supposed to happen. Today was supposed to be a simple pickup. The three of us were supposed to haul that box to a dry-storage unit a few blocks from the pier. Then I was going to buy you both breakfast at this diner." He gestured vaguely at the building. "We were supposed to talk. That was the job. In and out. No complications."

He shook his head, a small, bitter motion. "That's not how it went."

The silence in the car stretched on, filled only by the low hum of the diner's ventilation fan. Taylor took Simon's admission—this wasn't supposed to happen—and turned it over in her mind. It felt like a confirmation that she had stepped into a world where things going wrong meant bullets and bodies. Slowly, consciously, she began to pull her senses back, letting her concentration on the swarm dissolve. The frantic, agitated buzzing at the edge of her awareness receded, and the quiet that replaced it was terrifying. With the swarm's noise gone, the memories had more room to echo.

After another minute that felt like an hour, Simon shifted in the driver's seat. The brief, unguarded moment of regret was over. He straightened his back, his professional demeanor clicking back into place like a safety on a gun.

"I saw what you did," he said, his voice returning to its usual flat, analytical tone. He was looking at her in the mirror again, but his gaze was different now. "With the guns. The flies. Brilliant."

The words didn't land like a compliment. They felt alien, like a doctor praising the unique and fascinating properties of a tumor. Of course he had noticed. Simon didn't seem to miss anything. He was astute, and the thought was more intimidating than comforting.

"The ABB uses cheap, aftermarket crap," he continued, dissecting the firefight as if it were a business report. "Poorly maintained, prone to jamming if you so much as look at it wrong. You figured that out in seconds and exploited it. You turned the tide."

He paused, letting the analysis sink in before delivering the final verdict. "You did good, Taylor."

The praise was a grotesque twist of the knife. He was commending her for her role in the brutal, chaotic event that had left a boy dead on the pavement. A tiny, shameful part of her felt a flicker of pride at the recognition, at having not just survived but succeeded. The feeling was immediately swallowed by a wave of nausea.

Simon seemed to read the conflict on her face. "I imagine your appetite is gone," he said, a rare and pragmatic concession to her emotional state. "But we need to talk. Properly. Let's go inside. We'll order you some water, at least."

The diner smelled of stale coffee and old grease, an aroma of comforting nostalgia that felt profoundly wrong. Maverick's was a fossil. The wallpaper, a faded pattern of cheerful-looking chefs, was peeling near the ceiling, revealing a darker, water-stained pattern beneath. A few of the black-and-white tiles on the floor were missing, creating small, dark gaps like missing teeth. The red vinyl of the booths was cracked in places, and the seats themselves were worn thin and shiny from the countless bodies that had sat there over decades. It wasn't dirty from neglect, Taylor realized, but from sheer, unrelenting use.

Two teenagers, a boy and a girl in matching red aprons, stood behind the counter, silently wiping it down. They watched Simon and Taylor walk in, their expressions blank. There was no friendly greeting, no welcoming smile. Their eyes, dull and tired, seemed to understand that this wasn't a social call. They knew.

The thought sent a fresh wave of anxiety through Taylor. Were they Associates, too? Was this diner a front? Were these kids aware that their colleagues were being shot to death just a few miles away? The network was bigger, deeper, and more integrated into the mundane fabric of the city than she had ever imagined.

She immediately glanced out the large front window, her eyes scanning the street, the parked cars, looking for a beat-up sedan or anyone who didn't belong. The idea of another car full of ABB gangsters pulling up to the curb and opening fire was a terrifyingly real possibility.

"Sit," Simon said, his voice a low command. He slid into the booth opposite her, blocking her view of the rest of the diner and the street outside. He had deliberately chosen the seat that faced the entrance, leaving her with her back to the only door. She was being managed, positioned.

"Focus on me," he said, his gaze firm.

The conversation began, but not in the way she expected. "You held up better than most," he stated, his voice devoid of warmth. "Better than Anthony."

The name landed like a stone in her gut. The praise felt less like a compliment and more like the final line on a performance review before a difficult decision.

"But that brings us to the elephant in the room," he continued, leaning forward just slightly. "Your future. Or if you have one with us."

He let that hang in the air for a moment. "Let's be honest, Taylor. We knew you were a parahuman. That wasn't an accident. Your little display with the ABB thugs outside Scapelli's put you on our radar. It's why you were approached in the first place.

"The original plan was to ease you in," Simon said. "More deliveries. Simple surveillance. Low-risk work to gauge your temperament and reliability. What happened at the market... it expedited things."

He framed the bloody, traumatic firefight as a simple inconvenience that had moved up a deadline.

He paused, his gray eyes searching hers, trying to read the storm of emotions she was desperately trying to suppress. "I'm not going to tell you what to think. I need to know what you're thinking. I need to know where your head is at."

He leaned back, giving her a fraction of space. "And if you even want to hear what comes next."

Taylor’s mind raced, a chaotic whirlwind of options and implications. The question wasn't just about what came next; it was about whether she could survive it. She could lie, say she was fine, and try to fake her way through. She could break down, show weakness, and be discarded. Or she could do something else. Something honest.

She looked at Simon, at his calm, unreadable face. He was a professional, and he valued competence. He had praised her for being "brilliant." That was her only leverage. "I want to know what's really going on," she said, her voice steadier than she expected. "That's what I'm thinking."

She took a breath, the words spilling out, a torrent of confusion and fear that she had been holding back. "Look, before what happened at the deli, I had never even heard of a 'Fortune Mafia.' I thought this was… I don't know. I expected to do what Giorno did. Simple stuff. Deliveries, maybe a bit of cash on the side to get my own life in order. My own… career." She stopped herself before she said too much.

Simon's expression sharpened at the mention of the name. "Giorno told you the name?"

Taylor froze. The question was a trap. Did she protect the one person in this organization who had shown her genuine warmth? Or did she tell the truth? Would Giorno get his tongue cut out because she snitched on him for being too friendly with the new recruit? The silence stretched, and her lack of an immediate answer was an answer in itself.

Simon's eyes narrowed for a fraction of a second, a flicker of something she couldn't read—annoyance? respect for her loyalty?—before he moved on. "It doesn't matter. You have a choice now, Taylor. It's a simple one. You can walk out that door. Right now. You forget our names, you forget what happened today, and we forget you. You go back to your life, no richer, no poorer, and we never speak again."

He let the offer hang in the air, the tantalizing possibility of a clean break. An escape.

"Or," he said, his voice dropping, "you can go deeper. And asking what's 'really going on' is the first step down that path. You don't get to have both. You don't get the knowledge without the commitment."

This was it. The point of no return. Taylor thought back to the very beginning, to the man in the black suit who had stopped her in the alley. The promise he had made.

"The man who first approached me," she said, meeting Simon's gaze directly. "He said, 'You scratch our backs, and we'll scratch yours.'"

She leaned forward, a mirror of his own earlier posture, closing the space between them. "Today, at the pier, I saved you. I saved Leo. I saved your package. My quick thinking was the only reason we're sitting here right now and not lying on the concrete next to Anthony. I scratched your back."

Her voice didn't waver. For the first time since this whole mess began, she felt a flicker of control, of power. "I think you owe me an explanation."

A muscle in Simon’s jaw tightened. For the first time since she’d met him, he looked hesitant, genuinely uncertain. He stared at her, his usual mask of professional calm completely gone, replaced by a look of intense contemplation. Taylor's mind raced, trying to dissect his reaction. Why the hesitation? Was he not authorized to give her the answers she wanted? She knew he was a Soldier, though she didn't know the specifics of the hierarchy. Was he just a soldier, and his bosses didn't appreciate initiative from their subordinates? Had she just gotten him in trouble by demanding more than he was allowed to give?

Ding-a-ling.

The small bell over the diner's entrance chimed, a cheerful, mundane sound that felt like an alarm bell.

Simon’s head snapped toward the door. He took one look, and his entire posture changed. He immediately slipped out of the booth, rising to his feet in a gesture of deference. Respect.

Taylor, with her back to the door, couldn't see who had walked in. She heard multiple sets of footsteps, the heavy, confident tread of men who owned whatever room they entered. Panic began to bubble in her chest. She instinctively reached out with her power, grabbing hold of the nearest, most intimate insects she could find—the flies buzzing near the counter, the barely-there sensation of hair lice on the two teenage waiters, the microscopic skin mites on her own face. It was a crude, disgusting sonar, but it gave her a picture.

Three men. Two were dressed in tailored suits, flanking a third figure who wore a long coat. They had stopped just inside the door.

A deep, gravelly voice spoke, the words flowing in a smooth, authoritative Italian. Taylor didn't understand the language, but she understood the tone. This was a man used to giving orders. She felt his gaze, a brief, dismissive flick in her direction, before he continued speaking to Simon.

After a moment, the footsteps started again, approaching their booth. The figure stepped into her line of sight.

He was an older gentleman, perhaps in his late sixties, with a thick mane of silver hair impeccably styled. A faint, white scar cut diagonally across his left eyebrow, disappearing into his hairline—an old wound that only served to make his weathered face look more distinguished. He wore a classy, dark trench coat that fit his broad shoulders and surprisingly solid frame perfectly. He didn't look like a thug; he looked like a CEO or a seasoned politician. But his eyes, a sharp, intelligent dark brown, held a weight and a weariness that spoke of a long, hard life. They missed nothing.

He stopped at their table and gave her a warm, grandfatherly smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. "You must be the young lady who saved my men a great deal of trouble this morning," he said, his voice the same deep, gravelly rumble she had heard before, but now softened with a practiced charm.

He extended a large, age-spotted hand across the table. "It is a pleasure to meet you. My name is Gilberto."

Taylor stared at the offered hand, her heart hammering against her ribs. Gilberto. The name from the pier. Simon and Leo's boss. She had just demanded answers from a soldier, and the general had shown up instead.

Behind him, Simon silently stepped away from the booth, taking up a respectful position by a nearby table, his face an impassive mask. He had ceded the floor completely.

Hesitantly, her hand trembling, Taylor reached out and took the old man's hand. His grip was firm, dry, and impossibly strong. He didn't just shake her hand; he held it for a moment, his thumb pressing gently against her knuckles, a gesture that was both paternal and possessive. Then he released her and took Simon's recently vacated seat, the vinyl groaning under his weight.

Gilberto settled into the booth, an aura of calm authority radiating from him that made the grimy diner feel like a corporate boardroom. He folded his large hands on the table, the picture of a patient old man about to tell a story.

"Simon tells me you believe we owe you an explanation," he began, his voice a low, even rumble. "He tells me you believe that your… unique and timely intervention at the pier this morning earned you a seat at the table, so to speak. Is this correct?"

He was laying out the facts, ensuring they were both on the same page. Far from a casual chat, she reckoned.

"I saved them," Taylor said, finding a sliver of the courage she'd had with Simon. "And myself. I need to know what I'm getting into. I need to know what the Fortune Mafia really is, and what you have to do with this city."

Gilberto smiled, a slow, appreciative curl of his lips. "Direct. I like that." He leaned forward, his expression turning serious. "You're a bright young woman. I won't sugarcoat it for you. Here is what you need to know."

His voice took on a historical, almost reverent tone. "Decades ago, before the world became so… loud, my family, the Armani family, was Brockton Bay's underground. We looked after the small businesses. We ran the labor unions on the docks. We oversaw the casinos and the less… savory aspects of a port city's nightlife. There was an order to things. A structure."

He paused, his eyes clouding over with a distant, bitter memory. "Then the parahumans came. First Allfather and his pack of hateful dogs, wrapping their poison in a flag. They didn't care about business; they cared about ideology and violence. Then came the Teeth, a raving pack of animals who burned whatever they couldn't steal. Blind, pointless chaos."

The warmth was gone from his voice, replaced by cold steel. "The family's businesses were shattered. Our clients, the people we protected, ran in fear. Our casinos were raided, our wealth stolen, our people hurt. We were a close-knit cloth, but we were only men. We couldn't compete with powers like that. We couldn't protect our own. So, the family faded. We became a memory."

He looked her straight in the eye, his gaze intense. "Ten years ago, the Empire 88 decided to erase that memory completely. My cousin, Sempronio Armani, a good man, was driving his family to dinner. The Empire ambushed their car. They killed him. They killed his wife. They killed his son."

Gilberto leaned back, a profound sadness in his expression. "But they made a mistake. They were sloppy. They left one alive. She got lucky."

He took a slow, deliberate breath. "His daughter survived. She recovered. And when she was strong enough, she set out to reclaim what was stolen from us. She found the loyal men who remained, men like me. She gathered new strength. She whipped the family back into shape, restoring our control, piece by piece."

His eyes gleamed with a fierce, unwavering loyalty. "She rules the family now. And she continues the legacy her father began."

Taylor listened, utterly captivated, the grimy diner fading away. A mythology that she hadn’t heard of. A saga of a fallen kingdom and a vengeful princess.

"If all of that is true," she asked, her voice barely a whisper, "how have I never even heard of you?"

Gilberto gave a slight, knowing smile. "Because we are not the Empire, screaming our hatred from the rooftops. We are not the Teeth, leaving a trail of pointless fire. The family has always been discreet. Professional. We do not seek the spotlight; we seek results. Sometimes," he admitted, a flicker of coldness in his eyes, "eggs must be broken to make an omelet. But it is always business."

“And our enemies make the news more often, new masters replace the old and all of that.” Then he shifted, and the conversation became dangerously personal. "Your father," Gilberto said, his tone casual, "Danny Hebert. He is the hiring manager for the Dockworkers Union, is he not?"

Taylor froze. A knot of ice formed in her stomach, and her throat closed up. The mention of her father's name, so casually, so easily, was more terrifying than any gunshot. A violation and a threat, veiled and unspoken but deafeningly clear: We know who you are. We know where you live. We know who you love.

But Gilberto simply continued, as if he hadn't just shattered her world. "He has been a union man for decades. A man of principle. If you were to ask him about the 'old days,' before the city went to hell, I am sure he could give you a history lesson on the Armanis."

He didn't let her process the implications. He didn't give her a moment to let the fear take root. He moved on, smoothly transitioning into the brutal pragmatism of their everyday operations.

"I will not pretend we are not a gang, young lady," he said, his voice firm. "We are. But there are gangs, and then there are gangs. We are not the Empire, peddling racial poison. We are not this upstart ABB, trafficking in human misery. We are better. Because we have a code. We have a history."

He leaned forward again, his expression earnest, trying to make her understand. "Life is not black and white. It is a messy, bloody grey. We do bad things to stop worse people from doing worse things. That is the way of the world. What happened at the pier today was a tragedy. It could have been avoided." He gave a slight, respectful nod. "My sympathies for the boys we lost. But at the end of the day, it was business. Nothing personal."

The phrase "nothing personal" hung in the air, a cold and hollow comfort. Taylor found her voice again, though it was tight with a barely controlled tremor.

"Do people… like Anthony… like me… do they know what they're getting into?" she asked, the image of his blood-splattered sneakers flashing in her mind. "Really?"

Gilberto's expression softened into something that looked like genuine sympathy. "No," he admitted without hesitation. "They do not. The family values discretion. Security. The less a new Associate knows, the safer they are, and the safer we are. They are given simple tasks. They are evaluated. Most of them never see anything more dangerous than a crate of untaxed liquor. Today was… an anomaly."

The answer did little to soothe her. "What happens to him now?" she pressed, needing to know. "To his family? And the other man?"

Gilberto shifted his gaze, looking past Taylor to Simon, who was still standing by the other table. It was a silent question. Simon gave a single, sharp nod, his lips a thin, grim line. The silent communication was all the confirmation Gilberto needed.

His attention returned to Taylor. "Anthony's family will be taken care of," he said, his voice imbued with a solemn, unshakable certainty. "We will tell them there was a tragic accident at the docks. We will pay for the funeral. His parents' mortgage will be paid off. If his sister needs tuition for college, it will be provided. They will be protected, and their needs will be tended to in any way the family is able. We reciprocate loyalty. Always."

He let the promise sink in, a powerful statement of their values. "Events like this are rare," he continued, "but this is a dangerous business. Death happens. There is no guarantee of safety. There is only the promise that we will face that danger together, and look after those who are left behind."

His words, a carefully crafted mixture of brutal honesty and profound loyalty, struck a chord deep inside Taylor. We face that danger together. The idea of a group, of a family that cared for its own, was a concept so foreign to her own isolated existence that it felt like a physical ache, a longing for something she'd never had.

"And what about people who leave?" she asked, testing the limits of that loyalty. "People who turn their backs on the family?"

Gilberto didn't bristle at the question. He seemed to expect it. "For a made man, a Soldato like Simon," he said, and the word Soldato was spoken with a specific weight, a title of honor, "it is a long and difficult process. There are oaths. But for an Associate? For a young person who decides this life is not for them?"

He gave a soft, paternal chuckle. "Severance is in order. We would give them a gift for their time and wish them well. Simon can pursue his own interests and goals when his time is done. No son or daughter can stay in the mother hen's coop forever."

The answer was disarmingly reasonable. Gentle, even. It was a golden parachute, a promise of a clean, amicable break. It made the whole bloody enterprise seem less like a trap and more like a simple, albeit dangerous, career choice.

Taylor remained silent, the grimy diner fading into a blur as she processed everything Gilberto had told her. It was a dizzying mix of brutal violence and fierce loyalty, of historical pride and criminal enterprise. Their existence held a nuance, not just a gang seeking to exploit, but a lost kingdom trying to reclaim their legacy. And they had a code. We reciprocate loyalty. We take care of our own. The words echoed in the lonely, empty spaces of her life.

She took a deep, shaky breath, her mind a battlefield of fear and a strange, nascent sense of belonging. "I... I need time," she said, her voice barely a whisper. "To think about all of this. I can't just... I need to make a decision.

Gilberto’s warm, grandfatherly smile returned. "Of course," he said, his tone gentle and understanding. "That is wise. This is not a choice to be made lightly."

He reached into his trench coat, his movements slow and deliberate, and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a silver lighter. He placed a cigarette between his lips, but just as he was about to light it, he seemed to remember something.

"Ah," he said, taking the unlit cigarette from his mouth. He held it between two fingers like a conductor's baton, his hand gesturing as he spoke, a caricature of a true Italian. "Before I forget."

He reached back into the inner pocket of his coat. This time, he didn't pull out a cigarette. He pulled out a thick, tightly bound wad of cash. It was far thicker than the fold of bills Simon had given her in the restaurant.

"A thank you," Gilberto said, his voice sincere. "For what you did today. You saved two of my men and a very valuable asset. The family appreciates your… extraordinary talents."

He slid the brick of money across the worn surface of the table. It came to a stop just in front of her hands.

For a moment, she just stared at it. It was an obscene amount of money, sitting there between the salt shaker and a sticky patch of old syrup. Her hands trembled as she reached for it. She slid the thick rubber band from the stack and, with clumsy, numb fingers, began to count. The bills were crisp, new. Hundreds.

She counted it once, then again, her mind struggling to comprehend the number.

Two thousand dollars.

Chapter Text

Chapter 4: Tailored Suits

The bus hissed to a stop, the doors folding open with a pneumatic sigh. Taylor hopped off, her sneakers hitting the cracked pavement of a street she'd never been on before. This was the industrial outskirts of Brockton Bay, a part of the city that bled into rust and forgotten factories. The air tasted of chemical tang and low tide.

Inside her backpack, hidden beneath a false bottom she'd painstakingly stitched into place, was her costume. The thought of it was a nervous flutter in her stomach. This would be its first real field test. It wasn't finished—the back plate of the helmet was still just a design sketch, which meant her long, dark hair would be exposed—but it was functional. It was something. Simon had been insistent. Bring your gear. I need to see what you've put together.

She stood before the cannery. It was a massive, ugly block of corrugated metal and stained concrete, a hive of ceaseless activity. Dozens of workers in stained aprons and hairnets moved with a grim, practiced efficiency, their movements dwarfed by the scale of the surrounding machinery. The oppressive heat, even from the outside, was a pressing against her physically.

The instructions had been simple: follow the signs to "Administration," and do not speak to the workers.

She did as she was told, moving along the designated walkway, a lone, out-of-place teenager in a world of hard, adult labor. She kept her head down, acutely aware of the blank, tired stares of the workers she passed. They knew she didn't belong here.

The administration "office" was little more than a door at the end of a long corridor. It led to a steep, narrow staircase spiraling down into a concrete basement. The air grew cooler, thick with the smell of damp earth and something vaguely metallic.

She found Simon at the bottom, standing near what looked like a cargo elevator. He was speaking in low tones with Leo, the bald, imposing Soldato from the pier. The two of them together were an intimidating sight. Taylor started to wonder if they were a package deal now, her joint handlers.

When he saw her, Leo gave a curt, dismissive nod and walked over to the elevator. He pulled the metal cage door shut with a loud clang, and with a low whir of machinery, the platform began its slow ascent, carrying him up and out of sight.

"Taylor." Simon's voice snapped her attention back to him. "You're punctual. Good." He looked at her, his expression as unreadable as ever. "Gilberto informed me of your decision to continue your employment with us."

"Does this mean I'm… in?" she asked, the words feeling foolish as soon as they left her mouth. "A made member?"

"No," Simon said flatly. "Not yet. That is a long road. But you are on it." He gestured for her to follow him, leading her past towering shelves stacked high with canned goods, industrial cleaning supplies, and unmarked wooden crates. They entered a small backroom, a cramped space dominated by grey metal filing cabinets and a single, cluttered office desk with an old computer humming on it.

"Before an Associate can ever be considered for the rank of Soldato," Simon explained, his back to her as he typed something into the computer, "they must be acquainted with every aspect of the family's business. The clean, and the dirty."

He finished whatever he was doing and turned to face her, his arms crossed. "Let's see it," he said. "Your costume. Show me what you've built."

With slightly trembling hands, she unzipped her backpack, pulled out the false bottom, and began to lay the suit out on the desk. The main bodysuit was a deep, charcoal grey, the seamless lines of the spider silk weave giving it an almost organic texture. It was a far cry from the spandex most new capes wore. Bolted onto the shoulders, chest, and thighs were plates of dark, mottled armor. She'd bought them with the money from the first job—not real armor, but scrap metal from a junkyard, cut and hammered into shape, fastened with heavy-duty rivets. It was ugly, practical, and a testament to her paranoia.

Simon picked up one of the armored thigh plates, turning it over in his hands. He ran a thumb over the rough, uneven surface and the thick, ugly rivets. He was silent for a long moment, his expression unreadable.

"You have a talent for this," he said finally, his voice a flat statement of fact.

A hot flush of pride, unexpected and overwhelming, rose in Taylor's chest. The words, coming from the stoic, professional Simon, felt like the highest praise. Before she could stop herself, the story of its creation tumbled out of her, a dam of weeks-long, secret effort bursting forth.

"It took weeks," she heard herself saying, her voice filled with a passion she hadn't realized she felt. "I had to cultivate a colony of black widows—hundreds of them—and get them to produce silk on a near-industrial scale. And you can't just use it raw. I researched everything at the library. You have to learn how to braid the strands, layering them in a cross-hatch pattern to get the tensile strength everyone talks about. I had to teach myself how to stitch with my mom's old sewing machine, connecting the strips, then molding them..."

Her voice trailed off. She looked up and saw Simon watching her, his attention rapt. He hadn't interrupted. He was listening to every word, absorbing the information. A sudden wave of self-consciousness washed over her. She had just revealed the intimate, nerdy details of her secret power to her Mafia handler.

He placed the armor plate back on the desk. "It's a better costume than ninety percent of the independent capes in this city," he admitted. The praise, a second time, felt genuine. "Brilliant, as I said." He then gestured to the suit. "But put it away for now. You won't be needing it for what comes next."

The words were a splash of cold water. Disappointment, sharp and immediate, pricked at her. This wasn't the field test she had expected. So, what was it? Another test? A way to further gauge her skills? The thought process was immediate, a cascade of possibilities. Her power wasn't just about controlling bugs. The silk was a unique, valuable resource. She could produce this material, this lightweight, slash-resistant armor, for the whole organization. She could armor the other Soldati. She could make them stronger, safer. She could be useful. She could be worthy.

She pushed the thought aside, packing the costume back into her bag. The real reason she had agreed to continue, she told herself, was curiosity. She needed to learn more about the Fortune Mafia, to understand their inner workings. The knowledge was a weapon. If they ever gave her a real reason—if they ever crossed a line she couldn't justify—she could walk away. She could go straight to the PRT with everything she'd learned and burn their entire operation to the ground.

After Taylor zipped her backpack shut, hiding her costume away once more, Simon gave her a long, appraising look. His eyes scanned her from her worn-out sneakers to the frayed cuffs of her hoodie.

"We expected you'd use some of that money to buy yourself some new clothes," he said, his tone neutral, but the judgment was implicit. Beside his own sharp, practical attire, she looked like a vagrant. Unprofessional.

Taylor felt a flush of defensive anger. "I wasn't sure if I was going to stay," she retorted. "I didn't exactly have time to go shopping."

"That's fine," Simon said, seemingly unbothered by her tone. "We planned for that contingency. I have something for you."

He turned to one of the tall, grey filing cabinets, pulling open a deep drawer with a loud metallic scrape. He reached inside and pulled out a large, thick manila envelope, the kind used for mailing documents, but this one was bulging with something soft. He handed it to her.

She ripped the paper seal. Inside, neatly folded, was a crisp white button-up shirt, a pair of simple black trousers, and a pair of sturdy, black leather dress shoes. It was a uniform.

"If you're going to play the part, you have to look the part," Simon said, his voice firm. "We maintain a strict dress code. It's what separates us from the rabble. Without it, we're no different from the thugs in the Empire or the ABB."

He gestured to the clothes. "Put them on." Then he turned his back to her, a deliberate gesture of granting privacy, and busied himself with the computer on the desk.

Taylor hesitated for a moment before shedding her old clothes. The stained hoodie, a shield she had worn for years, came off first. Then the comfortable, worn-out sweatpants and the scuffed sneakers that had carried her through countless alleyways and back streets. Each discarded item felt like a piece of her old, miserable life being peeled away.

As she pulled on the crisp, slightly stiff new clothes, she thought about the hierarchy she had observed. Everyone was dressed like they belonged. The Soldati, the soldiers like Simon, wore practical but professional attire—suits and dark jackets. Gilberto, the Capo, wore a trench coat, a mantle of authority. This outfit—this simple shirt and trousers—was the first rung on that ladder. It was the uniform of an Associate who was being taken seriously. It was both a promotion and a leash.

Taylor turned around, the new clothes feeling strange and foreign against her skin. The fabric was stiff, the shoes a little too snug. Her old clothes lay in a pathetic, discarded pile on the dusty concrete floor.

Simon turned from the computer, his eyes giving her a quick, professional once-over. A small, almost imperceptible nod of approval was his only comment. "Much better," he said.

The silence that followed was heavy with anticipation. Taylor couldn't stand it any longer. "So what are we doing today?" she asked, the question sharp with a nervous energy she couldn't conceal. "What part of the business am I learning about?"

"As I said," Simon began, turning fully to face her, his hands clasped behind his back, "to be considered, you must be acquainted with every aspect of our operations. Today, we are paying someone a visit."

He paused, letting the words hang in the air. "There's a man. Owns a shoe polishing and repair shop a few miles from here. His name is Mr. Biaggio. And he is late on his payment."

The word "payment" landed with a cold thud in Taylor's stomach. She knew what this was. She'd read about it, seen it in movies. It was the bedrock of their entire enterprise.

"Protection money?" she asked, her voice quiet. "Racketeering?"

"Yes," Simon said, without a flicker of shame or hesitation. "We are not a charity. The protection we offer is a service. It requires resources. Manpower. It costs money. We can't provide it for free."

He looked her straight in the eye, his expression unyielding, throwing her own words back at her like a weapon. "Like you said, Taylor. 'You scratch our backs, we scratch yours.' Mr. Scapelli, at the deli, is a client in good standing. When the ABB came to harass him, we were already en route to assist. You just got there first."

He took a step toward the door. "Mr. Biaggio, however, has neglected to scratch our back for two months. Today, we are going to remind him of the terms of our arrangement."

"And what's my role in this?" Taylor asked, her stomach twisting into a cold knot. Was she expected to hurt this man? To threaten him?

"You will stand there," Simon said, his instructions brutally simple. "You will look professional. You will be a silent, intimidating presence. Your job is to be a part of the 'we' in the conversation. To help Mr. Biaggio understand that he is not dealing with one man, but with an organization. Your presence is the passive coercion. The active part is my responsibility."

He gestured for her to follow, and they left the small office, walking back out into the cavernous basement storage room. The cargo elevator was descending with a low mechanical groan, its metal cage arriving with a loud clang. Leo stepped out, followed by three other men. Two were the tough, blank-faced Associates she expected, but the third was a new face.

"Orso will be with you," Leo grunted at Simon, jerking a thumb at the newcomer. "My team has a visit to make on the east side."

The message was clear: this wasn't an isolated incident. This was a coordinated, city-wide operation. This was just another Tuesday.

"Let's go," Simon said. "In the truck."

They all stepped onto the large cargo elevator. As it whirred to life, lifting them up into the cannery proper, Taylor found herself standing next to Orso and took the opportunity to study him.

He was big, not just tall but wide, with the thick, powerful build of a laborer who had spent his life hauling heavy objects. His hands were huge and calloused, the knuckles scarred. He wore the same simple uniform as she did—a white button-up and black trousers—but on his large frame, it looked stretched and tight, a thin veneer of professionalism over a core of brute force. His face was broad and fleshy, with a flat nose that looked like it had been broken more than once. He looked like the kind of man who solved problems with his fists. He looked like a thug.

They emerged into the cacophony of the cannery's loading bay. Workers were hauling pallets of canned goods into the backs of several large delivery trucks. Simon led them toward one of the trucks, its rear shutter door wide open. As they climbed inside, the heavy metal door began to roll down, plunging them into a dim, claustrophobic darkness, the air thick with the smell of cardboard and tin.

Orso, noticing her staring in the gloom, let out a low chuckle. "How long you been with the family, kid?" he asked, his voice a low, gravelly rumble.

"A week," Taylor answered, her own voice sounding small and thin in the enclosed space.

Orso looked past her at Simon. "Fresh meat, huh?" he commented. "You're starting 'em young these days."

"We have to," Simon said, his voice sharp and cutting from the darkness. "The Empire is swelling its ranks with every skinhead and disgruntled idiot they can find. And the ABB must be dealt with. We need reliable people. Now."

"Heard another rumor, too," Orso's voice rumbled from the darkness. "Some new crew trying to set up shop."

"The Merchants?" Simon asked, his tone laced with dismissal.

Orso grunted, a sound that might have been a shrug. "Maybe. Maybe not. Could just be junkies getting organized. Could be the Teeth thinkin' the city's forgotten what happens when they show their faces."

Simon let out a long, weary sigh, the sound echoing in the metal box. Taylor could just make out his silhouette as he crossed his arms. "With our luck, it's something minor. The Merchants are a non-entity. A collection of dirty drug peddlers. We use them to harass the Empire's own narcotics trade when it suits us."

The casual mention of drug trafficking, even in relation to their enemies, snagged in Taylor's mind. She found her voice, the question coming out before she could second-guess it. "Do you… does the family deal in drugs?"

"No," Simon answered immediately, his voice sharp and definitive. "And if we did, I wouldn't be in that department."

He shifted, turning his silhouette toward her. "The family deals in vanities. Luxuries. We find loopholes in bureaucracy. We give the working man a chance to enjoy the things that giant corporations and government taxes try to squeeze out of his reach. We bring in fine liquor without the import duties that double its price. We run casinos where a man can feel like a king for a night without the government taking a slice of every pot."

His voice took on a self-righteous, almost political edge, the same pragmatic justification Gilberto had used. "We operate in the spaces they leave behind. If that means smuggling booze to cheapen it for the common man, then that's what we do. It's how we function. It's how we survive."

The conversation died, leaving only the rumble of the truck's engine and the jostling of its suspension. The silence was heavy with unspoken things. Taylor, having no more questions she felt safe asking, retreated into the familiar comfort of her power.

She reached out with her senses, a silent command sent through the vibrating metal floor of the truck. She gathered a swarm—not a massive one, but a respectable force of street-level insects. Spiders from the cannery's loading bay, cockroaches from the gutters, a cloud of hardy flies. She directed them to attach themselves to the undercarriage of the truck, a secret, chitinous army hitching a ride.

She wouldn't be caught off-guard again. What happened at the pier had taught her a brutal lesson: reaction time was everything. Having a swarm already in place, ready to be deployed, was a tactical advantage she would not neglect again.

The truck eventually lurched to a stop, its brakes groaning in protest. With a rattle of metal, Simon slid the shutter door open, flooding the dark interior with blinding afternoon sunlight. He hopped down onto the pavement, gesturing for them to follow.

Taylor blinked, her eyes adjusting to the glare. They were on a quiet side street, lined with small, older storefronts. A nearby road sign, its green paint faded and peeling, read "Dobs Strt." Simon and Orso were already moving, their strides purposeful, heading toward a small shop with a simple, hand-painted sign that read "Leather & Sole Repairs." The windows were filled with worn-out boots, fine leather dress shoes, and cans of polish.

It looked quaint. Harmless.

Simon opened the door, and a small, cheerful bell chimed. Orso followed him in, his large frame momentarily blocking out the sun. Taylor took a deep breath and stepped in after them, her heart beginning to hammer against her ribs.

The shop smelled of leather, wax, and old wood. Behind a long wooden counter cluttered with tools, brushes, and half-finished shoes, stood a small, wiry man in a leather apron. He had a fringe of grey hair, kind eyes magnified by a pair of spectacles, and a warm, welcoming smile on his face. This must be Mr. Biaggio.

"Simon!" the old man said, his voice friendly. "It is good to see you. Has it been a month already?" His smile faltered slightly as his gaze flicked past Simon to the hulking form of Orso, and finally to Taylor, a silent, professionally dressed teenage girl. His eyes widened with a dawning apprehension. He knew this wasn't a social call.

"Two months, Mr. Biaggio," Simon corrected, his voice polite but firm, cutting through the man's feigned cheerfulness. The air in the small shop instantly grew colder.

"Two?" Biaggio's smile vanished completely. He wrung his hands, a nervous, fluttering motion. "No, no, I spoke with Ignazio last month. He gave me a pass. We had an arrangement."

"The arrangement," Simon clarified, his voice losing its polite edge, "was that Ignazio would allow you to defer last month's payment, provided you paid the full, combined amount this month. With interest."

A thick, suffocating silence filled the shop. Mr. Biaggio's gaze darted between Simon's implacable face, Orso's hulking, silent form, and finally, to Taylor. His eyes, magnified by his spectacles, were wide with a pleading, desperate fear.

"Please," he began, his voice dropping to a near-whisper. "Business is… it's not good. How many fellas come in to get a shine anymore? To fix a heel? The world is changing."

He suddenly gestured toward Taylor, his hand trembling, singling her out. "Look at this young lady! A sharp girl, you can see it. She knows. Young folks like her, they don't fix shoes. They wear sneakers. The old pair gets a hole? Pfft." He made a throwing-away motion with his hands. "They go to the mall, they buy a new pair for twenty dollars. How can a man like me compete with that?"

He was appealing to her, trying to find a crack in their unified front, a sympathetic ear in the young girl who was, moments ago, one of those kids in cheap sneakers. He was making it personal, and Taylor could feel the weight of all three men's eyes on her, waiting to see how she would react.

Mr. Biaggio’s words, his pleading, his desperate appeal to her as a "young folk," should have resonated. A part of her, the logical, empathetic part, saw the truth in what he was saying. She understood his struggle. She felt a pang of sympathy for this small, kind-eyed man trapped by a changing world.

But his whining, his excuses, his attempts to squirm out of a promise… they struck a different, deeper chord.

The memory struck to the forefront, sharp and sour. Emma. Walking through the mall, laughing, as Emma "borrowed" five dollars from her wallet for a smoothie, promising to pay her back on Monday. Emma, "borrowing" her mother's favorite flute for a school project, only for it to come back with a dent, with a breezy, "Oops! I'll make it up to you, I promise!" They were friends then, and Taylor had believed her. Every time.

After the locker, after everything else, those memories had curdled. The broken promises weren't just careless slights anymore; they were a pattern. They were a weapon. A way to take and take and take, using the flimsy shield of a promise that was never meant to be kept. Trust was a currency, and Emma had taught her how utterly bankrupt it could be.

Taylor’s hands, hidden at her sides, clenched into tight fists. Her sympathy for Mr. Biaggio evaporated, replaced by a cold, hard bitterness.

She looked at the old man, her expression hardening. She shook her head, just once, a small, sharp motion. Her gaze, which had been avoidant, now met his, and it was no longer the gaze of a nervous teenage girl. It was a glare. A deal is a deal.

It was a reciprocal relationship. The family protected him. He paid them. He had broken his end of the bargain. He had broken the trust. He was just another person making excuses, another person whose promises were worthless. Her feeling of pity, of feeling terrible for his situation, was still there, a knot in her stomach, but it was overshadowed by a harsher, more rigid principle. You keep your word. Period.

Simon, ever astute, immediately seized the opening Taylor had created. Her shift in demeanor, her sudden, cold glare, had changed the dynamic in the room. They were no longer three separate people; they were a single, unified presence.

"It seems my young colleague does not appreciate your deflection, Mr. Biaggio," Simon said, his voice dropping, losing all its previous civility. He took a step closer to the counter, his shadow falling over the smaller man. "And neither do I."

He laid his hands flat on the polished wood of the counter, leaning in. "Let me make this very simple for you. Either you have the money, and you pay what you owe right now, or Orso and I will be forced to take it." He didn't have to specify what "it" was.

Mr. Biaggio seemed to shrink under the weight of the threat. All the fight went out of him, replaced by a defeated, pleading desperation. "Simon, please," he whimpered, his eyes darting between the three of them. "I've been loyal for thirty years! You know me. I would never cross the family. Come on!"

Simon shook his head, a slow, disappointed motion. "And for thirty years, the family has been lenient with you, Biaggio. We have overlooked late payments. We have given you passes. We have treated you with respect."

He leaned in closer, his voice dropping to a low, conspiratorial whisper, laced with menace. "Now, imagine for a moment that it wasn't us you owed. Imagine it was the ABB. Do you think they would be this patient? Or imagine it was the Empire. Sure," he added with a cruel, thin smile, "they might consider you 'white' these days. But you know as well as I do how much those animals love to cause trouble for its own sake. They would break your legs just for the fun of it before they even asked for the money."

The threat was clear. They were the lesser of three evils. And his loyalty was not to them, but to the protection they offered from a city full of monsters. A protection that was about to be revoked.

Despite the threats, despite the cold, final logic of Simon's argument, Mr. Biaggio could only shake his head, his face pale and slick with a sheen of terrified sweat. "I don't have it, Simon," he pleaded, his voice cracking. "I swear on my mother's grave, I don't have the money."

Simon stared at him for a long, silent moment, his expression utterly flat. Then, without another word, he walked around the end of the counter and pushed through the beaded curtain that led to the back room.

"Hey! You can't go back there!" Biaggio cried out, his voice a mixture of indignation and fear. His protests fell on deaf ears. Simon was gone.

Taylor stood in the tense silence, trying her best to tune out the old man's panicked muttering. She instinctively reached out with her swarm, a silent, creeping wave of perception that flowed past the curtain and into the back. She felt for the tell-tale cold, dense shape of a metal safe, for hidden drawers, for anything of value.

Her attention was snapped back to the present as Orso moved, his large frame blocking the service door, a silent, immovable wall. Simon reappeared from the back, his face a mask of grim determination. He held a collapsible, telescopic baton in his hand.

He stopped in front of her and held it out.

"He stays out here with you," Simon said, his voice a low command. "You watch him. Orso and I will check the office and storage. If he tries anything—if you so much as smell funny business—you put him in his place."

Taylor stared at the baton. It was black, metallic, with a ridged rubber grip. It was a tool designed for one purpose: to inflict pain. Her heart seemed to freeze in her chest. This was it. This was the line. She was being ordered to be ready to strike a helpless old man.

The memory of Emma's broken promises. The image of Anthony's dead body. Gilberto's promise of loyalty. Simon's cold logic. It all swirled in her head, a nauseating cocktail of justification and fear. Taking a slow, deliberate breath, she reached out. Her hand was surprisingly steady as she took the baton from Simon.

With a flick of her wrist, the baton expanded with a sharp shink, its metallic sections locking into place with a definitive, chilling click. She held it at her side, a solid, heavy weight in her hand.

As Orso and Simon prepared to disappear into the back, Taylor's swarm, which had been methodically mapping the small office, found it. A square, dense, cold object hidden behind a flimsy piece of drywall. On the wall in front of it was a framed photograph.

"Look for a painting," she said, her voice coming out sharp and clear. "Or a framed picture on the wall in the office. There's a safe behind it."

Orso stopped and gave her an incredulous look, his flat nose wrinkling in disdain. "And who the hell are you to be giving orders?" he grumbled.

But Simon knew better. He glanced at Taylor, a flicker of understanding in his eyes, before nodding curtly. "Let's go," he said to Orso, and the two of them disappeared past the beaded curtain.

Not wanting to be separated from the action, Taylor swung her leg over the counter, landing silently on the floorboards on the other side. The move was sudden and athletic, forcing Mr. Biaggio to stumble back until his shoulders were pressed against the wall. He was trapped between her and the counter.

He immediately started pleading again, his voice a desperate, wheezing whisper, trying to appeal to the young girl he thought was still there. "Please, young lady, I know you have a good heart. You're not like them. There must be something you can do. A word you could put in for me..."

On and on he went, his words a pathetic stream of babble. Taylor tuned him out. She closed her eyes for a second, focusing entirely on the sensory input from her swarm. She followed Simon and Orso's movements in the back room. She felt the vibrations as they took the picture frame off the wall, followed by a sharp crack and a crash as they smashed through the thin drywall to expose the safe's metal door. She could sense their frustration as they tried to pry it open, the scraping of metal on metal.

She opened her eyes and looked at the terrified man pinned against the wall. "The code," she said, her voice flat and devoid of emotion. "What's the code to the safe?"

Mr. Biaggio stared at her, his mouth agape. The pleading stopped. He saw the cold, hard resolve in her eyes. After a moment's hesitation, a last flicker of defiance dying in his gaze, he slumped against the wall in defeat. He rattled off a six-digit number, his voice a monotone of pure despair.

Taylor didn't waste a second. She turned her head and shouted the numbers toward the back room, her voice echoing in the small shop. "EIGHT-THREE-ZERO-ONE-NINE-FIVE!"

A few minutes later, Simon and Orso emerged from the back room. The beaded curtain clattered as they pushed through it. Simon was holding a thick stack of cash, his thumb methodically flicking through the bills as he counted. Taylor couldn't see the denominations, but from the size of the wad, she guessed it was in the thousands.

Simon finished his count and tucked the money into the inner pocket of his jacket. He turned to Mr. Biaggio, who was still slumped against the wall, a picture of pathetic, broken defeat.

"Thank you for your cooperation, Mr. Biaggio," Simon said, his tone the polite, detached voice of a banker closing a deal. He paused, then offered a piece of unsolicited advice. "If your business is truly failing, perhaps you should consider a new profession. The family can't be expected to carry a failing enterprise."

"What job?" Biaggio whispered, his voice hoarse. "This shop... this is all I have. It was my father's."

Simon shrugged, a gesture of absolute indifference. "The family is not here to solve all of your problems," he said simply. "If you wanted us to, the arrangement would have to be... more equitable. And the amount you would owe us would be far greater than what we currently ask."

The message was clear: they were a protection service, not a partner. His failure was his own.

Without another word, Simon turned and walked out of the shop, the bell over the door chiming mockingly. Orso followed, and after a moment's hesitation where she stared at the broken old man, Taylor did the same, the telescopic baton still a heavy, alien weight in her hand.

They walked a block down the street in silence, turning a corner that took them out of sight of the "Leather & Sole Repairs" shopfront. Simon stopped and pulled the wad of cash back out of his pocket.

Without ceremony, he peeled off two crisp, one-hundred-dollar bills and handed them to Taylor. He did the same for Orso. Then he pocketed the rest of the thick stack, which had to be well over five thousand dollars.

Taylor stared at the two hundred dollars in her hand. It was a payment. Her cut. Her reward for helping them terrorize and rob a helpless old man.

Chapter Text

Empire of Sin

A Worm AU

Chapter 5: Set The Table

Lord Street felt different this time. Taylor walked with a newfound, if brittle, confidence. She wore the uniform—the crisp white button-up shirt, the black trousers, the practical dress shoes. It felt less foreign now, more like a second skin. A simple black sling bag was draped over her shoulder, containing her costume. She was no longer a civilian stumbling into a secret world; she was an employee on her way to an assignment.

Her swarm was a silent, invisible vanguard. Thousands of compound eyes watched from the cracks in the pavement, from the undersides of awnings, from the leaves of the sparse city trees. They tracked every passerby, every car that rumbled past. She mapped the flow of the street, alert for any anomaly, any sign of a tail or a potential threat. The paranoia was no longer a frantic panic; it was a low, steady hum, a professional vigilance.

She checked the address on the screen of her new burner phone, then stopped, looking up at the storefront. The sign was simple, elegant gold script on a black background: "De Renzo Fine Tailoring."

Pushing open the heavy glass door, she stepped into another world. There was no old grease, no damp concrete. The air that greeted her was cool and clean, conditioned to a perfect temperature, and carried the fresh, almost sterile scent of new, expensive fabrics. The floor was polished dark wood, the walls a tasteful cream, and the lighting soft and indirect. The shop was immaculate, and completely empty of customers.

The front of the house was a showroom of masculine elegance. Mannequins stood at attention in perfectly tailored suits. Shirts, trousers, and fine leather shoes were displayed with the precision of museum artifacts.

A man who had been adjusting a tie on a display glided over to her. He was impossibly well-kept, with brilliant blonde hair styled perfectly, and an easy, professional smile that radiated customer service. He wore a suit that probably cost more than her father's car.

"Welcome to De Renzo's," he said, his voice smooth and cheerful. "How may I help you today?"

"I was sent by Mr. Gilberto," Taylor said, her own voice sounding plain and rough in the pristine quiet of the shop. "To pick up an order. For me."

The attendant's smile didn't waver, but a spark of recognition lit up his eyes. "Ah, yes, of course," he said with a knowing chirp in his voice. "We have it ready for you in the back. One moment, please."

He gave a small, polite bow and disappeared through a velvet curtain at the back of the showroom, leaving Taylor alone in the silent, expensive space. This was another front, another piece of the Armani empire hidden in plain sight. A legitimate, high-end business that served as a private outfitter for a criminal organization.

The attendant returned in less than a minute, holding a long, black garment bag. "If you would please follow me to the counter," he said with the same cheerful efficiency.

He laid the bag on the polished marble countertop and unzipped it with a smooth, satisfying shhhhick. Inside, nestled against the soft lining, was the suit.

It was immaculate. The jacket was a deep, dark navy blue, the fabric possessing a subtle texture that seemed to drink the light. The lapels were accented with a fine, almost invisible burgundy trim. Paired with it was a simple, elegant black tie. It was expertly tailored, impossibly expensive, and sized perfectly for her.

"Is everything to your liking?" the attendant asked, his smile unwavering.

Taylor stared at it, her mind a complete blank. Liking? She had no frame of reference for this. Her idea of "formal wear" was the one slightly-less-wrinkled shirt she owned for school presentations. She wouldn't know a good suit from a bad one if her life depended on it. She decided to trust the expertise of the tailor, and the impeccable taste of a man like Gilberto.

"Yes," she said, her voice a dry croak. "It's fine."

"Excellent," the attendant chirped. He zipped the bag back up with another smooth, final-sounding motion. "The cashier will ring you up now."

The cashier, a woman with severe-looking glasses and a professional, neutral expression, turned to her register. "That will be one hundred and fifty dollars, please."

The number hit Taylor's brain from out of nowhere, a mental whiplash that cracked her neck. Her body seized. Her hand, which had been reaching for the two hundred dollars from the Biaggio job, froze in her sling bag.

$150?

One hundred and fifty dollars. For a single suit jacket and a tie. That was more than a week's worth of groceries for her and her dad. It was an insane, impossible amount of money for a piece of clothing. And she was expected to have more of these? In different colors? Where would she even keep something like this? In her cramped, dusty closet, next to her threadbare hoodies? The sheer absurdity of it was mind-boggling.

"...ma'am?"

The cashier's polite voice cut through her daze. Taylor realized she had been standing there, frozen, for several seconds. A hot flush of embarrassment crept up her neck.

"Sorry," she muttered, finally pulling out the cash. She smoothed out the crisp hundred and a fifty-dollar bill and handed them over, the exchange feeling utterly surreal.

The cashier took the money, and the attendant slid the heavy garment bag across the counter to her. She tried suppressing the grunt that followed, but the weight of it in her hands caught her off-guard yet again. In a world so dangerous, did she need to die pristine, too? 

Her mind reeled as Anthony’s lifeless eyes flashed before her own. “...May I use your fitting room?” Gosh, her voice sounded meek, like anticipating a hand to crack out of nowhere and slap her across the face.

The attendant showed her to a fitting room. The space was larger than her bedroom, with plush carpeting and its own three-way mirror. After he left, closing the heavy door behind him, Taylor was left alone with the garment bag and her own reflection.

She carefully, almost reverently, put on the suit. The fabric was smoother, lighter than she could have imagined. It fit perfectly, tailored to her frame in a way that felt both constricting and empowering. She fumbled with the black tie for a full minute, her fingers clumsy and unfamiliar with the knot, eventually settling for something that looked approximately correct.

Then, she looked up and truly saw herself in the mirror. The old Taylor was gone. At least, the visible parts of her were.

There was no oversized hoodie to hide inside. The tailored cut of the jacket forced her to stand up straight, pulling her shoulders back, eliminating the defensive, perpetually hunched posture she had adopted for years. Her head was held high by default.

She looked like one of the mannequins from the showroom floor. Immaculate. Professional. Anonymous. But the face staring back at her didn't fit. It was still just her face—too long, her mouth too wide, her expression a permanent fixture of anxiety. It was a normal girl's face incongruously attached to a high-class suit of armor.

She tried to fix her hair, running her fingers through the long, dark mess, trying to tame it into something that matched the suit's elegance. It was a futile effort. She fidgeted, shifting her weight from foot to foot, turning slightly, trying to find an angle, a posture, a way of holding herself that felt right. Nothing did.

Who was she supposed to be now?

She wasn't the hero she had dreamed of becoming. Not yet, anyway. She was a cape, technically. She had a power. She had a costume hidden in a bag. But she worked for the Mafia. She'd terrorized an old man and watched a boy die, and she'd been paid for it.

The reflection in the mirror offered no answers, only a stark, silent question that echoed in the luxurious quiet of the fitting room.

Who are you?

Taylor left the fitting room, her old clothes stuffed unceremoniously into her sling bag next to her costume, and was guided by the attendant out a back exit. A black car was waiting in the alley, the kind of long, heavy luxury sedan that would have been the pinnacle of class and style thirty years ago. One of Gilberto's suited men held the back door open for her.

The car's interior was a world of faded glory. The upholstery was rich, dark leather, still velvety to the touch but cracked and worn in places. The seats were plush and deep, clearly having accommodated many passengers over the years. The air smelled of old leather and cigar smoke.

Gilberto was already inside, a benevolent patriarch waiting for her. He smiled warmly as she slid in beside him.

"Ah, magnificent," he said, his eyes appraising her new look. "The suit fits you perfectly. A wise investment."

"It was one hundred and fifty dollars," Taylor blurted out, the number still feeling impossibly large in her mind.

Gilberto let out a deep, warm chuckle, patting her shoulder with a heavy, paternal hand. "My dear, we always pay for quality. Besides," he said, his expression turning philosophical, "men and women in our line of work, we live close to the edge. Why not live each day as if it might be your last? When else will you have the chance to buy fine suits? To go shopping for dresses?"

He sighed, a nostalgic look in his eyes. "You remind me a little of my own daughter when she was your age. Such a sweet girl. Always worried about the cost of things." He smiled, but there was a hard edge to it. "I taught her what my father taught me: to make money, you must spend money. It is all business, my dear. Presentation is half the battle."

Taylor didn't know how to respond to any of that. The casual mention of his daughter, the strange mix of grandfatherly advice and cold, capitalist logic. She simply nodded, taking his words and shelving them away in the quiet, ever-growing library of Mafia wisdom in the back of her mind.

Gilberto seemed satisfied with her silence. He settled back into the plush leather, turning to face her, his eyes twinkling with a new excitement.

"Now," he said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial, cheerful tone. "Are you ready for a night of gambling?"

The sedan glided to a stop under a brightly lit portico. Taylor stepped out of the car and into a different Brockton Bay.

Glimmering neon signs painted the night in strokes of crimson and gold. Honeyed lights spilled from tall, ornate windows, promising wealth and excitement. This was the Ruby Dreams Casino, a rare and dazzling jewel set against the grimy backdrop of the northern Docks. It was tucked away from the pristine streets of Downtown, a world unto itself, and from the steady stream of expensive cars pulling up, it was clearly thriving.

Another front. Another river of cash flowing into the family's coffers. A glittering palace built on the desperation of men and women spending money they didn't have, all for the slim, foolish hope of a big win, while the house, inevitably, always won.

Gilberto's hand rested lightly on her back, a gesture of paternal guidance, as his security detail smoothly escorted them toward the grand entrance. Just inside the ornate glass doors, Simon and Orso were waiting. They stood at ease, dressed in sharp, dark suits that made them look more like pit bosses than mob soldiers. They both gave a respectful nod to Gilberto as he approached.

Taylor followed them inside, and the sheer scale of the place was breathtaking. The air was a cacophony of sounds—the cheerful, obnoxious jingles of a hundred slot machines, the clatter of chips, the low murmur of the crowd, the smooth voice of a jazz singer coming from a lounge somewhere. The glamour was overwhelming. Patrons in expensive suits and glittering dresses crowded around roulette wheels, their faces a tense mixture of hope and anxiety. Dealers in crisp uniforms dealt cards with practiced, emotionless efficiency at the blackjack tables. The entire room was a glittering, vibrant ecosystem of greed and chance.

They were making their way through the main floor, a small island of quiet purpose in the chaotic sea of the casino, when their procession was interrupted. A man emerged from the crowd, moving toward them with an unnerving, predatory grace. He had Gilberto's same olive complexion and sharp, patrician features, but where Gilberto's face was softened by age and a practiced, paternal warmth, this man's was all hard angles and cold calculation. He was younger, maybe in his early fifties, with slicked-back black hair just beginning to grey at the temples. A network of fine lines radiated from his eyes, but they weren't the laugh lines of a cheerful man; they were the creases of someone who spent a great deal of time squinting in suspicion. He wore an expensive charcoal suit over a blood-red shirt, the colors stark and aggressive. He was a wolf where Gilberto was a lion.

Gilberto's face broke into a wide, genuine smile. He raised his hands in a warm, welcoming gesture. "Ignazio!" he boomed, his voice full of familial warmth. "You old devil, I thought you were supposed to be in Boston."

Ignazio's thin lips pulled back into a smile that was more a baring of teeth. "Business finished early," he said, his voice a smooth, dangerous purr. By his ensemble, by the immediate and absolute deference Simon and the other men showed him, Taylor knew: this was another Capo. This was the Ignazio Mr. Biaggio had mentioned.

The two patriarchs began to speak in rapid, deep Italian, their conversation a mix of hearty laughter and serious, clipped phrases. As they spoke, the Soldati around them formed a subtle, protective perimeter, their eyes constantly scanning the crowd, their bodies positioned to intercept any potential threat. Their quiet, professional menace was a stark contrast to the boisterous reunion of their bosses.

The hypervigilance was contagious. Taylor instinctively reached out with her power, trying to get a feel for the room, and was immediately struck by a disorienting, terrifying cleanliness.

There were almost no bugs.

The casino was a sterile, hermetically sealed environment. Regular, aggressive pest control. No cockroaches in the kitchens, no spiders in the corners, no flies buzzing around the bars. It was a sensory blind spot, a black hole in her awareness. The vulnerability of it was staggering, making her heart beat twice harder with a sudden, cold panic.

She immediately began to compensate. Pushing her senses outside the casino walls, she started gathering a new swarm. She pulled flies from the dumpsters in the back alley, spiders from the nearby warehouses, roaches from the sewer grates. She didn't bring them inside where they might be noticed. She guided them into the infrastructure of the building itself—into the cavernous, dark spaces of the rafters above the ornate ceiling, into the humming ventilation shafts, into the maintenance pipes and sewer lines running beneath the polished floor.

She was seeding the battlefield. Building an army in the walls. So if—when—something bad happened, she would be ready.

After a few more minutes of hearty Italian, Gilberto seemed to remember Taylor's existence. He turned, his conversation with Ignazio pausing for a moment, and gestured vaguely at Simon. "Simon," he ordered, "show our new asset the facility. Get her acquainted with the operation."

"Of course," Simon said with a slight bow of his head. He gave Taylor a look, a silent command to follow, and she quickly fell into step beside him. They left the two Capos to their reunion, Orso and the other Soldati remaining behind as a silent, watchful honor guard.

As they moved away from the main entrance and deeper into the casino's glittering heart, out of earshot of the bosses, Simon's professional demeanor relaxed by a fraction.

"Welcome to the Ruby Dreams," he said, his voice a low murmur against the background din. "It's not the biggest casino we own, and certainly not the most profitable, but it's one of our most accessible. A reliable earner."

He led her toward the main cashier's booth—the "money booth"—a fortress of bulletproof glass where patrons exchanged cash for chips. Beside it was a heavy, unmarked steel door with a single, unblinking security guard standing beside it. The guard saw Simon coming and nodded, unlocking the door without a word.

The moment they stepped through, the glamorous cacophony of the casino was replaced by the quiet, focused hum of industry. They were in the guts of the machine. Taylor feasted her eyes on the inner workings. Workers in simple uniforms sat at long tables, their hands a blur as they sorted mountains of colorful chips into trays. Others were feeding stacks of cash into counting machines that whirred and clicked with terrifying speed. The counted money was then bundled and locked away in rolling safes or sturdy briefcases. It was a factory floor where the product was pure profit, and every worker moved with the precision of a well-oiled cog. Down one of the corridors was a sizable safe, the circular door the size of a man.

"The Soldati and Associates on duty here are for security," Simon explained as they walked. "But not for the reason you think. It's not to protect the Capos when they visit." He gave a dry, humorless smile. "Believe me, they can take care of themselves."

He didn't elaborate. He didn't need to. He led her up a narrow flight of stairs and pushed open a door marked "Security."

The room was a wall of monitors, displaying dozens of camera feeds from every conceivable angle of the casino floor. Several uniformed guards sat at the consoles, their eyes scanning the screens. But they weren't the ones in charge.

Standing in the center of the room, observing the feeds like a hawk watching a field of mice, was a man who radiated an aura of absolute, unshakable control. He wore a pristine black overcoat with subtle, elegant maroon accents, tailored to fit him perfectly. His dark hair was styled in a fashionable, slicked-back look, and a perfectly manicured mustache completed an image of old-world class and modern, dangerous precision. He turned as they entered, and his eyes, cold and calculating, immediately locked onto Taylor.

As they entered the security room, Simon gave a slight, formal bow of his head. "Croupier," he said, his voice imbued with a clear note of deference.

Taylor was caught off guard, hesitating for an awkward moment. Was she supposed to bow, too? Was that the protocol? The complex, unwritten rules of this new world were a minefield. She settled for standing stiffly, trying to look respectful.

The man in the black overcoat pushed himself off the console he had been leaning against and walked toward them. He moved with a liquid grace, his polished dress shoes making no sound on the floor. A slight smile played on his lips, revealing perfectly white teeth beneath his manicured mustache.

"We haven't met," he said, his voice a smooth, cultured baritone. He stopped in front of Taylor, his cold eyes looking her up and down, not with the analytical gaze of Simon, but with the appraising look of a connoisseur examining a new piece for his collection. He extended a hand. "Julian Gallo. In our professional capacity, you may call me Croupier."

Taylor took his offered hand. His grip was firm and cool. "Taylor Hebert," she replied, her own name sounding plain and insignificant. She didn't have a cape name to offer in return, a fact that felt like a glaring inadequacy. “I… haven’t decided on a name yet.”

Julian's—Croupier's—smile widened knowingly, as if he had read her thoughts. "It can be difficult for a new talent to settle on a name," he said, his tone disarmingly pleasant. "That's quite alright."

He released her hand. "I've heard a great deal about you, Taylor. Gilberto is very impressed. He says you have remarkable potential and have already demonstrated a commendable degree of loyalty." He gave a slight shrug, a gesture of magnanimous philosophy. "I am a firm believer that everyone deserves a fair shot to prove their worth. So, on behalf of the family, I welcome you wholeheartedly."

His welcome, while polite, felt less like an acceptance into a family and more like a probationary approval of her employment. Taylor, emboldened by her earlier confrontation with Simon, decided to be direct.

"What is your role here?" she asked, the question coming out more bluntly than she'd intended. "In the family?"

Croupier didn't seem offended. If anything, he looked faintly amused by her forwardness. "I am a Sottocapo," he said simply. "A Lieutenant, if you prefer military ranks. While my colleagues may lead crews of Soldati in the field, carrying out various operations across the city..."

He made a sweeping gesture toward the wall of monitors, the dozens of camera feeds displaying the glittering, chaotic world of the casino floor below them.

"...this," he said, a note of immense pride in his voice, "is my operation."

Taylor followed his gaze to the wall of screens. It was a god's-eye view of the entire casino floor. The endless rows of slot machines, flashing and chiming. The tense, quiet circles of patrons around the poker and blackjack tables. The mesmerizing spin of the roulette wheels.

This is his operation. The words echoed in her head. What did that mean? Was he just the head of security? It seemed like a waste, a sedentary, managerial role for a Sottocapo, a parahuman Lieutenant. There had to be more to it.

Her eyes narrowed, and she looked closer, focusing on the details. She watched the dice tumble across the green felt of a craps table. She watched a dealer's hands as he expertly shuffled a deck of cards. She watched the hypnotic spin of a roulette ball, a tiny silver sphere dancing on the edge of fortune and ruin.

All of it was based on chance. Probability. A system designed to favor the house, but still, fundamentally, random. But what if it wasn't? What if a parahuman could... influence that?

A guess, a wild, intuitive leap based on nothing but the context, formed in her mind. She looked back at Croupier.

"You're not just running the casino," she said, the words coming out as a sudden realization. "You're rigging it. Your power... you make sure the house always wins."

Croupier's smile returned, wider this time, filled with genuine appreciation. "Brilliant," he said, and the word, from him, felt like a knighting. "Simon was correct. You have a reputation for being quite intuitive. I see it's well-earned."

He confirmed her guess with a proud, proprietary air. "I don't control the games, not directly. I influence them. I nudge the probabilities." He tapped a finger against the glass of a monitor. "Every piece of hardware on that floor, from the microchips in the slot machines to the balance of the dice, is designed to be... receptive to my influence."

He pointed to a specific screen, a close-up shot of a roulette table where the ball was currently spinning, a silver blur dancing around the wheel. "Watch," he commanded. "That ball has a fluctuating, near-equal chance of landing on any number. The odds are, for this brief moment, fair."

He looked at her, his eyes gleaming with a showman's flair. "But I have decided that it will land on red twenty-seven."

He snapped his fingers, a sharp, theatrical crack that echoed in the quiet security room.

On the screen, as if pulled by an invisible string, the silver ball lost its momentum and, with a final, decisive bounce, settled perfectly into the slot for red 27. The patrons at the table either groaned in disappointment or cheered in surprise.

The casual, absolute nature of the demonstration was staggering. "You did that from up here?" Taylor asked, her mind reeling with the implications. "What's your range?"

"An interesting question," Croupier said, turning away from the monitors to give her his full attention. "My ability functions as a sort of... 'Midas touch.' Any implement of chance that I have physically handled, I can influence. The effect is strongest when I am near, and it fades over a week if I do not reinforce the connection. This casino," he gestured to the surrounding room, "is my home base. I have touched every card, every die, every ball on this floor. They are all extensions of my will."

He gave a slight, dismissive wave. "But enough about me. The family is already well-acquainted with my talents. It is your abilities that are the new and intriguing variable. Gilberto's report on the incident at the pier was... compelling."

He leaned against the console, his arms crossed, his gaze expectant. "So, Taylor Hebert. Tell me about your power."

The moment she had been dreading. The demand to explain herself, to lay bare the strange, gross, and unsettling nature of her ability. Controlling bugs wasn't glamorous. It wasn't the clean, almost magical precision of Croupier's probability warping. It was creepy crawlies. It was filth and chitin. She'd made it work, she'd earned recognition for it, but standing here, in this sterile, high-tech security room, next to a man in a pristine overcoat, she had never been more aware of the massive gap between them. He was a scalpel. She was a swarm of hornets.

She took a breath and pressed on, pushing past the insecurity. "I control bugs," she said, her voice flat, trying to sound as professional as he did. "Insects, arachnids, crustaceans. Basically... creepy crawlies." She hated how lame it sounded. "I can sense through them, and direct them. My range is about five blocks, give or take."

Croupier's perfectly styled eyebrows shot up. A low chuckle escaped his lips as he shook his head, a look of genuine, surprised amusement on his face. "Remarkable," he said, the word dripping with a theatricality she couldn't quite decipher. "Truly a unique and... visceral talent."

Taylor couldn't tell if it was a genuine compliment on the power's uniqueness or a polite, pitying dismissal of its grotesque nature. Given the man in front of her, she strongly suspected it was the latter.

The introductions were over. Croupier pushed himself off the console, his demeanor shifting from curious appraisal to focused, serious business. The air in the room grew tense once more.

"Now," he said, his voice losing its theatrical edge, "let's discuss why you are here tonight, Taylor. This is not a simple tour of the facilities."

He gestured to one of the monitors, which displayed a view of the casino's main entrance. Taylor could see Orso and other Soldati standing just inside, their postures relaxed but their eyes constantly scanning. "As you've no doubt noticed, we have an increased security presence on the floor. More Soldati, more trusted Associates on duty."

He turned to face her, his expression grim. "A few days ago, our people on the street reported some... undesirable elements trying to scout the premises. Men hanging around the block at odd hours, watching our patrons, timing our security patrols."

His eyes narrowed. "I suspect it's the Azn Bad Boys. They've been trying to exert more influence in the northern Docks for months. After the... unpleasantness at the pier last week, tensions are high." He gave a slight, humorless smile. "It seems they did not appreciate our last interaction. We believe they may be planning a move against us tonight, something bold to save face."

He paused, letting the weight of the threat settle in. "An attack is not just possible; it is expected. And that is why you are here."

The suit. The tour. The introduction to the Sottocapo. She was here as extra muscle, another parahuman on the board to counter a potential parahuman attack. More than that, she was the perfect surveillance asset, a thousand tiny, unseen spies to counter the casino's technological blind spots.

She gave a single, sharp nod, her expression hardening into a focused resolve. The fear was still there, a cold knot in her stomach, but the memory of the pier had taught her that freezing was a death sentence. Action was survival. "Understood," she said. "Where do you need me?"

Croupier seemed pleased by her direct, professional response. "For now," he began, gesturing to a vacant chair in front of a bank of secondary monitors, "you will be most useful right here, in this room."

He looked at her, a glimmer of tactical appreciation in his cold eyes. "Our cameras are excellent, but they have their limits. They cannot see through walls. They cannot see what is lurking in the alleyways or the sewer grates. You, however, can."

He turned and pointed to the screens. "You will be my early warning system. Monitor the perimeter. Keep your senses extended. The moment you detect anything out of the ordinary, anything that your power flags as a threat, you will inform me. You are our eyes where we are blind."

With the instructions delivered, Simon, who had been standing silently by the door, spoke up. "Permission to return to the Capo's side, Croupier?"

Julian waved a dismissive, elegant hand without turning from the monitors. "Go. Keep them entertained."

Simon bowed his head slightly, a final gesture of respect. He gave Taylor a single, appraising nod—a silent acknowledgment of her promotion, of the new responsibility on her shoulders—and then he was gone, the heavy security door closing with a soft, definitive click behind him.

The room was quiet now, save for the low, electronic hum of the servers. Julian returned to his preferred spot, a silent, black-clad specter overseeing his glittering kingdom. Taylor was left with the vacant chair and her orders.

She sat down, the leather of the chair cool against her back. The new suit felt stiff and unfamiliar. She took a deep breath, pushing past the discomfort, and sank into her power.

The chaotic static of a thousand different sensory inputs flooded her mind—the skittering of spiders in the rafters, the slow crawl of roaches in the sewer pipes, the lazy buzz of flies in the back alley. It was an overwhelming symphony of minuscule movements.

She began to filter it, to bring order to the chaos. She focused, tugging at the influences, isolating the important signals from the noise. She assigned zones, creating a mental map of the casino's perimeter, a living, breathing security grid made of chitin and legs.

Stay alert. Be useful. Prove your worth.

Chapter Text

An hour crawled by, each minute stretching into an eternity of quiet vigilance. Outside, the night deepened, but inside the Ruby Dreams, time seemed to stand still. The casino only grew more vibrant, more alive, a glittering world unto itself. Through the camera feeds, Taylor watched as Gilberto and Ignazio sat at the main bar like kings holding court, sharing stories over expensive-looking drinks, their laughter silent on the monitors.

She noted other figures of interest. A tall, severe-looking woman with her hair pulled back in a tight French bun stood near a roulette table, her expression one of utter disinterest as she watched the game. She wore an opulent, high-collared coat, the cuffs a brilliant gold, with strange, formal epaulettes on the shoulders. Was she a parahuman? Or just another one of the city's eccentric rich? Taylor filed the image away, a potential variable in a room full of them.

She pulled her focus away from the cameras and back to her swarm. The army she was building in the walls was now tens of thousands strong. She had summoned columns of ants from the surrounding blocks, marching them silently through maintenance tunnels and into the casino's hidden spaces. She arranged them with tactical precision, concentrating them near entrances and exits. By the loading bay doors, she had them moving in what she hoped looked like natural foraging lines. No one, not even a cape, would think twice about stepping on a few ants.

Then, she felt it.

A sudden, prickling sensation, like ice water on her skin. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up. Goosebumps raked across her arms. It was a silent alarm, a feedback loop of frantic agitation from a thousand tiny minds at once. Something was wrong.

Her senses snapped to the loading bay at the back of the casino. The camera feed showed nothing out of the ordinary—just the usual logistics staff, moving pallets of liquor and crates of supplies. But her swarm was in a panic. Her ants were scattering, her flies buzzing erratically. They sensed something the cameras couldn't see.

There was something big out there. Something on all fours, moving with a heavy, predatory tread. A dog? No, bigger. Much bigger. And there was another one. And… people. Three figures, astride the creatures.

Taylor's head snapped up from the monitors, her heart hammering against her ribs. "Julian!" she said, her voice sharp and urgent, cutting through the quiet of the security room.

Croupier turned, one eyebrow raised at her tone.

"Loading bay," she said, pointing at the screen. "Outside. Something's wrong. The cameras don't see it, but I can feel it. Two large animals, canine, on all fours. And three people riding them."

Julian’s expression hardened instantly. The theatrical showman was gone, replaced by the cold, tactical Sottocapo. He grabbed a radio from the console, his movements swift and precise. "Security team delta, report," he said into the device, his eyes locked on the loading bay feed. "What is your status? I need eyes on the exterior doors. Now."

The response from the radio was a burst of confused static, then a single, panicked voice. "Sir, we have a visual anomaly on the exterior—"

He was cut off. On the monitors, the three camera feeds overlooking the loading bay flickered and were abruptly smothered. A roiling, unnatural blackness expanded from the edges of the screens, consuming the image entirely until they were just three useless, pitch-black squares on the wall.

"Focus on those feeds! Audio!" Julian snapped at one of the uniformed operators.

The operator's fingers flew across his console, isolating the feeds. The screens filled the main monitor, but there was only silence. No gunshots, no shouting, not even the ambient noise of the loading bay. The darkness wasn't just blocking the light; it was swallowing the sound.

"They're inside," Taylor said, her voice low and tense. She was the only one who could still "see" them. "There's a third dog. And a fourth rider, smaller than the others. They just walked through the back doors. They're in the kitchens now."

As she spoke, the camera feeds from the main kitchen and the adjacent service corridors blinked out one by one, consumed by the same creeping, silent void. The darkness was spreading through the guts of the building like a cancer.

Julian was on his feet now, his face a mask of cold fury. The security operators were bolt upright in their chairs, their eyes wide as they watched their digital eyes being systematically blinded.

"Code Amber," Croupier said into the radio, his voice sharp and clear, betraying no panic. "I repeat, all units, Code Amber. We have a parahuman incursion."

The effect on the main casino floor was immediate and subtle. On the other monitors, Taylor could see the staff moving with a new, urgent purpose. Dealers began calmly but quickly collecting chips. Pit bosses were speaking into their sleeves, their eyes scanning the crowds. Soldati, materializing from the edges of the room, began to discreetly approach the high-rollers, the VIPs, guiding them toward unmarked exits. An announcement came over the casino's speakers, a calm, female voice urging patrons to please remain calm and stay where they were due to a minor "technical issue."

Taylor's swarm, clinging to the disturbing flesh and bone of one of the monstrous dogs, relayed a bizarre, disorienting sensation. The space between her insects was stretching, the distances widening unnaturally. The creature was swelling, growing, its very form distorting.

Before she could fully process the information, a thunderous crash ripped through the casino.

A monstrous beast, all bony spikes, calcified muscle, and overlapping armored plates, burst through the kitchen doors and smashed through the back wall of the main bar in a shower of splintered wood, glass, and expensive liquor. It was a dog from a nightmare, its howl a guttural roar that cut through the panicked screams of the patrons.

Two more beasts, equally grotesque, erupted onto the casino floor from different service corridors, their sudden appearance scattering tables and sending people diving for cover.

The attack revealed the riders. The woman leading the pack, perched atop the largest beast, had a squarish, powerful build. Her short auburn hair was unbound, and a cheap, plastic-looking dog mask covered the top half of her face. Behind her, on another dog, was a girl with a cascade of blonde hair, a simple domino mask obscuring her eyes, a wild, manic grin plastered on her face. The third rider, a boy in a strange, frilly white shirt that looked like something from a Renaissance fair, wore a blank, white drama mask.

And the last, striding out from the spreading darkness, was a figure clad head-to-toe in black motorcycle leathers, his face hidden by a full helmet painted with the grinning visage of a skull.

Taylor's head snapped toward Croupier. He was no longer just Julian Gallo. He had pulled a mask from his coat, a pristine, white porcelain thing shaped into a clown's face. It was elegant and terrifying, with sharp, stylized features, two dark, empty holes for eyes, and a wide, unsmiling grin. As he settled it over his face, two points of soft, maroon light flickered to life in the eye sockets, glowing with an internal, predatory intensity.

"Do you have a mask?" his voice, slightly muffled, came from behind the porcelain grin.

Taylor nodded, her hands already digging into her sling bag. She didn't have time for the whole suit. She just pulled out her mask—the dark, featureless, multi-lensed visage of her own creation.

"It clashes with the suit," Croupier commented, his glowing eyes fixed on the monitors, "but it will have to do. No time to change."

Taylor pulled the mask on. The world resolved into the soft, burgundy glow of its honeycomb lenses. The screams of the casino floor faded, replaced by the familiar, intimate hum of her swarm. She was no longer a girl in a suit. She was a cape.

"There," Croupier's voice crackled over the security room's internal comms, a small earpiece she hadn't noticed she was wearing coming to life. He pointed a gloved finger at the skull-helmed figure. "Target the one in the motorcycle helmet. He's the source of the darkness."

The reason became terrifyingly clear. Even as he gave the order, the man in the skull helmet raised a hand, and the silent, impenetrable black smoke began to pour from his body, flooding the casino floor, swallowing the light, the sound, and the cameras one by one.

Taylor didn't hesitate. Her mind, already connected to the thousands of insects she had seeded throughout the building, zeroed in on the target.

She used the few ants clinging to his boots as a beacon, a psychic relay pinpointing his exact location in the growing void. Then she unleashed her swarm.

It was an avalanche of creatures. A cascade of buzzing, chittering life poured from the ventilation shafts and the high rafters. Flies, moths, spiders, and—most importantly—the wasps and hornets she had nested near the kitchen, all converged on a single point. The cameras, before they were completely obscured, caught a brief image of the skull-helmed figure being enveloped by a solid, writhing cloud of black.

She was merciless. She forced the flies and spiders through the tiny crevices of his leathers—into the gap between his helmet and his collar, up his sleeves, into the cuffs of his boots. She ordered the wasps to sting anything they could find.

She could feel his panic through the frantic, dying signals of the bugs being crushed by his flailing. He slapped at himself, stumbled, his hands flying to his helmet as insects crawled over his faceplate. His concentration shattered. The suffocating, impenetrable darkness wavered, thinned, and then vanished, evaporating as quickly as it had come.

The lights of the casino floor flooded back in, revealing the full extent of the chaos. Grue was completely obscured, a man-shaped mound of insects, writhing on the floor before finally toppling over, unconscious.

With the darkness gone, the battlefield was clear. Taylor saw the woman—the one with the severe French bun and the opulent coat. She now wore a shimmering, flaky golden mask that seemed to have materialized onto her face. She was standing atop a roulette table like a defiant queen.

The butch girl on the largest of the dogs let out a furious roar and charged her. The beast, a monster of bone and armored plating, thundered across the casino floor.

The woman in gold simply whipped a hand out. Shimmering, golden chains, seemingly forged from the air itself, shot out, lashing at the charging beast. The dog dodged with a surprising, supernatural burst of speed, but the woman was faster. She snapped her other hand forward, and at such close range, a second set of chains materialized and slammed into the dog's face with the force of a battering ram. The chains wrapped around its head and torso, then drove down into the casino floor, pinning the massive creature with a shower of splintered marble.

Its rider, thrown clear, landed on her feet, and with a furious snarl, launched herself at the woman in gold, her fist connecting with a sickening crack.

In the security room, a hand tapped Taylor's shoulder. She turned. Croupier was standing behind her, his own porcelain mask a blank, unreadable plains. "Showtime," he said, his voice a low, excited purr in. "Follow me. We're joining the party."

Taylor followed Croupier at a brisk walk down the narrow hallways, moving against a frantic tide of fleeing staff, armed Soldati, and panicked Associates. In the midst of the chaos, Croupier was an island of perfect, predatory calm.

As they walked, he produced a deck of cards from an inner pocket of his overcoat. His hands moved with a mesmerizing dexterity, a blur of practiced motion. He split the deck, twisting it, riffling the corners together with a soft shhhh. He performed a perfect faro shuffle, weaving the two halves together, then bent the deck into a bridge, letting the cards cascade back into a perfect block with a rapid, satisfying skrrrck that echoed in the corridor.

The display was hypnotic, but as he continued to manipulate the deck, Taylor noticed something. A sharp glint of light off the edges of the cards. They weren't paper. They were polymer of some sort. Then she saw the faint, white lines of old scars crisscrossing his fingertips. The edges were sharp. Razor sharp.

Croupier pushed open the security door, and they stepped out onto the chaotic battlefield of the casino floor.

One of the monstrous dogs, having shaken loose another security team, was already charging them, a tidal wave of muscle and bone. Taylor reacted instantly. The swarm she had seeded in the walls coalesced, pouring from vents and drains, a living carpet of insects that swarmed up the beast's legs, targeting its eyes, its ears, the soft tissue of its nose.

The monster let out a pained, mewling howl, shaking its massive head, trying to dislodge the thousands of biting, stinging creatures. Its charge faltered, its massive paws tripping over themselves as it was blinded and overwhelmed. It skidded to a clumsy, pathetic stop just a few feet from Croupier.

Croupier, unflustered, casually pinched a single card—the Ace of Spades—between his fingers and drew his arm back to throw.

And then he stopped. Frozen mid-motion, his arm locked in place as if held by an invisible force.

Taylor's head snapped around, searching for the source. Her eyes landed on the Renaissance-fair reject. The boy in the frilly shirt and the drama mask had one hand outstretched, his fingers splayed, aimed directly at Croupier.

There was no time to think. Taylor surged forward, breaking into a dead run, charging the master. She pulled the telescopic baton from her suit jacket, the weapon expanding to its full length with a sharp, familiar shink. She brought a thick cloud of her swarm with her, a personal bodyguard of hornets and wasps.

The boy in the drama mask saw her coming and took a step back, his attention breaking from Croupier. But her bugs were faster. She sent the swarm out ahead of her, a living projectile aimed at his face.

Then, something caught her leg. An unseen, irresistible force. It wasn't a physical grab; it felt more like her own muscles had locked up, freezing her mid-stride. Her momentum betrayed her, and she crashed to the casino floor in an unceremonious heap, the baton clattering against the marble beside her.

Taylor scrambled, her hands slipping on the polished marble as she tried to get back to her feet. She grabbed her baton, her knuckles scraping against the floor.

Huge, earth-shaking stomps approached at a terrifying speed. She looked up and came face-to-face with a gaping maw of razor-sharp teeth and calcified bone. Another of the dogs, drawn by the commotion, was on her.

Her heart leaped into her throat. Everything slowed to a crawl. She could see the saliva dripping from its teeth, smell the carrion on its breath. She tried to move, to roll out of the way, but it was too close, too fast. She would never make it.

She braced for the inevitable, for the crushing, tearing agony.

Clang!

The beast slammed to the ground just inches from her, its massive head hitting the marble with enough force to crack the tile. Shimmering, golden chains had sunk into the floor, pinning the monster's neck and legs, rendering it immobile.

Taylor's eyes darted across the casino floor. The woman in the golden mask, even as she was weathering a brutal flurry of punches from the enraged dog girl, had saved her, launching her chains across the room with a flick of her wrist.

The momentary distraction was all Croupier needed. Freed from the master’s control, he didn't retaliate directly. He ran, a blur of motion, toward the central atrium of the casino. With a flick of his wrist, he sent one, two, three of his metallic cards sailing into the air.

They weren't aimed at anyone. They flew, spinning and impossibly stable, into the chaos. The first ricocheted off a pillar, then a slot machine, and finally off the ceiling, embedding itself deep in the thigh of the drama-masked boy. “God—DAMN it!” He screamed.

“Regent! Hold on—” Not a moment later, the second card cracked the glass of the motorcycle helmet, whipping his head back and keeping him pinned to the ground.

The last zipped past the fighting women, bounced off the bar, and sliced across the cheek of the dog girl, drawing a line of blood.

For the dog girl, the graze made her hesitate, a mistake that cost her precious moments. The woman in gold swept her legs out from under her and delivered a single, brutal punch to her sternum that sent her sprawling to the ground, gasping for air.

Taylor, meanwhile, refocused her swarm, a thick, angry cloud of wasps and hornets, on the drama-masked boy who was now clutching his bleeding leg. He screamed, his hands flying up to protect his face from the stinging onslaught. Then she sent a different portion at the smoke-generator, keeping him sprawling and flailing on the ground as well.

“Now or never, Tattletale!” The drama-masked boy—Regent—shouted.

BANG!

A sound louder and more destructive than any of the fighting echoed across the casino. The last of the dogs, the one ridden by the blonde girl, had rammed its full, monstrous weight against the main money counter. The reinforced iron bars buckled, and the bulletproof glass spiderwebbed and shattered. An opening was created.

The blonde cape in the purple bodysuit didn't hesitate. With a wild, triumphant laugh, she sprinted and slid through the newly created opening, disappearing behind the counter and into the casino's treasury. It seems like that had been the goal all along.

The chaos on the casino floor had reached a fever pitch. Patrons were screaming, cowering under tables, a terrified human sea surging toward exits that were now blocked by impassive Soldati.

Above it all, Taylor made a choice.

She saw the dog that had breached the counter rear back, its attention now fixed on the woman in the golden mask. It let out a low, dangerous growl—a promise of retribution for harming its owner. Taylor watched it tense, readying another charge, but Croupier was already in motion. He was circling the atrium, a blur of black and maroon, flicking cards with a relentless, deadly rhythm. They sliced through the air, each one finding a home in the beast's hide of flesh and bone, leaving a trail of shallow, bleeding cuts. The dog was being harried, distracted.

That was her opening. The others could handle the brutes. The real threat, the entire point of this chaotic, violent circus, was the girl who had just disappeared into the money.

Taylor pressed onward, running low and fast. She reached the ruined money counter and, without hesitating, dropped to her stomach and crawled through the jagged opening in the bars and shattered glass, ignoring the scrapes to her new suit.

Pushing herself off the floor once through, Taylor burst through the heavy steel door, her dress shoes skidding on the polished linoleum of the back corridors. The casino's guts were a maze of identical-looking hallways, but a series of electronic beeps, the sound of a keypad being manipulated with supernatural speed, echoed from down the hall, giving her a path to follow.

She stayed on the blonde girl's tail, her swarm extending her senses forward, flowing through the halls ahead of her. She rounded a corner just in time to see the target: the massive, circular vault door.

The blonde girl stood at the console, her fingers a frantic blur on the keypad. With a final, triumphant beep, the massive locking bolts on the door began to retract with a series of heavy, satisfying clunks. How? She couldn't have known the code. She must have guessed it, but how was that possible? There could only be one out of possibly billions of sequences.

Taylor pushed herself faster, sending her swarm surging ahead. "Stop!" she yelled, her voice echoing in the hallway.

But she was too late. The girl flashed a wide, manic grin over her shoulder, a look of pure, unadulterated success, and then disappeared behind the massive steel door. With a low, powerful hiss of compressed air, the vault door swung shut, the locking bolts slamming home with a sound of absolute finality.

Taylor slowed her stride, coming to a stop just before the impenetrable door. She stood there for a moment, catching her breath, the silence of the corridor pressing in on her.

Her first instinct was to find a way in. She sent her smallest insects—the mites and fleas she had on hand—scrambling over the door's surface, searching for any gap, any seam, any weakness in the joints. There was nothing. The seal was perfect and clearly well-maintained. She sent flies and moths into the ventilation shaft on the ceiling, hoping to find a path into the vault. They hit a dead end, a thick, impassable filter blocking the way.

Panic began to bubble in her chest. She looked around, frantically searching the surrounding hallways for a guard, a staff member, anyone who might have the code or an override key. But the back corridors were deserted. The "Code Amber" had either cleared everyone out or locked them down.

Stay here, and she was a useless guard dog, waiting for a thief who might never come out. She would be abandoning Croupier and the others to a brutal fight on the casino floor.

Leave, and she would be abandoning her post, giving the blonde girl a clear and uncontested path to escape with what was likely millions of dollars.

Both options were unacceptable. Both were a form of failure. She needed to be in two places at once. And then, an idea began to form. What if she could project the illusion of a guard? What if she could create a decoy? 

She took a deep, steadying breath, closed her eyes, and focused, pushing all of her other senses away. She reached out to the army she had seeded in the walls and under the floor, calling every available soldier to this single point in the hallway.

They came in a tide of chitin and legs. Cockroaches, spiders, beetles, and every other crawling thing swarmed out of the vents and drains, a living, writhing mass on the corridor floor. Then, she began to build.

It was the most complex and disgusting piece of micro-management she had ever attempted. The cockroaches, large and sturdy, formed the core, climbing on top of each other, locking legs to create a solid, stable frame. Spiders worked like living weavers, spinning thick, binding webs to hold the structure together. The flies, thousands of them, stuffed themselves into the gaps, their constant buzzing creating a low, humming thrum, a crude imitation of a living sound.

From the ground up, she constructed a pair of legs, a torso, arms. All made of a shifting, crawling mass of insects. She finished with the head, a rough approximation of her own shape. The attempt to recreate her hair with a cascade of black beetles and moths was a grotesque failure, but from a distance, in the dim light of the corridor, the silhouette was unmistakable. It was a perfect, horrifying duplicate of herself, standing guard.

Her cloned silhouette complete, she set the final pieces of her plan. She left a thin, invisible tripwire of spiders across the seam of the vault door. The moment that door moved even a fraction of an inch, she would know.

With her silent, chittering sentinel on duty, Taylor turned and sprinted back toward the chaos of the casino floor.

Taylor crawled back through the jagged opening under the money counter, her new suit scraping against the broken glass. She emerged into a scene of absolute pandemonium.

The man in the skull helmet was back on his feet, and the deafening, disorienting smoke was once again billowing from his body, filling the casino with a thick, choking haze. The bugs she had left on him must have been crushed or shaken off in the chaos. Without hesitation, she flushed the room with a new wave of her swarm, a targeted missile of wasps and hornets aimed directly at the smoke's source.

Her eyes darted around the battlefield, assessing the rapidly deteriorating situation. The woman in the golden mask was on the defensive, a thick, cracked shield of shimmering gold held before her as two of the monsters hammered against it in a relentless, brutal assault. Cracks were spiderwebbing across the shield's surface. It wouldn't last from the looks of it.

Croupier was in even worse shape. He was attempting to dodge the lunges and dashes of the final, and largest, monster dog. His usual effortless grace was gone, replaced by a desperate, acrobatic dance. The deck of metallic cards in his hand was visibly thinner; he was running out of ammunition. As she watched, the beast feinted left and then lunged right, its massive head catching him in the chest and smashing him against a roulette table with a sickening crunch. He landed on the green felt, and she saw his hand desperately roll a pair of dice across the table's surface.

Taylor didn't wait to see the result. She ran forward, her eyes scanning the room. She saw the Renaissance-fair boy, a makeshift bandage wrapped around his bleeding thigh, leaning against a pillar.

A choked scream—Croupier's—cut through the noise.

The dog had him. Its forest of monstrous teeth had clamped down on his arm and shoulder. It shook him violently, a dog with a rat, his body ragdolling in the beast's grip. Then, with a final, brutal flick of its neck, it flung him through the air.

He was flying directly at her. Without a thought, driven by a pure, heroic instinct, she braced herself and tried to catch him.

It was a stupid, awful idea. He was a grown man, and she was a skinny, underfed teenager. His weight hit her like a freight train. Her arms buckled instantly, the weak physique failing her completely. Instead of a heroic catch, it was a disastrous crash. They tangled together in a mess of flailing limbs and expensive suits, crashing to the marble floor and skidding to a painful, ignominious stop in a heap of bruised limbs and shattered dignity.

Taylor's head was ringing, the impact with the floor having rattled her teeth. While she was still struggling to untangle her limbs and get to her feet, Croupier was already moving.

He rolled, landing in a crouch, seemingly unfazed by the brutal mauling he had just endured. His suit was torn, but his arm and shoulder, which should have been a shredded ruin of flesh and bone, looked miraculously untouched. The dice, Taylor's concussed brain supplied. He must have rolled well.

The monster that had thrown him was charging again. Croupier, now on his feet, calmly flicked two of his remaining cards forward. They flew with impossible speed and precision, embedding themselves in the beast's eyes. The dog let out a piercing, agonized howl and recoiled, its charge broken. It pawed frantically at its face before scurrying away, blinded and whimpering.

By the time Taylor's brain had stopped rattling and she managed to get back to her feet, she realized the trip-wire of spiders had been tripped long ago, and the silhouette of bugs shattered during her crash and fall. 

Her eyes snapped to the ruined money counter. The blonde girl was there, shoving two heavily loaded duffle bags through the jagged opening. “Bitch! Help me out!” The butch dog girl, now astride one of the other dogs, was waiting. She grabbed the bags, then hauled the blonde onto the beast's back behind her.

A shimmering crack and a deafening crash echoed from the other side of the room. The golden-masked woman's shield had finally given out, shattering into a million pieces of golden light. The dog that stayed battering her sent her flying, and she crashed limply against a wall, slumping to the ground.

After that, the three dogs pivoted with a shrill whistle through the air. The motorcycle-helmed smoke generator, now free of Taylor's swarm, hauled himself onto the back of the second beast. As they thundered toward the hole they had originally made in the bar, they scooped up the injured Renaissance-fair boy, grabbing him by the arms and unceremoniously dumping him belly-down on the dog's back like a sack of stolen goods. “Grue, cover our exit!” Black smog bellowed and flooded in their wake.

Croupier was already running after them, shouting orders into his comms, but it was too late. With a final, triumphant whoop and a laugh from the blonde that echoed through the ruined casino, they were gone, disappearing into the kitchen and the darkness of the city beyond.

The ensuing silence was deafening, a sudden, shocking void where the cacophony of battle had been. It lasted for only a heartbeat before it was broken. A collective, shuddering wave of relieved sighs, choked sobs, and terrified cries rose from the patrons who were slowly, hesitantly, emerging from under tables and behind overturned slot machines.

The casino was a wreck. It looked as if a hurricane had torn through the main floor. The plush carpet was littered with shattered glass, splintered wood, and cracked marble. Overturned tables, ruined slot machines, and abandoned purses were strewn everywhere. Not only that, hundreds, if not thousands of bug corpses littered the room. The air was thick with smoke and the metallic tang of blood.

Taylor stood in the middle of it all, her new suit torn and scuffed. Soldati were moving through the wreckage, checking on the VIPs. Associates were helping the terrified staff. In the distance, she saw Gilberto and Ignazio, their faces grim, surrounded by a tight perimeter of their best men.

The adrenaline, which had been a roaring fire in her veins, began to cool to a low, trembling simmer. The exhaustion, the aches, the sheer, overwhelming reality of what had just happened, began to set in.

It was then that a furious, guttural scream of pure rage ripped through the air, making Taylor jump. She spun around and it was from Croupier. He stood before a blackjack table, his porcelain mask askew, revealing one blazing, hate-filled eye. With a violent, sweeping motion of his arm, he cleared the entire table. Cards, chips, and a dealer's shoe went flying, scattering across the floor in a clattering, useless mess. His body radiated waves of pure, unrestrained frustration and anger, his ironclad composure utterly shattered.

They had lost.

Chapter Text

Empire of Sin

A Worm AU

Chapter 7: Family Fortune

The silence in the ruined casino was a heavy blanket, punctuated only by the distant, crunching sound of someone sweeping up broken glass.

Taylor sat on a lone barstool, her back to the devastation. She faced the mangled remains of the bar, where one of those monsters had smashed through the wall. Her insectoid mask was still on, a comforting, featureless shield between her and the world. On the sticky countertop before her sat a tall, clean glass of water, untouched.

She wasn't alone. The woman in the shimmering golden mask was there, moving behind the bar with a calm, proprietary air. She worked the tap on one of the few remaining intact kegs, pouring herself a tall, foaming mug of beer.

Across the casino floor, Croupier was in the middle of a heated discussion with Gilberto and Ignazio. His usual smooth, cultured tones were gone, replaced by a pressed, seething anger. Every so often, his voice would rise, a sharp, explosive word piercing the quiet before being reined back in. He was being debriefed. Or, more likely, torn apart.

The Ruby Dreams had been cleared out. The screaming patrons were gone. Those who remained were family: Soldati standing guard at the exits, Associates cleaning up the wreckage, and the two Capos, observing the cost of the night's failure.

Taylor just sat there, trying to figure out what she was supposed to be feeling.

There was no triumph, no thrill of victory. But there was no crushing regret, either. No profound sadness for the loss. She felt... numb. A quiet, hollow space where a stronger emotion should be. Was she suppressing it? Trying to maintain a professional front, to avoid showing any weakness in front of these dangerous people? Or was it worse? Was it that, after everything, she just didn't care? She wasn't sure.

The golden-masked woman leaned against the bar beside her. The flaky, shimmering surface of her mask seemed to ripple, receding from the lower half of her face to expose a pair of full, unsmiling lips and a strong jaw. The top half of the mask remained, a glittering golden domino that continued to obscure her eyes. She took a long, slow sip from her mug of beer, her gaze fixed on the wreckage.

The heated discussion from across the room drifted closer, the three men—two Capos and their disgraced Lieutenant—moving toward the central, ruined bar. Taylor didn't turn. She just listened, her gaze fixed on the splintered wood in front of her.

"...every man on the street," Gilberto was saying, his voice a low, reassuring rumble, contrast that to Croupier's barely contained fury. "Every associate, every contact. They will be looking. We will find out who these children are."

"This wasn't the ABB," Ignazio added, his voice a smooth, dangerous purr. "Their methods are crude. Brute force. This was... I wouldn’t say elegant, but definitely efficient. And they don't have this kind of parahuman muscle."

"It's possible they hired outside help," Croupier spat, the words tight with anger. "But unlikely. The ABB are xenophobes. They only work with their own."

Taylor silently agreed. The girl who had breached the vault was blonde and white. The butch dog-girl with the short red mane could have been Irish. The boy in the frilly shirt was definitely Caucasian.

A heavy silence descended as Croupier's gaze swept across the trashed casino, his kingdom in ruins. Taylor could see his hands, clenched into tight white-knuckled fists at his sides, flexing and releasing. He was a caged tiger, pacing the confines of his own failure.

"Gilberto," Croupier said finally, his voice cold and hard. "Call in Il Omertà."

The name meant nothing to Taylor, but the sudden stillness from both Capos told her it was significant.

"I'll be in my office," Croupier finished, and without another word, he turned and strode away, disappearing up the stairs that led to the security room, his black overcoat swirling behind him.

Gilberto watched him go, a sad, weary look on his face. He sighed, pulled out his phone, and walked off toward the main casino floor, his thumb already dialing.

That left Ignazio. He stood there for a moment, his cold eyes surveying the scene. Then, with a slow, deliberate purpose, he began to walk toward the bar. Toward Taylor and the woman in gold.

Just as Ignazio began his slow, deliberate approach, the woman in the golden mask spoke.

"Quite the first night on the job, eh?"

Her voice was a complete surprise. It was high-pitched, chipper, and melodic, the kind of voice you'd expect from a cheerful cartoon character, not a parahuman who had just been in a brutal, knockdown fight. It was utterly incongruous with the surrounding scene.

Taylor turned to look at her fully. The woman's suit, which had looked so opulent and pristine before the fight, was now scuffed and torn in several places. A dark, ugly bruise was beginning to form on the exposed portion of her jaw where the dog-girl had landed a solid punch. Yet, she seemed completely unfazed, holding her mug of beer with a casual, relaxed grace.

She shifted, leaning an elbow on the bar to face Taylor more directly. Her golden mask, with its single, emotionless expression, caught the light. "I don't believe we've been properly introduced," she said, her voice still bright and cheerful. "What do they call you, little bug?"

"I don't have a name yet," Taylor replied, her own voice sounding flat and dull in comparison.

"Fair enough!" She chirped. "It can take a while to find one that fits. You can call me Constanza."

The name felt as ornate and unusual as her costume. "Are you..." Taylor hesitated, lowering her voice, trying to imbue it with the proper respect. "...a Sottocapo, too?"

Constanza tilted her head, rolling it from left to right as if she were trying on the title for size. "Mmm, essentially," she shrugged, a gesture of casual indifference.

"Miss Constanza is the family's skirmisher," a smooth, dangerous voice said from Taylor's left.

Ignazio had arrived. He settled onto a barstool, leaving one empty seat between himself and Taylor, a deliberate measure of distance and authority. He placed his hands on the bar, his gaze fixed on the rows of shattered liquor bottles. "She does not have a fixed operation like Croupier. She is deployed where she is needed."

"Or where she wants to be," Constanza added with a playful wink in her voice, taking another long sip from her mug.

Constanza set her mug down with a soft click, her golden mask turning to face Taylor fully. "Don't look so glum, little bug," she said, her voice full of that same incongruous cheer. "You did good tonight. Really good."

Taylor's gaze drifted past her, to the gaping hole in the back wall of the bar where one of the monstrous dogs had made its grand entrance. A few Soldati were already there, hammering temporary wooden planks over the breach. "We lost," Taylor stated, the words flat and final. "The casino is trashed."

Constanza waved a dismissive hand, a gesture that seemed to brush away the millions of dollars in damages. "Eh, details. It's insured. It'll all be patched up and prettier than ever in a month."

Ignazio let out a low, rumbling chuckle. "You are always so relaxed, Constanza. Such a gift."

Constanza leaned closer to Taylor, lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper, as if sharing a delicious secret. "Don't mind Julian," she said. "He's just pissed off because this is coming out of his end. He'll have to dip into his personal hoard to fix the place up, and he hates that."

She pulled back slightly. "Ever read The Hobbit?"

Taylor, caught off guard by the non-sequitur, could only give a slight, hesitant nod.

"He's like that dragon," Constanza said with a conspiratorial glee. "Smaug. Sits on a mountain of gold and gets absolutely furious if so much as a single coin goes missing."

"Should you be speaking of a fellow Sottocapo like that to an Associate?" Ignazio interjected, a playful warning in his purring voice. "She's not a made woman. Not yet."

Constanza gasped theatrically, her hand flying to her masked mouth. "Oops!" she chirped. "Forget I said any of that, little bug. Top secret family business." She finished with a wink that Taylor could feel more than see, and took a final, long gulp of her beer.

The playful moment passed. Ignazio took over the conversation, turning on his stool to address Taylor directly. His demeanor was serious, his purring voice now the low, gravelly tone of a veteran sharing war stories.

"She is right to be concerned," Ignazio said, his dark eyes fixed on Taylor. "An attack like this, so bold, so direct... it is rare. We pride ourselves on our discretion, on moving in the shadows. To some, this might come as a shock."

He took a slow, deliberate breath, a faint, bitter smile touching his lips. "But this? This is nothing. You should have seen the old days. When the Nazis and the Teeth were carving up the city between them. To stay alive, the family had to go out guns blazing so often, we had to sacrifice our cigar budget for more ammunition." The joke was grim, devoid of humor. "That was when the family was fracturing. Before..." He trailed off, the unspoken name of the new leader hanging in the air.

Taylor listened, a new question forming in her mind. Was the family really so secretive, or had she just been living under a rock her entire life, completely oblivious to the war being waged in her own city?

Constanza giggled, a bright, chiming sound that cut through Ignazio's dark reminiscence. She answered for him. "Oh, it's not you, little bug. It all comes from the top. The family has a very, very strict hierarchy. And it must be adhered to. Always."

"What is the exact hierarchy?" Taylor asked, seizing the opportunity. She needed to understand the structure, the chain of command she had inserted herself into.

It was Ignazio who answered, happy to indulge her curiosity. He began to lay out the structure of their world. "At the bottom, you have the Associates," he began, his gaze steady. "Like you. Not made members, but they work for the family. They are our eyes, our ears, and our hands for the simplest tasks."

He continued, his voice the calm tone of a professor giving a lecture. "Above them, the first true rank of the family, are the Soldati. The soldiers. Men like Simon and Leo. They are the backbone. They handle the day-to-day operations, they manage the Associates, and they are the first line of both offense and defense."

He tapped a finger on the bar for emphasis. "The Soldati are organized into crews, each led by a Caporegime. A Capo. Like myself, and like Gilberto."

"And then there's us!" Constanza chirped, gesturing between herself and the memory of Croupier. "The Sottocapo. The Lieutenants. The fun ones with the superpowers."

Ignazio paused, his fingers—adorned with several heavy, ornate rings—drumming a slow, deliberate rhythm on the polished wood of the countertop. He was letting the information sink in.

Taylor processed it all, building a mental flowchart of the organization. Associates, Soldati, Capos, Sottocapo. But there was a sense of incompleteness. There had to be more.

"And above the Sottocapo?" she asked, her voice quiet. "What's the next rank?"

Ignazio’s fingers stopped their drumming. He opened his mouth to answer, but was cut off by the sound of the grand entrance doors swinging open.

The sudden influx of motion and sound broke the quiet atmosphere of the cleanup. A column of seven, maybe ten, Soldati flooded onto the ruined casino floor, their black suits stark amidst the glittering chaos. They moved with a disciplined, silent purpose.

Ignazio smiled, a slow, predatory curving of his lips, and nodded. He looked back at Taylor, his eyes gleaming with something that looked like reverence.

"Principale," he said, the word spoken with a hushed, absolute respect. “Second only to the Boss.”

Through the column of parting Soldati, a woman entered. She was the calm at the center of the storm. She wore a flowing, ornate dress, the dark fabric covered in a galaxy of glittering jewels and intricate decorations that shimmered even in the dim, chaotic light. Her dark hair was styled in a long, thick braid that fell down her back, the top pulled up into a perfect bun held in place by a single, large, ornate hairpin.

Her eyes were completely covered by a strip of pure white, immaculate cloth, a blindfold that left only the top of her hairline and the elegant line of her jaw and lips visible.

Despite the blindfold, she moved with a preternatural grace. She traversed the wreckage-strewn floor with an effortless ease, her steps never faltering, her path weaving perfectly around splinters of wood, overturned chairs, and skewed tables. It was hypnotizing to watch.

Ignazio slid off his barstool, his usual predatory arrogance gone, replaced by a deep, formal respect. He straightened his suit jacket, a soldier standing at attention.

On the other side of the bar, Constanza didn't walk around. She vaulted over the countertop in a single, fluid motion, landing silently on the balls of her feet. She quickly patted down her own scuffed outfit, smoothing out the wrinkles.

Every Soldato in the room, from the newcomers to the ones who had been cleaning up, moved to meet the woman at the center of the casino floor, directly beneath the massive, glittering chandelier that hung from the high ceiling. They formed two silent, respectful lines.

Seeing the sudden, formal shift, Taylor scrambled to follow. She slid off her stool, her heart pounding, and quickly tried to smooth down her own scratched and wrinkled suit jacket. She found a place at the end of one of the lines, her posture stiff, trying her best to imitate the formal deference of the hardened men around her. The casino had been graced by the presence of royalty.

The silent assembly didn't have to wait long. From the grand staircase, Croupier descended, his porcelain mask back in place, his torn suit somehow looking no less imposing. He was flanked by his own small entourage of Soldati, who peeled off to join the lines.

Croupier walked the length of the impromptu honor guard, his footsteps echoing in the cavernous space, and came to a stop before the blindfolded woman. He gave a deep, formal bow from the waist.

"Principale," he said, his voice a low, respectful murmur as he straightened up. "Thank you for your timely arrival."

The woman's head tilted slightly, the only sign that she was acknowledging him. When she spoke, her voice was a low, hoarse rasp, a gravelly sound that carried an undeniable weight of decades of experience and absolute authority. "Dispense with the formalities, Croupier," she commanded, her tone leaving no room for argument. "Report."

Croupier, perhaps taken off-guard by her abruptness, cleared his throat. He nodded. "Of course."

He began his report, his voice the clipped, efficient tone of a soldier debriefing a general. He recounted the attack from start to finish: the initial warning, the parahuman incursion, the chaos on the floor, and the final escape. He mentioned Taylor only once, a clipped, professional acknowledgment. "...the new asset gave the first warning. Her senses detected the hostiles before they breached the perimeter."

He continued, breaking down the enemy team. "There were four primary hostiles, all parahuman. The first, a Master, controlled the three monstrous canid creatures. The second was the source of the sensory deprivation effect—a black smoke that nullified sight and sound. The third was another Master, capable of controlling bodies from a distance. His influence manifested as motor function seizure, a form of paralysis."

He paused, a flicker of uncertainty in his voice for the first time. "The final member, the one who breached the vault, was a young woman in a domino mask. I am... uncertain of her classification. She displayed no obvious powers, but the confidence with which she operated, the sheer improbability of her cracking the vault's security... it suggests a Thinker ability."

The Principale absorbed the information in silence, her blindfolded face giving away nothing. She stood motionless for a long moment after Croupier finished, the only sound the distant sweeping of broken glass.

"The police have been managed," she said finally, her gravelly voice cutting through the quiet. "The commotion has been officially attributed to a gas main explosion. Tonight's... mess will be handled with discretion." She took a breath. "The PRT and the Protectorate, however, have remained silent. For now. That is a troubling variable."

She turned her head slightly, as if addressing the entire room. "Time is of the essence. This cleanup must be concluded, and all evidence of the altercation erased, post-haste."

Then, her attention narrowed. "Croupier. Constanza." Her blindfolded gaze seemed to sweep over the line of Soldati and land directly on Taylor. "...and the new asset. You will join me in the penthouse suite. Now."

Taylor's stomach plummeted. She felt completely and utterly out of her league, a guppy being summoned to a meeting of great white sharks. She fell out of the line and obediently followed the Principale as the rest of the Soldati dispersed, returning to their duties with a renewed sense of purpose.

They took a private, ornate elevator, its interior all polished brass and red velvet. The ride up to the top floor was silent, but for Taylor, it was deafening. She was crammed into a small, enclosed space with a furious Sottocapo, a whimsical but deadly skirmisher, and the blindfolded, enigmatic woman who was apparently second only to the Boss. Her brain felt like it was buzzing, overwhelmed by the sheer power and danger radiating from the people around her.

As the elevator ascended, a gentle hand pressed down on her shoulder. Taylor looked up, startled, into the golden, flaky mask of Constanza. The lower half of the mask was receded, and the woman gave her a small, genuinely warm and reassuring smile. It was a tiny gesture of kindness in a world of cold, hard professionalism, and it was the only thing that kept Taylor from completely falling apart.

The elevator doors opened with a soft, pleasant chime, revealing not a hallway, but a wide, low-ceilinged penthouse suite. The air was cool and still. There were no windows, no view of the city lights, which gave the room a timeless, and deeply private feel. The lack of natural light was compensated for by the warm glow of several ornate lamps, which reflected off the polished oak of the walls and floor. The space was furnished with opulent, antique-looking furniture—heavy armchairs, a long divan, and intricately carved side tables. It was breathtaking, the kind of room where fortunes were won and lost, and secrets were buried.

The Principale—Il Omertà, Taylor guessed, recalling the name Croupier had used—strode forward with her unnerving, perfect grace. She moved toward a pair of long, plush sofas that faced each other in the center of the room, just in front of a massive, imposing desk that occupied the far wall.

Il Omertà settled onto the sofa that faced away from the desk, her posture immaculate. Constanza and Croupier, their earlier animosity now a disciplined, simmering silence, took their seats on the sofa opposite her.

That left Taylor.

She hovered for an awkward moment, unsure of where to go. Il Omertà gestured vaguely to a solitary armchair positioned off to the side, at the head of the arrangement. It was close enough to be included in the conversation, but separate from the two primary sofas. The placement felt deliberate. It singled her out, a clear, unspoken statement of her status: she was not quite one of them, not yet a part of the inner circle, but important enough to be granted a seat in the room.

She sat, the expensive fabric of the armchair feeling much more intimidating than the grimy vinyl of the diner booth.

"Brockton Bay has a great many parahumans," she stated, her blindfolded face aimed at the space between her two lieutenants. "The vast majority are irrelevant. Independents with minor abilities, posturing children, delusional vigilantes. They are not a factor in this equation."

She paused, letting the dismissal hang in the air. "What happened tonight was not the work of the Azn Bad Boys. Their methods lack this... finesse. This leaves two possibilities. Either the Empire has acquired new, non-traditional assets, or we are dealing with a new independent team, not unlike Faultline's Crew."

Her head tilted slightly. "I am leaning toward the latter. The Empire is a blunt instrument. They are too arrogant, too self-centered in their ideology to operate with such diverse personnel. This was a professional operation."

Her blindfolded gaze shifted, pinning Constanza. "Have you heard anything? Word on the street?"

"A few theories," Constanza said, her chipper tone discordant of the subject. "But I'll only share the one I'm sure of for now." She leaned forward, a playful glint in her demeanor, but her words were sharp. "Their method—the rapid incursion, the chaotic distraction, the single-minded focus on the objective, and the hasty escape—it screams of a crew that operates on a 'get in, get out' principle. That says 'mercenaries' to me."

She tapped a thoughtful finger on her knee. "They're local, though. Operating with a familiarity of the Docks that suggests they're based here, unlike Faultline's Crew, who take contracts all over New England. This might point to a single, powerful employer, rather than a true mercenary outfit."

Croupier, who had been listening in stony silence, finally chimed in, his voice tight with controlled frustration. "That is a significant leap in logic," he countered, shaking his head. "We cannot jump to such conclusions based on a single appearance. We have no concrete data."

"That may be," Constanza replied, her voice losing its playful edge and taking on a sharp, confident tone. She turned to Croupier. "But you, Croupier, spend your days in a dark room watching numbers. You don't spend enough time with people to question my read on them."

Croupier's reaction was hidden behind his blank, porcelain mask, but Taylor could feel the wave of pure, cold annoyance radiating from him. The air between the two Sottocapo crackled with professional friction.

"Enough," Il Omertà's gravelly voice cut through the tension, instantly silencing them both. She seemed to consider Constanza's theory for a moment. "A new mercenary team, locally employed. It is a viable hypothesis. The Consigliere will be informed."

Then, the full, undivided attention of the room landed on Taylor. The weight of three powerful, dangerous parahumans' gazes was a physical thing.

"The asset," Il Omertà said, her blindfolded face turned directly toward the armchair. "You were on the floor. You engaged them directly. Do you have anything to add to this discussion?"

This was it. Her chance to be more than just muscle. Her chance to provide real, actionable intelligence. She dredged her memory, forcing herself back into the chaos of the fight, focusing on the names she had heard shouted amidst the gunfire and roaring.

"Their names," Taylor said, her voice clear and steady. "I heard them call each other names."

She began to list them, assigning the titles to the faces. "The man in the motorcycle helmet, the smoke-generator... they called him Grue."

"The woman who controls the dogs," Taylor hesitated, the vulgar name feeling strange and disrespectful in this formal setting. A single bead of sweat traced a path down her neck. "...they called her Bitch."

"The boy in the drama mask, the one who... interfered with motor functions. His name is Regent."

She took a final breath, delivering the most important piece of the puzzle. "And the last one. The blonde girl who breached the vault. The one you said might be a Thinker. Her name is Tattletale."

A deep, appreciative silence followed Taylor's report. Il Omertà's head tilted, a clear sign of her approval.

"Excellent," she rasped, the single word imbued with a profound sense of satisfaction. She turned her blindfolded gaze back toward Constanza. "You have your lead. Grue, Bitch, Regent, and Tattletale. Find out everything there is to know about this team. Who they are, where they come from, and—most importantly—who is signing their paychecks."

Constanza gave a sharp, affirmative nod, her cheerful demeanor gone, replaced by the focus of a predator who has been given a scent.

With that topic concluded, Il Omertà's attention settled once more on Taylor, her presence filling the room. "You have proven yourself tonight, asset," she said, her gravelly voice resonating in the quiet suite. "You are capable, you are resourceful, and, if Gilberto's initial report over the phone was accurate, you are deadly."

As she spoke, she gave Croupier a slight, almost imperceptible sidelong glance. It was a gesture of pure, cold disapproval. Taylor's mind immediately connected the dots: a Sottocapo like Croupier should have made the report to the Principale himself, not delegated the task to a Capo. It was a subtle but clear rebuke of his handling of the situation, a reminder of the proper chain of command.

Il Omertà didn't skip a beat, her attention returning fully to Taylor, her expression unreadable behind the white cloth. She extended an open, upturned palm in Taylor's direction.

"It is time," Il Omertà said, her voice carrying the weight of a coronation. "It is time for you to be made. 

"Take my hand," Il Omertà's raspy voice commanded. "And repeat the oath."

Taylor's breath hitched. Her eyes flicked down to the offered hand, then back up to the blindfolded face. She swallowed, her throat suddenly bone dry. Her vision blurred for a second, the opulent room swimming around her.

This was it. The point of no return. A real, formal induction. This was her chance to truly be a part of something. To be someone again, not just the lonely, invisible girl from Winslow.

But what was she doing?

The thought screamed from a small, terrified corner of her mind. This was a gang. A literal Mafia. She had terrorized an old man and participated in a brutal firefight that had left people dead. She was about to swear an oath to a criminal organization.

Her mouth opened. The word "no" was on the tip of her tongue, a desperate, last-ditch refusal. But the sound wouldn't come out. A rope of her own making, woven from validation and desperation, tugged it back down.

She thought of Simon, his quiet, professional praise that felt more meaningful than any accolade she had ever received. She thought of Gilberto, his paternal warmth and the promise of a family that "takes care of its own." She thought of Constanza's reassuring smile in the elevator. It wasn't true friendship, not yet, but it was a connection. A sense of belonging. Her skills were valued here. She was influential. She was seen.

To turn her back on them now, after everything... what would that make her? After the Emma incident, the word was a brand on her soul, the ultimate sin. She would be a betrayer. A traitor.

A backstabbing bitch.

The thought was paralyzing. The fear of being that person, of confirming that deep, dark label she had fought so hard to escape, was more terrifying than any oath.

Her hand, as if with a will of its own, began to rise.

Taylor's trembling hand rose and met Il Omertà's. The Principale's grip was cool, dry, and surprisingly gentle, but held an underlying strength that felt like forged steel. The blindfolded woman gave a single, slow nod of approval.

"Repeat after me," Il Omertà commanded, her gravelly voice filling the silent room, each word a sacred, binding syllable.

"I am not born of fortune," she began. "I am of the common man."

Taylor's own voice, a dry, hesitant whisper, followed. "I am not born of fortune... I am of the common man." The words felt strange, a populist slogan that belied the opulent, windowless room they stood in.

"My family, my friends, these are the fortunes I cherish."

"My family... my friends... these are the fortunes I cherish." The lie tasted like ash in her mouth. What friends?

"Through rainy days and sweltering heat, I will be by their side."

"Through rainy days and sweltering heat... I will be by their side." A promise of loyalty she had desperately wanted to give to someone, anyone.

"I will not aid those who wish to hurt my family."

"I will not aid those who wish to hurt my family." The Empire. The ABB. Any and all who are the enemies of the family.

"I will embrace the family wherever it may take me."

"I will embrace the family... wherever it may take me." Down into a basement to terrorize an old man. Onto a pier promised to be littered with bodies.

"I am its eyes. I am its ears. I am its lips."

"I am its eyes... I am its ears... I am its lips." Secrecy. Omertà. The promise to see, hear, and say nothing.

"My hands shall not forsake the family name."

"My hands shall not forsake the family name." The baton. The swarm. Her hands were already stained.

Il Omertà's grip tightened slightly, the final, binding seal. "For I am of Fortune's grace."

Taylor took a final, shuddering breath and sealed her fate. 

"For I am of Fortune's grace."

Chapter Text

Empire of Sin

A Worm AU

Chapter 8: Button Up

The next time she met with the family, it wasn't in the glittering ruins of the casino or the grimy guts of a cannery. It was at a small, open-air café on the Boardwalk, the kind of place that sold overpriced coffee and pastries to tourists. Taylor sat at a small metal table, a simple cup of tea warming her hands, and watched the sun rise over the bay.

The morning air was cool and tasted of salt and fried dough from a nearby donut stand. In the distance, out in the middle of the water, the Protectorate HQ shimmered, its blue force field a glittering, otherworldly dome against the soft pinks and oranges of the dawn. It was a fortress of solitude, a silent, ever-present reminder of the city's official heroes, watching over everything.

Her eyes lingered on it. That was supposed to have been her goal. To be a hero. To maybe, one day, be worthy of standing inside that dome.

But now... she wasn't so sure.

The lines had blurred until they were almost meaningless. Wasn't it heroic, what she had done at the casino? She had defended the place from a violent attack. She had saved Croupier's life. She had pursued the thief into the vault. Wasn't it heroic when she had saved Mr. Scapelli from those ABB thugs? Or when her quick thinking had turned the tide of the ambush at the fish market? She had fought bullies and monsters. She had protected people. Wasn't that what heroes did?

Her hands tightened around the warm ceramic of the cup, her knuckles turning white. She looked down, away from the impossible, glittering dome in the bay, and stared at her own reflection, distorted and rippling on the dark surface of the tea. The face that stared back was just a girl's face, tired and uncertain, but the thoughts behind it were a tangled mess of justifications and a gnawing, ever-present doubt.

A chair scraped against the pavement, and Simon slipped into the seat across from her. He placed a steaming cup of coffee on the table. The sight of it, so simple and normal, immediately conjured the image of Anthony's smiling face, of him calling Simon a "lifesaver" for the same simple gesture.

Taylor's jaw tightened. It was the cost of business, she told herself, the now-familiar mantra. It wasn't Anthony's fault. It wasn't the family's fault. The fault laid in the ABB. They had fired the first shot. They had created the chaos. The blame rested with them.

"Morning, Taylor," Simon said, his voice a low rumble.

"Morning," she replied, her gaze still fixed on the bay.

"Did you bring it?" he asked.

"It" was her costume. She nodded, patting the worn backpack propped on the chair beside her. "It's in here," she said. "And the extra silk sheets, like you asked. It should be enough material."

Simon nodded, satisfied. He took a slow sip of his coffee. Taylor, mirroring the action, took a sip of her own lukewarm tea.

"The tea here is surprisingly good," he commented, his tone casual. "I like it strong."

The small talk felt strange, almost unnervingly out of place after everything they had been through. Taylor glanced over her shoulder, her eyes scanning the nearly deserted café. A couple of baristas, young and bored-looking, were wiping down the counter, paying them no mind.

"Is this place..." she began, her voice low, "...another front?"

Simon shrugged, a gesture of genuine uncertainty. "Could be. Could not be. It's early. The college students are still in bed, and the rich folks are brewing their own special blends at home. It might just be this slow."

Taylor grunted, a small, noncommittal sound, and accepted the explanation.

They finished their drinks in a comfortable, professional silence. Without a word, Simon stood, and Taylor followed. They left the café and began to walk along the Boardwalk, the wooden planks still damp with morning dew. The city was waking up. Stall owners were rolling up their metal shutters with loud, rattling groans. A few dedicated joggers pounded past them, their breath pluming in the cool air. A couple of early tourists were already taking pictures of the Protectorate HQ, its glittering dome a picture-perfect icon against the rising sun.

As they walked, a nagging question began to form in the back of Taylor's mind. She had been "made." She had sworn the oath. She had been let in on the hierarchy, a structure with clear ranks and a chain of command. And yet, Simon, a Soldato, was still acting as her handler. She was supposed to be his equal now, wasn't she? Was this a test of her deference? Or had some higher-echelon decision been made that she wasn't privy to?

She debated with herself for a moment, the old, ingrained fear of overstepping battling with her new, hard-won status. Then she reminded herself of the oath, of the power she had demonstrated. She was a made woman. She had earned the right to know.

"Simon," she began, her voice steady. "Why are you still my handler? I'm a Soldato now, same as you."

Simon didn't miss a beat. "You are," he confirmed, his gaze fixed straight ahead. "But you are also a special case. You hold the rank and privilege of a Soldato, but you possess the status of a trainee. You're not ready to be a Sottocapo, but your abilities place you far above the level of a typical new recruit."

The explanation was logical and clinical. Taylor, wanting to keep control of the conversation, to show she understood the implications, pressed forward. "So who am I assigned to? What's my command structure?"

"My own direct chain of command is through Capo Gilberto, who in turn answers to Sottocapo Gallo," Simon explained. "You, however, will be operating under the command of Miss Constanza. The family decided you would benefit from a familiar face during this transitional period. Better to have me guide you than to be thrown into a new crew without warning.

"But first," Simon continued, his tone shifting back to the immediate agenda, "you need a name. And an image. The family may operate by its own code, but we do not exist in a vacuum. The city's cape ecosystem has its own culture, its own rules. To operate effectively, you must understand them."

This was a subject Taylor was deeply, frustratingly unfamiliar with. She'd spent hours in the library, using the public computers to look up PHO threads and articles on cape culture, but the information was a tangled mess of in-jokes, jargon, and contradictory anecdotes. She was fairly certain her search history had done more to put her on a federal watchlist than to give her any solid answers.

"What are the rules?" she asked. "The 'unwritten' ones everyone talks about."

Simon shrugged, a rare gesture of uncertainty from him. "I'm not the best person to ask," he admitted. "I'm not a cape. Miss Constanza or Croupier would know the nuances better. But I can give you the broad strokes, the ones that matter to us from a tactical perspective."

He ticked the points off on his fingers as they walked. "One: No killing other capes. Bad for business. It brings down the full weight of the Protectorate and invites blood feuds that are messy and unpredictable."

"Two: When a cape flees a fight, you let them go. You don't hunt them down. The fight is over."

"And three, the most important one: You do not target capes in their civilian identities. Ever. No exceptions."

He lowered his hand. "They aren't laws. The PRT won't even acknowledge them publicly. But they are the lines that the capes drew for themselves to stop every city from turning into a ceaseless, 24/7 bloodbath. You break them at your own peril."

They turned away from the main Boardwalk, heading toward a storefront nestled between a high-end art gallery and a gourmet chocolate shop. The sign, done in clean, minimalist lettering, read "Marino Textiles." From the outside, it looked like a store that sold expensive, raw fabrics. Unlike the dingy diner or the old-world tailor shop, this establishment was aggressively modern.

The moment they stepped inside, a wave of cool, conditioned air washed over them. The interior was bright, clean, and spacious, with bolts of luxurious textiles—silk, cashmere, fine wool—displayed on minimalist racks like modern art installations. It was a place designed for a wealthy, classy clientele. The more of these places she saw, the more Taylor felt a growing, sour seed of loathing for the rich people who inhabited them.

A man who had been working at a large, industrial sewing machine in the corner looked up as they entered. He was a small, meticulous-looking man with a neatly trimmed grey beard and a pair of spectacles perched on his nose. Taylor assumed he was the owner.

Simon initiated the conversation. "Bernard," he said, his tone familiar but all business. "Is the showroom prepared for us?"

Bernard’s face lit up with a professional, if slightly nervous, smile. "Simon! Of course, of course. Welcome." His eyes flickered to Taylor, his gaze lingering for a moment on her new but plain uniform before returning to Simon. "Right this way. It's all ready for you." He pointed toward a simple, unmarked door at the back of the store.

Taylor followed Simon's confident strides. They passed through the back door and the entire atmosphere changed. The cool, conditioned air and soft lighting of the showroom were gone, replaced by a non-conditioned, practical, industrial space. This was the working part of the business. She passed by small, cluttered offices, storage rooms stacked high with boxes, and a tiny, functional bathroom.

Simon pivoted, leading her down another set of concrete stairs into another basement. This one was different from the cannery's. It was clean, well-lit, and the air hummed with the faint, electric thrum of powerful machinery. They stopped before a heavy, soundproofed steel door.

Simon placed his hand on the handle, a rare, genuine smile touching his lips. He looked back at Taylor, a glint of excitement in his eyes.

"Ready to see some real magic?" he asked, and pushed the door open.

They stepped into a quaint, surprisingly cozy workshop. Several large tables were strewn with bolts of fabric, half-finished garments, and intricate design sketches. Along the far wall, a row of mannequins stood sentinel, each dressed in an expensive, impeccably tailor-made suit.

Bernard shuffled past them, moving to a small, unassuming door on the side of the room. He knocked gently. "Maestro," he called out, his voice soft and respectful. "The fitting has arrived."

There was no immediate response from inside, but Bernard seemed to expect this. He gave Simon a small, knowing nod, then excused himself and headed back up the stairs, leaving them alone.

Taylor saw that Simon had already made himself comfortable, sitting in a plush armchair in a small lounge area by the door. He gestured with his head toward one of the large worktables in the center of the room. "Go on," he said. "He'll want to see the material."

As Taylor approached the table and began to unpack her costume and the rolls of spider silk, a loud whoosh echoed from behind the side door—the sound of a toilet flushing. A few moments later, the door creaked open, and a man shuffled out.

He was ancient. Hunched over, shuffling at a snail's pace, he looked like he was well into his eighties, maybe older. A pair of thick spectacles sat precariously on his wrinkled, wizened face, and a sparse fringe of frayed grey hair circled his head, leaving the top completely bald. He leaned heavily on a simple wooden cane.

"Simon, my boy," the old man rasped, his voice a dry crackle. "Where is this subject of yours? Don't have all day, you know."

When Simon pointed to Taylor, the old man's entire demeanor changed. His stooped posture straightened slightly, his eyes lit up, and he raised a frail, bony arm in the air. "Ah! Bellissima!" he cheered, a sudden, shocking burst of energy.

He shuffled over to Taylor with surprising speed, abandoning his cane against a table. He grabbed her by the shoulder and arm, his grip surprisingly firm. His eyes, magnified by his spectacles, darted over every inch of her—her posture, the fit of her new uniform, the texture of the spider silk she had laid on the table. They were uncannily aware, missing nothing.

"Such a good frame!" he exclaimed, his hands patting her shoulder and arm. "Good shoulders! And this material! Oh, this is exquisite!" He streamed out compliments, a flood of enthusiastic, grandfatherly praise that reminded Taylor, with a strange and sudden pang of nostalgia, of a great-uncle she hadn't seen since she was five years old.

The old man was so engrossed in his enthusiastic, hands-on appraisal of Taylor that Simon had to intervene.

"Maestro," Simon said, his voice holding a mixture of respect and fond exasperation. "Allow me to introduce you. This is Taylor. Taylor, this is the family's maestro, Geronimo Centofanti."

Geronimo seemed to snap back to reality, realizing he was, in fact, groping their new parahuman asset. He immediately let go of her, a faint blush rising on his wrinkled cheeks. "Ah! My apologies, my dear girl," he rasped, bowing his head slightly. "My manners, they flee from me when I am presented with such fine material. Forgive an old man his passions."

But he didn't waste any time on further small talk. His attention was immediately and completely consumed by the unfinished costume and the rolls of silk she had laid out on the table.

His wrinkled, age-spotted fingers, surprisingly nimble, brushed against the charcoal-grey fabric. He pinched the material between his thumb and forefinger, rubbing it, testing its texture. He scrutinized the seams, the places where she had stitched the panels together with her mother's old sewing machine.

"The needlework is clumsy," he criticized, his voice now sharp and professional. "The weave is inconsistent. Amateurish." He squinted at the rivets on her makeshift armor plates. "And this? Brutish. Utterly without elegance."

Then he looked at the overall quality of the silk itself. "But the material... the raw potential... not bad."

The brief flash of praise was immediately extinguished. "But it will not do," he declared, the finality in his voice leaving no room for argument. The rollercoaster of emotions—pride, embarrassment, a flicker of hope, and now disappointment—left a salty, bitter taste in Taylor's mouth.

Geronimo gestured dismissively at her creation, the product of weeks of her secret, painstaking labor. "The appearance is garish. Too much of the... how do you say... the horror movie. It sends the wrong message."

He peered at her over the top of his spectacles, his eyes sharp and critical. "My dear, if I saw you at the end of a dark alley wearing this, I would not think, 'Ah, there is an interesting and well-dressed individual with a unique sense of style.' I would think, 'A demon has come to eat my soul.' And then I would run. That is not the image the family wishes to project."

Taylor swallowed. It was a conscious, physical effort to push down the hot spike of pride and the crushing weight of disappointment. She had poured her heart and soul into that costume, and he had dismissed it as a cheap horror movie prop. She glanced over at Simon, who was watching the entire interaction with a neutral, unreadable expression. He was still observing. Evaluating.

She couldn't afford to be a petulant child. She had to be a professional.

She offered a peace treaty. "I have... other designs," she said, her voice quiet but steady. "Sketches. In a notebook. Maybe you could look at those?"

She rummaged through her backpack, fishing out the worn, spiral-bound notebook and placing it on the table. Geronimo picked it up, his movements slow and deliberate.

He began to flip through the pages. The first few were a riot of color and excitement, full of the bright, hopeful designs of a girl who had just discovered she could be a hero. Then, the tone shifted. The designs grew darker, more practical, more brooding. The final pages, as he neared the end, contained nothing but minor variations of the same dark, armored, terrifying suit that now lay on the table.

Geronimo flipped through them with the physicality of an old man, his head tilted back so he could peer through the lower half of his spectacle lenses, his mouth slightly agape in concentration. He would occasionally nod, murmuring something under his breath in what Taylor assumed was Italian.

Finally, he closed the book and placed it gently on the table. "So," he rasped, "you control the insects." It wasn't a question. He had deduced it from the themes in her drawings. "Hmph. Vile creatures. The bane of a tailor's existence, with their moths and their termites." He shuddered theatrically. "But, a talent is a talent."

He clapped his frail hands together, a sudden, surprising burst of energy. "Very well! Let us begin. We will make you a masterpiece." He turned his full, intense attention to her. "But first, you must tell me. What do you want from this costume? What is its purpose for you? Then, and only then, can I tell you what the family will want it to project for them."

"Well," Taylor began, her hands fidgeting, feeling suddenly foolish and exposed. "I just needed something I could make with the resources I had. That meant the spider silk. And I styled it after my power, I guess. The mandibles on the mask, the little skirt-thing is supposed to look like a beetle's carapace... the armor is supposed to look like chitin..."

"No, no, no," Geronimo interrupted, waving a dismissive hand. He wasn't being cruel, just blunt. "You are describing the how. I am asking you the why. What is the point? What do you want it to do for you?"

Taylor's explanation died in her throat. She was being asked a question she had never truly dared to ask herself. She took a deep breath, the truth coming out in a raw, vulnerable rush.

"I wanted to feel protected," she admitted, her voice barely a whisper. "And I wanted... I wanted people to see me and think that I was someone. Not just a nobody. Not just... bait for bullies. I wanted to be something else. And I wanted to go out and be a hero. To make a difference."

The old man's sharp, critical expression softened. He gave a slow, respectful nod. "Ah," he rasped, his voice now gentle. "That. Yes. I have heard that story many times, from many young men and women who have stood in this room." He looked at her cobbled-together costume on the table. "And this," he said, "this fulfills those needs. It protects. It frightens. It makes you into something else. In this, you have succeeded."

He paused, a flicker of his sharp, professional intensity returning. "Now," he said, "let me tell you what the family wants your costume to project."

He began to pace, his shuffling steps a slow, deliberate rhythm on the concrete floor. "Competence. Opulence. Status. That is our creed. We do not walk around in tailored suits and fine coats for our own amusement, my dear. It is about the image. The aura."

He turned to face her, his eyes gleaming with a philosopher's passion. "When the average person sees a man in a fine suit, what do they think? They see success. They see intelligence. They see someone trustworthy, someone who is in control. It immediately presents us on a pedestal. We are not thugs; we are businessmen. We are patrons."

He scoffed, a dry, rattling sound. "Look at the others. Swastikas. Dragons. Anarchy. Crude, ugly symbols for crude, ugly ideologies. But they understand one thing: people are drawn to symbols. They crave idols. They need an image to follow, or to fear."

He tapped his chest with a frail finger. "The family understands this better than anyone. We do not sell drugs or hatred. We sell an image. An image of class, of order, and of inevitable success. And you, my dear, are about to become our newest and most unique billboard."

Geronimo took her sketchbook and a piece of fine charcoal from a nearby tray. "Let us see what we can do," he murmured, more to himself than to her.

Then, his hands began to move.

The frailty of the old man vanished. He sketched with a speed and precision that was simply mind-boggling. The charcoal stick danced across the page, lines appearing with an impossible, practiced confidence. Taylor watched, utterly captivated. This was a master at his craft, a true maestro.

"The skintight design, we keep," he rasped as he drew, not looking up. "It is common sense. Practical. You do not want to get snagged on a piece of rubble while you are fighting for your life. Simple."

But then he began to add the details, the small, transformative touches that elevated the entire concept. Over the charcoal-grey bodysuit, his charcoal stick conjured a waistcoat, its lines sharp and tailored. A delicate, dangling chain appeared, replicating the look of a fine pocket watch tucked into a pocket. A formal tie materialized, perfectly framed by a high, stiff collar around her neck.

He was turning her from a monster into an aristocrat. It was the exact image he had just described—opulent, competent, powerful.

"The hair," he murmured, his charcoal adding the impression of her long, dark hair flowing freely from the back of the mask. "Yes, I like this. It provides a powerful femininity. A touch of wildness amidst the structure. It says you are not a machine. You are a woman of power."

Taylor started to explain, "I was going to make a fully enclosed helmet, I just haven't had the time—"

"Forget it," Geronimo cut her off without looking up. "A foolish idea. Hiding your greatest asset. No, we stick with this. It is better."

Then, he turned the page and began to sketch the back. Here, he added something truly unique, something born of pure artistic inspiration. Two pairs of wings, delicate and intricate, like those of a dragonfly. One pair was attached high on the shoulders, angled like pauldrons. The lower, larger pair sprouted from the middle of her back. They weren't clumsy or crude; they were elegant, almost ethereal.

When he finished the sketch, he held it up for her to see. The dragonfly wings, when folded, created a powerful, layered silhouette. It was a cape, but one that was fully, uniquely her. It mimicked the look of the trench coats worn by the Capos, a visual echo of authority, while retaining an insectoid grace that was entirely her own. It was perfect.

"Hmph," Geronimo grunted, setting the sketchbook down. He looked at his own drawing with a critical eye. "It is not my finest work. But it will be well-loved, I think."

He gathered up the sketchbook, her old costume, and the rolls of spider silk, carrying them over to a massive, cluttered workbench against the far wall. "I will begin the preliminary work," he announced. "Expect a call for a fitting in a few days. You will want to add things, no doubt, once you have had time to live with the design in your head."

As the old man began to rummage through drawers, searching for needles and threads, Simon finally spoke up from the lounge area. "You're a damn angel, Maestro," he said, a note of genuine warmth in his voice.

Geronimo barked a short, harsh laugh without turning around. "If I am," he crackled, "then I must be the Lord's least favorite."

He waved a dismissive hand over his shoulder, already completely absorbed in his new project. Simon gestured for Taylor to come over and sit in the armchair opposite him.

She did, her mind still reeling from the whirlwind of the last half hour. She sank into the plush chair, feeling a strange mixture of excitement and disbelief.

"So," Simon asked, his gaze steady. "What do you think?"

"Bizarre," was the first word that came to Taylor's mind. "It's all just... bizarre." She looked from the eccentric old Tinker back to Simon. "I never thought... I never expected to get this kind of professional help. I figured the Wards had their own tailor and tech support, but..." She trailed off.

"You never wanted to join them?" Simon prompted.

Taylor snorted, a small, bitter sound. "No. The idea of being stuck with a bunch of other teenagers, all trying to be famous heroes? All that teen drama, but with superpowers? It sounded like a nightmare. Like Winslow, but with capes."

"I can't say if you made a wise decision or not," Simon said, his tone neutral. "You made a choice. Now you live with it. You work with it. That's all there is."

The brutal pragmatism was, in its own way, comforting. It was a philosophy stripped of all morality, a simple statement of cause and effect. It made her choices feel less like a series of moral failings and more like a simple, logical progression.

"So what are we waiting for now?" Taylor asked, her voice quiet. The workshop, for all its creative clutter, was beginning to feel a bit claustrophobic. "If Geronimo is going to be working on the costume for the next few days."

A chipper, high-pitched voice, startlingly familiar, answered from the stairwell before Simon could. "You're waiting for me, of course!"

Constanza appeared at the bottom of the stairs, and the entire energy of the room shifted. She descended with a light, almost bouncing step, a brilliant, easy smile on her face. This was the first time Taylor had seen her without the golden mask, and the sight was disarming. Her face wasn't the hard, battle-worn visage of a seasoned parahuman. It was all soft lines and smooth, natural beauty. Her eyes, a warm, sparkling hazel, seemed to dance with a constant, playful amusement. She was wearing a simple but elegant silk dress shirt and tailored trousers, looking less like the deadly skirmisher who had weathered a storm of monstrous dogs and more like a successful art gallery owner dropping in to check on a commission.

The contrast between the woman she had seen in the casino and the one standing before her now was jarring. Taylor's mind immediately went into overdrive, analyzing, trying to reconcile the two images. Was this cheerfulness a mask, just as much as the golden one had been? A deliberate tool to put people at ease, to make them underestimate her? Or was this her genuine state, a woman who found a terrifying joy in the violent, chaotic life she led? The latter possibility was somehow more frightening.

Simon immediately stood and gave his customary, formal bow, a soldier in the presence of a lieutenant.

Constanza just waved it off with a laugh that tinkled through the quiet workshop. "Oh, sit down, Simon. Honestly. I'm not a stick in the mud like Croupier or Vendetta." She spoke of the other Sottocapos with a casual, familial familiarity that Taylor couldn't even begin to imagine having.

Her bright, friendly eyes landed on Taylor, and her smile widened. "Hello, little bug," she said warmly. "Things going well with old man Geronimo? He hasn't scared you off with his critiques yet?"

"Good," Taylor managed, the single word feeling inadequate. The relief she felt was a strange, surprising thing. The weight of forging her costume, of her secret identity, a burden she had carried alone for months, was now being handled by a master. She felt... lighter. "It's a relief, actually."

Constanza's smile softened with what looked like genuine understanding. She walked over to Geronimo's workbench, keeping a respectful distance from the maestro, who was already lost in his own world of threads and measurements. She cocked her head, taking in the design sketches, her hazel eyes scanning the charcoal lines. "Superb," she commented, her voice full of sincere appreciation. "Of course, he'll make it perfect. He always does."

She returned to the lounge area, her attention now fully on Taylor. She pulled a nearby stool over and sat down, leaning forward, creating a sense of immediate, friendly intimacy. "So," she said, her expression turning serious, though her smile never faded. "The big question. Have you figured out a name yet?"

The question again. The blank space in her identity. Taylor shook her head, feeling a familiar flush of inadequacy. "Nothing that feels right. I thought about 'Weaver,' maybe, but..."

"A little generic," Constanza finished for her, nodding in agreement. "It's pretty, but it has no teeth. No style."

"Parasite?" Taylor offered, the name tasting like self-loathing on her tongue. It was what she felt like sometimes. A creature feeding off the scraps of a larger, more dangerous world.

"Mmm, doesn't really roll off the tongue," Constanza mused, tapping a thoughtful finger against her chin. "And it's not a good brand. Far too self-deprecating. You're an asset, little bug, not something to be ashamed of." She nodded, her expression full of genuine sympathy. "Don't worry. It's the hardest part, finding the right fit. It took me months to settle on a name I didn't hate when I first started."

She leaned in closer, and the playful sparkle in her eyes returned, a conspiratorial glint. "But, you're in luck. Il Omertà has given me permission to help you with the 'branding,' as it were. And after seeing you in action, after hearing about what you did... I think I have the perfect name for you."

She paused, letting the anticipation build, savoring the moment. Her smile was infectious, and despite herself, Taylor felt a flicker of genuine excitement.

"Madrina."

Chapter Text

Empire of Sin

A Worm AU

Chapter 9: One-Way Ride

The key fumbled in her hand, the cheap metal refusing to find the lock in the dark. A sharp rustle from the bushes by the back porch made Taylor freeze, her head snapping over her shoulder, her body instantly tense. She held her breath, listening. It was probably just an animal, a rabbit or a stray cat, but the paranoia was a coiled snake in her gut now, a permanent resident.

Just to be sure, she reached out with her power. A half-dozen ants on the pavement below the bushes stopped their foraging, becoming her remote sensors. A lazy fly buzzing near the porch light became her eye in the sky. She scanned, felt, listened. Nothing. Just the wind.

She let out a slow, quiet breath and returned her attention to the door. She finally sorted the keys, the familiar shape of the house key finding her thumb. She slid it into the lock, turned, and with a soft click of the knob, pushed the door open.

She stepped into the quiet dark of her own kitchen. The only light was the single, small bulb over the stove's hood, casting a weak, orange glow over the familiar linoleum and worn countertops. The rest of the house was a cavern of silence and shadow.

Taylor closed the door as slowly and quietly as she possibly could, turning the knob until the latch was fully seated before releasing it. The final click of the door settling into its frame echoed in the stillness. Dad was asleep. She didn't want to wake him.

Her steps were light on the floor as she moved toward the fridge. She'd already eaten dinner hours ago, a cheap but filling plate of pasta at a Mafia-owned trattoria with Constanza, but her throat was dry. A glass of cold water was all she wanted.

She pulled the refrigerator door open, the sudden, bright interior light making her squint.

Click.

The sound came from the living room. Taylor's head whipped around. The doorway that led from the kitchen to the rest of the house was no longer a dark rectangle. A new, harsh light spilled from it, silhouetting the dining room table.

Danny was standing there, his hand still on the light switch. His face, illuminated by the single, bare bulb of the living room lamp, was a mask of pure, unadulterated worry.

For a moment that stretched into an eternity, Taylor was frozen, her hand still on the refrigerator door. Danny said nothing. He just stood there by the light switch, his worried eyes fixed on her, his expression a mixture of fear and a profound, bone-deep weariness.

The silence wore down on her physically. Taylor's mind raced, a frantic search for an explanation, an excuse, a way out of this sudden, terrifying confrontation. Why is he awake? He's never awake this late. Did something happen at the docks? Is he sick? Did someone call? Has he found something? Does he know?

Finally, she broke the silence, her voice a dry croak. "Hi, Dad." She swallowed, forcing a casual tone she didn't feel. "Sorry I'm home so late. The bus... it was delayed."

It was a weak, flimsy excuse, the same kind she'd been using for weeks. They had always worked before, mostly because Danny had been too tired, too lost in his own world to question them. She hoped it would be enough this time. To press the lie, to weave a more elaborate story, felt too dangerous.

Danny remained silent for another long moment, his gaze unwavering. "That's not what I'm worried about, Taylor," he said finally, his voice low and heavy.

He moved away from the wall, his movements slow and tired, and crossed the living room to the old, sagging couch. He lowered himself into it, not with the familiar slump of exhaustion, but with the careful deliberation of a man carrying an immense weight. His eyes were fixed on the floorboards, as if the words he needed were hidden in the patterns of the old wood.

Taylor turned back to the fridge, her hands trembling slightly as she grabbed the pitcher of water. She poured a glass, the simple, mundane action feeling impossibly difficult. Her heart was a frantic drum against her ribs. This wasn't right. The quiet, the stillness, his strange, sad calm—it was all wrong. Something terrible was about to happen. She could feel it in her bones.

"Finish your drink," Danny's voice came from the living room, quiet but firm. "Then come and sit down. We need to talk."

We need to talk. The words were a death sentence.

Taylor tried to appear normal, to keep her hands steady as she set the pitcher back in the fridge. But inside, her mind was a maelstrom. She pushed the fear, the heart-wrenching anxiety, the raw, screaming panic, out of herself and into her swarm. Deep in the walls and under the floorboards of the old house, termites and cockroaches began to move with a frantic, agitated energy. Maggots writhed in the kitchen trash can. A spider in the corner of the ceiling began to spin a messy, chaotic web. The unseen ecosystem of her own home became a physical manifestation of the terror she refused to let her father see.

She took his advice. She drank the water, downing the entire glass in three quick, desperate gulps, the cold liquid doing nothing to soothe the fire in her chest. She stood there for a moment longer, her back to the living room, gathering her courage.

Then she turned.

She made her way out of the kitchen, her steps feeling heavier and heavier with each footfall, as if the floor had turned to mud. The fear that gripped her was a cold, alien thing. It was a fear she had never, ever associated with her father. This was the fear she felt at Winslow. The stomach-churning dread of walking down a hallway, knowing that at any moment, Emma or Sophia could be around the corner, ready to pounce.

Instinct took over. When faced with a threat, you create distance.

She didn't sit on the couch near him. She moved to the armchair on the far side of the room, the one by the window, putting the entire worn-out coffee table between them. She needed that space. She needed that buffer. Because she was absolutely certain that whatever came next was going to be terrible.

More silence. It stretched on, thick and suffocating, broken only by the hum of the refrigerator from the kitchen. Taylor sat rigid in the armchair, watching her father. He wasn't looking at her. His gaze was fixed on the floorboards, his thumbs twiddling in his lap, a nervous, restless motion that was completely out of character for him. He was gathering his thoughts, or his courage.

After what felt like a lifetime, he finally lifted his head. He took a long, slow breath, and his tired, worried eyes met hers.

"How are things at school, Taylor?" he asked, his voice quiet.

The question was so simple, so mundane, and yet it felt like a trap. Taylor's fingers, clasped in her lap, went numb. Her throat, which she had just soothed with a glass of water, was instantly dry again. A chill that had nothing to do with the cool night air crept over her skin, and she sniffled.

"It's... been okay," she lied.

Danny's gaze didn't waver. He already knew the truth. "The bullying," he said, his voice now even quieter, laced with a pain she hadn't heard in a long time. "Is it still happening?"

There was no point in denying it. "I can handle it," she said, the words a familiar, hollow shield.

Danny closed his eyes, a flicker of profound weariness and failure crossing his face. Taylor knew what he was thinking about. The locker. The frantic hospital visit. The meetings with the principal. She knew he had tried, that he had fought for her. But all they had gotten out of it was the school covering her medical bills, a small, insulting settlement—hush money, really—and the empty promise of an "internal investigation." There could be no lawsuit; they could never afford a lawyer to go up against the school district. The investigation had come and gone, a bureaucratic smokescreen that had produced no names, no justice, no results.

She hadn't wanted to burden him with it since. He had enough on his plate. He had his own grief to deal with. And besides, she could handle it now, couldn't she? She was a parahuman. A made woman in the Mafia. A girl who had survived a gunfight.

So why did the thought of walking into Winslow tomorrow still fill her with a cold, sickening dread?

"And your friends," Danny said, his tone shifting, though his weary, worried gaze never left her face. "The ones from the library you've been... studying with."

He was testing her alibis, one by one.

"They're good friends," Taylor said, forcing a brightness into her voice that felt brittle and false. "They treat me right. I'm... having fun." The last part was almost true. The work was terrifying, but the validation, the sense of purpose—it was the closest to "fun" she'd had in years.

"That's good," Danny said, a flicker of something unreadable in his eyes. Hope? Suspicion? "I'm glad. When can I meet them? I'm curious."

The question was a landmine, something with no good answers. No easy lie, no plausible excuse that wouldn't make her look immediately guilty. But she had to try.

She started weaving the lie, pulling threads from the truth to give it a semblance of reality. "Oh, I don't know, Dad. They're all really busy," she said, trying to sound casual. "It's unlikely they could all come over. One of them, he's got this intense internship downtown. Another one," she thought of Giorno, "he's working full-time on a construction crew, long hours. And the other..." She pictured Simon, the consummate professional. "...he's a delivery driver. Always on the move."

The excuses sounded weak even to her own ears. They were a patchwork of half-truths and fabrications, and she knew, with a sinking certainty, that her father didn't believe a word of it.

He just looked at her for a long moment, his expression sad and disappointed. "Okay," he said finally, the word so quiet and devoid of conviction that it was worse than any accusation. It was the sound of a father who knew his daughter was lying to his face, and was too tired, too broken, to call her on it. Yet.

Something in the room shifted. Taylor couldn't say what it was, but it felt as if the air had grown colder, the single lamp in the living room dimmer. The quiet, sad resignation in her father's eyes was being replaced by something harder, more focused. The preamble was over.

Danny moistened his lips, his gaze finally lifting from the floor to meet hers directly. "I've been hearing things, Taylor," he began, his voice low and serious. "Concerning things. Down at the docks."

He leaned forward slightly. "Some of my friends in the Union... they're saying the new hires, the new blood showing up on the crews, have an odd feel to them. Kurt told me yesterday he can't put his finger on it, but it's making his skin crawl." He paused, letting the name hang in the air. "And you know Kurt. He doesn't miss when it comes to his instincts about people."

His eyes narrowed. "Then I see the news tonight. A 'gas explosion' at the Ruby Dreams Casino. On the northern docks." He shook his head, a slow, deliberate motion. "I know this city, Taylor. I know the docks. I know something big is happening, right under our noses."

Taylor's blood ran cold. She feigned a look of innocent confusion. "Dad, I... I don't know what you're talking about."

"I just want to know that you're safe," he clarified, his voice softening, becoming a plea again. "That you're being careful, being aware, when you're out so late at night like this."

"I am," she insisted, the lie feeling thin and brittle. "I'm always safe. I keep my pepper spray in my bag,"—a half-truth, it was in her costume bag—"and I always run at the first sign of trouble." It was a promise she had made to him years ago, after her mom died. A promise she had broken a dozen times in the last few weeks.

"That's good," Danny said, his voice quiet, though it held no relief. "That's really good to hear, Taylor."

He let the silence hang for a moment before he delivered the final, crushing blow.

"Because the school called today," he said, his voice flat, devoid of emotion. "Winslow. They said your attendance has been... spotty. Inconsistent. They said you missed almost two weeks of school."

He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped together, his gaze boring into her. "So, I want you to tell me, Taylor. If you weren't at school, where were you?"

The blood drained from her face. She fell back on her oldest, most worn-out excuse, the one she'd been using for months to cover up the days she just couldn't face the bullies. "The library," she said, the words coming out as a desperate, automatic response. "I was at the library."

Another stretch of silence. It was longer this time. More final.

"I called them," Danny said, and the words were the softest, most devastating things she had ever heard. "I called the Brockton Bay Central Library. I spoke to Mrs. Abramowitz. She knows you, Taylor. She said she hasn't seen you in days. Specifically, not on the same days you were absent from school."

He had her. Every lie, every excuse, every flimsy alibi was a pile of ash at her feet. She was completely exposed.

He looked at her, his daughter, a stranger sitting across the room in clothes he didn't recognize, living a life he couldn't comprehend. The worry, the fear, the sadness in his eyes all coalesced into a single, terrifying question.

"What have you been doing, Taylor?"

Taylor wanted to scream. She wanted to lash out, to flip the coffee table, to punch a hole in the wall. A furious, cornered-animal desperation clawed at her throat.

Her power, a mirror to her internal state, erupted. The low, controlled hum she maintained for vigilance exploded into a deafening, chaotic roar in her mind. Sensory information from tens of thousands of insects—the frantic scuttling of roaches in the walls, the desperate buzzing of a moth against a windowpane, the slow, deliberate crawl of a spider in the basement—flooded her senses. It was too much. A pounding headache began to bloom behind her eyes. She hissed, a sharp, involuntary sound, her hands clenching into fists so tight her nails dug into her palms, her leg bouncing a frantic, uncontrollable rhythm against the floor.

Why? Why is this happening? Why him?

The question was a raw, silent scream in her mind. Why was it always the people she loved, the people she was supposed to be able to trust, who eventually turned on her? First Emma. Now her own father, sitting across from her, not a figure of comfort, but an interrogator, a judge.

The grandfather clock in the hallway chimed midnight. A full fifteen minutes had passed in charged, vibrating silence before she could wrestle her own mind back under control. She took a shuddering breath and forced her power back onto its leash, the chaotic roar subsiding once more into a tense, manageable hum.

This was about more than skipping school. It was about more than her so-called friends from the library. He knew. He didn't know what, exactly, but he knew something was deeply, fundamentally wrong. Maybe he was hoping she would prove him wrong. Give him a plausible explanation, a reason to believe everything was okay.

But she couldn't. The lies had run out.

After the long, heavy silence, Danny spoke again, his voice weary. "The new clothes, Taylor," he said, gesturing vaguely at the professional, unfamiliar outfit she was wearing. "Where did you get the money for them?"

The question was a quiet, devastating follow-up. Taylor let out a shaky breath. The library job alibi was a smoking crater. There was nothing else. "I'm sorry," she whispered, the words feeling utterly inadequate.

Danny didn't acknowledge the apology. He moved on to the next piece of evidence. "I was in your room today," he said, and the admission was a fresh betrayal. "Looking for your laundry. I saw the suit. In the garment bag in your closet."

Her heart jolted, and the anger, hot and immediate, flared again. That was a line crossed. A violation of the one private space she had left in the world. He had no right.

"It's a nice suit, Taylor," Danny finished, his voice full of a sorrow that was worse than any anger. "An expensive one."

He paused again, waiting. He was giving her a chance to say something, anything. But her mind was racing too fast, a frantic, incoherent scramble of denials, justifications, and pure, unadulterated panic. She couldn't speak.

Then, Danny ripped off the band-aid.

"Are you in a gang, Taylor?"

The question was blunt, brutal, and landed with the force of a physical blow. She couldn't tell him. The oath. Il Omertà's hand in hers. The promise of secrecy. Her new family, her new name, everything she had just gained—telling him would burn it all to the ground. It would be a betrayal. She couldn't.

"No," she said, the lie tasting like poison.

It was the wrong answer. A flicker of frustration, the first real anger she had seen all night, crossed Danny's face. It was the anger of a parent whose deepest fears were being stonewalled by a transparent lie. "I'm scared for you, Taylor!" he said, his voice rising, cracking with a desperate, pleading edge. "I know something is wrong! Not because you're being quiet, but because you are lying to me! At every turn!"

He leaned forward, his eyes boring into hers. "Is that another lie? Are you lying to me right now?"

The walls were closing in. She had to get out of here. Out of this room, away from this conversation, before she said something she couldn't take back. Before he got any more involved, any closer to the truth, any closer to the danger.

"I'm going to my room," she blurted out, her voice high and strained. "Can we... can we talk about this tomorrow?" She started to stand up.

"Taylor, sit down, we are not—" Danny began, his voice firm.

"Dad, please!" she cut him off, her voice a desperate plea. "Just give me a break. It's past midnight. I'm tired. This isn't helping anything."

She stood there, halfway out of her chair, a hand held up as if to ward him off. "I promise you," she said, the word 'promise' feeling hollow and worthless even as she said it, "I'm fine. I'm not hurt. And I am not in a gang."

She looked at his worried, heartbroken face, and asked the final, desperate question. "Can't that be enough for you?"

"No," Danny said, his voice quiet but laced with an iron authority she hadn't heard in years. "It's not enough." He pointed a single, trembling finger at the armchair she had just vacated. "Sit. Down. We are not done. We will sit here all night if we have to, until I have answers. Until I know what is happening to my daughter, so I can at least try to help you."

The anger in his voice was rising, but underneath it was that same raw, pleading edge, a desperate fear that hurt her right to her soul. But she couldn't give in. She had to protect him from this. She had to protect herself from this conversation.

"So I'm a prisoner now?" she shot back, her own voice rising, dripping with a bitter, defiant teenage venom. "In my own home?"

"This is my house!" he retorted, his voice finally cracking, his control shattering. He stood up from the couch, a towering figure of paternal fury and fear. "And as long as you live under my roof, you will not lie to me!"

He took a deep, shuddering breath, raking a hand through his thinning hair. "I called your grandmother today, Taylor," he admitted, his voice dropping, becoming thick with a sudden, raw emotion. "I called Ma. I asked her what to do. I told her I felt like I was losing you."

He looked at her, his eyes filled with a heartbreaking mix of love and desperation. "She said... she said maybe I've been trying too hard to be your ally, when what you really needed was a parent."

His jaw hardened, his resolve solidifying. "So that's what I'm going to be. I'm putting my foot down. You are not leaving this room until you tell me the truth."

Taylor's breath came in ragged, shallow gasps, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. She stared at him, at this stranger who was her father, at this warden in her own home.

Defiance, hot and absolute, flooded her veins. "No," she whispered. She turned and walked, a single, decisive act of rebellion, heading back toward the kitchen, toward the back door, toward escape.

"Taylor! Don't you walk away from me!" Danny's voice boomed behind her. She heard him heave himself out of the couch, his heavy footsteps rushing after her.

She didn't get far. She had just reached the central kitchen island when a hand clamped down on her arm, jerking her back with a force that spun her around. She was forced to face him, their faces inches apart, the air between them electric with years of unspoken grief and a single, terrible night of confrontation.

"You can't help me!" she spat, the words a venomous torrent of her own fear and frustration. "There is nothing you can do! I can handle it! I am handling it!"

Tears, hot and angry, began to well in her eyes. "Why can't you just trust me for once!?" she screamed, her voice cracking. "Why couldn't you be this heavy-handed when I needed you to get justice for me at school? No, you just stand by. But now? Now you want to control me. You're not helping me, you're hurting me!"

The words seemed to slap him across the face. His grip on her arm vanished. His face, which had been a mask of fury, crumpled into a look of pure, wounded shock.

He stumbled back a step, and Taylor, her own strength failing her, slumped down onto one of the kitchen stools, her body trembling.

They both stood there in the harsh orange glow of the kitchen, breathing heavily, the horrible, ugly words hanging in the air between them like a toxic cloud. He was hurt. She could see it. She had meant to push him away, to protect him, but instead, she had just gutted him.

The anger drained out of Danny, replaced by a profound, hollow sadness. In a low, pained tone, he slowly began to speak.

"I hope you know," he said, his eyes not quite meeting hers, "that I'm only doing this because I love you, Taylor. That's all this is."

He took a shaky breath. "I know you're hurt. And I know... I know I haven't been the best parent since your mom... since she left us." The admission was a raw, open wound. "So this is me. Trying. Trying to be better. But I need you to be on the same page with me. I can't do it alone."

He looked at her, his eyes pleading. "Please, bug. Just tell me what's been going on."

Her silence, her inability to meet his gaze, was all the answer he needed. He had come to his own conclusion.

"You are in a gang," he said, the words a statement of fact, a confirmation of his deepest fears. "That's fine," he added quickly, a desperate attempt to keep her from shutting down again. "We can fix it. You can leave. I can help you with that. We can figure it out."

His mind, now latched onto the problem, began to churn, a verbalized, unstoppable train of thought as he tried to work the angles. "Which one is it? The Empire? Possibly... but they're picky. Your mother's family, the curly hair... they might frown on that." He shook his head. "Definitely not the ABB, you're not Asian."

Taylor remained silent on the stool, just watching him, a deep frown etched on her face, hot tears clinging to the edges of her eyes.

He crossed his arms, his thumb coming up to chew on a nail, a nervous habit she hadn't seen in years. He looked off to the side, his gaze unfocused, as if he were staring at something in the distant past that was suddenly, horribly, making perfect sense in the present moment.

He started speaking again, his voice slow, distant, as if telling a ghost story.

"Back when I was a kid," he began, his eyes still fixed on that spot in the middle distance, "your grandfather, he'd tell me stories. To keep me safe. To teach me about the real dangers of this city, the ones you don't see on the news."

He finally looked at her, and his eyes were full of a deep, old fear. "There was an organization, back then. Before the capes got loud. The Armani family."

The name, spoken by her father, in her own kitchen, made Taylor jolt in shock.

"I never saw them in action, not really," Danny continued, his voice a low, haunted murmur. "But I heard the stories. From my father. He was a union man, too. He told me how they controlled the docks, how they had their hooks in everything. How they'd extort businesses, how they'd skim from the union contracts." He shook his head, a dark memory passing over his face. "Businesses that didn't pay... they didn't last long. Owners would end up with broken legs. Or worse."

He took a step closer, his hands uncrossing, his posture now one of pure, pleading desperation. "I've been hearing the rumors, Taylor. From Kurt, from Alexander, from the old-timers who still keep their ears to the ground. They're saying there's been a resurgence. That the family is back."

He looked at her, at her nice clothes, at the new, hard look in her eyes, at his daughter who had become a stranger. His voice dropped to a raw, broken whisper, the culmination of all his fear and all his love.

"God, Taylor. Please don't tell me you're with them."

Her lips hung open, but no sound came out. She couldn't say anything. The truth was a betrayal of her new family. A lie was a betrayal of her father. She was trapped, impaled on the horns of an impossible dilemma, and her silence was a confession.

Danny's face, which had been pleading, crumpled. He stepped closer, his voice a ragged, desperate whisper. "Taylor. Please. Say something."

Her silence was the only answer. It hung in the air between them, a heavy, suffocating shroud of truth.

And it broke him.

A choked, guttural sob escaped his lips. His hand flew up to cup his forehead as he staggered back, leaning heavily against the kitchen island as if a wave of physical nausea had just crashed over him. His whole body trembled, the strong, steady frame of her father suddenly looking fragile, ancient, and utterly defeated.

"I'm sorry," Taylor whimpered, the words pathetic and useless.

The apology only seemed to fuel his anguish. He slammed his free hand down on the countertop, the sound a sharp, explosive crack in the quiet kitchen, making her flinch. "Sorry?" he half-screamed, half-sobbed, his voice hysterical with grief and terror. "Taylor... what have you done?"

He looked at her, and his eyes were wide with a horror that was worse than any anger she could have imagined. "They're killers, Taylor! They're monsters! Do you have any idea what they do? They don't protect the common man; they bleed him dry! They prey on the weak, on the desperate, on everyone! And you... you joined them?"

He pushed himself off the island, pacing the small kitchen like a caged animal, his hands tangled in his hair. "My God... my daughter... Annette's daughter... a gangster." He choked on the word, the reality of it, a poison in his mouth. "All this time... the lies, the sneaking out... I thought it was just kids, maybe drugs... but this? This is a death sentence!"

But Taylor couldn't accept it. She couldn't let his words stand. They were brutal, yes. Pragmatic, yes. But they weren't the monsters he was painting them to be. Not compared to the real monsters.

"They're not," she said, her voice breaking, the words a desperate defense of her new reality. "They're not worse than the Empire. Than the ABB. They're not Nazis or human traffickers, Dad. They're... they're just trying to survive."

Her own justifications, the ones she had so carefully constructed, came spilling out. "They're not bad people. They... they accepted me, Dad. For who I am. For what I can do."

"I ACCEPT YOU!" Danny roared, the sound a raw, wounded cry that echoed through the small house. "I accept you! Wholeheartedly! You are my daughter! How could you even say that!?"

He raised his hand, a sudden, furious motion—and then froze.

Taylor's eyes widened. She flinched, her body instinctively recoiling, her arm coming up to shield her face. She braced for the slap, the first and only one of her life.

But it never came.

Danny's hand, still raised, trembled in the air between them. A look of pure, horrified self-loathing crossed his face as he realized what he had almost done. He snatched his hand back as if it had been burned.

The silence that fell was the worst of all. It was absolute, charged with the horror of a line almost crossed.

And Taylor couldn't stand it anymore.

It started slow, a single, decisive push off the stool. Her nerves, stretched to their breaking point, finally snapped. She bolted.

She threw herself toward the back door, her hand fumbling with the knob. She wrenched it open and plunged out into the cool, dark air of the backyard.

She could hear Danny's shouts behind her, his voice a choked, desperate cry of her name.

"Taylor! Wait! Taylor, please!"

She didn't look back. She just ran. Over the damp grass, through the gap in the back fence, and out into the dark, silent streets of the city, leaving the wreckage of her old life behind her.

Chapter Text

Empire of Sin

A Worm AU

Chapter 10: A Pass

A harsh, fluorescent light flickered on, stabbing at Taylor's eyelids.

She groaned, a thick, sleep-deprived sound, and tried to roll over, burrowing deeper into the lumpy pillow that smelled of stale cigarettes and industrial bleach. Her sleep had been a shallow, restless thing, a series of feverish, disconnected nightmares played out against the unfamiliar backdrop of a cheap motel room.

Then she realized: she hadn't turned the light on.

Her eyes snapped open. Adrenaline, cold and immediate, jolted through her system. Someone was in the room.

She shot up, throwing the thin, scratchy blanket aside, her body moving on pure, panicked instinct. But before she could even get her feet on the floor, a firm hand clamped down on her shoulder, another on her arm, holding her in place. Not with crushing force, but with an absolute, unyielding control.

A figure knelt beside the bed. Her vision, still blurry with sleep, slowly resolved into a familiar, impassive face.

It was Simon.

"What were you thinking?" he asked, his voice a low, flat, and deeply unimpressed rumble.

Taylor didn't answer. Her mind was a chaotic symphony of buzzing as her swarm, which had been on a frantic, high-alert patrol all night, flooded her with a dozen different sensory inputs at once. A spider was in the corner of the ceiling. A cockroach was under the sink in the bathroom. Flies were circling the dumpster outside the window. She consciously shushed them, pushing the frantic energy down until it was just a low, throbbing hum at the back of her skull.

Simon, sensing her return to a semblance of lucidity, let go of her. She slumped back down onto the lumpy mattress, the cheap springs groaning in protest. She ran a hand over her face, the exhaustion of the last twenty-four hours a deep aching in her bones.

"I didn't have anywhere else to go," she muttered, the words a pathetic, whispered confession to the stained motel bedspread.

Simon rose slowly to his feet, his dark suit looking absurdly out of place in the grimy, rundown room. His gaze swept over the scene: the untouched, neatly made second bed; the cheap, wood-veneer nightstand; her own sling bag, dropped unceremoniously on the floor by the door. He shook his head, a gesture of profound disappointment.

"You look like what you are," he said, his voice laced with a cold, professional disdain. "A typical, thoughtless runaway."

He turned his gaze back to her, and it was hard, unforgiving. "Did you consider the consequences? What would have happened if a neighbor, hearing you running through the streets in the middle of the night, decided to call the police? What if the clerk at this fine establishment decided a lone, underage girl checking in after midnight was suspicious and made a call of his own? You would have spent the night in a juvenile holding cell, and the family would have another, very public, problem to clean up."

Taylor lifted her head slightly, squinting against the harsh light, a fresh wave of frustration and exhaustion welling up inside her. He was right. She hadn't thought about any of that. She had just run.

"Why can't anyone just leave me alone?" she asked, the question directed at no one in particular, a quiet, bitter plea to the universe. "Why can't anyone just trust me?"

Simon let out a long, slow sigh, the sound a mixture of frustration and a deep, weary patience. Perhaps he was realizing that the problem went deeper than a single, impulsive act. He stayed silent, giving her a moment. Taylor could hear him moving around the small room, his polished dress shoes quiet on the threadbare carpet. She draped an arm over her eyes, blocking out the harsh light, a fresh wave of misery washing over her. Her chest felt tight, as if a hand were squeezing her heart over and over again.

A soft thud sounded right beside her. She peeked out from under her arm. Simon had placed a sealed bottle of water on her nightstand.

The small, simple gesture broke through her wall of self-pity. Being this miserable, this pathetic, in front of him felt like a weakness she couldn't afford to show. Slowly, her body aching with exhaustion, she sat up, swinging her legs over the side of the bed.

She lifted her gaze to meet his. He was standing a few feet away, looming over her, his face an impassive mask. "Is there anything," he asked, his voice low and even, "that I need to know?"

It was a professional question. He was asking if her personal crisis had created a security risk for the family. She shook her head.

He paused, and his next question was different. Softer. "Do you want to talk about it?"

The shift from handler to... something else, caught her off guard. It was the closest he had ever come to showing personal concern. "No," she said, the single word coming out stronger than she expected.

Simon gave a single, trustful nod. Not exactly a dismissal, but an acceptance of her currently established boundaries. That was a start. He turned and walked over to the single, grimy window, pulling back the edge of the heavy curtain to peer out at the motel parking lot.

Taylor took the opportunity to grab the water bottle. Her hands were shaking as she twisted the cap. She took a few heavy gulps, the cool liquid a balm on her raw throat, some of it spilling and dribbling down her chin. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and let out a deep, shuddering sigh.

What have you done?

You ran. From Dad. From home.

This was for the better. Dad couldn't get involved. If he knew the truth, if he started digging, he would get hurt. Or worse. She was protecting him. And she could handle this. She had to.

There would be time. Time to go back, to check on him from a distance, to make sure he was okay. But not now. Later. She would go back later, when she was stronger. When she had something to show for all this. When she could prove to him that she hadn't made a mistake. That she was right.

Simon let the curtain fall back into place, plunging the room into a dim twilight once more. "Get up," he said, his voice back to its usual professional tone. "Miss Constanza is asking for you."

The name was enough to make Taylor perk up, cutting through the fog of her misery. Constanza. She stood, stretching her stiff, aching muscles, the joints in her back popping. "What for?"

"I don't know the specifics," Simon said with a shrug. "But our destination is the Lanfranco Boxing Gym." He watched as she began to straighten her wrinkled shirt and trousers, tucking them in, trying to restore some semblance of the professional image she was supposed to project. She did a quick scan of the room, making sure she hadn't left anything behind. "From that alone," Simon continued, a dry note in his voice, "I would surmise she intends to teach you how to fight properly."

Fighting. The idea was a spark of light in her gloomy thoughts. A way to channel the anger, the frustration, the helplessness. A way to get stronger, to be better prepared. And to learn from Constanza... she had seen her in action at the casino. The brutal, efficient grace, the effortless way she had moved. It was admirable. It was something to aspire to.

"I'm ready," Taylor said, walking to the door and grabbing her sling bag, her sense of purpose returning.

As she reached for the doorknob, Simon moved beside her. He suddenly wrapped a firm, strong arm around her shoulders, pulling her in close to his side. "Stick with me," he said, his voice a low command. He guided her out of the motel room and across the parking lot toward his nondescript white sedan.

The gesture was strange, unexpected. She wasn't sure what his intention was. Was it for discretion, to make them look like a father and daughter, an older brother and sister, to anyone who might be watching? Was it for safety, a way to control her and keep her close? Probably both.

But it was also warm. The pressure of his arm around her was tight, steady, and in a way she wouldn't dare admit, deeply soothing. It was the closest thing to a hug she'd had in a very, very long time. And in the silent, aching space her father's absence had created, she silently, desperately, appreciated it.

The drive to the gym was quick and silent. The Lanfranco Boxing Gym was a brutish, old-brick building in a part of town that was all warehouses and body shops. It looked exactly like the kind of place where men with broken noses and cauliflower ears came to hit heavy bags.

Simon pulled the sedan to a stop in the alleyway behind the building. He didn't turn off the engine.

"You'll use the fire escape," he instructed, nodding toward a rusty metal staircase zigzagging up the side of the brick wall. "Third floor. She'll be waiting for you. I will not be accompanying you."

Taylor nodded, gathering her sling bag. She was about to open the car door when Simon spoke again, his voice uncharacteristically soft.

"Good luck, Taylor," he said, looking at her directly, his gaze steady and, for once, completely devoid of professional detachment. "You're more capable than most people give you credit for."

The words, so simple and direct, landed with a surprising weight. It was the highest praise he had ever given her, a genuine statement of faith from a man who dealt only in hard, observable facts. A warm, unfamiliar feeling bloomed in her chest.

She got out of the car without a word, a lump forming in her throat. The sedan pulled away, its tires crunching on the loose gravel of the alley, and she was left alone with his words.

She shook her head, trying to clear the sudden, unexpected wave of emotion, and turned to face the fire escape. The metal steps groaned under her weight as she made her way up, the city sprawling out below her. She reached the third-floor landing and pushed on the heavy, unmarked steel door. It swung inward with a protesting squeal.

The air on the third floor was thick, a pungent mixture of old sweat, dust, and a faint, sharp tang of sulfur. Echoing through the space were the sounds of a fight—the sharp grunts of exertion from both a male and a female voice, punctuated by the heavy, rhythmic thud of bodies hitting canvas and leather.

Taylor pushed through another set of swinging doors and the muffled noise became a clear, brutal symphony. The room was a wide, open gymnasium, the ceiling so high it was lost in shadow. A single, regulation-sized boxing ring stood under a harsh spotlight in the center of the vast floor. And inside it, two figures were locked in a vicious spar.

They weren't boxing. It was a raw, dirty, and perhaps graceful display of close-quarters combat. Wrestling, grappling, and brutal, heavy strikes all flowed together in a way that was both incredibly violent and precisely coordinated. For a few moments, Taylor was utterly mesmerized, watching the structured, deadly dance.

A sharp whistle cut through the air, breaking her concentration. "Over here, little bug!"

Taylor turned to find Constanza sitting at a small table by the side of the ring. She was drenched in sweat, a towel draped around her neck, but she had a wide, energetic grin on her face. She waved Taylor over.

"Good to see you made it," Constanza said as Taylor approached. She offered a hand. "I'd give you a hug, but I'm pretty sure you don't want to get my workout all over you."

Taylor shook her hand; her grip was firm and surprisingly strong. As she sat down in the offered chair, she couldn't tear her eyes away from the two figures in the ring, who had now separated and were circling each other, breathing heavily. "Who are they?"

"The handsome, grumpy one is Vendetta," Constanza said, jerking a thumb toward the man. "Real name, Michael Carrera. The lovely lady who fights like a rabid wolverine is Zodiaco. Monica Bartlett."

As if on cue, the man, Vendetta, called out, his voice a low, serious growl. "Timeout."

Both fighters stopped their spar instantly. Vendetta turned and walked to the corner of the ring nearest their table, leaning against the ropes. He was tall, powerfully built, with dark, intense eyes and a stoic, hard-lined face that looked like it had never smiled. He nodded curtly at Constanza. "You shouldn't be giving out our government names like that."

Constanza just raised her hands in a mock surrender. "Guilty as charged," she said with an unrepentant grin.

Vendetta let out a long, weary sigh, then his intense gaze settled on Taylor. "And you are?"

"Taylor," she answered, her voice quiet. Then, trying it out for the first time, testing the weight of it on her tongue, she added, "My cape name is Madrina."

Vendetta's expression didn't change, but he gave a single, respectful nod. "Madrina. I hope we work well together."

From the far side of the ring, the other woman, Zodiaco, who was hunched over, hands on her knees, gasping for breath, looked up and gave Taylor a quick, tired wave. It was the only greeting she offered before turning her attention back to recovering from the spar.

"We'll give those two a few more minutes to beat each other senseless," Constanza said, taking a long drink from a water bottle. "Then you and I are getting in that ring. Time to teach you the basics of how to throw a proper punch."

Taylor nodded, her attention once again captivated by the two fighters as they readied themselves for another round. Her mind, however, began to churn.

These were the Sottocapo. The parahuman lieutenants of the Fortune Mafia. Counting them up, she now knew of four definitively: Croupier, the probability-warping mastermind. Constanza, the cheerful skirmisher. And now Vendetta and Zodiaco, the brutal wrestlers in the ring. A thought then struck her, Il Omertà, the Principale. The way she moved, navigating the ruined casino without sight... she had to be a parahuman, too. A Thinker, most likely. So that made five.

But then she realized something else. Only Croupier had ever actually explained his powers to her. She'd seen Constanza in action, but the specifics, the rules and limitations, were still a mystery.

She decided to ask, choosing her words carefully, not wanting to seem too nosy or rude. "Constanza," she began, her voice low. "At the casino... your powers. How do they work?"

Constanza didn't seem to mind the question at all. "Oh, it's pretty simple, really," she said with a casual shrug. "I create golden constructs. They're basically solid, physical things. A Shaker, if you're using the PRT's lingo, but with some Blaster applications." She ticked them off on her fingers. "The mask I wear, the chains I used to pin those ugly mutts, the shield... all constructs."

"Is there a limit?" Taylor pressed, her curiosity piqued.

"Technically?" Constanza mused, tapping a finger on the table. "I don't think so. I feel like I could probably make a thousand little golden butterflies if I wanted to." She grinned. "But the energy it takes to maintain them all at once would knock me out flat. So, I limit myself. Two or three big constructs at a time is my sweet spot. It also depends on the size. A big shield takes more out of me than a few chains."

She added one final, crucial detail. "And I can't just make them pop up anywhere. They have to manifest within a bubble around me, about three feet in any direction. I can throw the chains from there, but I can't, say, make a cage appear around someone on the other side of the room."

Just as Taylor was about to ask her next question, a sharp grunt of pain came from the ring. Vendetta staggered back, his right hand flying up to clutch his shoulder, a hiss of pain escaping his lips.

"Damn it, Monica, you weren't supposed to hit that one," he growled, his voice a low thrum of frustration.

Monica didn't relax her stance, her hands still up in a ready guard. "You're being unfair," she shot back, her voice tight with exertion. "You're twice my size, and you're putting all your weight into it. What am I supposed to do?"

Constanza, still sitting at the table, perked up and clapped her hands together, a bright, cheerful sound that cut through the tension. "Alright, that's enough lovemaking for you two!" she called out.

Michael and Monica both shot her an annoyed look, clearly not pleased with the comment, but they took it as their cue to end the session. They dropped their stances, the intense energy of the spar dissipating.

Constanza turned back to Taylor, a wide grin on her face. "You got a change of clothes in that bag, little bug?"

Taylor nodded. "Just a t-shirt and shorts."

"Good enough," Constanza said, standing up. She approached the other two Sottocapo as they stepped out of the ring, toweling off the sweat from their faces.

As Michael walked past their table on his way to a water cooler, his stoic expression marred by a wince of pain as he rolled his shoulder, Taylor couldn't help but ask. "What did she do to you?"

He looked back at Monica, who was now stretching her arms, and a rare flicker of exasperation crossed his face. "She's not being a good sport," he said, more to himself than to Taylor. "After I've kicked her ass every other session this week."

"That's because you fight dirty!" Monica retorted from across the room, overhearing him. "If this is supposed to be a simulation for a 'real life' fight, then I'm also going to fight dirty and use my powers!"

Vendetta turned back to Taylor, shaking his head. "We were sparring. She wasn't supposed to use her powers."

Unable to help herself, her curiosity overriding her caution, Taylor asked directly. "What are her powers?"

He just gave her a long, exasperated look, then nodded his head toward Monica. "Ask her yourself," he grumbled, and continued on his way to the water cooler.

"He's just being a miserable bastard," Monica's voice echoed across the large, open room. She was walking toward them now, wiping her face with a towel. "You're telling me to try and grapple a man who outweighs me by eighty pounds? You're damn right I'm going to trip him up first."

Vendetta, from the water cooler, just grumbled something inaudible in response.

Taylor's attention snapped back to Monica. "My power," she explained, picking up on Taylor's unanswered question without needing to be asked again, "lets me see the path of least resistance. Weak spots. Opportunities. Michael's right shoulder?" She smirked. "He sprained it at a firearms lesson yesterday. The opportunity was just too tantalizing not to poke."

"You're being emotional," Michael scoffed from across the room, having heard her.

Monica just laughed, a short, sharp, and utterly fearless sound. She turned and shouted back at him, "What are you going to do about it? Shoot me into a coma?"

In the blink of an eye, a rifle materialized in Vendetta's hand. He held it casually by the barrel, its weight seemingly nothing to him. It was a beautiful, old-timey lever-action, the kind Taylor had only ever seen in Western movies, with dark, polished wood and ornate metalwork.

The sudden appearance of a weapon reminded her, of course, of Miss Militia, but was that it? Just one specific gun?

Before the tension could escalate further, Constanza clapped her hands again, her voice sharp and authoritative. "Timeout! Both of you! Let's not have anyone shooting anyone today, thank you very much."

There was a tense second, and then the rifle in Vendetta's hand simply vanished. He let out a frustrated huff. He must have noticed Taylor staring, her expression a mixture of awe and confusion.

"The rifle isn't the power," he said, his voice a low grumble. "The bullets are."

"He's never smiled because he's always, always ready to kill a motherfucker," Constanza chimed in, walking back over to the table. She was carrying two bottles of water and a set of boxing gloves and a head guard, which she placed in front of Taylor. "And that is not a joke."

She leaned in, lowering her voice slightly as she explained. "His bullets... they manifest according to his mental state. When he's angry and frustrated, like he is right now, they hit with concussive force. When he's just full of contempt for a target, the bullet will pin them down, paralyze them. If he gets obsessed with finding someone, he can shoot them with a 'mark' and track them for a full day."

She straightened up, clapping her hands together, the briefing apparently over. "It's all very technical. Anyway!" Her bright, cheerful grin returned. "Ready for your first lesson, Madrina?"

Taylor returned from the locker room a few minutes later, having swapped the professional trousers and dress shirt for a simple t-shirt and shorts. The change felt freeing. She sat on the edge of the ring's apron, lacing up a pair of borrowed boxing shoes and fitting the gloves and head guard on.

Across the gym, Michael and Monica seemed to have let bygones be bygones. They were sitting side-by-side on a weight bench, heads together, discussing something in low, serious tones that she couldn't make out.

"Alright, Madrina, in you come," Constanza called from the center of the ring.

Taylor hopped through the ropes. The canvas was firm and slightly springy under her feet. Constanza was all business now, her cheerful demeanor replaced by the sharp focus of an instructor.

"We start with the basics," she began. "Your stance. Square your shoulders to me. One foot in front of the other, shoulder-width apart. Get your weight on the balls of your feet, but keep your heels on the ground. Be steady. Be a mountain."

Taylor did as she was told, planting her feet, feeling the solid ground beneath her.

"Good. Now, movement," Constanza continued. "You don't walk, you don't run. You shuffle. Keep your stance. Push off the back foot to move forward, push off the front to move back. It's a dance."

"I get it," Taylor said, a little too quickly. "I've seen it on... on WWE." She immediately felt a flush of embarrassment. "My dad likes it. I just happen to watch sometimes."

Constanza just grinned. "Hey, whatever works. But you've gotta be flexible. For now, basics." She shuffled forward, closing the distance until they were at arm's length. She held up her open hands, palms facing Taylor. "Now, the punch. A real one. Start with a hook. I want you to twist at the waist. The power doesn't come from your arm; it comes from the ground, through your legs, up your hips. Twist and let it fly. Go on. Give it a try."

Taylor's gloved fist met Constanza's open left palm with a soft thud.

"Not bad," Constanza grunted. "But you're still just using your arm. More power. I want you to feel it in your toes. Twist your whole body. Push it all into the punch."

Thwack. The sound was sharper this time.

"Better! Again."

Thwack.

"Again!"

THWACK.

"Good! Now jabs," Constanza commanded, switching her hands' position. "Quick. Snap it out from the shoulder. One, two, three, four. Jabs are for testing their defense, for finding an opening, for paving the way for the big haymakers. They're faster, less powerful, but they set up the knockout."

Taylor threw a series of quick, snapping punches, her breath coming in short, sharp bursts.

"Excellent," Constanza said, her smile returning. "You're a natural. Now, let's see you mix it up. A few jabs to set the rhythm, then give me a hard hook. Dazzle me, Madrina."

Taylor channeled everything into the punches.

Jab. Jab.

The soft, meaty thud of her gloves hitting Constanza's palms became a rhythm. She twisted her hips, her sides straining. The burn started in her shoulders, a clean, sharp fire that spread down to her elbows. She felt the muscles she never knew she had protesting, then obeying.

Constanza started to move, shuffling backward, forcing Taylor to follow. "That's it, little bug! Follow me! Don't let me breathe!"

Her words of encouragement were like gasoline on the fire. Taylor ramped up the intensity, her movements becoming less thought and more instinct. The emotions of the last twenty-four hours, the toxic sludge she had been suppressing, began to boil over.

Jab. The self-loathing, the pity for Mr. Biaggio.

Jab. Jab. The cold, hard anger at Emma's betrayal.

Hook. The searing frustration. Dad's face, contorted in hurt, then anger, then a profound, soul-crushing sadness. The image of his hand raised, poised to strike.

A raw, guttural roar tore from Taylor's throat, the sound a mix of exertion and pure, undiluted rage. Sweat poured down her face, stinging her eyes, plastering her hair to her temples. She poured all of it into the punches, each one a blow against the helplessness, the fear, the suffocating weight of her life.

"YES!" Constanza whooped, effortlessly catching a vicious hook that would have sent a heavy bag flying. "There it is! Keep it coming, Madrina! Let it all out!"

Taylor wasn't precise. She wasn't technical. Her form was sloppy, driven by raw emotion rather than practiced skill. But she was moving. She was hitting her shots. Her entire body was burning, every muscle screaming, every breath a ragged gasp.

And it felt so, so good.

"Heads up," Constanza said, her voice suddenly sharp, cutting through Taylor's rage-fueled haze.

The words barely registered before the world became a blur of motion.

"I'm about to kick you and punch you in the face," she stated, not as a threat, but as a simple, instructional fact.

Despite the warning, Taylor was utterly unprepared for the sheer speed and agility of the Sottocapo. One moment, Constanza was at arm's length, her hands up. The next, she was a whirlwind. She twisted, her body a blur of controlled power, and a perfect roundhouse kick snapped out, her shin connecting with Taylor's side with a solid, jarring thump.

The blow knocked the wind out of her. Taylor staggered, her vision swimming. Before she could even process the impact, Constanza pressed forward, flowing with the momentum, and planted a firm, precise jab directly on her forehead. The head guard absorbed most of the force, but the snap of the impact still rattled her teeth and sent a jolt down her spine. It hurt.

Somehow, she stayed on her feet. She stumbled backward, shuffling clumsily, her arms coming up in a desperate, sloppy guard, her mind screaming to create distance.

Constanza didn't pursue. She stood still in the center of the ring, her stance relaxed once more, her expression one of calm, professional assessment.

"Lesson two," she said, her voice even. "The most important thing in a real fight isn't how much damage you can dish out. It's how much you can absorb and keep going."

She pointed a finger at Taylor. "A fight's only over when you are on the floor, knocked out or dead. So, don't get knocked out. Ever. Everything else is secondary."

A slow, determined grin spread across her face. "So for the next week, we're going to be working on your endurance, your durability, and your strength. We are going to make you very, very hard to knock out." She winked. "Try not to get too bored."

Chapter Text

Empire of Sin

A Worm AU

Chapter 11: Wiseguy

Taylor woke up feeling like a sack of bricks had been dropped on her. That was the new normal. For the past three days, she had woken up with every muscle in her body screaming in a dull, persistent ache. It was a miserable, exhausting feeling, but she put up with it. She knew it was necessary. She knew the benefits.

Sluggishly, she swung her legs out of the surprisingly comfortable bed, her mind already centering itself in the simple, monotonous routine that now governed her mornings. First, get up and stretch. She reached for the ceiling, feeling the satisfying, crackling pop of her joints, a sound like a handful of saltine crackers being crushed. The deep, burning ache in her shoulders and back was a constant reminder of Constanza's lessons.

Next, the bathroom. She washed her face, the cold water a welcome shock that helped to clear the lingering fog of sleep. She brushed her teeth. She made herself presentable. After slipping on a plain white t-shirt and a pair of simple athletic shorts, she headed out into the kitchen. She wasn't much of a cook, but even she could manage bacon and eggs.

As she waited for the eggs to firm up in the sizzling pan, her gaze drifted around her new living space. It was still surreal. It wasn't just a room; it was a full-fledged apartment, beautifully and efficiently designed with an open-house concept. The kitchen flowed seamlessly into the living room, separated only by a waist-high marble countertop. The front door, to the north, opened into a small entryway where her new dress shoes, a pair of running sneakers, and a simple jacket were neatly placed. To the west were two doors: one leading to the bathroom she had just left, the other to the bedroom she now slept in.

She had expected a dingy studio apartment, a cot in a safe house, something practical and grim. This... this was considerate. This was luxurious as fuck. Gas, water, electricity, even basic cable, all paid for. Not a single dime had come out of her own pocket.

She turned off the heat, slid the eggs and bacon onto a plate, and moved into the living room. She sat on the comfortable sofa, turned on the TV to a Saturday morning cartoon for some mindless background noise, and began to eat.

She was three bites into a piece of crispy bacon when the doorbell rang, a pleasant, two-tone chime that made her jump.

Her first instinct, as always, was to check with her swarm. A spider in the hallway light fixture became her eye. The figure standing outside her door was a woman, dressed in skintight athletic pants and a hoodie, her hair pulled back in a ponytail. The air vibrated faintly; she was talking, likely into a cell phone. The soundproofing of the apartment was immaculate; Taylor couldn't make out a single word with her own ears.

With no other choice, she set her plate down and walked to the door, peering through the peephole.

Constanza. She was wearing the full morning-run getup that Taylor had become intimately familiar with over the past three days, a small, cheerful smile on her face.

Taylor fumbled with the door chain, her fingers clumsy, then unlocked the deadbolt and pulled the heavy door open.

Constanza's cheerful energy filled the small entryway the moment the door was open. "Morning, Taylor!" she chirped, her voice bright and full of a morning energy that Taylor couldn't even begin to comprehend. "How's the rest day treating you so far?"

Taylor stepped aside, gesturing for her to come in. "It's been... okay," she said, the word feeling inadequate to describe the strange mix of physical agony and quiet disbelief that was her current existence.

After meticulously scraping the bottoms of her running shoes on the welcome mat, Constanza stepped inside. Her gaze immediately went to the shoe rack by the door, taking in Taylor's single pair of dress shoes, her new running sneakers, and the vast, empty space beside them.

Taylor closed the door and followed her into the living room. "How are you settling in?" Constanza asked again, her tone a little softer this time, as if she had gleaned something from the empty shoe rack.

"Good," Taylor answered honestly, sinking back onto the sofa. "It's been… really good." She looked around at the clean, modern apartment, a space that was nicer than any place she had ever lived. "Thank you for this, by the way," she said, looking at Constanza directly. "I know you must have vouched for me to get this place."

Constanza just waved a dismissive hand, settling onto the other end of the couch with a comfortable, familiar ease. "Don't sweat it," she said with a warm smile. "We're a team now, aren't we? Besides, what are friends for?"

The word "friends" hung in the air, a foreign and complicated concept.

"Speaking of which," Constanza continued, her eyes twinkling, "that's why I'm here. I'm taking you shopping. It is a crying shame for a girl as capable as you to be stuck wearing the same t-shirt and shorts every day."

Taylor's mind immediately went to the alternative. She couldn't go home. Not now. Dad would be there, watching, waiting, like a hawk. Every piece of clothing she owned, every book, every personal belonging, was now trapped in a house that felt more like a prison than a home.

"As soon as you're ready," Constanza said, clapping her hands on her knees, her cheerful energy returning in full force. "We're hitting the Market."

They took a cab to the Boardwalk, to the sprawling, open-air collection of shops and stalls that the locals just called "the Market." It was a chaotic, vibrant place, a world away from the sterile, high-end boutiques Taylor had been exposed to so far.

At first, the shopping was a purely practical exercise. Constanza would point to a store, and Taylor would go in and mechanically pick out the things she needed: plain, monotone t-shirts, a couple of pairs of sturdy jeans, a new set of hoodies. The bags began to accumulate, a collection of bland, functional clothing that was an exact replica of her old wardrobe.

Constanza looked at her haul, a small, amused frown on her face. "Alright, little bug," she said, stopping Taylor in the middle of the crowded walkway. "This is just sad. You're not a librarian in mourning. You need some color in your life."

Before Taylor could protest, Constanza grabbed her by the arm and dragged her into a boutique she would never have dared to enter on her own. It was a riot of color and style. Racks were filled with soft cardigans, stylish tank-tops, a daring tunic with asymmetrical shoulders that caught Taylor's eye, and skirts of every conceivable type—mini skirts, pencil skirts, long, flowing, frilly skirts.

And without even realizing it, somewhere between trying on a dark green tunic and a surprisingly flattering navy blue skirt, Taylor started to have fun. Real, genuine fun. For the first time in years, she wasn't just buying clothes to hide in; she was choosing outfits that she actually liked. Clothes in her favorite colors—deep blues, rich purples, forest greens.

Constanza was a masterful guide. She always seemed to lead the way, yet they always ended up in front of a store that Taylor had been subtly eyeing, or she would pick out an item that Taylor was initially hesitant about but ended up loving. It was as if she could read her mind, gently nudging her out of her comfort zone.

By the end of the afternoon, they were laden with bags upon bags of new clothes. The total bill, as Taylor mentally tallied it up, was staggering, easily pushing past five hundred dollars. At every single cashier, as Taylor would hesitate, her old, ingrained frugality kicking in, Constanza would lean in, a cheerful devil on her shoulder.

"Go on," she'd whisper, her voice a conspiratorial purr. "Spend it. You earned it. Every single penny. You deserve it."

And the strange, intoxicating thing was, Taylor was starting to believe her. She did deserve this. For her efforts. For her dedication. For everything she had survived.

After the shopping spree, they settled at an outdoor table at Fugly Bob's, the greasy, familiar smell of burgers and fries a comforting anchor in a day of dizzying new experiences. Taylor sat surrounded by a fortress of paper shopping bags, slowly eating a single french fry at a time. A ghost of a smile twitched at the edge of her lips. She couldn't deny it. It had felt good. Really good.

Constanza returned a few minutes later, sliding into the seat across from her. "Sorry about that," she said, gesturing with her phone. "Had to take a call."

But she wasn't alone. Following just behind her was a boy. He had a bright, young face, soft, kind eyes, and a slim but clearly athletic build. He couldn't have been older than seventeen, and for a gut-wrenching moment, as he smiled, Anthony's face flashed before Taylor's eyes, a phantom pain that was becoming grimly familiar.

"Taylor," Constanza said, her tone cheerful but with an undercurrent of business, "this is Peter. Peter, this is our newest star player."

The boy, Peter, extended a hand across the table, his smile warm and genuine. "Nice to meet you," he said. "Constanza's told me a lot about you."

A close friend of a Sottocapo. That could only mean one thing. He had to be part of the family. But he was so young. Was he a Soldato? An Associate? Taylor realized she had been staring, her mind caught in the gears of analysis. She cleared her throat and shook his hand. "Taylor," she said, then corrected herself, the new name still feeling strange. "Nice to meet you, too."

Constanza giggled in the background, sipping her soda through a straw as Taylor and Peter made their awkward introductions.

"She said you two could use some help with all this," Peter said, gesturing to the mountain of shopping bags. "I've got my car parked just around the corner. I can take these and drop them off at your place."

Taylor was immediately hesitant, the ingrained paranoia kicking in. She didn't know this boy. She couldn't just let him take her things, let him know where she lived.

She looked at Constanza, who seemed to read her thoughts. "It's fine, little bug," she said reassuringly. "Besides, we still have a few more fun things planned for today, and it'll be a massive pain to lug all of this around."

The logic was sound. Finally, Taylor relented. "Okay," she said, looking at Peter. "There's a spare key on the doorframe, above the trim."

"Got it," Peter said cheerfully. Without another word, he began to expertly gather up the dozens of paper bags, his movements efficient and practiced. A moment later, he was gone, disappearing into the Boardwalk crowd.

It turned out the next "fun thing" was a private firing range, tucked away in the basement of yet another nondescript, family-owned building. The air was cool and smelled sharply of gunpowder and cleaning solvent.

Taylor stood back, wide-eyed, as Constanza took her position. She handled a blocky, modern-looking pistol as if it were a natural extension of her own body. The way she loaded the magazine, the way she took her stance—strong and perfectly balanced—the fierce, focused shine in her eyes as she aimed downrange... it was as mesmerizing as it was terrifying.

She fired a full magazine in a controlled, rhythmic series of shots—bang, bang, bang—each one a deafening crack that echoed in the small space. When the final bullet was spent, the slide locked back with a satisfying click. Constanza calmly ejected the empty magazine, set the pistol down on the table in front of her, and took off her bulky ear protection.

She nodded toward the empty stall. "Your turn, Madrina."

Hesitantly, Taylor walked forward. She put on her own set of ear protectors, the world outside suddenly becoming a muffled, distant thrum. She stood in the stall, trying to copy the stance she had just seen, feeling awkward and clumsy.

Then, a sudden warmth. Constanza was standing directly behind her, her body pressed close, her chest against Taylor's back. Her arms reached around, her hands covering Taylor's. The contrast was immediate and electric: Constanza's rough, calloused palms against Taylor's own sweaty, clammy skin. A jolt, a pure, unadulterated rush of electricity, shot up Taylor's spine.

"Strong stance," Constanza's voice was a low, intimate whisper, her breath warm against Taylor's ear. "Just like in the ring. Lean into it. Become the mountain."

Her hands guided Taylor's, showing her how to pick up the magazine, how to slide it into the pistol's grip until it clicked into place. "Good. Now rack the slide. Pull it back and let it go." The metallic shk-chk of the slide chambering a round was loud, even through the ear protection. "Rule one," she whispered. "Never point this at anything you don't intend to destroy."

With Constanza's hands still over hers, she made a series of minute, expert adjustments to Taylor's grip, shifting her fingers, tilting her wrist. The gun, which had felt like a heavy, alien object, now felt like a part of her. She was staring down the sights, the distant paper target perfectly aligned. The world narrowed to that single, focused point. It was intimate. It was terrifying. And a deep, shameful part of her never wanted it to end.

"Whenever you're ready," Constanza whispered, her voice a steadying presence in Taylor's ear. "Don't pull the trigger. Press it. A slow, steady squeeze."

Her hands slid back from Taylor's, coming to rest firmly on her shoulders, a solid, supportive weight to brace her against the coming recoil.

The pistol was now hers alone to command. She held it in a firm, two-handed grip, the lessons of the last few seconds ingrained in her muscles. Her index finger rested on the cool, curved metal of the trigger. She pressed.

BANG!

The gun kicked in her hand, a bucking, violent force that was far stronger than she had anticipated. She missed the shot completely, her eyes blinking shut from the shock of the muzzle flash and the deafening report. The scent of cordite filled her nostrils. Blood rushed through her ears, adrenaline flooding her system.

She fired again, trying to brace for it this time. BANG! Another strong kick of the recoil, another bright flash, another round lost to the back wall.

Behind her, she could feel Constanza's fervent, watchful presence. The light pressure of her hands on her shoulders was a constant, intimate reminder that she was being evaluated. A deep, desperate need to prove herself, to succeed here, washed over her.

She took a deep breath, forcing her racing heart to slow. Focus.

Then, an idea, a familiar spark of creative, tactical thinking, ignited in her mind. She reached out with her power, plucking a single, fat fly from the swarm she always kept near. She sent it buzzing down the length of the range and had it land, with perfect, delicate precision, right in the center of the paper target's head.

The effect was instantaneous. Through the fly, she now had an acute, innate sense of the target's exact position in three-dimensional space. It wasn't just a flat piece of paper anymore; it was a fixed, tangible point in her mind.

She raised the pistol, lined up the sights, and this time, when she pressed the trigger, she wasn't just aiming. She was connecting a line between the muzzle and the fly.

BANG!

The fly vanished in a tiny, imperceptible puff. She had hit it.

She replicated the trick, a new fly for every shot, a fresh target for her internal GPS. Bang. Bang. Bang. With each shot, her confidence grew, the recoil becoming a familiar, manageable punch. She emptied the rest of the magazine in a steady, controlled rhythm.

When the last round was spent and the slide locked back, Constanza's hands finally pulled away from her shoulders. Taylor let out a breath she didn't realize she had been holding, her entire body trembling with the leftover adrenaline. A profound, unfamiliar warmth pooled in her stomach.

With the whirring of an electric motor, the rail system brought the paper target rushing toward them. It came to a stop in their stall, swaying slightly.

Other than two wild shots in the top corners of the paper—her first two, undoubtedly—the rest of the holes were clustered in a tight, impressive grouping right in the very center of the target.

"Well, damn," Constanza said, her voice full of genuine, impressed surprise as she looked at the shredded center of the target. "Looks like you're a natural deadeye, Madrina."

The compliment, the praise she had been so desperately, unconsciously fishing for, landed like a warm, soothing balm. A real, genuine smile, the first one she'd had all day, spread across Taylor's face. She had done it. She had succeeded.

But her brief, perfect moment was immediately complicated. "That little trick with the flies," Constanza added, a knowing, analytical glint in her eyes. "Using them as a targeting assist. That's clever. Really clever."

The praise was still there, but the illusion of her being a "natural" markswoman was shattered. Of course Constanza had noticed. It was a minor deflation, but Constanza didn't seem to care about the distinction.

"Don't worry," she said, apparently sensing Taylor's momentary disappointment. "It's still impressive as hell. More than impressive, it's resourceful. And that," she said, tapping Taylor's forehead with a friendly finger, "is the most important thing you can be in a fight. Anyone can learn to shoot. Not everyone can think on their feet like that."

She began to unload the second pistol, her movements economical and practiced. "There's nothing worse than being caught with your pants down, with no resources, no plan. The ability to make a tool out of anything, to find an advantage where no one else would look... that's what keeps you alive." She slid a fresh magazine into the pistol and placed it on the stall's small table. "That's what makes you dangerous."

They returned to the Maestro's lair, the cozy, cluttered basement workshop underneath Marino Textiles. The air smelled of hot metal and ozone, a testament to his work.

"Maestro!" Constanza called out cheerfully. "We're here for the fitting!"

As if on cue, a toilet flushed from the side room, and a moment later, Geronimo shuffled out, wiping his hands on a rag. "Ah, the girls!" he crackled. "Excellent. Come, come. To the mannequins."

He led them to the far wall, where a new figure now stood among the tailored suits. And Taylor stopped dead in her tracks.

There it was. Her costume. Whole, complete, and a thousand times more breathtaking than the clumsy sketches in her notebook.

It stood on the mannequin, a perfect synthesis of her terrifying, insectoid aesthetic and the family’s opulent, aristocratic style. The base was still her charcoal-grey spider silk, but it now fit the mannequin like a second skin, impossibly smooth. From the legs, a subtle, elegant flourish of dark, vine-like patterns crept upward, woven directly into the fabric, a detail that was both beautiful and organic.

A tight, black leather belt, clearly reinforced, cinched the waist. The buckle was a single, downward-curving golden horn—an Italian horn, a symbol of good luck and fortune, a subtle nod to the family's name.

The waistcoat, a separate piece of segmented, matte-black armor, was now traced with fine golden lines that separated the plates, giving the impression of both heavy protection and high fashion. A faux-tie, made of a silky black material with swirling, intricate golden patterns, lay perfectly centered on her chest, held in place by a high, stiff collar that would frame her neck and support her mask.

The mask itself was a masterpiece. It retained the intimidating, inhuman bug-mandibles from her original design, but the crude, homemade quality was gone. The new multi-lensed, honeycomb eyes glowed with a soft, yellow light, and they were set into a smooth, elegant "noir" mask, the kind worn at a masquerade ball, that covered the top half of her face.

The shoulders and arms of the suit had been subtly bulked up with layers of silk and polymer, and she could see tiny, almost invisible gaps in the weave, perfect little hiding spots and exit points for her swarm.

But the most striking addition, the element that transformed the entire piece from a simple costume into a work of art, was the wings. Four iridescent, shimmering dragonfly wings, crafted from a material that looked like smoked glass but moved like silk, were mounted on her back. They were folded elegantly, the upper pair resting on her shoulders like regal pauldrons, the lower, longer pair sweeping down the length of her body to her knees, creating a powerful, dramatic silhouette that was part cape, part carapace.

The wings, a mix of charcoal grey, black, and gold, caught the workshop's light, and for a moment, they seemed to shimmer with the ethereal, gentle glow of a thousand captured fireflies. It was terrifying and it was beautiful.

A long, slow whistle escaped Constanza's lips. She shook her head, a look of genuine disbelief on her face. "Well, Maestro," she said, her voice full of awe, "you've done it again. That has got to be the flashiest, most dramatic costume in the entire roster."

Geronimo just cleared his throat, a dry, proud sound. He gestured for Taylor to come closer. "Well, child? Come. Look."

Taylor approached the mannequin, her steps slow, her eyes drinking in every impossible detail. Geronimo's frail, strong hands landed on her shoulders, and he squeezed them gently. "Your opinion is the only one that matters," he rasped. "What do you think?"

If there was a word in the entire English language that could capture the overwhelming mix of awe, disbelief, and sheer, unadulterated excitement she was feeling, Taylor didn't know it. "Wow," was all she could manage, the word a soft, breathy whisper.

She reached out a hesitant hand, her fingers tracing the fine, golden lines on the waistcoat. "Is it... is it really okay for me to wear this?" she asked, looking from the costume to Constanza. "It feels like... too much."

"Too much?" Constanza cut her off with a laugh. "Little bug, there is nothing wrong with being distinct. Every Sottocapo has their own flair. Julian has his cards and his creepy clown mask. I've got my golden bling. Vendetta has his stoic cowboy thing going on." She grinned. "Besides, your power is bug control. Trust me, you deserve a bomb-ass costume to balance out the inherent grossness of that."

Taylor shrugged, a small, self-conscious gesture. "The bugs don't really bother me anymore."

The comment made Geronimo visibly shudder. "Ugh," he shivered out loud.

"My point," Constanza said, ignoring him, "is that this is badass. And so are you. Own it."

Putting the costume on was a complex, almost ritualistic process. It was a struggle of zippers, straps, and overlapping armored plates. But the core spider silk, a material she knew so intimately, stretched and molded to her body, a familiar comfort amidst the alien opulence.

When she was finally dressed, she stepped out of the small changing area. Geronimo gave her a long, slow, appraising look, a single, satisfied nod his only comment. Constanza, however, let out an excited, unrestrained squeal.

"Oh, it's perfect!" she gushed. "It's absolutely perfect! The mask, put on the mask!"

Taylor lifted the elegant, terrifying mask. She settled it over her face, the soft interior lining cool against her skin. She pulled the straps tight, and with a final, definitive click, her transformation was complete. The world resolved into the soft, yellow, multi-lensed view of the insect. Her long, dark hair flowed freely down her back, a single, remaining touch of the girl she used to be.

Constanza was practically vibrating with excitement. "Madrina," she breathed, her voice full of genuine awe. "It's perfect. You look incredible."

"Hmph. I am glad you find it satisfactory," Geronimo grunted, though a glimmer of pride was visible in his ancient eyes. "Working with that silk of yours was a headache, I'll have you know. Broke the needles on two of my best industrial machines. Had to reinforce them with a new alloy."

A small, sudden spike of guilt pierced through Taylor's excitement. She had caused him trouble.

Constanza, however, just waved him off with a laugh. "Oh, please, Maestro. Those machines were probably as old as you are. They were ready to croak at any time."

Geronimo let out a short, barking laugh at that, shaking his head as he shuffled off to another part of his workshop, muttering in Italian about disrespectful young people.

Constanza walked right up to Taylor, her glee irrepressible. She reached out, her hands gripping Taylor's newly armored shoulders, feeling the texture of the material, the solidity of the plates. "This is it," she said, her voice dropping, becoming sincere and serious for the first time. "This beats any heavy suit or stuffy old trench coat."

She looked Taylor in the eye—or where her eyes would be, behind the glowing yellow lenses of the mask. "I'm proud of you, Taylor," she said, her voice soft. "For everything. You've earned this."

The words, so simple and so direct, landed like a dodgeball to the face. I'm proud of you. No one had said that to her in a very, very long time.

And in that moment, standing in a secret basement workshop, dressed in a suit of impossible, terrifying beauty, all the old anxieties, the fears, the crushing weight of being a nobody, a victim, a disappointment—it all just... fell away.

For the first time in what felt like a lifetime, Taylor felt free. She felt like someone.

She felt powerful.

Chapter Text

Empire of Sin

A Worm AU

Chapter 12: A Hit To The Knee

Taylor stood in a brightly lit makeup prep room, the kind used by actors before a stage performance, and thought about the strange and unpredictable nature of her new employers.

When she had imagined a high-level briefing for a major operation, her mind had conjured images of dark, wood-paneled rooms in a country club on the outskirts of the city, or a sleek, glass-walled penthouse office in a Downtown skyscraper. She had not, in any version of that fantasy, pictured a repurposed makeup studio on the second floor of a generic four-story commercial building wedged between a dentist's office and an accounting firm.

Her new costume, the "Madrina" suit, was fully donned. She stood before the large, mirror, its frame studded with Hollywood-style vanity bulbs, and took in the sight. It was still a shock to see this elegant, terrifying creature staring back at her. She picked up the mask from the cluttered makeup table. Underneath the layers of reinforced spider silk and segmented armor plates, a living arsenal—wasps, hornets, biting flies, cockroaches, and silverfish—lay dormant, a secret, itching weight against her skin.

Taking a final, deep breath to steady her nerves, she pulled the mask over her head. The world resolved into the soft, yellow, multi-lensed view of an insect. The mundane prep room, with its scuffed floors and lingering scent of hairspray, immediately felt more serious, more dangerous.

She idly ran a gloved hand down the length of one of her iridescent dragonfly wings, the film-like texture cool and smooth to the touch. Her foot fidgeted, her weight shifting from one leg to the other, a nervous, restless energy thrumming through her. This was it. Her first real mission as a made woman. Her first operation in the new suit, with her new name.

Get a grip, Madrina, she scolded herself, the new name a silent, steadying mantra. She took one last deep breath. Alright. It was time.

She turned away from the mirror, away from the strange, powerful creature staring back at her, and pushed the door open.

She stepped out into a large, open-atrium studio. The walls were lined with mirrors, and the floor was polished hardwood, like a dance studio. Gathered around a single, large, circular table in the very heart of the room, four parahumans stood in a silent, tense circle. The core of the family's parahuman strength.

The first to turn was Croupier. His pristine, white porcelain mask, now seamlessly repaired, snapped toward her as she entered. The two glowing, maroon-red lights of his eyes stared out, unblinking and, as always, deeply judgmental. He was back in his signature black overcoat, the picture of cold, calculating authority.

Closest to her, and the first to offer a sign of welcome, was Constanza. Her shimmering, flaky golden mask was in place, but even without seeing her mouth, Taylor knew she was grinning when she gave a sharp, encouraging nod.

On the far side of the table stood Vendetta. He was dressed in a long, black tailcoat, a modern take on a classic gunslinger's duster, worn over the familiar ensemble of a waistcoat, trousers, and a high-collared shirt. On his head, he wore a dark fedora with a wide, flat brim, the kind Taylor had seen in old gangster movies. Not exactly a "cowboy," but close enough. He was holding his ornate, lever-action rifle, resting it casually over one shoulder. Lastly, the balaclava that hid his face, leaving only both of his eyes exposed.

And beside him was Zodiaco. She was an image of dark, esoteric elegance. She wore a long, flowing black maxi skirt, the fabric dotted with what looked like a trail of glittering diamonds, arranged into the familiar shapes of the constellations. For a top, she wore a white, flowery button-up shirt with subtle golden accents. A beautiful, intricate masquerade mask, not unlike the base design of Taylor's own, obscured her eyes, its design evoking the image of a swirling galaxy.

The four of them together were an intimidating, breathtaking sight.

Taylor hesitated for a moment, feeling like an intruder on a private council. Constanza and Croupier shuffled aside simultaneously, a silent, unspoken gesture for her to take her place in the circle. She walked forward and joined them,

It was Zodiaco who opened the meeting, her voice calm, clear, and devoid of the frustration she'd shown in the gym. This was her element: strategy and information. "All Sottocapo are present," she announced, her masked gaze sweeping over the assembled circle. "We will now proceed with the briefing for the family's retribution."

Retribution. The word hung in the air, cold and heavy. Taylor's mind flashed to the chaos of the casino, to Croupier's furious scream. This was the consequence.

"While the perpetrators of the attack on the Ruby Dreams have yet to be conclusively identified," Zodiaco continued, a subtle, sharp glance at Constanza, "tonight's operation has a simpler, more direct objective: to recoup our losses. Our accountants have confirmed the amount stolen at four hundred and fifty thousand dollars."

Four hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The number was so large it was almost meaningless to Taylor. It was more money than her father would see in a decade of back-breaking work. To the family, it was a loss to be recouped in a single night.

"To that end," Zodiaco said, "Principale Il Omertà has sanctioned a punitive operation against the Azn Bad Boys." She looked around the table. "They are the city's newest major power, and its most persistent. They have been spreading like a cancer through the Docks and the northern territories. The Consigliere has advised that it is time we begin to cull that infection, before it festers."

On the table between them, a detailed, street-level map of Brockton Bay was laid out. Taylor's eyes scanned its surface, a familiar landscape of grids and names now transformed into a battlefield. She saw Lord Street, where her journey had begun. Dobs Street, where Mr. Biaggio's quiet life had been ruined. The sprawling, chaotic territory of the Docks, her father's territory, now a contested warzone.

Zodiaco's gloved finger tapped on the map, indicating two specific locations. "Our associates have identified two major ABB stash houses. Here," she tapped a warehouse complex near the ship graveyard, "and here," a series of condemned tenements on the edge of Downtown. "These are not just hideouts. They are major collection sites for all of their local operations. We can expect to find cash, narcotics, and weaponry. We can also expect heavy security."

She looked up, her gaze meeting each of theirs in turn. "The moment we strike, our intentions will be clear to the entire city. The element of surprise will be our greatest asset. We will make it count."

Taylor listened, a knot of nervous energy tightening in her stomach. This was it. A real, planned, offensive operation. A declaration of war. And she was standing at the table where the decisions were being made.

Zodiaco yielded the floor. "Constanza, you have the street-level intelligence on these locations."

Constanza, her usual whimsical demeanor now completely gone, replaced by a cold, serious focus, stepped forward. "Both of these stash houses have one thing in common," she began. "They are Lung's personal properties. The man himself."

The name sent a shiver down Taylor's spine.

"The ABB has the fewest parahumans of the gangs," Constanza continued, "but Lung is a force of nature. We are not engaging him tonight. Furthermore, his Lieutenant, Oni Lee, is a teleporter. His reaction time is near-instantaneous. The moment a silent alarm is tripped, the moment a breach is confirmed, expect him to be on-site within minutes."

She looked around the table. "This is a smash and grab. Weakening their manpower is a secondary, non-essential objective. I've had men scouting both locations. The guards are what you'd expect: low-level thugs, junkies looking for a fix, and a number of foreign nationals who barely speak English. They are not professional soldiers." She tapped the map. "I recommend a quiet approach. Infiltration over frontal assault. We exploit their sloppiness, buy ourselves as much time as possible to secure the assets, and make a clean getaway before Lee can rally a real response."

A sudden, inner instinct, a desire to contribute, to prove she belonged at this table, drove Taylor to speak. "I agree," she said, her voice clear. "Human error is the easiest thing to exploit. A guard at a back door might be tired, slow to react. A sentry might wander off to take a piss and leave a side door unlocked. My power is perfect for finding those small, quiet openings."

Zodiaco's masked face turned toward her, and she gave a slow, deliberate nod. "The Consigliere's assessment agrees with yours, Madrina." A flicker of what might have been approval. "But I cannot stress this enough," she added, her voice hardening. "The moment you are inside, treat every second as if you are about to enter a fight for your life. Complacency is a coffin."

Croupier, who had been silent, began tapping an impatient rhythm on the floor with his polished shoe. "The insertion plan?" he asked, his voice clipped.

"We split into two teams," Zodiaco announced. "Team Alpha will be myself, Constanza, and Croupier. We will strike the tenement stash house on the edge of Downtown." She looked at them. "Our position is the most exposed. We are the most likely to draw attention not just from the ABB, but from the Protectorate. We will be the anvil."

She then turned her gaze to Taylor and Vendetta. "Team Beta will be Madrina and Vendetta. You will hit the warehouse near the boat graveyard. You will be the hammer."

Taylor's stomach tightened. The assignment felt less like a strategic decision and more like another test. She was being separated from Constanza, the one person she had started to trust, the one who felt like a mentor, and paired with Vendetta, the stoic, silent gunman she barely knew. It was a deliberate move to see how she would operate without her safety net.

She glanced over at Vendetta. He met her gaze, his expression unreadable behind his stoic mask of a face, and offered a single, curt nod. They were partners.

"Get in, secure the assets, subdue hostiles, get out before the heroes show up," Vendetta summarized, his voice a low, final rumble. The entire complex plan was distilled into a simple, brutal mantra.

"Succinct," Croupier commented, a dry note of approval in his voice.

"Good luck, all of you," Zodiaco said, her voice carrying a formal finality. "Disperse."

The meeting was over.

Not twenty minutes later, Taylor—no, Madrina—was prone on her stomach, the rough gravel of a rooftop digging into the armored plates of her new costume. Beside her, Vendetta was crouched, his ornate rifle resting on the ledge, his gaze fixed on their target across the street.

The ABB stash house was a large, derelict-looking warehouse, quiet and dark save for a few pools of harsh, yellow light from naked bulbs. From this distance, it looked deceptively peaceful.

"My men are in position," Vendetta's voice was a low murmur beside her, barely disturbing the quiet night air. "Ready when you are. I'll provide cover from here."

Madrina nodded, her multi-lensed mask hiding her expression. "Escape route, if things go south?"

"The ship graveyard," he answered without taking his eyes off the warehouse. "Best place to lose a tail. We'll rendezvous on Tiller Street, two blocks north. Then we're gone."

That was all the confirmation she needed. Pushing herself up, she moved to the edge of the rooftop, a silent, dark figure against the faint glow of the city.

The raid had already begun in her mind. Tens of thousands of insects, a silent, creeping army, were already making their way toward the target building. The ones that had already arrived, she used as scouts, as tags. A single, unseen fly for each man. A spider on every doorframe. Mites crawling the walls.

A perfect, three-dimensional map of the facility bloomed in her head, populated by thirteen distinct targets. Two guards sat in cheap lawn chairs by the front entrance. One leaned against a side door, the tiny, hot cherry of a cigarette visible even to her smallest flies. Another guard at the back door was slumped over in his chair, either asleep or passed out. On a second-story balcony, two more were having a quiet conversation, looking out at the dark water of the bay. Inside, in a large, open room, five men were huddled around a flickering television, watching a soccer match. The last two were in a small office, counting money.

She had them all.

She was going in.

Without another word, she took a running start, her powerful new suit feeling like a second skin, and leaped across the wide, dark gap of the alleyway, landing silently on the roof of the adjacent building, one step closer to her prey.

She moved like a ghost across the rooftops, a silent, flitting shadow under the pale light of the moon. Leaping from building to building, she circled the target warehouse until she was directly behind it, opposite the back entrance. She descended a rusty fire escape, the metal groaning softly under her weight, and dropped the last ten feet into a crouch in the darkness of the alley.

Her hand went to the small of her back, her fingers finding the familiar, ridged grip of her telescopic baton. With a flick of her wrist, it expanded to its full length with a soft shink. She inched forward, her body low, and peered around the corner of a dumpster.

Across the narrow backstreet, behind a chain-link fence, the lone guard was still slumped in his chair. Three empty beer bottles lay at his feet. He was, for all intents and purposes, completely knocked out.

Madrina glanced up. The two men on the second-story balcony were still there, their backs to her as they looked out over the bay. She scanned the street in both directions. Empty.

She moved.

A quick, silent jog brought her to the fence. A section at the bottom had been bent and peeled upward, creating a human-sized opening. She dropped to a crouch and crawled underneath, her new costume flexing with her. The folded dragonfly wings, which she had worried would snag, slid through without a problem.

On the other side, she approached the sleeping guard, her steps careful and silent on the cracked asphalt. She was a few feet away when she felt it through her swarm—movement inside. One of the five men from the television group had stirred and was now walking with a purpose.

Taylor's internal map, drawn by a thousand tiny spies, tracked his path. He was heading for the back door. To check on his friend.

She immediately melted into the deep shadows right beside the doorframe, pressing her back against the cold, corrugated metal of the warehouse. The door was hinged to swing open outward, which would provide a perfect, moving wall of cover for her. She double-checked the guard in the chair—still dead to the world—and waited, her breath held tight in her chest.

The door swung open, its hinges squealing in protest. The man who stepped out immediately turned his attention to his comatose friend, his back to Taylor's hiding spot. He started speaking in a language she didn't recognize—maybe Chinese, maybe Korean—his voice a mixture of annoyance and concern. He walked over and began nudging and shaking his friend, trying to rouse him from his drunken stupor.

It was the perfect distraction.

The old Taylor, the impulsive one, might have seen an opportunity for a knockout blow. A swift strike to the back of the head with the baton, just like in the movies. But she was smarter now. She knew that real-life blunt force trauma wasn't that clean. A single hit probably wouldn't knock him out; it would just make him scream, and her cover would be blown.

Instead, she seized the opportunity for what it was: an open door. While he was preoccupied, she slipped past him, a silent shadow moving through the doorway and into the relative darkness of the warehouse.

Now she was inside. Standing in a quiet hallway of the warehouse's office section, she sent her swarm spreading out ahead of her, a silent, searching tide, looking for the real prize.

She knew from her research that some honeybees possessed an olfactory sense so acute they could be trained to detect the specific chemical signatures of narcotics. It was a long shot, but it was better than searching blind. She spread them out, a dozen silent, expert scouts, sending them drifting through the warehouse's dusty air. She moved with them, taking careful, deliberate steps, her senses on high alert, her swarm-map of the eleven remaining men a constant presence in her mind.

It didn't take long. One of the bees, flying near a closed door at the end of the office hallway, became agitated, its flight pattern changing. It had found the scent.

The room had likely once been the main manager's office. Now, it was a makeshift drug lab. The air was thick with a caustic, chemical tang that burned her nostrils, even from the hallway. Inside, tables were covered with mountains of white powder—cocaine—and what looked like crystal methamphetamine. It was a full-scale assembly line, with digital scales, stacks of small ziploc bags, and heat sealers.

This is what they do, a wave of revulsion and grim satisfaction washing over her. This is the filth they sell. It was a confirmation of everything Simon and Gilberto had told her. The family dealt in luxuries and vices, yes, but not this. They were better.

She held her breath, not daring to inhale the toxic, potentially powder-filled air, and quietly vacated the room, pulling the door shut behind her. The drugs were located. Now for the cash.

She continued her methodical scour of the first floor, checking every office, every closet, every dark corner. She found the break room next. It was a pathetic, decrepit space, furnished with a single, stained table and a few mismatched chairs. An old water dispenser stood in the corner, its plastic jug empty and yellowed with age.

And on the table, with enough wild contrast to the room's poverty to give her whiplash, were two massive, open duffle bags, overflowing with stacks of cash. Beside them, on a separate, smaller table, were even more loose stacks of bills, bundled with simple rubber bands.

Madrina stared, a flicker of genuine disbelief cutting through her focus. They just left it here? Out in the open? In an unlocked room, unsecured? The recklessness was staggering. She thought of Simon's meticulous professionalism, of Gilberto's talk of order and structure. The family would never tolerate such sloppiness. What was to stop any of these thugs from skimming a few bundles off the top whenever they felt like it? The lack of discipline was an insult.

The warehouse didn't have a basement; her bugs had already confirmed that. That left two places the rest of the stash could be.

The second floor, and the main warehouse floor itself.

Going up was the most dangerous part of the plan. The four men in the makeshift living room, distracted as they were by the soccer match, were still four men. If they spotted her, she would be outnumbered and cornered in an instant. As she began her slow, silent ascent up the metal staircase, the barebones of a plan began to form in her mind. She couldn't fight them head-on. She had to appear larger than she was. Not physically, but as a threat. She needed to be the ghost in the machine.

The second floor was a wide, open-plan space, a series of connected catwalks and hallways with very few doors. The moment she reached the top of the stairs, she could see the two guards on the balcony, their silhouettes framed against the faint lights of the bay. Her internal swarm-map kept her constantly updated on the positions of all of them: the two on the balcony, the five now huddled around the TV, the two in the front, and the one drunkard still passed out at the back. And, most importantly, the two in the small office on the first floor, still counting money. The lieutenants of this sad little crew.

She needed a distraction. Something to confuse them, to disorient them, to get them all moving and, hopefully, clustered together.

She reached out with her power, to the main power box she had located on the exterior wall of the warehouse. She had already seeded it. A thick, writhing mass of cockroaches, ants, and spiders now clung to the heavy, metal lever of the main circuit breaker. With a single, coordinated mental command, they threw their collective, minuscule weight against it.

Madrina pressed herself into the darkest corner at the top of the stairs, her charcoal-grey suit making her nearly invisible in the gloom. And then, she gave the final order.

Flip.

The reaction was immediate and absolute. The buzzing fluorescents crackled and died. The chatter of the television cut out. The entire warehouse was plunged into a sudden, disorienting darkness.

A chorus of disappointed and annoyed shouts echoed across the second floor. "Hey! What the hell?" "Power's out!"

As she had predicted, chaos began to rearrange the board. The two thugs from the balcony immediately came back inside, their quiet conversation over. From her perch, she could see them moving cautiously through the dark, trying to figure out what had happened. The two guards from the front entrance also filed back in, their boredom replaced with a wary alertness. The single guard at the back, the one who had been checking on his drunken friend, now had a new purpose, moving back outside to find the power box.

The two men from the balcony passed the staircase where she was hiding, their flashlight beams cutting through the darkness as they moved to join the main group now clustered in the living room area. It was the perfect diversion.

While they were all preoccupied, looking for the source of the outage, Madrina glided silently from her hiding spot. She didn't head for the main group. She headed for the office, where the two lieutenants had just been forced to stop counting their money.

She tried the handle of the office door. It clicked open. Unlocked. Sloppy.

The two men inside snapped their heads toward the sound, their chairs scraping against the concrete floor. "Who's there?" one of them barked in accented English.

Madrina didn't answer. She continued to push the door open slowly, a silent, dark silhouette in the doorway. She prepared the arsenal hidden within her suit, the hum of thousands of wings a low, unheard thrum against her skin.

The two men—one bald, the other with a massive, ugly scar streaking down the side of his shaved head—fumbled in the dark, pulling out flashlights. The beams cut through the gloom, searching for the intruder.

The moment the light touched her, she surged forward.

A torrent of flying cockroaches, buzzing flies, and fast, hairy jumping spiders poured from the gaps in her suit, a living wave of filth and fear. She didn't aim for their eyes or their skin. She aimed for their open, shouting mouths.

The insects flooded their throats, a choking, suffocating mass that muffled their screams before they could even properly begin. They writhed, their hands clawing at their own faces, their bodies staggering in pure, primal panic. They crashed into the desk, a clatter of metal and flesh, before collapsing to the floor in a heap.

Madrina stepped into the room and quietly closed the door behind her.

She stood over them, concentrating. She didn't want to kill them, just incapacitate them. She could feel their frantic, desperate struggle for air. It passed in less than a minute. Their own thrashing and panicked hyperventilation exhausted their oxygen, and the bugs did the rest. Asphyxiation was a brutally efficient tool.

When they were still, she recalled her swarm, the insects crawling back into the hidden recesses of her suit. She stepped over their unconscious bodies and looked at the desk, now covered in scattered stacks of cash. A single, cheap-looking cellphone lay amidst the mess. Intel. She pocketed it without a second thought.

Just then, the main lights of the warehouse flickered and hummed back to life. The guard at the back had finally figured out the circuit breaker.

Madrina quickly filed out of the office, pulling the door shut. Her internal map updated. Eight men were now clustered in the living room area, their voices a confused, relieved murmur. The two guards from the front had joined them. And the guard from the back, along with the cigarette smoker from the side door, were now both by the exterior power box.

The living room area had two entrances: a large, open archway—likely a deliberate design from the warehouse's old life—and a standard door. She decided to capitalize on their rattled, disorganized state. The insects she had sent earlier were already in position, deep inside the television's electronic guts.

She positioned herself just to the side of the closed door, glancing down the hall to the right, where the corridor turned and led to the main, open archway.

Crack. Snap.

The television, which had just come back to life, died again. The roar of the soccer match was replaced by a chorus of angry, disappointed shouts from the living room. Taylor could hear the heavy, percussive thump-thump-thump of one of the men banging on the TV's plastic casing, a futile attempt to bully it back to life.

But the real show was just beginning.

The single, bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling began to attract visitors. Moths, flies, beetles, and mosquitos, drawn from the hidden corners of the warehouse, converged on it. They flapped their wings, a chaotic, fluttering mass that caused the light in the room to flicker and dim, pulsing like a dying star.

Frightened gasps now mixed with the angry shouts. Someone yelled, "What the fuck!?"

Then, she gave the final command. All at once.

Hundreds of insects slammed into the hot glass of the bulb. There was a sharp tink, a crack, and the light fizzled out, plunging the room into a near-total darkness, a darkness that was immediately filled with panicked screams and a torrent of curses and racial slurs.

This was her cue. Madrina quietly turned the handle on the door, opening it just enough to break the latch. Then she put all her strength, all the power from her training, into a single, forward kick. The door flew open, slamming into the opposite wall with a thunderous crash. She didn't enter. She immediately dashed out of the doorframe and sprinted down the hall to the open archway on the other side. As she had predicted, the sudden, violent noise from the door had drawn all their attention. Every single one of them had their backs to her.

Her baton gripped tightly in one hand, she advanced into the room, her steps slow, deliberate, her posture a perfect, intimidating straight line.

One of them, perhaps sensing a new presence, turned. His scream was cut short.

From all around the room—from the ceiling, from the floor, from the very suit of the dark, winged figure who had just entered—a biblical torrent of insects descended. Wasps, hornets, bees, and flies filled the air, their buzzing a deafening whirlwind of flapping wings and venomous stingers.

Men screamed, flailing blindly in the dark as Madrina commanded her swarm to sting, bite, and pinch every inch of exposed skin. They stumbled into each other, some slipping on the floor, others tripping over their fallen, writhing friends. Four of them, in a desperate panic, made a break for the exit, but Madrina was ready. She filled their open, screaming mouths with a thick, choking mass of cockroaches, their instincts immediately shifting from escape to the primal, desperate need to claw the suffocating insects out of their own throats.

One of them, a brave or perhaps foolish man, managed to fumble for something on his belt—a gun. Madrina surged forward, a blur of motion in the dark, and brought her baton down in a vicious, cracking strike against his forearm. The gun clattered to the floor. Another hard strike to his shin, and he collapsed, screaming.

Her head twisted. Her senses, extended far beyond the room, felt the two guards from the power box rushing back inside, their footsteps pounding on the concrete, drawn by the commotion.

Madrina calmly walked across the room, stepping over the moaning, traumatized bodies of the men on the floor. She reached the door she had kicked open just in time to see the two guards reach the top of the stairs. They saw the darkness, heard the screams, and froze.

She didn't give them a chance to think. She sicced a fresh wave of her swarm on them, and the hallway filled with a new set of panicked, agonized screams.

Madrina walked past the two newest victims, their screams already subsiding into panicked whimpers as they fought off their own personal cloud of torment. She reached the large, grime-covered window at the end of the hall, the one she knew faced Vendetta's sniper nest.

Peering out into the darkness, she saw the faint, tell-tale glint of his rifle scope from the opposite rooftop. She raised a gloved hand and gave a single, sharp wave. All clear. Come and get it.

She returned to the living room. The sounds were no longer of panicked screaming, but of the pathetic, agonized moans of men who had just been through a waking nightmare. She got back to work.

From a pouch on her new, golden-horned belt, she pulled out a thick pack of heavy-duty zip-ties. One by one, she moved through the writhing bodies, methodically binding their hands behind their backs. A few of them were still conscious, their eyes dazed and confused, but mostly, they were filled with a pure, animal terror.

With the first group secured, she went to the office. The two lieutenants were still knocked out cold. She grabbed them, one by the ankles, and dragged them out, their bodies scraping along the concrete floor. She pulled them into the living room and dumped them unceremoniously in front of the others. The conscious ones stared, wide-eyed, at the seemingly lifeless bodies of their leaders.

Then, she did a final check. She moved from man to man, crouching down, her multi-lensed mask inches from their faces, checking for the tell-tale signs of a severe allergic reaction—swelling, difficulty breathing. She didn't want any of them to die from anaphylactic shock. The three conscious men whimpered as she approached, flinching violently when her gloved hand reached out to check their pulse. They seemed fine. Good enough.

Just then, her power alerted her. A large vehicle, a van, had pulled into the backstreet. Men were piling out, the sharp snip-snip-snip of bolt cutters on the chain-link fence a clear, audible signal through her swarm. The cleanup crew was here.

The last dregs of adrenaline began to drain from her system, leaving a faint, lightheaded exhaustion in its wake. Her job here was done. It was Vendetta's turn to handle the asset collection.

In the corner of the trashed living room, she saw a single, relatively clean armchair. It looked comfortable. Needing just a minute to catch her breath before the exfiltration, she walked over and sat down, the plush, if dusty, cushion a welcome relief. From her new vantage point, she settled in, positioning herself to keep an eye on the ten men she had subdued, ensuring none of them tried anything stupid while she waited.