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Rating:

Mature

Archive Warnings:

Graphic Depictions Of ViolenceMajor Character Death

Category:

Multi

Fandom:

Parahumans Series - Wildbow

Characters:

Additional Tags:

Mystic Eyes of Death PerceptionConceptual DeathHorrorPsychological HorrorBody HorrorCosmic HorrorExistential DreadSad girl hoursAlt-Power Taylor HebertPower CorruptionIdentity CrisisCharacter StudyBeing Taylor Hebert | Skitter | Weaver Is SufferingTaylor Hebert | Skitter | Weaver Needs a HugMagicInsanityMurder

Language:

English

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Published:2025-06-21Updated:2025-11-06Words:56,264Chapters:9/?Comments:252Kudos:757Bookmarks:293Hits:29,582

She Who Sees Death

TheSmilingFox

Chapter 9: Headhunting (Part 1)

Chapter Text

2/Going Under

Headhunting (Part 1)

A yawn forced its way out of me, long enough to hurt. I rubbed a tear off the corner of my eye and stared at the sky.

It was a mess. Clouds hung there in uneven patches, washed-out blue showing in places, ugly grey everywhere else. It looked like dirty cotton left to rot.

I rubbed my eyes again until colors bled behind my lids. They stung. They wanted to close, to sink into darkness and rest, but rest never came. Hard to drift off when every breath reminded you of how badly your back hated the bench underneath. The bench pressed in too, groaning and cracking, like it was protesting my weight. My 'bed' promised aches that would linger for days. The blouse was useless, the jeans worse. They barely dulled the bite of wood, the bolts under the planks digging into a nerve between shoulder and spine.

There was ache. There was numbness. And somewhere, in the brief, imaginary space between the two, I wondered how beggars even managed to sleep like this.

I opened my eyes again. I stared at the sky again.

The sky had no lines.

No jagged black seams running through the clouds. No fractures cutting the blue in two. Just sky, empty of the black fissures carving everything else apart. Just clouds, grey and swollen, pretending to be whole. Not raining. Not clear either.

I felt stupid. The how did I never notice this kind of stupid.

Three years of lines. Three years of avoiding, flinching, looking down. Not once did I ever think of looking up. At least, long enough to see a place where the lines didn't exist.

Maybe I'd just been too busy hiding. Too afraid of thinking about it. Maybe it was a miracle I'd lasted this long, still alive, still sane enough to realize that not everything was breaking apart. And maybe that was the trick to surviving – pretending not to see.

I tried to find them up there, the lines. Focused too hard. Searched for the same patterns I saw everywhere else. If only to reassure myself this wasn't a cruel illusion. An image my brain was conjuring to protect me from the truth. To hide death from me.

Nothing.

No lines in the sky.

And somehow that scared me more.

My breath came out in a shudder. Half-pleasure, half-terror.

If there was a moment to die, this was probably it. Lying here. Watching the one unbroken thing left in the world.

My fingers worried a paperclip, bending and straightening it in rhythm with my breathing. The old one was retired, worn smooth, twisted into nonsense from too many months and too many bad moods. This one was new. It still had spring in it. Resistance. Something to ground me, something to push against.

Sky. Paperclip. Silence.

The closest thing to peace I'd had in years.

...Then the ground rumbled. The bench quivered under me, wood groaning in sync. Pain shot up my right shoulder before fading.

An explosion, far off. Too far to care.

Another. Less boom, more glitch. Something like a blender chewing static, eating itself in slow motion.

I didn't look. I didn't move.

Let them kill each other. I was done caring.

Bent. Straightened. Bent. Straightened.

"Hah… hahaha…"

The laugh crept up before I could stop it.

All this blood, all this noise. And all this time, the fix was so simple. The cure was as straightforward as looking up.

It was so funny.

"Hahahahaha—!"

The sound that came out of me was ugly. Harder, louder than a little laugh. I slapped an arm over my mouth. The bloused muffled the sound; the sleeve caught the spit. Something shook loose in my chest and I snorted. Coughed. Blinked back tears that weren't from sadness. I wiped them dry before anyone could see.

Another explosion.

Blood-chilling blasts. Distant screams. A few gasps from nearby. Someone whispered, "How horrible." Someone else said, "When is this going to end?"

I grumbled. Dragged my gaze back to the one clean thing left.

The sky was still there. Still perfect.

Except for a thin column of smoke staining one corner black.

I turned my head until it was gone.

"…Come on, guys," I muttered. "Make love, not war. Violence breeds violence. Think of… I don't know. Puppies. Rainbows. The children."

A snort. A half-smile. The paperclip kept clicking between my fingers.

"Am I the only one who thinks of the goddamn children?"

The next tremor made me giggle. I let myself collapse deeper into the bench, breathing until the ache dulled.

I closed my eyes. Drew a breath. Let it out slow.

A shadow cut across me, dimming the light. I groaned and cracked an eye open.

A silhouette. Shining red lines pulsed on its shape, its vague edges. It had a deep voice.

"Young lady, are you okay? Shouldn't you be in school?"

"…I'm nineteen," I lied. "And perfectly comfortable."

"Well, maybe you'd be more comfortable somewhere else. This place isn't exactly safe right now."

I sighed. The paperclip clicked again.

"You're blocking the sun," I said.

"…It's cloudy."

"Then you're blocking the fucking sky. Who asked you to be my tour guide, anyway? I'm trying to nap. Go away before I peel your skin off. Creep."

A startled noise. Footsteps retreating. A faint 'bitch' under his breath.

I lay back again. Shut my eyes.

I exhaled. The explosions rolled closer. More rumbling. More shrieks of twisted metal and whatever-the-hell sounds people made when powers clashed.

When I blinked again, the smoke had turned fluorescent. Flickering, obscenely colorful streaks across the sky, as if a unicorn had vomited a rainbow over the city. I tilted my head further, but I couldn't unsee it.

I sighed. Waited.

Slowly, carefully, I sat up.

Pain and fire lanced through my right side. I bit down a cry and pressed a hand against my shoulder. Under the blouse, warm gauze, damp bandages. Burns that hadn't finished healing.

I breathed.

Bent. Straightened. Bent. Straightened.

Click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click

"Could've been worse," I whispered.

Getting hit by Lung was worse than hearing about him hitting someone else. I'd learned that the burning way.

Another tremor rolled through the city.

I shook my head and forced myself to stand. The paperclip danced between my fingers as I walked away.

Brockton Bay was a shithole. Not the picturesque, postcard-kind of coastal shithole, but the kind festering on the eastern seaboard, a wound that never quite scabbed over.

It had all the standard urban rot, sure, but here the rot wore costumes and called itself hero or villain. Some liked shouting about it. Maybe I was just biased; my perspective was a map of intersecting lines, a constant, grating overlay on the world. But I was half-convinced people here had a special talent for it. A knack for stewing in their own misery and ladling it out for everyone else.

Still, it was routine misery. Background noise. The static hum of American life – paychecks, potholes, and bad weather.

Then the PRT declared war on the ABB, and the city got that jolt. That specific flavor of adrenaline-fueled dread that tastes like ozone and cheap coffee. Panic came in a sharp wave and fizzled out just as fast. 'Terrorism' sounded like a big, scary word for the first few hours, until people remembered their mortgages, their nine-to-fives. They'd probably have mustered more genuine anger at an attack on the other side of the planet, something they could cluck their tongues at from a safe, moral distance.

So much for community spirit.

Controlled outrage. Funneled disgust. Five minutes of hate and eight hours of sleep.

At least, that's what I expected. Hoped, maybe, while I was still drenched and shivering, trudging home in rainwater thick as soup, too tired to think about the fallout and too hollowed out to care.

Eight days later, the bombs were still going off.

…Worst of all, there was something in the way people stared at the plumes of smoke rising from the Docks that pulled a thin, unpleasant smile onto my face.

Entire city blocks away, in the parts of town where the coffee was artisan and the cars were clean, they still craned their necks. Suits, students, shoppers, workers – it didn't matter. All were gawking like pigeons at a scattering of breadcrumbs. Except the breadcrumbs were explosions loud enough to make a jet engine blush.

The ground trembled underfoot. Windows rattled. Somewhere, a siren died mid-wail. There wasn't a corner of Brockton that didn't feel the rumble, or hear the distant roar of steel and thunder.

I wove through the people, a ghost in their periphery, paperclip rolling a hypnotic circuit over my knuckles.

'Animals'. 'Freaks'. 'Monsters'.

The words were a whispered chorus on the street. I wasn't sure who they were for anymore: the Protectorate's gleaming idols or Lung's ragtag circus of ethnic conscription. The line was so blurred it might as well have not existed.

It didn't matter anymore, either.

The city needed something to hate.

Screens gleamed behind store windows. Televisions flickered, their glow a pale imitation of the real fires. It didn't matter the channel, the political slant, if they leaned left, right, upside-down or on all fours. All were singing the same hymn of doom.

'Eight Days of War – Has the PRT Failed?' 'The Docks, Obliterated. The ABB, in Flames.' 'Brockton Bay: A City Bleeding out.'

So many creative euphemisms to describe chaos. I almost admired the creativity. And for a moment, it nearly seemed like some folks were even getting a thrill from it all.

I was.

Not the death. Not the mess. I've never had a stomach for messes. I wasn't that far gone. I wouldn't call it pleasure.

Maybe it was the contrast.

The city could shake like an earthquake. The people could gasp and scream. The capes could vaporize the shit out of each other.

The lines would stay where they were.

On the horrified people. Shifting across the apocalyptic landscapes shining in TV. Slithering throughout the ground and cars and animals and even me.

Waiting.

For me? For another girl with a knife?

I didn't know.

All I knew was that I enjoyed this little bit of schadenfreude. It felt like watching someone else come down with the same sickness you've had for a long, long time. For the first days, I felt like… Raskolnikov, yes, waiting for punishment, sweating through fever dreams and talking to ghosts. Then I started feeling better and maybe seeing everyone else unravel helped in the healing process.

Part of me wanted to laugh. Another part wanted to explode, to shake the nearest stranger by their collar, to slap them, to scream in their face. 'Enjoyed your life so far? Welcome to reality,' I wanted to say to them.

I didn't.

I just kept rolling the paperclip between my fingers, tracing its edges like a rosary.

For once, I didn't feel like cutting them. For once, I didn't have to fight this thing that made me want to dig something sharp into the dark.

The itch that usually clawed at the back of my skull, the one that whispered about knives and lines and how easy it'd be, went finally, finally quiet.

My lips twitched into something ugly.

There was only noise, now. And for the fist time in my life… I didn't mind.

The walk down Lord Street was a study in contrasts. The world was ending in fits and starts, but the PRT response had a rhythm to it. People stood frozen on sidewalks, eyes glazed toward the sky, while armored vehicles wove through traffic with a grim, practiced efficiency. Blaring sirens, confused mutters, the hiss of wheels against puddles… it all blurred into something distant. Unimportant.

The only sound that mattered was the soft, metallic click of the paperclip in my hand.

Bent. Straightened. Bent. Straightened.

The rhythm steadied my thoughts, my breathing. It was a focus, an anchor point in a city slowly shaking itself to pieces.

By the time I drifted away from downtown Brockton Bay, the skyline had become a jagged memory. The Boardwalk opened up, wide and quiet, the smell of salt replacing gunpowder and ash. The wind came clean off the ocean. It was sharp enough to sting my skin. The place was deserted, too, the weather and the city's state keeping sensible people indoors. Perfect.

I stopped just at the railing and put my hand on it. Leaned forward. A fresh breeze washed over me, then. Made my blouse cling damp to my half-melted shoulder, the flesh throbbing with a dull, distant fire.

The humid heat from a week ago had broken, leaving a penetrating cold in its wake. I welcomed it. Let the chill seep into my skin, let it numb the persistent ache eating through half my body. It felt good. Pure, almost.

I closed my eyes. Breathed in.

Yet another explosion in the distance.

The paperclip grounded me back. I was on the Boardwalk. I was enjoying the cold. I was… fine.

Straightened. Bent. Straightened. Bent.

I opened my eyes after a bit. Leaned my weight onto the rail.

My gaze drifted across the water, past the gentle waves, to the Protectorate Headquarters. The oilrig rose like a strange, modern cathedral. A faint shimmer warped the air around it – their near-invisible forcefield, thin as breath but there all the same, warping the arches and spires within in glassy distortion.

It looked like a snow globe for gods.

Ink-black lines pulsed faintly across its surface, The same lines I saw on people, yet these were writhing without pattern. But they were unmistakable. A chaotic, shifting tattoo on a bubble of power.

Bent. Straightened.

Click. Click. Click. Click

The paperclip in my hand felt heavier. Sharper. A sliver of potential, and therefore, danger.

A thought whispered through, unbidden, morbid. How funny, how easy it would be to get a boat, glide close enough. To slip this little clip into one of the black lines I knew would be on the oilrig's support pillars. To sever those lines. To watch the whole thing groan, list and sink into the water.

A prank.

No?

It felt only marginally more terrible than the things I'd already done.

I stopped fidgeting. Tapped the paperclip against the railing. Tap-tap-tap next to a jagged line coiling and uncoiling beside my fingers. The metal rang softly. My breath came out white.

"I screwed up, didn't?" The words barely carried past my lips in a puff of fog. "Three years. I did so well for three years. I had my paperclip, and a couple of cheap erasers. If I'd just waited, waited just a little bit longer… long enough to notice the sky instead of looking down at my own hands…"

A shudder. A sigh.

"…Maybe I wouldn't have felt so trapped. So tired."

The paperclip clicked again. I straightened it and lifted it up to the gray light.

"I'm a horrible person," I mouthed. "Aren't I?"

The wind nudged at my side. The skin on my hand prickled. The paperclip stayed poised between my fingers.

"Yes, you are," the paperclip answered back, its voice a squeaky falsetto as my fingers twisted it into a crude, talking shape. "The worst, most detestable person in all of Brockton Bay! It's a wonder people don't shoot you on sight. Sophia was right. You are lower than dirt."

I licked my lips. Felt them stretch into something like a smile. It hurt.

"You're a harsh critic, Clippy. I'm bad but not that bad," I said dryly. "I just… had a little episode. Lost it for a few days. Everyone snaps at some point."

Clippy wasn't buying it.

"The world doesn't care why you snap. Only that you do," he accused, relentless, his squeaky voice cutting through the wind. "And boy, did you snap. Killed all those people. Butchered them. And not once did you feel guilty. Not once did you wonder if you should stop. The only thing that ever bothered you was the how. Who was next. How many you could take down with you before someone put you down."

Clippy seemed to vibrate between my fingers. Or maybe it was just my hand shaking. I couldn't tell. All I knew was that my flimsy, self-pitying arguments were being systematically dismantled by a paperclip wielding facts and logic like a sword and shield.

"…Yeah. That's right," I offered. "I wanted to hurt people. I wanted them to look at me for once. I wanted them to shut up."

I met Clippy's twisted little shape behind the lenses of my glasses.

"Is that so strange? To detest others? To hate their noise so much you just want it to stop? Just once? For three years I was a good girl. I did the best I could."

My breath stuttered. My eyes stung against the cold.

"I learned to respect life. I learned to fear death. Even at my very worst, I didn't dare hurt my best friend. I think that counts for… something."

Clippy straightened with a final, decisive click. A verdict.

"It's not strange. It's human," he said in that tiny, judgmental voice. "And it doesn't make you any less of a monster."

Another gust rolled through, carrying salt and chill. My black hair lashed across my face. I threw it back with a sharp flick of my head. Clippy remained where he was, immovable, unperturbed.

I nodded. Sighed. The sound felt hollow.

"Okay," I whispered. "Let's do it like the ancient Egyptians, then. Weigh my heart on a scale."

I closed my fist around Clippy. With my other hand, I reached into my pocket and retrieved a crumbled piece of paper. I smoothed it flat against the railing.

At the top, my handwriting.

Reasons to Die:

* I killed people. I'm a murderer. A threat to everyone around me.

* I instigated Lung. Innocent people died because of me. Children died because of me. Entire lives, snuffed out in one night.

* I'm an economic and emotional burden to Dad. A leech. The promise of a normal daughter I can never be. Every day I stay is another knife in his chest.

* I'm socially incompetent. I can't connect with anyone. No friends. They will all leave, like Emma, and no one will miss me.

* I'm tired.

Five neat bullet points. Five quiet nails in a coffin.

I read them once, then twice, feeling nothing but the cold. The list was laid out with that dreadful, careful precision I had that I hated. A steel-solid argument for cessation. For stopping the madness that was me, before it was too late to even think about stopping.

But I didn't rush. I breathed in. The reason I was in this mess was a lack of perspective. Balance. So now, I would read the other side. I would weigh one list with another, calmly, rationally.

I drew in a slow breath and turned the page.

Reasons to Live—

I WANT TO LIVE

—I nodded to myself. Folded the paper, the creases sharp, and turned it back into my pocket.

The ocean kept moving. I watched the gray-blue water shift and heave. In the distance, another bomb went off, somewhere deep in the Docks. The sound was a dull thump I felt more than heard.

I brought Clippy back up to eye level.

"Seems I'll keep bothering the world a bit longer," I said, voice flat.

"The horror! The horror!" Clippy squeaked back.

I didn't respond.

I rolled my shoulders. The bad one flared again, lightning lancing down to my fingertips. I gritted my teeth, tried to roll the tension away slower, gentler. The pain already rooted deep in the muscle rewarded me with a fresh, bright jolt that made my vision swim.

My sigh fogged in the air. Eyelids dipped , heavy, closed for a second too long. I tapped Clippy against the metal again. Tap. Tap. Tap.

"…Let's start over," I murmured, an empty promise to the ocean. "No knives. No more lines. Just Clippy and me. It'll blow over. I'll go back to school."

A nod to myself sealed the lie. Sensible plan, right? If Emma tried something, I'd just knock her teeth in. No need for blades. No need to escalate. No need to cut.

I pushed away from the real. Pain bit into my shoulder yet again. It felt like the very bones were screaming in raw, grinding protest. I froze. Swallowed a gasp. Sucked in air through my teeth. One step. Two—

"Heya, killer."

—The world whited out.

Not a hallucination. Not a light too bright in front of me.

Only sheer, unfiltered pain.

"Ah—h—h."

A weight settled on my shoulder. A pat? A slap? No.

Just pressure. Crushing.

Something excruciating and indescribable detonated down my arm, sharp enough to knock the breath from me, to punch the pulse in my chest to a halt. Everything tilted sideways. Surprise, and a white-hot spike of agony. For a single, dizzying moment, my body turned to liquid, my bones to jelly. The ground seemed to yawn open beneath me.

Melting.

Undone.

I locked my legs. Forced them steady. Shadows crawled at the edges of my sight, dancing to the renewed, frantic drumbeat in my ears.

I craned my neck to the side.

A pale hand perched on my shoulder. Thin fingers. Neat nails.

THUMP.

A breath hissed from between my teeth, sharp and thin as a razor's edge.

I moved. A wire-taut reaction born of a hundred imagined and real threats.

I spun, grabbed the wrist, slammed into the rail. I used myself as lever, slamming the enemy back into the railing, pressing my body against them, pinning my weight against theirs. My other hand came up, Clippy poised, its tip finding a dark, shifting line that throbbed on the skin of their throat.

I blinked. Exhaled.

The world resolved, slowly.

Eyes. Bright, intelligent green like emerald, half-lidded and utterly unafraid. They widened for a fraction of a second, not with fear, but surprise. A cat, somehow, who hadn't expected the mouse to fight back. The shadows at the periphery of my vision receded, shakily, as I breathed in again.

…A girl.

My age, maybe, or maybe older. Fair skin, faintly bronze as if she'd been chasing the sun. A neat constellation of freckles dusted a nose too small to look serious. A jaw too soft tried and failed to combine with those eyes. Dark-gold strands framed her face while the rest of her hair seemed pulled back into a ponytail.

I tightened my grip on her wrist, bones grinding against iron. Then I drove a knee between her legs to keep her there. My fingers whitened around Clippy.

She didn't flinch.

Her lips, a soft, faded-pink, curved into a small smile. A friendly face. As if she knew how this would end and it wouldn't be with her bleeding out.

Not Emma's false concern. Not Sophia's predatory glee.

A fox's smile.

Someone comfortable in their own skin. Confident in ignorance. She looked like she'd found exactly what she was looking for. My violence? A part of the welcome package.

We stared each other down. My palm slicked with cold sweat.

A minute stretched, taut and silent. I waited for the flinch, the plea, the threat.

Nothing.

'Killer', she'd said.

She knew. Or she'd heard me talking to Clippy. Either way… she couldn't walk away. She was a liability. A loose end.

An annoyance.

NO CUTTING UNLESS THERE'S NO OTHER OPTION.

My gaze drifted past her, to the dark, choppy water below.

It would be easy. A quick flick of the wrist to sever the line. A second to decapitate her, another to push the corpse into the ocean. The current would do the rest.

Fast. Quiet.

Efficient.

The thought sat in my mouth like blood.

Her smile didn't waver. My shoulder throbbed in time with my heartbeat, a stabbing pain that was starting to dig behind my eyes.

"…I usually don't do this," I said, voice low, thin. "But I'll give you a freebie, for the audacity. Any last words?"

The girl didn't answer right away. She let the moment stretch a bit further, let the cold wind whip around us.

My muscles tensed for the final movement.

Then she spoke, calmly, clearly.

"Knock-knock."

Silence.

I stared. I could feel something twitch in my jaw.

"I'm not really in the mood for games," I said, trying to sound menacing, not exhausted. "Stop screwing around. Unless you want a bad punchline for an epitaph."

"Knock-knock," she said again.

Her tone didn't change. Exhaustion crawled up my spine.

Trying to hold her gaze was like trying to stare down at the sun. I had to fight to keep my focus, to keep her pinned.

"…Fine. Fine," I bit out. "Who's there?"

Her smile twitched. "Hit."

"Hit who?"

She took a breath. I pressed the paperclip's tip a fraction deeper.

"Hit the ground running, haven't you?" she said, light, conversational. "You're hired."

The word hung there. My grip loosened. I felt my lips twitch this time, not in a smile, but in something like a spasm.

"…Hired. Funny. I don't remember sending out any resumes."

The fox-faced girl cocked an eyebrow.

"No need for modesty, rising star. In this line of work, we don't recruit based on a piece of paper. We perform a qualitative and quantitative study of how much shit you're fucking up. And you, my dear, have one hell of a portfolio gettin' cold and stiff in the morgue. Impressive work. The kind that makes crime lords salivate and goth teens write bad poetry."

A dry laugh escaped me before I caught it.

"You're insane."

Her face scrunched up, a parody of offense.

"Insane? Naaaaaaaah." Her smirked then turned thoughtful. "Killer, d'you know the difference between a madwoman and a genius?"

"I don't care."

"Success!" she barrelled on. "Takes a little madness to see opportunity. Takes a little brilliance to take it anyway."

I let her words hang in the frigid air. My not-smile came back.

"You don't look particularly successful from where I'm standing, Goldilocks."

"I'm alive, aren't I?" she laughed softly. "First person to stare down the Slasher and live to brag about it. That's a win in my books."

I sputtered.

"S-Slasher?" A cold knot tightened in my stomach. "What's that?"

She giggled. The sound felt utterly incongruous in our position, same as her smile.

"Your name, killer. Your codename, cape name, hooker name, whatever you wanna call it. It's already out there, circulating. The world's a napkin and stains like that spread fast in 'BB'."

I looked down. Almost felt my thoughts physically reeling.

Slasher. It was ugly. Brutal. Reductive. I wasn't that.

At least I tried not to be.

"…I've been out of the loop," I admitted. "For the record, that's a fucking stupid name. And stop calling me 'killer'."

Her grin deepened in a moment.

"Sure thing. Do you prefer Taylor? Or Miss Hebert?"

The cold in my stomach turned to ice. Every nerve in me went rigid. Cold swept up my spine.

My fingers clenched around the paperclip.

"You—"

"—Know stuff, yeah," she cut in, breezy. "It's my thing. Bad habit. Everyone hates it. I can't help it."

I stilled. Licked my dry lips.

"How much?"

Her half-lidded eyes crinkled. "Enough to make you wish you hadn't asked."

I pressed the paperclip deeper into her skin, half of it already sinking into her line.

"How. Much."

I leaned in until our noses almost touched. She went quiet, finally. Her eyes locked on mine.

No fear. No terror. Just absolute calm.

"I know your birthday's on June. That you're not the friend-making type. I know your best friend turned on you for no reason you can fathom. I know your mother died in a car accident. I know you were there in that car. You lived, somehow, with your throat half gone. I know you let your hair grow long to cover the scar on your neck where your carotid exploded…"

She paused. Her lips parted.

For a second I thought I saw a flicker of something else. Pity? Understanding, maybe. Then it was gone, replaced by that foxlike grin.

Almost fondly, then, she said, "…I also know you like the donuts with chocolate filling inside."

A tic travelled up from my jaw to my eye. I blinked. Took a breath. Nodded slowly.

"Okay," I said. "You did your homework. What for?"

"I told ya," she replied. "I'm headhunting. And you're very, very hired."

I was quiet for a moment. Raised an eyebrow. Managed a thin smile with teeth on display.

"You make it sound like slavery. I'm not looking for a job."

She laughed.

"C'est des conneries, tueuse! First off, you're broke. You need those Benjamins. Secondly, I'm not forcing you. I'm just being… aggressively friendly. To discourage the whole murderous rage, killy-stabby part of your skill set. Think of yourself as a sleeper hire. The Chosen One! By HR. Except HR's me."

That almost earned her a reluctant smile from me.

"You with the cops? The Protectorate? I don't want to go to jail."

"Nope. No badge, no uniform. Professional villain. The facemask-wearing, bank-robbing, Arsène Lupin kind. Scout's honor."

"I can't picture you as a scout," I said, the words coming easier now. "Why me?"

Her face softened into an expression that was almost fond, and somehow more irritating for it. It reminded me of Emma, if Emma's condescension had been backed by actual intellect.

"The girl who carves through people like butter is asking the villain why she'd want her on the same side," she said. "Either you're the world's most modest sociopath or just denser than tungsten."

"My self-esteem is, uh… six-feet under at the moment," I explained. "Why should I even consider your offer?"

"Why? I dunno. Money. A team. People who'll back your back instead of stabbing it. You seem a little on edge. Heh. Edge."

I blinked. Chewed on the inside of my cheek. The offer hung there, dangerous and tantalizing.

"…We'll see," I murmured, noncommittal. I eased the pressure on her wrist another degree. "You know my name, my… blood type, probably. I don't know anything about you. Who are you?"

"Lisa," she responded, green eyes glinting with victory.

"Uh-huh. And how do I know that's even your real name?"

'Lisa' managed a slight tilt of her head despite my hold. Her smile sharpened.

"You don't. Consider this our first trust exercise."

She said nothing else. I didn't dignify her comment with another.

My eyes locked on Lisa. On the smug set of her mouth, the knowing glint in her eyes that saw too much. I watched the black lines crisscrossing her face, the one at her throat a stark, deadly temptation. Another line cut at a corner of her lip and up her cheek, as if drawing the shape of a wide half-smile, a smirk and a promise of death rolled up in one.

The paperclip in my hand felt cold. A hard point of reality. It would be easy. A quick, brutal drag. A push and the bay would take the rest.

The idea pressed against my teeth like familiar hunger.

Money. Team. A path forward, paved by the fact that I was a killer.

The wordless ledger of what I'd done slipped across my mind like a blade. I'd been ready to walk away from all of it. Let the knife clatter to the ground. Pretend the last two weeks were a fever dream; pretend the last corpses with names never existed. Then life, in its inimitable style, had thrown me a rope. And I was lucid enough to see that it was attached to a cinder block before I took it.

My shoulder burned from holding her up. My knees shook.

Disgust.

Disgust was the appropriate response. I was disgusted, but not for the obvious reasons. Not that this stranger had peeled back my life and seen the rot underneath. Secrets felt like a luxury I couldn't afford anymore. The little bitterness I felt on my tongue tasted real, yes… but thin.

No. It was the sheer, unmitigated gall of her. Strolling into my chaos, startling me, calling me killer like it was a job title, and expecting a 'yes'.

For a heartbeat I almost said yes. I couldn't deny I wanted to. Just to end this circus. To trade this freefall for the grim security of a cage, precisely because it had walls. The thought of an end, of something steadier than the scrape of death, slid under my ribs and stayed there.

I said nothing.

I watched her. She watched me back. For a second, I felt the unsettling certainty that she'd already mapped this moment. That she knew the shape of my decision before the thought had even fully formed in my own head. And in a way, she didn't seem far off.

The realization didn't bring fear. Or anger. Or sorrow.

For a single, impossible instant, my entire body unclenched.

For once, I didn't have to explain. For once, someone was looking at the raw, ugly truth of Taylor Hebert and wasn't turning away in horror. I didn't have to make excuses for my shadow. Someone was looking straight at it.

Lung hadn't looked away, but he was a force of nature. I was his challenge. An opponent to break. He would've kept charging and burning until I dissolved in ashes.

Lisa? A self-professed villain. A bank robber. Why would a thief want a killer on her payroll? Why provoke someone who could end you with the flick of a literal paperclip?

She didn't just know about the bodies I'd left in my wake. She knew about the life that had led me there, or maybe just the shape of it. And she was just… there. Smiling.

A fresh wave of exhaustion made my knees tremble. The burn in my shoulder deepened into sharp pain.

Then I saw it. A twitch at the corner of her lips. A new crinkle at the edge of her eye.

Laughter. Contained. Held back.

Of course.

I'd misread her from the start.

This wasn't Emma's pitying disgust, or Sophia's violent recognition. It wasn't Madison's paper-tiger flinching. This was different. She was reading me. Deconstructing me.

The memory surfaced – my own reflection, fractured by lines, eyes searching each segment for an answer. A way out.

She… found me interesting.

A second passed. Another. My grip on her shoulder eased, though I kept her pinned.

A smile touched my lips. It felt alien.

"Trust," I echoed, the word tasting like ash. "You said trust."

She nodded, her blonde bangs swaying.

"It's the name of the game, pardner," she said, a singsong lilt and a truly terrible accent warping her voice. "This cape business is like… economics, yeah. All serious and world-changing until you realize it's built on unquantifiable bullshit like trust and gut feelings."

A choked laugh broke free from my throat. It sounded more like a cough. The Boardwalk shuddered as distant detonations pounded the city. The rail hummed.

I nodded. Stared at her eyes again. Smiled, wider this time.

"How about I shove your 'trust' down your throat, you smug little bitch?"

My knee came away from between her legs. A swift kick knocked her feet wider. Her eyes went wide.

"Shi—!"

I slammed her back against the rail. Her hands snapped out to grip it, to anchor herself, knuckles bleaching with effort. I held her there, and saw her smile finally, truly falter.

This time it was me laughing.

"There we go. Goldilocks can emote. Nice to know."

She was quiet for a few heartbeats. Then her own laughter rang out, loud, genuine, drowning the next series of distant explosions.

"Alright, fine! You got me. A genuine scare. You can be proud of yourself. What now?"

"Now," I started, releasing her wrist, "you shut the hell up. You stay still. Try anything funny and they'll be fishing you out of the bay in two separate trips. One for your torso, another for your legs."

As I spoke, I ran my hands along her, patting her down. Her belly, her back. I moved up to her chest, pressing, searching for the hard outline of a weapon. She tensed before letting out a breathy giggle.

"Woah woah woah! Hands to yourself, girl. Ever heard of consent and shit?"

"I kill people," I replied, fingers not stopping. "Ethics isn't my strong suit."

Finding nothing, I moved down, squeezing her denim-clad thighs, Then, a quick, impersonal probe between her legs.

"Y'know, you could just ask if I'm packing heat," she said, sounding utterly unbothered, or perhaps pretending. "Easier. Less awkward than whatever this is. People are gonna talk."

"Let them. I prefer rumors to your words without insurance. And there's no one here."

I emptied her pockets, patted her backside. Nothing.

"I work out," she preened. "Like what you're grabbing, you perv? Buy me dinner first."

I huffed.

"You have a high opinion of your ass, Lisa."

I knelt, the paperclip hovering near a line cutting diagonally across her stomach as I patted down her legs. Her calves.

"A paperclip? Really?" she said, amused. "Not the most aesthetic murder implement. What are you gonna do with that little thing anyway?"

I paused at her knees.

"…If I had a nickel for every time someone said that to me," I said, "I'd have two nickels."

She cocked her head. Green eyes brightened against the clouded sky.

"So?"

I shrugged.

"Nothing. It's just weird it happened twice."

I checked behind her ankles, pressed my fingers into her shoes, against her toes.

Still nothing.

I rose, setting the paperclip back to the line on her neck. Back where we started, not quite the same way. We held each other's gaze.

"…So. You wanted me on the 'team'."

"Well, technically," Lisa said slowly, grinning, "you already are on the team. You just lacked the briefing package."

Words scraped and died in my chest. I let a smile come anyway.

"Ever heard of consent and shit?"

Her smile mirrored mine, but before it could settle, I pulled the paperclip back and smacked her cheek with the back of my hand. Not hard. A punctuation mark.

"Save your aggressive friendship for someone else," I said. "Let's talk. List the benefits. I'll consult with my conscience."

Lisa sucked in a sharp breath, then giggled, stretching her arms over her head as if she'd just woken from a pleasant nap.

"That's all I'm asking for, T~"

A cold wind swept in from the bay, carrying the scent of salt and smoke. Another bomb went off at the Docks, a dull whump that was becoming the city's heartbeat. Lisa, supremely unbothered, turned and started walking. I fell into step beside her, the paperclip a tiny, cold metronome clicking between my fingers.

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Chapter 1046 - 9