Interlude

Interlude: Rachel Lindt

Saturday, 2nd April

Rachel didn't ask for permission.

She didn't care for it. Anyone who would deny her it was someone she didn't care to listen to, and she didn't need backup or support. Some things, you have to do alone.

Wanting to avoid any negativity, any danger from the public, she had enough sense to wear her costume; the tight bodysuit that kept her dry of blood and rain, with enough stretch to accommodate her growth as she channelled her power. The loose pants that came down just below her knee, giving her all the flexibility she could need.

It worked, and even with her trademark jacket – fluffy hood missing more than a few of its strands – she apparently passed as different enough from the image people knew her for that attention wasn't drawn. Either that, or they were scared enough to pretend that it worked. Rachel didn't much care which.

Her mask rested like just another bone plate over her face.

Leaving the PRT headquarters in uniform was surprisingly easy. Nobody even questioned where she was going or why. The assumption seemed to be that if you were in costume, you must have had somewhere to go, and that was good enough.

She hit the streets hard. Pavement vanished under her stride. Combat boots pounded a rhythm into the concrete and the asphalt and the dirt, as each one passed into the next, and she devoured the distance.

Ambiguity was dead. She knew where she was going.

Soon it was upon her. A monolith of metal, rickety but stable. It still stank of blood, even as she tore the door open and saw that it had been badly washed away. Pink swirls and stains still gathered in the corners of the warehouse, a fleck of blood here and there.

Not much care had been put into things. Even the cages still littered the grounds, as though the entire place had been hosed down and otherwise left to the elements.

For once, she was glad of the neglect.

Rachel knew she should have come back sooner. Things had been out of her control, for the most part. She'd gone after Hookwolf possessed, and hauled him in. After that, she had nearly died, and then been under PRT supervision. By the time she was allowed out, she was with Taylor, and they had tasks; more opportunities to destroy the Empire. How could she turn that down?

Krieg had cried out beneath her paw, and she had come so close to pulling him apart. Bathing in his demise.

She hadn't. Taylor wouldn't have wanted it, and as vitriolic as Rachel was, she valued Taylor. Taylor, who had found her fighting Hookwolf and who had shown that she could, so easily, have taken him from her, but who had given her the tools to fight back and then simply left her to her vengeance. Taylor, who had granted her the power to take something from him too. If Taylor wanted her to play by the rules – to leave Krieg alive, if battered – then she would play them to the letter.

There was no Taylor now. For all that Rachel trusted her, held her dear, this wasn't her place. Taylor hadn't been here for it. Hadn't known them.

Rachel moved through the empty warehouse, ignoring the dull reverberations of her footsteps, heavy in boots, in the cold air. She bypassed the cages and moved into the back, pulling open the still-cracked door that led to the backroom; the place she had gone into convulsions beneath Hookwolf, before driving him away. The place she proved that not only cats have extra lives.

It was still a wreck. Even less attention had been paid to the back room than the main chamber, and again, Rachel was glad.

She remembered driving the nails into the wall herself, bloodied, before taking off after the fleeing Hookwolf. She remembered salvaging the bodies. Her friends. Her family. Pulling them along in pathetic desperation, out into the night air. Holding them while they died and able to do nothing about it. The smear on the ground was still there.

And on the back wall, hung on those nails, were the collars she had placed in reverence. An altar to her failure.

Dust had gathered across the top of them, settling into a thin slurry with the thin coating of blood that sat atop the leather. It had only been weeks, and pitting from the liquid had began to set in to some of the spikes and the fastenings of the collars. They looked rough.

Rachel reached out, hand trembling, and gathered them one by one. She had agreed to leave Brockton Bay behind, to follow Taylor – and she would follow Taylor anywhere – but she wasn't going to forget them.

Brutus. Judas. Angelica. Bullet. Axel. Kuro.

Names carved into her heart. She would never forget.

Her eyes burned and her jaw trembled.

Brutus' collar went first, strapped and fastened around her upper right bicep, drawn in as tight as it could be in order to hold position, the extraneous leather sticking hanging out for a few inches. Bullet and Axel joined him. Angelica, Kuro, and Judas went on the other arm, a mirror image of the right. All six, carried with her.

The dust of the room caught in her nose. The scent of sorrow.

When she returned to the PRT, nobody noticed the new additions to her costume. If they did, they said nothing about them. Even Regent seemed to keep his mouth shut.

Rachel would never leave Brockton Bay without them.