"There is in all things a pattern that is part of our universe. It has symmetry, elegance, and grace - these qualities you find always in that the true artist captures. You can find it in the turning of the seasons, the way sand trails along a ridge, in the branch clusters of the creosote bush of the pattern of its leaves. We try to copy these patterns in our lives and in our society, seeking the rhythms, the dances, the forms that comfort. Yet, it is possible to see peril in the finding of ultimate perfection. It is clear that the ultimate pattern contains its own fixity. In such perfection, all things move towards death."
—"THE COLLECTED SAYINGS OF MUAD'DIB" BY THE PRINCESS IRULAN
Paul arrived at the lighthouse ten minutes later, stepping from the stolen sedan like a shade born of the turning clouds. The engine's last cough faded into the consonant hush of the evening tide, and he paused on the drizzle-polished asphalt, allowing the night to fold around him. A small bridge arched over a mottled canal, its rails spattered with streaks of rust and lichen. Across that span loomed the lighthouse, its beacon long since dark, the brickwork patched and cracked by years of neglect—and by more recent violence.
Paul began crossing the bridge in measured strides, shoulders squared beneath a soaked cotton hoodie, eyes cold prisms against the glimmer of distant sodium lamps. Already, his disguise had begun to wash off, but he was not particularly concerned given its currently diminished utility.
Ahead, the tower's entrance periphery bore two sentries, spaced so as not to invite undue scrutiny. Paul noted their positions, the line of sight between them, the distance to the rusted service hatch on the south face. He noted the guard posted at the dock's edge, one hand resting casually on the stock of an assault rifle, the other cradling a cheap pump-action at the crook of his arm. To the right, a battered CCTV dome, its lens angled low, likely tuned to flag only motion within the narrow corridor.
Parked in front of the lighthouse was a black van. Paul watched as four ABB thugs hauled crates—wooden boxes banded with steel—and plastic coolers out from the back. They stacked their burdens at the main entrance, a few others emerging from the building to pick a crate before disappearing inside.
Paul had not stopped walking. He stuck to the shadows until he was two-thirds the way across, only slowing when he started to near the more properly lit portion of the bridge. There, he swung over the railings to the right and dropped feet-first into the murky water before swimming the remaining distance. At the other side, a rusted length of structural steel bracketing the bridge's pillars marked his vertical path. Rainwater sluiced down it in thin curtains while barnacles encrusted its foot; he ascended with the silence of a grey cat, palms kissing the metal only where flaking paint wouldn't soak the minor instances of friction.
Halfway up, a cracked granite mass protruded ninety centimeters beyond the corbel course—perfect to catch his right foot, pivot, and stretch across the gap into a blind corner. There, Paul found the length of guardrail he wanted and flattened to its concrete base, counting to seven (for the sentry's next inward turn) before vaulting over and blotting across open ground towards the tower.
There, on the visibly less-used eastern side, was a service hatch. The padlock on it showed signs of neglect—rust, scratches at the lip, dented shroud where tools had slipped. He circled, testing weight distribution, gauging whether a deliberate kick would shatter the frame or betray him with a groan of metal. Instead, he reached into his duffel slung across his shoulders and produced his key chain, straightening the wire of the ring into an improvised lock pick. Within five heartbeats, the bolt slid free. He lifted the hatch and slipped inside, motion swallowed by the echoing darkness.
The corridor beyond was low-ceilinged, its walls slick with condensation and ancient graffiti. He let his hand trail along the damp concrete, fingertips poised to sense the thrum of vibrations behind the paneling. The fluorescent lamp overhead buzzed to half-life, painting the hall in jaundiced intervals. He rose into the shaft of a second-floor stairwell and advanced until the entry into the gallery above lay before him—a rectangular window shattered long ago, its shards replaced by a scrap of plywood cracked at the edges.
He planted a palm on the ledge and vaulted, hips pivoting as he swung his legs over the sill. The plywood groaned, yielded, and he slipped inside. The gallery beyond was empty: lines of old exhibits stripped of artifice, placards torn away, the floor littered with discarded cables and a broken easel. Ceiling beams held sprigs of insulation, like the bones of some great creature long dead. He paused at the threshold, scanning left, then right, ingesting the smell of stale air and solvent. This floor likely served as a lounge of some sort, distinct from the warehouse-level comings and goings one floor below.
Paul's soaked sneakers whispered across cracked tile as he advanced toward the far corridor. The hush spoke volumes: the gangsters gathered in small packs, conversing, resting, many clusters alert only to their immediate perimeter; some, not-at-all. He skirted a pair of men in leather vests, arm tattoos coiling around biceps—"Vipers," one thug called this one. The pair exchanged whispers about some shipment schedules and the associated shifts. Paul's face was a facsimile of disinterest; his stride, a pattern of broken lines that the subconscious could catalog but deprioritize.
Paul soon found himself drawn to a narrow side door, its frame set back beneath a flimsy smoke vent. Inside, a small break room offered two chairs and a table littered with coffee stains and ashtrays. One man sat with his back to the window, inhaling the acidic tang of a cheap cigarette. The second leaned against the sink, shoulders hunched, as he stared out into the darkness with a nervous tic. Paul approached as though summoned by some misguided priest.
The braver of the two—the smoker—turned at the click of Paul's silhouette. His eyes narrowed, glassed with nicotine. "You lost?" he asked in Korean, voice thick as tar. Paul said nothing: a backhanded swing of his knife slit the throat. The man collapsed, the cigarette flaring against the linoleum before snuffing out in crimson droplets. Paul's gaze flicked to the second man, whose hand dove for a pistol. He moved with prana-bindu grace—strike to trachea, a whisper of torque, strike to the wrist—and the man crumpled, gun clattering away as his eyes widened with the betrayal of instinct. No alarm sounded, his voice dying in a stifled rasp.
Paul watched as the gangster tried to scramble away; his shin thumped the man's calf, dropping him flat on his belly. Paul grabbed a fistful of damp hair and pressed the bloody edge of his blade behind the jaw hinge. "Breathe slowly," he said in Korean, voice a dry, arid husk. "Twice. Good. Now, we will have a conversation. I have only one rule: You will speak when spoken to. Only then. Anymore and you die like a dog. Understood?"
Nostrils flared; the man gulped air that scalded a trachea already bruised. "I—I don't know anything," he begged. "I only haul boxes."
Paul tightened his grip. "Lie to me again and I will carve out your testicles, make mountain oysters out of them before feeding the dish to you. Understood?"—rapid nodding—"Good. Your mother gave you a name?"
"Minho," the thug croaked. "Minho Park."
"Park Minho," Paul mused. "What are your duties here?"
"Runner—I am a runner for the docks."
Paul asked a few more questions and the gangster answered, tremors rattling his limbs. "Bakuda," the thug choked when Paul inquired about the gang's capes. "In a shed across the bridge. Not here. She—she does her experiments there. Puts bombs in people's heads. Oni Lee left an hour ago. I don't know why, or where to…she's the only cape nearby."
Paul's thoughts churned. "What were you told to do here?" he pressed.
"I don't know," the thug whined. "I was only following orders. Sometimes Bakuda needs men to move stuff around."
Paul frowned. "Some crates were brought here earlier."
"I don't know," the thug said. "Bakuda just gives us things and tells us where to put them. No one smart goes around asking—"
Something bright lit up the corner of Paul's vision, distracting him from the rest of what the thug was saying. Instinctively, he raised his hand to shield his face as he felt his ears pop from overpressure. The next moment, an explosion rocked the building as it was struck by a pillar of white light. He staggered from the tremor that shook the building, nearly falling to his knees before quickly stabilising himself against a nearby wall.
Ignoring the thug who mindlessly scrambled for safety, Paul turned his attention to the starry corona blooming at the far window: the light emanating outward from a slender figure hovering in the air, haloed by the glow of her own aura. He recognised her instantly. A cape; E88.
Purity.
The villainess drifted earthward with the poised finality of a petal abandoning its calyx, feet alighting some ten paces from the entrance like a firefly touching down on still water. Something wasn't adding up, Paul sensed intuitively. At the sight, he felt a frown shaping itself before it reached his features—an intuitive protest given form. A skein of hypotheses unfurled across his inner vision, each strand seeking the loom of causality, yet one knotted question remained: What in the world is she doing?
Paul easily recalled the news and rumors on the PHO Forum painting her campaign against the Asians in unwavering strokes: Purity, scourge of the ABB, raining vengeance on her old rivals. The pattern of her attacks on the ABB strongholds had suggested stratagem—a lure to smoke out the rival gang's remaining capes. Now, before his eyes, the pattern fractured. In its place , two explanations surfaced with mentat clarity. Either Purity was ignorant of Bakuda's presence in the vicinity and was simply acting out as usual, or she was fully aware yet had elected to step within the tinker's lethal envelope.
The latter conjecture violated the simplest axioms of power. Purity's photon-kinetic powers meant distance offered her dominion over non-flying/less mobile capes; proximity diluted this advantage. No strategist born of sane bone would trade such sovereignty for a closer view of her target—unless hubris, or ignorance, or some deeper calculus compelled her. Why would she choose to approach the lair of another villain when she could simply bombard the building from afar? Surely, she wasn't that stupid. Paul tasted each possibility, found stale error in all, and concluded: She does not know a cape is nearby.
Then why was she here? Coincidence?
Paul felt his mind unfold with fresh possibilities—layers peeling back, each petal revealing the next. Bakuda's proximity. Oni Lee's departure. Purity's conveniently timed arrival. A trap? Yes. No. Maybe. Oni Lee would have been present if so. Perhaps, more precisely, a distraction? He ran some calculations with the data he had gathered over the past few days and deduced that Lung's transfer to the Birdcage should have been finalized by now… unless, of course, it was delayed for some reason.
Ah... Realisation struck him like a freight train.
If so, it would be a scheme, most elaborate. To drag every hero's eye, every PRT chopper's rotor, away from the true target: Oni Lee's mission to free Lung before his transfer to the Birdcage is finalised.
Keenly aware how far off the mark he could be, Paul's instincts still continued to flare in alarm. The consequences of this possibility being reality unfolded rapidly in his mind. He saw Purity hadn't halted her approach and knew then that he had to act. Immediately.
Below, ABB gunmen scrambled for positions. Someone raised the alarm, warning the others of the cape; another cursed Bakuda's absence. Purity ignores the hostiles. Her focus was on the building behind them, her power already humming to fragment the reinforced steel. A mistake.
Paul's decisions crystallized in that instant. He turned and ran. With a single motion, he vaulted through the nearest window facing the direction from which he had come, body twisting in a backflip into the night air as he caught a drainage downspout to fireman slide down; fingertips burning on wet rust; soles scraping the brick wall of the building.
He dropped the last four meters into a crouch on the sodden ground, pain blossoming across calves and spine, only to be ignored. Paul bowed into a sideways roll, absorbing impact, then surged to his feet, sprinting, muscles burning, lungs seizing, adrenaline painting his vision in blurry edges. One glance back as he dove for safety told the story of his fate had he tarried: the lighthouse's lantern-like windows flared orange, then white, and a thunderous roar split the night.
Behind him, Bakuda's bombs went off, and the building metastasized into a pillar of flame. An instant later, a wall of compressed air rushed out to smack him, knocking him out before he could tumble safely into the water beneath the bridge.