Chapter Text
Keith
The cool September night breeze cut through Keith like a knife as he made his way down the dark street towards his apartment. Ignoring the chill in the air, he tightened his thin leather jacket closer around himself and walked a bit faster, thinking of the hot shower he was going to take as soon as he possibly could. He could still smell the faint scent of meat lingering on his shirt; even after working at the butcher’s market for months he couldn’t get used to it. It was still so gross to him. But the sooner he got home, the sooner he could scrub the smell of raw meat off his skin, the better he’d feel.
By the time he rounded the corner of his block he was practically stripping as he rushed over to his front door. Key already in hand, Keith unlocked the door to the small apartment building, shutting it behind him with a heavy thud. Instantly he knew that was a mistake and it was confirmed by the sounds of the bottom floor apartment door unlocking the half dozen or so chain and deadbolt locks. A second later, a bald headed and angry looking man stuck his head out through a small gap in the doorway.
“Stop slamming the door! Some people are trying to sleep!” he growled out, leveling Keith a dark glare. He held it for a moment as Keith stared at him impassively, before closing the door again with a slam harder than Keith had used for the front door.
Giving the closed apartment door the finger, Keith ran up the two flights of stairs taking the steps two at a time until he came to the paint peeled wooden door of his shared apartment. Just as he went to slide the key into the slot the door swung open. In the doorway was his roommate and best friend Shiro, giving him a knowing half smug/half disappointed smirk.
“You pissed off Iverson again didn’t you?” Shiro said. He moved off to the side so Keith could step inside. “I could hear his yell from up here.”
Keith didn’t bother responding as he pulled off his jacket and tossed it on the half broken chair they used as a makeshift coat rack. This happened almost every day. Their crotchety neighbor had it out for him and it didn’t matter what Keith did, he was going to yell at him. Even if Keith did taunt him a bit. Sometimes.
Shiro closed the door and went back to where he had been sitting on their worn couch in the small living room. “You know you shouldn’t piss off our neighbors,” Shiro said as Keith walked past him towards his bedroom. “Especially the one that is also our landlord.”
“He knows that door doesn’t close unless you force it shut,” Keith said with a frown, stopping in the doorframe of his bedroom. “So if he doesn’t want me to slam it, then he should fix it.”
“I agree with you, I just don’t wanna get evicted,” Shiro said with a shrug and a laugh.
Keith rolled his eyes, but he couldn’t help but have a half smile at his friend’s hyperbole. “We’re not gonna get evicted,” he said shaking his head as he headed into his room. He paused halfway inside, “well, not yet anyway.”
The click of the door shut out the dim unintelligible din of the noise coming from the TV until it was indistinguishable from the general hum of the city that vibrated all around him, pouring in through the cracks in the windows and the walls. Keith took his first real breath of the day, sighing against his door. Every day he felt more and more like he was just biding his time during the day so that at night…
He glanced at the alarm clock he had on the makeshift night table he had made from a piece of a desk he repurposed. The clock read 10pm but it was an hour fast, he just never got around to fixing it. That meant he had about two more hours until Shiro couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer and he’d go to sleep; that’s when he could do everything he needed to do.
Grabbing his towel from where he’d drapped it over the exposed radiator the night before, Keith left his room for the bathroom, beyond ready to take a shower and scrub the dirt of the day free from his skin. He made sure the water was as hot as he could get it before he got in, enjoying the way the steam came off his cool pale skin and fogged the small yellow tiled room. It took him a while of scrubbing with a thick and overly expensive bar of soap before he was satisfied that the smell of the market was finally free from him. Keith stepped out of the shower, a bank of mist following him as he towel dried his hair and then wrapped the towel around himself as he exited the bathroom for his bedroom.
“Hey did you eat?” Shiro asked as Keith passed in the small hallway between the bathroom and his room.
“Uh, not really,” Keith said running a hand through his hair, shaking out some of the water. “Is there any leftovers?”
“Yeah I brought you chicken piccata from the restaurant,” Shiro said turning back to the TV, gesturing behind him towards the refrigerator. “I know if I don’t bring you anything you’ll forget to feed yourself,” he added in a chastising but affectionate tone.
Keith huffed out a small laugh, not bothering to argue. Shiro was right. He’d forget to eat for days if Shiro didn’t remind him from time to time.
He went back into his room and tossed on whatever was cleanest and most comfortable and headed back out into the main room. He dipped his head into the living room area to get a look at what Shiro was watching on the TV before heading into the kitchen to grab the food.
“The news? Really? Are you an old man?” Keith said as he pulled out the styrofoam container labeled “for Keith” in Shiro’s spindly handwriting.
“Are you really bullying me for watching the news?” Shiro said looking over the back of the couch to frown at Keith. “You know the news it is like, important.”
“Yeah but don’t you just get news alerts on your phone or something?” Keith said picking up a chicken cutlet with his fingers and lifting the whole container to his mouth to take a small bite from it. “Isn’t that enough?”
Shiro shook his head at him disapprovingly. “How do you function in the world?”
Keith took another bite of the fridge cold chicken piccata from between his fingers holding the styrofoam container right under his chin. “Just fine I think.”
“Debatable,” Shiro mumbled, turning back to the TV.
Taking a few more bites, Keith eventually decided it might taste better hot and placed the half eaten cutlet back down and stuck the whole thing into the microwave. As it heated up, he took a few steps over towards the couch to catch a bit of whatever news channel was playing on the TV.
—it is still unclear as to the cause of these attacks but the NYPD Commissioner stated today in a briefing held this afternoon, that officers are investigating several possibilities. They urged all New Yorkers to stay away from anything that looks suspicious and to remain on high alert until the perpetrators are found.
“What are they talking about?” Keith asked gesturing to the news reporter on TV who had already moved onto a new story.
“The attacks,” Shiro said, still watching the TV with a furrowed brow of concentration. Keith said nothing and that seemed to get his attention. “The attacks? The ones where they keep finding people mauled in the streets?”
Keith shrugged.
“Dude there’s been like seven!”
Microwaved beeped and he walked towards it as he responded. “I think I heard someone at the market talking about it.” He grabbed the steaming container, quickly placing the hot box on the counter. “I didn’t know there were that many.”
“Yeah it’s serious,” Shiro said, lowering the volume of the TV as he spoke. “They’ve found the bodies of people all over the city, in three different boroughs.”
There was a long pause and Keith didn’t have to look up from his food to know Shiro was looking at him with a concerned expression. “I can feel you staring at me,” Keith said, reaching for a fork from dish drying rack.
“I’m just… concerned. For you.”
The palpable worry in his voice was enough to get Keith to look over at him. He moved his food to the side of his mouth. “Why?”
“Cause you’re kinda reckless and do stupid shit and we’re not locals and sometimes you get lost and there’s weirdos going around killing people and it’s New York and you’re my best friend and do I even need to have another reason?”
Keith finished chewing and swallowed before responding, annoyed and touched at the same time. “I’m not gonna get killed, Shiro.” The amount of concern on Shiro’s face became too much for Keith to look at and he turned his head back down to his food. “You worry too much.”
“Listen I’ve watched you walk past a coyote eating a burger, I worry the right amount,” Shiro scoffed turning back to the TV.
Keith smirked, continuing to eat. He was always amused by his friend’s capacity to worry about him. It’d been like that for their entire friendship, as far as Keith could remember. There was something nice about that, knowing someone was worrying over you, even if you didn’t pay them much mind. Keith didn’t really have anyone else to do that for him besides Shiro.
The next few hours passed without comment. Shiro finished whatever homework he’d been working on with the TV as background noise and Keith entertained himself mindlessly, waiting for Shiro to tire himself out and go to bed. By the time that rolled around it was almost midnight and Keith was fighting off sleep himself. But he couldn’t waste anymore time.
He waited until he could no longer hear movement behind Shiro’s bedroom door before he went into his own room. As silently as he could he grabbed his phone and stuffed it into the pocket of his sweatpants and headed for the window. Carefully, he opened the window and stepped out onto the fire escape. Taking care not to make a lot of noise, he climbed up the steps and got up onto the roof.
Climbing over the short ledge, he stepped out onto the smooth cement roof. Keith took a deep heavy breath, taking a second to enjoy the quiet. From the top of the small walk up he lived in, Keith could could see the warm orange-yellow sodium lights filling the winding and meandering streets of Brooklyn all the way up to the water’s edge, cutting a line against the tall and controlled Manhattan skyline that was reflected in a warbled and hazy facsimile of the buildings.
It was a stark change from the red canyons and open sky of his native Arizona. He missed it a times, the warm days, the cool nights, the almost constant sun, and the feeling of being just always right in the midst of nature and the landscape all around him. New York had a completely different feeling. Canyons of rock were traded for canyons of steel and glass, filled with tumbleweeds of newspaper, and the dried cracked salt ground became the fractured sidewalks. It was different, but not negative.
He turned from the view and walked along the roof to the small shed against the water unit housed up there. When he and Shiro first moved in he quickly realized that their landlord had all but forgotten about it on the roof and since no one came up there often he adopted it as his own small work area.
Keith opened up the short wooden door and turned on the small lamp he’d installed in the corner. The light illuminated the walls covered in several maps, each with pins and writing in certain locations and photos and notes surrounding it. Right below it was a small table with a folding chair that he used as a makeshift desk, and it too was covered in scraps of map and photos and handwritten notes.
Closing the door behind him, Keith took a step back to look at the maps. The largest was pinned on the longest wall, depicting the entirety of the city of New York. Clusters of photos and pins and scribblings covered certain sections but the more Keith looked at it, the more he grew frustrated. Keeping this a secret, this investigation, it was starting to take a toll on him. Keith was constantly tired and drained and mentally broken from just being so desperate to find—
He sighed, slumping down into the chair. He leaned forward, placing his head in his hands and looking up at the map. His eyes drifted across the grouping of pins and notes; a cluster over by The Battery, some uptown in Inwood, a few scattered about in Queens, a couple dotted over Brooklyn with one even being incredibly close to where he lived. Small leads that he’d sussed out while searching for his mother, all places he personally checked out. But all turned up nothing.
His eyes drifted down to a small picture he had pinned carefully to the corner of the map. He didn’t have to really look at it to know what it was, he’d practically memorized every pixel. Still he looked at it.
It was small, a frayed 4x6 photo with a bit of water damage on the corner and a crease on the side. The subject was rather simple for something so important: a young woman with long black hair with the ends dyed pink, and soft smile looking down at a small toddler in her lap. She had her head tilted forward, her hair creating a curtain that the child’s small hands grasped at. It was one of the only pictures he had of his mother, and the only one of them together.
He’d only been about a year old in that picture and he had absolutely no memory of taking it, not even the vague fabricated memories he had of his mother in general that came from stories his father had told him when he was young. No, all he had was the picture, and a handful of others each with the same soft, looping handwritten sentence on the back:
1995 Brooklyn, NY
Lotor
Just as the last beams of light streaked through the sky, disappearing behind the brick facades of the low industrial buildings that lined the river, Lotor stepped out of his front door. Quickly descending the steps to the sidewalk, he looked up and down the street watching the street lamps turn on in unison as the night settled into the sky above him. It was cool for September, not that it mattered to him. He was always a perfect homeostasis of temperature; a perk— the one positive thing of his otherwise burdensome genetics.
He began a brisk walk down the street, eyeing the buildings as he moved, noting which lights began to turn on as darkness descended. It seemed like people had begun to settle in for the night, unsurprising for weekday in September, but it was worth noting.
It was finally completely dark by the time he’d reached his destination. Tucked behind the looming structures of two very large and solid industrial buildings was a rather unassuming building. With its small translucent windows that barely gave off a glow of inner lights, and it’s almost abandoned looking exterior, anyone who didn’t know better would have walked right past it without thinking twice.
But Lotor knew better and he knew exactly what he was looking for. The symbol was small, just faint design on the heavy metal door that was spray painted on in a similar color that made it fade into the gunmetal gray. Yet as he approached it the symbol began to glow brighter and brighter until it was luminescent and casting a cool violet glow on Lotor’s face.
He reached for the door handle and the heavy metal opened with ease, sliding into the wall like a pocket door. As he stepped inside, the change of atmosphere was instantly different. While the outside was plain, hidden, unassuming— the inside was a wash of energy.
Serving as a bar in the front, there were hordes of people crowding around a long metallic bar, ordering drinks and chatting over loud thumping music that seemed far too loud to be unheard from the street. The people that populated the bar were much larger and meaner looking than Lotor was with his lithe frame and long silver hair, but none gave him any trouble as he walked straight through the crowded front, catching the eye and nodding to the bartender as his passed, and towards the back of the bar towards a pair of double doors on the far back wall, almost hidden by dim lights.
As soon as he pushed the doors open, the atmosphere changed again, only this time instead of going from a quiet Brooklyn street to a noise bar, he moved down a wide flight of stairs from the noisey bar into a deafening arena-like room full to the brim with people.
There was makeshift stadium seating a few rows deep around the massive underground room, all which were situated around a circular dirt ring where two people were preparing themselves to fight. Cheering and chanting and betting and drinking and screaming all took place in this one room, packed to the brim with people all watching the center waiting for the show to begin. It was lined with benches filled with people closer toward the ring, and flittered out into more and more sparse seating that held small tables where much more contained spectators watched the proceedings. Even higher above them, up a flight of stairs, were private boxes where more discerning and seemingly wealthy patrons could observe the fight without being in the ructus of the crowd.
Moving his way through the crowd he watched as a bell was rung indicating that the fight would begin shortly. The two people in the ring moved in closer from eyeing each other from opposite ends of the space, to standing only a few feet apart. The crowd began to get more and more excited, cheering and screaming and as they did.
There was a change in the appearance of the two fighters. Already tall and strong looking people, they seemed to grow bigger as they stood in front of each other, both trying to intimidate the other. Their bodies seemed to grow more muscle mass and height the more aggressively they moved. Both of their hands transformed into sharp ended claws with tufts of hair growing out of the backs of their hands and fangs grew from their mouths. They became wilder looking, animalistic.
The two people, now massive and monstrous, attacked each other with a terrifying cry that was drowned out by the cheers of the crowd around them. Clawed hands slashed and gripped on flesh that sliced and bleed, dripping deep red onto the dirt. Their faces, that had transformed into much more grotesque non-human appearances, gnarled and bit at each other, with their sharp teeth catching on chunks of skin on their arms and shoulders. And each blow, and swipe, and bite, was cheered on by the roaring crowd. Drinks sloshed in glasses as spectators raised their hands to cheer, screaming for more.
Lotor made his way calmly through the rowdy crowd, confidently avoiding having a drink spilled on him or being accidently smacked in the face by an unruly on-looker. He glanced up at the private boxes, only really seeing vague shadows of figures behind the tinted glass. One in particular caught his eye and he stared at it a bit longer than the rest. Though the protective glass was tinted and dark, he could clearly see two figures resting their arms against the window, each with a drink in hand and talking to each other.
He walked until he came to a small table, well in the back and quite high up in the arena, where a few women sat, one of which watching him approach with a smirk.
“You’re late,” she said, stirring her drink with a thin red straw, clinking the ice against he glass.
“Thank you for noticing, Ezor,” he said dryly. “I had some business to take care of before I could come here.”
“Watching the sunset?” Ezor added with an even bigger smirk, swirling the ponytail of her long multicolored hair around with her finger.
Lotor narrowed his eyes at her briefly, but ignored the comment. Instead he took a seat at the table, opposite her and between the two other women there. He made sure to keep his chair turned in a way where he could keep the box in his line of sight.
He turned to the woman next to him. She was silent, though watching him with thinly veiled interest. She had her hand on a drink but it had gone mostly untouched, letting the condensation drip down the sides, forming a puddle of water at the base of the cup. When he sat down beside her she perked up, sitting straighter in her seat.
“Acxa is everything ready?” he asked her, half turning his head to indicate he was speaking to her.
She gave him a brief nod. “Yes, just awaiting your go-ahead.”
“Excellent,” Lotor sighed, crossing his legs and leaning back in the chair. He cast a glance around the table. “Where’s Zethrid?”
“She’s down there, beating the shit out of some idiot,” Ezor said, gesturing with the small straw she’d been playing with at the ring below.
Lotor glanced over at the match, noticing that the seemingly victorious person with in fact Zethrid, gesturing proudly to herself, half covered in sweat and bruises and blood. “I suppose we have to wait for her then,” he said folding his hands in his lap. “Not like time is of the essence.”
Ezor gave him a shrug but said nothing. The other woman at the table , who had as of yet said or did nothing, leaned forward sliding Lotor a small envelope.
“Narti is this…?”
She nodded at him, leaning back in her seat, pulling her hoodie lower and obscuring more of her face.
He carefully opened the small envelope, flipping back the fold and pulling out the note inside. The scratchy handwriting was just clear enough that it could be seen in the dark arena they were seated in. After reading it, he slipped the note back in and sealed the envelope. “Thank you Narti,” he said. She merely nodded again.
Cheers erupted from around them as the bell rung signaling the end of the match. They all turned their head towards the ring, watching as a relatively unharmed but still very monstrous looking Zethrid shouted victoriously at the crowd as her opponent laid on the dirt ground unconscious. The audience seemed to be split between cheering for her and booing at her, the majority doing the later. Not that she cared, acting as if the entire room was basking in her splendor.
“Well at least it was a short match,” Lotor said, reaching over for Acxa’s untouched drink. She let him take it and he took a long sip of it.
“She’s far too impatient to drag it out,” Ezor said with a grin. “She’s fast but good.”
Lotor looked at her with a flat glare and barely contained rolling his eyes as he finished he rest of Acxa’s drink. “Let’s go,” he said setting down the now empty glass.
The four of them got up from the table, weaving through the crowd of still cheering and booing spectators, and headed to the doors they entered from. As they approached, a very sweaty but beaming Zethrid jogged over to them, still wiping sweat from her face on a small towel.
“Did you guys see that fight!? I crushed him right with my bear hands!” she said, tossing the towel into the crowd behind her. Her appearance was much less ferial now. She’d lost some of the animalistic aspects and now looked much more like a human woman. A still very fit and muscular human woman with slightly sharper teeth than a normal person, but human nonetheless.
“Yeah you were a real riot,” Ezor grinned. “I particularly liked the way you almost ripped his arm off.”
“That was pretty great,” Zethrid said, almost wistfully. “What about when he tried to bite me and I knocked him on his ass?”
“Legendary,” Ezor said with a huge smile. Zethrid beamed back.
“If you two are quite done,” Acxa said dryly. “We have something more important to take care of.” The other two looked at her sheepishly, though exchanging small grins.
“Thank you Acxa,” Lotor said. He glanced up at the private box, still seeing the figures talking against the glass. “Let’s go have a chat with our dear friend.”
They all followed behind Lotor, their tone instantly changed. The four of them fell in line behind Lotor as they made their way out of the arena and back up the stairs and to the bar. Walking through the crowd, now even more packed after the end of the match, they headed for a separate entrance by the other side of the bar. Hidden away from the general area were a set of double doors, made to look almost like part of the wall. But just like the entrance to the bar, as Lotor approached the symbol on the door began to glow and he opened it easily.
The five of them headed up the stairs and into a clear high ceiling hallway lined with large ornate doors. The hall itself was much more decorative than the bar below, carpeted in a lavishly designed purple and gold with dim ambient lights that cast a gold glow on the metallic walls.
Mentally counting the doors for a moment, Lotor headed straight for the second closest door on his right. Stopping a few steps in front of it, he gestured to Zethrid who took her cue instantly. Preparing herself, she shifted her weight onto her left leg and with her right kicked open the doors sending them shuttering against the walls inside the small room.
The people inside jumped in shock at the sudden intrusion, shouting and spilling drinks. The low music that has been playing was drowned out by the cries of alarm. Lotor’s eyes locked on the figures he’d been focusing on through the other side of the glass. The two men who had been talking closely, leaning against the window drinks in hand, practically froze in place at the sight of the five of them storming in. Zethrid, Ezor, Narti, and Acxa all walked in front of Lotor flanking him as he sauntered in between them.
“Throk,” Lotor said in a loud but smooth voice, his mouth bent into a smirk.
Throk, a man of nearly six feet and a lithe but muscular stature, stood rooted to the spot. His expression was twisted in a mix of fear and defiance. “Lotor,” he said clearing his throat. “I didn’t know you were back in the states.”
“Yes I’m aware,” Lotor said, his grin growing even bigger. “I prefer to keep my comings and goings private. To keep everyone,” he glanced around at the few other people in the room all staring at him with a mix of hesitation and worry on their faces, “on their toes.”
Throk visibly swallowed. Forcing himself to relax, he walked over to the small wet bar at the side of the room, as if pretending Zethrid and Ezor weren’t standing right there glaring at him with intent. “Well,” he began to pour himself another drink, “what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?”
“Some business matters,” Lotor said vaguely. His eyes traveled with Throk as he brought the glass up to his lips with a barely concealed trembling hand. “That involves you of course.”
“Oh?” Throk said with a poorly feigned nonchalance.
“Mhm,” Lotor hummed. “The small business matter of your insurrection.”
Throk nearly choked on his drink, dripping some down his chin. “I assure you I have no idea what you’re impl—”
“Clear the room,” Lotor said, his voice suddenly void of it’s playfulness, now just dark and serious.
Instantly the other’s scrambled to get out, tripping over themselves to be as far away as they could. Throk stood in the center, flanked by the four women all staring at him with confident malice, gripping his hand on his glass and fisting his other beside him. He didn’t move a muscle as Lotor walked slowly towards him as Acxa shut the door quietly behind him.
Throk began to babble, frozen in place. “Lotor please I— you’ve been misinformed, I simply— what I said was not–not what it was coming across to be I was simply trying to—”
“I am fully aware what you were trying to do,” Lotor said calmly, the playful tone in his voice back. It seemed to send a cold streak down Throk’s spine. “And unfortunately, it just wasn’t done quite well enough to be kept out of my knowing. Though, points for trying.”
“Lotor this is a misunderst—”
“I know that you have been talking with all my father’s generals,” he said. He reached down and slipped he glass with the half filled drink from Throk’s hand. Holding it up to the soft, dim light glowing gold from the wall, he swirled the ice in the deep amber liquid. “And I know that you are looking to unseat him. Forming your own little,” he paused to laugh, “ pack. ” Lotor’s voice was dripping in condescension.
Throk said nothing. He swallowed thickly, his eyes flickering between the glass in Lotor’s hand and Lotor’s face.
“Now seeing that I’m feeling quite generous today I’ve decided to give you a rather interesting opportunity.” Lotor looked at him and saw that he had the man’s complete attention. “Is that something you’d be interested in?”
With a moment of hesitation Throk nodded enthusiastically.
“Excellent.” Lotor downed what was left of the drink, placing it firmly down on the small side table near the large tinted panel of glass facing down into the arena. “You’re not originally from here are you?” He looked at him expectantly. “New York.”
“N–no,” Throk said, shaking his head. “I’m from Tulsa.”
Lotor’s lips quirked up in a smirk. “And you still have pack connections there?”
Throk hesitated longer. “Yes,” he said as if he wasn’t entirely sure if he should be telling the truth or not.
“Well I need you to go there and find something for me,” Lotor said. He pulled out the envelope that Narti had handed him earlier. Reaching down, Lotor took Throk’s hand and turned it so it was palmside up, and placed the envelope in his hand. “Don’t open it until you get there, somewhere safe and alone. It is of the most grave importance that you follow my instructions to the letter, do you understand?”
Reluctantly he nodded yes. He looked down at his hand as Lotor curled his fingers inward over the letter.
“Excellent,” Lotor grinned. He dropped his hand and he could see Throk visibly deflate. “Well this has been a pleasure. I can’t wait to hear from you from Tulsa,” he said, adding an emphasis on the last word that made Throk grimace. Lotor turned began to walk away. “Have a pleasant trip Throk. Oh and sorry about this, it’s simply a formality.”
“A what— wait—”
As Lotor opened the door he could hear Throk stammering behind him as the four women closed in on him. “My apologies, I know you’re doing me a great favor,” Lotor tossed out as he walked out, “but even so I cannot let insurrection slide. Let’s just call this a formal warning.” The door closed behind Lotor just as he heard Throk’s muffled scream.