WHO Avery, NPC Brody and Ruth WHEN Halloween night (backdated) WHERE Manhattan, near Apollo's tower WHAT Avery doing some snooping and getting unexpected answers from an unlikely source WARNINGS none
Halloween was an excellent night to be incognito and skulking about, it turned out. People in costume were everywhere as Avery walked the city streets. He’d taken on the costume of an old-timey gumshoe, with a prop old camera around his neck, and his hands in the pockets of a big trenchcoat.
The apartment complex that Archer Goldenhawk lived in was ludicrously exclusive. It turned out that it was virtually impossible to get in through the front door even without being questioned, and his vague words of waiting for someone got him turned out again to wait on the street. Those concierge guys were super into their jobs. Waiting on the street was boring as fuck, though. An hour later, he tried to slip in again, hidden away in a group of other people, but he only got as far as the elevator before he got stopped again, and this time more firmly put back on the sidewalk. He tried to ask a few questions about the residents, but got stonewalled at every turn.
Well fuck. Avery chewed gum and walked around the block, trying to look at the building from other angles. The penthouse was all glass, and the city lights glinted off it, making it impossible to see inside, even with binoculars (and he tried). Getting agitated, he crossed the street to look up at the building from the other side of the road.
He was getting nothing. He’d been so certain he’d get some sort of lead from this and really impress Lyra, but he had nothing. Maybe he should’ve dressed up as a janitor or something. Nobody noticed the janitors.
Eventually, he found himself on the edge of Central Park, sitting on a bench with his phone between his hands, trying to plan his next move. Did he call in a bomb threat? Get the building evacuated and see if he could flush Archer out? Or did he wait until there was a shift change and try to sneak in again? He wasn’t anywhere close to giving up yet, though. Not by a long shot.
What he didn’t notice was a couple of kids walking near, pausing as the older girl answered a phonecall. The boy, maybe six, looked at Avery with bright, intent eyes.
Brody watched for a minute, then looked up at Ruth. She was always on the phone these days. Something had happened at school with her friend. Brody didn’t know, because Ruth didn’t talk about it. Ruth didn’t talk to any of them much since Bailey left. She just slammed a lot of doors.
If he’d been walking with Cin he never would have left her side, but Ruth was hissing something down the phone like a snake and Brody didn’t like snakes. The man on the bench wasn’t scary, anyway, not like all the men in the place they used to live. Also, Archie promised he’d always protect Brody from everything in the world because Brody was special, and Brody knew that was true. It was hard to be scared when you knew your protector would kill any baddies that tried to get you.
Brody had never not been scared in his life, but he wasn’t scared now.
“You’ll never get into the tower,” he told the man on the bench. “It’s not your home. It’s ours.”
“What?” Avery looked up at the boy stopped in front of him and spoke in riddles, dragging him from his thoughts. “What’re you talking about?”
Wait, the tower? Like, Archer’s tower? Avery straightened up, his mind spinning. No, no it couldn’t be, it was just some kid being weird, not an alien pod person warning him off.
Brody stepped back a fraction as the man sat up, staying out of reach. Even though he wasn’t scared, Cin always told him to stay out of reach of strange men. Brody was already really good at staying out of reach of Barak, back when Barak was alive. No one was scarier than Barak (even after Barak was dead) but Brody still made sure no strange man could grab him with their long arms. “Archie can make you die for a really long time if you hurt me,” he warned the man.
He wasn’t frightened, though. He knew the man wasn’t going to hurt him, but the man was going to make Archie mad, which meant he was probably a bad guy.
Plus, Cin had been telling him for as long as he could remember that he needed to grow up, he was almost seven, he needed to be scarier so bad guys wouldn’t hurt him or his sisters or even Jake. This man was good practise as someone to be scary at since Archie was going to get him anyway.
Weird kid, comes up to him and says cryptic shit, and then threatens him outta nowhere. Avery looked the child dressed as a clown up and down, trying to figure him out. “Archie can do that, can he?” he asked after a moment. Last thing he wanted was old Archie coming down on him, but at least he was right, this kid meant the Goldenhawk tower. The hair was prickling on the back of his neck. “Why’d you come over here then?”
“It’s Halloween,” Brody explained to the man, swinging his arms like a washing machine as he stood on the spot, his hollow plastic pumpkin of candy banging against his body at the end of each swing. “I’m being scary.” He pulled a scary face at the man, lots of teeth. He knew people were scared of clowns because they had all talked about the scariest costumes at school, but he didn’t decide that’s what he wanted to be until he found out Cin was going to dress up as a clown and then he had to. (Jake had made fun of him ‘she’s going as a slutty clown, you don’t even know what slutty means’ but Brody didn’t care, because Archie had already promised he would paint Brody’s face and it was going to look so scary it wouldn’t matter what stupid Jake said.)
Being scary was better than being creepy. Ruth called him creepy heaps these days and he didn’t like that. Ruth was meaner since Bailey left them, like she had to make up for Bailey being gone or something. She didn’t throw things like Bailey used to, but last week she’d gotten so mad at him after he told her that the woman they passed at a bus stop was going to die, like she got really, really mad and shouted at him and then refused to talk to him all the way home, and she walked really fast too so he couldn’t keep up. And then Cin had been mad at her because she hit the elevator doors to make them closed before he could get in and made him ride up on his own, which meant he was crying when he walked in the door because the elevators were scary if you had no one in there with you to protect you from being chopped in half. Cin had yelled at Ruth for leaving him behind and Ruth had yelled at Brody for being creepy and all Brody had been doing was pointing things out about the world like he always did, only this time it had been about a lady and not a fire truck.
And okay, the next day Ruth had come in and said she was sorry for the elevator thing, and volunteered to take him trick or treating, so it turned out okay. But he’d still rather be scary than creepy. Scary seemed like something you did on purpose.
“Uh huh. Super scary.”
Kid must have seen him hanging around. That must be it. Avery’s shoulders relaxed, and he took off his hat to scratch his fingers through his hair. It wasn’t some otherworldly alien child, it was some kid that Goldenhawk kept in his apartment (which… unexpected) who had seen Avery somehow (access to security cameras? Note to self) and now was being sassy cos he was a kid and that’s what kids do.
“Well, I can’t get into your tower anyway, so Archie doesn’t have to murder anyone today,” he said, pulling out his phone to jot down a couple of thoughts in his notes app. He paused a moment, and then, extra casually, not like it was any big deal or anything, added, “Has he made someone die before?”
With a final soft thump of his pumpkin against his leg, Brody looked at the man, and nodded. He wasn’t going to talk about Barak because Brody was smart enough not to catch Barak’s attention even though he was very dead, but Barak wasn’t the only one. There were squillions. More people than Brody knew how to count.
Now there was a cold feeling in the pit of Avery’s stomach. Maybe the kid had misunderstood something… or maybe he was telling the truth. He kept his phone screen facing away from the boy, and found his voice recorder app on his phone. “What else does he do?” he asked, hitting record and then lowering his arm, microphone pointed towards his subject. “Is he fun to live with?”
Brody shrugged first, because Archie did lots of things? But then he nodded, because he was definitely fun when he was around. “He made me look like this,” he said, pointing at his face, pretty proud of how cool and scary he looked. A few adults had properly winced when they opened the door to him earlier.
“Yeah, he’s got the touch with face paint,” Avery agreed. “It’s lit.” Yet another talent for Goldenhawk’s arsenal of immense talents. “Did you choose the clown? What did Archie dress as?”
Brody nodded away quietly again, poking his cheek with a finger. The face paint was cracking a little and it felt funny. “My sister was a clown too,” he said, turning his head to check on his other sister, who was still having a fast and furious conversation on her phone and not paying any attention to him at all. That was pretty normal, but the man was listening to him and saying nice things about Archie. Brody’s face was lit, he was right! “Archie dresses as lots of things,” he said, getting into it. “A doctor and a statue and a rock star and a soldier, pow pow pow when he went to fight the Nazis! But he wasn’t Archie then, that was before.”
That was some resume Goldenhawk had. Avery hoped his phone was recording everything properly. “Fighting Nazis? Who was he then?” he asked, leaning forward slightly out of eagerness. Another alias? Maybe a prototype during the war, before the first generation of Goldenhawks appeared? Round one of the clones, or the alien making his first appearance- but wait, what if it wasn’t his first appearance? How the fuck old was this guy???
Brody pointed at his feet and grinned, because it was a funny name, but it was one of his favourites. Way better than Warmoth or Goldenhawk (hawks were a bit scary) or Murphy (scariest of all.) “Lightfoot!” he said, with a giggle. “Maximillian, a million a million and million light feet.” It was very funny, actually. “A million a million a million,” he carried on (with another quick glance over his shoulder cos his siblings always thought he was really annoying when he repeated things over and over, but some words just sounded so great?)
“Archer” sure seemed to have a theme with naming himself. Goldenhawk, Lightfoot- what else was there? Avery’s mind was prickling with curiosity. “Got any other names?” he asked, hoping the boy would come out with something else, other than the verbage he was currently gabbling. “For the rock star maybe?”
None of the other names were as good as Lightfoot, so the rest of them all crowded in his head, unclear. Brody shrugged again, then said “there’s a million,” and grinned because oh, that was funny! “A million million Maxamillian.” He could make this into a song, maybe. Archie thought it was great when Brody came to him with songs he’d made up.
“Kid- kid-” Avery had to raise his voice slightly to cut his sing-song voice off. “Hey! What’s your name, anyway? What else have you seen Archer do? Has he ever done anything strange, or peculiar?” He was getting too eager for the story now, and asking too many questions at once. “Where is he from?”
“... million,” Brody snuck in one final word before he trailed off under all the man’s questions. Everything Archie did was strange. He bought Brody a violin, that was strange. He gave them a home in his tower, that was strange. He made Cin smile a lot and that was very strange. Brody didn’t really have an answer for that question.
Where was he from though? Brody knew that. He didn’t know what it meant, but he knew it the same way he knew the woman at the bus stop had been going to die and like he knew Barak had been still alive for days even when Cin thought he was dead. He knew that soon Jake was going to run headfirst into the balcony doors one morning and lose a tooth and he knew Archie used to live on the biggest and grandest magical mountain there ever was. “Olympus,” he said, with a proud smile at how smart he was.
Avery blinked, and licked his lips quickly. Olympus? What was- Olympus??? “What does that mean?” he asked quickly, insistently. There were answers and they were almost in reach-
It means soaring heights and huge powers and images Brody didn’t understand, a whole lot of things Brody didn’t understand, but he did know some things for sure. “No one’s going to believe you,” he promised. “They’re all going to call you a liar, Lyra pants on fiiiyaah.”
“BroDY!” Ruth’s voice ripped through the night as she stormed over, looking at Avery with untrusting eyes. “What are you dressed as, a pedo?” she sneered as she reached down and grabbed Brody’s hand. “Get away from him.”
Avery raised his hands innocently. “He came over here, I never touched him,” he replied, sitting up straighter, leaning against the back of the bench. He decided to keep recording, just in case this little altercation was brought up again, and set his phone on the bench next to him. “Maybe tell Archer to teach him not to talk to strangers.” It slipped out without thinking, and he wished he could take it back as soon as the word was said. Fuck. Now Goldenhawk would hear about this…
“Maybe go fuck yourself-” Ruth said, looking at his phone and wondering what he was doing with it. There was definitely something wrong with this guy, an adult dressed up as a detective (yeah she knew what the costume was, obviously, but pedo accusations got people to back off faster) hanging out by himself talking to kids. She didn’t like the way he phrased his question, either, like Archie was training Brody to be some kind of pet.
Her own phone was still in her hand, and she raised it, centered on his face, and took a picture of him. “-You look like you’d be pretty good at that,” she finished, and started to pull Brody away from him.
“Wow, sick burn,” Avery said, rolling his eyes. He didn’t like that she’d taken a photo of him, but what could he do about it? Steal it and delete the photo, and have her scream the street down calling him a pervert? He looked at Brody and shrugged apologetically for his sister. “Happy Halloween.”
“Die in a fire,” said Ruth coldly, and hauled Brody up into her arms. He was annoyingly heavy, and she couldn’t carry him for long, but he was less likely to throw a tantrum if she carried him than if she dragged him off by his arm, and Ruth wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible. Cin was going to be mad at her for not paying attention and letting Brody get too close to the guy, so she was already thinking of some way to spin it to make it not her fault. There was no chance Brody wouldn’t mention it; he told Cin and Archie everything. Usually more than once.
Brody, for his part, waved at the man over Ruth’s shoulder. “I wasn’t scared of him,” he told Ruth proudly. “And he’s not going to die in a fire, he’s going to-”
“Brody!” Ruth cut him off, her insides freezing. Death! Why was he so obsessed with death!? “I swear if you make up how anyone else is gonna die I’m gonna leave you here in the park, you little creep!”
Brody shut his mouth and held onto her a little tighter. He didn’t want to be left in the park. The park was full of other strangers, dressed as scarier things than that man. He wanted to get back to the tower, where Archie would keep him safe from everyone who was trying to break in.
Avery looked down at his phone, ending the recording and getting quickly to his feet. He had a whole lot of work to do, and it was going to take far too long to get home, so he could get properly stuck into it. That Brody kid was a godsend. What a stroke of fucking luck.
Archer Goldenhawk was going to be busted wide open.