The last surviving crewman — still dazed from watching his colleagues die — seemed to have already forgotten the carnage entirely. He poked his head out again, craning to see what had happened to the boss who'd jumped.
Maya wasn't going to let that pass. She covered the distance in a few quick steps, and before he could register what was happening, drew the kunai across his throat. By the time he crumpled, clutching at the wound, Maya was already through the door and into the first-floor cabin.
She reached out with her senses for the last man — the guard posted at the bottom of the hold. He had completely sealed the lower hatch and pressed himself against the wall behind it. Maya frowned. The man was terrified enough to have basically entombed himself down there. The iron door was several inches thick; a paper bomb wouldn't do much against it.
She was also quietly relieved. The guard clearly hadn't understood why she was attacking — he had no idea his captives were the whole point. If he had, he would have used the people in those cages as leverage. That would have made everything a great deal messier.
Maya considered for a moment, then channeled chakra into her palm. In the dim cabin, a pale blue sphere of light bloomed around her hand — her Rasengan. She fed it more chakra slowly, steadily, until controlling it started to take real effort. By then, the ball had swelled from the size of a fist to the size of a volleyball.
Even she felt a chill at what she was holding.
No more hesitation. She pressed the Rasengan directly into the iron door.
BOOM.
The door didn't just give way — it ceased to exist. From the point of contact outward, the entire panel buckled, then the frame, then the steel wall around it, all of it crumpling inward in a single violent wave. The door itself shattered into seven pieces. The guard behind it didn't have time to scream. He was reduced to a red mist in the Rasengan's wake, swept up with the door fragments. The corridor on the other side — nearly twenty-five feet (7 m) of it — twisted and folded like crumpled paper.
It looked like a very angry Hulk had taken a stroll through the lower decks.
Maya stared at the aftermath.
She had not expected her oversized orb — no, her giant Rasengan — to pack quite that much punch.
A column of air was still rushing in through the hole where the door had been. If she hadn't had chakra anchoring her feet to the floor, her small frame might have been swept right off the floor.
She stood firm and waited for the ship to stop shaking, then extended her senses toward the lower hold — toward the people who had been screaming since the gunfire started.
"...They're all right." She exhaled. "Bumps and bruises from being thrown against the bars, but nothing worse."
She hesitated, then decided against going down to them. Instead she turned back to the deck, retrieved the unconscious girl from the corner where she'd hidden her, and carried her carefully inside.
She laid her on the first-floor sofa. Then she looked up and found that the door to the second floor had been locked as well. Maya had no choice — she ran up the exterior wall again, entered through a shattered window into the bridge, and found the emergency shutoff. She hit the red button.
The ship had been drifting toward the vessels moored along Manhattan's west bank. It coasted to a slow stop.
Maya moved fast after that. After recovering what kunai she could, she jumped ashore and hurried to the nearest payphone. She dropped in a coin and pinched her nose to muffle her voice.
She kept her tone flat and low: "Hello. There's been an organ-trafficking operation at Hudson River Pier 9 in Manhattan. They were harvesting organs from the victims. It's on one of the ships moored there."
She hung up before they could respond. Then she dialed the Chinese Consulate General in New York and repeated the same message. Before whoever answered could ask why that was any of their business, Maya added: "Thirty-five people are on board. Some of them are Chinese nationals."
(Why did Maya know the consulate's phone number? Very simple — she also knew the phone number for the Manhattan UN Headquarters, Stark Industries' main line, every city government agency in New York, and the front desk of every major company from Hammer Industries to Oscorp to Rand Enterprises. Very simple.)
When she hung up the second time, the ground seemed to tilt slightly. The left foot had gone completely numb. Her whole body ached. Her mind felt hollowed out.
All she wanted was a hot shower and a long, dreamless sleep.
But she couldn't go home yet.
Maya limped the roughly six hundred and sixty feet (200 m) from the payphone to a low building within line of sight of Pier 9. She couldn't trust the left foot for climbing, so she used her hands. She pulled herself up to the roof and tucked her body into a sheltered corner out of the wind and settled in to watch.
Nearly half an hour later, just before five in the morning, a patrol car finally rolled down the street. A young, blond cop climbed out, hand on his holstered Glock, and picked his way cautiously up the gangway. The ship's bow had drifted into the hull of a vessel moored alongside it; he used that as his bridge onto the deck.
He was back outside in under three minutes.
He jogged to his patrol car, grabbed the radio from beside the driver's seat, and his voice cut through the predawn quiet: "This is Unit 05206, this is Unit 05206. At a Manhattan location — confirmed a human-trafficking incident, with at least five dead on scene. This is a major incident; requesting immediate backup! Over!"
Maya felt the tension bleed out of her.
She made her way home through side streets and checked the time when she walked in the door. Five thirty. No time for sleep — school in a few hours.
She peeled the shoe off her left foot. Her small, usually pale foot was badly swollen, mottled purple and red across the top. She pressed a fingertip lightly against the worst of the bruising.
Nothing. Completely numb.
She had to keep Jennifer from seeing this. Moving quickly, she stripped down and stepped under the shower.
Afterward, she pulled on a clean, warm deep-purple wool sweater in her room, exhaled a long breath, and let herself feel it: it's over.
Now to deal with the foot.
She dragged a small box out from under her bed. The inside of the lid held a neat row of kunai, all in a line. Inside the box: two rolls of bandage, and a stack of paper bombs.
These were her spoils — the yield of years of Bronze Wheel spins since she was a little girl.
She moved the pencil cup from her desk and dumped out the pencils. She set it on the floor beside the bed. Sitting very still, she channeled chakra with painstaking precision, using her heightened senses to guide the pooled blood out of her foot, one drop at a time, into the cup below.
Fifteen minutes later, she collapsed onto the mattress, drenched in sweat and completely drained.
She slept for barely two hours before Jennifer's knock dragged her back to the surface.