The next morning at seven-thirty, President Maya sat enthroned in her designated seat on the rickety old school bus, dressed in her blue-and-white checkered uniform, looking as serene as a monk in meditation.
Her spot: the single seat right behind the driver. Window access for scenery, close to the door for quick exits. Ever since Maya had become student council president, no one dared contest this prime piece of real estate.
She wasn't zoning out today, though. Instead, she was eavesdropping on her classmates' chatter. Snakes had their tunnels and rats had their holes—these kids from Hell's Kitchen all had their own sources.
"Did you guys hear?! Last night at the Butcher Bar on 40th—oh my God! Sixty, seventy people dead! Sixty or seventy!" Freckle-faced Arthur was, predictably, the first to start hollering.
"Is that for real? When did this happen?"
Ever since Andrew's mom had gone to prison, the kid had stopped wasting his life on that knockoff game console. Seemed like he was learning from President Maya's example and saving money to buy his mom something nice. He'd grown a lot quieter lately. It was rare to see him this engaged, asking questions on his own.
"Last night around midnight! Andrew, you have no idea! The whole of 40th Street sounded like the Fourth of July—rat-tat-tat-tat, BOOM BOOM BOOM! Gunfire all night long! Grenades and rocket launchers blew up half the block! I'm telling you—"
Arthur was clearly embellishing. As the puppet master behind the whole affair, President Maya knew exactly what had gone down. From the first gunshot to the last body hitting the floor, the entire thing took less than a minute. "Gunfire all night long," her ass. Nobody had even stepped outside the Butcher Bar, and he was claiming half a block got blown up? This freckle-faced kid was about as reliable as a chocolate teapot.
Sure enough, someone called him out. "Arthur, you dumbass! I live near 40th Street! I heard the gunfire from start to finish—it didn't even last ten minutes! No grenades, no rocket launchers, and when I went to check this morning, there wasn't even a broken streetlight!"
Getting publicly fact-checked stung Arthur's pride. He fired back: "Tuck, you little twerp, what do you know?! I've got an uncle on the local police force—he told me himself! Sixty dead! He counted them personally—sixty exactly! With that many casualties, the fighting must've been intense and brutal. You can't rack up numbers like that without heavy firepower!"
"Yeah, yeah! Arthur's got a point! That many dead—even if the whole block got wrecked, it wouldn't be surprising!" The other students nodded along, siding with Arthur.
"See? This is exactly why joining a gang is a death sentence. One lousy turf war over a single block and sixty, seventy people are dead. President Maya's foresight saved us!" said Student A, gazing at the president with undisguised reverence.
"Exactly! President Maya single-handedly saved dozens of our classmates' lives. She's amazing!" Student B chimed in.
"You morons! When has President Maya ever been wrong? Name one time she wasn't brilliant!" Student C said this particularly loudly, clearly hoping a certain someone would notice.
Andrew had heard enough gossip. He cut in: "Arthur—who was actually fighting on 40th last night?"
"It was Marion from 39th Street—the weed dealer—against those guys from the Upper West Side. They'd arranged to meet at the Butcher Bar. Everyone in the area knew about it. None of us dared step outside last night!" Tuck Barrett jumped in before Arthur could respond.
"So Marion's people got wiped out? Those Slavs are all ex-Soviet military—came to America after the USSR collapsed in '91. Built up their operation in just two years. They're seriously tough," Andrew analyzed, surprisingly sharp and level-headed.
"I—I honestly don't know. I was hiding at home all night—who'd be crazy enough to go look? Probably, yeah—Marion's crew is probably all dead. But hey, if they managed to take out a dozen or so of those thugs, that's not a bad trade." Tuck stammered through his response.
Arthur seized his moment, puffing up with a smug grin. "You guys are so naive. Way behind on the intel!"
He made a show of checking his surroundings, then dropped his voice to a dramatic whisper. "I'll tell you what really happened. Marion isn't what he seems. Not. At. All. He's got a very specific kind of mental condition—a second personality. An absolutely terrifying second personality. It only surfaces when he's in mortal danger—takes over his body completely. The streets already have a new name for him: Sleeping Marion."
Seeing his classmates still wearing skeptical expressions, Arthur elaborated: "Last night's situation was bad—really bad for Marion's side. Because of Ma—ahem—because of our great and brilliant President Hansen, Marion couldn't recruit any cannon fodder from our school. But the result? The result was—"
"—quite unexpected, wasn't it, Owlsley? Care to explain yourself?"
A modern, upscale penthouse apartment. A wrinkled Chinese grandmother leaned on a cane before the floor-to-ceiling windows on the thirty-second floor. Bathed in warm golden morning light, she gazed out at the bustling Manhattan skyline and addressed the red-haired "Wolverine" kneeling on her floor. Her tone was utterly flat.
Despite his thuggish appearance, the man formerly known as the Steel-Clawed Owl was trembling on his knees, head bowed so low his forehead nearly touched the marble.
"Madame Gao, this was my fault. But that Marion—he's too cunning, too unpredictable, and vicious beyond belief. He pretended he wanted to negotiate, said he'd give up the 39th Street drug trade, lulled us into complacency. Then—without a thought for his own men's lives—he turned on us right at the negotiation table and shot Lanskahov dead. But the truly terrifying part—he can dodge bullets. From less than ten meters (about 33 feet) away. Not dodging one or two shots—over a dozen men firing simultaneously! Simultaneously! The gunfire chewed a brick wall to rubble, and he didn't get so much as a scratch!"
The old woman turned to face the terror-stricken Owlsley. She offered no comment on his account. Instead, she asked a single, quiet question: "Leland. Where are your steel claws?"
Leland Owlsley froze. He looked down at his bare forearms—empty, naked—and after a long, hollow pause, answered in a voice thick with bitterness: "Madame Gao, I—after I watched Marion use a single combat knife to stab through seventeen men's hearts in a matter of seconds, I—I…"
"You abandoned a warrior's honor. You couldn't even muster the courage to face him." Her voice remained perfectly level. "Then again—the moment you accepted Marion's charity and ran home alone, you were no longer worthy of wearing those weapons. Leland, you're finished as a fighter."
Owlsley listened to that toneless, inflectionless voice and bowed his head in resignation, bracing for the killing stroke.
Madame Gao circled the kneeling man twice. In the end, the hand gripping her cane made no other move. She simply said: "Leland, you are no longer a warrior. Remove your battle gear and transfer to administrative duties. From now on, you will manage the books for our New York powder operation."
"Yes, Madame Gao." His voice was hollow. "From today, there is no more Steel-Clawed Owl. Only Leland Owlsley."