Chapter 28: [28] The Red-Haired Menace Strikes Back
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The night sky above Hotaru Town was black and starless, as if the heavens themselves had turned their backs on Hardy’s domain. Pierre crouched beneath a service grate three blocks from the town square.
This is insane, he thought, adjusting the small glass vial of aqua fortis secured in his jacket pocket. I’m about to crawl through sewers to vandalize a statue because some fictional tyrant hurt a little girl’s feelings.
But Mika’s face floated through his mind—the way she’d flinched when Alyssa entered the restaurant, the tremor in her voice when she mentioned her father’s imprisonment. That wasn’t fiction. That was real terror, carved into a ten-year-old’s features by months of systematic cruelty.
He could hear the Naval base half a mile away, searchlights sweeping the perimeter in lazy arcs. Pierre could see uniformed figures moving between buildings, their voices carrying on the wind as they coordinated another sweep for the "Red-Haired Menace."
They have no idea what’s coming.
Pierre lifted the grate and dropped into the maintenance tunnel below. The blueprints had been accurate—a network of service corridors connected every major building in the government district. Hardy’s engineers had designed them for repairs and utility access, never imagining they’d become highways for saboteurs.
The tunnel stretched ahead in both directions, lit by emergency bulbs that cast everything in sickly yellow light. Pipes ran along the ceiling, dripping condensation that echoed in the confined space. The air smelled of rust and stagnant water, with an underlying chemical tang that made Pierre’s nose wrinkle.
He moved quickly, boots splashing through shallow puddles that reflected the overhead lighting.
A distant rumble echoed through the tunnels—machinery starting up somewhere in the Naval complex. Raven’s show would begin any moment.
He reached another junction and consulted the mental map he’d memorized from the blueprints. Left led to the administrative district. Right curved toward the harbor. Straight ahead terminated beneath the town square, directly under Hardy’s monument.
Pierre chose straight ahead.