As the airspeed picked up, several things happened at once. The armored figure who had been quietly looming behind Scaletta boosted into the air, jetpack screaming as he launched himself at Cyclone. Cyclone gestured, and a vicious blade of air buffeted him off course into a wall with a thunderous crash that sent chunks of concrete raining down.
I threw myself behind a crate as gunfire erupted throughout the warehouse.
Scaletta was anything but helpless. The moment things kicked off, his hand shot under the folding table and ripped free a compact submachine gun, a Colt Model 635. He rolled smoothly behind a concrete pillar and immediately began laying down precise, controlled bursts. His movements were smooth and professional, clearly someone who'd been in firefights before.
Turk and Grotto had scattered in opposite directions, taking cover along the warehouse's side walls. Turk was holed up with what looked like a Desert Eagle from behind some machinery on the eastern wall, while Grotto crouched with his sawed-off near the western loading bay. Both opened fire at angles toward the northern end where the Maggia enforcers had fortified themselves.
I drew my needle pistol and squeezed off shots toward the mob muscle entrenched ahead of us, but judging by the lack of screams, didn't hit anything useful.
The three Maggia leg-breakers had claimed the warehouse's far end, using concrete pillars and heavy machinery for cover. One with a semi-auto shotgun was trying to work eastward toward Turk's position. Another with an SMG kept our heads down with suppressing fire from the center, and the third,armed with a sawed-off,was attempting to push down the western side toward Grotto.
But the real problem was Cyclone.
The costumed villain floated serenely in his miniature tornado about fifteen feet off the ground, completely untouched by the crossfire. His personal vortex deflected bullets like they were gnats, the projectiles spinning harmlessly away into the warehouse walls.
"Mes amis," Cyclone called out with theatrical calm, "you make too much noise. Perhaps I should... quiet things down, non?"
He raised both hands, and suddenly the air pressure in the warehouse shifted dramatically. My ears popped as the winds began to coalesce into something much more dangerous than his personal tornado.
The armored figure was struggling to get back to his feet after being slammed into the wall. Sparks flew from damaged systems in the suit's chest plate, and his movements looked sluggish. The jetpack was making an unhealthy grinding noise that I could hear even over the wind.
"Voilà!" Cyclone shouted. "Now we have a proper tempête!"
A massive vortex began forming in the center of the warehouse, pulling loose debris, papers, and anything not nailed down into its spinning embrace. The folding table Scaletta had been using for our meeting went tumbling end over end through the air. The enforcer trying to flank Turk lost his footing and was dragged several feet before managing to grab onto a steel beam.
I felt the inexorable pull of the winds and wrapped my arms around the crate I was hiding behind. The wooden box groaned against whatever was bolted to the floor beneath it, but it held.
"This is bad!" Turk yelled from the eastern wall, his voice barely audible over the howling wind. "Real bad!"
Grotto, who had been trying to move toward the duffel bags near the western wall, had been pushed back completely. He was now bracing himself against some shelving with one hand. Even the bags themselves moved, sliding under a shelf even further from his reach.
The bodyguard in the damaged power armor was having the worst time of all. His armor was too heavy to be pulled into the vortex, but without full power, he couldn't fly out of range either. He was stuck in the worst possible position, close enough to take damage from flying debris, but too heavy to escape.
"We need to get out of here!" I shouted to anyone who could hear me over the chaos.
That's when Scaletta surprised me again. Despite being in the middle of a windstorm, the arms dealer pulled a small grenade from his jacket and yanked the pin.
"Fire in the hole!" he bellowed, leapt out from behind his cover and hurled the object straight into Cyclone's vortex.
The grenade vanished into the spinning winds, and for a moment I thought it would just get flung harmlessly away. Then there was a brilliant flash and a CRACK that cut through even the howling of the tornado.
A flash-bang grenade. The blast disrupted Cyclone's concentration just long enough for his perfect control to waver. The massive vortex wobbled, lost cohesion, and collapsed with a loud WHUMP.
Cyclone himself dropped about three feet before catching himself, his personal tornado sputtering back to life. But the interruption had cost him his momentum, and more importantly, it gave everyone else a chance to reposition.
"Now!" Scaletta roared, leaping out from cover with his submachine gun chattering.
I can't say what possessed me to do this, but I leaped out from cover with him, needle pistol blazing away. Scaletta instantly dropped the enforcer with the sawed-off who'd been pushing toward the western wall, while I missed the center gunman but caused him to duck back into cover.
From the eastern wall, Turk popped up with his Desert Eagle and winged the flanking mobster who'd been working his way over. Grotto sprinted across the western side toward the now-exposed center position, sawed-off ready, taking advantage of the suppressing fire slackening off.
The armored bodyguard from earlier was nowhere to be seen. Maybe he was circling around for a better angle of attack, or maybe he'd blacked out. Whatever the case, it was just the four of us against the Frenchman now.
For a brief moment, it looked like we might actually win this thing. The Maggia muscle was down to one effective shooter and Grotto was closing in from the west, Cyclone was still recovering from the concussion grenade, and we had superior positioning.
But Cyclone wasn't stupid. He surveyed the tactical situation with calculating eyes, muttering something in French about "mes inférieurs" before his gaze sharpened.
"Ah, non," he said with theatrical disappointment. "This will not do."
Without warning, he gestured at Scaletta. Another blade of compressed air sliced through the space between them faster than the eye could follow. Scaletta screamed as the invisible blade caught his left arm just below the elbow. The limb bent at an impossible angle with a wet crack that made my stomach lurch.
"Voilà!" Cyclone said cheerfully as Scaletta collapsed, dropping his submachine gun and clutching his ruined arm. "Now we have proper balance, non?"
But Cyclone wasn't done evening the odds. His gaze swept across the warehouse until it found Turk on the eastern wall, who was trying to reload behind his machinery.
"And you," the costumed villain called out, raising both hands. "The one who brought this amateur to my attention. You must learn the value of silence, non?"
The air around Turk began to swirl violently. Before he could react, the winds caught him and yanked him into the air like he was weightless. But instead of tossing him around like a rag doll, Cyclone did something far worse.
The winds around Turk suddenly reversed, creating a vacuum pocket. I watched in horror as Turk's mouth opened in a silent scream, his chest heaving desperately as Cyclone literally sucked the air from his lungs. His face began turning purple, eyes bulging as he clawed frantically at his throat.
"Voilà," Cyclone said with theatrical satisfaction. "Now you understand true helplessness, non? The lungs, they are so fragile..."
Turk's struggles grew weaker, his movements becoming sluggish as oxygen deprivation set in. His Desert Eagle had long since fallen, clattering uselessly to the warehouse floor.
Despite the fact that this same man had tried to mug me less than twenty-four hours ago,and still might succeed at getting me killed because of his loose lips I couldn't just watch someone die like that. Not when I could do something about it. I aimed my needle pistol and squeezed off three quick shots at the floating supervillain.
The needles went wide, deflected by the swirling winds around him. But the sound made Cyclone's head snap toward me, his expression shifting from theatrical amusement to sneering contempt.
"Mais oui," he said with mock delight, letting Turk drop heavily to the ground. "The little nobody with his little pistol. How... approprié. A needle gun. The perfect weapon for an insignificant insect."
I felt the winds hit me before I could even think of running. The invisible force caught me around the waist and launched me across the warehouse. I had just enough time for ohshit to flash through my mind before I slammed into a concrete pillar chest first.
The impact drove all the air from my lungs and sent lightning bolts of agony through my chest. I hit the floor hard, gasping and wheezing. Through the haze of pain, I could tell something was seriously wrong. Breathing hurt like hell, and there was a sharp stabbing sensation every time I tried to fill my lungs.
Broken ribs. Had to be. At least three, maybe more. I desperately tried to wiggle my toes, and sighed with relief when they responded. Well, that's one less problem.
"Now for the final touch",sneered Cyclone. The Frenchman ascended, the pressure in the warehouse dropping and the wind picking up again.
The loading dock door exploded inward in a shower of twisted metal and concrete chunks. The power armored bodyguard from earlier who had conveniently disappeared came rocketing through the opening like an avenging angel, jetpack howling. It was the most beautiful thing I had seen in my life.
Cyclone tried to hit the newcomer with a massive wind blade—bigger than any of the ones he'd used before. But the armored figure had built up too much momentum outside. At the last second, he rolled hard to his left, sacrificing some forward velocity to dodge the worst of the attack. The wind blade stripped the insulation clean off one of his suit's externally mounted power cables, sparks cascading from the damaged wire, but barely budged his trajectory as he slammed into Cyclone like a meteor.
The impact was devastating. Cyclone's personal tornado collapsed instantly as he was driven into the warehouse floor with a thunderous crash that shook dust from the rafters. Concrete spider-webbed outward from the crater where they hit, and for a moment, everything went completely silent except for the still strained whine of the bodyguard's power pack/jetpack.
A second look at the suit made the damage clear. It was still throwing sparks from a deep gouge across the chestplate, one of the power cables looked like the insulation was half-off, and it looked like there was another deep gouge on the helmet.
The armored bodyguard walked calmly over to where Scaletta was still clutching his mangled arm, his boots clanking against the concrete floor.
"Mr. Scaletta," came a synthesized voice from the armor's external speakers, distorted but unmistakably cold and professional. "Do you want me to kill him?"
Scaletta looked up through pain-glazed eyes at his bodyguard, then down at the groaning Cyclone, then back up again. For a moment, the warehouse was dead silent except for the sound of labored breathing and the distant rumble of traffic outside.
"Nah," Scaletta finally wheezed through gritted teeth. "Just... just make sure he doesn't follow us. We don't need more trouble."
The armored bodyguard nodded once and knelt beside the barely conscious Cyclone, his faceplate reflecting the warehouse's dim lighting. "Don't follow us if you know what's good for you. Back off."
The bodyguard's attention shifted to Scaletta, who was still leaning against a crate, his face pale and slick with sweat. The arms dealer's left arm hung at that sickening angle, but he was conscious and alert.
"How bad?" the synthesized voice asked, kneeling beside him.
"Bad enough," Scaletta grunted, pushing himself up off the ground. "But I've been through worse. Arm's busted, not severed. I'll live."
The bodyguard's helmet tilted toward me next. "You?"
"Ribs," I wheezed, pressing a hand gingerly to my chest. "Feels like at least three, maybe four. But I'm mobile."
Behind us, I could hear ragged, shallow breathing. Turk was sprawled where he'd fallen, chest rising and falling in quick, desperate gasps. His face was still flushed purple, but the color was slowly returning to normal. Cyclone hadn't had time to completely suffocate him—just long enough to make his point.
On the far side of the warehouse, the Maggia enforcer Turk had winged was moaning softly, clutching his shoulder where blood was seeping between his fingers. He wasn't going anywhere fast.
"Speaking of which," I said, forcing myself to stand straighter despite the stabbing pain, "I should check on the merchandise."
The words came out automatically. But as I limped toward the scattered duffel bags, my hands started shaking. Not from pain, but from the delayed shock finally hitting me. What am I doing? That French psychopath could have killed me. The thought made my chest tighten beyond just the broken ribs.
Tenderly moving myself over to the bags, which had been tossed a distance across the warehouse, I forced myself to focus on the simple task. I unzipped the bags. By some miracle, all of the guns were intact,even though some of the rifle magazines were pretty banged up. The bags had been shuffled a few feet, but fortunately for me, they had ended up wedged under some shelving and been spared the worst of the battering.
I took a shaky breath and pushed the panic down. There'd be time to process this later. Right now I needed to stay functional.
The merchandise could wait however. Right now we needed answers. I limped back toward where Scaletta and his bodyguard were setting up an impromptu interrogation.
The wounded Maggia mobster was propped against a concrete pillar, clutching his shoulder where Turk's bullet had caught him.
Scaletta's bodyguard dragged over a metal folding chair, the scraping sound echoing through the warehouse. "Sit," the synthesized voice commanded.
Meanwhile, Grotto had managed to get the drop on the second mobster during the chaos. "Got this one too," Grotto announced, prodding the second enforcer toward us with his sawed-off. "Figured we might as well hear what both of 'em have to say."
Scaletta approached slowly, cradling his mangled arm against his chest.
"What are your names?"
The wounded one glared up at him. "Go fuck yourself."
The bodyguard's left gauntlet sparked, electricity crackling between the fingers. Fear flickered across the wounded man's face before he brought it under control.
The second enforcer, still dazed, was more cooperative. "I'm Tommy. Tommy Benedetto." He gestured toward his wounded companion. "That's Carmine Russo."
"Look," Scaletta said conversationally, "I'm a businessman, not a psycho. We just want information, and then you walk away with a message for your bosses."
"What kind of message?" Carmine asked.
"The kind that keeps everyone breathing. First off, why is the Maggia trying to squeeze me? I didn't do shit to you."
"You've been selling guns to the wrong types," Carmine said, shifting uncomfortably. "Orders came down from the Libris family. They want to cut off supply lines to anyone working with the Nobili family."
Scaletta's jaw tightened. "Ah, I see what this is."
"Is the Masked Marauder behind this?" Scaletta asked.
Both enforcers shook their heads. "Marauder's been dead for years," Tommy said. "The Libris family hired Cyclone to start squeezing Cosa Nostra suppliers."
"Libris family?" I interjected.
"One of the old bloodlines," Carmine explained. "They don't like that the Nobili family's been getting cozy with some Cosa Nostra crews. The Libris think the Nobili are failures, the Nobili think the Libris are upstarts trying to capitalize on the chaos."
"What chaos?" Scaletta pressed.
"You really don't know how bad things have gotten?" Tommy said. "Silvermane's dead, Nefaria's dead, the Owl's been in a coma. Hammerhead got arrested less than a year back."
Scaletta rolled his eyes. "Of course I know that shit. What I'm asking about is what's happening internally between the families."
"The families can't really go at each other directly," Tommy explained. "They're like Siamese twins - start tearing each other apart and the whole east coast operation falls to pieces. Plus you got smaller crews waiting to pick up scraps, and the Kingpin's always watching."
"So they try to fuck each other subtly instead," Carmine added. "This supplier squeeze isn't about destroying the Nobilis, it's about making them look weak and unreliable to their partners."
"And I was just collateral damage?" Scaletta asked.
"You supply whoever pays," Carmine said. "That includes some families the Libris want to hurt. So yeah, you were a target. Nothing personal."
The interrogation continued for another ten minutes, with both enforcers filling in details about what was left of the Maggia's command structure. When we were finished, the bodyguard pulled both men to their feet. We used rope from the warehouse to secure them to separate support beams, tight enough that they couldn't escape immediately, loose enough that they could work free given time.
"Here's your message for the Libris family," Scaletta said, looking at both of them. "Tell them that targeting independent suppliers was a mistake. Tell them that if they want to play family politics, they should keep it between families. And tell them that the next time they send someone after me, they better send someone better than that French windbag."
After both enforcers were secured, Scaletta looked around the warehouse, surveying the scattered debris and overturned crates. The tornado and gunfight had tossed everything around, leaving the once-well organized warehouse looking like a disaster zone.
"Give me a minute," he muttered, moving carefully among the wreckage while cradling his injured arm. He kicked aside chunks of concrete and pushed over a damaged crate, searching methodically despite his obvious pain.
Finally, near where his folding table had been launched by Cyclone's winds, he spotted what he was looking for - a reinforced metal case that had been thrown against the far wall but remained intact. Using his good arm, he dragged it over and worked the combination lock.
"Here we go," Scaletta said, pulling out a canvas bag from inside the case. He opened it and began counting out neat stacks of hundreds. "Ten grand, as agreed. You earned it."
He separated the money into precise piles - ten stacks of a thousand each. "Always keep it organized," he said, handing me the cash. "Makes accounting easier."
I immediately took three stacks and peeled off bills from two others, counting out shares for Turk and Grotto. "Fifteen hundred for each of you, as promised. Fifteen percent of my cut."
Turk accepted his share with shaking hands, still recovering from Cyclone's vacuum attack, but his eyes sharpened as he pocketed the money. "Thanks, man. That was... intense." He paused, then looked at me expectantly. "So about that intel on the Long Island job - the Cord facility break-in I mentioned? That twenty percent bump for the details?"
I shook my head politely. "Actually, I appreciate the offer, but I'm not interested in that information after all. Fifteen percent is fair for what you provided today."
Turk's expression shifted, irritation flickering across his face. For a moment I thought he might argue, but then he glanced around the destroyed warehouse - the hole Cyclone had blown in the wall, the crater where the supervillain had been driven into the concrete, the scattered debris from our firefight and the wrecked loading doors where Scaletta's bodyguard had made his dynamic reentry.
He shrugged. "Fair enough, I guess. Considering how this whole thing went down, fifteen percent of breathing is better than twenty percent of being dead."
Grotto pocketed his cash quickly. "We should get going. Place is gonna be crawling with cops soon."
We all walked out of the warehouse together, the cool night air hitting my face as we emerged from the chaos inside. Turk and Grotto were already heading toward their van, eager to put distance between themselves and the scene. "Thanks again for the business," I called after them, clutching the remaining cash despite the stabbing pain in my ribs. Scaletta's bodyguard silently carried the duffel bags with the weapons.
As I started to follow Turk and Grotto toward the street, Scaletta caught my arm. "Hold up."
He extended his good hand. "Vito Scaletta. You?"
"Quince. No last name."
"Where'd you get that needle gun?" His tone was matter-of-fact, appraising. "Same place you got those M16s and plasma rifles, I'm guessing."
"Ways and means."
Vito nodded, unsurprised. "We've all got our sources." He glanced toward where Cyclone was still groaning. "You handled yourself better than most first-timers. Professional enough."
"Thanks."
"What's your angle? Money? Territory? Reputation?"
"Money. Need to build capital fast."
"Fair enough." Vito shifted his mangled arm, wincing. "I might have work for someone who can follow orders and has access to high-end weapons."
The smart move would be to stay quiet, keep my cards close. My last calculated risk had left me with busted ribs and a throat full of concrete dust. But I needed that Stane intelligence, and Vito had just demonstrated both competence and connections. He was vastly more professional than the street-level chuckleheads who'd nearly gotten me killed. Sometimes you had to take calculated risks.
"Actually, I've got something in the works. I have some suspicions about security holes at the Stane International facility on Long Island. But I need some intelligence on the facility to confirm that."
Vito's eyebrows rose. "Ambitious. That kind of information doesn't come free."
"I figured."
"I need a job done first. Consider it a trial run." He pulled out a piece of paper, scribbling with his good hand. "You prove you can handle discrete work, I'll get you what you need for the Stane HQ."
His bodyguard approached. "Mr. Scaletta, we need to move."
"Yeah." Vito handed me the paper. A phone number and address were scribbled on it. "Call when you've decided. Address is a doc who takes cash, and asks no questions. Get those ribs looked at." He and his bodyguard started walking towards his car, a black second gen Mercedes S class. "Don't take too long. Opportunities expire."
I pocketed the paper, watching the Mercedes disappear into the gathering dusk. Seven thousand dollars in cash, three? broken ribs, and a reliable criminal connection.
My ribs were killing me—a deep ache that flared into sharp stabs every time I breathed or moved. But for the first time since waking up in that alley, I had real money and a solid contact. The Maggia might know my face now, and I'd be going to bed with fewer intact ribs than I'd started the day with, but I had a reliable connection. That was worth it.
Time to get my battered carcass to the doctor