CHAPTER 32: BAKUDA'S OVERTURE
The news ticker scrolled across Lisa's laptop screen: MULTIPLE EXPLOSIONS ROCK BROCKTON BAY. AUTHORITIES INVESTIGATING. ABB SUSPECTED.
I sat in the loft's main room, watching footage that shouldn't exist yet. Three bomb sites across ABB territory. One near a shipping warehouse. One outside a Korean restaurant. One in the middle of a street, crater still smoking in the morning light.
Bakuda's signature was unmistakable. The warehouse explosion had left ice crystals coating the rubble—a thermal inversion bomb, temperatures dropped so fast that metal shattered like glass. The restaurant blast had created a perfect sphere of devastation, edges razor-clean where the effect terminated. The street crater was conventional only in shape; the residue analysis would probably show exotic compounds.
Three days early, I thought. Why?
The answer came from meta-knowledge: Lung's increased caution. After our encounters in April, he'd tightened security, restricted movement, pulled resources inward. Bakuda, already unstable, had been left with less oversight and more desperation.
She was escalating faster than canon because I'd made Lung paranoid.
Brian walked in as I was reviewing the third blast site.
"You've seen the news."
"Yeah."
He moved to the territory map on the wall—still marked with E88 fracture zone notes from the Cricket mission—and started adding new pins. Red for confirmed ABB, yellow for suspected, black for casualties.
"Three dead," he said. "Fourteen injured. And that's just the ones they're reporting."
Lisa emerged from her room, tablet in hand. "Bakuda. ABB's new cape. Tinker, specializes in exotic explosives."
"How exotic?" Alec asked from the couch.
"Effects vary. Some freeze, some burn, some do things physics shouldn't allow. She's been making bombs for Lung since March, but this is her first public campaign."
I watched Brian plot the locations. The shipping warehouse was near dockworker territory—Danny's world. The restaurant was deep in Korean-American community space. The street explosion was pure visibility, designed to make headlines.
"She's not targeting us," I said.
Lisa glanced at me. "No. Not yet. This is establishment—proving she can hit anywhere, anytime. The Undersiders aren't significant enough to waste bombs on."
"Comforting," Alec muttered.
"It won't stay that way." I moved to the map, tracing the blast pattern. "These locations are political. She's telling every faction in the city that ABB has escalation capability. E88 is pulling patrols inward—"
"How do you know that?" Brian interrupted.
Shit. Too specific. Lisa's eyes were on me again.
"Scanner chatter," I said. "E88 frequencies went quiet after the second explosion. They're consolidating."
Brian accepted the explanation. Lisa didn't, but she didn't push.
"PRT's stretched thin," she continued. "They're responding to all three sites plus running patrols near likely targets. Protectorate's on high alert but they can't be everywhere."
"And Coil?" I asked.
Lisa's expression flickered—just a moment of something that might have been discomfort. "Our employer is... monitoring the situation. His surveillance network is recording everything."
Of course he is. Coil thrived on chaos. Bakuda's bombing campaign was exactly the kind of destabilization he could exploit.
"What's the team's posture?" Brian asked.
"Watchful waiting. We're not targets yet, and getting involved in ABB's campaign is high-risk, low-reward." Lisa set down her tablet. "Unless Coil gives us specific instructions, we stay clear."
"Works for me," Alec said. "Bombs aren't my thing."
Rachel's dogs shifted in the corner, picking up on the tension in the room. Brutus's head came up, ears tracking sounds I couldn't hear.
No—sounds I could hear, now. The echolocation was expanding, picking up distant sirens and emergency vehicles responding to sites I couldn't see.
"They're still deploying," I said. "PRT response. Three directions."
Everyone looked at me.
"Good ears," Lisa said quietly.
I didn't respond. Just watched the map and calculated timelines that were already wrong.
That night, I lay in bed at the Hebert house and stared at the ceiling.
If Bakuda was three days early, everything else might shift too. Leviathan's attack was scheduled for mid-May—roughly two weeks from now. But "mid-May" had been based on a timeline that was already diverging.
How much did I change?
The dominoes I thought I had mapped were tilting. Every action I'd taken since transmigration—killing Sophia's bullying, dying to Lung, joining the Undersiders—had sent ripples through the city's ecosystem. Some of those ripples were predictable. Others weren't.
Bakuda's acceleration was a butterfly consequence. Lung's paranoia, born from my interference, had created conditions for her escalation. Three days wasn't catastrophic, but it was significant.
What else has shifted?
I didn't know. Couldn't know until events diverged far enough to become obvious.
The echolocation picked up Danny's footsteps in the hallway. He paused outside Taylor's door—checking, the way parents do—then continued to his own room.
The radio alarm clock on my nightstand showed 2:47 AM.
I closed my eyes and ran calculations. Bakuda's campaign would escalate. The Undersiders would eventually be drawn in. Leviathan would arrive, maybe on schedule, maybe not.
And I was six deaths deep with three fragments, still too weak to face any of it directly.
Faster, I thought. I need to move faster.
But Brian's reprimand echoed in my memory. Team ops required discipline. Strategic deaths required opportunities.
I'd have to find a balance.
Sleep came eventually, fragmented by dreams of explosions and ice.
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