All Capes are Bastards: The Red Feathers

All capes are bastards.

People stamp it on us like a mark of shame. I'm fine with the title of bastards. We inherit nothing—no deeds or legacy. We inherit the needle-marked sirens that wash up near North Beach.

I find grime between the cracks. The demons that never get exorcised.

The blue glow from the screen carved shadows across my face, catching on the red fractures in my eyes—the kind that came from too many nights where sleep was just a rumor.

I ran a hand over the stubble lining my jaw, feeling the weight of too many hours and too little hope. The low hum of the laptop gripped my ears. an old machine built for a world that had already left it behind. 

I set the bloodstained flash drive on the desk and stared at it like a loaded gun. Whatever was inside had already gotten one man killed. If I plugged it into just any system, the next name on a missing persons report would be myself.

I powered up an old, stripped-down laptop—a relic from another time when people still believed in privacy. It's a digital island, completely cut off from the outside world.

That’s the point. An airgap. A barrier to keep whatever’s on this drive from spreading, from phoning home to whoever put it there. If it’s laced with spyware, malware, or some Kremlin kill switch, it won’t have anywhere to run.

No Wi-Fi. No network. No escape.

I mount the drive in what my friends at Stanford called a safety mode. If there’s a trap inside, it’s not getting the chance to spring. But I don’t stop there.

I boot up a virtual sandbox—a fake environment designed to trick malicious code into thinking it’s in friendly territory. I make it look like it’s inside a Russian server, somewhere deep in a troll farm outside Moscow. If there’s something hidden, it’ll activate. It’ll expose itself.

A few seconds pass. Then—a flicker.

A hidden process, trying to reach a foreign server.

My jaw tightens.

This isn’t just a flash drive. It’s a transmitter.

And whoever’s on the other end?

The Iron Curtain  fell—but the shapes of power slowly morphed into a new chimera. The old walls of concrete and steel had been

reforged into digital barbed wire, stretching across screens, tangled in timelines, choking out truth before it could breathe.

Troll farms. State-sponsored algorithms.

They flooded the dopamine receptors of middle America like carbon monoxide—silent, invisible, a living malware. Young men raised on promises their fathers barely lived long enough to cash in. The land of milk and honey had dried up before they ever got a taste.

So they were lured elsewhere.

They turned to the whispers in their feeds, the faceless voices nudging them toward war.

They all didn't have the training yet—but they would. Enough to fuel an army for a fraction of the cost.

They would sign the dotted line. March into the arms of the machine. Become the long knives of the ruling class, did it matter which flag added the kindling.

The insidious part was after the dust settled. The wars had burned out their bones and hollowed out their hearts; the same forces that sent them marching wouldn’t even offer them a seat at the table.

The boomerang always came back. The ones who threw it never had to catch it.

There’s no such thing as a lone wolf.

Every man who picked up a rifle and walked into a crowd thinking he was the hand of history had a network behind him—a chorus of voices in encrypted channels, a steady drip of doctrine disguised as conversation.

They weren’t self-made monsters. They were assembled, piece by piece, in the glow of a screen.

The digital sirens would crash these men into the cove, spinning their massacres into manifestos, their hate into heroism.

It wouldn’t stop at one.

A cold front started with sprinkles of mayhem. And when it hit, the avalanche wouldn’t bury the ones who started it.

It would engulf the ones who couldn’t outrun it. I must have been running on instinct, running on fumes.

Sleep was a distant country, and I no longer had a passport.

I didn’t realize where the night had taken me until I was standing beneath the golden glow of the casino, rain pooling at my feet.

The city buzzed beyond the glass. The distant wail of sirens twisted through the night like a dirge.

I watched the high-rise casino breathe, its golden light flickering through the rain like a dying pulse. The people that entered were no different than an insect following the electric hue.

The wind cut through my suit as I grappled across the black void between rooftops and rafters, the rain sliced like needlepoint against my cowl. He had contacted me. That meant he was desperate. He had acquired a treasure worth killing for.

Above the casino suite, the wind pushed through a shattered window, stirring the air like a dying breath. The trail doesn't just go cold, it turns into a tundra with every passing hour.

A trail of feathers drifted, caught in slow, weightless descent—soaked in red. Sparrow feathers. A message was both a ritual and a requiem.

The room was still, but my senses picked on the disembodied sounds.

I stepped carefully. The floor was slick. Not enough to pool, but enough to tell me someone had left their signature. It was up to me to read between the lines.

The scarlet stains that didn't wash away. It was the kind that soaks into the walls, into the air, into the bones of a place. The spill that lingers.

The blood-letting crawled up my spine, slow and cold— a familiarity of an iceberg cracking a hull, blungened metal screaming as it plunged into black water.

Some capes chase justice, blind to the mirage it casts. Others chase the rush, anything to muffle the voices.

Me?

I chase the places that don’t want to be found. The dead ends. The haunted mazes. The corners of the city where the past lingers, whispering through the fissures.

Petro indulged in the seven deadly sins before most people punched out for lunch. If you saw the way I dressed, like every day was Halloween, you wouldn't think I could relate. But we all have our reasons to wear the mask. Some cover up, some hide, some disappear completely.

I've met people who couldn't function without dusting their knuckles against drug pushers. Others couldn't sleep without the wailing of sirens.

Petro wasn’t just some thug swimming in vice.  He bathed in sin to get closer to his targets. Sundays were for rest and forgiveness.

A digital dead drop confirmed his arrival.

Dissenters weren't safe, even The ruling class in the East was being targeted, disappearing under the coldest war outside of St. Petersburg. Staged suicides, the kind where the bullet holes lined up too perfectly and the triggers weren't pulled by shaky hands full of regret. Vanishings, like dust in the wind.  

The red feathers are shredding as The Sparrows  Build their Nest. Our last exchange, is forever frozen for now.

I wasn't a level-3 medium, the kind they have on homeland watchlists but I got the tiny ringing in my brain I would meet these sparrows very soon.

Heavy boots dragged up the stairs. Laboring breaths. These weren’t silent professionals—these were pawns waiting to be knocked off the chessboard. I tossed a pellet down the corridor. Fire and ash swallowed their night vision.

I snapped my batons and went to work—sticks against steel, a bad bet any night. But David faced Goliath with less.

A flick of the wrist, and a Taser whispered free, slicing through the dark like a firefly on a death march. It found home in the sliver of flesh between the armor’s weave.

Then came the storm.

Blue-white lightning bloomed under his skin, veins igniting like neon threads in a rain-slick gutter.

His scream choked in his throat, lost beneath the crackle of raw voltage. For a moment, his body wasn’t his own—just a trembling husk, dancing to electricity’s cruel rhythm. If I didn’t know any better the was a wet spot between his legs .

There's no shame in that. It was a primal response to get caught in the grip of a hunter.

His partner panicked and ran. I pounced, baton pressing against his neck, careful not to crush the windpipe. The DA was up for re-election, and he’d love nothing more than to pin me with an upgrade charge. At least the view from San Quention would be nicer than the one I see now.

I let the man drift into darkness.

The second shooter scrambled for his backup piece. The gun was like a talismen but the bets were locked in. Every night out in this town is a game of Russian roulette. Maybe tonight was the night I played with loaded dice.

He drew a knife. A slasher, not a stabber.  Movies got that part wrong. A knife you don’t see coming.

He cut air where he should’ve cut my veins. I crushed his knuckles with the baton, the crack of marrow and cartilage a final exclamation point on the fight. A wet echoed cracked as he hit the gcrumbled hard, and I pressed my knee into him. I didn’t break him past repair.

He’d heal, maybe make parole. No honor in crippling a man beyond salvation, or his pride.

My lenses darted towards the ink.

Uncle Sam’s Mayhem Club, scrawled on his neck. Latin war proverbs down his arm. These guys always clung to the dead language of fallen empires.

Hard not to blame them. The modern vet doesn’t get spoils—just scraps. Half a doctor visit and nights soaked in cold sweat. It’s the shooters who sleep easy that keep me up at night.

The face whipped up a flood of memories. He was part of the crew that hit an armored truck months back. The serial numbers I traced pointed to experimental weapons from the golden age of arch-villains. Supposed to be destroyed by the DOJ. But the feds had other plans.

Those weapons would be used on whomever spat in the face of the men with press brass in the global south.

I pressed a painkiller into his palm. Easier to catch flies with honey. Torture eats away at the soul, and I’ve had my fill of sin-eating.

“We can get you to a hospital, maybe a public defender. But I need to know—what happened to the man who checked in?”

He smirked, lips cracked, voice dry as venom.

“Looks like my friends helped him check out.”

A slow burn crept through my veins. Stopped my heart.

The devil on my shoulder spread his wings, smothering whatever better angel of my nature still had breath.

Tonight, someone was going to cover the spread.

The air hung thick with the stink of rain and cheap cologne, the kind that barely masked sweat and gun oil. The man in front of me trembled, but not from fear. From something deeper. Something feverish.

“Look at the way you dress,” he spat, eyes glinting wild under the sickly glow of a digital billboards.

“There’s a wave of blood coming—to soak the roots under the tree of liberty.”

His voice had that frenzied rhythm, the kind you hear in backwoods chapels, where believers dance with live snakes and let venom decide if they’re worthy.

"And we plan to put so many bodies under those roots as well."

You could buy off a thug with cash. Set him up with real estate, a new name, a one-way ticket to nowhere.

But you can’t bargain with a zealot. They don’t hear words. They only listen to fists.

But I wasn’t going to make him a martyr. 

I took up my cross and asked deliverance for backsliding.

I administered the painkiller. My last one. The kind that works instantly, straight to the bloodstream, no prescription required. My nerves were screaming, raw and red as the adrenaline wore off.

I exhaled slow, too keep my hands. I harboered no illusions about breaking even. A good rounder made sure the house didn’t take it all. He got out before they could catch the loaded dice.

If the red tide was coming, then right now was the moment the ocean pulled back. The stillness before the point of contact.

The zealot spat blood and grinned through broken teeth.

“We all have orders,” he exhaled, blinking hard as the painkillers dulled the edges. “You can punch mercury, but it’ll gather around the fist.”

I rolled my shoulders, feeling the weight settle in.

“You ever try drowning in mercury?” I muttered. His eyes double-backed as I imagined

Stepping forward and sending him crashing into the tide. Pawns aren’t given a full picture, when jail is threatened and deals are cut they can only give bits of details of information like scrambled cable channels.

These weren’t the men who scattered the feathers. They were here to create smoke to hide the fire. And the flames were fanning behind my feet. I dropped a pin to an patrolman looking for extra overtime even if he wasn’t thrilled about the extra paperwork. I took his phone.

The screen lit up. a phone rang.

A burner, vibrating on the casino table, screen cracked from some past life.

I picked it up.

A voice—low, smoky, tired in a way that meant she was never really tired, just always awake.

"You were never the story, Cape. You never made the front page."

I let the silence weight in on her arrogance. 

"They’ll print the pictures in their heads by morning. 'Vigilantes already breed fear' the press never let the truth stand in the way of sales.

It won’t matter what you uncover, or how many life rafts tou throw out. A controlled burned is needed. And you, as always, will be consumed with nothing with a bucket"

She laughed softly. A Sparrow’s laugh. Trained to be warm, practiced to be real.

"Even the hawk in the shadows can be in the prey dark. And someone else has already written your obituary." . I doubted even she had the whole puzzle mapped out. Just enough to make sure I saw the wrong picture.

The Sparrows didn’t survive by being silent. They expanded their bloodline by speaking just the right amount of truth. A half-truth wrapped in cigarette smoke and careful pauses—enough to make the predator think he’s ahead when he’s already snagged on the tripwire.

A quiet beep. The line went dead.

Sparrows don’t fight the predator. They move before the shadow touches them. They scatter so the hunter can’t follow. They nest in the glow of giants, safe in the blind spots of men too powerful to question. And when the blood dries, when the headlines fade into static.

they are still there. Always.

I stepped toward the broken window, the city spread below me like a neon wound. The wind carried the scent of rain and something sharper beneath it.

The weight of unfinished promises.

Desperate men needed soft targets . It happens whe dreams curdled into disappointment, they wouldn’t blame the ones who sold them the lie.

They’d look for easier targets—the ones who didn’t fit, the ones they were told to hate. The Kremlin didn’t need collusion anymore. They had loaded dice.

They had calculated chaos. A slow-drip poison into the bloodstream of a country already running a fever.

Now, it was a choice—let the fever break or watch the body burn.

Civil war or world war.

I stepped back from the window, the glow of the city casting jagged shadows over the bloodstained feathers on the floor. The storm was coming, and I was standing at its eye. No cape, no emblem, just a man trying to stop the next shot before it was fired.

The hunt wasn’t over. It never was.

The sirens were closing in, distant but certain, threading through the city like hounds on a scent. Above, the low hum of helicopters carved through the night, their searchlights licking at rooftops, hungry for something just out of reach.

This was my inheritance—a city built from the bones of ships and sinners, held together by rust and regret.

I couldn’t be a gentle ghost in this haunted maze.

I had to be a banshee. A wail in the dark. A spectre in the storm.