Yasuke Kurochiha's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Three days ago, men in a black van took Yasuke's little sister off their own block. Now he stood in the lobby of his housing complex, the fortified towers where he grew up, and no one would say who did it. He had a name to find. He had nothing else. He knew these hallways. The mismatched doors, red and green and yellow, each one hiding a family that had watched his sister since she was a baby. He knocked on all of them. Old Mrs. Diaz cracked her door two inches and shut it. The Kemp boys wouldn't meet his eyes. Every face knew the crew. Every mouth stayed closed. "You seen who took Nia," Yasuke said to the man who ran the corner shop downstairs. Not a question anymore. The man wiped the same clean spot on his counter. "I got grandkids upstairs, Yasuke." His voice shook. "They know where all of us sleep." Yasuke understood. Fear wasn't weakness here. It was math. Talk, and the crew came for your family next. He couldn't hate anyone for the silence. He also couldn't use it. So he stopped asking. He climbed instead. On the ninth floor lived a man everyone called the Deacon. He collected the crew's money and moved it up to the polished penthouse where the bosses lived like magazine covers. The Deacon was no soldier. He was a bookkeeper who feared the wrong number more than any fist. Yasuke came in through the fire escape, quiet as a shadow through a dark forest. He was inside the Deacon's apartment before the lock finished turning. He didn't touch him. He sat in the good chair and waited. The Deacon walked in, saw him, and dropped his keys. "I'm not here to hurt you," Yasuke said. He kept his hands open on his knees. "I'm here to give you a better fear." "You don't know what they'll do to me." "I do." Yasuke leaned forward. "But they're upstairs. I'm right here. And I already climbed nine floors without anyone hearing me." He let that sit. "Give me a name. One name. No one knows it came from you. Refuse me, and I stop being quiet." The Deacon's hands trembled over his ledger. He weighed the bosses he served against the stranger already in his home. The stranger won. "Marcus Vane," he whispered. "He runs the crew that took her. He works out of the top floors. But listen—" He grabbed Yasuke's sleeve. "Vane doesn't grab family for leverage. Not usually. If he took your sister, somebody paid him to. This is bigger than a debt." Yasuke stood. He had his name at last. He also had something worse than silence. Someone had chosen his family on purpose. And he didn't know who, or why. He went back out the window, into the dark, already hunting the answer.