Brooding with the Corax

Halifax, Nova Scotia, sometime between why the hell are you still awake and too-dark o’clock in the morning. An old church roof in a part of the city that weathered the Halifax Explosion way back when and has been standing ever since.   Me? I’m the guy on the roof. You might mistake me for a gargoyle. I wouldn’t blame you.   I brood in classic, angst-ridden Byronic hero fashion—crouched in the dark and cold, perched on stone, staring longingly at the city and the distant North Atlantic. Very Corax. Very on-brand for my particular blend of introverted trauma and compulsive self-reflection.   The wind cuts in off the water like it remembers things I don’t want to. Salt, rust, old smoke. The city below hums softly, unaware or pretending to be. Lights flicker. Somewhere, a siren complains about a problem it won’t solve.   I stay still. Watching. Waiting. Because that’s the job. And because if I move, I might have to admit I’m tired.   Next to me is Steve. He’s an actual gargoyle—not the monster sort, more the carved gutter-on-a-rooftop kind. Great guy. Solid. Always listens. Never judges. A bit stone-cold, sure, but a real emotional rock.   “James, I appreciate the self-reflection, but must you assault me with the puns?” she says, her voice like black satin even when she’s annoyed.   That’s my co-pilot: the Crow Spirit. Immortal spirit-crow lady thing. Magical operating-system administrator for the Crow’s Talons—the pointy, ancient, definitely cursed metal gauntlets I get my superpowers from.   She lives in my head, in the metal, in the spaces between heartbeats. Offers guidance. Tactical advice. Sarcastic commentary, you know useful things in life.   Steve, for his part, remains silent. Which is why he’s my favourite conversationalist.   I talk to Steve sometimes. Not because I’m crazy. I mean—sure, I’ve got trauma issues. I’m certain a psychoanalyst would have a field day with me. But honestly, what vigilante doesn’t? Well-adjusted people don’t put on a mask and think, let’s go risk life and limb punching murderers and kicking supervillains in the family jewels.   I’m also what I’d call neurospicy. I’m weird. Quirky. Wired different. But crazy? No. Well—crazy cool. Crazy fun. Crazy good at video games.   “Goddess,” the Crow Spirit says, “for someone who is openly shy, you are privately confident in very specific ways that border on arrogance, my Battle Crow.” She pauses, then adds in a delighted tone, “I approve. Do continue this train of thought.”   Right. Anyway.   I talk to Steve because I think too fast—especially when the anxiety starts spiraling. My thoughts stack up, overlap, trip over each other. Talking out loud, as weird as it sounds, forces them to slow down. Turns the noise into a line I can follow. A pace I can manage.   Steve doesn’t interrupt. Steve doesn’t judge. Steve doesn’t tell me I’m broken.   Steve just listens. Stone-silent. Solid as ever.   Tonight I’ve got a lot on my mind. It’s been a few weeks since it happened, but it still haunts me.   I created a monster because I was too slow.   Sure, Doctor Nicodemus Rutkowski was a world-class scumbag. No argument there. But what he became—that was on me. When I realized it, really realized it, he was already gone. Slipped away before the RCMP special containment team even showed up.   That’s when the cold hit.   Not fear exactly. Something worse. The understanding that he was out there now—changed, feral, brilliant, and angry—because I failed to end it cleanly. Because I hesitated. Because I chose restraint when speed mattered more.   Down there, under the city, something I helped create was still breathing.   And I don’t know how many people are going to pay for that before I find him again.   He’s out there somewhere, in a city I swore to protect. A monster I made worse because I wasn’t fast enough to stop him from falling into his own cocktail of mutagenic waste and rat DNA.   Now every harm he causes feels like it’s on me.   Every scream I don’t hear in time. Every body I don’t find fast enough. Every choice he makes with the teeth and claws I helped put in his hands.   Justice is supposed to be a balance. Tonight the scales feel tipped, and I can’t tell if that weight is guilt—or me.   He hasn’t resurfaced yet. That’s what scares me.   When we fought, he was more animal than man. All instinct, teeth, panic. But what if the human part—the genius biochemist—just needs time to realign itself?   My options are ugly either way.   Either there’s a feral rat-man cryptid crawling through the guts of my city… or there’s a mad scientist who is a rat-man cryptid, planning something worse than just evil rat stuff.   “Evil rat stuff?” the Crow Spirit asks.   You know—stealing cheese, chewing through things… evil rat stuff. Okay, fine.   “Rather vague,” she says. “But what is the worse outcome?”   He sets up a lab. Finds a sponsor. Slips back into the illegal biochem and genetic-modification game and quietly rewrites the local criminal ecosystem. Or he goes full mad-science lunatic and decides the problem is that he’s alone—and the rest of us aren’t rodents yet.   “You’ve thought about this more than might be healthy, James,” she observes.   No. I’ve thought about it like a guy raised on comics, cartoons, and the bloodstained history of modern superheroes and villains. You don’t take a selfish, morally bankrupt man like Doctor Rutkowski, mutate him into a rat monster, and expect him to politely take up needlepoint and charity work.   That’s not how stories work. That’s not how people work.   “You can’t blame yourself for his choices,” the Crow Spirit says. “You never told him to create mutated rats to produce a street drug as potent as Ad-Max for personal profit. You tried to stop him from plunging into his own mutagenic compounds. You didn’t push him. Your self-blame is pointless, Battle Crow. Focus on the threat, not misplaced guilt.”   I quiet, and look back out over the city.   She’s right. She often is. But it’s not that easy.   I still ask myself what if. What if I’d been just a little faster? Made a different call in that moment? What if I’d walked the darker path she’s always trying to set me on?   What if I’d taken his life?   Then there wouldn’t be a nightmare brewing somewhere in the dark bowels of the city—waiting, learning, adapting.   That’s the part she never says out loud. That’s the part I’m afraid she’s right about.   She cuts through the haze, her voice sharper this time.   “While I find your tendency toward mercy foolish, the facts remain unchanged. You had him defeated. Chained. Restrained. You refused to kill an enemy who, by your own assessment, was immobile and beaten.”   Her tone hardens, iron wrapped in velvet.   “You could not have predicted his escape. You believed the RCMP would find him. That he would be cured or imprisoned. You are blaming yourself for not being omniscient.”   A pause. Calculated. Surgical.   “Surely you understand how foolish that sounds.”   I do realize it. Honestly, I do. Knowing something is true doesn’t always make its weight any easier to carry. Doesn’t make it easier to set aside or put down.   I’m smart. Introspective, sure. But deep down I’m more of a feeler than a thinker—and it’s the feeling part that messes me up the most.   Still… she helped more than I want to admit. There’s a certain clarity in having someone else confirm it—in having another voice, outside my own head, say stop being a dumbass. More or less.   You’re out there, Lab Rat. My mistake. My burden.   A monster who’s faster than me, more agile than me, stronger than me—tougher than me. And if the worst-case scenario is true, smarter than me.   I barely beat him the first time we brawled. He was fresh off the mutation then—his mind reeling, his body still figuring out which parts of itself were supposed to bend, bite, or bleed. Instinct over strategy. Panic over planning.   Next time, that won’t be the case.   Next time he’ll be settled. Focused. Ready.   And that scares the hell out of me.   I should head home. End patrol. I need sleep. I need to pretend I’m still a functional college student and not the shambling ruin of a personal life desperately propped up by caffeine, deadlines, and denial. If I don’t, something’s going to finally keel over and give up the ghost—and it probably won’t be the part of my life wearing armor.   So I stand, roll my shoulders, feel the familiar ache settle in, and get moving. Parkour and climbing carry me away from the church roof, back through the veins of the city toward my apartment. Brick, fire escape, shadow, breath. Muscle memory doing what it does best when my thoughts get too loud.   This life I’m trying to hold together. This duty I’ve taken on to protect my city.   Neither of them gets to rest. Neither of them gets to step back and politely wait for Lab Rat to make his move in a vacuum. Evil doesn’t work like that. Monsters don’t wait for permission.   I keep moving. I keep preparing. I keep being afraid—and doing it anyway.   I guess this crow will just have to hope he’s ready when the rat finally shows his face.   …or muzzle.