Once upon a time, well back in the day, the Minotaurs weren’t so small a threat as the gang you see today. Instead, they were big and bad as hell, and they ran with a guy, Horns, who got himself grafted in a big-city clinic on his mother’s credit. Not a smart dude, all things considered, but he wasn’t no-one to mess with, and the Minotaur’s done good under his leadership, good enough to claim all the blocks by the river, everything right up ta the bridge where the Lizards’ turf begins.
Now some of that goes to the Minotaurs, sure, on account of them recruiting ‘em big, mean, and ready to fight, but some of comes down to Horns’ work too. He’s a hefty guy, and tough as hell, and he doesn’t shy away when it’s time to make a mess of some other fella’s guts. An’ it ain’t long before he’s feared, and the Minotaurs intimidate the other gangs right along with him.
Now in those days the Signal Ghosts weren’t like you think either. They were smaller and secret, the kind of gang that picked out the runts of the litter, and they didn’t bother with any of the streets on the surface ‘cause they spent all their time mapping the wreckage of the railway tunnels. Nobody really gave them two minutes thought, and when we did, we figured they were chickenshit, or weirdo’s who feared the sun, so we let ‘em keep the underground and fought for the places that mattered.
Only one day Horns isn’t happy knowing there’s someone out there who doesn’t piss themselves when they hear his name, so Horns gets together a posse and takes his boys into the dark, following the old D line, leadin’ this expeditionary force that’s more like a small army when you start payin’ attention. They follow the tracks until they find an old station the Ghosts are using as a crib, all secure and well-lit and shined up real nice. And Horns thinks, yeah, this place ain’t bad, so he walks out into the middle of platform and calls out their leader to introduce himself, all official-like. “Time to clear out your people,” he says, all knuckles and snarls and unsubtle threats. “The tunnels near the river are Minotaur turf. You got two hours scarper ‘fore we break heads and do this the hard way, dig?”
“Whatever you say,” the head Signal Ghost says, all calm and pretty as you please, and he leads his people deeper in, following the tracks and the signals through the wreckage of the subways.
Horns is right chuffed about the way it all goes, congratulating himself for playing it cool and forcing the Signal Ghosts to back down. He’s perched in the splendor that once belonged to the Ghosts, feeling like a big man. He tells his boys to go nuts on the place, so the Minotaurs piss in the fountain and tag the walls, making a real mess of everything the Ghosts built. And after a while it ain’t fun no more, so they go a little deeper, seeing what’s there, and when they push their way through the rubble-filled tunnels, they find themselves another station the Ghosts have done up right nice, all painted and shiny and equipped with generators to keep the lights running.
“Well shoot,” Horns says, “this is much nicer than what we got,” and so he walks out into the middle of the Ghosts again and makes his new demands. “Two hours to get out or we’re breaking heads,” he says, and once again the Signal Ghosts leave their home behind.
Only this time the Minotaur’s ain’t so happy about their digs, especially once they’re done with the pissing and the tagging. They’re deeper underground, for starters, and the tunnels aren’t easy to get through. An’ the old station stairs leading up the surface got broken during the quake, so everyone has to climb using ropes and raw muscle. Even Horns ain’t pleased to be there, getting reports about the noises coming out of the deeper shafts, but he’s proud and dumb and unwilling to show fear, so he tells his boys they’re staying put and sets himself up a throne, and since Horns ain’t exactly the kind of guy who listens to complaints, the best the Minotaurs can do is grumble and moan and bitch.
An’ then the rumors start about the new place the Ghosts have set up, a big lair right out in the middle of the big ol’ Central exchange, the king-daddy station that makes the rest look tiny, and Horns starts thinking and fretting about the Ghosts having something that they Minotaurs don’t, about how bad it will look if word gets out they’re living large after the Minotaurs ran ‘em off. So he gathers his boys and he selects himself a posse, and together they head into the deep tunnels, the ones worst-hit during the quake, where only the Signal Ghosts really know what’s what.
And it ain’t easy for the Minotaurs to go that deep, not like it is for the Ghosts. The Minotaurs picked their boys for muscle, brought in the biggest and the strongest to join up and fight, an’ the Ghosts were always thin and small, the kind of boys who could squeeze through the rubble of the wrecked tunnels. All the Minotaurs know it’s a rotten call, but that don’t stop Horns at all and none of his boys are willing to complain, so they stumble through the dark and scrape through narrow gaps, losing skin and gaining bruises every step of the way.
An’ then they hit intersections, branching shafts that go off to the left and the right, or points where there’s even more choices, places where it’s easy to lose your bearings. Tunnels where a wall fell down or a sewer main broke, whole sections that get flooded and force the Minotaurs to retrace their steps.
And it’s round then that the Ghosts pick the Minotaurs off, throwing knives and rocks from hiding places, disappearing fast once they’ve bloodied someone up. The dark don’t bother them none, see, ‘cause the Ghosts got used to the murky black, and the tunnels don’t bother them none, either, ‘cause the Ghosts are small and know their way and slide through the narrow gaps all pretty as you please. An’ sure, the Minotaurs get one or two, torture ‘em plenty to get the secrets and find a way out, but you can’t follow a Ghost down there ‘cause they disappear ‘round a corner and never come back, an’ you can’t stay put ‘cause the other Ghosts come to distract you and your prisoner disappears while you’re trying to stop your boys from bleeding.
So Horns’ crew aren’t happy about this development, and one of them finally gets the guts to mention it to their leader, and Horns shouts down their complaints like it’s no big thing. “They’re just a bunch of skinny Ghosts,” he says, his nostrils all flared with anger, “weedy little punks with rusty knives who live in caves that smell of piss. Anything they do, we can do, yeah?”
An’ he keeps his crew moving, going further and further in, and every time he turns around, Horns finds he ain’t got as many boys as he remembered startin‘ out. An’ even this don’t stop him, so he continues looking for the Ghost’s Grand Central, ‘til even Horns can’t ignore the fact that he’s hungry and tired and sick of the dark. He tries to turn his posse back, finding their way to the surface, an’ the Ghosts keep hitting ‘em ‘til there ain’t none but Horns left walking.
An’ it’s hard for Horns to feel big and tough, walking through the murk all on his own, especially when he can hear the wet slap of Signal Ghost feet echoing through the tunnels. An’ for a while he convinces himself there’s nothing worse, listening to his enemies follow him through dark, but it turns out he’s plenty wrong ‘bout that too, ‘cause eventually the Ghosts stop following him and leave him all alone, just a big strong Minotaur ‘banger wandering through the old subways, lost in the twisted mess and wishing he could figure a way home.
An’ they say he’s down there still, living on rats and sewer water, trying to find his way out, but I don’t think the Ghosts have that kind of mercy and Horns’ never had that kind of smarts. ‘Cause it’s a smart man who chooses not to fight a Ghost on its own turf, and the Minotaurs learned that the hard way, way back in the day.