How can you explain something that isn’t supposed to exist?
Take the Network, the tall tale within the criminal community of New York
City. No one really believes it exists—not the police, not the street criminals,
not the federal men on the inside. It’s a legend, just folklore passed down to
scare the new guy, something that keeps young wiseguys awake at night, right?
Wrong.
The factionalized groups of the New York underworld fit
together like pieces in a cleverly-constructed puzzle box which
engulfs the city, sealing all within itself. Some pieces are larger,
some smaller, others hold important positions without which
the entire box would fall apart. The Network surrounds that box,
holds it together through implacable will, and can destroy it all
with a shrug.
The Network is the superpower of the underworld.
But it’s much more than that. Only the highest and the
mightiest of New York’s criminal population know it to be real at
all, and they aren’t talking. People who pay attention too closely
to the Network’s invisible activities have a tendency to become
invisible themselves — permanently. Those who squeal — besides
not being believed — end up suffering a fate much worse than
death, and this is not just an expression. The Network is never
talked about by anyone, never mentioned in serious conversation,
never marked down in ledgers. Its existence is marked nowhere
but in the minds of its constituents, the underworld population
of New York.
There was an attempt to destroy it once, back before the
Network was really big, or so it seemed. Just that once, the vast
machinery that truly is the Network rolled out of the shadows and
steamrolled its opponents flat. No one has made a move against it
since. Now, a seamless wall of invisibility, and the dispersion and
anonymity of the Network’s leaders, makes another such attack
impossible.
Those in power understand that all organizations answer to
the Network equally. If the Network is pleased, nothing happens.
If the Network is displeased, important people disappear. Always
quietly, without any fuss. Without any evidence. Organizations
come and go, leaders rise and fall, thugs die, and crime keeps
marching on in the endless play of human lives.
But only if the Network lets it.
