“Superhero fiction?” I asked him with a quirked eyebrow.
“A guilty pleasure of mine. I love reading about their adventures. Makes the little kid in me happy,” he said with a smile.
“You don’t have powers, do you?” I asked, more hopefully than I intended. The people trying to kill me all had superpowers. It would be nice to have someone protecting me who did as well.
“I don’t, but the US Marshal from WitSec does. He’s great—they call him Bricklayer. He’s completely impervious to physical harm and he can throw a tank. How cool is that?”
I nodded. I was less concerned about the ‘cool factor’ than the ‘I don’t die’ factor. “Whatever you say. Can we go?”
“Just a second, I want to see if you were followed. I have to say, Madisun, I’m impressed. You are one clever girl. First you escaped them in New Orleans, then here in the city… thank you. Thank you for trusting me and coming here. Together we’ll put these scumbags behind bars.”
I gripped the edge of the table until my knuckles hurt. This was exactly what I needed to hear. “Thank you, Agent,” I said, reaching up to wipe my face. “The last few days, even before everything that happened, have been trying.”
He reached over and touched my hand. “I read the reports, the fact that you’ve held it together says a lot about you. Don’t worry Madisun, from here on out your safety is guarant—”
I was looking down at my hands, not sure what to say but his sudden stop made me look up. Blood blossomed from his shirt in two places just above his heart. I hadn’t even heard a gunshot.
I’m next. Think!
I had only seconds to act. Agent Jordan was already dead, his blue eyes gazed out at nothing. His coat fell open and his gun caught my eye. I had only ever fired one once, at a range for a date. It hadn’t worked out with the guy, but I wasn’t half bad with a pistol. I kept meaning to buy one but gun laws in NYC were so strict it never seemed worth the time and expense.
Without second-guessing myself, I reached over and yanked his pistol out of the holster. It wasn’t the same kind of gun I had fired at the range, but they shared commonalities. Like a slide and a trigger. The side of the pistol was smooth, no safeties, so I grabbed the slide and jerked it back. The gun shook in my hand as it slammed forward. I raised it up over my head, pointing at the sky and pulled the trigger.
It was loud. Deafeningly loud. My ears rang as I emptied the clip into the air. People screamed around me, running in every direction. I tossed the gun aside and ran with the largest crowd as they crossed the street at a near run. As soon as the crowds merged I headed north on Worth street.
The nice thing about NYC is the transit. Busses pass the major intersections and travel along the large streets almost by the minute—or in this case, every five minutes. Sirens and screams continued to fill the air as people ran and police responded. Whoever killed Agent Jordan was audacious enough do it a block away from FBI HQ; I doubted they would have any trouble following me or shooting into a crowd if they thought they could hit me. No, I needed a bus and I needed to be as far away from New York as I could get.
Where in the world can I go that they won’t find me?
My dream of bringing Henry to justice died with Agent Jordan. How could anyone with friends that powerful ever face real justice? I pushed that thought aside and focused on surviving. I needed to go somewhere I had never been, someplace without friends or relatives, and as far away from the southern border as possible. If Sara was right, and I had no reason to think she hadn’t known what she was talking about, ISO-1 came from South America. Better to be as far away as I could.
The bus pulled up beside me and I jumped on. Pushing a little of the remaining cash I had left into the slot. I made my way through the crowded vehicle all the way to the back and took a seat.
Where do I go?”
Every bus has a map of its route; this line ended at Grand Central Station. It was fate. I could withdraw the remaining money from my account at an ATM there. It wouldn’t help them to know I’d left on a bus, there are busses to everywhere from Grand Central. But where? I really hated the cold, so Canada was out. Plus I was pretty sure I needed a passport to go there. Nothing in the south would work: from what Sara said, ISO-1 is a border gang. I rubbed my face, sleeplessness and worry were taking its toll.
Then the song started playing. The famous one by the grunge band with the singer who died when I was a kid. Where was he from?
Seattle… Nirvana played out of Seattle.
It was as far from my usual stomping grounds as I could get. I would do my own form of witness protection and no one would ever see me again. Of course, Sara’s murder would go unpunished, but at least I would be alive to remember her. To remember all of them. A pit of rage built up in my stomach. Unrelenting, aching, like a coal burning. It galled me that he would get away with it. It wasn’t right. None of it was.
The sad truth is, there’s nothing I can do about it. I’m just a single human being. No superpowers or training. I’m just going to have to find a way to live with it.
Chapter 6
I hate busses. They’re small, cramped, smelly, and filled with people I don’t know. When I first started out in the modeling business, I had to take the bus everywhere. As I grew in success, I graduated to planes and private cars. All of that came to an end last Thanksgiving when my agency gave me a pink slip. Now, I’m back on a bus.
I only had to wait an hour to find a bus heading west. It was only to Detroit, but from there I could catch any number of busses. I had almost bought a ticket for Seattle right there, but my subconscious nagged at me. No reason to broadcast where I was headed.
After I bought my ticket, I took the time to have some food, buy a few new items of clothing, and a new prepaid smartphone. I didn’t have much money left, so I needed to be careful or I would run out before I had a new source.
On the bus, I put my knees up on the seat in front of me, my body folded almost in half as I used my smartphone to look at maps of where I was going. Reading about Detroit I knew one thing; I didn’t want to stay there. Some of the highest crime in the country, tens of thousands of abandoned buildings, utilities that didn’t work, and a dwindling population. I started following links, as one does late at night when overly tired. It’s almost as if the web entranced me and I just kept clicking until I saw it.
ISO-1 Handed Their First Big Defeat in the Motor City.
The article was three years old. Still, reading about the police kicking their butt could lift my spirits and I read on. According to the writer, a Krisan Swahili, the super-powered gang moved into Detroit just after the incident in Washington DC. They used the confusion in Washington to set up bases of operation all over the country, but in Detroit, they failed. It wasn’t because of the police, though.
As I read my eyes grew wider and wider. I sat up with a start.
“No freaking way,” I muttered. The man next to me looked up from his phone as if I had spoken to him. I apologized and pulled my hood down farther. He went back to ignoring me. I couldn’t believe what I was reading.
A masked vigilante known only as The Wraith was Detroit's unofficial guardian angel. He had stopped thousands of crimes in his ten years of activity. Officially, the police hunted him. Unofficially they applauded him. The only photo of him was a blurry shot of a man in a trench-coat and hat, firing two silver pistols at someone one off camera.
He fought a war with ISO-1 that lasted a year and a half. In the end, hundreds of gang members were dead, and their leadership abandoned the city. After his victory, he got in a huge shootout with the state police when they tried to arrest him. After that, he was never heard from again. The writer hoped he had retired, but thought it likely that he had died of his wounds,
The Wraith… I didn’t follow the superhero thing—it was like celebrity watching and I never really was into it like Sara was. One thing the events of the last few days taught me is that those with the power to snuff out life with a f
lick of their finger are dangerous, but those who would betray their loved ones and friends are worse. Henry had betrayed my family. I didn’t know how I had never seen his weak character before; to think I married him turned my stomach.
I have nothing, no superpowers, no money, no training, I’m a freaking fashion model and I don’t even have that anymore. They’ve taken everything from me.
Maybe it’s time I took something back.
Chapter 7
The bus deposited me in the downtown station just after four in the morning. It was chilly, but not freezing, which surprised me—I always thought of the cities on the Great Lakes as cold, wet places. It wasn’t a balmy temp, but it was easily in the sixties. I flipped my hood up and buried my hands deep in my sweater pockets. I didn’t think anyone here would recognize me, but why take the chance? The way ISO-1 hitmen keep showing up to kill me, I didn’t think I could be too careful.
I walked directly out of the terminal and across the street at a brisk pace. The old buildings on this block were mostly abandoned; I found one with a pair of columns out front and ducked behind it to watch back the way I came. By leaving the building so fast I hoped that anyone following me would be forced to hurry as well—and that I would spot them. I waited five minutes before deciding I was clear.
Now what?”
The charge on my phone wouldn’t last forever, neither would my alertness. I hadn’t slept on the bus and weariness crept in at the edges. If I didn’t get some coffee soon, the pavement would be my bed.
Downtown Detroit wasn’t a grid system; more like a half grid, half circle system. The bus station resided on Fort St—a stroke of luck for me as it turned out. On my phone, I pulled up the writer’s piece on The Wraith. It only took a second to click on her name and find out where she worked; The Detroit Free Press. As it turned out, their building was not six blocks away.
The last piece she wrote for them was two weeks ago. I didn’t read it, but it was something about the city using bulldozers to level crack houses. If she still worked there then odds were good she had an office in the building. Time to start walking.
Right then my biggest enemy was fatigue. My eyelids drooped, and I started stumbling. When I almost fell, I shook myself awake but it didn’t take long before I was right back where I started. I needed caffeine. As luck would have it a Starbucks flipped its open sign just across the street from my destination. I went in, dropped my last five dollars on the counter, and ordered a triple shot Venti espresso—the largest one they had.
It was six AM; I had two more hours to pass before I could reasonably hope to find her. I found myself a cozy chair in a corner and leaned my head back. My hood was pulled down enough no one could see if I was asleep or awake, and that would have to do.
“Ma’am, you can’t sleep in here,” a girl said to me. My eyes popped open and for a second, I was back in the house, the fire raging, Sara dying in my arms. I leaped out of the chair, spilling what remained of my espresso and knocking the table over. “Hey, crazy, what are you doing?” she asked.
I looked around as my vision cleared. I wasn’t back in the house, I was in Detroit. It was no dream, just a nightmare. “Sorry,” I muttered as I left. The sun was up, not very far, but enough to bring the temperature up to the 70s. I could tell it was that warm because I needed to pull my sweatshirt off, just leaving me in jeans and a t-shirt.
The entire downtown area had seen better days, the Detroit Free Press building included—it looked more like a condemned tenement than a business. Enough people walked in and out that I was able to slip in with the crowd to avoid being noticed. Maybe I was paranoid, maybe not. All the dead bodies in my wake said I wasn’t paranoid enough. A long-abandoned front desk held the directory for anyone to peruse, but years had likely passed since they had a dedicated doorman.
KRISAN SWAHILI, 601
That was who I was looking for. Easy peasy. Of course, she might now know anything, but I’d be no worse off than I was at that moment. The west bank of elevators was taped off with ‘out of order’ signs; they looked like they hadn’t worked in some time. A few people waited over at the remaining ones. When the doors opened, I stepped in with them.
I caught sight of me in the warped mirrored finish of the elevator walls… I look like a madwoman. Not that I wasn’t. I was mad, not crazy, but mad. Mad that the justice system seemed unable to take Henry to task for what he did. Mad that, no matter where I went, I saw Sara’s face in every person I met. Mad that the life I thought I had was gone.
The doors opened on the sixth floor and I stormed out, pushing past the two remaining people. My blood boiled, and I let the anger run wild as I stormed into 601. I don’t know what I expected, but this wasn’t it. In the movies, newsrooms were clean, well-maintained places of research. This was a chaotic mess. Printers that were older than I was clacked away in the corner, unused office equipment was piled up against the far wall, and two of the fabricated offices against the window side of the building were halfway through their demolition. Except, it looked like no one had worked on it in a while… maybe years.
“What a dump,” I muttered.
“No one reads newspapers anymore.” One of the two people who had ridden up with me said as he walked by. “Can I help you find someone, miss?”
“Madi… Madi is fine. I’m looking for a reporter, Krisan Swahili?” I asked. I held out the phone to show him the picture that was on their website. The man looked at the phone then at me… or more accurately, my clothes.
“You’re not here to cause trouble, are you? It might not look like much, but we do have security.”
“Trouble?” I shook my head. “I’m looking for information about a piece she wrote a few years back.” I glanced around the room again. A half dozen people went about their day, typing at computers, drinking coffee, and doing their best to pretend they didn’t live in a war zone.
“Okay. Corner office—has her name on it.” He pointed to guide me. I took off walking immediately. There was a time in my life where I would have thanked him, even smiled for him. That time was not now. Not ever again. With each passing minute, my rage and anger grew, to the point where there was nothing left but coldness. It had to. If it didn’t, sadness would overwhelm me and there was work to be done. I could be sad some other time.
The office did have her name on it. The dirty windows did little to shield my view. There was a small desk inside, a laptop and a metric ton of paper books behind the small figure at the desk. Not something I saw very much anymore. Half the reason papers like this were dying was because of smartphones. The door was open.
“Mrs. Swahili?” I didn’t know if she was married or not.
“Just Ms. How can I help you?” she asked without looking up from her laptop. With a last name like hers I expected a person of color; I was surprised to see a white woman.
She was about my age, maybe a little older with shoulder-length brown hair in a ponytail but she had to keep pushing one strand out of her face. She chewed on her nails while she read the screen in front of her. Her outfit looked like a Wally-world special. Clearly, she wasn’t a high-paid reporter.
When I didn’t answer she finally looked up and raised her eyebrows at me. “Were you looking for me?”
“Yes, sorry I was just…”
“I married a Bantu man. When he immigrated, he was confused and gave the INS his language instead of his last name. He ended up liking it, and it stuck. When he died, I kept it. I loved the big lug and saw no reason to go back to ‘Peterson’.” She said it all so matter-of-fact I was surprised. It occurred to me as she spoke that she must get that question a lot—so much so that she answered it before it was even asked.
“I see,” I said lamely. My anger seeped out of me along with my energy as I leaned against her door frame. “I… I’m looking for information—” a yawn escaped me that I couldn’t stop. “On The Wraith?”
There wasn’t much in her office: her little desk, the chair she sat in, and a beat-
up old recliner. I pointed at the recliner and she nodded, waving her hand at it. I stumbled in, slid down to sit and folded my hands over my stomach.
“You look familiar. Have we met?” she asked.
I pulled on my fingers, trying to keep my mind sharp, but I was so tired. So very tired. “No. No we haven’t.” I yawned again, this time barely able to keep my eyes open. I fought to stay awake, but now that I had sat down the battle was lost. I slipped into unconsciousness.
Chapter 8
I awoke with a hard start, leaping out of the chair and immediately slamming my back against the wall, putting my hands up in front of me to defend myself. Not that I could—I didn’t know how to fight, but I wouldn’t let that stop me.
I had dreamed of Sara again. Every time I closed my eyes I dreamed of her. All that she was, all that she could have done, taken from her.
“Who’s Sara?” Krisan asked from behind her desk. She was still working, still biting one of her nails as she typed away with the other hand. I blinked several times. Sunlight streamed in through the window, far brighter than it was when I’d passed out. A cup of coffee sat on the edge of her desk closest to me.
“Is that for me?” I asked. She waved at it with her hand, not looking up from her screen, then continued typing faster than I thought possible for a person only using one hand.
I took the cup in hand, easing back into the chair before sipping it. The coffee was cold and bitter, but I didn’t care.
“She is… was… my little sister,” I answered. The office door was a few inches open, I leaned over and closed it the rest of the way. “You have to understand, everyone I’ve told this to… has… has…” I gulped not wanting to break down, not here, not now… maybe not ever. I closed my eyes and focused on Sara’s face. “Everyone I’ve tried to tell, they’ve been murdered.”
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