Boundless: A Bounty Short

by J. D. Cunegan

  But there was nothing Jill could do about that now. The best thing she could do was go home, get herself patched up, and regroup in the morning. Hindsight was not her friend at the moment, but Jill couldn’t do anything about that until she took care of the open wound on the back of her leg.

  Camden Yards was lit up in the distance. Jill was close to her apartment -- and more importantly, the First Aid kit in her bathroom.

  II

  No sooner did Jill push through the door to her apartment, she collapsed. The bleeding had slowed to a light trickle, which meant she hadn’t left much of a trail out in the hallway, but she was lightheaded. Jill somehow managed to shut the door before rolling onto her back and gritting her teeth. Just because the bleeding had almost stopped, that didn’t mean the pain was over. If anything, the wound on the back of her leg hurt more now than it did when she had pulled out the blade.

  The burning and throbbing were almost unbearable. Jill reached for the back of her leg, but the second her fingers touched leather, a jolt shot up her spine. She cried out before clasping her other hand over her mouth. The last thing Jill needed was to alert a neighbor as to her predicament. Ms. Reynolds in 4D was a lovely woman, but she didn’t know Jill’s secret and it needed to stay that way.

  Not to mention, someone calling the paramedics for the stab wound would be even worse. Word would almost certainly get back to the Baltimore Police Department, and that would be bad for Jill on several different fronts. So like it or not, Jill was on her own in this.

  Gritting her teeth, and trying not to move her left leg, Jill rolled onto her back. Even with her considerable strength and other attributes, the exertion took almost as much out of her as the fight over an hour ago.

  She huffed several ragged breaths, each gasp for air harder than the last, before digging her fingers into the shaggy carpet and trying to lift herself onto her elbows. It took a couple tries, but eventually Jill hoisted herself up. Her left leg hovered a few inches off the floor. She wouldn’t dare walk barefoot over it, the carpet was so rough, so there was no telling how much damage it would do to a stab wound.

  Jill blew a strand of hair out of her face. “Fuck.”

  Her first night as a vigilante had been going well, all things considered. Sure, she had her face smashed into a window and wound up staring down several high-powered military weapons. But Jill had defeated all of those men with surprising ease. Not only was she in shape from a personal history that included high school soccer, a four-year stint in the United States Army, and breezing through the Police Academy, but she had an advantage most could only dream of.

  While in the Army, Jill had agreed to undergo a secret scientific experiment called Project Fusion. The brainchild of one Dr. Trent Roberts, the project took human prosthetics and cybernetics to the next level. By the time Jill had recovered from the procedure, her entire skeleton was grafted in titanium, she boasted super strength, speed, and agility, and her left eye was capable of infrared sight. Add in a supercomputer the size of a bread crumb tucked into her brain, and Jill was practically the Bionic Woman… despite being remarkably human in every other aspect.

  She could feel the wound starting to heal; Jill also had accelerated healing, just not at the rate of a certain Canadian comic book hero her younger brother once idolized. Digging her right heel into the floor, Jill grit her teeth and pushed herself upright again, losing her balance until she reached over to grab the edge of the kitchen counter. For once, her apartment’s diminutive size worked in her favor -- even if the bathroom was still too far away for her liking.

  She hopped on her right leg, keeping her left leg as still as possible until she crossed into the bathroom and flipped the switch. The bulb flickered as Jill reached for the white box sitting on the back of the toilet, tossing it onto the sink and practically ripping open the lid. Her First Aid kit was essential, not just because of the day-to-day hassles of her normal job, but also because she knew long before she had this leather suit that her grand idea was dangerous. Jill hadn’t told anyone about her plan, not just because it meant she wouldn’t have a secret identity, but also because she knew everyone would try to talk her out of it.

  Then again, who was there in Jill’s life at the moment? Brian hated her guts, so talking to him was out of the question. There was Daniel Richards, captain of the BPD’s Seventh Precinct, her boss and reluctant surrogate father. He would call her a damn fool for pulling this vigilante stunt, and he’d be right.

  Yet Jill could never quite talk herself out of it. Not once did Jill ever doubt what she was doing. Not even the night a week ago she first put on the suit and got a good look at herself in the mirror.

  But staring back at her reflection now, seeing the way the aged light bulb reflected off her eyeplate, Jill was doubting herself. She tried lifting her left leg onto the sink, but the pain was too much. So she hobbled to the toilet before lowering herself onto the porcelain seat with a hiss.

  What a night this was turning out to be: stab wound, a muscle cramp starting to form in her leg, and Jill was no closer to finding out who killed Johnny Ruiz than she was before the day started.

  A homicide detective with the BPD, like her father before her, Jill was first on the scene almost twenty-four hours ago when a call came in about a body that had been stuffed into a dumpster between the city’s football and baseball stadiums. Jill was aghast that someone would kill a person near the city’s most iconic backdrop -- the B&O Warehouse that ran behind the right-field fence at Camden Yards was as close to sacred ground as the city had now that Memorial Stadium was gone and replaced by senior community centers, a YMCA, and a youth baseball field.

  Turned out, though, that Ruiz had not been killed between the two stadiums. He had only been dumped there. He had a gunshot wound to the forehead, but there was no blood pool or spatter in the dumpster or anywhere else in the vicinity. A forensics unit later found an abandoned Cadillac near One Charles Center, blood spatter on the back seat as well as gunpowder residue and a slug matching the bullet in Ruiz’s brain.

  The car had been reported stolen the week before, leading Jill and her team to a man named Madison Duval. Duval was rumored to be a crime boss in the city, running an underground drug syndicate that perpetually fed cocaine to West Baltimore. Drug arrests in that part of the city had increased by fifty percent in the past two months, and cops in Narcotics believed Ruiz was a runner for Duval.

  Captain Richards had then received a phone call from his contact in the FBI, claiming Ruiz was an informant. So the running theory was that Ruiz had been feeding Duval’s secrets to the feds and that Duval caught wind. One late-night car ride later, Ruiz took a bullet to the head and Duval apparently didn’t care all that much about covering his tracks.

  Ruiz had been dressed to resemble a homeless man, but that and the fact that the police found him in that dumpster were as far as the charade went. It was almost as if Duval was rubbing the authorities’ nose in it. He wanted them to know he did it, and he wanted them to know he was going to get away with it.

  The problem was, he was probably right. Duval was the one of the city’s most untouchable men thanks to his wealth and connections. He knew just enough people in all the right places to keep scrutiny off of himself. The only reason the FBI was trailing Duval in the first place was because he hadn’t yet infiltrated that agency.

  The case was at a standstill, but the minute Jill had heard Duval’s name, she decided this was as good a time as any to dig deeper. Her contact at the mayor’s office tipped her to the high-rise office building on the corner of Cider Alley and Paca Street. The twentieth floor supposedly held all of the files implicating Duval not just in Johnny Ruiz’s murder, but in several other illegal dealings -- including the drug trade that had infested West Baltimore.

  Only once Jill got there, the place was empty. There were no files to be found. Instead, Jill wound up squaring off against a handful of G.I. Joe wannabes, including head honcho Riggins who swore up and down that th
is went far deeper than Jill knew. To say nothing of the original assailant, whose identity she still didn’t know.

  If that was the case, her colleagues at the Seventh didn’t stand a chance.

  Duval’s suspected involvement appeared to be a perfect time for Jill to get her vigilante on -- at least, that was the thought earlier that night when she slipped on the armor and zipped up the bodysuit. The sword was a family heirloom, and Jill just remembered that it was still slung over her shoulder. Gingerly, she removed the sheath before setting the weapon up against the tub.

  There was nothing in the First Aid kit that would be suitable for a knife wound, but Jill would have to improvise because going to the hospital was out of the question. She was not about to blow her cover on the first night.

  Jill sucked in a deep breath, taking off her gloves before running a washcloth under the faucet and wringing it out once warm water had soaked through. She pulled the sword out of its sheath and laid the weapon in the bathtub before grabbing the leather strap and clamping down on it with her teeth. This was going to be excruciating, and Jill didn’t need to wake her neighbors with a scream.

  She bit down harder and squeezed her eyes shut, the hand holding the damp cloth trembling. She took another deep breath to steel herself, counted down from five in her head and the second her brain screamed one, Jill pressed the cloth to her wound.

  As expected, the pain was grueling. Jill’s scream was muffled by the strap and her leg trembled. Jill forced herself to hold the cloth in place, despite the sharp pain that rippled throughout her entire body. Another jolt of pain surprised her, and Jill lost her hold on the strap. Instead, she bit her lip and shook, trying to keep from crying out.

  In some ways, this hurt worse than the original injury. Even as she felt the wound slowly but surely healing, the slow trickle of blood sopped up by the cloth, Jill shook and her right eye rolled into the back of her head.

  “Fuck,” she hissed. “Fuck fuck fuck fuck…”

  Was this her life now? Huddled up in the bathroom at all hours of the night, tending to her own wounds? She removed the cloth once it had started to dry, staring at the blood stain in the center. Her leg was still shaking and though the pain had started to dissipate, it was still lingering just below the surface.

  She tossed the rag into the sink and sat back against the commode with a sigh, staring up at the ceiling. A fly buzzed against the wall, as if the corner of the shower stall was going to be its ticket to freedom.

  What on Earth made Jill think this a good idea?

  Gritting her teeth so hard that her jaw was starting to hurt, Jill unzipped her bodysuit and pulled her arms from the sleeves. She then reached down to untie and pull off her boots, which proved difficult with her lack of mobility. But she managed to untie the boot before brushing her right foot along the heel.

  Her boots now lying on the floor, Jill forced herself to stand up, her left leg still not touching the floor before she pushed the leather the rest of the way off. A black pair of compression shorts stopped mid-thigh, just above her stab wound, and Jill sat on the toilet again before grabbing a roll of heavy-duty bandage.

  She unfurled the roll and began wrapping the bandage around her thigh. Once, twice, three times the material wrapped around her leg, the friction sending another shot of pain through her. She grit her teeth against it, adding another three layers before cutting the bandage from the roll and securing it with medical-grade adhesive.

  Tossing the roll back into the First Aid box, Jill carefully let her left foot touch the floor and while it hurt, the pain was so much less than it had been when she had first got back to her apartment. Jill grabbed the edge of the sink and lifted herself upright again, deciding to leave the costume and the sword for the morning.

  Jill wasn’t on-call until noon the next day, despite the fact that they were working an active case. As thankful as she was for the chance to grab some sleep, Jill wondered how she was going to explain her limp the next day. With any luck, it would have healed enough by then not to be all that noticeable. As it was, it didn’t hurt nearly as much as she expected when she peeled off the mesh armor and slid under the covers.

  Most nights, sleep would be immediate. The rigors of her day job were enough to wear Jill out to the point that most nights, she was asleep by the time the door shut. Add in the night’s festivities in the office building, and Jill was sure that she would’ve passed out as soon as her head hit the pillow.

  Yet she was wide awake. It wasn’t the pain keeping her up, and it wasn’t even the case. Jill rolled onto her right side, tucking her arms underneath the pillow and staring into the bathroom. The light was out, but she could still see her costume in a heap on the floor.

  Again, Jill wondered: what the hell was she doing? As bad ideas went, this ranked up there with the time Brian tried to eat a bowl of chili while playing video games at the same time. Three months later, the Nintendo still smelled like cheese and there was no way that stain was ever coming out of the rug.

  Then again, Brian’s stunt didn’t result in him taking a knife to the back of the leg. Janice, their mother, might have reminded Brian a time or two that his father had a gun -- in jest, of course -- but no physical harm came of it.

  It looked so easy in those comic books Brian used to read. By day, the hero was a dashing businessman or an intrepid reporter or a fighter pilot or even a professor. By night, they transformed into a brave, death-defying crime fighter dedicating their life to saving those in trouble and making the city they lived in safer. That was all Jill wanted to do, and even though she did good work with a badge, it wasn’t enough.

  Not in this city.

  Over the past calendar year, Baltimore had averaged almost two homicides a day -- to say nothing of drug-related offenses, robberies, and the like. The police were, among other things, overworked. Depending on which newspaper one read, they were also incompetent. Truth was, a lot of them were taking money under the table from outside sources, so what some saw as incompetence might have actually been willful neglect.

  Then there was the worst insult of all. Her father, Paul Andersen, was once Baltimore’s most decorated cop. He had a key to the city, the highest closure rate in his precinct. He had a loving wife, a good son, and a daughter who worshiped him. But over a decade ago, Paul was arrested and charged with three murders. Gruesome acts that left bodies unrecognizable and appeared to be the work of a deranged serial killer.

  Yet all of the state’s evidence pointed to Paul and he was found guilty. As such, he had been sentenced to die. His lawyers had drug the process out with appeals and injunctions, but as it currently stood, Baltimore’s greatest hero was two years away from being put down.

  Jill was a cop because of her father. When she was little, she was in awe of the way her father fought for all that was good in the world He put the bad guys behind bars and came home every night with a smile on his face. Her father and her boss, who had been his partner at the time, were like Batman and Robin to her.

  As a child, Jill never understood her brother’s fascination with comic books because, as far as she was concerned, they lived with a real-life superhero. Paul was what she wanted to be when she grew up. As much as Janice had hated the thought, nothing was going to keep Jill from getting her badge.

  A stint in the Army, and two tours in Iraq, couldn’t even do that.

  But Jill could see that being a cop wasn’t enough. Her hometown was still in trouble, and her efforts thus far to clear Paul’s name had been in vain. There was no way she was going to let the state of Maryland kill an innocent man. Jill didn’t care what the prosecution said, she didn’t care what some jury decided. Her father did not kill those three people, and she had a little over two years to prove it.

  But not before she figured out a way to tie Duval to Johnny Ruiz’s murder.

  III

  As she had hoped, a good night’s sleep did wonders for Jill’s leg. It still hurt, she still walked with a limp, but the bleeding
had stopped. The red stain covering the bandage was far smaller than Jill had expected, and her biggest issue upon slipping out of bed was the fact that her muscles were so stiff.

  When she finally conked out the night before, Jill must have fallen into such a deep sleep that she hardly moved. It took several long stretches before Jill could lift herself off the mattress and wander toward the bedroom.

  She cringed at the sight of the leather pile on the floor, to say nothing of the katana in the bathtub. Over the past few months, Jill had considered seeking out a roommate. Now that she led a double life, though, that was no longer an option -- even if it meant expenses occasionally overwhelmed her. Snatching the bodysuit and boots, Jill wandered back into her bedroom to toss them into the armoire.

  Hobbling back to the bathroom, Jill grabbed the sword, sheathing it and returning it to its place in the back corner of the mahogany case. As Jill placed the lock on the armoire, her phone pinged. Captain Richards had sent her a text saying there was a break in the Ruiz case and that he would pick her up on the way.

  She limped her way into the bathroom again, pulling her hair back into a tight ponytail before applying a healthy amount of deodorant to her underarms. She took a glance at herself in the mirror, arching a brow at how her nose appeared to have healed overnight. It was no longer crooked, and the bruises she had sported the night before had almost completely faded.

  Jill sighed and shook the cobwebs out of her brain, squinting at the light in the bathroom that seemed a little brighter than usual. There was a dull throb at the base of her skull. Apparently, accelerated healing only went so far. But she could hide a headache far better than a broken nose.

  Opening a small blue box sitting on the right side of the sink, Jill pulled a skin graft out and gave herself a long look in the mirror. The eyeplate covering her left eye was the most obvious reminder of Project Fusion, the one she had to keep hidden from the rest of the world. Originally, she did so because the sight was so jarring for others, but now she had a secret identity to keep.