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 flick 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 Street, 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 not 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 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 beaten 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.”
The typing stopped. “Well, now you have to tell me,” she said with a smile. Not a humorous smile, but a coy one.
“Are you sure? I didn’t come here looking to endanger anyone. I just want to find The Wraith, if he’s still alive.”
She nodded as she used her feet to shimmy her rolling chair around to the front of her desk. “Let’s do a trade then. I’ll tell you what I know, but you have to tell me your story first. Deal?”
She was weird at best. Her movements were small, controlled. She typed carefully, moved carefully, and it seemed like she tried hard not to touch anything as she did so. In my time as a model I’d known a few germophobes and she acted like one. The only thing missing was the fifteen bottles of hand sanitizer.
“This isn’t easy for me,” I said. “To me, it happened just a couple of days ago.”
She nodded, then reached over to carefully pick up her water bottle and take a sip. “Go ahead?”
So, I did. I told her everything. Even things I really didn’t have to, like losing my modeling job. Even things like Sara’s last moments. I closed my eyes and bit my lip so hard it bled when I got to that part. I refused to cry though: I couldn’t cry until after the people responsible were brought to justice.
After what felt like an hour, I finished. Krisan blinked a couple of times and then, out of the blue, snapped her fingers. She pushed her chair back and dug around in the stack of books that littered the office behind her. After a moment she pulled out a magazine; an InStyle from the year before. She flipped through it until she found what she was looking for then turned around and slapped it down on her lap for me to see. Of course, I already knew what she was showing me. It was me, in a pair of torn jeans and a button-down shirt open to my navel. It was about the sexiest shoot I had ever don
e, and it was very close to my line of no nudes.
“This is you,” she told me.
“I know,” I said. “I was there.”
She shook her head. “But this is you? Right?” Maybe I had come to the wrong place. This woman seemed like she had a few screws loose. Here I had opened up to her, told her my story, and she wanted an autograph or something.
“Yeah, that’s me,” I told her again.
She bent the mag backward, running her hand along the crease to make it stay. “Listen Madi… can I call you Madi?” I nodded for her to continue. “Listen, I covered the whole ISO-1 debacle here. It was brutal. They’re thugs and killers.” She stopped for a second as if she realized who she was speaking too. Of course, I knew they’re thugs and killers. She went on. “Real brutal, they have very few lines they won’t cross. It worked well for them in South America and it worked well for them in the U.S.—that is until they tried to move into Detroit.”
I looked out the window and raised one eyebrow. “No offense, but your city doesn’t strike me as a beacon of honesty and incorruptibility.”
She laughed, a short bark of a sound that was almost a hiccup. “Oh, it isn’t. If it was, I wouldn’t have a job. No, it didn’t work well for them because it attracted his attention pretty quick. You know,” she said leaning close to me and continuing in a conspiratorial whisper. “The Wraith.”
“Right….” I said slowly. “That’s why I’m here. I want to find him. I need to know how he beat them and if he can do it again. I want justice for Sara, I want them to pay.” My hands clenched into fists all on their own and my voice took on a guttural quality as I spat out the last few words.
“Well, that is going to be a problem. You see… at the time we had a less responsible government—let’s call it that. They felt like criminals deserved more protection than the police or citizens. Instead of spending money to stop ISO-1 and the other gangs that ran rampant, they created a task force to go after The Wraith. When they finally caught up to him… well, he was shot several times and he’s never been heard of since. I’m sorry.”
The Wraith (Superhero by Night Book 1) Page 4
