Those Who Walk in Darkness so-1

by John Ridley

  There was another before she came, but him I barely remember, or remember what happened to. He might've been killed fighting the Void. I can't recall.

  But her… I remember the Princess. See her in action once, you'd never forget her. She could kick ass, yeah, but they all could. She could kick ass and she was beautiful. And graceful. The way she would sail above the city. Not fly, sail. It was the same difference in motion between a motor-boat and a tall ship.

  She made me proud, Nubian Princess.

  How many times I'd heard that, Nubian Princess, from guys who just wanted to get with me, who just wanted to break off some of what I had. Enough times that the words didn't mean anything anymore. Not until I saw her. Strength and grace and beauty embodied.

  For a while, just after she first appeared, they started showing up one after the other. Quadrupleman, the Texan, Tavor, Blue Knight, Red Dawn and the rest of the Color Guard… It was getting so you needed a score-card. Incredible abilities. Unbelievable powers. Were they always among us and just then decided to show their faces? Was this some kind of sudden, incredible leap in human evolution? Aliens? Heavenly agents? Questions got asked, but there was no one to answer them. All any of us normal people knew was that we were on a schedule. Every month or so we could expect new hero, new costume, new power. Most were guys (white guys), most were brutish, most didn't get my attention beyond a" Oh, isn't that interesting. It's the hero dujour."

  Most. But not the Princess.

  Tough, proud, and as costumes go she actually had fashion sense. To me

  she was a symbol and an inspiration, and I wanted nothing more in the world than to be like her.

  And she let me down. Just like the rest of them let all of us down. Worse than that. The baseball player everyone loves who turns out to be an afternoon boozer lets you down. Same with the corporate CEO who shovels employees' 401 (k) money into his beach house in Maui. What the so-called heroes, what the freaks did: They deceived us, lied to us.

  They killed us. Our spirit and then our bodies.

  Be like Nubian Princess? I want nothing to do with her except to throw flowers on her grave.

  La Brea and Sunset. The busiest intersection in a city full of nothing but cars and traffic.

  Head to her steering wheel. Had to be this intersection?

  A deep, deep breath. Relaxing for just a second. Getting calm, because this Soledad did not need. On a Saturday? On a day off and away from the department and the desk that had become a prison she commuted to daily? At least, she thought, the air bag hadn't deployed. It was, what? Three hundred dollars to replace those? That's if it didn't kill you first. But she was moving too slowly when she rear-ended the other car to set it off, the car she now sat tangled with at the intersection of La Brea and Sunset. Maybe, God willing, too slowly to have done any real damage.

  Horns honked: other drivers trying to make their way around the two bumper-smacked vehicles that were slowing up traffic. They didn't care there was an accident. They didn't care somebody might've been hurt. This was Los Angeles. Slow up traffic in LA you better hope the crash kills you before some pissed, late-to-be-somewhere-that's-nowhere-important nut job with a gun does.

  Soledad got out of her car. The other driver got out of his, met her halfway and hot.

  "Look at this. Would you look at this?"

  Soledad looked. The other car, the one she'd hit, was a Jaguar. Not a new one, an old one. She didn't know how old; what year, what model. Soledad wasn't into cars like that. But it was beautiful. British racing green with a mirror polish. Mint condition. Mint right up until Soledad took out the Jag's rear fender with the front one of her few-years-old Prelude.

  "Look at this," the driver ordered again."Do you believe this?" he asked.

  "I'm sorry."

  "I'm stopped, I'm sitting here. You didn't see me sitting here?"

  "I didn't."

  "I'm sitting here at the light, at a red light, and you didn't see me? Didn't you see the light? You didn't see that? How are you not going to see a red light with a green Jaguar sitting in front of it?"

  Her nonreg gun. Her desk assignment. Reese.

  Soledad said: "Had things on my mind."

  "Didn't see me? How the hell are you not—"

  She'd caught that part before."I said I was sorry."

  "Insured is what you better be."

  Yeah. Fine.

  Back to her car, a bit of a limp still, but she didn't use the cane anymore. No crutches for Soledad. She leaned to her glove box. Her fingers ran over Kleenex, a coupon for In 'n Out… that watch she thought she'd lost six weeks ago…

  Something caught her attention. A lack of something. The other driver wasn't complaining anymore. He wasn't telling Soledad what to look at, or how she'd better be covered. What he was doing was throwing a slack-jawed stare at Soledad, at her hip, at the gun that was holstered there and revealed beneath her coat as she leaned into her car.

  Simple explanation: I'm a cop. It's my off-duty piece. Soledad didn't bother. Let the guy sweat a little. Let him worry about opening his mouth and wise-talking one more time and getting a bullet for his trouble.

  Insurance card.

  Soledad came up out of the glove box, went back to the guy, his rant now fully replaced with awkward gawk.

  "You know," he started,"if… if you're not insured, we can work something out."

  Literally Soledad bit back a smile.

  "It's just, you know, a classic… I got a little upset, but we can work somethi—"

  "Here." The guy got Soledad's insurance card shoved his way.

  With a pen he quivered down her information.

  "I'll just… I'll h-have my insurance company call and—"

  "Yeah."

  Card back, Soledad slid into her car. She started up. She pulled around the Jaguar and took off. In her rearview mirror the guy bent over and sucked air.

  Sunday. Sunday afternoon ritual. Soledad dialed the phone. It rang a couple of times, picked up.

  On the other end a woman said: "Hello?"

  Soledad forced a little lightness into her voice: "Hey, Mom."

  Soledad loved her parents.

  "Soledad! How are you, baby?"

  "Good. Good."

  "Soooo, what's going on?"

  "Nothing."

  "Nothing?"

  "Nothing new. Just, you know, same old."

  The conversation was no different this Sunday than it'd been last Sunday. Maybe a little more vague on Soledad's end, a little less information on every single thing in her life than she usually conveyed to her mother. But not as vague as the conversation would be next Sunday. The level of communication she had with her parents, the world, was in a slow state of decay. Later Soledad's father would jump on the phone after coming in from doing yard work. Same as last Sunday, the Sunday previous. Same as next Sunday. For now it was just her and her mother. Soledad asked how her father was doing, her mother answered, then asked Soledad how work was, which Soledad dodged with more vagary, then went into:

  "The weather's been kind of nice. A little hot, but nothing too much. Just… nice."

  Soledad loved her parents.

  But the weather, talk about a movie she'd seen, something good that she was reading: Any of that was all the infiltration Soledad allowed her parents to her life. Allowed anyone, really. Soledad was not a people person as much as somebody could not be one. She didn't like sitting around chitchatting about herself, listening to other people like she cared about them. Cold is what people would call her. Would if they ever got to know her. Few did. That was fine. If she didn't bother with most people, she didn't have to break down a week's worth of her life for most people. She did for her parents. But she avoided specifics. Soledad rationalized it was for their own good: not getting details on a cop's life. Wasn't really. Largely it was good for Soledad's sanity.

  She remembered the time she was out running in West Hollywood and got clipped by a car. Nothing serious. Her thigh was deep purple and
tender for a week. Her wrist badly sprained. A day after the accident Soledad's mother had made the flight from Milwaukee to Los Angeles with her dad in tow. She cared, that's all. She just cared a little too much for Soledad's taste.

  And she worried. Soledad's mother worried constantly about her daughter. Bad enough when she was just a regular cop, her fretting kicked into overdrive when Soledad made MTac. Every time there was a report of an MTac element serving a warrant on a freak, Soledad's mother was on the phone wanting to know if Soledad was all right, still alive.

  No big deal.

  It's what moms do.

  Except Soledad's mom would make the call even if the warrant had been served in Dallas or Miami or some other city miles from where Soledad lived, and even though Soledad had yet to go on a first call herself.

  It was by the grace of God or just good fortune that when Soledad got battered around by the pyro her parents happened to be on a cruise in the Caribbean and didn't hear about it until a week after the fact. By then Soledad was recovered enough to tell them, to lie to them as she lay in a hospital bed, that the incident was nowhere near as bad as the news reported. Soledad's new voice was passed off as a bad cold. Her mom didn't fly out. One day Soledad would have some explaining to do about why her voice never changed back, why her throat was laureled with scars.

  Her father came in from outside, picked up on an extension. Soledad again recounted the weather, gave an update on the book she was halfway through. While she droned on she thought maybe today was the day to end the dodging; quit lying and start including her parents in on her life. Tell them about her first call and the pyro, her short stay in the hospital and Reese's continued one. And then, Soledad thought, she should cap all that off by telling her parents she was facing an uncertain future regarding a gun she'd put together hoping to balance the normal vs. metanormal struggle in favor of the normals.

  Sure.

  Soledad loved her parents.

  And Soledad wanted to include her parents in her life and her work and her aspirations. She wanted to be able to turn to them with her problems and fears. But she also knew what would be best for them and for her—what would keep them all happy and healthy—was to keep them blissfully ignorant. So she kept on talking about the weather and books and anything else that wasn't Soledad-specific.

  At the end of forty-five minutes I-love-yous were passed around. Soledad hung up. She thought about what she'd have to do at work the following day, and how she would fill her week, the seven days, until she made the phone call home again.

  It's a miracle," the reporter was saying on the television in the background on one of the morning breakfast news/weather/yak/ helpful-hint shows.

  Soledad was more interested in how come she didn't get more raisins in her Raisin Nut Bran—might as well call it Not Raisin Nut Bran—but caught enough of the dry details broadcast at her to be able to piece the story together: a gas explosion at an apartment complex in Studio City. The whole thing blown up and burned down. Plenty of footage—the smoldering shell of the building, the gawking onlookers—to go with the description. But, and here's the miracle part, no casualties. No injuries even. A thoroughly decimated structure, and everyone got out alive and unharmed.

  "It's a miracle," the reporter again reminded the audience.

  How about that? A little good news.

  That story got followed up by what went down in Indianapolis. The Indy MTac—what passed for MTac in Indianapolis—had served an EO on a metanormal.

  Euphemism.

  They'd killed a mutie. Not much of a mutie. It had geomagnetic abilities; could move earth and rock, do low-grade terraforming. None of that was much good against the Indianapolis MTac's bullets, and the Indianapolis MTac was all giddy 'cause in the years since the EO'd been enacted they'd finally had a shot at a freak and came out victorious.

  A geomagnetic. BFD.

  Soledad wondered, she wondered how they would've rated against a real freak; a pyrokinetic? Would they have survived their encounter like she had? What about a shape-shifter or metal morpher?

  A telepath?

  She knew how they, how any MTac, would do against that.

  Hand to her neck.

  She thought: She should go see Reese. View her. That was the only way to describe sitting with the comatose. Soledad hadn't done that in a while, hadn't been able to stomach it. Yeah, she should do that; visit Reese. Maybe tomorrow. No, tomorrow or the next day she really needed to spend her free time getting the front bumper of her car fixed where it hung limp from her accident. Thursday was physical therapy with her leg. And she wanted to see a doc about her throat. Was there any kind of surgery, anything to be done about the scars? But soon, real soon she was going to go and view Reese.

  Raisins gone and bran soggy, she tossed out the remains of her breakfast.

  Middle of the hallway. Soledad stopped, her head sprang up. The words of the cop who'd passed her just then seeping in.

  "What'd you say?" she snapped at his back.

  The cop turned, his face puzzled in expression."I said, 'Hey. '"

  "What did you call me?"

  "… I… What did I—"

  "Call me. What did you—"

  "Bullet. I said, 'Hey, Bullet. '"

  "Bullet?"

  "Cops, they've been talking about you; about what you did to that mutie. About all those bullets you got. Cops were talking, and they started calling you—"

  "That's not my name."

  "It's just a nick—"

  "Bullet is not my name." Reacting like she was allergic to the whole concept."Soledad."

  "I know. I know that. It's just a—"

  "Soledad, or O'Roark, or if you're desperate for something, Officer O'Roark's—"

  "Look," the cop cut her off, tired of just standing there taking what Soledad was handing out,"it was meant as a compliment. Learn to take it."

  The cop turned. The cop walked away.

  Soledad gave thought to yelling after the cop, telling him two or three or ten places he could put his compliment. There was no point in sharing any of them. She kept on for her desk, for the full shift of the insipidness that waited for her.

  Up the hallway: Bo and Yarborough. Yar's left wrist was in a splint, a sprain mending, acquired when the element responded to a call on an invulnerable. The invulnerable got away, and Yar got a sprain that was probably not a sprain, but a break. But if his wrist was busted, regs were, Yar would have to take a seat until it was healed. So, probably, it was a break he called a sprain.

  The green clip. The slugs with the contact poison. If they could've used that, Yar's wrist wouldn't've been broken or sprained or whatever, Soledad thought. The invulnerable'd be dead.

  No freaks today. No calls. No warrants to serve. Like most days, for most of the MTac elements, there'd be some training, maybe some refresher course of some kind, a lot of waiting for DMI, the Division of Metanormal Investigations, to hand them a warrant, or for someone in the city—someone who walked around like they were normal—to reveal themselves for the freak they really were. Estimates, estimates by DMI, the guys and girls who kept quiet surveillance of suspected freaks, figured there were about forty or fifty creeping around LA alone. Most had fled during the thirty days the prez had given them to get the F out of the country. Most went to Europe, where they still wore their costumes, did their superhero shtick: avert a natural disaster, bag a terrorist. But the heroes weren't the only ones forced out of the country. The bad guys, the superperps, had gotten the F out too. And they kept doing their thing, trying to perpetrate evil at the highest level. And way too regularly a couple of superheroes and supervillains would mix it up in Berlin or Madrid or Prague, take out a few buildings, get a few dozen people killed, and it was real obvious our government had made the right decision: freaks stay, freaks get dealt with by any means necessary. So MTacs all over the city, in cities all over America, trained and stayed in practice, but mostly waited for a mutie somewhere to raise its head for just a split
second so they could go and take it off.

  Bo waved Soledad over. Two other guys talking with him and Yarborough.

  "Jim Whitaker," Bo started the introductions,"and Vin Cana-velli."

  Whitaker had been transferred from Pacific MTac, and Vin was reactivated from Central MTac, having just recently been clean-billed from injuries he'd collected going after a thing that could generate and discharge electricity. Soledad had met Whitaker once before. Decent guy. Good cop. Except that he was eager to please. Always seemed to be working hard to be everybody's friend. Made him come off a little jittery, a little jumpy, like a dog that couldn't wait to do tricks for its master. Standing still, Whitaker always looked like he was doing a salsa. To Soledad's thinking anyway. Red hair, pinkish skin, he was the kind of guy who should've had a nickname like Rusty. Vin was new to her. Dark in complexion and smooth in feature, he looked like maybe he had originally come to LA to get into the business of show, but by some twist of circumstances had ended up in MTac.

  "Good to meet you, Soledad." Vin was following up an enthusiastic hello from Whitaker."Heard you did a hell of a job on that fire freak."

  Soledad nodded her head some. Kind of said something, snide, about getting put on a desk for her efforts.

  Vin, picking up on that: "Can't imagine Whitaker and me replacing you and Reese for long."

  "I can't imagine you replacing us at all."

  Vin took a verbal step back."Don't take that wrong. I didn't mean anything."

  "You don't mean anything, why are you saying anything?"

  "Just making conversation."

  "Well, you're doing a shitty job of it."

  "I think you and me are starting off wrong. Want to try this again?"

  "Why bother? You're just around temporary, right?"

  Amused, not fazed, Vin smiled."Sure. Just keeping it warm for you."

  Ever the appeaser, Whitaker started in with: "Hey, after shift, we all oughta head up to Los Feliz and grab—"

  "See you, Bo, Yar." Soledad meant to get the last word in.

  Vin beat her with, all sugary: "You be careful working that desk."

  He was a most nondescript kind of guy. A little too tall to be short. Somewhere between fat and thin. His hair wasn't quite blond, not really brown either. Nothing about him stood out. A glass of warm water. Eggshell wallpaper. He was like that. You could stare right at the guy without even noticing him. Except Soledad couldn't help but notice him as he worked his way through the drawers of her desk.