Red and Black

by Nancy O'Toole Meservier

I vaulted myself onto the garage floor and ran across the scattered gathering of cars. By the time I was halfway to the door, Marty and Noel were completely out of my sight. I cursed inwardly.

  Okay, okay, so maybe there were some benefits to super-speed.

  I heard the screech of tires and threw myself behind a (conveniently) bright red SUV. I looked up just in time to see Marty and Noel’s ride cruising past, heading for the exit.

  Damn. Had they seen me? And did the fact that their getaway car was leaving mean that kidnapping was off the menu for tonight? What were they even doing here?

  I shook my head. I didn’t like feeling so in the dark. All I knew was that I could feel something like electricity building up along my limbs. Something was going to happen tonight, something big.

  And I had no idea if I could stop it.

  The double doors led to a well-lit lobby. There was a large granite desk to the right that stood next to a trio of metal detectors. Behind the security station was a bay of four elevator doors and a hallway that continued throughout the ground level of the building. The place was all gleaming surfaces and clear glass. Apparently, the cleaning staff wasn’t slacking off just because things were a little slower.

  It was why I noticed the blood on the floor right away.

  The bright puddle had pooled next to the security desk. I bolted toward it, turning the corner to see an old guy dressed in the telltale gray and black uniform of a security guard. He lay on the floor, the gathering of blood beneath his head staining his salt and pepper hair. His eyes were open, and still.

  I raised the palm of my right hand to my forehead.

  “Shit.” My voice came out breathy. “Shit.”

  Oh Marty, Noel, what have you done? And what about me? If I had been a little faster, could I have saved this man? Could I have…

  I spun around in place, then stopped, shaking out my hands. Okay, Dawn, remain focused. You can’t let them get away with this. And more importantly, there might be more damage to prevent. First, call the police.

  I carefully stepped around the security guard (I could tell from his name tag that he was called “Steve,” just like my Steve from Northwest Comics) and grabbed the phone. Checking to make sure there was a dial tone, I punched in 911 and waited for the first ring. I nodded, then placed the phone on the desk instead of hanging up. From there, I looked over the rest of the surface, where an array of tiny black-and-white screens displayed the various public spaces. My attention was drawn to one fuzzy screen in particular—that of two men standing in an elevator.

  It was Marty and Noel, and they were wearing black ski masks.

  “Sorry, Steve,” I murmured, stepping around the man before dashing to the elevators.

  Okay, Dawn. Time to use that brain of yours.

  Above each of the doors was a line of numbers, explaining where each elevator was located. With one exception, they were all on “G” for ground floor. The other one had just stopped on 35 and didn’t move.

  That was my destination.

  I pressed the up button next to the neighboring elevator. It dinged upon opening, and I jumped as if it had been a gun blast.

  Calm down. I gritted my teeth. There were clearly bigger things to worry about thirty-five floors up.

  It probably took only a few minutes to get to my floor, but it felt like an eon. I winced as the door let out a ding when it opened. Yikes, I was such a n00b. I should have gotten off at the last floor and taken the stairs! I paused, listening. Distinctly masculine voices could be heard down the hall.

  “This place is like a frickin’ maze,” Marty said, not bothering to lower his voice.

  Well, at least I wasn’t the only one failing the stealth test today.

  I exited the elevator and started down the hallway. The stress of the situation seemed to make me hyperaware of my surroundings—the glare of the fluorescent lights, the hum of the air-filtration system, the surprisingly plush carpet, and the cloying stench of orange cleaner.

  I tried to remain focused.

  “There was a sign back there,” I heard Noel say.

  Footsteps rustled on the carpet. After a few seconds, they grew more pronounced, and I realized that they were coming toward me. Instinctively, I backed into a side hallway, flattening myself against the walls, all too aware of how starkly the red and black of my outfit stood out against the whitewashed background. A second later, they walked by, their masks wiping away any traces of their personalities. From their body types, I could tell that Marty was in the lead. He held a tire iron, of all things, in his hands.

  I felt my fists tighten.

  For a second, I thought about pouncing on them right there. I could take out the two of them out easily, have them ready for the police, and let the cops do their jobs without me butting in. (Rule #5: You are not a detective. Let the police do what they were trained to do.) Only…the cops already had their driver from last time, and these guys were still going around making trouble. What’s to say that Marty couldn’t be replaced as easily as Martha had been? And maybe seeing where they were going would give me a better idea of why the hell they had wanted Dana Peterson in the first place.

  Instead of attacking, I decided to follow, if just to figure out what was going on. At the first sign of trouble, I would act. After all, I bet I could handle a couple of hits from a tire iron. I had done just fine with a crowbar once. And a lead pipe.

  Jeez. My life was turning into a game of Clue. Only one where I was Mr. Body, and thankfully much harder to kill.

  Anyway. Not important.

  The two turned a corner and stopped in front of a wooden door that looked pretty identical to every other entryway we had come across. Noel pointed out the one difference right away.

  “Here,” he said, tapping a nearby nameplate. I noticed that his voice shook slightly.

  Marty nodded and knocked.

  “Mr. Hamilton,” he called out in a singsong voice.

  Gee. Way to sound like a psychopath, Marty.

  “Just a second,” a deep, masculine voice replied on the other side.

  About thirty seconds later, the door swung open, revealing a heavyset black man in a wrinkled shirt and tie. Gray marked his hair and beard.

  And before I could ask myself “friend or foe?” Marty pretty much answered that for me by hitting the guy across the face with the tire iron. Mr. Hamilton let out a cry of pain.

  “Hey!” I shouted from down the hall.

  Marty and Noel turned to look at me. Marty cursed.

  I broke into a sprint, wishing, for the second time tonight, that super speed had been part of my power-set. Marty and Noel were already shoving the guy back into the office, slamming the door behind them. I skidded to a halt.

  “Oh, please!” I rolled my eyes, then kicked down the door.

  I stepped inside of what was probably a small secretary’s office/waiting room. A table and a couple of comfy chairs sat on one side, a desk and a shelf filled with important looking-books on the other. But I didn’t have time to linger over the quality of the furnishings. Instead, my attention was drawn toward Noel, who stood, shaking, a shiny handgun raised and pointed right at me.

  What was more important was what he was standing in front of: the only other exit in the room. Given that Marty and Mr. Hamilton were no longer here, it was pretty obvious where they had gone.

  I had pictured scenes like this before. Encountering bad guys and exchanging witty banter before saving the day. Watching as their arrogant retorts were transformed to yelps of pain. But in those scenes, the guys I faced had never seemed quite this terrified.

  “Listen,” I said, taking a step forward. “Please just—”

  “Don’t move!” Noel replied, his voice muffled by the ski mask. “You can’t…just…don’t move.”

  My eyes flickered to the weapon. I had never been shot before, and I wasn’t quite sure how my healing abilities would take to it. I had a feeling that I would ultimately be fine, but I had no idea how long gettin
g back to fine would take. Would that give Marty and Noel enough time to bring the victim out of the back room and get by me?

  Given the tremor that went up Noel’s arm, I wasn’t even sure he could hit me, despite the fact that I wasn’t much more than ten feet away.

  So, talking first?

  “I know who you are, Noel White,” I said.

  Noel’s hand jerked. I forced myself not to flinch, half-expecting the gun to go off in his hand.

  “I saw you and Marty get into the car to get here,” I said. “I don’t know how you two got caught up in all this, but Marty’s killed a man, Noel.”

  “N-no…I told him not to…”

  “That doesn’t change what he did. And Noel, you let the man bleed out onto the floor without calling an ambulance. Do you think you can just walk away from that? Even if you succeed with whatever you’re doing here tonight, even if you get away, the police will know that you’re involved. Your life will be over.”

  “You’re making it awfully hard not to shoot you.”

  “It must mean that you really don’t want to.”

  I heard the beginnings of a strange rhythmic noise coming from the room behind Noel. What was…

  “I will,” Noel replied, increasing his grip on the gun. “For the Mistress, I will.”

  “The Mistress?”

  The rhythmic noise grew louder, and I felt something inside my brain click.

  “Noel.” I blinked. “You’re stalling.”

  I darted forward. I heard a loud bang as the weapon discharged, and something whooshed over my shoulder. Then I was on him, twisting the gun out of Noel’s hand. I felt a twinge of sympathy for my classmate as I felt his thumb dislocate and heard a small noise of pain. This was almost completely overshadowed by the other noise, whose source was now undeniable.

  I tore the door off its hinges as I opened it wide.

  Marty was still handling the guy in the suit. They stood next to a large, official-looking wooden desk. The older guy was clearly having a hard time standing in place, making me wonder if he had been drugged or just hit too hard on the head. Much as Dana Peterson had been, Mr. Hamilton was trussed up in zip ties, although his hands were tied in back.

  Unlike Dana Peterson, they weren’t getting away in any creeper van.

  The window behind them had been thrown wide, the safety measures somehow overridden, making the thirty-five-story drop a real possibility. And on the other side was a helicopter. A frickin’ helicopter! It hovered so close to the building, I was surprised the spinning blades hadn’t scratched the windows. Some sort of connecting slide had been lowered to the window frame, providing a bridge between the helicopter and the building. I watched as a woman, also in a ski mask, slid into the office.

  And then I heard footsteps at my three o’clock.

  I spun just in time to dodge out of the way as two fists came swinging toward me. I jumped back through the open doorway, landing on the floor. As a result, the blow missed me, hitting the carved wooden chair I had been standing next to instead. It practically exploded in a terrific crash, the once-solid piece of furniture now in a dozen pieces.

  For a moment, all I could do was look up at the figure that stood over me, framed by the doorway to the back office. He was dressed from head to toe in some sort of hard, black material and wore a helmet that looked like the Tron version of Judge Dredd’s headgear. Everything about him was obscured except for his jaw, which was set in a firm line.

  He was wearing a costume.

  Like me.

  And I was pretty sure he wasn’t here to help out.

  He moved through the doorway, arms raised for another two-handed blow. I rolled out of the way in time. He hit the hardwood instead, which splintered beneath his hands as if it had been glass. I was faster, though, and managed to get back to my feet. I clenched my hands into fists. He was clearly strong, but so was I.

  I took a swing. His hands blocked and deflected my blow away from his face. He delivered a cross with his right that slammed into my jaw and sent me spinning backwards.

  Ow, ow, ow, holy shit, ooooww!

  Before taking up the mask, I, like most good (okay, painfully boring) girls, got decent grades, didn’t skip class, and never did anything that would make my mother too ashamed. I had never been hit before costuming up. Now I couldn’t count how many blows I had taken. That’s the reality about throwing yourself into the fray. You’re gonna get hit every now and then. Fortunately, that’s where my resilience kicked it. I could take a punch. It hurt, but the pain faded pretty fast.

  I had never been hit this hard. This guy was big, it was true, but there was something more to him. Most people couldn’t turn a nice chair into kindling in a single blow.

  I was still reeling from it when I felt hands at my collarbone. The next thing I knew, I was being lifted off my feet, then pinned to the nearest wall. I felt the drywall crumble.

  Oh shit. Oh shit. I was not a high enough level for this boss fight.

  “Who are you?” the man said, his voice low and gravelly.

  I didn’t answer, which wasn’t a surprise given that I was probably frickin’ concussed at this point. He banged me against the wall again, sending a fresh wave of pain through every surface on the back of my body.

  “Who are you?” he demanded again.

  “God,” I half-gasped. “You’re not doing the Bale Batman voice, because no one really liked that, you know?”

  “What?” He cocked his head to the side.

  “It was the only bad call Bale made in portraying that character. He was such a great, ugh…Bruce Wayne, you know?”

  “Just take off her mask, Faultline.” Marty was suddenly at his side.

  Oh, God, what did that mean about Mr. Hamilton? I began to turn my head to the back office, only to stop when the guy with the helmet reached up to take off my mask.

  It wouldn’t budge.

  I wasn’t sure where my costume came from, but I knew it couldn’t be broken. I had tried everything, including ripping the cape in half with all my enhanced strength, only to be defeated by my own wardrobe. The truth soon became obvious. The only way to reveal who I was, was to transform back into little old Dawn Takahashi in full.

  It was incredibly useful.

  “It won’t move,” Faultline said, voice low, eyes focused on the mask.

  Sensing his distraction, I reeled back and headbutted him right in the face.

  Ow, ow, ow! Seriously, why do people always do that in action movies? There was no way I wasn’t waking up with a headache tomorrow.

  And I wouldn’t be the only one. Faultline went sprawling backward, his hands raised to his head.

  I ran into the back office and looked out the window.

  Only to find that the slide had been removed.

  The steady rhythm of the helicopter’s blades started to shift as the large vehicle began to move away from the building.

  “Oh fuck,” I said, even though I’m pretty sure lawful good heroes like myself are only supposed to swear in their inside voices. Deciding I was up for one more crazy move that night, I crossed the room and hopped on the windowsill. I could jump to the top of a fifteen-story building from ground level. There was no way I was missing this one.

  “Stop!” Faultline cried, his voice sharper than before.

  I looked behind me to see the big guy raising both his hands in the air as if to deliver another heavy blow. But to what? I was across the room.

  Crash! His fists made contact with the floor. I felt my eyes widen as a crack split through the hardwood, like the ground breaking apart during an earthquake. The crack rushed toward me and branched up the side of the wall.

  Before I knew what was happening, the window frame crumbled beneath me. I didn’t even have the chance to reach for the blinds to stop me from falling.

  The sensation was nothing like jumping from building top to building top. Instead, it was oddly similar to walking up to the top of a staircase, only to discover that you
had overestimated how many steps you had to take by one. The feeling of your stomach dropping, the shock as the comforting solidness beneath your feet was suddenly gone, replaced with nothing but open air.

  Only instead of one single step, multiply that by thirty-five stories.

  I couldn’t tell you where the helicopter was anymore, as I was ignorant to everything but the whistling of wind around me and the sensation of falling down, down, down, completely at the mercy of the reality that is gravity. Earlier in the day, I had stopped myself from falling thirty stories, but now I no longer had that choice. I was going to test out the limits of my healing abilities even if it killed me.

  It probably would.

  And then I hit the top of the five-story parking garage.

  At first, I felt absolutely nothing. No pain, no sight or sound. It was as if someone had reached into me and turned off the power switch.

  Then, I rebooted. And the pain. Oooh boy, the pain. I thought being thrown around by some armored-up masked man was bad, but it was nothing compared to this. I couldn’t even breathe.

  I had never been so happy to feel my healing powers kick in.

  Healing powers were pretty straightforward, at least in my experience. You feel pain, and then it lessens until it goes away, like taking painkillers on fast-forward. This time was a little different. I could feel my powers crackling through me like electricity. It was uncomfortable, yet filled me with a weird sense of relief. My other senses slowly began to come back, and I realized I was lying on my back on the top of the garage. When my neck finally healed enough to let me look from side to side, I did so, seeing that it was pretty much empty here, save for the floodlights that illuminated the entire top level.

  Well, let’s never try that again.

  I placed my hands on the roof and pushed myself up (Ow! Ow! Ow! Not completely healed yet!) into a sitting position. Then I noticed something very, very wrong. I was cold.

  I never got cold when costumed up.

  Blinking, I looked down at my body and gasped. My costume was gone, leaving nothing but Dawn behind.

  And no matter how long I tried, I couldn’t change back.