by Logan Jacobs
The man blinked at me in disbelief for a moment, I wasn’t sure whether it was just my good looks or the fact that there was an unarmed female running straight toward him in a tight bodysuit. Then he pulled the gun out of the driver’s face in order to point it at me.
“Stop right there!” he shouted. “Stay back!”
But of course, I didn’t stop running. Now that he was pointing the gun at me, my next actions would obviously be in self-defense.
I could do whatever I wanted to him now, but I realized as the man aimed the gun down at my knees that these thoughts were Miles’. He would have told me that the asshole tried to kill me, so it was perfectly acceptable that I kill him first.
The robber pulled the trigger of his gun.
I was actually a bit surprised he had time to aim, but I was even more surprised that he actually hit me. My body healed quickly, and I’d recover from a bullet wound in about a day, but the suit Miles made me was bullet proof in the spots where the material covered me, and the asshole’s shot hit me right in the shin where my boot covered my leg. It did little more than knock my leg a bit off balance, and I used the energy to dive forward, catch myself on my palms in a gymnast’s plaunche, flipped forward so that my body bent like a “U,” and then my heel connected with his groin.
There was a cracking sound as either his hips broke or his testicles exploded, and he toppled over with a scream of pure agony.
I sprang on top of him a fraction of a second later, wrested the pistol out of his grip as he continued to scream, and then clubbed him in the forehead with the butt. The hit left a bloody gash on his skull, and then the asshole went limp.
A little too limp.
Woops.
For a second I felt panic. According to the Warden handbook, it was a serious fuckup to kill a criminal who didn’t even have superpowers, but I couldn’t completely dismiss that voice telling me that he was just a piece of shit parasite that was going to rob, steal, and kill until he ended up in prison or another criminal killed him. I tried to tell myself that it was Miles’ voice, but deep down I knew that the voice had lived inside me long before I ever met Miles. It was just starting to speak up more and more often lately.
“You good?” I asked the driver who I had just saved. The man’s eyes were wide, and he wore a dress shirt with a taco print on it that matched the logo of a fast-food chain. The guy was probably on his way to work, and the asshole I had just killed would have stolen the citizen’s only method of transportation.
“Y-yeah,” he stammered. “That was-- wow-- you are amazing. He was going to take my car! Thank you!”
“No problem.” I waved at him and walked away. The unconscious or dead carjacker was in the hands of his intended victim now. If he were so inclined, he could call for medical help. If not, he could simply drive away, and I wouldn’t blame him one bit.
The next disturbance that I encountered consisted of one guy punching the living daylights out of another while half a dozen people stood around, watched, and cheered. Both fighters looked relatively fit, but they also clearly weren’t professionals.
“What’s going on here?” I asked as I shoved my way into the circle and pulled the guys apart.
“Manny’s kicking Jonah’s ass,” one of the bystanders explained as everyone blinked at me.
“Fuck you, he’s not!” yelled the bloody-nosed, slightly woozy-looking guy who had been serving as a human punching bag up until a second ago.
“Well, why?” I asked. “Is there a grievance here? Did one of these men wrong the other?”
“You a cop, lady?” someone asked, and the crowd glanced nervously at my suit.
“Nope,” I said. “So why are these men fighting?”
“Nah, we’re buds,” the guy who must have been Manny assured me as he clutched his opponent to him in a side hug and patted him aggressively on the head. “It’s just he told me he could beat my ass in a fight, and I told him he couldn’t and he said he could and I said he couldn’t and he said he could so I said fucking prove it, but they all just wanted to watch, y’know, and place a few bets.”
The guy who must have been Jonah, who had clearly either overestimated his fighting ability or underestimated his friend’s, gave me two thumbs up and a bloody, gap-toothed grin to confirm this report. They didn’t look similar enough to be brothers, but all of their behaviors were indicating an approximately equivalent relationship.
“Okay then, carry on,” I said with a shrug, and continued on my way. The fight resumed almost immediately behind me. Just as I passed out of earshot of the blows and the cheers, groans, and shit-talking of the spectators, someone cleared their throat behind me, and I turned around to face them.
“So, you one of them supers?” a man with slick-backed hair and a cheap suit asked. His body looked rail thin, but his face was fat and greasy, so I guessed that he indulged in cocaine or other drugs.
“Yes,” I said as I crossed my arms.
“Damn, girl, you’re so fucking hot,” he purred as he licked his lips.
“I can also crush a skull with my fingers.” I cleared my throat.
“Oh, uhhh,” he said as he reached into his suit pocket. “I had a little business proposition for you.”
“Not interested,” I said. “I’m in this city to fight crime and--”
“I’ve got these girls, see,” he said as he pulled out his card and gave it to me. It just had a phone number and address on it. “You can make some good money.”
“So, you are a pimp?” I asked as I took the card from him.
“Naw, naw, naw,” he said as he waved his hands. “I just hook people up with other people. You’d make a killing every night. I’d find the richest guys for you. We are talking ten thousand just to spend a few hours on your back.”
“How many girls work for you?” I asked.
“Twenty,” he said as his lips curled into a proud smile.
“That’s all I needed to know,” I said, and then I stepped toward him with the intent of driving my fist through his skull.
But then my phone vibrated, and I stopped in mid-step with my fist cocked at my side.
“And this number is your cell phone?” I asked the man with a sigh.
“Yep,” he said as he glanced down at my fist coiled by my hip.
“Perhaps I’ll call you,” I said as I slid the card in one of my suit’s pockets. If I did get some free time, I would call him, find out where he ran his operations out of, interview his girls, and bring him to justice if I found out he was whoring them out.
And maybe “bring him to justice” meant that I would just kill him.
“Okay,” he said as he stepped back from me on the street. “I’ll look forward to it.”
I ignored him and glanced down at my phone. The message was from Miles. He was always terse over text messages. No unnecessary words, no dramatic punctuation, and definitely no emojis ever.
Need you back home. It’s Mayhem.
Chapter Six
“What’s going on?” Dynamo asked when she walked into the house we were renting.
I turned a laptop toward her to show her the news report that Aileen had notified me of. A local daycare called the Grayville Children’s Center had evidently been taken hostage by the supervillain Mayhem along with a few of his henchmen. It was surrounded by SWAT teams but they were currently in a standoff and couldn’t enter for fear of endangering the children and their caretakers. All the major news outlets concluded their reports by promising live updates on the ongoing situation.
“We need to go rescue them,” Dynamo said immediately.
“This is the perfect chance to nab Mayhem,” I agreed.
“I’ll go get our gear,” Norma volunteered immediately.
Within minutes, Elizabeth, Norma, and I were in the car and on our way to the Grayville Children’s Center. It wasn’t very far away but the five minutes felt like forever because of the urgency of the mission.
When we got there, several blo
cks had been taped off and there were police officers redirecting cars and pedestrians to keep them away from the church campus where the daycare was located. It was easy to tell which building the daycare was for two reasons.
Firstly, a SWAT team in full kit had staked out the building and were parked on three sides to surround it using their trucks for cover.
Secondly, Mayhem’s symbol, the disembodied head of a little blue imp, was projected as an animated holograph right above the building. Every minute it looped into a demonic, squint-eyed, wide-jawed laugh that caused the whole head to shake. The laugh was silent, but I imagined it would sound like, “Mwahaha.”
We parked a block outside of the tape, and then I turned to the women.
“So, how do we get in?” Norma asked. “The police probably won’t let us through.”
“But it doesn’t look like the SWAT guys are moving in either,” I said as I checked through a pair of binoculars.
“They probably don’t want to endanger the hostages,” Elizabeth said. “Hmm. Back in Pinnacle City, police would always let through anyone with a Warden badge in a situation like this.”
“Then, you think that Grayville cops would let the Shadow Knight through?” I wondered aloud.
As if on cue, one of the SWAT guys that I was watching through my binoculars said something into a radio, listened to the response, and nodded. Then he dragged out a searchlight from the nearest van, propped it up on the ground, and turned it on.
The beam of light that flooded the sky was interrupted by the silhouette of a crow with outstretched wings. The Shadow Knight’s symbol.
“Well, that answers that,” I said.
“They’re saying they have a need for a superhero, and the one they’re calling for isn’t here,” Elizabeth said. “But we are. What if we snuck past the barriers, climbed up that building to the left, and then rappelled down onto the roof of the daycare?”
“They’ll be watching the roof in case Mayhem or his thugs pop up and start sniping at them,” I said. “Aileen, do you have any ideas to help us get in undetected?”
“Why, I thought you’d never ask,” Aileen purred. “You know how the Grayville Children’s Center is run by the church and was built on a church campus? Well, one hundred and fifty years ago before most of the original buildings were renovated, that building to the left that Dynamo just mentioned was used as the monks’ sleeping quarters. And the building now used to house the daycare used to be the nuns’ sleeping quarters.”
“Thanks for the history lesson, but what exactly is the relevance here?” I asked.
“Check your phone,” Aileen replied.
I looked down at my phone screen to see an article that had been published in an archaeological magazine about eighty years ago, titled, “Builders Discover Secret Tunnel on Church Property Likely to Have Been Used for Illicit Trysts.”
Next, Aileen pulled up a blueprint of the building that she said had used to be the monks’ quarters with an X to mark the spot where the tunnel was.
“Very well,” I said. “Let’s go fuck some nuns.”
“Wait, how are we going to get past the cops guarding the campus?” Dynamo asked. “They’re just doing their jobs, I refuse to harm them.”
I considered that. My suit did have the ability to dispense a gas that would cause everyone who inhaled it to pass out within seconds without causing them any permanent harm, but it was really only effective at a five foot radius, so I wouldn’t be able to take out more than a few cops before I brought all the rest of them down on us. Not to mention the SWAT teams standing by.
“I’ll distract them so that you two can slip in,” Norma offered. I turned around to look at my assistant. Her brown eyes twinkled with mischief, and I knew she must already have an idea in mind.
“Okay, if you think you can do that, I trust you,” I agreed.
“But wait, I’ll need to change out of my supersuit into normal clothes for it to work,” my assistant said.
“No problem, you brought normal clothes along in the car, right?” I asked. That was my team’s usual policy. Sometimes a mission required the high tech capabilities of our suits. Sometimes it required us to blend in and try our best to pass for ordinary citizens.
“Y-yes,” Norma stammered as she pulled the clothes out from where they were tucked and clutched them to her chest. She flushed bright red. “Er… should I… I mean, do you… ”
Confused by her sudden discomfort, I stared harder for a second until I realized that she felt embarrassed about asking me to look away. Or, possibly, the mere idea of me seeing her naked was getting her all flustered. That did kind of make me wonder what my shy, sweet little assistant looked like under all those frumpy clothes she wore. But now was not the time to pursue that line of thought.
“Elizabeth and I will get out,” I said.
We opened the doors and stayed on the side of the car opposite the church campus, so that our supersuits wouldn’t attract the notice of all the law enforcement personnel there. After a few minutes Norma emerged in a pink sweater that was a bit too tight for her and brown corduroy pants that were a bit too loose.
I looked at the campus to figure out the least conspicuous angle of approach to the old monks’ quarters where we would have the most buildings to hide behind along the way and then turned to Elizabeth and Norma.
“That looks like the best way for us to go,” I said as I pointed over my shoulder, and then I gestured back to the cops. “Norma, try to draw their attention.”
“Got it, boss,” Norma chirped, and headed toward the police officers.
She didn’t try to walk casually or sidle up stealthily. No, she sprinted. She had a sort of clumsy, windmilling running gait that I think she was currently exaggerating for effect, although I wasn’t sure about that. The nearest officers turned to stare at her and one of them took a few steps to block her path.
“Myy baaaabbbbyyy’s in theeerrre,” she howled at the top of her lungs as she proceeded to tackle the officer that was standing in her way like a footballer. “Mayhem will kiiiiillll myyy baaabbbby!”
Now, all the officers in the immediate vicinity were looking at her.
“Go,” I said to Elizabeth, and we sprinted at the yellow tape, vaulted over it, and managed to dive behind the nearest building before any of the cops caught sight of us.
“Ma’am, I need you to please calm down,” I could hear one of them shouting as Elizabeth and I peeked around the corner, waited till no one was facing our way, and sprinted to the next building.
“But Mayhem will kiiillll myyyy baaabbbyyy if you don’t let me go in there,” Norma’s wail, now in the distance, still carried to our ears as we made the final dash up to the building that used to be the monks’ quarters.
“No ma’am, those men right there are going to ensure that--” I could faintly hear the cops trying to reassure her as Elizabeth and I slipped past the unlocked door.
The building was now in use as a schoolroom for kids slightly older than the daycare crowd, but class hadn’t been in session, and it was empty. There were a bunch of tiny plastic chairs, several whiteboards, and a couple shelves of books, and crayon art decorated with colored feathers and googly eyes adorned the walls.
We went to the south end of the room where Aileen’s diagram had shown the secret tunnel to be located, and I knocked on sections of the floor to figure out where it sounded hollow.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth took a couple of the kiddie chairs, broke the plastic seats off, and twisted the metal legs into a crude sort of club.
“Fuck, remind me never to make you mad,” I muttered.
“Eh, as long as you never fail to make it up to me, I won’t twist your head off,” she promised with a wink.
I pointed to the spot where I had determined the secret passageway to be underneath the new modern flooring that had been installed in the mid-twentieth century. It only took a couple swings of Elizabeth’s newly crafted club for the tiles to shatter into the opening bene
ath. Then we peered into the dirt tunnel that was now exposed.
“I bet the kids would think this was pretty cool,” Elizabeth remarked.
“I think it’s pretty cool,” I replied.
The tunnel was pretty low, low enough that we had to crawl through it on our hands and knees. Elizabeth went first, a prerogative that she always insisted on when we were entering potentially hostile territory due to her regenerative ability, and I followed right behind her.
There were about twenty feet between the two buildings that we had to cross underground. We turned on the glow feature on our suits so that at least we could see where we were going and have confidence that we weren’t going to smack into an obstruction. That also enabled us to see several instances of movement where I definitely didn’t want to see movement, but they were just rodents and insects, not supervillains lurking in wait in the tunnel.
“Think how long it must have taken to dig this,” I said. “Pussy really is the all-powerful motivator.”
“You’re assuming it was the monks,” Elizabeth replied. I could tell from her tone that she wasn’t actually offended, just teasing. “Maybe the nuns at least helped from their end.”
Then, we came up against the floor that sealed off the other end. Elizabeth took the makeshift metal chair leg club that she’d brought with her and battered her way through it in two blows.
As that part of the floor rained down on us, we heard a shout of, “What the fuck?” accompanied by running feet.
Elizabeth vaulted up through the hole, and I followed after her. We found ourselves at the end of a hallway, with three thugs in black leather overalls over blue shirts charging toward us from the other end. Good, not supervillains then. It was sort of an unwritten supervillain rule, virtually never broken, that only non-super henchmen wore uniforms based on their bosses’ themes, since other lesser supervillains had their own costumes. They also didn’t have guns, which was a good thing, since Elizabeth and I were keeping ours holstered, because we didn’t even know exactly where in the building the hostages were being kept and any rounds fired could easily penetrate the walls and hit them.
