NEXGEN PHARMA WAREHOUSEBLUDHAVEN, NEW JERSEYAt some point, you actually get good at this, right?
The drop ceiling exploded, as the red-caped figure fell through from above. A shower of metal, subfloor pieces, dust, insulation fiber, air ducting, and wires raining down as the child-sized figure lay on the linoleum of a men’s restroom, questioning his poor life decisions.
Of course, he’d been dead for about twice as long as he’d been alive at this point. So was that questioning his poor death decisions? How exactly did that work?
Grabbing onto the sink for support, the tweenage vigilante finally pulled himself up from off the floor, only to collapse to one knee when sharp pain shot up the other leg. A glance down confirmed that it was lying at an odd angle from the knee joint that had been completely dislocated.
“Bitch,” the masked youth swore, even as he shifted his weight around and took the wounded knee in both hands. A primal, raw scream ripped through him as he discovered new depths of pain and agony. The bones and joint slid back into place with a sickening sound. “That’s it,” he breathed, not holding back tears.
Heroes didn’t cry, right?
Doubled over, the boy’s head craned to one side as a magazine propped up on the floor in the back toilet stall caught his eye. Was that a Hustler?
A small orb dropped through the hole in the ceiling, taking the boy’s eye off the magazine as his attention re-focused on the grenade rolling around on the floor instead.
“Oh, fu–”
The blast knocked him into the wall, tile and drywall crumbling as he rolled onto the floor. The haze of smoke was thick. He didn’t have ear drums, or any internal organs for that matter, but his ears were ringing nonetheless. Gobs of green splatter decorated the walls from where shrapnel had ripped through the suit, exposing a body that bled a necrotic, glowing sludge instead of blood.
“That got ‘em.”
“You think that got ‘em?”
“Oh yeah. He’s wasted.”
Picking himself up from the floor, the boy ripped a piece of shrapnel from where it had lodged in his chest. Chains rattled as they seemed to snake outward from the boy’s form, seemingly filled with some kind of serpentine life of their own, even as he whipped the chains up through the hole in the roof.
The men above gave shouts of surprise, just as the boy pulled them through the ceiling and down into the public toilet that was starting to go up in smoke from the grenade.
One was pretty fast. Coming up to his feet as his hands flew to the butt of a Glock that was tucked in the front of his pants. It left him open to a sucker punch to the throat, staggered back and choking as the boy grabbed the gun in the waistband and pulled the trigger.
For a fairly large dude, guy had a great alto. Hands grabbing his crotch as he fell back, writhing around on the floor before a second pull of the trigger left him limp.
The second guy was up before the boy could turn the gun on him. The costumed youth finding himself seized from behind and lifted up from the ground as he was shoved forward – his head yanked back and then thrust downward with enough force to shatter the sink as the boy’s head broke the porcelain in two.
The gun dropped from his hand, clattering onto the floor as stars exploded before the boy’s eyes. The goon holding him got off a few more punches aimed at his kidneys – or where his kidneys should have been – before yanking the boy back by the cape.
He slung the small, black-garbed youth into the toilet stalls, a door flying open as the boy’s shoulder connected with it. The man came at him with a fist reared back. The youth’s foot kicked out, connecting with the man’s weight-bearing knee and shattering the knee cap. The man dropped with a screech of pain, the boy seizing hold of the arm he’d started to extend and using it as leverage to throw the man into the stall, face down into the toilet.
The man gripped either side of the bowl, gasping as he lifted his head up. The boy grabbed him by the hair, plunging him back down into the water. As the man struggled beneath him, trying to get his legs under him for leverage, the train of the boy’s cape seemed to extend and move with a mind of it’s own. Sweeping the discarded pistol from off the floor, the cape knocked the weapon over to the boy’s waiting hand.
A shot echoed through the bathroom, as he put a round through the back of the man’s good knee, easing the man’s head out of the bowl just enough to hear him scream. Then he went back under the water.
The smoke was even thicker now, as the fire had taken hold and started to spread. Scraps of paper flitted in the air, the grenade having blasted the magazine apart. Which was the real crime, here. No one had those magazines anymore. Not print editions, anyway. Everyone just used their phones.
He needed to get a phone.
When he finally let the man have a gasp of air, there was only one question. “Where’s the product coming in from?”
Jason wasn’t a detective, just an addict. Well, a dealer. Or former dealer, but the one kind of implied the other. Quality control was important in the business after all. He knew the game. He’d been born in the game. He knew how drugs moved. It was the only thing the Old Man had ever taught him.
What a pharmaceutical company that manufactured cancer drugs had to do with this, he had no idea. Only that working from the street up to the distribution network had led him to this warehouse. When skibidi toilet here started singing, he got the rest of that story – drugs were drugs. Hide the illegal ones in the legal ones, which were fake in any case. But by the time anyone realized that, they’d have moved on and the company would be found to not exist.
What he wasn’t getting was what he wanted, which was the sourcing.
The Cullens were getting smarter. Compartmentalizing information so no one mook could give up the scheme. When it was clear the man was trying to tell Jason what he wanted to hear, because he really didn’t know, the boy backed out of the stall and left what remained of the man crumpled on the floor.
Inspecting the pistol in his hands, the youth gave a shrug as he brought it to his thigh. The belt and suit stretched and expanded, creating a drop-leg holster for him to seat it into as he took a breath and exited the bathroom.
The warehouse beyond looked like it had been hit by a bomb, bodies littering the place and several fires spreading.
Casually, the boy walked through the collapsing warehouse, snaking his path through the break room. Someone had kept some Pabst Blue Ribbon in the refrigerator. The Cullens were drinking top shelf, of course. Grabbing two cans of PBR, the boy continued until he reached the door. A BPD officer was strung up in chains, gagged and dangling where he’d been working security at the entrance.
Plenty of cops worked security as a side hustle. But not in uniform. Or with their cop car parked in front.
“You know, BPD response time for this side of town is over forty minutes,” the youth noted casually.
The fires smoldering and spreading through the warehouse had grown strong enough to ignite the broken gas line in the back, a fireball tearing apart the entire back end of the warehouse as volatile narcotics began setting off secondary explosions, which were spreading quickly through the warehouse.
The cop began writhing, fighting against the chains binding him as muffled screams struggled to be heard over the intensifying fire.
Reaching up his arms, the boy casually patted down the officer, coming up with a manilla envelope. Glancing at it for a moment, he shrugged and tucked it away into the folds of the cape as he started to walk away.
“Good luck with that,” the boy offered, as he seemed to vanish like a ghost into the night, leaving the man hanging as the flames crept closer.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
and he’ll brace for battle in the night
he'll fight because he knows he cannot hide
- alec benjamin, outrunning karma
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
BLUDHAVEN POLICE DEPARTMENTOnce upon a time, Lynne Baker had been a young mother struggling as a beat cop trying to make it work, both in terms of time and money. She’d missed birthdays, and plays or sports, but hoped that the sacrifices had been worth it. Now her children were grown and she wore the bars of a police captain. Her home was an empty nest, but any hopes of starting her grandma era seemed stifled by the amount of work that seemed unending.
Due in no small part to the Bludhaven ghost.
Now it seemed like rumors were swirling that Gotham had a ghost of its own. Just what the world needed. More assholes in capes.
She was working alone in her office, the precinct largely emptied out, when the hair stood up on the back of her neck. As if the devil had just walked over her grave.
She wasn’t alone.
She turned to look to her left, a hand instinctively reaching for her weapon, when a flash prompted her to make a snap judgment. She caught the flying can just before it hit her in the face.
It was a... Pabst Blue Ribbon?
“Nice reflexes.”
If she didn’t see it with her own eyes, she wouldn’t have believed it. A boy entering her office through the wall. Not the window. Not the door. The wall.
Like a ghost.
“Shit taste in beer,” she noted, setting the can aside. For his part, the boy just shrugged as he casually opened his own can and then plopped down on the couch in her office. “What would have happened if I’d missed?”
“It would have hurt,” the boy answered flatly, taking a swig.
Lynne’s unopened beer dropped into the trash with a loud clang. Folding her hands down on the desk, she leaned forward as she demanded, “Want to tell me what the hell happened out there?”
She was on her feet the moment the answer was a nonchalant shrug. “I’ve got two shifts out there – one on overtime and the other pulled away from their families – to deal with your shit. And a dead cop, but I suppose you’re going to tell me you had nothing to do with that?”
Holding the woman’s gaze, the boy swirled the can as though savoring a fine whiskey as he deadpanned, “No, I just didn’t save him.”
“I suppose next you’re going to tell me that you didn’t start the fire?”
“I wasn’t the one throwing the grenades or shooting around flammable chemicals,” the boy answered, knocking back another sip of the beer even as his eyes held hers.
She didn’t like those eyes. Eerie as shit. Made her think of Poe. His eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming. “There’s a cop that’s dead because of this,” the woman snapped, leaning over the desk at the smaller figure. “Whatever you think that this is, buddy... this isn’t.”
“What was your boy doing there?”
She wanted to snap I’ll ask the questions, but the fact was... she had the same question. And wasn’t getting much in the way of answers from the field. Finally taking her seat, the woman’s shoulders slumped slightly as she instead remarked, “You probably have more information than I do. I’m guessing working security.”
The boy brought the can to his lips, pausing as he noted, “In his BPD uniform? With the car out front?”
No one at the site had reported either of those facts. Now she was curious to read the reports. “Those details hadn’t gotten back to me,” she stated candidly.
“He had this on him,” the boy noted, producing a large manilla envelope from what seemed like thin air, only to toss it onto her desk. “There’s instructions and money for some of your other cops. Nothing that’ll shock you. If I know their names, they have to have raised someone’s eyebrows around here.”
As soon as she saw the money, she knew he was telling the truth. “Jesus fucking Christ, how am I supposed to explain how I got this!?” the woman blurted aloud.
Due process? Proper evidentiary procedure?
Where was working with vigilantes in the Police Academy course? She must have been sick that day.
“That sounds like a not my problem. I just tell you what I know,” the boy stated flatly, giving a shrug as he added, “What you do with the information... that’s on you.”
The woman buried her face in both hands. She felt a major migraine coming on. Pinching the bridge of her nose, she uttered, “Dead ass, mother–,” and looked up, ready to tear him a new one.
...except her office was empty again.
Only an empty beer can rolling around in front of the couch to suggest he’d ever been there in the first place.
mattmanganon,
Eddie Brock,
Captain Uni,
Lord Wraith,
Cyberlad,
Candy Cane Elf,
Love Dove,
Oso,
Azure Bubbles,
Agunimon
