A nest of hornets - Part 8

Caitlyn looked around to see where the other cops were, but she only saw a back road. Intermittent trees dotting the sides. More of a dirt track than anything. In the distance, she could see the tips of New Hasting's skyscrapers and, behind her, she saw a fading pillar of smoke. Speaking of smoke, the old cop tapped a pack of cigarettes against his hand, lifting it to place the tip of one in his mouth.

"You don't mind? I'm supposed to be giving up. My daughter would have words if she knew, but, sometimes, I just need to calm my nerves." He didn't wait for an answer, taking a Zippo from his pocket as he put the pack away and flicking it open. "You have a problem. See, technically, vigilantes are illegal in New Hastings. In reality, we let supers get on with their business and we clean up afterward. You don't know the rules, the unspoken rules, and that means you're a danger to yourself and others. Like today."

The lighter flared into life and the cop dipped his head. Taking a long, deep drag, he lifted his head up and squinted at Caitlyn. He just stared, as though he wanted her to say something, but she had no idea what to say. She couldn't test the strength of the cuffs while he was looking, not while she could see the clip on his holster wasn't attached. He was ready to draw that old revolver and Caitlyn wasn't so certain the suit was bulletproof.

"So, am I under arrest?" Her voice sounded muffled beneath the mask. Sometimes she wasn't even aware she had the mask on, it felt so comfortable. "I could just fly away."

"I could just shoot you." He looked relaxed. Not a care. No fear. No nerves. Only taking lazy drags of the cigarette every now and then. "Blood Obsidian. Not a name that screams 'hero'. That's Black Staff's outfit. Changed. Looks more like armour, but it's his. How'd you get it?"

"Thrift shop." She rolled her eyes. This wasn't the time for jokes. She couldn't help it. Wearing the suit made her nervous and she joked when nervous. "I ... just sort of got it. I don't know how."

He nodded at that and looked beyond her. She turned her head to see a helicopter, another one, rising from where the smoke trickled into the sky. It turned in a lazy circle and then moved away, back toward the city. That smoke was her doing. Partly her doing. She had some responsibility for it, even if it was Vezzpa that had caused most of the damage.

Looking back at the cop, she saw him rub the bridge of his nose. She had thought he looked old before, but now he looked weary. She could break the handcuffs now, if she wanted. She knew the suit gave her enough strength for that, and it gave her enough speed that she could take his revolver before he could blink. Something told her to wait, though. After a second or so, his hand moved to his stubbled chin, smoothing down his rough skin.

"Rule number one, kiddo. Civilian safety is more important than catching the bad guys. It's a tightrope. You have to make split-second decisions. Is the bad guy the type to target civilians? Are they the type to cut and run if you're occupied with saving folks, or will they attack while your back's turned?" He pointed back toward the diminishing smoke with the two fingers holding the cigarette. "This Vezzpa, she's new, but she cuts and runs. The money was insured. Forget about it. The people in that facility? Well, let's just say you were lucky today. It could have been worse. From what I hear, Alden's daughter was the only one with life-threatening injuries, but she'll be fine. Miraculously fine. She could have been dead."

"Rayna?" The word blurted from her and she clamped her mouth tight, berating herself. She didn't even know the girl. Not really. "I didn't know. I just ... I just wanted to stop Vezzpa."

Again with the squint! Caitlyn couldn't help but think everything she said was becoming stored within that grey haired head. Filed away for a future prosecution. She couldn't let that happen. If Aunt Mary found out what she had done, how she had put herself and others in danger, it would crush her. After losing Uncle Richard, Caitlyn couldn't lose Aunt Mary.

"She a schoolfriend? Rayna Alden? That would make you ..." She could see his mind working behind his blue eyes, crows feet deepening. "Parkside High. That's how you got the suit. When Black Staff died, it passed to you. Damn! What are you? Sixteen? And the only one of the kids with major injuries, that miraculously weren't that major, was ..."

"Stop!" The man was a computer! And she was seventeen! There was a huge difference. The cuffs broke with a snap and the cop's hand fell to the butt of his revolver. But he didn't draw it. Caitlyn held the broken cuffs out to him. "Sorry. Don't work it out, please. Don't say it. If a villain found out you knew who I was, they could use you to get to me. To my ... to people close to me."

"Kid, I know the drill better than you. Trust me." He still had his hand on the pistol while he reached out to take the cuffs from her, turning them over in his hand. "Black Staff did that the first time I met him, too. I never learn."

The hand on the pistol moved away, taking the cigarette from his mouth and looking around, frowning. After a second, he scraped it against the fender of the car, checked that it was out and dropped it to the ground. The cuffs he bounced in his other hand, a little smile crossing his face. A smile that talked of fond memories and nostalgia.

All the while, Caitlyn shifted from one foot to the other, wondering whether she was arrested or not. The cop didn't look about to try to cuff her again but, then again, he had as much worked out who she was in the space of a few seconds. If he wanted, he could let her fast-float away and then send a whole bunch of SWAT teams to her Aunt's apartment. Aunt Mary would have kittens. So, she stayed where she was. For now.

"You knew him? Black Staff?" Curiosity. It always got the better of her. Plus, it stopped the cop from taking her in and dropping her at Stormfield Island's ultra-maximum security supers wing. "I'm not ... I was never really into supers that much."

"Yeah. I knew him. As well as anyone could know him. Even now, his body still in the morgue, we still don't know his name. DNA, fingerprints, facial recognition. All nada." He gave a little laugh. "Anyway, kiddo, we need to decide what I'm going to do about you."

"Fine. I won't resist. Just ..." She held out her wrists, though she didn't know if the cop had any spare handcuffs. "Just ... please, be gentle with my Aunt."

"Put those hands down, kid!" Now he looked annoyed and Caitlyn really wished he'd make his mind up about what he wanted to do. "Listen, if you're going to do this, you're going to have to do it right. Learn the rules, for a start. And here, that's a burner number to get to me. Now, we can't help each other officially, but, sometimes, us cops and you heroes need to be on the same page. Capisce?"

He handed her a business card that only had a number written on it and she wondered how many people he gave this number out to for him to have cards ready. The world was far more complex than she ever knew. Cops having shady dealings with heroes. Unspoken rules that said, sometimes you had to let the villains go. Caitlyn knew it happened, villains making their audacious escapes, she had no idea that sometimes the heroes let them.

With a thought, she felt the suit ripple away from her backside, where she had stuffed her phone into the back pocket, only to find it empty. In horror, she turned back toward the facility, the smoke now gone, and wondered, in a panic, where she had lost it. Probably when she had made the suit create the big shield. The suit's ability to create things meant that other parts of the suit became thinner. Or, as in this case, expose almost everything to create a shield that had saved her and Vezzpa's lives.

She had all her pictures on that phone! Okay, they were backed up in the cloud, but still. It would take ages to get them back onto a new phone. Not to mention the music, the apps, contacts. The horror continued. She would have to ask Aunt Mary for a new one! And lie to her about what had happened to the last one. She didn't want to lie to Aunt Mary!

And, oh god, Alaina will have filled up her messages by now and, she looked around, it was daylight! She crumpled to the ground. Everything was going wrong. Everything! Aunt Mary would be going insane with worry. A whole night, out here, searching for a super-villain, fighting her, wrecking a secret Ald-Tech facility, almost killing Rayna, finding all those tubes filled with stuff like what the suit was made from, but different, wrong, and, on top of all that, she had lost her phone, got a cop working out who she was and her mask totally stank of vomit!

"I can't." She held out the card, after returning to her feet. "I just ... I got caught up in it, you know. It was fun and exciting, but people are getting hurt because of me. I'm not a hero! How could I even think I am? I'm not ... this isn't for me. I could die! People could die while I'm fighting some asshole in a tight suit! I can't do it. I can't! I'm not Blood Obsidian and I'm certainly not Black Staff. I'm just ... I'm just going to go. I need to go home. Sorry."

"Keep the card, kid. The name's Chief Watson. If you need help, for anything, call." He turned his back, heading around the car to the driver's door. With one foot inside the car, he leaned on the roof. "You're not the first to have a crisis of conscience. One day, ask me to tell you about the time Black Staff quit. Well, the second time. You got a taste of it all, kid. It's hard to put that away."

Caitlyn waited until he had started to drive away before she stopped watching. She had put it out of her mind, ignored it for most of that conversation, but it plagued her. Rayna, the new girl at school and daughter of her boss, Raymond Alden, had nearly died. Sure, the cop, Chief Watson, had said she would be fine, but that wasn't the point. Caitlyn had played at being a hero and someone had almost paid the price for Caitlyn's game. She couldn't have that on her conscience.

-+-

Back in the facility ...

"One last sweep before shift change, they said. It'll be fine, they said. The structure is safe, they said." Harry loved working for Ald-Tech, most of the time. Tonight, not so much. "It don't look safe to me."

He was only a security guard. Paid to walk the perimeter of the facility and report anything out of the ordinary to people better paid and trained to deal with it. Sure, he had a gun, but who didn't. And, as that chick named after Italian motor scooters had shown, some people had things worse than guns. They could hurt in ways that guns couldn't. Damage things in ways guns couldn't.

Like here.

He roved the flashlight over the remains of the chopper and shook his head. The pilot had walked away from that one, how, Harry could never know. He stopped moving the light, thinking he had caught something in the beam, but it was nothing. Shadows making him jumpy. Not only shadows. Dust fell like a miniature avalanche from the broken roof and he stepped back. He didn't need to go in there. Better paid people. They would go in there.

Something else caught his eye. Or, rather, not something. Earlier that night, he had passed this way on another patrol and had seen the harness that Vespa chick had worn. Orders from the top had told everyone to stay away until some West Coast brainbox made their way here to examine it. That would be a problem. A huge problem. The harness was gone, leaving only an imprint in the dust. And, next to that print, another one. Rectangular, small. Like a phone, maybe.

Regardless, Harry had to call it in, which meant questions and, probably, fired without pay for screwing up so badly. Which was a damned shame. Harry loved working here.