When Angels Stoop, Part 4

“Maybe it just sags
Like a heavy load.”

Montage of a Dream Deferred, “Harlem”
Langston Hughes
1902-1967

Sunday, late

Yayo couldn’t sleep.

The pretty doctor- she had to be a doctor, because normal women didn’t act like her, all quiet command and brisk efficiency- had looked him over quickly, then gave him a Styrofoam cup with something citrusy and gross, a Dixie cup filled with water, and led him into a quiet room above her clinic.

Yayo had been in a lot of hospitals growing up, and this didn’t feel like one.  The room was clean and neat, but almost Spartan.  There was a bed and a small chest of drawers.  Down the hall was a bathroom, complete with a bathtub, toilet, and a medicine cabinet over the sink.  There was toilet paper in the bathroom and bandages in the medicine cabinet, but no medicine, not even Tylenol.  Yayo supposed that he wasn’t surprised- she was a doctor, after all, and she probably had all of her drugs downstairs in the clinic.

Yayo explored a little bit while the pretty doctor did pretty doctor things in the clinic before coming upstairs into the living space.  He supposed she treated this area as not-doctor space; she had a small kitchen- freezer, refrigerator, stove, oven, and kitchen sink- and no dishwasher.  Her cabinets had salt and a few dishes and not much else; apparently, she was not a fan of spices, as she didn’t even have pepper.  He did notice a few dried herbs- mint, he thought, and something with broad, sharp leaves- but little else.  Her freezer had some frozen meat and there were fresh vegetables in the refrigerator, but, again, he found no sign of condiments of any sort, and the foods themselves were almost universally bland, with the exception of oranges.

A little later, the pretty doctor- she told him to call her Alessia- came upstairs.  She looked exhausted by the slump of her shoulders and the way her footsteps seemed heavy as she trudged through the living room.  She waved at Yayo and smiled a little weakly, then disappeared into another room next to the one she’d put Yayo in.  A few minutes later, she reemerged wearing a pair of bike shorts and a loose t-shirt.  Yayo was surprised  to realize how compactly muscular and solidly built the doctor was- her scrubs had neatly disguised everything with the exception of how tall the young woman was.

She pushed the furniture to the edges of the room- Yayo helped mainly by staying out of the way- then she began stretching.

“How long has your sister been taking care of you?” she asked abruptly and Yayo blinked.

“Cyn always looks out for me,” he said after a moment.  She grunted and twisted.  Yayo had seen Cyn doing similar exercises, but this woman seemed, somehow, more fluid, more certain, and more graceful.

“Your whole life?” she asked, “You never knew your parents at all?”

Yayo shook his head, then realized she wasn’t looking at him.  “I don’t really remember them,” he admitted, “they went away when I was little.”

Alessia started stretching out her arms, folding them over and behind her head, and she frowned thoughtfully.  “How old are you now, Yayo?”

“Um- I dunno,” he said after an uncomfortable moment, “I mean, I have birthdays every year, but I don’t remember how many.  Cyn knows, though- my next birthday’s coming up and we’re gonna have cupcakes!”

Alessia smiled and dropped into a splits, twisting her torso from one side to the other to increase the stretch.  “Tell your sister to let me know when it is,” she said, “and maybe I can bring something, too.”

She was careful not to let her smile falter- she had serious doubts that Cyn would make it through the night.  It wasn’t her business, though- what Cyn was doing was obviously illegal and probably immoral, as well.

Yayo frowned nervously.  “We never have people over for my birthday,” he said slowly, “but I’ll ask her.”

She straightened from her splits into an odd three-point crouch, then started doing one-handed push-ups, alternating hands with each iteration.  Yayo found the motion, the almost mechanical precision and repetition, utterly fascinating.  Despite himself, he stopped talking and Alessia seemed too engrossed by her task to continue the conversation in any case.

After a little bit, Yayo yawned.  Alessia looked up and paused in her workout.  “Why don’t you go to bed, Yayo?” she suggested, “I’m going to be up for a bit, and I may need to go out, but Angelo’s just downstairs if you need anything- you can talk to him on the intercom.”

Yayo nodded, although he wasn’t really sure what an intercom was or how it worked.  Alessia seemed to sense his confusion, so she stood up and showed him a little box with a mesh screen and a red button.  “Press this button,” she instructed, “and say something.”

Yayo did so.  “Hello?” he said tentatively.

“You have to let go of the button to hear anything,” Alessia explained, and Yayo took his hand away.

“Hello.  Is that Yayo I hear?” asked Angelo’s deep, rumbling voice from the grill and Yayo grinned, inexplicably pleased with the success of the experiment.

He jammed his finger against the button again.  “I’m Yayo,” he declared, “and I’m going to bed, now!”

The speaker grille rumbled a chuckle.  “You go ahead, Yayo.  I’ll be down here all night.  Let me know if you need anything.”

Alessia watched Yayo shamble off to his bedroom.  She hadn’t told Angelo that she was going out- she hadn’t realized she’d decided, in fact- but Angelo clearly knew his niece too well.  She depressed the speaker button again.  “Thanks, Angelo- I’ll try to be as quick as I can.”

“Don’t worry about it, Tesoro, I’ll mind the store while you’re gone.”  He paused and Alessia thought, for just a moment, that he was done talking, but then he added, “be careful, Alessia.”

Alessia nodded, then said aloud for her uncle, “I will, Angelo.  I’ll do my best.”

She went back to her bedroom and shimmied out of her workout clothes.  She showered quickly and slipped into the considerably tighter and more revealing costume that identified her as Tyche to the world at large.

*****

Cyn had taken a taxi from the clinic to the bus stop, then one of the all-night buses had taken her as far as a small 24-hour Stop-N-Shop on the edge of the territory Ramirez claimed for his own.  She wore sweatpants and a loose t-shirt, both borrowed from Alessia’s old clothes and, therefore, just about big enough for Cyn to swim in.  She also had a pair of athletic socks and, fortunately, the night was dry, so being shoeless hadn’t been a big problem.

Of considerably more concern was the condition Cyn was in, herself.  Despite Alessia’s best efforts, Cyn was still in an enormous amount of pain- to the point that it made thinking difficult and most movement downright agony.  She was fortunate that she was strong enough to carry herself entirely on her crutches, because the one time she had accidentally let any of her weight down on her injured leg, the pain had been so intense that she’d passed out for a moment, barely managing to catch herself before she fell face-first into the pavement.

The building she was now approaching didn’t belong to Ramirez by law, but his possession of the short, squat apartment building and its drug lab hidden away in the basement was the sort of open secret that dirtied the name of major cities’ police forces across the nation.  Ramirez stayed in business by bribing a few officials, threatening or blackmailing others, and feeding just enough information to the police to be marginally more useful to them free rather than in custody.

Assuming there really was honor among thieves, Cyn reflected grimly, Ramirez was the exception that proved the rule.  Of course, she added as a grim afterthought, that’s one Hell of an assumption…

Cyn hobbled up to the doors to the building.  They were old, probably built in the 1970s, a heavy wooden construction with a steel core.  The locking mechanism used an ancient door buzzer that disengaged the deadbolt; if it ever jammed, no one without superhuman strength would be able to open it.  The ground floor windows had all been boarded up and the fire escape, if the building had ever had one, had been torn down and, likely, sold to a salvager long ago.  If Cyn wanted to kill Ramirez- and she really, really did- she was pretty sure she could set a fire and make certain that nobody made it out of the building alive.

She took a deep breath and reminded herself of the reason she was here.  This wasn’t about revenge; this was about survival, not just for herself, but for Yayo, too.  If she had too, she would burn until her skin blackened and her bones cracked from the heat if it meant that Yayo would live.

Of course, that wasn’t her first choice.

Cyn looked at the doors for a few seconds, then, in a fashion not unlike what she’d done earlier in the day- had it only been Sunday morning?- she raised both hands to the door.  Her weight was almost entirely on her right leg, her crutches held against her sides by her bent arms as she considered.  She’d tried the direct approach that morning and it hadn’t worked out well for her.  She needed to do something a bit subtler.

She realized she’d been staring at the door for too long, then saw the closed-circuit television camera mounted above the entryway.  She was standing in shadow and she was pretty sure that the camera was old enough that it wouldn’t have any high-tech spy gadgetry, but it still made her nervous.  With a twitch of her fingers, she directed a focused blast of precisely calibrated energy into the camera’s lens.  She heard a quiet tinkle as the precisely curved glass shattered and fell to the ground.

She turned back to the door.  The ancient mechanism actually had a keyhole, even though it could be controlled with a buzzer from the inside.  She wondered if she could shake the mechanism sufficiently to make it disengage, but she doubted it.  As she stood there, staring at the door in puzzled frustration, someone cleared her throat from behind her.

If she could have, she would have spun like a scalded cat.  Her injuries precluded that, however, and she tripped and started to fall against the door frame as her involuntary reaction overbalanced her.  Strong hands caught her shoulders and stabilized her.

“Steady there,” the owner of the hands warned as she helped Cyn turn to face her, “I’m going to assume the reason you’re staring at the lock is because you forgot your keys and you don’t want to wake the neighbors.  It’s either that, or you’re in the process of breaking and entering which, given your precarious legal status, could be problematic.  Sound about right?”

The owner of the hands was a tall woman, Cyn saw, and surprisingly muscular.  Her voice was cool and professional and tinged with just a hint of ironic humor.  Despite her mask, Cyn recognized her instantly and her mind boggled.  “Doctor Troisi?”

“Tyche,” the woman replied, her mouth quirking into a smile, “I try to keep those lives as separate as I can, if you don’t mind.”

“Like a secret identity?” Cyn asked curiously.

“Nothing so ostentatious,” she laughed, “although, if you’re planning on continuing with these sorts of late-night activities, you might want to seriously consider one.  I don’t think it will do you or your brother any good if your real name gets mixed up in criminal activities, do you?”

“Hah.  No,” Cyn admitted, “you can call me Breakpoint, I guess…”

Tyche nodded.  “Breakpoint it is, then.  Now, back to my original question, sort of- did you have a plan for how to get in, or were you planning on just staring at the door until it magically opened on its own?”

Cyn shrugged.  “I don’t know, really- I could break open the door, I’m pretty sure, but that would be loud and it would probably wake up the whole building.  Honestly, I almost didn’t expect to get this far and now I’m kind of feeling my way in the dark, if you know what I mean.”

“Are you okay to stand on your own now?” Tyche asked.  When Cyn nodded, she went on.  “I may have a way to get the door open without bringing down the wrath of God, if you’re interested.  The trade is that you don’t murder anybody.  Deal?”

Cyn snorted.  “I’m not in much shape to be doing anything as strenuous as murder, right now, anyways,” she remarked dryly.

Tyche shrugged acceptance of this noncommittal acquiescence, then shouldered in so that she was standing closer to the door.  She crouched down and examined the lock carefully for a few moments.  “Well, the lock itself is dead easy.  More tricky is going to be the alarm- it’s triggered to go off if there’s ever a break in the current going through the wires.  Using a key would, normally, disable it temporarily, I think, but, oddly, I didn’t think to bring a key…”

She grinned up at Cyn’s anxious face.  “Don’t worry about it,” she chuckled, “I can improvise.  I’m just showing off.”

She reached into a belt pouch and produced a pair of long, thin picks and several strips of wire.  “One thing men’s clothes got right,” she noted absently, “was pockets.  Women’s clothes and bodysuits need to take note…”

Tyche used deft hands to insert the picks and fiddle with the wire for a few moments.  After a few moments Tyche gave a satisfied smile and Cyn heard a definitive ‘click’ as the lock released and the door swung open on surprisingly quiet hinges.

“Rich white girl,” Cyn whispered disbelievingly under her breath, “where’d you learn to do that, anyways?”

Tyche grinned like a pleased cat.  “Pick up all sorts of weird, esoteric skills doing this gig,” she whispered back, slightly louder.  She didn’t need to point out that her enhanced senses were so delicate and profound that she could literally hear and touch the locking mechanism’s function as she worked it, much as she could see in the dark (and in spectrums that no natural human could), could smell Cyn’s sweat, fear, and blood, and could even feel the slight elevation in Cyn’s body temperature due to the mild fever her wounds had gifted her with.

“Come on- let’s get moving before someone notices the camera you killed,” Tyche suggested, straightening and pushing her way through the door.

*****

Vincent Hammer watched as the two women slipped quietly inside Ramirez’s compound. Well, well, he thought, this is unexpected…

The arrival of one of his victims was, almost, fortuitous, actually, although he misliked surprises.  The accompanying heroine, Tyche, was mostly unknown to him.  He’d seen her mentioned in a few police reports, but she seemed like a minor player.  She’d certainly never been involved in anything large scale that he was aware of, although he vaguely remembered seeing her name briefly topping RWD Simulation’s leaderboards for unarmed combat.  Her presence was somewhat more troubling and he considered postponing his operation for another time, but decided that Papa Joe had been serious about wanting this job handled expeditiously.  He’d just have to deal with her- it wasn’t like one more corpse was likely to make a big difference.

He grimaced and ran his suit through another self-test, the third one this evening.  He wasn’t quite OCD- his therapist had refused to label him as such, in any case- but he was almost painfully precise.  His precision in dress, operational procedure, timing, and systems maintenance was a bit of a strange contrast given his function.

Some people would call Vincent Hammer a hitman. As a descriptor, it was woefully inadequate.  Hits by Vincent Hammer were loud, splashy, violent affairs.  They made the news and people always knew a message had been sent.  It was a matter of pride for Vincent that no one could ever misinterpret the message.  No, Vincent Hammer wasn’t just a hitman.

Vincent Hammer was leashed chaos, a walking singular event of complete and utter- and, surprisingly- intimate and personal devastation.

He was, as Papa Joe had intimated, a blunt object.  But he was a blunt object wielded with terrifying precision, so that even the collateral damage that was certain to result from one of Vincent’s operations was sure to reinforce his message.

He didn’t use explosives- not much, anyways- although he was intimately familiar with the use and disposal of demolitions, and he rarely used bullets.  Vincent Hammer preferred his kills to be up close and extremely personal, and his suit ensured that he was always able to execute.  He floated down on silent phased-array anti-gravity bands.

He would have to remember to thank his wife properly, he thought- the new inertial compensators brought him to an almost instant stop without any notable discomfort.  If the new systems worked as efficiently on offense, he’d be able to punch his fist through battle plate without difficulty, making a human body just so much meat in a loosely-bound bag of skin.

*****

Tyche’s hyper-acute senses drove them deeper into the building.  The basement was pretty typical of an apartment building this size, with one major exception- there was a security door in the laundry room.  It boasted a fairly high-tech security seal, powered, she guessed, by some internal generator- except that the whole thing was turned off.

“Breakpoint,” Tyche breathed, then had to repeat herself as Cyn’s labored breathing drowned out her first attempt.  The girl stopped and looked in her general direction through the inky blackness.

Breakpoint had none of Tyche’s remarkable heightened senses, although her perception of variances in sonic frequencies was remarkably acute.  She couldn’t see anything in the nearly non-existent light, nor could she taste the absence of electricity running through the old wires in the building, or smell the faintest hint of drug compounds beginning to build up in the building atmosphere as the electrically-powered fans failed to circulate the air properly.  She waited impatiently for Tyche to speak again.

“Something is… there’s no power in the building, and I think it’s just here.  I think…”

Cyn nodded.  “Trouble,” she agreed.

Tyche took the lead.  “We’ll need to hurry, then.  Remember- no killing, okay?”

Breakpoint snorted quietly.  “Yeah- I’ll be good,” she allowed bitterly.

*****

A flashing light inside his visor indicated the direction the girls had travelled; it was, as he had more than half-expected, on a direct line to his primary target.  If he had paused to consider it, he might have been impressed.  His own active and passive arrays gave him the equivalent of nearly perfect senses in the darkness, but he had no idea how the girls were managing to keep on so direct a path after he’d killed the power to the building.

He didn’t know why Tyche- who all media accounts had pegged as a true hero- was accompanying a woman who had been tapped to be an enforcer for Papa Joe, but it was clear that they had arranged some sort of cooperative relationship.

He didn’t expect it to make any real difference.  While he hadn’t had a chance to study Tyche in any real detail, he’d seen enough to understand that she simply didn’t have the power she’d need to stop him or even significantly slow him down.  As for Cyn, while she was metahuman, he was fairly sure that his suit would have protected him from loud noises- her one recorded ability- and from the admittedly low level of metahuman strength she possessed even if she hadn’t been nearly crippled by the injuries Ramirez’s goons had inflicted on her.  In her current condition, he wouldn’t even break a sweat.

From some distance ahead of him and around a corner, he heard a loud thump and the splintering of wood as a heavy door was broken away from its frame.  He smiled and hurried up- it wouldn’t do for him to miss the party because he was flower-sniffing along the path behind the girls, after all.


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Artwork by .  Tyche, Yayo, Papa Joe, Hammer, and Breakpoint all belong to me.

This was frustrating- for some reason, dA apparently doesn't want me uploading pictures.  I had to finagle this onto my tablet and upload from there.

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