A nest of hornets - Part 4
Caitlyn had homework to do. A lot of homework. The school had doubled-down for the missing days due to the damage to the school. She should be at home, eating Aunt Mary's trademark quadruple chocolate cookies while typing out essays with music blasting in her headphones, but no, she was here, in the wharf district. Again. She could see this whole superhero-in-training thing beginning to swallow her precious teenage years.
The suit provided her with night vision, like before, and she saw everything as clear as though it were daytime. Albeit with a sickly, sparkly green tinge to it all. Despite that, she couldn't see anything that could indicate a super-villain lair. Not that she knew what one looked like if she did see one. Up, on the roof of a warehouse, she checked down toward the ground, hoping that Vezzpa had left a sign. A big arrow, flashing in the night, with a neon sign attached saying 'Bad guys' would help.
The wharf district, at this time of the night, still had more than a little activity. The docks never stopped working. Loading and unloading ships with cargo destined for far off places, like California, or something. Short of checking inside each and every warehouse in the area she had calculated Vezzpa had disappeared, she doubted she would find anything.
She stopped moving, turning as close to a statue as she could as she saw a flashlight arc across a nearby alley between two of the warehouses. A security guard, perhaps. The light stopped dancing as the man who held it rattled the handle on a door, sweeping the beam of light across the sign above the door. Caitlyn ducked down as the light jumped toward the roof. She had seen that guy somewhere before and her mind raced to think who it was.
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Below ...
Watson had a hunch. Strictly speaking, he should sit in his badly ventilated office and send out officers to do this sort of thing, but his old instincts and desire to do real police work had brought him out here. Alone. He wasn't a young rookie anymore, those days were far, far behind him, but he still ached, sometimes, to return to the streets. He was too old for this. The riverside air not doing his nascent arthritis any good.
Something didn't add up. Of all the places that new villain, Vezzpa, could have flown to hide her ill-gotten gains, she had come here. Battled that new hero when she could have disappeared. Either she had something to prove, or something to hide. Something to protect. He had seen it often enough. The number of felons that had called out Black Staff, just to have the chance of bragging about beating the super, could fill a book. A few books. This didn't feel like that.
As any good cop did in a world of supers, he looked everywhere. Especially to the skies. So many of them could fly, it made a cop's job all the more difficult. And did the city provide the NHPD with enough funds to counter these flying supers? They did not. They barely had a budget for overtime. Something he and the unions had batted heads about for years.
He thought the flashlight had caught something, high above, but he saw nothing. Nothing yellow, at least. If nothing else, the need for these supers to wear garish, colourful costumes helped to identify them. They thought it brought eyes on their exploits but, to Watson, it only provided him with better visibility to target them. Not that they could. Standing orders were to let supers deal with supers, but he could never stand by and allow that. Hence his shady dealings with Black Staff.
There was nothing there and villains were rarely afraid to announce their presences. As an afterthought, he lifted the lids of a couple of dumpsters, checking inside. Some villains made mistakes like that, leaving evidence in the most mundane places. Nothing. Nothing except rats and rotting cardboard. Records showed that only four warehouses in this area were unoccupied. This one made the second of those four that didn't look like anyone had touched them in weeks. Maybe months.
The next one stood a couple of structures away and he set off, ready to call it a night, take a long bath and ease the aches in his knees. If this didn't pan out, he would have to wait for Vezzpa to strike again. They always did. It became like a drug for them. The excitement of taking what wasn't theirs and, crazily, the battles with superheroes. He had known more than a few villains who only did jobs to draw out the heroes, wanting to prove themselves. Their superiority. That rarely went their way.
Bingo! Switching off the flashlight, he noted some late-night movement. A truck getting loaded and a bunch of mooks that were henchmen if he'd ever seen one. Two lookouts. One this side of the truck, another at the other side, packing AK's. The easiest rifles to find for this sort of thing. Taking out his phone, he started taking pictures, flash switched off, of course. Plates, faces, close-ups, wide shots. More than enough for convictions. With one call, he could have a dozen squad cars here within the next five-to-ten. There were too many for one mouldy old cop to deal with.
Too late, he heard the buzzing behind him and his hand never reached his holster.
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In a private wing at New Hastings General Hospital ...
This was all pointless. Raymond Alden knew it was pointless and so did the doctors. They could do nothing for him that he couldn't get at his own facility on the outskirts of the city. If he had retained his lucidity, he would have ordered them to take him there, but his people had panicked at his collapse and New Hastings General was closer. At least they had managed to secure the entire wing for his recuperation.
Outside the room, he could see two guards. Big men that charged enough to protect a small country. He didn't need them. They couldn't protect him from the disease that ravaged him. Anything else seemed insignificant. Including potential kidnappings and the following ransom demands. To some super-villains, that was their stock-in-trade. Right now, all those security guards were stopping was Raymond's sense of peace. As was the visitor forcing those very same security guards to step aside.
"Is it true?" His beautiful daughter, Rayna. So much like her mother. She slammed the door behind her. "You have a technology that can cure you? And you're not using it?"
"It's not that simple. It's untested. The people working on it have had to fudge certain aspects and ..." That little crease, right between her eyes when she was furious. So like her mother. Raymond almost laughed at that. "And, frankly, there are more deserving people who should get it first. If it works! Tests on lab animals are inconclusive. It could make things worse."
"That's not what I've read." She stood a good six feet from the bed, unwilling to step closer. "According to the latest findings, this 'Black Element' requires a human host. It's inconclusive with animals because its not designed for them. Correct?"
"You read the reports." He couldn't help but smile. "'Host' isn't quite the right term. It's a liquid nano-technological, self-replicating ... substance. Alien in origin and there are some parts that have no analogue on Earth. We can make guesses, but it isn't safe until we conduct more trials. It could be years in the future and I ... I don't ..."
The wave of nausea hit him so hard, he thought he would drown in his own vomit. The nausea and the pain. Like nothing he had ever felt before. It was good that Rayna had started to take an interest in the business, even if reluctantly. She would need to step-up, become the head of the company, no matter her age and, if she became half the woman her mother was, she'd be formidable. A pity he wouldn't get to see that.
Everything started to turn black and Raymond wondered whether this was it. They had said the final, fatal symptoms would manifest fast, but he hadn't expected this. He still had much to do. He had to close down the weapons testing division, wanting to head into more a more sustainable business model. He had to spend more time with Rayna, rebuild bridges broken for too long. He had to supervise the awakening of one of the brightest young minds he had ever encountered. Too late. All too late.
"I want the Ald-Tech helicopter on this roof within five minutes!" Rayna's voice, so far away, so commanding. She would make him proud. "Have the riverside facility ready to accept him. We will not lose my father! If he dies, you'll all be looking for new jobs. Move!"
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Meanwhile, back at the wharf district ...
The third warehouse. At least he hadn't wasted his time checking all four before finding Vezzpa and her crew. Or, as it had turned out, Vezzpa and her crew had found him. They hadn't beaten him as much as some villains had, in the past. He still had all his teeth, for a start. Human henchmen. Big lugs, but at least they punched only as hard as humans punched. More than once, Watson had taken beatings from supers. That wasn't something he wanted to happen again.
Vezzpa smiled under those bulbous, compound-eye goggles as another guy punched Watson, making his jaw click as he spat blood to the side. He'd already told them everything they needed to know, knowing full well that trying to keep anything back would make the beating worse. It wasn't as though he was spilling state secrets. No, this beating was for Vezzpa's amusement.
She sashayed around behind the goon, making certain all her gang, and Watson, could see how tight that yellow and black uniform was. Command through sexuality. Watson had seen better and he wasn't impressed. As Vezzpa trailed a finger across the muscular shoulders of the guy giving Watson the beating, she seemed to come to a decision.
"You know, I wazz hoping for a little more fun. A little ... defianzze. I'm inclined to believe you when you zzay no-one knowzz you're here." She squatted in front of Watson, knees spread in one last attempt to get him to desire her. It wasn't working. "Of courzze, if you're alone, that meanzz no-one will know when we kill you. When I kill you. Getting branded a cop killer izz zzuch a drag."
The villain's stinger tail whipped around her waist, pointing right at Watson. He'd seen the videos and knew that he wouldn't survive this. Were Black Staff alive, Watson wouldn't have come alone, but Black Staff was dead and Watson was about to follow him. It could have been worse. It could have been Blockchain that killed him. He would never have lived that down. Metaphorically.
Something broke, high above in the rusted steel rafters and everyone's eyes rose upward, Watson's included. It only took a second of surprise before bullets began to fire up into the shadows of the roof, clattering against the metal, pinging and ricocheting away. Fire first, think later. Typical henchmen. Watson had seen enough super rescues to know how this would turn out.
What he didn't expect was someone hiding behind him as they tried to untie his hands.