by AlwaysAPrice » Sun May 12, 2013 8:26 am
((Concurrent with Bolty's post.))
Across the street and high above Paradise, death skulked. Not any personification of Death its actual self, but one person it had touched. One it had visited but been turned away from, one dead girl named Jane. Perched on the edge of a rooftop, she had an expansive view of the street below, and watched on as the lights of the club's sign cast flowing bands of color over the long line of warm, over-decorated bodies waiting to be judged worthy of entry.
Nearly forty of you. Standing there. Lined up like cattle. Why? Dance, flirt, mingle, right there. Only thing different inside is drinks and music. One guy with a cooler and a boombox, you're set.
The idea of a night on the town pretending to be normal used to intrigue her, but she'd had more than enough of them and the charm had long ago worn off. Jane was a curious woman, but her curiosity about this subject was sated, and soured, decades ago. It wasn't the night life that drew her here, just one of the people partaking in it.
Jane was not good at people. Not at socializing, small talk, nor crowds, not as far along as her condition had progressed, dampening her emotions to faint echoes of what she'd once been able to feel, trying to reduce her attachments to no more than potential sources of sustenance in her mind. Still, she had her ways of preserving the few near-friendships she chanced into in Advent City, and this was one of them. Not stalking, she told herself. Socializing from a distance. Watching them from afar kept the primitive impulses quiet and let her build a private rapport, an understanding of her living acquaintances as just that, living people.
The music surged as the door opened, and Jane hunched forward, peering down for a glimpse inside. A tingle rolled down her spine as she focused her hearing beyond its usual enhanced sensitivity for a few seconds, picking out the murmurs of the cattle outside, clear and distinct from the thumping music or boisterous voices inside. A familiar voice exchanged minor pleasantries and excused herself for some air, and Jane swung her legs back around to the roof to stand. She followed the roof to the corner of the block it occupied, head turned to watch Beth Wells the entire way to her car. She'd lied to the acquaintance she passed on the way out. Ignoring the glamorous club-going attire, watching how she moved, Jane identified relief in Beth's posture, determination entering her stride, and understood.
Beth moved behind her vehicle, attention on opening its trunk -- she didn't see the man approaching behind her. Again Jane was awash in the tingle of conscious metabolism, honing her senses again, and felt a satisfying tug within her abdomen as her diaphragm suddenly contracted to draw her second breath since night fell, in case she needed to shout a warning. Her eyes fixed on the hand the man was slipping into a pocket, studied the contours of the object being pulled out beneath the fabric -- flat, rectangular, not a gun. Maybe a taser.
Jane hoped it was a taser. Would be funny, she thought without amusement, pushing the air out of her lungs unused.
Jane listened for a moment longer as the man introduced himself as a reporter and Beth humored his intrusion, then started to let her focus withdraw, content there was no threat. Before her senses were fully withdrawn from the street below her attention snapped to the corner at the far end of the block Beth had parked on -- the unmistakable sounds of struggle, shoes kicking helplessly against asphalt, a scream that might have been a cry for help muffled somehow into an unintelligible sound of urgency and protest. Already aware of her surroundings from the time she had spent lurking up there tonight, she broke into a dead run towards the other side of the building.
She could make it across Paradise's block faster on the more even rooftops on the next street than she would taking the shortcut of a dive into the street below, risking injury that would both slow her down and drain her reserves. Instead, she sprang across an alleyway to the sill of a window on the story-taller neighboring building, spidered up the wall using the protruding frames of its windows as hand and footholds, and rolled over the edge of the roof, unfolding onto her feet and resuming her run without any pause to appreciate the efficient elegance of her own movements.
After the screech of tires, she knew which way they were heading and angled her run accordingly. The screech suggested they were in a hurry, but she hadn't heard any sirens. If they didn't think they were being pursued, she could catch up. Precision rolls, run-ups and leaps turned every obstacle into a shortcut. She alighted on an apartment building's fire escape railing only for the instant it took her to push off it and roll into the open window leading to the floor's central corridor, where she rolled back to her feet and continued her breakneck pace without a grunt or a gasp.
As she emerged on the opposite side's matching escape, the black van shot past in the street below, its speed increasing. She started to question what they were running from, as she still hadn't heard a siren in pursuit, when an arc of lightning illuminated the block. Hope she ditched the reporter, Jane mused, then pulled her weapon out of its leg-straps, leapt, and swung the three-sectioned staff up and over a cable that descended to the building across the street. Her grip on both the outer handles provided her with an impromptu zip line to the other side of the street.
Jane tossed one handle back up and over the cable and began to fall, taking the staff with her, but the momentum carried her forward just enough to place a hand and one foot against the wall she'd been sliding towards a moment before, and bounce off for a relatively soft landing on the sidewalk below. Lightning flashed again, arcing over the next two blocks, and Jane rushed into the street and vaulted into the back seat of the next passing car, a dark red Mercedes convertible, as casually as one might hop a subway turnstile.
The driver turned his head so fast his Bluetooth flew out of his ear and bounced off Jane's forehead. A violent shudder rolled through her as she felt it leave a trace smear of earwax behind, but she had to focus. "Drive," she intoned with blood behind it, and she lurched in the backseat as the driver looked ahead and floored the gas. "Safely..." she added, always uneasy with applying her abilities this way, infringing on a person's free will, and hoping to minimize any danger she might be putting the driver in. "Black van, turning three blocks up. Catch up."
Jane rubbed at her forehead with the sleeve of her hoodie, shooting the driver a sour look through the rear view mirror, then set to strapping her staff back to her leg. "Get me close. Will get out of your life." she instructed in her normal voice, ensuring that he'd forget who exactly detoured him when this was over.
"Jesus, why am I even doing this?" the young man, whose hairline was receding entirely too early, wondered aloud as he navigated the light traffic of the road and took the turn she'd indicated, barely slowing. Guy can drive. Lucky night. "Are you some sort of superhero?"
"Not really."
"Then what's with the fist?" His eyes flicked nervously to Jane's chest in the mirror.
Jane looked down at her hoodie and opened her mouth as if to provide an answer, only to find she didn't have one to offer. "Don't know, didn't ask them yet." The van was in sight, and Jane rose into a crouch on the back seat, peering through, then over the windshield. She added, "Not a hero. Still good guy."
As they neared the van, Jane's eyes darted ahead to the changing street light ahead of them, now yellow. The driver gripped the wheel, white-knuckled but determined to catch the van as he'd been instructed. "Do I hit it? Try to run it off the road? Who's even in there?"
"Someone young and scared who doesn't want to die. Little closer." Jane hopped forward to squat on the front passenger seat's headrest as the man sped up, gripping the frame of the windshield. She focused, the familiar tingle coming on more intensely, coursing throughout her body as she prepared herself. As the van shot into the intersection in spite of the red light, Jane barked. "Brake!" and the driver did, immediately slamming on the pedal. With her body's tensed muscles reinforced by a burn-off of blood, she leapt just in time to preserve and add to her momentum and launched across the intersection.
A loud horn bellowed and tires screeched to her right, her fingertips brushed the handle of the van's rear door, then a bus slammed into her hip. Jane caromed out of the intersection, twisting and tumbling through the air until she caught the fender of an inconveniently parked Cadillac with her spine, and flopped onto the asphalt next to it. Her head smacked into the street at just the right angle to let her see the van shoot past the expressway on-ramp and veer around a corner further down the street.
Jane mouthed a breathless sigh, a trickle of someone else's blood escaping from the corner of her mouth until she pressed her lips shut and gulped it back down. She tried to dig her cellphone out of her pocket, but found it difficult without the ability to turn her hips until her spinal cord had a minute to mend. She got it eventually, ignoring the frantic bus driver and other concerned bystanders, including the driver of the convertible she'd hijacked as he tried to assess how badly she was injured - apparently he had some medical expertise. A very faint, only slightly bitter laugh escaped her when he looked at someone with worried, oblivious eyes to ask "What was she doing in the middle of the road?"
Jane's thumb flew over the keypad of her sturdy old Nokia in precisely timed sequences to find the letters she wanted, and she sent a brief text message to the number Starbeam and Bolter had given her when she made it clear she was going to keep popping up. Van still in city, skipped expressway. Lost it at the warehouse district.