Chapter 8

A Chapter by Peregrinator7

About a week later, I had several tools and weapons that would be extremely useful for this mission and beyond. I had created a spyder-string rope, so strong that it could only be cut by vibranium and diamond, but so light and compact I could fit it in a small spot on my belt. I had also made a mini stun gun that can shock someone from a max of 50 yards and can also wield a variety of ammo, like a tranquilizer bullet. It could also become a grappling gun, with the spyder rope and a small fishhook that could expand. I also got a Swiss army knife and lead powder and a variety of ammo that I won’t list. When I was done inventorying my tools, I then scaled all the sets of stairs in the building and reached the roof, reevaluating my plan as I climbed each step. When I found Sayyaf from the tallest roof in town (the case file said he liked to hide in plain sight), I would fly over and shoot him with a special tracking device that I invented. It was simple, but it worked.

I took off just as the dawn was slipping away. After I landed on the tallest building in town, I relaxed and just enjoyed the view for a while. I remembered when my parents and I went camping in those good old days, and Dad would wake me up before the sun rose, and we would go fishing out on a lake that was clear as glass. When we caught a few fish, my dad and I would just sit quietly and watch the sun rise. It was very beautiful. I fast-forwarded to the summer of seventh grade, when we went to the Space Needle. There was no one there, so my family and I enjoyed the view privately. I bounced around the viewing deck, taking in everything my normal human eyes could. My mom came up and put a hand on my shoulder. “It’s pretty, isn’t it?”

I didn’t say anything. I was still wowed by the view. “If you look long enough, maybe you’ll get the eyes of a hawk,” she said.

Suddenly a dagger whizzed past me, only inches shy of my head. Wait… that wasn’t supposed to happen. I was jerked back to the present when another dagger almost nicked my left ear. I whipped around to face the attacker.

It was a man in an embroidered jumpsuit. He had no hair except for a rectangular mohawk in the middle of his head. His eyes were narrowed to slits, and only a little of his icy blue eyes could be seen. Somehow, he looked vaguely familiar. Then it hit me like a brick in the head.

Everything was all reversed. I was supposed to find him, not have him find me.

That man was Sayyaf.

“What do you want?” I said in a low voice while swiftly, but smoothly pulling a special tracking device out of my pocket and loading it into my stun gun.

“Get away from here,” Sayyaf growled in an equally low voice as mine.

I leaned against a wall. There was a dagger stuck a few inches into it. That dude has a good throw. I pulled the dagger out and made the sun’s light reflect the blade. “Why?”

Sayyaf unsheathed a longsword and narrowed his eyes even more in a silent threat. “Get away.” I swear, he could have had his eyes closed.

Then I noticed the sign. I.I.E.M. PREMISES. KEEP OFF OR ELSE. Hoo boy. I was in deep, deep doo-doo. If I made enough noise, more villains would come up and help Sayyaf. I needed to lead him off the roof. But how?

Sayyaf chucked another dagger at me. I reached out and grabbed it, then turned to face him. “Ha!” he sneered. “Face my longsword!”

A lightbulb went off in my head. I moved to the edge of the roof. “Well, you’re gonna have to catch me first!” I backflipped off the edge, leaving a startled and confused Sayyaf behind. He peeked over the guardrail, face beet red. “Coward!” he roared in frustration.

I landed on the ground right next to the entrance. The building was disguised as a law office. Clever. Then several villains burst out the front door, lead by Sayyaf. I simply grew my wings and flew above them, like I had done with the robots. Some lifted into the air with me. “Huh,” I sniffed aloud. “A lot versus one isn’t very fair.” I secretly pulled my spyder rope out and flashed a clever grin. “So let’s even things up a bit!” In an expert lasso I had learned from training, I tied up the two people closest to me. They struggled for a bit, then I sprayed them with mace and they tumbled to the ground, rubbing their eyes vigorously and howling, crashing into others. That had gotten rid of some of the villains. But not enough. More took to the air, and I fended them off with my fists the best I could. A few fell to the ground, taking out others, but I was becoming outnumbered. A stream of people, all armed in some way, were coming from all directions. Some villains tackled me. We hit the ground hard. I could see dots dancing across my eyes. Even with the world spinning, somehow I spotted Sayyaf and hit him with the tracking device. I knew it wouldn’t hurt (I tested it on myself) but it would be agony taking it out (also from the test). My mission was a success!

Then everything went black.

A bright light woke me up. “Wake up!” a gruff, rocky voice growled in my ear. I opened my eyes reluctantly. I was in another interrogation room, except it was different. The walls were painted white, with splotches of crimson and brown. My stomach did a flip. People had died in here.

The growling voice came back. “What do you want with the I.I.E.M?”

I tried to move, but I realized my hands and my feet were bound in metal cuffs. I also noticed I was lying vertically on a board. “Ummm, nothing,” I said and shimmied around in my bindings, attempting to get free. (Have I mentioned I hate sitting still?) “Can you let me go?”

The growly interrogator’s face darkened. His disposition was now one of a hungry cat. He came within inches of my face. Sheesh, even when I channelled my powers, his breath smelled (falcons don’t have a very good sense of smell). “What do you WANT?” he snarled, though quietly. I had to turn away my head to prevent his horrible breath from hitting me head-on. He must’ve had a cold, too, because he started into a coughing fit. I had to turn away even more, straining my neck. Wait… if I channelled my powers, I could turn my head all the way around. I finally noticed there was something around my neck. What was it?

“I see you’ve noticed the PDn,” the interrogator jeered, as if answering my silent question. His voice sounded more scratchy than growling now, and coughed some more.

“If you would cover your mouth when you cough,” I wrinkled my face in disgust. Immediately after, the expression morphed into curiosity. “PDn?”

“Power Deactivation necklace,” the cat-man snorted decisively, as if I was supposed to know what a PDn was. He cracked an evil grin. “With a PDn on, you can’t use your powers.” His cocky nature seemed to be his downfall, because whenever he tried to bad-mouth my knowledge, he would start into a big coughing and hacking fit. The interrogator finally stopped coughing, blew his nose, and scowled at me. Then he pulled out a small walkie-talkie. Static crackled as he spoke into it with a low voice, and all the while, throwing daggers at me with his eyes. “I can’t break her,” were the words I heard him mutter. “Yeah, yeah, okay. We’ll be over in a minute.”

The cat interrogator pressed a button on the wall next to him. Immediately, the cuffs released and I dropped to the ground. I felt weak. Why? The interrogator pushed me up and snapped a new set of chains on me. We exited the room. Two other men came alongside us.

“Where are we going?” I asked the interrogator.

His face twisted into a malicious smile. “Darknight,” he said.

I was too curious to assume. “Darknight?” I asked.

“The most feared man in all history. Almost destroyed an entire country and almost killed the entire US government. He’s the boss here, so don’t mess with him. The last guy that got on his bad side…” he trailed off and gulped. The scene must’ve been too graphic for even a guy this evil to describe. “Well, let’s just say I wouldn’t want to be that guy.”

That was enough for me. I didn’t want to become the next victim of Darknight… whoever he was. My mind started to race. How could I get out of this? The guards to my left and right looked strong, but they weren’t armed. The interrogator stood behind me, but he wasn’t as strong as he made himself out to be. I remembered his strain when he pulled me up off the floor. The interrogator had made the mistake of putting my handcuffs in front of me, too. I could easily defeat them, but I needed to get the stupid necklace thingy off my neck. I needed a diversion.

Just to my luck, we passed a window. “Look!” I shouted and pointed at nothing. The guards and the interrogator swiveled their heads to look. I bought the time and yanked the necklace off. Instantly, my eyesight sharpened and my hearing was more acute. The interrogator’s breath odor (that I had now gotten used to) slowly faded. Some villains passed. They didn’t seem to notice that the captive had a black strand in their palm. Once they were gone, I made my move. I planted my feet and abruptly stopped.

“Get a move on, would you?” the interrogator growled as he nearly fell over me. In a burst of movement, I uppercutted the guard to my right and gave the one to my left a chok to the face. The interrogator moved to seize me, but a sweep with my foot sent him head over heels to the floor. I dashed back to the window. “STOP HER!” a disgruntled interrogator shouted behind me. But they were too late. I had already flown through the window and into the clear blue sky. The only remnant of my presence was a striped feather that floated lazily to the floor.

He waited for this intruder to come in, but she never came. He was never very good at waiting. After a few minutes, he began to wonder why Faeles didn’t come. Faeles did have a cold, after all. He probably needed to stop by the bathroom on the way. A few more minutes of waiting. Under his mask, his face became a bright shade of crimson in fury. He was done idling. He burst out of the room and down the hall, followed by some guards. Faeles and some other guards were in a moaning, hurting heap when he reached the scene. “What happened?!” he bellowed in rage.

Faeles cowered under his stony glare, his face turning a bony pale. “Please forgive me, D-Darknight,” he squeaked. “But she was quick! Knocked out the g-guards and f-flew o-o-out th-th-the w-window.” His voice became higher and more stuttered as he continued to speak. “Sh-she…” Faeles’s voice grew even more strained. “Distracted us?...” He started to cough violently as he dipped his head and braced himself.

“WHAT?!?!?!?” Darknight roared. Everyone, including the supposed-to-be stoic guards, jumped a foot. In blind fury, he lifted Faeles up off the ground and pinned him against the wall. Faeles scratched at the bricks, attempting but failing to find a grip. Darknight’s telekinetic grip tightened. The sad interrogator clawed at his neck desperately, as if trying to pry away an invisible hand. Then a resonant snap echoed through the hallway. Darknight released his grip on the interrogator, who slumped to the ground, face still pale from the struggle. Faeles didn’t move for a very long time. He was dead. His sorry corpse reflected a death of horror. As if this was normal business, Darknight motioned to the trembling guards. “Take the body away,” he barked. “I don’t want it in my sight.”

Darknight stepped over the unconscious guards and made his way to the window, a stream of onlookers following, but keeping a distance from the angry villain. The window was broken into a million pieces. As he stepped through the remains of the window, Darknight spied something. It was a feather. A falcon feather, to be exact. Darknight bent down and picked it up. He stroked the quill. Under his mask, his eyes widened. Memories suddenly came flooding back.

A woman and a young man, holding a baby between them, begging to a cross-armed official glowering at them...

A woman screaming in fear as a pit swallowed the car she was in… her husband watching on a curb in disbelief and horror… a maniacal laugh…

Two officials holding a young man at gunpoint, while forcing him to hand over a baby… the young man cutting a nick off the baby’s ear as the baby was ripped out of his hands… a small voice crying as the young man was dragged away…

“Um, sir?”

Darknight was snapped out of his trance by a nasal, tenor voice. He whipped around. It was Sayyaf, his eyes wide in concern. “What do you propose to do?” Sayyaf asked. He cleared his throat. “You know, the intruder.”

As if a lever was flipped, Darknight hardened again. “Whoever this intruder was,” he growled in a boiling anger as he placed the feather in his pocket, “they are going to pay for messing with the I.I.E.M.”

It didn’t seem like the officials waiting for me appreciated the way I came back. I was still in one piece, but I wasn’t able to get the handcuffs off. I think it was the handcuffs that made the officials frown at me in disapproval. But that wasn’t all.

“You were gone two days!” one of the officials exclaimed. Wait. Hold it. Did he just say two days? Dang. I must’ve been out for a while after the random villain dude stabbed me with a sedative. Oh well. At least I completed my mission, and I didn’t have to face that creepy- sounding Darknight dude. Although there was something familiar about him that I couldn’t place my finger on…

By this time, the officials had escorted me off the roof, still in handcuffs. I wasn’t looking where I was going and I rammed into a random superhero in my path. The impact knocked us both to the floor. It was a guy in a navy blue mask and green-and-blue hair that spiked up. His eyes were a deep brown. I could’ve sworn I’d seen him before too…

“Sorry,” he quickly said. “Here.” He offered me a hand, and since I couldn’t get up by myself anyway, I took it. His grip was strong, but I countered with a falcon grip. He grimaced and rubbed his hand when I was on my feet. I think he thought something was familiar about me too, because we stared at each other for a moment. He shook his head. “Sorry,” he said again, and ran his fingers through his spiky hair. “Thought you were someone else.” We parted ways. But little did I know that our paths were destined to cross again…

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© 2018 Peregrinator7

Author's Note

This was probably my proudest moment when writing the old version. Although I shouldn't have added that little thing at the end. It would've added more suspense.

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Locke Redwyne (night sy..

she mentioned seeing PDns on someone's belt in an earlier chapter (for future versions)
she works for SWORD!!! how does she not know dn??
also does dn have some level of psychometry?