Chapter 1: Running Late

Sally convinced me to write a new Chapter 1 for The Return of Dr. Necropolis. Her comments made me feel like Tiffany wasn't coming across heroically enough in the book's early going, a concern I'd had in the back of my mind since before the re-write. I'd therefore been considering something like this for awhile. I just hadn't pulled the trigger until this past weekend.

I gotta say that I'm still not totally sure where to put this. But you can tell me what you think of it, either in context with the rest of the book or as a standalone piece.

Thanks in advance!

Chapter 1: Running Late

“Go go go!”

The van’s driver gunned it. Momentum shifted abruptly, throwing Tiffany hard into the nearest SWAT officer, and he cursed. For once, Tiffany bit back a retort. She’d never worked with this particular SWAT team, didn’t know the players, and wasn’t in the mood to start making new friends in the moments before a raid. The sound of squealing tires heralded another momentum shift, and suddenly that same SWAT operator flew back into Tiffany’s own lap. Wordlessly, she focused just long enough to push him back upright. 

The van screeched to a stop, and its doors burst open. 

Tiffany followed as the black-suited SWAT team hurried out of the van. Bridgeport, Connecticut’s once thriving industrial heart rose around her in dizzying, rusted glory. Shattered windows panes covered the front of a massive red brick building, its face saggy, aging, and covered with ancient ducting from long-forgotten machinery. The sky overhead held only a lingering purple twilight. The dying sun left a fey half-light, heralding the witching hour throughout this long dead part of America’s past.

I don’t have time for this, Tiffany thought. I’m running late as it is.

The SWAT guys approached the building’s metal doors with handheld rams and non-lethal beanbag rounds. Despite three day’s surveillance, they still didn’t know exactly what they’d find inside the target building. Homeland Security had only just added the Post-Human Liberation Front to its Domestic Terrorist Watch List. Tiffany didn’t know whose confidential informant had provided the relevant tip, but it certainly hadn’t been one of hers. Still, being a skrag wasn’t technically illegal, and Tiffany doubted that their warrant would’ve held up against a group of mere mundies. But these weren’t mundies, and for the last ten years, that had mattered. 

The unknown CI had alleged that the PHLF dealt in unlicensed genetic augmentation tech. That was probably illegal. Under the Enhanced Forces Act, the allegation alone had been enough to trigger their warrant. Even so, Tiffany’s boss had ordered non-lethal rounds because no one knew which, if any, actual laws had been broken, and no one wanted a bloodbath based on such uncertain intelligence.

Unfortunately, the suspected presence of Marcus J. Jackson, better known as Static Jack, and Bridgette Ducain, the erstwhile Brickette, had sped the raid’s timing considerably. Both were known fugitives, wanted for dealing back-alley gene slop as well as cocaine, crystal meth, and anything else they could get their hands on. If they were indeed present, the FBI needed to get them off the streets immediately, even if that meant sending in an improvised SWAT team backed by an ex-superhero who’d already had other plans for the night. 

But the FBI never cared about other people’s plans.

“Shit! It’s the Feds!”

Of course they saw us, Tiffany thought. That idiot van driver laid rubber all over the parking lot. They probably heard us three blocks away. 

But that might make the raid run more quickly, not less, so Tiffany didn’t exactly mind. No had started shooting yet, so they were probably now flushing whatever they’d been cooking down the toilets before SWAT could seize it. 

Flushing beat firing by a mile.

The SWAT guys stacked up at the door behind their ram, but before they could swing it, Tiffany set her feet, gathered her concentration, and pushed hard with her telekinesis. The door exploded off its hinges, and the SWAT team rushed immediately inside. Behind them, Tiffany sagged back onto her heels, breathing hard. It had been easier back in the day. Not because thirty-five was old but because Oberon used to do all the heavy lifting. Everything was harder without him. It always had been. These days, it was just Tiffany and a bunch of mundie SWAT guys against Brickette, Static Jack, and whatever unstable mutations a would-be terrorist cell had created using God-knew-what back-alley gene-tech.

Tiffany would never understand why anyone would want to be a skrag. She herself would have killed to be a plain-jane, vanilla mundie. It was far too late for that, though. Eighteen years had passed since she’d been a real girl. 

Eighteen years since she’d become Titania. More than half her life.

Tiffany heard yelling beyond the doors but still no firing. That was good. She’d come dressed in her old gear, and with her kevlar-lined leather vest and her silver positive sequence bracers wrapped around her forearms, she actually looked like the superhero she’d once been. The only difference now was that she’d pulled her brown hair back into a ponytail and wore a Sig Sauer in a shoulder holster underneath her left arm. She never would have worn a mere ponytail back in the day, and she’d certainly never have carried a pistol. But maybe the FBI wasn’t going to need Titania today. Maybe they’d just need Special Agent Tiffany Trujillo. In which case, maybe she might possibly still make it to her sister’s baby shower.

One can hope, anyway.

She froze and bit back a sigh. She’d felt the pop as much as she’d heard it. Static Jack had let off an electromagnetic pulse somewhere inside the building. Electric lights flickered and died across a three-block area. Darkness fell like a shroud. Shouting began, followed by immediate, panicky firing. Bean bag rounds went first, then flash-bangs. M-4s would start popping off soon, though, Tiffany knew.

She gathered her concentration to enter the fight, but then the bricks on the far wall shuddered from a hard outward impact. Glass fell from the broken windows overhead. Another slam, and a small section of the factory wall collapsed outward. 

Brickette emerged into the gloom. Static Jack followed a step behind her. The SWAT team, meanwhile, remained inside the building, yelling and firing beanbag rounds. The sound reminded Tiffany of a popcorn popper down to its last kernels.

Fuck me, she thought. 

But this, of course, was why the FBI had brought her along.

Tiffany could barely make out details in the gloom, but whatever Brickette had done to herself, it had given her one hell of distinctive look. She stood maybe five-feet-four and had to weigh at least two-fifty. That made her squat, heavy-limbed, and incredibly powerful. She had a wild mane of red hair alongside droopy gray skin and an unnaturally ponderous gait. Had she spliced in some elephant DNA? Not that it mattered. Oberon could have gone toe-to-toe with her easily, but Tiffany would have to play it smart.

Behind her, Static Jack cut a tall, slim, obviously fidgety figure, even in the gloom. Electricity played around his eyes and fingertips, but beyond that, Tiffany couldn’t make out many details. She saw a white wife-beater tank top and the shape of his cowboy hat’s silhouette. She wondered, though, if maybe Jack wasn’t actually a skrag. Could he be fully ultrahuman? She’d never heard of a simple gene-splice giving someone electrical powers.

“Listen,” Tiffany said, trying to keep her voice light. “Can we maybe skip the fight and cut straight to the part where you guys are sitting in cuffs in the back of the tactical van? My sister’s baby shower starts in about two hours, and you guys are really messing with my timeline. She’s my baby sister, y’know?”

“Titania,” Brickette breathed. Tiffany could hear the sudden panic in her voice. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

“I’m Special Agent Tiffany Trujillo now. Have been for the last ten years or so. And I was serious about that baby shower. So can we maybe hurry this up? I’m gonna be hella late as it is.”

“Bitch,” Static Jack hissed. He came around from behind Brickette, letting little jags of lightning dance up and down his arms. “Get out of the way, you fucking race-traitor. You should be on our side. You’re just as oppressed as we are. More, even, and yet here you stand, working against your own people.”

Definitely ultrahuman, Tiffany decided. No mere skrag could look at Titania and see a peer.

Tiffany concentrated enough to engage her superspeed even as sparks began shooting up and down Static Jack’s arms. The world slowed, and nearby sounds deepened to a booming, otherworldly bass. But the little lightning bolts sliding over Jack’s body still flashed at nearly normal speed, and Jack himself seemed to move only slightly slower than Tiffany did herself. Worse, she could feel the hairs on the backs of her arms and neck standing rigid with static electricity. She knew from the pre-raid case files that an ultra-high voltage electric field now surrounded Jack’s body. If she got too close, that field would ground out through her, causing a serious electrical burn and maybe a heart attack, too, depending on the path the charge took to ground.

Tiffany almost reached for her pistol. Electrical powers and an EMP wouldn’t save Jack from a bullet, and she had no doubt that the FBI would rule it a clean shoot. Plus, no one but Brickette would ever miss Static Jack. But the part of Tiffany that had once been Titania, the part that had been a member of the Diogenes Society alongside Oberon, the Owl, and the rest, that part rebelled at the idea of killing a man when he didn’t actually need to die. Besides, a shooting meant paperwork, and paperwork meant that she’d never make her sister’s baby shower.

Instead, Tiffany took a few quick steps to her left, moving to keep Brickette between herself and Static Jack. At the same time, she threw her hands forward and pushed, blasting Brickette back with a surge of telekinesis. Brickette stumbled and nearly fell, but Jack dodged her easily. She still stumbled close enough, though, that Jack’s electric field ground out through her body with a horrific, sizzling flash. Brickette screamed and tumbled backwards. Jack turned, horrified, and Tiffany flashed forward at superspeed, tackling him hard into the factory wall. The impact stunned them both, but Jack’s eyes glazed over from where his head had struck brick. He slumped forward, and Tiffany scrambled to get on top of him until she could get one of her positive sequence bracers up under his neck, moving quickly so that he couldn’t gather another charge. The bracers, she knew, would ground that charge out so long as they could do it slowly. She then slammed her knee up into his groin, and he slumped backward, groaning and insensible.

She released her superspeed even as she reached back for her handcuffs, but several SWAT guys swarmed the scene before she could get her cuffs loose from the back of her belt. She looked over and saw that Brickette lay unconscious but breathing. Tiffany sighed with relief. Tiny wisps of smoke rose faintly from the poor woman’s body. There was no telling how badly she’d been burned.

Tiffany shook her head. Oberon could have captured these two without injuring either. By herself, Tiffany had been lucky she hadn’t killed the both of them. She’d still given Jack at least a grade two concussion, and only luck had prevented her from cracking his head open like an egg. An actual miracle had prevented Brickette’s heart from seizing.

Sloppy, Tiff. Very sloppy. You’ve gotta be better than this.

She sat back and let herself breathe. Night had fallen fully over the course of mere minutes. The tactical van’s headlights and the SWAT team’s flashlights provided the scene’s only illumination. These cast the factory into contrast, darkness broken intermittently by brilliant pools of light.

Tiffany got slowly back to her feet. Using superspeed plus frantic telekinesis had left her feeling dizzy. She realized at that moment that she really did not want to go to her sister’s baby shower. Not because she begrudged her sister anything, but because that shower came as part of a whole life, a life that Tiffany herself had never even had the chance to try. But she had to go see her sister just as she’d had to go on this raid. 

Just as she had to be in the FBI.

Oberon was gone, and he’d taken all her choices with him.

She looked over and saw that the SWAT team’s tactical leader was headed her way. Tiffany saw “Donovan” stencilled onto his nametag. He was an older guy, still wearing his helmet, and incredibly, he was chewing gum. He looked annoyingly unruffled, like this entire scene could have been just another Tuesday for him.

He smiled when he got close. “Nice work with these two, Titania. You laid a hell of a hit on that guy. You okay?”

“Please,” she said, trying not to cringe, “I’m just plain old Tiffany now. We’re both agents in the FBI.”

Donovan shrugged. “If you say so. But I don’t think we could’ve taken these two without you. This would’ve been a real shitshow.”

Tiffany didn’t know what to say to that. “Glad I could help,” she managed at last. Then, “You’ve got this, right? I mean, you don’t need me anymore?”

“Yeah. Why? Do you need to--”

“It’s my little sister’s baby shower. I’m already pushing it as it is. If I no-show, my mom will kill me. You know how moms get. Please tell me you’re got this, right Sergeant Donovan?”

“Yeah. We’ve got this. See you tomorrow?”

Tiffany returned his smile even as she regathered her concentration. “Nope. I’m off tomorrow. First day off in two weeks!”

“Nice!” he said. “Enjoy it. You earned it!”

Another burst of telekinesis, and Tiffany rose lightly into the air. The SWAT guys all turned to stare at her now in earnest, but Tiffany ignored them. The Bridgeport Field Office -- and her car -- stood only a dozen or so blocks away. 

She could fly a dozen blocks, surely.