Disclaimer: I don't own Kung Fu or Kung Fu: The Legend Continues, or any of the characters or anything like that. Except Minerva. She's mine. I saw her first, she belongs to me!
Feedback is always welcome. : ) Send me your praises and flames. I accept them all. Except maybe death threats. I just laugh at those.
Author's note: This story is an idea that's been bouncing around in my head for a while now like that little ball from the pong game.
Disclaimer the 2nd: I don't own Pong either.
Anywho, enjoy. It's been fun for me so far.
Kung Fu: The Legend Continues
Minerva's Box
By Pami
Prologue
I met Peter Caine for the first time the night of the raid. I was living with a small gang of street thugs, and apparently one of them had witnessed a recent murder. They needed him to put their suspect away for a very long time. But I didn't know that.
I was awakened by a loud slam. It was dark, and I was disoriented. Where had
the noise come from? Why was it so dark? Of course, there were no windows in the old factory we'd taken as a tentative sanctuary. I looked down from my loft to see cops pouring through the wooden double doors into the burned out old building. There were shouts and staccato footfalls as the cops swarmed, flashlights and guns blazing, onto a group of kids who'd been too impatient to find some dark corner to get high in. They sat in a messy group almost immediately inside the door.
My roost was an old office, perhaps the overseer's God-like perch. But now there were no walls save the one in the back, sporting a door that I'd shoved an old crate against just to be sure no one could get in from that way. It led to another part of the factory, I'm sure, but I was too tired in those early morning hours when I'd crawled up here to sleep to check it out.
Yelling, clomping, stampeding cops continued to surge through the fairly wide
doorway, parting smoothly around the crowd of officers and junkies like water around any obstacle. Down among them, it may have seemed like chaos to the kids, but from above I watched their efficiency, their objective forcefulness, their clockwork operation that appealed to my organized mind as much as the invasion burned in my chest as rage.
"We've got to run, Min," came a small voice beside me. It came from the little
girl snuggled into my side beneath layers of ratty blankets. I'd found her wandering the streets alone a couple months ago, unable to remember her mother, her father, her own name. I took her in, cared for her. Helped heal the scrapes and bruises she couldn't remember getting. She now clung to me wherever I went, didn't matter what I was doing. I could barely use the crapper without her hanging on my arm. I called her "Zee," as in chimpanzee, because she reminded me of a clingy little monkey. Soon she was my little sister in everything but law and blood, but sometimes those two factors counted the
least. I judged her age to be about 8 years or so, but she was smart, and she was quick.
"Min, they have guns! Are they gonna shoot us? We gotta run now, Min." She
was standing, pulling on my arm, but I had to keep watching. I had to see if anyone was harmed. We'd been through a couple raids before, but nothing of this magnitude, and it was my job to make sure everyone was ok.
I am a Healer.
I don't mean like a medic or anything like that. I Heal people using some strange energy inside me. I'm a Healer and an Empath, and it's not very easy being either, much less both.
Using my empathy, I was screening the crowd below, trying to determine what
could happen next. Now, most people confuse empathy with telepathy. I can't read thoughts, but I can read emotions, and emotions often reveal intent.
Emotions roiled violently among those below me. Terror, rage, determination,
they sounded in my mind like the screams and angry shouts that pulsed in my ears. But I refused to close off either my mind or my ears. How could I Heal anyone if I were deaf to their cries for help?
"One of em's lookin' at us," Zee breathed in my ear. I saw him, one pale face
looking up from far below. I could barely make out features, but I could feel eyes burning into me.
"Min, please, please, we gotta run," my little charge whimpered. She was so
afraid...but my job...
He started up the stairs. It surprised me; I couldn't tell you why. I hadn't thought he could really see me. The loft was shrouded in shadow, and I'd dressed both myself and Zee in dark clothing. Then a niggling thought wormed into my mind...what if he felt me? Felt my presence, my passage. I had heard of other Sensitives, but I'd never met one. Could this officer possibly be one?
Zee's insistent cries forced my decision. For her sake, we would run. The cop
was halfway up to the loft, being slowed by many landings. It was time to go. I grabbed Zee's small hand and went through the door at the back. We came upon another loft, and were immediately faced with two staircases, one leading up to the next floor, and the other leading down to the floor below. I made quick calculations based upon my knowledge of the building's exterior and what I now knew, and remembered there was an exit on the building's south wall, which could be gotten to by those down leading stairs. I also thought of what would happen if we were caught together. We'd be separated, probably sent to foster homes, and I'm sure I'd go to Juvie first. If we were going to be separated, then it would be on my terms. She would not be taken.
"Look, little chimp. We gotta be apart for a bit." Her eyes widened and a protest rose to her lips, but I hurried on. "Listen, listen. I want you to go down those steps, and out the door. And be as quiet as you can. Go to the subway station at Main and East 3rd, and wait for me in the girl's room. I'll be there soon, okay?" She nodded, a bit forlornly, but I could see she was ready to do it. I gave her a quick peck on the cheek, then gently shoved her toward the stairs. "Go!"
She did. I watched until she reached the second landing down, then tore my eyes
away and made myself start up the other staircase. I was only up to the first landing when the door banged open and the cop charged through. He held his gun different from most cops I'd seen. They usually double-gripped their weapons, with the barrel pointed low; but this one held his high, single-grip. Zee made a sound on the stairs; she hadn't yet reached the bottom. The cop lowered quickly into a crouch, one arm behind him, bent up at the elbow, gun extended straight in front of him. Almost as if he were...fencing?
The movement itself was instantaneous, flowing and beautiful to watch; but I
couldn't just stand there and look at him...he was already moving toward the railing, peering down, searching for the source of the noise. I remembered my plan, to make as much noise as I could to draw him away from Zee, and started clomping up the stairs. I stopped at the second landing and glanced down to see if he was following. Clanging footsteps that shook the rickety staircase were my answer, and I continued running upward as fast as I could. A female voice calling, "Peter!" followed him even as he followed me.
"Wait for me down there, Jody," he called back.
I could hear his breathing start to become ragged as I hit the sixth landing, him only a few steps behind me. But he was keeping pace, even after hustling up all those steps to the loft. I remember thinking that of course I would get the only fit cop in Sloanville after me.
A sudden surge of adrenaline forced my legs faster, and I pulled ahead. I didn't exactly know how high the stairs went; we'd only occupied this building for a few days, and I had not been among the scouting party who had gone ahead to check the place out. I didn't know any of the floors above mine well enough to duck off onto one of them and try to hide. But I had been on the roof, so I hoped and prayed as I ran that this one went all the way up. If I could reach the roof, I could probably find a way down.
Two more floors, and I was huffing and puffing myself. My leg muscles felt like
tenderized meat, all wobbly and Jell-Oey. But I continued going up at full speed.
I rounded the next landing, and saw a door at the top of the stairs. I felt a mixture of relief and anxiety flood through me. It could lead me to the roof...or into a dead-end. There was no choice, however. I could not turn back.
I shouldered the door open, hitting it so hard it slammed into the concrete wall. I hesitated only a second as early evening air washed over me before rushing to hide behind an old crumbling chimney, one of many adorning the rooftop.
Cold, foggy air surrounded me, and it didn't take long before the chill seeped
through the layers of clothing I wore, and into my bones. Little shivers soon overtook me, and I had to clench my teeth to keep them from chattering.
The cop wasn't far behind me, of course, and in less than a minute he was blasting through the doorway as well. Again, that metal-against-concrete sound as the door slammed into the little bunker around it.
"Police!" he called. "Come out where I can see you!"
Stupid, I thought. Anyone could pinpoint his location just by listening to his
voice. A good way for a cop to get dead real fast. I peeked around the edge of my redbrick chimney to see what he was doing, where he had his attention focused.
He wasn't by the door.
Damn it.
I looked around a bit more, but I still couldn't see him.
Shit. Where the hell was he?
I knew then that this man was more than just a dumb cop. A lot more. The
feeling I'd had about him before, that he was possibly a Sensitive, grew stronger, along with my apprehension. Where the hell was he?
A second before the hammer cocked, I felt his presence behind me, a mixture of
body heat and electricity. Apparently, he saw me flinch before he pulled the hammer back, because he yelled, "Freeze!" a bit too loud for our proximity. I realized then that I frightened him, at least a little. If he was Sensitive, he would be able to feel my power, standing so close.
I could feel his now that I was concentrating on him. He didn't have much, but
what was there had certainly not been neglected. I chuckled dryly to myself. Finally, a guy in touch with his Sensitive side. But there was also an emptinessinside him, along with a wildness that belonged on the street, not inside a cop. He also had an intensity, one that wouldn't let him give up before he had what he wanted.
"Put your hands up," he ordered.
I didn't move. I'd been given this treatment before, certainly. I hadn't liked it before, and I didn't like it now.
"You just told me to freeze." Yeah, I know, an over-used line, but I was pissed. People thought they could just bust into your house, chase you up to the roof and then order you around. Nope, wasn't happening. At least not with me.
"Yeah, well now I'm telling you to put your hands up. Slowly."
Still I didn't move, just stood there, head held high. I stared out at the city, at ugly buildings bathed in the orange gold of the setting sun. Noises usually associated with huge urban areas were there, invading upward toward the sky. The familiar realization that I hated the city ached in my chest like an old bruise that refused to heal.
I closed my eyes and opened my Senses, trying to read him. I even prodded at
him, wondering just how Sensitive he was.
Enough to feel that, apparently, for in the next moment I found myself shoved up
against the rough brick of the chimney. Air whooshed from my lungs, and I found
difficulty inviting it back in. While I gasped against the chimney, the cop grabbed one of my wrists and clamped a cold metal bracelet around it. He did the same to the other, and suddenly did nothing at all.
I could feel him staring down at my hands. The too-short sleeves of my jacket
were pulled halfway up my forearms.
"Where did you get these?" he asked, his voice an odd mixture of whispering
disbelief and righteous outrage.
I deliberately misunderstood. "You slapped 'em on me, Deputy Dawg. You tell
me," I said in my most desultory voice.
His fingers clamped around my right wrist, and he held my arm in place while he
tried to turn me around. Tried to show me my own tattoo while I was still handcuffed.
"Smart-ass, tell me where you got these!" he yelled.
"Ouch, motherfucker, let me go!" I yelled back.
Surprise registered in his deep, dark eyes. Asian eyes in a Western face. I never knew whether he was surprised because I was a girl...or because my friend Leeto had just slid three inches of stainless steel into his left lung.
His breathing started to take on a gurgling quality. "Shit, Leeto," I said
eloquently as the cop tried to spin on my friend, tried to draw his gun again and point it in Leeto's direction. I kicked the weapon out of his hand. I didn't need two injured guys to deal with. Leeto took the opportunity to stab the cop again, now that he was weaponless.
"Fuck. Quit it, Leeto!" I said, watching the cop try unsuccessfully to deflect the snake-like strike. Now with two holes in his chest cavity, he was gasping hard for air, clutching at his chest with one hand. Despite my own better judgment, I opened a mental channel between us. I am a Healer, after all, but I can't Heal shit without a connection. It would be kinda like trying to talk to someone over the phone without a phone-line.
"Shit, Minerva, he was all up on you. I don't let nobody hurt my own." Leeto
sounded indignant, as if he'd just offered me a precious gift, and I had then proceeded to smack it out of his hand in disgust. Yeah, a dead cop. Thanks, man.
"Shut up and get me out of these. Get his cuff keys." Leeto searched the cop,
who tried weakly to fight him off, but found he should concentrate more on breathing. He sagged against another chimney, not more than three feet from the one I'd chosen. Then he slid down it, the cloth of his jacket snagging on the rough brick.
Leeto had the keys in his hands, and moved quickly to free me. "Come on, let's
get out of here."
I looked him square in the eye. "I can't. You know I can't."
"Come on, Min, he's a motherfuckin' pig. Why do anything for him?"
I knelt in front of the gasping man. His forehead was clammy, and blood seeped
through the dark tee shirt he wore beneath the black cop jacket. "Father," he breathed.
That was new to me. Most men cried for their mommies when they were injured,
perhaps dying.
I stared into his eyes, eyes that no longer saw me or anything else of the scenery. Shit, he was going fast. Leeto certainly knew where to stick somebody.
"Listen to me," I said, though my lips did not move. The words were sent directly to his mind. Well, not exactly words. I sent him a feeling, an idea, my desire to have him pay attention to me. "I'm going to fix you, but I need your help." I probed at his pain center, but it was completely shut off from me. I needed to access his pain, to tell where it hurt so I could determine more accurately what needed fixing.
"Open up to me," I coaxed, feeling a bit like a young kid trying to seduce his date on prom night. Come on, baby, I thought you loved me. Let me feel your pain. I swear it's not gonna hurt. Baby, c'mon.
He still wouldn't let me in.
"Listen, you stupid jerk. You're dying. Let me in, or I'll do it myself. I can, and I assure you I will. But I don't think you'll like it if I do."
It was true. I could force open his pain center, but that could add anxiety to his wounded state. It certainly wouldn't make my job easier, but I'd do it if I had to.
My job...
My job was also to protect Zee. Shit, had she made it to the subway station? I
hoped so. But I couldn't think about her now. I forced my thoughts back to the dying officer in front of me.
"Open," I whispered in his mind, prodding gently at his shielded pain. I figured the harder I pushed, the more he'd push back. Just like the right touch can get a prude to spread her legs, I opened him with a simple projection: my own desire to understand his pain.
Holy Shit.
Images inundated me, flooded me with pain of all kinds. From the dull persistent ache of his mother's death, to the raw agony of his father's abandonment. Not to mention those lonely years at the orphanage, and the rage buried so deep inside him it would always be a part of him. I saw it all and felt it all, everything but what I needed to feel.
His emotional pain was overwhelming. I wondered if he even felt the wounds in
his chest.
I used a little trick I'd learned while dealing with children, women, and men who had experienced devastating emotional agony at one point in their lives. Since I had taken his pain upon myself, the trick was to block it as if it were my own. Then the physical hurt could be felt.
I gasped, clutching an arm around my ribs. As I tried to draw breath, it felt like I was breathing water. Of course, he had blood in his lungs. Still staring into his sightless eyes, I cupped his face in my hands. Skin-to-skin contact helped my power to work all the better. And then, with force of will and my Healing gift, I convinced his lung tissue, flesh, and muscle to mend; the blood in his chest cavity to simply absorb back into his veins. And since my endurance was nearing its limit, I encouraged him to cough up what was in his lungs.
Bright red splattered on the grey surface of the rooftop. The cop was on his hands and knees, coughing and hacking. Red smeared around his moth, giving him a gruesome appearance. Finally, he stopped, and would have pitched face-first into his own blood if I hadn't caught him, and helped him to lay over one side. He was breathing heavily, as if he'd just run a marathon. I suspected he was glad just to be able to breathe right again. I sat against my chimney and just watched him. In truth, I was too weak to want to do anything else.
"You are one lucky bastard," I said after a moment or two. "If I hadn't been
here-"
"If you hadn't been here, I wouldn't have run up those stairs after you." His voice was hoarse from all the coughing.
"Hey, nobody invited you in."
He struggled into a sitting position, leaning back against his chimney, facing me. We sat together in the falling dusk, both trying to reclaim our strength. It was a silent truce.
I hadn't noticed before, but Leeto was gone.
"Why did he stab me?" the cop asked. "Why didn't he just shoot me?"
I shrugged. "Probably because I was too close. Like he said, nobody hurts his
own. Not even himself."
He laughed, a note of derision in his voice. "Street thug ethics."
"Those ethics saved your fucking life. I think you should be a bit more grateful, Officer. I could have just left you to die."
"It's 'Detective.' And why didn't you? I didn't invite you to help me."
"I saved you, fucker. I didn't just help."
"Hey, whether you saved me or not, it's still an offense to verbally abuse a police officer."
He was laughing at me. I could see it in his dark Asian eyes.
"Yeah, well...you're a 'Detective,'" I said, doing air quotations with my fingers.
"You don't count."
Oh, this felt strange. This was very strange. I was trading jibes with a cop. I had to get out of here. But first, a distraction. What could I-
"Peter?"
Bingo. Lady cop to the rescue.
"Good-bye, Detective Peter."
He'd been looking at the door, at the woman coming up on the roof. Then his
head jerked back toward me when I spoke. But to him, I wasn't there anymore. I had slipped below his plane of consciousness. Another trick of Empathy. I was still there, but he couldn't see me. It was kinda like he'd just awakened from sleepwalking, and I was the dream. Normally, I could only keep this up for a few minutes, though, and since I'd just Healed him, that time was drastically reduced.
I stood and searched for a fire escape, something that would get me down to the
street.
"Peter? Dammit, where are you!"
"Over here, Jody." His voice sounded tired.
I saw two thin railings of metal side-by-side, curving up and over the lip of the roof. Once again, bingo.
"My God! Oh, my God, Peter, is this your blood?"
I'm fine, I'm fine. Did you see-,"
"We've got to get the paramedics up here!"
I started down the ladder. I got halfway when I had to let my little sub-conscious trick wear off, or I wouldn't have strength enough to climb down. I'd fall instead.
The ladder led down into an alley. As soon as I reached the bottom, I trotted out to the street and melted into the crowds of pedestrians, on my way to the subway station at Main and East 3rd.
I was sixteen at the time. I wouldn't see Peter again for another four years.
Feedback is always welcome. : ) Send me your praises and flames. I accept them all. Except maybe death threats. I just laugh at those.
Author's note: This story is an idea that's been bouncing around in my head for a while now like that little ball from the pong game.
Disclaimer the 2nd: I don't own Pong either.
Anywho, enjoy. It's been fun for me so far.
Kung Fu: The Legend Continues
Minerva's Box
By Pami
Prologue
I met Peter Caine for the first time the night of the raid. I was living with a small gang of street thugs, and apparently one of them had witnessed a recent murder. They needed him to put their suspect away for a very long time. But I didn't know that.
I was awakened by a loud slam. It was dark, and I was disoriented. Where had
the noise come from? Why was it so dark? Of course, there were no windows in the old factory we'd taken as a tentative sanctuary. I looked down from my loft to see cops pouring through the wooden double doors into the burned out old building. There were shouts and staccato footfalls as the cops swarmed, flashlights and guns blazing, onto a group of kids who'd been too impatient to find some dark corner to get high in. They sat in a messy group almost immediately inside the door.
My roost was an old office, perhaps the overseer's God-like perch. But now there were no walls save the one in the back, sporting a door that I'd shoved an old crate against just to be sure no one could get in from that way. It led to another part of the factory, I'm sure, but I was too tired in those early morning hours when I'd crawled up here to sleep to check it out.
Yelling, clomping, stampeding cops continued to surge through the fairly wide
doorway, parting smoothly around the crowd of officers and junkies like water around any obstacle. Down among them, it may have seemed like chaos to the kids, but from above I watched their efficiency, their objective forcefulness, their clockwork operation that appealed to my organized mind as much as the invasion burned in my chest as rage.
"We've got to run, Min," came a small voice beside me. It came from the little
girl snuggled into my side beneath layers of ratty blankets. I'd found her wandering the streets alone a couple months ago, unable to remember her mother, her father, her own name. I took her in, cared for her. Helped heal the scrapes and bruises she couldn't remember getting. She now clung to me wherever I went, didn't matter what I was doing. I could barely use the crapper without her hanging on my arm. I called her "Zee," as in chimpanzee, because she reminded me of a clingy little monkey. Soon she was my little sister in everything but law and blood, but sometimes those two factors counted the
least. I judged her age to be about 8 years or so, but she was smart, and she was quick.
"Min, they have guns! Are they gonna shoot us? We gotta run now, Min." She
was standing, pulling on my arm, but I had to keep watching. I had to see if anyone was harmed. We'd been through a couple raids before, but nothing of this magnitude, and it was my job to make sure everyone was ok.
I am a Healer.
I don't mean like a medic or anything like that. I Heal people using some strange energy inside me. I'm a Healer and an Empath, and it's not very easy being either, much less both.
Using my empathy, I was screening the crowd below, trying to determine what
could happen next. Now, most people confuse empathy with telepathy. I can't read thoughts, but I can read emotions, and emotions often reveal intent.
Emotions roiled violently among those below me. Terror, rage, determination,
they sounded in my mind like the screams and angry shouts that pulsed in my ears. But I refused to close off either my mind or my ears. How could I Heal anyone if I were deaf to their cries for help?
"One of em's lookin' at us," Zee breathed in my ear. I saw him, one pale face
looking up from far below. I could barely make out features, but I could feel eyes burning into me.
"Min, please, please, we gotta run," my little charge whimpered. She was so
afraid...but my job...
He started up the stairs. It surprised me; I couldn't tell you why. I hadn't thought he could really see me. The loft was shrouded in shadow, and I'd dressed both myself and Zee in dark clothing. Then a niggling thought wormed into my mind...what if he felt me? Felt my presence, my passage. I had heard of other Sensitives, but I'd never met one. Could this officer possibly be one?
Zee's insistent cries forced my decision. For her sake, we would run. The cop
was halfway up to the loft, being slowed by many landings. It was time to go. I grabbed Zee's small hand and went through the door at the back. We came upon another loft, and were immediately faced with two staircases, one leading up to the next floor, and the other leading down to the floor below. I made quick calculations based upon my knowledge of the building's exterior and what I now knew, and remembered there was an exit on the building's south wall, which could be gotten to by those down leading stairs. I also thought of what would happen if we were caught together. We'd be separated, probably sent to foster homes, and I'm sure I'd go to Juvie first. If we were going to be separated, then it would be on my terms. She would not be taken.
"Look, little chimp. We gotta be apart for a bit." Her eyes widened and a protest rose to her lips, but I hurried on. "Listen, listen. I want you to go down those steps, and out the door. And be as quiet as you can. Go to the subway station at Main and East 3rd, and wait for me in the girl's room. I'll be there soon, okay?" She nodded, a bit forlornly, but I could see she was ready to do it. I gave her a quick peck on the cheek, then gently shoved her toward the stairs. "Go!"
She did. I watched until she reached the second landing down, then tore my eyes
away and made myself start up the other staircase. I was only up to the first landing when the door banged open and the cop charged through. He held his gun different from most cops I'd seen. They usually double-gripped their weapons, with the barrel pointed low; but this one held his high, single-grip. Zee made a sound on the stairs; she hadn't yet reached the bottom. The cop lowered quickly into a crouch, one arm behind him, bent up at the elbow, gun extended straight in front of him. Almost as if he were...fencing?
The movement itself was instantaneous, flowing and beautiful to watch; but I
couldn't just stand there and look at him...he was already moving toward the railing, peering down, searching for the source of the noise. I remembered my plan, to make as much noise as I could to draw him away from Zee, and started clomping up the stairs. I stopped at the second landing and glanced down to see if he was following. Clanging footsteps that shook the rickety staircase were my answer, and I continued running upward as fast as I could. A female voice calling, "Peter!" followed him even as he followed me.
"Wait for me down there, Jody," he called back.
I could hear his breathing start to become ragged as I hit the sixth landing, him only a few steps behind me. But he was keeping pace, even after hustling up all those steps to the loft. I remember thinking that of course I would get the only fit cop in Sloanville after me.
A sudden surge of adrenaline forced my legs faster, and I pulled ahead. I didn't exactly know how high the stairs went; we'd only occupied this building for a few days, and I had not been among the scouting party who had gone ahead to check the place out. I didn't know any of the floors above mine well enough to duck off onto one of them and try to hide. But I had been on the roof, so I hoped and prayed as I ran that this one went all the way up. If I could reach the roof, I could probably find a way down.
Two more floors, and I was huffing and puffing myself. My leg muscles felt like
tenderized meat, all wobbly and Jell-Oey. But I continued going up at full speed.
I rounded the next landing, and saw a door at the top of the stairs. I felt a mixture of relief and anxiety flood through me. It could lead me to the roof...or into a dead-end. There was no choice, however. I could not turn back.
I shouldered the door open, hitting it so hard it slammed into the concrete wall. I hesitated only a second as early evening air washed over me before rushing to hide behind an old crumbling chimney, one of many adorning the rooftop.
Cold, foggy air surrounded me, and it didn't take long before the chill seeped
through the layers of clothing I wore, and into my bones. Little shivers soon overtook me, and I had to clench my teeth to keep them from chattering.
The cop wasn't far behind me, of course, and in less than a minute he was blasting through the doorway as well. Again, that metal-against-concrete sound as the door slammed into the little bunker around it.
"Police!" he called. "Come out where I can see you!"
Stupid, I thought. Anyone could pinpoint his location just by listening to his
voice. A good way for a cop to get dead real fast. I peeked around the edge of my redbrick chimney to see what he was doing, where he had his attention focused.
He wasn't by the door.
Damn it.
I looked around a bit more, but I still couldn't see him.
Shit. Where the hell was he?
I knew then that this man was more than just a dumb cop. A lot more. The
feeling I'd had about him before, that he was possibly a Sensitive, grew stronger, along with my apprehension. Where the hell was he?
A second before the hammer cocked, I felt his presence behind me, a mixture of
body heat and electricity. Apparently, he saw me flinch before he pulled the hammer back, because he yelled, "Freeze!" a bit too loud for our proximity. I realized then that I frightened him, at least a little. If he was Sensitive, he would be able to feel my power, standing so close.
I could feel his now that I was concentrating on him. He didn't have much, but
what was there had certainly not been neglected. I chuckled dryly to myself. Finally, a guy in touch with his Sensitive side. But there was also an emptinessinside him, along with a wildness that belonged on the street, not inside a cop. He also had an intensity, one that wouldn't let him give up before he had what he wanted.
"Put your hands up," he ordered.
I didn't move. I'd been given this treatment before, certainly. I hadn't liked it before, and I didn't like it now.
"You just told me to freeze." Yeah, I know, an over-used line, but I was pissed. People thought they could just bust into your house, chase you up to the roof and then order you around. Nope, wasn't happening. At least not with me.
"Yeah, well now I'm telling you to put your hands up. Slowly."
Still I didn't move, just stood there, head held high. I stared out at the city, at ugly buildings bathed in the orange gold of the setting sun. Noises usually associated with huge urban areas were there, invading upward toward the sky. The familiar realization that I hated the city ached in my chest like an old bruise that refused to heal.
I closed my eyes and opened my Senses, trying to read him. I even prodded at
him, wondering just how Sensitive he was.
Enough to feel that, apparently, for in the next moment I found myself shoved up
against the rough brick of the chimney. Air whooshed from my lungs, and I found
difficulty inviting it back in. While I gasped against the chimney, the cop grabbed one of my wrists and clamped a cold metal bracelet around it. He did the same to the other, and suddenly did nothing at all.
I could feel him staring down at my hands. The too-short sleeves of my jacket
were pulled halfway up my forearms.
"Where did you get these?" he asked, his voice an odd mixture of whispering
disbelief and righteous outrage.
I deliberately misunderstood. "You slapped 'em on me, Deputy Dawg. You tell
me," I said in my most desultory voice.
His fingers clamped around my right wrist, and he held my arm in place while he
tried to turn me around. Tried to show me my own tattoo while I was still handcuffed.
"Smart-ass, tell me where you got these!" he yelled.
"Ouch, motherfucker, let me go!" I yelled back.
Surprise registered in his deep, dark eyes. Asian eyes in a Western face. I never knew whether he was surprised because I was a girl...or because my friend Leeto had just slid three inches of stainless steel into his left lung.
His breathing started to take on a gurgling quality. "Shit, Leeto," I said
eloquently as the cop tried to spin on my friend, tried to draw his gun again and point it in Leeto's direction. I kicked the weapon out of his hand. I didn't need two injured guys to deal with. Leeto took the opportunity to stab the cop again, now that he was weaponless.
"Fuck. Quit it, Leeto!" I said, watching the cop try unsuccessfully to deflect the snake-like strike. Now with two holes in his chest cavity, he was gasping hard for air, clutching at his chest with one hand. Despite my own better judgment, I opened a mental channel between us. I am a Healer, after all, but I can't Heal shit without a connection. It would be kinda like trying to talk to someone over the phone without a phone-line.
"Shit, Minerva, he was all up on you. I don't let nobody hurt my own." Leeto
sounded indignant, as if he'd just offered me a precious gift, and I had then proceeded to smack it out of his hand in disgust. Yeah, a dead cop. Thanks, man.
"Shut up and get me out of these. Get his cuff keys." Leeto searched the cop,
who tried weakly to fight him off, but found he should concentrate more on breathing. He sagged against another chimney, not more than three feet from the one I'd chosen. Then he slid down it, the cloth of his jacket snagging on the rough brick.
Leeto had the keys in his hands, and moved quickly to free me. "Come on, let's
get out of here."
I looked him square in the eye. "I can't. You know I can't."
"Come on, Min, he's a motherfuckin' pig. Why do anything for him?"
I knelt in front of the gasping man. His forehead was clammy, and blood seeped
through the dark tee shirt he wore beneath the black cop jacket. "Father," he breathed.
That was new to me. Most men cried for their mommies when they were injured,
perhaps dying.
I stared into his eyes, eyes that no longer saw me or anything else of the scenery. Shit, he was going fast. Leeto certainly knew where to stick somebody.
"Listen to me," I said, though my lips did not move. The words were sent directly to his mind. Well, not exactly words. I sent him a feeling, an idea, my desire to have him pay attention to me. "I'm going to fix you, but I need your help." I probed at his pain center, but it was completely shut off from me. I needed to access his pain, to tell where it hurt so I could determine more accurately what needed fixing.
"Open up to me," I coaxed, feeling a bit like a young kid trying to seduce his date on prom night. Come on, baby, I thought you loved me. Let me feel your pain. I swear it's not gonna hurt. Baby, c'mon.
He still wouldn't let me in.
"Listen, you stupid jerk. You're dying. Let me in, or I'll do it myself. I can, and I assure you I will. But I don't think you'll like it if I do."
It was true. I could force open his pain center, but that could add anxiety to his wounded state. It certainly wouldn't make my job easier, but I'd do it if I had to.
My job...
My job was also to protect Zee. Shit, had she made it to the subway station? I
hoped so. But I couldn't think about her now. I forced my thoughts back to the dying officer in front of me.
"Open," I whispered in his mind, prodding gently at his shielded pain. I figured the harder I pushed, the more he'd push back. Just like the right touch can get a prude to spread her legs, I opened him with a simple projection: my own desire to understand his pain.
Holy Shit.
Images inundated me, flooded me with pain of all kinds. From the dull persistent ache of his mother's death, to the raw agony of his father's abandonment. Not to mention those lonely years at the orphanage, and the rage buried so deep inside him it would always be a part of him. I saw it all and felt it all, everything but what I needed to feel.
His emotional pain was overwhelming. I wondered if he even felt the wounds in
his chest.
I used a little trick I'd learned while dealing with children, women, and men who had experienced devastating emotional agony at one point in their lives. Since I had taken his pain upon myself, the trick was to block it as if it were my own. Then the physical hurt could be felt.
I gasped, clutching an arm around my ribs. As I tried to draw breath, it felt like I was breathing water. Of course, he had blood in his lungs. Still staring into his sightless eyes, I cupped his face in my hands. Skin-to-skin contact helped my power to work all the better. And then, with force of will and my Healing gift, I convinced his lung tissue, flesh, and muscle to mend; the blood in his chest cavity to simply absorb back into his veins. And since my endurance was nearing its limit, I encouraged him to cough up what was in his lungs.
Bright red splattered on the grey surface of the rooftop. The cop was on his hands and knees, coughing and hacking. Red smeared around his moth, giving him a gruesome appearance. Finally, he stopped, and would have pitched face-first into his own blood if I hadn't caught him, and helped him to lay over one side. He was breathing heavily, as if he'd just run a marathon. I suspected he was glad just to be able to breathe right again. I sat against my chimney and just watched him. In truth, I was too weak to want to do anything else.
"You are one lucky bastard," I said after a moment or two. "If I hadn't been
here-"
"If you hadn't been here, I wouldn't have run up those stairs after you." His voice was hoarse from all the coughing.
"Hey, nobody invited you in."
He struggled into a sitting position, leaning back against his chimney, facing me. We sat together in the falling dusk, both trying to reclaim our strength. It was a silent truce.
I hadn't noticed before, but Leeto was gone.
"Why did he stab me?" the cop asked. "Why didn't he just shoot me?"
I shrugged. "Probably because I was too close. Like he said, nobody hurts his
own. Not even himself."
He laughed, a note of derision in his voice. "Street thug ethics."
"Those ethics saved your fucking life. I think you should be a bit more grateful, Officer. I could have just left you to die."
"It's 'Detective.' And why didn't you? I didn't invite you to help me."
"I saved you, fucker. I didn't just help."
"Hey, whether you saved me or not, it's still an offense to verbally abuse a police officer."
He was laughing at me. I could see it in his dark Asian eyes.
"Yeah, well...you're a 'Detective,'" I said, doing air quotations with my fingers.
"You don't count."
Oh, this felt strange. This was very strange. I was trading jibes with a cop. I had to get out of here. But first, a distraction. What could I-
"Peter?"
Bingo. Lady cop to the rescue.
"Good-bye, Detective Peter."
He'd been looking at the door, at the woman coming up on the roof. Then his
head jerked back toward me when I spoke. But to him, I wasn't there anymore. I had slipped below his plane of consciousness. Another trick of Empathy. I was still there, but he couldn't see me. It was kinda like he'd just awakened from sleepwalking, and I was the dream. Normally, I could only keep this up for a few minutes, though, and since I'd just Healed him, that time was drastically reduced.
I stood and searched for a fire escape, something that would get me down to the
street.
"Peter? Dammit, where are you!"
"Over here, Jody." His voice sounded tired.
I saw two thin railings of metal side-by-side, curving up and over the lip of the roof. Once again, bingo.
"My God! Oh, my God, Peter, is this your blood?"
I'm fine, I'm fine. Did you see-,"
"We've got to get the paramedics up here!"
I started down the ladder. I got halfway when I had to let my little sub-conscious trick wear off, or I wouldn't have strength enough to climb down. I'd fall instead.
The ladder led down into an alley. As soon as I reached the bottom, I trotted out to the street and melted into the crowds of pedestrians, on my way to the subway station at Main and East 3rd.
I was sixteen at the time. I wouldn't see Peter again for another four years.
