Heartbeat
Author's Note: This story has been reworked a bit, with a part 2 coming soon. Enjoy!
"I'm bulletproof, nothing to lose
Fire away, fire away..."
- I am Titanium, Gavin Mikhail
Jamie was never much of a runner, but he's running now.
He's at least eight blocks in but not giving up, won't even think about giving up or catching a breath or letting the red-hot stitches in his side cool out, because Danny wouldn't give up and Jamie knows where the family standard lies.
The sidewalk is broken, and it heaves underneath his feet. It would be hard enough to walk on it at a normal pace in full daylight, but he's tearing over it now, dodging tipped garbage cans, careening off the leaning chain link fence beside him, trying not to turn an ankle and go down in an inglorious heap. He's stumbling plenty as it is, tripping over ragged pieces of concrete that jut up like chunks of cinderblock, unexpected and impossible to see in the darkness. It's rough and dangerous, just like this part of town, and he has to watch it, watch his feet and watch the shadows too, watch everything.
His lungs are slabs of wood in his chest, rigid and splintering, barely allowing him to suck down the gritty, humid air of the Morrisania Bronx at 2 a.m. Maybe it's because his muscles are howling and his heart is beating double-time, pounding so hard he can hear it in his head. Maybe it's adrenaline, barreling through his veins.
Maybe he's trying not to think about what comes next.
Because the kid that he's been chasing for eight damn blocks - nine now, nine, gotta remember where he is - the kid is slowing down, his T-shirt a flash of white half a block away, a ghost in the darkness. The streetlights are weak here, shattered out with gaping holes like sagging mouths in their domes, but it's enough and Jamie can tell he's catching up. He's gaining ground and he won't give up, and he'll move down this narrowing path that fate has set out for him and he'll deal with whatever comes at the end.
He won't think about what the darkness is hiding.
He won't think about the fact that he's only fired his weapon once on the job.
He won't think about the fact that he's alone.
Jamie gasps in a mouthful of stale air and runs on.
)()()()()()()()(
Of all the hard ass instructors in academy, Lieutenant Houghton had been the granite standard. Jamie could remember squinting along the barrel of his weapon in the muffled cacophony of the shooting range, errant shots pinging off metal, voices shouting to be heard over the ragged staccato of gunfire. He was sighting the target, tuning out the noise and the distraction, his goggles slipping in the sweat on the bridge of his nose. The huge, standard-issue headphones were clapped over his ears, muffling the worst of the noise, yet he could still hear the huffed breaths of his lieutenant, chin hovering at Jamie's shoulder. "Smooth, rearward roll of the trigger, Reagan. Think you can handle it?"
He didn't reply. Didn't move. He'd been through this test before.
"Well fire, Reagan! The suspect ain't gonna stand there and wait for you!"
He gripped the handle, kept the sights straight in line, and pulled the trigger.
Easiest thing in the world.
)()()()()()()()(
His gun is clutched in his right hand, heavy, slippery. His fingers seize tight around the handle. He can shoot if he needs to. He's been trained. He can shoot if he has to.
His legs burn, fire racing in corkscrew patterns under his skin.
A flash of white up ahead.
No matter how many breaths he gasps in, he still can't breathe. He's been running too long; going too hard. He lost the ability to do anything other than wheeze a block ago.
The sidewalk lurches under his feet, and he tightens up, forcing down the crawl of fear in his throat, darting ahead into the darkness.
His radio spits static into his ear. "Location, Reagan! Where are you?"
)()()()()()()()(
As a kid, Jamie never played the same games that Danny and Joe had before him. They used to play cops and robbers in the yard, solve pretend cases, practice submission holds. Jamie had been too small to partake when they were young, was disinterested when he got old enough to hold his own, and was written off by both his older brothers by the time they were in the NYPD and he was spending his afternoons knee-deep in historical texts and philosophical papers.
That changed when he joined the academy himself, and Danny had pinned him with a fiery glare across the dinner table two nights after he broke the news. "Really, kid? Really?"
Danny never talked to him much. They had never been close; never shared interests or opinions. "What?" he muttered, busying himself with a butter knife and dinner roll. He didn't bother looking up.
"You think you're cut out for this? You think you have any business trying to do this?"
"Danny," his father had said, quiet but firm. "Not now."
"Not now? Then when, Dad? Before or after he gets himself killed?"
Jamie snorted before he could think better of it, and Danny's eyes found him, gleaming with anger. Jamie saw it - couldn't miss it, really - and it was unsettling to have an expression so seething upon him. "You think it's funny? You think this is funny, Jamie?"
"I'm not going to get killed, Danny," Jamie snapped. "That's not going to happen."
He wasn't sure why he said it. He believed it at the time, but the whole table had joined in Danny's stunned silence.
)()()()()()()()(
Renzulli was behind him somewhere, lost somewhere in the inky black. They had started out the call together, answering the report of a robbery in progress. The call was on the fringe of their response area, but it was a slow night and the 42nd was short-handed. They responded, blue and red lights bouncing off the telephone poles and worn facades of small, run-down buildings in an endless, faceless row, and the suspect - just a kid, only a kid - had bolted. Jamie had followed, leaving Renzulli with an armful of hysterical shop owner, a small Chinese woman who was all skinny, flailing arms, clutching at Renzulli's uniform, wailing in the night.
Sirens are wailing now, somewhere behind him, not close enough to command attention but steadily filling the air. They trailed like smoke against the chipped brick of apartment buildings with bars across their small windows, spilling into the hidden crevasses of the night, slipping into places Jamie could not see.
He hadn't expected the chase to unfold like this. He'd never had to chase anybody more than a block or two before. He hadn't expected to be alone.
But he won't be for long because the kid is close, now. White T-shirt, black hoodie, jeans. The boy's movements are jerky, exhausted. Jamie sees him stumble through a tight right-hand turn around a laundromat and duck into an alley between buildings.
Darkness layers upon darkness here. A memory stirs to sudden clarity in his mind - his grandfather, sitting on the edge of his bed when he was just a boy, his weathered hands plucking at the darkness as he spoke. "You don't need to be scared of the dark, Jamie," he had said gently, as Jamie had tugged his quilt closer to his chin. "In the very darkest places - like that, there, in the corner? There are angels already there."
"Angels?" he whispered hoarsely. He liked angels, and often stared at the beautiful statues that flanked the altar at church to pass the time during long homilies. But what would angels be doing in dark places?
Henry had nodded sagely. "You didn't know that, did you? It's one of an angel's most important jobs. They wait in the dark because they know how scary the dark can be, and they make sure the demons stay away. If it gets really dark like that, you don't have to be scared. The angels are already there."
Sweat beads against the back of Jamie's neck, snaking down into the latch of his throat, tickling against his temple and cheekbone. Teasing. Cold, almost.
He gasps in a breath. He doesn't know what waits for him, but nonetheless, he plunges headfirst into the darkness.
)()()()()()()()(
Jamie never expected to feel the impact before he heard the shot.
And yet he was thrown to the ground with lung-crushing force, down before sound could catch up, the pop of the gun drilling through his eardrums and scattering what was left of coherent thought. His breath was gone and the world was tilted sideways, floor at eye-level. Askew. Shock held the pain at bay, and he gritted his teeth, hissing.
Lieutenant Houghton loomed over him with a smirk. "And that was just a rubber bullet to the vest, Reagan," he chuckled, extending a hand which Jamie dazedly grasped. "Imagine what the real thing can do, eh?"
)()()()()()()()(
Everything around him is slowing down, and yet his vision has never been sharper; his hearing, never more acute. The kid is a hollowed form, nothing more than silhouette and angles, hesitating halfway down the alley, turning. There's a flicker of something beautiful in his hands, a flash of light against silver. A metal surface twists out blues and grays where the moonlight catches its luster.
Jamie aims. His fingers are tight, bloodless. Numb. "Drop it!"
If the kid shoots first, the bullet will shred the darkness before he can see it. It will hook him in the chest, or the throat, or the face. He knows he will feel the impact before he hears it.
His finger twitches against the trigger, but it's too dark. He can't fire. What is he aiming at? Who? What if it isn't a gun in the kid's hand? Can he live with himself if he turns a teenage boy into a corpse, and runs the beam of his flashlight across the body and sees a cell phone clutched in his frozen hand?
He can't fire.
Even though knows he will feel the impact of the kid's bullet before he hears it.
But he actually hears it first.
A zing through the air, darkness tearing open to his right, an angry insect zipping past at supersonic speed. It's wide; it misses him by at least a foot, but he jerks anyway, leaping to the side, instinct slamming his body into the wall before he can think to move. Brick cracks into his shoulder, biting into his skin.
The darkness splits, yawned open as his eyes adjust, and he stares down the alley in shock.
The kid is gone. He's bolted to parts unknown. In his place, Jamie swears he can almost make out black, feathered wings stirring in the night air that still rocks from the echoes of the shot, and he doesn't know if his mind is playing tricks on him or if his grandpa actually got this one right.
His heart is bouncing off his ribs, chest heaving, and his knees turn to water. He slides down the wall, panting, veins screaming with adrenaline as his muscles shake for air. His pants match the ricochet of the sirens, loud enough now to pin him down and hold him where he's fallen. Fear has smacked him across the face and left him washed cold, shaking, empty. His gun is loose in his hand. The barrel is cool.
And the angel is gone in a twist of shadow, leaving only the faintest stir of shadows behind.
You just wait, little brother. You wait until one night you chase some guy down a dark alley with a metal object in his hand... maybe it's a cell phone, maybe it's not.