Disclaimer: I still don't own the universe that these characters are inhabiting. The characters are mine, but the place they're running around it is not.
Further disclaimer: I just want to reiterate: Maria is a racist bigot. I'm not. I am creating a character with all the characteristics I myself despise. The aim of this story is not to give the impression that I believe intolerance is "cool," or to promote hate of people of a certain race or religion. The use of racist slang and epithets is not intended to give the impression that I actually use them, or approve of their use in polite conversation, merely to probe what I believe to be the greatest single evil in the world today: intolerance. I think the world would be a much better place if we as a species could accept differences between races, cultures and sexual orientations and accept that there is beauty in every skin tone, every faith and every orientation. Interestingly enough, part of the reason I took so long updating this was that I got so incredibly pissed off at Maria that I had to stop writing for a while. I'm still undecided whether it's a good sign or not if you hate the main character of the story you're attempting to write. I knew this was going to be a difficult story to write when I started…
So, without further ado:
Chapter 3:
Montreal, Québec.
"All units, we have a two-eleven in progress at Spence Jeweler's on Berri. Subject is Caucasian female approximately twenty-two years of age."
"Car number forty-seven en route. ETA one minute." Gabbiani spoke calmly into the microphone. They were literally driving down Berri when the call came in and it would take less than a minute for them to arrive, "armed robbery?"
Armed robberies were certainly nothing new in Montreal, like any big city. What was unusual was to have an armed robbery in broad daylight on one of the most major streets downtown.
"If she's robbing a jeweler's at gunpoint in broad daylight, she can't be that bright." Daffer, his partner, activated the lights and the siren and pressed the accelerator to the floor, "this shouldn't be too hard."
Armed robbers were, almost without exception, among the dumbest of the criminal element. Where brains broke down, they used force instead. A sledgehammer instead of a scalpel, as it were. When someone exerted more force than they could, the armed robber almost always folded. Get a couple of cops on scene, a couple of guns on the subject and it was practically a foregone conclusion that this would end with no bloodshed.
It wasn't difficult to spot the scene. It wasn't even taking place inside the jewler's. An armored truck was parked in the street, its rear doors hanging open as a swarm of security officers attempted, to no avail, to stop the single woman who danced effortlessly around them. She was armed with what looked like an extendable baton, and it looked as though she'd already dispatched two of the security officers, Gabbiani's mind immediately analyzed the scene. So this chick was deadly. She still couldn't outrun a bullet.
The cruiser had barely skidded to a stop when Gabbiani and Daffer slid lithely out of their seats, each training a nine-millimeter on the young woman. It was hard to get a good idea of what she looked like. She had her hair tied up in a bun behind her head, and her eyes were hidden behind a pair of sunglasses. That and she was moving so fast that her features were little more than blurs as she rendered the security guards unconscious one at a time. It was a good thing that the dashboard camera in their cruiser was operating, because Gabbiani wasn't sure he could give a description which would distinguish her from any of the other thousands of brunette women living in Montreal.
One of the security officers managed to get a shotgun trained on the subject, for a fraction of a second. It lasted no longer as she twisted out of the line of fire and in a flurry of motion slapped the barrel of the shotgun downwards as he pulled the trigger. The solid slug dug a hole a few inches deep in the asphalt after passing through the foot of one of the other rent-a-cops attempting to subdue her. He fell to the ground blood flowing from a gaping hole in his foot in pulsebeats. She gripped the barrel firmly and slammed the butt of the shotgun brutally into the bridge of the man's nose. It didn't have enough force to render him unconscious, but it stunned him enough that he released the shotgun and stumbled backwards.
The woman tossed the shotgun aside, and smoothly stepped around him, gripping him under the chin, then as if the motion required no less morality than snapping a twig, she jerked it brutally upwards.
Even from where he was standing, ten feet away, Gabbiani could hear the loud crack as the man's neck snapped at the third vertebra. He winced automatically. Five years on the force and he'd never seen anyone killed. He'd seen his share of dead bodies, but never had he seen someone get that way right in front of him. The shock made him (and, apparently, his partner) hesitate for the brief moment it took for the woman to hit the final security officer across the temple with her baton, knocking him out.
"Hold it!" Gabbiani kept his sights trained on the young woman. If he shot her now, that would technically be "excessive force," but part of him desperately wanted her to give him an excuse to pull the trigger.
The woman stopped and turned to face the two officers. She was breathing hard, but not so hard as she should have been as the street around her was littered with the unconscious, the bleeding and the dead that she'd apparently dispatched without so much as a firearm.
"Drop the baton." That was Daffer.
Maria looked upon them almost quizzically. The baton in her hand held at the ready. She was fast, to be sure, but she was in no way fast enough to cross the distance to the police officers before they opened fire.
"Car forty-seven requesting ambulance on scene of a two-eleven at Spence Jewler's." Gabbiani spoke into the mike on his shoulder. The officer with a hole in his foot would require medical attention immediately and it didn't look like much could be done about the one whose neck she'd broken, but the others would probably be fine once they woke up and their headaches faded.
In unison, the two officers stood and inched their way towards the young woman. The baton was still gripped so tightly in her hand that her knuckles were turning white.
"Drop the baton and put your hands behind your head."
Calmly, almost as if bored, the woman opened her hand, allowing the baton to drop unceremoniously to the ground.
Gabbiani held his gun on the woman as Daffer moved around behind her, smoothly holstering his pistol as he prepared to 'cuff her.
Maria studied the cop in front of her for a moment. A wop and a nigger. Figures. Do they have a shortage of white cops in this country?
As she felt the cold metal of the handcuffs bite into her right wrist, Maria exploded in two directions at once. Her left foot lashed out, coming up under the wop's outstretched hands, knocking his aim off while her elbow lashed out backwards catching the nigger in the bridge of his nose. She heard a very satisfying crunch as the nasalis bone was crushed under the hard bone of her elbow.
To his credit, though what must have been incredible pain, not to mention eyes which would be tearing from the impact, he managed to remain composed enough to draw his nine-millimeter from his holster as he stumbled backwards. Maria spun effortlessly to her left, gripping his hand at the wrist, and pulled the trigger on the nine-millimeter; launching a single slug into the wop's leg.
The carotid sinus gets its name from the fact that it lies along the carotid artery in the neck. It is possibly the most vital single nerve in cardiovascular physiology. It allows the body to control blood pressure with a rapidity which is nearly unparalleled in any physiological system. As Maria's hand slammed, knifelike, into the nerve, the intricate, well coordinated electrical dance of this little lump of tissue became discordant. It fired almost randomly, sending impulses in every direction at once.
The man's heart, normally a perfectly synchronized entity began to pulse sporadically, and in a fraction of a second, every artery in his systemic circulatory system dilated. His blood pressure plummeted from 120/80 to less than 100/50. Daffer's eyes rolled back into his head, and his legs collapsed under him. Almost in unison, the two cops fell to the ground, one with a hole in his leg which neatly demarked the caliber of a nine-millimeter bullet, the other unconscious with barely a mark on his body, blood flowing freely from his nose.
The wop was screaming in pain, his hands pressed against the side of his knee as bright crimson blood flowed over his splayed fingers.
Maria walked over to stand over him, looking emotionlessly down at a human being in agony.
"They say that being shot in the kneecap is the most pain a human being can endure without passing out." Maria shook her head, "being you must really suck right now." The clip dropped free from the grip of the gun and she tossed it aside. She smoothly ejected the single bullet from the chamber and dropped the gun a few inches from the guard's hand. Even if the wop were to stop screaming long enough to grab for the gun, it would be useless. She didn't consider it all that likely that he would, though.
The last thing Gabbiani heard before blood loss mercifully caused him to lose consciousness was the even tapping of the woman's footsteps on the black asphalt as she walked unhesitatingly away.