Chapter 10:
The pretty young woman came flouncing down the dimly lit hallway in tight low-rise jeans and a tight white tee-shirt, that fantastic ass wiggling like a fantasy come to life. Elisa had the stereotypical Latin booty that men talked about, and she left a trail of boners as she passed down the hall. Being a first-generation Salvadoran immigrant, the beautiful girl was hard-core, able to run with the best of the men in the gang, and that was why she was trusted by the gang's fanatical leadership. More to the point, with so many male members of MS13 occupying the morgue, they didn't have a lot of depth on the bench right now.
Coming to the middle of the hallway, Elisa knocked on the door and whispered the pass-phrase. The door opened slowly, revealing the presence of the supreme leader's ugly face. Salvatore was at the window–a place he knew he wasn't supposed to be. His safety depended on him staying out of sight, but he'd confided to Elisa that he felt like he was back in prison. The pressure of being on the run from the killer frogs was making him crazy.
"News," asked Leo, his chief bodyguard and henchman? "Did you make contact?" Elisa kept walking. "No time for games, mamasita," announced Leo. "Did you find this Lucy..." "No," replied Elisa. "She wasn't in. I didn't know which ones to trust, so I left." Salvatore spat curses. That was his best hope. They were at the end of their ropes with just a couple-hundred loyal soldiers left out of the thousands they'd once been able to boast. He'd made the decision to go hard against the frogs, not even realizing what they were up against, and that decision had cost him nearly all of his manpower.
The thought of turning to the police–turning to the oppressors who routinely rousted his people off the streets–disgusted him. He would have turned to the aliens first, but that option was closed. They didn't have a choice. The weapons they'd wielded to terrorize the neighborhoods they called home–to keep the white man in fear of them–were nothing against these ranas. Now he'd failed in getting hold of the cops.
Unfortunately for Salvatore, that was about to become the least of his problems.
A distant sound of gunfire alerted them that all was not well. "They're here," shouted Leo. He rushed for the door into the hallway, admitting the sounds of automatic weapons fire. They could hear it all–pistols and choppers going off in a staccato beat like fireworks or a drumroll as his men unleashed full-auto rock-and-roll on the enemy. Screams announced that their men were dieing. There was a whole lot of screaming.
"Salvatore," howled Leo. "We gotta' go!" He spun around to find Elisa standing next to the boss–only she had her arm embedded in his face up to the wrist. Grinning a sinister smile as her face slowly melted into brown goop, Elisa said, "I'd start running, pendejo." Leo turned and sprinted down the hall towards the window at the far end. They were four stories up at the very top floor of the old factory, but he didn't care. His courage had melted away at that sight. Reaching the window–just now covered in plastic garbage bags–Leo threw himself through the window, falling thirty feet to the rooftop beyond.
The sludge-puppy pulled her hand out of the dead man's face, returning the bones to their normal places with the absent-minded efficiency of her race. Crossing the room, she fell back into her favorite shape, becoming a petite, slender human woman with peroxide hair. As she reached the end of the hall, she met her allies coming up. "d'you bring my clothes," asked the pretty blond? The Hispanic girl's clothes were falling off of her. The frog handed her the bundle she'd left with them. "The guards are dead," hissed the lead toad. "What about their leader?" Nodding at the room with the corpse, the sludge-puppy replied, "I took care of it."
It was five in the morning when Mike's comlink rang. Lucy's was just a beat behind. They'd only barely gotten to sleep after working all day and well into the night. They'd had SWAT teams to brief. There was the job of coordinating raids on all the locations they had scoped out, and there was the job of ensuring their best undercover asset could safely get in and out without being made. After a very late and very lousy dinner, the two had gotten home at two AM. Finding Mike's brother asleep on the couch–curled up in one of Mike's blankets–Lucy had insisted he sleep with her. Now the two rose from their abbreviated slumber feeling exhausted and irritable.
"Why do we do this again," asked Lucy, as she swung her legs out of bed? Mike laughed. He did wonder some days. More seriously, he asked, "how you holdin' up, honey?" She had gotten the worst of it. The jet-lag had kicked her ass the first couple of days here. "I'm ok," said Lucy. "Let's get at it. I'll drive."
Twenty minutes later, the proto-truk landed in a deserted street and slipped silently up to their destination, finding a beehive of activity there on the street in front of a run-down factory. At first the cops manning the barricade didn't want to let them through, but Mike's badge changed their minds, and soon Lucy was pulling up to the scene of the crime. "Helluva mess," muttered Mike, as he took in the sight of all the bodies. "I think we just lost one of our gangs," sighed Lucy. Grimly, Mike stared at her. "Someone breached their security," said Lucy. Mike knew what that meant.
Climbing out of the truk, the two headed over to where a white-shirted officer was giving instructions. He wanted the press kept well back from this. A hovering police helicopter was already warning off news-choppers. "What do we have," asked Mike as he approached? "A fucking massacre," growled Bartholomew Hayes. "There's a hundred bodies here!" He'd been briefed on the alien-police, and he glared at Mike, demanding, "I thought you were supposed to be handling this!" Lucy pushed past the angry cop and approached the coroner's wagon. Two men from the coroner's office were putting a naked corpse inside. Lucy stopped them and drew the sheet back to look at what they had. She had a hunch.
The Hispanic woman's once-beautiful face was badly mangled. It looked like an iron bar had been driven up through the woman's jaw and into her skull. Mike and the angry NYPD Captain appeared at either shoulder, wondering what she was looking at. "This was how they got in," sighed Lucy. Bart Hayes asked, "how do you know?" "The infiltrator needed her face, and she needed to know the passwords and security," said Lucy. Rolling the sheet back over the corpse, she said, "she probably sucked it literally from this woman's skull." "You say her," rumbled the gang cop. "Male Lenopan wouldn't portray females," said Mike as he signaled the coroners to take the body. "It's considered emasculating." Lucy announced, "our captive frog told us they only had one infiltrator. We can now eliminate more than half of our pool of suspects..." It was time to get busy hunting down a rogue.
As Lucy strode off to check some of the other bodies, Bart turned to his 'expert'. Taking off his hat and scratching at his hair, he asked, "what does all that mean? How does she know that?" Mike replied, "on Earth, you're born a guy or you're born a girl, and people go through enormous amounts of pain and suffering to become what they think they really want to be. Her people? They're born with the means to be whatever they want. They have so many choices, they stand a real risk of losing themselves. I'm sure it'd be a fascinating subject for behavioral scientists, but they... They're very particular. The only person Lucy knows who regularly portrays males is her, and she'll only take it so far. She doesn't want to forget what she was born as or who she is." Shaking his head, he headed off to join his lady. He knew she'd be hurting inside right now. Having seen that, she'd be thinking of all the consequences that her family and friends back home could suffer as backlash for such an awful crime.
"Talk t'me, Luce," said Mike. "What are we looking at?" "Incursean weapons," said Lucy. "Pistols probably. I'm guessing they didn't want to make noise." Shockingly their rifles made a tremendous racket–sounding a lot like man-made thunder when they were fired. The pistols were loud, but not nearly as obnoxious. Nick and Helen appeared in the doorway of the old factory. "It's a mess in there, guys," whistled Nick. "Casings everywhere." "The gangsters put up a fight," said Helen. "There's frog-blood in a couple of places." "Their shot-caller's dead," said Nick. "Half his face is gone." Lucy's face snapped up to his. Nick wasn't sure why that was significant, but he said, "looked like somebody drove a steel pipe into his jaw." "She took his memories," growled Lucy. "The leader of the Bloods may be in danger."
Bart Hayes frowned in puzzlement as the pretty blond girl went sprinting towards the beat-up tradesman's van she'd come riding up in. Halfway there, the strange, blue-skinned creature caught her and even passed her. As the gang officer watched in amazement, the van transformed into a spaceship and roared out of there, nearly knocking their helicopter out of the sky. Bart jogged over to Stack and asked, "what gives?"
"The leader of MS13 was in contact with the leader of the Bloods about an alliance," said Mike. "My officers believe the Bloods will be next." He was so calm. Bart was shaken to his core. He'd never seen so many bodies. If this was how these creatures did business... "How the hell did things get like this," babbled the Captain? "Never mind that," sighed Mike. "We need to see that it doesn't get worse." That meant damage control. Drawing his comlink, Mike called Molly and the Alphas. He wanted them to bring a couple more vehicles down to help empty the warehouse before the news agencies got wind of what was going on.
Racing across town, Lucy and Helen approached the Warner Homes, finding the residents just shaking themselves out for the day. As Helen brought the proto-truk in for a landing, Lucy scanned the area, looking for one person in particular. "There," said Lucy. "Take us down!" She would have recognized that heavy body from a mile off. The proto-truk descended onto the courtyard as a plump woman came walking out of one of the buildings. A startled Latavia Wilson jumped back from the strange machine that had dropped out of the sky in front of her. As she reached for the pistol packed in her purse, Lucy jumped out of the truk. "Wait," said she.
The plump woman frowned at her, and she continued to grip the .38 snubby she had in her purse. Lucy scanned the plump woman. "Yeah, human," rumbled the Lenopan. "Whazzat mean," asked Latavia? "Means you didn't get killed and replaced last night..." There was a small crowd there on the courtyard, and they were all staring at the proto-truk and the blue-skinned alien that had gotten out of it. Lucy took the opportunity to scan them too. As she reached the small group clustered at the entry to the courtyard, the life-form scanner flashed red. Lucy's eyes locked with a petite brunette who'd been standing there in the crowd.
The other Lenopan was in motion just as quick as can be. Lucy was running after her before Helen could even register what she was doing or why. It was only when the fleeing murderess opened fire that Helen got something of a clue about what was going on. And then she was trying to save lives. Running at full tilt, she crossed the courtyard before most of the people there even realized she was moving. Using her tail, she knocked down as many people as she could, taking them out of the line of fire as their rogue sludge-puppy emptied her pistol at the crowd. The Lenopan rogue turned south and sprinted down the street with Lucy in hot pursuit.
Meanwhile Helen turned to cleaning up the mess, shouting, "anyone hit? Is anyone here injured?" "M-my daughter," shouted one woman! "She's been shot in the stomach!" Helen ran towards the sound of the voice, finding a young woman there with a child who was bleeding profusely from her abdomen. Helen grabbed the child and raced for the proto-truk. Lucy was on her own. With the child strapped into one of the stasis beds in the back and the mother in the passenger seat, Helen lifted off, programming the autopilot to take them to the nearest hospital, while she called the team to let them know what was happening. In short order, Mike was on his way across town to search for Lucy, while Nick and the others finished up at the MS13 massacre.
Mike took the trip at scary speeds, flying the proto-truk through the darkened cityscape faster than the Plumbers typically allowed. The woman he loved was in danger, running without backup against the same people who'd just taken out an entire street-gang. Indeed, as Mike closed in on the area where his fiancé was in hot pursuit of one of their perps, deadly forces were closing in as well. The Plumbers had burned the op against the remaining street gangs, and Rillec wanted his agent retrieved before they lost her. Rolling up on the scene in a trash-truck, the Incurseans were pondering what to do when their sensors detected the proto-truk arriving on scene.
Mike found Lucy standing in the middle of a darkened side-street, half-stooped over, gasping for breath. Setting the proto-truk down behind her, he jumped out and rushed up the street to her side, weapon at the ready. "Fuuuck, that little bitch was fast," panted Lucy. "Chased her six fucking blocks!" "Any idea where she went," asked Mike? "If I did, I'd probably still be chasing her," gasped Lucy. "How're you feelin', honey," asked Mike? Lucy gave him an odd look. Usually by now he'd have rushed up, hugged the stuffing out of her, and tried to stuff his tongue down her throat. He was a very concerned boyfriend. Seeing the way he was watching her, Lucy muttered, "alright, already. Get it over with." Turning away and holding her hands up where he could see them, she motioned for him to scan her. Mike held the sniffer up, finding that Lucy's transponder was pinging just like it should.
"You just like looking at my ass," grumped Lucy. "Yeah," laughed Mike. "I do." Slipping his arms around his lady's waist, he said, "we got lucky, baby. Your quick thinking saved us a boat-load of trouble." They would have had two massive massacres, and that was more than he could have explained. Lowering her arms, Lucy rested her hands on his and said, "mmmm, you should show me how much you appreciate me..." Leaning in, Mike kissed her cheek, whispering, "love to." In the now, they needed to go see some thugs about some alternative security arrangements.
As the two cops walked back down the street towards their vehicle, Lucy's quarry watched them from a fire escape. That was interesting. Their two lead cops had a thing going. More to the point, one of them was the nasty bitch who worked for the Plumbers. There were a lot of people in the Lenopan underworld that wanted Lucy Mann and her nasty little family wiped off the face of the Earth.