Notes : I should put this down for a day and then edit it AGAIN, but, as
usual, I don't want to wait so I think I'll just go ahead and post it.
Please Read AND Review :P
Oh! I should have mentioned it sooner, but thanks again to Niggle for the very thorough set of comments :) When I first read them they earned several grins.
Aright.. on to the long overdue violence… just a reminder I DID rate the story R for a reason. It's just taken me this long to get there.
Shadows : Chapter 3b (last part of chapter 3)
Throughout the day the weather had been alternating between annoying drizzles and outright downpours. By four in the afternoon water was descending from the sky in an angry torrent, while the threatening rumble of thunder called out from far off in the distance. Heavy clouds converged from every horizon casting the hotel exterior in a disconcertingly drab shroud. What they were about to do would have been better done in the brightest of daylight, but radar images indicated that the weather system wouldn't move past until after the sun went down. Night was out of the question, and the next day might be too late.
So there they were.
"Do you really think he's still here?" The voice was that of agent Mayweather, the man leading the first of the squads that had been sent to Sean shortly after he phoned in his request. Mayweather looked more like he belonged in the army than in the FBI. His hair was almost non-existent and years spent lifting heavy weights had left him looking like a three hundred pound gorilla. Given what Sean needed Mayweather for, he wasn't complaining.
"Everyone who came on the bus signed into that hotel and none of them have checked out yet. He'll be there." Who 'He' was hadn't yet been solidly established. Through a process of elimination all but three of the guests had been removed as suspects, most having sufficient records of previous addresses to definitively mark them as unlikely targets.
Five teams had been assembled. The first three would descend on the targets while the last two would secure the perimeter and the hotel exits. There were ten people to a team, each wearing kevlar and armed with assault rifles. Five snipers had been posted on top of near by buildings as a final contingency. The assumption was that at four in the afternoon the target would be easily captured, but given the disturbing amount of cloud cover and a lack of any real understanding concerning his limitations no one was taking any chances.
The last of the snipers radioed in that they'd reached their position and Sean took a deep breath, casually wiping some of the water out of his eyes. He'd been waiting for this moment for years, but now that it had come a small voice in the back of his mind was telling him to turn around and run away as fast and as far as he could.
Screw it.
Sean lifted his radio. "Teams one two and three move into positions, team four secure the entrances."
Through the rain all he could see of his people were vague outlines. Some of them moved to crouch before doors while the rest proceeded inside.
Sean wondered how many of them he was about to get killed.
Gabriel woke to the echoing shouts of angry voices. Sliding to an upright position he made a brief check of his dark, empty room, before moving to the door and opening it the smallest crack possible. Scowling at the bright lighting in the hall he watched as a large group of blue clad men and woman with guns stormed two of the hotel's rooms within view of his own.
Why couldn't the stupid fucking bus driver have made it all the way to Metropolis?
Cursing quietly Gabriel closed the door again and slowly backed away. There was a well-lit building in front of him and the sun outside behind him. He was trapped.
But for some reason he didn't feel trapped.
Closing his eyes he let himself relax. He couldn't touch the shadows, but for some reason he could still taste them. He could almost smell them. It took him a moment to finally register the steady hum of water drumming against the window and the rumble of thunder far off in the distance.
Apparently it was finally his turn to get lucky.
Gabriel gleefully flung back the curtains to reveal a sky covered in thick layers of gray that melted together like a blanket. Neither dark nor light, not day or night, the world was painted in shades of twilight.
It wasn't release, but neither was it a trap. He'd make do.
Chloe hung up the phone just as Clark walked into the Torch office. She looked up at him and he could almost feel the enthusiasm rolling off of her in physical waves. Her hair was slightly out of place and her expression was one of restrained excitement. In short, she looked adorable.
That thought made him pause for a second. He didn't use, speak, or think the word adorable.
Clark watched her as she began to speak and found the thought reiterating itself in a slightly disconcerting manner.
"Clark, I take it back, that was one present for which no bow was required. Come take a look at this."
"You weren't in English class." He moved across the room and leaned over her shoulder to take a look at the computer screen. A faintly sweet sent caught his attention instead and he found himself breathing in deeply just to get a heavier dose.
Raspberries.
Since when did Chloe smell like raspberries?
"Our illustrious teacher let me skip out today to work on the Torch." She explained briefly before continuing on what she obviously considered items of much higher interest. "I took the names and checked them against the New York newspapers but, aside from an occasional innocent mention they were all completely under the radar. We can't find any obviously related cases so I couldn't try and run an address match or anything."
Focus Clark…
"So you got creative and found something?" To his own ears he sounded slightly distracted. He wondered if she'd noticed.
Chloe reached back to squeeze his hand, which had somehow found its way onto her shoulder without his knowledge. "Creative? Try desperate. Look at the screen Clark."
Dutifully he let his eyes wander over the web page Chloe had been looking at. Emblazoned in a bold font at the top of the screen were the words 'Star Wars'. Curiosity finally kicked in and helped clear his head, how had Chloe ended up at a Star Wars convention site? She pointed to the name of one of the organizers, then pointed to the same name on the list of hotel guests.
"So tell me Clark, what's a Star Wars buff doing on a bus to metropolis when he's supposed to be at a convention in New York?"
"Same name, different person?"
"Nope, I called them and checked, apparently Mr. Steven Polluck was supposed to be at the conference, vulcan ears included, but no one has seen him. When I got through to the coordinators they were anxious to talk to me, they haven't heard from him in over a week."
"Which raises the question…"
"Of whether or not it was really Steven Polluck from New York that got on that bus."
Sean listened as the teams called in their status. There'd been no gunfire, no resistance, just a bunch of scared people with no idea what was going on. Somehow Sean had missed something or made a mistake. He was about to signal that he was going inside to check out the suspects himself when a report came in from the back portion of the perimeter. The voice on the radio was calm and businesslike.
"North side Agent Philips, someone just came out of a window over here. Can't really see who in this weather…"
Right building, wrong people. Shit. Their aim had been off but maybe they'd flushed him out. "Team four, abandon exits and move around to the north side of the building. Team five tighten up the perimeter on that side."
Sean set off at a quick run, he was in the wrong place to see what was about to happen. The other end of the parking lot suddenly seemed much farther away than he remembered.
Agent Samual Rollins clipped the radio back to his belt and lifted his left hand to help steady his rifle.
The shape just stayed there, kneeling in front of the broken window. Samual could see the other agents coming around the corner of the building but there were no entrances on that side and for the next ten seconds only he and two other agents he'd never seen before that day were in position to block the suspect's escape route.
But still he just knelt there like a statue with water pouring over it.
Move you son of a bitch.
They'd drilled into Samual that this was going to be dangerous, that ripping people's throats out was the psycho's idea of a fun Friday night on the town. They'd also told them that if was at all possible the suspect was to be captured, not killed.
The last part was bullshit of course, if he was that dangerous then all Samual wanted was an excuse to pull the trigger.
The agents running around the corner of the building had barely moved, as if time had slowed down and it was taking them a minute to move a foot, which was a hilariously ridiculous thought. Rain blew into his eyes and he blinked to clear them, closing his eyelids in the first heartbeat, opening them in the next.
And the shape was gone. Completely and utterly gone and that was impossible because he'd just been there.
To his left Samual heard a sick squishing sound and he turned his head only to wish that he hadn't. The shape, now obviously an imposing figure hidden within a long black coat had his hand around one of the other two agent's throat, a tall wiry man who'd dropped his gun in an effort to pull the fingers free. The crunch of breaking bones signaled the agent's death as Samual tried to turn and point his rifle. The third agent was turning as well, a tall athletic looking brunette with eyes that widened in shock as she tried to bring her weapon around.
But the man in the coat was faster and he casually knocked her aside and My God he'd just plunged his fist into her fucking chest! And Samual still hadn't been able to finish turning. The figure dropped her with blood still pouring out of her mouth and welling up from beneath the kevlar vest and for some reason she seemed to be taking far too long to reach the ground.
And then Samual's gun was finally pointing in the right direction and he was squeezing his finger to shoot the bastard in the head and to hell with fucking capturing him. But somehow the man moved in and pushed the gun to the side just as bullets began to leap out of the barrel.
That was when Samual finally realized he was about to die.
By the time Sean rounded the corner the only thing left to find were the bodies. He forced himself to walk right up to them and take in every little detail, ignoring the acid that threatened to rise in his throat, he'd throw up later. It was obvious what had killed the first one, his throat had been literally crushed and his head hung limply from a neck that no longer provided any kind of support. The woman took Sean a moment longer, aside from the blood staining her face and her vest there was no obvious wound. Taking a closer look he found a large slice in the kevlar where a hand had somehow punched through not only the vest, but her chest, creating a hole the size of a fist where her lungs were supposed to be.
Dark brown eyes stared at him accusingly and he forced himself to linger a moment.
It was Sean's fault that they were dead.
The third corpse made the first two look tame and he didn't even bother to try and distinguish individual wounds.
The only sound of a struggle had been a brief burst of three rounds from an assault rifle, anything else had gone unnoticed. In disgust he realized that, even without success, his superiors weren't going to care that three of the agents had died. They'd probably be pleased, the target was still in the area and there was new information to be added to the archive. No one had known about the clouds.
Picking up his phone he tried to figure out what he was going to tell them, and what he would need to do next.
Oh! I should have mentioned it sooner, but thanks again to Niggle for the very thorough set of comments :) When I first read them they earned several grins.
Aright.. on to the long overdue violence… just a reminder I DID rate the story R for a reason. It's just taken me this long to get there.
Shadows : Chapter 3b (last part of chapter 3)
Throughout the day the weather had been alternating between annoying drizzles and outright downpours. By four in the afternoon water was descending from the sky in an angry torrent, while the threatening rumble of thunder called out from far off in the distance. Heavy clouds converged from every horizon casting the hotel exterior in a disconcertingly drab shroud. What they were about to do would have been better done in the brightest of daylight, but radar images indicated that the weather system wouldn't move past until after the sun went down. Night was out of the question, and the next day might be too late.
So there they were.
"Do you really think he's still here?" The voice was that of agent Mayweather, the man leading the first of the squads that had been sent to Sean shortly after he phoned in his request. Mayweather looked more like he belonged in the army than in the FBI. His hair was almost non-existent and years spent lifting heavy weights had left him looking like a three hundred pound gorilla. Given what Sean needed Mayweather for, he wasn't complaining.
"Everyone who came on the bus signed into that hotel and none of them have checked out yet. He'll be there." Who 'He' was hadn't yet been solidly established. Through a process of elimination all but three of the guests had been removed as suspects, most having sufficient records of previous addresses to definitively mark them as unlikely targets.
Five teams had been assembled. The first three would descend on the targets while the last two would secure the perimeter and the hotel exits. There were ten people to a team, each wearing kevlar and armed with assault rifles. Five snipers had been posted on top of near by buildings as a final contingency. The assumption was that at four in the afternoon the target would be easily captured, but given the disturbing amount of cloud cover and a lack of any real understanding concerning his limitations no one was taking any chances.
The last of the snipers radioed in that they'd reached their position and Sean took a deep breath, casually wiping some of the water out of his eyes. He'd been waiting for this moment for years, but now that it had come a small voice in the back of his mind was telling him to turn around and run away as fast and as far as he could.
Screw it.
Sean lifted his radio. "Teams one two and three move into positions, team four secure the entrances."
Through the rain all he could see of his people were vague outlines. Some of them moved to crouch before doors while the rest proceeded inside.
Sean wondered how many of them he was about to get killed.
Gabriel woke to the echoing shouts of angry voices. Sliding to an upright position he made a brief check of his dark, empty room, before moving to the door and opening it the smallest crack possible. Scowling at the bright lighting in the hall he watched as a large group of blue clad men and woman with guns stormed two of the hotel's rooms within view of his own.
Why couldn't the stupid fucking bus driver have made it all the way to Metropolis?
Cursing quietly Gabriel closed the door again and slowly backed away. There was a well-lit building in front of him and the sun outside behind him. He was trapped.
But for some reason he didn't feel trapped.
Closing his eyes he let himself relax. He couldn't touch the shadows, but for some reason he could still taste them. He could almost smell them. It took him a moment to finally register the steady hum of water drumming against the window and the rumble of thunder far off in the distance.
Apparently it was finally his turn to get lucky.
Gabriel gleefully flung back the curtains to reveal a sky covered in thick layers of gray that melted together like a blanket. Neither dark nor light, not day or night, the world was painted in shades of twilight.
It wasn't release, but neither was it a trap. He'd make do.
Chloe hung up the phone just as Clark walked into the Torch office. She looked up at him and he could almost feel the enthusiasm rolling off of her in physical waves. Her hair was slightly out of place and her expression was one of restrained excitement. In short, she looked adorable.
That thought made him pause for a second. He didn't use, speak, or think the word adorable.
Clark watched her as she began to speak and found the thought reiterating itself in a slightly disconcerting manner.
"Clark, I take it back, that was one present for which no bow was required. Come take a look at this."
"You weren't in English class." He moved across the room and leaned over her shoulder to take a look at the computer screen. A faintly sweet sent caught his attention instead and he found himself breathing in deeply just to get a heavier dose.
Raspberries.
Since when did Chloe smell like raspberries?
"Our illustrious teacher let me skip out today to work on the Torch." She explained briefly before continuing on what she obviously considered items of much higher interest. "I took the names and checked them against the New York newspapers but, aside from an occasional innocent mention they were all completely under the radar. We can't find any obviously related cases so I couldn't try and run an address match or anything."
Focus Clark…
"So you got creative and found something?" To his own ears he sounded slightly distracted. He wondered if she'd noticed.
Chloe reached back to squeeze his hand, which had somehow found its way onto her shoulder without his knowledge. "Creative? Try desperate. Look at the screen Clark."
Dutifully he let his eyes wander over the web page Chloe had been looking at. Emblazoned in a bold font at the top of the screen were the words 'Star Wars'. Curiosity finally kicked in and helped clear his head, how had Chloe ended up at a Star Wars convention site? She pointed to the name of one of the organizers, then pointed to the same name on the list of hotel guests.
"So tell me Clark, what's a Star Wars buff doing on a bus to metropolis when he's supposed to be at a convention in New York?"
"Same name, different person?"
"Nope, I called them and checked, apparently Mr. Steven Polluck was supposed to be at the conference, vulcan ears included, but no one has seen him. When I got through to the coordinators they were anxious to talk to me, they haven't heard from him in over a week."
"Which raises the question…"
"Of whether or not it was really Steven Polluck from New York that got on that bus."
Sean listened as the teams called in their status. There'd been no gunfire, no resistance, just a bunch of scared people with no idea what was going on. Somehow Sean had missed something or made a mistake. He was about to signal that he was going inside to check out the suspects himself when a report came in from the back portion of the perimeter. The voice on the radio was calm and businesslike.
"North side Agent Philips, someone just came out of a window over here. Can't really see who in this weather…"
Right building, wrong people. Shit. Their aim had been off but maybe they'd flushed him out. "Team four, abandon exits and move around to the north side of the building. Team five tighten up the perimeter on that side."
Sean set off at a quick run, he was in the wrong place to see what was about to happen. The other end of the parking lot suddenly seemed much farther away than he remembered.
Agent Samual Rollins clipped the radio back to his belt and lifted his left hand to help steady his rifle.
The shape just stayed there, kneeling in front of the broken window. Samual could see the other agents coming around the corner of the building but there were no entrances on that side and for the next ten seconds only he and two other agents he'd never seen before that day were in position to block the suspect's escape route.
But still he just knelt there like a statue with water pouring over it.
Move you son of a bitch.
They'd drilled into Samual that this was going to be dangerous, that ripping people's throats out was the psycho's idea of a fun Friday night on the town. They'd also told them that if was at all possible the suspect was to be captured, not killed.
The last part was bullshit of course, if he was that dangerous then all Samual wanted was an excuse to pull the trigger.
The agents running around the corner of the building had barely moved, as if time had slowed down and it was taking them a minute to move a foot, which was a hilariously ridiculous thought. Rain blew into his eyes and he blinked to clear them, closing his eyelids in the first heartbeat, opening them in the next.
And the shape was gone. Completely and utterly gone and that was impossible because he'd just been there.
To his left Samual heard a sick squishing sound and he turned his head only to wish that he hadn't. The shape, now obviously an imposing figure hidden within a long black coat had his hand around one of the other two agent's throat, a tall wiry man who'd dropped his gun in an effort to pull the fingers free. The crunch of breaking bones signaled the agent's death as Samual tried to turn and point his rifle. The third agent was turning as well, a tall athletic looking brunette with eyes that widened in shock as she tried to bring her weapon around.
But the man in the coat was faster and he casually knocked her aside and My God he'd just plunged his fist into her fucking chest! And Samual still hadn't been able to finish turning. The figure dropped her with blood still pouring out of her mouth and welling up from beneath the kevlar vest and for some reason she seemed to be taking far too long to reach the ground.
And then Samual's gun was finally pointing in the right direction and he was squeezing his finger to shoot the bastard in the head and to hell with fucking capturing him. But somehow the man moved in and pushed the gun to the side just as bullets began to leap out of the barrel.
That was when Samual finally realized he was about to die.
By the time Sean rounded the corner the only thing left to find were the bodies. He forced himself to walk right up to them and take in every little detail, ignoring the acid that threatened to rise in his throat, he'd throw up later. It was obvious what had killed the first one, his throat had been literally crushed and his head hung limply from a neck that no longer provided any kind of support. The woman took Sean a moment longer, aside from the blood staining her face and her vest there was no obvious wound. Taking a closer look he found a large slice in the kevlar where a hand had somehow punched through not only the vest, but her chest, creating a hole the size of a fist where her lungs were supposed to be.
Dark brown eyes stared at him accusingly and he forced himself to linger a moment.
It was Sean's fault that they were dead.
The third corpse made the first two look tame and he didn't even bother to try and distinguish individual wounds.
The only sound of a struggle had been a brief burst of three rounds from an assault rifle, anything else had gone unnoticed. In disgust he realized that, even without success, his superiors weren't going to care that three of the agents had died. They'd probably be pleased, the target was still in the area and there was new information to be added to the archive. No one had known about the clouds.
Picking up his phone he tried to figure out what he was going to tell them, and what he would need to do next.
