Beep. Hiss.
Beep. Beep.
Beep. Hiss.
Her eyes opened to the human of the fan above, to the world of pastel walls. At her feet, Stryker stood, bandaged, but uniformed. Bruised, but at the ready to greet her. There was a sense of grayness about two of them, like the room just didn't fit their thoughts.
The only thing on her mind was Kano.
When she woke up, she was almost upset. A million years she spent with millions of ways to kill him.
The building collapsed around them that day, several offices, Stryker explained, had lost their lives, and few would still see time in the hospital before they'd make it back out into the real world. Stryker was out, she could plainly see, but she thought about Jax. He had not said a word about him.
"Sonya?" A frail voice weeped at the door.
Her mother came in to take her hands, and Sonya focused on the spots and lines that darted those familiar, but old ands. She took hers from her mother. Suddenly two worlds began to collide.
"You're father hasn't returned." She kept her hands at the bed, for Sonya if needed.
A glance between Stryker and Sonya sealed a pact that no word would be spoken of this. His fate wasn't known, his location, in fact, Sonya wasn't sure how to think about it still.
"The police force will find him." She assured her mother, but the cold tone of the officer cracked when her mother's hand touched hers again.
"You'll bring him back. You'll find your father, Sonya." She was so certain.
Sonya could see the beads form at the corner of the old eyes and began to trace the weathered curves of flesh, but she couldn't feel it. She had buried this so deep inside, she had begun to wonder why Kano had kidnapped her father at all.
He didn't love her after all, right?
"We'll find him, Mrs. Blade." Stryker intruded.
For too long she waited. She loved her mother, but Sonya's heart had been singed by the flames of war. Still, the cracks bleed. She hugged her mother as the hospital gave her freedom to leave, but she would not.
"Where is he?" She turned to Stryker, who dared not speak about it until this point.
He nodded down the hallway.
They moved. Slow, but careful. She was vigilante. Each room had some form of tragedy or new beginning for the broken. Three doors down she found Jax. Still unconscious, still hooked up to machines. She wanted to enter the room, but her hand wouldn't turn the nob. That coldness seized her breath and pushed her back a step. The fire now burned a ring within her eyes as they met Stryker's.
"We need to find Kano and end this."
"Come hell or high water."
At the station she was welcomed back like a hero, but tragedy had still struck. Welcome back, Sonya, other cops are still dead. In the break room she waited for the coffee to drip, for the life of the machine to die so that her heart may race again for the hunt of the Black Dragon's leader. Two detectives entered, waited, talked amongst themselves, and then turned to Sonya.
"Our lives are in your hands and you're waiting for coffee?" One spoke, blunt, and stared into her like she were merely an insult to the force, like pig, or racist.
The other spoke, "looking for the Black Dragon is a wild goose chase Sonya. He's just making us fall into every trap, whittling us down one by one, and you keep stepping into it." He added, "starting to think you're one of them."
This one caught her off guard a moment, but she stared blankly at the man. Portly, black hair, may as well be a pig. He certainly was racist.
"Next time I'll bring your team with me, I'm sure the black kids in the neighborhood will be happy to know you're off the streets."
"You fu-"
"Is there a problem here?" Entered the captain. His presence silenced all three of them and the air behind him carried the weight of his words like lead anvils on all of their shoulders.
"Sonya, Lieutenant Stryker wants to speak with you." He took her shoulder, "hold cell on the right when you enter."
The blood guy, ruffled hair, chiseled brows with that serial killer stare, solid tone button downs and always with the donuts, passed Sonya with the box, but she moved right passed him. She didn't have time. He waved her off and sat in the corner with the lead forensics analyst as the others exited the break room.
In the room, Styker stood at the table, leaned against it with his arms folded and a remote control in hand.
"Another tape came in." He welcomed her in, but his voice was low, his words short.
"From Kano? Which one is it this time?"
"The House That Dripped Blood." Sonya then cut him off to finish the rest.
"Nineteen Seventy-One, Horror featuring John Bryans."
"Yeah." He then reached out with the remote to turn it on.
With a flicker and a flick the screen showed Kano behind her father. He was alive, duct taped to the seat and Kano still with the dagger, but not a drop of blood on it.
"You know, baby, ever since you killed half of my men and I nearly escaped our little informant operation in Manhattan, I've spent every single day and every single night thinking about you." He toyed with his words, almost sing-song, like the dagger that traced his fingers.
"Feelings mutual." She returned, though the recording could not hear.
"I lost good men, loyal men. Men that were better and stronger than anyone on your police force." He added, "which, by the way, I heard you lost about as many men and women as I have now. You'd think that would make us even, right, babe?" He shook his head. "No."
Stryker paused the recording.
"What his end game?"
She stared into the frozen eyes of her perfect opposite. She may not have realized it, but she was much a cold blooded killer as Kano. She could feel the desire to strangle him and anyone that got in their way. Right now, the only one between them was her father.
He stared back at Sonya, eyes wide, helpless, but in those eyes somewhere behind the grain of film was a cry for his daughter, not the police. She could hear it. She could feel it. Her heart began to race, those burning cracks began to mend and the pain suffocated her chest.
She needed to get him back, but she would die just to kill Kano herself.
"To get back at me," she turned to him after a long pause. "I lead the operation that gutted the Black Dragon. He didn't realize that he had spilled more information as our informant than he intended."
"Thought he could play the game." Stryker looked back at the screen.
"He got played."
"Now we are." He added.
"I am." She tightened her arms as they folded around her chest and watched.
"The Black Dragon is more than a crime syndicate, Sonya. We're not the police. We're family, and you fucked with my family. Now I'm going to fuck with yours."
He tossed the blade aside and came closer up against her father. His arms around the man's shoulders and his head on his left side, one good eye toward the camera.
"Do you miss him, baby? Miss your daddy?"
Sonya couldn't answer this, and even if she could, she wasn't sure how. Those eyes, though familiar, also seemed estranged. It had been many years under his roof without ever hearing him tell her he loved her. She became a cop for him. She became everything he wanted out of her, but not once did he tell her what she wanted out of him.
Stryker turned from the screen and watched her.
Her eyes tight, arms tighter, and though she stood as a statue might, he could see the cracks in the marble form.
"Well, I'm about to fuck you right in the cunny. Right where it hurts, baby." One armed moved behind the chair. He wrestled with himself for a moment to produce some grunts out of her father that were muffled by the duct tape.
His face began to redden, and his temper flared. The optic piece in his left eye brightened as his blood temperature raised. She could visibly see him psych himself up.
"You bitch!" He spat. "You fuck with me, you're going to get fucked!"
"You said that already." She spoke to the screen.
She watched him strangle her father with that arm around his neck. He growled and groaned like an animal and cursed at the camera.
"You're gonna' get what you fucking deserve, you cu—"
BANG!
Stryker stopped the tape.
Sonya stood for a moment in silence. Eyes on the screen as the red hue that faded with the recording to pitch black hit her. Did he love her? He'll never get to tell her now.
The cracks in the marble produced tears that fell silently down the statue of a broken human that desperately tried to hold them back. If she could stop her heart, this would be the moment.
"Sonya?" His voice felt like it had been filtered through a long tunnel to her.
All she could hear was Kano's screaming. Her father uttering the words he had never told her in life, and the sound of the gun that shattered her glass facade.