Chapter 88: The Precinct

The City of Townsville. Outskirts. Smith Cottages.

03 MAR (Friday) 1989. 2215.

Bunny skulked her way to the back of the maintenance station's basement, searching for something. It didn't take long for her to find it. Rook had briefed her on what to look out for. There was supposed to be a purple flight suitcase left near the shelves, planted by an agent embedded in the sewage maintenance team. It contained what she needed for the mission. But it was dark, and so Bunny squinted hard - so hard that her eyes lit up like lamps! It'd surprised her that the basement had lit up wherever she was looking at, but then again, strange things had been happening to her lately. In her assassination mission this morning, she could have sworn she could see through walls.

The purple luggage stood out in her eye-light. As Bunny wondered what other powers she would discover next, she opened the luggage to find a fresh set of clothes, including socks and footwear. Sitting in the middle of it was a contact lens case, no doubt containing lenses to hide the purple glow of her eyes.

But the luggage was huge, and Bunny knew why. It was also meant to hold her gear while she was away. With nothing else left for her, she got started and picked up a pair of T-shirts and in the process, found a small mirror underneath it. She thought it was thoughtful of Rook to arrange for it. It'd help her with her lenses immensely.

The City of Townsville. Outskirts. Smith Cottages. TPD Precinct 109.

03 MAR (Friday) 1989. 2226.

Officer Marcus Campbell had been sitting on his ass for four hours and counting, and he was extremely bored. Life on the edge of Townsville wasn't as hardcore as it sounded - the heart of Townsville was where all the action was, and officers of the TPD on the outskirts had limited jurisdiction, with most of the crime tending to happen beyond the city limits, under the jurisdiction of the sheriffs of Pokey Oaks County.

But Townsville was the crime capital of the world, and even on the outskirts, crime was everyday business, so prevalent that it would soak everything in it, including the police department and its countless precincts and manpower that was meant to keep it under control.

Much of the work was fairly routine and dead boring though, and Officer Campbell had been bearing the brunt of the snooze-fest for the entire week as it was his turn on reception duty. It wasn't even time yet, but that moment was coming. Like all other police precincts in the city, crime had a presence in 109, though 109 was known by insiders as a corruption outpost, where the straight were the minority, ruled over by the bent.

"Next," the officer called out to the next person sitting down at the reception seats, his voice dry and cracked from lack of sleep and too many cigarettes. A man in a hoodie with the shakes came forward. There were a few other people in the room. The crowd was thinning out, and Officer Campbell found it favorable to him. The only reason why he'd kept the job was that he wouldn't be accepted in any other - the easy money he was earning on the side from the contacts he had accumulated over the years was a huge bonus.

That was when the double doors leading into the reception area opened, and in walked a girl of not even ten, much to the exasperation of the reception officer. There hadn't been another new 'customer' in the last half hour, and it could mean more would come, and it would be another hour and a half more before the punch clock.

The officer took a glance at her. The late winter meant that temperatures were on the rise, and she didn't have to wear earmuffs and a scarf, nothing to block the view. The young girl was decidedly plain, likely from the poor class, as most people in the Smith Cottages area were. She looked the part as she was alone, with her brown hair dangling loosely and flowing with the late winter wind. Her pink jacket had some patches on them, though her red lumberjack skirt and white pantyhose seemed pristine enough. Her winter boots looked worn. The officer could see her teeth as she'd come in weeping. They were disgustingly out of alignment, and likely beyond her family's fiscal ability to fix.

Instead of waiting like everybody else, the kid had decided to pad right up to the front desk, which Officer Campbell found annoying. He was never good with kids, and likely would never be.

"Mister policeman, p-please!" the young girl cried; she was rubbing her eyes with both her hands. Eyes were turned to her, with few of them being sympathetic. "My family's in trouble!"

"Is it an emergency?" Officer Campbell asked gruffly, a tone of annoyance rising in his voice. "Do you know what an emergency is, kid?"

The young girl nodded her head feverishly. The officer scowled at her.

"So is it an emergency or what?" the officer asked again.

"No…" she mewled.

"Then take a seat and wait for your turn! Isn't that what they taught you in school!?" Officer Campbell scolded her, pointing his ballpoint pen at an empty seat beside what appeared to be a hobo who'd been living it rough in dirty jackets and an even worse smell. The young girl cried and sniffled her way to her seat, but she'd found one a distance from the hobo, who didn't look offended at all.

Furrowing his eyebrows, the police officer went back to what he was doing, turning back to the man in a hoodie. "And how may I help you, mister?" he asked in an overly-polite manner.

"You're early. Do you have it?" he then asked the strange, jittery man in a low, whispering voice, in quick succession. The odd fellow reached into his jacket and pulled out a wad of cash. For some reason, Officer Campbell was wary of the young girl. She had stopped crying, sure, but he had a feeling, for some reason, that he was being watched and listened. Was it the way the young girl was glancing in his direction, no worse for wear from her tear-fest when, normally, it would be devastating for a young girl? In the end, he decided that he was just being overly-cautious. He hadn't been caught after all these years, so why would he be today?

"Here's the payment. Now give it to me," the strange man said, just as quietly. If anyone had overheard their conversation, they weren't showing it. While waiting for the officer's response, he wiped his face with his hand, sweeping away perspiration.

Officer Campbell took the wad of cash and counted it below the table. They came in hundred dollar bills, which made counting easy. The amount came up to a grand. Satisfied, he pulled a few little satchels from under the table and discreetly handed it to the man. The satchels and their contents were from the evidence room, and he thought it was a waste to just let them sit there. 'Waste not, want not.' That was what his mom taught him.

"Thank you for volunteering that information. Have a nice night, sir," the officer said to Hoodie Man as if announcing it for the world to hear. The pale, jittery man took the satchels and stuffed them in his jacket before getting up wordlessly to leave. "Next!"

An old lady of around sixty-plus years got up gingerly. She was presumably next, only for the young girl to dart forward, having resumed crying at some point.

"Please! My family's in big trouble!" the young girl cried again. At this point, Officer Campbell couldn't care less. He began scribbling some notes on a report as he waited for the old lady to inch her way forward.

It'd happened so fast that he didn't notice it until it was beyond too late. The girl had hopped onto his desk like some kid-sized rabbit, crouching there like an imp as she grabbed him by the collar, surprising him. Everyone else in the room were equally shocked to the point of freezing except for Hoodie Man, who was snorting something and taking his time walking towards the exit.

The young girl pressed her face close to Officer Campbell's face, innocent sadness turning into hateful fury. Tears were streaming down her cheeks all the same.

"My family's in big trouble because of people like you!" the young girl accused the officer before snatching his ballpoint fountain pen and plunging it into his eye. He screamed and squealed like a stuck pig as the young girl vaulted over his shoulder and wrapped her arm around his neck. His hands were going up to his punctured eye when the young girl wrestled him down, chair and man both, and snapped his neck. A cacophony of scream filled the reception room.

Stealing the officer's sidearm, the girl hopped on top of the reception desk again and began shooting, first putting a bullet through the skull of the old woman who was supposed to report a crime next, then the rest of the crime victims on the seats. Hoodie Man, still a little out of it as he swayed on his way out, was shot in the head last.

But the reception area wasn't completely devoid of life yet. In an adjoining room, she could hear radio chatter, and when she focused her enhanced hearing on it, she heard a chair moving, a gun being drawn and its slide pulled.

The City of Townsville. Outskirts. Smith Cottages. TPD Precinct 109.

03 MAR (Friday) 1989. 2230.

Bunny trained her stolen service pistol on the door leading into the radio room. She could see some kind of shadow behind it, as if she could see right through the door. She opened fire just as the shadow moved to open the door, putting several bullets right in the center of mass. She saw the shadow fall over, clutching the chair to remain upright.

Hopping down from the reception desk, Bunny rushed over to the door to open it and saw what the shadow was: a policewoman without her peak cap, clutching one of her many chest wounds as she fought for air. The least Bunny could do was end her misery, so she raised her pistol again and put a bullet between her eyes.

There were supposed to be at least eight more of them in the police precinct, and Bunny remembered the layout. The offices, break room and other facilities were in the middle. The locker room, armory and storage at the back, and the jail cells were in the basement. It was a small station, so there wasn't a second floor.

Noticing that the slide of her stolen service pistol was out, indicating that its ammunition was exhausted, Bunny threw it away and picked up the policewoman's. Pulling the magazine out, she counted thirteen bullets before slipping it back in. It was more than enough, especially with what she had in mind.

The stairs leading down to the basement was just behind the reception area. The architect of the station probably located it there for ease of access from the carpark outside. After closing and barring the doors leading into the reception area by bending a crowbar around the handles, Bunny descended down these steps. She'd seen the police officer attending to the jail cells even before she entered the basement area. Somehow, she could see through walls clearer than ever now. They weren't just shadows anymore.

At the foot of the stairs, Bunny tried the door. It was the kind that wasn't unlike that which could be found barring the way to a cell. It was chained shut, but she was able to snap the chain in two with her bare hands and slide open the basement door. The police officer there was hiding behind his desk with a shotgun. Bunny unloaded three shots into the desk, hoping to kill or incapacitate the cop before he could even pop out; the cop fidgeting meant that only a shot grazed him and another punctured his kidney. He popped out anyway, but Bunny was leagues ahead in speed and anticipation, putting a bullet in his dome before he could even aim his shotgun. The cop's shot went overhead harmlessly, not that it could even put a bruise on Bunny.

Bunny stared around the jail cells in wonderment. She could not believe that she could see through the walls so clearly; it was another super-sense to add to the list. But the prisoners in the jail cells were exactly what she needed. She searched the desk and found the switch that would release all the prisoners. It was a big, red button, as cliched as it sounded. Not so cliched was the fact that it was covered in a metal cage locked by a padlock, labeled 'Emergency'. Bunny pulled the metal cage off with ease, like tearing paper, before hitting the button and crawling under the desk.

Bewildered prisoners began streaming out, looking at each other, wondering what had delivered their godsent freedom. Bunny could see them through the desk, still captivated by her fully-realized x-ray sight. There were about six of them in all, and some began gunning for the stairs, while a couple of others greedily looted the downed officer's corpse. One of them took the shotgun while another his sidearm.

As soon as they were gone, Bunny crawled out of the desk and took her time to catch up with the escaping prisoners.

Gunshots rang out upstairs. Men and women were shouting, cursing, yelling and wishing each other dead. Bunny sneaked upstairs. She tried seeing through the walls again while she was still on the way up, but she couldn't see much. As it turned out, there was a limit to how much her x-ray vision could pierce through.

But her strategy was working as intended. She had released the prisoners to help throw the remaining police officers into disarray. With some luck, they might even help her kill one or two of them.

Dashing up the stairs and back into the corridor, she took a peek. There was a dead prisoner halfway down the corridor, one of those who salvaged a weapon from the dead cop. There were more gunshots. She turned up her x-ray vision once more and saw that the other five prisoners were holed up in the office, with one of them in his death throes. Bunny could see blood and wounds on his chest. The rest had overturned tables in the hopes of using them as cover and were trading shots with four police officers across the office, also hiding behind tables.

Another three police officers were guarding the back entrance of the precinct. All their guns were out, and one of them was half-kneeling in front of the other two. One of them had a shotgun, the others, their sidearms. It all seemed straightforward from here, easier than her hit on the warehouse district, and all Bunny wanted was to go home after doing her part in safeguarding her family.

Running out of cover, she began shooting at the officers guarding the back entrance. With the advantage of already knowing that they were there, she was able to take aim and gun them down quickly. Bullets whizzed past her, and a few struck her but did no damage; either sliding past her Chemical X2-enforced skin or slamming into her harmlessly. All three police officers were killed by gunshots to the head or heart.

She continued running towards the exit. Time was of the essence as it would only be moments before the survivors in the building realize what was going on. She stopped when she saw, using her x-ray vision (with increasing strain to her eyes), that she was close to the rest of the officers in the office, separated only by a concrete wall. Had she been allowed to break cover, she would have applied her super-strength to break through the wall, but she had to act (somewhat) normal, so she'd decided on another solution when she saw it close by.

There was a window between the corridor and the office. Dashing up to it, she hopped through it, placing herself behind the police officers' cover.

She didn't wait. The moment she was in, she opened fire. The only response came from one of the officers, who turned around to look at her, only to get a bullet to the brain. The rest of them fell in short order. The criminals on the other end stood up when they realized they were no longer being fired upon, which was quite fortunate for them since they had run out of ammunition. Bunny jumped on top of an office table, looking like some kind of savior.

"Who are you?" a woman who was one of the prisoners asked, looking both shocked and afraid at the same time, still unsure if Bunny had been the infiltrator who was behind the breakout; after all, how many kids could boast about overwhelming a police station?

Bunny did not reply. Instead, she raised her pistol and massacred the prisoners for their troubles with her remaining ammunition, which was quite unfortunate for them - and for the first time since this whole thing began, everything fell quiet. Leaving the office, she began doing a room-by-room search for any survivors unaccounted by intelligence. As far as she knew, she'd killed exactly the number of targets Rook had given her, and then some. The civilians in reception were collateral damage, considered enemies for witnessing her operation. It was something Bunny knew she would cry about later, but her duty was her duty, and her family and friends were the only things she cared about.

"This is Rook, come in," her USDO supervisor said on the radio, which Bunny had been hiding in her jacket. "What's the sitrep? Over."

Bunny pulled the radio of her jacket and pressed the call button. "Ten tangos down, all of them KIA. Ten charlies down, all KIA too. Did Bunny do good?" she asked, though her voice was cracking up; at that moment, she felt as if she had gone back in time a week, reduced to a helpless infant. The realization of what she had done had hit her the moment she talked about it, even if it was through thick military lingo.

"Bunny did great," Rook laughed on the other end of the radio. "Sweep for survivors or witnesses, extraction in five, not after - cops will be coming back soon as their radio operator is dead. Over and out."

Bunny strained her eyes once more for a quick scan of the area with her x-ray vision but stopped as soon as she'd gone through the rooms she had been through before. Not a living soul was alive after she had plowed through the area like a force of nature. But there was one room she hadn't checked, and it was near the corner of the station's back, nestled between the locker room and a combined closet and storage area, just out of reach of Bunny's x-ray vision the whole time.

Dashing there, remembering that time was always in short supply during a black operation, Bunny pressed her ear against the door; her eyes were hurting, but her ears weren't. Focusing on the space within, she could hear it clearly. Someone was whispering to himself almost maniacally.

"No… no… Yes… Do I… No… Shouldn't have taken it, man…" a man on the inside said to himself feverishly, before laughing bitterly, almost maniacally. Bunny thought that he was likely someone similar to the junkie she had shot right at the beginning of her rampage. Most importantly, he had likely heard everything that had transpired in the precinct, making him a witness, a liability. An enemy, a threat to her family. He would have to be killed.

Bunny opened the door, but carefully, slowly, gently, giving the knob a sluggish twist before inching it open just enough for her to squeeze through the crack. The lighting in there was dim; the light bulb above was old and dirty.

But the man in the room was no junkie, and the room Bunny was in wasn't any ordinary room. There was a counter up front, and behind that counter were racks upon racks of weapons. All kinds of shotguns, all kinds of rifles and submachineguns. Pistols. Ammo boxes containing thousands of rounds. All around her were body armor with 'TPD' printed on the back.

The man who was muttering to himself was in full SWAT gear. Sitting down on a bench, he rocked himself as he continued mumbling incoherently, something about 'shouldn't have taken it'. The way he was doing it disturbed Bunny somewhat. It had to end quickly. It had to end now. Raising her stolen pistol in panic, she pulled the trigger - only for nothing but an audible click to happen.

She'd tried to fire an empty weapon in her panic. The SWAT cop jumped to his feet and whirled around, revealing red, glowing eyes behind shaded ballistic goggles, catching Bunny off-guard as he fired his shotgun from the hip, knocking Bunny off her feet. But it wasn't the pain that was seared into her mind - it was those red eyes, and whatever twisted face of a man she could see underneath that helmet and goggles. Something was terribly wrong here.

Bunny got up as quickly as she could, but the drugged SWAT had already pumped his shotgun and fired another shell, stumbling Bunny back. The enhanced girl caught hold of the door behind her to prevent herself from falling, but the SWAT cop pumped his shotgun once more and fired a third shell, causing her to fall through the doorway.

"You're under arrest!" the SWAT cop warned Bunny in a distorted, growling demon voice. Something was very, very wrong with the man beside the fact that his eyes were glowing red. Getting up again, Bunny couldn't even get into a fighting stance when she felt a kick in the chest, which sent her flying into the wall, which she thought had cracked from the force. Somehow, the SWAT cop's kick felt stronger than his shotgun blast! 'How is it even possible!?' Bunny managed to think despite getting shot at.

"You have the right to remain silent!" the drugged SWAT taunted Bunny as he pointed his shotgun at a kneeling Bunny. Before he could fire a shell right in her face, Bunny pushed the barrel of the gun aside, causing the man to miss. She jumped to her feet and gave the SWAT an uppercut at the same time, pushing the odd cop back The SWAT gurgled and coughed as if he was about to throw his lungs up.

Bunny followed this up with a jump-kick, but the SWAT cop was exceedingly fast, knocking her kick out of the way. She'd nearly gone out of balance, but she landed just fine.

"Anything you say may be used against you!" he continued saying as if deliriously, voice still distorted and unnatural. He'd pointed his shotgun at her again, but she'd punched it aside, causing him to miss again. Taking advantage of her momentous, she tackled him next into the wall before launching herself into another flying kick, crushing his shotgun into him. She thought she could hear cracks when it happened.

For the moment, the SWAT cop seemed stunned. At the very least, he wasn't abusing the Miranda Warning. Grabbing his shotgun, Bunny wrested the gun away before breaking it in two. The SWAT cop, in the meantime, had recovered enough to pull his pistol out and aim it in good speed, only for Bunny to smack it away and plunge her fist into his stomach, putting it right through the actual organ.

The SWAT cop was coughing blood out immediately, which shot out like a projectile. Bunny had seen a glimpse of it. Somehow, his blood wasn't red. It was almost black in color.

"Y-you have the right… the right to remain silent…" the drugged SWAT croaked stubbornly. Bunny pulled her fist out of his stomach. Her arm was drenched up to the elbow in black blood, which she found so disgusting that she could retch from it. The SWAT cop fell to his knees, having been previously pinned to the wall by Bunny. "the right… remain… silent." He then collapsed; even with whatever he had been consuming that made him so strong, the wound he suffered was too severe for a normal human being.

"This is Rook. I heard shots going off, over," her USDO supervisor had called again on the radio. Bunny was wiping her hand on her skirt when it happened. She pulled her radio out again to reply.

"Bunny here. There was another tango - he was really… special..." Bunny said, but couldn't complete her description. With the unprecedented discovery and her limited vocabulary, it was too difficult for her to do so. In the end, she let go of the call button anyway.

"We'll talk about it at debriefing. I can hear sirens. Extricate yourself, over and out," Rook said.

Bunny, however, needed some time. The fight with the red-eyed SWAT cop was a little tougher than most, and she could still feel a dull pain in her chest. Pressing against it, she could feel a bruise forming. How was it possible? Normal people weren't supposed to be this strong!

Straightening herself up, she took a deep breath of the warm, conditioned air… Which was when she felt an itch in her nose. She twitched it and rubbed it to no avail. Instead, what came was a horrible sensation, which felt as if something was about to explode in her nose-

She sneezed. Her hand had gone up to her nose instinctively, covering her face when she did. Upon withdrawing her face, however, she was met with a ghastly sight. Her hand was spattered with blood. Something was snaking down her nostrils, so she wiped it away, only to see more blood on her hand. The itch did not go away immediately, but it eventually did, only to be replaced with a dull kind of pain that showed itself out the door, too, after it'd made its presence known.

Bunny was confused. The injury she had sustained from her fight with the SWAT cop could hardly even be called as such - how was she bleeding from her nose? She didn't even remember getting hit in the head either, not by hand or foot, not by a shotgun.

But the itch and blood had gone away quickly. Dismissing it as just 'coincidence', Bunny dashed away from the police station upon hearing the distant wails of a police siren…