John Ridley - Those Who Walk in Darkness

Soledad fired again. A bullet pounded itself into Vaughn's thigh with a loud, dull thud that sounded simultaneously with the crack of his shattered femur. The combo of the new wound and the damage it caused put concentration, mind control and even stable, moment-to-moment thought way beyond Vaughn.

"Nothing special for you." Soledad sneering."Just a regular old bullet." She holstered her gun. Stepping quickly, Soledad covered the distance between herself and the collapsing freak before her.

Vaughn looked up.

Soledad swung her leg in a crescent. The outside of her boot pounded the right side of Vaughn's head. He twisted some, staggered. Somehow he stayed upright.

Soledad: "I take back what I said. You're not hardly gods."

Her leg moved in an inward arc. This time the inside of her foot that came smacking into the left side of Vaughn's face brought him back to center and straightened him some.

"Fact…"

Soledad tensed her body, spun in a tight, fast pivot. Like Tashjian had minded her, she thrust her leg at the last second. The target for the blunt of her heel: the center of Vaughn's chest.

Contact.

Vaughn took to the air trailing streamers of blood from his twin wounds. He sailed, he hit the door behind him. Hit it hard, hard enough to knock it from its rusted hinges and send it to the ground just a moment before Vaughn thudded motionless next to it.

Soledad over the metanormal. She looked down on him."You, your kind, you're nothing at all."

Stepping over the body, Soledad entered the room, checked on Vin and Eddi. Both were breathing, if just barely. Next she checked herself. It seemed like there wasn't a part of her that wasn't bruised, swollen or cut. It seemed like there wasn't a space on her body that wasn't flowing blood. Soledad unhitched a radio from Vin, dropped to the floor as she tuned to Tac-1. She called out her 10–20 and requested a rush on a bus. And then she sat and waited and listened to the quiet.

It wasn't entirely quiet.

There was the sound of a light breeze scraping along the building and the rustle of tree branches. There were birds somewhere not too far away. There were sounds of life. Everyday, normal life.

And there was a siren. Way in the distance, coming closer, was the wail of a racing ambulance.

And there was something else, a scraping noise that wasn't wind or trees, and wasn't outside the building but right behind Soledad.

She turned.

Vaughn clutching a metal rod, a part of a car or maybe the building, but sharp where it was twisted off at one end.

A flash of motion. A blur of hands moving with frantic speed.

Vaughn slashed.

Soledad scrambled out her gun. By the time she had it aimed, it was over. Vaughn was slumping to the ground having jammed the metal up under his rib cage and deep into the cavity of his chest. Blood came like a fountain as his heart pumped itself dry.

He said, as he faded: "… Can have your world… Don't want it…"

Soledad's gun kept up a stare at Vaughn.

He said: "… Can't wait to see what the truth does to you…"

Vaughn went down and stayed down.

Soledad spent a long moment looking at Vaughn's body. After that she went back to listening to the approaching siren. She went back to waiting.

Life was very okay. It was nowhere near great. It was not even good. It was just barely better than all right. Yarborough was dead. Vin had one less leg and would be permanently gimped. Eddi had a badly smacked-up knee but was expected to make a satisfactory recovery. It was possible, if she regained mobility, stability, she would be allowed to return to active duty on an element. In exchange for all that, one freak was captured and another dead. So, for Soledad, as she rode in Ian's Jag, top down, wind tearing through her hair, up PCH north toward Napa Valley—toward five days of rest and only rest—life was very okay.

She'd earned five days. She'd earned way more than that, but she felt like she could take five days. She felt like, five days from work, and the world wasn't going to end. The debriefing Soledad went through after serving the warrant told everyone that the immediate crisis had passed. The final verdict: The telepath, Vaughn, and the metal morpher, Aubrey, were acting alone in an effort to exact revenge for a perceived wrong. And although it appears that meta-normals maintain surreptitious contact with one another, it is at best a loose and unorganized association rather than an extensive and potentially dangerous network.

Case closed.

Even at that, Soledad carried her O'Dwyer with her just as she carried an off-duty piece. The job remained her life.

There was a coda: an award or plaque or some such thing that Soledad was supposed to be given, that Rysher was desperate to give to her, so that he could have his picture taken with MTac's top cop.

One more photo for his wall.

Soledad told Rysher yes, she'd be honored to accept the award. Or plaque.

Yeah.

She checked her watch. Right about then Rysher was probably doing some kind of embarrassment dance to cover the absence of the guest of honor, who was at the moment riding north. Top down, wind tearing through her hair.

Soledad found herself to be surprisingly happy about having the confrontation with Vaughn behind her. Besides being alive, she never fully realized before exactly how much pleasure there was in spending empty time with someone you cared about. And with every mile traveled she found herself taking more delight in the distance put between her and Los Angeles and the LAPD, MTacs and the responsibility of being a watchman in the struggle between freaks and normals.

Soledad thought about what Ian, just days prior, had said to her. Let's go away, he'd said. Let's get away from the rest of the world. At the time, Soledad went through the motions of considering the maybes of the deal. But now, the Jag's odometer scrolling upward, getting away and staying away seemed like more than just a remote, someday possibility.

Why not?

Soledad, in record time, had or had been part of putting down five freaks. The amen to that: and lived to tell. Hadn't she done her part? Didn't those numbers add up to some kind of ongoing sabbatical?

Why not?

The department recognized—was forced to recognize—her gun was a viable weapon against muties. It was only a matter of time before it went into wide use among MTacs. Wasn't that legacy enough to deserve an early retirement?

Why not?

And, yeah, an element was nearly wiped out, but Eddi would recover. Busted knee or no, Eddi would be back doing work in short order. Another element would get built up around her and no doubt, her leading the charge, they'd all be BAMF in no time. And Soledad didn't have to entirely kiss things good-bye. She could work R&D, keep developing hardware for the frontline cops. She could transfer to DMI, start doing some HUMINT for the PD. That's where a good number of half-busted MTacs eventually ended up anyway. And knowing your enemy was the first step toward kicking your enemy's ass.

So with all that balancing things out, why not step aside and let some new blood pump through MTac?

Soledad looked over at Ian, and Ian looked to Soledad and smiled. He was plainly, purely happy. He'd put in the time and ended up with someone he cared for. At that moment, for every moment in his foreseeable future, that was all the more simple bliss he needed.

Her hand to his. A tight squeeze. A transferred affection.

Over the noise of the air whipping around the convertible, Soledad said: "You're right."

"About…?"

"We're no good for anyone but us. And probably we're no good back there." She committed."So maybe we shouldn't go back."

A smile between them.

Ian's head turned to center, saw the black BMW—asshole-driven way over the speed limit—jumping up over a rise in the road, shooting toward them across the center line.