Justice dragged herself out of the water and onto the sandy coastline of Aberdeen Penitentiary, the moon reflecting in her black catsuit as she caught her breath. Had it been a sunny daytime, the place that the prison had been built on seemed like a rather pleasant place to sunbathe, had it not been for the imposing structure built upon the island and the blanket of rain that had been beating down upon it for the past hour. At least, it’s what most people – especially Sandra – think when looking at a 12 foot tall prison wall made of cast concrete. Usually, it would have been impossible to scale, but Justice had her Spider gloves and boots. As for cameras, while she could be spotted by whoever managed security, Justice’s outfit was dark enough so that she’d be able to blend in where there was enough shadow.
However, as she attempted to scale the wall, Justice found that she slipped back down to the sand. She tried again, and the result was fruitless. It didn’t take a genius to deduce what the issue was. However, this meant her method of infiltration – climbing over the wall – wouldn’t work. She’d need to find some other improvised way into the facility if she was to get her information. Through her heads-up display, Justice called her aide.
“Jailbird,” began Justice, scanning the prison, “did you test the Spider gloves on wet surfaces?”
Guiltily, Jailbird replied “N– Nope… I’m sorry…”
“You don’t need to be!” said Justice, glancing at a watchtower. “Just… if I’m going to get to Fox, I’m going to need to know if anything’s coming into the prison today. The Spider gear and Spinneret should still work indoors, right?”
“B– Based on what you’re telling me about it, yep!” said Jailbird. She paused for a few seconds, as she typed something into her desktop, taking a few more seconds to scan the document. “T– There’s a shipment of food coming in from BVN Ltd. via lorry!”
“Got it, thanks. I’ll call if I get lonely. Do me a favour, put my knuckle dusters in the Panther, and some Thermite.” replied Justice.
“I mean, I get the thermite, but those things?”
“It’s a prison. Who knows who I could face there?”
“A– Alright then, Justice… I love you, stay safe!” Once her support hung up on her, the vigilante closed the call and swam back to the other side of the bridge leading onto the island, under the dark water’s surface. Dragging herself onto the coast, she then bolted through alleyways as she rooted in her utility belt before tossing up a small, automatic drone. The drone then hovered off into the darkness, and – on Justice’s heads-up display – a window popped up, a GPS signal and a camera feed of a single white truck rolling along a highway leading into Redcliff City. How fortunate. It may have been on the road, but it gave her time to attempt to enter it. Entering an empty warehouse, Justice sat down, leaning against the wall.
Navigating menus in her mind, Justice confirmed a prompt labelled ‘CALL PANTHER’. For five minutes, there was nothing, but – loudly – a motorbike sped into the warehouse, nobody sitting on the seat or otherwise driving the vehicle, and then stopped in its tracks with a drift that sent small clouds of dirt into the air, stopping in front of her. The bike itself (although it officially was something improvised in a garage) was a sleek, fairly shiny thing. Shiny, black metal plates adorned the body and covered vital parts of the bike like the engine and gas. A single imposing headlight was built into the face of the bike, leering at the darkness of the warehouse like a predatory cat, prepared to pounce.
Hopping on, Justice revved the bike, before opening a compartment tucked under the handlebars. Placed within this space were two fairly large metal rings, or ‘cuffs’ (they didn’t go around the wrists) with black and green accents tracing their surface, no larger than Justice’s biceps, and a somewhat large sack filled with a dull, dark-reddish clay. Unfortunately, these handy things wouldn’t be useful yet. Pocketing them in her utility belt, she turned her motorbike around and then sped out of the warehouse, its engine loudly roaring as she sped out of the place.
Justice sped through the streets on the Panther, far above any legal limit, and – although a patrol car or two would trail her at a time (just that, eventually pulling over to the side, giving up on the pursuit) – she found the streets of the city relatively quiet that night. And so was the suburbia of the city. There was one issue on her way out of the city. In the dead of night, a young girl in a sleeveless dress – not the best clothes to wear in the cold, merciless rain – slept at the foot of a wilting tree, an umbrella propped up against the tree, her eyes peacefully closed. The young girl, however, began to stir – most likely a result of the blinding headlamp on Justice’s motorbike. Wearily rubbing her eyes, the girl initially turned away from the bike, but – as her eyes adjusted to the light – she slowly turned to discriminate Justice from the shadows of night, and the blinding light of her bike.
“What’s a girl like you doing out here at this time?” asked Justice. “It’s not safe, and you’ll catch a cold with just that umbrella.”
The young girl groaned. “You’re pretty. Are you a ghost?”
Justice paused, deliberating on her next words. “Maybe. But it isn’t safe out here, you could catch the flu, or something horrible like that. What’s your name?”
“Mommy told me not to tell my name to bad strangers, though… Are you a bad stranger?”
The vigilante considered her next words wisely. But eventually, she replied “No.”
“Ok… My name is Ren, pretty ghost lady!”
“That’s a pretty name, Ren. A strong name. But still, why are you out here at such a late hour?” asked Justice.
“Olly’s stuck in the tree…”
“Olly?”
“Olly, my cat!”
Justice stood up off of her motorbike and took a light out of her utility belt. Sure enough, there was a little grey furry thigh, and adjusting the beam of her light showed Justice the face of a particularly scared cat.
Taking off her coat and hat, handing the coat to Ren and placing the latter on her head, Justice ordered “Keep yourself warm while I do this, alright?”
Scaling the tree, Justice managed to snag a closer view of the cat, standing on a branch of the tree, its eyes wide. She attempted to coax it into her arms, but all that the feline did was crane its beady eyes at the vigilante. Sighing, she crawled up the tree on the branch towards the cat, controlling her weight. Swiping the creature into her arms, Justice then jumped down from the tree, landing stably on the pavement.
Ren gasped in awe, seeing Justice land on both her feet. “You’re like a cat!” she commented.
“Just doing my people a favour.” replied Justice, moving back to her bike, setting Olly down in his owner’s lap. “I have to get going, though.”
“Okay! Thank you, Miss Ghost!” replied Ren, holding the vigilante’s coat and hat up for her to take back.
Justice smirked as she pulled her coat back on, drawing the brim of her hat down to her eyes. “Not a problem. But when – and if – you tell your friends about me, don’t call me a ghost…”
“What should I call you then?”
The vigilante paused, and curtly giggled to herself before saying “Mrs. Golubeva.”
As Justice sped off and out of the suburbs, she grinned as Ren smiled and waved, her cat safely in her arms. Then after a few minutes of driving, there was a ringtone in her mind and a notification in her heads-up display. A video feed call from Jailbird. Accepting it, Justice saw that her hacker had become a blushing mess.
“Something wrong?” slyly asked Justice, as she reached the countryside, and buildings began to run thin.
“I– I saw the heightened heartrate replay, y– you can’t just give out our names!” shouted Jailbird, her brow furrowed and face pouty.
“I mean, I never gave out my name… Besides, Golubeva is just that – a surname!”
“But it can be easy evidence for an investigation into us! Our fight to find out just what it is we are could all be ruined just because you felt like a flirt!”
“So you don’t want me to be Mrs. Golubeva anytime? Ever?”
Jailbird paused, caught off guard. Turning away furtively from her video camera as she played with her hair, she muttered “No…”
“Whatever you say, babe.” Justice said, smiling. “Sorry about the hold-up on the investigation, by the way, I–”
“Cat in a tree, I know.” interrupted Jailbird. “I– I saw it in your heightened heartrate replay!”
“Oh, yeah…” began Justice, “I don’t want the chip recording when I… you know, does it ever turn off?”
“D– Don’t worry, it only records if I’m at my computer!”
Breathing a sigh of relief, Justice rolled her bike into a service station – where the truck had apparently stopped for a bit. “I’m by where my GPS says the BVN Ltd. truck stopped.” She caught the drone as it fell to the ground, placing it in her utility belt. “Love you, Jailbird.”
“Love you too…” muttered the hacker, a little less giddy than usual. After that, the line closed.
This wasn’t Justice’s concern, though. Her concern was breaching Aberdeen Penitentiary through this food truck. Slight issue: while its doors were open, Justice had no way of breaching the truck and hiding inside of it. Watching the night, standing outside of the truck, its doors open, was a single man who looked as though he would have been smoking had he not been in a (relatively) public space. Justice had plans for this, though. Taking two coins from her pocket, she tossed one into the air and then threw the second into it, before diving into a shadowed alcove.
The confused trucker flinched, turning to the coin. As he tentatively inched towards it and squatted down to analyse it, Justice snuck past the distracted man and placed a camera on the underside of the truck before sneaking into the back of the truck, hiding behind a stack of crates. After a few seconds of dazed looking around, the trucker pocketed the penny and closed the door of the truck’s cargo hold.
Tapping into the camera she set with her heads-up display, Justice looked at the outside of the van. Sure enough, the vehicle began to gain speed, causing the vigilante to stagger as the vehicle began pulling out of its parking bay. After gaining her footing, Justice sat down and simply waited, watching the horizon of midnight speed past the truck.
When the truck entered the city, Justice saw that it was still raining. Her catsuit having dried off, she adjusted it and lowered the zip, breathing as the truck drove onto the bridge leading into Aberdeen Penitentiary. The prison from the front was less of a treatment centre and more of a cold, uncaring facility. Cold, concrete walls bordered the prison, and at the two corners in the front of the prison were two large, imposing towers. The guards on the ground moved aside, pushing a gate which opened, letting the truck in. Keeping the truck from the prisoners only was a mesh fence.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Justice reviewed the parameters of the situation and decided now was the time to act. Taking a lighter and the sack of clay thermite from her utility belt (naturally in different pouches), she began to set it on the wall of the container, pushing the crates of prison food away from her. Checking her spy camera, Justice saw that the truck had entered a concrete hallway, away from prying eyes. She took a long fuse from her belt and stuck it into the clay, before moving a safe distance away and lighting it.
The flame travelled along the fuse, before the thermite clay lit up in an awesome light show. For a few minutes, the thermite stayed lit, before the flames died out completely. Upon verifying that it was dead, Justice kicked the metal circle out of her way, diving out of the hole that she’d made in the container and bolting into an alcove. Fortunately, it seemed as though the oblivious trucker hadn’t noticed this spectacle. Turning on her heads-up display, Justice called Jailbird, saying “I’ve managed to break into Aberdeen.”
“Good!” said Jailbird. “Alright, I’m uploading the blueprint to your neurochip. Cherlyn Fox, inmate ID #110992 is being held in solitary confinement in the… B Block, don’t forget that!”
“Got it.” said Justice, nodding as the map popped up in her heads-up display. “Anything else I should know?”
“Not that I know of…” said Jailbird. “Good luck!”
With this, Justice closed the call and took off for the prison block. Pressing up against a wall whenever she heard the footsteps of a guard ambling the muddy back of the prison, she rolled through, in order to eventually spot a door. Unfortunately, this door was protected via keycard, demanding that she subdue a guard if she was to enter the prison complex. Justice hid behind some crates as a security guard began to pass her by. After swiping the card from the patrolling guard’s pocket, Justice slinked back into the shadows, before slotting her card into the card reader. The door clicked open, and Justice strode into the hallway.
Much like its outside walls, the inside of the prison was brutalist. At least the floors had been tiled. Seeing a security camera in the corner, Justice almost panicked before remembering that Jailbird had installed a chip into her Volto mask that jammed most security cameras for as long as the chip was picked up by them. Of course, this was toggleable. While heat-seeking cameras would still spot her, Justice knew Aberdeen Penitentiary wouldn’t be armed with those. Not even the facility that trained her used those. Too much of a hassle to install. Checking her HUD, Justice looked at her location on the mini-map. Just past the door were the prison cells. Not the holding cells, or the solitary confinement, but the actual prison block. Justice readied herself before quietly slinking into the hall of rooms.
Then suddenly, the lights flickered off, and there was a great confusion. The confused convicts shared hushed whispers as they panicked. The lights went off early. As this was established, one convict pushed their door to the side. After that, another prisoner opened their door and walked out. Then another. Until the whole room was filled with a rabble of prisoners, all confused, and all beginning to get agitated. Once two guards entered, the cell block then broke out into an all-out riot in the dark. Justice dove under a punch sent her way by one of the prisoners as the first few punches flew, turning on her sonar vision to gain clarity. Each hostile was illuminated in a different shade of red, the strength of the colour based on distance.
Reaching into her pockets Justice took out her ‘knuckle dusters’, locking the two rings around her shoulders. The two rings turned into a sort of cold, gelatinous liquid or slime, wrapping around her arms and forming gauntlets, as Justice used her HUD to activate the devices. As the rings solidified around her forearms attached to their initial form via suspenders, Justice began to scan the hallway. Standing above a prostrate, scrawnier prisoner, beaten bloody, were three larger prisoners who’d somehow managed to procure batons. Rolling through the crowd, her large, flowing coat confusing the horde of prisoners that stepped too close, Justice stopped at the cornered prisoner’s location and sent a punch into the chin of one of the men standing over him. The man was sent flying into the nearby wall, the impact sounding like a small explosion. Some of the prisoners shouted in panic as this happened. “The riot guards are here!” shouted one.
However, before she could recuperate, Justice was hit in the left arm by a baton, causing a loud snap and a pain so searing it caused her to stagger backwards, the only thing keeping it from going limp being her ‘knuckle dusters’. “It’s not the guards!” shouted the prisoner who hit her. “It’s… It’s this bitch in spandex!”
“Who?”
Recovering, Justice felt her adrenaline beginning to spike as she felt a small droning pain at the back of her head. “Justice.” she answered. With a loud punch to the prisoner that had hit her, sending him to the floor, Justice turned to the rest of the crowd. “Submit, and retreat to your cells now, or be destroyed.”
One prisoner shouted, and it was easy to see him, and turn to the side, slamming him into the floor. The criminals put whatever weapons they had managed to improvise or seize away, before retreating to their cells. As the scrawny prisoner attempted to leave, too, Justice lifted him up and held him against the wall. Raising her arm, ready to punch, she barked “Where is Cherlyn Fox being held?”
“Th– That lady?” asked the scrawny prisoner, flinching as Justice inched her fist closer to his face. “She’s being held in solitary confinement! But… with this power cut–”
Suddenly, there was a loud sound, as a man burst through the doors. Turning to look at him, Justice saw that the man was dressed in militaristic body armour, his face bloodied and bruised, the visor of his helmet cracked. Most likely some kind of riot guard.
Delirious, the guard weakly shouted “Cherlyn Fox got out!”
“Is she still in the facility?” shouted Justice, walking through the crowd of prisoners still filing into their cells.
“Y– Yeah…” weakly groaned the guard, staggering to the ground. “She– She’s a freak!”
“What did she do?”
“When the power cut out, she just started bolting it to the kitchen… She knocked out the chef, and started dragging him… Me and the rest of Phil’s crew tried pulling her off, but she just stopped, took one of those kitchen knives and– Oh, God…”
Justice paused, watching the panicking man before turning to the prisoners. “Someone get this man medical help!” she barked. “If you don’t…”
Justice cracked her knuckles.
Almost immediately, one prisoner stood up and tore off the sleeve of his jacket, using it as a dressing for the guard’s wounds. Seeing this, Justice left the room, and began to run. Opening her minimap, Justice began to navigate through the halls. She didn’t try to make it to the solitary confinement block, though – she already knew that it simply would not be viable. After a few minutes of stumbling, Justice found the kitchen. The bodies of the guards were left in the corners – visibly riot guards, based on the fact they were armed – but Justice only saw one of these riot guards’ guns taken – a pistol.
Near one of the bodies, Justice saw a trail of blood leading into the exhaust panel above the grill of the kitchen. The panel had been unscrewed and on the bloody counter, although no blood covered it. It was easy to deduce where Cherlyn had escaped. Shooting a rope up with her Spinneret, Justice hurtled up the shaft and out of the prison building, onto its rooftop.
Up there, the rain was still falling, but Justice saw blood being washed off of the roof and falling onto the ground, heading in a trail going along the side length of the rooftop. A smaller building sat below, Cherlyn running along with her hostage, and Justice jumped down, sprinting in pursuit of the lady.
“Fox, stop running!” shouted Justice. “I just need to ask a question!”
Cherlyn shouted back “As if! I know what you’ll do! You’re just gonna put me back in jail, with those meanies!”
“It’s for your own good, Fox!” shouted Justice. “And besides, this prison isn’t for you. There’s a mental institute I can get you transferred to, best of its kind, far from–”
“Shut up!” Cherlyn interrupted, tossing a knife stored in her opened straitjacket up to Justice as she fell onto the grass of the prison courtyard, the vigilante barely dodging it. Then she began to throw more, forcing Justice to duck behind a parapet. “Shut up, shut up, shut up! I don’t care, I don’t want to!”
“Far from the… the bad people in there! It’s the Rockford Family Institute, other side of the city! Just… put the cook down. And speak to me, Ms. Fox. I have some questions.”
It wasn’t clear to Justice if Cherlyn’s eyes were tearful, or if the rain was just trailing down her cheeks. Nonetheless, she stopped, turned to face Justice, and set the unconscious Phil down onto the grass. Pouting as Justice jumped down onto the courtyard, she didn’t resist as the younger lady redid her straitjacket.
“That’s good,” said Justice, “you’re a good girl, Cherly–”
“I didn’t do it for you.” snapped Cherlyn. “I did it for Avith…”
Justice didn’t say anything. Instead, she hugged the lady. A sign of comfort. Once it was clear that Cherlyn had her fill with the hug, she finally began to interrogate.
“Me and a friend of mine have been doing some digging.” said Justice, sitting down next to Cherlyn after calling the police. “Who is A. Bautista?”
Cherlyn looked around, as though someone may have been listening in, before she began to speak. “He’s a freak.”
“Elaborate.”
“His daddy had my Vito killed years ago…” said the woman. “And the rest of the gang… everyone… You wouldn’t know them, though.”
“And then?”
“Mr. Bautista died. So his ward, the guy you want to talk about, inherited his empire while I was rotting in jail… I don’t know everything, that’s just what one of his boys said to me, before…” she gagged, and mimed the slitting of a throat.
“Is there anything else you heard?”
“Yeah. I heard he’s shipping convicts in from up north – America. Some kind of operation he’s doing, just… extracting people…”
“Alright. That’s good, Cherlyn. You’ve said all that you need to. You can rest easy.”
The lady was silent. But slowly, a grin – a wide grin – came to her face, pulling Justice in for a hug. “Thank you!”
It didn’t last for long, though. Justice heard sirens in the distance, before two beat cops burst out the building and into the courtyard, toting guns. She craned her head towards them, but did not care. Aiming her arm up, as the officers began to threaten to fire, she shot her Spinneret out and hurtled past the officers, dropping a smoke grenade. She knew Cherlyn wouldn’t be hurt, even with her crimes; the deed wouldn’t go down well with the criminal population.
“Jailbird,” she began, calling her aide, “did you get all of that?”
“Yeah…” she said. “A– American convicts… Did you hear, by the way?”
“Hear what?”
“I think there were some big names among them… This French thief, Arséne De L’Unetelle, and his gang just… disappeared from the grid entirely…”
“Isn’t that normal?”
“He… He– I dunno how to describe it, but he had a gimmick, or impulse. Something he had to do. Every four or so months, he’d usually rob one thing, even if it was small. His teachers and his psychologist always said it was a habit for him.”
“I see. That’s all, I’ll see you at home, Jailbird. Love you.”
“L– Love you too!”
Justice squinted as she looked around after closing the call as she walked around the prison. The rain had subsided, and – with this – both beat cops and some SWAT had come and managed to secure areas of the prison left untouched by Justice, and naturally, they were beginning to make their rounds throughout, securing the prison. Making her way out of the prison, Justice called her motorbike and closed her trench coat to protect from the rain, smiling as she saw Cherlyn giddily skipping into the back of one of the police cars. She’d be in better hands. Her contemplation of the convict’s fate was then halted, as she turned to greet Katja.
The pretty young officer flinched, stammered, before saying “You caught me off guard there.”
“As I was taught to.”
“Bad day?”
“Great day. I’m on the tail of what may be an international criminal conspiracy related to the murder of a media company CEO’s son.”
“Whatever you find relaxing, I guess… Well, just give me a call if you–”
“I need something.”
“Do tell.”
Justice paused, considering her words. “Make sure Fox gets some sort of psychiatric aid. And not placed in this prison again.”
“I’ll see what I can do.” replied Katja, smiling and walking back to her patrol car, adjusting her cap. Justice followed behind. “So, what’s this… conspiracy you’re talking about?”
“I had a word with Cherlyn Fox about a name seen in a transaction – A. Bautista.”
“Do you know the first name?”
“I wouldn’t have excluded it if I did. According to Fox, though, his organisation funded a great exodus of convicts out of America.”
Katja’s brow raised, curious. “Any evidence?”
“None, other than the name listed in the transactions of the CEO itself,” said Justice, “oddly enough, someone Mr. Moldoff was paying.”
“Contract killing?”
“I don’t doubt that, but why? And more importantly, who? Why Alan Moldoff? He was just a kid – his kid.”
“You don’t get to the top in this city without any blood. Get that document to us, I’ll see what I can do.” said Katja, turning away to bark at some staring police, who promptly turned away and marched off. Turning back around to face Justice, she only let out a single word – “So–” – before she realised that the vigilante had disappeared into the night.
Almost like a phantom.