The sun beat down mercilessly through the windshield. Tek sighed and sank down lower in the driver’s seat. The person next to her shifted uncomfortably in her seat, and Tek glanced over at her. She’d always assumed that Shanree was female, but realized now she had no idea how gender worked on Earth-94. Shanree did have curves in the normal places, but she also had golden, metallic skin that made her look very much like a robot. Tek wondered if Shanree’s skin felt like metal.
“It feels like skin,” Shanree said suddenly, still looking out the passenger side window. Tek almost jumped out of her seat before she remembered the strange ability of the Jannui. She would have to be careful what she thought around Shanree. The other woman sighed and sat up straighter in the chair, finally turning to look at Tek.
“I can’t just read your mind,” she said, with a tone that implied she’d explained this many times before. “But if you are thinking hard about something, I can get a glimpse of it. Especially if it’s about me.” She looked pointedly at Tek with the last sentence. The luminescent lines in Tek’s skin turned dark purple for a moment, before fading back to a normal color. The Jannui woman smirked. Tek looked back out the window, though there wasn’t anything new to see.
“Stakeouts suck,” Shanree complained. Even her voice was somewhat of a monotone, which only contributed to the robotic feel for Tek. Still, she was good at her job and, more importantly, from another universe.
“Yeah they do,” Tek agreed. “The first one was okay, but they just keep getting worse.” They’d been staking out various locations all over Earth One’s New York, which is where the main operations branch of the IPF was located. It had been two months since Tek was granted her task force, but red tape had tripped them up again and again. For starters, the only other agent who she’d been able to add to the task force was Shanree, and even that had taken a while. They’d generated some early leads on more versist attacks throughout New York City, though Tek had heard about others across the world. They had to start somewhere, though, and so their start had been staking out various potential meeting points across the city. So far they’d had exactly zero luck.
Tek took a sip of her lukewarm soda and slumped back into the seat, just as a bullet exploded through the windshield and buried itself in the headrest where her head had just been. A second later, another bullet slammed through the windshield and into Shanree’s shoulder.
“What the-” Tek started to shout, but was cut off by additional fire. Keeping her head low, she threw the car into reverse, backing up and stopping just short of smashing the front fender of the car behind her. She slammed the car back into drive, and flew forward, glancing sideways at the injured Shanree. Her shoulder was bleeding; the bright red blood looked strange against her golden skin. The woman was gritting her teeth in pain, but she raised her other arm and pointed out the window at the house they’d been watching. As the car flew by, she tapped the window.
“Tek, look!” she said around her still clenched teeth. “It’s Alderman Sachar!” Tek followed her pointing finger in time to see a middle aged man hustling around the back of the house. He had gray hair and a sharp hook to his nose, but his trademark cane is what really gave him away. Tek looked back at the road in time to swerve out of the way of an oncoming car. Her late reaction bumped the police vehicle up onto the sidewalk, which was fortunately clear of any pedestrians. It also saved their lives, as gunfire erupted from the other vehicle. The bullets punched holes in the trunk of their car, and chewed up the front of the building next to them. Tek lurched back onto the street at the corner and punched it up to full speed until she could confirm there was no one following them. Or shooting at them.
“How bad is it?” she asked Shanree as she started making her way to the nearest hospital. There was no response, and Tek looked over at the other woman. Shanree had passed out, her head lolling forward.
“Shit!” Tek yelled aloud, skidding through a turn at full speed. She hated these versist creeps with a passion. Then she remembered the Alderman walking into the house and she smiled grimly. At least she’d finally gained another lead. Tek was surprised that it possibly went as high as an alderman, but she didn’t care. She’d take them all down, no matter how far up it went.
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The hospital was a buzzing hive of activity when Tek and Shanree arrived. Tek pulled her car straight up to the front entrance. She scrambled out of the car and leapt around to open Shanree’s door. There was already a hospital attendant approaching.
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“Ma’am, you can’t park here, that’s…” her voice trailed off as she noticed the injured and bloody woman in Tek’s arms. There was a moment’s pause, and then the attendant snapped into action. She barked orders into her radio, and almost immediately there were two large men taking Shanree from Tek and wheeling her quickly inside. Tek had to hurry and follow before she lost sight of them.
Eventually they arrived at an operating room, and an orderly kicked her out into the hall. After an hour of anxious waiting, the door opened and Tek followed the operating party to a different hospital room, where she was again shoved out into the hall. The noise and chaos was lesser here, she realized. With a small groan, Tek slid down to the floor, her back against the wall, and pulled out her phone. She quickly searched online for information about Alderman Sachar, but nothing jumped out at her as fishy, or even interesting. She sighed, and put her phone back in her pocket. Movement at the corner of her eye caught her attention, and she looked down to the end of the hallway to see a man in a leather jacket walk by. Their eyes met and Tek was shocked by how cold his looked. That was a man who didn’t care. Her thoughts briefly imagined him as a hired killer, and then she shook her head. Maybe a bathroom break would make her less jumpy.
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Tek returned to the hallway, but something felt different. It seemed less busy somehow. She felt like she had arrived in the immediate aftermath of a giant explosion of movement. Unsettled, she started to slide back down into her position on the floor when she saw the pool of blood start to leak from behind the nurses’ counter. Tek leapt to her feet, and sprinted down the hall to find a nurse crumpled on the ground behind the counter, a vicious knife wound in her neck. Tek punched the emergency alarm button on the radio, and sprinted out into the main hallway. She caught a glimpse of a leather jacket striding quickly away.
“Skezzing idiot!” she said to herself. “Always trust your freaking instincts.” She watched as the man angled towards the main exit, and then she turned and sprinted back towards Shanree’s operating room. She burst through the door to a scene of carnage. The two nurses and the surgeon all had slit throats, and Shanree had multiple stab wounds. Still, when Tek slammed the door open, the golden skinned woman’s eyes blinked open, and she weakly raised a fist that held a bloody syringe.
“Good girl,” Tek said under her breath, and then she fired her pistol at the window across the room. Cracks appeared throughout the glass, and then Tek launched her body at it. The window exploded outward, and Tek crashed to the concrete outside the hospital. Leaping up immediately, she sprinted towards the entrance, just catching sight of the man in the leather jacket. He was heading towards the parking lot, so Tek gritted her teeth and ran as fast as her body would allow.
She caught up to the man right as he was opening the passenger door of a gray sedan. He noticed her approaching, and he ducked low as she fired. She was fairly certain he didn’t have a weapon beyond the knife, so Tek continued sprinting towards the man until a bullet pinged off a side mirror in front of her. She skidded into an awkward dive, taking cover behind a vehicle that was two spots away from where she’d last seen the man. It finally clicked in that he had been using the passenger door, which meant he had a partner as the driver. That must’ve been where the bullet came from.
Tek slid down to her belly and looked under the car. She couldn’t see any feet nearby, but before she stood up she heard a thud and realized the man was on top of the cars. She quickly shimmied her way under the car nearest her. There were a couple more thuds, getting louder, as the man jumped his way towards her. Eventually he landed on the very car she was under, and then he stopped. Tek held her breath, cursing in the back of her mind about the insane situation she’d found herself in. The man continued to stand there, then he shouted something unintelligible, presumably to his partner.
After waiting another long moment, Tek decided she needed to move before the man jumped off the car and decided to look underneath. Quietly sliding off her boot, she readied her weapon in the other hand. Then she launched the boot out the side and heard it thunk up against the next car’s side. She army crawled out from under the trunk, ready to aim up at the man, and blindly hoping he was distracted. Instead, motion to her right caused her to launch her body sideways as a stream of bullets flew past her. She hit the ground hard, but then rolled up into a shooter’s crouch and fired. She watched as a blonde woman, also in leather, took the bullet in the center of her chest and fell back in a spray of red.
Tek quickly adjusted her position, expecting return fire from the man, but none came. After a moment she heard the roar of an engine. She leapt to her feet in time to see the gray sedan speeding away. She allowed herself a moment of disappointment before she checked on the woman. Surprisingly, the blonde woman was still breathing, though faintly. Tek loomed over her, and the woman’s eyes opened halfway.
“Who are you?” Tek asked, almost shouting. The woman’s eyes closed again, and Tek slapped her cheek. The eyes fluttered open once more.
“Who sent you? Who are you?” she asked frantically. The woman’s lips quirked in a tiny smile.
“You’re next,” she said, in barely a whisper. Then her eyes closed again, and Tek knew she was gone. She sighed and slumped back on her knees. Then she looked back at the pandemonium that was now the hospital. She sighed again. The captain was really going to regret giving her this task force.