Volume 2: Prophase

Issue 1: Stitch, Professional Hero

Jannette Adrian Churchwell

By Nova

A soft chorus of gunfire crackled in the distance, too far away for me to stop.

But not too far for me to clean up.

My eyes tracked the skyline, which lit the evening fog with a soft glow. I searched for signs of the usual suspects; a flying robot, a figure rapidly descending through the dark, or even, if the shooters were particularly unlucky, a glowing comet.

And if we were both unlucky, a pair of white wings.

I didn’t see anything, thankfully. I’d be going into this alone, which kept the edge off at the very least. I sped into the night. The electric engine of my motorcycle thrummed with a high-pitch whine. Warm yellow street lights cast a sickly glow on my bike, contrasting hideously with its dust-stained white-and-red paint job. There wasn’t much traffic; it was late on a weekday after all, but I still flipped the traffic switch on my handlebars. In front of me, traffic lights switched to green, keeping cars out of my way.

I drove, block after block, north as I went deeper into the Mission District. The bike’s police scanner had already lit up with chatter, talking about the gunfire, but no one seemed to have any idea what was happening. I didn’t have a clue myself—I wasn’t exactly familiar with the Mission District. I knew we were in Los Reales territory, and deep enough to keep out Dragon’s Teeth or the Yakuza, so it probably wasn’t a border skirmish. No mention of any villains either, so, thankfully, it probably wasn’t a powerfight.

I wasn’t really in the mood to deal with a villain tonight anyways.

I guess it could have been an indie villain, or maybe just rival streets going at it? I didn’t know Los Reales well enough to tell whether infighting fit their profile… but it would make my life a lot easier if it did.

I was only a block or two away when the gunfire stopped. Did they know I was coming? Setting up an ambush? Hopefully they hadn’t executed anyone and just bailed. I didn’t know if I could track them down if they scattered.

I rounded the final corner and was greeted with a scene that I wished still shocked me. A handful of bodies lay in the street, blood pooling beneath them, as four men were rifling through their pockets. The four all wore white shirts with red bandanas in their pockets, while their victims on the ground had no such uniformity.

I gulped, uneasy at this revelation. I had expected some kind of gang skirmish, but this looked like a mugging gone horribly wrong…

A couple of the Los Reales gangsters looked up as I skidded to a halt. A chatter of panicked Spanish rose up from them as they recognized me, even though my look wasn’t the most… distinctive. My most interesting feature was my gray—or silver, if you were being generous—hair. For my costume, I wore little more than a set of scrubs, a lab coat, and a blue surgical mask. While my current outfit only resembled what I had originally… borrowed from the hospital, it still hardly matched most people’s expectations of what a hero was.

But this didn’t change the fact that I was a hero.

And I had a job to do.

I stepped off my bike and strode towards the gangsters in front of me, stopping only ten feet from them. In the background, I could hear the faint wail of sirens, nearing, but still too far to be of any help right now. Two of the four Los Reales guys pulled guns, while the other two seemed to hasten the pace of their looting. “Aye, Stitch, beat it! It’s a… personal matter!” one shouted at me.

“C-come on, you know I can’t do that,” I said, a little quieter than I liked too. I glanced at the bodies. Judging by the pools of blood on the ground, if they were still alive, I had to act fast. I cleared my throat. “Alright, guys. I’ve seen your faces, you know how this goes. Give up and I’ll keep you out of the hospital.”

“It’s a big city, can’t find all of us.” He sounded confident, but his gun shook in his hand.

I sighed. He knew better than that, but he must have been the leader. Maybe he wanted to look tough to impress the others. “And them?” I asked, motioning to the bodies on the ground.

He gulped, but didn’t respond. The other gunman said something in Spanish to one of the looters who replied, “No.” Were they looking for something? Is that why they hadn’t bolted yet? By now, the faint cry of sirens in the background had steadily gotten louder… couldn’t they hear that?

If the bodies were still alive, they didn’t have much more time. This clearly wasn’t a simple mugging or turf skirmish. Something else was going on here and they weren’t going to surrender—take the easy way out—unless they got what they wanted. I didn’t have time to figure out what was going on here; I needed to act fast before I had four corpses on my hands.

I rushed towards them suddenly, without warning. I wasn’t super fast—my legs were far too short for me to even be as quick as the fastest baseliner—but I could push myself harder than a normal person. My leg muscles and ligaments tore apart at the strain, then instantly healed, my power immediately stitching them back together. There was a shout of surprise from the gunman as he fired a few shots in my direction. The first few missed as I narrowed the gap between us, but the last one hit. It passed straight through my left kidney.

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

Urine, waste, and blood spilled from my ruptured kidney, flooding the body cavity. This probably would have been lethal to any baseliner. If untreated, it could lead to a deadly infection, even if they survived the blood loss. But my power traced through my body the moment the bullet had left it. Endorphins rushed through me, destroyed tissue regrew, urine and waste safely shuttled into my excretory system. The wound itself sealed up, leaving only a small red stain on my costume.

In those few seconds it took me to close the distance, get shot, and recover, the other gangsters were still reacting. Shouts of panic rose up from them as I lashed out with one hand towards the closest gunman. He tried to pull back, but wasn’t fast enough. I gave him a firm slap on his cheek, letting my hand rest there for a moment.

It was all it took for my power to get to work.

My power traced through his anatomy, jumping from skin to muscle, flesh to bone, cell to cell. I instantly learned he was in good shape, though he really needed to see a dentist, and looked to have a serious nicotine dependency. If I had more time, I would have solved those problems. But for now, I needed to focus on taking him down. My powers ripped through his muscle fibers, tearing them apart in an instant. As he began to crumple, I flipped a switch in his endocrine system which started pumping out waves of melatonin. Simultaneously, my powers reached into his brain and triggered a REM sleep cycle. Hopefully, he’d be out cold before he felt too much pain.

I backed away from the collapsing gangster and ducked just in time to avoid a well-aimed headshot from the other gunman. Just because I could regenerate, it didn’t mean that a bullet through the brain couldn’t put me down for a while. I slipped behind a parked car and surveyed the scene through the window. One of the two looters beat a hasty retreat while the other shouted at him, clearly furious. Another shot from the remaining gunman shattered the window I was peering through, scattering broken glass all over my face. Blood quickly welled up from the cuts, which sealed up in a heartbeat, but still left my face covered in a sticky red.

As blood dripped onto my lab coat’s collar, dyeing it a deep crimson, I frowned. It was going to take a while to clean that up.

With one already retreating—probably too far for me to chase down by now—I didn’t have time to do this tactically. I vaulted over the car’s hood, and rushed the gunman. One of his shots skimmed my shoulder, but that wasn’t enough to stop me as I grabbed his arm. This guy was younger than the last, probably around nineteen judging by his bones. I felt a pang of guilt, and hoped that prison wouldn’t mess up his life too bad. Still, he needed to go down. My power reached to his heart and pushed him into a cardiac arrest. As I pulled away from him, he dropped his gun and began clutching his chest, dropping to his knees in pain.

I charged toward the remaining gangster. The looter—giving up on his search—desperately grabbed for the gun in his pants. But before he could get a shot off, I slammed my palm into his forehead. My power quickly traced through his body, striking first at his optic nerve, severing it, before shredding the muscles in his hands and legs. I made his endocrine system start pumping out endorphins, but left him conscious. Since I’d lost track of the other looter—who had rounded the corner and left my sight—I needed him awake for questioning.

The gun dropped out of the hands of the gangster, as a sudden wail of shock left his lips. He flailed weakly at his face, his broken hands dumbly reaching for his sightless eyes. He cried out in Spanish, a repetitive refrain, before switching to English. “Bitch! Can’t see!” he shouted. “What the fuck you done?”

“Sorry…” I said, quietly. “I’ll get to you in a minute.” I pushed him off the body he was sitting on. I tapped it… only to see it was now a corpse. While plenty of the cells were still alive, his brain had passed the point of no return. Sure, I could maybe bring him back, but he’d basically be brain-dead. I quickly moved to the other one and found he was still breathing. As I reached out to heal him, I noticed a small tattoo on the bottom of his wrist. It was simple; a black pine tree no bigger than my pinky nail. To the uninformed, it would have meant nothing.

But I knew the symbol of the First Way when I saw it.

The shock almost stayed my hand, but I still had a job to do. I sealed the man’s wounds with a tap, restoring the lost blood and stabilizing his condition. However, I still kept him unconscious. I didn’t know what the First Way was doing here but it was certainly illegal.

The other two First Way bodies were in worse shape, however. One had taken a bullet to the skull… not much anyone can do about that, even me. The other had lost far too much blood before I even got here. My shoulders sagged. They might have been First Way but had I been a little faster… I turned my gaze toward the starless sky and closed my eyes. I could hear the sirens getting closer and closer, echoing around the empty street. Just a few more minutes and it would all be over. They would handle it. I could go home.

But…

I turned a reluctant gaze toward the two corpses. What was going on here? Both had their jackets stripped off them and their pockets turned inside out. The looters I interrupted had clearly gotten to these guys first, but that didn’t explain what they were looking for. I crouched down next to one and gingerly lifted an arm, revealing another small First Way tattoo. The four of them hadn’t wandered into Los Reales turf by mistake. What happened here happened for a reason.

The sirens were getting closer, but I wanted some answers now. I turned back to the guy I’d left awake, who was currently groaning on the ground. “Hey,” I said, softly. “How are you doing?”

“Fuck off, bitch,” he snarled.

I frowned beneath my mask. The guy had the balls to call me a bitch after murdering three people? “Look,” I said, more firmly, “I’ll give you back your eyesight if you answer some questions.”

“Fuck off,” he said, but not as aggressively as last time.

I took this as a sign I could continue. “What happened here?”

“Ain’t speaking without a lawyer,” he said.

“D-don’t you want to see again?” I asked, trying my best to sound menacing.

“Fuck you, I know you.” He fixed his sightless eyes on me. “You Stitch, you fix the people Seraph fuck up. You ain’t letting me leave here without my eyes.”

I touched his forehead with one finger. “Go to sleep,” I said, just as two cop cars rounded the corner. He crumpled to the ground next to the man he probably killed, his shoulder resting in a pool of the man’s blood. My fist clenched. He was right, but… I wished he wasn’t.

I set to work healing this guy, reversing the damage I had done. I reconnected the optic nerves and mended the pulverized muscles. Around me, cops leapt out of their vehicles and started creating a perimeter. The sound of shouting, screech of sirens, and flashes of red and blue filled the street. I rose from the gangster, resting my hands in my pockets. Hopefully, none of the cops would notice them shaking.

I took a step back as the battlefield transformed into a crime scene. As people swarmed around me, a sense of panic mixed with exhaustion rose within. I took a few deep breaths to steady myself, to maintain professionalism. One cop saluted me as he walked by. I nodded back, my jaw clenched. I had to maintain a… presence right now. I couldn’t show weakness.

That’s what it is to be a hero.