Volume 2: Prophase

Issue 4: Night Patrol

Jannette Adrian Churchwell

By Nova

It was pretty late before I gathered up the courage to head out on patrol. I stuffed my costume into my backpack, along with my baton and a few snacks, and threw on some civvies; a beige turtleneck and a black skirt. While I’m sure my neighbors wondered why I left at such weird times of day, it was a necessary misdirection. Stitch couldn’t be seen leaving Jannette’s apartment after all. I brushed my teeth before I left, mostly for that minty freshness. My powers could clean my teeth far better than any toothbrush… but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get my spit to taste like toothpaste.

I finished brushing and spat out the toothpaste, taking a moment to stare down my reflection. I briefly considered putting some eyeliner on—like I used to when I first started out—but decided against it. Some heroes could make the whole make-up thing work, but most didn’t for patrols or fights. The few I’d met who did focus on keeping a perfect appearance at all times were either entirely self-absorbed or had some weird powers at play. By now, I knew it was all pretty pointless.

Still… I always worried about getting caught without makeup by the paparazzi. I had deathly pale white skin, which was not helped by my gray hair and eyes. Additionally, I was short—barely hit five feet—and charitably described as scrawny; not exactly the kind of hero teenage boys hung up posters of.

Not that I thought that was a bad thing, exactly, but it still put me in a league below heroes like Ripple and Phoenix.

I took one last shot of coffee before heading out, quickly making my way down the flight of stairs, out into the street. It was a clear, moonlit evening, though the faint smell of smoke in the air hinted at a wildfire going on somewhere upstate. The smoke mixed terribly with the usually pissy scent that hung around my apartment’s front door, but I did my best to ignore it. I’ve smelled far worse, after all.

I headed south, down the road, toward a familiar looking construction site a few blocks away. A couple of years ago, a powerfight had mostly leveled the building that once stood there—I think it was a JCPenney’s or something—and instead of repairing it they just tore it down and sold the property on the cheap. Some poor tech-company had bought it, started building their new headquarters, only to go mostly belly up before they could finish it. Apparently they had tried selling it, but since they didn’t have the money to demolish what they had built, no one went for it. It was a bad neighborhood with a proven history of random powerfights; no wonder no one wanted a piece of it.

Despite it all, at least I had some use for the rusting set of metal beams, decaying concrete, and even the occasional squatter. They made sure that no one was likely to drop by, which was exactly what I needed from this place.

I made my way through the structure, out of sight of the street, to a wide metal sheet lying on the ground. I grabbed it by the side and, with a grunt of effort, slid it across the sandy dirt. Underneath where it once sat was a hole I had dug in the ground a few months ago. A hole where I hid my bike.

It wasn’t much, but I didn’t have a choice. Stitch’s bike couldn’t exactly be sitting out on the street in front of my apartment, and I didn’t have a garage to put it in anymore.

I grabbed it by the handlebars and pulled. The bike weighed at least a few hundred pounds and, while I didn’t exactly have superstrength, I could push my body far harder than the average person. Withholding a scream of pain as my muscles tore themselves apart, stitched themselves together, then tore themselves apart again, I slowly wrenched the bike out of its hole onto level ground.

I nearly collapsed on top of it, out of exhaustion, as I gulped down air. After a few moments to regain my composure, I quickly stripped out of my civvies and put on my costume. I stuffed my clothes into my backpack and threw it, unceremoniously, into the hole and carefully pulled the metal sheet back over it, leaving the hole as I found it.

“Hard part’s over,” I muttered as I swung myself onto my bike. I turned on the electric engine and set off, driving through a twisting concrete corridor out onto the street. I sped into the night, flicked the police scanner on, and listened as I drove.

Tonight’s patrol had begun.

I had started the patrol pretty late, but even now the scanner chattered with activity. A verbal disturbance in Bayview, a car crash in Milpitas, a fire in Palo Alto… all good places to start. I weighed my options. Bayview was too far, I’d get there long after the situation was resolved. The crash and fire were closer, but I didn’t have much context for them. More people might need help in the fire… or maybe they all got out before it went wild. People were more likely to be injured in the crash, but if the fire was bad there would be more people who needed help there…

Milpitas and Palo Alto were in opposite directions. If I went for one, I’d have to neglect the other. I parked on the side of the road, just before the onramp to the 101. Taking it west would lead me to the fire, east would bring me to the crash.

My hands clenched the handlebars. I felt paralyzed, unable to decide where to go. The police scanner chatter updated me on the catastrophes as I sat. The burning building was a warehouse… The crash involved two vehicles… More support was needed for the fire… At least one person had died in the crash… I nearly shouted in frustration as the situations got worse and worse with each passing minute.

My arms trembling, I set out down the road again, back the way I came. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t be the one to make these decisions. I felt a sudden need to escape, to get out of here, out of the city, as the police scanner continued to chatter, and images of bodies, far too gone for me to help, flashed in my mind. No matter where I went now, I’d be too late.

Late again.

I could barely focus on the road ahead of me. The white line swerved around me as I tried to keep myself on the street. Cutting my losses, I parked in front of an abandoned vegan restaurant and took a moment to breathe. I tried my best to put the fire and crash out of my mind; I had to tell myself that they were out of my hands. I was too late. I took a shuddering breath and just stopped for a moment, almost collapsing onto the bike’s bars. I closed my eyes and plugged my ears, listening to my heartbeat. Deep breath in… and out. In… and out.

A minute or two passed before the shaking stopped. I still felt terrible, but I slowly opened my eyes and unplugged my ears. I sat, for a few moments, on my bike, listening to a mix of the distant noise of traffic and the still chattering police scanner. I stared, emptily, into my reflection in the windows of the abandoned restaurant, only barely visible in the poorly lit parking lot. I sighed. Going home now would prove her right… I had to prove I could do this.

On my own.

I started flipping through the channels on the police scanner. Armed robbery in Oakland… too far. Another car crash in San Mateo… Maybe I could meet them at the hospital? Report of assault in Mountain View… Closer, but if they were reporting assault the guy had probably gotten away by now…

I groaned. How did the others do it? The city was huge and I was so… small. The big teams had entire crews to watch the city for them, Seraph just flew around, and I had no idea what Ripple, or all the rest did. I just couldn’t match them. I couldn’t fly, didn’t have a crew, or… whatever it was Ripple had. Her… confidence or whatever. I just had my bike, my power, and me.

And it wasn’t enough; I had to rely on luck. After all, being in the right place at the right time was how I was able to stop the shooting. Even then, I wasn’t lucky enough to save anyone, or catch all the shooters… but it was still all I had.

I pulled out of the parking lot and set out on the road again. I started driving towards East Side San Jose. While my part of town was hardly great, East Side was where I got started, and for good reason. If I was going to stumble into anything tonight, it’d be there.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

I was quickly on the highway, moving out of the squat strip-malls which characterized my part of town and into the places people actually liked to live. I could look to the northwest and see, only a couple of miles away, the OhmTech Titan’s gleaming headquarters in Mountain View. Around me were the short glass towers that hosted the tech companies which made Silicon Valley famous. But these monuments to wealth quickly faded away as I passed over a river into a far less developed part of town, and then over another river into somewhere more familiar.

I exited the highway and found myself among a series of brand new, yet mostly empty, buildings. In front of every other one was a huge “FOR RENT” sign, advertising lower prices than anywhere else in town. To those unfamiliar with the Bay’s… unique relationship with tech companies, it would have been a strange sight. But locals knew better. Between the regular villains just trying to get a cut of the business and the First Way’s psychotic “anti-technology” philosophy, powerfights hit the tech industry on a monthly basis. I didn’t think a single one of the buildings around me was older than a decade; at least one of them got leveled by a villain every year. The big tech companies— OhmTech, IMAGO, Google—all poured billions into rebuilding them, making sure that it was only a few months before things returned to looking normal.

This helped keep a steady flow of new companies into the buildings, especially since rent had to be so low, though only the most desperate or stupid set up shop here. No one knew how anyone was making a profit off these buildings, but I always thought it took a target off the big companies’ backs. They had their own hero teams to dissuade villain attacks, making these unguarded companies far more desirable. After all, if the easier target wasn’t so close, how much damage could a lucky or stupid villain do before they could be stopped? I didn’t know much about business, but I figured that plenty of CEOs were willing to pay a lot to keep their nice office penthouses safe another year.

I drove through the buildings, keeping my eyes peeled for trouble. Since a chunk of the buildings were empty most of the year, it attracted crime even when there weren’t any villains running around. People hung out in the empty parking lots, or snuck into the abandoned buildings to camp out. Criminals also took advantage of the smaller police and hero presence in this part of town. Smashing windows to break into cars wasn’t exactly uncommon in the Bay Area, but it was particularly endemic here. There were plenty of stories about people being mugged in the parking lot while they were leaving after a long day at work, and I even once heard about someone whose entire car vanished into thin air when they hit the unlock button.

But that was all pretty tame compared to some of the darker stuff that went on here. Drug deals, human trafficking, cult sacrifices… I’d seen enough of it myself to know that this whole row was just bad news.

Which was exactly what I was counting on.

My first loop through the row didn’t reveal anything. It looked like a quiet night—there wasn’t even that many tech guys working the night shift. Still, it was my best bet of finding anything tonight, so I ran another loop and checked a couple of nooks and crannies I knew about. Maybe I would dig something up there?

But another loop didn’t reveal anything. There were a couple of homeless people milling about, but that was it. Still, I parked my bike near them and approached. I could do some good tonight, at the very least.

They had set up a small camp near the river, nestled between two bushes in a hole in the fence. Most were sleeping in sleeping bags as I approached, but a couple were still awake and shot me alarmed looks as I got closer.

“Ey, we ain’t doin’ nothin’ wrong,” one said, raising his hands. He had tanned and deeply wrinkled skin with a messy stubble. He was wrapped in winter garb to keep warm, though fortunately for him it wasn’t too cold of a night. “Just want to be left alone,” he said after a brief pause. The others stirred at his words, turning to face me with bleary eyes.

“I’m not here to kick you out,” I said. “I’m a hero, just looking to help.”

The man I was talking to gave a short, coughing laugh. “Sure sure, whatever. You can help by goin’ ‘way.”

I put my hands on my hips and struck the best “hero” pose I could manage. “Don’t you know who I am?” I asked.

“No,” he simply stated.

I rolled my eyes. “I’m Stitch. I’m a healer. If you aren’t feeling well, I can help,” I said.

His eyes narrowed. “What’s in it for you?”

“Nothing,” I said, slightly taken aback. “I just want to help.” I didn’t usually run into this. When people heard I was a healer, it usually made them drop their guard. After all, I could save them a trip to the hospital, or from racking up fees that their insurance didn’t cover.

Which is why I think the hospitals didn’t like me visiting anymore, but this man was hardly in charge of finances at the local clinic. What was up with him?

One of the others, a tired looking woman, started towards me but the man grabbed her by the arm and wrenched her back behind him. “Don’t!” he snarled. “She’s a hero, ‘member?” He glared at me. “And I think I know this one, she’s with Seraph.”

There was a near unanimous recoil at that name, as they leaned back from me. I raised my hands. “L-look, I’m not with h-” I stammered, approaching slowly, but the man leapt to his feet with surprising agility.

“Get outta here!” he shouted. “We don’t need you.”

My shoulders sagged. “Alright,” I said. “Just… stay safe.”

“We’re doin’ fine ‘till you showed up,” the man said.

Defeated, I retreated to my bike. The homeless guy had kept his eyes on me, and watched me as I drove away. It had been a while since I had tried the more… humanitarian type of superheroics, but I didn’t expect this response. I had always preferred healing people, it felt better than violently putting down a criminal, but had my reputation really sunk so far? Or was it heroes in general?

I shook my head. I needed to pay more attention to these things.

I almost felt like giving up, but I needed something tonight. But what could I do? I’d patrolled, I’d tried to heal. What was there for me to do?

As I was driving down an alleyway, on another pointless loop, I spotted something out of the corner of my eye. I skidded to halt and fixed my gaze on it.

A rooftop access ladder. The building’s maintenance must have forgotten to properly stow it. I glanced around and carefully parked my bike, hiding it behind a dumpster. As quickly and quietly as possible, I scrambled up the ladder. This was the luckiest break I could have asked for, short of randomly stumbling across a crime or accident of course, and I wasn’t going to miss out on it.

After a minute or two of climbing, I reached the top. I was at least a hundred feet off the ground and I had an excellent view of the entire row. It would help cover one of my big disadvantages: I was tied to the ground. Seraph could fly, Ripple could do those controlled leaps, and even Mr. Mystery could turn the ground into a trampoline. All I had was my bike. But here, on top of this building, I could hide where the others could; above everything else, giving me an excellent vantage point over the entire area.

Also, even after sixty years of superheroes being a thing, people still had a hard time looking up.

I laid down near a ledge and ate a granola bar as I staked out the row. Every time I heard a car, I scurried over to the side where I could watch it, but there wasn’t much activity. I watched the last of the night shift guys leave, some janitors and security guards arrive, but not much happened for a few hours as the night wore on.

Slowly I felt fatigue begin to take me, but I stayed put. It was almost calming watching the city from up here, listening to the drone of the highway and seeing the few stars I could see past the city’s lights. So I stayed, waiting for anyone to show up. I steadily grew more and more tired, but forced myself to stay awake. I had to find something tonight, though I really wished caffeine still affected me…

It was just before dawn, as the sky began to turn a pale gray in the east, that I finally saw something. Two gray vans pulled up and parked along the side of one of the buildings next to the one I was on top of. I had a good view from where I was, but they were too far for me to get a good look at them. Nevertheless, I didn’t see anyone leave the van—whoever was inside seemed to be waiting for something.

I nearly left the rooftop to investigate closer when I heard the rumble of motorcycles rolling down the street, toward the van. I turned to look at them, spying six bikes driving in formation. The riders each had a duffle bag slung over their shoulder and I instantly recognized them by the large wolven insignia on each one of their backs: the Wolfpack, the largest motorcycle gang on the West Coast… and a bunch of neo-Nazis. Their leader, Ragnarok, was one of the oldest and most powerful villains still around but—as I scanned the riders—it didn’t look like they were riding with him or any other villains. They were just baseliners, which let me relax a little. This would be something I could handle on my own.

Just as I expected, the Wolfpack rode right up to the gray van, whose occupants got out and opened the van’s back doors. They all wore different camo patterned jackets, with no real cohesion. I couldn’t tell who they were from here… maybe some hunters from up north? That didn’t explain why they were here though, dealing with the Wolfpack of all people.

Unless…

I leaned closer to the edge, as if I would somehow get a better view of them. The First Way didn’t have a uniform or gang colors or whatever, but they did mostly operate in the rural wilderness of Northern California… If they had just arrived, maybe to reinforce their fallen comrades from last night…

I scrambled to my feet. I didn’t know if I was right… but this was something. The First Way and the Wolfpack might have been the two most despised gangs in the entire city, but the Wolfpack could smuggle in anything and the First Way might have lost something to Los Reales last night… What did the First Way need that the Wolfpack had? Was it really connected to the shooting last night? Or the monster at Chapel High?

There was only one way to tell. I had to act fast.