Blood Obsidian

Issue 16

A nest of hornets - Part 4

Caitlyn had homework to do. A lot of homework. The school had doubled-down for the missing days due to the damage to the school. She should be at home, eating Aunt Mary's trademark quadruple chocolate cookies while typing out essays with music blasting in her headphones, but no, she was here, in the wharf district. Again. She could see this whole superhero-in-training thing beginning to swallow her precious teenage years.

The suit provided her with night vision, like before, and she saw everything as clear as though it were daytime. Albeit with a sickly, sparkly green tinge to it all. Despite that, she couldn't see anything that could indicate a super-villain lair. Not that she knew what one looked like if she did see one. Up, on the roof of a warehouse, she checked down toward the ground, hoping that Vezzpa had left a sign. A big arrow, flashing in the night, with a neon sign attached saying 'Bad guys' would help.

The wharf district, at this time of the night, still had more than a little activity. The docks never stopped working. Loading and unloading ships with cargo destined for far off places, like California, or something. Short of checking inside each and every warehouse in the area she had calculated Vezzpa had disappeared, she doubted she would find anything.

She stopped moving, turning as close to a statue as she could as she saw a flashlight arc across a nearby alley between two of the warehouses. A security guard, perhaps. The light stopped dancing as the man who held it rattled the handle on a door, sweeping the beam of light across the sign above the door. Caitlyn ducked down as the light jumped toward the roof. She had seen that guy somewhere before and her mind raced to think who it was.

-+-

Below ...

Watson had a hunch. Strictly speaking, he should sit in his badly ventilated office and send out officers to do this sort of thing, but his old instincts and desire to do real police work had brought him out here. Alone. He wasn't a young rookie anymore, those days were far, far behind him, but he still ached, sometimes, to return to the streets. He was too old for this. The riverside air not doing his nascent arthritis any good.

Something didn't add up. Of all the places that new villain, Vezzpa, could have flown to hide her ill-gotten gains, she had come here. Battled that new hero when she could have disappeared. Either she had something to prove, or something to hide. Something to protect. He had seen it often enough. The number of felons that had called out Black Staff, just to have the chance of bragging about beating the super, could fill a book. A few books. This didn't feel like that.

As any good cop did in a world of supers, he looked everywhere. Especially to the skies. So many of them could fly, it made a cop's job all the more difficult. And did the city provide the NHPD with enough funds to counter these flying supers? They did not. They barely had a budget for overtime. Something he and the unions had batted heads about for years.

He thought the flashlight had caught something, high above, but he saw nothing. Nothing yellow, at least. If nothing else, the need for these supers to wear garish, colourful costumes helped to identify them. They thought it brought eyes on their exploits but, to Watson, it only provided him with better visibility to target them. Not that they could. Standing orders were to let supers deal with supers, but he could never stand by and allow that. Hence his shady dealings with Black Staff.

There was nothing there and villains were rarely afraid to announce their presences. As an afterthought, he lifted the lids of a couple of dumpsters, checking inside. Some villains made mistakes like that, leaving evidence in the most mundane places. Nothing. Nothing except rats and rotting cardboard. Records showed that only four warehouses in this area were unoccupied. This one made the second of those four that didn't look like anyone had touched them in weeks. Maybe months.