Saving a Superhero

15: Fights+Concussions

I was getting sick of having a gun pointed at me. Sure, it only happened once before, but it wasn't a pleasant experience. I appreciated a little more finesse in the common criminal. Maybe a bow and arrow or a new age drug with untested affects. Something really action worthy.

Not a gun.

This time around, the gun didn't bother me nearly as much. Maybe because I had my friends behind me, all three with their hands up--the obligatory response to being held at gunpoint. More likely, it was because I couldn't feel the barrel pressing against my skull.

"Sir," I began, keeping my cool as best as I could. It was difficult to turn on my voice this time around. At the bank I was hopping on adrenaline and fear, with my friends I wasn't in immediate danger. I had neither of those perks in the middle of an empty warehouse. "If you could-"

The thug in front of us unloaded three shots into the ceiling. A dumb move. Now someone would call the cops and the full force of the NCPD would be on us in minutes. So we just had to keep our criminal friend talking.

I forced my eyes away from the man as he sneered at us, no ransom yet made. I glanced at the other superheroes of Nova City, hoping their powers had kicked in.

Long story short: they hadn't.

I--with my constricted vocal cords and fear suppressed by faked apathy--was the most coherent. I couldn't make out Rory or Harper in the shadows, but I did see Kennedy. I saw her with knees knocking together beneath her skirt and eyes darting around, not able to settle on the man with the gun or my face. A look I read as panic was present in her trembling.

I could only imagine that Rory and Harper were in a similar state of uselessness.

So it was up to me.

Or it would have been if the man didn't level the gun at my chest. My pulse shot through the roof and I felt a familiar state of fog begin settling over me. I forced a breath in but choked on the exhale. The air was caught in my throat, threatening to suffocate me if the gun didn't move targets.

"No talking from you, snitch." The man had an uncomfortably melodic voice. I couldn't make out his face in the shadows, but it didn't match his hulking build that threw a Goliath sized shadow across the room. Behind him a few of his goonies approached, fists gleaming with brass knuckles and perspiration beading on their foreheads. "We have strict orders to keep you here until the boss turns up. So we're going to sit tight or one of you is going to lose a knee."

Sympathy pain shot across my knee cap and down my calf. I pushed the pain away, but only managed to banish any of the bravado that I had before the fog settled. Nevermind that I had done this before, done this hundreds of times. Heck, I had taken down the Scholar, the city's most dangerous criminal, but I couldn't do what I had done then. Not when the stakes were so much higher now.

As I succumbed to the fog and my fate, a voice whispered behind me. A voice I recognized only because it had been rambling nonstop for the past three days. Rory. "Premeditated."

I didn't understand what she meant by that until Harper added, "Him."

There was no question who "he" was. The Scholar. Hudson Mills. The man was behind both guns that had been aimed at me over the course of the week. Maybe he was behind whatever was happening with Grace. These weren't pesky low lives whose drug den we had stumbled upon.

This was, as Rory had whispered, premeditated.

What happened next felt more like snapshots than fluid movements. Around me I sensed movement and had the good sense to duck before the world came crashing down around me.
I sprawled on the floor, chin banging against the damp concrete and giving myself a nasty cut. It pooled with blood immediately.