Sophia
Hebert's head perked up, glanced backwards, although the panel van they'd borrowed for the night didn't allow for a rearview mirror. The back was full of plumbing equipment, rattling with every pothole and speed bump. Still, her alarm put Sophia on alert, and she glanced at the side mirrors, not seeing—
A pair of headlights pulled out of the alleyway they'd just passed.
"We're being followed," Sophia said. It wasn't a question.
"Yes," Hebert said, having put the notebook on the dash and unzipping the duffel bag she'd stashed in the footwell. She opened a ziploc bag full of little tin foil packets each the size of a piece of gum, rolled down her window, and produced a jet lighter. One by one she held the packets over the flames just long enough for something to hiss, then dropped them out her rolled-down window.
Between that and glancing back at the car—a sedan, black, with a metal grill in front, and she thought she saw one of those mounted lamps by the front driver's mirror—It took her a second to notice that Hebert had given her directions. "What?"
"I said turn left up ahead."
She did, still using her turn signal out of habit. The light was red, and despite her impulse to gun it, she was calm, she was cool.
Their pursuers pulled up and stopped behind them in the turn lane.
And then the undercover cop car's lights went on, the ones mounted inside the roof of the car flashing red and blue, the siren wailing loud and sending Sophia's heart rate spiking. Despite herself, she still thought I love you, Mom to herself, a silent prayer, even though she knew no one was listening. But she wasn't scared. She could handle herself. Fight. Flank. Evade. She would not get caught. Wasn't the first time she'd had to run from the cops as a hero.
She glanced to the side at Hebert, who seemed relaxed, still. Her, on the other hand…
The light turned green. "Go," Hebert said.
Sophia looked behind at the cop who had started walking out of his vehicle… only for him to stare in alarm at the smoke coming out from under the hood of his patrol car.
She pulled out onto the one-way street, leaving the cop behind. He glanced at them, then at his car, and called something in on his shoulder radio before she turned again and broke line of sight.
"We've got to ditch the van."
"Yes."
Sophia weighed the pros and cons of asking more questions. She was intensely fucking curious, but also still wanted to maintain plausible deniability about Hebert's powers. Her silence must have lasted long enough for Taylor to notice something.
"He didn't look up anything on his computer before following us."
She had been driving below the speed limit, and there were no lights out, no flat tires, the registration hadn't expired…
Her lips twisted in disgust but not surprise. White cop in Brockton Bay seeing a black girl driving at night. Fucking Nazis.
They switched vehicles without a word. She didn't know where Hebert kept finding the keys, but like before, she didn't ask.
After that. they drove around as usual, although did skirt the edges of Empire territory this time, closer to the edges of ABB turf. Sophia's heartrate had slowly returned to normal, settled into the routine of following Hebert's directions around the city, obeying traffic laws, keeping an eye out on anything strange or suspicious.
Like a cloud of darkness spilling out of an alleyway.
Sophia's mind raced. Night and Fog had supposedly followed Purity back from Boston, was that—
Then it kept growing, several stories tall, cutting off the street. Motherfucking Grue. Sophia instinctively reached for her crossbows, but she grasped nothing but empty air where her holsters should have been.
Instead she pulled over to the side of the empty road, waiting. Hoping it wouldn't billow too close, because fuck if she didn't hate how it interfered with her power, even if she wasn't using it right now. That motherfucker thought that he was so tough, but she'd show him just how mistaken he was. Could have sworn she'd gotten him before, but it clearly hadn't been a killshot. She'd do better this time.
She glanced at Hebert, who was staring at the darkness with her usual unreadable expression.
Well. Next time.
Sophia watched the clock on the dash, waiting for the clouds to fade, hoping they wouldn't billow their way, unsure what she'd do if they did, frustrated at being forced to do nothing. It was bad enough only driving while Taylor did all the actual work on their patrols together.
Then she heard muffled explosions, too loud to be gunshots. Grenades? Hard to tell where, though, and that asshole's darkness clouds did weird shit to sound. So she just gripped the steering wheel and tried not to grind her teeth. Fucking useless.
And Hebert just sat there in silence the whole time, staring off into the darkness like she could actually see shit.
Who knew? Maybe she could. She'd said the cop hadn't looked at his laptop, now that she thought about it. She knew how Hookwolf died blocks away. Whatever her power was, it let her know things at a distance, that much was obvious.
Eventually the darkness faded. Hebert didn't say anything, just taking notes, jotting down numbers.
The next day, Hebert had a cell phone in addition to her notebook. She kept texting at random times throughout their patrols, and she was bad at it. Hunt and peck, so slow it made Sophia frustrated just to hear the faint taps of keys on the little foldout keyboard. But she didn't bother asking. It was just another thing on the plausible deniability list.
It did distract her, though. Sophia hadn't noticed the check engine light had turned on until something under the hood started rattling alarmingly. Fucking great. She pulled over onto the side of the road, already grabbing her things as Hebert put away her phone and started doing the same. Sophia glanced at the street signs—this was not a good neighborhood to be walking in in the middle of the night. Especially not for her, although Hebert probably wasn't much safer.
There weren't any good cars nearby, either. Hebert said something about possible tracking devices, which made her grit her teeth. Of course they'd notice eventually. Luck always ran out, and they'd been lucky far too long.
So she wasn't surprised at all when they were followed.
Half a dozen skinheads, drunk and riled up, stumbling out of a bar right as they turned the corner. They immediately pulled back, started jogging the other direction, but that only drew the attention of the aggressively intoxicated idiots more. Better than trying to fight them in front of the bar, though. They called out stupid shit after them—half insults, half demands that they stay and 'play'—and took chase. Sophia could hear their laughter and the clomp of their boots on asphalt as they picked up speed in pursuit.
She and Hebert swerved in unison towards a side alley, which turned out to be an L-curve that led into a dead end. Fuck.
Sophia geared herself up to fight—it was only half a dozen, and they're drunk, she could take them—but Hebert grabbed her arm and pulled her behind a dumpster. Of course Hebert would try to hide, she would get the shit kicked out of her even if Sophia tried to take them down quick, kept their attention on her—
Hebert didn't look alarmed, though. She had something in one hand, the other tucked in a ring. A grenade? How crazy was this bitch?
In the most serious tone she'd ever heard Hebert use, she said "Don't. Look."
And then, right as their pursuers turned the corner, laughing and whooping, Hebert pulled the pin and threw the small thing in her hand over the dumpster.
An earsplitting wail filled the air, enough to make Sophia cover her ears. A rape alarm? Really? That was just going to draw more attention, and it sure as hell wasn't going to stop a bunch of drunken racists from trying to take advantage of a couple girls walking alone in a shitty neighborhood. She scowled at Hebert, but she was just looking at Sophia intently.
Couldn't hear shit over the noisemaker, but although Sophia coiled her legs beneath her, ready to strike at anyone that turned the corner around the dumpster… Ten seconds. Twenty. No one did.
In fact, the noisemaker was getting quieter. Like it was moving away.
Despite Hebert's warning, she peeked her head around the dumpster, catching a fleeting shadow, a hint of movement. The men, running?
No. They were on the ground. Unmoving.
Sophia looked at Hebert, but her face was still unreadable. She cautiously stepped out around the dumpster, trying to figure out what happened, seeing no possible reason the men were unconscious, sprawled out in a panic, several looking like they were clutching at their throats and faces before they passed out. More clues added to the list. The hell was her power, anyway?
More important question. "Are they dead?"
"They're unconscious."
As Hebert pointed it out, Sophia noticed their chests rising and falling. Still alive, but vulnerable. Helpless.
Easy pickings.
Sophia pulled the knife from her back holster. She turned to Hebert, about to tell her to stay there, to pretend she didn't see anything, to maintain plausible deniability.
Hebert was pulling a knife out of her backpack.
The wail of the alarm grew distant and then finally went silent as together they took out the trash.
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Yes, this is made with AI. I say "with" and not "by" because it's heavily edited by me in Photoshop.