It was the end of my Christmas bonus and the start of my night job.
These three Seventeens were out for at least an hour. Stupid fucks, barely into high school and already throwing their lives away. I flipped them over and took their wallets. Then I dragged them to a sign post and zip-tied them to it with their arms behind their backs. I took their driver’s licenses and their cash (crime fighting isn’t cheap).
“See this?” I growled. I held up the IDs. “I know who you are now. I know your names. I know where you live. In an hour I’ll know your families, your dogs, your girlfriends. What I’ve done to you, I can do to all of them. And worse.” The licenses vanished into a pouch on my belt.
Yeah, I stole the whole gag from Fight Club. Sue me. If I was that creative I really would be writing a script and I wouldn’t have to finance all this with drug money.
The goggles were the hardest thing. I knew what I needed, but had no idea how to make them. Through a friend of a friend I found a retired prop-builder out in Van Nuys. Guy used to design and make stuff for all sorts of sci-fi films before everything went digital. I told him they were for a movie being shot somewhere in Hungary. He complained for half an hour about film jobs leaving Hollywood and then asked when I needed them by. He built the goggles from old camera irises and dark-mirrored sunglasses, and made three sets of them, so I’d have spares. I got the blueprints and design notes, too, in case they needed to do on-set repairs. On the movie.
I walked back to my motorcycle and pulled a road flare from the saddlebags. It hit the ground a few feet from the punks, casting a flickering red light over everything. People ignore gunfights, screams, and drug deals, but for some reason everyone calls the cops if there’s a flare burning in the street.
I gunned the engine, spun the bike around, and gave them one last flash, the goggles snapping open and shut just like a camera. Somebody told me the moment I make eye contact is a lot like getting hit in the back of the head with a baseball bat, just without the actual pain. Then comes the fear when you realize I’ve got you locked. When someone’s in my sight, they can’t blink or look away.
“Get out. You don’t want me to catch you again.” And I roared off in what I hope was a terrifying display of ice-cold bad-assery. It’s worked so far. Half a year at the night job and I hear crime’s down six percent in my territory.
Of course, that doesn’t mean a lot. There’s always two or three gangs fighting over this part of the city. Sometimes it’s just tagging. Sometimes it’s drive-bys. The City Council would brag in the papers that gangs and drug dealers and homeless people had been driven out of this neighborhood or that one. No one would ever discuss the fact they’d all just moved somewhere else.
So my goal wasn’t to drive them out. It was to eliminate them. To make every current and potential member of the South Seventeens--a gang that proudly referred to themselves as “the SS”--run in terror at the sight of a green gang scarf or bandanna.
The bike shot down the street, slipping through intersections and around corners. I tried to cover as much ground as possible each night. The trick was to be seen as many places as possible, but never be moving so fast people thought I wouldn’t stop for something. There’s a reason police cars seem to move at “hanging out” speed a lot.
I’ve also learned moving targets are harder to hit. There’s a chip in my helmet where someone tried to blow my head off with a rifle. Knocked me off the bike, and that was when I learned my power can drain someone from a block and a half away.
I was on Pico when the sedan pulled in behind me. I got a good look at it in the mirrors. An old Caddy with a lot of power, a lot of seating room, and one dumb fuck sitting in the passenger window with a shotgun.
I gunned the throttle and pulled away. They picked up speed. Their car swerved a bit and I could hear them howling and laughing. Drunk or stoned to work up their courage.
A little more speed from the bike. A lot more from the Caddy. They were gaining fast. My timing needed to be pretty good for my next trick to work, but they were so wired I didn’t think I needed to be perfect.
I let my speed drop and swung the bike to the left, heading for an alley a bit up ahead. The sedan swerved to cut me off, gunning its engine again, and I clamped hard on the brakes. The bike shrieked to a halt and spun around.
They over-steered and rushed past me. The guy in the window fired off a blast from the shotgun while one in the back seat shot a few rounds from a pistol. They were barely aiming and none of them came close.
They slammed into the corner of the building, right where the alley began.