Heathen

Hunts Point—where I'd been 'hanging out' last night—was known for prostitution, car jackings, burglaries and lately there'd been increases in rapes. You'd think I'd go somewhere seedy to get my special orders. Wrong. Though sometimes I did crash a black market dealing searching for rare goodies, I'd been taught that transactions in crowded places are the best way to slip unnoticed. That's why after eating three large pizzas, showering and putting on some cleanish civies, I was getting to Union Square. I parked my bike next to the abandoned subway station that used to connect so many neighborhoods. I removed my helmet, squinting at the harsh sunlight, slipping on a pair of aviator sunglasses. Dismounting, I popped open the bike's compartment stashing my red-on-black helmet and pulled out a baseball cap—slapping it on. I adjusted the backpack's strap on my shoulder.

"Safety mode on," I whispered. My motorbike emitted a curt hum and its headlights blinked a blue light that'd go unnoticed during the day—unless you had my eyes. "Good girl." Advancements in technology hadn't been all bad. Voice control on new vehicles was preventing tons of robberies. I smirked heading toward the center, for the benches, not everyone's rides came with my baby's safety mode. Had to thank my benefactor for that—hell, for everything.

I was sweating. It was mid-spring. Thanks to my awesome scar sleeves, I couldn't wear t-shirts out. Keeping a low profile was what kept me alive—untraceable. So, I was wearing a leather jacket over a red tee. I'd replaced my scuffed army boots for dark Adidas and the Kevlar-reinforced cargo pants for faded jeans.

Normal. Heh, normal-ish. There was a small knife strapped to my left forearm.

JP—my monthly provider of ammunition—was sitting in one of the park benches. I paused a minute, blinking. When I opened my eyes next, images amplified and sharpened. I turned eyes on every person sitting on the benches in my line of vision. It was like standing a foot away from them.

My vision was about seven times stronger than the average human, according to Axel's tests. Crudely put, I can shoot a douchebag who's two miles away with the same accuracy I'd shoot someone standing five feet away.

Thank you stubborn H-gene!

JP was sitting lazily, one arm thrown over a bench while he slurped a smoothie, roughly fifty feet away. I blinked again, the scenery retreating to their rightful distances and casually walked on over. JP cocked the half empty plastic cup, chilling. No one would think his sports' backpack was filled with gun clips. I sat down, putting my bag beside his, mimicking his chill.

If glasses and preppy hair worked for Clark Kent, baseball cap and sunglasses worked for me.

"How are you wearing that damn jacket? You're crazy, esé." I drowned a snort.

About a few months back, while out patrolling—searching for some kickass action—I'd crashed an exchange between some gangbanger and Juan Pollo. That gangbanger and his four henchmen were probably still rotting in prison. Instead of landing JP's Puerto Rican ass in juvie, I cut a deal. Simple and clean. He worked for me. No one else. He was seventeen and he wasn't exactly bad—trust me, I knew bad, I'd seen bad—he was someone who'd been dealt a bad card. Drunk Dad. Runaway Mother.

"Keeping out of trouble, kid?" The straw slipped from JP's lips as he nodded. "Good. The usual," I gave my bag a pat. JP's eyes lit. A corner of my lip kicked. "I'll find you next time I need a… refill. Stay in school."

I hoisted the ammunition bag, leaving mine down on the bench standing up.

Juan gave me a two-finger salute, "Will do, hermano."

Walking back into the late afternoon crowd, I felt the comfortable weight of seventy magazines. Half were rubber bullets. Bastards always thought they were loaded with lead, lethal shots.

"Safety mode off," I strapped the bag on both shoulders, then shoved my helmet on. I threw a leg over my bike once the blue lights vanished. I kicked off the kickstand. "Start engine." My baby roared to life. I made a half circle before bursting onto the street, speeding away.

Next stop: Lilith's.

***

Lilith lived in a ten thousand square-foot—give or take—European-style townhouse on the Upper East side. I wasn't the type of guy who enjoyed gaping at buildings—unless I was casing the place for a way in and out—but I knew that outside her mansion was all limestone. The place was six large stories of mansion, plus a sub-basement and a roof garden.

I parked in the sub-level basement, getting in through the backdoor. Rows of lights came on, lighting every corner. The entire sub-level was larger than my studio apartment. Couldn't complain, though. Since this sub-level was one of my bases. Which explained the punching bag hanging in the distance, the weight bench, a pull-up bar and a treadmill. Also… part of my gun collection hanging on a wall. Oh yeah, plus, the state of the art computer.

Mechanical hinges turned, in the door leading downstairs—from the upward level—and with a whoosh it opened, closing right after a woman with strawberry hair waltzed in. She was forty-seven years old, but she didn't look a day over thirty.

Scratching my neck, I smiled ruefully.

"You didn't say you were coming."

"I never do," I pulled off the helmet, setting it on a nearby iron table. "If I called whenever I dropped by, you wouldn't get any shuteye."

Lilith spared a smile. Hers didn't last too long. I knew the reason well—it was the same reason why she'd been funding my extracurricular activities for the past two years. Three years ago, Lilith's daughter got an HA injection… Lilith said she'd complained about chest pain from time to time. One day, a few months down the road, her heart just gave out when she was running track. Since her speed had been amplified, Axel's theory was: her heart hadn't been able to handle the strain. It had worked itself on double overtime—aging the cardiac cells freakishly faster.

The autopsy? It read that Lilith's daughter had been pumping herself full of steroids. Another cover up.

"Did you go out last night?"

"Yeah. Had myself a nice date—being chased across rooftops by some fuc—" I cut myself off. Swearing in front of Lilith felt wrong, like something I wouldn't do in front of my Mom. Pretty fucking stupid, but hey. "Some guy who'd been keeping watch over the meeting's perimeter."

A coy smile played on her lips, lasting a little longer than the first. Maybe she'd been thinking about Cynthia before coming down. Living in a big-ass house with pictures of the kid you buried had to be crippling. You know, for parents who gave a shit. She sat on the massive office chair across the computers—my so called workstation.

"Someone got the jump on you, then? That doesn't sound like you, James." Also, she was pretty much the only person—not like I was close to a ton of people—who called me James. Her brow pinched, the slight amusement fading, "Are you sick?"

"No," I said, throwing out a smile for reassurance. "I might be trained as hell, but I'm still only human. From time to time I... slip up." Those words were hard to say. When you played the vigilante game, slipping up could equal death. "Even with the H-gene..." I mumbled absently, opening the bag I'd gotten from JP. I took out a magazine flicking the metal lid and taking out a bullet checking to see if was 45 caliber. I held it between my thumb and middle finger. Yep. JP knew better than to mess up my orders, he knew I'd hunt him down and beat his ass. I loaded it back, zipping the bag.

I shrugged off the leather.

Lilith had seen my scars before. She had to, after Axel made me tell about the Facility, about the horror show those clowns ran. That's how she ended up financing my extravagant tastes. She wanted the truth to be known—that Cynthia, her daughter, hadn't been a junky. That the HA drug caused severe side-effects and she wanted to see me shut down the Facility. Lilith made me think maybe not everyone was as lost to this apathetic, blind society we'd descended into these last fifteen years. She made me want to believe that somewhere out there, parents who were militia and had their kids shipped off to the Facility, weren't just drinking the Kool-Aid and saluting their superiors.

It made me hope for something I shouldn't dare.

"Axel called me with some interesting news. A kid's gone missing after his HA injection. The H-gene activated. But someone in Mead Labs covered up what really got heightened. It's been a week since the injection and the kid's been A-wall." Lilith got up from my chair—technically it was hers, she'd paid for it—and leaned on the computers' table instead. I started the computer intent on digging up something on Adam. "His name's Adam Hatfield. Heard of him—his family?"

She gave a saddened nod.

"Where do you think he is?"

"No clue." I paused on starting the search, side-glancing her. "Axel thinks they might've taken him to the Facility."

"But you don't?"

"No," I whispered. "I don't think they're dumb enough to risk their precious torture house. Not with the amount of cheap, controllable cadets they pump out." They didn't just want our H-gene awake, nope. At the same time, they brainwashed us. The first step was to break you down with a selected torture just for you—they studied each person, trying to figure out what they were more vulnerable to. Example: physical pain or mental pain? On me, Cabe used the former. Then, they gave you a new name. Accepting that name, was the first step to belonging to them—to be their puppet.

Lilith must've felt the change in me, in the air around us, because she nodded wordlessly before going toward the upstairs door. I heard the retinal scan, followed by the whoosh and then—I was alone. It took me awhile to undo my tightly closed fists so I could type in Adam's freaking name. Hacking wasn't my thing. I still remembered my Dad's badge number and password to access the FBI's database, but they'd be able to know someone who wasn't my Dad had used his info to log on and snoop around. Staying away from the feds was something I was happy obliging.

"Let's see who you are Adam..." I trailed off, scrolling through a bunch of hits I'd gotten on the deep web. "Damn, kid." I murmured.

There was only one Adam Hatfield in New York city. And the kid was smarter than the average person. He'd turned sixteen early this month, already attending his first year of College. I got snippets of info here and there, he was in chess club back in high school, on the debate team and he'd led the computer and technology club, too. Busy schedule between all the advanced classes. A couple of photos popped up giving me a visual of the kid I was supposed to hunt down. It must've been pulled from some social network like Facebook or Instagram. It looked like he was hanging out in some skate park. Adam wasn't a scrawny kid, though he looked tall for his age—maybe taller than me. Brown hair, spiked at the front, wearing a t-shirt and jacket. He was smiling at someone. There were others—one girl kept showing up, laughing and making faces with him. She was blond but a tress of her hair was colored pink, and she had a big collection of glasses. They kept changing colors.

They didn't look like siblings. Looked too intimate, not to mention they had nothing in common. He was tanned, she was pale. He had dark eyes, she had vivid blue. Maybe girlfriend. I'd have to look into her later.

It'd be time to head out soon. I needed to run some background check on his parents. It was easy—my search for Adam gave me his parents names thanks to his birth certificate. Father: Carson Hatfield—a Chief operating officer of a Holding Company called Wilbur Co.—and Mother: Zoe Hatfield—deceased. She'd died from childbirth.

My jaw locked at the information. I looked for more, like where they lived. Five minutes later, I had a destination. All I needed to do now, was head to my safe house and suit up.

***

My bike was parked in the small garage below the studio. I was the only one living in this three-apartment complex, courtesy of Lilith's Miami condos, not to mention her exportation and importation enterprises. It would just be awkward if someone caught me walking around in Kevlar, not to mention carrying an Armory. The second floor was pretty much a replica of Lilith's sub-basement. The third floor was pretty empty.

I shrugged off the leather jacket, then the T-shirt—it was one of the last clean, hole-free I owned—and slipped on my wife-beater from last night. I wrinkled my nose. Good thing smelling clean wasn't required to go out and bash some skulls. Or press an under-concerned parent. I hunted down my Kevlar vest, strapping it on. I ditched the jeans for cargo pants and went to get my belt, looping it in. I grabbed my hunting knife, slipping it into the belt's sheath, it's weight familiar on my left hip. Grabbed a new pair of knuckled gloves, then opened the ammunition bag, checking which ones were rubber and which weren't. I always carried four spare magazines of normal, killer bullets. Only one spare for rubber. I grabbed my recently cleaned guns off the kitchen counter, loading them with different clips. Left gun was rubber bullet gun, right gun was shoot-to-kill gun. I strapped them on the holsters. I grabbed my hooded leather jacket off the couch and slipped on a dark ski mask. I hated using this thing—it made me look like a fucking robber. And it was hot. Even with the mouth hole. After last night's fiasco, I wasn't risking wearing only a hood, though.

I made it down to the garage, mounted my bike—not bothering with the helmet—and gassed off when the garage door was wide enough. Lock down would initiate in a minute, activating all alarms.

Adrenaline pumped as I sailed between cars, racing down streets of traffic and not stopping for red lights. Not like my bike had an actual license plate. It was a fake. I changed it every month. Before I left Lilith's house I'd made sure to memorize a route from my place to the Hatfield's house.

I was good at scaling mountains. No rope, no safety necessary. But rocks had plenty of places to grab onto, crooks to hoist yourself. Buildings? Yeah, they're not nearly as easy. Especially the newer, taller ones with no fire escapes. I left my bike three blocks from the Hatfield's residence.

Strategy dictated that I started on a lower building. I was running across rooftops, flying between gaps like a parkour pro. Until they were too tall and that's where the grappling hook came in. It was a gun, twice the size of my colts, but it shot a line strong enough to lift about five-hundred pounds. Like I said, technology wasn't all bad. I shot my grappling hook—aimed at a wide expanse of ledge—there! Hooks teeth were sunken deep. I pressed the ascension button. Every time I used this thing, I was shit-faced surprised by its propulsion. Using my body's momentum, I did a somersault once I went higher than the ledge, flipping onto the building's roof. After retracting the hook, I took a second to study where I was and where I was supposed to go from here. Tall, taller, taller motherfucking buildings. I craned my neck, getting rid of a kink before running off, launching the hook again. Repeating my climbing. Again. Again. And again. You get the picture. I'd had enough practice with this baby so that my shoulder wouldn't get dislocated after so many tugs, but for fuck's sake, I really liked jumping across buildings on my own.

Huffing, I landed on the stinking thirty-story building the Hatfield's lived on. There was no access door to the roof. My only options were to scale down to their apartment on the fifteen floor, kicking in a window, or... I tilted my head. There were two elevator shafts. I could easily pick the lock and make my way down. After strapping the grappling gun to the holster on my left thigh, I reached into the back pocket of my cargo pants, getting my picking lock set. It was a standard lock. I needed to align the gaps between the pins with the shear line, that way the plug could rotate without problem. First off, I plugged in a tension wrench at the bottom—the lock tilted right. Letting me know the direction it opened. I plucked my short hook pick, sliding its curved edge inside. With owned skill, I felt every pin with the tool, lifting them all to the shear line—yes! I grabbed the lock, pulling it open. The tension wrench flipped to the ground.

With a smirk, I put everything away. Picking old-fashioned locks was easier than deciding between pizza with extra pepperoni or extra mushrooms. Lifting the vent's lid barely put a strain on me. Inside, the elevator shaft was pitch black. That don't matter when you got my eyesight. I sat down, legs swinging into the quadrangular empty space and I grabbed onto the vent's edge. My eyes adjusted, giving me some quality feedback. Just like having light bulbs for eyes. I edged left where a thick cord was. I swung my legs—gotcha. Knees and ankles tightly wrapped around it, I let go of the vent, making a quick grab forward.

Done. Nice and easy down I went. Counting floor after floor. And you know, listening for a possible in-coming elevator that might possibly be my death. I needed to get out on the fifteen floor. Getting the doors open from outside while traipsing was going to be craptastic.

"Of all the times to need a damn crowbar..." The irony isn't lost on me. I rolled my eyes. Dark humor was better than no humor.

I'd counted four floors—I was on the twenty-six—when I glanced down and saw some big ass road block. Looked like someone rode the elevator. It was parked right underneath me. Hmm. Whoever lived on this floor just earned themselves a place in heaven. I loosened my hold on the cords, ignoring the faint burn once I slid down—fast. My feet made contact with metal. I crouched, grabbing the panel on the elevator's ceiling. I ripped it off easily, ducking my head inside the small space. Empty. I flung myself down. It swayed and groaned a little. I got up pressing the fifteen floor.

Easy access. Scaling an infinity of skyscrapers was actually kinda fun. I chuckled, angling my chin downwards once the doors parted into a hallway. There were two apartments. One on the right. Another on the left. I headed left. Another lock to pick. I made quicker work of it. I hadn't studied how top notch this building's surveillance was, not exactly in the mood to deal with the boys in blue. Their timing was ten times better since we were smack dabbed in one of the best neighborhoods in Manhattan.

Click. Stashed my stuff and eased the door open, pulling out my left gun. I slipped the door closed behind me and listened for a minute. Everything was quiet. I looked around the hallway, staying in the shadows for some time. For a minute there was no sound. Until... A door—had to be, the floor was marble—somewhere to the right squeaked. I slid along the walls, careful to peek around the corner. It was a short hallway leading into a living room. The sound hadn't come from the living room, though.

Soft light flooded underneath a door. Maybe an office. Nodding, I silently slunk towards it. The door was parted an inch.

I kicked it wide open. Silent approaches aren't really my thing.

A man in his mid-forties jumped in a ginormous office chair. I recognized from the pics I'd seen on the computer. Papers dropped to the floor at his feet as his eyes widened, registering the guy gunning at him. A smirk etched behind my ski mask.

"Us two need to have a little chat. I'm sure you'll agree it's in your best interest to cooperate before I put a bullet between your eyes."