Episode 92
(Washington D.C., August 7, 2019)
Once Katrina was out of sight, Rin drove the original cop car back. She abandoned it a few blocks from Daryl’s house, walking the remainder. His front lawn was a big scene. A dozen police cars had arrived, along with three unmarked black vehicles.
Rin began to approach the police cordon from the opposite side of the street, out of sight of the snipers. She changed her mind and turned around. Those snipers were the first order of business. This would be a lot easier without them, and in all the commotion it was doubtful anyone would immediately notice their absence.
Twenty minutes later, Rin returned. She walked up to an officer and casually asked what was going on.
“I’m sorry, miss, please stay back,” he ordered.
Rin donned her best smile and tried to coax some information from him.
“We’re searching for somebody,” the man explained, lightening up a little. “Now, please step back.”
“Would it happen to be a woman my height and shape and build?” Rin asked.
The officer made clear that he did not think this was funny.
“With this gun?” she drew the Glock and waved it casually. “Which killed all of those men?” she added as the policeman reached for his gun. Her own clicked empty as he drew his.
Rin put her hand to her mouth with a chagrined look. “Oops.” She tossed her gun aside. Another spark, and she looked down. A third taser? She definitely had to buy stock.
The policeman was on the ground, where he had landed after attempting to tackle her. Rin didn’t feel like killing him and saw no need to. She walked through the police line and up to one of the men in black suits. The cop was on his feet again and shouting at her to get on the ground. If he was going to get in the way, maybe she should have killed him. The man in the suit turned toward her, gun drawn. His companion waved off the cop.
Rin gave the man a playful smile. “Do you guys dress like that for a reason? I mean, it’s not hard to figure out who the bad guys are.”
The man smiled and trained his gun on her forehead. “We’re only the bad guys if you’re a terrorist, ma’am.”
Hooks from a stun-gun attached themselves to the back of Rin’s shirt, and she smelled smoke. Two policemen tried to tackle her but collapsed in agony. She had heard cracking sounds, so their efforts probably had earned them a few broken bones.
Rin never could be certain how the universe would accommodate her protections in any given situation, but by now she could take a pretty good guess. A lone assailant would glide off, two would bounce. If surrounded, she’d either slide upward like an eel or anchor to the ground like a rock. Neither were particularly elegant.
She put her hand around the wrist of the cop she had first accosted. To escape her grip he would have to move her body against its will, and that was prohibited. The circle of Rin’s fingers was unbreakable, even if she couldn’t bench fifty pounds.
The man struck her repeatedly with his gun, but it just bounced off. Rin was surprised it didn’t shatter, but maybe he wasn’t striking her hard enough. He fired at her forehead.
This was getting silly. She grabbed his gun with her free hand, breaking his wrist in the process. Strong or not, Rin did have several millennia’s worth of practice fighting. She had left the man alive on a whim, but now realized it was the right call. A regular cop was more likely to talk than those guys in suits. Even if he knew less, he still could prove useful. He also had provided her with a firearm.
Rin smiled and thanked him, waving the gun in his face. The cop just groaned and clutched his hand.
“Oh, that’s nothing,” she began. “I’ve got much grander plans…” Her speech was cut short by a spatter of blood and brain. Half of the man’s head was gone.
“Okay, who shot him?” Rin shouted over the roar of gunfire. “What asshole shot their own guy? Really, that’s just ridiculous.”
She sighed. There was no avoiding it. She would have to kill everybody except one or two — and she would have to be quick about it, before they put new snipers in place.
It was tedious work. There were too many of these idiots. Rin was reduced to foraging for ammunition off existing corpses in order to make new corpses. Predictably, most of the guns and magazines she found were nearly empty, and she wondered if she would need to search the cars for additional rounds. Fortunately, this proved unnecessary. Unfortunately, everybody ended up dead.
Rin had tried her hardest to keep one or two of the black suits alive. She even had shielded a couple of them from friendly fire with her own body while attending to the rest. But, just as she thought they were safe, both of their heads exploded. New snipers had been put in place.
There was no longer any reason to stick around. Even if she waited for more men to show up, the snipers would ensure that she didn’t capture them alive. Rin retrieved car keys from one of the dead black suits, located his vehicle, and got in. She floored it and headed back to the forested area, ditching the car where she had stolen the other.
Rin made her way to the rear entrance of a house across the street from the trailhead, and quietly broke in. Nobody was home. She was glad she wouldn’t have to deal with innocent bystanders. That could have been noisy, and she’d have risked losing the element of surprise. Stealth wasn’t necessary, but it was convenient.
Soon after, three black cars showed up. As Rin had suspected, unlike the stolen cop car, her black car actually had a functional GPS tracker. The last encounter had been a fiasco, and she decided to play things differently this time. Her top priority was securing a live prisoner.
Moments later, eight men were milling around the stolen car. Rin emerged from the front door of the house and waved at the men. They looked at her with annoyance, but that was all. She smiled. This was the problem with bureaucracies. The snipers knew what she looked like, and there probably was plenty of footage of her from security cameras and bodycams, yet nobody here seemed to realize who she was.
Apparently, communication within their organization was inefficient. In Rin’s experience with her own companies, nothing was more important than efficient communication. These guys really needed to hire a consultant.
The evidence left little doubt who these people were. Who else would be heavily armed, utterly incompetent, and able to command the police? It had to be the federal government, but that didn’t really narrow it down enough. The federal government was an archipelago of agencies. Which one was it?
As Rin approached, one of the men strode toward her purposefully and flashed some ID. She grabbed it with one hand and closed her other around his wrist. The smell of burning cloth drew her attention to the cattle prod. Well, at least she had been upgraded from a mere taser. Without releasing the man’s arm, Rin read his ID. Some generically named government agency. Not very informative and quite possibly forged.
Several of the other men were trying to tackle Rin and punch her. For some reason, none were brandishing their guns. Had they been ordered to take her alive? The ones earlier had shown no such inclination.
Rin tried to pull a gun from one of their holsters, but it resisted. She sighed. Damned safety holster. She crouched next to the man and proceeded to undo the straps as he flailed and struck and grabbed at her. If this didn’t get them to draw on her, what would? Unfortunately, the effort required two hands, and she had to relinquish her hold on the other man’s wrist. He immediately attacked her, with no better luck than his fellows. Finally, the gun came loose.
After all that work to obtain a gun, it would have been a pity not to use it. Rin shot the farthest man first. Was it a man? She hadn’t paid close attention to their individual attributes, even when she was gripping one or working the gun loose. For all she knew, some could be women. Perhaps the government was an equal-opportunity employer of goons.
She had to move quickly, before more arrived. Once again, she shielded two with her body while killing the rest. This time there were no snipers to sabotage her efforts. She turned toward the remaining two.
One somehow had managed to acquire a nasty wound despite being protected by her. Rin groaned. What more could she have done? Were these morons so inept that they couldn’t even hide behind an invulnerable shield? Maybe her protection had passed the bullets through or diverted them around her. That had happened in the past. It also was possible that one of the man’s own bullets had ricocheted back at him. He probably had been trying to shoot her from behind while she was busy shielding him. How ungrateful.
It was frustrating. Was there no way to keep these damned insects alive when she wanted to?
Rin studied the second survivor. He had a crazy look in his eyes, which made him useless. This one definitely would do something stupid. He likely would try to kill his companion once he grasped her intent. Obviously, these people weren’t squeamish about that sort of thing. Rin shot him in the head. She would just have to hope that the remaining man’s wound wouldn’t kill him too quickly.