The Loop

August 3rd

“That motherfucker,” muttered Camilla to herself, not worrying too much about the beat cop who could clearly overhear her. The pale, freckle-faced kid kept shooting her nervous glances. Good, she thought. Let him. She had a way of intimidating people, and she knew it.

And she used it.

“Ma’am?” asked the kid, quiet, uncertain.

“What is it?”

“Are you okay? Is this related to a case you’re working? It’s just, you seem pretty upset about a random priest getting knocked out in Central Park in the middle of the night. More than a normal person would be, I mean.”

“He’s not just any priest. He’s … never mind. Why am I even telling you?” She leveled a dismissive look at the young officer, but to his credit he didn’t budge.

“It’s just … I told you everything I know. I was just hoping you might, I don’t know, reciprocate?”

“You thought I might reciprocate? Is that how you think this thing works, officer Dansen?” She said his name with all the derision she could muster.

“It’s Denton, ma’am.”

He probably believed she had gotten his name wrong on purpose. The truth was she just didn’t give enough of a shit to have heard him right. Not unless he was telling her something she wanted to know. Still, he wasn’t backing down. She looked him up and down, taking him in fully for the first time since she’d shown up to the scene, ducked the yellow tape, and started questioning him without any preamble besides a flash of her badge.

“Denton, right. Listen, Denton: this isn’t a case I’m working, exactly. Call it a passion project, if you want. The fact is, that priest that your witness spotted here harassing those gang members and then getting whacked by a baseball bat, he’s one of these Hyperhumans. One I’ve been keeping an eye on. I want to be the one to take him down.”

“Just because he’s a Hype doesn’t mean he’s a bad guy,” said Denton. He sounded almost defensive and Camilla wondered for the briefest moment if he was one. “After all,” he pushed onward, getting more confident with each word, “it seems like he was out here trying to help that kid last night.”

“You might think that, but there are two things you should keep in mind if you plan to continue being a cop. One, we don’t allow vigilantes to just go around dispensing their own form of justice. And two, the guy who hit him over the head with the bat was my partner, a New York City detective—one of the best—and he wouldn’t have done that if the priest wasn’t a very dangerous individual.”

She knew it was Ricky because the witness who had phoned the cops after all the action had concluded—a drunk college kid who had been passed out on a park bench nearby until all the shouting had woken him—had ID’d the car that Ricky and the kid had taken off in.

“I … I didn’t mean to imply … Not like your partner did anything wrong or anything like that. I just meant—”

“Save it. It’s fine. Situations like this are going to crop up more and more with all the crazy shit going down, and to your credit, Ricky was somewhere he wasn’t supposed to be, doing god knows what. And he didn’t even bother letting me know he was going after this priest, even though he knows I want to nab this guy.”

Denton was looking at her expectantly, like he thought she was going to put forth some grand theory right there and then. She ignored him.

“It doesn’t make sense …” she muttered to herself.

“Maybe he wasn’t here for the priest.”

“What do you mean by that? The priest was here, Ricky showed up and cracked him over the head, and then took off with that kid that the priest was harassing.”

“I don’t mean to overstep, but …”

“Spit it out, rookie.”

“You’re assuming that your partner got a lead on the priest and came here, and that the kid’s presence was incidental, right?”

She nodded.

“But maybe you’ve got it backward. Maybe he came here for the kid and the priest’s presence was incidental—just a complicating factor. I mean, the kid was being harassed by those gangsters before the priest even showed up, and after the priest was dealt with, so to speak, your partner didn’t cuff him and phone it in, but instead got in a car with the kid and drove away. And the witness said he thought there were more gang members coming into the park, chasing after the kid.”

Shit, she thought. I do have it backward.

“What was the witness even doing in the park?” she asked, not because she really cared, but because the delay would give her more time to think.

“Get this: he said he and some buddies saw an ad online that some dude could turn people into massive lizard creatures—for the right price—and they came to check it out, drunk out of their minds. Their guy didn’t show, and eventually his friends got tired of waiting and left him alone on the bench.”

“That’s … no more ridiculous than anything else I’ve heard lately. Anyway, I think you might be right about Ricky.”

The rookie nodded, and while his head was down she saw a slight smile on his face.

“And Denton, if you want a good word when you try to step up to detective, you look me up.”

“Who said I was going for detective?”

“Instincts like yours? You’d be an idiot not to.”

As she walked back to her car, she mulled the whole thing over. What the fuck did Ricky have to do with some kid? The witness had described the kid as looking like he could have been another gangster, but without video evidence, it was impossible to know what that meant. Maybe the kid was black, and the witness was just a racist.

———————

Well, if Ricky was a good detective, so was she. He wasn’t answering his phone, but she wasn’t going to let that deter her from tracking him down. She drove to his building first, snuck in the front door when another tenant was on their way out, and was halfway up the stairs to his apartment when she crossed two red-haired men coming down and heard a snippet of their conversation.

“I told you, the boss says we’ve gotta find this detective guy. Apparently the kid’s with him.”

“Well he ain’t in his apartment, so where the hell are we supposed to look for him?”

“Hell if I know. All I know is the boss is gonna be pissed if we can’t track the kid down.”

Camilla thought the men were being pretty brazen, discussing their criminal activities so openly in public. Of course they didn’t know that the woman who was listening to them talk from the next landing up was the partner of the very detective they were trying to track down.

What the hell have you gotten yourself into, Ricky? she asked herself.

She debated surreptitiously following the two men, but it didn’t seem like they had any idea where to go next, so she snuck up behind them in the parking lot outside, instead.

“Where are you boys off to in such a rush?” she asked.

“Jesus, lady!” said one of the men, turning around and clutching at his chest. “You just about gave me a—”

She didn’t let him finish, hitting him solidly in the nose with her baton. Strictly speaking, she wasn't supposed to have a baton, but she had never let the rules define her choices. The other guy was spinning toward her, fumbling to get the pistol at his waistband free. She hit him across the face and he went down.

“What the hell?” shouted a man getting out of his car at the far end of the lot. He was bringing a pistol up to shoulder height and leveling it at her. Without thinking, she threw her baton in his direction as she dove behind a car for cover. She waited for the sound of shots but instead only heard a sickening crunch.

She peered out from her cover and saw the man clutching at his face, blood pouring out between his fingers. She closed the distance between them rapidly and hit him with her stun gun. She dragged the two other bodies over to the car, and cuffed the three of them together to the steering wheel.

The first man she’d knocked out was starting to stir.

“Do you … have any idea … who you’re fucking with, lady?” he asked through his daze.

“Actually, I was hoping you boys could help me with that.”

She played the whole thing cool, but her heart was pounding in her ears and she still kept expecting a fourth man to come out of the shadows, guns blazing, or at least for a pedestrian to show up and ask what the hell she was doing. She wasn’t operating strictly within the mandate of the law, and she’d have trouble explaining her actions to her superiors.

“You just attacked three of the Mur—”

“Shut the fuck up, Finn. The lady made it clear she doesn’t know who we are. Do we want to change that?” said the other one. He was considerably older than his compatriot.

“Too late, there, laddie,” she said in her most obnoxious Irish accent. “The Murphys, huh? I’m familiar with the name. What do you want with Ricky Gonzalez?”

The two who were awake put hard faces on and kept their lips sealed.

“Not feeling very talkative then?”

Nothing.

“Fair enough. Well, let me tell you how this is going to go down. I’m a detective, Gonzalez is my partner, and fucking with him—and me—is, I can assure you, a much worse idea than fucking with your little wannabe mob boss leader.”

“Wannabe? Lady, what are you smoking? Mr. Murphy is one of the most successful crim—”

“Finn! Shut yer fuckin’ mouth. Jesus, these kids.”

“Sorry, Brian. I’m not thinking straight.”

“That’s okay, Finny-boy,” said Camilla. “You can talk to me. I’m a good listener.”

“Don’t say another fuckin’ word, Finn,” said the one called Brian, shooting his partner a menacing glare.

Without warning, she popped him in the nose again with her baton. He yelped in surprise and pain, and fresh blood gushed from his nose. She looked over at the driver, who was still out cold. Shame, she thought. Maybe he’d be more cooperative.

“I wasn’t talking to you, Brian,” she said, keeping her voice level.

“You … you can’t fucking do that, lady. Cops can’t do that shit.”

“I didn’t say I was a cop. I said I was a detective. And right now, I’m not even wearing my badge. So trust me when I tell you, I can do whatever the fuck I want. And if I don’t start getting some answers out of you morons, I’m liable to do a lot more than break your nose.”

Brian looked ready to release another string of curses at her or launch into another tirade, but Finn beat him to the punch.

“The kid works for us, okay? The kid who’s with your partner, or whatever he is.”

“And you want to get this kid back for … for what, exactly? He steal some money from you?”

“Boss just wants him back, is all. That’s all I know.”

“And it was your goons who were after him in Central Park last night?”

Brian was still staring daggers at Finn, but he kept his mouth shut. He wore an expression of pure venom, and Camilla didn’t want to know what was in store for Finn when they got back in front of their boss. She didn’t much care, either.

“What? No. That was the Novaks. They’re after the kid for their own reasons. Now are you going to let us out of here?”

“One more thing, before I do. Where were you going to go look next?”

“We had no idea, alright? This was our only lead. The kid had a place he was staying at, but the boss and his kid were checking that out themselves.”

“And where is that place, if you don’t mind my asking?”

———————

What the fuck did I just see? thought Camilla, looking up at the rooftop across the street from the safehouse where the kid had been living. She’d pushed around the corner just in time to see Sean Murphy and his son walk out the front door of the building alone, which was enough to tell her that the kid and Ricky weren’t there. She’d hung back as they walked in the other direction, heading toward a limousine parked at the far corner. She’d intended to go and have a look around the apartment herself, hoping to come across something they’d overlooked—anything that could help her track down Ricky—but then the rooftop across the street had caught her attention and she realized her search had come to an end.

As she watched, the light on the rooftop seemed to swirl and distort, and for an instant, just an instant, she caught sight of a face—Ricky’s face—before it was distorted and made invisible again. But still, the light around the rooftop had a strange shimmering quality to it, like it was being seen through a thin sheet of water.

Powers, she thought. Ricky’s been holding out on me. She wasn’t sure yet how it was all connected, but it was starting to take a rough sort of shape in her mind. Ricky—or the kid he was with—had powers. Maybe that was what the priest had been going after, or maybe that really had just been a coincidence. In any case, Ricky was helping the kid, who was clearly in trouble with not one but two organized crime families. And why was Ricky helping him? Because that’s his nature.

The Murphy goons had said that the kid used to live at this safehouse—past tense—which meant maybe he had been living on the streets more recently. Maybe he spent some nights at the homeless shelter where Ricky volunteered? That would explain how they knew each other at least.

She’d been the one who sent Ricky to check out the lead at that warehouse near Hell’s Kitchen the previous night. Was that connected? Had he even made it there before getting the call from the kid to come to Central Park? Probably not, she thought. He’d been involved in the madness that had happened at St. James’ right after he’d left work. Would he have had time to wrap up talking to the officers there, get out to Hell’s Kitchen, and then make it back to Central Park in time to rescue the kid?

Busy fuckin’ night for him, if so, she thought.

She snuck into the building and made her way up to the roof. She kicked the door open and ran out into the open, hoping to get a startled reaction out of her partner and whoever he was with, but when she emerged she found the roof empty.

Empty, or just made to look that way? But no, she couldn’t hear anything, and the light didn’t have that strange shimmering quality to it that she’d observed before. Had he really been here, or had she just imagined it because she was operating on next to no sleep and she was desperate to get some answers out of him—or, if she was being honest with herself, to make sure he was okay?

She had a quick look around and found a few things that indicated that someone may in fact have been on the roof: a discarded gum wrapper, a patch of gravel that looked like someone had been kicking it and creating a little divot. It wasn’t much, but it was validation. Then she saw something that made a gum wrapper and a bit of disturbed gravel seem completely meaningless. She wasn’t sure how she’d missed it at first, because once she caught sight of it, it was so obvious that overlooking it seemed impossible. But then she moved around it and realized she could only see it from one side and not the other.

It was another sort of distortion in space, not like the shimmering light, but like … Like a doorway, she thought; a rectangle about the size and shape of a door, perfectly two-dimensional, and seeming to only exist when looked at from the side of the roof closest to the building across the street—the one the Murphys had been searching for the kid.

If it’s a door, she thought, then it must lead somewhere. It was hard to say where it might lead, because all she could see through it was pure black, like, if it really was a door, it led straight into deep space.

She had a moment where her mind felt nearly ready to fall apart under the weight of the assumptions she was making and the purely crazy shit she was seeing and somehow accepting without question, but she put her hands on her knees, took a deep breath, and forced all of that out of her mind. She was good at operating nearly purely on instinct, separating her brain into the part that analyzed the world around her and came to conclusions about what it found there, and the part that acted, usually without much input from the first half—unless what the first half was telling it was critically important.

She ignored the first part now, and all its warnings that what she was about to do was at best crazy, and at worst the last thing she’d ever do, and she stepped up to the ‘door’, took another deep breath, and stepped through.

———————

At first she couldn’t see anything at all, and for a terrifying instant, she believed that she really had just stepped through some sort of portal straight into space and was only moments away from death. But then she realized that she was still breathing, still standing on solid ground, and her eyes started to adjust to the darkness of the room she was in. It had been a bright day on the other side of the doorway, no wonder this unlit room had looked like pure, inky blackness.

“Camilla, glad you could make it,” came a voice from the darkness, the face of her partner just starting to resolve out of the gloom.

“You were expecting me?”

“Why do you think I asked Kay— my friend here to keep the door open?”

“You wanted me to find you?”

“I saw you across the street before we came back through. Told Felipe to give you a little glimpse of us, figured your detective’s instincts would get you the rest of the way here. After all, they already got you to that building. That’s some good work.”

“Don’t fuckin’ patronize me, Ricky. You’d better get right to telling me what the hell is going on and how you’re wrapped up in it before I go call the FBI or something. Because whatever is going on here is totally beyond fucked up.”

“You wouldn’t call the FBI. You don’t trust anyone but yourself to solve a case.”

“… Fair point,” she conceded after a moment’s thought. “Doesn’t mean I won’t bust out the cuffs and figure shit out after you’re in custody. Because from where I’m standing, it seems like you’re involved with criminals, one or more of whom may have superpowers. I wanted to nab the priest, and you let him go. But this … this would be almost as good.”

“Hey!” A woman’s voice she didn’t recognize spoke up from behind her, making her jump. “I take objection to being called a criminal. I’m a lawyer. A respected lawyer.”

Camilla knew well enough that ‘lawyer’ and ‘criminal’ weren’t mutually exclusive labels, but she kept her mouth shut and ignored the woman. Unless she was holding a gun to Camilla’s back—and she didn’t think she was—then she wasn’t worth the attention yet.

“The kid’s a criminal. I’ve worked out that much. Drug courier and who-knows-what-else for the Murphys. Ripped off the Novaks. Got quite a record, I’d wager … Or would, if he’d ever been arrested. The fact he hasn’t tells me that he’s smart. Smart enough to trick a detective into doing his dirty work for him? Maybe. Or maybe you’ve been crooked for a while now.”

Ricky wasn’t responding, which she was finding increasingly frustrating, and as his face came into clearer focus, she saw that he was actually smiling.

“You smug prick. I can tell I’m getting close. Just fill in the blanks. Fuck it, kill me if you’re going to. Just tell me the truth first. Don’t leave me in the dark.”

As if in response to only the last part of her statement, the room she was in was flooded with light.

“Let there be light,” muttered a youngish, dark brown-skinned boy standing about twenty feet behind Ricky. She didn’t recognize him, but she knew who he had to be.

“Cool trick, kid. Felipe was it? So you’re the one who was messing with the light around the rooftop. And she’s the one who made the portal … thing, I assume?” she asked, pointing over her shoulder with her thumb, but not taking her eyes off of Ricky’s face. He was smiling wider than ever. “Which I guess makes you just the lackey? Because I can’t figure out how you would get two Hypes to bend a knee to you when you don’t even have powers.”

“Your instincts really are good,” he said, “but this situation is, as you so elegantly put it, ‘totally beyond fucked’, and as such, your instincts will only get you so far.” He was still being smug, which made her want to punch him in the nose, but at least he seemed inclined to keep talking, and she was inclined to let him. She looked around—the room appeared to be a large storeroom filled with unneeded tables and chairs—and found a desk a few steps away to lean against, looking at Ricky expectantly.

“Well,” she began. “Tell me where I went wrong, oh great god of detectives.”

“It’s a bit of a long story, and you got parts of it right. Felipe is, or was, a criminal. And obviously I’m helping him. But these two aren’t the only ones with powers. And if you want the full story, there’s one thing you have to do.”

“What is it?” she asked, but she had a feeling she knew where he was heading.

He pulled it out from behind his back: a shining sphere of impossibly polished, gleaming metal or glass.

“You’re a good partner,” he began, “a great detective, and a pretty decent human being. If this isn’t for you, I get it. I would only ask that, if you’re not willing to go all in with me, you leave and let us continue with what we have to do. I’m asking you that as a friend. I’m asking you to trust me. I’m trying to help some people who need my help; that’s all I’ve ever wanted to do.”

Camilla gulped, nodded slightly, not even sure what she meant by the action.

“But if you are interested—and I can tell by your expression you know exactly what this orb is and what it does, or at least you’re smart enough to guess—then all you have to do is touch it. It doesn’t hurt, and what it gives you will—hopefully—be enough to help us turn the tide against the forces that are gathering against us. And I don’t just mean the Murphys and the Novaks. The city is going to shit, Camilla. Or at least, without decent people pushing back against the darkness, it will.”

His argument was fairly convincing, but not altogether original. No, what really convinced her was the use of her first name. She couldn’t remember the last time he’d called her anything but Pérez. It was the closest he’d ever come to letting his guard down around her, and it told her one very important thing: whatever he was trying to accomplish, he believed in it earnestly.

And besides, whatever that orb gave her might be just the edge she needed to find and take down the fuckin’ superpowered priest before he amassed an army and turned New York City into hell on earth.

She said nothing, took a deep breath, and prepared to push the analyzing half of her brain to the back until she realized that both sides of her mind were in agreement: forward was the only way.

She closed the distance between herself and Ricky quickly, and his smile grew wider, but it no longer seemed smug. She reached her hand out.

“I just touch it?” she asked.

But she didn’t even wait for an answer before her hand made contact with the smooth surface, and her world went dark.