Dani watched from the shadows as the police completed their roust. The old, abandoned factory was an easy place to make an arrest quota. At any given time, drug addicts and dealers, pimps and prostitutes and johns, could be found in the many nooks and crannies of the large industrial space. Except, of course, for right after a raid. Cops rounded people up, confiscated drugs and cash, and left. That’s when Dani moved in.
She crept in slowly, dialing up her hearing and doing a thorough sweep. Other than a few rats in the walls and birds in the rafters, she was alone. That wouldn’t last long but she’d have time to get in a good workout. She found a piece of machinery that wasn’t too rusty and left her hoodie and t-shirt draped over it. Down to a tank top and jeans, she did some warm-up exercises to start.
The too-big clothes were the best she could get out of the shelter’s donation box, but even if she could have found something that fit she would have taken the larger sizes to hide her form. While she was far from looking like a body builder, she had more muscle than a homeless and presumably malnourished woman should. The kind of physique that would be noticed, remarked upon, and worst of all – remembered. Angel always said they looked like women UFC or MMA fighters, cut and solid. Nicole said they looked like Amazons.
Dani didn’t care what she looked like, as long as she could keep anyone from hurting her ever again.
Despite the poor nutrition and sporadic workouts, her muscle tone was still good months after her escape. That’s the way her body had been designed. Or rather, redesigned. She’d been scrawny once, and weak. Vulnerable. The lab had changed that. In a way she was grateful, but not enough to stay and keep being the director’s favorite lab rat.
Warm-up done, Dani moved on to a circuit workout of fast-paced, varied exercises. She missed the weights and other equipment in the lab’s gym but did the best she could. Then she moved on to the route she’d been using as a makeshift running track, taking it easy on the first lap in case anything had been moved. With every lap she ran faster, until she was dripping with sweat and had lost count of how many times she’d been around the track.
Next came her favorite part – parkour. She’d never even heard the word before the lab. Once she began to accept her body’s new abilities, she’d grown quickly to love the challenge of parkour. She launched into the air, hands finding a hold on a massive piece of industrial equipment left behind to rot. Finding handholds and footholds, she climbed rapidly to the top. From there she leapt to another structure, then back to the floor, then up and over the remains of an assembly line. In and out of busted windows. Somersaults over work stations. The adrenalin high rocketed through her bloodstream and she realized she was grinning.
Dani worked her way through every level of the factory until she came to a stop on the roof. She leaned over, hands on her knees, and gulped in air. The cool breeze felt good on her skin. From this vantage she could see the lake to the east and Cabrini on all other sides. In the distance to the north, the lights of downtown Point Sable beckoned. She turned away from that sight and focused on her more immediate surroundings.
Accessing her night vision and dialing up her hearing, she looked out over the lake first. A few ships, nothing out of the ordinary. The water was placid and smelled faintly of chemicals and organic rot.
This area of Cabrini was still relatively quiet after the police raid on the factory. It would be a few more hours before most would venture out of their bolt holes again. The bass thump of hip-hop came from a club three blocks away. From somewhere closer came the scent of marijuana drifting on the wind and mixing with the smells from the lake. A car crawled by slowly, too slowly. Dani tensed and tried to zero in on it. Something was off with the engine, some kind of clunking noise. She relaxed and the car limped along to its destination.
Dani shifted her senses back to normal and returned to the ground floor of the factory. Still no one around, her stuff right where she’d left it. She put on her t-shirt, pulled the phone from her hoodie then draped the garment over her shoulder and left. The night was just as quiet on street level. Good.
She’d been avoiding the shelter but now she needed a shower. Surely he wouldn’t be returning. Rich guys like that had lawyers who could get their community service moved to somewhere safer. So maybe she could risk it. Scope the area for a fancy car first, then go in and take a look around. Make sure he wasn’t there. God, she wanted a shower and a meal, and to not have to worry about stuff like this.
But she didn’t regret helping him. She didn’t regret coming to the aid of any of the people she’d helped. It had brought her trouble, minor injuries, too much attention. After beating down nine members of the Dogtown crew, they were on the lookout for her. That didn’t scare her, but it did make for an annoyance. There were certain areas of Cabrini she now needed to avoid unless she was in the mood for a fight.
As she headed toward the shelter she turned on the phone. She’d been keeping it off to conserve the battery. Once a day she checked it for messages. There were always several, most from girls. Maybe this was the number he gave to the ones he wasn’t seriously interested in seeing again. Whatever, there sure were a lot of them, and they all sounded dumb as a box of rocks. That fit with the media image of him as a rich, useless playboy. So did the drunk and disorderly charge that got him community service. But there was some elusive quality to the messages he’d left for her that suggested there was more to Kevin Moynihan.
Tonight’s message was no different. “Hi, it’s Kevin. How are you?” He laughed. “Stupid question, huh? So I guess you’re not going to call me back at this point. I try to tell myself I’m not stalking you, since I’m basically talking into a void here. But it does feel weird to keep calling when you’ve had time to call back and haven’t. So I’m going to stop. I’m going to try to stop. I feel compelled to check on you. Repay this debt I owe you. You saved my life, saved me from serious injury. I don’t even know your name, and I can’t thank you in person. All I can do is hope you’ve listened to at least one of these messages, and that you know how grateful I am. And that my offer stands. If you need help, all you have to do is call.” He paused for so long that she thought he might have hung up.
But he hadn’t. “I hope you’re safe. Good night, whoever you are.” She thought she could detect a smile in his voice and remembered his smile from the time she’d seen him in the shelter’s kitchen.
Just a rich, useless playboy. That’s all he was.
She shut off the phone and tucked it in her pocket. Not much battery left. She might as well sell it soon. Right now a shower and a meal at the shelter was all she wanted.
A scream split open the night, breaking her plans for a peaceful evening. Dani kicked her senses into high gear and located the sounds of a scuffle two blocks away, at the lake shore. As she ran, she shrugged into her hoodie and pulled the hood up to hide her face.
Another scream sounded, a female voice. Dani skidded to a halt and took cover behind the edge of a building to survey the situation. Three men, dark clothes, hard faces, and guns. Four women. More like girls, really, they looked so young. The girls had their hands tied and wore skimpy clothes, cheap cocktail dresses, short shorts and tank tops, wobbly high heels. Smeared eye make-up and terror on their faces. They were being herded from a boat into a panel van at gunpoint.
A fire burned in Dani’s gut, fueled by memories. Five years ago she was one of those girls. Her and Nicole and Angel and poor, dead Cassidy. They were sold to be lab rats instead of sex slaves, but that didn’t make them any less property. What the lab had given Dani didn’t outweigh her lack of choice in the matter, the loss of her freedom. When she escaped just a few months ago, she’d sworn she’d never be anyone’s property again.
And she wouldn’t stand to see anyone else forced into that role either.
One of the girls still had some defiance under her tears and smeared make-up. She let loose with a torrent of angry-sounding…Russian, maybe? That was Dani’s best guess. One of the men raised his hand to hit her but was stopped by another. Dani balled her hands into fists and stepped out from behind the building. She’d have to keep an eye on the guns and do this fast, but she knew she could do it.
The man who’d stopped one from hitting the girl took something out of his jacket and pressed it to the girl’s stomach. She screamed and dropped to her knees.
A stun gun. He had a stun gun. Dani froze.
Another burst of Russian, this time from the man with the stun gun. He leaned over the girl he’d shocked, yanked her hair back so she was forced to look up at him. More Russian, quieter this time, menacing. A threat of more harm, probably.
The other two men shoved the girls into the panel van. The man with the stun gun turned. Dani ducked behind the building. Shame filled her, and fear. The urge to run, the need to escape, the absolute terror of electric shock – it all churned together in a nauseating mix that nearly had her throwing up in the alley.
Get a grip. Get a fucking grip.
The van started and the back door was slammed shut. Dani peeked around the chipped brick and got a clear line of sight on the man with the stun gun. She’d bet money he was the leader, if she had any. Quickly, she activated the camera in her left eye and snapped a picture of him. She had no way of downloading it right now, much less running any kind of search, but she wanted the image anyway. He climbed into the passenger seat of the van and the vehicle drove away.
Time for more parkour. Dani followed via rooftops.