Cape City Knights - Harbinger: Never a Dull Night

[Streetrat]

     Edward - Harbinger

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Edward's shoulder was sore, it was to be expected after a sparring session with Zhou, even when he is able to read how the fight will go it does not ensure that he will win. He was able to touch Zhou a few times, but not with enough force to harm him.  The average street thug may think differently though.

As he walked toward the bus stop a bit of paper caught his eye.  It was the kind of paper that drew everyone’s eye as it was money. A crumpled five-dollar bill.

This stopped him, there was no one around, no one to return it to. As he picked it up he knew…he KNEW that he was about to go into the nearby bodega and buy a soda. He did not understand the why, but when he had a feeling like this he understood that it was better to trust his gut and follow.  But why did the universe want him to buy a soda? Well, he was about to find out.

Edward came out with a bottle of Aurora Dew, the sea green one. The one flavored with lime instead of orange. Why the original yellow one was flavored with real orange juice he could not figure out, oxidized orange juice held no flavor, but was a necessary step for preserving and shipping the concentrate.  All flavors came from the mix of oils and “natural flavors” that were added after the fact to maintain a consistent product. This was most likely the same thing happening with the lime or Bahamama flavored one, but it was more tolerable to him than the others, less Red 40 by far than the cherry one, or gods knows what in the blue.

Edward generally stayed away from sodas though, they tended to be a vehicle for sugar more than anything else.  It took quite a bit of sugar to hide the sour taste of carbonation. It was actually healthier to just buy a box of donuts…but the universe did not want donuts this evening.

He walked down the sidewalk again, but now something had changed. Now he had a man following him. He was hooded with a shadow shrouding his face, he carried a knife, relatively large by the standard of concealable, his jacket was threadbare, his jeans threadbare. He walked with a very slight limp, favoring his right knee though his left foot scraped the ground as he walked, no, more than walking but less than a jog or run. In short order, unless Edward ran the man would be upon him.

Edward knew that if he did not confront this man, another would die. Why another? Already his mind had processed something that had not yet come to the forefront.

He moved down a nearby alleyway, went about ten feet, and turned around, waiting for the man. The man had sprinted to catch up and was breathing heavily from the exertion though he held the knife at the ready.

The knife was wet, not dripping anymore, but it recently had been, the red stain not yet dry. His eyes though, those are what told Edward most of what he had assumed, they were dilated, the man must be on drugs, but they also spoke of desperation. The man wanted whatever Edward could give him, but he was not interested in asking nicely.

“I have $46 in my wallet, you can have all of it,” he said in a neutral tone already knowing that this was not going to end in such an easy manner.  The man was high and already seeking his next fix. Edward was not sure by his looks and symptoms what he was high on, it could have been any of the new mixes that had been hitting the streets recently perhaps Tweak, it at least was not a drug that gave super strength or speed, but it did make a person feel invincible and was hideously addictive.  The police do a decent job, but it was always trying to hold sand in their hands, there was always something that got through.

“I will be taking everything!” He said in a hungry tone, it was as much of a command as a statement.  The negotiations were over. He was unsteady, his hand was unable to remain still, he was still favoring his right leg and telegraphed his lunge.

Edward stepped slightly to the side, his hand reaching and grabbing the arm above the knife, his other arm following to connect to the man’s elbow overextending it until

‘CRACK’

The sound of an elbow dislocating was never a pleasant one. But drugged as he was, the knife remained in his hand. Using a technique shown to him by Zhou, Edward’s hand slid down to the wrist and twisted, then Edward added his own move to this and stomped on the man's knee.

The knife dropped from his hand.

Then Edward raised his knee and the man's head, already in a pivot down, met. The man was stunned, at least stunned enough to allow Edward to pull out zip ties and bind the man.

He would call the police soon enough, but there was another person out there wounded. Edward did not dally, he followed the trail of blood, and it did not take long. The man was still breathing, and before he even reached him he had called the emergency number. “91…”

“I am in an alley just off 30^th and Broadway, a man has been stabbed and is bleeding out…I can’t stop the bleeding, please help!” his voice was frantic, enough to convince the operator that he was just a normal civilian who ran across a dying person.

“Alright sir, I need you to remain calm…” he was told as he removed his jacket and rolled his sleeves.

-

Quickly police and emergency workers were dispatched and on scene, red and blue lights of police cars and an all-red of an ambulance filled the night. Edward was separated from the man, somehow only his hands had gotten bloody, and was “cleaned up” and questioned while paramedics tended to him and removed him on a stretcher from the alley to the ambulance. The man would survive.

One intrepid officer followed the trail of blood to find the assailant, still zip-tied. It was not long before his statement was taken and he was released just in time to see the Bus pass by. He would miss this one, and because of that, he would miss the connection, Julie would worry if he was too late returning.

Edward passed the bus stop and moved to a nice quiet spot and called the Blue Blitz. It did not take long for the monowheeled cycle to make it to him. The Blitz was a marvel of engineering, nothing that he would have been able to craft for himself, another marvel of Rodger.  He took the helmet out of the storage space, and then he was off.  The Blitz could go much faster than he was comfortable with. Even with the gyroscopes, Edward was not yet comfortable taking the corners at speed yet he was home in a fraction of the time it would have taken with public transportation.

After parking the Blitz and securing it in a hidden room in the bottom deck of the car park, he took the elevator up, giving himself time to compose himself.

Entering the apartment the world again opened up to him like a bad detective movie.  A jacket was draped over the Loafing-Boy chair, a backpack had been tossed onto the couch but fell off bringing a few throw pillows with it, a carton of Cookie-Dough Ice Cream sat empty on the counter with a spoon draped out of the near-empty melting container. Shoes were dropped haphazardly in the hallway and a door was open a crack painting the hallway in darkness.

As Edward opened the door he found Julie draped across her bed crying. All of the clues were drawn together to focus on the young woman. If it was her female friends it would have been Chinese food or cookies, and the kitchen would be a mess of pots and pans.  But ice cream? Ice Cream was for boy troubles.

But if Edward knew anything he knew this…Julie did not want to talk about it.

As Edward entered he took his jacket off and hung it on the doorknob. He drifted over to her and gently lifted her up enough to sit down next to her and rest her head upon his shoulder. Julie sobbed and Edward gently cradled her head and hugged her tighter.

Julie sobbed harder.

Edward had tried speaking to Julie in instances like this before. He has tried to talk her through it, he has tried to help her identify problems so they could find solutions, and he has tried to put together the problem so that he could resolve the situation behind her back…the best result was explosive and trust-breaking. Edward has come to the realization that she did not want him to solve her problems, she would take care of herself, but what she needed was his support, comfort, and life preserver she could cling to until she could tread water herself.

She was strong and would get through this. What she needed from him was to be there. It was the hardest task he had been charged with, to care for her, to be there for her, and to let her forge her own path and not stand in her way. Not all battles could be fought with your hands and feet, not all threads needed to be pulled, not all pieces were to the same puzzle, and some puzzles were not his to solve.

---

[Streetrat]

     Edward - Harbinger

---

Edward returned to his office after leaving Julia to her own ends.  She had gotten out the worst of the emotional outburst and now was in recovery mode. She was leaving depression and moving toward acceptance. The only thing that he would do now was get in her way.

So instead he went to his office and went to his wardrobe. When he opened the doors half of the large cabinet was full of outfits, pre-selected outfits already coordinated to Julia’s standards. She just could not be seen with him in public if he was not presentable, and apparently, color coordination was one of his biggest weaknesses.

The other half of the cabinet was a large metal box with a matte finish, Edward placed his hand over a seemingly arbitrary portion of the box and it unsealed itself and a rack slid out. There were places on the rack for his pants, his shirt, his coat, and his tie. Once placed he gave the rack the lightest of touches and it slid into the box to…Well, Edward was not really sure what the box did.  What he knew of the box was that what he received at the end of a cycle was clean, mended, pressed, and seemingly like brand new.

He had Roger to thank for that as well. Roger was the first to recognize Edward's abilities as something that could be used for “Good” and the two of them spent many nights out in Cape City solving small cases, calling in tips to investigators, and fighting street crime. Thwarting muggings and robberies. Roger though had graduated and went off to work for Unlimitant GoTechnology, or U-Go. Before he left he had given Edward a few gifts, the suit which offered him a measure of protection, the Blue Blitz and its parking space, and a few other odds and ends.

As the suit slid into the magic technology box Edward withdrew a nice comfortable PJ set, gray with blue stripes, and set them aside. His office shared a door to the “master” bath with his bedroom. The only thing master about it was that the bathtub was a little larger than the one in the other bathroom and had jets. Edward had yet to utilize these features in the time that he had lived there. Instead, he took a hot shower. He let his mind fall into the sound of the water striking his skin, the tub surface, the frosted glass, and the tile. The constant pressure of the water and heat took part of his brain and placed the mouse in the wheel and let it run, letting him decompress and think about his day. He would have time to think about his day later, but in the shower was the best time to let his mind wander to the events outside of his purposeful actions and thoughts.

His mind began to process through the background of his conscious thoughts. The child who broke away from his father and almost ran into the street and was scolded by his mother, the banker who left his office at precisely twelve seventeen every day to get food from a taco truck two blocks down, the bearings on the rear wheel of the bus needed attention and were starting to grind.

Information flowed through him and he mentally sorted it into important, not important, and save for later.

Edward got out of the shower and toweled off, placed the towel into the towel hamper, Julia’s instance, and went into his office where he put on new undergarments and the set-aside PJs. He then went over to the closet and opened the door. Edward was met with a mass of racks, each set into the closet so as to create a wall of wooden panels.

Edward selected one and rolled it out. The board was filled with notes, pictures, string, and push pins.

Most of the boards had a picture in the middle of them, this one only had a question mark. There were images of crime scenes, images outside of the crime scenes, images of withered corpses with expressions of terror, a map of Cape City with pins and strings leading to crime scenes, and only a name to place at the center of it all.

Koschei.

It was only while casing a set of enforcers that he was even able to get a name. But the descriptions that they gave were dead on, so he had no reason to disbelieve.

In his research Edward was not able to find much, the man might as well be the Boogieman for all he was able to find out. There was not enough of a pattern in the killings, Edward thought that he had worked one out and even came upon a fresh crime scene, but it was luck not skill that had gotten him there.

If you call random phone numbers and answer the call with “Bless You” eventually you will get someone who, well for one will answer an unsolicited call from an unknown number, but will also have just sneezed.

But it was just chance. Edward had tried to apply the formula several times since and nothing. Either something changed, or more likely Edward had it wrong.

He believed that he had it wrong. But there was a new crime scene to put up on the board. Edward scribbled a few notes about the scene that the pictures did not cover and pinned them to the board with two strings dangling down, one that he pulled up to the question mark and the other to the map of the city and a new pin for the location, but it still seemed arbitrary and random. With so many crimes there was always some overlap. Second Cousins, fathers were business partners, Shopped at the same bridal shop in the same week, Children went to the same school, shared an internship several years ago, dated briefly, had the same SAT scores, went to the same Universities, intermittent fasted on Tuesdays. But these were only arbitrary connections that you could find in any randomly selected slice of society or Jury pool. Nothing that covered all of the victims, nothing that gave them a greater connection that he was able to find so far.

So far.

That was where he had to leave it. Something would eventually give. Some clue might bring this all together, but not today. Edward slid the board back into its spot in the closet and sat down on his computer. He finished some homework for school, checked Julia’s grades, checked a few message boards and social media sites that tended to inadvertently give information that could be useful, and visited a few bulletin boards that still operated because there were still a few holdouts from the early days of the internet.

Nothing new.

Edward could not leave it at that tonight. He went back to the wardrobe and opened the magic technology box and withdrew his suit. Fresh, clean and all the seams perfect Edward donned his armor and utility belt and made sure to turn on his ‘off heroing’ light, a lamp with a soft blue glow so that Julia would know he was out if she woke up in the middle of the night.

Edward left the apartment and had the Blue Blitz meet him in the back. His first stop was a bodega for a sandwich, a foot-long with all the veggies and bologna. His second stop was after a bit of a search. He had to visit several parks and alleys until he found who he was looking for.

They were sitting on a concrete bench in front of a replica of the Fontana Della Barcaccia. The pumps were off for the night so no water flowed through the fountain, but still, there was a serene beauty to the still water, and the ship cut from stone, or more probably concrete.

On the bench was a homeless man, one of the invisible faceless masses of the street. Someone that during the day the average citizen of Cape City would let their eyes glance over them pretending that they were not there. Even with the Social Work of Cape City where anyone looking for aid could find a way off the streets, there were some that did not wish to adhere to such structure or follow the rules that governed society, both written and unwritten. And so even in a near utopia, there were still those who were homeless and on the streets by choice.

The man wore three jackets and two hats, one woven and one knit. He had gloves that were fingerless, but only because they had been worn through. His skin was weather-toughened but clean, his garments as clean as one who slept on concrete or dirt could be. But he was sitting upright and proud, just admiring the fountain.

Edward parked the Blitz and took the hoagie with him and sat down next to the man. “Hello John,” he stated. Edward had never met this particular man, but he had met John before.

“Hello Harbinger,” the man said in a formal tone. Roger was not the first to call him this. It was John who was the first to call him Harbinger and the name slowly seeped out and began to stick. And it was not out of line or character and suited him. So Edward embraced the name.

“With the fountains off and only the outer pool lights on the ship seems to be almost real,” he stated.

“Yes, the work is good, and the replication is nearly perfect. They even included the wear over the centuries.”

Edward handed over the hoagie to John as he looked over the fountain. Coins littered the bottom of the fountain, mostly pennies, some foreign coins, and a smattering of quarters. Every week or so the coins are collected and used to help fund a nearby pay-what-you-can restaurant.

John accepted the offering and stowed it away. Edward had never seen John eat, but he suspected that his offerings went to other homeless that were in more need.

Edward met John a few years back, he had been searching for a ‘runaway’ and had been asking about them with the homeless as they were more likely to have information. Very quickly Edward had noticed that several of the people he talked to had the same mannerisms.  Not similar, the same.

John was not several homeless people on the street. John was one gestalt mind in the bodies of several homeless people on the street. Just as John had given Edward the name Harbinger, Edward had dubbed this Gestalt ‘John Doe’. This amused the Gestalt and Edward had been calling it John, male or female host, ever since.

“You seek information about Koschei?” John asked.

“Always, but the boogieman is like trying to capture a shadow.”

“There was another murder, East Second and George Washington. The police have already contaminated the crime scene and the bodies have been taken to the morgue.”

“I may give it a look, thank you for the information.” John understood Edward better than most, the Gestalt understood what it meant to be fed an overwhelming amount of stimuli and input. They were kindred spirits in their own way. But John was not one mind taking in the information, but several, perhaps hundreds. Edward had not pegged them all down yet, he was not sure he even could if he tried. He did not understand nor get an answer to how the mind grew or accepted another. And he accepted that it was not his to know and let John keep that secret.

“The crime scene may have to wait. I have a request for you Harbinger. A child of the streets has gone missing and we fear for her safety. If you could look into it we would be appreciative.”

“Rare is it the chance for me to pay you back for your generosity John. Where do I start?” Edward never pressed for information, always allowing John to give but never seeking. There were forces on the streets that could make life worse for those who live there. John was invaluable to Edward though because the homeless were nearly invisible and easily forgotten. Words were spoken around them that would otherwise only be spoken in private.

“The child, female in her early teens, brown hair,  green eyes, 64 inches tall, claims the name Bradlee, she was last spotted at the entrance of the Fens.”

The fens, it was a series of alleys that had a higher than normal disappearing persons rate. But as most of those missing persons were non-persons or homeless it was not on anyone's priority list. It was well known to the homeless to stay away, but it was also a place where drugs were sold, whatever was abducting people were using that as a lure.

One of the entrances to the Fens was not far, so Edward set the Blue Blitz to return to home base and he would walk. “Thank you, John, I will take it from here,” he said standing. John had never taken his hand when offered, so without any more ceremony, he stood up and began to make his way to the Fens, eventually finding himself at an entrance to an alley between a Cape City Bank and Billowing Cape Insurance.

The street light was out, and Edward was only illuminated by the light of the bank sign. He pulled the domino mask from his jacket's inner pocket and donned it, completing the Harbinger persona, and walked into the darkness.

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Edited December 28, 2023 by Streetrat (see edit history)