Crimson Flare was barely conscious as she lay on the floor. When Nancy removed her mask and Morly pressed the camera in for a close-up of the exposed face of Mitropoulos’ Avenger, the event was like so much of the torment that had already been inflicted on her in this room: She was aware that it happened, but she was in no condition to prevent it, or to even resist. As the black vinyl was pulled away from her face, her only response was what could only be described as a whine. When the camera pushed in on Karen’s face, she turned away from the intrusion, though it was likely it was more in response to the lights attached to the instrument than in an effort to protect her identity.
‘Who the fuck are you?’ Nancy stared at the girl beneath her. She reached down and took a firm grip on her chin, turning her face back toward the camera. Weakly, gloved arms reached up, trying to block the bright lights stabbing her no-longer-masked eyes.
Too exhausted, barely understanding the question, Crimson Flare remained silent, except for another whimper.
Nancy slapped her face, cracking the hard crust that had formed from the combination of dirt and cum. A grimy film of the detritus was wiped across Karen’s mouth and she tasted the filthy mixture again. From somewhere, the battered heroine heard the demand again. ‘Who the fuck are you?’
The helpless, exposed Champion sighed. She just wanted everything to stop.
Finally, she said, almost inaudibly, ‘Let… me go. I’ll go… away.’ She was pleading for her life, she knew. The haze created by Chan’s serum was disappearing. Agony was replacing the delirium and lassitude that had surrounded her.
When her prisoner had made the plea, Nancy knew that it would not be long before her physical strength would be restored. She looked across the room at Ed, again clothed, relaxing on the floor, and still staring at the girl who had been the object of his attack minutes earlier. ‘Tie her wrists,’ Nancy said quietly. Ed didn’t move, his reverie unbroken.
‘Tie her fucking wrists, you idiot!’ she ordered again, glaring at him and baring her teeth. As quickly as he could move, he stumbled to his feet, grabbing the nearby twine that had earlier been discarded. He wrapped the same rope that had been used earlier to weaken the heroine around her wrists again. Ed enjoyed the feeling of Crimson Flare’s satin gloves, and the imagined sensation of the soft skin within them, as he fumbled to immobilise her limbs. With her wrists bound and resting upon her stomach, the Maiden of Mitropoulos felt her strength fall away. And her body, deprived of its strength, was now wrapped in agony, and she twisted and convulsed from the pain that was no longer held at bay by her strength. She cried out weakly. Nancy watched, fascinated by the writhing form of the naked superheroine.
‘So, bondage really is sexy for you, isn’t it, little girl?’ She reached toward the chain running between her captive’s breasts and gently, tantalisingly traced the links first in one direction and then the other, finally rubbing each round knob in turn. When Karen continued to twist her body, responding to the throbbing anguish that had gripped her, Nancy became convinced that her erroneous conclusion was, in fact, true. She grabbed the chain and pulled the hapless Champion of Women up from the floor.
Vaguely, slowly, awareness gradually returned to the disheartened heroine. She was conscious of her nakedness and of the pain that now swallowed her. She knew that the pain was centered in her sex, but that that was only part of the agony surrounding her. She slowly began to actually distinguish things around her. Nancy and one of her henchmen were fully clothed, while the other thug, the one with the camera, was half-naked. He continued to move around her with the camera. She tried to recall, What was it Stacy had told her? Use the pain, find the center of the pain and drive other distractions away. Her mind was very slowly becoming more focused; bewilderment and confusion still confounded her senses, but the intense pain inside her was one thing that was clear. When she turned her concentration to that sensation, it seemed to magnify, swelling inside her to envelope her entire being, inside and out. Tears welled in her eyes as she squeezed them shut. She pulled her legs up to her chest; sweaty, filthy thighs pressed against mauled, bruised breasts and the clamps that were attached to them, and she contracted her body into a semi-fetal position. As the battered Champion of Women then unfolded her form, she cried out, releasing all of the suffering of the last several days in a howl of sheer agony. ‘AAAAAaaaaaagggghhhhhhkkkkkkgg!’
Nancy relished the scream. Her enemy was beaten, on the verge of finally being broken. The video would become not merely a record of her victory, but a testament to her power. As Morly continued to record the end of the heroine, the redhead walked to the collection of objects she had set out earlier. She picked out a collection of weights and returned to the still-quivering girl. And a few moments later, these black and silver icons hung from the exposed Champion’s breasts and clit, secured there by new clamps, new sources of agony and humiliation for America’s Darling.
‘So how do you think your fans will like your new “look”?’ Nancy asked. ‘Too punk? Too goth?’ She flicked one of the dangling ornaments, one that hung from her most intimate area, with her index finger. She smiled as her prisoner winced.
Nancy directed Morly to return to a frontal shot of their captive as she resumed her interrogation. ‘I’m serious, Crimson Slut. Who the fuck are you? What’s your name?’
Karen wanted to lie, to protect her identity, to defy, at long last, her tormentor. But she was afraid that if she did so, and it was found out, Nancy would have other ‘toys’ in the bag with which to torture her. ‘K-Karen. K-Karen Perry,’ she sighed. Morly’s camera captured the confession.
‘Well, K-Karen,’ Nancy mocked, ‘how did you get to be the Crimson Whore?’
The hapless heroine tried to catch her breath. Exhaustion and pain continued to take their toll on her, even as she searched for a way out of her delirium. The interrogation was giving her more breathing space, an opportunity to find that elusive focus for which she had been searching. Finally, she said, ‘I… I was always very strong, even as a child. I don’t know why… or how. I learned… to hide it. I didn’t want to be treated like….’ She stopped, not wanting to say what she was thinking. But she wanted to give Nancy enough of the truth so that would be satisfied, though not enough to endanger others.
‘How did you hide it?’
‘By never using it… in public. But a lot of the time… I beat boys who didn’t… well, they didn’t….’
‘Yeah, I know what you mean. So you had this strength. Why become Crimson Slut?’
‘I couldn’t simply do nothing with it.’
“That’s one option. But isn’t it expensive? What do you do for money?’
‘I… I have a small trust fund.’ This was true enough, and could be confirmed. It would protect Stacy’s role in Crimson Flare’s creation.
The question-and-answer session also allowed Karen to begin considering her options. She had already begun to cut away at the ropes at her wrist. Ed had tied them hurriedly and sloppily and she knew she would quickly be freed, restoring her strength. She had to keep Nancy occupied long enough to finish the job.
But Nancy’s attention was shortly attracted to the severe discoloration on Karen’s chest. ‘What is that?’ she asked peering narrowly at the bruise. She reached her hand out to touch the purple and black contusion. In investigating the curious mark, the redheaded sadist jabbed her fingers, stiff as a knife-edge, hard against the damaged ribs. Pain shot through the bound Champion once again and Nancy felt something give under the pressure.
As Crimson Flare twisted her body to get away from the intrusion, Nancy smiled broadly. ‘Ape! You wonderful, stupid shit! You broke her ribs!’ She pressed her hand again toward the wound.
‘No,’ Karen whimpered, the pain clear in her voice, as she turned away from Nancy’s inquiring fingers.
‘No?’ Nancy was furious. ‘No?!’ The redhead straightened up very quickly and signaled to Ed, who had been watching. ‘I’ll teach you—“NO!”’
Ed grabbed her from behind and pulled her roughly to her feet, so that her bound wrists were now tight against her torso, her elbows pulled sharply back. The bruise was visible in the crook above her left forearm, and Karen grimaced as a fresh pain wrapped itself around her chest. Nancy immediately shot a hard right jab, which landed directly on the mark. ‘Eeeeeeeggggghhhhhkk!!’ the poor girl screamed as the fractured bone was aggravated by the new shock of Nancy’s blow. Her vision faded to black; red and white fireworks exploded in that darkness, and the heroine sagged in Ed’s grip. The broken edges bone cut away at internal organs, giving rise to a feeling of nausea. The claw ceased its work as the combination of Ed’s restraint and the new damage weakened her once again. But before she even had time to think, another powerful punch smashed against Crimson’s jaw as Nancy’s uppercut stretched and twisted the heroine’s neck. Glorying in the weakness of her nemesis, Nancy suddenly unleashed her fury in a vicious attack against the helpless avenger. A hard left cross to Crimson Flare’s cheek elicited an anguished cry. But it was the next blow, a straight, hard right to the discolouration on her chest, gave rise to a shriek of such infinite pain that even Nancy paused. Karen’s left leg collapsed under her and her whole body sagged in Ed’s grip. And with each successive blow, one after another, the ornaments dangling from her breasts and sex swung freely, as if trying to free themselves from their tight grip on the Maiden of Mitropoulos.
Nancy watched with unhidden joy as Ed pulled the petite form of the crimefighter to her feet. She felt satisfaction as a right and then a left cross smashed against the Champion’s cheekbones, drawing further groans of pain from the helpless figure. This, she thought, this was what victory felt like. When she drove a level jackhammer blow once again against the bluish-black target that discoloured Crimson Flare’s chest, and she heard the satisfying whelp from the battered, exhausted heroine, she stepped back and examined the slumping form before her. Unmasked, her mystery gone, Crimson Flare didn’t look quite so beautiful. She was attractive, to be sure, but the mask created an allure that was unmistakable, and which was unmistakably missing from this girl. The smeared muddy concoction that covered her face and jaw didn’t help, and the tears now flowing freely down her face, resulting from the combination of pain and shame revealed her to be only a weak little girl. Nancy watched her mouth moving, trying to form words: ‘Please.’ ‘Stop.’ Her body seemed infinitely smaller than earlier, now that she was desperately trying to curl her form to ease the pain in her ribs. Every once in a while her body jerked spastically, as she wept, quietly for the most part. The coating of sweat and filth that covered her did nothing to return Crimson Flare to her former glory. Even the satin gloves, the scuffed black leather boots, and the still-shiny black vinyl cowl now mocked their wearer, rather than enhancing her. The clamps secured to her body dangled the objects attached to them like a cheap stripper’s tassels. More than satisfied, Nancy turned to make sure that Morly was still getting the degradation of Mitropoulos’ Guardian.
Morly could hardly believe what he was seeing as he squinted through the camera’s eyepiece. Here was Crimson Flare, unmasked, moaning in pain, naked to the world, and revealed as nothing more than a little girl whose aspirations didn’t match her capabilities. Just days ago, even though they had been holding this Champion of Women prisoner, he and Ed still spoke of Crimson Flare in hushed tones. But Nancy’s triumph would destroy this heroine forever, smash her face in the mud, make her a laughing stock in the underworld. And he was creating all the evidence that they would ever need. His place in the criminal history of Mitropoulos was assured.
He moved to capture the debased heroine from a new angle, and, keeping the camera on the humiliated form of the victim, he turned his head and stared as Nancy returned to the implements of torture she had laid out on the blue table earlier.
Instead of selecting one of the toys that had been set out earlier, toys that might yet find a part to play in the heroine’s degradation, Nancy reached down to the rack that hung from the lower part of the table, where one might expect to find billiard cues or bridges. She came up with a shiny red spreader bar, almost three feet long, with chains and a lock attached to each end. She walked slowly, smiling, back toward her helpless prey, fingering the device. ‘Put this on her, Ed,’ she ordered.
After a moment’s pause, when it appeared that the thug was unsure about what to do, Ed released the heroine and stepped toward his superior to retrieve the device. The pillaged form of Crimson Flare simply crumpled to the floor. Unable to move, moaning in agony, the Champion of Women felt her legs spread by Ed’s fumbling fingers. She lay on her back, with her wrists bound, laying on her chest, and though she was aware of the compromising image Morly was capturing of her, the pain that racked her body made it impossible for her to resist.
Each time Nancy had driven one of her hard body blows to the avenger’s weakness, a white sheet of pain enveloped the avenger, obscuring all other sensations. The Maid of Mitropoulos had been so badly battered by the redhead that she was completely dependent upon Ed’s restraining her to remain upright. When he released his hold on her, her legs simply gave out from under her, and she crumpled forward and rolled over onto her back.
Though she had not seen the device that Nancy had brought into play, she felt Ed’s hands first spreading her legs, then wrap something around her booted ankles. Her mind was so far from her present predicament that she even failed to use this opportunity to resume cutting away at her bonds. That thought only entered her mind as Ed finished his work, deliberately fingering the leather-covered ankles of the captive. By then it was too late, as Ed roughly pulled her to her feet, yanking her elbows back and pressing her bound wrists hard against her stomach. With the ropes flush against her tight stomach muscles, the heroine was again in no position to take advantage of her claw. She felt the chain linking the nipple clamps lightly brushing her chest and she realised that her legs had been spread obscenely. The image Morly was capturing would show her as nothing less than a slut.
The powerless Maiden now stood with her feet spread almost a yard apart, with all of the invitation that that position offered from a beautiful, naked, young woman. Still dazed from the beating she had absorbed, she swayed back and forth, unable even to keep her head up. And yet, still another blow followed from the vindictive moll, a short, sharp uppercut that drove right onto her pubic bone. She tried to pull her thighs together, but the bar prevented any defense against the next two punches that caught her on exactly the same point. Again a cry of torment filled the room. One of the blows had landed directly on the dangling ornament in that area and a sharp sting of agony pierced her body. Shrieking piteously, Karen attempted to pull her legs up into some sort of fetal protective posture, but she was simply too weak. All she could do was absorb more of Nancy’s punishment, feebly crying out as she desperately tried to find some way out. She pleaded with her attacker to stop this assault. She felt consciousness slipping by degrees from her, and she found herself asking, Why? Why would this happen? Why would she die at the hands of this monster?
The next punch landed flush against Karen’s cheek. Her head twisted sickeningly and she felt fresh blood flow into her mouth, mixing with the sediment and cum that still marred her face. A final blow to her stomach, just above her bound wrists, drained all the air from her body. The battered Champion looked quizzically at Nancy, her eyes getting wider as she tried to draw a fresh breath into her beaten body. But her body refused to comply, and she noisily, desperately, gasped for air.
‘Let her go,’ the criminal moll told her shaven-headed minion, who still restrained the beaten heroine.
As Ed did so, Crimson Flare, heroine of Mitropoulos, Champion of Women, now unmasked, stripped, and bound, her legs spread wide by the bright red bar and her body decorated with clamps and weights, tottered for barely a second, and then fell on her face to the floor. The sound of her head striking the hardwood echoed through the hall, making even Ed wince.
Nancy only smiled.
Morly stopped filming for a moment, and then, to avoid the wrath of his boss, he moved to a different angle and continued his coverage.
The redhead considered that she was almost through with the defeated superheroine. Almost through. Taking a single step so that her feet were perpendicular to the petite girl’s torso, she aimed one final kick at the blue-black target on her chest. The blow she landed carried with it all of the remaining fury of the sadistic criminal.
‘Aaaaarrrrrhhhhhhh!!!’ The harsh whisper of pain exploded from the Champion of Women as Nancy’s boot, spotless now from Crimson Flare’s humiliating cleansing, found its mark, sending the girl twisting from the floor, landing several feet away on her back.
‘Let’s go!’ Nancy said, as she led the two men toward the door.
Behind them, the unmoving body of the defeated Maiden of Mitropoulos was the evidence of her victory.
Stunned, swallowed by an agony that wouldn’t go away, Karen lay on her back, staring up at the globs of light that bathed the room in a pale yellow glow. It was full minutes before she had the presence of mind to realise that she was alone in the rehearsal hall. Seconds after that, she remembered the claw that would permit her to free herself from her bonds. Freedom meant escape. She could flee this place of torture and pain. If she escaped from this place, she might also finally escape her alter ego.
As she cut away the last of her rope bonds, she reflected on the suffering she had been subjected to as Crimson Flare. She thought back of how often she had been raped and savagely beaten; how the worst criminal elements had targeted her for destruction or humiliation; how she had endured the pain and degradation; and how she had come to understand the reasons for this mistreatment. One after another, her opponents had told her that she had been targeted not because she was fighting for justice or against crime, but because she was a woman. Even her erstwhile allies, the police, hated her for this selfsame reason; they wished to see her fail, to see her destroyed. Because she was a woman.
Well, if that was how they felt, they can go back to fighting crime without her.
As the last strand of rope was cut and her arms fell to the floor, the surge of strength that rushed through her body overwhelmed the pain that had dominated her senses. The agony that she felt everywhere, in her chest, in her crotch, around her jaw, all disappeared, replaced by a dull throbbing. When she sat up, she was reminded of the clamps and weights that decorated her sweaty, filthy body and she saw the bright red metal rod that spread her legs. Reminded of her humiliation, she felt herself involuntarily redden; then she began to undo the clamps and remove them, first from her sex and then from her breasts. As each object was removed, she hurled it from her presence, as if sheer distance would erase the shame that she had endured. Finally, she reached down and broke the spreader bar in two, at the same time tearing away the chains that encircled her black leather boots.
But before Crimson Flare disappeared from Mitropoulos, she thought, she would have to erase all memory, all evidence, of what she had undergone here. As she got to her feet, she stumbled. Reaching down toward her knees with her hands, she placed the crimson satin against those black-booted gams that were the delight of all of Mitropoulos, trying to catch her breath and to steady herself. Seeing those symbols of her heroine persona, she thought back on Stacy and how she had given her life to preserve Crimson Flare. Well, Stacy, she thought, maybe we were wrong, after all.
She walked as quickly as she could to her costume, discarded on the floor halfway across the room. As she picked up the ultra light material, shimmering in the bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling, she once again admired the sequined spandex; thinking about the first time had put it on, and how it had felt against her skin. Tears welled up in her eyes as she remembered how Stacy had laboured over its design; and she felt a thrill run down her spine as she recalled its cool tautness against her body. She remembered how she used to love to swell her chest against the spandex, to feel it grip her breasts and stretch to its limit against her ribcage. It exuded strength, and wearing it she felt strong. The boots and the gloves only added to that sensation. The way her belt settled on top of hips and the way the baton rested against her thigh communicated to her that same sense of strength.
For the last time, she thought, and she stepped into the uniform of the Maiden of Mitropoulos. Nearby she found her black vinyl mask. It had not weathered her beating well: the vinyl was scratched and scarred, and one of the eyeholes had been ripped at the edge. She smoothed the tear and gingerly placed the form-fitting mask on her face. Adding her black belt, she completed her costume. Once again, the Champion of Women was fully prepared to fight her enemies.
‘You know what we ought to do with her…’ Nancy walked into the room, carrying on a conversation with her thugs, who remained in the hall.
‘No, what?’ Crimson Flare replied, walking purposefully toward her enemy.
The redhead’s jaw dropped when she saw the heroine, fully garbed and masked. But a moment later, she smiled, her confidence restored. ‘Why, K-Karen, how you’ve changed.’
‘You’re going to jail. You’re going to admit to the crimes that I’ve been charged with and you’re going to pay for them. Or, I swear, I’ll kill you.’
‘You’re a heroine, Crimson Slut. You can’t do that. You’ve got to stand for truth, justice, and the American Way.’ She was smiling broadly.
‘In one thing you’re right,’ Crimson said evenly. ‘My career is over. The police, the criminal elements, everyone… they hate me because I’m a woman. So when I’ve settled with you, Crimson Flare’s career as a crimefighter is over.’ She took another step toward Nancy. ‘You’re under arrest.’
Nancy rushed at the heroine even before she had finished talking. Aided by the element of surprise, she wrapped her arms around the masked Guardian of Mitropoulos and the force of her rush drove the two women back toward the risers. The Champion fell on her back with Nancy on top of her, still firmly holding the petite form in her freckled arms. Once again Crimson’s cowled head cracked against the wooden flooring, but this time her great strength allowed her to keep her wits about her.
As the two women bounced on the second level of the risers, the powerful superheroine whipped her arms outward from her body, forcing Nancy to break her grip. In a whirl of speed and power, Crimson Flare turned Nancy’s attack against the larger redhead. In a moment, the masked avenger was behind the criminal, her hands firmly gripping her opponent’s wrists, and she was pulling underworld queen toward the tattered rope lying on the floor where only minutes earlier she herself had been held bound and helpless.
‘N-n-no!’ cried Nancy. ‘I will not!’ She pulled and struggled, tugged, yanked, and twisted in an effort to get free.
In a surprise move, she twisted her body and jumped toward the heroine. The action forced Crimson to release her grip on Nancy’s wrists in order to defend herself. Once again the two women slammed onto the floor. This time, Nancy’s weight momentarily drove the air from Crimson Flare’s body as she landed on the little girl’s diaphragm, temporarily stunning the heroine. In that instant, the redhead was up and running toward the door.
‘Ed! Morly! She’s loose!’
But before the redhead could reach the exit, Crimson Flare was again on her, using her strength and speed to advantage. The heroine wrapped up her enemy in her powerful arms, only to have the larger woman push off from the floor, upwards and backwards, trying to drop the Champion on her back again. But this time it failed, and Crimson Flare countered the move by spinning around in a great arc before releasing the criminal from her powerful arms.
Nancy screamed as she flew threw the air. It would have been funny, and eminently satisfying to America’s Darling as she watched, but the strength of the toss hurled the gangland queen not simply across the open space of the rehearsal hall, but also against the painted-black glass of one of the large windows that pocked the face of the building. She crashed through the portal and out into the night sky, still screaming, as she fell three stories to the street below.
Shocked, the exhausted crusader ran as fast as she could to the gaping hole that opened out to the city night. The cool night air felt refreshing against her body, and the dawn, just beginning to her left, seemed to offer a beautiful, cloudless morning. In the faint light, Crimson Flare could make out below her the cast iron fence that separated the Conservatory from the sidewalk and street. The top of the five-foot fence was lined with spear points, purely decorative at the time of construction, but many now rusted or bent. And across this formerly formidable array, three stories below her, Crimson saw the twisted body of her redheaded tormentor. Three of the iron spikes had pierced her abdomen, a diagonal line of bloody tips that crept up her body from her navel to her breast. One more bloodied spear point held her thigh in place on top of the fence. Her other leg hung down on the outside of the property, and through the morning light, the heroine could see that it was still dangling loosely, bouncing off the vertical iron pipes beneath. Nancy’s dead arms were spread out in a cruciform manner and her head was almost invisible as it hung down toward the grass and litter inside the fence.
Crimson Flare let out a soft sigh, both of relief and dismay. The most important person who could clear her of the criminal charges against her was dead. But that person had also been her most vicious enemy. Turning back to the room, she headed toward the exit. Before she was halfway across the room, however, she was stopped in her tracks.
Intense pain shot through her head, as if someone were cutting away at her brain and skull. Oh, god, the Nemissesitor! Her black boots clumped on the wooden floor, her speed slowing, the evenness of her stride mangled by her loss of balance. The Champion of Mitropoulos looked at the exit as she slipped to her knees. There, smiling, was Ed, pointing the weapon at her. Crimson dropped her gloved hands to the floor in an effort to support herself, but finally she dropped her head and closed her eyes. The agony created by that infernal machine was simply too much. She slid to the floor, the pain pronounced on her face, her body shaking. Had she killed Nancy only to wind up at the mercy of her thugs?
As she lay helpless on the floor of the rehearsal hall, several loud reports from below her snapped the Maid of Mitropoulos back to her present reality. Pushing with all her strength, she raised her body and pulled her legs up under her hips. Sinking back on her haunches, she listened as two sets of feet raced heavily up the stairs. Raising her masked face toward the doorway, Crimson was astonished, moments later, to see Maria Blakeman, hugging the walls, creep around the corner and into the room. The police officer lowered her gun when she saw the heroine.
‘Crimson Flare. Are you all right? We saw you at the window and—’ she said in a rapid-fire manner, reminiscent of Joe Friday on Dragnet, but more truly reflecting her concern for the well-being of America’s Darling.
Before the heroine could answer, her partner, Officer Tim Westbrook, stormed into the room, holding his gun on the exhausted crimefighter. ‘Crimson Flare!’ he shouted. ‘You’re under arrest! You have the right to remain silent….’
‘Wait, Tim,’ Maria said to him. ‘Before we multiply the mistakes that have already been made in this case, let’s do some investigating.’ She turned to the heroine, who was just now slowly rising to her feet, and asked, ‘What’s been going on here?’
Crimson Flare began when she had left the officer’s car. It seemed now to be months or years, rather than days, ago. When she mentioned Ape and his activities in the old Conservatory, the officers’ interest picked up. ‘Ape Greystook! What happened to him?’
Crimson immediately recalled Ape’s fate. She started walking toward the exit. ‘Follow me,’ she said.
She walked to the room where Ape was lying on the bed. As she led the officers in, Ape’s shallow, laboured breathing could barely be heard. ‘Oh, my god, he’s still alive!’ Crimson shouted. ‘Quick, call for help. Nancy prevented me from getting him help when I injured him.’
In mere minutes, medics were strapping the huge criminal, tubes running into his body from many sources, to a stretcher and preparing to carry him down the three long flights of stairs to street level. As they wheeled him into the hall, the eyes of criminal and crimefighter met. He saw the worry and sympathy behind the mask, and he remembered what he had overheard in the minutes immediately following his injury; he had heard Nancy demean him again; he had known that Nancy would let him die; Crimson Flare was confident that she would have her name cleared as soon as Ape was able to speak.
‘There were two other men, besides Nancy and Ape, who were here. Nancy’s the woman who fell through the window,’ Crimson explained.
Maria responded first. ‘Those two other men ran into us when we entered the building. We had no reason to stop them, but they just started shooting at us. They’re both dead on the first floor.’
Officer Westbrook, sensing that his arrest was slipping away, looked at the Guardian of Mitropoulos suspiciously. ‘Fell through the window? From where I stood, it looked more like she was thrown through the window. Throw by someone with remarkable strength.’
“Stop it, Tim. It’s over. Ape Greystook and Nancy Smith’s involvement in whatever was going on here is going to explain a lot of what’s been happening in Mitropoulos. They’ve been involved in a series of crimes going back over the last five years. When all of this is sorted out, anyone calling for Crimson Flare’s arrest is going to look pretty stupid.’
Crimson Flare and Maria walked down the stairs together. The officer gave the heroine a bottle of water, so that she might clean the filth from her face before leaving the building. They then walked out into the street, where the flashing lights of back-up units, crime scene units, the ambulance, and even a police electronics laboratory—to deal with that mass of computer and other equipment the police found tucked away in a room on the first floor—reflected off the brick fronts and wet streets around the old music building. ‘I don’t want to know anything that happened in there,’ Maria told her heroine.
‘It was pretty rough.’
‘I didn’t tell this earlier because you seemed pretty shaken by some of the other things I had to say. But… well, you’re the reason there are so many women joining the police force, the fire department… I became a cop because of you, and that’s true of every woman I know on the force.’
Crimson Flare didn’t know what to say.
‘If it hadn’t been for you, we might have never done anything with the educations we got, or with the opportunities we had in front of us. Too many women I know went to college, got married, and had five kids.’
‘I… I have to… to go.’
‘Don’t stop, Crimson Flare. We need you.’
The End