Chapter 2: Vigilante
The sirens were a rising wall of sound, pressing in from all sides. The boy with the mop handle, his name was Kyle, Lara would later learn, didn’t need telling twice. He grabbed his friend, Jake, who was still clutching his shattered collarbone, and they scrambled toward the beaded curtain that led to the stockroom and the back door.
They didn’t make it.
Amber, wheezing on the floor, snarled through her pain. “Don’t let them go!”
The purple-haired girl, Mia, moved. It wasn’t a run. It was a blur of frustrated motion. She dropped the fire extinguisher and was in front of the curtain before the boys could take another step. She didn’t hit them. She grabbed Kyle by the front of his shirt and threw him. He sailed past the demolished counter, legs pinwheeling, and slammed into a remaining cooler door. The metal dented inward with a sound like a giant struck bell. He slid down, unconscious.
Jake froze, his face a mask of snot and tears and terror. He backed away, toward Lara, his good hand up in pointless surrender.
“Please,” he whimpered. “We’re sorry. We’re so sorry.”
Mia advanced, her eyes fixed on Jake. The confusion Lara had seen was gone, burned away by a fresh, purer fuel: the thrill of total control. Amber pushed herself up onto her elbows, watching with a painful, rapt intensity.
“You don’t get to be sorry,” Mia said, her voice calm now, which was worse. “Sorry doesn’t put the video back in the phone. Sorry doesn’t make the laughing stop.”
“Let him leave,” Lara said, stepping between Mia and Jake. Her heart was a trapped bird against her ribs. “The police are coming. Just let him walk out.”
“Or what?” Amber coughed from the floor. “You’ll hug us again?”
Mia’s gaze flicked to Lara, dismissive, then back to Jake. “Move.”
Lara didn’t. She widened her stance, the glass crunching under her shoes. She had no idea how to fight. But she could be a wall.
Mia sighed, a sound of profound annoyance. She reached out, not for Lara, but around her. Her hand shot past Lara’s shoulder, fingers closing around the neck of Jake’s t-shirt. She yanked him forward like a doll.
“No!” Lara grabbed Mia’s wrist. The skin was warm, solid. Unyielding.
For a second, they strained, a silent, impossible tug-of-war over a sobbing boy. Mia was stronger, Lara realized with a jolt. Not just strong. Ferociously, casually powerful. Lara’s feet slipped on the debris. Mia grinned, a flash of teeth.
Then she changed her grip.
Her hand slid from Jake’s shirt to his throat, her fingers settling under the curve of his jaw. Jake’s eyes bulged. He made a wet, gurgling sound.
“Stop it!” Lara screamed. She threw a punch. It was awkward, born of panic. It connected with Mia’s temple. The impact was a dull, resonant thock, like hitting a seasoned oak stump. Mia’s head snapped to the side. She blinked, slowly. A flicker of surprise, then annoyance. She didn’t let go.
“You see?” Mia said, looking right at Lara, her voice conversational. “It doesn’t hurt.”
She pulled.
It wasn’t a yank. It was a slow, inexorable pressure, a gradual separation. There was a terrible, wet series of cracks and pops, a sound of ligaments and vertebrae surrendering. Jake’s scream died into a choked hiss of air. His eyes were locked on Lara’s, wide with an incomprehension so absolute it was almost peaceful.
The sirens were right outside now, lights painting the shattered front of the store in pulsing red and blue.
Mia tore his head from his body.
It came free with a final, fibrous rip. She held it for a moment, looking at it curiously, then dropped it. It hit the tile floor with a soft, meaty thud and rolled, coming to rest at Lara’s feet. The body slumped, a fountain of blood arcing from the severed neck, pattering on the glass.
Lara stopped breathing. The world narrowed to the head on the floor, the eyes still open, the mouth agape. The buzzing in her ears drowned out the sirens, the shouts from the street. There was only the sound of blood dripping and Amber’s low, approving whisper from the floor. “Yeah.”
Kyle groaned, stirring by the cooler.
Amber looked over. Her pain seemed to vanish, replaced by a luminous, focused malice. “My turn.”
She got to her feet, movements stiff but deliberate. She walked toward Kyle.
“Amber, don’t,” Lara whispered. The words were ashes.
Amber didn’t acknowledge her. Kyle pushed himself up, blinking dazedly. He saw Amber coming. He saw Jake’s body. He scrambled backward, his back hitting the cooler.
“You liked the comments, didn’t you?” Amber asked softly. “The ones calling me a brick-foot? You shared it.”
“Amber, I swear—” Kyle babbled.
Amber knelt in front of him. She placed her palm flat on his chest, over his heart, almost tenderly. “Let’s see what’s in there.”
She pushed.
Her hand didn’t punch. It sank. Flesh and bone gave way before her arm like soft clay, with a sound of splintering ribs and tearing muscle. Kyle’s body jerked. A shocked, silent ‘O’ formed on his lips. Amber’s arm disappeared into his chest up to the elbow. Her expression was one of intense, curious concentration.
She held it there for a long second, feeling something inside him spasm and go still. Then she withdrew her arm. It emerged slick and crimson, dripping. She wiped it casually on Kyle’s jeans as he sagged sideways, a dark, ruined hole in the center of him.
She stood, grabbed the front of his shirt, and shoved the body toward Lara. It slid across the bloody tile, coming to rest beside Jake’s head.
The two girls stood together, panting slightly, looking at their work. Then they looked at Lara.
The buzzing in Lara’s head stopped. Everything stopped.
The cold, procedural clarity she’d felt in Mr. Henderson’s apartment returned, but this time it wasn’t filled with shock. It was filled with a silence so deep it was auditory. The black tide of her anger wasn’t a tide anymore. It was the ocean itself, and she was standing at the bottom of it, in perfect, pressure-filled calm.
These were not girls in pain lashing out. These were open valves, releasing something into the world that could not be taken back. They had crossed a line that folded beds and shattered glasses only hinted at. They had made it simple.
They had to die.
Not for justice. Not for the boys. But because letting them walk out of this store was the same as opening the door to a plague.
Lara bent down. She picked up the fire extinguisher Mia had dropped. It was heavy, solid steel. She hefted it in one hand, then the other, getting a feel for its weight. It felt like a toy made of balsa wood.
“You gonna try that?” Mia asked, almost smiling. She cracked her neck. “We’re the same. You can’t hurt us.”
“I know,” Lara said. Her voice was foreign to her. Flat. Empty. “But you can hurt each other.”
She moved.
She didn’t charge Mia. She went for Amber, who was closer, who was still looking at her bloody hand with a kind of dazed pride. Lara swung the extinguisher not like a club, but like a hammer throw, putting all the twisting force of her body into it.
The cylinder connected with Amber’s side. This time, the sound was different. A deep, internal crunch, like a car compacting. Amber’s breath exploded out of her. She folded around the point of impact, her feet leaving the ground. She flew across the store and crashed through what was left of the front window frame, vanishing into the kaleidoscope of police lights outside.
Mia roared—a raw, furious sound. She lunged, hands clawed for Lara’s face.
Lara dropped the extinguisher and met the charge. They came together in a crash of bodies. No technique. Just force against force. They grappled, stumbling over debris, each grip a vice that would have pulverized normal bone. Lara felt Mia’s fingers dig into her bicep, a pressure that meant nothing. She drove a knee up into Mia’s stomach. It was like kneeing a stone wall, but Mia grunted, the air hissing from her lungs.
They fell against a shelf, flattening it. Bags of snacks exploded around them in a cloud of salt and powdered cheese. Mia got a hand on Lara’s throat and squeezed. Lara felt the pressure, a constriction that was annoying, like a too-tight collar. She grabbed Mia’s wrist and pried the fingers back. Mia’s eyes widened with effort, then shock, as Lara forced her hand away, her own tendons standing out like cables.
They were matched. Utterly.
Mia headbutted her. Lara saw it coming and met it with her own forehead.
The crack echoed in the ruined store. A spiderweb of pain flashed through Lara’s skull—not damage, just sensation, bright and shocking. Mia reeled back, a gash opening on her own brow. Dark blood, thick and slow, welled up and dripped into her eye.
For the first time, Mia looked afraid. The invulnerability had been a fact. Now it was a contest.
She scrambled back, grabbing a metal support rod from the fallen shelving. She swung it like a baseball bat. It whistled through the air.
Lara didn’t bother to block. She let it hit her across the shoulders.
The rod bent around her with a shriek of metal.
Lara snatched the bent rod from Mia’s stunned hands. She stepped in, inside Mia’s guard. She drove her elbow into Mia’s face. Nose cartilage gave way with a wet snap. Mia stumbled, blood sheeting down her chin.
This was it. This was the difference. Lara had spent a lifetime absorbing blows. Taking hits was her oldest skill. Mia only knew how to give them.
Lara brought the bent rod down on Mia’s knee. The sound was like a branch snapping in a storm. Mia screamed, her leg buckling. She went down on the ruined knee, catching herself on her hands.
Lara stood over her. She was breathing hard, not from exertion, but from the roaring silence inside her. Mia looked up, blood and tears and defiance mixing on her face.
“You’re one of us,” Mia spat, a crimson bubble bursting on her lips. “You’re a monster too.”
“Probably,” Lara said.
She raised the rod. It wasn’t about anger anymore. It was about closing a valve. It was about preventing the next Jake, the next Kyle. It was surgery.
She brought the jagged, pointed end down, aiming for the base of Mia’s skull.
A voice, amplified and metallic, blasted through the store. “FREEZE! POLICE! DROP THE WEAPON AND STEP AWAY WITH YOUR HANDS UP!”
Lara froze. The rod was poised.
The rod was poised. The amplified voice crackled again, urgent and frayed. "I said drop it! Now!"
Through the shattered storefront, Lara saw silhouettes. Four, five of them, taking position behind car doors, weapons drawn and aimed. The swirling lights painted the carnage inside in stark, horrific flashes: the bodies, the blood, Mia crumpled and bleeding at her feet.
Mia looked from the police to Lara, and a wild, desperate hope flashed in her eyes. "They'll shoot you," she rasped, a bloody smile forming. "Not me. I'll tell them you did all this."
Lara considered the bent rod in her hand. She considered explaining. The two dead boys, the girl she'd thrown through a window, this broken thing at her feet who’d torn a head off like twisting a bottle cap. The words would be a jumble. They would demand surrender, cuff her, take her in. They would put Mia in an ambulance.
Mia would live. She would talk. She would get better. And then she would do this again somewhere else.
The decision was quiet and absolute.
Lara dropped the rod. It clattered on the tile.
Mia’s smile widened, a ghastly split in her ruined face. “Smart,” she whispered.
Lara looked down at her. “No.”
She raised her foot, a simple, deliberate motion like stepping onto a stair. The sole of her sneaker hovered over Mia’s temple. Mia’s eyes widened, the smile vanishing into pure, animal panic. She tried to twist away.
Lara stomped down.
The sound was a hybrid of a rotten pumpkin bursting and a bundle of dry sticks snapping. It was profoundly, offensively wet. Mia’s head flattened against the hard floor, the structure of it giving way with a final, crunching sigh. Her body jerked once, then lay still, a ruined sculpture.
Silence for one beat. Two.
Then the world exploded in noise and light.
“OPEN FIRE!”
Muzzle flashes lit up the doorway like strobes. The roar of gunfire was deafening, swallowing the sirens. Bullets ripped through the air, chewing into shelves, pocking the walls, shattering bottles.
They struck Lara in a stinging, insistent rain.
It felt like being pelted by heavy, angry hailstones. She felt the impacts across her chest, her stomach, her legs. She looked down. Her scrubs were being shredded, fabric tearing and flying away in puffs. Underneath, her skin showed faint, immediate white welts that faded almost as quickly as they appeared. No blood. No pain. Just a persistent, tapping pressure.
A bullet snapped past her cheek. Another tugged at her hair.
She took a step forward. Glass ground to powder under her heel.
Another step. A bullet hit her directly in the forehead. Her head rocked back a fraction of an inch. It felt like a firm finger-flick. She kept walking.
Through the shattered opening, she saw the officers’ faces. Their expressions of professional fury melted into confusion, then raw, disbelieving terror. Their magazines emptied. The sudden cessation of gunfire was almost louder than the barrage had been.
In the ringing quiet, the click-clack of frantic reloading sounded like toys.
“Hold your fire! Hold your fire!” one cop shouted, his voice cracking.
Lara stepped out of the store and onto the sidewalk littered with glass. The cool night air washed over her, smelling of cordite and spilled soda. She held her hands out, palms open, showing them empty.
“Please,” she said, and her voice sounded too calm, too normal amidst the wreckage. “You have to listen. I’m not… I can’t be hurt. The bullets don’t work.”
An older officer with a grizzled mustache stared, his service pistol half-reloaded. His eyes darted from her torn, unbloodied clothes to the horror inside the store. “On the ground! Now! Face down!”
“The girl in there,” Lara said, taking another step toward them. They flinched back as one. “Mia. She killed those two boys. She ripped one’s head off. I had to stop her. She would have kept going.”
“We will shoot!” a younger officer screamed, his weapon raised again, his hands shaking violently.
“You already did,” Lara said, a faint, helpless frustration bleeding into her tone. “Look at me. It doesn’t work. Something happened today. To women. To girls. We’re… different now. She was a murderer. I stopped her.”
The older cop’s eyes hardened. The fear was still there, but it was being subsumed by training, by a protocol that had no box for this. “I don’t care if you’re made of goddamn steel. You are under arrest for murder. You will get on the ground, or we will use lethal force.”
He finished reloading with a sharp snap.
Lara looked at their faces. She saw no understanding. Only fear, and a rigid determination to force the world back into a shape they recognized. To cuff her, to process her, to put her in a cell. A cell that could not hold her. A system that would see her as the only culprit in there.
They would take her. They would try.
The calm ocean inside her shifted. It wasn’t anger. It was a dreadful, practical realization. They were another kind of valve. A stubborn, armed valve that would not turn.
“Okay,” Lara said softly.
The younger officer rushed her. He’d holstered his gun, maybe thinking she was compliant, maybe thinking brute force would work where bullets failed. He grabbed for her arm to twist it behind her back.
Lara let him take it. His grip was strong, practiced. He tried to force her down. She didn’t move. Not an inch.
He grunted with effort, his face reddening. “Resisting arrest—!”
Lara turned her wrist, easily breaking his hold as if he were a child. She wrapped her fingers around his forearm. He gasped. She could feel the bones inside, so delicate.
She didn’t squeeze. She twisted. A quick, rotational jerk.
The bone broke with a sound like a chair leg snapping. His scream was high and shrill. She let go, and he stumbled back, clutching his arm, which now bent the wrong way midway down the forearm.
“She broke my arm! She fucking broke it!”
The other three moved at once. The older cop raised his pistol again, aiming for her face. The other two converged, one going for a tackle, the other pulling a taser.
Lara ducked the tackle, letting the officer sail past her into the side of a patrol car with a heavy thud. The taser’s probes shot out, hitting her in the chest with two tiny pricks. Wires trailed back to the device in the officer’s hand. He thumbed the trigger.
A jolt buzzed through her. It felt like a static shock from a doorknob, amplified. A mild, full-body tingle. Her muscles didn’t lock. Her heart didn’t stutter. She looked down at the wires, then yanked them out of her skin, the tiny barbs offering no more resistance than splinters.
The officer with the taser stared, dumbfounded.
The older cop fired. Three rounds. Chest, neck, face. The bullet to her cheek spun her head sideways. She turned it back to look at him, a faint red mark already fading.
He froze, his will finally breaking, the reality of her crashing down.
Lara walked up to him. He was a big man, solid. She put a hand on the front of his ballistic vest. She didn’t shove. She just pushed, steadily.
He flew backward as if yanked by a wire, clearing fifteen feet of sidewalk before smashing through the plate glass window of a dry cleaner. He lay motionless amidst mannequins and shattered glass.
The officer who’d tackled the car was getting up, drawing his baton. He swung it at her knee. The aluminum shaft bent double around her leg. Before he could react, she grabbed the baton and him with it. She lifted him, one-handed, by the front of his vest. He was heavy, but his weight was nothing.
She looked around. A USPS collection box, a heavy blue steel rectangle, was bolted to the sidewalk a few feet away.
She walked over to it, carrying the kicking, struggling officer. She held him up next to the mail slot.
“No, no, no, please—” he begged.
She thrust him, head-first, into the mail slot. His shoulders jammed, stopping him. The metal of the slot dug into his collarbones. She pushed down, a steady, inexorable pressure.
The metal of the collection box groaned. The slot’s opening, not designed for such stress, distorted, widening just enough with a sharp shriek of tortured steel. She forced him through, his ribs cracking audibly as they compressed. He slid inside the dark box with a final, muffled thump, his legs dangling grotesquely from the slot for a moment before going limp.
The officer with the broken arm was scrambling away on his backside, sobbing, trying to draw his sidearm with his good hand.
Lara looked at the last one, the one who’d used the taser. He was backing away, hands up, empty. “Don’t,” he whispered. “Please. I have kids.”
She believed him. The black ocean inside her receded slightly, leaving cold, hard shore.
She walked past him. She walked toward the officer with the broken arm. He fumbled his gun, dropped it. She bent down, picked it up. It felt absurdly light. She crushed it in her fist, the metal groaning, the components snapping, and dropped the ruined lump at his feet.
“Stay down,” she said.
She didn’t look back at the dry cleaner, or the mail box, or the store. She just started walking down the middle of the empty, flashing street, the sirens of more units growing louder in the distance, heading toward a city that was no longer the one she woke up in.