After the interesting and fruitful meeting with Detective Kendall, I headed towards the house I had told her about. There was a cache of drugs and weapons there, hidden beneath the stairway, but I had to make sure that it had the information in it, I wanted the good detective to find.

When I got there, I realised a slight problem in my plans. A few Omegas had decided that they needed to squat in the house, so I would have to be sneaky and stealthy. I waited for some time, watching the house with infrared vision, making sure that all occupants were down, before moving in. From the movement I had seen and a few hot energy-sources, I was sure that they had smoked something and drunk something out of cans. Hopefully, the stuff they smoked and drank was something nicely sedative. Sneaking into a building where everyone was stoned out of thier minds, falling down drunk or both should be a lot easier, compared to a building of sober people.

The backdoor had a lock, in theory, but the frame was so warped that the door did no longer fit into it, so opening it was stupidly easy. I had to avoid a bunch of bear-cans lying around, score one for drunk, but low-light vision was sufficient for the job. By now, Galatea had activated the air-filters in my suit, as the air was saturated with a mixture of salty sweat and sweet smoke, according to the sensors, remnant of cannabis-smoking, so one score for stoned. I did not even have to avoid creaking floorboards, as the floor was concrete, covered with some sort of ugly plastic tarp, silencing my steps even further.

Finding the locking-mechanism in the dark was a bit of a challenge, but thanks to an ultrasound-scan of the internal mechanism, I found the switch quickly and hid a small, scribbled note between the stashed things, detailing a payment to an offshore account, with the name of one of the bought officers next to it. It was one of the things Galatea had found, an offshore account that made semi-regular payments to the account of his brother. It was not terribly well hidden, but well enough for ordinary police officers, there were simply too many of them to canvas them all. Not to mention, it would be a legal nightmare. In addition, I had a few pictures of the officer, together with a lady of ill repute and placed them into the stash as well, in a folder labeled Det Riggs, which was his name.

Now, Detective Kendall only had to raid the place and find the material to go after the Detective Riggs. It was not a lot, not in the grand scheme of things, but I needed to make the crumbling gradual, so it seemed natural, in order to get all Omegas locked up, without any of them screaming police conspiracy.

On the way out, I noticed that, unlike what I had thought on the way in and all my previous thoughts, not all occupants of the building were male, one of the forms lying around was clearly female. It made me a little sad that a girl around my age was playing hooker for a bunch of idiots like those Omegas. But, I was not the child protection service and I could not save the world. I would have to be content with slowly dismantling the organisation around girls like her.

After placing a few surveillance cameras in the area, there was no way I would miss the show, I started on my way home. Just running, under my own power, felt great. The combination of a brutal daily workout and the DNA-treatment was already showing its worth, increasing my training-levels to national levels, if I were an athlete. National Levels amongst woman that is. Once it was fully propagated, I should be able to reach a level above a male olympian, if I trained enough.

What was most interesting however, was that the part of the treatment dealing with my reflexes had taken hold even faster, giving me reaction-times that were pretty much inhumane. It was not yet to the level that I could calmly plan my actions while mid-action, but grabbing a particular coin out of a thrown handful of coins was possible without disturbing the coins around it. Or gathering silverware mid-air, separating the different utensils between my fingers instead of making a frantic grab. Both were exercises I had done to improve reaction-speed and hand-eye coordination.

“Now, who do we have here? I’m sure you don’t mind showing me some form of identification? You are acting mighty suspicious.” a voice challenged me and Galatea showed me footage from the drone above, of a red and blue-clad figure stepping out of an alleyway I had just passed.

Figure and voice told me that it was Clark aka Battlemaster and I had no desire to tangle with him, not without my armour. Sadly, he had other plans that night and when he realised I did not stop, but was increasing my speed, he took off after me. That started a game of parkour, he was faster and stronger, meaning he could leap higher, while I had agility on my side. The only reason I was able to flee as I did, was that the drone above me allowed me to plan my route, or the chase would have been over a lot faster.

Over fences, through alleys, up containers and down stairs, I ran, trying to shake him, in order to make my way back home. But he was relentless, maybe he had realised that I was dressed in the same, light-absorbing fabric that Anath used and thought I was affiliated with her, maybe he was just stubborn, I did not know and I did not care, I only wanted to get rid of him.

Finally, he got close enough and launched a sudden burst of speed, trying to tackle me. In a desperate move, I managed to throw myself aside and down, rolling a few meters before managing to get back to my feet but I had lost all momentum and he was in front of me. Now, he could see my mask and if he was unable to make the connection between the visor of my armour and the mask I was wearing, he was even dumber than I thought.

“So, it’s you. What a lucky coincidence, I get back home and the first day, I get such a nice present.” I could hear the smirk in his voice and it gave me a lot of motivation to find a way to ram it where his proctologue would have to search for it.

“Now, I caught you. Will you come quietly or will you do me the favour and resist arrest?”

While he spoke, I thought about my options. My best bet was to try to get him with my air-taser but that would only stun him for a time. I had no idea just how damage resistant he was or how long it would take him to shake it off.

His lunge cut my thoughts short, forcing me to react without a good idea how to. His punch was fast, inhumanely so, but it was also sloppy and telegraphed from across the ocean. It showed me something important. I was able to react faster than him. And not just a bit faster. As his fist was coming towards me, I had an inspiration how to deal with him. Turning my body in a half-step backwards, I was able to dodge most of his momentum and get a hand on his arm and clamp down. The next step was to test how well his costume protected him from electricity.

The answer was, not well. Not if one applied enough power to equal the average wall-socket. My air-taser did not need to transmit over a large distance of air. It was perfectly capable to discharge on contact and the gauntlets protected me from the charge. I was dragged with the momentum of a now twitching Clark, but the clamped down gauntlet did not lose hold, which was good. Without muscle control, Clark simply landed on his side, with me next to him. A posture he probably had dreamed about, lying next to me, once I was his obedient little wife. The look in his eyes betrayed pain and surprise and gave me the idea what to do next. His eyes were right in front of me, unprotected and unshielded.

But just the eyes? No, not good enough. With a careful hand, I pulled his mask a centimeter or two down, exposing his nose but not more of his face. Not that he could me accuse of unmasking him later.

It was good that my mask was sealed against air and hiding my smile I doubted it looked very pleasant at that moment. With his eyes and nose exposed and his teeth clamped shut to avoid biting his tongue, I pointed my second hand at his face.

“You know, I hope you like spicy food.” I said in a conversational tone.

And sprayed a large load of pepper spray point-blank into the exposed parts of his face before jumping back.

His screams sounded rather girly behind me, as I was running away.