A moment later

Lani grabbed Michael's shoulder and pulled him toward the hospital. They ran into the building as the crowd grew, they knew they couldn’t be observed going to their vehicle. As they moved, Michael bumped his shoulder against a wall. “Michael,” Lani said to him as she noticed, “we’re almost there.”

“Surviving guy,” Michael mumbled as he looked for the stairs back to the third floor, “we gotta question that fuckin asshole.”

Lani sighed, realizing that they didn’t have time to question him, but they had to go deal with him. “Guess leaping from the third floor of a hospital wasn’t exactly planned.”

“They’ll be pissed that Bernard’s dead,” Michael replied, “I think they just wanted him questioned, but most of what we’d have asked him about died cuz some cute put holes in people.”

Lani blushed slightly, he’s never called me that in the field she thought to herself as she followed Michael up the stairs. She shook it off for the moment. “You shot them harder than I did,” she said with a slight giggle in her voice, “I think they nearly shit when you shot them with yours.”

Michael laughed, “you mean with my busted gun?” He rolled his eyes as he rounded the stairs and made his way to where he had left the wounded man in the hallway. The man they had left was no longer laying on the floor alive, but pinned to the wall in a pentagram drawn in burnt blood.

Lani remembered the case pictures that she had been shown when she had brutalized the pedophile back in Chicago. She grabbed Michaels shoulder as she turned and looked down the hall to see a slender woman in a dark blue dress, brown cloth boots and long black hair. There was no expression on the girl's face, nor was she moving. Dead silence. Perfect stillness. Her skin pale skin was almost as white as the floors of the hospital.

This isn’t right Michael thought as he shoved Lani back to the stairs and drew his handgun. He kept it pointed down, as he was trained to avoid aiming his weapon at people who hadn’t made acts of aggression. “Did you see who did this?” he asked with a loud firm voice, “Do you know what happened?”

Lani watched the girl, and prepared to raise her weapon at her. She wasn’t trained as Michael was, and was very distrusting of the suspicious figure. “Something’s wrong,” she said with agitated nervousness to Michael.

“You’re the one,” the girl said in a flat tone, loudly enough to be heard from the end of the hall where she stood, “The hand of furious justice, the lone wolf who kills everyone who does what you perceive to be evil.” She began taking steps toward them slowly. “And you,” she said looking at Lani, “The angel, the sister and the protector who kills everything that endangers the one you love.”

Michael backed toward Lani and got in front of her, aiming his weapon at the girl as he tried to nudge Lani behind something. “Alright,” he shouted, “Who the fuck are you?” As he aimed his weapon, flames ignited on the walls next to the girl. Fuck! He reached toward Lani and shoved her forcefully down the stairs.

Though Michael knew Lani would be unphased by a tumble down the stairs, she still looked at him with shock and surprise as she stumbled back. You little fucker she thought as she felt the floor beneath her hit her armor. She watched as flames engulfed the hallway, almost making an impassable wall that trapped Michael in a rectangular arena. She shrieked as she saw Michael open fire on the girl, going through an entire magazine before a chunk of floor was hurled at him. Though he had evaded it, he was reloading and still engaging.

As Michael fired, each shot that would have hit the girl square in the face didn’t. Some shots changed direction, other times she appeared to be teleporting out of the way, making progress closer to him. She could kill me instantly, he thought as he slowed his shooting down, why isn’t she!?

The girl finally made it within grabbing distance and placed her hand on his vest. She picked him up with what seemed like no effort, almost as if she wasn’t so much lifting him, but rather floating him telekinetically while controlling his movement in the air with her hand. She pulled him close and whispered to him, “someone wants to meet you,” before shoving him into a portal where he vanished.

As Lani watched Michael get thrown effortlessly into the portal, tears began to pour down her face as she screamed, firing at the wall of flames that seemed to keep the shots from hitting the girl. She reloaded quickly as her bolt locked back, but a hand quickly pulled the weapon from her grasp. The girl wrapped her hand around Lani’s neck and pinned her against the wall behind her. Lani struck the forearm and elbow attached to the hand that held her. As she did, she noticed that her full strength wasn’t budging this girl. She swung her fists furiously at the girls head, but still no effect. The expressionless face continued to look at her eye to eye, unphased by the furious blows being landed on her. Lani even tried kicking her knees, but it was still useless. She hadn’t been this helpless since she was nine years old in the orphanage being kicked by groups of kids twice her size.

The girl leaned in and pressed her body against Lani, pinning her more. She whispered in her ear with her flat emotionless tone, “your efforts are valorous but vain.” She tightened her grip on Lani’s neck, pinching the arteries and bringing her close to passing out. Before Lani could pass out completely, the girl whispered one more time. “He’s not gone, and you’re not dying,” she said firmly, “I need you still.”

Lani tried to push a fuck you out, but couldn’t quite say it as she blacked out, feeling terror for the first time in a very long while. The last thing she saw was the stairwell around her begin to burn rapidly.