by Laer Carroll
"I gave them a shot to cause tetanus. Their muscles are spasming. Their hearts will burst. But all their bones will break before that."
"Good," said the black-haired woman. She turned away, almost literally washing her hands of the events in the room behind her.
Sasha took a chance and escorted them downstairs in an elevator. If someone noticed, so be it. And chances are they would think the four men in the executive suite were using it.
At the hostage door the guard was still snoozing. Sasha knocked and the three were let into the room. Most of the women clustered around the victimized women. Soon they took the two into a bathroom to clean them up.
The grey-haired woman gazed at Sasha, who nodded back. Then the woman began making phone calls. The first, as Sasha had requested, was to Emergency Services.
Apparently the authorities on the end of the line were hard put to believe her. Sasha got impatient.
"Here. Everyone get as far from the window as you can. I'm going to break it."
When the former hostages did as she said, and turned their backs to the window, Sasha picked up a metal chair and began bashing at the window. She used less than her full strength, which would have exploded the window outward, but did put into her swings all the strength a fit woman could. A half-dozen strikes later the window was clear of all but a few shards of glass. She broke off the chair back and used it to clean away shards of the tough glass from its frame.
"Now, someone stick their heads out and begin waving. Then someone else. We're being watched by the other tower's security cameras. They will know we're telling the truth."
The women and men took enthusiastically to the task. Then someone got the idea to tear down a long banner which decorated the back of the low dais from which conferences were sometimes conducted. Soon it was spilled out of the window and was being vigorously shaken.
Soon the people on the phone at Emergency Services realized what was going on. It helped that the grey-haired woman knew some Olympic officials who were quite high up in the hierarchy.
Perhaps fifteen minutes later someone at the window reported excitedly that a SWAT team was being deployed toward the building. Then another pointed out that a second team could be just barely seen at one extreme edge of the hotel tower they were in.
The tough young-looking man Sasha thought was Israeli said there were likely at least four teams, one for each side of the hotel. Others agreed. Perhaps they knew what they were talking about.
It was almost an hour before a SWAT team showed up at their door. By then the grey-haired woman was coordinating with officials at all levels and the police outside knew there were no hostage casualties who required quick medical treatment.
The med team that did arrive made up for their delay by showing up in force with much equipment. A number of rescued hostages were taken out on wheeled stretchers.
Sasha displayed injuries with fake bruises and actual dried blood oozed from her skin to get on one of the stretchers. Her ruse was endangered a bit by all the hostages who clustered around her as she was taken up onto a stretcher and out, thanking her. Some of the women were weeping, and several of the men looked quite upset too.
At the hospital Sasha quietly got up from the bed in the emergency room and walked out.
It was Saturday, the next-to-last day of the Olympics. The Olympic managers extended the schedule to make up for lost time. It was a great expense but they felt it was worth it.
The closing day ceremony on Tuesday was the most spectacular ever. The rest of the week was declared a holiday and the Village and the city and nation, indeed the world, celebrated.
Sasha celebrated too, with her family and Saya's and Glenn's and many more people than Sasha ever knew cared about her.
And thus was the ambition of a little five-year-old girl vindicated.
Chapter 8 - Bloodhoun d
Sasha's next brush with crime began with a simple trip to the bank. Though it had a bit to do with the fashion shoot which Sasha Canaro, Olympic gold medalist, shapechanger, and sort-of superhero, did just before that.
"Give me a kiss. That's it. Now not so much. Just a hint of a kiss."
Sasha Canaro stood at the focus of over a dozen bright flood lights. Behind and above her a huge sheet of white paper spun off a roll of paper, hung down, and curved forward at the floor to end in an edge taped to the floor with transparent duct tape.
She wore a fantasy of harem pants, basically a blue bikini with a filmy vest and several ankle-length panels of gauze to simulate a skirt. Her long shapely legs peeked out of edges of the panels.
"Break! Lick your lips just a bit. Sandie! Lip gloss, darling. Chop, chop!"
A skinny girl with short black hair in bangs with raccoon rings of black around her eyes skipped forward, a lip pencil in hand. She wore camouflage clothing colored, oddly, bright pink.
While her lips were being expertly moistened Sasha amused herself by imagining on what battlefield such camouflage would be effective.
"Back to work! Darling, again, kiss, soften, now a hint of a smile. Just a hint. Mysterious. That a girl."
Rigoberto was a talker. Some fashion photographers were practically mute and others were in-between. Sasha preferred the talkers. After a year of being a fashion model she still needed lots of direction .
Two hours, four set-ups, and twelve costume changes later Sasha, Rigo, and crew were done. Rigo went off onto the hotel building balcony to chat, argue, shout, cajole, wheedle, and laugh with his lover, a somber, starchy millionaire businessman who loved Rigo desperately. Sasha thought he might commit suicide if Rigo ever left him.
Meanwhile the crew broke down and stored the set. Sasha showered and cleaned up in the hotel suite bathroom, one of the luxuries of such shoots. Ones on the street or in one of New York's many parks oftentimes approached safari-like harshness.
Then she strolled into the bedroom completely nude to dress. Sasha's ultra-sensitive nose told her that no one was affected by this sight of one of the world's most beautiful women (several men's and fashion magazines said so). They had seen it all and more, and anyway several of the men were gay.
Not that many more men than in the general population, however. Sasha could smell one's sexual orientation, and she knew. But in the fashion world gay men were accepted and could show it.
"God, I wish I had a cigarette!" Maria the hair-dresser was lying on one of the two double beds. Glenda the make-up girl (never woman ) was sprawled in a chair, leg up on an arm, and the hotel phone cradled between neck and shoulder. She had sworn off cell-phones "because of the radiation"—this week.
Sasha was amused by the caution. She could sense radio waves as a sort of ever-so-slight warmth against her skin. And her body was practically a biochemical laboratory (and factory). It told her better than any human-made lab that there was no harm in such radiation.
She brushed an errant strand of Maria's hair off the woman's brow. At the same time she sampled the woman's biological state by injecting her skin with an army of submicroscopic messengers who reported back to her. The woman's body was still healthy and still did not crave tobacco. Sasha had cured Maria of the drug habit and every other ill weeks ago.
"No, you don't. It's just the habit that you miss."
She went on to the closet and pulled out her sports bra, shorts, and worn tennis shoes. Sitting, she dressed.
Glenda was staring at her crotch, mildly curious not sexually interested. "How do you get your goody-bits so smooth? When I shaved down there I could never get it so perfect."
Sasha finished tying her shoe laces. Her skin being perfectly adaptable and immensely tough where she wanted it to be she would have preferred to go barefoot everywhere, but she had to keep up the appearance of being an ordinary human.
"Why did you do that? Did you model?"
"No, I had this boyfriend. He liked it that way."
Sasha said no more. The hairs on her head and body were not really hair, which died as soon as it left the scalp
and hung limp. Her "hairs" were alive all along their length. She could use them like very thin fingers. They could also lengthen or shorten or be absorbed by her body as she willed. So she could assume a new hair style by desiring it, and also change her hair's color and texture.
This was why she liked to have Maria do her hair. The woman treated all hair as if it were delicate and alive.
Back in the living room part of the suite Rigoberto was seated at a desk reviewing the digital photographs which he had taken on a large viewscreen. Sasha came over and laid a hand on a shoulder. Simultaneously she double-checked his health through her hand. The little cancer was dissolving nicely back into his body.
"How's it look?" she said.
Rigo put an idle hand over hers, gave it a pat, dropped his hand back to the desk where it had lain. With his other hand he continued to move the computer mouse to control the images he saw.
"Good as always, sexy girl." He flirted with all his models, but it was a pro forma flirtation. No one took it seriously.
"Then I'll leave you to it." She leaned down and kissed one of his cheeks. She liked him a lot.
One of the reasons made itself known to her as she walked through the organized chaos of shoot takedown. A young man sitting on a couch waved her over to him. He had paperwork spread on the cushions on each side of him and on the coffee table in front of the couch. He reached forward and picked up a clipboard, offered it to her.
Sasha briefly double-checked his figures for the time she had spent working and signed a form. He tore off a check for her work and handed it to her. Unlike all-too-many photographers Rigo paid everyone as soon as a shoot was over.
"Thanks. See you next time."
The man smiled at her but was already working on something else in his lap. Sasha waved at a few busy people and was gone.
The hotel was a four-star in downtown Brooklyn, which was east just across the East River from Manhattan. She emerged onto a street with buildings just as old and tall as those on the famous island which out-of-towners thought of as New York. The sun was more than halfway down the sky so the south side of the street was half in shadow and the northern side half in sunlight. A brisk wind was blowing down the canyon of buildings, a bit chill from the hour and the river. The sidewalks were full of people and the streets of vehicles.
Sasha walk east toward the edge of Brooklyn, ducked down the stairs of a subway entrance, and within a couple of minutes caught a rattling hissing train toward the mildly upscale Park Slope suburb where she had an apartment. A half mile on, however, she got off the train, re-emerged into daylight, and walked a couple of blocks further eastward. At the edge of the city was a university and a hospital and a large park.
It was a neighborhood she liked, with all sorts of interesting restaurants and shops catering to the university and the hospital and to the local businesses. There was also a branch of the bank she used.
It was an old building with two big fluted columns flanking the double doors. Inside there were high ceilings, an odor of dust and age, modern carpeting, an area with loan and service desks, and a line for those wanting a clerk. Sasha got in it and made out the deposit slip as she inched along.
Her thoughts were still back at the shoot. And maybe that was why she did not notice the man behind her pull a ski-mask on over his face, pull out a pistol, and grab her around the throat.
Reflex took over before her mind could. Her metabolism sped up and time seemed to slow. She disarmed the man, broke his arm, and tripped him so that his head bounced hard enough to put him out but not kill him.
Looking all around Sasha saw a man with a ski mask taking an M5 semi-automatic rifle from a bag. He wore a bullet-proof vest, so she broke his arms with a pistol shot to each exposed shoulder.
There was a third ski-masked man, just turning toward her carrying a fully automatic submachine gun. She aimed the pistol at his face, shouted "Freeze! Police!" in a voice projected like a sonic boom, and saw him turn to dash through the near-by double doors.
She gave the room another comprehensive look to see if there were more would-be bank robbers, ran to the shoulder-shot man, stuck the pistol into her waist band and retrieved his rifle from the floor, then turned to a nearby man who seemed to be waking from a dream.
"Take care of this man, would you? Get others to help you."
Then she ran to the exit.
Through the glass doors she could see the third man getting into a white van a quarter-block to the left. She leaped through the heavy doors and one-handed fired a single carefully aimed rifle bullet into the engine block of the get-away vehicle as it neared her. She could hear the bullet pinging around inside the engine and the engine grinding to a stop. The van jerked to a halt.
The driver and passenger banged their heads into exploding air bags. The first seemed stunned near-senseless. The gunman was not. He grappled with his bag as it began to deflate, pushed open the door, got out, saw Sasha, and began to bring up the automatic subgun.
The bullets from that weapon could harm Sasha and a dozen people more. She drew the pistol from her waistband and shot him through one eye. The bullet exploded his far-side skull, splashing the side of the van with grey matter and blood, but staying in the van as she'd planned.
Nerveless his body began to tilt forward, the subgun began to slide from his hand .
Sasha was there before it struck the pavement and possibly fired. She caught it, pointed it inside the van without putting her finger inside the trigger guard, and yelled "Crawl out this side! Now!"
Projected directly at the man her voice was like a blow to the head. He began to comply.
A few minutes later the driver was lying face down on the sidewalk, arms spread out to each side. Sasha had the pistol pointed at him and the rifle and subgun slung over her shoulders. That was how the police in the shrieking patrol car found them as it jerked to a stop at the street's curb.
Out of the sides of her eyes Sasha saw two policemen erupt from the car and aim pistols at her. She did not move a muscle.
"Freeze! If you twitch we will shoot!" Sasha had already frozen. She awaited further orders.
"Put the guns down! Slowly! That's right. Now sit! Slowly. That's right." The near-side officer was giving the orders. His voice was becoming softer and softer. More reassuring.
Sasha would have bet they took lessons in voice-controlling criminals.
In another minute she was imitating the get-away driver, lying on her belly with her arms and legs spread.
"Hey! Guys. You can let her up." Sasha's head was turned toward the bank, so she saw a red-headed bank security guard in a grey uniform with blue shoulder patches exiting the bank.
"She was helping me control the situation." The guard was either being nice to the Most Beautiful Woman in the World (according to This Man's Magazine ) or trying to grab some of her credit. She was happy to let him, and she'd have bet before the day was over he would have convinced himself that he did "control the situation" that day.
Eventually the bad guys were loaded into various police cars and ambulances and taken away. So too was Sasha and over two dozen witnesses and bank officials, though in three police SUVs and (for the bank officials) limousines.
It took more than three hours to take witness statements, the Brooklyn Police Department tasking three or four officers to do so. For a time Sasha thought she might be let go with the other witnesses, but a female plain-clothes police detective (or maybe an assistant district attorney) had threatened Sasha with reckless endangerment charge or some such. At which point Sasha insisted on calling her mother again.
Within thirty minutes a round little man in a rumpled brown suit had shown up. He was balding and looked harmless. Sasha was not fooled. He was surely one of the best criminal defense lawyers in the biggest city in the world, and that meant very good indeed.
The assistant DA (for such she was) was not giving up without at least a token fight.
By now it was nearly 9:00 at night and Sas
ha was getting annoyed. She had not had her usual huge dinner and her body was beginning to complain a bit at the lack. She had had a couple of snacks and a fruit drink, but it was not enough. And she refused to control her emotions with her shapechanger abilities.
She was in a police-station conference room. It was old but quite nice, with polished deep-brown wall paneling, conference table, and chairs. Beside her at the table was her attorney. Across from them was the assistant DA, who had long dark hair and a dark-blue dress suit. She was young and pretty and might have gotten a little too-used to having that as an advantage.
But across from her sat Sasha, tall, obviously natural platinum blonde, with large blue eyes and luscious lips and a small nose, her cheeks almost invisibly pink. She wore an exercise bra and shorts and tennies but with such assurance that she seemed ready to step off the front page of Vogue.
The head of the table and the room was commanded by a police captain, a tall thin black man wearing a perfectly tailored dark blue suit. Beside him was a uniformed police sergeant with a large number of stripes on his arm. He had an open laptop before him and occasionally made notes on it. Sasha guessed he was an assistant to the captain.
Two plain-clothes detectives were also at the table, an older grey-haired man in great shape and a plain-looking woman who Sasha thought would look elegantly beautiful when made up and dressed up. The man wore a grey suit and the woman a leather jacket over jean pants. Both had badges on their belts and pistols at their waists, partly concealed by their jackets.
The master sergeant had just read a summary of the robbery in a dry monotone.
The ADA leaned forward and said, "So, Miss Canaro, why did you attack the man behind you in the bank-service line?"
Her attorney had told Sasha that, since she had not been charged with anything and not been notified of her rights, she could say anything. He would only interrupt if necessary.
"I did not attack him. He attacked me and I defended myself."
"He only grabbed you around the neck. You did not think it might be better to wait and see what was going on before you acted?"