Nighthawk: A Superhero Story (closed for Siobhancan99)

[Halcyon638]

“Everyone get low and stay quiet,” Katis said. “No one panic and we’ll get through this.” In the chaos, Monica was able to slip out easily, though.

She didn’t hear more gunfire, but screams of panicking conferencegoers permeated the expansive space. She entered the stairwell.

A crowd of roughly 30 terrified people were moving swiftly up the stairs away from a man at the bottom raising a pistol in the air. The main was dressed like many of the male attendees, wearing khakis and a non-descript button-down shirt, only with sleeves, torso, and legs stained with blood—his own or others’, it was unclear, though he didn’t seem to be hindered. He had angular features and looked to be in his late 20s or early thirties, with long, dark brown hair and a mild expression to his somewhat attractive face.

“Please, slow down,” he implored the mass of people. “No one needs to rush. Nice and calm, okay? No one needs to get hurt.”

 

[siobhancan99]

"oh, someone's getting hurt. It's gonna hurt when I lodge that fucking gun up your ass, khaki's." Monica grabbed the railing of the stairwell and hopped over, dropping down to the next floor landing. "Unless you put it away. then I guess your statement would be accurate. So how bout it? you gonna stow that thing or am I going to do it for you?"

 

[Halcyon638]

A look of bewilderment crossed the man's face. He took a few seconds to compose himself, aiming the gun at Monica simultaneously. "Don't do this. I really don't want to hurt you." The crowd of people continued hurrying up the stairs, momentarily distracting the gunman and giving her an opportunity to strike.

 

[siobhancan99]

Lashing out, she aimed to just kick the gun out of the guy's hand. He didn't seem to sure of himself, so he might be being blackmailed or something into this. Or at the very least he wasn't exactly Clint Eastwood. If she could take the gun out, this might all end with very little punching "You uh. Do know who I am right?"

 

[Halcyon638]

Monica easily sent the weapon sailing out of the man’s grasp, following down 10 or 12 steps. A look of slowly dawning fear appeared on his face. Then, as if taking a second to steel himself, he charged up the staircase toward her, trying to wrap his arms around her. “I do,” he said. “You should be on our side.”

She sidestepped the attempt with ease.

 

[siobhancan99]

Monica stepped away "I'm generally not on the side of people with guns herding other people and saying they don't want to hurt them." She attempted to redirect his momentum into the wall "What the fuck is your deal, man? are there others? how many of you armed assholes are in this building?"

 

[Halcyon638]

The gunman collided with the nearby structure. The impact left a line of blood on the wall from his mouth as he fell to the floor, shaken up and out of the fight. “We need…to make a statement,” he managed.

“There were at least two or three others,” Monica heard Morgan, who she now noticed among the crowd, say. “I saw one jump a guard with some kind of knife and steal his gun. Coordinated.”

"We need to stop it," the gunman said. "AI."

 

[siobhancan99]

" so this does that how exactly? It really fucks me off that you people are getting your loans forgiven when all you learn here is how not to be effective human beings. Unless you're a time traveller from the future and the one and only guy that can make AI is here in this building and you've come to kill him in some sort of reverse Terminator 1 move, your plan is fucking stupid. you're fucking stupid."

Picking the kid up "alright, useless. Where are your friends headed? you can make a statement together."

She looked back to Morgan "hey I meant to meet up with you at some point. give you an exclusive or something. Stick around and you can give me your card, but you know. Away from the bullets. close but not too close."

 

[Halcyon638]

Morgan managed the hint of a grin. “I got, like, 14 job offers after the last one, so…sure?” He shifted his attention to the gunman.

“I bet you they were going after Griffiths,” Morgan noted, referring to the CEO of the consumer tech giant, Weel, who had been rumored to be attending. They were a major player in the AI market, and she recalled him making some comments recently labeling fears about AI as paranoid fantasies.

“That’s the plan, right? Are you planning to make demands? Hurt him? What’s the endgame?” he said in a measured, almost empathetic tone. “If this doesn’t go as you plan, you know they’re going to distort your message. I’m a journalist. Talk to me.”

“No one’s going to take this seriously until…blood starts getting shed,” the man said. “Better one man now than all of humanity 20 years out.”

Morgan furrowed his brow. “Oh, I guess the 3 security guards you fucking shanked don’t count?” He looked to Monica. “If I can do anything, let me know.”

 

[siobhancan99]

"jackass" Monica growled "nobody is going to take you seriously now. you've probably ruined your cause forever. Fuck's sake I don't even have a college degree and I know that" She was tempted to bounce his head off the wall "WHen we get closer to the others i'm gonna set him down and tie him up and you're gonna watch him. Stay out of harm's way."

She looked at the guy over her shoulder "where are we going? remember your cooperation will be crucial in keeping a needle out of your arm if one of those guards dies."

 

[Halcyon638]

Morgan gave her a half-ironic, half-sincere salute. “Yes, ma’am.”

The older man looked at Monica and winced. “We’re all on the ground floor. We’ll be moving the hostages to interior rooms to limit sight lines for snipers. There are three—three more of us.”

 

[siobhancan99]

"alright then" she kept him hoisted over her shoulder "Morgan, call the cops and let them know the situation. let them know I'm here so you know. they don't shoot me"

Making her way down, Monica headed for the lower floors, listening for more gunfire.

 

[Halcyon638]

“Will do,” Morgan noted. Monica made it down to the stairwell door, gunman in tow. There were no sounds of gunfire, mercifully, and she could hear the distant sounds of sirens. Peering out, she saw the main lobby and pavilion of the hotel, jam packed with people only minutes ago, had entirely emptied out. Many of the displays, booths, and even the metal detector were lying on the ground. It was very likely that 4 gunmen couldn’t keep the majority of a crowd of that size from fleeing the scene.

She could faintly hear what sounded like a voice or voices coming from one of the large interior conference rooms labeled “The Monroe Room.” Near one of the metal detectors, one 20-something security guard lay in a pool of his blood, multiple red marks across his body. He appeared to be stirring slightly. Two others appeared to not have been so fortunate.

 

[siobhancan99]

Monica paused by the guard "be still. Don't exert yourself. Help is on the way." She looked down at him, then made her way over to the doors of the conference room, she listened a moment, then looked also to see if the door was open at all. If so she'd peer in, if not she'd try the handle.

 

[Halcyon638]

The guard looked up at Monica, fear in his eyes. He extended a trembling hand briefly before apparently losing the strength. She crept over to the conference room. The door was closed, but she heard someone speaking in what sounded like the far end of the room, maybe 70, 80 feet away, and then a voice near the doors.

The voice was slightly agitated and sounded northeastern, New Jersey or NYC-adjacent. “What can you see out there?” the man said, making his way out of the doors and moving past Monica without spotting her. He held a cell phone to his ear with his right hand and a pistol in the other. He was well-built, in his late 20s or early 30s, and had a huge patch of darkening, drying blood on his dress clothes.

 

[siobhancan99]

Monica inhaled a moment, then crept up. She tried grabbing him from behind and trying to put her hand over his mouth. If she could take him out quietly, it was that much the better. the phone was an issue though, someone would probably immediately know something had happened.

 

[Halcyon638]

Monica rose and grabbed for the man. He was surprisingly quick, reacting immediately and creating some distance between them with his elbow, then taking a step back to begin to raise his weapon and slide the phone into the pocket of his dress pants. “What the--?”

Still, if she reacted quickly enough, she might be able to take him down before he managed to squeeze off a shot, or complete his exclamation.

 

[siobhancan99]

Stepping in, she launched a punch for the guy's face. He was definitely a killer and so there was no holding back. If she broke him, she broke him. Besides three on one wasn't exactly as fun when they all had guns. Not that it would be her first time with something like that. She regretted not bringing the chain. Oh well. Instead she just went all out, trying to take him down with her fists.

 

[Halcyon638]

Monica dealt a crushing blow to the gunman’s broad face. There was a wet crunch and a spray of blood erupted from his nose and mouth, adding to the scarlet he’d already accumulated on his clothing. The terrorist collapsed to the ground instantly with, to her relief, only a muted thump.

She could hear voices coming from the conference room still.

“—in all of your hubris and worldliness, you have condemned mankind to destruction,” she heard a man say in the tones of a Southern preacher. He sounded mic-ed up at the far end of the room. “And I have come here today to announce to you that though the hour is late, it is not yet too late.”

 

[siobhancan99]

Monica hmmmed and wondered briefly if there was a religious angle here. If so she had some banter already prepared. She looked into the room, trying to see if she could get the layout. She assumed one or two guys based on what the kid with the gun had said. That was doable for sure, but she needed to get a sense of where everyone was, and if there were hostages.

 

[Halcyon638]

Monica stole a glance into the room. There were about 20 hostages divided into two groups of roughly ten on the left and right sides of the large room, all of them seated on the ground. Tables and chairs that likely had been arranged in that area had been shoved aside to keep them slightly penned in, not enough to prevent them from slipping under the furniture but enough to make it difficult for all of them to stream out quickly.

At the far end of the room was a very tall, burly man with the build of an offensive lineman. He looked to be in his mid 30s with unkempt, long brown hair and a stubble-encrusted face. Kneeling on the ground before him were two figures, one of whom was the CEO of Weel, Cullen Griffiths. The huge man was gesticulating with a pistol and speaking. “Today, brothers and sisters, you are going to start down the path to redemption. But everyone knows you can’t have a lick of redemption without a little sacrifice.”

About 30 feet from the door was a wiry 50-something man with intense brown eyes dressed in the uniform of hotel maintenance staff, though again, soaked with blood. He was stationed between the two groups as if to monitor them. Unfortunately, Monica saw his eyes meet hers when she glanced through the door.

“Over there!” he called out.

 

[siobhancan99]

'well' she thought 'cover blown. might as well make an entrance' throwing the door open she strode in. "having ourselves a little Luddite revival are we?" She shook her head "you know how that ended right? hangings and the mechanical looms went forward unabated." She looks around "what's your stupid fucking plan huh? Kill these two like there's not 100,000 people working on AI? you gonna fly to china next and kill everyone in their labs? India? Russia? Israel? just the two of you?" She snorted "wait let me guess..." She made air quotes around her first two words "The people are going to rise up as one in a Butlerian Jihad right? named after you of course. you're the Butler figure. Here's the deal. That's not going to happen. The face associated with your movement is going to be the dead security guard in the hallway. Nobody wants to associate themselves with terrorists. You've basically fucked your movement in the ass with a huge syphilitic cock you cretinous fuck.So here's the deal, surrender now and I won't make you surrender."

 

[Halcyon638]

The huge man grabbed Griffiths roughly by the shoulder. “Well, now,” he said calmly as his comrade raised his pistol toward Monica. “It sounds like we have ourselves an unbeliever. John 20:25: But he said unto them, Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe.’” He pressed the barrel of the gun against the side of Griffith’s head. “Mr. Griffiths here is about to potentially have several stigmata-quality holes in him. Do you need to touch them to come around, Miss?”

 

[siobhancan99]

"I imagine you think that you have a hostage, and that will buy you time" Monica came closer without regard to the safety of the man with the gun to his head "But we both know if I step away or hesitate your plan is to blow his brains out anyway. That makes him useless as a hostage. If I leave, you kill them all. If I hesitate, you kill at least him. I've done the math, he's a sunk cost." He wasn't, if she could get close enough but she had to get herself the time "I know a few verses. Thou shalt not kill for starters. Love thy neighbor as you love yourself. What you're doing isn't very christlike. The thing about charlatans like you is that I suspect, deep down inside, you know there's no god. There's no force to judge you for all the ruin you wreak on the lives unfortunate enough to touch yours. No. There is no god. There is only me, and while I am just I am not merciful."

 

[Halcyon638]

The large man glanced down at Griffiths, then at Monica, then back and forth once more. He raised the barrel of his weapon and pointed it at Monica. “Forgive her, Father. She know not what she does,” the man said as both gunmen squeezed their triggers.

A helicopter could be heard approaching the building. It was loud enough to momentarily distract both terrorists, enabling Monica to use her lightning-fast speed to stride toward the leader.