Overpower Him

You sit in the back, looking the officer up and down coldly for a few silent moments. Each time he looks back, you meet his eyes. The only sound is the quiet hum of the motor and the occasional crackle of his tinny radio. Each time he looks back, he seems a little more uncomfortable about how you're looking at him.

"Woman of few words, eh?" He finally clears his throat, but his voice is already fractured of any previous swagger and confidence.

You simply continue to look at him. He coughs awkwardly and goes back to looking at the road.

There's a small metal barrier keeping your hands from crushing his skull, the kind of thing that only protects him so long as you believe it will and don't try it. You reach out to it slowly and give it a little tug, rattling it noisily and testing the tensile strength.

"H-hey, you need to keep your hands off of that, alright?" Phrasing it as a question makes it a plea, one you're going to ignore. You see his hand twitch, suppressing a restrained muscle memory to reach for what is likely a weapon on his belt.

The metal grating has holes big enough for you to poke fingers through, letting you grasp the fence easily. The tug revealed what you expected. The metal is tense, flexible, woven around itself in a way that makes no easy way to untangle or snap. Pressure applied in one spot spreads to the rest, keeping any weak link from breaking the chain. Any weak link in the fence, at least, the fatal flaw of the design is that as the pressure spreads out, it meets a series of inflexible screwheads that hold it in place. The fence could take a thousand pounds of ****, and it's supported by screws that would struggle with a hundred.

You feel the muscles in your arm flex as your body pushes the right amount of energy into the coiled sinews. With a single pull, the fence simply pops free of the restraints.

"Jesus fuck-"

You lunge up through the gap between the open front and back like a bullet, feet striking the dashboard and launching your back against the passenger seat. With another flick of your head, you slam your lips against the officers. You hear a loud bang and feel a sharp pain hit your lower abdomen, a second later, your tongue detaches from the floor of your mouth, sliding down his throat. Another bang, pain in your neck now, and then his eyes gloss over. The car hasn't had time to veer more than a few inches out of the lane it was driving in by the time his hands steer it back under your control.

It was a less than clean procedure. His gun drops to the floor near his seat, you consider fishing it out but you decide to save it for later. You look down at your body. The plain white dress and blue vest both got caught by the first projectile in the front, and a dark brown stain is slowly spreading like rust across the white fabric. You can feel the bullet still inside of your torso, sitting uncomfortably in your hemocoel. You bring a hand up to your neck. The second shot tore at the edge of the skin, but mostly grazed past and punched through the roof above your head. The loose skin around the wound on your neck slowly twists in a nautilus spiral as it closes up, leaving only brown blood as evidence when it finally reseals and returns to normal. You shift your hand down to a hundredth of its size and jam it into the hole in your torso as well as you can, grasping the bullet and pulling it out. As your hand shifts back to normal, you turn the curious thing over in your hand, your wounds sealing as best they can. The damage to the hemocoel is reparable, but likely means a permanent setback, the blood loss can only be regained through predation.

You place the bullet in your mouth, running your tongue around it. Mostly lead, not poisonous to you but probably bad for most of the things on this planet. Especially paired with the heat that still lingers in it from the hyper-acceleration and the crumpled design. It was likely an empty box when originally fired, but on breaking the skin was designed to crumple and fracture after puncturing. You shift, confirming that some small pieces of it are still lingering inside of you. Not big enough to necessitate removal, unlikely to do damage without a circulatory system, but a nuisance. You spit the thing back out. Two shots fired, the second one didn't get a clean enough hit of your neck to do serious damage or leave any stragglers.

The officer drives placidly, the urgency of the situation required a more... direct handling. In the cooldown of the excitement, you look at him with something like pity. Effectively, he's already dead. At least the person he was. You jabbed him with a nerve spike that replaced any higher brain function with pure motor memory. Even if you took control of him now, you'd be assuming control of a glorified vegetable. You have him pull the car over and bring it to a stop. Once you're sure nobody will see you, you step outside the car and pull him out of the driver's seat.

You heft the body into a ditch by the side of the road. The glassy eyes look up at the sun, unblinking but watering as it stares ahead. Will it be faster to drain him or undress him first? Likely the drain.

Your tongue starts to crawl out of his stomach, popping back out of his mouth. It slowly flattens, covering his face and beating like a heart. The salt, vitamins, and minerals slowly drag out of the pores of his skin and into the mucous membrane of the face-hugging blanket. His eyes close, his breathing stops. When you reach down and draw the flesh back into your skin, his face is sunken and browned enough to seem as if he's been here for some time, baking in the sun. You do your best to carefully remove his clothing without causing any further damage. It should look like some poor bastard dried up wandering the desert, nothing more.

His clothes fit worse than the old ones, but they're unbloodied, for one. You're lucky he was as tall as he was, even if that meant his clothes were small around enough to fit his beanpole frame. The navy uniform pants ride up a little at the ankles but aren't as scandalously short as the dress was. The shirt comes up a little short around the wrists, but don't leave the whole forearm exposed. You would change your size to fit it more if you could, but energy that cannot be fully worked into absorption is, by necessity, lost and wasted. You're not about to leave valuable organic material behind to better hide your ankles or make the bulge in your crotch less garish.

You ball up the dress and vest and bury them nearby, making sure to cover your tracks. If you had a better way to ensure that none of your genetic material fell into human hands, that would be preferable, but far enough from the road the chance of them being found before sufficient decay becomes negligible. You finish by taking the officer's hat but leave his shoes.

You slide back into the car, now in the driver's seat. The fortunate reality of what you left the officer with when you overpowered him is that you've probably absorbed at least the basics of driving. You wouldn't want to be in a hairy situation, but just getting down the road shouldn't be a problem. You bring the engine back to life and feel out the pedals and wheel. In a few moments, the ditch with the body disappears into the horizon behind you.

"10-51, Code 1, Nelson and 42nd, do we have a car in the area?"

The radio buzzes, sending a moment of panic through you. You don't know any of what was just said... which poses a problem if these law officers are especially observant. You consider saying something, but wouldn't know what.

"Uhh, I'm Code 7 a few blocks out, I'll get on it if it becomes urgent."

A different voice. It's not an operator barking orders, it's a public communication channel! Judging by the tone, a certain amount of casual talk is allowed, but the question is how many are on it. If it's every officer in a local area, and you're only one of a dozen, they'll notice your silence quickly.

"Car 30, I have your last check in nearby, 10-45?"

At least thirty cars, not a small number but not a huge one. Unless you're especially unlucky. You wait for a response, but none comes. Shit, are you car 30?

"Car 30, 10-73?"

With every passing moment, the danger of you being Car 30 is going up. There's no book of codes nearby for you to understand what they're saying. This is going from bad to worse.

You swallow and pick up the radio, synthesizing the officer's voice as best as you can, "I have released the suspect."

There's a long, awkward silence. You swallow again, having trouble focusing on the road.

"10-37?"

That's... not an answer that helps. You put the radio back down.

"Officer, 10-37."

Not a question this time, an order.

"That sounded like McDermott, car 10."

"Car 10, 10-39 on McDermott?"

You pull the badge out of your pocket, flipping it open. Officer McDermott. It's progress, but it also means that the **** is small enough to recognize you by your voice through a crummy radio.

"This is McDermott, Car 10." You breathe a sigh of relief, "Sorry, I'm drawing a blank on the code."

There's another long pause, you think you hear somebody laughing at you in the background on one end. Finally, the dispatcher sighs.

"367, please keep the channel clear unless you having something relevant to say."

You look at the badge again, 367. You just got Officer McDermott reprimanded on duty, but he has some more substantial problems. You put the radio down.

There's a city starting to gleam on the horizon. It's hardly a bustling metropolis, but it also isn't an empty desert. It's a step up. One of the road signs says it's time to start slowing down, so you do.

As you actually enter the city, the realization of how deceptive the look from the outside was. The buildings stand several stories tall, all clean concrete, glass, and brick. Inset among them are small buildings, little homes and shops. You slow down even further, suddenly onset on all sides by cars. Lots of them see your car, then gape at you for a moment. Perhaps the city is a lawless place and the sight of an officer is unusual, perhaps (and likely) is that you've twisted yet another unspoken societal rule. You slide the dark pair of glasses over your eyes for an extra piece of security. You pass another police car, one with a substantially different look. You're probably pretty far out of your jurisdiction, but it seems like you get a decent amount of offhanded respect just for wearing the badge and uniform.

A moment later, the radio buzzes again, "Dispatch, this is Artesia PD, car 27, I just saw Roswell car 10 in downtown Artesia."

A pause, "In Artesia, are you sure it was car 10 Roswell?"

"Pretty sure, Roswell."

"Artesia 27, McDermott has been behaving weirdly today, did he seem-?"

"Negative, Roswell, the driver was female."

There was a very long pause, "367, 10-39 on McDermott?"

You switch the radio off, taking a look around to make sure you're not being tailed by any other cars. When the coast is clear, you pull into a restaurant and get out. Looking around again to make sure you're clear.

The inside is quiet, only a few people sitting around and a few ceiling fans making lazy patterns in an attempt to beat the still heat. The man behind the counter looks at you incredulously but still nods to you with respect. An old man is sleeping in a booth in the back, a fly buzzing around his open mouth. You take a seat at the counter. The only other patron, a woman who had been sitting at the other end, gets up and walks over to sit beside you.

"Since whendo they let women in the PD?"

Her voice is raspy, beaten down by years of smoking into a husk of what might have once sounded nice. She slurs with obvious intoxication. You look at the clock, dead noon, the peak of the day, and she's utterly wasted. Her face is deeply tanned, worn down by time, and both bitterly suspicious and playful. **** and slovenly living has fattened her somewhat, but her arms still have an angry, strong-looking sinew to them. Likely a working woman at some point, either with enough money to waste her life in these kinds of dumps now or collecting some long-set stipend.

"They do in Roswell."

You only realize after saying it that you're caught halfway between the officer's voice and your female voice. The result strips away your stilted speech, but it also leaves you with a manly husk. If the woman notices, she doesn't seem to care. She takes a box of cigarettes out of her pocket, but finds them empty.

"You got a smoke, occifer?"

You can feel a bulge in your pockets, when you take it out, it's a box of cigarettes, but of a different brand.

The woman makes a dismissive noise, "Leave it to a scorcher to smoke shit."

It doesn't stop her from taking one.

"I'm takin a lucky, and you can't stop me."

Once she lights up, you look in your box of cigarettes. Half of them are upside-down, in an alternating one-on one-off pattern. She took one of the upside-down ones. You consider lighting up, but you're not sure what kind of effect tobacco would have on your system. The smell of her smoke rankles your nose enough to make you not want to test it.

"So, watsyer baggage if yer here on a Saturday afternoon?"

You're not sure what exactly she's asking, probably just trying to make conversation. Realistically, even if she isn't a great candidate, you could try to play this smooth and pick her up. A change of clothes would go a long way to dropping all of the attention you've been picking up. You could also play up the cop angle and see where that gets you.

Alternatively, you don't actually have to engage with this, but you might not be in the best position to be picky about your hosts.