Story 2 Maximum Security

The coffee tasted like burnt water and good intentions. Rikki Drakeson sat in a folding metal chair in the basement of the St. Jude’s Community Center, staring into her styrofoam cup. Around her, a circle of fifteen other people sat in various states of discomfort, listening to a man named Gary talk about his sixth months of sobriety. Gary was crying. He was talking about clarity. He was talking about how the birds sounded so much nicer now that he wasn't hungover.

Rikki didn't hear birds. She heard the hum of the vending machine in the hallway. She heard the fluorescent lightbulb flickering above her head at a frequency that made her molars ache. She heard the guy two seats down tapping his foot in a rhythm that was slightly off-beat.

She squeezed the cup until the styrofoam squeaked. Ninety days, she thought. Ninety days sober.

She should be proud. Her skin was clear, she was sleeping well and showing up to work on time every single day. She was a model citizen. And she was bored out of her mind. Sobriety had taken away the numbness, but it hadn't given her peace. It had just turned the volume up on everything else. Every silence felt heavy. Every empty evening in her apartment felt like a threat. She missed the warmth of ****.

"Rikki?" the group leader asked softly. "Would you like to share today?"

Rikki looked up. Fifteen pairs of hopeful, broken eyes looked back at her.

"I'm good," Rikki said, her voice tight. "Just listening."

The meeting dragged on for another ten minutes before they finally stood up, joined hands, and made their exit. She grabbed her jacket, **** to get out of the fluorescent glare.

"Hey. Red."

Rikki paused near the exit. She turned to see a guy who sat across the room fro her. He was young, maybe mid-twenties, with a split lip that was healing poorly and knuckles that looked like they had gone through a meat grinder.

"Name's Nico," he said, leaning against the doorframe. He didn't have the soft, apologetic look of the others in the circle. He looked hungry.

"I'm in a hurry," Rikki said, clutching her keys.

"I saw you in there," Nico said, keeping his voice low. "You weren't listening to Gary. You looked like you wanted to throw that chair through the wall."

Rikki stiffened. "I'm just tired."

"Nah," Nico grinned, a sharp, knowing expression. "You're itching. The talking doesn't help you. It doesn't help me either. You need to sweat it out. You need to hit something."

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a simple black business card. On the back, a time and an address in the industrial district were scrawled in marker.

"The Foundry," Nico said, holding it out. "No refs. No rules. Just release.”

Rikki looked at the card. An underground fight club. It was illegal. It was dangerous. It was exactly the kind of destructive behavior she was supposed to be avoiding. But her hand reached out and took the card anyway. She ran her thumb over the rough cardstock.

"I..." Rikki hesitated. She looked at Nico, then stuffed the card into her pocket. "I'll think about it."

Nico winked. "See you there, Red."

Rikki pushed past him and burst out of the community center into the cool evening air of the Low City. She took a deep breath, trying to slow her racing heart. She could go. She could go to this "Foundry" and beat someone senseless until the buzzing in her head stopped.

She reached for her car door handle.

BOOM.

The sound wasn't distant thunder. It was a concussive crack that shook the pavement beneath her boots. Car alarms up and down the street instantly began to wail.

Rikki whipped around.

Two blocks away, a plume of purple smoke was rising into the sky. It wasn't normal fire smoke, it was ionization discharge.

Supplier tech, Rikki realized, her eyes narrowing. Someone was playing with toys they didn't understand. Rikki looked at the fight club card in her hand, then at the purple smoke rising over the skyline. She opened the trunk of her sedan. Underneath a pile of gym clothes and old case files sat a reinforced black case. She flipped the latches. There it was. The matte-grey Kevlar weave. The utility belt. The mask.

It had been weeks since she’d put it on. She had been trying to be "Rikki Drakeson," whilst adjusting to sobriety and getting over what the Supplier had made her do. But looking at the suit, she felt a hunger that had nothing to do with **** and nothing to do with Nico’s fight club.

She stripped off her civilian jacket and pulled the suit on over her clothes. It fit like a second skin. She clasped the utility belt around her waist, feeling the familiar weight of the Stun Batons on her hips and the Smoke Pellets in the pouches.

Finally, she checked the wrists. She flexed her hands. With a soft metallic snick, the grapple launchers built into the wrists engaged, the high-tensile micro-cables ready to fire.

She pulled the mask over her eyes. Rikki Drakeson was gone.