Vs Reality by Blake Northcott

Author:Blake Northcott [Northcott, Blake]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Science Fiction & Fantasy, Fantasy, Paranormal & Urban, Superheroes, Superhero
Amazon: B005EM9LQ8
Published: 2011-07-25T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen – Logistics

New York City

August 26, 2011

5:47 am, Eastern Daylight Time

Franco yawns, stretching his arms overhead. A sliver of hazy orange daylight stretches across the lobby’s white marble tiles, past the concierge desk, reflecting off the ornate chandelier that dangles from the ceiling. He breathes a small sigh of relief. It’s morning – finally. The graveyard shift is almost over.

A vibration tickles his upper thigh. He pulls the phone from his pocket and glances at the screen, and a moment later he wishes he hadn’t.

It’s a text from Paige Davenport, his other employer. Her message doesn’t contain any words (they never do); she’d sent him a simple three-digit number that conveys the nature of her predicament: ‘911’.

“Merda,” he mutters under his breath.

Franco replies with a ‘thumbs up’ emoji and pockets the device. After grumbling a profanity-laced tirade he rolls an uncomfortable stool beneath him and begins to clack away at a bulky desktop computer, accessing the building’s control panel. A few keystrokes trigger a loud clank that reverberates down the elevator shaft, followed by a chime. Emergency protocols – everything on lockdown. A few more clacks shut down the lobby’s security cams; the digital ones, anyway. Another camera still runs on old-school cassettes to provide a back-up copy, but that can be erased easily enough.

He texts her back. ’10-4’.

A moment later the lobby doors crash open. Brodie and a skinny blond kid he doesn’t recognize drag a body by its tree-trunk sized legs; a giant of a man wearing board shorts and a Hawaiian shirt. He’s beaten and bruised, streaking the pristine tiles with a river of sticky blood as they inch him towards the elevators.

Under normal circumstances, dragging a bloody, unconscious four-hundred pound man though the lobby of a high-rent condominium, right in the heart of New York City, would be problematic. Impossible, even, if you wanted to escape detection. With over ninety-five thousand surveillance cameras and eighteen million people living inside the cramped city limits, someone is bound to see you.

Luckily, Dia and Paige have Franco: an Italian exchange student who works part time as the concierge of their building to help pay his tuition fees. The gawky nineteen-year-old with a week’s worth of beard stubble and a tangled mess of curly black hair might not be the sharpest crayon in the box, but he’s as loyal as they come. And the ungodly pile of cash that Dia deposits into his Swiss bank account on the first of every month is able to purchase a lot of loyalty. Misdirecting law enforcement, forging visitor logs and deleting surveillance videos are just some of his regular tasks. But, unfortunately, he has one additional responsibility this evening: mopping.

Paige saunters in behind them sucking a lollypop, her thickly-soled combat boots echoing with every step as she strides across the tile. She sidesteps the crimson streak that stretches across the expansive corridor.

Franco lifts his hand with a semblance of a wave and Paige replies with a perfunctory nod. He’s not sure if

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