Sergio

'Then the last thing I hear – kah-boom! I thought you guys were dead!' Morello's Jersey accent was stronger when he emphasized a dramatic event. Arriving at the station, he and kai were the first guys we stumbled across.

'There was an accident on the bridge', Selena explained excitedly, showing the guys clips of the toppled lorry on fire, and the car damage, 'we were in the explosion, but the girl, she –'

'Oh-kay', I had to stop her, 'let's talk about this inside'. I knew exactly what I saw, and that's why I feared to explain it in public. If anyone heard that we encountered a young teenage girl with powers, who wouldn't go after her, especially secret services? Never had I ever anticipated that I would be saved from an explosion by a thief with special abilities. 'Her powers could easily be weaponised by higher authorities if they figured out how to control them'.

'So, what you're saying is... we shouldn't tell anyone?' Selena's rookie tendencies told her it was always good to share exciting, yet sensitive information to the world, share it on social media, tell all her cousins, tell the whole department.

'New rule. No-one needs to know what we know', I knew this because I used to make the same mistake, 'not even the chief'.

'Well... but...'

'I know. This goes against everything you were taught in field training, but please just keep it between us for now'. Selena was the youngest detective in the unit, practically a college graduate, so I figured she was one among the many Gen-Z's, loving the immediacy of new technology, living their whole lives through either Twitter, YouTube or Instagram, or anything where information spread faster than a virus, the generation that laughed at people like me for our technological illiteracies.

However, I prized her ability to discover and somehow access illegal 'black-market' apps made especially for investigation. No-one in our department currently had that edge.

'What about Kai and Morello? Can they know?' she asked. Shortly, I gazed back at them, 'if nobody knows she has powers, she might harm someone non-suspecting'. Selena caught me eye-to-eye, 'Sergio, if we're gonna apprehend her, we need to be protected. You're only finding out this teenage girl has powers, yet you've known her for some time. Who knows what she's capable off?'

The search was on.

Unfortunately for Selena, not all footage could be cam-shazamed, so we did it the manual way: going from owner to owner, shop to shop requesting for footage. Impatient and bored, she often mumbled slurs under her breath.

Sometimes we were given big chunky video tapes, which the mere mention of almost made her cry, because it wasn't something that fit into the concept of an app, plus I gave her the task of reviewing them all.

Wasn't our relationship just off to a great start? As long as our shifts were paired, she would be my intern.

'Finally!' Selena hailed, finding three shop window clips of the girl walking down a street, 'she might have accommodation in this area, because she walks down this path for three consecutive days at around 10:00PM each time'.

'Where is that area?' I asked. With not many road signs, it was difficult to depict. Selena screenshot the paused video and ran it through Google.

'Not sure on the specifics, but its around this area'. She zoomed into the Google-located area.

'Send me the co-ordinates. And stay here. Keep checking for useful footage'. Selena frowned. Any task not involving that adrenaline rush disappointed her. Grabbing my jacket from the chair, I left the office. I decided to check out the area. It was not far from Chinatown.

When we busted the girls' York-styled hideout, I found a piece of wax print fabric, with a pattern on it that looked identical to my mother's own clothing. The make was rare. As I rushed to park, I noticed a woman in front of me unpacking her trunk with rolls of wallpaper. Without observing, she smacked the hood of my car with a roll.

'Hey!' I yelled at her.

'Oh. I'm sorry'. She turned around. No way. 'Sergio?' It was my mother's closest friend, the woman who brought me from São Paulo, Brazil to Bluebridge when I was only five.

'Rita?'

'It's been – wow – twenty years since I last saw your handsome face', dropping all her rolls with joy, she ran to squeeze-hug me, 'please stay for coffee'. Indeed, the last time we met I wasn't anywhere near a law-abiding citizen. To help her unpack, I gathered some of the wallpaper and other bits. Indoors, we stuck to speaking in Portuguese, the language she was more comfortable with.

'Thank you. I'd like to stay, but...'

'What? Are you up to no good again?' Rita hadn't changed much. When I was just a kid in the foster system, she often visited wearing her usual cargo pants, a long cardigan and always had her short wavy hair tied back. Vivid recollections of the past clouded her judgement, 'not still part of the Fratellanza, are you?' The Fratellanza was an extinct Italian drug supplier.

'Actually, I'm not'. In slow suspense, I unravelled the piece of my mother's fabric from my pocket, found at the hideout. 'I'm a lieutenant now'.

'What?' her jaw dropped, 'you mean, you're the police?' I nodded. For an ex-member of a clumsy Italian gang, Lieutenant was way beyond her expectations for me. After taking a long time to digest the fact that I was now in the police, she shifted her focus to the fabric. News of the Heritage Museum robbery had already reached Rita, but she didn't know it was my case, so I had to explain. 'Where did you find that?' she asked.

'In their hideout'. Neither of us fully grasped the implication of this. Rita rushed to her storage to unlock her box of precious things, just to reveal about three more yards of the same fabric. A perfect match.

'A week before carnival, I had this made for Evaldina. She liked to tie her hair with it', Rita expounded, while I flashbacked to the nostalgic memories of my mother. So why did those girls have it in their apartment? Either the girls had infiltrated Rita's things... or one of them had connections to my mother. 'Sergio. Be careful'.

Not far from Rita's new apartment, I spent time investigating the new co-ordinates Selena sent me, taking me to a piece of Chinatown, next to a rusty gas station. The time was almost ten. No sign of the girl. Fifteen minutes later... still no girl.

'Selena? Can you use your app to get footage of the area?'

'No, it doesn't work that way. I'm way too out of range. Just download it'. So, I downloaded her app from a non-secure weblink she sent over. This was crazy. Even more crazy, I didn't know how to use it.

'Hey, Selena, this app is confusing'.

'No, it's not. It's actually really easy –'

'Okay, just help me out here. Come over, please?'

'Urgh. Old people –' she mumbled under her breath, right before hanging up. How dare she. Since I couldn't use the black-market app and didn't want to waste time, I tried the gas store.

'Nah, sorry. I've never seen that girl before', said the cashier. Next, I asked him for his camera footage. Slowly, the man scrolled through a small desktop beneath the till.

Wait. There she was, across the road!

Right before she entered a path leading deeper into Chinatown, I caught a glimpse of her pink hair. I followed. She was swift, ghostly. Every time I turned a corner, she was already onto the next. So, I picked up the pace, but it wasn't long until she noticed I was following her. She ran. Just before two market trollies intersected, she squeezed through the gap. Shit.

'Move', I blurted, pushing the blockage and people out of my way. Just when I thought I had her, she hopped over some road scaffolding. Before I had the chance to imitate the stunt, parts of the scaffolding collapsed.

Left!

Through a transparent building hall, I caught her running on a path parallel to mine. With my eyes glued to her, we briefly ran in the same direction, but before I could find an intersection taking me to her side, she vanished. Aimlessly I ran, guessing each corner of her route. 'Damn!' finally out of breath, I leaned over my knees and swallowed the fact that I didn't have her fitness. This was it.

'No!' I heard a wail, coming from the corner I hadn't yet turned, 'let go of me'. And there she was. A man, six-foot and muscular grabbed her by the collar, surrounded by a handful of tough-looking bikers. 'P-please. Let's negotiate alright?'

'It better start with my cut', the tall man growled, 'or it's gonna end with my fist in your face'. Guess I wasn't the only company she had pursuing her.

'Let her go', I shouted five metres apart from them. Like ferrets, all their heads span towards me.

'And you are?'

'Someone you don't want to mess with', I replied. Instantaneously, about six guns were pulled out, my gun at the bully, his gun at the girl's head, and his amigos guns at me. Bystanders, observing the guns, already began to clear the paths of Chinatown. This was going to be fun.

'You let me keep the girl, then you can go free and unharmed', the man imposed, choking the girl with a tight arm. Under his grip, she struggled and failed to wriggle her way out.

'No. You give her to me, then you can go' I re-imposed. They laughed.

'Look man, you're outnumbered, and no-one needs to die today – ow!' like a wild dog, the girl bit into the man's bicep. As he loosened up, she elbowed his chin and grabbed hold of his gun, but he didn't let go.

Next, bullets flew everywhere, in circles in the air and into shop windows. Sharing the gun in their hands, they danced a dangerous duet not realising where they were shooting at, while the screams of people escalated.

'Ah!' the girl was thrown back into a brick wall. To create a smokescreen for the girl, I shot at the bikers. Two fled. The rest had me cornered. Just as the tall muscly man found his opportunity to shoot the girl, something I never expected happened. A magnetic force pulled the weapon out of his grip, and into hers.

Her powers!

She shot only once, hitting the man's thigh. In agony he wailed and bled out on the floor. A second time, she clicked. When she realised the gun was empty, she ran in my direction, wedging herself behind the obstacle I was behind. 'So, we meet again, detective'.

'Amy!' the shot man screamed from the floor, holding pressure over the bullet in his thigh. She squinted, then rolled her eyes. Gun shots had returned in our direction.

'I'm guessing you and you're friend over there go way back', I slurred.

'He did a job for me one time', she explained, 'but... I couldn't pay him'.

'And the job was?'

'Er –' a bullet came close, but missed, 'nothing big, just-um... robbing a collection of Monet paintings – something like that', she mumbled off. Nothing big?!

'Listen, when I count to three, I want you to start running straight while I keep them distracted, got it?' she nodded, 'one...' the girl ran on two, 'hey!'

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