Turncoat: Turncoat Trilogy Book 1

Chapter 2.2

"Yes, officer?” I asked.

“How old are you?” he asked.

Suppressing a groan, I reached under my tank top and pulled my dog tags out. This happened easily once a week, if not more. I held them out to him. “Seventeen, sir,” I said.

He took my tags and began to scrutinize them. I waited patiently as he scanned them. His eyebrows furrowed and he scanned them again. “Ma’am, you’ll have to come with me,” he said.

“Uh,” I looked around for anybody, only to find the street mostly deserted. A few people were walking away from us. “Why?”

“It’s just a routine matter,” he said. His lips parted into a smile that I assume was supposed to make me trust him but did just the opposite.

I raised a questioning eyebrow. “What’s the issue, officer? I’m just going home and I work here, I am allowed to be on street level.”

“Your tags aren’t reading properly, you need to come with me,” he said.

Not good. I took a step back before I even realized what I was doing and the officer's hand shot out, his fingers wrapping around and digging into my bicep. "Don't go running now," he said, pulling me closer to him. “Itold you, it’s just a routine matter.”

I tried to pull my arm from his grip, but it was like iron, tightening even more every time I strained against it. He began dragging me back to his vehicle. This vehicle, a hovercar by all appearances, sat docked in the mouth of an alleyway. I thrashed against him, trying in vain to slow him. I tried to drop my weight but he wrenched me forward, pulling me off balance and making me stumble after him. Air rushed from my chest as he slammed me against the side of the vehicle. His hand went to my neck and he forced it down, effectively immobilizing me.

“You really shouldn’t have resisted,” he said.

I drew gulping breaths, recovering the oxygen I lost and realized we were now hidden from the street by the hovercar. Not good. Before I could try to shove him off me, my arms were wrenched behind me and cold metal clasped around my wrists. His hand closed over my collar and straightened me up.

“See, is it really that hard?” he asked and resumed his leaden grasp on my bicep.

I tried to pull away once more as he propelled me towards the vehicle once more and released my arm this time. The world flashed white for a moment as my head made sharp contact with the pavement. A constant ringing noise filled my world as I tried to blink the surroundings into clarity. The officer’s lips moved but nothing came out as he used his boot to roll me onto my stomach.

A blade erupted from the center of his chest and he stopped in place. His head slowly lowering to look at the item on which he suddenly found himself impaled on in the moment before it retracted and then reappeared. The blade left his chest once more and he collapsed to the ground.

A man stood in the officer’s place, a long blade extended down from his forearm. He wore a set of scratched battle armor with a shemagh over his face. The blade folded itself up and slipped silently into his forearm as he walked closer.

I pushed backwards, my arms and lower back scraping uncomfortably against the ground. His hand closed over my arm and he pulled me to my feet.  His hand clamped over my mouth before I could draw the breath to scream. I found myself being pulled deeper into the alleyway and two more people stepped out. A man and a woman, each dressed in armor but neither had a shemagh.

“You didn’t have to kill the cop,” the woman said. I only knew she had spoken because she motioned back down the alleyway to the corpse of the officer. Her voice sounded gravelly and distorted.