The Displaced Detective: A Body Hopper Tale – Part 9
by Limbo’s Mistress

I spun around toward the voice, my heart already leaping up into my throat. No! No! No! We’d been so close to making it to freedom. Our escape into the air only a minute to two from becoming a beloved reality. A reality where we left this awful place behind.

Armitage stood in front of the plexiglass doors, an arrogantly annoyed smirk on his face. As if he were pissed about having to come outside to collect me himself, but pleased that he’d managed to catch me off guard. My hate for him shot up another fifty points, spurred on by the spoiled debutante sharing my skull.

A pair of burly men, each dressed in a dark suit and mirrored sunglasses, stood on either side of Herman. Each one held a Glock in one hand and a taser-like device in the other. While all four of the weapons were gripped in a ready position, none of them were pointed at me.

Yet.

Bringing my gaze back to Armitage, I asked the question that was pinging around Sasha’s mind.

“How … how did you find me?”

He laughed, clasping his hands together as his smirk widened. I honestly thought for a moment he was going to start rubbing those mitts of his together and begin cackling like one of those outrageously demented villains from James Bond.

At the same time, I also had the uncomfortable thought that having Daniel Craig swoop in and save me would be totally dreamy.

“The answer, I would think, is quite obvious. Your choices were the front door or the helicopter. And considering the disastrous attempt you made earlier, I gambled that you would pick the helicopter.” He clucked his tongue disapprovingly, the sound making Sasha-me blush with the embarrassment Jack felt for not thinking of that himself. “Now, let’s end this farce, shall we?”

I didn’t dare look behind me. I’m sure he knew I wasn’t alone, but since my allies were on the other side of the bird, mostly obscured by the darkness, perhaps he would only think Matthew was out here. If he didn’t know about Carol and her new abilities…

One of the men stepped forward, raising the taser to aim at me.

“You wouldn’t dare,” I said, hoping I sounded braver than I felt. Which was, like, not at all. “Wouldn’t want Daddy … Dellinger to get his daughter back with electrical burns on her tender flesh.”

Armitage shrugged. “Not to worry, Detective. We have an excellent healer downstairs who can really work miracles. I promise they can repair any wound, regardless of severity.” Then he glanced at the other thug. “Collect her companion. Shoot him in the leg if you must, but I want him alive.”

Companion. Singular. With a male pronoun.

The man nodded and started to walk toward the helicopter, the arm holding the pistol bent in a standard police preparation manner. As he passed me, I considered leaping on his back to give Matthew an advanced warning. However, I also knew the man with the taser would light me up like a fucking Christmas tree the second my back was turned.

Just as the gun wielder took another step toward the chopper, he turned around and pointed his weapon at the other henchman.

“I told you to come with me,” he said in a voice full of warning sighted down the barrel and dropped the taser to grip the pistol in both hands. “If you continue to resist, I’ll shoot you.”

“George?” the man tasked with collecting me turned his head slightly to look over at Armitage for a second before looking back at the other man. Despite the reflective sunglasses, I knew his eyes were full of confusion and panic. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Not one more step closer, asshole,” George said. He thumbed back the hammer on the weapon, an action that struck Sasha as impressive at first. Then Jack remembered that the automatic the thug was holding didn’t require such theatrics.

Herman looked from the pistol-holding man to me, as if ascertain if I was responsible for the sudden change in the narrative. He shuffled slightly to the side, placing himself behind George’s buddy.

“Donaldson, get a hold of yourself. Stop!”

“You should have listened,” George said, pulling the trigger.

The rapport made me jump, but I wasn’t the only one. Right as the man fired, his buddy pulled the trigger on his own, less lethal, weapon. The bullet slammed into his chest, sending a spray of black arching up into the beam of one of the nearby spotlights, where it became a brilliant crimson almost the same shade as my hair.

The wired darts from the taser sunk into the center of George’s chest and delivered their high-voltage load, causing him to go rigid. The electricity coursing through him contracted his muscles, including his trigger finger. A second gunshot split the night, the bullet ricocheting harmlessly off the rooftop, and the gun fell out of the now-unconscious man’s hand. He collapsed to the roof and continued to twitch.

I spun around to see Carol peering out from around the front of the chopper, her eyes glowing silver. The grin on her face was positively terrifying, and reminded me of the way Zimmer had smiled each time he stripped another piece of me away. It wasn’t just that she had used her powers to kill someone, she’d apparently enjoyed it immensely.

The sound of someone grunting and struggling caused me to turn back.

It took a second for what I was seeing to register. The man with the very bloody hole in his chest had fallen against Armitage when he went down. Being the larger of the two, he’d first knocked his boss over, then landed across his lap to pin him to the roof beneath with two hundred plus pounds of dead weight. The noise I’d heard was Herman trying to push the man off him while simultaneously attempting to reach the discarded Glock lying about a yard away.

Matthew rushed up from behind me, grabbing my shoulders as he spun me around. His eyes went up and down my body several times in quick succession, as if checking to make sure I wasn’t leaking vital fluids from unnatural holes. When he seemed satisfied that I was only shaken, he glared over my shoulder at Carol.

“What the hell were you thinking? Jack could have been shot.”

She walked past us toward Armitage, sniffing with derision. “I was thinking that someone should step in and save our asses. Including the one belonging to Miss Thang.” Then she lowered her gaze to mine. “You’re welcome by the way.”

Herman finally managed to wriggle himself free from beneath his recently deceased employee. Leaning over, he just managed to put his hand on the butt of the gun when he glanced up to see Carol walking toward him. His face scrunched up in an expression of complete confusion.

“Hannah? What are you doing?” he asked, seeming to forget all about the pistol for a second.

“Guess again,” she said, smiling. “Hannah doesn’t live here anymore.”

“Carol,” he said, spitting the word like it was a distasteful. “I might have known.”

He kept his palm on the gun, but didn’t attempt to pick it up yet. Instead, his face took on a serious look. Sort of the way Daddy looked when he was about to close a business deal with a particularly annoying client.

“I understand that you might feel some sort of way about the recent past, dear. However, before you do anything rash and unforgivable, let’s talk. Think of the benefits of our cooperation. Surely you have to know we could accomplish so much by working together.”

Carol laughed as turned her head to look at the hand reaching for the gun. A second later, Armitage hissed in pain and yanked his hand back, cradling it as if it had just been burned.

“Working together? You mean, like when I did that job in Reno, and you repaid me by trapping me in that old, fat cow? Is that what you believe cooperation is all about?”

Still babying his hand, he looked down at the weapon again for a second before turning his face back to Carol.

“Would you like an apology? I didn’t want to do that to you, but you were far too valuable to just let you Hop away and vanish from our radar again. Do you have any idea how many resources were wasted during the five years it took to locate you after last time?”

“You’ve worked for the Order before?” I asked, glaring at Carol.

“Besides,” Armitage said, still smiling like a salesman in the most important pitch of his life. Which, like, it totally was. “Look at what you’ve gained. Not only do you have your original powers back, but you’re currently in possession of Hannah’s as well. You’re twice as formidable as you once were. Together, we would be unstoppable.”

“You’re, like, totally insane,” I said, shaking my head at Herman. “Seriously. I don’t know why you thought you’d be able to get one over on Daddy. He’s ten times smarter than you.”

Carol looked back at me and laughed, then turned back to Armitage.

“You’re right about one thing, Herman. I am unstoppable.” Even though she wasn’t facing my way, I could see the silver light shining around her face. “I think I’m going to be just fine without you.”

Armitage opened his mouth, then closed it as his head whipped around to look behind him at the plexiglass doors. A second later, a whimper of fear, something I would have sworn the man didn’t understand, bubbled out of his mouth. He scrambled to his feet, backing up as he continued to stare at … nothing. The doors remained closed and the bit of hallway that was visible through them was empty.

When he got closer to me, I instinctively moved behind Matthew, worried that Armitage might decide to use me as a shield against whatever was freaking him out. However, my precautions were a moot point. As he continued backing up, he never bothered to even look my way.

The smell of his freshly released bladder was disgustingly pungent.

Suddenly, the man who would probably haunt Sasha’s dreams for years screamed at the top of his lungs and whirled around. With a speed the defied his age and build, he bolted like a professional track star toward the low wall running along the edge of the roof. When he reached it, he didn’t even slow down, leaping up and over to vanish from view.

His wails followed him all the way to the ground, instantly silenced by the echoing rapport of something heavy landing on solid concrete.

Despite the way the sound made my stomach turn over, I couldn't say his death actually upset me. The man responsible for the dumpster fire my life had become was finally gone for good.

Matthew sighed, tossed a reproachful glance at Carol, then began walking to the helicopter.

"Let's go," he said. There was a note of regret in his voice. As if he were either sad that Armitage was dead. Or displeased that Carol had killed him.

I didn’t ask which it was. I merely nodded and made my way behind him, climbing into the rear seat of the chopper.

Another explosion from inside the building shook the helipad just as we lifted off. As we rose into the air, I could see dozens of figures fleeing through the front and rear doors. Most of them were men in dark suits who ran toward the SUVs. None of them seemed the least bit interested in helping their fellows.

More than a few of the figures, however, were dressed in either hospital gowns or pajamas. These seemed to be milling around outside, some of them tasting freedom for the first time in a long while. I hoped the girl I’d seen was one of them. Even if she was an assassin, like Carol suggested, she’d probably been made that way by Armitage and his men.

I wondered if any of the figures I saw below wore Jack Rollins’ face.

Matthew used the GPS to locate our exact position. Carol, sitting in the co-pilot’s seat, told him which heading to take in order to get us back to the farmhouse. According to her, the flight was going to take about three and a half hours.

I settled into my seat, letting the thrumming of the blades over my head soothe me. I could hear bare snatches of the conversation taking place in the cockpit. However, I didn’t need to know what was being said to know that there was a whole lot of animosity building between them. The last thing I was able to make out before their fight ended was Carol’s statement on Matthew’s morality.

“One day you’ll have to kill someone, Cornelius. Better accept it.”

The rest of the journey through the dark sky was spent half-dozing while my brain, mixed up as it was, spun around and around. The threat of the Order was past, at least for the foreseeable future. I wasn’t quite so naïve, even as a fifteen year old, to think that we’d destroyed the whole organization. As far as I knew, Armitage was in charge of just that particular section. What I did hope, however, was that any connection between the Order and Michael Dellinger was tied directly to the dead man.

That left the question about what to do with my other problem. I wasn’t getting my old life back, and the more I thought about that, the more I was convinced that any hope I’d had was a fool’s errand. Like it or not, without the antidote and a willing Hopper, I was going to be Sasha Dellinger for the rest of my life

I didn't want to run, constantly looking over my shoulder as I eked out a living on the streets. Dellinger had a long reach, and sooner or later someone would find me. Plus, the lawman that still resided in my nubile body itched at the thought of being dragged back against my will to my daddy. I would be under constant guard until I was thirty. Then I’d probably be married off to someone as part of a shady business arrangement.

So, that meant I was going to have to go home. With one really damned good story under my belt if I didn’t want to be grounded like I had when I lied about Maria ruining my new blouse.

The bump of the landing struts on hard, packed earth jolted me awake from where I’d been dozing. The world outside the chopper’s window was dark and flat. I stared at the silhouette of the farmhouse on the other side of the field as the whirling rotors overhead wound down to a stop. Then I unfastened my seatbelt and climbed out of the chopper.

My legs were shaking a bit as I walked away from the aircraft. The field we were in was about a quarter mile from the house, and the mostly full moon hovering halfway up the eastern horizon cast everything in a silvery glow.

"Well, Detective," Carol said coming up beside me. "That was quite the adventure. I must admit that everything ended up working out better than I’d hoped."

I stopped walking and looked up at her. “I wouldn’t call that an adventure. I still think you sold us out to save yourself. I also think that if we hadn’t been able to escape, you would have let them keep Matthew and watched without a damned care in the world as they, like, used me as a bargaining chip.”

“Do you think you might be judging me a little too harshly? After all, you really don’t know me.”

I shook my head. “Maybe not, but I know your type.” I tapped myself on the chest. “I might seem like just a silly little girl, but in here,” I tapped my temple, “there is still a seasoned investigator. I still know how to read people. Your only concern is yourself. Don’t deny it.”

She laughed. "Oh, I wouldn't dream of denying it. As you so succinctly put it, I look out for myself, first and foremost. Which is not a good thing for you. See, Cornelius is soft, easily manipulated. He spent the better part of the eighteen century following me around like lovesick puppy.”

I felt a wave of uneasiness roll through me at her words. I turned my head to look at the helicopter. The pilot’s side door was open and I could see Matthew’s legs poking out from inside. When they moved, indicating he was still alive, I released the breath I’d been holding and turned back to Carol.

“Unfortunately for you, I don’t wish to leave any loose ends.”

I took a step backward. "What are you talking about?"

"Well, for starters … there’s the matter of this.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small vial containing a dark liquid.

I looked at it for several seconds before realization slammed home.

“That’s … that’s the antidote. The one that counteracts what’s keeping me trapped in this body.”

She nodded. “This was my backup plan. If Armitage or his men managed to get the drop on us, I was going to force it down your throat and Hop into you.”

I shook my head. “You could have given me that back in the mansion. Matthew and I could have swapped.”

She grinned a malicious smile. “I could have. But I like the body he’s in now. It’ll make a much better bed companion to this one than yours.”

As soon as I took that first step toward her, her thumb flipped off the stopper on the vial and she dumped it into the loosely packed earth.

“No!” I yelled, dropping to my knees before the damp spot. I pressed my fingers into the remains of the puddle, unable to get more than a drop or two before the thirsty ground swallowed the rest. Hot tears began to flow down my cheeks.

“Oops!”

I glared up at her through watery eyes and rose back to my feet.

“You think Matthew will be with you after that? He already feels guilty about me being trapped in here. When he learns that you deliberately dumped out the antidote, he will never forgive you.”

“I wouldn’t worry too much about that,” she said, taking a step closer to me. “You see, not only will you be in that body for the rest of your life, you won’t even care.”

“What … why?”

“Sometime in the next couple of hours, the police will respond to an anonymous tip and discover the missing Sasha Dellinger wandering along the side of the road a few miles from here. Poor thing will be practically catatonic from what had to have been a horrendous ordeal.”

I took step back as her eyes began to glow with eerie similarity to the moon behind her.

“Of course, the best doctors in the world will be brought in. Too bad that none of them will have any success reaching her.” She laughed evilly. “Look on the bright side, Detective. With your family’s wealth, the hospital you spend the rest of your days in will be first-class. No rundown padded leather cells for you, girlie.”

Her eyes flashed brighter, and the sensation of a cat's claws attempting to dig into the soft matter inside my skull sent a wave of agony rolling through me. I cried out and dropped to the ground on my knees, my hands pressed against the sides of my head. It felt as if the bedroom where Zimmer had removed Jack Rollins was being shaken by a monstrous earthquake. Or perhaps a tornado slamming against the walls.

I was so overwhelmed by the lighting bolts of pain bouncing around in my brain that I didn’t recognize the sound of a nearby gun being fired for a couple of seconds. Then, the screeching in my head instantly vanished, and I looked up to see that the luminous glow in Carol’s eyes had ceased.

She stared down at me, both hands pressed against the front of her chest. As I watched, a dark circle formed beneath her fingers and spread out, staining her blouse. Her mouth was open, as if she were trying to tell me about the new hole in her torso.

I turned my head to the side, still fighting a bout with nausea, to see Matthew standing about thirty feet away in a classic shooter's stance. A black pistol, just like the one George had used on his partner, was gripped tightly in his hands.

Carol looked over at him, her face twisted in an expression that seemed to say that she was having trouble following what had just happened.

"You told me I was going to accept the fact that I was going to have to kill one day. Today is the day.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

Carol coughed, a little spray of black ejecting from her mouth to glint in moonlight. Then she dropped to one knee in front of me, still holding onto her chest. Her eyes rolled around in her head for a moment, then snapped down in an attempt to find mine.

I almost looked away, until I remembered the empty vial. I kept my face completely neutral as she attempted to change places with me. It only took her a second though, to remember her boast of how stuck I was.

"Have fun in hell, bitch." I said, crossing my arms over my chest as I watched the blood seep out of her body. A moment later, her eyes rolled back again, this time remaining that way as she pitched over and hit the dirt with a thud.

Matthew walked over and stood in front of me. He had an extremely guilty look on his face. He met my eyes for a moment, then turned his attention down to the gun in his hands.

“Where did you get that?” I asked, climbing back up onto a set of trembling legs.

“It came with the body,” he said. Then he looked from the weapon to Carol. “I knew she would try to screw us, Jack. I didn’t want to believe it. I had hoped she had changed.”

“Some people find the years have corralled them into a certain way of living. When you have more years than you can count, changing is the hardest thing to do.”

“I did love her once, you know. When I was young and optimistic. I always thought that, if she could see how easy it was to live without hurting anyone, perhaps I could get her to follow my example.”

"I understand," I said, reaching out to put my hand on his arm. "You made the hard call. Something every cop has to do more than once in their lives."

He sighed. "So, what are we going to do now? Keep running? Granted, I don’t look like Jack Rollins anymore. However, you still resemble the missing Dellinger girl."

I shook my head. “Running, for me at least, isn’t a viable option. I’ve been thinking about something that might actually let me live here in peace.”

He arched a brow. “Oh?”

I nodded. “Still have a few of the finer details to work out, but I think with a lot of planning, and a little luck, I can make it work.”

“Anything I can do to help?”

Tossing him a little smile, I shrugged one shoulder. “Actually, there is.”