Chapter Text
It was a regular patrol, like any other, for Hannah.
Routine. Nice and simple.
Riding around on her sportbike, weaving through traffic, keeping eyes and ears peeled for trouble, headphone crackling in her left ear, reporting precious little from her rooftop-hopping colleagues following from above and behind.
Shifting gears, watching out for the more serious traffic infractions to record and send to police later…
Idly wishing they let her paint her motorcycle anything else except the colours of the flag, because god it was garish-looking with all the stars…
Smiling and waving through her jet-style helmet at the pedestrians taking pictures, the commuters behind her when she stopped at red lights…
Occasionally revving the bike for some excited kids that asked for it, rolling her eyes at the loud cheering that usually followed.
It was, arguably, one of the more enjoyable parts of the job, riding around like this, even if it left her vaguely sore afterwards.
The only thing of note that she had expected to happen that day, was when she noticed someone riding around without a plate in a suspiciously beat up sports car, and engaged them in a thrilling, albeit drawn out chase, when they refused to pull over.
They had ended up all the way in the edge of Brockton by the time she finally managed to make the arrest, largely because the reckless fool spun out and rammed into a light pole while making a turn after she started shooting into his windows with pepper ball rounds.
Arresting the disoriented thug was no trouble from there, and waiting for the police to come take him was an exercise in boredom.
It was only when she got back to her motorcycle, that she had to pause, and stare in slow, growing bewilderment.
That’s where, in the future, she would point to, if asked where she thought her life had taken a sudden left turn.
On her speedometer, was a single paper note, glued onto the acrylic glass with smears of what looked like… honey.
She had seen a small swarm of insects in the corner of her eyes, buzzing around her bike, but she hadn’t thought much of it.
Inwardly confirming that she hadn’t seen anyone approach her bike whatsoever, she swallowed, eyes flicking all around her as she picked it up and read it, one hand resting on her gun while the police cars around her slowly dispersed.
atlas projects construction west thermopylae 45th
underground bunker
coil inside
has people in the hero police
lots of soldiers here
please save me
quickly
The words were scratchy, barely legible, faint lines of pencil barely dark enough to be read.
…Was this bait?
A bee landed on the paper, startling her.
She watched intently, as it hurried across the paper, in a tight circle, a mere inch from her fingers.
It was circling the words “please save me”, its gait so hurried it was basically stumbling over itself, twitching, before it abruptly froze.
She held her breath.
In much more natural movement, it paused to groom itself for a second, then flew off.
She hurriedly clicked the intercom on her helmet, then stopped.
People in the ‘hero police’... They probably meant…
Insider agents in the PRT.
… Why was that written in the way a child would describe something like the PRT?
Her stomach dropped even further with that realization.
Turning the intercom off, she instead put the paper in one of her pockets, and quickly straddled her bike, hopping around barriers to barge onto the docks.
There was just too much traffic for the streets, and she did not know how much time she had. ‘Quick’ could mean ‘save me today’ or it could mean ‘save me in an hour’.
So, she grit her teeth and prayed she wouldn’t crash and die.
Her bike’s engine howled loud enough to echo across the entire city as she raced across the coarse concrete of the docks, mere feet from the waters of the bay, barely keeping the front wheel down as she steadily opened the throttle, chin pinned to the gas tank, wind roaring past her with enough force to pull on her hair like a fist.
It was genuinely terrifying. She was used to cruising around or giving the engine about twenty percent power, if a chase occurred.
With the gas pinned to the max, it was not riding anymore, it felt more like clinging onto a howling rocket across a mix of concrete and sharp rocks, pockmarked with cracks and potholes, while waves splashed against the docks’ edge a mere dozen feet away, a limitless expanse of ocean just beyond, flecks of sea water splattering against her visor in the afternoon sun.
More than once, she thought she was about to die, leaning so hard into turns that her kneepads scraped across concrete, throwing sparks onto the orange-red exhaust tubes.
Still, she kept the throttle pinned open, even as she felt the handlebars creak and subtly bend from how hard she was hanging on, her muscles straining.
She got to the oil rig in eight minutes, and only because at the end where the docks merged onto the boardwalk, she had to hop back onto the road due to how populated it was.
She got to Colin’s lab in twelve minutes, breathless.
And into Piggot’s office mere moments after.
It didn’t matter how quickly she reported it, in the end.
Despite her protests, it took an entire three days for the raid to be organized. To research what bunker was being discussed, to get discrete scans of it with Dragon’s help, to confirm, to muster forces without letting anyone know.
Three days for a raid was record time, she knew. Borderline reckless time. Dangerously little time to plan, to muster forces. Almost no time for Thinker support.
She still felt like it wasn’t fast enough.
To a certain extent, she was right.