Super Hero Rhapsody: 1975

A month has passed since the annex raid. Rain taps the windows of Devlan Mitchel’s cluttered office on Front Street, and the place smells like stale coffee, paper dust, and old smoke.

Devlan looks thinner, more worn, but his eyes sharpen when Sally arrives. He slides a thick dossier across the desk, its front page stamped with Blaze’s name and a map of Portland gang routes.

Before Sally can answer, the office door bangs open. A man in a grease-stained delivery jacket steps inside, one hand hidden under a cardboard box, the other already reaching for a pistol.

Devlan jerks to his feet, chair scraping hard across the floor. The courier raises the gun toward Sally, but his stance is rushed, nervous, desperate to leave with the dossier more than win a fight.

Sally vanishes through the desk in a blink of motion, the wood and paper ghosting around her shoulder as she comes up inside the courier’s line. The shock on his face is the opening she needs.

She drives into him hard, turning his panicked aim off target and smashing him back from the doorway. The pistol jerks wide before it can fire.

The cardboard box splits against the wall, dumping wrapped parts and stamped packaging across the office floor. The dossier stays behind on the desk, but the courier’s hand claws for it anyway.

Rain ticks against the window as Devlan lunges around the desk, cutting off the courier’s escape path. The dead overhead light leaves the room in pulsing red and gray.