by Captain Sammitch
New Orleans, Louisiana:
"You got a lotta guts comin' up here," Joe Forelli said quietly. "And cops can't pass themselves off as someone else that good. So who are you, and what do you want?"
"It's quite simple, really," Phil Smith explained. "I quite honestly don't care what extortion charges the cops down there say they have against you. You've got two hostages that I've been asked to find and retrieve. None of us is going home until I get 'em back."
"Shit," Vincent Forelli breathed. "You're FBI, aren't you? That hostage rescue team or something."
"If I were with the FBI," Phil said, "they'd never let me come up here by myself. Besides, the FBI was after me, last I checked."
Joe's face paled. "Unidentified."
"What's that?" Phil asked, his grip on the gun tightening.
"You're the Unidentified Man," Joe said, turning around slowly. "You're that guy who killed all those people in New York."
"Shit," Vincent repeated.
Phil sniffed the air and frowned. "Couldn't you have held it a little longer, Vin?" He chuckled. "Yeah, that's me. If you had read the whole story in the papers, my goal wasn't to kill people. I was trying to rescue people who had been kidnapped. Unfortunately, I had to... eliminate a few people who got in my way." He paused and smiled at Joe. "Are you in my way, Mr. Forelli?"
"Put the gun down," a voice ordered behind Phil. He turned to see two more mobsters pointing weapons at him. "You just walked into a whole lot of trouble, mister."
Phil looked at the two and grinned. "Nice to know that folks still have company over now and then." He looked back at the Forellis. "I'm afraid that you gentlemen don't realize your predicament. You're between a rock and a hard place on this one."
"Put the gun down!" the one with the shotgun repeated.
"Don't make me kill you," Phil said calmly, without missing a beat. "Even if you did get past me, you'd have the cops outside to deal with. They've got backup on the way, and if you keep this up long enough, they will kill you. I, on the other hand, am being charitable at the moment, but even my patience has limits."
"Look, we don't gotta do this," Joe pleaded. "We can talk this out."
"Can we?" Phil asked, smiling.
"You ran from the cops before," Joe reminded Phil. "You know what it's like. We can give you the girl and her mother back, and you can help us get out of here."
Phil laughed. "You're joking, right?"
"Come on!" Vincent shouted. "Can't you negotiate on this?"
"I don't negotiate," Phil replied. "You think I'm gonna let you get away with everything you've done?"
"You did," Joe challenged.
Phil glared at him. "I pay the penalty for what I've done every time I look in the mirror. Prison time is an easy penance compared to what I go through." He looked at the two mobsters pointing guns at him and laughed. "Don't your arms get tired?"
"Look, man, we can make it easy for you," Vincent said. "We can get you money, security, anything. Just help us out here, okay?"
Phil sneered at him. "I won't say that I can't be bought, but I'm definitely not interested in selling out to you."
"Look, man," Joe snapped, "if you're gonna do something, you don't got a lot of time. You better make up your mind pretty quick."
He was interrupted by the sound of shattering glass. A SWAT flash-bang crashed through the window and bounced across the floor, coming to rest in the middle of the cluster of men.
"Damn," Phil murmured as the room was enveloped in a blinding glare.
Everyone in the apartment was blinded by the flash-bang, and everyone except Phil could barely hear over the ringing in their ears. The four mobsters in the room cursed and flailed around the room wildly, clearly out of commission for the time being.
Phil's pulse pounded. He couldn't see. He grabbed an end table and pulled himself to his feet frantically.
Concentrate. Think.
Slowly, Phil began to reel in his racing pulse as the world gradually took shape around him. His eyes weren't functioning, but he could see by piecing together images of the room gathered by his other senses and assembled by his telepathic mind. He dashed into the back room and was greeted by a hail of bullets ricocheting off his psionic shield.
Two more mobsters stood across the room, on either side of the Pipers. They were clearly unaffected by the flash-bang and were clearly out for blood.
Phil deflected several more bullets, but refused to draw his gun. I'm not going back. I'm not going back.
"Drop the gun, man!" one of the mobsters shouted. "Or they both get it!"
The other mobster moved toward Phil with his gun drawn. "Drop it!"
Phil looked at Latisha Piper, cowering in her mother's arms. "I'm afraid I can't do that," he said.
Quicker than the human eye could register, Phil grabbed the mobster's gun hand, twisted his arm so that the gun pointed straight into the ceiling, spun into the man's body, and pummeled him in the solar plexus. The mobster dropped the gun and staggered back as his buddy fired two shots at Phil. Phil deflected them easily and turned to face the other attacker. He didn't see Luigi Paterno standing over the frightened Diana Piper -- he saw Agent Fisher standing over the wounded body of Gabi Riviera.
Phil glared at the man. "You're starting to piss me off, you know that?"
He threw one punch, adding as much telekinetic power to it as he could muster.
Luigi Paterno lifted off his feet and slammed into the wall so hard that the room shook. He slumped over and fell to the ground, leaving a man-sized dent in the plaster.
Phil spun to face the other man as his eyesight returned. He was shocked to see a kid who didn't look any older than him, lying face down on the floor with his arms outstretched. "Don't hurt me!" he cried. "I didn't wanna do it! Joe made me do it!" He looked up at Phil. "I'm only nineteen! Please don't hurt me!"
Phil paused. "What's your name?"
"N-Nick," the kid managed to croak. "Nick DiVecchio."
"Nick," Phil said, "I'm gonna ask you to stay there, or else I'll have to hurt you very badly."
The kid obeyed. Phil turned to the Pipers. "I'm going to need you to come wi--"
A hail of gunfire erupted from the doorway. Phil dove in front of the Pipers and extended his telekinetic shield over them, but he took one look at Diana Piper and realized he was an instant too late. The body of Kit Piper's ex-wife limply slumped to the ground, a random bullet wound in her forehead. Phil felt Latisha grab onto him tightly as he turned to face the doorway.
"Nobody makes a fool of the Forellis," Joe said, brandishing an Ingram. "I hope you went to confession this morning."
"Cover your ears," Phil whispered to Latisha. The little girl obeyed, trembling with fright and trying frantically to get her mother to respond. Phil knew she would never respond to anyone ever again.
Phil smiled at Joe Forelli. "Die slow, you filthy son of a bitch."
BLAM! BLAM!
A textbook FBI double-tap with the .44 relegated the mobster to dinosaur droppings -- prepared to lie there until fossilized. Powered by sheer killer's instinct, Phil gunned down two of the mobsters, then suddenly realized that Nick DiVecchio had just dropped the other two.
Phil jumped to his feet and grabbed Latisha. "Let's go!" he shouted.
"I want my mommy!" Latisha screamed.
"Your mommy can't help you," Phil said bluntly. "We have to get out of here." He turned to DiVecchio. "If you wanna be on my side, get us the hell out of here."
The would-be mobster jumped to his feet and headed for the fire escape. "This way!"
Phil ran after DiVecchio, carrying Latisha and keeping one eye on the door. The two men slipped through the window and made their way onto the fire escape as the SWAT team battered down the door of the apartment.
"I think we're in trouble," Nick lamented as a police helicopter zoomed overhead.
"Stay where you are!" the helicopter loudspeaker boomed.
"I'm not with the Forellis," Phil transmitted to the helicopter pilot.
"I know you're not!" a voice called from the chopper. "I know who you are!"
"Well then, who are you?"
"This is Detective Rick Patterson. I transferred here from the NYPD. I know all about you, Mr. Smith."
Phil froze. "You can't come after me. I'm dead. That case is closed. You closed it."
"I'm not here to arrest you! I want to help you!"
"The best help you can give me," Phil warned the detective, "is to stay out of my way." He pulled out his grapple gun.
"What are you doing?!" DiVecchio demanded.
Phil aimed and fired, latching onto a building across the street.
"Don't do it!" Patterson shouted.
"Sorry, detective," Phil apologized, "I'm on a schedule." He turned to Nick. "You might want to hang on to something."
"What?"
Phil handed Latisha to DiVecchio, who grabbed onto Phil's shoulders. Phil walked to the edge of the fire escape, took a deep breath, checked his grip on the grapple gun, and jumped.