When you first become a crime fighter, there’s a lot you don’t know. The first lesson is that it’s not a clubhouse out there; metahumans are either territorial about protecting their opportunities for fame and fortune, or they’re the diehard vets suspicious of your motives. Then there’s the stuff nobody tells you about, be it where to find functional outfits, how to protect your brand against marketing poachers, and how to communicate with the police.
One of the secrets to being a crime-fighter is what’s considered an industry secret shared only with those heroes who operate beyond a tour or two. It’s for metahumans who pursue heroism for selfless means, and not a shot at glory, and it’s passed on by word of mouth, as much an act of trust like learning someone’s secret identity as it is a rite of passage.
The Street Angels Network is the name of an underground system of contacts willing to help heroes under the table. Some are professionals whose jobs prevent them from helping metahumans without permission or for whatever ethical oaths they’ve sworn. Some are doctors and nurses, some still practicing and others striped of their license. Some are lawyers, or cops, or retired metas themselves. Some charge for the sake of supplies but most offer their services for free. The only rules for using the Street Angels Network is:
- Don’t break their trust.
- Don’t abuse their services.
My journey into the Street Angels Network began at 11:00 PM one Thursday night, when a rap at my window startled me. My apartment was three stories up. Lancer was hovering outside, arms crossed and a simple question on his mind. “You ready?” was all he said.
I’d been expecting this visit for a while, but I was still trying to crawl back into my own skin after that scare. I’d known Lancer for a while, now, but I had a hard time readingthe man. Throw his mental abilities into the mix, and I was genuinely scared of him. If he’d ever picked up on that in the time I’d known him, however, he never indicated.
I was about to be given a tour of the Street Angels Network; not all of it and even the Street Angels themselves didn’t know the full extent of their own loosely affiliated organization, but the caveat was all the same. I was to use false names, locations, and descriptions to protect the men and women dedicated to helping metahumans.
Lancer used a mental cloak to keep us hidden, and we wandered the streets like ghosts. It wasn’t that people didn’t see us per se, just that a subconscious urge made them ignore us like we were a pair of non-descript faces in the pages of Where’s Waldo. It was thus obfuscated that we arrived at our first stop. It looked like any other building, the apartment door short a coat of paint and the blare from a television set filtering across the floor.
The man who answered the door went by the codename of Raph, short for Raphael, the archangel of healing. I’d consistently see this Judeo-Christian-Islamic theme behind the Angels, for obvious reasons. Inside his apartment, Raph had a variety of triage kits, disinfectants, some pain-killers, puncture proof disposal bags, and a room he’d insulated against sound that could be converted to emergency care with a massage table for an operating table and a cot for recovering patients. It was surprisingly clean. Raph was polite but apprehensive, and it was only after Lancer insisted on him taking a swig from a bottle of liquid courage (which he also used as cheap antiseptic) that he finally warmed up a little to my questions.
“They didn’t let me practice medicine here,” he admitted, “so I had to find another job.”
After I asked him how he got into helping metahumans, he told me about working as a deliveryman when, one night, a customer pulled a knife on him. A metahuman he refused to name saved him, but got cut badly, and Raph treated his wounds and quickly developed a reputation among some crimefighters as a street doctor who would treat your injuries, no questions asked.
The “no questions asked” is the currency of the Street Angels Network; heroes need these contacts because they don’t trust official channels, while the Street Angels themselves have their own lives to protect. Raph himself could be arrested for practicing medicine without a license, but he calls himself “the middleman” between the heroes and the ERs. Although doctors in general protect their patients under Doctor/Patient confidentiality, they’re still required to report stabbings, shootings, and suspected signs of injuries due to power usage. Many heroes don’t want to be arrested on charges of non-cooperation.
“How do you safely dispose of all the medical waste?” I asked. Treating metahumans was a dangerous affair, and if I’d learned anything from interviewing Roadkill Inc., metahuman waste was called problematic residuals for a reason. More than one person had died from touched meta-contaminants.
“One of the street angels has access to a cremation furnace,” Lancer said. “We use it to get rid of various things.”
“Bodies?” I asked.
The room went quiet, but Lancer remained nonplussed. “Never. We don’t make the network an accessory to murder. But we do burn a drug dealer’s stash when we know he might walk, or a dangerous piece of tech that has no right being made or retro-engineered.”
Our next stop wasn’t any less homely… another non-descript apartment that could be found in any lower tax bracket. In these places, though, people proactively minded their own businesses, making it easier for Street Angels to operate. This time, we visited the home of a short woman who spoke in a low voice to avoid waking up someone in the next room. Whether it was her partner, a relative, or her children, I practiced the currency of the agreement and didn’t ask questions.
She called herself Lewit, and I was hard pressed to remember an angel of that name. Instead I asked, “So what do you do?” The woman’s smile was bright and encouraging, and she motioned for me to follow her. Her workroom was hidden and both Lancer and Lewit chuckled at what must have been my shocked expression. This ample woman, someone I would have expected to be a lawyer or bureaucrat by day, was an engineer. There were several worktables covered in various machine shop tools, or with electronic gadgets including hand tools, soldering tools, cables and wires, and circuit boards. The walls were covered in organized shelving units and drawers, and the empty spaces were filled with a high-end 3D printer, a gun drill, a button rifling machine, a reloading press, a pallet of coolant oil, boxes of cartridges, and so much more. I was looking at a goldmine of equipment here and Lewit must have sensed my thoughts because she simply said: “I have patrons.”
“Patrons” is a polite way of saying “junkrats,” a breed that encompasses crimefighters, glory hounds, and straight up collectors, mostly baseline humans who buy high tech devices from inventors strapped for cash or retiring from the life. My attention fixated on a wall display case above the door.
“Are those–?”
“Street Saint’s old power batons. I gave him an upgrade and he said thank you,” she said, nodding to the two weathered batons crossed and on display.
I never learned whether Lewit was a baseline human or metahuman but she helped crime fighters repair their gear. I sensed a military clip to her bearing and to the way she spoke; by the way she handled the equipment, I had no doubt she could shoot a weapon as easily as she could field strip and repair one. Many crime-fighters, especially the Charlie-class ones, often used gadget belts and various tools to help keep the streets safe. Lewit was the go-to saint for building, repairing, and outfitting those gadget-wielding crime fighters. She was a Jane-of-all-Trades when it came to equipment, mechanical and electronic, and she was even known to custom-build devices for her clients when she had the parts and thought the cause was good.
I wanted to spend more time speaking to Lewit, but she had an early morning and Lancer was eager to get moving. There were still more Street Angels to visit that night, and I was not about to waste my one shot to peek behind the curtain.
TO BE CONTINUED: PART II NEXT WEEK