Other links:
Sapphire Angel, Superheroine (Book 1)
Power Play (Book 2)
Deconstruction (Book 3)
Savage Dawn (this book - Book 4)
VIOLENCE WARNING: The two stories in the Savage Gang saga, and especially the second story, involve a gang practicing extreme violence toward everyone — women, the elderly, the protagonist, etc. The stories contain mature sexual content and violence as well. I am placing this warning on all chapters, including those without such violence, so you can choose whether to continue.
CHAPTER 14
Olivia Lockheed’s combat ability and fitness couldn’t save her from the suddenness of the man’s attack. His grip encircled her neck like an iron shackle, preventing her from pulling away. She was strong, but his huge hands overpowered her.
His grip tightened as he lifted her from her feet and pulled her close to the bars. She fought for air, raising her arms and trying to pry his grip loose. She failed. Like all of Savage’s men, the man was a beast, and his strength dwarfed hers.
“No one is going to talk, bitch,” he said, his face contorting into a sneer.
As Lockheed's legs thrashed and she pulled at his fingers, a strange thought entered her mind. It was not one of fear, but of annoyance with the Harrisburg police for this outdated jail cell. The bars of a modern facility prevented prisoners from reaching through them. But there was nothing modern about this place, and it might be the end of her.
The lockup had surveillance cameras, so perhaps someone would come to save her. It would be a three-way race between her oxygen running out, her neck being snapped, and someone saving her. As she dangled in front of him, her eyes bugging out, she sensed the door at the end of the hall clang open and footsteps pound her way. His grip tightened, and she felt as if her neck would break before help arrived.
His eyes met hers, and he regarded her with pure contempt. Contempt, and something else. Brutal calm. The man’s eyes conveyed a crazed look, but somehow he restrained himself and controlled a fury resting deep inside him. Were they all like this?
Not a sound came from her mouth as her surroundings spun and her vision flickered in and out. Perhaps the footsteps had been from someone coming just to watch her die, and to celebrate the death of the domineering outsider.
But then she discerned movement around her and took a last glance at the prisoner. A thin smile crossed his lips. He released her, and she dropped to the floor, falling to her knees and wheezing for air.
Hands seized her and rushed her toward the exit. She stumbled, not able to walk without help. As she staggered into the elevator, and the doors closed behind her, she considered an improbable fact — someone had taken this man and his companions alive. Sapphire Angel had defeated not just one of them, but four.
Lockheed didn’t know how it was possible. She had never believed all the tales of the superheroine’s exploits, figuring the media exaggerated them for ratings. Now the shaken FBI agent wasn’t so sure. If the other three men were half as capable as the brute in the jail, Sapphire Angel was every bit as powerful as the stories made her out to be, and possibly more.
Something about that reality bothered Olivia Lockheed. Perhaps it was because Lockheed played by the book, and Sapphire Angel operated outside the law. The heroine was a force for good, but rules didn’t apply to her. People like her needed someone to teach them to follow the rules.
The elevator reached its destination just as Lockheed started to regain her bearings. She had sensed more than one person come to her rescue, but only one person had entered the elevator with her. She looked to her left, seeing the young officer. Lockheed was glad it was only him, and she didn’t need to face anyone else after the embarrassing attack.
She paused to gather her wits, brushing off her blouse and clearing her throat, before stepping off the elevator. The officer stuck out a hand to stop the doors from closing before falling in behind her.
Michaels waited down the hall, reviewing the weapons in the conference room. Perhaps he would give her some news, to change the tone of the day. She thought back to her attacker’s words. No one is going to talk, bitch!
If nothing else, she knew he spoke the truth. She wouldn’t be getting any information from the prisoners.
Benjamin Drummond moved his gaze from the data on his iPad to the imposing form of Maximus Savage, who reclined on a sofa against the wall. Larry Oberkfell, clad in his dirty lab coat, knelt next to the gang leader, easing the IV from Savage’s arm. Savage took a deep breath, as if in peace.
“Yes, Benjamin?” Savage asked, opening his eyes and titling his head toward Drummond.
Drummond pushed his glassed up on his nose with his index finger, gripping the iPad in one hand. He needed to get to the point while he had Savage’s attention. Whenever Oberkfell finished one of these extended sessions, pumping his drugs into Savage, the gang leader’s focus evaporated.
“So far, good news. The men in jail in Pennsylvania have not cracked. They’ve kept their mouths shut.”
“No shit!” Savage snapped, swinging his legs off the sofa and causing his advisor to take a step back and his pseudo-doctor to stumble out of the way. Savage frowned and gave Drummond a dismissive wave of the hand.
“What I mean, Benjamin, is that our men will never talk. That’s why we vet them and train the shit out of them.”
Without waiting for Drummond to respond, Savage climbed to his feet and moved past the young man to the doorway. Before leaving the room, Savage turned and looked back over his shoulder.
“Keep tabs on Rocco,” Savage said. “We can’t have any more screw-ups.”
“Yes, sir,” Drummond replied with a nod of the head. He considered calling out after Savage, and providing him with data on other operations around the country, but there was no point. The information wouldn’t even register with the man.
After the gang leader disappeared, Drummond turned back to Oberkfell, whose otherwise bald head contained random splotches of wiry brown and gray hair. The doctor’s eyes darted about, not focusing on anything for more than a second, as he gathered vials and tubes, and placed them onto a metal rolling cart.
“Is this stuff safe?” Drummond asked with disdain. Drummond didn’t approve of the doctor — if one could call him that — but Savage would never listen to any warnings, as he craved Oberkfell’s chemicals.
Oberkfell paused and raised his head, but his eyes didn’t settle on Drummond, instead continuing to dart about the room.
“Define ‘safe’,” the man answered, holding a finger to his lips.
“Is all this garbage you’re pumping into Savage going to kill him? Or screw him up somehow?”
Oberkfell sighed and wrinkled his mouth. He tapped his finger to his lips for several moments before giving a shrug.
“I think these mixtures are fine, but as I’ve warned Savage, they haven’t been tested like normal medicine. My neck is on the chopping block if it goes wrong, so I worry, too. I’ve tried to convince him we should dial it back a bit, but he won’t listen.”
“How much more can he take?” Drummond asked.
“It won’t matter, soon. These formulas don’t work like others. He’s building up a tolerance to them, and he soon won’t see any benefit.”
“And then what?”
“And then he’ll either kill me, or I’ll have moved on to a new… type of formula.”
“A new type of formula? What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means I’m always looking for the next great thing," Oberkfell replied. "I’ve started a dialog with someone for a new… product. I have some doubts about it, but perhaps my concerns are unfounded. I’ll know in time if I can use it with Savage.”
Drummond’s eyes narrowed. “And who is this dialog with?”
“That’s a trade secret,” Oberkfell replied with a smirk.
Drummond scowled. As Savage’s top advisor, he liked to be in control, but Oberkfell had a hold on Savage that Drummond could never match. Drummond stared at Oberkfell until it was clear the doctor wouldn’t relent. Drummond waved a hand and changed the topic.
“When I came in,” he said, “I heard him mumbling again about wiping out entire villages in Afghanistan a few years back. He’s never mentioned anything like that before, at least with me. Does he talk like that whenever you’re pumping him with that crap?”
Oberkfell shrugged again. “Not always. I guess my concoctions can loosen his lips a bit.”
“I can’t figure him out,” Drummond said. “It sounded like he hated reliving that part of his past, yet he’s doing the exact same thing today. He's targeting people's families and friends to get them to comply. If it causes him so much guilt, why would he do it?”
Oberkfell snorted, letting loose with a chortle.
“You think he feels guilt?” Oberkfell asked, still cackling, causing the bald patches on his head to turn red. “Savage doesn’t feel guilt. Not about anything. There’s something else. Something that eats at him, that causes him to go into those fogs and relive those part of his life. Something, I dare say, that has helped form who is he today. Something he's never talked about.”
Drummond wrinkled his brow. To best serve Savage, he needed to understand what made his boss tick. But he couldn’t press the gang leader to reveal details about his life. One didn’t do that with Maximus Savage, if one wanted to live. But he would keep his ears open and perhaps uncover Savage’s secret.
Forward to Chapter 15 (link works after Chapter 15 goes live)
Other links:
Sapphire Angel, Superheroine (Book 1)
Power Play (Book 2)
Deconstruction (Book 3)
Savage Dawn (this book - Book 4)
Olivia Lockheed getting her hind end handed to her by that Savage Gang grunt brought to mind that scene from “The Falcon & The Winter Soldier” where John Walker similarly gets his hind end handed to him by a group of Dora Milaje guards led by Ayo, who attempt to arrest Zemo after Sam and Bucky break him out of prison to help them with their case against the Flag Smashers. If anything, it just put further in perspective how terrifying the Savage Gang can be towards those who are nothing but simple, normal people, and how either an enhanced individual or a crazy amount of firepower/physical strength are the only reasonable means to take even one down. Sapphire’s honestly so skilled if she really did take these four, and I feel like that sequence subtly represented how much better she is than Olivia. It’s been told that Olivia’s after Sapphire because she doesn’t like the idea of Sapphire constantly operating outside the law.....but she (Sapphire) gets the job done and does it well, so I don’t see the problem. I do wonder, though, if she were also somehow on Sapphire’s side of the coin; that is, if someone who’s such a stickler for the law like herself ended up gaining superpowers, too. Would she just shut herself off from using them entirely because it’s not “by the book” (and potentially let countless people die), or would she forsake her entire philosophy at that point? I do feel bad for her, at least a little---I would even hypothesize that she’s just envious of Sapphire---but I’d need more information. She’s lucky to have gotten out alive, though. You said she was “strong”......is she anything like the Junker Queen from Overwatch 2 (you can look that character up if you need to)?
I knew Maximus Savage had a thing for these weird drugs provided to him by Oberkfell, but now it looks like they’re making him take unwanted trips back to his past. Benjamin and Larry’s conversation was intriguing; I figured someone as thorough as Savage (roughly thorough, at any rate; he insisted that Rocco Lynch perform another operation on the same night as the previous failed one) would have Oberkfell test the drugs first before administration, but I suppose he still needs some way to maintain his strength and hone his abilities. Sounds like Oberkfell may be in danger, though; the drug’s supply may as well be directly proportional to his remaining lifespan. I wonder who the supplier of Oberkfell’s new product could be, though. Maybe a prior villain is bolstering him even from behind bars? Or beyond the grave, even, in Demarco, Wheldon, Rockford, Bishop, and Valik’s cases? For all his faults, Valik was an accomplished scientist, so maybe his son Calvin has had some exposure to it, too? Or maybe it could just be a completely new character whom we haven’t met yet. Interesting! Whoever, they are, I hope they can get the approval and the medication to Oberkfell before Savage goes bonkers.
......I’m just kidding. He was ALREADY bonkers. And these substances clearly aren’t helping. Well.....not in the way that he would have liked; they’re still very helpful in letting us delve into Savage’s backstory.
It’s a bit accessory, but I’m hoping we find out why the Savage Gang chose to use gargoyle-like masks to represent themselves. Was it of any particular significance, or was it just because they thought they looked scary/intimidating?