San Francisco
Summer of 1996

Sweat dripped down into Luke’s eyes and he wiped his sleeve across his face. His other hand gripped the shotgun, his knuckles white. Though there were screams and shouts and sirens coming from all around him, Luke couldn’t hear anything beyond the blood pounding in his ears. He struggled to control his breathing, feeling himself on the verge of hyperventilating.

“I’m coming for you, pig!”

Luke stopped breathing for a moment, terror caressing his heart. Involuntarily his eyes settled on the body across the floor from him. It was headless. Luke squeezed his eyes shut and hunched up closer to the cabinets at his back. For a split second he’d wondered how he’d got here.

He’d been getting coffee at his favorite stop, Peet’s on Market. It wasn’t just that he always had good service there, but the manager was an attractive redhead with a warm smile and hot everything else. When the call came through his radio he’d given her an apologetic look, hurried to his car and responded to the call: shots fired, bank robbery in progress.

It was a few blocks away but he’d hit his lights and screeched to a halt in less than two minutes, good time in midday San Francisco traffic. He’d been one of the first to arrive, and what he’d seen was not something they’d covered in the academy.

The windows of the bank were mostly covered by blinds, but one was cracked, the spiderweb pattern of the glass marred by the blood and bits stuck to it. Another body lay just on the street, the window shattered and the blinds half-broken and hanging at an angle. The face on the body—a middle-aged male—was deformed, as if it had been hit with a hammer.

Fighting back the urge to vomit Luke had set up a position to cover the front of the bank until the sergeant had ordered him to the alley behind the bank to cover the rear exit. He’d been only too happy to oblige.

That was, until the door had come flying off its hinges.

The man who’d come through was broad enough that he’d had to turn sideways to get through the door and nearly as tall. His hands and shirt were bloody, his face devoid of all emotion. That, perhaps, was the most disturbing thing. No emotion. Not fear, not anger, not menace or anything. Nothing, as if he wasn’t there.

The man’s eyes met Luke’s and the two stared at each other for long seconds. A shout from within the bank caught the man’s attention, and the spell was broken.

“Don’t—“ Luke stopped, cleared his throat. “Don’t move!”

The man smirked, an expression of utter disdain, and walked forward. Luke fired.

The blast took the man in the chest, and he looked seriously annoyed as he continued to advance on Luke. Luke fired three more times before the man was nearly upon him. With speed born of fear and adrenaline Luke dodged the man’s outstretched hands and ran to the side. He barely noted that the mic cord attached to his shoulder was ripped away as he moved. The big man didn’t pursue. He just walked across the alley and kicked through another alley door. Luke skidded to a halt, briefly paralyzed by fear and indecision, then ran after the man.

Ten minutes later Luke was hunched down behind the counter of a small break room, looking at the headless body of some office worker who’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time and hoping beyond hope that he would live to see the end of this day.

There was a crash from the other room. “Pig! Still coming, pig!” Another crash, then a loud thump.

Luke took stock of his options. His taser was gone, shot and discarded as useless. His handgun still held a full clip but the shotgun was down to its last two shells. Not that it had done much good yet but he had nothing else. He didn’t even know what was going on. The man had entered the bank, started killing people, then moved to the office building next door where Luke had followed.

And now he was trapped with the man. He knew the other officers were again setting up a perimeter, and he knew that there was nothing in their arsenal that would hurt this man. Why he followed and why he stayed he didn’t know, but there were still people in this building and he had to do what he could.

“Come out, pig! Come out or I kill another one!”

Whispering prayers and curses with equal passion Luke pushed himself to his feet and wiped his hands on his pants one at a time, then took a renewed grip on his shotgun. Taking a deep breath he spun around the corner of the break room into the hall, shotgun leveled just like he’d been trained.

He saw the man pacing at the end, a body being dragged effortlessly, carelessly. It moved from right to left, out of sight. Luke moved forward. This time he’d go for the head. For the face. He checked left, right, continued on. Ten more feet. Eight. Five. Three.

A hand reached out and jerked the shotgun from his grasp, his fingers pulling the trigger even as it left his hands. The man stepped into view, holding the shotgun in both hands. His eyelid twitched as he bent the barrel as easily as Luke would squeeze a lemon, and tossed it to the side.

“You’re dead, pig,” the man said, and Luke believed him.

"Hey, monkey boy." The voice was so casual and relaxed and so out of place it cut through the tension of the moment like a broken bottle. "Why don't you pick on someone your own size?"

The hulking would-be cop killer turned slowly halfway around and in doing so revealed the source of the voice to Luke. The man standing at the far end of the hallway was no bigger than he was but he stood with a self-assurance that made him seem somehow taller than his trained cop eyes would allow. It was a biker, by appearances - jeans, leather jacket and boots, and a pair of dark sunglasses that masked eyes framed by shoulder-length hair.

He jerked his chin towards Luke and said, "I got this."

The man grunted a low growl and turned fully towards the newcomer before he started stalking towards him with heavy, ponderous footsteps that shook the floor. For his part, the biker didn't seem impressed or even afraid. As the man-giant inexorably approached, the smaller man in shades actually took the time to whip out a Zippo and light a cigarette of all things.

If anything it only made the big man angry. He raised a car battery-sized fist into the air behind him with an evil sneer and swung it powerfully at the biker's head. An image of the headless body in the break room flashed through Luke's mind and at the moment of impact he closed his eyes.

The smack he heard wasn't as meaty or wet as he expected. When he opened his eyes, Luke saw that the biker had caught the now-shocked larger man's fist with his own. With his free hand, the biker removed the smoke from his mouth to say, "You're about ten seconds away from the most embarrassing moment of your life."

The big man roared his rage and with a speed that belied his massive size grabbed the biker in both hands. The he lifted him like a rag doll and smashed him completely through the hallway wall to his right. With a triumphant, throaty growl full of killing intent, he kept going until they were both out of sight beyond the wall.

There was a loud smack and a crunching of what might have been a radiator, and the large man's voice came from the other side of the huge hole in the wall.

"Now you gonna dieeeeEEEYYYIIIEEEEE!!!!!--"

The killer flew out of the hole and back into the hallway, hit the opposite hallway wall a split-second later and crashed through it to disappear from view again, and based on the sounds must have crashed through at least two more walls before hitting something solid enough to rock the entire building.

The biker stepped back into the hallway through the hole he had been smashed through, checked his broken cigarette with a mild look of irritation, tossed it to the floor, and then continued on through the other hole after the killer, but not before offering Luke a brief, sighed, "Be right back."

There were more sounds of titanic struggle, punctuated by a growl that was quickly cut off by a sickening crunch that sounded unenduringly painful even from as far away as several rooms. Then there was another building-shaking smash, after which the sounds of an agitated police cordon came wafting from the rent wall.

After a quiet moment, the biker stepped back into the hallway and slowly approached Luke. "Hey, cop...you alright?"

Luke stood unmoving, staring at the biker. He blinked rapidly several times then remembered to start breathing again. It came out in a gasp and he fought to get himself under control. He glanced down at his hands. They were shaking.

“Um.” He croaked, his throat dry. He swallowed. “Good. I mean, yeah, I’m fine.” He gestured vaguely toward the hole in the wall. “Um…” he said again. “Him?”

"Down on the street," the biker replied indifferently. "He's out. Your friends are taking care of it. His leg's broke and maybe a few ribs. I don't think he'll give them any more trouble."

Luke nodded, still nonplussed by what he’d just witnessed. “Um…” he began, then stopped himself in embarrassment. He closed his eyes a moment, took a deep breath, opened his eyes and somehow seemed a little more collected.

“Thank you,” he said, slowly at first, as if testing out the words, but then with increasing speed. “Thank you. Seriously. I thought I was a goner for sure. I mean, I couldn’t stop the guy. Shotgun just bounced right off of him. The taser didn’t work. Mace didn’t work. I thought for sure I was—“ He stopped again, realizing that he had moved from stunned silence to babbling in the space of only several seconds.

“Anyway,” he said with a half-smile. “Thank you.” He extended his hand. “I’m Luke Merriweather.”

The biker brushed a strand of long hair out of his face and took Luke's hand in his. The shake was firm but...careful.

"You're welcome. People call me Stone," he said in that same relaxed manner he'd evidenced since he arrived in the hallway. He let the shake hang a moment before dropping his hand and walking past Luke to the other end of the hallway from where he started, towards the back of the building.

"Stay out of trouble, Luke," Stone said while walking away. The sounds of policemen coming quickly up the stairs rose from the ruined end of the hallway and Stone’s shaded gaze drifted towards them for a moment. This building would need some serious repair. "If you don't mind, I'm going to do likewise."

Luke stood as if mesmerized. Things like this didn’t happen to him. Sure, he’d heard of superheroes and villains and such, but they always happened to someone else, somewhere else. Not here. Not him. He’d almost had his life ended by a walking pile driver, only to have it saved by another. Just a name, a handshake and that was it. Luke watched the retreating form of his savior, thinking he should say something, do something. Instead he just stood and watched the man called Stone walk away.

And then he was gone, around the corner and - from the sound of his boots on the hard wood stairs - down to the alley exit.

Luke remained there for a long time. It was only when other uniforms came into the building that he pushed away the shock of the previous ten minutes—ten minutes? That was all?—and started answering questions, most of them with “I don’t know.” He’d been indecisive, brash, foolhardy, and he’d been saved by someone who didn’t even stay to take credit. He knew that this was one of those days--one of those moments--that stayed with a man, defined him. He wondered if things would ever be the same again.