A Superhero Book Series With Strong Female Heroine

Nightcrawler by John Reinhard Dizon

Series Excerpt

It was determined that the foiled attack had been designed to take advantage of a shift in trade winds that would have carried the anthrax powder across the shore into the Wall Street area. Analysts estimated that as much as ninety five percent of the germs would have dissipated along the harbor, but the highly potent virus strain would have contaminated the Statue itself. Any anthrax that would have survived the journey across the river would have been highly toxic and could have easily started a minor outbreak.

The State prosecution found itself immediately on the defensive as the terrorists’ ACLU lawyers charged that their gay rights had been violated in uncovering the plot. The women, Lana Harper and Mindy Harris, had accessed a secured phone line to the Gotham AIDS Fund before the attack. The ACLU charged that their privacy had been violated, and the Nightcrawler had somehow traced the call in order to discover their identities. Moreover, the vigilante was able to hack the women’s personal computer to steal information that led to the attack against them at the Statue of Liberty.

Both Harper and Harris maintained that they had been scammed by a group calling itself the Octagon that met them at the Statue with a briefcase full of travelogues that would enable them to sell tourist packages to visitors. Somehow the terrorists had switched the suitcase with them, and the women were attacked by the Nightcrawler in the Statue’s torch where they were framed for the crime. Officer Hoyt Wexford, who was on duty at the scene of the crime, had been given a taped confession by the Nightcrawler shortly after the incident ended. The ACLU, after a medical examination, obtained evidence that an experimental drug called DAT-KO had been used on the women to disable them and extract their confessions. It was determined that the gas had decreased their mental responsiveness with its shock effect on their dopaminergic systems. It acted as a sophisticated truth serum that left them defenseless against the Nightcrawler’s interrogation.

Harper and Harris were being held without bail at the Attica Correctional Facility awaiting trial for terrorism under the New York Anti-Terror Laws. The NYPD, though having an all-points alert out on the Nightcrawler, were exultant over the intel provided on the tape given Wexford by the vigilante. They had made copies of it as well as electronic transcripts, and though the ACLU had the tape handed over to the court, the info was distributed throughout the Department’s databases. A SWAT team had descended on the warehouse hideout of the Octagon shortly after the women gave up the location, but it had been deserted hours before their arrival.