She rushed up the stairs at a run until she got to the third floor. This door was already broken down, glass on the floor. She discarded her crowbar and went through, keeping to the shadows and staying quiet, but moving as fast as possible. She heard the sounds of struggle again and something that sounded like growling, but not from any wild animal she’d ever heard before. It kind of made her shiver a little, actually, but she kept going anyway, fleetingly wishing she’d called for backup and not really all that sure why she hadn’t thought to other than that she was just tired and in need of sleep. It was a stupid mistake, really. But it was too late to go back now, obviously. If she did, whatever was going on in there might be over by the time she made it back, and that could mean someone might end up dead who she could have saved.

There was another crash and a man crying out in pain and more of that unearthly growling. She came to a room with desks and furniture and file cabinets, mostly all strewn about in a state of disarray and ruin. There were men garbed all in black and grays, state of the art body armor and night vision goggles. And there was… this woman, this… creature – human looking, but with wings like a dragon, claws, shadowy skin, glowing red eyes. Still though, definitely a woman. They had an electrified net over her and were poking her with what looked like… electrified javelins.

It was such an unreal tableau, she couldn’t even guess where to begin to reconcile it with reality, really, but whatever that woman was and whatever her attackers thought they were doing, Elisa knew one thing: It was cruel and it turned her stomach to see it. She couldn’t know for sure she was doing the right thing of course, but really, as a cop, if you see someone getting attacked, you help them and deal with the rest later; you don’t stop to ask if the person getting beat up started it. You just don’t.

She stepped out of the shadows, leveled her assault rifle and shot at one of the javelins. Her shot hit the mark just above one of the black-clad men’s hands. He jumped back as shrapnel and sparks came from the destroyed weapon. ”NYPD! Drop your weapons, hands on your heads, now!”