Those Who Walk In Darkness

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Those Who Walk In Darkness is a novel by John Ridley, published in May 2003. It details the life of a member of an elite mutant hunting task force in future Los Angeles.

[edit] Plot summary

In a world where, until a few short years ago, the streets were rocked by battles between colorfully clad men and women with astounding metanormal powers, the people have declared all-out war against these modern-day titans. Following the destruction of the city of San Francisco in a super-battle gone bad, the federal government has issued an executive order outlawing not only the use of super powers, but also the very people who possess them. For the beings known as Metanormals, it doesn't matter whether they were once superheroes, supervillains, or neither; if they commit crimes, save lives or just try to live normal lives without ever using their powers; they're all regarded as public enemies, and as such the legal prey of the murderous LAPD division G Platoon (presumably after SWAT's designation of D Platoon) known more familiarly as the Metanormal Tactical Unit, or "MTac."

The MTac cops of the city of Los Angeles, who battle shape-changers, telepaths, super-speedsters and even more horrific menaces on a daily basis, are obsessed with killing the people they call "freaks" and "muties," and they have to be. It takes a special kind of driven personality to remain a member of an elite squad that averages a 50 percent mortality rate per mission. None of them expect to live long. They don't care. They just want to take down as many Metas as they can.

Soledad O'Roark is a rookie MTac whose single-minded hatred of the Metas is extreme even by the obsessive standards of her profession. She wants every Meta—good, bad or indifferent—dead and buried, and she doesn't care how ruthless she has to be to accomplish it. Soledad earns the hated nickname "Bullet" on her very first call, when she uses an O'Dwyer Variable-Lethality Law Enforcement gun to blow away a rampaging pyrokinetic in the act of frying her squad. The high-tech gun, which comes complete with color-coded bullets designed to exploit the individual weaknesses of various common Metas, saves her life and the lives of several of her partners, but the department brass still demotes her, and considers filing charges, for her failure to follow official procedure. Why punish her for getting the job done? Soledad's lawyer, Gayle, suspects a conspiracy.

Michelle, an angelic winged woman who possesses the ability to heal the sick and bring back the lives of innocents killed in disasters, lives in hiding with her telepathic husband, Vaughn, and a mentally retarded metal manipulator named Aubrey. When Michelle reveals herself in order to restore the lives of an entire construction crew killed in a deadly street collapse, Soledad just shoots the winged woman dead, dismissing the horrified reaction of one witness with a shrugged "She's not an Angel. Angels don't bleed. She's just another freak."

Soledad doesn't know that the grieving Vaughn is about to succumb to the anger his gentle wife held in check for so long, and declare war against the MTacs.

[edit] Characters

Soledad O'Roark: protagonist of the story, though there's little that would qualify her as heroine. Brittle, abrasive, isolated from family and friends, driven by her she blames for the loss of San Francisco, she carries out her little war with no sense of perspective whatsoever. She just wants to kill them. In short, she would be very much at home appearing as the obsessed mutant hunter of a typical X-Men story, and Ridley devotes a significant percentage of her story to demonstrating that nothing's ever likely to change her mind. It doesn't matter whether she's confronted by the miracles wrought by the doomed Michelle, the eloquent words of a lawyer who remembers the lives good Metas saved, or the wounded decency of another Meta damned to life in a cell for the crime of just wanting to mind his own business. Soledad's determination to take down the "freaks," preferably with deadly force, never wavers.

She's pretty hateful, really. Her ability to maintain a love life with a nice guy—even one with downright superhuman persistence—is downright amazing. Indeed, by the time Vaughn takes her on, you almost want him to win. (He is, after all, the one whose wife was murdered for no good reason.) But what makes Soledad so compelling, despite the queasy morality of her crusade, is her toughness and her unstoppable resolve. Nothing fazes the woman. Even in Ridley's intensely violent and hyper-kinetic action scenes, which capture with perfect fidelity just how nightmarish these super-powered battles would really be for vulnerable human beings caught at ground zero, she remains the most dangerous player on the field. So what if her opponents have godlike powers? So what if her allies are falling, dead or maimed, all around her? Soledad still has her gun and her attitude. It's an even match.