Abandoned buildings hulked on either side of the darkened street, like rotted teeth in a gaping mouth. Two men trailed a lone female between island pools of light. She looked nervously behind her and began to hurry. The men quickened their pace.
Marco popped up another window to get the SkyCam view, the enhanced infrared casting everything in pearly green phosphorescence. It was a bit jerky; the little blimp was probably trying to tack against a strong headwind. He dragged the window to a corner of the screen.
They were about half a block behind her now, closing fast. She broke into a run. Good. Marco nudged a slider switch on the virtual control panel to crank up the sound a bit. Her light feet slapped against the street, counterpoint to the men's heavy footsteps. He boosted the presence and could just make out her breathing--shallow, panicky gasps. He could enhance it more later, or overlay something from the sound library.
She ducked into the doorway of a building, her pursuers following close behind. Shit. Marco popped another couple of windows to see if their shoulder cams were picking up, but it was too dark in the building's entrance. Grainy shadows jerking back and forth, sounds of struggle. She screamed and they dragged her into the street.
The resolution still wasn't very good, not nearly enough available light. It was fine for the stalk--the shadows made everything look menacing. But you needed some serious bit density for the hand-to-hand.
Laurel must have been giving them field directions from the mobile unit, her voice buzzing out of their mastoid speakers like a guilty conscience, because suddenly they dragged the victim from the shadows in front of the building into the bright circle of light cast by a streetlamp.
Four windows open now, tiled across the workstation screen--the SkyCam, the mobile unit, and the two shoulder cams. Marco felt like God on an electronic throne.
From one of the shoulder cams, a tight, fleeting shot of the woman's face. Her eyes were wide, whites showing all around, like a frightened horse. Outstanding. Marco froze the image and blew it up until her face filled the screen, popped it into another window, and superimposed the streetscape view from the mobile unit.
"Goddamn, I'm good," he muttered.
One of the men had a knife out and was waving it around in the air, leaving a complex pattern of trails on the screen. It was a great effect. Marco boosted the contrast to enhance it.
The woman broke free and almost got away, but the taller of the two tackled her and she went down hard, scraping her face on the pavement. First blood, black in the light.
She was pleading now, her voice a keening monotone. "Don't hurt me, please, please, don't hurt me."
Marco looped it and put a drum patch underneath, his hands alternately flying across the keyboard and caressing the virtual controls onscreen. The sound of their blows, their grunts and heavy breathing, rose now over the hip-hop dub of her whining pleas. Marco made a note to himself to give Lou in Production a call about marketing a single.
They had her shirt off now. The shorter man was squeezing her breasts while his companion held her with one hand and punched her repeatedly in the face with the other. Her lip was split and one of her eyes was swollen completely shut. She was still struggling, but weakly. The jerky motion of the shoulder cams synched perfectly with the dub's insistent rhythm.
Suddenly, she went limp. Damn. Lost consciousness, maybe even cardiac arrest. That's the trouble with these fucking animals, Marco thought, no sense of timing. They smelled a little blood and went apeshit.
They were still hammering on her, slamming her in the head and jabbing at her naked torso with the knife. The shorter guy started pulling her pants off, exposing pale, white thighs. They would probably fuck her anyway, dead or not.
Marco grimaced. No way he could get that past the Board. Still, he had plenty of good footage, and for gravy, a sweet, little dub.
It was a wrap.
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