Dumb Luck -CHAP.01--DEADPOOL-

  Hayden Snow stood at the edge of the bridge, hovering right on the precipice so that her vision was filled with nothing but the lethal, crashing waves of the harbour below her. In some cities, you'd think that people would take more notice of a young woman standing ready to jump to her death, but here, cars and pedestrians just passed her by as if she was simply part of their everyday scenery.

  She spread her arms wide and lifted one foot, tentatively holding it over the edge as if she was about to step out into the air. As soon as she did, the whispering started in her head and the wind started to pick up, swirling around her like it was entombing her within a cocoon, warning her away. Hayden ignored the warning and instead let herself fall forward, allowing gravity to take her the rest of the way...

  Only it never happened. The wind suddenly roared to life, rushing up to meet her with such inexplicable force that it knocked her right back onto the solid ground of the sidewalk along the inside edge of the bridge. To anybody else, it would have looked like she'd simply changed her mind; that she'd decided life was worth living after all. Even if they'd experienced the sudden change in wind speed from what had otherwise been nothing more than a light breeze, they'd have passed it off as just a minor freak of nature.

  But Hayden knew better. She'd tested it many times before to definitely know better. She knew that it was because of this bizarre lucky streak that had been following her ever since she'd come out of her coma six years ago. She knew that it wasn't something that could be so easily explained... or even easily bypassed.

  As she'd always so eloquently put it, it was just pure dumb luck.

  The whispers in her head dulled back to their usual quiet murmurs. Something she was more than used to. Hayden had used to think that she was crazy - constantly hearing these voices... Until she'd learnt that the voices were actually spirits. Though maybe that made her even more crazy. Still, as she used to tell people, "I'm not crazy. The voices aren't in my head; they're all around me."

  But then the claims of someone who was addicted to drink, drugs and any other intoxicating substance that she could get her hands on apparently weren't all that credible. Everyone was a critic nowadays. Your word wasn't good for anything once you were labelled as anything other than normal.

  Suitably satisfied, Hayden turned away from the wall of the bridge and continued on her path towards downtown on the other side. She wouldn't have liked diving from the bridge as a way to go anyway. She wasn't too fond of the waters. She wasn't that hot on the idea of dying either. Not anymore. Every now and then, she just liked to test the waters, so to speak. Just to see if her little spirit friends were still keeping up her lucky streak.

  She'd eventually learnt that it was these same spirits that she could hear who seemed to have taken it upon themselves to help keep her safe. Hayden wasn't really sure why they'd taken such a shine to her. Maybe they'd all had a jolly good time together in limbo when she'd been living on machines. Or maybe it was because she was just that damn awesome.

  Though her boss wouldn't really be feeling the awesomeness if she turned up late for her shift. Maybe experimenting on the way to work wasn't the smartest idea. And seeing as her little test had succeeded, she couldn't even use the excuse of dying as her reason for being late. She was sure her boss wouldn't have heard that one before.

  As it was, she managed to get to work on time anyway, thanks to power walking the rest of the way. The garage downtown wasn't in the friendliest of areas, so she didn't run into many people on the way. That worked out well for Sal's Chop Shop. Repairing cars wasn't the garage's only business - their background motive also being where Hayden came in. You could look at it in many different ways, but when it came down to it, her job wasn't exactly... well, legal.

  After clocking in on the old-fashioned card punching machine, Hayden went straight through to the lockers. She was one of the very few employees who even had a locker, but then that was because she had a very specific uniform to wear that she always just kept at work. She was the only one who did what she did. Ergo, the only one who needed a uniform other than the usual jade coveralls that the rest of her colleagues wore over old tees and jeans.

  She pulled open the door of her locker, green eyes meeting her from the mirror glued to the inside. Her almost black hair was tied forward into her usual twin braids that just reached her shoulders. The braids should have given her a rather girlish look, but it was spoiled by the dominatrix style thigh-high boots and stockings, the black and blue body art criss-crossing down both arms and the revealing, lace-up tailcoat that cut across her otherwise naked skin and displayed a dangerous amount of bare cleavage.

  Not anymore, however. The boobs were going away for now. She zipped herself into the matching leathers of her uniform from head to foot, having to lose the boots for less fashionable ones with steel toe caps. All in the name of health and safety. As safe as you could be as a human crash test dummy anyway. She grabbed her helmet and headed down to the back of the shop. Everyone knew the dodgy things always happened round the back.

  "Sup, boss man?" she greeted the familiar back of the head that was bent over the hood of a car that didn't really have the rest of the car attached anymore. Hayden wasn't sure what was under the hood was the car's biggest problem. Whatever Sal was doing was no doubt something else illegal.

  He straightened up when he heard her. There was no means of greeting in response - his usual impatience getting in the way and colouring his already strong New Yorker accent. "Come on, come on; we've already got a car waitin' for ya."

  On time and he still treated her like she was late. Sal was blunt in every aspect of his profession. He had no time for niceties - only time for making money. Standing at the same height as her at around five six, five seven, Hayden had always reckoned that Sal had 'little man's syndrome'. He certainly spent enough time trying to intimidate people with his mouth instead. With dark hair and eyes and particularly pointy teeth, he could have played the part of a creature of the underworld in any vampire flick over the last decade or so. Well... maybe not Twilight. Nobody would want that.

  "Yeah, I'm moving. Chill your beans," Hayden replied.

  She pulled the bronze steampunk goggles she usually wore on her head down out of the way, so that they hung around her neck, and fitted the helmet into place instead. She left the visor open so that she could still hear and see better and let Sal lead her round to a violently orange, outrageous looking hypercar that she didn't even recognise.

  "Whoa, what the hell is that thing?" she exclaimed.

  "New model from Italy," said Sal. "This is just a prototype. Unknown make; they're callin' it the Mostro for now. Means monster. They wanna make it the fastest road legal car on the market."

  "And we're gonna test if it can be classed as legal or not," added Hayden, catching on.

  "Only automobile industries can make those decisions," Sal pointed out. "We're just gonna make sure its passengers can keep up with the engine without gettin' pummelled."

  "Sounds fun," Hayden commented without a hint of sarcasm.

  "I want ya to try a basic crash test first, seein' as we've got it in here," said Sal. "If that all works out, we'll get it moved down to the air strip."

  Further downtown was a small, derelict airport. Sal had somehow managed to wangle the deeds to it several years after it had been closed down for good. His partner owned a tow truck, which they'd use to transfer cars to the air strip for speed and handling tests. The abandoned runways provided the perfect open spaces to trial fast cars without obstacles or unwanted spectators.

  The majority of Sal's income came from such tests. Car companies paid him big money for testing the safety on their new prototypes for them. Crash test dummies could only go so far as a substitute for real humans. It was easy to tell when a dummy was crushed or torn apart during experiments, but not as easy to pick up on less obvious damage. Dummies couldn't tell you if the seat had jarred their back, if the headrest had given them whiplash, if they'd smashed their kneecaps because there wasn't enough leg room in the cockpit...

  Instead, that had become Hayden's role. When Sal had decided that using real live crash test dummies would be much more beneficial in getting the real results, he'd struggled to find anyone willing to let themselves get smashed up just for some quick cash. Sal had found Hayden purely by chance, after witnessing her jump from a four-storey fire escape under one of her own experiments and escape with nothing but a broken toenail. He'd offered her the job and she'd taken it without question.

  Hayden knew she wasn't invincible. Not by a long shot. She could receive injury just as easily as anyone else. But she was confident enough that her lucky streak would keep her safe enough from taking any serious damage. The constant presence of spirits may have been annoying at times, but it certainly had its uses for things like this. Any minor injuries she was likely to sustain from her work were worth it for the money she got in return. It being such a dangerous job, Sal paid her a lot for it. That was just one of the perks.

  Another being that she got to drive all these fancy cars first hand. Hayden wasn't much of a gear head when it came to cars and she didn't pretend to know a whole lot about them, but she knew that a lot of people would give a whole lot to get to test drive some of them like she did. And she could certainly appreciate how good some of these new prototypes looked at least. The Mostro was definitely one of them, if a little crazy. Crazy, but good. That was right up her street.

  "Let's do this!" she said eagerly.

  She clambered into the low-built hypercar, ducking to avoid the scissor doors. Now that was a pretty awesome feature. Her leathers squeaked against the seat made of the same material, though the interior was all streaked with loud red racing stripes against the black. The dash in front of her was very basic - none of the high-tech displays that you got in most new cars nowadays. That suited Hayden much more. Technology tended to hate her. At least that was what she told people.

  "Take her into the vault and do a run up at the wall," Sal told her through the open door. "Best to test the airbags out first. This baby does zero to sixty in two point five seconds and zero to a hundred in less than five, so you'll want 'em to be workin'."

  "Rightio."

  The vault was their name for their best testing area. It was situated right against the far wall of the surprisingly extensive garage, sided by an extra wall of super strength, bullet proof glass, as well as the target wall, which was reinforced with layers of steel tubing and concrete. It was completely unforgiving, which made it the perfect example to see how cars could withstand driving headlong into solid objects.

  Sal tipped the door closed. "Just hope the airbags go off," were his last words as he patted the carbon fibre roof of the car.

  How comforting. Thankfully, Hayden had other reassurances to rely on. Feeling perfectly confident, she pulled the visor down on her helmet, strapped herself into the seat and put the car into drive. The Italians had certainly put their money into this one - the steering was so feather light yet so concise that she felt like the car was responding to her thoughts rather than her touch. She manoeuvred it easily into the vault, backing up to the furthest point away from the target wall inside the enclosed space.

  With the car back in drive, she stomped her foot onto the accelerator, ready to test out this two point five seconds from zero to sixty statistic... Only she didn't get that far. The engine snarled to life and jumped the car forward, but as soon as it moved off, there was a huge bang and it suddenly careered sideways, crashing into the bullet proof glass before it could reach any kind of serious speed.

  Even from inside both the helmet and the car's interior, Hayden heard a shout from Sal of, "What the hell was that?"

  Completely unharmed, she lifted the visor of the helmet and unclipped the seat harnesses. She pressed down on the button to open the window and leant out for a good look. The front tyre on the driver's side had burst, leaving a gaping tear in the sidewall. That explained the bang. A burst tyre was certainly better than a burst engine. Or a burst head, for that matter.

  "Flat tyre," she said calmly, still surveying the damage.

  She knew that was somebody's way of telling her that the car definitely wasn't safe to drive yet. That same lucky streak yet again that had just kept her from getting crushed, blown up or having her head torn off. She wasn't really fussed which would have happened, just so long as it didn't.  She knew well enough to trust the judgement of her little ghostie friends. And it was a good enough demonstration for Sal to see that it wasn't safe either. Sure enough, he sighed and gestured for her to get out.

  Hayden did as she was told and happily got out of the car and squeezed past it to get out of the vault. She took her helmet off. "You may wanna tell the Italians to do some re-assessing before I get back in there."

  "I swear bad luck just follows you everywhere," Sal complained.

  "Beats being smushed up the target wall. I prefer to think of it as good luck," Hayden said lightly. "Call it a sign."

  "Damn superstition..." Sal grumbled.

  "Hey, you're the one who always calls me unlucky," Hayden pointed out. She was sure that if he knew the full story like she did, then he'd probably think differently. "Now who's the superstitious one?"

  "Yeah, yeah," Sal waved the comment away. "Dammit... I can't believe I'm gonna have to get this imported back like this. The company would have given us a shit load of money if we'd gotten all the tests done successfully on it."

  "Will they charge you for sending it back not in mint condition?" Hayden asked.

  "Naw. Part of our agreement. Whatever happens during testin' doesn't put us at fault; it's faults of production," Sal explained. "They won't be happy though. And we won't get paid for any of it."

  "Well, at least it's better to send it back with a bust tyre rather than sending it back in a cube," said Hayden helpfully. Sal simply grunted in response. "So is that the only one I have to test today or you got anything else for me?"

  "Go check with Santiago. She was workin' on somethin' she reckoned she'd have ready by this morning."

  His tone made it clear that he didn't need her for the rest of the day. Hayden didn't take it personally - she knew he wasn't exactly mad with her. He'd just be moping for a while over the idea of missing the chance to score some easy money. Too bad. The Italians had a way to go before they could make the claim they wanted. The Mostro clearly wasn't anywhere near road legal just yet.

  She went outside to find Santiago instead. Jenny Santiago was Sal's business partner, as well as his girlfriend. Hayden had never really understood how a creep like Sal had managed to find such a down-to-earth hottie. Santiago was even shorter than Sal was, but with a perfectly proportioned hourglass figure. She was supposedly Latina, but instead of the more predominant darker colouring of most Latinas, her black hair clashed with very fair skin and unusually pale blue eyes. Santiago often joked that her parents had found her in their back yard.

  "Hey, girl," Santiago greeted her. Her coveralls were smattered with oil, as usual. "Sal tell you I've got a new challenge for you?"

  "Something like that."

  "Well, take a look!"

  Santiago gestured towards the near end of the junkyard that the garage backed onto. Sat alongside a wall of spare tyres was an old rust red Toyota Hilux truck. The paint job had definitely seen better days, but besides that, it looked to be in pretty good shape, particularly for the ten-plus year that was indicated by its license plate.

  "Whose is it?" asked Hayden.

  "Some old kook from New Jersey who wants to take it cross-country for some world record attempt," said Santiago. "The Hilux is meant to be extremely sturdy, so he wants us to run a few tests and make sure it's still safe to use. If it is, he's gonna pay us all the costs to spruce it back up to like-new condition."

  "You want me for an airbag check then?"

  "Nope, we spring tested them and all the airbags are working fine," said Santiago. "But we still want you to do a crash test, just to make sure the bodywork can withstand collisions without anything falling off. The hood's bound to take a beating if it's gonna be going cross-country... So you up for it?"

  That was the difference between Santiago and Sal. Santiago always asked, whereas Sal just assumed. Santiago was one of the few people that Hayden could class as anything close to a friend. Most people in her life had discovered quickly that she was a known flight risk and learnt not to trust her. Hayden liked to be sociable, but she always put herself first. If it was in her best interest to suddenly take off and leave someone else behind, then that was what she'd do. Weirdly, Santiago seemed to have learnt this like everyone else had. The odd part was that she'd actually still stuck around.

  "Sure," Hayden agreed. "Let's see what it can take!"

  The Mostro had to be extracted from the vault first so that they could get the Hilux in there instead. Whilst Hayden was waiting for the two to be switched over, she sat on the hood of an old Volkswagen and checked her cell phone. She had three new text messages - only one of which she was interested in. She left the other two unread.

  "Is this the only car you need me to test today?" she asked Santiago, looking up from her phone.

  "Yup," replied Santiago. "And if Sal sent you to me already, then I'm guessing he doesn't have anything else for you either. So you can go home after this one."

  "Awesome."

  That was another perk - her shifts were usually crazily short hours. Which meant she had the rest of the day to herself. That worked out quite well, seeing as the one text message she'd had was regarding her 'other' job. And that one was even more fun that crashing cars. Sometimes her life really did feel like it was all play and no work. It was a total win-win. She was definitely glad she hadn't jumped off that bridge earlier.

  Hayden didn't need any interferences on this test. She was able to plough the truck straight into the target wall without any hiccups, escaping with her worst injury being just a slightly stiff neck. Nice and simple. Plus since her job role was so dodgy, she didn't have the ins and outs of an employee contract like everyone else, so she got paid up front for every crash test she did. Yay.

  She liked having money in hand where she could see it, but she did tend to splurge out on drink and poker games that way. Her addictive tendencies often stretched to other substances too. It all depended on how much else she had to occupy her mind at the time. But from the sounds of it, tonight was going to be an interesting one, so drugs were far from her mind right now.

  She whiled away her time downtown by alternating between seedy bars and an old arcade until the evening. Though there were plenty of unsavoury folk downtown, her face was fairly known there. People generally knew they were better to leave her alone, thanks to a few well-placed connections. Or at least one connection in particular.

  As it started to grow dark outside, her cell phone buzzed to signal another incoming text message. 'Hey Ghost Whisperer, toga party's in an hour. Bring pointy things. And guns. Lots of guns.'

  That was all the confirmation that Hayden had been waiting for. She much preferred working for her other so-called 'boss'. He was probably the only person who could make her feel entirely normal. If her gifts were freaky, then his were weirder. If she was untrustworthy, then he was worse. And if people thought she was crazy, then he was most certainly utterly and certifiably insane. Plus the perks of that job usually included guns, explosions and often sex. And apparently pointy things. Couldn't forget the pointy things.

  Feeling considerably more excited, Hayden purposely crashed out of the old Space Invaders game that she was playing and took her leave. Time to get ready for the party.