“What the hell are you waiting for? Get him!” Hans shouted.
Triceratop roared and took off, bursting through the door frame in an explosion of wood and metal. He sprinted down the hallway in pursuit of Deimos, shattering every window along his path.
Hans hurriedly pulled out his phone and opened up the security feed to the room where he had left Siren tied up. As soon as the feed opened he saw two men, Glenn and Harold, helping Siren through a smoldering hole in the wall. They stepped out of the third story room onto what appeared to be an oversized drone hovering outside the building.
Left on the chair beside Siren’s cut restraints was a steaming pile of poo.
“They better have a dog with them,” Hans grimaced.
Down the hall, Deimos was making his way to the southernmost window that he had designated as his pickup point. He was forty-five seconds ahead of schedule but he couldn’t bear to listen to another second of Hans’ babbling nonsense. As Deimos made his way along the curved hallway, he was able to see through the windowed research facility that Triceratop had stopped chasing him. He was simply watching Deimos move further along down the curve. Then, when Deimos was nearly at the opposite end of the floor, Triceratop burst through the glass wall into the research facility and charged straight through it.
Triceratop was fast. Faster than Deimos had predicted. Even with the added resistance of millions of dollars worth of computers, servers, lab equipment, desks, and security glass standing in his way, Triceratop made it to the opposite end of the facility before Deimos did. Deimos skidded to a halt as Triceratop burst through the glass wall in front of him. They both stopped and stared at each other for a moment.
“I guess you aren’t as dumb as you look,” Deimos said, gasping for breath.
Without any warning, Triceratop leapt forward and swung wildly at Deimos. He dove sideways, narrowly missing Triceratop’s deadly fist, and crashed through a window into the research facility. Triceratop ripped through the remainder of the glass with his massive, armored hand as if he were pushing through beaded door curtains.
Triceratop dove forward at Deimos, who hardly had time to regain his footing. He leapt deftly over Triceratop’s massive frame, narrowly hitting his own head on the ceiling in the process. But before Deimos had time to land, Triceratop was spinning around with an uppercut.
His massive fist impacted directly into Deimos’ chest. His reach was so long that Deimos was launched through the ceiling and he exploded upward into Hans’ office in a shower of tiles and debris. Deimos soared through the office, crashed through the hanging glass ball, and landed hard on Hans’ desk.
Deimos sprawled out on the desk, unable to breathe. He unzipped his jacket. Hidden underneath was a breastplate Harold had welded together from spare Whitesnow parts. In the center of it was a massive dent pressing into Deimos’ lungs. He unclasped the armor and it fell heavily onto the desk. He breathed in a huge gulp of air.
“Holyfuckingshit,” Deimos exhaled. “That… was a big hit.” He looked around the office. “Wow. This is so much nicer than my cubicle.”
Triceratop’s armored hands began clawing at the hole Deimos had made in the office floor. They ripped downward along the edge, widening the gap by pulling down insulant and tiles. The hands stopped briefly, and a moment later Triceratop burst up through the floor in a shower of debris. He landed near Hans’ massive ivory doors with such a heavy stomp that Deimos was shocked Triceratop didn’t shoot right back down to the floor below.
Deimos awkwardly rolled off the desk and stood painfully. His heart was pounding out of his chest. There was no way he would survive another hit from Triceratop. He wasn’t even sure he would be fine after the last one, but his adrenaline was spiked enough for him to not care.
“Over here, big man!” Deimos called out.
Triceratop spun around, snarling menacingly.
Deimos gulped.
Triceratop roared and began to charge, deftly jumping over the hole he created with ease. Deimos immediately followed suit. The microthrusters on his thighs powered up as he took his first step. They began to propel him forward, increasing his speed with every step he took.
In an instant, the two were mere feet away from each other. Deimos leapt upwards, simultaneously firing the microthrusters on his right calf at full burn. He spun once in a lightning-like blur and delivered a rocket-powered kick directly into Triceratop’s head. His leg connected with one of Triceratop’s horns, bending it. The giant man was propelled sideways across the breadth of the office and slammed into the wall, unconscious.
Deimos landed painfully. He hunched over, grabbing his back.
“Fuck!” Deimos shouted in agony.
He felt the muscles tightening in his lower back. It probably didn’t help that he had been thrown through a ceiling, and subsequently the floor of the room above it, but twisting like that at his age was a surefire way to throw out his back. It was painful, but he was grateful if that was the worst thing that happened to him after going toe to toe with a superpowered meat monster.
That was when Deimos noticed his right robotic leg was bent thirty degrees in the wrong direction. Beneath the metal plating, his leg was bent along the axis at the knee, performing an impossible can-can.
“Sure as hell glad I can’t feel that,” Deimos winced.
He yanked off the metal plating and forced the gears to twist backwards. There was a loud SNAP as his leg broke into place. Deimos made a mental note to swing by the ER on his way home.
Deimos heard footsteps from the hallway and looked up. Hans was standing in the doorway pointing a gun at him. With a painful, disappointed groan, Deimos snapped the plating back on his leg and pulled himself up into a standing position.
“A gun? All these resources, this grand plan of world domination using genetically modified supervillains, and you pull a gun? Don’t you have anything cooler lying around you can kill me with?”
“Always need to end with a joke, don’t you, Deimos?” Hans leered.
“Fine, you want serious? I’m impressed, Hans. Really I am. Everything you’ve done here is without a doubt evil, brilliant even! I have to give you a hand,” Deimos said, plastering a stupid grin on his face.
There was a long, uncomfortable silence between them.
“You know, because I tore off your other one,” Deimos continued.
Hans sighed and shook his head.
“Goodbye, Deimos.”
In an instant of searing agony, Deimos twisted to turn as Hans fired his gun. The bullet whizzed past Deimos into the window behind him. Deimos stepped painfully forward and sprinted toward the crack the bullet had made. Another bullet soared past his ear as he dove feet first through the window in a shower of glass and blood.
It isn’t widely known, but the first thing to do when crashing through the penthouse window of a skyscraper is to take a deep breath and relax. The subsequent fall will lead to a most certain death and there isn’t much to do at the moment. However, there is a bright side to this grim predicament. Skyscrapers are, to put it simply, quite tall. It is in their nature. Skyscrapers are so tall, in fact, that considering it is average in height, anyone falling from one will have somewhere between twelve and fourteen seconds before gravity unceremoniously reunites them with the ground. That is more than enough time for them to think back on their life and reconsider the choices they made that ultimately led them to crash through the penthouse window of a skyscraper.
Thankfully, Deimos didn’t have to wait that long. Two seconds after bursting through the window, he landed in the open platform of a flying craft being piloted by his henchmen. They had watched the fight progress to the penthouse floor and repositioned the craft outside Hans’ office right as Deimos dove through it.
Deimos looked up and saw Siren, Terry, Harold, Glenn, and Professor Paws looking down at him. He stood shakily in the drone and immed
iately embraced Siren. They kissed passionately and Deimos saw fireworks, either from the kiss or from the searing pain emanating from his back.
“Hey, hot stuff. Nice legs,” Siren grinned.
Deimos winked back at her.
“You should see what else I upgraded.”
“Did you make a robotic dick, boss?” Terry asked, completely obliterating the moment.
Deimos sighed, “Goddammit, Terry.”
He tapped the tablet and the craft rose up to Hans’ office window. Siren quickly drew and fired an Electric Ave Pew-Pew at Hans. He wasn’t knocked unconscious, but he did drop the gun and fall to the ground, seizing like a snail in a salt bath.
Siren shouted out to Hans, “What do you think of our new ride? We’re calling it Indiana Drones and the Temple of Zoom.”
“Ooh, nice one babe!” Deimos applauded.
“Thanks. I’m better with movies,” she replied.
“Yup, and she came up with it all by herself,” Harold added sarcastically.
Siren nudged him playfully.
Deimos positioned Indiana Drones closer to the window. Hans watched furiously, foaming at the mouth, as Deimos inched within speaking distance.
Deimos began, “Now, Hans-” but was immediately cut off by Glenn.
“I think we all learned something here today,” Glenn proclaimed, stepping in front of Deimos. “No matter the distances you may travel, or the different faces time leaves you with, we are all-”
“Whoa, whoa. Pump the brakes,” Deimos interrupted. “Monologue? Now? So not the right time, buddy.”
Glen looked around awkwardly, meeting the disapproving stares of his peers. He bowed his head and shuffled back behind the other henchmen. Terry patted him on the shoulder sympathetically.
“Now, Hans,” Deimos continued, “I’m not going to leave you with a long speech on how you screwed up or to watch your back, but consider this your only warning. You took everything from me once, know that I can do the same to you. I have all the evidence I need to take you down. Either put an end to this insanity, or I will.”
Deimos tossed a round object resembling a grenade through the broken window. It beeped menacingly, and Hans could do nothing but watch it roll into his office as he lay immobilized. The beeping reached an apex, then stopped. Electricity shot up from the ball into the ceiling. The sprinklers activated and sprayed down on Hans anticlimactically.
“Now your papers are all wet, bitch!” Glenn shouted.
Deimos gave Glenn two thumbs up.
“There you go, man.”
He tapped Indiana Drones’ tablet controls and they flew back over the city, leaving Hans soaking wet and immobilized in his office.
The fatigued friends soared high above Los Rebeldes, standing silently in the craft and letting the cool night air whip against their faces. After a moment, Deimos reached down and pulled the walkie-talkie out from his jacket pocket that he had been using to transmit the prior events to his henchmen. He tossed it under the control panel.
“I’m confused, why didn’t we record him?” Harold asked. “It’s like you said, we could take him down if we had evidence.”
Deimos stared Harold down.
“Ideas like that are helpful before we leave on a mission,” Deimos grumbled.
Harold bowed his head.
“Sorry, boss.”
Deimos laughed, “It’s okay. It probably wouldn’t have helped anyway. Hans has so many politicians and cops on his payroll that nobody would have listened to us no matter how high up we went. I only hope that threat bought us enough time to regroup.”
“But we heard him,” Terry stressed. “He’s building an army! How can we compete with that?”
Deimos smiled and looked over the twinkling lights of Los Rebeldes.
“We’ll recruit our own.”
CHAPTER NINE
When the sun rose the following morning, Deimos’ henchmen were sound asleep at his and Siren’s home. Terry, Glenn, and Harold had all passed out in various uncomfortable positions throughout the living room only a few hours prior. After they had returned from their late-night outing at Crymson Tech, and Deimos’ quick stop by the emergency room afterward, they still had to remove the large fan blades from Indiana Drones so it could fit into Deimos’ garage. It wasn’t an easy process, so when they were finished Deimos took ten minutes to help the henchmen install bendable joints along the wings. That made it so Indiana Drones could fit into the garage fully intact and they could simply unfold it when they were ready to take it back out.
It was very late when the henchmen eventually fell asleep, or very early depending on your view of time. Despite this, Deimos and Siren made the irresponsible decision to further their night by engaging in a bout of vicious lovemaking. There was something about returning to a life of villainy and narrowly escaping death that really got them going.
Due to his paralysis, Deimos had been unable to get an erection for most of his adult life. However, before Deimos left to raid Crymson Tech the day before, he had built an addition to his robotic legs that fixed that problem. Terry wasn’t quite right when he asked if Deimos had made a robotic dick, it would be more apt to describe it as an electrified cock ring. This new addition provided the electrical stimulus needed to activate that particular area and gave Deimos and Siren the ability to engage in an activity they had been deprived of for thirty years. That was why they had only been sleeping for about twenty minutes when Deimos’ phone alarm went off at 5:30 a.m.
Deimos shouted over the blaring alarm, “Dear God, no!”
He was trapped in a tangle of blankets and Siren’s legs and couldn’t reach his phone. He attempted to push himself up but felt a stinging pain shoot from his back. Deimos wasn’t sure if the pain was from kicking Triceratop in the face or from being absolutely wrecked by Siren, but either way he wasn’t keen on the idea of a new disability.
Glenn barked from the living room, “Shut that shit off!”
Siren grumbled and rolled over, freeing Deimos. He hurriedly grabbed his phone and turned off the alarm. In a long, audible groan he forced himself into a seated position.
Siren mumbled through her pillow, “Holy shit. My head is killing me.”
“Yeah, no kidding,” Deimos replied. “You got knocked out from that explosion yesterday, remember? Please tell me you remember. Forgetfulness is the first sign of a concussion.”
“I remember. I’m fine, it was only for a few seconds,” Siren blubbered. “Screw this, I’m going back to bed.”
Deimos hopped out of bed and stretched his back.
“Not a chance. It’s Monday. Get dressed, we have work,” he said energetically.
Siren groaned and pulled the blanket up over her head.
“You’re out of your mind. I’m calling in a substitute.”
Deimos walked over to Siren’s side of the bed and gently pulled the covers down.
He kissed her gently on the nose and whispered, “Honey, we need to go on as if nothing happened last night. The best way to not raise suspicion is to stick with the status quo.”
Siren groaned loudly, smushing the pillow into her face.
“I know that groan. That groan means you know I’m right!” Deimos exclaimed, hopping back and forth on his robotic legs. He was grateful to discover that having a broken leg had not limited his mobility.
Just another benefit of being crippled, he thought.
Deimos nudged Siren repeatedly in her shoulder.
“Come on, let’s do this! New day! New perspective on life! Exciting opportunities!”
Glenn shouted again from the living room, “Christ, he’s worse than the alarm! Get up already!”
Deimos offered Siren his hand. She grimaced and took it. Deimos made his way into the kitchen to give Siren her space so that she could get ready. During his nearly thirty years of
marriage he had learned when to leave Siren alone, and early mornings after no sleep was definitely one of those times.
In the living room, Terry and Glenn had begun to dislodge from the armchairs and sectionals they were using for beds. Harold and Professor Paws were still sound asleep on the sofa, curled up with each other. It seemed like Deimos was the only one with a spring in his step that morning, which could have been in part due to the literal springs that were in his robotic legs.
Terry and Glenn slowly lumbered into the kitchen and Deimos sat them down with two glasses of orange juice. He then bounced back to the fridge to grab eggs and started to make breakfast. He continued to scramble eggs, put down several slices of toast, and start the coffee in a joyful dance of overextended movements. He repeatedly glanced down with a beaming smile to watch his legs move. In all the excitement, Deimos accidentally bumped into the back of Glenn’s chair and caused him to spill his juice.
“Dammit, man!” Glenn exclaimed. “Mind not bouncing around the kitchen with those things so much? It’s a little early.”
“I’ve been paralyzed for thirty years. Is that really what you want to say to me right now?” Deimos asked coldly.
He stared tensely at Glenn like a cowboy gearing up for a showdown. Glenn, due to lack of sleep and the grumpiness that old age brought, mistakenly took up the challenge. He matched Deimos gaze and gritted his teeth.
There was a long, tense pause. Terry glanced between Deimos and Glenn nervously. He could almost feel the heat emanating from the men’s piercing gazes. Then, in a moment of clarity, Glenn caved and broke his gaze. He looked down at the floor, dejected and embarrassed.
“Sorry, boss. Enjoy your legs,” he grumbled.
Deimos beamed back at him.
“Thanks, Glenn!” he said loudly and leapt onto the countertop.
His heavy robotic legs landed squarely on a stack of dirty plates, shattering them. Utterly oblivious, Deimos reached into the topmost shelf and pulled out a travel mug. He then hopped back down onto the floor, shaking the kitchen. Siren rushed into the room with a red smear of lipstick along her cheek.
Villain (Book 1): Villain 1 Page 9
