“Ladies and gentlemen,” Hans continued, “I would like you to meet the head of my security team and my dear friend Ezekiel Walsh. Please, don’t be shocked by his appearance. Those horns you’re seeing are simply a communication relay. The suit, however, is what keeps Ezekiel alive.
“You see, I met Ezekiel years ago on his deathbed. His family came to me in a final desperate attempt to save his life. Utilizing the world-renowned scientists we have here at Crymson Tech, Ezekiel was able to make a full recovery and then some. The video you saw of Ezekiel retrieving my fiancée from those horrid villains is only testament to the success of that treatment. It is testament to the bravery of this incredible man who saved the love of my life!”
Hans finished speaking in a feigned inability to continue. Fiery alligator tears streamed down his face and he gripped tightly onto Triceratop’s hand. Reporters began to shout questions but Hans held up his hand and they quieted.
“Please, I’m sorry. I wish I could say the altercation with those villains ended there, but it didn’t. I was very grateful to receive my fiancée last night and refused to leave her side for even a moment. However, it seemed those villains were so angry that Ezekiel was able to thwart their plans that they retaliated with unconscionable actions.
“Early this morning, four men infiltrated my offices and hid an explosive device in one of our conference rooms. It was detonated during a meeting in which I was supposed to be in attendance. Thankfully, I was still with my fiancée, but my board members were not so lucky. They… They were killed instantly.”
The tears were really flowing by this point. Hans turned to Triceratop and embraced him, a sobbing, blubbering mess, like Rocky Balboa crying over a recently deceased Mickey. Triceratop remained standing, not reacting to the situation at all. The reporters had stopped attempting to ask questions. They were completely won over. They met Hans’ crying with concerned looks. Some reporters even had a few tears of their own. After a moment, Hans turned back to the crowd and wiped away his tears.
“I need to say one more thing. I want you all to know that this experience has changed me. There are still villains out there who wish to destroy my company and hurt you innocent, hard-working people. So after discussing with the LRPD, Ezekiel, and my top scientists, I have decided to create a task force whose sole purpose is to track down and stop these villains. A task force of people like Ezekiel who I can help give the tools to fight evil.”
Hans motioned behind him and two Crymson Tech employees wheeled out a television. Displayed on the screen were the faces of Deimos, Harold, Glenn, and Terry. It was clear to Deimos that the images were pulled from the security footage of the prior night. Of course Siren was conveniently missing from the photos, having been given the role of Hans’ kidnapped fiancée.
Hans pointed fervently to the images of Deimos and his henchmen.
“The faces you see here are the men responsible for kidnapping my fiancée and killing my dear friends on the board. Memorize them! Show your friends and colleagues. They could be hiding among you as we speak, plotting their next attack on our freedom! With your help, we can put a stop to this madness. My new task force and I are coming for them guns blazing! We will protect this company, this city, this country, with everything we’ve got!”
The crowd erupted into a mixture of cheers and shouted questions. Hans waved, choking back tears, and hurriedly left the podium with Triceratop.
◊ ◊ ◊
Deimos sat watching the television utterly stunned. After a moment he turned it off.
“You guys hear all that?” Deimos asked.
Terry squeakily responded, “Yup. Was he showing pictures of our faces at the end there?”
“Yeah,” Deimos replied. “That was a very impressive cover. I spotted a few plot holes but I doubt the press will be asking the right questions after that performance.”
“What does this mean for us?” Terry asked weakly.
Deimos finished the last bite of his sandwich and chewed vigorously.
“Well, Hans plastered our faces all over the news and made us public enemy number one, so I guess there’s no point in worrying about these secret identities anymore. Damn, and Siren really wanted to sleep in today. Now I feel like a dick for making her go to work.”
Harold spoke up, “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
“Damn right,” Deimos replied. “We’re switching to full-time. Call Siren and let her know I’ll pick her up from the school as soon as I can. First thing I’ve got to do is get the hell out of Dodge before anyone from work pieces this together. You three stick to the plan. Finding Eve is going to be even more important now. But remember, be discreet! Talk soon.”
Deimos hung up and threw away his trash before heading out of the break room. He was halfway back to his desk before he realized he was walking normally and had left his crutches leaning on the lunch table. Deimos turned around to grab them but saw Gary’s head poke out of his office. There was no going back now. He continued nonchalantly back to his desk.
“Hey!” Gary shouted from behind Deimos.
He had seen Deimos pass by and was trying to catch up as fast as his stubby legs could carry him. Deimos ignored Gary and put his head down, increasing his pace back to his desk. Around him, murmurs were picking up throughout the office. He looked up to see coworkers’ heads popping up from their cubicles. Several were whispering in passing, pointing to their phones and to Deimos.
Deimos arrived at his cubicle and grabbed his laptop. As he turned to leave, Gary was standing in the entryway of his cubicle, blocking his path. He was out of breath from the brisk twenty-foot walk from his office.
“Damien! Didn’t you hear me calling you?” he asked between strained breaths.
“Now isn’t a great time,” Deimos replied.
Deimos attempted to step past Gary, but his stubby fingers grabbed Deimos’ arm, stopping him.
“I am your boss and you will respect me!” Gary shouted. “I want to continue our discussion from the other day.”
He stuck his chins up, yes plural, in an attempt to make himself appear taller. It only made him look like Jabba the Hutt sniffing out a Klatooine paddy frog.
Around them, the other employees on the floor began to file into the hallway with their cell phones out. Word was spreading fast about Hans’ news conference. His coworkers most likely recognized him in the photo but presumably none of them had gotten a good enough look at him in the last twenty years and needed to get closer to be sure.
A female coworker Deimos recognized from HR was frantically speaking into her phone. She kept making eye contact with him and rapidly looking away.
Shit, Deimos thought. I shouldn’t have taken the time to finish my sandwich.
Gary, completely unaware of the situation, wrongfully presumed the crowd was forming for his soon-to-be scolding of a lowly employee. He smiled cockily and crossed his arms, waiting expectantly for Deimos to respond. Then, he looked down and his eyes went wide.
“Wait a minute. Where are your crutches?” Gary asked. “What’s going on?”
“He’s a terrorist!” a coworker shouted from the crowd.
Gary turned, shocked.
“I mean, I appreciate the support, but I wouldn’t go that far. He just mouthed off a bit, is all.”
Another coworker shouted out, “It’s true! We saw him on the news. He’s a real-life villain. He kidnapped some lady and killed a whole bunch of people at Crymson Tech!”
Deimos looked around nervously. The sea of his coworkers’ faces were becoming increasingly angrier. Gary slowly backed up out of the cubicle.
“Damien? Is this true?” Gary asked.
Deimos smiled nervously and put up his hands.
“Come on, guys, this is obviously some misunderstanding. It must be someone who looks like me. I’ve worked with you for twenty years. You kno
w me.”
“We didn’t know you could walk,” Gary replied.
“Well…” Deimos faltered.
A coworker handed Gary her phone to show him the pictures of Deimos and his henchmen from Hans’ press conference.
“Look,” she said, pointing at the screen. “It’s him.”
Gary looked down at the phone then back up to Deimos. There was no mistaking that it was him. He stepped back even further.
“My God…” Gary stammered. “Damien, you’re a monster.”
“I’m a monster?” Deimos snapped. “Really? Me? You are the head of a tech division but can barely even turn on your computer without my help. The series of failures that must have led to your promotion into this position is mind-boggling.” He turned to the rest of his coworkers, dumbfounded. “Seriously, does nobody else see how insane this is? How are we even operating as a company?”
The throng of angry employees said nothing and simply returned stone-faced stares. Gaslighting wasn’t going to work here.
“Don’t try to change the subject, Damien, if that even is your real name. You’re going to jail,” Gary said with another cocky smile.
“I already called the police, they’re on their way here!” the woman from HR shouted.
“Good. Then we will all stand here and wait for them,” Gary proclaimed, folding his chubby arms together.
Deimos sighed. He was annoyed, but he couldn’t bring himself to be angry with his coworkers. They were banding together in a way that no corporate team-building exercise could ever hope to achieve. In all of his years working at Starflame Industries, Deimos had never seen more than three people in the break room at any given time, and even then they were always at separate tables. To watch the entire floor of different departments cooperating toward a common goal nearly took his breath away. He felt proud to be partially responsible for bringing together this morose group of pencil pushers, even if it was only because they thought he was a murderous cultist psychopath.
Despite his momentary swell of pride, Deimos couldn’t allow his coworkers to keep him there. In fact, if he was being truly honest with himself, he didn’t particularly like any of them outside of this one, bold moment. If there was going to be no convincing them otherwise, then he would need to leave the building by the only means he knew how.
“Screw it,” Deimos said finally. “You’re right, Gary. My name isn’t Damien. It’s Deimos!”
He threw up his hands and looked around expectantly. He was greeted with looks of confusion and indifference. Deimos coughed awkwardly and lowered his arms.
“You know… Deimos? World-famous villain? Disappeared in eighty-nine, never to be heard from again? Anyone?”
He looked around frantically from face to face, hoping to see any sign of recognition. There was none.
“Ah, well-”
Without warning, Deimos chucked his laptop like a Frisbee and hit Gary squarely in the forehead. Gary tumbled backward, knocking aside several coworkers. This was the opening Deimos was aiming for.
He jumped off of Gary’s stomach and dove over the crowd of coworkers. He landed in a dive roll and immediately took off down a row of cubicles. A line of sales associates stood in his path, poised and ready for action. Without slowing down Deimos leapt into the air, jumping from coworker to coworker, bouncing off their shoulders, knocking them down into their cubicles.
Being high above the other employees made Deimos an easy target. They began pelting him with staplers, hole punches, coffee mugs, and anything else they could get their hands on. He made his way down the row this way, jumping off coworkers and batting away incoming projectiles, until one person had the foresight to back up as Deimos jumped to her.
Deimos missed her shoulders and soared into an open cubicle. He crashed through the opposite wall into a new row. He rose slowly with a groan and placed his hand firmly on his lower back. The casual calisthenics of crushing coworkers only exacerbated his back pain.
He looked up. Ahead of him was a clear shot for the windows facing the parking lot.
“Goddammit,” Deimos grumbled. “So cliché”
He steadied himself, ready to make a dash for the windows, when he was side tackled by the woman from HR. She was stronger than she looked, full of tightly wound muscle that could only be formed by years of stress brought on by listening to people bitch about mundane incidents day after day. The two rolled into a wall and the woman, despite her best efforts, ended up knocking herself unconscious on the jut of a door. Deimos promptly unwound himself from her limp limbs and hopped to his feet.
He looked down at her and chuckled to himself, “Who should I report this to?”
Then, laughing maniacally, Deimos darted to the window and leapt through it feet first. He fell four stories to the ground below, which happened to be directly onto a reserved parking spot with a cherry red Chevy Nova in it. Deimos activated his microthrusters at the last second to mitigate the fall, but his robotic legs still crushed through the hood and knocked out the engine block. Deimos cringed, waiting for the assuredly oncoming wave of pain from his lower back, but it didn’t come. He shrugged and carefully unwedged himself from the twisted metal.
I’m getting really good at jumping out of windows, Deimos thought to himself.
He darted across the parking lot. Above him, Gary’s distinctive wail echoed mournfully over the sight of his crushed Nova.
Deimos hopped in his car. When he turned it on, “Back in Black” by AC/DC began to play through his speakers. Deimos found this amusing since he was indeed back, and he also happened to be wearing his black polo that day. The song was really speaking to him on all sorts of levels. He turned up the radio and sped out of the parking lot in a plume of burning rubber.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Doctor Isaac sat in his lab nervously scrolling through the news on his tablet. Coverage that day had been focused on Hans’ conference and he couldn’t pull himself away from watching the mayhem unfold. The talking heads and armchair experts weighed their opinions on the day’s proceedings from all across the political spectrum, but only he knew everything they were discussing was based on lies. Not one word of what Hans had spoken that afternoon was the truth. There was never going to be a task force, Triceratop wasn’t brought to them by some tearful family, and there wasn’t a woman on Earth that could put up with Hans long enough to become his fiancée.
The closest thing to the truth that had spewed out of Hans’ mouth earlier that afternoon was that Triceratop’s horns were a communication relay, but even that was stretching the facts. The reality of Triceratop’s situation was that due to his initial unwillingness to partake in some of Crymson Tech’s more nefarious activities, Hans had implanted a type of mental restraint into Triceratop’s brain. The horns simply housed the components that ensured Triceratop obeyed every command issued by Hans. The device was based on tech Hans had recovered from the villain Mind Master. If Triceratop ever attempted to disobey or hurt Hans in any way, he would become immobilized in pain equivalent to having searing hot lava coursing through his veins.
As if that wasn’t enough, most of Triceratop’s long-term memories had been blocked and a constant frequency of interference kept his cognitive ability so low that he could barely conjure up a thought of his own. Triceratop was a shell of a man being controlled for his strength and intimidation, living a life no human should be subjected to.
It was a despicable situation that Doctor Isaac initially wanted no part in. However, whenever Hans asked something of him, Doctor Isaac was always too afraid to deny the request. In many ways he was still the scared grad student Hans hired thirty years ago. Of course, back then he was working on human genome sequencing in hopes of finding a cure for MS. Now, only two decades later, he had spat in the face of God (if you believe in that sort of thing) by creating three genetically modified humans at the behest of a man apparently spurred on by an
untreated brain tumor. One of these modified humans was of course Triceratop, while the other two were locked away undergoing Doctor Isaac’s training program.
Now, a fourth test subject was floating unconscious in front of Doctor Isaac in a vat, buck naked, and missing both of his legs. The naked, legless man was Brad Willis, a homeless veteran who had lost his legs during the Gulf War. In his military days he was a Black Ops sniper, specialized in long-distance assassinations. However, while on his second tour, Brad lost his legs when some bad intel sent him crawling through a minefield while being pursued by a squadron of attack planes. The military tossed him aside for whatever badass came along next and he was quickly forgotten. He never received insurance from Veterans Affairs due to his military history being scrubbed and he was forced to live out his days homeless in Sacramento. His unusual skills, loss of limbs, and resentment toward the government made Brad the perfect candidate to become Hans’ next supervillain.
Hans had given Doctor Isaac twelve hours to have Brad, who Hans simply referred to as The Veteran, up and ready to fight. A third party viewing Doctor Isaac’s predicament would have deemed it hopeless. Not only was the vet floating legless in a vat of specialized bacterial ooze, but Doctor Isaac had removed even more of the poor man’s legs. Of course to Doctor Isaac, all of this seemed completely normal and he was right on schedule.
Behind The Veteran, in a separate ooze-filled vat, was a pair of elongated human legs. As far as Doctor Isaac knew, there was no way to regrow the veteran’s lost limbs from his stumps in half a day’s time, so he had borrowed a pair from a failed test subject they had on ice.
The only note Hans had given Doctor Isaac for this project was that whatever The Veteran’s legs were replaced with had to work better than Deimos’ robotic braces. Outperforming a pair of jet-powered robotic legs would be impossible by human standards, so Doctor Isaac turned to the animal kingdom for some inspiration. There was only one species in particular that he had in mind that could be up to the task—the Issus coleoptratus, a species of planthopper.
Villain (Book 1): Villain 1 Page 12
