“Don’t worry, I’ll make sure of it,” I replied.
“Shit, do you think that means that he plans to escape Grayville by boat?” my girlfriend asked. “If he’s by the docks right now, then maybe he plans to sail on out of here right before the gas starts?”
“That’s very possible,” I said. “Either that, or he plans to just hijack another chopper and fly it the fuck out of town.”
“Well, he won’t be going anywhere if I have something to say about it,” Elizabeth growled.
After my girlfriend changed into the super suit that I had designed for her, she came back into the room so she could get the earpiece and tracking device that I planned for her to use. She strode across the basement with such purpose that it was like she was headed out to kill the Maniac right now, and I smiled at how goddamn sexy she looked as she moved toward me.
Her dark suit clung to her curves tightly enough that it didn’t stand in the way of her quick reflexes, but the carbon fibers it was made from protected her from any real damage that she could take. Besides, even if she took a hit or a bullet that somehow magically managed to penetrate through her super suit, her regenerative powers would kick in, and she’d be fine, anyway. It would just take her a little longer to bounce back.
Elizabeth tossed her long black hair back over her shoulders, flexed her gloved fingers into tight fists, and crossed the rest of the distance between us with a smile.
“Like what you see, Miles?” she asked and gave me a wink.
“Oh, you know, I do,” I laughed. “So, I’ve got something for you.”
“I bet you do,” Elizabeth purred and then sighed. “But I know we don’t have time for that… at least not right now. So what do you have for me?”
“I’ve got two things, actually,” I replied. “The first thing is the tracking device. Its outer shell is made of the same carbon fiber as your suit, so even if the Maniac scans you for any devices, he shouldn’t be able to detect it.”
“Alright, lay it on me,” Elizabeth said.
I grabbed a quarter-sized object from one of my workstations, pressed a small button in the back, and then held it up in front of Elizabeth’s suit. I just needed to fit it in somewhere that wouldn’t be noticeable, so after I examined her suit for a few minutes, I finally decided to sew it into the suit over her abdomen.
It would be damn near impossible to see the stitchwork there, and the thickness of the protective fibers would add just a little more of a barrier
between the tracking device and any detection gadgets that the Maniac might have.
After I grabbed my kit, I carefully sewed the tracking device into her suit and then stitched the fibers back into place goddamn seamlessly. Even I had to admit that it was impressive work, but before I congratulated myself too much, I pulled out my private phone to make sure that the signal was still synced even through the carbon fibers.
“That’s one thing down,” I said with a smirk. “And now on to part two.”
“I can’t believe how small that tracking device is,” Elizabeth said.
“I’ve never seen one so tiny before.”
“I’ve been working on that prototype for a while,” I said. “It doesn’t tell me every piece of information that I’d like to know, at least not yet, but it will tell me your exact location, and for this mission, that’s really all I need to know.”
“I should probably take the mask that you just made for me, too, right?” Elizabeth asked.
“Definitely,” I said. “We all will, just in case.”
The door to the basement opened, and I glanced up to see Norma hurry down the stairs with Penumbra right behind her. My assistant waved,
almost stumbled halfway down the steps, and then caught herself before she walked down the rest of the stairs.
“How’s everything going?” Penumbra asked as she floated down after Norma.
“We’ve got the tracking device taken care of,” I said, “and I was just about to fit her with the earpiece so she can hear us, and so we can hear the Maniac.”
“Won’t he be able to see an earpiece?” Norma asked.
“Not this one,” I snickered, and then I turned to fish around in one of my drawers until I found the one that I wanted. “Now, this may be a little uncomfortable at first, but only because of where I have to place it inside your ear.”
“I’ll try to brace myself,” Elizabeth said through gritted teeth.
The earpiece was so small that I had to pick it up with a pair of tweezers in order to place it inside my girlfriend’s ear, but once I had a good grip on it, I tilted Elizabeth’s head to the side and started to put it into place.
It was only about the size of a pinhead, but it would pick up any sounds within a ten-foot radius, and it would also allow me to speak to Elizabeth without any chance that the Maniac might be able to overhear me.
Once I had lodged it securely inside her ear with some of my custom glue, I slowly pulled out the tweezers and let her shake her head around to make sure that it wouldn’t budge.
“How’s that feel?” I asked.
“It only really pinched when it went in,” my girlfriend replied, “but now, I can’t really feel it.”
“Perfect,” I said and then looked at her ear from every direction.
“Then I think you’re all set to go.”
“Aileen, have any supervillains been spotted in the area around the shipyard?” Elizabeth asked. “It’s okay if not because I can still--”
“No supervillains,” my android interrupted, “but CCTV suggests that two groups of non-superpowered humans will meet in the area to conduct a drug deal, and both parties should arrive at the shipyard in approximately…
fifteen minutes.”
“Shit, you all better get changed, too, if you’re coming with me,”
Elizabeth said.
“We’ll get changed,” I said, “but we can’t come with you.”
“But you said you’d be right outside wherever the Maniac takes me!”
my girlfriend growled.
“And we will be,” I said, “but we’ll follow you shortly after you leave. I don’t know how much the Maniac is watching or how much access he has to the city’s CCTV, but I don’t want him to think that anything is off, so we’ll need to follow separately.”
“Then can I take the armored car?” Elizabeth demanded.
“Absolutely,” I said.
After the rest of us changed into our super suits and new gas masks, we followed Dynamo out to the garage to see her off. Aileen was still in the basement, but she had changed so that her body would be ready to go the moment I needed her.
I wanted my android to work on the gas until the last possible minute. Still, even after we went to help Elizabeth, my AI system’s consciousness could continue to work on the problem of the gas, so while she couldn’t physically work on it while we were gone, she might still be able to generate a solution based on what she had observed and learned about the gas so far.
“Wish me luck,” Elizabeth said as she opened the door to the armored car.
“You won’t need it,” I said. “You’ll have us.”
“I better,” my girlfriend said, and then she leaned over to kiss me firmly on the mouth. “See you soon, Miles.”
“You will,” I promised.
After Elizabeth drove off toward the shipyard at the docks, I stared out of the garage for a few seconds as I watched the fading light. The late afternoon was quickly turning into evening, and it wouldn’t be too much longer before it was so dark that it would be impossible to see the gas whenever the Maniac released it on the city.
Not that it was easy to see it, anyway. In the containment chamber in the basement, the gas looked like pale mist or smoke whenever Aileen released a little of it to work on, so it might just look like low-lying fog to the citizens of Grayville, especially since none of them knew that they should be on the lookout for gas. They just knew that something bad was going to happen, and the Mania
c was the one responsible for it.
I bet they wished now that their precious Shadow Knight had killed the bastard when he had a chance.
Then again, I doubted if Slade would have been able to kill the Maniac, even if he had overcome his high and mighty morals. It would take more than one feather-caped asshole to take down a supervillain who could see far enough into the future to block his opponent’s every move.
After Elizabeth had been gone for a few minutes, I checked in with her via the earpiece, and she confirmed that she could hear me just fine. I double-checked to make sure that I could follow her tracking device with my phone, and then I nodded at Norma and Penumbra.
“I’m gonna follow her in the car with Aileen,” I said, “and you two take a separate car. Then if we need to split up for any reason, we’ll be able to, but we should be able to all meet at the shipyard.”
“And you don’t want me to just float us there?” Penumbra asked.
“Not this time,” I said. “The Maniac won’t be able to see through our tinted windows, but if a pretty blonde superheroine suddenly floated across some CCTV footage that he was watching, then the game could be over before it even gets started.”
“Got it,” the blonde replied as her cheeks turned slightly pink.
“Aileen, we’ve gotta go,” I said. “Just secure the gas and then come to the garage.”
“I will be there in thirty seconds,” my android responded into the comms.
As soon as Aileen and I were in one of the cars, we pulled out of the driveway first, but Norma and Penumbra followed close behind us. They
would take a different route to the shipyard once we reached the main road, but until then, the only other route would have taken a lot longer.
“I’m at the shipyard,” Elizabeth suddenly said through our comms system. “The deal’s going down a little quicker than we thought, so I’m headed in now.”
“We’ll be there directly,” I replied and then glanced over at Aileen.
“So no luck on the gas yet?”
“I am still processing a number of formulas to find a solution,” my android responded from the passenger seat, “but I have also been analyzing the Maniac’s speech patterns from your phone call with him.”
“Yeah, what about it?” I asked as I glanced up at one of the helicopters high above the city.
“He used a particular phrase that may have some relevance,” Aileen said. “He stated that he would release his gas ‘on’ the city instead of ‘in’ the city. It may mean nothing, but--”
“Oh, fuck,” I interrupted as I watched the helicopter veer back and forth in the distance. “I know what the Maniac’s plan is.”
“Miles, did you just say that you--” Penumbra started.
“He’s gonna release the gas from the helicopters,” I said. “He doesn’t have an airborne fleet of his own, so he must have planted his henchmen in
all the choppers, and as soon as he gives the word, they’ll release the gas down onto the entire city.”
“Shit,” Norma whispered into the comms. “Death from above.”
Chapter 13 - Dynamo
Miles had just said something that sounded important, but the sound of gunfire all around me made it impossible to hear his actual words. He would just have to repeat himself in a minute, since at the moment, I was a little bit too busy to ask him what he had said.
The drug deal had barely gotten off the ground before both sides started to shoot at each other, so almost as soon as I had arrived at the shipyard, I had to spring out of the armored car and race into the fight.
Of course, part of me just said that I should let them all shoot each other and then just sweep in afterward to make sure there were no survivors, but I knew that was mostly Miles’ influence. I didn’t have any desire to arrest these bastards and haul them off to prison, but I could at least see if they were working for a bigger authority before I killed them.
There had been a string of high-profile drug cases recently, and I wanted to know if the Maniac had anything to do with them, or if it was someone else entirely. It might not matter if Grayville went tits-up in the Maniac’s planned gas attack, but if everybody survived until tomorrow morning, then it might be a nice tidbit of information to turn over to the police.
Besides, even though there weren’t any civilians around, there was still the possibility that some might show up or that the fight would spill out and move to somewhere that innocent people might be put into danger. It would be much easier if I just controlled the fight myself, and since none of the assholes with guns looked like they had any kind of superpowers, I figured that I really ought to be able to handle them all by myself.
But maybe I’d pull a Miles after all, and I would let just a few of them take each other out first.
After I got a running start, I jumped up onto the top of one of the shipping containers. As the sounds of the gunfire continued from up ahead, I ran along the roof of the container and then jumped to the next one. When I reached the end of the next shipping container, I saw that both forces had essentially pinned each other down, so now no one could move in either direction without catching a bullet from their enemies.
Several bodies were already on the ground, so it looked like there were only three survivors pinned down behind one SUV. Four survivors from the other group hid behind their pick-up truck a few dozen yards away, but as I flexed my fists on top of the shipping container, I watched survivor number four pop out to try to get a shot off at the SUV group.
Instead, he just got a bullet above his knee.
He screamed and fell to the ground, but before his friends could pull him back to safety, the drug dealers behind the SUV opened fire at the exposed bastard until he finally fell still. Smoke hung low above the gravel of the shipyard from all of the fired guns, but for a moment, it looked the way that I imagined the Maniac’s toxic gas would look when it was released, and I felt a brief stab of panic in my chest.
I had a job to do, and that was to get the fucking Maniac to notice me.
“Hello, boys,” I called when there was another pause in gunfire, “did my invitation to your little party get lost in the mail?”
As all six men turned to face me, I launched myself up into the air before they could recover from their surprise. A few of them started to point their guns toward me, but by then, it was too late.
I crash-landed into the middle of the group pinned down behind the SUV and immediately grabbed one of them by his greasy mullet. Even as his companions tried to stumble back far enough to shoot me without shooting each other, I tightened my grip on the mullet and then just slammed his skull into the face of one of his friends.
Their noses cracked against each other and instantly started to gush blood, but I was too fast for them to recover before I just crashed their
skulls together again. This time, the man with the greasy mullet started to sink down in my grip, so I hoisted him up into the air with both arms and then threw him toward the pick-up truck.
A few gunshots rang out from the other party, and I guessed that they had finished my work with the mullet-man for me, so I turned my attention back to the two assholes who were left. The man with the broken nose aimed a shaky gun at me, but by the time he was steady enough to pull the trigger, I had already moved.
I hurled myself toward him, so the bullet sailed over my shoulder as I rammed my body into his torso. He stumbled backward until his head cracked against the window of the SUV, and then all I had to do was grip him by the shoulders and slam him into the glass a few more times before his eyes rolled into the back of his skul,l and he collapsed to the ground.
“Just you and me now,” I said with a smile to the last asshole behind the SUV.
He turned and tried to run. Of course, I could have told him that it was too late for that, but just a second later, he found that out for himself.
The bastards hidden by the pick-up truck had decided not to stay and finish the firefight after all, so all t
hree of them had loaded up into the truck
and started the engine. They rumbled over the gravel and slowly picked up speed, and their path took them exactly toward my fleeing target.
They didn’t even slow down, and instead, their front bumper crashed into him hard enough to drop him to the ground, and then both front and back tires crunched over him until he looked a little bit like a deflated balloon.
There were three less drug dealers in the world now, but six less drug dealers sounded even better, so I took off toward the pick-up truck to stop them before they could get further away. When they saw me, they flipped their high-beams on and stepped a little harder on the gas, but I just ran straight toward them like I was going to vault over the truck like some goddamn bull-fighter.
Instead, at the last second, I dropped into a crouch, picked up one of the bigger chunks of rock, and then hefted it toward the windshield straight at the driver’s face.
The rock might have fit into the palm of my hand, but based on the force that I put behind it, it immediately penetrated the glass and hit my target. I couldn’t see exactly where the rock hit, but since the truck suddenly started to jerk back and forth, I guessed that it hit the driver right between the eyes.
I rolled to the side out of the path of the pick-up truck, but when I jumped back to my feet, the truck was headed straight for a shipping container. I raced after it, and just before I caught up to it, it started to slow down like one of the passengers had managed to get a foot on the brake.
The front bumper only lightly tapped the shipping container rather than just smash right into it like I had hoped, but it at least caused the truck to come to a stop. There was a lot of movement and shouting inside the cab of the truck as I approached it, but no one managed to take the driver’s seat by the time I reached the passenger door.
I pulled on the door, and when I felt the lock resist me, I just yanked it harder until it broke loose and opened right on up for me. The man in the passenger seat tried to scramble away from me, but there was nowhere for him to go, so I just pulled him out, pinned him up against the side of the truck with my knee, and then used his skull as a punching bag until he died.
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