by A. J. Markam
“Shade. Yeah.”
“After you told me to leave.”
“Yep.”
“Why did you do that?” she asked suspiciously.
“Because he’s an assassin for hire. I’m sure he’s already memorized your face, but there was no good reason to let him collect more information about you.”
She went a little pale. “Do you think he was involved in – ”
“No. He told me he wasn’t.”
“Why the hell would you believe him?”
“Because, as he pointed out, if he had been involved, he’d be running a city instead of drinking in a high-class whorehouse.”
“Oh. Okay, that makes sense. Who’s he killed?”
“Usually government figures and rich people who don’t want divorces but would like to be single again. He stays away from supers in general – he prefers easy targets – but we’re in a whole new world right now, so I don’t know if he’s looking to expand his services.”
“But he knew about the heist?”
“Some other guys had approached him about it, trying to hire him. He said no.”
“Why wouldn’t he do it?”
“Because he doesn’t like risks. Plus, he kills people for a living. He doesn’t steal Ephemera.”
“That’s what they’re moving?” she asked, shocked.
“Yup.”
“Do you think Antimatter’s going to sell it?”
“He controls all of Japan. What the fuck does he need with another 30 or 40 million dollars? No, I’m betting he’s building an army, and he’d rather promote from within. That way he can avoid recruiting anybody with powers who’s ‘overly ambitious’ and might be gunning for his spot. I’m betting he’s gonna go with guys he already trusts.”
“But the people trying to rob him tomorrow – ”
“They’re the types who could use an extra 30 or 40 million.”
She stared at me disdainfully. “And you’re going to try to beat them to the punch. You know, you’re not supposed to actually go back to being a smuggler.”
“I’m not. I’m only interested in who’s going to show up.”
She looked surprised, then figured it out. “The people who will be stealing it.”
“Bingo. Prime recruitment opportunity.”
She narrowed her eyes. “You have somebody specific in mind, don’t you?”
“Yup. I’m hoping they’ll be there.”
“Why don’t you just contact them?”
“Criminals on the lam don’t exactly keep a steady phone number, Nova.”
“Who is it?”
“Hopefully the next member of our crew.”
“I know that,” she said impatiently, “but who?”
“You’ll see.”
“I need to know.”
I snorted as I pulled back the covers and got in bed fully dressed. “No you don’t. And even if you did, I’m not revealing their identity unless they get onboard.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t want them going on the list you send back to Harding. I might need these people again someday.”
She scoffed. “What, after you kill hundreds of supervillains?”
I shrugged. “If you’re suggesting this is a suicide mission, you’re free to jump ship any time you want.”
“It’s my duty to follow through on it.”
“Well, the only reason I’m doing it is I’ve got a gun pointed at my head. So until you and Harding take the gun away, fuck you and good night. Wake me up when you get tired and I’ll take over.”
I rolled over in the bed and tried to go to sleep, but it took me a long time.
I kept thinking of Aiko’s breasts…
…and what Nova’s would look like if I could get that damn suit off her.
13
I only got a couple hours sleep, because I had to be there bright and early on top of the Nakatoma Building, a much taller high-rise near the Yasuda Bank.
The Ephemera was at Yasuda because it was one of the most secure locations in all of Tokyo, and was designed to protect against thieving SPCs. There are some pretty badass powers for bank robbing out there, but Yasuda had covered the vast majority of them.
I got there on top of Nakatoma four hours early so I could use the cover of dark to not be detected. Also, to be honest, I wanted time to rest. Creating a forcefield to lift me 30 stories to the top of a building was going to take some time to get over.
The good news was, it wasn’t nearly as difficult to recover as last night.
The bad news was, it still sucked ass.
At 0955, Nova’s voice spoke over the commlink in my ear, the one I’d picked up when we first landed. “I’m in position and holding over international waters.”
“Good. Did you have any trouble with Fumito?”
“Just fending off his advances, that’s all.”
I’d sent her back separately to the airfield to pick up the plane. As much as I was worried about the harbormaster double-crossing us, we had to take some gambles – and if we both got caught, the entire plan was fucked. Nova had accepted the risk and gone by herself.
Now we had the sparkjet and a much stronger hand.
“Are you on top of the bank building?”
“No, a nearby building about 500 feet away.”
The commlinks were quantum-encrypted, so there was no way anybody could intercept our communication. Otherwise I wouldn’t have felt comfortable giving away my position.
“Why are you so far away from the action?”
“I wanted a better vantage point. Also, easier to keep away from snipers.”
Of which I had seen plenty on the rooftops surrounding Yasuda Bank.
“But you’re too far away to do anything.”
“I’m not here to do anything. I’m here to wait until the shit hits the fan. That’s when I step in.”
“I should be there with you.”
“No, I need a getaway driver, and you’re it.”
“What if a firefight starts?”
“Then I’m getting the fuck out. And you’ll already be the fuck out, so my job will be 90% easier. Wait – hold on a second…”
A whole fleet of armored trucks – the type that normally ferried around lots of cash around – were pulling up outside the bank.
I used the binoculars I’d snagged when I’d picked up the commlinks and saw a bunch of guys in body armor spilling out of the backs of the trucks. At first I wondered if they were cops, but then I saw the bare arms on a couple of idiots and spied the full sleeves of colorful tattoos.
Yakuza. Which meant all of them probably were.
And look who was bringing up the rear.
Spike strode along behind the soldiers like he didn’t have a care in the world. He probably didn’t, seeing as he was virtually unkillable.
He was wearing an armless, legless body suit that covered his chest and crotch, and a couple of heavy boots. The rest of him was exposed. At this distance, all those vicious spikes on his skin looked like dull grey hair all over his body.
So the Big Man had sent his Number Two… but where was Antimatter?
I wondered if this mission was important enough for Anti to get involved, and figured it was. The transfer of the Ephemera was key to his building an army. He was probably lurking nearby, watching from afar – like me.
Which was not a happy thought.
“Hey Nova, how soon can you be here if I need you?”
“60 seconds.”
“Alright, good to know.”
The soldiers filed into the single entrance to the bank. The first four floors of the bank had no windows – just solid steel, concrete, and defenses against supers – so I couldn’t see what happened once they entered.
Suddenly there was an explosion from inside the bank. A 20-foot plume of fire blasted out the front entrance and into the street.
“And here we go,” I muttered.
Everybody inside the bank was probably dead,
except for Spike.
Hopefully all the employees had been told not to come in today, and it was just a bunch of Yakuza who’d bit the dust. Somehow I doubted it, though.
More Yakuza poured out of the remaining armored cars into the street.
Except now they weren’t alone.
Three new arrivals in helmets and body armor moved in from side streets and started attacking the Yakuza.
They didn’t have guns, though. They had powers.
The one to the south was shooting green force beams out of his hands. Any Yakuza in the way got crushed to a pulp.
A second guy to the east was apparently a terrakinetic, because he was making the earth move. A sinkhole appeared beneath the front two armored trucks, and down they went into the giant pit. Walls of rock and dirt popped up in front of the Yakuza, blocking them from returning fire – but for the rock and dirt to appear, that meant the street and sidewalk had to crack. Busted underground water mains started spewing water everywhere.
The Yakuza started shooting, and the street turned into a war zone.
The third robber to the north had turned his arms into fog and was spewing a thick, white cloud all over the street, obscuring the Yakuza’s eyeline.
Nice. All three jokers were helping me out by distracting the bad guys, but Fog Boy had done me the biggest solid.
I scanned the ground with my binoculars until I found a rifle with a scope lying next to a dead Yakuza. As the fog rolled in and threatened to obscure my view, I focused intently… formed a forcefield underneath the gun… and then lifted it up into the air 30 stories until I could reach out and grab it.
I ejected the high-capacity magazine and looked at the bullets – 223 Remington ammo, at least 70. That would do nicely.
I rammed the clip back in, moved to the edge of the roof, and aimed down at the fifth floor above the bank.
The first through fourth floors were windowless – all steel and concrete, and probably lined with forcefield generators and high-voltage electrical lines to deter supers who might try to come in from above the vault. The bank probably had the same situation going in the basement to stop anybody from sneaking in underground.
The fifth floor had windows, though. So that made it the easiest point of entry for me.
I was guessing all the glass was bulletproof, but that wasn’t a problem. I just needed to weaken it, not punch through it entirely.
I adjusted the scope for distance, then looked through the crosshairs and found the window I wanted.
Then I just followed my training from the Rangers.
Deep breath… all air out on the exhale… squeeze.
BLAM.
Through the scope, I saw the glass chip. Now I had a new target.
I fired off round after round, adjusting between shots. I was rusty, but I was able to still get a nice pattern of cracks and chips going.
I figured 30 shots was enough. I might need the rest for inside the building.
Down beneath me, one of the Yakuza clipped the green force beam guy. Down he went.
Sucks to be you, dude.
I concentrated and created a small sphere ten feet from the window – then slammed it into the chipped glass as hard as I could.
As soon as it impacted, it felt like somebody had clubbed me in the back of the head with a blackjack.
But the glass shattered inwards.
Nice.
In another burst of gunfire, the Yakuza nailed the terrakinetic. He collapsed in a spray of blood.
Hopefully Fog Boy could just float away.
Next I created an invisible slide down to the window: a 500-foot-long hollow cylinder.
Then, holding the rifle at the ready, I went in feet-first and slid down the worst amusement park ride of all time.
I prayed that the Yakuza and the robbers were too busy down on the street, and hopefully too shrouded in fog, to notice me.
Of course, they couldn’t see the forcefield, so I wasn’t worried about them taking potshots at it. They would see a guy all in black sliding down at a crazy angle, but by the time they could react, I would hopefully be inside the fifth floor.
I was way more worried about stray bullets or force beams. At my current power levels, if the shield got hit, there was a good chance it would collapse – and I’d be falling 400 feet straight down instead of sliding.
But luck was on my side, and I tumbled into the office building window without any more damage than a low-grade headache. It was a huge relief when I could let the slide disappear.
The office was empty. Well, of people, anyway. Desk, computer, phone, a half-dozen pictures of the wife and kids.
I switched the rifle to automatic, got into ready stance, walked across the broken glass on the carpet, opened the door –
And saw three Yakuza 40 feet down the smoke-filled hallway.
Shit.
Smoke was drifting out of the air ducts, probably from the explosion down on the first floor, but the Yakuza still saw me. They immediately swung their guns toward me –
I could have fired, but there were three of them. So I rammed a cylindrical forcefield across their ankles at about 60 miles per hour.
The impact didn’t feel good to my brain, but it felt a whole hell of a lot worse to them.
It swept their legs out from underneath them and they all fell facedown on the floor.
From there it was easy to shoot them all in the head. Short bursts – one, two, three.
Blood and brains went spraying all over the hallway.
The overconfident dumbshits weren’t even wearing helmets.
Then again, neither was I. Best to take their example as a cautionary tale.
I peeked out the door to the left and right through the smoke-filled air. Nobody else was around – at least that I could see.
I set up dozens of forcefields – floating spheres like dangling beads of glass – in the air, 50 feet in every direction. They were my early warning detection system. If somebody bumped into them, I would feel it. I’d know I had a bogey, where they were, and how far away.
I visualized the blueprints Harding had sent Nova, and made my way down the smoky hall. I took a turn or two until I was directly over the vault, four stories up.
According to the blueprints, the bank’s most powerful defenses were built into the walls on the first floor. After all, if the crooks couldn’t get in through the main doorway, they’d probably try punching in through the wall.
The second-most powerful defense was the ground beneath the bank. They didn’t want anybody tunneling their way in.
The weakest link was in the area above the bank – and it wasn’t that weak. An electrical shield generator took up the entire second floor.
No way I could punch through it – but that wasn’t my plan.
Whoever had robbed the bank had to get out some way.
I was betting that running into the streets and becoming a visible target was a no-go.
And it was too dangerous trying to get out through the ground. If shit went sideways, they were trapped down there.
No, I figured they would come up through the first-floor ceiling. The second-story shield generator was a problem, but if they’d gotten this far, they probably had a plan to deal with the shield, too.
So I was betting they would come up directly from the vault, through the ceiling.
They didn’t disappoint me.
After about 30 seconds, a small figure in a black leather bodysuit and balaclava rose up from the floor like a ghost.
First the robber’s head appeared, then their shoulders, then their body as they floated up through the air like a diver swimming up through water.
The thief was a phaser, just like I’d expected. Phasers were able to move through solid matter like a ghost.
In the robber’s black, leather-clad arms was a canvas bag. I would’ve bet ten million dollars it was filled with metal cylinders, each about a foot long and three inches in diameter. I knew from experience they weren�
�t too heavy – about four pounds each.
Cannisters of Ephemera.
Each cylinder held a few ounces of Ephemera, which was worth about $10 million on the black market. So the thief was carrying 50 to 100 million dollars, easily.
One thing about phasers, though: they could go through solid matter, but they couldn’t get through other things.
One was electrical fields like the one above the vault, which led me to believe they’d short-circuited it somehow. Maybe that’s what the explosion earlier was about – not taking out the Yakuza, but destroying the shield generator on the second floor.
Another thing phasers can’t get through?
My forcefields.
I threw a field up flat against the ceiling. The thief immediately bumped their head against it, then hovered back down a few inches in surprise. They tried again, but my forcefield held.
Before they could try to move out from under it, I enclosed the thief completely in a cube so they couldn’t get out from the top, bottom, or sides.
I knew it would work, because it had worked on her dozens of times before.
I stepped out from around the corner. “Hey, Yuki. Thought it would be you.”
The thief whipped her head around in shock. Then she used her free hand to pull off her balaclava, revealing the gorgeous Japanese chick I knew so well. Her face was soft, her lips plump, and her dark brown hair was tinged slightly purple. Japanese punk thing, I guess.
She stared at me with her big brown puppy eyes, and her face lit up with a thousand-megawatt smile.
“HUNTER-SAN!” she yelped gleefully, then said in lightly accented English, “What are you doing?! Let me go!”
“First I need you to promise to come with me and hear me out,” I said as I jogged over to the forcefield prison she was in.
“I can’t leave my crew!”
“Your crew’s probably already dead.”
Down the smoke-filled hall came some distant, angry shouts in Japanese.
Yuki looked over at the sound, then back at me with panicked eyes. “They’re coming – let me go!”
“Promise me to hear me out.”
“Fine, fine!”
Then a new voice rang out through the hallway – a gravelly Brooklyn accent definitely not speaking Japanese.
