VEG

by Zachery Nims

  Chapter 10: Gotham’s Headquarters

  Source: Journal

  Name: Mark Boggs

  A sharp pain shot through my left jaw, head throbbing, my mind numb to the world. I couldn’t figure out if I had been hit a minute or three hours ago. My tongue prodded at my cheek barely passing the teeth before I felt the swollen tissue. The acidic taste swirled and turned in my mouth as blood oozed from unknown origins. I swallowed bitterly, the movement of my lips causing a split near my nostrils.

  "Who do you work for?" a hard smack across my face shot a rocket filled with adrenaline straight to my brain. My eyes burst open only to be met with a blinding interrogation light. It sent my pupils into shock as they contracted trying to help me cope with the radical change but it was too late. A softball-sized lump of vomit leapt from my esophagus like some sort of alien entity, attacking the chest of my company. It gripped desperately at the cotton woven t-shirt with UNITY written in big block letters on the front.

  The shirt depicted the dark silhouette of a man with his fist in the air. His fist was now replaced by my green and yellow abomination. I smiled thinking that it now somewhat resembled the statue of liberty with a green flame. Baring my teeth, I swished the blood through the cracks to taunt my captors, staining my teeth red. A hand lunged at my throat trying to squeeze the life out of me, his grip was soft and I could tell he lacked the training.

  I played dumb and let my head go limp, falling to my right hand side, waiting patiently for the man to check my breathing. As I suspected he came in close with his own face only inches from mine. I released all my force driving my head into where I gauged his nose would be but missed by an inch or so.

  My rock hard skull crashed hard against his face removing one of his front teeth as he spun backwards colliding into something soft behind him. "Kill that mother fucker!" he screamed as he jumped to his feet. I placed my forehead forward hoping he would be stupid enough to land a blow that would cripple his hand but nothing came. A foot or so before impact he came to an immediate halt. Then I heard nothing, just the trailing footsteps of abandonment.

  I was in a warm room and it even felt a bit humid which was strange for this time of winter. Most likely I was underground but I didn't dwell too much on my whereabouts. I focused my attention on my immediate surroundings. Sight was limited to a mere foot in front of me due to the magnitude of the blinding interrogation light. Trying to move my chair seemed futile for it was bolted to the ground. My hands were bound by a series of amateur knots. Given sufficient amount of time, I could untangle them, but I doubted I had long.

  They had tied my legs from the thighs to the base of the chair, which rendered the lower half of my body useless. I then tried to move my arms backwards and was relieved to discover that I could almost move them freely. A knot that was meant to bind them tight to my back failed with a little force. I could move them around fifteen inches or so, enough to where I could feel the wall behind me at about thirteen. It felt slick with condensation as if the walls were sweating as much as I was.

  A sole set of footsteps began making their way towards me from the distance. I used this time to adjust my eyes to the light to try and give me the highest visibility possible. I was surprised to see a woman enter the room. Whoever pulled the strings had an untrained entourage, which portrayed weakness in my eyes. Although, I had just been caught by their trap.

  They had to have some brains in this underground sweat shop. I heard the screech of another chair being pulled away from me, “Who do you work for?" The woman's voice soothed even my painful state.

  "Where am I?" I asked while leaning forward, trying to see if I could get a better look at the woman, but no luck. Besides, she was most likely wearing a mask.

  "Right now, all you need to know is that you are off the grid." It wasn't a malicious statement and she said it coolly. "What were you doing busting down door 1652?" she asked.

  "I work for the police and standard protocol states that we knock down a couple of doors every day until we find someone doing something illegal, didn't you know?" I said. Humor was always my strong suit when it came to the opposite sex, I could sense a smile appearing from somewhere amidst the interrogation light.

  "You have no ID card and your prints are unrecognizable. So once again, who do you work for?" She asked.

  I thanked the gods that the Green Beret had singed off my fingerprints before I began special ops missions overseas. I never carried identification on me so that hackers couldn't use personal information to try and bypass securities on my account.

  I was a ghost, one of the last of my kind, that hadn't been imprinted or tagged with some sort of tracking device. "The truth is..." I paused and sat motionless looking into the light as if I was contemplating trusting someone.

  "What?" She said sweet, breaking the silence.

  Her voice was so kind I could barely go on. "The truth is I'm on a secret quest to find eight triangular glowing pieces, that when collected and combined create an artifact called the triforce. I was looking for one of the final pieces and it brought me to apartment 1652. It's the only way for me to free princess Zelda." I leaned in closer as if to whisper. "You have to let me go so I can complete my quest, we are wasting valuable time!" I said.

  I felt another smile catch me from across the room. Breathing in deep, I found myself amused. I exhaled through my nostrils, unclogging the dried blood. That’s when I first smelt her. It was a burst of spring in the dull winter. The only way I could describe her smell was with a taste, honey whiskey with a mild cigar. She was my heaven. The chair shifted and the smell became distant as she exited.

  I sat in a pathetic daze feeling emotions for a scent that I couldn't place with a face. She was a new mental obsession that my body ached for. I snapped myself into focus, moving my arms against the wall, searching for some kind of imperfection.

  My hands slid upon the wet wall like a snake slithering this way and that trying to find anything of use. That is when I felt it, a small niche with a bit of something sharp around my elbow. I positioned my fingers so that I could pick at it.

  I froze in place hearing someone approach. Small fingers cuddled my face. Sally... she must have followed me here from the ghostel. I was both upset and happy at the same time.

  I had trained her from a young age on how to hide and evade detection. She must have been practicing. "Daddy you got yourself all tangled up," she said. "You're so clumsy Papa." I kept calm thinking she might actually believe this was a game I was playing.

  "You have very little time to get Daddy free so we can go to ride Ponies tomorrow!" I said.

  At that, Sally unzipped her backpack she always wore, digging deep inside. Her body was halfway in when she found her little red arts and crafts scissors. They were dull but then again the rope wasn't really meant to resist being cut. It was probably the reason why they tied me with so much of it. She began cutting away using the scissors like a saw at one point. Finally, I felt the first bit tear which gave me a lot more movement. She had chosen a good strand to cut because it began unraveling the rest.

  I was free in a matter of minutes. I hugged and squeezed her little body as tight as I could. My mind was in perfect focus regardless of the blows to my head. Sally had given me some kind of adrenaline rush knowing that I needed to protect her and keep her safe. They left nothing on me but my watch. They would have taken it if they knew about the button near the top that released a short range EMP burst. It disabled any kind of electronics within a city block. I couldn't really use it to help me escape because my captors most likely carried weapons that would kill me with or without electricity.

  I looked around the room for somewhere that I could hide Sally but no luck. I peered through the door, not more than five feet down the hall, a ceiling panel between two light fixtures looked just big enough to fit a child. "We are going to play the hiding game again
. I need you to stay as quiet as possible...OK?"

  She nodded her head up and down then saluted me with her cute little right hand. "Yes sir," she said in her official sounding voice as she clapped her heels together standing at attention. I pointed to the spot I wanted her to hide and then put a finger to my lips silencing her. I moved swiftly down the hall and hoisted her into the void. She climbed up into the darkness, once safe she peeked back over at me and mimicked the thumbs up that I gave her. It made me rest a little easier having Sally safe, but I was still in a world of trouble.

  The building felt like an abandoned FBI headquarters. There were multiple offices and I knew now that I was in fact underground because B5 was posted on a couple of the walls. Sulfur leaks painted the ceilings orange and brown as drips seeped through neglected cracks. Long abandoned I'd have to say. I decided to start picking offices at random, hoping for some luck. Either a solo guard or an ammunitions bunker would be a jackpot but I wasn't feeling optimistic. It reminded me of the game Minesweeper in a way how I would always pick five cells at random hoping for a good outcome but that sixth would always explode when I got greedy. So at the fifth door I decided to proceed with a little more caution. I looked around briefly for some sort of weapon but found only a dull letter opener that I pocketed.

  I knew that they would be coming back to interrogate me at some point, and I doubted they would send just one female again that lacked results. The muscle was probably coming next. It was standard procedure to interrogate first with a light bruiser, then someone a little more comfortable and finally where talking failed pain would prevail. I listened to the door hoping for a single set of footsteps but heard nothing, only the constant dripping. I decided to venture on knowing my time was short. There were two sets of staircases. The further set of stairs seemed the most logical option to me.

  The stairway only went to L1 so getting out a safe way would be near impossible without running into a guard. I had to scout it though, even if it meant being captured again. A cool breeze hit me as I opened the door, chilled by the fresh winter air. The floor appeared vacant at first but I could hear hushed voices in the distance. I approached the door next to the source and opened it as quiet as possible, slipping inside with my letter opener gripped in my right hand. To my surprise there was a door inside the room leading into the adjacent office where the voices were. I got up close to it, so close that their voices were almost decipherable. It was five men and one woman. I pressed my ear firm to wood and listened. "He won’t talk, and it will take a couple of hours to hack his Jackers." The soft female voice said.

  "He couldn't be a cop, he would have had backup and the police would be on us by now," said a man positioned against the far wall.

  "He had to have been looking for Gothamsreckoning. He could be a friendly." This voice made the door vibrate, he was right next to me resting with some body part flush against the thin layer of wood.

  "Let's just beat it out of him, we can't risk him capturing you." My ears perked up and my heartbeat increased as adrenaline rushed through my veins. Gothamsreckoning was just beyond this one-inch wooden barrier.

  I rose up slow as to not alert, and then gauged the power of my kick. I lunged forward feeling the force hit hard against the shoulder and head of the unknown body resting on the other side. The room had little time to react as I slid in like lightning grabbing the woman roughly around the chest, my letter opener pressed firm to her throat. Four guns were drawn and aiming in my direction as I backed us against the closest corner.

  Her hair was intoxicating, dark curly Caribbean hair complementing her honey beige skin, tossed across my steady hand as I inched her further into a defensive position. One man lay stunned on the ground trying to regain total consciousness. His arms and legs wobbled as he braced himself against a desk to gain composure. "How did you find me?" A girl said in a voice that sounded eerily familiar. I had only briefly heard it after her screams.

  There she was, the helpless little girl with my rough bandaging tarnishing her innocent face just below her eye. She had healed well in just a day. She was sitting with her knees together, crouched in a little nook between two desks on the far wall. My grip loosened for a split second but I refocused. "You don't need to save me from these people. They are friends." She said as if I was her protector. This changed everything, my mind jumped to multiple outcomes of how this would play out.

  "Bell, how… how do you know this man?" the guy asked from the corner of the room, his desert eagle still trying to get a fix on my forehead. Bell looked around and lowered her head in shame.

  "Bell, speak now!" the woman in my grasps said, fighting the words against my blade pressed firmly to her esophagus.

  "I was going to tell you but I didn't want you to worry. I was attacked on my way home last night... nothing happened though because of my hero. He saved me. How did you find me my knight?"

  The girl was of a different breed and had obviously been told way too many fairy tales. Before I could answer, I heard it, the soft click of a Rabid X-52. Rabid X-52's were standard issue to special ops police forces. They were automatic assault rifles with five different types of ammunition. Near the base of the rifle lay five cartridge barrels that held around fifty rounds. Armor piercing rounds were the ammo of choice for entrance with lethal purpose. Gas rounds were preferred in low ventilated rooms, each one releasing a concentrated volume of H2S gas. Odorless and lethal, you were dead in seconds. Taser rounds were short ranged but a pain in the ass. They would not only kill but they released a coil of thin metal wire connected to the base of the barrel. Each one was electrically charged and when sprayed across a room it was like a spider setting a web that made it impossible to escape from. The fourth type was an explosive round, but the fifth were my favorite. The fifth type of round was a proximity mine. Each bullet was tipped with four metal barbs that extended from the head and looked like eagle claws upon release. They would penetrate whatever surface you shot them at and then arm. Any kind of motion would activate them, causing a lethal focused explosion. Escaping the police by backtracking wasn’t an option.

  That soft click was the sound that only a Rabid X-52 made when engaging the ammunition of choice. It was too late to alarm them all, some would die, but I doubted they were in a position to take the building yet. I searched the hips of the woman finding my Glock pressed against her side. The gun jumped into my hand like an old friend, my pointer finger stroking its trigger. I felt a cool calmness wash over me before the storm, and then I shouted, "BELL, BELLY DOWN NOW, EVERYONE BEHIND ME." I twirled around throwing my captive diving toward the door as armor piercing rounds broke through the window taking one of the men in the back of the skull and the other two through the chest. The man standing near the desk took one to the left shoulder sending him screaming to the floor. Only one of the gang made it down unscathed. I opened the door, dragging the woman outside, as Bell crawled quickly after. It only took another couple of seconds for them to breach the windows and then they were in.

  I was in luck, because they hadn't come through any other entrance yet. They had to attack prematurely due to my actions. I was not about to let some rookie shit get the best of me. Police were almost impossible to escape, due to their multitude of tracking devices. Every Police helmet came equipped with a streaming video camera that was monitored by a hive of brains. Once your face was identified you were toast. Luckily I had tools to help me survive a little bit longer and I intended on using them. I jumped up, grabbing Bell by the hand and began sprinting toward the stairwell while I pushed the EMP burst on my watch.

  During a raid police were very susceptible to this attack because they relied on all of their communications being linked to give the maximum percentage of success. EMP bursts were not available to citizens and the makeshift ones created on the streets were all too weak to shut down even the camera links on their helmets. Mine was ac
quired through my prior profession. I knew that the burst would buy us some time, but only a minute or two. Eventually the orders would be given to the worker ants by some form of communication to seek and destroy.

  One of the gung ho warriors wasn't waiting for his god to answer and he rounded the corner shooting two or three explosive rounds into the chest and abdomen of the unscathed man trailing twenty or so steps behind us. His body exploded before he could register the pain. It was a terrible thing to do to a man but I imagine this cowboy hadn't gotten to fire his gun on a live mission. Most cops were pumped so full of video game adrenaline and simulated battle that the kill they had just made wouldn't register until much later. Right now he was trigger happy and years from now he would be on a couch in some simulated psychiatrists office talking about the deep seeded issues that all derived from this very moment.

  I rounded the corner and busted through the stair doors. "Quickly, is there any secondary route for escape?" The woman looked at me stunned as I stopped on B2. Blood covered her face and she looked half in shock. I grabbed her by the arms and shook her wildly. "This isn't a fucking game or one of your stupid VEG simulations. You must have some sort of fail-safe route in this place. These cops were sent to kill not wound."

  She blinked and started slowly, "A... a crawl space. Yes a crawl space on B5 through one of the offices, it leads four blocks from here." Focus came into her eyes. More importantly a wave of emotion flew over me knowing I could easily grab Sally on the way down. We continued down to the depths of the facility.

  "I've got to grab my daughter," I yelled as we approached the door to B5.

  "Your daughter?" The woman still sounded a little stunned.

  "Yes she came and rescued me, it will only take a second."

  I ran to Sally’s hiding place and whistled the ok signal, which I had taught her at a young age. I had two whistles, turn and run and all ok. She enjoyed doing them and I made up a short story that comforted her about how mother and father birds do this in the wild to warn each other of predators. Her little head poked out of the black abyss in the ceiling and she smiled, jumping into my arms. The woman and little girl looked at us bewildered. I grabbed Sally's hand and said "this is my daughter, I need to get us out of here." The woman still looked to be in complete shock, her eyes bouncing between Sally and I.

  "Follow me" she finally forced out. We ended up in the same office I had searched earlier for a weapon. She pushed a filing cabinet out of the way to reveal a small concrete crawl space to safety.