Blackjack Messiah

by Ben Bequer

  I got off the plane a different person. Rested and refreshed, ready for the next adventure. And with long - motherfucking - white hair. I found the nearest bathroom and there it was, long and luscious. I took a selfie, giving the finger, and texted it to Ricochet. By the time I was out of the toilet, he had texted me an image back. In the picture, he and Templar both had the bottom, working-end of a mop draped over their heads. The caption read, “#GoingWhite.”

  “Fuckers,” I growled. I laughed and headed down to the luggage carousel, but by the time I got there, the bags were long gone. “Great,” I muttered, reaching into my backpack for my contact info, as a lean middle-aged guy walked up to me. He was wearing a Firefly t-shirt and jeans, holding a sign that read, “Gary Nesbit.”

  “Mr. Nesbit?”

  I shook my head no, then paused, realizing that was my new name.

  “Shit, sorry. That’s me.”

  “Oh great,” he said, folding the sign and thrusting his hand forward, which I shook. “I’m Terry. Powermaster. You know.”

  The guy looked totally unrecognizable out of his costume. He looked like he worked at Home Depot or Best Buy. “I got your bags outside,” he said, motioning to my big case. “Come on, let’s get you set up and started.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Terry, aka Powermaster

  I was wearing the cap and shades with the hair pulled back into a long tail, and the look worked. No one gave me a second glance. He led to through an elaborate parking lot to a newer model minivan. Inside were two girls and a Hispanic woman that looked the part of a maid or nanny. “Girls, this is Gary,” Powermaster said. “Gary, these two beauties are Karina and Marina. And this is Esther.”

  I waved and sat in the front seat.

  Esther showed promise, young and thin if you like that kind of woman. She had pretty eyes, and it was obvious that Terry was more than just an employer. The two girls had curly blonde hair, as I’m sure Powermaster would if he didn’t shave his head and his same blue eyes. One was almost in her teens and the other about half that age, though I didn’t know which was which.

  “So how was the flight?” Terry said, paying for the parking.

  “I feel like Odysseus.”

  Powermaster looked at me curiously as he waited for the change, not following my train of thought.

  “I’ve traveled far,” I explained.

  He laughed, “I bet. I try not to fly anywhere more than an hour away nowadays. Well, since the New York thing.”

  I looked at him, curiously. He seemed like a friendly enough fellow, but part of me couldn’t help thinking that it was all obfuscation. The girls, the woman, it was all a ploy to trap me in politeness so he could enact his revenge.

  I humiliated him a few years ago, and this was his chance to get back at me. Oh sure, it was under the guise of “rehabilitation,” but I found it rather curious that Powermaster had volunteered to make room on his little regional team. “Terry” had taken me in, and now I was in his clutches.

  “What do you want to do first?” he said. “Hit the HQ or see your place?”

  I shrugged. “Your call.”

  “I guess you probably could do with rest and stuff.”

  We drove a while before reaching a small residential neighborhood, the street lined with brownstones on either side. “Here we are,” Terry said as he parked the car.

  Esther opened the minivan’s side door and the girls spilled out onto the sidewalk. Terry got out of the car, and I took that to mean that they were all coming inside. I suppose he wanted to give me the full tour.

  “Okay, that’s you,” he said pointing at one of the brownstones, “And that’s us,” he pointed at the one beside it.

  “Neighbors,” I said with faux excitement that was pretty obvious to catch.

  “Don’t worry,” he chuckled, “I won’t have you looking after the girls or anything. Esther’s pretty awesome.”

  He led me to my new place. Esther took the girls to their home. One of them, the older one, waved goodbye. I waved back. Seemed like a nice kid, too nice to be getting embroiled in Powermaster’s mind games.

  Terry opened the door and led me inside. It was a simple affair, two stories, with a wide hallway past a small foyer, and a staircase stacked to the left. There were rooms to either side of it with open windows overlooking the street. To the right was a sitting room/TV room, and to the left, through an archway before the stairs, were a dining room and a marble island separating it from the kitchen. It had a downstairs room that was suited for an office right behind the TV room, and a back door down the hall that led to a small fenced-in porch.

  “We barbeque all the time,” he said, taking me outside to enjoy the tiny space. “Next door, that is. I invite the team over and burn up some wings and dogs. It’s a simple affair.”

  “Nice.”

  He looked a bit uncomfortable or maybe he was just tired. His girls texted him five times while he was showing me the place, and by the last one, he looked ready to blast the phone. “Let me show you the upstairs.”

  It was vaster upstairs for some reason, despite having only a small room, a master and one bathroom between them. It could have also been the vaulted ceiling which made the place look bigger. “So?” he said. “What do you think?”

  “It’s kind of big for just me, but it’s very nice,” I said, a bit surprised that I let down my guard. He had a disarming way, friendly and unassuming, and I liked how he kept his distance, giving me space.

  “Yeah, these were originally envisioned as single family homes,” he said, meaning to go on about the builder or some such crap, but I guess I grimaced or made my typical “Blackjack” face so he edited himself. “Anyway, I usually rent it for $3,500 a month, but things are light these days in the market.”

  “And anything for Super Dee, you know,” he added. “Okay, I’ll let you get some rest. I stocked the fridge with some stuff. I wasn’t sure what you liked so I put a little of everything.”

  “Wait,” I said, racing after him as he started down the stairs without me.

  “What’s up?” he said, stopping at the landing.

  “Who owns this place?” I asked.

  “I do. Well, me and the girls. I put them on the papers, you know, in case something happens.”

  “I don’t understand, I thought I’d be in a hotel or something.”

  Terry suddenly grew worried, “Oh, no. Don’t think I’m taking advantage of Superdynamic or anything. I volunteered the place at no charge. I wouldn’t-“

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ve been bouncing around the globe the last day or two. Let’s back up a little. So you own the place?”

  He nodded.

  “And you’re donating it to-“

  “To Superdynamic. To the cause, you know?”

  I shook my head. “No charge?”

  Terry laughed. “Yeah. Doubt it’d rent this time of year anyway. It’s not a big deal.”

  He patted me on the shoulder, flashed me a big smile, and left me at the doorway with a stupid look on my face. After he left, I checked the kitchen and saw the freezer stocked with meat and chicken, the fridge and pantry stuffed. “Guess I need to learn some more recipes,” I said.

  The place was fully furnished, nice, warm, and for the time being, home. Powermaster, Terry, was becoming more and more curious. He donated a huge brownstone to Superdynamic, bypassing over three grand in monthly income so I would have a home while learning the intricacies of playing well with others.

  Whatever con he was trying to pull, the least I could do was make it harder for him. Opening the largest of my suitcases, I placed the packed clothes and shoes in a neat pile on the coffee table. I smiled into the empty suitcase and picked at the edge of the liner spread across the bottom. It took a couple of tries, but the edge came free, and I gently pulled. It was foam, pliable, firm, and inlaid with circuitry that Ricochet and I had put together the day before I left. Designed to hide objects from X-ray, radar, and microwave scanners,
it was more than enough to baffle whatever the airport used to check the luggage before loading it on the plane.

  Hidden beneath was another piece of foam, this one with strategic chunks cut out of it. Nestled into the excised spaces were a cache of arrowheads that should never have flown commercially, the absorbing bracers, and enough spare cartridges to keep them and the belt I wore in civilian situations good for a month. Bypassing that stuff, I pulled out a thin case about the size and shape of a checkerboard. Opening it, I took out a slimmed down version on my computer watch. It had been through almost as many redesigns as anything Superdynamic used, usually because it got destroyed. Having unfettered access to an engineering bay with endless resources had been good for my brain. Looking around the modest brownstone, I wondered what I would do with my time.

  Slipping the watch over my wrist, I unfolded a pair of glasses and slid them over my eyes. The lenses were tinted green, but with a touch of the watch’s face, a HUD similar to what I had used at Point Nemo appeared. A grid of white lines stretched across my view, along with the room temperature, time, GPS map point, and percentages of oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and carbon monoxide in the air.

  Everything looked normal. The glasses linked with the watch, and a menu popped into view. Choosing options in a flurry of hard light prompts, I heard the drones whir to life. The ones Bubu used in our little venture were tiny, working in concert for whatever the job required. I’d been tinkering with different versions and models with the intention of upgrading the overall tech. These guys were the result of that work. About the size of a toddler’s hand, they had more storage capacity and better A.I. protocols. Less crashing into each other and better pathing back to their origin spot. It would reduce costs, in theory, and we’d make more money.

  They lifted off from the case, meandering around me in a figure eight pattern that was their baseline. I thought it looked cool. A short countdown took over my field of vision and I closed my eyes. The shift from real-time view to the drone cams made me nauseous. I opened my eyes and they hovered in a dozen individual view screens. One of them was behind me and I saw how long the hair was. It trailed down to my waist, even though it was tied back. I loved Ricochet, but I was going to rip his kidneys out. Through his nose.

  I tapped at solid light menus, giving the drones their instructions. The brownstone was a good testing ground for their flight pathing, and though there were some bumps, none were terminal. They took two full circuits of the entire brownstone, including the basement, mapping it out down to the foundation, scanning for surveillance devices, secret doors, anything that might be out of place.

  I didn’t know what to expect, but I was sure they’d find something. I was wrong. No bugs, no nanny cams, no hidden chambers to hide in. Nothing insidious. The phone was working and private. The wiring was old, and there was a slow leak in the plumbing of the second bathroom. The attic and basement were clear. Dust particle content in the air was lower than standard. He had cleaned the place up for me.

  No. Fuck that. I’d seen enough cons in my day. Nobody was long conning me. Executing another set of commands, I took the glasses off and let the drones work. Cameras and microphones were going up, the drones would fabricate and assemble the hardware and cabling. Climbing the stairs, I went into the master bedroom. Pulling up the blueprint on my computer watch, I picked out a stud along the weight bearing wall. Running a finger along the drywall I found a good spot and marked it on the blueprint.

  One of the items on the drone’s build list was a hub that would handle all the data gathered by my surveillance gear. It had enough hard drive space for a week’s worth of 4k video and audio. I would need to dig into the wall to access it, but that was no hurdle and the drones could repair drywall with zero effort. I could have done it wirelessly, but that presented its own dangers. I read up on Powermaster and the other All-Stars, and it didn’t seem like they had a tech person, but better safe than sorry.

  I waited to get caught. Powermaster had to know I was up to something. I could hear his kids playing next door, and the drones had to be just as loud. I expected some kind of stealth device or operative to come out of nowhere and attack, or for the All-Stars to show. I could see Powermaster looking down his nose at me, shaking his head in disapproval as his people destroyed my gear.

  I poured myself a glass of orange juice and waited. All I heard was the steady thrum of the AC system, my drones, and the muffled sounds of children bouncing up and down the stairs as Esther railed at them in Spanish.

  I unpacked my stuff, careful to make it seem like their bullshit was working. Clothes hung and folded neatly, suitcases stored in the second room. My gear was another matter. I’d smuggled enough firepower out of Mali to destroy a city block, and I didn’t want the kids getting into it. I left the arrowheads in the suitcase and replaced the liner. It would fool them, and empty suitcases were boring by their nature. I hoped. I left the suit and bow packed as well, neither was dangerous on their own.

  The watch said the drones were about half done, which was pretty good. And none of them were disabled. Bubu was going to love this. With all the activity, I hadn’t realized the leg was hurting until I stood still. I thought about Armada, glad that she was suspended. Her chances of running into Apogee by accident were slim, which was good for everyone. The idea that she cared enough to murder a person for me was both exhilarating and terrifying. It was a responsibility, a superpower in its own right. I intended to do some light reading while the drones finished, but jetlag and a comfortable bed were too strong a combination.

  ——

  I woke every couple of hours.

  The first time because the drones finished their work and were gathered in the master bedroom. I thought they were returning to the hub but realized that they were tied to the watch which sat on the dresser. It was disconcerting to find them flying in the figure eight pattern while I slept. They should have gone dormant when their commands ran out. A bug to work out later.

  I hobbled to the bathroom and pissed, then drank straight from the tap. It was like that for the next couple of hours. Weird dreams about killer rabbits intertwined with gorging on water or pissing oceans into the toilet. Eventually, my body reached equilibrium and I was able to sleep peacefully. We’d arrived at the brownstone in the early afternoon, and I woke up just as the sun was going down. I listened hard, sure someone was downstairs. The ominous sounds of children playing greeted me. Did those kids ever sleep? There was something soothing about their laughter and when my eyes closed I didn’t fight it.

  I woke up the next morning, refreshed and ready for anything. Donning both wrist computer and glasses, I brought up the camera feeds and had a full view of the brownstone’s interior, basement and attic included, as well as the front stoop leading to the street, and the backyard as well. I wanted to the check out the neighborhood, intent on mounting cameras that would give me a view of Powermaster’s movements. I put on some jogging gear and went outside. It was barely dawn, streaks of sun barely cresting the rooftops. Perfect time for a quick jog around the block and some reconnaissance.

  So I ran.

  I got to the end of the block before pain, and a frightening twitch in my left calf convinced me to stop. Last thing I needed was for Powermaster and his family to see paramedics scoop my broken ass off the sidewalk. I hobbled back to the brownstone, each step feeling like the one that would send everything spinning off the rails. I had just turned onto the walkway to my front door when I saw a guy across the street leave his house, locking the front door behind him. He got a look at me and walked over.

  “You’re Gary?” he asked, hand outstretched.

  He was a heavy-set fellow, wearing a nice suit and a fedora. He had patchy stubble that looked more like laziness than an attempt to grow a beard.

  “I am,” I said shaking his hand.

  “I’m Lucas Carlisle,” he said, and I expected a super code name to follow. “Terry told me you would be moving in. It’s nice to meet you.�
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  “You too,” I said, poorly hiding my surprise.

  “Getting a good jog in, huh? Man, I wish I had your energy. But it’s crazy at the office these days.”

  “Oh, good,” I said, taking a step back. He didn’t look like any of the team members on file. A little too round at the waist to be a super.

  “Well, I won’t waste any more of your time,” he said, stepping towards the street. “But do us a favor and come by for dinner Friday, will you? Stacy makes the most amazing lasagna and we’d love to welcome you properly. I’ll ask Terry to come over with the girls,” he added.

  “Yeah, sure,” I said and watched him drive away. The guy gave me a big smile and wave as he passed.

  Where the hell was I?

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Stranger in a Strange Land

  Using every piece of the house that looked like it could hold my weight, I maneuvered to the couch and dropped onto it. It held my weight easily, for which I was grateful. The pain eased into a throbbing ache, and I massaged the calf to get the blood flowing. It was tense, but I worked it hard and felt a little give.

  I laid there wide awake, desperate to vent my frustration, devoid of an outlet. Stuck in goddamn-Kansas-fucking-City living next door to a guy who was most likely dreaming up ways to humiliate me before killing me, and I was vulnerable. I couldn’t even run when things got hairy.

  The pain abated slowly, and I was able to stand. Climbing the stairs, I changed clothes. It was early, and I didn’t want to bother Terry or his people. From the proximity of our homes, I knew what was going on over there at all hours. There were some vital items missing from the fridge and pantry, so I called an Uber and paid the guy an extra $50 to wait for me in the supermarket parking lot.

  The driver dropped me off, and my phone started ringing as I walked through the door. I was loaded down with grocery bags, but I freed up a hand and dug the cell phone out of my pocket. It was Annit, from London.