I pushed the button for seventeen and waited as the elevator rose. It let me out in a hallway which was doing its darnedest to be completely inoffensive. Grey carpets, golden marble to waist-height, beige walls, and a white ceiling. It was a common area, with a small bank of windows at either end looking out over the city, with one door for each of the four condos on this floor. Checking for cameras, I found none. Extracting my lock pick, I went to work on the Greelers' front door.
I bypassed the alarm and did my best to unlock it silently. If the Greelers were home, I didn't want to alert them just yet.
Part 8
Daisy Towers put the floor plans of their condos on their website for prospective residents to peruse. From what I gathered, there was about a twenty-five percent vacancy rate. So I knew beforehand that the front door should open onto a small atrium with the "expansive kitchen" towards the building core. In the case of 1701, it was left of the entrance. The presence of an umbrella stand made from an oversized ceramic vase right where the door opened up was not a standard feature. I didn't bump into it, but it meant opening the door further than I liked to step inside. Most of the light spilling into the atrium from the apartment appeared to be coming from the television. The volume was way down, but it sounded like some sort of action piece.
The couch was positioned so that the walkway from the atrium would pass behind it. It faced my left, towards a coffee table and the wall-mounted screen. On the couch, I saw Fenton's distinctive baldness-sculpted hairdo indicating a slouched posture. I couldn't tell if he was awake or not, so I assumed awake. I set the carry bag down on the atrium floor, and carefully closed the door behind me. There were three rooms on the floor plan which could house a home office. Two were off to my right, the third, was down the hallway with the bathroom. A hallway whose entrance sat between the kitchen and the television, easily in Fenton's field of view.
I didn't realize how much my heart had crawled into my throat until I picked up the insulated bag again. I knew from experience that the Greelers had access to automatic weapons and a willingness to use them. And I didn't own body armor. Glancing down the hall in both directions to make sure the coast was clear, I headed right. A closet capped the hall to hide the fact that one of the main structural columns of the building prevented a window from being installed there. Two doors faced each other across the hallway just shy of the closet. Left would lead to the room at the comer of the tower-- two walls of oversized windows. Choosing a search pattern, I went with "keep right" and eased that door open.
Judging by the posters plastered on the walls and the clothing haphazardly strewn about, it was a girl's room. A girl with a narrower build than Jasmine Greeler. The bed sat against what was now my right-hand wall, its headboard separated from the atrium by a few layers of drywall and some insulation. A desk sat against the wall opposite the door, and the presumptive owner of the room was seated at it. A head of neatly-braided hair bounced along to some sound only audible through her headphones. As I eased the door closed again, the poster behind her monitor caught my eye. It was a few years old, one of the "Sidekicks Assemble" line for this region of the country. It was a print of a painting done by a member of the community containing a half dozen of us. It was odd seeing my fourteen-year-old self next to Nora before she'd added the censor box to her costume, along with three others and Donny front and center in red and yellow. I think it was the only merchandise piece I appeared in. The sight of my old mask only stirred my ire.
I finished easing the door closed and crossed the hall. This bedroom had a much larger bed and a couple of dressers. No desk, no obvious computer either. Sure, they were made small enough to hide almost anywhere, but I wasn't going to go rooting through the Greelers' underwear drawer unless I had to. Leaving the master bedroom for the time being, I made my way back to the living room. From this angle, I could actually see Fenton's reflection in the windows. He was asleep. Easing my way past the living room at a near crawl, I entered the other hall. The bathroom door sat open, its light spilling out. Opposite it was a closed door. As I turned the knob I heard voices.
"The well is dry," Jasmine Greeler said, "We need to find alternate sources of funding."
"That is not what you promised us," a reedy voice said in a low tone probably meant to sound ominous. It lacked the desired effect and just made him sound wheezy. "Until you fulfill your part of the bargain, the serum stays with us." Wishing for a fiber-optic probe, I eased the door open a crack to see what was going on. Greeler, now dressed in blue, stood on a three-foot metal circle under a matching circle on the ceiling. The interior of each was gridded and glowed slightly. A tangle of cables bolted to the ceiling and lying loose on the floor connected these to a metal desk by the far wall. Rising from the glowing surface of this desk were two half-size figures. One was the black-clad, red-eyed Doctor Omicron. The other was a thin figure in white robes with blue trim. He had a narrow face and a patch of sandy blond hair clinging to his chin. Both figures were semi-transparent. They rippled and sheared periodically, with vertical scan lines rolling through them. Holograms had a way to go before they could be mistaken for the real thing.
Omicron pointed a finger at Greeler, but it passed outside his scan platform, so his hand was cut off in the projected image. "Not to mention," he said, his resonating voice far more effective than the robed man's. "You claimed that there was no chance anyone would miss those riffraff. It brought heroes down on our heads, costing us an entire front company and millions of dollars worth of hardware. We almost lost the relics too."
"Heroes meddle all the time, it's part of the risk," Greeler said.
"Do not lecture me on risk, woman," Omicron said. "I did not spend decades pretending I couldn't give the Soviets unbeatable first-strike capability to be lectured on risk by a boiler-room broad who shills penny stocks for a living. You know nothing of risk." Greeler looked to be on the verge of exploding into a feminist tirade when another voice cried out. A rather shrill one, not ten feet from me.
"Who the Hell are you!" I turned my head to see the girl from the other room. Without the chair back in the way, I could see she was clad in pajama bottoms and a t-shirt. There was a family resemblance to the Greelers, but I couldn't attest to what that relationship was. Lacking a real plan, I held the insulated bag in front of me and charged towards the door. The girl kicked at me, looking surprised as her bare foot met the aluminum case inside the insulated bag. Jasmine emerged from her office, slamming a magazine into a rather beefy handgun.
"Nikki, stay down," Greeler shouted as she leveled the pistol. My foot caught her wrist on the way down, knocking the handgun from her grip. Nikki didn't stay down, her fist finding my cheekbone. She had quite a right on her, knocking me into the kitchen bar. My elbow accidentally started the hot water running in the sink. My ball cap landed right in the stream. Jasmine dove for the pistol, but I body-checked her away from it. There was an oddly satisfying "plunk" noise as the handgun landed in the toilet. That satisfaction was robbed almost at once by the cannon-like retort of Fenton's shotgun and the pile-driver kick of a bean bag round striking me in the spine. I tumbled over Jasmine. Through the crook of my arm, I saw the couch cushions that had been dislodged when Fenton retrieved the shotgun.
In probably the most unheroic move I've ever made, I wrapped an arm around Jasmine's neck, twisted her arm behind her back and held her as a human shield. The pain shooting through my back insisted my spine had to be broken, but the rest of my body said otherwise. Fenton immediately grew hesitant, lowering the muzzle of the shotgun. Nikki wasn't so uncertain, charging down the narrow hall. I threw Jasmine at her and tried to roll past as they were entangled. The hall was too narrow, and Nikki caught my sleeve. I slipped out of the windbreaker and continued forward, catching Fenton before he brought the muzzle up again. I slammed the side of the barrel into his face. With the crack to the noggin he'd given me, I didn't feel the least bit bad when
blood began pouring from his nose.
Fenton went down, tumbling over the back of the couch. Jasmine ducked back into her office as Nikki charged at me. I drove the butt of the shotgun into the girl's midriff. She doubled over in pain and staggered back. Almost reflexively, I leveled the shotgun at the doorway as Jasmine emerged with the angry-looking big brother of the carbines she'd had before.
"You've got bean bag rounds all the way down," Jasmine said, "I've got armor-piercing frangibles that will rip you to--" If she'd fired instead of talking, I'd have never been able to pull the trigger, both from a mix of reaction time and uncertainty as to the load in the shotgun. Once she confirmed that there wasn't a lethal chaser in the tube, I had no qualms about shooting her. I don't think Jasmine Greeler was used to being on the receiving end of pain. When the bean bag caught her in the gut, her mouth popped open and her eyes bugged out as she toppled to the floor.
"Get over by the window," I said motioning to Nikki with the shotgun. Glaring at me, she grudgingly complied. I went over to where Jasmine was still groaning, and partly disassembled her assault rifle. Tossing the bolt assembly into the kitchen wastebasket, I collected my jacket, my now-soaked hat, and the carry case before heading for the door. I dunked the shotgun into their umbrella stand on my way out. Luckily, none of them decided to follow me.
Legally, I had nothing to bring to the authorities. I didn't even accomplish what I'd gone there to do. Eavesdropping on one non-definitive conversation was not what I'd call much of a success. I did learn one thing, Jasmine Greeler had sicced Omicron and his bots on the Fifth Street Gang, probably as an act of petty vengeance for threatening her with a machete.
After some searching, there was no evidence that Greeler's holocom conference had been carried over normal networks. Not a big surprise in our line of work. Nora had gone through proverbial reams of paperwork and returned with a sack of thumb drives full of data to be picked over, but nothing definitive. With the holocom setup in Greeler's home, there was little chance of a record of direct contact showing up in it. Of course, finding a record of an indirect contact required someone with a better grasp of the financial markets than I had. The Community Fund had a whole investments arm full of people with the right expertise, and the data went their way.
The description I gave of a guy in a robe with a narrow face and a small beard wasn't all that distinct, but they thanked me for trying anyway. That's all I've been doing, trying. If only I could start succeeding sometime soon. I did learn that Nikki Greeler was Fenton's daughter from his first marriage, and Jasmine was the third Mrs. Greeler. Would have been nice to know she existed before barging into their home. My train of thought was interrupted as Cupric dropped a newspaper on my almost empty workbench.
"What's this?"
"A newspaper."
"They still print those?"
"Just take a look at it."
The headline read "Who is Dr. Omicron?" with a tag line of "The Terror of Technomation Revealed!" The largest picture looked like it was pulled from one of Technomation's security feeds with Doctor Omicron dragging Masquerade and a pile of crates in two separate force bubbles. The reds and black did not show up all that well against the dark gray pavement with the lighting conditions in the parking lot. Below it were two smaller pictures. One had the slightly off saturation levels and grain of a color photo from the seventies, showing Omicron in front of some contraption whose function was not evident. The other was an even older black-and-white still. It showed a man in a striped prisoner uniform, clean-shaven with thinning salt-and-pepper hair. He had a strong jaw and chiseled features. His visage was the epitome of distinguished, except for the eyes. The hate in his gaze was on the verge of burning through the newsprint. Below his chin, he held a sign with a prisoner number that read "Ivar Kazuk (Doktor Omicron)."
"I'm guessing someone had a contact with the FSB who fed them some choice information and spent some time digging through the Nazi archives for that mug shot."
"Only the article is a bit thin on actual information. Nothing we didn't already know. It's new to the public, I guess."
"Omicron is pretty spry for a supercentenarian. He looks to be in his forties or fifties in the German photograph."
"Nineteenth century birth records are bit thin on the ground in Eastern Europe. If it hasn't been destroyed by war, it's certainly not digitized. That is, if there was even a record in the first place. We can't tell where he went to school either."
"I can't tell you by his accent, because he doesn't have one."
Cupric sighed and looked for another seat. There was a shortage of chairs in the hideout.
"Something else?" I asked.
"In a few days, the Fund Board is going to call on you to perform community service. I got a heads-up to let me know that you'd be unavailable. Apparently it involves a road trip and an operation that needs a lot of bodies on the ground. Beyond that, they didn't give me any details."
I frowned, it wasn't exactly the topic I'd expected. It wasn't a surprise, as community service was an inevitable part of the job. I pushed it aside and moved to the topic where I'd expected to go.
"How's Pam?" I asked.
"Still stable, but she hasn't regained consciousness. They've actually brought in three magic users to help with treatment. Apparently, the evidence points to Doctor Omicron mixing some sorcery with his science, which would explain why the mutagen would be able to force such dramatic changes in short order."
"Do you think I'll be able to see her before I have to leave?"
"Now is not a good time."
"I see." I wanted to tell her I was sorry, but there was a little sliver of my mind that was glad not to have to see the horrific price she'd paid for my screw-up.
"You still seem rather down."
I chuckled. "Ever since I decided not to quit, I've had a constant stream of failures where the only objective I managed to achieve has been 'don't die.'"
"To be fair, that's a pretty big objective." Cupric picked up his newspaper. "There are always setbacks. A refusal to let that stop us from doing what's right is part of what makes us what we are."
Says the guy who's actually succeeded at some point. Of course, I wasn't going to blurt that out loud. Moping wasn't going to help much either. I was starting to realize that Nora was right; I didn't know anything but this life. I hadn't even tried to.
"Fun fact," Cupric said. "Nikki Greeler actually applied for fund sponsorship to be a sidekick, twice."
"What happened?"
"There were more exceptional candidates available. We actually have about a dozen nastygrams from her stepmother calling us racist misogynists for rejecting her."
"So how did I get in?"
"Ask 'Monoman,' he's your official sponsor."
"He hasn't given up that name yet?"
"I believe he's thinking about pulling another thirty-eight. He just needs to come up with a better name first. With him that could take a while."
"That's the story of his career." A lingering, awkward silence befall the workshop. I decided to break it. "So we don't know where Masquerade is either, I'm guessing?"
"No."
"What's his story, anyway? You seemed to be familiar with him."
"Ronald White the Second, son and only child of the noted developmental psychologist Ronald White."
"Sounds like he screwed up in raising his kid."
"Actually, that's the disturbing part of the whole story. From Doctor White's point of view, he succeeded. He was firmly on the nurture side of the nature versus nurture argument with regards to the development of psychosis. He decided to prove it, using his own son. Masquerade is Dr. White's ultimate experiment gone horribly right. We don't know if Ron the Second knew he'd developed powers when he sculpted a Pazuzu mask out of modeling clay, but he proceeded to murder his fa
ther as retribution for the years of psychological and emotional abuse. Wrapped a table around him and decapitated him with his own clipboard. He ran amok, calling himself Pazuzu until the mask got shattered in a fight. That's about when his actual abilities became apparent and people started calling him Masquerade."
"So he really doesn't know right from wrong?"
"I don't think he knows up from down," Cupric said. "He's not a planner. When they tried to capture him in Montreal, he got impaled through the gut by a piece of rebar. All he did was switch masks, because 'the injury happened to the other guy.' It was blood loss that finally subdued him, but he demolished three city blocks before it did. With his powers, he could have easily fixed the injury or withdrawn, but 'it happened to the other guy.' In prison, he just got worse, killing another inmate with his bare hands before trying to skin his face with a plastic spork. The guards took him down before he got far."
Gruefield 18 (Tarnished Sterling Omnibus) Page 13
