The four uniformed officers, three men and a woman, all look between excited and nervous. I can’t handle the silence anymore.
“How long have you all been on the force?” I ask not knowing what else to say. The program Epic wrote let’s me speak with my normal synthesized voice.
“We’re not really supposed to talk to you,” the woman says, her name tag reads Marino.
“Really? Come on, despite what it might seem like, my suit isn’t a lot of fun to be in. I haven’t figured out how to put food and water in it. I’m exhausted, but sleeping is impossible inside this thing. Cut me some slack and talk to me.” It’s all true, no lies here. I’m exhausted, I would sleep if I could, but I can’t.
“What was it like, you know, to fly up with the nuke?” One of the men asks.
“My brother is in State Police, did you really get hit by a anti-tank weapon in the mountains?” Marino asks.
“All good questions. The nuke sucked. I’m sure you all have had moments where you thought you were going to die, well it was mine. I don’t know about the anti-tank weapons—they had fifty-cals loaded with armor piercing rounds, does that count?”
“Holy cow. Yeah. I was in the Army, and AP rounds on a fifty will penetrate a lot of armor, including some tanks.” The one standing by the door says. He has a similar look to Luke, except smaller, more compact, and not nearly as handsome.
“Thank you officers, you can go,” a man in a cheap suit walks in. He’s older, maybe in his 40’s, with some slight graying around his temple. From his shape he looks like he could stand to work out more. He has no trace of an accent, even though he looks Hispanic.
The officers all nod. They shuffle out of the room with a couple of smiles for me.
“Based on the weapon you described, and the telemetry from the buildings security, we’re going preliminarily rule this self-defense. Now Ms…?”
“Arsenal,” I say, “Ms. Arsenal if you must.”
He gives me the deadpan stare. “This is a potential homicide investigation, I don’t have time for your games—”
“You just said it was self-defense?” I ask. There goes my mouth again.
“The initial ruling is self-defense, but new evidence could always come to light. Now, your name?”
“Arsenal.”
He’s really irritated now. If he thinks I’m putting my name in the public domain, he’s crazy.
“Officer…?”
“Detective,” he growls.
“Detective, Arizona state law, and the US Supreme Court backs this up, my name doesn’t go public as long as one named member of a team does have the information. In other words… You. Don’t. Get. To. Know. Who. I. Am.”
The pencil in his hand snaps and he lurches to his feet.
“This isn’t over. If I find one shred of evidence you murdered these men I will have you in cuffs so fast it will make your head spin.”’
I hold out my arms. Of course I can’t put the wrists anywhere near together, “By all means, slap away.”
He jabs his fingers at me, “All you heroes think you’re above the law. We have ways of dealing with you.” He spins and storms out. I throw a mock Nazi salute in his direction, jerk.
My HUD flickers for a second as Epic connects with it.
I’m detecting severe lacerations to your face and elevated respiratory distress. Do you need ems?
“I need to get out of the armor, can you connect me to Kate?”
He doesn’t respond but her voice is in my ear a half second later.
“You okay?”
“I really need to get out of this and see a doctor.” A second later she pops into existence in front of me. She switched to her work clothes before the police arrived, she’s wearing her form-fitting black catsuit with all her gadgets, minus the weapons, and her ID is clipped to her chest to show the police she really does work here.
“Let’s get you upstairs.”
Two hours later I’m sitting in the private wing of Valley Hospital. They don’t know who I am, but the companies insurance covers all wounds and injuries sustained while on duty or on property. Good insurance too, I don’t even need a co-pay.
The doctor is busy making hmm noises as he stitches up the four cuts on my face.
“It looks really painful,” Kate says. She’s back in her civvies.
“It isn’t.”
“But it—”
“The blades were razor sharp,” I glance at her, “they barely even sting. I’m just glad it was my face and not my legs, that can be dangerous.”
“Dangerous?” she asks.
“Yeah, I can hurt myself and not know it. Not feeling pain doesn’t mean I won’t get infections.”
“You should be more careful Ms. Lockheart. You are correct though, the razors were extremely sharp. Any deeper and you would need surgery. As it is, if you wear the bandage the nurse will apply, keep it clean and dry, there should be minimal scarring.”
“Thanks, Doc.” He leaves the room. My emotional and physical strength is all but sapped. Suddenly, Kate is there engulfing me in a hug.
“I’m glad you’re okay,” she says.
“Me, too. Is Carlos better?”
She lets go and looks me in the eye, her hands stay on my shoulders though. Either she is using her whammy on me, or I am feeling better naturally. At this point, I don’t care which.
“He’s fine, full recovery and already home.”
“He’s going to be disappointed he didn’t see you.”
She shrugs.
“Sounds like he stood up bravely, I might have to drop by his house and thank him.”
I laughed. If she went to visit Carlos he would about die.
Oh how I hate monitor duty. Until the bandage is off my face I am to avoid excessive stress. Which means no armor and no patrol. Which puts everyone else on patrol shifts while I sit in our command room and listen for trouble. I told Luke I could easily program an algorithm to do this and he said, “It’s our duty to be there for one another.”
Whatever. I could also do this from my room while I worked on my armor. He said I would be too distracted. I hate it when he’s right. I get we can’t trust Central, but why can’t we hire someone to do this full time instead of taking a person out of the field? Granted, I would be out regardless, but in general? It doesn’t make any sense. I haven’t seen the budget, though. It’s possible there isn’t room for one. Hmm, I suppose a certain company with a planetary sounding name could donate a few full-time people. I’m sure there are plenty of qualified 9-1-1 operators who wouldn’t mind a pay raise and full benefits. I make a note of that for later.
I add it to my long, long list of things which don’t make sense. Like, why we haven’t been assigned any new recruits from the national pool? I decided I would be a little pro-active, Luke is always complaining, though not loudly, that I don’t do enough extracurricular for the team. Surely he can’t complain about me checking the available heroes and maybe even sending in a request?
The problem of course, is Category-7. All the hardware is theirs. Donated to the teams nationwide, along with buildings, materials, etc. They’re a fortune fifteen company, they have a long track record of being pro-meta, and as far as I can tell, are clean as a whistle. Other than them denying any involvement in my parents disappearance, they seem legit. They have tech that shouldn’t exist, but they’re clean.
How do I do look into them without them tracking my every move? By not using their computers. This is why I’ve brought my own little mainframe down with me from upstairs. It’s the size of a game console, has its own built-in liquid cooling and can run circles around anything commercially available. I even built a virtual interface for it. Once I have it installed I power it on. Since I absolutely despise blinking lights, the only way to know it is on is by the slight hum. Next, I put my glasses on. They look like standard safety glasses. It was the best I could do on short notice. The world of the computers comes alive in front of me.
T
his is going to be good.
Now, I’m no hacker. I do have a pretty good understanding of how things work. Also, I’m plugged into a port inside the company’s firewall. Technically, I’m not hacking anything.
Okay, “Epic, let’s manufacture an ID. Bring up a list of their admins… Let’s go with Assistant Sys Admin, Richard West, he looks like a nice fellow. Sorry Richard, but I’m sure they will figure out it wasn’t you.”
Epic responds in my field of vision, Affirmative.
It takes me all of ten minutes to crack their system and I’m in. Now to pull up the database… ah. Perfect.
Wow. There are hundreds of candidates? I quickly check the roster of the nineteen state teams. All of them are understaffed. It can’t be the budget, hell they barely pay me a living wage to do this. It’s no wonder everyone who can earn extra money does.
“Arsenal, are you monitoring the fire on the east side?” Luke asks in my ear.
Crap. No I’m not.
“Uh, yeah, let me give you an update.”
“Epic!”
Four-Alarm fire on the 38th block of East Indian road. A propane hauler lost control and tipped over, knocking down a telephone pole. The truck exploded from the pressure build up and now the three buildings closest are on fire.
I relay it to Luke word-for-word.
“Have they asked for assistance?”
I check the log. No they haven’t. I’m not sure what good Luke or Domino would be, but Mr. Perfect can do a lot with his constructs. The thought briefly enters my mind before I’m typing away, manufacturing a PFD request for Diamondback assistance, I throw Mr. Perfect’s name on their specifically.
“It just came in. They’re asking for any and all assistance, specifically if Mr. Perfect can come,” I lie like a champ. Maybe this monitor duty thing isn’t so bad.
“They asked for me by name?” Perfect interjects.
Crap, maybe they don’t do that?
“Uh yeah, they say you can use your fancy magic to contain and extinguish flames,” I reply.
“I never considered doing it before, but yeah, it should work. Let them know I’m on my way!”
He sounds happy. I switch freqs to PFD and open the mic, “Incident Commander 38th block, Diamondback assistance is inbound. He says he can contain any hot spots you have.”
The voice which responds is gruff and hurried, “We could use all the help we can get, have him report to Chief Gomez.”
I relay that little tidbit to Perfect. All in a days work for Amelia Lockheart, dispatcher.
It quiets down and I can return to my real job. If I could put my feet up on the desk I would. The Category-7 database is full of potentials, most are untrained and underpowered.
Ooh, a guy who can talk to fish, like that would ever come in handy. Here’s another useless one. He can levitate. That’s it. Nothing else, just levitate himself a foot off the ground. I don’t know what would be worse, not having super-powers or having them and they end up being useless.
What we really need is a TK, like Harper, or a Telepath. Scratch that, no telepathy. I don’t need anyone sifting through my—
Oh wow. This guy, we need him. Tony Shaw, aka Fleet. His parents immigrated here from China and he was born in Boston. Oh I’m going to love his accent! He can run at five hundred and fifty miles per hour? I do the math, at top speed he can cover eight hundred feet in one second. Wow. How is he not recruited? His other powers are all secondary to his running, he generates a frictionless field while he’s moving, it extends a half inch around him. He also can turn sharp corners going as fast as three-hundred miles per hour.
He’s been on the probationary waiting list for three years. He’s worked as a courier in Boston, New York, and LA. Currently he’s living in Minnesota. His application to the State Militia there has already been denied. Why?
Oh. I see. In field operations he consumes eighteen thousand calories a day. The average person eats a tenth of that. He has been known to consume as much as fifty. I can understand him being a problem where food isn’t readily available. In a city? He’s a no-brainer.
Now, how to ask for him here? I hop over to our system and pull up the interface and log in as me. Turns out, any member can request a probationary but only the team leader can sign off on full membership. Awesome. I fill out the form, request Fleet, and submit. Now, back over to my Mr. West’s sysadmin login and approve the request. Done.
Now with that taken care of, I can work on the other thing. With my sysadmin access I create a little back door, a unused port and an access code for it. Next, I write a quick worm. It will siphon off information about Cat-7. A file here, a folder there, nothing they will really notice. Store it, then I can access it through the back door, download it and go over it. I can’t actually have it search for anything, that would raise too many flags. I can have it scan files as they are accessed and copy them. It might take a while but eventually someone will access a file that says what happened to my parents. Especially once they know who I am.
I log out and smile. I’m one step closer to finding my parents. Also, we’re terribly underhanded. A speedster will round out our powerset nicely and keep us versatile. Heck, if all he did was evacuate areas in trouble it would be worth having him.
“Arsenal?” I jump in my chair and let out a sharp scream. I throw my glasses behind my server, spin the chair around and lean over with elbow on the desk to block the speaker’s view of my equipment.
“Y—yes, that’s me!” I say too loud.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” says the man. He’s in his mid-thirties, handsome if you're into movie star good looks and a gymnast build.
“I’m Sam Sykes,” he holds out his hand. He’s four feet away from me and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.
“Oh, sorry. That was rude of me.” He walks forward and tries again. I reach up and take his hand. His shake is firm but gentle.
“I arrived via helicopter from the airport and the man in the intercom said you were on monitor duty. Is now a bad time to talk?”
I glance around at my unauthorized computer, thankful it doesn’t have any lights to bring attention to it. I’m sure if the team needs me I can still respond.
“Sure,” I say eagerly, “Pull up a chair.”
“Thanks. This won’t take but a few minutes.” He grabs a chair from out in the hallway and lugs it in. While he’s out I whisper to Epic, “Take over monitor duty, use your new voice.”
“Affirmative,” I hear in my ear. Wow, it’s weird to hear him speak. I programmed him to have a masculine, gravely voice. There’s this actor I love who does this mix of dark sci-fi and car racing movies and Epic sounds exactly like him. Mostly because I sampled every movie and used the audio waves to program him. Even the movie where he only says three words the whole time!
“So,” I drag out the ‘o’, “What brings a PR minion down from on high?”
“Actually I’m the vice president in charge of PR. You don’t recognize me? I’m at all the press releases and I do the TV spot. You know, When a storm rolls into town, you need to fight fire with fire, call Category-7!”
I nod and force a smile. “Oh yeah, sure you look taller in person.”
“Thanks, I don’t hear that one, usually it is the other way around!” Even with my emotional guard up he’s putting me at ease. I wonder if he has powers?
“After Las Vegas you’ve become something of a public figure. The fact that you haven’t done any interviews in or out of your armor only adds to your mystique. The only time anyone sees you is on Youtube.”
Yeah I kind of like it that way. They certainly aren’t getting me out of my armor and away from it for an interview.
“We would like to do a series of interviews with you, do the morning talk show circuit, maybe even a few late night shows. There’s even a spot on Studio 50, for you. We just need to figure out the logistics.”
“No,” I say.
“No to Studio 50? It’s t
he biggest news show in the country. More people watch that than Jeopardy!” He doesn’t seem put out by my proclamation, maybe he just doesn’t understand what I’m saying.
“No to the whole thing. I’m not giving an interview out of my armor.”
He furrows his brows for a moment and takes out his phone and taps in a few quick notes.
“If it is your identity you’re worried about we can disguise you. This gentlemen here,” he turns the phone around it’s a picture of a tall man in a mime costume.
“He’s on the New York team, he can make you look like anyone else. It’s the perfect disguise. Would that do?”
“Unless it’s an illusion or some form of mind control, you can’t hide my chair. But no, that isn’t why.”
He purses his lips together. “I have to say Ms. Lockheart, you’re a tough one,” he turns it into a smile, “but I’m sure we can come to an agreement!” He leans in a little closer. His aftershave smells amazing. I want to help him, he’s so handsome and I—
Bastard. Pheromones. They couldn’t physically get me so they’re using sly tactics. I put my hand to my ear and fake an emergency call.
“Domino, you’re in trouble? Hang on let me coordinate,” I put my hand over my ear as if I’m muting the microphone in the earpiece, “We’ve got a passable cafeteria if you want to go downstairs, and we can discuss this when I’m off duty.”
“I’m happy to wait here,” he says with a smile. I’m sure he is. A few more minutes of his proximity in a small room and I would be putty in his hands. I nod and turn around and proceed to work on my fake call. Think! I only have maybe five more minutes. From what I understand about Kate’s powers the longer you’re in proximity the harder it gets to resist her.
I pull up my chat window and message Epic.
Override HVAC and turn on the heat. As hot as you can get. Open any windows you can.
Affirmative.
I feel the vibration of the furnace kick in and suddenly hot air is blowing into the room instead of cold. A dry, hot breeze rolls in from the hallway telling me Epic opened a window.
Arsenal (Full Metal Superhero Book 1) Page 11
