by Logan Jacobs
Chapter 1
We’d been waiting a month to kill this guy.
The Human Magnet was a magnetically charged supervillain who had been leading a string of bank robberies all across Grayville. He targeted a particular bank in the city because the owners stubbornly refused to update their tech to something beyond steel doors and a weak security system.
They were idiots, of course, but that didn’t mean they deserved to be robbed.
Before my team and I had arrived in Grayville, The Human Magnet used to rob this bank at least twice a month without being contested. Now, a whole month had passed since he’d made an attempt to rob it, so I figured that he was due to hit it again any night now.
That’s why we were here, crouched on the various buildings across the street with our guns ready to kill the asshole when he showed up.
A month ago we’d killed Mayhem, one of Grayville’s major supervillains, and since then there was a noticeable lack of new copycat supervillains and crime rates were already down a significant percentage. Now that the various villains of the city knew there was a risk beyond a few months in jail, people in Grayville were less interested in taking up the mantle of supervillain.
Most of the media outlets had called my anonymous destruction of Mayhem’s hideout an act of terrorism, but more than a few had lauded the act as one of true heroism.
I, of course, agreed with them.
It felt pretty damn good to strike obvious fear into the hearts of Grayville’s criminals. In just a week of activity, I had already made more progress in protecting this city than the Shadow Knight had in his entire career.
Just like in our weapons and technology businesses, I was easily beating Dan Slade in the superhero business.
I adjusted the position of my binocular-enhanced glasses to scan the streets around the bank for any sign of movement. Everything felt quiet and empty, and it was almost peaceful in the way the early hours of the morning could be. I was restless, though, so I twitched my upgraded, palm-sized laser toward the slightest movements near the bank, but it was never anything more than a stray cat.
“Any sign of him?” I asked through my earpiece to my partner on this mission, who was also my superpowered girlfriend.
“Nothing here,” Elizabeth, known as Dynamo to the rest of the world, sighed from where she was stationed on the other side of the bank.
Elizabeth had started her superhero career with the Wardens, who were the premiere defenders of Pinnacle City, my home. Well, they were the “premiere defenders” in the sense that they postured around and were entirely useless at actually preventing crime, but they had been the only defenders of the city for a while. That is, until I picked up the mantle and started dealing with criminals and supervillains in my own, and much more efficient, way.
The Wardens only cared about their image and rarely removed their supervillain enemies for good. They seemed to know that if they started killing their enemies rather than just tossing them into a poorly guarded prison, they’d get less attention. Most of their “work” was spent at photo-ops and press conferences.
So Elizabeth, smart girl that she is, had very quickly abandoned the Wardens to come work for me instead. There also may have been a bit of seduction on my part, but I could tell she would be naturally drawn to my way of fighting crime from the first moment I saw her. That, and I was naturally drawn to her long, powerful legs in her high-waisted, lipstick-red leotard that revealed the creamy-white skin of her upper thighs. I kept those design elements in the suit I’d made for her, however.
Useless as they could be, the Wardens sure knew how to make a sexy design.
But the suits I designed weren’t just for show, even if they did look damn good. My suits were packed to the brim with as much power-boosting mechanics as I could come up with. In my version of her supersuit, Elizabeth’s superpowered punches could crush a man’s skull with no effort at all. It was a pretty impressive sight to behold. She was far better off with me than she’d ever been driving around and looking pretty for the Wardens. We actually made a difference in both Pinnacle City and here in Grayville.
And we’d take out one more supervillain tonight.
“I can’t sense any signs of movement within or around the bank,” the sultry voice of my AI assistant Aileen informed me.
“He has to be around here somewhere.” I groaned and lowered my binoculars to get a better overview of the city. “Is he really that scared?”
“The odds of him striking tonight are still very high,” Aileen continued to explain. “I have traced and tracked his known movements and calculated that tonight has the ideal conditions for him to make a robbery attempt. If not tonight, the next ideal conditions will not be for another several weeks.”
As my personally designed AI assistant, I knew Aileen’s calculations were always accurate, provided she had the right information. I designed her that way and chose to place my trust in her judgement. It was basically just trusting my own judgement, and I rarely ever doubted myself.
We’d left her physical body back in the basement of my new Grayville abode. Aileen was a wonderful piece of work, with a banging body that could easily pass for a bodacious human supermodel. That is, a bald and metallic supermodel. I had yet to finalize my development on her skin covering, but as soon as I had that done, she would be indistinguishable from any other stunningly beautiful human woman. I knew how badly she wanted that, as much as a robot could want something, but I’d really been too busy with my other endeavors to spend much time on it.
“How long do you want to wait for him?” Elizabeth said with a yawn that crackled through our comms.
I stared out across the dreary, aptly named city of Grayville. As quiet as it seemed, I knew that wouldn’t last long. This city was plagued by even more crime than Pinnacle City was, and even though the Shadow Knight wasn’t as much of a showboat as the Wardens, he was just as equally useless. To make matters worse, the prison he shoved his superpowered enemies in had some of the worst security I’d ever seen, and the laws were practically written to give supervillains a lenient sentence. To me, it was stupid to an unfathomable level to let them live, but the Shadow Knight had a very strict moral code that he seemed to think made him better than me.
Otherwise, I might have considered making him an ally. We had a good deal of things in common, which included the fact that we lacked any superhuman abilities of our own. The Shadow Knight’s true identity was Dan Slade, a fellow billionaire playboy. Supposedly he also had as much of an appetite for beautiful women and extravagance as I did, but I was entirely sure that was just an act he put on for the press. The gruff, sullen, stick-in-the-mud mantle of the Shadow Knight appeared to be closer to his actual personality.
I might have been able to tolerate that had he not been so obsessed with keeping superpowered murderers alive. Eventually, I suspected, our philosophical differences would cause an unpleasant confrontation.
“Miles?” Elizabeth asked, and her words pulled me from my thoughts and back to the event at hand.
“We’ll stay here as long as it takes,” I confirmed.
“Another sleepless night, then,” Elizabeth joked.
As much as I would have loved to take her back to our bedroom instead, I knew we had to remain focused on the task at hand. There would be plenty of time for playing around later.
We lapsed back into silence, but it didn't last for long. As soon as I'd settled back into my perch on the rooftop, an alert blared through our comms, so I immediately switched my palm-blaster on to power it up.
“Where is he?” I asked as my eyes roamed over the front entrance of the bank.
&
nbsp; “Police reports are coming in about a smash-and-grab at a nearby jewelry store,” Aileen explained, and I flipped open my tablet to check out the new information she'd sent over.
“Looks like a super, likely with moderate indestructibility powers,” Elizabeth commented. “He smashed the glass cases with just his bare fist, and I don’t see any injuries on him.”
“The Wall,” Aileen informed us. “Only known power is a very tough outer layer of skin that can’t be penetrated. He possesses no superstrength or other abilities.”
“Hmmm,” I mused. The cops wouldn't be able to handle him on their own. I had a decision to make, and I needed to think quickly. I knew in my gut that the Human Magnet was probably going to strike tonight, but I couldn't in good conscience let another robbery occur only a few blocks away without doing something. Neither supers were incredibly powerful, so it was entirely possible for us to split up and take out both at once. It might be difficult, but it was nothing that Elizabeth and I couldn’t handle.
“Elizabeth, go after him,” I said as I made up my mind.
“What?” she asked. “But what about the Human Magnet? Aileen seems certain he’ll show up any minute now.”
“Within the hour,” Aileen confirmed.
“I’ve got him covered,” I assured her.
“Are you sure?” she asked, and her voice lifted at the end of her sentence in a way that convinced me she was worried about me fighting alone.
“Yeah, of course I’m sure.” I smirked and glanced down at the new plating I’d extended from my fist up my arm, where it covered most of the circuits and tech required to fuel the laser implemented in my palm. I’d only installed the laser in one hand, but for symmetry’s sake both of my arms were plated with sleek metal. It would allow my left hand to pack a powerful punch as well, maybe not as powerful as Dynamo’s would be, but easily enough to end a fight with one blow.
“If you’re sure,” she lilted again.
“Go catch up to The Wall. This “Human Magnet” has small-time powers, and I want to test out my new arm lasers against an opponent with the ability to control metal. I’m actually a bit giddy about it.”
“I’ll leave him in your very capable hands, then,” she laughed, and then she dropped her voice into a flirtatious purr. “I’ll keep you updated.”
“Likewise,” I replied and watched her leap down from the building in the distance.
I might not have had any superpowers like her ability to sense lies, but I had a good feeling about tonight. Aileen’s predictions were very rarely wrong, and if we were both successful, then we’d take out two birds with one metaphorical stone tonight.
“Aileen, keep watch,” I ordered as I flicked my thumb against the palm-blaster’s switch to power it back off for now. “I’m going down to the ground floor, so I can rush out as soon as this bastard makes a move now that Elizabeth isn’t around to grab him.”
“Understood,” she acknowledged as I entered the elevator.
As soon as I exited the elevator, there was a crash outside.
“Miles, he has arrived,” Aileen informed me.
“No shit,” I chuckled.
I ran out of the building across from the bank and saw a smoking crater in the side of the bank’s reinforced walls. It wasn’t very subtle, but it was in line with the Human Magnet’s usual M.O. of ripping off the doors to the vaults, so maybe he was in a hurry and decided to just smash through the walls.
“Can you get a read on who’s inside, Aileen?” I asked, but before she could answer me, a man emerged from the opening carrying two fat duffle bags full of what I assumed must be bills.
He was covered from head to toe in a clunky metal suit. Nothing even remotely as sophisticated as the one I was working on, or even anything the Wardens might have come up with. It looked like he’d just slapped scraps of any kind of metallic material he could find to himself, with no rhyme or reason to it. He was just a man, covered in scrap metal.
As someone who had recently gotten into the business of metal plating on supersuits, I was deeply offended by how primitive his was.
He turned stiffly to look at me, and I noticed he was also wearing a mask to obscure most of his face. It was actually a pretty sleek design, unlike the rest of his outfit, and immediately struck me with an idea for a better helmet design to add to my own suit.
But I had a job to do. I could consider redesigns later.
The Human Magnet, rather than actually try to fight me, turned immediately and ran down the street, and each of his huge footsteps echoed with a loud crunch. So he really was a coward.
“Where’s he headed? Getaway car? Headquarters?” I rapid-fired at Aileen as I started after him.
“Possibly headed toward an armored vehicle a couple hundred feet away, through some back alleys.” My robotic assistant calculated all of his potential escape routes and narrowed it down to the most likely one.
It didn’t matter, though. He wouldn’t make it that far.
I charged forward as I began to power up the laser in my palm. One blast to the head should be enough to ruin his skull, even through his metal mask, and I was looking forward to how effectively my new weapon sprayed and or cooked his skull and brain matter. I didn’t trust the prisons or justice system of Grayville, and I was sure no one would miss the Human Magnet if I killed him and ended his spree of robberies for good. No one except maybe the Shadow Knight, who would probably be upset I’d killed another one of his precious supervillains.
Slade was an idiot.
My right arm began to whir as the mechanisms for my laser fired up, and I continued to close the distance between me and the scrap-metal supervillain. The sound of the laser warming up grew loud enough to draw his attention, and his metal-plated head swiveled to look behind him. Even beneath the mask, I could see his eyes grow wide with terror, and he turned around to try to redouble his efforts to get away despite his heavy suit.
It felt pretty good to put that kind of fear in someone, so I smirked and raised my arm at him.
“Creator!” Aileen’s distress cut through my earpiece, “Behind you--”
There was a rustle of feathers and a giant, cowled menace swooped out from overhead and landed directly in front of the Human Magnet. I skidded to a stop and swung my arm to the side just as the laser erupted from my arm. The beam arched across the alley away from the Shadow Knight, cut a dumpster in half, and then cleaved a wedge out of the brick building to my right as if it was a piece of cheese.
The Shadow Knight didn’t seem to realize that I’d just saved his idiot life, since he wasn’t even looking in my direction. Instead, he intercepted the metal-masked robber and flung him to the ground. Both bags of money dropped, and the robber froze entirely and barely put up a fight as the feather-cloaked hero subdued him. I couldn’t tell if it was because he was afraid of the Shadow Knight or because my arm laser hand just ruined the alleyway, but he hadn’t struggled at all.
“Miles?” Elizabeth asked, “Is everything okay? I handed the Wall over to the police, so if you need me to be there I can--”
“In a minute,” I cut her off. “I’ve hit a roadblock in the form of a carrion crow.”
“Him again?” she groaned. “Alright. I’ll finish up here and meet you there.”
“Don’t bother,” I dismissed, “Just meet me back at the house.”
There was no point in making her suffer along with me. That, and I didn’t want the Shadow Knight to think I had to rely on my girlfriend to fight my battles for me.
“You’re coming with me, Magnet,” the Shadow Knight said to his captive with a gruff, obviously faked voice.
It made me want to roll my eyes at how forced it sounded, but it sure seemed to instill enough pants-wetting fear into the magnetized supervillain, who cowered pathetically.
“I’m sorry, I never would have done this if not for my family, my wife is pregnant, my kids are starving,” the Human Magnet sputtered out, and then he continued to drop every convenient ex
cuse in the book as he cowered on the ground.
Give me a break.
To his credit, the Shadow Knight didn’t pay much attention to the Human Magnet’s babbled excuses. He had turned to glare at me instead, and his eyes were dark and shadowed beneath his crow mask. I was furious that he’d shown up here solely to interrupt my kill rather than handle any of the other rampant crime happening in his city.
An entire month of stake-outs, and the Shadow Knight had ruined it.
“Was that necessary?” I snapped as I shook my arm to loosen my muscles. The laser had been more of a blast than a single laser point, and I felt more recoil than I’d expected it to.
“Was that?” the Shadow Knight replied, and he looked pointedly toward the dissected trash bin and cut-out building wall.
It blended in with the run-down buildings and the rest of the cracked sidewalk, so I didn’t even think it looked that bad.
“Yes,” I scoffed. “It would have been enough to knock him out.”
“Or kill him.” The Shadow Knight sounded unamused.
I rolled my eyes. “And?”
“No one deserves to die like that.” His voice was rough in response. “Everyone deserves a second chance.”
“And a third, and a fourth, and a fifth?” I retorted.
“They deserve a chance to be redeemed,” he hissed through grinding teeth.
I couldn’t believe he was trying to spout that kind of thing after everything that had happened with Mayhem. Had he seriously not learned from that at all?
“Right, that’s why all your supervillains keep breaking out of prison to kill more people.” I scoffed.
“You don’t understand.” The crow-masked hero said as he exhaled slowly. “We don’t get to play god. We don’t have the right to determine who lives and who dies. If we start doing that, we’ll be no better than they are.”
“So?” My hand flexed into a fist as I replied. “Who does, then? Why can’t it be us? It seems pretty obvious to me who should live and who should die. And here’s a hint for you: mass murderers deserve to fucking die.”
The Shadow Knight also flexed his hands into fists as he glared at me. Meanwhile, the Human Magnet started to struggle back up to his feet, but then Slade made a motion with his hand and an advanced silicone net shot out and fell over the villian to keep him pinned to the alley ground. That wasn’t a good sign, because it meant he’d want both of his hands free for our “conversation.”
