Origins of a D-List Supervillain

by Jim Bernheimer

  By my reckoning, it might not be the perfect plan, but it was pretty damned close.

  The reinforced wall leading to the vault put up more of a fight than I counted on. By the time I was inside and into the metal locker where they kept the cash drawers, there was only enough juice for two full power pulses.

  Hoping that wouldn’t matter, I stared at the green pastures of Nirvana, and started filling the pair of duffel bags with both fists while wishing that I had made a quick disconnect for the blasters to keep them from getting in the way. Sure, I could be a bit anal retentive at times, with all my planning and such, but I was glad I’d practiced with cut up stacks of newspaper standing in for the greenbacks. All those lockboxes surrounding me looked inviting, like Christmas presents waiting to be opened, but I resisted. The stuff in the boxes belonged to people. This pile of cash belonged to a faceless corporation, insured by the same government that took my invention and gave it to Promethia.

  Remorse wasn’t in my vocabulary at that particular moment.

  I lingered, probably longer than I should have, wanting to make certain that I had enough money to finish making my powersuit. A shadow blocked the light from Tracy in the van and I spun around.

  “Surrender evildoer!” A voice boomed, drawling hideously. The bugle was in his hand at the ready.

  It probably highlighted the difference between me and this idiot. I would have shot first and then said something stupid. His proclamation gave me enough time to dial the controller setting down two and send a pulse at him. His bloated ass went right back out the hole he came in. I didn’t want to ponder how he’d managed to find me, but I knew it was time to go. I looped my right arm through the bags and ran out the gap in the wall with my left arm thrust out like some absurd parody of the Heisman trophy.

  The Bugler had hit the front of the van and was slumped on the ground. He staggered to his feet. “A lucky blow villain, but justice plays with an upbeat tempo!”

  That was so mind-numbingly stupid that I couldn’t let it pass without comment. “Are you brain damaged?”

  The next thing I knew I was flat on my back with cash falling all over the place. My ears were ringing. Hardened acoustic energy really hurt!

  “Son of a bitch!” I bellowed and shot both blasters at him. The fat pig in a blue and silver unitard moved quicker than I anticipated, and my bolts of energy sailed right by him.

  Sometime in the microseconds after that, it occurred to me that my van was behind him. One went into the engine block and the other took out Tracy.

  “I just destroyed my damned getaway vehicle! It’s not supposed to be like this.”

  In my slack-jawed stupidity, I was blindsided by another funnel of sonic waves that knocked me into the broken wall. My entire head was ringing and there was blood in my mouth. I tried to use my one working hand to turn the controller up, fully intending to kill the Bugler. After three attempts, I finally got my hand in the right spot only to find that the bits of the broken dial came away in my twitching fingers.

  “...your name?” A muffled voice said. My lolling head located the source. The Bugler towered over me. It was hard to think straight. Part of me knew I had a concussion, but that part wasn’t really talking to the part of me that was in control of my body.

  “Huh?” My reply was very articulate.

  “What’s your name?”

  The question caught me off guard, and I wasn’t certain what to say. “ManaCALes.”

  “Manacles?” He repeated, while pulling my force blasters off and slapping a pair of handcuffs in their place. I put up a token resistance.

  There were dozens of reasons for me to be pissed off, but for some reason it was the way he said my name that got to me. “No, you moron! ManaCALes!”

  “That’s what I said, Manacles.”

  When I protested again, he wondered whether he’d hit me too hard. I just wanted to go to sleep. I’d been beaten by a guy with a sonic bugle.

  “I’ll get you for this,” I mumbled. It seemed like the appropriate thing to say.

  “Of course, you will,” he replied and yanking the cuffs to ensure they were tight. “That’s what all you supervillains say. C’mon, let’s get you to the ambulance where the nice policemen are waiting.”

  A supervillain? I thought. I guess I am. I’m a supervillain!

  I just wasn’t a very good one.

  • • •

  Five years. I probably would have gotten more, but the judge was a real bleeding heart who bought some of my lawyer’s arguments for leniency. I was a first time offender and all my crimes were committed in a way that I never hurt anyone except that one cop in Alabama. Even my not-so epic battle with The Biloxi Bugler hadn’t hurt the loser superhero. The prosecutor wanted to add a count of assault against me for his benefit, but that sanctimonious do-gooder declined.

  It was a relief to not face additional time, but it was also embarrassing. I’d gotten a concussion and a dislocated shoulder.

  I also didn’t try pleading “not guilty,” that threw the prosecutors and they didn’t have time to properly prepare the case. Plus, they could only pin the bank robbery and the one jewelry heist on me.

  Even so, I was going to the SuperMax—the prison for supervillains, where the cells were buried several hundred feet below the North Dakota landscape. To the inmates, it was known as The Pit. The nearest city was fifty miles away, and a pair of satellites sat in geosynchronous orbit watching every square inch of the compound; in both visual spectrum and several of the ones not visible to the naked eye.

  There had only ever been one successful mass breakout, and it had been led by the most unlikely of sources: that semi-catatonic Imaginary Larry. After three days, he decided that he didn’t want to be there anymore and ripped a way out of that place with his mind. Over two hundred prisoners followed him to freedom. Many were recaptured, but almost as many weren’t.

  Instead of taking Larry back there, they made a special mental facility for him in western North Carolina. Supposedly, he is living his high school days over and over again. If there were years I had to keep repeating, it would probably be them.

  There’d been a number of individual breakouts, but those were attributed to the powers possessed by those people and a lapse in procedures. I had no powers and no hope of getting myself out of this place anytime soon.

  Riding along in what amounted to an armored bus, I had my own US Marshal sitting next to me. Two rows up was another prisoner, who looked like he was five or six years younger than me. He must be more important, because there were three officers surrounding him. The man was joking with his guards about coming home again.

  Without my force blasters, I was just a guy in chains and didn’t really pose much of a threat.

  “Who is that?” I asked the man sitting beside me.

  “E.M. Pulsive,” the Marshal answered. “Ultraweapon brought him down in Las Vegas.”

  “Oh, so that’s what he looks like.” I recognized the name from the ATAI. He could turn his whole body into electricity. It was a real superpower.

  “Have you all figured out how to contain him yet?” Pulsive had some kind of thick collar on that looked similar to the neck braces they put people with spinal injuries in. “I heard he snuck out in someone’s cellphone once.”

  “It’s above my pay grade,” the suit next to me said. “Even if I did know, I wouldn’t be telling you.”

  I shrugged, and tried to think of a way I would contain a guy like E. M. Pulsive. Keeping him grounded had already been tried in several variations. From the insulation on the brace, my guess was they were going for a way to quickly short him out when he changed.

  The armored bus went through four checkpoints on the way in. Each one was a twenty minute inspection. At the third one, a small truck dragged up a small rubber coated platform with two conductive poles. They ushered Pulsive up to the platform and made him discharge his energy. It was actually pretty cool.

  “Doesn’t that get old?” I aske
d him when they brought him back onto the bus.

  “I’m not worried,” he said, ignoring the US Marshals around him. “They’ll screw up at some point. They always do. I just have to be patient. I’m Eddie. What are you in for?”

  “Cal Stringel,” I answered. “Bank robbery.”

  “First timer, huh?”

  “Yeah, what’s it like?” I’d seen the documentary the Hero Channel had made about The Pit, but that only told the sanitized version for the public.

  “Well, since you don’t look like you have any powers, you’ll probably end up as someone’s bitch.”

  That didn’t sound fun.

  He paused to see my reaction before laughing and saying, “Hah, you totally fell for that! It’s not so bad. They’ll try a bunch of that therapy bullshit on you to see if you can be rehabilitated. Me? I’m still serving my three hundred year sentence, so every time I get caught, they just bring me right on back and we play this little cat and mouse game all over again.”

  Eddie was an unrepentant criminal, and I just wasn’t there yet. He would have no qualms pulling daylight bank robberies or even killing someone who got in his way. Also, he seemed like a colossal ass.

  “So, any advice for the newbie?”

  “Find someone to teach you the ropes; it’s better to make friends inside than it is to make enemies. Most won’t do anything when we’re being watched twenty-four seven by the man, but they’ll remember you when you get on the outside and settle the score then. I hear that no one ever makes parole the first time around, wouldn’t know myself, of course, but that’s what they say.”

  I wouldn’t be eligible until after two years, so I’d have some time to think about it. “Thanks for the info.”

  “No problem. Inside, we villains try to stick together. Outside, is a whole ‘nother story.”

  • • •

  After passing through the fourth and final checkpoint, I got my first close up look at The Pit. The walls didn’t look as high as they did in that documentary, and I’d be willing to bet that they used some clever camera angles and touched up the images using editing software.

  As they took me to “In Processing,” Eddie went straight to the main building where the sole access to the lower levels resided. Everything else up top had a very mundane appearance—admin buildings and the like. I thought it looked mostly harmless.

  Ninety minutes later, after being deloused, subjected to a strip search as well as a cavity probe, I had a new definition for the term mostly harmless.

  “Prisoner number eight four seven two six ready for transport below.” The ever-present marshal said to the female platform operator.

  They ran me through another whole body imager before the operator was satisfied.

  “Proceed to the center of the platform, and make no other actions or you will be fired upon.”

  That was about the time I noticed the gun emplacements ringing the room. It was a hodgepodge of weaponry covering the gamut of the imagination. They had two turrets with fifty caliber machine guns, a pair of twenty millimeter cannons, lasers, masers, plasma cannons, pulse cannons, sonics, gas grenade launchers, and at least three things that I couldn’t immediately identify. The engineering nerd in me could have spent hours up here inspecting their defenses. The criminal in me didn’t like the way the weapons tracked my every movement.

  Guess which one won?

  In the center of this giant circle was something that resembled an over-sized port-a-potty. It was the elevator down. The documentary showed they had rooms where they simulated the outdoors, but odds were that I’d seen my last bit of sunlight for the foreseeable future. Two armed guards in Pummeler Exosuits rode down with me. They were militarized Waldos using Promethia’s synthetic muscles to enhance their strength. They’re presence wasn’t as intimidating to me. I’d even used the commercial versions before, at Promethia, but I knew that either of those two ‘roid ragers piloting those Pummelers would have no problem ripping my arm from its socket, if he chose to.

  Unlike regular elevators, there was no control panel inside, only an indicator of what floor we were on.

  I watched with interest as we descended all the way down to level fourteen, only two levels from the very bottom. One of the surprising things about The Pit was that they housed the more threatening prisoners on the higher levels. At first even I couldn’t understand it, until I realized that the more powerful villains, like Eddie, wouldn’t bother going down to free all the lightweights. Instead, they’d try to head for the surface and not try to start a prison riot. From that perspective, it made plenty of sense.

  As the armored door opened, one of the men in the Pummelers addressed me. “Welcome to your new home Eight Four Seven Two Six. There’s an orientation film in the room directly ahead of you. Watch it, or don’t. It doesn’t really matter. Your cell number is contained in your welcome packet. All prisoners are to be in their cells at nine p.m. If you’re not, a squad of Pummelers comes down and either gets you to your cell, or the infirmary.”

  With that, I was shoved out, hard, by one and the other kicked the plastic tub containing my prison uniforms, daily essentials, and processing paperwork at me like a soccer ball. It missed, but just barely and emptied the contents onto the ground. The two shared a laugh while the door slid shut and left me there.

  • • •

  “You get the top bunk, new meat,” the man inside the cell said. He took up most of the cell. The guy was built like an offensive lineman and had long, dirty blond hair and a bushy beard.

  “Hey, I’m Cal Stringel,” I tried to be nice to “Grizzly Adams.”

  “Bobby Walton, but everybody calls me Hillbilly Bobby.”

  I searched my mind for anything ATAI might have mentioned about this guy, but absolutely nada was there.

  “So, what’re you in for?”

  “Oh, hell, I don’t rightly know,” he said. “There was all them bank robberies, the destruction of public property, and a whole bunch of things.”

  “I’m sort of a bank robber myself,” I admitted. “Got caught on my first job, though.”

  “That sucks.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  He asked what I could do, and I answered that I invented stuff. On the other hand, Bobby could lift five or six tons. He ran afoul of the Gulf Coast Guardians when he was working with another villain and I was forced to confess that the Biloxi Bugler took me down.

  “I’ve fought him before,” Bobby said. “He don’t look like much, but he’s real tricky like. Slipperier than a greased pig.”

  Bobby took me on a tour and showed me where the cafeteria, gym, recreation room, and the automated dispensary were. The prisoners were actually in charge down here. He knew where the library was, but had never gone in. The only time the guards and staff came down was after lights out and lockdown. They refilled the automated dispensers and left before the cells opened again. Our therapy sessions took place via video teleconferencing; there was little or no chance of taking someone hostage.

  “What happens if the prisoners break the rules?”

  Bobby looked at me and said, “Last time we did that, they didn’t refill the dispensers for two days. Things got a little tense down here when the food started running out. They also shut off the shitter pumps and that got everyone’s attention real quick-like.”

  For the first few days, I kept my head down. There were forty-six prisoners on this level. Most had minor powers, but some were just average schmucks like me. Bobby could probably take on three or four of those guys in the Pummeler suits.

  On the third day, I was asking Bobby what he thought I could have done differently and he laughed, before saying, “You’re a smart guy, Cal, but you’re stupid. You didn’t have a hideout. They got all the cash and stolen goods back, didn’t they?”

  “Yeah,” I said, not enjoying the feeling of a guy who didn’t finish seventh grade tell me what a rube I was.

  “Shit! Always, and I mean always, have a hidden stash. Yo
u should’ve hooked up with someone real to be a driver.”

  “I didn’t have any connections!” I protested.

  “Well, that’s what you need to do while you’re here, build up a bunch of contacts. The big boys a few levels up are always hiring us little guys to steal them something or get revenge on someone who did them dirty. A guy like you could make a pretty penny just building stuff for people. Probably a lot less risk and a lot more reward doing that. I’m up for my second parole board in six months, but I’ll do my best to get you in the know before I get my sweet ass outta here.”

  Damned if he didn’t have a point. I could learn a lot from a bumpkin like him. My Mr. Miyagi was more likely to swill moonshine than drink hot tea, but it was a start.

  • • •

  “Mr. Stringel,” Doctor Ingalls said on the other side of the screen. “You seem to have considerable unresolved tension with the Promethia Corporation. Before you can make any real progress, you have to confront and overcome this.”

  “Doc,” I said. “You’ve obviously never had someone both figuratively and literally ruin your life, take your work, and lie about it just so they could make a buck.”

  The older black man with white hair shook his head and said, “Mr. Stringel, I was just a young child during the Civil Rights movement, but I saw enough of ignorant people trying to ruin my life and my whole family’s life, so I’ll give you something you probably need to hear. The world does not revolve around you. The sun does not rise and set just for you. You tried to take the easy way out and gave in to your ego. Lazarus Patterson and his employees did not put you in prison; you did that all by yourself. If you don’t own your past, you can never hope to own your future.”

  “I guess we’re just going to have to agree to disagree on that one for now,” I replied to the sanctimonious prick on the other end.

  “This is a journey, Calvin. You’re not going to get there in a week, or even a year. I can’t change the way you think. I don’t have any kind of superpowers, but I can work with you until you are ready to change the way you think. We’ve got a few minutes left, so let’s change the topic; have you written your parents yet, as we discussed in our last session?”