by Ben Bequer
Of course, the whole thing was window dressing, an opening act meant to entice the main event. A lot was riding on Haha snatching the honey pot, and the strength of my code but I was confident it would work.
I had no choice.
Bubu and I took a brief tour of the entryway – a gorgeous multistory foyer dubbed “The Hall of Honor” in the real Castle Peles. Haha’s team would come in through the main entrance and I would meet them there, several stories up, looking down on them like a good villain should. The next step would be to parlay, to threaten each other, then the fight would begin, and so would my little game.
He took me to a special spot, marked with a golden X embroidered onto the carpet in case I forgot.
“Subtle,” I said.
“I didn’t want you to forget your mark,” he chuckled. “Stand here or bad shit will happen.”
I leaned on the wooden balcony, reveling in the beauty of the place. The second floor walls were painted blue, contrasting with the wooden carvings throughout, with a triple archway leading in from the main entry. It was all special polymers and composites, but from this view, it looked real. This was where it would all begin.
“Once the drones are ready, let me know,” I said.
Bubu looked down and I saw a smile play on his face, “It’s going to be murder, bro.”
“I hope,” I said. “But if it goes the wrong way…”
“It won’t.”
“Bubu,” I said. “I want you to tell Sebas and his guys, and all the Romani; tell them all to leave now.”
He stared at me.
“And you too.”
Bubu raised an eyebrow, as if I was kidding. “I’m serious, Bubu. I don’t want you here while it all goes down. I can finish from here,” I told him, but he made no move to leave. “What?”
Bubu took a half step up the stairs.
“You can’t stay, Bubu.”
He ignored me, picking at the wooden-looking plastic railing with his nail.
I took a step down and clasped his shoulder.
“If I make it through today, bro, I’ll find a way to thank you. A proper way, not just money. But you have to think of your wife and kid. Now’s not the time to be brave. Me and Apogee can handle this, okay? But we can’t do our jobs if we have to worry about you.”
He nodded, “I was just thinking that no one is going to be minding the computer.”
“I can do that,” I said motioning to my command drone.
“What if it gets blown up?”
I smiled, touched by his concern and loyalty. “By the time that’s a problem, it won’t matter. Everything will be in progress.”
“Bro, what if the robot does things out of order, or if he breaks into the system?”
“That’s what I’m counting on.”
“Yeah, but you know what I mean. With all of us gone, no one will be able to keep an eye on you.”
I got serious, gripped his shoulders hard. “You could die. It’s not worth it…” I paused. “I’m not worth it.” I swallowed hard and went on. “Go to your family. You’ve done splendid; this is more that I had hoped. Please, do it for me.”
He shook his head. “No bro. I could lie, right, then go down there and surprise you at the right moment. ‘Bro I’m here!’ But better you know I’m here. Better you know I have your back down there. And if they get me, they get me. We go down together.”
I could tell in his eyes that he wasn’t going to waver. I’d have to knock him out and drive him home before he gave up.
“Okay,” I said. “Drone squadron five,” I spoke to the command drone I had nearby. “On station, on new target, designated…,” I paused, looking at him with a big smile. “Romanian Motherfucker.”
* * * *
Bubu went downstairs, followed by a dozen weaponized drones, to the castle’s main computer center. He’d have monitor support, and full control of the drone army and traps from that room. He’d also have access to my emergency drone, which I was using to command all the others. This was a closed circuit, available only through that room, and the drone network was also closed, remote slaved to a local WIFI that we were generating. We were still avoiding connecting to the internet. I was expecting Haha to crack us within seconds of coming online.
I walked in on Apogee changing, catching her as she slid on a pair of Yoga pants to accompany the tank top and sports bra she was wearing. “Tongue in mouth, bub,” she said, pulling on a pair of socks and shoes.
“Easier said than done.”
“You’re such a goon sometimes,” she said with a smile.
I shrugged nonchalantly and closed the door. “What are the chances I can convince you to stay in today?”
She looked at me, clearly startled. “I know prison makes you horny, Dale, but wow.”
“You’re not wrong, but that’s not what I had in mind.”
“What, you want to cuddle?”
I felt my cheeks redden, blushing high into my newly short hair. “No. Yes. I don’t know. I wanted to talk a little.”
The pleasure she was taking from my discomfort slackened as she said, “That’s sweet Dale. I want that too, but for now, the price if doing business is vigilance. I got plans for you this afternoon, darling, and they have nothing to with this room.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“It’s surprise, no hints,” she said, then her eyes lit up. “Oh, I got you something.”
She placed a small metal case on the bed.
“This is kind of his apology, okay? See, Jeff and I have high hopes for you, Dale. I want to see you make this journey. More than anything, and…well, I want you to know…from now on, at least…that I’m with you.”
“Holy shit, Maddie, get it out,” I said.
She raised her hand, pausing me, angered that I was ruining her great emotional moment. Yet, her “speech” was a mess, and interrupting was making her laugh, intermingling laughter with the tears.
“Say one more word and it’s on,” she said, cocking her head forward along with the threat, then softening once I was quiet. “This is hard, okay?” Apogee sighed before going on, wiping the edges of her eyes. “Anyway…what little I can do, I promise to do. And this is part of it. Part of what I, and Jeff, think you need to do is to move forward. To leave the Blackjack thing behind. That’s the only way to grow, to move forward.”
“My life has turned into a Disney movie,” I said.
“Oh, fuck it, just open the damned thing,” she handed me the case.
I clicked the latches open and split the case, inside finding a new suit. It was a spandex and neoprene job, tight and form fitting, like Apogee’s, designed with dark blue material with white stripes and trim. I felt the material under my hands, and saw it had an integrated power pack on the attached belt. Holding up the codpiece protector pad, I said, “This won’t be large enough.”
Apogee smiled, “What do you think,” I could sense her apprehension, her fear that I would reject this new paradigm, something she had obviously put a great deal of thought and effort into.
It was a modified version of what the people who worked in Superdynamic’s tower wore. It looked like a onesie big enough for a teenager, but possessed elastic properties that would allow it to stretch over even my massive frame.
“It won’t protect your from blunt force trauma,” Apogee said. “But it won’t tear to shreds after one bad encounter.”
Running it through my hands, I felt the material flex, that fabric unlike anything I had ever seen. “I like it. Tell Superdynamic he’s back on my Christmas list.”
* * * *
I put the suit on and went downstairs to the labs in the dungeons below. Bubu was in a low-lit room with a dozen monitors and a table loaded with keyboards, mice, half-empty chip bags and a bunch of empty bottles of Rienergy, Romania’s answer for Red Bull. He saw me come in with bleary eyes and a dull look on his face and rubbed his hands on his slick black hair.
“Nice,” he said of my suit. “I
can see your dick, though.”
I picked at my crotch and motioned to the system.
“It’s not working, bro,” he said. “Defense program isn’t handshaking with the drone control system.”
I grabbed a chair and sat next to him, taking a mouse and rolling the scroll wheel to run through the lines of code I had written myself. “It’s supposed to be a module, you just plug it in.”
Bubu shook his head, unleashing a body-wide yawn that lasted fifteen seconds.
“The guys know more shit than I do and they’re saying it’s not working. I did this in college, bro. It’s been ten years.”
“I told you to tell them to go,” I said, starting to get frustrated.
“They won’t go either,” Bubu said. “The bros like the money, what can I say?”
“We’ll see how loyal they are when villains start dropping out of the sky,” I said leaning back in the chair and stretching my arms. “So what do we do about the drones?”
Bubu reached for a bottle of Rienergy, shaking it, he swigged the last few ounces. “Wait. Let them do their thing.”
“I don’t have time, Bubu. I have everyone in the world coming after me.”
“At least we have the trap rooms,” he said. “Those are ready to go.”
“I suppose,” I said, exhaling in defeat. “You just have to have Cracker Jack timing snatching them when they come after me and sending them off in the right rooms.”
He said nothing, looking at something past me. Apogee was walking toward us.
“We can handle them,” she said.
I looked at Bubu, but he wasn’t as convinced.
“Won’t be easy,” Apogee said, coming up to the computer center and leaning against the monitor grid. “You up for it?”
I smiled.
“Then let’s see what you’re made of,” she said. “Time to train.”
* * * *
Apogee walked me down the service tunnels to a trap we had dubbed the Napoleon room. It took the drones the longest to bore this chamber out of the rock, and even longer to wire it and light it, but this chamber was hardly as complex as the one right below, the Cretaceous room. The drones had to transport the water and build the 3D printed fake plants…and the robotic dinosaurs. If I survived Haha and his crew I might be tempted to sell some of the designs to the Disney Corporation so they could build a more realistic dinosaur experience.
Our training ground was a placid recreation of the Belgian countryside about what it would have looked like in mid-June, 1815. She’d seen it in an early morning jog through the underground facility and liked the quiet, rolling hills for what she had planned. We stopped at the top of a ridgeline that overlooked a long sweeping plain.
“Nice,” she said, looking down to a walled group of cottages that dominated the central flatlands. “That place have a name?”
“La Haye Sainte,” I said and she turned to me suddenly.
“Where do I know that name?”
“Waterloo,” I said. “This is as much as we could-“
“Waterloo…” she said, shaking her head and adjusting her gloves. “That’s not so good. It’s like a bad metaphor or something.”
I laughed. “I like to see myself as Wellington, if that’s okay with you.”
“Wherever the hell this is, you need a work out.”
“A work out?”
She nodded, serious as hell.
“I’m not so sure about this,” I said. “Everything hurts.”
“It’s the new bones. You’re still growing into them.”
“That’s what SuperDee says?”
She nodded, “That’s what he says. They’re stronger than your old bones. In theory, you should be stronger, too.”
I smiled and came closer, reaching out for her. “I’m pretty strong as it is.”
She took my arm, stepped into me, and spun, flipping me into the air and hurling me face first into the sand. Apogee kept my arm, twisting it back against the socket. I fought the urge to yelp like a little girl.
“Strength will only take you so far, Dale McKeown,” she said, releasing me and stepping back.
I rolled and sat, rubbing my shoulder. There was pain deep in the joint, as if someone had jabbed an old rusted screwdriver in there.
“Are we really doing this?”
She crossed her arms across her breasts, shaking her head. “You fight like a bull in a china shop, you know?”
“Was good enough to take you out,” I said, standing up. “Twice.”
Apogee stepped into me as I was mid crouch, scissoring her legs into my neck, dropped her body and used her equilibrium – and my desire to not have my neck broken – to hurl me forward into a leg lock, where her left hamstring was regulating the blood flow to my brain by compressing my neck.
“You need to do better,” she said, waiting until I turned red before releasing me and rolling away in a ninja-like maneuver. “You need to be faster, surer. You can’t fight like you’re a pawing blind man,” she said, mocking my fighting style by hunching over and clawing with her lead hand, with a stupefied look on her face.
“If you knew how to fight,” she said. “You wouldn’t have taken such a beating from Lord Mighty.”
“Hey,” I said. “I did okay against Epic and I recall Mighty being on the losing end of our match.”
“Mighty was old and tired. You fought a guy that was, what, ninety years old? Mighty would have lasted three second against me one on one.”
“Not all of us have your gifts,” I reached forward to pat her ass, but she used super speed to avoid me, moving behind me and collapsing my right knee by digging into the back of it with hers. Using my momentum against me, she swept my legs forward and followed through, drilling me back into the dirt. She finished by straddling me, pinning my arms with her knees.
Once I gathered my senses, I was treated to one of the great sights in the history of humanity, a close-up of Apogee’s untrammeled figure, from the cusp between her legs, up through the ridges of her muscled abdomen and between the perfect peaks of her breasts, to the most beautiful face on the planet. I could smell her, feel her warmth against my neck, and my only reaction was to smile.
“I’m trying to be serious, Dale,” she said.
“Then don’t do this,” I said. “This whole ‘I revert to caveman mode’ thing.”
She rolled off, sitting on the sand, and I sat up.
“As far as the other stuff,” I said. “I’m game. You don’t have to beat me up or show me how good of a martial artist you are to convince me that I fight like a drunken bear.”
“I’ve seen drunken bears that would kick your ass.”
I laughed and looked past her, remembering the time in Shard World when we had found a small lake, Cool Hand in tow. In his usual, indiscrete fashion, Cool Hand Luke had pressured Apogee about whether she found me attractive and whether I did the same. It was his method, crass as it was, to play matchmaker.
“Where’d you go?”
I got up and offered my hand to help her up. She took it and we faced each other.
“What I’m trying to say, is that I accept your offer for training,” I said, bowing from my seat in the dirt.
She fought the urge to smile, poorly, and we got started.
* * * *
I got into a ready position, and she paused. “What are you doing,” she said.
I looked around, self-conscious. "What?"
"What is that," she gestured at me.
"I'm knuckled up," I said. "Ready to rock."
"Who taught you that?"
I was ready for the surprise shot. I knew that's what the lesson was. Don't drop your guard, don't be fooled by off-tactics. I kept my guard tight, my eyes wide and ready.
"I'm serious," she said. "When did you learn to square up like that?"
Her hands were by her sides, and I saw genuine confusion in her face. "The last time I saw you fight, you were like a plodding cow," she said. "That looks pretty good."
<
br /> I chuckled, recalling the brief training session with Focus back in Superdynamic's Tower. We'd spent only an hour or so going over the basics, but I guess some of her teaching had stuck. Apogee hadn't seen me for more than an instant during the D.C. incident, so this was all new to her.
"YouTube," I said, not wanting to bring up Focus.
She shook her head with a knowing smile on her face, finally shrugging and returning to her stance in front of me. "Then let's see how much you've learned," she said, and snapped a lead jab that caught me under the chin and rocked my head back.
"Sonofabitch," I said, rubbing my face.
"They don't teach that online, do they?"
I smiled, "Getting beat up I’m already good at.”
"You need to learn how to fight," she said, with such a definitive tone she must've thought I was as helpless as a newborn.
"I don't have to remind you who won that the last two times we've tussled," I said, and a second later she snapped another nasty jab at my face, only this time I was ready for it. I caught the punch with the open palm of my right hand and slapped it down - something I had seen Focus do when we had sparred.
Apogee didn't like the move, which I followed with a lateral step and a half punch that came within inches of her right cheek. She dropped her guard and stared at me, her jaw clenched tight.
"Who’ve you been training with?”
I didn’t want to tell her, worried about how jealous she’d get about the time I’d spent with Focus. Hell, I had plans for tonight with Madelyne. One word about spending time training with a younger woman and I might jeopardize that.”
"Maybe we should focus on something simpler," I said. "Like the big haymaker. Every big dude does it..." I trailed off, recalling the shot I had received from Blackjack 2.0 that had almost taken me out of commission.
"Right..."
"Well, teach me how to defend against one," I said. "And not just how to get out of the way. I can duck, too. I mean-"
"I got you," she said, moving closer, inspired by my suggestion. "More practical tips. I see where you're going. Okay, so the big punch." She stepped closer and maneuvered my shoulders to block us at proper distance. "Throw it softly."
