by Ben Bequer
“Nice speech,” she added after moment. “By the way.”
I strode off, “Whatever.”
“You want to know why I wear a suit this revealing?” she asked, following me.
“I don’t care.”
“It’s to distract pieces of shit like you and give me-“
I was in her face in a second, “if you’re going to tag along, then watch your fucking mouth, you understand?”
“What, it hurts your feelings?” she mocked.
“Wouldn’t you be insulted if I spent the whole time calling you ‘bitch’ or ‘whore’? You know, for being a big damned hero you sure act like a regular, ordinary asshole.” I put some extra emphasis on the last word but didn’t realize it was going to have the effect it did. It felt good to be on the giving end for once, so I kept going.
“You people act worse than villains. That jackass Atmosphero destroyed my house, without probable cause, without any evidence. The guy tore out my house from its foundations and threw it down the hill at me, barely missing the neighbor’s house. They have two kids, you know? It’s a fucking miracle that no one got hurt. If he had miscalculated by a tad, your teammate would have killed a bunch of kids.”
“That’s your side of the story,” she replied defiantly.
“Check it out,” I snarled. “There are plenty of pictures of the wreck. In fact, it was because Atmosphero was so reckless that I’m out. They had me. I was in jail and they had to release me because your buddy doesn’t worry about the minor details, you know, like procedure, and evidence. You should know all this stuff.”
“I read your file, Blackjack.”
“Well, there you go,” I mocked. “And your partners, Superdynamic and Epic. The guys were looking for blood. When Cool surrendered, they didn’t even have an idea of what to do.”
I let that linger in the air a bit, before continuing.
“What about you? You were too busy headhunting to even worry about innocent civilians. Hell, isn’t that your primary responsibility? To protect the public? Or is it to kick ass? What the hell was that shit you pulled in the hotel lobby? You’re supposed to be the good guy.”
I turned and continued to the light source, a metal door with a grating under which a bit of light spilled through. I ripped the door off its hinges, and placed it on the floor beside the open entrance. Inside was a service room, and beyond a stairway leading up towards the surface.
“I know what you’re capable of,” she said as we moved inside. “We were there because you and your people were committing a crime. I’m not sure that’s clear to you. Do you understand your part in this? It doesn’t matter how you say it, or how eloquent your arguments are, you’re the bad guy here.”
“Listen,” I said, seeing the flush of anger return to her face and wanting to strike a reconciliatory tone. “I know you hate me, that part is clear, ok? I’m not such a big fan of yours either. But we’re stuck together, right? At least until I can find Zundergrub and slap him around.”
I paused as another train passed outside blowing a storm of dust amongst us for a moment.
“Until we can get him to fix your head, turn off whatever makes you such a damned grouch all the time-“
“All he has to do is get you out of my sight,” she said.
“Fine. Whatever you want. But for now, can’t you at least try to be nice?”
She crossed her arms, and shook her head, a slight smile gliding over her face.
“You got some nerve.”
“Hey we can go another twelve rounds right now if you want,” I threatened and took a half step forward, but her smile widened.
“You wouldn’t,” she scoffed. “You’re afraid to fight a woman because you’re caught up in some chivalric bullshit from a century ago. If you and I ever really fight, I’ll crush you.”
“Yeah, but what about right now?” I moved forward and glowered over her. “What would happen now?”
“You wouldn’t,” she repeated, but I could see her coolness fading. She uncrossed her arms and placed her hands on her hips, almost expecting me to strike. In this confined space, her speed would be useless against my strength. Even if her will was fully unleashed, I would have her. And besides, I’m the bad guy. Rape was par for the course as far as she was concerned.
I let the moment linger, enjoying every delicious second but finally I shook my head, “You’re right, I wouldn’t. I may be the bad guy, but hitting a woman is not my thing.”
I walked away towards the access door leading to another tunnel. One would hopefully lead us to the surface. I ripped the whole thing off its hinges, in a far more dramatic fashion than was necessary, but hell, who doesn’t like to show off some?
“By the way,” I started, “that ‘chivalric bullshit’ can be nice some times.”
Apogee laughed and said, “With the right person.”
“I’ll make you a deal. I’ll behave myself, ok? I’ll keep my hands and eyes off the merchandise,” I said, motioning to her shapely body. “But you have to play ball too. I mean, stop being so goddamned pissy all the time.”
I paused, softening my tone before continuing, “It could be a lot worse, Apogee. You could be stuck with Zundergrub.”
Apogee said after a long pause, finally shaking her head bewildered by the whole situation. “Just stop staring at me. It creeps me out.”
And for the first time that whole day, I laughed out loud.
Chapter 14
We made it to the surface, coming out beside some highway I couldn’t recognize. The screen of my watch computer was shattered so I couldn’t open my GPS and navigation program to get oriented. Apogee and I were on the sharp slope beneath a slow moving highway, filled with morning traffic. To avoid detection, we stayed low to the street level, coming to a small wood. On the other side of a copse of trees, about three hundred yards away was a gas station, diner and Walgreens beside an empty strip mall.
“Come on,” I motioned to Apogee and we headed that way. “We have to get you out of that costume. You stick out.”
“Don’t start with that,” she said.
We moved through the wood and once we reached the Walgreens I took Apogee aside.
“You’re going to have to wait out here, ok?”
“I can’t.”
I grabbed her shoulders, exasperated. Her warm skin tingled under my touch, it was almost electric. I had to let go and take a moment to compose myself.
“Look angel, you can’t go inside looking like that.”
“It’s not that I don’t want to, damn it. I would give anything to get away from you. But I can’t.”
“Because of what Zundergrub did?”
“I think so.”
“I’m going to kill him when I see him again.”
“Get in line.”
I gave the entrance of the store a once over and there were only a few people in the parking lot, coming and going to their cars
“Fine, we’ll chance it.”
Unfortunately, the inside the store was more populated than I expected, and we drew stares. It was Apogee that had everyone’s attention. I could have had a rabbit head and no one would have noticed. I snuck her down the first aisle and hunted down the rack with clothes. All they had was the typical tourist crap. I grabbed a T-shirt, cap, and pair of cheap sunglasses. My boots were in decent shape, and my pants were still good.
“Well?” I asked, when I saw she was staring at me.
“What?”
“Get something for yourself,” I told her, grabbing a few different t-shirts and shorts, all gaudy tourist crap, but less conspicuous than the filthy spandex suit with boob slit.
“I’m not wearing that,” she scoffed.
“Apogee, we don’t have-“
“No way in hell.” Apogee crossed her arms as if to give that argument a sense of finality, and continued, “And don’t tell me that I’m breaching our whole ‘let’s be nice’ agreement, because I don’t recall ever consenting to wear ridiculous clo
thes.”
“Apogee, this is Jersey. I mean, you can’t look like that here.”
“I’m flattered, I really am, but I’m not putting on some ‘I love NYC’ t-shirt. Forget it. And if you’re going to be around me, like even within sight of me, I highly recommend you find something less tacky.”
I stared at her, livid at first, then bewildered, finally grinning, and she smiled for the first time. And what a smile. Apogee blushed, unable to even look at me, then punched me on the shoulder.
“Please don’t make me wear that crap,” she pleaded
“Ok,” I said at last, “We’ll find you something better.”
* * *
I went to pay for our stuff and I could feel her fidgeting and giving me weird looks.
We must have looked quite the pair.
My face, shoulders and chest were bruised severely, and I had trimmings of blood on my nose and mouth. I was wearing the same pair of beat up pants (I had ripped off the remaining Dr. Retcon goo), a dirty and bloody black shirt, and busted up combat boots.
Apogee was less injured but far dirtier than I, but who would notice a single grain of sand on her body? A few folks in line couldn’t help but gawk and one young kid even asked her for an autograph.
She was the perfect distraction and no one paid me much attention. I used some of my emergency cash, thanked the cashier and left with Apogee in tow, giving me a strange look. We stepped outside and I stopped.
“What?”
She shook her head, baffled. “You paid.”
“Of course I did,” I said, holding up the receipt and the bag filled with stuff.
“I thought you were going to rob the place!”
“Why would I do that? I have money here.”
I guess she couldn’t believe that I would bother to pay a $35.52 bill. In her mind we were all criminals, all a bunch of evil scumbag killers.
“Come on,” I said grabbing her arm and dragging her down the street. “Want to commit a crime? Here we go.”
We walked until I found a car to my liking, a recent model large-sized SUV.
The screen on my computer watch was cracked, so it took me twice as long as it should have to research what I needed to bypass the alarm of that particular model. The owner had an alarm warning sticker, and that made it all that much easier since I could narrow down the model of the system. I went online with my damaged watch computer, found the frequency range then wrote a program to modulate at high speed across the bandwidth that the alarm system was designated to receive. Once I engaged the program, the locks snapped open.
“Get in,” I told her, thankful of her silence during the whole process. I opened the door for her and she slid inside, shaking her head in disbelief.
I ran around and jumped in the driver’s seat, and started on the harder part, a new program that ran through a whole new set of frequencies. I picked this particular model because I knew that it had one of those keyless entries and ignitions. Entry was made possible by depressing a button on the car key, which sent a transmission to the car, telling it to open the door. Starting on the car was more complicated. The key emitted a different frequency at much lower range that told the car that the person inside did indeed have the key. You had to have the key within a few feet of the steering column sensor for the car to recognize the key’s frequency and enable the ignition. In fact, there was nowhere to stick the key into, a button to turn the car on.
The trick to it was to find the right transmission and find a way to keep it going. I found some sound advice in an online forum from a guy called “st33lzwh33lz” that saved me the trouble of going frequency by frequency, one at a time, and having to turn the ignition to each. St33lzwh33lz thought of the simplest thing: transmit every frequency at once, permanently.
I wrote that program in about three minutes, turning my watch into a makeshift key transmitter, and we were off down the street.
“AC cold enough for you?” I asked her, smug as hell.
“You just tacked on another ten years.”
I leaned back and cruised along, burning a few hours while headed out of town, until the malls opened.
* * *
I convinced her to wear a tourist t-shirt for our trip through the mall. It was an outlet mall in New Jersey, on the outskirts of New York. Liberty Village Premium Outlets was actually quaint, mostly wood, open air affair with long manicured lawns and a large pond in the middle. It was like some seaside Jersey village, painted in pastels and whites. I would have liked to look around more, if not for the fact that I was a wanted criminal with a captive heroine in tow.
It was about opening time, and most folks were eager to get their shopping started. I had been up since the day before, but I wasn’t tired. It was typical of me when I was on a mission or had a project. Coffee and doughnuts would keep me going all night and day. Apogee, though, was starting to feel it and even dozed off as I drove to the mall.
“Ok, now you can’t complain,” I said, motioning to all the stores and moving to the map of the place.
“Ann Taylor will do,” she said, fighting back a yawn.
I found it on the map and headed off, striding fast in our direction. Even in this early hour, the mall was full of shoppers and employees, and every security guard was a potential radio call away from turning us in.
We reached the store she liked and I opened the door for her.
“I’ll head over to the Jockey store next door and get some more things,” I said as I let the door close and walked away.
Apogee used her speed powers and caught up to me.
“What?”
She shook her head. “I’ll go with you.”
“It’ll take longer. Come on, we don’t have time,” I said, whining more than I liked. “If we split up, we can get more done faster.”
“I have to go with you,” she demanded.
“Fine!” I yelled, angry at myself for forgetting Zundergrub’s mind job and stormed off towards the Jockey Store.
We walked inside and went towards the women’s section.
“I was going to get you some unmentionables,” I said, still annoyed.
She laughed. “No one calls them that anymore.”
“If I wanted a fucking lesson on the history of clothing terminology-”
“It’s called lingerie, you ignorant Neanderthal,” she said playfully and walked past me, looking at the store’s wares. I followed her for almost five minutes as she perused every bra, scrutinized every bottom, and finally lost my patience.
“We don’t have all day here,” I blurted and grabbed some sports bras and a few matching bottoms and went to the cashier to pay. She followed, displeased.
“I like to take my time when I’m shopping.”
“Then remind me to never go shopping with you again,” I said, almost throwing money at the woman who worked there not waiting for the change. “Come on!”
I held the door open for her, but she paused.
“Fuck, move it!” I said.
Apogee crossed her arms, in what I was starting to recognize as her most used stance, at least with me.
I was losing my mind. The whole world was after us, and she wanted to take her time shopping. I wanted to get back in the car, get away from the major cities until I could contact the guys. Every effort to talk to them through our communications system proved fruitless and in the meantime, an alphabet soup of agencies was coordinating across the whole Eastern seaboard to catch me.
She was right though. I was unhinged, rattled, and it was going to lead to more trouble unless I calmed down and had my wits about me.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s my first manhunt. I’m not handling it well.”
“No, you’re not.” Apogee walked over to me and ripped the bag out of my hands as she stepped outside.
“I hate this color,” she said, peeking inside.
“It’s white, it goes with everything. I figured-”
Apogee paused, rumpling the bag as she dug th
rough the garments I had purchased. She looked at one of the bras, almost ripping it out of the bag, and held it by the tag.
“How do you know my size?”
I smiled.
* * *
The whole thing took too long. I hurried her, prodded her, threatened to chuck her into the goddamned lake, but she strolled the isles like a princess, looking at everything, rubbing it in my face with a haughty expression on her face. I gritted my teeth, afraid that fidgeting would draw attention to my appearance. Three stores later she seemed satisfied with her wardrobe.
She got some practical clothes for being on the run, a pair of black runner’s tights, sneakers and a purple runner’s hoodie. Apogee looked ready for a marathon, and I like a homeless person with a clean t-shirt. But at least she was satisfied, and quiet, until we got back to the car.
I wanted to steal another, and started casing the parking lot for something big.
“What are you doing?”
“I want to switch cars,” I told her.
She laughed, “They have cameras, you’re better off with the one you already have.”
I glanced around and she was right. They had a serious security presence, including a fleet of white SUVs riding around the parking lot.
We walked back to our stolen car and drove off.
“What are you upset about?”
Apogee had pulled her hair back into a tail and washed her face in the mall bathroom, and she looked fantastic, at the cost of spending over two hours shopping when we should have been running.
“I’m not upset,” I said, lying.
“Look at your knuckles. You need to calm down.”
“Or else what?” I snapped. “Huh? Don’t think I don’t see you delaying, parading in front of every security camera so they can see you and track us.”
“What?”
“Don’t pretend you’re not. I know when your people show up; you’ll fucking jump me.”
“Blackjack, baby. We only met,” she said.
“Just shut up, ok? You got your fucking clothes so you can look good when the cameras show up.”
