by Ben Bequer
“I’m hoping Atmosphero shows,” I said, more menace in my voice than I realized.
Sandy laughed, “What, you’re gonna throw down right here? That might go bad for us with you wearing those things,” he motioned to the power dampener collar and bracers that generated a localized pulse wave denying me access to my powers, in my case my amazing strength, at the cost of terrible nausea and disorientation. If Atmo showed, though, not these bracers, or a dozen other supers would stop me from ripping his spinal cord out of his asshole.
“Anyway,” he continued, “the guy’s not coming. They never come. Hell, he’s gonna be your best friend after today is through. You watch.”
“I doubt that.”
Trust Sandy, Serpentis had told me, and I would have if the guy seemed more capable. In the dozen or so talks on the phone we’d had since I had retained him, it always felt like he was having six conversations at once and I was always the least important on the list. I had paid the guy a hundred thousand dollar retainer, and now I was at his mercy.
I hadn’t endured all the bullshit life had thrown my way to end up in jail. Not like this, not with all the plans I had, all the ideas yet to be realized. Besides, I had only been at this a couple of years now, things were just getting started.
Blackwell rose from the prosecution’s table and took a handful of documents to the judge, no doubt arrest reports and the like, while one of his assistants brought over a corresponding copy for Sandy, who barely bothered to glance at it.
“What’s that?” I asked, not really curious, but trying to lose some of the anxiety that was twisting me into knots.
Sandy looked at it again, said; “It’s their proposed witness list,” and tossed it aside, not caring to either divulge the details or go to the trouble of finding out.
I picked up the document and read it, catching Sandy’s attention, as if he thought I couldn’t read. Yeah, the ape villain was trying to comprehend the hard writing stuff, he must have thought, but I had an IQ probably fifty points higher than his, and if not for some…difficulties…I’d be sporting multiple Master’s in Chemistry, Engineering and Physics, from Cal Tech, as if they could have quenched my overwhelming thirst for knowledge.
If it was worth knowing, I had to study the thing, learn every aspect of it, and master it. It was O.C.D. behavior, for certain, but it allowed me a level of concentration that was uncanny. When combined with my advanced genetics, it meant I was a roving encyclopedia of the obscure and complex. For example, the previous summer I had gone to an art gallery, casing it for a potential job, when it struck me to know as much possible about art. A few days raiding the internet, and visiting a few local libraries later and I could tell you the difference between Cézanne’s post-Impressionistic sensibility and Jackson Pollock’s volatile abstract expressionism. Hell, I was probably the World’s foremost authority on the subject.
I smiled after getting quick look at the prosecution’s witness list because the first name was the most familiar.
“Let me see that,” Sandy said, ripping the document from my hands and giving it another, more serious, look.
“Who’s Doreen Wellington?” he asked, looking at the name of the person deposed. “And who’s Emmet Wellington,” he continued after turning through the pages. “Who’re the Wellingtons?”
I smiled, “Don’t ask,” I said.
“Hang on a second. Who’s the attorney here?”
I nodded, motioning to him.
“That’s right. So allow me to determine whether something’s important or not. Is that ok with you?”
I would have laughed if I wasn’t so nervous, but watching Sandy, who was maybe a foot shorter than I, butch up and stand up to me made my day.
“So who are these people?” he pressed.
“Doreen Wellington was my step-mother,” I told him. “Emmet Wellington was her piece of shit brother. They’re the wonderful pair that raised me from the time my father died, when I was thirteen, until I ran away. If you want to blame someone for everything, blame them,” I added, laughing.
But I didn’t blame them. I wasn’t crying and bellyaching about my horrible childhood to anyone. There was only one person that had made all the choices in my life, and I took responsibility for it all.
He looked at me, dumbfounded, and back at the deposition, then shrugged and tossed it aside, not caring about the document any further, nor, I could tell, wanting to find out more about my fractured family life, or the beatings I received as a child my brutal alcoholic step-uncle, Emmet. I didn’t expect Sandy to care; it was real and ugly.
Sandy returned to his doodling, as Blackwell came back to the prosecution’s table. He managed to argue his points against our motion to dismiss, while at the same time effortlessly wading through the mountain of paperwork to find a specific document, handing it to the Judge. Blackwell was a tall guy, though tiny next to me, and in reasonable shape. The guy did Muay Thai, Pilates, or Yoga, with a slim and athletic build, proud of how well his suit fit.
They had two dozen boxes of documents, filled with their case against me, which constituted over a hundred charges ranging from felony armed robbery, arson, extortion, destruction of private property and, of course, assault and battery. A mountain of paperwork, designed to bring me to justice. On my side, I had Sandy, with his yellow pad and a sketch of me in full costume firing arrows while flipping upside down, all done with a rather intense glare peering from beneath my cowl. It was pretty impressive, though I never recall doing a back flip in the middle of a street like Sandy had me doing. A guy my size didn’t flip much.
Blackwell started reading the list of charges, one by one, making a big deal of the whole thing, and as he started, Sandy let out a slight chuckle.
It wasn’t pretty a pretty thing, smeared in my face like that, all at once, and they had pretty much everything. In truth, the crimes weren’t that hard to figure out, to compile into one mass lump against me. They all involved a big guy, running around with a black hooded cape and a bow, firing explosive arrows all over the place. Blackwell continued into some of the more recent stuff, and I noticed Sandy’s expression change. He stood, instinctually.
“Judge,” he began. “Defendant is willing to stipulate to the entire list of charges.”
This halted Blackwell mid-sentence, which was not something he was used to, nor according to his sudden shock and surprise, something he enjoyed. The first natural reaction was a strange, bewildered face accompanied with a pleading chortle, directed at the Judge, but he quickly composed himself.
“Judge, I do believe it is within the purview of the prosecution to read the list of charges to the accused. Unless your honor has any objections, of course,” he added, skillfully massaging the Judge’s ego, drawing a slight shrug from the elderly judge that Sandy immediately understood as defeat, and Blackwell as victory.
After a moment to find his place, the prosecutor continued down the list and that funny look returned to Sandy’s face, a mixture of concern, displeasure and disgust. He tapped the pencil’s eraser end against his cheek, watching me as each new count was read and shook his head.
“What’s with all this stuff?” he asked, because the crimes Blackwell was now rattling off were nothing like the prior bank and armored car jobs, jewelry exchanges and fund brokerage robberies. This ‘stuff’ was wasn’t the usual thing I was known for. It was more personal, and he didn’t know about it because he didn’t have to.
“Additionally, the defendant is charged with four counts of arson, seventeen counts of destruction of private property, breaking and entering into a Federal Facility, violation of four counts of the Patriot Act and two charges of Treason, for the March 25th destruction of several facilities at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory,” Blackwell continued, and quickly moved on to another individual crime on his list, while tacking on charge after charge.
“He’s making shit up,” I told Sandy, not bothering to make eye contact.
“You’re freelancing on me? I�
�ll fucking walk right now, man. I won’t even ask for permission from the judge. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t really care what it is. But if you did it, and they know, then I have to know. It’s not fucking rocket science, and you know rocket science, right? I mean, I’m defending you here,” he said, as if we were on the same team.
In a manner of speaking we were. Sandy wasn’t just “The Killer”, attorney to super villains, he actually acted more like an agent, and making sure we kept busy. Since he knew everyone, and everything that was happening, Sandy was in the unique position of being able to direct people to jobs that needed doing, much bigger jobs than the crap I had been doing, stuff that would make my financial situation liquid, so I would no longer be a hack suffering from hand and mouth. In that respect, he was the most important person in my life, but since I was so new, since I hadn’t really distinguished myself, Sandy never bothered with me, he never put me out there.
“So?” he pushed.
“I did it.”
“The Jet Propulsion Laboratory thing?”
I nodded.
“That’s some badass security right there,” he responded, beaming, and totally surprising me. Like breaking into the C.I.A. or the Pentagon.”
Sandy shook his head, returning to the doodle and now drawing a female figure, something that he was even more familiar and comfortable with, placing the heroine in the path of my arrows.
I had expected him to be upset with me, to want an explanation for the crimes which I didn’t really want to give, because it was revenge, plain and simple, payback to the bastards that ran the JPL, the small thinkers who had fired me for no good reason. That hit and all the other tech firms I had targeted were run by former schoolmates and colleagues of mine at Cal Tech, guys who wouldn’t even have the courtesy to return my calls after I got tossed from JPL.
Maybe I’m not good with people.
That’s one of the things that attracted me to archery. I was able to do it alone, just me, the bow and the target. The archery thing went way back, back to my early childhood, when aunt Jenny, my father’s sister, had come to visit one day, and horrified with the conditions my step-mother kept me and my brother in, had insisted on taking us to the store to buy me proper clothes, and also got me one toy.
That one toy had been a plastic bow with suction cup arrows. I played with it until my older brother Jason broke it over my back, angered that he hadn’t been home during Aunt Jenny’s visit. I fixed it and played with it still, then with what money I could scrounge, I bought a better replacement and through the years, I always had a bow to practice with.
Archery was in my blood, through and through, as if I had served Edward III at the Battle of Crécy or rode on the back of a horse for one of Attila’s lords. I knew everything about archery including the science, the history. It was one of my passions, and it led me to a State Championship in high school but once I got to college, I put the bow down. I had bigger things to do.
But again, I was hamstrung by their system, their bullshit protocol that required you to learn Class A before you moved on to Class B. What if I already knew all that stuff and needed to get to Class F? It was a weird experience, reading through all the books and understanding them without further explanation, then going to class where we had to go at the pace of the slowest moron, and listen to all their banal questions. Hell, after my first year, I had read through the entire curriculum, and was working on my own, advancing my knowledge by reading the latest publications, not even bothering with the classes they gave me. School wasn’t for me. I knew it, and they did as well, and the brightest minds in the Cal Tech faculty decided to be done with me. I shouldn’t have I cared, I was working at a level none of them could even comprehend.
But I took it personal and broke into Cal Tech’s most precious facility, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and destroyed projects amounting to thousands of man-years of research and development into the construction and operation of robotic planetary spacecraft.
Blackwell’s list also included series of other, private labs, belonging to ancillary projects of Cal Tech’s teachers and faculty. Their labs, and most importantly, their creations were now lost in ash and flame. Dozens of projects ranging from Higgs-Boson particle research to experiments in chemical thermodynamics to projects studying thin film photovoltaics, all lost in a night’s work by my hand. And not for a damned cent either. Another villain would have stolen data, files and prototypes, extorted a pretty penny for their return. I wanted total destruction and I was thorough, destroying hard-drives, paper records, online archives and even prototypes.
“That’s not bad,” Sandy said, still bewildered that I had made it into a facility as secure as the JPL, though I didn’t want to tell him how easy it had been. I had left not a sign of my passing, save for a few seconds of blurry video footage (before my EMP arrows took out the signal) showing a big dude wearing a cape running in the shadows.
But as far as Dale was concerned, things weren’t looking too good. Blackwell was trying his hardest to lump such a massive case against me that he’d overwhelm Sandy into capitulation. It was a fact that was becoming clearer to me, whenever I was referred to as by my real name; that the whole “Dale McKeown” part of my life was one big misadventure, dragging me down. Hearing my civilian name filled me with a sense of apprehension, with a lengthy baggage train of painful memories.
It was time to drop the pretenses, to quit playing around and pick the bow back up, become Blackjack for real.
Someone shifted behind me, and I turned in time to notice a tall, leggy blonde, wearing a striking black suit that contrasted against her short, platinum blonde hair, walking out of the courtroom. It surprised me not to have seen her before; she was the kind of woman that was impossible to miss in even the most crowded room. Yet she had sat a few seats behind me without my knowing. As the woman reached the door, she turned back to me, making sure to make eye contact and flashed a playful smile that was both tantalizing, and made me feel like a vampire’s next prey.
Blackwell also noticed her, staring as she closed the door behind her, and smiling bashfully as he switched his line of argument to defend Atmosphero, the man who had arrested me, and the main thrust of our defense. As he did, Sandy inexplicably let out a loud chuckle that silenced the courtroom and drew everyone’s attention to him. Yet he continued his drawing, filling out the super heroine’s legs, making them too curvaceous and sexy for a real person.
“It looks like she’s going to kick my ass,” I said of the heroine he was drawing, who looked to be dodging my arrows and coming closer to hit me in the face with a power-charged fist. Sandy looked over at me, befuddled at first, but smiling once he understood.
“I know a few that’d give you a beating,” he said.
As Sandy ignored the case, content with his attempt to draw my virtual demise, Blackwell and his cadre of assistants prepared to destroy me for real. The prosecutor now brought up the subject of Atmosphero, the one weakness in his case, the one chance I had, according to Sandy, to get off and be a free man again.
He outlined a long list of awards and credentials, including Keys to the Cities of Los Angeles, New York, Paris and Tokyo. Blackwell also presented to the court a stack of letters of reference from dozens of heroes, worldwide business leaders and figures in local, state and federal government, including from two former Presidents of the United States.
Blackwell then followed up with all of Atmosphero’s greatest moments, including working with big name national and international groups, fighting against the biggest threats to humanity, defending the innocent against monsters like me.
His presentation was impressive, and at the end of it, I should have been dazzled by it all, if not for my overwhelming desire to push Atmo’s jaw through the back of his head. Still, the guy had been around, had mingled with the biggest and the brightest, and had a spotless reputation where it counted, with the good guys.
“Ok, Mr. Blackwell,” the judge said raising his hand and inter
rupting. “That’s your time.”
Blackwell stopped, held aloft mid-sentence, but smiled and said, “Thank you, your Honor.” He gave me a “you’re fucked, buddy” look as he walked back to his chair to a round of high fives by his fan-like crew then studied a document as if it was the most important thing in the world in order to avoid my return glare.
“My pleasure, Mr. Blackwell,” the judge said, rubbing his nose to ease the tension. “Well, I’m a bit at a loss here,” he continued, looking over at his clerks. “It’s your motion, Mr. Hamlin, but you’ve declined to make a statement before the court – which is the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen – are you certain you want nothing for the record?”
Sandy flipped his pencil in the air absentmindedly and looked over at Blackwell. Since it was our motion to dismiss, we had to go first, and Blackwell got the chance to rebut the merits of our arguments, but Sandy had chosen to forgo any statement. Yet here the judge was giving him another chance to get something in the record, to even go second and get to rebut the prosecution’s testimony, and Sandy still hesitated.
“I’m sure the prosecution would have no objections to some abbreviated comments, no Mr. Blackwell?”
Blackwell rose, “not at all, Judge. As long as we can have a brief reply thereafter, we have no objections.”
Sandy looked at me, “Think I should say something?”
“I really hope you’re fucking with me.”
He laughed. “Ok, I’ll say something,” he said and stood.
“If it pleases the court, I am Sandy Hamlin for the defense. Uhm…yeah. Well, I’d like to thank Mr. Blackwell for this opportunity. Yes, judge, I’ll be very brief.”
He did the opposite of Blackwell, who liked to pace the room like a lion roaming his territory, marking each corner against newcomers. Sandy stood in one spot; his only notes the near complete doodle of Blackjack fighting the random busty heroine.
“I’m not really sure why we’re even here,” he started. “Atmosphero wasn’t registered under the Wattley act, so he wasn’t sanctioned to-”
