Forging Hephaestus

by Drew Hayes

  “Ah, you mean number four: we must defeat the security of a system rated at least Level Three or higher,” Lance said, turning back to the projector. “These include federal banks, the offices of higher-up government agencies, national museums, and the offices of most companies on the Fortune 500 list.”

  “That’s the first real hurdle,” Tori agreed. “Level Three is nothing to joke about. When I was... well, before the guild, let’s just say I avoided them whenever possible. On top of being high-tech and frequently monitored, most have a hard-wired line to the AHC. It’s a service they pay quite a premium for. If we set the system off, the capes will come running.”

  “Which means we have to steal at least five hundred grand from a place specifically designed to stop people like us from doing just that,” Beverly surmised. She glanced up from the paper, inspiration twinkling in her eyes. “Hey, wait, can’t Tori just hack some bank for us to grab the cash? As long as it’s one with a Level Three security system, that still counts, right?”

  “First off, while I appreciate the vote of confidence, and I do know my way around a few programs, I’m more the buildy type of geek than the hacky one,” Tori replied. “Plus, even if I could manage it, that still wouldn’t work. Remember number five?”

  “All team members must contribute to the job in some meaningful way,” Lance helpfully supplied. “I guess they added that because if hacking options were on the table, Tori could have split off from us and done it on her own.”

  “Fuck a whole wet mess of that. I might have my prideful moments, but not even I’m cocky enough to think I could pull this off by myself.” Tori halted her pacing for a few moments, rubbing her temples as she tried to think of some way to get everything required for the task before them. “Keep going, Lance, there’s only a few left.”

  “The sixth one is pretty straightforward: no evidence linking the crime to the guild may be left behind,” Lance said. “Obvious, but I guess they wanted to remind us to be careful. The seventh, on the other hand, seems to have been added just for evil kicks. If any member of a team is captured by either the police or the AHC, the entire team will have failed.”

  “I think it was less evil than it was mischievous,” Beverly said. “That one is there to tempt us to split off on our own. After all, if we only have to be accountable for ourselves, then we don’t have to worry about being dragged down by someone else’s failure.”

  “Is that how you took it?” Warren looked across the table with a touch of surprise, one of the first times anyone had ever seen genuine emotion on his pinched face. “I assumed it was there to ensure that teams actually worked together. If the failure of one means the failure of all, no one will sabotage a fellow apprentice who might have become a future rival.”

  Silence fell over the room as everyone’s eyes gravitated to Warren. What he said wasn’t wrong; in fact, it was so spot on that they immediately believed he’d hit the nail straight on the head. It was, however, a bit disconcerting, both because whoever made the trial had accounted for the possibility of betrayal, and because only one of them had even seen it as a possibility. It seemed Warren had been getting a somewhat different, possibly more useful education than the rest of the apprentices.

  “Guess that means we’ll have to look out for each other, no matter what,” Tori said at last, breaking the spell of quiet that had inadvertently been cast. “Lance, what do we have in the way of resources?”

  “Beverly copied down the whole list, but for the most part, it’s just standard gear: flashlights, rope, backpacks, lock picks… basically a ‘My First Crime’ starter kit. Aside from that, we have four thousand dollars to spend on whatever assets we want to purchase.”

  “Which is obviously the part of our resources that really matters,” Beverly added.

  “I’m not totally sure about that, but it’s definitely the part that requires action,” Warren said. “We have to figure out what assets best suit our needs, but before that, we have to determine what those needs will be by picking a target.”

  “Actually, I disagree with you there.” Lance was still at the projector, scrolling through the large list of assets available for purchase. “There are a lot of options, but I’m starting to think they’re mostly here to trip us up. The vast majority of these are either very niche services or way out of our price range, but there are two that we can just barely afford. Round trip transportation by Tunnel Vision will run us thirty-eight hundred dollars, or we can rent those pendants from Arcanicus for a grand a pop. I doubt those prices, or the amount of money we have, is a coincidence.”

  “Lance makes a good point,” Tori agreed. “Either the rates were lowered or our amount of cash was specifically picked to make those affordable. It gives us a choice of ways to lessen our risk. We can have magic that lets us slip around more easily, or we can get out of Ridge City—and by extension the AHC’s backyard—which makes us less likely to hit their radar.”

  “What a coincidence. Both of those are tools we’ve seen and used multiple times, making us intimately familiar with their workings and limitations.” Beverly shook her head as she scrawled new notes on the paper, scratching out previous writing with grand strokes of her pen. “These people really do think ten steps ahead.”

  “It’s not like we’re the first apprentices they’ve made go through this trial,” Lance pointed out.

  “And on the upside, this gives us a place to actually start.” Tori’s mind was whirling. Now that they knew the first decision to make, the task before her seemed less daunting. It was just a series of smaller steps, like building a new invention: take care of one manageable piece after another until something truly extraordinary had been created. “We need to pick cloaking or teleportation, and to do that, we have to decide what the best target for us to take on is. If we find a good one outside Ridge City, we go there, and if we see one ripe for the picking here, we grab the necklaces.”

  Tori walked over to the table and tore a sheet of paper from Beverly’s pad. “Let’s divide and conquer. Lance, you check out any museums that have both Level Three security systems and the kind of exhibits that will get us to five hundred grand. Try to keep the focus on paintings and jewels. Pottery is too bulky and delicate, and sculptures are just a pain in the ass. Also, make sure we can easily clear eight hundred thousand, since art requires a fence and the guild might take the fees for that out of our profits.”

  “Damn, I didn’t even think about that,” Lance said, joining the rest of the group clustered around Tori.

  “Think of it like criminal taxes: there’s always someone taking a little off the top. Next up, Beverly, we need you to go through any banks that fit our security needs. Keep an eye out for ones that have a lot of safety deposit boxes or store precious metals. Cash will do in a pinch, but it’s bulky and comes with serial numbers that can be traced, so it’s usually more trouble than it’s worth.”

  “I get the strong feeling that you’ve done this before,” Beverly remarked, flashing her friend a knowing grin.

  “Never on this scale, but I’ve had to make off with ill-gotten gains on a couple of occasions.” Tori tapped Beverly’s pen and looked at Warren, who was waiting patiently for his orders. “This one is going to be a bit tougher, but Warren, can you do some digging in to any well-secured branches of government agencies that have recently made big busts? Maybe raided a cartel’s compound or something. Drugs and cash are out, but pretty much anyone who does crime for a living keeps a stash of something untraceable they can turn into money when the need arises. If the feds found something like that in their bust, we might be able to take it off their hands.”

  “That’s not going to be easy information to find,” Warren cautioned.

  “I know, and if you come up empty-handed, it’s okay. But as you’re the only one of us with a more versatile power, I thought you might be able to pull some magic that no one else here could.” Tori also secretly considered this avenue to be the most unlikely to pay off, which was why
she handed it to the person in the room she trusted the least. With the rules as they stood, she doubted Warren would go out of his way to sink them, and he certainly didn’t seem to harbor as much animosity as his mentor, but there was no sense in taking needless risks. Besides, he really did have access to magic, so maybe he could manage to uncover something useful.

  “What does that leave you with?” Lance asked.

  “My old stomping ground: corporate espionage,” Tori replied. “I’m going to research every company that’s developing experimental prototypes or working on tech under juicy government contracts. Grab one of those, sell it to a competitor, and we can easily clear the half a million mark.”

  “Well, if you’ve successfully robbed these places before, that sounds like our best bet,” Beverly said.

  “‘Successfully’ might be stretching it a bit.” Tori’s pen slowed as an unexpected wave of bashfulness overtook her. “I mean, I’ve robbed companies before, but I did say I avoided ones with Level Three security.”

  “Have you ever successfully beaten a system that strong?” Lance leaned in a little, as curious as he was pleased by the unexpected change in Tori’s demeanor.

  “Well... sort of. There was only one time I ever tried to rob someone with security that good, and to be fair, I did manage to make it all the way inside their vault,” Tori said.

  “And then what happened?” Beverly’s smirk said more than her actual words would ever need to. Friend or no, it was a rare chance to actually see Tori squirm.

  “Oh, you know, not much. Found out the team I’d been working with was nothing but plants, realized the whole thing was a trap, got threatened with death, and then Doctor Mechaniacal came out and offered me a spot in the guild.”

  “Wait... you tried to rob the guild?” Whatever Beverly had been expecting, that wasn’t it. Her eyes widened and her voice raised several octaves.

  “No!” Tori quickly protested. “I mean, not directly. I tried to rob a company owned by the guild. And hey, I got pretty far, even with a team of betrayers. Plus, guild security is way higher than Level Three, so if anything, I’m over-prepared for this job.”

  “That would be much more reassuring if you hadn’t walked directly into a trap last time you tried a theft of this caliber,” Warren pointed out.

  “Yeah, well, last time I had a shitty team. I’ve learned my lesson since then.” Tori ripped the sheet of paper off the pad and folded it neatly before tucking it in her pocket. “All right, everybody, get researching. You heard Doctor Mechaniacal; starting tomorrow we get access to Sanctum. Let’s show them what we’ve got by walking in with a game plan.”

  While the group didn’t exactly cheer with enthusiasm, there was a glint of determination in every eye present. It wouldn’t be easy, and it probably wouldn’t be fun, but they were starting to think they could do this. Tori knew too well how important that was. With enough guts and willpower, they may just be able to pull off a win.

  Or, at the very least, they would go out trying like hell.

  Chapter 58

  With the kids at Janet’s and Tori undergoing training, Ivan pulled his car up to an empty house after leaving the guild. Eventually the party had wound down, with Wade heading off to his room and Thuggernaut hauling Arachno Bro off to sleep it off somewhere more comfortable. In spite of himself, Ivan chuckled at the memory of the large man trying to find a comfortable grip on the unconscious body with too many limbs. He’d forgotten how much entertainment could be had simply from hanging around the guild. No, that wasn’t true; he’d forced himself to lose those memories. Thinking about it, staying around, it only made keeping himself detached all the harder. He was only still there to protect the guild and the peace. Ivan was only keeping a promise, nothing more.

  When he turned on his living room lights and found an unexpected intruder standing there waiting for him, Ivan didn’t jump in surprise. In fact, he showed no reaction at all, save for the glowing red runes that lit his eyes’ suddenly dark expanse. Calmly, he turned and closed his front door, locking it and resealing the wards that had, not surprisingly, failed to keep the uninvited guest out of his home. Ivan didn’t think of it as a failing on his part, though. Even the most powerful holding cells had only ever managed to contain Nexus for a few hours.

  “And what the hell brings you here today?” Ivan had never fought Nexus before; the odd man with the kaleidoscope eyes generally preferred to deal with Quorum or Stasis, though few were aware of what made them such tempting targets. That was the problem with Nexus: his motivations were entirely his own, often incomprehensible to anyone else.

  “Just checking in. Are you Fornax, the nothing, or the new one yet?” Nexus scratched his head, flakes of what appeared to be ash tumbling down to Ivan’s nice clean carpet. “It’s been a crazy week, and I’m trying to get my bearings.”

  “I’m not Fornax, and I have no idea what you mean by the other two things. My current name is Pseudonym, if that helps.” There were few things Ivan hated more than someone barging into his home, but any conflict with Nexus would almost certainly sweep up the rest of the neighborhood in collateral damage. That meant goodbye to his civilian identity, to say nothing of the lives of everyone with homes around him. Talking with this madman, bothersome as it was, would cost nothing more than his time.

  He hoped.

  “That’s the nothing, then,” Nexus replied. “And your girl, she’s not dead here, so did she take a name yet?”

  “Just tonight. Tori is now known as Hephaestus.”

  “Only tonight? Excellent, I’ve got plenty of time then. Or at least, I should. Never know quite what to expect over here. I mean, the fight is coming. That happens almost everywhere. But it will be interesting to see where the bits and pieces fall in the aftermath.” Nexus looked back at Ivan, almost as if he were registering for the first time that the homeowner was in the room with him. “Ah! Which is why I wanted to come talk to you. Your time as the nothing is drawing to a close, or should be. If, when—whichever—that happens, I’d be very much interested in seeing a fight between the new one and Quorum. Never got the chance to set that up when you were Fornax, but I think it would make for quite an interesting show.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Ivan repeated. “However, I do know that I’m not going to try and fight a cape, let alone one of the AHC’s leaders. Leaving aside the fact that it would do irreparable damage to the peace between superheroes and the guild, I’ve got no problems with Quorum.”

  “But it was never about problems, was it? It was about power, testing it, gaining it, learning how to wield more of that monster inside you. Quorum is a strong one, you know. The fight you two could have, why, it might shake the very stars from the heavens.” Nexus winked a Technicolor eye and Ivan felt his already strained patience begin to thin.

  “The stars are fine where they are. I’m not that man anymore. Now, if you’re done proposing ludicrous ideas, I’ll thank you to get the hell out of my house.” Ivan fought to keep his voice calm, pushing down the violence that a too-familiar voice was beckoning him to unleash.

  “Do as you will; that much always stays constant with you. But whether you fight Quorum or not, the stars will likely fall soon. Not every time, though. And in this one, things always seem to take their own turns. Still, it would make for a good show, and I’d even go so far as to say I’d be indebted to you for putting it on.”

  “Sorry, no dice. Go watch it in some other dimension. One version of me is bound to have less self-control,” Ivan said. Nexus’s powers and the existence of multiple universes weren’t exactly secret—the man had never been shy about dropping hints that even the dullest of people could string together. Unfortunately, travel between them was a highly experimental science among even the brightest minds. No one had a clue how Nexus did what he did, which made him all the more impossible to stop.

  “Oh, would that I could! There are so many of you with so much violence in your hearts, but I’m afraid
it’s impossible. Bringing in a ringer would chance too much, and I won’t spoil the whole show for the sake of a single episode.” Nexus shook his head, genuine sadness etched on his mercurial expression.

  “Then make the me there fight the Quorum there. I don’t care how you get your kicks.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Nexus replied, head jerking up like a hawk who’d heard the rustle of a mouse in the brush. “In all the multiverse, there is only one Quorum. That’s what makes him interesting, you know. The rest of you? So predictable, the same motions even if the gestures change. But Quorum, he is truly unpredictable. That’s why I can’t go ruining things by cheating. Think over my offer, though, I’m a good man to be owed a favor by.”

  Then Nexus was across the room, standing only a few feet from Ivan. He braced for an attack, but Nexus merely leaned in and whispered softly into his ear, words barely louder than the strum of a spider’s thread.

  “Especially for a man who seeks to keep the stars from falling.”

  As the words faded, Ivan realized he was alone in his home. Moving slowly, he pulled out his cell phone and pulled up a number on the screen. He stared at the green “Call” button for over a minute before putting the phone away. Nexus was cryptic and insane all the time, and even if he did know much, what he said wasn’t always true. No reason to wake her at this hour with some groundless prediction. Ivan wouldn’t let things come to that.

  He would keep his promise, no matter what.

  * * *

  The explosion engulfed not only his target but the ones on either side of it as well, catching them in flickering magical fire that quickly turned the wooden figures into cinders. Balaam bit his lip in frustration at the unintended casualties. Normally, he took pleasure in his power and how far reaching it was, but this training was about precision. After having to spend a whole evening holding his tongue around Ivan, Balaam’s annoyance and frustration were at dangerous levels. He needed to regain his composure, for the sake of safety, if nothing else.