by Andrea Speed
“And any witnesses to be dealt with?”
There were a couple of ways that could go. He decided the nonlethal option was best for now. “Just use the cops on the payroll. Harsher only if necessary.”
“Got it, sir.”
Ash pressed the button that put up the privacy screen, and as Kaede turned to ask him why, Ash grabbed him and kissed him. It was a full-on, aggressive kiss, and Ash was still working the whole tongue thing out, but it was surprisingly hot despite its sloppiness. Ash straddled him and kissed the corner of his mouth, saying, “I want more. Don’t you want more?”
“Of course I do.” He slid his hands underneath Ash’s shirt and felt his sweaty back, even though he was still a little cooler than he should have been. When Kaede kissed his neck, he realized Ash’s sweat tasted different too. It was lightly salty, mostly clean. Of course he wasn’t a completely normal human, but for some reason, Kaede often forgot that. To him, he was just a strange—and strangely alluring—person.
Lust was starting to get the better of him, but he remembered that both he and Ash were high as fuck, and this might not be the best time to take their relationship to the next level. It was difficult, but he pushed Ash back, holding him at arm’s length. “We can’t do this right now.”
“Why not?”
“Because we’re tripping balls.”
Ash grinned. “What better time to do it?”
He reached for Kaede again, but Kaede grabbed his hand and held it instead. “I know. Believe me I know. But I don’t feel right about this. So let’s just back-burner this for now, okay?”
Ash frowned, slumping back against the seat. “Really?”
“Yeah, I can’t believe I’m saying it either. But I am. We shouldn’t do this right now.” Kaede was shocked at the words coming out of his mouth. Hadn’t he just shot a man in the head? You’d think restraint was beyond him. But he liked Ash, and he never wanted to take advantage of him, even if the very concept of it seemed questionable at best.
Wow. He was going to regret this. Hell, it had been thirty seconds, and he already regretted this.
Although Kaede worried it was awkward, they still leaned on each other going up to the penthouse. A message was waiting for him when they came in, which the computer dutifully played.
It was Cyrus Snow, “concerned” they’d gotten off on the wrong foot and wanting to meet with him to “discuss” things tomorrow. Ash collapsed on the couch, lounging over it like a sun-drunk tourist. “Is he crazy? Even a two-year-old could see that was a trap.”
Kaede nodded, retrieving bottled water. He tossed one to Ash and kept one for himself. “Yep. Which is why we should totally do it.”
Ash raised an eyebrow at him. “Walk into a trap?”
“Yeah. Why does he want me out of town so bad? There’s gotta be a reason.”
“He’s an insecure fuckhead?”
“Yes, well, that is the obvious answer, but I’m wondering if there’s something else at work here.”
Kaede wasted a perfectly good high doing research and thought he figured it out. At the last couple of crimes connected to Snow’s crew, a supposed “superweapon” had been used that sounded an awful lot like the sonic cannon his dad made, which was currently on the missing-tech list. Was that it? Snow had bought it on the black market and was afraid Kaede was going to insist on getting it back?
He was right to be afraid. Snow just didn’t know how right he was. Yet.
Kaede had no clear memory of going to bed, but he woke up snuggled up next to Ash. They were in his bed, but they were both still wearing last night’s clothes, so presumably there had been no fucking around. He hoped not, otherwise he’d forgotten it, and wouldn’t that be disappointing?
He allowed himself to lie there for a little bit, cuddling with Ash. Ash still smelled like rain on asphalt, a pleasant scent. Why couldn’t all man-sweat smell that way? Kaede noticed again how strong and slow Ash’s heartbeat was, and how that contrasted with his cooler body temperature. Surely they were related.
Before he nodded off again, Kaede peeled himself away from Ash’s arms and took a shower, all the while coming up with a plan to defeat Snow. The two of them should be able to take him out, although Kaede did wonder about the size of Snow’s crew. How many people with guns would there have to be before Ash was concerned about it? Two dozen? Three?
If Snow was smart, he’d expect them to try something. But Kaede had to assume Snow was like most underworld bosses—a conceited prick. He would expect he could handle anything they brought. He might even try and use the sonic weapon on them.
While putting breakfast together, Kaede looked up the specs on the sonic weapon, and just as he thought, there was a kill code. Actually, it was a special radio frequency tone that only his dad—and he—knew. Dad had tiny key chains that could broadcast the frequency. He’d have to get him and Ash set up with them before they headed out. If Snow’d had any smarts at all, he would have known that no Dr. Terror weapon could be turned on its creator. Dad was just too smart for that. How did everybody not know this? It was like Dr. Terror 101.
Once Ash was up and out of the shower, they discussed strategies over breakfast. They didn’t talk about what had happened in the car last night, but that was probably for the best. Kaede kind of wanted to ask if he was still interested in going to the next level, but they probably needed to stay on task. First, they had to get the sonic weapon back from Snow, and oh yeah, teach him a hard lesson about threatening supervillains and stealing from them.
Computer maps revealed that where Snow wanted to meet them was a damn good place for a quiet slaughter. But if it was perfect for an ambush on them, it was equally great for an ambush on Snow and his men. But they had to keep Dark Justice and any other hero from interfering.
You just had to assume that DJ would know Snow was up to something, and maybe Kaede as well. In fact, Kaede expected DJ to show up and hassle him about what happened last night. Even though Kaede felt he had a good case for self-defense. Okay, maybe blowing that guy’s head off was a bit beyond the pale, but it would have been acceptable if this were Florida or Texas. Probably not an acceptable argument.
Ash thought his idea for luring all the capes away from the docks was a little extreme, but he couldn’t think of a better idea that could be pulled off at short notice. So Kaede went to work on his plan.
The lab had a facial replicator, which did exactly what you might think it did: made masks out of artificial skin with a 3D printer, ones you could affix to your face and that were much more realistic than anything Hollywood could cook up. It created perfect disguises, although in reality it was best to use them for only a few hours, as they could eventually degrade and tear. Kaede’s facial features were already programmed into the machine so it could make masks to his precise measurements, and he made one to his specifications. It was a generic white guy, and when he put it on and sealed the edges, he looked like every other white guy on the street. Perfect. He put on a jumpsuit so generic it could have been the work coveralls of a dozen different workers or businesses. Generic was the keyword for today.
He walked out of their building, cloaked in anonymity, and no one ever gave him a second glance, which was exactly what Kaede wanted. He was just a regular Caucasian guy in an overwhelmingly Caucasian part of the city. Nothing remarkable about him at all.
Kaede walked to the Lincoln Avenue apartments, smack-dab in the center of downtown, on the border where the middle-class neighborhood started to give way to the poorer, urban section where an Asian man wouldn’t have been so out of place. But he was not Asian right now.
He used a thermal scanner to confirm the number of people in the building, then went inside, making a beeline for the landlord’s office. He identified himself as a fictional employee of the gas company, with fake but realistic credentials to prove it, and insisted they needed to immediately evacuate residents and pets as there was a gas leak. That made the landlord move, more than happy to help him evacuate
people. It took longer than Kaede hoped, but once it was done, he did another pass with the thermal scanner, just to be sure, and then went up to the second floor to plant the bomb.
He’d hastily studied the structural integrity of the building this morning and computer modeled it just in case. In the second-floor elevator shaft, this type of bomb would create a flashy explosion, send lots of debris all over, and snap the spine of the building, which was exactly what he wanted. He needed chaos, but he saw no reason to kill any of these people. Their only crime was living downtown.
Kaede left through a rear exit and shed his disguise along the way, dumping the face mask and hair in one garbage can, and taking off the coverall and throwing it in a Dumpster behind a fast-food place. Underneath he wore dress pants and a T-shirt. He stopped in a clothing store downtown to buy a suitable button-down shirt, jacket, and shoes. He left his work boots in an alley to be found by some lucky homeless guy.
Kaede found a handy car to hotwire and was driving away when a loud explosion made the ground tremble, and he could see a large plume of gray smoke rising in his rearview mirror.
Superheroes being unbelievable fame whores, in spite of “secret identities,” he knew Dark Justice would be there, and while there was no one to rescue from the apartments, there would be several car crashes and other extraneous damage, including a fire. Moreau would be forced to help, freeing him and Ash—and Snow—from his scrutiny for several hours. Moreau would probably want to pin it on Kaede, but he couldn’t, because Kaede had made an exact replica of a bomb used by the Lewis gang when they used to blow up safes and bank vaults. Since the Lewis gang was in jail, DJ would probably assume Kaede had done it to taunt him. He would be correct, but the poor dumb bastard could never prove it, and the cops would be left chasing their own tails.
Kaede drove out toward the waterfront and left the car abandoned behind a run-down old bar known for biker gangs and aggravated assaults. He had no doubt it would be stolen within twenty minutes.
In theory, it was a short but dangerous walk to an abandoned cannery, near pier thirty-one, but it wasn’t dangerous for Kaede. What was? He also knew that even though he couldn’t see him, Ash was watching him. He could feel his gaze on him, and it was comforting.
Although he arrived on time, Snow’s gang was already in the warehouse, and Kaede was frisked with unnecessary roughness by two of Snow’s no-necked goons, who glared at him like a couple of hicks from a trailer park suddenly let loose in the big city.
“I don’t like guns,” he told them, and their puzzled, disgusted expressions were almost quaint.
He was cleared to enter the warehouse, where Cyrus Snow, the current underworld kingpin, sat at a metal table with four of his most thickly muscled men. There was a single open chair at the opposite end, where, coincidently, a bright lamp was aimed like a spotlight. So much for being a welcome guest. But then again, Kaede had killed some of Snow’s men last night.
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Hayashi,” Snow said. “Although it feels like I’ve met some version of you before.”
Kaede scoffed and pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his jacket pocket. The packaging was all in Japanese, but if you caught a whiff of them, you’d smell clove and a hint of almond. They weren’t tobacco cigarettes, as he’d never understood how anyone could smoke them. They tasted terrible. “First Dark Justice assumes that, and now you. I don’t suppose you and he are close.”
That provoked a dark, gravelly chuckle from Snow. He had a long, thin knife blade of a face, which his receding hairline emphasized, and dead shark eyes spaced a bit too widely above a slender nose. Kaede had no idea why, but he had yet to encounter an attractive crime boss. It was the rare job that didn’t welcome the pretty. The lights illuminated the table and a few inches of space beyond it, but no more, casting the rest of the cannery in shadow. Still, Kaede was aware of shapes moving in the dark, shifting restlessly from foot to foot, moving heavy guns from one shoulder to another. Snow had probably assumed Kaede was coming to try to kill him, even though Snow had arranged the meeting. How many men were here, including the ones outside? At least a dozen, all armed with the biggest weapons they could carry.
Not enough. Not nearly enough.
“Hardly,” Snow said. He clasped his hands together on the table, and Kaede noticed he had a pinkie ring the size of a cherry tomato. Super tacky, and made worse by the fact that the garish gemstones in it were probably real, and he probably thought it was cool. “But there have been a lot of deaths and mayhem since you came to town.”
“Do I look that dangerous to you?” Kaede replied, fishing his lighter out of his pocket. There was derisive sniggering from the dark, confirming locations of gunmen, and Snow smirked at him.
“Nah, can’t say you do. But you mad-scientist types rarely look that bad.”
“Who said I was a mad scientist? That’s my father, not me. Speaking of which, I don’t suppose there’s any chance you’d give me back the sonic blaster, is there?”
“The what?”
Kaede dug a cigarette out of the pack and placed it between his lips, taking his time to pocket the pack and light his cigarette before responding. “Come now. The sonic cannon, stolen blindly from an illegal tech auction? I dare say neither of you knew exactly what you had, but since it’s my father’s invention, it’s mine now. Return it and I leave.”
Now Snow laughed, a genuine gut-buster of a chortle. He slapped the table before he calmed down. “You got stones, Hayashi, I’ll give you that. Comin’ here, all by yourself, unarmed, and demanding I give you something. You got guts.”
Kaede inhaled deeply and then let out a large plume of smoke. It had an aftertaste like spice cake. It was very pleasant. “Who said I came here alone?”
Snow shook his head. “Got lookouts on the roof. They saw you walkin’ in. Really ain’t that smart to walk this place alone. Or to come in here alone.”
“Are you insinuating something?” There were almost always lookouts or snipers on the roof. Crime bosses could be so boringly predictable.
Snow smiled, but the grin was sharp and oily. “Your father is a big brain, and odds are you are too. Even if you ain’t, you got access to his stuff, right? I’m thinkin’ this could be the start of a beautiful friendship.”
Kaede exhaled another plume of smoke. It dissipated slowly in the light, a gray-white fog moving across the table. “Whether I like it or not?”
The left corner of Snow’s mouth hitched up even higher, showing one of his eyeteeth. “Now yer gettin’ it. Just think of what we could accomplish if we teamed up. We could get rid of that fuckhole Justice once and for all.”
Now it was Kaede’s turn to chuckle as he tapped ash on the cement floor. “You aim very low, don’t you?”
Snow’s grin faltered. “What?”
“How much do you know about my father? I’ll assume you know what everyone else knows. Which is fine, because the authorities would rather downplay all the significant strides forward he made. He is the preeminent genetic engineer of our time. Not just in creating flesh-eating bacteria and lethal viruses that will only activate in people with certain genes, but in various other substances as well. In fact, he creates special toxins and also creates cures to them, which he tests on himself. After rigorous, illegal human trials, of course. The thing about these cures is they are genetic. He inserts genes in his own DNA that essentially deactivate all these designer toxins he creates, so they can never be used against him. He inoculated me as well.” The thug on his immediate right started to cough, followed by the thug on his left. Kaede pulled in and then exhaled another large plume of smoke. “In essence, I can breathe poison, and it has no effect on me at all. How about you, Mr. Snow?”
Snow’s blue eyes bugged out as Kaede’s words sunk in, so much so that Kaede could count the broken capillaries that decorated his whites like discarded ribbons. All the other gun thugs at the table were coughing, except the two closest to Kaede, who had slumped to the floor, no longer coughin
g. Or moving. Their lips were a peculiar shade of blue.
Snow reached under his jacket, obviously going for his gun, so Kaede upended the table, propping it up on its end as bullets slammed into the scarred metal. He threw his cigarette away and lit the whole pack on fire before tossing it toward the center of the room. The faster the smoke filled the place, the better. Kaede was proud, because while the toxin was his dad’s idea, putting it in smokable form in a Japanese clove cigarette pack was all his. He saw movement from the corner of his eye, pulled a throwing disc out of his pocket, and carefully threw it at the shadowy target, never touching its edge. Kaede couldn’t see where he’d hit his target, but he heard the clatter of his gun on the floor as he went down.
There was more coughing and more bullets, but now a new noise entered the fray, a sound of dull thuds and the sharp crack of bones, and Kaede knew Ash had arrived right on time.
Ash had actually come here well ahead of everyone else in a display of his infinite discipline and patience. He waited and scoped out the cannery, counting each and every one of the thugs who arrived and noting their positions. As soon as the ones on the roof reported Kaede’s arrival, Ash would have gone up there and killed them. The ones on high ground you had to take care of first. Next he would have started on the thugs at ground level, as that was the most logical secondary step. Then he’d simply wait for Kaede to make his move, and he’d finish off the stragglers. Ash was wearing a symtech suit, with full headgear, so he was impervious to everything.
Kaede peeked around the table to see the still-living thugs attempt to attack Ash en masse. A good plan, really—all they could do since bullets didn’t seem to work—but doomed to failure. Ash delivered a palm strike to the throat of one thug, crushing his larynx, while delivering a full-force kick to the chest of another man, collapsing his sternum. One goon grabbed Ash from behind, only to get a sharp elbow to the face that shattered his nose—and possibly his skull; it wasn’t only blood gushing from his nose as he fell. Ash then headbutted another man, who collapsed to the ground seizing, and while the remaining man leveled his Uzi point-blank at Ash’s chest, Ash grabbed his arm snake quick, and Kaede could hear the man’s bones snap like a dead tree branch as Ash twisted his arm until he dropped the gun, screaming. Ash put him out of his misery with a well-placed kick that most likely pulped his solar plexus on contact. Ash didn’t always fight at full strength, because, as he said, “It was too damn easy,” but on missions like this, the sooner they were done, the better.
