by Logan Jacobs
“Thanks, Aileen,” I said as I moved in front of one of the main computer terminals.
“This seems simple enough,” Norma said as she studied it beside me.
“It does, but I’m still going to make sure there’s nothing hidden in here that might blow up the entire base,” I told Norma and Elizabeth. “Why don’t the two of you go look over the Shadow Knight’s weapons cache? I want a full rundown of everything he’s capable of, including weapons he might have discarded or any failed prototypes. The more we know about him, the better.”
“Will do!” Norma chirped.
“Do you want us to gather any of his weapons to take back with us?” Elizabeth asked.
“Hm…” I thought about it for a moment, and then I nodded. “Yeah, grab anything that looks like something we don’t already have.”
“That might be difficult,” Norma said with a grin.
“I’ll see what we can find,” Elizabeth said, and then the two of them started toward the Shadow Knight’s weapon racks to dig through them.
That left me alone to try and access the deeper parts of Slade’s computer systems, so I plugged in a jump drive that Aileen would be able to remotely access, so she could join me as I went through all of Slade’s files. She would also be able to go through and deactivate any of his panic security and any self-destruct systems that Slade might have implemented in case someone got access to his lair.
But there was no way Slade was prepared for someone like me.
“I will bypass the security,” Aileen informed me as her actions started to appear on the screen. “Shall I download the files?”
“Yes,” I said as I scrolled through some of the files and programs on Slade’s main computer terminal. “But something about this seems…”
“Lacking?” Aileen finished my thought for me. “I agree.”
I continued to dig through the files on the computer, but much of the information I found on the various supervillains in Grayville seemed incomplete. It was mostly the basic information that I’d already accessed publicly, with just a few added details here and there. Even information on Slade’s own technological systems and inventions seemed very barebones and basic. There were lists of his current technology assets, but there was no specific information on them or even any design blueprints.
From what I’d seen of the Shadow Knight’s hideout so far, I didn’t think he had a physical cache of information that he kept. He was very much a tech guy, so I knew there had to be something that I was missing-- especially since there was absolutely no information to be found at all on the Shadow Knight’s main nemesis: Maniac.
“Aileen, see if you can access a deeper level,” I instructed her.
“There is not one, Creator,” she replied. “Everything you see is all he has. There are no hidden files located on this computer.”
But that did get me thinking.
“What if this isn’t his only computer?” I asked.
“You believe that he is hiding an entirely separate system?” Aileen responded. “It could be possible. There are traces of files that have been deleted that appear important.”
“If he has a hidden computer, it’s probably on its own private network,” I replied as I typed a few basic commands into the computer terminal.
“So I could not access it or control it the way I can with this one,” Aileen huffed like she was personally offended. “It is possible.”
I spent a little more time looking around Slade’s decoy terminal, but it held nothing of interest to me. I unplugged the jump drive and instead turned to the smooth, concrete walls that surrounded the computer room. It was very likely that he had some kind of hidden computer terminal behind one of those walls.
Considering the amount of power required to keep both computers up and running, it would be easiest to keep them relatively close together. I also didn’t think that Slade was paranoid enough to put his actual computer somewhere that was inconvenient for him to reach since he would still have to use it a lot.
I observed the walls and searched for the tell-tale signs of the hidden panels that were apparently typical of Slade’s security systems, and after several minutes of study, I found it, slid open the panel, and revealed another code-restricted access point.
“Can you access this one, Aileen?” I asked my AI system.
“It is connected to his main security,” she confirmed. “I can access it, but I have no ability to connect to whatever is in this room. I cannot tell you what could be inside.”
I assumed it was his actual computer terminal, but I was prepared for anything.
After I used the code that Aileen gave me, the door slid open to reveal a very dark room. I knew better than to try and flip on the light-switch and risk setting off whatever bomb security that Slade had certainly rigged this room with, so instead, I entered the room and slowly made my way toward the main computer terminal in the middle.
As soon as I reached it, I studied it as best as I could in the darkness to figure out how Slade usually woke it up. The setup was a large, curved monitor propped up on a desk with multiple buttons and keyboards placed around it. Each appeared to serve a specific purpose, but all I needed to do was siphon out the information from it onto a jump drive. I didn’t need to try and manually go through it, so there was no need for me to try and figure out exactly how it all worked with whatever setup he used.
I just needed to find a port to plug my drive into.
“He likely has systems in place to prevent the theft of his information,” Aileen warned.
“Yeah,” I replied. “But I already dealt with that back at the prison. He probably has a similar system here, but we can get around it with the drive. Once you’re inside, you might still need to manually deactivate anything we miss.”
“I will not disappoint you,” Aileen assured me.
When I found an open port to plug in the drive, I inserted it carefully, but the screen remained dark, so I knew the drive hadn’t been detected.
“Are you in?” I asked my android.
“Yes, Creator,” she confirmed. “I have access to this computer through the drive now, but you should be aware that this entire room is rigged to blow up if it detects anything even slightly out of the ordinary.”
“Then let’s copy everything on the computer onto the drive,” I said. “There’s no need to go through it all here since we can look it over later.”
“I can copy everything without alerting the systems,” Aileen assured me. “He should not know we were here.”
“If we’re taking his physical tech back with us, he’ll probably know anyway,” I said with a shrug. “Or that someone was here, anyway. You blanked the security cameras, right?”
“I left it on a loop of the empty interior once we arrived,” she confirmed.
“That’s good, even though I don’t think it really matters,” I said. “I’m sure he’ll know it was us, but as long as he thinks we didn’t access this secret room of his, we’ll still have the upper hand.”
“Easy enough,” Aileen replied. “All information will have been copied shortly.”
“Good,” I said.
“There is quite a lot of information on the one known as Maniac,” Aileen said after a moment. “Do we want it all? Some of it is… excessive.”
“Yup, all of it,” I said. “We need the complete picture to know exactly how Slade ticks.”
“Understood,” Aileen replied. “The volume of information on the Maniac will make this take twice as long as it would otherwise.”
“And how long is that?” I asked.
“Two minutes as opposed to one minute,” she replied in a way that almost sounded like she was bragging.
“I think we can wait that long,” I snickered.
It took exactly as long as Aileen said it would, and soon all of the Shadow Knight’s secret, hidden information was contained on my jump drive. I unplugged it and pocketed it back into a safe place on my utility belt, and then I quickly exited the room
before any of the extra security was triggered.
Once the door slid shut behind me with Aileen’s assistance, it was done.
“Miles?” Norma blinked as she watched me emerge from the secret doors. “That’s where you were?”
“What did you find?” Elizabeth asked from beside the decoy computer terminal.
My superpowered girlfriend held a few varieties of shurikens and stun-blasters that I didn’t already have in my own arsenal. I didn’t usually like things like stun guns because I would always much rather just use an actual gun, but it might be worth taking apart one of the Shadow Knight’s weapons to see what he worked with.
“The Shadow Knight was more secretive than we thought,” I explained. “That computer is a fake, and his real one is in that room I just came out of.”
“That’s a little over the top paranoid, isn’t it?” Elizabeth smirked as she looked past me toward the closed, now-hidden door.
“Well, Slade is over the top paranoid, so it makes sense,” Norma sighed. “How’d you figure it out, Miles?”
“The information on his main computer was painfully lacking, and that hidden room had the same kind of secret security panel that he used on the boathouse,” I said with a shrug.
Slade was brilliant, but for someone like me, he was predictable.
“Beacon called for you a little while ago,” Elizabeth said. “He found something he said you’d be interested in.”
“Let’s go see,” I replied. “And let’s make sure he hasn’t set that old man loose.”
“He hasn’t,” Norma assured me. “They’re taking what you said very seriously.”
We left the east wing of the lair and headed back to the main entrance, where Beacon waited for us alone.
“Penumbra took Julien to the west wing where she’s keeping an eye on him, but I wanted to talk to you alone first,” Beacon started.
“Go for it,” I said.
“Can you give Julien a chance and listen to what he has to say?” Beacon sounded nervous. “While we were treating his hand, he seemed like he’s really against the Shadow Knight now. He said himself that Slade has gone totally insane, and that he has to be stopped. He wants to help.”
“Fine,” I sighed. “I’ll listen to him, as long as you can vouch for the information he gives me.”
“He’ll tell you about everything that Slade is using,” Beacon said. “I promise you that.”
He could be absent-minded at times, but so far, Beacon hadn’t done anything against me, and he’d even been pretty helpful. So if he vouched for this Julien man and said that he was as opposed to the Shadow Knight as we were, then Beacon’s judgement was probably accurate.
And if he was right about Julien, then I was about to find out even more about the Shadow Knight’s tech and activities than I’d anticipated.
Chapter 12
Even though Slade had access to the entire cave system underneath the island, he had only divided the Shadow Knight’s lair into three main areas. There was the first main room that we’d entered, where Slade kept his weapons cache as well as various worktables to develop and engineer new technology. It also connected to the rest of the island’s undeveloped caves and eventually led back to the surface, where it ended in a waterfall.
The second area was the east wing, and I’d just discovered that it held Slade’s decoy computer as well as his actual, hidden computer that I’d already raided. The third area was the west wing, and I had no idea what it contained, but from what I remembered of Penumbra’s blueprints, it was the biggest space in the Crow’s Nest.
Beacon led us through a tunnel toward the west wing now, and as I glanced at the cavern walls around us, I realized that this tunnel had only been reinforced. The rest of Slade’s base had been modernized and was mostly man-made, but this area kept most of its natural structure.
“So what’s the deal with this Julien guy?” I asked as we walked down the tunnel. “I didn’t exactly have time to ask about him, but I’d like to know exactly what his relationship is to you and Slade-- actually, I’d like to know that before we go any further.”
I stopped walking, Norma and Elizabeth stopped right behind me, and Beacon turned toward us before we went any deeper into the tunnel.
“You do kind of owe us an explanation,” Norma piped up.
“I wasn’t trying to keep it a secret or anything,” Beacon said with a red face. “I just wasn’t sure how you’d react.”
“I was prepared to kill him for threatening us,” I said. “You’re lucky he only got out of it with a blown off finger.”
“I know, that’s my fault, too,” Beacon sighed. “But I had no way to contact him. Slade did a good job of keeping us all apart, and that includes me and Penumbra. Slade was so in my head that-- well, even after I stopped being his apprentice, I hadn’t really thought about the fact that I could talk to Penumbra before you brought us all together.”
“So the Shadow Knight kept you apart from each other to better control you?” Elizabeth frowned. “That doesn’t seem very beneficial to the team.”
“He didn’t treat us much like a team.” Beacon shrugged. “But yeah, he kept us apart to try and control us and to keep us from talking to each other more often than he considered necessary.”
“But you still managed to get close to Julien,” I guessed.
“I did.” Beacon nodded. “Back when the Shadow Knight was training me, it was Julien who would treat my injuries when Slade went too hard or got a little out of control. At first I only knew him as the guy who helped Slade design his tech, but we got closer after a while. I thought he might be here, but I didn’t think he’d be on board with any of the Shadow Knight’s plans against you.”
“How much of Slade’s tech did he develop?” Norma asked.
“It’s nothing Slade couldn’t have eventually created himself,” Beacon said. “Julien just helped speed up the process a little bit, but he knows a lot of information that can help us.”
I was still extremely unsure about this Julien character, but if he knew all the details of the Shadow Knight’s plan for me, he could be useful. I only had a few vague ideas about what Slade could be plotting, and I would need to go through the thousands of files we’d pulled off of his computer to get a better picture of his plan.
So if the old man had good information, it could jumpstart that process and make it easier for me, and I was certainly open to that.
“Alright,” I sighed. “I said I’d listen to him, so I’ll give him one chance to impress me.”
“And one chance to prove that he isn’t going to report everything back to the Shadow Knight,” Elizabeth added.
“At this point, it doesn’t really matter if Slade knows we were here,” I said. “Let’s just focus on being fast and getting what we need instead of worrying about any tracks that we might leave behind. Aileen, how long until the press conference is over?”
“It already is,” my android confirmed in her low, sultry voice. “Slade Industries has already moved on to their investor meeting. This is less publicized, but based on my calculations, you still have several hours before we should worry about Slade.”
“As long as he’s not on his way over now, it’ll be fine,” I said. “Alright, Beacon-- we can go on now.”
Beacon led us up a metal staircase instead of through another set of steel doors in front of us, and as we climbed, I noticed that my assistant kept glancing over the railing at the floor far below us.
“Where does this go?” Norma asked.
“You’ll see,” Beacon said. “We’re almost there.”
He pushed open a door at the top of the stairs, and we emerged onto a huge metal platform with only three solid walls. The fourth wall was instead a large glass pane that gave a wide, expansive view of the hangar underneath.
It looked like it had space for many different types of vehicles, but from what I could see, there were only a few vehicles left, and they were all shoved into a back corner. Most of th
em didn’t look like the high-tech armored tanks that the Shadow Knight currently drove around the city, but they did at least look like they might be early prototypes of some sort.
A movement from the other end of the massive platform caught my attention, and I looked over to see Penumbra as she waved to us. Julien stood beside her, but he was looking out at the empty hangar instead of at us. He leaned on a cane to stay upright, and his right hand was wrapped up in several bandages, so I couldn’t tell how bad the damage was. I doubted that he would ever be able to use that hand again, so I hoped he was left-handed.
If not, he’d just have to learn to be.
“Miles!” Penumbra smiled as we reached them. “Um, well, you should be properly introduced.”
“There is no need for introductions,” the old man scoffed as he glanced at us. “I know who he is, and I’m sure that Beacon has already told him who I am and what I do. Let’s not waste any time.”
“I appreciate that you want to get right down to business,” I said since that was definitely a plus in the old man’s favor. “So first, I need to know where you stand when it comes to Slade.”
“Very well.” Julien turned away from me to look down at the vast, empty hangar again. “I have been working for Dan Slade since he first arrived in Grayville and took on the persona of the Shadow Knight. I have watched him steadily descend into madness, but the last few weeks have been the last straw for me. I told him that once I completed the designs we already had in progress, that I would end my working relationship with him-- no matter what the outcome was of his fight with you.”
“So you don’t support him at all?” I asked.
“Correct,” Julien replied as he turned back to face me. “I have seen the way that he treats his sidekicks and apprentices, and I have also seen his obsession with the Maniac, and I-- well, to put it mildly, I don’t appreciate it. Everything that’s happened with you has just… it’s just solidified my decision to stop working for him completely.”
I wondered if any of the Shadow Knight’s team would have ever realized how deranged their mentor truly was if I hadn’t arrived. I was pleased that Julien’s story lined up with what Beacon had already told me, but there was still one more method that I could use to tell if the old man was lying or not, and that method had turquoise-blue eyes and was wearing a skin-tight supersuit that I’d made especially for her.
