by Wyatt Kane
That caught Ty’s interest. Working as an electronic repair person might not be his absolute ideal, but it was a lot closer than working for Angie. Yet Martin hadn’t finished. He was still waxing lyrical.
“Better yet, maybe you could invent something and license it. Sell it to thousands. You know what people are like these days. Any new gadget and they’re all over it. I bet you could make a fortune!”
It was another good idea. Ty would have to give it some thought, but off the top of his head, he didn’t know what he might invent. Again, Martin tweaked the mixer, changing the nature of the music once more. He pushed his glasses back up his nose and focused on the screens
“So it’s all good?” Ty asked. “It works the same as before?”
“Too right it does! If I hadn’t seen what you did with my own eyes, I would have sworn it was a new system. It’s perfect!”
Ty was happy with that. “Good,” he said. “Maybe Angie won’t fire me for another day or so.” He said it with a laugh and started packing his tools away.
“I should damn well hope not,” Martin said. Then he looked past Ty to the main entrance. “I guess we’ll find out. There she is now. Looks like the music summoned her.”
Ty didn’t even bother to look. He just continued to pack his tools away so that when Angie arrived, he was all set to go. Only then did he glance up to see that her expression was a mixture of irritation and anger.
Ty wasn’t surprised. Anyone else would have been pleased by his success. But to Angie, it signified a status adjustment that she wasn’t willing to accept. Ty had stepped out of the box she had put him in. Even worse, she couldn’t punish him for leaving before his shift was done.
“He fixed it, then?” Angie said, her words directed at Martin as she glared thunderously at Ty.
“He sure did. Angie, Ty was amazing. The system was dead for all money. I don’t think anyone would have been able to fix it other than him.”
Angie continued to glare as she offered a snort in response. “I bet it was no more than luck.”
“It was a lot more than that,” Martin said, and Ty could tell by his tone that he knew full well what he was doing. He was deliberately lending his voice in Ty’s support. “Angie, Ty has just saved us a whole bunch of cash at the same time as making sure that we’re ready to go. If he hadn’t been here, there would be nothing but silence for entertainment this evening. And there would’ve been nothing I could do about it.”
Angie transferred her glare from Ty to Martin and couldn’t keep the sneer of from twisting her lips. “So you say,” she said. “I find it hard to believe that he was able to manage anything useful at all. The system must not have been as badly damaged as you thought.”
At this, Martin visibly bridled. He was about to leap to Ty’s defense, but Angie didn’t give him the chance. “In any event, he still has his normal job to do.” She switched her glance back to Ty. “Your disappearing act last night left a number of tasks undone. You can start by taking out the trash,” she said. “And while you’re out there, clean out the grease traps. It’s been a while since they were done.”
Cleaning the grease traps was the absolute worst job in the place. But Ty wasn’t surprised. It was Angie’s way to punish successes.
“I cleaned the grease traps just a couple of weeks ago,” he began.
“And they need it again,” Angie said. “Or are you really going to disobey me in this?”
The way she said it, with that combination of relish and disgust, told Ty all he needed to know. His success with the sound system hadn’t secured his position within the club. If anything, it had made it more uncertain.
Ty sighed deeply. “Yes ma’am,” he said.
It was enough. Angie favored him and Martin both with a sneering grin that spoke volumes of her state of mind. “Good. And when you’ve done that, come find me. I’m sure I can find some other jobs more suited to your skill set.”
Ty could see that Martin wanted to say something. He shook his head to silence the DJ, knowing full well that it just wasn’t worth it, and waited while Angie spun her bulky form about and waddled away.
When she had gone, Ty grinned at Martin. “What was that you said about your cousin?” he asked.
5: From Thin Air
The New Lincoln sky was starting to darken behind its usual layer of clouds when Ty lugged the last of the garbage bags into the alley behind the Concubine Club. He and Martin had talked briefly about the DJ’s cousin before Ty left to do as Angie commanded.
Apparently, the cousin ran a successful second-hand tech business specializing in all manner of items. Cybernetic implants of various types. Artificial limbs. Communication devices. Wearable tech of all types, as well as an assortment of more traditional appliances.
The business model was to scavenge the discard piles from the mega-corporations, fix up what they could, and sell them on to whomever needed good tech at discounted prices.
To Ty, it sounded like the type of thing he could enjoy, but he stopped short of asking Martin for an introduction. There were too many things happening in his life at that moment already. He didn’t need another to juggle, yet it felt good to have a possible option should he need it.
Ty breathed deep of the dusk air and immediately wished that he hadn’t. The alley behind the Club wasn’t as thick with alcoholic miasma of the Club itself, but it was dirty and damp and was home to three separate dumpster bins filled with trash.
It stank like the pile of fetid, decomposing garbage that it was. Ty couldn’t help but screw up his face in disgust as waves of the noisome odor hit him. It was a long way from the fresh, clean air he had hoped for.
Muttering under his breath, he gripped the top of the green, plastic bags tightly and swung first one, then the other into the closest bin.
In times past, he had struggled to swing the heavier trash bags high enough to get them over the edge. More than once, a bag had opened or ripped, showering Ty with the worst sorts of waste that the Club could produce.
Ty glanced at his sleeve where the device was hidden. The nanites it had injected into his system had caused him to grow several inches. He figured he must be close to six foot, where before he had stretched to claim five foot eight.
Yet even that was a minor difference compared to some. The villain Bain had grown much bigger and stronger as well. The monstrous man must have been more than eight feet tall, and he was built bigger than Arnie at his very best. Yet Ty was happy enough with his own gains. He had been expecting nothing when he picked up the device.
And anyway, it was his skill with electronics that was the most important.
The trash taken care of, there was nothing else for it. It was time to turn his attention to the grease trap.
Unlike in other places, the Concubine Club’s grease trap was outside, in the alley with the dumpsters. Ty stared at it with an expression of disgust. He had cleaned it at least once a month since he had started working there, and it was never much fun. He had to get down on his hands and knees and scrape layers of the worst rotting foulness he could ever imagine out of the trap.
It was so bad that more than once he had thrown up at the stench, and he would have preferred to do almost anything else. Even cleaning out the worst of the bathrooms wasn’t as revolting as this.
Yet it was the job he had signed up for. At the time, he’d had little choice. Ty had been broke to the point of starvation, and any job had been better than none. He had bills to pay, and his student loan wasn’t going to take care of itself.
So he had done his job, imagining emptying his buckets of sludge over Angie’s head as he did. And he would do it again, because despite how much his life had changed, his bills still remained.
There was no point in putting it off any longer. He had already brought out his buckets, scraper and thick, rubber gloves. Wishing for a nose-peg or maybe a gas mask as well, he approached the trap with the same wariness he might have shown on entering a sewer, and told himself th
at this was only temporary, that sometime soon, he would leave all this behind him.
“Some superhero you are,” he muttered to himself. He might have said more, postponing his least-favored task for just a bit longer, but before he could do so, everything changed.
He was still in the alley behind the Club. The last of the daylight was fading. The air was still filled with the stench of decaying food and waste. But instead of the normal faint chill causing the small hairs on his skin to stand on end, the air became filled with energy.
It was as if the entire area had become charged. As if the gods had chosen the alley as the next place to be struck by lightning. With the air filled with static, Ty wouldn’t have been surprised if a ball of energy suddenly appeared with lightning sparking left and right, and for Arnie himself to step out, fully naked, and demand Ty give him his clothes.
It was a fleeting thought, and yet it was surprisingly apt. There was pop! of energy, but instead of Arnie appearing in the alley, it was the demoness. The woman who had appeared from nowhere to spirit Bain away when the villain had been on the verge of defeat.
The teleporter.
She was a woman with devil horns growing out of her temples, a demonic tail, and a pair of wings that a small dragon would have been proud to display. She wore little more than strips of cloth wound about her, and sported a device on her wrist that matched the one Ty wore.
It was Dinah’s device, taken from the deerkin by Bain and his men and given to this woman.
She was standing there in the alley. Tall and dangerous, her eyes filled with green fire and her open, beautifully-formed face twisted into a severe expression severe, she had appeared as if by magic.
Ty made a strangled noise of surprise mixed with fear. He didn’t know how this woman had found him. Nor did he have any clue what her purpose might be. Part of his mind acknowledged that she was, in her own way, as stunningly beautiful as either Tempest or Dinah. For a moment, it was all he could do to stand there and stare, and if she had chosen to act at that time, there would have been nothing Ty could have done to prevent it.
Then he shifted his stance to a defensive position as decades-old martial arts lessons came back to him. “Activate!” he said, and his mesh suit responded. All at once, he found himself enclosed in an energy field of his own making and immediately felt more secure.
But the shield was purely defensive. It was no good at all should he wish to take the attack to the woman.
Which was why he carried a blaster tucked into his trousers.
As fast as thought, Ty reached for the weapon, drew it out and aimed. Without pausing to stop and think, operating under the assumption that this woman was there with malicious intent, Ty fired at her.
The blaster was one of those he had modified so he could adjust the strength of the blast. For the sake of nothing but caution, he had set it at its weakest strength. Yet the demoness was only a few yards away. At this distance, the blaster should have blown her backwards. It should have knocked her unconscious and left her with multiple bruises. Perhaps even a fracture or two.
But it didn’t. It didn’t hit her at all.
Not that Ty missed her, exactly. At this distance, it would have been difficult to do so. Ty had never had any formal training in using a blaster, but his roommate Brad was a professional gamer. Ty had played more than his share of first person shooters and knew how to aim and fire a gun.
Yet none of that mattered. Between the time Ty aimed the blaster and pulled his trigger, the demoness vanished with a pop and a distinct smell of ozone, only to appear an instant later balanced on top of one of the dumpsters.
Ty had been aiming down the length of the alley. The plasma blast from his weapon dissipated before it hit anything.
As fast as he could, Ty aimed and fired again. Once more, he was too slow. The demoness vanished with another pop! and whiff of ozone. Ty couldn’t help but think that the popping was wrong. His mind told him that the sound should have been “Bamf!” which to him was a completely different noise. Yet it was definitely a pop!, like the sound a tiny balloon might make when squeezed until it exploded.
This time, the force of Ty’s shot expended itself against the lid of the dumpster. The blast was concussive and explosive at once. The dumpster lid flew apart, its edges melted, and the dumpster itself was thrown back a few inches, as if knocked by a truck.
Ty whirled about, looking for the demoness. His heart was pounding and sweat formed on his brow despite the cool of the evening. He knew that she could be anywhere. There was nothing stopping her from appearing right behind him and doing whatever she wished.
Yet despite his panicked reactions, he was still surprised when she called out from above.
“Stop that!” she said, her voice filled with urgency and irritation both at once.
6: Lilith
Ty ignored her. He sighted again and fired, but it was too late. She was already gone.
“I said stop that!” she snapped from back where she’d first appeared. “I don’t have time for this nonsense!”
Ty was too rattled and scared to figure out what she meant. He fired again, knowing that he couldn’t hit her other than by sheer chance but hoping to get lucky. At the same time, he yelled out, “What do you want?”
She answered from behind him. “If you stop that, I’ll tell you!”
Ty whirled about. He had no intention of stopping. For all he knew, his attempts with his blaster were the only thing keeping him safe. He and Tempest had already rescued Dinah from Bain’s clutches. He didn’t want them to have to rescue him in her stead.
He fired again, and watched the blast dissipate against the brick of the Club. He wondered briefly how much charge his blaster retained. At the lowest setting, a single cartridge should be good for perhaps a hundred shots. But he had taken this cartridge from one of Bain’s men and didn’t know how much charge it retained.
Then the demoness appeared right in front of him, so close she was almost touching him. Ty flinched and jerked his arm back so he could aim at her again. Despite the overwhelming stench from the dumpster and the general grime of the alley, Ty caught a hint of her scent. To him, the demoness exuded an earthiness that put him in mind of forests and moss.
Even as he sought to defend himself, he couldn’t help but feel that in her own way, the demoness was as intoxicating to him as both Tempest and Dinah.
Before he could properly bring his blaster to bear, the demoness wrapped her arms around him as if drawing him into a hug, and then Ty felt the world lurch. It was as if he missed the last step and stumbled onto the ground.
Fearing the worst, Ty looked about, but nothing had changed.
“What the hell?” the demoness exclaimed. She had tried to teleport him away, but something had gone wrong. Perhaps his shield interfered with her ability.
He didn’t have time to wonder about it. The demoness gripped him more tightly and tried again.
It felt like Ty had been kicked in the chest. There was a moment of cold, as if all semblance of heat had vanished forever. He felt disoriented and instantly nauseous, and he opened his mouth to give voice to a wordless scream that never came out. He knew in his bones that during that moment, Ty and the demoness were no longer in New Lincoln. They weren’t even on Earth, or anywhere within the known universe.
Somehow, she had taken them somewhere else. Through a different dimension, perhaps. Somewhere where human beings were not meant to be.
It was terrifying and amazing and awful all at once, and Ty fervently wished that he would never have to experience it ever again.
And then they were back. Ty knew it the instant it happened. Wherever they had gone, wherever the demoness had taken him, they were no longer there.
He felt the most profound sense of relief in his entire existence. Ty swallowed hard on the bile that was rising in the back of his throat, then realized his relief was premature.
The demoness had teleported them straight up into the air.
He couldn’t help himself. This time, he did let out a cry of fear. At the same time, he started flailing about, twisting and turning in an effort to get out of the woman’s grip. What he would do if he succeeded, he didn’t know. Ty wasn’t thinking clearly. He wasn’t thinking at all. He was gripped in a mindless fear and simply reacted.
The demoness cursed out loud. “I don’t have time for this!” she repeated. Then, “Fine, then!” she said.
With that, she let Ty go.
Ty screamed in mindless terror. He lost his grip on his blaster and it went sailing away into the gloom. He desperately kicked and struggled, but there was nothing he could do. He was falling, and would hit the ground within moments.
Desperately, he wondered if his shield would protect him, but even as he had the thought, he figured it probably would not. His shield nullified the strength of an impact. Bain could hit him with an iron girder and he would barely feel it. But if his momentum was suddenly halted, that would be a different story.
The shield wouldn’t slow him down. If anything, it would protect the ground against the impact of him falling.
But Ty himself would take fall damage.
In the last few moments before he hit the ground, Ty understood that the defensive technology that had worked so well against Bain had at least one serious flaw. All he could do was bring his arms up to cover his head and cry out as the ground approached.
