I expected such a complex question would stop Lane in his tracks, but he just gave me his annoying I-know-something-you-don’t smirk.
“Ah, sis,” he chuckled and patted me on the head. I restrained myself from murdering him. Barely. “This is why you and the nerds are down in the dungeons playing with your computers while folks like me get to swim with the sharks.”
“You’re afraid of sharks,” I reminded him with a smirk. When we were kids, Lane had this reoccurring nightmare where a shark grabs his leg and carries it off to sea. Which is just as ridiculous as Lane dressed like a dock worker because again, we’re landlocked. Come to think of it, I don’t even think there are sharks at the Aquarium. Piranhas, yes, but no sharks.
“It was a metaphor,” Lane said and rolled his eyes. “The point is, we ain’t looking to bust Mister High and Mighty so much as make some inroads. If we just so happen to find out he is dabbling in shady dealings, we exploit the crap outta those weak points and get a foothold in his business. Next thing you know—BAM!—Winfield Enterprises owns a controlling share of Grey Market Grocers.”
Admittedly, it was an impressive plan, which means it certainly didn’t come out of Lane’s head. Unless he came up with an accidental flash of brilliance while looking for any excuse to don that ridiculous getup. I wasn’t going to rule that out as a possibility.
“Well, good luck,” I said, downing the last of my coffee and toying with the idea of getting back in line for a refill. “I’ve got to get to the nerd cage. Would hate to see something happen to your computer while you’re off playing green grocer.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“Of course I would.” I gave Lane a toothy smile and a pat on the cheek as we both left, taking off in opposite directions.
I know I said this just a few paragraphs ago, but it bears repeating: Monday morning is pretty universally soul crushing. For those of us who only know the words relaxing weekend as an unverified urban legend, that goes double. Add in the fact that Monday in IT usually involved wading through a hip deep pile of tickets that came in over the weekend and it’s easy to see why the media always portrays my fictional counterparts as socially awkward dorks with rage issues. Mondays sucking was just an unavoidable occupational hazard, which is why I tried to remain objective.
But every so often, a Monday would test the limits of my objectivity and this was already shaping up to be one of them. On top of the usual pile of trouble tickets and the double digit calendar alerts for meetings that were sure to screw with my productivity, the breakroom was out of coffee. Yes, I did just down nearly a liter of caffeinated sugar and yes, I might have still had the shakes, but not everyone had the forethought to fuel up before work, which meant odds were good that everyone I had to deal with was going to be snappish and short-fused.
Had that been all, it would have been bad enough, but the cherry on the top of my Monday madness came in the form of a ransom note I found taped to my monitor. Rather, it wasn’t the note so much as the fact that it had been scrawled on the back of a photograph of Wildcard, who had foregone his usual mask for the occasion and instead wore a pair of my pricier undies over his face. It was typical behavior and I’d be lying if I said the note didn’t give me a chuckle, but there was a time and a place for antagonistic flirting and this definitely wasn’t it.
I’d barely gotten the note stuffed into my purse when a familiar shadow fell over my desk.
“I thought you said you were going out to the labor…. Oh! Sorry, I uh… thought you were…”
Instead of Lane’s hulking bulk blotting out my cube’s meager light, I found myself looking up into the rotund face of Brandon Marlow, the head of Winfield Tech, the research and technologies division of Winfield Enterprises. Yes, Mary Sue Winfield was just as creative with the names of her companies as Wayne Grey was with his.
While it was weirdly intimidating enough to suddenly find one of the top executives lurking about down in my neck of the dungeon, this particular executive was especially intimidating. Brandon Marlow’s after-hours identity was none other than the Coalition of Evil member known as Oddball.
Now, to be fair, aside from Hostile Takeover, Oddball was my favorite of the Coalition members. But you have to consider that was kind of like saying Mussolini was my favorite Axis leader. Sure, I had aspirations of making it into the Coalition one day, but that didn’t mean the current members didn’t creep me out a bit.
“Eet iz owl right you confuse me wiz your brutter. Not many otters iz built like we, no?”
No, Marlow wasn’t a foreigner. As far as I knew, he was born in Maxima City and until five seconds ago, didn’t have any sort of distinguishing accent. But the dude wasn’t called Oddball for nothing.
“True,” I said, trying to twist my mouth into something resembling a casual and relaxed smile, as if Coalition members just drop by my cubicle all the time. I don’t need to tell you how that worked out. “Is there, um… something I can help you with?”
Marlow regarded me for a moment, almost as if he didn’t comprehend my meaning. Which, to be fair, he might not have, given that Winfield Industries had their own IT department that had nothing to do with me. Still there was something really off-putting about that stare. I mean, I try not to judge people based on their appearance, with the obvious exceptions being my brother (because family is fair game) and Tabby Burns (because rivals are fair game), and Awkward Man (because…okay fine! I judge people! I’m a bad guy! It’s what we do, okay?), but Oddball was an appropriate name on all levels. Aside from random and unpredictable personality quirks, the guy was… well, round. Everything about him, from his physique, to his bulgy eyeballs had an unnaturally spherical quality. He wasn’t just an oddball, he was an odd… ball.
Finally, he pulled a scrap of paper from his breast pocket and placed it on my desk. Ignoring what looked like the teeth marks from a small rodent, I focused on the minuscule, cramped handwriting that was just barely legible. A server address. One of ours, if I was reading it correctly. I typed the address into my computer and came up with a nondescript login screen with the Winfield Industries logo in the corner. I looked back at the paper, flipped it over, but the back was blank. There was no login information, so I arched a questioning eyebrow at Marlow.
“Hack eet.”
“Um… you want me to... uh… hack into this server?”
“Deed I stahdder?”
Okay then.
I scanned the page, hoping that this was in fact work related and not just some lunatic whim that was about to get me dragged up to the bosses office. It was definitely our server. I recognized some of the security protocols as my own design, but I had zero clearance, which was not surprising. As I said, Winfield Industries wasn’t my playground. I gave a mental shrug and damned the consequences. The chance to see if I could break into a server secured with my own supposedly unbreakable protection was just too much to resist and I got down to it.
After a solid thirty minutes of intense trial and error, I did it. I was in. It probably wouldn’t have taken me so long under normal circumstances, but it was hard to concentrate with Marlow standing over my shoulder, breathing loudly, and staring like he was trying to memorize my every keystroke. Or maybe he was having a stroke. Honestly, it was hard to tell.
“Impressive,” he said with an appreciative nod after snapping out of his trance. “Would you please send me a list of vulnerabilities and any suggestions you might have for closing the gaps?”
“Of course,” I said, ignoring the fact that the Dracula accent was gone. Like I said, the guy was cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.
“I appreciate your assistance.”
“No prob…lem…”
By the time I turned my head, he was already gone, leaving nothing but a faint stench of onions behind. Oddball’s talent—besides being bat-shit insane—was teleportation.
The rest of my Monday was thankfully pretty normal. By normal, of course, I mean stressful, soul sucking, and filled with incompetent idiots w
ith broken computers, but at least there were no more chance encounters with creepy weirdos.
Well, not on Monday, anyway.
Wednesday evening, I finally got my chance to check out the posh place my friends had found. What I thought was going to be a relaxing evening out with the girls took a strange turn when our party was joined by my least favorite Coalition member, Jet Set. Of course, he wasn’t in costume, so all my friends knew was that social media mogul Chad Luntz crashed ladies night, acting like the two of us were best buds.
Truth be told, I hated the little creep and not just because he managed to buy his way onto the Coalition even though he’s three years younger than me when his only talent is super speed. I didn’t even use his social networking platform because I knew the only reason he started it was to creep on all the girls who wouldn’t give him the time of day when he wasn’t rich. Not that women were throwing themselves at him now either. Rumor has it he’s speedy in all the wrong ways too.
It was bad enough that my friends not only fawned over this guy, but they acted like I was some sort of monster for never mentioning that we were friends. Even worse, Chad might not have been in costume, but he was in full Jet Set mode, asking me questions that teetered dangerously on the brink of revealing both of our secret identities to my otherwise oblivious girlfriends. He even went so far as to ask me to chill his wine to the perfect temperature under the guise of joking that I was some sort of ice queen.
Luckily, I was able to use the excuse that I had a big meeting at work to duck out early, but that was just the beginning of my strange encounters for the evening. While I was driving home, I nearly had a heart attack when yet another Coalition member materialized in the passenger seat of my car. Manifestation—yeah, the name says it all—was lucky I was used to seeing some crazy shit because otherwise I might have driven us off a bridge or something.
“Your presence is requested at Phryzer Pharmaceuticals.”
Of course it was, because why wouldn’t the absolute creepiest members of the Coalition need me to come out to their laboratory in the middle of the night?
“Dr. Cannibal still refuses to get a smart phone, eh?” I asked with a wry smirk. Manifestation didn’t reply, but there was something in his silence that conveyed exactly how he felt about being Cannibal’s instant messenger service.
At least the lab was near enough to my apartment that I didn’t have to go looking for paid parking. Surprisingly, Manifestation walked the whole four blocks with me. Considering that he didn’t really exist on our plane, I just expected him to dematerialize and meet me at the lab. If there’s one thing I’ve come to expect from talent on both sides, it was a penchant for laziness.
“Ah, Frostbyte, come in, come in. I do hope we’re not inconveniencing you too much?”
I’ll give Cannibal one thing, he’s definitely the most polite Coalition member ever. Granted, even the most benevolent and accommodating smile can be off putting when it reveals a row of tiny, razor sharp teeth designed for devouring human flesh. I’m open-minded. I can overlook a lot of flaws, but I have to draw the line at people eating.
“I was just on my way home,” I said with a shrug, as if I hadn’t left the bar earlier than usual because of a run in with their bratty colleague.
Dr. Cannibal gave a distracted nod and an “Mm-hmm,” as his attention was drawn to a series of smoking vials, bubbling beakers, and what looked to be an elaborate game of cat’s cradle being played between two robot arms. Amongst the many questionable substances being held in glass tubes along the wall, I noted an awfully large sample of Noxium Digitus. The bright blue fungus was not just illegal contraband, it was also the very substance that turned the curiosity seeking Professor Phryzer into the people-eating Dr. Cannibal.
Manifestation must have gone back to wherever his usual realm was because he disappeared as soon as we got to the lab. I wasn’t sure whether I was relieved to not have to deal with him or freaked out that I was left alone with the guy who would have no remorse if he forgot what side he was on and ate me.
Finally, after much fussing and harrumphing, Dr. Cannibal grabbed a beaker full of a particularly bright neon orange liquid that was both bubbling and smoking, and gave me another unnerving smile.
“My latest development,” he said, beaming as he held the vial aloft. “A tablespoon taken with a glass of water should allow the user to survive the most extreme temperatures. I’d like you to help me test it.”
“Um…”
Okay, on one hand, even though I was one of Take’s heavies, technically, I worked for all of the Coalition. On the other hand, I was pretty sure part of the protection I got from being her right hand woman meant that I didn’t have to submit myself to being a lab rat for the crazier members to experiment on. Even if whatever was in that beaker didn’t kill me, I didn’t like the idea of something that could damage my talent.
“I’ve already lined up subjects for the clinical trial,” Dr. Cannibal amended, correctly interpreting my horrified expression. “I merely need your assistance in setting up a testing environment.”
I sagged in visible relief, though still wondered why I was asked to do this at midnight on a Wednesday. Luckily, I wasn’t asked to stick around while Dr. Cannibal performed his trials. I really didn’t want to know who was crazy enough to volunteer for such experiments. Or if they were in fact volunteers and not future dinner plans. As soon as I got home, I forcibly removed that last thought from my mind with a couple shots of vodka.
By Thursday, life was back to normal. Well, normal for me, that is. At least I wasn’t having anymore weird run-ins with the Coalition guys, though it didn’t escape my notice that certain coworkers—namely, the folks who also had costumed double lives—suddenly found reasons to hang out down in my lowly corner of the world.
It wasn’t until Friday afternoon, when an email marked as extremely urgent hit my inbox, did it finally register that something serious was happening.
Chapter 5
I stared at the message on my screen for about five numb minutes before my brain went into hyper-drive. Mary Sue Winfield was personally requesting my presence for a meeting. In all of the years that I’d worked for Winfield Enterprises, not once had I ever received a direct email from the big boss. Historically, this kind of a request was either really good or really bad, with really bad being the outcome ninety percent of the time. As far as I knew, I was a model employee, meaning I shouldn’t have even been on Mary Sue’s radar.
Yes, I know what you’re thinking. Frostbyte might have been Hostile Takeover’s second in command, but there is an unspoken rule that these two worlds are not to collide. Lisa Raskin, mild mannered IT manager, was definitely not on the radar of Mary Sue Winfield, president, owner, CEO, and supreme overlord of Winfield Enterprises.
Which is what made the whole thing a head scratching mystery. Not only did the email come from Mary Sue Winfield to my company account, but she wanted to meet here, at the office. Adding to the mystery was the fact that I’d had such a strange week that until just then, it had escaped my notice that Take hadn’t sent out the plans for the upcoming weekend. Unless she did and I wasn’t included.
The thought sent me into immediate panic mode. I tried to tell myself that being excluded from the team’s plans and being summoned to the boss’ office didn’t necessarily mean I was in trouble, but it sure was difficult not to see it that way. Something was definitely up, but good, bad, earth shattering, or otherwise, there was no point in dwelling. I would have to wait until six that evening to find out.
Which meant I had two hours to sweat the fact that I wasn’t exactly dressed for a meeting with my boss, regardless of whether that was Winfield or Take. Fridays were casual days at Winfield Enterprises and down here in IT we were a little more casual than most. I was pretty sure my ensemble of ratty jeans, combat boots, and a “Hoth Winter Olympics” t-shirt wasn’t appropriate even for an afterhours meeting. I’d just have to run home at five, do a quick wardrobe change, an
d run back.
Yeah right. Five o’clock found me crawling around in a service access tunnel, trying to figure out why the customer support center lost power. By the time I found and replaced the rodent-ravaged network cable, put in a ticket for pest control, and rebooted the support center’s main machines, I had just ten minutes to brush off the dust and haul my ass up to Winfield’s forty-second floor executive office.
Curiously enough, I needn’t have worried about my appearance. When I got off the elevator, the first thing I noticed was a soft blue glow in the corner of an otherwise darkened reception area. Mary Sue Winfield sat alone, curled up on one of those leather reception sofas that cost more than a year’s rent on my apartment, the light from her phone’s screen reflected in her glasses. When she saw me, she stowed the phone and stood up. Instead of a sharp business suit, she wore a pair of beat up yoga pants and a ratty t-shirt displaying the logo of a women-only fitness center.
Still, I swear she gave me a critical once over before greeting me with a too casual, “Hey” and the kind of conspiratorial smile that confirmed I was definitely meeting with Hostile Takeover, but said nothing about whether this was a good or bad thing. Although a moment later, the mystery of why we were meeting here was revealed.
I followed her back into her office, marveling at the ginormous room, devoid of all furnishings aside from a single desk that sat in front of a bank of floor to ceiling windows, affording a spectacular view of all of the city below. I had to wonder if there was a point to the office other than an intimidation tactic meant to make anyone lucky or unlucky enough to find themselves sitting opposite that desk feel small and insignificant.
But Take ignored the desk, passed by the door that led to the adjoining boardroom, and moved aside an ornately framed Ensor painting to reveal a state of the art keypad that was years in advance of the already high tech door locks protecting the rest of the building.
A Shot at the Big Time Page 4
