by Skyler Grant
Uma said, “I know I can get us access to her trophy room. We have a problem with the suit. If we take it, she’ll know and she’ll be angry. We don’t want her angry.”
“Does maintenance have any sort of manufacturing ability for specialized parts? Three dimensional printers?” I asked.
“You want to try to duplicate the suit? I don’t think we’re getting it into a scanner,” Uma said.
“I’m the scanner. I’m incredibly advanced analysis software. Get me a good look with a proper set of sensors and I’ll get us a duplicate,” I said.
“I wish we had Ox with us. At least after that dose of ambrosia I’m pretty strong. I can maybe get the duplicate in and the suit out,” Jules said.
“And then we’re out the way we came in. Hopefully with Disaster none the wiser,” I said.
It was a good plan. Optimistic, but the pieces seemed to work—for all it required a lot of improvising from each of us.
31
Niles, Jules, and my hover drone made their way into Disaster’s Lair via a maintenance tunnel. Disaster lived in a tower that was in stark contrast to the rest of the city. While her lands might look like a warzone her tower was a work of art, sculpted and twisted glass spires rising high into the sky.
The district surrounding was the only part of the city where we’d seen anything approaching a real electricity grid, including street lights. There were pedestrians too who, while armed, didn’t look completely terrified.
Uma had loaded a portable version of her program into Niles’ notebook. A scanner beeped and flashed green as we approached a door in the back surrounded by loading docks.
We’d come in the middle of the day. So many criminals did their work at night that noon tended to be the slowest part of the day. A short hall led to a room filled with lockers and benches.
Uma hacked digital locks until Niles and Jules found uniforms that fit them, changing from their streetwear into khaki overalls with a prominent 'D' crossed by a lightning bolt on the shoulder.
No uniform for my drone, but after a bit of searching Niles found a Disaster logo magnet on one of the lockers and attached it to my drone's side. It threw off weight distribution slightly.
“Everybody knows what they need to do. Niles, get into that server room and find us the credentials we need to access the trophy room,” I said.
“Meanwhile we’re going to the maintenance room on floor Two Zero Four,” Jules said.
The trophy room was two stories higher and that was the closest maintenance room. Hopefully it would have what we needed.
Everybody nodded, and Niles and Uma headed off.
Jules led the way through a series of back corridors until eventually we found a maintenance lift. It smelled of trash and paint.
“Well, you can’t say our company doesn’t take you interesting places,” I said.
“My office might have been boring, but I had health insurance. You got me shot three times in the gut,” Jules said.
“Did Mastermind’s health plan ever give you ambrosia to put your pieces back together again?”
Jules laughed at that and shook her head. “No, and I admit that was more exhilarating than I expected it to be. You don’t know how much time I’ve spent running from my family's legacy.”
“Why?” I asked. “You seem to have embraced things like the skills. You didn’t become so skilled an archer without practice.”
Jules paused for a moment. “People of my bloodline are powerful, but we don’t get happy endings when we’re strong. Even when we win great victories, when we get everything we wanted, eventually it all turns to ashes.”
It was understandable that Jules didn’t comprehend why that was so, or that it wasn’t just her. It was like the question of how much MONEY is enough? More, always more. If her people always suffered when they were done with the day's work, it wasn’t that uncommon. The answer was to work more.
“But you like it. I can tell,” I said.
“I always felt like I was being smart. Waiting my time, waiting to make my move. It isn’t a lie, not exactly. I won’t say I like how this push came about, but it might be a good thing,” Jules said.
How long was this elevator ride going to take? We were only to floor forty. This building was entirely too large. Perhaps Disaster had a quantum teleporter to get to the top.
“Any desire for vengeance?” I asked.
“Against you? Mastermind? You used a dose of ambrosia on me, a valuable resource when you didn’t have a lot to give. For your part in what happened, we’re square. As for Mastermind, he didn’t mean to kill me, but he could have. For now he’s too big for me to even think about hurting, but one day I’m going to spill his blood in turn.”
My thoughts on vengeance were already known, there was no profit in it. I wanted to support Jules. However, one day she might need convincing away from this course.
The elevator came to a halt and the doors hissed open. It was a janitor entering with a cart.
“Sup?” asked the janitor, punching a button for a few floors above. He noticed the button we'd selected. “Isn’t that James' floor?”
“James got disintegrated,” Jules deadpanned.
“I saw him this morning,” the janitor said with a frown. “She uh, isn’t planning on going downstairs today is she?”
“I really hope so,” Jules said.
The janitor gulped and when the elevator next beeped he hastily pushed his cart out. “Uh, good luck, I guess.”
“You too,” Jules called out as the doors hissed closed.
“Now I’m feeling I don’t kill enough henchmen,” I said.
“Have you had any survive for a week in your employ? Without getting burned, chopped up, or decapitated? I think you’re doing fine,” Jules said.
“Is Ultimatum on your list too?” I asked.
“He tore my head off and kicked it across the city. I saw the video. It was … unnecessary. I’m going to find a way to hurt him too, to really hurt him.”
There was a real vicious streak to her that I hadn’t identified before. That could, perhaps, be put to good use.
The rest of our ride went uninterrupted. The maintenance corridors up on the higher floor looked far nicer than the ones below.
A man in a janitor’s outfit was slouched against the wall and looking at his phone.
“James?” Jules asked.
“Yeah?” James asked, sounding worried.
“Sorry, surprised to see you. We heard word you got disintegrated,” Jules said.
“Err … no …” James said.
“Stupid seer must have got the timing wrong. Oh ... ah, sorry,” Jules said.
James stared at her for a moment and coughed. “I’m uh, suddenly feeling bad. Think I’m taking the rest of the day. You’ve got things, right?”
“Hey, now wait just a minute—” Jules said. James was already in the elevator with the doors closing.
Jules really had a talent for this.
32
The maintenance room had exactly what I was hoping for. Three dimensional printers were increasingly commonplace for building maintenance. If supers did one thing well, it was destroy their environment and there was always a need to put it back together. Quickly replicating parts was a requirement.
The printers Disaster had were top quality, and they’d accept a data feed from one of the adapters built into my drone.
“Now we wait,” Jules said.
That we did, since there wasn’t anything else we could do until Niles got his part done. We'd been waiting about ten minutes when we finally got the call along the secure comm line.
“You’ve got your access IDs, I’m sending them along now, but we’ve got a problem,” Niles said.
“I didn’t do it,” Uma chirped.
“She didn’t. There had an engineer on duty that was a little too good at his job. I, uh … kind of electrocuted him when his back was turned and we stuffed his corpse into a server,” Niles said.
> Fantastic. Ideally we were going to be in and out without a sign. This was going to be a sign.
“We’re still good,” Jules said. “I know it doesn’t sound like it, but he’ll be the dayshift. Nobody cares about the dayshift. We’ve got at least four hours until his replacement comes on duty and starts wondering why nothing got done.”
That might be true. It still meant they might uncover what we’d done, and somebody was going to start asking questions.
Jules seemed to be thinking the same thing.
“The janitor named James, works the floor we are on. He just left for home early, the logs and cameras will show that. Frame him, I don’t care how,” Jules said.
It wasn’t a perfect plan, he’d seen Jules. His story would be a lot less convincing, since he'd be denying being framed. Besides, Jules' face wasn’t going to do Disaster a lot of good even if the janitor gave a description. We were running maskers to distort the cameras and while that wouldn’t affect his eyesight, it wasn’t much to go on.
“We’ll work with it,” I said, and zipped my drone out into the hall. There was no need to involve Jules, not yet.
The new ID codes Niles provided allowed me into the trophy room and the door slid aside.
The hall was long and filled with statues, some done in black marble and some in white. At the foot of each was a glass case. A statue of a noble-looking woman in a suit emblazoned with an atom had a single atom logo on the case. A plaque read “Atomgirl, 2034”
It took me three minutes of searching to find the Clockwork Knight. Disaster had been in a lot of battles with both heroes and villains, and it looked like she kept a trophy every time. This place was a monument to both her ego and her power. I wasn’t sure which was greater.
I took a moment to study the suit in the case.
Clockwork Knight Suit
Unique
Estimated value 7,500,000
Suite of battle armor from the clockwork dimension that belonged to Prince Aleski, known as the Clockwork Knight after he was brought here. Complex gear-work allows one super strength, enhanced durability, and due to properties from its native dimension it also allows the wearer to slow down time for short periods.
That was a lot of money. That was a lot of powers that we’d be giving Niles. The suit was damaged, a blackened chunk taken out of the helmet, but with either Niles' ingenuity or my powers we should be able to repair it.
For now though, I just needed a scan. Another ten minutes as I took readings from every angle and then it was back to the maintenance room where Jules was still waiting. She had taken the time to bring out a janitorial cart, removing all the supplies from the inside.
Good.
I hooked myself up to the printer and transmitted the specifications.
To fully replicate the interior workings of the clockwork suit, even if possible, would have taken months of printing. We didn’t need anything that exact—what we needed was as flawless an exterior reproduction as could be managed.
It still took time, two hours in fact, but eventually we did have a believable replica. Jules loaded it into the cart before covering it with a cloth and we returned to the trophy room.
Jules seemed more impressed with the statues than I was. “I never knew she faced Doctor Hope. Look—Verdant and Rapid too. That's the whole League of Three right there. Did she fight them together?”
“You really have a fan girl thing going on here,” I said.
“I mean, these are golden agers. When powers were just emerging into the public eye. There were only a dozen or so known on each continent. I knew she was one of the first to go public, but it's another thing to see it.”
I carefully worked free some restraining bolts and Jules lifted the glass case before gently setting it down. The ambrosia really had given her a bit of super-strength. I didn’t like it that my vision hadn’t listed it as one of her powers. I wondered what else it was missing, and why.
It didn’t take long for us to swap the suits. I made certain the pose was identical before sealing the case once more. Once we had it, we only had to meet up with Niles and then make our escape. No security stopped us, since no alarms had gone up yet.
We still didn’t rest easy until we had been teleported back and made it to our own lair.
It was still possible Disaster would notice the theft and trace it back to us, but at least now dealing with us would mean invading the territory of Mastermind. I hoped she wouldn’t, and that even if discovered, she'd figure this trophy was just one amongst many others and not worth pursuing.
33
Niles spent most of the next day working on the armor while the rest of us figured our next lead. It was time enough for Ox to finish his resurrection.
Jules was trying to get her life insurance reinstated, and it was proving problematic. The customer service at Emmatech was notoriously bad and insulting.
Niles had replaced the clockwork helmet totally with one of his own design. It had integrated tactical displays and combat processors that could take full advantage of the slowing effect. In addition he’d added a battery backpack for energy storage and several beam weapons. With that and a new paintjob the clockwork origins weren’t nearly as apparent.
When we were ready, we held another meeting to discuss our next options.
“One power-up down,” I said.
“It looks like it's going well?” Jules asked.
Niles said, “I’m not rated and registered yet, I think it best we keep it that way for the moment, but yeah. I can kick some ass. I mean, maybe not anyone's here, but someone, somewhere, maybe ...”
It was okay that he didn’t have self-confidence. You didn’t need to believe in yourself when you had energy cannons.
“Where are we with the rest of our options?” I asked.
“I’m still following up on a lead for me. There was a serial killer about twenty years back who hunted people in my family. The Minotaur, he was supposed to throw them into a death maze with ambrosia as the prize,” Jules said.
Nothing could go wrong following a serial killer into a place called the death maze.
“Emmatech will have what I need, but figuring out how to get them to give it to us is another matter,” Uma said.
“Maybe when we work that out, we'll know how to get them to reinstate my life insurance,” Jules said.
“Two for one. We’re in the future. What about my new computing core?” I asked.
“Nothing stops us from going after that. Hackshack is a collective not aligned with either heroes or villains, although they’re based here because Mastermind is less of a dick than most,” Niles said.
“What are we going to trade them for the core?”
“Nothing. You don’t know hardware guys like them—they’ll never turn over something like that. It's one of a kind. We’re going to have to go in there guns blazing and kill anyone that stops us.”
“Isn’t that kind of … brute force? They’ll be prepared?” Jules said.
Niles told her, “This is the thing, and you’ll probably sympathize because you’re smart. They’re too smart. Their base is hidden from all surveillance nets, their network infiltrations leave no footprints, their communications are impossible to crack, and the door codes impossible to know.”
“But you know where the front door is,” Jules said.
“I do, and trust me, the last thing they are expecting is for someone to come kicking that down. What safeguards they have are also related to their data. That will be tucked away and hidden with seconds of any signs of trouble.”
“But we don’t care about that. Just the hardware,” I said.
Niles nodded.
“How does this compromise you? You have to have their trust,” I said.
“My reputation is going to be toast. I’m burning some bridges here. I don’t think I’ll burn all of them though. A group of murdered friends and stolen surprises is going to be considered a badass move by some others,” Niles said.
“That's pretty common villain philosophy right there. They might not be officially aligned to our side, but it sure sounds like they think like us,” Jules said.
“We’re not going in there with a best-case only mindset that they just all fall over and die. Hit me with the worst case,” I said.
“They are hackers and you are software. They could launch attacks on you, some really bad ones. They might be easy to shoot, but they’re scary behind a screen,” Niles said.
“That could mean locating our base as well. And if they have friends, as they likely do, they could have someone to shoot faces for them,” Jules said.
“Ox,” Ox said.
We really did need to get him a better way to communicate. Whatever he was trying to say was probably very helpful.
“We need to isolate them. Can we cut them off from Villainet?” I asked.
“We could take down their nearest network hub. However, Mastermind doesn’t like that sort of thing,” Jules said.
Didn’t like was different from didn’t allow.
“Does he send kill squads or send a bill?”
“Bill,” Jules allowed after a moment. “And a fine.”
For a criminal he really had a lot of laws.
Niles said, “We take out their physical connection and I can jam the aerial. They might still be able to get something out, but we’ll mostly quiet them down.”
“We kill their communications. Kick down the door. Murder everybody. Steal everything they own,” I said.
“I don’t know if we need to go that far,” Niles said.
“You’re burning your bridges anyways and we’re going to have a fine to pay. They’ll try to wipe their data clean and we’ll want to retrieve all we can. You up for that, Uma?” I asked.
“You know it. You just let me at those servers,” Uma said.
“Whatever we find, we don’t hold onto any of it. We liquidate, blackmail, whatever suits us, but we turn it over fast. We aren’t a data brokerage and nothing we find is going to be more valuable for holding onto it,” I said.
