“Better, actually,” Deimos said. “Thanks! Whatever you did to them is a miracle.”
Veronica laughed, “Hardly. I mostly pumped you full of painkillers.”
Deimos was unable to hide his disappointment. He frowned and tapped his chest absentmindedly.
“Oh. Then why did you take off my cast?”
“Because you aren’t supposed to wear a cast for a chest injury, dummy.”
Deimos flushed red. It wasn’t often he was made to look stupid.
Veronica noticed Deimos’ sullen expression and added, “Don’t worry, it’s a common mistake. Besides, I needed access to your ribs so I could inject a serum into your bone marrow. But don’t let the painkillers fool you, the serum isn’t magic. You still need a few days to heal so take it easy. You’re lucky your ribs weren’t broken, otherwise I’d probably still have you under right now.”
“What kind of serum?” Deimos asked pointedly. “I don’t generally like things put inside me that I don’t know about unless the wife is feeling particularly kinky.”
“The serum is a little something I whipped up back in Brazil. It’s derived from a modified algae that accelerates bone healing,” Veronica replied casually.
“That is immensely impressive. Captain C is lucky to have a scientist like you on board.”
Veronica snickered, “Yeah. Don’t worry, he knows it. Actually, if you aren’t feeling nauseous from that anesthetic you should be fine to go see him. He’s in the cafeteria with the two women you’re traveling with. He felt so bad about what happened to you that I quite literally had to kick him out of here so I could work on you.”
Deimos hopped off the table and stood for a moment. He didn’t feel anything other than the vibration of the ship beneath his feet.
“Feels alright to me. Thanks doc!” he exclaimed and headed toward the door. He stopped at the doorway and turned back to Veronica. “Really, thank you. I’m sure it must be asking a lot to have the whole crew go on this silly adventure just because we’re here. I know how much you have all gone through.”
“No offense, but we aren’t doing it for you,” Veronica stated bluntly. “We would all do anything for Calder. We’ve been taking care of him for a long time and this new chapter in our lives is no different. If he’s happy, we’re happy.”
Deimos felt a wave of appreciation and longing for his own henchmen, knowing they felt the same way toward him. He smiled and nodded before exiting the room.
Deimos headed down several flights of stairs to the cafeteria. Along the way he got lost and accidentally ended up in the engine room more times than he would care to admit. In his defense, the engine room filled up the entire back half of the bottom three floors. It was easy to stumble into without any of those handy ‘You Are Here’ signs.
Eventually, Deimos found his way into the cafeteria. It was located in the front of the hold on the bottom of the ship. The room was mostly empty save for a few wooden dining tables scattered with a dozen pirates on their breaks. At the end of one of the tables was Siren, Eve, and Captain C. They were eating breakfast around a stack of papers and talking in hushed tones. Deimos found this image silly, seeing as the headsets they were wearing were peer-to-peer and everyone nearby could likely hear them. However, there are moments in life, such as planning a pirate adventure over a stack of old scrolls, that still deserved the respect of hushed tones.
Captain C was the first to notice Deimos. He pushed past Siren while getting out of his chair, nearly knocking her face into a stack of pancakes. He ran up to Deimos with his arms outstretched like a peasant looking for a king’s forgiveness.
“Deimos!” Captain C exalted with tears welling in his eyes. “Oh sweet Poseidon, thank ya fer sparing this man!”
He grabbed Deimos’ face and pulled him into his chest. He was careful not to touch Deimos’ injured ribs and ended up hugging Deimos’ head instead, providing him a mouthful of red, curly chest hair. Deimos saw why Veronica had to kick Captain C out of the infirmary. He was very emotional for a pirate.
“I am so, so, so sorry! I never meant fer ya ta get hurt. I had no idea ya had such severe injuries!” Captain C lamented over Deimos, forcing even more of his curly chest hair into Deimos’ mouth.
Deimos pushed Captain C away but smiled and patted him on the shoulder.
“It’s okay, man. I’m fine,” Deimos said smiling. “You have a spectacular doctor.”
Captain C wiped away the tears and snot that were collecting at the top of his mustache.
“Veronica really is the best. Promise yer okay? I feel terrible ‘bout this.”
“Yes I’m fine, I promise. I’ve been through worse.”
Siren came up behind Captain C and politely shuffled past him to her husband. She gave Deimos a firm kiss and lovingly squeezed his hand.
“Hey, hot stuff. Good to see you up,” she said softly.
Eve’s voice crackled in from their headsets, “What’s the matter, old man? Can’t handle a little rocket?”
Deimos peered over Siren’s shoulder to see Eve at the table with her mouth full of pancakes.
He chuckled, “You’re one to talk. Are those even the same pants you were wearing earlier?”
Eve awkwardly averted her gaze.
“Uh, Professor Paws wet my pants,” she stammered unconvincingly.
Professor Paws looked up from his dog bowl as if to dispute that fact, but more likely due to the fact he heard his name over his headset.
Captain C grimaced, “Yeah… While you were under we had a quick field trip to the laundromat on the second level.” He softly placed his hand on Deimos’ back. “Come, sit with us. We were just finishing breakfast.”
They headed to the table and Eve passed Deimos a plate of bacon, toast, pancakes, and eggs, all drowned in syrup. He eagerly accepted it and dug in.
“Oh my God,” Deimos moaned through bites of his meal. “This is the best breakfast I’ve ever had.”
Captain C beamed proudly.
“I’ll be sure ta tell the chef.”
“Please do. So, what did I miss while I was out?”
“We were going over the plan fer the museum,” Captain C said. “Or rather, Siren was telling us what the plan is. She’s an impressive tactician.”
“Only reason I’m still alive,” Deimos said, winking at her.
Deimos dug into his breakfast as Siren caught him up to speed. Captain C’s latest records indicated that the golden turtle they would be stealing had long since died, but that its shell was still on display in a private museum. It was located a few miles inland from Shibushi Bay, hidden away from tourists in a dense forest.
There was a single-lane road leading to the museum, but to gain the element of surprise they would be taking a winding dirt path between a mix of sheer rock cliffs and the surrounding forest. Deimos suggested the four of them could simply fly in on Indiana Drones, but Captain C was insistent the majority of his crew came as well. Retrieving the golden shell was as important to them as it was to Redbeard and he wanted them there to witness it. Deimos conceded and Siren filled him in on the heist plans.
The museum had a simple, one-story layout. Captain C’s henchmen would form a perimeter around the structure and remain hidden in the tree line in case there was any trouble. Deimos and Captain C would wait at the front and back entrances as Eve and Siren entered through a small skylight on the roof. The museum seemed small enough to not warrant overnight guards, and Deimos was certain he could trick whatever security system it had. Even if something were to go wrong and the authorities were alerted, Captain C and his crew would be prepared to extract them immediately.
With that settled, Captain C headed up to the control room to inform the crew, leaving Deimos, Siren, and Eve alone in the cafeteria. They shared a quiet moment together. Their last twenty-four hours had been fast and loud. The trio needed a quick re
spite from the action to gather their senses.
Their quiet moment didn’t last long. The three looked at each other and burst out laughing. They were going on a pirate adventure.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
At Crymson Tech headquarters, Hans Goenn was having a particularly shitty day. While trying to come to terms with the fact that his most recent genetic experiment had failed his first mission, he had received a call that one of his shipping vessels had been destroyed at sea. That was the fourth one in six months and those things weren’t cheap. He was grateful it was only a shipment of cheap office supplies and not something more lucrative, but it still wasn’t good news.
Hans slammed down the phone. Ever since Deimos showed up, none of his plans were going the way he had, well, planned. He had the support of the local police, several governments from around the world, and controlled actual genetically enhanced humans. All things considered, Hans had a pretty stacked deck. Yet somehow Deimos still ran free, slowly building a following and escaping death.
There were several questions Hans kept returning to. Why didn’t he simply have the police handle Eve’s mob instead of sending in two supervillains on a murderous rampage? Was it possible he had a god complex as Deimos had stated? It was true, that morning he had subjected Triceratop and The Veteran to extremely painful mental conditioning with the desired end result of them viewing Hans as their savior and only source of happiness, but that was simply because they had failed him. If they had followed his grand plan exactly as he had designed it, there would be no need for him to torture them. But that wasn’t the actions of someone with a god complex, was it?
There was something else, something important that Doctor Isaac had told him but he couldn’t seem to remember.
The tumor! Hans recalled. Why do I keep forgetting about that?
Hans thought for a moment that perhaps the tumor was indeed affecting his reasoning. As he considered whether or not he should take a few days off to have it removed, he received an email from Doctor Isaac. It was titled, “I found your man,” and had four picture attachments.
Hans opened the images. Although they were low quality, he knew exactly what he was looking at. They were the last images taken from his recently sunk shipping vessel’s security cameras. Along with the presence of an out-of-time pirate ship, Hans could clearly see the outline of Deimos’ aircraft. In the email body was a comprehensive outline of the pirate ship’s last known coordinates and its estimated trajectory that Doctor Isaac had calculated using satellite imaging.
A wicked smile grew on Hans’ face. Surgery could wait. He wanted Deimos to die by the hands of his creations.
◊ ◊ ◊
Doctor Isaac wasn’t surprised when he received the call from Hans. In fact, he had planned on his email inciting a knee-jerk response from his emotionally charged boss. The incident with The Veteran the day before had solidified Doctor Isaac’s belief that Hans was unfit to wield his genetic tools. Unfortunately for Doctor Isaac, he was a coward. He was too afraid to bring his concerns to the proper authorities for obvious reasons, and quitting was completely out of the question. The only possible escape he could think of was if Hans somehow lost faith in his genetic research program.
When Hans called and told him that they would be sending The Twins to kill Deimos, Doctor Isaac feigned shock.
“They aren’t ready!” he exclaimed with the delivery of a budding porn star. “They need more time to understand their abilities.”
“You’ve had them training for long enough!” Hans shouted back. “If they aren’t able to succeed on this mission, then maybe it’s time we discussed your place in the future of this company.”
Doctor Isaac smiled. That was exactly what he was hoping to hear.
“Of course, sir. I’ll have them ready to go within the hour.”
He hung up and headed to the training facility to inform The Twins.
The Twins were a female acrobatic duo that Doctor Isaac had recruited for Hans’ program ten years prior. ‘Recruited’ might be the wrong word, but saying he abducted two young orphan carnies at the behest of his boss in order to subject them to experimental and illegal procedures didn’t fit the internal narrative Doctor Isaac had in his head in which he was a good guy.
At the time of the children’s abduction, Doctor Isaac had not yet succeeded in manipulating a live human genome. He was intrigued by the prospect of studying two people with identical genomes and immediately set to work. The results of his studies were spectacular and greatly aided his research. It was from those results that he was able to create Hans’ first supervillain, Triceratop, but the time eventually came when Hans demanded more. The only problem was that Doctor Isaac had become attached to the girls—not in a creepy pedophile way, but in a loving fatherly way. He didn’t want to continue with the program, but Hans was paying the bills and eventually forced his hand.
The Twins were put into a medically induced coma while they had their skin tissues and key DNA sequences combined with that of the mimic octopus. The procedure broke Doctor Isaac’s heart, as he was the only member of the team skilled enough to perform the procedure on the two children he had cared for over all those years. The act of surgically removing the young girls’ skin was the hardest moment in Doctor Isaac’s life, one that he never forgave Hans for ordering him to do.
After a few months of recovery, it became apparent that the operation had been a success. The girls’ vitals were normal and their bodies were accepting the skin grafts. But once the bandages were removed they were quite a sight to behold. Their skin, once smooth and unblemished, was now marred with deep grooves and dark stripes that looped around their entire bodies. As if acting autonomously, their skin would sometimes harden and appear like stone. Other times they would grow sharp spindles along their hands and feet. When Hans first saw them, he congratulated Doctor Isaac for creating two of the ugliest children he had ever seen. To Doctor Isaac, however, The Twins looked beautiful.
He decided that he would do anything in his power to keep The Twins safe. He devised a training program that would be impossible to complete in hopes they would fail like all of the other test subjects. Despite his best efforts, The Twins continually excelled at everything he threw at them. In fact, they never even felt as if they were being tested. Every exercise was a game to them, their minds never fully maturing past the state when they underwent the surgery. Doctor Isaac theorized that this mental condition may have even increased their ability to adapt.
They became nearly impossible to detect and were able to blend in with any environment they were thrown into. Their speed and flexibility were unmatched, enabling them to take down every opponent that they were faced against, even Triceratop. In the years that Doctor Isaac spent trying to keep The Twins from becoming one of Hans’ supervillains, he accidentally turned them into the perfect assassins. That’s parenting for you.
Doctor Isaac entered The Twins’ training facility and living quarters located in one of the Crymson Tech sub-basements. It was a modest 2,000 square-foot apartment peppered with fine art and marble statues. A quiet string of classical music echoed lazily throughout the uninhabited space. At least, it appeared uninhabited. Even though The Twins were well into their twenties, hide-and-seek was still their favorite game.
One of the statues blinked and Doctor Isaac walked up to it.
“Very clever to hide in plain sight, Sasha. You would have fooled me if I didn’t know there wasn’t a statue here.”
The statue tilted its head toward Doctor Isaac and smiled.
“Still a pretty good statue though, right Papa?” it said.
The statue’s surface began to churn. The hard gray stone transformed to a smooth cream with black stripes, ultimately revealing itself to be a nude 24-year-old girl.
“Wait until you see Aria’s spot!” Sasha exclaimed excitedly.
Doctor Isaac held up a robe for her
.
“I don’t have time for hide-and-seek right now. I was hoping we could play a new game. One where you both get to go outside.”
Behind him, a large vase complete with two birds of paradise contorted and shaped itself back into Sasha’s twin, Aria.
“Wait, do you mean outside outside?” Aria asked, her feet still transforming from pointed flowers back into her normal feet. “Not a new test environment? We get to leave?”
“Yes,” Doctor Isaac said firmly, “and if you play the game right, we can all leave for good.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The moon lit Yasuke’s path as he trudged up the mountainside to his modest cottage. It had been another long day and all he could think about was the inevitable slumber that waited for him a few hundred yards ahead. Behind him, the inhabitants of Unmei had already been sleeping for hours. Nobody from the Kasai Gang showed up that night, but Yasuke had still remained on patrol for more than ten hours. After performing odd-jobs for the townsfolk and fixing Hamada’s fence, Yasuke was completely drained.
He reached his cottage and turned to give his village one last look before calling it a night. There were no lights on in Unmei and it appeared to glow magically under the moonlight. Yasuke sighed contentedly. He turned to enter his cottage when something caught his attention out of the corner of his eye. He looked out over the Pacific and saw a bright light flickering on the horizon. He squinted at it, wondering if his eyes were playing tricks on him, but the light was only growing brighter by the second.
Yasuke rushed inside to grab his binoculars, but by the time he returned the light was gone. He scanned the area where he last saw it but there was nothing except the dark ocean. Suddenly, dim lights flickered. They were small and huddled close, moving together in unison. Yasuke focused on them but had difficulty making out their shape. He kneeled and watched them for several minutes as they drew closer.
The lights began to take shape. Yasuke was able to see the outline of what looked like a large ship. As he watched, long poles began to rise up from the deck of the ship and form into masts. From their tips, long black sails dropped and caught in the wind, billowing to their full size.
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