Sidekick

by Carl Stubblefield

  The man laughed slightly and reached into a pocket, pulling out a card and a purple token. “Well, if you change your mind, go to this address and show the token. It was nice to meet you. Stay safe out there.” He waved goodbye, spun on his heel, and walked away.

  Aurora stood there, watching him go, anticipating him waiting for her but he joined the stream of pedestrians at the end of the alley and was gone. The card was a shimmering purple color and just had a single address on it. The chip was thick and had something embedded within; she could see some sort of electronics or wires through a translucent window in the center of the token as she held it up to the light.

  Pocketing both, she made her way back to the main street. She was in a nicer part of town, and many people she asked for directions either didn’t know anything about the part of town where she lived or outright ignored her, suspecting she would pickpocket them or beg for money. She must have been grimy and dirty, and the thought embarrassed her.

  Eventually, she began to ask for directions to a couple landmarks, and she was able to make it back to the small shack she called home about an hour before sundown. She was mentally exhausted as she tried to open the door, finding it locked.

  Knocking loudly, she yelled, “C’mon, Auntie, it’s been a rough day. What gives?” She shook the door, and after yelling louder and louder, the neighbor Mr. Kim poked his head out of the window above next door.

  “What are you doing here? She left a couple hours ago.”

  “What do you mean she left?”

  “She said she doesn’t need you anymore. Told us to tell you to find a new home.”

  “Huh?” she asked, shocked. She had been helping Auntie learn English, and she had become much better in the last four years, but she never anticipated this. “What about my stuff?”

  Mr. Kim just shrugged and leaned back in, closing the window.

  Reeling from the situation, she sat on the front steps of her former home and started to cry. Life sucks. Cass knew very well that it wasn’t safe to be on the streets late at night in these parts, and it was getting dark. Pent up emotions from the near escape earlier crashed against the new anger and hurt from Auntie abandoning her. Cast off just like trash.

  Is everyone going to leave me? First Mom, now Auntie? She swiped the tears away but they kept coming, then her nose started to run and she reached into her pocket looking for a tissue, but found only the card and token.

  Balling her other hand in a fist, she stood and walked back to the main street, making her way to the academy, choking back her sobs.

  Aurora frowned and groaned a bit, then rolled over in the dusty duct, and slept even harder, the dream fading away.

  Chapter Twelve

  Still Alive

  Gus got the alert early in the morning before the sun was up. His minimap showed two flashing yellow stars. Gus had set up the alerts so they would flash more and more quickly the closer they got to the island, until they would remain solid when they were ten miles or less away. The color of the stars would also shift to red the closer they were to his location, giving a quick heads up on proximity. Gus quickly got ready, grabbed Jet and an energy bar, and headed out.

  Both the boat from earlier and this new approach had come from this same direction. Gus’ plan would be to evaluate from a safe distance and try to discover what their powers were. Gus asked Nick to check the quantum server to see if there was any information there but was told that Nth often would not record things like weaknesses, in order to protect their host. After the host died, this type of information was recorded and transferred for all to see. Gus had no idea how many or what types of supers to expect, and his lack of preparation and abilities seemed daunting. Still, he had his ace in the hole.

  Gus was counting on using his untested Leech ability to see if he could gain some new abilities and disable the attackers long enough to get them to the brig. Eventually, he would have to figure out what to do with them, but it was his best workaround for the time being.

  He made it to the beach and took out his energy bar, hiding in the leafy bushes nearby. His stomach was in knots, and after a couple bites, it was hard to tell how much was anxiety and how much was due to the stale, sawdust-like concoction. The life of a super. So glamorous. He licked his teeth, trying to remove the residue the dry bar left.

  Gus could see the two supers approaching through Psi-bond as the sun crested the horizon. They looked like the projections in the training arena, as he could only see the web of Nth scattered through their bodies, moving like red constellations in the brightening sky. As they approached the beach, Gus saw that the rest of their bodies were not only translucent, they were invisible as they moved from place to place. Gus saw no Predator-esque warping of the space as they passed through it to hint where they were.

  Rather than totally settling on the sand of the beach, they continued to hover, a foot off the ground, to maintain their stealth. Mentally, Gus asked Nick if he could extrapolate and put a skin on the figures so that it would be more readily apparent where they were looking and what they were doing. A mannequin-like appearance formed over the wispy Nth framework and Gus could tell that one super was male, the other female. Their hand signals became more apparent as well, but Gus could not decipher their gestures.

  Silently, they glided towards the manor but stopped just short of the grass. The bigger super pointed at two tiny emitters that Gus had never noticed before. They must have been some kind of proximity detector that would wake the manor interface. They floated even higher, skirting the range of the sensor. From here, one broke off towards the front door and the other explored the patio.

  They joined back up and the one from the door shook her head. Then they took up positions above the shady patio, making sure that the sun would not cast visible shadows, and waited. It was almost entertaining to watch until Gus remembered they were waiting for him. He had no idea of the extent of their abilities, but worked out what he was going to try, and hoped it wouldn’t get him captured or killed immediately.

  Gus skirted the manor, staying out of the line of sight of the super-stakeout and headed to the jungle to access the manor remotely. Moving so slowly it was almost painful, he took care not to arouse their suspicions until he had made it to the clearing and onto the path.

  Luckily, the birds and animals in the nearby forest were chittering, warbling and carrying on in the early dawn. Only once he was sure the ambient noise would mask his movements did he run back to the tunnel entryway. From there, he returned through the tunnels using Dash.

  Gus found the same room he had used to attack the zombies en masse. With care, the large door to the balcony slid silently open. Peeking outside, Gus could see the two supers below, perched on the edge of the roof like creepy mannequin gargoyles.

  The Leech skill description had no clear definition of proximity or physical contact, but his gut told him the closer the better. He also didn’t know how well it would work against two combatants simultaneously. No cooldown was mentioned, but he was working on guesswork until he tried it.

  He was getting used to life being complicated though, so he forged ahead on his plan. He assumed one or both had a cloaking or camouflage ability, and they both seemed to fly pretty well. So Gus was going to attempt to Leech these abilities if he could.

  He climbed up on the balcony and prepared to jump. The plan was to grab them from behind and activate Leech, but that was not what happened. As he crashed into the two bodies, the roof—which was merely a sturdy pergola with clay shingles—did not support his two-story fall along with the weight of the other supers. They all fell in a heap of orange dust, broken wooden lattice, and the clunks of breaking terracotta shingles.

  Gus reached out and touched both of the supers before anyone got their bearings, while they all scrambled and struggled to get to their feet. Gus found that both supers had a camouflage ability, and he activated the first prompt of his Leech skill. As he quickly chose these, a yellow bar filled along the bottom
of his display. He added advanced flight which overfilled the bar, turning it to red and it pulsated in warning.

  The larger super gave Gus a hard backhand that glanced off the side of his head.

  Gus struggled to hold on as he tried to manage his display, reeling a little. He found he could adjust how much of the flight skill he could absorb and quickly adjusted the slider down until it fit within the field at the bottom of his display, turning yellow again. Leech had its limits; he couldn’t just copy everything.

  The man growled and Gus barely held on as the man threw off a large section of lattice, freeing himself to fight.

  You have chosen to leech Camouflage (Level 21).

  You have chosen to leech Phase-Shift (Level 18).

  You have chosen to leech Advanced Flight (Level 3) [Adjusted from 24].

  You have chosen to leech Vivid (Level 12).

  You have chosen to copy and erase skills, are you sure? (Y/N?)

  As Gus was about to move to the next prompt, a sharp elbow to the groin from the other super distracted him and he selected yes before collapsing to the ground. The invaders spasmed on the ground like they were having seizures or being tased.

  Gus rolled on the ground with his attackers as disabled as they were. When the process was finished, the supers laid there prone and unconscious. Gus had to lay beside them in the fetal position until the pain subsided. Soon, however, a sensation almost identical to leveling up intensified. The pain thankfully subsided and he let his hands drop off of them. A notice popped up on Gus’ display:

  You have unlocked the skill Camouflage (Level 5).

  You have unlocked the skill Phase-Shift (Level 4).

  You have unlocked the skill Advanced Flight (Level 1).

  You have unlocked the skill Vivid (Level 4).

  Please note that full functionality will not be available until skills are consolidated during your normal sleep cycle. Levels scaled to your individual limits based on core stats. Victims of Leech will remain unconscious in proportion to the invasiveness and extent of the extraction process. Even after regaining physical consciousness, their Nth will be inactivated completely for an indeterminate time span.

  Congratulations! You have subdued (2) opponents trespassing on privately-owned territory.

  2,000 XP (1,000 x 2) awarded for non-lethal methods.

  1,000 FP (500 x 2) awarded.

  LEVEL UP! Congratulations, Level 15 reached!

  You have (20) additional stat points to assign.

  12,260 XP to level 16.

  At first, Gus felt guilty for copying and erasing the skills, but he had not known what to expect from using Leech, and the low-blow hadn’t helped. It was a snap judgment to end the fight, and he would have rather made their powers inactive for a while. Dave’s words echoed in his thoughts and he felt his guilt evaporate. They had made their choice. This was going to be hard enough as it was. Who knew how many more of these jokers there were waiting in the wings?

  He took a moment and, using Ether Weaving, cobbled together some ether stretchers and took the supers to the brig inside. Without their powers active, Gus saw a middle-aged man, balding and starting to get gray hair around the edges. The woman appeared to be a gymnast, svelte and sharp-looking in her angular costume. Thin plates either served as armor or to make her more aerodynamic when she flew.

  As the stretcher fizzled out at the lift, he had to hold the super under the arms and drag her by walking backward. He left the man in the doorway of the elevator to keep it from leaving—that was the last thing he needed, the elevator taking him away and having the super wake up with free reign of the manor.

  He leaned the woman against a wall and went back for her partner. The man was much heavier when Gus began to drag him into the brig. The unsettling feeling of his Nth’s effects on his strength became even more evident the further he tried to wrench the man, and he felt the strain on his lower back for the first time since coming to the island.

  He had planned on putting the supers far in the back, but the combination of muscle strain and how winded he was getting motivated him to drop him off in the first cell available. The female was easier, and he opted for a fireman’s carry, not trusting himself to carry her in his arms without his Nth strength boosts.

  He opted to place her in another cell around the corner so they wouldn’t be able to communicate and come up with a plan. He closed the cell door barrier and activated the sound-block feature so they couldn’t coordinate by banging walls or shouting. The brig was eerily quiet as his boots popped on the hard floor, and he made his way out quicker than normal.

  “Can you do me a favor?” Nick’s voice gasped when Gus was halfway to the control room. “You’ve unlocked the Infirmary. Put a stupid gurney or two in the elevator. That took way too long.”

  “Not a bad idea.” Gus put a hand to the small of his back, which had already rebounded from the strain now that his Nth were on task again. “Right after I check one more thing off the wish list.”

  As the car sped upwards, Gus tried to fly a bit but nothing had changed from his level of skill in Basic Flight.

  I guess I really will have to ‘sleep on it.’

  “Nick, can you send a message to the cafeteria, and set up a feeding schedule for the prisoners? Preferably automated, so I won’t have to visit the prisoners personally.” He anticipated it might get pretty busy in the near future, and he might forget while occupied with other, more urgent tasks.

  “Bologna sandwiches and water, coming right up!”

  “We have bologna?”

  “We have a couple canisters of meat powder that can be reconstituted. It expired about two decades ago, but who looks at those labels anyway?”

  “Ugh. I don’t want them getting sick or anything. But no frills either.”

  “So… you’re not saying no to the bologna. I hear you, wink-wink, nudge-nudge.”

  Gus was about to clarify when he noticed another red star on his minimap. At the manor! He had been so focused on getting the other supers into their cells that he had ignored the minimap!

  Dumb, dumb, dumb, Gus!

  Gus rushed to the control center and turned on the monitors, cycling to find evidence of who was attacking now. He skipped by the main front door then had to go back. His jaw fell as he saw who was standing there.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Follow Me

  Aurora woke, the duct warmed by the machinery nearby. Even though she was lying on dusty sheet-metal, she felt like she had slept like a queen. After so much sleep deprivation from being bound, she was surprised she felt as good as she did. The soreness and ache were gone from her muscles. She was pain-free for the first time in a long while. She loved the resilience being a super offered her.

  Getting her bearings, Aurora crawled deeper into the accessway and climbed the narrow single-sided ladder they kept in these areas to access the various floors. Wires and panels were studded with multi-colored cords and modules, and lights of various colors indicated what was in use. The cargo bay was on the lowest tier, so she climbed up two floors and slid down another accessway. From here, she could access some ducts and see what was going on in the crew quarters. Depending on where they were going, most of the crew hung out here before a mission, some doing final prep, others decompressing before the action.

  She could hear them talking long before she got to the vent above the large room. From her vantage, she could see forty-six individuals, mostly men. She counted seven women among the supers. A large crowd was gathered around two men arm wrestling across a small table almost directly underneath the vent. Another group was playing cards on a table in the corner, and a few supers were cleaning guns and checking electronic equipment.

  The two men grunted and growled at each other as they struggled. Neither seemed to have a distinct advantage and they swayed back and forth, neither getting enough leverage to even be near winning. There was a loud crack and the table broke in two, and the men let go.

  “That’s t
he third one—you guys are disqualified! Ya can’t press down, ya idiots!” an older man with a cigar shouted. The men threw up their arms in protest, and the others in the circle jeered and laughed, some exchanging money.

  Aurora looked over the group, trying to assess what their abilities could be. This group had mercenary written all over them. They wore no cohesive uniforms among them, although a couple had black patches attached to their suits. Their levels of hygiene and rough appearances made it obvious that some of them didn’t have the discipline that an academy would provide. She doubted that there were many supers with Psi powers, but it was better to not take any chances. She decided not to get too close or stay too long. As long as she had no flares of emotion, she should be okay.

  She could see at least ten fliers in the group, and a couple acrobats, detecting them just by the way they moved. Aurora’s eyes tightened, noting that the ones in the corner were probably augments, having powers that synergized with their weapons or electronics, if she had to guess. Eight of those. The others were wild cards, probably Minmaxers, who specialized in one stat boosted to obnoxious levels at the cost of others. Usually fliers had other, more significant powers, so on average were more dangerous.

  She wanted to observe more, but forced herself to silently slide backward, making her way back to the ladder, taking it up to the top floor. This floor was usually only captain’s quarters and the bridge, and she made her way forward to the front of the ship. The passageway widened a bit to compensate for the increased amount of connections and sensors that had to be connected to the bridge.

  She froze when she heard a familiar voice. It was the same one from the torture chamber. She inched forward looking through the grate.

  “How far are we? It feels like we’ve been in the air forever,” he barked.