by Logan Jacobs
Norma opened a cabinet, took out a shot of horse tranquilizer, and held it up for my approval.
“That should do it,” I agreed. “Just follow a safe distance behind Aileen, since he can’t hurt her, even in the unlikely event that his superpowers are strong enough to destroy her portable body, I’ll just build her a new one.”
Aileen wheeled over to the elevator, extended a pincer, grasped the bloody corpse, and gingerly slid it out of the way. Then she pressed the button to open the elevator doors and wheeled inside, and Norma walked in after her.
I watched the live footage as my two assistants rode upstairs in the elevator, then raced down a few hallways to head off my unwanted guest in the rabbit mask. If he had gone upstairs, then Aileen wouldn’t have been able to follow on her wheels, but he didn’t do that, first of all because he was still intent on finding a way out and probably didn’t want to end up trapped on a roof instead, and second of all because the poor guy had no way of knowing that he was being hunted down by a lethal, although currently handicapped, robot.
Until he turned a corner and saw her standing there in all her silvery glory with her bright blue eyes, her cherry red lips, and the gleaming barrels of her nipples.
“What the fuck?” he yelped faintly, and I dialed up the intercom volume again so that I’d be able to hear all the details of his encounter with my assistants.
“Hello, my name is Aileen,” she murmured seductively.
The rabbit-masked villain turned around and sprinted back the way he’d come.
I scooted my chair over a few inches and pounded a few keys on a nearby control board. The door that he had come through slammed shut and locked, which left him trapped with nowhere to go except down the hallway that Aileen was waiting in the middle of.
She rolled toward him with no change of expression in her always serenely smiling face. It was composed of mobile parts, but I hadn’t programmed her with a repertoire of human facial expressions yet.
“Fuck fuck fuck,” the rabbit yelled and tried to make a mad dash past Aileen.
She rotated her left nipple downward, took out his kneecap with one shot, and he collapsed screaming.
As Aileen rolled up to him, foot-long claws sprouted out of his fists and he started slashing at her wildly. His claws dragged across her face and I think one of them went directly across one of her staring eyeballs, but all the materials that she was composed of were too hard for whatever his claws were made from to leave a scratch, and I felt a happy chuckle escape my throat.
She extended her pincers and as he tried to scramble away, but he was unable to put weight on his shattered kneecap, so she pinned him to the ground easily. Then she patiently walked her pincers down to his wrists so that he couldn’t use either set of claws. All he could do was buck his hips and kick with his one uninjured leg.
“Norma,” Aileen called out.
Norma emerged from a doorway with her syringe, and the rabbit started making frantic keening sounds in his throat. My assistant straddled him in such a way as to control his kicking leg, but when he kept trying to struggle, she punched him in the shattered kneecap, and he let out a screech of agony that made my speakers actually clip.
Then Norma injected the horse tranquilizer directly into a vein in his neck, and he stopped moving.
Norma stood up, grinned, and gave me a thumbs-up directly into the hidden camera since she knew its placement.
Aileen used her metal arm-substitutes like a forklift to scoop up the unconscious rabbit-masked body. Then she wheeled herself back to the elevator while Norma walked beside her, and I watched the numbers count down as my assistants descended toward me.
When the elevator doors opened, I pointed to a special chair and said, “Stick him there, please.”
Aileen deposited him clumsily in the seat of the chair, and Norma used her human dexterity to arrange his unconscious body in an upright seated position with his arms resting on the arms of the chair and his ankles aligned with the chair legs. I tapped a few keys and shackles extended from the chair and locked into place around his wrists and ankles.
“Now what?” Norma asked. “We wait for him to wake up?”
I checked my watch and said, “Nah, we don’t have time for that. There should be adrenaline in the cabinet next to the one where you got the horse tranquilizer from. One hit should do it.”
Norma stabbed the man in the chest with the shot of adrenaline and then gingerly plucked off his rabbit mask as he sputtered back to life gasping for air, covered in sweat, and with his chest heaving frantically. His claws shot out, retracted, and shot back out again. It seemed to be some kind of uncontrollable spasming reflex, not even a conscious attempt to attack Norma, who was keeping her body carefully out of range.
I walked over to my prisoner. “Hello, Mr. Rabbit,” I said. “To whom do I owe the pleasure of your company this evening?”
“Fuck you,” he screamed, which sprayed spittle over the front of my freshly ironed suit. At least the fabric was moisture-wicking.
“Let me rephrase that,” I said. “Who sent you?”
“Fuck y-- ”
I grabbed a nearby remote control and swatted his shattered kneecap with it. Over the sound of his scream I said, “I’m not aware of any individual who goes by that name, and have certainly never had personal or professional dealings with one.”
“This unexpected visit must be related to the impending launch of the C.D.S.,” Aileen stated. “It has received substantial media coverage and probably made enemies of individuals of whose existence you are not even aware, boss.”
“Yeah, but what kind of passive aggressive mother would name her kid Fuck You?” I asked with a playful smirk on my lips. “I mean, is that directed at the baby? Did this poor lady not have access to contraceptives or abortion services? Or is it directed at the father? Did he ditch her when she got knocked up? Is that why the kid has such serious mental issues that now he’s sending D-grade supervillains on a suicide mission to my house? I mean, I sure as hell am not the father. I got a vasectomy as soon as I made my first billion. I don’t need that kind of mess in my life.”
“The C.D.S., if that’s what you call your fucking totalitarian nightmare surveillance system, will never launch,” the rabbit spat.
“Hmm, guess you were right on the money, Aileen,” I said. “Okay, says who, Rabbit?”
The unmasked rabbit stared me in the eye and then spat on the floor.
“Hmm,” I mused. “Looks like he is choosing to be difficult. What do you know about advanced interrogation tactics, Norma?”
“You mean torture?” She shrugged. “I’ve never put them into practice, but in theory, I know an average amount.”
Miles Chapter Two
Norma got out a pair of pliers, clicked them in the air, and set them on a table in front of the unmasked rabbit. She repeated the process with a scalpel and a pair of scissors.
The rabbit glared at her and seemed to be trying to look unconcerned.
Then she got out a black strip of fabric and blindfolded him.
She took the scissors first and ran the outside of their blades lightly along his knuckles, which were clenched tight with the claws fully extended from them. The claws clattered against the arms of the chair but he couldn’t bust out of the shackles.
“Let’s play a guessing game,” Norma said sweetly. “Hmm, which tool do you think this is?”
“Fuck you, bitch,” he squawked with raw panic apparent in his voice.
Norma placed his pinky finger between the blades of the scissors and started to exert light pressure. “Now do you know which one?” she asked.
“I’ll never talk,” he gasped. “Nothing you could do to me is half as bad as what my boss would do to me.”
Instead of answering verbally, Norma just squeezed down more on the scissors, and the rabbit started whimpering as the blades cut into his skin. The whimpers quickly turned into full-throated screams as she penetrated to the bone and then struggled
to crack it. Eventually she swapped out the scissors for the pliers, which had a stronger fulcrum, and that got the job done.
Aileen, meanwhile, wheeled over and faced the captive directly. She stared at him so long and so intently that I wondered if she was studying his facial cues or attempting to decipher his brain signals or something.
“I have a facial match,” she finally announced.
“From a police database?” Norma asked.
“Nope,” Aileen said. “From a page of a high school yearbook that was uploaded to multiple social media sites due to the student next to him alphabetically becoming a minor celebrity on a singing competition reality show and having had a mullet haircut during their senior year.”
“Fucking Gary Clarke,” moaned the rabbit.
“Okay, now that I have his name… ” Aileen murmured to herself as her internal processing continued. “Ah. There we go. Based on graduation year and ethnicity, it has to be one of sixteen, fifteen… based on the nationality and addresses on record it is most likely one of two… the other one is collecting disability benefits that would suggest he’s currently hooked up to an oxygen tank, which clearly isn’t the case here… okay, that’s the Jonah Clark we’re looking for. Aha.”
I chuckled. “Bet there are a lot of Jonah Clarks in the world, but I bet there ain’t a single other one wearing bunny ears and missing his right pinky finger.”
Aileen continued, “Officially his employer is… hmm. A fictional insurance company. I can’t identify the holding company. I don’t know if it was ever regist-- ooh, this is interesting.”
“What’s interesting?” I asked as I walked over to the liquor cart, poured myself another tumbler of bourbon, and tipped it back.
Aileen stated, “Wife: Jennifer Clark. Married thirteen years ago. According to her driver’s license, her eyes are brown, her hair is blonde, and her height is five four. Hmm, her occupation is a nurse practitioner at the Pinnacle Children’s Hospital. And speaking of children… two of them, a boy and a girl, ages eight and six. They both attend the Sunshine Learning Academy.”
“That’s not my family, you have the wrong Jonah,” choked the prisoner. His face was twisted with rage and his eyes bulged with terror.
“Oh, I see,” I said. “Then I guess you wouldn’t care if something unfortunate befell this other random Jonah’s family? That possibility wouldn’t affect your willingness to divulge the identity of your employer and the nature of his intentions toward me?”
Tears trickled down the man’s face. “Superheroes don’t… do this,” he moaned finally. “Threatening the innocent. That’s not what heroes do!”
“You know what, you’re right,” I said.
Jonah Clark closed his eyes and panted with relief.
“But I’m not a superhero,” I admitted apologetically.
His eyes flew open and pleaded with me silently.
“Sorry if that’s what your boss told you,” I continued. “If he made this seem like the next epic installment in the eternal battle between the forces of good and evil, or something. Nah. I’m probably really only a few shades paler than your side, morally speaking. Even if you had somehow beat me, you wouldn’t get the satisfaction of robbing the world of some kind of knight in shining armor.”
“Then why are you building the surveillance system?” Jonah asked. “That seems like some misguided white knight shit to me. ‘Stopping crime in its tracks’? ‘Pinnacle City, I’ve got your back’? ‘Supervillains Will Have Nowhere to Hide, Nowhere to Run?’”
“Eh, just your standard marketing,” I said. “I saw a demand and created a product to fulfill it. It’s all about money and power. You get that. Your boss gets that, but I sell to the law and order types because they’re more likely to honor their contracts. Your kind is more likely to show up and threaten to burn my house down. The C.D.S. was nothing personal. As long as your boss doesn’t make it personal, that is.”
“Ha, you think you can trust The Wardens?” Jonah sneered. “Then you’re in for a nasty surprise, coverboy. They call themselves heroes, but they are just in it for the sponsorship deals.”
I shrugged. “Sure, they’re pompous and ineffectual; never get shit done, but at least they’re predictable. And the municipal government keeps them on a pretty short leash.”
Jonah started cackling maniacally. “You have no idea. I can’t believe it. You think you’re some kind of fucking free agent but what you really are is just out of the loop. You’re clueless. The Wardens get done exactly what they intend to get done.”
“It’s practically a catch and release policy,” Norma said impatiently. “They’re too saintly to actually kill the vast majority of the supervillains they defeat, so they just subdue them, pack them off to a maximum security prison, get a medal from the mayor, and then a few months later the supervillains break out, killing a bunch of guards and civilians in the process, and the mayor has to call in more Wardens for help, and the whole cycle just starts all over again… ”
“… And everyone gets a cut,” I concluded as I stared Jonah in the eyes. “Not my problem. I just want in on the cut, so if you are claiming that the battle between good and evil that constantly lays waste to Pinnacle City is just one big entertainment racket, I’d have to give you credit for your deductive abilities, Mr. Rabb--”
“You got it, coverboy,” Jonah said softly. “My boss isn’t the real bad guy. He’s out for himself just like you, just like everyone. But he doesn’t spew any bullshit about championing the people. He doesn’t lie to them. The Wardens on the other hand? They let people like me, people like my boss, mow down thousands of upstanding Pinnacle City citizens every single year just so that they’ll have big scary supervillains to fight before an adoring public. Just so they can keep collecting their supersized superhero paychecks. Just so their follower counts on social media can keep on climbing through the stratosphere.”
“Hmmm, okay,” I said. “Perhaps some day I’ll give a shit about the whole heroes versus villains struggle. But right now? My most immediate concern is who your boss is. I’m gonna need that name, buddy.”
“You don’t understand, man,” Jonah moaned. “My boss isn’t the problem. He’s a teeny, tiny little part of the jigsaw puzzle. But in the grand scheme of things, the guys who are really going to fucking end you because of your naïve tech wizard do-gooding? The guys who really don’t want crime-fighting to become more scientific, more efficient, don’t want to reduce casualties, don’t want to reduce spectacular explosions, don’t want to reduce the number of potentially catastrophic acts of terrorism that are staved off in the eleventh hour? You’re looking at Optimo! Blue Steel! The Killer Kitten!”
“She’s hot,” I remarked.
“Yeah,” he remarked urgently, “but half of what makes her so hot is that the entire city has seen that footage of her doing all those acrobatics in her bra and panties to kick the Green Demon off the top of a skyscraper, when they could’ve just sent a drone to take him out easy, and then all those people on the forty-ninth floor when they went through the glass wouldn’t have died.”
He did have a point there, but it wasn’t my problem right now.
“I’m getting bored,” I sighed. “So, I’m going to ask you one last time: A guy sent a supervillain hit team to my house. What’s his name?”
Jonah’s eyes flickered back and forth as if he still thought there was some kind of chance of escape. He looked close to hyperventilating, but he didn’t answer the question.
“Aileen,” I said. “Can you pull up the interior security feeds from the Sunshine Learning Academy?”
“No problem,” chirped my robot assistant. She wheeled over to a monitor and synced with it remotely. After a few minutes of hacking, a live feed came up of the inside of a crowded school cafeteria. It zoomed in on a small blonde girl in a pink striped shirt talking and laughing with her friends and the frame froze. “There she is. 99.8% facial match for Carina Clark.”
“Great,” I said. “Ai
leen, how fast can we dispatch--”
“You fucking sick bastard,” Jonah sobbed. “She’s a little girl. My boss is called The Chief. I don’t know his real name. But that’s what everyone knows him by. The Wardens too. They work with him. He sends over employees to get in the occasional high-profile tussle with them, compensates the employees for the ensuing stint of jail time… and The Wardens leave his major operations alone. Mostly narcotics stuff. He’s small time. We all are. I’m just trying to pay my bills so my kids can go to school.”
“Great,” I said. “That’s all I really needed to know.”
“What does The Chief look like?” Norma asked.
“I don’t know,” Jonah said. “He always wears a crocodile mask. I’ve never seen him without it. And really nice suits. He’s, uh, he’s about six feet tall. Medium build. Caucasian skin.”
“Ha, think you can filter that one out from the population, Aileen?” I asked sarcastically.
“Er, the number of results exceeds--” she began.
“Damn it,” I said. “I really need to figure out how to program sarcasm recognition. But anyway. Jonah, think you can give your boss a little message from me?”
“You’re… letting me live?” the prisoner croaked.
“Yup, lucky for you,” I said. “If you can make yourself useful by giving The Chief this message.”
“But I can’t go back to him,” Jonah said. “Not now that I’ve told you who he is. I’d be better off dying here in this chair than doing that.”
“Tell him it was one of your dead coworkers,” Norma suggested.
“Well, then how do I explain the fact that I’m the only one who was allowed to live?” Jonah asked through gritted teeth. “And this finger you cut off, and the marks from the shackles… he’s not going to believe that I just overpowered you and I escaped.”
“Okay, well I don’t care how you do it and whether you ever go back to him in person or not,” I said. “But you need to get in contact whether it’s online, over a pay phone, or through a go-between, and make sure he gets this warning. Tell him I’m a generous guy and I’m willing to overlook this egregious error in judgment. One time and one time only. If I never hear from him again? We can forget about the whole thing. He can quietly keep on peddling party drugs to kiddos till his crocodile mask turns to leather. But if I hear about him linked to a violent crime, or especially if he ever comes in contact with me or one of my associates again in a way that I don’t like? I’m gonna make a fucking purse out of his skin. Got that?”