The Negative Man: Act 1

by Jeremy Croston

  Erin knew too much. I hated the idea that he had to die; it just was the way of the world. “Thanks for being a good friend. Maybe in the afterlife, if there is one, drinks can be on you.”

  Like I did to Valiant, I was quick and efficient, not prolonging the suffering needlessly. When he was dead, I kicked his body into the water, letting Mother Nature do away with the evidence.

  ****

  When I turned on the news the next morning, the top story was the abduction of local man, Erin Cieslik. Police Chief Harvey Grimes wasn’t all that positive, basically telling the viewing audience that this was probably going to end up being a homicide case. Granted, he was right, but man, he was a terrible interview.

  I sat down with my bowl of cereal in hand and was getting ready to turn the television to the West Coast Sports Network when my door was rather rudely kicked in. The owner of said foot, Captain Channel Esposito, stormed in with his partner, Captain Joshua Pabon right behind him. Both men had assault rifles strapped to their backs, like they were getting ready for a war.

  It was surreal to watch them calmly take seats in my living room, not even breaking character for the fact they just kicked in my door. “You’ve been drafted to support the army,” Esposito said calmly. “As such, the nature of this non-voluntary assignment is extremely classified.”

  “We need you to deliver us the prototype that Erin Cieslik was supposed to get,” Pabon added in.

  I played dumb. Giving away my hand in this situation wasn’t going to get me anywhere except for more dead bodies. “What in bloody hell are you talking about?”

  Esposito smiled. “I told you Cieslik kept his mouth shut. Jericho here is in the dark.”

  Pabon leaned in, “You’re familiar with the prototype charger that a man named Phil Jenkins is developing for your company, correct?” I was. “Erin was going to steal it for us, that way we could complete assembly for the plutonium core. This crooked town needs a nuclear cleansing.”

  “Wait, so you two are the ones who bought the core from that super?” I knew all of this, but it was fun to watch them squirm a little. “Channel, not just a few days ago you were here telling me you weren’t involved.”

  “A necessary lie to keep you off the path until we were ready.” He stood up, getting ready to launch his villain speech. I knew this move, as I had perfected it myself. “My wife was killed by one of these freaks. Supers… they are a blight to our society and the west coast, especially Pacific Station, embraces them. Well, no more. With that plutonium core, we’re going to make a mark that will act as a beacon to the rest of the nation.”

  And people thought I (or rather The Negative Man) was extreme. “What about all the innocent people you’ll kill?”

  “No one here is innocent. Go to an elementary school and the kids worship The Dark Lion. Not our soldiers, they worship a monster.”

  I was going to get through with reason. The ideal plan would be to go along with this and find the core. “Obviously I have no choice, so when and where do I need to get this charger to you?”

  Pabon pulled out a scrap piece of paper with an address written down on it. “Erin was going to make the delivery Tuesday night, once Jenkins ran his last field test. You’ll be expected to do the same.”

  There was really nothing left to say. I took the paper and the two of them left. Before Channel completely disappeared from view, he added, “You’re a good man for accepting this mission. Sometimes you need to burn Rome to save it.”

  Chapter 12 –

  Monday Evening; Wonder-Tech Tower

  DL had even called in Massacre for this. I wasn’t a fan of that choice, but it wasn’t my show, either. After I had laid out everything I knew, “I’m to bring the prototype for the charger to this address. I’m guessing that’s where they are keeping the core.”

  John was leaning up against his workbench. “Do you think this is two dissenters from the army going AWOL or do you think the general is in the know, too?”

  It was tough to say. My gut told me the government was always involved in such things, yet General Whisant seemed too level to get involved with a plan to blow up an entire city. Haphazardly, “If I was to make an educated guess, I think Esposito and Pabon are rogues on their own. This feels too much like an extremist attack, not a government sanctioned op.”

  “I agree.” Wonderton turned to PJ, “We’re going to let Jericho steal and deliver the prototype to them. You and I will act as his backup. As soon as he delivers it, we pull him out and take the rangers head on.”

  “These two are just regular soldiers, so it shouldn’t be too much trouble, right?”

  He shrugged at my question. “It is tough to say, Jericho. I get the feeling there’s more to Esposito and Pabon than we realize.”

  “John,” PJ spoke up. “Not to add to this, but we should probably go out and see if we can find that Cieslik kid. The local Leo’s aren’t having any luck.”

  Wonderton rubbed his temples. “You’re right. Plus he was my employee and a good guy. Let’s suit up. Jericho, you sticking around to stay on comms?”

  I had nothing else really to do and secretly, I was beginning to enjoy the work. “Yeah why not? Plus, if you don’t mind, I’ll look at some of your other gear and see what I can do.”

  He picked up the Lion Claw. “I don’t think that’s a bad idea. This turned out fantastic.”

  It didn’t take long for the two of them to get ready and hit the streets. The moment they were gone, I routed everything to my tablet and took the elevator to R and D. I wanted to see this charger that had everyone so jazzed up. The offices were locked, but that was no problem. A quick burst of polarity quickly unlocked the floor, giving me access to everything.

  I figured Jenkins kept his most top secret work in the back lab and sure enough the charger prototype was there, under a glass housing. I was quite surprised to see a man like Jenkins come up with something so advanced. He didn’t seem capable. I manipulated the key lock pad and the housing lifted up, giving me access to the prototype.

  Upon inspecting it, “Phil, how could you overlook that?” He had crossed the positive and negative intake wires. I grabbed the stabilized tweezers from the table and made the change. When he fired that thing up tomorrow, it was going to work like a dream.

  My eyes drifted around the room, seeing all the exotic trinkets Jenkins was up to. Wonder-Tech was mostly a cell phone manufacturer with dabbling in other ventures. Some of the things Jenkins was developing seemed way off base. But before I could investigate, I got buzzed in by DL. “Jericho, we have a potential lead.”

  How could that be? Acting cool, “What’s up? Do you need me to look into something?”

  “Can you pull up a residential security camera that is adjacent to the Cieslik residence? Police didn’t notice the owner of the house had one, but I did.”

  Swallowing hard, “Yeah, send me the address.”

  A few seconds later, the address popped up on my phone and I entered it in. The security company had a pretty flimsy firewall to keep hackers out, so I was in without a problem. I scrolled through the footage on my tablet to the night in question. You could clearly see Cieslik get out of his car with his wife and then stumble around as she entered the house. A figured then rushed him and subdued him. From the vantage point I had, you could almost say it looked as if Cieslik got tased.

  And that’s the story I was going to go with. “An unknown assailant appears to surprise him and used a taser on him.”

  “A taser,” DL mumbled. “That reeks of military. Why would Esposito or Pabon abduct the guy that was working for them? Maybe Erin had a change of heart?”

  There was a change all right, from living to dead. “The only way to find out is to confront them. Maybe we should go to the address tonight?”

  “No.” He sounded sure in his answer. “They might not even be there. We have a plan and it’s a solid one. Even though I don’t like the idea of you going into the field, let’s not deviate this late in t
he game.”

  With nothing left to do, we shut down the comms. I went back upstairs and was getting ready to call it a night when I got the hankering to do something. There was a pair of old goggles setting on a shelf above the workbench. They’d look as if they’d seen a lot of battles; scratches and chipped paint covered them.

  I flicked the toggle switch to on and the eyes flashed for a minute before shutting off. I figured these weren’t going to be getting any use, so I put them in my bag. I kept a pretty bare bones apartment, but I had enough tools to mess around with these and see if I could bring them back to life. Plus, it’d keep my mind going until tomorrow. With a new project in hand, I flicked the power switch to the secret room off and headed on home.

  Chapter 13 –

  Tuesday Night; Ray’s Storage

  Of course they were keeping a potential nuke at a storage facility. I mean, that just screamed common sense, naturally. I arrived fifteen minutes early with the charger prototype. Earlier in the day, Jenkins seemed almost pissed that the last test went off perfectly. I was surprised by that; I was expecting him to jump through the roof. I mean, he’d been working on it for the better part of the month I’d been there.

  Stealing the prototype when you have the boss’s approval to do such things was easy. Again, once everyone was gone, it was a matter of overriding the locks and stealing it. Wonderton then went back in and erased the entry codes, making it none the wiser who stole the prototype. So that’s how it got here, in my car, while I waited for Esposito and Pabon to show up.

  Not too far away were Massacre and DL. We went without comms just in case they patted me down or something. This had to look as authentic as possible or the two army rangers would try to kill me. I mean, they’d try and fail, and then the world would know The Negative Man was still alive. We couldn’t have that, at least right now.

  I was listening to some good old classic rock, trying to keep the mood light. No sooner did a favorite song of mine pop on the radio than a black van rolled into the parking lot. I could see Pabon driving from here, but I stayed in my car until I was summoned. They parked and just sat there for a few minutes without moving. This was probably part of their training to make sure they weren’t being ambushed. When everything checked out to them, Esposito and Pabon got out.

  They didn’t stray far. Esposito flashed a small light over at me, which must’ve been my signal. I got out of the car and opened the back driver’s door. Pulling out the charger prototype, I slowly walked over to the men. I stopped at about five feet away and set it on the ground. “Well, here it is, hot and ready just like you ordered.”

  Pabon walked over and inspected it. “This is it and its running. As soon as we connect it to the plutonium core, we’ll have a way to detonate that thing.”

  Detonate, that was a pretty cool word. I’d have to remember that if I ever got back into supervillain pursuits. Meanwhile, “So how much time do I have to get the hell out of here?”

  “We’re going to set the charger to a timer that will go off in exactly twelve hours. If I was you, I’d stay making haste right now.”

  Esposito had another idea. “No, we need him for one more task. Jericho, can you hook this into the core? We can, but it’d take a lot longer.”

  Of course I could. Why would I want to though? Oh yeah, I was the diversion. “Something tells me this really isn’t a choice.”

  “It is, but consider this a request. You do this for us and we’ll see whenever you land on your feet, you’re compensated.”

  As he was yapping, I was wondering where the hell Massacre and DL were. What the hell were they waiting for?! “I like money. Let’s do this.”

  Pabon picked up the charger and I followed the two of them into the air conditioned storage facility. Smart, keeping it a steady temperature kept the core stable.

  We walked down the second hallway and Esposito unlocked the garage door and lifted it up. Sure enough, right in the middle of the storage locker was a freaking plutonium core from way back in the day. The casing around the radioactive material seemed to be in good order and there was a place prepared to set the charger in. The only thing that needed to be done was splice the wires from the core and the charger together.

  The only thing missing was the timer. “I need to install the timer into the charger first before connecting it.”

  Esposito reached into his pocket and pulled out a standard issue missile timer. Once I connected it to the charger, it’d go live for a time to be entered. That only took about a minute and we had a functioning timer. Trying to delay things, “We’ll add the countdown once it is in place. Let’s do the complicated stuff first.”

  Neither ranger disagreed and I got to work. Splicing wires is tedious, especially when it is connected a charger to a nuke. One wrong move and the entire place goes to hell in a handbasket. The first three lines were pretty simple; it was the last one giving me some problems.

  As I finished getting the last one set, my backup finally showed up. The problem is I didn’t see them right away and I set the charger into the prewired harness. Pabon did and immediately pushed me out of the way.

  DL was charging forward but stopped. “Listen ranger, you don’t want to do that.”

  “I’m not taking orders from a freak like you.” I’d just set the timer for twelve hours but Pabon changed the denomination from hours to minutes and hit the start. “Sorry suckers, you’re not walking out of here alive tonight.”

  Esposito pulled a long, dangerous knife from his boot. “Rumor has it guns won’t work on either of you, but I bet you bleed like any other man.”

  A rumble was about to go down but we had bigger problems. In less than twelve minutes, Pacific Station was going to be a crater, unless I disarmed this bomb. So while the two rangers began stalking the vigilantes, I pulled out my own smaller pocket knife and began to sweat. “Damnit Jericho, one wrong move and this thing goes off.”

  Check please, I was ready to go back to being a villain.

  Chapter 14 –

  Tuesday Night; Ray’s Storage

  “What did they just take?” That was Massacre complaining about something. I didn’t have time to keep checking in on them. They were supers and these two guys were just guys – special ops guys, but still. I had a freaking nuke to disarm!

  I heard something hit the wall behind me. To my surprise, Pabon had just thrown Massacre into it. There was something strange about the ranger, too. Whatever they took, it seemed to level the playing field.

  Again, not my concern. I had wires to start snipping. I couldn’t look at the wires I just spliced from the timer to the core. I opened up the panel just under the harness where I installed the charger and found what I needed. There were so many wires going into the core, I didn’t even know where to start.

  Great, gun fire was added to the mix behind me. As if these idiots couldn’t make a deadly situation even worse. With that threat, I probably didn’t even have the twelve minutes that were on the timer. Or actually the nine minutes and fifty-three seconds it was flashing. C’mon Jericho, think! I looked over the wires again – it was time to make some decisions.

  I immediately discounted the three red wires going to different circuits. Red was always bad. I was left with green, blue, black, and white. There were two white wires, so I reached in with my knife and cut them. There wasn’t a giant, life ending explosion, so I figured we were good. That just left the green, blue and black.

  Pain hit me in the shoulder. I dropped my knife and hit the cement floor. Pabon had shot me. “I can’t let you do that, Jericho.”

  The bullet hit bone or else it would’ve gone clean through and mushroom clouded this city. That did little for me though, as I was in excruciating pain. Pabon walked over to me and pointed the gun at my head. “Nothing personal; I just can’t let you ruin our plans.”

  And so this is how The Negative Man was going to die, by trying to do the right thing. I was too close to the core to use my power, as that would’ve be
en a death sentence for us all. Either way, I was SOL. Until A clawed hand grabbed Pabon by the neck and snapped it. The ranger went down in a heap.

  DL was standing over me. “Jericho, are you okay?”

  “Besides a bullet in my shoulder, I’m doing fantastic!” Yeah, my sarcastic charm never goes away. Still, I was grateful… to my enemy of all people. “Thanks, I appreciate still being alive.”

  Esposito was laying a beating on Massacre. “I can handle him if you can finish disarming that.”

  I grabbed my knife with my working left hand and pulled myself up. “Go, I got this.” I sounded a bit more confident than I actually was.

  We were under five minutes. Seeing as how there were more black wires than any other color, I went with them. I cut all five black wires, and as I cut the last one, the timer switched from five minutes to a critical one minute countdown.

  Over the punching, “Jericho, I hope that’s a good thing!”

  Blue or green, there were two wires for each one. It was a simple guess at this point, so I grabbed green as it was my favorite color and cut the remaining two wires. With twenty-eight seconds to spare, the timer froze in place.

  At the same time behind me, DL smashed Esposito in the face with a huge overhand punch. Wonderton looked pretty damn beat up, too. I missed one hell of a fight.

  ****

  General Whisant placed Esposito under arrest personally. It was a shame we weren’t there to see it, but we were back at Wonder-Tech Tower as DL was digging the bullet out of my shoulder. I’ll go ahead and admit it, I screamed. Never being shot before, it wasn’t something I’d ever want to do again.

  “Jericho,” he sounded solemn. “From here on out, this control room is your home. I put you in harm’s way and for that I’m sorry.”

  He was referring to the gunshot, but we were in so much more danger if I hadn’t been there to disarm that bomb. “You know what? I could use a quiet spell. Being the eyes behind the scene is just fine by me.”