"I don't, thanks." Bobby shook his head vehemently. "I'd like my lunch to stay where it is."
"It’s your loss." He grinned and took a sip of his beer. "So, how do you feel about choosing this over your other job?"
"Well, there was never really any kind of contest, you know that. That place was shit. Here's still shit, but it's shaping up to be something special."
"Yeah. I want to build something here—a business, sure, but something…that lasts, you know? Do you think it’s a little too ambitious?"
"Probably," Bungees said with his usual realism. "But you're coming off the post-mission high so I'll forgive you without you even asking.”
"How nice of you," he replied sarcastically.
"Yep, and I'll do you one better." His friend pulled his phone out of his pocket. "I've actually looked into making upgrades to your suits. Well, I actually already started working on the two you left behind. I played around with them and used new designs a friend of mine sent me."
"Who is this friend of yours?" Taylor asked as he studied the designs displayed on the phone's screen.
"I’m not sure if you ever heard of her, but it's Amanda Gutierrez. She’s a freelancer mechanic who works out of the French Base. That woman is a bonafide genius.”
"Yeah?" He scrolled through the designs. "I have heard of her and the interesting work she does, actually."
"Yep. She said she was working on developing a type of exo-suit that can be used in an urban environment without attracting too much attention. Well, less attention, anyway. It works with the same kind of reactor on the back and has a good portion of the same armor, but instead of using the hydraulics for power functions, it uses—get this—magnetic coils."
"Huh. I think I saw someone mention using magnets instead of hydraulics before, but they weren't functional for the larger suits."
"Not for the larger ones, no," the other man agreed. "But for the smaller hybrid and exo-suits, it should work fine since it would require less time to power the magnets from the reactor, which would improve the reaction times by a huge amount."
Taylor tilted his head and studied the specs. "It's actually kind of brilliant. Honestly, I’m pissed that I didn't think of it first."
"Well, thankfully, the designs haven't been copyrighted, so I've worked on turning the two suits here into something you can use like that," Bungees said. "It's something you have to get used to, obviously, but once you are, it'll be lighter, faster, and easier to use and put on in a hurry."
"How would you work the HUD, though? I don't see anything in the designs for anything like that. It seems like you'd have to work the suits by feel."
"Well, I thought about that and I think I have a solution. Come on. We can try it in the garage."
"Fine." He rolled his eyes. "But if I get my head blown off, you'll have to pay my bank loan, got it?"
"Understood." Bungees laughed, entirely unoffended. "Come on, don't you trust my designs?"
"Not even a little," he teased. "And don't think I'll forgive you for tinkering with my suits while I was gone."
"I thought you would probably die, but whatever. And you'll forgive me once you see what I've been able to do."
Chapter Twenty-Four
"So," Bobby said as he watched his boss move around in the new suit, “what do you think?"
"Well…it's a little lighter than I'm used to," Taylor said and glanced down at the exo-suit he wore. "And with that, the slight lack of power function makes it a little heavier to move around in than I thought it would be. Not excessively so, obviously, but it's still something to get used to, you know?"
"This is a kind of hybrid of hydraulics and coils so either way, you can calibrate that shit. You can do it manually on the controls around your left hip, or you can have the suit do it on the HUD."
"What HUD? Because if you're thinking something like smart glasses, it's an elegant idea but it fails in the function since shit like that tends to be too easy to break to be functional in a combat scenario."
"Come on. I thought we had worked together long enough for you to give me more credit than that." Bobby smirked and moved over to where the suits were mounted for display and removed what looked like an overly bulky motorcycle helmet from one of the mounts.
"It has a wired connection to the rest of the suit," the man explained. "I tried to put in as much of a combination of mobility and neck protection around it as possible, but it's not a perfect system."
"Have you thought about maybe working it like the tank mech suits?" he asked. "Maybe anchor it to the shoulder and leave the head free to move around inside with external cameras to give a full three-sixty view outside?"
"That would make it a little bulkier than the rest of the suit so you’d be top-heavy," his friend replied thoughtfully. "It’s not a bad idea, though. We could probably work in a hybrid of that idea to still give you some head mobility while protecting the neck."
Taylor nodded and looked at his reflection in the tinted windows of his truck. The suit looked slimmer than anything he had worn in the past but it felt solid. With the helmet added and maybe a coat that was two or three sizes too big for him without it, he would look like your average gym rat biker dude.
He would need to add the actual bike, of course. He decided to think about maybe settling for a bike instead of leasing or buying something that would be cheaper to run in the city. Bikes were supposed to be more economical and since he could use a full exo-suit to ride it, he didn't need to worry as much about personal safety.
But that would have to be a thought for another time, he mused as he rolled his shoulders. The action lowered the mechanical resistance and brought up the magnetic power functions until movement was a little more comfortable. The best percentage he found with his regular suit was closer to around seventy percent, which allowed him to carry some of the weight and gave him a feel for how the suit moved.
For one this light, though, he could even move it even without the hydraulics he usually relied on. With a little help, working at twenty-five percent capacity, he was able to move like it wasn't even there—much like a second skin.
He did have to admit that Bobby knew his shit. A couple of adjustments would make it perfect and they had time to do that.
"So, what do you think?" the man asked again as Taylor practiced the motions he would need to make while in the suit.
"I think we'll definitely make more of these. There has to be a market for urban-based suits, right?"
"Well, for one thing, we don't own any trademarks on it. If we started to make money on it, we wouldn't have the facilities to compete with the larger corporations so it wouldn't be a long-term thing. Besides, I feel kind of bad making money off someone else's idea—not without giving them some credit and cash for the effort."
"That’s fair enough."
His friend was right, of course, and he should have thought of that himself. He decided to blame the fact that he was in full business mode since he wasn't usually the type to fuck someone out of their own idea. It was good for him that he had someone there to rein him in when he needed it.
Most of the day was spent on the suit to tweak the small issues that came from converting a hydraulic power suit into an exo-suit. That had the benefit of giving him time to adjust to it more and get into the groove for natural movements before they could even think about starting weapons testing.
They were crazy but they weren't stupid. You didn't give the guy testing a new suit a gun to play with. That was how people had their legs shot off.
They finished the necessary adjustments about halfway through the afternoon and took a break to check how Liz had fared while she traveled across the country twice in the space of a week.
"How did the improvements work for you?" Bobby asked as he lifted the hood and examined the engine.
"I didn't feel any problems," Taylor said. "It was a hard push all the way on the trip to DC and a more relaxed pace on the way home. There weren’t too many changes from
the original—it maybe added a few numbers to the mileage and made it easier for the auto-pilot to hold it in the lane, but aside from that…" He shrugged.
"Well, what else do you really need for her? There's a limit to how fast you can reasonably drive a truck like that over longer distances. What kind of improvements do you want?"
"Well, there's the small matter of my having stayed awake for almost a full thirty-five hours on the drive there."
"That's because your dumb ass wanted to drive," his friend pointed out. "You could have taken the plane ticket and had a nap during the in-flight movie."
"I don't like flying.”
"You flew to and from the Zoo."
"Sure, when I had to, because I know how to keep my phobias under control. But it doesn't mean I’ll test them at every opportunity."
"So you think you'll want to work with the AI installed, then?"
"Yep," Taylor replied. "You don't need to give it a personality or anything like that but it would be nice to have something in there that can take over driving for the longer stretches to give me a nap here and there. They have lanes for that now, so it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world."
As with most things related to computers and cars, it took a fair amount of work to align the software to the larger vehicle it would now inhabit. Given that AIs were mass-produced to cover a wide variety of vehicles in the market, there wasn't anything to prevent them from applying the functionality to Liz.
There were bugs to work out but by Taylor’s reckoning, it was a good day to be back. The building was mostly functional now and they had at least a day or so before their first client's suits arrived in need of repairs and the possible improvements he’d mentioned.
It was a good start to their little business and he allowed himself to enjoy the satisfaction that knowledge brought. Even if it didn't grow as rapidly as he hoped, he was still on top of his loan payments and if he needed to, he could always sell the property for a profit since it was in much better condition now than it had been when he bought it.
If that kind of worst-case scenario happened, maybe he would run into that delightful realtor again.
Once the work for the day was done, the two men locked up and headed off for drinks. It was partially a celebration over the condition of their business, the successful mission in DC, and Taylor's safe return. Surviving an encounter with Zoo critters was never something to be taken lightly and it was almost always best to celebrate if they had the time.
Marcus wasn't working the bouncer position, and while Alex did appear to be on duty, the bar was mobbed to the point that she hadn't even seen them come in. He decided not to bother her for attention. That seemed like the wrong kind of message to send and once again, the two men slid into one of the booths in the back of Jackson's.
"What are we drinking to?” Bobby asked.
"You ask that like we have a shortage of topics. First off, walking away from a goop monster is always a win in my book. I'm happy about that."
"Of course, you are." The man grinned and tapped his companion’s beer glass with his own before he took a sip. He wiped the suds from his mustache. "And hey, I'm happy that my new employer didn't get himself dead before he paid me my first paycheck."
"I have to get payroll software running and I'll need your details," he reminded him. "Once that happens, you'll be swimming in cash like Scrooge McDuck or—well, it would have to be a shallow fucking pool and a ton of singles."
"I can dig that," They clinked glasses again.
"I really do appreciate you having my back with this, Bungees," he said with a small smile. "I don't want this to be a chick-flick moment but I needed help and you were the support I needed so thanks for everything, man."
"No chick-flick moments, huh?" Bobby laughed. "Well, yeah, I owe you for getting me out of a shitty situation I was too comfortable with, so don't think I haven’t taken anything away from this shit too. We're partners in this. Well, technically, I'm the employee and you're the boss, but we're still partners in everything but name. I have everything to gain in seeing McFadden's Mechs succeed."
"God, it sounds even worse when said aloud." He shook his head. "We really need to think of a new name for the business. Something like…oh, Cryptid Assassins."
"What kind of assassins now?" His companion raised an eyebrow.
"It's the code name the folks at the FBI assigned to me," he explained. "They called me the Cryptid Assassin."
"You have to understand that people will misinterpret that shit. I can only imagine the calls from the dumbasses who think you're some kind of assassin for hire."
"Eh, we're already working with the Feds so I don't see why we can't make a little extra money by passing on the names and numbers of the folks who do call us for that on the down-low," he responded and chuckled. "But you're right. I still like the idea of using something with Cryptid in it. Like…Cryptid Mechs or something."
"Now you're onto something."
Taylor was about to respond but paused when his phone rang in his pocket. Once again, it was a blocked number, which really said everything he needed to know about it.
He pressed the accept call and speakerphone buttons in quick succession and placed the device on the table between the two of them.
"This is McFadden," he said.
"McFadden," Banks said on the other side. "I hope I'm not interrupting anything?"
"Nothing important." He grinned when Bobby flipped him off for the comment. "How can I help you, Special Agent?"
"Another mission has become available and I thought you were the man for the job," she said, either not knowing or caring that she was on speakerphone. "Are you interested?"
"Have Desk send me the when and the where. She’s already hacked my comms and everything else, so I might as well put it to use, right?"
Chapter Twenty-Five
Desk messaged him with the details of the mission. He would have to head across the country again, it seemed, but it was a shorter trip and closer to the south of the country than he had been on the last one.
Taylor had never been to Georgia before, and while it seemed he would skim the edge of Florida too, he knew it would be far from an uneventful drive.
Thankfully, most of the heat was avoided since he kept the air-conditioning on full. Once night began to fall, he eased into the auto-driving lane on the interstate and leaned back in his seat. It wasn't the most comfortable night's sleep he'd had in his life but it was certainly a damn sight better than sitting there and driving and having to caffeinate every ten minutes or so merely to stay awake.
After he watched a short movie that played over the waves, Taylor actually snoozed through most of the night. It was light sleep but still restful and allowed him to pull in and park at a nearby truck stop to enjoy a proper breakfast before he continued on his journey. He actually made better time on this trip than he had on the other.
It wasn't too deep into his second day on the road before he turned off the highway and onto the smaller, lesser-traveled roads that would take him farther south toward Florida instead of Atlanta.
A huge swamp straddled the border between Georgia and Florida and comprised most of what he could see around him. While Taylor was all for different kinds of lifestyles, he honestly couldn't understand why people would choose to live in an area where they were outnumbered by mosquitoes to the tune of a million to one.
There were any number of different lifestyle preferences in the world, but that was one he couldn't understand. Living near or around a swamp was worse than living out in the desert, and for more reasons than that the Zoo would have an absolute orgy with the wealth of biomass it would find there.
His resident apocalyptic nightmare was never too far from the surface. He really didn't want to see what the goop could do if it got its metaphorical hands on the local alligator population. Aside from its insatiable hunger for the biomass it needed to feed its expansion, non-Zoo creatures also provided the DNA to create mutant monstros
ities.
He definitely did not want to have to face alligator hybrids. If the beasts were capable of surviving the KT extinction, what they could do when infused with alien goop was truly the fuel for nightmares.
The GPS in his truck told him that he was now close to where Desk had told him to go. He realized that the location was nowhere near any real evidence of civilization. The largest building he had seen in the past ten miles had been a two-story gas station and convenience store, and from the looks of things, he couldn’t expect anything even remotely like his previous experience.
At least the trip to DC had ended at an office that provided space in which to prepare. From what he could tell, there would be no such luxury there. Despite that, the SUV parked on the side of the road clearly indicated that he wouldn’t actually run this operation on his own either.
Banks leaned against the side of her vehicle and watched as he brought his truck to a stop beside her.
"Another record-breaking trip," she said as he exited the vehicle and stretched with a loud groan. "If you cross the country any faster, you might almost be half as fast as your average airliner."
"Blow me," he retorted and rolled his shoulders against the inevitable stiffness. "What the fuck are you doing here?"
"Well, given that this is your first official bounty with the FBI, my supervisor wanted me to keep an eye on you," she explained. "I’m here to make sure you're getting with the program. That won't be a problem, will it?"
"What part of my earlier performance—or, to quote the exact terminology you and Desk used, audition—made you think I need someone to babysit me?" he demanded caustically. "It's killing monsters. The terms of engagement aren't exactly War and Peace."
"Be that as it may, my supervisor still wants an eye kept on you." She stated it in an off-hand tone like neither she nor he had any say in it, which he doubted was entirely the case. "Although I do admit that it's mostly because I don't trust you as far as I can throw you."
Hired Killer (Cryptid Assassin Book 1) Page 20