Shoplifting from the Company Store
“Matt, I brought this like you asked,” Nurse Gina Sharper says, using the fake name I’d given her, and sets the bag on the table. “It’s kind of a mess.”
“It’s fine. You and the others were trying to save his life,” I say. Squatting, I slice the bag open and dump the bloody control suit onto the workbench. The blood didn’t bother me nearly as much as the severed bits of circuitry. My claws aren’t really designed for the kind of delicate work of rewiring this harness entails, but I’ll have to make do.
The harness didn’t hurt anyone. Why did it have to suffer?
The Velocizapper suit doesn’t use a Direct Neural Interface. Considering how much Omar spent on synthmuscle, I can see why. With enough time, I can correct that, but for now I need to stick with the simplistic kinetic feedback harness Omar created. It has a straightforward simplicity. A quick wrist movement activates and shuts off the plasma ball launchers. The gauntlets won’t work in my hybrid form. They’ll have to go. Glancing at the clock, I realize I’ve been in here for almost ten hours. Now that I have the control suit, I can see how hard it’s going to be to power this beast up.
Spreading the suit flat on the table, I look at the electrical carnage. “How’s Omar doing today?”
“Still no change, I’m afraid. The doctors are taking the fact that he survived the night as a good sign. That is the only good news I have to offer.”
“I’ll take what I can get, Gina. Thank you.” My reply slaps a fresh coat on my current lie. Omar’s life or death doesn’t really matter to me. Frankly, the world’s probably a better place without him in it. Fixing the suit and getting it to where I can use it is far more important in the grand scheme of things.
Fake it until I make it!
Gina doesn’t need to know that. She’s been nice to me, even if she is a minion of General Devious. It’s a stark reminder that not everyone who signs up for a job at a supervillain base is a complete and utter asshole. Even so, there was no need to drop my guard around her. Nurse or not, she’d flip on me at the first sign of trouble. My thoughts flit back to Vicky and how she died in the Overlord’s base so many years ago. Having an underling of a top-shelf supervillain giving me the time of day digs up specters from my past.
Maybe I can warn Gina to get out of here while she still can.
Too risky. She’ll have to hunker down when things go all stupid.
Face it—Vicky is dead, and I hope Gina can avoid that same fate when the cavalry arrives.
Assuming the cavalry does actually arrive.
The nurse looks up and down the Velicozapper suit and breaks me out of my moment of contemplation. “You’re making changes.”
“You said it yourself. Even if Omar pulls out of this, he’s not going to be suiting up anytime soon. I might as well fix it for me and use it to pull some jobs so that he can build a new suit from scratch with the money I bring in. Instead of hand actuators, I’m replacing them with claws. Fine motor skill will suffer, but the two claws should compensate for it.”
It also gives me the chance to try and mess with those powerclaws that Cuban superheroine, Honey Badger, uses. It’s an easy upgrade—
a speed suit that has claws that can cut through most anything. It makes more sense than just tossing plasma balls around. Omar usually avoids direct combat, probably out of fear that his delicate suit would end up—
well, like this. He’d circle around people, lobbing plasma at them. Naturally, I’m keeping the plasma launchers; they help cool the suit, and weigh far less than any heat exchangers I could install. With more time, I’ll try to find the right spot for a sonic generator and once more rip off The Biloxi Bugler. But that idea is on the back burner in favor of getting the suit up and running and me inside of it.
It’s the challenge, I realize. With Mega, I can have anything and everything I ever wanted without any power or space limitations—like playing all those first-person shooters back at the base in God mode, unlimited ammo and impregnable shields. Now, I am looking for every square inch of space where I can fit something and every spare kilogram of weight.
I miss this game and the thrill of getting something done despite the problems surrounding me.
“Have you been debriefed yet?”
To lie or not to lie? “No. What’s the point? I ran around, caused a little chaos and then had to drag my pal’s limp form back to the chopper. I get it, I’m a grunt . . . a small little gecko, I guess, out running with the big lizards.”
“You should go,” she says. “Everyone gets debriefed and you know that. I’ve already been. There’s only a couple of people left in line.”
“Seriously,” I lisp the “s” with my slightly misshapen tongue.
The nurse gives me an exasperated look and says, “Matt, I’m just looking out for you. If they come looking for you, you won’t like it. They’ll have someone stronger than you drag your ass down there.”
“I’ll go as soon as I get this harness cleaned up. Promise.”
She takes me at my word and wishes me a good evening. I start swabbing at the bloodstains with some wipes as I inspect the damaged circuits. The doctors must have used some shears to split the material. I’ll need at least a day, maybe two given the fact that I have to use my claws, to reconnect those breaks and try to add some room. Omar has a runner’s build, and in my human form I have a “run to the fridge and grab something to eat” build. My hybrid body needs even more space. With the stubby tail, I’ve got “junk in the trunk,” which will require further modifications.
Thirty minutes pass and I realize that time isn’t on my side. The claws aren’t up for delicate work, and I don’t dare revert to being human. I need something different. Why not some weak magic instead? Concentrating on a simple levitation spell, the one I used to impress Stacy when she got her memories back, I float the ends of the wires back together and use the soldering iron taped to my right claw to join them.
Success! The spell takes very little to maintain with some good old cold blood running through my veins.
Now just a couple of thousand more to go.
Better go down and debrief. It’s been a full hour since Gina left and she probably told them about me, so I’d better go and play insignificant Manglermal. Maybe I can get an idea where José is being held.
Unplugging the soldering iron, I peel away the tape and set it aside. The control suit is still a wreck, but almost all of the blood is gone and I will be able to make it work . . . eventually.
“Better go down to the rooms and report in,” I say, more for anyone who might be monitoring the room.
• • •
“You look like crap! Where’ve you been?” Babe the blue-ish ox asked. He and two other Manglers are all that are left, waiting to be seen.
“Trying to find out how my partner was doing and seeing if I can salvage his suit. Plus, I figured everyone else would cut in front of us anyway . . . just because.”
Babe and the hammerhead shark lady next to him, with a breathing device connected to her gills, nod at my assessment.
As I’d implied to the nurse, Manglers are way down on the pecking order, just a hair above regular grunt soldiers. They’re considered less than human, mostly extra muscle who are faster, stronger, and have better reflexes than a normal person. As strong as Babe might be, Bobby would beat the snot out of him, and my buddy is only a few rungs up the ladder.
Then again, Bobby did give his Gulf Coast Guardian cousin a serious smackdown when they fought in New Orleans, so he might be climbing out of the C-List category.
“How about you?” I ask. “I’m sure you weren’t waiting in line all this time.”
“I ate, grabbed some rack time and went down to the bottom level to pay my respects to Doc Mangler.”
The mention of Doc Mangler confirms that my captured friend is here. Manglers, in general, give their deranged creator way too much hero worship, but I know better than to say anything to contradict
their opinions. Who knows? It might be coded into their genetics. The Doctor is a figure revered by almost every one of his creations. Some don’t care for him. Like the few Mangler heroes, or someone like Anemone who isn’t really a hero, but is still with the Gulf Coasters for some odd reason.
From what I know about Sanford Marley Acojo, he probably likes the paycheck, and since his power merely paralyzes people, the Gulf Coast Guardians let him do it without restraint.
As far as Doc Mangler is concerned, I’m not completely sold on the asshole’s omnipotence. He’s the son of a Nazi scientist that the Russians gave sanctuary to after World War II. They got what they deserved in the end. The people protecting him and his father and keeping the two of them off everyone’s radar became the very first Manglermals.
The rest is history, littered with the bodies of failed experiments and the victims of the successful transformations, like the ones I am standing next to.
“I should go down and see him,” I state.
“You haven’t already?” the hammer head asks, sounding like a nosy suburban housewife who just discovered a scandal in the cul-de-sac. Her eyes, so far apart like that, creep me out.
I shrug and shake my head, deciding to shut up and let the others draw their own conclusions from my silence.
“You shouldn’t be embarrassed,” Babe says. “Be different. Be proud.”
Imagining all the shit Bobby would give me if he was here right now, I say, “I am. It’s just been a long day and I’m burnt out. This place might feel OK to normal, but it’s too cold for me. I’d prefer it to be another ten or fifteen degrees warmer.”
“Way, way too dry for me,” the shark woman adds in agreement. “As soon as we get out of here, I’m going for a long swim.”
The penguin guy or girl at the front of our little line grunts.
One of the rooms opens up and a Mangler walks out, a male gypsy moth. I recognize him from my stint in prison—a small time thief. Of course they could say the same thing about me, back in the day. The penguin waddles away and into the open room.
Eventually, my turn comes. The room is small, designed to make someone feel uncomfortable. The tiny, confining chair won’t work with my frame, so I’m forced to stand in front of one of Devious’s goonsquad.
“I don’t have you down on our list. Mr. Harrell, is it?”
“Look under Bad Raptor,” I offer. “If it isn’t under that, then shit . . . I dunno.”
I’d think about saying more, offering up some kind of human input error or something, but don’t want to sound like I’m trying to lead him. Instead, I’m banking on my interrogator’s long-ass day making him sloppy.
“Not there, either,” the interviewer growls and massages his bald head.
“Figures,” I mutter. “Shit like that always seems to happen to me! Do you guys always have computer problems like this?”
OK, maybe a little steering is in order.
“There’s a high turnover in the IT group,” the man says. “My damn access token doesn’t work half the time and then they’re always having an outage for something. If they’re not patching the databases, they’re patching the workstations, or the portal is down. It’s a fucking nightmare. I figure if someone’s got the stones to hack into our system, we’ll just kill them when we find out who they are.”
“Sounds rough,” I say sympathetically. Lucky for me, I have a “no shit” artificial intelligence to take care of all my computing needs and not a very big network, either. Before Andy, I’d done the computer work, and I thought Bobby was going to take a swing at me when our new firewall blocked around eighty percent of all the porn sites.
“You should try typing with these,” I say and wave a clawed hand in the air. “I feel you, though. Back at my house, I tried setting up the speech to text program. With my lisp, that was a waste of time!” I play the confidence game and try to help my cause by giving my interviewer an easy scapegoat.
“Let me pull up the portal and see if I can get one of the DBAs to see if they can find your record,” the man says.
“Really isn’t much to tell . . . I was causing a little havoc and then stumbled onto Velocizapper, that Twin Taser woman, and freed them. VZ and I tried to cut down an alley and ran into one of the damn Olympians—the bitch with spears. She jacked up VZ really bad and I had to lose her before I could circle back and get him. After that, it was just about carrying VZ to a chopper and getting him looked at. Didn’t even get a chance to do any smash and grabs.”
The guy looks up from his screen. “The DBAs are on a meal break, I got the automated submit a ticket crap. Let me just get a pad of paper and I’ll write it down.”
“Sounds good to me.”
Patiently, I wait for him to get the necessary tools for an interview and then repeat my half-truths for him. It is all very low-key. That’s the problem with trying to become a major villain; if your organization gets too big, you get too big. You end up hiring people, and unless you luck out and get someone like Vicky, they become your weakest link.
Bobby and I used to joke that having to hire a support staff was what kept us from starting a top tier crime syndicate—that and talent.
Hell! My time with the Coasters left a bad taste in my mouth for having a bunch of employees. I’ll stick with Andy every day of the week!
Thankfully, the guy is just half-assing it anyway. For all he knows, I’m just a filthy Manglermal, a super-powered nobody. In less than ten minutes, I’m out of there after listing what supers I’d seen and what I’d seen them do.
After leaving the room, I walk to one of the elevators and go down two more levels to where the cafeteria is. Since I’m out and about, I might as well take in the sights. Until I finish the modifications to the VZ armor, I don’t plan on visiting Mangler. Plus, I’ll probably do something stupid the moment I see José. Even with a new suit, I’ll still be a little under gunned against the people running around this place.
I can freely admit to a slight case of “base envy.” My setup is . . . somewhat lacking, in comparison to this beast. If I could stand the heat of Mexico, I’d be sorely tempted to capture this place and move our operations here. Whereas I have two and a half levels sixty feet under Alabama, Devious has eight levels with each of them roughly the size of a big-box retail store. It’s almost like a damn inverted skyscraper.
And this isn’t even her main base!
Even so, it doesn’t match up to the Overlord’s Omega base.
Passing through the automated cafeteria line, I don’t get any looks from the repurposed Type-A robot serving as a mechanical lunch lady. I can see another one in the kitchen area with extra arm upgrade attachments. For a techie like myself, that just seems gratuitous, like Devious is flaunting.
What next? Type-B robots with room service trays attached to their gyroscopic forms?
• • •
Much to my surprise, a pair of techs are fiddling around with the VZ armor when I return to the workshop. “Just what the hell do you two think you’re doing?”
The taller one looks up from the laptop he has connected into the head assembly. “Orders, jackass. We’re pulling the video footage. Someone told someone else that this pile of scrap ran into Megasuit. Praetorius told our supervisor who told us. If you got a problem with it, lizardman, by all means take it up with Praetorius.”
When I don’t say anything, the guy looks back down and mutters, “Yeah, thought so.”
The Italian strongman is known to throw down with Ares. His presence here complicates things. Even with Mega, I wouldn’t want to be stuck in a confined space with him.
“Cut him some slack, Bryce,” the older, shorter, white-haired tech says.
“Maybe he shouldn’t come walking in like he owns the place and asking us what the hell we’re doing. Last I checked, this is one of our workshops and he’s the visitor.”
“Sorry, just finished getting debriefed and eating some meat that I couldn’t identify. Relax!”
“
He’s always like that,” the more pleasant one says. I’m Dean.”
Waving a claw at him, I reply, “I’m Matt. How much longer do you think you’ll be? I’ve gotta get back to patching this thing up.”
“Shouldn’t be but another ten or fifteen minutes. If you’d been here, we’d already be done. Took us almost twenty minutes to find the access port in the head gear.”
I shrug, not wanting to admit that I wouldn’t have known where the access port is either. That would not have gone well for my cover.
Bryce sticks to his work while Dean becomes my new best friend. He handles this level’s supply and inventory. I ask him where I can get a bunch of things and he taps away on his handheld. Moments later, he starts calling out locations. My piss-poor writing skills aren’t needed because he prints it out for me.
I’m liking Dean more and more. Bryce is still giving me the occasional dirty look—which translates into us not getting along very well.
Surprisingly, I’m OK with that. Besides, I think I can talk Dean into staying to help me with some of the more detailed work that my dinosaur claws aren’t really suited for.
“So did you actually see the Megasuit?” Dean asks.
“Only briefly,” I say. “There was one of the female Olympians and someone else there. They were a little out of my league.”
Dean nods in an understanding fashion, while Bryce does as well, but in a more condescending manner.
Just can’t catch a break with this one, can I?
It’s not like I’m really interested in befriending either of these two. I just need to keep them mostly out of my hair until VZ is up and running. My mind starts searching for ways to slow down Praetorius. The few times I threw down with Ares hadn’t exactly been resounding victories for team Mechani-Cal. I overloaded and blew up a weapon in his face, which knocked him on his ass long enough for me to run away as fast as I could. The other time was when I made a “last stand” on the steps of Mount Olympus. Ares was part of the group of mind-controlled heroes who overran my position.
Not one of my best memories, even if it all worked out in the end.
Rise of a D-List Supervillain Page 12