by David Reiss
And forty-six minutes later, I discovered key information regarding the location of the Ancient’s hidden treasure.
◊◊◊
A thin smile graced Henry Collins’ lips as I entered the restaurant. As always, the man’s couture was immaculate; his charcoal-gray three-piece suit was perfectly fitted and looked to have been recently pressed. It was a deliberate choice, I knew. He chose his outfits for effect, another weapon within his arsenal to establish dominance over his victims. There was not a fleck of lint upon his suit, not a scratch on the face of his expensive gold wristwatch, and not a gray hair out of place on his head. His skin-care regimen must have been astounding; his skin was as smooth as that of an infant, and pale like a creature untouched by the sun.
My own attire was professional, but I’d discarded my tie and left my shirt’s top button undone. I wasn’t trying to compete; Dr. Terry Markham was to be portrayed as a working CEO, fresh from meetings and labor.
I’d arrived on time, but Henry had chosen to seat himself early and had already begun his meal. Again, a not-particularly-subtle method of oozing dominance. I chose not to acknowledge the insult directly but instead flagged down a waiter’s attention as I took my seat.
“Terrance. I’m glad that you agreed to this meeting.”
“Henry,” I acknowledged, looking over the menu. “I think that we both know I didn’t have much of a choice.”
An expression of smug conceit flickered across his features but was quickly replaced by his default dull and emotionless mien. It was only with significant effort that I was able to conceal my own amusement at his reaction.
We didn’t speak until after the waiter had taken my order.
“So,” I began with a sigh, “what do you want this time?”
“The same thing I always want,” he replied. “For you to align the company’s priorities with your stockholders’ interests.”
“If you’re expecting to blackmail me into doing your bidding, you’re going to have to be more specific,” I grimaced. “I wouldn’t want to accidentally do what’s right for the company instead of what’s right for you personally, after all.”
“It’s not personal.” A frown of admonishment touched the corners of his lips. “I represent A.H. Biotech’s shareholders, Terrance.”
“You represent eight percent of our shareholders,” I scoffed.
“A registered blockholder with eight percent ownership lobbied on my behalf,” Henry Collins corrected, his expression one of fond recollection. “But in the end, I was confirmed by majority vote.”
“I own more than three times as many shares as your voting bloc.”
“Yes,” he chuckled. “However—according to AHBT’s articles of incorporation—executive staff have no voting rights. Technically speaking, I’m your proxy; I suppose it would be more accurate to say that I represent approximately thirty-five percent of shareholders, then.”
It required Herculean effort to restrain a growl.
If Henry and his supporters ever succeeded in having me removed as CEO then I would regain my voting rights, but he and his supporters had enjoyed years to build up political support among the shareholders. Simply owning the large volume of shares would not guarantee me any significant influence over the company, and Henry knew it.
I took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. “All right, then. I’ll ask again: what do you want?”
“I want for you to close down Blue Seas. If you do that, I’ll make sure the Board votes in favor of your new vanity project.”
The Blue Seas venture used colonies of genetically engineered bacteria to metabolize plastic debris within the ocean into harvest-able, sell-able chemicals; the enterprise wasn’t profitable yet…but it would be eventually. I could think of only one reason that Henry would want to abandon the business unit before it had begun to earn revenue.
“You want us to sell our hardware and license the process to another company,” I frowned. “Vanaheim Petrochemical is one of the major investors behind your voting bloc, aren’t they?”
“As it happens, I believe that Vanaheim Petrochemical is readying a bid. It’s a win-win scenario: A.H. Biotech gains licensing fees and has costly liabilities stripped from their balance sheet. Vanaheim Petrochemicals gets some good publicity and another profitable product line.” His expression was predatory. “I think that it would be in A.H. Biotech’s best interests to accept the offer, don’t you?”
Theoretically, Vanaheim Petrochemical was well placed to take advantage of the deal. They had a large fleet of ships and would be able to expand operations more quickly than our own efforts had been able. On the other hand…their goal would be raw profit and I could already envision some of the harmful, polluting and destructive methods they would use to optimize the process, publicity be damned. Blue Seas was originated as a humanitarian and environmental movement; that goal would be lost before the ink on the contract dried. Licensing the technology to an outside business with more maritime experience may have been a decent idea but that particular customer would be a poor choice.
“No,” I shook my head. “No, I don’t think that A.H. Biotech is going to do that.”
The slim man was unperturbed. “Last time we played this game, you needed to pull a remarkably impressive rabbit out of your hat in order to get your way. You can’t do that every time, Terrance. Learn to play ball, life will become easier for you.”
“The last time we played,” I countered, “the rules were different.”
“How so?”
I smiled wryly, “Somehow, I’d gotten it into my head that you were the villain in our little drama, and that meant that I was the plucky hero who had to struggle and outwit you to defeat your fiendish schemes. But you’re not a villain. You’re just a sad, selfish, hollow creature in a well-tailored suit. And if you’re not a villain, then I don’t have to play the hero’s role.
“In which case, I’m just a very wealthy man who has a few dozen Senators and Congressmen on speed-dial. Also, Meredith Ellison. Do you remember her? She had an inoperable tumor, and saving her was one of A.H. Biotech’s ‘vanity projects’.”
“I think I recall,” Henry Collins replied wanly, seeming a bit more pale than usual.
“It turns out that she’s the Secretary of the Interior’s niece; Vanaheim Petrochemical is currently waiting on approval for four off-shore drilling projects, aren’t they? I only ask because Secretary Brand and his family are coming by my house this weekend and it may come up in conversation.”
The gray-haired man’s jaw clenched. “This is beginning to feel very much like the blackmail you accused me of earlier.”
“I will never ask anything of you other than to do your legal duty to act on behalf of all of A.H. Biotech’s shareholders. If you think I’m pushing the company in the wrong direction? Fight me on it. I can take the hit and I’m willing to listen.” I bared my teeth. “But if you try to manipulate my company to benefit your eight-percent at the expense of the other ninety-two, I promise you that I will use every tool at my disposal to ensure that every investor who supports you is going to have a bad day.”
Henry Collins looked ill as he set down his silverware, and I waved down our waiter to get my meal packaged to go.
◊◊◊
“I am Doctor Fid!” I boomed, my armor’s volume raised loud enough to rattle windows. “Stand down immediately and your injuries will be minor.”
For a moment, all was silent. And then the fully-automatic gunfire began.
I couldn’t help but chuckle. Small arms, against Doctor Fid’s towering Mk 35 heavy combat? Encased within this suit, I’d faced down the largest assembly of superheroes in modern history. The suit’s strength had been matched against the mighty Valiant for twenty-two and a half minutes! Even after facing Skullface in his own domain, the Mk 35 had walked away under its own power. Skullface’s mercenaries may as well have been throwing cotton-balls.
A surface to air missile might be able to scratch the electrostatic
veneer from an orichalcum plate but mere copper-jacketed lead was no threat at all. Bullets spattered off the Mk 35’s starfield surface, and I strode straight through the duplex’s wall to confront the armed criminals.
I hadn’t detected any communication from Skullface nor from Doctor Chaise; that avenue of investigation was lost to me. My sensors had, however, indicated that these mercenaries had been working non-stop at re-tasking their stockpiled explosives. These were not bombs designed to breach a fortified stronghold, nor were they intended to defend against a superpowered assault. These devices—flechettes and ball bearings shaped around a relatively small charge—were suitable for only one purpose: to cause mass casualties among unarmored civilians.
Skullface’s minions had already created more than a hundred such implements before I’d decided to intervene; whatever they had been preparing for, the results would have been a horror. And so, laughing with vicious cheer, I waded through the duplex’s wreckage to swat one gunman after another into the ground. Bones snapped and blood sprayed, but the damage was carefully non-lethal. The police were already en route and I wanted these mercenaries incarcerated: a very public warning to those who had accepted Skullface’s employment.
If Terry Markham wasn’t required to rigidly follow the hero’s role when confronting the chairman of the A.H. Biotech’s board of directors, then perhaps Doctor Fid needn’t be constrained to a scheming supervillain’s path when opposing Skullface.
It was time for a more overt approach.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Sadly, Skullface chose not to cooperate with my desire for a more direct confrontation. Several mercenary cells—small units given specific tasks but little in the way of information—had been located and the criminals arrested (or hospitalized and arrested), and yet their employer’s location still eluded me. I’d even ‘accidentally’ allowed one minion to escape so that I could surreptitiously monitor her; thus far, no contact had been made.
It was an annoying scenario, but I took solace in the certainty that whatever plans had been in store, the sudden spike in incarcerations would surely have been a disruption.
And even if I were unable to locate Skullface, it was plausible that sufficiently-tantalizing bait might draw the villain out.
Under cover of darkness, a swarm of utility drones and I performed detailed scans of an island off the east coast of Nova Scotia. Behind the Mk 38’s star-field faceplate, I indulged in a smug smile; my calculations had been correct.
The Ancient had hidden tiny clues in the works that he’d left behind; little discrepancies in technique or components that were indecipherable when taken individually but began to suggest a pattern when combined. I have no doubt that he’d intended for this pattern to be discovered via magical means, but my science and math had managed the task equally well. A picture had begun to emerge: an intensely complex geometric diagram.
The Ancient had published a monograph on the use of images for meditative purposes and I was immediately struck by the hidden illustration’s similarity to a Buddhist mandala. The paper had stressed the importance of radial symmetry in such illustrations, but the diagram that I’d modeled from so many pieces of the Ancient’s belongings was subtly flawed. At first I thought this a limitation of the artist’s materials. Eventually, I realized that the blemishes were, in fact, the message.
The Ancient had fancied himself both scientist and wizard; for a practitioner of the mystic arts, I wondered, would understanding have been an instinctive thing? Attaining a deep trance state while contemplating the complicated drawing, until the solution was revealed by one’s subconscious? I had no idea; my own analysis relied upon complex mathematical models, cryptographic methods, and steganographic techniques. One flaw led to another, and when laid upon a map they all pointed here: to a small and uninhabited island. And now, my sensors indicated that the island hid a system of caves below its surface.
There was, I was sure, some secret entrance. Some mystic password that my research had missed, some illusion to be disrupted. Given time, I was certain that I would have been able to identify and bypass that hurdle…but I was done with subtlety. My warstaff was summoned into my hand, and I poured a roaring jet of plasma upon the island’s beach. Winds were whipped into a frenzy and the night sky was set alight by the fiery assault; molten rock spattered across the sand, crackling and hissing when thrown into nearby waters. And then I was through.
The newly-formed pit’s walls had been melted to glass and were still dimly glowing as I descended. A swarm of microdrones explored ahead, and the networked devices’ sonar and lidar readings were quickly compiled into a three-dimensional model that was overlayed across my vision by the time my feet touched the hidden tunnel’s floor. Little light touched these walls save for the dull-red glow emitted from the Mk 38’s seams and the trickle of starlight from within its surface, but so much sensory data was being poured into my brain via my neural tap that it was several seconds before I noticed the lack of visual input. A pair of construction drones were ordered to drop down the shaft and join me; they, at least, had floodlights installed.
The path undulated slightly, limiting my view in either direction. I dismissed my warstaff back to its subspace storage and chose a route in which to begin my investigation: Westward, towards the center of the island.
The tunnel’s surface had a matte grey finish which caught the light emitted from my floating cylindrical utility drones but did not cast much in the way of reflection. Although sensor readings confirmed my suspicions that these tunnels were not naturally formed, I could detect no toolmarks upon the smooth stone walls. I imagined that, if I took the time to drill cores from the surrounding material, I would find stress fractures within the basalt that could not be explained by any natural process; the Ancient had written a monograph on geomancy and the evidence seemed to match the predictions in his text.
I recalled my visit to Chicago and had just a moment to feel a strange sense of deja vu, and then the flood of black-scaled bipedal lizard things fell upon me.
There’d been no warning, not even a hint of movement: just a twist of shadow and then there was a chaos of glowing red eyes and long fangs dripping with poison. Grinning wildly behind Doctor Fid’s emotionless mask, I summoned my warstaff once more and stepped into the fray.
Years before, Bobby and I had watched images of Chimera and her compatriots battling monsters like these. Then, I’d been taken aback by the creatures’ sinuous savagery. The video had not captured the half of it; even now, encased within the powerful Mk 38, I was impressed. They were inhumanly strong and moved with vicious coordination and speed. It was only reflexes honed by decades of nefarious deeds that kept me from being borne down in that initial assault.
A warning alarm blared within my skull; the poison from their fangs was fantastically caustic, and the design of my armor required that some plates had not been constructed of orichalcum; if I allowed too much venom to spill, the seals at some joints might be breached. And so I stepped back as I fought, falling into a violent rhythm. Dodge then strike, shift and parry. I used the curve of the tunnel to my advantage, forcing the creatures to crawl over each other to reach me rather than surrounding me as had been their original intention. My staff barked with power, each swing crackling with energy and every blow landing with the force of an oncoming truck. I shattered my enemies in waves but still they came. Claws scraped across my mask, and fangs strained to find purchase on my mask. I was jostled and poked, shoved and menaced and struck. My entire world was movement and danger.
I laughed and moved and killed until there was nothing left of me but the battle.
◊◊◊
Standing before the University’s budget advisory committee for the first time had been a bewildering experience. The first chair queried why they should fund my project, and I had waxed eloquent regarding the glory of discovery. They shifted uncomfortably, and I’d developed the distinct impression that they were considering asking me to step outside. But�
�I was the University’s wunderkind, their teen-aged polymath pursuing studies in a half-dozen unrelated scientific fields! Given my burgeoning reputation, I was offered the benefit of the doubt; again, they questioned why this particular research should be subsidized…and I launched into an impassioned and poetic oration about the nobility inherent in the expansion of human understanding.
The board did not seem swayed.
I was fortunate that I’d included my minder—Michael, now a PhD. in his own right—within my team; he took pity on me and addressed the board directly. The research and subsequent academic papers, he explained, would attract future grants. He offered a series of simple justifications for his premises and the project was approved while I watched in open-mouthed confusion.
The moment of subsequent comprehension had been dizzying: I had made a mistake. I’d been so focused upon the truth of my answers (scientific inquiry is both noble and glorious!) that I’d failed to listen to the nuances of the questions being asked of me. Accurate content is insufficient if its context is inappropriate. In order to prosper in academia, I’d suddenly realized, I would need to be more aware of my surroundings.
As time passed and the string of successes behind me grew ever longer, it became increasingly difficult to remember that lesson.
◊◊◊
The black-scaled lizard-like monsters had driven me backwards through nearly a quarter-mile of tunnel, but I was unworried. I’d left behind a long trail of the dead and dying, and their numbers were beginning to thin. When the last hiss had been uttered, when the last glowing red eye dimmed, I would float over their corpses and claim my prize.
At first, I’d been somewhat concerned that the Ancient might still be present within these caves, and that a more delicate confrontation lay before me. But no; these were mindless and brutal creatures with none of the malevolent guidance I’d seen hints of when watching television with Bobby. Hissing, rabid and dangerous guards, left behind by an absent master. Either I’d missed some valuable bit of intelligence—a command or sign that would have rendered this army quiescent, or else the Ancient had intended for his legacy only to fall into the hands of a powerful recipient. There were not many who could have weathered this torrent of violence.