Enhancer 5

by Wyatt Kane

  “Here’s the thing,” Ty said, and even he was surprised at the level of threat in his voice. “I’ve had just about enough of you people. It’s because of you and people like you that this world is as bad as it is. I’m going to find the Master if it’s the last thing I do, and I’m going to rip his spine out through his chest. Maybe then he will stop infecting New Lincoln with his personal brand of spite. Maybe then he will stop hurting my friends!”

  At first, as Ty spoke, the boss man appeared to be intimidated. But as Ty’s speech continued, he started to grin, and as Ty finished, the man actually barked a laugh.

  “Stop hurting your friends?” the boss man sneered. “Boy, you have a lot to learn about making threats. I’ve done worse than that for no more than a look I didn’t like.” The boss man gave a shrug. “Maybe one day you’ll get there. Maybe one day you’ll be someone to fear. But that day isn’t today.”

  Ty’s fury warred with his frustration. A part of him knew the boss man was right. Perhaps he should have been more forthright in his actions.

  Out of frustration and annoyance, Ty smashed his free fist into the wall beside the boss man’s head. Chunks of brick went flying, and the boss man flinched away, but he was still laughing even as Ty’s fist came away, leaving a large hole where it had been.

  Ty gave a growl and hurled the man onto the ground. He would have flung himself after, and likely began pounding the man with his fists. In his mind, all he saw was Tempest, her left side gone because of Bain’s efforts. He had a fleeting thought of conjuring the plasma blade the monstrous villain had used, and seeing how this boss man responded to the same type of treatment. But he hadn’t yet worked out how to connect the plasma blade to his power converters.

  His fists would have to be enough.

  Yet before he could turn his thoughts into actions, Vixen was standing between him and his target. She raised her hand to stop him, and her expression was firm.

  “There’s no need,” she said. “I can get him to talk.”

  Ty stood rooted in place, his rage building up like a storm. Yet he knew Vixen was right. Pounding the boss man into a body pulp might make Ty feel better for the moment, but it wouldn’t get them any closer to the Master.

  With a supreme act of will, Ty reined himself in.

  “How?” he asked.

  Vixen gave him a cold smile. “Like this,” she said.

  With that, she reached down to the man on the ground and pushed against his chest. Ty noted that she’d put the blaster away, and was touching the man with her bare hands.

  Ty’s first thought was that she was reaching into his chest as she had done with the dealer, but that wasn’t the case. Instead, she’d made the man insubstantial, and was pushing him into the ground.

  To begin with, the boss man didn’t seem to know what was happening. Then he did, and he started to scream. He flailed about in a panic, then with more focus. He tried to punch Vixen, tried to shove her away from him, but nothing worked.

  The boss man’s flailing arms connected with nothing solid, and very soon he was almost entirely buried. Only his face and hands stuck out of the ground.

  He kept wailing, kept struggling. Ty didn’t understand completely. When Vixen had taken him to the other dimension, it hadn’t been like this at all. Was she doing something different?

  “Hush, now,” the dark elf said sweetly to the man in the ground. “You’re starting to be annoying. If I take my hands away from you, that’s it. You will merge with the ground, and I doubt very much if you would survive more than a few seconds.”

  Just like that, the man stopped his thrashing about and clenched his jaw shut. Despite himself, Ty was impressed. To be able to rein himself in from that state would have taken an enormous force of will.

  “That’s better,” Vixen said, just as sweetly. “Now, you’re probably wondering what exactly it is I’m doing to you. Well, I’ll tell you. I have the ability to step between different dimensions. Different versions of this same earth we all live in. If I step in all the way, it’s like I disappear from this one entirely. But I don’t have to step in all the way. I can step partly over, in which case I can seem transparent in this world, and in the other.”

  The way she spoke, it sounded to Ty as if she had said it all before. As if she had practiced it, like a speech. And all at once, Ty understood that she had done exactly that. In her own city, if she needed information and her target was reluctant, this was what she did.

  He had to admit, it seemed to be effective.

  “That’s what I’m doing with you. You are now only partly in this world, and you are partly in the next. Funny thing, but in this state, you literally can move through walls. But it feels decidedly odd while you’re doing it.” Vixen smiled broadly at the man, and Ty knew it was one of her rare, genuine smiles. “It can feel a lot worse if I want it to.”

  At this, she didn’t appear to do anything, but the boss man’s eyes started to bulge and he looked like he wanted to scream.

  “Uh-uh,” Vixen admonished. “One more sound out of you, and you’re stuck there forever.” The boss man choked on his scream and held it in. “Now. Are you going to answer our questions?” Vixen asked.

  ◆◆◆

  As it turned out, the boss man wasn’t able to supply the name of his superior, and this time both Ty and Vixen believed him. But he was able to give the address of the factory his organization operated out of.

  “That’s where he will be. I don’t know his name, but you’ll know him when you see him,” the man said.

  “Thank you,” Vixen said sweetly.

  “Now, please, get me out of here!” the boss man said, his voice close to a whimper.

  As Vixen drew him back out of the alley floor, Ty wondered what they were going to do with him. They couldn’t risk the boss man making contact with the rest of his organization, nor did Ty have the callousness or brutality required to simply kill him.

  But Vixen solved that problem as well. As soon as the boss man started to breathe a sigh of relief at no longer being embedded in the ground, she grabbed the front of his jacket and plunged as much of the fabric as she could into the ground, trapping his arms. It took less than a second, and when she moved her hands away, Ty could see she had effectively caught him in place. He had no leverage, and could do little more than kick out with his feet.

  “Hey!” the man started as Vixen stood back up.

  “Would you prefer I buried your head instead?” Vixen asked him, and his struggles subsided. “And, just so you know, if it turns out you aren’t telling the truth, we’ll be back.”

  With that, the dark elf looked around and nodded her head in satisfaction.

  “Job done, I think,” she said. “How about we check these others for weapons and communication devices, and I’ll secure them in the same way. And then we can see whether this kind soul was telling us the truth.”

  In less than a minute, they were done. Ty took a moment to break the blasters he’d gathered apart, and destroyed every communication option he could find, including a couple of embedded phones worn by the guards. Then, he and Vixen returned to Dinah’s bike, and Ty used the GPS to figure out where they were heading.

  Within a few minutes, he and Vixen were back on the road, weaving through traffic again.

  27: A Familiar Face

  Once again, Vixen pressed herself against Ty’s back in a way that he wasn’t comfortable with as they made their way through the ongoing drizzle.

  As distances went in New Lincoln, the factory the boss man had directed them to wasn’t that far. In a city that stretched for hundreds of miles in virtually any direction, a journey of less than forty minutes when the traffic flowed easily was akin to a spectacular dose of good fortune.

  Yet that was the case this time. And it made a good deal of sense. The Master’s drug distribution network would have a series of hubs throughout the city. The alley where they’d ambushed the boss man had to be close to one of them.

 
Whether the boss man’s superior would actually be there or not, only time would tell.

  Without much surprise, Ty found the factory in the middle of an industrial zone. It looked not so much like a factory, but an ordinary warehouse. It was surrounded by similar buildings, some built to a truly massive scale, there to supply all sorts of goods throughout the city of New Lincoln.

  As he pulled Dinah’s Ducati to the side of the road, Ty thought his life had become little more than a sequence of warehouse visits. Bain and his men had held Dinah hostage in one. Ty and Tempest had been ambushed in another down at the docks. And while the confrontation with Steam and Massive had occurred in a foundry, in Ty’s mind, it was a similar construction, even though it was probably just the size of the space that made it seem so.

  Ty’s visits to most of those other warehouses had resulted in carnage. But this time, he thought, it should be much simpler.

  Once again, Vixen and Ty climbed from Dinah’s bike, locked their helmets in place, and set the anti theft system.

  “So,” Ty said. “Same as before? You use your power to hide us from everyone until we find the person in charge. Then we get them to point us to the next in the chain.”

  As Ty spoke, he was acutely aware that if it weren’t for Vixen, he would have been lost. He might find her attitude grating, but there was no denying she was more streetwise than him, and more generally capable when it came to this sort of work.

  If it wasn’t for her, Ty would have had no choice other than to keep busting dealers and trying to shake the information from them in his ineffective way.

  He found himself deferring to Vixen in terms of planning in the same way that he had deferred to Tempest. When it came down to it, he was still very new at this game. He’d been wearing his device for less than a month all up.

  Vixen had far more experience than he did.

  “Sounds good to me,” Vixen said. “Except…” She trailed off, her brow creasing with uncertainty. Without explaining why, she touched the device on her wrist, bringing up the holographic display of her character sheet.

  Ty hadn’t asked, but he had been curious about her skills and attributes, and couldn’t help taking a look.

  General

  Name: Vixen Gray

  Modifications: Dark Elf

  Unique Skill: Skill Duplication

  Acquired Secondary Skill: Dimensional Phasing

  Alignment: Neutral Good

  Baseline

  Strength: 4

  Durability: 3

  Healing: 3

  Stamina: 4

  Agility: 4

  Intelligence: 6

  Wisdom: 3

  Skill: N/A

  Secondary Skill: N/A

  Post enhancement

  Strength: 6

  Durability: 6

  Healing: 6

  Stamina: 7

  Agility: 6

  Intelligence: 7

  Wisdom: 4

  Skill: 3

  Acquired Secondary Skill: 2

  Surprisingly, her character sheet showed an attribute that had to be specific for her. Acquired Secondary Skill. Ty couldn’t imagine how the device could have generated that automatically. Perhaps the Architect had programmed it in directly.

  “Hmm,” Vixen said. “It’s as I thought. When I borrow someone’s skill, it doesn’t last forever. It seems that despite how long I’ve been hanging out with Delve, that hasn’t changed. That number used to be a four. Looks like it’s already starting to fade.”

  Ty studied her. The last thing he wanted was for her power to run out while they were insubstantial.

  “Can you still do it?” he asked.

  The dark elf nodded. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m not going to leave you stuck in another dimension. From the looks of things this morning, I don’t think Dinah or your friend Lilith would forgive me if I did.”

  Vixen again grabbed hold of Ty’s arm, and moments later the world around them seemed to change hue once more. Confident that no one would be able to see or hear them, they wandered into the warehouse as if they had every right to do so.

  ◆◆◆

  They entered through the main door, phasing through the steel and wood as if it didn’t exist. Inside, there was a small reception room where a couple of workers sat at their desks, completely oblivious to Ty and Vixen as they wandered through. It was when they phased through the partition door at the back of the reception area that Ty saw for himself that this was indeed the production factory, and not the warehouse it had appeared to be.

  It was bigger than it seemed from outside. Ty and Vixen had entered on what had appeared to be the ground floor, but he and the dark elf were looking down on the main work area.

  Two, maybe three stories below, dozens of men and women went about their daily business, working among vast vats filled with chemicals, a manufacturing track that looked to be putting together one-shot inhalers, and a storage area filled with unknown items on shelving units that reached nearly all the way to Ty and Vixen’s viewing platform. Each of these three areas were separated from each other by dividing walls, but all of them were open to view from above.

  Ty hadn’t consciously decided to do so, but he’d stopped just to take in the site.

  “This is it, then,” Vixen said. “The source of the drug.”

  Ty nodded. “Looks like it,” he said. He wondered if he should take the opportunity to do a Concussion and tear the building down. At the very least, that should halt production for a week or two. But in the end, he decided against it. They’d confirmed only that this was the production plant for something. He needed further proof to be sure it was for the AZT-407.

  And besides, destroying the factory wasn’t their immediate goal. Nor would it lead them to the Master. Maybe later, Ty said to himself. Once he had what they’d come there to get.

  With a sigh, he turned to Vixen. “Where should we start?” he asked, even though Vixen was as new to this building as he was.

  She gave a small shrug. She looked around. “The offices up here?” she said.

  “Okay,” Ty agreed. They had to start somewhere.

  Together, still firmly within the other dimension rather than in the real world, they made their way along the lookout platform, which seemed to double as a hallway, looking into each room as they passed.

  It turned out that there were only two rooms other than the reception area at this level of the building. Perhaps there would be a control room and a testing lab somewhere below, but on the upper level, aside from the reception area, there was just a large meeting room with a single office down the far end.

  The meeting room was empty, and Ty was starting to wonder what the boss man had meant when he suggested Ty would know his boss when he saw him.

  Then, as soon as Ty and Vixen entered the office, he understood.

  Ty froze in place. There were three people in front of them, two men and a woman. But Ty’s attention was focused solely on one of the men.

  “What’s wrong,” Vixen said.

  “I know him,” Ty said. The man wasn’t overly tall, and had a flat, hard-looking face with undersized features, and enormous, powerful-looking shoulders. Yet for all that, he still had the same stamp to him that was common to most in his extended family.

  “It’s Massive,” Ty breathed.

  “Massive?” Vixen asked, obviously confused.

  “A superpowered villain. When Tempest and I last fought him, he was able to knock Tempest out. He’s incredibly strong and seems to be able to alter his density.”

  “He knocked Tempest out?”

  “Yeah. But that’s not the worst of it. He doesn’t work for the Master. He works for Rubio.”

  Vixen didn’t get the implications. “So, what’s he doing here?”

  “I don’t know. He shouldn’t be. The Master and Rubio don’t get along.”

  At that moment, Massive was growling at the other two people in the room, his voice like the grinding of stone against stone. Ap
parently, there was a delay with a key ingredient for the next batch of the drug, and Massive wasn’t happy.

  “Well, I guess we’re going to have to ask him,” Vixen said. With that, she let go of Ty’s arm.

  Several things happened all at once. From Massive’s perspective, Ty and Vixen would have just materialized inside his office. It was startling, and not just for the blocky man. His two employees turned toward them in shock, but it was Massive who recovered the fastest.

  “You!” he said, recognizing Ty just as Ty had recognized him.

  Massive had been sitting at his desk, but no longer. With a single convulsive move, he stood, shunting the desk out of the way in the process. Ty could almost sense the man gaining weight and density, and wondered what Vixen had in mind.

  The dark elf wasted no time. She moved toward the superpowered man with a sense of purpose and determination, and Ty thought she was going to use the same trick on him as she had on the boss man in the alley.

  In preparation, Ty activated his shield and got ready to unleash everything he had at the villain. He knew from experience that, like Bain, Massive was proof against Ty’s weaponry, and he feared for an instant that he would be proof against Vixen as well.

  The walls of the structure were not made of bedrock. They weren’t even made of concrete. From what Ty could see, there was nothing for Vixen to embed the man into that he couldn’t simply flex his muscles and become un-embedded in an instant.

  He wasn’t the only one to be taken off guard when, instead, Vixen wrapped her arms around Massive’s thick neck and kissed him hard on the lips.

  28: A Massive Skirmish

  For an instant, everyone in the office froze in place. Even Massive, whose expression said quite clearly that he couldn’t believe what was happening.

  Before Ty could even begin to comprehend what Vixen was doing, she broke off the kiss and turned her head toward Ty.

  “You’re right,” she said. “He can change his density. And now, so can I.”