“And then I had the idea to try this.”
The Tin Can Man’s metal finger sank into the cube, making a clicking sound as an unseen button depressed. A rectangle along one side slid back, revealing what the structure contained.
It wasn’t what Brendan saw that made his stomach turn as much as what the sight implied. Looking through the window into the cube, he understood how the Tin Can Man powered his vehicles, and why he’d been able to keep pace with Samson’s gas-powered car. He understood why the Tin Can Man was so interested in Brendan’s powers and what he would ask of him.
And in that moment, Brendan hated him.
10
A gleam on the cube’s surface made it hard to see inside, but Brendan saw enough.
He saw darkened eyes staring blankly. He saw black veins tracing up and down sallow flesh. He saw thick, black tentacles reaching out of every opening in a man’s body.
The Tin Can Man had stuffed an infected inside a cube. The creature was contorted, knees pulled to its chest and arms squeezed to its sides. From the way its hair and clothing moved, Brendan assumed it was submerged in some sort of fluid.
“This,” said the Tin Can Man, patting the cube. “Is the most efficient battery you’ve seen in your life. Have you ever wondered how much energy the filth has? The answer is a lot. And since the filth is indestructible, you can crank up the power as high as you want, and it doesn’t die. I haven’t found an end to it yet.”
The Tin Can Man shut the window into the cube, and relief washed over Brendan. He’d seen plenty of infected before, but something about this one made his stomach turn. The drugs blocked his connection to the tar, but if he wasn’t wearing that cuff, he’d sense the creature’s hunger. He’d sense its fury, and even its pain, if the tar was capable of suffering.
“The technology’s the same as any other bio-power cell,” said the Tin Can Man, either not noticing Brendan’s unease or not caring. “You harness the energy that’s naturally being produced and redirect it. Simple as that. But you’ll never get human bio-power to match this level of energy. Not without hooking hundreds of people up to one cell. And then you only have so long until your power source dies.”
The Tin Can Man sat back down. He scooted his chair closer to Brendan, close enough that their knees touched. Cold mod on hot flesh.
“You never have to rest these batteries. You never have to recharge them. My first prototype has just as much juice as the newest models. The only catch is these batteries are extremely difficult to create, because...well.” He reached back, patting the cube again. “It’s not exactly easy to stuff a filthy into a box. And when they lash out, they’re dangerous. We’ve refined our methods, sure. I don’t lose as many men now as I did when I started, but if it’s all the same, I’d prefer these cells not cost me any men. And you could be the key to making that happen.
“You see where I’m going with this?”
Brendan did, and he didn’t like it.
“Let’s say we put somebody in a power cell before they got infected and turned dangerous. Then, once they’re all sealed away, we got somebody to conjure filth out of nowhere and send it into the cell with our lucky volunteer. I get my power cells, my men stay safe, and the person doing the conjuring gets paid a pretty penny. What do you think?”
Brendan thought the Tin Can Man was crazy. Even if Brendan had enough control over his power to open a portal to Tir Anhrefnus and pinpoint the exact location he would pull the tar through, he didn’t want to use it that way. The Tin Can Man was deliberately infecting human beings, and for what? Faster cars? A better underground fortress? More safety?
More power, said a voice deep inside Brendan.
That was the core of it, right? Brendan noticed it in the Tin Can Man because he’d honed that same ruthless instinct in himself. If it made him more powerful, he would do it, even if it meant pushing someone else down, even if it meant sacrificing them to the tar. Like Tiger Stripe. Like the guys at the bar. Like everyone who’d ever gotten in his way.
Was this what he was becoming? Someone so obsessed with removing everything that made him vulnerable that he also removed everything that made him human? He might live longer, but at what cost?
He didn’t have the answers to those questions, but even in his drug-induced haze, he had the answer to the one the Tin Can Man had asked him.
“No.”
“No,” the Tin Can Man repeated. It was hard to read emotion in his voice, echoing and modulated through the mask, but Brendan sensed the anger. His captor had been hoping for a more receptive subject.
The Tin Can Man’s eyes gleamed, and he leaned forward in his chair, as if hoping to wear Brendan down through sheer force of will. Brendan didn’t budge. He held the grinning skull’s emerald stare, clenching his jaw in defiance.
The Tin Can Man stood. He said, “Fine. You’ll get there.”
And then he yanked the IV tube from the cuff around Brendan’s arm. Electricity coursed through his body again, sent his muscles into convulsions again. Brendan doubled over and fell out of his chair, twitching at the Tin Can Man’s feet.
“Yeah,” said the Tin Can Man’s voice, floating amid the sea of pain. “We’ll get you there.”
11
The Tin Can Man didn’t put the tube back into Brendan’s cuff until they returned to the cell. Brendan was vaguely aware of being dragged through the dank fortress.
“You don’t understand,” said the clanging, muffled voice. “I’m not afraid to kill you. When we rounded you up, you and your friends were only going to be three more batteries, but then I saw what you could do. I saw that if you would play ball, you had the potential to change the world with me.
“Understand this: It’s your potential keeping you alive, nothing more. If you’ve got no potential, I’ve got no need of you.”
Finally, the pain ended. As Brendan’s muscles unclenched and the darkness lifted, he realized they were back in the cell. The Tin Can Man had returned the tube from the wall to its port in Brendan’s cuff. A fresh stream of drugs entered his system.
“It should come as no surprise I’m not a patient man,” the Tin Can Man said. “And believe it or not, I don’t need you. I built all this without your help. So if you’re going to come to your senses, you’d better do it sooner than later. My patience will run out. Maybe you have a few days, maybe only an hour. When that time comes, you’ll either be on my side or you’ll be dead. Your choice.”
And then he was gone.
Brendan couldn’t bring himself to move. He lay perfectly still on the cold ground. Krystal or Samson was trying to talk to him, but he was exhausted. He drifted effortlessly into oblivion.
12
Brendan woke again. The pain in his muscles had evolved into a dull ache, now joined by fresh stiffness from sleeping on such a hard surface.
“How do you feel?” said Krystal’s voice.
Brendan rolled over, eying her with frustration. What kind of stupid question was that? How did she expect him to feel after everything the Tin Can Man put him through? But then he realized her question was more than idle talk. He blinked away the sleep and looked at her with fresher eyes.
Krystal wasn’t hooked up to the drugs. Her cuff lay open on the floor next to her feet, translucent fluid dribbling through it. There was a small wound surrounded by bright red swelling in the crook of her arm. Brendan met her gaze again, and she nodded back, looking pointedly at his arm. His cuff was gone, too. It sat next to Krystal’s, leaking a river of translucent fluid that joined the drugs from Krystal’s cuff and spiraled into a drain in the center of the floor.
“It’s a good thing he showed us what would happen if we just unplugged those tubes,” Krystal said. “That would’ve been a nasty surprise. But once I knew what to look for, it wasn’t that hard.”
Brendan rubbed his forehead. The cobwebs in his mind were clearing, but the drugs’ final vest
iges still floated there.
“How did you...how were you able to think straight?” he asked.
Krystal shrugged. “I didn’t have to. Not that much, anyway.” She held up her modded hand, allowing each finger to flip back in sequence, revealing the tools beneath. “I can do this kind of stuff in my sleep, remember?”
“Where are we?” said a gruff voice between them.
Samson sat up, pulling oily gray hair out of his eyes. The lines on his face looked especially deep now, but he looked at Krystal with something more than his usual bored contempt.
Krystal snorted. “How does it feel, not getting to save the day for once?”
Samson turned away, a look of distance crossing his face. He’d barely heard her.
“How did we arrive here? Are we far from Black Falls?”
Brendan and Krystal shared a look. Again, Brendan remembered the passages from the Book of Memory where Ansel lost memories when he used too much of his power.
The color drained from Samson’s face. “I need the Book of Memory. Where is it?”
Brendan shook his head. “I don’t know. They took all of our stuff before throwing us in here.”
“There are holes in my mind. How much power did I use?”
It was the most frantic Brendan had seen Samson, and he didn’t blame him. It was one thing to be unable to remember how he’d ended up in an underground cell, but to wonder what other memories were missing? Samson wouldn’t even know what he forgot.
“But you do remember how to use your power,” Krystal said. From the quiver in her voice, Brendan could tell it took great effort for her to remain calm.
Samson nodded. “It is the one thing I am confident I will never forget.”
“Can you get us out of here? Maybe we can find where they’re keeping our stuff.”
Samson closed his eyes, heaved a heavy, calming sigh. Then, slowly, he stretched his hand toward the grate. It shuddered and groaned, but otherwise nothing happened. Samson took a deep breath, extended his hand further, and redoubled his efforts. Again, nothing happened.
Frustrated, Samson lay back on the hard ground. “I cannot focus. There is something in the way.”
Krystal pointed at the trio of cuffs dribbling their fluids into the drain. “Drugs. They were blocking our concentration. The guy who trapped us here said they’d keep you from using your power, and it looks like he was right. Now that they’re disconnected, any idea how long until you can use your power again?”
“Hard to tell,” Samson said. “I know nothing of this substance.”
“Well, let’s hope it’s soon. Next time someone comes to this cell, it’ll be hard to hide what we did. And if we’re not ready to defend ourselves then, we may have missed our only chance.”
“Can’t you use your mod on the door like you did on the cuffs?” Brendan said, gesturing at the grate.
Krystal shook her head. “Believe me, I tried while you guys were zonked out. I can’t reach any of the things I’d need to work on.”
No one spoke after that, but they all reached the same conclusion. Their lives depended on which returned first: The Tin Can Man, or Samson’s powers.
13
Brendan slept, but it was an uneasy rest. Every distant creak was the Tin Can Man returning to ask Brendan to join him. Every flicker of the lights was his metallic form casting shadows through the grate.
With a little more effort, Krystal had re-fitted the cuffs to each of their arms, while cutting off the flow of drugs. The ruse wouldn’t fool the Tin Can Man for long, but Brendan needed every extra second he could get.
Periodically, Brendan heard Samson shift his weight, trying to use his power to destroy the grate, but never successfully. It would shake and groan, but nothing more would happen. The drugs still floated in Samson’s system. He couldn’t focus, much less command the fabric of reality.
When the Tin Can Man returned, he made no attempts at stealth. Those heavy, clanging footsteps echoed down the hallway in noisy rhythm.
“All right, filth-talker,” came the Tin Can Man’s voice. “Are you ready to work together?”
Their metal-clad captor oozed confidence, and why not? He’d been prepared for every eventuality—for the tar to invade, for intruders who lifted chunks of highway without even touching them, for dozens of other scenarios Brendan had yet to imagine.
But he hadn’t been ready for Krystal. For all the precautions he’d taken to keep his prisoners’ powers under control, the sophistication of Krystal’s mod had sneaked past him. Unlike every other mod, Krystal’s looked like flesh. It was hard to create a mod that mimicked true flesh, but Krystal’s insistence on retaining as much humanity as possible was as pure a distillation of her character as Brendan could imagine.
And that appearance of humanity was what saved them.
If the Tin Can Man had known how many tools hid inside Krystal’s lifelike fingers, he would have neutralized her. He’d used drugs on Brendan and Samson, and it would’ve been easier with Krystal. A bio-power blocker, or even an old-fashioned screwdriver, would’ve been enough to render her mod useless.
Instead, the little mechanical fingers had been active, and the three of them stood a chance at survival.
The Tin Can Man appeared outside the grate once again. With a dull clank, the grinning skull leaned into the bars as the hideous creature surveyed his captives.
“What do you say?” said the Tin Can Man. “Will we achieve greatness together?”
Brendan stared at the Tin Can Man, tried to hold his emerald gaze the same way he had every other time. Even though he watched the grinning skull, every other fiber of his being pointed at Samson. Was he ready? Had his powers returned, or would it come down to another fistfight?
“Oh, what the heck?” Brendan said. “Let’s see what we can work out.”
The metal figure didn’t move. It stayed there, leaning against the grate.
A rhythmic clicking sound that might have been a chuckle emanated from behind the mask. “I have to say,” began the Tin Can Man, fiddling with the lock. “I didn’t expect you to give in this early. That’s not to say I’m disappointed. I just figured you’d take a little more convincing. But this is good, right? We’re working together that much sooner, which means we’ll see results that much sooner.”
The Tin Can Man pushed the grate aside, and Brendan didn’t wait to learn if Samson would save the day. He sprang to his feet, ripping his cuff open as he did. Brendan swung the cuff by its chain in circles over his head, once, twice around, before letting it fly. The projectile reached the Tin Can Man, and with the cuff acting as a weight, the chain wound around his gleaming neck.
Fresh bio-power flowed through Brendan’s mod, and he yanked the chain back. The Tin Can Man staggered forward, chirping a toneless grunt as he lifted metal hands to the chain around his neck. Brendan sidestepped the Tin Can Man. The metal man’s momentum carried him past Brendan, who let the chain fall slack in his hands, giving his victim space.
He planted his feet, wound the chain around his mod for a better grip, and yanked once again.
Metal scraped on metal as chains tightened around the Tin Can Man’s plated neck. His head snapped backward while his feet kicked in front of him. For a split second, the gleaming man floated, horizontal over the ground. Then he landed flat on his back with a resounding thud.
“Well,” said the Tin Can Man. No pain or fear darkened his mechanical voice. “I can’t say I expected that. I thought I’d taken care of everything.”
The Tin Can Man rose to his knees and wrapped the chains around his arms. Too late, Brendan realized what was happening. He couldn’t untangle his mod from the chain before the Tin Can Man whipped him across the room. Brendan hurtled through the air, seeing the Tin Can Man as a frozen image while he flew. He was kneeling, metal hands gripping the chains and grinning his terrible grin. The chains wound around the Tin Can Man�
�s neck, but through all the layers of armor, the man beneath was unharmed. He held fast, watching with his frozen grin.
Brendan crashed into the wall, and the breath left his body. He found himself in a familiar posture—curled in pain at the Tin Can Man’s feet.
“We would have made a great team, you and I,” said the Tin Can Man. “I guess it makes sense you want to fly solo. Why play by someone else’s rules, right? It’s just that I thought I made it abundantly clear what your options were. You could join me in changing the world or die in this cell. Pity you chose the second.”
The Tin Can Man drove a gleaming foot into Brendan’s ribs. Searing pain filled his lungs. Brendan wanted to gasp but his throat wouldn’t open. The metal foot rose again, and this time came down on Brendan’s nose. Stars burst behind his eyes and blood flowed over his lips.
Brendan tried to raise his eyes, tried to glimpse Samson. Maybe help was on its way.
But Samson only sat with his legs sprawled ahead of him and his forearms resting on the tight denim of his pants. Gray hair hung in front of his eyes as he stared at his hands, useless without his power.
The Tin Can Man’s foot buried itself in Brendan’s stomach again. He gagged. Warm blood dribbled from his mouth.
Brendan rolled onto his back, and with his last ounce of strength sent his mod flying for the Tin Can Man’s face. He hit the grinning mask and caught hold, but as he tried to pull, the Tin Can Man only braced himself. He gripped Brendan’s mod at the wrist and squeezed.
There was no pain, but Brendan knew how it felt when his mod suffered structural damage. It didn’t matter, of course. It wouldn’t be much longer before the Tin Can Man got bored and killed them all.
Supports in Brendan’s mod snapped, and synapses darkened. Now he wasn’t using it to pull the Tin Can Man toward him but to push him away. The grinning metal skeleton leaned over him, reaching with his free hand for Brendan’s throat. He was ready to finish the job.
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