Blackjack Dead or Alive (The Blackjack Series Book 3) (31 page)

But first there was the standoff.

“Long time, Epic,” I said. “How’s the face?”

*              *              *              *

He winced, shaking his head in disgust. I expected him to send his flyers at me, along with the teleporting chick. Hell, I was waiting for it. Instead, he decided to monologue.

“We really have to do this?” he said.

I scanned his team, making sure the women felt me ogling them.

“I just noticed,” I said after a long pause. “You’ve got all girls on your team. Makes the plane ride back more interesting, I suppose.”

Princess Armada glared daggers at me, but the others were unfazed. Bamma, in fact, shot me a little wink between popping her gum. She was big in Japan, and everything about her spoke of tapping into their cultural love of all things American, the louder the better, big hoop earrings, blood red lipstick and big, almost 60’s style hair – those ginormous tits. I smiled and winked back at her.

“The only woman you have to worry about is Apogee,” he said, threatening with a pointed finger. “What’d you to do her?”

It took me a moment to realize he was talking about the video we had produced and broadcast for their viewing pleasure. It was an attempt to get them to rush the castle, but it had proven a waste of time.

“You should be less worried about me and more about your own team,” I said, my façade cracking, anger seeping out. “How the fuck could you bring Underworld here?”

“I heard you ran into my teams outside,” he said.

“Yeah, and he took her to that fucking nightmare dimension of his,” I said, recovering a little of my calm.

“She’ll be fine,” Epic said, and believed it. “I’m sure he took Apogee to the Abyss for easy transport back to the jets.”

I should have been surprised how much faith he had in the obviously unbalanced hero, but I didn’t have room for it. I filed his ignorance regarding Underworld’s grudge against Apogee away with the other things I was going to teach the idiot today.

“Pity you can’t talk to your boys out there anymore,” I said, slipping back into character. “We’re jamming you in here. By the way, do you guys have a name? The whole team, I mean.”

He blinked twice.

“We were called the Impossibles, back in the day. Clever name, if you really think about it. You guys should be the Epics…or no, that’s too on the nose. The Titanics! Oh, yeah. I like that.”

“Blackjack-“

“Feel free to use it, Epic,” I said. “No charge.”

“He’s just wasting our time,” Bamma said, her voice tinged with an Alabama drawl. “Let’s just tie the boy up and get the job done.”

“Bigger, badder men have tried, darling,” I said.

“You can’t beat us, Blackjack,” her sister added in an equally colorful Southern accent.

“Remember that when you’re begging for mercy,” I said.

“This isn’t you, Blackjack. Call this off while it’s not too late,” Epic said.

“What I’m wondering is what you’re going to do once I put you down again. What hole are you going to hide under?”

I paused, looking at his team.

“I see you got a whole new team. Too embarrassed to run with the same people that saw you get put down like a dog, huh?”

His face twisted in anger at the mention of our last meeting, and I doubled down. “Well, it’s important all of you know,” I said. “I’m not playing around here. Some of you are going to get hurt if you don’t leave now. Some of you might not make it out. This place is deadly. And I’m not holding back.”

“I know you don’t mean any of that, Blackjack,” Epic said. ”You forget we have friends in common. And for my part, I don’t hold any ill will about what happened on Hashima. Come on, man. This is going to get out of hand, and you know it. I’ll send everyone out, you and I can talk this out.”

I laughed. It was my best villain laugh, and I immediately hated it. It was something that needed work. My voice was deep and baritone and trying to be both menacing and projecting to the whole room was an acquired talent.

“Talk…My advice is that you leave. Now. You have these lovely women to protect,” I said, relishing Princess Armada’s death stare.

Epic’s patience was waning, but he hadn’t engaged in my game. I could feel his frustration, which was part of the original plan, frustrate Haha and make him sloppy. The same plan should have worked on these dopes, in theory. Now I was winging it, hoping my creations were equal to the task. In fact, there was a sense of release, knowing that my chances of getting out of Castle Black were slim and thinning. Armada was a killer, as was Gryphonette. Either of them got me alone, this place would be my tomb.

“Are you going to surrender, or not?”

“You didn’t bring all these people, plus the ones outside thinking I was going to go down easy,” I said. “Forty heroes against little old me? It’s almost embarrassing.”

Epic laughed, “The idea is to show overwhelming for-“

“Oh, I know what the idea is,” I said. “The problem is that this place…” I waved around my hands, gesturing to my castle, “…is full of surprises. I tell you what. Take your people and fly off, go after a real threat, a crazy like Brutal or Murderman. Hell, take on Axis of Power or Baron Blitzkrieg if you want to flex your muscles. But leave me be, Epic. I have work to do.”

He shook his head in frustration, lost in thought for the moment.

“Jeff said you weren’t an asshole,” Epic said. “He thought we could talk this out.”

“He should have talked you out of coming out.”

The hero chuckled, “You’re going to laugh, but he seems to think you and I would get along…normally…if circumstances were different, that is.”

“That dude is suspect,” I said, bothered all over again that Superdynamic would think Epic and I could be best buddies. Epic was a fop and a prima donna, more concerned with looking good than doing the job right.

“But it doesn’t matter,” I said, getting to the point. “You’re outclassed, Epic. You’d best take your sexy babe team after another villain. Like I said, I have work to do.”

“What is this all about, anyway?”

“Oh, you want to talk? Chatty chat and whatnot? The girls are doing you wonders, Epic.”

“I’m serious.”

“This is a trap. The most elaborate contraption you’ve ever seen in your life. Think House of Fun meets a roleplaying gamer’s worst nightmare, and you morons are ruining it.

As I spoke, I saw Coach extend a tendril, easing it the long way around the room and trying to come around behind me.

“You made this to catch us in a trap?”

“Not you, Ricky,” I said, recalling his first name. “Ever heard of that song, ‘you’re so vain’? Well, I think it was about you.”

To his credit, he wasn’t playing the game, ignoring my insults and actually thinking about it. “You’re after…” he struggled to word Haha’s name and I rewarded him with a little knowing nod.

Coach was busy, though, moving her tendril closer and closer. I flexed my fingers, feeling the bow heavy in my hands. Bubu was way ahead of me, monitoring the whole thing, and I saw the nozzle jets drop from the roof and start releasing a fine mist. It was so high that by the time it settled on them it was almost imperceptible.

“Now do you understand,” I said.

He shook his head, unsure of what to do, when something drew his attention - Coach’s tendril about to get me.

I ignored it, firing an arrow directly at Coach. The warhead popped with an electrical charge that had a chemical reaction with the falling mist. The charge ruined the arrow’s flight path, and it spun out of the sky, falling to the ground at her feet. I smiled at her, knowing she would flash her tendrils at me now at full speed, all thought of stealth forgotten.

“Get him,” Epic said.

Armada jumped in the air, her powerful legs were going to easily carry her to the balcony. Gryphonette transformed in an instant, the others moving to give her new girth room. In one huge flap, her wings carried her towards me. Slamma popped out of reality, a flash of light and an explosion of air rushing to fill the vacuum left behind by her body. Epic stood there, watching his team go into action and Bamma just spat her gum onto the floor, shaking her head.

The only one of them not running headlong at me was Coach. Throwing her arms out, she said, “Look!”

The mist was crackling, like crystals falling from Heaven, solidifying little by little, until a violent blowout, covered the room with the stuff, spreading and hardening until they were all braced by it. The crystalline mass spread fast, enveloping everyone below in an instant and those above as they neared me. Before I was caught in the effect, a floor panel beneath me gave way, and I slid through a long tunnel. An instant later, the panel closed obscuring my sight.

“And it’s on,” I said over coms, hearing Bubu’s laughter filtering through.

*              *              *              *

Things went wrong almost immediately. I slid down my rabbit hole and could feel the mechanism around me, churning and twisting the tube, changing my exit, and my fate.

Instead of sliding into a central receiving room – with a soft mat to cushion my landing – I slammed into the hard floor of the first trap room. In theory, Epic and his people would gather themselves, run up to the top of the balcony where I had stood and find the hole, sliding down to the trap room I was now in.

I turned back around, amazed at the realism of the place, which thanks to “borrowed” tech from Superdynamic was half holo, half real –a primordial bog straight out of the Cretaceous period. A few feet from where I stood the hard 3-D printed concrete ended and the muddy quagmire began, up to my knees in places, far deeper in others. Beyond was an overgrown marshland, replete with flora and fauna from the period – and I did my research, no 6 inch raptors. None of the denizens of this trap were friendly, especially the big bastard about 300 yards away from me, only coming online now as the floor sensors felt my arrival. The roof of this cavern was so high darkness obscured it, and only select lights, positioned to maximize the mood, would give my pursuers an idea of what they were facing. The only clue was a simple sign, posted at the edge of the mire, which read, “The only way out, is through.”

It wasn’t a Tolkien riddle, but the only exit to the place did lay after making it through the floor and vine traps, mechanical monsters and holo-effects intended to diminish Epic’s party by a few members – either through injury or capture.

Well, I had designed this for Haha and his people, hence the use of a marshland and so much water. I knew Blackjack 2.0 – if he still lived – was using some sort of suit, combined with undefined powers, and Haha was all metal and wires. He’d shown real apprehension about getting into the gel-like waters of that lake on Shard World, and I figured he wasn’t completely watertight.

“Just a sec, bro,” Bubu said over my earpiece and I knew that he was already working on opening the emergency hatch near the main entrance. Through that hatch, I could climb about 500 feet to the same chamber I was supposed to fall into – a precarious climb in the dark up a ladder carved out of the rock.

I heard a slight creak as the hatch sprung open, the computer controlled maglocks would force them to tear the door off its hinges. I didn’t move towards it though, my eyes squared on the tunnel’s exit. Without realizing it, I strung and an arrow, falling back into the rhythm of shooting, steadying my breath, relaxing my muscles.

Slamma would be on point, she was fast and agile, her teleportation as deadly an advantage as Apogee’s super speed. I had a special arrow for her, one that would neutralize her regardless of where she ported. Epic would follow, maybe she would bring him along, and for him I’d use a-

“Bro, what’re you doing?” Bubu said.

I shook my head, swallowing hard, the taut bowstring a faint pressure on my fingers, the shaft lined perfectly. “Hang on,” I muttered.

“Dude, the hatch is open,” he said, and shaking my head, I noticed the flap lying open – only meters from the exit to the slide. I swallowed again, feeling a dry itchiness in the back of my throat, the pounding of the veins along the side of my face, my vision growing blurry.

“I’m fine, Bubu.”

“Not ‘I’m fine,’ bro. Get in the fucking hatch.”

Bubu’s nervous tone snapped me back to reality, and I slipped the arrow back into the quiver, moving towards the hatch. I didn’t need to get steamrolled to understand that fighting six pissed off heroes was a not smart, especially when I had managed to lure them into the hornet’s nest. I’d spent a lot of time and money on this place, and though it would never serve its true purpose, it would still be put to the test.

I was at the hatch opening, ready to crawl through when a deep, booming thud echoed through the room. Bubu was in my ear before I could ask, “Bro, the heroes outside are punching in through the roof, more of them coming in through the front door. The other guys are tearing through the floor.”

“Well, I guess they’re pissed,” I said and Bubu laughed over coms.

“I’m sending you the drones we got weaponized. They’re just Tasers, but they may come in handy.”