Pacific Station Vigilante (Book 1): The Negative Man (City of Chaos) (11 page)

“We’re robbing you?”  I tried not to insult him.

Spades put his good arm on my shoulder.  “Think of this as a two front plan.  First, this break in will lead the morning news, giving the public more reason to fear us.  And second, it’ll give poor Owen Walker sympathy which will lead to a boost in sales!  It’s a win-win.”

I felt weird being in the lobby of a place we were about to rob with the CEO of said company leading the charge.  No one else was here, as Spades had made the security schedule specifically with this job in mind.  When the three of us still weren’t moving, he shooed us away.  “Go on now, go steal stuff.  And smash up some offices while you’re at it.  I don’t use my insurance nearly enough.”

So without further prodding, Hearts took to the lead and Cubs and I followed him.  We got on the elevator and went up three floors to the accounting department.  As we stepped on the elevator, “Accounting keeps the checks for purchases in the safe at the end of the hall.  I figure the two of you can crack it while I go make a mess on the other side.  Call me if you need anything.”  With that, Hearts lumbered off with destruction in his eyes.

Clubs and I walked down the hall towards the safe.  “Can’t say this is exactly how I saw myself getting into gl-O-bal, am I right Phil?”

He rolled his eyes behind his black mask.  “I’ve learned not to question Spades, either as the crime boss or as a technical genius.  I might be the one who can organically hack into systems, but his vision is out of this world.”

A loud crashing sound told us Hearts had found his first target.  “Yeah, the Mercury Five is an amazing piece of tech.  If Wonderton and R&D,” I looked directly at him, “doesn’t come up with something close, Wonder-Tech might be in trouble.”

“I have some ideas, but Legal keeps telling me they’re too insane.  I mean, how are we to show the public progress if we don’t push the boundaries?”

I wonder if these were the plans Heather had told me about earlier.  I wanted to ask him, but we reached the safe.  It was an electronic combination lock, probably something pretty easy to hack if you had powers like Clubs did.  He wasted no time putting his hand on the lock and closing his eyes.  I heard a few soft clicks and then a louder pop.  The safe door cracked open.

Removing his hand, “That was pretty easy.”

I pushed the door all the way open.  Not only were the cashier’s checks and the rarely used traveler’s checks, but there was physical cash sitting there too.  “Holy shit… this is a ton of money.”

Clubs put his hands in the safe and started grabbing everything.  “Come on Jericho!  Isn’t it time you got yourself a new car?”

I grabbed some money, not nearly as much as Clubs did, before we returned to the office area.  Hearts had done quite a number to it.  “This was quite enjoyable.  You two ready to head down to R&D?  I’m sure you’ll love all the tech down there.”

We stepped back on the elevator and went down this time.  We passed the ground floor and went three more levels down to B3.  When the doors opened, “Hot damn.”

I stepped off the elevator in total disbelief.  The stuff just lying around here was amazing.  Clubs ran over to the nearest workstation and picked up something that looked like a camera.  “My God, is this a digital distortion camera?”

“That it is.  Spades came up with it in the hopes to catch a picture of The Negative Man.”  Hearts puffed his chest out like it was his idea.  “Hopefully it’ll do the opposite of what a regular camera does and we’ll know who he is.”

A camera to capture The Negative Man’s identity?  Who would be dumb enough to try that?  “Something tells me he wouldn’t like that.”

“Diamonds my young friend,” great he considered me a friend.  “If we got a chance to talk to him, I know he’d support our cause and maybe even join it.”

I wasn’t so sure, knowing what I did of him, but I kept my thoughts private.  Instead, I walked over to another table and picked up a very futuristic looking gun.  Seeing the cryo-chamber in it, “This is a freeze gun!”

“Wrong, it is an elemental gun.”  Hearts joined me at my table and pulled open a drawer.  Inside were various chambers that looked like the cryo one in the gun currently.  “You can replace the chamber with whatever element you wish to use.  Red is the heat wave chamber, white is the wind cannon, and so forth.”

I set it back down.  A little voice in my mind told me that Spades wouldn’t want me running off with that.  Clubs was having a field day though, liberating the tables with all sorts of stuff.  To make it not look too suspicious, I picked up a Mercury Alpha tablet and a few sets of wireless headphones.

There were plenty of other gadgets I had an interest in.  The sheer amount of drones they were working on was insane.  Some were small enough to fit in your pocket, while others were obviously being designed for military use.  Again, the gl-O-bal R&D department was amazing.

As we made our way back to the elevator, the building’s alarm went off.  “That’s our signal to go!”  Hearts hit the button for ground floor and we rocketed back up. 

Spades was waiting for us in the lobby.  “Perfect timing gentlemen.  I say we make ourselves scarce before anyone shows up.”

We left and quickly made our way around back to the van.  Police cars showed up just as we got out of view.  As Hearts went to unlock the door, a shadow jumped down from the rooftop beside us.

“Didn’t learn your lesson the first time Spades.  I guess I’ll have to break your other arm.”

Standing there like a lone sentinel in the night was The Dark Lion.  Maybe I’d actually gotten through to him on the phone call.  I couldn’t blow my cover, so I took a step towards him.  “It’s four against one moron.  We already know what you can do.”

His gloved hand with the long nails flashed in the light.  “I killed one Diamonds already; I can add a second to my collection.”

Spades stepped in the middle of us.  “There is no need for violence this fine evening, is there John?”

I could see him bristle at being addressed by his real name.  “Tell me why I shouldn’t finish the job?  I’m quivering with excitement for whatever bullshit you’re about to tell me.”

Spades didn’t say anything.  Instead he pulled off his mask, revealing his public face, that of Owen Walker.  “We’ve done nothing wrong here tonight.  You can’t steal what’s already yours.”

The Dark Lion followed suit.  He pushed back his cowl and took off his infrared googles.  No longer was this about hiding their faces, no both men wanted to show their hatred for the other.  “Owen Walker, you dirty piece of shit.  Had I known it was you from the beginning, you wouldn’t be alive for this conversation.”

“Big words coming from a man who couldn’t even defeat his arch nemesis.  Speaking of,” he pulled out his phone and brought up a tabloid headline, “it seems The Negative Man is actually being hailed as the city’s savior, not you.”

Spades was really playing with fire.  John’s eyes were ready to explode from his head.  “I don’t care what anyone says; one day they’ll see just what a coward and a piece of shit The Negative Man truly is.  As for you,” with catlike reflexes he reached for Owen.  But, having learned his lesson the first time, John’s hand passed through Owen’s body.  He was already intangible.

Hearts roared forward and slammed his force field into John.  The shock from the invisible blow caught him unprepared and he had to leap back to avoid any more damage.  He didn’t stop until he made it all the way back to the rooftop.  With one last evil glare at us, The Dark Lion vanished into the early morning.

Spades was completely amused.  “Oh John Wonderton, when will you learn that you can’t beat me.  You’ll never beat me.”

I got the feeling the real reason John left the scene was because I was there.  If a full-fledged fight had broken out, I wouldn’t have had many choices in defending myself.  As he pointed out before, Jericho Staley wasn’t the super.  He was just the sidekick.

I pulled up to The Aces hideout, expecting to see everyone yet, only Spades was waiting for me.  And he wasn’t wearing his mask.  I parked the car and got out.  “Everything okay boss?”

When not wearing his black Spades mask, Owen Walker looked like the nicest guy in the world.  He offered a friendly handshake and an explanation.  “Tonight’s task just requires the two of us.  You see, I think I’ve designed a weapon to help us with our vigilante problem.”

“A weapon?”

He started walking briskly towards the warehouse.  “It is a thing of beauty.”

I kept pace with him, like following a giddy kid through the aisles of a toy store.  We passed through the portion of the hideout that acted as the parking garage and armory and went straight to the main computer room.  Inside, all the screens were lit up showing various parts of Pacific Station.  However, Walker didn’t even look up at them.  He beelined straight to a case on the ground and picked it up.

Popping open the latches, “I figured as a follow techno lover, you’d appreciate this more than the other two.”  The top opened and inside was the elemental gun and its chambers.  “Saw this the other night at the raid on gl-O-bal did you?”

That I did.  “Hearts told me that you can change the chamber in it, making it a sort of elemental weapon.”

He slid down what I assumed was the engaging mechanism and the gun began to hum.  The blue cryo chamber lit up and the liquid inside began rolling, almost like the ocean.  “I’d stand back if I were you Jericho.”

I did as he asked and where I’d been standing just seconds earlier, he fired the concentrated blue beam into the concrete floor.  The air in the room immediately dropped by a lot, but only for a few seconds.  As soon as the gun disengaged and the blue laser was gone, the temperature returned to normal.  But that was the least concerning part of this.  The spot of concrete that had been hit by the cryo-gun was a frozen solid disk of ice.  Not just any ice, “Is that dry ice?”

“You have a keen eye Jericho.  As much as I’d love to tell you have I came to form this particular compound, I’m afraid that knowledge will stay locked away in here.”  He tapped on the side of his head.  “However, the reason you’re here is I need help perfecting the weapon itself.”

From that demonstration, I thought it worked perfectly fine.  “What’s wrong with it?”  He handed the gun over to me.  Immediately I picked up on what the problem was.  “It’s overheating isn’t it?”

“What you’re feeling is only a slight display of it.  Use it for any more than five seconds and the gun becomes scolding hot.  Obviously, to use it against The Dark Lion, I need it to be running at optimum capacity.”

I looked around the room.  “Do you have a tool box or anything I can use?”

Spades left and returned shortly after, rolling in a giant metal tool box.  “I think you’ll find I have everything one would ever need in this box.”

I opened the first set of drawers, finding a complete set of the top of the line Red Wolf tools. “Holy shit, this must’ve cost an arm and a leg.”

“No cost is unnecessary when you want to create the best.  So tell me,” he gestured to the gun, “what are you thinking?”

I picked up a Philips head screwdriver.  “I first want to see the wiring for the gun from the power cell.  That will tell me if the problem is in the power supply itself or in the physical wires.”

As I took off the cover, “I checked and rechecked both.  I find it hard to imagine that either would be the problem.”

When the last screw fell into my hands, I popped the plate off and began inspecting the wiring.  From the first glance, everything appeared to be normal and wired correctly.  I followed the path back to the power cell, which also appeared to be stable.  Then an idea hit me.  “The energy coming off the power cell must be pretty extraordinary, right?”

“To be able to get the concentrated blast needed to perform, no matter the element, we had to use the most concentrated supply we could muster.”

I looked back at the wiring.  “You don’t have enough wires funneling the energy.  Basically you’re trying to push ten pounds of crap down a five pound bag.  You’re overloading the wiring and the circuits on the other end.  By my calculations,” I looked over the open compartment again, “I think you need to double the wire capacity and adjacent circuits.  That would do the trick.”

As he conferred with what I said, a huge realization just hit me.  I just helped The Dark Lion’s enemy perfect a weapon that could in theory kill him.  Walker was over the moon happy.  “How could I be so dumb?  Of course, in the interest of keeping the weapon light and streamlined, I overlooked the most obvious solution!  Well done Jericho.”

I handed him the gun back and he returned it to the metal briefcase.  “How long will it take you to rebuild that?”

“Hopefully we don’t have to rebuild it from scratch, but if we do, possibly a month.”  He started rubbing his hands together.  “Just think, this could be the measure we need to get rid of The Dark Lion once and for all.”

I saw the speed at which the energy from the gun shot out.  Just by a quick calculation in my head, DL wouldn’t be able to avoid very many blasts before one hit him.  And being hit by a concentrated blast of any of those elements would be deadly.

Out of nowhere, “Jericho, what would it take to pry you away from Wonder-Tech and come work with me at gl-O-bal?  If I had you running the R&D department, I bet the elemental gun would be ready in half the time.  Plus, who knows what other wondrous gadgets we’d invent together.”

Words failed me.  “Are you offering me a job?”

“Not formally, that’ll happen on Monday morning when I call you.  Thank about it though, would you?”  Again, he patted my shoulder.  “It’ll be an offer that’s very hard to refuse.”

That last line stuck with me from the second I left The Aces base all the way back to my home.  It was bad enough living two separate lives, but the one I never meant to continue kept inching its way further and further into my real one.  Plus there was also the problem with the elemental gun.  Just because I was pissed at The Dark Lion and showed it over the past week, I didn’t want him to be killed by Spades.

What I needed was clarification.  Was there a way to get The Dark Lion to confront his biggest problem, The Negative Man?  I didn’t know, but it was the only way to get the city back the hero it needed.  The Aces were still the first and foremost threat.  As bad as it sounded, what The Negative Man was doing wasn’t that big of a threat to the city.  The lives of two shouldn’t mean more than an entire population.

I fell asleep on my couch with all these thoughts running through my mind.  I was awoken by my phone ringing beside me.  Groggily, I looked down at it and saw the display said eleven thirty in the morning.  The caller ID flashed John Wonderton.  It was his office phone.  “Hello?”

“Jericho, I know it’s Saturday and we haven’t talked much lately, but I need you here.”

Rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, “It was a long night.  How important is this?”

“When I got here this morning, I received an email from an encrypted account.  I opened it using you’re secure server and there was a video clip on it.”

Apparently cutting to the chase still wasn’t his strong point.  “What was on the video?”

“It was The Negative Man.  He gave me instructions on how to reach him today at noon and I’m going to need your help to set up the connection.”

Hmph, well look at that.  It seemed wishes really did come true.  “I’ll be there in fifteen.”