Gigaheroes

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Seventeen: Seattle Vance

I took a long draw of the cigarette in that dilapidated office atrium. Outside, the rain drizzled quietly on the empty street. The dim sky cast grey shadows throughout the ruined building. The only spark of color was the soft orange embers I held from my fingers. 

It wasn’t bad yet, but it was going to be. The somber morning had been a sullen patter. The anger of the storm was approaching, and it would strike soon. I hoped to have the flash drive in hand before then. 

The others were already in the tunnels, searching for the maintenance shaft. The homeless, thankfully, hadn’t been an issue. They retreated to the upper floors for fear of flooding. That left us with much of the run of the place. While the others searched, I elected to be the one to stay behind and keep watch. 

It wasn’t for any practical reason. In fact, it was an unnecessary risk, me being so close to where a passing drone or person might spot me. But I refused to do any job before I had my last cigarette. It was a ritual I needed to do—kinda like a last meal. 

From this point onward, I was a dead man walking. Any million things could and would go wrong, but they were guaranteed to get worse if I hesitated. If I was too busy shaking in my boots, that was just going to get everyone killed. I found the only way I could shut that side of me off was by telling myself I was already dead. There was nothing to fear and nothing to lose except failing the mission. 

But I couldn’t do that without one last puff of smoke. 

I didn’t hear Dust as he approached, but I turned my head as I noticed his presence. I think that spooked him a little. It was clear he kept himself quiet on purpose, smart, given his age. He drew back down the dark hallway. 

“We found it.”

My time was up. No hesitation. No fear. It was time for the plunge and who knew what was going to be on the other side. 

I cracked a smile. “You nervous?”

Dust thought for a moment and then grinned back. “Yeah.”

“Me too.” I put out the cigarette on a nearby wall and flicked the stub away. “It’s a good thing to be a little nervous. It’s a tool. It helps keep you alert. Just don’t let it cloud your head, then it becomes a weakness.” 

Dust was wearing an ASA janitor uniform. It was almost comical on someone that young. But maybe that was my parents talking. They had living memories of a world where one could afford to have a childhood, and they tried to pass something of that onto me. But today was a different world. We didn’t get to be the people they got to be. 

I grabbed my M4 where I had leaned it up against the wall. “That thing I asked you to do. Can you do it?”

Dust nodded. Taking his hand, he reached for and then into his abdomen. His hand phased through clothing and flesh and then it came out with the smallest of flip phones. He put it back inside a second later. 

I smiled. I ran with a few phasers back in my childhood. The ones I knew were a bit more powerful, but what every phaser eventually learned was that they were their own best hiding place. They made the best thieves because no one thought or wanted to open them up. 

“I still don’t understand why I have to keep it hidden like this,” Dust asked. “Shouldn’t I just place the call when trouble hits?”

“If trouble hits.” I slung the M4 over my shoulder. “You’re not going to get that chance. You go up against a class three, the only question is whether he wants to take you alive. That phone is for what comes after, when the ball is in our court. That is when people like us can turn the tables. In the meantime, try to stay close to the windows.”

I followed Dust down the dark hallway and down several sets of stairs into the basement. We turned on our flashlights as we passed by forgotten rooms filled with dust and debris. The concrete walls were cracked and splitting open. The water trickled everywhere and there were pools of fetid filth. We covered our noses as we walked back. 

We finally came to a long concrete hallway. Raven and August were standing over an open ventilation duct. It had been part of the old infrastructure before it was renovated and renovated again, a holdover that no one had bothered to remove. 

“It’s about twenty feet down and then a left,” Raven said as we approached. “Then we’re in.”

I crouched down over the square opening. It only had room for a single person at a time. “I sure hope none of you are claustrophobic.”

August shrugged. “Only on the way back.”

I went prone and crawled in. I turned off my flashlight. It would’ve been a bitch to hold it, and I knew I probably didn’t want to see what I was wriggling through, anyway. And after this, the next step on our little heist were the containment chambers. 

Of course, I knew what to expect. They were little more than pits big enough to squeeze three or four kids. Covered with a thick slab of metal, the point was to give them no room to use their powers. Keep them underfed and exhausted—to the brink of death—so they don’t have the energy to fight back. Most couldn’t anyway. The kids thrown in the pits were largely class ones and twos and maybe a three here and there. Fours and fives got the deprivation tank, which would be in a lower floor. 

I wondered if any of them ever escaped and found this little passage to freedom. Probably not, as the ASA would’ve patched this hole in their security. Still, I wanted to believe. I wanted those kids to have some hope. Even in the pits, if one is just clever and resourceful enough, there’s always a way out. 

It was tragic I couldn’t afford to be that way out today. 

I took a left and got to the end. There was a flimsy grate looking over a small storage closet. It was filled with boxes and janitorial equipment. I banged the thin metal off and dropped down. I did my best to clean myself off as the others dropped down with me. It was tight, but we all managed to get through fine. 

Raven silently opened the door, and I followed her out into a LED lit corridor. It was a sterile, white hallway, something you would see at a hospital. Everything looked and smelled scrubbed with chemicals. 

We knew from the blueprints that we were currently in one of the auxiliary hallways that branched off from the main tunnel network. The whole thing was a spider’s nest that burrowed downward, with the most powerful being kept at the bottom. We walked down the hallway as if we were supposed to be there, which was far more difficult than one might think. 

The place was surprisingly empty, but we found our mark easily enough. He was patrolling one of the containment chambers. I tried to ignore the slabs of metal as I approached and tapped him on the shoulder.

 I was surprised how skinny he was. He looked like an impish man more than anything else. I remembered them being a lot larger, but maybe that kid me talking. He turned around. 

I smiled. “Hey.”

Before he had a moment to react further, Raven placed her hands on his head. A blue light glowed from her hands and the man went limp, dropping his gun to the ground. I had scanned for cameras before we entered the room, but I checked again. There were none. I guess nobody wanted to risk footage of this particular room getting out. 

I took a glance out in the corridor to make sure no one was coming our way before turning back to the room. Again, besides the slabs of metal, it didn’t seem particularly malicious. It looked like an enlarged hospital room. There were cabinets and refrigerators full of drugs. There were tables with paperwork and forms. The LED lighting made it all look sickly and sterile but not evil.

It was a room. That was the only impression made on my mind. I walked over to one of the slabs of metal and put on my hand on it. It was heavy and large enough that it muffled any sound from below.

So this is how it looks from the outside. I couldn’t be disturbed at how silent it all was. One of the most terrible places in the world and it was so quiet you could pass by without ever noticing.

I waited as Raven gathered the info she needed. It wasn’t long. 

“When will he wake up?” I lightly kicked his unconscious body. 

“A few hours, but I don’t want anyone finding him. What do we do?” She asked. 

I glanced over to the pits. There was one with the metal slab uncovered, empty, to be used for later. We shoved him in and covered the hole. 

We met up with Dust and August, and it was another easy thing to take the elevator up. The doors opened to the thirteenth floor, and Raven and August gave us a final nod as they stepped out. The doors closed, and the elevator continued to the twenty-fifth floor. After everything, I was depressed by how banal the ASA building was. 

I don’t know what I was hoping for, maybe something like an evil lair with hooks and chains hanging from the ceiling. But it wasn’t that. It was an office building just like the rest. We passed by banal people and banal rooms as we found an empty room to wait for the signal. I paused as we passed by a printer. 

It wasn’t one of those fancy printers with a sleek design. It was one of those older, bulky printers from ancient times. It was one of those continually repaired and maintained over the years and then later held together with duct tape, spit, and whatever else kept it working. Some guy in a shirt and tie was struggling to get a form printed out.

So this is it. This is the heart of all evil. 

I knew that if it was like this here, then all the other ASA regional headquarters looked something like this as well, a network of trite offices scattered throughout the country. And the most depressing was, it didn’t matter if Adam Mason ended up destroying this place. It didn’t matter if he leveled this building to the ground because there were thousands of other places exactly like this still standing. 

And this one would be rebuilt anyway. 

My parents weren’t revolutionaries, but they were close enough, I guess. But nothing they could’ve done would’ve made one whit of difference. That man struggling with a printer represented the corpse of a rotting system so unmovable that it outlasted the end of the world. And the more it decayed and festered, the more it seemed things couldn’t keep going on like this, the more it just kept chugging on. 

People like Raven think they can hold on to something—anything. But the truth was, this world was dead, and it was going to drag everyone down with it. 

We found a darkened conference room to wait for the signal. The rain was pattering against the windows. Looking out, the world was a blurry, wet mess. To tell you the truth, I never liked the rain. No matter how hard a storm raged, it was never enough to wash the world away. I never saw the point, then. 

“This has been too easy.” Dust said as he sat in one of the chairs, grinning nervously. 

He had the energy of a young kid doing something forbidden—which he was. I knew the look in his eye. He was worried about getting caught, but not actually thinking he would. He fidgeted in his chair, impatient to get on with it. This was dangerous, and it was exciting for him. 

I smiled and shook my head. “Don’t jinx us, kid. This is when things get serious.”

“But what could go wrong now? All we have to do is wait and then go pick up the flash drive.”

I turned to him with a bemused expression. “When I was nineteen, I ran with a crew that was smuggling alcohol along highway 13, up in the mountains of West Virginia. It’s a long road, and the mountains are full of bootleggers and bandits and whatever else you can think of. We were supposed to be meeting with our supplier, but what we didn’t know was that a junkie gang had rolled up and took over the territory. We didn’t know we were waiting for our own ambush.”

“But that just seems like bad luck. Why are you so worried?” It was clear the kid was trying to ease his nerves by easing mine, but I didn’t want to lie to him. 

“Have you ever been in a plan that’s gone wrong. I mean really wrong?”

Dust nodded with a look of begrudging regret. 

“No, you haven’t,” I said. “I can see it on your face. You haven’t had to kill anyone. You haven’t had to lie to someone you care about. You haven’t had to watch your loved one die. The worst part isn’t that you did it. The worst part is that you know you’ll have to do it again. Raven knows that. Don’t know about August, but he’s been in this game long enough.”

Dust was silent for a moment. I didn’t mean to kill his mood, but someone needed to tell him the truth. When the time comes, it’ll hurt him less that way. 

“Have you ever killed anyone?”

It was clear from his tone that Dust didn’t ask the question wondering if I actually had killed anyone. Course I had. He was wondering how I felt about it. 

The usual faces flashed in my mind, but for some reason, the one that stood out was Adam’s. That one had just been an accident. Wrong time and place and all that. I can’t say I regretted it then, but I did regret it now. 

I didn’t know why it hurt so much now. He didn’t mean anything to me, unlike some of the others. But strangely, maybe it was that lack of connection that made it so important. I didn’t know the man, and I never would. But his life certainly meant something to him. It didn’t matter that I handed him superpowers. I also ended his life, and everything that went with it. Did he have any family? Any friends?

Would anyone miss him when he was gone? Or would he just be forgotten? Was he just one more tragic story to be half-remembered in this city? 

I didn’t know, and it disturbed me that I didn’t. I should’ve known. I should’ve had the kindness to ask. Instead, I had lied. 

Looking out into the rain, I suddenly felt angry. The rain should’ve washed all this away, and it was a downright crime that it didn’t. 

My phone buzzed in my pocket. I picked up and answered it, even though I knew what Raven was going to say. 

Adam Mason’s time was up. 

Link to Chapter Eighteen