Embedded Files
HUNDRED ACRE HORROR
MALEVOLENCE
“Thank you for coming, Dr. Odd. I realize that munitions chemistry is not your normal field of expertise.”
Sarah Stacy shook the older woman’s hand. Dr. Fiona Odd smiled gracefully, looking past Sarah at the work already under way. “Given the urgency of your message and the consequences should this project fail, I am more than happy to help.” She returned her gaze to Sarah, like a mother regarding her child as the two began to walk away from the large, ornately-carved mahogany double-doors that stood alone in the field beside them . “And since Stacy Solutions has the promise of exposing me to new applications of my research, and funding me for it to boot, I could hardly say no to you.”
Sarah had felt uneasy about hiring Dr. Odd. She was not a scientist of your typical stripe. She studied magic. Scientifically. Those two diametrically-opposed concepts tore at her brain. And yet there was no doubt that Dr. Odd was both an accomplished scientists and mage. Her desire to use the former to explain the latter had gradually won Sarah over, even if some of the good doctor’s abilities made her uneasy.
Take those double doors. They just sat there, in their frame, something that belonged in a mansion, and yet was just standing there in a field full of metal barrels. You could walk around them and see they were ordinary, yet expensive, doors. However, according to Dr. Odd, if you opened those doors and walked through you would not just arrive on the other side of the frame. No, you would enter a pocket dimension wherein her sanctum resided. A massive, multi-room space that could change its dimensions as needed.
Sarah shook her head, just thinking about it gave her a migraine. Best to focus on the matter at hand.
Sarah led Dr. Odd from the place where her sanctum had materialized moments before to the section of Camp Minden’s open, and unmowed, field, currently covered by an array of unwalled tents, where Bridget Duncan was orchestrating setup of the chemical conversion process.
All around Camp Minden a few hundred local hired workers carefully worked in the intense Louisiana heat and humidity to organize the mess of M6 artillery propellant barrels so that they could properly account for, manage, and recycle them. The plan was to convert the M6, as quickly and safely as possible, into fertilizer. Safe, non-exploding fertilizer.
Bridget looked up from where she and Sherri, (sorry, she thought, Rubix), were busy setting up the equipment for their conversion factory. She immediately glared hatefully at Dr. Odd, throwing her hands in a gesture of disgust. "Are you freaking kidding me!? What the hell is that quack doing here?"
Dr. Odd retained her friendly demeanor. "I see that the southern temperatures are not the only source of warmth present today, Sarah. Be careful, Dr. Duncan, or your volatile temper might trigger the M6 explosion you seek to avoid."
Bridget ignored Dr. Odd and pressed on yelling at Sarah. She snapped her arm back to point at the work going on behind her. "This is a delicate operation, requiring precise, reliable methods of execution. We do not need quack theories and pseudoscientific distractions. I thought this company was going to be founded on sound science, not mystical mumbo-jumbo."
Sarah's lips tightened. Although she shared many of Bridget's misgivings, she wasn't going to take that kind of browbeating from anybody. "Stacy Solutions is dedicated to solving problems using the best methods possible. However, our hiring practices are not a matter of committee. If I decide to hire somebody, then you, as an employee, will do your best to get along with that fellow employee."
Bridget did not back down. She again pointed open-palmed at Dr. Odd, with both hands this time. "She's poison to the entire operation! She think she's a freaking wizard! Have you ever read one of her papers? There's as much voodoo as there is science. It's pure crackpot."
Before Sarah could say anything else, Dr. Odd interjected. "It is my understanding, based on Sarah's correspondence, that the high temperatures here in Louisiana make it much more likely that the M6 will explode spontaneously. Is that your assessment as well, doctor?"
Bridget shot an icy glare at Dr. Odd. "Not that it's any of your concern, but yes. Why, what are you going to do, wave your magic wand and make it snow?"
Dr. Odd withdrew from within her suit coat a handful of marble-sized spheres that appeared to be made of ice. There were about twenty or so in all. These she cast into the air. They spread out to surround the entire camp, spinning and releasing what appeared to be ice crystals. As the crystals melted into the hot air the temperature began to cool dramatically. Eventually, the cooling ceased, and the air settled in to a coolness like that of a late fall day in Manhattan.
Sarah smiled in spite of herself. Although she didn't understand how those little ice spheres had worked, they have proved her point for her. "Our first priority is to find solutions to the problems at hand. Yes, every solution will have a scientific explanation, even if we don't happen to know what that explanation is at the moment. Part of our job is to discover that explanation, but our main job is to solve the problems."
Maybe it was the drop in temperature, but Sarah found herself cooling off as well. She put a calming hand on Bridget's shoulder. "So try to play nice with Fiona, here. She's only trying to help."
With that, Sarah moved past the pair of rival doctors to check in with Rubix on her progress assembling the conversion factory. However, she glanced back just to make sure that a fistfight didn't break out.
Bridget marched right up to Dr. Odd, and got in her face. "You're not fooling anyone." She pointed at one of the spheres. "There's a sound scientific explanation for this."
Dr. Odd smiled pleasantly. "I'm glad we agree. Someday, I hope to be able to tell you what it is." She walked past Bridget to join Sarah and Rubix, whom were discussing the progress thus far made. "In the meantime, I suggest that we return to our work."
Bridget cut off Dr. Odd's path. "Just remember this is my project. My reputation is on the line here. I expect you to be on your best behavior. That means no more hocus-pocus."
Fiona gave her a reassuring look. "I assure you I will do nothing to tarnish your reputation."
"Now that that's settled," Rubix said, "I can tell you that we are just about ready to go. As soon as we get the first containers on the assembly line we can start."
Sarah felt herself relax for the first time since they arrived two days ago. All of the scrambling to find the parts, labor, and know-how to accomplish this monumental project had finally come together. She sat down beside Rubix, who was busy messing with some computer program for the main mixing tank. Now they could get to work. Their first big contract, they're only contract, finally underway, based on an idea that Gabriel had envisioned after only a few minutes of examining the problem.
She found herself, not for the first time, wishing that Gabriel were here. They should be creating the future of their company together. Instead, she was running everything, while he was back in New York playing detective. Sure, he had checked in occasionally to see how things were progressing, and had been the one to tell Sarah about Dr. Odd as a possible contact regarding the temperature issue, but the fact was he wasn't here.
She wondered, not for the first time, if she could really count on him to be part of the business.
The frantic arrival of one of the local workers broke Sarah’s musings. He rushed up to Bridget waiving a clipboard full of papers in his hand. “Dr. Duncan! The count is off!”
Bridget, for once, was the voice of calm. “Easy, David. We knew that the report that the EPA gave us was only a rough estimate. Even the company that made this mess didn’t have exact figures. Did we over- or underestimate?”
David looked white as a ghost. “You don’t understand. There’s a whole section of the camp where we should have barrels, where there’s evidence there were barrels by the droves, but which is empty now.”
Sarah stood up. “How many barrels?”
David gave her a grave, nervous look. “At least several hundred.”
That caused Sarah to shiver. Several hundred barrels missing. Barrels of highly explosive, easily weaponizable M6. Taken by who knows who. And if Sarah didn’t find those barrels, and the media found out, then it wouldn’t matter when those barrels went missing. The EPA would scapegoat Stacy Solutions, and the company would go bankrupt before ever completing their first contract.
And she had to face this horror alone.
#
He had to face this horror alone.
It was coming on dusk. Arach-Knight, from a darkened perch on a nearby brick general store, surveyed the wreckage of the home in front of and below him. Dr. Jerry Porter was the victim of an explosion identical to the one Gabriel had witnessed. Dr. Porter had died only a few days ago, only a day before the young mutant girl (Mia Gutierrez, according to the newspapers), had died in front o Gabriel's eyes. The only differences Arach-Knight could discern were that unlike Mia, Dr. Porter was not a mutant, and that, unlike Mia's case, the police were actually taking his death seriously.
The contrast was stark. Here, a police inspector was always on the scene, with forensics teams pouring over the well-protected crime scene and counsellors helping the surviving family members deal with their loss. Every possible clue was carefully collected, bagged, and sent to be analyzed by a police expert.
At Mia's home, on the other hand, the inspector had dumped the investigation on a subordinate at the first mention of the word 'mutant', the crime scene had never been secured, evidence trails had quickly become corrupted, and the family was given the cold shoulder. The anti-mutant bias in the police force was palpable.
And yet it went beyond anti-mutant bigotry. In his brief investigation so far Arach-Knight had uncovered three more attacks of the same type. The victims had all been metahumans, but not all of them mutants. One was the former villain known as Humbug, a tech-based nobody that no one would miss. Another was an experimental bio-physicist whom had tried to recreate the accident that had created the Hulk, with limited success. The third was, evidently, a small group of Morlocks, an offshoot of the main group, whom had begun an outreach with the homeless of the city, an attempt to build bridges with the 'least' in our society.
In all cases Arach-Knight had found the same callous dismissal by law enforcement. Any time the case had directly involved a member of the meta community, the case had been summarily dropped. Arach-Knight couldn't help feel a sense of 'the other', as though he were a member of a second-class group, a people considered not-quite equal by his own government.
He was determined to find out why.
None of the cases he'd seen thus far had been tied together under a single investigation team. Each had its own lead inspector. The one at the current crime scene actually seemed engaged in his work. At the moment, he was yelling into his cell phone, berating someone for something; the man was just too far away from Arach-Knight’s perch to hear clearly.
Arach-Knight smiled grimly. It was not for nothing that he had designed this suit. It may have started out as just a repurposing of the Green Goblin’s gear (he’d found backup versions of both goblin costumes in storage with those on display when he’d searched Norman’s cache), but he had taken the time to add plenty of updates and extras. Such as concealed parabolic microphones. He adjusted his suit’s sensors and tuned in to what the inspector was saying.
“…don’t care about jurisdiction, and neither do you. You know as well as I do that jurisdiction has nothing to do with this. Dammit, Coleman, I’m telling you it looks like the same killer, and he’s not just going after meta-freaks any more. This guy was normal.”
Arach-Knight’s lips tightened. So here was confirmation of his suspicions. Same killer (most likely), and same bigotry. Also, same name; he recognized the name of the other inspector as the one whom had intentionally mishandled Mia’s murder investigation.
“Look, Makayla,” the inspector was saying, now trying a more patient if still stern approach, “I’m not asking you to go out on a limb here. Just send me your file. Even incomplete information will help me better than nothing. Hello? Hello!” He pocketed his phone. “Dammit! So much for ‘once a partner, always a partner.’”
With that, Arach-Knight quietly crawled to the far side of the building and leapt away. Inspector Makayla Coleman was about to get a visit from a very angry metahuman, and he really didn’t care if that irritated her.
#
It had taken quite a bit of digging, but he managed to find Inspector Coleman’s desk. It was, much to his chagrin, not an exterior office with a window. Instead, it was amongst a cluster of desks in an open area of a well-guarded precinct station. That made a private interview in a place where Coleman’s records would be impossible. And anyway, she worked days most of the time, and it was near two a.m. by the time he’d gotten this far. So, reluctantly, Gabriel had allowed himself the luxury of sleep so as to approach the problem fresh.
He was now ready.
He had picked up Coleman’s trail after several hours of monitoring police bands. She was currently investigating a gang-related murder several dozen blocks from Mia’s murder. From the chatter, it was just an ordinary murder, with no metahuman involvement.
He caught up to Coleman at the crime scene, and it was a dramatically different woman he observed than he had seen at Mia’s home. Coleman was following every procedure to the letter, and taking great care to gather every last bit of evidence.
Arach-Knight waited patiently, knowing that he could eventually find a moment to catch her alone. Then they would have words. He kept to shadows and well-obscured sight lines. He would be ready to act when the time came.
At last, after several hours, Arach-Knight’s stakeout paid off. The inspector left the crime scene, heading for a nearby subway entrance. Keeping out of sight, he swung through alleyways and raced along walls until he had reached an alley ahead of her. As soon as Coleman reached the alley, he emerged from the shadows, stepping right into her path.
“Why are you railroading murder investigations, Inspector Coleman.”
Coleman immediately drew her pistol and aimed it at his face, to the surprise of several passers-by. She was visibly startled, but well-practiced in her reactions. She kept him covered, one-handed, while the other went for her cell phone.
He did not flinch. He towered over her by nearly a foot, and knew that he cut an imposing presence, especially in his dark, spider-themed attire. He could see her shaking slightly. He kept his eyes locked on hers. “I’ve jammed your signal, Inspector Coleman. Now answer the question.”
She tested her signal, then pocketed her phone. She never took her gun off him. “As far as I’m concerned this is assault on an officer. You come quietly and I might not shoot you.”
He may as well have been a statue. “Cell phones are ubiquitous these days, inspector. I can confirm that we are being filmed by at least seven people at this moment. I’ve made no move against you. And I have both Jennifer Walters and Matt Murdoch on speed dial.” That last comment was misleading; sure; he had their numbers, but he’d never had any contact with either lawyers before. “Arrest me on trumped-up charges and I will have your badge.”
A crowd was growing around them, but mercifully these people were wisely keeping their distance. Several people were, in fact, filming the conversation. “Naturally you’d lawyer up with those two lawless freaks,” she scoffed. Now both hands were on her gun. “A cop versus a nut in a mask, who do you think a judge would believe?”
Arach-Knight raised his voice, to make sure that those cell phone cameras could hear. “I’ll as again. Why are you railroading murder investigations, Inspector Makayla Coleman?”
Her eyes narrowed. “You want to back up that lie, freak?”
Fine, he thought. We can do this the hard way. “I have been following the trail of several murders by someone targeting metahumans and those with links to them.”
“Naturally,” she spat. “Someone like you doesn’t care about all of the real murder and crime in this city. You only care about your own.”
“Don’t paint me with your crimes, you hypocrite,” he said. “You are the one only helping ‘your own.’ I have documented multiple crime scenes involving metahumans in which proper police procedures were openly disregarded, evidence chains were destroyed, and the victims treated like vermin.”
“Your choice of words, freak. Not mine.”
“All I want is your file on these cases. You were lead investigator on at least one of them. I want to prevent whomever is doing this from killing anyone else, before he or she kills innocent people in these terror attacks. That includes what you would call normal people.”
He paused for dramatic effect. “Or I can just give all of my data to Ben Urich over at the Daily Bugle and let him air out your dirty laundry for you.”
Coleman stood there for a long moment, never lowering her gun. She stared at him with probing eyes, as though seeking some sign of bluff through Arach-Knight’s mask. Finally, she lowered her gun and holstered it. “Lawless freaks like you,” she muttered,” you expect the law to protect you when you spit on it day and night.” She stepped around him. “I have a duty to protect the people, innocent people. Not freaks who blow up the city on a regular basis and then come running for the cops when it’s you can't handle the mess you've made of things.”
She was speaking very low, he noted, to escape her words being captured by the still-recording cameras. It didn’t matter. Those cameras, whose content would soon be on Youtube he had no doubt, had captured enough to show that the inspector was definitely guilty of some kind of wrongdoing. She would do whatever it took to make sure exactly what she’d done wrong was kept under wraps or, if that was impossible, spun to make her look better than she should.
As she passed him, his suit-amplified hearing picked up her whispering to him. “Rooftop of the Mitchum Apartments complex. Midnight.” And then she pushed past the crowd and hurried down the stairs to the subway station.
#
Rubix was in her element. In her mind, she saw, no, felt the flow of data from all across the internet. She has an intuitive feel for the structure of the world wide web; to her it was a living being, with heartbeats, nerve structures, and senses. It ate, and excreted, data of various kinds, and in between used that data to fuel its functions. And while she could not link directly to it (she had no cybernetic interface or anything like that), she did not need one. She just knew, because of her particular mutation, how it all worked.
And how to make it work for her.
This was what made her stand out. She was not just some kind of She-Forge, although her mutation gave her the same kind of mechanical intuition that the former member of X-Factor enjoyed. The techno-organic weave she'd infused into her hair to get it to look like a living Rubik's Cube was just one example of what she could do. No, she had specialized, and in doing so had gained understanding of and access to the sum total of human knowledge. Maybe not directly, but no one short of Ultron had better access to all of that knowledge than her. And maybe not even Ultron could access it quite as intuitively as her.
And right now, on this cool Louisiana evening, the creature called the internet was hiding something from her.
Her boss, Sarah Stacy, had put her to the task of figuring out who had stolen the M6 propellant from Camp Minden. Although hired as a general technology expert (a She-Forge), Sarah had recognized Rubix’ extreme skill in all things software and yanked her off the current conversion process (which was now fully automated anyway) to track down any electronic footprint that might lead them to the missing explosives. All of the facilities’ security camera footage, all of the encrypted files from the former company (left behind when the company had bugged out when the first explosion had occurred), all of the scanned paperwork, including any daily sign-in/sign-out sheets from guests and personnel, all of it was now hers to peruse, as well as any relevant data that might come from the net generally from leads generated by those other sources. Whomever had stolen that artillery propellant, if they left any physical or electronic trace, Rubix would find the thief.
“Why are you playing Pong?”
Sarah Stacy was micromanaging the search. It was kind of deja-vu. Her last boss, Dr. Alexander James Greene, had always been one to hover, asking her for some gadget or other and then, it seemed like every five minutes, demanding to know if it was done yet. How many times had he pestered her about rebuilding Greene Manor, from the ground up, complete with phase-safe zones for him to use his intangibility through without shorting out the whole manor house, with ‘is it done yet’ questions. If Alex hadn’t been such a damned nice guy, she would not have repressed her tendency to build in humorous features into her gadgets and turned Greene Manor into a Anime Funhouse of Steampunk Goth, complete with ‘It’s A Small World’ animatronic children.
Sarah, for her part, kept checking on Rubix’s progress in way-too-short-for-reason intervals. Rubix could understand why, since the whole future of Stacy Solutions hinged on finding the thief. Still, it was annoying, and so, unwilling to repress her signature silliness, she had turned her data stream search into, to those without her mutant ability to see between the code, an amazing technicolor kaleidoscope of ever-shifting 1980’s arcade classics. Just because.
“Be patient,” she said. “It will be Dig Dug soon.”
“What?”
“It’s just a side-effect of my twist on technological intuition. I’m actually deeply focused on the task at hand. So if you don’t mind, I’d like to get back to saving the day.”
Sarah didn’t look the least bit amused. Nevertheless, despite her obvious irritation, Sarah didn’t press the point. “Just let me know when you’ve found something.”
Rubix couldn’t suppress a mischievous grin. “Actually, I’ve found quite a bit.”
“What?!”
Rubix spun round in her swivel chair, still grinning. “I’ve got nearly everything but a name, which I suspect I’ll have soon. In fact, I’d probably have gone to you with a complete report in,” she glanced at the clock on the computer screen, which she’d made look like an old grandfather clock, “about five minutes.”
Eagerly, Sarah pulled up a chair next to Rubix, but she had a cross look on her face. “If you and I are going to work together, you are going to have to curb the attitude.”
Rubix softened her smile. “Sure, as long as you don’t spend your every moment asking for progress reports.”
Sarah paused, then nodded. “I suppose I have been rushing you too much. But everything depends on this. I’ll give you your space. Now what have you got?”
Rubix spun round, rolling her eyes but feeling she’d made some progress with her new boss. “Well, I’ve got a forged security pass, an unmarked military cargo truck, and multiple visits by a shady woman within the last year. All during a time when Camp Minden was minimally-staffed and just stockpiling more M6 than they knew what to do with, and had basically given up keeping track of it all.”
A game of Centipede vs. Space Invaders was interrupted by a full-screen video via security camera of a military-grade cargo vehicle pulling up to what Sarah recognized as the east gate of Camp Minden. A security guard, by the looks of him someone earning an extra paycheck to supplement his Social Security benefits, disinterestedly glanced at the driver’s credentials before letting her pass. The woman in the video was a middle-aged black woman, dressed in generic military fatigues and sporting a military crew cut. She looked perfectly at home behind the wheel of the cargo truck. Everything about her was casual, almost jovial.
Rubix leaned back in her chair. “It’s the same thing day after day for reams of video footage. She breezes past security, takes what she likes, then leaves.”
Sarah was studying the feed, which continued to show day after day of the same scene. “We need to find this guard. See if he was in on it. He might know her name.”
Rubix shook her head. “I’ve already thoroughly examined his every electronic interaction, from bank transactions to Facebook posts. There’s nothing out of the ordinary there. I’d be highly surprised if he was guilty of anything more than negligence from the sheer boredom of his post. Besides, he never even makes so much as eye contact with her. I doubt he knows anything we don’t.”
Sarah gave Rubix a sideways glance. “Should you be able to see his bank transactions?”
Rubix gave a sly smile. “I don’t have to break anyone’s password to see what a data packet looks like in transit. I know a large financial windfall when I see one in the data stream. He’s clean, and we didn’t break the law.”
If Sarah was still wary of Rubix’s answer, she didn’t press the matter. She returned her gaze to the video. “Any chance we can see the license plate?”
Sarah brought up a second screen overlaying the first, with several screen shots of the plate. All were fuzzy, but with some legibility. “I ran an algorithm to piece together the plate from different images. The truck was stolen from a military surplus dealer in Alabama. The guy didn’t even realize it was missing until last week. Poor bookkeeping.”
Sarah was getting frustrated. “I though you said you were close to identifying her.”
“Relax, boss.” Rubix removed the video feed and other clutter from the screen. For a brief moment Donkey Kong Jr. flashed on the screen, and then a new program turned on. Thousands of faces per second were blinking on and off the screen. “I also ran a face recognition algorithm of my own design that accesses public records, publicly-shared posts on social media, and the like. It’s a smart algorithm, so it learns as it gathers new data and narrows its search accordingly. I’d be very much surprised if it didn’t have an answer for us before I finished this…”
‘Ping’ went the computer. The blur of faces settled on one face, that of a middle-aged black woman smiling maniacally back at them. The picture was from a years-old Facebook account, and the algorithm had listed information from various public data sources about the woman. Most important of which was her name.
Sarah peered at the screen. “‘Bethany Sergeant, Lieutenant, U.S. Army.’” She paused for a moment. “‘Dishonorably discharged.’ Does it say anywhere what for?”
Rubix was speed reading the text, which for her was normal reading. “Right here. She tried to steal a fully-armed Apache helicopter with intent to destroy Avengers Mansion a few years back.”
Sarah suddenly put her hand on Rubix’s arm. “Look at this. She was a munitions specialist while in the army. She’d certainly know her way around M6, and how to weaponize it. Maybe for sale, or maybe for her own use.” She looked at Rubix sternly. “Are you sure your algorithm found the right person. As damning as all of this seems, if she turns out to be innocent it could destroy the government’s faith in us and any chance of a permanent contract.”
Rubix tried not to feel insulted. After all, this was her first outing with Stacy Solutions and they didn’t really know her. Still, her pride had been bruised. She snorted, then went back to work. She had to find this Bethany Sergeant woman, and fast. “You can bank on it.”
Several long minutes past as Rubix did her work. Sarah busied herself with reading Bethany Sergeant’s file, which Rubix had quickly e-mailed to Sarah’s personal tablet. Despite the work nearby to process the remaining M6, the space seemed extremely quiet.
Finally, with a rush of adrenaline fueled by satisfaction, Rubix stood up. “Got it. She’s renting an old, disused farm not twenty miles from here. I’ve got the address.”
Sarah stood as well, a determined look on her face. “Notify local law enforcement and the FBI. Tell them everything, and arrange for them to meet us at the site. Let them know that there is potential for explosives to be present, and that our experts are at their disposal.” She made for the M6 repurposing factory. “I’ll assemble a team to meet them at that address. I want you to come along, too. You have combat experience, and we don’t know what Miss Sergeant might have up her sleeve.”
Rubix began packing up her gear, and grabbed her bag with her old Guardian “combat gear.” Her time with the Guardians had taught her to never be without a means of defense. For half a heartbeat she considered calling Alex to get the team to scramble to confront this Bethany Sergeant woman, but even by Slingshot the team would never get here from Boston in time to be of any help.
Her gear gathered, she rushed to join Sarah as she assembled her team. She had to admit it. It was great to be in action again.
#
He had expected a trap. Given Inspector Coleman’s animosity towards metahumans, and that it was shared by a large swath of the police department, Arach-Knight had fully anticipated an ‘unofficial’ sting operation meant to ambush and kill him the instant he arrived. Maybe he was paranoid. Maybe he was just jaded. Whatever the case, a diligent search of the apartment building and its surroundings had yielded no evidence of any police presence beyond the odd standard patrol.
Still, he was wary. For his own protection, since they had served him well earlier, he stealthily placed small digital cameras on and around the perimeter of the rooftop, facing inward as well as outward over the apartment complex. Microphones were also placed strategically. Those, in addition to the recording equipment in his own suit, would ensure that the whole exchange would be recorded. He would be on his best behavior. He doubted she would do the same.
He had begun setup at about 9:30 at night, taking his time to ensure that no one observed him. He was careful, and thorough, and finished about twenty minutes to midnight. Now that he was done, he checked the interface with his cameras and his suit’s systems. On one camera, he saw Inspector Coleman walking down a path. He positioned himself so he could see her directly. She approached the building, a large folder filled to capacity with paper in her hand. She produced a card key and swiped it, unlocking the door. Immediately she stepped inside.
So, she had chosen the roof of her own home for the rendezvous. Fine by him. Now he knew where to find her if he needed her again. He found a place of cover on the roof and waited.
A few minutes after midnight, the rooftop door opened, and Inspector Coleman stepped out. Her face was pale, and her right hand were clenched hard around the file folder, her left holding her gun. She glanced around, then stepped onto the roof. Her gun at the ready, she slowly and carefully searched the roof.
With practiced ease, Arach-Knight kept two steps ahead of her search. He wanted to make sure that he had the edge, so he planned to make himself known only when he was good and ready.
After completing her search, Inspector Coleman lowered her pistol and holstered it under her arm. She let out a long sigh. She took one more look around, then, evidently satisfied, made her way back towards the door to the apartment building.
Arach-Knight silently stepped out of the shadows behind her. “You’re late.”
This time, her training failed her. She spun round with a yelp, and dropped the file. She fumbled for a moment for her gun before giving up. After that, she took a few deep breaths before adjusting her jacket. “You’re an asshole!”
Inside his mask, Arach-Knight smiled. This woman had such a superiority complex about metahumans, and he was going to make her pay for that. It would probably not teach her a lesson, but that was for another time. “I believe that belongs to me.”
She looked at the file on the roof, and then smirked defiantly. “Then help yourself. We’re done here.” With that, she spun on her heels and walked towards the door.
He shook his head. ‘Well, that was abrupt,’ he thought. Keeping his eyes scanning the various rooftop video feeds, he bent down to scoop up the file.
Suddenly, on his screens, Inspector Coleman spun around. Her gun was drawn. Her eyes were squinted with focus and her jaw clenched.
It wasn’t spider-sense, but it would do in a pinch.
From his crouched position, he leapt straight into the air. Below him, bullets fired from her gun whizzed past, striking the rooftop behind and below him. He grabbed and threw a spider-rang, its razor-sharp edge striking her at the wrist of her gun hand.
Inspector Coleman shouted in pain, her gun falling along with the blood from her wrist. As he landed beside her she dropped down, striving to pick up the gun with her other hand.
He casually kicked the gun away. Inspector Coleman lay on her side, clutching her bleeding wrist. Her cell phone had fallen out of her pocket, and lay behind her.
“Asshole!” she shouted. “I’ll have the entire city hunting you down. This is definitely assault on an officer now.”
He stood over her, and scooped up the cell phone. He flipped it open, typed in a few commands, and then lay it down where she could see it. On the screen she saw the entire encounter play out, over and over again from multiple angles.
“That’s a live stream from a secure source. It shows you attacking me, unprovoked. One sign that you are pursuing your charges against me and this winds up in the hands of every media outlet in the city. Oh, and in the hands of my lawyers.”
He picked up the file, then his spider-rang, and turned to walk away, then paused. “Oh, and if I go through this and find it is bogus, you can count on seeing me again.”
For several minutes, Inspector Coleman lay alone on the roof, clutching her wounds and watching the video replay on her phone. Finally, crying, she closed the phone, stood, and headed for the door. She’d spend much of the rest of the evening at the hospital. When asked how she obtained her injuries, she just whimpered and said nothing.
#
The “farmhouse” was a one-story shack with boarded-up windows, loose clapboard siding, and holes in the roof. The yard was overgrown with weeds, some the size of saplings. The driveway was unpaved and overtaken by the weeds.
If anyone was living here, Sarah thought, they may as well be homeless.
It was near midnight, and the farm was currently lit by hundreds of spotlights. Med-e-vac helicopters were standing by, in case the worst happened. Sarah and her team waited whilst the state police and FBI cleared the house, and then everyone moved on to the barn. A bomb squad was also on site, but due to the particular type of explosive involved, would be taking their lead from Sarah and her experts.
As the bomb squad swept the exterior of the barn for bombs, Sarah studied the structure. It was old, like the farmhouse, but in better repair; it would at least keep the rain out. It was a proper barn, with a two-story first floor and a hay loft above. The large barn doors were shut, but the smaller door built into the large left door was slightly ajar. Within was darkness.
Beside Sarah, Bridget Duncan was standing beside the bomb squad's truck, talking into the truck's radio to a member of the bomb squad that was examining the barn. Rubix was also there, along with Dr. Fiona Odd. Rubix was in a bronze spandex-like suit devoid of markings, a vest and belt (each covered with tools and gadgets), fingerless gloves, and boots. The spandex looked thicker and more rugged than what must super-teams wore, and attached to the belt were a pair of modified gun holsters with very unique guns in them.
Remnants, Sarah guessed, of her time as a Guardian. Somehow she felt comforted by the fact that she had a former superhero as an ally, even though her own background made her somewhat super herself. In fact, since the transfusion, she had actually felt healthier and more powerful than ever, even with her accelerated strength and health from her Osborn/Goblin bloodline. Still, although she was trained as a fighter, she had long since come to the conclusion that she was not cut out for heroics. Leave that for others with deeper motivations for such things.
Like, say, her brother.
With a frustrated sigh, she put him out of her mind. She had more important issues to resolve.
The bomb squad reported that they had completed the sweep of the barn’s exterior and found nothing. Rubix pulled a device from her belt and made some settings adjustments. “I’m going to scan for any possible electronic traps. This will only work at close range, so, sergeant, stay several paces behind me.” She paused for a moment. “Like a block or so.”
The sergeant and his men were all dressed in heavily-padded gear, and carried all manner of equipment. A second team monitored the first from within an armored truck with a control station in the back, where Bridget was now headed. He gave Rubix a confident smile. “Not our first rodeo, ma’am. Lead the way.”
Before they departed, Dr. Odd, whom had been quietly meditating over some stones tied with string in her hand, passed them out to the team. The sergeant looked at her sideways. Dr. Odd smiled. “Humor a silly mystic. I’ve placed a spell of protection over these stones. It won’t completely stop such an overwhelming detonation that might occur with M6, but it could be enough to keep you alive.”
The sergeant, skeptically, allowed Dr. Odd to place one of the necklaces around his neck. “Whatever, lady. Aw, hell, I guess a good luck charm never hurt anyone.” He looked at Rubix, whom was placing her own stone around her neck. “Ready, miss?”
Rubix tapped a button on her belt. Her body began to shimmer with the telltale yellow energy of a personal force field. “No one is ever ready, sergeant. But at some point you just have to do what is necessary anyway.” She gave a smile and a nod to Sarah. “Back in two and two. Or a few hours. Not sure which yet.”
Sarah stayed back, beside a federal agent whom had introduced himself earlier as Jenkins. He seemed very tough; he was built like a bull and sported a military haircut and several old scars, like perhaps he had been in some kind of special ops team in a prior career. He didn’t talk much, and usually in the shortest sentences he could muster. Sarah found him at once unnerving and reassuring; he felt like someone who could handle just about any situation, and that kind of feeling was sorely needed here.
The bomb squad, led by Rubix, approached the small barn door. After a quick scan, she stepped aside, giving the all-clear. The sergeant then directed his team to search for mechanical triggers. Several minutes later, another all-clear, and the team entered the barn.
The next twenty minutes or so comprised of perimeter checks of the barn’s interior, with status updates communicated back and forth to the squad’s truck. It was a slow, careful process. The very first update confirmed that a large number of barrels of the type containing the M6 were present.
Sarah stayed with Jenkins beyond the truck but with eyes on the door. She hated that she had placed Rubix in harms way. Sure, the former Guardian had volunteered, and all precautions had been taken, but things go wrong. She wanted nothing more than to see the team emerge unharmed.
Bridget poked her head out the door of the truck, her face ashen and her eyes alert. “Sarah, I just heard back from Rubix. There are far fewer barrels here than are missing from Camp Minden.”
Things go wrong. “How many?”
Bridget shook her head. “More than three quarters. We can tell that it all passed through here, but most of it has been carted off.”
Bridget turned her head, as though listening to someone speaking from within the truck. Without another word, she disappeared back inside.
Sarah felt sick in her stomach, and her head felt funny. Somewhere in the back of her mind she had known it likely that Bethany Sergeant had moved some of the barrels to whatever buyer she had set up or to some other hiding place in case the first one was discovered, but she had allowed herself to hope that she’d find all of the missing barrels here. She looked at Jenkins. “I don’t suppose your men have found that stolen cargo truck.”
Behind his sunglasses, Jenkins’ was an emotionless statue. Kind of like a Terminator robot, but less cuddly. "Yes," he said. After Sarah stared at him for several moments, obviously waiting for more, he reluctantly continued. “It was found behind the barn. There’s evidence of a larger vehicle being present, loaded up heavy and moved out. We’re trying to learn more about that vehicle now.”
Sarah clutched her aching head. Worse and worse. The situation, and her head. It actually seemed to ache more when she faced away from the barn, towards a large tree behind the agents and police, between the farmhouse and the barn. No, not ache. Tingle.
She noticed something up in the branches of the tree, a glint in the light cast by the various spotlights, and an odd shadow that wasn't part of the tree. She moved towards it. She noticed that Jenkins was following her, but that wasn’t important. The fact that the tingling in her head increased as she approached the tree made her move towards it ever faster. Her eyes never left the thing in its branches.
It was an owl. No, not an owl, but Owl. From Winnie The Pooh. It was a stuffed Owl doll. And behind it, a thin, PVC pipe ran from beneath its perch, down the tree, and into the ground.
Suddenly, the doll’s head swung round to face her. In a pre-recorded voice similar to that of what Owl had sounded like in the movies, it squacked at her. “As my good and learned friend Tigger would say, TTFE: Ta Ta Forever!”
The tingling in Sarah’s head exploded with fury. In terror, she realized what it meant. Spider-sense! Danger sense! She yelled, and ran towards the barn.
The plume from the explosion was seen as weather by satellites for the national weather service.
#
Bethany watched the woman running for the barn through the video feed from Owl. She waited a moment, then pushed the button. It took mere moments for the signal to pass to Owl, then down the wires in the PVC piping, then underground to the mechanical fuse below the main level of the barn, and up to the detonators on the barrels. Then the whole barn went up, along with all inside. The shockwave blew upward and outward, knocking over the bomb squad truck and the people around it. Finally, it hit Owl, and the transmission went to static, and then nothing.
A tear ran down her cheek. She stood, and saluted the screen. “Thank you for your service, Owl. You will never be forgotten.”
Never forgotten for the sacrifice in blowing those vile people to bits. Bethany smiled. Then laughed. More lying liberal communist marxists gone. A good use of some good bombs. She couldn’t wait to do that again. And in just a few days, she would. In a really, really big way.
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