YOU'RE MINE

29

Ron was sitting in a generously padded lounge chair in John Dick's executive office. He felt great, all thanks to Veronica Staples who had nursed him back to life over the past two weeks. The phasing was under control, there were no accidental detours into other realities and, best of all, the malicious voice was gone. Or was it so integrated into the internal dialogue that it no longer felt separate? Had he assimilated the voice, just as the Cerebro had assimilated parts of his brain? Why didn't he feel any different now that an alien was hanging limply from his head? And why didn't it bother him that he had no answers to any of these questions? Who knows? Or better - who the fuck cares!

Maybe it was the black pressure suit he was wearing that made him look so damn cool: A wafer-thin membrane that shimmered purple and was so tight that he looked as if he had been carved out of a large hunk of obsidian. Ron was big, Ron was bad, Ron was swole. Nothing suggested the dreadful weeks that had led up to this point. 

"Send me back," he said.

Two guards manned the office door, wearing semi-automatic rifles, flak jackets, knee pads, and stern faces. Staples stood with a tablet a few safety meters away from Ron, checking his vitals. Only John Dicks, business man extraordinaire, stood dauntlessly close. 

"We can't do that," Staples said, not looking up from the tablet, scared shitless of the echo she might receive.

Nothing, no reaction whatsoever. The unsettling thing wasn't Ron's intimidating statue or the abomination his face had become; it was the chilling calm, the serene menace in which he sat there. There was a long pause, a silence that made your ears ring, a thought amplifier, that raised the level of discomfort to a point that led the guards to raise their guns.

Dicks turned and, with a slow hand movement, motioned them to lower their weapons, "Please, gentlemen, no need to escalate. We're just talking."

The guards obeyed, but kept their boomsticks at the ready. A colourful glow emanated from the Cerebro. It continued along Ron's face until it covered it completely. A high-pitched sound followed. One of the guards flinched, blood running down one of his nostrils. He wiped it off and looked at the bloodstained glove. His hand began to shake and moved back to the rifle. It turned the gun a hundred and eighty degrees and with the help of the other hand, thumb on the trigger, put it in his mouth.

"Wa da faaa..." he slurred, his eyes agog with fascinating horror.

Click. Click. Click. The thumb squeezed the trigger three times. Rescued by the safety. The guard thought and looked over at his partner with a relieved smile and slid the metal pacifier back out, but stopped halfway. Ron's face lit up again. The rifle slid back in. Staples' tablet buzzed urgently. She moved her hand to tap the screen when Dicks grabbed her forearm and shook his head. The guard closed his eyes in pain. Ron closed his eyes to concentrate. Intuitively, he knew what to do and how to do it.

The guard opened his eyes violently, "Heee meee!" and broke into a sprint across the office. 

Ron sat there in stoic peace, gazing straight ahead, and as the guard passed him he kicked out his leg, sending the poor chap tripping and impaling himself, the barrel sticking out of the back of his head. The force of the impact sent the head down the barrel, releasing the safety, and with his thumb still on the trigger, the dead man emptied a full clip through his head into the ceiling. Ratatatatat!

Ron opened his eyes again and said deadly cool, "That was not a request."

"Mister? …" Dicks straightened his tie and paused to let Ronny fill in his surname. 

"Ron," Ron said uninterested.

"Mister Ron, okay," Dicks said with a dry smile and stepped over the dead body, "you don't realize the opportunity you've been given. With all this power, we can... Ahhh!" 

A thunderclap headache made Dicks grunt. He was forced to lean forward, resting one hand on his thigh, the other cup his forehead.

"We can't give you what you want!" Staples jumped in, she took pity on Dicks and wasn't quite sure why. Normally one would be happy to see that egomaniac choke on his power tie, that black hole of ambition that sucks all the joy out of work. It wasn't as serious as wishing someone cancer, but a good case of hiccups for the rest of his life? Yeah, that would do. 

"We can't give you what you want because it's not us. It's you."

Dick's headache faded as quickly as it had appeared.

"Explain," Ron relaxed into the lounge chair, "but first clean up this mess, it's kinda killin the mood," he signed to the guard, pointing at the slain comrade. 

The guard looked at Dicks. Is this guy for real? was written all over his eyes.

"Do it," Dicks said, annoyed, still rubbing his temples with thumb and forefinger.

The guard wrapped his hands around his partner's ankles and began to pull. He couldn't bear to remove the rifle, so he screeched the stock across the Brazilian walnut floor, leaving behind deep grooves that quickly filled with blood. 

Still dazed from the brain freeze he had just been dealt, Dicks clapped his hands, "Bravo. Bravo." He plucked the tablet from Staples' hand and pointed it at Ron as he strode up to him, "You and me. We are going to do great things."

" What makes you think I give a damn about your goals, little man." Ron's face rainbowed, the tablet became nervous, a headache brewed in Dicks's head, but before it turned into a full-blown thunderstorm, Dicks pressed the tablet's touch screen.

The purple glow from the pressure suit disappeared and Ron began to convulse violently, the phasing had begun again. The agony spread to every corner of his being, it felt like being torn apart and put back together at the same time, pain that spread to the outer reaches of infinity.

"I may be smaller in a physical sense, Mr. Ron." Dicks said, and nothing could hide the pleasure he felt. There is nothing like winning, being on top, putting people in their place; the rush of power. 

"What I may lack in physical prowess, I make up for in intellectual power." He tapped the end of the tablet twice against his temple and lowered himself next to Ron. 

"I know you want to see your wife again. I understand that. I mean, I was never in love myself. The closest thing I guess is my love for the work I do: The betterment of mankind. What I am trying to say is that I sympathize, and I promise you that Dr. Staples here will find a way to reunite the two of you. But - in return, you will do us a favor. A favor for a favor, you understand?" Dicks stood up and waited for Ron's answer. 

For Ron, who was in multidimensional pain, it was impossible to form even the smallest syllable, so he raised his right hand as high as he could and gave Dicks a shaky thumbs up.

"Great. I knew we could talk like civilized men," Dicks said, tossing the tablet back to Staples, who oddly snatched it out of the air. "He's all yours," he continued, marched to the office door and said nonchalantly, " I want him ready by the end of next week."

Staples reactivated the suit and pulled Ron out of his agony. Hot, angry eyes pierced John Dicks' back. 

Dicks grabbed the doorknob, stopped and turned around. "I'm so excited I have to go to the bathroom. When I come back I expect you both to be gone. And Staples..."

"Yes, sir?"

"Get the cleaning crew up here." 

Then he looked at Ron and said with a devilish grin, "You and me my friend, you and me. We are going to take the world off its hinges! - Gotta pee, bye.