Quickness may be the essence of war, but haste without enlightenment only leads to ruin.
- Sun Tzu
The Hermit
The day had begun like any other. I’d drank a delicious broth made of moss, spent some time on the treadmill, and checked to ensure my booby traps were still functioning properly.
Then, as I was settling down to watch some quality TV, my remote died. I stared at it for a full three seconds, before letting out a world-weary sigh. It was going to be one of those days, I could already tell.
I scrounged around for a bit, but quickly found the only rechargeable batteries I had were a little too big for the remote. As in, “they weighed a metric ton” too big. I then tried to jury rig a power source using a pair of jumper cables and my rechargeable batteries, but only succeeded in giving myself mild electrical burns.
Finally, I decided maybe, just maybe, it was time to go Outside.
***
It was a more daunting prospect than one might have realized. I hadn’t been outside my bunker in over three years. The last time, it had been to buy a number of prosthetic disguises. I had practiced with them in the mirror at home, but the real question was whether they would fool other people.
I carefully examined my appearance in the mirror. I was wearing padding under my clothes, to give my thin body a more rotund appearance. I’d dusted my face with a pale powder, and finally as a finishing touch affixed a bulbous nose over my own.
The effect would be wasted on most people, as I could count the number of people who would recognize me and still have five fingers left over, but They knew what I looked like.
Before I left, I made sure to gather several hundred thousand dollars from the Vault on level seven, and put it in a suitcase. I had no idea what had gone on in the world above in the last three years, and for all I knew my father’s hoard was now worthless. Better safe than sorry.
Then, I spent the next three hours actually getting out of the bunker. Back when it had been my father’s lair, the process might have taken five minutes. After his death, however, I made some improvements.
I kept the fingerprint and retinal scanners in place at the entrance, but they were a misdirection. Anyone who tried to use them would be met by toxic gas, a hail of machine-gun fire, and then a lot of actual fire. Instead, to get in or out one had to tap an intricate series on the tiled floor with one’s feet. Failing to do so properly would result in a series of high-yield lasers burning the person in question to a crisp.
Then there were the booby traps I’d hidden at various points throughout the upper levels of the bunker complex. Level six, where I lived, was free of them. I figured if my enemies managed to reach there, it was all over anyway.
The entrance to the bunker was hidden underneath an abandoned paint factory. The nearest bus stop was fifteen minutes away and I was already beginning to regret coming Outside by the time I got there.
My shoes were damp, the air smelt too sweet and my fake nose was itching terribly. Still, I endured and caught the next bus into town proper.
Outside hadn’t changed all that much for the better since the last time I’d come out - it was still obnoxiously noisy and filled with people. Cars drove back and forth down a busy street, and the chatter of other humans still filled the air. I stepped out into the road - as if I’d ever use a sidewalk like those sheep.
A car that had been barreling towards me missed at the last second as the driver slammed on the breaks, sending it skidding into a lamppost. The car behind it swerved past me to the other side, crashing into one of incoming vehicles. Both owners immediately jumped out and began yelling at each other - and me, of course, but I ignored them.
I scanned the shops on either side, noting their run-down appearance. I needed a place that sold batteries...any corner store would do. A few cracked advertisement boards showed pictures of products I had no interest in.
Finally, my gaze landed on a worn-down shop titled Chow’s General Goods. It looked promising enough, so I walked inside. It was your standard run-down corner store, selling almost exclusively frozen food, chips, and cigarettes. There were two other people in there when I arrived - an older man and a young woman. I ignored them and immediately went for the counter, where a series of batteries were displayed. I sifted through them quickly, and found what I was looking for.
I straightened, and my hand was on the clasp of my suitcase when three men burst through the door, quickly followed by four more. They were ugly and dirty, each one wearing matching frayed jean jackets and all were carrying pistols. I wrinkled my nose. Bikers. The lowest form of life.
“Get on the ground!” yelled one of the bikers, waving his gun at the three of us. The people behind me ducked and screamed. I sat down cross legged. “If I have to…”
The biker didn’t like that. “The fuck you say?”
I sighed, and held up the string of batteries for him to examine. “Look, I just want to get my shopping done. Did you really have to choose,” I glanced at my watch, “Four o’clock in the afternoon to do this?”
The biker’s face darkened. “Oi, Jim,” he said, gesturing one of his fellows over. “This one thinks he’s funny.”
“Jim” was over six feet tall, crooked teeth and with a military-style buzz cut. He sneered, and punched down at me. I didn’t move and his fist missed wildly. He overbalanced and fell sprawled out on the floor. His eyes were staring at me in shock. I gave him a thin smile.
“Quickness may be the essence of war, but haste without enlightenment only leads to ruin,” I told him solemnly.
Jim’s face reddened and he staggered to his feet. “Are you making fun of me, you little cocksucker?”
I frowned. “No,” I told him honestly. “You just need to work on your technique. Plus, your intimidation factor isn’t exactly all that great.”
If I had been a criminal, I’d have at least put a little effort in. My father had been terrifying.
Jim’s expression turned ugly and he pulled out a pistol and aimed it at my chest. “Guess what happens to smartass cocksuckers like you,” he snarled. His buddy tugged at his shoulder.
“Jim, man, chill, we don’t need the heat.”
“No,” a cultured voice spoke. The group of bikers parted, and a man in a leather jacket walked forward. He was wearing a black devil mask, with twin stylized lightning bolts etched on each cheek. “It’s time we showed this city that the Heaven’s Devils aren’t to be fucked with!”
Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!
His voice ended on a crescendo, and the bikers gave a weak cheer. I could feel the glare behind his mask at their rather unenthusiastic response.
His face turned down towards me. “Execute him.”
Jim aimed the pistol at me with a nasty smile, and pulled the trigger. A second later, he collapsed to the ground, howling in pain as he clutched his shoulder.
Mr. Mask turned towards me sharply, even as the other bikers backed up nervously. “So you’re another Superiorhuman,” he said, his words a sibilant hiss. The effect was kind of ruined as he tried to go an octave too low and his voice cracked.
A nimbus of bright energy began gathering around his hands, and he began laughing. “This is excellent! The death of a Superiorhero will cause this city to know and fear my name! The Angel of Storms and his Heaven’s Devils have come!”
On the last word, he shot a blast of lightning in my direction. It missed completely, hitting the ‘frozen’ section, obliterating the glass panels and spraying ice cream everywhere. I got to my feet as the neon lights above me blew out, sending shards of glass falling to the ground around me. Miraculously - or not - none of the shards hit me.
“What the fuck?” snarled Mask. “How - who are you? Laserblast - no, Archer? Viatron?”
“I’m just trying to buy some batteries,” I said with a sigh. “I knew there was a reason I don’t usually leave my home…”
“Fuck you!” Mask roared as I tried to sidestep around him, firing another blast of electricity at me. It missed again, curving through the air to strike some of his henchmen. There was an ear-curdling scream, which I winced at, and three of the bikers dropped to the floor. They were gently roasted and very dead.
“Holy shitting fuck!” swore Jim, still clutching his shoulder. “Let’s get out of here!”
The remaining gangsters immediately fled, except one.
“Cowards!” screamed Mask, sounding increasingly unhinged. “Get back here!”
The last biker drew a gun and fired at me twice. Half a second later, he and Mr. Mask slumped to the ground, each with a bullet lodged in the back of their skull. I’m not a vindictive person by nature, but I do take people trying to kill me rather personally.
I turned back to Mr. Chow wearily. “So how much were these batteries again?”
Mr. Chow said nothing, his mouth opening and closely silently.
I paused, “You know what, never mind. Here,” I hefted my suitcase onto the counter, opened it and grabbed a fistfull of bills. “That should cover it.”
---
The Detective
“So you’re saying someone killed these goons, and then paid you fifty thousand dollars for a six-pack of batteries?”
The thin asian man nodded quickly. “Yes, my Superior,” he said. “I don’t know what he did, but they killed each other. That is not normal.”
I smiled, to show that I meant him no harm. He relaxed. Inferiors were always nervous around us, always worried that we would take out two thousand years of persecution on them. Others might, but I was not nearly so vindictive. No, the fact the country had been set to right was good enough for me.
“You can keep the money,” I said generously. I was in a good mood, and besides, I made four times that amount in a year. The man’s eyes widened. The average Inferior made around fifteen thousand a year after Liberation Taxes. I’d just handed him years of work on a silver platter.
He bowed deeply. “Thank you, my Superior. You are most kind, an exemplar of Superiority.”
I smiled. “Of course I am. Perhaps one day, you’ll have Superior children yourself.”
“If the Supreme Superior wills it,” he said fervently.
I nodded magnanimously, and left the store. My partner of two weeks was still standing outside the ruined shop and smoking a cigarette disinterestedly.
“Anything?” he said, eyebrow half raised. Flightpath was about fifty-two, with a grab-bag of powers that made him perfect for detective work. Flight, super-hearing and super-vision combined to make one hell of an effective CEM. If it weren’t for the fact he was bone-lazy, of course.
“A Superior’s dead,” I said brusquely. “Turns out the Heaven’s Devils had one of them.”
Both his eyebrows shot up. “That two-bit gang? A Superior?”
I nodded. “The Inferior’s story checks out. Scorch marks everywhere in there, and the grid registered a massive power surge.”
“Still,” Flightpath said skeptically. “You’re saying that he was what...a Superiorvillain? Really? There haven’t been any of those in over four decades.”
“There never were Superiorvillains,” I said sharply. “That word doesn’t exist. It’s meaningless. Making up words like that will get you a visit from an Educator.”
“Right,” Flightpath said, laughing. “Just like there never was a USA, either.”
“There wasn’t,” I snapped, and then collected myself with a sigh. Flightpath was borderline treasonous, speaking unfacts like that. Still, he was Superior, and that gave him a certain amount of leeway with the Department of Education. If he had been an Inferior...who knows?
In retrospect, that was probably why he was stuck at a dead-end job like this one, with low pay and only a Gold-tier benefits plan. Seriously...I was going to have to do something big to move up. I refused to be stuck here, making a paltry two hundred thousand a year.
Suddenly, I had an idea. Flightpath’s unfacts aside, it was unheard of to have a Superior be a criminal. It was in our DNA to be better, smarter, kinder and stronger than Inferiors. It wasn’t their fault, of course, but it explained why their bigotry towards us ran so deep. More than a few scientists argued it was present at the genetic level.
“Maybe the Superior had faulty genes,” I muttered aloud.
Flightpath looked at me askance. “Damn, the Educators really got you good.”
I threw him a withering look. “I received the finest Education the Department could offer,” I told him coldly.
He looked away. “Of course you did,” he muttered. I ignored him.
Either way, the Department of Community Enrichment would likely want me to pull this thread. If the Inferior was telling the truth, then another Superior had been involved in this. It was possible that they were one of the many Superiors that made up society, but they tended to be given title deeds on the upper side of town by the government. It would be rare, and odd, to see one of my brothers and sisters this far into the lower town.
Which meant, it was another rogue Superior. A tingle of excitement ran through me. This could be my big break, a chance to move up in the world. Right now, I was stuck as a Community Enrichment Manager, but this could make or break my career.
I turned to Flightpath. “We’re going to catch this mysterious rogue Superior.”
He hmmed, and puffed on his cigarette. “Sounds exciting. Have fun.”
“Oh no,” I said, “You’re coming with me.”
“Why?” he said. “It’s just a few dead Inferiors, after all.”
I frowned at him. “There’s no need for that,” I said. “They might be hateful bigots, but one day they might have Superior children. It’s happened before. There’s hope for everyone.”
Flightpath sighed. “I like my job,” he whined. “It’s easy, safe, and nobody notices me. The sort of thing you want me to do is hard, dangerous, and will absolutely get me noticed.”
“If you don’t, I’ll get you fired.” I said. “You never do any work, and spend more time smoking than actually trying to solve cases.”
He chuckled, but didn’t sound very amused. “Getting fired is the sort of thing that happens to Inferiors. When was the last time one of us lost our job?”
That...was actually a good point. A few years ago, a former classmate of mine, Blazing Chairman, had accidentally messed up the safety protocols for a mine he was running. Scores of UnEducated had died, and he’d been promoted laterally. Last I heard, he was running part of the Department of Social Harmony.
I tried a different tack. “I’ll tell the Educators about your treason.”
Flightpath eyed me warily. “Come on, that was just a joke.”
“Well I didn’t perceive it that way,” I said stroppily. “It offended my sensibilities as a loyal Superior to the cause of Liberation.”
My partner dropped his cigarette and crushed it under a gold-studded leather boot. “Fine, fine,” he said. “I’ll help you find this rogue Superior...at least until the Department of Education bans the use of ‘rogue’.”
“The Department of Education doesn’t ban anything,” I reminded him. “Educators simply exist to help us discern between truth and lies,” I gestured towards him to pick me, “Now come on. Let’s go for a spin around the block.”
This was my big break. I just needed to grab this opportunity with both hands. If I had to drag Flightpath along with me, kicking and screaming, then that’s simply how it had to be.