If there was one thing Joseph could say about the Company specialist, Deathless, it was that he valued efficiency. Before Joseph could even open his mouth to invoke his rights, the air was humming with dozens of drones that swept in from the north, staying low in altitude but high enough to clear power lines and roofs. They were cross-shaped machines about the size of an average adult, and they used a combination of rotors and, if the tickling sensation in Joseph’s nasal cavity and behind his eyes was any indication, some kind of semi-shielded grav tech to maneuver. He followed their movements with his eyes, making note of the patterns they wove, concentric circles starting from the perimeter of the hotel and working inward. Once in a while, a drone would stop and strobe with a series of camera flashes as it found something significant that would go into its report.
In the parking lot, two of the drones used laser cutting tools to break into the foam that had formed around the poor guy Joseph had hit with the splash from his fireball. They hovered above the big white blob like wasps, dipping down to deliver bright ultra precise stings that left afterimages in Joseph’s vision like the torch of an arc welder.
Joseph forced himself to look away, and when he did, Deathless was there, bent at the waist to bring his gaze low, eye level with Joseph and uncomfortably close.
“Do not worry for his safety. I will have him out in under two minutes,” he said, never taking his dead eyes from Joseph’s. The mouth moved while Deathless talked, but, despite how close the two of them were, Joseph felt no air escaping the cyborg’s mouth. Instead the sound seemed to come from his entire body all at once.
Joseph took a step back more out of reflex at having his personal space violated than anything, but apparently Deathless took that as a possible precursor to fleeing or fighting. One of the drones swooped down and flipped on its edge to hover only about 6 inches behind Joseph’s head, the tickling sensation increased ten fold until something gave way and a trickle of wet blood fell out of his nose. A slight blue-ish glow bled from the machine’s straight edges where the armor plates met the fittings, confirming Joseph’s grav propulsion theory. An armored compartment the size of Joseph’s forearm slid open to allow a slithering metal tube with a large gauge needle on its tip to coil itself in preparation to deliver a strike.
He looked back and forth from the cyborg to the drone a couple times, resisting the temptation to wipe the blood trickling down his mouth with his sleeve. Deathless was making a play at intimidation. That was obvious. The way the guy moved, Joseph would have no chance of escape even without the drones everywhere. No, Deathless wanted the object of his curiosity cornered and off balance. Joseph was under no obligation to cooperate, however.
He squared his shoulders and tried to come off as unbothered. “You’ve pinged me, so you know who I am. You arrived as a group of hostiles were trying to give me a jumpstart. Are you sure you're directing your questions at the right people?” Joseph asked, trying to keep his tone even.
Deathless didn’t give him any room to breathe. The dead skin of the thing’s face lost its smile and its eye lights dimmed, but that didn’t really reduce the creep factor too much.
“These men are not fit to answer questions just now,” he explained matter-of-factly.
As if to punctuate the sentence, Tattoo, still hanging upside down by a thin cable attached to the hotel’s roof, let out a panicked “No! No!” then screamed as one of the drones working on cutting him down used two of its coils to restrain his arms and a third coil to jam a needle into the base of his skull. Tattoo’s screams cut off abruptly, and white spittle oozed out of his mouth as his eyes rolled back into his head. With their target pacified, the drones, again, set to cutting through the wire wrapped around the thug’s ankle and bring him down to the ground. “Answers from them will be forthcoming. You, however, are not being detained and therefore are a priority witness,” Deathless stated, lifting the skin that would normally hold an eyebrow.
When Joseph didn't immediately answer, Deathless seemed to take that as the go-ahead to continue. "What were you doing here, attempting to gain access to a person of interest in an ongoing case that you have been, on no uncertain terms, told to stand down from?" Again, his words held no outright hostility, but how perfectly pronounced and enunciated they were made the question off-putting.
“Patty’s a client.” Joseph shrugged. The question was straight forward, but Joseph's attempt at an answer was not. The way the cyborg stared intently into Joseph's eyes as he asked his questions made the super suspect he was being gauged on more than just his words.
Nearly inaudible mechanical whirring could be heard as the face splitting smile returned to Deathless' expression. “I did not realize comic and toy peddlers made house calls.”
Now, that was just mean. People like what he sold. Apparently, having a large part of your anatomy replaced by machines precluded you from experiencing joy as well. “I also sell books and games,” he replied mockingly, though he couldn't deny there was a little real defensiveness slipped in there. “I’m not sure what you’re after here, big guy. I live here, and I care about what happens to my neighbors.”
"What I am after is the Why. Why are you here when you could have just made a phone call? Why are they here?" He gestured with one of his long, spindly arms to encompass the two unconscious men on the ground behind him. "Why are you in the parking lot instead of upstairs with Ms. Johansen and Ms. Maldonado? And why did you engage these men instead of calling for help?"
All good questions. Ones he wasn't prepared to answer, if the tall metal man had the capacity to tell truth from lie with accuracy.
Joseph put a hand on his chin as he considered. "Did you want those answered one at a time or were some of them rhetorical?"
"Why are you here?" Deathless asked in exactly the same way he originally uttered the words.
"I'm a concerned citizen with an AHAB card. I wanted to check on Patty."
Deathless tilted his head to the side for a full second before projecting an alien, artificial laugh. “You are attempting to swim in dangerous waters, Matchstick.”
Joseph ignored the barb at his powers, having heard it all before. “And what waters are those?”
“Do not insult my intelligence by trying to deny that you are here to track down the man that attacked you in Ironside.”
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Deathless didn’t come out and say it, but it certainly sounded like he knew that Banks had spotted the men searching for Joseph downtown. He’d have to tread carefully here.
“Johansen’s AI saw a couple suspicious characters downtown, and we decided we didn’t want to look for trouble amidst so many people.”
“So you came here. An odd choice considering the point of a hotel is to stack people like cordwood to maximize capacity over a small geographical footprint. Furthermore, you were in trouble and decided to bring your problems to Patricia Maldonado’s front door.”
The drones, having freed and drugged their targets, floated over to the grassy patch behind Deathless and lined up the unconscious bodies. Four of them. Apparently, Joseph’s ‘always assume there are more’ maxim still held weight. He wondered if this one was a getaway driver or something. The drones then set about using their metal tentacle arms to rifle through the men's pockets and take their shoes, belts, wallets, and the like.
Again, Joseph played it safe. “We knew Banks would send his report, and we didn’t want to escalate things. We just came here to check on Patty.”
“You have given me nothing but partial truth for this entire conversation, but that was the first outright lie you’ve told.”
Joseph narrowed his eyes and took a step forward, nearly coming nose to nose with the machine man. “Buddy, I’m under no obligation to tell you anything. I’m AHAB just like you are.”
Deathless' eyes narrowed and his mouth twisted into an exaggerated sneer. “And you think that qualifies you to play superhero, Mr. Jaeger?” The drone with the needle edged closer to Joseph’s head, and enough that the wash from the grav propulsion made his hair stand up on end and part unnaturally. Joseph stood his ground though. Despite the posturing and the threats, he was pretty sure Deathless was restrained by the law. Any damage Joseph caused wasn’t immediately grounds for detention, much less arrest, and he was under no obligation to answer questions from another super unless directly ordered by a higher authority. Despite what the Company thought of itself, it was not considered a higher authority, though it had those with said power on their speed dial.
Johansen’s voice cut into the conversation as she jogged up from the east side of the building. “I see you two have met,” she called as she came to a stop perpendicular to the two supers squaring off face to face. “You’re not questioning my super without his liaison present, are you?”
Deathless' eyes never left Joseph's. Now that they were this close, he could see the mechanical irises as they constantly shifted and made adjustments to their positioning and focus. "I think I see the Why now," he whispered to Joseph. Then the specialist straightened himself until he stood to his full height at about 9 feet. “That would be against protocol, Ms. Johansen. I am bound by our employer's directives the same way you are supposed to be.”
Then the black clad specialist addressed them both. “Now that you both are here, let me clear the air.” The cyborg seemed to lose some of his edge, backing up and giving Joseph some space while the menacing drone that had been crowding Joseph flew off to help the others do what they needed to do as well.
“I know your type, Ms. Johansen. You are young and new to field work, and you have a misguided desire to see your name in print alongside your assignment's. Normally a good driver in one's career if properly harnessed. However, you were told to drop this case and focus on the foundations of your relationship with your super, but you have never been told ‘no’ in your life. Therefore, you decided that despite the vast gulf of experience and, quite frankly, competence between you and your superiors, you would investigate the incident at the hospital on your own. You saw that you were being hunted, and you decided to bring that trouble right to the family of the suspects’ target instead of calling for backup as you should have. For this reason, you will be leaving tonight on the flight I have booked for you."
Johansen opened her mouth to protest, but Deathless rolled over her.
"Your AI will give you the details when it arrives to pick you up. You will be on the plane to receive your reprimand in person when you land in Washington D.C.”
Outrage invaded Johansen’s demeanor. Her shoulders stiffened and her face reddened as the words piled on.
“I am not the one reprimanding you, Ms. Johansen, though I would be fully within my power to do so, and I would be much less gentle if I had my way. Save your petulant flailing for someone paid to deal with such things. Your orders come from the top. What you have done in your short career to merit such attention I don’t know, but someone believes a period of reflection will be good for you. Perhaps they have determined that the only way to impress upon you the gravity of your position is to slow you down and force you to go at your employer’s pace instead of your own.”
Deathless’ eyes narrowed and some of the glow came back to them. The buzzing of the drones crescendoed as they all gathered in a constantly shifting swarm overhead until almost nothing else could be heard except for them and the cyborg’s next words. “As for you, Jaeger. My orders have nothing to do with you, as you are, technically, an AHAB asset. However, your status as a super is more of a function of charity than a statement of confidence in your abilities. Your capabilities rate somewhere on the level of a wealthy debutante that changed her eye color with gene therapy. The fact that your power is the way it is might be because unfortunate circumstances or weakness of character, but that is no excuse to insert yourself into conflicts far beyond your capabilities. Stay out of my way, and I will be out of your life quickly. Continue to put innocents in danger with amateur bullshit, and I will bury you. Is that understood?”
Joseph wanted to tell his fellow super what he could bury and where, but he didn’t. The fact that Deathless considered him weak and contemptible meant that his cover was still intact, and the only reason Joseph was angry was his selfish desire to prove himself to a soulless corpo he'd just met. Besides, Deathless had just handed him a golden ticket, a chance to get out of town and take care of business in New Mexico.
It was galling that Johansen was the only one being punished for something they'd both agreed to do, though. It may have been Johansen's idea, but Joseph had jumped into it with gusto, and, if he was being honest with himself, was excited at not having to work a case alone. The tendons in his neck tightened, and his hands balled into fists in preparation to do something stupid.
Then he swallowed his pride and nodded, forcing his muscles to relax and allowing his shoulders to droop, adopting some of his meek personality he saved for the psych evaluators. He hoped he looked sufficiently cowed.
If Deathless thought his change in temperament was in any way significant, he gave no indication. He spread his arms, and his drones came down to wrap their metal tentacles around his limbs and torso, their grav engine wash's blue light intensifying until Deathless was only visible in silhouette as they lifted the metal super off the ground. Then Joseph and Johansen watched Deathless and his four dangling prisoners fly off to the north, past the treeline and out of sight.
The two of them stayed there as the procession flew off into the Montana morning until the whine of the drones could no longer be heard. When Joseph turned back to Johansen, her face had a hard look to it as if she'd steeled herself to take her punishment already. She was still staring off into the distance.
"I have a flight to catch." Was all she said, but Joseph could tell she wanted to say more.
Joseph wanted to say more too, but his life didn't have room that kind of honesty yet. Perhaps if things changed, he'd be ready. "Sorry," was all he could say.
"Don't be. Just don't do anything heroic while I'm gone, alright?" she pleaded with a little laugh forced through a clenched jaw. "Or if you do, catch it on video."
"No heroics," he declared with a raised hand. "I swear."
No heroics. The world's heroes already had their chance to end Gull. Now, it was Joseph's turn.