Seattle Vance
“So Mason was a little more powerful than I expected,” I remarked, flipping through the TV. Every channel was filled with the wreckage that had fallen over the city, news reporters were crawling over the goriest scenes. There was one particular incident that was being passed around. A homeless guy had made his shelter in a used car on the street. He turned it into halfway between a tent, a domicile, and a toilet.
Anyways, a burning piece of wreckage struck his shabby little shelter, and he got trapped inside. All his buddies gathered around, recording his nasty death on their phones. There were seven or eight different angles as everyone stood uselessly like it was a fucking campfire.
I flicked to the next channel, disgusted.
The fires had largely been left to burn out on their own. There were many areas of City 57 that went without emergency services, and sadly, those happened to be the ones that were hit the hardest by Mason’s flying antics. But besides, no one would be bothered to clean up anyway. The whole city was holding its breath, waiting for what Adam would break next. Why go and put out fires when the whole block might be leveled tomorrow?
Having fought in Cairo, I knew the mood very well. When abnormals get involved, pretty much everyone just sort of… stops. They lay down and take it because they know there’s no point. I mean, what are you supposed to do when Omni-Dude can demolish half the city, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it? People give up. Suicides skyrocket. People die before they’re even dead.
I suppose I couldn’t blame them for that. But what pissed me off were the other ones, the people who thought they could profit off the situation. I flicked to a channel where a newsman was red-faced, screaming into the camera as he shouted threats to the new public menace. He was making it look like Mason had launched a personal crusade against the city, already rallying people around the burnt guy as if he was a martyr. And there were a thousand more journalists just like him, each one with their own angle to whip up the frenzy.
Maybe Mason had a vendetta. If he did, I honestly couldn’t blame him. Seeing the whole of City 57 looking to profit over the people killed in the crossfire made me want to puke.
I flipped to another channel. This one was showing the CCTV footage of a Maccie’s fast-food restaurant. The fuzzy footage showed Adam walking in and choking out a random customer. Swiping a burger, he then flicked the robot into the kitchen and walked out with a shit eating grin on his face.
“Enjoy it.” I nodded. Truly, I hoped he did. He didn’t have much time left.
“Fucking hell.” I finally heard Joshua’s voice. He had been hunched over his computer monitors, silently scrolling the city and searching for Mason. “You unleashed fucking Captain Eagle 2.0. What was in that enzyme?”
I shrugged my shoulders. I didn’t know if it was something Joker didn’t tell me, or whether that was just the lucky roll of the dice. Enzymes had different effects on different people. You could be assured of the powers it would manifest, but the strength was shaky depending on the compatibility of the individual. Mason might very well be approaching a class six in terms of raw power. However, the stronger he was, the quicker his body was going to burn out. When the deterioration started, he was going to go downhill fast.
“You think you can find him?” I asked. “I need to be able to reach out if I’m going to get him onboard.”
“Oh yeah, don’t worry about that. Our boy isn’t exactly discreet. But what are you going to say to convince him to attack the ASA?”
I sighed. I’ve told a lotta lies over the years, and it kills the feeling in you after a while. You strangle a part of yourself when you’re dishonest. And what’s worse, you get mixed up in the head. You start believing your own bullshit, and then that dirty lie starts to become the real you. And to tell you the truth, I didn’t know where the real Seattle Vance began and ended anymore.
But this particular lie felt nasty. It rubbed me the wrong way, like some grit that was stuck in my brain. I’ve done a lotta things to a lotta people, but I’ve never lied to a dying man. And of all my sins, that was the one which felt like I was crossing a line the real Seattle Vance never would.
“I’m going to paint a big red bullseye on it,” I said, feeling guilty as fuck. “Man’s going to be desperate soon. I tell him what he needs is in that building.”
Joshua glanced back at me. “You’re going to lie to super hobo? And what happens when he finds out?”
“Hopefully, I’ll be long gone.”
“You better hope so,” Joshua warned. “It took a nuclear war to put Captain Eagle down. You don’t want to be on the business end of this guy.”
“I’ll try to keep that in mind.” I joked.
…
Everything felt squalid, and it wasn’t just because I knew my plan was as shabby as a cardboard rent-a-box taped over with duct tape. There was a mass in my gut that just didn’t want to go away, and it made me uncomfortable as I walked invisibly down the shantytown streets of City 57.
Every once in a while, I get “what the fuck are you doing?” moments that make me self-reflect. Was I really going to storm the ASA building with a bunch of randos and explosives and just hope I made it out with the flash drive? There were so many ifs, ands, and buts that the scheme felt more like a fever dream than a to-do list. I was the guy who didn’t wear a seat belt because he was betting on getting ejected in the car accident.
I was sure Mr. Greene only agreed because he knew it was a suicide mission, and he wanted to kill two birds with one stone: killing me and framing CitySec. But that rushed rationale I fed him sounded like Swiss cheese the more and more I considered it. Hey, I’m not exactly great at coming up with master schemes while a gun is pointed at my head.
But then why did he agree? Why did things go my way?
Questions. Questions.
I don’t know how powerful or wide reaching the Index was. I don’t think anyone truly did. The organization was so heavily compartmentalized that no one knew the full scope. I knew they worked internationally, and I knew their services were solid. But remembering that vault filled with locked safe boxes, I got the feeling the organization hadn’t flexed its true muscles yet. And when it did, the whole of the Democratic Union was going to feel it.
Going visible again in a discreet corner, I stepped out in front of a Mexican restaurant. I say “restaurant”, but it was really a garbage heap turned kitchen.
I’ve been to a lot of slums—they’re practically everywhere in the Democratic Union. But you get a certain sense of geography after a while. A lot of places up north preferred to use cobbled-together shipping containers. After all, they’re easy to transport, easy to use, easy to forget that you’re living in a glorified fucking scrap heap.
This place was a maze of one to two story containers, their colors all long faded. They were all welded together to make proper houses and the like. Most didn’t have doors, only tarps thrown over entrances. Dirty faces hardly paid me any attention as they squatted and waited out the winter. Graffiti was everywhere, the only art form that still mattered in the 2090s. You know, I was a kid when the last of the spray cans were finally used up. Since then, apparently a whole market sprung up scavenging paint, scraping them out from the interiors of houses or raiding crumbling factories for chemical leftovers.
In bright blue coloring, the word Andele! was written on a shipping container. Dog was being cooked inside, though if you’re like me, any burning meat smells delicious. A pale kid was waiting at the entrance on a stool. He was how I knew I found the right place. A low priority in a place like this? It was a flag that this place was under certain ownership.
He looked up at me with tired blue eyes and nodded. Jumping off the stool, he led me inside and towards the back of the slophouse. There was a discreet storage closet with a false back. The boy pulled on a lever disguised as a shelf, and the wall slid back to reveal a staircase leading down.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
The boy took me through a quick series of concrete tunnels that I assumed used to be part of the subway system back when City 57 was New York.
Most of the network had been destroyed or caved in or otherwise flooded, as no one could afford to maintain it anymore. It became the underground realm of entrepreneurs like Joshua, looking to capitalize on all the ancient infrastructure. And from all appearances, the Index had done a good job for themselves.
These tunnels were only a little less advanced than Joshua’s set up. Electric lighting was strung along the walls. The floors and walls were all immaculate, recently poured concrete. And I couldn’t help but notice discreet explosives and turrets tucked away in corners. I swear I felt I was walking through one of the bunkers in Iceland rather than the dilapidated ruins of the old world.
The boy opened one last steel door, and I stepped into a former subway control center refurbished into a private meeting room.
I don’t know, meeting room isn’t quite the right word to capture it. There was a gun rack stocked full of assault rifles and a minibar. I chuckled to myself and shook my head. In the center of the room was a big oak table with a projection interface which was appreciably more high tech than my encounter with Mr. Greene.
The three individuals picked for the mission had already arrived. They all had codenames to hide their real identities, but I could tell who was who at first glance.
Raven was a dark-haired woman with brown eyes and a sharp face. She wore a similarly black jumpsuit that covered her thin frame. I couldn’t tell what age she was, but she appeared to be in her late thirties. Her superpower was a class one telepathy. But from reading the description of her ability, I would’ve preferred to call it mental interrogation. Sure, she could only use it on one person, and it took some time, but she could shred your mind apart until she got the information she needed. Despite having such an… unpleasant superpower, she didn’t seem as dour a person I expected. Just a straight professional.
August was a younger man with combed white hair. He had a round face that looked somewhat transparent, almost like it had a layer of frost on it. He was wearing an oversized blue hoodie and jeans. His ability was a class two temperature control. Specifically, he could freeze things within a short radius. He was the only one who looked like he was enjoying himself, and he had a grin that might’ve been annoying to some, but I found it rather endearing.
The last on the list was my personal pick. Dust was a class one phaser, meaning he could make parts of himself intangible along with small objects. He was the youngest out of all of us—maybe fifteen years old. Wearing a t-shirt and a jacket and some jogging pants, he wasn’t exactly much to look at.
But, to be fair, I hadn’t been either at that age. Some might rightfully take moral umbrage in putting a kid in danger, but that was the day-to-day of every single person in this room. We all got our starts running dangerous jobs. That was how life was if you wanted to live outside of Gen Pop. You did the things others couldn’t, and you got good at it. The life—and often death—of a survivor was the only kind afforded to people like us.
All of them looked at me as I entered the room. The pale kid shut the door behind me, and left us in private.
Mr. Greene elected not to make an appearance. Again, that compartmentalization of the Index. Members often didn’t know who the bossman was, and it struck me at that moment that Mr. Greene himself might not be the bossman. Sure, he talked a big game, but who was I to know if someone else was pulling his strings? Either way, I saw a discreet camera in a dark corner of the ceiling.
The message was clear though. This was still their operation. I was just the guy who happened to be the face of it.
“Nice to finally meet you all in person,” I said as I stepped up to the oak table. “For this gig, just refer to me as the Ghost.” I winked.
Both August and Dust snickered while Raven crossed her arms.
“You should’ve already been filled in on the general details, but in case you haven’t, our mission is a frame job on the regional ASA headquarters in City 57. We expect moderate to heavy security, and I’ll be arranging some muscle to provide a distraction. Our job is to get in and make a mess of things. We’ll be planting explosives in the garage and two separate server rooms. Mr. Greene will also be providing us some malware stolen from a CitySec hacker farm. Make sure to smile for the cameras, ladies and gentlemen. As of today, you’re getting new identities as poached CitySec talent.”
That last part was the finishing touch by the Index. They had their hands in a large share of the identification fraud market here. My team were now filed into government databases as on CitySec payroll as low-cost foreign staff—which was how CitySec secretly imported most of their mercenaries. By the time we were through, they were going to look as guilty as all sin.
“What about the second part? The part about stealing a list?” Dust asked.
He had a pensive look on his face. They all did to an extent. No one here was stupid enough to think this was going to be easy. But Dust had trouble concealing it like the others. I could already tell this was his first big job.
Would rather have not put a kid like him in his position, but he had a unique power that made him invaluable to me. He was my personal emergency button.
“Objective number two is something called the Skeleton List,” I told them. “Consider it a file that has all the names too scary for your average blacklist. I have good reason to believe it’s in the ASA headquarters here in City 57.
“From the details, we’re only getting paid for the frame job. Why should we care?” Raven crossed her arms.
“If we get that list, I’ll personally pay you all triple,” I said. “We’re talking about some of the most sensitive info in the Democratic Union, and I’ve got more than a few prospective buyers. You’ll never have to work another day in your life again.”
I took a moment to let that sink for them.
“All right,” August perked up. “What’s the specs? I assume we’re not just walking in there.”
“Course not.” I booted up the holo projector, and it displayed a map of City 57.
I confess, I’ve always wondered what all the Old American cities used to look like in their heyday—before the bombs. Though few people remember that the nukes actually did very little damage, comparatively speaking. Hundreds of missiles had malfunctioned during the conflict, most of them launching decades after their expiration date. More than a few fell from the sky like metal duds. It was the people who really tore down the old world, stripping it of everything it was worth.
City 57’s story was not an unusual one. New York was hit with the equivalent of several low-grade dirty bombs instead of an outright nuclear blast. It was the chaos that killed most people, not the radioactive fallout. For City 57, Manhattan was rendered unsafe to live and left to the gangs who remained in the poisonous ruin. After order was restored, civilization became what was formerly Brooklyn and Staten Island. Queens became the dumping ground of the new society, and The Bronx was the dumping grounds of the dumping ground. Outside that was the new America, large stretches of wasteland with various pockets of civilization interconnected by what remained of the highways.
I zoomed the map on the ASA headquarters, smack right in the middle of the renovated sections of City 57. It was part of the “reconstruction” bill that was supposed to bring the Democratic Union back into eminence. Instead, it amounted to a bunch of ugly skyscrapers and not much else.
“I’ve obtained schematics of the building as well as the layout of the surrounding area. As you might already know, the ASA headquarters was purposefully built over a series of tunnels now used as containment chambers for abnormals.”
“We enter here.” I pointed to a building that was currently being used as a homeless encampment. “There’s a maintenance shaft which connects to the lower floors of the headquarters. From there, it’s a matter of getting passcodes to the elevator.” I looked over to Raven as she nodded along.
“After that, we split up. We’ll be dressed as security guards. Dust, you’ll be a janitor. Once we’re safely in the elevator, we’ll then proceed to our positions. August, you and Raven will go to the security room on the thirteenth floor.” I zoomed in further to the floor and highlighted the location. “August is going to use his freezing power to break into the room, and Raven, you’ll be interrogating for the know how to work the system. You’re going to turn off the building’s defenses and give us a bird’s eye angle from the surveillance system.”
“Access to the security room is going to have its own passcodes not known to general personnel. If we break in, that’s going to set off major alarms.” August pointed out.
“And that’s where our muscle comes in. I trust you’ve all heard of our new class five roaming the streets? He’s going to attack the ASA headquarters head on. Once you are in position, I’ll alert him for the go-ahead. You’ll be in complete control of the security room, and by the time anyone thinks to check, we’ll be long gone.”
August nodded.
“Meanwhile, Dust and I will be planting the explosives. We’ll start with the garage as we’re least likely to run into trouble there. That’ll give you time to take the security room, and you can watch out for us as we proceed to the server rooms. After we finish, me and Dust will proceed here.”
I pointed at the twenty-fifth floor. The blue room on the map was officially labeled as a storage closet. It was a bit bigger than one would expect, but there was nothing suspicious about it. There were no in-depth security systems or anything of the sort. That was probably the point. Those in the need-to-know could walk in, retrieve what information they needed, and leave without anyone noticing. Even their own personnel would be clueless.
“There is going to be a bullet-proof case disguised as a circuit breaker. Dust is going to reach in, snag the goods, and then we all egress back out the way we came.”
The others all looked reasonably satisfied with the plan. It wasn’t without its risks, but everything this dangerous came with risks, and the payout would be more than worth it. Only Dust still looked somewhat disquieted.
“What about Adam Mason? You didn’t outline a plan for him, and… shouldn’t he be here? I mean, what happens to him? What’s his exit plan?”
I opened my mouth, surprised at the kid’s perceptiveness. He had a head on his shoulders, that was for sure. I wanted to brush his question off or make a quick lie, but for some reason, my smart mouth decided now was a good time to clam up.
Maybe it was another line I thought I would never cross, another lie I thought I would never have to tell. It’s just… it made something in me hesitate. I don’t know why lying to this kid came harder to me than beating Mason within an inch of his life. Maybe I just don’t like hurting people when they can’t see it coming. Doesn’t feel right at all. People deserve to know the truth. If you’re going to hurt a man, take away everything he’s ever loved, then you should do it to his face. And you should tell him why you’re doing it.
I never had that chance, and that’s why I could never let it go. That’s why I was going to get that list. That’s why the ASA was going to pay in blood.
“He’ll figure his own way out,” I finally told him.