Seattle Vance

I took a long draw of the cigarette in that dilapidated office atrium. Outside, the rain drizzled quietly on the empty street. The dim sky cast grey shadows throughout the ruined building. The only spark of color was the soft orange embers I held from my fingers.

It wasn’t bad yet, but it was going to be. The sullen patter was only the beginning. The anger of the storm was approaching, and it would strike soon. I hoped to have the flash drive in hand before then.

The others were already in the tunnels, searching for the maintenance shaft into the ASA headquarters. The homeless, thankfully, hadn’t been an issue. They retreated to the upper floors for fear of flooding. That left us with much of the run of the place. While the others searched, I elected to be the one to stay behind and keep watch.

It wasn’t for any practical reason. But I refused to do any job before I had my last cigarette. It was a ritual I needed to do—kinda like a last meal. Back in Cairo, I saw men get disintegrated inside the blink of an eye.

That was just the way the world worked now. There was no warning or heads up. Sometimes you were gone so instantly it was almost like the reaper taking you in your sleep. You never get used to it, but being scared stiff wasn’t an option either. When you went against Supes—which we might be doing—nanoseconds mattered. Usually, nanoseconds were all you were going to get.

From this point onward, I was a dead man walking. Any million things could and probably would go wrong, but they were guaranteed to get worse if I hesitated. If I was too busy shaking in my boots, that was just going to get everyone killed.

I found the only way I could shut that side of me off was by telling myself I was already dead. There was nothing to fear and nothing to lose except failing the mission.

But I couldn’t do that without one last puff of smoke. One last guilty pleasure, I suppose. A funeral service for a dead man walking.

I didn’t hear Dust as he approached, but I turned my head as I noticed his presence. I think that spooked him a little. It was clear he kept himself quiet on purpose, smart, given his age. He drew back down the dark hallway.

“We found it.”

My time was up.

I cracked a smile. “You nervous?”

Dust thought for a moment and then grinned back. “Yeah.”

“Me too.” I put out the cigarette on a nearby wall and flicked the stub away. “It’s a good thing to be a little nervous. It’s a tool. It helps keep you alert. Just don’t let it cloud your head, then it becomes a weakness.”

Dust was wearing an ASA janitor uniform. It was almost comical on someone that young. But maybe that was my parents talking. They had living memories of a world where one could afford to have a childhood, and they tried to pass something of that onto me. But today was a different world.

We didn’t get to be the people they got to be.

I grabbed my M4 where I had leaned it up against the wall. “That thing I asked you to do. Can you do it?”

Dust nodded. Taking his hand, he reached for and then into his abdomen. His hand phased through clothing and flesh and then it came out with the smallest of flip phones. He put it back inside a second later.

I smiled. I ran with a few phasers back in my childhood. The ones I knew were a bit more powerful, but what every phaser eventually learned was that they were their own best hiding place. They made the best thieves because no one thought or wanted to open them up.

“I still don’t understand why I have to keep it hidden like this,” Dust asked. “Shouldn’t I just place the call when trouble hits?”

“If trouble hits.” I slung the M4 over my shoulder. “You’re not going to get that chance. You go up against a class three, the only question is whether he wants to take you alive. That phone is for what comes after, when the ball is in our court. That is when people like us can turn the tables.”

I followed Dust down the dark hallway and down several sets of stairs into the basement. We turned on our flashlights as we passed by forgotten rooms filled with dust and debris. The concrete walls were cracked and splitting open. The water trickled everywhere, and there were pools of fetid filth. We covered our noses as we walked back.

We finally came to a long, dingy hallway. Raven and August were standing over an open ventilation duct. It had been part of the old infrastructure before it was renovated and renovated again, a holdover that no one had bothered to remove.

“It’s about twenty feet down and then a left,” Raven said as we approached. “Then we’re in.”

I crouched down over the square opening. It only had room for a single person at a time. “I sure hope none of you are claustrophobic.”

August shrugged. “Only on the way back.”

I went prone and crawled in. I turned off my flashlight. It would’ve been a bitch to hold it, and I knew I probably didn’t want to see what I was wriggling through, anyway. And after this, the next step on our little heist were the containment chambers.

Of course, I knew what to expect. They were little more than pits big enough to squeeze three or four kids. Covered with a thick slab of metal, the point was to give them no room to use their powers. Keep them underfed and exhausted—to the brink of death—so they don’t have the energy to fight back. Most couldn’t anyway. The kids thrown in the pits were largely class ones and twos and maybe a three here and there. Fours and fives got the deprivation tank, which would be on a lower floor.

I wondered if any of them ever escaped and found this little passage to freedom. Probably not, as the ASA would’ve patched this hole in their security. Still, I wanted to believe. I wanted those kids to have some hope. Even in the pits, if you’re just clever and resourceful enough, there’s always a way out.

It was tragic I couldn’t afford to be that way out today.

I took a left and got to the end. There was a flimsy grate looking over a small storage closet. It was filled with boxes and janitorial equipment. I banged the thin metal off and dropped down. I did my best to clean myself off as the others dropped down with me. It was tight, but we all managed to get through fine.

Raven silently opened the door, and I followed her out into a LED lit corridor. It was a sterile, white hallway—something you would see at a hospital. Everything looked and smelled scrubbed with chemicals.

Stolen story; please report.

We knew from the blueprints that we were currently in one of the auxiliary hallways that branched off from the main tunnel network. The whole thing was a spider’s nest that burrowed downward, with the most powerful being kept at the bottom. We walked down the hallway as if we were supposed to be there, which was far more difficult than one might think.

The place was surprisingly empty, but we found our mark easily enough. He was patrolling one of the containment chambers, a long room with a low ceiling. I tried to ignore the slabs of metal as I approached and tapped him on the shoulder.

I was surprised how skinny he was. He looked like an impish man more than anything else. I remembered them being a lot larger, but maybe that kid me talking. He turned around.

I smiled. “Hey.”

Before he had a moment to react further, Raven placed her hands on his head. A blue light glowed from her hands and the man went limp, dropping his gun to the ground. I had scanned for cameras before we entered the room, but I checked again. There were none. I guess nobody wanted to risk footage of this particular room getting out.

I took a glance out in the corridor to make sure no one was coming our way before turning back to the room. Again, besides the slabs of metal, it didn’t seem particularly malicious. It looked like an enlarged hospital room. There were cabinets and refrigerators full of drugs against one wall. There were tables with paperwork and forms. The LED lighting made it all look sickly and sterile—but not evil.

It was a room. That was the only impression made on my mind. If not for my memories, I would’ve thought nothing of it. I walked over to one of the slabs of metal and put my hand on it. It was heavy and large enough that it muffled any sound from below.

I was always disturbed at how silent it all was. One of the most terrible places in the world, and it was so quiet you could pass by without ever noticing.

I waited as Raven gathered the info she needed. It wasn’t long.

“When will he wake up?” I lightly kicked his unconscious body.

“A few hours, but I don’t want anyone finding him. What do we do?” She asked.

I glanced over to the pits. There was one with the metal slab uncovered, empty, to be used for later. We shoved him in and covered the hole.

We met up with Dust and August. They were carrying duffle bags filled with the explosives. I took the one from August as we proceeded to take the elevator. The doors closed on us as Raven punched in the garage.

“So I guess this is it?” August said. “We’re not going to see each other until the mission is completed?”

“I guess so,” I said.

“Any last words then?” August joked.

I grinned at him. “Nothing can possibly go wrong.”

The doors opened to a large parking garage and me and Dust filed out. August waved us goodbye as we began strolling over to several columns and hiding the explosives near the floor. The parking garage wasn’t anything to look at either. The only abnormal thing about it was how many armored trucks there were. But there were also a lot of normal cars, like… for regular people.

I glanced around as I set a brick of C4 on the ground and tucked it into a discreet corner. I expected we would have to play it easy, acting like we were just doing our jobs for some people walking around… but there was no one. Whole place was empty. It just gave me the creeps, the only sound was the faint patter of the storm outside. Our footsteps echoed in the large space as we silently did our work, uninterrupted by so much as a single passerby.

It was so easy that we were done much earlier than I expected. We were walking back to the elevator in just under ten minutes. I knew the plan was to wait for Raven and August, but there wasn’t much point standing around and looking suspicious.

I punched in for the elevator. Dust glanced at me, but he didn’t say a word. We would ride it up to our next floor and find a good spot to hide in until Raven and August were finished. As the doors opened again to an office hallway, I had to stifle a groan.

I don’t know what I was constantly wanting from this place, maybe something like an evil lair with hooks and chains hanging from the ceiling. But it wasn’t that. It was an office building just like the rest. We passed by banal people and banal rooms as we looked for a quiet room to wait for the signal. I paused as we went by a printer.

It wasn’t one of those fancy printers with a sleek design. It was one of those older, bulky printers from ancient times. It was one of those machines you found so often in the Democratic Union—some clumsy device weathered with age and disrepair. It was so old and so ill-maintained that it looked held together with nothing but spit, rubber bands, and duct-tape. Some guy in a white shirt and tie was struggling to get a form printed out.

So this is it. This is the heart of all evil.

I knew every single ASA regional headquarters looked something like this as well, a network of trite offices scattered throughout the country. And the most depressing was, it didn’t matter if Adam Mason ended up destroying this place. It didn’t matter if he leveled this building to the ground because there were thousands of other places exactly like this still standing.

And this one would be rebuilt anyway.

My parents weren’t old American sympathizers like I told Raven, but even if they were, nothing could’ve done would’ve made a damn difference. I know what I said earlier about people changing, but this place had set me in a bad mood. Bad memories. That man struggling with a printer was part of a corpse of a system so unmovable that it outlasted the end of the world. And the more it decayed and festered, the more it seemed things couldn’t keep going on like this, the more it just kept chugging on.

People like Raven think they can hold on to something—anything. But the truth was, this world was dead, and it was probably going to drag everyone down with it.

We found a darkened conference room to wait for the signal. The rain was pattering against the windows. Looking out, the world was a blurry, wet mess. To be honest, I never liked the rain. No matter how hard a storm raged, it was never enough to wash the world away. I never saw the point, then.

“This has been too easy.” Dust broke the silence as he sat in one of the chairs, grinning nervously.

He had the energy of a child doing something forbidden—which he was. I knew the look in his eye. He was worried about getting caught, but not actually believing he would. He fidgeted in his chair, impatient to get on with it. This was dangerous, and for that reason, it was exciting for him.

I smiled and shook my head. “Don’t jinx us, kid. We’ve got a long ways to go before this is done.”

Lightning rumbled in the sky. I could swear I saw movement in the other buildings, probably more homeless looking for shelter. But I imagined they were soldiers, all ready to spring at us. The empty garage had been eerie, and I suppose I have come to always expect ambushes.

When I was fifteen, I ran with a few bootleggers through Sector 5, up in the mountains of what was formerly West Virginia. People always said those mountains were haunted. Never saw any evidence of that, but there were plenty of bandits and rad-mutants. Anyways, we were in a convoy heading down some backroads when we were ambushed. Never even saw the damn muzzle flashes as everyone I knew was cut down. By some miracle, I wasn’t hit. I opened the door and crawled on my hands and knees into a nearby ditch as I saw silhouettes clear the trucks. Most heart pounding fifteen minutes of my life.

And then they left. And then I was alone with ten corpses.

That’s why I don’t like working with people close to me. They always get caught in the crossfire. I glanced at Dust.

“You think we’ll get to see The Vagabond fight?” Dust he asked, tearing me away from my thoughts.

I grunted. “Hope not.”

“Does he really hate the ASA like they say? That he’s going to come tear it all down?”

“Can’t say for sure.”

“How do you know him by the way? Were you two friends?”

I sighed. “No.”

Before Dust could ask another question, I shot him an annoyed glance that shut him up. But his questions had stirred something in me. Something that I didn’t want to think about.

There were so many faces—ghosts really—that flashed before my eyes, but for some reason, the one that stood out was Adam’s. That one had I thought I would feel the least about. Wrong time and place and all that. I can’t say I regretted it then, but I did regret it now.

I didn’t know why it hurt so much now. He didn’t mean anything to me, unlike some of the others. But strangely, maybe it was that lack of connection that made it so important. I didn’t know the man, and I never would. But his life certainly meant something to him. It didn’t matter that I handed him superpowers. I still murdered him. Did he have any family? Any friends?

Would anyone miss him when he was gone? Or would he just be forgotten? Was he just one more tragic story to be half-remembered in this half-remembered city?

I didn’t know, and it disturbed me that I didn’t. I should’ve known. I should’ve had the decency to ask. Instead, I had crossed another line I couldn’t take back.

Looking out into the rain, I suddenly felt angry. The rain should’ve washed all this away, and it was a downright crime that it didn’t.

The walkie talkie buzzed with Raven’s voice. I picked up and answered it, even though I knew what it meant.

Adam Mason’s time was up.