Neither of them seemed surprised. The woman smiled in response.
“Good. I’m glad”, Neel remarked. Or Thinker perhaps. He had put his mask back on.
The woman wasn’t in a mask but was looking at him with interest.
“You’re Lucky Guess?”, Mark asked.
“Yep!”, she responded. “Nice to meet you, Mark. So, you still have to pass our test. Do that, and you’re officially in.”
“She’s going to handle that”, Thinker said. “I’ll leave you now. I’ll see you tonight, provided you pass. And you’ll get all your answers. Good luck Technique.” With that, he walked away. Mark had Bitbird follow him for as long as he was in his range.
“Wait. Tonight? You mean this test is going to be today?” Mark asked the woman, Lucky Guess.
“It’s going to be now”, she responded.
“What?! I didn’t think- “
“Well, that was a mistake then. Always think.”
She put on her mask. Mark took in her costume. He was right, her costume was surprisingly generic. She wore a black bodysuit that covered her entire body up to her neck. On top of that were dark brown leather pads. Her mask was ceramic looking and covered her entire face. Ultimately, her costume covered her entire body with no skin showing whatsoever. Mark felt like he was looking at a ninja of some sort. There was nothing to indicate what her power might be. He knew that Lucky Guess wasn’t the kind of mask that went into the field, which perhaps explained her costume. She was the type that directed the rest of the team from behind a bunch of computers.
Mark thought about having to take his test right now. He felt a bit of trepidation, but he supposed there wouldn’t have been much of a difference if it was now or a week from now. Not like he had any plans anyway.
“Alright. Let’s do it.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
They were in Lucky Guess’ car. It had fallen dark outside and the windows were tinted, but she was wearing a mask as she drove nonetheless. Mark hadn’t slipped his own on yet. They were driving back towards the city, entering the outskirts. It wasn’t a pretty part of town. Every street they passed had at least one homeless person camping on it, and the buildings were all short, ugly apartment complexes. Mark had figured his test would be to rob something, and this was definitely the part of town where robberies happened. He looked at Lucky Guess.
“Your power. You can…”
“Make lucky guesses”, she said, shrugging.
“Right. That was you with the sniper rifle, wasn’t it? I thought that the sniper was in a weird position- that the shot just happened to line up. But I’m guessing that was your power.”
She nodded. “I guessed that you would end up standing there, and I was right. And so, the shot lined up.”
“And you guessed that I wasn’t a potential enemy?”
“Hmm. Well, not exactly. I can’t really guess emotions that well, mostly because emotions are usually a mess with no straight answer. I guessed that you had no backup or really anything up your sleeve other than that drone.” She finished the sentence with a slight tut.
“The drone is pretty cool”, he said defensively, which made Lucky Guess chuckle a bit.
“So do people just call you Lucky Guess?”
“Sometimes. Some call me Lucky or just Luck. Lady Luck was a name they used for a while, but I never liked it.”
“Lucky it is.”
“Cool. And what about you? ‘Digitalis’? No offense, but that sounds like a venereal disease.”
“It’s a poisonous plant! And it has the word ‘digital’ in it, so… I didn’t choose it anyway. I go by Technique if I have to go by anything.”
“Ugh I think I prefer Digitalis. Ok, Technique; your test is simple, you’re going to rob a minimart. More precisely”, she said, bringing the car to a stop. She had parked on the side of the road and pointed to a store further down the street on the opposite side. He could see the dull neon sign but couldn’t make out the letters. It looked run down. This whole neighborhood looked run down. “You’re going to rob that minimart.”
Mark frowned. “Why? Shops like that aren’t even close to worth it. They only have a few thousand dollars at the very very best.”
“That one in particular has..”, she trailed off and spoke slowly as if thinking about each number. She was guessing. “one…. thousand and… forty two dollars… and something like twenty cents. Not worth it”, she agreed. “The point isn’t the money. The point is to see you in action.”
Mark felt reservations about this. It was a fairly small store. Not his typical target. Mark preferred to rob from faceless large banks, taking money from a collective pool so each person lost only a little in the end.
“It’s fine”, Lucky spoke, as if reading his thoughts. “You rob him now, tomorrow he gets delivered a mystery envelope containing thrice as much money, including damages. Here, take this.” She extended her palm and offered a little black nub. She was putting another in her ear. Earpieces.
If this is a test, might as well start impressing her. He used his power and focused on the bud in her ear. One of the devices in his own suit attuned to the frequency her earbud was operating in and spoke for him. “No need.”, his voice rang through her earbud.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Mark got the impression she was grinning under her mask. “That, is awesome”, she said, pocketing away the extra bud. “You don’t even need to speak?”
Mark put on his mask. The first thing Mark had done was embed a speaker in it. When in costume, the speaker spoke for him, as Mark used his powers to beam his speech to it.
“I just use my power to tell it what to say”, came the response from the speaker in his mask. The voice was modulated. In the beginning Mark had played a lot with the modulation to get the cadence and tone just right. He wanted to imitate all those crime thriller movies- when the hero gets a call from the mastermind who kidnapped a president or something and the villain’s voice was creepily distorted to protect his identity. After much experimentation, Mark had settled on an ominous deep voice, but with a digital twang to it, to reflect his powers. It largely preserved the tones he wanted to convey but the digital ‘interferences’ would give it a disjointed inhuman feel. Given the position of the speaker near the bottom of the mask, it made it seem like the sound was genuinely coming from his mouth. Mark was proud of it.
“Badass”, Lucky remarked, her tone light. “How come you didn’t use that for the meeting with Thinker?”
“Because it comes across as intimidating and aggressive”, he said with his own voice. “And I was under the impression that it was going to be a friendly meeting”, his voice sounded a bit more accusatory than he wanted it to.
“Yeah… sorry about pointing a gun at you. Don’t know what to tell you- paranoia is a good thing in our line of work. But still, I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine. Things are moving a bit fast and my feelings are struggling to catch up, that’s all. I wasn’t expecting to rob a minimart today.”
Lucky nodded in sympathy. “Thinker doesn’t like to waste time. You’ll manage.” She pointed to the mart. “Let’s set some ground rules. First of all, I want you to give me physical cash. Given your abilities, it’s pointless otherwise. Second, are you planning on using your drone?”
“Yes. Um, I call him Bitbird.”, he replied.
Lucky laughed out loud at that. “Of course you do. His name is cooler than yours.”
“Is it going to be a problem if I do? I always use him when I do my thing. He’s pretty useful. An extra set of eyes and a crude set of hands. He even has a tranq gun attached to him.”
“Anything lethal?”
“No, definitely not.”
“Then I guess it’s fine. Why just one drone?”
“I need to constantly use my power, or he drops from the sky. Two drones would just take too much of my attention and energy.”
“Hmm. Third, don’t hurt the shopkeeper, please. Store’s empty right now, and my guess is that it’s going to be empty for the next twenty minutes or so. Fourth… no I don’t think there is a fourth. That’s it for now. Go ahead whenever you’re ready. I’ll be in your ear, or um, however you’re doing what you’re doing.”
“A device in my suit will receive what you say, and I’ll use my power to hear what it’s receiving.” Facilitated by the chip in his brain, but he didn’t see the need to bring that up.
“Cool. Ready when you are.”
Mark took two deep breaths.
“Alright”, he said, speaking using his mask this time. “Wish me luck”.
Technique got out of the car.
------------------------------------------------
Technique stood outside the store. ‘SillyMart’ was the name apparently, though he wasn’t sure what exactly was silly about it. Bitbird was hovering over the building, surveying the area. Technique was using his ability to watch through the cameras inside. It looked pretty generic- a row of aisles with a slushy machine at the far end. Technique sighed when he directed one of the cameras to look at the counter. It was shielded. Thick glass panes extended from the counter up to the ceiling. There was a slot at the center where the cashier could receive money and give back change with safety. That was no good. He needed a better look.
He thought for a second and walked in casually. For now, he was going to be a mask shopping at a minimart. Weird, but not implausible. The shopkeeper’s eyes were following him with visible concern. Technique pretended not to notice and walked amongst the aisles, pretending nothing was wrong. He let the cameras be for now, but had the image distorted whenever he appeared on them. He would disable them later. He kept a digital eye on the shopkeeper. He had a phone, but he wasn’t using it to call or message anyone. Right now, he simply seemed to be staring at Technique. He felt the buzz of various electronics throughout the store- TVs, refrigerators, computerized fire alarm systems, and more. Using one of the cameras he could see a mechanism that would presumably make the shields go down- a lever. But it was mechanical. Not digital.
“Bad neighborhood, huh. The cashier has this shield thingy”, he had his devices say to Lucky.
“Pretty bad”, Lucky responded. “The usual picture of American decay. Primarily black and Hispanic neighborhood. Every problem from drugs to theft to prostitution, and recently, masks.”
Technique tensed. “Masks?”
“Cute story. Brothers, both with abilities. One has superspeed, and one has super-durability”, she was using a dramatic tone, as if narrating a story. “The brother with the superspeed can’t damage the one with the super-durability, and the one with super-durability can’t land a hit on the one with superspeed. So instead, they decide to put aside their differences, and take control together. And now here they are, the kings of some five shitty, run-down city blocks.”
Technique wasted no time to scour the internet. He found the information he needed on the local police database. One of the first things Technique had done as a mask was travel around installing backdoors in the databases of useful seeming organizations- police departments, greater law enforcement, libraries and more. He couldn’t always get to the really good stuff. They were usually too well protected, and he would have had to get too close for too long; but thanks to his work he still had access to a formidable amount of information, even from a distance. Aside from police networks, he had partial access to various FBI and NSA databases, gained during his brief stint as an NSA stooge. He had even temporarily managed to get access to a network belonging to the Office, but they had somehow caught on pretty fast, and ripped it out, root and stem.
Lucky Guess was right. Two masks had formed a gang some twenty strong. They had taken up some kind of enforcement role for the neighborhood- extorting the residents in exchange for ‘protection’. “I see it. They’re not actually brothers. Daniel Quan and Alex Hill. Hardened skin and increased speed.”
“Oh, come on!” Lucky sounded annoyed.
“What?” Technique asked, surprised.
“You can’t just out someone’s secret identity like that! You know, until like the 90s, a secret identity used to mean something. People would kill each other over that shit. These days no one gets to have one thanks to shit like this.”
“Um, sorry?”
She sighed. “Never mind. What else?”
“The Office has apparently marked them as persons of interest. Let’s see, the hardened skin guy can apparently shrug off pistol bullets. But it looks like shotguns hurt him, and it says here that a high calibre sniper rifle could probably kill him if necessary. Jeez. The super speed guy-“
“Forget about him. He’s not the one you have to worry about.”
Technique felt his heart skip a beat. “Excuse me?”
“Look out the window, kid.”
Technique swore. A huge man, walking straight towards the store- walking with a purpose; he knew Technique was inside. He was wearing a ski mask with a skull painted on it. Daniel Quan. The guy with the hardened skin. He had a silver baseball bat in his hand, which he was casually swinging as he was approaching. He wore black jeans and a leather biker jacket with spikes on the shoulders. Fuck.
“I’m leaving”, Technique said, quickly, marching to the door.
“You’re going to run into him as you exit. And he’s coming after you, Technique.”
Technique stopped. She was right. He swore.
“What do I do?”
“Impress me.”