Rebel's Tale:

A young man stood up from in front of his computer in a dimly lit room, turned off the monitors in front of him, and grabbed the studded leather jacket. “Ok, guys. I’m heading out.” he said to the others, grabbing an old bag and putting on the AR glasses inside it. He plugged a cable from the glasses into a curved plastic device and put it on the back of his neck.

“Hey, Dave.” said a man in a red shirt at another computer. “Before you go, I managed to get into that guy’s computer. What should I do now?”

The first man walked over to him. “If you have his bank account data, clean out his accounts, download all of his files, and send the info to the cops and media. I doubt the cops will do anything, but the media might cause problems for them if it’s a slow news cycle.”

“We aren’t going to put a hit on him using his own money, this time?” asked the man scornfully.

“We only do that when the target deserves it.” Dave answered.

“And the last guy deserved it?” the man asked. Clearly he had a problem with how last week’s objective ended.

“That Canadian Politician? He had over a terrabyte of CP on his harddrive, much of which he made himself. As the great Sam Jackson put it, “yes, he deserved to die, and I hope he burns in hell.”.”

The red shirted man shrugged. “I thought you were an Atheist.”

Dave chuckled. “I was speaking metaphorically.”

The man nodded. “Fair enough. Are you really going out dressed as a chip-head?”

“No one will pay attention to me if they think I’m using electronic drugs, right?”

“Except the cops.”

Dave smiled. “If the cops catch me, I would prefer them thinking I’m just a random stoner. At least I’ll just get roughed up a bit for that.”

Another man in a blue shirt walked into the room, carrying a cup of coffee. “Not sure what you have against chip-heads. You should try VR some time. Whether they’re AI, avatars, or recorded sessions, VR girls are the best.”

“I prefer real life women.” said the red shirted man.

“Suit yourself.” said the blue shirted guy as he sat down and booted up an AI meant to search for signs of criminal activity on social media posts.

Dave turned to leave. “Well, I’m off. I should be back in a few hours, unless our allies need my help.” With that he walked down the hallway and entered the elevator.

Taking the elevator up a hundred meters, he stepped out into a utility room in the sewers. No one outside of his crew had come down here for the last three years, but even so you needed a special override code for the elevator to take you anywhere but the subway and surface substation.

Dave walked a few hundred meters down the line, around several turns, until he got to a ladder. He double checked that his disguise was in place before starting to climb. He exited the hatch into a rarely-used part of the subway system, and walked down the emergency sidewalk until he had to jump a barrier into the station.

Making sure to act like he was a bit stoned, he headed up to the street. Unfortunately, where he had to go wasn’t connected to the main subway or sewer system. It was, instead, in the industrial sector where they had their own bus and sewer systems, so he was force to go topside to meet with them.

He stepped into line at the exit gate. Some street preacher had resisted arrest when the cops ordered him to stop, apparently, and the cops were wrestling with him at the top of the stairway. Dave hated that he had to ignore it, but he had bigger things to do than stop one of the thousands of daily cases of police abuse of power.

He still felt like he had to do something, though, so he turned on the device on his neck and told it to broadcast on police frequencies. They used some fairly complex encryption, with new codes being issued to cops at the beginning of their shifts to prevent people with police scanners from listening in, so he doubted he could fake an actual call. There was, however, a glitch in the program that let you force it to dump the encrypted data to the radio’s speaker. A burst of static blasted from the radios at max volume, forcing the cops to instinctively release the poorly held man and pull out their radio’s earbuds. The man used the brief moment to start running, which let him get about five meters from the police before they realized what was happening.

“Shit,” one of the cops cursed, as the started chasing after the guy. He shoved the earbud back into his ear to call it in, but the static was still occurring. “Damn defective radio.” he said, joining the other three police in the chase.

Dave reached the top of the steps and stepped over a dropped religious sign. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed a tattooed man try to open the door to the driver’s door of the still-running police car, only to receive a massive electric shock and stumble backwards. ‘So, they updated the car’s security systems’, Dave thought as he walked away. Some of the local criminal groups, especially the mafia, had started pushing back against the police, which had lead to the police stepping up security, including on their vehicles. While Dave was glad that others were standing up to them, he wouldn’t be happy about it until it was the common people doing so. Criminals only had an issue with it because the cops interfered with their business. If the cops started letting them run drugs and other vices in peace they would stop caring about the rampant abuses of power.

Dave boarded the bus as it pulled into the stop at the top of the ramp and rode it to the other side of town. The only interesting thing to happen on the trip was a news report from the cell phone of someone who didn’t bother with headphones. One of the media channels was reporting on the death of a Canadian Parliament member in his own home, and suggested that there was more to the story than just a simple assassination, though they couldn’t reveal the details yet. Dave smirked, though to anyone who noticed it he would merely be a stoner engaging in his drug of choice. And as shit as society was these days, people took uppers while on the bus sometimes, so no one cared.

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As the sun began to set the bus pulled into a stop in the industrial sector and Dave stood up. Stepping off the bus, he noticed two police were looking over the debarking people, with another four asking questions. “Hey you, chip-head.” one of the cops said, pointing at him.

Dave walked over to the cop. “How can I help you officer?”

“Have you seen this man?” he asked, showing a tablet with a man’s face on it.

Dave didn’t recognize him. “Nope. What did he do?”

“Lot’s of stuff.” said a younger, smaller cop. Dave instantly recognized her attempting to play the good cop. “Come on, help me out here. You have to know something. He hangs out around here.”

“Naw, man.” Dave responded. “I don’t really know many people around here.”

“Just your dealer?” she asked.

“Naw, I download it all. Freeware, you know.”

This got her to turn to her partner and whisper something and point at the device on Dave’s neck. ‘So, he’s a dealer?’ Dave thought. Though he doubted they would send six cops down here just for a small time dealer.

The female cop turned back to him. “Well then, call us if you see him. There is a reward after all. Might be able to get some better software with it.”

“Sounds fun.” Dave said as the cops waved him away. Dave continued to listen as he walked away.

“It’s a PS Dream,” the younger cop said to her partner. “It’s a decade old device that’s probably running bootleg firmware so the sensations are more real, but it’s not illegal as far as I know. You really should brush up on what the kids are doing, Samson.”

‘So she was the brains of the outfit.’ Dave mused as he walked away. Thankfully he didn’t run into any more police as he made his way to the beach.

One of the many entrances to the hideout was a seaside cave that opened up at low tide. Dave preferred that one due to the large number of homeless people living in a camp nearby. They would act as both camouflage and an early warning system should the police show up there. The homeless were actually incentivized to live near such entrances with charitable giveaways for that very reason. A few minutes after arriving at the cliff-face the water had pulled far enough away from the cave entrance to reveal a two foot wide walkway from the nearby beach. Dave pulled a balaclava over his head and proceeded.

Dave made his way into the cave and removed a VR game chip in a waterproof case from his pocket, tying it to a beached rowboat that had been trapped there for over fifty years. There was a specific homeless person who claimed this cave as his own, after all, and it wasn't wise to cross people that could cause you trouble, especially when those people were Superhuman. Thankfully this specific person loved Fantasy games, so you could always give them a gift in exchange for safe passage thorough their territory.

At the back of the cave a boulder was propped against the wall among other, similar, boulders. Dave felt around behind it and, after shooing off a spider that had moved into the crack, pushed a button hidden there. The boulder lifted away from the wall and revealed another stone section of the cave behind it.

Fifteen meters down the passageway Dave lifted a small, flat rock and went down the ladder underneath it. He had hidden security cameras in the cave behind the stone, but down the ladder the security was even tougher. At the bottom he opened a steel door into a large room. It was a cylindrical concrete room ten meters across, with multiple barricades and automated turrets. Anyone who saw this would instantly know that they weren’t meant to be here, but then it would be too late. If they weren’t a threat they would be knocked unconscious using one of the multiple defense method installed here, from electric shock to sedative gas, and one of the members of the group here would have to deal with it. Thankfully, though, that had never happened. The Fishman in the main cave knew about the hidden passage, but assumed they were just common criminals. He had no idea what lay behind it.

At the back of the room Dave pushed a button and summoned the elevator. He rode it down far deeper than his own base and the doors opened to reveal a room with multiple monitors hung from the ceiling and a holographic display table in the middle. Four other people with disguises on were already there, and the one in a yellow suit looked at him.

“Good, you are finally here, Rebel. Now we can get started.” said the man in yellow and black.

A Tale of Two Anarchists:

There was a knock on the office door, and the woman behind the desk waved the person inside. “Mrs. Sanders, your son is on the phone. Apparently he was arrested again, and is calling from jail.”

The red suited woman behind the desk sighed. “Again?” she sighed, then nodded. “Ok, tell him I’ll come down there and bail him out.”

The secretary nodded and closed the door, returning to the phone. The other woman pushed back her chair and stood up. She was a lawyer with one of the biggest law firms in the city, but still had to deal with having a son that couldn’t stay out of jail. His inability to control himself had already resulted in her losing rich clients, and could be the reason she hadn’t been offered a position as a senior partner. Bad PR meant a lot in this profession, after all.

She left the office, waving goodbye to her secretary, and took the elevator down to the parking garage. She got into the luxury electric car she had bought only a month earlier and drove down to the police station 13 blocks away where her brother had called from. It was the closest one to the office, and the one he most often got sent to, so she had been there many times before.

When she entered the station the officer behind the desk waved at her. “I’ll tell them to bring him out.” the man said, and called back to the cells. As soon as he was off the phone he pulled something up on the computer, printed it off, stuck on on a clipboard, and passed it across the desk to the lawyer.

“So, what was it this time?” she asked, not bothering to read the charges before signing the paperwork and pulling out her debit card.

“Trespassing, disturbing the peace, and resisting arrest.” the officer replied. “Apparently he and a few of his buddies had glued themselves to the floor of a jewelry store and started ranting about the evil rich people. Or something like that. We have recordings from the security cameras, if you want them. Still need to pull the bodycam footage, though.”

“Sure, I’ll come by in a few days to pick up all the evidence, and try and talk some sense into him.” With that she handed over the clipboard and waited the minute or so it took for them to bring her brother forward and uncuff him. She could tell his palms were red in spots and his wrists had red marks as well. He had struggled against the cuffs, but not so much that he seriously injured himself. “Come on, Terrance.” she said, motioning for him to follow her as she left.

He grabbed his stuff and followed her out the station. Once they were far enough away he started talking. “I can’t believe they threw me in jail over a protest.”

“And I can’t believe you would do something that stupid. What do you think you’ll accomplish like that?”

“We’ll show the people the truth about corporate greed and how the corps are keeping the common man down.”

“You’ll piss people off and have them call the cops on you? Do you thing a single one of the people in that store or that walked by sided with you? No. You disrupted a business where normal people were just trying to earn a living. They certainly won’t side with you now, since all you did was annoy them while at work and cut into their percentage on all of the sales you drove away. And tonight your little group will be on the News, and people all over the city will think less of both you and your cause. I’ve told you, if you’re going to protest do it peacefully. People respect a peaceful protest.”

They got in the Benz the woman had driven here, turned on the car’s white noise generator to mess with the laser microphones the police like to use on innocent people occasionally, and pulled out of the police station’s parking lot. “The problem was that I didn’t do enough.” He responded. “I should have...”

“Should have what?” the woman said, raising her voice. “Used your powers? Put yourself on the Super registry and guaranteed that the next time the cops arrest you you wake up in a hospital instead of a cell, if you wake up at all?”

The boy looked at her. “But Di, you know what I can do. I can make the cops do whatever I want.”

“You can make suggestions that people think are reasonable. With effort you can even make them hallucinate. But you can’t mind control them. So how would you have made them “do whatever you want” in this situation, huh?”

“I could have made them let me go.”

“How? You know the jewelers has the cops on their payroll. You’ve seen the legitimate donations to the police union they made, not to mention the fact that they’ve probably made illegitimate donations too. There’s no way the cops will let you get away with that.”

“What if they think I’m rich?”

“Only if you had the cash to back it up, or someone rich was willing to do it for you. That’s the thing with sellouts, you have to keep paying them.” They pulled into the garage of an old tenement in the slums, meant for the landlord instead of the tenants, and got out, locking up behind themselves. On the surface Attorney Diana Sanders had purchase the abandoned building at a tax sale to fix it up and house the homeless, a form of charity meant to improve her image, and made her delinquent son help her fix up the place to keep him off the streets. In reality, this place connected to the sewers in the basement, which gave the two of them easy access.

They both went to their respective rooms, her the office where the landlord would work, and him the apartment he would be moving into once the place opened its doors and therefore needed a manager and maintenance guy. Soon two people came out, a nineteen year old in a red jacket and pair of red tinted mirror shades, and an old woman with a cane. “You ready sis?” asked the boy, and she nodded.

They made their way to the basement where they slid aside an old book cabinet and entered a hole in the wall, sliding the cabinet back over the opening. They walked for several minutes before they reached a steel gate. The old woman took out a key and turned it in the lock, and the gate swung open. It may look old and rusty, but it was well maintained. They walked down a corridor that both of them knew housed dozens of hidden turrets, and when they got to the end the old woman knocked on the door. Three knocks, pause, two knocks, pause, four knocks. The door opened and they entered. “Welcome Communist and Socialist.” said the man in a yellow and black suit, “You two are the first to arrive, but the others should be here shortly. In the mean time, feel free to help yourself to anything in the kitchen.

Communist, the kid in red, nodded and made his way there. If he hurried he might be able to sneak a beer before his sister stopped him.