The voltage snapped off, and the cable floated alone as the cards burned away. “Thirty thousand amps and a two degree rise in temperature,” I reported. “This is the real deal.” I flicked up a Joker and chopped down, cleanly severing an inch off the cable, which I caught nimbly and set on the card. “Taste it, sir.”

The card wafted over Mr. Hill’s shoulder. He glanced at it, picked the severed end off of the card, which promptly disintegrated, and he thumbed off the insulation onto the table before tossing the yellow-orange strand of metal into his mouth.

“Mmm!” he said despite himself, as sparks suddenly filled his mouth and crawled over his lips. “Hey, that’s pretty tasty. Like a spicy bit of jerky.” He held up his big hand as Max Dillon stared at him, and I slapped the cable into it. “What’s the original price on this, girl?”

“Approximately a thousand dollars, sir,” I informed him.

“You got this from Dynamo?” he asked Electro directly, who nodded hastily. “And you purified this?” he asked further, and got another nod as Mr. Hill sucked noisily and blue arcs played over his teeth. “What value you put on this, girl?”

“It would go for at least three thousand dollars a meter, sir, if he can keep producing it. As a one-off, perhaps twice that.”

“How’s the demand for something like this? Not as jerky.”

“Every secure phone line, new computer, electromagnet, and Weird Science high-end electronic thingamabob in the country, sir.”

“So, power armor?” he considered aloud.

“Among others, sir. I’m sure Stark would pay you ten grand for that cable if that’s all there is, just to use it in his suit. If you have more, he’ll first rewire and upgrade his personal computer systems, then his labs, then his corporate labs and highest-grade production facilities.”

He grunted, running his finger down the length of the cable, generating a few sparks as he peeled away the insulation, and the yellow-orange color of the volturium gleamed in the light. “I’ll give you two grand for this. Dealer.”

I flicked a finger, and two thousand-dollar chips slapped down in front of Max, who palmed them quickly.

Mr. Hill took another bite of the cable, easily chomping through the end, and more sparks played around his teeth as he sucked on it with pleasure.

“I got expensive eating preferences,” he told Max with a straight face. “You... have an expensive hobby. Okay, you’ve got something worth selling. You got the money to pick up the volturium?” he asked directly.

Max Dillon took a deep breath. “Not right now, no.”

“So, you’re asking for a loan to get you started, so you can repay your debt.” Mr. Hill’s eyes narrowed.

“No sir, I’m looking for a business partner,” Dillon replied respectfully.

“Explain!” Mr. Hill said bluntly. “I ain’t no shyster, so don’t use big words, either!”

“I’ve a record, and I won’t be able to sell the product clean. I-I need someone to keep me on track, too.” He opened his jacket, showing the widget hanging there, the holo turned off, but the basic meters still on. “My powers are creating brain imbalances, so I have mood swings that are really bad. I need someone who can keep me in line as I do this, or I might just gaff off, despite the consequences.” He took a deep breath. “Mr. Hill, Mountain, sir, this is a chance for me to make a LOT of money, if I do it right. I’m not sure I can trust myself to do it right, so I need a partner. If that means I make money a little slower, I’m cool with that.

“A loan means fronting me cash, and I’m afraid I might just wake up tomorrow and run away with it. A partner means small upfront, acquire and pay as you go. Less risk for both of us... and I figure you have a better line on selling, without all the criminal penalties that I do.”

“Huh.” Mr. Hill took another bite of his two-thousand-dollar metallic licorice. “Girl, where’s the money in this?”

“Long cables, sir. Let the buyer cut them up. An unbroken line of volturium of this quality a thousand meters long is easily worth five million dollars. If he can do it at four-gauge, it could serve as a primary power cable to a turbine, for a fraction of the weight and cooling risk, and no current loss. It could also handle every telephone call in the state.”

“That would take care of your little gambling problem right there,” grunted Mr. Hill, as Dillon looked pretty excited. “Now, the problem is you got a record here in the States.” Sparks flickered in Mr. Hill’s mouth as he sat back, kind of making his eyes sparkle now and then, like there was a gem hiding in the gray.

“Now, you fenced shit before, so you know getting thirty cents on the dollar ain’t bad, if you ain’t been paid to acquire it.” Dillon nodded despite himself. “So, you need a middleman, which I can do. You also need me to buy the volturium for you, find the buyers, and sell it, then come back and give you your cut. I also gotta cut Dynamo in for sending you to me.”

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Dillon sighed. “What are you looking at?” he asked, dreading to hear it.

“Fifty percent, of the sales price minus the expenses, which should be just buying the volturium, and maybe a few bribes. I’ll itemize what is there.

“We’ll put all your share towards the casinos to get them off your back. Then you are gonna have to tell me how you want your cash, because the feds like their taxes, and are going to be watching this. If we got to wash the money for you, that’s more expenses on your side.”

“What if I wanted to go legit?” Dillon blurted out. “I think, I think I could get my time on this down to a meter an hour! If we could get a higher grade of cable, I could do it even faster!”

“Legit?” Mr. Hill mulled that over, giving him a serious look. “And staying here in Murica? I ain’t no lawyer, but off the top of my head, I’d say you gotta do some time. Serve it out, get your record set, the law off your back, keep your nose clean, and make your money.

“A meter an hour. Just with this stuff? Three thousand bucks an hour is pretty damn good money,” Mr. Hill acknowledged.

Dillon’s eyes flashed. “I was told it was chump change. The real money is in computer chips.”

“’Zat so? Girl, what’s he mouthing about?” Mr. Hill asked me.

“Sir, the future of computers is moving away from vacuum tubes and into semiconductors, looking at the Tribal, Wakandan, and Russian tech. Their computer tech is heavily into the rare earth elements for their semiconductors, and as you can tell, conductivity is everything.

“If someone could supply superconductive or perfectly conductive chips, or even raw materials for those chips to them, they have a guaranteed market and buyers that is an order of magnitude more profitable than doing E-copper, sir.”

“But it’s all got to be legit business,” he inferred.

“Yes, sir. The amount of investment required is too high to be under the table. Nobody going into chip-making is going to be small or circumspect, and it’s all going to be heavily monitored and regulated because of the use of the material and chips.”

“Huh.” Mr. Hill took another bite of his 3k snack, letting arcs fly in his mouth as he considered that. “How time-sensitive are we?”

“Not really, sir. This kind of refinement is beyond any machinery at present anywhere in the world. Mr. Dillon will be central to the process, and probably central to the attempts to duplicate the process in the future, too.”

“You got the brains to do that stuff, Dillon?” Mr. Hill asked bluntly.

Max Dillon opened his mouth, closed it, and thought about the answer. Slowly, he shook his head. “I can do the refinement, sure. I could calibrate the machinery, monitor it, run it, watch it, fine-tune it. But I couldn’t design it from scratch. I know electricity, but on my level, not a machine’s.”

“Okay, then. So, the goal here is to get to the point that you’re making stuff fast and clean, and you’re getting paid on production, not on the hour. So, the faster you go, the more you make. Right, girl?” Hill asked.

“That would be ideal for his purposes, sir, for all levels of this. It would probably be very cost-effective to invest in something that can further refine the volturium we acquire, just to speed up his production speed. Let the machines take up as much grunt work as possible, and let him finesse the way to six or seven Sigmas.”

“Huh, okay. What’s holding you back, Dillon? Why so slow? I ain’t calling you dumb or nuthin’, but even I know there’s a zillion lines of cable out there. A meter an hour is literally nothing.”

“It’s not the purity,” Dillon said quickly. “Most of the Weird Elements are processed pretty damn pure ahead of time. It’s, well, it’s the tiniest of things. For true superconductivity, all the crystals in the metal need to be in alignment, harmonized, in optimal formations. Any disruptions or flaws in that, along with even the smallest atom of other elements disrupting stuff, starts breaking the pattern, generating waste heat and causing further disruptions down the line.

“What I did was force all the impurities out of the core of the cable towards the exterior, and concentrate on forming a perfect spiraling configuration through the heart of it. Once that was done, even at an atomic level, realigning the stuff around it is just a case of adding energy so the atoms move a bit, and recrystallizing it properly.”

I added in, “Purifying the crystalline matrix to an optimal state also greatly strengthens the material, sir. If you would, sir, pulse a gravity wave through the core of the cable.”

Intrigued, Mr. Hill held up the cable vertically, and there was a faint trembling in the air. A spark leapt out both ends of the thing.

“Mr. Dillon, please assess it. Mr. Hill, please continue applying localized gravity.”

Warily, Electro got up and came around the table. Mr. Hill pivoted politely, the ramrod straight cable still hanging up and down between his fingers. An arc of electricity formed a halo between Dillon’s hands as he moved it up and down the cable.

“Oh, wow. The crystals are lining up in place much easier with the pressure from the increased gravity. How many are you pulling on this?” Dillon asked, eyes intent.

“Thirty.”

“Try a hundred?”

Mr. Hill grunted, and the air trembled again, the electricity between Dillon’s fingers clearly bending under some influence, which he ignored as it grew brighter.

“They’re falling into place like dominos as I push them. This is easily ten times faster than when I was doing it alone.” He pulled his hands back and nodded at Mr. Hill, who grunted and brought the cable back down.

“So with me helping, ten meters an hour. Nice for the money, slow fer practical purposes. Girl, any ideas?”

“An improved extrusion process. If we can take the primary Sigma off, that’s a ninety-percent reduction in the work that actually has to be done, because the number of flaws should fall with it. You would have to get someone with serious metallurgy skills to design a system to do so, as the value of it would be minimal unless you are attempting perfection.”

“Grimm’s boss, or that Stark kid?”

“Either would probably do well, sir. Dr. Richards is probably the better designer, and Stark the better engineer.”

“What about Doc Ock, Egghead, or the Vizard?” Dillon asked, sitting down again. “They love to show off their brains.”

“Do you trust ‘em to make a machine that won’t break down all the damn time, forcing them to come and correct it for rather large amounts of money?” Mr. Hill grunted, and Dillon had nothing to say to that. “Right. That’s how those Schmot Guys work. All the be-yoo-tiful gear that works like a charm, until they sell it ta someone else. Then it works for a while, breaks down, and needs ta be fixed or replaced. Guaranteed income. Anything you buy from a Schmot Guy you better get into and know yourself, or you just became a source of money ta them guys.”

Dillon had his lips pursed, thinking about that. “Huh. No wonder Jenkins never lets Ock near his armor...”