Blackjack Villain (23 page)

“So I guess it’s the rocket or nothing,” I muttered.

He nodded, as if trying to convince a child.

“How long until we get supers?” I asked.

“Maybe ten minutes, perhaps less. We have to-“

Then Cool Hand Luke walked in, interrupting us.

“Hey BJ,” he started with his typical over-exuberance. “You gotta check this out, man.”

“We are trying to ascertain the best way for ingress and egress,” Zundergrub shot back, irritated.

“Fuck that, land right wherever and hit the hotel. We gonna have a fight either way. You gotta see this,” he turned to me after dismissing the doctor’s worries. “Come on.”

He grabbed my arm and led me out of my new lab and across the hall to a large set of machines, one with a large glass dome beneath a retractable arm. He shoved me inside and I saw that Zundergrub had followed and had his arms crossed.

“What is this?”

Cool Hand was giggling like a teenage girl with a secret. “It’s the coolest thing. Now don’t move,” he said and lowered the dome on me and ran over to the control panel. Cool Hand tinkered with the buttons and dials as the machine grew louder and louder, emitting steam from the dome.

“You like a black suit, right?” he asked.

“What is this steam all about?” I shouted to be heard over the loud machine. The hot gas was obscuring my vision and burning inside my lungs.

“Oh shit,” he shouted. “Close your eyes!”

I didn’t have time, as the machine sprayed some sort of black liquid down at me, enveloping me with the warm viscous stuff. It fired off steam and more of the fluid and I fell to the floor, almost gagging and unable to breathe. Cool ran over and threw the retractable arm back once the process was done, and helped me up to my feet. I was ripping at my face. Something was covering my eyes, blinding me.

“Easy man,” Cool said. “Hang on. I’ll cut a slit for your eyes.”

I heard the click of a blade and felt him carefully slice the material that was now all over my face. With a flick of the knife, he opened a pair of eye holes and I could see, though my vision was shot due to the hot steam.

“Jesus Christ, man.” I roared. “You could’ve warned me!”

But he ignored me, turning me around to face a mirror on a far wall.

“Absolutely badass.”

It took a second for my vision to clear completely, so I could appreciate what Cool had done. The machine was a suit maker designed by Retcon. In the mirror, I could see I was wearing a new black suit, melted atop my jeans and shirt, with a long flowing black cape and a wicked-looking hooded cowl.

Cool Hand was right, I looked awesome.

Chapter 11

The flames of re-entry raged outside the huge window, but from our angle we couldn’t yet see the earth, the falling stars. Cool Hand Luke, Dr. Zundergrub and I were strapped to sturdy deck chairs, upright, but our angle back was about sixty degrees. It was like riding a flaming recliner at 3,000 miles an hour, led by a robotic joke box, with an inflamed sense of purpose. The only one of us not strapped in was Mr. Haha, who ran back and forth between several computers as he monitored our descent using magnets on his feet to keep him steady. In any case, I was trusting my life to a conglomeration of metal and wax, with an oversized, plush toy rabbit head.

Cool flashed a big smile, denoting how much he was enjoying the shaky ride. I half expected him to make a comment about this reminding him about riding the Cyclone in Coney Island as a kid, but he was strangely quiet.

Zundergrub prayed softly, so I couldn’t hear whether he was Catholic, Hindi or something else. His imps were panicked, bouncing around his feet and lap, nervously climbing up his legs and hiding within the folds of his lab coat and pant legs, wailing in fear, but he ignored them.

I was nervous as well, and noticed my hands clenching the armrests, bending the metal out of shape.

“You good?” Cool asked, spotting the twisted metal.

“My life’s flashing in front of my eyes,” I responded. “Should that be happening?”

Cool laughed, and even Zundergrub, deep in prayer, chuckled.

The Rocket Flyer rotated and we finally saw the earth. We were dropping into New York City at night, and while the descent carried us in a wide, loping parabola, the rocket flyer left the sun behind as we came into the dark side of the planet and lower into the atmosphere.

“We should be there shortly, gentlemen.” Haha said.

“I remembered I fucking hate your guts, Haha.” Cool said.

Haha’s head turned slowly to Cool Hand.

“The calculations that go into atmospheric re-entry would boggle your mind, Cool Hand. First of all, there’s an inconstant rate of descent, due to changes in atmospheric properties, weather conditions and magnetic changes. We might start at 76 miles above the earth, approximately five thousand miles from our destination, but that is-“

“Blah, blah, blah,” Cool interrupted. “Just don’t get us killed, or I’ll fucking kill you.”

Haha shrugged and went back to his task. His programs were probably computing the dichotomy of Cool Hand’s threat, while at the same time running the calculations for re-entry. I had some idea of the formulas and numbers involved and was glad it was the robot flying the ship and not me.

“This is all bullshit, you know.” Cool Hand continued. “Once we land, there’s gonna be like twenty cops close enough to see the rocket land. Even if this rocket is stealth to radar and shit, they’re gonna see us, like, with their EYES. And they’re gonna call for help. And once the word is out, we’re gonna have like a dozen supers show up in, like, 10 minutes. And the Guidos. Fuck! Once they hear of this shit they’ll swarm on our asses.”

“What are the Guidos?”

“Our worst nightmare,” he responded. “Think the Superb Seven are gonna be a pain to beat? Shit, wait ‘til these fuckers show up. They’re a bunch of Jersey guidos, all ‘rhoided up with low level powers, or none at all. They spend all night partying and getting high, but at least one of them is always checking out the police scanners. They thrive on shit like this. And there’s like fifty of them.”

“They don’t sound like much of a threat,” Zundergrub said.

“Sure, you say that now. But wait ‘til you have, like, twenty of them trying to beat your ass. That’s not cool at all. And if you really lay into one, you’re gonna kill the guy. So now you’re wanted for murder cause some dumbass pseudo-super thought he’d get heroic. And don’t tell me you’ll be careful. These fuckers swarm to crime scenes and jump in when other supers jump in, like fucking pests. So imagine you’re fighting it out with one of the Superb Seven, say you,” he pointed at me.

“Say you’re swapping spit with Apogee ‘cause she’s pissed you killed her friend. So you’re fighting and fighting, then a couple of these shitheads jump you. ‘Cause they’re coward fucks, you know? So they jump you right in the middle of a big fight. And what’re you gonna do? You swing away, right? I mean, who wouldn’t? You hit one of these guys, Blackjack; you’ll pulp them, like Gallagher on a watermelon, man.”

“OK, I got it.”

“You don’t have enough of your monsters, Zee.” Cool Hand said. “And you don’t have enough arrows. We’d need that guy Multifarious, the dude that can make like a million of him. Except he’s a superhero, so never mind...”

“I say we stick to the plan,” I said.

“My sentiments exactly,” Zundergrub added.

“Yeah, good luck with that.”

* * *

It was decided that I should linger on the second floor of the rocket flyer so I could spot enemies through the enormous Plexiglas view screen as we landed but that was, in retrospect, a terrible idea. As Dr. Retcon’s rocket ship came to a final (and sudden) stop atop the fast food restaurant across the street from the New Yorker Hotel. The engines brought up enough debris, dust and smoke to obscure my view.

I abandoned my post and ran down three floors to the escape hatch leading outside. My three companions were way ahead of me as I ran down the gangway to the roof. On the street I could already hear the sounds of tires squealing and folks screaming, and as I reached the edge of the building, I saw Cool Hand Luke, Mr. Haha and Dr. Zundergrub already hard at work. The fast food place was a 24-hour joint, and people were streaming out of the place screaming. Dr. Zundergrub, with his demonic imps in tow, was helping them on their way, turning panic to hysteria and clearing the streets of pedestrians. His imps were also attacking all the police cameras on the street. Cool Hand was speeding through the street, dropping every police officer in the area with a well-placed aluminum bat blow to the head. Across the street, Mr. Haha was covering the entrance to the hotel, motioning with his rusted katana that we should follow.

Making sure to avoid the panicking New Yorkers, I dropped to the sidewalk below and ran towards Mr. Haha, past him and into the hotel lobby. Running in, I encountered what was sure to be a problem; a whole convention of people was in mid-hysteria at our arrival. The frenzied crowd of almost thirty raced towards every exit. The lobby was a vast room with white and black marble floors, a golden honeycombed ceiling, and an elaborate circular chandelier that I was already imagining falling atop the convention guests as we had to fight off Cool Hand’s ‘Guidos.’ It was a nightmare of crowd control, but I was allowed to pass by with hardly an odd look as I moved through the lobby to a service door and into the depths of the hotel. Managing that crowd was Cool Hand’s job, so I gave him a head’s up.

“Cool. You’ve got about 30 guests in the lobby. FYI.”

“Any underage hotties to fondle?” He responded over my com badge. That kid was full of surprises.

I came into a taupe-colored hallway with a quick turn and immediately got in trouble. While the folks in the lobby, guest and employee alike hadn’t found a towering hooded man worthy of notice, the New Yorker’s security had, and as I came around the corner one of their agents approached, extending a metal expandable baton. He was a big guy, almost as tall as me and heavy set. I’m sure he was used to pushing people around, but as an employee of a big time hotel he had to play nice at first.

“Excuse me, sir,” he managed before I popped him in the stomach so hard he almost passed out. I left him right there and kept going.

Further down was the security office where he had come from. It was Haha’s job to take command of the office, but as I was walking past the large open glass, I saw two men scrambling. One was on the phone, half standing up, while the other was busy loading a shotgun. I kicked the door down and fired one of my new stun grenade arrows. The two guys were totally surprised as an arrow stuck to one of their chairs, then suddenly exploded with both light and a loud THWUP that dropped them both to the ground, semi-conscious. I followed up with an EMP arrow into the large computer server assembly in the back of the room and ran off as it exploded, destroying every electronic device inside the room.

“Mr. Haha,” I keyed into the comlink as I ran for the service elevator. “I took care of the security office.”

“Pity, I now have less to do.”

“Get upstairs and search the room,” I told him. “I’m on my way downstairs.”

“Hey Blacks! Quit being such a fucking hero,” Cool keyed into his mike, having some fun at my expense. “Teacher ain’t gonna give you a star for extra credit.”

Nearby was the service elevator to the lower levels and a stairwell. I didn’t have the patience to wait for the elevator so I ran down the stairs, taking them three and four at a time.

We had a few minutes until the first supers started arriving, and according to Cool Hand, about twenty minutes until ‘Guidos’ showed up in force. The big problem was we had no way of knowing where the Superb Seven were. They had been in Washington D.C. the day before for the White House press conference. If they were still in the region, it wouldn’t take them long to get to New York. Epic was known to have a hypersonic jet that carried him around the world, and it could easily carry the rest of the Superbs.

I arrived at the lower basement, kicked the locked door off its hinges and ran out of the stairwell and down a long hallway. About halfway down I passed the old Direct Current generator that was cordoned off and set apart like an exhibition.

“First victim of the day,” Cool Hand shouted into the comlink and I stopped in my tracks.

“You alright?” I asked, but I knew what he was going to say before he said it.

“I’m good,” he replied. “This guy here, not so much.”

I started running again, heading towards my target for tonight.

“One of those Guido guys?” I wondered, turning a corner. Ahead was my destination, a hallway that had been closed and built over, maybe two decades ago.

“Nah, a bonafide, cape-wearing super,” Cool Hand replied. “But I’ve never seen this guy before. Oh, here comes another.”

I could see the impression of the hallway along the wall where the plaster had dried and left a shallow gap. They had re-plastered and painted it a few times, but the gap, however narrow, had remained.

From my pack, I took a device that Dr. Retcon had provided for us onboard the Rocket Flyer. It was a handheld laser drill, which looked more 1930s serial films Buck Rodgers than modern-day Craftsman or Dewalt. Aiming at the plaster gap, I squeezed the trigger and a narrow red beam slowly ate through the plaster.