Bad Beat - Chapter 09 - Sliver (Patreon)

He arrived at his door in half an hour, and the moment he inserted the key into the lock, Mia’s door opened. The goth girl looked around surreptitiously and skulked over to him while hugging her laptop to her chest.

Gabriel never saw anyone he could describe as looking like a cat that caught the canary.

Until now.

She wasn’t giggling, but he could sense an aura of smugness around her.

He quickly opened the door and let the girl in, handing her the shopping bag containing the items she had requested. After closing the door and turning the key twice, he turned around to see Mia sitting cross-legged on a kitchen chair, already devouring a yogurt cup.

“Thanks!” she exclaimed happily between two bites. “I love these, but they run out so fast…”

“You’re welcome,” Gabriel said, then went to put away the rest of the groceries.

For a few minutes, he worked around the kitchen while she demolished the yogurt. When he finished, he sat down and idly surfed the net, waiting for her to finish.

Done with the entire pack of yogurt, the two of them moved to the old, ratty couch – once again taking up the opposite ends, with Mia sitting while holding her laptop in her lap.

The laptop itself had the same style as her gun. It had a metallic finish, a bit thicker than a usual laptop, but completely silent. It also had the now-familiar blue glow lines and a faint hum that couldn’t quite be heard but could be felt.

“So, this is the beast?” he asked, motioning toward the futuristic-looking computer.

Mia nodded happily. “Yup! Had it since high school. It was starting to slow down, but with my powers, it works better than most of the top-of-the-line rigs I’ve tried at shops.”

Gabriel hummed thoughtfully.

She raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“Wait a sec!”

He jumped up from the couch and rushed into his bedroom. Quickly looking through his deck, he picked out the 1 x Advanced Laptop (Wiped) card, summoned it to his hand, and returned to the living room at a more sedate pace.

All in all, he was gone for maybe ten seconds. Mia didn’t even have time to react to his actions.

Gabriel walked over to the couch and offered the laptop to the curious woman.

“Here. Try this.”

Her eyes widened as she beheld the brand-new-looking laptop, turning it this way and that, trying to figure out where Gabriel had gotten it.

“What the hell, Gabriel? Where did you get this?” she asked, flabbergasted. “I’ve never seen this brand.”

Opening the laptop, she powered it on, and her eyes widened even further when it booted up in under five seconds.

“Fast…” she whispered in wonder.

Mia played with it for a few more seconds – navigating through the BIOS options with practiced ease – before powering it down and putting it aside.

She looked back at Gabriel with a thankful look on her face that was only slightly overshadowed by burning curiosity.

“I want to ask where you got it, but I won’t,” she stated seriously before her face softened and a small smile found its way there. “Thanks.”

Gabriel smiled. “No problem.” He hesitated for a second before adding. “Also, don’t worry about tracking. It’s not stolen.”

“Right. Because that doesn’t sound totally suspicious…” she grumbled, still glancing at the pristine laptop sitting on the table.

Finally, after a few seconds of internal debate, she let the issue go and turned back to Gabriel.

“Alright. Ignoring your… magic, let’s get to the important stuff,” she began while opening her own laptop, typing a few things.

His TV turned on without anyone visibly touching it or the remote, and she began mirroring her screen to it.

“As you know, I arranged a phantom delivery.”

The screen started to list the contents of the package. With a few supporting pictures also appearing.

Apparently, she had time to put together a presentation…

Hundreds of laptops, smartphones, peripherals – including cables, chargers, and adapters – a bunch of smartwatches, Bluetooth headphones, and a smattering of tablets. All of them were dropshipping-quality, but with Gabriel’s power, that wouldn’t be an obstacle.

Oblivious to Gabriel’s thoughts, Mia continued. “Because it’s from a dropshipping business, the total value is around ten to fifteen thousand creds. Not much in the grand scheme of things, but it would give us a good starting point.” She fixed him with a pointed look. “If you can hold up your end with your… magic.”

Gabriel could see on Mia’s face that she desperately wanted to know about his power – especially after she shared her own – but she was smart enough to realize he wouldn’t trust her fully after the stunt she had pulled.

He nodded. “Don’t worry. Just make sure the paperwork is good, and I can handle the rest…” he promised.

Then, a second later, he wanted to curse.

“Oh? You’ll handle the rest?” she asked with a coy smile. “Is my big, bad neighbor a ninja? Ready to sneak into a dilapidated warehouse all on his own?”

Gabriel gave her a wan smile but nodded. He had dug his own grave; he couldn’t back down.

Well, he could…

But how would that look? He had promised to help. If he stepped back before they had done anything, she would lose all trust in him.

“I mean, it’s a random warehouse. How hard could it be?” he asked gibly before wincing again.

‘Me and my big mouth… Now it’s guaranteed to go wrong…’ he complained inwardly while trying to project a confident aura.

Mia eyed him for a moment, then let out a snort. “My brave hero…” she exclaimed dramatically, clasping her hands together in front of her.

Then she shook her head and returned to the laptop with an eyeroll.

The scene changed on the TV.

Now it showed a map of the area. A blue dot marked their building, and a red the location of the warehouse.

They were connected with a green line.

The most efficient route between them.

Gabriel stood up and walked closer to the device to see the map more clearly, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.

Mia zoomed in on the warehouse, bringing up a grainy satellite image.

The building was squat and ugly, surrounded by cracked asphalt and rusting cargo containers.

“Registered owner?” Gabriel asked.

Mia hesitated.

“Technically? Some shell company in Nevada.”

“Technically?”

She tapped the keyboard, and the screen changed once more, screenshots of carefully worded forum posts showing up.

“Street rumor says the Electric Jackals use it as overflow storage.”

Gabriel paused.

“That sounds bad.”

Mia shrugged.

“Only if they’re actually using it this week.”

Gabriel hummed thoughtfully, ignoring the implications. For now.

He traced the route between the two points on the map.

“An hour walking, ten minutes in a car.”

“A car could be tracked.”

“Can we steal one?”

“Around here? If it is not already stolen, the Electric Jackals already own it,” Mia replied dismissively.

“Then we walk.”

“Well, you walk.”

“Yes, I walk,” he replied with a smile, while his attention refocused on the task. “We’d need to go in without any electronics. Or brand-new ones. I don’t want them to track us down via triangulation or anything like that.”

Mia opened her mouth, then closed it again. She frowned before cursing under her breath.

“How am I supposed to play overwatch if you’re going in clean?”

Gabriel thought about his experiments, then spoke up.

“Don’t worry about that part, I’ll handle it.”

She looked at him suspiciously, but in the end, she didn’t really have a choice.

“Fine. But if we get caught, I’m telling the cops that you forced me with illegally taken pictures!” she declared with great vehemence.

“Sure. You can even tell them I’m your stalker from high school, if you want…” he replied casually, still staring at the map.

Mia chuckled, then continued going down the list of issues.

Okay,” Mia said slowly. “Let’s pretend your mystery powers solve the locks.”

She nodded toward the screen.

“What about motion sensors? Cameras? Silent alarms?” she began to list them. ”And what about transportation?” she asked. “How are we going to move so many pallets of goods without being caught?”

“Leave that to me, too,” Gabriel stated confidently.

He glanced back at Mia, who was still sitting on the couch, and smiled.

She sent him another suspicious look, but in the end, she just shrugged.

“Fine. Fine,” she spat. “Let’s ignore the biggest issue and start planning this stupid heist. The sooner we’re done, the sooner I can go to jail…”

“Way to be positive!”

“I have a knife!”

After a marathon planning session, Mia returned to her apartment to attune to her new laptop – apparently it took anywhere between one and three hours – and Gabriel was left alone for his own planning.

He lay in his own bed after a shower to get off the general grime of the day and the lingering smell of the meal aisle he had spent most of his shift in. His own laptop rested in his lap.

‘Let’s see what I need…’ he mused as he began his search.

First, he needed a way to keep in contact with Mia. He could’ve upgraded his phone for that, but in this case, he wanted to completely destroy whatever device he used afterward to prevent any possibility of tracking.

A small hands-free headset would be cheap to acquire. Adding that to the mix – a burner phone for both of them – he would also need something that would let him enter the warehouse and see in the darkness.

The burner would be easy: just slap a few bargain-bin phones together and be done with it. The same for the hands-free.

The big question was how he would get inside.

Opening the messaging app, he asked Mia if she had any lock-picking sets.

He felt she was the type of girl who had at least half a dozen of them.

He wasn’t disappointed.

Five minutes later, a disgruntled Mia – wearing black pajamas with a graphic of emo sheep jumping over a barbed-wire fence – knocked on his door and slammed a small case into his chest before stalking away.

Inside was a collection of common lock-picking tools, as well as a small device – around the size of a large flash drive – that could be used to open simpler electronic doors by blasting them with a pinpoint electromagnetic strike. It would need to be recharged immediately, but it was better than nothing.

Curiously, he absorbed it.

The card had a white border and read: 1 x Doorbuster (One-Shot).

Chuckling slightly, he picked up sixteen batteries he had in his kitchen drawer in case he needed them for anything, and merged them, gaining 1 x Enhanced Battery with a blue border. Then, without any preamble, he merged it with the Doorbuster.

The card flashed slightly before reforming into another blue-bordered card, reading 1 x Doorbuster.

Gabriel grinned.

Looking around the living room for inspiration, his eyes landed on a book. It was an old schoolbook from his community college days, about the physics of electricity and how computers use it.

His grin widened.

He picked up the book and merged it with the Doorbuster.

The blue border stayed, but the name changed: 1 x Efficient Doorbuster.

‘Better than nothing…’ he mused, wondering what effect it would have on the changed device.

Then he absorbed his All-Purpose Multi-Tool and merged it first with the lock-picking set, then with the Doorbuster device.

The border of the card stayed blue, but the picture showed some changes. Instead of a high-quality multi-purpose tool, the item was splayed open, displaying all the different tools within it, with a faint electricity effect running through them.

Summoning it into his hand, he inspected it.

It still looked the same, though it had become a little thicker – probably for some kind of battery – and now had a button marked with a broken key symbol on one side.

‘Alright. Entry is handled. Now the other problems…’ he congratulated himself before returning to his bed.

There was research to be done.­

Over the rest of the week, the two of them canvassed the neighborhood for all the cheap shops, second-hand stores, and bodegas, and picking up the tools needed for the heist.

Well, Mia didn’t really understand why he needed sixteen different black hoodies and ski-mask, but she nevertheless went out and bought them for him.

She even complained about how discriminatory it was to assume that someone who dressed like a goth would automatically know where to get black clothing.

He didn’t point out that it had only taken her an hour to get everything.

Gabriel, meanwhile – with great enthusiasm – went through a few used book shops and picked up several books about ninjas and the like.

He didn’t know yet if books would help, but they had clearly done something with the Doorbuster, so he was willing to try again.

Another trip resulted in a box of fake night-vision glasses from a joke shop. And another – slightly more expensive – trip netted him a proper pair of goggles.

On Saturday morning, after Mia dumped everything in the middle of his living room and sent a curious look at the eclectic collection he had assembled there, he escorted her out, promising some cool results later.

Standing alone in the middle of self-made chaos, Gabriel grinned.

“Time for some elbow grease!” he exclaimed softly and began absorbing and fusing things.

The sixteen black hoodies became Master-Crafted Hoodies, followed by the ski masks, which turned into a Master-Crafted Ski-Mask.

Then he started to fuse the joke items – naturally, after playing around with them for a bit – eventually producing one slightly useful pair of Low-Quality Nightvision Glasses card with a white border.

Trying them on, he turned off the light and looked around.

Everything was grainy as hell, but he could at least make out general shapes.

“Good enough for this operation,” he muttered, taking them off.

Then he took a pack of one thousand disposable masks and began the arduous process of fusing them. He stopped when he had four Perfect Face Masks in his cards. They only had white borders, but it was enough for what he had planned.

Three went into his bugout bag, and the last one was placed on the table next to the ski mask and the glasses.

Another fusion later, and he held a card.

But he didn’t look at it yet.

Instead, he picked up two books.

History of the Shinobi: Myths and Facts

The Greatest Burglaries in History

Both books looked decades old, but what Gabriel counted on was the content and the concepts they represented.

With deliberate movement, he absorbed them and, one by one, fused them to the other items. Then, with a final motion, he added the hoodie and the pair of goggles.

Holding his breath, he turned over the card.

To his surprise, it had an orange border.

On the face of the card was a modern-looking hoodie made out of matte-black material. In the opening of the hood was a mask with slim night-vision lenses. The name was very appropriate: 1 x Shadow Stalker Hoodie.

Summoning the item into his hands, he inspected it carefully.

The material was some kind of strange cloth that breathed extremely well while barely making any sound when it moved. Pulling it on, he found it remarkably comfortable and form-fitting, yet it didn’t restrict his movement at all.

Pulling the mask down, he affixed it to the connection point on the hoodie’s neck. His vision instantly turned green, allowing him to see in the darkness.

“Awesome!” he exclaimed.

“What?”

Gabriel froze in surprise.

His voice had changed.

Instead of its usual timbre, it was deep and gravelly. He sounded like a seventy-year-old coal miner who had smoked a pack a day for all of those seventy years.

“Fantastic!”

Turning on the light, his lenses took a second to adjust to the brightness before returning to normal.

He took out his phone, turned on the recording function, and set it down on his table. Then he walked in front of it, striking silly poses and performing exaggerated “martial arts” moves before taking off the mask and checking the video.

The second surprise found him there.

The footage was full of visual artifacts.

Every time he moved and the camera caught the mask clearly, the video glitched slightly.

By the end of the recording, it was almost unwatchable.

“Well… now I can’t even deny the magic accusation…” he mumbled as he started taking off the hoodie.

To further his confusin another inspection didn’t reveal any electronics in the mask.

For all intents and purposes, it was magic.

Gabriel stared at it for a while before shrugging.

It was called the Deck of Infinity, after all.

After that, it was child’s play to put two High-Quality Smartphones together, as well as two Cutting-Edge Hands-Free Headset.

One set for him and another for his partner in crime.

He looked around, satisfied, and began to pick up the trash, stuffing it into unwanted shopping bags before destroying them with his deck.

Once he finished, he sent a message to Mia that he was done and started making lunch.

All this breaking the universe over his knee made him hungry.