Bad Beat - Chapter 21 - Interlude 1 (Patreon)

There was something wrong with the new guy.

Mia watched the screen in front of her, where a window showed the feed from the hidden camera she had placed above her door.

It was mostly for security – living alone as a woman was never the safest – but now it came in handy to observe the suspicious guy who moved into 707.

The previous tenant moved out – supposedly for a new job – and just a few days later, this new guy moved in. Either it was the biggest coincidence ever, or Gary had godly tenant-seeking skills.

Or there was something more afoot.

For now, she promised herself that she would keep an eye on the guy.

She was here on a mission, and nobody would jeopardize it.

The observation of the Electric Jackals was slow going, as she had to carefully and painfully pick her way through their electrical defenses.

You can only get lost while walking around so many times before people get suspicious. Thankfully, she could flash a smile – maybe wear a little tighter shirt – and those morons would suddenly lose all the blood in their bigger heads.

Still, those few excursions were enough to set up a few bugs and taps around the building – sadly not on the ninth floor – all created using her power.

Waking up with powers was a trip – but over the months, she had gotten used to it.

Well, maybe…

Watching things change under her fingers – while understanding and knowledge streamed into her brain – would never stop being weird for her.

Mia still didn’t really understand where the power came from.

One theory she had was that the stress of her parents’ deaths – compounded by her sister’s – caused it.

Any research she had done on the internet had eventually led to conspiracy rabbit holes, so that was a lost cause. She also didn’t dare to go to the government or any of the companies that were constantly advertising that they were hiring supers for all sorts of things.

She was very aware that her power was extremely valuable.

If it only gave her the ability to transform and modify technological items, then it would be somewhat valuable. But with every transformation, more and more knowledge appeared in her head about the item.

How to use it. How to maintain it.

Sometimes, those flashes of knowledge came with general information – like bits and pieces of programming, hacking, or even engineering.

The first time she had transformed her laptop – mostly as an accident when experimenting – she was almost knocked unconscious by the influx of knowledge.

Still, it allowed her to do what she wanted.

To find out what happened to her sister.

“That fucking asshole!” Mia ranted into her pillow, knowing that the walls were too thin to yell.

She went through the trouble of setting up that entire scheme – by carefully planting and sneaking in a few viruses into the Processware building – to have them get rid of the laptops.

She even managed to blackmail one of the interns in charge of disposal into simply dumping them into the dumpster instead of properly disposing of them.

And then, some asshole came along and took the majority of them.

She had a small camera set up in the alley, so she could see when her new neighbor stopped next to the dumpsters, checked out the laptops, and walked away as if nothing had happened.

At first, she was relieved, but then when she went to pick them at night, almost half of them were gone.

“How the hell did he do it?” she half screamed and half grumbled into her pillow.

Then an idea slammed into her mind like a lightning bolt.

She bolted upright.

“He is a super!” she exclaimed, then flinched.

Mia looked around guiltily, hoping nobody heard her.

Then, with renewed vigor, she scrambled over to her transformed old laptop and began her search.

“Probably some kind of storage or transportation ability…” she mumbled as the browser opened on the screen. “How hard could it be to find him?”

As it turned out – impossible.

No matter how hard she looked, she couldn’t find anybody in the city – or even the state – who had a power that even remotely resembled her new neighbour’s.

Which meant…

“He is either some super-duper secret agent or a new super…” she mused in her chair, leaning back and staring at the ceiling.

Some time later, she had given up trying to figure out the man.

He seemingly just went to work every day – Freshway, a pretty okay grocery chain – and spent most of his time in his apartment.

No partying. No friends. Nothing.

This all lent credence to her idea that he was some kind of secret agent.

The question was: why was he here?

Was he here for the Jackals?

For her?

For something completely different?

The fact that she couldn’t figure it out drove her mad.

So, one day, she decided to finally confront him.

She dressed in a cardigan and t-shirt combo that always got her some free drinks, made sure that her makeup was on point, practiced her ‘innocent’ smile in front of the mirror, and spent a few minutes practicing summoning her gun.

And wasn’t that a surprise when she managed to cobble a gun together using a watch, a Nerf gun, and a half-dead taser?

Luckily, she hadn’t had the need to use it – either in self-defense or to attack somebody – but she was ready to do it, because the new guy was really annoying her.

She took the lemon shortbread she had stress-baked while worrying about the guy’s identity, took a deep breath, and headed out.

Time to see what he was hiding…

Mia locked the door behind her, put her face in her hands, and let out a silent scream.

That could have gone better.

She shot him twice. TWICE!

And then, like a complete sap, she let him convince her to spill her story and then agree to a team-up.

How the hell did he do that?

She shook herself, her eyes narrowed, and bit her lip.

“Does he have mind control?” she mused out loud as he walked toward the kitchen.

She usually didn’t drink, but this required something strong to process.

“But then how did he do the vanishing act with the laptops?”

The question was gnawing at her.

It was generally agreed that people could only have one power. Even if somebody looked like they had multiple sets of powers, those were inevitably connected in some way.

And mind control and… what? Storage power?

They didn’t fit.

They didn’t fit at all…

But honestly, it felt kinda nice – sharing and having someone agree to help her.

She didn’t really have that happen a lot growing up.

Granted, now that she looked back, she was certain the only reason he did that was just to prevent her from shooting him a third time.

She took a sip of the beer and let out a chuckle.

“He did look super queasy after the second shot, heh…”

Another sip.

“Maybe I shouldn’t have shot him twice?” she wondered out loud, then she shrugged. “Nah, I’m sure he is going to be okay… The rats were…”

Not wanting to reveal her abilities, she tested on the abundant rodents found in the district.

She downed the rest of the can and then went back to her laptop.

Time to set up some more dead drops in case Gabriel turned out to be some kind of psycho or government agent.

Mia slammed the door shut behind her and walked toward her own apartment, her entire body tense as her mind went a mile a minute.

‘An AI! A goddamn AI! How the hell did he do that?’ she screamed silently, eyes darting all around, trying to spot any trace of it.

She knew, deep down, it was illogical to think that the AI could go out and set up bugs or cameras to spy on her.

But nothing has been ordinary since she met Gabriel.

The whole goddamn person made no sense.

His power made no sense.

His behavior made absolutely no sense.

And now… he made an AI.

Somehow… with his magic power.

A magic power that allowed him to create a laptop with specs that were better than anything she could reasonably find on the open market.

Hell, she even looked up some custom-built monstrosities, and they still fell short.

Then a smartwatch with almost the same capabilities turned her trusty pistol from merely useful into something actually dangerous.

All without seemingly doing anything… or having access to any workshop.

She made sure to keep track of his movements – just in case he decided to flee or something like that, but the guy seriously spent most of his time at work or at home.

She bit her thumb as she walked toward her door.

“It makes no sense…” she mumbled.

How could he get his hands on the hardware necessary to run an AI? Or how could he set one up?

As far as she knew, most AI that were acknowledged to exist were incredibly limited and required entire server farms and a small reactor’s worth of energy to operate.

All he had was that small box with a projection system of unreal quality.

She had only seen anything like it in movies – or when some of the illusion-type supers got creative.

But it was real, and it responded to her.

Then a thought hit her.

The heist.

The electronic devices.

All those laptops, tablets, phones, and other devices she had managed to divert to that warehouse.

She had never seen them.

Never seen or been to his ‘hiding’ place.

Just reassurances that he had it handled.

Then the mention of his ‘magic’.

And now, something that shouldn’t exist.

The realization hit her like a freight train.

Gabriel actually had several different powers.

Some kind of storage ability that allowed him to transport a large amount of items without being noticed.

A second one that allowed him to manipulate matter – helping him break down all those electronic devices.

And finally, one that gave him the knowledge to use those materials to build super-technology without the aid of a dedicted workshop.

Mia stopped, freezing in place.

“There is no way…” she muttered. “Could he have more?”

If he already had three very different power sets, who was to say he couldn’t have more?

All paired with a naïve mindset that thought creating an AI was a great idea.

Without chains! Or Safeguards! He probably didn’t even ensure it was loyal to him!

Did he not watch movies? That’s how all those apocalypse movies started!

Mia had to do something.

But what?

The AI probably already had everything on her.

One wrong move and she would be exposed.

Or worse…

Turning around on a dime, she strode back toward the apartment.

The only thing she could do was to convince him to let her supervise his creations. Unless she wanted to sell him out before he unleashed some kind of technological abomination.

Or maybe create a grey goo scenario…

The thought of selling him out sent a shiver of disgust through her body.

She remembered the police when they had given her the news of her sister’s death.

Their uncaring – almost bored – look.

As if her sister’s death meant nothing.

A simple statistic.

How they ignored her when she pointed out, between sobs, that gang members were hanging around her apartment…

They had the gall to tell her that it was natural to want to blame someone – but these things just happened…

No. Mia was not going to go to the government with this.

She was going to deal with it the same way she dealt with everything else.

By herself.

And if she had to drag that idiot by his ear and slam common sense into his brain with a hammer, by god, she was going to do it!

Spending time with the AI was not as bad as she thought.

The synthetic life’s comments appeared on her laptop’s screen constantly as she directed Gabriel through the infiltration mission.

At some point, Mia forgot to be afraid of its existence and was simply annoyed by it.

[Nin. Nin. Nin.]

[Parental unit stealth mission – success.]

“Could you not?” she whispered angrily as she watched the dot representing Gabriel move through the building.

While they had prepared as much as possible and were using tech that was way overkill, she still couldn’t help but worry.

[Organic unit, Mia worries too much.]

[Parental unit is lame, but competent.]

[Umu.]

“Should you be saying that about your ‘parental unit’?” she asked with a frown.

[Cute daughter privilege.]

Mia just let out a sigh and went back to monitoring the situation.

The guard patrol was going well. The first man was currently on the other side of the building, while their counterpart was in the small security office, at the receptionist desk. They were watching spoofed footage that was constantly updated by Spark-1, so as to avoid the usual fallings of looped footage.

The workers were sitting around a small folding desk in the printing room and were playing some kind of card game while having a smoke next to an open window.

Mia was almost jolted out of a trance when Gabriel found something that was not in the original blueprints.

She had lived most of her life in the San Bernardino district, so she wasn’t really surprised that the plans weren’t up to date or that someone had left something out of them.

The reality of life in this oft-forgotten district of the Los Angeles megacity was that you solved issues in any way you could.

If someone wanted a new basement, it was much easier to just call over a few friends, maybe find a person who knew what they were doing, and get to digging.

Waiting for city permits, going through rigorous bureaucratic processes, often took years.

And the result was still up to the capricious system.

Still, the moment Gabriel decided to descend, her fingers began to fly over the keyboard, looking for any digital system down there to infiltrate.

[No outgoing signal found.]

“I know, I know… try to piggyback off his phone…” she muttered at Spark-1’s comment.

[Expanding search parameters.]

[No outgoing signal found.]

[Again.]

“Yeah, yeah…” she replied, frustration mounting, as she was also unable to find anything.

Then, the silence of the night was interrupted by a loud sound.

Motor revving.

At the same time, Spark-1 began to bombard her with comments.

[Outgoing signal found.]

[Incoming enemy combatants.]

[Parental unit is in danger.]

Mia’s eyes widened, and she began to whisper-yell into the microphone of the headset.

She watched with disbelief as the Buzzer gang arrived with several beat-up vans, piled out.

They collected into a disorganized mess.

Ambling around for a moment before one of them reached into a bag they were holding and threw some kind of explosive at the building.

BAAMMMM

“What the hell are you saying?”

The other man wrung his hands and looked anywhere but at the man sitting on a faded armchair, surrounded by several glaring, muscle-bound men and women in blue and white shirts.

The first man spoke with a slight Mexican accent, had his eyes narrowed, and his hand was visibly twitching.

“Repeat what you just said,” came the cold order.

The overweight, sweating man nodded rapidly. “Y-yes, s-sir.” He swallowed before continuing, eyes darting around as if looking for an escape route. “W-we went to pick up the p-package, as usual.”

“And you saw nobody?”

“And we saw nobody during our first search,” he confirmed, practically echoing the man in the armchair. “No signs of entry. Nothing.”

The man frowned, then made a hand motion to continue.

The overweight man wiped his forehead with his already wet hand and did so. “Yes, sir! Then, when we didn’t find the package, we first thought we were looking in the first place. Wouldn’t be the first time they left a package in the wrong place.”

“Naturally…”

“Indeed, sir,” the man started to nod again, sending his chins wobbling. “But then…”

“Then you heard the sound, right?” the man in the armchair asked, his gaze sharpening. “Made by someone that no camera picked up. Or someone who just vanished the next street over. Did I get it right?”

The pudgy man kept nodding, as if it were the only thing keeping him alive.

“I-I promise you, sir! We saw somebody! We even found footprints!”

“And? Where did those footprints lead to?”

The man swallowed but didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. Both of them knew the results of the investigation.

Nothing.

No clue who the thief was. Or where they had gone.

Even watching secondary markets yielded nothing.

The package simply vanished into thin air.

The man in the armchair stood with a sigh, adjusted his thick watch, and stepped closer, patting him on the shoulder.

At the brief pressure, the overweight man collapsed to the ground, begging.

“P-please, sir. I wasn’t… we were just… I’ll make sure…”

It came out as a jumbled mess, not making much sense.

The first man only smiled.

“Don’t worry. It can happen to anyone. The important thing is now to find this new super,” he stated, removing his hands from the other man’s shoulder.

The pudgy man let out a shaky breath and gave a brittle smile, looking up.

“T-thank you, thank you, thank you… I’ll make sure to do my best!”

The first man raised his eyebrows, his smile turning cruel.

“Who said you’re going to help?” he asked.

For a fraction of a second, nothing happened. The man on the floor blinked, confusion flickering across his face – then his expression twisted.

Blood welled at the corners of his eyes first, thin red lines spilling over and running down his cheeks. A moment later, it followed from his nose and ears, thicker now, pulsing with each frantic, failing heartbeat.

He tried to speak, but the words were replaced with a bubbling gargle.

His body shuddered, then with a final, ragged breath, he sprayed dark red across the floor, before falling limp and slumping on the side, eyes still wide and unseeing.

Silence settled over the room, thick and absolute.

The first man grimaced.

“Clean this shit up.” Instantly, a few people sprang forward, dragging the dead body away. “And somebody find me Claw.”

“I have a job for him.”

The crowd around the building was not enormous – as there was no actual event being organized – but with her fame, there was always a small group camping out there, hoping to spot her.

She descended gracefully from the sky, making sure that the photographers – and the perverts – only caught her good side, while the people under her feet screamed for her attention.

The sound of the crowd blurred together before her, but she made sure to make eye contact with a few of them – just as her useless public relations trainer insisted – while flashing them a charming smile.

She touched down on the concrete before the entrance to one of the Helix buildings they used as a gathering point and walked alongside the line of screaming masses held back by stoic-faced security people.

Deftly avoiding grabbing hands, she stopped a few times to sign a few worthless papers – the practice always confusing her.

Why collect worthless scraps of paper?

Still maintaining the smile, she offered a few empty pleasantries, waved, then stepped through the doors, which thankfully cut off the screaming behind her.

Ignoring the security, she gently floated to the lift and punched the number to her floor with a finger. She heard a small crack as the plastic gave way under her strength, but she ignored it with practice.

Settling onto the floor, she looked at the ceiling as the lift took her up, before a small ding interrupted her woolgathering.

Once again, rising into the air a few inches to avoid walking, she levitated over the couch in the middle of the giant room, throwing off parts of her costume on the way.

Finally, she sank into the supremely soft couch with a relieved sigh, now wearing only her leotard.

She stretched pleasantly, looking out the giant one-way windows overlooking Los Angeles.

“What a small world…” she muttered, reaching her hand out and picking up a drink from a tray held out by another woman dressed in a servant’s uniform. The servant bowed her head and left with the same grace and silence with which she had entered.

She took a sip and continued to stare at the city, her mind drifting without settling on anything particular.

Finally, after half an hour of silence, it was broken by the steady steps of a pair of platform heels.

She waited until the owner of the heels entered her sight, still staring out of the floor-to-ceiling window.

“Well?” she demanded, her previous cheerfulness and angelic disposition nowhere to be seen.

The other woman stood before her, wearing an expensive pencil skirt with a black blazer over a white shirt – very office chic. Her hair was black, done in a severe updo, while she was looking down on her on the couch with a stern expression. She was also holding a thick tablet in her hands

“Amelia.”

“Evelyn,” she returned the greeting evenly.

“Anything to report?”

She shrugged. “I have no idea… nor do I care. Went in, punched them, and they died. The end.”

“Yes. I’m aware of that. The internet is full of videos of the fight.”

She perked up a little. “Oh? Are any of them good? Did I look good in them?”

The other women smiled with schadenfreude. “One of them is titled ‘Bombshell Top 10 March Ass Moments’.”

She just snorted. “Booo… at least they could have come up with a better title…”

“Indeed,” came the dry reply. The woman reached up with a hand, but aborted the motion halfway and returned it to the tablet she was holding. “But I was mostly curious about your actual job.”

She exhaled through her nose, took another sip, then waved lazily toward the pile of clothing she had left behind.

“It’s there…”

The other woman nodded, walked over the dirty pile, and with a distasteful look crouched down, searching through it before coming up with a small pendrive. She raised it to eye level and observed it as if appraising something valuable.

Nodding to herself, she walked back to her and inserted the pendrive into a slot on the thick tablet.

For a minute, she just watched the tablet working, occasionally tapping the screen, before nodding to herself.

The pendrive was removed and pocketed as the other woman turned to her.

“All in order.”

“As if I’d fuck something this simple up… I’m not that idiot Hotshot,” she retorted with a laugh.

The other woman ignored the ‘joke’ and tapped a few times on her tablet before speaking up.

“I’ve got your new assignment.”

“Really? Can’t you let me rest?” she whined, slumping further into the couch. “I deserve a little rest, don’t I? I was a good girl!”

“The target is an apartment building in the San Bernardino district,” came the retort, ignoring her whining. “Voidwake is tapped as your enemy.”

“Ugh, that creep?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Fineeee.”

In a small office, in a building somewhere in America, a room was filled with all sorts of electronic panels – each one packed with screens, buttons, and keyboards arranged in countless configurations, their displays streaming data at an almost incomprehensible speed for the human eyes.

The panels lined the walls in uneven rows, some stacked higher than others, others recessed into the structure as if added later, piece by piece. Thick cables ran between them in bundled lines, disappearing into the walls, the floor, and the ceiling, their exact paths impossible to follow. A few hung loose in places, swaying ever so slightly in the still air, as though disturbed long ago and never set right again.

Everything looked brand new. Metal gleamed beneath the dim overhead lighting, edges sharp and clean, surfaces polished to a sterile shine. There wasn’t a scratch on anything.

And yet, every surface lay beneath a thin layer of dust – as if no one had set foot in the room for a very long time.

The air itself felt undisturbed. Stale, but not unpleasant. Filtered, perhaps–too clean in a way that suggested circulation without presence.

Still, there were signs of recent visits.

Plastic boxes left on clear surfaces. Stacks of documents lined the shelves, some slightly askew as though flipped through in haste. A few empty water bottles. Pens without caps, drying out. Pencil stubs scattered beneath the desks. A chair pulled just slightly away from its station, not quite returned, not quite abandoned.

People came here.

Just not often.

The door was encased in state-of-the-art security: cameras, motion sensors, and a reinforced pad requiring both a code and a fingerprint, with a small microphone embedded beside it.

In this empty, indifferent space, nothing seemed to change as time passed.

Until one day, something did.

One of the screens – linked to several panels by thick cables – shifted.

The data flowing through it warped, patterns breaking and reforming as indicator lights flickered to life and went out in rapid succession. Nearby panels followed, one after another, as if waking from a long, silent sleep, while lines of code continued to cascade across the display.

Then, as though reaching a decision, a large red lamp ignited and began to spin, washing the room in harsh, pulsing light.

RING. RING. RING.

An alarm sounded – surprisingly gentle – at odds with the urgency of the light, as the once-silent room filled with sudden, unnatural activity.

It took a long while before anyone noticed.**

**

A/N: Well, here is our first interlude :)