Bad Beat - Chapter 46 - Upstream (Patreon)

WHUMPF

The blue light struck his hand again, Gabriel's skin drinking in the energy as the container inside his body swelled. Mia stared at him, then glanced down at her weapon, as if trying to decide whether she'd made a mistake or Gabriel had somehow done something.

In the end, she shook her head, aimed the weapon at him again, adjusted her aim slightly, and pulled the trigger.

WHUMPF

The light flashed before him, making him instinctively squeeze his eyes shut as the projectile flew toward his face. Thankfully, it too was swallowed.

“What the hell?” Mia muttered.

Then, apparently wanting to make sure, she pulled the trigger several more times.

The only thing she accomplished was filling Gabriel’s energy tank. Meanwhile, he simply sat there, occasionally closing his eyes as another blast disappeared into his palm.

Mia frowned, then reached for the gun and adjusted a few settings. The low hum it emitted deepened, and the glow grew noticeably brighter.

“I switched it from stun to stun and hurt,” she said. “But don’t worry, it’s just a prick. I’m sure you’re familiar with the feeling..."

WHUMPF

A stronger surge of energy washed through Gabriel. Thankfully, Mia had aimed it at his palm, the brighter blue light sinking into his skin. This shot filled his energy tank a little more than the previous ones, pushing it to almost half full.

‘I wonder what I’ll actually be able to do with all this,’ he thought gleefully.

Mia studied him with narrowed eyes, trying to piece together what was happening.

Gabriel could practically see the gears turning.

Then, as if a light bulb had gone off, her eyes widened. The firearm vanished from her hand, and she pointed at him. “You drank that power vial!”

He grinned and rocked his hand from side to side. “Almost.”

Mia leaned forward, barely containing her excitement. “And you got power immunity?”

“Heh, I wish...” he said, shaking his head. “It’s energy absorption."

“That’s... not as good as I thought,” she admitted, though she still looked practically giddy. “You can absorb any kind of energy?"

“So far, yes,” Gabriel replied. “I tried it with a few different kinds of energy, and all of them were absorbed.”

“Hell, yes!” she exclaimed. “What can you do with it?”

“Fire beams of energy,” he admitted. “Not exactly the best thing, but at least it gives me a way to fight back.”

Mia nodded eagerly, her eyes roaming over him as if she expected to spot some visible sign of the power.

“Any side effects?” she asked after a moment’s thought.

Gabriel frowned and looked down at himself. “Nothing so far.”

Since the liquid he had drunk had been created by his Deck of Infinity, he didn’t expect it to have any negative side effects. Of course, that wasn’t something he could exactly tell her.

Mia’s eyes lit up even more. “Wow! That means even I could drink it... I wonder what kind of power I’d get?”

She spent a moment fantasizing about superpowers before the excitement drained from her face, as if a switch had flipped.

“I just remembered...” she said sadly. “You only had one bottle.”

Gabriel just smiled. “I still have that one. I used one of the shittier ones instead. Add a pinch of magic, and voilà. Power in a bottle!”

She crossed her arms and glared at him. “You and your fucking magic. I’m starting to get a little annoyed by it. Is there really no way you’ll tell me?” she asked.

Gabriel shook his head. “Sorry. For now, I’m keeping it to myself. Especially in this building.” He gestured toward the walls. “We couldn’t find any bugs, but when powers are involved, you never know.”

Mia huffed. “Fine. Let’s pretend I agree with that and move on.”

Gabriel could tell she hadn’t given up. Hell, part of him wanted to tell her, but something inside held him back. It wasn’t the deck, or some hidden power compelling him to stay silent. It was his own paranoia.

He couldn’t shake the feeling that he was missing something. Not necessarily about Mia, but about everything happening around him. This entire situation had him on edge. Nothing was unfolding the way he’d expected, and things kept happening that made absolutely no sense.

“Agreed,” he said. “Let’s talk about your sister.”

She sniffed. “Let’s.”

They fell silent. The only sound was the quiet hum of the drone’s rotor blades as Sparky hovered between them, observing. They stared at each other; Gabriel occasionally took a bite of his sandwich, while Mia tried to ignore the mascara streaking down her face.

Gabriel let out a sigh. “What do you want to do? Do you want to give up, or go look into it?”

“What? Why would I give up? I’m hunting those motherfuckers down even if it’s the last thing I do!” she said vehemently.

“Let’s leave dying to other people, please,” he muttered.

Then he gestured for Sparky, who immediately brought up three screens, each displaying different information.

The first showed a small brewery that supplied beer to local pubs, known for a line of unusual brews made with prickly pear cactus, mesquite pods, palm dates, and other ingredients typically found in the California desert. The building itself looked rundown, with faded signage and a peeling façade covered in graffiti that could just as easily have been left by the owner as by local teenagers.

All in all, Gabriel could see how people might use it as cover for chemical experiments.

The second screen showed a generic warehouse-like building, connected to a small wholesale clothing shop and dry cleaner, with large signage boasting their ability to handle industrial-scale loads of laundry. Another place that would be an ideal hiding spot for a chemical workshop.

The last one was a residential building, far more worn down than the place they were currently staying in. Graffiti and peeling façade covered every surface. Several windows were boarded up, and part of the fire escape was missing entirely. Around it, piles of trash overflowed from dumpsters that looked as if they hadn’t been emptied in at least three administrations. He could even spot a few rusted cars sitting in the building’s shadow.

According to Sparky’s notes, the image had been taken a month ago by a so-called bleeding-heart journalist trying to drum up attention for refurbishing these old ‘historic’ buildings before they collapsed.

A second attachment was a link to the journalist’s death certificate.

A smaller screen also appeared, showing the locations of the three spots in San Bernardino, with lines connecting them to their current location.

Gabriel leaned back, studying the display. “What do you think?”

Mia leaned closer to the screens, her mascara and anger at Gabriel forgotten for the moment as she read through the building specifications.

“I have no idea…” she admitted.

They spent the entire morning debating which location to choose as their next target, but in the end, they couldn’t really agree on one. Mia was adamant it was the laundry, since that would let them regularly order larger quantities of chemicals without arousing suspicion, while Gabriel argued the brewery made more sense, because the laundry was too obvious.

“If we’ve thought of it, the police probably have too…” he said.

“I don’t think they’re smart enough for that,” Mia replied.

In the end, they tasked Sparky with carefully investigating both locations, letting the AI dig for anything useful about the businesses, while Mia stood up and pulled out her phone.

“No matter how much I loathe it, I think it’s time…” she declared dramatically, holding the phone up into the air.

“No!” Gabriel gasped, theatrically covering his mouth. “You can’t!”

Mia hung her head solemnly. “I have to…”

“Please! Think of the children!” Gabriel exclaimed, reaching out a hand as though toward a drowning man.

They stared at each other for a beat, then both snorted and broke into quiet laughter.

Gabriel stood as well, patting Sparky’s casing as the drone hovered closer. “Anyway, give Nate a call. Perfect time to take a break, and I’m getting hungry.”

Mia nodded. “Pick me up something, too.”

“I was thinking burgers?”

“No pickles, please.”

“Understood.”

Gabriel quickly pulled on his shoes, grabbed his wallet and phone, and headed for the door. Just as he reached for the handle, the drone appeared, holding something in its claws. He held out his hand, palm up, and it dropped the object into it.

A small display flickered to life over the drone.

[This unit managed to compress the other drone into a small shape.]

[This unit can control it if the parental unit needs it.]

“Aw, were you worried about me?” he asked with a faint smile, slipping the object – a slab of compacted metal – into his back pocket. It reminded him of those oversized phones people had tried to market as the next big thing in his previous life. Hopefully, anyone watching would assume it was a notebook or a bulky device. “Thank you.”

[This unit was not worried.]

[This unit simply wants to fight.]

[The unit craves blood.]

“Sure, sure…” he said placatingly, reaching over to pat the drone. Then he opened the door and stepped out. Behind him, he heard the drone buzzing in irritation, while Mia began talking on the phone.

“Hey asshole, it’s me.”

“Yeah, we need some of your mojo.”

“No, not just me. Gabriel is also here…”

The door shut, cutting the conversation off as he put his headphones on, and he started toward a nearby burger joint. With a car it would have been maybe five minutes, but since he didn’t have one – aside from the stolen one hidden away in one of his cards – and felt like walking, it was closer to half an hour each way.

He was halfway to his destination when he heard it.

A tearing sound cut through the air, followed by something heavy crashing into the street nearby. A beat later, screams began suppressing the music in his ears.

It had been a pleasant day, so the streets were crowded. People filled the sidewalks, and traffic moved steadily along the road, the same traffic Los Angeles experienced every day, with bikes and pedestrians threading through each other.

And that peace was shattered.

Tires screeched, and horns blared. People shouted over each other, yelling, screaming, or simply making noises of distress. Gabriel snapped his head up, as he could hear almost everything even through his headphones.

Freezing like a deer in front of floodlights, he ripped the headphones off his head and looked around wildly.

His eyes scanned the street, searching for the source of the chaos as the crowd began to surge, people instinctively moving away from a single direction. As always, a few of them were already raising their phones mid-flight, filming even as they retreated to cover.

He turned toward where they were running from.

And immediately regretted it.

“What the hell is my luck?” he wondered as he saw two supers locked in combat.

He didn’t recognize either of them, which wasn’t surprising. The city had a constant churn of transient supers. Every day new ones appeared, while others vanished just as quickly, either into obscurity or something far worse.

One of them was a giant, covered head to toe in metal. Not a proper metal suit crafted with precision instruments; instead, to Gabriel it looked as if someone had taken a bunch of car doors and welded them together.

Despite the improvised look, it moved with a strange, unsettling fluidity, as if the structure had become something organic. Whoever was inside was completely obscured. Even gender was impossible to guess. They were at least twelve feet tall, with fists the size of microwaves.

The other person was clearly male, wearing green clothing and a cape, covered in a full-face mask, firing blasts of air at the armored figure while yelling obscenities.

Gabriel backed up until his back hit the wall of a nearby building, ignoring the crashing sounds from the fight as the metal giant picked up an abandoned bicycle, crushed it into a ball, and hurled it at the wind-wielder with a surprisingly clean baseball throw.

Naturally, the other super blasted wind beneath himself and dodged the projectile, which instead slammed into a car with its doors still open, abandoned mid-escape.

In response, the metal giant extended an arm. One of the car’s dented doors flexed for a split second, then, with a tearing scream of metal, ripped free and shot forward at extreme speed, cutting through the air toward the other super with a whistling sound.

Gabriel reached into his back pocket and pulled out the drone.

He thought Sparky was overreacting, but apparently the sassy AI knew his luck better than he did. The device unfolded automatically in his hand, while his phone began buzzing.

Then the drone vanished as if it had never existed.

A moment later, he felt it leave his hand entirely as it ascended into the air.

Now that his hand was free, he pulled out his phone and glanced at it. It showed an overhead view of the battle, streamed directly from the drone’s camera, while Sparky was already commenting.

He ignored it in favor of keeping his eyes on the fight.

The street was growing emptier by the second, with only a few stragglers left behind, all of them still holding up shaky phones to record the scene as it tore through the road in real time.

Cars were ripped apart. Wind blasts punched through windows and peeled metal back like paper, all while the two supers moved through the area in an erratic pattern, each trying to land a decisive hit on the other.

“I really should run…” he muttered.

CREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEN

The metal giant grabbed one of the long SUVs, peeled the metal chassis away as if it were a banana, and quickly rolled it into a crude facsimile of a baseball bat. Without hesitation, it swung the improvised weapon at the wind-wielding super.

The response was immediate.

A massive blast of compressed air hit the ‘bat’ head-on.

The two forces met in the middle.

Air against metal.

For a split second, neither gave, straining against each other.

Then the metal lost.

The torn chassis was ripped from the giant’s grip and spun violently through the air.

Directly toward Gabriel.

“Fuck.”

For a moment, he was frozen.

He watched, almost in slow motion, as the twisted piece of metal spun end over end, closing the distance between them. Every blink brought it closer, and his mind was screaming at his body to move, to do something, anything.

But the instinct to act was drowned out by a single looping thought in his head: ‘What the hell? What the hell? What the hell?’

Finally, just before the metal wreck could impale him, close enough that he could have seen his own reflection in it, his body finally restarted and moved.

He dropped to the ground, uncaring of what was beneath him, like a marionette whose strings had been cut.

CRAAAAASH

Time sped up again, and the metal projectile slammed into the wall above him, erupting into a shower of broken brick and dust that rained down on him.

Coughing through the cloud of dust, he looked up and watched as the supers continued the fight without even glancing in his direction.

Internally freaking out, he began crawling away. The remnants of the wall dug into his palms and skin, but he didn’t care.

‘Anywhere is better than here…’