Bad Beat - Chapter 49 - Whisper (Patreon)

For the next hour or so, he just watched TV and chatted with Sparky, letting the constant stream of news, commercials, and random entertainment slowly wash away the lingering tension from the day’s events.

They discussed celebrity news, both good and bad, and he tried to answer some of the more awkward questions Sparky posed to him about humans in general, particularly why people became so emotionally invested in complete strangers and why a single careless comment on social media could somehow dominate the news cycle for days.

It turned out Sparky had become a huge fan of Petite Ingot, a Korean girl band, but she didn’t really understand the finer aspects of the fandom or people’s reactions to some of the group’s actions, leaving Gabriel to explain everything from obsessive fan culture and shipping to online arguments that seemed to erupt over the smallest imaginable slights. Heavy metal was never his jam, but Gabriel still found it somewhat poetic that an AI had become enamored with a heavy metal band, especially one whose lyrics revolved around humanity’s flaws, emotions, and self-destructive tendencies.

Otherwise, Gabriel simply wanted to unwind after his participation in the spat between Scrapheap and Devil Wind.

He still felt his heartbeat accelerate whenever his mind drifted back to the confrontation, and the unsettling realization that, despite everything his power had given him, he had felt completely powerless in that moment.

Could he have stopped them?

Of course.

His abilities almost certainly gave him the means to interfere if he was willing to reveal enough of what he could do.

But that would have outed him to everyone. Granted, with only one power, but even that would have been enough to put a target on his back, especially with people still searching for the mysterious Enchanter.

The worst part was that he had a deep, unsettling feeling that the entire chain of events, from the clash between the two villains to him walking by at exactly the wrong time, followed by Bombshell showing up, wasn’t exactly an accident.

There was just something about it that stank to high heaven, as though too many coincidences had lined up perfectly for it all to have happened by chance.

Still, Gabriel had to admit he was just happy that he had survived. A few more encounters like that, and he might even get used to it…

The only disappointment throughout the entire ordeal was that he hadn’t been able to absorb any samples of the villains’ powers. He had been so focused on staying alive that the thought had never even crossed his mind until long after everything was over. Even Bombshell hadn’t gotten close enough while actively using her power for him to absorb another sample.

Which was a pity, considering the last sample he had acquired had allowed him to craft a rather impressive power.

“Maybe I could engineer a situation where she’d have to save me?” he muttered, before instantly shaking his head. “Nah, that’s stupid…”

Besides, deliberately putting himself in danger for the chance to collect another sample sounded like exactly the kind of plan that got people killed.

Gabriel idly wondered if there was a way to absorb Nate’s precog powers...

But he couldn’t come up with any solution, so instead he shifted his attention toward one of the fundamental forces of nature.

Electromagnetism.

More specifically, magnets.

He didn’t have any at home, but a quick trip to a nearby corner store that sold everything from snacks to small home improvement tools and materials solved that problem. Soon enough, he had a small spool of wire, a few nails, and a pack of batteries. He even found a school packet containing some of those red and blue magnetic strips that students used to experiment with and learn how magnets worked.

Gabriel was man enough to admit that, even after studying engineering in his previous life, he still didn’t fully understand how they worked. The way they interacted with invisible fields and forces, influencing objects without any obvious physical connection, made about as much sense as his own powers sometimes did.

He sat at his coffee table with his tools spread out across it, while Sparky watched from one of the drones that was currently transformed into a metallic mouse, perched comfortably on Gabriel’s shoulder.

“Ready, Sparky?” he asked as he began taking apart the school packet, then carefully winding the wire around the nail.

[Parental unit is attempting to perform experiments more suited to elementary school students.]

[This unit is excited to see how this will be weaponized.]

Gabriel didn’t rise to her provocation.

Instead, he picked up one of the magnets and held one of his blank-faced cards near it, focusing on simply absorbing the invisible magnetic field surrounding it. For an entire minute, he kept the two objects together, patiently waiting to see if anything would happen, before finally pulling them apart.

To his relief, the card had changed.

The blank black face was gone, replaced by a simple, almost childish drawing of a red and blue magnet with the magnetic field lines around it drawn in white chalk. The border was green, with a simple name written at the bottom of the card: 1 x Weak Magnetic Foce.

He repeated the experiment, creating another card with the same name, before carefully placing the two together and initiating the fusion. The resulting card was still green-bordered, but the name had changed slightly: 1 x Magnetic Force.

Gabriel stared at the new card and hummed thoughtfully.

“Now what the hell should I do with this?”

Shrugging slightly, he put the card down and picked up another empty one. Then he carefully connected one of the nine-volt batteries to the wire, allowing electricity to flow through it and creating a very rudimentary electromagnet.

He held the card near it and focused on absorbing the resulting field. A minute later, he had one more card: 1 x Weak Magnetic Force. Apparently, his schoolyard experiment electromagnet was about as strong as the small piece of ferromagnetic material included in the school packet.

‘But that also tells me, if I make a bunch of small electromagnets...’ he mused as he stared thoughtfully at the card. ‘I can fuse them together and create a super powerful electromagnet...’

Not wanting to waste card space, he spent one more minute filling another card, which he then fused with this one. Then, using the newly created card, he fused it together with the one he had created previously.

The resulting card still had green borders, but the name had changed once again: 1 x Medium Magnetic Force.

“Well, that is something…” he muttered.

Naturally, Sparky couldn’t leave that without comment.

[Wow.]

[Such impressive creation.]

[Parental unit truly showed this unit their capabilities.]

[This unit’s respect cannot possible rise much higher.]

[Slow clap.]

[Very slow clap.]

Gabriel let out a sigh, then sent the metallic mouse perched on his shoulder flying with a flick of his finger, earning another series of sarcastic messages from Sparky as the drone transformed mid-flight, and landed safely on the table as a spider. He ignored her commentary and simply put the resulting card back into his deck.

For now, it was just an interesting experiment, but he hoped it would come in useful someday.

**

For the rest of the week, he simply followed his usual routine.

He went to work, occasionally stopping by other shops for groceries, sometimes cooking at home and sometimes eating out, but mostly acting like the fight that had happened hadn’t really affected him. He wanted everyone to think that he was just happy to return to his simple, ordinary life.

Naturally, he was still paranoid about Bombshell swooping in for the third time, but aside from one fleeting moment when he thought he saw her flying high in the sky one afternoon, nothing happened.

One sweaty, overweight guy recognized him in the grocery store and demanded to know what his relationship with Bombshell was, but Gabriel simply pretended he didn’t speak English. With one of his female coworkers watching the situation, the guy quickly became flustered and left while muttering to himself and typing something furiously into his phone.

Nancy, the perpetually frowning, dirty-blonde coworker who was either sixteen or forty-six depending on the day, walked up to him while smirking.

“I see someone has been getting some much-needed attention...”

Gabriel simply let out a sigh and continued filling the shelves. “Thank you, Nancy, for that observation.”

“I mean, he was a bit rude, but you know what they say about having a bit of meat to hold onto...” she continued, sarcasm rolling off her tongue in waves.

Gabriel just rolled his eyes. “Thank you for that image…”

Nancy’s smirk deepened. “Anytime, anytime…”

As he left the store on Friday afternoon, he let out a deep breath of relief. He wasn’t scheduled for the weekend, thanks to Sparky’s intervention and his manager’s complete lack of technological literacy, so he planned to pick up some fresh gyros on the way home and go over the data Sparky and Mia had found.

And perhaps even whatever Nate had discovered.

Sadly, Nate’s messages mostly consisted of sending Gabriel memes about games, memes about Gabriel’s ‘abduction’ by Bombshell, and memes about cats and goths. Not much useful information, and even less entertainment value.

He let out a sigh and took a deep breath, inhaling the familiar smells of a Friday afternoon in Los Angeles Megacity. Around him, life continued without paying him even one ounce of attention, just as it did for everyone else. Indifference mixed with the sounds and smells of traffic as people rushed home, surrounded by honking horns, screeching tires, and the endless movement of thousands of people trying to get somewhere else.

Shouldering his bag and letting the strap settle comfortably, Gabriel looked around one last time before heading home.

He was halfway out of the alleyway behind the Freshway store, as the manager insisted they leave through the employee entrance, when he suddenly felt the ground beneath him shake and buckle.

For a brief second, he felt his stomach drop as his brain suddenly recalled with perfect clarity that earthquakes were incredibly common in California. But the moment those thoughts flashed through his mind, the movement vanished, and he found himself standing on perfectly stable ground.

Gabriel looked down, then around, and finally up.

There, standing on the edge of the roof of the neighboring building, was a very familiar figure.

Bombshell.

She looked down at him with a smirk, raised one hand, pointed at her own eyes with her index and middle fingers held in a V sign, then pointed directly at Gabriel.

And when she saw that he understood, she beckoned him over.

Gabriel just stared back.

**

It took him only a short amount of time to find the entrance to the building, which contained a few offices belonging to several different businesses, and then take the stairs up to the roof where the blonde superhero was waiting for him.

Gabriel contemplated running away, but the sad reality was that Bombshell was much faster than he was. Plus, he was almost afraid to admit that he was insanely curious about what the corporate superhero wanted from him.

The roof, as he expected, was empty, but he scanned the area with a suspicious gaze. He didn’t know exactly what he was looking for, but the simple act of checking his surroundings still felt somewhat relaxing. Naturally, he didn’t spot anything aside from some animal refuse and scattered trash.

Bombshell was standing in the middle of the roof, watching him with hawk-like eyes.

“Good afternoon,” she greeted him with a sweet smile that promised everything but sweetness.

Gabriel nodded, but found he couldn’t really answer, as there was a lump in his throat.

Bombshell didn’t seem to mind.

“You know, there was this whole plan and all that jazz, but I got bored of it like five minutes in,” she began, and the lump in Gabriel’s throat dropped into his stomach like a ball of lead.

Cold sweat broke out across his skin as fear began crawling up his spine.

“Uhm, what?” he asked, hoping against hope that Bombshell had somehow confused him with someone else.

Bombshell’s smile widened. “Oh, no need to pretend,” she told him in a sing-song voice. “We know...”

“Er, know what?”

His eyes darted around, searching for an escape route, while deep in his mind he cursed his own curiosity for dragging him into this situation.

If possible, the smile on Bombshell’s face grew even wider. “Why... Mr. Porter. It’s not nice to lie to a lady,” she said, wagging her finger at him.

Then, just as he was about to try to talk himself out of the situation, even though deep down he knew there was very little chance of success, Bombshell moved.

She raised an arm into the air, pulling it back, curling her hand into a fist, and launching herself forward. The very air around her fist seemed to swirl as energy radiated from it.

And it was aimed directly at Gabriel.

Despite himself, he took a step backward instinctively, bracing for impact while automatically bringing up his hand to cover his face.

THWACK

One dainty but surprisingly strong fist slammed into his palm.

The amount of energy he absorbed was minuscule, and he felt no pain.

His closed eyes, which he didn’t even remember closing, slowly opened, and he found himself staring into Bombshell’s radiant blue eyes as she smirked at him.

“Got you!”