Bad Beat - Chapter 53 - Rush (Patreon)

The next day, Gabriel decided to have a lie-in.

He just lay in bed and stared at the ceiling, going over everything and trying to process what had happened to his life.

The whole rush into a life of crime, doing his best to become the world’s best thief, surviving supers fighting over his head, and then the whole Bombshell thing.

Surprisingly, of all of that, Bombshell was the one who worried him the least.

She seemed to be crazy and enjoyed being in a position of power, and seemed to be tickled pink by figuring out his ‘secret,’ but otherwise didn’t give a crap about him. Handling her should be easy. Feed her information she could act on while ramping up his own powers until he could take her head-on.

‘Easy…’ he mused dejectedly.

The other two were much harder to deal with.

At this moment, he couldn’t really stop the whole thieving thing. He needed more material and money to fuel the Deck. Without it, his previous actions would sooner or later catch up to him, leaving him without defenses.

A truly vicious cycle of his own making…

‘I have always been a bit impulsive, but this was a bit much,’ he thought as he slowly went over the actions that led him to his current situation.

‘Maybe I got overconfident because of the sheer potential of the Deck of Infinity?’ he finally decided after a few minutes of mulling it over. The realization that he was pretty stupid with it, jumping almost immediately into the life of a super without basically any preparation, hit him very hard.

The worst part was that even though he had realized his mistake, there was no way to undo it. Or to avoid the consequences. Mia would probably find him via her own technological powers. Nate would find him via his precognitive powers, and Bombshell only had to snap her fingers, and the entire machine of Helix would be looking for him.

He had made too many waves, too many people knew of his existence, and most importantly, too many people knew he had powers. Consequently, Gabriel could only hunker down and do his best to become impossible to kill.

And to capture.

With how fast Nate had found him, Gabriel was worried about how many other precogs were either looking for him or observing him. Precognition was very, very rare. Naturally, as if fate had decreed it, there was one small clan of them in Delphi, who were supported and protected by the Greek government.

Funnily enough, that made the Greeks a world power on the level of England or Japan.

Even funnier was the fact that the Greeks used this advantage to make sure that the country was debt-free, then set up universal healthcare, free (and high-quality) public education, and even a basic universal income plan. Then they fucked off to the beach to eat and drink.

Getting Greek citizenship was one of the most desired things in the world.

Next to this, the oracles in Delphi were free to be approached by anyone. You didn’t even have to pay. Just stand in line and ask your question.

Understanding their cryptic prophecies about the future was another story.

However, they were the only group of precogs that was in the public eye. Any time any of them so much as twitched on camera while there was some kind of World Cup or Championship in progress, the entire internet would spend hours analyzing and trying to figure out who would win according to those twitches.

The rest of the precogs were hidden. At least to the public.

Naturally, there were always rumors about the government having their own group of precogs to try to combat crime with precogs, but based on the situation currently ongoing in the USA, Gabriel very much doubted those greedy, control-freaks in power would allow things to deteriorate so much.

‘Of course, there is always a chance that those precogs are playing five-dimensional chess and this is just part of their grand plan for the mysterious future they had foreseen…’

Gabriel groaned. Trying to wrap his head around timeline shenanigans was majorly confusing. He discarded that thought, as there was no point trying to think about the possibilities. If precogs saw him, then anything he did was seen. If they were just as affected as Nate, then once again it didn’t matter because they didn’t see him.

A confusing mess of contradictions.

Shaking his head, Gabriel instead focused his thoughts on what he needed.

According to Sparky, the last of the materials for his experiments would arrive in a day or two, depending on traffic and the harbor officials, as some of the stuff was coming in on a ship. Until then, he only had to sit around or go to work until Mia, with Sparky’s help, figured out the guard and worker rotation at the laundry they had designated as their next target.

For a moment, he just wanted to spend the time resting, maybe catching up on some movies and TV shows, but then rationality broke through.

He had a new power.

When he first gained the Deck of Infinity, he instantly jumped into testing all aspects of it, trying to figure out how it worked, its limits, and such. But when he gained the absorption ability, he just threw a bit of energy around, then left it at that.

Major mistake.

Gabriel needed to experiment with it. Or maybe even train it to see where the limits lay.

With a loud groan, he got up onto his elbows and blinked the deep pull of the bed from his brain before turning toward his desk, which still held the metal box with the blue sphere of fractal light on top of it that housed Sparky’s consciousness. Next to it was a small station where a drone was resting, the other two spots empty.

‘When did she build that?’ he wondered for a moment before shaking his head. ‘No. Never mind…’

“Sparky,” he called out softly, his voice a bit croaky after sleeping.

The fractal light instantly became stronger, and a small screen was projected in front of him while the drone began to vibrate a little, starting the startup sequence.

[Yes, parental unit?]

[Are you about to do crime?]

“For once, I’m not.”

[Awwwww.]

“Listen, I need you to look up something for me…” he asked the AI while slowly getting out of bed.

Time to get ready for the day.

A few hours later, Gabriel skulked around the industrial parks of San Bernardino. He took the surprisingly excellent subway system and a bit of taxi travel to reach the very edges of the area, where humongous warehouses dotted the landscape, only broken up by parking lots and a few smaller buildings housing businesses that serviced those logistics centers.

There were humongous warehouses with thousands of square meters of floor space, with giant trucks coming and going all day, but there was a small section where smaller warehouses were bunched together, older and much more worn than their giant counterparts. They were leftovers from the end of the seventies, when the area was experiencing a boom, and everybody was building warehouses to handle their business interests, but not all of those people could maintain them. Thus, they fell into disuse and disrepair, only worth anything because of the land they stood on.

Occasionally, a small company would lease or buy them to store their merchandise, but they would either go out of business quickly or move to better and bigger warehouses as soon as possible. This process left the area open to certain segments of the population, at least until a big company came in and bought the properties up, leaving fewer and fewer of these spots.

These segments were the homeless and the criminal element. A lot of the homeless used these warehouses as meeting spots for impromptu exchanges and as protection against harsh weather. Mostly in the winter, but even in the summer, they sometimes sought shelter, as a few of the warehouses still had spottily functioning air conditioning.

The criminal element was much simpler. They used these warehouses as temporary storage for illicit materials or as meeting places where the attention of anyone else would be detrimental.

And he was currently at the side of one of those abandoned warehouses, hiding in the shadows of a pile of scrap and trash, happy that his mask filtered out the smell. Thanks to Sparky’s help, he had managed to find one that, according to a few forums where people discreetly discussed who was using these, was currently empty. All those communications were, of course, in code, but Sparky was an AI. A rudimentary substitution cipher wouldn’t stop her for more than a few seconds.

He spent a few moments listening for any noise as he watched through his mask, where Sparky was showing him the feed from the three drones as they surveyed the area.

Then, when Sparky signaled it was go time, he activated the invisibility of his armor and then used the pile of scrap and trash to scamper upward until he reached a large vent hole covered with a rusted metal grate. He carefully slipped his hand under the bottom of the grate and raised it high enough that he could climb up under it and enter the vent system.

Based on the tracks and other evidence, he wasn’t the first one who had used it.

One of the drones would stay there, morphed into a shape that would blend in with the trash, and watch out for anybody coming or following him.

Another drone would be patrolling around the warehouse, while the last one would be seeking out trash piles and pulling together enough high-quality metal that, if he ever gained the ability to manipulate it, he would already have the resources necessary. The drone would also be looking for discarded electronic devices and other equipment that Gabriel could possibly revive or repair with the Deck.

Crawling through the vents, he soon entered the warehouse. It was dark, but his mask allowed him to see everything in grayish-green tones. The entire inside space was filled with enough dust to kill an asthmatic person.

Most of the shelving system was visibly missing, and he could see several spots where people had set up camps, with a few places where somebody had actually built fire circles. Otherwise, it was pretty empty; clearly, it had been picked clean the moment it was abandoned – probably even before that.

Perfect for what Gabriel needed.

He jumped down onto the catwalk, wincing as the cavernous space echoed with his footsteps, and then slowly made his way down. Every moment, he was worried that the old steel structure would collapse under him, but aside from a few groans and creaks, it held.

Reaching the floor, he spent a few minutes poking around, seeing if there was anything interesting hidden away. But aside from somebody’s drug equipment, including a bong made out of home improvement store materials, there wasn’t much to find. It looked like someone had tried to hide it in a hurry, and Gabriel found it only because whoever did the hiding was possibly still high from whatever they had smoked in the bong.

That is, a small metal box, with a giant, dirty red tarp over it, and a waterlogged piece of cardboard that someone had written on in shaky handwriting and questionable grammar.

DruGz Her No Tochi

Chuckling a little, he left it there and then moved to the middle of the empty space, doing a few warm-up exercises as he conversed with Sparky.

“Any movement?” he asked while trying to touch his toes.

Sparky’s reply showed up on the screen of his mask.

[Negative.]

[No movement spotted.]

[Crime successful.]

“I’m not doing crime, Sparky,” he muttered defiantly.

[Correction: Entering unlawfully on premises under someone else’s ownership counts as breaking and entering.]

[Which by definition is a crime.]

[So, technically – which is the best kind of correct – the parental unit is doing a crime.]

Gabriel opened his mouth, then closed it and shook his head mirthfully. “Fine. You’re right. I’m doing a crime.”

[Technically right!]

“Okay… You’re technically right.”

[This unit is very thankful that the parental unit acknowledges this unit’s smarts and beauty.]

[Hehe~~]

‘When did I talk about her beauty?’ Gabriel wondered, but out loud he just chuckled. “Yes. Yes. Sparky is the greatest.”

[Please do not forget.]

“I won’t,” he replied, finishing up his warm-up. It wasn’t exactly needed, but habits were hard to beat. Gabriel jumped in place, shaking his limbs, before stopping and raising a hand.

Time to experiment.

“Keep up surveillance. I’m starting,” he warned Sparky.

[Roger. Roger.]

A/N: So having listened to some feedback, I realized MC didn't really do anyhting with his new power, so I moved around a few things, and added some experimentation. Hope you like it. :)