The Machinist Part One: Malevolence Page 3

  “What is like?” Asked Stanislav without looking up from what he was doing.

  “A job,” McHenry replied tersely.

  “Not hiring,” Stanislav started to say before looking up. “Try—Mac! Is you!”

  The huge man reached over the register to embrace McHenry in a bear hug. McHenry’s heart skipped a beat—the Butcher was capable of snapping a car in half over his knee. Some nick-nacks fell to the floor with a crash. Stanislav released the smaller man as he felt the confused stares of his customers on him.

  “Of course, anything for old friend.” He gestured. “Come to back.”

  McHenry walked around the counter and followed him into the back room, his pulse still racing.

  “How long gone, ten years?” Stanislav inquired.

  “Fifteen,” replied McHenry.

  “Fifteen years, is shame!” A stack of cardboard boxes crinkled under the larger man’s weight as he leaned back on them. “You missed very much.”

  “We had the news.”

  “Ah … not miss so much, then.”

  “I ...,” McHenry started, pausing to contemplate his words before he spoke. “Are you still … in?”

  “Oh, yes!” Stanislav laughed. “Coffee shop chain, much better cover--Is global, you know? Excellent money laundering scheme!”

  McHenry nodded. That was actually pretty brilliant. But there was more. Stanislav kept going: “Side-benefit, too: Heroes come in after patrols, bitch about day. We hear everything. All plans. All girlfriends’ names. Everything, none suspect.”

  “Amazing,” McHenry chuckled and then looked Stanislav squarely in the eyes. “I need a favor.”

  “Anything.”

  “Someone told me the Network would give me the hookup.”

  Stanislav nodded. “What is you need?”

  “Somewhere to sleep. Some gear. I’m getting back in.”

  “I can do.”

  Stanislav punched the box between his legs, tearing into it. He retracted his hand with something in it, which he then tossed over to McHenry. McHenry caught the little plastic-wrapped rectangle with his good hand.

  “Have brownie,” said Stanislav. “I make call.”

  The moment Stanislav stepped out the back door of the shop McHenry tore open the packaging and chomped down on the brownie. After fifteen years of prison food, he was in Heaven.

  Stanislav was back in a minute or two, and gave McHenry an address four blocks south. He sent him on his way with a paper cup of hot cocoa and a plastic bag full of individually-wrapped brownies. They were devoured before McHenry even got near his destination.

  The entire building was plastered in demolition notices that hadn’t yet been enforced, and McHenry didn’t see any other people as he made his way up the creaking stairs, but he heard some yelling as he passed a middle floor. He made his way up to the top floor as per Stanislav’s directions.

  He came to the door of the apartment in question, and saw a key sticking out of the lock.

  McHenry pushed the door open, pocketed the key and stepped inside. There was no furniture in the apartment. A bare mattress was laid out on the hardwood floor next to a radiator. He bent down, put the cup on the floor.

  He blinked and once again his vision turned grayscale. Data points appeared in his frame of view.

  There were four sets of active power outlets and a cable TV socket, but no wire and no set. No electronic devices at all, in fact. There was nothing else there.

  He walked over to the mattress and picked up the plain gray tee shirt and black sweatpants lying on top of it. A little piece of paper fell to the floor.

  It had one word written on it: “Wait.”

  He stripped out of his tight suit, put on the new clothes, and sat down on the mattress.

  Half an hour passed before he laid down on his back.

  Another dozen minutes went by before his vision faded into darkness.

  Chapter Three

  BZZZZZZ!

  McHenry floated in the air, his ears ringing. He felt a weight in his hands and looked down: He was holding a bulky, futuristic gun. It glowed with power.

  His vision drifted down further, but stayed focused on himself. He was wearing armor. His armor. Green-trimmed, black ballistic plates covered him from his neck to his toes. He could feel the familiar ache where nodes connected the armor’s circuitry to his nerves. He flexed the three digits of his cybernetic hand, testing it to make sure of its functionality. He stroked the weapon’s trigger with the leather-gloved fingers of his good hand. Wind whipped between the buildings, causing his thick black cloak to flutter and tug on his shoulders.

  He was young again. But he wasn’t just Nicholas McHenry anymore, he was the Machinist.

  His drones cried out in his mind for instruction. They were like dogs—desperate to please him, constantly seeking direction. He looked around him and saw his three little robots hovering next to him, bolts of flame ejecting from the large feet attached to spindly legs. The lenses of their blocky faces focused on him, and the little laser arrays they had in place of arms twitched.

  Looking around, he realized he was in the city, hovering over Times Square. Panicked civilians shoved each other roughly, screaming as they tried to flee inside the shops lining the street.

  “You insects! You morons!” He heard himself yell. “I was never good enough for you!”

  He blasted a stalled-out yellow cab without aiming, destroying it.

  “Well, what do you think of me now? What do you think of me now?!”

  The Machinist started laughing and shooting without taking sight. His drones took part as well, zapping people and creating little black piles of dirt where they’d stood.

  “You kicked me out of the institute! You tried to suppress my work!”

  He saw his scarred, pale face appear in close up on that stupid, stupid jumbotron, and screamed. It shattered.

  “I just wanted to be recognized!” He blasted wildly, demolishing more vehicles. “I just wanted you to say I was smart!”

  People started peeking their heads out from behind burned-out trashcans. One of them, a woman, started yelling: “But you are smart! You just never applied yourself!”

  She looked like his mother, when she was younger. He sneered, took aim with the gun, and disintegrated her.

  An old man stepped forward, “We just wanted you to stop daydreaming and create something practical!”

  It was his first boss, Professor Eisenstein from the institute. Disintegrated.

  Just as McHenry was taking aim at a young woman that looked like his first high-school crush, another man’s voice—a familiar one--bellowed out something inane:

  “Stop right there, evildoer!”

  McHenry sent a mental command to his rocket boots to turn him around to face the interloper, and his jaw dropped when he saw who it was.

  His nemesis.

  Night Owl.

  McHenry felt himself fill with rage. He couldn’t remember why, but he knew he hated Night Owl with every fiber of his being.

  “You motherfucker!” The Machinist bellowed, taking aim with the gun and firing off three bolts of energy. Night Owl evaded them, the rockets on his spread-wing shaped backpack blasting in little spurts.

  His nemesis reached a hand into a pouch on that ridiculous yellow belt he wore—The hero clearly had never heard of the color wheel, because his belt didn’t match his dark brown and gray armor—and pitched something at McHenry. The hero’s toy buzzed as it flew past McHenry’s head, missing him.

  “Missed me, moron.” McHenry couldn’t help but gloat. He just felt so good, so god damn powerful again.

  Below, a crowd had gathered to watch the melee. McHenry glanced at their faces. Krudoff was among them. So was the magnetic kid. They all cheered him on.

  He commanded his pets to fire at the idiot in that stupid mask, then reached his mechanical hand forward, claws outstretched. In microseconds the computer in his brain plotted a trajectory that would put his arm throug
h the hero’s heart, and he sent the mental command to his rocket boots to enact that plan. While Night Owl was distracted by a swarm of tiny heat-seeker missiles, he’d strike. He rocketed towards Night Owl, who deftly deflected the lethal blow. They collided and plummeted to the ground.

  The hero’s armored helmet fell off as they bounced off of destroyed vehicles. It was shaped to resemble an owl’s head, with yellow goggles and two swept points over the ears. It sparked as it clattered on the pavement. The Machinist punched the idiot right in the jaw with his good hand, tearing into his leather cowl and ripping it off.

  He stared for a second at the unconscious Owl, he took in every detail of the face—one described by women’s magazines as “ruggedly handsome.” He hated it. Even knocked out, the bastard still looked smug.

  The Machinist held Night Owl by the throat with his good hand, and began to lift him off the ground. He felt the servos in his armor strain, but didn’t care. This was his chance.

  McHenry struck his nemesis with his incredibly powerful robotic hand. Once. Twice. Again.

  Again.

  He felt his smile grow with each strike. As hot blood sprayed onto his cheeks and forehead, as flesh turned to meaty pulp, he felt more and more content. And when there was nothing left of Night Owl’s face to destroy, he released his grip on his opponent’s throat.

  The body dropped to the pavement with a splash of blood and splintered bone.

  McHenry turned to face the crowd, which cheered wildly. He raised his arms in victory, and fireworks exploded in the sky above.

  BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT!

  The sound vibrated the entirety of the Square. Cars and newspaper boxes shimmied, and trash cans toppled over.

  “I’m sorry, folks!” Boomed a man’s cheerful voice--it sounded like a game show host. “But that’s not how it happened!”

  The assembled crowd let out a defeated, “Aww.”

  From behind a wrecked box truck, a man in a tuxedo stepped out. He held a wired microphone in one hand. He had the head of a dog—an Elkhound—and McHenry realized it was his childhood pet, Max.

  “Wh—what do you mean?” McHenry stammered. “I beat him! I finally—”

  Max the announcer dog interrupted McHenry, saying, “Well folks, that’s all we’ve got time for tonight, so good night!”

  And then that damned buzzing sound shook the world again, more violently than before.

  ***

  BZZZT! BZZZT! BZZZT!

  The buzzer above the apartment’s door would not stop going off. Nicholas McHenry opened his eyes. His back ached from lying on the incredibly uncomfortable mattress, and his sweats were adhered to him by a thin film of perspiration. He felt his brain try, but fail, to recall his dream as his eyes unblurred themselves.

  He got up and stumbled in the dark over to the door, remembering too late that he could simply have changed his eyes to night vision. He was out of practice.

  He swung the door open to reveal a man in a suit standing there. At least, he thought it was a man, from the build of the person’s body. But then he looked up and saw that there was just blank, stretched skin where a face should have been. A pair of red lights glowed dimly under the skin where the thing’s eye sockets should’ve been. The figure had no hair. After handing McHenry a large black and orange toolbox, the faceless thing gestured towards the hallway. McHenry put the toolbox on the floor and followed the bizarre humanoid.

  The hall was filled with crates. Some of them were clean, stainless steel boxes with labels imprinted on them that read, “Department of Defense – Classified,” about three feet long. There were a few other, larger black crates that were scuffed up and dusty. The faceless man opened a black crate, then a stainless one.

  McHenry looked inside. The steel boxes contained multiple disassembled laser cannons, plasma launchers, and rocket assemblies. The black ones contained jumbles of circuit boards, wires, and power capacitors.

  And in the back of all these were a few boxes that seemed out of place. There was one long, coffin-sized wooden crate, and three boxy wooden crates, each about four feet tall. They had the acronym “NYPD” pattern-painted on them. He got closer to read their labels, and smiled as he read what they said.

  Suspect: McHenry, N.

  Evidence for Fed. Case AA.4282-12

  Do not remove.

  “My gear?” He asked, already knowing the answer. “My ’bots?”

  The faceless man nodded before reaching into the breast pocket of its suit to pull out a two-inch-thick wad of cash. It separated about a quarter of the bills, stuffed them back into its pocket, and handed McHenry the rest. It walked away and vanished into the shadows of the far hallway.

  McHenry dragged the boxes and crates into the room with the mattress. He spent the rest of the night unpacking, tuning up the systems and mechanicals of his bots, reinstalling his cybernetics, and calibrating his battle armor. The next morning, he walked back to the shop and bought a coffee from some girl without asking anything about the Network or Ivan. He didn’t want to risk losing their assistance.

  Coffee in hand, he took a cab uptown a few blocks and bought a black leather jacket two sizes too big. If he was going to wear it over the cyber suit, he needed to account for the added bulk of his armor. Moths had gotten into the NYPD storage vault where his equipment was held, and destroyed his cloak—besides, it was a new decade. Why not update the look a little bit?

  Once he’d returned to the derelict building the Network had set him up with, McHenry took a short nap, then turned his attentions towards some final equipment checks. His plasma rifle was acting up so he scrounged through one of the crates he hadn’t gone through yet. He found a box with three small handguns, and sighed. Guns were not his style.

  McHenry disassembled one of the pistols, soldered components of the plasma gun to it, and took a test shot. It blew a small, scorched hole through his east wall and into another—thankfully unoccupied—apartment. He activated the magnetic holster on his right hip and attached the little gun to it. At least he had some kind of armament.

  By two a.m., he was fully suited up and hovering a few inches off of the creaking roof of the building, his rocket boots tracing thin burn lines on it. Two of his robots were fully functional, and hovered next to him. The third one, which could only move one arm, tried to do the same but sputtered and landed again with a clunk. He commanded it to return to the apartment and shut down.

  He took to the air. He stayed high enough to be unseen by the few drunks and social dropouts who were on the street at that time—only tourists ever looked up, and it was far too late for them to be around. But he also stayed below the city skyline to avoid being spotted by heroes brooding on gargoyles or flying against the moon dramatically.

  He kicked himself as he got out of the city lines, remembering only then that the suit had a light-bending function that would have rendered him nearly invisible. To be fair though, he had only just installed it the night before he was arrested.

  Not off to a great start, Mac, McHenry scolded himself as he activated the system. He turned into what looked like a human-shaped blob of water flying through the air.

  McHenry had decided that his first task as a supervillain renewed would be a simple smash-and-grab. He remembered an old bank on Church Street in Hoboken, and headed there to raid the vault. He just wanted to see if he could pull it off: He would disable the security, burn his way through the heavy metal door, grab a backpack’s worth of large bills and head back home.

  Within minutes, McHenry was floating ten feet off the ground in front of the bank’s front doors; he could move at an incredible pace when he was flying. He deactivated the stealth system and landed. The robots moved towards the doorway, then waited for instruction. He stepped forward and punched the security keypad with his robotic arm, exposing wires and circuitry. He opened a panel on the cybernetic gauntlet and uncoiled a cable of his own, connecting the ends of it to the sparking wires comin
g from where the keypad hung. In his mind, he made the right packet connections, and began decrypting the building’s security. The lights inside flickered, then went dark. He switched to night vision, disconnected from the interface, and pushed the doors open. No alarms went off, no lights flashed. There wasn’t even a security guard in the building. He was in.

  The robots followed him towards the vault and started burning a series of concentric circles into its door with their lasers. Five minutes later, a giant chunk of it fell to the floor with a loud clang. He smiled and stepped inside.

  Two minutes after that, he stepped out of the vault and strapped two backpacks overfilled with cash to the bots then made his way back to the parking lot. He congratulated himself on a job well done, a mission accomplished.

  Chapter Four

  POW!

  A fist connected with McHenry’s face.

  “Fuck!” he tried to say as he fell to the blacktop. His impact interrupted the word, so all he got out was, “FFFUH!”

  His mind raced, trying to process this unexpected event. He had forgotten to turn his personal force field on. Stupid. Second mistake of the night.

  McHenry looked up at his assailant while trying to steady himself. His shield activated, growing around him in a sphere before tightening up half an inch over his armor and face. It shimmered like a soap bubble.

  The attacker was a hero, and a young one at that. Early twenties, maybe. He wore a blue and white bodysuit under a poofy jacket that looked like a winter coat. Black, gelled hair spiked up from under his sideways cap. His skin was an unnatural shade of orange, which made McHenry first think he was facing some kind of alien before realizing it was just a poorly-applied spray tan. The hero glared at him through his blue domino mask.

  “Silent alarm, bitch!” The hero spat as he tried to kick McHenry in the side. Instead, his foot bounced off of McHenry’s energy shield with a crackle. “Ahh-ow! Shit!”

  McHenry sent a mental command to his drones, activating one of their predetermined attack patterns. They started strafing around the young hero blasting off chunks of his stupid coat. The kid was unphased, and strode towards McHenry as his rocket boots started spinning up. The hero took a swing at McHenry who he had already hovered a dozen feet into the air.