The Machinist Part One: Malevolence Read online

  “Get back down here, man!” The hero jumped up, trying to grab at McHenry’s ankles while laser bolts ricocheted off of him.

  “Carlo, I got him,” said another young man’s voice. McHenry looked in that direction and saw another kid standing there cracking his knuckles. This one wore a red full-body suit and had a swept-back visor covering his eyes. His skin was the same shade of orange. There was a white lightning bolt design on his left leg, another across his chest. He sprinted in McHenry’s direction, accelerating inhumanly before leaping off the ground with his fist extended. It slammed against his energy field and the boy dropped to the pavement, swearing.

  The second kid got back up and started running back around the parking lot. It looked as if he was going to take a second try at the same tactic, just at a faster speed. McHenry decided to cut him off at the pass, and transmitted a command to his bots to start shooting the speedster instead. Their tracking systems might not be able to hit him, but they could make it difficult for him to work up a full head of steam. McHenry reached down to his holster and took the plasma pistol in hand. He took aim and fired a bolt.

  The kid dodged it at the last second, and the swirling sphere crackled with electricity as it hit the side of a sports car parked in the lot. The door of the car tore open, then the whole frame rattled before the leather seats burst into a blue flame.

  Speedy kid circled the two bots and tore the laser turret off of one of their arms. It squealed an electronic, modem-like scream before firing up its own rockets and taking to the sky. The second bot did the same. The kid raised a fist at the bots then turned to run back to help his friend, who was dodging more plasma balls from McHenry’s pistol. It seemed that his power of acceleration also extended to his ability to process information, because he dodged the blasts from the remaining bot with ease.

  “Holy shit, bro!” The speedy kid shouted above the explosions. “Dude wrecked the car!”

  Invulnerable kid glanced over his shoulder at the smoldering metal that used to be a Maserati and swore. “My dad’s gonna kill me!”

  McHenry, in his attempt to line up a shot on the hero, had inadvertently hovered closer to the ground. Seeing this, the blue-coat hero charged him and grabbed him in a bear hug, his hands slipping on the force fields but his grip staying around McHenry’s waist and on one of his shoulders. “I’ll hold him, you do that vibrating shit, bro!”

  The red hero strolled up and started shaking his right arm like he was trying to limber up before a workout. Then it shook faster. And faster. Until all McHenry could see of it was a stuttering red blur. The kid took a swing that McHenry’s combat HUD told him was at seventy-five percent of light speed. His fist vibrated into the force field, slowing down exponentially with every millimeter of the barrier that it passed through. But it still got through, and connected straight on with McHenry’s nose.

  McHenry called out in agony and his vision went red. He lost his concentration and the combat systems deactivated. His energy shield dropped and he slid out of the grip of the strongman. McHenry’s makeshift pistol fell to the ground and smashed to pieces. The hero scooted them aside with his foot, and leaned in over McHenry.

  “This is what happens when you mess with the Crew,” he said, kicking at McHenry’s ribs for a second time. This time he connected. Even through the ballistic armor, McHenry felt the impact. He bent over, coughing and holding his ribcage.

  The red one piped in, “He ain’t shit. Carlo, we been doing this shit six months now, ‘bout time we caught a supervillain.”

  “He don’t seem so super to me,” Carlo chuckled, slapping McHenry across the face. “Your ass is going to jail, and our asses are going to get plastered at the club.”

  “Get a copy of the police report, Carlo,” the speedster suggested. “Show that to the girls and we’ll get a free lap dance.”

  “At least.” He was interrupted by a laser bolt from the sky singing his hat. The drones tried to ward the pair of heroes away from their master. “Fuck, bro, I forgot about those little motherfuckers.”

  Both of the heroes turned away from McHenry and started yelling at the robots, insulting their parentage and suggesting they were constructed of excrement. McHenry righted himself, rubbing blood off of his upper lip and chin with his good hand before lunging forward at the kid in red with his robotic hand.

  He grabbed the top of the hero’s head in the three claws of the prosthesis and squeezed with a thousand pounds of force. The kid’s head burst like a water balloon full of chunky red sauce. The kid in blue’s eyes widened in terror, but just for a second. Then he was on McHenry with a series of punches that the Machinist blocked with his metal gauntlet.

  McHenry grabbed the collar of the kid’s costume and activated his rocket boots. Within seconds the two men were a hundred feet off the ground. McHenry relaxed his fingers, letting the kid fall. There was a loud crack as he hit the pavement.

  Bloodied, bruised, and groaning, McHenry and his robots took to the air just as the bank parking lot filled with red and blue flashing lights.

  That was not how it was supposed to go, he thought to himself. Not at all.

  His head hadn’t been in the game. He hadn’t planned for any heroes to be there, which was stupid. He hadn’t accounted for the fact that they’d had fifteen more years to breed. There were a dozen mooks for every cape in his time, but recently there’d been a noticeably increased influx of them at Blackiron.

  Then there was his gear: All of his equipment—the masterpieces of his life’s work—was little more than a joke now. His force field was too easily overcome. His drones were broken in seconds like they were cheap toys. The computer in his brain hadn’t been able to track the speedster kid, and the servos in his suit didn’t help him escape that bruiser’s grapple or evade his strikes.

  And then, when he looked to the bots flying alongside him, McHenry realized that the speedster kid must have torn the backpacks full of money off of them during the fight.

  The whole night was a disaster.

  “Fuck,” he said to himself. He tasted blood in his mouth.

  He flew home exhausted and in pain.

  Chapter Five

  CLICK-CLICK!

  McHenry unlocked the door of his apartment and pushed it in.

  His bots followed him in and returned to their crates before powering down.

  He stripped off his armor, tossing the components to the floor, and made his way deeper into the apartment, stopping to pull on his sweatpants. Then, in the bathroom, he washed his face and poked at his nose while looking at it through the cracked medicine cabinet mirror. It wasn’t broken.

  There was an enormous bruise on his chest, and on his side. He twisted, and felt a sting—but nowhere near enough for it to mean anything was broken. But it was enough to overcome his pain suppression system.

  That he didn’t have to go to a hospital and make up a story about falling down stairs--or another equally stupid lie--was something to be thankful for. But to him, recalling the events was even more humiliating than lying to some nurse.

  He flipped open a pane of the mirror to see if there was anything in the cabinet. He was greeted by an almost empty, expired bottle of painkillers. He grabbed it with his good hand and wedged it into the armpit of his gimp arm, struggling momentarily to unscrew the lid. He tapped three of the pills out onto his tongue, filled his cupped palm with water from the faucet, tossed the water into his mouth, and swallowed.

  Maybe it was time to give it up, he thought to himself. To go live life on the straight and narrow.

  He left the light on as he stumbled out of the bathroom, and collapsed onto the bed, turning on the interface over his vision. He made an attempt to connect to something calling itself “24B Wifi KEEP OUT” and discovered it was transmitting in a similar way to the system he used to command his drones. His networking protocols informed him he was online, and if he wasn’t so worn out he would have been impressed with the advent of wireless Internet.

 
If he was going to turn it around, to blend in with civilians, he needed to not be Nicholas McHenry anymore. Especially if there was any chance he could be found out and connected to those two dead morons back in New Jersey.

  McHenry spent half a minute hacking into the Social Security Administration’s database and began overwriting his personal details into the file of a recently-deceased robotics engineer. He had decent credit and the worst thing on his record was a DUI from his early twenties. McHenry used that identity as he began applying for jobs.

  After another half hour he passed out from exhaustion and pain. He slept fitfully; in his nightmares, he endured an awkward job interview for a demeaning position at a big consumer electronics retailer--in his underwear.

  ***

  A few minutes after four a.m., the intercoms of Blackiron Federal Penitentiary groaned electronically before the airhorn sounded, far too early for inspection.

  An electronically distorted male voice boomed throughout the prison to answer the unasked questions.

  “Prisoners, brothers,” said the voice in English accent, “Supervillains. This is the Master speaking.”

  There was a pause. Guards scrambled from their bunks towards the armory only to find it locked. They slammed chairs and shoulders against its impenetrable doors in a rhythm of desperation that matched their pulses.

  “This is not a trick. This is not misdirection by the guards. I am real, and now, I am in control.”

  In their cells, some prisoners’ eyes widened and jaws slacked in disbelief. Others stood up with knowing grins on their faces.

  “For years you have struggled in the shadows, striving to survive in a barbaric world.”

  The voice went on to say, “Only to be pursued and imprisoned by egotistical morons who enforce an outmoded and primitive concept they call ‘justice.’”

  Marlon Jones cocked his head from side to side, cracking his vertebrae, then tugged on his restraining collar. It was dead. He tore it off and threw it aside. He looked at his hand and focused. His skin dried out, cracked, and transformed into a jagged bludgeon of granite.

  “Those of you loyal to the Network—who were loyal to me, even if you didn’t believe I existed—have paid your dues. I haven’t sat in the dark counting the dollars you’ve cut off your earnings to give me.”

  In the solitary confinement wing of the prison, inmates who normally screamed and jabbered at all hours of the night were silent.

  “We’ve spent decades planning, building, preparing for this moment. Today, the sun will rise and the heroes will fall. The Network will be in control of the world—out of the shadows and on top of the pile—and you will all be rewarded royally for your loyalty.”

  “I only ask one thing of you,” the voice declared. “Listen carefully: in the coming minutes, you will be loosed from your cages. Some of your jailers, regretfully, were undercover for the Network for years. You will know them by the names O’Shea, Williams, and Troy; let no harm come to them and they will assist you in getting teleported into the lion’s den.”

  Gunshots echoed through the halls of the prison as O’Shea and the others killed their betrayed comrades of ten years or more.

  “In exchange for your freedom, you are to go into the very heart of New York City, and do what you do best.”

  Jones’ eyes went dark as the rest of his body turned to stone. He smiled with crumbling lips and said, “Fuck some shit up.”

  “You will not be alone in this, my brothers; we have opened the cells of the facility called the Boulder as well.” The Master’s voice echoed over the prisoners’ chants of his name. “Together, we will be invincible!”

  Every cell door in Blackiron slid open. While nearly every inmate burst out into the halls with hollers and howls, Doctor Henri Krudoff stayed on his mattress and took a drag off of his cigarette.

  “I’m too old for this shit,” he muttered, blowing smoke out his nose.

  At six a.m., rectangular fields of purple energy shimmered into existence a few inches off the ground in front of One Police Plaza and the Mayor’s office. A few seconds later, the same portals appeared at the financial district, Times Square, and outside a number of museums. With every passing second, more and more of them appeared throughout the city. Through them stepped the first of dozens of super-powered inmates, free from their imprisonment at Blackiron Penitentiary.

  In the southeast part of the island, the gates of the Fortress flew open and a sea of thugs flooded into the streets.

  ***

  An explosion rocked the apartment, jostling McHenry from his painkiller-induced daze. He pivoted himself off the mattress with his stump as little clumps of plaster rained down the back of his hairless head.

  Sirens blared in the distance and he stumbled over to the window to peer between the dingy slats of his blinds. The view was unimpressive; mostly, he could see the next building over. But the tiny strip of sky he could make out was clouded with black smoke.

  A hero flew past the building at top speed, but was knocked to the ground by a big chunk of gravel. When the cape hit the ground, half a dozen figures swarmed over him. McHenry heard screams and sizzling sounds coming from the mass. He turned away and began processing.

  Something big is happening, he thought to himself. This isn’t someone’s scheme, this sounds like a war.

  He suited up and powered on his bots, checking on the haphazard repairs they’d performed on each other. It’d have to do. If things were as bad as they sounded out there, he decided, then he needed their firepower and the protection his armor gave him if he was going to stand a chance. Going straight was going to have to wait until he was outside the city lines, outside the warzone.

  He’d fly low, with his stealth systems on, avoiding fights unless he had to get involved. He didn’t want to get mixed up in anything. The last thing he needed to see was another hero coming at him.

  McHenry had just finished pulling his trench coat on over the bulk of his mechanical prosthesis when the wall next to him was torn from the side of the building. The bricks and leaking pipes hovered momentarily before dispersing in all directions, revealing seven silhouetted figures hovering a few feet from the building—several stories above the ground.

  “The signal originated here, yeah.” Said another hero--the god damned Night Owl--not looking up from the display on his gauntlet. His spread-wing jetpack fired off a few spurts of flame, keeping him in place.

  McHenry glanced left and right, taking in the forms and the colors, his mind putting two and two together agonizingly slowly. His head’s-up-display screamed warnings at him.

  These figures, these heroes--they were the Titans of Liberty, live and in person. The cream of the crop, the top dogs of the super-powered world.

  McHenry mouthed, but never said aloud, “Oh, fuck me.”

  “He’s a tech,” said one of the three women present, an athletic redhead in a white and gold costume. The ruby in her gold tiara glowed, and thin bolts of electricity streaked rhythmically around her body. She had an Italian accent, McHenry noted. Not an Italian-from-Brooklyn accent, rather, a straight-off-the-boat one. She must have been that Stormsoul woman those idiots were fighting over in the cafeteria.

  McHenry mentally analyzed how bleak things were for him: It had only taken one of the Titans to arrest McHenry when he was in his prime, fifteen years past. He was still reeling from the prior night’s clusterfuck—against two morons—and now this?

  Before McHenry could move a finger, a gold and purple blur spun around him. A male voice whistled around him saying, “I’vegothimitsokayrestrainingcollaractive.”

  Something zapped McHenry’s throat and he fell to the floor, his hands cuffed together. There was a neutralizing collar—one a lot like the one he’d worn in Blackiron--around his neck. Having lost their connection to him, his drones powered themselves down and collapsed to the floor as well.

  “Okaywegothimcuffednowletsgetgoing.” Said the voice again. A thin black hero seemingly materialized o
ut of thin air. He was wearing a purple costume with a zig-zag gold pattern all around it. He wore matching purple and yellow sneakers, and twitched impatiently.

  Rampart, the leader of the bunch, floated into the room and picked McHenry up by the chest, crushing a panel of armor with his fingers. The hero’s feet never once touched the floor. “We’ve been looking for you.”

  “Why? I didn’t—“ McHenry stammered. A man who could crush a yacht into a tiny ball was staring him right in the eyes. “I, uh--If this is about last night, about those two—”

  “Don’t play dumb,” the hero said, bringing his fist up to McHenry’s face. He positioned his forefinger below his thumb, and then flicked McHenry’s cheek with the single digit. It felt like a blow from a baseball bat. McHenry recoiled in agony and gritted his teeth. That made the pain worse. After a beat, his tongue pressed reflexively on the premolar behind his bottom right canine. He felt it click and move around in the socket. He winced.

  Rampart continued, “You’ll be nice and cozy at the brig in the Hall while we clean up after your henchmen and take ‘em down. Then, you’ll tell us how to disarm the nukes you’ve aimed at all the world’s capitals.”

  “What? I don’t kn—“ McHenry started to say through the bloody dribble between his lips, but was interrupted by Rampart waggling his finger in his face. McHenry shut up.

  Still holding McHenry with one hand, Rampart turned back to the assembled group of heroes floating outside the partly destroyed building. He nodded at the robot of the group, a skinny female form with glowing blue eyes, and said, “Teleport us back to the Hall, Sister Brain.”

  The female android raised her arms in the air, and a blue field of energy surrounded the group. Electricity flashed and crackled around them.