Talyesin's Tales

Even with my accelerated healing ability, it's a couple of days for my shoulder to feel even remotely better. Kimmy keeps busy hunting down that Boost cartel and I just play it safe, going into work and staying home for a couple nights. I figure anything big will make the news and I’ll make an appearance as Squirrelman. The small fry stuff the other Lower Uptown costumed crimefighters can handle - Ace, Clown, Harlequin, the rest. Hell, the Night Watchman’s back from wherever he’s been the last few months - I figure petty crime isn’t going to run rampant without me for a couple of nights.
Kimmy isn’t getting anywhere with her search. The Boost dealers obviously won’t give out their source, the addicts don’t care. Boost heightens normal human performance to superhuman levels - not Majestic levels, but at least as strong and fast as me, maybe more - and it's extremely addictive. The problem with norms taking the drug is that they feel so good and powerful all the time that they forget to eat, drink, or sleep, and most of them starve to death, die of dehydration, or pass out while doing something dangerous. Imagine picking a motorcycle over your head and falling asleep and having 600 pounds of Detroit steel land on you, hard.
The other problem with Boost - the reason why Kimmy is committed to closing down the cartel for good - is when powered individuals take it.
Since I came to this world - well, to this body anyway - I’ve learned there are many varied levels of superpowered people. The categories are roughly outlined as normals (people without powers, even folks like Doc Sterling, who's just really smart), enhanced (people with powers that mimic and surpass the abilities of normal humans - faster than an Olympian track star, stronger than a champion weightlifter, or like Kimmy, who’s triple-jointed and has a heightened sense of balance), superhuman (beings with abilities beyond those of normals, like flight or shooting ray beams from your eyes - from me with my squirrel-sense all the way up to Majestic and his family), and metahuman (beings with powers so far beyond human capability, they’re no longer considered human, like energy or elemental beings, sentient metal, shapeshifters, or aliens).
Kimmy’s cousin Ray had been enhanced, and no one knew it. Probably Ray didn’t know himself - he was just really good in school, got straight A’s and was a track star and champion quarterback. He never needed to study and he only worked out to be a part of the team. He’d been tested (like all athletes are) and came up negative for powers for whatever reason and so he just thought he was lucky and smart and athletic. Kind of like thousands of kids, I guess. According to Kimmy he wasn’t stuck up about it at all - he was just a really swell kid.
One night at a party in University somebody slipped him some Boost. Everyone was doing it - it was a new drug back then (this was the late eighties), replacing the other designer drugs like Hour and Speed and Hyperdrenaline.
When someone with powers takes Boost, it can augment those powers to super or even meta levels. Or it can lead to spontaneous irreversible mutations. Maybe one in a hundred of those mutations is completely unviable as a lifeform.
It was a closed-casket ceremony.
Kimmy comes home frustrated and annoyed with her lack of success at tracking down the source of the Boost in Lower Uptown. She’s been hunting them for months, shutting down shipping warehouses, busting dealers and running addicts into detox clinics. She’s making headway but she wants to take it to the source, shut it down for good. Everyone knows Action City is where Boost comes from, but no one knows where the main lab is located.
Kimmy comes into my loft apartment - I’d moved from the last one, it didn’t have enough space and let’s face it, I could afford something a little classier - through the skylight I had installed and landed angrily on the upper level, where the bed and bathroom were. I’m working on some actual day-job work I brought home with me. I hear her head into the shower without a word and the water starts and eventually stops.
She comes downstairs in her bathrobe - one of the many things she’s brought and left here at my place - and pours herself a glass of wine and heads over to the computer terminal. I turn around in my chair and say, “Hey.”
“Hi.” She flips a hidden switch and the terminal swivels in the wall, revealing my PSYFERRET. A little holographic ferret appears on the desk in front of Kimmy.
“Good evening, Kimberly, Matt,” I telepathically ‘hear’ Farrah say. Farrah, for whatever reason, is always strictly polite with my girlfriend - something about it being a standard protocol toward secondary users. Kimmy hates being called Kimberly.
“I’m not in the mood tonight, Farrah,” Kimmy practically snarls. It’s been a rough night for her, I can tell. I head over to her and put my hands on her shoulders. She tenses at first and I’m thinking she’s about to brush me off, but after a second she relaxes the least microscopic bit and I start working on the stress knots she has in her shoulders. She says to Farrah, “Just find me the Land Registry Bureau’s information on 1313 Miller Crossing.”
“Access to the Land Registry Bureau datasite is strictly prohibited to city officials, Kimberly.”
“I know that you little rat, just crack the site!”
“I’m sorry I can’t do that, Kimberly.”
Farrah holographically skitters across the desktop as Kimmy swats at her.
“Hey, hey, you break it you bought it,” I say, joking. She ignores me.
“Farrah, run FoxThirteen,” Kimmy says coldly. It’s her bitch voice. Sometimes, when she’s giving a perp the hard stare, it can be a turn-on. Not tonight, though.
My cute little holographic ferret suddenly looks surprised and the hologram changes, morphing into this little cartoony fox with a sly grin on his face.
“What’s up, doll?” the holographic fox says.
“Kimmy, what the hell is this?!” I ask.
“Land Registry Bureau, Fox13,” Kimmy says, still ignoring me. I take my hands off her shoulders. “1313 Miller Crossing.”
“Gotcha doll,” the fox says and dives into my PSYFERRET terminal.
“What the hell,” I start.
“Look, either I install cracker software on your terminal or I break into the LRB myself,” she says, not looking at me. She’s tired and pissed off and not happy about what she’s done.
“Or you could have asked me,” I answer
“Matt, can we fight another night please?”
“Why do you need to crack the LRB’s datasite?”
“Because that building is right smack dab in the middle of all the dealers and distribution centres, that’s why!” She’s facing me finally, anger red hot in her big green eyes.
I cross my arms and I’m about to start in on if she had asked me for help I would have gladly, but the cracker Fox comes out of the terminal.
“No can do, doll,” it answers. “Locked up and guarded tighter than a nun’s knees.”
“Goddammit,” Kimmy swears. “I was told you’re the best cracker software out there!”
“That I am, doll, but I ain’t no miracle worker.”
“Kimmy, get rid of that thing, and I’ll find out for you.”
She turns to face me.
“How?”
I jerk a thumb at the little creep who’s looking a little nervous. Kimmy rolls her eyes and says, “Fox13 - Sour Grapes.”
There’s a funny little look on his face and he disappears, replaced by Farrah, who looks hurt. I’ll have to get her some upgrades to make her feel better.
I pick up the phone and dial a number. The person answers and I say, “Yeah, Land Registry please. Thanks... Matt Mattheson, from Mr. Accountant. I need to find the ownership of a property. One of my clients is interes- 1313 Miller Crossing. Right. Right. Really? Okay then. Thanks.”
Kimmy’s look at me with big disbelieving eyes, like she doesn’t know if she should kiss me or deck me.
“I run an accounting firm, hon, we check this sort of thing all the time. The building is held in trust by a consortium called Big Wheel Holdings. Mostly trucking companies, some storage facilities.” I squat in front of her and take her hands. “But the interesting thing about that building is that it once was a registered entrance to Downtown. Sealed in ‘96.”
Kimmy goes pale and still.
“Look, I’ll go with you, alright?”
“I hate Downtown,” she says.
“I know you do... You know we’ll have to contact him.”
“No we don’t.”
“His turf, his problem, remember?”
“You know how much I fucking hate that little creep.”
“Kimmy... It’s Downtown.”
She’s not happy, but we don’t have a choice. She nods.
“Fine. We’ll talk to the Mole.”