Talyesin's Tales

The first thing I’m aware of after that is, cold hard. Something cold and hard beneath me.

The cold thing bothers me more because the next thing I’m aware of is I’m not wearing my costume - not naked, I still have my boxer briefs - and the floor or table or whatever I’m on is cold metal against my skin. Face down on something cold and metal, my arms behind me.

This tells me three things. The first, that we’re in trouble, because the street outside was broken asphalt and I’m not on that. The second, that whoever put me on the cold metal whatever it is took the time to undress me, and that’s never good in my line of work. And third, that I haven’t been on the cold metal whatever long enough for my body heat to warm it to a comfortable temperature, so it can’t be that long since the explosion knocked me out.

I open my eyes and see I’m in a room that’s all cold steel and everything has this weird green tinge to it, the light coming from somewhere behind me. I do a quick tally and there doesn’t seem to be any major damage, only superficial cuts and scrapes and a hell of a lot of bruising. And my wrists and ankles are manacled together. I hate being hogtied.

I can’t see anyone so I turn my head - painfully - and see Kimmy and a blond guy on two tables alongside me. So we’re all in our underwear. The blond guy sees me and grins, and I know it’s Ace.

“So much for our dramatic unveiling,” Ace says.

Kimmy’s eyes snap open.

“I never figured you for a blonde,” Ace says to her.

“I never figured you for a tighty whitey type,” she says back.

“Spend a lot of time thinking about my underwear, do ya?” he quips.

“I hate to interrupt this touching moment, but can either of you get free?”

Kimmy shakes her head. Ace lifts up his wrists and shows the handcuffs.

“I’m in goopcuffs,” Kimmy says. She doesn’t have regular old metal handcuffs on, she’s wearing the reddish-black semi-soft material known as goop, tying her wrists and ankles together, hogtied also.

“How the hell does a Downtown mob afford goopcuffs?”

“Buddy, I don’t think we’re dealing with a regular Downtown mob,” Ace says, thrusting his chin toward the wall beyond our feet. He’s the only one not hogtied - though his ankles are shackled. He sits up and Kimmy and I shift ourselves to see what’s over there.

The wall is a long series of translucent tubes filled with greenish liquid. Each container has a person inside, maybe a dozen in total. A lot of tubes run in and out of the bigger containers, leading to a huge bank of some weird technology I don’t recognize, and what seems to be a large distillery, because small vials of something milky-blue-white are being slowly filled, one by one. There are dozens, maybe hundreds of the vials.

“Shit,”Ace says. He gets off the table and hops over to the machine. He looks at it a bit and turns and says, “This is all Praxis tech.”

Praxis is a German consortium of corporations. They’re the second most successful developer of bleeding edge technology, right after Sterling Enterprises. But then, Sterling Enterprises has the World’s Smartest Man, Doc Reed Sterling, as their lead developer.

“Okay, how the hell does a Downtown mob get Praxis tech?” Kimmy asks.

“I don’t know, but I mean to find out,” I say, and hot-squeeze my claws out. I try to pick the locks on the manacles but I can’t get any good purchase. Besides I’ve never really been all that good at picking locks.

“Here, let me try,”Ace says, and hops over to me. He takes one of my fingers and puts it into the keyhole. He starts wiggling my finger and after a couple of seconds, he says, “This is going to hurt, Squirrelly.”

“Do it. A broken finger will heal. If we don’t get out of this, I have a feeling we’re going to wind up in those tubes.”

There’s a sick wet snap and this bright flare of pain in my left hand.

“Fuck!”

“Sorry man.”

The pain, if anything, gets worse for a few seconds, then the manacles are off. I flip over and cradle my hand in my other. I pop my finger back into place and the pain flares into stark relief in my hand. I’m panting a bit at the pain, but shake my head at Ace’s offer to help and pick the lock on his manacles.

“One to go,” Ace says, and heads toward the machine, looking for something. I go over to Kimmy and check her for any injuries.

“You okay?” I say quietly.

“Just pissed off,” she says, smiling up at me. “You?”

“It’ll heal.”

“Ah-hah!” Ace says. He holds up a little tool, like a screwdriver, but with an odd flange on it, and some buttons along the side.

“Eureka?”

“Never leave the controller where the prisoners can get it,” he says, sticking it into the goopcuffs. He presses a series of buttons and the goop melts off Kimmy’s arms and legs and pools around the remote. Kimmy rolls over and sits up, rubbing the circulation back into her arms and legs.

Ace puts the goop on the table, then smiles his familiar damn-I’m-smart smile. He presses the buttons on the controller again and picks up a small bit of goop from the larger blob.

“C’mere, Squirrelly,” he says. I raise an eyebrow. He indicates I should raise my left hand, and uses the goop to make a flexible splint for my broken finger.

Kimmy’s looking at the tubes, wiping some of the moisture off the side of one.

“Holy shit,” she says, looking a little ill. We go over and look.

The tubes running into the larger containers are also running into the people inside. They have their heads encased in what I recognize as virtual reality helmets. Every once in a while one of them will jerk or spasm, and then some syrupy stuff will drain out of one of the tubes in their side and out of the container and into the machine.

Ace goes to one of the control panels and calls up a variety of display panels on the holographic display in front of him.

“According to this, they’re all enhanced, or supers,” Ace reads from one of the displays.

“What’s this one?” Kimmy points to one. “Adrenaline production?”

“They’re using the VR helmets to induce adrenaline production in the subjects,” Ace says, pulling up more display panels.

“Why?” I ask, but I’m pretty sure I know the answer.

“Boost,” Kimmy says. “They refine and purify the adrenaline, mix it with some other chemicals, and create Boost.”

We all look at the vials and vials of the drug on the trolley next to the distiller.

“And the process pretty much sucks them dry and kills them after a couple of weeks,” Ace says, turning back to the console. “Supers last longer than enhanced people.”

“What about normal folks like you, Ace?”

“Hey, I may not have any powers, but I’m far from normal.”

“Har har.”

“They don’t last more than a day,” Kimmy reads from a display panel.

“Shit.”

“They’ve been doing this for how long? How many years?” Kimmy says, angry now.

“Does it matter? It ends today,” I say, and kick over the trolley, sending millions of dollars smashing to the floor.

“Any way to get them out of there?” I say to Ace. He checks the computer and then looks at me, shakes his head.

“It’s permanent,” he says.

“Can we reprogram their VR to give them a break at least?” Kimmy asks.

“If we had a computer genius here, sure,” Ace says, scrubbing a hand through his hair. “I could maybe figure it out in a few hours, but I doubt we have a few hours.”

“Quite right my friend,” says a voice behind us. There’s a guy standing there, wearing a white lab coat, cyber-tech gauntlets and more cyber gear on his bald head.

“I am Doctor Hi-Q,” he says melodramatically.

“Doctor Haiku?” I smirk. “Shouldn’t you be speaking in only seventeen syllables?”

“Shut up,” he smiles at me.

“Aww, I thought this was the witty banter portion of the day,” I say.

“That might be true, if you were being witty,” he sneers. He looks us over and says, “You’ll make excellent specimens for the extractor.”

“Listen, Poindexter, there’s three of us and only one of you,” Kimmy says.

“Ah my dear, that’s where you’re wrong,” Hi-Q says, pushing a button on the back of his hand.

Doors slide open in the walls and a bunch of reanimated cybered-up corpses step into the room.

“Zombies,” Ace groans. “Why did it have to be zombies?”

“Cyber-zombies,” I smile at him. “Very dangerous. You go first.”