Mind Games - Chapter 26

Yes, I could have made this entire exercise easier and faster by using essence.

Unless I was in life-threatening danger, though, I was restricting myself to purely mundane methods of stealth, infiltration, combat, and espionage. There were multiple reasons for that. The first was simply that I hadn't had the time or space to refine my Sidereal martial arts and charms. My Apartment was a recent purchase, after all, and I needed the pocket dimension to put a wall between me and whatever nasties might sense me using a non-native supernatural energy. Despite the fact that I had a perfect intellectual understanding of the arts, I wanted (and likely needed) a little practice to holistically blend everything together.

So no voodoo kung-fu unless I met some nablies attacking some wee men.

Heh.

Still, I was cheating pretty hard even without that ace up my sleeve.

The simple truth was that most people – most Contractors, even – simply didn't understand the utility of the Apartment and its expansions. Oh sure, it was nice to have an inviolable private space to do any manner of things one needed to, but a personal pocket dimension had tactical and strategic applications that simply went over most of their heads.

One of the reasons, for instance, that I'd spent some of my thinning pool of funds to allow Himiko to generate her own portals wasn't merely because it would be good for her underdeveloped sense of personhood to have a place to grow and develop. Don't get me wrong, that was most of the reason, but it helped that I could justify the purchase beyond self-actualization for my girlfriend.

Were I to ever get in over my head, such as heading into an unmapped villain bunker that was being used to manufacture dangerous quirk-enhancing drugs...

Just as an example.

...well, were I to get into an untenable position where I simply couldn't escape or wait out the situation in the Apartment itself, I could call Himiko from the safety of the pocket dimension and have her open a portal near her house.

Untraceable, fiat-backed limited teleportation with extra steps, in other words.

Unlike my voodoo kung-fu, that was an ace I was entirely willing to use and abuse as I saw fit. Should the situation require it, at least.

My hope was that this situation wouldn't require it, the goal in essence being to get through the basement-bunker-drug lab undetected. Strapping a head-mounted camera tightly before pulling up a purple hood on the coat I was wearing underneath my leather jacket, I reminded myself that this was a recon mission first and foremost from this point on.

The upscale pawn shop above was publicly-known and could plausibly be the target of a skilled villain looking to make a quick buck or acquire some interesting trinkets.

But the secrets below?

They needed to continue to believe those had gone undetected.

Which meant no theft, no violence, and no traces I was ever there.

I pulled the gloves tight on my hands, sliding up the fabric mask over the lower part of my face to quiet the noise of my breathing. Finally, I slipped on a pair of military surplus 'sunglasses' that were made of a material that amplified ambient light, allowing increased night vision without the potential liability of a battery or an electrical malfunction.

They were the single most expensive item I'd purchased from Nakamura as well.

I could, in a pinch, substitute a bit of internal essence manipulation to see even in the pitch black, but one of the... dozen or so points of this little exercise-

Again, my Sidereal Tendencies are acting up.

-was not to rely on essence-based arts. I needed to be able to pass for a 'normal' junior superhero for UA in a few weeks. Granted, I'd be an undoubtedly talented, skilled, and mature prodigy of a 'normal' prospective student, but the people of this world liked to write off anything weird or abnormal to quirks.

And that was a blindspot in their logic I was more than willing to ruthlessly exploit.

I stepped out of the safety of my Apartment into the recently-vacated hallway and slid the card I'd just stolen into the reader before giving it a quick peek.

Good news?

Empty stairwell.

Bad news?

What lay before me was a cheap metal scaffolding stairwell made of reinforced steel that had been sloppily welded together to bear the weight of the loads that would be ferried up and down it. Cassandra remembered these with irritable displeasure and the Sidereal was familiar enough with the concept to have an equally troublesome analog in Creation. The reason they were so disliked?

They creaked.

They groaned.

They shook and rattled and clanged and attracted attention from anyone with a pair of functioning ears.

In short, these stairs were ironically the most significant and difficult-to-bypass security feature I'd come across yet.

However, just as the natural inclination of any business to cut costs was causing me problems here, the natural inclination towards human laziness proved my saving grace. Normally, a stairwell had a sloping ceiling that followed the falling angle of the stairs below, but installing anything that wasn't at a ninety degree angle on a building took a level of skill that wasn't terribly common in criminal organizations. Moreover, the prevailing reason behind a sloping ceiling, which was to prevent wasted 'dead space' in a building, didn't really matter if the business up top was simply a cover for a black-market drug operation underneath.

So they'd simply boxed out a rectangle above the stairs, the same width as the doorway, which extended until someone descending wouldn't need to duck out of the way.

Which meant that, instead of taking the rattling, noisy stairs down to a lair full of criminals who would hear me coming and see me immediately, I pressed one hand on each wall and proceeded to use the isometric pressure to crawl out into the open space above the stairs.

Then, crawling out to the furthest point, I positioned myself upside down and got a look around the space below.

Hmm... I wonder if this is what being a xenomorph is like?

Shaking off the random thought, I put my head on a swivel.

From what few records I could find, the space was going on a century now, and it showed. To the villains' credit, they'd shored up one badly-cracked wall with steel girders and ties as reinforcements. Even then, though, it looked to be one good superhuman blow away from crumbling into rubble. I allowed the camera on my head to linger over it for a few more seconds, taking special note of it. Any sort of assault on this location would need to be aware of structural instability like that or risk endangering the entire shopping arcade above.

“-I don't care, double-check it! The Boss is on my ass, so I'm on yours!” The man from whom I'd stolen the access card yelled out, and I pivoted to him.

Basic factory racks held large tanks with wires trailing from them and small screens attached along one of the walls of the room below me. Obviously the precursor chemicals they had spoken of. A few cheap desks had been set up nearby, more cords connecting the containers to electrical power as well as the computers set up there.

Looking straight down, I saw another series of shelving units, these stacked high with all sorts of glassware and boxes full of unknown supplies.

Turning my head back to the door at the top of the stairway, I knew that the longer I stayed up here, the more I invited someone to make their way through that entrance and stare straight at me.

Lowering myself to the very lowest bound, I took a deep breath as the men below busied themselves and-

-spun in place, still upside down, using the momentum of my rotating form to throw me down and between the shelving units full of random items.

I flipped once, my gloved hands impacting the bare concrete with barely a whisper before I bled off further motion by flipping again and landing in a crouch.

“You hear that?” One of the men lifting a large crate of syringes asked, turning to look in the direction of the shelves I was hiding behind. Staying low, I peered through a gap in the supplies, watching his elongated ears twitch as his black eyes probed the poorly-lit area.

Acting on impulse, I pulled out the card I'd stolen from the lead thug and sent it into a high arc.

It impacted on a corner, striking the metal and ringing it like a bell as it continued to 'roll' down the stairs.

“Shit, what was that?” The bat-looking villain asked, his head snapping away from me and towards the card as he lowered his cargo and took a few steps towards it.

“Well?” The thug-in-charge demanded.

I used the distraction to slip further into the drug lab, making sure to keep something solid between myself and the others as much as I could. With a demonstrable extrasensory quirk in the room, I couldn't rely on the darkness to protect me.

“Hah! Ah-” Bat-thug chuckled awkwardly, belatedly realizing that it might not be the smartest move to actually laugh at the guy ordering him around. “You-um, dropped your card-key?”

There was a moment of awkward silence as the lead thug slipped a hand into his pocket in disbelief, then cursed and stalked over toward the bat-heteromorph, grumbling.

Enjoying the fact that everyone's attention was very firmly aligned with the little drama unfolding as the lead figure did everything he could to paper over the momentary loss of face, I kept moving as whisper-quiet as I could.

The bunker was large, but annoyingly subdivided into hardened and reinforced rooms, throwing off my estimations of the respective size of rooms and the walls between them. It also served to date this structure, as I'd come to learn through my studies of the recent history of this world. Apparently, shelters like these were all the rage while society was imploding, for all the fact that they did very little to help. Still, as time went on and particularly prolific villains made a point of cracking bunkers, both to show they could and to enhance their own infamy, the bunkers themselves became thicker and sturdier with enhanced – sometimes quirk-empowered – building techniques.

The structure I was in right now would probably take some massive ordinance to destroy.

Or Cementoss could swing by on his off day and level it.

Which was, in a nutshell, why people had stopped building them.

As the number and variety of powers rose in the general populace, the likelihood that a hostile force would have a bunker-buster cape of some type rose to a near-certainty.

That wasn't to say fortifications had gone entirely to the wayside in the modern era, though. The ones built these days just tended to be a little more... exotic in their defensive capabilities. Of course, they were also a lot more expensive and required specialized labor to set up, so they were limited to vital infrastructure, top-level officials, and people with more money than sense.

I peeked my head into the toilet and cocked an eyebrow before closing the door silently and moving away down a dimly-lit corridor.

They still have running water down here. I'd wager this is probably tapped into a central water main and just too expensive to cut out and bypass...

I looked in the generator room briefly as well, satisfying myself that what machines were left were entirely non-functional.

Beyond the rusting detritus of ages long past, there was a truly startling amount of modern detritus... mostly of the drug-processing kind. A few rooms were either sealed or smelled so awful that I simply bypassed them entirely given they appeared to just be loaded with trash.

Then, finally someone started yelling.

“Get the fuck up here! The shop's been robbed!”

Which is what I'd been waiting for and the real motivation behind stealing everything in the secure area.

Well, besides wanting my own authentic samurai swords and taking the evil statues out of circulation.

And occluding the fact that I'd planted all of the data-taps and other surveillance equipment.

Oh, and-

Goddamn Sidereal Tendencies!

-I sighed.

Anyway, now that the two unconscious criminals/employees/villains upstairs had likely been discovered, it was an all hands on deck moment. Meaning that everyone down here was going to go up there. Which, of course, meant that-

“Not you!” The chief thug barked as I waited around a blind corner. “You stay here! Check every-fucking-thing! If someone's stupid enough to steal from us they might be stupid enough to come down here.”

“Wh-what should I do if there is someone?” A thin and reedy voice asked. I mentally matched it to the nerdy guy I'd seen running checks on the equipment.

The tell-tale sound of metal-on-metal rang out as a gun was cocked.

“Point this at whoever it is and pull the trigger, dumbass,” the chief thug growled, heading towards the stairway and stomping up the rattling mess of beams and steps.

I sighed and rubbed at my face.

Or, I guess someone could actually have two brain cells to rub together and decide to make my life marginally more difficult.

Marginally.

“And make sure that trunk stays locked!” The chief thug yelled from the top of the stairs before slamming the door behind him.

I blinked and cocked my head.

Trunk? Like you'd pack to take to wizarding school? Or...

I looked around more carefully, watching as the nerd's head pivoted and he clutched the gun so tightly I worried it might go off. Mentally, I mapped out the corridors I'd already snuck down, holding up a finger and pointing to them as I counted them off.

I came up one shy.

Specifically, the hallway that nerd-thug was moving towards, muttering to himself.

My eyes trailed upwards, orienteering myself properly according to the terrain and buildings above-ground. Frowning, I took a cautious step out of hiding and moved towards the computers, flicking a glance down the mystery path to ensure the 'guard' wasn't coming back.

“That goes towards the rear of the shopping arcade... there's a block of warehouses back there, isn't there?” I hummed to myself, the first words I'd spoken aloud since coming down here. “Damn incomplete building records.”

Disregarding my curiosity for the moment, I pulled out another set of data taps and key-loggers for the computers, carefully installing each in the most difficult to reach areas behind the devices just as I had done upstairs.

That done, I took a more detailed look at their laboratory setup, the part of the bunker that had been busiest and, therefore, most likely to result in me getting noticed. Really, it was nothing more complicated than what you'd see in most high school chemistry classrooms, though the stocks weren't anything like what you'd find in those cabinets.

I let my head-cam take a close look at several of the bottles that my inner River recognized as being particularly dangerous. Even if I was drawing a blank on the current state of law around handling chemicals like this, I was willing to bet you needed some kind of license for this shit. Especially since I could cook up a pretty killer explosive with them...

I cocked my head and listened as I heard the sound of footsteps.

Specifically, those of the nerd, now approaching as he returned.

I took a few quick steps and ducked behind a stack of sealed cases that likely contained a great deal of the finished trigger drug.

My fingers itched to disappear some of it.

But I wouldn't.

I needed them to think I'd only hit the expensive stuff upstairs. They needed to believe this place had gone completely undetected if I wanted them to continue to operate out of it. Criminals were like cockroaches... if you shone light on them, they scattered to find new hiding places. It would be better if I could guide the heroes of my choice to a complete and established distribution operation in order for them to have the maximum impact on the trade of a dangerous substance.

...and to make sure a certain someone is as occupied as I can make him.

Well, okay, two someones, actually. Or, well... three, kind of.

The plan had layers, alright?! Like an onion! Or an ogre!

Disregarding my internal diatribe against my own predisposition for Machiavellian machinations, I watched silently as the nerd retreated back to his workstation. No longer clutching his weapon quite so closely now that he'd apparently reassured himself his primary objective was holding steady, he gave the room a wide sweep...

...and failed to check behind him, satisfied that the area he'd just come through was, of course, clear of any possible threats.

Meanwhile, I silently made my way down the wide hallway-

No. This wasn't a hallway. Narrowing my eyes, I squinted through the gloom with my light-enhancing eyewear and knelt down briefly. Directing the head-mounted camera towards the tire tracks, I traced them with my finger to ensure they were properly highlighted for the future viewer, then stood and continued on my way.

From what information I'd found online, the primary entrance to this bunker had been directly above it, leveled and sealed when the shopping mall arcade went up fifty years ago or so. Apparently, though, there was a secondary entrance that was not just intact, but simultaneously large enough to move wheeled vehicles through and operational.

This was one well-organized operation. Well-funded, too.

Three guesses who was behind this and the first two don't count.

If I was counting my distance correctly, I ended up crossing the entire back street behind the arcade and getting well underneath the row of warehouses behind that before I came to the end of the long tunnel. Sure enough, at the end was a large room marginally more well-lit than the other areas of the bunker. The first thing of actual importance I noticed, though, was the pair of dark, four-door cars sitting just on the other side of a large, roll-down metal door.

“Secondary supply entrance,” I muttered, calculating the angle and mentally marking where the exit ramp to the surface must come out.

Beyond the cards, though, there was an obvious load of chemicals, glassware, and other things necessary for the continued creation of the trigger compound. I took a few moments to make sure I got everything on camera as well as ensuring that there wasn't any kind of CCTV surveillance system in here. I hadn't seen any since I'd gotten into the bunker, but it never hurt to check...

But, no. It looked like they weren't quite stupid enough to record their own crimes in progress.

Either that or the budget had only accounted for one security system.

Humming to myself, I grabbed a pair of GPS trackers and slipped them behind the rear wheels of the vehicles after ensuring they were on. They'd last for a good thirty days and give me vital information about where they were getting the precursor chemicals and other supplies.

Then, casting a cautious look back where I came from, I approached the first car and peered through the tinted windows. “Bingo.”

I'd hoped, given how clean and nondescript the vehicles looked, that they were 'company cars,' and I'd been right. On this one, at least. A common enough trend in larger criminal organizations was to keep 'clean' cars that weren't registered to anyone with warrants or criminal histories. These wouldn't provide law enforcement with a good excuse to do a stop and search. They were also traded around among 'employees' regularly, reducing the amount of personal belongings and traces if one of them needed to be burned.

Burned figuratively, as in used in the commission of a crime and having it's low profile destroyed.

Or burned literally if the crime was too significant and the vehicle itself needed to be destroyed.

That way, no one got pissy when the crime boss ordered you to set your personal vehicle on fire, drive it into the ocean, or park it in a mine shaft that they were going to collapse.

This was particularly important because given such cars switched operators regularly...

I opened the door, confident that the alarm wouldn't go off.

...they usually left the keys in the cars themselves, I grinned silently as I took note of the fob and keyring in the center console's cup holder. Twenty more seconds and I had the listening device properly planted, then stepped away to do the same. These weren't perfect, sadly, and would piggy-back on the not-bluetooth within the car itself to dump a conversation log every twenty-four hours. If they were out of range, they'd try again every hour after that. Normally, I wouldn't worry, but...

If they had any more hideouts or processing plants like this one, signal could get a little iffy.

“Okay, work's done and I've behaved myself, let's see what's in the trunk...” I stated, rubbing my hands together.

The first car was a bust. Nothing beyond a spare tire, a tire wrench, a jack, and a bag of stuff that could be easily written off as standard cleaning and maintenance supplies. Even the tarp could be explained as an emergency fix for a broken window... though its real purpose was probably more sinister than that. Being thorough, I made sure I had video evidence of the cleanup kit before softly shutting the door and trunk to the first one.

“Big money – Big money, No whammy – No whammy,” I chuckled quietly, rubbing my hands together as I hit the release for the second car's trunk.

The muffled sound of surprise clued me in before I even got around to raising the rear door up.

Looking inside only confirmed what I already knew. It also confirmed my suspicions of the tarp in the other car, given that an identical one was laid out underneath the girl in this one, obviously to catch any stray hairs, fibers, or blood.

...now if only I could figure out why she was so damn familiar.

I held up a gloved finger outside of the cloth covering the lower half of my face and made eye contact with the pink-haired girl in the skimpy costume tied up with what was probably too many ropes. She wasn’t a Bat, after all.

The girl in the trunk looked up at me, her eyes widening as she nodded fervently around the tape over her mouth, seeming to understand I wasn’t a member of the crew that had nabbed her.

Pulling out a small knife, I started carefully cutting away at her bonds.

“No noise,” I cautioned her again as I leaned down, helping her out of the cramped space. “I’ve distracted most of them, but there’s still a guard.”

She nodded again, blatantly sagging with relief as I began pulling at the tape over her mouth while she finished undoing the ropes around her wrists and legs.

“My name is Pop Step!” She hissed.  “You’ve got to help me get out of here! They’re planning to dump trigger into the city’s water supply!”

~~~

Well, look at what we have here! A little early, for once!

Here's chapter twenty-six of Mind Games for everyone to enjoy, and I hope you do. We've got one more chapter to close out this little vigilante arc before we return to our regularly-scheduled programming.

That said, next up will likely be a chapter of something else over the weekend. Not sure what, I'm getting ready for my trip out of town and things are a little spastic right now, so we'll call it a surprise.

Hope this finds everyone having a good weekend!