String - Framework 2.4

I wonder what it would have been like to be in their shoes.

Just like Alice had said, there were two watching TV, while another three were playing a game of poker. The fourth player had briefly paused the game to head to the kitchen when the door to the room flew off its hinges and collided with him hard enough to break several bones.

Startled, they all reached for their guns only for a blur to zip into the room and steal every firearm from them before they could so much as lay a finger on their weapons. The blur then solidified in the middle of the room having dismantled all of their guns.

The pieces of steel dropped to the floor at her feet.

With all their attention on her, they neglected to identify the second threat walking through the door, me.

I turned to one of the guys watching TV, aimed for center mass, and fired, a bright red light flashed on my target for a split second. Lasers don’t have any mass so I didn’t expect there to be much of a reaction. It quickly became clear, however, that I underestimated just how painful it was to have your skin instantly seared.

The other man watching the game was my next target. Like his buddy, he screamed and dropped to the floor with his shirt on fire. I turned, aiming at the three guys still at the table. Alice had told me not to hesitate, so I didn't. I aimed at the one closest to me and pulled the trigger. He flinched when the laser hit him and I got a clear view of the damage my weapon caused. The laser burned a hole through the shirt and turned the skin dark black.

The wound smoked as he cried out, falling over the back of his chair. The other two don’t exactly know what to do, so they split up, each one going for a different target. With Pink in control, neither made it more than two steps before she blurred forward and took their feet out from under them. Two quick kicks to the head later and they were both unconscious.

It all started and ended in about three seconds.

It was shockingly easy.

“See, that’s how it’s done, Uppies. Easy peasy lemon squeezy!”

I sighed. “Seriously?”

“Well I’m not callin’ ya Upgrade. It’s waaaaay too serious.”

I was already moving to check the first two guys I’d hit. One was groaning in pain, his wounded shoulder smoking. The other one had seemingly passed out. I checked his pulse just to make sure because I wasn’t too thrilled with the idea of being a murderer.

“This one is still awake,” I said. I wasn’t too keen on shooting him again. There was such a thing as overkill. “I might need to find something easier to knock someone out. Maybe a taser.”

Pink was at my side in a moment, staring down at the groaning thug with a vicious smile.

“Lights out, bozo!”

Her foot crashed into his face and I heard a nasty crunch, his body going slack.

“I suppose that works too.”

Pink flashed me a victorious grin. “A boot to the face is a great way to start a nap.”

All the men in the room were incapacitated but strangely, the one I had run into a couple nights ago was not among them. Where was he? He had to still be in the building somewhere. I had heard his voice through the drone so he couldn't have gotten far. Pink seemed to be on the same wavelength as she strolled back to the middle of the room, eyeing up the one unopened door next to the poker table.

“Oh gee, I wonder what’s behind the door over there,” Pink placed her hands on her hips and began swaying back and forth on the balls of her heels.

“You gonna make this easy on us and come out, or are you gonna play hard to get? I do love it when boys play hard.”

“Classy.”

Pink turned and winked at me.

The door clicked open and the man of the hour strolled out casually tossing his gun to the floor. He took one look at his downed comrades and rolled his eyes. I inhaled sharply as I took in his features. He didn’t even look bothered by what we had done to the guys under his command.

“Little fish sticking their noses in my business,” The man said confidently. He proceeded to mutter a string of what I assumed to be curses in a different language. Spanish, from the sounds of it. Pink just tilted her head innocently.

“You come here for something, hm? I hate to disappoint but nothing here is for sale, my friends.”

“That’s okay. We ain’t buyin,” Pink chirped. “But we are lookin’ for a lil something.”

He spread his arms with a smile that dripped with false bravado.

“How might I be of service, chica?”

Pink started circling him, giving him a wide berth as she kicked his gun across the floor toward me. He didn’t make any threatening moves as she started moving, her eyes scanning him to make sure he didn’t have anything else on him. As she left his vision, his eyes flickered toward me and I tensed.

He just gave me a playful smirk.

“A little birdie told me you made off with some serious cha-ching the other night,” Pink’s gaze flickered to me, her lips thinning into a grin similar to the man. However, once she had completed her inspection, his expression reverted back to an easy frown. “We’d like to know where it is.”

The man had the audacity to look a bit confused.

“Aha… you might have to be a little more specific. Money passes in and out of these hands frequently. It’s quite easy to lose track of it.”

Pink grabbed a chair and kicked it across the floor. It slid right behind the man at the same time she appeared in front of him to boot him into it. Clutching his stomach, he let out a winded exhale as Pink blurred again. She blitzed out of the room in the blink of an eye and was back in less than a few seconds. She was like a whirlwind around the man and within moments, he was bound.

“How nice of you to keep some rope on hand!”

“Ahh… you never know who to expect,” He replied confidently, shifting a bit in his new binds. “Very tight. An admirable effort.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere here, bub,” Pink replied without the usual chirp to her voice. “Now, it would be best to start talkin’ because I get excited when bones start breaking. You never know, I could get carried away and I’m not the type of girl to have a safe word!”

He laughed for a good couple of moments there. I wasn’t sure where the joke was so I had to settle for complete insanity. This guy had lost it.

Then he looked past Pink to me.

“What was that I said? Woman, right? Fuckin crazy.”

My blood ran cold.

“You know it’s me?”

He grinned.

“You’ve barely said a word since I walked through that door,” he tilted his head back to the door he came out of behind him. “And judging from how tightly you're holding that gun…” he made a tisk tisk sound with his teeth. “Trying to swim in the big, dark ocean are we? You think a little playmate is gonna stop the riptide?”

I stepped forward, moving past Pink until I towered over him. For the first time in my life, I tasted catharsis in its purest form. It was only a small victory but to see the man that had embarrassed, tormented, and stolen from me tied up like this and at my mercy was nothing short of euphoric.

“Who’s the one tied up now?”

He sneered back at me. “Funny how things work out. What will you do, kill me?”

“Kill you? No,” I aimed at his foot and fired.

The laser seared through his shoe and caught fire. Pink was quick to toss a rag over it to smother the fire but his pained cry was like music to my ears. I was a little concerned I derived such satisfaction from this but all I had to do was remind myself of the position I was in just the other night. Just like that, the guilt vanished.

“That’s for fucking with me, asshole.”

I checked the ammo display. Eight shots left.

“Got some balls on you,” He hissed out. I stared at him as he lifted his head. He was clearly in pain but he was smiling – enjoying all of this. “I had you pegged as a spoiled rich kid. Never thought you’d have it in you to pull the trigger.”

I gestured around him to his downed comrades.

“You thought wrong.”

“So you want to know where I took your money?” He asked. I nodded. He chuckled and leaned back in the chair, looking thoroughly bemused by the situation.

“That’s unfortunate my friend, because I no longer have it. Your money is property of the Cains now. Like I said before, money comes and goes frequently.”

“But you must know where you took it, who you handed it to,” I pressed, glaring at him through my visor. It probably didn’t have the effect that I wanted since he couldn’t see my face but I doubt it would have mattered. This guy would have met and faced down people far more imposing than a high schooler.

“Tell me.”

He stared at me, unimpressed.

“Why would I do that? Even if I did know, telling you would put me into some serious hot water,” He pursed his lips and shrugged. “The worst you can do is hurt me.”

“Aha! If I had a dollar for every person who’s said that, I would buy an island,” Pink giggled. “Trust me, bub. Once the pain starts, you’ll start thinking twice.”

I shuddered.

The man only seemed to find Pink’s words amusing.

“You two caused a bit of a stir. Bonesmith captured and Banshee injured… I think you can imagine we’re not too happy with you,” he shook his head like a disappointed father. “The big boss knows of you now and he’s not the type to negotiate. You’ll be going to war with the big fish if you want your money back.”

That was already what I had suspected. Him still having my money would be too easy. Getting back the quarter million was going to be harder than I anticipated. It was time to change my approach a little bit.

“Fine, you don’t have it. Not like I would expect you to use a payload chip anyway,” I dismissed. He at least had the decency to look a little bit insulted. I considered it a win. I turned to Alice. “Do you want to bring Gold out to see what you can get from him? He doesn’t seem to want to talk.”

Pink narrowed her eyes before shrugging. “Nah.”

I blinked. “What?”

“He can wait. I wanna go look through their stuff, come on,” She turned on her heel and walked through the door the guy had come through. It led into an office that seemed stacked with boxes and other things. It was clearly smuggling because some of the boxes had the ECU logo on them, along with other companies.

“Don’t just stand there, Uppies. Come and help me here. That bozo ain’t going nowhere.”

I grumbled under my breath. Fine. He can wait.

The man cackled.

I lashed out and punched him in the nose, feeling another rush of satisfaction as it broke. Though, this time it was dulled by the throbbing in my hand. The moment I was out of his line of sight, I clutched my hand and tried to shake away the pain. Pink caught me rubbing my knuckles as I strolled through the door and giggled.

“Alright, what have they got?” I asked, trying to change the subject. I spotted my old phone lying on the desk which sufficiently brightened my mood. “At least I managed to get this back. Find anything interesting?”

“Hmm…” Pink hummed aloud, surveying the room “We got some grade 4 biogel so far but other than that, a whole lotta crap..”

We began sifting through piles of stuff. It quickly became clear what kind of operation they were running here. There were primarily drugs and weapons, with some mundane tech sprinkled in.

“Drat! No hard cash,” Pink bemoaned. “Looks like we’re going to have to look a bit harder in future.”

“You can switch back now,” I said, giving Pink a blank stare. “There’s no one around except for the guy tied to the chair, but he’s probably too busy dealing with a broken nose to listen in.”

“Nope!”

“No?”

“Yup! I’m stayin’. Get used to me, Uppies. You’re gonna be seeing me a lot.”

“Stop calling me Uppies,” I asked, holding back a wave of annoyance. “Upgrade isn’t that hard to say.”

Pink pouted. “Uppies is cuter.”

“I don’t really care what’s cuter,” I gestured to my armor, helmet, and gun. “It doesn’t really fit well with the image I’ve got going here.”

“Aw…” Pink blurred over to me and gave me a playful hip bump. “You’re all frowny-face under that helmet. Cheer up! Things are going well.”

I sighed.

“Sorry, I’m just a little eager to get some more information out of that guy. He’s definitely holding something back and I’m willing to bet Gold can get it out of him.”

“Once we’re done here, I’ll switch. Now, quit standin’ around and help me look some more. There has to be something else we can take,” Pink said eagerly, tearing through another crate of goodies.

This one had some solid weaponry in there, stolen from the ECU. It wouldn’t do us much good considering most of their tech was biometrically locked. Some Mechakinetics might be able to develop something to crack through that security, but unfortunately, I didn’t have the tools on hand to do that.

If I was going to continue this partnership with Alice long term, upgrading some mundane tools into mechatech so we can work around stuff like this would probably serve me well in the future. I’d need a workshop though to store all the stuff since currently, I didn’t have any space to work on this kind of stuff privately.

Alice though… she had space at her place. Several rooms were in dire need of repair. Come to think of it, it was the perfect place for a workshop. I could repurpose one of the floors and maybe even do a complete makeover of the garage. Outfit it with some defenses.

Every Mechakinetic had to start somewhere. It’s not like Ajax was just able to magically build his giant space station out of nothing.

“Oooh, what’s this?”

My eyes flickered to my partner in crime as she heaved a military-grade case out of a wooden crate she had pried open. She dropped it on the office desk and rubbed her hands together with anticipation.

The case looked heavy like it was carrying an expensive weapon or something. It looked big enough to hold an anti-material rifle or a rocket launcher. It even had a keypad and some very solid magnetic locks to complete the look.

“Jackpot?” I asked. Pink turned and gave me a mad grin. It was going to take a while for me to really separate Sam from the rest of her personalities. “Not a payload chip but with that kind of security it has to be worth a small fortune.”

“That’s the idea! Now, how do we crack this baby open?” Pink examined the small digital keypad. “Oh! I know, I’ll try every possible combination.”

I blinked owlishly.

“Hey, wait. I don’t think—” her hand blurred against the keypad. In a split second, the magnetic locks clamped as the emergency settings kicked in. The keypad shut itself off and blurred angrily at us whenever Pink tried to push another key. “Good job.”

“Aw crud! We’re locked out. That always works in the movies…” She stamped her foot angrily. “Ah, shaddup Gold! You dunno what ya talkin about!”

I stood back awkwardly as Pink suddenly shuddered.

Her body language changed and her shoulders became a bit more rigid. Like a ferocious animal, grunts escaped her throat as she began digging her fingers into the cracks at the side of the box. I watched, fascinated, as a girl – who seemingly didn’t have much muscle on her – tried to pry open the military-grade case.

“Uh—”

Her head snapped toward me, her eyes blistering red. “YOU GOT SOMETHING TO SAY!?!”

“Nope,” I shook my head. “Carry on.”

I was not going to get between Red and the box. I still didn’t know Alice enough to truly gauge how much control she had over her different personalities. So, for the moment, I’d steer clear of Red.

Her efforts continued for another minute before she became frustrated by her lack of progress. It eventually devolved into her throwing the box against the wall and folding an office desk in on itself. I stared at the destruction, trying my best not to display any outward emotion until I was certain Red was gone.

When Alice turned around, I was met with Pink eyes again.

“Oops.”

“Mind if I give it a crack?” I asked with an easy tone, walking over to the box now resting at an awkward angle in the corner of the room. “I might be able to do something.”

“Like what?” Pink asked curiously. “We don’t know the code and I locked us out!”

With some minor difficulty, I dragged the box out of the corner of the room where Red had thrown it and brought it back over to the center of the room. Crouching down, I placed a hand on the keypad. As expected, my head was filled with the different possible upgrade paths, but I quickly shunted most of them away and narrowed down my focus on the keypad.

I found the keypad was designed to select a different code depending on the time of day, changing every hour or so. That meant there were at least twenty-four different codes to figure out. Coupled with that, there were also fingerprint scanners built into each key. So even on the off chance Pink had managed to get the correct code, we would have been locked out.

“Let’s see if this works.”

I dropped a point into upgrading its security.

“What’re you doing?” Pink narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “You’re upgrading it! Isn’t that just going to make it harder to open?”

I chuckled lightly. “You might think so but if my suspicions are correct…”

After about a minute the upgrade finished and the keypad reformed to look a little bit more advanced. I placed my finger against the biometric lock. I grinned when the display flashed green. I then proceeded to punch in an eight-digit code. The display flashed green again. All set, now I just needed to repeat the process.

After the second code, the magnetic locks clicked open.

“Huh!?” Pink exclaimed. “I don’t get it! What did you do?”

“When you replace hardware, the software needs to change as well. By upgrading the security, I essentially wiped the whole thing and then when it was installing the new system I configured it with my own codes and fingerprints,” I explained. “Piece of cake.”

What occupied the box wasn’t exactly what I was expecting. I had been anticipating a weapon of some kind, maybe a mechatech sniper rifle or something. However, what I stared at was anything but that. If anything, it looked like the power source I had sold just the other night.

It was a small black cube, no bigger than the size of my palm.

Pink reached down and picked it up.

“What’s this supposed to be?”

I tried to get a better look at it but it was just a featureless black cube.

“Can I see it?”

“Sure.”

The moment Pink handed it to me, there was a sensation like fireworks going off in my head.

[Distorted Space-time Dimensional Occupatiol Unit (DSDOU) Prototype Alpha.Build 0.8234…]

I gasped and stumbled back as my entire world spun. I had never seen the possibilities extend so far before. The upgrade tree just seemed endless. There was so much to consider I could barely process any of it.

Dark matter energy generator.

Time dilation.

Spatial adjustment.

There were a few Supers in the world who were known to mess with stuff as dangerous as space and time – all of them were considered too dangerous to cross regardless of which side of the law they were on. However, there was only one who could create technology with these capabilities.

“This is Deadlock’s tech,” I said breathlessly.

I stared at the seemingly inconspicuous cube in my hand like I had just discovered the holy grail. Pink stared down with saucepan eyes as well. This cube could sell for millions– no, billions.

How did the Cains get a hold of something like this? Better yet, why wasn’t this thing somewhere more secure? Why just a regular ECU weapons crate? Was it being smuggled somewhere? What was going on?

“No way, really?” Pink was gone and Alice was back to her regular blue. “What’s something like this doing here?”

“The better question is how the Cains were able to steal something like this,” I murmured. “The ECU has to keep this kind of Mechatech behind their best security. Getting something like this should be borderline impossible,” I then looked around at the room we were in. “And you’d think the Cains would put someone more capable here to guard something as valuable as this.”

Alice stilled as our eyes met. In the blink of an eye, her eyes changed.

I found myself staring at glowing molten gold.

“They didn’t know.”

She turned and walked out of the room.

I followed her out, only to find the man we had strapped down to the chair was missing. There was no chair or ropes either. It was like he had never even been tied up in the first place. Instead, lying face up on the chair was a note.

“What the hell?” I hissed, picking up the note. It was a single sentence and it was enough to get my blood boiling.

“It’s been fun but I got things to do, ciao – M.”

“How the hell did he escape? I didn’t hear anything,” I turned to Alice for an answer only to find her glaring at the chair, her lips thinning into a grim scowl. “Alice?”

“He didn’t escape. We never caught him in the first place,” Gold sneered. “We’ve been played.”