The unbearable weight of waiting ... - Part 5

The area of Market Town had seen better days. A long time ago, for certain, but now the place held some of the most impoverished and declining areas of the city. A place where slum lords still ruled and the people took to crime for the privilege of simply having enough money to eat. Caitlyn had never come here before. Not once. The place terrified her, but here she was, sat on a roof, looking down at a building that looked marginally better off than its neighbours.

Here, Kyle sat, looking through a small monocular scope he had retrieved from the cuff of his gauntlet. How the thing held so many different objects, Caitlyn couldn't guess. Some miniaturisation technology? Careful packing. She had checked her own, similar gauntlets and had found nothing.

"I thought you were going to teach me detectiving." She wasn't certain that was a word, but it did the job. "So far we've punched people and swung around like idiots."

"What do you see?" He handed the scope to her without looking, before leaning on the brick parapet, resting his chin on his hands. "Everything is relevant, you only have to see the little things that most people would miss."

Caitlyn looked through the scope and then turned it around to look through the correct end. Starting from the bottom, the steps leading up to the door of the brownstone, the door itself, travelling from window to window. Most of those windows were in darkness. Others, the lights switched off as she watched, or on. There were plants in tubs hanging from the sills, curtains tucked back, or half-closed. It looked as normal as an apartment building should.

As she looked at the roof, she saw a skylight for the topmost apartment, gravel upon the roof's surface. Smoke stacks that were largely unused these days. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary and she began to feel a little frustrated. Kyle had obviously brought her here for a reason, but she couldn't see it. She began to feel a little stupid and she knew for certain she wasn't.

"I don't know what I'm looking for. It just ... wait." She looked back at one of the windows and then, straight away, looked to another. "It's a pattern. The lights in the apartments are switching off and on in a pattern. And, there, on the roof, there's like a series of disturbed patches, but not from feet. More like, uh, grooves?"

"Good work. It's fake. The whole thing. No-one lives there." He turned away from looking across to the other building and sat back against the parapet, taking out his phone. "I tracked where the video came from, it passed through nearly twenty different, public servers around the world, but I managed to find the tiniest, blink-and-you'll-miss-it connection and it led here. More work revealed that this place had, up until recently, been almost derelict. Now there's enough electricity pumping in there to power several server farms."

Caitlyn looked again. There was no way that much electricity was used to light the place. Those curtains she could see looked new. The plants were almost uniform in their sizes, freshly planted. The skylight, if Caitlyn looked carefully, had some kind of pneumatic pistons on the inside. To open it? That's what she could only assume. It all left her wondering why, however.

All of this to create a fake video of her saying truly nasty things about her best friend. The villain, Fiend, had said they were going to destroy Caitlyn's life, but this seemed a little petty. Childish, even. She almost wished the villain would simply attack her and have done with it, rather than ruin the lives of those around her. It also brought up what the point of planting the term papers was. Again, a little low-key for the revenge Fiend had sworn. But revenge for what, Caitlyn couldn't imagine.

"So, we stake the place out? Sit watching for the bad guy to come back?" She handed Kyle his scope back and felt her stomach rumble. "I wish I'd brought sandwiches and coffee."

"Nah. No point. I've had a bunch of Drone's drones watching the place since I found it. If I know villains, and I do, this is only one lair. It's done what it needed to do and will probably get dismantled soon." He almost bounced to his feet and jumped up to the parapet. "That's why we're not going to be subtle. Follow my lead and, uh, watch out for broken glass. We'll have seconds before things go bad."

"Things go bad? Go bad? I need more information than ..." Caitlyn talked to thin air. Kyle had already fired his grapple and now swung across the intervening space without a care in the world. "'Well, you see, Blood Obsidian, what will happen is ...'. A few seconds. A little explanation. That's all I ask. But, no. Me am man. Me am jump straight in like idiot."

As Kyle curled himself into a ball, releasing the grapple at the height of his swing, Caitlyn fired her own grapple. The hero, Pho-Boy, dropped through the skylight, shattering it down into the apartment around him and Caitlyn winced, waiting for the inevitable alarm. Too late, though, as the grapple had started to pull her across the gap between the buildings. This time, like a boss, she landed on her feet. Albeit a skidding, sliding, stumbling landing, but on her feet. Which was progress. At the broken skylight, she looked down.

-+-

Elsewhere in the city ...

The room was in complete darkness. Thick, velvet curtains blacked out any possible light from entering. No sound entered, either. A deep, dark, black sanctuary away from plans of revenge and murder. The silence, however, became broken by a steady, low beeping sound coming from a phone, laid face down on the bedside cabinet.

A hand reached out from under luxurious covers, lifting the phone, and expert, swift fingers flickered across the screen, calling up an app that no-one else in the world had on their phone. A proprietary product, the creator no longer able to earn anything from one of the most secure video security systems ever devised. Of course, the creator was no longer able to do anything at all at the bottom of the bay.

The screen showed activity in one of the lairs. One of many that they had created over the past few days. More sanctuaries, but very different ones. A pinch zoom revealed one of the people engaged in breaking into the lair. A hero, but not the one they cared about. The brat of Fear. A problem, but not one that couldn't be overcome. The other figure proved more interesting. They could recognise that girl from anywhere. Blood Obsidian. Caitlyn Carter.

The phone shattered in their hand at the sight of the hated enemy. A hand that had turned rough, grey and clawed. No matter. There were other ways to deal with these invaders. Efficient ways.

-+-

Kyle, none the worse for falling through the skylight, busied himself around the room where he had landed and Caitlyn dropped down to the floor before looking around in awe. A bank of servers lined one wall. She could feel the heat from them even from this distance. This was not some digital chop shop, dealing with second-hand gear. It all looked state-of-the-art and expensive.

Somehow, Kyle had found actual paper evidence, as though anyone did anything analogue these days, but Caitlyn's eyes were drawn to another wall, opposite the servers. There, she saw a couple of those hovering, flying platforms that Fiend used. Once adapted from Vezzpa's technology, Fiend had upgraded them. Now they appeared to have thrusters, drone-like rotors within the body of the platform, and they looked far more aggressive.

Along another wall, she saw purple bodysuits, like leotards, but made from material similar to the suit she now wore. And weapons. More of those grenades that had almost killed her and Alaina, but other things, too. Blades of various shapes and sizes. Not knives, or swords, but something else. And miniature rockets. She took another look at the flying platform and found apertures ready for those rockets.

"Thirty seconds until download is complete." Kyle had found one of those bags, like a satchel, that Fiend had worn, and stuffed everything he could fit inside, including one of those grenades. "Remember, everything is significant."

"I don't know what to ... wait." She'd seen something similar, not long ago. "I know what this is."

She picked up the tube, dropped upon a table, and looked inside, only to find it empty. Something deep inside her stirred, however. The suit, reacting to whatever the tube had once held. Like Kyle, she found a spare satchel and stuffed the tube inside before something caught her eye. Something had blinked. Something red. She leaned over, looking behind a piece of equipment to get a better view. It blinked again.

"Ten seconds. Get ready to fly." Kyle moved under the broken skylight, rolling his hand to urge her along. "Don't waste time."

"It's just something flashing." She ran to Kyle's side and raised her arm as he raised his. "It might be ..."

Everything began to blink. Little red lights appearing on equipment, on the flying platforms, the rockets. The grenades began to blink on the switches at the top. The servers began to whine and Kyle grabbed hold of Caitlyn, his grapple firing upward even as the blinking came faster, almost becoming steady lights. The explosion soon followed.

-+-

Meanwhile ...

The screen on the computer turned into static. They had expected to lose some assets, though not as soon as this. The interference of Fear's boy sidekick was not expected, though wouldn't cause too many problems. They had strength and power, now. The kind of strength they had never had before and the kind of power that dwarfed every other kind they had experienced.

It was a power that required maintaining, however. In the light of the computer screen, they looked at the tube that sat on the table. The black, liquid-like substance bubbled and roiled inside, waiting for release. To become one with the villain named 'Fiend'. There were many of these tubes, secreted throughout the city, along with their other lairs, but they would need to find a permanent solution soon.

Though they had many of these tubes, and the synthesised Element within, it was a finite resource. They needed this power and they would take it. One way or another.