Last time, Titan and I had barged into Machine Head’s penthouse “with our feet,” so to speak.
I’d simply thrown Titan’s body through the reinforced glass after he’d taken his stone form.
And of course, I could do that again.
But this time, I wasn’t looking for a confrontation with Machine Head’s organization.
So I chose a less aggressive approach.
The building, naturally owned entirely by the crime boss, had security at the entrance.
It was very possible that something supernatural was built into the building’s security.
Several criminals with abilities worked for him.
But I had no other choice.
I was still a fifteen-year-old kid.
My simple disguise wouldn’t help.
The moment I opened my mouth, everyone would know they were dealing with a child.
No one would let me have an audience with the boss without his explicit orders.
And he couldn’t have given those orders.
His talents were based on analyzing input data.
Extremely advanced, bordering on mystical, but still, he’s not Spider-Man.
He couldn’t know about my visit.
I was outside his field of vision.
He had no input data to analyze.
So I needed to break in and simultaneously demonstrate my power.
Let the crime boss immediately understand he wasn’t dealing with some overconfident teenager, but an overconfident teenager with dangerous abilities.
Easier said than done.
*
*
*
I waited until a group of respectable-looking gentlemen, perfectly respectable Wall Street wolves as far as that description applies, passed through the main doors.
Then, clutching my battered Walmart bag to my chest, I dashed in after them at tremendous speed.
Again, I was in a slowed-down world.
The hall was almost empty.
The security was calm, but they’d notice something was wrong soon.
The receptionists smiled and made eyes at some movie-star-handsome guy.
It wasn’t so much his looks as his style.
Cameras watched the entrance where I was no longer present.
The elevator doors were closed, to my annoyance.
But there were stairs.
I flew up the steps of an unfamiliar building.
In my past life, I’d broken straight into the upper floors and been carried out on a stretcher after the fight.
The floors blurred past like mirages.
I just had time to count.
Finally, the right floor.
I burst into the hallway, still accelerating.
Security guards, carefree, thinking no one else was there, leaned against the walls outside the boss’s office doors.
And no one would open those doors for me.
So I’d have to do it myself.
“What the?” Machine Head jumped up from his couch in shock and panic, though you couldn’t tell by his face, when I appeared in the middle of his room.
Once again, I marveled at his nature.
The guy literally had a mechanical head.
Under an impeccably clean white jacket, cybernetics connected to flesh.
His arms were completely human.
I don’t even know if you could call him a cyborg.
He doesn’t have a human brain.
He’s more like a machine with a human body, an advanced robot that thinks it’s a human.
A Terminator.
But his ambitions and desires are perfectly human.
He’s driven by machine logic instead of emotions, so you can deal with him.
Just keep in mind that “soulless bastard” isn’t an insult, but a statement of fact.
From the other side of the room, his second-in-command and chief insurance policy in case of assassination, Isotope, teleported to his boss.
An unremarkable guy about forty, with an elongated face made more so by a tuft of black hair sticking up, a predatory face framed by stylish handlebar mustaches, wearing a green jacket over a black t-shirt with a capital “I” on the chest.
Even now, when an unknown person had broken into the boss’s office with unknown intentions, his sly little smile never left his face.
Isotope’s first jump landed him behind the boss, hand on his shoulder, ready for a second jump.
He could teleport his boss away instantly at the master’s signal.
He saw that I’d not only stopped, not interfering with his escape, but raised my hands in a peaceful gesture, showing my peaceful intentions.
Besides, it wasn’t a good look for a crime boss to run from an opponent who hadn’t even attacked him, while his own henchmen filled the room.
Not just the security who’d missed the intrusion, but a couple of familiar supervillains who’d apparently been on duty with the others outside the boss’s room.
One of them was Titan, already in his stone form.
The second was that guy with the tentacles coming out of his chest device.
What was his name?
Seismic Tyrant or something.
Despite the strange name and equally strange ability, that thing was alive and existed in symbiosis with him.
Those tentacles coming out of his chest were damn strong.
Not Ave Maria strong, but still.
“Negotiations?” I asked calmly, under the sights of a dozen guns.
“A kid!” one of the thugs behind me couldn’t hide his surprise.
But another guard shushed him immediately.
“Who are you?” Machine Head had already calmed down.
He straightened his crooked tie and walked to his desk.
Isotope followed, ready to save his boss at any moment.
“And how did you get in?”
“That doesn’t matter.
What matters is what I have.” I shook my gold-filled Walmart bag.
“A Walmart bag?” The criminal smirked.
“Its contents,” I smirked back.
“Hmm.” Machine Head turned on the console built into his desk.
He stared at the screen for a few seconds.
“You’re very fast.
The cameras barely caught you.”
“You thought, ‘He could easily kill me if he wanted to.’ Didn’t you?”
“Can’t anymore,” Isotope suddenly chimed in, peeking out from behind the boss’s shoulder.
“I already said I’m not here to shed blood,” I shrugged.
“I’m offering a deal.
And I’ve heard you value pragmatism and logic above all.
Trust me, making a deal is the best and only mutually beneficial option for us.”
“Don’t tell me what to do, kid!” Machine Head’s mechanical head suddenly flared with emotion.
“I’ll figure out what’s logical and beneficial for myself.
You’re too arrogant.
Age and experience will fix that.
My men are here to provide you that experience if you survive it.”
“Oh…” I demonstratively massaged my nose bridge with my free hand, showing that all their weapons aimed at me meant nothing.
He was supposed to be guided by cold machine logic, not emotions.
What was wrong with this guy?
He was too emotional for someone with microchips instead of a brain.
“I wouldn’t have come here with this if I wasn’t sure I was in no danger,” I tried again.
“You understand, right?”
“Counting on your speed?” He seemed to be trying to get me to confirm that my power was speed.
Had his comment about the cameras been a bluff?
“No one in this room is a threat to me,” I said calmly.
“Those two can’t hurt me or stop me, let alone the others.
Guns aren’t serious.
Your assistant will probably get you out in time.
But this conflict will only bring you losses and destroy your office.
Feel free to test me if you don’t take my word for it.”
I turned to one of the thugs.
“You, with the .45.
Shoot.
Just don’t break my glasses, please.”
The thug hesitated.
He glanced at the boss.
I was almost sure he’d give the order, and then I’d just have to leave at maximum speed.
Starting a massacre and attracting the attention of heroes wasn’t in my plans.
But then…
“What do you have there?” Machine Head suddenly waved his hand at the guards, shooing them away like flies.
He’d apparently calmed down.
“Nothing special.” I calmly stepped toward his desk and placed my bag on top of some documents.
“Just a bunch of gold I want to sell.” Get faster updates on g.com.
The bag, which had been through more adventures today than some people in a lifetime, finally gave up.
It tore, spilling its contents across Machine Head’s desk.
Gold coins, almost certainly of great collector’s and cultural value.
Several ingots and pieces of jewelry of varying degrees of intactness.
And a couple of mollusks in deep shock from the ordeal.
All of it covered in a film of silt and, in places, a film of microscopic green algae.
“Holy shit!” Seismic Tyrant whistled at the sight of the gold.
“Did you pull this from the seabed?” Machine Head took a gold ingot from the pile with disgusted admiration.
He wiped it with his index finger, leaving green slime on his fingertip.
“A genuine sunken treasure,” I smirked.
“Possibly even pirate treasure.”
Someone behind me swallowed a greedy lump of saliva.
“Hmm.
Everyone except Tyrant and Titan, get out,” the crime boss ordered.
“Isotope, what do you think?”
While the lackeys left the office, Isotope took the gold ingot from the boss.
He looked at it carefully, then closed his eyes as if listening to something.
Ten seconds passed.
Then the criminal’s hands began to glow green.
“This ingot was cast three hundred to three hundred fifty years ago,” Isotope declared.
Now it was my turn to almost whistle.
It’s gold, damn it.
It’s not easy to date.
I don’t remember the details, but a precise method for dating gold appeared only a few years ago.
If Isotope could really determine the age of the metal using his powers, he should have gone into science, not crime.
“Is that so?” Machine Head was no longer hiding his enthusiasm.
He pulled the largest piece of jewelry from the pile, an almost intact necklace with gemstones, rubies I think.
“I think we can make a deal.”
The negotiations took on a different tone after that.
Isotope still hovered by his boss’s shoulder, ready to pull him out at any moment.
Titan and Tyrant remained on alert, ready to engage me in combat.
But my status had changed.
From an unexpected and dangerous guest, I’d become a goose laying golden eggs.
This guy immediately started imagining how much he could get if I started working for him.
You know, the classic: together we could rule the world, something like that.
Though he started small, asking me to help with another job.
I gathered it involved a large shipment of drugs he’d recently lost at sea, which I could easily raise under the noses of the Coast Guard.
I refused, of course.
Further cooperation with the criminal underworld wasn’t in my plans.
I didn’t want to work with them at all.
I just needed to sell the treasure I’d raised.
I would have gotten more by going through official channels, but I couldn’t afford that for obvious reasons.
So I flatly rejected all of Machine Head’s offers of future cooperation.
“I know people like you,” he declared, his optics flashing.
“The money will run out, and you’ll come back to me.
Sooner or later.
This won’t be our last meeting.
Be sure of it.”
Oh, I knew that without you.
But next time we meet, I’ll destroy this whole place and put you in prison.
“We’ll see,” I said.
No need to voice my thoughts.
Moral satisfaction wasn’t worth making an enemy ahead of time.
I left the crime boss’s lair without the gold but with a briefcase stuffed with cash.
We’d settled on a hundred thousand.
Yes, I knew I’d undersold myself, but I didn’t care.
That money would last me a long time.
It was more than Dad’s yearly income from his books.
I went to another city, bought a school backpack, transferred the cash into it, and threw Machine Head’s briefcase, no doubt equipped with tracking devices, into the ocean.
Then, with a clear conscience, I went home.