Script created with Final Draft by Final Draft, Inc.
[
bottom
]
Nametag : rook
HEARTBREAKER
"Students of history are witnesses of patterns. In day to day
life people desire, want, perhaps even need, patterns. But
when looking at lives beyond our own they want individuality
above all else. Alexander the Great; no one wants to think
about the vast army at his back, but when that army said,
'screw you' and refused to march any further, he instantly
became Alexander the Has Been. Who then drank himself to
death in less than a year." The withered figure in the chair
flicked its bone like fingers at a fern frond.
"The 300 Spartans; no one likes to hear about the five
thousand other Greek hoplites that got to the pass first and
did the principle fighting on those first two days. And when
they left; they fail to mention the two thousand Helot's who
fought along side the 300 and died with them on the third
day. We are cynics in our present day lives and romantics in
our past."
"And the future? Well, no President has ever had a Sectary of
the Future. Nudging the present along the more promising and
positive of future possibilities takes a lot of money and
effort and the rich have never seen any profit in that."
The old figure in the chair turned in the glass domed
botanical garden and jabbed a long nailed finger at the
shadowy silhouette standing under a drowsy clump of Spanish
moss. It's that shield that gives you your security
clearance. Not you. It's the romantic lies of the past of
that shield that let you onto my island. That let you in to
see me here. That large round cake pan let's you talk to me
here and now. It is fitting that you take your name from it;
Ms. Shield." The skull like face grinned at the shadow which
detached its self and stepped out on to the cement pathway.
"Just Shield, thanks." The figure that stepped out of the
shadows was a young woman. Very thin, long limbed, with a
slim short build and rather small breasts. Wearing a one
piece swim suit and knee high boots and carrying a large
circular shield that covered almost her entire body. Only her
eye mask with its cutouts for her large eyes and freckled
nose poked out above it. The large shield she bore looked
like it must have weighed almost as much as she did.
The skull dropped its grin and frowned blinking, "er, what
are you? An 'A'-cup? I thought you super heroine types were
all- you know-" he cupped his hand in front of his sunken
chest and moved it up and down. "Busty!"
Shield felt her face heat up and her lips pulled back in a
teeth gritting nervous sweating forced grin.
"I mean, what are you about 4' 9''?" The old man held out his
hand about even with his seated shoulders. "You look like
you're fifteen."
"I'm nineteen, all right?! Now the World High Alert
Monitoring Operations a division of World Watch told me to
come see you for a briefing and had told me before dropping
me off on your island that you had been contacted about
this."
"W.H.A.M.O." He sighed, "yes of course. I was just expecting
some milk jugs or at least someone a little taller. I was
never much into that little girl Japanese anime porn." He
pointed his hand and moved it about and the chair rose up off
the ground and scooted across the botanical gardens to where
a large fountain was suddenly sprouting a large holographic
projection screen. Images were already starting to dance upon
its surface.
"I take it you are interested in the Heartbreaker project?"
The chair stopped before the screen and the man looked over
his shoulder at Shield who had taken a seat upon a nearby
park bench. Her pointed toe booted feet did not quiet touch
the ground. The man stared at her dangling booted feet and
sighed again before turning back to the screen. "Even Flag
Girl packs more in her little D-cups. And everyone feels
sorry for her."
"Could we stop talking about my breasts or lack there of
please and get back to my mission."
"Of course! Of course. It's just that I get so few visitors
and when they told me I was about to be visited by a Delta
City super heroine today. Well! I broke the seal on my viagra
and downed a fist full of them in anticipation."
"I am sorry if I have somehow disappointed your perverted
creepy old geezer fantasies," Shield hissed through her
clenched teeth.
"It's all right. I suppose it can't be helped. There's always
Azure Angel getting tentacle fucked on the internet. Now
THERE is girl who's packing! Double JJ cups and only
eighteen!"
"About the Heartbreaker project, you worked on it right?! Or
where you just that one guy in every room that went around
dropping his pencil and looking up the working technicians
skirts?"
"Hmmm. What?! Oh yes, the Heartbreaker. Was just sort of
thinking of Azure Angel there for a second. Heh-heh, yes, now
there's a girl with a pair! Right?! Ha! Now now, don't get
upset at least you got a little ass on you. Round and firm.
I have seen worse. Trust me. Advanced weaponry R & D does not
attract the lookers. Ha! Though there was this one; Ms.
Graham. Now there was a whole lotta shaking going on, let me
tell you!"
"Maybe I should come back after the viagra wears off."
"Wha? Oh, yes. The Heartbreaker. Simple enough. There has
always been a strong desire amongst the Joint Chiefs for a
weapon that would eliminate people but leave their stuff
intact. With the world populations soaring and resources
dwindling the idea of a bomb that could eradicate the people
from a city and leave the city untouched was always high on
the Pentagon wish list."
"Sounds awful. I mean we're not talking a weapon to destroy
an army here, right? But something to kill citizens?"
"All weapons are awful. And I honestly do not know of anyone
building any weapons since the 1930's that were designed for
the battle field. I mean they often get tested there but...
But yes, these sort of weapons don't romanticize well no
matter how much history goes by. Maybe because they are a
threat to history its self? The neutron bomb had been around.
It vaporized people and left most of the buildings in tact.
But it tended to weaken the subatomic structure so you in
fact ended up with a city of condemned rapidly degrading
buildings. Not really what was desired."
"The Heartbreaker was designed to send out a pulse that
caused people to die from heart attacks. Simple as that. Drop
it from a plane or from a helicopter or put in the back of a
truck and drive it down town or into the suburbs and hit a
button. The ultimate drone warfare. No more people and after
some messy clean up you move your people in to inherent all
their stuff. Simple."
"Simply horrible! How could you work on something like
that?!"
"I own an island. My older smarter brother died as a
penniless door greater at Wal-Mart in Iowa. They sent him
outside in thirty bellow wind chills to round up shopping
carts. He came back in and said he was freezing and the store
manager sent him back out there or else loose his job. Fifty
six and it wasn't even his job to begin with and that twenty
seven year old asshole manger sent him back out there in the
middle of a blizzard while he stood inside and sipped his
employee's coffee. He died out there. They never even fired
the store manager."
The old man snapped his fingers until he found the images he
was looking for; "I built a bomb that was never supposed to
be used. But it had a shelf life.
Twenty-five million dollars of tax payer money and it had the
shelf life of a strawberry yoghurt cup. So the brass decided
they wanted to 'test' it before it went bad."
"Sounds like it was already 'bad' to me."
"Look kid you want to fight injustice? Why not start a little
closer to home and round up all those CEO's and local level
store managers that fuck people over on a daily basis because
they simply CAN! You want to jump to the other end of the
evil spectrum and tackle the big time bad guys and ignore all
of that day to day little stuff, fine. But on any given day
there are thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people
out there tackling the big bad wolves because the big bad
wolves threaten the rich and poor alike. But kid, no one, and
I mean no one, is dealing with those assholes making up the
other ninety-nine percent of the evil spectrum. And you know
why? Because they are only hurting the poor schmucks. Now the
poor schmucks just happen to make up over eighty-seven
percent of the entire humane race; but hey that's why they
give guys like me fucking islands to build bombs like this."
"Seriously kid, every country in the world spends most of its
covert assassination budget to hit targets in their own
country. They kill their own citizens. And over two thirds of
those are targets that have done nothing wrong; they just
happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and saw
or heard something that impacts on national security. And
national security is mostly about covering stuff up. In fact,
from now on whenever you hear the term, 'national security' I
want you to think, 'killing children.' When some politician
says, 'in the interest of national security' you think' 'in
the interest of killing children' and you won't be far
wrong."
"Oh don't get me wrong there are an amazing amount of bad
assholes in the world on any given day. I'm just saying that
they tend to spread out rather evenly across the playing
field and in the stands rather than clump together all on one
team. Now don't give me that look. That shield you are
carrying is your security clearance badge. That shield you
have there has been very useful in interests of 'national
security' over the years and since you are the only one who
can now wield it and tap its powers you get to tag along
whereever it goes. Now if you don't want to do that. I
suggest you let go of that oversized frisbee and walk away."
"Still here? Your choice... for now. Now, where was I? Oh,
yes on my wonderful privet island in Delta City Bay. And what
a view! And such ritzy neighbors! You know if I could climb
on top of my little glass dome here and if I could stand and
if I had any desire in my life to learn the wretched game of
golf;
I could shank golf balls off my roof and hit Government
Island! Of course they would launch a Cruise Missile back at
me, but oh well, what fun! What neighbors!"
"So. Back to the so called briefing; the Heartbreaker was
never intend to be dropped on a foreign power. Why would you
care if a foreign power had its cities reduced to rubble. Do
you know how much money a country makes off of reducing
another country to rubble and then letting its own rich and
wealthy get more rich and wealthy re-building it and charging
those foreign citizens for that service? No, the Heartbreaker
was designed to be dropped by the United States upon the
United States. To wipe out a city of unpatriotic citizens who
were becoming 'loudly unproductive.' There is no profit in
blowing up your own cities. Using up your own finite raw
materials to re-build them. How does one make money off a
countries Gross National Product when it's your own country
paying for it all? See doesn't work. No money in it. Too self
Parasitical."
"So I helped build this damnable thing. Not for détente. Not
for world peace. But so rich bastards in the United States
could feel more safe and secure in being rich bastards in
that if anyone got too pitch fork and torch-y amongst its
'poor its downtrodden its unwashed masses' it could hit a
button and get rid of them. Thin out the labor pool and lower
the wages. Capitalism at its finest. With me so far kid?"
"Quit calling me kid. I told you I am nineteen."
"And I am fourty-seven. Yeah, I know. Withered old man. Part
of the price paid for working ten years on the Heartbreaker.
Trust me others paid more."
"You said they tested it?"
"Oh yeah. Set it off in some remote one horse town in the
desert. I watched it states away in a bunker on little itty
bitty television screens. Population four hundred and sixty
and press a button and a little invisible pulse some brief
static and population zero. Worked amazingly well. Team went
in to recover some test subject cadavers. Burned the rest.
Set up some charges to make it look like some kind of
accidental train derailment destroyed the entire town. Which
meant some more innocent people killed for the train bit.
National security at work."
"Pentagon was very happy. But then it all went south. All
went wrong. You see the Heartbreaker kills everyone in that
first blast induces massive pulmonary seizures. People, dogs
and cats, their gold fish, live stock, basically anything
with a heart just drops down dead. But after one hundred
minutes everyone just gets back up again. Only they are still
dead.
And they are sort of, well very aggressive, let us say
homicidal aggressive. Zombies with a massive a-hole alpha
male attitude aggressive."
"Zombies..."
"Yep. Luckily it was contained. All those guys on the ground
had flame throwers already in hand for dealing with the
corpses. Lost a few of those boys, but who gives a fuck about
them. Wearing a uniform does not make you a hero; it's what
you do while you are wearing it, and what there were doing
was piling up bodies of women and children in the middle of
the street who had all died because they hit a button on a
highly immoral bomb. So fuck 'em."
"Zombies..."
"Well, unlike the arch-type movie zombie these guys don't
spread their 'zombie-ism' through bites or anything. You hit
a button and four hundred and sixty fall down dead and no
matter what when you come back latter there is only going to
be four hundred and sixty. They don't self propagate in
anyway. But they also don't shuffle around moaning either.
They in fact, are faster and stronger then they were before
they died and they don't need to eat or sleep or rest. Their
cell tissue does not break down either. They 'heal' as it
were very quickly. They can't talk and few of them seem to
care to understand. All they want to do is run about
attacking anything 'alive' and ripping it into pieces."
"Super zombies..."
"Okay, yeah I will give you that, super powered zombies. They
do seem to posses most of the Aphrodite level one active gene
powers. But these zombies have a shelf life. When they get
'dead' they last about one hundred hours and then they burst
into flame, crumble into ash. That bit made the Pentagon
happy again. The Heartbreaker was sort of a failure for a
home use weapon but now it suddenly had offensive
capabilities against an enemy."
"You drop the bomb on some one else's city and the citizens
drop down dead and then a hundred minutes latter get up and
start attacking anyone not dead and do so with super strength
and agility and resilience and healing and then after roughly
one hundred hours they self combust and turn into piles of
ash. The perfect weapon. A little too perfect. In the
interests of national security the Pentagon decided to kill
the Heartbreaker team members and seal up the files and
prototype designs. I was working on some other military hush
hush projects at the time that I was also working on the
Heartbreaker so some how I got a pass on the culling."
"So what you are telling me is that the Heartbreaker turns
everyone in its effect radius into super zombies for roughly
four to five days and then they turn into burnt toast?"
Shield slipped off the bench and stood beside the withered
man in the hovering chair.
"Super zombies that use those heightened powers to attack and
kill all life around them for four to five days, yes. That
shield is almost as big as you are. Is it true that you are
the only one who can pick it up and use it? Sort of like
Arthur's Excalibure. It was a sword before they named a piece
of shit car after it. And you were a normal little girl
before you picked up that garbage can lid."
"If you only made one Heartbreaker and then used it in a test
and then they deep-sixed the project why would World Watch
send me here for this top secret briefing?"
"That I couldn't tell you. I am all but retired anymore. My
tissue degeneration is exponential in nature. Come back in
another month and you may find me floating in a fish bowl on
the grand piano I can no longer play. But if I were to hazard
a guess someone must have thought the Heartbreaker project
too 'dear' to leave moldering on the ash heap of hidden
history."
"Thank you for your time, Professor. I will do all I can to
undo this monster you have unleashed upon the world."
"By definition a 'professor' holds a teaching position. I
would be a 'doctor'. And did you know that during an average
work week sixteen million Americans call their local police
to report their boss committing some crime against them;
whether payroll fraud or harassment or unsafe work
environments etc. And do you know what every single one of
those people are told by the police before they hang-up on
them? 'GET A LAWYER.' It's a world full of monsters out
there, kid. All you have to do is open your eyes and look.
But if you do you are going to find most of those monsters
are running the show and its people like you being put into
the cages by people like me."
*************************************************************
Back in the high tech helicopter that buzzed Shield back to
the skyscraper horizon of Delta City the short scrawny teen
girl checked back in with the local interacting branch of the
international World Watch; World High Alert Monitoring
Operations. W.H.A.M.O. was responsible for coordinating
information with field agents on international missions in
face of the agents of local governments lack of clarity of
international law and personal agenda involving threat issues
that the United Nations independent World Watch flagged as
being genocidal in nature for the entire human race.
The right of self sovereignty of nations went out the window
when those self same nations created situations that could
eradicate the entire humane race. While World Watch had no
army of its own it was chartered to engage agents within a
nation independent of said nation to act upon its behalf. Not
surprisingly this had increasingly been super heroines
getting the shoulder tap.
"This is Shield." The spunky young half-pint spoke into the
headset as she sat somewhat dwarfed in the sole seat of the
zipping helicopter's cockpit. "I have just completed my
briefing with information source. Can you fill me in on
mission profile now?"
"Shield you will be inserted into locale of last know
sighting of Mister Fear. It is believed Mister Fear is now
the last remaining team member of Heartbreaker project." Even
as the mechanical computer voice spoke a large explosion
erupted behind the helicopter and a huge fireball mushroomed
into the sky out of a crater that used to be the privet house
of the withered man she had just spoken to minutes before.
"He remains the most likely suspect for stealing the
Heartbreaker data now that the doctor has been investigated
and sanctioned."
Shield blinked back at the smoldering ruins of the small
privet bay island and turned off her headset, "here there be
monsters indeed!"
*************************************************************
The LKS or last known sighting of this Mister Fear was
unfortunately in one of the lesser prosperous sections of
Delta City. She shield rolled to a standing position and
after some darting glances all around her watched the high
tech helicopter sail away in a blur.
Shield had always worked with government agencies. She seldom
went on solo patrols without being called in first on a set
mission. There were the Flag Girl secret file outings but it
was hard to call those 'missions'. More like slumber parties
with weapons fire.
Every since she had first touched the shield and it had
instantly bonded with her and opened up her powers Shield had
been working for peace with the various governments of the
world. While that did mean sometimes being put in bed with
some real creepies it also meant perks like her own personal
Shield helicopter. The helicopter was permanently linked to
the United Nations World Watch division. It was a drone that
could pick her up or drop her anywhere.
It ran on a secret power source that did not need refueling
and when she was not in it being zipped from one point to
another it zoomed up into the stratosphere and hovered above
her waiting for her call. The Ms. Americana mobile and the
Specter mobile where cool and the Flag Girl moped was cute,
but nothing beat having your own super-sonic ultra stealth on
call 24/7 surveillance helicopter. That it came with an
energy beam laser and could shower an area with smoke
grenades was a nice plus too.
Of course it was not really hers. It was hers to use as she
willed because she was 'Shield' but every six months it would
vanish for a week while it was getting its annual maintenance
overhaul and she had no say in that. It was also home of the
super computer AI unit that acted as her liaison between her
secret identity and World Watch.
It was that super computer which had launched the missile
that had destroyed the withered man's house and him with it.
She had not made such an order; it was World Watch that had
issued it and without telling her in the slightest. It was
more honest to think of the AI program that ran the
helicopter as a separate agent all on its own. One that
responded to World Watch orders instantly and without
question. It catered to her every need as it were only
because some faceless person who was monitoring it told it to
do so back at the World Watch headquarters. Whereever that
was.
Shield raised her shield before her and leapt off the
building top she had been dropped off on. The shield was a
round circle of curved metal that reached from her chin to
below her knees. It was large and weighed over four hundred
pounds. This was because of its incredible impenetrable
molecular density. It felt as light as a plastic umbrella in
her hands. As long as she was touching the shield she had
super enhanced senses and healing and agility and strength
and resistance to most physical damage. When she threw the
shield which always returned to her; she instantly began to
slowly but steadily lose her enhanced powers. If she put the
shield away her powers would slowly ebb and be gone within an
hour and she was once again only a nineteen year old girl
with a quick mind, a beautiful face, a skinny body, a little
bubble butt, and as everyone who met her in costume seemed to
insist on pointing out; no tits.
Every super heroine in Delta City had massive mammaries. Huge
water melons glued to their otherwise skinny bodies. It was
sort of an international sign; want to know who a super
heroine might be in her secret civilian identity well check
her tits! Was she a double DD or larger? Then that was
probably your girl(s)!
Being a super heroine with an A cup was like being a blind
race car driver; no one believed it and they were only
interested in watching what to them would be the inevitable
crash.
That she showed up lugging around a shield almost as big as
her small frame and then threw it around knocking people down
with it sort of added to everyone's reserved thanks when she
saved their lives or the day.
It didn't help that she was a bit short and had a really cute
face with big eyes. Not really the 'amazon' expectations
people tended to have for a super heroine. "I have just been
saved by a hobbit!" One guy had joked after she rescued him.
The shield was more than just some high tech garbage can lid.
It had a sort of alien conciseness to it. And it could access
the hovering copter and relay messages to it. But while World
Watch could control the copter it could never control the
shield. Only she could do that.
Shield could talk to the shield and hear it respond in her
mind. Since it could link to the copter it could pull
information from its super computer which was linked to World
Watch giving her unlimited global Intel and information. She
may have worked solo most of the time but she was never truly
alone.
Sprinting rolling jumps from building top to building top had
her quickly careening down to street level. A congested
street of small dingy houses and short squat apartment
complexes under a flat cloudless midday sky. A street filled
with trash and burnt out cars. It looked like a war zone and
just four blocks away was one of the richer gated communities
of Delta City. It made little sense. Why some people were
just abandoned to live in helpless squalor and others were
mindlessly pampered like kings.
The street dead ended at a large tunnel complex boarded over
and chain link fenced sealed off. One of many pork-belly
building projects generated just to shuffle money around at a
government level; skimming some off with each shuffle.
It looked like it may have been intended to be a highway
underground expressway. Except the massive tunnel had dead
ended here in a little suburban ghetto.
There was no one in sight. Trash blew around from huge piles
of it so large they covered the street like snow drifts or
swallowed up the mouths of alleyways. There was the sound of
television sets issuing out from drape-less curtain-less open
windows. Windows thick with dust and cracks.
Someone unknown had reported a person bearing Mister Fear's
description at the mouth of this tunnel. The tip was several
hours old now and yet there was no sign of any police
presence or federal agent presence in the area. Considering
her shield was relaying into her mind from the copter super
computer AI that this Mister Fear was a known fugitive from
the maxim security facility on Pinewood Island and considered
highly dangerous; this utter lack of any one following up
this tip was a bit confusing to the young teen super heroine.
Shield used her shield to break through the chained gate.
Pausing only to note that the gate had been freshly re-sealed
from the inside of the tunnel with rusty chain and heavy
brand new paddle locks.
There were lights sunk into the concrete wall but only every
other pod of them were powered on so it was a walk along what
felt like an underground parking garage of concrete walls,
ceiling, floor, emerging into lighted brief pools of sight
before plunging back into inky blind darkness.
It was hard to hear when one walked past the large 'whump
whump-whumping' fans set in wire mesh grills in the walls.
Some seemed to be sucking air out; others forcing it in to
the tunnel.
This combined effect of temporary deafness and blindness made
it difficult to judge distance and for someone who threw a
shield to attack her opponents this was not a comforting
environment to be exploring.
There were old and fresh homeless camp sites all over the
place. The ubiquitous oil barrels were not to be found. The
oil companies had gone to plastic barrels decades ago and
steel drums were no longer being produced. Apparently only
holocaust movies prop departments had an unlimited supply of
them. The rest of the world seemed to be using cinder blocks
rags and bed slats now a days to make a street camp fire.
Despite the camps and even occasional shopping carts and oily
mattress and trash bags of belongings and broken beer and
liquor bottles there were no signs of human life.
The place was utterly empty. Which was very upsetting because
it was obviously a highly prized location for homeless
shelter. The tunnel was four lanes for traffic with a raised
divided columned center separating the lanes. And it seemed
to run for miles under the city. It was not completed in
parts. Naked earth could be seen here and there on the other
side she was not walking on and there were several small
office or supply rooms with steel doors in the raised divided
platform in the center that were not finished.
The homeless had managed to pry open several of these steel
door small rooms set in the concrete support center and had
busted into all of the chain link fence paddocks that also
suddenly appeared at this or that open space in the center
divide.
Everything had been stripped clean and looted. Picked over a
hundred times. Even abandoned homeless carts and trash bags
had been ripped open and researched apparently again and
again. In fact there appeared to be an almost constant
migration of scavengers through the area.
Every now and then an open area was heavily tagged with
graffiti spray paint. But the walls had been surprisingly
spared and left gray and damp and threatening with the
brooding menace of gulags and half buried pillboxes.
And yet on she walked stopping now and again to listen and
peer into the dark corners of this wide flat gray world and
there was simply nothing. Not a single soul moved about.
Which utterly belayed the obvious signs of heavy and almost
constant habitation and use.
It seemed a world of one constant slow turn. Straight long
sections seemed rare instead a series of switch backs
sidewinder ever onward.
She could feel the thrum of passenger subway trains at times.
There were occasional sudden openings in the side wall where
a concrete stair case lead up to a sealed metal hatchway
door. These were not only locked but had been torch melted
shut.
There was an utter lack of mutiod and breeder presence which
was odd for any stretch of underground passage in Delta City
and Shield wondered about this until she found the large
earthen pit.
There was still a crane sitting in the pit and a couple of
bulldozers. It just opened suddenly in the arc of one of the
slow wide turns of the tunnel. A big earthen pit. Ripped up
re-rod and shattered pavement several feet deep sat upon the
maw edge of the pit. Showing that it had been dug AFTER the
underground tunnel highway had been already completed.
In the pit were dozen of rotting mutiod bodies and four dead
breeder bodies. It takes a lot to kill a breeder. The large
dog legged clawed humanoid aliens tended to set up little
bases underground and slip stealthily out at night for their
victims, but they were extremely tough and could be lethal in
a fight.
To see four of them dead in a pit was like seeing the seventh
fleet belly up in your backyard swimming pool.
It was hard to take in and make it register on the front
burner of your consciousness.
There was no going around the pit. It spanned the entire four
lanes of the underground highway and the pit had been dug
very deep and with very sheer sides. The extruded mass of
dirt and rock had then been used to make a very solid wall of
rubble filling in the other side of the pit sealing off any
further advance.
"Dead end," Shield sighed and retraced her steps but this
time following the opposite wall on the far side of the one
she had followed when she had entered. This side seemed a bit
less 'completed' in parts and a lot less 'lived in'. She had
not gone far when she came across the first stair case and
side door of this side of the road and she went dutifully up
it to check it out.
Unlike the other side doors she had seen and investigated
prior to this one; the embedded wall lights had been
blackened out with paint or simply broken. This had made her
almost miss the staircase and the door niche as the wall
lights in this area happened to fall into their rhythmic
darkness here as well.
She could just make it out in the darkness and was surprised
when her gloved finger tips failed to find the familiar weld
along the door seams. This door had NOT been wielded shut!
It was still locked but no locked door, not even a steel
hatch door that looked like it belonged on board a submarine,
could keep out Shield!
Just as the young teen was about to launch into some
experimental shield bashing. There was a loud thunk followed
by a sharp click and the center wheel in the door began to
spin. Someone was opening the door from the other side?!
Shield leaped instinctively backward bringing up her shield
and crouching. The door wheezed open popping an obvious
airtight seal and the crack of light that shot out promised
to flood the short stair well and spot light her standing at
its base. She quickly dodged to the side and pressed herself
up flat against the concrete wall as the golden light of the
opening door increased into a solid beam splitting the
darkness beside her.
The now fully opened door etched a pair of humanoid shadows
in its round spotlight upon the ground at the base of the
stairs. The shadows descended the stairs muttering. She
watched the shadows intently straining to hear; could be
mutiods... could be breeders. Two mutiods she could handle.
Two breeders? Well things would be interesting.
The first figure sauntered out of the wall opening his boots
crunching on the grit of the concrete. He instantly turned in
the direction opposite of her clinging to the wall and
proceed to in the direction of the chain link fenced and
boarded tunnel exit. He was a man. A very hairy and smelly
man. Dressed in rags. He was almost instantly followed by
another man. A bit less hairy and less stinky who wore better
clothes and had a small machine gun slung off his shoulder
which he rested his elbow and forearm upon.
The second man turned away from her as well and followed the
first man a few strides and then stopped and began to shout
after him, "try not to screw this up! The man himself wants
all the exits unbarred! Check back in with your cell when you
got it done!"
The hairy raggedy man just kept walking slowly on ignoring
the shouting man with the gun until he raised up his right
hand and flipped off the shouting gun man over his shoulder
without looking back.
The gun man shook his head and snorted, "why the hell he
would use you is beyond me." The gun man turned to return
back up the lighted steps and got a face full of shield.
Shield dragged the unconscious gun man further along the wall
in the inky shadows and then slipped out a pair of plastic
hand cuff zip ties and placed them on his wrist. She threw
his gun further along in the shadows all while keeping a
watchful eye on the distant shaggy raggedy man who was now
whistling as he continued on.
She had nine police plastic zip tie handcuffs left in her
boot tops plus two ball gags. She decided to not ball gag the
gun man. It would be better to keep those in case she needed
them for latter.
Shield slipped like a well oiled shadow back to the well of
bright golden light hesitating only briefly before shooting
up the short flight of stairs bursting in a soundless roll
through the open hatchway.
The hatch opened upon a small round room; a short squat
cylinder of metal with three more identical hatchway doors
set in their surface.
She quickly closed the open hatch she had just entered and
locked it shut. The three remaining hatches were all closed
as well. In the center of the small room was a crescent of
sandbags that rose about chest high to an average sized man,
of course an average sized man could look down on the top of
her head at his shoulder height, the belly of the crescent of
this sandbag wall faced the door she had just closed. The
exit out.
It would be important to remember that as none of the hatches
were marked and they all looked identical. Inside the semi
circle of sandbags sat a lone cardboard table with a full ash
tray several empty beer bottles lying upon it. Two folding
metal chairs sat around the wobbly table with a large
military metal ammo box. A small dirty plastic cooler sat
upon the metal grill floor; still half open. It contained
more water than ice and a few still sealed floating beer
bottles. A military walkie sat upon the half opened cooler
top.
"He took his package of cigarettes with him on his short walk
to usher the other man outside but he left his primary means
of communication behind. I am entering a house of thieves,"
Shield thought to herself as she began to systematically open
the three hatches and progressing down them a short distance
before doubling back and trying another.
She decided the second hatchway was the most promising and
returned to it closing them all behind her as she proceeded
down the metal walkway/hallway. This short hallway ended at
another hatchway that opened upon a large sunken storage
room. The hatchway opened upon a metal walkway that ran along
the upper edge of the large room with three more closed
hatchways ringing it. Down below well over a dozen obviously
homeless men sat amongst large mental containers at crudely
made camps. The other upper hatchways lead to three more
identical rooms also filled with a dozen or so homeless
squatters. These rooms also had extra hatchways and at least
the two more of these she checked also lead to similar rooms
and occupants. It was an enormous shanty town underground.
"None of the upper walkways connect to the lower rooms," she
whispered to her shield as she finished her report back to
the helicopter hovering through hundreds of feet of concrete,
rock, dirt, and sky above her unseen. The report was a one
way conversation. Only the shield and its semi-alien
intelligence could penetrate the mass above her; the
helicopter could only listen to it even with its cutting edge
surveillance powers.
Shield returned quickly and quietly back to the small round
room picking another hatchway. The second hatchway had proved
most interesting but her mission was to locate and
interrogate Mister Fear not to investigate an illegal
homeless shanty town found in an abandoned underground
highway project.
Mister Fear was obviously not hanging around a bunch of
homeless people. He must have carved out his own little niche
in the strange series of rooms that had been built for
unknown reasons alongside the abandoned sub-highway project.
The first hatchway had lead to nothing but a series of
storage rooms. Whatever they had been meant to store they now
stored food stuffs pilfered and looted from discount stores.
The third hatchway had initially seemed the least promising
as it opened and ended abruptly at a water pumping station
and power generators as well as a sewage treatment station.
Just large tunnels of machinery responsible for pumping air
and light and shit through the rest of the underground rooms.
An endless clunky maze of necessity and the tools and parts
to keep it functioning.
It wasn't until Shield realized that this warren of cramped
humming machinery was utterly devoid of homeless in either
body or cast off refuse that she realized she must be onto
something.
The homeless are like rats. Rats are scavengers by survival.
They plant nothing. They invest in nothing. And they go
everywhere. But none had ventured here. Why? The hatchway was
not locked. True there had been a man with a gun and he might
have kept them out. But that man looked more like them than
not. He obviously did not 'live' in that little round room.
It was his work station not his home.
There was no way down from the upper walkways to the rooms
where the homeless were gathered. Yet there must be. If she
explored further that way there must be a place where the
upper walkways and the lower rooms merged. She was just about
to abandoned her twisting and turning search of the
mechanical guts of the underground city when she happened
upon the staircase leading up to a gangway and a series of
metal rooms.
Shield knew instantly this was the most promising place to
look for this Mister Fear, this escaped dangerous man, this
man who was the last surviving member of the Heartbreaker
team, because four armed guards and two drone machine gun
turrets instantly opened fire upon her.
*************************************************************
She had not seen them until the last possible second which
she somewhat humiliatingly realized had been the point. They
had been positioned just out of sight in such a way that they
saw her a second before she could see them.
Bullets flew ricocheting off her impregnable shield and dug
and tore into the metal around her as behind her she heard
the click and whirl of heavy machine gun turrets popping down
out of the ceiling tracking incessantly to find a target.
She could hear the click and whirl of the dropping ceiling
turrets echoing down the hallway behind the way she had come
meaning they now formed an unbroken line in every room at
every turn she had ventured from the small round room to
here. Even over the thunder of the guards who kept up a
steady fire on the position she had just vacated she could
hear them dropping down and locking into place. She was
trapped.
The utter lack of security cameras had lulled her into a
false sense of safety. She had not even bothered to look for
a security system. Though she doubted she would have thought
to look for pop-up turrets wall and ceiling turrets.
The two heavy turrets upon the gang way had ceased firing the
moment they had lost sight of her; but the four guards kept
up a steady fire shredding the now spitting sparks hunk of
machinery she had initially dropped behind and then rolled
away from.
They were out of her line of sight. She waited. They paused
to re-load and she ran and leapt high into the air and threw
her shield.
The shield took out two of the men who were standing up in
the open re-loading. The heavy turrets opened fire on her and
then the shield as she rolled across the gap and landed on
the far side of the staircase leading up to the elevated
offices.
One of the guards who had crouched behind the railing to re
load leapt over the railing and down onto the staircase and
came running down to her position as the turrets ceased fire
having lost their target.
He rolled and raised up with weapon searching for her even as
her shield smacked him in the back of the head as it returned
to her and left him unconscious.
The last remaining guard tossed a hand grenade at her
position. She huddled behind her shield as it went off
turning the unconscious man into hamburger.
Shield repeated her run and air roll and threw her shield the
man who had thrown the grenade was just recovering from his
throw and took the shield right in the face. He went down in
with a cracked skull and missing most of his front teeth.
The turrets opened fire again first at her and then tracking
the shield until it entered their saftey no-fire zone. They
did not fire on the shield after it left striking the guard
and returned to her.
This gave Shield an idea. She threw the shield in a slow lazy
arc and then sprinted and cartwheel and cannon balled her way
up the stair case as the turrets locked on and pounded her
shield.
Once she reached the upper terrace where the turrets were
mounted they stopped trying to track or target her. She
summoned her shield back to her as the turrets again fired on
it until its blur passed their combat zone.
Shield quickly removed the electronic signal patches that
obviously rendered them as non-targets to the automated
turrets and pushed each of the four guards over the railing.
They fell down to the floor below. This placed them within
the safety no-fire zone of the automated turrets but to
regain the upper level they would have to come up the stairs
and the turrets would shred them into swiss cheese.
For all intensive purposes the four guards would now be
trapped under the walkway until someone turned off the
turrets. Likewise she had no threat of anyone coming down
those automated turret riddled hallways after her from the
small round room until they were turned off as well. No
wonder the homeless did not venture down this section of the
underground hallways and rooms!
Her only threat now was the way ahead. Shield carefully
opened the first door of the elevated offices and eyed the
room full of food stuffs and office furniture. Futons
littered the floor as well as bags of trash.
The guards she had tossed over the railing had obviously been
homeless people just like the first guard she had encountered
outside in the underground highway. They must have once been
veterans in the army. But for all that they lacked the edge
and skills of an active soldier. They had acted as
individuals not as a team and had showed no sense of command
structure. Had they worked together and maximized their
turrets defense by falling back to the doorways of the metal
walled rooms she might not have been able to over come them
so easily.
Shield patted the three electronic patches she had slipped in
her boot top, "let's hope these will let me pass any other
automated turrets without engaging them. Of course there is a
one hundred percent chance that they also can and are being
tracked."
The other metal walled office room was identical to the
first. The third had desks on either side of the room with a
central hallway leading directly to a sealed hatchway door.
The hatchway was locked but she found her electronic patches
caused the door to open just as she approached it.
Beyond the doorway was a narrow hallway with pop-down turrets
locked on to her. Again the patches seemed to override their
firing. They tracked her but did not open fire.
She moved forward watching the turrets follow her but not
firing as she reached a point where she would have to pass
the first turret; doing so would place a turret in front of
her and now behind her. Both would be tracking her. It was
one thing to walk toward a machine gun turret with her shield
between her and death but she could not use her shield to
guard her front and back at the same time should the turrets
not firing be a ruse of some kind of if some one suddenly
threw a switch somewhere and turned them on.
What to do?! She knew from experience she could sheer off the
turrets with a well thrown shield attack. She could thus
systematically work her way down the hallway cutting the
turrets down one by one. Shield looked down at the three
patches tucked into the lip of her boot top. If she did that;
if she destroyed the turrets any chance that someone was
reading the patches as three living guards moving as a group
down the corridors would be gone. There was just a slim
chance that some guy at something like a radar terminal was
watching blips on an overlay screen of the layout of the area
and not looking at her on a television screen. She still had
not seen any closed circuit security cameras. Of course the
turrets had optics on them.
If there was someone looking at a computer screen reading the
patches as locations then the methodical destruction of the
turrets would make him realize that those three approaching
blips were not friendly.
Shield took a deep breath and got down on her hands and knees
and crawled under her shield which she slung over her back.
The shield covered up almost all of her but her boot tips as
she crawled and the turrets seemed to lock on to the center
of its mass. She made her way to the turn in the corridor and
then down the 'L' shaped turn to the next hatchway. It was
locked as well but again unlocked as she neared it. So far
the patches were working.
She crawled through the hatchway into a small room and
straight into the knee caps of a lone man who was looking
down at her.
*************************************************************
"I'm sorry we don't want any girl scout cookies today," The
man was pointing a small machine gun at her head.
"That's all right. If I had any on me I would have ate them
all. I can't resist those things.
Especially the macaroons." Shield stood up slowly with hands
raised as the man eyed her over. The top of her head came up
to his arm pit and he frowned.
"Sending little girls now. Tisk tisk. That appears to by your
only weapon," he pointed on the large round shield on her
back and snapped his fingers and made 'give me' wiggles with
his fingers as he kept the shoulder strap machine gun leveled
at her face.
His arched comment that she 'obviously' wasn't carrying any
other weapons had to do with Shield's attire. They nineteen
year old woman wore a very tight, very sheer, one piece swim
suit. She may have only had small budding firm perky A-cups
but her nipples were always hard just like all active
Aphrodite gene super heroines and her pokies were rather
prominent. The suit came toed considerably and her flat
stomach and sunken in lower stomach between her hip bones
emphasized her raised round mound of Venus. The back of the
suit was a g-string cut which left her white full round ass
cheeks fully exposed.
For all her little girl looks Shield amped up what she had to
distract males just as much as her bikini clad fellow super
heroines did. She just did it a tad more sublimely.
The man kept wiggling his demanding fingers, while keeping
his ice blue eyes unblinking on her, as he leaned his head
slightly to the side and talked into a shoulder mic, "we got
her cancel the alert."
Shield shrugged and slowly removed her shield from her back
and handed it to the man. He grabbed it with one hand and she
let go of the shield.
The shield weighs four hundred pounds.
Perhaps it is not easy to grasp what it would be like for a
small girl who looks all of fifteen to hand you an item which
you grab hold of with one hand and which seems to weigh
almost nothing and then she lets go of it and it suddenly
weighs four hundred pounds.
This man was clean shaven sporting a crew cut and was wearing
a uniform. Not street clothes or the ghosts of rags of once
street clothes as all the others had been but a well pressed
and laundered black uniform. He smelled of Ivory soap.
He was obviously a well trained man in combat and strategy.
For any untrained person would have instantly let go of the
weapon as it ripped downward and let the enemy reclaim it for
potential attack.
This man tried to cling to it. This man was yanked down to
his knee and had his hand crushed into a useless pulp. This
man lost two fingers which were popped off as if by tin snips
by the lip of the shield. This man got his face kicked in by
what he perceived as a fifteen year old girl scout who
proceeded to kick his bad military honed ass and render him
unconscious in under three seconds. He didn't even get to
squeeze the trigger of his highly polished and proudly
maintained weapon.
Shield reclaimed her namesake and dumped the sub-machine gun
into a near by trash can. She used a plastic hand cuff tie on
both his wrists and ankles and a ball gag on his mouth. This
one was potentially dangerous.
The small room was an observation port. The wall directly
across from the open hatchway, which she closed after seeing
the hallway turrets ascend back into the ceiling and vanish;
was set with two oblong horizontal glass windows. The walls
were covered in machinery. There were no signs of any monitor
screens. Two door hatches on either side led out to suspended
walkways that curved around the sides of a very large
circular opening. The walkways lead to an identical
observation blister on the far wall.
The view outside the portal windows was of a well lit
vertical shaft full of humming machinery. It looked like a
missile silo; except it had been filled up with a tinker toy
mass of mechanical equipment that seemed very busy doing
nothing.
Shield locked the hatchway of the hallway she had entered
from manually there by over riding the electronic patch
unlocking and did the same on one of the doorways that exited
onto the suspend gang ways. She then slipped out the
remaining door and sprinted around the large circle of wire
suspend planking until she had reached the observation port
set opposite of the one where she had subdued the initial
guard.
Even as she approached she could see three men identically
uniformed and armed as the one she had just waylaid moving
about beyond the glass oblong horizontal windows. Her
eyesight was very keen and she noticed they had not seen what
had happened in the little pod room where she had knocked out
and secured the uniformed guard and had not seen her leave it
and race around the gang way toward them.
From entering the observation point and subduing the initial
guard and then racing all the way around to within a dozen
yards of the other observation pod less than three minutes
had passed and most of that had been taken up with said
unconscious guard's blathering about cookies.
Still despite her blurring speed she could see the men in the
second pod were growing anxious as they were failing to raise
their comrade on their shoulder mic radios. She cursed her
luck when the hatchway door on her approaching side opened
and a grim faced guard stepped out on to the gangway.
He was using two hands to open the hatch so his sub-machine
gun was hanging limp at his side from its shoulder strap. He
noticed the shaking gang way when he stepped on it and
puzzled looked up frowning right into her face as his face
burst into alarm. She was still curving around the circular
walkway at about twenty yards from him as the crow flies.
To his credit he did the right thing. He acted like a trained
team player. He did NOT try and raise his weapon at her and
open fire; a selfish act that betrayed his fellow soldiers.
No, instead he turned from her and tried to shut the hatchway
door. Trying to close it leaving him locked outside with her.
Had he accomplished this feat he would have left her with a
locked door on an exposed gang way and his fellow soldiers
could have easily slipped out the other hatchway on the other
side of operation observation blister to snipe at her as she
would be forced to flee back to the other observation wall
pod. Even with the hodgepodge of machinery filling up the
space of the cylinder there were more than enough open spaces
for opening fire upon her.
Yes, it was the educated move on his part and she left him
cursing his luck when she downed him with her thrown shield
before he could accomplish it.
As soon as the shield touched her gloved hand she launched it
back out and through the half open hatchway door. She could
hear its unseen blur as it clanged off of the circular inside
of the room like a pinball machine ball before whisking back
out of the hatchway and back into her gloved hand.
By the time she finished her unimpeded sprint she found the
other two guards unconscious inside the small round room.
Apparently they had not time to do anything but blink.
She zip tied these three at the ankle and wrist and pushed
them out onto the gantry before manually locking both gantry
hatchways from inside the circular room.
She then took a deep breath and opened the last remaining
hatchway set in the cylinder's wall and with shield raised
proceeded through it.
*************************************************************
It opened immediately in to a short hallway with a kitchen on
the left and living quarters and storage quarters on the
right.
The kitchen had three men in it in uniforms sitting at a
table eating. Their weapons were on the empty tables around
them. She took them out with a sprinting flying kick and two
shield bashes. In an eye blink they were down and out cold
and in that same eye blink an unobserved lone uniformed man
in the corner sipping coffee and reading a clean newspaper
dropped these and un-holstered a side arm and opened fire.
Wether by chance or subconscious skill her shield came up out
of her last combat move and deflected the first two rounds
saving her life and letting her respond with a shoulder three
sixty shield throw that broke both the man's arms and slammed
into his chest so hard it would be weeks in the hospital
before he would breath without pain.
The stamping of feet herald the approach of more men. She had
just enough time to catch her returning shield by her finger
tips and drop down into a crouch with it raised as three more
black uniformed men open fired upon her from almost point
blank range. One went almost instantly down his leg riddled
by bullets bursting off her shield. This caused the other two
to realize their danger of rebounding bullets and they rushed
forward and to either side of her seeking cover behind over
turned tables before opening fire again. A mistake. Her flung
shield took out both men while she rolled forward and
finished off the downed man who was trying to bring his
weapon to bear.
She reached behind her as she ran and caught her returning
shield behind her back as she leapt up into the air and spun
around in another three sixty full circle and flung it at a
guard who was peppering the area under her crouched air born
form where she had just been running toward him.
The shield hit him with such force in the front of his ankles
that it yanked him off his feet and smashed his chin into the
metal grill floor shattering his jaw and breaking his teeth.
As she came down out of her knee tuck leap a man burst out of
the living quarters armed with a shock baton and swung at
her. This caused her to lose mental contact with her shield
so instead of reversing course and returning to her it sunk
deep into the metal wall of the 'T' shaped intersection the
short hallway terminated into and which lead to two stair
cases leading down.
Shield barely dodged the first blow and caught a whiff of
ozone and burnt hair as she rolled under the second. She came
up on one knee and instantly turned her upper body to make an
'X' with her forearms catching the descending wrist of the
shock baton attacking man. She instantly reversed her hands
and grabbed the man's weapon wrist taking one hell of a punch
to the side of her head from his free hand in exchange. A
mistake on his part. He was all agression and no tactics.
He should have kicked her with his back foot. Forced her back
on her knees and thus broke free his weapon hand to strike
again. But all he saw was a pretty young girl who he could
knock out with just one punch. That's the problem with these
'lifting weights all day types' they are just too stupid to
live. She took the punch without flinching and popped the
baton out of his hand; breaking his wrist in the process.
He was in his undershirt and boxer shorts. Apparently
sleeping when all of this started. She took advantage of this
and buried the tip of the baton through the gap of his
boxer's fly and hit the button. The smell of burnt dog hair
filled the room as she drained the entire battery into his
unconscious form. She gingerly stepped over the puddle of
urine seeping out from under him and wondered vaguely if
there would be any surgeon skilled enough to salvage the
burnt charred remains of his tiny penis. Not that any girl
would be moaning such a miniscule loss.
Her shield was buried deep in the wall at its branching off
into two descending stair cases on either side. It took a
great deal of concentration for her to summon her shield back
to her once it was no longer air born and moving. And to
mentally yank it back out of a wall where it had sunk so deep
was out of the question.
She raced forward and into an ambush.
So far every guard she had seen had just one tactic; bullrush
the opposition and unleash on it anything and everything you
got. But these weren't black shirted guards. These were
combat soldiers in full combat armor and instead of rushing
up the stair case on either side they had crouched down and
waited upon the stairs for her to show herself.
This was intelligent tactics that required extensive
training. By stopping at the stair case on either side both
split groups could fire with impunity upwards at their target
with little fear of friendly fire. This would not have been
the case had they stayed at the bottom of the stairs or
ascending up to the top of them and fired around the corner
down the short hallway at her. If they had done either of
these things only two men could have opened fire. Their
bodies preventing the others in the group from engaging. By
stopping on the stair case and waiting silently they could
now unleash all weapons on her from both sides. Which is
exactly what they did.
She should have been riddled in an instant a died a twitching
pile of minced meat. But she didn't. She was saved by a
combination of elements not the least of which was her
enhanced senses and abilities. At the second she started to
step past the termination of the wall and enter the 'T'
section corridor with its two staircases on ether side.
She saw the black combat armored men crouched down in clever
echelon angled back to lessen their profile against her line
of sight. If they had been wearing a dusty gray or blue gray
camouflage or muted soft gray green or even tan she would not
have noticed them so instantly as that dark black against the
dull metal and concrete. Nothing stands out so stark and in
such relief from surfaces than black. Only in heavy shadows
at night does it offer any kind of stealth tactic which is
why real world historical ninja's almost never wore it.
But no they were in black and stood out like a black panther
in a concrete zoo exhibit cell. To this there was another
sensory aspect; sound. A group of twelve men split into two
groups of six told to crouch down upon sharp metal painful
stairs and freeze without moving for several high adrenal
seconds is like telling a bunch of elementary kids hopped up
on candy bar sugar and high energy soda to sit still in a
room full of snakes. It is not going to happen.
But it was not the rustling of clothes and scrapes of re
enforced plastic knee and elbow pads and heavy hushed open
mouth breathing that gave them all away to her; it was the
Monday morning armchair lead from the rear officer who took
that moment to bark for a report over an open radio set that
once again sabotaged the day.
Warned at the last possible second they now missed her
blurred form because they shot at and behind her. This was
again the right thing to do. After all when you step into a
trap you yank BACK out of it into known safety. But Shield
shot forward and kicked her shield with her booted toe as she
raced up the wall and flipped into the air.
Her finger tips grazed her shield as she flipped in the air
and it shot to her left at the men in the staircase and she
instantly followed after it.
The men in the stair case which she had not attacked
immediately leapt up and raced to the landing where she had
been but they could not open fire for she had landed behind
them and they had naturally stood up to turn and fire upon
her and thus were blocking the men standing on the landing
from firing upon her.
One man was down from the shield's initial attack and now
back in her hand she staggered the others back with a
feinting blow and disappeared down the right angle remaining
four risers and into the hallway below.
The men who had collapsed backward had to remain on top of
one another as one of the men standing on the landing had
opened fire as soon as they had fallen backwards and he had a
target. This kept everyone bottle necked up for several
precious seconds.
During this time Shield simply ran down the hallway a few
strides and swung back up the staircase she had not attacked
and slammed into the backs of the un-expecting men. They went
down in the close quarter fighting like sheaves of wheat
before the thresher. Unable to use their assault riffles due
to the congestion and too cramped to draw their boot knives
the entire fight of the remaining eleven men took less than
ten seconds and the young teen flushed with the exertion
sprinted away leaving the barking officer still demanding his
report over the radio.
*************************************************************
The hallway the dual staircase debauched into was a simple
rectangle. It went around a large central room which had two
doors that entered into it. Both on the interior side of the
hallway; one at the front and the other at the back. Along
the outer sides of the four right angled hallway were
hatchways that lead into various rooms filled with machinery
and one that was obviously a medical bay.
This left only the central room with its two entrances. The
barking of the officer over the soldier's radio on the
staircase reaffirmed Shield's perplexed belief that for
whatever reason the facility was blind of any security
cameras which made no sense and was relying on line of sight
of guards and radio reports for surveillance. Considering the
high tech turret guns this was very bizarre but it bode well
for the young teen as she chose the back door entrance to the
main room and slowly spun the wheel of the hatchway door.
The fact that no one had bothered to manually lock the
hatchway from within and that her tucked away electronic
patches were still overriding the automatic electronic locks
convinced her that there must be a massive amount of fire
power pointed at either door at point blank range or else the
man leading these homeless people was not Mister Fear but
rather some coke head who needed help getting his trousers on
in the morning.
She was hoping for the latter.
What the super teen agent got was the door swinging open
slowly with no riddling gunfire as she slammed herself to the
side of it and the sudden click and whoosh and whirl of
dozens of pop-up turrets dropping out of the ceiling and
instantly tracking her again thanks to her boot top full of
patches they did not open fire.
She chewed her lower lip and wondered how long it would take
someone to figure out how to work the override on the turret
safety protocols. She was in an impossible situation.
There was no way she could use her shield to deflect the
hallway turrets locked on to her from all sides if they
should happen to fire. There was nothing for it; she would
have to see what the main room had to offer.
She eased up to the open hatchway and used the mirrored inner
surface of her shield like a mirror to peak around the edge
of the door.
There were no guards nor any of the combat suited up
soldiers. There was a couple of pop-up turrets deployed. One
raised in the floor directly in front of the doorway and two
more from the underside of the elevated extended walkway that
ringed the large room half way up it. Across the large
expanse a duplicate pop-up floor turret was glued on the
closed hatchway door and two pop-up turrets hung down from
the walkway.
Shield took a deep breath and placed her shield in front of
her body and then very slowly followed her shield on all
fours into the room. The three turrets in front of her locked
on to her but did not fire. She closed the door and the
turrets instantly dropped their tracking of her and went back
into a wait mode. She breathed out a deep breath of air she
had not even realized she had been holding and slipped past
the turrets eyeing the room both below and above.
The room below was filled with soda machines and wall mounted
water fountains and couches and a pool table and an air
hockey table and a ping-pong table and several book shelves
and magazine racks. The place was spotlessly clean and showed
no sign of homeless activity.
The upper area which she could only see directly opposite of
where she crouched and hid behind a potted fern. Was
obviously sunk back and extended well beyond both the ringing
hallway and the rooms of its outer edges. While the central
downstairs room was well lit and looked like a suburban rec
room the upstairs rooms seemed to be open faced niches dark
and full of buzzing blinking equipment.
She found the lone way up. A hatchway door that opened in a
concrete well that housed a single metal spiral staircase
leading up. All over the concrete wall of the well dozens of
pop-up turrets had deployed and they instantly locked on and
tracked her as she slowly ascended up to the second floor.
The second floor was as she had previously noted filled with
an open wall both out into the lower well lit lower room and
an open wall leading into a seamless ring of operational
control rooms. It would have taken over forty men to man each
station but there were only three men present.
One man sat at a work station and was having his life made
utterly miserable by another man standing and leaning over
the back of his chair and barking incessantly into his ear.
The third man was muttering next to the standing man flipping
through plastic binders and sighing.
"Where are my soldiers! What the hell is going on?! Are you
sure the deterrents deployed?!" The black uniformed man with
the buzz cut salt and pepper hair topped with the ridiculous
bill-less cap kept shouting at the first and only person in
the entire facility that Shield had seen working.
The guard in the chair kept flipping switches and holding an
ear set to one ear while doing what every man does when faced
with an itch that can not be scratched... ignoring it. The
itch in this case being the yelling officer.
"I am sure the turrets have deployed," the man with the
plastic binders sighed.
"Then why am I not hearing the delicious patter of some nosy
hobo getting his guts ventilated! This is bullshit! Why don't
I have any eyes in the sky down here?!"
"As Mister Fear explained the preparation and deployment of
the Logos project is highly destructive to all non-insulated
electronics such as security cameras."
"Bullshit! Bullshit! Bullshit! That's all I am hearing today!
If my men don't respond in the next ten minutes; you're ass
is going out there to see why!" The officer jabbed a finger
at the man with the plastic binders who again merely sighed.
Shield noticed that like the man in the chair he was wearing
a guard outfit and not one of the combat outfits of the
soldiers or the officer. There were obviously two different
groups here. A guard force made apparently out of homeless
vagrants and a much more professional solider force which was
better equipped and trained.
"Mister Fear is checking back in." The man seated at the work
station spoke evenly. "He wants the hobo army deployed as per
project phoenix."
"Give me that!" The officer yelled and yanked the head set
mic out of the seated guards hand. "This is Hand! Listen up
Fear we got some kind of security breach here! No doubt
brought on by YOU insisting on using that riffraff you
dredged up off the streets before you got smart and hired me
and my boys at Red Hand Security! Well, we are not going to
do anything until we get that breach closed! You read me!
What's that? All right now we are talking!" The officer
handed back the head set to the seated guard and made his way
over to the spiral staircase. "Fear just wised up!
We're going to replace all the scum with my boys!" He yanked
an assault riffle and cellphone out of a wall niche. "I am
going top side and get in touch with my downtown office. We
will have two hundred professional combat security agents
down here in half an hour! Best million and a half that Fear
guy has ever spent!"
Shield had already moved around away from the stairwell and
had taken up a hidden position in the shadows of a work
station just two removed from where the three men had been.
Officer Hand jumped down the steps of the fire escape two at
a time only to have the pop-up turrets suddenly open fire on
him and reduce him to a large unplatted dish of meat ball and
spaghetti in less that five seconds.
The guard in the chair placed the head set back to his ear,
"Mister Fear said Mister Hand and his security detail are no
longer needed and he has canceled their electronic passes."
The man with the plastic binders sighed.
*************************************************************
Before Shield could process what had just happened to Mister
Hand the man with the plastic binders picked up a second
headset and spoke into it, "Deploy hobo army to Forthright
Abby."
Shield threw her shield cutting the spiral stretchy cords of
both men's head sets before leaping into the room and
flipping both of them to the floor. She straddled them with
boot heels planted firmly in each of their chests and reached
up and snagged her spinning shield and cocking it and her
fist back ready for a punch growled; "Now which one of you is
going to tell me exactly what is going on here, and which one
of you is going to learn how to whistle without teeth."
What was going on was a bit complex and the two reluctant men
got bloody lips and broken noses before they felt more
inclined to speak freely. There was also a brief interlude of
heavy machine gunfire from the outer hallways for several
seconds. No doubt the Hand mercenary security soldiers had
woken up and wandered off the staircase and found themselves
suddenly unemployed by both Mister Fear and life; in roughly
that order.
Eventually Shield beat it out her two captives; the homeless
in the rooms she had seen and dozens of others she had not
seen were being cattle shuffled through twisting underground
labyrinths to the abandoned condemned downtown Abby of
Forthright.
There in a large mass of thousands and with the condemned
barriers and locks removed thus leaving the Abby unobstructed
from the outside world, a pre-placed Heartbreaker would be
unleashed. Killing the thousands of homeless. Who exactly one
hundred minutes latter would rise up as undead and with
almost super human powers to begin attacking the five o'clock
rush hour downtown traffic. Estimates of fatalities before
the hobo army would be eradicated or fell to ashes upon its
own was in the hundred of thousands. Perhaps tipping into and
over a million.
This was further complicated by the Logos. Which was the
giant cement cylinder filled with machinery. It was set to
trigger at the same time as the Heartbreaker. The Logos would
produce a huge semi-transparent floating construct.
Impervious to all weapons and attacks it would float above
the city like a glowing blue cloud of blocks and spheres.
Mister Fear intended it to be his new base. His new home.
Initially designed for deployment after a nuclear strike the
Logos was a self contained operations and survival center
made of hard light construct. It was only designed to house
up to a couple of dozen people, but could keep them alive for
hundreds of years.
This meant there were two courses of action in two different
directions. Shield could retrace her steps back to the Logos
silo descend via either one of the observation pods which she
had failed to observed also acted as elevators and find a
cornered and rather helpless Mister Fear.
It would be easy to take him into custody and this would
certainly make World Watch happy.
Of course the Heartbreaker would trigger as there would be no
one to stop it and the death toll would be catastrophic. But
that said only Mister Fear knew how to build one so once
triggered and him in custody any future threats would be
void.
Or she could race after the homeless still sloughing their
way to Forthright Abby; fight her way through those
ungrateful heathens and try and defuse the Heartbreaker. This
would save hundreds of thousands of lives but let Mister Fear
escape and not only escape but escape in an impregnable
floating self contained sky tower from which he could reign
down terror at future whim.
There was of course no choice. Shield thanked her two
informers with shield bashes and crotch kicks until they were
not waking up anytime soon and then with leads in the prison
soprano eunuch choir. And raced away after the mob of armed
homeless heading through the sewers to downtown Delta City.
With help from her unseen hovering helicopter AI and her
shield she quickly made a few short cuts shield bashing down
sewer walls and over took them.
A lot of shouting and some quick combat with their appointed
leaders and Shield convinced the horde to remove all their
electronic patches and put them in trash bags. She slung
these over her shoulder, a sewer Santa, and raced on to the
Abbey hoping that Mister Fear was tracking the mass of
electronic patches as his horde and thus still waiting for
their arrival rather than becoming suspicious and triggering
the Heartbreaker too soon.
It was a heady gamble and it paid off. She dumped the patches
into the sewer just short of the Abby and the sluggish
current kept them slowly moving forward as she raced on
ahead.
The Heartbreaker was mostly made out of crystallized lattice
of suspended chemicals and while its disarmament would take a
trolly full of PHD's; smashing it to inoperative pieces took
only a few good swings.
Shield exited the downtown Abby and boarded her helicopter
hoping to make it back in time to stop the Logos launch. But
there is only so much fate will allow and only so far
'gumption' can go in one day on two little legs.
The Logos launched. It did little damage as it erupted out of
the ground; its initial heart being a long lone cylinder of
metal housed in a blue shimmering shell. At one hundred feet
it blossomed into an increasing array of blue buds and
tendrils looking all the world like a Lego interpretation of
an upside down blue sun flower.
World Watch was not happy; but Shield found they never where.
They had wanted Mister Fear or the Heartbreaker intact or
both. Not neither. The saving of so many lives? Well it was a
world of monsters and monsters put little value in any life
not their own.
[
top
]
Script created with Final Draft by Final Draft, Inc.