Authors: Ben Bequer
It was Atmosphero.
“Would you like anything else?” Valeria asked, but my attention was on Atmosphero, who was walking towards the valet. He jumped into the Bugatti Veyron parked in front of the restaurant and lowered his glasses, flashing me a playful wink before roaring off.
Chapter 3
I slinked out of the restaurant, mindful of everyone’s judging eyes, labeled as a penniless bum even appearing as one. Prior to my mention of ‘no money’ and ‘prison’, I might have seemed like an edgy hip hop artist, with the careless diffidence of a style trendsetter, the awful hairdo a new expression of diffidence. Now I was akin to a leper, homeless man, surrounded by the affable and well-to-do, unwelcome in their company.
And in a way, it was true. My house lay in ruin on the hillside of a Malibu Beach; my only vehicle had been a plaything to Atmosphero’s weather powers. Everything I had worked two years for was gone in a few minutes, and the label of villain tacked around my neck forever more. Once I was caught, there was no recourse for me, few avenues left for me to roam, and as I walked the streets of Los Angeles, it seemed that everyone knew who I was, and what I was about. The news worked fast, and my face was undoubtedly the opening on every newscast, footage of the wreck of my mansion burned in the minds of everyone in town who bothered to turn on the TV, or to look at the front page of the newspaper.
Atmosphero had ruined me.
First he had turned a good gesture into a desperate grab for cash, though I can’t be certain that I wouldn’t have kept the money if the hero hadn’t showed up. I’d like to think I would have done the decent thing, but I know my heart, I know where I come from, and that money was more than a few paid bills. That rain of twenties was a fresh start that translated to my first success ever. I had turned that bit of money into a whole career until Atmo came around and dropped a house on me.
I didn’t want to blame him for it, to transfer the responsibility, to imply I wasn’t in control, that forces were working against me I couldn’t master. But I still couldn’t keep from feeling a growing anger towards the pompous super, a need to find Atmosphero and break every bone in his body so his humiliation would match mine.
I guess that’s what made me so angry, so vulnerable that a second rate super could totally change my life in a few impetuous moments.
Maybe I was trying too hard, straddling the line between being a normal guy and a super-powered criminal. Serpentis and Delphi had managed to do that, so why couldn’t I?
Delphi told me once; “The game’s changed, Dale. It’s all black and white now. It’s not even about wrong or right.” It was a weird thing to say to me, as I was getting started, as things were going well for me after all his and Serpentis’ counsel and advice, but that was the one piece of advice that I never learned, I guess, and that might be the reason why he and Serpentis were now retired.
The game was different for sure. A guy like Atmosphero could operate with impunity, free from all consequence, save a laughable civil trial that would pit my word against that of one of the city’s favored heroes. He could beat up a guy like me whenever he wanted, destroy my home, leave me with nothing, and they’d probably give him an award for it, name another street after him. Trying to exist under the radar had no hope against someone like that. Say I did beat him one on one, he’d come back with his super group, Rising Sun, to pound me until my face was ground beef. Then they’d turn me in and maybe collect a reward.
The problem was trying to skirt the line, to be two things at once, to be Dale McKeown, engineer, and Blackjack, villain. One thing made the other possible, as I couldn’t work on my projects without the illicit funds from my villainous activities (I wasn’t about to try going straight again, after that unmitigated disaster), but the other was becoming more and more untenable. I couldn’t expect to be taken seriously with any of my inventions now that I was revealed to be a caped villain.
My name was out there now, my real name was known to every super that ever needed a punching bag, and there was no way to hide from them all. That was something I was going to have to get used to. Atmosphero must have been laughing his ass off right now because he’d won. In the end, he’d won.
And it was ironic, because I had been successful. For the first time in my life I had actually made something work, done something right, even if it was being criminal. Guys had to work for years to get where I got to, to be as good as I was, and in two minutes I had lost everything. I couldn’t believe I had let him take me. Atmo had some trick up his sleeve, I knew that now, but Sandy had been right; a guy like me shouldn’t lose against someone like Atmosphero.
I guess I lacked clarity of purpose, lacked focus, and I always had. I’ve been going through my life from one experience to the next, as if on cruise control, unable to avoid the scrapes that were sure to come. Each experience has made me stronger, sure, but this last one was leaving me in a rut I don’t know if I have the strength to get out of.
I was going to have to face a harsh reality I had been trying to avoid since Atmosphero broke my world. I was going to have to start from scratch, as if everything I had done until now didn’t matter. I had to set a new path for myself.
I needed a new start.
* * *
I ended up at a small park near my lab, in the Skid Row section of downtown Los Angeles. The neighborhood was a dichotomous chemical mixture of the lowest and poorest of the city with a newly growing yuppie sector near the warehouse district, and you might find a half dozen squatters in a cardboard city a block away from one of those fancy four dollar coffee houses.
The abandoned warehouse where my lab lay was only a few blocks away, unreachable as long as I had this much heat on me, and ironically, it was the only place I had left to go. Yet something held me back, made me walk the area as aimless as the local hobos. I found a quiet spot in the new park on San Pedro and sat on a park bench while some kids played on the swings and jungle gym.
There was no clear path for me, no first step to lead to anything fruitful. All around me the world was going on, moving forward, leaving me behind without a care, and there was nothing I could do about it.
Nothing but the obvious.
Near me, a woman played with her two boys, pushing a four or five year old on a swing while minding an older child that was maneuvering sand like a god-like architect. I don’t know why she drew my attention, save perhaps to wonder what she was doing at the park so early in the afternoon. Her clothes were worth a fortune and the cell she constantly spoke on, the latest toy, worth five hundred dollars easily. I also suspected that the black Land Rover parked in the curb behind me was hers, so she had money. So much that she didn’t work. Perhaps she was married to a bond-trader husband, or a rich Hollywood producer. In any case, her life was set, her future was an easy to follow path that lay beneath her feet, leading the way.
I had no such guidance; nothing was that crystal clear for me. There was only one thing keeping me from utter hopelessness, and it lay a few blocks north of here.
I looked in that direction, and noticed a cop car come to a stop across the park and two uniformed officers headed my way. As they crossed the sandy playground area, the woman I had been watching pointed in my direction, guiding the police officers towards the undesirable.
The two officers strode up to me, and I could feel their inner confidence, their utter contempt. One guy, a Hispanic with the name tag “Ramirez” fidgeted with his club and the other, a black officer with the last name “Early” had his hand right on the mace in his left hip holster.
“What’s up?” Ramirez asked, licking his lips as he neared.
“You can’t be here,” Early said, massaging the mace handle.
“I’m sitting here,” I said, knowing I wasn’t a convicted anything and I could be here all I wanted. But having the law on my side and having it respected by a pair of cops with an attitude were two different things.
“Well, you can’t be here buddy. There are kids here.”
“You like kids, bro?” added the cop with the club. “You a fucking sicko or something?”
I looked at one then the other and smiled.
“Alright asshole,” snapped Early, not liking my attitude. “Get the fuck up.”
I complied though I took my sweet time, stretching up to my full height and towering over the two otherwise large men. I could feel my lips curling with contempt, my eyes glowering with rage, and already in my mind, I was preparing the justification for sending these two men to the hospital. Or the morgue.
“Speakie Ingles?” Ramirez asked, freeing the can of mace from the Velcro that restrained it.
I looked up into the sky, hoping to see him, wishing for a flash of the blue and yellow costumed peacock. Hoping for a rematch.
“This dude’s high or something.”
“You guys know who I am?” I said the sound closer to a guttural growl than to a regular speaking voice.
If they were frightened, they didn’t show it.
“You some famous movie star?” mace cop laughed. “I hope you have a good attorney.”
The other officer didn’t like being threatened. He put his hand on my chest, trying to shove me back, and patting his badge with the other hand.
“You see this, shithead? My gang’s five thousand strong.”
“I’m Blackjack,” I said and smiled again, watching their feeble brains go through the process of recalling the pertinent information, then putting that knowledge into perspective. The mace guy took a step back, suddenly concerned, and his buddy reached for his piece, though he didn’t free it from the holster.
I nodded and looked up again at the sky, not finding what I wanted.
It was a lovely afternoon, unblemished by any clouds ruining the view, another beautiful Los Angeles day, and in that moment, for some reason, it all became so obvious to me. It was all so clear.
“Get the fuck out of my face,” I said, with such force and rage that both men recoiled.
The officers loitered a moment, soothing their wounded pride by angling threats at me, promising to return in greater numbers, to call some super emergency line, but I knew they were merely posturing.
For my part, I could have said more, I could have growled creepy shit like “run if you want to live,” but seeing the name have the desired effect felt pretty good.
My real name, my new name.
* * *
I had to risk going to my secret lab, but I didn’t go straight there, hoping to lose any tail from Atmosphero or any of his friends. I dipped into an office building through the front entrance and left via the parking lot, hid inside an apartment building and ran across the rooftops to come out of the fire escape in the rear of a building three blocks down. Finally, I went into a small local mall, escaping out of a service entrance, catching a ride in the back of a delivery truck for a few miles before doubling back. I used every trick in the book and it took me four hours to travel what would have normally taken me thirty minutes.
I was energized and nervous, thrilled at the prospect of a new start. But I wasn’t stupid, and I wasn’t going to make it easy for Atmosphero and his friends to find my secret sanctum. I wanted the rubber match, sure, but on my terms.
My lab lay in a small deserted two-story warehouse on Seaton Street, between East 5th and Palmetto Street, across the street from an abandoned gas station. It was surrounded with a broken down chain link fence, and in the no-man’s land between the fence and the actual warehouse, the ground was covered ankle-deep with garbage of all sorts with a veritable community of rodents living in the filth. The surrounding buildings were either abandoned or for sale to ensure no one would ever notice me coming and going.
The stairwell to the basement in the northeast corner had crashed down upon itself, so I had cleared out the wreckage and rebuilt a vault-like entrance with rubble molded and bolted atop the door so when it was closed it was camouflaged. Inside the stairwell, I had gone to great lengths to hide sensors and cameras amongst the rubble and destruction. Infrared sensors were hidden near exposed wiring, a UV array was concealed amongst water damaged drywall, the floor was lined with pressure sensors and there were a half-dozen concealed pinhole cameras with IR/UV filters.
The destruction on the first basement level was too severe, so I had settled on the cramped lower basement. I had a cot in a dark corner with a trunk and an ancient porcelain faucet and toilet that still had running water. Beside the cot was a six-foot tall generator of my own devising. It was a finished model of what I had started at JPL, and could use standard propane tanks or even normal gasoline for fuel. It was silent as a whisper and had about a fraction of the carbon emission of a normal gasoline generator you could buy at the corner hardware store.
I fired the generator up and it responded with the usual low thrum, the inflow of electricity firing up rows of fluorescent tubes hanging from the roof that successively blinked to life. Attached to them were explosive charges that would blow the whole place sky high in case of an intruder. The whole security system was remote controlled from my computer-watch. I could also phone in a command to self-destruct if that was ever necessary. Not that I was going to do that anytime soon. I had no money to replace it.
The lab itself was simple. Two twelve foot metal tables in the shape of an L that held all my ongoing experiments. I also had a series of computers, with more than enough processing power and hard disk space to last a lifetime of projects, and a trio of 42” HD displays in a seamless landscape display.