I do not own any of these characters.
I am not making any money off this story. This work is done purely for entertainment.
I'm updating three chapters at a time, but these are short chapters. I don't know if I will be able to continue to do that.
Jonathan Alter took a cautious sip of coffee. The liquid was scalding hot. He put it down quickly. He got up and walked over to the freezer. He opened the door and plucked an ice cube from the tray.
"Grab me one, will you?" the room's other occupant didn't lift his eyes from the computer terminal he was studying. He was maybe fifty, physical fit but with a ghostly pallor. Most disconcerting was that his perfectly normal blue eyes only blinked a third of normal rate.
Jonathan dropped one ice cube into his coffee and the second into the other coffee cup. He knew he wouldn't have to wait much longer. He was too tired to complain about the room's chill, the lack of light, and the dust and grime that coated everything.
Th recruiters never tell you how hard it is to keep your secret, underground supervillain base clean, Alter thought to himself.
"Are you sure this data is correct?" Before the superhero ethics committee deemed that his experiments posed too great a threat to human life, Maximus was one of America's premier scientific superheroes. That they would have the effrontery to reprimand him, to put him under a microscope was a scenario that had occurred to him. He disappeared, taking his more favorable plans with him.
Unfortunately, being an evil mad scientist was expensive.
That is how his destiny became tied with Alter. Alter was a sidekick he befriended. Alter could use his skin to move small quantities of metal dust from one location to another. He'd been stuck as the sidekick of a mentally challenged metal manipulating superhero who treated him as his personal whipping boy.
When Maximus learned that Alter was particularly adept at transferring gold dust onto his hands, he realized the young man's potential.
"To summarize. Command is aware that you have been, quite illegally, skimming gold from Fort Knox. The only reason you have not been arrested is they strongly suspect you have a partner and they wish to wrap up the entire operation at one time."
Alter nodded. "I can't stay there much longer."
"This is not the time to draw attention to yourself." Maximus said calmly. "I am at a very delicate stage of testing of the wave disrupter. I cannot be distracted with trivial matters at the moment."
"You and I have a different opinion of trivia. I am about to end up in Maxville Superhero Penitentiary."
"It will not come to that."
If anyone else had said that, Alter would have scoffed, but this was Maximus.
"You have a plan," he asked hopefully.
"We need a distraction? I predict they will discover this lab within two weeks. I cannot move my equipment before then. So, we must give them something else to think about and a reason to leave us in peace. Once my machine is perfected, they will be in no position to trouble us."
"Return to the surface. Halt all gold extraction. We need no more money. Do nothing suspicious. Jon, if you run, I will cut you off. Keep your head and everything will be alright."