Chapter 8.2

Upwards, that was the path I chose. Now, if only I could remember on what floor Accord's office had been. Given his… issues, it was probably a special one.

Lets see… If I was a psychopathic maniac that killed people for stealing a pen, where would I put my office? Presuming, of course, that the entire building was his.

The first option of course, was to put it in the exact middle of the building, with everything symmetrically around it. But I'd looked out of his window, and he had been too high up for that. Also, his office hadn't been in the enter of the window.

It also wasn't the top floor, or we wouldn't have taken an elevator there.

So maybe a floor that corresponded to a prime number or something like that? No, there were simply too many of those.

I checked the numbers on the doors. I was currently at number thirty-seven, and there looked to be at least ten floors above me.

Forty-two maybe? That made sense? But Accord was a humourless asshole, so it probably wasn't forty-two.

I heard noises below me, the cape-squad from the elevator, apparently having decided to take the stairs. Well, I could make noise too. And in a small confined space like this, it'd hurt them, hard.

I dropped another speaker, and while my earpieces filtered out most of the sound, I could still hear the noise. Then, I dropped it down the central shaft.

As I dropped it, I saw someone look up through the shaft. A cape, his mask had a strange blue wide shade to it. He spotted me, and the device, and while the noise seemed to annoy him, he still managed to use his power.

Some kind of portal seemed to open in the stairwell, and a strange white gas came out, rising slowly. He seemed to have at least partial control over it, and I saw the others following him back away from the cloud.

Poisonous gas? Probably yeah. That was a problem. I'd need to get out of there, because the gas was rising a lot faster than I could run.

Maybe I could use my hookshots to get higher? Although, that would probably cause one of them with a ranged attack to just shoot me.

I wouldn't be able to use the grenades. Containment foam let gases through, allowing people caught in it to breathe. That meant the poison gas would go straight through too.

Except… my own mixture, the invisible stuff. That was a tad more solid. That made it too dangerous to safely use on people, but if I could block off this passage…

They probably wouldn't even notice until I'd blocked of the passage if I created a distraction during the foam expansion.

So, what could I do to create a visual distraction? I'd already taken down their ears, so that wouldn't work…

Of course, I could just distract them with actual confoam.

I took out my remaining grenades. Three invisible, two confoam. First, I rigged up the invisible ones to spread through the area all at once. Then, I dropped the confoam nades, aiming them at the walls just above the rising white gas. As they exploded, I activated the invisible ones, and ran for it.

Two floors higher, I found the solution to my earlier conundrum.

A door that seemed to have a lot more security on it than the others, including a lock attached to a number pad. I was pretty sure Accord's lair wasn't up to code.

Sadly, that meant I couldn't use a lockpicker to unlock the door. Now that I knew this however, I could use a different plan.

I ran further, to the floor above what I thought was Accord's, and unlocked the door there. Below me, I heard shouting, people yelling about gas and not being able to understand each other through the noise.

I looked down one final time, just when I heard them start yelling about something else.

Way at the bottom of the stairwell, like forty floors down or something like that, something weird had appeared. It looked to be, well, tentacles was the only way I could describe it, and it was slowly making its way upwards.

Yeah, I was pretty sure I knew what would happen if I got close to those things. Not cool.

I made my way through the door, and closed it again behind me. It locked itself automatically, which was useful. Unless they had some way of detecting what doors had been opened. Which, if this was my supervillain lair, I would have installed. So they probably knew where I was.

Now, to find a window that looked out in the same direction as Accord's office.

I ran through the hallways. Again, most of the doors seemed to be locked, and also not see-through, but I spotted a break-room here and there, and those had windows to the outside. From what I recognized of the city outside, I just needed to make one more turn.

It was eerie, the empty hallways, all made up out of hardwood and marble and steel, or at least something that looked like those materials. Small nameplates were placed next to each door, as well as professions. Biologists, economists, mathematicians, psychologists, sociologists, nutrition researchers, I even spotted a few historians. What the hell was Accord planning here? Some sort of weird world-domination plan? I'd thought he was some sort of local businessman/supervillain that used a squad of powered flunkies to take out the competition, but everything on this floor seemed like it was meant for a different purpose. It made me think of old spy movies, or crazy cape-fics on PHO.

Suddenly, I felt something shake, like something large just hit the building. One of Accord's men? Probably not, he wouldn't want his own lair destroyed. Something else then. Not something I did, I was pretty sure of that. Whatever had caused the tentacles maybe? Or was there something else involved.

I turned another corner, and estimated I'd be just above Accord's office now. I looked on the door to my right. It said

Dr H. Reed

Head Pharmacology

So this dude did medicine, he specialized in drugs. The medical kind, not the stuff you'd buy from criminals. Although, he worked for Accord, so if you bought anything from him, you would actually be buying form a criminal.

I grabbed another unlocker, my second to last one. Strangely enough, the new one that had started generating shortly after my escape was already halfway done. I could've sworn that usually took longer.

Pushing it in, the door opened, and I saw an office, complete with computer, swivel chair, and a man hiding underneath his desk. On the walls were awards and diplomas, no personal items to speak of.

I walked closer, and he seemed to shrink even further. Pathetic, a grown man scared of a little girl. Useful though, it meant I wouldn't have to bother with him

More interesting were the notes on his desk, as well as the picture visible on his computer screen.

A picture of Rose, naked, a tube shoved in her mouth, and more medical stuff attached to her lower half. She was chained up, and her eyes… I suddenly stopped feeling even slightly bad about the woman I'd shot downstairs.

"The fuck is wrong with you!" I shouted at the guy, not bothering with voice modulation.

He just whimpered, and I gave him a kick. When he didn't react to my tiny woman-legs, I gave him just a little shooting in the leg. At that, he shouted out in pain.

"What the fuck did you do!" I shouted at him. In the meantime, I quickly blueprinted all the papers on his desk. Maybe it would help with something.

"I don't… please… I just work here... It's Tinker stuff, they're refining the drug," he replied.

"Where? Where is she!" I shouted.

I'd thought she was dead. This? This was worse.

"Please don't-" he began, and I decided to shoot him again, this time in the other leg.

"Where?" I asked, aiming a third hookshot at his face.

"The lab on forty-one. Please, I have a daught-"

The man was silenced by a knife hitting him in the throat, and fell down, gargling on his own blood.

I looked up, and saw another knife floating in the air.

The invisible guy, the one that had taken me down before.

The knife flew towards me, too fast to dodge. Instead, I tried to absorb it almost reflexively.

It worked. Kind of. The knife had penetrated slightly, and I felt blood seep from my chest, just in front of my heart. It hadn't penetrated further though.

Still, if I didn't manage to find a way around this guy, I was completely, totally, fucked.

Sound? No. Drone? No. Looper? No. confoam? Empty.

My mind raced through all the other options. The stuff I'd absorbed on a whim, or for a different purpose. Did I have anything explosive? Something to break the window before the guy could reach me?

I felt a kick in between my ribs, right where the knife had almost killed me, and got an idea.

I waited, having fallen to the floor, acting just panicked enough to make him think he'd won. Then, when I thought he'd be right in front of me, I called up the largest thing in my arsenal. Leet's flying drone.

For half a moment, it flickered into existence. Then, I suddenly saw an outline of someone standing over me, overlapping the drone. Something strange happened, and both the guy and the drone shifted out of existence.

Then, just as I thought I'd gotten lucky again, the building shook again.

I looked around, not seeing where the shaking came from. Well, it'd have to wait until after I'd rescued Rose. If she could still be rescued.

I took out my miniature chainsaw, and tested it on the glass pane overlooking the city. There were scratches on the glass, but it didn't seem to work as well as I'd expected.

Well, I had other tricks up my sleeve. Such as hotwiring batteries. First, I closed the door, hoping that invisible guy would need to open it if he came back. Then, I grabbed every power tool with a battery I had.

A little wire here, another there, and I'd created an electrician's nightmare. I took a glance at the pharmacist, still slowly bleeding out, and decided to pull him with me, hiding behind an overturned desk. Then, I set off the explosion.

Somehow, it worked, breaking the pane of glass. I returned my gaze to the asshole. I didn't really have anything to help him out with, and had no idea how to give first aid. Also, it had been his friend that tried to finish him off.

Leaving him behind, I walked to the now broken window, and looked outside.

Just below me was forty-one, the lab I'd been looking for. I saw that my destruction of the glass, and what seemed to be the instability of the building, had destroyed that window too.

Above me, something completely different was happening. What could only have been Dragon was circling the roof, firing flamethrowers at someone that was shooting back.

That explained the crashes. Also, that meant I needed to get out of here, a hero like Dragon probably wouldn't take kindly to villains like me.

I jumped out, shooting backwards with my hookshot, and neatly flew into the office on the floor below me.

The first thing I noticed was that someone had emptied out the office. The computer had been ripped open, its hard-drive removed, and there were empty folders scattered though the room, in addition to some papers lying on the floor. Whoever had been cleaning this place out had probably left after I exploded the window. I looked at the papers, and saw they were filled with text and graphs. No pictures, so I couldn't figure out what it was about. Still, if they didn't want anyone to see this, it wouldn't hurt to blueprint it right?

I walked to the door. I needed the lab, not some empty office. Although the fact that they'd evacuated, combined with Dragon attacking the building…

Was Accord the type of guy to have a self-destruct button? I mean, he did have his own tower in Boston, plus secret supervillain lab. But self-destructs would be messy, and everything here tended to be very clean and ordered. I hadn't spotted a single cob-web in the building yet.

The hallway itself was not empty. I saw lots of people running around in lab coats and suits, spotting me, and then quickly running the other way. Most of them were holding laptops and papers.

With Dragon attacking, whatever those tentacles had been, and me rampaging through the building, they were quite obviously evacuating somehow. The question was, how? They probably wouldn't be taking the elevator, and I was quite sure the fire exit wasn't going to work either. Some sort of parahuman ability? Did they have a teleporter like Rose? Had they somehow harnessed her power?

I didn't know, and it didn't really matter. I wouldn't be able to take them down anyway. Most of what I had going for me here had been the element of surprise, and the fact that most people expected to lose against a cape. I was quite obviously a cape, what with my helmet and everything, so they just chose to run instead, even if a guy with a gun could easily beat me.

Still, making them more afraid of me could only help, so I decided to take out a third loudspeaker and add some more noise to the mayhem.

I had to admit, I loved being the only person that wasn't able to hear these things, the effect on the surrounding people was just amazing. Just like that, they all scattered around corners and behind doors.

Now, to find their secret medical lab. It was obviously secret, so it wouldn't have a window. Which meant it was probably in the middle of the building, because the building had windows all around it. Unless the lab had fake windows, but that would be cheating.

Sadly, even though I'd expected it and it confirmed my suspicions about the location of the lab. The only door that led into the middle of the building that I found was locked with a number pad, an eye-scanner, and a card-scanner. Probably needed a voice command too.

Well, it was time to get to work, I didn't bring my tools everywhere for nothing.

I grabbed a screwdriver, a mobile soldering tools, some wire that would disappear in a few hours, and started to work. This was almost as fun as what I expected breaking open a bank safe to be. Only, you know, the context around it was really really shitty.

Eventually, the rest of the floor went silent. People stopped running or panicking or yelling, and the only thing I heard was the soft hum of my sound-filter. I wondered how they'd gotten out. After all, I'd been in the hallway for all three minutes, meaning they wouldn't have been able to leave their rooms without me spotting them.

Then, I noticed a voice coming from behind the door. Someone was talking. Two people actually. One of them, I recognized as Accord. The other was a woman. I couldn't quite make out what they were talking about, although I figured out a few words. Something about a drug and powers.

Wait… did that mean this was related to what had happened in Westlake? Were they testing drugs that gave you powers here?

I took out another hookshot, and fired it at my speaker, destroying it. Then, I took of my helmet and earpieces, and held my head to the door.

"-ird generation is complete, and dimensional bleed-off is confirmed, but compatibility with either power source is unconfirmed. I am not leaving this project incomplete!" I heard Accord say.

"We agree," the woman replied. "Door to base Samekh 7."

Then, I heard footsteps, small, light ones. Which in this case it was the man that was leaving, not the woman. Accord was a tiny tiny little asshole.

I kept listening, wondering what the woman was doing. Everything seemed to be perfectly silent, with only a few crashing sounds from far away in the building, both beneath and above me.

Then, the woman spoke again.

"You do know the only remaining step is to reroute that yellow wire through the top of the little array you made, right?" she whispered, just barely loud enough to be heard.

I looked at my work, noticing that I was indeed almost finished if I did that. Probably. I'd been going for a safer path through since I couldn't see all the internals, but it would probably work.

I snipped the wire, and rerouted it, after which the door went open with an audible hiss. The lab had been over-pressurized, probably to keep out external factors such as dust or supervillains.

Inside was what seemed to be a mix between an operating room and a laboratory. I recognized Rose, strapped to the table, completely white. There were a lot of wrappers lying on the ground, and a few empty vials were scattered though the room. A tube came out of Rose's neck, leading into what seemed to be a device made to fill bottles like the ones lying around. They'd been bleeding her dry and storing the blood.

Also in the room was the woman. She was wearing a suit, complete with tie, and had a hat on her head that was typically reserved for fat idiots on the internet. She wasn't wearing a mask, and didn't look like the type of person Accord hired. Given the end of the conversation that I'd overheard, she was the type of person that hired Accord. A super-supervillain or something like that.

"I'm afraid your stupidity killed her," she said. "Also, you should ask your father about his prediction program."

Me? I'd killed her? Bullshit. She was the one standing in front of Rose's corpse, not me.

I took out a hookshot, firing it the instant it materialized.

The woman in the suit sidestepped it effortlessly, and turned her back to me.

"Door me," she said. From her tone and manner, I was quite sure she wasn't talking to me.

Right in front of her, a hole appeared in the air. Behind it, a long corridor, paved with white tiles you'd expect in a bathroom.

That had probably been how everyone had escaped from this floor then…

Before I could react, the woman stepped forward, and the portal closed behind her.

Coming out of my shock, I walked towards Rose's body.

My eyes went for her face, just for a moment. This time, I didn't see a shitty picture. Instead, I saw the real deal, and I was suddenly very happy I wasn't wearing my helmet right now.

After about half a minute, I looked up from the puddle I'd left on the floor. It didn't look like there wasn't anything I could do for her. I grabbed a cloth that someone had left behind, and draped it over her face. If I couldn't close her eyes for her, I could at least do this.

I felt my stomach retch again, but this time, there was nothing left to come out. I took a second to find an empty spot on the floor, and sat down, trying desperately to control myself.

She'd died. Used up for some crazy experiment, bled dry until they couldn't user anymore. They were creating some sort of drug, one that gave people powers. One that was similar to the one that had devastated Westlake.

Did than mean O'Neill was involved here? Or did it go higher? I could imagine someone like O'Neill creating a lab somewhere to further study his product, but all the way over here in Boston? Creating something like this in a matter of months? No, it had to be something bigger. Something involving an organisation that could create portals to different places, such as whatever Samekh 7 was.

Samekh, wasn't that a letter in Hebrew? Like Aleph and Bet? Did that mean there was something interdimensional going on here? Had Accord and the woman in the suit been some sort of alien conquerors?

And what was that about either power source? Was there more than one way to gain powers? Something besides trigger events? Something like a drug maybe? But they had to test compatibility of the new drug with the old one, so it'd be a third power source.

Except… there were Trumps, as they were called, that could give people powers too right? Was that something different as well?

And what was that about my father's prediction program? Was dad doing something at work that would be relevant or something? Should I be following the advice of a super-supervillain?

The noise outside, made by Dragon flying around the building, started to recede. Had her opponents left? Evacuated in the same way the lady in the suit and Accord had?

I tried to stand up again, and noticed the pain in my chest. I looked at my shirt, now covered in blood. Strange, I hadn't really felt the knife-wound before. Was that the adrenalin? Probably yes. I looked around, trying to see if I could find something to take care of it before realizing I had absolutely no idea on how to use medical technology. Weird, that. For some reason, biology hadn't been part of the package beyond trying to figure out what my tech would do to flesh and bones.

Thinking about bleeding, would the guy upstairs have made it? What with the knife through the throat and everything? Probably… well, probably not. He was probably dead, just because I chose his office to make my way downstairs. Or because one of Accord's people had decided to silence him. Technically the second reason, but I couldn't help but think it was the first.

I decided to take a few minutes to gather my energy. The bleeding had largely stopped, so it probably wouldn't be a big deal. When I'd rested a bit, I could go outside and hookshot out or something. Accord's people had left the building, so that'd probably work out just fine…

Eventually, I wasn't sure how long it had been, someone entered the room. I looked up, and saw a man wearing a face-shaped mask, slightly wooden in appearance, like a strange amalgamation of tree and flesh. I didn't recognize it. Besides him was what seemed to be the lovechild or a kangaroo and an elephant, with some extra attachments that reminded me of a scorpion. It would've been cute if it didn't look so deadly.

"Hey, you Armsmaster's kid?" the man asked me calmly, as if he already knew the answer and expected it to be yes.

Wait what?