Capsid 4.R

Alec stared out the passenger window of the panel van, watching the sun set and paint the clouds in a riot of reds and purples. The thought struck him that this scenery was too pretty for this city, and too pretty for this situation. He was bored and vaguely anxious, and he chased idle thoughts and half-formed daydreams to cope. Things had been going well after the bank heist, so it figured that something was due to go wrong.

Alec looked over to Lisa, who held the van's steering wheel in a white-knuckled grip.

The silence was too stuffy, too suffocating.

"This is the last straw. I'm going to write the boss a strongly-worded letter about our coworker." Alec joked.

Trainwreck grunted in what might have been amusement—or maybe just annoyance—from where his huge mechanical body was folded up in the panel van's cargo area. He was the whole reason for the Undersiders' new wheels, not just because he was a Tinker with power armor, but because he was a Case 53. Unfortunately, he didn't even get to be one of the sexy monsters like Newter. He was just a greasy dude with no arms or legs who could stretch out like a gross, fleshy amoeba to pilot the insides of his walking junkyard of a mech suit. As far as Alec was concerned, the jury was still out on whether Trainwreck would be worth the trouble. Bitch was proving to be enough trouble by herself.

"I doubt this is about the money," Lisa said tersely. "She's only got Judas with her. If she was trying to rob us, she'd never have left Brutus and Angelica behind at the Loft."

"Shit." Brian said, popping his knuckles nervously. "Shit, shit, shit. The timing is too convenient. We told the boss we were going to deliver the money tonight, and now she just up and vanishes? I don't think she would leave the dogs behind either, but I wouldn't put it past her to try something stupid."

"Might be someone's beating the location out of her. Might be she went to steal it and was gonna come back for her dogs. Either way, we gotta get to the money first," said Trainwreck.

Alec definitely agreed with the practicality of that statement, but it also bothered him that he should have felt more... something about Rachel. He couldn't judge whether his deadened emotions were just another thing he could thank Father for, or whether it was just that he didn't care all that much about Rachel to begin with.

Either way, Rachel had been with them from the start, and Alec trusted her a hell of a lot more than he trusted Trainwreck. It wasn't that he objected to having one more meat shield between himself and the heroes, which was well worth having to dish out another share in Alec's book, it was that Rachel was a known quantity, and Trainwreck was a bitter asshole who wasn't even trying to be a part of the group, not to mention he was the worst roommate ever. He'd taken to living on the ground floor like a troll, constantly tinkering or getting drunk, interrupting Alec's games and TV with his incessant clanging. As if that wasn't enough, he reeked. He had a clinging stench like a mix of stale body odor, burned hair, soot, and motor oil.

"Seriously, though, I don't completely buy that this is her betraying us," Alec mused. "Something doesn't add up. Bitch is a total loose cannon, sure, but we didn't do anything to piss her off besides taking on Trainwreck, and hell, she gets along with you as well as she gets along with anyone."

Trainwreck grunted again. "Don't always need a reason, though. Money's enough reason."

"Still, we were the closest things she had to friends or family, besides her dogs. I don't even think she really gives a shit about money, besides what it takes to care for her dogs, and she already had a huge payday coming. Bitch lives up to her name in a lot of ways, but that also means she's loyal. I doubt she'd throw everything away just for a bigger cut, not unless there was something else going on," said Alec, realizing as he defended Rachel's better qualities that maybe he did care about her a bit more than he thought.

"We'll find out soon enough," Lisa said with forced cheer. "Suit up, boys. We're here."

Lisa eased the van to a stop in the alley behind an abandoned train depot, and they quickly hopped out to change out of their civilian clothes. Alec donned his skintight armor mesh and the loose, frilly white shirt and tight black leggings, then fixed the Venetian mask with an attached silver coronet to his face to become Regent. He grabbed his scepter—which concealed the prongs of a taser in the tip—and once the others were done getting dressed and unloading from the van, they set off.

Their destination was just a block away from the train tracks, a nasty warren of a storage facility strewn with long-abandoned bottles and decaying trash. Once upon a time, people had clearly lived out of the little ten-by-ten storage units, but the city had since cleared them out. Plenty of other, more spacious abandoned buildings to squat in nowadays, anyway.

Regent tried not to be bothered by Trainwreck's clanging footsteps, but they were by far the loudest noise in this abandoned part of town, just another way the guy didn't fit in with the rest of the Undersiders. They tromped their way through the maze of conjoined storage sheds, which weren't sequentially numbered, until at last they came upon the one they were looking for.

"Padlock's gone," Grue noted in a wooden voice. Even though it was a foregone conclusion, he swung the door open to see what was inside.

Regent's uncertainty evaporated in an instant, and his worst suspicions about Rachel were confirmed. There was nothing but a floor covered in disturbed dust and a dark stain in the corner. Trainwreck made a wordless noise of rage.

"I vote we kill her," Regent quipped, unsure whether he was joking.

"Ah-ah-ah, that's not for you to decide," a buzzing, synthesized voice rang out.

Startled, Regent spun around with the others to see the storage unit opposite from them open its door to reveal a kneeling, handcuffed, gagged Rachel, her face beaten and bloody, while a tall, hooded woman stood behind her. The woman was an obvious cape, though one Regent didn't recognize. She had some kind of bazooka strapped over her shoulder, she had a bandolier filled with grenades, her face was covered by red goggles and a gas mask, and she was holding on to a leash that was fixed to a dog collar around Rachel's neck. Regent realized the leash and collar belonged to Judas, though there was no sign of the dog.

"Bakuda," said Tattletale, the same moment Regent put two and two together. The bomb Tinker overheard and made an extravagant sweeping gesture.

"The one and only," she said loudly. The delivery was overdramatic, almost theatrical—but the synthesizer in her mask rendered her voice down into a monotone crackle.

"How interesting," Tattletale said, adopting her usual devil-may-care smirk. "It seems you have the money from our latest heist already in hand, but we have plenty left in the piggy bank to buy our teammate back, so we can—"

Bakuda raised her hand with her finger pointing up, and Tattletale instantly went silent.

"Stupid girl. This isn't a ransom, though your modest contribution to the ABB's coffers is appreciated," Bakuda said, tilting her head in a condescending gesture. "You see, the theme of tonight is aggressive acquisition. Defeating the team that killed my predecessor is a fantastic way to inaugurate the ABB's new leadership, wouldn't you agree?"

Lisa twitched at being called stupid, which Regent knew she detested, but she spoke with renewed urgency. "We didn't kill Lung, but if you want to know who did, I'm sure we could come to an amicable arrangement—"

"Fuck that," Trainwreck interrupted, taking a threatening stomp forward and raising his bulldozer-like hands. "Give us the money, cunt, or I'll break every bone in your body."

"Well, this one is a fucking retard, isn't he?" Bakuda asked rhetorically, not looking the slightest bit intimidated by the gigantic mechanical man. She casually raised her hand and snapped her fingers.

A half-second after Bakuda's snap, every other storage unit in the row started opening their doors, all thirty or forty of them.

Regent's blood ran cold.

Each storage locker in the row revealed between one and four people. There were clearly ABB gangbangers, all holding pistols or submachine guns, but maybe half of them looked like ordinary civilians off the street, Asians mostly, but also a smattering of white, black, and brown people. Cannon fodder. The only thing they all had in common was that they had a weapon of some kind—kitchen knives, hunting rifles, baseball bats, shovels, pipes, golf clubs. An engine roared to life further down the row, and a Jeep driven by an ABB member with boxes full of blinking explosives turned around the corner and stopped next to Bakuda's storage locker.

"Game over, Undersiders. You're already in checkmate," said Bakuda. "So let me tell you what happens next. Your dog-loving friend here has been implanted with a special little device of my own creation, and if you refuse to cooperate, I'll activate it."

To punctuate her words, Bakuda bent down and mockingly smacked Rachel's cheek twice. Then, she grabbed Rachel's head and twisted it roughly to the side, showing a dark line of blood running down the side of her neck.

"The neural bomb I planted in your friend's skull is a real nasty one, if I do say so myself," Bakuda continued, pacing back and forth behind Rachel as though unable to contain her enthusiasm. "You know the old cliché about adrenaline allowing your body to surpass its natural limits and perform great feats of strength? It's true! Bomb one-twelve was inspired by that little tidbit and a seizure I saw once. I thought, 'what would happen if I dialed up someone's adrenaline and turned the convulsions up to eleven?' As it turns out, the answer is hilarious! People twist themselves into pretzels, shredding their own muscles, shattering their own teeth, breaking their own bones! The only drawback is that they snap their spines and die too quickly, so I calibrated this one, the one-thirteen, to primarily affect the limbs. As an added bonus, because the injuries are mostly internal and mostly localized to non-vital areas, it should take hours, or even days, for her to die!"

As Bakuda bragged about some science jargon that Regent couldn't understand, Rachel was practically vibrating with rage and fear, the cords in her neck standing out, her eyes wide and rolling like a mad dog. Regent didn't even like Rachel, but seeing her like this was just wrong. She wasn't struggling, wasn't spitting out her gag to shout epithets, wasn't doing any of the defiant, reckless Rachel things he'd expect her to do. The look in her eyes reminded him of the time he'd thrown a tantrum and Father had hit him with pure, absolute, mindless terror. He hadn't spoken a word for months afterwards.

"Bakuda's in a manic phase," Tattletale muttered under her breath as Bakuda rambled on. "She wants to capture us alive, but even if we do what she says, she'll kill one or two of us to send a message to the rest."

Motorcycle helmet or no, Regent could see the exact instant when Grue made the decision to cut their losses. The stutter of hesitation, then the reflexive raising of his hands. Grue's clouds of darkness billowed out like a smoke bomb, covering their escape.

Sorry Bitch, Regent thought as Grue took his hand in the darkness and guided him up and over the storage locker. You're on your own this time.

Regent landed just a second behind Tattletale and Grue on the other side of the locker, no longer blinded and deafened by Grue's darkness. As soon as sound returned, Regent was hit by screams and shouts and two different-sounding bursts of gunfire as Trainwreck had apparently chosen fight instead of flight, not that Grue could have pulled him up and over the roof anyway.

"Go! That way!" Tattletale said, pointing to the left.

As Regent and the others sprinted parallel to the way they'd come, there was a low, metallic boom followed by a sound like heavy rainfall magnified a hundredfold. Regent looked over his shoulder to see that the storage locker they'd just vaulted over along with parts of the adjoining ones were rapidly turning a pale, sickly gray color and collapsing like they were made of soggy cardboard.

Regent looked back where he was going just in time to be blinded again, this time by a flash. The loudest thing he'd ever heard assaulted his eardrums, and he felt like his entire body had been slapped by a giant hand. He staggered and fell, but that was so minor in comparison to the overwhelming sensations, it was mostly his internal sense of gravity and his body's position that informed him that he'd fallen.

Over his body's protests, Regent pushed himself to his feet as quickly as he was able, which still seemed far too slow. His scepter was gone, and he couldn't remember when or where he dropped it. He blinked to try to clear the splotchy purple afterimages out of his vision. Grue and Tattletale seemed to be in no better condition than him. Ahead, there was a perfectly round crater about ten yards away. It looked like someone had taken a giant sphere and pressed it into the ground like it was clay. The cement and dirt had bulged up around it.

Regent heard a sound behind them over the ringing in his ears. It was Bakuda, kicking aside larger chunks of the pulpy gray muck that remained of the storage locker like a kid in rain boots playing in a mud puddle. The Jeep followed behind her, and Rachel had been tossed in the backseat. Behind the Jeep, a contingent of ABB were dragging a now-naked and seemingly unconscious Trainwreck by a length of chain wrapped under his blobby, stubby pseudo-arms. Bits and pieces of his armor still clung to him, but most of it had gone gray as well and sloughed off like wet papier-mâché. He was bleeding from the head as well, the red mixing with the pale gray of his former helmet.

"Do you get it now? It doesn't matter where you run, I can blow you up anywhere, anytime, with no warning, just using my thoughts," said Bakuda, idly strolling along as her henchmen ran past her to surround them. "Case in point: Shazam!"

Bakuda pointed to a random spot off to her right, and a moment later, there was a shrieking sound followed by a bone-jarring impact that obliterated two storage lockers, sending an explosion of white papers flying everywhere like feathers and the corrugated metal roofs tumbling through the air like leaves, reaching sixty or so feet into the air.

"Not gonna lie, that was actually pretty cool," Regent found himself saying. An unwelcome but familiar feeling came over him—the endurance and acceptance that came with the sure knowledge that resistance was futile, and the only option was to just say 'fuck it' and go with the flow, since the alternatives were all worse.

The old childhood survival instincts were kicking in. Submit, but never show weakness. Don't even flinch at the fucked up things going on around you. Endear yourself to the psycho. He already knew Bakuda's type. She wanted to have her ego flattered.

Predictably, Bakuda sucked up the attention. "I know, right? I bet you'll never guess how I pulled that trick off."

"Stolen aircraft," Tattletale said immediately. "Hovering somewhere overhead. Stealthed, invisible."

Regent nearly choked as he frantically stifled the urge to either laugh or punch Tattletale in her fat fucking mouth. Losing a bet to Tattletale's irrepressible know-it-all attitude was one of his favorite running jokes, because he knew when he finally got one over on her he'd never let her live it down, but at the same time, she might have just gotten them all killed. You did not attempt to upstage a superpowered narcissist. Did she not know that, lacking his firsthand experience, or was she simply incapable of keeping it in her pants? Fuck, fuck, fuck.

"Shoot her if she says another word," Bakuda said without looking away from Tattletale, speaking the order to no one in particular, with the unshakable certainty that the command would be followed. It was another point of familiarity, but Regent was definitely not feeling nostalgic over it. "Don't you know that revealing a magician's secrets spoils the whole show? I'm not sure what your power is or how it works, but killing you if you open your big mouth should cover most contingencies."

Turning her back on them, Bakuda strutted over to her vehicle and patted its hood affectionately. "I love Jeeps," she said conversationally. "It's said that Jeeps are 'as faithful as a dog, as strong as a mule, and as agile as a goat.' Soldiers would use the flat hoods as a table for all sorts of things, including field surgery. I can personally attest to its efficacy in that regard, I installed the bomb in your friend's head in two minutes flat on here. Pretty fucking impressive, isn't it? Speaking of which..."

Bakuda waved her hand at Rachel, and two of her goons dragged her out of the backseat. Bakuda pointed at the ground in front of her, and Rachel was roughly tossed there with a muffled grunt of pain, unable to break her own fall with her hands cuffed behind her back.

"My predecessor believed in rule through fear. A mix of certainty and uncertainty. I've taken that lesson to heart, but I've also learned from his mistakes. See, Lung was too passive. He let slights and insults stand against him for years and years while he plotted a revenge that would never come. I know our generation is more about instant gratification, so hold on to your butts, because you ain't seen nothing yet!" Bakuda crowed. "As promised, here's bomb one-thirteen!"

Regent had lived and breathed the most fucked-up shit imaginable for his entire childhood. Torture was nothing new to him. Death was nothing new to him. It was his normal. After he triggered, he only ever got to experience intense feelings and emotions through controlling other people. But despite all of that, he was shocked and disgusted by what happened to Rachel, maybe only because it was Rachel, someone he knew. The sight before him was grotesque. There was no other word for it.

Rachel bucked and flopped over the ground in a fit, screaming behind the rags duct-taped to her mouth. There was a horrible cracking, popping sound as she wrenched one of her hands out of the handcuffs, degloving the skin around her thumb and knuckles in the process. The noises she made only became more frantic as joints and fingers dislocated themselves, wriggling in impossible ways like pale, obscene worms, until the vocalizations suddenly stopped. She curled in on herself even as her limbs continued to flail and pop, choking as thin, watery vomit tinged with runnels of blood sprayed out from her nostrils, unable to get past the gag sealing her mouth.

Regent glanced away, to Grue and Tattletale. Grue was frozen in place, his expression unidentifiable behind his heavily tinted skull-shaped motorcycle helmet, but the way that the darkness roiled around him was indication enough that he was too petrified to do anything except bolt at the first opportunity. Tattletale was shifting from foot to foot, biting down hard on her lower lip, looking like she'd never wanted to speak so much in her life. Her gaze met his, and she conveyed a message with her pleading eyes alone.

Help her.

Regent gave the tiniest nod, then turned his attention back to Rachel. He hadn't ever fully controlled her before, but months of being around her and the occasional prank had given him a pretty good idea of her nervous system.

Fuck. Bitch will owe me big time for this, he thought as he delved into her nervous system, seizing control of her limbs as if they were his own.

Agony. Regent collapsed to the ground like a marionette with its strings cut. He had felt the pain of his powers backfiring countless times before when he attempted to do too much, but this was on a whole other level. Rachel's nervous system was caught in a searing, recursive loop, like a spasming explosion of pain that kept reigniting itself. He only barely managed to keep a grip on his power and force Rachel's limbs to relax somewhat.

He pushed harder, until he didn't even have enough left in him to breathe. He felt Rachel's body continue to spasm and cramp, but with the last of his strength and focus, he managed to assert enough control to break the seizure loop and keep the motions from doing any more damage.

"Aww, did the little boy faint?" Bakuda said in a tone that should have been mocking, but came out the same monotone as ever. "Don't worry, it's a common enough reaction. I'm not offended. Just makes the surgery easier, never bothered with anesthetic after the first few anyway. Bring him right up to the operating table, it's time for my newest slave's orientation ceremony."

Regent held on as long as he could, but darkness was starting to creep in at the edges of his vision, and his head was swimming, and it just hurt too much to continue. He released Rachel from his control and took a heaving breath, and she continued to twitch weakly, struggling to clear her airway.

Through his foggy mind, Regent considered it lucky that whatever Bakuda had done was apparently more like a one-charge bomb that set off a chain reaction, and not like a continuous taser to Rachel's brain. He wished he had his own taser back as the two men that had tossed Rachel picked him up under the arms. He'd like the opportunity to shove it right in Bakuda's eye. He pictured it in gross, vivid detail—anything to distract himself from the pain and the bomb that was about to come. He clung to every second of freedom he had left, knowing the bomb was a death sentence one way or another.

No more freedom. Back to surviving, minute by minute. At least he didn't have to go back to his fucking family this time.

The pair hoisted him up onto the hood of the Jeep, and one of them produced a pair of handcuffs to restrain his arms behind his back while Bakuda seemed more interested in Rachel, kicking her over onto her back. "I have to say, I'm a little disappointed. That show didn't last nearly as long as it should have. Did all your ligaments get stripped away from the bones already? Doesn't look like it. Ah, I see, skinny boy over here did something, didn't he? We'll just have to—"

Bakuda was interrupted by a sudden swarm of bugs appearing out of nowhere and blanketing her face. She made a sound the synthesizer translated as a robotic gargling and tried to brush them away from her goggles. Beside her, the gun-toting ABB members were also attacked by bugs.

Dim recognition flashed in Regent's shellshocked mind, causing him to come more fully to his senses. It was Bug—the dorky girl they'd tried to recruit, but who became the indie hero Arachne instead. He didn't care if she was here to help them escape or to arrest them all indiscriminately.

Arachne was all the distraction they needed.

Grue blanketed the area in darkness, and being blind and deaf had never come as so much of a relief. Moments later, a small hand grabbed him, Tattletale, and guided him as Grue was no doubt guiding her. They were moving slowly—too slowly, not that Regent could move much faster than a limp anyway. Grue must have changed his mind, stopped to pick up Rachel. Regent didn't even entertain the thought that Grue had stopped to pick up Trainwreck instead, no matter what a juggernaut he'd proven to be during the bank robbery. It just wasn't how Grue worked.

After what must have been only a few dozen feet but what felt like miles, they broke into clear air again. Grue was indeed supporting Rachel as though they were in a three-legged race, and Tattletale formed the chain between them and Regent.

Behind them, there was a tremendous crack, but instead of a shockwave, it was like Grue's cloud of darkness crumbled and imploded as a fierce wind kicked up, drawing everything towards a central point.

"In here!" Grue roared, kicking in the door of one of the storage lockers as the wind strengthened and became like a tornado. It wasn't just wind, though—it was gravity.

A black hole. Holy fuck! She can do that!? Regent thought, struggling to follow Grue and Tattletale into the unit. He slipped in, then he was pressed up against the brick wall of the unit alongside Grue, Rachel, and Tattletale like one of those spinning carnival rides. He waited for a few pounding heartbeats as the howling outside intensified.

It suddenly occurred to Regent that whatever help Arachne's bugs might have been, they'd probably been sucked up by the black hole. Maybe even Trainwreck too, if no one grabbed on to him. As the pull only grew stronger, he realized it might not matter if the storage unit collapsed and they all died anyway. Before that could happen, though, the pull stopped like it had never existed.

"Go, go, go!" Tattletale urged, practically throwing herself at the door, wrenching it open.

They burst outside, only to come nearly face-to-face with a cape in a gray leather jacket, with a triangular, bare metal mask that covered his hole face save for two eye slits. He was literally rooted to the ground, tendrils of black and red stabbing through the concrete to keep him in place during the black hole maelstrom.

Regent recognized him instantly, even though the costume was unfamiliar. It was the other Case 53, the one he'd tried to dub Zombie. He had ripped off Regent's own name and undead suggestion and called himself Revenant instead.

"Don't just stand there, you morons! Get out of here!" Revenant demanded. "Bakuda is mine."

A/N
I do hope that people catch the subtle differences in Bakuda's character. Heavy is the head that wears a crown, after all, and this time she's not just pretending to rule the ABB, she really is the Big Cheese after Lung got ate. Next time, we rejoin Alex's perspective as he gets the showdown he's been itching to begin, but this fight will prove much more than he bargained for...