“Don’t step on that.” I told Danny while waving a stick in a circular motion around a patch of grass where he was about to step. He looked at me, puzzled, but still heeded my advice.
While he turned to walk around it, I slammed the stick down onto the grass. A bear trap snapped closed and then quickly went back down. The stick broke in half, and the bottom half fell to the ground. Danny, Mar, and Emily all jumped at once. If only they knew about the countless other traps I’d laid out in the field leading to my lab that I’d maneuvered them around more stealthily.
“How did you know about that?” Mar asked, looking horrified. I lifted the now broken in half stick up and threw it into the field.
“I set it up.” I said. I think I heard Emily gasp when I said that. Danny gave me a disappointed look. “I told you guys that this is my secret spot. Wouldn’t do if homeless people were constantly converging on my secret spot, would it?” I said in the most reasonable sounding way I could.
“So you take their legs off?” Mar asked in an accusatory voice. The group continued onward, though they followed behind me and watched where I chose to stand a lot closer than they had before. Or rather, where I didn’t choose to stand.
“I built it so it would only cut into their leg. It couldn’t crush bone and certainly couldn’t take it off.” I remarked.
They didn’t ask any more questions after that. Beads of sweat started to form on my eyebrows as we continued marching in the evening sun. If only they knew about all the other traps I’d set up. All nonlethal, of course. I’m not a monster. But you could do a lot of horrible stuff without being lethal.
I had tripwires set up to shoot people with paintballs, little foot traps that delivered painful shocks for five seconds, I had one that was just a flashbang. I knew where each and every one was, it was burned in my memory from all of the times I’d accidentally set them off myself. It’s a good thing I was wearing jeans. Danny definitely would’ve noticed the scars around my ankle. Once we made it to the front of the abandoned factory I turned towards my group of explorers.
“Okay, now nobody freak out on me. Okay?” I told them. That didn’t make them look any less uneasy, which was the point. The rusty doors slid hard against the stone floor as the combined effort of Danny and I pushed it open. Under normal circumstances I’d climb through the broken window around the back, but I didn’t want them thinking that this was an easy thing. The less easy they saw it as, the less likely they’d come snooping around.
“Voila!” I shouted into the large dark space of the factory. My voice echoed as it reached the back. My tour group looked at me with concern. I flipped the switch on the generator by the door and all at once the lights flicked on. The others covered their eyes in shock but I kept my eyes wide open and enjoyed the feeling of shellshock that comes with a sudden change in lighting. “What is it?” Mar asked.
“My lab. You like it?” I respond while gesturing over to the various trinkets and crinkets I laid out for this occasion.
A partial robot was on a table, it resembled a ball with a smiley face. It was capable of rolling around on its own and learning basic commands. It was connected to my computer network, but the a.i. was still simplistic. Another trinket was an electrical boa staff with a hook like a claw machine on the end. It could launch the hook out and grab things.. The hook was based on the foot claws of my costumes.
Other than that I had various chemicals. Nothing too high tech, most of it was rather primitive. Besides all of the stuff I had to invent in order to make my suit work, which was also laid about. Polymer fibers that you couldn’t tear or cut. Mechanical gloves that enhanced strength and connected to your nerves. As I demonstrated each of my little toys I could see the looks of shock and awe on everyone’s face. Mar and Danny would occasionally comment, but mostly they just listened to me drone on.
“So you built all of this?” Mar asked. She looked genuinely confused and amazed. I couldn’t help the prideful smile building on my face.
If only you could see the cool part.
“Yep. Many a day and night has been spent here tinkering away.” I responded, while turning on my smiley face bot and placing it on the ground.
“This is amazing. You should patent all of this!” Emily finally spoke up.
I instantly cringed at the idea. Patenting it would include people sifting through my stuff and trying to market it for financial gain. I’d always just intended for this to be where I held all of my little pet projects.
“Nah. I don’t want to do that. I never even intended for anyone else to ever see this stuff, but Danny boy forced my hand.” I said while demonstrating how the smiley face bot rolls around the floor avoiding any obstacles in its path.
I’d designed it to act as a white blood cell of sorts. It had a sensor that would go off if it noticed any intruders that weren’t me. That included mice, insects, and stray animals. Of course I was still working out the kinks. My friends were on its whitelist, but after they left I’d planned on taking them off. Danny looked disappointed in me.
“You forced my hand when you disappeared until one in the morning. Why won’t you just tell your parents about this anyway?” Danny asked.
“Because I’m my parents’ pride and joy, and I’m sick, and if they knew I was going to a field out past the abandoned train tracks to an abandoned factory to tinker with dangerous technology they’d never let me leave my room again. And that’s not how I want to live.” I told him, honestly.
“Hey guys. I have an idea.” Mar says, cutting through the thick silence. “How about we make this place a clubhouse? We can tell all of our parents we have a hideout somewhere in town, and then it won’t look so bad on Jacob when he comes in late.” She explained.
Please no.
Please God no, no no no.
Why? Of all of the things you could’ve suggested, why did you have to do this to me?
“No, I don’t think you wanna do that. I mean what would you guys do here all day anyway. I’ll be busy working on stuff the whole time.” I said. I tried to remain calm while I screamed inside.
“I can help you out. I think I can really be of some use.” Danny said. His words put me in a position where I couldn’t remark upon it without hurting his pride, which would just make him double down on this idea out of spite.
“I have some books I’ve been trying to find some time to read. Plus my house is a little too crazy right now to be doing homework.” Emily said, not quite as confident as Danny or Mar.
Please stop.
“Oh! We can have a study group!” Mar squealed in excitement, causing a pretty loud echo in the mostly empty lab. And making my head hurt a little.
That’s it, you’re not invited to my funeral.
“Guys, guys come on. This place is old, run down, and creepy. Not to mention all of the traps I have laid out and the criminals in the area. You’d have to learn where all the traps are, and I learned the hard way with most of them.” I told them, sounding a bit foreboding as I warned about the traps in the hopes of scaring them away.
“Jacob. We want to spend more time with you.” Mar said, sadness in her voice.
AHHHGGHHH!
I’m the one with cancer! You can’t use my own sympathy card against me! Who do you think you are!?
All I could do at this point was sigh. Time to find somewhere else to switch in and out of my costume, time to find a new place to tinker with. This was going to set me back several weeks. How is it that in trying to solve one problem I ended up creating a bigger one?
Oh well.
“You think we could get some couches in here? Bean bag chairs, something like that?” Mar asked Danny and me. I gave her a confused look.
“Are you asking me if I can carry a couch all the way from my house to this lab without my parents noticing? Or are you suggesting I get an abandoned couch off the curb near a crack den, because somehow that’s even more insane.” I asked her in a rhetorical sense. She gave me an annoyed look.
“Well I mean, you have all of these computers and stuff, how’d you get those?” She responded. “Trust me. You do not want to know where the stuff came from.” I warned her. “I definitely do.” She insisted.
I just ignored her and got back to work on my strength enhancing glove. I started to show Danny the particulars of it, while Mar and Emily talked about renovating my personal space. I began, for a moment, to forget why I was so against having them here in the first place.
“Hey Jacob, I have a question.” Emily said behind me. I immediately stopped what I was doing to listen to her, while also not turning around to face her.
“What’s up?” I replied.
“This stuff is really groundbreaking… So why not contact a lab and work towards finding a cure for cancer?” She asked me with a pang of sadness. The question killed me a little inside. Reminded me of all the things I’ve spent so much time trying to give up on.
Now I remember why I didn’t want you here. It always comes back to this.
“I don’t want to waste my last months on a pipe dream.” She didn’t reply, and I returned to my work without ever even thinking of turning around.
…
Mar forced me to draw a map of the exact locations of each of the traps and what they did. I made three copies, one for each of them. They each used them to make their way out of my lab. Danny was the last to leave, and he still seemed annoyed that I was asking him to lie. He’s nicer than I could ever be. I don’t know what exactly makes a person like that.
They’d also promised me that they’d be back tomorrow to do a study group, and then start renovations. Danny said he had an idea for a really cool project we could start on. I kind of liked the idea of having him along for the ride. Even if I couldn’t tell him what was really going on.
About ten minutes after Danny left I took the suit out of my backpack and started tinkering. My first step was to improve the mechanics of the suit. I replenished the supply of painkillers. I had stored them in a cabinet in the back, so none of my dear friends could have found them. A lot of painkillers had been used the night before, because the capsule in the suit was almost empty. I took the battery chip out of a pocket on my backpack and put it on a charger. Soon I’d have to get more gasoline for the generator. The service providing box I’d set up was keeping the computers running smoothly.
I tinkered with the blades on the suit’s toes. The problem was a damaged nerve sensor near the joint of the toe. A problem that was easily remedied by taking it out and replacing it with a brand new one. Next, I disabled the enhanced sense of smell. It caused more trouble than it was worth when I was out and about. Once I was done tinkering with the suit, I started on the boa staff. I needed a suitable power source for it.
I was planning on using it to help take down criminals but reeling in the claw would be a lot more trouble than the added advantage was worth without a good battery. After I was done writing down possible solutions to the multitude of problems and crossing out the ones that dissatisfied me, the battery was done charging. Good for another night of living it up.
I placed the battery chip in the spine of the suit and then started the nightmare that was putting it on. I could hear the mechanisms click into place and instinctively flinched and squirmed. That was a really bad idea, too. I might’ve messed up the connection process. I had to take a deep breath to keep myself from moving too much.
I preemptively screamed once I felt the ice cold touch of the painkillers on my skin. The needles tearing into my flesh followed not too long after. Luckily none of my friends had decided to stay in the vicinity to make sure I was alright, or they would have heard my mad howling.
Next came the mask. My hands shook from the pain as I crawled on my hands and knees towards the table I’d laid the mask on. Tears welled up in my eyes as I took it and stared at it for a long time. I placed the mask on and heard the click of the mechanism that started the process. I’d have kept screaming but it’s difficult to scream with wires sinking into the soft flesh of your throat.
Either I’m going to have to invent the strongest painkiller on planet Earth, or I’m going to have to make this easier for myself.
I fell flat on my back. I felt a lot of discomfort from laying on top of the tail. But that discomfort meant nothing compared to the soreness I felt in my eye socket, the inside of my throat, my ear canal, and every single inch of my skin.
Why did it hurt so much worse the second time? Eventually I found the strength within myself to get back up.
This time I didn’t even need to get a good vantage point to hear what I needed to. A high pitched noise sounded in my now sensitive ears. I instinctively pressed down on them to try and soften the noise, but only succeeded in irritating an already sore part of my body. The noise disappeared just as quickly as it had arrived, but I had already turned my attention towards its general location. I heard people talking in whispered voices.
One person, actually, a girl. She was quietly yelling and complaining at someone. I knew exactly where they were. I bolted out the front door of the factory like it wasn’t even there. I’d gotten a little used to the odd gait of the suit, I’d be able to get to their location in a few minutes.
…
Zoey hadn’t intended to live this life. She’d wanted to be a veterinarian. But you need a lot of money to pay for those college classes. Zoey had always been an exceptionally smart girl, but her mother was on welfare and she’d never met her father.
She’d gotten quite a bit of financial aid along the way, but she screwed it all up in one little mistake. She’d gotten a boyfriend. Zoey had never had a boyfriend before college, she didn’t know how to maintain a social life, maintain her grades, and keep a boyfriend. So Zoey made a few stupid mistakes and lost all of her scholarships. Then her boyfriend left her. Then her friends abandoned her. Then her mother couldn’t make time for her.
So Zoey was all alone. But Zoey was still an exceptionally bright girl. She just had to turn that brightness towards something else. In this case that happened to be robbing the house of a millionaire with several thousand dollars worth of security in his house. But every system had flaws to exploit, and this one was definitely no exception.
Zoey had a bad habit of talking to herself and she probably sounded like a crazy person if anybody was in earshot to hear her. She went through an entire dialogue with herself as she sat outside the house and disabled the security systems.
“Fuck. The alarm went off for a second. Oh well, it’ll probably be flagged as false.” Zoey said to herself.
After finishing her job she stuck her handgun in her belt, and grabbed two duffle bags. Zoey’s target was an isolated old man that deliberately avoided living in the city. He had ex mob ties and thus liked to keep just how he got so rich a secret from the general public. Luckily for Zoey he was visiting family at the moment. The electronic door popped open without resistance. Zoey waited patiently on the front steps and tapped her foot as she did. After a few minutes of waiting she checked her watch.
Zoey was an excellent shot because of years of training her whore mother had given her in case of an especially violent John. Three bullets put down three German Shepherds. All shots in the head, not a single second of hesitation between. A smirk grew on Zoey’s face as she heard of the yelps of one after firing off the first shot.
Once the last one slumped onto the floor with a hole in its forehead. She started with the especially expensive looking stuff. A vase, some watches, a couple art pieces small enough to fit. She was planning to auction it all off to anonymous buyers tomorrow night. That’d be enough to get her back on her way to becoming a veterinarian. Then she’d be done. Zoey had always loved helping animals.
An especially heavy vase shattered on the floor as Zoey heard the door slam behind her. Zoey had her gun held and pointed at the doorway, but there was nothing there. Zoey heard the laughter of a little boy coming from behind her in the kitchen. Without thinking she shot wildly at the counter, not a single shot landed on anything alive. Zoey saw for a single second the flicking of what looked like a brown rope moving past faster than anything should be able to run.
“Come out!” Zoey screamed. “Come out you fucking pussy!” She shot wildly at a noise she heard on the stairwell. In a moment of adrenaline she ran up the stairs thinking she’d catch the culprit. When she found nothing she made a slow descent back down the stairs. She leaned against the wall in the living room and tried to calm herself. A weight descended on her back and she was instantly forced to the ground.
She felt something snake its way around her throat and squeeze tight. Then she heard a little boy giggle from on top of her back. She felt ten little knives sink just a little into her shirt like cat’s claws.
“You’re going to call the police, and confess.” The little boy said. For a moment everything started to get darker and darker. She was brought back to reality by the feeling of blood starting to slowly descend down her sides, and the feeling of less and less air in her lungs.
“Do you understand me?” He asked. She nodded her head.
Whatever was around her throat loosened and eased up. The weight let go but as it left she felt handcuffs that she had been keeping in her pockets, in case of any witnesses, slip on her wrist. When she found the where-with-all to look up and around the little boy was gone, there was a phone calling 911 in her hand and she was handcuffed to a couch leg in the living room.
…
I’d decided to use my voice modifier to sound like a little kid, for the added psychological effect. That and I needed to test the limits of it after a few improvements I’d made to it tonight. Worked like a charm.
Hopefully she didn’t just immediately hang up. That’d suck.
I ran along rooftops to my lab feeling like a million bucks the whole way there.
