Chương 43: Every Villain Needs a Hobby

Annie spat blood onto the arena floor and grinned. The crowd roared around her. Tiered seating packed shoulder to shoulder, shadows cut by spotlights, fans pressed against reinforced glass. The cage rose to the ceiling. No escape. No mercy. Just how I like it. Her opponent sagged against the far wall, wheezing through broken ribs. A slab of mutant muscle with dino-hide skin and claws like machetes.

He had ripped chunks of metal out of her before she caught onto his rhythm, and he'd scored a long cut in their last exchange. Blood ran freely from the fresh wound in her recently healed stomach. Doesn't matter. Free healing as long as I win, baby. She flexed her metal arm slick with his blood and rolled her shoulders. Flesh and steel moved in harmony.

"Come on," she taunted, pacing toward him, slow and steady.

"You gonna try again? Or are we done here?" The shifter groaned and slid down the wall. A heavy buzzer sounded. Red lights flared overhead. Match over. The far door opened, medical bots rolling in to cart off the loser while a superhuman healer tended to the winner. They worked fast, as if they'd done it hundreds of times before. They probably have. The crowd erupted. Annie raised her arm in victory and let the noise wash over her.

"I want another one!" she bellowed, voice raw with adrenaline.

"Right now! Who's next?!" The announcer's voice crackled through the speakers, muffled by the roar.

"Ladies, gentlemen, and others! Can you believe it? The bloody ginger herself, still standing after going toe-to-toe with Mesothrasher! What do you say, folks? Do we give her what she wants?" The crowd surged, chanting the name she'd given them.

"Scrap-py! Scrap-py! Scrap-py!" She spun in place with arms wide, blood dripping from her elbows. MetaMetal rippled with her excitement. Her skin stitched together beneath the healer's touch.

"Don't make me beg," she shouted at the announcer's box.

"Line up the next one!" Another buzzer. Another door grinding open. Her grin widened. She didn't care who it was. She just wanted another taste of victory. Augustus stirred his drink with a thin metal straw, listening more than he spoke. A quiet jazz loop played overhead, soft enough not to compete with conversation. The bar was low-lit, clean, and mostly empty. It was a gem tucked away at the edge of one of the residential spokes. Not a lounge, nor a dive, but something in between. Just what he liked.

Across from him sat the owners, a married couple in their late forties, though advanced medical treatments blurred the years. She handled the drinks; he handled the books. They'd introduced themselves as Lira and Juno, and Augustus had taken an immediate liking to both.

"So how do you manage supply runs?" Augustus asked, voice warm.

"Seems like a nightmare with orbital customs." Juno laughed behind his glass.

"It is. We bribe the right people, keep three months of dry stock, and never order anything fragile. Liquor's easier than produce."

"We used to keep fresh citrus for cocktails," Lira said with a shake of her head.

"That lasted… what, two months?"

"Two and a half," Juno corrected with a grin.

"Then the shipment came in spoiled and we lost twelve grand on rotten oranges." Augustus winced in sympathy.

"The hidden cost of class."

"You learn to adapt," Lira said, slipping a coaster under his glass with practiced ease.

"Out here, everything's more expensive. Rent. Licenses. Staff. Even ice."

"But people tip better," Juno added.

"A lot of them think they're on vacation, even when they're not." Augustus chuckled softly and leaned back.

"I've been thinking of opening one myself. A small place, somewhere quiet. Decent lighting and music. Proper furniture. And a game room out back."

"It's hard to do it without help," Lira warned.

"The Queen insists that things measure up to her standards."

"Fortunately," Augustus said, "I'm not without resources. Or friends. But I appreciate the candor."

"You're the magician, right?" Juno asked.

"With Grimnir?" Augustus smiled, but didn't answer.

"Hell of a thing," Juno went on.

"You've made a lot of enemies. But also fans, especially up here. People know who really took out that crew in Argentum." Lira raised an eyebrow.

"If you're looking for staff when you open that bar, call us. We know the right people." Augustus tipped his glass to her.

"You'll be my first call." He glanced out at the passing crowd. It wasn't just about being charming or curious. He was mapping it out in his head. Every contact and every skill set. Favors. Grimnir would need allies. But the team had also given him an opportunity to see his dream reborn from the destruction wrought by Flashpoint. He had no intention of letting it slip through his fingers. Talia sat still on the stool. The room was dark by design. Smooth walls and soft flooring.

No furniture but her seat and the dividing wall in front of her with a diamond-pattern mesh cutout that distorted faces but carried sound clearly. There were no visible cameras, no microphones. The only way in or out was a single reinforced door behind her. The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement. She admired the setup. It was straightforward and discreet. Professional. A soft chime sounded. The mesh flickered with faint blue light emanating from the person behind it.

"Begin," said a low voice, modulated to sound anonymous. Talia sent the first file from her implant.

"The highest priority is a girl named Sasha Sheridan. Might go by Ash. She's a normal human, between sixteen and seventeen. Last seen near an abandoned Argentum dockyard roughly three months ago. No known location since." The silence that followed wasn't a passive one. She imagined they were already running preliminary scans of existing data and cross-referencing with whatever footage they could access.

"That's not much to go on," the voice said at last.

"You'll pay more."

"I know," Talia replied evenly, sending the next file.

"Tertiary priority. Time is not a factor. I can provide only names. No known last locations or power classifications. Some are ex-military; the sort that don't want to be found. I understand you're working with next to nothing. I expect you'll charge accordingly."

"Yes. This will require a much wider net. Many inferences. Accuracy cannot be guaranteed."

"I understand." She tapped again, transferring the third file.

"Secondary priority. Santiago Systems," she said.

"We want everything you can get. Headquarters layout. Site maps for any R&D facilities, specifically those in or near Argentum. Key staff. Superhuman contractors or guards. Power classifications, if known." There was a longer pause. When the voice returned, it carried an edge of curiosity.

"That's a dangerous request."

"So is being curious," she said flatly. Another silence.

"And…?" the broker prompted. Talia tilted her head slightly.

"Dossier on Flashpoint," she said. It was a risk Alexander hadn't concerned himself with. But she knew it would matter eventually, and she liked to be prepared.

"Whatever you have. Personal. Historical."

"Very well. The upfront cost will be…" Her implant chimed with the figure. She paid without hesitation. The price was of no consequence compared to what Grimnir aimed to achieve. Alexander ducked beneath a low arch of cables as he stepped deeper into the cluttered stall. The sign out front had been a scrap of painted metal. Inside, the air smelled of rust and scorched metal. Exactly his kind of store. Stacks of salvage crowded the shelves. Alien components. Fractured boards.

Crates with markings he didn't recognize. Most of it was either inert, too damaged, too old, or too specialized to function outside whatever wreck it had been torn from. But every few minutes, his Technopathy picked up a flicker of something odd. He'd been tracking the pulse throughout the level for hours now, while checking out all the different stores. The alien tech on offer had fascinated him until he realized most of it was dead and useless.

What little he found still powered only showed how much he still had to learn. Another subtle buzz along the edge of his awareness. It wasn't a sound or vibration, more like a device idling in sleep mode sending out an activation prompt. It was faint and sporadic, perhaps operating in low-power mode, but it was still alive. And definitely alien. He circled the shop slowly, sending out careful pulses weak enough to probe only a few feet around him at a time.

Several times he thought he had it, only to realize it was the wrong shelf. Wrong crate. A dead end stack. The fourth found him hovering a hand over a container of mismatched alien scrap. Tools, maybe. He snorted. For all I know, these are the most advanced weapons I've ever seen. Or alien sporks. He pushed aside a bent coil of tubing and saw it. A blackish-blue cube the size of a grapefruit. Metallic, according to his Metallokinesis, but like nothing he was familiar with.

It felt like layers of thin geometric wafers, broken into asymmetrical grids which grew increasingly complex the further he delved into it with his mind. It was too large to fit comfortably in his palm, but he picked it up anyway. It was warm to the touch. And heavier than it looked. All three of his powers spiked as something inside the cube responded to his touch. It didn't feel like any machine he was familiar with, and it also wasn't entirely metal despite his first impression.

Some kind of metal-ceramic composite? Alexander narrowed his eyes.

"You're not junk," he murmured.

"You find something you like?" a voice croaked. He turned and found the shopkeeper standing behind him. Short and hunched, with skin of melted bronze. Micro-lenses rotated and clicked over her eyes. She grinned wide at him, revealing chipped and missing teeth.

"You got a good eye," she cackled.

"That piece? Came from a starship graveyard at the edge of the Helix Nebula. The Eye of God, they call it. Full of ancient derelicts, older than our species. That one's been warm since it arrived. Couldn't crack it, but maybe you've got a trick or two, hm?" The cube pulsed faintly in his grip.

"I'll let it go for… two hundred thousand." Alexander blinked.

"For scrap?"

"Ancient, alien scrap. Still active. And you've been pacing my shop like a man on a treasure hunt," she said, leaning against the wall.

"I can see you want it. The only question now is how much." Damn it. Too obvious. Auggy would've played that cooler. Usually he was good at reading people, but the long pursuit had distracted him and half his mind was still working on the cube, trying to understand its structure. Its purpose. Alexander sighed. He hated haggling.

"One hundred. And that's being generous." The shopkeeper chuckled.

"One-fifty." He hesitated. The cube pulsed again.

"One-twenty-five. And I walk out with as much of this starship armor as I can carry." The woman clicked her tongue, then extended a hand.

"Deal." Alexander paid. Overpaid, probably, for just the cube. But as he left the shop with tons of scrap metal floating behind him, and an irate shopkeeper scowling at his back, he couldn't shake the feeling that he hadn't just bought salvage. He'd picked up something that had been waiting to be found. Alexander took the long route back. He didn't need to. There were nav maps and digital kiosks all over the station. But the cube, now resting on a stack of pizza boxes he carried, was worth the distraction.

The deeper he dug into it, the more it resisted. When he tried reshaping it with Metallokinesis, a new skill he'd been developing, he found he could only minutely affect it before it would snap back into place. Alexander was pretty sure that wasn't supposed to happen. Then again, what did he know? Maybe alien metal followed different rules. His drones drifted lazily above.

He dipped into them now and then to check if he was being watched and had noticed several devices trained on him throughout the day; some, he suspected, belonged to heroes, recording his activity, but he ignored them. Astra Omnia was full of walking weapon systems. He had already passed several international-class supervillains. One had even given him a respectful nod, as if they were old colleagues.

Compared to them, a man with four gourmet pizzas and half a starship's worth of scrap floating behind him should barely register. The pizza shop had been an impulse. A side alley that smelled of garlic and real baked dough, not that vat-grown yeast, had drawn him in. He'd ordered with little thought. Hawaiian for himself, extra pineapple, just to annoy the puritans. A meat-lover's monstrosity for Annie. Some overpriced prosciutto-pear-arugula creation called Borealis No. 7 for Augustus.

A balanced supreme with mushrooms, olives, and roasted capsicum for Talia. Maybe she'd eat it one-handed while reading three files at once. He pinged them across the station's net with a lazy, subvocalized drawl.

"Pizza's on me. Meet back at my suite." The replies came quickly. From Annie: "Hell yes!" From Augustus: "Better be the good stuff." From Talia: "Noted. ETA six minutes. Don't touch my pizza, Annie." Making his way through the hotel lobby, he drew strange looks from the staff. Alexander smiled at them and summoned the elevator with a thought. One quick ride later, alone because of the floating debris, he arrived at his suite. He removed his coat, tossed it onto the bed, and settled into a chair with a sigh.

The scent of baked pizzas and cheese drew him to his first slice. The others would get there soon enough, and knowing Annie, there'd be plenty of chaos to unravel. But for now, pizza and quiet would do. The chaos could wait.