Chương 33: Definitely Not A Lair

Silver Visor gestured with a hand to the dark doorway as if he'd presented me with a suite at the Shangri-La. I stood still with my scratched arms folded over my chest next to the stranger I met ten minutes ago.

"You honestly expect me to go down into whatever kind of torture chamber or hoarding place for your serial killer trophies you've got there?" His head hung back tiredly.

"Coming from the girl who fought a Chem Head down a dark alley all by herself." He pulled out a flashlight from his belt and turned it on.

"Go ahead and check it out yourself." He threw the black stick at me and I caught it with both hands. I stepped closer to the doorway and flashed the light into the dark. There was a set of stairs leading down with a rather plain door at the bottom. Each step felt like walking into a creepy basement but we were on the roof so it was actually the top floor. The door at the bottom of the stairs opened smoothly, but I didn't take a step in yet.

The first thing visible in the room was a giant map of the city that covered an entire wall. Small photographs were pasted on different parts with circles on specific places and post it notes with writing next to each picture. Strings crisscrossed over the map connecting pictures and several tied to one area at the top. Other than that, there was a desk, a chair, a couch, and rows and rows of shelves filled with various junk.

"If you want," he said, walking past me into the room.

"You can stay next to the door the whole time. Or use your kung fu to disable my arms– honestly, I'd like to see that." I glanced at him.

"I was worried you might be crazy until I saw that you're a totally normal person who keeps a map of where certain people go, what they do, and exactly where to find them anywhere in the city. This has completely relieved all of my concerns." He walked over to the wall next to me and flipped on a light.

"It's not just anyone. It's the Alchemist and his minions." My feet slowly made their way down into the room. There was a dustiness to the air that smelled like a library, an abandoned warehouse, or basically anywhere that is largely untouched by humans. He said it was a lab, but there was no science equipment in sight, just rows of shelves filled with random junk and a corner containing a desk and paisley-patterned worn furniture pieces, it mainly looked like a hoarder's storage place for Goodwill raids.

The map was enormous, but most of the unhinged editions were around my neighborhood. I walked up to it, looking over everything– names, locations, pictures.

"That's her!" I touched the photo of a woman with big black hair and the cat-like smile that would be forever embedded into my brain now.

'Katerina Ivanova' a post-it note said under her picture. Yeesh, she clearly took inspiration from her name.

"That's who I fought tonight." His head nodded.

"She's not usually in that area, so maybe she was filling in for someone else. But now they're going to have to replace her." My eyes continued roving over the map.

"How long have you been keeping tabs on these people?"

"Not long enough." He didn't sound like he wanted to elaborate. I looked up at where all of the strings connected, but there was no picture there. Only the words 'the Alchemist' were written on top.

"And it looks like you still don't know who the big Kahuna is yet?"

"Not yet, but I'm getting close."

"But why them specifically?" I turned back to him.

"There are plenty of villains out there and you're not tracking them. What's with the obsession?" He walked over to the desk in the corner and began taking off some of his tools. Metallic plunking sounds filled the silence and I was about to move onto my next question when his voice finally broke out.

"Because no one else is paying attention! The heroes aren't doing anything because the Alchemist and his Chem Heads are relatively new. Only an "act of villainy" can get him flagged, so he uses his minions to spread his poison. But the heroes know it's him, they know he's the one behind it, but they won't do anything about it because they say drug enforcement is a local police matter. And if they're not going to do anything, then I will!"

He slammed a canister down on the desk with far more force than was necessary. My eyes went back to Katerina's picture.

"Yeah, I guess that's how all vigilantes feel, that's why we do things on our own."

"Oh so you're admitting to being a vigilante now, huh?" I sighed, looking down at the tatters of my sleeves.

"Look, you said you have basic medical care, can I use some?" There was a distorted grumbling noise from behind his visor as he got up from his desk. He walked to a corner of the room and brought back a plastic container. Inside was a bottle of saline, antibiotic cream, large bandages, gauze, and even needles, splints, and braces.

"Have you had to use all of this stuff before?"

"Not everything. I haven't broken a bone yet, but I've gotten very close."

"What's your plan if you get caught?" He shook his head.

"I'm really not opposed to the Academy at all. They're good people and they do good work, but they might ask me to focus on other things when there's just one thing that I need to do. After that, I'm fine with working for them." His voice had grown quieter like a tired robot instead of an angry one.

"And that's taking down these people?" I gestured with my chin toward the map.

"Yes." There was a silence as I dripped the saline over my arms. It was surprisingly pain-free. His head looked down at my arm.

"You want to have those scars forever?"

"No."

"Then you need stitches." I glanced down at the ripped lines. Closing each one would take hours. Not to mention a sharp needle poking in and out of my skin about a thousand times.

"You know, maybe I will just take the scars. I can use them to impress all of my biker friends at bars." He was looking through all of the different bottles.

"I think I can make something to help you." From his many shelves, Silver Visor started grabbing different bottles, various flasks, and a bunsen burner. With careful and meticulous measurements, he began pouring and mixing different chemicals. It was like the man dressed as a robot had embraced his inner AI because he worked like a machine. I looked over his shoulder as he worked. It was possible that I could learn something because the entire process looked like a very advanced form of cooking.

Then again, there was that one time that I started a fire while making top ramen, so what he was doing was well beyond me. Before long, he was almost done. A clear thick liquid bubbled above the flame of his burner and gave off the smell of paint thinner. He stepped closer and gestured for my arms.

"Let me have a look." I shielded my arms from Doctor Psycho.

"I appreciate the effort, but that stuff smells like it would strip the color off a car and I was raised to not take drugs from strangers so…"

"Relax, I'm a tinker. Chemistry isn't really where my talent lies, but I can mix up a solution to tighten the skin together and seal the wound. You have heard of a tinker, right?" He tilted his head and even with the voice synthesizer, I could tell that his tone implied he was talking to someone with suboptimal intelligence. My hands dropped, but my head raised higher.

"Yes." I looked at the mixture bubbling in the glass.

"But I didn't think it worked like this."

"Well, it does." He opened a cabinet and began taking out vials of strange liquids to add to his little glass cauldron. His hand moved over the beaker, picking it up and moving it around clockwise. The contents swirled inside with a pearly sheen.

"When confronted with a problem, my mind fills with possible solutions. My skill also helps nudge things along to make it work right." My lips twisted as I tried to think it through.

"When you say "helps nudge things", do you mean that your power is literally nudging physics to make your pseudo science work?" He paused to think.

"I never thought about it bending physics, but I guess it does, yeah. If you mixed these exact chemicals, you would create something similar, but it wouldn't be nearly as effective. My power can fill in gaps when I don't have everything I need or when the quality of my materials isn't good enough." I thought that through, or at least tried to look as if it made sense to me. Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

"Alright," he said, taking it off the burner.

"I think it's ready." A few drops of blood dripped down from under his helmet onto his upper lip.

"Umm… you're bleeding." His hand quickly reached into his desk and pulled out a cloth to dab his face.

"Skill fatigue. Medical solutions take a lot out of me. Let's get you patched up." I shook my head. The chemical smell of whatever he'd cooked up was just too similar to when Gran had repainted our apartment.

"Thanks, but like I said, I'm gonna keep my arms like this. I think it's really going to help me become top dog when they send me to prison."

"Look," he said, shrugging off one of his gloves, taking a knife from his belt, and quickly slicing it down his arm. It wasn't deep, but blood welled on top of the wound. He took a cotton swab and dipped it into the clear liquid, then swiped it over the cut. The skin on either side raised up and then closed together, the drops of blood spilling out over the small ridge. The cut was still there, but the skin was pressed perfectly together and the bleeding had completely stopped. Ok… that was pretty cool.

"Do you want to wait thirty minutes just to make sure I don't die of toxic chemical poisoning or do you believe me now?"

"Fine." I held out my arm.

"But if I do die, I'm going to haunt you, and I'll be way more annoying to talk to than I ever was in real life. If you can't already tell, that's saying something." He began swiping the liquid over my arm. It was at first pleasantly cool, soothing to my inflamed skin, but then after a few seconds, freezing and stiff, like he'd poured liquid nitrogen on me. Every long line of ripped flesh was rising up and pressing together, and I had too many to count.

"So," he said, switching to the other arm.

"You're okay with going to the Academy if you get caught?"

"I won't get caught." The cotton swab was thrown into a garbage can and he swiped his hand in front of his face like I did sometimes to dismiss a message from the system, then he began washing his hands with rubbing alcohol.

"What do you dislike about them so much? It's not a bad gig. I'm going to sign up after I take down the Alchemist." I sighed, arm twinging from the icy puckering of all of my scrapes.

"It's a weird government training facility that they drag you away to if you have the right power set to be useful. My life may not be perfect, but it's mine. A prep school prison sounds like an absolute nightmare for a person like me." He sat down in a cheap swivel chair which creaked alarmingly under the weight of his armor.

"You do seem like the type of person that has issues with authority. You're wrong about the government facility though. The Academy is run by the Hero Confederation" I stared at him blankly.

"Isn't that the government?" His metal encased head shook back and forth.

"Technically no. The Confederation works with the government, but they maintain independence. They are the ones that run the Academies around the country, not the Bureau of Super Affairs. You may like it there." I leaned back against a table.

"I don't think so. They would get to control what I choose to do, who I fight, and what spandex I have to don, even if I don't want to, and believe me– I don't. They seem a lot more concerned with getting superheroes on cereal boxes than actually helping people. It should be as simple as what we're doing, but they have to inject every part of it with bureaucracy."

"I won't argue with you. I like the freedom that comes with being a vigilante too. I just wish I had access to their information on the system. There are some forums that Henchmen use that I found. It had some warnings about what not to pick, but I bet the Academy can really teach you to min max." I nodded my head confidently.

"Right. Learning to mid max is very important."

"It's called min max, not mid max. It means to minimise useless stats and maximise important ones. You do know what I'm talking about right? You're not just putting points wherever, are you?"

"Of course not. I put them where I needed them." I held up my hands and showed him my perfectly unharmed fingers. He put a hand on his head, then let out a long sigh.

"Your fingers aren't your skill, they're your stat upgrade. You focused an entire stat point on your fingers?"

"No. That would be ridiculous…" I tried crossing my frozen arms in front of me, but that felt like lying giant icicles on top of each other.

"I spent a half of one." He got up and stepped closer, taking my fingers in his gauntlet-covered hands. The visor was opaque but I got the impression that his eyes were roving over every knuckle and chipped nail.

"Did I somehow ruin my future as a super?" I mumbled.

"With half a point? No. I mean it's not optimal but you must have wanted to chop off your hand from the pain. The forum said to never take the option to focus a physical stat boost to a small area of the body. That the intensity of the change is excruciating." He gave me my hands back and I held them together, looking down at my fingers.

"Yes, it was undoubtedly the worst pain I've ever experienced." My voice came out low, even more gravelly than before. I shuddered, then glanced back up at him.

"You should give it a try, it could be a learning experience. Really put some hair on your chest."

"I'll pass." His robotic voice somehow sounded flatter than usual.

"So…" My arms were starting to feel closer to normal now, and Gran would get angry and suspicious if I didn't come home soon. I needed to wrap this up.

"Any tips on how to mid max my class?"

"I told you it's min maxing, not mid maxing."

"Listen, you can call it Mad Maxing for all I care. I'm just looking for some advice." He sighed.

"Fine, what's your class? We can look up some info on the forums. The heroes have pretty tight security on their servers, but henchmen and villains will post their ideas anywhere."

"I–" My tongue sludged in my mouth, incapable of moving. I still didn't know this guy and revealing my power was very sensitive information. I needed help, but he didn't need the specifics.

"I move really fast." He tapped his chin.

"You mean a speedster? That's pretty straightforward. You'll need agility; it's your main stat and if you can get it to five, you can upgrade your skill. After that you have the skill cap to deal with." I nodded, tucking my hair behind an ear, trying to look like I knew what he was talking about. Too bad that was hopeless.

"Skill cap?"

"You can't raise a skill past level five at F Rank." My fingers scratched behind my ear.

"How do you get past F rank?"

"The Villains post about it online. They say you need to successfully perform an act of grand villainy. There isn't as much information for heroes, but I would imagine we would need to stop an act of grand villainy." My eyes looked down at my shoes. It was fine. I had hoped to buy my way out of F rank with hero points, but instead I would have to grow stronger. I just had to save the whole of Chicago from a raging monster, tidal wave, diabetes or something simple like that.

"What about after you get your main stat to five?"

"That's up to you. Do you need to hit harder or be more durable? Judging by your neck and arms you could use some more constitution to recover faster. Other than that, focus can help reaction times. Intelligence is probably your dump stat as a speedster, as is charisma." I rolled my eyes.

"Pass on that last one. I haven't changed my mind about being on those cereal boxes." His fingers tapped on his knee for a bit.

"Actually, charisma can provide a lot of different things. It's not just about looking pretty, what it really does is affect people's minds and how they perceive you." Hmm.

"Well, thanks for the advice– and surprisingly effective medical care." I looked down at my arms, which still had pink ridges crisscrossing all over them covered in a white sparkly frost. The skin felt so tight it was hard to move them, but it didn't look like I would slowly bleed to death anymore, though.

"Maybe you aren't a crazy stalker, after all." He chuckled through his voice synthesizer, sounding like Johnny Five Alive.

"Oh, I am for the people I want to find." I stood up, stretching my body, which turned out to be a bad idea. I needed to get home. My throat swallowed painfully as I looked down at my hands.

"Thanks for all of your help tonight. I really needed it and everything you told me is going to make things easier from now on." I took a deep breath.

"But I should really get going."

"With your neck looking like that? You should probably try to cover it up." Of course I hadn't forgotten about the way my neck felt like more like a crumpled straw than a breathing apparatus. It just hadn't occurred to me that people could see that from the outside. I shrugged.

"I'll buy some clothes on the way home. I certainly wouldn't be the first haggard and bloody person to be walking around Chicago at night."

"I have some clothes here. Take a look to see if there's something that will work." My foot tapped on the floor for a bit then I nodded.

"Ok ok, I'll look around." He turned and walked to his workbench, muttering to himself about insufficient torque while unhooking his grappling hook from his wrist. I moved between the shelves. It was just like a library except instead of books, it was filled with junk. He had whole sections comprised of just cleaning and household chemicals. One aisle was just car parts. In the back, he had old clothes and foam boards. Something about this felt familiar.

There was someone I knew who would like this whole crazy hodgepodge set up, but my mind couldn't make a connection to anyone. I focused back on the task at hand of choosing clothes. But then I had an idea. Silver Helmet looked up after I tapped him on the shoulder.

"Ok, I picked something out." I held up a long-sleeved shirt and a scarf from behind my back.

"I could use these to cover up my arms and neck so that my Gr– family won't see them when I get back home. And then, I was thinking I could really use a better mask– something small and easy to throw on and, you know, isn't made out of a sock. If I try to make one now, I'll probably pass out from exhaustion, so I thought maybe I could come back in a few days." I took a large, gravelly, pain-inducing breath.

"... And maybe you could give me some more advice on how to be less of a complete failure as a vigilante." My pulse pounded under my skin, either because of the recent blood loss I'd experienced or because I was taking a chance here, but probably both. I had known this guy for the entirety of less than an hour, but he had given me magic stitches and lots of tips on how to be a better super during that time.

And I had to admit– it felt like Atlas getting a five minute break from holding up the world to be able to talk about all of this to someone. To share this part of me with somebody else. The best part was that they only knew this side of me, nothing else. He didn't move much at first, just tapped a finger against his lips. Then he cleared his throat and said, "That works. Come back on Saturday. I'll leave the door unlocked." I nodded.

"Alright, I'll see you then." My feet turned to walk away, then stopped.

"By the way, what's your name?" He smiled slightly, pausing for a moment.

"It's Rigel. What's yours?" His name stuck in my head like it reminded me of something, but I couldn't think of what. I shook my head to clear it as I held out a hand to shake his.

"Zero."